iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The U.S. is big -- and getting bigger. Since the 1980s, American adults obesity is at epidemic proportions, and there does not seem to be an end in sight.



Rates of obesity in those younger leveled off between 2005 and 2014, but a recent report in Journal of the American Medical Association wanted to know if there has been any change.



The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which takes various measures of the health and nutrition of children and adults in the U.S., using interviews and physical exams.



Body mass index (BMI) measures from almost 30,000 adults and 17,000 young people tell the story between 2007 and 2016.



On BMI measurements: Adults are obese when their BMI is over 30; severe obesity is any BMI over 40. A normal BMI ranges between 18.5 and 24.9. In those under 20 years old, obesity is measured against what is normal for one's age -- obesity is greater than the 95th percentile, while severe obesity is at or above 120 percent of the 95th percentile.



The CDC results were mixed: in the young, the prevalence of obesity was 16.8 percent in 2007; it was 18.5 percent 10 years later.



There were no significant differences when looking at age or gender, but thats still nearly two out of every 10 kids weighing in as obese. Our youth arent in the clear just yet.



For adults, it was a more stark story: Obesity increased from 33.7 percent to 39.6 percent over 10 years -- it stood out most in women and in adults over 40. Thats a shocking two out of five adults.



Severely obese adults went from 5.7 percent to 7.7 percent, showing up the most in adults from age 20 to 59.



Americans, it seems, may not realize that these trends increase risk for all types of disease, from heart attack, stroke and diabetes, to many forms of cancer.



And although we are seeing a potential plateau of obesity cases in our kids, we continue to hear about them being diagnosed with high blood pressure and diabetes -- diseases we often associate with adults -- requiring medication management.



Although the report did not give any recommendations about these results, it is telling that the obesity epidemic isnt losing its heft.



Doctors argue that we cannot accept this as societys new normal - unless we accept a higher death rate as well. Perhaps the thought of raising more healthy families will prove to be motivation to change.

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Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged South Africans to welcome and embrace foreign nationals from the continent as the country moves to be part of a pact to enable free movement of people and encourage trade and investment after signing a protocol at the African Union summit in Kigali, Rwanda...

"This is an opportunity that is going to yield great benefits for all countries on the continent as well as big business, small companies and micro-traders", President Ramaphosa said at the conclusion of his Working Visit to the Republic of Rwanda.

Rwanda and South Africa have had luke-warm relations after South Africa expelled in 2014 three Rwandan diplomats it linked to a raid on an exiled Rwandan general's Johannesburg home, and Rwanda retaliated by expelling six South African envoys. "Because when they come, they come with money".

Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe wants to strengthen infrastructure development cooperation with South Africa, particularly in roads, rail and energy. "Some of them come to learn in South Africa", Ramaphosa said.

While in Kigali, Ramaphosa on Wednesday signed the Kigali Declaration, signalling South Africa's commitment to moving towards the envisaged free trade area in Africa.

The Agreement on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) should provide new and meaningful trade and investment opportunities across the African continent.

"So movement of people does not only mean people are coming to South Africa to take our people's jobs". Also it needs to be seen in another dimension that we are sending people here [in Rwanda] to do business, to trade and to learn. "They have developed so quickly and got out of the total disaster they had 20 years ago and they are a completely transformed country", he said, with reference to Rwanda's genocide. He said he agreed that this would help trade.

Ramaphosa said he wasn't sure what a single African currency will look like, but said a digital currency may precede a "real" single currency - as it is easier than having a "proper, full" currency.

After the close of an extraordinary African Union summit on the African continental free trade area agreement, Ramaphosa said that if Rwandans wanted to come to South Africa to do business, it should be allowed.Journalist associations on Saturday demanded strict action against Delhi Police personal involved in assault and molestation of journalists covering a protest by students and teachers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

In a letter to Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik, the Press Club Of India, the Indian Women's Press Corps, the Press Association and the Federation of Press Clubs in India said journalists were beaten and molested despite telling police that they are from the

Condemning the assault, the associations said two women journalists were roughed up; one of whom was intimidated and threatened by women police officers and even more shockingly, the other journalist was molested by Station House Officer Vidyadhar Singh. A third male journalist has his arm in a sling after being beaten up by policemen.

They said the journalists were physically assaulted as they tried to take pictures of the protest, while police snatched their equipment and did not return it.

"Despite repeated pleas that they were journalists and even furnishing their identity cards, they were not spared.

"We demand that strict action against the police persons involved and the registration of FIRs on the complaints of assault and molestation, both of which have been filed at the respective police stations," the associations said.

On Friday, JNU teachers and students held a protest march demanding suspension of professor Atul Johri, accused of sexual harassment, and protesting against the removal of some department heads and a coordinator for not complying with the University's new attendance rules.

As the hundreds of protesting students and teachers from the University marched towards Parliament, the Delhi Police undertook a baton charge and fired water canons on the agitators near the INA Market.

Delhi Police on Saturday tendered their "deepest apologies" for the attack on personnel when police undertook a baton charge on protesting students, with a senior officer stressing that police did not intend to obstruct the from doing its job.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Puerto Rico's Monica Puig pulled off a surprise win 0-6,6-4,6-4 over second-seeded Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark on the fourth day of the Miami Open.

Wozniacki, who won the WTA Finals in Singapore in October last year, devastated Puig in the first set to take it 6-0, reports EFE news agency.

But everything changed in the first game of the second set, when Puig set up a breakpoint, which the world number two managed to save.

The 2016 Olympic Gold medallist finally managed to break Wozniacki in the fifth game to tie the match and recover her confidence.

Puig, ranked 82 in the world, who beat Australia's Samantha Stosur 6-3,6-4, in the first round, started the third set in fine form to earn an early break and then held on to win the set.

Puig will now meet Greece's Maria Sakkari, who beat Estonia's Anett Kontaveit 6-4,6-1, in the third round.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Fearing a blanket ban on e-cigarettes by the government in view of the limited awareness about the relative benefits of vaping over smoking, the Association of Vapors India (AVI) on Saturday stressed that nicotine should not be blamed for smoking-related deaths.

There is a widespread misconception about the health risks of vaping, which has led many Indian states to ban e-cigarettes, depriving smokers of a safer way of inhaling nicotine, said Samrat Chowdhery, Director, AVI, a not-for-profit advocacy organisation that defends the right to a healthier alternative to smoking.

This misconception is not limited to India, Chowdhery said, adding that e-cigarettes were victim to negative public perception elsewhere too.

An e-cigarette is a battery-operated device that uses a liquid that may contain nicotine, as well as varying compositions of flavourings, propylene glycol, vegetable glycerine and other ingredients.

When smoked, traditional cigarettes release tar and other toxic chemicals, widely believed to be responsible for premature deaths among smokers.

In contrast, e-cigarettes produce only nicotine which creates dependence, no doubt, but is not harmful to health unlike tar and other carcinogens produced from the burning of tobacco in traditional cigarettes, AVI said in a statement.

According to the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA), nicotine is a drug because it stimulates the brain and enhances feelings of pleasure, thereby reinforcing its continued use by the individual. It is not what causes serious illness and death from cancer and lung and heart diseases.

"It's the other chemical compounds in tobacco and the smoke created by setting tobacco on fire, that directly and primarily cause the illness and death, not the nicotine," FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a meeting held at White Oak, Maryland in 2017.

Michael Russell, the father of tobacco harm reduction theory and the developer of nicotine gum, famously said in 1976: "People smoke for nicotine but they die from the tar."

The nature of e-cigarettes is that, like Russell's gum, they contain nicotine and thus satisfy the cravings of smokers, but do not burn tobacco like cigarettes. Unfortunately, many people do not realise that nicotine itself is not the villain, said Chowdhery.

The AVI functionary said studies have shown that nicotine can have even positive effects like caffeine in tea and coffee, which acts as a stimulant and raises the heart rate and increases the speed of sensory information processing.

--IANS

gb/ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Pakistan and Sri Lanka have agreed to further diversify and enhance relations especially in the realm of trade and people-to-people contacts, a statement from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

The move came after Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi briefed visiting Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on issues of regional and international importance. President Sirisena concluded his three-day visit here on Saturday.

"The Sri Lankan President appreciated the support and assistance extended by Pakistan to his country during the difficult times," the statement said.

The Sri Lankan President presented 20 corneas (10 corneas each) to the president and the Prime Minister of Pakistan, who appreciated the generous donation for the people of Pakistan.

Three MoUs were signed during the visit of the Sri Lankan president to further strengthen bilateral cooperation on capacity building of diplomats, public policy research and training of civil servants.

"President Maithripala Sirisena's visit further cemented the good will between the two countries and provided renewed impetus to strength bilateral cooperation," the statement said.

According to the statement, Pakistan also sought help from the Sri Lankan president to convene the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)

--IANS

ahm/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Ailing Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is responding well to treatment in the US, Union Minister Suresh Prabhu said on Saturday.

"Spoke to @manoharparrikar who is responding well to treatment in the US. Hospital. Wished him speedy recovery, early return home to lead Goa," Prabhu said in in a tweet.

Parrikar is suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer and was admitted to a New York hospital earlier this month.

After being admitted to the Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai twice since February 15, he was flown to the US on March 7 for further treatment.

The Goa CMO has repeatedly maintained that Parrikar suffers from "mild pancreatitis".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Satuday offered prayers at a Hindu temple here for the party's success in the upcoming Karnataka assembly polls.

"Gandhi drove to the hill-top temple along with senior Congress leaders beginning his two-day visit to the state's old Mysuru region," a party official told IANS.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, party's state unit president G. Parameshwara and Energy Minister D.K. Shivakumar accompanied the Congress President to the renowned Goddess Chamundeshwari temple located on a hilltop dating back to the 12th century.

This is his fourth visit to the poll-bound state since February.

During the visit, the Congress chief will be holding public meetings and interacting with party cadres and people in Mandya and Chamrajnagar districts.

He will also address a rally on Sunday.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday attacked Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, saying that he was "peddling fake news" while the legal system is collapsing.

Prasad hit back, saying the pendency of cases was a legacy of the Congress led United Progressive Alliance government. He also questioned if the notice given to controversial firm Cambridge Analytica bothered him personally.

In a tweet on Saturday, Gandhi said the legal system is "collapsing under pending cases".

He said there were over 55,000 pending cases in the Supreme Court, over 37 lakh in various high courts (HC) and over 2.6 crore in the lower courts.

"Yet, a staggering 400 high court and 6,000 lower court judges not appointed, while Law Minister preoccupied (with) peddling fake news," Gandhi said.

In response, Prasad tweeted calling the pending cases a UPA legacy.

"Mr Rahul Gandhi, pendency is the legacy which UPA Govt of 10 years had given us where judicial infrastructure development was the lowest priority.

"We are improving the situation by creating more infrastructure, more digitization and greater technology application in disposal of cases," he said.

"In 2016 a record 126 High Court Judges were appointed in one year - the highest since independence. Since May 2014 NDA government appointed 17 SC Judges, 326 HC judges and made 304 additional judges permanent & also created 173 new posts of High Court Judges, compared to 20 created in UPA 2," Prasad added.

Prasad also questioned if the notice given to Cambridge Analytica worried the Congress chief.

"Mr. Rahul Gandhi, the notice given to Cambridge Analytica for Data Manipulation has naturally worried you. Angry, frustrated and apprehensive, you are now dragging the judiciary. Deeply reprehensible," he said.

Prasad had alleged that the Congress was using the services of the London-based political data analytics firm CA and also claimed that the firm was involved in Gandhi's social media campaign and there had been meetings too in this regard.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said that he was unaware of the training and benefits of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) in the country.

Responding to a question by a student at the Maharani's Arts and Commerce College for Women here on the benefits he would like to be extended to the NCC cadets who have cleared 'C' certificate examination, Gandhi admitted he was "unaware" of the training.

"I don't know the details of NCC training, so I won't be able to answer that. But, as a young Indian person I'd like to give you an opportunity where you can have opportunities, a successful and a future where you can thrive in this country," the 47-year-old party chief said.

Gandhi, who is on a two-day visit to the poll-bound Karnataka's old Mysuru region till Sunday, was taking questions from the students in a 30-minute long interaction.

The NCC, which operates under the defence ministry, recruits and gives military training to cadets in high schools, colleges and universities all over the country.

Under the voluntary programme, students have examinations with 'A', 'B' and 'C' level certificates, with the C certificate being the highest, giving the students benefits of special entry into the military and government services in the country and priority in competitive examinations.

During the two days, Gandhi, who is on his fourth visit to Karnataka since February, will be holding public meetings and interacting with party cadres and people in Mysuru, Mandya and Chamrajnagar districts.

--IANS

bha/nks/ksk/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons has been hit with a $10 million suit accusing him of rape.

In a complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday, a woman identified as Jane Doe accused Simmons of raping her in his hotel room, reports variety.com.

The complaint does not give much detail about when or where the alleged incident occurred. Simmons has been accused by at least nine women of various forms of sexual misconduct, and was sued for an alleged rape in January.

He has adamantly denied wrongdoing.

The new lawsuit claims that the woman met Simmons at a concert, where she was chaperoning her son. According to the complaint, Simmons invited her to an after-party.

She dropped off her son with a baby-sitter before joining Simmons at the hotel where he was saying. They went to a nightclub before returning to his room.

The suit states that Simmons lured her into the room, promising that he was not interested in sex because he was dating a well-known model.

Once she was inside the room, however, the suit claims Simmons said: "I am going to f- you," and that he also threatened her son.

"Simmons threw her on the bed and raped her," the suit read.

In a statement, Simmons denied the claim and said he had passed a lie detector test.

"I vehemently deny all the allegations made against me. They have shocked me to my core as I have never been abusive or violent in any way in my relations with women. I have submitted myself to multiple lie detector tests.

"I denied forced sex and sexual harassment allegations brought against me in each test; I also answered no to the question, 'Have you ever physically forced any woman to have sexual intercourse?' I passed all of the lie detector tests."

--IANS

dc/nv/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Turning off the lights, even if it's just for an hour, is one of the most common ways to support Earth Hour. But some brands organised Cyclothon and Walkathon on Saturday to create awareness about the annual campaign.

Earth Hour, which will start from 8.30 p.m. on Saturday in India, draws the attention of people towards the climate change effects.

The Suryaa hotel will join millions around the world by observing Earth hour 2018 between 8.30 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. to spread awareness about climate change and the need for sustainable lifestyle to ensure a brighter future of the planet.

The hotel will minimise lighting in guest rooms and public areas and will have power energy saving lights in restaurants and lobby area to join the global Earth Hour initiative.

"We feel every individual should observe the Earth Hour to remind ourselves the importance of preserving mother Earth," Dhananjay Kumar, General Manager of The Suryaa, said in a statement.

E-commerce company ShopClues is also going to give up on excessive usage of energy.

"As an environmentally responsible organisation, we will be shutting down air-conditioning and unnecessary lights in four floors 6 p.m. onwards. We believe we should all contribute and do more for mother Earth and not just limit our efforts to that one hour," said a spokesperson of the company.

WWF-India, in partnership with the Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance Company, hosted Pedal for the Planet -- a Cyclothon and Walkathon -- to celebrate Earth Hour on Saturday.

"Pedal for the Planet, a Cyclothon and Walkathon, to celebrate the worl''s largest grassroots environmental campaign - Earth Hour, brings together people from all over Delhi-NCR, who care and are concerned for our Earth," said Ravi Singh, Secretary General and CEO, WWF-India.

--IANS

nv/nn/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)LONDON-Britain's information regulator says it is assessing evidence gathered from a raid on the office of data firm Cambridge Analytica, carried out as part of an investigation into alleged misuse of personal information by political campaigns and social media companies.

After entering the building in New Oxford Street at 8pm yesterday, some of the team emerged on foot at around 2.50am this morning as a van, thought to be carrying evidence, left via a rear exit.

The British Information Commissioner's Office was granted a warrant by the High Court to search the London offices of the company late Friday, a move which is part of a wider investigation into political campaigning.

The officials concluded the search around 0300 GMT on Saturday.

According to news reports, Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan created a personality-analysis app that was used by 270,000 Facebook users, who in turn gave the app permission to access data on themselves and their friends, ultimately exposing a network of 50 million people.

The data watchdog is looking into claims that Cambridge Analytica, used by Donald Trump during his primary campaign, illegally mined users' Facebook data and then used it to target potential voters.

United States lawmakers on Friday asked Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to come to Congress to explain to explain how the data got into Cambridge Analytica's hands, adding to pressure on the firm, which is under fire from investors and advertisers.

"As anyone who is familiar with our staff and work can testify, we in no way resemble the politically-motivated and unethical company that some have sought to portray", a statement reads.

Earlier the investigators could be seen examining documents and taking photographs of a whiteboard and of computers.

The firm also said it is "now undertaking an independent third-party audit" to verify to the public it complied with a Facebook request in 2015 to delete the data. "It had nothing to do with us", Banks was quoted as saying.

Efforts by the ICO to investigate Cambridge Analytica had hit a snag on Thursday after a judge adjourned its application to search the British consultancy group's office by 24 hours.

Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that his company made mistakes in mishandling data and promised tougher steps to restrict developers access to data.Despite a warning by Chief Minister N. Biren Singh to employees, the strike in government offices across Manipur continued for the third day on Saturday, paralysing work.

Singh had, on Friday night, asked employees to return to work by Monday, "failing which the government has to find other people to discharge their work".

Explaining the government's position, he said: "It will involve an additional expenditure of Rs 1,400 crore annually to implement the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission to pay over 85,000 employees and about 45,000 pensioners. Manipur has been depending mostly on the central government largesse."

Noting that "before the end of the financial year on March 31, funds have to be sanctioned for a slew of developmental projects", he urged employees to return to work.

The indefinite strike was jointly called on Thursday by the Joint Administrative Council (JAC) of the All Manipur Trade Unions Council and the All Manipur Government Employees Organisation to protest the government's failure to implement the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission for employees and pensioners.

Except for the employees in the Secretariat, there is a massive response in all other government offices, pro-strike activists claimed.

The employees on strike pointed out that out of the 19 BJP-ruled states, Manipur is the only one where the recommendations have not been implemented.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Syrian Army on Saturday announced it had taken full control of Harasta town in Eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus, following the surrender of Islamist fighters.

Harasta was declared free of militants after the departure of a second convoy of Islamist militiamen and their families on Friday night for the northwestern province of Idleb, which is almost entirely under the control of opposition groups, Efe news reported.

The combatants handed over their heavy weapons and left Harasta as part of an agreement reached between the Syrian authorities and the Islamic Movement of the Free People of the Levant (frequently referred to as Ahrar al-Sham).

Syria's state-run SANA news agency claimed that a little over three thousand people left Harasta on Friday, including 1,072 armed men, to join the first group of over 1,500 people who left for Idleb a day earlier.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK based war monitor, reported that the last group of evacuees arrived Saturday in the town of Qalaat al-Madiq in Hama province, from where they will head for neighbouring Idleb.

The SOHR said a total of 4,700 people left Harasta in the past two days, including 1,300 combatants and some 2,500 women and children.

Following the evacuation of the last group of armed men, the SOHR added that Ahrar al-Sham's combatants were no longer present in Eastern Ghouta.

The Syrian Army, reportedly gained control of 90 per cent of the territory in Eastern Ghouta, considered the main opposition stronghold near Damascus, in a month-long government offensive to take the area.

Eastern Ghouta's largest city Douma remained the only part still under rebel control.

--IANS

soni/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)US President Donald Trump has moved to formally ban most transgender persons from serving in the military with limited exceptions, according to a White House memorandum.

The memorandum was issued on Friday night on policies determined by Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, stating that transgender persons were "disqualified from military service except under limited circumstances", reports The Hill magazine.

The memorandum, filed in the US District Court in Seattle, states that "transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery -- are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances".

Mattis will have some leeway in implementing the policy, the memo states, as will Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen when it comes to the Coast Guard.

The two top officials "may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals", the memo stated.

However, LGBT advocates quickly denounced the move, The Hill reported.

"There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence Administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops," Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said in a statement.

"The Trump-Pence administration's continued insistence on targeting our military families for discrimination is appalling, reckless, and unpatriotic," added American Military Partner Association president Ashley Broadway-Mack.

The Palm Centre, a group that promotes the study of LGBT people in the military, accused the Pentagon of having "distorted the science on transgender health to prop up irrational and legally untenable discrimination that will erode military readiness".

Trump first called for a ban on transgender troops in a series of tweets last year, and followed up in August by issuing a memo banning transgender people from enlisting.

The ban has since been battled over in court, with Mattis in February giving Trump a final recommendation. It was expected that he would recommend Trump allow transgender troops to remain in the military.

Several federal courts blocked Trump's initial ban, with one ruling in November that the military would be forced to resume accepting transgender recruits starting this year.

In February, the Pentagon confirmed that one transgender recruit had joined a branch of the military after the ban was lifted due to the court order. That individual passed all tests including medical, officials said.

It was unclear what Trump's decision will mean for that unnamed recruit and the estimated thousands of other transgender Americans currently serving active duty in the military.

While the exact number of transgender individuals in active duty service is unknown, a 2016 Rand Corporation study commissioned by the Pentagon estimated the number to be anywhere from 1,320 and 6,630, with 830 to 4,160 others serving in the reserves.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A wanted criminal, carrying a Rs 25,000 reward on his head, was arrested after a brief gunfight here on Friday, which left him as well as a police officer injured, police said.

The incident occurred at about 8.15 p.m. Saturday in Pratap Vihar area under Vijay Nagar police station, when a police patrol came across some persons appearing suspicious and asked them to stop for checking.

However, the criminals opened fire at the police team while trying to escape. One of the bullets hit Vijay Nagar police station incharge Naresh Kumar Singh in the stomach. Police retaliated, hitting one of the criminals in his leg and apprehended him.

Both the injured were taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors said both were out of danger.

The caught criminal revealed his identity as Sundar, who carried a reward of Rs 25,000, and a pistol and motorcycle was recovered from him.

"Sustained interrogation is being conducted by the police team. Details would be shared with media persons after some time," said Superintendent of Police, City, Akash Tomar.

--IANS

sps/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Globally, major strides have been taken in cinema as far as gender equality is concerned. But when it comes to nudity, men still prefer to keep themselves clothed even while playing sexually-emboldened characters.

Take, for example, last year's game-changing same-sex love story "Call Me By Your Name" which features the incredibly charismatic Armie Hammer as a visiting American student who has a passionate affair with the son of his hosts in Italy.

Armand Douglas Hammer, a straight man in real life, who has unabashedly played gay roles in at least three recent films, revealed that his co-star Timothy Chalamet and he remained naked on the sets while shooting their love scenes. However, they had both stipulated in their contracts that there would be no bared private parts on screen.

In an interview, the film's writer, the renowned James Ivory, said: "Certainly, in my screenplay there was all sorts of nudity. But according to (director) Luca, both actors had it in their contracts that there would be no frontal nudity, and there isn't, which I think is kind of a pity. Again, it's just this American attitude. Nobody seems to care that much, or be shocked, about a totally naked woman. It's the men. This is something that must be so deeply cultural that one should ask: 'Why?'"

Indeed, why?

Explaining his reluctance to go starkers on camera, Armie explained how he didn't want a picture of his penis to surface on the internet to embarrass his daughter.

Fair enough. We must respect the self-censorship that an individual imposes on artistic liberty. And Armie is partially right. Nudity can get mortifying in the family. I remember the pain and suffering that the fiercely committed Seema Biswas went through after her full frontal nudity in Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen hit the theatres.

For all her reservations, she did it nonetheless. Somehow women have always had an easier time exteriorising their character's candour through nude scenes. Top contemporary actresses in the West like Jennifer Lawrence and Sally Hawkins have appeared without their clothes in award-winning films last year.

Male actors, though, have always been shy. This lopsided reading of physical objectification goes back to the cinema of Yash Chopra where the romantic songs shot in snowcapped Switzerland featured heroines in skimpy chiffon sarees while the heroes were padded up in woollens.

Even the much-vilified item songs are almost invariably meant for the male gaze. So many girls. Where are the item boys?

Women, it is pretentiously presumed, are too shy to gaze at anything except the cooking range. And then, after dinner, the lights go out. Women are, of course, presumed to be loath to objectify men. But some Bollywood's resident beefcakes don't mind being item boys.

Randeep Hooda, who played a dangerous sex machine in his latest release "Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster", used his sexuality with the power of a gun. After seeing his libidinous act, Shobhaa De wrote on a micro-blogging site, "Finally figured out what Sush(mita) saw in Randeep Hooda. He's hotter than all the Khans."

During the release of the film, Randeep had told me: "Of course, I love the thought of being an object of desire in a slow romantic item song for women. Wouldn't you love it too? Every man wants to be desired by the opposite sex. And why just ladies? I don't mind being admired by men too."

In Rohit Dhawan's "Desi Boyz", Akshay Kumar and John Abraham performed a striptease pole dance, as the ladies drooled to their heart's content. The trend of item boys in Bollywood started with Abhishek Bachchan who surrounded himself with a bevy of beauties and sang "One love" for Mahesh Manjrekar's film "Rakht" in 2004.

In Soham Shah's "Kaal", Shah Rukh Khan took off his shirt and joined Malaika Arora for a water-drenched raunchy romp.

But these remain isolated instances.

It's the women who get objectified in the item songs. So when Armie Hammer gets nervous about being exposed to his daughter's friends, we should also spare a thought for all the female actors who are regularly dunked in water, soaked in the rain and made to wear as much as decency requires.

Women have families too.

(Subhash K. Jha can be contacted at jhasubh@gmail.com)

--IANS

skj/hs/ky

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The White House praised the numerous demonstrations held on Saturday across the US in favour of greater gun control, mostly organised by students, bringing almost a million people into the streets.

"We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights (which protect the right to free speech)," Efe quoted the White House spokesman Lindsay Walters as saying.

Walters said that "keeping our children safe" is very important to US President Donald Trump, though he has yet to comment on the approximately 800 protests being held around the country.

"Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the President's, which is why he urged Congress to pass the Fix NICS and STOP School Violence Acts," two laws that aim to improve the system of background checks before gun purchases and to strengthen security in schools, he said.

The Fix NICS Act will improve existing laws to guarantee that authorities transmit information about everyone with criminal records to the database of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to discover in minutes if someone buying a gun has ever committed a crime.

Meanwhile, the White House recalled in its statement that the US Justice Department "issued the rule to ban bump stocks following through on the President's commitment to ban devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns," in response to the growing demand for new policies to reduce gun violence.

The largest march demanding more gun control was to begin at 12:00 noon in Washington with the expected participation of 500,000 protesters.

--IANS

qd/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Dear Reader,

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Digital EditorGearing up for the next general election, BJP President Amit Shah has set a target of 21 seats out of 25 parliamentary constituencies from the Northeast in Lok Sabha polls in 2019. Addressing a rally of BJP booth unit chiefs here on Saturday, he asked the party members to work towards achieving this target. I want to give a target for 2019 polls.

We want to win more than 21 seats out of 25 seats from Northeast, Shah said in the rally. Except Mizoram, all other states in NE are ruled by NEDA (North-East Democratic Alliance) constituents. So all of you need to take it ...An indication as to how difficult it is going to be for the opposition at the level to get its act together was available after K Chandrashekar Rao met Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata to lay the foundation for a federal front.

However, even before the proposed alliance could get off the ground, the differences about its framework were visible. While the Telangana Chief Minister wanted it to be a non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), non-Congress group, his West Bengal counterpart kept her options open about including the Congress.

A feature of these alliances is that each of their constituents is guided by the ground realities in their own states which may be at variance with the political condition in some other state. For instance, the Congress may be a more formidable adversary for Chandrashekhar Rao in his state, but it isn't so for Mamata Banerjee. So, while the Telangana Chief Minister wants to keep the 133-year-old Grand Old Party at arm's length, Mamata Banerjee, a former Congress person, is more accommodative.

Similar conflicting perceptions are known even within one party such as the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) where the Kerala comrades are against any proximity to the Congress, obviously because the latter is a force to reckon with in the southern state, but the Marxists in West Bengal are keen on a tie-up with the Congress against the BJP since they no longer face any major threat from their old opponent in the state. Rahul Gandhi's hope, therefore, of forming a "workable" anti-BJP alliance with other parties faces considerable roadblocks.

Yet, the BJP's current vulnerability is obvious to its political enemies. At the same time, the non-BJP parties know that none of them is capable on its own of offering a serious challenge to the ruling party at the Centre. Banding them together is the only alternative. The egos of individual leaders are also a problem, for none of them will be willing to concede the role of a leader to another.

Difficulties of this nature have plagued earlier such formations. In the Janata Party (1977-80), the duel was between Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram. In the Janata Dal (1989-91), it was between V.P. Singh, Devi Lal and Chandrashekhar.

It was to overcome similar confrontations in the confused post-1996 scene that the name of then West Bengal Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, was proposed by United Front leaders like H D Deve Gowda, Mulayam Singh Yadav and others, but was rejected by the CPI-M. The BJP, on the other hand, has been fortunate in having an unchallenged leader like Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1996 and in Narendra Modi now.

Who can be the unchallenged leader in the non-BJP camp at present? Although the leaders in a federal front are highly influential in their home provinces, none of them measures up to the popular image of a Prime Minister who is a sober, sophisticated, well-educated, widely respected, trustworthy and unbiased person with a clearly identifiable vision.

To start with Sharad Pawar, who is among those who have shown an interest in leading the charge against the BJP, there has been a question mark over his reliability ever since his party was seemingly regarded by the BJP as a prop against the Shiv Sena's machinations in Maharashtra. He is generally seen as too clever by half and too much of a deal-maker to be trusted as the guiding light for the nation.

His age -- Pawar is 78 -- is also against him. India appears to be coming around to accepting Modi's view, as articulated by senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, that a politician is "brain dead" after 75.

Rahul Gandhi at 48 is safe in this regard as is Mamata Banerjee (63), whose case is being energetically pushed by one of her lieutenants in Delhi. But while the Congress president is still considered not "grown-up" enough, the West Bengal Chief Minister is too immersed in her own province to be seen as a leader.

Akhilesh Yadav (45) and Mayawati (62) have the same disadvantage of being rooted in the Hindi belt with its concomitant of casteism. Though also from the same region, 67-year-old Nitish Kumar was once considered a possible Prime Minister "material" before he shot himself in the foot with his of perambulation, forever looking for green pastures.

The bare cupboard of PM hopefuls leaves only 72-year-old Sonia Gandhi, who has been engaged in dinner diplomacy to cobble together an anti-BJP formation, as a possible candidate. But her minus points are obvious.

For one, she does not appear to be in the pink of health. For another, any whiff about her aspirations will make the Hindu Right revive the "foreigner" debate with great gusto with Sushma Swaraj perhaps once again threatening to shave her head as in 2004. For a third, she may not be interested as she is seemingly intent on paving the way for her son's elevation.

Yet, the former Congress president is possibly the only one with a much wider acceptability in the non-BJP camp than anyone else and also among the Dalits, backward castes and minorities as well as a section of the traditional Congress supporters in the upper caste though not among the middle class. In a way, she offers the best of a bad bargain with the resultant turmoil proving to be one of the worst in recent years.

Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.comMetro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 24)  Mely Tagasa, the actress popularly known as Miss Tapia in the decade-long hit sitcom "Iskul Bukol," passed away Saturday.

She was 82.

Condolences poured in as Tagasa's daughters, Gina and Lani confirmed the news in their public posts on social media.

"At 12:26 am today (March 24,2018) our beloved Miss Tapia has joined our Creator. The gates of Heaven open for her. We love you very much, Mommy," Gina's Instagram post read.

Lani also bid farewell to her mother in a Facebook post, where she earlier said Tagasa was in coma.

Friends from the showbiz industry mourned the veteran actress' passing.

Director and scriptwriter Bibeth Orteza called Tagasa "everyone's beloved Miss Tapia," and thanked her for the love and friendship.

"Malalim na pakikiramay (our deepest sympathy)," actor Bodjie Pascua said in a Facebook comment.

Actress Coney Reyes, posted a heartfelt message for her "Nanay Ateng."

"Thank you for being there for me, praying with me, fasting for me, listening to me during the darkest and lowest moments of my life," Reyes said in an Instagram post.

In November 2017, Tagasa was awarded her own star in the Philippines' version of the Walk of Fame in Eastwood City.Two Pakistani militants, belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) outfit, were killed in an encounter with security forces today in south Kashmir's Anantnag district, police said.

Acting on specific information about the presence of militants in Shistragam village in Dooru area of Anantnag, security forces launched a search and cordon operation in the area late last night, a police official said.

The search operation turned into an encounter as the hiding militants fired upon the security forces, the official said.

He said while the operation was halted for the night, the forces maintained a tight cordon to prevent the militants from escaping.

The gunfight resumed this morning and two militants were killed, the official said, adding the seizures made from the spot and other incriminating materials collected so far have confirmed that the killed militants were a part of outlawed JeM outfit.

Preliminary investigation suggests that both the killed terrorists (in an encounter in Dooru area of Anantnag) are FTs (foreign terrorists) from Pakistan, the official said.

He said the operation ended without any collateral damage.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Ahead of assembly polls, the JD(S) today suffered a setback when four of its rebel MLAs resigned from the Karnataka Assembly, a day after cross voting in favour of Congress' Rajya Sabha candidates.

B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan, R Akhanda Srinivasamurthy, N Chaluvaraya Swamy and Bheema Naik submitted their resignations to Assembly Speaker K B Koliwad at his residence here.

The MLAs are likely to join Congress in a day or two, said sources close to them.

The four MLAs were among the seven who rebelledagainst their party and been vocal against the party leadership, especially H D Kumaraswamy, JDS state unit chief and son of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda.

Koliwad told reporters he had accepted the resignations because they were in order.

"Today Chaluvaraya Swamy,B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan, RAkhanda Srinivasamurthy and Bheema Naik have resigned from the legislative assembly. When I asked them personally, they said they resigned on their own without political pressure or any duress. I have accepted their resignations," he said.

Speaking to reporters after resigning, Khan said he decided to walk out of JD(S) because it has become "a party ofoneupmanship."



"H D Kumaraswamy does not listen to anyone. He does not bother to consult his father and former Prime Minister H D Devegowda and elder brother H D Revanna. Will he listen to us?" said Khan.

The votes cast by seven JDS rebel MLAs in the Rajya Sabha biennial election yesterday and also support of independents had helped the ruling Congress win the third seat as a bonus, though it had strength only to bag two seats for sure.

Despite the shortfall in its strength with 37 members, including seven rebels, as against the required 44 votes, JDS had also fielded its candidate, but boycotted the poll midway alleging electoral malpractice by the Congress in "collusion" with the returning officer.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Over 650 students from different institutions in the country, including the NITs and IITs, have registered for the first round of INAE Youth Conclave at IIT Kharagpur.

The three-day conclave, held for the first time in IIT Kharagpur, is aimed at engaging budding engineers from different disciplines in developing innovative technologies and solutions.

The conclave began yesterday.

The contestants are presented with situations which may be similar to some of the current problems faced by the society and expected to come up with new plans, innovative technologies or workable solutions to these problems, an IIT Kharagpur statement said.

The conclave was initiated last year by the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and held at Birla Institute of Scientific Research (BISR), Jaipur.

The organisers have received 127 submissions for the three broad categories of problems. The largest number of submissions has come for a 'Swach Bharat Abhiyan' plan that asks students to find effective ways to segregate and dispose waste in apartments, the statement said.

The finals are slated for August 10-12 at IIT Kharagpur.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Seven people were killed during a police operation this morning in the violent Rio de Janeiro favela of Rocinha, authorities said.

The military police, currently operating across Rio de Janeiro state, said troops were patrolling two areas in the south and southeast of the favela when "they entered into a confrontation with criminals."



The force, which gave no more details, initially said on Twitter that six suspected criminals were wounded and taken to a local hospital.

It later confirmed they died of their injuries and added a seventh fatality.

After the incident police said a rifle, seven pistols and two grenades were seized.

Around 100,000 people live in the Rocinha favela, mostly in unsanitary conditions.

Since September, it has seen several confrontations during an ongoing turf war between narco gangs seeking control of drug trafficking in the area.

Public security in the state of Rio has since last month been under controversial military control ordered by President Michel Temer, who cited a breakdown in law and order.

But there has been little evidence that the situation is coming under greater control.

Last week, a one-year-old toddler was killed in a shootout between police and drug gang members in the Alemao favela days after the assassination-style shooting of Marielle Franco, a city councilwoman known for her outspoken protests against police brutality.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Accusing the Haryana government of not releasing Delhi's share of 450 cusecs of Yamuna water daily in violation of a Supreme Court order, AAP legislators today protested outside the Haryana Bhawan here.

The protest by AAP legislators and their supporters came a day after the Delhi government accused Haryana of giving political patronage to polluting industries that release ammonia in the Yamuna leading to a scarcity of potable water in the national capital.

The protesters alleged that withholding the release of water by Haryana was in violation of the 1996 apex court order.

"The Haryana government is not complying with the water sharing agreements between the two states and is not releasing Delhi's share of Yamuna water. The state is also in violation of the Supreme Court order on this issue," Sanjeev Jha, Aam Aadmi Party legislator from Burari, said.

Jha alleged that the Haryana government's behaviour was politically-motivated.

The Delhi Jal Board, too, has approached the Supreme Court seeking directions to Haryana to release adequate water. It is likely to mention the plea for urgent hearing on Monday.

Voicing concerns over water scarcity in the city, another AAP MLA, Madan Lal, said: "Summer has now begun in Delhi and the demand for water is also growing."



Lal added that it was unfortunate the Haryana government is playing over water and denying Delhi's fair share of water.

Yamuna is one of the main source of potable water to the residents of Delhi. Water supply in the national capital is often hit as a result of increase in the level of ammonia in the river.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Actor Amy Adams is in talks to star in the upcoming drama "The True American".

Annapurna Pictures is producing the project, reported Deadline.

According to a source a deal has not yet closed and scheduling is still being worked out, specifically regarding Adams' promotion efforts on her upcoming HBO limited series "Sharp Objects," but she wants the film to be her next project.

"Jackie" helmer Pablo Larrain is on board to direct, and Mark Ruffalo and Kumail Nanjiani are also in talks to co-star with Adams.

Based on the non-fiction book by Anand Giridharadas, "The True American" is set in Texas in the days following the 9/11 attacks. It follows Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim immigrant and Bangladesh Air Force veteran who narrowly survived a killing spree that took the lives of two other immigrants. Employed at a Dallas-area convenience store as he established himself in America, Bhuiyan worked to have his attacker, self-proclaimed "Arab slayer" Mark Stroman, spared from execution.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Uttam Galva Steels Ltd today said it has received approvals from the BSE and NSE for declassification of world's largest steel maker ArcelorMittal as a promoter of the company.

"...the company has received the approval of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and BSE Ltd for declassification of ArcelorMittal Netherlands BV as a promoter of the company," Uttam Galva Steels said in a BSE filing.

Uttam Galva Steels Ltd has offered to settle the Rs 5,654 crore loan default by paying 51 per cent of the amount upfront to public sector banks so as to abort the auctioning of the company's assets.

The company, which is part of the Reserve Bank of India's second list of loan defaulters who have been referred to the bankruptcy tribunal for insolvency proceedings, on March 15 wrote to the State Bank of India (SBI), proposing a "one-time settlement" of all dues of lenders "through an upfront payment mechanism".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Freedom fighter Bhagat Singh's 87th death anniversary was observed here by two groups of people who demanded declaring him a "national hero" of Pakistan.

Singh was hanged at the age of 23 in Lahore on March 23, 1931 along with Rajguru and Sukhdev. The capital punishment had inspired thousands of people to take up the cause of the freedom movement.

The Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation (BSMF) and the Bhagat Singh Foundation Pakistan (BSFP) yesterday held separate functions at Shadman Chowk where they were hanged.

The participants paid rich tribute to the three freedom fighters. Some relatives of Singh made a telephonic address.

BSMF Chairman Imtiaz Rashid presented a resolution demanding the British Queen to tender an apology for hanging the three freedom fighters and compensate their families.

He demanded naming a road after his name and including a chapter in the school curriculum besides issuing a postal ticket and installation of Singh's statue at Shadman Chowk.

BSFP Founder President Abdullah Malik said: "Bhagat Singh raised his voice against imperialism. He will be remembered as a great freedom fighter".

He demanded that the governments of India and Pakistan declare Singh and his comrades as "national heroes".

The events were held under strict security in the face of threats from extremists.

Both the foundations have been demanding renaming the Shadman Chowk as 'Bhagat Singh Chowk'. However, the Hurmat-e-Rasool, a sister organisation of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-u-Dawah, opposes the proposal and suggests to rename it as 'Hurmat Chowk'.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress President Rahul Gandhi today accused the BJP of "attacking" the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.

Addressing a rally in poll-bound Karnataka after visiting a temple of Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru, he said the BJP was not only snatching away people's money through note ban and GST, but "there is new fashion now, they are attacking the Constitution."



"Hear it from here. We will not allow the BJP to change the Constitution. How much ever BJP forces its way to change the Constitution, we will make sure that the Congress will protect the work of Ambedkarji," he told the gathering,



Gandhi is on the fourth leg of campaign tour in Karnataka, covering Mandya, Mysuru and Chamarajnagar districts during his two-day visit.

He had earlier toured thenorthern, coastal and Malnad regions.

The Congress president accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being "insensitive" towards problems related to jobs and demonetization.

"I interacted with young students this morning. One of the girl students stood up and asked me about Narendra Modiji's promise to give two crore jobs every year and his "Make In India" programme... but that turned out to be an empty promise and there was no weight behind those words," he said at the rally held here as part of "Janashirvada Yatre".

Gandhi said nobody has benefited from the note ban andquestioned the rationale of having five different GST rates, including 28 per cent.

"A girl stands up and says nobody has been benefited by the note ban. Another girl stands up and says why are there five separate rates, including 28 per cent. ... It only means that the students aged between 18 to 20 years have understood the problems, but Narendra Modji is yet to understand," he added.

Gandhi also alleged that through demonetization, most of the "cheats" converted their black money into white by depositing it in banks.

The Congress president began his speech by invoking Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Mysore ruler, Krishnaraja Wodayar, 24th maharaja of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom, Sir M Vishveshwariah, renowned engineer, and Kuvempu, Kannada poet, by remembering their contributions to Karnataka and India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Manila (CNN Philippines Life)  The quality that characterizes the poetry of Mesandel Virtusio Arguelles is brevity. A book of his can be read in one sitting; a poem in less than a minute. Over the years, his poems have found company in sparser crowds, in the quietness of intervals, in the visibility of erasures. He tends toward frugality, and only through a spare use of language can he envision vastness. I hate the feeling of excess, he admits, though perhaps its not just the feeling but also the effect.

But this brevity does not concern the tininess of thought or shortness of spirit that relies on the weight of sudden ends. His words know where they are and are there waiting to be claimed. His figures of speech hardly feel heavy and heavy-handed. What may appear complex is in fact a display of honesty. One can call it precision, but this undermines the surprises in his surfeit, in the attempts at fullness that can be achieved only in ambiguity.

In 17 collections published by various publications in over 15 years, many of which by the small press collective High Chair to which he belongs, Arguelles has shown that he is not only one of the best Filipino writers at present but also the countrys most remarkable contemporary poet in Filipino, one whose dedication to his craft and its improvement is felt even in the shortest of his compositions, in his resolve to stay often on the ground to sit and observe.

At one point, while supervising the recording and seeing how the sound engineer meticulously makes sure every note is perfect, Arguelles has had a realization. Poetry is music, he thinks. Poetry is sound. Therefore, to me, meaning becomes secondary. Photo by PATRICIA FLORENTINO

Balancing his time between academic duties (he teaches literature and creative writing at De La Salle University), family responsibilities (he lives with his wife and two children), and publishing activities (he also edits textbooks and manages an online and print journal called hal., among other things), Arguelles is constantly writing poetry, although now he considers himself lucky if he manages to finish a good poem in six months. Hence, he is glad to welcome changes to his routine. In Oct. 2016, he started to work with ALAB, a non-profit organization of artists, on what would turn out to be his most challenging project yet: Namamatay ang mga Nagmamahal  a full-length CD album of his poems set to music, interpreted by artists who have agreed to give voice to his compositions.

In its early stages, ALAB co-founder Vins Miranda, who fully encouraged and supported the project, helped Arguelles. But the project eventually grew and became a community of artists who believed in it: Pearlsha Abubakar, Khrisczen Agres, Cucay Pagdilao, Ian Paolo Acosta, Joseph and Rachi Saguid, Keith Bustamante, Marvin Laureta, Valene Lagunzad, Lolito Go, Vincenz Serrano, Regine Cabato, Bobby Balingit, Ryan Reyes, and Apol Sta. Maria. Arguelles sent them pdf copies of his collections  Menos Kuwarto (Pithaya Press, 2002), Ilahas (High Chair, 2004), Hindi man lang nakita (High Chair, 2006), Alinsunurang Awit (High Chair, 2010), Mal (High Chair, 2011), Mga Tala at Panaginip (High Chair, 2012), Guwang (High Chair, 2013), and Pesoa (Balangay Productions, 2014)  and they selected poems that they wished to set to music. His only request was that they keep the poems intact.

Relying mostly on crowdfunding and the generosity of friends, Namamatay ang mga Nagmamahal had slowly come alive in six months of recording. Balingit volunteered to produce the album with the help of sound engineer Rj Mabilin, two key people whose creative input helped emphasize the lyrical and musical qualities of Arguelles poems and turn them into 17 songs of varying emotional intensities.

Im just a small part of this, Arguelles says, and when one listens to the finished record, in compositions taken from eight collections whose themes range from love, loving, life, living, death, dying, existence, and existing, one feels the bigness and broadness that are not underscored in the poems, for they are essentially not poems any more, no longer moving merely between the paper and mind, between gaps of understanding, what with the distinct voices given to them, the accompaniment of guitars and piano, the fine-tuning of sound, the arrangement of highs and lows and softness and silence that, on one hand, makes apparent the capacity of the words to hold life and larger-than-life stories and, on the other, shows their willingness to be transformed into hymns.

In these new forms lie new sensations, and the interpretations done by each artist, one way or another, put fixed outlines and punctuations, with the use of dramatic devices via pauses, manners of phrasing, repetitions, vocal quality, and the liberties asserted to put the sound of the song forward. Which is a good thing. These are new lives, after all, and Arguelles could not have been more satisfied with the result.

In Abubakars Kasama, for example, there is a sense of lift given to a poem about encounters, about the paths of existence decided in a moment, beautifully encapsulated in that line, Ang paghihiwalay ay paraan lamang ng pagtatagpo. The romantic emotion in Agres Habang Wala Ka is mesmerizing in its calm and brevity. Whether she muses on light and darkness (Oktobre 15) or the death of an artist (Enigma), Cucay Pagdilao exhibits her soulful storytelling gifts. Such heart-rending weight is also felt in Valene Lagunzads Awit ni Endymion, enveloping the listener in the mists of the myth and dance of passion.

Relying mostly on crowdfunding and the generosity of friends, Namamatay ang mga Nagmamahal had slowly come alive in six months of recording. Photo courtesy of AYER ARGUELLES

Arguelles request to keep the poems intact, of course, is meant to be circumvented. Joseph and Rachi Saguid (Namamatay ang mga Nagmamahal and Ako ng mga Ako) and Vincenz Serrano and Regine Cabato (Aksidente lang ang Sarili) have decided to pick verses from Mal and Pesoa, both book-length collections of erasures, and rearrange them for their songs. Which is only fitting because these pieces delve on the self, the many selves, the impossibility and variations of selves. Meanwhile, Apol Sta. Maria have done away with the verses altogether and bookended the record with the restful atmospheres of Ang Tahimik na Berso and Si Cezanne sa Ulan. For his part, rock icon Bobby Balingit  whom Arguelles regards as his hero: I have all the records of Wuds!  turns Postscript into an introspective five-minute tour de force.

Perhaps owing to the process of creation that puts the material at the center, there is nothing on this record that sounds half-hearted. Ian Paulo Acosta, who had to take on another artists responsibility, has a commanding voice that turns Anyo and Ang Katahimikang Wala Ako into memorable ditties, the former with its slow but onerous tune and the latter with its struggling cadence. The collaboration of Keith Bustamante and Marvin Laureta on Handog and Fiat Lux shares this seriousness, except theirs plays more with color, and the hook Katawan/kata ng katawan is one of the albums enjoyable peaks. Lolito Go sings about life, art, and failure in Ang Iyong Buhay ay Laging Mabibigo and gives justice to Arguelles whimsical yet truthful sentiment. Finally, on Bago ang Mundong Ito, Ryan Reyes comes closest to the mood of Arguelles poetry and conveys the stillness that allows one to believe in the things to come.

At one point, while supervising the recording and seeing how the sound engineer meticulously makes sure every note is perfect, Arguelles has had a realization. Poetry is music, he thinks. Poetry is sound. Therefore, to me, meaning becomes secondary. In poetry, they often give importance to what the poem is trying to say. But I think the poet has to listen to the sound of the words. Thats why it takes me so long to write now. I make sure the sound is right. Then, in a flash of inspiration, he brings up the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski. Im not sure if he really said it, but somewhere I read this. And I believe its true. He asks: What is the similarity between music and poetry? Pause. Poetry.

***

Namamatay ang mga Nagmamahal album launch will be held at Conspiracy Cafe (59 Visayas Ave. Quezon City) on Mar. 24, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Tickets are 200 inclusive with one drink. The album will available at 300 each and is also up for pre-order. Visit the Facebook page for more details.Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today said the Narendra Modi government at the Centre was working for the development of all without any bias.

Inaugurating the district office of the BJP here, he said, "Both the Central and state governments are working on the slogan of 'sabka saath sabka vikas'."



About the various welfare initiatives of his government, Adityanath said 37 lakh new ration cards have been issued to the needy while 30 lakh fake cards have been cancelled.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)BJP chief Amit Shah today acknowledged his party lost the crucial Lok Sabha bypolls in Uttar Pradesh because of the electoral understanding between the SP and the BSP.

A panel has been formed to analyse the reasons for the BJP's loss and the party is ready to win 50 per cent votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he told Aaj Tak in an interview.

"We lost the polls as the SP and the BSP reached an electoral understanding at the last hour," he said.

Asked if the BJP's electoral mathematics could be ruined by a possible SP-BSP alliance in 2019, he said, "It is not so simple."



"The media is harping on the results of the elections to two seats (Gorakhpur and Phulpur)... The Congress distributed sweets in the Parliament Complex. But no one is talking about the 11 states we wrested from them. No one is talking about Tripura," he said.

"We should keep in mind that bypolls are fought on local issues, but the general elections involve senior leaders and bigger topics," he said.

Replying to a question on Yogi Aditynath's remark that the BJP lost the bypolls due to "overconfidence", Shah said he did not know what the UP chief minister was referring to.

To a query related to fighting the 2019 elections without the support of the Telugu Desam Party and the Shiv Sena, he said: "11 parties joined hands with the BJP in 2014. Only one of them has left us. The National Democratic Alliance will remain intact."



The BJP chief said the party was sure of winning the Karnataka Assembly polls considering the way Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was running the government there.

To a question on ceasefire violations by Pakistan, Shah said: "Every bullet fired by Pakistan will be answered by a bomb. This is the only solution.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Gearing up for the next general election, on Saturday set a target of 21 seats out of 25 parliamentary constituencies from northeast in polls in 2019.

Addressing a rally of BJP booth unit chiefs here, he asked the party members to work towards achieving this target.

"I want to give a target for 2019 polls. We want to win more than 21 seats out of 25 seats from North East," Shah said in the rally.

"Except Mizoram, all other states in NE are ruled by NEDA (North-East Democratic Alliance) constituents. So all of you need to take it forward," Shah said, adding the party won eight seats from the region during last polls in 2014.

The BJP needs to win maximum number of seats from northeast to strengthen Prime Minister Narendra Modi so that development of the region continues.

The party chief also asked the Assam BJP unit to expand the network and appoint 'Page Pramukh' or in-charge of each page of the electoral list.

Shah attacked the Congress and said the northeastern part of the country lagged behind other regions post Independence due to faulty policies of the oldest political party of India.

Assam was the fourth developed state in India after Independence but it was fourth from the bottom when Sarbananda Sonowal became the chief minister in 2016, he claimed.

"Congress' policy is divide and rule, while it is sabka saath sabka vikaas for BJP. During 2014 campaign, Modiji had promised to develop northeast like the western part of India. Four years have gone and see the progress of the region done by him," he said.

Assam, he said, had got Rs 79,741 crore from the 13th Finance Commission during the UPA tenure which soared to Rs 1,55,292 crore in 14th Finance Commission during the Modi government.

Without naming former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Shah criticised him for allegedly not doing anything significant for the region despite being elected to the Rajya Sabha from Assam twice.

The BJP chief also listed a series of schemes and financial benefits provided to Assam and the other northeastern states during the NDA regime in the last four years.

"(With) the stand India has taken on Doklam issue under Prime Minister Modi, a message has been sent to the entire world. He has also solved the border dispute with Bangladesh, helping the (northeast) region to prosper," the BJP chief claimed.

He also highlighted the Assam government's thrust to make the state free from corruption, terrorism, foreigners and pollution.

"The insurgent groups of the region are surrendering one after another and development is on. The way NRC update is going on, the foreigner issue will also be resolved soon," Shah added.A senior official of the Chhattisgarh Medical Services Corporation (CMSC) was today arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for allegedly demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 1.15 lakh here.

Virendra Jain, a general manager with the CMSC, was caught red-handed during a trap laid by the ACB at a shopping mall in Pachpedi Naka area here, Additional Director General (ACB/Economic Offences Wing) Mukesh Gupta told PTI.

He said that the complainant, Akash Mishra, is a medical equipment and medicine supplier and his payment was pending since last year.

"When Mishra contacted Jain for the bills, since the latter's department deals with such payments, Jain asked for a bribe of Rs 1.15 lakh. He asked Mishra to get the money and meet him at a mall," he said.

The official said that a trap was laid at the mall and Jain was caught.

A case had been registered under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the ADG said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The speaker of Catalonia's parliament has suspended a scheduled vote to elect a jailed separatist leader as the new regional president of the restive northeastern corner of Spain.

Speaker Roger Torrent announced to the chamber today that there would be no vote on the candidacy of Jordi Turull, a former regional minister.

Turull was one of five high-profile separatists sent to jail without bail yesterday by a Supreme Court judge for their alleged role in a failed independence bid by Catalonia from the rest of Spain in October.

The separatist majority of the Catalan parliament had the chance to elect Turull on Thursday, but the far-left wing of its bloc sunk his chances by abstaining.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today hailed the state's budget 2018-19 as a milestone one, with its focus on multi-sectoral growth, and expressed the confidence that it would put the state on the path of high growth.

However, opposition Akali Dal and AAP dubbed the budget as "directionless".

Former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal dismissed the budget as "directionless, meaningless and devoid of vision".

Dismissing as totally unfounded and misleading the statements of SAD-BJP on the budget, the Chief Minister told mediapersons that this budget would lead the state back on the path of growth and prosperity to bring it out of the vicious cycle of fiscal mess into which the previous government had plunged it.

The budget proposals for 2018-19 were presented before the Assembly here today by Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal.

Amarinder challenged the Akalis and the BJP to list even one tangible success they had achieved in terms of development and prosperity of the state "during their decade-long misrule".

"They had completely ruined the state's economy with their ill-conceived policies," he pointed out, adding that the current budget was not only progressive, balanced and people-friendly but provided a roadmap to put the derailed economy on the track by ensuring all-round development of the state.

The current budget had taken due care of all sectors of state, be agriculture, industry, health, education, employment generation or, above all, the welfare of disadvantaged sections of the society, said the Chief Minister.

Amarinder recalled that his government's maiden budget last year had been an endeavour to improve the fiscal health of the state through meticulous long term-planning to restore financial discipline in line with the provisions of FRBM Act-2003, "which the previous SAD-BJP Government had blatantly violated to pursue its vested interests."



Taking a step forward, this year's growth-oriented budget would further consolidate the recovery that the state had started showing in the shape of its improved financial health, he added.

Industry body CII also hailed the budget as balanced and cautious, aimed at provisioning something for each strata and also bringing in some degree of fiscal prudence and resource mobilisation.

Former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal dismissed the budget as "directionless, meaningless and devoid of vision".

"It documents the government's betrayal of the farmers, the dalits and the poor, the youth, the employees and the helpless senior citizens," Badal said in a statement here.

"It does not read like an economic document at all and is full merely of empty and baseless statements about the so-called intent of the government. It is clear that they have not given any serious thought to planning or to making programmes and policies for the glory of the state and to solving the problems facing the people," Badal said.

"The budget documentary in fact reads likea White Paper on the government's black deeds of the past one year. These black deeds include betrayal of every section of society, particularly the farmers, the dalits, the youth, the senior citizens and women."



Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal alleged that the "budget is a written proof of this government's betrayal of every section of Punjabi society, particularly of the farmers, the farm labour, the dalits, the youth, the employees, the women and the senior citizens.""The government has stabbed the farmers in the backgoing back on its promise of Rs 90,000 crore debt waiver... the government blatantly lies about its commitment to the farmers," he alleged.

Sukhbir Badal said that the government claims that it will levy no fresh taxes "but then it talks of additional resource mobilization of Rs 9,000 crore, which is a clear proof that it will burden the Punjabis with taxes later."



"The budget also puts in writing the government's betrayal of the employees as it refuses to make any commitment on the Pay Commission," Sukhbir said.

Terming the budget as "directionless", AAP said the ruling Congress had failed to deliver on its promises, including a full loan waiver for farmers and jobs for youth.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress president on Saturday said if his party comes to power, it would impose one slab of Goods and Services Tax instead of five and abolish the 28 per cent GST slab.

During an interaction with students at Maharani'sCollege here, Afreen, a student, asked the congress chief why there was free health care in Singapore though they have one GST slab of seven per cent, which India lacks despite having 28 per cent GST.

Replying to her, Gandhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be better positioned to answer.

He, however, told her that Congress favoured one GST as multiple slabs encourage corruption.

Gandhi said his party's position on GST was very clear.

"GST is basically the Congress party's idea but our thinking was that as in Singapore there is one GST of seven per cent, similarly there should be one tax but BJP government imposed five different slabs. They have a tax of 28 per cent too," he said.

"We are absolutely against the 28 per cent tax," he said.

"Our system was that the products used by weaker sections should be kept out of the purview of GST and then have one tax for all."



"So, in terms of conceptualisation, there is a difference between their (BJP's) GST and our (Congress) GST. If our government comes to power, we will abolish 28 per cent GST and impose one GST across India," Gandhi said.

He claimed that the existing GST encourages corruption and alleged that the government would use it to favour or hurt anybusinessman.

"If you do a five layered GST, you will not have GST, you will have a Gabbar Singh Tax.What it means is there will be extortion and there will be a lot of mischief to decide which bracket what product should go," Gandhi said.

The Congress president accused Modi of doing nothing to bring back black money stashed abroad.

He said the Centre was having the list of those who have accounts in Swiss Banks but it is reluctant to table in Parliament the list of black money hoarders.

The government's focus should not be five per cent of cash stashed abroad but the focus should be Swiss Bank, gold and real estate, the congress president said.

Gandhi said transparency alone can check corruption and black money and the Congress government had taken certain steps like Right to Information.

He said defaulters like Nirav Modi and others were getting exposed because of transparency, empowering citizens, Panchayati Raj, Lokpal and decentralization of power.Bundled against the cold but fired up with passion after a Florida high school massacre, crowds gathered in Washington today for what is expected to be the biggest US gun control protest in a generation, with hundreds of thousands attending.

The student-organized protest is to feature rallies from coast to coast, with the main event in Washington within sight of the US Capitol -- whose lawmakers the protesters hope to influence.

"Let our votes be our best weaponry," said one of the many signs carried by early protesters, who arrived more than three hours before the event's official mid-day start.

Thousands of demonstrators poured out of the city's subway and had already filled Constitution Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, which links the White House with the Capitol, making it difficult to get close to the main stage.

The area was closed to traffic in order to hold the half-million protesters squeezing into streets flanked by giant video screens proclaiming their slogan, "March for Our Lives."



Lauren Tilley, 17, told AFP she arrived from the other side of the country in El Dorado County, California, with seven other teens and three adults.

"We came here through an essay contest. They raised the money in order for us to fly here for the march," Tilley said, holding a sign calling for the US Constitution's Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, to itself be amended.

"We are the people who are scared to go to school every day because we don't know if we are next," she said.

"Our main message is we are not going to be quiet, we will keep fighting. I don't care how much money you have, your money can't drown out the sounds of our voices. We will be voting in 2020. Our generation wants change."



Other marchers carried homemade signs reading: "My dress code is stricter than our gun laws," "Your right to bear arms doesn't override my right to stay alive," and "Your silence leads to violence."A large peace sign decorated with flowers called for a ban on assault rifles, such as the type used in the Florida shooting.

"The Second Amendment doesn't guarantee, I don't believe, the right to own an assault rifle," said Billy McLaughlin, 67, a teacher from West Virginia.

He and other demonstrators repeated a common complaint of gun control advocates, that politicians are beholden to the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group.

"We shouldn't have guns in our society. These kids are right," said Jeff Turchin, 68, of New York. "They're basically saying the NRA is paying off these Republicans," the party of President Donald Trump, which controls the Senate and House of Representatives.

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida -- where 17 students and staff were shot dead on February 14 by a 19-year-old former classmate -- have been the driving force behind the march.

With a mixture of outrage and passion, they have been badgering US lawmakers to enact a ban on assault rifles and to expand background checks to cover all gun purchases, even private sales.

Since the Parkland shooting, the state of Florida and the US Congress have made only modest tweaks to gun laws and Trump's proposal to arm teachers has been met with widespread resistance.

Organisers say more than 800 marches are being held across the country and around the world under the slogan #NeverAgain.

In London, hundreds of people protested outside the US embassy.

Although the Florida mass shooting triggered the movement, it has embraced the entire problem of gun violence in a nation that sees more than 30,000 gun-related deaths a year.

Most of those fatalities do not come from mass shootings but from neighborhood homicides and suicides.

The appeals for stricter gun regulations have drawn the backing of Democratic lawmakers. A series of American celebrities have pledged USD 500,000 donations to support the protests.

They include actor George Clooney and his wife, Amal, a human rights lawyer; actress and media mogul Oprah Winfrey and director Steven Spielberg and his actress wife, Kate Capshaw.

Later, artists including Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato will perform at the rally.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, where 20 elementary school children were shot dead in 2012, told AFP the student-led movement needs to become an "electoral force, and this march may be the beginning of that."



Conscious of their growing political power, March For Our Lives organizers provided a link on their website for supporters to register to vote.

They have called on supporters to vote against lawmakers who receive money from the NRA.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Any change of status quo along the India-China border may lead to another Dokalam-like crisis, India's envoy here has cautioned even as he asserted there was "no change" at the standoff site even though the PLA may be reinforcing its troops "well behind the sensitive area".

Gautam Bambawale said though "no change" has taken place in the standoff site at Dokalam after it was resolved last year, he squarely blamed China for the crisis saying it happened because Beijing tried to alter the "status quo" which it should not have.

The 73-day standoff ended on August 28 last year after China agreed to halt the road building activities by PLA troops at Dokalam in Sikkim sector.

"No, I can tell you that you in Dokalam area, which we call close proximity or sometimes the face-off site, the area where there was close confrontation or close proximity between Indian and Chinese military troops, that there is no change taking place today," Bambawale said reacting to reports of the Chinese military stepping up infrastructure build-up in the area.

"Maybe behind, the Chinese may be putting more military barracks to put in more soldiers, but that is well behind the sensitive area," he said in a wide-ranging interview to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"Those are the things you're free to do and we are also free to do, because you're doing it inside your territory and we are doing it inside our territory," he said.

Indian troops intervened to stop Chinese soldiers from building a road close to India's narrow 'Chicken's Neck' corridor that connects the northeastern states. Besides China, the area is also claimed by Bhutan.

Recent reports said the Chinese military is trying to work around or outflank Indian troops in the Dokalam area.

Bambawale defended India's decision to stop Chinese troops from building the road saying no attempt should be made to change the status quo.

"If anyone changes the status quo, it will lead to a situation like what happened in Dokalam. I can tell you very frankly and you can quote me on this. The Chinese military changed the status quo in the Dokalam area and therefore India reacted to it. Ours was a reaction to the change in the status quo by the Chinese military," he said, adding that China should inform India about such initiatives in sensitive areas.

He called for delineation of the 3,488-km Line of Actual Control (LAC) which China has refused earlier.

"The India-China boundary is un-demarcated and un-delineated, so we have to talk to each other to delineate and demarcate it, which means to draw the boundary line. Now in the meantime, while we are discussing where the boundary will lie, both China and India have agreed that we should maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas," he said.

He said at present both countries are having "a lot of dialogue" especially at the political level, and also at the economic level, as he welcomed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's recent comments that the Indian elephant and the Chinese dragon must not fight but dance together.

He also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit China to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation(SCO) in June during which there will "definitely" be a bilateral meeting between him and President Xi Jinping.

The summit is due to be held in the Chinese city of Qingdao from June 9-10.

"During that, we will definitely have bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping. And before that happens we want to have a lot of other meetings," Bambawale said.

"We will have a whole series of meetings in the next few weeks and months," he said adding that the boundary officials of both the countries will also meet.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently said she will visit China next month. The foreign ministers of the SCO countries are also due to meet before the summit.

About the forays being made by China into India's neighbourhood, he said New Delhi is not worried about it as it has strong relationships with its neighbours.

He also said South Asian countries are free to have relationships with any country including China.

"Let me tell you very clearly that India has its own relationships with all these countries. These are very strong relationships and India is also doing a lot of projects in all these countries, such as the Maldives, Nepal or Sri Lanka," he said.

He also spoke of India's strong reservations about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is part of China's multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and called for candid talks to resolve the differences.

"When we talk about development projects or connectivity projects, they must be transparent, fair and equal. There are certain internationally accepted norms for such projects," he said in apparent reference to criticism that the BRI projects lacks transparency.

"If a project meets those norms, we will be happy to take part in it. One of the norms is the project should not violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country. Unfortunately, there is this thing called CPEC, which is called a flagship project of BRI, which violates India's sovereignty and territory integrity. Therefore, we oppose it," he said.

The USD 50 billion CPEC traverses through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Parliament Complex, Nirman Bhawan and Shastri Bhawan were among the government offices in Delhi where the World Earth Hour was observed by switching off lights between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm tonight.

Lights were also switched off at Rashtrapati Bhavan, India Gate, Akshardham Temple in Delhi and Buddha Statue in Hyderabad and Howrah Bridge in Kolkata, according to an official from World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which organises the campaign.

Yesterday, Union Minister Harsh Vardhan urged people to switch-off all non-essential lights for an hour today to mark the Earth Hour, saying he himself will do so.

Celebrities and politicians too vowed their support for the campaign.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan tweeted a picture which showed him sitting in candle light.

Chouhan said: "I observed Earth Hour in my residence and worked in candle light. I hope you too did the same."



Delhi MLA Manjinder Singh Sirsa tweeted, "If you can read this, you can surely manage with lesser light for one hour. Let us switch off all non-essential lights in our offices & residence from 8:30 to 9:30 pm tonight in support of #earthhour. I support this wonderful initiative by @drharshvardhan."



Actor Amitabh Bachchan tweeted, "#EarthHour is tonight, Mar 24th .. #Switchoff all non essential lights between 8.30-9.30pm and join millions around the world .. !! Come together to #Connect2Earth."As part of the campaign, various residential colonies in Delhi switched off street lights in their area during the hour.

Kerala Governor P Sathasivam also had appealed to people and institutions to support the Earth Hour.

Earth Hour, which started in Australia in 2007, is described as the world's largest grassroots movement for climate change which aims to raise awareness about the importance of protecting the and wildlife.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 23)  President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the arrest of the operator of the bus involved in a deadly crash in Occidental Mindoro.

"Pinahuli ni PRRD (President Rodrigo Roa Duterte) operator and pinahuli nya ang lahat ng colorum," Special Assistant to the President Bong Go said on Friday.

[Translation: President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the arrest of the operator, and all colorum vehicles.]

Duterte ordered this after a unit of bus company Dimple Star fell into a cliff Tuesday night. The crash killed 19 people and injured 21 others.

The bus was bound for Manila from San Jose, Occidental Mindoro.

The President visited the site of the bus crash in Sablayan Occidental Mindoro Friday afternoon. He also visited wounded passengers and attended the wake of those who died in the incident.

Aside from the Dimple Star bus operator, Duterte also ordered the arrest of all colorum vehicles nationwide.

"Nationwide. Yes. Tapusin na natin itong problema na ito. Salot sa buhay natin," Go quoted the President as saying.

[Translation: Nationwide. Yes, let's finish this problem. It's a burden to us.]

Earlier today, transport regulators suspended the entire fleet of Dimple Star due to a number of violations and crashes.

Dimple Star is required to surrender the license plates of all its 118 buses by March 26th.Business leaders from Nepal and India today participated in an international entrepreneurship conclave here and discussed the need to establish better connectivity between the two countries to explore new business opportunities.

Nepalese Finance Minister Yuvaraj Khatiwada who inaugurated 'The International Entrepreneurship Conclave-Connect-IN', said that the conclave provides a platform for the entrepreneurs from both the countries to come together and exchange innovative ideas.

"Young and innovative entrepreneurs from both the countries need to come forward with their innovative ideas and the governments of the two countries should play the role of facilitators by creating conducive business environment," the minister said.

"Nepal needs to benefit from the economic prosperity attained by its two neighbours, India and China through sharing knowledge, skills and transfer of technology," he said.

The event, organised by Embassy of India in Kathmandu in collaboration with Clock b Business Innovations was attended by over 300 delegates.

Speaking on the occasion, India's ambassador to Nepal Manjeev Singh Puri said the event will be instrumental in connecting the budding entrepreneurs from both India and Nepal and will also serve as platform for providing suitable opportunities to the business communities of the two countries that would be mutually beneficial.

Seven CEOs and investors from India and eight from Nepal addressed the audience who were mostly young entrepreneurs.

Those representing Indian entrepreneurs include Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO Hotels, Ashutosh Tyagi, Executive Vice President, Tata Capital Private Equity, Navin Surya, Chairman, Payments Council of India and Mrs. Ritu Marya, Editor-in-Chief, Entrepreneur Media among others.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont, wanted under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, left Finland for Belgium on Friday, a Finnish lawmaker who organised his visit to the Nordic country said.

Mikko Karna, an MP who hosted Puigdemont in Helsinki on Thursday and Friday for talks with lawmakers, said he had "just received information that Carles Puigdemont departed from Finland last evening by unknown means to Belgium," in a statement posted on Twitter.

"Puigdemont confirmed to me today that in Belgium he will fully cooperate with authorities," Karna wrote.

Puigdemont is wanted by Spain on charges of "rebellion" and "sedition".

Finnish police had said earlier today they would comply with the European arrest warrant, but stressed they did not know Puigdemont's whereabouts.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said it could not confirm Karna's information.

"We do not have official information regarding that... This is what a member of parliament is saying, but we have no confirmation," NBI criminal inspector Hannu Kautta told AFP.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Home Minister Rajnath Singh today called for strong steps against narcotics trade in the country, saying assets of drug traffickers should be "forfeited" and stern legal action be taken against drug cartels.

Singh, in his address at the first national conference on 'drug law enforcement' here, urged multiple government agencies working in this domain to increase the use of technology in drugs interdiction.

"To stop the inflow of money generated from illegal trade of drugs into our economy, proper financial investigation needs to be conducted in each significant NDPS (anti-narcotics law) case.

"Movable and immovable assets of drug traffickers should be forfeited. This will break the back bone of drug trafficking," Singh said while addressing officials of various anti-narcotics agencies from the Centre and the states.

In his address at the conference organised by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), he said a "lot more" work still needs to be done in the field of combating narcotics crime.

"Drug law enforcement in India is a multi-agency task. All enforcement agencies should give high priority to this," Singh said.

Drug trafficking, he said, is an organised crime run by cartels and syndicates and "we need to identify such syndicates and their kingpin and take stern action against them to disrupt their illegal businesses."



He said regular arrests or "catching" by police and other agencies of drug carriers was the just the "first step" in the larger process of hitting at the roots of the drugs trade.

"Our national policy on narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances gives equal emphasis on supply and demand reduction. We need to spread more awareness among the public particularly among the young about ill-effects of drug abuse," he said.

The home minister also talked about the impact of drugs abuse on the society.

"Drug trafficking and abuse pose serious threat to our society and is a matter of serious concern for all of us. Drugs endanger peace, health and stability across regions.

"Drug abuse places a heavy burden on public health system in treatment of addicts and on the other hand the drug user becomes unproductive and cannot contribute towards the development and growth of the society," he said.

The home minister said illicit cultivation of opium and cannabis in some parts of the country was a matter of concern and must be suppressed.

He said India's geographical position on the globe -- between two largest opium producing regions of the world that is golden crescent in the west (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran) and golden triangle (Myanmar, Laos and Thailand) in the east -- and sea and air links with these countries makes it "vulnerable" to drug trafficking.

Singh said it was important for Indian agencies like the NCB to "actively collaborate" with foreign countries, particularly neighbouring nations, by way of sharing of intelligence on a real-time basis.

He also gave out some figures of drugs interdiction and seizure last year.

During 2017, he said, various agencies seized 1,991 kg opium, 2,189 kg heroin, 1.96 lakh kg ganja, 2,657 kg hashish, and 67 kg cocaine in the country. Also, opium poppy crop spread over 6,007 acres and cannabis over 8,358 acres was destroyed by enforcement agencies, he said.

The minister informed that a total of 332 foreign nationals were arrested in drug cases in India in last year, largely for trafficking cocaine and heroine category of narcotics that are abused by the youth.

NCB Director General Abhay said that at the two-day conference, resolutions such as seeking longer shelf life for drug detection kits, more impetus on financial crimes, proper utilisation of legal powers to put drug traffickers under preventive detention and providing more funds to states for the creation of additional drug testing laboratories, were passed.

A total of 50 agencies from across the country and those from the drug enforcement agency (DEA) of the US and the Australian Federal Police also participated in the first-ever conference, the DG said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The central government has decided to solve the water problems in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan by utilising water from rivers flowing into Pakistan, Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari said here today.

He said the government has also introduced a new scheme where water will reach farmers through innovative technology using pipe system rather than canals, avoiding land acquisition costs to the tune of Rs 6,000 crore.

Gadkari made these remarks in his inaugural address at an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry here, according to a release issued by the organisers.

Citing the case of the Godavari, where 3000 tmc of water isflowing to the sea, Gadkari said government is constructing adam at Polavaram in Andhra Pradesh at a cost of Rs 60,000 crore to check Indravati river flow, which is a tributary of Godavari and flows in full spate through a thick forest.

"This water can then be carried till the tail end of Tamil Nadu, almost 1,300 km by pipeline. Once this project is completed, Tamil Nadu will get almost 450 TMC of water," he said.

Gadkari, who also holds the portfolios of road, transport and highways and shipping, said the government is very keen on developing Karwar port in Karnataka and is willing to spend Rs 3,000 crore for the projects if the state government is in agreement.

Touching upon waterways as a cheaper logistical option,he said government is encouraging seaplanes and called on HAL to form a Joint Venture with the government to manufacture them.

According to him, around 10,000 seaplanes would be required in the next two years.

Gadkari also emphasised the urgent need to reduce pollution and urged the automobile industry to produce vehicles that would run on electricity and alternate fuels like ethanol and methanol, which could be produced from agricultural waste.

"Conversion of waste into wealth is the future," he said.

Gadkari also said the current road construction is at 28 kms a day and the target for next year is 40 kms per day.

He stated that the government has already signed work contracts for projects worth Rs 8,50,000 crore for roads, ports, shipping and water resources.

Stating that the government's plan was to develop two lakh kilometers of highways, with 12 express highways, he said work on a new highway between Bengaluru and Mysuru at a cost of Rs 7,000 crore, will commence from today.

He also said that government would start work on a ring-road for Bengaluru, which will cost around Rs 10,000 crore.

Gadkari said work on the Rs 16,000 crore express highway project between Bengaluru and Chennai is expected to start by end March or beginning of April this year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Haryana government is emphasising on promoting peri-urban agriculture in the state as part of its efforts to move growers away from traditional farming of wheat and paddy, a senior official of the Haryana agriculture department said here today.

"We are focusing on promoting peri-urban farming in the state whereby fresh fruits, vegetables, milk, flowers, poultry, foodgrain, pulses and other items will be supplied to the target market of Delhi," Haryana Agriculture Department, Additional Director Suresh Gehlawat said here today.

He was speaking on the sidelines of third three-day Agri Leadership Summit -2018 which commenced here today.

The department has identified Delhi as target market for supplying fresh items by cultivating and processing in adjoining Delhi and periphery areas in Haryana.

"Delhi is surrounded by Gurugram, Panipat, Sonipat, Faridabad districts which fall in the NCR region and if peri-urban farming is promoted here then it will benefit almost one lakh farmers of Haryana as they will have large market for the supply of fresh vegetables, fruits, poultry items, organic products etc," he asserted.

As a pilot project, Haryana government has proposed to promote peri-urban farming in Faridabad.

"We have sought Rs four crore of funds under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana for launching peri-urban agriculture at Faridabad on pilot basis," he further said.

"The items so grown and processed will be sold under Haryana Fresh brand," Haryana Agriculture department's Additional Director said.

To promote peri-urban farming, the government will also rope in Farmers Producers' Organisation (FPO) , he further said.

Official said the peri-urban farming will not only encourage growers to come out of the wheat-paddy cycle but will also lead to crop diversification.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Madras High Court today reserved orders on a plea from Tamil Nationalist Movement leader Pazha Nedumaran, seeking return of his books, allegedly seized by police for his support to Tamil Eelam (separate tamil state).

Last week, the First Additional Sessions Judge had said if the books were circulated, it would disturb the minds of the readers and the peace and tranquility of the public.

Hence, the books would not be returned to Nedumaran, the judge had said.

Nedumaran was arrested in 2002 for publishing books supporting Eelam and released in 2007.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Madras High Court has set aside a single judge order of 2014, allowing the Chennai Port Trust (CPT) to impose Rs 63.08 crore fine on the Chennai Container Teriminal for alleged non-achievement of output targets and directed the CPT to return the amount.

The first bench, comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Abdul Quddhose, directed the CPT to return the amount while allowing an appeal by CCT against the order of the single judge.

In December 2007, the CPT had said the container terminal had failed to achieve the required percentage of non-transhipment traffic as per the licence agreement and slapped a fine of Rs 63.86 crore.

Besides, the port encashed Rs 47.08-crore bank guarantee granted by the terminal, the court was informed.

The dispute was referred to an arbitration tribunal presided over by former Chief Justice of India R C Lahoti. The other two members were former judges of the high court -- Justice R Jayasimha Babu and Justice S A Kader.

In 2013, the tribunal had ruled in favour of the CCT and directed the Port Trust to return the Rs.63.86 crore to the terminal. Aggrieved by the award, the Port Trust moved the High Court.

When the plea came up for hearing, the Bench said, "In our view, the single judge has failed to appreciate the law relating to the setting aside of an arbitral award under the Arbitration Act, 1996.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Following are top at 2000 hours:



DEL14



SHAH-LD NAIDUTDP chief's criticism of Centre untrue & baseless: ShahNew Delhi: In his first attack on TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu for his decision to break ties with his party, BJP president Amit Shah says the Andhra Pradesh chief minister's move was guided by political consideration and not development concerns, and dubbed his criticism of the Centre as "untrue and baseless".

CAL3



AS-LD SHAH



BJP sets target of over 21 LS seats from NE in 2019 polls



Guwahati: Gearing up for the next general election, BJP President Amit Shah set a target of 21 seats out of 25 parliamentary constituencies from northeast in Lok Sabha polls in 2019.

DEL3



RS-TALLY-BJP



BJP at 69, Congress at 50 in Rajya Sabha after polls



New Delhi: The BJP makes a significant gain of 11 additional seats while the Congress makes an overall loss of four in the biennial elections to 58 Rajya Sabha seats, consolidating the saffron party's position in the House and leaving its main rival far behind.

DEL22



UP-LD MAYAWATI



SP-BSP ties won't be affected by RS poll result: Mayawati



Lucknow: BSP supremo Mayawati asserts that her party's understanding with the SP will not be affected by the defeat in Rajya Sabha polls and that she will not allow the BJP's "design" to create a rift between the two parties to succeed.

MDS5



KA-RAHUL



BJP 'attacking' the Constitution: Rahul Gandhi



Chamarajanagar (Karna): Congress President Rahul Gandhi accuses the BJP of "attacking" the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.

DEL21



RAHUL-LD PRASAD



Rahul targets Prasad over pendency of cases in courts



New Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi hits out at Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad over huge pendency of cases in courts and shortage of judges, and charged him with "peddling fake news" instead.

DEL5



NIRAVMODI-ED SEIZURE



Fresh seizure of jewellery, watches from Nirav Modi's Mumbai apartment



Mumbai/New Delhi: A fresh seizure of antique jewellery, costly watches and paintings of Amrita Sher-Gil and M F Hussain worth Rs 26 crore has been made by the ED from the sea-facing Mumbai apartment of diamantaire Nirav Modi in connection with the over Rs 12,000 crore PNB fraud case.

DEL15



JK-LD ENCOUNTER



2 Pak militants killed in encounter in J-K



Srinagar: Two Pakistani militants, belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) outfit, killed in an encounter with security forces in south Kashmir's Anantnag district, police say.

DEL19



POL-CONG-BJP



BJP's 'DNA' is 'full of lies': Cong



New Delhi: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi charged the opposition of spreading lies against the government, the Congress hist back alleging that it was the BJP's "DNA" that was "full of lies and its dispensation had "crossed all limits".

DEL10



RAJNATH-NAXALISM



Naxalism on its last leg in the country: Rajnath



Gurgaon: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh says the "serious" challenge of Naxalism in the country has entered its "last leg" and Maoists are now resorting to coward ambushes against security forces as they are unable to undertake a direct fight.

DEL23



JK-SEPARATIST LEADER SON



Son of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat chairman joins Hizbul Mujahideen



Srinagar: The son of Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, the newly-elected chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, reportedly joins the Hizbul Mujahideen, the Jammu and Kashmir Police says.

BOM4



CG-NAXAL-BLAST



4 policemen injured in IED blast carried out by Naxals in C'garh



Raipur: Four District Reserve Guard (DRG) jawans injured in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast, suspected to be carried out by the Naxals, in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district, police say.

LEGAL:



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DL-COURT-2NDLD-KARTI



Karti shall not be arrested till April 16 in Aircel-Maxis cases: Court



New Delhi: A day after securing bail from the Delhi High Court in INX Media case, Karti Chidambaram gets another relief from a city court which granted him protection from arrest till April 16 in Aircel-Maxis matter arising out of the 2G spectrum cases.

FOREIGN:



FGN6



UN-INDIA-WATER



India welcomes UN launch of decade of action on water



United Nations: India welcoms the launch of an ambitious decade for action on water, expressing hope that concerted action by the international community will help in meeting the challenges of ensuring sustainable solutions to the requirement of clean water.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Students of Assam Women's University (AWU), the only institute of its kind in the North East, are agitating to press for permanent vice-chanellor and for transforming it into a full fledged varsity.

The agitation had been launched on March 5 and protests are being held across upper Assam in support of it.

The government is considering to downgrade it to a technical institute by repealing the Act, which was passed by the state Assembly in 2013, and is likely to discuss the matter in the next cabinet meeting.

"The government has not taken a final decision yet. It can be either way. A discussion is going on, mostly in the political level. As a public debate is going on at present, the government will definitely consider this," Assam Higher Principal Screteray Ajay Tewari told PTI.

"Most probably, the Cabinet will take up the matter in the next meeting. If the Cabinet decides to scrap the varsity then the Assembly has to ratify it," Tewari said.

When asked to comment on the government-appointed expert committee's view that the university should be retained, he said the report was a technical one and a university requires lots of other things.

"The government will take a sensible and unbiased decision ... The university has been languishing since long," Tewari said.

Since classes began in 2013, the university has been functioning without a vice-chancellor or any permanent teaching staff.

Assam Agricultural University V-chancellor K M Bujarbaruah is functioning as its mentor and all the teachers have been appointed on contract and ad-hoc basis.

The AWU students are on an indefinite strike and are boycotting classes from the first week of March and even held a 36-hour hunger strike from March 19.

"We want a written undertaking from the government on two issues -- appointing a permanent VC and transforming AWU into a full-fledged university.

Otherwise, we will continue our strike," AWU Students' Forum president Chinmoyee Gogoi said.

Last year the students had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention in the matter but nothing "concrete" has happened, she added.

Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Tarun Gogoi, during whose tenure the university was set up, visited the campus this morning and lent his support to the agitation.

"Assam Women's University was one of my dream projects for empowering the women. It is not only a pride of Assam but of the whole country. Assam BJP Govt's decision on AWU exposes the hollow promises of flagship program #BetiBachaoBetiPadhao," Gogoi tweeted after his visit.

Students bodies like AASU, SFI, SMSS, ACYCP other social organisations have thrown their weight behind the students and have organsied rallies, satyagraha and other protest programmes across upper Assam and in Guwahati in the last couple of days.

Effigies of Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Minister Hemanta Biswa Sarma were burnt and nearly 175 colleges under Dibrugarh University organised satyagraha marches during the week.

The agitation has garnered support from students and teachers of JNU, TISS, BHU, NEHU, IIT-Kharagpur, Jadavpur University and Sikkim University among others.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India is not worried about China's attempts to establish close ties with South Asian countries as New Delhi has strong relations with its neighbours, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale has said.

The South Asian countries are free to have ties with any country including China, India's Ambassador in Beijing Bambawale said.

"India has its own relationships with all these countries. These are very strong relationships and India is also doing a lot of projects in all these countries, such as the Maldives, Nepal or Sri Lanka," he said in an interview to Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"Our relationships with these countries are very strong, they are historical, people-to-people contacts," the envoy said, citing example of India and Nepal having open borders.

There is an open border between Nepal and India so people can come to India without any visa, and the reverse is also the case, he said.

"So, we have very strong relationships with all these countries and we are confident that this relationship will become even stronger and richer in the coming months and years. I don't think we are worried about what China is doing. Those countries are free to have relationships with any third country including China," Bambawale said.

He also spoke of India's strong reservations about China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is a part of China's multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

"When we talk about development projects or connectivity projects, they must be transparent, fair and equal. There are certain internationally accepted norms for such projects," he said, in an apparent reference to the criticism that the BRI projects lack transparency.

"If a project meets those norms, we will be happy to take part in it. One of the norms is the project should not violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country. Unfortunately, there is this thing called CPEC, which is called a flagship project of BRI, violates India's sovereignty and territory integrity. Therefore, we oppose it," he said.

The CPEC traverses through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

India follows the principle of not "letting differences of opinion becoming disputes, of doing projects which are not opaque but open; transparent and meet ecological and environmental standards; does not violate anyone's territorial integrity, then we will find a situation where the Chinese dragon and the Indian elephant will actually be dancing together," Bambawale said.

He played down the talk of India-China rivalry saying: "As far as India is concerned, India does not look upon China as a rival or a competitor. We look upon China as a partner in progress and development".

He referred to historically high bilateral trade between the two countries which touched USD 84.5 billion last year.

Bambawale also cited examples of Bollywood films like Dangal becoming a huge hit in China while Chinese phone maker Xiaomi becoming the largest mobile handset seller in India.

The success of the films shows that Chinese people are open to watching Bollywood movies, the envoy said.

"I think from watching those movies they understand India better and by understanding each other better, we will be able to have greater trust between each other. That's why these examples are very important," he said.

India has no concerns about China's rise. "In fact, India looks at China's rise as something which also gives us encouragement that India can also do at least some of the things that China has done, which is to develop economically and develop rapidly," he said.

To a question about China's concerns over the US, India, Japan and Australia forming a quadrilateral grouping, Bombawale said India is too big to be a part of any alliance.

"As far as the four countries are concerned, India has never been a part of any alliance. Countries like India and China are too big to be a part of any alliance. We both have very independent policies; domestic policies as well as foreign policies," the envoy said.

India will work with all countries in the world to improve and increase its interests.

"Wherever our interests converge, we will work together like on climate change and environment protection. India and China work very closely together on many international issues like environmental protection and counter-terrorism. We will continue to work with anyone, where we find that there is a synergy. We will work with China definitely," Bambawale said.

He also declined to comment on the constitutional amendment removing the two-term limit for Chinese President Xi Jinping, paving the way for a life-long tenure.

"The removal of the term limits and new team for foreign affairs and all that is China's internal matter; I don't want to say anything on that. That is for China and the people of China to decide. We only look upon it as something which encourages us to do better in India's economic development, India's economic progress and social progress," he said.

Both China and India are re-emerging on the international stage and becoming very important players, Bambawale said.

"Many centuries ago in the 1600 and 1700s, both China and India were very important economic powers in the world. Now in the 21st century, we are seeing a re-emergence of both China and India to some extent on the world stage from a geo-political and geo-economic point of view," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Cebu City (CNN Philippines)  A security guard of a bar was killed while three others were wounded in a shooting incident in Cebu City Friday evening.

The police reported a group of men in a white pick-up truck opened fire at a Ford SUV about to leave the Infinity KTV at 11:45 p.m.

Security guard Wilson Bucay, who suffered from multiple gunshot wounds, died on the spot.

Meanwhile, another security guard George Lambating and two German nationals who passed by the area were also wounded in the incident.

Police recovered 53 empty shells of M16 rifle aside from four live M16 ammunition in front of the bar.

Meanwhile, the driver of the Ford SUV, with plate number ZKZ-361, fled the scene and headed toward the Asia Power Residences in the Cebu I.T. Park, two kilometers away from the bar.

The driver of the car and the gunmen remain unidentified.

Cebu City Police director Joel Doria said the security guards at the condominium refused to identify the SUV driver.

Businessman Peter Lim owns the KTV bar. He became controversial when President Rodrigo Duterte named him as among the drug lords in the country connected with the Chinese triad.

READ MORE: Suspected drug lords Peter Lim, Kerwin Espinosa: What we know so far

He, along with alleged drug lord Kerwin Espinosa, face drug charges at the Department of Justice.In a major real estate deal, Real Estate (IBREL) has executed a definitive agreement with global private equity investor Blackstone Group to divest 50 per cent stake in its prime commercial properties in the megapolis for Rs 47.50 billion.

IBREL has executed transaction documents with the entities controlled by Blackstone to divest their entire holding in certain subsidiaries and thereby indirectly divesting 50 per cent stake in Properties Private Ltd (IPPL) and Real Estate Company (IRECPL) at an aggregate enterprise value of around $1,461.5 million or Rs 95 billion, the company had said in a BSE filing last evening.

"Substantial part of sale proceeds would be utilised towards repayment of existing debts of the company and its subsidiaries, and for achieving sustainable long term growth and for further strengthening of their on-going businesses," it said.

The transaction is expected to be completed by March 31.

Once this transaction is concluded, Indiabulls will cease its sole control over the two subsidiaries IPPL and IRECPL, Indiabulls added.

The company, did not give any details about the assets held by these two subsidiaries.

However, according to sources, the two subsidiaries hold premium commercial office assets, Indiabulls Finance Centre and One Indiabulls Centre, in central Mumbai.

Indiabulls in April last year had announced plans to restructure its business by creating a separate venture for commercial and leasing operations as part of efforts to focus on each segment.

It planned to hive off commercial and leasing business into a separate entity Indiabulls Commercial Assets Ltd.

In a recent announcement, the company said it plans to sell its housing and commercial assets in Chennai as part of strategy to exit non-core market and restructure its business.

The US-based Blackstone directly and along with its joint venture partner Embassy group is currently holding huge commercial assets with over 56 million sqft across major cities.

Embassy group is planning to launch the country's first real estate investment trust to monetise commercial assets.

Unlike housing sector, the commercial real estate is doing fairly well and attracting huge investment from global investors like Blackstone and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC.

In late December 2017, DLF promoters concluded sale of 40 per cent stake in rental arm for nearly Rs 120 billion. This deal included sale of 33.34 per cent stake to GIC for Rs 90 billion.

Few years back, Godrej Properties had sold over 4 lakh sq ft of office space in Bandra-Kurla complex for nearly Rs 15 billion.An Indian-origin man unauthorisedly drove past into a major air force base in the US and died as the vehicle crashed and burst into flames, with the FBI saying they are investigating the motive behind his action.

Hafiz Kazi, 51, of Sausalito drove his minivan into the Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California on March 21 without authorisation.

FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sean Ragan said in a statement that as the vehicle entered the base, it caught fire and Kazi died at the scene.

Within the vehicle, investigators found five propane tanks, a gym bag with personal effects, three phones, three plastic one-gallon gas cans, and several lighters.

The investigation is in the early stages, he said.

A report in Fox quoted Ragan as saying that Kazi was a native of India who has lived in the US since 1993 and was a permanent legal resident. Ragan said investigators have been unable to find any of Kazi's family living in the US, but a family member in India has been notified of his death.

The FBI officer said Kazi appeared to work as a cab driver in the past, but investigators are yet to determine if he was currently employed. It is also not clear if Kazi owned the minivan.

"We don't have any evidence of any religious affiliation or anything at this point," Ragan said. "As of now, we know of no other associates." He added that based on the investigation so far, it appears Kazi did not have any known links to terrorism.

Travis Air Force Base first responders and local emergency officials responded to the incident, which took place at the main gate entrance. Travis Air Force Base's Explosives Ordinance Disposal Team, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation also responded to the scene.

The FBI is currently leading the joint investigation to determine the circumstances that led to the incident.

"We know that the community is concerned but we can assure everyone that we are unaware of any specific threat to Travis Air Force Base and the Fairfield community," Ragan said.

"We continue to seek the answer to the question of why this man acted in the manner he did. We appreciate the public's concern and patience as we continue to follow all investigative leads in order to provide a factual basis for the events that occurred," he said.

Ragan said investigators have been reviewing all available information about Kazi and urged the public for any information about him.

The Travis Air Force Base is home to 10,000 military personnel and is a major hub for logistics and military cargo in the Pacific. It's the largest military aerial port in the United States and includes facilities for airlift and aerial refuelling, according to a CNN report.

The base is located in Solano County and is midway between Sacramento and San Francisco.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)An insect museum with state-of-the-art amenities will be inaugurated at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) here on March 26.

The museum will be declared open by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami, a TNAU release said today.

Established at the Department of Agricultural Entomology, at a cost of Rs 5 crore, the museum features preserved specimens, live specimens in different developmental stages, besides displaying images, videos and models on their unique behaviour, habits and habitats.

The uniqueness of the museum is visible in the lobby, which depicts the theme, "BUGS ARE KINGS," while the exhibiting area comprises seven radial walls (bay) on the right side and an undivided wall on the left side, it said.

Three touch screen facilities for access to information on insect trivia, insect records and insects and you, have been provided.

In addition, the museum has a souvenir shop and a mini auditorium to screen movies and documentary films on insects, it added.

A ramp for the differently-abled has been erected at the museum, which is also equipped with an electronic ticketing facility.

Agriculture Minister R Doraikannu, Municipal Administration Minister S P Velumani and Deputy Speaker in Tamil Nadu Assembly, Pollachi V Jayaraman will be present on the occasion.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The African Continental Free Trade Area(AfCFTA), which aims at establishing a free trade regime across the continent, holds great promise for Indian industry, co-chair of the India-Africa CEOs Forum Vivian Reddy said here.

According to economists, the AfCTFA, aimed at boosting development, food security and economic transformation through free movement of persons, capital, goods and services across Africa, has a potential to create a unified market of over USD 1.2 billion for a GDP of more than USD 25 trillion.

AfCFTA would simultaneously reduce the reliance on donor funding in many countries, they believe.

"South Africa has been seen as a springboard to other countries on the continent by Indian business ever since relations with the country were resumed when President Nelson Mandela came into office," said Reddy, who was made the co-chair of the think-thank of the forum alongside Adi Godrej of India during the visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016.

Reddy said the new move augers well for Indian industry because it will open up further opportunities for this to be expanded by the more than 150 Indian companies which are already operating offices in South Africa.

"We are also going to encourage Indian companies and those from the other BRICS countries, who are not here yet, to set up (work) in South Africa because we have the best infrastructure in Africa, so that they could then trade from South Africa to the rest of Africa," he told PTI.

But South Africa and Nigeria are two of the major players which did not become party to AfCTFA when the heads of state met in Kigali in Rwanda earlier this week for an African Union Summit where 44 countries signed the agreement.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa welcomed the move towards a continental free trade area, but said his government needed more time to consult relevant stakeholders before signing it.

"We as South Africa want free trade in Africa because we are an important player in the African continent," Ramaphosa remarked.

"We are part of this process of opening up Africa for trade. All that is holding us back from signing the actual agreement is our own consultation process.

"We stillneed to consult at home (with) Cabinet, the partners at the National Economic Development and Labour Council and finally to consult Parliamentarians," Ramaphosa said at the Summit.

Nigerian President Muhammad Buhari, who did not attend the Summit, also said his government needed to do more consultation.

African heads of government had agreed to establish a continental free trade area in 2012 and started negotiations in 2015.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Iran today slammed new US sanctions against 10 of its citizens and an Iranian company over their alleged involvement in a massive state-sponsored hacking and intellectual property theft scheme.

The US Treasury Department unveiled charges on Friday against nine Iranians along with sanctions against 10 individuals and the Mabna Institute, which it accused of hacking hundreds of universities on behalf of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi called the accusations "false".

"Iran condemns the United States' provocative, illegal and unjustified actions, which are a major new sign of the hostility and animosity of US leaders towards the Iranian people," he said in a statement on the ministry's website.

"They will not prevent the scientific development of the Iranian people."



The two founders of the Mabna Institute, Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38, and Ehsan Mohammadi, 37, were among the nine Iranians indicted in New York and whose assets are subject to US seizure.

Since 2013, the Mabna Institute carried out cyber intrusions into the computer systems of 144 US universities, the Treasury Department said, and 176 universities in 21 foreign countries.

Mabna Institute employees and contractors "engaged in the theft of valuable intellectual property and data from hundreds of US and third-country universities... for private financial gain," it said.

"For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and, specifically, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said.

The US Department of Labour, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, dozens of private firms and non-governmental organisations such as the United Nations Children's Fund were also allegedly targeted.

Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the Iranians conducted "spearphishing" attacks designed to steal passwords from email accounts in what he called one of the largest state-sponsored hacking schemes ever uncovered.

Since taking office in January 2017, US President Donald Trump has adopted a tough stance against Iran and repeatedly denounced a landmark deal that Tehran reached with world powers to curb its nuclear programme.

Trump said in January that the 2015 deal must be "fixed" by May 12 or the United States will walk away.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The AYUSH ministry will organise a tour of Yoga professionals from abroad to Kerala, known as "Yoga's birth place", as part of various programmes in the run up to the International Day of Yoga (IDY).

Yoga Ambassadors Tour, the 10-day educational tour of Kerala is being organised with the support of the Kerala Tourism and the Association of Tourism Trade Organisations, India (ATTOI).

"Applications have been invited from established and practising yoga professionals from around the world to have a first-hand experience of Kerala, the southern state of India, the country proud to be known as the birth place of Yoga," a senior AYUSH Ministry official said.

The tour will culminate on June 21, which is the International Day of Yoga, and the delegates would also get a chance to participate in a mass yoga drill to mark IDY 2018.

"The Yoga professionals do not need to be only yoga practitioners, they can be yoga tour operators or yoga writers.

"India is the source of yoga and place of its origin. We want them to experience and get the feel of how yoga is practiced in India," the official said.

Meanwhile, around 5,000 delegates hailing from 16 countries and more than 40 yoga institutions and universities participated in the three-day International Yoga Fest which began on March 21.

Further, the ministry has shortlisted four cities -- Jaipur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Mysore -- for holding the main function of International Yoga Day this year.

These four names will now be sent to the PMO which will select one city and then finalise the venue of the main event.

The international yoga fest will be followed by 10 state-level fests to be held in different parts of the country.

Also, 100 yoga teachers have been deployed in Indian missions abroad and delegates from more than 16 countries will participate in the event.

"The aim is to build an atmosphere of yoga leading up to the main event and sensitise the masses about the grand function on June 21," an official had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Jammu and Kashmir DGP SP Vaid visited the houseof martyrDeepak Thusoo who laid down his life in the line of duty during a gunbattle with Pakistani terrorists in Kupwara recently.

Five Pakistani terrorists were killed and four security personnel martyred in the nearly 48-hour gunbattle in the dense Kupwara forest in north Kashmir on March 21.

Interacting with the family members at their Jagti camp residence yesterday, the DGP assured all help from the department to the family, a police spokesman said.

"The DGP acknowledged the exemplary courage shown by the official in the line of duty," the spokesman said.

"He also assured to expeditiously deal with the ex-gratia case so that the family is taken care of, especially the children," he said.

Thusoo is survived by his wife, two children, mother and a sister.

Vaid later tweeted about the meeting.

"It was heart-breaking to meet young children and other family members of our martyr cop Deepak Thusoo who gave supreme sacrifice while fighting terrorists. Department will do everything within its powers to support the family. May God give strength to the family," he said in the tweet.

The DGP was accompanied by IGP Jammu S D Singh Jamwal, SSP Jammu Vivek Gupta, AIG (Personel) Aftab Kakroo,SP Rural Jammu Shivdeep Singh, AIG (Welfare/Communication) PHQ Manoj Pandit, SDPO Nagrota Jasbir Singh, and Dy SP DAR Jammu Madanmohan Singh Jamwal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Noted historian Romila Thapar today alleged that the Jawaharlal Nehru University was being "slowly dismantled" and asserted that critical thinking if trampled upon would destroy the idea of a varsity.

She also said that history was facing a threat of "infusion of imaginary theories" which were being used to "ground valid knowledge".

Thapar, one of the first academicians to join the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)when it was founded, said the varsity's first vice-chancellor Gopalaswami Parthasarathi along with many other academicians helped build the institution with "meticulous" care.

"This is being ramped continuously as GP (Parthasarathi) wanted, as the foremost university in India and very often ranked as equal to the better universities in the world. It is now, perhaps not surprisingly, being slowly dismantled," Thapar said at the launch of a book titled 'GP 1912-1995', based on the life of Gopalaswami Parthasarathi -- a journalist, diplomat and academician.

Thapar's comments come in the backdrop of charges by a section of academicians that varsities, including the JNU, were being targeted and the space for critical thinking and dissent was shrinking.

Thapar, 86, noted that university is a place not to just hand out degrees, but to advance knowledge by raising doubts and critically questioning subjects.

"Those in polity have to recognise these rights and nurture them. If they trample on them they will destroy not only that particular institution but the very idea and the function of a university," said Thapar, who along with other the noted academicians had raised concerns over "rising intolerance" in the country after Kannada writer M M Kalburgi was shot dead in 2015.

She said that disallowing the freedom to debate and allowing only authorised ideas was an indication that those in power were "somewhat insecure".

Besides, Thapar, Muchkund Dubey, former foreign secretary, and former External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh were also present at the event.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)JNU professor Rakesh Bhatnagar has been appointed as the vice-chancellor of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), the HRD Ministry said today.

Bhatnagar, who was VC of Kumaon University from 2012 to 2013, has been teaching at JNU for two decades and his areas of interest include molecular biology of infectious diseases, recombinant vaccine development and programmed cell death in prokaryotes.

President Ram Nath Kovind, who is the Visitor to the university, approved Bhatnagar's appointment this week, a senior HRD Ministry official said.

He will take charge from BHU Registrar Neeraj Tripathi, who had been holding the additional charge of the top post since October last year.

Bhatnagar's predecessor, Girish Chandra Tripathi, had gone on leave two months before his tenure came to an end, following a ruckus on campus in September last year.

The development came amid indications from HRD Ministry sources that the central government was upset with the manner in which the former vice-chancellor had handled the entire episode, including a protest by women students following an incident of alleged harassment.

The ruckus started when a number of students, including women, and two journalists were injured in a baton-charge by the police after a protest against an alleged eve-teasing incident turned violent in BHU, one of the 43 central universities in the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A day after the members of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) were stopped from continuing their march to Parliament by the Delhi Police, the teachers' body today announced that it would take part in another protest march on March 28.

The march, organised by the Federation of Central Universities' Teachers' Associations (FEDCUTA) is scheduled to start from Mandi House and conclude at Parliament Street.

It will be taken out to protest against the Centre's move to privatise higher

"JNU teachers to join the FEDCUTA People's March in defence of Public Funded Higher (from Mandi House to Parliament Street) on 28th March, 2018 at 12:30 pm," the JNUTA said in a statement.

The police had lathicharged and used water canons to disperse the crowd near Sanjay Jheel in Lakshmi Bai Nagar during the "Padyatra" organised by the JNUTA and the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) yesterday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Uh-oh! It could be you, or it could be us, but there's no page here.A NIA Special Court today sentenced woman operative Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid to seven years rigorous imprisonment in connection with Kerala IS recruitment case.

Special Judge S Santhosh Kumar awarded the sentence after convicting her under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Indian Penal Code.

The NIA special court in Ernakulam also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on her.

Zahid, who hailed from Bihar, is the second accused in the case investigated by the NIA.

Last year, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had filed the charge sheet against two ISIS operatives Abdul Rashid Abdulla as the main accused, who motivated a number of youths from Kasaragod to leave India along with their families to join the Islamic State, and Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid.

Zahid was intercepted while trying to take a flight to Kabul to join the IS in Afghanistan.

There are 15 accused in the case. The NIA had chargesheeted only two as the 13 others including first accused, Rashid, were in Afghanistan and one in Syria.

Three are believed to be killed in air strikes in Afghanistan.

The agency had said the case relates to the criminal conspiracy hatched within and outside India by certain youths, originally hailing from Kasaragod district of Kerala, with the intention of furthering the objectives of ISIS and their pursuant exit from India along with their families for joining and supporting the terror organisation.

The case was re-registered at the NIA police station, Kochi, on August 24, 2016.

A probe by the NIA has established that Abdul Rashid Abdulla was the main conspirator, who motivated a number of youths from Kasaragod to leave India along with their families to join the Islamic State.

He conducted classes in Kasaragod and other places in support of the terrorist organisation and "its ideology of violent jihad", the agency had said.

Abdulla motivated one more set of 14 co-conspirators, including another accused Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid, to join the proscribed organisation and plan for "Hijrah to the Caliphate" announced by the ISIS, it had said.

The NIA said the probe revealed that the conspiracy had been in operation since July, 2015.

It said Zahid was intercepted at the New Delhi International Airport on July 30, 2016 when she was trying to leave India for Kabul along with her minor child to join her co-conspirator Abdulla in the territory under the control of IS in Afghanistan.

The probe has established that Abdulla had raised funds for the IS and transferred the money to Yasmeen, who utilised it for her activities with the intention of supporting the terrorist organisation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)An NIA special court today sentenced a 30-year-old woman operative to seven years rigorous imprisonment in connection with Kerala IS recruitment case.

Special Judge S Santhosh Kumar awarded the sentence after convicting Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The woman was also found guilty under Indian Penal Code sections 120B (Punishment of criminal conspiracy) and 125 (Waging war against any Asiatic Power in alliance with the Government of India).

The special court in Ernakulam also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on her.

Zahid, who hailed from Bihar, is the second accused in the case investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

NIA prosecutor Arjun Amabalapatta submitted that the issues related to IS is not just confined to Kerala or India.

"The issue has to be eliminated from the society for which maximum punishment should be granted," he said.

Last year, the NIA had filed the charge sheet against two ISIS operatives Abdul Rashid Abdulla as the main accused, who motivated a number of youths from Kasaragod to leave India along with their families to join the Islamic State, and Zahid.

Zahid was intercepted at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on July 30, 2016 when she was trying to leave India for Kabul along with her minor child to join her co-conspirator Abdul Rashid Abdulla in the territory under the control of IS in Afghanistan.

There is overwhelming evidence to prove the association of Abdul Rashid Abdulla and Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid, the Court noted.

The Court said the evidence showed that the first and second accused had an inclination to join ISIS and in fact Abdul Rashid Abdulla along with his colleagues physically joined ISIS by reaching Afghanistan.

It has been established that she attended secret classes taken by Rashid with respect to 'Hijra,' violent jihad on several occasions, the Court said in its order.

There are 15 accused in the case.

The NIA had chargesheeted only two as the 13 others including first accused, Abdulla, were in Afghanistan and one in Syria.

Three are believed to be killed in air strikes in Afghanistan.

The Court said the audio tapes sent by Abdul Rashid Abdulla from Afghanistan to his relatives here, openly propagates the ideology of ISIS and soliciting others to join it.

According to him, it is the duty of every Muslim to do Hijra towards the Caliphate which is formed under leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Court said.

The agency had said the case relates to the criminal conspiracy hatched within and outside India by certain youths, originally hailing from Kerala's Kasaragod district, with the intention of furthering the objectives of ISIS and their pursuant exit from India along with their families for joining and supporting the terror organisation.

The case was re-registered at the NIA police station, Kochi, on August 24, 2016.

A probe by the NIA has established that Abdul Rashid Abdulla was the main conspirator, who motivated a number of youths from Kasaragod to leave India along with their families to join the Islamic State.

He conducted classes in Kasaragod and other places in support of the terrorist organisation and "its ideology of violent jihad", the agency had said.

Abdulla motivated one more set of 14 co-conspirators, including Zahid, to join the proscribed organisation and plan for "Hijrah to the Caliphate" announced by the ISIS, it had said.

The NIA said the probe revealed that the conspiracy had been in operation since July, 2015.

The probe has established that Abdulla had raised funds for the IS and transferred the money to Yasmeen, who utilised it for her activities with the intention of supporting the terrorist organisation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A meeting of the council of priests today decided to initiate steps to resolve the crisis in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese over alleged irregularities in a land deal involving Cardinal George Alencherry and some priests.

The meeting of the presbyterial council of Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese was attended by 49 priests.

In his address, Alencherry sought to reach out to the priests who have declared war against him over the land deal, calling for reconciliation.

Talking to reporters after the meeting here, a representative of the priests said initial steps have been taken to end the crisis.

He, however, maintained that they needed to get a clear picture about the land deal involving Alencherry and two other priests.

There is no need for intervention of Pope Francis, if the issue is resolved here itself, the priest said.

"It is an internal matter of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese," he said.

The reconciliation efforts began in the diocese following the negotiation talks conducted by Kerala Catholic Bishops Council representatives with priests and the Cardinal.

Kerala Catholic Bishops Council stepped in to help resolve the crisis in Syro-Malabar Church after a group of priests came out openly against Cardinal over alleged irregularities in the land deal involving him.

Over 200 priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese had hit the streets recently, urging Alencherry to keep off all responsibilities of the Archdiocese in view of a police probe on the alleged irregularities.

Cardinal Alencherry is the Archbishop of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese.

They raised the banner of protest after Kerala High Court had ordered police to register an FIR against Alencherry.

The priests have alleged that Alencherry and the others sold prime land of the archdiocese for "a very low price" and refused to make public the details about it.

The High Court had ordered the probe after rejecting Alencherry's contention that the land belonged to the diocese and that a third party could not complain about alleged loss in sale of such a private property.

An FIR has been filed against Alencherry, who enjoys support of priests, Bishops and Church followers in other dioceses.

A division bench of the High Court stayed the single bench order in an appeal filed by the Cardinal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)India has handed over a second advanced offshore patrol vessel (AOPV) constructed at the Goa Shipyard to the Sri Lankan Navy.

The vessel was officially handed over to the Sri Lankan Navy Chief Rear Admiral Neil Rosayro on Thursday in the presence of the Sri Lankan high commissioner to India, and the chairman and managing director of Goa Shipyard.

The construction work of this AOPV commenced in 2014 and the state-of-the-art vessel is capable of conducting patrols, policing, reconnaissance, surveillance, search and rescue, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) and pollution control missions in Sri Lanka's maritime zones.

The navy said the delivery came much ahead of schedule.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad today arrested six Bangladeshi nationals for staying in the country without valid documents, officials said.

The Thane unit of the ATS arrested the six from Bhiwandi and they have confessed that they are Bangladeshi nationals who had been staying in the country illegally, an official said.

They have been booked under relevant sections of the Passport (Entry Into India) Rules,the Foreigners Act as wellas the Indian Penal Code, he said.

Officials said the number of nationals from the neighbouring country apprehended by the state's ATS now stood at 24.

Earlier, raids by the ATS had netted Bangladeshi nationals from Malwani, Kandivali, Panvel in Navi Mumbai, Ambernath as well as Pune, officials informed.

Among the arrested, five have also been charged with sheltering operatives of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a terror outfit banned in Bangladesh, an official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Criticising the BJP-led central government for its stand on Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today said it bulldozed states to show them that it was doing a favour by giving funds.

Her statement came in the wake of BJP president Amit Shah's letter to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and the latter hitting back at him.

Extending her support to Naidu, Banerjee tweeted, "I appreciate that Chandrababu Naidu Ji @ncbn has stated the facts. Very good. There are many so called leaders who spread lies. They make this a habit. They try and bulldoze States and show that they are doing the States a favour by giving funds. This is fake federalism (sic)."



Shah, in his letter to Naidu, had said the latter's "unilateral" decision to quit the NDA was for "political considerations and not development".

Shah's letter yesterday came a week after Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) pulled out of the NDA over its demands for special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

Naidu, in a counter-attack, criticised Shah's open letter to him and alleged that it was "full of false information" that hurt the sentiments of the Telugu people.

Shah had described as "untrue and baseless" the TDP chief's allegations that the BJP was not sensitive to the aspirations of the people of Andhra Pradesh.

He had said the NDA government had released Rs 1,050 crore in the first three years of coming to power as a special development assistance for seven backward districts of the southern state.

"Surprisingly, the state has spent only 12 per cent of this amount and 88 per cent remains unutilised," Shah had said.

Banerjee also extended her support to Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati, who today asserted that her party's understanding with the Samajwadi Party (SP) would not be affected by the defeat in the Rajya Sabha polls and that she would not allow the BJP's "design" to create a rift between the two parties to succeed.

Her remarks came after SP chief Akhilesh Yadav cancelled the victory celebrations for his party nominee Jaya Bachchan in Lucknow as a sign of solidarity with the BSP, whose lone candidate backed by the SP lost in the Rajya Sabha polls.

"I welcome the views expressed by Mayawati Ji today. We are strongly with her and @yadavakhilesh in this mission for the nation," Banerjee said in another tweet.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The man, who drove through the main gates of a major US air base carrying propane tanks and gas cans on Wednesday and died as his vehicle caught fire, has been identified as an Indian-origin American, the FBI today said, denying any terror angle in the incident so far.

Hafiz Kazi, 51, was living in the US since 1993 and was a legal resident, FBI Special Agent Sean Ragan said at a conference, adding that he was originally from India.

He apparently lived in the San Francisco area and had worked as a cab driver, Ragan said.

Around 7 pm on Wednesday, Kazi drove his minivan through the main gate of Travis Air Force Base in Northern California. The vehicle soon veered, crashed and started burning and by the time first responders broke through its locked doors, Kazi was dead, Regan was quoted as saying by the CNN.

No shots were fired during the fiery crash, he said, adding investigators discovered five propane tanks, three phones, gas cans, several lighters and a gym bag inside the car.

"Authorities have not announced a motive but the security breach does not appear at this point to be terrorism-related," Ragan said.

"We don't have any nexus to terrorism at this point," he said but added that Kazi's phones and social media were being searched for any possible connections.

Meanwhile, officials said the investigation is ongoing and there are no current known threats to the base or community. "The main gate has reopened and all other facilities are operating as normal," the base officials added.

Travis Air Force Base is home to 10,000 military personnel and is a major hub for logistics and military cargo in the Pacific. It's the largest military aerial port in the United States and includes facilities for airlift and aerial refuelling, according to the report.

The base is located in Solano County and is midway between Sacramento and San Francisco.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Former prime minister Manmohan Singh today visited the Hindu College here, 70 years after he completed his bachelors in economics at the institution.

Singh addressed a gathering of students and teachers, and shared his experiences as a student at the college.

"This college made me what I am today. Today I am visiting here after a gap of 70 years and remember the past sweet events of my life during my stay in the college as student," he said.

"I came to this college in the holy city of Amritsar as a 1st year student in September 1948," the former prime minister said, adding that he had done his BA (Honors) in Economics.

The memory of the college goes back to 70 ago. "What I am today is because of the imparted to me by the distinguished teachers and members of the faculty of Hindu College," he said



"I still remember I passed my intermediate while holding first position in the University and also got first position in the university when I passed out Graduation in Honours," Singh said.

Recalling the role of former IFS officer and his friend Satinder Lamba in his diplomatic life, he said, "Here I will say about Satinder Lamba, the distinguished alumnus of this college who was advisor to me when I was prime minister, he was always praised by Field Marshal General Manakshaw."



Satinder Lamba had a special role being Advisor to the Prime Minister, he said.

Lamba was also present in the college's convocation today.

Singh also praised his teachers.

"I am thankful to my teacher Professor Mast Ram Jain, Professor S R Kalia, Dr Jugal Kishore Trikha and B L Kapoor as they are my real heroes perhaps without them I couldn't recognise my hidden potential," he said.

In his address, Singh said he was grateful for being inducted as the first member of the alumni.

He said that he considered 2018 as a special year as it brought him the chance to visit his own Hindu College.

The former prime minister also recalled the contribution of Principal Sant Ram Grover.

He told the students that they should feel lucky that they are students of such a historic college.

He was happy to see the progress of the college and said that he was sure that the college would continue on the path of progress to emerge as the best college in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A merchant was arrested for allegedly cheating farmers by manipulating an electronic weighing machine using a remote control at Sarangi village in the district, a police official said today.

According to the official, the grain merchant- Rishabh Bambori- was caught by a farmer yesterday when the latter had gone to sell his wheat crop. The farmer found that the accused was secretly using a remote control to show the wrong weight of the wheat-filled bags when they were kept on the weighing scale.

"The farmer Premsingh Damar (25) from Kasarbardi village went to the grain merchant at Sarangi village in the district yesterday to sell 15 quintals of wheat. Before going to the shop, he weighed the grain at home to know its exact weight," Petlawad police station in-charge Lokendra Singh Thakur said.

"But when the merchant started weighing the yield on his electronic machine, it showed that the per bag weight was reduced by five kgs, as compared to what the farmer had registered at home. Despite repeatedly checking the weight, there was no difference, following which the farmer grew suspicious," he added.

The farmer later observed that every time the bag was kept on the weighing machine, Bambori would put his hand into his trouser's pocket. When Damar confronted him, he told him that there was only key-chain in his pocket.

"When the weighing process began again, the complainant and others searched Bambori's pocket and found a remote control. After came to know that the remote control was linked to the weighing machine and the moment its button was pressed, it used to reduce the per bag weight by 5 kgs," the officer said.

When the farmers realised that they were being duped, they created a ruckus and sought that a case be registered against the trader.

"Soon, a police team reached the spot and arrested Rishabh when he was trying to escape from the spot. His four associates, however, managed to flee," Thakur said adding that a search has been launched to nab them.

A case under relevant sections of the IPC including section 420 (cheating) and SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against all the accused.

Local mandi officials have seized the electronic weighing machine along with the remote control for further investigation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Shiv Sena today criticised Union Minister Nitin Gadkari for 'overruling' the state government's decision to file a review petition against the Supreme Court's decision on mining.

The mining activity in Goa has come to a standstill after the apex court quashed second renewal of 88 mining leases. Gadkari visited the state earlier this month to work out a solution to the crisis.

"The State Cabinet Advisory Committee had decided to file a review petition in the mining matter. But suddenly Gadkari arrived and announced that a legal opinion would be taken before filing the petition," Sena's Goa spokesperson Rakhi Prabhudesai Naik said in a statement here.

What authority Gadkari had to overrule the decision taken by the Cabinet Advisory Committee appointed by Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar (who is undergoing treatment in the US), she asked.

"Gadkari has no right to act like a de-facto chief minister of Goa and act against the Cabinet Advisory Committee," Naik added.

"The BJP is not able to provide a solution to the mining crisis which is its own creation," Naik said.

Gadkari's visit to the state and the "drama" of holding meetings with industry stakeholders, ruling coalition partners and BJP leaders was merely an eyewash to avoid a backlash from the people dependent on mining, the Sena leader alleged.

Gadkari, after holding meetings over the mine closure issue, had announced that further steps would be taken after seeking a legal opinion.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 24)  President Rodrigo Duterte is calling on Filipinos to reflect and unite in time for the Holy Week.

Let us take a moment to pause in the spirit of contemplation and work and unite as one people to build a truly equitable and inclusive nation where everyone can enjoy a decent and comfortable life, he said in his Holy Week message.

Holy Week officially starts on March 25, Palm Sunday.

The President said the coming week is a time for the public to revitalize their faith and renew their relationship with God and their fellow men.

He wished Filipinos a deeply meaningful and solemn Holy Week, and called on them to help and uplift the downtrodden.

As we reflect on the Catholic values and embody selflessness, compassion and love instilled in us through the years, let us remember to always help and uplift the downtrodden because it is only through charitable actions that we can make God's presence visible among us, the President said.

In his Holy Week message for 2017, Duterte had called for solidarity regardless of religious denomination.

He reminded Filipinos to persevere in the struggle for a better society.

READ: President Duterte's message for LentGerman President Frank-Walter Steinmeier today held wide-ranging talks with Indian leadership including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, who stressed that the world community must be unanimous in curbing and rooting out terror in all forms.

Steinmeier, who is on a five-day visit to India, and Modi discussed ways to strengthen the strategic partnership during their meeting at the renovated Sunder Nursery, a 90-acre heritage park in central Delhi.

"Had the honour of taking the President of Germany, Mr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier to Delhi's Sunder Nursery. We had wonderful discussions on a wide range of issues," Modi tweeted.

Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also called on the German president, who has visited India several times in the past in his capacity as the foreign minister and vice chancellor of Germany.

"Engaging discussion on broadening and deepening our strategic partnership. The two sides attach priority to the relationship, bilaterally and also in the global context," Raveesh Kumar, Spokesperson of Ministry of the External Affairs, tweeted after Swaraj met the President.

While interacting with Steinmeier, Naidu said that India and Germany share similar perceptions on most of the issues confronting the world.

Without naming Pakistan, Naidu decried the activities of India's neighbour "which is encouraging, abetting and aiding terror groups".

"Terror has no religion," a statement quoted Naidu as saying during the meeting.

The Vice President suggested that the world community must be unanimous in curbing and rooting out terror in all forms, it said.

Earlier in the day, Steinmeier was accorded a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The German president had arrived on Thursday and had visited Varanasi. He also had an interaction with students at the Delhi university.

On Sunday, he will travel to Chennai. His engagements there include a visit to IIT-Madras and addressing a group of business leaders. The next day he will visit the Shore temple in Mahabalipuram.

The last German president to visit India was Joachim Gauck in February 2014.

Germany is India's largest trading partner in Europe and the sixth largest trading partner in the world. India was ranked 24th in Germany's global trade.

In 2016-17, the bilateral trade turnover was USD 18.76 billion. In 2016-17, India exported goods worth USD 7.18 billion to Germany and imported goods worth USD 11.58 billion.

Germany is the 7th largest foreign direct investor in India and the cumulative German FDI in India from April 2000 to December 2017 is USD 10.71 billion or 2.91 per cent of total FDI, according to official figures.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit China to take part in the SCO summit in June during which there will "definitely" be a bilateral meeting between him and President Xi Jinping, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale has said.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a China-dominated security grouping, is increasingly seen as a counterweight to NATO. The SCO summit is due to be held in the Chinese city of Qingdao from June 9-10.

In an interview to Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, Bambawale said: "During that (SCO summit), we will definitely have a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping. And before that happens we want to have a lot of other meetings".

"We will have a whole series of meetings in the next few weeks and months," the envoy said, adding that the boundary officials of both the countries will also be meeting.

"We are having these meetings to have candid and frank discussions," Bambawale said.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently said that she would visit China next month.

The Foreign Ministers of the SCO countries are also due to meet before the summit.

Last year, Indian and Chinese troops had been locked in a stand off for over two months at the Dokalam area in Sikkim section. The face off ended on August 28.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Feminist activists are preparing to sue China's biggest social media platforms for deleting their organisation's account, the group's founder said today.

On March 8, International Women's Day, staffers operating the prolific Feminist Voices account on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform found it had been deleted.

Weibo customer service representatives told them by phone that the account could not be reactivated due to the posting of "sensitive and illegal information", the group's founder Lu Pin told AFP.

The next day, the group's WeChat public account had also disappeared.

The group has run into trouble before on social media, with their accounts being temporarily suspended and individual posts deleted, but "this time they say it's a permanent deletion", Lu said.

Feminist Voices has "already begun legal procedures and is preparing to sue Weibo and Wechat", she said, adding that they have sent letters of complaint to both the government department in charge of the internet and the All-China Women's Federation.

Neither Sina Weibo nor internet giant Tencent, which runs WeChat, responded to requests for comment.

The black-out prompted Lu to pen an open letter to British actress Emma Watson -- "one of the feminist idols held in highest esteem by young Chinese women," she said -- to solicit the celebrity's support.

"We are struggling to reactivate our accounts so that we can continue our work and are asking you to demonstrate your open support for Feminist Voices on Twitter," she wrote in the English-language missive, posted to Twitter Friday.

China's ruling Communist Party runs one of the world's most restrictive online censorship regimes.

Feminist Voices, which established an account on Weibo in 2010, was temporarily blocked by authorities last year after it translated and posted parts of an article by American academics calling for a "general women's strike".

The article in question spoke of the need for "a new wave of militant feminist struggle" against US President Donald Trump's "aggressively misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and racist policies".

The post was deleted and the group's Weibo account suspended for 30 days -- the first instance of a black-out since its founding, with a notice stating they had "violated Chinese laws and regulations".

Feminist Voices has garnered some 250,000 followers since 2010, according to Lu.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The National Commission for Women has ordered a probe into alleged manhandling of JNU students and a woman journalist during a protest march here.

A large number of JNU students and teachers were yesterday stopped from marching to the Parliament Complex over various demands, including academic freedom, with police resorting to lathicharge and use of water canons.

"We have ordered a probe and sent a team today to meet the police officials and we will further pursue the matter on Monday," NCW Acting Chairperson Rekha Sharma said.

The protesting students had claimed that the "attack" by the police was "unprovoked", with a woman journalist alleging that a man in uniform "groped" her and asked her to vacate the place.

The "Padyatra", which started at the varsity's campus, was organised by the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA).

The associations are demanding academic freedom, and accessible and equitable

The teachers' body had requested other associations to join the protest march.

Their other demands include withdrawal of the executive council decision to constitute a committee to take action against teachers and the immediate withdrawal of notifications replacing chairpersons who were opposed to implementing compulsory attendance.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The new schemes proposed by the Himachal Pradesh government for the agriculture sector in its 2018-19 Budget will help farmers double their income, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur said today.

He reiterated the commitment of the government to double income of farmers and said that to achieve the target new schemes have been proposed in the Budget.

The chief minister was addressing a public meeting at Pakhubela in Una Assembly Constituency.

The previous Congress government in the state had neglect the Una constituency, but today schemes and projects worth Rs 20 crore have been inaugurated for its development, besides laying of foundation stone for new projects, he said.

The main focus of the state government would be on development and welfare of the poor, downtrodden and under privileged sections, the chief minister said.

The previous government had pushed the state into a debt trap, but the BJP dispensation is dedicated to development, the chief minister said, alleging that opposition Congress was forcing non-issues to divert the attention of people from core development issues.

The BJP government has sanctioned an IIT, Indian Oil depot, Satellite Centre of the PGI, mother child health care centre and other mega projects for Una district, he said.

State BJP president Satpal Singh Satti hailed the chief minister for laying foundation stone of a bridge to be constructed on Jalgran-Pekhubela-Khui-Bhadloiya road at a cost of Rs 131.69 lakh.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)"No change" has taken place at the Dokalam standoff area after it was resolved last year, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale said and blamed China squarely for the face off, saying it happened because Beijing tried to alter the "status quo" which it should not have.

The 73-day long standoff ended on August 28 last year after China agreed to halt the road building activities at Dokalam in Sikkim Section.

"No, I can tell you that in Dokalam area, which we call close proximity or sometimes the face off site, the area where there was close confrontation or close proximity between Indian and Chinese military troops, there is no change taking place today," India's Ambassador to China Bambawale said, reacting to reports of Chinese military stepping up infrastructure build-up in the area.

The Chinese side may be putting more military barracks to put in more soldiers, but that is well behind the sensitive area, he said in an interview to Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"Those are the things you're free to do and we are also free to do, because you're doing it inside your territory and we are doing it inside our territory," Bambawale said.

Indian troops intervened to stop their Chinese counterparts building a road close to India's narrow corridor "Chicken Neck" area connecting northeastern states. Besides China, the area is also claimed by Bhutan.

Recent reports said that Chinese military was trying to work around or outflank the Indian troops at the Dokalam area.

Bambawale also reiterated his earlier comments that China should not change the status quo along the Indian border and inform India about its plans earlier.

"In the sense that if the Chinese military is going to build a road, then they must tell us 'we are going to build a road'. If we do not agree to it then we can reply that, 'look, you're changing the status quo. Please don't do it. This is a very very sensitive area," the envoy said.

During the Dokalam standoff, China claimed that it had informed India about its plans.

About lessons to be drawn, he called for delineation of the 3,488-km long Line of Actual Control (LAC) which China has refused.

"The India-China boundary is un-demarcated and un-delineated, so we have to talk to each other to delineate and demarcate it, which means to draw the boundary line.

"Now for the last 30 years, not a single shot had been fired between the India-China border, which shows that we have been successful at maintaining peace and tranquility. Even during the Dokalam incident, a very serious incident, there was no firing, we were able to maintain peace and tranquility. I think this is a successful example of diplomacy between our two countries," Bambawale said.

He said both countries should move further to solve the problem.

"We need to move further to actually solve the problem, which is to draw the boundary line. The boundary is quite long between India and China, roughly 3,500 km. In order to maintain the peace and tranquility, there are certain areas, certain sectors which are very sensitive, where we must not change the status quo. If anyone changes the status quo, it will lead to a situation like what happened in Dokalam.

"The Chinese military changed the status quo in the Dokalam area and therefore India reacted to it. Ours was a reaction to the change in the status quo by the Chinese military," he said, stressing that the two countries should have high-level communication on it.

"I agree entirely that it has to be brought down to practical levels. It shows that when incidents like Dokalam happened last year, it means that we were not frank enough and candid enough with each other. So we need to increase the level of frankness," Bambawale said.

At present both countries are having "a lot of dialogue" at the political level and also at the economic level, the Indian envoy said as he welcomed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's recent comments that Indian elephant and Chinese dragon must not fight but dance together.

Referring to various visits planned between the two countries including that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June to China to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, he said that both the countries "especially on the political level, must be very frank and open and candid with each other".

"There are some issues and problems between India and China, if we have to solve those problems, we need to talk candidly. That's what I mean about the candid discussion. Only through talking frankly and candidly, we will be able to solve the issues and problems and understand each other's concerns," Bambawale said, asserting that the boundary issue is the most important problem between India and China.

"It is a leftover from history, but today's governments are trying to tackle it. We are giving it a high priority. But only when both sides talk to each other very frankly and candidly, we will be able to resolve this boundary issue and decide on a boundary," the envoy said.

Both the sides should address each other's concerns, he said.

"There are two principles that India has suggested to China. One is that each side must be sensitive to the other side's aspirations, their concerns, their priorities and so on. The second is that we must not allow differences to become disputes. For example, we might have differences of opinion on Belt and Road, but that we must not allow that difference of opinion to become a dispute," Bambawale added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)After announcing a string of tough trade measures against China, US President Donald Trump has said that Beijing would no longer have a "free reign" like it had been having for many years, which resulted in a massive American trade deficit with it.

A day after he initiated a series of tough actions against "unfair" Chinese trade practices, inviting retaliation by Beijing, Trump exuded confidence that the steps would end up with China fairly treating America.

"China is going to end up treating us fairly. For many years, they had free reign; they don't have free reign anymore. We're very friendly with China. We have great relationships with China. And, look, it's time. It's time," Trump told reporters yesterday at a White House conference.

"Last year, we lost USD 500 billion on trade with China. We can't let that happen," he said.

The White House has also said that America's massive trade deficit with China is estimated to have resulted in about two million job losses in the US.

Trump imposed tariffs on about USD 60 billion worth of Chinese imports to punish the country for its "unfair" seizure of American intellectual property, a move that could escalate the already tense trade relations between the world's two biggest economies.

In a retaliatory move, China unveiled plans yesterday to impose higher tariffs on USD 3 billion worth of American goods including pork and pipes in retaliation to US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from Beijing.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal today said China is to blame, and not Trump, if there happens to be a trade war between it and the US.

"If there's a trade war between the US and China, don't blame Donald Trump: China started it long before he became president," the daily wrote.

"Even free traders and internationalists agree China's predatory trade practices, which include forcing US businesses to transfer valuable technology to Chinese firms and restricting access to Chinese markets, are undermining both its partners and the trading system," it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A 37-year-old city resident has been convicted of killing a Bangladeshi-American Muslim cleric and his associate in New York in 2016, a crime that was seen as symptomatic of rising Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric in the US.

"Oscar Morel of Brooklyn was convicted at trial of first-degree murder and other charges for the broad daylight execution of Imam Maulana Akonjee, 55, and his associate and friend Thara Uddin, 64. The two men were gunned down as they walked home following prayers at the Al-furqan Jame Masjid Mosque in Queens in August 2016," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement.

Describing the killings as a "senseless act of gun violence" carried out in the middle of the afternoon in a close-knit neighborhood filled with families, Brown said, "Morel's actions caused immeasurable grief not only to the victims' families, but the slaying struck at the heart of the Muslim community of Queens."



He expressed hope that the verdict would bring some closure to the family and many friends of the two men killed.

Morel was convicted yesterday following a nearly three-week-long trial before Queens Supreme Court Justice Gregory Lasak. Jurors deliberated for about a day and found Morel guilty of one count of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder and one count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Morel will be sentenced next month and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY), the state's leading Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, welcomed Morel's conviction, saying the brutal crime had corresponded with a nationwide surge in anti-Muslim hate crimes, triggered massive demonstrations in the city and gained worldwide media attention.

CAIR-New York, which serves as civil counsel for the Akonjee and Uddin families, exposed gratitude that Morel has been brought to justice for the horrific crime.

"Maulana and Thara came to this country in search of a better life, instead they found Morel's hatred. Nothing can ever replace what Morel took from us, but this verdict helps show that this city will never accept this sort of heartbreaking violence."



CAIR-New York Executive Director Afaf Nasher said many lives had been seriously impacted with the grief and continuing consequences of losing their loved ones.

According to trial testimony, Akonjee and Thara were returning home from prayers at their local mosque in the afternoon of August 13, 2016 when Morel approached them from the rear, pointing a .38 caliber revolver at their heads. Morel fired several shots and fled the scene. The Imam was hit four times in the head and body. Uddin was shot once in the head. Both men were rushed to a nearby hospital, where they died.

Video surveillance from near the shooting scene showed the defendant exit a black SUV and walk and run toward the two victims off-camera and moments later Morel was observed on the same video camera running back to his vehicle and leaving the area.

The firearm was later recovered from Morel's home. Forensic analysis confirmed that the bullets that killed the Imam and Uddin were fired from the revolver that was hidden behind a kitchen wall in the defendant's Brooklyn apartment.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Goa government was open to a discussion with Maharashtra on allowing people from the neighbouring state to avail treatment at Goa Medical College and Hospital, state health minister Vishwajit Rane today said.

Goa has been charging patients from outside the state for treatment at the GMCH and recently Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had said that his government would give Rs two crore per annum for such treatment.

Rane informed that the Maharashtra government had written a letter asking the Goa government to waive off this fee.

"I am open to a discussion with the Maharashtra government over the issue but with the rider that they should sit and discuss it with me. I am firm on my decision to charge them," Rane told PTI.

He said that the Maharashtra government could either empanel the GMCH under its own medical scheme or deposit Rs five crore per year as service charge for treatment.

He said the decision to charge patients coming from outside Goa was taken to reduce the load on the state-run medical facility.

This, he said, was because more than 50 per cent of patients arriving at the GMCH were from Maharashtra and Karnataka.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has seized over 200 Indian star tortoises from a hotel room in Kolkata and arrested two persons in connection with the case.

According to a statement issued by the DRI, the accused had planned to smuggle the tortoises to Bangkok.

Acting on an information that the tortoises were kept in a room of a hotel on Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road in Kolkata, officers of the DRI mounted a surveillance on the hotel during the night of March 22, the statement said.

Even as the DRI sleuths kept vigil, a person came to the hotel carrying a backpack and a suitcase and entered the room already occupied by another persons.

"DRI officers then entered the room and found the tortoises kept in two bags. A total of 214 Indian star tortoises were found," it said.

These tortoises are rare and endangered species and are often poached from the wild and sold internationally to be kept as pets and also as ingredients of Chinese medicine.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)More than a quarter of tuberculosis patients in the country have resistance to anti-TB drugs, a new government survey has revealed.

On World TB Day today, the health ministry released two reports -- TB India 2018 Report and National Drug Resistance Survey Report.

According to the first national anti-TB drug resistance survey 2014-16, India records more new tuberculosis (TB) patients annually than any other country, contributing to 27 per cent of the world's TB burden.

About 2.79 million TB patients are estimated to be added annually and the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) notified around 1.94 million TB patients in 2016.

"MDR-TB rates at the national level are still within the range of previous state-level surveys conducted in India. However, more than a quarter of TB patients in India have drug resistance to one or the other anti-TB drug.

"Fluoroquinolone resistance among MDR-TB patients is high and is similar to resistance rates reported by the RNTCP," the survey said.

It said that India initiated the programmatic management of drug resistant TB (PMDT) in 2007 to address the emerging problem of drug resistant-TB (DR-TB), and the national PMDT scale-up was achieved by March 2013.

"The treatment success rate among MDR-TB patients in India is consistently about 46 per cent and the death rate is around 20 per cent as against the global level of treatment success rate of 52 per cent and death rate of 17 per cent.

"High rates of treatment failure and deaths are associated with fluoroquinolone resistance in the Indian cohort of MDR-TB patients," it said.

It said that MDR-TB is 6.19 per cent among all TB patients with 2.84 per cent among new and 11.60 per cent among previously treated TB patients.

"Among MDR-TB patients, additional resistance to any fluoroquinolones was 21.82 per cent and 3.58 per cent to any second-line injectable drugs. Among MDR-TB patients, additional resistance to at least one drug from each of the two classes, i.e. fluoroquinolone and second-line injectable drugs (XDR-TB) was 1.3 per cent," it said.

It advocated for setting up and strengthening drug resistance surveillance including using state-of-the-art next generation sequencing.

"This will provide the programme with the trends of drug resistance, transmission patterns and mapping of hot spots in different states for better understanding of molecular epidemiology for TB surveillance.

"Rapidly scaling up universal DST and appropriate DST guided treatment. Strengthening epidemiologic intelligence for specific interventions based on local epidemiological profile," it said.

Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan, while releasing the reports, said that India is already aligned with world TB treatment protocols.

"It has launched a mission to end TB by 2025, through community participation, involving civil societies and other stakeholders. The global target to end TB is 2030 but we will end it by 2025.

"This is a tall order but I am confident that if we all work together, if all the partners combine together and we ensure full treatment is given on regular basis we can show the world this can be achieved. I am confident of this and my confidence is backed by our success in eradicating Polio," she said.

Addressing the participants, the health secretary further stated that the prime minister has given a call for TB Mukth Bharat' which can only be possible "if we ensure our panchayat and blocks are declared TB free". For that the government has adequately provisioned drugs and diagnostic in every part of the country, she added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently launched a campaign to eradicate tuberculosis (TB) from India by 2025, five years ahead of a globally-set deadline.

Meanwhile, the India TB report 2018 said that Since 2007-08, annually, RNTCP screens approximately 20 million symptomatic persons by microscopy for TB and initiates about 1.5 million persons on TB treatment.

"In 2017, 7,32,449 patients have been tested using these methods and 38,854 Rifampicin resistant/MDR-TB patients have been diagnosed," it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A Portuguese citizen initially reported as dead in attacks in the south of France was in fact only seriously wounded, the Portuguese government said later today.

The Portuguese citizen was listed as dead due to "communication errors", secretary of state for Portuguese abroad, Jose Luis Carneiro said.

"After procedures to identify the victim, it turned out that the Portuguese citizen was only seriously injured and hospitalised in Carcassonne," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Union Minister Suresh Prabhu said today ailing Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is responding well to medical treatment in the USA and expressed the hope he will return home soon.

Parrikar (62) is suffering from a pancreatic ailment and is undergoing treatment at a hospital in the USA, where he was admitted in the first week of March.

"Spoke to @manoharparrikar who is responding well to treatment in the US Hospital. Wished him speedy recovery, early return home to lead Goa," the commerce and industry minister tweeted.

The chief minister took ill on February 14 following which he was admitted to Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai. He was discharged from the Mumbai hospital on February 22.

The same day, Parrikar, who also holds the finance portfolio, returned to Goa and presented budget in the Assembly.

After spending a couple of days at home, Parrikar was admitted to the Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) near here after he complained of dehydration.

The CM stayed at the GMCH for four days and was again admitted to Lilavati Hospital on March 5, from where he was taken to the US.

A three-member Cabinet Advisory Committee (CAC) has been constituted to handle the day-to-day affairs of the government in Parrikar's absence.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A court here today issued a production warrant against gangster Abu Salem and directed the authorities to bring him before it on March 27 in connection with an extortion case.

Additional Sessions Judge Tarun Sehrawat's direction came after the jail authorities informed the court that they would not be able to produce Salem before it today.

The matter was scheduled for the final hearing.

It relates to an extortion case lodged in Delhi, in which Salem had allegedly demanded Rs 5 crore as protection money from businessman Ashok Gupta, a resident of Greater Kailash in south Delhi, in 2002.

Salem had, on January 15, contended in the court that his trial in the case violated the order by which he was extradited to India.

He had also told the court that the prosecution did not have evidence to prove that he had demanded money from the businessman or that the phone number from which the call was made to the complainant belonged to him.

Salem, who was extradited from Portugal in November 2005, was granted bail in the present case in 2013. However, he is currently in jail in connection with various other cases, including those related to the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

Salem, along with five other accused, is facing trial in the case.

According to the prosecution, Salem had allegedly demanded Rs 5 lakh from Gupta and his son Abhishek in April, 2002 and threatened to eliminate their family members if the money was not paid.

The other accused in the case are -- Chanchal Mehta, Majid Khan, Pawan Kumar Mittal and Mohammad Ashraf. One of the accused, Sajjan Kumar Soni, died during the trial.

The police claim to have recorded phone calls made by Salem to Gupta.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Protesters demanding that the Nowshera town be made a district today clashed with police, resulting in injuries to more than 30 people, including a deputy commissioner and about 10 policemen.

The protesters threw stones at the police, who used batons and tear gas shells to disperse them.

Protests have been going on in the Nowshera town in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district for the last one and a half months demanding that the Nowshera, Kalakote and Sunderbani towns in the border belt be made districts.

The protest turned violent a day after the J&K government announced appointment of additional deputy commissioners in the three towns.

A large number of protesters took out a rally in the Nowshera town. A clash broke out when the police tried to stop them.

The mob hurled stones at the men in uniform and vehicles.

The police used batons and tear gas shells to disperse the protesters.

More than 30 people were injured in the incident, the police said.

Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, an additional superintend of police, 2 DSPs, a station house officer and two sub-inspectors were among those injured, they said.

More than 20 civilians were wounded. Four of them were admitted to the GMC Hospital in Jammu and the rest to the Nowshera Hospital.

Five police vehicles were damaged in stone pelting, they said.

Internet services have been suspended in the area in view of the incident.

The Deputy Commissioner and the SSP of the Rajouri district are holding talks with the protesters, the police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Congress-led Punjab government today proposed a development tax of Rs 200 per month on income tax payees as the budget for 2018-19 focused on fiscal consolidation, with the state finance minister exuding hope of putting economy back on rails over the next two years.

The budget's key focus areas remained agriculture and farmer welfare, industry, health, employees and students.

While presenting the second budget of the Congress government, Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal said, "We have tried to mobilise resources and cut down on expenditure".

The total budget size was kept at Rs 1,29,698 crore, though the effective budget size is Rs 1,02,198 crore.

Manpreet Badal proposed raising Rs 1,500 crore through additional resource mobilisation measures. He further informed the Assembly that the government has decided to bring in a legislation for imposing a "nominal development tax" at the rate of Rs 200 per month "only on the Income Tax payees who are engaged in professions, trades, callings and employments".

The new tax will be called 'Punjab Development Tax', under which government is hoping to garner Rs 150 crore annually.

As the state goes for resource mobilisation, Manpreet said the move will help the state access cheaper loans from institutions like Asian Development Bank.

"Many of the progressive states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have been collecting such tax for development for a long time.

"The state also intends to bring in a new Social Security legislation to create a dedicated fund to meet its commitment towards the weaker sections of the society," he said in his budget speech.

In the education sector, the state will provide all requisite text-books free of cost to students of Class I to Class 12th studying in government schools during 2018-19, for which Rs 49 crore has been provided for.

The government will provide free sanitary napkins to all girl students from Class 6-12th in all government schools with an objective to promote menstrual hygiene and reduce dropout of girl students.

All municipal towns/areas would be made Open Defecation Free by June 30, 2018, under the Swachh Bharat Mission.

Manpreet informed that the total outstanding debt of the state is Rs 1,95,978 crore, which is 41.04 per cent of GSDP for 2017-18. The outstanding debt liability is likely to be Rs 2,11,523 crore in 2018-19, 40.82 per cent of GSDP.

The debt servicing (principal plus interest) for 2018-19 is a whopping Rs 24,870 crore as against the allowed net borrowing limit of Rs 15,545 crore approved by Government of India for financial year 2018-19.

Manpreet said the only way left for government is to mobilise more revenue while at the same time cutting down on our non-committed expenditure.

Manpreet Badal's budget speech was disrupted for a while by slogan-shouting opposition MLAs of Akali Dal and Aam Aadmi Party, who protested near the Well of the House and later walked out alleging that the Congress government backed out from its promise of complete debt waiver made to farmers.

"..We have been able to contain the fiscal deficit to 4.36 per cent during 17-18 as compared to 12.18 per cent for 16-17," he said, adding this has been targeted to be 3.81 per cent in 2018-19 in the given circumstances of "huge committed liabilities".

The state's revenue expenditure rose from Rs 55,296 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 71,183 crore in 2017-18 and during the same period, expenditure on salaries, wages and grand-in-aid has risen from Rs 21,729 crore to Rs 24,938 crore, and on pensions from Rs 8,773 crore to Rs 9,469 crore, he said.

The expenditure on interest payments rose from Rs 11,642 crore to Rs 15,175 crore. The total revenue expenditure on these committed liabilities is itself 87 per cent of total revenue receipts of state during 2017-18.

"Despite my best efforts, I have only been able to peg the revenue deficit at 2.42 per cent of GSDP in 2018-19. However, we remain committed to reducing this deficit consistently and getting the state into an era of revenue surplus," he said.

During 2017-18, the GSDP of the state has increased from Rs 4,33,660 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 4,77,482 crore, and it is projected to increase to Rs 5,18,165 crore in 2018-19.

The per capita income of the state has also increased from Rs 1,31,112 in 2016-17 to Rs 1,42,958 in 2017-18 and is 28 per cent higher than national average of Rs 1,11,782, he said.

Touching on farmers' welfare, Manpreet said that the total outlay for the year 2018-19 has been increased from Rs 10,581 crore (17-18) to Rs 14,734 crore.

On the Congress government's key poll promise of debt waiver, an amount of Rs 4250 crore has been proposed for implementation of this scheme during 2018-19. During 2017-18, Rs 370 crore had been disbursed to 71,166 marginal farmers.

"The focus of this government is the farmer of the state and we have decided that our policies on agriculture and rural economy shall be centred only on the welfare of farmer," he said.

Free power is being provided by the state government to farmers and subsidised power to SC, BC and Non SC-BPL category and a provision of Rs 8,950 crore is being made in the budget 2018-19.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Punjab government would provide debt relief to the tune of Rs 200 crore to around 50,000 beneficiaries in six districts in the next phase, a spokesman said today.

The state government has also assured that eligible farmers under this scheme would get debt relief and no eligible farmer to be left out, he said.

The spokesperson of the Punjab cooperative department said the roll out of the Debt Relief Scheme-2017 would be a continuous process.

He said about 50,000 beneficiaries of six districts -- Gurdaspur, Pathankot, Hoshiarpur, SBS Nagar, Amritsar and Tarn Taran -- would get relief of around Rs 200 crore and a function would be held next month in Gurdaspur.

Reiterating the resolve of the state government to fulfil its commitment of debt relief to farmers, he said the scheme has been amended to obtain a self-declaration from eligible beneficiaries, thereby, simplifying the disbursement procedure.

The spokesperson said that under the scheme relief up to Rs 2 lakh would be provided to marginal and small farmers who have crop loans from cooperative institutions, public sector banks and other commercial banks as on March 31, 2017.

"Under the scheme, cooperative institutions and banks would upload Aadhaar based data of their beneficiaries on a web portal of the government for ascertaining the eligibility of the farmers.

"The data uploaded thereafter would verified by the revenue department for identification of farmers as small or marginal," he added.

The spokesman said that as per the provisions of the scheme, the farmers who have obtained crop loan from cooperative institutions are to be given relief on priority.

"Debt relief to marginal farmers is to be given in first phase and small farmers shall be covered in the second phase," he said.

Further, as per the scheme, deputy commissioner concerned would consolidate the claims of the banks and the department of agriculture would reimburse the amount of relief to the banks.

He said 46,556 marginal farmers of five districts of Mansa, Bathinda, Faridkot, Muktsar and Moga had already been provided relief of Rs 167.39 crore in January in the first phase.

"On the day of the function, the loan accounts of the beneficiaries maintained in the banks were credited and the farmers who have provided their mobile numbers to the banks were informed about the credit in the accounts on account of debt waiver through SMSs," he added.

The spokesman said that in the next phase, 29,192 farmers of five districts -- Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Fazilka and Ferozepur -- were provided relief of Rs 162.16 crore during a function held at Nakodar in this month.

On the day of the function the loan accounts of the beneficiaries with the banks were credited with the amount of relief and the farmers who have provided their mobile numbers to the banks were informed about the credit in their accounts through SMSs.

So far, 75,748 farmers of 10 districts have been provided debt relief of Rs 329.55 crore, he said.

He said the debt relief in these 10 districts was given to those marginal farmers whose data has been uploaded on the web portal and revenue department has authenticated their record.

He clarified that there are some farmers whose data could not be uploaded due to mismatch of Aadhaar or pending scrutiny by the revenue department or due to any local issue and as such their claims of relief could have been delayed.

"If such farmers have any doubt or grievances, they could approach deputy registrar of district or assistant registrar concerned at the tehsil level or branch manager of cooperative bank or concerned secretary of the concerned cooperative agricultural society for their redressal," he added.

The spokesperson informed that all the deputy commissioners have been directed to monitor the scheme on a day-to-day basis and ensure that no eligible farmer was left out and the relief disbursed at the earliest.

Besides, to facilitate the delivery of the scheme more efficiently, state government has constituted committees of SDMs, assistant registrars, and agriculture development officers at each sub-division level to settle the claims manually of those farmers who have died or do not have Aadhaar with them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)In a pungent attack on Janata Dal (Secular) of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, Congress president today dubbed it a "B-team" of BJP and nicknamed JDS as "Janata Dal Sangh Parivar."



Taking on JDS on its turf in old Mysuru region, where it is the principal challenger to ruling Congress, Gandhi said earlier 'S' in JDS stood for secular, "but in this election they have got a new name JDS- Janata Dal Sangh Parivar."



On his fourth round of tour in poll-bound Karnataka, Gandhi said the coming assembly polls was a face-off between two ideologies -- on one side BJP and RSS and on the other the Congress.

"In between there is third party which is the B team of BJP that is JDS," the Congress president said at a public rally here in Mandya district, the Vokkaliga belt considered a JDS stronghold.

He told the gathering, "I will tell you. Let BJP's A team, B team or C team come together. Congress party is going to win this election."



Stating that the Congress believed in the ideology of 12th century saint, social reformer Basavanna, Gandhi said JDS call themselves secular, "but they have become the B team of BJP and are supporting them."



Quoting Basavanna's saying "nudidante made" (follow what you preach), Gandhi said JDS had to think about what Basavanna said.

"They (JDS) preach something and do something else," he said.

Gandhi also alleged that BJP and JDS wherever they go spread lies.

"BJP is a party that believes in dividing the country, we will have to defeat them."



He asserted that the Congress would win the elections in Karnataka because "it is not a new fight, but is a very old fight."



Earlier speaking at Chamarajanagar, Gandhi accused the BJP of "attacking" the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.

Addressing a rally after visiting a temple of Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru, he said the BJP was not only snatching away people's money through note ban and GST, but "there is new fashion now, they are attacking the constitution."



"Hear it from here. We will not allow the BJP to change the constitution. How much ever BJP forces its way to change the constitution, we will make sure that the Congress will protect the work of Ambedkarji," he told the gathering,



In his current two-day visit, Gandhi is covering Mandya, Mysuru and Chamarajnagar districts.

He had earlier toured the northern, coastal and Malnad regions.

The Congress president accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being "insensitive" towards problems related to jobs and demonetization.

"I interacted with young students this morning. One of the girl students stood up and asked me about Narendra Modiji's promise to give two crore jobs every year and his "Make In India" programme...but that turned out to be an empty promise and there was no weight behind those words," he said.

The rally was held here as part of "Janashirvada Yatre."



Gandhi said nobody has benefited from the note ban and questioned the rationale of having five different GST rates, including 28 per cent.

"A girl stands up and says nobody has been benefited by the note ban. Another girl stands up and says why are there five separate rates, including 28 per cent."



"It only means that the students aged between 18 to 20 years have understood the problems, but Narendra Modji is yet to understand," he added.

The Congress chief began his speech by invoking Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Mysore ruler, Krishnaraja Wodayar, 24th Maharaja of erstwhile Mysore kingdom, Sir M Vishveshwariah, renowned engineer, and Kuvempu, Kannada poet, by remembering their contributions to Karnataka and India.Railway Minister Piyush Goyal today said it was a "matter of concern" that railway organisations were still working in "silos" despite officials committing to do away with the practice.

Addressing a conference on artificial intelligence here, Goyal expressed his displeasure over various organisations of the railways functioning in isolation.

The minister also said that if used well, artificial intelligence could help transform the railways and ensure endless benefits.

He asked officials not to feel threatened by artificial intelligence, saying it cannot replace anyone, but can aid functioning.

Actually, I urge you to move a note. Every one of our services, since we do believe in continuing with our silos much against my own desire, Goyal said.

The minister said that the situation persists despite top 250 officials at a meeting here few months ago committing that they would try and integrate railway organisations and break these silos.

Am very disappointed that our board still chooses to live in silos. It's a matter of great concern and sadness for a person like me that we are not able to break the silos in the railways, he said.

The minister also noted that in the absence of change and integration in the railways, data prepared would be completely useless. Not using data is criminal as it costs the railways, he said.

Half the data we have, we are not even able to retrieve if we so desire. And the kind of data overdose I am seeing in the railways, is actually harmful for our system. It is not giving us any outcome whatsoever, Goyal said.

The minister told the gathering not to feel intimidated by the changes taking place the world over, but absorb those to make lives easier and safer for passengers on board trains as quality service is delivered to them.

He said artificial intelligence could be used in better asset management and crowd management.

The minister also suggested addressing issues such as how artificial intelligence can be harnessed for social good, economic, organisational and human good.

Artificial intelligence can actually transform the way we are running the railways in terms of safety, passengers' amenities, in terms of growth, efficiency, better revenues, cost-effectiveness, cost control and the list is endless, Goyal added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Punjab government today appointed Raman Bahl as chairman of the reconstituted Punjab Subordinate Services Selection Board.

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had on March 21 informed the Vidhan Sabha that the reconstitution of the Subordinate Selection Service Board was under process.

A spokesperson of the chief minister's office said that the notification on Bahl's appointment had already been issued by the personnel department.

The post of the chairman fell vacant after the abolition of the 11-member Subordinate Services Selection Board on February 27, 2018.

Bahl, son of former minister Khushal Bahl, is a practicing lawyer at Gurdaspur Courts.

He was a member of the senate of the Panjab University, Chandigarh from 2008 to 2012.

He also served as senate member of the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar from 2004 to 2006, besides being syndicate member of the GNDU for one year.

Bahl has also been on the Board of Directors of the Beant College of Engineering and Technology, Gurdaspur and had also been chairman of the Gurdaspur Education Society to cater the educational needs of the border area.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)(CNN)  A U.S. destroyer has sailed within 12 nautical miles of a Chinese-claimed island in the South China Sea, a highly-contested stretch of water where China's been reclaiming land and building islands, U.S. officials told CNN Friday.

In its own statement late Friday, China's defense ministry said two Chinese Navy ships "took immediate action to identify and verify the U.S. ship, and warned and dispelled it."

"China holds indisputable sovereignty over the islands and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea," ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said in a statement. "By repeatedly sending military ships into these areas without authorization, the U.S. has seriously harmed Chinese sovereignty and security, violated basic rules of international relations, and harmed regional peace and stability," the spokesman said.

China's defense ministry claimed that by carrying out these so-called infringements, the U.S. had "damaged the atmosphere of military-to-military relations between the two countries, caused close encounters by air and naval forces, which could easily trigger miscalculation or even accidents at sea or in air."

The defense ministry called the American behavior a "serious political and military provocation against China. The Chinese military is firmly opposed to it."

The U.S. Navy conducts regular Freedom of Navigation operations in the region with the unstated goal of challenging China's huge, disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea.

On Friday, the USS Mustin sailed close to Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, an island chain also claimed by the Philippines, a US defense official told CNN.

"All operations are designed in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows," Lt. Cdr. Nicole Schwegman, US Pacific Fleet spokeswoman, said.

The Chinese government has laid claim a large swathe of territory in the region, overlapping areas claimed by other countries including Vietnam and the Philippines.

To reinforce its position, Beijing has reclaimed land and constructed military assets on a series of reefs in the Spratly and Paracel island chains in the South China Sea.

In October 2017, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Chafee also sailed close to the Paracels, provoking a stern reaction from the Chinese Defense Ministry. "(We are) firmly opposed to such flaunting of force and promotion of militarization in the region by the US, which could easily trigger accidents at sea and in the air," it said in a statement at the time.

On Friday, the Chinese Navy announced it would hold live fire drills in the South China Sea at an undisclosed date and location.

According to state media, the navy will hold the drills "in the near future" but didn't elaborate further on their timing or what they would entail.

"The purpose is to test and improve the training level of the troops and comprehensively improve the ability to win," state media said.

The drills do "not target any particular country," the report added.

For many years the South China Sea has been considered an international flashpoint, as the US and China attempt to assert their influence in the region.

But the ongoing nuclear crisis in North Korea and a distracted US government under President Donald Trump has diverted attention from the area, allowing the Chinese government to tighten its hold.

"The Chinese continue to pace with their long-term strategy to gain de facto control over the sea lanes in the South China Sea. And what changed is the United States stopped paying attention," Michael Fuchs, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told CNN in December.

Correction: The story has been corrected to state that US defense officials confirmed the operation Friday.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "US destroyer sails close to contested island in South China Sea."Goa Minister Vinod Palyekar today apologised for his remark that the Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal had a "soft corner" towards the tourist state which is locked in a bitter row with neighbouring Karnataka.

The water resources minister said it was a "mistake" on his part to give such a statement and maintained he did not intend to show any disrespect to judiciary or judges.

The tribunal is hearing an old dispute between Goa and Karnataka over sharing of water of the Mahadayi river (called Mandovi in the tiny coastal state).

"I will never disrespect judiciary or Judges. If I have said something in the flow of speech then I am sorry. I uttered it by mistake," Palyekar told reporters here.

"But whatever I said or I say is always in favour of Goa," maintained the minister, who belongs to the Goa Forward Party (GFP), an ally of the ruling BJP.

Palyekar, speaking at an event organised to celebrate the World Water Day two days ago, had said "God will give us success in this case because even the judges on the tribunal know what the truth is and they have a soft corner towards Goa."



The hearing on the issue is reportedly in the final stages. Goa has accused Karnataka of diverting the Mahadayi water for irrigation.

The issue of sharing the river water between Karnataka and Goa - two out of three riparian states of the Mahadayi - came to the fore again after Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wrote a letter in December last year. Maharashtra is the other riparian state.

In his letter to Karnataka BJP president B S Yeddyurappa, Parrikar had said he would allow sharing of the river water for drinking purposes only.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had dismissed Parrikar's letter as an "electoral gambit" as the southern state is going to polls this year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.): A Himalayan black bear cub, rescued two months ago by a conservationist near the India-Myanmar border, has been successfully translocated to a zoo at Miao in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh.

The one-year-old cub was handed over to the zoo authorities on March 20, an official report said here yesterday.

The cub was rescued by Yangwok Hodong of Lazu area of Tirap district in January. He fed it and looked after it for two months before handing over to the Range Officer of Lazu Forest Range, Hangpong Tesia, recently.

The bear cub was fondly called as 'Ollo' by the villagers in Tirap district.

DFO Bitem Darang has appreciated Hodong for his efforts to rescue the bear, the report said, adding that the administration at the zoo has assured to take proper care of the cub.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Reacting to the toughest ever sentence awarded to Lalu Prasad in a fodder scam case, the RJD today termed the CBI investigation "politically motivated" and the BJP said the law took its own course.

"It is no rocket science to see that the probe was politically motivated. I do not wish to say much about the judgment since one cannot expect a verdict to be fair and just if the investigation itself was faulty," RJD national spokesman Manoj Jha told PTI.

He was reacting to the judgment pronounced by a CBI court in Ranchi, whereby Prasad was sentenced to 14 years in prison in a case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of money from the Dumka treasury when he was the chief minister of undivided Bihar.

The Rajya Sabha MP, however, expressed confidence that they would draw the higher court's attention to the shortcomings in the investigation and Prasad would come out unscathed.

"Prasad is a victim of a conspiracy by political parties like the BJP, which represents the interests of those who are opposed to social justice and communal harmony," Jha said.

He alleged that had the CBI conducted a fair enquiry in the cases of this nature, all the big shots in the Nitish Kumar government would have been behind bars in connection with the Srijan scam by now.

Prasad's younger son and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav told reporters, We apprehend a threat to Laluji's life as he has been challenging the BJP's hegemony and trying to unite the parties opposed to it across the country. He is innocent and he will get justice in the higher courts. The people of Bihar will give a befitting reply to those behind the conspiracy against the RJD supremo."



Asserting that the RJD would not get cowed down by the latest development, Tejashwi said the workers of the party would work more resolutely than ever before and added that the JD(U) and the BJP would be made to bite the dust in the next election.

Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who was one of the petitioners in the fodder scam cases in the Patna High Court, which had ordered a CBI enquiry into the scam in 1996, said, The law has taken its own course. The verdict is not the first one in the fodder scam cases and it should be respected by all."



He dismissed Tejashwi's allegation that there was a threat to his father's life and pointed out that the RJD supremo enjoyed a foolproof security in jail.

Union minister Giriraj Singh told reporters, As one sows so one reaps. This is the law of nature and it is futile to make a fuss over today's verdict. The RJD workers should remember that the BJP was not in power when the fodder scam cases were lodged. Even Prasad's first conviction came when the country was being ruled by the Congress-led UPA, of which the RJD was a part.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD)president Ajit Singh today expelled the party's lone MLA in the UP Assembly, Sahender Singh Chauhan, for hobnobbing with the BJP in the just concluded Rajya Sabha elections.

MLA Sahendra Singh Chaudhan kept the party leadership in the dark and worked against its directives. Hobnobbing with the BJP, he cast his vote as part of a conspiracy. He has been expelled by party president Chaudhary Ajit Singh, an RLD release issued here read.

The party had decided to vote in favour of the BSP in the Rajya Sabha elections to defeat communal forces, the release, signed by RLD National General Secretary Trilok Tyagi, read.

The RLD is committted to opposition unity in national interest against the BJP government which is "spreading communal hatred in society", it added.

RLD MLA's vote was reportedly declared invalid as he had cast it in favour of two candidates.

The BJP won all the nine seats it contested and the remaining seat went to the SP in the polls marred by cross-voting from both the sides, which led to the defeat of the BSP candidate in the prestigious battle of ballots.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The RLD and the NISHAD Party today expelled their MLAs for voting against party directives in the just concluded Rajya Sabha polls.

RLD chief Ajit Singh expelled his lone MLA in the UP Assembly Sahender Singh Chauhan. NISHAD Party president Sanjay Nishad announced the expulsion of MLA Vijay Misra.

MLA Sahendra Singh Chaudhan kept the party leadership in the dark and worked against its directives. Hobnobbing with the BJP, he cast his vote as part of a conspiracy. He has been expelled by party president Chaudhary Ajit Singh, an RLD release issued in Lucknow read.

The party had decided to vote in favour of the BSP in the Rajya Sabha elections to defeat communal forces, the release, signed by RLD National General Secretary Trilok Tyagi, read.

The RLD is committted to opposition unity in national interest against the BJP government which is "spreading communal hatred in society", it added.

RLD MLA's vote was reportedly declared invalid as he had cast it in favour of two candidates.

At a presser in Lucknow, Mayawati said the RLD MLA did not vote in favour of the BSP nominee.

According to a report from Gorakhpur, the NISHAD Party expelled dissident MLA Vijay Mishra, who represented the Gyanpur seat in the Assembly, and also cancelled his primary membership.

Mishra is the only MLA of the NISHAD Party and he voted in favour of the BJP during the Rajya Sabha polls.

Sanjay Nishad, the national president of the NISHAD Party, announced the expulsion of the MLA for "cross-voting and indiscipline".

Our party does based on ethics and ideology and cannot tolerate deceivers, Sanjay Nishad said, adding the BJP is a party of industrialists and its ideology is totally opposite.

Sanjay Nishad's son Praveen won the Gorakhpur parliamentary seat in the recently held Lok Sabha by-polls. He was the Samajwadi party candidate and was supported by BSP, NISHAD party and Peace party.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Russian ambassador to Britain has written to a policeman exposed to a nerve agent during the poisoning of a former Russian spy in southwest England, insisting on Moscow's innocence and thanking him for his bravery.

Alexander Yakovenko yesterday told Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was released from hospital on Thursday following two weeks of treatment, that he hoped the officer, as well as targeted ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, "get well soon".

"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for your bravery when reacting to the assault on two Russian nationals," he wrote.

"Please be assured that Russia has nothing to do with this reckless incident and is ready to cooperate with the British authorities," Yakovenko added.

Skripal and daughter Yulia were found poisoned in the southwest English city Salisbury with what Britain has determined was a military grade nerve agent.

Prime Minister Theresa May has blamed Russia for an "attempted assassination".

She won the backing of other European Union leaders at a summit this week, who unanimously agreed it was "highly likely" that Moscow was responsible for the attack.

Russia has ridiculed the accusation, and in an escalating war of words following tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions, suggested British military laboratory Porton Down may be the source for the attack.

Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the facility, said on Friday there was "no way" a nerve agent could have left the site.

"It's very frustrating to hear that because everyone here knows that's just not true," he told the BBC. "We've got the highest levels of controls."



He added: "It's a coincidence that it's down the road", in reference to Porton Down's proximity to Salisbury, which is less than 10 miles away.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)BJP President Amit Shah today said TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu's decision to quit the ruling NDA was guided by "political considerations" instead of Andhra Pradesh's development concerns, and dubbed his move "unfortunate and unilateral".

In a letter to the Andhra chief minister, who broke ties with the BJP after the Centre declined to grant Special Category Status to AP, Shah also said his party is a true well wisher of the state.

He also cited a number of development projects undertaken by the Centre for the state, besides funds given to it, as he sought to reject the charge that the Modi government had not fulfilled its promises.

"This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision, I am afraid will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns. It is widely known that the Union Government has not left any stone unturned in ensuring growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh," Shah said in the letter.

"You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both states."



Listing five infrastructure projects the Central government has initiated in the state, Shah said "a perusal of these would reaffirm what you already know and perhaps would not admit that Central government has fulfilled its obligations and that BJP is a genuine friend add true well wisher of the state."



The TDP pulled out of the BJP-led alliance over the refusal to accord special category status to Andhra Pradesh and fulfil other commitments made at the time of state's division in 2014.

The TDP has also given notice for a no-confidence motion against the Modi government in the Lok Sabha, which could not be taken up due to an unending uproar in the Lower House.

"On the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh, it is regrettable that some political parties are whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate which is the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy.

"I would like you to introspect whether political parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda," Shah told Naidu.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Disgruntled BJP leader Shatrughan Sinha today called on RJD president Lalu Prasad at Ranchi and described the jailed former Bihar chief minister as the "most popular son of soil" and a "mass leader".

The actor-turned-politician, who represents the Patna Sahib constituency in the Lok Sabha, met the RJD supremo on a day the latter was sentenced to 14 years in prison in a fodder scam case.

"I was at Ranchi to meet & greet d most popular, son of soil, mass leader LaluJi. My best wishes & prayers for a healthy & long life. Get well soon (sic)," Sinha tweeted after his meeting with Prasad at the Ranchi Institute of Medical Sciences, where the RJD supremo, who has so far been convicted in four fodder scam cases, is undergoing treatment.

Sinha was accompanied by local Congress MP and former Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay.

The development has triggered speculation about the future course of action to be adopted by the BJP leader, who has been critical of his own party and the Narendra Modi government for quite some time.

Popularly known as "Bihari Babu", Sinha also expressed displeasure at not being invited for the three-day "Bihar Diwas" celebrations organised by the state government that concluded today.

"Bihari Babu once again not invited to his home on Bihar Divas for reasons best known to all of us," Sinha remarked cryptically in the same tweet.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Shubhankar Sharma came up with a late rally but it was not enough to fetch him his first WGC-Dell Match Play win as he went down to another first-timer South African Dylan Frittelli in the third league match here.

The third loss meant Sharma finished at the bottom of the four-man pool, but would have been richer with the experience in his first taste of Match Play since his win way back in All India Amateurs in 2013.

The 21-year-old Sharma, who is due to play at Houston next week and then carries on at the Masters on an invite, acquitted himself well by taking Sergio Garcia to the 18th and losing to Frittelli on the 18th.

Against Xander Schauffele, Sharma lost 3&1 at the WGC event.

Asia's big star was Kiradech Aphibarnrat, who won all his three matches. He scored a great win over World No. 3 Jon Rahm 4&3 and with a 3-0 record, he marched into the knock-out phase, where he meets Charles Howell III.

The day's big match-up was between Patrick Reed and Jordan Spieth, where the former won 2&1 and moved into the knock-out stages. Spieth was somewhat at a loss two weeks ahead of Masters.

Spieth was totally out of sorts, hitting his opening tee shot onto the range and out-of-bounds. He hit into a hazard on each of the next two holes. And when he finally caught Reed with consecutive shots to tap-in range, he missed two key putts inside 6 feet.

As Reed moves in search of his second WGC, Spieth heads to Houston Open without a top 10 in his last seven tournaments.

Justin Thomas (No. 2) and Sergio Garcia (No. 7) were the only top-10 seeds to advance to the fourth round. Thomas had the easiest time, a 7-and-5 victory over Francesco Molinari. Since defending champion Dustin Johnson is already out, Thomas could rise to No. 1 in the world if he wins this week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The spiritual head of the Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan, Zainul Abedin Ali Khan, today said the solution to sensitive issues like the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case lies with the Supreme Court.

He also appealed to leaders of all religions to wait for the apex court's judgment in the case and respect its verdict.

"Religious fanaticism cannot provide solutions. Efforts to settle the matter outside the court were also unsuccessful and, hence, the court's decision (in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case) should be respected in the interest of the country," he said.

Khan was addressing chiefs of various shrines during the ongoing Urs of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer. He is the Deewan of the dargah.

Present religious, political and cultural organisations are not being able to provide a practical solution to the disputed site in Ayodhya and there is doubt among followers of all religions, he said.

"Looking at the present atmosphere, aware citizens and followers of religions cannot agree upon any settlement outside the court, so people should wait and respect the apex court's verdict, Khan said.

"Religious fanatics, be it Hindu or Muslim, cannot allow a solution," he said.

Youths today need opportunities to grow and prosper. Religious and political organisations should stop politics on such cases and not engage youths in religious fanaticism as such politics leads to hatred in society, Khan said.

In his address, he also stressed on efforts to promoted women empowerment.

"In the Hindu religion, women are considered and referred to as "Devi". Women also have a special place Islam in also," the spiritual leader said.

Khan said that efforts to empower women should be there in rural and backward areas also.

Heads of various shrines, including those from Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, attended the Urs.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)(CNN)  Three people were killed and five others wounded Friday in southern France after a gunman stole a car, fired at police officers and took hostages in a supermarket in what authorities are treating as a terror attack.

One person died in the carjacking, and two others were killed at the market, the French Interior Ministry said.

Police shot dead the gunman, French media reported, after a four-hour standoff at the Super U supermarket in the town of Trebes. The Interior Ministry identified Redouane Lakdim, 26, as the gunman. He was known to authorities for minor crimes, including drug offenses, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said.

An investigation has been opened into murder and attempted murder "in connection with a terrorist in Trebes," the French prosecutor's office told CNN.

Police have taken into custody a woman who was "very close" to Lakdim and "shared his life," prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters at a news conference in Carcassonne.

"Our country has suffered an Islamist terrorist attack," President Emmanuel Macron told reporters. "We've paid the price of the danger of the terrorist threat in blood for several years.

"I want to state my absolute determination to the nation to lead this fight."

The ISIS-affiliated Amaq News Agency said that the gunman was a "soldier" of the militant group and that he had responded to its call to attack coalition countries, a reference to the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Amaq offered no evidence ISIS had any contact with the attacker.

"This attack has been claimed by ISIS, and it is currently being analyzed," Macron said.

A local prosecutor said the attack appeared to be "ISIS-inspired," CNN affiliate BFM TV reported. Witnesses said the man shouted, "I am a Daesh soldier," using another name for ISIS.

A BFM TV reporter at the scene said the attacker claimed to be an ISIS soldier and demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, the suspected mastermind of the November 2015 Paris attacks.

CNN could not independently confirm the gunman made the demand. Abdeslam is on trial in Belgium.

France has faced a string of terror attacks in recent years, including the Paris attacks and other smaller-scale assaults. The country remained under a state of emergency for about two years after the Paris attacks. It was lifted late last year.

How the rampage began

The violence unfolded when the attacker stole a car, killing one person in the vehicle and gravely wounding another, said Collomb, the interior minister.

The gunman then shot at four National Police officers who were jogging in Carcassonne. The driver tried to run the officers down. One of them was wounded, but he is not in serious condition.

The gunman proceeded to the Super U market. He entered the market, firing his weapon and killing two people. He took several others hostage.

Police found the car, and SWAT teams surrounded the market.

Collomb said a National Police lieutenant colonel shot the gunman after offering himself for at least one of the hostages. The officer was also seriously wounded. The order of the shots was unclear, Collomb said Police then raided the store after hearing gunshots.

Two others were wounded at the market, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

"People were absolutely calm before and never thought that there could be an attack in a town like this," Collomb told reporters, adding that the risk of terrorism in France remained "very high."

'Totally deserted'

A supermarket employee who fled as shots were fired told BFM that he and about 50 others had been on lockdown in a car park.

Madeline Fuhrman, a witness, said that Trebes had gone quiet after the attack.

"It's totally deserted now. Absolutely every shop is closed. There's not a soul in sight," she said.

Macron, who was in Belgium for a summit of European Union leaders, returned to France and spoke to reporters after a crisis meeting at the Interior Ministry.

The French leader hailed law enforcement's response.

"The forces of order intervened with remarkable speed, both to contain the individual who hid away with his hostages, to help one of the victims who was still alive who he had left in the surrounding area," Macron said.

He singled out the officer who volunteered to be traded for a hostage and saluted his bravery.

"He has saved lives, and done his role and his country proud. He is currently fighting for his life, and all our thoughts are with him and his family," Macron said.

Macron said the investigation should answer several questions  when and how the gunman was radicalized and where he got a weapon.

He said French soldiers overseas risk their lives "to reduce this threat."

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the interior minister's name.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Gunman shot dead in France after killing 3 in supermarket, car attacks."A day after the BJP won nine Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, deputy chief minister on Saturday claimed that SP-BSP alliance has proved to be a "complete failure".

In an apparent reference to Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP supremo Mayawati, Maurya said, "The one who could not be loyal to his father and uncle, can never be loyal to his 'bua' (aunt)."



The BJP won all the nine seats it contested and the remaining seat went to the SP in the polls marred by cross-voting from both the sides, which led to the defeat of the BSP candidate in the prestigious battle of ballots.

"We can say that the victory we achieved in 2014 (Lok Sabha elections), will be repeated in 2019 and Narendra Modi will become the prime minister again," Maurya told reporters here.

"The Yogi Adityanath government (in Uttar Pradesh) has been trying to wash away the sins committed by the SP and BSP governments in the last 15 years," the deputy chief minister said.

To a question on the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid case, Maurya said hearing in the case is being held expeditiously in the Supreme Court and if the verdict is favourable, construction of Ram Temple will begin soon.A suspected criminal carrying a reward of Rs 25,000 was arrested after an encounter with police in Vijay Nagar area here, a senior police official said.

Sunder, 35 and from Pilkhuwa town, was wanted in five cases of attempt to murder, killing and robbery, they said.

Senior Superintendent of Police Vaibhav Krishna said the encounter happened at around 8:15 pm near Akbarpur Bahrampur on NH-24. The man was on a bike, and when the police signalled him to stop, he opened fired on the police team.

The police officials there returned the fire in which Sunder was shot in his right leg, Krishna said, adding that Vijay Nagar SHO Naresh Kumar was also injured in the fire-fight.

Both Kumar and Sunder were being treated at a hospital.

A country-made pistol, knife and a few live cartridges were seized from Sunder, the official added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A teenage girl left brain dead after she was wounded in a school shooting in Maryland died after she was removed from life support, local officials said today.

The girl, 16 year old Jaelynn Willey, was shot in the head by the attacker, with whom she had had a relationship.

Another student was wounded in Tuesday's attack, and the assailant -- also a student -- was shot and killed by a police officer stationed at the high school in southern Maryland.

Writing on behalf of the Willey family, the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office issued a statement "with heavy hearts and great sadness," saying that Jaelynn Willey died at 11:34 pm (local time) yesterday "surrounded by her family."



Her parents told a conference late yesterday that their daughter was brain dead and would be taken off of life support.

"My daughter was hurt by a boy who shot her in the head and took everything from us," said her mother, Melissa Willey, according to The Washington Post.

The Great Mills High School shooting came about five weeks after a massacre at a Florida high school left 14 students and three adults dead and sparked a grassroots campaign for tougher laws on gun ownership.

The shootout, in a school located just 90 minutes from the US capital, took place just days before a massive Saturday rally in downtown Washington supporting gun control.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A trustee of the Trimbakeshwar Devasthan Trust near here has approached the National Archives of India (NAI) in Delhi, seeking to bring back the blue Nassak diamond, which reportedly once graced the crown of Lord Shiva idol at the famous Trimbakeshwar temple.

Lalita Shinde, trustee of Trimbakeshwar Devasthan, said the precious diamond, which was allegedly looted by several rulers in the ancient times, is now said to be kept at a private museum in Lebanon.

Shinde, who had earlier written letters to former President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union minister Sushma Swaraj and other departments concerned, in a bid to bring back the diamond, visited the NIA in Delhi on Thursday and gave a memorandum to its office-bearers.

The blue Nassak diamond, also called 'eye' of Lord Shiva, weighed 43.38 carats or 8,676 gram when it was found in Golconda mines of Kollur and originally cut in India. The diamond was the adornment in the Trimbakeshwar Shiva Temple in the 15th century, she claimed.

"I had written letters to the president, PM and ministers concerned, but did not get any response. Therefore, I decided to approach the NAI. My demand is that the government should get back the diamond from the Lebanon museum as soon as possible," Shinde said.

She also appealed to the experts in the field and historians to throw more light on the diamond.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The US and China's top economic officials agreed by phone today to "continue to communicate" on trade issues, Chinese state media said, as President Donald Trump pledged his escalating trade showdown would get results despite pushback from Europe and Beijing.

In his latest jolt to the prevailing global order, Trump on Thursday authorised tariffs on as much as USD 60 billion of Chinese imports, targeting sectors in which Washington says China has stolen American technology.

Liu He, the Chinese vice premier in charge of the economy, told US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin today that Beijing was "ready to defend its national interests" but hoped that "both sides will remain rational and work together," according to China's official Xinhua agency.

He also accused a US probe into Chinese intellectual property practices of violating international trade rules.

China had warned the United States yesterday that it was "not afraid of a trade war" as it threatened tariffs on USD 3 billion worth of US goods in retaliation. And French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe would respond "without weakness" to Washington's threats of tariffs on steel and aluminium.

"Nothing should be addressed when it is with a gun to your head," he said at the end of an EU summit in Brussels.

Global stocks have plummeted as fears rise that the confrontation could provoke a damaging trade war. Meanwhile, World Trade Organization Director-General Roberto Azevedo called for cooler heads to prevail, saying in a statement that new trade barriers would "jeopardise the global economy".

But speaking to reporters yesterday as he signed new budget legislation, Trump said his efforts were beginning to bear fruit.

Washington this week said it would temporarily exempt Europe as well as countries including Brazil, Argentina, South Korea and Australia from the steep new steel and aluminium tariffs that Trump unveiled this month and which took effect yesterday.

European and US trade officials said this week they were beginning talks to reach a compromise.

"Many other countries are now negotiating fair trade deals with us," Trump said Friday.

"Part of the reason, frankly, that we're able to do that is the fact that we have the tariffs on steel and the tariffs on aluminium."



Meanwhile, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said yesterday that US and South Korean officials were "relatively close" to reaching a deal on the steel and aluminium tariffs, with an announcement possible as early as next week.

But Beijing yesterday also unveiled a hit list of products that could face duties of up to 25 percent, from fresh fruit to pork and wine, though it stopped short of pulling the trigger as it indicated its readiness to negotiate an agreement.

China's commerce ministry warned that a 15 per cent tariff on 120 goods worth almost USD 1 billion -- including fresh fruit, nuts and wine -- would be imposed if the US fails to reach a "trade compensation agreement" within an unspecified time frame.

In a second step, a 25 percent tariff would be imposed on eight goods totalling nearly USD 2 billion, including pork and aluminium scrap, after "further evaluating the impact of the US measures on China," the statement said.

"China does not want to fight a trade war, but it is absolutely not afraid of a trade war," the commerce ministry said.

The list noticeably does not include soybeans, a key US export from Trump-voting states that Chinese state-run newspaper the Global Times had suggested should be targeted by Beijing.

Betty Wang, an economist at ANZ bank, said China's reaction was "relatively mild."



"From China's perspective, it absolutely does not want to see a trade war. Coming back to the negotiation table is a relatively good result," Wang said.

The United States had a record USD 375.2 billion goods trade deficit with China last year.

Senior White House economic advisor Everett Eissenstat said Thursday the new US import duties would target sectors where "China has sought to acquire an advantage through the unfair acquisition or forced technology transfer from US companies."



US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer indicated the industries could include aerospace, maritime and rail transport equipment, and new energy vehicles.

Trump's order also directs the US Treasury to develop new proposals to increase safeguards against Chinese investments in the US that could compromise national security.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), in partnership with the British Council of India, has hosted the 'Commonwealth Big Lunch' here as part of an initiative to facilitate an exchange between students and the dignitaries of the Commonwealth countries.

The event was organised yesterday to mark 70 years of inception of British Council in Commonwealth countries.

More than 30, 000 tribal students and staff members of the institute got a chance to interact with high commissioners, deputy high commissioners and representatives of 53 countries over food yesterday, a KISS spokesperson said.

The delegates were accorded a traditional welcome by the students on their arrival. They participated in various programmes organised on this occasion, including a handicraft exhibition, he said.

Ten different dishes were prepared in the KISS mega kitchen for the lunch yesterday. The BCL had sanctioned Rs 30 lakh for the purpose.

KISS is the only institute selected from Asia for the 'Commonwealth Big Lunch', the spokesperson said.

The main motto of this programme is to encourage people to get together to celebrate their Commonwealth connections over food, he added.

Expressing his satisfaction over the success of the event, Alan Gemmell OBE, Director, British Council India, said, "We are inspired by the vision and determination of KISS founder Achyuta Samanta to share the transformative power of education with tribal children," he said.

Samanta thanked British Council for selecting KISS for the 'Big Commonwealth Lunch'.

"It is a matter of pride for Odisha to host the dignitaries from 53 Commonwealth countries. They will certainly carry a part of Odisha with them," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)President on Friday issued orders to ban most transgender people from serving in the US military except under "limited circumstances, following up on his controversial proposal last year that sparked a widespread backlash by LGBT rights groups.

In his presidential memorandum, Trump said transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- those who may require substantial medical treatment -- are "disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances."



The memo did not elaborate on possible exceptions, but said the secretary of defence and secretary of homeland security "may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals".

He allowed those transgenders who are already in the military to continue with their service.

Trump had signed a memorandum in August last year that barred transgender people from the armed forces, but it was blocked in court two months later after transgender troops took the policy to court.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that Trump had rescinded his previous policy to allow this new policy to take its place.

The new policy, the White House said, was "developed through an extensive study by senior uniformed and civilian leaders, including combat veterans," under the direction of Defense Secretary James Mattis.

"I hereby revoke my memorandum of August 25, 2015, and any other directive I may have made with respect to military service by transgender individuals, Trump said in the memorandum.

The memo said the experts' study sets forth a policy to enhance US military's readiness, lethality, and effectiveness.

"On the advice of these experts, the Secretary of Defence and the Secretary of Homeland Security have concluded that the accession or retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria those who may require substantial medical treatment, including through medical drugs or surgery presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality, the White House said.

This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards, including those regarding the use of medical drugs equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen, memo said.

The Democrats slammed Trump for his new policy on transgender.

"This latest memorandum is the same cowardly, disgusting ban the President announced last summer. No one with the strength and bravery to serve in the US military should be turned away because of who they are, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said.

"The President's hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honour and dignity. It will harm our nation's readiness and hollow out our strength, for we only strengthen our military by honouring our values of freedom and equality.

"Once more, the President's agenda of hate and prejudice is dictating our national security, instead of honour, decency and strength, she said.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said his State will take every measure available to prevent Trump's discriminatory action that harms or marginalizes transgender service members or any other transgender Americans who wish to courageously defend the nation.

We must honour all those who serve in our military and sacrifice their lives to fight for the safety of our nation, he said.

Joshua Block, a Senior Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, said what the White House has released is transphobia masquerading as policy.

This policy is not based on an evaluation of new evidence. It is reverse-engineered for the sole purpose of carrying out President Trump's reckless and unconstitutional ban, undermining the ability of transgender service members to serve openly and military readiness as a whole, Block said.

This decision is an insult to our brave transgender service members and all who wear US uniform, said the Democratic Party.

Instead of fulfilling his oath to protect the American people, and Mike Pence are putting our nation's security at risk and shoving real American patriots back in the closet, it said.Two persons, including a woman, have been arrested by DRI officials at the Kolkata airport for allegedly trying to smuggle out foreign currency by hiding it in their body cavities, according to an official statement issued today.

Acting on intelligence, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials intercepted two persons a man and a woman on Thursday.

These two were slated to travel to Bangkok by an Indigo flight carrying the illegally acquired foreign currency, it said.

The DRI officers intercepted the duo when they were about to board the flight.

A detailed personal and baggage search was done but nothing incriminating was found at first, the statement issued by the DRI said.

Thereafter, after intense questioning, the two persons admitted to carrying the foreign currency in their rectum and voluntarily ejected out the currency which had been rolled up and wrapped in a rubber, it said.

Euro currency notes valued at Rs 58 lakh were recovered from them and seized under provisions of the Customs Act, 1962.

Both the passengers have been arrested, the statement said.

In a few cases in the past, rectum concealment has been used to smuggle and ferry gold biscuits, however, this is the first instance in Kolkata in the recent times where there has been an attempt to smuggle out foreign currency by hiding it in body cavity, the DRI said.

The foreign currency is illegally taken out towards making payments on account of smuggling of contraband like gold and other miscellaneous items that are illegally brought into India, it said.

In another case, DRI yesterday busted a major drug syndicate engaged in trafficking of ganja' and arrested eight persons.

Acting on a tip-off that a syndicate, based in Odisha, would be transporting narcotics and carrying the illegal contraband in a car going from Bhubaneshwar towards Kolkata, DRI sleuths got into action in the wee hours of Thursday.

Eight persons, travelling in two vehicles, were intercepted near the Dhulagarh area (on the KolkataKhargapur highway) at 6am by DRI officers and about 120 kg of 'ganja' was seized from them, the statement said.

The contraband was sourced from the Malkangiri area in Odisha and sent to various parts of the country, including Kolkata, it said.

Kolkata is used as a stocking and redistribution-cum-consumption centre, the DRI said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Police in the UK have urged Indian-origin families to keep their gold away from homes after a growing number of robberies targeting jewellery associated with such households.

Leicestershire Police released an image of a burglar this week after he was jailed for four years for a violent robbery at an Indian-origin home in Leicester last year.

The elderly couple, who have chosen to remain anonymous, have been left traumatised and decided to sell their home and move from the area.

"A 63-year-old woman, who was asleep in bed with her three-year-old grandchild next to her, was awoken after she felt a blow to her face, she was then subjected to a vicious attack and threatened with a knife before she was left unconscious.

"Gold bangles on her wrists were stolen along with cash and other items of jewellery. The child wasn't harmed during the incident but the victim was treated in hospital for cuts and bruises," Leicestershire Police said.

African-origin Farhan Loonat, 27, pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary at Leicester Crown Court and was sentenced to four years behind bars on Thursday.

The police have been using the case to renew its appeal for families to consider removing their "high value gold or jewellery" from their homes and placing them in a safety deposit box.

They have also urged people to "double lock doors and windows, use timer switches on lamps if they are out and keep a light on in the evening".

Detectives believe Loonat did not act alone and there was another suspect who has never been identified.

Although Loonat was not involved in the violent attack on the victim, his fingerprints were found within the property which then led officers to identify and arrest him within weeks of the offence in October last year.

"This was a distressing incident for the victim in her home, the violent nature of the offence was callous. We are pleased that Loonat has pleaded guilty to his part in the incident, albeit he wasn't responsible for the violence, he was responsible for entering the house and stealing more than 20,000 pounds worth of items," said Detective Constable Damian Young.

"Burglaries, especially when there is violence involved, leave the community in fear. We take these reports extremely seriously and will leave no stone unturned to find those responsible," he said, appealing for information on Loonat's accomplice.

Loonat and his accomplice broke in with a knife and demanded that the 63-year-old Gujarati-origin woman tell them where the jewellery was kept in the house.

She was treated in hospital for injuries but her family says she is suffering from the psychological impact of the attack even today.

Leicester, with a large Indian-origin population, is associated with gold merchants and traders from the city's famous Golden Mile on Belgrave Road.

An Indian-origin jeweller Ramniklal Jogiya was killed earlier this year in what is believed to be a robbery gone wrong.

The 74-year-old was found dead in Stoughton area of the city on January 25. Four men aged between 19-29 were charged with his manslaughter last month.

The incident caused a lot of unease within the local community, with local police deploying extra officers to patrol the Golden Mile.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The number of people around the world in danger of dying unless they get food urgently surged to 124 million last year, mainly because "people won't stop shooting at each other," the head of the UN food agency has said.

David Beasley told the Security Council by video link yesterday that almost 32 million of those acutely hungry people live in four conflict-wracked countries: Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan and northeastern Nigeria, where famine was averted last year.

"The link between hunger and conflict is as strong as it is destructive," the executive director of the World Food Program said. "Conflict leads to food insecurity. And food insecurity can also stoke instability and tension which trigger violence."



Globally, Beasley said, 60 per cent of the 815 million chronically hungry people who don't know where their next meal is coming from live in conflict areas.

UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said "despite the wildest predictions, famines have become less frequent and less lethal over the past few decades."



He called this "an amazing achievement," citing the dramatic expansion in agricultural output and productivity and the global reduction in poverty which has seen people gain purchasing power.

"The remaining risk of famine and hunger is now concentrated in a relatively small number of countries affected by large-scale, severe and protracted conflict," Lowcock said.

"Almost 490 million undernourished people, and almost 80 per cent of the world's 155 million stunted children, live in countries affected by conflict," he said by video link.

Lowcock said a study released on Thursday by the World Food Program, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the European Union confirmed that conflict, often combined with "extreme climate shock and high prices of staple food is the main driver of global food insecurity."



While famine was averted last year, Lowcock said that according to the latest data, northeastern Nigeria, Yemen and South Sudan still face the risk of famine over the next six months. And there are also "extremely worrying" food security issues in Ethiopia, Somalia and Congo, he said.

Beasley, the WFP chief, also warned of pressures building now in Africa's greater Sahel region, which is home to over 500 million people.

While the region is blessed with natural resources, arable land and young people needing jobs, he said it also faces constant food insecurity, is vulnerable to droughts and floods and has seen armed groups take advantage of the situation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)US Ambassador to India Kenneth Juster today called on Bihar Governor Satya Pal Mallik and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at their official residences here and apprised them of the US' willingness to help the state in its journey towards economic progress.

Juster, who had arrived in Bihar yesterday on a two-day visit, met Mallik at the Raj Bhavan where he told the Governor that the US was keen on the state's development and saw huge potential in agriculture and electronics.

He also told the Governor that he was impressed by the state's glorious historical and cultural legacy as also the newly-constructed Bihar Museum, and expressed his willingness to undertake more such tours of Bihar in the future.

The Governor presented Juster with a book on Champaran Satyagraha authored by the country's first President Rajendra Prasad, an "Angavastram" and an idol of Lord Buddha.

Juster, who paid visits to Bodh Gaya and the Patna Sahib Gurudwara, besides interacting with local entrepreneurs here, also met Nitish Kumar at his 1, Anne Marg residence and lauded the chief minister for the development initiatives taken by his government.

Kumar apprised Juster about his "saat nishchay" (seven resolves) programme which aims at providing basic amenities like sanitation, roads, electricity and piped water to the remotest corners of the state.

Kumar also presented Juster with an "Angavastram" depicting the centenary year celebrations of the Champaran Satyagraha, and a memento with the inscription of the national emblem "Ashok Stambh".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The United States warned today that it was losing patience and again threatened to quit the UN Human Rights Council after the Geneva-based body adopted five resolutions condemning Israel.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley said in a statement that the council was "grossly biased against Israel," noting that it had adopted only three resolutions separately targeting North Korea, Iran and Syria.

"When the Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran, and Syria, it is the council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name," said Haley.

"Our patience is not unlimited. Today's actions make clear that the organisation lacks the credibility needed to be a true advocate for human rights," she said.

Haley has over the past year repeatedly warned that the United States was ready to walk away from the 47-member body established in 2006 to promote and protect human rights worldwide.

The five resolutions were presented by the countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation under the council's "agenda item 7" which concerns Israel.

Israel is the only country that has a dedicated agenda item at the council, a mechanism that the United States and some European countries view as inappropriate.

The latest threat to quit the council came after President Donald Trump appointed UN-sceptic John Bolton as his national security adviser.

Since Trump took over at the White House, the United States has quit the UN cultural agency UNESCO, cut UN funding and announced plans to quit the UN-backed Paris climate agreement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Zimbabwe has invited Indian investments into areas such as minerals, coking coal, gold and iron to give a boost to economic ties between the two countries, industry chamber PHDCCI said today.

Quoting, Zimbabwe Vice President Constantino G D N Chiwenga, the chamber said huge opportunities exist to enhance economic cooperation.

We have designated key areas of our country for Special Economic Zones, with incentives for investors, and we want Indian investors to take advantage of these zones at an early stage to position them advantageously," Chiwenga said.

He said that his government has embarked on a number of initiatives including creating conducive investment climate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)This is a key housing market to follow since Phoenix saw a large bubble / bust followed by strong investor buying.



The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) reports (table below):



1) Overall sales in February were up 7.7% year-over-year (including homes, condos and manufactured homes).



2) Active inventory is now down 12.1% year-over-year.



More inventory (a theme in most of 2014) - and less investor buying - suggested price increases would slow in 2014. And prices increases did slow in 2014, only increasing 2.4% according to Case-Shiller.



In 2015, with falling inventory, prices increased a little faster. Prices were up 6.3% in 2015 according to Case-Shiller. With flat inventory in 2016, prices were up 4.8%.



This is the sixteenth consecutive month with a YoY decrease in inventory, and prices rose a little faster in 2017 compared to 2016 (5.6% in 2017 compared to 4.8% in 2016).





February Residential Sales and Inventory, Greater Phoenix Area, ARMLS Sales YoY

Change

Sales Cash

Sales Percent

Cash Active

Inventory YoY

Change

Inventory Feb-2008 3,445 --- 650 18.9% 57,3051 --- Feb-2009 5,477 59.0% 2,188 39.9% 52,013 -9.2% Feb-2010 6,595 20.4% 2,997 45.4% 42,388 -18.5% Feb-2011 7,171 8.7% 3,776 52.7% 40,666 -4.1% Feb-2012 7,249 1.1% 3,616 49.9% 23,736 -41.6% Feb-2013 6,618 -8.7% 3,053 46.1% 21,718 -8.5% Feb-2014 5,476 -17.3% 1,939 35.4% 29,899 37.7% Feb-2015 5,970 9.0% 1,784 29.9% 27,382 -8.4% Feb-2016 5,816 -2.6% 1,688 29.0% 27,202 -0.7% Feb-2017 6,547 12.6% 1,696 25.9% 24,275 -10.8% Feb-2018 7,052 7.7% 1,978 28.0% 21,339 -12.1% 1 February 2008 probably included pending listingsNotice for the Postmedia Network

This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.Friday, March 23, 2018 at 10:16PM

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus have just gone on sale recently and its not without its issues. Reports have surfaced that some units are suffering from unresponsive touchscreens with dead zones being identified across S9 screens. The reports are being made across forums like Reddit and XDA but it isnt clear how widespread the issue is. Some people claim the top part of the device doesnt respond to touch inputs while others are saying the bottom of the screen doesnt work. Its not only an inconvenience but with a full-display device like this, it would be particularly debilitating.

Samsung has issued a statement on the matter. A spokesperson said, "At Samsung, customer satisfaction is core to our business and we aim to deliver the best possible experience. We are looking into a limited number of reports of Galaxy S9/S9+ touchscreen responsiveness issues. We are working with affected customers and investigating. We encourage any customer with questions to contact us directly at 1-800-SAMSUNG."

Source: CNETnews, latest-news

The ACT's Auditor-General is investigating allegations of potential breaches of the territory's Public Sector Management Act related to ACT Health's former performance information branch. Auditor-General Dr Maxine Cooper on Friday announced the new audit, which will be the "first step" towards a potential wider audit of the health directorate's management of data and failures to report on its performance. The audit, she said in a statement, would focus on specific allegations of breaches of the Public Sector Management Act, the laws governing the conduct of territory public servants, between May 2015 up to as recent as October last year. While Dr Cooper's statement referred to the allegations as related to the "former performance information branch" in ACT Health, it is seems unlikely the investigation relates directly to a data doctoring scandal dating back to the Gallagher government in 2012. The new audit will consider the way the allegations were handled by the performance information branch and allegations made by former staff of such breaches by senior executives in ACT Health at the time. It would be the fourth audit of data-related problems in the directorate in the past eight years, and comes as the territory government awaits the findings of a "root and branch" review of the directorate's data reporting in coming weeks. That review related to the directorate's failure to provide data to the Productivity Commission in time for last year's Report on Government Services, as well as a year-long failure to release any performance data on the directorate's operations. Director-General Nicole Feely has also previously ordered a review of the problem by former NSW Auditor-General Bob Sendt, which has not been publicly released, and her directorate has spent over $1 million to to identify and fix the problems. While Ms Fitzharris, as then-assistant health minister, was told of the data issues as early as May 2016, the government did not report anything publicly about the issues until after the October 2016 election.

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More than 180 works by some 160 artists are on display in Celebration: 20 years of collecting visual art at CMAG. The exhibition - which has taken over a large part of the gallery space - provides a small sample of the more than 6500 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, photographs, glassworks and other objects Canberra Museum and Gallery has acquired over the past two decades. For many of the works, it's the first time they've been shown in many years, if at all. CMAG's senior curator of visual arts Deborah Clark, who has curated the exhibition as her final act before leaving the gallery after 10 years, says, "The idea of it is really a showcase of some of the best and brightest" with works both by artists from the Canberra region and art works about the Canberra region. She decided, in order to be as representative as possible, to include no more than one work by any particular artist except in a few cases where there was a series of works. The oldest work in the exhibition - and the collection - is Joseph Lycett's hand-coloured aquatint View of Lake George, New South Wales, from the north east, rendered in 1825. A much more recent piece is the linocut Encounter of 2017 by "the wonderful Dianne Fogwell". The exhibition showcases some of the very first purchases made for the gallery in 1996, such as Jaishree Srinivasan's ceramic Vanity Box of 1995 as well as objects only recently gifted to the collection such as Frank Hinder's lithograph Office staff, Canberra of 1942. The latter work was gifted through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by Rex and Caroline Stevenson in 2018. The single biggest gift was made in 2000: CMAG received the complete collection of workshop proofs - "hundreds", Clark says - when Studio 1 shut down. A corner space has been dedicated to these works. Another corner has been devoted to what Clark calls the "Menagerie" - animal works. These include the Carcass prints by head of printmedia and drawing at ANU, Alison Alder, and her inspiration, Sidney Nolan. This is also an example of the fact that where possible, Clark has sought to emphasise connections of various kinds. "Matthew Harding studied under George Ingham, the inaugural head of the wood workshop at ANU - they have the only two art chairs in the collection," she says. "Robert Boynes was the inaugural head of the painting workshop and Ruth Waller was a lecturer with him and is now head of the workshop " There are also works by some of Boynes's students including Derek O'Connor and Marie Hagerty. Shane Breynard has been CMAG's director for almost seven years. He says that glass art is a particular strength in Canberra, with artists and products from the glass workshop attracting national and even international attention. "A lot of really inspired Australian glass artists come from Canberra." Some galleries in Sydney and Melbourne have specialised in representing Canberra artists such as Mandy Martin and eX de Medici, indicating the following they have built up, and the quality and diversity of Canberra art has continued to grow. Breynard says the number of visitors enjoying the gallery - including its off-site programs - has increased markedly during his tenure, from 42,000 visitors six years ago to 218,000 last year. They include both locals and visitors to Canberra - the latter numbers have continued to rise and the gallery's central location in the city has seen it become something of an unofficial tourist bureau, with staff often called on to advise people about what's on in town. But the growth in patron interest and activity has not been accompanied by commensurate increases in funding or space for CMAG. "It's an ACT government enterprise as part of the Cultural Facilities Corporation but it's remained relatively static," he says. The acquisitions budget has been kept for some time at $25,000 a year - the gallery is heavily reliant on artwork donations from artists and financial patrons such as Meredith Hinchliffe and John Hindmarsh - and the on-site storage room is rapidly approaching capacity. Breynard says the gallery is not currently looking to acquire large objects, simply because it doesn't have the space to house them. Space-making options, he says, include increasing the gallery space where it is by moving the gallery's storage off-site, thus enabling the storeroom to become another display area, and expanding the gallery into surrounding premises presently used for other purposes. However, these are all matters for discussion. Among the highlights during his tenure, Breynard says one was taking the exhibition Peace, Love and World War: The Denmans, Empire and Australia, 1910-1917 to London last year, where it was shown in the Weston Room at the Maughan Library, King's College, from July 3 to September 25. "It was opened by Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to Britain, and had been opened here by Menna Rawlings, the British High Commissioner here." He says the 2014 exhibition Elioth Gruner: the texture of light, curated by Clark, was the most popular show the gallery has had, and 2015's INK REMIX: Contemporary art from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong curated by Sophie McIntyre enjoyed a multi-city, multi-year Australian tour. And 2017's Eirene Mort: A livelihood, curated by recently retired senior curator of social history Dale Middleby, had an artistic component but also highlighted the social history aspect of the gallery and its collection, Breynard says. While the focus of the exhibition, as its title suggests, has been on 20 years of collecting visual art, Breynard says CMAG's "coming of age" 21st-birthday celebration in February 2019 will pay more attention to the gallery's role as a chronicler of social history and its forays into the digital sphere. The Canberra Museum and Gallery has simply done too much in its first two decades for one exhibition to do it justice.

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The ACT Opposition has accused the Barr government of being "laidback" about safety, with only a fraction of prescribed burns going ahead as planned. A dry autumn prevented the ACT from completing nearly 7000 hectares of prescribed burning in 2016-17. It meant just 7 per cent of the planned burns were carried out. So far this year, 1438 of the 8259 hectares has been completed - just 17 per cent. An ACT government spokesman said the highly variable weather meant the entire schedule of burns was not able to be carried out every year, and this was factored into their overall bushfire management plan. Outstanding burns were rolled over into the next year, he said. But Canberra Liberals emergency services spokeswoman Giulia Jones said dry weather conditions shouldn't be a deterrent, and the government should mobilise its Rural Fire Service and Community Fire Unit to carry out more burns when conditions were favourable. "Seven per cent is nowhere good enough and shows a laidback attitude of the government towards safety," Mrs Jones said. But the government spokesman said ACT Parks had trained fire behaviour analysts who analyse weather and fuel conditions to determine suitable opportunities to implement prescribed burns. "Conditions that are too wet or too dry will make it impossible to effectively and safely deliver a burn program," the spokesman said. "Last autumn, the conditions across the ACT were too dry due to an extended fire season. Implementation of the burn program would have been dangerous and counterproductive. "The ACT then received large falls of rain towards the end of March which then limited opportunities for prescribed burns as fuels never dried sufficiently. Fuel conditions are assessed throughout the year and checked at least weekly, and where an appropriate 'operational window' presents, we are prepared to move quickly to implement prescribed burns." Overall, about 95.9 per cent of the total bushfire operations plan was carried out, the spokesman said. That included slashing 4733 hectares of grass across 246 sites and grazing 6041 hectares across 73 sites. Both targets were completed 100 per cent. The Opposition's criticism comes as residents of the far south coast town of Tathra return home, after bushfires destroyed 69 homes. Prescribed burning levels do not appear to have been a factor in the widespread loss and damage, experts have said. The government also addressed criticism over its prescribed burn at Namadgi, which got out of control on Sunday and burnt out nearly 200 hectares. The spokesman said the burning began on March 10, under favourable conditions. When the weather deteriorated to "unseasonal, severe" on March 15, he said steps were taken to strengthen the containment lines and bring in extra support, including a 15,000-litre water carrier.

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Several major Canberra car parks were closed to drivers during last week's Skyfire as part of anti-terrorism measures. As residents expressed anger this week over car parks such as those near Questacon and the National Library being closed to those watching the fireworks display, new figures show parking fines increased at this year's Enlighten Festival. At least $90,000 worth of fines were issued by the National Capital Authority during Enlighten, with many drivers booked for overstaying parking limits. NCA figures show there were 825 infringements during the 2018 festival, an increase of 236 from the year before. In the week of Canberra's Balloon Spectacular and Skyfire, the NCA handed out 466 parking infringements, with almost half of these happening during the fireworks spectacular. The NCA data showed in the same week in 2017, 331 fines were handed out to drivers. During the 10-day period of the light installations and Night Noodle Markets, 359 fines were handed out, rising from 258 the previous year. NCA chief executive Sally Barnes said many of the car parks were closed for Skyfire in order to comply with anti-terrorism policies. "In collaboration with event organisers and the AFP, all events held on national land undergo measures to ensure public safety in line with Australia's strategy for protecting crowded places from terrorism," she said. "To support public safety measures for major events on national land, additional roads and car parks may be requested to be closed. To further ensure public safety within the area for these events, additional signage and marshals are put in place." Ms Barnes said there were many factors behind the increase in parking fines. "This increase could be attributed to the rain affecting visitation to the 2017 event. Infringements were issued for parking in disabled parking without a permit and unsafe parking such as nature strips and footpaths," she said. "Large scale events such as Enlighten bring an increased number of people to the Parliamentary Zone, and there may be some people who do not adhere to the measures in place." Parking fines in the ACT start at $114 for offences such as overstaying parking times, to $600 for parking in a disabled space. "The National Capital Authority is responsible for the public safety and protection of spaces and places and cultural and heritage significance within the Parliamentary Zone, where the recent Enlighten event was held," Ms Barnes said. "With more Canberrans attending large-scale events, parking infringement notices issued within the Parliamentary Zone compared to last year's March event have only marginally increased. "With tens of thousands of people attending multiple events over this period ... illegal parking represents only a small percentage of visitors."

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Over the past four years Gordon resident Suzi Maginnity has spent about $30,000 trying to rectify issues caused by an excavation on the building site next door. Mrs Maginnity has been fighting for access to her own backyard after the excavation resulted in a six-metre cliff face between her and her neighbour's block. Initially the development work, which was not authorised to be conducted to that extent as it encroached on the Maginnity's boundary, resulted in a landslide and slumping of part of the backyard. In the intervening years, and after sprayed concrete was applied to try and stabilise the wall of dirt, more of Mrs Maginnity's land has slipped onto the neighbour's block and resulted in damage to her pool, the pavers surrounding it and her pergola. The builder, who believes he has followed due process, was allowed to continue to build on the site despite nothing securing the six-metre wall of dirt. A stop-work notice was issued in March, 2016 with construction allowed to continue to lock-up stage. In 2016, an engineering consultant commissioned by Mrs Maginnity said the situation was "a risk to life and property". Despite Mrs Maginnity's pleas, the government has only recently stepped in to rectify the situation. "The regulators and enforcers are pitting us against each other," Mrs Maginnity said. "And that's not fair, on either of us. I don't care what they do next door, it's none of my business, but the government have put me in this situation," she said. The initial excavation occurred in May 2014 and resulted in "safety fence" being erected on Mrs Maginnity's block. The fence, made of rusted metal and plastic that bangs in the wind, initially didn't prevent access to the cliff face for her then eight-year-old daughter. At the start of the process, Mrs Maginnity had an engineer look over the plan for the wall. "I thought I better get someone to check it because this was allowed to happen to start with," she said. "So it's cost me from the start, which is ridiculous." There have been nine designs for a retaining wall over the past four years, none of which have resulted in a permanent stabilisation. "I keep saying, why is this my job [to fight to rectify the situation]? All along the government has suggested I needed legal help, so being the helpful person I am, I now have a lawyer who I need to pay. "I'm trying to do the right thing in doing what they suggest, but I still don't think it's my job." Mrs Maginnity said it has been four years of angst, and there was little hope she would be able to recover the money she's spent on her neighbour's problem. "Why is it my burden to shoulder? They're outsourcing enforcement to the little lady next door and it's just not fair." She said after 16 years of living at the home, the family now feels trapped by their situation. "This is a beautiful spot but we're trapped. We can't sell the house with that there. We're stuck. I work to pay these bills," she said. A spokeswoman for the builder on the site next door, Kurt Muench, said all certification of the site was undertaken by a fully-qualified and approved certifier. The spokeswoman said the government had been helpful in trying to resolve the issue. "Together with the ACT government, we are in negotiation with Mrs Maginnity to reach agreement." The spokeswoman had previously said that Mr Muench was a fully licensed builder with more than 50 years' experience. An engineer for Mr Muench had stated in 2016 that the initial retaining wall and fence on the neighbouring property collapsed due to being built on fill, not through the fault of the builder. ACT Construction Occupations registrar Craig Simmons, who started in the job in February, stepped in on Friday to deliver an ultimatum. He said it had taken four years because the engineers involved couldn't agree on a solution, but he was now willing to intervene and side-step the development application process to "expedite" the works. "There's a power available to the registrar to direct building work to take place," Mr Simmons said. "[At a meeting on Friday] I said these are the options you have, and I have asked the parties to come back to me by Thursday of next week with the preferred method to proceed. Once I get that, then I will proceed as expeditiously as possible to have the site made safe by the building of a wall." Mr Simmons couldn't pinpoint why it had taken the government so long to step in, or so much money on Mrs Maginnity's behalf to come to this, but he said the onus was not on her. "That's a choice people make," he said. Minister for Regulatory Services Gordon Ramsay visited the site in 2017 and said he had taken advice from experts and Access Canberra that showed the site was "safe". "I understand the site was stabilised when the issue was first raised and there have been subsequent checks of the site including by engineers, which have advised the site is safe," the minister said. Canberra Liberals planning spokesman Mark Parton also visited the site and described it as a "pure debacle". "Here we have a Tuggeranong homeowner who, through no fault of her own, finds herself out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars," he said. "What Suzi has gone through is deplorable and has come as a result of unenforced legislation, rather than a lack of regulation." Mr Parton said ministers had "failed to open channels of communication" between government agencies, meaning that regular citizens "who don't have a PhD in town planning find it nigh on impossible to navigate this maze of bureaucracy".

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The Department of Human Services continues to defend the controversial robodebt system, telling a Senate committee it "went well". In a hearing on Friday afternoon deputy secretary of integrity and information Jason McNamara disputed Senator Jenny McAllister's comment that "as it turned out, it wasn't a project that went that well". "The department's view would be, we wouldn't agree with the proposition that it didn't go that well," he said. The Finance and Public Administration Committee is holding an inquiry into the digital delivery of government services, including whether existing programs had delivered quality, reliability and value for money. Mr McNamara said the program, where debts are generated from matching Centrelink earnings data with Australian Tax Office data, was considered a success because it produced savings. Committee chair Jenny McAllister read from the Commonwealth Ombudsman's report on the robodebt program, labelling it a "disaster". "It produced incredible anxiety for a very large number of citizens," the Labor senator said. NXT Senator Rex Patrick asked if any metrics of success were used by the department other than savings, referring to the experience of people who received Centrelink debt letters. Mr McNamara conceded that many people were confronted by the experience, but not that the nature of the data-matching process contributed to their reaction. For people who had "diligently" reported their information to Centrelink, but had mistakenly included their net income instead of their gross income they "quite rightly become upset," Mr McNamara said. "Everything was done with the best of intent," Lesley Seebeck, chief investment and advisory officer at the Digital Transformation Agency told the committee. Mr McNamara told the committee the robodebt program had so far saved the government $900 million and that $270 million had already been recovered. The committee heard that the program was developed by Human Services IT staff, consulting with compliance and frontline staff, but it was not clear how many staff outside the IT area were involved. The department detailed changes that were made to the letters sent to Centrelink recipients after the original rollout of the program, saying the program had been "improved" since it first began.

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The long wait for drivers filling up with fuel in Weston Creek looks set to be reduced, with a second service station for the area approved. The ACT government recently signed off on plans to build a Caltex service station on Kirkpatrick Street in Weston but several conditions were attached to the approval. The development will also include a McDonald's and an Oporto on site, which will be subdivided as part of the approval conditions. Drivers in Weston Creek have for years been calling for a second service station in the area, with residents forced to rely on a single petrol station at Cooleman Court where they are often subjected to long queues or even fuel running out. Weston Creek Community Council chair Tom Anderson has welcomed the approval. "We've been long overdue for a second service station in the Weston Creek and Molonglo areas. Almost anytime you go to the servo here the queue's all the way up the street," he said. "We first started a petition back in 2012, so it's been a long time coming." It's not yet known when construction will begin on the 112,000 square metre site, although Mr Anderson said he would like to see work begin after Easter. "I would assume they have to wait for the block to be subdivided before any work can be undertaken," he said. Among the conditions laid out in the approval, a proposed 12 metre McDonald's sign outside the service station will be scrapped, and will be merged with a shorter combined Caltex and Oporto sign. The sign will not be illuminated as it would negatively impact the nearby Mount Stromlo Observatory. "Developments within a five kilometre radius of the observatory are required to protect the night sky from light pollution to aid in the ongoing operations of the observatory," the DA approval said. "The proposed illuminated pylon signage did not demonstrate that it would comply with this requirement." The DA approval also said the proposed site's traffic management plan was "not considered adequate" and would pose a risk to pedestrians in the area. A new traffic management plan would be put in place as the previous parking and building placements were considered "convoluted". Despite the development having 66 car spaces, short of the required 80, additional spaces won't have to be constructed, as the fast-food outlet was considered to be mainly drive-through. The Weston Creek site was purchased for almost $6 million by a Sydney-based company in November 2015 and construction costs for the service station are estimated to be $2.3 million.

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When Isaac Karachepone moved to Canberra a year ago, moving into an inner-city apartment was a no-brainer. And the fact that the apartment he eventually rented in the New Acton precinct was just a short walk from his place of work was a bonus. The American chef manages Monster Kitchen and Bar in the Nishi building, and he and his wife Lizabeth are firmly part of the community that is the building they live in. "The neighbours have very regular coffee meetings, and my wife and I use the gym quite regularly, so we've got to know quite a few of the residents," he says. "We have no regrets about living in a two-bedroom place." And although the 12th-floor apartment with northern views of Black Mountain costs more to rent than the couple initially budgeted for, he says they have saved more through running just one car - Lizabeth works on the south side - and walking almost everywhere else. It's a lifestyle more and more Canberrans will soon be adopting, as planning laws around building heights are relaxed and urban renewal looks ever skyward. We are about to get the tallest building Canberra has ever seen, a 113-metre tower in three buildings that will dominate Belconnen's skyline. In fact, we're about to get a skyline, something not normally associated with what has long been considered a low-rise city. It hasn't been built yet, but the Republic - Geocon's recently approved Belconnen development - represents a crossroads for Canberra. Ours is a city that is being built in layers, green and suburban on the outer edges, and more and more spiky the closer you get to the centre. But while there's an acknowledged gap between single, detached suburban dwellings and small apartments in the town centres, it's these spikes - the apartment blocks and high-rises - that often cause the most consternation. The newest layers now involve urban renewal - the revival of town centres, and the reconsideration of suburbs whose broad streets and established trees could be enjoyed by more people. Inevitably, this means building up, instead of out. Most complaints about tall buildings involve unwelcome shadows, unpleasant wind tunnels, a distorting of proportion, a diminishing of community. There is also the spectre of Grenfell-style housing estates, the height equalling disadvantage or undesirability. But for the city's planners, developers and architects, these are all niggling complaints that seem to be more about a fear of change. And if any of these fears are realised, it will be because of bad planning and bad design, rather than a lack of concern for the quality of life in the territory. Malcolm Snow, the head of the City Renewal Authority, says any aversion to tall buildings is tied to Canberra's evolution, and the way the city has changed over time. The debate is about density, rather than height. "I don't think you could say Canberra was conceived as a low-rise city, but certainly given our location - we are a regional city, we are a city in the bush, so to speak - people have got used to the idea of the city not growing that fast, but growing, and remaining pretty low-rise," he says. "Fast forward to today, 2018, where like many other cities, Canberra faces the hard choices about the type of city it wants to be in the future. The concept of land being this limitless resource that we can keep on consuming ad infinitum, in some cases good agricultural land, does have a finite point to it." Those who oppose high-rise buildings, he says, are often driven by self-interest. "Good planning understands where height is appropriate and where height is inappropriate, and so possibly those whose automatic default setting is to say height is bad, I think miss the point," he says. "This is not about self-interest, this is about the broader public interest in the way in which we actually want to plan and create a city that actually ensures that the benefits of distributing growth have actually been realised "We cannot have a city where we take this dominant preservationist view about everything. Cities are constantly changing, constantly evolving to their circumstances. The circumstances we find ourselves in in the city are increasingly likely to become the circumstances that larger cities are facing." For David Sutherland of Fender Katsalidis, the architects behind Nishi and the New Acton precinct, height is little more than an abstract concept when it comes to building vibrant, environmentally sustainable communities. "Urban densification is the simplest, cheapest, most effective way of achieving environmental sustainability, because they generally have apartments, and apartments are smaller than houses," he says. "You generally put them in places where people will congregate, so people can walk, rather than drive. So if you can live smaller, live closer and drive less, that is the biggest impact and biggest improvement we can make on environmental sustainability." Developer John Hindmarsh has long battled opponents of high-rise, particularly around Woden, where his company is developing a large tract of land. Having battled to build even above 10 storeys in the past, he says the argument that a high-rise will "ruin" someone's view is ludicrous, especially as the most common alternative is to build something longer and lower, that will block out even more of the horizon. "The big deal is anything that's high is bad, which is just nonsense. Anything that's high means you've got a lot more space behind it," he says. "If we build long, flat buildings, you can't see anything, particularly four-storey buildings, or even three-storey buildings. It blocks out the horizon. Tall, relatively slender buildings give you a view - you can look past them and you can see the landscape behind them. But everyone here seems to have a terrible aversion to anything that they consider high-rise. And 10 storeys is hardly high-rise." Both Sutherland and Snow point out that European metropoles like Paris and Barcelona - low-rise across the board but still densely populated - are often evoked in this debate, but say that at some point we have to accept that Canberra is running its own race. "We're from the new world and we're conceived through that kind of lens, but we can still create a much more interesting, diverse and even equitable city by building up to those sort of height limits without the need to go excessively high," Snow says. Australian National University academic Meetu Sharma Saxena, who is using Canberra as her case study in a PhD on historic urban landscapes, is more worried about the types of communities these "mixed-use" buildings and precincts will create, or whether they'll create any sort of community at all. She migrated with her family to Canberra eight years ago, via her hometown of Delhi in India, and a stint in Dubai. Both cities offered high-rise living that catered to the types of people who lived in them, rather than the other way around. "There's a completely different way of setting those high-rises up. They are gated communities, people have that sense of security," she says. "They're cooperative group housing societies, which is where blocks of land are developed by people who are within a similar organisation or they have a similar kind of financial or social background. They all come and live together, so that develops a sense of community because you can relate to the people who are living with you." And such communities arise within the context of the surroundings - highly populated metropoles, and regional centres of commerce and culture. Not, in other words, Canberra. "Essentially, I believe that the housing solution has to be a response to the context of a place," she says. In cities like Singapore, Hong Kong or New York, there have been "centuries of cultural sensitisation to the fact that they don't have enough land and there need to be compromises made. It's an inbuilt programming of the person who lives in those cities, and their entire lifestyle kind of organises itself with that in mind, and it's in response to their local resources and local context." In some ways, it looks to her, an outsider, like Canberra is trying to manufacture density the other way around. "There's a tension in the urban fabric, and the [proposed] highrises are a result of that tension," she says. "Do we need to artificially impose that, or does our society need more densification in the suburbs, so that they are closer knit, and we are not destroying the entire landscape of the city?"

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Jakarta: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has "destroyed everything that we have built" and brushed aside the rule of law, according to the country's longest-serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. And in an interview with Fairfax Media the 92-year-old Mahathir, who for years stymied attempts by successive Australian prime ministers to move closer to the ASEAN bloc, cited the long-abandoned and racist White Australia policy and suggested Australia was still "an outpost of Europe". However, in an apparent softening of his long held anti-European stance, Mahathir also suggested that Australia could one day join the ASEAN group of nations, as suggested recently by Indonesian president Joko Widodo. Malaysia's national elections must be held by August 24 but most commentators expect they will be called by the end of April, once an electoral boundary realignment that is expected to heavily favour Najib is completed. Mahathir, who stepped down in 2003, recently announced an extraordinary political comeback that will see him stand as the prime ministerial candidate for a coalition of opposition parties, Pakatan Harapan, against Najib's governing Barisan Nasional coalition. In an astonishing twist, Mahathir has also promised to seek a royal pardon for his protege turned bitter political rival, Anwar Ibrahim, who was jailed during Mahathir's rule on politically-motivated sodomy charges. The pair are now unlikely allies agains Najib, and Mahathir wants to win the election, then instal Anwar as prime minister in his place. Anwar's first political comeback after his conviction was overturned in 2004 ended when he led the opposition to defeat in the 2013 election. Then he was jailed again a year later, also on discredited sodomy charges, and is due to be released on June 8, though he will need a pardon to re-enter politics. The once-unimaginable alliance between Mahathir and Anwar has one over-riding objective. "To remove Najib from being Prime Minister of Malaysia. That is the main thing. All other things that we struggle for, 'reformasi', reformation and all that can only happen if he leaves," Mahathir said. "Najib has destroyed everything that we have built up in this country. Today he is ruling the country without regard to the rule of law. Even the constitution is not respected. "Yes, he [Anwar] can become the Prime Minister, once he is qualified [pardoned]." However, the former leader predicted victory would be difficult to achieve, "as there is going to be massive cheating" by the ruling coalition. On Australia's possible future entry to ASEAN, an idea recently endorsed by Indonesian president Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, Mahathir said Australia would first need to prove itself more "Asian than European". "It sticks out like a sore thumb in this area because it is an outpost of Europe. There are now more liberal attitudes by Australia, in the past of course, it was White Australia, but currently they admit people of other ethnic groups," he said. In the future, if Asians and Africans were treated as well in Australia as "white" Australians, and "if they understand the priorities of East Asia, then I think they are entitled to join ASEAN". Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Ismail, is the opposition candidate for deputy prime minister in the unlikely coalition with Mahathir, while their daughter, Nurul Izzah Anwar, is also an opposition MP. In a separate interview, Wan Azizah told Fairfax Media it is "a bit surreal" that after a decades-long fight, her husband and Mahathir are fighting for the same side. But it underscored the determination of the opposition parties to blast out Najib. "The government is pretty strong and has not changed since independence [in 1957], so now I think Malaysians are ready for change," she said. "I think Malaysians have made up their mind. Enough is enough and we are going to do this." But University of Malaya politics professor Edmund Terence Gomez says the most likely outcome is, as in 2013, Najib will lose the popular vote but win enough seats to hold government because of a gerrymander that favours rural constituencies. Mahathir's re-entry into politics has also been prompted by the so-called 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal. Najib set-up the sovereign wealth fund and the US Department of Justice has alleged he received $US681 million in stolen money from the fund, a claim the current prime minister has denied. The former prime minister asserted the current government had stolen money from the fund and promised to recover it and return it to government coffers if elected. with Haylena Krishnamoorthy

/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/0188432e-ea7b-47af-bfd6-1b5e5213ebd2/r0_167_3296_2029_w1200_h678_fmax.jpgIn the wee hours of April 1, the city of Cape Coral will officially begin an extended bar hours program for the second time with the hopes of not only making the South Cape a destination but to do so in a way that is safe for everyone.

The city Council on Monday voted 7-1 to bring back extended bar hours for Friday and Saturday nights, as well as certain holidays, this time to 3 a.m. as opposed to the 4 a.m. closing time used last go-around.

That trial period went from April 2015 to April 2016, and ended when the then-sitting Council deadlocked on continuing due to reported increased crime numbers, even though the program proved financially beneficial to business in the South Cape where two venues took part.

Those venues, Backstreets and Dixie Roadhouse, reported significant revenue increase as did other businesses in the district.

For the program to work this time, it likely needs to heed the advice of other cities that have done extended hours in the past, such as St. Petersburg and South Beach in Miami.

Jim Peters, president of the Responsible Hospitality Institute, a not-for-profit that aids communities with nightlife expansion, said extended bar hours are a growing trend. In California, a bill is being considered that would allow large cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco to have 4 a.m. closings.

The closing time has a lot to do with how you manage things with the public agencies and the kind of relationship theyve had with the neighbors, Peters said. How efficiently can they get out of these areas at closing time? Are they lingering or having parking lot parties?

When Cape Coral did its trial period for 4 a.m. bar hours in 2015-16, the Cape Coral Police and bar owners had a working relationship, meeting monthly to find ways to make the late hours safer and less eventful.

Bart Connelly, police chief at the time said then there was a tremendous partnership between the police and bar owners and that partnership produced results.

We have reduced the number of incidents that have occurred with the extended hours such as DUI, mischief, intoxication. Officers have talked to people about getting rides home and advising them on what they should do. Connelly said in October 2015, six months into the program.

Upon completion of the trial period, though, the CCPD reported that calls for service, crime numbers and DUI arrests had all increased.

Peters said bars need to decide for themselves whether to take on the burden of staying open late and deal with the increased chance for trouble.

But they wont have to pay for police, as they had to pay for off-duty officers the first time the hours extension was tried.

This time, there will be four on-duty officers and a supervisor in the area at a cost of more than $150,000 in overtime. The money will come mostly from the citys General Fund, with South Caper Community Redevelopment Agency paying a third.

In other areas, that is considered appropriate, Peters said.

You dont have banks pay for police in the day to protect their business. Its what people pay taxes for, Peters said. Cities have dedicated police teams at night trained to deal with nightlife issues.

Cape Coral would like to see economic development increase with the extended hours, as it did the last time it was tried.

This time, they want to program made permanent so people looking to invest in the South Cape have a level of certainty.

Peters said the world in changing, and that people arent punching in and out at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. London has the option for 24/7 bar hours.

The reason is simple. People dont want to be alone. Flexible hours are a good thing, and those who work the odd hours need the same opportunity to unwind and socialize as the 9-to5ers.

The night time economy represents an important economic engine. Everyone needs a chance to meet and socialize. In New Orleans, the people who are out at 4 a.m. are the restaurant and bar workers. Its the swing shifters who are likely to be going to these places, Peters said. You need to recognize the other 9 to 5.'

This creates jobs and adds a different layer to the daytime economy. People will go out and get their hair done or buy clothes in the day to socialize at night, proponents of extended hours say.

Even big companies have made nightlife an important component in deciding whether or not to move into an area, Peters said. Amazon is an example.

Dana Brunett, the citys economic development director, said there will be a positive impact on the South Cape economy, as it did the last time. The question is how much so with an hour less than the 2015-16 trial.

The numbers showed that in the prior test. How far reaching it will be I dont know. Before it was a test. If its permanent, there might be more long-lasting effect. More money may be put into businesses, Brunett said. During the last test year, 69 new businesses came in.

During Mondays Cape Coral City Council meeting, consultant Joe Mazurkiewicz gave a presentation that showed the residual effect of extended hours. Even if venues didnt close at 4 a.m., revenues increased. In fact, the impact was felt by businesses as early as 9 p.m. in some instances. Restaurants, for example, could have an extra seating.

People werent coming out for the last two hours, they were coming out for the time before that. How late they stay out is up to them, Brunett said.

Ultimately, it is customers who will determine what impact the new hours will have, according to some.

JoAnn Elardo, owner of Big Blue Brewing, said they set their hours based on what customers want.

I love the opportunity that we have. I think its very difficult to see when the government tells you what hours you should be open, Elardo said. We dont know how its going to affect us. If there is business we will be open like any business owner would be.

Elardo said the ordinance will have a good impact on the area, but the customer will decide whether it will succeed.

Anytime youre a little different, that helps your business. We have a lot of tourists who come in the winter, so its nice to be able to be on par with some of the other places, Elardo said.

For some South Cape businesses, such as Dek, the extended hours first go-around didnt have a quantifiable impact, since they tend to be very busy anyway.

Betty Davis, owner of Dek, said she is indifferent to the extended bar hours program, since she didnt participate in them two years ago and likely wont participate now.

I dont care about it at all. It really didnt affect us in any way. Its pretty much wall to wall here on Friday and Saturday nights. I wouldnt notice any increase, Davis said.

Davis said it worked out well the first time because only two places were open and were in close proximity, and it gave her staff a place to unwind after a hard night.

It kept the police concentrated in one area so everyone felt secure down there, Davis said. And our staff had somewhere to go after work. Its nice to have it in a central location. If everybody did it, there would be no one to get off work and go.

Editors note: This story has been updated to include additional quotes and sources.To the editor:

So happy to see the Florida legislature didnt ban assault rifles. Now we will be able to arm ourselves with semi automatic weapons so we can deal with the over population of fuzzy little bunny rabbits here on Sanibel.

I am concerned that our politicians only allocated $400 million to mental health. I just dont know if that will be enough to treat all our legislators and the morons that continue to elect them!

Michael Dicorpo

SanibelUnfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.Photo: CTV Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak speaks during a press conference, Monday, March 24, 2014.

A new analysis of satellite data indicates the missing Malaysia Airlines plane crashed into a remote corner of the Indian Ocean, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday.

The news is a major breakthrough in the unprecedented two-week struggle to find out what happened to Flight 370, which disappeared shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew aboard on March 8.

Dressed in a black suit, Najib announced the news in a brief statement to reporters late Monday night, saying the information was based on an unprecedented analysis of satellite data from Inmarsat.

He said the data indicated the plane flew "to a remote location, far from any possible landing sites."

"It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

He said Malaysia Airlines has informed the families of passengers of the plane's fate.

Selamat Omar, the father of a 29-year-old aviation engineer who was on the flight, said some members of families of other passengers broke down in tears at the news.

"We accept the news of the tragedy. It is fate," Selamat told The Associated Press in Kuala Lumpur.

Selamat said the airline hasn't told the families yet whether they will be taken to Australia, which is co-ordinating the search for the plane. He said they expect more details Tuesday.

A multinational force has searched a wide swath of Asia trying to find the plane.

On Monday, Australian and Chinese planes spotted floating objects in the southern Indian Ocean. An Australian navy supply ship is heading to the area to get a closer look.

The majority of flight MH370s passengers were Chinese citizens. Two Canadian citizens were also on board.A meeting took place with the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Westside Board of Trade, the Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission, city officials from the four local municipalities in the Central Okanagan, the Urban Development Institute, the home building industry, MLAs and developers. Its said the meeting resulted in a unified voice of opposition to the proposed speculation tax. Im concerned that no voices of support appear to have been heard at the meeting.

To my knowledge, theres no advocate in Kelowna thats uniquely focused on housing or tenants issues, groups that do have an interest in housing issues were not invited to the meeting. Following the get-together, the Chamber and the Board of Trade wrote to Minister James asking her to step back from implementing the speculation tax on homes in Kelowna and West Kelowna owned by out-of-province residents. We are writing this joint letter to you today on behalf of our close to 2,000 members representing more than 25,000 employees in the Central Okanagan, asking that your government step back from implementing the speculation tax on homes in Kelowna and West Kelowna until the mechanics of how it would be implemented, to whom it will be applied, and how the tax is expected to make housing more attainable in our cities, is better defined and understood. In the meantime, we encourage you to consult with community leaders, developers and construction trades officials in the cities and regions that have been specifically targeted for this proposed tax.



I think a more comprehensive canvassing of voices would have included the local employers who have long complained that they cant attract the workers they need because of the shortage of affordable housing, including rentals. The CBC reported that a 2017 survey of 200 businesses conducted by the Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission found that this problem of being unable to attract workers extends to all sectors of the regional economy. It strikes me that the North Okanagan Labour Council, the umbrella group for labour unions in the North and Central Okanagan representing some 8,500 union members, might have competently spoken for both the employers who need workers and the employees and potential employees who need homes had they been invited to the meeting.



But it may not be too late. In their letter to Minister James, the Chamber and the Board of Trade offered to host a round-table discussion in Kelowna on the issue of the new tax. In my view, representatives of all stakeholders should be invited to an event, possibly led by your government, to discuss opposition to and support of the tax. Kelownas mayor Colin Basran led the way, heavily promoting the idea that a speculation tax could have a negative effect on the local economy. "Investment from other parts of the country is a good thing, said Basran, adding it helps stimulate the economy through development, tourism, job creation and helps small business. But that could all be impacted by the implementation of the new tax here. A week later, he said the tax could have an adverse effect on construction in Kelowna and that could affect jobs.



Justin OConnor, president of the Central Okanagan chapter of the Canadian Home Builders Association, likewise focused on the perceived value of out-of-town owners to the local economy, but got rid of the conditional verb tense as he did so. These developments bring hundreds of thousands of dollars into our community, and the proposed speculation tax will become a huge detriment to our community should this pass. B.C. is home to many vacation areas, all of which rely on these annual visitors to support the local economy.



Kevin Edgecombe, chair of the Kelowna builders Urban Development Institute, followed the same line of thought. We are certain that jobs will be lost in the Okanagan, and there is a concern that this tax, while intended to create affordability, will unintentionally harm the tourism sector, many forms of small business and the B.C. economy as a whole.



Tanis Read, president of the Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board, elaborated that the local economy will be affected not because of the intended changes to real estate prices, but due to the unintended loss of revenues generated by those homeowners who take advantage of local services such as car dealers, wineries, restaurants, gas stations and the resulting potential job losses.



What remains unanswered to me is why out-of-province vacationers would provide greater incentive to build housing units than local workers or families in search of housing. Last month, a local realtor reported there is a serious shortage of housing available in the Central Okanagan with only 701 residential detached single family homes for sale with 284 of these priced over $1 million. Meanwhile, the average house price in Kelowna was $762,000. As for the rental vacancy rate, its been 0.2 per cent since late last year, the lowest in the country. In other words, no one needs to look at out-of-province visitors in order to have a reason to invest in and build local housing developments.



What also remains unanswered is how temporary vacationers would contribute more to the local economy than locals who might or who do live here 365 days a year, buying cars, drinking wine, going to restaurants, pumping gas, and so on. Why do any of the people Ive quoted think that out-of-towners are a fundamental economic driver without which the local economy will take a dive?



I feel strongly that no one should lose sight of what concerns all of us on a good day, which is the existence of housing unaffordability, a near-zero vacancy rate, and the fact that empty homes in Kelowna are widespread. Last month it was reported in Statistics Canada findings that almost one-quarter of Kelownas downtown homes sit empty, not used as a primary residence and not rented on a long-term basis, while 17 per cent of Lower Mission homes share the same status.



The Union of BC Municipalities 2018 report, A Home for Everyone, insists both foreign and domestic speculation places the possibility of purchasing a home out of reach for many British Columbians, in turn creating pressure on the rental stock and increasing competition, all too often leading to homelessness. People deserve housing options aligned with incomes in their communities, says the report, and taxation measures to address both foreign and domestic speculation should be considered to stabilize housing prices.



Whether the new tax is called a speculation tax or an empty home tax or something else, and whether it's directed at foreigners, out-of-province owners, or British Columbians, the crucial point is that local workers and families need places to buy and rent in Kelowna and local employers need this to happen for the economic well-being of all of us.

Dianne VargaPhoto: Wayne Moore - File Photo Steven Tyler

A Kelowna councillor says proposed changes to the city's Good Neighbour bylaw clarifying its busker program go contrary to everything the city wants to achieve downtown.

The changes would require street performers to have a valid busker's permit within the borders of the Downtown Business Association.

They would be restricted to performing at one of the 15 "busk stops," and street performing would not be allowed anywhere else.

"Everything in our OCP, Imagine Kelowna and the Downtown Plan talks about vibrant, urban spaces, animated public realms," said Coun. Ryan Donn, a musician himself.

"What's more animated than a busker playing some music to add to the vibe of a street? It only adds to it."

Donn said the restrictions make no sense, wondering what problem the city is trying to fix.

A big part of the issue for Donn is the term street performer instead of busker. While busker implies someone is performing for money, a street performer could be anybody.

Technically, he says playing one of the pianos Festivals Kelowna has stationed around downtown would be contrary to the bylaw.

"With rules and regulations ... there's the actual impact, then there's the perceived impact.

"The perceived impact, if I was still working at Festivals Kelowna, I wouldn't bring Pianos in the Parks to my boss. I would need a busk stop first. If the regulations were here, 'pianos' wouldn't have happened."

He said bylaw staff joked even superstar Steven Tyler would have required a permit when he tickled the ivories on one of the pianos a few hours before Aerosmith's concert at Prospera Place.

Council will debate the merits of the new restrictions when it meets Monday.Photo: Little Miracles Preschool

It is not exactly how Tamara Kayle planned on spending her spring break, but the Vernon businesswoman doesn't give up easily.

She was forced to move her entire business on short notice.

Thirty days ago, Kayle was told that she had to move the location of her daycare, Little Miracles Preschool, from the St. John's Lutheran Church.

It seems the church is about to be decommissioned due to an unsafe foundation.

Kayle actually only purchased the daycare in September, and at the time, thought St John's was going to be her long-term location.

"A couple months later I was told this is what was happening, but I thought I had until the end of the school year, but it didn't work out like that."

The church did try and find a new place where both the preschool and church could exist but nothing was big enough.

Kayle set out to find a new location that would be able to accommodate the children of close to 60 families  that is about 25 to 30 kids a day.

"I had to just have a positive attitude, and hopefully these families trust you and believe that you can make this happen."

She was lucky to find a space in downtown Vernon at 3021 29 Avenue, but the space needed massive renovations.

"This is the only location we could find that can hold all the kids we have."

The financial costs of buying a business and then having to move that business, not to mention the costs of renovations to the new space, is enough to stress any business owner, but Kayle is taking the situation in stride.

"It is different," says Kayle. Some parents have expressed concern over the new location, and some parents have even removed their child.

"They are concerned about the safety of downtown Vernon, but in no way am I ever going to put someone's child in harm. So obviously we are going to take every precaution we can."

But, like the optimist she is, Kayle says she thinks the new location will provide new opportunities for visits to the library, Science Centre and Polson Park.

"There's a lot of construction going on right now, but it will look beautiful when it is done. I know it will."

Little Miracles will be holding an open house today from noon to 4.Photo: RCMP

British Columbia's prosecution service says no charges have been approved against three RCMP officers involved in arresting a woman who broke her jaw while being restrained.

The service says in a news release that the intoxicated woman was taken into custody in the early hours of March 16, 2014, but became aggressive shortly after arriving at the Langford detachment of West Shore RCMP on Vancouver Island, near Victoria.

It says the woman tried to strike one of the officers and was taken to the ground, where she struck her chin, causing injuries.

The Independent Investigations Office conducted an investigation and forwarded a report for charge assessment to Crown counsel, as per the usual protocol involving serious in-custody injuries or death.

However, the B.C. prosecution service says the available evidence does not prove the officers committed a criminal offence or used excessive force.Photo: Pixabay

Four local governments in the South Okanagan won't receive provincial funding when they conduct a feasibility study on building an indoor swimming pool.

The province penned a letter to Oliver town manager Cathy Cowan saying the town's rural dividend fund application was not approved.

The Town of Oliver had submitted the $100,000 request on behalf of the other local governments involved  the Town of Osoyoos, the Osoyoos Indian Band and the Regional District Okanagan Similkameen.

Cowan said the news is disappointing, but said the study will be done regardless.

The study will determine if building an indoor pool is practical and where it should be located, among other subjects, she said.

"There's a number of things the study is going to address so we can take it forward to the public and provide them with good information, so they understand the costs associated with it and stuff like that."

The study itself will cost about $130,000 to complete, split between the local governments involved based on their populations. Cowan said Oliver will cover about $36,000 of the costs, which it has accounted for already in this year's budget.

Cowan also said she will be meeting next month with staff of the rural dividend program to discuss what could've been done differently in their funding application.

She added the meeting will also be useful if the local governments seek funding in the future for an indoor swimming pool.Photo: Contributed

A tale of love has turned to one of tragedy as a Kelowna couple fights to stay together  and for a woman's life.

Patrick McQuary and Endang Suslash met three years ago in Taiwan. According to his sister, Karalee, it was love at first sight.

He was travelling, she on a work permit. Soon, they went to Indonesia so Patrick could meet her family.

The lovebirds planned to return to Patrick's home in the Okanagan and be married, but a couple of days before leaving they both fell ill.

Patrick recovered. Endang did not.

Suffering through the long flight, Endang fell even sicker while in the air.

She was rushed to Kelowna General Hospital as soon as they arrived, and she has been on dialysis ever since  two and half years. The diagnosis: kidney failure.

To make matters worse, the couple had been working on getting Endang's Canadian citizenship. But, because she fell so ill, she has ended up overstaying her visitor's visa and has now been ordered by the federal government to leave the country and return to Indonesia.

Karalee says they received the news on Thursday, and Endang has 30 days to comply.

The couple did marry two years ago in June, but with her request for permanent resident status denied, "We're worried she won't survive going back to Indonesia," said Karalee.

She says health care is of a much lower standard there, and on top of that, patients must pay for every treatment out of their own pocket.

"We're filing an appeal as one last hope for her to stay in Canada," said Karalee, who said her brother is heartbroken.

And, if Endang returns to Indonesia, she is not allowed to come back to Canada for a full year.

In the meantime, the family has launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay for her anticipated medical expenses in Indonesia.

"There (are) little to no options for health care for her there, and treatment options are grim. The dialysis equipment used in their hospitals is not nearly as effective, and the quality of her care would be very poor.

"We want to fight for her to stay in Canada, and get her (a) kidney transplant so they can continue their life together. We are scared for the uncertain and what could happen if she has to go back."Photo: Facebook Waylon Jackson

His name was Waylon Percy Junior Jackson, not 'the deceased,' as he was frequently referred to at the murder trial for his killer over the past three weeks.

I did not name him deceased, and I do not like it that he was referring to my son as the deceased in the courtroom, said Christine Whiskeyjack, Jackson's mother.

Chad Alphonse, the man who stabbed Jackson three times, piercing his lung and heart, on the evening of March 11, 2016 was found guilty of manslaughter Friday by a 12-person jury, but was acquitted of a second-degree murder charge.

An accused must be proven to have had the intent to kill or cause serious injury for a murder conviction.

Whiskeyjack, who drove from Alberta to attend the trial with 'Justice for Waylon' stickers on her SUV, says she's angry about the result of the trial.

I don't have no justice yet, she said. I think that he should be locked up, the accused, I don't think he should be allowed to roam free in Kelowna.

Whiskeyjack took particular exception to Alphonse's statement to police that Jackson was like a brother to him.

A friend wouldn't do that to another friend in front of their child, she said. He took my late son's life in front of his daughter. A friend wouldn't do that.

Jackson's mother remembers her 26-year-old son as a hard working, talented and artistic man, who played guitar and was a tattoo artist.

My Waylon was a Grade 12 graduate, he was a scaffolder, he wasn't just a nobody," she said, her voice swelling with pride. "He had family in Alberta that loved him and cared for him."

After growing up in Goodfish and St. Paul, Alta., small communities northeast of Edmonton, Jackson moved to Kelowna in 2015, when his girlfriend, Naomi Foureyes, moved to attend school.

He was a family-oriented person and she was pregnant with his child, Whiskeyjack said. He wouldn't allow her to be a single parent."

On the evening of Jackson's death, Alphonse, who was dating Foureyes' sister, joined them at their home on 115 Gerstmar Rd. to help decorate for Foureyes' baby shower the following day. After several hours of drinking, Jackson and Foureyes went upstairs to go to bed, but heard arguing between Alphonse and his girlfriend downstairs.

Jackson went downstairs to investigate, and ended up fighting with Alphonse, at one point hitting him with a chair. As he walked away from Alphonse, who was on the ground, Alphonse lunged at him, fatally stabbing him in front of Foureyes and their five-week-old child.

Alphonse is expected to be sentenced on the manslaughter conviction sometime in the next two months.Photo: Jon Manchester

Two vehicles collided into each other along Leon Avenue and Bertram Street in downtown Kelowna just after 5:30 p.m.

A Ford Escape SUV reportedly ran a stop sign, according to RCMP, and collided with a Hyundai Tiburon coupe.

Fire rescue, paramedics and RCMP are on scene.

No injuries have been reported.Photo: The Canadian Press Hedley fans Charene Gonschorek, left, and Brandon Krys show their support outside Prospera Place.

Fans of embattled Vancouver pop-rockers Hedley were handing out flyers in Kelowna, Friday, in support of the band ahead of what could be its last concert.

The group announced they'd be going on an "indefinite hiatus" earlier this month under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations against frontman Jacob Hoggard.

Hoggard has denied ever engaging in non-consensual sexual behaviour, but he admits he has behaved in a way that objectifies women.

The the group has been dropped by its management team, blacklisted by scores of radio stations and abandoned by musicians booked as tour openers.

Laura Carruthers photocopied 3,000 flyers asking people to sign a petition urging radio stations to reinstate airplay for the band.

She was in the parking lot outside Kelowna's Prospera Place ahead of the concert handing out the pages, which have the phrase #istandforhedley written on them with hearts drawn in red glitter.

"I'll always be standing by them. Because it's allegations, it's not actually a charge yet," Carruthers said.

Valerie Rivet, who travelled from Ottawa to see her favourite band for the 33rd time, said the accusations against Hoggard haven't been proven, and if they ever are, she would re-evaluate her love of the band.

"Twitter is not a court of law," she said. "For now I stand with them."

Toronto police have said they are investigating Hoggard, but no charges have been laid.

Online accusations began surfacing last month suggesting inappropriate encounters with young fans.

A 24-year-old Ottawa fan of the band alleged to the CBC in February that she was sexually assaulted by Hoggard after chatting with him on the dating app Tinder and agreeing to meet him at a hotel in Toronto.

The CBC published another report weeks later of a Toronto woman who alleges Hoggard tried to force her to do things without her consent during a sexual encounter in 2016.

A Calgary radio host has also alleged that Hoggard groped her and made lewd remarks to her seven years ago.

In announcing he would be putting his career on hold, Hoggard said he would make real changes in his life, seeking guidance from his family and learning from the "amazing women in my life."

"The way I've treated women was reckless and dismissive of their feelings. I understand the significant harm that is caused not only to the women I interacted with, but to all women who are degraded by this type of behaviour," he wrote in a statement posted to his Twitter account Feb. 28.

"I have been careless and indifferent and I have no excuse. For this I am truly sorry."Photo: pbiactuarial.ca

The Canada Revenue Agency has far reaching powers when you owe money to them. If you owe them, they will find a way to collect.

They charge penalties and interest on your overdue taxes.

They can withhold payment of your Child Tax Credit and GST rebate.

They can take money from your bank account or garnishee your wages.

When you are self-employed and do not have tax deductions coming off your paycheques and havent made other provisions to cover your tax debt at the end of the year, you could have a problem.

Tax debt is serious and should be dealt with immediately.

The CRA will generally not accept any arrangement other than a full payment and this is due and payable at the time of your assessment or reassessment.

They cannot set a precedent that would allow them to accept less from everyone else. They have one of the highest rates of collection activity in Canada as our taxes fund public goods and services.

What do you do if you cant pay them in full?

Contact them immediately.

You may be to negotiate a payment schedule if you cant pay the full amount, but they generally will not let it be outstanding for over a few months. Know that they will continue to charge the interest and penalties on the past due amount.

If you own real estate, the CRA can register a lien against your property if what you owe to them has been outstanding for an extended period of time.

This is done to guarantee that you pay your outstanding debt. When a lien is registered against your property it can prohibit you from refinancing or selling your property until the outstanding debt is paid in full.

This is important to note - Filing for bankruptcy, or filing a consumer proposal, does not discharge a lien against your property.

If you go bankrupt on your CRA debt, the lien remains and  even worse  accrues interest over time. Even after your discharge from bankruptcy, the lien remains in force, until you eventually sell your home.

Another point to note  if you are self-employed and your income tax is not current, you will not be able to secure mortgage financing to purchase a home.

Canadian banks will not make unsecured loans for payment of income tax debt and they generally cannot refinance an existing mortgage to cover the debt either.

If you are a homeowner, having an experienced mortgage broker working for you can save you both time and money when seeking a solution to your CRA problem.

If you simply cant pay the full amount of your back taxes, consider refinancing your mortgage and using the equity in your home, a consolidation loan is possible which can include tax arrears and other debts.

I have access to lenders that will allow a refinance to pay outstanding CRA debt or second mortgage financing. Please give me a call to discuss at 888-561-2679 or email [email protected].Photo: CTV Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame, 44

UPDATE: 2:35 p.m.

The French police officer who swapped places with a female supermarket employee being held hostage had already received a lifetime of accolades by the time he walked unarmed into the store under attack by an extremist gunman.

Known for his courage and sang-froid, Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame was acclaimed by neighbours, colleagues and French authorities as a hero Saturday after his death from wounds the day before. President Emmanuel Macron announced plans for a national ceremony to formally honour him.

After agreeing to the hostage swap, Beltrame surrendered his weapon  but kept his cellphone on, allowing authorities outside the Super U market in the southern French town of Trebes to hear what was happening inside.

Thanks to Beltrame's quick thinking, special police units heard gunshots inside the store Friday and stormed the building immediately, killing the attacker.

"Beyond his job, he gave his life for someone else, for a stranger," his brother, Cedric, told RTL radio in France. "He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing ... if we don't describe him as a hero, I don't know what you need to do to be a hero."

"Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much," Macron said. "In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero."

The date of the ceremony for Beltrame wasn't immediately set.

ORIGINAL: 7:30 a.m.

A French police officer who offered himself up to an Islamic extremist gunman in exchange for a hostage has died, raising the death toll in the attack in southern France to four. He was honoured Saturday as a national hero of "exceptional courage and selflessness."

Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame, 44, was among the first officers to respond to the attack Friday on the supermarket in the southern French town of Trebes.

Beltrame, who joined the elite police special forces in 2003 and served in Iraq in 2005, had organized a training session in the Aude region in December for just such a hostage situation. At the time, he armed his officers with paintball guns, according to the Depeche du Midi newspaper.

"We want to be as close to real conditions as possible," he said then.

But when he went inside the supermarket, he gave up his own weapon and volunteered himself in exchange for a female hostage.

Unbeknownst to the Morocco-born hostage-taker, he left his cellphone on so police outside could hear what was happening in the store. They stormed the building when they heard gunshots, officials said. Beltrame was fatally wounded.

In addition to the four people killed by the gunman in his rampage Friday, the attacker was killed by police. Fifteen others were injured.

"Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much," President Emmanuel Macron said. "In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero."

French police and soldiers have been a prime target of attacks by extremists, with 10 killed in recent years, including Beltrame. Other victims include three soldiers killed near Toulouse in 2012, three police officers shot to death in 2015, a police couple killed in their home in 2016 and a police officer killed on Paris' Champs-Elysees in 2017. Dozens of others have been wounded.

According to Macron's statement, Beltrame also served as a member of the presidential guard and in 2012 earned one of France's highest honours, the Order of Merit. He was married with no children.

Cedric Beltrame told RTL radio Saturday that his brother died "a hero."

"He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing," Cedric Beltrame said.

Beltrame's mother told RTL radio that, for her son, "to defend the homeland" was "his reason to live."

"He would have said to me, 'I'm doing my job, Mom, nothing more,'" she said.

People were placing flowers in front of the Gendarmerie headquarters in the French medieval city of Carcassone to pay tribute to Lt. Col. Beltrame. Flags at all gendarmeries were ordered to fly at half-staff.

Macron says investigators will focus on establishing how the gunman, identified by prosecutors as Morocco-born Redouane Lakdim, 25, got his weapon and how he became radicalized.

On Friday night, authorities searched a car and the apartment complex in central Carcassonne where Lakdim was believed to live. Two people were detained over alleged links with a terrorist enterprise, one woman close to Lakdim and a friend of his, a 17-year-old male, Paris prosecutor's office said.

Lakdim was known to police for petty crime and drug dealing. But he was also under surveillance and since 2014 was on the so-called Fiche S list, a government register of individuals suspected of being radicalized but who have yet to perform acts of terrorism.Photo: The Canadian Press President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, in Florida, Friday.

President Donald Trump released an order Friday night banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under "limited circumstances," following up on his calls last year to ban transgender individuals from serving.

The White House said retaining troops with a history or diagnosis of "gender dysphoria"  those who may require substantial medical treatment  "presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality."

Trump surprised the Pentagon's leadership in a 2017 tweet when he declared he would reverse an Obama-era plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly. His push for the ban has been blocked by several legal challenges, and four federal courts have ruled against the ban. The Pentagon responded by allowing those serving to stay in the military, and began allowing transgender individuals to enlist beginning Jan. 1.

"This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards  including those regarding the use of medical drugs  equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday.

The new policy was promptly assailed by congressional Democrats and civil rights groups. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted, "No one with the strength & bravery to serve in the U.S. military should be turned away because of who they are. This hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honour & dignity."

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT civil rights organization, accused the Trump administration of pushing "anti-transgender prejudices onto the military."

"There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence Administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops," said HRC President Chad Griffin.

Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, said the policy "effectively coerces transgender people who wish to serve into choosing between their humanity and their country, and makes it clear that transgender service members are not welcome."

Trump received recommendations from Defence Secretary Jim Mattis in February for dealing with transgender individuals serving in the military. The White House said Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen agreed with the policy.

Earlier Friday, Maj. David Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, said the announcement of a new policy would have no immediate practical effect on the military because the Pentagon is obliged to continue to recruit and retain transgender people in accordance with current law.

The Justice Department said in a statement late Friday that it would defend the Pentagon's authority to "implement personnel policies they have determined are necessary to best defend our nation" and would ask the courts to lift all related preliminary injunctions.

The issue has become mired in a complicated string of political statements, court decisions and policy reviews since Trump first stunned his administration with his tweets last July. It's unclear how much impact the court decisions will have on Trump's decision. Activist groups had worried the administration could enact such strict enlistment and health care restrictions that it would become all but impossible for transgender troops to join or continue servingPhoto: Richard Long

Witnesses tell Castanet the driver fled the scene of an accident last night on Valley Road.

Richard Long said at 9 p.m. Friday, he heard screeching tires and a loud thud.

When he went to investigate, he found a small car had hit a light post, but there was no sign of a driver or passengers at the scene.

RCMP were called.Photo: Facebook

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to formally exonerate six First Nations chiefs who were hanged by British Columbia's colonial government in the mid-1800s.

A video posted Wednesday on the Tsilhqot'in National Government's Facebook page shows Chief Joe Alphonse discussing the exoneration, which is anticipated to happen Monday, and the extent to which the event affected his people and their relationship with Canada.

The hangings stem from the Chilcotin War of 1864, which involved a confrontation between Tsilhqot'in warriors and a white construction crew building a road through the First Nation's territory that led to 14 labourers being killed.

Five chiefs subsequently arrived at what they believed would be peace talks with government representatives, where they were arrested, tried and hanged; a sixth chief was executed the following year in New Westminster.

The B.C. government apologized for the hangings in 1993 and installed a commemorative plaque in B.C.'s Interior where the five hangings took place.

Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett is scheduled to hold a press conference alongside the Tsilhqot'in Nation leadership in Ottawa on Monday following the official exoneration.Photo: Contributed This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows bulldozers removing barriers from a road in the town of Harasta, east of the capital Damascus, Syria, Saturday.

Some 7,000 members of a rebel group and their relatives were preparing to leave eastern Ghouta to opposition-held areas north of the country Saturday as part of an agreement to evacuate the second of three pockets held by opposition fighters east of the capital Damascus, Syria's state media reported.

The expected departure comes a day after an agreement was reached between Faylaq al-Rahman, the second most powerful rebel group in eastern Ghouta, and the Russians to surrender the second of three pockets in eastern Ghouta, where rebels have been holding up over the past years.

Early on Saturday, bulldozers removed giant sand barriers from a main road in the town of Harasta that will be used by the rebels and their relatives on their way to the country's north.

The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said a corridor is being prepared for Faylaq al-Rahman members and their relatives to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbeen, Ein Tarma and Jobar.

The evacuations come after thousands streamed out of Harasta, the first pocket after a similar negotiated deal for the evacuation of armed fighters and civilians.

Faylaq al-Rahman said in a statement Friday that the deal will lead to the immediate evacuation of sick and wounded people for treatment and to allow aid to enter the besieged area.

The group added that opposition fighters and their relatives who decide to leave eastern Ghouta will head to rebel-held parts of northern Syria while civilians who decide to stay will be guaranteed safety.

It said that Russian military police will deploy in Faylaq al-Rahman-controlled areas including the Arbeen, Zamalka, Ein Tarma and Jobar. A prisoner exchange will take place between the group and the government, the group added.

On Feb. 18, a concerted military offensive, backed by Russian airstrikes, squeezed the rebels and civilians in the area under an intense bombing campaign and tightened the siege. The U.N. estimated that nearly 400,000 people remained in the enclave before the latest offensive began.Photo: Contributed Vice Premier Liu He attends a press conference after the closing session of China's National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

China's newly appointed economic czar told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Saturday that Beijing is ready to defend its interests after President Donald Trump announced plans to slap tariffs on nearly $50 billion in Chinese imports.

Vice Premier Liu He told Mnuchin in a phone call that the order Trump signed Thursday violates international trade rules, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The White House says the planned tariffs are aimed at punishing Beijing for allegedly stealing American technology and pressuring U.S. companies to hand it over.

Xinhua cited Liu as saying that China is "ready and capable of defending its national interest and hopes both sides will remain rational."

China said Friday that it planned to raise tariffs on a $3 billion list of U.S. goods, including pork, apples and steel pipes in response to the steel and aluminum duties earlier announced by Trump.

The Chinese move appeared to be a warning shot aimed at increasing domestic U.S. pressure on Trump by making clear which exporters, including farm areas that voted for the president in 2016, might be hurt.

On Friday, American farmers from hog producers in Iowa to apple growers in Washington state and winemakers in California expressed deep disappointment over being put in the middle of a potential trade war with China by the president many of them helped elect.

China's Commerce Ministry said Beijing was considering a tariff increase of 25 per cent on pork and aluminum scrap, mirroring Trump's 25 per cent charge on steel. A second list of goods, including wine, apples, ethanol and stainless steel pipe, would be charged 15 per cent, mirroring Trump's tariff hike on aluminum.

Overall, the nation's farmers shipped nearly $20 billion of goods to China in 2017. The American pork industry sent $1.1 billion in products, making China the No. 3 market for U.S. pork.

"No one wins in these tit-for-tat trade disputes, least of all the farmers and the consumers," said National Pork Producers Council President Jim Heimerl, a pig farmer from Johnstown, Ohio.

The U.S. has complained for years about China's sharp-elbowed trading practices, accusing it of pirating trade secrets, manipulating its currency, forcing foreign companies to hand over technology, and flooding world markets with cheap steel and aluminum that drive down prices and put U.S. manufacturers out of business.

The spiralling trade dispute between the world's two largest economies has spurred concerns among companies and investors that global commerce could be depressed.Photo: Vernon Fire Rescue Vernon Fire Rescue were called to a suspicious blaze early Saturday morning that damaged three vehicles.

Vernon Fire Rescue were called to a suspicious blaze early Saturday morning that damaged three vehicles.

Interim Fire Chief David Lind said the call came in at 5:30 a.m.

When crews arrived at The Strand in Okanagan Landing, they found three vehicles in flames.

It does appear one vehicle was ignited and the other two were in close proximity and caught fire as well, said Lind.

No one was injured and the matter has been passed on to the RCMP

remaining of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.Competitions

Chelsea launch photo competition with photographer Mel D. Cole to help promote tolerance in football and society

Chelsea FC is committed to using the power of football to promote greater tolerance, unity and inclusion in society. As part of the No to Hate initiative, funded by club owner Roman Abramovich, Chelsea is launching a photo competition inviting fans worldwide to help demonstrate how sport can be a unifying force in society.But I was struck Wednesday night at Northlight by how many ladies much closer in age to Mag than to Maureen were grinning from ear to ear as Frys Maureen festered and simmered, plotting her escape from the old monster who has sucked away any chance of happiness. When the play turned violent  it is McDonagh, after all  my row was filled with a plethora of throaty senior chucklers. A touch of reverse catharsis, perhaps. Or a bit of frank relief that the saccharine way in which the interplay of carer and caregiver usually is discussed gets chopped up here with a poker. Ill say this: Nobody seemed shocked."When we first started this, we thought we'll just match beds and heads, so you have three kids and a home with three beds? Put them together, and you've got a match," Stewart said. "But as I started going through people's social media pages to verify that they are who they say they are, I thought, 'Well, this person has two teenagers so I don't just want them in a place that has two beds. I want them in a place that actually has a teenager at home for them to bond with and relate to.' I wanted to make this event memorable not just for what happens down on Pennsylvania Avenue, but for the whole experience, and that includes where they're staying."Peter Strazzabosco, a spokesman for the citys Department of Planning and Development, said the archaeologists had not identified any camel or reindeer bones, but were referring to published accounts about the deaths of exotic animals that were among the expositions attractions. At the fairs Midway, home of the first Ferris wheel and built on what is now the Midway Plaisance, the Streets of Cairo concession offered camel rides (as well as the gyrations of the belly dancer Little Egypt) while the Lapland Village, one of several ethnograhic attractions, displayed reindeer.Crowds surrounding the park were so thick that when it came time for demonstrators to march along Washington Avenue and back up Lake Street in the West Loop, a line of volunteers had to clear the streets one block at a time in order to allow them a path. The sight brought a proud smile to the face of Isabel Paredes, 17-year-old senior at Plainfield South High School and one of the March for Our Lives Chicago organizers who had been planning the event for weeks.In a span of three days this month, three robberies were reported within blocks of each other in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood, Chicago police said.A man was injured in an accidental shooting late Saturday in the Northwest Sides Avondale neighborhood, police said. The 65-year-old man was accidentally shot in the head by a man who was showing a gun to his friends around 9:20 p.m. in the 3400 block of North Kedzie Avenue, police said. He was taken to an area hospital in good condition. The owner of the gun did have a concealed carry permit, police said. Detectives were questioning the owner as the investigation into the shooting continued.In the homicide, Peggy Goodman, a woman in her late 60s, was shot and killed around 11:10 a.m. Friday in the first block of East 37th Place in the South Sides Bronzeville neighborhood, police said.We cannot let the memory of Decynthia die on I-90 and 25, Blalark said. We must protest this. This injustice shall not go unpunished. I am not talking about hate, I am talking about justice  or it might be my child next.Amtrak police found the bag at the station in the 200 block of South Canal Street just before 9:30 a.m. Friday, prosecutors said. Canine officers were called in and authorities discovered police SWAT patches inside, as well as a Greyhound ticket with Malailuas name on it, prosecutors said.In court, prosecutors described how Ceazer snatched away smartphones from four unwitting victims between Wednesday and Friday. Three of the thefts occurred in the Loop and one occurred on the South Side, just over a mile from his home.Pushing for the investigation were two former teaching pastors and the wife of a longtime president of the Willow Creek Association, a nonprofit organization related to the church. Some of those pressing for more scrutiny say the churchs prior investigation had shortcomings in their opinion and at least three leaders of the associations board resigned over what they believed was an insufficient inquiry.I had family members who died during the Holocaust, and I had family members who were rounded up by the Nazis in Lithuania in 1941 and taken out with their hands bound behind their backs and shot in the back of the head.Petition requirements are a lousy way to prevent the ballot from being cluttered with whimsical vanity candidates, but theyre the best way we have. In New Hampshire, where hopefuls merely had to pay a filing fee to be on the ballot, there were 37 such candidates who received fewer than 100 votes each in the states 2016 presidential primaries. And we dont want that."Making the age limit 21 has to decrease sales for everyone, but you realize these laws are to protect youth and their health, but people that want to smoke are going to do it anyway. It's the same old game," Walker said. "Kids go to college or whatever and ask someone of age to buy the stuff for them. You can't stop people from getting these products if they really want them.""My school has lots of safety protocols. But it's the schools that don't have the protection that I am concerned about," said Caldwell, of North Aurora. "I stand with the Parkland students and every shooting victim. There's an epidemic of violence in our country."Fink said her son was in his final year of law school when he again started using. Six months later, while in a halfway house with a Florida treatment center, two Naperville police officers knocked on her door, handed her and husband Russ a piece of paper that contained the name and phone number of a Florida detective, but offered no more information. Thinking their son had gotten in some kind of legal trouble, the couple called the number, only to be informed by the officer on the other end of the line that "we are investigating the death of Spencer Fink.""First and foremost, the Village of Buffalo Grove continues to mourn the loss of firefighter and paramedic Kevin Hauber," she said. "The village has the responsibility to be the stewards of the taxpayer dollars. Given that there is no precedent for the award of an enhanced pension for this type of cancer, it is not clear whether the pension board's decision today is consistent with the standards set forth in state law."The VanHoutans traveled overseas to identify scientists working on potential therapies to replace the missing enzyme that led to the disease. They pleaded with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for less stringent clinical trial requirements and lobbied Congress to allocate more money to rare disease research. They became leaders in the rare disease community, and organized fundraisers to raise more than $1.5 million to fuel the search for a Batten disease cure."As I walked out onto that courtyard (on March 14) it dawned on me that this is a generation that will fight back," she said. "We cannot go to school in fear.""There have been times when the prisoner will try to force his way past the officer right (after entering the booking area) because they notice that the (magnetic gate) is broke," one officer said. "Sometimes I still will fake it like it works. I take my key, put it in the thing and turn it to hide the fact because we all know it doesn't work."Werner said some of the veterans still have scars from war in the form of PTSD but are able to find great comfort in being around other veterans and being useful in working on the artifacts.As with the county's other construction projects  the Public Safety Complex and the new courthouse  the "best bids" were those received early in the year, and the bidding climate was "less favorable" in April and May, Tuminello said.Borrego Solar Farms, Inc., is seeking three special use permits for two parcels of farmland on Indiana Avenue in Washington Township and one in Manhattan Township at 27555 S. Gougar Road. All are about 20-acre sites that could be used to generate two megawatts of energy."While I understand that you (are) investigating these issues, I urge you to take any and all necessary action and to consider some important questions about AWL's standard of care, its management, and the regulatory approach to animal facilities like this," U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Western Springs, wrote in a March 13 letter to Illinois Department of Agriculture Director Raymond Poe and Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation Secretary Bryan Schneider.Jensen tells several officers gathered at the scene: If she does exit out of the vehicle, Im sure you guys have gone over this, well try to order her  to get on the ground. If she does end up brandishing the knife, running it at us, well go with the (rubber bullets). OK, and if it ends up being closer, if shes coming towards us, were going to try  the Taser then. Then well take other options, but well hopefully be able to get her out and walk back towards us and prone her out on the ground. I dont know how well her direction-following skills are going to be right now, though.Representatives from the organization that offers the honor were at the school to present it to Mitchell  who knew she had been nominated but not that she had won."I am proud the bill includes support for several programs I specifically requested," Schneider said in a statement. "I led my colleagues in calling for robust funding to address the opioid and mental health crises, support resources for local communities to address the health effects of climate change, and continue an important joint U.S.-Israel counter-tunnel defense initiative. I am pleased to see each of these measures included in the legislation, as well as a bipartisan proposal I introduced to help schools install panic buttons in classrooms."Videos

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos."In my experience women are not as confident or they just don't know what to do," whether it setting up a nondisclosure agreement, asking for professional assistance, or taking a risk, Carney said. "That training has to happen out of (the Naperville incubator).""We look to have everything similar  the order of the service is very similar to our main service, but with a cultural flavor. It is very much on par with how we do things in main services the message is all Christian," Cannon said. "The Indian community is leading and volunteering for the entire service.""We want to see the same security measures for our students that we see for our money," said one Valparaiso man, who declined to give his name. "We would like teachers and school administrators to have the ability to defend themselves and the students. We don't want to force them to carry a gun but we want them to have the option."Pueblo Chile & Frijoles Festival is back with a full celebration

Pueblo is set to host the fiery Pueblo Chile & Frijoles Festival Sept. 24-26 with chile roasting, live music, parading Chihuhuas and more.A direct flight between London and Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan province, was launched on Friday.





The maiden voyage of flight HU421, which took off from Changsha Huanghua International Airport at 13:15 Beijing time, landed at Heathrow Airport the same day around 17:00 local time. The return flight, with all seats sold out, will leave Heathrow late at night and arrive in Changsha the next day.





The Changsha-London route is serviced by a Boeing 787 Dreamliner three times a week -- on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.





This is Hainan Airlines' second nonstop service to Britain, following the rollout of the Beijing-Manchester service in June 2016.





Bao Qifa, chairman of Hainan Airlines, said, "We believe that the air bridge, which symbolizes the friendship between China and Britain, is bound to promote cultural exchanges and to deepen economic and trade cooperation between the two cities at each end of the route."





A spokesman of Hainan Airlines said that during following months, the busy Heathrow Airport will see two more new direct service from Chinese cities to London, as the Beijing Capital Airlines will launch its direct service between London and Qingdao on March 26 and the Tianjin Airlines' new service between London and Xi'an will start from May 9.





According to a report by the Manchester China Forum and Manchester Airport, since the direct flight between Beijing and Manchester was launched, exports from Northern England to China have almost tripled to 200 million pounds (283 million U.S. dollars) a month, and the amount spent by Chinese tourists in Manchester has doubled to 138 million pounds a year.





International carriers operate around 60 flights a week between Britain and China.



Chinese exporters are upset by a U.S. plan that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China, calling the move irrational and destructive.



U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a memorandum on the plan in a unilateral move that triggered a market sell-off.

Trump has directed U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to publish a list of proposed Chinese goods that could be subject to tariffs in 15 days, while the U.S. Treasury Department will have 60 days to propose restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States.

Some executives of Chinese companies told Xinhua that imposing tariffs might not drive U.S. orders out of China, but may instead cause a temporary shortage of certain commodities in the U.S. market, given that the world's largest economy is not omnipotent in manufacturing.

"It is just unbelievable. It will do no good to the United States," said a vice president of a leading Chinese TV set manufacturer, under condition of anonymity.

The company, based in south China's Guangdong Province, sold more than 4 million TV sets in the U.S. market in 2017.

The United States lacks a complete industrial chain for TV sets, and U.S. brands have their products manufactured in Asia, he said.

"The tariffs will lead to rising costs, which will probably be paid by U.S. consumers. The measure will harm the exporter without benefiting the importer."

An executive with Changhong, a home appliance manufacturer, said the move would force some small and medium-sized Chinese companies to halt sales in the United States.

"However, there are not many suppliers in some niche industries. The United States cannot easily find ideal alternatives in a short time," he said.

"If subject to the tariffs, we will hike prices, and tell U.S. customers that they have to pay more because of their president's tariff decision," said a foreign business chief with a Guangdong-based home appliance company.

The manufacturer exports products worth around 10 million U.S. dollars to the United States a year, both online and offline, accounting for 9 percent of its export volume.

Qi Tonggang, chairman of Qirun, a high-end equipment manufacturer based in east China's Zhejiang Province, worries his company will bear the brunt of the potential tariffs.

Qirun was in talks with a U.S. investment company that was considering selling the former's moisture separator reheater, a device that removes moisture from wet steam and reheats the steam, to Europe.

"I fear the cooperation will fail. I fear the products we have poured so much money into cannot find a buyer," Qi said.

The trade dispute may deal a hard blow to privately owned Chinese high-tech companies, which have not gained a firm foothold in the domestic market while being shackled in the overseas market, Qi said.

The executives said some U.S. companies have retreated or will recall their orders from China. However, the attempt to accelerate the process with a massive imposition of tariffs against China will only cause chaos and losses, they said.

"'Made in China' is too big to be replaced by one region," said Lin Yiqing, chairman of Qiloo, an east China company that exports shoes to the United States.

Lin estimated that at least a third of shoes sold in the United States would still come from China, because other manufacturers cannot provide more.

"Therefore, U.S. retailers and customers will be victims of the tariff plan," said Lin.

In a statement on potential tariffs against China in mid-March, U.S. Chamber President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said, "As we're starting to see, tariffs could lead to a destructive trade war with serious consequences for U.S. economic growth and job creation. The livelihood of America's consumers, businesses, farmers, and ranchers are at risk if the administration proceeds with this plan."

The U.S. memorandum is based on a Section 301 investigation into alleged Chinese intellectual property and technology transfer practices that was launched by the Trump administration in August 2017.

"We firmly oppose it. It is a typical unilateral and protectionist practice," said a spokesperson with China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC).

The spokesperson also reiterated China's stance of not wanting or fearing any trade wars. "We have confidence and capability in dealing with any challenges," he added.

The MOC urged the United States to "pause on the brink of a precipice" and make prudent decisions so as not to put bilateral trade relations in jeopardy.

"It is true that we are Chinese companies, but we supply American companies," said the executive with Changhong.

"We hope the United States keeps calm about China's development, which can benefit itself as well," he said.The United States has requested consultations with China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over alleged "unfair" technology practices, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said on Friday.

The USTR "filed a request for consultations with China at the WTO to address China's discriminatory technology licensing requirements," it said in a statement.

"These Chinese policies hurt innovators in the United States and worldwide by interfering with the ability of foreign technology holders to set market-based terms in licensing and other technology-related contracts," said the statement.

Consultations are the first step in the WTO dispute settlement process. If the United States and China are not able to reach a mutually agreed solution through consultations, the United States may request the establishment of a WTO dispute settlement panel to review the matter.

"Even though there're complaints by the Trump administration about how well the WTO works, there does seem to be some evidence that they also share the view that the WTO can be a place where these disputes can be resolved," Stephen Lamar, executive vice president of American Apparel and Footwear Association, told Xinhua, suggesting that the U.S. and Chinese governments could resolve trade disputes through the WTO and bilateral dialogues.

The request came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of Chinese imports, which fueled worries about a potential trade war and triggered market selloff.

China's Ministry of Commerce on Friday urged the United States to "pause on the brink of a precipice" and make prudent decisions so as not to put bilateral trade relations in jeopardy.

China will not sit idly watching its legitimate rights and interests being damaged under any circumstances, the ministry's spokesperson said, adding: "We have confidence and capability in dealing with any challenges."The Nepalese government is looking to strengthen their cooperation with China on the development of hydropower projects, Nepalese ambassador to China has said.

Leela Mani Paudyal, Nepalese ambassador to China, delivers his opening remarks in a seminar on investment opportunities in hydropower projects in Nepal held in Beijing on March 23. [Photo by Cui Can/China.org.cn]

A seminar on investment opportunities in hydropower projects in Nepal was held in Beijing on March. 23, drawing about 100 experts, officials and enterprisers from China and Nepal.

Leela Mani Paudyal, Nepalese ambassador to China, said in his opening remarks that Nepal has attached great importance to relations with China, and is looking forward to more concrete agreements with Chinese companies that are interested in Nepal's hydropower sector.

He also pointed out the huge potential that lies in Nepal's hydropower sector, saying that the current 800 MW hydroelectric projects in Nepal tap only 1 percent of the total potential capacity. "Our four major river systems and over 6,000 other rivers are capable of producing huge quantities of power with different capacities."

Barsha Man Pun, minister of the Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Ministry of Nepal, sent a message of support for both sides' aspirations to further develop hydropower projects in Nepal. He hoped that this seminar could shed light on China's financing and technical support for Nepal, especially in the field of hydroelectric generation and transmission.

In 2016, the Upper Marsyangdi-A Hydroelectic Project (50MW), the first China-invested power project in Nepal, developed by a China-Nepal joint venture company, started operations, giving a much-needed boost to the government's effort to ease its load shedding in winter.

In an effort to enable the Chinese entrepreneurs with a better understanding of Nepal's hydropower sector, Binod Prasad Acharya, minister (economic) of the Embassy of Nepal in China, elaborated on the prospects for investment in Nepal from the perspectives of the tax system, fiscal incentives, and major policies and regulations.

"As China's partner in the Belt and Road Initiative and the founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Nepal has deepened bilateral relations with China ever since. And I'm willing to see more Chinese companies invest in Nepal, benefiting the people of both sides in the future," Acharya said.Apple CEO Tim Cook, speaking at an economic summit panel Saturday in Beijing, called for "calm heads to prevail" as trade tensions intensify between the U.S. and China.

The Economic Summit of the annual China Development Forum convened at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on Mar. 24, hosting a delegation of global business leaders headed by Cook as well as Chinese government officials and company chiefs.

The potential for a trade war between the U.S. and China was a focus of discussion among panelists and attendees. On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum to impose tariffs on as much as US$60 billion of imports from China.

Answering a question on what advice he would give to Trump on trade relations with China, Cook said, "Countries that embrace openness, trade, diversity are the countries that do exceptional; and countries that don't, don't."

He continued, "My belief is that one plus one equals three. The pie gets larger [when we are] working together; it's not just a matter of carving it up between sides."

Cook spoke on a panel addressing challenges of global inequality, with BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, who echoed his sentiment on trade.

"The world needs a strong China and a strong U.S.," Fink said. "The world does not need a public fight in which we reduce mutual opportunities."

Nevertheless, voices among panelists also included calls for stronger retaliation against U.S. tariffs. On another panel, Lou Jiwei, chair of the National Council for Social Security Fund and China's former finance minister, said the country could impose tougher tariffs on U.S. imports, such as soybeans, automobiles and airplanes.

The Ministry of Commerce is considering 15 to 25 percent tariffs on a list of 128 American products that include pork, fruits and wine, according to a statement on the ministry's website. The ministry also stated that China will seek legal action against the U.S. tariffs through the World Trade Organization.

Former WTO Secretary-General Pascal Lamy, speaking at the summit's opening panel, lamented a "dangerous disconnect" between the global economy and trade policies.

"On the economy side, the world economy is doing well, better than the last 10 years," Lamy said. "On the side of politics, international tensions are high, political turbulences led to the Brexit vote and to the election of a nationalist president on the U.S. side."

"It would be a grave mistake to damage the system [of open trade], to destabilize the system, when there is a possibility to improve it," Lamy warned. "Protection [should be to] protect people, protect climate. Open science, open society, and open markets."You are here: China

China will raise the basic pension payments for retirees in 2018, the 14th year of increase.





From the beginning of this year, the average monthly payment for pensioners of enterprises, government agencies and public institutions has been lifted by 5 percent from the 2017 level, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said in a statement Friday.





The increase, set to benefit 114 million retirees across China, was lower than the 5.5-percent pension rise last year.





While an aging society has put increasing pressure on pensions, China has raised pensions for 14 years in a row.





The 5-percent increase in pensions outpaces the 1.6-percent growth in the consumer price index.



Construction of the Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL) is nearing completion and trial operations are due to start on April 1, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency.





Funded by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, the project has been designed and constructed by MTR Corporation. MTR is the operator of the Hong Kong subway system along with subway lines in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou.





During a ceremony on Friday to mark the completion of the main construction works, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the Hong Kong government will work to ensure the smooth operation of the XRL when the line opens in September.





The 26-kilometer-long line connects Hong Kong to the 25,000 kilometer national high-speed rail network. It will help consolidate Hong Kong's place as a regional transportation hub and is expected to open up economic opportunities.





A one-stop border checkpoint is planned for the starting point of the Hong Kong section of the XRL at West Kowloon Station. The checkpoint will serve commuters traveling between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong.



Sitting on the world's fourth largest natural gas reserves, Turkmenistan has finally kicked off the long-awaited TAPI pipeline project connecting Central Asia right down to South Asia via Afghanistan.





Consisting of four countries, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, the TAPI project has been pending since the 1990s as instability in Afghanistan made any crossover route impossible. Stretching over a distance of 1800 kilometres to supply 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas every year from the world's second largest gas field Galkynysh to Fazilka near Pakistan's border with northern India, TAPI serves to open up the rich energy reserves of Central Asia to the region and beyond to Eurasia.





Further down the road, it links up to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, one of the key corridors of the Belt and Road Initiative.





Inaugurated by Afghanistan's President Ghani, the land-breaking ceremony took place in Herat last week and was attended by Pakistan's Prime Minister Abbasi, Turkmenistan's President Berdymukhamedov and the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar, amid an exceptional air of bonhomie.





The laying of the Afghan section of the pipeline included a fibre-optic communication line on the same route, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power transmission line and the Serhetabat-Turgundi railroad, which were also commissioned on the same day.





Observing that the pipeline would give a powerful impetus to the economic development of the region, the Turkmen president said, "The construction of the TAPI gas pipeline, the start of an important phase of which we will give together with the leaders of other countries on February 23, and which will deliver Turkmen gas to the countries of Asia, will be inscribed in gold letters in the history of our independent neutral state."





Struck by chronic energy shortfalls, Afghanistan will benefit from 5 billion cubic meters of gas itself, while the rest is to be equally divided between Pakistan and India. Constructed by a consortium with Turkmen state concern Turkmengaz in the lead, it has been financed by the ADB and a $700 million loan has been allocated by the Islamic Development Bank, though on the whole, TAPI stands to cost $8 billion.





Advocating TAPI as a preferable alternative to the IPI-the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, the United States has also welcomed this project. Ostensibly having decided to set aside past issues with the Afghan Taliban, construction has already been initiated by the Afghan government even though the project traverses through hundreds of miles of Southern Afghanistan which is Taliban territory. Unexpectedly endorsing the venture as an important element of Afghanistan's infrastructure network and pledging to facilitate it, Taliban spokesman Yusuf Ahmadi has said, "We announce our cooperation in providing security for the project in areas under our control."





Confidence building measures like these is what war-weary Afghanistan particularly needs. Hoping for a speedy return to normalcy, Jelani Farhad, a government spokesman in Herat voiced his sentiments, "It's a golden day for Afghanistan today, it will help our economy and create thousands of jobs." Indeed, the economic prospects are very encouraging as nearly 30,000 jobs would be created for Afghan workers, while the pipeline could generate $500 million in toll and transit rights.





Diplomatically tying up the region, this project could stabilize Afghanistan as well as improve relations between India and Pakistan. Helping Pakistan meet nearly 20 percent of its natural gas requirements and approximately 10 percent of its energy needs, Pakistan's Prime Minister Khaqan Abbasi visualized its growth, "TAPI will lead from a gas pipeline into an energy and communication corridor," adding that it would also lead to development of rail and road links.





Eventually linking up with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor would sharply increase Central Asian connectivity, while the Gwadar port would prove the most efficient sea-link for Turkmenistan. Also providing India additional connectivity with Central Asia through Afghanistan, TAPI was well received by the Indian Minister for External Affairs M.J. Akbar as "a symbol of our goals" and "a new page in cooperation" between the four nations.





Often called the "peace pipeline," the TAPI may hold the key to bringing the region closer for mutual benefits instead of bickering and engaging in hostilities, even though it is situated in a very tense, friction-ridden neighborhood. Having identical aims to those of the Belt and Road Initiative, this is the progress the world needs in this geo-economic century.





Sabena Siddiqui (Twitter: @sabena_siddiqi) is a foreign affairs journalist and lawyer based in Pakistan.





Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.



 Flash

Verified Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla disappeared on Friday, minutes after Elon Musk responded to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down his rocket company SpaceX, electric carmaker Tesla and his own official pages in support of the #deletefacebook movement.

"What's Facebook?" Musk on Friday morning sarcastically replied to a tweet from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton urging his followers to delete Facebook by tweeting "It is time."

Musk, CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla, Inc, replied to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down the SpaceX, Tesla and Musk official pages in support of the #deletefacebook movement by saying "I didn't realize there was one. Will do."

Less than half an hour, the verified Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla, Inc are no longer accessible. Prior to the deletion, both the two pages had over 2.6 million Likes and Follows, and super high engagement rates.

The boycott "#deletefacebook" started after U.S. and British media reported that the data of more than 50 million Facebook users were inappropriately used by a British data analysis company, Cambridge Analytica, in activities allegedly connected with U.S. President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Wednesday that his company had made mistakes in a data leak that caused grave concern about user privacy possibly abused for political purposes. Flash

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he has signed the 1.3 trillion-U.S. dollar spending bill hours after he threatened to veto it.

"As a matter of a national security, I've signed this omnibus budget bill," Trump said at a press conference on Friday.

However, he added that "there were a lot of things I'm unhappy about in this bill."

In a tweet earlier Friday, Trump threatened that he was considering to veto the massive spending bill which will fund the federal government through Sept. 30.

Trump argued in the tweet that 800,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program "have been totally abandoned by Democrats" and his long-promised border wall "is not fully funded."

The 1.3-trillion-dollar spending bill was approved by the House of Representatives on Thursday and by the Senate early Friday morning. It helps to avert a government shutdown as the current funding expires midnight.

The spending package allows big spending increases for defense and domestic programs, while adding money for infrastructure projects, veterans and measures to combat the opioid crisis, among other programs.

It also includes measures meant to strengthen gun sale background checks and improve school safety.

But the bill also provides 1.6 billion dollars -- far short of what the Trump administration has sought -- for border security measures, including construction of a border wall with Mexico.

"I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again," Trump said at the press conference.

Trump has been frustrated that Congress has not provided enough funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Trump's campaign promises.



No, he didn't. The little gray cells are still mostly reliable. See - http://www.ameu.org/getattachment/51ee4866-95c1-4603-b0dd-e16d2d49fcbc/The-Day-FDR-Met-Saudi-Arabia-Ibn-Saud.aspx "Over the waters of Egypt's Great Bitter Lake, an American destroyer, the USS Murphy, steamed toward a rendezvous with history. On a deck covered with colorful carpets and shaded by an enormous tent of brown canvas, a large black-bearded man in Arab robes, his headdress bound with golden cords, was seated on a gilded throne. Around him stood an entourage of fierce-looking, darkskinned barefoot men in similar attire, each with a sword or dagger bound to his waist by a gold-encrusted belt.It was, one American witness said, "a spectacle out of the ancient past on the deck of a modern man-of-war."..."Abdul Aziz brought with him and which he insisted the American sailors share as his guests. Smith balked at the livestock, but the Arabs said they would not eat the frozen meat of the Murphy's stores. Eddy, ... "(My emphasis - more @ the URL - very interesting reading)I don't know what the status implications were of King Abdul Aziz possibly eating goat while in diplomatic negotiations. I suspect that he wasn't having any. As I recall, the sheep were slaughtered on the spot, the blood & offal pressure-hosed off the deck.This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:Watching the preliminary proceedings in a murder case and enjoying an extensive behind-the-scenes look at the Court of Final Appeal were just two of the highlights for Law students in Hong Kong with #DMUglobal.

The second-year De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) students were shown around the imposing 20-storey High Court building before watching 30 minutes of the hearing.

They then headed to the nearby Court of Final Appeal to meet Mr Registrar Kwang, one of the highest court judges in Hong Kong, who gave them an exclusive insight into its history, architecture and day-to-day work with a personal tour unavailable to the public.

This was followed by a reception back at the High Court with the Young Barristers of the Hong Kong Bar Association, where they were presented with gifts, found out more about legal practice in the territory and could take advantage of what became a fantastic networking opportunity.

Law student James Solanki said: We got a chance to examine how the Hong Kong legal system has been affected by our British constitutional laws, and it really helped us to see and understand both the similarities and the differences. #DMUglobal is a fantastic opportunity to really interact with individuals you wouldnt usually interact with. It also allows students, like myself, whove never travelled by themselves, to take that first leap forward to explore the world as part of your degree course.

RELATED NEWS

Business students taking stock on exhilarating first day in Hong Kong

Morning to remember at the Post for Journalism students in Hong Kong

#DMUworks heads to China for first-ever trip

Marija Baltrusyte, an international student from Lithuania, said one of the main reasons she applied to DMU was its international experience programme: Ive already been on a #DMUglobal trip to Canada and we went to visit a court there, so its very exciting to compare Hong Kong with that and also the UK. Trips like this widen your perspective as you see how different systems approach the same things. I think it is very important to see the world to understand it  and its people - better.

Kaisha Wilson, from Bermuda, said: Its good to have an open mind about how different legal systems work  you never know where you might find yourself living or working some day. Thats why I also really enjoyed the #DMUworks launch in Hong Kong, because we got a chance to speak with alumni. It was really inspiring that they had graduated and are now here. And it was good to see the university stays in contact  they dont forget about you when youre gone.

Louise Neilson, the senior DMU Law lecturer and barrister who helped organise the trip, said: Today has been even better than we had hoped and we would like to thank Mr Registrar Kwang for making it so special. The Hong Kong legal system is complex. It obviously has a history that is embedded within the English one but it is now moving forward in a more Eastern way. This visit is a great opportunity to marry the two cultures together. Also, our students may well find themselves in this system in the future, because a lot of British lawyers do come out to work here.In 2020, we were the church on our heels. A global pandemic shut down much of our world. But the church has been on the move since it was birthed; it will continue to be on the move until God makes all things new.The magic returns; the strains of our music will once more ring forth. Consortium Aurora Borealis is back in action after the silence imposed on so many arts organizations by COVID-19.We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message.AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron man pleaded guilty to drug charges Friday after he was found to have several grams of carfentanil, prosecutors said.

Da'Nico D. Geter, 27, entered the plea to using a firearm while having nearly a half-pound of carfentanil, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office of the Northern District of Ohio news release.

Authorities said the charges carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison.

Geter and was arrested on Sept. 7, 2017 by the Akron Police Department and Akron Police Narcotics Unit. He was found with the drugs and a Springfield Armory .45-caliber pistol and ammunition, prosecutors said.

Carfentanil is an analog of -- but significantly more powerful than -- the opioid fentanyl and is used in veterinary practice to immobilize large animals. It is the most powerful opioid that is sold commercially. The drug has been linked to hundreds of fatal overdoses across Ohio.

To comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments page.CLEVELAND, Ohio - The state wants to hear what you think on Tuesday night about its new vision for what schools should aim to accomplish with students.

Ohio's new "strategic plan" to guide schools released earlier this month focuses less on tests than schools do today. It also treats teaching emotional health, critical reasoning and how to be an "engaged, culturally aware and contributing member of society" as equal to teaching basics like English and math.

"Every student is different, every student is individual and we as an education system have the capability to deal with that individuality," State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria said at a recent public feedback session in Canton.

Cuyahoga County residents have their turn to voice their opinions Tuesday in the seventh of 13 sessions that DeMaria and the Ohio Department of Education have scheduled across the state.

The session will be from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday, March 27 at the Educational Service Center of Cuyahoga County, 6393 Oak Tree Blvd., Independence. Click here to register or for more information.

DeMaria will offer an introduction and short slideshow on the plan, then attendees will spend 90 minutes gathered around tables discussing it in small groups.

More than 300 people - more than half of them teachers or school administrators - have already registered for the event here, said Lisa Gray of Philanthropy Ohio, which is helping organize the event.

That's many more than in hearings so far in rural counties and the 150 or so in Canton last week, though sessions won't take place in Cincinnati or Columbus until next month.

Click here for news coverage of the session in Canton, a separate session in Defiance and the feedback session in Portsmouth.

The full plan below is still a draft that can be revised after all of the hearings, the board and DeMaria say.

Highlights include:

- Considering technology skills as basic and foundational to success as English and math

- Making the ability to reason critically or have social and emotional skills equal as well

- Holding earning job skills as equal to going to college as its "over-arching goal"

That goal states that the state should:

"Annually increase the percentage of Ohio's high school graduates who, within one year of graduation, are:

* Enrolled and succeeding in a post-high school learning experience, including an adult career technical education program, an apprenticeship and/or a two-year or four-year college program (15 semester hours); or

* Serving in a military branch; or

* Earning a living wage."WASHINGTON, D. C. - President Donald Trump will visit Richfield, Ohio on Thursday, March 29 to discuss his infrastructure initiatives, White House officials said Friday.

Trump released an infrastructure plan in February that aims to trigger development by using $200 billion in federal money to lure $1.5 trillion in investments from state and local governments, as well as private companies.

His plan also calls for shortening and simplifying the approval process for infrastructure projects.

"It will speed the permit approval process from 10 years to 2 years, and maybe even to 1 year," Trump said at the time. "Because when we give U.S. governors and mayors, and people representing your great states -- when we give you money and you can't get your approvals, I guess we're going to have to take that money back, or you're not going to build."

He called it a "commonsense and bipartisan plan that every member of Congress should support."

"I look forward to working with them, and we're going to get the American people roads that are fixed and bridges that are fixed," he continued. "And if for any reason they don't want to support it, hey, that's going to be up to them."

Democrats said his plan would increase the burden on cities and states and eliminate clean air and water protections that keep consumers safe.

"After a full year of empty boasts, the President has finally unveiled a puny infrastructure scam that fully fails to meet the need in America's communities," said a statement from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Thousands of people congregated at Public Square in Cleveland on Saturday afternoon for a March for our Lives rally, demanding lawmakers take action on gun reform in the wake of mass shootings and gun violence that have ravaged the country.

The March for our Lives Cleveland rally was one of hundreds being held worldwide to join together trying to bring change in gun laws. Locally, Akron, Avon Lake and Medina also participated. The main march in Washington, D.C., was led by survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting that left 17 dead in February. Communities across the country marched along with Washington.

Parents, grandparents, students, teachers and many others held signs voicing their demands and opinions and blanketed Public Square. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish, student organizers of the march, activists and a mother of a student who witnessed the Parkland, Fla., shooting spoke during the rally.

You can listen to their remarks, rally participants' opinions and see the scene of the rally in the video at the top of this post and another one here below.

Watch as more than a thousand demonstrate at March For Our Lives rally at Public Square Posted by cleveland.com on Saturday, March 24, 2018

From there, the crowd flooded the streets of Cleveland, demanding change and shouting chants.

School shootings are at the forefront as students victimized by these heinous acts or students who are living in fear are speaking out and demanding the government start making real change.

A month after the Parkland shooting, survivors joined tens of thousands of students across the United States by walking out of school for 17 minutes earlier this month. The walkout was in response to Congress' lack of action against gun violence.

Cleveland's march and rally were organized by the following students: Grace Kelley, a 17-year-old student at St. Joseph Academy in Cleveland; Jane Roche, 17, from St. Joseph; Kevin LaMonica, 17, from Shaker Heights; Pranav Iyer, 18, from Solon; Milla Costa, 17, from Shaker Heights; and Sam Haog, 18, of St. Ignatius in Cleveland.

Everyone can't sit by and let this keep happening, Kelley said during the rally.

"The government hasn't done anything about it," she said. "Someone has to."

When she heard about the national movement, she and her fellow organizers decided to follow suit and rally together in Cleveland.

"How many more lives have to be taken?" she said. "I can't keep watching this. I can't keep living in fear when I go to school. We want more effective and comprehensive gun laws passed, that includes banning assault weapons, raising the age (to buy guns), expanding background checks. You know, basic stuff that should have already been in place."

Watching videos of the Parkland shooting made Roche realize "enough is enough" and real change needs to come soon.

"The way that the Parkland students stood up for change, I think that really inspired me," she said.

Roche wants to see stricter gun regulations and doesn't want to fear going to school. Government needs to use common sense when it comes to gun laws, she said.

Mentor High School student Eliana Taub has been passionate about stricter gun laws since the Chardon shooting in 2012.

"I want my generation to be the face of change for this cause," she said. "This movement is really being headed by my generation. I want congress to pass legislation for gun control. I believe my life matters more than guns."

Ariana Kocab, also a student at Mentor, said she's scared of going to school.

"I don't understand why I have to watch my back," she said. "I want stricter gun laws. This (gun violence) is not good for our country."

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comments section.WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sure, it would have been easier for the hundreds of Ohioans who protested gun violence in the nation's capitol on Saturday to attend some of the sister gun control rallies in Cleveland, and other cities closer to home.

But Washington, D.C., is where the nation's laws are passed. It's across the Potomac River from the National Rifle Association's headquarters in suburban Virginia. And it's where students from Parkland, Fla., -- where a gunman killed 17 people in February -- gathered to decry "public servants who only serve the gun lobby," as Parkland's David Hogg put it during the D.C. event.

Students from Lakewood High, Columbus, and other Ohio towns joined hundreds of thousands of people from all over the U.S. on Pennsylvania Avenue to hear speeches from the Parkland students and other gun violence victims, and join in chants of "Vote them Out" and "Enough is Enough."

Lakewood students at March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C. 23 Gallery: Lakewood students at March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C.

They also demanded changes in the law, including a ban on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and closure of a loophole that lets people buy firearms online or at gun shows without background checks.

"I want someone to hear it from a teen," 16-year-old Arieon Mackey of Columbus said as she showed off a sign she made for the rally. "We're tired of being gunned down. We need this to stop."

"I'm here because I want the leaders of this nation to see that we have the power to save students' lives," added 10-year-old Xavier Thompson of Columbus.

"We don't want to die in school and we don't want other kids dying in school," said Lakewood senior Emelia Oravetz. " We're here to show our lawmakers that we're serious about this issue and they better fix it or we're going to vote them out."

Oravetz's Lakewood group raised roughly $6,000 in less than a week to bring 52 people to the rally. They drove overnight in a bus from Ohio and arrived at a Hard Rock Cafe in Washington, where breakfast awaited. While there, they made protest signs before heading to the rally.

In Washington D.C. with Lakewood High School students at March for our Lives demonstration. Posted by cleveland.com on Saturday, March 24, 2018

The streets were too packed for them to make it onto Pennsylvania Avenue itself, or get anywhere near the stage where the Parkland students gave speeches and artists including Demi Lovato and Lin-Manuel Miranda performed.

They found a spot to watch the event from a grove of magnolia trees across Pennsylvania Avenue from the Justice Department, where the proceedings could be seen on a giant TV screen in the distance if nobody's head got in the way.

They ate Cheetos and granola bars as they waited for the speeches to start. A few sang along to familiar songs that came across the public address system, like "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers, and "TiK ToK" by Ke$ha.

They cheered as Parkland student Delaney Tarr said, "The pressure is on for every person in power ... We know what we want, we know how to get it and we are not waiting any longer."

As they made their way though the throng in search of members of the group who became separated in the crowds, they agreed the long trip to Washington was worth it.

"I'm really impressed by how well everyone spoke and how well they stayed strictly on the issue of gun control," said Lakewood junior Era Bakia.

"It was worth it to meet so many people who have the view that we do," added Alara Firman, a home schooled high-school sophomore from Newark, Ohio. "We need stricter gun restrictions. The way things are now, too many people with mental problems can buy them."CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A woman found dead in a garbage can at an abandoned Cleveland home was identified Friday as a Cleveland Heights mother who has been missing for a month.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner said the office identified Miriam Johnson, 31, through fingerprints and family members.

Johnson's death is being investigated as a suspected homicide, but police and the medical examiner have not yet said how Johnson died. An autopsy was scheduled for Friday, the medical examiner's office said.

No arrests have been made in the case.

Police about noon on Thursday were called to a home on Chamberlain Avenue in the city's Fairfax neighborhood after someone found the body, according to police.

Officers found the body, taped off the home and called for homicide detectives, who are investigating the case, according to police reports.

The home was boarded up after the discovery.

A neighborhood resident, Allison Tate, said drug activity and gunfire is common at the abandoned home.

Cleveland Heights police said Johnson is a mother of four who has been missing since Feb. 25. Police at the time said she was believed to be in danger and were searching for her children's father, who may have held her against her will for some time.

Cleveland Heights Police Chief Annette Mecklenberg said Friday investigators have been tracking leads on the case since Johnson was reported missing on March 6. She said detectives have contacted everyone that Johnson knows, except for the father of her children, Yaphet Bradley.

Johnson has been the victim of violence at the hands of Bradley at least three times since 2010, according to court records.

In 2012, he broke into her home, beat her unconscious and urinated on her. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was sentenced to another 18 months in 2010 for two domestic violence cases against Johnson, including one case in which he dragged her into a home and assaulted her.

Bradley is not considered a suspect in her disappearance or death, Mecklenberg said. She said investigators want to talk to him to see if he had any contact with her after Feb. 25.

Mecklenberg said her detectives will continue investigating the case, along with Cleveland police's homicide detectives.

Cleveland Heights police on Thursday visited the crime scene of a second dead body found in Cleveland that day looking for Johnson. That death, however, is a suspected drug overdose.

Johnson's mother reported her missing March 6. She last saw her Feb. 25 after dropping her off at her Cleveland Heights home, Johnson's sister, Sarah Johnson said.

"She had never really gone without contacting us before," Sarah Johnson said. "That's why we filed the missing person's report. It wasn't like her not to speak to any of us."

Sarah Johnson said her sister had four children--ages 13, 10 and 7-year-old twins. She said it's been difficult on the family in the month since she went missing, especially with trying to talk to her children about why their mother wasn't around.

"It was very stressful," Sarah Johnson said. "I think everyone is in shock right now."

Sarah Johnson said her sister was one of six siblings who grew up in Cleveland Heights. She said her sister graduated from Heights High School in 2005 and worked as a server and food preparer at the Map Room in downtown Cleveland.

"She was very funny, very charismatic," Sarah Johnson said. "She was just very fun to be around. She loved her family."

To comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments page.CLEVELAND, Ohio - The name may not be instantly recognizable, but you probably know his work.

Perhaps you've seen Jeffrey DeMunn as the prosecutor in the opening of "The Shawshank Redemption," as Dale Horvath in the early seasons of "The Walking Dead," as serial killer Andrei Chikatilo in the acclaimed cable movie "Citizen X," as well-connected power player Chuck Rhoades Sr. on Showtime's "Billions."

DeMunn, who grew up in Buffalo, New York, has established a reputation as one of Hollywood's most versatile and reliable team players. And, after being a featured player on "Billions" for two seasons, he becomes a full-fledged member of the team for the show's third season, which begins at 10 p.m. Sunday, March 25. With this episode, he is promoted to series regular.

"It's an amazing company," DeMunn said during a telephone interview. "I tell you, during the table reads for this show, I just sit there taking it in. We have a table read with each new script, and I just look at all that talent sitting around that table and think about how fortunate I am."

That's not false modesty. That's the response of a working actor grateful for good work. That's a team player.

"That's why I love acting," DeMunn said. "I had no desire to be the center of anyone's attention. When I went to college, I was picturing being part of a group of people trying to do the impossible. I really didn't find that in education, but when I discovered the theater, there it was. It was a group of people working toward a common goal, trying to do the impossible. I said, 'I'm home. This is it.' "

And, right now, "Billions" sure feels like home. The New York drama puts the focus on the intense, often-ruthless rivalry between U.S. Attorney Charles "Chuck" Rhoades Jr. (Paul Giamatti) and billionaire hedge fund manager Robert "Bobby Axe" Axelrod (Damian Lewis). Each is determined to destroy the other.

It's never easy to know who the good guys are in "Billions," a high-stakes Manhattan chess match played on a board shaded with ambiguity. The relationships are difficult, to say the least, and that goes for the father-son dynamics navigated by Chuck Rhoades Sr. and Jr.

"I just love working with Paul," DeMunn said. "I think we had done a reading for a play many years ago, but we didn't know each other. We really met on this and it was love at first sight. We get the scripts, look around, and both pinch ourselves."

Also in the regular cast are Maggie Siff, Malin Ackerman, Toby Leonard Moore and David Costabile. Joining the show as a guest player is DeMunn's "Shawshank" co-star Clancy Brown, who plays new Attorney General Waylon "Jock" Jeffcoat. Executive producers Brian Koppelman and David Levien return as show runners.

"When I went in and met Brian and David, I immediately got them," DeMunn said. "In the process of that audition, it kind of clicked. It felt right. It felt good.

"I'm not terribly good at reading a script and immediately responding to what's in it, but I am good at reading people. And that's what I responded to. Now I'm responding to the writing, avidly reading each script. It's such muscular, strong writing, and it feels like everything has fallen in place this season."

Trust has meant a lot to DeMunn, 70, throughout his career. It led to a long, continuing association with writer-director Frank Darabont. That started with the 1988 remake of "The Blob."

"That came out of left field," DeMunn said. "Frank was a writer on 'The Blob.' They suddenly needed to replace someone, and I really needed a job. I got there, had a blast and thought, 'Well, that's that!' Then, a few years later, I got a call out of the blue to do 'Shawshank.' "

DeMunn has the first actual lines of dialogue in "The Shawshank Redemption," based on a Stephen King story and filmed in Mansfield in 1993. He plays the prosecutor who spells out the murder case against banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins).

"We filmed in an actual Ohio courthouse, and I think we did it in a day," DeMunn said. "We toured the old prison that was used in the movie. And we toured the new prison, which gave me religion. I resolved at that moment not to even roll through a stop sign."

Darabont also used DeMunn in his film versions of King's "The Green Mile" and "The Mist," as well as the Jim Carrey comedy "The Majestic."

"I immediately took to Frank and liked him and trusted him," DeMunn said. "And I think he trusted me."

In 2010, DeMunn got a call from Darabont, who was the executive producer in charge of an AMC horror series called "The Walking Dead": "I was doing a play down in Texas and Frank called and said, 'Hey, you want to come to Atlanta and kill zombies?' I didn't have to think about it. It was Frank. I knew it was going to be quality.

"The writing in the beginning was just amazing, as was that original cast. You can't talk about 'The Walking Dead' without talking about the extreme heat. I was always grateful for Dale's hat, by the way. It was serious heat and we were working all day. The heat had a way of uniting us all, cast and crew. You kept an eye on your friends under those conditions."

DeMunn's enthusiasm for "The Walking Dead" died the day in July 2011 that AMC fired Darabont as show runner.

"Dale's death was my decision," DeMunn said. "I was furious about how Frank was pushed out of the show. I spent a week not being able to take a full breath. And then I realized, 'Oh, I can quit.' So I called them and said, 'It's a zombie show. Kill me. I don't want to do this anymore.' It was an immense relief to me."

Not long after "The Shawshank Redemption" was released in 1994, viewers saw DeMunn in a totally different role, as Chikatilo, the Russian serial killer known as the Butcher of Rostov. His performance in "Citizen X" earned him an Emmy nomination.

"That was quite an experience," DeMunn said. "We filmed in Budapest, and it was horrible living with that character. That character lingered with me for weeks after it was over. It took me about a month to draw a full breath again. It was a long time getting over."

The breathing is easier on "Billions," but it did take a couple of scenes for DeMunn to find the right character for Chuck Rhoades Sr.

"I felt like I was wearing someone else's clothes at first," he said. "I felt like I was pretending. But during the pilot, we were shooting this little scene, and Brian and David made it clear there was something they wanted and I wasn't giving them. And finally, they saw it. And that's when the lightbulb went off for me. Something clicked on that take, and I've been holding on to that for dear life ever since.

"I don't know what he'd do in absolutely every situation, but I believe have a certain amount of knowledge about him and understanding of him. And that's fun to play -- great fun."

PREVIEW

Billions

What: The drama begins its third season.

When: 10 p.m. Sunday, March 25.

Where: ShowtimeWESTLAKE, Ohio -- Drunken driving, Columbia Road: A concerned driver called police about 2:10 a.m. on March 17 to report that they were stopped behind another vehicle at the traffic light at Columbia and Rose roads.

The other driver appeared to be passed out behind the wheel and sat through several cycles of the traffic signal. Officers woke up the 26-year-old Westlake woman, who immediately drove forward into a police cruiser parked in front of the suspect vehicle.

The driver did not respond to the officer's orders, so the officer broke out a window of the vehicle to physically take the keys out of the ignition. The woman had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on her breath and failed field sobriety testing.

Police arrested her for operating a vehicle while impaired, and she later tested almost 2.5 times the legal limit of alcohol on her breath. The vehicles sustained minor damage, and no one was seriously injured.

Impaired driving crash II, Center Ridge Road: An officer on routine patrol at 3:13 a.m. March 19 discovered a running vehicle with its lights on in a parking lot at the corner of Center Ridge and Clague roads.

Again, there was a driver passed out behind the wheel, and when officers awoke the 29-year-old Westlake man, he immediately drove into the front of a cruiser. Officers opened the car doors and grabbed the man to prevent him from attempting to drive away. The groggy driver believed he was in North Olmsted.

Police arrested him for operating a vehicle while impaired. He refused a blood test.

Drug overdose, Crocker Road: A restaurant employee called police March 20 to report a woman was passed out in their bathroom.

When officers and a rescue squad arrived, they administered Narcan to revive a 44-year-old Lorain woman. She admitted to overdosing on heroin. Officers also found marijuana in her possession, and she admitted to stealing clothes in her possession from stores at Crocker Park. An ambulance took the woman to a hospital for treatment.

Westlake police continue to investigate.

Stolen package, King James Parkway: A resident called police March 20 to report that someone had stolen a delivered package from the vestibule of her condominium building. Police have no leads.

Drug abuse, Crocker Park: A Westlake police detective about 2:50 p.m. March 21 witnessed a 26-year-old woman seated in a vehicle and applying a tourniquet to her arm to inject herself with a syringe.

Police searched her vehicle, finding numerous used syringes, a suspected crack pipe and other drug paraphernalia. The woman admitted she was a regular heroin abuser.

As officers were dealing with the woman, her husband, a 48-year-old man from Cleveland, approached to see what was happening. Police discovered he had an outstanding arrest warrant. They arrested him for the warrant and charged him with possession of drug abuse instruments.

Police arrested the woman and charged her with drug abuse, as well as possession of drug paraphernalia.

Receiving stolen property, Columbia Road: A woman called police about 7:20 p.m. March 21 to report that when she returned to her vehicle that was parked at the YMCA, she discovered that someone had broken a window on the passenger door and stolen her purse.

The victim and her fiance had been observant when leaving the vehicle and specifically described a suspicious van that had been parked nearby in the lot. Officers located the suspect vehicle leaving the area, and North Olmsted police assisted in stopping it.

Officers found the 54-year-old driver, from Stevens City, Va., was in possession of the stolen purse. He also had warrants for breaking into vehicles in North Carolina.

Police arrested the man and charged him with felony receiving stolen property because the purse had contained the victim's credit cards.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comments section.Where do you start with nearly 800 exhibitors gracing the in-cosmetics Global show floor? Why not head toward the newcomersthis April in Amsterdam, Cosmetics & Toiletries and Global Cosmetic Industry are proud to sponsor the new exhibitors. Here, we've highlighted those offering lab and consulting services, per their in-cosmetics profiles.

Agfa-Labs

Stand: L159

Agfa-Labs grants you access to more than a century of experience with innovative product development. Our specialty? Organic formulations and coatings in different material contexts. Our biggest assets? A multidisciplinary approach by highly trained staff in well-equipped labs. Several bright employees look forward to tackling your complex challenge with an industrial mindset. This means that your goals always come first.

AK Chem Tech Co. Ltd.

Stand: Q310

AK Chemtech strives to provide better products and services through continuous technological development and customer-satisfactory management in order to create the rich future that we dream of. AK Chemtech's products, which consider humans and the environment before anything else, will enrich our lives starting from the very nearest places. AK Chemtech was newly launched on July 1, 2009, integrating the surfactant business of the Aekyung Group chemical division, paint division and the inorganic material division. We strive to develop new business models in the chemical sector based on stable revenues, overseas market entry, and technology investment. AK Chemtech will be a company that values humans and the environment through endless research and development.

Charles River

Stand: J131

As a proven innovator in the development of dependable, robust testing solutions, Charles River continues to set the standard for managing microbial quality control. Weve purposefully built our portfolio to deliver the most comprehensive and flexible set of microbial solutions available from a single provider. Our three industry-leading brandsEndosafe, Accugenix and Celsiscreate an expansive, unified set of core competencies that meet the diverse testing needs of the bio-pharmaceutical, medical device, compound pharmacy, home, beauty, dairy, beverage and food industries. We are committed to being our clients partner of choice for managing microbial risk.

Cosmetology Institute

Stand: H46

The Cosmetology Institute is a union of high-level professionals that operate in the cosmetic, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical market all over Brazil. Our main objective is to provide knowledge to train health professionals through updated and top-level teaching methods. Professional qualifications through post-graduate, extension and distance courses are indisputably great differentiators, as demonstrated by higher-paying salaries and prominent positions within companies.

E&R B.V.

Stand: J160

E&R B.V. is a specialized company with almost 40 years of experience in the distribution and service of production and laboratory equipment for pharma, cosmetics, personal care and specialty chemical industry. Products include homogenizers, bead mill and particle size reduction equipment, mixing and agitating systems, emulsifying and suspending systems, ointment mills and general processing equipment. In cosmetics, we represent our partners, Netzsch Vakumix GmbH, from Weyhe, Germany, and Exakt Technologies, from Norderstedt, Germany. Next to our process equipment division, we offer a specialized raw material division distributing fluorescent pigments from Sterling & Swada, special effect pigments, environmentally friendly carbon black pigments and natural emulsifiers for the dispersion of pigments.

EquipNet

Stand: K148

EquipNet is a leader asset management company assisting manufacturers in buying and selling used equipment and machinery across multiple industries worldwide. We help clients identify, evaluate, track, redeploy and sell their surplus manufacturing equipment, allowing them to benefit from 25% to 75% off the costs of new equipment. EquipNet works with many leading companies, laboratories and academic institutions in the pharmaceutical, biotech, chemical confectionery, and consumer processing and packaging industries globally. Our main services include asset management, appraisal, worldwide logistics and warehousing, procurement, auctions and project management.

Eurochemicals SpA

Stand: Q147

Eurochemicals S.p.A. is a supplier of raw materials and specialty ingredients for chemical and cosmetics industries. Today, in an ever-changing global economy, Eurochemicals keeps its commitment to propose high quality products and services. The cosmetic division is increasingly focusing on the research of innovative raw materials and in line with the market trends. Eurochemicals makes every effort to satisfy the customer's needs, aspiring to be to become a reference company for the cosmetic industries.

Guangzhou PM Technology Co., Ltd.

Stand: J150

Guangzhou PM Technology Co., Ltd., is a company specializing in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, food and other mechanical equipment research and development. Its manufacturer, Gaoyou Sina Light Industrial Machinery Factory, has 25 years of R&D experience in manufacturing. In 1988, the founder, Daniel Wang, started in the cosmetics machinery industry's first-line production. In 2001, Gaoyou Sina Light Industrial Machinery Factory was officially founded in Jiangsu province and became the leading enterprise in the domestic cosmetics industrial with advanced technology, high quality and attentive service. In 2016, we reached a strategic cooperation with Spanish P&M Proximer company, formally founded P&M Group and also set up branches in Europe and the Asian-Pacific region.

Haloa Aina LLC

Stand: R36

Haloa Aina is a family owned business dedicated to restoring the native dryland forest. Before our care-taking, the forest was stressed from years of cattle grazing and wild sheep. By removing the damaged trees as outlined in our forest management plan, the land returned to pre-ranching condition. Our trees, Santalum paniculatum, are endemic to Hawaii Island (the Big Island) and are found only on our volcanic slopes at an elevation of 5,000 feet. Santalum paniculatum has impressive alpha and beta santalols compared with album, and is above the current ISO standard for santalol content. We are also the only USDA certified 100% organic seller of sandalwood oil and hydrosol that meets the international ISO standard. At this time we sell 100% Royal Hawaiian Sandalwood organic products.

InnoHealth Group

Stand: K109

InnoHealth is a R&D company located at Scientific Park in Madrid, Spain. The company has designed biological and bioinformatic platforms to provide a quality service to other companies in the dermocosmetic sector. InnoHealth offers several solutions to investigate the biological activities of cosmetic ingredients including low-cost screening assays. SimDerma is a multiparametric platform that includes 30 key dermocosmetic targets, a valuable comprehensive screening system for cosmetic ingredients (offered in collaboration with our partner, Vivacell GmbH). The biological data obtained in SimDerma is analyzed in the INCOS platform to identify synergistic activities between individual ingredients and to develop novel dermocosmetic products with superior activity for specific applications.

ORIL Industrie

Stand: K68

Your reliable partner in fine chemistry, offering: custom synthesis, extraction and purification (batch, continuous) of natural substances; high pressure (up to 250 bar) and high temperature (up to 300C) hydrogenation of oils; manufacturing and formulation capacities up to 12 m3; analytical support; active ingredients storage; and a worldwide supply chain.

Quality Products

Stand: R110

Quality Products (QT) is a specialist in natural raw materials. The key priority to QT is to offer quality natural raw materials. We have a wide catalog of vegetable oils and shortenings. We also offer different types of quality according to your needs; e.g., virgin or refined oil in conventional and biological qualities and formats in 5, 23, 40 and 190 kgs. We also offer one of the widest lines of pure essential oils, in bio or conventional quality, and we complete our offerings with 100% natural hydrolates obtained during the distillation process. Check our complete list of floral waters.

SCC Scientific Consulting Company GmbH

Stand: K154

SCC has actively supported the cosmetic industry and prepared more than 60 comprehensive safety dossiers for challenging substances. We offer the competence and capacity to meet all challenges of the EU Cosmetic Regulation (EC) No. 1223/2009. Our services include and are not limited to: assessment of cosmetic ingredients and formulations including toxicological profiles; data gap analysis; testing strategies and study monitoring; dossier preparation for active ingredients; (SCCS) submission and defence; cosmetic safety assessments including exposure and risk assessments; review of/advice on claim support and labeling; and task force/consortia participation.

SciLabware Limited

Stand: J161

SciLabware Limited, a DWK Life Sciences Company, is one of the worlds leading manufacturers of high quality glass vials, dropper bottles and assemblies and plastic bottles, providing primary packaging solutions to the personal care sector across the globe. Utilizing SciLabware's extensive manufacturing and development capabilities, our flexible product offering includes bespoke custom solutions, coupled with an extensive homeopathy range. Through our Wheaton and Azlon product brands, you are assured outstanding quality and service for all your primary packaging needs.

Shandong AWA Biopharm Co., Ltd.

Stand: R69

Specialist in manufacturing, selling and research hyaluronic acid; by virtue of mature production processes, stable quality products and professional sales teams, we have grown into a famous manufacturer and supplier of hyaluronic acid at home and abroad. AWA Biopharm possesses advanced technology and fermentation equipment, has established excellent quality control management, and has built up production with GMP standards. The annual production capacity of hyaluronic acid has reached more than 60 MT, including cosmetic grade and food grade. We can provide hyaluronic acid according to customers requirements for molecular weight, purity and packaging. Our products are largely exported to Japan, America and Europe.This weekend both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are fighting brutal political battles. But their guns are not trained on each other  in each case, they are at war with their own parties.

Corbyn is despised by the majority of his own MPs, many of whom would stop at nothing to be rid of him. Meanwhile, Mrs May faces an ever-more mutinous and well-organised internal opposition who fear the Brexit 17.4 million people voted for is gradually being watered down.

This Tory cabal believes this weeks transitional deal with the European Union is nothing more or less than a cynical compromise. Theresa Mays settlement with Brussels could leave Britain, in the words of Tory rebel Jacob Rees-Mogg, entrapped as a vassal of Brussels.

These rebels wonder if Mrs May has ever believed in Brexit, and worry that she wants to keep Britain as close to Brussels as she can.

PETER OBORNE explains Why Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are both at war... with their own parties

Their fears are being stoked by the dreadful decision from Amber Rudds Home Office to give the contract to manufacture the new British passport to France, rather than British workers in the north-east of England.

The Tory feud exploded into the open last week when Conservative Brexiteers refused point-blank to support a report by the powerful Commons committee scrutinising Britains withdrawal from the European Union. That report recommended an extension of the transition period  and consequently five anti-EU Tories and a DUP MP who sit on the committee refused to endorse it.

But three Tory MPs on the committee backed it. In my judgment, this split accurately reflects the balance of numbers inside the parliamentary Tory party itself. No less than one in three are backing a so-called soft deal with Brussels.

But approximately 70pc of Conservative MPs are opposed to such concessions.

This is lethally dangerous for Mrs May, because it means she can no longer rely on an overall Parliamentary majority  she barely has one when her party is entirely behind her  to push through her plans for Brexit.

Unfortunately for her, she is committed to winning the endorsement of Parliament for the deal she strikes with Brussels before Britain automatically leaves the EU on March 29 next year.

On the present timetable, that deal should be struck by September at the latest (though many close to the negotiations believe that is too optimistic). So on the basis of this weeks events, Mrs May is about to face the most dangerous period of her premiership  especially if she loses that vote.

Meanwhile, Mrs May faces an ever-more mutinous and well-organised internal opposition who fear the Brexit 17.4 million people voted for is gradually being watered down

Already, I am told, there is a growing rump of Tory MPs who are considering using the results of the local elections in May to attempt to weaken or even unseat her before the Brexit vote comes before the House. These MPs plan to move against her if  as predicted  the Conservatives suffer a series of damaging defeats in the local elections, including in the flagship London boroughs of Westminster and Wandsworth.

But Mrs Mays assured performance in the wake of the nerve agent attack in Salisbury  and the European coalition she is doggedly building against Russian aggression  should give those MPs pause for thought.

Her challenge to steer her party through the Brexit vote is mighty indeed. But Tory MPs with rebellious thoughts need only look across the floor of the Commons to be reminded of the grave threat from Jeremy Corbyn.

Fortunately for the prime minister she is not the only party leader in trouble. For Mr Corbyn is facing grave problems of his own.

There is no question that he has a civil war on his hands. Momentum, the activist movement compared by some to the hard-Left Militant Tendency of the Eighties, is already targeting moderate senior Labour figures in local government.

Many now expect that over the summer Momentum will de-select Labour MPs disloyal to Corbyn and replace them with figures from the Left-wing of the party.

I predict that if that happens, the rumbling internecine struggle within Labour will erupt into a political bloodbath. Corbyn himself will come under massive pressure to condemn Momentum activists, and the situation could spin out of control very quickly.

Do not rule out the possibility that the party itself may formally split between Corbynistas and the leaders opponents in the parliamentary party.

I could envisage a situation where Labour effectively has two leaders  one, possibly unofficially, in the Commons, and Corbyn supported by his fanatical fans across the country.

To sum up, British politics is about to enter a period of bitterness and chaos. Do not presume that the PMs survival is guaranteed. Do not rule out another general election. And do not rule out the break-up of the Labour Party.

The stakes have never been higher, or the future more uncertain, as we enter the most ruthless stage yet in the battle for Brexit.

Mr Corbyn is despised by the majority of his own MPs, many of whom would stop at nothing to be rid of him

Ten years ago, as the scale of the Iraq war calamity became apparent, I interviewed John Bolton, who had been George W. Bushs Ambassador to the UN.

Bolton refused to answer many of my questions, and I can understand why, given the shambles he advocated. Now he is back as President Trumps National Security Adviser. This is terrifying. Bolton is determined to make war on Iran, and we should all feel very afraid.

Theresa May should learn from Tony Blairs calamitous premiership and make clear that, unlike him, she will have nothing to do with American adventurism overseas.

IDS should be given universal credit

Lets salute the hero behind this weeks job figures, in which the number of people employed in Britain surged to 32.25million.

Step forward former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, whose remarkable and courageous reforms to the welfare system have done so much to transform Britain.

His new system of a single monthly payment  Universal Credit  has brought about a momentous and historic change in Britains attitude to work. His revolutionary programme swept aside the shambolic mess of tax credits and working benefits inherited from Labour. Universal Credit is simpler to understand and makes it easier to move from unemployment to work.

Iain Duncan Smith, pictured, is the hero behind this weeks job figures, according to Peter Oborne

Without doubt there have been glitches in its early implementation. But now the system is making massive strides. It has invigorated the job market and is on course to be available in every job centre by the end of the year. I am certain future political historians will view Universal Credit as the greatest achievement of David Camerons government, because it has obliged work-shy people to get into the job market. It has changed them financially, and morally, for the better.

It is eroding the culture of dependency by ending the squalor of long-term unemployment, courtesy of the Welfare State.

Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke is deaf in one ear. This means he often has to close his eyes when he is sitting in the Commons as he strains to make sure he hears what MPs are saying.

As a result, Labour supporters are mocking Mr Shelbrooke for taking a nap in the Commons. This is a blatant lie.

Never forget, it is Labour, not the Tories, who are the true nasty party!When asked some years ago about his vision for the future, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said with pious zeal: The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open and connected.

Last year he was even more evangelical, saying he wanted to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together . . . to build a global community that works for all of us . . . make a lot of things in the world better.

This week, we discovered in shocking detail precisely how Zuckerberg has been making the world better.

He turned a blind eye as tens of thousands of app developers hoovered up and sold the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users, data Zuckerberg had pledged to protect. The web giants takings as this went on between 2009 and 2015 soared by nearly 13 billion.

US Robber Barons look like angels compared to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, says AMANDA PLATELL

Well, the world certainly got better for Zuckerberg  he became a multi-billionaire.

He did so by unscrupulously milking Facebook customers, turning it into an internet platform where rules dont exist, where paedophiles ply their evil trade, terrorists recruit and instruct killers, fake news abounds, intimidation by trolls and malign forces is endemic, democracy is undermined and where, as we learned with growing horror this week, theres an arrogant disdain for privacy.

Along with Zuckerbergs unscrupulous greed, theres his cowardice. Following the data-mining scandal, he disappeared for days. Only when the scale of the calamity it had caused Facebook became apparent  35 billion wiped off the firms value in two days  did he make a statement.

He admitted there had been mistakes, that changes were needed  but still refused to apologise.

On top of greed and cowardice, we can add hypocrisy. Zuckerberg has relentlessly paraded his moral credentials, giving money to education projects, pledging billions to charities. He even called for a global tax on all workers to provide a universal basic income for all men and women.

Yet Facebook does all it can to shelter its billions from the taxman. In 2016 in the UK, it paid just 5.1 million corporation tax on a profit of 58.4 million, a rate of less than 10 per cent.

Zuckerberg makes the infamous U.S. Robber Barons of the 19th century, men such as oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, and transport king Cornelius Vanderbilt  who built fortunes often by questionable means  look like vicars at a tea party.

He is nothing more than a ruthless, money-grabbing, tax-avoiding impostor. There is only one weapon we have to fight back: Facebook customers can delete their accounts. Use it!

Along with Zuckerbergs unscrupulous greed, theres his cowardice. Following the data-mining scandal, he disappeared for days

Presumed dead in The Last Jedi, veteran actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, wants to return in the next Star Wars movie as a ghost. May the purse be with you, Mark.

Top answer from LeBlanc

As Joey in Friends, Matt LeBlanc made millions. His life then unravelled, he divorced, hit rock bottom  and now hes back presenting Top Gear and starring in the TV hit series Episodes.

Of his current success, he says: Its just a job. I turn up, do it and then Im off. The pay cheque is probably the most important part.

No whingeing, no emotional journeys. Joey couldnt have put it better.

Of his current success, Matt LeBlanc says: Its just a job. I turn up, do it and then Im off. The pay cheque is probably the most important part

A gorgeously giggling Duchess of Cambridge performed her final royal duty before taking time off to have her baby next month. Despite a horribly difficult early pregnancy and being bigger than she was with her first two children, Kate has recently been glowing. Good luck to her. I cant wait to see her with a beautiful new baby cradled in her arms.

The father of the British woman who died fighting with the Kurds in Syria accuses the Government of failing to help repatriate her body. Anna Campbell willingly sacrificed her life. Its a bit rich to expect the taxpayer to bring her home.

Three of Prince Harrys serious ex-girlfriends are believed to be among the 600 people invited to the wedding. Lucky he didnt invite all his exes or theyd need the Royal Albert Hall.

Exercise Klasses

Myleene Klass is promoting her new fitness DVD in the face of trolls who object to the 39-year-old mum of two constantly appearing in next to nothing, or indeed nothing, to promote herself.

Your opinions do not pay my mortgage, she retorts. Fair enough. My concern is how she expects anyone to ride an exercise bike  in six-inch stilettos.

Myleene Klass is promoting her new fitness DVD in the face of trolls who object to the 39-year-old mum of two constantly appearing in next to nothing, or indeed nothing, to promote herself

Ant McPartlin disproves the old adage that addicts only really hurt themselves. While I feel sadness for him, he abandoned his desolate wife who stood by him, devastated his mother who raised him single-handedly and has probably wrecked the career of his lifelong pal Dec Donnelly. Lets hope when he recovers, Ant realises its not all about him.

We always associate weight loss with betrayed women but Colin Firths first appearance since news of wife Livias affair broke tells the other side of adultery. Pride And Prejudices once handsome, wet-shirted Mr Darcy, looks grey and gaunt. The poor man has aged a decade in a few months.

Theyve broken up before, but former One Direction boy band member Zayn Malik has finally split from his model girlfriend Gigi Hadid. How do we know its really over this time? Zayn unfollowed Gigi on Instagram. It reminds me of when Phil Collins reportedly dumped his wife by fax in the Eighties. Proving that while technology changes, some blokes will NEVER know how to treat women.

Breaking with tradition, again, Kensington Palace reveals the right-on maker of Meghan and Harrys wedding cake. A royal observer said it has Meghan written all over it. The baker is a bohemian ex-market stall owner and the cake an ethically sourced lemon and elderflower sponge with buttercream to reflect the couples values of food provenance and sustainability. Pass the organic sick bag!

A Playboy Playmate claims she had a ten-month affair with Donald Trump, which he denies.

Karen McDougal, 47, says it was months after Melania gave birth to their son and she was hurt when he offered her money after they had sex on their first date.

McDougal told CNN she was not that kind of girl but says she did accept a New York apartment from him for the duration of their alleged affair.

Perhaps she was that kind of girl after all.

Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, 47, claims she had a ten-month affair with Donald Trump, which he denies

Ahead of Elton Johns three-year, 300-date farewell tour, Rod Stewart says The Rocket Mans Yellow Brick Road extravaganza stinks of selling tickets and is not rock n roll. When was elderly Elt last a rocker? I saw him at The O2 Arena a decade ago and he couldnt hit a note then  he was all crock n roll. Time to Let The Sun Go Down On You, Elton.

Westminster wars...

+ HOME Secretary Amber Rudd rubber-stamped the deal giving a French firm the contract to make Britains new blue passports. She didnt see the names of the bidders and chose on the recommendation of her civil servants. Such sensitive decisions should be made by our elected representatives, not unelected mandarins who have their own often anti-British, pro EU political agenda.

+ HARRIET Harman wants candidates for the next Labour leadership election to come from a women-only shortlists, just as there are calls within the party to allow men transitioning to women to be included on such lists. So blokes can join the race after all  as long as they pop on a bit of lippy and false eyelashes.A facial that gives the anti-ageing effect of procedures such as Botox is so effective it's now replacing jabs and fillers among A-listers.

Nicknamed the 'non-surgical facelift', the CACI Facial treatment is a favourite among celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez who even purchased a home machine for a rumoured $24,000 (20k) in 2015 as she loves the effects so much.

And last year English actress, designer and producer Sadie Frost revealed it's her age-defying beauty secret for looking fabulous at 50.

The pain-free facial uses simultaneous LED light therapy combined with a micro-current to stimulate collagen production for an anti-ageing effect - at a fraction of the price of more invasive treatments.

This week Kim Kardashian shared a picture to her social media as she indulged in a Caci facial ahead of Madonna's Oscars after party on Sunday

One 45 minute session of the' Purifying Facial Treatment' is 80, while a surgical Facelift could set you back as much as 10,000, and Botox and fillers start at around 250 per area.

Hollywood skin care expert Lena Bratschi told Femail that the facial is her top 'red carpet beauty secret', with many clients now using it in place of fillers and Botox.

One 45 minute session of the' Purifying Facial Treatment' is 80, while a surgical Facelift could set you back as much as 10,000, and Botox and fillers start at around 250.

Femail spoke to Dean Nathanson - MD & Founder CACI International to find out how the facials work.

Nicknamed the 'non-surgical facelift', the CACI Facial treatment is a favourite among celebrities including Jennifer Lopez who even purchased a home machine for a rumoured $24,000 (20k) in 2015 as she loves the effects so much

How do CACI Facials work?

The clinically proven facial treatment has been around for 25 years and is a muscle lifting procedure that uses microcurrent technology to send out tiny electrical impulses helping to tone and soften facial expressions.

It incorporates a number of other pioneering technologies to stimulate collagen production:

1. Orbital Skin Resurfacing that delivers a controlled skin exfoliation to reveal healthy radiant skin.

2. Ultrasonic Deep Cleansing that rids the skin of make-up residue, blemishes and impurities.

3. CACI's Wrinkle Comb targets deep lines and wrinkles to provide a non-invasive alternative to dermal fillers.

The facials are infused with hyaluronic acid, collagen and rose water to provide skin with an extra boost of hydration for a plumper effect.

British Sadie Frost is also said to be a fan of the tightening treatment, an alternative to Botox and fillers

What sets CACI aside from other facials?

While most facials are done by hand and work to maintain a healthy visage, this facial is aided by an electric contraption which works to improve the skin texture.

The microcurrent facials are widely considered the most cost effective alternative to fillers, and are said to be perfect for ridding your skin of fine lines and wrinkles with immediate results that last for weeks.

Synergy is the latest version of this technology that promises to deliver simultaneous microcurrent and high brilliance LED stimulation that tones the facial muscles at the same time as rejuvenating the skin.

The results are said to be dramatic, leaving the face with the most natural lift whilst rejuvenating the skin and boosting collagen production.

'Firming & Tightening,' she wrote on her Snapchat clip, describing the pain-free facial which incorporates simultaneous LED light therapy to stimulate collagen production

Hollywood skin care expert Lena Bratschi on her celebrity clientelle

Lena's celebrity clientele include Jason Bateman, Amanda Anka, Ashley Graham, Julianne Hough, Derek Hough and Nicola Peltz.

Speaking to Femail, Lena revealed the facials have a long-standing celebrity following and they are described as the 'red carpet beauty secret', with many now using it in place of fillers and Botox.

'My final facial of last year's awards season was 10pm night before the Oscars, on an Actor nominated for Best Actor.'

'Botox and fillers are still popular and have their place, there's a definite shift away from 'that look' to a more natural and healthy aesthetic,' she said.

'Treatments like the CACI Eye Revive and Jowl Lift uses microcurrent to lift and tone the facial muscles and are tools that fit in perfectly.

'I'm fortunate in that I see my clients year round and nearly all of them are on ongoing treatment courses so for the big events like the Golden Globes or the Oscars I know exactly what they need.'

Hollywood skin care expert Lena Bratschi treats an array of celebrities during the awards season, including model Ashley Graham (pictured)

My final facial of last year's awards season was 10pm night before the Oscars, on an Actor nominated for Best Actor.' Lena revealed. She also treats Julianne Hough (pictured)

Lena ensures she is on constant call during the awards season from January to March, revealing she treated one Oscar-nominated actor the night before the ceremony.

'I really try to partner with my clients so what I have them do at home accentuates what I do for them in the treatment room but for the Oscars, I usually see them in the immediate days before and in some cases again the day of the event itself - they literally go straight from me to hair and makeup for the red carpet,' she said.

'My go-to in those situations is the CACI Eye revive roller technology that uses anti-ageing serum filled CACI microcurrent rollers together with a deeply nourishing Hydro Eye Mask to lift hooded eye lids, reduce puffiness and dark circles and soften the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles around the delicate eye area. It gives the whole eye area a boost and that fresh look, even though they're on the final straight of a gruelling awards season.

'My final facial of last year's awards season was 10pm night before the Oscars, on an Actor nominated for Best Actor. It's an incredible blessing to come from a tiny village in Switzerland and treat the pinnacle of the acting world right before their biggest event - definitely a 'pinch me' moment,' she added.She has the royal fiance, the 50,000 engagement ring and a home at the palace. All Meghan Markle needs now is her own coat of arms.

And I can reveal that plans are in hand to produce a heraldic crest for the American actress.

But courtiers face a dilemma over whether Meghans father, Thomas Markle, should be granted a family coat of arms.

Miss Markles father has the right to a coat of arms because his daughter is marrying into the Royal Family, a source tells me. Kate Middletons father was given one, just as Sophie Rhys-Joness father was when she married Prince Edward.

Meghan's shield could reflect her passions - yoga, acting, fashion - and her ancestry, as shown in this light-hearted mock up

However, so far, there has been no indication as to whether Mr Markle wants one or not.

The reason for the delay may be that Mr Markle, a retired Hollywood lighting director who lives in Mexico, is a U.S. citizen, so needs to prove that he has an ancestor who was a subject of the Crown.

This should not be too difficult, as his forebears include Mary Smith, a maid who was recorded in 1856 as working at Windsor Castle, where Meghan will be married in May.

A Kensington Palace spokesman confirms that Meghan will have her own coat of arms. It is expected to be ready in time to feature on the souvenir programme for the royal wedding. The Duchess of Cambridges father, former British Airways flight dispatcher Michael Middleton, used a gold chevron in his coat of arms, in a reference to his wife Caroles maiden name, Goldsmith.

The crest also featured three acorns to represent the couples children, Kate, Pippa and James.

Oak trees are common around the familys 5 million Berkshire home in the village of Bucklebury.

John Petrie, Herald in Waiting at the College of Arms, which will be responsible for Meghans crest, tells me she automatically qualified for the honour.

OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

As she approaches her 77th birthday, Dame Vivienne Westwood should have grown up.

But her friend, artist Tracey Emin, has revealed that Westwood still refuses to behave in public.

Emin, 54, made the mistake of inviting the veteran fashion designer to join her at a service at her local church.

Vivienne really didnt like the vicars contemporary analogies, using TV programmes to make his point, so she heckled all the way through, Emin reveals.

It was like a scene from Ab Fab.

TWO GENERATIONS OF THE PRIMROSE HILL SET

The Primrose Hill Set were a byword for Nineties hedonism, and the well-connected group from that swanky corner of North London are still revelling as they enter middle age.

Sadie Frost, 52  who divorced Jude Law in 2003 allegedly following a wife-swapping episode  joined pal Kate Moss, 44, at a Mayfair party co-hosted by the supermodel.

Sadie Frost, 52 joined her pal Kate Moss, 44, at a Mayfair party co-hosted by the supermodel while her Burberry model daughter Iris Law, 17 turned heads in a mini-skirt and blazer

Keeping up with her mother was Burberry model Iris Law, 17, turning heads in a mini-skirt and blazer.

The other host was Vogue editor Edward Enninful, who memorably burst into tears when he was not invited to meet the Queen at a fashion show. This time, though, he was laughing with TV chef Lorraine Pascal.

The other host was Vogue editor Edward Enninful pictured with TV chef Lorraine Pascal

Could Buckingham Palace be given a very modern makeover? I ask only because the Queen invited Kelly Hoppen, the interior designer known as the queen of taupe due to her fondness for the brownish-grey colour, to the palace for lunch this week.

Former Dragons Den star Kelly, 58, declines to shed any light on her invitation, but boasted about it online next to a photo of her outside Buck House.

Last time she visited, to collect her MBE from HM in 2009, Kelly declared: Nothing matches, but it is fabulous. I was gazing at the flock wallpaper, and said: Oh, imagine what it would look like all in white. 

A happy diversion for John Varley, the former Barclays boss charged with conspiracy to commit fraud  his daughter has become engaged.

Emma Varley, 27, is to wed Alexander, the 31-year-old son of former Bishop of London Richard Chartres, who gave the sermon at the Duke and Duchess of Cambridges wedding.

The couple both work for investment management firm Ruffer. Emma will want to have her big day before her dads trial so he can be sure of walking her down the aisle.

(VERY) MODERN MANNERS

If you're a married royal, where should you go to conduct rendezvous with glamorous members of the opposite sex? In the case of the Queens eldest grandchild Peter Phillips, the answer is most surprising.

Princess Annes 40-year-old son, who has been married to Canada-born Autumn since 2008, chose the most prominent table at the Thomas Cubitt gastro-pub near Buckingham Palace on Wednesday evening. His dinner with the attractive brunette, who seemed to hang on his every word, lasted until around 10pm. Naturally, I am far too discreet to disclose any of their conversation . . .Family time should be an opportunity to do things together  to chat, make jokes, eat and play. Even, occasionally, to argue. But our kitchen has begun to resemble a departure lounge at Heathrow, with each person absorbed in their own little world, never looking up from their devices. The only time they talk to me is when the internet stops working  and by talk I mean they plead with me to fix it.

As a father of four, Im increasingly worried by the amount of time my children spend on screens. Whether theyre playing on the Xbox, staring at their smartphones or just watching endless repeats of Friends on Netflix, their minds always seem to be elsewhere.

Im sure most parents have experienced this, but it isnt just the impact on family life Im worried about. Its the effect it may be having on their brains and on their future, both in their personal lives and in their careers. Its a problem Ive been interested in as a parent, but also as someone whose own past mistakes have come back to haunt him in a very public way.

As a father of four, Im increasingly worried by the amount of time my children spend on screens. Whether theyre playing on the Xbox, staring at their smartphones or watching endless repeats on Netflix. But it isnt just the impact on family life Im worried about

It has been, for me, a painful learning experience. But as an educationalist and a parent, I believe that the lessons I have learned are ones that we can  indeed must  pass on to our children. The digital world theyre growing up in is full of landmines and those of us whove stepped on them have a duty to point them out.

THINK BEFORE YOU POST

I am one of the worlds experts on the dangers of posting offensive material online. How did I obtain this dubious distinction? Earlier this year, I had to resign from my role at the Office For Students, the universities regulator, when my detractors dug up some tasteless things Id said on Twitter.

The fact that most of these ill-judged tweets dated back to 2009 when I was a journalist provocateur  and long before I got involved in education  was neither here nor there. On social media, the bad things that men say live after them; the good is oft interred with their old phones.

I am one of the worlds experts on the dangers of posting offensive material online. How did I obtain this dubious distinction? Earlier this year, I had to resign from my role at the Office For Students, the universities regulator, when my detractors dug up some tasteless things Id said on Twitter

The cost of being publicly humiliated in this way was depressingly high. In addition to having to step down from the Office For Students and apologise unreservedly, I had to resign as a Fulbright Commissioner, a position Id occupied since 2013, while my honorary fellowship from Buckingham University was abruptly withdrawn.

The lesson for my own children could not be clearer: think before you post anything online. You dont have to compulsively share every detail of your life, particularly if its something that could come back to bite you years later.

A friend in Whitehall told me that todays graduates are so incautious when it comes to Facebook and Twitter that ten per cent of the applicants for Foreign Office jobs now fail the vetting process on the basis of their social media history alone. His advice for them if they want a good job in the Civil Service is to change their name by deed poll.

So let me be an example to todays younger generation: dont say anything online that you wouldnt say in front of your partners parents when meeting them for the first time in an extremely stuffy restaurant.

HAVE THE SEX TALK

My eldest son has just turned 13 and when I was his age I developed an all-consuming fascination with womens bodies. Naked bodies, to be precise. Luckily, my appetite was kept in check by the scarcity of this kind of material back in the 1970s  my friends and I had a single copy of Mayfair that we shared between us for several years. But how can I possibly stop my son from accessing it today?

As well as having to step down from the Office For Students and apologise, I had to resign as a Fulbright Commissioner, a position Id occupied since 2013

I have an additional challenge in that during the imbroglio over my appointment to the Office For Students, an article Id written 17 years ago was discovered in which Id praised a late-night TV programme that featured a different glamour model in each episode.

The unfortunate headline on that piece was Confessions of a porn addict. Some wag stuck the article on Twitter, complete with the provocative headline, and that led to an unwelcome newspaper headline the following day: New pressure on Theresa May to sack porn addict Toby Young from watchdog role.

How will I persuade my son to stay away from the more seedy parts of the internet, given that his dad supposedly confessed to being a porn addict? One solution is to get your broadband provider to prevent anyone in your household accessing adult content and install parental controls on all their devices. But that wont stop them sharing unsuitable material with their friends via social media.

And the more you try to ban it, the more fascinated they become.

After discussing this at length with my wife Caroline, we decided the best way forward is to tell our 13-year-old the facts of life, point out that porn is often demeaning to women, and gives a distorted picture of what a healthy sexual relationship is like, and then rely on his good judgment.

That may be naive  and, to be honest, we havent had that conversation yet because we keep arguing about who should do it  me or Caroline. In the meantime, she is surreptitiously checking his browsing history. So far nothing has rung any alarm bells.

THE NOT-SO-SMART PHONES

There is growing evidence that spending too much time on screens is bad for childrens mental development. That is to say, all that time on social media is actually making them dumber. Although that wont come as a surprise to any parent who has looked at a typical exchange on Snapchat  its not exactly a Socratic dialogue.

Last year, I attended an academic conference in Montreal where I listened to Professor James Flynn, one of the worlds foremost experts on intelligence, talk about a terrifying new phenomenon whereby average IQ has been declining across the Western world since 2014.

According to Prof Flynn, when you give British 14-year-olds the same IQ test today that their counterparts took back in the 1980s, they score significantly worse. I asked the professor why he thought this was so and he had a simple explanation: smartphones.

He didnt know for sure, but he suspected that what has changed since 2014 is that children are spending more and more time on their phones.

Why should that stop them getting smarter? According to author Mark Bauerlein, its because teenagers spend so much of their time talking to their peers via social media that they hardly ever interact with adults. To develop intellectually youve got to relate to older people, he told Time magazine. Seventeen-year-olds never grow up if theyre just hanging around other 17-year-olds.

TURN TECH TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

Theres a fiendishly clever app called OurPact that, once installed on your childs device, enables you to switch off Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube, for example, at specific times of day.

I have used it to deactivate more or less everything between the hours of 5pm and 7pm, Monday to Friday, which is now officially designated as homework time, as well as during the night.

There is growing evidence that spending too much time on screens is bad for childrens mental development. That is to say, all that time on social media is actually making them dumber

This has put an end to the need to strip-search the children before bedtime and confiscate their iPhones and iPads. Once youve turned their devices into very expensive clocks via OurPact, they will try to fill the time by watching television. Rather than ban TV outright, which is impossibly difficult, why not find something you can all watch together as a family? This can be a surprisingly bonding experience.

The emotional high point for us was watching an episode of Planet Earth II, in which a baby iguana is chased across the beach by a snakes. When it managed to escape to safety, we all cheered and hugged each other.

And to encourage the children to get up off their bottoms and actually put one foot in front of the other, I have bought them all Fitbits and linked them via the Fitbit app, along with the devices belonging to me and my wife. Now that we can monitor each others steps, the kids have become ferociously competitive about how many theyve done each day.

LEAD BY EXAMPLE

Any father who has moaned about the amount of time his children are spending on screens will be familiar with the standard retort: But Dad, youre always on your screen.

Yes, I protested, but Im reading serious books, not playing Pokemon Go. So to ram home the point, I have now switched to hard copy and ostentatiously sit there reading a Penguin Classic while they mooch about complaining that I have deactivated Minecraft.

Meal times are also screen- free occasions. You will be amazed at how quickly the wall-eyed zombies can turn back into normal kids.

Meal times are also screen- free occasions. You will be amazed at how quickly the wall-eyed zombies can turn back into normal kids

Ive even persuaded them to participate in nightly quizzes involving capital cities and the Kings and Queens of England.

Many parents have a tendency to worry too much about the unhealthy influences on their children, particularly if they feel they have little control over them, and Caroline and I are no exceptions.

But there is a growing body of evidence that different parenting styles have a negligible impact on how children turn out. Its all in the genes.

All you can do is create a safe and loving environment and let nature take its course.

Im sure my four will turn out OK, no matter what toxic material theyre exposed to on the internet. The key thing is to make sure they dont produce any toxic material themselves, as I know to my cost.Tom Markle, pictured on Friday, will walk his daughter down the aisle when she marries Prince Harry on May 19

Meghan Markles reclusive father will walk her down the aisle, a close friend has told The Mail on Sunday.

After months of speculation about whether retired Hollywood lighting director Tom Markle will be by his daughters side in Windsor Castle, one of his closest confidantes last night confirmed: He will.

And Kensington Palace has been told that the 73-year-old will be flying in for the ceremony from Mexico, where he lives in a sleepy retirement community.

Hes very excited about it, said the friend: Hes very close to her [Meghan] and hes very happy. All the pressure has been hard on him and hes just trying to stay out of the limelight.

The woman also said Mr Markle does not know what he will wear on the big day adding: The Royal Family controls that. Were not sure.

She declined to be named  but, after being pictured sharing a pizza with Mr Markle at a local restaurant last week, denied that she was romantically involved with Harrys future father-in-law.

Mr Markle has not yet met the Prince, and it is not known when he will. But his friend said: He likes Harry. He thinks hes very much a gentleman and hes looking forward to the wedding.

It has been rumoured that Meghan could break with convention and have both her father and her mother, Doria, walk her down the aisle on May 19.

Doria, 61, met Harry at last years Invictus Games in Toronto, and the Princehas described her as amazing. Tom and Doria, a social worker, divorced when Meghan was six, and she has subsequently been closer to her mother.

A family source said: Meghan sees more of her mother because Tom leads such a quiet life, but she adores both her parents. It would surprise no one if she has both her mother and father accompany her.Tom has said from the start that he wants to walk her down the aisle, and that has never changed.

A close friend said that Mr Markle is 'very excited' about attending the wedding and said that he is very close to his daughter

The Mail on Sunday spoke to Mr Markle outside his seafront bungalow yesterday. He confirmed the woman who spoke to this newspaper was a good friend  but nothing more. I have no girlfriend, he added. Have a good day, man.

He met the young mum, an American, in the street when she was with her ten-year-old daughter. He told me how cute she is and that he misses his kids, the friend said. My daughter reminded him of when his kids were little.

Mr Markle  who moved to Rosarito Beach in Mexico after being declared bankrupt in 2016  has previously called Harry and Meghan a very good match, saying: Its wonderful. Im very happy for them.

Last week the wedding invitations were finally sent out. The Mail on Sunday understands that the guest list includes British stars, including the Beckhams, international figures such as Canadian premier Justin Trudeau, and close friends from the US, including designer Misha Nonoo.Men with prostate cancer could benefit from radical radiotherapy that delivers the treatment in just five days instead of the usual 37.

At the moment, patients must go to hospital from Monday to Friday every week for nearly two months.

But doctors in London are conducting a major trial to deliver a more powerful therapy in five daily sessions.

Men with prostate cancer could benefit from radical radiotherapy that delivers the treatment in just five days

As well as being more convenient for men, it will save the NHS millions of pounds, and scientists believe it could also reduce side effects.

A trial of 1,800 patients has started at the Royal Marsden Hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research in London. They receive either surgery or a five-day, 37-day or 20-day radiotherapy course.

NHS England said in November that the 20-day course should become the standard procedure. Scientists will monitor the men for five years to see whether the five-day course is as effective at defeating prostate cancer as the others.

Around 15,000 men with prostate cancer receive radiotherapy every year  nearly a third of the 47,000 diagnosed in Britain annually.

The treatment is expected to save the NHS millions and will also be more convenient for sufferers

The treatment is effective, particularly if given at an early stage of the disease, when it permanently eradicates 60 per cent of tumours.

But it can involve long-term side effects, including impotence, bowel problems and even bladder cancer.

The Daily Mail is campaigning to improve prostate cancer treatments and diagnosis, which lag years behind those for other cancers.

The trial involves boosting the radiation power to more than twice the original dose over fewer treatments.

MRI scanning means radiologists can also focus higher radiation on the core of the cancer, rather than irradiating the entire prostate.

Professor David Dearnaley, of the Institute of Cancer Research, said: If you maintain the effectiveness of treatment and make it more convenient, with fewer side-effects, that is really good. We have not proven yet that it is as good, but its possible.Over the course of my career, Ive spent many years working with alcoholics. I know the battle they face and the torture they endure in facing their demons and giving up the bottle.

Ive seen many succeed, but also many more fail. Its a struggle that often gets right to the heart of who someone is and I wish Ant McPartlin all the best for his rehabilitation.

But after he was charged this week with drink driving Im afraid my patience and sympathy are in short supply: by all means ruin your own life, but dont put the lives of others at risk.

Having seen people die as a result of drink-drivers, I have zero tolerance for them.

When youve had to tell someone, as I have, that their child has died at the hands of a drink-driver, you quickly develop a hard carapace when it comes to drink-drivers self-obsessed pleas for leniency.

Having seen people die as a result of drink-drivers, I have zero tolerance for them, says DR MAX (file photo)

Yet Ive already heard people talking about Ants battle with the disease of alcoholism and it makes my heart sink. People want to show how understanding they are, but the idea that alcoholism is a disease  the so-called disease model of addiction  helps no one, not least the alcoholic.

The argument is that although the use of alcohol is voluntary to start with, in some individuals it flicks a switch in the brain that means they can no longer stop drinking.

This has never been proven and a review article in the highly respected medical journal Lancet Psychiatry in 2015 concluded that the research conducted into addiction does not support the simplified view that it is a disease.

The authors also challenged the idea that the disease model of addiction represented the consensus view among experts. In fact, like me, many doctors reject the idea that alcoholism is a disease.

Thats not to say it doesnt need treatment and those who suffer from it dont need help and support. Of course they do.

But viewing alcoholism as a disease is counter-productive.

Alcohol addiction represents an inappropriate coping strategy for intense emotional pain and psychological distress. Making alcoholism a disease removes any sense of responsibility or ownership and flies in the face of the psychological work that is done with alcoholics. The fact is, people choose to drink alcohol. This element of choice is not afforded to those with MS, cancer or cerebral palsy. Thats not to say that choice is easy or straightforward. But its a choice nonetheless.

To drink is an active decision they make each day and pretending otherwise is to rob them of the power to choose a different path  the process of recovering from alcoholism involves taking responsibility and realising they are the architects of their own misery.

This is overwhelmingly scary for most at first. But over time it is incredibly liberating to realise that, while you are the cause of the despair you experience, you are also your own salvation.

The term disease undermines this recovery process. It disempowers the individual, suggesting they are impotent in the face of their dependency when actually they are the only one who can change their behaviour.

Whats interesting is that although there is a group of people pushing for alcohol addiction to be called a disease, we dont hear people saying the same thing so readily about drug addiction. We dont hear talk about the disease heroin addiction, for instance. Rather, the element of choice is emphasised, along with taking responsibility for your actions.

Alcohol addiction represents an inappropriate coping strategy for intense emotional pain and psychological distress. Making alcoholism a disease removes any sense of responsibility or ownership and flies in the face of the psychological work that is done with alcoholics (file photo)

Why is this? The idea of a disease communicates sympathy and understanding. It says to people were not judging you, we are taking this seriously and know how hard this is for you.

I think this is why the idea of alcoholism as a disease is championed by many of the liberal elite  its a way of showing how caring they are and so it makes them feel better about themselves.

Similarly this is why people are wary of challenging the disease model  theyre fearful theyll be accused of being cold-hearted.

But you can show compassion and care to the person struggling with alcohol dependence  just as doctors and nurses working in this area do  without removing their responsibility.

Why do we have to pretend that its something its not?

Blame NHS bosses for mixed-sex wards

Why, despite all the promises to tackle the issue, do patients still endure the indignity of mixed-sex wards? Although ministers pledged to get rid of them by 2010, latest figures show the number admitted to mixed-sex wards was at its worst for seven years during the winter crisis.

This is a classic example of the disconnect between public-facing people such as ministers, and those at the top of the NHS.

Faced with irate members of the public and media campaigns, of course politicians will promise to deal with the problem.

But the priority for those high up in the NHS is to reduce costs  and unlike government ministers, theyre not accountable to the public in the same way. Sitting in their offices, staring at their pie charts, its easy for them to become out of touch with what really matters to people.

For years, senior NHS managers have been pushing an agenda of closing hospital beds in favour of moving care into the community. While they claim its because people want to be cared for in their own homes, all theyre really interested in is money  and hospital beds are expensive.

The NHS has lost 15,000 beds in the past six years alone  thats one in ten beds gone, despite demand and a rising population.

This policy is incompatible with the promise to stop mixed-sex wards. When hospitals operate a one in, one out policy because theyre so full, allocating beds on the basis of gender is impossible.

The Mail has long campaigned against mixed-sex wards. Many, particularly the older generation and those who are bedbound, find them embarrassing.

I remember speaking to a patient who had not opened her bowels for over a week. She explained she couldnt use the commode as the beds on either side were occupied by men.

The only man who has ever seen me naked is my husband, she told me apologetically. In fact, the hospital should have been apologising to her.

Research shows, too, that patients are at increased risk of violence on mixed wards  two-thirds of all attacks occur there.

Its time the politicians made it clear to those NHS bosses that cutting beds isnt the answer to the Health Services problems.

Should HRT get a second chance?

For years, Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) has had a bad press after a study published in 2002 linked it to increased rates of breast cancer and strokes.

This prompted widespread panic among the medical profession as well as the public and cast a long shadow over it.

HRT is in the news again  this time because new evidence suggests it can help the brain and even stave off memory loss.

Could it be time to rethink HRT? When the original study that caused so much concern was analysed in depth, it emerged that while HRT can be risky for some groups of women, for others the benefits actually far outweigh the risks.

Doctors and patients must remember that while sometimes speedy action is warranted and undoubtedly saves lives when responding to health scares, as the HRT story shows, we can be too hasty to dismiss something on evidence that doesnt withstand scrutiny.

For years, Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) has had a bad press after a study published in 2002 linked it to increased rates of breast cancer and strokes (file photo)

The fact is, things are often not black or white in medicine. But nuance is something that even doctors struggle with.

Its a particular problem with specialists who all too often fall into the trap of viewing things from their narrow range of expertise.

So we had gynaecologists insisting that HRT was fantastic, while oncologists and cardiologists denounced it. The truth was somewhere in the middle.

Like any treatment, HRT has risks and benefits: and the fact is that, for some women, its a valuable medicine.

Im usually a great fan of the Duchess of Cambridge, but I take issue with a speech she gave at the Royal Society of Medicine this week, in which she argued that children need lessons in becoming parents.

I cant believe shed really thought that through. Dont they have enough to learn at school already?

And what on earth could you realistically teach them that will have any benefit for something that, hopefully, they wont need for years?

The toughest part of parenting is coping with teenagers  how would you teach a teenager to parent a teenager? Its ludicrous.

Focus instead on ensuring that they grow up to be happy, thoughtful and well rounded. thats what will make them good parents.Britain could set off a schizophrenia timebomb if it ignores the dangers of super-strength skunk cannabis

Britain could set off a schizophrenia timebomb if it ignores the dangers of super-strength skunk cannabis, one of the UKs most eminent psychiatrists warns today.

Strong evidence now shows that smoking potent forms of the Class B drug increases the chance of psychosis, paranoid delusions and schizophrenia.

But too many people  from teenagers to top officials  have little idea of the terrible toll it can take on the mind, says Professor Sir Robin Murray.

Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party all back legalisation of cannabis in some form. But Prof Murray said the dangers were not being recognised  and legalising skunk would amount to a major pharmaceutical experiment with the brains of young people.

Prof Murray, from the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London, said: I dont think any serious researcher or psychiatrist would now dispute that cannabis consumption is a component cause of psychosis.

He warned that:

MRI scans show long-term use of skunk can shrink a vital part of the brain;

The substance  now dominant on Britains streets  is four times stronger on average than cannabis smoked in the past;

A clear majority of studies show those who regularly smoke cannabis are at significant increased risk of developing psychosis or schizophrenia-like illness;

Heavy users of skunk are up to four times more likely than non-users to develop psychotic symptoms.

Prof Murray said the cannabis being sold on our streets had changed almost beyond recognition in the past 20 years. Dealers have dropped weaker varieties in favour of skunk, which is made from non-pollinated parts of the plant, and provides a stronger hit that may be more addictive.

A recent study revealed that almost all cannabis sold in the UK is now skunk. On average, skunk is 16 per cent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive compound  four times more than the THC in marijuana and hash.

Brain scans show skunk has a far stronger impact on the mind, said Prof Murray, due to both its high THC content and its very low content of the protective compound cannabidiol.

Experiments on volunteers at Kings College show THC boosts the brains natural fear response  making the merely worrisome seem positively frightening.

And MRI scans reveal that long-term use of skunk shrinks the hippocampus  the part of the brain essential for regulating emotions and long-term memory  by 11 per cent, according to researchers at Monash University in Australia. Only prolonged abstinence could reverse the brain atrophy, they concluded.

MRI scans reveal that long-term use of skunk shrinks the hippocampus  the part of the brain essential for regulating emotions and long-term memory  by 11 per cent

Prof Murray and colleague Dr Marco Colizzi have emphasised their concerns in a hard-hitting article for the British Journal Of Psychiatry, titled Cannabis And Psychosis: What Do We Know And What Should We Do?

They say UK authorities should watch what happens in America, where a number of states have recently legalised cannabis use.

The USA has embarked on a major pharmaceutical experiment with the brains of its youth and we should wait and see the outcome of the experiment, they write. While we wait, we need education to make the public aware of the risks associated with heavy cannabis use.

It would be a shame when we are in sight of ridding the country of the scourge of tobacco use, if it were to be replaced by use of a drug that, although less harmful to the body, is more toxic to the mind.

To help educate people about the dangers, Prof Murray is giving a series of talks in London, organised by events company Funzing. And he believes that health officials should be playing a far more active role in warning of the perils of skunk.

His intervention comes three years after The Mail on Sunday revealed his groundbreaking research suggesting up to a quarter of all new psychosis cases could be caused by skunk. Among those deeply affected is hereditary peer Nicholas Monson, whose son Rupert, 21, took his own life last year after developing drug-related psychosis.

Lord Monson said: He descended into complete, utter madness.

Rupert Green (pictured) the son of Lord Monson, was just 21 when he killed himself last year after descending into drug-related pyschosis, having gone in a few short years from the occasional spliff to habitually smoking skunk

Rupert first admitted smoking the occasional spliff at 19 and, like many parents, his father reacted with relief that it was nothing harder. But his behaviour gradually became more and more peculiar, said Lord Monson, adding: He was a mixture of self-pity and outright aggression. I found him very difficult to deal with.

The family managed to get Rupert referred to an NHS mental health team, and after being diagnosed, the youngster stopped smoking skunk and went on medication. However, he later killed himself.

Lord Monson said: He hadnt touched skunk for four months. But his mind continued to be overwhelmed. What Ive learnt since his death is once a young man gets into a state of drug-induced psychosis, he doesnt get out of it.

Lord Monson has lobbied hard for better public education, including writing to the Prime Minister. He said he wanted cannabis below five per cent THC legalised to take it out of criminals hands, but anything stronger to be banned.

Incredibly, Government agencies provide almost no information on the risks of skunk, despite millions smoking it. Three years ago, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said there was strong evidence that standalone information or warning campaigns were ineffective. But Lord Monson said: The Government is doing an enormous disservice by not educating people about skunks dangers.

Last night Public Health England said its Rise Above programme helped young people cope with a range of diverse challenges including drug misuse, while its dedicated drug information website, Talk To Frank, provides easily accessible information for young people about the risks and harms of drug misuse.

Yet Rise Above, which is aimed at teenagers, does not mention cannabis at all. Talk To Frank, for an older audience, does state that regular cannabis use is associated with an increase in the risk of later developing psychotic illnesses including schizophrenia. But it contains no information on the greater danger posed by skunk.DEAD MENS TROUSERS by Irvine Welsh

DEAD MENS TROUSERS

by Irvine Welsh (Cape 16.99)

Irvine Welsh's books are no longer novels, as such  theyre more a state of mind.

His favoured territory is a peculiarly male, aggro psychopathy that careens between drug-addled braggadocio and a more crippling self-reckoning.

His characters casual, ugly contempt for the opposite sex makes Harvey Weinstein look like a celibate priest.

In this characteristically carelessly written novel  apparently the last to revisit the former heroin addicts Welsh so brilliantly introduced in 1993s Trainspotting  slippery Renton, the dazzling amoral Sick Boy and gormless Spud are all somehow still alive.

Renton is now, implausibly, a prosperous international DJ promoter.

They reconvene at the behest of their former psychotic nemesis Francis Begbie, now a globally famous artist who wants to feature them in a new art project.

Old grudges soon rear their heads, alongside a farcically gruesome subplot featuring a human kidney, but the book is a mess.

At his best, Welsh still burns with a scabrous, ferocious energy, but you have to wonder: is anyone still reading?

THE ITALIAN TEACHER by Tom Rachman

THE ITALIAN TEACHER

by Tom Rachman (Riverrun 16.99)

Tom Rachman is a relentlessly entertaining writer, mixing high-wire ideas with effervescent prose.

This follows Charles, a son destined to live in the oversized shadow of his extravagantly talented father, a famous portrait painter and pathological womaniser who, over his lifetime, sires 17 children.

Charles has artistic talent of his own but, after a vicious knockback by his charmingly monstrous dad, devotes himself to a life of mediocrity. He fails at relationships (including with his mother) almost as determinedly as he does at his career.

His once absolute paternal devotion, however, is curdled into something else by the disappointments of adulthood and he plots one last desperate, even demented, attempt to make his mark.

Sometimes, this novel feels a bit like a Jackson Pollock, with its energy all on the surface, but in making Charles the artist of his own misfortune, Rachman asks interesting questions about the tension between legacy and self-determination.

THE TRICK TO TIME by Kit de Waal

THE TRICK TO TIME

by Kit de Waal (Viking 12.99)

Kit de Waal is fast emerging as a novelist who is not afraid to tell the sorts of stories flashier writers might overlook. Her Costa book awards-nominated debut My Name Is Leon was told in the voice of a mixed-race, eight-year-old child separated from his beloved younger brother after he is taken into care.

This second novel is more harrowing. Its the story of an Irish lass, Mona, who leaves for Birmingham as a young girl.

When we meet her in late middle-age, she lives alone, designing the clothing for handmade wooden dolls, many of which are used to console the mothers of stillborn children.

The chain of events that have brought her to this point is revealed through a series of flashbacks that flit between rural Wexford in the Sixties and urban Birmingham in the Seventies, at the height of the IRA mainland bombing campaign.

Perhaps de Waal piles on the tragedy a little too heavily. No matter: she is excellent at detailing the quiet, awful currents that a person can carry with them all their life, and the novels ending will leave you reeling.TANGERINE by Christine Mangan

TANGERINE

by Christine Mangan (Little, Brown 14.99)

Taking Patricia Highsmiths thriller The Talented Mr Ripley as its touchstone, Tangerine heads to Morocco in 1956 to tell the tale of a friendship gone badly, menacingly awry.

There are two narrators, both entirely unreliable, and a plot as twisty as the labyrinthine streets of its dazzling, befuddling Tangier setting, but a languor of pace undermines a promising premise.

Rich, orphaned Alice Shipley is more than glad to be college roommates with Lucy Mason, who appears like a kind of knight in shining armour to the lonely, mentally vulnerable girl  until Lucys predilections for obsessive behaviour, gaslighting and reinvention sever their relationship in the most dramatic of ways.

Now married to the unfaithful John, and unwilling to leave her Tangier apartment, Alices careful life is once again upended when Lucy reappears like a genie . . . unwillingly conjured up.

ONLY CHILD by Rhiannon Navin

ONLY CHILD

by Rhiannon Navin (Mantle 12.99)

Six-year-old Zach and his classmates are huddled in a closet in their American primary school, listening as the POP POP POP of gunfire gets ever closer.

Within minutes, 19 people are dead, including Zachs older brother, Andy.

His family is changed for ever: his mother embarks on a bitter quest for justice and his father is overwhelmed by guilt and grief.

Narrator Zach, a sweet boy, awash with hot, mad tears, is left to deal with a welter of emotions  I never knew you could feel more than one feeling inside of you at the same time.

This is a sensitive, moving (and occasionally overly sentimental) exploration of a childs struggles to repair his fractured family and make sense of an incomprehensible world.

BITTER by Francesca Jakobi

BITTER

by Francesca Jakobi (W&N 14.99)

Life has been a wrenching disappointment to twice-divorced, middle-aged Gilda Meyer. She is the self-deluding, guilt-ridden narrator of Jakobis riveting study of a woman who takes motherly concern to rather sinister extremes.

She loves her married son, Reuben, beyond measure, but is sorely estranged from him. The hopeless wait for visits that dont happen, the empty letterbox, the unanswered phone calls take their toll and she watches his house, spying on his wife Alice and lying to her best friend.

But, as her story unfurls  a loveless childhood, a marriage of convenience to her brusque fathers business partner and a pregnancy beset by fear  it slowly, tantalisingly becomes clear that Gilda has never been in charge of her life.

Shes been jostled, talked into things, told what to do . . . and shocking secrets from her past will have the power to transform her present.THE DEVILS DICE by Roz Watkins

THE DEVILS DICE

by Roz Watkins (HQ 12.99)

This is an impressive debut from a Cambridge engineering graduate who became a lawyer before writing crime novels.

Her story features DI Meg Dalton, a newcomer to the force in the Peak District with a chequered past and a rebellious daughter.

A well-respected local solicitor is found dead in The Devils Dice, a network of caves rumoured to be haunted and a famous site for suicide. Is that the case here? The post-mortem isnt conclusive  could it be murder? There are plenty of suspects with a motive.

Added to the twisty mixture are some creepy inscriptions on the cave wall that seem to foretell the death  even though the carvings have been there for at least a century. A touch of Agatha Christie, a dash of Ann Cleevess Vera and a suitably moody setting in the Peaks, where it always seems to be raining, bring a formidable newcomer to British crime writing.

CLOSER THAN YOU KNOW by Brad Parks

CLOSER THAN YOU KNOW

by Brad Parks (Faber 12.99)

In THE wake of his bestseller Say Nothing, Parks new story is based around Amy Kaye, a likeable, down-to-earth assistant attorney in Virginia.

Enter Melanie Barrick, whose infant son is swept up from the childminder by social services without any warning.

Melanies house has been raided by the sheriffs deputies, who have found enough cocaine in the air-conditioning duct in her babys room to send her to prison for a very long time. If Melanie cant prove she has been framed, she will lose her son for ever.

Kayes boss wants her to make an example out of Barrick, while Kaye is preoccupied by a cold case of the so-called whispering rapist who always tells his victims he will not hurt them. This equals John Grisham at his best.

DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA by Walter Mosley

DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA

by Walter Mosley (W&N 20)

One of the worlds most gifted crime writers tells the story of Joe King Oliver, a top black investigator in the NYPD until he was framed for assault and despatched to solitary confinement in the infamous Rikers Island prison. Ten years later, King is a private detective, running an agency with the help of his teen daughter.

He is consumed by the case of a black radical journalist accused of murdering two corrupt on-duty officers who had been trafficking drugs and women.

Suddenly, he receives a card from a woman who admits she was paid by someone in the NYPD to frame him a decade ago. King begins to delve into who on the force wanted him gone  and why  as well as whether there is a connection between his disgrace and the two dead officers. Exceptional.THE CHILDREN OF CASTLE ROCK by Natasha Farrant

THE CHILDREN OF CASTLE ROCK

by Natasha Farrant (Faber 6.99)

When her family home is sold after the death of her adored mother, Alice, 11, is packed off to an eccentric Scottish boarding school by her feckless actor father, Barney.

Despite her fears, she makes friends with boys Jesse and Fergus and invites her father to the schools Visitors Day.

After he fails, as usual, to turn up, she receives a mysterious package from him and a note asking her to deliver it to an old castle on a remote island. Using the schools Orienteering Challenge as a cover, she enlists her pals help, dodging criminals with guns along the way.

A joyously old-fashioned, Blyton-esque hymn to unsupervised childhoods, this fast-paced, witty adventure has undertones of grief and shows the power of friendship to heal the disappointment of adults emotional neglect. Age 10+

A FAR AWAY MAGIC by Amy Wilson

A FAR AWAY MAGIC

by Amy Wilson (Macmillan 6.99)

After her parents die in suspicious circumstances, 13-year-old Angel is angry and friendless at her new school. The only pupil she wants to connect with is the solitary, sullen Bavar, in whom she recognises a hidden darkness and power.

She inveigles herself into his family home, where she discovers a menacing magic unleashed by Bavars parents, who have died. Bavar is the only one capable of closing the rift between the worlds of the evil raksasa spirits and humans.

Wilson harnesses the spiritual and mystical elements and roots them in a bleakly funny adolescent reality. Age 11+

MAX AND THE MILLIONS by Ross Montgomery

MAX AND THE MILLIONS

by Ross Montgomery (Faber 6.99)

Another frenzied caper from Montgomerys vivid imagination. Ten-year-old Max is isolated at school, and not just because he wears hearing aids and is picked on by the money-grubbing headmaster. He finds solace in building tiny models with janitor Mr Darrow.

When Mr Darrow mysteriously disappears, Max discovers a miniature world of three warring tribes  Red, Green and Blue  who are alive and furious in the caretakers room. Can Max and his only friend Sasha reconcile the enemies before the headmaster finds them?

This is a wildly energetic ride in which even the smallest warrior has a big heart. Maxs use of his lip-reading skill as an unusual, personal superpower is inspirational. Age 9+Protesters rallied in the villages of al-Musalla and Jad Hafs on Friday to mark the first anniversary of the martyrdom of Mostafa Hamdan, who in March last year succumbed to the injuries he had sustained during a raid on a sit-in protest in Diraz Village.



(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Bahraini people have once again taken to the streets in the kingdom to slam the deaths of political activists at the hands of the Manama regimes forces.



Protesters rallied in the villages of al-Musalla and Jad Hafs on Friday to mark the first anniversary of the martyrdom of Mostafa Hamdan, who in March last year succumbed to the injuries he had sustained during a raid on a sit-in protest in Diraz Village.



Late in January 2017, Hamdan was shot in his head when Bahraini forces attacked anti-regime demonstrators who were staging a sit-in protest in Diraz village in support of Sheikh Isa Qassim after authorities revoked the prominent Shia cleric's citizenship in June 2016 over accusations of sowing sectarian discord in the sheikhdom.



The top cleric has denied the charges.



The demonstrators on Friday also expressed their solidarity with martyr Hassan al-Bahraini shot dead by Bahraini coast guard last month, chanting anti-regime slogans.



They also voiced their support to Sheikh Isa Qassim and the other detained opposition figures.



Similar protests also took place in the villages of Abu Saiba, Shakhura, Karbabad and Sehla as well as Sitra Island on Friday.



They were carrying photos of the victims of the regimes crackdown.



People in Shahrkan village also expressed their solidarity with all those killed at the hands of the Bahraini forces, including Ahmed Abdul Nabi.



Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the kingdom on February 14, 2011.



They are demanding that the Al Khalifah dynasty relinquish power and let a just system representing all Bahrainis be established.



Manama has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent. Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of Al Khalifah regimes crackdown.







/257Its the show thats shaken up daytime TV (and left men quaking) with oh-so intimate admissions from its female stars. But one question makes the Loose Women worry... are they sharing TOO much?

'Come the next election, Loose Women is going to be more important than Question Time in deciding the future of the nation.

So says Janet Street-Porter, shouting above the noise of hairdryers, shrieks of laughter, tea orders and the general hustle and bustle that occurs when four presenters from the award-winning, groundbreaking ITV daytime show  Andrea McLean, Denise van Outen, Nadia Sawalha and Street-Porter  get together for an exclusive photo-shoot for Event.

We are talking politics and the power of a TV juggernaut that has in the past few years been transformed from a rather messy hen-night affair (where several hosts, including Denise Welch and Carol McGiffin, were better known for drinking than debating) into a feisty issue-led show that won an award from Mind for its coverage of mental-health matters.

Andrea McLean, Denise van Outen, Nadia Sawalha and Janet Street-Porter, star presenters of Loose Women. Its the show thats shaken up daytime TV (and left men quaking)

And thats the point, says former newspaper editor Street-Porter. Its the only show on TV where women discuss things from their sex lives to the divorce laws, and its relevant to peoples lives because we are not just talking facts and figures but how it affects them and us.

So when we start on politics, we talk about it in a way that no one else does on TV. We have the power to educate and inform in a way that is entertaining and relatable and far more inclusive than any political show.

Street-Porter becomes even more animated as she warms to her theme. What people dont realise is who watches our show. When I met David Cameron, Sam Cameron told me she was a massive Loose Women fan. She wasnt just saying it, because she kept talking about various outfits Id worn on the show. And the Duchess of Cornwall loves it because she told us. They all do. It is also the show that regular guest Simon Cowell says he wishes he had come up with. Oprah Winfrey gave it her seal of approval by appearing on Loose Women in 2013.

So would they like to have Theresa May as a guest? Yes, the four presenters chorus.

Jeremy Corbyn? Van Outen pulls a face. The 43-year-old West End star, who made her name hosting The Big Breakfast in 1997, says, To be honest, I prefer talking about more fun stuff. I like it when we all have a real laugh.

In these times of #MeToo and Times Up, with revelations of widespread sexual misconduct towards women in the workplace and the thorny issue of equal pay, it might seem like there isnt a lot to laugh about for women today. But Loose Women, which is watched by five million people over a week and recently celebrated its 18th anniversary, is riding the crest of the womens wave, mixing highly emotional discussions on abuse with celebrity interviews and topics ranging from Syria to shoes.

And the menopause, chips in Scottish presenter McLean. Im most proud that we talk about something no one else on television really does. We never get sick of talking about it because millions of women in this country are going through it.

McLean recently admitted to wearing sanitary towels under her arms before going live on air because her hot flushes have been so extreme. And when she revealed in 2016 that she was taking time out to have a hysterectomy after struggling for years with endometriosis, 10,000 viewers contacted the show to applaud her honesty and openness.

Meanwhile, former EastEnders star Sawalha has talked about losing so much pubic hair due to the menopause that she now has to do a pubic combover.

What makes Loose Women work, according to the shows editor, Sally Shelford, is the distinct and different personalities of the 15 women who make up the five-day-a-week panel and the ethos of absolute equality among the presenters, from Street-Porter through to reality star Katie Price.

What makes Loose Women work, according to the shows editor, Sally Shelford, is the distinct and different personalities of the 15 women who make up the five-day-a-week panel

The women who appear on the show bring their lives with them, and thats what makes it special, says Shelford. We start having a discussion about something thats going on in the news and these women will open up about how it affects them. We have created this incredible environment of trust, where people feel they can be open.

The programme has aired some notable confessions. Last year, Rod Stewarts wife, Penny Lancaster, admitted for the first time how she had been sexually assaulted as a young model. And when Cliff Richard chose to give his first interview in the wake of sexual-abuse allegations against him being dropped, it was on Loose Women that he chose to discuss his sexuality and suicidal thoughts, and how he had tried to clear his name.

We dont just try to talk about the news  we make and break news, says McLean. The whole vibe is extremely female: we get things done, we show our weaknesses and strengths, we are supportive. Its the opposite of bitchiness. Its women at their best. We will push ourselves right out of our comfort zone if we think we can send a message that we believe in passionately.

Last years headline-grabbing Body Stories campaign, shot by rock star photographer Bryan Adams, saw nine of the shows stars un-airbrushed in bikinis and swimsuits to send a message of body confidence to their viewers. I was completely terrified about it, says Sawalha. I was refusing to do it until I had a word with myself about practising what I preached and setting an example to my daughter. Afterwards, I felt totally empowered.

FROM THE RIGHT: Katie Price, Penny Lancaster and Ruth Langsford

So did I, adds Street-Porter. Because I went out and bought a very expensive swimsuit for that shoot and it looked fantastic. Im 71, Im in a swimsuit, there was no way I was going to look like a pile of s***.

The show has 15 regular presenters but only four appear at any one time, with McLean, Ruth Langsford or Christine Lampard acting as anchor. Other guest presenters occasionally feature, alongside celebrities such as Bryan Ferry, Robbie Williams and Bette Midler. Topics up for discussion are decided at a pre-show morning meeting based on that days news, and every show is filmed before a live  mainly female  audience. The other extraordinary thing about Loose Women is that every presenter gets paid the same, regardless of their age, experience or star appeal. Theres total and absolute equality, says Sawalha, 53. And thats how it should be.

In terms of TV-broadcasting pay structures, this is almost unheard of, and is perhaps because the show is an all-woman affair, run by a female editor with a largely female production team.

As a group of women, the presenters could not be more different. There is the bleeding-heart Leftie Sawalha, who home-schools her two daughters and fronts a podcast with her husband, Mark Adderley, about how to survive marriage. Theres glamour from van Outen and McLean, who, during her ten-year stint on the show, has been divorced and remarried for a third time to businessman Nick Feeney. And then theres the veteran broadcaster, Mail Online columnist and former Independent On Sunday editor Street-Porter. Or rather, there isnt, because having inspected and dismissed the clothes on offer at the photo-shoot, she has gone home to find a dress of her own. Thats Janet, says Sawalha, raising an eyebrow.

Street-Porter returns an hour later, brandishing some form-fitting dresses that suit her long, lean body. At 71 she has earned the right to do and say exactly what the hell she wants.

There are two things I dont want you to call me, she says. One is curmudgeonly  which is incredibly patronising  and the other is national treasure  which I hate as much.

Loose Women has brought Street-Porter kicking and screaming to a daytime audience far more used to the touchy-feely style of Fern Britton or Judy Finnigan. Now she gets stopped in supermarkets when shes buying her avocados.

It happens all the time, she says. But the thing I hate is the touching. People grabbing your arm. The good thing is that because of Loose Women everyone knows what Im like. I just say: Do you mind not touching me, I dont like it, and they just laugh.

Street-Porter has also been asked  on many occasions  to stand as a politician. I did toy with setting up a grey-power movement, she says, but then I lost interest. Politics needs a kick up the arse, but I know Im not going down that route because I dont have the time you need to put into it. Leave it to other people. Amber Rudd  big fan of hers. Leave it to them.

And for the record  she points out  liking the Tory Home Secretary does not mean she votes Conservative. No one knows my politics, she says. What they do know is I say what I think. In some ways Im the polar opposite of Nadia, but on some subjects we think the same. Sawahla adds, We just have a very different way of dealing with things.

The opinions on Loose Women tend to be less along party-political lines, more along social ones. And for all that van Outen claims to enjoy the fluffier debates (she recently stripped to a thong to have a bum lift live on air), she has won a whole new audience of fans talking about her struggles with seven-year-old daughter Betsys dyspraxia and dyslexia. This saw van Outen relocate from the country to London so Betsy could attend a specialist school.

Left, Stacey Solomon, right, Coleen Nolan

She has also opened up about her amicable relationship with her theatre-star ex-husband, Lee Mead, who still comes round for dinner once a week and has become friends with her current boyfriend, City trader Edward Boxshall. For someone who has always been careful not to discuss her private life in interviews, its something of a turnaround.

She shrugs when I mention this. When you are on Loose Women you feel you are sitting around with your mates, she says. Theres no point being guarded and Im really happy to talk about stuff because you get such positive responses back, and people actually get a proper glimpse into who you really are.

The problem with that is that sometimes we are very guilty of oversharing, laughs Sawalha.

Janet loves talking about her relationship with her mum and her sex life, says van Outen with a wink. She talks about her sex life A LOT.

McLean recently came home to be confronted by her teenage son, Fin, demanding to know if she had really told the world that his bedroom smelled of feet. He did actually see the funny side of it, she says. But you forget what impact saying something like that has on your kids or your partners. Sometimes you have to stop yourself. But they rarely do.

There are, they admit, certain men who have terror in their eyes when they step onto the set of Loose Women. Nigel Farage was made mincemeat of by panellist Saira Khan after he defended Donald Trumps Muslim ban. The adventure-junkie Bear Grylls, who thinks nothing of leaping out of planes into seas filled with sharks and killer jellyfish, admitted to being way out of his comfort zone on the show. But he was lovely, laughs McLean. And we had a great chat. I dont know why men would be so scared...

All the presenters cite other women as their favourite guests  from Oprah Winfrey and Drew Barrymore to Toni Collette. Street-Porters favourite guest was Bette Midler.

Love her, she says. I know her husband [artist Martin von Haselberg]. As she sat down, someone asked how I knew her husband, and quick as a flash she piped up: She had sex with him before I did. Street-Porter hoots with laughter, then gets up to excuse herself for leaving early. Other fish to fry.

Van Outen is grinning at her across the table as she packs up her belongings. Shes had enough.  shes going for a lie down on her tweed sofa, quips van Outen. She cracks me up. I love the fact that someone like me gets to do a television show with someone like her. Its just genius.

It is clearly the reason why Loose Women continues to grab the ratings and headlines. But these women are on a mission to be taken very seriously. General election aside, there is no limit to their ambitions.

What we want next is a Bafta, says McLean. We want to be recognised for what we are doing for women on television and for women in Britain. And we want that award.

Loose Women airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITVA Wrinkle In Time Cert: PG 1hr 49mins

Rating:

Madeleine LEngles A Wrinkle In Time is a book that has stayed with me since childhood. Thats partly because its central idea of a tesseract  a fold or wrinkle in space and time that would allow us to travel millions of light years across the universe almost at will  was just so exciting for a child of the first space age like me, and partly because what flowed from this brilliant, pre-Hawking notion was so gloriously bonkers.

I mean, semi-supreme beings known as Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which? An evil entity known simply as the IT?

The new Disney adaptation, which arrives in cinemas a mere 56 years after LEngles childrens classic first hit bookshops, is pretty bonkers too and, sadly, not always in a good way.

A Wrinkle In Time is a book that has stayed with me since childhood. This Disney adaptation is bonkers too, but sadly not always in a good way (Reese Witherspoon as Mrs Whatsit, above)

Yes, it has Reese Witherspoon as Mrs Whatsit being comically insensitive while wrapped in what appears to be high-fashion bed sheets, and Oprah Winfrey sporting glittery lipstick, matching eyebrows and big, blonde hair as Mrs Which, but somewhere along the line something has gone missing.

Could it be magic? as the quote-channelling Mrs Who (Mindy Kaling) might say, before adding the attribution: Barry Manilow, American. Or maybe its the science. Matthew Bond, British.

As well as updating the action to the present day, director Ava DuVernay  best known for the civil-rights drama Selma  has overseen other changes too, the most noticeable of which is that this is now an ethnically correct production.

The Murry family have become mixed-race, with Chris Pine playing the father and Gugu Mbatha-Raw the mother, while the three Mrs Ws are now Caucasian, Indian-American and African-American respectively.

Like some of the visual effects, the Mrs Ws just dont quite work - Oprah Winfreys Mrs Which (above) struggles to convey the complexities of an omniscient being with a love of cosmetics

As for any Hispanics feeling left out well, Michael Pena will be along as Red shortly, albeit playing a baddie.

There will, I know, be those irritated by such an overt show of political correctness but I liked it, particularly as Storm Reid, who plays the films 13-year-old reluctant heroine, Meg Murry, is an engaging, sympathetic and thoroughly modern presence.

Sadly, however, some of her good work is undone by the painfully shrill young actor playing her six-year-old brother Charles Wallace, who is less child prodigy here  as LEngles story requires  more major irritant.

Id hoped Disney had moved beyond this sort of precocious, showy-off style of child acting, but alas not.

Storm Reid's Meg Murry (above with Witherspoon and Deric McCabe as Meg's brother Charles Wallace) is an engaging, sympathetic and thoroughly modern presence

The starting point, however, is comfortably familiar, with the Murry family struggling to cope with the unexplained disappearance of father Alex four years earlier and, as we get properly under way, the inevitably troubled teenage Meg (bullied, under-achieving at school) and Charles Wallace sharing bread and hot milk on the sort of dark and stormy night that heralds something strange is about to happen.

Mrs Whatsit is on her way and the dimension-jumping hunt for Mr Murry  whom Meg has never given up hope of seeing again  has begun.

I really wanted to go with what ensues and there is certainly some lightweight, colourful fun to be had here, as we head towards that triumvirate of Disney tenets  that nothing is more important than family, good always defeats evil and love conquers everything.

Which is partly what LEngles original book was about  but only partly.

Sadly some of Reid's good work is undone by the painfully shrill young actor playing her six-year-old brother Charles Wallace, who is less child prodigy here, more major irritant

Something bigger, something more mind-expandingly substantial, has gone missing, along with real emotion and the important idea that an awkward girl like Meg, with troublesome hair, might be good at maths and science.

Here, she seems more dependent on the presence of putative boyfriend Calvin (nicely played by the young Australian actor Levi Miller), her love for her father and three semi-immortal beings apparently more interested in frocks than fractures in space-time.

Like some of the visual effects, the Mrs Ws just dont quite work  Witherspoons isnt funny enough, Kalings doesnt have enough to do, while Winfreys (perhaps channelling Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, one of several echoes of The Wizard Of Oz) struggles to convey the complexities and contradictions of a floating, ethereal, omniscient being with a serious love of cosmetics.

IT'S A FACT Madeleine L'Engle's book was originally rejected by at least 26 publishers. It was finally released in 1962, and has been in print ever since. Advertisement

Fans of the book will spot other changes  the inhabitants of the colour-drenched planet Uriel are now flying flowers rather than centaurs, the tentacled Aunt Beast barely gets a look in, and at least one planet seems to have gone missing altogether.

LEngles underlying Christian message also seems to have disappeared somewhere along the way, although, as I didnt notice this as a child (Narnias Aslan went straight over my head too), Im hardly going to mourn its absence as an adult.

But perhaps what does most damage is the fact that there is no wrinkle in time in real life.

Years pass, decades pass, half-centuries pass  and much of what was innovative and exciting when LEngle wrote her story are all too familiar now.

Unsane (15)

Rating:

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House (12A)

Rating:

Pacific Rim: Uprising (12A)

Rating:

Steven Soderbergh, best known for Sex, Lies And Videotape and the Oceans Eleven franchise, announced his retirement from film-making five years ago.

But hes already made one big-screen return with Logan Lucky and now hes back again with Unsane, an edgy psychological thriller noteworthy not just for the fine acting but also for the fact that it was apparently shot on an iPhone.

Claire Foy, Queen Elizabeth in The Crown, takes on the role of Sawyer Valentini, a troubled young American who seeks counselling to help her deal with the emotional aftermath of being stalked, only to find herself committed to a psychiatric hospital. First for 24 hours, then for a week.

Unsane stars Claire Foy (above) as a troubled young woman who finds herself committed to a psychiatric hospital. It's a dark, shifting production that even Hitchcock would enjoy

Is the hospital behaving unethically or is Sawyer sicker than we think?

The truth turns out to be even more complicated in a dark, constantly shifting production that even Hitchcock would enjoy.

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House is another political conspiracy thriller plucked from the Nixon-era White House.

Liam Neeson, clearly having trouble stepping back from action-thriller mode, isnt brilliant as Felt, the associate director of the FBI who, after the Watergate break-in, battled to maintain the agencys long-standing independence from political interference.

But with President Trump firing top FBI officials, the films message couldnt be more topical or important.

Cross Godzilla with Transformers in 2013 Pacific Rim pitched huge sea-monsters from another dimension against giant robots piloted by humans.

Despite its modest success, the franchise returns with Pacific Rim: Uprising. The visual effects are better and the monsters are evolving but the tangled, tedious storyline will defeat anyone over the age of ten.As a child, self-confessed uber-geek Ernest Cline spent hours in front of his computer playing video games and was vilified by friends and family alike. Youre wasting your time, they told him.

Today, bespectacled Cline is having the last laugh. Because all those countless wasted hours led to a bestselling science-fiction novel in 2011, Ready Player One, which has now been transformed into a 125 million Steven Spielberg blockbuster.

The film, already being hailed as Spielbergs finest in years, is a rip-roaring ride into a dystopian future packed with pop-culture references from the Eighties, including DeLorean cars, Pac-Man and Duran Duran.

Tye Sheridan as Parzival. The film, already being hailed as Spielbergs finest in years, is a rip-roaring ride into a dystopian future packed with pop-culture references from the Eighties

Olivia Cooke as Samantha in the new film. Ready Player One is set in 2044, in a world ravaged by poverty and climate change

Sheridan as Parzival. Above: Mark Rylance as Anorak. Spielberg calls Cline a visionary, while critics have praised the films dizzying special effects

Gaming saved me and has allowed me to live a life I could never have dreamed of, says Cline, 48, of the book and movie that made him a millionaire. Now I can call all those hours of game-playing research.

Ready Player One is set in 2044, in a world ravaged by poverty and climate change, where people try to escape their miserable lives in a virtual-reality fantasy world called Oasis. When the eccentric creator of Oasis dies (played in the film by British actor Mark Rylance), he leaves his trillion-dollar fortune to whoever wins a cut-throat scavenger hunt in his virtual world.

Spielberg calls Cline a visionary (copies of his novel are handed to new employees at Google as a road map to the future), while critics have praised the films dizzying special effects, amid predictions that the on-screen virtual-reality world will inspire real-life pioneers of the burgeoning technology.

Cline says: 'Pop culture is the only culture Ive ever known. I wrote a book filled with references I hoped other people could relate to'

Hannah John-Kamen as FNale Zandor. Cline was overcome with emotion when he visited the film set at Leavesden Studios

Just like his protagonist in Ready Player One, Cline was a socially awkward child who was an outcast at school

What I never predicted was how fast technology would catch up with fantasy, says Cline, who lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and ten-year-old daughter.

Just like his protagonist in Ready Player One, Cline was a socially awkward child who was an outcast at school. His teenage parents were ill-equipped to raise Cline and his younger brother, so the boys were adopted by their God-fearing grandparents, who lived on a remote farm in Ashland, Ohio.

The young Cline became addicted to gaming, spending hours immersed in Dungeons & Dragons. At one point, his grandmother banned him from playing it because she feared it was the devils work.

There was a panic in the media about it being about devil worship and kids doing witchcraft. So I was forbidden from playing it for religious reasons. Of course, like anything forbidden, that only made it more appealing.

A college dropout, Cline started writing in his spare time while working as a computer technician. But his first brush with Hollywood, as screenwriter for the 2009 flop Fanboys, was an unmitigated disaster.

The film, about a group of geeks who break into George Lucass Skywalker ranch, was co-produced by Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, both of whom have been accused of multiple sexual-assault charges and whose very public downfall prompted the #MeToo movement.

I didnt experience that side of them, obviously, but they mutilated Fanboys, Cline shrugs. He says his characters were altered along with the storyline, rendering his original script unrecognisable. It was the worst experience ever, with two of the worst people in Hollywood. I felt creatively violated.

He wrote Ready Player One as a personal rebuke to Hollywood. I wanted to have control and geek out as much as I wanted without anyone telling me what to do. I thought it probably unfilmable, but after Fanboys I buckled down and decided to write about what I knew. I was born in 1972. Pop culture is the only culture Ive ever known. I wrote a book filled with references I hoped other people could relate to  Atari, Back To The Future, Pac-Man.

Right: Director Steven Spielberg; Left: Ready Player One author Ernest Cline

In the space of 48 hours in 2010, the book and movie rights were sold for a reported $1 million each. The novel became a runaway hit, selling millions of copies worldwide.

When he first met Spielberg, the legendary director arrived with a dog-eared copy of the book filled with 50 Post-it notes.

I knew then everything would be OK, says Cline. I went from having the worst experience in Hollywood to the best.

He has already written a sequel (Ready Player Two), but says he will likely stop at a trilogy. Does he believe we will all, eventually, shun the real world for a virtual one?

Before I became a writer I worked in tech support, surrounded by people who played video games all the time, sometimes at work. Some friends of mine began to feel that going online was more compelling than real life. To me, the ultimate will be when we seamlessly move between reality and virtual reality, and I believe that day is coming.

Does he let his daughter play video games?

They been such a big part of my life and career that it would be hypocritical for me to stop her, says Cline. We share it together. If shes interested in a game, I learn it too.

She is not, however, allowed to use social media. The bullying today is on a whole different level, so I have software that limits where she can go. Theres no Facebook yet. She hasnt even read Ready Player One.

Cline was overcome with emotion when he visited the film set at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire and saw giant, life-size stacks of trailer homes piled one on top of the other  one of which is home to the protagonist in his book. Thats when it sank in that this was reality, that Steven Spielberg was directing my movie. It was an overwhelming moment.

In true fanboy fashion, Cline says he only allowed himself one splurge when Ready Player One hit big  a 1982 DeLorean DMC-12 just like the one in Back To The Future, which cost him 30,000.

Ive wanted to own one since I was ten years old but it seemed like a silly daydream. Now all my dreams have come true.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is published by Arrow Books, priced 8.99. Offer price 6.74 (25 per cent discount) until March 23. Order at www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over 15. The film is released on Thursday. Or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over 15. The film is released on Thursday.POP! Art In A Changing Britain

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester Until May 7

Rating:

Its a common misconception that Pop Art was a movement from the United States, as American as the Coca-Cola bottles and Campbells Soup cans silk-screened by Andy Warhol. The truth is that Pop began in Britain in the late Forties  and went on to thrive here over the next two decades.

A sizeable exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester (its largest ever) looks to tell the story of British Pop Art. It starts in the post-war years of rationing, when artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton  inspired by consumer magazines from across the Atlantic  cast an envious eye on American prosperity. In Hers Is A Lush Situation, Hamilton merged the body of a new Buick with that of a naked female, serving to highlight the sexual connotations in many a car advert.

He and Paolozzi were founding members of a radical, Pop collective called the Independent Group, whose goal was to release (what they saw as) an elitist hold on British art at the time, in order to make it inclusive of popular culture.

Judging by the Miss World winners, music stars and cartoon characters who appear in this exhibition, youd have to say the group succeeded. Peter Blake  who studied under Hamilton at Londons Royal College of Art and was part of a second wave of British Pop artists in the Swinging Sixties  is represented here by Irish Lord X. Its one of numerous portraits he did of professional wrestlers.

One of four mural panels by Nigel Henderson, 1949-1960

Hollywood, by Anthony Donaldson, 1968

Sadly, another of Hamiltons leading pupils, David Hockney, barely features, while a third, Pauline Boty, is omitted altogether. In fairness, thats because this was never intended as a comprehensive survey of British Pop.

Rather, its a chance for Pallant House to display, for the first time, a selection of the 500 works it received in 2006 from the collection of Colin St John Wilson and his wife (and fellow architect) M J Long. The show represents their personal take on Pop.

One of the artists they collected most keenly was Joe Tilson, whose marvellous Letter From Che shows that Pop could also get political. It consists of a collage of photographs of the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara on his deathbed, aged 39  complete with a facsimile of a letter hed sent to his parents years earlier, in which he alluded, in good humour, to his invincibility.

Richard Hamiltons Hers Is A Lush Situation, 1958

The Silken World Of Michelangelo, 1967

It wasnt only with subject matter that Pop artists innovated, but also technique. They were particularly fond of screen-printing, which traditionally had been associated with graphic design and advertising.

Screen-prints abound in this exhibition, though its the sculptures that make for the most eye-catching exhibits. Such as Hollywood, Anthony Donaldsons rendering in yellow fibreglass of the searchlights that used to light up the night sky at Hollywood film premieres.

Alas, theres no attempt to consider American Pop Art and how that parallel, but independent, movement developed across the Atlantic. Its also frustrating that the curators decided not to order the show chronologically, which might have allowed us to see how (if at all) British society developed in tandem with its art.

That said, these are defects its easy to look past. Pops fondness for bright, ice-cream colours ensures this is an upbeat experience throughout  a highly suitable exhibition to mark the advent of spring.Rex V. Edith Thompson: A Tale Of Two Murders

Laura Thompson

Head of Zeus 25

Rating:

Laura Thompsons last book was about Lord Lucan, and very good it was too. In her introduction, she wrote of other murders that had taken place within the context of unhappy marriages. Among those she mentioned was the 1922 murder of Percy Thompson by Freddy Bywaters, the lover of Percys wife, Edith. Edith was, she wrote, almost certainly innocent, but she was hanged for complicity. A woman of unusual allure, eight years older than the boy who had clubbed her husband to death, she did not command the sympathy of the Old Bailey.

For her new book, she turns her full attention to this particular murder case, which was so famous at the time that it prompted T S Eliot to write to the Daily Mail, congratulating it on its no-nonsense stance that the executions should go ahead. As murders go, it seemed relatively straightforward. Percy and Edith Thompson, both professional people, lived in the grey London suburb of Ilford. Edith took a lover eight years her junior, called Freddy Bywaters, who was a steward on a P&O line. On the night of October 3, 1922, Mr and Mrs Thompson were walking home after a visit to a West End theatre when Bywaters sprang out and stabbed (rather than clubbed) Mr Thompson to death. Bywaters was arrested soon after, and charged with murder.

Freddy Bywaters, Edith Thompson and husband Percy in the couples Ilford garden

More controversially, Edith was charged too, largely on the basis of a bundle of love letters she had written to Bywaters. They seemed to contain evidence that in the months leading up to that fateful night, she had goaded him into murder, and had herself attempted to kill Percy by poisoning him, as well as grinding up light bulbs and sprinkling the remnants in his food. Her defence counsel argued that these murderous suggestions were simply the fantasies of an over-imaginative woman.

Since then, most commentators have gone along with this argument, among them the late P D James, who described Edith as a fantasist, almost the prototype of that dangerous species. Nevertheless, it is easy to see why the jury found her culpable: her letters fuss about leaving fingerprints, and include such phrases as I used the light bulb three times, but the third time he found a piece and You said it was enough for an elephant. Perhaps it was. But you dont allow for the taste making only a small quantity to be taken.

T S Eliot wrote to the Daily Mail, congratulating it on its no-nonsense stance that the executions should go ahead

Rex V. Edith Thompson is subtitled A Tale Of Two Murders: the author is convinced that Edith was innocent of the charges against her, and wrongly hanged. But she doesnt stop there; far from it. She believes that Edith was executed because she was a woman, and calls the judge and jury those unromantic men with their pipes and their slippers and predictability. Furthermore she condemns the police for their strange pleasure in the prospect of her destruction  a pleasure both puritanical and orgiastic, which had taken possession of the men at Ilford police station.

As you may already be able to tell, this is not the sort of true crime investigation that goes On the one hand but on the other. Laura Thompson is impassioned and incensed in her defence of Edith. These passions govern all her judgments and opinions, of which there are a never-ending supply. She also allows them to play havoc with her narrative structure: for the first 100 or so pages, I kept thinking Id missed something important, and would then flick back, only to find it had never been mentioned.

You have to wait until page 115 before the events start to be laid out in the right order; until that point, its a dogs dinner, with, for instance, the murder discussed before the marriage has even taken place and the adultery mentioned before the marriage. From the start, Thompson ditches the sane approach she took for her book about Lord Lucan, opting for something much more wild and windy. Edith was, she assures us, a hard-working woman, going to her place of business even when the sun beckoned her to a delirious leisure or the snow fell in vicious clumps or her mind yearned to wander in the dreamscapes of her own conjuring.

Come again? All that really tells us is Edith got to work on time, but Thompson finds it hard to leave well alone. Instead, she writes as though dry-ice is blowing across her typewriter, to the sound of thunderclaps overhead. Her prose is overblown with melodrama, particularly where Edith is concerned. Though at different points she says that Edith was not obviously sexy-looking and had only-just-above-average looks, she also gasps at her explosive erotic force and argues that she exerted her femininity with the unconscious luxuriant ease of a cat flexing its claws. Not only that, but, femaleness rippled through her genes, her flesh, her nature. She was lush with it, yielding with it. Where is the late Jackie Collins, now that we need her?

In one paragraph, Thompson even enters Ediths body as she makes love to Freddy one Saturday night, revealing that she achieved shuddering sensations of pleasure. It was, she writes, the first and only time that she truly understood how sex could be with this man; she gave herself to him, lost her perpetual awareness, and either climaxed or came very close. She gets the germ of this scene from Ediths letters to Freddy, which she describes as remarkable love letters, of the most intense and beautiful and individual kind. This is pushing it: because of what was to happen, they obviously possess a tragic quality, but, in themselves, they rarely transcend the banal. When Thompson quotes from the original letter from which she invented those shuddering sensations of pleasure, and so on, one is struck by how underwhelming it is by comparison. You said you knew it would be like this one day  if it hadnt would you have been disappointed is all that real Edith says to describe the experience.

Edith and Percy. Occasionally in works of non-fiction, one can spot a novel struggling to get out. The tale as it exists is not sufficient to contain the aspirations of the author

Laura Thompsons glorification of Edith is matched only by her contempt for her husband, Percy. It is awful, really, how hard it is to feel compassion for a murder victim, she says, adding, a few pages later, one can feel pity for Percy, although it does not necessarily flow easily. She even goes so far as to blame Percy for his own murder, citing his reluctance to divorce. He should have washed his hands of it all. He would have saved everybodys lives  it was within his gift to do that  but his defining characteristic was obstinacy. But she is much more forgiving of his murderer, the 20-year-old Freddy Bywaters, arguing that, when he stabbed poor Percy repeatedly in the chest, he was very young. And one forgets, so easily, what that feels like. Moreover, one cannot help but wish he had escaped: human nature favours the fugitive.

Occasionally in works of non-fiction, one can spot a novel struggling to get out. The tale as it exists is not sufficient to contain the aspirations of the author. In this book, there is an autobiography queuing for release, too, plus a collection of opinion-pieces. Nothing can happen in Ediths life without Laura Thompson wanting to sound off about it. The Thompsons wedding, for instance, was probably a jolly affair; they usually are; it is when they are over that the trouble starts. Is she trying to tell us something?

As the book progresses, these sermonettes come thick and fast. Women today are not as happy as they should be, on the whole. Liking so rarely goes with lust, lust is much more common than liking, and thwarted lust is so very, very dangerous. Marriage! What an undeservedly good press it still gets, so wildly at odds with its capacity to cause misery and destruction. Meanwhile, the true story gets lost in a blizzard of suppositions, with quite likelys and surelys, probablys and almost certainlys blowing around the pages like so much confetti.Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday's ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.

G.H. writes: While we were on a cruise with Thomson (now called TUI), my wife was injured by a member of the ships staff who took a short cut through a fire door that opened on to the deck. This part of the deck was a designated smoking area, with an ashtray next to the door. There were no warning signs.

My wife needed seven stitches in a gash to her leg. The ships doctor gave us a wheelchair for a week, but the holiday was ruined. Our solicitor took the case on but TUI told him it must be dealt with under maritime law in the Admiralty Court in London. This would involve using an expert barrister. TUI must know few people can fight them this way.

Injury: An accident happened on board the TUI Discovery

Tony Hetherington replies: There seems to be no dispute over what happened during your holiday on the TUI Discovery cruise ship. Your wife was in what should have been a safe place, set aside for smokers.

The crew member opened a heavy metal door from the inside, hitting her and leaving her bleeding from an open wound that required emergency treatment from the ships doctor.

A report signed by the doctor shows the wound needed cleaning and dressing every day for the rest of your trip and the stitches were eventually removed by your own doctor.

In the wake of the accident, you had the presence of mind to photograph the door. On the outside nothing warned passengers not to stand in front of it. On the inside nothing instructed the crew that it was only to be used as an emergency exit.

But soon after the accident, signs appeared. On deck the sign warned passengers not to block what was a fire exit. On the inside a fresh sign was put up, telling crew members that the door was only to be opened in an emergency.

It is hard to see this as anything other than an open and shut case. But when your solicitor asked TUI for the name of its insurer, and suggested that if TUI did not hand over copies of its records about the accident then he would take the matter to court, the shutters came down.

When your solicitor tried to file a county court claim on your wifes behalf, TUI told him he must go to the specialist Admiralty Court. At this point, as costs mounted, you and your wife halted legal action.

But when I invited TUI to comment, I was told: As we understand this matter is now the subject of legal proceedings, it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.

I told TUI repeatedly that there are no legal proceedings and I asked time and again for details of the court and case number. Eventually, TUI told me there had been a degree of confusion. When the cruise company referred to legal proceedings, all it meant was that it had heard from your solicitor.

But you no longer have a solicitor. You had to back out because he warned you of the need to pay for a specialist barrister. Your letter to The Mail on Sunday made this clear.

Sadly, TUI has proved completely unwilling to discuss the accident. It has been trying to persuade me to question your former solicitor on points of legal procedure, instead of looking into why the smoking area was set up right outside a heavy metal door, why there were no warning signs on the door and what TUI could do to help a passenger who was injured on one of its cruise ships.

Absurdly, at this late stage TUI told me that any claim could be started in the Admiralty Court and then be transferred to the far cheaper county court. So why not say this in the first place?

Even worse, at no point did TUI tell you, or me, or your solicitor about the even cheaper conciliation scheme run by the Association of British Travel Agents.

A spokesman explained: This conciliation scheme is a simple and cost-effective means for ABTA members and their customers to resolve personal injury claims for awards of up to 10,000 without the need to go to court.

I have sent you details of the ABTA scheme. But TUIs attitude throughout makes me wonder whether passengers on its ships should not just take out travel insurance. Perhaps they need legal expenses insurance as well.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.

Read Tony Hetherington's case files at thisismoney.co.uk/hetherington.



Breaking into the music industry is hard - and expensive.

But where does the money in the music industry go and could you reap rewards from backing new ideas

We take a look at the industry's finances, from how much artists get from downloads, to why gigs have never been more important and how to invest yourself.

Little Mix, big rewards: The band with their Brit award last year

PUT MUSIC AHEAD OF MONEY

The music industry is worth 10billion a year in sales  which sounds a lot until you realise it is a third of the revenue it raked in two decades ago.

A major reason for this is the internet. Despite websites opening up the opportunity for us to enjoy more music through streaming it has meant less money being spent on more profitable album sales.

Making a living out of becoming a rock star has therefore become increasingly difficult. For every success story, such as pop star Ed Sheeran worth 37million and girl band Little Mix, countless others fail. Even with that incredible talent, Sheeran spent a couple of years homeless  often catching his sleep on the London Underground  before eventually being discovered.

The cut-throat industry is now more about making profits from existing bands rather than discovering new groups. With most releases failing to cover their costs, investors must be realistic. Rob Town, musician and founder of agency Stampede Press, says: The music industry is full of sharks keen to exploit artists who are often blinded by a dream of success.

The harsh reality is this is a tough old business and you rarely get to make a living out of it even if you are particularly talented.

He adds: As soon as a band starts talking about money you know it is the beginning of the end  you should always put your music before anything.

Potential investors should therefore not be primarily motivated by money but instead on how they can support an artist wanting to make music.

The A-team: But Ed Sheeran  now worth 37million  struggled at first

TUNE IN TO NEW ARTISTS

Thanks to the internet, artists can share their music with many millions of new potential fans through websites, social media and streaming services.

The majority of music is now listened to through streaming where you often pay a monthly subscription to get access to millions of tunes  but the amount each service pays a band can vary.

Spotify is the most popular  but also one of the meanest  often handing out just 0.003p per tune played, according to research from the American business magazine Forbes. Deezer pays 0.004p a stream while Apple Music 0.005p. The most generous streaming services are Napster and Tidal, which pay out 0.01p and 0.008p respectively.

Subscription to Spotify and Deezer is free if willing to have occasional adverts played between the tracks  or 9.99 a month without ads. Apple Music and Tidal also charge from 9.99 a month.

Music technology student Joe Brooks hopes to make a living out of music and believes social media can help achieve his dream. The 20-year-old is drummer in band Stray Foxes and is a DJ called Brxy.

Joe, of Kingston upon Thames in South West London, says: It is more about the number of new listeners rather than records sold these days  and if a band attracts enough fans it will then be in more demand for gigs where it can earn some money.

Drum up fans: Joe Brooks hopes to make a living from music

He believes if you wish to support musicians further, consider visiting the music download website Bandcamp  where you can pay what you feel is appropriate to download music to give financial help to emerging acts. New bands such as Stray Foxes can also be enjoyed for free on websites such as SoundCloud.

Joe adds: It is important to make the most of social media, such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, to ensure music and gig details are shared  and hopefully people who enjoy what they have heard pass the message to other fans.

Buying music  either downloaded or through hard copy CDs and vinyl  makes bands far more money than streaming where it is just played online. Artists can expect to pocket perhaps between 6p and 20p per track of music bought online via a provider such as iTunes, depending on how the original deal was negotiated. A CD or vinyl album sale might see between 5 to 13 per cent of the price paid for the tunes ending up in a musicians pocket.

INVEST AS A MUSIC MOGUL

Despite the high-risk nature of the industry there is nothing to stop you getting involved  just as long as you are aware you could lose all your money.

Such a gamble turned Richard Branson into a billionaire. In 1973 he invested in Mike Oldfield and Tubular Bells when no other record company would touch him. He also released best-selling album Never Mind The B*******, Heres The Sex Pistols in 1977 after the punk band was fired by other record labels.

Perhaps the best way to get involved in the market is through a seed enterprise investment scheme, such as industry-focused Amplify Music.

Gamble: Richard Branson invested in Mike Oldfield and The Sex Pistols

For a minimum of 10,000 music fans pool funds with other investors until they get a 1.5million pot. Then five bands each get 300,000 to record and release albums. The cash is tied up for three-and-a-half years and you do not get a say which bands get help  that is left to experts, such as the music manager Brian Message, who has been involved in working with the band Radiohead.

The risks may be high but the tax breaks for seed enterprise investment schemes are generous. They include being able to offset half the total you have invested against your income tax bill. In addition, such schemes can avoid capital gains tax as well as inheritance tax.

Alex Davies is chief executive of Bristol-based financial adviser Wealth Club. Amplify Music is among the tax-efficient investments he offers. He says: There is no guarantee you will make any money  this is not about finding a new mega star like Adele but helping promising artists.

Every time you hear their tune on the radio you can be proud and also know you own a bit of the music. He adds: Revenue comes not only from music sales but also concerts, royalties and merchandise.

The most recent Amplify Music seed enterprise investment scheme returned 60p in every 1 invested after three-and-a-half years when investors received some of their money back last September.

Despite this meaning a 10,000 investment only got them back 6,000  if they reclaimed the 5,000 income tax relief they would not be out of pocket. To be considered a seed the business has to have been around for fewer than two years  but this refers to the limited company that invests the money and not necessarily the band, which could have been around longer.

Recent band successes for Amplify Music include the London Community Gospel Choir and The Boxer Rebellion.

GO OUT TO GIGS

Musicians often still tour pubs and clubs to learn their craft and start to build a fan base  despite the internet revolution.

Joe Brooks, of the Stray Foxes, says: A band might have to pay 100 just to be given the opportunity to share a stage in cities such as London  they are only able to make any money if they sell tickets off their own back which more than covers this initial outlay. Once established, pubs and clubs pay 150 or so if you bring in fans.

It may be a long way from filling the Wembley Arena but it is worth remembering Oasis was only discovered by chance when record label boss Alan McGee was in Glasgow to visit his father in 1993.

He went to King Tuts Wah Wah Hut club two hours early by mistake when the band played four tracks  and there were only a dozen people in the crowd.

Compared to spending sometimes more than 100 to see an established band with a seat miles from the action, consider enjoying the intimacy of watching relatively unknown bands close up. For ticket prices from 10 these can prove better value.

Details of where you might find such bands can be found at websites such as TicketWeb, See Tickets and the London-based Skiddle. It is also worth scanning local newspapers and music press. University colleges are great for live music.

You might also try out battle of the bands style events where groups fight it out with other musicians to get through to another round  and depend on audiences loving them. Such events include SPH Band Contest, with tickets from 7.

When buying tickets for events try to purchase direct whenever possible to avoid being ripped off. Second-hand ticket sellers StubHub UK, Viagogo, Seatwave and GetMeIn! were ordered to clean up their act by the Advertising Standards Authority earlier this month.

They were criticised by the watchdog for not being totally clear about extra charges that can be added when booking for gigs. Viagogo was also slammed for using the slogan official site when selling previously purchased tickets.Turnaround specialist Melroses controversial 8billion takeover bid for engineer GKN is set to go to the wire when shareholders cast their votes by Thursday.

Bosses of both firms are gearing up for last-ditch talks with shareholders to convince them to back their own plans to turn around the aerospace and car parts maker.

It is the largest hostile takeover bid in Britain since the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft nearly a decade ago.

Melrose began its pursuit of GKN in January, but its overtures have been repeatedly rejected

Melrose began its dogged pursuit of GKN in January, but its overtures have been repeatedly rejected. It wants to eject the GKN board and revive the firm before ultimately selling it on.

GKN plans to revive the businesss fortunes by selling two divisions  including the automotive business to Americas Dana for 4.5billion.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank have said the outcome is too close to call. They added: Should Melroses offer be successful, we would not be surprised to see the level of acceptance only moderately above the 50 per cent plus one share threshold.

Elliott Advisors, the worlds biggest activist hedge fund and the second-biggest GKN shareholder, has thrown its weight behind the Melrose bid.

It said: We acknowledge GKN managements contribution in developing the companys defence strategy and obtaining an improved offer from Melrose, but strongly believe the best way forward... is now as part of Melrose.The former boss of Britains biggest IT firm pocketed 8.4million just months before he was forced to quit last week, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Chris Hsu became chief executive of Micro Focus last September when it paid US technology firm Hewlett Packard Enterprise 6.8billion for the software division he had been running.

Hsus bumper payday involved Hewlett Packard Enterprise share options triggered when he left the business to run Micro Focus.

Glory day: Chris Hsu ringing the New York Stock Exchange bell to mark Micro Focuss US listing

But this week, Newbury-based Micro Focus announced that its sales were falling faster than expected  with the result that its shares slumped by half, wiping 4billion off the companys value.

Micro Focus  listed in London and New York  has grown through a series of acquisitions to become the UKs largest IT firm. Customers include British Airways and the US government.

However, there were concerns about its HP deal, its largest, because it included the remains of British software firm Autonomy, which Hewlett Packard bought in a disastrous deal that led to a huge corporate fraud case.

The drama follows a 24million payday for Micro Focuss executive chairman, Kevin Loosemore, in November as part of a share scheme from a previous takeover.

Hsu will not receive a payoff for leaving Micro Focus.

But a new scheme was put in place after the HP deal, putting executives and managers, including Hsu and Loosemore, in line for part of a potential 270million payout next year. However, that is based on the share price rising to 34. It is now languishing at 956p after last weeks crash.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a spin-off from Hewlett Packard, said Hsus share options were granted in 2016 before the Micro Focus talks. The company said in documents that Hsu successfully executed the deal on time and under budget, generating significant stockholder value.An art dealership accused of offering to launder money through the sale of a Picasso painting has gone bust.

It is the latest casualty of an FBI sting that led to the collapse of London stockbroker Beaufort Securities at the beginning of this month.

Lenders to Mayfair Fine Art, owned by Matthew Green, called in administrators after the company failed to meet debt repayments.

Masterpiece: The Picasso painting at the centre of money laundering claims

An alleged deal to launder money through the sale of the 6.7million Picasso work  entitled Personnages, Painted 11 April 1965  fell apart earlier this month when one of those involved turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.

Greens firm defaulted on a business loan it took out with Mayfair investment bank MBU Capital last October. It is unclear whether the lender, who called in administrators on March 12, will be able to recover any capital.

Facing charges: Art dealer Matthew Green

Joint administrators Ian Robert and Ryan Davies, of Kingston Smith & Partners, said in a statement: There is no known physical art gallery and investigations have begun into the location of any assets.

Green, 50, was allegedly introduced to the undercover FBI agent in London last month by Beauforts manager Peter Kyriacou and his uncle Aristos Aristodemou.

According to court papers, Aristodemou told the FBI agent he could buy a Picasso painting through Green and could later sell it to clean the money.

Green, who resigned as a director of Mayfair Fine Art in February, faces criminal charges in the US along with Kyriacou, Aristodemou and three others.

The 36million securities and money laundering operation allegedly run by Beaufort was said to stretch from Belize to Budapest.

There is no suggestion MBU Capital is involved in any wrongdoing.Leader of Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement Abdul Malik Badreddin al-Houthi has stressed that Saudi Arabia will finally fail in its all-out military aggression against its conflict-ridden southern neighbor as it failed in Syria and Yemen.



(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Leader of Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement Abdul Malik Badreddin al-Houthi has stressed that Saudi Arabia will finally fail in its all-out military aggression against its conflict-ridden southern neighbor as it failed in Syria and Yemen.



Speaking in an exclusive interview with Lebanons Arabic-language al-Akhbar daily newspaper published on Friday, Houthi said Saudi Arabia's policies in Yemen are doomed to failure, stressing that the Riyadh regime has not shied away from killing thousands of women and children, targeting crowded markets and social events such as weddings and bombing densely populated neighborhoods, schools and mosques in order to realize its goal of occupying the entire Yemeni soil.



He added that the Yemeni media outlets have sought to expose the extent of the tragedy and horror that the Saudi-led military aggression haunts Yemen and its nation.



The Houthi leader went on to say that the unjust economic siege against Yemen is also aimed at limiting the movement of ordinary people, including patients who are in need of medical treatment abroad, restricting humanitarian supplies, devaluation of local currency, drying up the salaries of civil servants, starving the Yemeni people and destroying factories plus service facilities.



The Yemeni people have however remained steadfast, and managed to confront all forms of aggression much to the surprise of Saudi-led forces, which though the Yemeni people would surrenders within weeks after the military campaign, he pointed out.



Houthi said, Saudi Arabia is now in the midst of unprecedented attrition as its political, economic, security and military problems continue to exacerbate.



The Ansarullah chief said Saudi Arabia is being used "like a milking cow" by Americans, emphasizing that US President Donald Trump has been more successful than his predecessor Barack Obama to get money out of the Riyadh regime.



Elsewhere in his remarks, Houthi pointed to Yemens missile capabilities, underlining that the main goal is to reach the level of deterrence.



Our missiles can now reach the heart of enemy areas. They have reached Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Above all, they have penetrated the US-made air defense systems which they heavily depend on. Our Burkan-2 (Volcano-2) ballistic missiles have reached al-Yamamah Palace in Riyadh and go even longer, he commented.



Houthi said Yemen's resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and a number of his administration members are currently being incarcerated inside Saudi Arabia.



About 14,000 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabias military campaign against Yemen in March 2015. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.



The United Nations says a record 22.2 million people are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.



A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the catastrophic living conditions in Yemen, stating that there is a growing risk of famine and cholera there.



After three years of conflict, conditions in Yemen are catastrophic, John Ging, UN director of aid operations, told the UN Security Council on February 27.



He added, People's lives have continued unraveling. Conflict has escalated since November driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes.



Ging further noted that cholera has infected 1.1 million people in Yemen since last April, and a new outbreak of diphtheria has occurred in the war-ravaged Arab country since 1982.







/257It is one of the worlds most iconic fashion events which this year drew a front-row appearance from the Queen.

But London Fashion Week, which brings designers and their fashionista followers flocking to the capital, could become one of the most high-profile victims of Brexit.

Fashion industry bigwigs, politicians and lawyers say Britains withdrawal could make must-have fashion styles on Londons catwalks vulnerable to design theft.

They say the issue needs urgent attention or risks designers deserting London for Paris and Milan already powerful rivals.

London Fashion Week: Britain's catwalk showcase could be left vulnerable to design theft

Lord Clement-Jones, an expert in the field of copyright law, said the loss of protections for unregistered ready-to-wear designs could be a massive blow to the UK economy and is urging the Government to avoid this major fashion faux pas.

Ewan Grist, an intellectual property expert at law firm Bird and Bird, said: This could leave some designs completely unprotected in the UK after Brexit and sitting ducks for copying or counterfeits.

The UK fashion industrys exports are thought to total 9.1billion a year, and the industry supports around 177,000 jobs.

Concerns centre on complex but vital rules known as EU unregistered community design rights. These protections mean designs first presented within the EU  currently including the UK  cannot be copied by others in the bloc for three years.

Alex Monroe, a London designer whose jewellery is sold in Fortnum & Mason, John Lewis and Fenwick shops, said the loss of these rights is a big threat.

We in Britain live by our distinctive and innovative designers, he said. Were not as big as Paris or Milan or New York, but were quirkier and individual, as we have these strong designs.

The minute you take away these exclusive, British, forward-looking designs USP [unique selling point], then theres not much left. Someones got to bloody well look after it.

Fashion royalty: The Queen and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour at a London Fashion Week show last month

Labours Baroness Goudie said the Government needs to assure those industries that they are welcome here, and do so quite quickly. Otherwise they will look to go to Paris and Milan, because they are asking and baiting them to come.

Organisations such as fashion week will disappear from London, she said.

A survey of 500 designers by the British Fashion Council in 2016, before the referendum, found that 90 per cent of the 290 that responded wanted to remain within the EU. Just 4.3 per cent wanted to leave.

The British Fashion Council has also raised concerns in a report sent to the Parliamentary Culture Committee.

The council, chaired by Net-A-Porter founder Natalie Massenet, says the loss of protections in Britain would force many businesses to reveal their designs in the EU first in order to trigger protections, effectively closing down London Fashion Week as a platform to promote British businesses.

Caroline Rush, the chief executive of the British Fashion Council, warned in the report: It is a real challenge for London Fashion Week because everyone is going to want to be able to protect their designs as best they possibly can.

What we are going to be seeking with Government is to understand how legally you can show as part of London Fashion Week but be seen to disclose those designs maybe digitally within the EU so that those rights are protected and they are recognised on both sides.

Jewel in crown: London designer Alex Monroe and one of his designs

Harold Tillman, former boss of Jaeger and ex-chairman of the British Fashion Council, told The Mail on Sunday it is important to protect the global showcase that is London Fashion Week.

He added: Fashion and allied services are worth 40billion to the UK in GDP. I would hope this is recognised in the terms of Brexit and protections of design rights are reciprocal with continental Europe.

The Law Society, which represents solicitors across the UK, has also recently issued a report warning Parliament of the potential damage. Despite the threat posed by Brexit to designers, the potential for new trade deals has been cited as an opportunity by chief creative officer of Burberry, Christopher Bailey, who describes himself as a Remainer.

In September, Bailey, due to leave Burberry at the end of the year, said the potential for post-Brexit Britain to export its design is enormous adding: Britishness resonates globally.

A spokesman for the Governments Intellectual Property Office said that, as part of the Brexit process, the UK will establish new schemes to protect rights like these. The spokesman added: This will preserve the full scope of the unregistered community design rights in the UK.Painful memories of his six-year-old daughter being mauled close to death by a pack of dogs come rushing back for Bruce Wicksteed every time he hears of another attack on a child.

The Perth dad rescued his daughter, Maya, from almost certain death after she was set upon by six dogs in 2012.

Now Mr Wicksteed is behind a push for dogs bred for hunting to be eradicated - in the hope of saving other children the pain and suffering Maya endured.

Each year in Australia, a staggering 13,000 dog attack victims are taken to hospital.

And earlier this month Kamillah Jones - a one-year-old girl from Inverell - was mauled to death by her family's rottweiler.

Mr Wicksteed says something has to change - including restrictions on the number of dogs allowed in one place.

Maya was left with life-long scarring and a crippling fear of dogs after she was attacked by three bull Arab mastiffs, two kelpies and a German shepherd on her neighbour's property.

Maya Wicksteed, 12, was attacked by six dogs in 2012 - but has worked to get over her fear of dogs - she is pictured here with her pet Honey

Maya in hospital with her mother Sophie in the hours after she was attacked by the pack of six

Kamillah Jones, one, was killed early this month after her family's rottweiler mauled her in the backyard, Tom Higgins, three, was attacked by a Great Dane when he was in the street

Mr Wicksteed was just metres away from Maya and heard her screaming as she hit the ground and was dragged 40 metres across a gravel driveway by the hunting dogs.

He got her to the house and called for help - his quick actions saved her life.

Mr Wicksteed, who is a paramedic, was a nurse before his daughter was attacked and had cared for children with dog bites.

But it wasn't until he watched his daughter being mauled by the pack that he really considered how dangerous dogs were - now every time he hears about a new attack by 'dangerous breeds' he is infuriated.

'I believe these dogs should be eradicated - you see families who have these dangerous breeds, these dogs bred for hunting, and want to explain to them that they could kill their children with one bite,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

He also believes there should be a limit on the number of dogs allowed in one yard.

'Three of the dogs which attacked Maya were domestic dogs, not hunting dogs, but they were still attacking her because they became a pack,' he said.

The recent death of one-year-old Kamillah Jones has had a major impact on the Wicksteed family.

Maya, who has grown up to be strong and resilient, still remembers ever moment of the dog attack - her father believes dangerous breeds bred for hunting should be banned

More than 13,000 people are admitted to hospital after dog attacks every year - this graph shows serious attacks in 2016

'I was pretty sad about that baby,' Maya said. 'It made me realise how lucky I was that dad heard me screaming.' Maya pictured in hospital after the attack

As did the recent mauling on Tom Higgins, who needed surgery to reattach an ear, and the attack of a 10-year-old girl which occurred in the same horror week.

'I was pretty sad about that baby,' Maya said. 'It made me realise how lucky I was that dad heard me screaming.'

After the attack Maya couldn't cope with 'seeing a dog a hundred metres in the distance or hearing one bark' but six years on she loves them again.

'We took her to Bali, because we knew there would be a lot of stray dogs there. We taught her to understand the body language of dogs. At first she would cling to us but by the end of the trip she was fine with them,' Mr Wicksteed said.

Maya still remembers the savage attack vividly - from being dragged across gravel by the hair to being bitten by the dogs.

Maya with her dad Bruce, and little sister ishka, three. Maya's father saved her from the dogs

Kamillah's death shocked the Wicksteed family who realise how lucky they are Maya survived

A 10-year-old girl was mauled by her own dog an African Boerboel earlier this month - she was saved by a neighbour when her sister called for help

'They were on a lead, I walked up to the top of the hill to wave at them because I wanted to pat them. They ran at me and jumped on me. I was pretty relieved when dad helped me. But it didn't hurt when it was happening,' she said.

While her fear of dogs has disappeared over time, she hopes she 'never has to go' to the farm (where she was attacked) again.

She also has some ongoing problems like nightmares and nervous reactions when she is playing sport.

'Sometimes when people run at me I just freeze and start screaming,' she said.

Her dad has had to readjust as well.

'If I am called to a house, as a paramedic, I will often ask for people to take any dogs outside before I can work,' he said.

The rottweiler that killed Kamillah Jones was put down after being seized by rangers

Maya pictured the day after the attack - and her emergency surgery

The young girl was raced to hospital where she was met by family

The father says with every attack the need for stronger rules around keeping dogs becomes more obvious.

The three hunting dogs were destroyed - but the domestic dogs were not - much to the Wicksteed's dismay.

'They protected the other three dogs, we had two dogs at the time and I wouldn't have hesitated to put them down if they had attacked someone,' he said.

Maya wears her scars with pride - knowing she escaped the initial attack and has been strong enough to beat her fears since.

Children are more likely to be victims of serious attacks, according to statistics.

The Great Dane responsible for attacking Tom Higgins had escaped from its yard



A jury will reconvene on Monday to decide the fate of a North Carolina man who allegedly murdered his wife and two-year-old daughter and then posted images of their corpses on Facebook as 'trophies.'

Elhadji Diop, 55, faces life in prison if he is convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Aminata Drame, 40, and their daughter, Fatim.

The family immigrated to the United States from Somalia.

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told jurors in a Raleigh courtroom on Friday that the pictures Diop posted on Facebook of his dead wife and daughter are enough proof to show he is guilty of murder.

Freeman said that Diop posted the photos on social media as if the bodies of his wife and daughter were 'like trophies,' according to WRAL-TV.

Elhadji Diop, 55, faces life in prison if he is convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Aminata Drame, 40, and their daughter, Fatim. Diop is seen in court in Raleigh on Friday

Diop (left) allegedly murdered his wife and two-year-old daughter and then posted images of their corpses on Facebook as 'trophies.' Aminata Drame is seen right

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told jurors in a Raleigh courtroom on Friday that the pictures Diop posted on Facebook of his dead wife and daughter are enough proof to show he is guilty of murder

But a defense attorney for Diop said those photos were shrines to two people he killed accidentally and loved so dearly he tried to kill himself after their deaths.

The bodies of Drame and Fatim were found by Raleigh police in April 2016 after Diop's niece in Senegal saw the photos of the dead mother and child in an embrace on Facebook with 'Look what God did to me' written underneath, prosecutors said.

Diop was arguing with his wife about money when he allegedly strangled her.

The 2-year-old child got between the two as they struggled and was crushed under her unconscious mother, Freeman said.

'A picture is worth a thousand words,' Freeman said in her closing argument as she showed jurors the photo of the bodies. 'This picture is proof that Elhadji Diop is guilty.'

But a defense lawyer said Diop tried to kill himself after the deaths by cutting his throat and wrists and ingesting rat poison, roach killer and grease remover. 'His grief was real. One does not build a shrine to someone they wanted to kill,' public defender Chuck Caldwell (above) said

'Think about a small child being crunched under struggling adults, surely crying out and yet the defendant persists in that struggle,' she said.

'A picture is worth a thousand words,' Freeman said in her closing argument as she showed jurors the photo of the bodies.

'This picture is proof that Elhadji Diop is guilty.'

The prosecutor added: 'For most of us would, it is difficult to understand how you can murder your wife and your daughter, move them, pose them on the floor and not call 911, not call for help.'

But a defense lawyer said Diop tried to kill himself after the deaths by cutting his throat and wrists and ingesting rat poison, roach killer and grease remover.

'His grief was real. One does not build a shrine to someone they wanted to kill,' public defender Chuck Caldwell said.

'Horrible things can occur that are the result of an accident.'

Beside the first-degree murder charges, Diop can also be found guilty of lesser charges.The FBI says one of its first responders to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks has died of brain cancer linked to exposure to contaminants.

Special Agent Melissa S. Morrow died Thursday at the age of 48. She had served with the FBI for 22 years and was assigned to the Kansas City Field office when she died.

The agency said in a statement on Friday that Morrow made the 'ultimate sacrifice'.

Her death has been classified as a line-of-duty death, due to her exposure to chemicals responding to the Pentagon after 9/11, and a fire at an evidence warehouse in Alexandria.

Special Agent Melissa S. Morrow died Thursday at the age of 48. She had served with the FBI for 22 years and was assigned to the Kansas City Field office when she died.

Her death has been classified as a line-of-duty death, due to her exposure to chemicals responding to the Pentagon after 9/11 (pictured)

The warehouse contained evidence from the Pentagon attack and caught fire in 2013.

Prior to serving in Kansas City, Morrow was a member of the Evidence Response Team in the Washington Field Office.

She spent 10 weeks recovering and processing evidence from the 9/11 attacks.

She had been certified by the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Morrow spent 10 weeks recovering and processing evidence from the 9/11 attacks

Morrow joined the FBI in 1995. Her funeral will be held at Country Club Christian Church in Kansas City on Tuesday afternoon.

It comes less than a week after a former firefighter who evacuated hundreds of people from Lower Manhattan during the September 11 attacks died of cancer at the age of 45.

Thomas Phelan, who was working as a ferry captain when he helped evacuate survivors, died on March 16.

His illness was also believed to be related to exposure to the toxic fumes swirling around Ground Zero.A father who accidentally backed over and killed his two-year-old daughter says he has no words to heal the pain and suffering of his wife.

Jeremiah Batu, 32, had just finished unloading furniture into his newly rented Clayfield apartment, in Brisbane's inner-north, on March 16, when he decided to reverse his leased blue Ford Ranger out of the garage.

The Burmese refugee's little girl Elisha was 'playing around' inside the garage while his wife Wah-eh Htoo, 27, swept the floor.

But as he began to reverse down the driveway, he struck the toddler, who was later confirmed dead in hospital.

Jeremiah Batu (right), 32, had just picked the keys up to a rented apartment in Brisbane's inner-north with wife Wah-eh Htoo (left), 27, when he reversed out of the driveway and killed his daughter Elisha on March 16

Now Mr Batu says there's nothing he can say to 'heal the heart' of his grief-stricken wife, as the pair prepare to lay Elisha (pictured) to rest on Saturday

Now Mr Batu says there's nothing he can say to 'heal the heart' of his grief-stricken wife, as the pair prepare to lay Elisha to rest on Saturday.

'I cannot fix my daughter, and I cannot give my wife the words. Whatever I say is not enough for her,' he told The Courier Mail.

Mr Batu said he grabbed his dying daughter out of his wife's arms and began yelling at people on the street to call an ambulance.

Elisha was taken to hospital while Mr Batu was held at the scene with police officers - who are still investigating the death.

He was permitted to follow his wife and elder daughter Cynthia, five, to the hospital two hours later, but Elisha's death had been confirmed.

Mr Batu described Elisha as an affectionate child who adored him before the horrific accident.

Mr Batu (pictured) had just finished unloading furniture into the Clayfield apartment when he decided to reverse his leased blue Ford Ranger out of the garage, before hitting Elisha

'Elisha loved me so much, and because she always stays home with mum and I go to work, every time I come home she always gives me a kiss and a hug, more than her sister, Elisha gives more love,' he said.

The death has led to an outpouring of community support, including a GoFundMe campaign which has raised more than $7,000 in less than a week for the heartbroken family.

Elisha's Saturday funeral has been donated by White Lady Funerals, while an Easter hamper is on its way to Cynthia.

Mr Batu said Cynthia asks him if he's going to 'fix' Elisha.

'But I have to tell her: "No, shes not going to come home anymore, shes going to sleep with Jesus. One day, we will go with her and meet her again,' he said.A former employee is suing an online shopping company for $5million claiming she was fired for refusing to go to rehab after the firm said she had a 'social drinking' problem.

Megan Davis from Hoboken, New Jersey, filed a lawsuit against Rue La La, where she worked as a merchandise manager.

She claims she was fired in December after she refused to attend treatment for what her company believed was a 'drinking problem'.

The lawsuit is asking for $5million from the company after Davis claims she was wrongfully fired.

Megan Davis was fired from online shopping site Rue La La after she refused to attend a treatment facility for alcoholism. Davis claims she doesn't have a problem and was discriminated against by the company

Problems for the employee began in August 2017 after she attended a work function in Los Angeles and admitted to 'social drinking' with colleagues, the New York Post reported.

But an employee reported her behavior to human resources once she returned to the office in New York City and reportedly said she was 'intoxicated' and 'acting inappropriately'.

In the lawsuit, Davis claims she has 'no such recollection' of this behavior during the work function.

When Davis was confronted by HR, she ' reluctantly agreed that she may have a problem with alcohol, even though that is not what Davis reasonably believed,' according to the lawsuit.

In an attempt to dispel the reputation that she had a drinking problem, Davis began 'dressing overly professional' and 'executing business transactions' in a 'timely manner'.

The issues began in August 2017 after Davis attended a work function with colleagues in Los Angeles. One employee reported her behavior to HR claiming she was 'intoxicated

But her employers allegedly jumped at every misstep, the suit claims.

In October, Rue La La's director of HR allegedly told Davis that she noticed 'red flags' in regards to her behavior that signalled she had a drinking problem.

She sited one incident where Davis sent an email from her phone that had grammatical errors and another when she tripped while walking into the office building.

The director told Davis she was required to enter a mandated 60-day treatment program for her alleged drinking problem.

Davis told her bosses that she felt they were 'shoving rehab down my throat' and refused.

She is suing Rue La La for $5million for its alleged 'discriminatory and outrageous conduct' after she was fired in December.

Dailymail.com contacted Rue La La for a comment about the lawsuit.

A couple on the trip of a lifetime have been revealed as the survivors of a tragic Queensland helicopter crash.

Colarado couple Emily, 33, and Bobby Sheets, 34 were on the chopper that crashed into waters near Queensland's Witsunday Islands on Wednesday.

Emily's mother Sue Hansel and her husband Peter, who were on a dream honeymoon, unfortunately died in the crash.

Colarado couple Emily, 33, and Bobby Sheets, 34 (pictured) were on the chopper that crashed into waters near Queensland's Witsunday Islands on Wednesday

The 35-year-old pilot also escaped serious injury and pulled Mrs Hansel from the helicopter, while others performed CPR on both victims under instruction by phone from emergency services officers.

The surviving couple had quit their jobs and were travelling around the world.

'Well, we're off. First stop Kona, then Australia,' the couple posted on Instagram.

'Been on the bucket list for a while, so were pretty excited. It will be continent 6 of 7. Anyone have travel tips for Sydney & the Whitsundays?'

The couple lost their cell phones in the helicopter crash, a family member told the Courier Mail.

The crash killed Emily's mother Sue Hansel and her husband Peter, who were on a dream honeymoon and described as a 'really sweet couple'

'Bobby and Emily lost their cell phones in the crash and are unavailable,' a family member told the publication.

'They are safe with minor injuries but unfortunately Emily's mother and stepfather did not survive this tragic accident.

One family friend posted her concern for the survivor to Facebook on Friday.

The surviving couple (pictured) had quit their jobs and were travelling around the world

'Emily, just heard from your dad. I'm so sorry to hear the tragic news. My heart hurts for you. Let us know if there is any thing we can do,' she said.

Emily's Mum Sue, 65 and Peter, 79, married last December and the Whitsundays was chosen as their honeymoon destination.

Speaking from Hawaii, friend Ronald Cole told AAP Peter and Sue met at a lodge in Kona, where they were members before becoming friends.

Sue, 65 and Peter, 79, married last December and the Whitsundays was chosen as their honeymoon destination

'I noticed them over the years - him first coming in, in the afternoon, seldom smiling, having a drink or two, and then she started coming in, and she could really make him smile,' he said.

Vern Ungerecht, Peter's friend of more than 25 years, said they were thrilled to be going on the trip.

'They were so looking forward to this. They were so excited about this big trip. It was a new experience for both of them,' Mr Ungerecht told West Hawaii Today.

Friend Wendy Zweigardt said the Hansels would be dearly missed.

'They were so happy, and a really sweet couple. I was so happy for them getting married. They will certainly be missed,' she wrote on Facebook.

The helicopter was on its final approach towards a landing pontoon some 65km north-east of Whitsunday Islands

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The helicopter was on its final approach towards a landing pontoon some 65km north-east of Whitsunday Islands.

It is not known exactly what caused the accident, but moments later the helicopter and all on board plunged into the water just meters away from its target.

Queensland Police District Inspector Ian Haughton confirmed the deaths of the two American tourists on Thursday following the crash off Hardy Reef Pontoon who were known to the two survivors.

'It was a normal flight ... on this occasion, something went wrong and the consequences are tragic,' Insp Haughton told media.

'This is a traumatic experience for any involved in the situation.'

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau assessed whether they would be able to recover the EC120 helicopter to help piece together what led to the crash.

The ATSB says no firm date has been set to try to raise the wreckage, believed to be sitting on the seabed 60m deep, and weather is being monitored for potential impact on plans.

'A decision on whether or not the ATSB requires the helicopter wreckage to be recovered as part of its investigation will be made in the coming days,' the bureau said in a statement to AAP on Friday.

Police are speaking to witnesses on Hamilton Island as they continue to assist the ATSB with the investigation and recovery of the aircraft.

A preliminary report will be published in late April.

Witnesses performed CPR on the Hawaiian couple, but with emergency services more than an hour away, the victims died (pictured are police at the scene)

Operator Whitsunday Air Services has suspended all operations and will work with authorities to determine the cause of the crash.

The crash happened a day after the ATSB released its findings into a November incident involving the company, in which no one was injured.

The helicopter was reportedly fully submerged in water.

Onlookers tried to save the passengers at the Whitsundays crash site while listening to instructions in a phone call with paramedics just after 4pm Wednesday

Police and other emergency service vessels were en route to Hardy Reef (map pictured) with the crash site about 65km northeast of the Whitsundays

Operator Whitsunday Air Services has suspended all operations and will work with authorities to determine the cause of the crashJK Rowling has come under fire from her fans after she appeared to 'like' a tweet which referred to transgender women as 'men in dresses'.

The tweet was posted during a row about the status of transgender women in the Labour party.

The Harry Potter author's representatives told the Sun that the 'like' was a 'clumsy and middle-aged moment'.

They added that this isn't the first time Rowling has 'favourited' something by holding her phone incorrectly.

JK Rowling has come under fire from her fans after she appeared to 'like' a tweet which referred to transgender women as 'men in dresses'

Leanne Donnelly posted on Twitter that she would be keeping the news that JK Rowling liked a transphobic tweet from her son

However her fans were quick to notice the apparent nod of support to the transphobic tweet which read: 'I was shouted at by men at my first Labour Party meeting aged 18 because I asked them to remove a Page 3 calendar.

'I've been told to toughen up, be louder, stronger, independent. I've not often felt supported. Men in dresses get more brocialist solidarity I never had. That's misogyny!'

Leanne Donnelly posted that she thought it would be 'crushing' for transgender children to know that the writer was 'transphobic', adding: 'Going to keep it from my son that @jk_rowling is transphobic.

'How crushing for all the trans kids out there that love her work. And for the record, trans people don't 'want to be other gender, they inherently 'are'.

'Persistently, insistently, consistently. #ProtectTransKids'

Another user asked Rowling what she meant by liking the tweet

Another twitter user pointed out that Rowling should clarify what she meant when she liked the tweet.

They posted on the social media platform: 'I don't want to jump the gun here.

'But perhaps you should clarify @jk_rowling - do you believe that trans women are men in dresses? And that people fighting for our rights in misogyny?

'Because that's how it looks from you liking this tweet.'

Megan Rae, a trans woman, tweeted that she was 'hurt' by the news that Rowling apparently agrees with a transphobic tweet

One Harry Potter fan who identifies as a woman said that they were 'hurt' that Rowling 'apparently agreed with' the transphobic tweet.

She wrote: '@jk_rowling I'm a trans woman. I grew up reading, loving, & wishing I could go to Hogwarts. It's still 1 of my fav. series.

'I'm not a man in a dress. I'm not invading women's spaces, taking women's rights, or faking.

'I'm very hurt by the posts that you apparently agree with'.

Diana Ribeiro jumped to Rowling's defence suggesting that just because she has liked one tweet doesn't maker her anti-trans

However Diana Ribeiro jumped to Rowling's defence suggesting that just because she has liked one tweet doesn't maker her anti-trans.

She said: 'What biological women feel about trans women can be multi layered - it is not something that can be put into two sentences on Twitter.

'Liking that post does not make someone anti-trans.'

JK Rowling's representatives have been contacted for comment.A Utah woman was sentenced to 50 years in prison Friday for helping her husband as he killed two Northern California sheriff's deputies in 2014.

Janelle Monroy, 41, was convicted on Thursday of 10 charges including murder, attempted murder and carjacking, and possessing an assault rifle.

On Friday, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White sentenced her to almost 50 years in jail after jurors rejected claims that she'd only gone along with her husband Luis Bracamontes' murderous scheme because she was terrified of him.

Janelle Monroy, 41, (pictured in court last week) was convicted on Thursday of 10 charges including murder, attempted murder and carjacking, and possessing an assault rifle

On Friday, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White sentenced her to almost 50 years in jail (Monroy left and right)

Bracamontes, a Mexican citizen who has repeatedly been deported, has repeatedly said in court that he killed the deputies and wished he had killed more.

Monroy, 41, who is a U.S. citizen, willingly moved her husband's assault-style rifle from vehicle to stolen vehicle after he killed Sacramento County sheriff's Deputy Danny Oliver and before he killed Placer County sheriff's Detective Michael Davis Jr. hours later, prosecutors said.

'She's not the person who killed law enforcement officers,' defense attorney Pete Kmeto said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

'This client is not an evil person, this client has been victimized and has had a tough life,' Kmeto said, arguing that her sentences should be served concurrently.

'She did not commit a crime with the devil,' Sacramento prosecutor Rod Norgaardhit back. 'She married him.'

The deputies were killed shortly after the couple arrived in Sacramento during what Monroy said was a wandering journey spurred by Bracamontes' drug-infused paranoia.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Bracamontes, who was convicted by a separate jury.

Monroy is accused of helping her husband Luis Bracamontes (pictured smirking in court) of killing two Northern California sheriff's deputies in 2014

Bracamontes laughed in court as he was found guilty of murdering the two cops

Monroy and Bracamontes were married for 12 years.

Prosecutors refuted claims she was scared of her husband, and painted her as a willing participant in the cover up of the double murder.

'She's not a hostage  she's not some browbeaten person locked in a room,' a prosecutor said according to the Sacramento Bee.

The prosecutor also reminded jurors of surveillance footage that was played in court that revealed Monroy caressing her husband and checking the two of them into motels from their trip from Utah to Sacramento.

'She's the CEO here. It's pretty easy to see if you watch them together,' the prosecutor added.

To counteract her claim that she lived in fear of him, prosecutors pointed to the fact that she had multiple affairs during her marriage.

Placer Sheriff's Deputy Michael Davis Jr. (left) and Sacramento Sheriff's Deputy Danny Oliver (right) were killed in 2014

Prosecutor Rod Norgaard noted that Monroy has conceded she had numerous affairs during her 12-year marriage, and offered that as proof that she did not live in fear of him.

'She couldn't have been afraid if she had affairs. She would survive to do it again and again, these affairs,' he said.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Bracamontes after he was convicted by a separate jury.

When Bracamontes stood in trial, he laughed when he talked of his murders.

'I wish I could have killed more of those motherf***ers,' Bracamontes said, before Judge Steve White, according to the Sacramento Bee.

His case has been cited by President Donald Trump to illustrate problems with the nation's immigration policy. She is a U.S. citizen.

He has repeatedly blurted out in court that he killed the deputies and wished he had killed more.

In contrast, Monroy was silent and refrained from showing emotion as her verdict was read aloud.

However when the jury left, she began to cry.

An international police operation has smashed a network smuggling Albanians into Britain.

The operation unearthed more than 50 people making millions by sneaking migrants across 17 countries to reach the UK, US and Canada.

Thirty-nine suspects operating in ten countries including Britain are accused of smuggling around 1,500 illegal migrants who each paid up to 20,000 to escape Albania. Another 12 remain on the run.

Four police officers on Albanian border crossings were among those arrested on suspicion of helping the gangs.

Investigators also seized automatic guns, ammunition, more than 25,000 in cash, a cache of forged passports and other identity papers, as well as seals and stamps, colour laser printers and 28 computers used to make the false documents.

Initially the route to the UK went through Italy and France, but after crackdowns by police in these countries they started to take a circuitous route through Montenegro, Serbia, Germany and northern Spain, from where they would be helped on to ships heading to the south coast

Half of the migrants smuggled by the criminal network  around 750  ended up in Britain, with henchmen here helping to arrange each trafficking operation.

Around nine in ten of the Albanians trafficked into the UK are believed to have boarded ferries using fake passports and identity cards created by the gangs. Most of the forged papers were Italian, while some were French and Spanish.

Initially the route to the UK went through Italy and France, but after crackdowns by police in these countries they started to take a circuitous route through Montenegro, Serbia, Germany and northern Spain, from where they would be helped on to ships heading to the south coast.

The police operation was launched after the Daily Mail revealed last year the shocking scale of Albanian illegal immigration to the UK, with many young migrants openly taking stowaway selfies of themselves laughing and joking while hiding in British-bound lorries.

An international police operation has smashed a network smuggling Albanians into Britain. Above, police escort a suspect in Santander, northern Spain

The National Crime Agency has warned that Albanian crime groups have established a high-profile influence within UK organised crime. They are behind much of the supply of cocaine around the country and are also involved in trafficking and prostitution.

Albanians now make up the third largest foreign group jailed in England and Wales, behind Irish and Polish criminals  at a cost of around 53million to the taxpayer.

The suburban drug lords and their cannabis factories Nine Albanians admitted drugs offences this month after police seized cannabis worth 750,000 in raids on farms hidden in suburban homes. Following an eight-month covert investigation, 50 officers swooped on six drugs dens in Gloucester and Cheltenham. The raids were part of a major operation to tackle Albanian drug gangs, human trafficking and modern-day slavery in Gloucestershire. In one terrace property alone, police uncovered rooms packed with cannabis plants worth 100,000. Another of the cannabis factories in last Octobers raid was located directly opposite a primary school, police said. Nine men pleaded guilty to cannabis production. A tenth who denies any involvement is due to go on trial at Bristol Crown Court next month. Advertisement

There were 726 offenders from the Balkan state behind bars last year  almost triple the 267 in 2013, Ministry of Justice figures revealed this week.

Albanian authorities described the raids, carried out last weekend, as a mega operation which also involved officials from the US Department of State, the Canada Border Services Agency, Europol, Interpol and police in Kosovo, Spain, France and Italy.

The operation was codenamed One If By Land, from a secret signal used during the American Revolution.

Albanian national police chief Ardi Veliu said seven criminal groups were involved in the human trafficking ring, operating in Albania, Bulgaria, Spain, France, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Britain, Ireland and the US.

Every person paid at least 7,000 to get to the United Kingdom and from 17,000 to 20,000 to reach the US and Canada, he said.

Because Albania is an EU applicant state, nationals can travel freely within the EU without showing a passport as far as northern Spain or Calais, but still need visas for Britain and North America.

Albanians last year made up the second-highest number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Britain, with more applicants than from war-ravaged Syria.

MPs in the country have warned that high charges for human traffickers meant migrants were often forced to take jobs with ruthless Albanian crime gangs operating in the UK to pay their huge debts.

The NCA says Albanian gangs have considerable control of the UK drugs market.

Kathryn Holloway, the Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner, said their sheer brutality made them the most ruthless the UK has seen.

In a drive to convince the EU to start accession negotiations this June, Albania has stepped up its fight against crime. It has recently seized 1,350lb of cocaine and busted a large cannabis smuggling group. Many have been convicted of murder, drug dealing, sex offences, money laundering and people-smuggling.Qasemi made the remarks in reaction to statements made by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir at Brookings Institution about political solutions to regional crises particularly the Yemen crisis.



(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The Saudi Arabia has caused all political initiatives to solve Yemen crises over the past three years to come to a deadlock, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said on Saturday.



Qasemi made the remarks in reaction to statements made by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir at Brookings Institution about political solutions to regional crises particularly the Yemen crisis.



It is not the first time for Saudi officials to talk nonsense and impudently when they step into the land of bullying rulers who sell them security, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said.



Of course, Qasemi said, it is now clear to everybody and even the American rulers that which country and what kind of thought is among the major sources, if not saying the only source, of terrorism, extremism and instability in the region and the world.



Qasemi added: 'Iran is a vast country with natural borders and ancient civilization and history and there is no doubt that its cultural boundaries have gone beyond its geographical borders. This influence is inherent, historic and everlasting.'



The Islamic Republic of Iran has constantly tried to help in establishing peace, security and stability in the region and in fighting terrorism, extremism and barbaric violence that have been imposed on the regional nations by some who rely on their petrodollars and support from the United States.



Al-Jubeir who is accompanying Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in his visit to Washington last day accused Iran of supporting terrorism.







/257A fraudster who claimed he was a doctor trained in secret by the KGB faces 14 years behind bars after he was ousted following a more than decade-long investigation into his crimes.

Vincent Berg, 67, was on Friday found guilty in the Southport District Court of faking a medical diploma, before maintaining the lie that he was a fully trained psychiatrist for almost two decades.

The Russian refugee was sent to jail to await a date for his sentencing, which could result in him being imprisoned until he is 81-years-old, Gold Coast Bulletin reported.

Vincent Berg, 67, was on Friday found guilty of faking a medical diploma, before maintaining the lie that he was a fully trained psychiatrist for almost two decades (stock image)

He was found guilty in Queensland's Southport District Court (pictured) after he claimed to be a doctor secretly trained by the KGB

He was convicted of four counts of fraud, two counts of attempted fraud and one count of forgery.

His deception began in 1999 when he faked a medical diploma to land a job as a clinical observer at the Gold Coast Hospital.

The court heard he used bogus credentials from a 'secret KGB faculty' in the Voronezh State University to convince administrators he could act as an observer.

'It was a special degree meant to be used only for KGB purposes,' he told the jury.

Later that year, he duped officials at the Townsville Health Service into employing him as a treating psychiatrist - a job which he held until 2002.

While later working at four north Queensland hospitals, he prescribed medications that gave serious side-effects to several patients.

Assault and grievous bodily harm charges were dropped during the trial.

Berg claimed to have obtained his qualifications between 1969 and 1977.

His deception lasted until April 2003 and included one fraud that gained him more than $30,000.

Berg's crimes only came to light in 2005 after an inquiry into Queensland Health was launched due to another 'doctor' faking his qualifications.

Court heard he claimed to be secretly trained by the KGB before he moved to Australia in 1992. His deception lasted between 1999 and April 2003, and included one fraud that gained him more than $30,000. Pictured: Former KGB building Lubyanka

The inquiry heard Berg refused to work under supervision and would change medication for no reason.

He was eventually charged with fraud and assault in 2009.

A former employee of the university who searched for Berg's records told the court she couldn't find any trace of him in records that stretched back 75 years.

But the graduation number on documents he produced was so different from the number on a legitimate degree, issued a month before Berg supposedly graduated, that it raised suspicion.

During the trial, Berg's former supervisor at Gold Coast Hospital, associate professor Leon Petchkovsky, told the court he found him 'quite credible'.

He was never given any reason to believe Berg wasn't a doctor and felt he was good with patients.

Berg moved to Australia in 1992 to flee persecution in Russia due to his position as an Anglican Bishop.

He claimed the KGB took his medical diploma off him as he left the country and he only got them back in 1994, when an agent asked him to infiltrate the ABC or SBS to plant stories regarding Russia, The Courier Mail reported.

Berg has been living with his son in Coomera on a disability pension for mental health issues after he was sacked from the Townsville Health Service.

He will undergo psychological testing before his sentencing in coming months.The grieving mother of a student shot and stabbed to death on a night out said she is struggling to understand why he was murdered.

Stephanie Saunders said she is completely heartbroken after her son Russell Jones, 23, was ambushed in an unprovoked attack outside a train station.

His death is one of eight murders in London in a week and has sparked warnings that the capital could see a record number of killings in 2018.

Russell Jones, pictured with his girlfriend Tara Ward, was killed after he was attacked by four men in Enfield, north London

Mr Jones was with a friend, also 23, when four hooded men attacked near Ponders End station in Enfield, north London, at 12.40am last Saturday.

The business student was just weeks away from completing his course at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield. He had previously studied international business in Utrecht, Holland, according to his Facebook page.

Mr Jones had a twin sister, Hannah, and had been with girlfriend Tara Ward, 21, for three years.

Beniamin Pieknyi, 20, (left) was killed in Stratford and Lyndon Davis, 18, (right) was knifed in Chadwell Heath

Three days after his death, Miss Ward posted a poignant picture of the couple on her Facebook page and tied a red rose to a lamppost close to where Mr Jones died, with a message saying: In Loving Memory of a Dear Partner. Russell my love, You will always be mine and I will always be yours. Love you, T xxx.

Miss Saunders, 47, said: We are completely heartbroken and in total shock and disbelief  We are struggling to understand how someone could do such a terrible thing.

Hersi Hersi, 36, (left) was found stabbed in Hounslow and Joseph William-Torres, 20, (right) was shot in Walthamstow

Russell was and always will be my baby and he has been taken away from me in this truly devastating and heartbreaking way.

We wish that no other family has to endure such a tragedy. The people who did this have to be caught. Please, if you know something  tell the police.

She described Russell, who lived in the family home in Enfield, as a loving son, twin brother, grandson, partner and friend who was looking forward to graduating from university.

His grandmother Valerie Ford, 76, who lives next door, told MailOnline: We are still so raw and need to deal with our grief. Detective Chief Inspector Andy Partridge said the attack was totally unprovoked and utterly deplorable.

Tyrone Silcott, 42, (left) was stabbed in Homerton and Jermaine Johnson, 41, (right) was knifed in Walthamstow

A shopkeeper called Sashi, 61, said a customer called police after he saw Mr Jones lying in the road. Officers and paramedics found him with stab injuries and a gunshot wound.

He was pronounced dead at the scene at 1.14am. A post-mortem examination showed Mr Jones died from a knife wound.

Balbir Johal, 48, (pictured) was knifed by a gang in Southall, as the capital saw eight people murdered in just one week

His friend was taken to hospital with stab wounds and has been discharged. Yesterday detectives said there had been no arrests.

Asking for witnesses, DCI Partridge said: The suspects would have drawn attention to themselves, running away as a group into a residential area just after midnight.

Sophie Linden, London deputy mayor for policing, urged the Government and other agencies to fight root causes of violence.Writing to his ex-wife Pamela Lane in the autumn of 1983, the celebrated playwright John Osborne told her: You are as voluptuous and erotic as when I first saw that beautiful red head of hair and fell in love for ever.

You are, always have and will be at the centre of my heart. I hope you dont mind getting a 32-year-old love letter. Well  that old play of mine was, as you must know, a pretty anguished love letter.

The old play to which he referred was his masterpiece Look Back In Anger, which exploded on to the staid, post-war theatrical scene in 1956, and which was based almost entirely on his brief, tempestuous marriage to Pamela  even down to their pet names for each other: Bear for him, Squirrel for her.

When she first saw it, she confided later to friends: I felt as though I had been raped.

Newly published letters between Look Back In Anger playwright John Osborne (pictured) and his ex-wife Pamela Lane reveal he continued sleeping with his first wife through his next four marriages

Yet a deep bond between them remained, finding its expression in an extraordinary series of secret letters exchanged over a period of more than 30 years  a correspondence that transcended their acrimonious parting, their divorce, Osbornes celebrity and his subsequent four marriages.

Though many letters have been lost, almost 100 have survived and are to be published in a new book documenting the intriguing course of a relationship between two people who couldnt live with each other  but could not apparently survive without each other either. They also reveal his enduring sensual fascination with her underwear.

From the outset, the couples union had been tempestuous. Meeting as 21-year-olds appearing in repertory theatre in Bridgwater, Somerset, they had fallen headlong in love and within three months, to the dismay of Pamelas parents, had married.

Three years later they spent six domestically catastrophic months in a squalid flat in Derby, the experience providing the inspiration for Osbornes bleak, so-called kitchen sink drama in which the volatile, angry young man hero Jimmy Porter and his impassive, supposedly socially superior wife Alison destroy their marriage in front of their friends and the audience.

For Osborne and Pamela, the Derby episode was a disaster, their marriage suffering the same fate.

Osborne wrote sadly to her in 1954: This is really goodbye, then. I really did love you too much, didnt I?

Two years later, when she and Osborne were separated but not yet divorced, Pamela went to the Royal Court Theatre in London to see Look Back In Anger, which had opened to huge critical acclaim.

There she had the unnerving experience of watching an only lightly fictionalised account of her own tormented marriage, in which Alison, the character modelled on her, was played by her estranged husbands lover Mary Ure  soon to be the second Mrs Osborne.

But still their strange, complex bond endured. Hardly was the ink dry on the divorce papers than their decades-long correspondence began, starting in 1958 with a note on a bouquet left for Pamela at the stage door of Londons Savoy Theatre which read: Very good luck for tonight, darling. All love, Johnny.

Just over a year later, with his marriage to Mary Ure already on the rocks, Osborne and Pamela were apparently getting on so well that they planned a romantic few days away together in Brighton.

Pam, darling, wrote Osborne in March 1960, I dont know the best arrangement for our accommodation. Unless you can think of something better, I suggest the following: I shall book a double room at the ROYAL ALBION for April 10 in my own name and you can book a single room in your name. Can you do this right away. Please let me know. Do hope youre well. Longing to see you.

Love, Johnny.

Meeting as 21-year-olds appearing in repertory theatre in Bridgwater, Somerset, they had fallen headlong in love and within three months Pamela (pictured) and John had married

History does not relate how their weekend in Brighton unfolded, but on January 17, 1961 Osborne was in touch with his ex-wife again.

Ive been thinking of you and, frankly, wanting you again, he wrote. I can think of nothing Id like more than seeing you alone again, and being together, as we were in Brighton. If I picked you up after the show on Saturday, would you care to go somewhere  if only till Sunday?

Whether or not he managed to whisk her away for a night or two is again unknown, but what is clear is that the now-single Pam, who never remarried, appeared to be reclaiming something of the thrill of her pre-marriage life.

She was wonderful to be with, recalls actress Julia Lockwood. She drew people to her. She was very clever, very sexy.

Little wonder, then, that she continued to exert such a powerful influence over her ex-husband.

On November 14, 1962, Osborne and Mary Ure were divorced and he moved in with the journalist and film critic Penelope Gilliatt, who would become his third wife.

But Pamela was still in his mind, and at the end of April 1963 he sent her a copy of his newly published Plays For England.

My dear John, replied Pamela, Thank you for the Plays  I was pleased to have them. (Very sexy, too, not dull and boring at all).

Her very sexy comment refers to several passages in one of the plays celebrating womens underwear  a subject in which Osborne had a playful, if rather juvenile, interest.

About a year later Pamela moved, with actress Hazel Coppen (the nature of their relationship was never revealed), into a flat in Kilburn, North London, where she lived the rest of her life.

Osbornes diary entry for February 3 1965, describes an early visit: Pamelas flat, 11.30am, he notes laconically.

Once again, easy glide between the sheets. Says weekly sums she got from her piece of Inadmissible Evidence had kept her going.

Osborne had, it seemed, arranged for a percentage of the profits from his latest play, Inadmissible Evidence, to be passed on to his former wife. Pamela love, he writes in June 1965, youll be getting some of the profits from Inadmissible in the next few days, so buy yourself some new knickers or something. Hope alls well.

Three years later they spent six domestically catastrophic months in a squalid flat in Derby, the experience providing the inspiration for Osbornes bleak, so-called kitchen sink drama, and the pair split up

Whether Pamela used the money to buy underwear is not recorded, but in December she writes: Thank you more than I can say for making 1965 so easy and comfortable for me: the income from Inadmissible has been welcome beyond words.

My love to you and Penelope Ever, Pamela.

Penelope, by now the third Mrs Osborne and the mother of his only child, his daughter Nolan from whom he would later become estranged  had met Pamela and, as the letter suggests, the two were on good terms.

But Osborne was already tiring of his latest wife and had begun a relationship with the volatile actress Jill Bennett, whom he married on April 19, 1968. Pamela was vehemently against the relationship, believing (correctly, as it turned out) that the couple were entirely incompatible and urging him to walk away. Osborne was furious.

Although Pamela was a former wife, a close friend and occasional lover, he felt she had intruded uninvited into his private affairs.

Their friendship cooled, and they would not see each other again for more than a decade. The impasse was not broken until September 1979  by which time journalist Helen Dawson had become Osbornes fifth wife  with a postcard from Osborne to Pamela at Leicesters Haymarket theatre.

It is unclear what prompted his move. Darling, he wrote,  . . . Have just read where you are. Have thought of you so often and anxious to know if alls well with you. Im going to Italy on October 8th to work on my memoirs. (  Im afraid. I owe the Inland Revenue 120,000 [equivalent to 656,000 in 2018]. Im in spiffing form otherwise. Ive lived in the country [their luxurious home in Edenbridge, Kent,] for the past three years. Perhaps you could come down for a restful visit?

Take care. Much love, John.

After years of silence, the touchpaper of renewed contact flared into life  a stream of increasingly intimate letters and cards flew between the two, who were now both in their 50s.

They began meeting for long, leisurely lunches at restaurants and assignations at Pamelas flat, and calling themselves Bear and Squirrel again: To darling Squirrel from everloving Bear  thirty years on! wrote Osborne in a Valentines card in 1981. This was followed by a postcard in May of that year saying: Take care, dear Squirrel. Love you always. In haste, B.

Your knickers  advertised appropriately in HONEY colour  are a triumph! Afraid youre stuck with them now!

This is the second occasion that Osborne introduces the subject of Pamelas underwear. The appropriateness of the honey colour is a reminder of the closing lines of Look Back In Anger, spoken by Jimmy: Well be together in our bears cave, and our squirrels drey, and live on honey, and nuts . . .

Increasingly confident in their intimacy, Osborne now suggested Pamela begin wearing directoire knickers, a request with which she enthusiastically complied.

A vintage garment, directoires are loose fitting, with legs reaching to elasticated hems just above the knee. Osborne and Pamela considered them jauntily erotic, suggestive of the breezy vulgarity of saucy seaside postcards. As 1982 ended, money from Osborne began arriving at Pamelas flat with urgent instructions that she should acquire more directoires, preferably to be premiered at their next meeting.

Squirrel, darling, wrote Osborne. If youre free December 4th afternoon, will try to pop over with champagne for an hour or two. Will ring. Dying to see you. Take care, Bears. Enclosed: buy yourself some sexy directoires.

Pamela and Osborne had by now known each other for more than 30 eventful years.

Osborne wrote sadly to her in 1954: This is really goodbye, then. I really did love you too much, didnt I?

This, along with his excavation of the past in order to aid his rewrite of his memoirs, began to prompt bouts of sentimental reflection in the playwright.

Darling one, wrote Osborne to Pamela in August 1983, Ive just been re-reading some of your letters to me. They are most touching. What a triumph its been for us to be so close and in such memorable contact.

You must be getting low in directoires: hence enclosed. Three days later, Pamela replied: You must know how deeply I share your pleasure in (and amazement at?) our renewal of old but never neglected or forgotten feelings, but it cant be said too often.

Darling, thank you for ensuring a bottomless (?) supply of directoires. I wouldnt be seen dead in anything else now  you were quite right. I was getting through them rather disgracefully  bless you, Bears.

Love ever, Squirrel.

Osbornes reflections continue in a maudlin, introspective vein, with a note in September 1983 saying:

Dearest Squirrel,

Back from Venice. Quite wonderful. Didnt notice how tired I was. Restored but feeling very low indeed. How are you?

When can I see you? It is odd, surely, to be in love for thirty years? B.

The following  probably drunken  letter, handwritten from Cornwall on pages from a notebook is in similar vein, disjointed and opaque, but heartfelt:

October 18, 1983

My darling,

Its about 3am. Ive had the most intractable headache all day.

Dear, beautiful bushy tail [sic] squirrel, goodness, I do love you. I dont know and dont ask what you feel for me. I know you do love me.

I fell in love with you 32 years ago. My feelings  no, passion, always passion  are unchanged. My desire, my curiosity  oh, my dear girl, you always.

What I am trying to say, quite inadequately, is that you are, always have been and will be at the centre of my heart. My fortune to have loved someone for a lifetime, someone who stuns and enlivens me  and yes, as you know, baffles and exasperates me.

I longed for you in those early morning scuffles. Oh, and I dont have to tell you, quite unfailing lust. In 1951 I simply didnt have the nerve to coax you into directoires  afraid, alas, of ridicule. Wrongly, I think.

Their strange, complex bond endured. Hardly was the ink dry on the divorce papers than their decades-long correspondence began, starting in 1958 with a note on a bouquet left for Pamela at the stage door of Londons Savoy Theatre

I had always wanted daughters. How I wish you and I had had them, four or five loving, hearty girls! I often wonder whether  if indeed you do  you should want to see me at all  especially with the constraints we both have.

Although, no direct reply appears to survive, a letter from Pamela in June 1984 appears to confirm his anxieties are groundless:

Darling B,

I do love you, my savage, benign bear wherever we are in our separate necks of the forest and to re-encounter you suddenly, briefly, is as literally breathtaking as ever, so I never seem to verbalise . . . to tell you that your lightest embrace whether of affection or passion revives the oldest memory I wish to keep  of deep familiarity, excitement, reassurance and of a trust now greater than before.

From this point the letters have the word Droitwich added to the address line  an acronym invented by Osborne meaning: Directoires Right On In Time When I Come Home.

August 1, 1984

DROITWICH

Darling S (writes Osborne),

Yesterday was marvellous. I nearly fell asleep over lunch after all that mid-morning directoire thrashing. Didnt leave anything on top of the dresser so enclosed is for reinforced gussets and fresh elastic. My love always, Your B.

For all the affection, another estrangement was on the horizon  this time permanent. In a letter in 1985, now lost, Osborne had unleashed a furious  possibly drunken  tirade, questioning Pamelas love, accusing her of using him for his money, and of neglect.

Its bitterness was such that it shocked and confused even Pamela, who knew her former husbands volatility only too well.

There is something of the atmosphere of Jimmy and Alison Porter in her letter of November 7, 1985: We shall have to define what parts we play in each others lives, thats clear, wrote Pamela.

I am in love with you still, if youll allow me to say so, that seems inescapable. Im always answering charges, that will never change, I know. As for your affection and friendship and not in your other hat, as benefactor, I think you know how I prize them.

My love as ever, Pamela.

The next year a further significant event changed the relationship still further: the Osbornes left Kent for a new home in Shropshire. The reasons were mainly financial, but a benefit for Helen Osborne was that it greatly increased the distance between her husband and his first wife.

How much did Helen suspect? Whatever the answer, the meetings and letters between Pamela and Osborne stopped.

The final surviving note from the playwright to his former wife comes in November 1991 after a gap of some years, addressed from the Cadogan Hotel in London. Its tone is plaintive, even elegiac:

Writing to her in October 1983, he said: 'I fell in love with you 32 years ago. My feelings  no, passion, always passion  are unchanged. My desire, my curiosity  oh, my dear girl, you always'

I dont think anyone has declared their love so repeatedly, so insistently or for so long as I have. I shall be at the above for 24 hrs December 5-6. On my own, for what its worth. My godson, Ben, is playing Dorian Gray at Watford. Ah well . . .

It is unsigned. There is no record of whether a meeting took place.

On Christmas Eve 1994, John Osborne died just a few days after his 65th birthday, a life cut short by a furious consumption of tobacco and alcohol. Ten years later, Helen Osborne lost her fight against cancer, aged 64.

The playwrights first wife had outlived not only Osborne himself but all of his subsequent wives: Mary Ure died of a barbiturate overdose in 1975, aged 42, while Jill Bennett committed suicide in 1990 after suffering depression for many years. Penelope Gilliatt died of alcoholism in May 1993.

On October 26, 2010, Pamela died at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, North London, aged 80. Thirty-three years earlier she had made a will at a solicitors in St Johns Wood. It was a brief, succinct document, disposing of her estate of around 38,000.

But it also reveals a final gesture of devotion towards the man she called her savage, benign bear who had briefly been her husband and who in 1983 had confirmed that: My feelings  no, passion, always passion  are unchanged.

Her will is in her married name and signed, decisively in a firm hand: Pamela Elizabeth Osborne. The first Mrs Osborne  and now the last.

Dearest Squirrel . . . The Letters Of John Osborne And Pamela Lane, edited by Peter Whitebrook, is published by Oberon Books on April 1 at 20. To order a copy for 16 (offer valid to 31.3.18; p&p free on orders over 15), visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640.Advertisement

The most idyllic Australian country towns in terms of friendly people, economic diversity and positive employment rates have been revealed.

Stand-out areas from each state were shortlisted by The Demographics Group, with some towns, including Griffith in New South Wales, among the surprise top picks.

More obvious finalists were surf and wine region Margaret River in Western Australia's South West region, and Tasmania's picturesque riverside town, Margate, The Weekend Australian Magazine reported.

The favourite country town in Victoria was Woodend, known for its scenic hilly surrounds, while 'charming' Nairne came in at number one for South Australia.

Scroll down for video

Margaret River (pictured) in Western Australia's South West region was named the state's best country town for its stunning beaches, wine region, diversity and quality of life

In the Northern Territory, Katherine (pictured), was singled out for its unique economy, with a large portion of its population belonging to the RAAF base

Griffith (pictured) in New South Wales made the cut of stand-out areas

In the Northern Territory, Katherine was singled out for its unique economy, with a large portion of its population belonging to the RAAF base.

The Government funded powerhouse has provided much-needed stimulation to the far north location's economy, with its population expected to continue climbing.

Sitting on the border of Queensland and NSW, Goondiwindi made the top list for its friendly community spirit, 'slow living' lifestyle and sprawling cotton fields.

'Not too big, not too small and with just the right mix of verve, chutzpah and 'a fair go',' was the criteria set out by the Group's Bernard Salt and Simon Kuestenmacher.

The favourite country town in Victoria was Woodend (pictured), known for it's scenic hilly surrounds and laid-back atmosphere

Tasmania's picturesque riverside town, Margate (iconic train pictured), topped the island state's country towns

The population of the picturesque locality south of Hobart was 2300, the fewest of all finalist towns

To be eligible for finalist status, 'Goldilocks' towns needed to have a population greater than 2000 and represent the 'the best country-town lifestyle'.

Those with more than 30,000 were ruled out, given they would likely contain sub-groups of richer and poorer areas, throwing off the area's statistical average.

The top towns made their way into the best rating localities because they had above-average income and below-average rates of unemployment.

They were also found to have a diverse range of young and old people, and diversity across industries providing economic stimulation.

Sitting on the border of Queensland and NSW, Goondiwindi made the top list for its friendly community spirit, 'slow living' lifestyle and sprawling cotton fields

The small town made the list for being prosperous and affordable, and having all the amenities needed to raise a familyAirlines face a crackdown on sneaky charges amid fears millions of holidaymakers are still being ripped off.

Ministers are poised to launch an official investigation into the price of tickets and add on charges including booking and baggage fees.

The Department for Transport wants airlines to be more up front about hidden charges which it says often fail to become clear until the customer comes to the end of a long booking process.

One of the main focuses of the probe will be allegations some airlines are deliberately splitting families up unless they pay to reserve seats.

Airlines face a crackdown on sneaky charges amid fears millions of holidaymakers are still being ripped off

The Civil Aviation Authority has already launched a separate investigation into this tactic, which it claims is costing passengers up to 400million a year in fees.

But the intervention from the Government  which oversees the CAA  steps up pressure on the airline industry to make the cost of flying more transparent. One DFT source said the government could even beef up the CAAs powers as a result of this probe.

Currently the CAA can pursue airlines in the courts but it has no statutory powers itself to fine airlines or force them to make changes.

Aviation minister Baroness Sugg told the Mail: When passengers book flights, they can sometimes be hit with additional charges over and above the original quoted flight cost.

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The DFT puts passengers at the heart of everything we do and we want to ensure people have as much information as possible when making decisions over which flight to book.

Through our Aviation Strategy, we will explore ways to improve and enhance the information available, so passengers can make well informed decisions before deciding who to fly with.

For years budget airlines have been accused of reeling in customers with cheap air fares, only to then impose a raft of extra costs. They could be encouraged to use apps to give passengers a more accurate picture of the total cost of a flight earlier in the booking process.

The government will consult on the plans in the Aviation Strategy later this year, and aims to publish a final report next year.

Ryanair is among those that have faced complaints from families about being split up on flights if they have not paid extra to reserve seats.

They have vehemently denied this is a money-spinning tactic. But the aviation watchdog the CAA suspects it may be a deliberate ploy in the industry after finding that on average one in five travellers on airlines are split up. Other charges that will be investigated include booking or admin fees.

EasyJet and Ryanair both insisted they had no hidden charges and all optional charges and fees were clearly displayed during booking.Jeremy Corbyn has admitted defending an artist who painted an anti-Semitic mural.

The Labour leader criticised the decision to remove the painting, which depicts a group of 'hook-nosed' men around a Monopoly board, from a wall in east London.

When the artist complained on Facebook that it was being painted over, Mr Corbyn replied: 'Why?', before going on to condemn previous destruction of controversial political art.

Jewish groups condemned the image, saying it contained 'vile anti-Semitic tropes' such as the idea that Jewish people controlled the world.

The Labour leader criticised the decision to remove the painting (pictured) from a wall in east London

After Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger demanded a response from Mr Corbyn yesterday, he admitted writing the Facebook post six years ago  and agreed that the mural was anti-Semitic.

A spokesman said: 'In 2012, Jeremy was responding to concerns about the removal of public art on grounds of freedom of speech. However, the mural was offensive, used anti-Semitic imagery, which has no place in our society, and it is right that it was removed.' The mural, entitled Freedom For Humanity, was painted in the East End by graffiti artist Kalen Ockerman, known as Mear One, in 2012.

It showed six businessmen and bankers sitting around a Monopoly board counting money. The board was placed upon crouched human figures representing the oppressed masses. Mr Ockerman denies being anti-Semitic, saying it is about 'class and privilege' and contains bankers 'made up of Jewish and white Anglos'.

Labour leader Corbyn (pictured) criticised the decision at the time to remove the painting

Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger demanded a response from Mr Corbyn

The mural was removed by Tower Hamlets council after residents complained. Lutfur Rahman, who was mayor, said: 'The images of the bankers perpetuate anti-Semitic propaganda about conspiratorial Jewish domination of financial and political institutions.'

Labour MP Ian Austin said: 'This is one of the worst ant-Semitic images I have seen. Jeremy would never have defended a racist image of any other group.'

Corbyn responded to Berger (pictured), admitting to writing the Facebook post

Mr Ockerman told his Facebook followers in October 2012 that it was to be removed.

In a misspelled post, Mr Corbyn said: 'Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller destroyed Diego Viera's mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.' His post referred to the removal in 1934 of a work by Left-wing artist Diego Rivera from New York's Rockefeller Center.

Jennifer Gerber, of the Labour Friends of Israel, said: 'It's repugnant that Mr Corbyn would defend an anti-Semitic mural.'

Mr Corbyn said last night: 'In 2012 I made a general comment about the removal of public art on grounds of freedom of speech. My comment referred to the destruction of the mural Man At The Crossroads by Diego Rivera on the Rockefeller Center.

'That is in no way comparable with the mural in the original post. I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on, the contents of which are deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic.

'I wholeheartedly support its removal. I am opposed to the production of anti-Semitic material of any kind, and the defence of free speech cannot be used as a justification for the promotion of anti-Semitism. That is a view I've always held.'

The row comes days after it emerged that Mr Corbyn was in Palestine Live, a Facebook group whose posts often criticised Jews and Israel.Six seriously ill people a day are being stripped of vital care funding and face being turfed out of nursing homes.

Every year 21,000 sufferers of degenerative and terminal conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases are being reassessed over their care needs.

If they fail to prove their health needs are severe enough to qualify for financial help, the funding covering their nursing home fees is removed.

Every year 21,000 sufferers of degenerative and terminal conditions are being reassessed over their care needs (stock image)

In the worst cases, elderly people are forced to leave their nursing home and move somewhere cheaper, a Money Mail investigation found.

It comes after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt unveiled a blueprint on Tuesday to transform care for the elderly.

He said pensioners were too often treated as 'tasks on a to-do list'.

The Government is aiming to make 855million of efficiency savings from the NHS care funding budget by 2021.

Last night Tory peer Baroness Altmann, a former pensions minister, said: 'Our social care system is broken  it isn't fit for purpose. We are abandoning people who need help the most. For the fifth-richest economy in the world that is a disgrace.'

NHS continuing healthcare (CHC) is paid to those with complex, severe or unpredictable health needs. Recipients must go through regular reassessments.

Funding can be snatched away if their needs are deemed to be social  such as needing help with washing  rather than healthcare-related.

The sick resident must then pay care costs themselves if their assets are worth more than 23,250. Often this means selling the family home.

If they fail to prove their health needs are severe enough to, the funding covering their nursing home fees is removed (stock image)

The Money Mail investigation revealed that 2,211 British people lost their funding following a reassessment in 2016.

The figures, which came from NHS Trusts that replied to Freedom of Information requests, showed this was a near-300 per cent increase on the total for 2013.

Matina Loizou, senior policy adviser at Parkinson's UK, said: 'The NHS continuing healthcare system is in a shambolic state. People are left hopeless and without support when they are already at their most vulnerable.'

A spokesman for a regional clinical commissioning group where a dementia patient faced losing her CHC funding said it followed 'national guidance' for determining eligibility for care.He was elected as the London mayor to represent the interest of those living in the capital.

But just two days before the start of a week of bloodshed in London, Sadiq Khan was posing for pictures with revellers at a music festival in Texas.

He was afforded rock star status at South By Southwest in Austin where queues snaked around to block to listen a major speech on online abuse.

Two days before the start of a week of bloodshed in London, Sadiq Khan was posing for pictures with revellers at a music festival in Texas

Mr Khan is a popular figure among liberal Americans because of his outspoken opposition to Donald Trump.

'The sun hasn't set in Washington DC yet,' he told the crowd. 'This hopefully means no late-night tweets attacking me during the course of this speech..'

This is was a reference to the president's criticism of him hours after the terrorist attacks in London last year.

The speech, which received a standing ovation, focused on how governments have struggled to keep pace with technological change.

Sadiq Khan has been criticised for not spending enough time in London by Conservative Andrew Boff

However, not everyone was impressed with his exploits across the pond.

Andrew Boff, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, said Mr Khan, 47, was not spending enough time focused on London.

'It has been very clear Sadiq Khan has ambitions beyond the mayoralty,' Mr Boff said. 'His attention would be better served on issues closer to home.'Donald Trump, Jr, and Vanessa were married at Mar-a-Lago in 2005

The divorce filing called it 'uncontested' meaning both Trumps agree to split

In her divorce filing, Vanessa Trump didn't ask for sole custody of the kids

She met the children, who flew down with Don Jr, on Tuesday for a vacation

It has been a week since Vanessa Trump filed for divorce from Donald Trump, Jr and you'd think she'd want a little break from him and his family.

But Vanessa Trump and her five children are on Spring Break at the Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

In exclusive photos for DailyMail.com, Vanessa can be seen frolicking with her children at the Trump family's Palm Beach resort.

Vanessa and Donald Trump, Jr. who announced their split last week after 12 years of marriage share five children, Kai, ten, Donald III, nine, Tristan, six, and Spencer, five, and their youngest, daughter Chloe, three.

Vanessa and her kids out enjoying the Palm Beach weather, far away from the media storm around Don Junior's alleged infidelity

Vanessa Trump stops to tie a shoelace as she and the kids walk around at Mar-a-Lago

Donald Trump, Jr flew to Mar-a-Lago with the children, shortly after the divorce was announced to 'escape the scrutiny of New York', according to People Magazine.

Trump spent the weekend at the resort, sharing pictures on social media of his time with the kids.

On Tuesday, Vanessa tweeted 'It's time for spring break with my kiddies!' sharing a picture of the palm trees at Mar-a-lago. And now that she is there, it seems Don, Jr has left.

Vanessa Trump tweeted a photo the iconic palm trees as she arrived in Palm Beach for vacation.

Vanessa Trump gives a piggyback as she and the kids hang out in the sun in Palm Beach

Vanessa flips her son over as the family frolics away from the headlines about the divorce

When Vanessa filed, sources say she listed the divorce as uncontested, meaning that she is not asking for full custody of the children at this time and that Donald Jr does not object to the filing.

The former couple, who were married at the Palm Beach resort, said in a statement, 'We will always have tremendous respect for each other and our families. We have five beautiful children together and they remain our top priority.'

They are apparently already sharing time with the children.

While Vanessa has been at Mar-a-Lago with the children reports have surfaced about her husband's alleged affair with Celebrity Apprentice Contestant Aubrey O'Day.

Vanessa Trump reportedly found 'sexy texts' from Aubrey O'Day while Donald Trump Jr showered, and just a year after their alleged affair ended, O'Day mocked now-President Donald Trump in a 2013 interview.

Happier times: Donald Trump, Jr and Vanessa Trump attended the White House Correspondents' dinner in 2016

Singer Aubrey O'Day, seen here in 2015, met Donald Trump, Jr when she was a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice, the two were reportedly together while Vanessa was pregnant.

Shortly after Don Jr's wife, Vanessa, found the texts, he abruptly ended the affair with O'Day in 2012, a source has claimed.

Don Jr was reportedly in the shower while his phone was on the bedside table when the texts came through from O'Day, a source who worked on Celebrity Apprentice told People.

'This is how Vanessa found out and the affair ended,' the source said.

Now Vanessa is enjoying Spring Break with her kids, without Don, Jr.

Vanessa Trump and her children seem to be having a good time, as they walk at Mar-a-Lago

Vanessa Trump , seen here with three of her five children, hugs them close as they walk along the waterFour of Britains biggest insurance firms are raking in more than 800million a year by selling rip-off extras to their customers.

They are pocketing a bonanza through the sale of add-ons such as legal or breakdown cover which could be found much cheaper elsewhere.

Other tricks include hitting customers with sky-high fees to change details on policies, and charging more when drivers and homeowners pay in monthly instalments.

Britains biggest motor insurer, Admiral, brags in its annual accounts that add-ons bring in 64 for every vehicle.

Britains biggest motor insurer, Admiral, brags in its annual accounts that add-ons bring in 64 for every vehicle

MPs and consumer groups accused the firms of preying on the unsuspected public to boost their profits.

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, said: Customers are being treated like a cash cow.

The revelation comes after families have been hit by surging premiums over the past year, with the cost of car insurance up 9 per cent to a record high of 481.

How the charges send bills soaring Admiral Raked in 203million from insurance add-ons last year. This included 56million from customers paying monthly who were charged 11 per cent interest, adding 29 to an average 481 car policy. Other fees included 19.50 to change policy details, research for the Mail by price comparison firm GoCompare found. Direct Line Raised 179million overall from extras including 116million from monthly payments, with customers charged up to 12 per cent interest. An extra 22million came from selling legal and repair services. Hastings Netted 299million, including charging customers as much as 32.50 to set up a new policy and 25 for later changes. It made 94million by charging interest, sometimes as high as 29.9 per cent. Esure Generated 125million in total. Monthly payments were charged at 11.6 per cent int-erest, while a change in policy details cost 26. Advertisement

As well as Admiral, Hastings Direct, Esure and Direct Line also reveal in their 2017 accounts how much they rake in from add-ons and fees.

Taken together, they collect a total of 806million. The industry-wide figure is likely to be far higher because other big insurers are less transparent.

One study suggested it was 1billion as long as four years ago.

The big insurers that publish figures all reported rising earnings from add-ons in 2017.

Admirals revenue from the sales climbed 7.5 per cent to 203million, mainly because of a jump in the amount it makes by charging customers more to pay in monthly instalments.

Direct Line netted 179million from add-ons last year, which was 8 per cent more than in 2016.

At Hastings the total income from activities other than selling premiums was 299million  a rise of 20 per cent.

Esure made 125million from selling additional services, up 18 per cent.

The firm said the practice brings in 65 for every car and 21 for every home.

Other major insurers such as Aviva do not break out how much they are pocketing in their annual accounts.

Aviva boss Mark Wilson told the Mail this was because the amount is very small.

Finance expert Justin Modray, of advice firm Candid Money, said consumers who sign up for insurance online are sitting ducks.

Insurers can lure these customers in with a rock-bottom basic premium, without showing whether their add-on costs are competitive or not.

Labour MP John Mann accused companies of treating customers like cash cows

Mr Modray said he was charged 40 for extra legal cover by one insurer but found exactly the same level of service from an independent provider for 20. He said: The insurance industry has gone the way of the budget airline industry with really basic cover where you need to add on a lot of extras. If people arent careful they might go for the cheapest deal and end up paying a lot of unexpected fees.

The Association of British Insurers said firms have to disclose fees and charges, and added: Consumers should shop around. Hastings said: Our ancillary fees and charges are in line with others in the market and our premiums are some of the most competitive.

Esure said: Instalment income has risen simply as a result of the company selling more policies and the higher average premiums being seen across the industry.

We are very clear on the difference customers will see in the prices if they pay by instalments.

Direct Line said it does not charge fees to amend policies, and the charge for paying by monthly instalments is communicated clearly to customers when they receive a quote.

Admiral declined to comment.A teenage girl has died during a fishing trip after a boat capsized while attempting to cross a river bar on the New South Wales south coast.

The 13-year-old from Canberra became trapped under the boat's hull when it flipped on the Moruya River bar, south of Batemans Bay, about 7am Saturday.

On board the 6.3metre half-cabin cruiser - which capsized about one kilometre from shore after being hit by multiple waves - were three children and three adults.

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A teenage girl has died after a boat (pictured) capsized while attempting to cross the Moruya River bar, on the New South Wales south coast, about 7am Saturday

The 13-year-old became trapped inside the boat when it flipped south of Batemans Bay on Saturday morning

Surf lifesavers found the teenage girl's lifeless body under water and pulled her aboard a rescue boat, where they performed CPR but were unable to revive her.

All surviving passengers were taken to hospital for treatment to non life-threatening injuries.

The five passengers were three men aged 18, 29 and 46, as well as two other 13-year-old children.

All of the passengers except for the 29-year-old male were from the Australian Capital Territory, and were heading out to a popular fishing spot when the boat capsized.

Surf lifesavers found the teenage girl's lifeless body inside the vessel and pulled her aboard a rescue boat, where they unsuccessfully performed CPR (scene pictured)

All surviving passengers were taken to hospital for treatment to non life-threatening injuries (scene pictured)

One of the children is believed to have suffered a minor leg injury in the incident, while it has been revealed the skipper of the boat was the victim's father, Nine News reported.

State Lifesaving NSW said in a statement that conditions were 'challenging' when the boat flipped into the water.

'At the time of the incident, conditions were challenging with a swell of up to two metres on the outgoing tide,' the statement read.

'It is unclear if the boats occupants were wearing lifejackets.'

Police said on Saturday afternoon that early indications suggest the passengers weren't wearing lifejackets.

Local charter fisherman Ron Ingram said the river bar is more dangerous than 'people give credit for' and should be treated with caution (pictured is Moruya River)

He added that in three decades of fishing in the area, he can recall four or five people who have been killed on the river bar (pictured is Moruya River)

Local charter fisherman Ron Ingram said the river bar is more dangerous than 'people give credit for' and should be treated with caution.

'It's getting shallower and shallower and more and more waves are standing up as you're going out the bar,' he told News.com.au.

'A lot of the time people don't have the necessary experience and take it far too lightly.'

He added that in three decades of fishing in the area, he can recall four or five people who have been killed on the river bar.

Meanwhile, Surf Lifesaving NSW chief executive Steven Pearce said: 'Our thoughts go out to the family and to the rescuers who were involved in this extremely challenging and confronting situation faced by all this morning.'

The organisation's duty officer Donna Wishart added that surf lifesavers involved in the rescue have been offered counselling.

Police are investigating the incident and a report is being prepared for the coroner.Theresa May used a British intelligence briefing to persuade EU leaders to hit back at Russia following the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

Up to 20 European countries are now considering kicking out Russian spies after the Prime Minister led a four-hour discussion over dinner in Brussels to convince them of Moscows guilt.

It was the same evidence that failed to persuade Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to pin the blame on the Kremlin.

The response came as 23 British diplomats were applauded by colleagues as they left Moscow yesterday in a tit-for-tat expulsion in response to the UK ejecting the same number of Russians.

Theresa May used a British intelligence briefing to persuade EU leaders to hit back at Russia following the Salisbury nerve agent attack

But the Kremlin is now braced for the mass expulsion of its spies from Europe after Mrs May used the summit to pull off a diplomatic triumph on Thursday night.

A diplomatic source said she convinced leaders there was a smoking gun linking Moscow directly to the attempted murder of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who helped convince wavering countries such as Greece, Italy and Bulgaria, described the poisoning as an attack on European sovereignty.

He added: What has happened in Britain is unprecedented... and demands a reaction.

A diplomatic source said she convinced leaders there was a smoking gun linking Moscow directly to the attempted murder of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4

As a first step, the EU yesterday recalled its ambassador to Moscow in protest at the attack. Diplomatic sources said Russia now faced a wave of co-ordinated action by EU countries, which could begin as early as Monday.

It is understood between 15 and 20 EU countries could eventually take part. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Denmark, Lithuania and Poland have already given their backing to the plan to kick out Russian agents.

Angela Merkel said Germany would also consider further measures against Russia.

Bulgarias prime minister Boyko Borisov, one of several leaders won round by Mrs May, warned: We find ourselves at times worse than the Cold War. During the Cold War there were rules. Now I am not optimistic for the peaceful future of the world.

European Council president Donald Tusk said countries would announce more measures on Monday. He acknowledged it was not always easy to get co-ordinated action against Russia but said differences over Brexit would not prevent a united response.

Angela Merkel said Germany would also consider further measures against Russia

Mr Tusk added: It is not the end of our actions. In these difficult circumstances Im personally especially pleased that despite the tough Brexit negotiations, the EU has demonstrated unequivocal unity with the UK.

Going into the summit, several countries indicated they were unwilling to point the finger at Moscow for the Salisbury attack until Mrs May managed to convince them to unanimously sign up to the British position.

UK intelligence assessments linking the Novichok nerve agent used in the attack to the Kremlin appear to have played a key role in building a united EU response.

While it failed to satisfy Mr Corbyn, Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic said: There was not a single head of government who questioned the authenticity of the UK security services conclusions. Lithuanian leader Dalia Grybauskaite said the very detailed information the PM provided influenced our decision to upgrade the response text.

Mrs May said it was crucial there had been recognition around the table last night about the threat that Russia poses.

But Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov accused the UK of trying to deepen the crisis with Russia. He added: We still do not see any facts, which makes us think that all this is provocation.

The boss of the Porton Down defence laboratory, Gavin Aitkenhead, yesterday said there was no way it could be linked to the poisoning of the Skripals. Some conspiracies had suggested its proximity to Salisbury could be behind the nerve agent use.Cars will be slower than bicycles on Britains traffic-stricken roads in less than ten years, it was claimed last night.

Data released by the Department for Transport revealed that the average speed for cars on the countrys A-roads in urban areas dropped to just 18.4mph last year, down from 19.3mph in 2014.

Campaigners have called for new measures to combat the problem, with the RAC suggesting that extra investment is needed to reduce congestion and optimise traffic flow.

If the current trend of declining average speeds continue, bicycles will travel faster than cars across our towns and cities by 2027, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Data released by the Department for Transport revealed that the average speed for cars on the countrys A-roads in urban areas dropped to just 18.4mph last year, down from 19.3mph in 2014. (File photo)

Over the last three years average speeds have been steadily declining across the country with the morning rush hour across both urban and rural roads down to 23.7mph, or just 22.2mph during the evening jam.

The predictions are based on a 16mph average speed of a male cyclist, calculated by activity website Strava.

Average speeds vary dramatically across different areas of the country.

All of the top ten slowest local authority areas in England are in London, with the City of London being the slowest with average A-road speeds of just 7.6mph.

The next slowest place outside the capital was Manchester, with an average speed of 15.3mph, while the fastest local authority area in the country was Rutland in the East Midlands, with an average of 41.6mph.

The report also stated that drivers were delayed for an average 46.9 seconds for every mile last year, with that figure rising to 56.1 seconds in morning rush hour and 65.8 seconds in the evening rush hour.

Congestion is not only frustrating, it is costing the country money and worsening air quality in our cities and other urban areas Nicholas Lyes, RAC roads policy spokesman

The RAC called for ministers to improve traffic flow across the country, saying that this should include extra investment into reducing congestion at pinch-points, looking at further town bypasses to redirect traffic, and re-sequencing traffic lights so authorities are optimising traffic flow.

Nicholas Lyes, the RAC roads policy spokesman, told the Telegraph: This will come as little surprise to motorists who are having to endure increasingly congested roads.

Congestion is not only frustrating, it is costing the country money and worsening air quality in our cities and other urban areas.

At some point, the Government may even have to look at road pricing as an alternative to the current taxation system to help manage demand.

Edmund King, the president of the Automobile Association, said: For years, the AA has argued that more could be done to encourage drivers to leave their cars on the outskirts and take public transport or car share into urban centres.

But, a lack of joined-up thinking ... or a desperate urge to milk cash from drivers in the form of parking charges, has left car commuters with no option but to join the queues.

Environmental activist group, Greenpeace, added that air pollution and congestion go hand in hand.

A Department for Transport spokesman said the Government was investing 23billion in roads to help cut congestion, shorten journey times and boost the economy.

We recently launched plans which will see utility companies charged up to 2,500 a day to carry out works on Britains busiest local roads  incentivising firms to work on quieter roads or outside of rush hour  to cut delays due to roadworks.'Work on a third runway at Heathrow will be ready to start in a little over two years, the Transport Secretary said yesterday.

Chris Grayling said that if Parliament backs the expansion, the project will begin around December 2020, when the Brexit transition period ends.

He told BBC Radio 4s Today programme this would follow outline planning consent being given by the time the UK formally leaves the EU in March 2019, saying: By the time that we leave the European Union... if all goes according to plan, it will have outline planning consent.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has said that work on Heathrow's third runway will be ready to start by around December 2020

By the time we finish the transition period the construction work will be about to start.

Mr Grayling said Parliamentary approval was the equivalent of giving the airport outline planning consent.

MPs yesterday said the airport expansion bid should not be approved without tougher measures to protect communities and passengers.

More safeguards on issues such as air quality, noise, regional connectivity and airport charges are needed before the third runway scheme gets the go ahead, according to the Commons Transport Select Committee.

It called on Parliament to support the project once its concerns have been addressed, accepting there is a case for expanding Heathrow.

The committee wants a more stringent interpretation of air quality laws and for noise estimates to reflect a range of possible flight paths.

A proposed night flight ban of six-and-a-half hours should be extended to seven hours and further evidence is needed that landing charges will not be hiked to pay for expansion, MPs said.

The committees report also urged the Government to provide more clarity on the funding and timeline of changes to the airports rail and road links - particularly the M25 - and how it intends to secure 15 per cent of new slots for domestic connections.

In October 2016 the Government announced that a third runway at the west London hub is its preferred option for increasing airport capacity in south-east England.

Outline planning consent will be given by Parliament if it approves a National Policy Statement (NPS) setting out objectives and requirements for the scheme.

The final NPS is due to be published by the Government for a vote in the Commons by the end of July.

Heathrow is the busiest airport in Europe with 78 million passengers in 2017.

A third runway would allow hundreds of thousands more flights a year.

The airport hopes to begin construction in early 2021, with the runway completed by the end of 2025.The officially designated Brexit campaign 'cheated' during the European Union referendum, a whistleblower has claimed.

The claims centre around Vote Leave's links to another campaign - BeLeave - which it helped fund.

Shahmir Sanni, who worked on the campaign, claimed Vote Leave used it to get around strict spending limits set by the Electoral Commission.

Shahmir Sanni, left, has accused Theresa May's political adviser Stephen Parkinson, right, of 'outing' him because he was afraid Mr Sanni was going to blow the whistle about Vote Leave's conduct during the EU referendum. Mr Parkinson released a statement which said he was involved in a relationship with Mr Sanni for 18 months

Vote Leave has strongly denied wrongdoing and said the 625,000 donated to BeLeave was within the rules.

But Mr Sanni told Channel 4 News: 'I know that Vote Leave cheated ... I know that people have been lied to and that the referendum wasn't legitimate.'

Mr Sanni was in a relationship with senior Vote Leave figure Stephen Parkinson - now Theresa May's political secretary - at the time of the referendum and claimed through his lawyers he was 'outed' by the Number 10 aide in the run-up to the Channel 4 disclosure.

Mr Sanni went to the Electoral Commission with two other pro-Brexit friends on Thursday, who say they helped the Vote Leave campaign two years ago, Channel 4 reported.

Their lawyers have given the election watchdog signed statements.

Mr Sanni told the broadcaster he was initially a Vote Leave outreach volunteer but he was then assigned to BeLeave.

Vote Leave said it did not recall Mr Sanni working as a volunteer, but he was 'like hundreds of others who occasionally visited the offices'.

Mr Sanni said that he and BeLeave's co-founder Darren Grimes always reported to Mr Parkinson.

Mr Sanni claimed he was initially a Vote Leave 'outreach volunteer' before he was assigned to the BeLeave campaign. He said BeLeave's co-founder Darren Grimes 'always' reported to his former boyfriend Stephen Parkinson. He added: 'There was no time where anything BeLeave did didn't go through Stephen'

'There was no time where anything BeLeave did didn't go through Stephen,' he said.

In the final 10 days of the 2016 referendum campaign Vote Leave donated 625,000 to Mr Grimes, who was registered as a permitted participant, with the money used to pay Canadian data firm Aggregate IQ (AIQ), the programme said.

Asked whether they could have refused to spend the money on AIQ, Mr Sanni said: 'We didn't ever feel like we had that level of control.

'That's what I mean, we never felt like we had control over the organisation itself.'

He claimed: 'In effect they used BeLeave to over-spend, and not just by a small amount ... Almost two-thirds of a million pounds makes all the difference and it wasn't legal.'

Mr Sanni released a statement tonight through his solicitor's Bindmans

Mr Parkinson said he was 'saddened' by the 'factually incorrect and misleading' statements by Mr Sanni and his lawyers.

He added: 'At the relevant time during the referendum period, the commission advised Vote Leave that it was permissible to make a donation in the way it proposed to do to BeLeave.

'Twice since the referendum the commission has investigated this matter, and twice it has found no evidence of wrongdoing. A third investigation into the same issue is currently taking place.

'The Electoral Commission has not contacted me in relation to any of these inquiries, but I will of course be happy to assist in them if they wish me to do so.

'I firmly deny the allegations in the programme.

'I had no responsibility for digital campaigning or donations on the Vote Leave campaign, and am confident that I stayed within the law and strict spending rules at all times.'

Mr Grimes also denies all the allegations, Channel 4 said.

A Vote Leave spokesman said it had 'twice been cleared on this matter by the Electoral Commission' adding: 'There are now a number of new accusations and allegations.

'While many of them seem irrelevant or trivial, some are serious and potentially damaging to the reputations of those caught up in those allegations.

'As has been the case throughout, Vote Leave is obligated to review - to the extent it can after this long elapsed period since the referendum - all such allegations, and is doing so.

'We will as appropriate share any relevant findings with the Electoral Commission, again as we have always done.'

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said: 'The commission has a number of investigations open in relation to campaigners at the EU Referendum; it does not comment on live investigations. '

Mr Sanni was forced to reveal his sexuality to his mother and members of his family in Pakistan following the statement.

It came after Mr Sanni was said to be set to come forward to allege the Vote Leave campaign, who he worked for, broke campaign finance laws by donating money to another pro-Brexit group, BeLeave, and co-ordinating how it was spent.

In a statement revealing their relationship, Mr Parkinson admitted he had spoken to Mr Sanni about the two campaigns, but denied wrongdoing.

He said he gave him 'advice and encouragement' but said he was 'confident' Vote Leave acted within the law.

Vote Leave donated 625,000 to BeLeave, a campaign aimed at the youth vote.

Electoral law forbids Vote Leave having any say in how the cash is spent.

Vote Leave would have been unable to spend the money itself because it was approaching the 7million campaign spending limit.

Responding to the sudden 'outing', Mr Sanni was released a statement through is solicitors Bindmans.

'I represent Shahmir Sanni, who has provided information to the media as a whistleblower about matters relating to the conduct of the Vote Leave campaign during the EU Referendum.

'10 Downing Street tonight confirmed an official statement to the media on behalf of Stephen Parkinson, Political Secretary to the Prime Minister, disclosing my client's sexuality publicly.

'We believe this is the first time a Downing Street official statement has been used to out someone. My client is now having to come out to his mother and family tonight, and members of his family in Pakistan are being forced to take urgent protective measures to ensure their safety.'

Mr Sanni added: 'It's sad that Stephen feels he can't tell the truth about cheating in the Referendum.

'I think he understands why I had to do the right thing and let people know what really happened.

'But I never imagined that he, with the help of Number 10, would choose to tell the world I am gay, in a last desperate attempt to scare me.

'This is something I've never told most of my friends or family, here or in Pakistan, some of whom are having to take measures to ensure their safety.

'He knew the danger it would cause, and that's why he did it.

'My coming out should have happened at a moment of my choosing - not his or the Government's.

'Some things are more important than politics and I hope that one day he agrees.'

In an earlier statement, according to the Times Mr Parkinson wrote: 'Shahmir became an occasional volunteer for Vote Leave and other Leave campaigns, and we began a personal relationship.

'We subsequently dated for 18 months, splitting up  I thought amicably  in September 2017. That is the capacity in which I gave Shahmir advice and encouragement, and I can understand if the lines became blurred for him, but I am clear that I did not direct the activities of any separate campaign groups.

'I had no responsibility for digital campaigning or donations during the referendum, and am confident that Vote Leave acted entirely within the law and strict spending rules at all times.'

Number 10 this morning told MailOnline: 'This is a political matter for CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Head Quarters).

MailOnline has approached CCHQ for a comment.A year-long crackdown on illegal bird killing at a British military base in Cyprus has resulted in a 'huge' drop in the number of poachers operating inside the base's territory, authorities said.

There has also been a 70per cent reduction in the trapping of blackcaps over the past 12-months, officials said.

Small migratory birds are considered a delicacy by some Cypriots and trapping feeds a multimillion-euro illicit trade.

One small mist net alone traps hundreds of birds at a time, and Black Caps - also known as songbirds - sell for up to 65 per dozen.

A year-long crackdown on illegal bird killing at a British military base in Cyprus has resulted in a 'huge' drop in the number of poachers operating inside the base's territory, authorities said

Authorities destroyed more than forty miles of illegal irrigation pipes, used to water acacia trees that conceal nets.

More than 40,000 worth of bird-trapping apparatus has been seized, and over a thousand captive birds have been released.

Dhekelia British base police chief Jon Ward said combating poachers remains a priority and that a 12-person anti-poaching unit will expand its use of drones and hidden cameras to enforce the law.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who recently visited UK troops in Cyprus, said: 'Bird trapping is not only a cruel and barbaric trade, it lines the pockets of criminal gangs to the tune of thousands of pounds.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who recently visited UK troops in Cyprus, said: 'Bird trapping is not only a cruel and barbaric trade, it lines the pockets of criminal gangs to the tune of thousands of pounds

'Thanks to the fantastic work of our Armed Forces and the Sovereign Base Police there has been a 70 per cent fall in the number of birds killed in the Sovereign Base Areas.

'By seizing and destroying the tools criminals use, we are protecting migratory birds and hitting bird trappers in the pocket.

'And by doubling the number of thermal image drones used to catch the poachers, we will strive for even more positive results.'

Chief Constable Chris Eyre, who has been leading the police efforts, added: 'With the support from the UK Government we have been able to dedicate more resources to this problem and we are now seeing the rewards of that commitment and that message is reaching the bird trapping community.

'Our work with the RSPB and the use of hidden cameras can also not be overlooked and that has led to a number of high-profile convictions within the SBA court system.'Four missing children aged between one and ten-years-old have been found safe and well after disappearing together on Friday.

Police have thanked those who helped in the search to find Jacob Phoenix, one, Jamie Lee Phoenix, two, Michael Power, six, and Jody Power, 10.

The four children were on Kings Heath Avenue in the Dovecot area of Liverpool at 4pm on Friday before they disappeared.

Merseyside police issued a desperate plea for help in finding the children shortly after 1am on Saturday.

A spokesperson has now said: 'The four missing children, Jody Power, Michael Power, Jamie Lee Phoenix, and Jacob Phoenix have now been found safe and well.

'Thank you to everyone who helped us in the search to find the children.'Russia mounted a huge disinformation campaign online in the wake of the Salisbury spy attack, British officials believe.

Thousands of robotic accounts were involved in sowing doubts about the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, reaching at least 7.5million people in the UK.

We have seen the Russian state deploy an extensive disinformation campaign around the Salisbury incident, a British official told the Times.

Thousands of robotic accounts sowed doubt about attempted murder of Sergei Skripal

This campaign curiously began before the prime minister announced that Russia was behind the attack.

The so-called bot accounts on sites such as Twitter numbered an estimated 2,800, and their messages were interacted with 75million times.

The automated accounts are computer programs which can post on social media hundreds of times a day.

Monitoring reports prepared for the British government found there was a 70 per cent chance the suspect accounts were bots.

More than one in four of the suspect posts identified by UK officials were created by just six accounts.

Although it is difficult to identify whether an online account is a bot or controlled by a real human operator, the government analysts are thought to have determined many are bots based on who they follow online and how many times they post.Around one in eight students are unaware of how much money they have borrowed to cover their university tuition fees, a government-commissioned report suggests.

It also indicates that around a fifth of university applicants are unsure about the amount they will have to take out in student loans.

The findings come just weeks after Prime Minister Theresa May announced a wide-ranging review of post-18 education - including tuition fees, which now stand at 9,250 a year for English and EU students.

The findings of a new report come weeks after Theresa May announced a wide-ranging review of post-18 education

The study, published by the Department for Education, found that 13% of those in their first year of university 'did not know what amount of tuition loan they had taken out'.

It also showed that a quarter of students said they nearly did not apply, or go to university, because of debt worries, while half reported being 'put off' by the costs of university.

However, the findings also reveal that of those who felt deterred, the fact that they could access tuition fee and maintenance loans, as well as that they would not need to start repaying the money until they were earning a certain salary, helped to ease their concerns.

Among the university applicants polled in the summer of 2015, around a fifth (19%) said they did not know the amount that they would be expected to take out in tuition fee loans, the study found.

'This might be because they were either unaware of or undecided about the amounts involved,' it said.

The research also suggested that many would-be students expect to get financial help from their parents while studying.

More than half of the applicants that were polled in the survey said they were put off university by the costs associated with it

While nearly nine in 10 (88%) said they expected to get a tuition fee loan, almost two-thirds (63%) anticipated using their mothers and fathers as a source of income, with a similar proportion (62%) planning to use savings.

Would-be students from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to say they would get help from parents or savings.

'Financial factors were not the biggest influence on the final decision to apply to university,' the report said.

'The most important factors were the desires to be more employable, to achieve the qualification and to pursue an interest in a subject. This was the case for applicants from both the higher and the lower socio-economic groups.'

More than half (54%) of the applicants polled said they were put off to some extent by the cost of university, and, of those who said this, tuition fees were a bigger turn-off than living costs, and most would-be students (75%) thought university was a worthwhile investment despite the cost.

'For those applicants who were 'put off' by the costs of university, tuition fee loans, the repayment threshold and maintenance loans were considered to be the most important aspects of the student finance package that helped persuade them to apply to university despite the costs,' it said.The future of British engineering stalwart GKN hung in the balance last night after an aggressive New York hedge fund backed an 8.1billion hostile takeover.

Investment firm Elliott, which controls a 3.4 per cent stake in GKN, yesterday threw its weight behind turnaround specialist Melrose in the battle for control of the manufacturer.

Opponents of the takeover warn that Melrose is simply trying to strip the 259-year-old firms assets so directors can secure a 285million bonus.

Investment firm Elliott, which controls a 3.4 per cent stake in GKN, yesterday threw its weight behind takeover bid from Melrose

Elliott has been dubbed a vulture fund by critics over its aggressive tactics. It has been building its stake in GKN ever since Melrose launched its bid  a strategy that will enable it to make a quick buck should the takeover go ahead.

It came as two major car manufacturers, which account for 800million of GKNs sales, voiced opposition. In an indication of rising concern that its opportunity is slipping away, Melrose issued a last desperate plea for support.

Major GKN shareholders including Lancaster Investment Management, Jupiter Asset Management and Columbia Threadneedle have come out in defence of the engineering firm. Airbus  its single biggest customer  has warned it will be practically impossible to work with the firm if Melrose buys it.

GKN says it will sell its parts-making arm Driveline to US supplier Dana if it can fight off Melrose. Dana is set to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange if this 4.2billion deal goes ahead, giving British investors more control.

A senior executive at one top European carmaker said: We are much more comfortable with a long-term, well-respected industry investor like Dana than someone with a private equity-style buy-and-sell approach whose short-term outlook will influence our purchasing decisions.

Executives and founders of Melrose from left to right: Simon Peckham, David Roper, Chris Miller and Geoff Martin

ADS, the aerospace and defence industry trade body, called for the deal to be blocked on national security grounds.

Shareholders who own more than half of GKNs stock must give their backing to the deal by the end of Thursday next week if it is to go ahead.

Melrose chairman Christopher Miller wrote to GKN investors yesterday in a final effort to get them onside.

He said: Only the Melrose team can transform GKN into the manufacturing powerhouse that it could and should be. Elliott argued that GKNs recurring historical underperformance was self-inflicted.

The hedge fund was famously branded a financial terrorist for buying up Argentine government debt while the countrys economy collapsed, then demanding payment in full.

Other victims include investment manager Alliance Trust, whose chairman and chief executive were forced out after a vicious public campaign.

Melrose is still waiting for permission from US authorities for the deal. It now says it will push on even if their April 17 deadline is missed.Ivanka Trump reportedly confronted her father, President Donald Trump, during the 2016 campaign and angrily demanded he do more to accommodate her husband, Jared Kushner, it has been reported.

Then-candidate Trumps daughter burst into his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower in New York City one day during the campaign, Vanity Fair reported on Friday.

I need to talk to you, a campaign official recalled Ivanka Trump telling her father.

You dont give Jared the support he needs. Hes left his business to be a part of this. You have no idea what hes sacrificing to be here and how hard he is working for you.

Ivanka Trump then told her father that she was personally hurt by his lack of appreciation for his son-in-law and that it was affecting their marriage.

The campaign official told Vanity Fair that Donald Trump immediately capitulated.

Ivanka Trump reportedly confronted her father, President Donald Trump, during the 2016 campaign and angrily demanded he do more to accommodate her husband, Jared Kushner, it has been reported. Kushner and Ivanka Trump are seen in Washington on January 30, 2018

All right, all right, all right, the official remembered Trump saying to his daughter.

What does he want?

Speculation has been rampant in both Washington, DC and New York that the Kushners are waiting until the school year ends in June before returning home to Manhattan.

Last November, President Trump told Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared, that they should return to New York in order to escape the negative publicity they have received since taking up their positions as White House advisers, according to Vanity Fair.

But if and when the couple does return to New York, they may find that their social circle has abandoned them.

Donald Trumps divisive rhetoric throughout the campaign and during his presidency has reportedly turned off many people who counted Kushner and his wife as friends.

What are they coming home to here? a New York-based friend told Vanity Fair.

A bunch of people who havent exactly been counting down the seconds since theyve been gone.

Trump's Muslim ban, his comments on the Charlottesville violence, his rhetoric against immigrants, his remarks about grabbing women, and his alleged affairs with porn stars and Playboy bunnies have led Kushner's told friends in New York to shun him and his wife.

Last October, Ivanka Trump and her husband were conspicuously left off the invitation list for a Halloween party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The party was being co-hosted by Wendi Murdoch, a close friend of the couple.

Some of the predominantly liberal Manhattan crowd that Kushner and his wife counted as friends turned away from them after it became apparent that Trump was going to win the presidency.

Ivanka Trump felt that her father wasn't appreciative of her husband's 'hard work' to help get him elected, it was reported on Friday

But the couple felt it was worth sacrificing their friends if they felt they could make an impact on policy.

What is complicating matters for Kushner is the legal difficulties he is likely to find himself in because of the Mueller investigation.

The probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election is closing in on Trump, with Kushner being mentioned as a likely candidate to eventually be indicted.

Last month, it was reported that Kushner's role in the West Wing was significantly downgraded after Chief of Staff John Kelly denied him access to top secret intelligence reports.

Kushner, who had been operating under an interim security clearance for about a year, had his access to the president's highly classified daily briefing cut off in the past few weeks, said the sources.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recently passed new information to White House Counsel Don McGahn that led to the slowing or stopping of Kushners pending clearance application.

The nature of that information was not clear.

It also is unclear if and when Kushners access to the briefing, known as the PDB, which requires clearance higher than the Top Secret level, would be reinstated.

Kushner, a wealthy New York businessman, has not received his full security clearance because of his extensive financial links, which have taken a long time to examine.

Last month, it was reported that Kushner's role in the West Wing was significantly downgraded after Chief of Staff John Kelly (far left) denied him access to top secret intelligence reports. Kelly, Ivanka Trump (center) and Jared Kushner are seen at the White House on March 8

He has revised his security clearance form, called an SF-86, several times.

Kushner's reduced access to sensitive information has fueled further talk that a return to New York is imminent.

Faced with the spectre of indictments from Mueller, there is the distinct possibility that the Russia probe will cause a split in the Trump family.

One friend of the president told Vanity Fair that if Donald Trump was faced with the choice of taking the fall to save Kushner or sacrificing his son-in-law to save his own skin, the choice is clear.

If you think hes going to tie himself to the kid, you dont know anything, the long-time friend of the president said.

If its going to cost him his legacy, not a chance.

Another former Trump adviser told Vanity Fair that one of the reasons he is keeping Kushner around is to not let him out of his sight  especially if he is indicted.

Another unknown question is what Ivanka Trump would do if faced with choosing between her husband and her father.Inmate David Sweat, known for escaping prison in 2015, is in trouble again after he was caught in a sex act with his girlfriend

The girlfriend of David Sweat, the infamous convicted murderer who broke out of an upstate New York prison in a 'Shawshank Redemption' -style escape, is denying claims she was helping him masturbate during a recent visit.

Prison sources at Attica Correctional Facility told the New York Post that Frances Malanik was banned from seeing Sweat for 60 days after they were caught in a sex act during a recent visit.

The source said a correctional officer saw Sweat touching himself through his pants in the visitor's room as Malanik reached her hand through a partition to help him out.

The 45-year-old mother-of-one told the Post that's not exactly what happened.

According to Malanik, Sweat was complaining of lumps in his groin so she reached down to check.

'He was complaining about a lump in his groin area. I'm a nurse. It was just a natural reaction to check on him,' she said. 'I never thought for a minute they'd think it was sexual in nature.'

Malanik's version of her March 8 visit to is vastly different than what Sweat told the Post.

The 37-year-old inmate, who is serving a life sentence at the maximum security prison for killing a cop, did not mention a lump in his groin. He told the outlet that he had drank 'about three and a half 20-ounce iced teas' and had to use the bathroom.

Frances Malanik was escorted out of the prison after she decided to help Sweat fondle himself. Malanik and Sweat started dating in 2015, shortly after Sweat was captured and returned to prison

Like any little boy or man would do, I grabbed it like, Man, I really have to pee'', he said.

Sweat said he was squirming in his seat because he couldn't wait to use the bathroom, and claims his prison uniform 'makes it look like I have a hard-on anyway'.

As for why Malanik was reaching through the partition? Sweat said he was holding her hand and the proximity made it look as if she was touching his groin.

Both suggested to the Post that the guards misrepresented what happened to punish Sweat.

Malanik said correctional officers are mad Sweat was transferred to the Attica prison four months ago because extra security cameras were added, making it hard for them to break the rules.

Sweat said he's been on a hunger strike the past four months because he believes guards are trying to poison his food. He also said he's afraid to take showers because he doesn't want to be vulnerable in front of the officers.

They bring a bucket of hot water in the morning and thats basically what Ive been using, he said.

New York is one of four states that allows qualifying inmates to have conjugal visits, also known as extended family visits. Sweat, however, doesn't qualify.

According to the state's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, inmates housed in the Special Housing Unit for disciplinary reasons are not granted family extended visits.

Sweat was placed in solitary confinement in the Special Housing Unit at Attica Correctional Facility after trying to make a deal with authorities in which he said he would detail his newly hatched escape plan if they gave him special privileges.

Sweat and Malanik struck up a relationship in 2015, shortly after Sweat was captured and returned to prison following an elaborate escape.

In June of that year he and fellow inmate Richard Matt busted out of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York by using tools smuggled to them by jail worker Joyce Mitchell. The escape resembled the one hatched in the 1994 movie 'The Shawshank Redemption'.

Matt, 49, was fatally shot by a border patrol tactical team three weeks after he busted out of prison. Sweat was captured on June 28, 2015.

Mitchell, who was nicknamed 'Shawskank' after it was revealed she had sexual relationships with Matt and Sweat, was arrested and is currently serving seven years in prison.

The elaborate scheme and Mitchell's involvement inspired a 2017 Lifetime movie.Mr Geissler is pleading not guilty to murder and the trial will continue Monday

She said her ex admitted to accidentally killing Mr Baynton with a sword

His ex-girlfriend Paige Yasserie gave evidence in the Mackay Supreme Court

A girl has told a court her ex-boyfriend admitted to accidentally murdering a 29-year-old man with a samurai sword.

Mala Owen Geissler , 31, is facing trial in the Mackay Supreme Court for the murder of Tyrone Tubby Baynton, 29.

Mr Baynton was found dead at a property in North Mackay, Queensland on October 11, 2015.

An ex-girlfriend of an accused murderer, Paige Yasserie, gave evidence in the Mackay Supreme Court on Friday

His former girlfriend, Paige Yasserie, said Mr Geissler stabbed a 'samurai sword' through the door, the Daily Mercury reports.

'I remember he was saying that he put the knife through the door by accident,' she reportedly said.

'And I think I remember asking him that night if he was on ice and he said 'yes'.

'He said he didn't know who was standing behind the door.'

Mala Owen Geissler (pictured) is pleading not guilty to murder as a trial continues in the Mackay Supreme Court

The prosecutor is alleging Mr Geissler drove the samurai sword through the unit block door and pierced his neck.

Two other men, Joshua Wales and Jeremy Abbell were allegedly present that night, with Mr Wales having previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not guilty of murder.

Mr Geissler is pleading not guilty to the murder.

Tyrone Tubby Baynton, 29, was found dead at a property in North Mackay, Queensland on October 11, 2015

The defence for Mr Geissler has asked the jury to take into account whether the death was caused by an accident as defined by the law.

Joshua Don Francis Wales, 27, pleaded guilty of manslaughter in the Supreme Court in February.

Earlier in the trial, a Samurai sword was brought into the court room.

The trial heard from a number of witnesses and police and will continue on Monday morning.Fines of up to $2,500 are being threatened across Queensland as councils introduce laws to penalise wheelie bin louts.

People who leave their bins out on the kerb for more than 24 hours could be slapped with an infringement.

The new local laws are to replace a state law which is due to expire but did not specify a time limit.

There are 20 councils throughout Queensland making the new local laws with the rules coming into force in July.

Leaving the bins out for too long could land residents across Queensland with fines of $2,500

Residents in Mackay run the risk of being fined $2,523 if they flout Local Law Number 9, the Daily Mercury reports.

Similar laws with fines are being introduced in Townsville, Rockhampton, Burdekin, Bundaberg, Gladstone and the Gold Coast.

The changes are being made to ensure urban areas do not look untidy and was not a money-making law, Mackay mayor Greg Williamson told the Daily Mercury.

'In the case where someone complains that there is a land owner or occupier of a dwelling not doing the right thing by the environment, and people that live in that area, we need this local law or otherwise it is a free-for-all,' he said.

There are 20 councils across the state but Mackay, which is imposing the maximum fine, says it is not a money-making ploy

But the council said it was not going to rush out and issue fines adding it had the power to do so when required.

Officials said the council had received 18 complaints since April but had issued no fines.

The move had been challenged by the Local Government Association of Queensland, which wanted the state government to extend its current law.

The association says it believes 24 hours is long enough.

The old laws did allow for a maximum fine of $2,523 - the same as being adopted in Mackay - but had no time limit applied to when it should be taken back in.

The version of the new law set to be adopted in Brisbane will keep the unspecified time limit law with a possible fine of $1,260.Video footage of San Jose police officers leading away a 14-year-old boy in handcuffs as his parents angrily confront the cops has sparked outrage.

Ernesto Mirabal is seen in the footage being detained by at least four uniformed police officers at Los Paseos Park in California on Monday.

His parents say the boy spent that night in jail after he allegedly punched a man in the face.

The parents say their son was accosted by three adults who began to choke him and hit him, prompting him to fight back.

Police arrested Ernesto for assault and battery, but his parents say it was an adult who initiated the violence, KRON-TV reported.

Video footage of San Jose police officers leading away a 14-year-old boy in handcuffs as his parents angrily confront the cops has gone viral on social media

Ernesto Mirabal, 14, is seen in the video being detained by at least four uniformed police officers at Los Paseos Park on Monday

His parents say the boy spent that night in jail after he allegedly punched a man in the face

The parents say their son was accosted by three adults who began to choke him and hit him, prompting him to fight back

Ernesto Mirabal is seen above being led into the police cruise by an officer in San Jose

Police arrested Ernesto Mirabal for assault and battery, but his parents say it was an adult who initiated the violence

The cell phone video was recorded by the boys father, Manuel Mirabal.

His mother, Jennifer Mirabal, is seen in the footage arguing with the officers as they lead her son into the police cruiser.

He was walking to school, like every kid does, and three adults took it upon themselves to interrogate him and make him scared, Manuel Mirabal said.

It is terrifying, as a mom, Mrs Mirabal said. I wasn't there to protect him.

He did start to tell her like, Get the (expletive) away from me, the mother said. Leave me the (expletive) alone.

After his son spent the night in jail, Manuel Mirabal said: He is just not emotionally right.

The parents insist their son was not the aggressor.

He was just grabbing my son like this and choking him and hitting him, and that is when my son was fighting back, Mrs Mirabal said.

The boy's mother, Jennifer Mirabal (left), and father, Manuel Mirabal (right), recorded their son's arrest. They are exploring legal options

And when he protected himself and stood up against them, he got arrested for it, Mr Mirabal said. He got the punishment.

Police, however, said it was Ernesto who punched one of the adults in the face.

The parents said that the man who was allegedly punched by their son was an off-duty police officer, but authorities would not comment.

They posted the video of their son being arrested on social media.

San Jose law enforcement officials, however, said the officer acted appropriately.

The officers who responded to this incident acted within the San Jose Police Department's protocol, a police spokeswoman said.

The family said that the district attorney agreed to drop all charges. Nonetheless, the parents have retained a lawyer and are exploring legal options.

The Mirabals have already filed a police conduct complaint.

I don't feel like that was a great judgment call for them, and I just hope that gets fixed in the department, Mr Mirabal said.Bahari Shaquille Warren, 25, was charged cruelty to children Wednesday in Georgia

A mother of two has told her children that God would protect them before closing her eyes and ramming their car into a utility pole.

Bahari Shaquille Warren, 25, was charged with two felony counts of cruelty to children early on Wednesday after the car crash in Norcross, Georgia, on the northeast outskirts of Atlanta.

Police said that Warren was driving north on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard when she crossed into the oncoming lanes and ran off the road, hitting the pole.

'She was telling us to believe in god so nothing would happen to us,' one of the children told police, according to patrol car footage obtained by WSBTV.

Warren told the children, who are aged five and seven, to buckle up and then accelerated blindly, police said.

'Her eyes (were) closed and she was saying, "blah, blah, blah, I love God",' the girl said.

Warren told the children to buckle up and then accelerated blindly, police said. 'Her eyes (were) closed and she was saying, "blah, blah, blah, I love God",' the daughter said

The two children are seen in the back seat of a patrol car giving a statement to police

'She didnt want us to just have a car accident. She wanted us to know that God is real,' the daughter added.

After the crash, Warren admitted that she intentionally crashed the car to prove to her children that God is real, according to police.

The children stayed with a grandmother as Warren was taken into custody.

She was released from Gwinnett County Jail on Friday afternoon on $11,200 bond, according to jail records.

Warren's attorney, Angela Brown, could not immediately be reached for comment early Saturday.

The mother is next due in court on Wednesday, according to court records, which spell her first name as Bakari.Fishermen fear someone is going to get hurt after authorities refused to move on a crocodile which has been stalking a popular creek for weeks.

The reptile has been spotted several times around the wharf on the Little Tuan Creek near Boonooroo on Queensland's Fraser Coast throughout March.

But the state's environment department claims the croc is not acting aggressively enough for officers to do anything about it.

Residents say they have seen a crocodile in the Little Tuan Creek for several weeks and fear it will hurt someone

Howard Davies says he is worried a serious incident could happen with the long Easter weekend coming up, the Fraser Coast Chronicle reports.

He told the publication: 'She's a bit too game for my liking. She's not frightened. I'm getting a bit worried getting up to Easter time.

'Somebody is going to get seriously hurt or injured.'

Residents have been posting on social media about a croc in the creek since January with more sightings in recent weeks.

But the croc cannot be moved from the wharf near Boonooroo (pictured) because the croc is not aggressive enough, authorities said

On Tuesday, the government said it had three confirmed sightings reported.

Mr Davies said the first of his many sightings of the croc came when she was looking for food, jumped out of the water and hit her tail against his boat.

His brother, Don, said he will be staying out of the water to clean his boat's propellers in future.

The two men are now urging caution for anyone visiting to be aware of the animal - a message echoed by the government.

A spokesman for Department of Environment and Science added officers are monitoring the area but has not had seen the crocodile for themselves.

A spokesman for Department of Environment and Science added officers are monitoring the area on the Fraser Coast

Other concerns there is a breeding pair in the area have been dismissed by the authorities.

The spokesman said there was no record of any crocodile nests in the Fitzroy River delta adding it would be unusual for them to breed so far south.

'If the presence of a crocodile is confirmed it will be targeted for removal,' they said according to the Chronicle.

Anyone who sights a crocodile is asked to report it to the department on 1300 130 372.Josh Waring was arrested in 2016 for attempted murder

Former'Real Housewives of Orange County star Lauri Peterson is opening up about her son's 2016 arrest for attempted murder claiming he was falsely accused and the truth will soon be revealed.

After keeping silent for nearly 2 years in regards to my sons arrest, I am going to begin laying out the facts of his case and how easily it is to be falsely accused, she tweeted Thursday.

I will lay out the facts starting from the day of the arrest. Ill let you be the judge but it is going to take me time to organize and far to lengthy for one tweet. 

Peterson's son, Josh Waring, was arrested in June 2016 for allegedly shooting a man in Costa Mesa, California and then fleeing in a stolen vehicle.

The 29-year-old was charged with battery, hit and run with property damage; resisting arrest and obstructing an officer; unlawful taking of a vehicle, reckless driving, and evading police.

Lauri Peterson alleged in a series of tweets that her son was 'falsely accused' for attempted murder. Peterson is pictured above with her son

The Real Housewives of Orange County alum's tweet was the first time she addressed the arrest in two years

Peterson suggested that she would detail what happened in a blog post

Last year, the charge possession of a contraband was also added after police said he was caught with alcohol in jail.

Peterson didn't divulge any further details about her son's case - suggesting she would provide more information in a blog post - but shared a link to an article she said is the 'closest to the truth that I've seen so far'.

In the article titled 'Cop-Protected Orange County Snitch Avoids Murder Beefs With Laughable Tales', author R Scott Moxley alleges that a man named Bryan Jason Goldstein was at the crime scene with Waring but managed to quickly win police exoneration.

He understands this case and although there were a couple of minor mistakes, he is the closest to the truth that Ive seen so far,' Peterson tweeted about Moxley's story. 'Much more to come.

Waring's lawyer previously alleged that Goldstein was given 'special treatment' by officers.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Waring's attorney said during court for his trial in January that police never tested Goldtein's hands or clothing for gunshot residue and didn't search the vehicle until two days later.

Peterson said an article in OC Weekly is the closest thing to the truth regarding her son's case. The article suggests that another man was at the crime scene and managed to quickly win police exoneration

Peterson, pictured above with her husband George Peterson, quit Real Housewives of Orange County in 2008 following her son relapsing and getting arrested

It was also alleged that Goldstein had struck an 'immunity agreement' with the Orange County District Attorney's office to testify in a 2016 homicide case. The lawyer also said Goldstein was a police informant in a 2004 case.

Peterson quit the Bravo reality show in 2008 revealing that her son was addicted to heroin and had relapsed and was arrested. She and her husband, George Peterson, adopted Waring's 12-year-old daughter Kennedy in 2012.

In a tweet to a fan, Peterson said the 'silver lining' in her son's 2016 arrest was that he was finally sober.A pilot has walked away unharmed after his light plane overshot a runway and hit an embankment before coming to a rest on a road.

The pilot, a German national in his 50s, was lucky to walk away without serious injury police said.

The Cessna 430 plane missed the runway at Lilydale Airport in Yering, 45kms north-east of Melbourne, on Saturday afternoon after making an 800km trip from Bankstown in NSW.

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A pilot has walked away unharmed after his light plane overshot a runway and hit an embankment before coming to a rest on a road

The pilot told an investigator that he attempted to hold down the breaks but it did nothing to stop the plane over shooting the runway

The pilot told an investigator that he attempted to hold down the breaks but it did nothing to stop the plane over shooting the runway.

Acting Sergeant Robbie Tucknott told 9 News that is was a lucky escape for the pilot and passing motorists.

'It happened in front of motorists but luckily on this occasion fortune was on our side and no one was injured and no cars were involved,' he said.

Acting Sergeant Tucknott said the pilot was in good spirits after his close call and was 'pretty happy with the outcome'.

The plane missed the runway at Lilydale Airport in Yering, 45kms north-east of Melbourne , on Saturday afternoon

Paramedics treated the male pilot at the scene, but he didn't require transport to hospital, 7 News reported.

A witness to the accident can be heard saying 'the plane missed the runway'.

Investigators will visit the site to inspect the aircraft and see what contributed to the accident.A wheel-chair bound man's dog has died after allegedly being attacked by a viscous dingoes in Geelong, Victoria.

Peter Mouat was helpless when his 13-year-old terrier was attacked earlier this month in Corio.

The elderly man was unable to intervene to save his pet dog who would follow him during his daily walks.

The dog, named dotty, died of injuries in hospital days after, leaving Mr Mouat with a $5,000 bill for vet, medical and cremation costs, according to a Go Fund Me page.

Peter Mouat (pictured), a wheel-chair-bound grandfather. was left helpless when his his 13-year-old terrier was attacked in March.

The elderly man, who is 'completely incapacitated' in the final stages of Motor Neurone Disease', could not stop the attack and was unable to call for help.

He was forced to head back home with Dotty courageously dragging herself behind his wheelchair.

Ruth Morrison, a nurse, has created the fundraising page to raise funds for the Mr Mouat.

'Pete is now battling grief over the senseless loss of his beloved dog and companion, Dotty,' she wrote.

Mr Mouat is absolutely heartbroken according to his granddaughter, who vented on Facebook on Friday.

'This is my Pa. For those who didn't read my post when it happened, his poor doggy Dotty was attacked by two dingoes in front of him while he was taking her for a walk,' he said.

'Unfortunately it was all too much for Dotty to handle and she passed away a few days later.

The dog, named dotty, died of injuries in hospital days after, leaving Mr Mouat with a $5,000 bill for vet, medical and cremation costs (stock photo)

'This left my pa not only heartbroken and grieving for his best friend of 13 years but also severely financially strained.'

The fundraising page has now raised $4,470, only a few hundred dollars away from the $5,000 target.

'Peter Mouat is a proud man, hed been a hard worker until the effects of MND forced him to stop working and, most importantly, hes a genuinely good bloke,' the page states.A severe tropical cyclone has made landfall in north Queensland.

Tropical Cyclone Nora crossed the western coast of Cape York Peninsula around 1.15am on Sunday, according to Sky News.

Part of the Gulf of Carpentaria was battered by the edge of the cyclone on Saturday as 10,000 people told to lock down until the storm passes.

Forecasters say winds of up to 195k/h will make landfall between Pormpuraaw and Gilbert River Mouth bringing 'very destructive winds'.

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The Bureau of Meteorology has warned Queensland of a severe category four tropical cyclone which could develop off the coast on Saturday

Tropical Cyclone Nora developed early on Friday morning in the Arafura Sea and the category was increased to a category two system before 11.00am

The most severe part of the storm is around 100km wide and moving around 20km/h.

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told communities to move to stronger housing in areas above the storm tide levels and houses built after 1982.

Bob Gee, deputy commissioner Queensland Police, said: 'We need to lock down tonight.

'There will be a certain stage this evening when it will be safe for no one to be out  including police, QFES, SES, health professionals.

'We need to think about being locked down for couple of days. We are prepared to help when we can get in.

'If you want to be safe tonight you've got a couple of hours to do whatever needs to be done to get to a high place of safety.

A cyclone warning has been issued for north Queensland as a severe cyclone is generating vicious storms and wild wet weather

'Lock down tonight, take your supplies with you and stay there until it is safe to come out.'

Ms Palaszczuk added: 'We've heard from Weipa region they are starting to feel the effects of the winds now.

'This is a severe tropical cyclone. Once you are in your homes this evening, do not leave.'

Bruce Gunn, Queensland state manager from the Bureau of Meteorology said: 'We're no longer expecting a category four.

'There are very destructive winds at its core and approximately 100km wide. It's a large cross section of destructive winds.

Nora is heading for the north Queensland coast as a severe tropical cyclone and is generating strong rain, storms and gales causing storms and gales in western Queensland

Tropical Cyclone Nora developed early on Friday morning in the Arafura Sea and the category was increased to a category two system before 11.00am

'The crossing point is going to be between Pormpuraaw and Gilbert River Mouth.

'Anyone in the path should move to solid buildings on higher ground.'

Katrarina Carroll, commissioner of the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, said: 'You only have a small timeframe this afternoon to get everything in place. Please tonight bunker down.

'Extraordinary plans and preparation has been put in place. We're in a very good place and well prepared.'

Tropical Cyclone Nora developed early on Friday morning in the Arafura Sea and the category was increased to a category two system before 11.00am.

Record heavy rain is hitting New South Wales, with residents in parts of the Hunter and mid-north coast region warned to prepare for flash floods (pictured is flooding caused by the heavy rain)

Mr Dutschke said heavy rain and storms are also expected for parts of Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory (pictured is flooding caused by the heavy rain)Advertisement

Thousands have gathered for an emotional interfaith vigil at the National Cathedral ahead of Saturday's 'March For Our Lives' in Washington DC and in other cities.

Area residents joined together with students and families affected by the Valentine's Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parland, Florida, where 17 died.

Volunteers handed out more than 2,000 candles on the cathedral steps as the attendees entered.

'We come with sadness, as we grieve so much loss of life, so much senseless death, so much needless suffering,' Rev. Randy Hollerith, dean of the Cathedral, told the crowd, WTOP reported.

Volunteers handed out more than 2,000 candles on the steps of the National Cathedral as the attendees entered on Friday

Area residents joined together with students and families affected by the Parkland shooting for an emotional vigil

People take part in a candle light vigil at the Washington National Cathedral ahead of Saturday's March For Our Lives rally

Mia Sande, 13 of Reston, Virgina takes part in a candle light vigil at the Washington National Cathedral on Friday

Kathleen Wind, of Reston, Virginia, said that felt she needed to join the many others who had traveled to DC for the event.

'This is just an extremely important placed to be tonight, to pray and be with all of these students that are coming into town,' Wind said.

Philip Schentrup, the father of 16-year-old Stoneman Douglas victim Carmen Schentrup, spoke at the event.

'She was going to change the world,' Schentrup said, as he remembered his daughter.

A slate of religious leaders from multiple faiths and denominations also addressed the crowd.

'God is about to make a new covenant, with a new generation, who understands what it means to have the law written on your hearts, instead of wrapped up in a distorted understanding of a Second Amendment,' said Reverend Canon Mark Sims, an Episcopal minister at the Schentrup family church in Florida, according to Mother Jones.

'Students, this nation's adults, we have failed you,' said Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

It came on the eve of a massive rally in support of gun control in Washington, with sister marches planned at cities around the country.

Phillip and April Schentrup, parents of 16-year-old Carmen Schentrup who died in the recent shooting in Parkland, speak at the Washington National Cathedral for a interfaith prayer vigil

Pastors speak at the Washington National Cathedral for a interfaith prayer vigil with activists, students, and pilgrims

People take part in a candle light vigil at the Washington National Cathedral ahead of Saturday's March For Our Lives rally

Stoneman Douglas student and activist David Hogg gives an interview to Dan Rather earlier on Friday in Washington DC

Organizers hope the event will prove that the country has reached an emotional tipping point on gun violence, with teenagers seizing the initiative and leading the demand for change.

The nation's capital is generally nonchalant about protests, but Saturday's gathering has prompted more attention and speculation than usual.

Estimates on crowd size are notoriously unreliable but organizers are hoping to draw 500,000 protesters; that would match last year's women's march and make this one of the largest Washington protests since the Vietnam era.

It would also bolster claims that the nation is ready to enact sweeping changes to its gun control laws. More than 800 other concurrent marches are planned in cities across America and dozens of locations overseas.

Hollywood stars Amy Schumer, Yara Shahidi and Olivia Wilde plan to address the crowds in Los Angeles.

Joseph Kushner, the brother to President Donald Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, also posted on Instagram that he would be attending a march.

'I look at the younger kids and the future generations and I never want them to go through what we went through or see what we saw,' said 15-year old Kayla Renert, a student at Stoneman Douglas High School, on Friday morning.

Renert, who sheltered in a classroom during the attack and had a friend wounded in the leg, was on a bus bringing her to Washington from the airport after flying up from Florida.

She pointed out that the Parkland shooting wasn't even the most recent school shooting in the United States. One student was wounded and another later died from her wounds after being shot Tuesday in southern Maryland. The 17-year old gunman was also killed by an armed school resource officer.

'We keep saying, 'Oh this is going to be the last time.' But there's already been another time,' Renert said.

Students are seen during a March 14 walkout in this file photo. Organizer hope half a million will rally in DC on Saturday

Joseph Kushner, the brother to Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, posted on Instagram that he will march

Many of the protesters spoke pointedly about how their parents and others of their generation had failed to bring about the changes they are demanding. They present the youth-led nature of the current movement as proof that they will succeed where their predecessors had failed.

'I'm here because previous generations couldn't do what we're doing right now,' said Charlie Shebes, 16, another student from the high school, on a flight from Ft. Lauderdale. 'I want to see safer schools. I want to see changes in gun laws.'

The students have tapped into a powerful current of pro-gun control sentiment that has been building for years. They have also partnered with well-funded liberal groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control advocacy group founded by former New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Polls indicate that public opinion nationwide may indeed be shifting on an issue that has simmered for generations, and through dozens of mass shootings. A new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 69 percent of Americans think gun laws in the United States should be tightened. That's up from 61 percent who said the same in October of 2016 and 55 percent when the AP first asked the question in October of 2013. Overall, 90 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of gun owners now favor stricter gun control laws.

The stage area is set up on Pennsylvania Avenue near the US Capitol in Washington for the 'March For Our Lives'

'To me, it feels like this is THE moment when it's all going to change,' said Anne Tumlinson, who will be hosting about a half dozen high school demonstrators from Jacksonville in her Washington home. A grassroots campaign among Washington residents resulted in more than 1,500 Washingtonians offering their homes to underage out-of-town demonstrators.

But even with claims of historic social momentum on the issue of gun control, the AP poll also found that nearly half of Americans do not expect elected officials to take action. One of the questions facing march organizers and participants will be how to translate this one-day event, regardless of turnout, into meaningful legislative change.

One way is by channeling the current energy into mid-term congressional elections this fall. Students in Florida have focused on youth voter registration and there will be a registration booth at the Saturday rally.

'We're pushing the message of now is the time for action but also November is going to be the time for action. It's the time to make our voice heard when we're voting,' said Alex Wind, a 17-year-old student from MSD. 'We are the age of people that don't vote normally. We're going to change that.'A professional drift car racing world record holder and stuntman has confessed to his part in a the reselling of stolen Holden parts that amounted to a profit of $350,000.

Robin Bolger submitted a sworn affidavit to the court confessing to his crimes a full three months after a jury found him guilty and he had pleaded his innocence repeatedly.

Judge Steven Milsteed said it was unfortunate that Bolger had not decided to cooperate earlier in proceedings, The Advertiser reported.

Professional drift car racing world record holder and stuntman Robin Bolger has confessed to his part in a the reselling of stolen Holden parts that amounted to a profit of $350,000

Mr Bolger now faces a maximum 20-year jail term for 11 counts of property laundering and 54 counts of money laundering.

In a twist, Holden was a sponsor of Bolger's racing career which Judge Milsteed pointed out.

'He was receiving engines and transmissions stolen from the very people who were sponsoring him,' he said.

'Theres an element of breach of trust involved.'

In a twist, Holden was a sponsor of Bolger's racing career which Judge Milsteed pointed out

Elizabeth Mansfield, the defence solicitor for Bolger, said her client had 'willfully turned a blind eye' to the stolen Holden V8 engines.

'A very serious wilful blind eye because, in his words, all his Christmases had come at once and the temptation was simply too great,' she said.

Jurors found Bolger guilty of buying and then reselling $700,000 worth of V8 engines and gearboxes to clients in Berri and Victoria between 2010 and 2011.

Elizabeth Mansfield, the defence solicitor for Bolger, said her client had 'willfully turned a blind eye' to the stolen Holden V8 engines (stock image)

It was discovered the parts had come form a now closed Holden factory and had been deemed 'obsolete'.

As a result of his conviction and wilful cooperation in reselling the stolen engines, Bolger has been exiled by the racing industry.

Bolger was remanded on continued bail terms with a sentencing date yet to be set.Ahmed Hassan, you have been found guilty by a Jury of the Old Bailey of Attempted Murder on overwhelming evidence. This is a case of attempted multiple murder. I will now sentence you for this most serious offence. Please sit down.

Shortly before 7 am on Friday 15th September 2017, you left your foster parents home in Sunbury on foot carrying a heavy Lidl shopping bag and headed for Sunbury railway station.

The Lidl bag must have looked innocuous enough to members of the public, including children, who passed you; but, in fact, its contents were extremely sinister and dangerous.

It contained an improvised explosive device (IED) which you had spent the previous hours, days and weeks, meticulously researching, refining and manufacturing in your bedroom at 47 Cavendish Road where you lived with your foster parents.

The IED contained 400 grams of the high explosive Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP). The explosive TATP (or Mother of Satan as it is sometimes known) has increasingly become the explosive of choice for terrorists. You packed the device with 2.2 kilograms of metal shrapnel comprising nails, screws, bolts, sockets, knives and screw-drivers. You had a home-made initiator in your pocket which you had manufactured out of a kitchen timer.

Your intention that morning was to kill as many members of the British public as possible by planting the IED on a busy commuter tube train and then make your escape to the Continent via Dover according to a pre-arranged plan.

You took the overground from Sunbury to Wimbledon and, on arrival, disappeared into the public toilets. There you set the timer for 15 minutes and placed it with the device inside the Lidl bag. You then boarded a District Line tube train at Wimbledon which left at 8:08 am heading towards Edgware. You positioned yourself by the rear right-hand door in Car 6 of the tube and placed the Lidl bag on the floor beside you. The CCTV shows that Car 6 began to fill up Page 2 of 11 with commuters at the intermediate stops of Wimbledon Park, Southfields and East Putney all heading to work in Central London. When the tube arrived at Putney Bridge station at 8:17 am you slipped out as more people boarded the carriage and made your way down the stairs and out of the station. You were wearing a beanie hat, a grey jumper and headphones and were making a conscious effort to behave casually and blend in to the crowd. You knew that approximately two minutes later your IED would go off killing (you hoped) dozens of people in the tube.

At 8:19:54 am your IED exploded in Car 6 of the District Line tube train shortly after it had arrived at the next stop, Parsons Green station. There were approximately 93 people in the carriage when the device went off. The IED created a large fireball which rolled along the ceiling of the carriage. Numerous passengers sustained burns to their faces, heads, hair, arms and legs and were showered with glass. People ran out in fear and panic, helping other victims as they went. A major incident was declared. A total of 23 passengers received burns injuries, some significant; and a total of 28 people who were on the tube or at Parsons Green station that day suffered crush injuries in the aftermath of the incident. Fortunately, no one was killed.

Those at the rear end of Car 6 that day were very fortunate. Things could easily have been so much worse. You made and planted a very significant explosive device. Given the amount of TATP (400 grams) used and the weight and variety of shrapnel packed around it (2.2 kg), had the device fully detonated as you designed and intended, it is inevitable that there would have been numerous fatalities and serious casualties, particularly amongst those in the closest proximity standing or sitting nearest to the IED. I am satisfied that it was your desire and intention to kill significant numbers of members of the public on that busy tube train that morning.

It is sheer luck that the main charge did not fully detonate. This was due, most likely, to the initiator moving out of place and not igniting the main charge. As a result, it triggered only a partial explosion, or what the Prosecution explosives expert, Dr Sarah Wilson (a Senior Forensic Case Officer at the Forensic Explosives Laboratory at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) called a violent deflagration as opposed to a detonation of the main charge.

The immediate aftermath was marked by remarkable bravery by passengers caught up in this incident, in particular, a recently retired Met police officer and an ex-Army officer, both of whom had the presence of mind to approach the device as it continued to burn in order to assess its remaining danger and warn others and the authorities. The Met explosives team were quickly on the scene to neutralise it.

I am satisfied that you were determined to create as much death and carnage that day as possible. You had filled the Tupperware box you had selected with 300 grams of TATP, and when you found you had excess, you put the remaining 100 grams into a blue glass jar which you then placed on top of the Tupperware, in order to maximise the main charge. You stole knives from Mr and Mrs Jones kitchen and went out shopping on 14th September to Asda and Aldi carefully selecting metal tools to buy which would provide the most effective, dangerous Page 3 of 11 and heaviest shrapnel. You targeted the District Line tube from Wimbledon at rush hour because you were familiar with it and knew it would be crowded with passengers. You cynically placed a pair of trousers over the top of the open bag to make it look innocuous and avoid the sort of suspicion that, e.g. a closed rucksack, might have engendered if abandoned on a tube. You made a viable timer and initiator.

You wanted to save your own skin and were not prepared for shahada (martyrdom). On exiting Putney Bridge station, you set about executing a carefully thought-out escape plan which involved (i) surreptitiously destroying your SD card and disposing of your phone, (ii) taking a complex series of bus, tube and train journeys via Fulham, Earls Court, Richmond, Clapham Junction, Brighton, Ashford to Dover, and (iii) wearing 4 tops and 3 bottoms so you could switch your clothes at least four times in 24 hours. You also had 2,300 pounds in cash with you and had deliberately wiped your Mac computer so your webhistory could not investigated.

You could not resist a glance out of the bus as it passed Parsons Green tube station to see the results of your handiwork. And the first thing you did after buying a new phone at Dover was to check the headline news. As Ms Alison Morgan for the Prosecution said, it must have come as a great disappointment to you to see that the IED which you had so carefully created had failed to operate correctly and the carnage which you had hoped to create had not occurred.

You were arrested at 7:52 am on the morning of Saturday 16th September 2018 waiting for the Dover Ferry as a result of the good old-fashioned police work and alertness of officers at Dover who recognised you from the circulated image and approached you and questioned you. It is telling that as soon as they arrested you, you started shaking, praying and complaining that your rucksack should not be placed on the ground because it had the Quran in it. You are clearly very religious.

You were not averse to using others to cover your tracks, e.g. having the hydrogen peroxide delivered to the address of a friend, Mr Mahmood, and then telling the police at Dover you were meeting another friend, Mr Farroukh, both of whom were entirely innocent.

Following your arrival in the United Kingdom in 2015, you were content to lead a double life for almost two years. You presented as a very polite, well-behaved and exceptionally bright model student, grateful for the opportunities that were being given to you. You cynically exploited to the full the generosity and naivety of the system and those looking after and helping you. Meanwhile, you harboured dark thoughts.

Those dark thoughts lay dormant for periods, particularly as you began to achieve academic success at Brooklands College, culminating in you being awarded a prize in July 2017 as student of the year. In a remarkable act of cynicism you used your prize money from the College, a 20 Amazon voucher, to purchase the first ingredient for the IED. One can only imagine the sense of betrayal felt by all those at Barnados and Brooklands College whom you duped.

I sentence you on the basis that you did not start actively planning this attack until about a month before 15th September 2017, i.e. in mid-August 2017 when the evidence shows you began researching the ingredients for TATP on the Web.

In my judgment, taking all the above considerations and aggravating and mitigating factors which I have outlined into account, the appropriate minimum term is 34 years with no discount for time spent in custody. 47. So, Ahmed Hassan, for the offence of Attempted Murder of which you have been convicted, I sentence you to Life imprisonment with a minimum term of 34 years.

Finally, Ahmed Hassan, let me say this to you. You will have plenty of time to study the Quran in prison in the years to come. You should understand that the Quran is a book of peace; Islam is a religion of peace. The Quran and Islam forbid anything extreme, including extremism in religion. Islam forbids breaking the law of the land where one is living or is a guest. Islam forbids terrorism (hiraba). The Quran and the Sunna provide that the crime of perpetrating terror to cause corruption in the land is one of the most severe crimes in Islam.1 So it is in the law of the United Kingdom. You have, therefore, received the most severe of sentences under the law of this land. You have violated the Quran and Islam by your actions, as well as the law of all civilized people. It is to be hoped that you will come to realise this one day. Please go with the officers.A head trauma expert has called for a ban on under-16s riding quad bikes after yet another accident almost ended in tragedy for a Victorian family.

Teenager Hayley de Lacy, 15, is lucky to be alive after she made a split decision to ride a quad bike without a helmet in Gippsland in Victoria's south east on January 3.

The vehicle flipped up to eight times and Hayley was airlifted to The Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne in a critical condition and spent a week in intensive care.

A boy, 16, also suffered spinal injuries.

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While Hayley de Lacy has since returned home in regional Victoria, she has a long road to recovery ahead of her following a near a fatal quad bike accident in January

Doctors don't know if or when Hayley will fully recover from the accident

'It's encouraging that strength she had before the accident is still there,' her mum Andrea told 7 News.

Hayley added: 'I'm very lucky, I could've come out a lot worse.'

While Hayley has since returned home, she has a long road to recovery ahead of her.

She's unlikely to return to school this year and doctors don't know if or when Hayley will fully recover from the accident.

A Go Fund Me page set up in January to help the family has raised almost $6000.

'We are all so proud of how far Hayley has come, such strength and determination in such a young person, but her journey is far from over,' the page states.

'Hayley's recovery and rehabilitation is going to be very long, and will impact greatly on her family. While Hayley continues the next stage of rehab at home, her mum Andrea will remain off work, helping her. As the weeks roll into months, the financial burden will grow. Andrea and Hayley's sisters Cassi and Bronte are all well known in the community and many people are asking how they can help at this difficult time.'

Quad bike accidents result in an average 16 deaths in Australia every year, while six people every day enter emergency departments from accidents, according to consumer watchdog Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC).

According to Safe Work Australia, there were 10 quad bike fatalities in Victoria between 2015 and 2017.

The Royal Children's Hospital head trauma expert Dr Warwick Teague says he sees too many preventable quad bike injuries.

'We also see injuries such as burns from children from being pinned down under the weight of the quad bike,' he told 7 News.

'I do wish to see a ban of children under the age of 16 using quad bikes of any size or specification.'

His calls come just two days after the ACCC proposed a minimum safety standard for quad bikes in a bid to reduce the national death toll.

The ACC proposed the introduction of a safety rating system, crush protection devices and mandatory minimum performance standards.

Hayley was airlifted to The Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne in a critical condition following the accident in Gippsland

According to the ACCC, there are 190,000 quad bikes in operation in Australia.

Around 16,000 quad bikes are sold nationwide each year and are one of the leading causes of death and injury on Australian farms.

'The ACCC believes a mandatory safety standard incorporating all of these elements is the best option to save lives and make quad bikes safer for everyone. We invite the public and stakeholders to have their say on this important safety proposal,' ACCC Commissioner Mick Keogh said.

'The ACCC has considered a range of evidence and views in making this draft recommendation. We have consulted with industry representatives, quad bike manufacturers and retailers, farmers, consumers, academics, hospitals, health professionals, tourism operators, among many others.'

He invited public submissions on the proposal as ACCC prepares to make its recommendation to the government later this year.Information commissioners have left the central London office of Cambridge Analytica with a van full of evidence, a source said.

Teams searched the troubled tech company's New Oxford Street headquarters after a High Court judge granted the Information Commissioner's Office a warrant.

It took more than seven hours for investigators to comb through files, with paperwork and boxes of suspected evidence piled into the back of a transit van.

Today a spokesman for the ICO told MailOnline it would not comment where the files were being taken to but confirmed officers left the premises just before 3am.

teams searched the troubled tech company's New Oxford Street headquarters after a High Court judge granted the Information Commissioner's Office a warrant

Just after 3am a large white rented Enterprise van was seen pulling out of the car park beneath the building

The spokesman said: 'We will now need to assess and consider the evidence before deciding the next steps and coming to any conclusions.

'This is one part of a larger investigation by the ICO into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors.'

Just after 3am a large white rented Enterprise van was seen pulling out of the car park beneath the building.

Around ten people understood to be working for the commission were seen leaving the building shortly after. They were a mix of men and women with most dressed in smart attire and others dressed down in jeans and sweatshirts.

They arrived at the premises to execute the warrant granted to Information Comissioner Elizabeth Denham at 8pm last night.

The commissioner is seeking access to records and data in the hands of the company amid claims that Facebook data may have been illegally acquired and used for political campaigns.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny any wrongdoing.

It took more than seven hours for investigators to comb through files, with paperwork and boxes of suspected evidence piled into the back of a transit van

Around ten people understood to be working for the commission were seen leaving the building shortly after

An investigator from Britain's Information Commissioners Office, is seen inside the building which houses the offices of Cambridge Analytica

Enforcement officers (centre) working for the Information Commissioner's Office entering the premises of Cambridge Analytica in London

At 8pm on Friday, less than an hour after the warrant was granted by Judge Leonard QC, a group of 18 people, some wearing ICO enforcement jackets, were led by a woman holding a piece of paper which appeared to be a warrant.

They went up a side set of stairs at the building in New Oxford Street, London, and were seen on the second floor - where Cambridge Analytica has its offices.

Earlier, the Information Commission Office Twitter account posted: 'ICO granted warrant: We're pleased with the decision of the judge and we plan to execute the warrant shortly.

'This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data for political purposes and we will now need time to collect and consider the evidence.'

The data watchdog's investigation includes the acquisition and use of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica, its parent company SCL and academic Dr Aleksandr Kogan, who developed the app used to gather data.

It stems from claims over the harvesting of personal data  and whether it was used during Donald Trumps US presidential campaign or the Brexit referendum.

Officers entered through a side set of stairs on New Oxford Street and were seen on the second floor

Cambridge Analyticas chief executive Alexander Nix has been suspended while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been called on to give evidence to MPs.

At the High Court yesterday, Judge Anthony Leonard QC said he would give the reasons for granting a warrant on Tuesday.

The move comes as billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk ordered the deletion of his companies official Facebook pages.

Those pages  belonging to rocket company SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla  disappeared yesterday, just minutes after Mr Musk promised on Twitter to take them down.

Mr Musks business ventures had millions of followers on the site. Earlier, challenged online whether he would take the pages down, the tycoon responded: Will do.

He added that the Tesla Facebook page looks lame. I dont use Facebook and never have, so dont think Im some kind of martyr or my companies are taking a huge blow, Mr Musk said. Also, we dont advertise or pay for endorsements, so we dont care.

Mr Musk has had run-ins with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the past.

Mark Zuckerberg's (left) Facebook gave details of 'every friendship formed in 2011 in every country in the world at the national aggregate level' to lab worked in by Cambridge academic Aleksandr Kogan (right)

Britain's Information Commissioner received a warrant to raid Cambridge Analytica's London headquarters (pictured)

Last year, a war of words broke out between the two billionaires over whether robots could become smart enough to kill their human creators.

When Mr Zuckerberg was asked about Mr Musks warnings over the dangers of robots, the Facebook chief said it was irresponsible. In response, Mr Musk tweeted: His understanding of the subject is limited.

Behind the frosted glass windows at the central London office block people could just barely be seen looking at and moving papers around.

At around 9.40pm someone from inside began closing the blinds to the camera flashes of photographers who were outside on the street in the business district.

Curious passers-by asked the waiting press what the fuss was about as the search continued.

Facebook handed over data on 57billion friendships to the scientist who designed the app that creamed off personal data from 50million people for the data firm without permission, it was revealed earlier today.

The social network gave details of 'every friendship formed in 2011 in every country in the world at the national aggregate level' to Aleksandr Kogan's University of Cambridge lab.

It comes after a senior US academic said today it is proof that the social network had a 'pre-existing' and 'trusted partnership' with Dr Kogan before they blamed him for the data crisis that has wiped $50billion off its value.

Last night it emerged that 57billion friendship links were shared in 2015 in an act later hailed by Cambridge University as the first of ongoing work between Kogan and Facebook.

Two of Mark Zuckerberg's employees were even named as authors in the accompanying paper.

WHAT IS FACEBOOK DOING TO FIX ITS DATA MINING PROBLEM? Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence on the misuse of 51 million users data Wednesday evening, outlining three steps the firm plans to take to prevent something like this from happening again. This includes: 1. Investigate apps which used old system to get user information Apps can no longer access the same amount of information that Kogan did through quizzes thanks to a 2014 change in Facebook policy however it remains unclear how many took advantage of the old rules before they changed. On Wednesday, Zuckerberg said Facebook's first step was to go back and look at what they still know. 2. Make the rules even tighter for app developers If a person has not engaged with an app for three months, Facebook will remove their access to you. They will also restrict what information they do get in the first place to only your name, profile photo, and email address. If they want more, they will have to sign a contract and get approval. 3. Introduce tool to show what companies already know about you The tool will appear in the next month or so on users' news feeds. Advertisement

The study also says Kogan used Amazon's Mechanical Turk - the online retailer's AI function - to get US respondents to download an app that gave him access to their Facebook data and the location of their friends

Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, said Facebook and Kogan had clearly developed strong links.

He told The Guardian: 'The sheer volume of the 57billion friend pairs implies a pre-existing relationship.

'It's not common for Facebook to share that kind of data. It suggests a trusted partnership between Aleksandr Kogan and Facebook'.

He added: 'In my view, it's Facebook that did most of the sharing', adding this arrangement was 'designed to share their users' data in meaningful ways in exchange for stock value'.

Facebook said yesterday they had been 'deceived' by Dr Kogan who was paid $800,000 by Cambridge Analytica to create his controversial app.

They also called his work a 'scam' and a 'fraud'.

Facebook spokesman Christine Chen said: 'The data that was shared was literally numbers  numbers of how many friendships were made between pairs of countries  ie x number of friendships made between the US and UK. There was no personally identifiable information included in this data'.

Dr Kogan, a psychology researcher at Cambridge University, would also 'personality quiz' app as a research project.

Only 300,000 Facebook users responded to Kogan's quiz, but that gave the researcher access to those peoples Facebook friends as well, who had not agreed to share information, producing details on 50 million users.

He passed the data to Cambridge Analytica, whose boss Alexander Nix was suspended on Tuesday after Channel 4 broadcast footage of him bragging about the firm's role in Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

The company says Mr Nix's comments 'do not represent the values or operations of the firm'.

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix is reported to have taken credit for Donald Trump's shock presidential win

Dr Kogan claimed 'tens of thousands' of other apps may be mining social media for personal data to be sold on in the same way. Other experts said it was possible virtually the entire Facebook database from 2015 could be in unknown hands.

Elizabeth Denham applied for a search warrant to enter the CA headquarters after they refused to cooperate

The algorithm trawled through what each user 'liked' on Facebook and could use this information to target them with personalised political adverts.

The academic, who joined Cambridge's psychology department as a lecturer in 2012, also said the accuracy of the data had been 'extremely exaggerated'. He added: 'What Cambridge Analytica has tried to sell is magic.'

He said: 'It made claims that this data is incredibly accurate and it tells you everything there is to tell about you. But the reality is it's not that. If you look at the data carefully those claims quickly fall apart'.

There have been doubts about how useful the data was.

Cambridge Analytica promised politicians its 'extra secret sauce' of harvested Facebook data would win them elections but it was 'never very useful', a presidential campaign chief said yesterday.

Ted Cruz was favourite to win the Republican nomination and his team handed $6million to CA to help him find voters to target with online adverts during his battle to reach the White House.

The London-based company handed him 'psychographic' profiles based on 50million Facebook accounts and said it would help Senator Cruz target them individually on social media.

But in the end he was crushed by Donald Trump in the presidential primaries - losing by 7million votes - and Mr Cruz's campaign spin doctor Rick Tyler has said today it is proof CA 'didn't deliver'.

Until it tightened privacy settings in April that year, Facebook was effectively giving away masses of personal data to third-party developers for free, to encourage them to create more apps and grow the platform, say experts.

Storage crates have been removed from Cambridge Analytica's London headquarters (pictured) before Britain's data watchdog was allowed access

Footage emerged of a meeting in which Mr Nix appears to suggest that CA could compromise politicians by sending 'beautiful' Ukrainian women to candidates' house

In 2012, there were some nine million Facebook apps  all of whose developers were apparently able to access users' personal details.

It is unclear what checks were made on someone applying to Facebook to become a 'developer'  for example whether they might be a company, a spy agency or even a mafia gang  before personal details were made available.

Dutch academic Bernhard Rieder, who created a similar Facebook app in 2009 before deleting it, said: 'Before 2015, you could get troves of data. I should have stored all the data [and then sold it to] get that Lamborghini.'

Cambridge Analytica 'strongly denies' allegations of data misuse.

A judge is to consider the Information Commissioner's application for a warrant relating to Cambridge Analytica this afternoon.

Elizabeth Denham wants access to records and data in the hands of the London-based company amid claims that Facebook data may have been illegally acquired and used on behalf of political clients.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny any wrongdoing.

The move follows the issue of a demand for access, on March 7 , to which there was no response by the deadline provided.

'Therefore, we are seeking a warrant to obtain information and access to systems and evidence related to our investigation,' said Ms Denham.

She added: 'A full understanding of the facts, data flows and data uses is imperative for my ongoing investigation.

'This includes any new information, statements or evidence that have come to light in recent days.'The son of a head teacher who stormed the Churchill cafe in North London has been accused of kicking a professor who has cancer and punching a woman lecturer during protests over lecturers' pensions.

The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) university has launched an investigation into student Hamish Anderson, who is alleged to have taken part in violent protests in support of lecturers last Friday.

Anderson hit the headlines in January after storming the Blighty cafe and denounced Britain's war-time leader as a war criminal and a racist while chanting Marxist slogans.

Hamish Anderson (wearing beanie hat) was at the protest in the Churchill cafe in January

The hard-left activist's mother received an OBE for services to education. Despite his comfortable upbringing, he is accused of leading a 'hard picket' with fellow Blighty cafe protesters Halimo Hussain and Nisha Phillips and blocked the entrance to the SOAS building last week.

The music and history student is accused of kicking Professor Lawrence Saez, 52, who had just found out two days earlier that his latest bout of chemotherapy had been unsuccessful.

Professor Lawrence Saez claims he was kicked by Hamish Anderson

Professor Saez, who broke the picket to work, told The Times: 'Over the last two years I have been a cancer patient... frankly, I'm not sure how long I have left. I try to enjoy life to the fullest and I get a great deal of enjoyment from my work.

'To have these punks prevent me from teaching is very upsetting.'

Anderson is also alleged to have punched and kicked Dr Idil Osman, 34, as she tried to pass the picket line. Dr Osman claimed the group's actions 'reeked of privilege'.

She told The Times: 'Hamish was the violent one. He kicked me and punched me on the upper body. The others watched him assault me and then told me off for "shouting at them".'

The latest protest took place outside the SOAS building last week

She continued: 'I'm a black Muslim woman who had to work hard to become a lecturer. I've got other struggles and a PhD loan to pay off. I can't afford to pay into a pension.'

The welfare and campaigns officer at the University's students union said the claims made by the two lecturers were not supported by CCTV footage.

A spokeswoman confirmed the university had received 'a number of complaints' and was investigating.Poisoned former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be pardoned and to be able to visit his home country, a friend has said.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to visit his family, his friend Vladimir Timoshkov said.

Mr Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok while eating at a Zizzi's in Salisbury on March 4.

Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33 (pictured) remain in critical condition following being poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the poisoning

The attempted assassination sparked an diplomatic crisis between Russia and Britain, which has been supported by its allies in apportioning blame to the Kremlin.

On Friday, EU leaders promised an 'unprecedented' diplomatic response to the attack after backing Theresa May's assertion that Moscow was responsible.

Meanwhile, the EU is recalling its ambassador to Russia for 'consultations' on the Salisbury attack.

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the poisoning, while on Sunday Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's EU ambassador, said that 'from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him (Mr Skirpal)'.

The 66-year-old was accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.

Vladimir Chizhov (pictured) Russia's EU ambassador, said that 'from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against Mr Skirpal

He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.

Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey (pictured) who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripal's aid

Mr Timoshkov, who has known Mr Skripal since school, did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union, according to the BBC.

'Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland,' he said.

'In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor... (he told me) he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were (in Russia).'

Russia's ambassador to the UK sent his well wishes to Mrs Skripal and his daughter on Friday, saying he hoped for their recovery.

Alexander Yakovenko wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripal's aid.

Mr Bailey said his experience had been 'completely surreal' after he was discharged from hospital.A man who stabbed his friend because he believed he fathered his partner's stillborn more than seven years prior to the attack has been sentenced to more than three years in prison.

District Court judge Mark Herron described the attack as 'frightening, terrifying and traumatising' when he jailed Robert David Sobasz, 32, for three years and five months for the November 2016 attack, according to the West Australian.

Sobasz climbed over George Davidson's, 33, back fence and stabbed him repeatedly.

George Davidson was left with two black eyes, a broken nose and a ruptured liver after his friend Robert David Sobasz broke into his home in 2016 and attacked him

Mr Davidson heard a noise and went to the back of his Ellenbrook, Perth, home to see what was going on.

Thinking Sobasz was being chased Mr Davidson let him in to his home.

This is when Sobasz punched him in the head and pushed him down to the ground.

Sobasz then repeatedly punched and stabbed Mr Davidson in the arms, abdomen and chest.

He then grabbed Mr Davidson's mobile phone and laptop and fled the home.

Mr Davidson was left with two black eyes, a broken nose and a ruptured liver during the attack.

Sobasz will be eligible for parole in 20 months after his sentence was backdated to November 6, 2016

In a victim impact statement he said there was 'emotional trauma and fear he continues to suffer'.

Sobasz's lawyer, Alana Padmanabham, told the court that on the morning of the attack he was told the stillborn child he had mourned for seven years was not his.

He believed it was Mr Davidson's child instead despite his denial of ever have a sexual relationship with the woman.

Sobasz sentence was backdated to November 6, 2016.

He will be eligible for parole in 20 months.Two men in their twenties were shot outside a tube station in east London and rushed to hospital last night.

The latest violence to hit the capital happened outside Mile End Underground station at around 10.35pm.

The attack comes after the city suffered its eighth murder in seven days on Tuesday, as London's crime epidemic continues.

Armed police were called to the scene where two men, 20 and 25, were suffering from gunshot wounds.

Ambulances rushed both men to a nearby hospital where both men are said to be in stable condition.

The Met said their anti-gang unit Trident is leading the investigation.

Pictured: Armed police and emergency services rushed to Mile End tube station after two men in their twenties were shot

The attack is the latest act of violence to hit the capital which suffered its eighth murder in seven days last week. Pictured: Both men suffered gunshot wounds and were rushed to hospital

Man, 30, is stabbed in south London hours before two shootings outside the Tube east of the capital A 30-year-old man is fighting for his life after being stabbed in south London in the middle of the day. Police and ambulance crews were scrambled to Kennington, south London at 11.38am on Friday to reports of a man stabbed. He was rushed to a hospital in south London where he remains in a critical condition. No arrests have yet been made and enquiries are ongoing. Police and ambulance crews were scrambled to Kennington Road, Kennington, south London (pictured) at 11.38am on Friday to reports of a man stabbed The Kennington Road stabbing came just hours before two men in their twenties were found shot outside Mile End Tube Station in east London. They are now in a stable condition, with the Met Polices Trident gang squad investigating. Violence is on the rise in the capital this week after eight people were murdered across the city in seven days. Advertisement

There have been no arrests in relation to the shooting and police are continuing their investigation.

There were 16 knife attacks in London alone in January and February, with many of them believed to be gang related.The former first lady of Zimbabwe, Grace Mugabe, is reportedly being investigated by police over claims she headed up an ivory poaching network which illegally exported tonnes of elephant tusks, gold, and diamonds from the country.

Mrs Mugabe wielded substantial power until her husband, Robert Mugabe, was forced to quit as President last November when the military stepped in and ZANU-PF lawmakers launched impeachment proceedings against their once beloved leader.

A senior official in President Emmerson Mnangagwa's administration said he ordered the 'urgent' investigation after 'very strong' evidence was uncovered by Adrian Steirn, an Australian photojournalist.

The former first lady of Zimbabwe, Grace Mugabe (pictured), is reportedly being investigated by police over claims she headed up an ivory poaching network which illegally exported tonnes of elephant tusks, gold, and diamonds from the country

Undercover footage filmed by Mr Steirn reportedly captures several sources, such as suspected poachers, stating how Mrs Mugabe smuggled ivory poached in national parks out of the country by using an exemption from airport security screening as first lady.

Reports also suggest that the security loophole extended to cargo shipments of the former first lady's.

Mr Steirn posed as a customer for contraband ivory in a four-month operation to try and infiltrate the poaching networks around the country's national parks. He started the investigation after discovering rumours about the former first lady's involvement in the trade.

Mrs Mugabe was named by two suspected poachers as the alleged leader of an illegal operation. They were later arrested by police after offering to sell Mr Steirn tusks in February, reported the Telegraph.

Robert Mugabe pictured with his wife Grace addressing a ZANU-PF party members, shortly before he was ousted from office

'For years I've been documenting the frontline poachers who end up serving 20 years for shooting a giraffe. Meanwhile, she was taking billions of dollars out of the country,' Mr Steirn told the newspaper.

Christopher Mutsvangwa, a special adviser to Mr Mnangagwa, said he had ordered the investigation into high-profile figures such as Mrs Mugabe based on Mr Steirn revelations.

He added that currently there is no implication that Mr Mugabe himself was involved in the smuggling but that evidence pointed to high-ranking members of his security group and that the crimes also involved moving rhino horn, diamonds and gold.

Mr Mugabe often travelled for health care treatment to Singapore from Harare and at the same time as one of his trips, where he was often accompanied by his wife, 200g of ivory was seized at the airport on December 11.

Mrs Mugabe's alleged buyers have not been identified, yet the customers are suggested to be organised groups of criminals based in China and Malaysia.

The former first lady, who has not yet been charged, reportedly did not respond to requests for comment.

The amount of elephants in Zimbabwe decreased by 10 per cent from 2005 to 2016 and now the country is home to near 86,000. Around 900 of these animals were lost to poachers between 2013 and 2016

Yet a close family friend, Father Fidelis Mukonori, said he discussed the allegations with her, to which she replied she was 'unconcerned. She said it doesn't matter.'

The results of Mr Steirn's investigation has not come as a shock for some researchers, who say official corruption is what has fuelled poaching across the continent.

'Corruption is key all along the supply chain,' said Lucy Vigne, a leading researcher into the smuggling of illegal ivory and rhino horn from Africa.

'Officials may turn a blind eye for bribes or collude with the criminal traders in illegal wildlife trade activities themselves.'

Mrs Mugabe was known for her high amount of spending during her nearly 20 years as first lady, such as her estimated 10 million worth of luxury properties, despite her husband earning around $20,000 a month.

The amount of elephants in Zimbabwe decreased by 10 per cent from 2005 to 2016 and now the country is home to near 86,000. Around 900 of these animals were lost to poachers between 2013 and 2016.The grieving family of a six-month old boy who died from meningococcal within two hours are still coming to grips with the with their terrible loss.

Nathan Braddock, 35, and Emma Smith, 32, parents of Jordan Braddock, said their daughter Alexis, two, still isn't able to understand what has happened.

In the wake of their tragic loss the family are calling on health authorities to make changes that will protect future families from having to experience their pain, The Advertiser reported.

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A family has been left grief stricken after their youngest child, six-month old Jordan Braddock, contracted meningococcal and died within two hours

'Alexis told me this morning she wants to cuddle him [Jordan] and its really hard hearing it from her because she doesnt understand,' Ms Smith said.

Mr Braddock said the lack of awareness and available information about infants and vaccines had cost his family dearly.

'It shouldnt be "if you want to know, find out yourself", it should be "you should know",' he said.

The family now wish to see an immediate statewide rollout of the B strain vaccine.

He said the impact of any new changes would easily outweigh the costs incurred by government.

Six-month-old Jordan Braddock died shortly after contracting the meningococcal disease's b-strain.

Mr Braddock said the initial 7 News report that they could not afford the vaccine were false.

'If the injections were $10,000, we wouldve paid them,' he said.

His parents did not notice anything out of the ordinary when they put their boy to bed last Saturday night but by the morning things had become serious.

When his parents found him quiet and limp in his crib they rushed him to the emergency department immediately, Jordan lost consciousness 20 minutes later.

Doctors tried valiantly to revive the toddler but Ms Smith said the swiftness of the disease was 'devastating'.

Jordan Braddock died within hours of contracting the meningococcal disease's b-strain after it was revealed his parents were unable to afford the $350 vaccine.

Little Jordan died just two hours later, after the rash started to show up just 30 minutes after he was admitted to the emergency ward.

Jordan's father Nathan Braddock posted to his Facebook expressing his grief at the loss of his boy.

'Why us...it's so cruel,' he wrote.

The status had a picture attached that read 'there's a difference between saying goodbye and letting go'.

Jordan stopped breathing while doctors worked to save his life, they were unable to revive him

The post continued 'goodbye is I'll see you again when I'm ready to hold your hand and when you're ready to hold mine. Letting go is I'll miss your hand, I realised it's not mine to hold and I will never hold it again'.

Jordan stopped breathing while doctors worked to save his life, they were unable to revive him.

Paul Goofellow survived meningococcal b-strain and said he knew first hand the importance of making the vaccine available for all.

'There's a medication, there's something you can have for it, so I really think that it should be available to anyone and everyone,' he told 7 News.

In another post to Facebook Mr Braddock said that his daughter and Jordan's older sister, Alexis, already missed her baby brother.

'You are taken way too soon,' he wrote.

A Go Fund Me has been set up by the family to help pay for the funeral costsA male babysitter who raped two children and filmed the assaults before setting some of the videos to music has been jailed for 100 years.

Milton Narvaez, 36, from Manhattan, assaulted a girl, thought to be as young as 7, inside a church where he worked as a janitor.

He abused his other victim, a boy who he was paid to look after, from the time he was six to when he turned 12, starting in February 2008.

Milton Narvaez, 36, from Manhattan, abused a girl, thought to be as young as 7, and a boy, aged 6. He is pictured receiving his 100 years to life sentence at Manhattan Supreme Court on March 23

Narvaez's lawyer, Glenn Hardy, had pushed for a sentence of only 10 years, telling the court his client was the victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his father.

But on Friday, a judge at Manhattan Supreme Court sentenced him to 100 years to life.

The fiend was convicted in November last year on 98 criminal counts including predatory sexual assault against a child, sexual abuse and dozens of counts of promoting and possessing child pornography.

Narvaez was employed as a babysitter by several Manhattan families, and also worked as a custodian at the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church in Midtown.

Narvaez's lawyer, Glenn Hardy, (pictured right on March 23) had pushed for a sentence of only 10 years, telling the court his client was the victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his father

Beginning in February 2008, Narvaez, who also used the name Milton Gomez, repeatedly raped a boy who was in his care, and the abuse continued for six years, from the time the victim was six years old to about 12 years old.

Then on October 15, 2011, Narvaez also raped a little girl in a storage room of the Armenian Church.

Narvaez's years-long sexual abuse was uncovered in 2015 in the course of a routine investigation into online child pornography. Pictured in an undated police mug shot

The years-long sexual abuse was uncovered in 2015 in the course of a routine investigation into online child pornography that was carried out by the DA's office's Cybercrime and Identify Theft Unit.

Milton's conviction at trial was announced in a written statement released by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, released on November 28, 2017.

'There are few acts more horrific than the long-term sexual abuse of a child,' Vance said.

'As a babysitter and custodian with access to children, Milton Narvaez abused his position to rape two children, before further exploiting them by recording video of the acts.

He added: 'The children of this City will be safer with Milton Narvaez out of our homes and churches.'

Vance said that Narvaez shared and possessed dozens of images depicting children performing sexual acts.The married man who embarked on an affair with a midwife who later delivered his baby has been revealed as a policeman.

Joanne Lumsden, 37, who starred in Channel 4's One Born Every Minute, struck up a holiday romance with the man after meeting in the Spanish resort of Benidorm in 2016.

It has now emerged the father of four is a serving police officer who has not yet been identified.

It is understood his wife, who made an official complaint to Liverpool Women's Hospital about the conduct of Miss Lumsden, is no longer with him.

Joanne Lumsden worked at Liverpool Women's Hospital and has delivered hundreds of babies, but failed to declare a conflict of interest when delivering the baby of a man she allegedly had an affair with

Miss Lumsden was disciplined by the Liverpool Women's Hospital NHS Trust and is understood to have resigned from her post.

She is being investigated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council and faces being struck off.

The patient, who asked to remain unnamed, made a complaint to the Trust after claiming Miss Lumsden deliberately made herself present during her birth, despite knowing she'd been having sexual relations with her husband.

She described how Miss Lumsden cradled the newborn baby in her arms and said: 'Doesn't the baby look like his dad?'

The woman's suspicions were raised after the medic said she had met her husband on holiday and 'rubbed suncream into his back'.

The mother told The Mirror: 'She was round my bed, holding the baby.She was commenting, saying, "Doesn't the baby look like his dad".'

Ms Lumsden had looked after her and the baby the day after the birth.

She became suspicious when it became apparent the midwife knew her partner.

She said: 'They were talking on the ward at my bedside. He told me he knew her through work. I knew something was not right.'

She got a different story later from the midwife, who told her she had met him in Benidorm, where he had been on a men-only trip 14 months before.

The mother-of-four said: 'She said, "I rubbed sun cream into his back".

'That's what she told me on the ward while I'm there with my baby trying to breast feed her.'

Lumsden confessed to the mother that the affair happened on a 'lads holiday' to Benidorm. She is now facing disciplinary action and is no longer employed by the hospital.

The mother, who asked not to be named, said the day after she had her baby Miss Lumsden revealed she had met her partner in Benidorm. The midwife said she had 'rubbed suncream' into his back, then called later to reveal full details of the affair, it is alleged.

The mother has now written a letter of complaint to Liverpool Women's Hospital Trust

Speaking to the Liverpool Echo about her ordeal, the new mother said: 'As a mum who was looking forward to the birth of her last baby, I was subjected to the most horrific ordeal any mother to be could ever imagine.'

The mother-of-four added the revelation 'amount to the destruction of a family', adding Lumsden 'took matters into her own hands and made sure she was present' at the birth of her daughter.

The mother said: 'As a woman, I am now left with a life-long memory of the midwife holding my new-born baby in her arms with the knowledge that she was having sexual relations with my baby's father during my pregnancy and being fully aware that I was under the care of her place of work.'

'This will haunt me for as long as I live. This woman held my baby in her arms knowing that she had engaged in recent sexual activity with her father.'

The mother added her partner began acting 'strangely' and made excuses for missing scans, even missing the birth of his first child last summer, which she believes is due to fear of having the affair made public.

She has now written a letter of complaint to Liverpool Women's Hospital Trust to which she claimed that Lumsden inserted a suppository into the mother's rectum and held and cared for her daughter.

Lumsden broke the news to the mother just hours after she had undergone a major surgery following the birth of her daughter at the Liverpool Women's Hospital.

A spokesman for Liverpool Women's Hospital Trust told the Liverpool Echo: 'Whilst we cannot discuss the detail of individual cases due to patient confidentiality, we can confirm that disciplinary proceedings were undertaken by the Trust as a result of two members of staff's conduct.

'The Trust took this action immediately upon being made aware of the incident and an internal investigation was also conducted.

'The disciplinary process undertaken with the members of staff involved is now being dealt with by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

'The patient also made a formal complaint to the Trust and we have been in regular communication with them throughout the complaints process.

'We would like to apologise for the upset caused to the patient as a result of their experience.'

The Nursing and Midwifery Council were contacted for comment, but were unable to issue a statement on whether there was an ongoing investigation into Ms Lumsden or the community midwife.

The Lumsden household gave no comment when contacted by MailOnline.Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel on Thursday with an Air India route flying non-stop between New Delhi and Tel Aviv - a sign of a behind-the-scenes improvement in ties between the Arab kingdom and the Jewish state.

The Air India 139 flight landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport after 7-1/2 hours and flew over Saudi for around three hours, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fuelled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region.

It comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described relations with the Arab world as the 'best ever', with common concerns over Iran drawing them closer together.

Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel on Thursday with an Air India route (pictured) flying non-stop between New Delhi and Tel Aviv - a sign of a behind-the-scenes improvement in ties between the Arab kingdom and the Jewish state

'This is a really historic day that follows two years of very, very intensive work,' Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a radio interview, adding that using Saudi airspace cut travel time to India by around two hours and would reduce ticket prices.

Riyadh, which does not recognise Israel, has not formally confirmed granting the Air India plane overflight rights. And while the move ended a 70-year-old ban on planes flying to or from Israel through Saudi airspace, there is as yet no indication that it will be applied for any Israeli airline.

The Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner entered Saudi airspace at around 4.45pm and overflew the kingdom at 40,000 feet for about three hours, coming within 37 miles of the capital Riyadh, according to the Flightradar monitoring app.

It then crossed over Jordan and the occupied West Bank into Israel. The airliner had earlier flown over Oman. Officials from Oman, which also does not recognise Israel, could not be reached for comment.

The flight comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured) described relations with the Arab world as the 'best ever', with common concerns over Iran drawing them closer together

Israel's airline El Al, excluded from the Saudi route, says its Indian competitor now has an unfair advantage.

It plans to take its own fight for access to Saudi airspace to the Supreme Court in Israel, officials said on Friday.

And the company has asked an airline industry lobby group, the International Air Transport Association, to help it access Saudi airspace.

It has also accused its own government, which approved Air India's new route, of putting it at a disadvantage.

'Such approval, which was granted by the state of Israel, gives a significant and unfair advantage to a foreign airline and is contrary to any principle of reciprocity in the world of international aviation,' the company said in a statement.

The court appeal will come early next week, according to one source familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for El Al confirmed the company intends to bring its complaint to the Supreme Court, but would not give any further details.

The Air India 139 flight landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport after 7-1/2 hours and flew over Saudi for around three hours, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fuelled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region

El Al currently flies four times a week to the Indian city of Mumbai. Those flights take around 7 hours and 40 minutes, following a Red Sea route that swings toward Ethiopia to avoid Saudi airspace.

If El Al planes were to fly on to New Delhi, a destination El Al has said it might be interested in, they would require another two hours - and significantly more fuel.

Interviewed on Israel's Army Radio, Levin voiced confidence that El Al would eventually be allowed to use Saudi airspace.

'You know, they said the Saudis wouldn't let any flight pass. So here, the Saudis are permitting it. It is a process, I think. Ultimately this (El Al overflights) will happen too,' he said.

Asked if any other foreign airlines might follow Air India by opening routes to Tel Aviv over Saudi Arabia, Levin said he has been in negotiations with Singapore Airlines and a carrier from the Philippines, which he did not name.

Israel's airline El Al, excluded from the Saudi route, says its Indian competitor now has an unfair advantage

'They are certainly showing readiness and desire to fly to Israel, and I don't know if they will also receive permission like the Indian airline,' he said.

Yet Singapore Airlines told Reuters it is not currently considering services to Israel. A spokesperson for Philippine Airlines said the company was not in any talks to launch a flight.

'We are studying it, but not in the near future,' the spokesperson said.

Saudi officials could not immediately be reached.

There will be three flights weekly in each direction.

Israeli analyst Jonathan Spyer said that the Saudi concession showed that positive signals were being sent despite the lack of an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, long seen as a prerequisite for relations between the Jewish state and the Arab world.

'I think that what this shows is even in the absence of that you can have small gestures that are of real meaning,' Spyer, director of Israel's Rubin Centre for Research in International Affairs, said

'That's what I think that this Saudi decision to allow the overflights consists of. It's small but significant,' he said.Iranian hackers with links to the Tehran government stole secrets from British universities in a series of cyber attacks on academics' computers, it has been revealed.

Hackers working for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are accused of conducting massive state-sponsored cyber attacks targeting 320 universities in 21 countries.

Around 20 British institutions were affected as hackers raided intellectual property, a Whitehall source toldThe Daily Telegraph.

Around 20 British institutions were affected and intellectual property was targeted in a state-sponsored, global cyber attack

It's not clear which universities were hit or whether specific academics were targeted.

The identity of nine Iranians accused of conducting the government-backed crimes were revealed in US court papers made public yesterday.

The nine men are accused of working for the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based company, which was acting under the direction of Iran's revolutionary guard according to the court papers.

The National Cyber Security Centre said with 'high confidence' the Mabna Institute was behind the attacks on British universities.

The identity of nine Iranians accused of conducting the government-backed crimes were revealed in US court papers made public yesterday

US deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein said: 'These nine Iranian nationals allegedly stole more than 31 terabytes of documents and data from more than 140 American universities, 30 American companies, five American government agencies, and also more than 176 universities in 21 foreign countries.

'For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and, specifically, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.'

The Mabna Institute was established in 2013, and US prosecutors believe it was designed to help Iranian research organisations steal information.

By targeting the email accounts of more than 100,000 professors worldwide, the hackers compromised about 8,000 of them, according to the US justice department.Montana public school officials are considering tightening their policies after a student's parents were enraged by teaching material they deemed 'pornographic'.

Students in a Billings high school were directed to racy ads as part of a psychology lesson about how gender and sexuality are portrayed in the media, the Billings Gazette reported.

Matthew and Codele Lurker, whose son is a student in the class, have met with district officials over the issue and questioned why teachers are given such liberty to to select course materials.

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Billings Public Schools officials are considering policy changes after a high school psychology teacher directed students to materials such as a Carl's Jr's ad deemed too racy for TV

Students were asked to look through a website created by a college professor and select an example of 'shocking' use of gender in advertisements

The assignment included analyzing content such as the infamous Carl's Jr commercials deemed too racy for network television for their depiction of scantily clad women eating burgers.

Students were also asked to look through a website created by a college professor and select an example of 'shocking' use of gender in advertisements.

The website offers a compilation of ads that play into the different roles assigned to women, including those of 'mothers, strippers, dominatrix, naggers and nymphos'.

Different sections of the page delve into a range of topics such as the objectification of women in the media and how sexual violence is glamorized in campaigns by showing images of models in sexually suggestive positions.

The website offers a compilation of ads that play into the different roles assigned to women, including those of 'mothers, strippers, dominatrix, naggers and nymphos'

The material included in the lesson included images that portray 'men in control'

'(The teacher) violated the sacred trust between parents and schools,' Matthew Lurker told trustees in a school board meeting on Monday where he handed out some of the teaching material in question.

The district's Superintendent Terry Bouck accepted blame for the incident during an interview with the Billings Gazette in which he said he was 'personally offended' by the content shown to students.

'I'm superintendent here,' he said. 'Whatever happens here... it's my responsibility.'

Bouck said, however, that the district did not receive complaints from any other parents.

Different sections of the website students were directed to delve into a range of topics such as the objectification of women in the media and how sexual violence is glamorized in campaigns

Matthew and Codele Lurker, whose son is a student in the class, have met with district officials and questioned why teachers are given such liberty to select course materials

The current rules, as reported by the local outlet, let teachers add material they deem appropriate to the ones provided by the district, as long as those materials fulfill certain academic standards.

Because materials issued by the district are often outdated, it is necessary for teachers to include additional educational tools.

However, educators are supposed to notify parents in advance if the material they plan on including contains 'mature subject matter' so their kids can opt out - something that didn't happen in this particular Billings classroom, according to officials.

Mother Codele Lurker said teachers 'have been emboldened by this lack of accountability' and given 'too much latitude to introduce their personal beliefs into the classroom'.

The district's IT director Kyle Brucker said the website was initially flagged because of its political content, but not its sexually suggestive images.

'(The teacher) violated the sacred trust between parents and schools,' Matthew Lurker said in a school board meeting where he handed out some of the teaching material (pictured)

He said 'We were all kind of flabbergasted,' when they came across the ads and the website has now been blocked by the district.

Now, officials will be going over the district's policy on additional materials, which goes back to 2005.

'We're going to fast-forward this,' Bouck said. 'We don't want this to happen again.'

The district is not naming the school or the teacher in question, but officials say they're taking 'ongoing corrective action' with the employee and the Lurkers have been told all additional material in the class must now be cleared.

The Lurkers said they aren't trying to get the teacher fired and are hoping for a direct apology.

The district's Superintendent Terry Bouck accepted blame for the incident and said he was 'personally offended' by the content shown to students (pictured)Advertisement

Not even a devastating bushfire could stop one couple from saying 'I do' on the New South Wales south coast on Saturday.

Sadness and and despair were replaced with love and happiness when Sam Dawson walked down the aisle to marry David Hutchinson in front of loved ones on the headland of Tathra, in the state's south.

Just six days before, a bushfire ripped through the coastal town and destroyed 65 homes and 35 caravans and cabins.

Sam Dawson and David Hutchinson sealed their marriage with a kiss on the Tathra headland on Saturday, six days after a bushfire devastated the coastal town

Blushing bride Sam Dawson also posed for photos with proud dad Ray and an orange Kombi van on the Tathra headland

The couple had been planning their big day for six months.

But after the devastating bushfires hit Tathra on March 18, they only decided to go ahead with the wedding late in the week.

The blushing bride also posed for photos with proud dad Ray and an orange Kombi van.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian will return to the Bega Valley on Monday to host a lunch to honour everyone who helped out in the bushfire in some way, the Bega District News reports.

Preliminary investigations have found that power lines were the likely cause of the fire, raising questions about the maintenance of power infrastructure by Essential Energy, which is owned by the NSW Government.

Sadness and and despair were replaced with love and happiness when Sam Dawson walked down the aisle to marry David Hutchinson in front of loved ones

After the devastating bushfires hit Tathra on March 18, they only decided to go ahead with the wedding late in the week

There are also suggestions of a turf war between the NSW Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW after the RFS declined at least two offers of help from their urban counterparts for a pumper when the fire first broke.

The captain of the Bega RFS said accusations FRNSW were locked out of the bush were a 'load of rubbish'.

'If the RFS said no then how did the Merimbula Fire & Rescue travel about 45 minutes to the scene and be with my crew on the same side of the fire line?' he said on Facebook.

The blushing bride also posed for photos with proud dad Ray and an orange Kombi van.

Law firm Slater and Gordon is considering launching a class-action lawsuit if it becomes clear Essential Energy did not follow 'stringent inspection and ongoing maintenance requirements' that could have prevented the bushfire.

Esther Lodge owner Joanne Coulton, who will house displaced locals in her holiday home, says the town's recovery will depend on getting tourists back

'You've still got your beautiful beach and coastline even though, yes, the houses that burned down look devastating,' she told AAP.

'But if people want to come to Tathra to chill out - they'll come. I know they'll come back. I know they'll return.'

After the devastating bushfires hit Tathra on March 18, Sam and David only decided to go ahead with the March 24 wedding until late in the week

The happy couple exchanged vows among blackened trees

Preliminary investigations have found that power lines were the likely cause of the fire, raising questions about the maintenance of power infrastructure by Essential Energy, which is owned by the NSW GovernmentA jailed British soldier who bragged about being a Nazi and killing Muslim children has been allowed to stay in the Army and continue serving in the Irish Guards.

Guardsman Graham Bolger, 23, was even permitted to join the barracks' annual St Patrick's Day parade in front of Prince William and the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge this year.

The Army's Chief of General Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, was left less than impressed with the revelations and ordered an immediate investigation into why Bolger was permitted to continue serving.

Less than ten days after being sentenced for his vulgar comments Bolger was accepted back into his unit, 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, at Cavalry Barracks, Hounslow, west London, where he has since been seen on armed guard.

A jailed British soldier who bragged about being a Nazi and killing Muslim children has been allowed to stay in the Army and continue serving in the Irish Guards. Guardsman Graham Bolger (pictured), 23, was even permitted to join the barracks' annual St Patrick's Day parade

Bolger was given 24 weeks jail time in January for racially motivated taunts of abuse to a woman over Whatsapp - where he boasted about being in the Army 'to kill people'.

Yet his sentence was cut dramatically thanks to a comrade's character reference, meaning the self-declared Nazi soldier was sentenced to just 12 months community service.

In one grim message Bolger wrote: 'If I was to kill all Muslims I wouldn't leave the child, I'd kill that too!'

The disgraced soldier was also filmed wearing a swastika and performing a Nazi salute at the Infantry Training Centre in Catterick, Yorkshire, reported the Sun.

In other messages, he worshipped Hitler as 'brilliant' and reportedly told pals he would have loved to have been in the SS.

The soldier learnt Nazi drumming and highlighted the Holocaust as a 'great thing' - because 'Jews are money-grabbing c****.'

The Duke and Duchess are pictured in Hounslow, west London with the Irish Guards for St Patrick's Day

Standing to attention: Soldiers from the 1st Batallion of Irish Guardsmen line up as they prepare for their Royal visit

Bolger's initial sentence was increased after the CPS successfully proved he was guilty of a hate crime. Yet it was later cut to 12 months community service as a result of a character reference to the court.

A source said: 'It is absolutely sickening. How on earth can such a vile a person be able to just stroll back and serve Queen and Country as if nothing ever happened?'

General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the General Staff, said: 'I have ordered an immediate investigation by a senior officer into whether the Army's response to this case was appropriate.

'The Army's values and standards underpin the professionalism and discipline for which we are known worldwide, and I will not tolerate unacceptable behaviour of any form in the Army.'

Bolger pleaded guilty to two charges of intentionally causing harassment, alarm or distress which was racially or religiously aggravated at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court on January 9 this year.Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, is gradually moving towards the sea - and scientists have warned there could be potentially devastating consequences.

The whole island of Sicily is creeping towards the Mediterranean at a rate of 14mm per year, scientists have warned.

A research team led by a team from the UK said the state of the island will need to be monitored in the future as hazards surrounding the island may increase in the future.

The results of the study, which was carried out between 2001 and 2012, were published in the Bulletin of Volcanology.

The whole island of Sicily is creeping towards the Mediterranean at a rate of 14mm per year, scientists have warned

The study found: This is the first time basement sliding of an entire active volcano has been directly observed.

'This is important because the geological record shows that such sliding volcanoes are prone to devastating sector collapse on the downslope side, and whole volcano migration should be taken into account when assessing future collapse hazard.'

Dr John Murray, who has been studying the volcano for nearly 50 years, told BBC News: 'I would say there is currently no cause for alarm, but it is something we need to keep an eye on, especially to see if there is an acceleration in this motion

Over the course of 100 years, the volcano is thought to move around 1.4 metres. This type of movement is typically associated with extinct volcanoes, and this trend could lead to devastating consequences on the leading side if they drift downhill.

Pressure and stress can build up on the island, leading to potentially devastating landslides.

Yet Dr Murray said it was rare that such a move would happen and could take thousands of years to reach such a critical stage.

Using precision GPS station placed around the volcano, Dr Murray was able to examine the movement of the volcano. He concluded that Mount Etna was sliding down a slop of around one to three degrees, possibly due to the pliable sediment.

The GPS trackers were able to establish that the mountain was moving in an east-south-east direction, towards the coastal town of Giarre, around nine miles away.

Mount Etna is one of the biggest tourist attractions on Sicily, attracting thousands of people a year. The 700,000-year-old volcano is a huge 24 miles wide and is virtually active constantly. Each year, it produces enough lava to fill a 108-story skyscrapers.A former president of a Mormon missionary training center has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 1984 and several others.

The Utah-based church said this week that it would discipline Joseph Bishop if the claims turn out to be true, Yahoo reported.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement Tuesday that it is looking into 'deeply disturbing' allegations against the alleged perpetrator.

Former president, Joseph Bishop, of a Mormon missionary training center has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 1984 and several others

A 55-year-old woman, whose name has not been publicly disclosed, said Bishop, who is now 85 years old, raped her in 1984 while she was training to be a missionary.

The church said in a statement 'If the allegations of sexual assault are true, it would be a tragic betrayal of our standards and would result in action by the Church to formally discipline any member who was guilty of such behavior, especially someone in a position of trust.'

A few days before the church's statement a conversation between Bishop and the woman was posted to MormonLeaks.

A 55-year-old woman, whose name has not been publicly disclosed, said Bishop, who is now 85 years old, raped her in 1984 while she was training to be a missionary

Last December she posed as a reporter and secretly recorded the interview with Bishop in Arizona

Last December she posed as a reporter and secretly recorded the interview with Bishop in Arizona, Fox 13 reported.

In the audio she begins by interviewing Bishop about leaders in the church.

The conversation then transitions to her discussing what she claims he did to her in the MTC. As well as discussing what happened to her, she also questions on him with regard to his interactions with other women.

The Mormon leader can be heard saying he doesn't remember assaulting the woman and says that maybe it's 'because my mind doesn't want me to remember that.'

Bishop did admit that he molested at least one woman and has been inappropriate with many other women. He said he gave one woman a back rub that got too 'frisky.'

Bishop did admit that he molested at least one woman and has been inappropriate with many other women. He repeatedly apologized during the conversation

He said if all his sins were to be revealed he would be excommunicated and the Mormon Church would be embarrassed.

He repeatedly apologized in the recording and said that he has always struggled with a 'sexual addiction.'

'I am very, very sorry and I am so sorry. I don't know if I can even be forgiven on your side,' Bishop said in the recording.

He added 'well I apologize, from the depths of my heart.'

In November the woman reported the assault to Brigham Young University police. Bishop denied the rape allegations but told detectives that he'd gone with the woman to a small 'preparation room' and while talking with her 'asked her to show him her breasts, which she did.'

He repeatedly apologized in the recording and said that he has always struggled with a 'sexual addiction'

Deputy attorney David Sturgill, from Utah County attorney's office, said that he couldn't pursue criminal charges against Bishop because the statute of limitations had expired four years after the alleged assault.

'I have no reason to doubt the victim's disclosure, and would have likely prosecuted Mr. Bishop, but for the expiration of the statute of limitations,' Sturgill informed BYU police, according to the police report.

The church said in a statement they are 'continuing its investigation of this individual's claims and will act consistent with its long-standing policy of no tolerance for abuse.'

Bishop was the president at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo from 1983 to 1986.

An MTC trains thousands of young men and women before they are sent out as missionaries to countries across the world.An abusive woman was thrown off an easyJet flight after screaming 'do you want me to be a prostitute' during a bizarre foul-mouthed rant.

She was headed on a girls' holiday from Manchester to Paphos, Cyprus, but after launching a tirade of abuse at fellow flyers and crew members the plane was diverted.

The captain was forced to land in Athens, Greece, on Friday night and four passengers were thrown off for being abusive.

The woman was headed on a girls' holiday to Cyprus when she was chucked off her flight

She was escorted off the easyJet plane after launching a bizarre rant at passengers and crew

A video taken by one passenger shows crew surrounding one rowdy young woman with a Liverpool accent - who says she is 23 and from Birkenhead.

She repeatedly shouts 'are you taking the ****?' at one crew member who is trying to calm her down.

She then launches a bizarre rant at him saying: 'Do you want me to be a prostitute?'

As efforts continued to calm the woman, she sits down in her seat and becomes tearful before claiming she's 'going to get raped' if she's thrown off the flight, although she appears to think she is already in Cyprus.

The crew member tells her: 'Listen to me. Do you want to walk off here or do you want to be dragged off in a pair of handcuffs?'

Seeing another passenger filming the episode, she lashes out and says: 'Getting your '******* phone out of my face.'

Appearing to cry, she adds: 'I'm scared. I just want to go home. Please take me home, please. I don't even want to go on holiday. Please take me home.'

During her outburst she asked if one of the male crew members wanted her to be a prostitute

As she is being led down the aisle, she shouts at another passenger: 'Why the **** are you recording me you ugly b****.'

Fellow passengers can then be heard cheering and clapping as the woman is taken off the plane.

It is believed the women were arrested by police in Athens.

The easyjet service, flight EZY1975, continued on its way to Cyprus. The delay meant a scheduled return trip to Manchester had to be postponed until Saturday as the crew had run out of hours they are legally allowed to work.

Fellow passengers reported that the woman had been drunk before they boarded the flight and that they had smuggled their own drinks on board.

As she was led down the aisle, she shouted at a passenger: 'Why the f*** are you recording me you ugly b****'

One passenger said: 'They were all very drunk, drinking their own drinks on the flight. And they started swearing and fighting and threatening others passengers so the plane had to divert to Athens.'

A spokesman for easyJet said: 'EasyJet can confirm that flight EZY1975 from Manchester to Paphos on 23 March was diverted to Athens and met by the police on arrival where four passengers were offloaded as a result of disruptive behaviour onboard and the flight continued to Paphos once the passengers were offloaded.

'EasyJet's crew are trained to assess and evaluate all situations and to act quickly and appropriately to ensure that the safety of the flight and other passengers is not compromised at any time.

Darren McKie trial: Police officer found guilty of murdering his wife Leanne - this is the evidence the jury heard over 13 days 'Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously, do not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour onboard and always push for prosecution.

'The safety and wellbeing of passengers and crew is always easyJet's priority.'A third case of measles diagnosed in Western Australia has been traced back to Bali.

The third infected person was confirmed on Saturday, one day after a Sydney infant was also diagnosed after travelling to south Asia.

Both WA and NSW have since issued a health warning over the illness.

Twenty cases of measles from Bali have been diagnosed in Western Australia since 2013, with seven from 2017.

The third case of measles has been diagnosed in Western Australia and traced back to Bali holiday-makers

Dr Gary Dowse, medical epidemiologist, said that it is not uncommon for Australians to contract measles from overseas.

Dr Dowse said: 'With high vaccination coverage, naturally occurring measles has been eliminated from WA for around 20 years, but occasional cases and small outbreaks still occur  associated with tourists or WA residents who are infected overseas.'

Measles is treated as a high public health concern due to the risk of local spread  including to those most vulnerable to infection.

It is not uncommon for Australians to contract measles from overseas, according to Dr Gary Dowse, a medical epidemiologist

Health staff are doing their best to warn those who may have come into contact with the measles-infected person but with public places it is impossible to keep track.

There can be serious complications from measles that include ear infections and pneumonia in 10 per cent of cases.

Around 40 per cent of cases need hospitalisation and about one person in every 1,000 will develop encephalitis, which is inflammation of the brain.

Have you been to these locations? The three measles cases in Western Australia have come into contact with these locations. If you have been to any of these locations you may need to visit a medical professional. Connolly Drive Medical Centre in Butler March 17 between 10.15 and 11.15 am

March 18 between 8.30 and 9.45 am

March 20 between 9.00 and 10.30 am Butler Health Pharmacy March 17 between 10.45 and 11. 30 am Joondalup Hospital Emergency Department March 18 between 9.15am and 5.00pm

Perth Airport international terminal arrival area March 11 between 8pm and 9pm Kung Fu Kitchen restaurant in Albany Highway, Cannington March 10 between 12.30pm and 1.30pm Busy Bee Pharmacy on William and James Streets in Northbridge March 12 between 12.30pm and 1pm

March 14 between 12.10pm and 12.45pm

March 16 between 8.40pm and 9.15pm Queens Park Medical Centre in Wharf St, Queens Park, from: March 12 between 3pm and 4pm

March 14 between 11.15am and 1.15pm

March 16 between 9.45am and 12 noon Bentley Hospital B Block ground floor and main entrance from: March 13 between 9.15am and 11am

March 14 between 2pm and 4pm Royal Perth Hospital from: March 17 between 11.30am until 2.30pm - in and around the Emergency Department 2pm March 17 until 7.30pm March 19 - in and around the Acute Care Unit on the 5th floor of Q block Source: Western Australia Department of Health Advertisement

People are also being warned about potentially catching the infectious disease Sydney after the young child who developed it overseas took a train with family from St James in the CBD to Bankstown in Sydney's west, before spending time in various areas in the city.

The infant was too young to be vaccinated and NSW Health has voiced fears for members of the public who may have come into contact with the child between Friday March 16 and Wednesday March 21.

Areas the child visited included The Wesley Conference Centre on Sydney's Pitt St, the Rickard Road Medical Centre and Rickard Road Chemist in Bankstown and the suburb's Emergency Department.

The young child developed the contagious infection overseas and then took a train with family from St James in the CBD to Bankstown in Sydney's west, before spending time in various areas in the city (Stock image)

The infant was too young to be vaccinated and NSW Health has voiced fears for members of the public who may have come into contact with the child between Friday March 16 and Wednesday March 21 (Stock image)

The baby is now isolated and recovering at home and NSW Health is now warning those who may have been exposed to the illness to visit the doctor and limit outside contact.

Measles symptoms typically take between 10 and 18 days to show and people should remain on alert until April 9.

Dr Vicky Sheppeard, Director Communicable Diseases, NSW Health, said those most likely to be susceptible to measles are infants under 12 months of age who are too young to be vaccinated and young adults.

'People in the 20-40 year age bracket may have missed out on the full vaccination program for measles, which was changed in 1998, including a national school-based catch-up, and mistakenly believe they are protected against the disease,' Dr Sheppeard said.

Areas the child visited included The Wesley Conference Centre on Sydney's Pitt St, the Rickard Road Medical Centre and Rickard Road Chemist in Bankstown and the suburb's Emergency Department (St James pictured)

NSW Health is asking anyone recently in parts of Bankstown (pictured) and Sydney CBD to be alert to the symptoms of measles after an infant who contracted the disease while overseas visited the areas

The baby is now isolated and recovering at home and NSW Health is now warning those who may have been exposed to the illness to visit the doctor and limit outside contact (Stock image)

'The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and highly effective protection against measles, and is available for free for those aged 1 to 52 from your GP. If you are unsure whether you have had two doses, it is quite safe to have another dose.'

Measles is highly contagious and is spread in the air by coughing or sneezing.

Symptoms of measles include fever, sore eyes and a cough followed three or four days later by a red, blotchy rash spreading from the head and neck to the rest of the body.

Dr Sheppeard warned people should be on the lookout for symptoms and to visit the GP if there are any concerns.

'Our public health units are contacting people known to have been in contact with this latest case to offer preventive injections, where appropriate,' she said.

'Vaccination is your best protection against this extremely contagious disease.'

Measles: Do you have the signs? What are the symptoms? Tiredness

fever

feeling generally unwell

cough

runny nose

sore red eyes

Rash Complications can include: ear infections

diarrhoea

pneumonia

swelling of the brain Who is at risk? People born after 1966 who have never had measles

People born after 1966 who have never been vaccinated against measles

Those with weak immune systems

Those never vaccinated and travel overseas How is it treated? There is no set treatment

Drink plenty of fluids

Try to avoid spreading the disease by limiting contact with people Advertisement



A sex gang of seven 'predatory' men have been convicted of abusing young girls.

The group of seven men aged between 37 and 47 were described as 'predatory and cynical' by a judge after being convicted on Friday following a five-month trial, at Oxford Crown Court.

The court heard how the gang would often abuse girls aged between 13 and 15 in a 's wagon' with licence plate ending 'SHG'.

Khalid Hussain, left, was convicted of one count of rape and count of indecent assault. Assad Hussian, right, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault, three counts of rape and two counts of conspiracy to rape

A jury of four women and seven men took a record-breaking 107 hours and 31 minutes, over the course of 24 days, to reach their verdict.

The charges faced by the men, who each denied their part in the child sexual exploitation, included indecent assault, rape, and false imprisonment, on five victims between 1998 and 2005.

During the trial, Oxford Crown Court heard accounts from the victims, all of whom were aged between 13 and 15 at the time, who said they were plied with drink and drugs and took part in sex parties.

A number of the women also recalled a vehicle driven by the men regularly referred to as the 'shag wagon' - with a licence plate ending 'SHG'.

Judge Peter Ross, who presided over the trial, said once the final verdicts were handed out: 'Systematic and widespread grooming, that is what this case has revealed.

'The investigation has involved countless hours of work and [the police] are entitled to commendations for the work they have done.'

Alladitta Yousaf, left, was convicted of one count of indecent assault. Moinul Islam, right, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault, one count of rape and one count of supplying cannabis to another

He also thanked jurors for their 'assidious' and 'phenomenal' dedication to the case in returning their verdicts, following the longest jury deliberation in Oxford Crown Court history.

The lengthy trial saw seven defendants convicted - Raheem Ahmed, Moinul Islam, Kamran Khan, Kameer Iqbal, Khalid Hussain, Alladitta Yousaf and Assad Hussain.

Two others who stood trial, Saboor Abdul and Haji Khan, were acquitted of all charges. Two other men involved in proceedings cannot be named for legal reasons.

The court heard throughout the trial how the seven men on numerous occasions coerced the girls into sex at a number of addresses across Oxford.

Kameer Iqbal, left, was convicted of three counts of rape. Raheem Ahmed, right, as convicted of two counts of indecent assault and one count of false imprisonment

These included at guest houses, in cars parked at lay-bys, and at local parks.

Prosecutor Oliver Saxby QC called the abuse 'routine, cynical and predatory sexual exploitation'.

Opening the trial in October, Mr Saxby said: 'Each of the young girls we are dealing with shared one very important characteristic, they were vulnerable.

'Perfect prey for, in the main, young men prepared to exploit them for casual sexual gratification that was easy, regular and readily available.'

Kamran Khan, of Northfield Road, Bolton, was convicted of indecent assault and false imprisonment. He was cleared of one count of rape

During the trial one victim recounted how she would be pressured into sex at numerous locations across Oxford, between February 1998 and February 2001.

She said this took place at Shotover woods, at lay-bys outside the city and near Oxford City FC's ground Court Place Farm.

She told jurors how Assad Hussain, Kameer Iqbal, Khalid Hussain and Alladitta Yousaf had all indecently assaulted or raped her on various occasions.

Another woman, who was aged 14 at the time, was sexually assaulted by Moinul Islam, the court heard, while at Cronin's B&B in Iffley Road.

The charges in full Raheem Ahmed, 40, of Starwort Path, Oxford, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault and one count of false imprisonment. He was cleared of one count of rape. Moinul Islam, 41, of Wykeham Crescent, Oxford, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault, one count of rape and one count of supplying cannabis to another. He was cleared of false imprisonment. Kamran Khan, of Northfield Road, Bolton, was convicted of indecent assault and false imprisonment. He was cleared of one count of rape. Kameer Iqbal, 38, of Dashwood Road, Oxford, was convicted of three counts of rape. Khalid Hussain, 37, of Ashhurst Way, Oxford, was convicted of one count of rape and count of indecent assault. He was cleared of another count of rape. Alladitta Yousaf, 47, of Bodley Road, Oxford was convicted of one count of indecent assault. Assad Hussain, 37, of Iffley Road, Oxford, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault, three counts of rape and two counts of conspiracy to rape. He was cleared of one count of indecent assault. Saboor Abdul, 37, of Oxford Road, Cowley, one of only two defendants to take to the stand, was unanimously cleared of a single count of rape. Haji Khan, 37, of Littlegreen Lane, Birmingham, was cleared of one count of conspiracy to rape and one count of indecent assault. Advertisement

She told police she recalled 'feeling sick' after the assault.

In other instances of abuse the girls were plied with drink and drugs as part of what prosecutors called the 'grooming process'.

They were made to take part in 'sex parties' at a number of addresses across Oxford involving large groups of men.

At one such party, which took place at a flat in London, one girl said that she was forced into sex with Khalid Hussain.

A number of the woman also recalled a black Nissan Serena people carrier in which many sexual abuses are alleged to have taken place, including gang rape.

One woman said of the vehicle: 'They would pick the girls, have sex with them, and dump them. Everything happened in that Serena.'

The same woman said that the men would 'take it in turns' to have sex with her and that gang rapes would take place after she was plied with booze and drugs.

Another woman told police in 2015 that she was 'mind-f*****' by the group during the ordeal of repeated rapes and sexual assaults.

She said: '[They] made you believe they actually care about you, and they actually don't.

'Like you are something important to them, that you are a friend to them. And, really, it wasn't that.

'It was just to get what they want. It took me some years to realise that.'

The men will be sentenced at Oxford Crown Court in June.Two monks have been banned from performing exorcisms after they and fellow members of a monastery were defrocked by Pope Francis.

The Pontiff took action against nine monks altogether, after he was told they had spread messages from a nun, who claimed that God had spoken directly to her.

Ukrainian nun Sister Maria Baran shared messages from the Almighty with Father Grigory Planchak, of St. Theodore Studite's Monastery in the village of Kolodiivka, Ternopil region.

Father Grigory Planchak, one of nine monks defrocked by Pope Francis, after they spread messages from a Ukrainian nun who claimed God spoke directly to her

Pope Francis, pictured right in Vatican City, took action after a church investigation concluded that the nun had not received 'real messages' from God

Pope Francis leads his weekly general audience in St Peter's Square in Vatican City

The monk, along with eight colleagues, then spread those messages, the content of which has not been reported.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) website said that people, 'started to talk about Sister Maria Baran from the nunnery in Velyki Birky (in Ukraine's western Ternopil Oblast region) in 2004.

'She seemed to hear the voice of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, Sacred Virgin Mary, and some saints. Some of the messages were written down by Father Planchak.

'The priest confirmed their veracity and origin from God but did not have the authority for this.'

Church investigators reported to their bosses that protocol was being ignored

Church investigators examined what Sister Baran claimed God had said, and concluded that they were not real messages.

A further investigation into the monastery where Father Planchak is based found irregularities in discipline and unauthorised exorcisms being carried out.

Assistant Bishop of Ternopil-Zborowski archdiocese, Teodor Martynyuk, explained: 'The priest who wants to do this should get a special permit, a blessing from the local bishop.'

In addition, some of the monks had reportedly started taking instructions from Sister Baran.

Church investigators reported to their bosses that protocol was being ignored. However, despite investigators' attempts to reorganise the monastery, the monks apparently ignored their direction.

The church said that the nine, 'did not accept the admonitions of the church authorities and refused to listen to them. They continued to violate the rules of the monks.

'They did not want to correct their behavior. After the relevant warnings, nine monks have been removed from the monastic state. This decision was personally approved by the Roman Pontiff.'

According to the decrees, they can no longer call themselves monks. Also, they have no right to wear monastic clothes, and have been stripped of all duties arising from taking monastic vows.

Two of the group, Father Planchak and Father Kostevsky, have been banned from conducting any religious ceremonies, including any public prayers for the sick, or performing exorcisms, the UGCC added.

It was not reported what punishment was given to Sister Baran, but the website said that the, 'decision of the Holy Father is final and cannot be appealed'.Advertisement

A non-stop 17-hour trek from Perth to London may seem a long haul for some, however it's nothing compared to the four-day, 55-hour flight time once embarked by passengers in 1947.

On Saturday night the first direct Qantas carrier marked the beginning of the fastest way to travel between Australia and Europe as the only direct air link between the two continents.

In 1947, a return flight from Sydney to London cost 525 when the average wage was 7 a week.

Today, the average Australian weekly wage is $1,600 and a return fare from Perth to London can cost less than $1,300.

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History was made following the departure of Qantas' non-stop 17-hour Perth to London flight on Saturday

The inaugural, historic Qantas flight to United Kingdom by Constellation aircraft at Mascot Airport Sydney ready for take off on 1 December 1947, the beginning of the 'Kangaroo Route'

By 1947 Qantas launched the historic 'Kangaroo Route' which took a mere 4 days with 55 hours in the air

The journey kicked off a new era in travelling with the flight path eliminating stopovers.

But spare a thought for the jet setters who took the first Qantas flight from Brisbane to London in 1935.

The trip took 12 days, the flight made up to 31 stopovers and - at 20,525 kilometres - was by far the longest air service in the world.

The trip involved a long and complicated series of connections, transferring between a varying number of different-sized aircraft, all of which were cramped for space and would seem nightmarish to the modern traveller.

Back then, the new route was regarded as a fantastic new option for speedy travel and was greeted enthusiastically by travellers whose previous options for getting to London included a six week sea voyage.

When Qantas began operating its first international service from Brisbane to Singapore, just ten passengers fit into the tiny De Havilland 86 plane (pictured). The flight took more than three days, made more than ten stops and had no cabin crew - although the co-pilot handed out sandwiches

Passengers at Archerfield aerodrome in Brisbane 1935 on the steps of the tiny DH86 aircraft, which took more than three days to get to Singapore via more than ten stops in the Australian outback and Indonesia

Lady Edwina Mountbatten, whose husband Lord Louis was the Queen's cousin, arrives (pictured) on the inaugural Qantas flight from Brisbane to Singapore after a gruelling three-and-a-half day journey on the tiny De Havilland plane

In 1935, air travel from Australia to London was introduced by Qantas in partnership via a series of flights which took 12 days, had up to 31 stopovers (the ten major stops are pictured on the map above) and at 20,525km it was by far the longest air service in the world

Lady Edwina Mountbatten (pictured in her Red Cross uniform around 1935) was a passenger on Qantas' first international flight which left Brisbane in April 1935. The wife of the Queen's cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten (the couple are pictured, right, in 1954), she used the service to get to Malta where her husband was stationed

On the first flights from Australia to London in 1935 there were no cabin staff, but gradually Qantas introduced larger planes and passengers could enjoy the relative luxury of service by stewardesses like these pictured

Qantas Empire Airways, as it was then known, began operating its first international passenger service to Singapore on April 17, 1935, flying via the Queensland outback and the Northern Territory.

There was no cabin crew, although the co-pilot handed handed out sandwiches and drinks and the service to Singapore was 'ridiculously cramped' due to the large amount of mail aboard the tiny De Havilland 86 plane.

The airfare was 195, which at today's exchange rate equals $281 Australian, but was equivalent in value to $18,000 Australian then.

Qantas operated in partnership with Imperial Airways, a predecessor to British Airways, and passengers flew in the middle sector on planes operated by Indian Transcontinental Airways.

The service departed from Brisbane once a week and took three and a half days just to reach the Asian city.

The DH86, which had a range of just 1,200km and flew at a speed of 750mph (230kph), stopped at Charleville, Longreach and Cloncurry in Queensland.

The aircraft carried just ten passengers and its mail delivery was hailed as a breakthrough in delivering fast and regular means of communication between Britain and Australia.

The inaugural flight, which was boarded in Charleville by Lady Mountbatten, who was travelling to Malta to meet her husband Lord Louis Mountbatten, the second cousin of the Queen, then a nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth.

There were no through bookings from Brisbane to London on the first service because of heavy sector bookings, but there were two passengers booked through to Brisbane on the next flight that left London on April 20, 1935.

By 1947, when these catering supplies are pictured being loaded on to a Qantas Empire Airways flight at Archerfield aerodrome in Brisbane, passengers travelled for a mere four days to get to London

From 1944 in the final years of World War II, travel conditions had been pared back to basic as sen on this Liberator aircraft which Qantas painted the exterior of its cockpit the kangaroo sign for the first time

Qantas flight attendant uniforms (pictured, the summer uniform worn between 1959 and 1964) were mostly designed by overseas couturiers until the airline tapped into the talents of local designers, such as George Gross and Harry Who, and Peter Morrissey

After an overnight in Cloncurry, the plane touched down in Camooweal near the Northern Territory border, then stopped at a series of towns and stations en route to Darwin, including Avon Downs, Newcastle Waters, Daly Waters and Katherine.

Passengers spent the night in Darwin and then left for South-east Asia, stopping at Rambang in Indonesia - where they stayed overnight in a humble jungle rest house - then flew via several stops to Singapore.

In Singapore, passengers connected with Imperial Airways, but boarded a planed operated by Indian Transcontinental Airways for Rangoon, Burma, now known as Yangon, the capital of Myanmar.

Just nine passengers could fit into the Armstrong Whitworth Atalanta aircraft which flew from Rangoon to make a night stopover in Jodhpur, India, and then on to Karachi in Pakistan.

In Karachi, passengers would change planes to the slightly larger Handley Page 42W Hannibal, which had greater range and carried 24 passengers.

The flight went via Sharjah in the Persian Gulf, where the plane landed in the desert and taxied in alongside the Imperial Airways Resthouse through an opening in barbed wire entanglements which at night time were closed in.

From there, they flew to Baghdad, Iraq and then on to Cairo. From Cairo to the neighbouring Egyptian city of Alexandria, the flight stopped on the island of Crete and over the Mediterranean to the Italian port city of Brindisi.

From there, passengers had to board a train for Paris, where they took their final flight over the Channel to London abord the relative luxury of a Handley Page 42W Heracles which carried 38 passengers and had stewards serving meals.

Qantas Empire Airways started flying to Europe from Brisbane but by 1944 had expanded its routes and used Guilford Airport in Perth (pictured) in its Western Operations Division

For a brief golden age from 1938, Qantas flew 'flying boats' via Rose Bay in Sydney to London via South-east Asia with only one, luxury first class, but the aircraft were targeted by the Japanese air force in World War II

Qantas staff model winter uniforms in 1948, a year after the airline introduced its history making 'Kangaroo Route' on which meals were served and the travelling time from Sydney to London reduced to four days

In 1938, for a brief golden age, Qantas introduced its 'flying boats', a first class air service which left for London from Rose Bay in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs.

Primarily designed to carry first-class air mail, the flying boats carried 15 passengers, a crew of five, and 1400kg of mail and cargo.

But the cabins were no cramped, and so spacious they could be converted for sleeping accommodation at night and passengers could stroll around, chat and smoke

Speeding along at 250km an hour, they reduced the trip to London to an unbelievable nine days, but their reign was curtailed when they became targets of the Japanese air force during World War II.

By 1947, Qantas introduced its 'Kangaroo Route' and launched its first solely operated service from Sydney to London.

Gateway to the world: Rose Bay flying boat base in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs in 1939 when the luxury aircraft had a brief reign offering first class travel which contrasted greatly to the cramped planes of four years earlier

After introducing its first Brisbane to Singapore service in 1935 on tiny De Havilland plane, Qantas expanded its fleet (a Short Sunderland is pictured at Southampton in 1938) with 'flying boats' and other aircraft

The flying Kangaroo emblem first appeared on Liberator aircraft in 1944 (pictured) which Qantas adapted from the adapted from an Australian one penny coin and painted beneath the cockpit

The new service cut the nightmare journey of 1935 to a third of its duration, and provided cabin service and comfort.

Qantas' first Kangaroo Route service departed Sydney and flew to Darwin and then Singapore where passengers stayed overnight, on to Calcutta in India, Karachi and Cairo overnight.

The Constellation aircraft, which carried 29 passengers and 11 crew, flew on to Tripoli in Libya before arriving in London.

The four night journey took more than 93 hours and included 55 hours in the air and was later described by Qantas as a history making 'momentous step in Australian aviation which literally brought Australia closer to the rest of world'.Meghan Markle's reclusive father is pictured enjoying a date at a pizzeria with a mystery young mother and her daughter - just weeks before his own daughter's wedding.

Thomas Markle, 73, was spotted dining with the women at a restaurant near his home in Mexico.

And friends have even suggested the mystery woman could be his plus one when Megan marries Prince Harry in Windsor on May 19.

Thomas Markle was all smiles as he enjoyed a dinner date with a mystery blonde - just weeks before his daughter is due to marry Prince Harry in Windsor

Mr Markle was pictured at the pizzeria in Mexico alongside the mystery woman and her young daughter. Friends claim she could be his plus one at Meghan's wedding

Earlier this week Harry and Meghan (pictured in Belfast yesterday) sent out invites for their wedding at Windsor Castle. Friends of Mr Markle say he wants to walk his daughter down the aisle

One told the Mirror: 'He has been enjoying the company of his friend and has had the smile put back on his face.

'And he's been a complete gentleman.'

Mr Markle picked up the woman and her daughter in his old red Ford Escape, driving them to a local mall - and ending months of solitude.

The trio then made their way to the Peter Piper Pizza restaurant, near to the Rosarito beach resort.

They enjoyed pizza and soft drinks - while Mr Markle drank a Heineken before taking the woman's daughter to the pizzeria's amusement arcade.

They stayed at the arcade for more than an hour and Mr Markle won several toys for the youngster.

He then picked up the 20 dinner bill.

Mr Markle, who moved to Mexico after being declared bankrupt, shared a joke with the blonde after dinner.

The invitations to the wedding of Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle have been issued in the name of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, after the announcement of their engagement (left) and (right) on a visit to a radio station in Brixton, south London

The couple will have a carriage procession around Windsor like that at the wedding of Prince Edward and his bride Sophie, now Countess of Wessex, in 1999 (pictured). Some 2,600 members of the public will be allowed into the grounds to watch

The former lighting director's friends have not revealed the woman's identity but said she had made him happy.

Earlier this week, Meghan and Harry sent out 600 wedding invites.

As Mr Markle waits for his to drop through the letterbox, friends say he wants to walk his daughter down the aisle.

It was previously reported a chronic limp could stop him flying to the UK, but he appeared in good health during his date on Thursday.Search and rescue teams came across the grisly discovery of a dead body on the banks of New Zealand's Ashley River on Saturday afternoon.

Police had been using the training exercise in the area as a second search for missing Rangiora woman Emma Beattie, who went missing from the area on New Zealand's South Island in December 1.

Police believe there were no suspicious circumstances.

Police in New Zealand are yet to confirm whether the body found on the banks of the Ashley River on Saturday is of missing woman Emma Beattie

Many of 100 participants involved in the most recent training exercise on the Ashley River were involved in the original search for missing woman Emma Beattie

'The body was discovered around 4pm while Canterbury Police district was running a training exercise for Search and Rescue staff,' Rangiora Police Senior Sergeant Paul Reeves said in a statement.

'A formal identification will now be carried out. The death has been referred to the Coroner.'

Search and rescue teams combed the rugged terrain late last year before police scaled back the search due to exhausting 'all possible search options.'

Many of 100 participants involved in the most recent training exercise were involved in the original search for Ms Beattie.

'A lot of people involved in this exercise are involved in that search,' SAR coordinator Sergeant Phil Simmonds earlier told Newshub.

The Ashley River on New Zealand's South Island flows for 65 kilometres before entering the ocean at Waikuku Beach.

'A lot of them feel like they have some unfinished business and are hoping to find her. It's a chance to come train different techniques and sort out how capable we are.'

Teams were brought in from across the Canterbury region from as far as Fairlie and Waipara to conduct the search from the air and by foot.

Search dogs were also involved.

Teams mapped areas yet to be searched for Ms Beattie.

'It's very difficult; it's up and down a lot,' says David Williams from LANSAR South Canterbury told Newshub.

'One minute you're on firm ground the next minute you're in a hole.'

The Ashley River flows for 65 kilometres before it enters the ocean at Waikuku Beach.The graves of five Australians murdered by the Japanese during World War II have been found on the island of Nauru.

But because the men died working as civilians for Canberra, rather than soldiers, there is no money to bring them home.

Frederick Royden Chalmers and four other Australians stayed on the island knowing a Japanese invasion was coming to help the natives.

Frederick Royden Chalmers (pictured) and four other Australians were murdered in 1943 by Japanese soldiers

Chalmers and the others can't be returned home as they were civilians at the time of their death

But Chalmers, 62, Bernard Quin, 48, Wilfred Shugg, William Doyle, 47 and Frederick Harmer, 44, were all captured immediately.

On March 25, 1943, they were all dragged out to a beach and brutally attacked.

Now, Chalmers' family wants him to come home.

Tasmanian historian Scott Seymour has narrowed down the location of where this happened.

But neither the Unrecovered War Casualties unit of the Australian Army Defence Force or the Department of Foreign Affairs are in a position to bring these men home.

A DFAT spokesperson told Daily Telegraph: 'Defence's survey mission was inconclusive. It found a likely location of the site, but noted that there were issues with the reliability of evidence, that the remains might have been disturbed since their original burial and that they might not have survived in-situ.'

The spokesperson said the only way to be certain would be to excavate the site - a feat that could cost between $50,000 and $150,000.

Tasmanian historian Scott Seymour has narrowed down the location of where the men were murdered

But Extent Heritage believes they can do this for $35,000 - they are even prepared to do the work unpaid.

They even have a benefactor willing to chip in a third of the cost.

However, they will need more money for things such as DNA testing.

Tasmanian independent MP and former Army officer Mr Wilkie supports the campaign and said to the paper that he has approached the Federal government several times in a bid to bring these men home.A police officer shot and killed a suspect who was trying to pin him with a car, authorities on Florida's Gulf Coast said Friday.

Largo Police Lt. Randall Chaney told news reporters on Friday night that it happened at 5:55 p.m. when officer Matthew Steiner attempted to stop a driver of a black Nissan sedan at a gas station.

The driver used the car to try to pin him in the area near the gas pumps.

Chaney said Steiner then fired into the vehicle.

A traffic stop turned deadly Friday night when a police officer shot and killed a man in self-defense

Officer Matthew Steiner, a seven-year veteran of the department, pulled over a driver in a black Nissan sedan

Largo Police Lt. Randall Chaney, pictured, explained how a motorist attempted to pin cop between car and gas pumps and concrete barrier

Police described what was a routine pullover that quickly turned into a 'violent, explosive situation'

'A stop was initiated in which they began some sort of encounter with this gentlemen, at which time he got in the vehicle and began acting very violently with the vehicle. At the time, the officer felt he was in peril for his own life and took action,' Largo Police Lt. Randall Chaney said later at a news conference.

A backup officer arrived just as Steiner fired his weapon, police said. It was not immediately known how many rounds were fired.

'It appeared in this particular instance that it happened extremely quickly,' he Chaney said. 'The subject went right to a resistive attitude and action. In that case, the officers are trained to deal with whatever presents itself to them, but it's obviously very difficult because of the potential for danger, but also the fact that we have to deal with people in difficult situations.'

Officers says that further casualties were likely prevent thanks to the officer's quick thinking

The driver was later pronounced dead at a local hospital. Chaney said the officer was also taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

'I just spoke with him, actually, and he's doing OK,' Chaney said to Fox 13 Tampa Bay. 'It's a very difficult situation to go through something like this.'

The driver's name was not immediately released. Chaney said his family had not yet been notified.

Chaney said the investigation is still in its early stages. He could not say what triggered the incident or why Steiner attempted to stop the driver, who was the only occupant of the car.

More details are due to be released at a press conference on Monday

He said Steiner belongs to a 'problem-oriented policing unit' that focuses on long-term quality of life issues in the community such as chronic crime and neighborhood hotspots.

He said the incident escalated rapidly and the driver 'went right a resistive attitude and action.'

Lieutenant Chaney said Steiner's actions may have stopped others from being injured or killed.James Packer has allegedly begged his ex-wife Erica to 'take him back' after he succumbed to a volley of 'mental health issues' and sensationally quit as director of Crown Resorts.

The embattled billionaire is now making repeated attempts at reconciliation with the mother of his three children, The Daily Telegraph reports.

However, Erica, who separated from Packer in 2013, has rejected suggestions of a reunion after watching her ex-husband's downward spiral from powerful businessman to middle-aged depression, the publication said.

James Packer (pictured) has allegedly begged his ex-wife Erica to 'take him back' after he succumbed to a volley of 'mental health issues' and sensationally quit as director of Crown Resorts

Packer, 50, is reportedly wanting to 'turn back the clock' by reuniting with his second wife in the hopes he can pick up the pieces the dark cloud of depression tore apart

Packer, 50, is reportedly wanting to 'turn back the clock' by reuniting with his second wife in the hopes he can pick up the pieces the dark cloud of depression tore apart.

'Turning back the clock five years might be what James wants but it won't help Erica,' a family friend told the publication

'She has finally got her life together and has created a stable life in Los Angeles for her kids.'

Friends also allege Erica does not wish to expose her children - Indigo, 9, Jackson, 8, and Emmanuelle, 5 - to their father's 'seismic' mood swings.

Erica's snub is unsurprising after Packer left the model to pursue bachelorhood and to expand his casino empire.

Friends also allege Erica does not wish to expose her children - Indigo, 9, Jackson, 8, and Emmanuelle, 5 - to their father's 'seismic' mood swings

'He made friends only with people he believed could help him generate money and jettisoned everyone else. He became ruder, more obnoxious, more poorly behaved than he had ever been before,' a former friend alleges.

It is believed Packer has come to the belated realisation his ex-wife offered 'support' and 'stability' to his turbulent life in the public eye.

Despite rejecting her ex-husband's advances, Erica has long been a pillar of support for the casino tycoon.

They are often photographed together and appear to get along well as they co-parent their three children.

The 40-year-old brunette visited Packer in Aspen at Christmas as he holidayed with socialite Kylie Lim.

Despite rejecting her ex-husband's advances, Erica has long been a pillar of support for the casino tycoon

They are often photographed together and appear to get along well as they co-parent their three children

Packer stepped down as director of Crown Resorts, citing 'mental health issues' (Crown pictured)

James has been unlucky in love, with his recent failed engagement to Mariah Carey reportedly costing him between $6 and $13 million.

He married his first wife Jodhi Meares in 1999 and the couple separated in 2002.

Packer made his mental health struggle public upon deciding to step down as director of his beloved casino business.

'Mr Packer is suffering from mental health issues. At this time he intends to step back from all commitments,' Mr Packer's private investment vehicle CPH said in a statement.

Pictured: James arriving in Cabo on Thursday

James has been unlucky in love, with his recent failed engagement to Mariah Carey (pictured) reportedly costing him between $6 and $13 million

One of Australia's richest people, with a personal fortune estimated at $4.1 billion, Packer announced on Wednesday he would 'step back from all commitments' indefinitely.

The only son of late media mogul Kerry then flew to Mexico following his shock resignation.

His mother Roslyn Packer, 80, was also seen getting off a direct flight from Sydney in Los Angeles.The then-three-year-old sister of two siblings stabbed by their nanny tried consoling her mother as they arrived at the horrific scene at their New York City apartment.

Retired NYPD detective Luis Sandoval gave harrowing testimony on Friday of the moment he responded to the Upper West Side apartment where Yoselyn Ortega, 55, murdered six-year-old Lucia Krim and her two-year-old brother Leo on October 2012.

The former cop choked back tears as he told the jury how he found Nessie, three, consoling her frantic mother Marina in the blood-soaked bathroom where the nanny had just viciously stabbed the children.

Nessie, then three, tried consoling her mom after they found her two siblings stabbed to death by their nanny in 2012 (Nessie is pictured between Lucia and Leo with their mother Marina)

Yoselyn Ortega (pictured on March 2) has pleaded not guilty to the double murders by reason of insanity

Marina and Nessie had been at a swimming lesson while Ortega looked after the Lucia and Leo.

'I observed a lady screaming and crying,' Sandoval said before taking a moment to compose himself, according to the New York Daily News. 'And a little daughter.'

The little girl was reportedly saying: 'Please mommy, don't cry'.

Sandoval recalled that, as someone trained in CPR, he was going to try to revive the children before another officer told him the effort would be futile.

'They're' done. They're blue,' Sandoval said the officer told him.

Retired NYPD detective Luis Sandoval gave harrowing testimony of the moment he responded to the apartment where Ortega murdered Lucia Krim, six, and her two-year-old brother Leo

'I observed a lady screaming and crying,' Sandoval said of the slain kids' mother Marina. 'And a little daughter.' (Marina is pictured with husband Kevin Krim)

His testimony care after that of another nanny, who said she saw Ortega behaving strangely the day before the murders, complaining in Spanish about not being paid enough.

'When I saw her that day in her state of mind, I said to myself, and I told another person, that I did not want to have a play date with her because I did not like the way she looked,' said Chelsea Andrews.

Andrews' testimony aligns with the statements of others, who have also said Ortega been complaining about her work situation and seemed off in the days leading up to the attack.

Ortega's older sister, Miladys Garcia, took the stand on Monday and faulted Kevin and Marina Krim for not seeing how troubled her sister was - suggesting that if they had given her some time off they may have prevented the murders.

Ortega's older sister, Miladys Garcia, (left) took the stand on Monday and faulted Kevin and Marina Krim for not seeing how troubled her sister was

She told the jury about a bizarre phone call she had with her younger sister, Yoselyn Ortega, 55, about five hours before the fatal stabbings.

Garcia said her sister didn't say much on the phone before she hung up, but she could hear her 'gnashing' her teeth and felt she knew something was wrong.

'The way I spoke to her, I know her voice,' Garcia said. 'It was like I was talking to a demon. She had become something evil.'

Earlier in the trial, jurors heard how two days after the attack Ortega moaned about having to clean the Upper West Side apartment and look after the children in her statements to police.

She said: 'I had to do everything and take care of the kids. I worked as a babysitter only and she wanted me to do everything. She wanted five hours of cleaning every week.'

The Dominican nanny stabbed herself in the neck just as the children's mother was coming in the door but she survived her injuries.

Ortega has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.The arrest of a drunk co-pilot has resulted in the sudden stranding of 106 passengers at Stuttgart Airport.

TAP Air Portugal has apologised for the last-minute cancellation of Lisbon-bound flight TP523 in southwestern Germany.

Shortly before the flight was to take off to Lisbon on Friday night, an airport employee noticed the co-pilot walking unsteadily and smelling of alcohol.

Bosses at TAP Air Portugal have apologised to the stranded passengers

The 106 passengers were supposed to fly to Lisbon on Friday

After being left stranded at Stuttgart Airport in Germany, hotel accommodation was organised

He notified airport authorities, who decided to ground the plane. It was not immediately clear whether the 40-year-old co-pilot was detained.

However, the German news agency dpa reported today (Saturday) that all 106 passengers were put up at hotels overnight.

One passenger took to Twitter to air her concern about the inconvenience, tweeting: Hi there, flight TP523 was cancelled yesterday and now were sitting in the Hotel you brought us (sic). We need to get to our destination today. Please check if you could book us on some other flight today and not in like two or three days please.

The airline tweeted back: We apologise for the situation and for all the inconvenience it may cause you. Your flights are now rescheduled for March 26th, which is, at the moment, the first day with seats available.

In December last year, TAP Air Portugal was named best airline in Europe, for the seventh consecutive year, by readers of 'Global Traveler' magazine.Sir Paul McCartney stood in solidarity with protesters at the New York City March for Our Lives protest on Saturday and reminded the world of his own experience with gun violence.

Without going on camera, he told a CNN reporter: 'As you know, one of my best friends was shot not far from here.

'It is important to me,' he said.

It was an understated tribute to John Lennon, his Beatles bandmate who was gunned down outside The Dakota Building, where he lived, in by gunman Mark David Chapman in December 1980.

The New York City protest on Saturday was held at 72nd Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, within eye shot of The Dakota Building and Strawberry Fields, the Central Park tribute created for Lennon after his death.

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Sir Paul McCartney is pictured with his wife Nancy Shevell at the New York City March for Our Lives protest on Saturday where he paid tribute to his Beatles bandmate John Lennon. Lennon was gunned down in the exact location the march was held in 1980

McCartney was referring to his Beatles bandmate John Lennon who was gunned down outside his apartment in 1980. They are pictured together in 1963

"One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, so it's important to me," says Paul McCartney, remembering his Beatles bandmate John Lennon at the March for Our Lives in New York City https://t.co/u4aBKWC1Jb pic.twitter.com/8Jnjn8A3xH  CNN (@CNN) March 24, 2018

It was created by Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and landscape architect Bruce Kelly.

Ono, now 84, attended the women's march in DC last January. It is not known if she attended any of Saturday's anti-gun events.

The New York City protest was one of nearly 800 happening around the world on Saturday to call for gun reform.

The main protest was in Washington DC where 500,000 are expected to gather.

The global event has been orchestrated by the survivors of the Parkland massacre in Florida on February 14.

On Saturday, McCartney wore a t-shirt saying 'we can end gun violence'. When asked what he wanted to achieve, he pointed to it.

'You know I am like everyone. I don't know [if we can end it] but this is what we can do so I am here to do it,' he said.

Lennon was shot outside The Dakota, the Manhattan building where he lived with Yoko Ono

Strawberry Fields in Central Park was created as a tribute to the singer after his death. Above, the memorial is seen in a file image

Lennon is pictured with his wife Yoko Ono in 1971, nine years before his death and a year after he left The Beatles

Lennon is pictured signing an album for Mark David Chapman, his killer, six hours before he was shot

This was the scene of chaos outside The Dakota after Lennon was shot on December 8, 1980

Later, in a video filmed by another protester, McCartney encouraged young people to 'get out and vote'.

'You can make the change. It is up to you,' he said.

Seventeen students and teachers died in the mass killing by gunman Nikolas Cruz.

Celebrities have been vocal in their support of the protests around the world and have donated their money.

All have however been eager not to snatch the spotlight from the events' young organizers.

George Clooney and his wife Amal donated $500,000 to the Washington DC march as did Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg.

McCartney wore a t-shirt with the words 'we can end gun violence' written across it.

The 75-year-old was excited to take part in the event and took photographs on his phone

McCartney was joined by tennis legend Billie Jean King for the NYC protest

President Trump announced on Friday that the Department of Justice would issue a 'rule' banning bump stocks - the firearm accessory which can turn non automatic guns into semi-automatic and automatic killing machines.

'Obama Administration legalized bump stocks.

'BAD IDEA. As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period.

'We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns,' he said.

On February 14, gunman Nikolas Cruz did not use a bump stock to kill 14 students and three teachers.

The most infamous use of the accessory was by Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas gunman who murdered 58 people by spraying bullets into a crowd at a country music festival in October. He later shot himself.

McCartney was at the New York City protest on Saturday when he made the remarks. Above, others at the eventBel Trew, Middle East reporter for The Times, who had been based in Cairo before being expelled by the authorities

A British journalist expelled from her beloved Egypt ahead of the presidential elections says she has no idea why she was kicked out of the country.

After being detained three weeks ago, Bel Trew, The Times Cairo correspondent, has been deported as authorities in the country crack down on the media ahead of the upcoming election.

About 60 million people in the country are registered to vote in the three-day presidential elections, which start on Monday, with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi expected to easily win a second four-year term.

However, late last month Ms Trew was ordered to leave Egypt, after a three-week-long detention, according to The Times.

The journalist was driven to the airport by police and made to board a flight to London.

Ms Trew said she had been listed as a persona non grata and that Cairo authorities have reportedly threatened to re-arrest her should she attempt to return.

Describing Egypt as her 'beloved' home for seven years, the reporter tweeted: 'Im not sure when I can return. I was arrested after doing an interview and threatened with military trial unless I got on a plane. Like others, I still dont know what happened.'

In an article about her detention, the reporter said that five plain-clothes police officers travelling by minibus 'cut off' a taxi she was taking from a cafe in central Cairo, and took her to a nearby police station.

She added that Egypt is, 'suspicious of foreign reporters and intolerant of negative news'.

ITV News correspondent Emma Murphy tweeted her support for the expelled reporter, saying: Depressing reality check @beltrew has done a brilliant job in Egypt  telling the good and bad in fair, honest detail. Times reporter expelled as Egypt tightens media grip.'

A minibus of plain-clothes police officers cut off the reporter, as she was travelling by taxi in Cairo, and took her to a nearby police station

A spokeswoman for The Times said: 'The circumstances of her detention and the threats made against her were sufficiently outlandish to suggest that a mistake had been made, based on a misunderstanding.

'We have since been trying to ensure her safe return to Cairo, in time to cover the presidential election. It is now clear that the authorities have no intention of allowing her to return."

'The Times deplores this attempt by the Egyptian authorities to intimidate the media and suppress our coverage.

'This is sadly in line with the increasingly oppressive environment that President Sisi has created for both domestic and international press.'Advertisement

Shocking photographs have emerged showing pilots fooling around at 30,000ft - with one posing with a hangman's noose while joking about 'hanging out in the office'.

This comes a day after easyJet captain Michel Castellucci and his co-pilot were banned from flying 'pending a disciplinary investigation' after filming themselves dancing in the cockpit during a flight from Paris to Madrid.

Now fresh pictures originally posted to Instagram under the hashtag '#autopilotandchill' have come to light, showing other pilots from around the globe pulling pranks while in charge of aircraft carriers carrying hundreds of paying passengers.

In one image an unnamed aeronaut holds a bird watching book while pointing to the vacant skies. In a similarly flagrant display of nonchalance, one shares a picture of a Rubik's Cube. In another a pouting pilot holds up two Lego toys with his back to the control panel.

The bragging airmen also shared snaps of their in-flight snacks: a large slice of takeaway pizza for one and a burger and portion of chips from McDonalds in another. The photographs have been taken down from the social networking platform and it is not known which airline the men work for.

:: Do you know the pilots in question? Email tips@dailymail.co.uk

No laughing matter: A smiling pilot posing with a noose shared the picture to Instagram, writing: 'Hanging out at the office'

Bird watching: Another pilot points to the sky some 30,000 ft above ground in jest at the absence of flying creatures

Pucker up: An airman proves he's not too old for Lego in another photograph, pouting at the camera while making the two toys embrace

Fly-thru: Pilots also shared pictures of their in-flight grub, including what looks like a burger and fries from McDonalds

Sky high jinx: A laughing co-pilot appears to be attempting to do some paperwork while his colleague takes a photograph before adding a computerised owl to the snap

Fun and games: A navigator appeared to have time to spare during a flight and spent time trying to crack a notoriously-difficult Rubik's Cube

Fast food: A flyer posted a picture of their meal of choice, a slice of Domino's pepperoni pizza, aboard a plane thought to be a Boeing 747Disabled BBC journalist Frank Gardner (pictured) claims he was left stranded for '100 minutes' before he could get off his plane from Ethiopia on Saturday morning

A BBC journalist has accused Heathrow Airport of having a 'casual disregard for disabled people' after staff lost his wheelchair and left him stuck on his plane.

Frank Gardner claims he was left stranded for '100 minutes' before he could get off his flight from Ethiopia on Saturday morning.

The security correspondent says staff delivered his wheelchair to the terminal building instead of the plane door, leaving him 'stuck on an empty plane'.

Mr Gardner, who has been in a wheelchair since he was shot six times by militants in Saudi Arabia in 2004, took to Twitter to slam the airport.

It is the third time the journalist has experienced problems at London airports this year after similar incidents happened at Gatwick in January and Heathrow in February.

He wrote: 'I am so utterly sick of Heathrow Airport ground staff 'losing' my wheelchair.

'Over 70 mins after landing back from Ethiopia I'm still stuck on an empty plane while they try to find it.

'Just when is UK's premier airport going to stop treating disabled passengers this way?' A social media spokesman for the airline replied: 'Hi Frank, we are really sorry to hear that. Are you able to DM us with further information?'

But Mr Gardner replied: 'Apology not accepted. You do this nearly every time. You 'create a case number' then it happens again the next time.

'This casual disregard for disabled passengers is a disgrace to British airports.'

The furious exchange ended with Mr Gardner telling his 80,000 followers: 'Finally off after 100 minutes,' before saying 'I've had better treatment in Djibouti'.

A Heathrow spokesman said: 'We apologise unreservedly if the service Mr Gardner received today fell short of the experience we aim to provide to our passengers.

'We are working with the responsible airline to investigate what went wrong in this case.'

The spokesman told MailOnline airlines are the ones responsible for transporting wheelchairs. Ethiopian Airlines is yet to comment on the incident.

Speaking about the incident on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: 'There are hundreds, possibly thousands of others who have this experience and all we get is these platitudes from Heathrow Airport, calling me by my first name and saying they have created a case number for you.

'Nothing changes, it goes on and on happening and it is just so frustrating.'

'If you can't walk and your wheelchair has been taken away to the terminal, that is your legs gone, that is your mobility gone.

'It is a basic human right so I am pretty seething about it.'

Dozens of his followers rushed to share their disgust at the incident, saying financial penalties should be imposed.Police are searching for a Colorado single mother of three who disappeared after an evening of celebrating St. Patrick's Day.

Rita Gutierrez-Garcia, 34, was last seen in a parking lot behind 3s Bar in downtown Longmont, Colorado on March 18, authorities said.

Gutierrez-Garcia was said to have been out with friends and family celebrating St. Patrick's Day on March 17. Police said that she had gone to two establishments that night  The Speakeasy and Breakers Grill  before walking to the nearby parking lot behind 3's Bar.

Rita Gutierrez-Garcia, 34, a mother of three, was last seen by friends in an alleyway behind a bar in downtown Longmont, Colorado at 2.30am on March 18

Her friends said they saw Gutierrez-Garcia on her phone in the parking lot at about 2.30am on March 18 and heard her say that she would get a ride with someone, Deputy Chief Jeff Satur said, according to the Times-Call.

Gutierrez-Garcia's friends, then left the parking lot. That was the last time the mother of three was seen.

Her family realized that she was missing when her mother, Diane Romero, arrived at her home to pick up Gutierrez-Garcia's three children  ages 6, 13 and 18  to take them to church, according to KDVR.

She was officially reported missing on March 19.

'Its unlike her for her not to be [home] at all,' Gutierrez-Garcia's neighbor Michelle Young told KDVR. 'Its really weird.'

Authorities said Gutierrez-Garcia was heard saying she would get a ride with someone

Gutierrez-Garcia's friends said they saw her speaking with some other people in the alleyway

Police said Gutierrez-Garcia was seen speaking with several other people in the parking lot behind 3's Bar. Police have asked those people to come forward

Police said that they do not know who Gutierrez-Garcia was on the phone with prior to her disappearance, but noted that witnesses saw her speaking with other people in the parking lot, too. Police have asked those people to come forward, according to The Denver Channel.

Gutierrez-Garcia's family is said to be particularly concerned because her cell phone has been turned off and she has not responded to any calls or texts.

She is said to be an avid Snapchat user, but hasn't shared any content since around the time she was last seen on March 18.

Romero said that Gutierrez-Garcia is one college semester shy of graduation and is studying to become a paralegal. She described her daughter as being a busy and bubbly mother.

Gutierrez-Garcia is 5'7" tall and weighs about 140 pounds. She has tattoos on her arms, shoulder and feet. She was last seen wearing a black, long-sleeve shirt and black leggings.

Anyone with information about Gutierrez-Garcia's whereabouts is asked to contact Longmont police at (303) 651-8501.He may have exhausted himself with interviews since the February 14 shooting at his school, but Stoneman Douglas student David Hogg was full of energy as he spoke at the March For Our Lives event in Washington DC on Saturday.

Hogg, 17, was among 20 young speakers at the event but was arguably the most recognizable thanks to his busy media schedule since the atrocity.

In an angry and metaphor-laden speech, he condemned the 'cold brass of corruption' which he said 'shackled' Washington DC.

'The winter is over. Change is here. The sun shines on a new day and the day is ours,' Hogg said.

He won roaring applause from the audience which shouted back at his comment 'not anymore' as he spoke of gun violence and politicians in power who are 'shaking'.

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David Hogg, 17, finishes his speech at the March For Our Lives event on Saturday in Washington DC

Hogg denounced the 'shackles of corruption' and said: 'Winter is over. The sun shines on a new day and the day is ours'

Hogg finished his speech on an official note, saying: 'Thank you I love you all. God bless you and God bless America.'

He won over some fans, with one internet user asking whether or not he was old enough to become president.

But it was 11-year-old Naomi Wadler from Alexandria, Virginia, who impressed the most with her soft-spoken eloquence.

In a speech dedicated to ending the disproportionate rate of gun deaths among African American women, Naomi quoted Toni Morrison to say: 'If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

'Honor the girls, the women of color whose stories have not been told.'

In her own words, Naomi said: 'My friends and I might still be 11, and we might still be in elementary school but we know.

Naomi Wadler, 11, is from Virginia, Alexander. She gave an uplifting speech about her hopes to reduce the disproportionate rate of gun violence deaths among African American women

Naomi is pictured with Miley Cyrus and fellow protester Mya Middleton backstage afterwards

'We also know that we stand in the shadow of the Capitol, and we know that we have 7 short years until we too have the right to vote.'

Her words set Twitter alight with praise and hopes of a future presidential run.

Yolanda Renee King, Martin Luther King Jr's granddaughter, also won hearts.

She gave an infectious and brief speech where she called on the crowd to recite her words back to her.

Invoking her grandfather's immortal words, she said with a beaming smile: 'I have a dream that enough is enough.

'And that this should be a gun free world, period.

'Spread the word! Let it be heard, all across the nation!

The speeches set the internet alight with praise for the youngster and hopes they will later enter politics

'We are going to be a great generation!'

She later went on CNN and said she was 'nervous' about the speech but settled in to it.

'Well I was really nervous. My heart was like beating like boom boom boom and it just got faster and faster but then I got used to the crowd. Then I was like, "oh it's not that bad."

'I think one of the things I want to help is that there to be no guns in this world, not just at schools, just everywhere.

'We have to do all this lockdown drills [at school] because people have guns,' she said.

'He'd be amazed that all these people were getting together. A few days ago I had a dream about him.'

Yolanda Renee King, Martin Luther King Jr's nine-year-old granddaughter, also spoke at the event

Yolanda's cheeriness was infectious. She told the audience that she, like her grandfather, had a 'dream' for a gun-free world

Hogg's speech was less cheery. He spoke of the 96 people who die every day across the country from gun violence and took multiple swipes at politicians.

'If you listen real close you can hear the people in power shaking. They've gotten used to being protective of their position. Through the safety of inaction.

'Inaction is no longer safe. To that, we say, no more!'

Hogg spoke of making gun violence a 'voting issue' which will lead the primary elections.

'We are going to take this to every election to every state and every city. We are going to make sure the best people get into run, not as politicians but as Americans,' he fumed.

Pointing to the Capitol, he added: 'This... is not cutting it'.

Stoneman Douglas students Delaney Tarr (left) and Alex Wind (right) also spoke

'Today is the beginning of Spring and tomorrow is the beginning of democracy. Now is the time to come together not as Democrats or Republicans but as Americans who care about one thing and one thing only and that is the future of this country and the children who are going to lead us.

'They will try to separate us in religion, class, congressional demographics. They will fail.

'We will come together. Let's put the USA over the NRA. This is the siren of Spring and the blossoming of our democracy,' he said.

Other Parkland students who spoke were Sarah Chadwick, Jaclyn Corin, Ryan Deitsch, Aalayah Eastmond, Sam Fuentes, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, Delaney Tarr and Alex Wind.

The other speakers from around the country are Trevon Bosley, 19, from Chicago, Edna Chavez , 17, from Los Angeles, Zion Kelly, 17, from Washington DC, Alex King, 18, from Chicago, D'Angelo McDade, 18, from Chicago, Mya Middleton, 16, from Chicago, Matt Post, 18, from Maryland, Matthew Soto, 19, from Connecticut and Christopher Underwood, 11, from Brooklyn, New York.Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama shared a message offline to Parkland school shooting survivors, dated March 10.

The letter, which was first obtained my Mic News and published on Wednesday, encourages the survivors of the tragedy that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14 to embrace this moment as theirs to create change.

'We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy,' the two wrote.

It was the Parkland shooting survivors that banded together to organize the March For Our Lives movement being held on Saturday across the country, with its flagship demonstration in Washington, DC and over 800 sisters marches, nationwide.

Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama shared a message offline to Parkland school shooting survivors, dated March 10, and made public my Mic News on Wednesday; They are seen here at the White House in Washington, DC in September 2016

The letter, addressed to the students of Parkland, reads as follows:

'We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.

'Not only have you supported and comforted each other, but youve helped awaken the conscience of the nation, and challenged decision-makers to make the safety of our children the countrys top priority.

'Throughout our history, young people like you have led the way in making America better. There may be setbacks; you may sometimes feel like progress is too slow in coming. But we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.

'Barack Obama Michelle Obama.'

The message encourages the survivors of the tragedy that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14 to embrace this moment as theirs to create change

Former first Lady Michelle and former president Barack Obama are introduced at the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit on October 31, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois

The goal of the March For Our Lives movement is to demand stricter gun control laws, in the hopes that school shootings won't happen any more.

It was the school shooting massacre that happened on Valentine's Day in Florida that has ignited the current nationwide debate on gun control.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, admitted to killing 17 people and injuring 15 others on February 14 with an AR-15 that he had obtained legally.

Yet another school shooting took the life of a 16-year-old girl in Maryland on Thursday. Jaelynn Willey was shot on Tuesday and died after being taken off life support, two days later.

The March For Our Lives demonstrations seek to call attention to the need for common sense gun reform that prevents tragedies like these from happening.

Cruz remains in custody in Florida, charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.The remark was made by Vietnamese Ambassador to France Nguyen Thiep in a interview with Vietnam News Agency on the threshold of the trip from March 25th to 27th, which will be made at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The ambassador said the two countries set up diplomatic ties on April 12, 1973. Overcoming ups and downs in history, over the past 45 years, especially since the establishment of the strategic partnership in 2013, Vietnam-France relations have developed well.

France is an important European partner of Vietnam. It also respects Vietnams stature and contributions to peace, stability and development in the region and the world. Vietnams membership of the ASEAN Economic Community and many free trade agreements, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), which will take effect in the near future, will bring new cooperation chances for both countries.





He noted that during the upcoming visit, the two sides are scheduled to sign a series of important cooperation documents on defence, justice, space technology, intellectual property, climate change response and tourism, along with economic contracts worth tens of billions of USD.

Strategic plans and new cooperation frameworks and mechanisms issued during the trip will develop the Vietnam-France strategic partnership.

The visit will also be an occasion to popularise Vietnam as a country with many reform achievements, a trustworthy partner ready to bolster ties with France, an emerging market with numerous investment and business opportunities for French businesses and an attractive, safe and friendly destination for French tourists, Thiep said.

He told Vietnam News Agency that when the EVFTA comes into force, trade between Vietnam and the EU will improve in both quality and quantity. He expressed his belief that trade links between Vietnam and France will also grow in the time ahead.

Accordingly, French companies will have many chances to boost exports to the Southeast Asian nation, especially agricultural products, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, fashion items, high-end furniture, hi-tech machinery, transport vehicles and chemicals. They can also help Vietnam take part in their production chains and access advanced technologies.

The two countries businesses can also partner in investment and production to export goods to not only ASEAN but also European countries and other markets around the world, Ambassador Thiep noted.

Meanwhile, culture and education-training are among the priority fields for cooperation in their strategic partnership, he said, elaborating that cultural exchanges are expanding. The French Government allocates about EUR5 million (USD6.1 million) for cultural cooperation with Vietnam each year, including support for French culture centres in Hanoi (LEspace), Ho Chi Minh City (Institute of Cultural Exchange with France - IDECAF), Hue city and Da Nang city.

With 14 projects worth USD188 million, France ranks seventh among countries and territories with tourism investment in Vietnam, which considers the EU nation a key source of tourists. In 2017, Vietnam welcomed 255,370 French visitors, up 6 percent from 2016.

According to the diplomat, France regards education and training as a priority in its cooperation in Vietnam, focusing on French teaching and human resources training at tertiary level in various areas like economic management, banking, finance, law and new technology.

The French Government has annually granted 80 scholarships for Vietnamese students to study in France, mostly for training programs at master and doctoral levels. The number of Vietnamese students in the country has increased by some 40 percent over the last 10 years to about 7,000 at present.

Regarding the Vietnamese community in France, Thiep said they have greatly contributed to the homeland and the two countries relations. With about 300,000 people, the community has organised donation programs to support the disadvantaged in Vietnam, presented scholarships to university students and promoted science and technique development projects.

They have also integrated soundly into local society. Many associations of Vietnamese people here have supported one another and served as a bridge helping to nurture friendship between the two peoples.

More and more Vietnamese-French are taking important positions in economic, political and scientific-technical spheres in France, consolidating the communitys status in France, he noted, adding that the visit by General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong will also be an occasion to affirm that the Party and State always pay attention to expatriates in France - an integral part of Vietnam./.President Donald Trump will expel dozens of Russian diplomats from the U.S. in retaliation for the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the U.K.

Two people close to the Trump administration told Bloomberg on Saturday the president has agreed to take the advice he received from the National Security Council and proceed with the expulsions.

However, the anonymous sources warned that the president could still change his mind before Monday, when the announcement is expected, as he wants to make sure European allies are also taking action on the matter.

Two people close to the Trump administration told Bloomberg the president has decided to expel dozens of Russian diplomats in retaliation for the poisoning of an ex-spy

Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter remain in critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok on March 4

Trump allegedly discussed the issue on Friday with the U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, among others.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Raj Shah said on Saturday: 'The United States stands firmly with the United Kingdom in condemning Russia's outrageous action.

'The president is always considering options to hold Russia accountable in response to its malign activities. We have no announcements at this time.'

The diplomats in question are considered undercover spies who disguise as embassy staff to carry out intelligence activity, one of the aides cited by Bloomberg said.

Trump allegedly discussed the issue on Friday with the U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster (pictured with Trump), among others

May has already ordered the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats she claimed were undeclared spies working at the London embassy

Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, remain in critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok on March 4.

Prime minister Theresa May has said its 'highly likely' the Kremlin is behind the poisoning, a statement the American, French and German governments have agreed with.

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the poisoning.

'As soon as we get the facts straight  if we agree with them, we will condemn Russia or whoever it may be,' Trump said after facing criticism for refusing to name Russia as the likely aggressor.

May has already ordered the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats she claimed were undeclared spies working at the London embassy.

Last week, EU leaders promised an 'unprecedented' diplomatic response to the attack. According to the Times of London, the coordinated campaign will start with the recall of the European Union's ambassador to Russia for four weeks on Monday.

The EU's coordinated campaign will start with the recall of the European Union's ambassador to Russia for four weeks on Monday (pictured is ambassador Markus Florian Ederer)

Both Democrats and Republicans expressed disappointment earlier this week after Trump congratulated Vladimir Putin on his electoral win, arguing that the Russian leader did not allow free and fair elections.

Trump has repeatedly stated he intends to have a good personal relationship with Putin, and on Wednesday tweeted those who wanted him to 'excoriate' Putin over the allegedly unfair elections were 'wrong!'.

'Getting along with Russia (and others) is a good thing, not a bad thing,' he added.

The president has recently replaced National Security Adviser McMaster with former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Secretary of State Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, changes that could impact his administration's stance towards Russia.A man who nearly killed a young woman in a devastating head-on collision has been jailed for nearly three years.

Mark Barnes, 51, of Hill Close, Warwickshire, slammed his 34,000 Audi A6 estate into a car driven by Hollie Smith, 26, on the B4100, Banbury Road in Warwickshire on November 10, 2015.

He said an unexpected seizure caused the collision, which left Ms Smith with life-threatening injuries.

Mark Barnes, who caused a devastating head-on crash in Warwickshire, leaving a young woman, Hollie Smith, with life-threatening injuries, has been sent to jail

Crash victim Hollie Smith suffered 27 broken bones, including crushed legs, a broken back, neck and a fractured skull. The beauty account manager was trapped in her car for 80 minutes before she was cut free by a fire crew, and rushed to University Hospital in Coventry

Ms Smith, a beauty account manager, was trapped in her car for 80 minutes before she was cut free by a fire crew and rushed to University Hospital in Coventry.

She suffered no fewer than 27 broken bones, including crushed legs, a broken back, neck and a fractured skull.

Some of her shattered bones had pushed through her skin and her blood loss left her perilously close to death.

Coventry Crown Court heard evidence that Barnes had suffered epileptic episodes in the past, but had continued to drive regardless of the risk that posed.

Ms Smith, of Kenilworth, had to be given five pints of blood to survive the crash.

Barnes and a nine-year-old boy, who was a passenger in his car, were both taken to hospital with less serious injuries.

Sentencing him to two years and nine months in prison, Judge Philip Gregory also handed down a five-year driving ban to Barnes.

Prosecutor Peter Cooper said: As a result of her injuries, Hollie has had a long fight back to health, spending months in hospital.

The first six weeks of it she was flat on her back and able to move only her arms. Once she was able to move, she began a courageous and painful battle to walk again.

Progressing from a wheelchair to managing a few steps with a walking frame, then a single crutch before finally being able to walk unaided.

Barnes's defence, supported by medical evidence, was that he had suffered an epileptic-type seizure.There was no screech of tyres, no last minute change of direction. As the grim video footage now visible on You Tube makes clear, the speeding Uber taxi didnt even brake before mowing down 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg last weekend as she pushed her bike across a dual carriageway in Tempe, near Phoenix, Arizona.

It was exactly the sort of accident that was supposed never to happen. For this was a safe self-driving car, a vision of the future armed with a battery of sensors and automatic brakes for just such an emergency.

For Ms Herzberg, however, the new technology proved fatal. Rushed to hospital, she later died of her injuries  and so became the first pedestrian casualty of the driver-free era.

It was exactly the sort of accident that was supposed never to happen. This was a safe self-driving car, armed with a battery of sensors and automatic brakes for just such an emergency. The speeding Uber taxi didnt even brake before mowing down Elaine Herzberg last weekend

If the crash was a catastrophe for the victim and her family, it is disastrous, too, for the billion-dollar proponents of the fledgling technology.

Uber has suspended its experimental autonomous taxi fleets in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto pending multiple enquiries. And the questions will go well beyond the events of Ms Herzbergs tragic death last Sunday.

Because, despite the huge investment and many promises, autonomous vehicles remain adrift in an ocean of practical problems, moral doubts and, as we now know, fatal consequences. As a transport writer and analyst for more than 25 years, I believe the promise of a world dominated by self-driving cars is a mirage, and a deadly one at that.

Here, I examine whats really going on behind the glossy spin churned out by the industry  and ask some very worrying questions.

The future beckons

It is a deeply seductive vision: cars so intelligent you can put your feet up, sit back and relax on even the most stressful journey. Traffic jams and crashes will become a distant memory, we are told, along with expensive driving lessons and irksome parking tickets. Moreover, this future is just around the corner, with some authoritative voices claiming 95 per cent of city car journeys will made in self-driving vehicles by 2030.

No wonder technology giants and car manufacturers are licking their lips at the prospect of a fully robotic transport system  and profits on a vast scale, naturally.

Uber has suspended its experimental autonomous taxi fleets in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto pending multiple enquiries. And the questions will go well beyond the events of Ms Herzbergs tragic death last Sunday

Google alone has thrown billions at the technology, testing out a sci-fi world of driverless electric pods at its Googleplex headquarters in Mountainview, California.

It is a crowded field, with car manufacturers and tech giants including Intel, Uber and Amazon investing, too. More prosaically, Jaguar Land Rover is running experiments with self-driving cars on public roads in the Midlands, while the Government is testing small, self-driving vehicles in South London. Chancellor Philip Hammond has gone so far as to suggest that fully autonomous cars will be on our roads by 2021.

The nightmare failings

Last weeks crash was supposed to be impossible, yet many  myself included  believe it was all-too predictable. Indeed the accident has exposed something the tech giants would rather keep to themselves: that the self-driving technology isnt yet ready, and might never be.

What, for example, do two driverless cars do when they meet on a typical country lane? How do they cope with unexpected roadworks, or a sudden flood  persistent features of British motoring? How can you get the car to understand the difference between a policeman waving a car on or trying to get it to stop?

If the crash was a catastrophe for the victim and her family, it is disastrous, too, for the billion-dollar proponents of the fledgling technology (pictured from inside the vehicle)

These are the sorts of calculations that are intuitively and instantly worked out by human drivers on a daily basis, but which remain baffling to a computerised control system. And then there is the question still haunting the citizens of Tempe, Arizona: what is a robotic car to do about pedestrians who venture into the road? Autonomous cars must surely be programmed to stop  something that signally failed to happen in Arizona  but that in turn poses enormous difficulties in busy cities where pedestrians routinely step out from the pavement.

Other worries follow on from that. If any driverless car can be stopped by something as simple as a person standing in front of it, what will prevent criminals from blocking a car and then attacking the people inside?

Bear in mind, too, that with computers comes hacking. Criminals already have the technology to open and drive away expensive cars, despite sophisticated electronic security systems. Driverless cars would be even more vulnerable.

The legal minefield

The question of who is liable for an accident could soon be tested in the case of Ms Herzberg, for example, whose family could be in line for millions in compensation. Is it the manufacturer, the owner or the operator who must pay?

Even if the technology could be conquered, there are multiple legal, regulatory and economic conundrums facing autonomous cars.

The question of who is liable for an accident could soon be tested in the case of Ms Herzberg, for example, whose family could be in line for millions in compensation. Is it the manufacturer, the owner or the operator who must pay? The Herzberg case alone could provide lawyers with years of lucrative work. Imagine the outcome if driverless cars and, presumably, driverless accidents, become more widespread.

Nor is there any clear business model. None of the firms has said how much these cars will cost, and none is yet on the market. Nor is there any coherent plan as to how conventional vehicles will be replaced by autonomous ones, presumably after a long period when the two will run side by side, with all the dangers that will create.

The dozy reality

For all the billions spent on research, the manufacturers have come across one major and very human failing: we fall asleep, sometimes at the wheel. Companies such as Google and Jaguar had hoped they could adapt existing cars step by step, gradually removing the driver as the technology advanced and individual problems were solved. But that incremental approach has proved impossible because scientists have found that when drivers are told to supervise cars instead of driving them, they soon get bored and doze off.

This is why Ford abandoned its attempts to develop partially autonomous cars: the driver nodded off. Then, when it tried putting a second driver alongside the first, they both fell asleep.

As Chris Urmson, the former head of Googles driverless car project, has admitted: Human drivers cant always be trusted to dip in and out of the task of driving when the car is encouraging them to sit back and relax.

Last weekend brought telling proof. The human operator of the Volvo that killed Ms Herzberg wasnt even looking at the road ahead. Only as the crunching impact happens can she be seen gaping open-mouthed in alarm.

As a result of our all-too-human failings, then, the manufacturers have been obliged to leapfrog straight into what is known as Level 4 in the industry: a fully robotic car that can deal with all the challenges normally faced by a human driver.

The cars must drive by themselves in all conditions, coping with heavy rain, snow, icy roads, flooding, dirt roads, roadworks and potholes, while avoiding other cars, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, children, dogs, wild animals, debris and so on.

Except that they cannot, of course, which is why industry promises have morphed from near guarantees into vague predictions.

Volvo, which in 2013 suggested we would have fully autonomous cars by 2017, has now said it will take at least another four years to develop them. A report by the London Assembly suggested the 2030s were more likely. I am not convinced they will happen at all.

The growing doubts

For all the billions spent on research, the manufacturers have come across one major and very human failing: we fall asleep, sometimes at the wheel

The Arizona crash has led to the first serious outbreak of bad publicity for the fast-expanding industry, but it comes as no surprise to those whove looked closely at the new wonder machines. Take, for example, the technology reporters who went for a ride in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Taylor Soper and John Cook, who write for GeekWire website, tried out a driverless Uber taxi, a Volvo.

It will be some time before Soper and Cook get into another one. In fact, their experience of fly-by-wire driving ended when the car hit a pothole, causing it to revert to manual mode.

Not that it was much of a ride, in any case. Soper said the journey felt as if he were being driven by a 16-year-old novice as the car stopped and started at random, jolting its occupants when it sensed non-existent danger or failed to negotiate mundane hazards such as a car ahead being reversed carefully into a parking space.

Most of the excitement I had for these futuristic vehicles has been replaced by wariness, he wrote. Theres no way Im letting a robot drive me around without human backup, at least not until the technology improves.

What about the rest of us?

Naturally, the promoters of driverless cars have a clear set of priorities  and other road users come second. It has been suggested, for example, that cyclists should wear beacons so they can be detected by autonomous vehicles. How long will it be before they say pedestrians must be microchipped like dogs?

Governments, meanwhile, seem dazzled. As things stand, they are hell-bent on creating a brave new world without assessing the downsides. The last Budget, for example, included a 400 million fund to support investment in electric and autonomous vehicles without the faintest hint of how this might affect the lives of voters.

So, for the moment, we should keep a tight hold of our car keys. There is no such thing as a driverless car capable of, say, taking someone to work, then returning to whisk the children to school. The driverless vision of Google, Uber et al remains as futuristic as it has ever been.

If the death of Ms Herzberg serves any purpose, it is to show that driverless technology is nowhere near ready. And might never be.

Christian Wolmars book, Driverless Cars: On A Road To Nowhere, is published by London Partnership Publishing at 9.99.President Donald Trump tweeted a message of solidarity with French President Emmanuel Macron and the people of France in light of the ISIS terror attack that shook two towns Friday.

ISIS gunman Redouane Lakdim, 26, hijacked a car then opened fire in a Super U supermarket killing three and injuring at least 16 before he was shot dead by French police.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the horrible attack in France yesterday, and we grieve the nations loss,' Trump said.

President Donald Trump shared a message of solidarity with the people of France on Twitter in light of an ISIS attack Friday that killed three and injured at least 16

French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech on March 23 in Paris detailing the horror at the Trebes supermarket where ISIS gunman Redouane Lakdim, 26, held hostages

Trump shared his message of solidarity on Saturday saying 'We are with you @Emmanuel Macron'

'We also condemn the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support. We are with you @EmmanuelMacron!' he added.

The horrific attack at the hands of the Moroccan gunman saw Lakdim hijack a car in the town of Carcassonne shooting a passenger in the vehicle dead and wounding the driver.

ISIS gunman Redouane Lakdim, 26, hijacked a car on Friday then opened fire on jogging police officers and in a supermarket

Later he opened fire on four police men jogging near the edge of town, wounding one.

He then headed to Super U supermarket in Trebes where about 50 people were shopping and where he took hostages.

He screamed 'Allahu Akbar, I'll kill you all' before killing a butcher and shopper in the grocery store.

French police officer Arnaud Beltrame offered to swap places with a hostage, and the gunman took him instead.

The hero cop was harmed in the attack and died later due to his wounds.

A total of 16 people were wounded in the attack and two were seriously hurt.

In his reign of terror Lakdim demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, 28, the last surviving suspect in the 2015 ISIS attack in Paris that left 130 dead.

After a stand-off police, Lakdim was finally shot down.

A sign reading 'closed road' at the entrance of the Super U supermarket the day after the attack that killed three and wounded at least 16

Police are pictured in the supermarket car park after the terrorist was killed

Masked police officers are seen after they raided the Super U supermarket, killing the gunman who had claimed allegiance to ISIS

A car that was hit with bullets as Lakdim fired at jogging police officers, leaving one of them with a bullet wound to the shoulder

French police say Lakdim hijacked a car in his hometown of Carcassonne, shot at four police officers on the edge of town, then drove to Trebes where he took hostages

President Macron called the attack 'terrorist act', the first to hit France since he became leader in May.

'An attack and hostage operation are ongoing in the south of France and everything leads us to believe that this is a terrorist attackThe police intervened in a very coordinated manner in what was at first an attack on police officers,' Macron said in a press conference Friday.

According to French police, Lakdim was on the watch list of intelligence services and was flagged in a database of radicalized militants.

Neighbors reported seeing Lakdim earlier the day of the attack, dropping off one of his younger sisters at school.

The terror shooting follows attacks in Paris and Nice in 2015 and 2016.New York City police are searching for a man who randomly assaulted two women within five minutes on Friday.

Shocking video of the incident shows the unidentified man grabbing a 17-year-old woman and throwing her on the ground before running away near the Tribuzio Meat Market in Brooklyn.

And just five minutes later, the same man exposed himself to a 31-year-old woman at a bus stop near the market.

Shocking surveillance video shows a man randomly attack a 17-year-old woman in Brooklyn

When the victim tried to run away, the man pulled down his pants a second time and punched her in the face, causing a laceration to her lip, according to police.

The attacker has been described as a black man, around 30 to 40 years old and five-foot-nine.

He was last seen wearing black pants, a black hooded jacket, black sneakers and a black skull cap.

Police are asking that anyone with information on the subject contact them at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).

The man is seen grabbing the woman and throwing her on the ground before running away and attacking another woman just five minutes laterAdvertisement

The annual Oxford Cambridge Goat Race returned to London for the ninth time today, with the fundraising event held on the same day of the famous university boat competition.

The event saw two goats, one representing Oxford and one representing Cambridge, lock horns as they raced around a farm.

The lighthearted event took place at Spitalfields City farm in east London with today's race starting at midday.

The event started with the goats standing at the starting line, where the excited audience waited with baited breath for them to start trotting off.

There was even an on-site bookie for people who fancied a flutter on their goat of choice and live music, comedy performances, drinks, craft stalls and farm-related games.

Today's race was a reversal of the result of the boat race and saw Hamish, the goat representing Oxford, emerge victorious after he defeated Cambridge's competitor Hugo, before milking the adoration of the crowd.

The annual goat race took place today between animals representing Oxford and Cambridge university. Although Hugo, the goat for Cambridge, was in the lead at one stage, he failed to hold onto it

Instead, the champion of the goat race, which was held for the ninth time today, was Hamish (pictured), who was representing Oxford in the annual fundraising event. The result was a reversal of today's boat race

Several fans flocked to watch the goats lock horns, with some taking the opportunity to show off some homemade signs while enjoying drinks, live music, craft stalls and other farm-related games that were held during the event

Hamish was the victor over his competitor in today's edition of the race. The event started at around midday with a sizable crowd turning out to watch the goats face off

Hugo came second in the race, with the black goat left behind by his rival, although he seemed extremely relaxed about the competition. The race saw a high turnout and was held at the Spitalfields City farm in east London

It wasn't just people watching the two Oxford and Cambridge goats lock horns, with the crowd also filmed with some animals. There were a number of goat-related activities held at the event after the race, with the day finishing at around 6pm

Hamish seemed overjoyed after bringing the home the victory for Oxford and could be seen milking the attention of his adoring fans after the race - although he may have just been trying to grab himself a snack

As Hamish raced to the finish line, it appears that Hugo took a much more relaxed approach to the competition, with the Cambridge goat pictured roving for food around the farm in the middle of the contestEmma Gonzalez, who survived the school shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, stood silent on stage for long periods during her powerful speech at the Washington, DC March For Our Lives.

She addressed the massive crowd for six minutes and 20 seconds - the time it took Nikolas Cruz, 19, to kill 17 or her classmates and injure 15 others with an AR-15 that he had obtained legally during the massacre on February 14 in Parkland, Florida.

Gonzalez took the crowd by surprise with her uncomfortable silence, prompting the crowd to cheer support and chant 'Never again,' as it seemed they thought she had lost her words due to emotion. Then a time went off, and she spoke.

'Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest,' she said when she began to speak again.

'Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job,' she said, ending her time of silence.

She captivated the crowd of half a million protesters in Washington, DC for the March For Our Lives movement in the powerful statement.

Scroll down for video

Emma Gonzalez, who survived the school shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, stood silent for a long period during her powerful speech on the stage at the Washington, DC, March For Our Lives

Gonzalez, who has been an outspoken voice among the Parkland survivors, used the minutes of silence to punctuate an an already moving speech.

'Six minutes and 20 seconds... In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken, 15 were injured and everyone, absolutely everyone, in the Douglas community was forever altered,' she said.

'Everyone who was there understands. who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands. For us, long, tearful chaotic hours in the scorching afternoon sun were spent not knowing.

'No one understood the extent of what had happened. No one could believe that there were bodies in that building waiting to be identified for over a day.

'No one knew that the people who were missing had stopped breathing long before any of us even knew that a code red had been called. No one could comprehend the devastating aftermath or how far this would reach or where this would go.'

She went on to honor some of the lives lost on that day, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Gonzalez, who has been an outspoken voice among the Parkland survivors, used the minutes of silence to punctuate an an already moving speech

The crowd didn't know what to make of her silence at first, until a timer went off and Gonzalez explained that six minutes and 20 seconds had passed since she took the podium

Gonzalez clarified after her speech that she didn't stay silent for the whole six minutes, but asked her followers to imagine how it feel to hide for that long

'For those who still can't comprehend, because they refuse to, I will tell you where it went,' she said. 'Right into the ground, six feet deep.'

'Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen [Schentrup] would never complain to me about piano practice. Aaron Feis would never call [Kiera] "Miss Sunshine." Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother, Ryan. Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp. Helena Ramsay would never hang out after school with Max. Gina Montalto would never wave to her friend, Liam, at lunch. Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan,' she said.

She went on: 'Alaina Petty would never. Cara Loughran would never. Chris Hixon would never. Luke Hoyer would never. Martin Duque Anguiano would never. Peter Wang would never. Alyssa Alhadeff would never. Jamie Guttenberg would never. Meadow Pollack would never.'

Her personal memories of the students who died that day filled the air and hung heavy.

It was the Parkland school shooting massacre that happened on Valentine's Day in Florida that has ignited the current nationwide debate on gun control.

Yet another school shooting took the life of a 16-year-old girl in Maryland on Thursday. Jaelynn Willey was shot on Tuesday and died after being taken off life support, two days later.

The March For Our Lives demonstrations seek to call attention to the need for common sense gun reform that prevents tragedies like these from happening.

More than 800 demonstrations kicked off across the country on Saturday.

Cruz remains in custody in Florida, charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

She captivated the crowd of half a million protesters in Washington, DC for the March For Our Lives movement in the powerful statementThe eighth person to be shot or stabbed to death in London in the last week has been named as Jermaine Johnson.

Paramedics battled for more than an hour to save the 41-year-old on March 23 but were ultimately unsuccessful.

Johnson is the last of the eight people killed in the murder epidemic sweeping the capital to be named.

The shocking week of violence saw stabbings in Hackney and Southall, as well as a shooting in Walthamstow.

Eight people were shot or stabbed to death in London in the seven days following Wednesday last week

The spree began on March 14 as two young men were killed in a single evening.

Lyndon Davis, 18, the youngest to have been named, was found suffering from a single stab wound in Chadwell Heath, east London on March 14.

Within hours Joseph Williams-Torres, 20, was shot and killed as he sat in a stationary car in Essex Close, Walthamstow.

Two days later, on March 17, Russell Jones, a university student, was shot and stabbed outside Ponders End station in what appeared to be an unprovoked attack.

Paramedics battled to save Jermaine Johnson, 41, after he was knifed in Walthamstow

Lyndon Davis, 18 (left) was stabbed in Chadwell Heath, Romford, while Joseph Williams-Torres, 20 (right) was shot and killed in Walthamstow

As the family, including Russell's father, who is a project manager for a construction firm in Enfield, were being comforted at their terraced house just over a mile from the murder scene, Ms Saunders paid tribute to her son who was looking forward to graduating from university when he was senselessly killed.

'We are completely heartbroken and in total shock and disbelief at what has happened,' she said in a statement.

'Russell was a loving son, twin brother, grandson, partner and friend who was looking forward to graduating from University. He will be forever loved by us all and will be in our hearts and minds for eternity.'

Mr Jones, who is understood to have been in the last two weeks at the University of Hertfordshire was with a friend, also 23, when four hooded men launched a brutal attack.

His friend was also stabbed and taken to hospital but is not in a serious condition.

Russell Jones (pictured with a friend) was in his last weeks at the University of Hertfordshire

A friend described how Mr Jones was in 'the wrong place and the wrong time' when the unidentified attack inflicted fatal knife injuries and a suspected gunshot wound

Hersi Hersi, who lived as a trans woman called Naomi, was pronounced dead at the scene after being found with knife injuries at Heathrow Palace in Haslemere Avenue, Hounslow, at 10.50am on Sunday.

Father-of-two Tyrone Silcott, 42, died from knife wounds on Sunday morning after a St Patrick's Day party.

It is alleged the car mechanic got into a row over two girls at a party in Homerton and was attacked.

Father-of-two Tyrone Silcott, 42, died from knife wounds on Sunday morning after a St Patrick's Day party.

Rowmando Lewis, 28, of Cunningham Avenue, Enfield, was charged with murder and appeared before Thames Magistrates' Court on Thursday.

Hersi Hersi, 36, (left) was found stabbed in Hounslow and Tyrone Silcott, 42, (right) was stabbed in Homerton

It is alleged Mr Silcott, a car mechanic who worked for Mr Clutch garage in Leyton, had got into a row at a party attended by 40 members of the Montserratian community.

Paramedics fought to save Mr Silcott's life but he was pronounced dead at the scene in Homerton.

Two men were killed on March 19. Jermaine Johnson, 41, who was named today, was knifed in Walthamstow.

The same afternoon, Balbir Johal, 48, from Slough, died less than an hour after he was admitted to hospital in West London after being stabbed in Southall.

Romanian Beniamin Pieknyi, 20, is believed to have jumped in to the fight in a bid to save his friend during the altercation at the Stratford Centre in east London.

The 20-year-old, who only arrived in Britain two months ago, died in his best friend's arms after being chased and stabbed by a gang in the busy shopping centre.

Balbir Johal, 48, died after he was knifed by a gang in Southall in west London

These killings bring the total number of men under the age of 25 murdered in the capital this year to a shocking 17.

It comes as Sophie Lindon, London's deputy mayor for policing, warned the knife crime epidemic could only worsen.

Carrying blades, she said, could become 'normalised' among young people in the capital.

'Those figures are shocking and really disturbing. It is a problem in London, myself and the Mayor are absolutely clear that we do have an issue in London,' she told the Evening Standard.

Beniamin Pieknyi, 20, was stabbed after reportedly stepping in to help a friend during a fight at the Stratford Centre in east London

'I speak to a lot of young people around attitudes around carrying a knife and what they've said to me is it's becoming more normalised,' she added.

'We do have a real problem with it being more normal to carry knives.'

Asked if she expected violent crime to continue to rise, Ms Linden added: 'I think it will be very difficult to make a substantial inroad in knife crime if the government doesn't step up.'

Latest figures from City Hall reveal there were 14,750 incidents of knife crime in London in the 12 months leading up to February 2018, up from 11,701 on the year before.

The Home Office said it will unveil a Serious Violence Strategy in spring, targeting young people before they see carrying knives as normal or necessary.

A spokesman said: 'The Mayor of London is accountable to the public for the performance of the Metropolitan Police which will receive 2.5 billion in direct resource funding in 2018-19, including Council Tax precept and has the most officers per head of population - a quarter of all police officers in England and Wales.

'We are clear that every single death from knife crime is a tragedy and this Government is determined to do everything it can to break the deadly cycle and protect our children, families and communities.'Advertisement

These male ibexes were seen locking horns in a frenzied battle for the affections of their female companions in the Judean Desert today.

The desert goats were captured on camera at the Ein Gedi nature reserve near the Dead Sea in Israel on Saturday.

Incredible images show the creatures fighting during the species' mating season when females are the most fertile.

The Nubian ibex, found in the mountains of Israel, Jordan, Oman, Saudi Arabia and various northern African countries, is a near-endangered species, with just 1,200 left in the wild.

Males fight for the right to breed with their desired female partner by putting their heads together and locking horns.

Once the champion is crowned the male and female mate in a process that takes around 30 minutes. The wild creatures rose to prominence in the media during David Attenborough's Planet Earth series.

These male ibexes were seen locking horns in battle for the affections of their female companions in the Judean Desert today

All's fair in love and war: The desert goats were captured at the Ein Gedi nature reserve near the Dead Sea, Israel on Saturday

Incredible images show the creatures fighting during the species' mating season when females are the most fertile

Males fight for the right to breed with their desired female partner by putting their heads together and locking hornsUpstate New Yorkers are concerned that newly announced gubernatorial candidate  and Sex and the City star  Cynthia Nixon is too city-focused to understand the rest of the state's concerns.

After much speculation, Nixon, 51, announced her candidacy for governor of New York on March 19. She will be challenging Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, a two-term incumbent, in the 2018 Democratic primary.

Nixon, who grew up on the Upper West Side and currently lives in Manhattan's pricey NoHo neighborhood, is a Emmy, Tony and Grammy award winner, well-known in pop culture for starring in HBO's hit Sex and the City for six seasons. Although she has no formal political experience, she has been a passionate activist for educational issues and LGBTQ rights for many years.

Upstate New York voters said they are concerned about gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon's ability to represent their interests and think she might be too New York City-centric

On her campaign website, she chided ' the current leadership in Albany,' noting that unlike Cuomo, 'Cynthia rides the New York subway nearly every day, and understands the toll that the mismanagement of the MTA is taking on everyday New Yorkers.'

Her campaign platform includes the desire to fix 'the crumbling subway system' and strengthen and renewing expiring rent laws, helping to 'protect affordable housing for millions of New Yorkers'  two seemingly predominantly city-centric goals.

'Celebrities, extremely wealthy people  they cant relate to Chenango County of 50,000 people,' Patrick McNeil, a Norwich watchmaker and local Democratic Party chair, told the NY Post.

'She wants to fix the subway. Well, does she want to fix the bridge on Route 12?'

Nixon has declared that city-centric issues such as fixing the New York City subways and renewing expiring rent laws are large aspects of her campaign

Upstate New York voters are concerned that Nixon, who starred in Sex and the City for six seasons, is not familiar with issues facing the rest of the state

Nixon has a 17 year history of supporting education activist and LGBTQ rights. She is pictured here on Saturday during the March for Our Lives rally in New York City

Of New York State's 6.2million registered Democrats, about 55 per cent of them live in New York City, while 24 per cent, about 1.5million people, live upstate.

'New York is an incredibly diverse state and we need to be convinced that any candidate understands and respects how diverse it is,' Judith Hunter, chair of the Livingston County Democrats, told the NY Post.

Hunter dismissed Nixon's celebrity as being 'based on absolutely nothing other than New York City. Sex and the City was New York City.'

While Cuomo is another New York City native, having been born in Queens, he has established roots in upstate New York, having attended Albany Law School and working as his father's gubernatorial campaign manager in 1982.

Nixon, however, is 'an unknown person here,' Venice Ervin, president of the Utica and Oneida County NAACP, told the NY Post.

Ervin suggested that Nixon ought to start traveling around the state so that constituents could become familiar with her platform and interest in representing them.

A recent Siena College poll conducted a week prior to her announcing her candidacy revealed that 70 per cent of upstate New York residents were unfamiliar with her or had no opinion about her.

Nixon's campaign strategist, Rebecca Katz, pointed to a recent trip Nixon had made to a bed and breakfast in Skaneateles, New York, and noted that she will be traveling 'all over this state in the course of this campaign.'It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discoverA man claims sailing around the world saved his marriage and family.

Caspar Craven, 45, wrote a book called Where the Magic Happens: How a Young Family Changed Their Lives and Sailed Around the World, which comes out Tuesday.

He claims being free from the pressures of modern life transformed his role as a father and husband, reported the New York Post.

Caspar Craven, 45, claims sailing around the world saved his marriage and family

He claims being free from the pressures of modern life transformed his role as a father and husband

He has three children Bluebell, 12, Columbus, 11, and Willow, 5.

Before their sailing adventure Craven said him and his wife Nicola, 46, 'were having a crummy time.' He co-owned a consultancy business, and Nichola, worked as an attorney part-time.

'The pressures of money, work and children were catching up with us,' he explained.

He has three children Bluebell, 12, Columbus, 11, and Willow, 5 with wife Nichola

In 2009 the family decided they were going to leave London and join the ARC Flotilla, which is a fleet of 200 to 300 boats that make up the annual Atlantic Rally for Cruisers.

It wasn't until August 1 2014 when they actually left, they thought five years would be enough time to save up and plan.

'Many people assume you need to be wealthy before you can live your dream,' Craven said in his book. 'We made the decision to put our dream first and then created the wealth to make it happen.'

In 2009 the family decided they were going to leave London and join the ARC Flotilla, which is a fleet of 200 to 300 boats that make up the annual Atlantic Rally for Cruisers

At the time, he co-owned a consultancy business, and Nichola, an attorney, worked part-time.

The family purchased the Aretha, a 53-foot sailboat, by taking out a second mortgage on their home. The sailboat they wanted cost between $500,000 and $750,000.

Over the next couple of years they traveled across the world and visited islands in the South Pacific, Australia, South Africa and Brazil.

It wasn't until August 1 2014 when they actually left, they thought five years would be enough time to save up and plan

Despite the life-changing adventure, Caspar admitted it wasn't all smooth sailing. Nichola suffered from seasickness, and at one point Bluebell fought off a bout of Dengue fever.

The children were home-schooled during their time on the boat but now they are at a school in London and Caspar says the two years away has made them 'more curious, confident, and bonded to their parents.'

'It's probably the thing I'm most proud of. By doing this, we truly changed our relationships. Sailing around the world saved my marriage,' he said.

Caspar Craven, 45, wrote a book called Where the Magic Happens: How a Young Family Changed Their Lives and Sailed Around the World, which comes out TuesdayA Florida man's family said that EMS workers left his dead body to bake in the middle of road for hours after being unable to revive him.

On February 26, Ty Ross, 78, of Bradenton, Florida, was out walking his two dogs around the Palma Sola marina when he apparently had a heart attack, falling face first onto the street.

Passersby called 911 and Manatee County EMS as well as two deputies from the Sheriff's Office arrived on the scene, the Herald-Tribune reported.

Ty Ross, 78, was walking his dogs in a marina when he had a heart attack and died. His family members said that EMS workers callously left his body in the street after declaring him dead

Ty's wife, Julie Ross, who had been phone-less in a pilates class, learned that her husband had died after picking up a voicemail from her niece, Carrie Price Whaley. Assuming that Ty had died at his home, the two drove to the Ross home, only to have a sheriff's deputy tell them that they had to 'figure out how to move the body' out of the marina.

About 90 minutes after EMS had declared Ty dead, Julie and Whaley arrived at the marina. Julie said they found Ty with his upper body in the grass and his legs in the street. Someone had put a sheet over his body, but it wasn't long enough to cover his feet.

EMS was nowhere to be found.

'Apparently EMS tried to revive him, could not and then left,' Julie Ross told the Herald-Tribune. 'My poor husband lied in the street for an hour, easily.'

'Apparently their policy is, if youre dead, they leave you,' Whaley said.

Upon arriving home, a sheriff's deputy told Ty's wife, Julie Ross, that it was her responsibility to find a way to remove her husband's body from the marina

Julie then spent more than an hour at the marina, holding an umbrella over his body, while her niece attempted to find a funeral home that could pick up Ty's body. He had been lying in the street for approximately three hours after being declared dead

Whaley then had to call around to find a funeral home that could come and pick up her uncle's body.

Meanwhile, Julie sat in a chair that a neighbor had brought her, holding an umbrella over her husband's body for 90 minutes, trying to shield it from the sun. All the while, she said she was worried that ants were going to start crawling over Ty if the funeral home couldn't pick up his body quickly.

By the time the funeral home was able to send someone to transport Ty's body, he had been lying in the street for at least three hours after he was pronounced dead.

In a statement to the Herald-Tribune, a Manatee County spokesperson said that, 'There is no EMS protocol that addresses the removal of a person whose death has been determined to be a natural cause. Typically, those incidents occur in the home or near a loved one who is able to assist.'

It's believed that Ty died instantly from the heart attack while he was out walking the dogs.

Julie Ross said when she arrived at the marina, Ty's body half on the grass and half on the sidewalk. Someone had covered him with a sheet, but it wasn't long enough to cover his feet

A Manatee County spokesperson said that there isn't any EMS protocol that addresses the removal of a person whose death has been determined to be a natural cause, but that the county and the EMS chief are working to correct that oversight

The county spokesperson also wrote that the county's EMS Chief DiCicco and the Sheriff's Office are in the process of developing a 'corrective policy that addresses the unusual circumstance of an individual who passes away in a public place without loved ones nearby.'

EMS did stay at the scene for about an hour after Ty was declared dead, WWSB reported.

While Julie acknowledged that the EMS workers might've just been following protocol when they left her husband's body at the scene, she said that she assumed that in cases like this, they would've taken the body to the hospital's morgue, at which point a family member could arrange for a funeral home to come and pick it up.

'But the way it was explained to me was that if the ambulance takes the body to funeral home, then that ambulance is out of commission, and what if there was an emergency, and they couldnt answer because they already had someone who is not alive?' Julie told the Herald-Tribune.

Whaley questioned the protocol, pondering whether EMS workers would leave someone on the spot if they died in a mall food court.

'What if a child died at a playground, God forbid, and someone had to sit for three hours like that?' Whaley said. 'That would be horrible.'Advertisement

The United Nations has been criticised for sharing the details of hospitals in rebel-held areas of Syria with the Russian military after one of the units was bombed several days later.

The UN provided the Russians with GPS locations of hospital operating in rebel areas which had been supplied by NGOs under a 'notification' scheme.

Under the plan, areas around the hospital would not be targeted - although the GPS co-ordinates can allow pin-point attacks on medical units.

On March 12, during a major offensive in Ghouta, a hospital was hit in what medics described as a 'bunker buster' bomb.

A Syrian woman and child walk through Arbin during a ceasefire which is allowing rebels and civilians to evacuate the area

The Russian-backed Syrian government has allowed the rebels to leave the area and go into exile

The area has been subjected to heavy bombing over the past few weeks by pro- government Russian-backed forces

According to the Telegraph, it is not known whether the hospital was attacked by Syrian or Russian forces.

UN Humanitarian adviser on Syria Jan Egeland said: 'There were 120 attacks on hospitals and medical facilities in Syria last year. Syria is one of the worst wars on medical workers in recent history and part of the problem is there has been no functioning notification system to protect them.'

Hamis de Bretton Gordon, director of Doctors under Fire said: 'They have bombed hospitals with little thought, and have always given the excuse that they were harbouring terrorists, which is untrue. They act with impunity as there has been zero consequence so far.'

However, thousands of rebels have been evacuating one of their last remaining strongholds on the outskirts of Damascus in Eastern Ghouta.

Syrian media reported that the rebels have moved out of the territory following a deal with the regime.

The state media service Sana said: 'Several buses carrying 500 fighters and their families have reached the Arbin crossing, in preparation for their departure from Ghouta.'

Syrian people took the opportunity of a temporary cease fire agreed with Bashar al-Assad's regime to evacuate Eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus to go into exile in the north east of the country

The regime has allowed fighters and their families to evacuate the city if they are willing to move into exile

The Russian-backed Syrian army paused its bombardment of Douma ahead of the planned convoy

The regime were waiting for more buses to join the convoy before allowing them to pass to opposition zones in northern Syria.

The Russian-backed Syrian army paused its bombardment of Douma ahead of the planned convoy.

It follows the departure of thousands of others on Friday from the town of Harasta in a similar deal for insurgents to depart with light weapons in return for surrendering their territory.

The buses queued at a crossing point before moving into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades, debris and unexploded ordnance.

Some captives held by the insurgents were released and state television showed them leaving in a minibus.

The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit, state television said. It broadcast pictures of the massive trenches and other fortifications the rebels were leaving behind.

The cease fire allowed men of military age to join the convoy to allow the regime to recapture the area

The rebels and civilians are being moved to Qalat al-Madiq, north of Hama in the north east of Syria

Dozens of buses transported those who were happy to leave the besieged enclave that would fall to regime control

People used any available form of transport to try and evacuate the city before the regime recommenced its attack

It means only Douma is left of the opposition's eastern Ghouta enclave which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400,000 people and constituted the rebels' main stronghold near Damascus.

The army offensive to capture it, heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the seven-year conflict with warplanes, helicopters and artillery, has killed more than 1,600 people, said the war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminately - inaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally Russia, which has helped his air campaign, have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians.

About 7,000 fighters, along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad's rule, were to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday, rebels and state media said.

They will go to Idlib province in the northwest - the destination for many such 'evacuations' after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years.

The first group of those evacuated arrived in the north east of the country earlier today

It will not mean an end to their experience of war. Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week, killing dozens of people.

Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups. On Saturday, an explosion at a headquarters for al Qaeda's former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others.

The Britain-based Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish al-Islam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners.

Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted, rebels said on Friday. However, rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting.

Wael Alwan, spokesman for the Failaq al-Rahman group that was dominant in Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar, was quoted by al-Hadath television on Saturday as saying he did not trust Russia's guarantees.

A Russian military webcam at the al-Wafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory on Saturday, carrying children and sacks of belongings.

Russia's military said on Saturday more than 105,000 people had left eastern Ghouta, including over 700 on Saturday.

Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters already too full to take them.Psychologists have warned that patients are more likely to miss a hospital appointment tomorrow because of the clocks going forward today.

At 1am today, the UK made the annual switch to British Summer Time meaning people lost an hour's sleep.

Now psychologists have revealed that five per cent more patients miss an outpatient hospital appointment every spring in the week after the clock changes compared to the week before.

Clocks in the UK went forward at 1am today for the annual switch to British Summer Time (FILE photo)

The study also revealed that they are less likely to miss appointments in the autumn when clocks revert back to Greenwich Mean Time, meaning they get an extra hour in bed.

Each hospital outpatient appointment costs around 120 so the missed appointments are a significant blow to already overstretched NHS budgets.

Every year there are eight million missed appointments which reportedly cost the NHS over 960 million.

But reducing non attendance by just 1.2 per cent could save 60 million a year.

Researchers suggested that to make sure patients arrive on time hospitals could send out short reminders to those scheduled to attend in the weeks following the clock change.

They analysed over two million appointments in Scotland from 2005 to 2010 before, during and after the spring and autumn clock changes.

Lead author Dr David Ellis of the University of Lancaster explained: 'More people missed their appointments after the clocks moved forward in spring.

Research from psychologists suggests that the clock change will lead to some patients missing hospital outpatient appointments tomorrow (FILE photo)

'Fewer people missed them after the clocks moved back again in the autumn.

'The increase in missed appointments observed following the spring (forward) clock change suggest that the potential disruption of chronobiologic rhythms during the transition into DST, for example losing an hour of sleep and decreased sleep quality, may translate into patients missing more scheduled appointments and the effect may carry over into the following week.

'The results also showed that the effect persists beyond the week of change, suggesting that the increase in non-attendance may take longer to settle following a forward clock change'

Reader Dr Rob Jenkins at York added: 'However, it may also be the case that people arrive early for appointments after the autumn clock change and late after the clocks go forward in spring.'

Dr Ellis said: 'Missed appointments represent a significant financial issue for healthcare systems and have an adverse impact on patient care.'

And Dr Kirk Luther at Lancaster concluded: 'Potential solutions include sending additional reminders to patients as the spring clock change approaches, or scheduling more appointments in the week prior to the spring clock change.'

The clock change will affect hospital appointments for up to a week after the switch, according to the research (FILE photo)

The researchers explained the phenomenon in greater detail and revealed how the clock change affects sleeping patterns.

Dr David Ellis said: 'More than 1.5 billion men and women are exposed to the transitions involved as the clocks go forward one hour in the spring and backward one hour in the autumn.

'Known as Daylight Saving Time (DST), these changes can disrupt chronobiologic rhythms and influence the duration and quality of sleep, with the effect lasting several days after the shifts.

'Conversely, the transition out of DST in autumn has been shown to be less detrimental to the sleep/wake cycle.

'A wealth of research has examined the impact of the transitions into and out of DST on human behaviour and health, including road traffic accidents, workplace injuries, and impairments in mood and cognition; all of which have been attributed to changes in sleep duration/quality and circadian misalignment.'

Dr Ellis added: 'In general, previous research has focused on health, memory and cognition in isolation.

'The current study merged these two strands of research by utilising hospital admission data to explore how transitions into and out of DST may impact missed appointments within secondary care.

'Therefore, the proposed analysis adds to the larger body of evidence that DST effects are tangible and have a measurable impact on individuals and society.

'Given the negative effects associated with reduced sleep as a result of the spring transition into DST, it was hypothesised that non-attendance would increase in the weeks following the springtime change and that this effect would be reversed following the transition out of DST in autumn. '

The study was published in Chronobiology International.

When do the clocks change and what is Daylight Savings?

Twice a year, the UK switches between Greenwich Mean Time and British Summer Time as part of Daylight Savings Time.

This means that when the clocks change people will have an extra hour for a lie-in in winter, but an hour less in summer time.

When do the clocks change in the UK?

The clocks went forward by an hour today, marking the start of British Summer Time (BST).

BST began at 01:00 GMT, meaning that people in the UK had one hour less of sleep as 1am became 2am.

The reasoning behind switching to BST is to have more daylight in the evenings.

Today the clocks went forward by an hour, marking the start of British Summer Time (BST)

When do the clocks go back in 2018 in the UK?

GMT resumes in autumn, on Sunday, October 28. At 02:00 BST, the clocks will go back an hour to become 01:00 GMT again. This is so there is more daylight hours during the winter months.

An easy way to remember how clocks change is the phrase: Clocks 'spring forward in spring, fall back in fall'.

What is Daylight Savings Time (DST)?

Daylight Savings Time is generally attributed to an Edwardian builder named William Willett, who wrote a pamphlet in 1907 entitled The Waste of Daylight.

Willett fervently campaigned for the adoption of British Summer Time.

In his pamphlet, he proposed that the clocks move forward by a total of 80 minutes in four stages throughout the month of April. That way, Willett argued: 'We shall have 8o minutes more daylight after 6 p.m. every day during May, June, July and August.'

The reason given behind the switch to BST is so that people have more daylight in the evenings

Willetts said that the benefits of adopting Daylight Saving Time included 210 extra hours of daylight and an annual saving of 2,500,000.

However, for many years Willetts ideas and bill proposals were rejected. In a cruel twist of irony, Willett ultimately ran out of time, dying just before his proposals were adopted.

In 1916, Germany, seeking to conserve coal during the First World War, introduced Sommerzeit and put the clocks forward by one hour at 11pm.

The UK followed several weeks later with the 1916 British Summer Time Act. The act stipulated that the clocks should go forward by one hour from May 21 to October 1.

Many other European countries followed suit shortly after. The US also adheres to Daylight Savings Time, however they alter their clocks before the UK and Europe.

EU Daylight Saving Time Review

At the beginning of February, a proposal was floated on whether to scrap Daylight Saving Time and thus British Summer Time. On February 8, the EU Parliament voted to begin a review of DST.

The review comes after impact assessment suggested the existence of negative effects on human health, agriculture and road traffic safety.

The research claims that one day after the clocks change, the risk of heart problems in older people increases, traffic accidents jump up by a third and children struggle in school.

The research says these events are down to the fact that the the human body is made for a steady biorhythm and the clocks change affects it.

Benefits and drawbacks of Daylight Saving Time

As Willett outlined, the rationale for adopting Daylight Saving Time is that, by increasing the amount of daylight hours, energy consumption drops.

Another more social reason is that 9-5 societies would prefer to have an extra hour of sunlight after the working day is over. By rising earlier, some argue that DST helps depression sufferers, while others argue extra sunlight during the afternoon allows for outdoor exercise.

However, as the EU review shows, not everyone is for Daylight Saving Time. A 2015 YouGov poll found that people who opposed British Summer Time outnumbered its proponents 40-33 per cent. Just under a quarter of the British population (23 per cent) had no opinion either way.

But the change is considered controversial, with a 2015 YouGov poll finding that people who opposed British Summer Time outnumbered those who supported it from 40-33 per cent

Over half of people over the age of sixty (53 per cent) wanted to scrap the practice.

The main criticism of Daylight Saving Time is that the energy saving evidence is, as the French MEP Karima Delli said during the EU debate, not convincing.

Studies that show an increase in road accidents or sleep trouble during the time change must be taken seriously, he added.

Two American psychologists go so far as to argue that Daylight Saving Time produces harmful effects that contribute to the US sleep crisis, and that it actually increases energy costs.The lawyer of porn actress Stormy Daniels was seen working up a sweat on New York City's Fifth Avenue on Saturday.

Michael Avenetti's run came a day before his client is set to speak out about her alleged affair with president Donald Trump for the first time ever on a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday.

The lawyer suggested on Thursday that Daniels might have photos or videos backing up her claims of a 2006 affair with the president.

#Basta: Stormy Daniel's lawyer didn't break a sweat as he ran across New York City's Fifth Avenue on Saturday, a day before his client is to appear on 60 Minutes

Avenetti appeared relaxed as photographers captured him before his client's tell-all sit-down with Anderson Cooper

'If "a picture is worth a thousand words," how many words is this worth?????#60minutes #pleasedenyit #basta,' he wrote on Twitter alongside a photo showing a CD inside an opened safe.

Appropriately, he was sporting a cap with the words 'basta' - the Italian word for 'enough' during his run.

Also on Thursday Avenetti demanded that the Trump Organization, the president's real estate company, preserve all of its records relating to a $130,000 payment from a 2016 nondisclosure agreement Daniels signed.

The lawyer has been making the rounds on cable news, appearing on most major networks, except for Fox News, which he said hadn't invited him.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, wants to be released from the agreement that bans her from discussing her alleged sexual relationship with Trump.

The lawyer was wearing a cap with the word 'basta' on it - the Italian word for 'enough that he has been repeating on social media and on TV appearances

She alleges the agreement is null because the president never signed it.

In a letter to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Avenatti wrote that declaring the agreement null and void would permit her to 'use and publish any text messages, photos and/or videos relating to the President that she may have in her possession.'

Cohen has denied there was ever an affair and said he paid the $130,000 out of his pocket, using a Home equity Line of Credit to get the funds. He has said neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Clifford and he was not reimbursed for the payment.

The lawyer suggested on Thursday that Daniels might have photos or videos backing up her claims of a 2006 affair with the president.

Avenatti posted this photo with Daniels and Anderson Cooper earlier this month, beginning speculation about what the porn star might discuss in the interview airing on Sunday

'We intend on using all legal means at our disposal to uncover the truth about the cover-up and what happened,' Avenatti said on Thursday. 'When we are done, the truth will be laid bare for the American people.'

Daniels filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles earlier this month seeking to invalidate the agreement so she could 'set the record straight' and discuss her alleged relationship with Trump, which she said began in 2006 and continued for about a year.

The lawsuit said their relationship included encounters in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and Beverly Hills, California. Trump married his current wife, Melania Trump, in 2005, and their son, Barron, was born in 2006.

The porn actress is expected to discuss her relationship with the president during the sit-down with Anderson Cooper tomorrow, opening herself up to the $1 million fee she has to pay every time she breaks the nondisclosure agreement.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, wants to be released from the agreement that bans her from discussing her alleged sexual relationship with TrumpLily Weinstein was spotted meeting up with her father's ex-wife Georgina Chapman five months after their family was ripped apart by the movie mogul's sex scandal.

Lily, 23, is the eldest child of Harvey Weinstein, 65, and has kept a low-profile since her father was accused of sexual harassment by more than 30 women in the film industry.

She was seen leaving her former step-mother's New York town home and walking into Chelsea with a downcast face to meet up with Chapman, 41, at her fashion line Marchesa's office.

Lily, 23, is the eldest daughter of Harvey Weinstein and was seen leaving the town home of her former step-mother Georgina Chapman in New York

With a downcast face she walked along the New York streets dressed in a navy pea coat, a black top and jeans, and black heeled boots

Lily, also known as Remy, looked preoccupied as she left Chapman's New York town home, holding on to her phone and a water bottle

Lily, also known as Remy, sported a weary face as she headed out into the city in a knee-length navy coat, a black top and jeans, and heeled black booties.

Her red hair was polished and cropped as she walked through Chelsea.

Lily seems to maintain a good relationship with Chapman despite her father and the fashion designer's divorce last October.

The couple announced their divorce after his name became smeared in sexual assault scandal, ending their marriage that was just one month away from ringing in 10 years.

Chapman reunited with Lily at her office, where she wore a floor-length floral dress paired with a leather jacket, black scarf, and heeled leather boots.

In a statement to People Chapman said on her divorce: 'My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions. I have chosen to leave my husband.'

The two met outside of the Marchesa office in Chelsea where Chapman (above) was spotted in a floral dress, a leather jacket, and a black scarf

Lily got into this vehicle with Chapman, who divorced Harvey Weinstein last October in the wake of his sexual assault scandal

It is the first time the two are seen together since the Harvey Weinstein scandal boiled over Hollywood after a New York Times story published a story last October that shed light on his abuse.

The two met their driver outside the Marchesa office before heading north out of New York City together.

Last October after the media frenzy over her father's history began, Lily was seen holed up in her Hollywood home along with her younger siblings where she was attended to by several assistants.

Lily's forlorn expression was visible from the car window of the vehicle that sped off north out of the city

She looked pensive with her hand to her mouth as she stared out of the window during the trip

The two of them headed north out of New York City to an unknown location

Chapman was seen out and about in New York earlier this week, keeping her face kidden behind a pair of oversized black sunglasses.

Since her ex-husbands disgraceful fall from Hollywood, she too has kept a low profile and even cancelled her labels New York Fashion Week show.

After the scandal broke out she left the US to a countryside retreat in England where she was seen in November.

Weinstein was fired as his companys CEO in October amid the allegations against him.

He denied allegations of non-consensual sex.

The Weinstein Co has filed for bankruptcy after dozens of actresses made allegations of rape, assault or sexual harassment against its co-founder Harvey Weinstein (pictured)An instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst has been arrested by police on suspicion of sexually assaulting a male officer cadet, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Staff Sergeant Michael Wright, 37, has been removed from the prestigious British Army academy in Berkshire after an alleged incident which is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

Last night, police confirmed SSgt Wright's arrest following the alleged sex assault in Guildford, Surrey, on March 1.

Shortly after the incident is said to have occurred, the alleged victim made a formal complaint to police which led to SSgt Wright's arrest.

Staff Sergeant Michael Wright, 37, has been removed from Sandhurst, the prestigious British Army academy in Berkshire after an alleged incident which is now the subject of a criminal investigation

The case is being investigated by civilian police rather than the Royal Military Police because the alleged incident took place outside Army working hours and not on Ministry of Defence (MoD) property.

Defence sources said last night that as many as five cadets at Sandhurst, where Princes William and Harry trained, had raised concerns about SSgt Wright's conduct.

A Surrey Police spokesman said: 'Following an allegation of a sexual assault in Guildford on Thursday, March 1, a person from Berkshire has been arrested.

'They have been released from police custody on conditional bail.'

The MoD said it could not comment on the case specifically because of the ongoing criminal investigation but stressed that it took misconduct allegations very seriously.

The instructor from Dudley, West Midlands, had kept a Twitter profile under the name @SoldierBoy80 on which he wrote about himself: 'I'm in the Army, like meeting new people and travelling.

The case is being investigated by civilian police rather than the Royal Military Police because the alleged incident took place outside Army working hours and not on Ministry of Defence (MoD) property (Sandhurst pictured)

'Enjoy cooking, keeping fit and red wine and dancing.' He has since closed the account down.

'SSgt Wright, of the Intelligence Corps, has been an instructor on the Leadership Development Course at Sandhurst since May 2016, according to his profile on the job website LinkedIn.

Since his arrest he has been transferred to the Intelligence Corps base at Chicksands, Bedfordshire.

SSgt Wright took down his account on LinkedIn shortly after The Mail on Sunday approached the MoD about his case on Friday.

It had stated that he joined the British Army in 2001 as a junior analyst. He was later promoted to a senior analyst's position in the Intelligence Corps in 2008.

Hundreds of Army officer cadets are trained at Sandhurst every year.

The college, which was founded in 1812, is hugely respected and only officers and non-commissioned officers with outstanding personal reports are considered for posts as instructors.Russia was accused last night of sending a 'cynical and tasteless' letter to the hero policeman exposed to the nerve agent in the Salisbury poisoning attack.

The letter from Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko thanked Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey for his bravery and insisted that Vladimir Putin was not behind the attack.

Mr Yakovenko expressed his 'sincere gratitude' to DS Bailey for putting his life at risk by coming to the aid of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia after they were struck down by a nerve agent.

The diplomat claimed his country was not behind the 'reckless' assassination attempt  despite the Government's insistence that the Novichok nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union was used.

Mr Yakovenko even said he hoped the Skripals would recover.

A letter from Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko thanked Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey (pictured) for his bravery and insisted that Vladimir Putin was not behind the attack in Salisbury on March 4

The news came as it emerged last night that Donald Trump is preparing to expel dozens of Russian spies posing as diplomats from the US.

In the ambassador's letter, sent on Russian Embassy notepaper to Wiltshire Police headquarters, Mr Yakovenko wrote: 'Dear Detective Sergeant, I was relieved to hear you were released from hospital and reunited with your family

'I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for your bravery when reacting to the assault on two Russian nationals, Sergey [sic] and Yulia Skripal who I hope will get well soon too.

'Please be assured that Russia had nothing to do with this reckless incident.'

But the letter provoked outrage, with Salisbury MP and Treasury Minister John Glen telling The Mail on Sunday last night: 'It is a pathetic attempt to try to regain respectability when the ambassador knows full well Russia is behind what happened in Salisbury.

'Most people in Salisbury and across the country will feel this is a cynical attempt to once again deny the truth that this nerve agent derived from Russia.'

Mr Yakovenko expressed his 'sincere gratitude' to DS Bailey for putting his life at risk by coming to the aid of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia after they were struck down by a nerve agent

Matthew Dean, leader of Salisbury City Council, said: 'The ambassador's letter is in the most appalling taste and demonstrates the most dreadful cynicism.

'The scientific community across the world is united that the nerve agent was manufactured in Russia.

'Salisbury residents have been shocked by the attempted murder of the Skripals and the serious injury of a police officer in pursuit of his duties.

'To now attempt to embroil us in low Russian politics is totally unacceptable.'

DS Bailey, 38, was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital on Thursday but said that life would never be the same for him or his wife Sarah and their two children.

Meanwhile, Mr Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter remain in a critical condition in hospital, three weeks after they were found slumped on a bench.

Pictured: Russia's ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko in London this week

Mr Skripal is a former Russian intelligence officer who sold secrets to MI6 and was jailed for treason before being freed in a spy swap and coming to live in Salisbury.

Last week a High Court judge ruled that blood samples could be taken from the Skripals so that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons could verify the analysis by experts at the Porton Down military research centre that they were struck down by a nerve agent.

Mr Justice Williams said it was not practical to ask any relative of the Skripals for their view on the tests given the 'limited evidence as to the possible existence of family members in Russia'.

However, The Mail on Sunday has tracked down relatives in Siberia and discovered that they are desperate for doctors to give them information.

The diplomat claimed his country was not behind the 'reckless' assassination attempt (crime scene pictured)  despite the Government's insistence that the Novichok nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union was used

Mr Skripal's cousin Natalia, 65, said she was like a sister to him while they were growing up.

'Our whole family, each and every one of us, are incredibly worried for Yulia and Sergei's health,' she said.

'We have been discussing just how to get in touch with the hospital, with none of us understanding how to make the right steps to find their doctor.'

The Russians under threat of expulsion in America are believed to be intelligence officers acting under diplomatic cover, just like the 23 Russian Embassy staff kicked out of Britain last week.

Additional reporting by Will Stewart in MoscowWiltshire Council leader Cllr Jane Scott did not visit the stricken cathedral city until Friday  19 days after the attack on March 4

The leader of Wiltshire Council faced calls to quit last night after it emerged she has been working in her 300-a-day role as a peer despite claiming she was 'too ill' to visit worried Salisbury residents following the nerve agent attack.

Jane Scott did not visit the stricken cathedral city until Friday  19 days after the attack on March 4.

In the days after the poisoning, residents had demanded to know why their council leader had not visited the city to offer reassurance.

Her deputy, John Thompson, told a local newspaper that the Tory peer had been 'extremely ill' with a fever that she had picked up during a recent trip to visit hospitals in South Africa.

But it later emerged she had been working in the House of Lords, where she is entitled to a 300 daily allowance.

Last night Baroness Scott confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that she intends to claim the money.

The peer said she had been meeting Ministers about the attack but she refused to name those she had met.

She confirmed that she had been in the Lords for the three days following the attack, and a further two days last week.

The peer, 70, told The Mail on Sunday she became ill 'with a nasty bug' towards the end of the first week after the poisoning.

But this contradicts what she told the Salisbury Journal last week, when she said that she had 'probably gone home very ill' on Tuesday, March 6.

Amid growing questions about her whereabouts, Mr Thompson told the local newspaper on March 13 that she had not been able to visit the city because she had picked up a 'rather unpleasant disease' while on a working visit to South Africa.

In the days after the poisoning (crime scene pictured), residents had demanded to know why their council leader had not visited the city to offer reassurance. Her deputy, John Thompson, told a local newspaper that the Tory peer had been 'extremely ill' with a fever

But neither Mr Thompson nor Baroness Scott informed the public at the time that she had been working in the Lords.

Baroness Scott, a horse breeder and wife of a banker, last night denied misleading her constituents and said she still intended to pocket her Lords allowances.

She said she had been working 'solely in the interests of Salisbury' and that 'even when I was really ill I was still in full control'.

But there is anger at her lack on clarity on when exactly she fell ill and last night she was even facing resignation calls from fellow Tories.

One senior councillor, who asked not to be named, said: 'I think she has to go over this. Her story is all over the place.

But while Yulia and Sergei Skripal (pictured) lay in hospital it later emerged she had been working in the House of Lords, where she is entitled to a 300 daily allowance

Victim: Hero Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey (pictured) has now been discharged from hospital after coming into contact with the deadly nerve agent in Salisbury

'One minute she was ill on the Tuesday, the next it's at the end of the week.

'She can't properly account for why she didn't go to Salisbury until almost three weeks after the attack but she could still travel 100 miles to London.'

Baroness Scott also faced calls to quit from dozens of residents commenting on the Salisbury Journal website. One post read: 'She needs to resign and fast.'

Another said: 'She is so out of touch to her job and what we need for such role. We need to call for her resignation.'The Labour frontbencher sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for demanding a second EU referendum faced claims yesterday that he had previously threatened to quit over his leader's weak response to the Salisbury poison attack.

Well-placed sources said Owen Smith had been so appalled at Mr Corbyn's initial failure to blame Russia for the attack earlier this month that he had been ready to walk out.

The former Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary reportedly only pulled back when Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffith went on the airwaves to toughen Labour's stance and backed Theresa May's insistence that Moscow was responsible.

Challenged yesterday, Mr Smith would say only that he had not 'publicly' threatened to resign.

Well-placed sources said Owen Smith (pictured) had been so appalled at Mr Corbyn's initial failure to blame Russia for the attack earlier this month that he had been ready to walk out

Mr Corbyn's decision to fire him for breaching party policy by calling for a second EU referendum has been branded a 'Stalinist purge' by former Cabinet Minister Peter Hain.

However, Mr Smith  who challenged Mr Corbyn for the party leadership unsuccessfully in 2016  is suspected by many Labour MPs of deliberately provoking his leader into sacking him by defying party policy.

One said: 'Owen's clearly been cruising for a bruising over the Europe issue because getting sacked for it makes him look like a martyr.'

Mr Smith yesterday denied that, insisting he had to speak out and warn that the country could be about to 'sleepwalk' towards a Brexit 'that we know is going to be damaging to our economy'.

And he reaffirmed his fears that leaving the EU would harm the Good Friday Agreement that delivered peace in Northern Ireland.

The Pontypridd MP also took a swipe at close Corbyn ally Diane Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary, for backing his dismissal.

He pointed out that last year she had also suggested a second vote on the EU, before backtracking.

Mr Smith said: 'She said something very similar just a couple of months ago and she hasn't been sacked.'Theresa May was dragged into an extraordinary sex smear row last night over claims her longest-serving No 10 aide was involved in a corrupt Brexit plot.

The Prime Ministers political secretary Stephen Parkinson was under pressure to resign after explosive claims that he risked the lives of a former lovers Pakistani family by outing him as gay in a vicious feud over the EU referendum.

Mr Parkinson was accused by whistleblower Shahmir Sanni of cheating to help the official Vote Leave campaign  led by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove  get around strict campaign spending laws.

Stephen Parkinson, left, was accused of outing his former boyfriend Shahmir Sanni, after Mr Sanni decided to turn whistleblower about the Vote Leave's conduct of the Brexit vote

Mr Parkinson, right, released a statement on Friday night outing his former boyfriend

Astonishingly, Mr Parkinson hit back by declaring that he had dated Mr Sanni during the referendum campaign, and appeared to suggest he had gone public because of their break-up.

A furious Mr Sanni responded by accusing Mr Parkinson  and by extension his boss Mrs May  of outing him. He said his friends and family in Pakistan did not know he was gay and Mr Parkinson had deliberately put them in danger.

And yesterday, Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave and Mr Goves close personal and political ally, launched a new onslaught against Mr Sanni, branding him a liar.

Mr Cummings said Mr Sanni had left Mr Parkinson with no choice but to tell Mrs May and the public of their affair.

Meanwhile, Mr Parkinson blasted Mr Sannis factually incorrect claims about campaign spending.

The sensational developments came amid growing evidence linking the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the Brexit campaign. The Mail on Sunday has been told:

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham is seeking details from both major pro-Brexit groups on where they got social media data for their referendum campaigns;

A crony of Nigel Farage works for Cambridge Analytica, the firm accused of using a Facebook loophole to harvest the data from 50 million users to help Donald Trump win the US Presidential election;

There is new evidence linking Cambridge Analytica to another data firm, AggregateIQ, which was paid almost 4 million to run a social media campaign by Vote Leave.

Information Commissioners officials yesterday finished a seven-hour search of Cambridge Analyticas London HQ, driving away in a van carrying evidence.

Remain supporters have long claimed that Leave campaigners used illicit methods to win the referendum in 2016  claims denied by the Brexit camp, who accuse Remainers of sour grapes.

The gay smear clash flared when Mr Cummings used his website to publish a pre-emptive rebuttal of Mr Sannis allegations.

Mr Sanni claims Vote Leave had illegally paid 625,000 to relatively obscure social media campaign group BeLeave to evade spending caps. Mr Sanni was also a volunteer with BeLeave, run by Darren Grimes, a 23-year-old fashion student from County Durham.

Mr Sanni told Channel 4 News last night: I know that Vote Leave cheated. I know that people have been lied to and that the referendum wasnt legitimate.

He added that he hadnt changed his stance in favour of leaving the EU, but said: I dont agree with losing what it means to be British in that process; losing what it means to follow the rules.

Along with two other whistleblowers, Mr Sanni has handed 46 pages of evidence to the Electoral Commission, which he says back his claim that Vote Leave broke the law by exceeding spending limits.

It includes the allegation that, despite working for a supposedly separate organisation, he always reported to Mr Parkinson at Vote Leave. Everything went through Stephen, he told Channel 4. Mr Sanni also said he was told that the only way BeLeave could secure the 625,000 would be if they gave it straight to AggregateIQ  which he said struck him as a bit odd.

Astonishingly, Mr Cummings defiant rebuttal of the claims included a personal statement from Mr Parkinson, who has worked closely with Mrs May for six years.

He is the sole surviving aide from her days as Home Secretary, after former chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill were forced to quit after the botched General Election.

In the statement, Mr Parkinson said he and Mr Sanni had dated after meeting while campaigning for Vote Leave, but later split up.

He vehemently denied Mr Sannis claim that the campaign had cheated in the referendum by covertly funnelling Vote Leave cash to BeLeave. Significantly, Mr Parkinson added he thought their split had been amicable, but he could understand if the lines became blurred for Mr Sanni.

His statement, effectively outing Mr Sanni, was done without informing Mrs May or No 10 and stunned fellow Downing Street staff. Some thought he was suggesting Mr Sanni had turned whistleblower because of a lovers tiff.

Mr Parkinson said he had no responsibility for digital campaigning or donations during the referendum, and that he and Vote Leave obeyed the law and spending rules at all times.

Enraged Mr Sanni lashed out at No 10 for disclosing my sexuality publicly.

His lawyer implicated the Prime Minister, saying: This is the first time a Downing Street official statement has been used to out someone.

Mr Sanni said: Its sad Stephen feels he cannot tell the truth about the referendum. I never imagined he, with the help of No 10, would choose to tell the world I am gay in a last desperate attempt to scare me.

He said he had been forced to come out to his mother and many of his family and friends in Pakistan, adding: Some of whom are having to take measures to ensure their safety. He knew the danger it would cause and that is why he did it.

Some Tory MPs say Mr Parkinson may be forced to resign. You cant have Downing Street officials making provocative statements about other peoples private lives on the internet, said one. But Mr Cummings returned to the attack yesterday, claiming Mr Sanni had repeatedly lied.

He scorned Mr Sanni for initially demanding Mr Parkinsons statement about his sexuality be deleted from the internet because his relatives in Pakistan might get killed.

Shahmir is unquestionably telling lies about BeLeave, said Mr Cummings. Given the nature of his accusations, no reasonable person would have thought Mr Parkinson could explain all this while hiding the fact of their relationship.

A Vote Leave spokesman also claimed Mr Sanni had previously stated that Vote Leave and BeLeave were separate organisations and had not co-operated illicitly. It also emerged last night that Mr Sanni had been filmed attending a Gay Pride event in Downing Street last year. Mr Parkinsons supporters said this suggested he had never hidden his sexuality.

l Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has taken out full-page adverts on the back of national newspapers today, including The Mail on Sunday, to apologise for the breach of trust which allowed the data of 50 million account-holders to be used for political purposes without their knowledge. We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we cant, we dont deserve it, he wrote in a bid to restore faith in his company as its share price plunged 14 per cent in a week.Theresa May's former chief of staff Nick Timothy tonight defended her current political secretary Stephen Parkinson who 'outed' his former boyfriend as gay to stop him from becoming a whistleblower.

Shahmir Sanni, who was in a relationship with Mr Parkinson for 18 months, worked on the Brexit campaign as a volunteer.

Mr Sanni, who is of Pakistani heritage, was forced on Friday night to tell his mother and friends about his sexuality after Mr Parkinson wrote on a Vote Leave blog that he was gay.

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Theresa May's former chief of staff Nick Timothy, right, has come to the defence of her current political secretary Stephen Parkinson, left, who has been accused of 'outing' his former boyfriend Shahmir Sanni who was planning to blow the whistle on Vote Leave Brexit spending

Shahmir Sanni, pictured, accused Vote Leave used the BeLeave campaign to get around strict spending limits set by the Electoral Commission at the time of the Brexit referendum

Mr Parkinson, right, pictured here with David Cameron, is one of Theresa May's longest-standing aides having moved with her from the Home Office to Downing Street

Nick Timothy, who was forced to resign as Theresa May's joint chief of staff following last year's disastrous election campaign tweeted his support for Mr Parkinson - who had previously been an aide to Mrs May at the Home Office.

Mr Timothy wrote: 'I can't comment on the allegations about Vote Leave as I did not work for the campaign. Two quick observations, though:

'Stephen Parkinson is a good friend. He wouldn't dream of outing somebody for cynical reasons. In fact, when he was a Tory candidate in 2010, he was, ludicrously (but inevitably, being a Tory), accused of homophobia. So he was forced to come out himself.

'Has everybody forgotten that the *entire* weight of the Whitehall machine was put behind the remain campaign?

'If the referendum was slanted it was in favour of continued EU membership. This is not going to stop Brexit.

'We are leaving the EU, and leaving next March.'

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt defended Mr Parkinson as 'someone of the highest integrity', adding 'there are two sides to these stories'.

He told ITV's Peston on Sunday: 'The critical question here is - first of all - was the campaign properly conducted? Also, did anything that happened that shouldn't have happened - if that was the case - actually affect the result?'

Nick Timothy, Theresa May's former chief of staff defended his friend on Twitter tonight

The officially designated Brexit campaign 'cheated' during the European Union referendum, a whistleblower has claimed.

The claims centre around Vote Leave's links to another campaign - BeLeave - which it helped fund.

Shahmir Sanni, who worked on the campaign, claimed Vote Leave used it to get around strict spending limits set by the Electoral Commission.

Vote Leave has strongly denied wrongdoing and said the 625,000 donated to BeLeave was within the rules.

But Mr Sanni told Channel 4 News: 'I know that Vote Leave cheated ... I know that people have been lied to and that the referendum wasn't legitimate.'

Mr Sanni was in a relationship with senior Vote Leave figure Stephen Parkinson - now Theresa May's political secretary - at the time of the referendum and claimed through his lawyers he was 'outed' by the Number 10 aide in the run-up to the Channel 4 disclosure.

Mr Sanni released a statement on Friday night through his solicitors Bindmans

Mr Sanni went to the Electoral Commission with two other pro-Brexit friends on Thursday, who say they helped the Vote Leave campaign two years ago, Channel 4 reported.

Their lawyers have given the election watchdog signed statements.

Mr Sanni told the broadcaster he was initially a Vote Leave outreach volunteer but he was then assigned to BeLeave.

Vote Leave said it did not recall Mr Sanni working as a volunteer, but he was 'like hundreds of others who occasionally visited the offices'.

Mr Sanni said that he and BeLeave's co-founder Darren Grimes always reported to Mr Parkinson.

'There was no time where anything BeLeave did didn't go through Stephen,' he said.

In the final 10 days of the 2016 referendum campaign Vote Leave donated 625,000 to Mr Grimes, who was registered as a permitted participant, with the money used to pay Canadian data firm Aggregate IQ (AIQ), the programme said.

Asked whether they could have refused to spend the money on AIQ, Mr Sanni said: 'We didn't ever feel like we had that level of control.

Mr Sanni, right, who was in a relationship with Mr Parkinson, left, for 18 months accused his ex-boyfriend of putting his Pakistani family in danger by 'outing' him

'That's what I mean, we never felt like we had control over the organisation itself.'

He claimed: 'In effect they used BeLeave to over-spend, and not just by a small amount ... Almost two-thirds of a million pounds makes all the difference and it wasn't legal.'

Mr Parkinson said he was 'saddened' by the 'factually incorrect and misleading' statements by Mr Sanni and his lawyers.

He added: 'At the relevant time during the referendum period, the commission advised Vote Leave that it was permissible to make a donation in the way it proposed to do to BeLeave.

'Twice since the referendum the commission has investigated this matter, and twice it has found no evidence of wrongdoing. A third investigation into the same issue is currently taking place.

'The Electoral Commission has not contacted me in relation to any of these inquiries, but I will of course be happy to assist in them if they wish me to do so.

'I firmly deny the allegations in the programme.

'I had no responsibility for digital campaigning or donations on the Vote Leave campaign, and am confident that I stayed within the law and strict spending rules at all times.'

Mr Grimes also denies all the allegations, Channel 4 said.

A Vote Leave spokesman said it had 'twice been cleared on this matter by the Electoral Commission' adding: 'There are now a number of new accusations and allegations.

'While many of them seem irrelevant or trivial, some are serious and potentially damaging to the reputations of those caught up in those allegations.

'As has been the case throughout, Vote Leave is obligated to review - to the extent it can after this long elapsed period since the referendum - all such allegations, and is doing so.

'We will as appropriate share any relevant findings with the Electoral Commission, again as we have always done.'

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said: 'The commission has a number of investigations open in relation to campaigners at the EU Referendum; it does not comment on live investigations.'

MailOnline has approached Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) for a comment.James Packer has reportedly asked his estranged second wife Erica to 'take him back' after succumbing to a volley of 'mental health issues' and sensationally quitting as director of Crown Resorts.

Following multiple unsuccessful attempts to reconcile with his second wife, who mothered his three children, Packer has also checked into one of the top psychiatric facilities in the United States.

The Pavilion at Boston's McLean Hospital, an 11-bed facility where the embattled business mogul will receive treatment, charges $5000 a night for its exclusive 14-day program, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Packer checked in on Thursday night, accompanied by his elderly mother Ros and friend Guy Jallan.

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James Packer (pictured) checked into an exclusive mental health facility in Boston on Thursday night after sensationally quitting as director of Crown Resorts

Packer is also trying to reconcile with his second wife Erica, who mothered his three children

Joined by his mother Ros and friend Guy Jallan, Packer checked in to The Pavilion, where he will undergo testing and treatment for $5000 AUD a night

McLean Hospital is considered the best mental health treatment centre in the United States, and Boston Globe journalist Alex Beam told the Telegraph the facility was 'the real deal', not a usual destination for celebrities putting up a front.

'McLean is a medical facility and not a fake medical facility like some of these spas in Arizona. Harvey Weinstein would not fit in there,' he explained.

'It's for people who can spare no expense. It's not where you hide out from the paparazzi or avoid a judge.'

Sylvia Plath was a patient of McLean Hospital, as were musician Ray Charles and mathematician John Nash.

The pair are believed to remain on good terms, with the family spending time together in Aspen

Ms Packer has reportedly declined to rekindle their romance after creating a stable life for her family in Los Angeles

Friends also allege Erica does not wish to expose her children - Indigo, 9, Jackson, 8, and Emmanuelle, 5 - to their father's 'seismic' mood swings

In addition to seeking help with his mental health, Packer is also believed to be seeking the support of his ex-wife, who mothered his three children.

The 50-year-old has made multiple attempts to reconcile with Erica Packer, who has turned him down, The Daily Telegraph earlier reported.

Packer is reportedly wanting to 'turn back the clock' by reuniting with his second wife in the hopes he can pick up the pieces the dark cloud of depression tore apart.

'Turning back the clock five years might be what James wants but it won't help Erica,' a family friend told the publication

'She has finally got her life together and has created a stable life in Los Angeles for her kids.'

Friends also allege Erica does not wish to expose her children - Indigo, 9, Jackson, 8, and Emmanuelle, 5 - to their father's 'seismic' mood swings.

Erica's snub is unsurprising after Packer left the model to pursue bachelorhood and to expand his casino empire.

'He made friends only with people he believed could help him generate money and jettisoned everyone else. He became ruder, more poorly behaved than he had ever been before,' a former friend alleges.

It is believed Packer has come to the belated realisation his ex-wife offered 'support' and 'stability' to his turbulent life in the public eye.

It is believed Packer has come to the belated realisation his ex-wife offered 'support' and 'stability' to his turbulent life in the public eye.

Despite rejecting her ex-husband's advances, Erica has long been a pillar of support for the casino tycoon

They are often photographed together and appear to get along well as they co-parent their three children

Despite rejecting her ex-husband's advances, Erica has long been a pillar of support for the casino tycoon.

They are often photographed together and appear to get along well as they co-parent their three children.

The 40-year-old brunette visited Packer in Aspen at Christmas as he holidayed with socialite Kylie Lim.

James has been unlucky in love, with his recent failed engagement to Mariah Carey reportedly costing him between $6 and $13 million.

He married his first wife Jodhi Meares in 1999 and the couple separated in 2002.

Packer made his mental health struggle public upon deciding to step down as director of his beloved casino business.

'Mr Packer is suffering from mental health issues. At this time he intends to step back from all commitments,' Mr Packer's private investment vehicle CPH said in a statement.

Packer stepped down as director of Crown Resorts, citing 'mental health issues' (Crown pictured)

James has been unlucky in love, with his recent failed engagement to Mariah Carey (pictured) reportedly costing him between $6 and $13 million

One of Australia's richest people, with a personal fortune estimated at $4.1 billion, Packer announced on Wednesday he would 'step back from all commitments' indefinitely.

The only son of late media mogul Kerry then flew to Mexico following his shock resignation.

His mother Roslyn Packer, 80, was also seen getting off a direct flight from Sydney in Los Angeles.

For confidential support in Australia call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14.Advertisement

Nicholas Dworet would have turned 18 years old on Saturday, his friends revealed during the March For Our Lives event in Washington, DC.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior was one of 17 people killed on February 14 when gunman Nikolas Cruz opened fire with an AR-15 inside the Parkland, Florida school.

Samantha Fuentes, 18, who was shot in both legs and hit with shrapnel in her face, gave a heart-wrenching speech at the rally pleading for stricter gun laws.

In the middle of her addressing the crowd Fuentes, overcome with emotion, ducked behind the podium to vomit but quickly gathered herself together.

Samantha Fuentes (left) led a crowd of people at the March For Our Lives event in DC in an emotional sing-along of 'Happy Birthday' in honor of Nicholas Dworet (right), who was killed in the Parkland school shooting. He would have turned 18 today

Samantha Fuentes (right) was one of several Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students who gave speeches at the rally

800,000 teens and adults turned out for the March For Our Lives event in Washington, DC

The rally was to plead for stricter gun laws after 17 people were killed on February 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

'I just threw up on international television, and it feels great!' she said.

Before walking off the stage Fuentes asked the crowd of 800,00 people to help her sing 'Happy Birthday' in honor of her friend, ABC News reports.

'I have one more request. Today is March 24, March for Our Lives. But it also the birthday of Nick Dworet. Someone that was senselessly murdered in front of me,' she said.

As the large crowd sang, some teens held each other and cried. Fuentes got emotional but continued to sing.

Earlier on Saturday, student Cameron Kasky read the names of all 17 people killed in the shooting. He saved Dworet's name for last.

'And I saved Nicholas for the end, because today is Nicholas' birthday,' Kasky said. 'Nicholas, we are all here for you. Happy birthday.'

Dworet's family said in a statement that the teen was the captain of Marjory Stoneman's swim team. He was supposed to start University of Indianapolis in the fall where he was going to join the university's swim team.

'He was a happy young man full of joy and life,' the statement read. 'He dreamed of making the Olympic swim team and going to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. He believed he could accomplish anything as long as he tried his best.'

'Nick's death is a reminder that we are connected to the larger world, and when tragedy hits in places around the world, it oftentimes affects us at home,' Un

Samantha Fuentes, who was wounded in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, asks the crowd to join her in singing "Happy Birthday" to Parkland victim Nicholas Dworet, who would've turned 18 today https://t.co/IcL7STLrLp pic.twitter.com/D8s0jwpc0P  CNN (@CNN) March 24, 2018

A girl cries as Marjory Stoneman student Samantha Fuentes leads the group in singing 'Happy Birthday' to her friend who was killed in the February 14 attack

Teens cry as at a rally in DC as Samantha Fuentes sings 'Happy Birthday' in honor of a Parkland school victim who would have turned 18 on Saturday

The crowd was emotional as they sang 'Happy Birthday' in honor of Nicholas Dworet

Thousands of teens attended the SC rally. Pictured above are three teenagers listening to Samantha Fuentes' speech

Hundreds of thousands of people filled Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC on Saturday for the March For Our Lives against gun violence

Fuentes was shot in both legs during the February 14 attack at her high school and was hit in the face by shrapnel

Fuentes was one of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida injured in the February shooting

The teen spent a week in the hospital before she was released. Fuentes is pictured above with family members

iversity of Indianapolis president Robert L Mauel previously said in a statement.

Hundreds of thousands of people turned out for the March For Our Lives events on Saturday.

The main event was held in DC, but another 800 events took place around the world in cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Chicago, Houston, Denver, Pittsburgh, Boston, Miami, Atlanta, Nashville and other areas.

Globally, events were held in Paris, London, Berlin, Sydney, Mumbai, Tokyo.

Fuentes was just one of many Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students who gave speeches.

The teens were joined by a raft of stars including George and Amal Clooney, who donated $500,000 to the event, Jimmy Fallon, Steven Spielberg, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus.

Singers including Andra Day and Jennifer Hudson were among those who performed in front of the crowds.

A satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe showed the massive crowd at the March For Our Lives rally in Washington, DC on Saturday.

Parkland survivor David Hogg, 17, was among the 20 young speakers at the Washington DC event. At the end of his impassioned speech, he took a presidential tone and said: 'Thank you, I love you all. God bless you and God bless the United States of America'

Emma Gonzalez, one of the most vocal of the event organizers, went silent on stage until she had been there for 6 minutes and 20 seconds, the amount of time it took gunman Nikolas Cruz to murder 17 people at Stoneman Douglas on February 14

Parkland survivor Alex Wind fought tears as he gave his own speech at the Washington DC event

The DC march began on Pennsylvania Avenue at noon on Saturday. It has been organized by the teenage survivors of the Parkland shooting on February 14

Hours before the event began, the streets in DC were filled and students the crowds looked towards the Capitol where a stafe was set up

This satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe shows the March For Our Lives rally in Washington, DC on Saturday

Digital Globe called the nationwide demonstratins calling for gun control, collectively, one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam era

Youngsters lead the march in Washington DC on Saturday at the March for Our Lives protest

Young protesters in Washington DC carried signs demanding the outlawing of assault rifles like the AR-15 used by Nikolas Cruz to commit mass murder on February 14

The March For Our Lives in Washington DC on Saturday concluded with a performance from Jennifer Hudson who, afterwards, was joined on the stage by the 20 young speakers from the event. They included Parkland school shooting survivors

Hudson is a victim of gun violence too. Her mother, brother and nephew were all murdered in 2008. They were shot to death. She is pictured hugging Stoneman Douglas student Emma Gonzalez as 11-year-old Naomi Wadler, one of the event speakers, looks out towards the crowd

Digital Globe called the nationwide demonstrations calling for gun control, collectively, one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam era.

David Hogg, one of the Stoneman Douglas survivors who has been at the forefront of the issue ever since, spoke confidently about the event on Saturday morning in an early interview with GMA.

'Today we are going to start a revolution.

'This is the beginning of a lifelong marathon not only for me but for my generation.

'We are sick and tired of the inaction here in Washington and around the country at different state capitals and different cities, of politicians that are owned by the NRA and not listening to the constituents of America.

'We are the children. We are making our voices heard and we will change America with or without these politicians and today is the beginning of that revolution,' he declared.

Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West attended the event with their daughter North. They are pictured backstage

Even North West, the eldest daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, was at the protest in Washington DC

Later on Twitter the beauty mogul and reality star wrote: 'Im so happy I got to share this moment with these two [Kanye and North]. I hope North remembers this forever'

Kim Kardashian West posed for a selfie with a young attended at the march in Washington

George and Amal Clooney beamed at the Washington DC March For Our Lives protest. The activist couple donated $500,000

George and Amal Clooney watch the stage at the March For Our Lives in Washington DC on Saturday

George and Amal Clooney are pictured at the Washington DC March For Our Lives protest on Saturday. They donated $500,000 to the event

Paul McCartney wears a t-shirt reading 'We Can End Gun Violence' during the March For Our Lives protest in New York City

A woman takes a selfie with Paul McCartney during the March For Our Lives protest against gun violence in New York City

Selena Gomez wrote on Instagram: 'I don't want this to just be an Instagram post anymore. PLEASE. ENOUGH. These people, families and CHILDREN have suffered enough. Today we march for our lives. I'm going to continue to trust god with the future and also play my part in bringing change'

Teaming up: The stars were seen sharing a friendly embrace as they took the streets to demonstrate against gun violence with thousands of other marchers

Model Kaia Gerber, the daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford, was spotted at the March for our Lives rally in Los Angeles holding sign with a friend

Model and reality star Kendall Jenner turned up to the protest and was spotted with friend Jaden Smith

Jaden Smith (left), Kendall Jenner (center) and Hailey Baldwin (right) attending March For Our Lives in Los Angeles

Disgraced YouTube star Logan Paul makes it out to the "March For Our Lives" event held in downtown LA

Actress Amy Schumer speaks at the March For Our Lives in downtown in Los Angeles

Actress Olivia Wilde (left) and Connie Britton (right) gave speeches at the protest held in Los Angeles

Singer Charlie Puth was spotted wearing a statement-making shirt emblazoned 'enough is enough' at the event in Los Angeles

Demi Lovato also sang at the Washington DC march on Saturday as part of the March For Our Lives protest

Singer Willow Smith (left) and actress Yara Shahidi (right) speak at the March For Our Lives in downtown in Los Angeles

Actress Alyssa Milano was seen with her children at the anti-gun March For Our Lives rally in downtown LA

TV anchor Katie Couric attends the March For Our Lives in Washington DC

Senator Elizabeth Warren joins students gathered at Madison Park High School before the March for Our Lives in Boston

Later, in his own speech, he spoke of the 'cold shackles of corruption' which is gripping the NRA and slammed the government for not doing more.

'If you listen real close you can hear the people in power shaking.

Gunman Nikolas Cruz was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder for the February 14 massacre

'They've gotten used to being protective of their position, through the safety of inaction. Inaction is no longer safe. To that, we say, no more!'

Hogg spoke of making gun violence a 'voting issue' which will lead the primary elections.

'We are going to take this to every election to every state and every city.

'We are going to make sure the best people get in to run, not as politicians but as Americans,' he fumed.

Pointing to the Capitol, he added: 'This... is not cutting it. At the end of the speech, he told the crowd: 'I love you all. God bless you and God bless the United States of America'.

The final speech was the most compelling.

It was delivered by Emma Gonzalez, who was in Stoneman Douglas on February 14 when gunman Nikolas Cruz stormed the building with an AR-15.

During the middle of her speech, Emma went silent for several minutes until she had been on stage for a total of 6 minutes and 20 seconds - the exact amount of time it took Cruz to murder 17 people and injure 15 more.

'Six minutes and 20 seconds... In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken, 15 were injured and everyone, absolutely everyone, in the Douglas community was forever altered,' she said.

This was the scene on Pennsylvania Avenue at around 9am on Saturday morning as more and more protesters arrived with signs

Signs written in both English and Spanish were dotted among the fast-growing crowd on Saturday morning

NEW YORK CITY: Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell take part in the march in Manhattan on Saturday. McCartney told a reporter: 'One of my best friends was shot not far from here'. He was of course referring to John Lennon who was gunned down outside The Dakota Building which was within eyeshot of the NYC march on Saturday

British singer Leona Lewis attended the protest in Los Angeles. She wrote on Instagram: 'So inspired by all of the students who came out and raised their voices against gun violence today. These young people are the future and protecting them should be our highest priority. It was beautiful and awe inspiring to witness everyone coming together to uplift the message of putting an end to gun violence. Thank you for having me, I stand with you'

British singer Rita Ora also turned up to the protest, sporting an attention-grabbing bright orange ensemble

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Emma Gonzalez (left) attend March For Our Live s rally in DC. Miranda was also spotted with Ben Platt

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt perform on the stage at the March For Our Lives in Washington DC on Saturday

Ariana Grande (left) and Miley Cyrus (right) also performed at the event in Washington DC on Saturday

Singer Andra Day kicked off the performances in Washington DC rally with a children's choir from Baltimore who sang her hit Rise Up with her

Steven Spielberg with his wife Kate Capshaw (left) and George Clooney is seen with Dennis Rodman (right)

Glenn Close and Cher hug backstage at the Washington DC March For Our Lives on Saturday afternoon

Jimmy Fallon is also at the event in Washington DC. He also posed with Rodman backstage

Jaden Smith and his girlfriend Odessa Adlon march at the anti-gun March For Our Lives rally in downtown LA

Actress Marisa Tomei participates in March For Our Lives Los Angeles while wearing a Time's Up shirt

Martin Luther King III and Yolanda Renee King attend the March For Our Lives protest in Washington DC

Matthew McConaughey speaks during the march in Austin, Texas, next to his daughter (left)

Lady Gaga shared support over social media, making her presence known at a march

Model Kaia Gerber is spotted out at the March for our Lives rally with a friend in Los Angeles holding sign that reads 'One child is worth more than all the guns on the earth'

Nick Offerman (left) came out to show his support and marched in Los Angeles, while comedian Chelsea Handler (right) was out in DC

Joined the tens of thousands attending: Milla Jovovich and her third husband, Paul W. S. Anderson, brought their daughter Dashiel Edan to the March For Our Lives rally in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday

Jaime King shared an image of herself with a sign turning the term 'pro-life' on its head, and using it to call for for people to march for our lives, kids and babies

Cyrus also shared a photo, including her sister Noah Cyrus, with her marching group outfitted in hooded sweatshirts featuring the March For Our Lives logo

Natalie Morales carried a sign that said 'Everytown for gun safety'

Author and producer Padma Lakshmi took her politics to the bank, calling attention to the money behind our nation's current gun control policies

Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon, who announced her candidacy for governor of New York on March 19, joined marchers in New York City

'Exhausted' shooting survivor David Hogg, 17, complains that his parents don't know how to use a 'f***** democracy' David Hogg, 17, on Good Morning America on Saturday where he heralded the march as 'the start of a revolution' Shooting survivor David Hogg, who has been at the forefront of advocacy for tighter gun laws since 17 of his classmates and teachers were murdered on February 14, gave a foul-mouthed interview on Friday on the issue. Speaking to The Outline, Hogg, 17, tried to explain why his generation felt they had to take things into their own hands to effect change. ''When your old-a** parent is like "I dont know how to send an iMessage" and youre just like, "Give me the f***ing phone and let me handle it," Sadly, thats what we have to do with our government. 'Our parents dont know how to use a f***ing democracy, so we have to.' Since February 15, the day after the shooting, Hogg has been dogged in his participation in media interviews. He became such a regular fixture on CNN that right-wing trolls wrongly labeled him a 'crisis actor' who had been pushed forward to peddle a Democratic agenda on television. All of the talking and organizing of events has left him 'beyond exhausted' he said. 'Im beyond exhausted. I get to a certain point where I just get so tired that I keep going. It creates a positive feedback loop in some ways  the more stress and work I put on me, the more stress and work I can deal with,' he said. He also complained about some of the changes being made to prevent more shootings, namely the clear backpacks students at his school are now being asked to wear. Hogg says it violates their 'First Amendment Rights' and is 'embarrassing'. 'Its unnecessary, its embarrassing for a lot of the students and it makes them feel isolated and separated from the rest of American school culture where theyre having essentially their First Amendment rights infringed upon because they cant freely wear whatever backpack they want regardless of what it is. Hogg said he was 'beyond exhausted' but that he could cope with the 'stress' of organizing the march and advocating for gun reform 'It has to be a clear backpack. What we should have is just more policies that make sure that these students are feeling safe and secure in their schools and not like theyre being fought against like its a prison.' 'One of the other important things to realize is many students want their privacy,' he added. 'There are many, for example, females in our school that when they go through their menstrual cycle, they dont want people to see their tampons and stuff.' He also took a swipe at the NRA, calling them 'sick f******' and condemned Senator Marco Rubio and Governor Rick Scott for accepting their donations. 'It just makes me think, "What sick f**ers out there want to continue to sell more guns, murder more children, and honestly just get reelected?"' He added: 'What type of s**** person does that? They could have blood from children splattered all over their faces and they wouldnt take action, because they all still see these dollar signs.' AdvertisementI cannot resist asking the Health Secretary about an extraordinary account of his meeting with Nimco Ali, a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM), writes Simon Walters.

Somali-born Ms Ali, who is now a campaigner against the barbaric practice, met Mr Hunt at his Whitehall office to discuss the issue. She said Mr Hunts first question was: What I really want to know is, can girls like you have an orgasm? She said she replied: Well, it depends how good you are Jeremy because 80 per cent of the clitoris is internal, but lets move on.

Somali-born Ms Ali,left, who is now a campaigner against the barbaric practice said she was asked by Mr. Hunt whether she was able to have orgasms

So did he really ask such an intimate question? Seeing the warning lights flashing, Mr Hunt offers me a perfect gentlemans response: All I will say is that shes an amazing lady and weve made incredible progress on FGM thanks to her.

Hmm sounds like he did say it, though perhaps in not such a Harvey Weinstein way. Which is as you might expect from a former Charterhouse head boy.Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt today throws his weight behind a controversial NHS tax to tackle the timebomb of how to pay for elderly people in care.

In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, he suggests it could solve the dementia tax row that badly damaged Theresa Mays Election campaign last year.

Mr Hunt also pledges to end the unfairness of cancer patients getting costly treatment for free while dementia sufferers are cleaned out of their savings to pay care bills.

The Health Secretary suggests it could solve the dementia tax row that badly damaged Theresa Mays Election campaign last year

But he knows his support for a hypothecated tax  when money goes directly to the NHS, not the Treasury  sets him on a collision course with Chancellor Philip Hammond, who hates giving up his grip on the nations purse strings.

Mr Hunt says: It is beyond dispute that with a million more over- 75s in ten years time, the NHS and social care system are going to need more money.

The public are very clear that for that specific issue they are willing to pay more tax but want to know that every penny is going to be spent wisely.

Asked if the appeal of such a ringfenced tax was that it would guarantee to help the elderly and infirm, Mr Hunt says: Absolutely. That is the attraction.

His pledge comes in a wide-ranging interview in which he:

Candidly declares it is wrong to believe NHS hospitals are very safe and vows to slash 150 avoidable deaths every week;

Speaks movingly about the anguish of watching his grandmother, Betty, lose her senses one by one before she died in a nursing home aged 100.

Reveals how his father Nicholas, a Royal Navy admiral, died four years ago from asbestosis caused by contamination from one of the ships he commanded.

There is a palpable new swagger to Mr Hunt, 51, who has always appeared too clean-cut to compete with his more ruthless rivals  Boris Johnson and Michael Gove  to be Prime Minister. The only time the Health Secretarys bedside manner is ruffled during our hour-long interview is when I enquire if he really did ask an anti-female genital mutilation campaigner about orgasms.

Hunt watched his dear grandmother Betty, pictured here, struggle in her last days

Any suggestion he lacks the thrust to get to the top were scotched two months ago when Mrs May summoned him to No 10 to give him the push. He refused to quit his post  and the Maybot crumbled.

Further evidence of his extra Cabinet clout came last week when he wrestled a bumper 4 billion- a-year pay deal for NHS workers from Mr Hammond.

Now Mr Hunt is focusing on two other objectives  curbing preventable deaths in the NHS, starting with extra midwives, and solving a major cause of Mrs Mays botched Election last year, the dementia tax fiasco.

Everyone accepts that the ageing population means vast sums will be needed to pay for people with conditions such as dementia.

At present, dementia sufferers in care homes can have all but their last 23,250 stripped from them. Mrs May planned to increase the limit, but fatally she also vowed to grab their property if they needed care at home.

If Mr Hunt gets his way, there could be a radical hypothecated tax so that money goes direct to the NHS, bypassing Mr Hammonds greedy Treasury.

It is seen by some as a way of making tax rises more palatable by ringfencing the cash for popular causes such as care for the elderly and the NHS. A 1p tax rise raises about 5 billion a year. But in return, Mr Hunt would let those with dementia keep their homes and savings. He stresses he has not made up his mind  and it is up to Mrs May and Mr Hammond to decide the matter. But he leaves little doubt as to his intentions.

Mr Hunt leaving Downing street. The 51-year-old has always appeared too clean-cut to compete with his more ruthless rivals  Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to be Prime Minister

No one can deny we got our fingers burned on social care in the Election, he says. Asked if an NHS tax appeals to him, Mr Hunt says: If we want every single old person to be treated with the dignity and respect we would want for our own mum or dad, it will need more resources. It is vital to be open-minded to innovative models of taxation to provide the cash.

The British people say, I dont mind more money going to the NHS but I want to know it is for the NHS and wont be wasted. 

Mr Hunt says it is wrong that if you get dementia your assets are far more at risk than if you get cancer. I would like to get rid of the unfairness whereby the assets of your loved ones can be cleaned out if you get dementia.

He stresses he has not made his mind up on a hypothecated NHS tax and acknowledges winning over Mr Hammond will not be easy. The Treasury do not like it because it takes it out of their hands, he admits.

His voice falters as he recalls the final days of his grandmother Betty, who died aged 100 in a nursing home in 2003. By the end she lost nearly all her senses one by one. She couldnt see or speak, all she could do was hear, he says.

Hunt would like to see money go straight into the NHS rather than the treasury. Here, Philip Hammond and Theresa May

Were going to have a lot more people like her. Living to 100 wont be the exception as it was for my grandmother  it will be the norm. My kids have a 50 per cent chance of living until they are 103. Mr Hunt and his Chinese-born wife Lucia have three children  John, seven, Anna, six, and Ellie, three.

He also saw his father, Sir Nicholas Hunt, Bettys son, die a painful death in 2013 as a result of contact with asbestos formerly used in ships.

Mr Hunt says the shocking Mid Staffs NHS scandal in 2010, where up to 1,200 people died because of blunders, has made him think again about hospital safety.

There are much higher levels of avoidable harm and death in modern health care systems than the public really understand. People assume hospitals are very safe places, he says.

In reality, in modern health systems all over the world, we harm around ten per cent of patients. There are about 150 preventable NHS deaths every week. Too much care is unsafe.

For this Health Secretary, plain speaking is clearly more important than a reassuring bedside manner.

The man who took on Theresa May... and won: SIMON WALTERS says the PM has given Jeremy Hunt a leadership platform

Jeremy Hunt freely admits that when he was made Health Secretary nearly six years ago he knew absolutely nothing about health.

Having just survived one of the worst winters for the NHS for years, as well as a recent attempt by Prime Minister Theresa May to fire him, it would be richly ironic if he were to end up succeeding her.

Until recently, such a prospect would have been dismissed out of hand by Tory MPs. But Mr Hunts new-found glow, combined with the Conservatives failure to campaign effectively on the NHS in last years Election, has changed that.

The Health Secretary bridles when I suggest he has Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to thank for getting billions more to fund pay rises for NHS workers.

But there is some truth in it. The Brexit-obsessed Tories foolishly allowed Labour to play its trump card against them: the NHS isnt safe in Conservative hands.

Now Mrs May has been forced to pay up to prove it is  and that has given Mr Hunt a leadership platform.

As an anti-Brexit campaigner who now says he would vote to leave, Mr Hunt is well placed if the party is looking for another unifying figure.

By coincidence, I bumped into a Brexit Minister shortly after parting from Mr Hunt.

Telling him I had just interviewed his colleague, the response was brusque: Parading his leadership ambitions no doubt. Few Tories have become leader on the back of giving money to the NHS.

A sober reminder that winning over his partys support for Hunt for PM could be tougher than wooing the NHS-loving public.Advertisement

Krakow has emerged as the cheapest European city for a bargain break for Brits this spring.

Thats according to Post Office Travel Money, which surveys the price of 12 typical city break items annually  including food and drink, accommodation and must-see attractions  across 36 European cities to produce a City Costs Barometer.

Eastern Europe continues to dominate the list of best-value capitals for UK tourists, taking the top seven places. London comes 25th on the list, with Amsterdam offering the very worst value for money.

Kraking times: Krakow has emerged as the cheapest European city for a bargain break for Brits this spring

London is the 25th most expensive city in Post Office Travel Money's 2018 barometer

At 165 for 12 typical city break items, Krakow has taken the top spot in the City Costs Barometer for the first time.

Prices in Polands second city are less than a third of those in Amsterdam (535).

The high cost of accommodation in Amsterdam - 365 for two nights, up over 100 on 2017  accounts for the 27 per cent increase in its barometer total.

However, prices for meals, drinks and other items are lower than in long-time rivals Paris and Venice.

Although prices are almost 19 per cent higher than a year ago, Vilnius (166) is a close runner-up to Krakow.

Another Baltic capital, third-placed Riga (172), continues to offer by far the cheapest accommodation at 62 for two nights. By comparison, prices in the third Baltic capital, Tallinn (15th, 252), are up by over 20 per cent for the second year running, making the city 53 per cent more expensive than Vilnius.

Elsewhere in Eastern Europe Warsaw (4th, 181), Budapest (5th, 184) and Prague (7th, 200) remain cities where thrifty tourists will get more for their money, even though sterling has slipped in value by between 1.2 and 7.7 per cent against their currencies since last spring.

The highest new top 10 entrant is Moscow (200), which has moved up 10 places to sixth in the table after a 9.6 per cent fall in prices. The weak Russian ruble, low living costs and competitively priced accommodation account for Moscows strong performance.

The high cost of accommodation in Amsterdam - 365 for two nights, up over 100 on 2017  accounts for the 27 per cent increase in its barometer total

36 European cities ranked by their value for money 1. Krakow, Poland 2. Vilnius, Lithuania 3. Riga, Lativa 4. Warsaw 5. Budapest 6. Moscow 7. Prague 8. Athens 9. Lisbon 10. Lille 11. Valletta, Malta 12. Dubrovnik, Croatia 13. Strasbourg 14. Nice 15. Tallinn, Estonia 16. Munich 17. Rome 18. Berlin 19. Palma 20. Edinburgh 21. Belfast 22. Vienna 23. Paris 24. Barcelona 25. London 26. Bruges 27. Geneva 28. Madrid 29. Stockholm 30. Helsinki 31. Dublin 32. Venice 33. Copenhagen 34. Reykjavik 35. Oslo 36. Amsterdam Advertisement

It is one of seven cities where barometer costs have fallen over the past year.

The biggest fall, of 15.3 per cent, is recorded in Stockholm (387), which has moved six places up the table to 29th. This price fall has been boosted by a 4.6 per cent year-on-year rise in sterlings value against the kronor. Along with Oslo (35th, 510) the most expensive Nordic city of five surveyed, Reykjavik (34th, 510) has also seen a sizeable fall of 7.7 per cent.

Another city to register a fall (2.1 per cent) is Lille (209), which has moved four places up the barometer table into 10th place. The three other French cities surveyed also performed well. Strasbourg (13th, 235) and Nice (14th, 246) are in the top half of the table while the long-established city break favourite Paris (23rd, 320) is over 200 cheaper than Amsterdam.

Athens (8th, 200) has regained its place as the cheapest city in Western Europe, overtaking Lisbon (9th, 209), where prices have risen 29 per cent.

Meals in the Greek capital (37.11 for a meal for two with wine) are significantly cheaper than in any of the other cities surveyed.

By comparison, overall barometer prices are over twice as high in the two most expensive Eurozone cities surveyed  Venice (32nd, 423) and Amsterdam (36th, 535).

Just outside the top 10, Valletta (11th, 212) is looking like good value for visitors attracted by its status as this years European Capital of Culture. Meals, drinks and other tourist costs in the Maltese capital are fifth cheapest in the survey, although accommodation costs are higher than in the top 10 cities.

Prices in London (351), meanwhile, have dropped by 5.8 per cent since last spring, according to the research. They have also fallen 2.4 per cent in Belfast (21st, 315), which remains cheaper for a city break than neighbouring Dublin (31st, 388)  although the differential is mainly the result of high hotel prices in the Irish capital. In 20th place, Edinburgh (291) emerges as the cheapest of the three UK cities surveyed.A wish to return is the best compliment a tourist can offer. Asking friends about Malta, I discovered theyd all become regular visitors to this tiny, beautiful and heroic island perched south of Sicily at the centre of the ancient trade routes of the Mediterranean.

One of the islands fondest fans is a former pilot who first arrived there during the Second World War, when Malta - an essential British naval base and under constant attack - won the George Cross for bravery. Chums joke hes still looking for the leg he lost in Vallettas Grand Harbour.

He just says he loves the place. So does Meghan Markle, who came here in 2015 to check out her Maltese ancestry and found herself wanting to stay.

Serene seaside: The colourful fishing village and harbour of Marsaxlokk is located on Malta's south coast

A three-hour flight from the UK, Malta features year-round sunshine, delicious food (like Meghan, I loved the rabbit stews and fresh fish) and an amazing history, dating back 3,600 years. Thats a whole thousand years before the first pyramid.

Bombed to smithereens during the Second World War, the capital Valletta has finally been restored to picture-perfect glory, ready for its reign as this years European City of Culture. Elegant old townhouses have been converted into boutique hotels. We stayed at Ursulino, where a roof terrace offers views across the enormous harbour to the ancient city of Birgu.

Ferried over in a gondola at dusk on our first evening, we joined crowds exploring Birgus narrow streets by candlelight. All electricity is turned off for this one night in the October Festival when house-owners open their doors, musicians rove the streets and actors stage impromptu plays.

It was like stepping back in time to when the Knights of St John took refuge here. Exiled from Rhodes, Birgu was where they first built their lavish palaces during the three centuries they governed the island, defending it from naval attack by the Turks in the Great Siege of 1565, a battle you can safely relive on-screen as part of the well-designed Malta Experience.

The capital, Valletta, has finally been restored to picture-perfect glory, ready for its reign as this years European City of Culture

Theres no escaping Maltas heroic past. Every day, cannons fire a salute across the harbour to honour the Knights. One of the worlds biggest and most comprehensive armouries, spreading out along a vast corridor of the Grandmasters Palace in Valletta, displays an awe-inspiring array of weapons from that famous siege.

Any visit to Malta should include a trip to the ancient city of Mdina, the backdrop to movies such as Gladiator and Troy, and TVs Game Of Thrones. Visiting film stars love to wallow in the laid-back luxury of Mdinas sumptuous Xara Palace Hotel.

Any visit to Malta should include a trip to the ancient city of Mdina, the backdrop to movies such as Gladiator and Troy, and TVs Game Of Thrones

Take time to enjoy the lovely views over the Mediterranean from the towering Dingli Cliffs. The little fishing harbour of Marsaxlokk - be thankful all the islanders speak flawless English - boasts a cheerful outdoor market where you can buy lace, silver earrings, salted capers (dont) and even a fresh tuna head, neatly severed for you by a fishermans wife.

The side trips add colour and fun. But Valletta is where youll want to idle time away, strolling down cafe-filled streets while you discover more about Maltas amazing past. Restaurants played a large role in our five-day visit. My favourites were the outdoor cafe-style eating places centred around one of the two main streets that run the entire hilly length of Valletta.

There was plenty of time to sit and watch the world go by, including the unforgettable spectacle of four Segway-mounted policemen coolly rolling past as the advance guard for their presidents black Daimler.

If you want to be sure of a welcome abroad, look no further. The George Cross symbolises a friendship with Britain that thrives as much today as it did during the Second World War.She's the Gold Coast native who is already being billed as the breakout star of Bachelor in Paradise, which debuts on Sunday.

And ahead of the show's premiere, Tara Pavlovic has revealed what she's looking for in a man - and her answer may surprise you.

Speaking to BW on Saturday, the 28-year-old said she goes for 'ordinary' Australian blokes who wear 'high vis' to work.

'I want an ordinary guy!' Bachelor In Paradise's Tara Pavlovic reveals her perfect man wears 'high-vis and buys ready meals from Woolies because he can't cook'

'The kind of guy I go for is in his high-vis at Woolies,' Tara said.

'(He's) picking up a meal you can just heat up because he doesn't know how to cook.'

Tara explained that she isn't attracted to men who are obsessed with their physical appearance.

'Masking insecurity': Tara explained that she isn't attracted to men who are obsessed with their physical appearance

Ahead of the premiere on Sunday, Sportsbet has named Tara as the most likely contestant to get engaged during the show.

The bookmakers' odds will come as a surprise to fans, who are expecting that Jarrod Woodgate will propose to Keira Maguire.

Sportsbet has correctly identified the Bachelor and Bachelorette winners for the last three years in a row.

Not Keira and Jarrod? Ahead of the premiere on Sunday, Sportsbet has named Tara as the most likely contestant to get engaged during the show

The whole package! On Friday, all signs pointed to Jake Ellis being Tara's most likely suitor

On Friday, all signs pointed to Jake Ellis being Tara's most likely suitor.

In February, Woman's Day also linked Tara to Samual Cochrane, claiming that the paid had bonded at a 'bogan-themed party'.

Bachelor in Paradise Sunday at 7.30pm on Network Ten

Coming soon! Bachelor in Paradise Sunday at 7.30pm on Network Ten



His relationship with Ashley Irvin was confirmed earlier this week.

And on Saturday, Justin Fischer, 41, spoke about his 'perfect' bond with the 29-year-old Virgin Australia flight attendant.

'She travels as much as I do (for work), which is perfect. We definitely bonded inside the experiment and have stayed in touch,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

'She travels as much as I do!': Married At First Sight's Justin Fischer reveals why his relationship with Ashley is 'perfect'... and hints he would have been a better match for her than Troy

The soft serve entrepreneur also hinted that he would have made a better match than Ashley's 'ex-husband' Troy Delmege.

'Ashley and I did get on really well and possibly could have been a good match. All I'll say is: watch this space,' he added.

On Friday, Ashley broke her silence on her romance with Justin during an interview with Nova's Fitzy and Wippa.

'(We) possibly could have been a good match': The soft serve entrepreneur also hinted that he would have made a better match than Ashley's 'ex-husband' Troy Delmege

Wife swap alert! Earlier this month, the MAFS couple were caught on a date in Sydney. Their relationship was confirmed by OK! magazine on Thursday

The blonde revealed she and Justin were 'really close' and that they bonded during the social experiment.

Earlier this month, the couple were caught on a date in Sydney. Their relationship was confirmed by OK! magazine on Thursday.

Ashley was originally paired with Troy on Married At First Sight, but they decided to part ways at the vow renewal ceremony.

Surprise romance: Ashley was originally paired with Troy on Married At First Sight, but he is now dating Justin's 'ex-wife' Carly Bowyer

Meanwhile, Justin was 'scientifically matched' with Carly Bowyer on the show, however they struggled with physical intimacy.

Both Ashley and Justin's exes - Troy Delmege and Carly Bowyer - are now dating, making their own relationship even more appropriate.

Married At First Sight returns to Channel Nine next yearHis 'wife' Sarah Roza has stubbornly refused to confirm their split, despite the fact it has been common knowledge for weeks.

But Telv Williams looked worlds away from his 'marital woes' on Friday, as he joined fellow MAFS star Dean Wells for a boys' night in Melbourne.

The 33-year-old was photographed sipping cocktails and meeting fans at Club 23.

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Let's get the party started! Telv Williams looked worlds away from his 'marital woes' on Friday, as he joined fellow Married At First Sight star Dean Wells for a boys' night in Melbourne

Singletons Telv and Dean, 40, partied the night away surrounded by female fans, as well as a few familiar faces.

Dean, a Manly-based hip hop artist and creative director, couldn't wipe the smile off his face as he posed with two glamorous young women.

Meanwhile, Telv enjoyed a friendly catch-up with former MAFS contestants Nadia Stamp and Nick Furphy.

Girls, girls, girls! Dean, a Manly-based hip hop artist and creative director, couldn't wipe the smile off his face as he posed with two glamorous young women

Earlier this week, Dean took to Facebook to promote his appearance at the nightclub, promising plenty of 'craziness'.

'Hey this is Dean here, I'm going to be hanging out at Red Heart Club 23 with Telv. Come party with us, it's going to be a really fun night,' he told fans.

The video was posted on the club's Facebook page, alongside a poster of Dean and Telv captioned 'Boys' Night Part II'.

Just three single friends have fun! Meanwhile, Telv enjoyed a friendly catch-up with former MAFS contestants Nadia Stamp (right) and Nick Furphy (centre)

It comes after Sarah Roza, 38, awkwardly refused to confirm or deny her split with Telv during a impromptu MAFS reunion on Friday's The Kyle and Jackie O Show.

When Nasser Sultan revealed live on-air that Telv had told him the relationship was over, Sarah branded him a 'story-teller'.

She said: 'Believe it when we say it. It's purely Telv and my relationship so when we feel comfortable to say we're together, not together, whatever - it's up to us.'

Sarah and Telv's split has been confirmed by two former MAFS cast members (Ryan and Nasser), multiple sources, and a leaked email Telv sent last month to a producer.On Friday, former Today weatherman Steve Jacobs looked downcast as he was spotted in public for the first time since news of his marriage split made headlines.

It was a stark contrast to the 51-year-old's demeanour during his on-air 'retirement speech' in 2016, which saw him joined by his children and now-estranged wife Rosie.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, body language expert Diederik Gelderman explained the couple were not showing any signs of 'tensions' at the time.

'There are lots of little things they do which are all positive': A body language expert has said Steve and Rosie Jacobs were the picture of happiness during his retirement speech in 2016

In 2016, Steve stepped down from his full-time duties as Today's weatherman and moved to Vanuatu with Rosie, 39, and their daughters Isabella and Francesca.

Following reports that Rosie is now in a relationship with a Canadian commando, the announcement has been called a failed 'last-ditch' attempt to save his marriage.

Diederik analysed the Today show footage for signs of trouble in the relationship, explaining that Steve was emotional but likely not suffering from relationship woes.

'The kids on the lap interfere with any "normal" body language they would show, however she does reach out and touch him on the arm a number of times,' he said.

What went wrong? Rosie is now dating another man, leading to claims Steve's retirement from the Today show and the family's move to Vanuatu was a last-ditch attempt to fix their marriage

'They share genuine smiles and there are lots of little things they do which are all positive'.

Diederik added: 'There is nothing negative in any of their body language - everything is solid.'

'My reading is that, at that time, they were fully committed to the relationship and each other.'

Crisis move: In 2016, Steve stepped down from his full-time duties as Today's weatherman and relocated to Vanuatu with Rosie, 39, and their daughters Isabella and Francesca

During the emotional announcement, Steve was on the verge of tears as he thanked Today hosts Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson for the 'time of his life'.

'We're making a decision for the family, and it's a big one,' Rosie added.

One of Steve's daughters sat on his lap and smiled happily as the TV personality confirmed their plans to move to Vanuatu.

'Genuine': After analysing Steve's retirement speech video (pictured), Diederik Gelderman said, 'They share genuine smiles and there are lots of little things they do which are all positive'

'Solid': Diederik added, 'There is nothing negative in any of their body language - everything is solid. My reading is that, at that time, they were fully committed to the relationship'

However, sometime between the December 2016 retirement speech and late 2017, things between Steve and Rosie took an unfortunate turn.

Rumours of Steve's split with his wife-of-eight-years first broke last Saturday.

They were soon followed by revelations he had allegedly become 'involved in an altercation' with her new boyfriend.

Steve allegedly had a tense verbal exchange with Rosie's Canadian ex-commando lover Dylan Nash in a Vanuatu gym.

Split: Rumours of Steve's split with his wife-of-eight-years broke last Saturday. They were soon followed by revelations he was allegedly 'involved in an altercation' with her new boyfriendShe was honoured with the Special Award at the annual David Donatello ceremony in Rome earlier this week.

And Diane Keaton celebrated her impressive achievement with a luxurious shopping spree in Italy's capital city on Friday afternoon.

The Family Stone star, 72, put on a fashion-forward display as she donned an elaborate checked coat, tied in with a stylish fedora hat.

Fashion maven: Diane Keaton 72, celebrated her recent David Donatello ceremony with a luxurious shopping trip in Rome on Friday afternoon

The actress teamed her daring look with a pair of designer sunglasses and a trendy belt, which cinched at her svelte waist.

Carrying her purchases from Italy's Rinascente in one hand, the prestigious screen star gave onlookers a peek at her eccentric polka dot socks through her ankle-grazing trousers.

The age-defying beauty wore her tresses in a poker straight fashion and opted for minimal makeup.

Style savvy: The Family Stone star put on a fashion-forward display as she donned an elaborate checked coat, tied in with a stylish fedora hat

Making her way! The actress teamed her daring look with a pair of designer sunglasses and a trendy belt, which cinched at her svelte waist

Off she goes! The prestigious screen star gave onlookers a peek at her eccentric polka dot socks through her ankle-grazing trousers

Diane - whose career spans nearly five decades - was awarded with the Special David accolade at the star-studded David Donatello ceremony on Wednesday night.

She was joined by actress Monica Belluci, 53, who led the glamour in a figure-hugging black gown with a low-cut neckline.

The Italian beauty's glamorous gown boasted a wrapover style and contrasting grey panels at the waist and on the sleeves.

Timeless: Diane - whose career spans nearly five decades - was awarded with the Special David accolade at the star-studded David Donatello ceremony on Wednesday night

Making a statement: Monica Belluci, 53, led the glamour in a figure-hugging black gown with a low-cut neckline

The Father Of The Bride star recently expressed her support for Woody Allen, despite his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow's allegations that he molested her as a child.

'Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him. It might be of interest to take a look at the 60 Minute interview from 1992 and see what you think,' Keaton tweeted in January.

The actress was referring to a 60 Minutes interview in 1992 when the filmmaker publicly denied the allegations about Dylan, who was seven years old at the time.They are driving down to Melbourne on Saturday to start their new life together.

And Married At First Sight couple Troy Delmege and Carly Bowyer enjoyed a night out in Bondi on Friday to celebrate their last day in Sydney.

Carly, 32, flaunted her incredible figure in a slinky dress as the lovebirds arrived at Milky Lane for a catch-up with their fellow MAFS stars.

Moving to Melbourne! Married At First Sight couple Troy Delmege and Carly Bowyer enjoyed a night out in Bondi on Friday to celebrate their last day in Sydney

Nasser Sultan, who joined the couple for the farewell drinks, told Daily Mail Australia they were driving down to Melbourne this weekend.

He said: 'Troy and Carly are very much loved-up. They were driving to Melbourne today. Last night was a catch-up before they moved.'

To celebrate the milestone, the pair also invited Blair Rachael and Alycia Galbraith along for their last hurrah in Sydney.

Dressed to impress! Carly, 32, flaunted her incredible figure in a slinky dress as the lovebirds arrived at Milky Lane for a catch-up with their fellow MAFS stars

Flawless style: The marketing manager styled her hair loosely and accessorised with a pair of bold statement earrings

Carly looked simply stunning in a figure-hugging strapless dress, completing her glamorous look with ankle strap heels and a tan handbag.

The marketing manager styled her hair loosely and accessorised with a pair of bold statement earrings.

IT professional Troy opted for smart casual yet again, pairing his signature polo shirt with a pair of blue jeans.

On the move! To celebrate their move to Melbourne, the couple also invited Blair Rachael, Alycia Galbraith and Nasser Sultan along for drinks in Bondi

Troy and Carly's love story has been a rather surprising development for Married At First Sight fans.

Carly was originally paired with 'millionaire' Justin Fischer, but the couple struggled with intimacy issues and his workaholic tendencies.

Meanwhile, Troy was unsatisfied with Ashley Irvin's lack of affection and they eventually split at the vow renewal ceremony.Fans are speculating Karl Stefanovic and Jasmine Yarbrough could be expecting a child together following their surprise commitment ceremony earlier this month.

And the 34-year-old Mara & Mine designer raised eyebrows on Saturday after she kept her tummy under wraps while running errands in Mosman, Sydney.

Jasmine was spotted picking up healthy smoothies in the upmarket suburb while wearing a baggy grey jumper and embroidered trousers.

Covering up again! Karl Stefanovic's fiancee Jasmine Yarbrough raised eyebrows on Saturday after she kept her tummy under wraps while running errands in Mosman, Sydney

Jasmine completed her casual look with a pair of black and white flat shoes from her own label Mara & Mine, which retail for $310.

Jasmine looked glowing as she carried a tray of take-away drinks and a plastic bag, perhaps filled with snacks for herself and Karl.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Nine and Karl's management for comment.

Under wraps: Jasmine was spotted picking up healthy smoothies in the upmarket suburb while wearing a baggy grey jumper, embroidered trousers and $310 Mara & Mine flat shoes

It comes after the former runway model took to her Instagram Story on Thursday to post a photo of herself taking a stroll wearing a baggy tracksuit.

Showcasing a designer ensemble in what appears to be a sponsored post, the $438 velour tracksuit completely covered up Jasmine's figure.

According to OK! magazine, Karl and Jasmine's fans have been suggesting there could be a baby on the way following their recent commitment ceremony.

Hiding her figure? It comes after the former runway model took to her Instagram Story to post a photo of herself taking a stroll wearing a baggy tracksuit

It was a theory that seemed to be echoed over at the Today show's official Facebook page recently.

'She looks pregnant? Why else hold a commitment ceremony?' asked one fan.

'Why not just wait a decent amount of time has passed from the divorce and then get married... my money's on a baby.'

Baby rumours: According to last week's OK! magazine, fans of Karl and Jasmine have been suggesting there could be a baby on the way following their recent commitment ceremony

Karl's agent Sharon Finnigan previously denied rumours of a pregnancy, describing the reports as 'absolute bulls**t' in November.

The Today show co-host already shares three children - Jackson, Ava, and River - with his ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn.

The former couple split in 2016 after 21 years of marriage.His bizarre antics and timeless catchphrase '#CoconutOil' made him a fan favourite on Married At First Sight, despite his less-than-stellar treatment of his wife Gabrielle.

And Nasser Sultan was back to his usual tricks on Friday during Troy Delmege and Carly Bowyer's 'going away' party at Bondi's Milky Lane bar.

Not everyone was impressed by his quirky behaviour, however.

It's a Nasser thing! Married At First Sight stars cringed as Nasser Sultan pretended to bite their faces at Troy Delmege and Carly Bowyer's 'going away' party in Sydney's Bondi on Friday night

The fitness trainer, who hails from Surry Hills, appeared to be in very lively spirits during Troy and Carly's boozy send-off.

The 50-year-old pretended to 'bite' the faces of his male and female co-stars, who looked a little overwhelmed by his tomfoolery.

At one point, Nasser was pictured leaning over the booth to reach Blair Rachael as she smiled politely despite his odd behaviour.

No one's safe! The fitness trainer, who hails from Surry Hills, appeared to be in very lively spirits during Troy and Carly's boozy send-off

Er, thanks Nasser! The 50-year-old pretended to 'bite' the faces of his male and female co-stars, who looked a little overwhelmed by his tomfoolery

Later, the prankster got Alycia Galbraith in his sights, leaning in for a bite while she visibly cringed.

Fortunately, Carly saw the funny side as she smiled and pointed at the bizarre scene taking place across the table.

Not even Troy was safe, as Nasser jokingly tried to take a chunk out of his face as they posed for a photograph.

Whoops! The prankster got Alycia Galbraith in his sights, leaning in for a bite while she visibly cringed. Fortunately, Carly (right) was amused by his behaviour

Fan favourite! The over-50s fitness trainer was the life of the party on Friday night

Nasser told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday that Troy and Carly had thrown the party to celebrate their last night in Sydney before relocating to Melbourne.

'(Friday) was catch up before they moved,' he said. 'I love those two.'

Married At First Sight returns to Channel Nine next year

Lively! Nasser told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday that Troy and Carly had thrown the party to celebrate their last night in Sydney before relocating to MelbourneJessica Alba and Gabrielle Union are the stars of NBC's Bad Boys spinoff series.

Alba, 36, looked like one tough broad Friday as she carried a faux gun and badge on set of the upcoming crime-drama.

The series will follow Union's character Syd, from the original franchise, as she leaves her job at the DEA to join the LAPD as a detective.

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Hands up! Jessica Alba, 36, looked like one tough broad Friday as she carried a faux gun and badge on set of NBC's Bad Boys spinoff series

Bad girls: Jessica Alba will star alongside Gabrielle Union in the upcoming crime-drama

Jessica and Gabrielle have big shoes to fill as they carry on the Bad Boys legacy for the original 'bad boys' Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.

Union will continue her character Syd Burnett's story that came to a screeching hault after she helped take down a drug cartel in Miami in the 2003 film Bad Boys II.

Alba will play Syd's detective partnera working mom by the name of Nancy McKenna.

Whatcha gonna do? Jessica and Gabrielle have big shoes to fill as they carry on the Bad Boys legacy for the original 'bad boys' Will Smith and Martin Lawrence

In the action-packed series, the two will team up to take down the bad guys.

It's unclear whether or not Smith or Lawrence will make a cameo on the show.

The series marks The Honest Company founder's return to TV after last starring as Max Guevara in the hit Fox series Dark Angel, which aired from 2000 until 2002.

Boss babes: The series will follow Union's character Syd, from the original franchise, as she leaves her job at the DEA to join the LAPD as a detective. Alba will play her partner Nancy McKennaa working mom who is at the top of her game

Jessie's got a gun: During a scene for the new show, Alba and Union draw down on a suspect

Confident: Alba, who has had her fair share of action roles, looked comfortable with gun in hand

Both actresses have already taken to social media to promote the new show.

'Just solving crime with our badges,' Gabrielle said as she smiled widely in an Instagram story.

'We're very official today,' Jessica replied.

NBC hasn't released a premiere date for the series as of now.

What a crew! Also spotted on set was actor John SalleyEarlier this week, fans couldn't resist poking fun at Sean Thomsen after he wore THAT infamous gold dinner jacket during the Married At First Sight reunion.

And now former contestant Nick Furphy is getting in on the action, embarking on a trolling campaign against Sean and his new girlfriend Tracey Jewel.

In the past few days, Nick has shared a series of hastily-edited memes on Instagram ridiculing the couple.

'They aren't a good match!' Former Married At First Sight star Nick Furphy trolled Tracey Jewel and Sean Thomsen with cruel memes this week

Some of Nick's rather unflattering memes posted to Instagram recently compared Sean to US talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.

In one photo, Ellen's head is photoshopped onto Sean's body while he poses next to Tracey in an image from the MAFS finale.

'LOL good job of this one,' Nick wrote in the caption.

'LOL good job of this one': Some of Nick's rather unflattering memes posted to Instagram recently compared Sean to US talk show host Ellen DeGeneres

Mean-spirited: In another meme, Nick posted side-by-side photos of Tracey on her wedding day and Ellen, 60, wearing a tuxedo - again suggesting that Sean and Ellen looked similar

In another meme, Nick posted side-by-side photos of Tracey on her wedding day and Ellen, 60, wearing a tuxedo.

'So happy for these 2,' he wrote, again suggesting that Sean and Ellen looked similar.

'I know I'm pumping it a bit too much but f**k it,' he added, tagging both Sean and Tracey in the caption.

But the ridicule didn't end there as Nick shared two more photos mocking Sean, including a picture of Sean's face superimposed on a Gold Logie statuette.

It would appear the Gold Logie meme was Nick's way of suggesting that Sean's relationship with Tracey was a 'performance'.

'I know I'm pumping it a bit too much but f**k it': Nick also posted a meme of Sean's face on a Gold Logie statuette, suggesting that Sean's relationship with Tracey was a 'performance'

Despite the social media taunts, it is believed Sean and Nick are old friends. Perth Now reported in January that Nick even encouraged his pal to sign up for MAFS.

It comes after Dean Wells - who is Tracey's 'ex-husband' from MAFS - told Channel Nine's The Fix that he didn't believe the pair were a 'good match'.

Dean confessed he 'didn't understand' why Tracey and Sean were together, before dismissing the relationship as just 'a rebound'.Megan Fox donned her $48.50 Frederick's of Hollywood 'Dion' off-the-shoulder bridal teddy to help promote the lingerie label's launch at Forever 21 in Glendale on Friday.

The 31-year-old mother-of-three paired her black boudoir wear with blue skinny jeans and patent leather T-strap Louboutins selected by stylist duo Jill Lincoln + Jordan Johnson.

The New Girl stunner also rocked red lipstick and white eye shadow along with her signature middle-parted ombre brunette locks.

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Representing! Megan Fox donned her $48.50 Frederick's of Hollywood 'Dion' off-the-shoulder bridal teddy to help promote the lingerie label's launch at Forever 21 in Glendale on Friday

Babe: The 31-year-old mother-of-three paired her black boudoir wear with blue skinny jeans and patent leather T-strap Louboutins

Since 2016, Megan has served as brand ambassador, stakeholder, and creative partner of the formerly-bankrupt bra brand.

Fox embraced and posed for pictured with numerous female fans while promoting Frederick's at The Americana at Brand.

The fashionable festivities at the shopping mall featured a cotton candy machine, nail polish booth, and DJ Tessa on the decks spinning tunes.

The Tennessee-born beauty's sighting came the same day Variety reported that she'll reunite with her two-time Transformers castmate Josh Duhamel for Gil Junger's indie family comedy, Think Like a Dog.

Flawless face: The New Girl stunner also rocked red lipstick and white eye shadow along with her signature middle-parted ombre brunette locks

Boss lady: Since 2016, Megan has served as brand ambassador, stakeholder, and creative partner of the formerly-bankrupt bra brand

Hey girl! Fox embraced and posed for pictured with numerous female fans while promoting Frederick's at The Americana at Brand

Spring line available in stores! The fashionable festivities at the shopping mall featured a cotton candy machine, nail polish booth, and DJ Tessa on the decks spinning tunes

The Hollywood Medium guest star and the 45-year-old Daytime Emmy winner will soon fly to New Orleans to portray the parents of a 12-year-old tech prodigy, who creates a telepathic connection with his dog Henry.

Missing from Megan's side was her husband Brian Austin Green, with whom she has three sons - Noah, 5; Bodhi, 4; Journey, 19 months.

The on/off couple - who met on the 2004 set of Hope & Faith - famously filed for divorce from each other in 2015 but then reconciled in 2016.

The 44-year-old Chasing Titles actor is also father to son Kassius - turning 16 next Friday - with his former Beverly Hills, 90210 castmate - Vanessa Marcil.

'Thank you!' The Tennessee-born beauty's sighting came the same day Variety reported that she'll reunite with her two-time Transformers castmate Josh Duhamel for Gil Junger's indie family comedy, Think Like a Dog

Onscreen couple: The Hollywood Medium guest star and the 45-year-old Daytime Emmy winner will soon fly to New Orleans to portray the parents of a 12-year-old tech prodigy, who creates a telepathic connection with his dog Henry (pictured in 2007)There were reports that she had broken up with rapper boyfriend 21 Savage.

And Amber Rose not only confirmed the news but admitted that she misses him so much that she smells his old underwear.

The 34-year-old model appeared on the Big Boy's Neighborhood radio program to talk about the end of her relationship with the 25-year-old rapper.

She admitted she still thinks about her ex-boyfriend all of the time and hopes they can reconcile their differences.

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Split! Amber Rose and 21 Savage have split after almost a year together; (pictured February)

Amber - who has a five-year-old son called Sebastian with ex-husband Wiz Khalifa - explained: 'To be in a relationship is difficult, to be famous and in a relationship is even more difficult and then you end up arguing about things that you usually wouldn't argue about as a normal person.

'I love him, I miss him, I think about him every day. I can't say that I'm single because I still think about him every day. My heart is still with him. Hopefully, we can work it out but if we can't - the love is still there.'

Amber even admitted that she misses the rapper - whose real name is Shayaa Abraham-Joseph - so much, she's taken to sniffing his underwear.

Amber confessed: 'I still sniff em [his old underwear], I was just sniffing 'em before I got here. I miss that motherf*****.

'If you don't love the smell of your man's private area, then you don't really love him.'

Despite their recent split, Amber still doesn't consider herself to be single.

Better days: 'They are definitely off. They are not together,' a source told People on Wednesday; (pictured October)

The curvaceous star - who previously dated rapper Kanye West - confessed that the emotions of their break-up are still very raw and that she is still deeply in love with the musician.

She explained: 'We're just having a rough patch, it's just very fresh. I could never say that I'm single because I don't feel single, I still love him.

This comes just a month after a People report that they had split in which a source said: 'They are definitely off. They are not together.

The TV personality and rapper were last seen together holding hands in Los Angeles on Valentine's Day.

The pair - who unfollowed each other's Instagram accounts earlier this week - had announced their relationship last July as Amber posted a tribute to 21 Savage.

Old love: The pair - who unfollowed each other's Instagram accounts earlier this week - had announced their relationship last July as Amber posted a tribute to 21 Savage

'It's pretty amazing waking up every morning feeling love like this,' she captioned a photo of the two in bed.

'Ive cried endlessly and been hurt a lot in my life, Ive been abused, talked to like I wasnt sh*t, been gaslighted and Slut shamed by men that I once loved and cared about.

'So Im so thankful that God brought this amazing person in my life who genuinely has my back and is ready to pull up to defend my honor by any means.' she added.

In August, she told TMZ: 'I want to marry him. But we'll see.'

'Let's talk about how much in love I am and how happy I am,' Amber said when she was first approached by the reporter, later gushing how both she and her boyfriend had a lot in common.

The curvy video star and TV host married rapper Wiz Khalifa, 29, on July 8, 2013 and they separated in September the following year.

Plans foiled: In August, she told TMZ : 'I want to marry him. But we'll see.'; (pictured August)

In 2016 they agreed to share custody of their only child after a nasty court battle.

Amber also claimed she was left heartbroken after she and Kanye West split up and that he has 'bullied' her for the past seven years.

She dated the rapper for two years before splitting in 2010.She's one of Australia's much-loved commercial radio hosts, working alongside co-host Kyle Sandilands on KIIS FM.

And Jackie O (formally Jackie O'Henderson) has taken to social media to share the meaning behind her treasured necklace pendant.

Snapping a flawless selfie, the mother of daughter Kitty, six, proudly flashed a 'K' pendant on a simple chain necklace.

Precious memory! Jackie O (formally Jackie O'Henderson) has taken to social media to share the meaning behind her treasured necklace pendant

Taking to Instagram, the mother-of-one captioned the post: 'Been meaning to post this for ages. This necklace was a present given to me by my daughter for Christmas.'

Jackie added: 'She designed it herself (clever little thing) with the help of House of K'dor.'

'I wear it every day. My favourite gift ever,' Jackie completed the post.

Like mother, like daughter! Taking to Instagram, the mother-of-one captioned the post: 'Been meaning to post this for ages. This necklace was a present given to me by my daughter for Christmas'

Fans were quick to comment, with the post rallying more than 4,000 likes within a couple of hours of being posted.

'In this photo, I can see so much of Kitty,' one fan wrote.

Another shared: 'You're looking as gorgeous as ever. How talented is your daughter!'

Two of a kind! Fans were quick to comment, with the post rallying more than 4,000 likes within a couple of hours of being posted

Another joked: 'Oh how sweet, you even have a necklace to remember Kyle.'

Known for posted sweet family pictures, earlier this week Jackie snapped a series of pictures with husband and father to their shared daughter, Lee Henderson.

In one picture, the sweet trio are snapped kayaking together while on a family trip away in Kangaroo Valley.

Three's a crowd! Known for posted sweet family pictures, earlier this week Jackie snapped a series of pictures with husband and father to their shared daughter, Lee Henderson

Captioning the post, the famed radio presenter wrote: 'This is us pretending to be a sporty family.'

The picture, which hit over 12,500 likes, sent fans into a heartwarming meltdown.

One fan wrote: 'That's such a beautiful way to spend the weekend.'

'This is so cute,' an additional comment read.Know her illustrious career as a model, Simone Holtznagel recently gained a whole new fan base when she took part in I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here.

Now that she's back in Australia following her stint in the South African jungle, the 24-year-old wasted no time stepped out for more glamorous events.

Showing face for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne on Saturday, the blonde looked svelte in a black keyhole frock.

Beauty in black! I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here's Simone Holtznagel (pictured) turns heads in charcoal-hued keyhole frock as she glams it up in Melbourne

Simone, who had her blonde tresses tied back into a tight ponytail, stunned in the figure-hugging charcoal ensemble, posing up a storm against the media wall as she rested her hand on her hip.

The Playboy model was all smiles as she effused beauty, opting for a glam makeup palette which made her dramatic eye look the centre piece.

Simone accesorised the look with a gold handbag, drop earrings in a similar hue and added nude heels to complement the outfit.

Looking good! Simone accesorised the look with a gold handbag, drop earrings in a similar hue and added nude heels to complement the outfit

Single or taken? Simone has been a fixture in the headlines recently, due to her rumoured romance with fellow I'm A Celeb jungle-dweller and AFL star Josh Gibson

Simone has been a fixture in the headlines recently, due to her rumoured romance with fellow I'm A Celeb jungle-dweller and AFL star Josh Gibson.

She was also at the centre of a controversy when comedian Mick Molloy fat-shamed her on his radio show, describing her as a 'plus size model' and likening her to a baby elephant.

The Triple M shock jock made the comments about Simone during his drive-time national radio show with Jane Kennedy earlier this month, leaving his co-host appalled.

Too far? Earlier this month, Mick Molloy dubbed the reality star a 'plus size model' and likened her to a baby elephant

'She claims to be a world class international model... I call bulls**t!' he exclaimed, to which Jane responded: 'Excuse me, thats incredibly rude of you.'

'I mean, maybe a plus-size model. She's been in the jungle for 10 weeks now and still...' he continued, then started humming the Baby Elephant Walk tune.

However, since the scandal, Simone has chosen to forgiven and forget, telling her Instagram followers 'Hatchet = buried' in a caption that accompanied a photo of herself with Mick on Friday.They've been a couple for over a year and frequently share the big screen together.

And Joaquin Phoenix, 43, and Rooney Mara, 32, appeared inseparable as ever as they enjoyed a date night at Los Angeles Vegan hot-spot Crossroads on Friday.

The A-list couple looked near identical in their effortlessly cool ensembles, both opting for a loose-fitting black jumper, while Rooney paired her low-key look with a pair of matching skinny jeans and they both wore Converse plimsolls.

Coordinated couple: Joaquin Phoenix, 43, and girlfriend Rooney Mara, 32, wore near-identical outfits as they headed out for a dinner date in LA on Friday

Joaquin brightened up his toned-down outfit with a pair of white chinos, but matched his love with his choice of footwear, pounding the pavement in black Converse sneakers.

The Lion star swept her cropped brunette tresses into a top knot, while Joaquin followed suit and kept the hair off his face with his own tiny ponytail and serious salt-and-pepper scruff.

The Oscar-nominated actor shielded his eyes from the Californian glare in classic black shades, while Rooney opted for matching clear-rimmed sunglasses.

Dressing alike: Joaquin brightened up his look with a pair of white chinos, but matched his love with his choice of footwear, pounding the pavement in black Converse sneakers

Rooney kept it fresh-faced for their casual dinner, opting to forgo any make-up and only carry a black clutch as an accessory. The showbiz couple's latest on-screen collaboration Mary Magdalene was released this month.

Their home is in the Hollywood Hills, according to a T: New York Times Style Magazine profile of Joaquin written by American Psycho novelist Bret Easton Ellis.

The director of the Mary Magdalene - Garth Davis - also helmed the 2016 awards show contender Lion headlined by Rooney, Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman.

Joaquin told Bret he came aboard the project because 'I was looking for something meaningful. I was looking for an experience. I was friends with Rooney.'

Happy days: The showbiz couple's latest on-screen collaboration Mary Magdalene was released this month (pictured in February with Chiwetel Eifofor (R) at the National Gallery, London, screening)

Mary Magdalene will also feature apostles, including Chiwetel Ejiofor as Peter, Charles Babalola as Andrew, Tawfeek Barhom as James, Zohar Shtrauss as John, Michael Moshonov as Matthew and Tahar Rahim as Judas.

Phoenix is also reported to be in talks to play the Clown Prince of Crime in Todd Phillips' as-yet untitled Joker movie, according to Variety.

The publication reports that studio negotiations are not yet underway, but Phillips clearly wants Phoenix in the lead role.

Sources say that Phillips is on board to co-write and direct the movie, having met with Phoenix before the new year to further discuss the project.She always looks preened to perfection on the red carpet.

And Naomi Watts proved she can nail off-duty chic too, as she left her New York apartment in an effortlessly stylish ensemble on Friday.

The actress, 49, cemented her sartorial credentials in a jaunty trilby and luxurious belted jacket as she headed to the airport.

Hats off to her! Youthful Naomi Watts looked effortless in a chic trilby and luxurious belted jacket as she jetted out of New York on Friday

Sticking to a monochrome palette, The Impossible actress paired her chic outerwear with simple cropped jeans.

Opting for comfort in her footwear, she rocked some black patent leather loafers and carried an understated leather bag.

Shielding her eyes behind quirky white acetate frames, the King Kong star appeared to go make-up free for her relaxed outing.

Looking good: Sticking to a monochrome palette, The Impossible actress paired her chic outerwear with simple cropped jeans

Natural beauty: Shielding her eyes behind quirky white acetate frames, the King Kong star appeared to go make-up free for her relaxed outing

Nicole's outing comes amid claims she is dating 49-year-old actor Billy Crudup, who is her co-star in the Netflix series Gypsy.

The two have been fuelling romance rumours after they got close while filming the show and were spotted holding hands at a Vogue party in February.

Last week, the Mulholland Drive actress stepped out in NYC to support the Justice League actor on the opening night of his one-man show.

Rumour has it: Nicole's outing comes amid claims she is dating 49-year-old actor Billy Crudup, who is her co-star in the Netflix series Gypsy

A source confirmed to People back in July that the pair were 'dating' in real life, just 10 months after Naomi called it quits with her husband of 11 years, Liev Schrieber.

Naomi also raises two children - nine-year-old Samuel and 10-year-old Alexander with her former flame Liev Schreiber.

The ex-couple were first an item back in 2005 but they called it quits for good on their relationship in 2016.She's the former Bachelorette who found temporary love with millionaire pub owner Stu Laundy last year, before breaking it off in January.

And since the split, the single blonde bombshell hasn't let heartbreak get her down, rallying fans across her social media with hysterical video clips.

On Saturday, the former Bardot star took to Instagram to post a video clip of herself dancing in sweat pants, a crew neck sweater and a pair of high-top white sneakers.

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Old school! Sophie Monk took to Instagram to post a video clip of herself dancing in sweat pants, a crew neck sweater and a pair of high-top white sneakers

Following a few hair flips, peace signs and suggestive dancing reminiscent of her Bardot days, the star started to re-deliver the same moves over.

Captioning the clip, the 38-year-old joked: ' Ran out of moves.'

Taking to Instagram earlier this month, the star uploaded another humorous video, showcasing a wardrobe malfunction as she jumped into a swimming pool in a racy red dress.

She's got the moves! Following a few hair flips, peace signs and suggestive dance moves, the star started to re-deliver the same moves over

In the video, Sophie runs up to the ledge of the pool and dive bombs in, while offering a frontal display of her knickers amidst the jump.

Following her leap of faith, her father (also donning a perfectly matching red-hued outfit) executes an entertaining pre-jump dance.

Sophie's hilarious dad - who made a guest appearance on The Bachelorette last year - then dive bombs into the water himself.

Racy in red! In the video, Sophie runs up to the ledge of the pool and dive bombs in, while offering a frontal display of her knickers amidst the jump

In yet another bizarre clip uploaded to social media earlier this year, Sophie posed in a busty mini-dress and wields an electric drill while acting out a scene from 1992 film A Few Good Men.

In the first clip shared to her Instagram Story, Sophie says to camera: 'When dad messes with me, this is what happens.'

She then switches on the electric drill and points it toward her father Andrew.She is often seen on her bike as she continues to keep a low profile since her lavish wedding last year.

But Pippa Middleton was on foot when she enjoyed a lovely walk with her pooches, in London on Friday.

The younger sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, 34, looked effortlessly chic as she braved the cold with Cocker Spaniel Rafa and her husband's black Labrador.

Puppy love: Pippa Middleton looked effortlessly chic in navy coat as she enjoyed a low-key walk with her Cocker Spaniel and black Labrador in London on Friday

Kate's sister donned a stylish navy mid-length jacket which kept the chill of the British capital's air at bay.

Pippa was worlds away from her regal appearances when she shielded her eyes with huge sunglasses and she wore her brunette locks in a poker straight fashion.

The royal beauty ditched her sky-scraper stilettos for a pair of towering boots with an eye-catching metallic design.

As well as taking the lead to walk her dogs, James Matthews' wife amused herself by putting a phone call into her friend during her stroll.

Keeping busy: As well as taking the lead to walk her dogs, James Matthews' wife amused herself by putting a phone call into her friend during her stroll

Mutt be love: The younger sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, 34, braved the cold with Cocker Spaniel Rafa and her husband's black Labrador

Greetings: They were approached by another pooch on their walk out in leafy London

The family have always been keen on Cocker Spaniels as Pippa's brother James gave Kate and William a puppy called Lupo for their wedding present.

Pippa has been keeping her life under wraps ever since she tied the knot with banker James in a countryside ceremony.

Prince Harry, Roger Federer and of course the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were among the great and the good of the guest list.

In her element: Pippa looked paw-fectly happy when she headed out with her pooches for their morning stroll on Saturday

Heading out: She ditched her bike in order to spend some time with Rafa and the black Labrador in London

Pout and about: The trio were happy in each other's charming company when they roamed the streets of the British capital

Looking good: Kate's sister donned a stylish navy mid-length jacket which kept the chill of the British capital's air at bay

Chatting: Pippa enjoyed catching up with a pal via her mobile phone as she headed out for her low-key walk with the dogs

In the family: The family have always been keen on Cocker Spaniels as Pippa's brother James gave Kate and William a puppy called Lupo for their wedding present

Quiet lifestyle: Pippa has been keeping her life under wraps ever since she tied the knot with banker James in a countryside ceremony

The newly weds then jetted to the French Polynesia for a luxury honeymoon before they enjoyed a stint in Sweden to attend a society wedding in Stockholm.

Back on home turf, the couple ensured they were well and truly in the limelight with three headline-grabbing appearances at Wimbledon in June.

As the royal beauty settles into family life with her husband James at home, she now keeps a relatively low profile.

Moving on: The newly weds then jetted to the French Polynesia for a luxury honeymoon before they enjoyed a stint in Sweden to attend a society wedding in Stockholm

Busy pair: Back on home turf, the couple ensured they were well and truly in the limelight with three headline-grabbing appearances at Wimbledon in JuneHe recently announced he would host the final two shows of Saturday Night Takeaway alone, after Ant McPartlin admitted himself to rehab after being charged with drink-driving.

And fans are calling for Holly Willoughby to step into the embattled presenter's role as Declan Donnelly's co-host, describing the 37-year-old as the 'perfect candidate' for the job.

It comes months after the 42-year-old playfully teased Ant, also 42, that the This Morning star was set to replace him on I'm A Celebrity, joking; 'no one was sure if you would make it or not', after he checked into rehab last June.

Holly and Dec? Fans are calling for Holly Willoughby to step into the embattled presenter's role as Declan Donnelly's co-host, describing the 37-year-old as the 'perfect candidate' for the job

In the joke, Dec immediately opened the 2017 series by joking about his friend's much-anticipated return.

He said to viewers: 'I'm here with the gorgeous Holly Willoughby...' before adding in mock horror: 'Wait, no! Guys that's the wrong script! You've put the wrong script in!'

Turning to Ant, who was stood in mock outrage, Dec continued the joke by stating, in reference to his pal's rehab stint: 'No one was sure if you would make it or not!'

Best pals: Holly has been firm friends with the dynamic duo for years (Pictured with Dec in 2008)

Fans favourite: It comes months after the 42-year-old playfully teased Ant, also 42, that the This Morning star was set to replace him on I'm A Celebrity

Confirming to fans he was better than ever however, the famous Geordie assured: 'I was always going to make it, come on.'

He then added excitedly: 'I'm back my friend!', before the pair sweetly hugged, to the applause of the production crew.

Now fans are questioning if the poignant joke could turn into a reality, with Saturday Night Takeaway viewers calling on his close pal Holly to support Dec on air.

Back-up: In the joke, Dec immediately opened the 2017 series by joking about his friend's much-anticipated return

One wrote on Twitter: 'Ant is human and to be human is to err. Hoping Ant is feeling the love and best wishes from us all. I do reckon Holly Willoughby would be a fab co-host contender!'

Another added: 'Being a huge Ant and Dec fan I have found the last few days upsetting. I hope that Ant gets the help he so needs and Dec gets the support that he needs without his best friend by his side.

'Holly Willoughby would be the perfect candidate to present the show with him,' while another said '@this morning when is Holly taking over from Ant? Holly and Dec, got a ring to it!!'

Stepping in his shoes? Fans are questioning if the poignant joke could turn into a reality, with Saturday Night Takeaway viewers calling on his close pal Holly, 37, to support Dec on air

However, not everyone seemed thrilled with the idea of the television personality stepping into Ant's shoes, while others called on Stephen Mulhern to co-host.

One wrote: 'No, no, no! Sorry, but people's opinion on Holly Willougby covering for Ant for the 2 shows, I can't see it working. Dec either goes it alone or Mulhern steps in. If you watch BGMT you'll see how well he works with Ant and Dec. They love him.'

Another typed: 'I really hope Stephen Mulhern replaces Ant on BGT and Saturday Night Takeaway rather than Holly Willoughby.'

Fans calling for some of the biggest names in TV to support Dec in his presenting duties comes after Ant McPartlin's drink driving charge and subsequent decision to return to rehab.

Mixed response: However, not everyone seemed thrilled with the idea of the television personality stepping into Ant's shoes, while others called on Stephen Mulhern to co-host

'Perfect candidate': One wrote on Twitter: 'I do reckon Holly Willoughby would be a fab co-host contender!' (pictured together in 2013)

Dec will take the reigns on Saturday 31 March for the first of the final two episodes of this series, with him confirming the news on Twitter on Wednesday.

He said in a statement released after meeting with ITV bosses: 'Whilst I never thought I'd be in this position, after much discussion and careful consideration we've decided that the remaining two shows of this series of Saturday Night Takeaway will go ahead.

'We made a promise to take hundreds of deserving winners to Florida to watch the series finale, and we will honour that. Everyone at ITV and the Takeaway team feels we owe it to the audience to complete the series'.

Dec's difficult decision came after Ant crashed his car in Richmond last Sunday and was later charged with drink-driving.

Takeaway co-stars Stephen Mulhern and Scarlett Moffatt will appear as usual.

Dec posted this emotional statement on Twitter on Wednesday, confirming he will press ahead and host the last two episodes of Saturday Night Takeaway alone

An ITV spokesman added: 'We can confirm that Saturday Night Takeaway, presented by Declan Donnelly, will return to ITV on March 31, and the series finale will be taking place at Universal Orlando Resort in Florida a week later.'

In their 2010 autobiography, Ooh! What A Lovely Pair, Dec wrote he couldn't do it without his screen partner.

He said: 'We made an agreement  whatever happened, we'd be mates forever, and neither one of us would ever be on our own out there.

'If it all ended tomorrow, we'd still speak every day, we'd still see each other all the time and we'd still be best mates. And that's something we're both very proud of.'Love truly was in the air for Georgia Love and her beau Lee Elliott on Saturday.

The former Bachelorette star took to social media to document yet another wedding, after being a bridesmaid at her sister Katie's wedding just last week.

Taking to Instagram stories, the television presenter posted a series of clips during the couple's mutual friends' special day.

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Wedding bells! Love truly was in the air for former Bachelorette star and her beau Lee Elliott on Saturday, when the two took to social media to document yet another wedding this week

In the first clip, the lovebirds are all smiles while in the back of a luxury car and dressed to the nines.

Opting for an nontraditional wedding guest dress hue, Georgia wore a sheer black ensemble with horizontal gold strips delicately printed atop the fabric.

With her hair parted to the right, her strands were left to hang freely with the former Bachelorette's signature curls styled in place.

Wedding bells are ringing! Opting for an nontraditional wedding guest dress hue, Georgia wore a sheer black ensemble with horizontal gold strips delicately printed atop the fabric

Sitting with his hand on Georgia's lap, Lee was snapped beaming from ear-to-ear, wearing a crisp white shirt, skinny black patterned tie and dark grey suit pants to match.

In the following snap posted to her Instagram story, Georgia uploaded a series of moments from the ceremony, including a sweet 'you may now kiss the bride' picture.

Taking place after dark, the ceremony was in an outdoor venue, featuring an array of white blooms in the backdrop of the romantic scene.

Cute! In the following snap posted to her Instagram story, Georgia uploaded a series of moments from the ceremony, including a sweet 'you may now kiss the bride' picture

In a final flip, the proud ambassador for Pancare Foundation uploaded a snippet from the reception, featuring the event's emcee and friend chatting away.

And it seems attending weddings are a common occurrence for the couple as of late, having both played significant roles in Georgia's sister's wedding just last Saturday.

As for if the doting couple are merely practising for their own wedding, the twosome previously hinted at their plans with The Daily Telegraph.

Georgia next? As for if the doting couple are merely practising for their own foreseeable wedding, the twosome spilled their plans with The Daily Telegraph

'We can see ourselves getting married to each other,' the 29-year-old told the publication.

'At our ages and stages of life, to have been together for 18 months and to say marriage isn't on the cards is silly.

She added: 'We can see ourselves getting married to each other, but it's not something that we're thinking about right now.'Married At First Sight's Sarah Roza has finally confirmed she and 'husband' Telv Williams have ended their relationship.

Following ongoing rumours of the two splitting after the explosive season reunion, Sarah took to social media to confirm the news on Saturday evening.

Posing in a light grey hoodie and with her signature makeup intact, Sarah admitted she and her partner 'are no longer together' hinting an unforgivable act was behind the break-up.

'Telv and I are no longer together': Married At First Sight's Telv Williams and Sarah Roza have confirmed they've officially ended their relationship, following on-going rumours of a split

'On the back of what has been such an extraordinary experience it is with great heartache, regret & sadness that Telv & I are no longer together,' she penned in the emotionally wrought post.

While she didn't reveal the cause behind the split, Sarah hinted there was more to the break up than meets the eye - admitting her 'innate standards' had been compromised.

'As you undoubtedly saw, my heart was completely committed to this before I even met my husband & it was absolutely set on fire once I did meet him,' Sarah explained.

The red-haired stunner wrote: 'Like all relationships, no one but the couple involved know exactly what goes on behind the smiles & the tears, so respecting the dignity of both Telv & myself I am wanting to be completely transparent with you; the dedicated, much loved & appreciated viewer,'

It's over! The Married At First Sight bride took to Instagram to share a lengthy post detailing the news

Newly single Sarah went on to say that she was now taking solace in the comfort of her close ones as she recovered from her heartbreak.

'Being surrounded by friends & family is providing a safe haven for me now. This is so I can heal & continue to carry on living a upstanding & happy life. An experiment like this forces you to reveal exactly who you are. For me; I'm so proud of my resilience, decency, compassion & my loyalty,' she continued.

The reality star also seemingly took a swipe at her former 'husband' and appeared to be blaming him for the romance not working out.

'I know that nobody is perfect yet I am at that stage in my life where the foundation of basic respect & support from my partner is crucial. As a woman I know what I truly deserve & I just can't allow my innate standards to be compromised,' Sarah elaborated.

Game over! Sarah captioned the picture: 'On the back of what has been such an extraordinary experience it is with great heartache, regret & sadness that Telv & I are no longer together'

'There were so many heartfelt moments that we shared together which I honestly will treasure forever,' she added.

Despite wanting more from her man, Sarah doesn't appear to be holding any ill will against her former partner.

'I truly wish only the absolute best for Telv because I undoubtedly will always love & care very deeply for him, but ultimately I deserve someone who shares the same life goals & aspirations as I do,' she wrote.

'While it saddens me that it didn't work out, I do know the right man for me is out there somewhere looking for me too. I still believe in my happily ever after & that I'm deserving of a pure & committed love.'

What happened? 'I know that nobody is perfect yet I am at that stage in my life where the foundation of basic respect & support from my partner is crucial,' Sarah seemingly took a swipe at Telv in the detailed post

Finishing the post, she concluded: 'I will always be eternally grateful that our paths crossed in this way as I feel that I have learnt so much about myself & grown exponentially as a person. I'm honoured to have been a part of this incredible life changing journey & I'm thrilled to embrace the next exciting chapter in my life...'

The news follows speculation that the two had parted ways ahead of the reunion episode.

On Friday, the TV groom did little to quiet speculation of the rumoured split, when he was spotted at Melbourne's Formula One Grand Prix without his wedding ring.

'Ultimately I deserve someone who shares the same life goals & aspirations as I do': Sarah kept coy about the reasons she and Telv called time on the romance, but admitted she wanted something different to what he could provide

Co-star Ryan Gallagher had also confirmed the couple were no longer an item, telling Thursday's OK! magazine that the 'TV husband wife' have called it quits.

'They've both got their demons. He's in Melbourne now, but they're not together,' the 29-year-old tradesman divulged to the publication.

'They're still talking and they're civil to one another, but they've got a lot of baggage between them.'

'They're not together': Married At First Sight co-star Ryan Gallagher, 29, also confirmed in Thursday's OK! magazine that the 'TV husband wife' have called it quits

The fan favourites' break up was exclusively revealed by Daily Mail Australia earlier this month.

In a leaked email from Telv to a MAFS producer dated February 17 2018, the 33-year-old machinery technician slammed beauty specialist Sarah, 38, as 'crazy' and revealed he had blocked her phone number.

'Had a chat to Sarah... I have blocked her number and refuse to have anymore talks,' the father-of-two wrote.

'I wanted to try and get along strictly for publicity... I no longer want anything to do with this crazy woman.'

Despite the explosive emails, the couple had repeatedly denied claims they have called it quits, with Telv previously alleging the email was 'fake'.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Sarah and Telv for further comment.They are returning to the sun-drenched Caribbean where he popped the question.

And Jeremy Kyle, 52, looked closer than ever to his stunning fiancee Vicky Burton, 36, when they touched down in Barbados on Friday where they greeted friends.

Not leaving each other's side, the lovebirds were inseparable from one another when they headed through the terminal holding hands.

Cosy in the Caribbean! Jeremy Kyle, 52, and former nanny fiancee Vicky Burton, 36, held hands as they returned to Barbados for sunny getaway on Friday

Jeremy kept cool in the sweltering climes of Barbados thanks to his T-shirt and cut-off denim shorts.

The former nanny looked lovely in her airport attire as she flattered her fabulous figure in a cream blouse, which she teamed with ripped jeans for a trendy vibe.

Vicky used to accompany Jeremy to Barbados every year for his annual family festive trip over the festive period as a nanny to his kids with ex-wife Carla.

But now the couple seem to have made the sun-drenched Caribbean spot their own as they are holidaying there for the second time this year already.

Very together: Not leaving each other's side, the lovebirds were inseparable from one another when they headed through the terminal holding hands

What a man! Jeremy was every inch the doting fiance when he affectionately reached out to stunning Vicky

The couple, who went public with their relationship in January last year, have gone from strength to strength during their time together as an item.

Recently, Jeremy revealed how his proposal was almost ruined by a stray piece of glass when he produced the ring from his bag.

Reflecting on the proposal, he told The Mirror: 'It was in the Caribbean, I had been carrying the bag around on the boat to the island.

Awkward: Vicky used to accompany Jeremy to Barbados every year for his annual family festive trip over the festive period as a nanny to his kids with ex-wife Carla

It started to rain. I found a shack. I went down on one knee; there was glass on the floor. The ring was upside down. She said just get up will you!

It is claimed the engaged couple will likely tie the knot in Barbados because it was their 'sanctuary', according to The Sunday People.

At the time, a source told the publication in March last year: 'The wedding is likely to take place in Barbados, with the ceremony or reception at Jeremys home. Barbados is their sanctuary and was the place they could first be together openly.'

Their place now: But now the couple seem to have made the sun-drenched Caribbean spot their own as they are holidaying there for the second time this year already

Good company: The couple were joined by their close friends and family when they made their arrival together at the airport

While the father-of-four will walk down the aisle for a second time, he confessed he didn't want to have any more children.

In the light of his oldest daughter Harriet's pregnancy announcement, he added: 'I am just going to be a granddad for now.'

Jeremy has been mending his heartache since the breakdown of his marriage to Carla in 2015 after they were married for 13 years.

Keeping it casual: The chat show host donned cut-off denim shorts, a T-shirt and trainers to keep cool in the sweltering climes of the Caribbean

Looking good: The former nanny looked lovely in her airport attire as she flattered her fabulous figure in a cream blouse, which she teamed with ripped jeans for a trendy vibe

News broke after the chat show host had made a frank admission on his popular self-titled show, which interrogates people's love lives, about the couple's sex life.

Reports emerged that the television presenter's wife had an affair with England polo player James Carr, 25.

The former flames share three children together: Eight-year-old Henry, 13-year-old Alice and 12-year-old Ava.

Must be love: The couple, who went public with their relationship in January last year, have gone from strength to strength during their time together as an item

Second trip: They are returning to the sun-drenched Caribbean where he popped the question earlier this year

Jeremy also raises Harriet, 27, with his first wife Kirsty Rowley whom he was married to from 1989 until 1990.

But there was no humour lost on the chat show host when he poked fun at his elderly father Patrick for finding love again just a year after his mum passed away.

He told The Sun at the races in March: 'My father is down there in the front row, he said not to do this but he's 84 and he's got a new girlfriend.

Nightmare: Recently, Jeremy revealed how his proposal was almost ruined by a stray piece of glass when he produced the ring from his bag

Claims: It is claimed the engaged couple will likely tie the knot in Barbados because it was their 'sanctuary', according to The Sunday People

Supportive: Jeremy put his hand on Vicky's back in a supportive fashion as they made their way out of the airport

'Give him a round of applause. We lost my mother a year ago and it hasn't taken him long has it? She's very proud of you, sticking pins into a picture of your new bird.'

Horse owner Jeremy's beloved mum passed away in March 2017 following a long battle with dementia.

The Jeremy Kyle show has been running for 13 seasons ever since 2005 and it has more than 2,600 episodes.

Hey you! Jeremy showed off his cheeky personality as he pointed to the cameras while they waited for other family members

Keep together: The television personality guided the family from the airport exit when he led the pack

Raring to go: Vicky toted her huge handbag and suitcase as she waited for Jeremy to return to her at the airport

Meet and greet: The couple had returned to the sun-soaked country for the second time this year but this time they returned with family and friends

A smooch! The Jeremy Kyle star greeted the lady with an affectionate kiss on the cheek on their arrival at the airportThey have put out the fire of split rumours by re-following each other on Instagram.

But Younes Bendjima and Kourtney Kardashian's Friday nights couldn't be further apart as they enjoyed their nights out without each other's charming company.

While the American reality star had a cosy dinner with her sisters Kylie and Kendall Jenner, the Kardashian's toyboy painted the town red with the lads at Delilah.

Abs-olutely back together? Younes Bendjima partied at Delilah as Kourtney Kardashian enjoyed dinner with Kylie and Kendall Jenner on Friday after they re-follow each other

The boxer-turned-model bundled his muscular frame in a trendy coat which he teamed with a wide-legged pair of jeans and trainers.

Elsewhere, Kourtney enjoyed a 'little dinner party' with the girls when she headed out with Kylie, Kendall and another girl pal.

The mother-of-three looked sensational when she flashed a glimpse of her abs thanks to her very sexy crop top and jeans combination.

'Little dinner party': Kourtney enjoyed a swanky soiree with the girls when she headed out with Kylie, Kendall and another girl pal

Kourtney treated her 61,800,000 followers to a glimpse inside the Kardashian-Jenner's swanky soiree.

Sparks flew when Kourtney and Younes met for the first time in Paris last year, one night before Kim was robbed.

The couple have gone from strength to strength during their time together, with Younes even being introduced to Kourtney's kids from her relationship with Scott.

Heading out: While the American reality star had a cosy dinner with her sisters Kylie and Kendall Jenner, the Kardashian's toyboy painted the town red with the lads at Delilah

Their relationship was plagued with split rumours after they unfollowed each other on Instagram in recent weeks.

But the lovebirds were then pictured together at the market on March 8 for the first time since their unusual social media activity and their last outing on February 5.

However, since then, it seems the beautiful couple are back on track as they began following each other on Instagram last week.

MailOnline has approached Kourtney Kardashian's representatives for comment.

Kourtney raises her children Mason Dash Disick, Penelope Scotland Disick and Reign Aston Disick with her former flame Scott Disick.

In February, it was claimed her ex was 'insanely jealous' of Kourtney's new-found happiness with Younes despite being loved-up with 19-year-old Sofia Richie.

'Scott is still insanely jealous of Younes,' a source told E! news. 'He just can't come to terms with the fact that Kourtney has found true happiness with someone else.'She was the ripe age of 12 when she landed her first industry-breaking acting role in popular series Game of Thrones.

And despite her camera-confident appearance, Maisie Williams, 20, has revealed she doesn't completely love herself or have it all figured out just yet.

Speaking to Stellar, the actress known for her role as Stark in Game of Thrones shared: 'I'd be lying if I said I never worried about the way I look.'

'I'd be lying if I said I never worried about the way I look': Game Of Thones' Maisie Williams (pictured) admitted to Stellar on Sunday she's insecure about her appearance... and reveals her Hollywood career plans

However, Maisie added she didn't let her insecurities control the way she went about her life day to day.

'I like to try and live my life with the way I look not controlling my every move. As soon as you go down that path, which I get dragged into every now and then, it ends up driving you a little bit mental,' she told the publication.

Later in the interview, the star went on to explain that she's spent time trying to discover herself as an actress.

Elaborating, Maisie divulged that she has now learnt to steer clear of worrying about her vanity, as a means of avoiding going 'insane'.

Honesty policy: Speaking to Stellar, the actress famed for her role as Stark in Game of Thrones shared: 'I'd be lying if I said I never worried about the way I look'

Having earned herself an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress, the star is aware with Game of Thrones' final episode inevitably hit screens, she will need to focus on her next move.

But it's full steam ahead for the talented British actress, having landed roles in both Doctor Who and hotly anticipated X-Men movie The New Mutants.

On her upcoming flicks, where she will portray Ashildr and Rahne respectively, the star applauded her characters for being written as substantial people - not just 'eye candy'.

On the rise! It's full steam ahead for the talented British actress, who has landed roles in both Doctor Who and hotly anticipated X-Men movie The New Mutants

On the back of the conversation, the bright-eyed and bright-minded star expressed her thoughts on a shift in Hollywood's perspective.

Explaining that in the past, looks were crucial acting requirements, Maisie shared that she believed stereotypes have changed and she feels she can now have a career in the cut-throat industry without the focus being so heavily on her appearance.

On how she keeps fame external from her everyday life, Maisie confessed that she leads a very ordinary life outside of acting, adding that her friends and family aren't fussed by her Hollywood status.Sunday Night host Melissa Doyle has recalled one of the most harrowing moments in her journalism career.

The 48-year-old former Sunrise host, who spoke of her bold decision to leave the morning news program after 16 years, has opened up about the horrifying moment Sydney's Lindt Cafe was taken under siege as she was working across the street.

When the siege happened in December 2014, Melissa said she knew it would take all of her 20 years experience to tackle the story, The Sunday Telegraph reported this week.

'That's the [time] I felt the most responsibility ever': Sunday Night host Melissa Doyle recounts reporting on Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney

'That was a moment when everything I'd learnt along the way came into play,' she told Stellar magazine.

'That's the [time] I felt the most responsibility ever, to get it right.'

Melissa in that moment was keenly aware of what the responsibility meant, given anyone could be watching her broadcast - from the families of those trapped inside, to the gunman himself.

When the siege started, Melissa was in Channel Seven's studios, on Martin Place opposite the Lindt Cafe, when herself and colleagues were evacuated.

Despite the situation, Melissa knew that as a news broadcaster she had a responsibility to report on the siege to the best of her ability

Despite the situation, Melissa knew that as a news broadcaster she had a responsibility to report on the siege to the best of her ability.

The accomplished journalist added that she had to balance keeping people informed with not jumping to conclusions about what was happening before confirming the facts.

Melissa added she did not want to sensationalise an already delicate and stressful situation but she also knew in many ways it was the biggest story she had covered up to that point.

'I think that was the starkest moment of being really aware of our responsibility in the media to get it right,' she said.

The 16-hour stand-off at Sydney's Lindt cafe ultimately ended in the deaths of two hostages - Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson.

Gunman Man Haron Monis was also killed when police stormed the venue after Tori was fatally shot.She finally confirmed her split from her Married At First Sight 'husband' Telv Williams in an emotional post on Saturday evening.

And Sarah Roza's relationship woes seemed to be playing heavy on her mind, as she was spotted looking tense at the Mornington Cup just hours before making the announcement.

No doubt keen to keep up appearances, the 39-year-old beauty therapist was seen still wearing her wedding ring as she attended the races in Melbourne with her co-star Melissa Walsh.

Keeping up appearances: MAFS' Sarah Roza looked tense while still wearing her wedding ring as she joined Melissa Walsh at the Mornington Cup just hours before confirming her split from Telv Williams

She seemed deep in thought as she chatted away animatedly to Melissa while they strolled along with the other race-goers.

Proving her glamorous sense of style hadn't suffered as a result of her heartache, she donned a figure-hugging purple dress with a racy plunging neckline.

Styling her auburn-hued tresses in coiffed waves, she framed her features with her trademark perfectly applied make-up.

Melissa, meanwhile, looked chic in a pastel-hued floral minidress with a lace-edged tiered skirt and cold-shoulder detail.

Hmm: No doubt keen to keep up appearances, the 39-year-old beauty therapist was seen still wearing her wedding ring as she attended the races in Melbourne with her co-star Melissa Walsh

Chic: Proving her glamorous sense of style hadn't suffered as a result of her heartache, she donned a figure-hugging purple dress with a racy plunging neckline

Her own 'husband' John Robertson was not in attendance, while Telv was also absent from the races.

Sarah's outing came just hours before she confirmed on Instagram that she and Telv had parted ways.

'On the back of what has been such an extraordinary experience it is with great heartache, regret & sadness that Telv & I are no longer together,' she penned in the emotionally wrought post.

While she didn't reveal the cause behind the split, Sarah hinted there was more to the break up than meets the eye - admitting her 'innate standards' had been compromised.

'As you undoubtedly saw, my heart was completely committed to this before I even met my husband & it was absolutely set on fire once I did meet him,' Sarah explained.

What happened? Following ongoing rumours of the two splitting after the explosive season reunion, Sarah took to social media to confirm the news on Saturday evening

The red-haired stunner wrote: 'Like all relationships, no one but the couple involved know exactly what goes on behind the smiles & the tears, so respecting the dignity of both Telv & myself I am wanting to be completely transparent with you; the dedicated, much loved & appreciated viewer.'

She concluded: 'I truly wish only the absolute best for Telv because I undoubtedly will always love & care very deeply for him, but ultimately I deserve someone who shares the same life goals & aspirations as I do,' she wrote.

'While it saddens me that it didn't work out, I do know the right man for me is out there somewhere looking for me too. I still believe in my happily ever after & that I'm deserving of a pure & committed love.'

The news follows speculation that the two had parted ways ahead of the reunion episode.

On Friday, the TV groom did little to quiet speculation of the rumoured split, when he was spotted at Melbourne's Formula One Grand Prix without his wedding ring.

'Telv and I are no longer together': Posing in a light grey hoodie and with her signature makeup intact, Sarah admitted she and her partner 'are no longer together' hinting an unforgivable act was behind the break-upFrasier star John Mahoney, who died in hospice at 77 last month, has reportedly left behind an estate worth more than $5 million.

Roughly $300,000 of this amount represents real estate, TMZ reported citing legal documents in a probate case filed by Bernard Dowling, a friend of John's.

The potential benefactors, chosen from among the television icon's friends and family, are said to number 38.

Legacy: Frasier star John Mahoney, who died in hospice at 77 last month, has reportedly left behind an estate worth more than $5 million

John had been facing down lung cancer, seizures, brain disease, diabetes and kidney diseases when he died, according to TMZ.

Born in Blackpool nine months after Britain entered the Second World War, he was evacuated from Manchester as a child with his family owing to the Blitz, and relocated to America when he was 18.

On Frasier, he played Martin Crane, the live-in retired father of the title character, a radio psychiatrist played by Kelsey Grammer.

Jane Leeves played Martin's caregiver Daphne Moon, with David Hyde Pierce giving a scene-stealing performance as Frasier's effete brother Niles.

Throwback: On Frasier, he played Martin Crane, the live-in retired father of the title character, a radio psychiatrist played by Kelsey Grammer (left)

The main cast was rounded off by Peri Gilpin as Frasier's radio producer Roz Doyle and Dan Butler as another radio host called Bob 'Bulldog' Briscoe.

Frasier lasted 11 seasons and snagged John two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series, one in 1998 and one in 2003.

In 2000, the show's cast - John included - earned the Screen Actors Guild Award For Outstanding Performance By An Ensemble In A Comedy Series.

Before the TV role that made him a household name, John won a Tony Award in 1986 for his turn in John Guare's play The House Of Blue Leaves.

Happier times: John had been facing down lung cancer, seizures, brain disease, diabetes and kidney diseases when he died, according to TMZ; he is pictured in 2009

He appeared in such movies as Say Anything... and Moonstruck, and frequently acted at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, the founders of which include John's fellow sitcom legend Laurie Metcalf.

'He was fragile and he was supposed to be having a routine procedure. But having just beat Stage 3 throat cancer, I think he was just too weak,' explained Steppenwolf director Anna Shapiro, discussing John's final months.

Anna, a friend of John's, said: 'And John was incredibly private. He did not like complaining. He suffered a lot of what he suffered, in private.'

Per the Chicago Sun-Times, she said of his last Steppenwolf play: 'By the time he did The Rembrandt he was clean of cancer.  But other health issues came up and he was just too fragile.'She's been spending a good amount of time in her hometown Warsaw, Poland.

But Joanna Krupa was back in the United States as she was spotted out for a lunch date in Beverly Hills on Friday.

The 38-year-old reality star looked stunning in an off-the-shoulder white top and ripped denim pants as she sat with a pet pooch at Il Pastaio restaurant.

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Stunner: Joanna Krupa, 38, was spotted out for a lunch date in Beverly Hills on Friday

Daring to impress, the Real Housewives of Miami star showcased her delicate decolletage as the sweater and hung just above her bosom.

Her gorgeous gams were thrust on center stage as the ripped jeans swathed her statuesque frame tightly.

She accentuated the debonair look with a set of nude high heels, retro shades, and a red leather Elisabetta Franchi tote bag.

Her trademark golden tresses were left long and loose as they cascaded over her petite shoulders.

Delicate: Daring to impress, the Real Housewives of Miami star showcased her delicate decolletage as the sweater and hung just above her bosom

Leggy lady: Her gorgeous gams were thrust on center stage as the ripped jeans swathed her statuesque frame tightly

Applying a slick coat of berry lipstick and flaunting a slight smokey eye, Joanna highlighted her natural stunning looks.

The TV personality finalized her divorce from Romain Zago last August, after four years together.

And Joanna decided she wanted to move on to new pastures after putting her swanky $1.9 million Miami apartment on the market.

The Real Housewives of Miami star is hoping to make a hefty profit on the lavish pad, after reportedly shelling out $1.4 million on the Four Seasons property with her husband back in 2013.

Accents: She accentuated the debonair look with a set of nude high heels, retro shades, and a red leather Elisabetta Franchi tote bag

Hair story: Her trademark golden tresses were left long and loose as they cascaded over her petite shoulders

Au natural: Applying a slick coat of berry lipstick and flaunting a slight smokey eye, Joanna highlighted her natural stunning looks

The humble abode is situated in the high-rising grand complex of the Four Seasons Residences, and boasts floor-to-ceiling windows in every room which look out onto views of the Miami skyline.

Her ex-husband Romain, 45, previously told People magazine: 'Joanna and I both own it and we are selling it. We are good friends and still have businesses together.'

And Joanna echoed the amicable sentiment as she previously told MailOnline: 'Its been an interesting day but its all good. Were on great terms and Im very grateful Romain is supporting me right now.

'We are on great terms, we talk more than ever.'Were best friends and not much has changed. Im very grateful to have Romains support and we respect our ten years together.'

Splits: Joanna finalized her divorce from Romain Zago last August, after four years together

New digs: And Joanna decided she wanted to move on to new pastures after putting her swanky $1.9 million Miami apartment on the marketShe's expecting baby number two.

And Candice Swanepoel was every bit the stylish mom-on-the-go as she showcased her bohemian chic flair for fashion on Friday.

The model, 29, wore a flowing white dress that displayed her bump as she stepped out in New York City.

Bumping around just nicely! Candice Swanepoel was every bit the stylish mom-on-the-go as she showcased her bohemian chic flair for fashion in New York City on Friday

She stepped out in a pair of slouchy fringe boots and wrapped up in a jean jacket and violet scarf.

Candice topped off the ensemble with a hat and a pair of reflective sunglasses.

The catwalk queen appeared relaxed and content as she strolled out into the sunshine.

Back in January, Candice made the announcement that she was having a second son with partner Hermann in an Instagram video of her one-year-old Anaca kissing her bump.

Bundled up in style! She stepped out in a pair of slouchy fringe boots and wrapped up in a jean jacket and violet scarf

'My boys,' the star wrote warmly in her caption.

She first publicized the pregnancy with a December Instagram snap of herself cradling her bump. Her caption effervesced: 'Christmas came early.. #2'.

Candice has been with Brazilian model Hermann since 2005, having reportedly met him in Paris when she was just 17 years old.

They got engaged in August 2015 but have yet to announce wedding plans.As a mother of three, it's no surprise she has a keen interest in the safety of schoolchildren.

And Kim Kardashian West and her husband Kanye West showed their support for the March For Our Lives rally as the couple proudly attended the protest in Washington D.C. on Saturday.

Indeed the couple made sure her oldest child, four-year-old daughter North, was at the very center of the proceedings, with Kanye hoisting her onto his shoulders as he walked with the crowd.

Taking to Twitter, Kim wrote: 'Im so happy I got to share this moment with these two. I hope North remembers this forever.'

Showing their support: Kim Kardashian West and her husband Kanye West showed their support for the March For Our Lives rally as the couple proudly attended the protest in Washington D.C. on Saturday

Activist in training: North, 4, was at the center of the march on her father Kanye's shoulders

The reality television star, 37, had announced she would be attending the event as she tweeted to her over 59 million followers that same day: 'So ready to March today! Landed in DC w North & Kanye.

'We stand in solidarity with the survivors of gun violence & students who are calling for action on common sense gun safety laws at #MarchForOurLives around the country.'

Doting father: Kanye doted on daughter North West as they headed to the protest

Taking to Twitter, Kim wrote: 'Im so happy I got to share this moment with these two. I hope North remembers this forever'

Loving moment: Kim and Kanye dote on their daughter as they watch the march

VIP pass: The West family were among the crowds on the mall

United: The couple were seen bundled up as they made their way through the crowd together

Looking her best: Her hair had been elegantly done, and she accentuated her TV star features with a heavy and flattering makeup job

Kim and Kanye were seen braving the Washington D.C. chill, bundled up as they made their way through the crowd together.

The event is being led by the student survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on February 14 when 17 were slaughtered by a teenage gunman carrying a legally-purchased AR-15.

The star joined the crowds at the event, which saw Lin Manuel Miranda and Miley Cyrus performing for the crowd.

Also showing their support: Kendall Jenner and Hailey Baldwin, meanwhile, joined forces as they attended the Los Angeles rally

Making a statement: Kendall carried a March For Our Lives flag, while Hailey wore a statement sweatshirt

Kim - who has ten million more followers than Donald Trump - also retweeted her sister Kourtney, who was supporting the event: 'Today we stand with the survivors of gun violence and student activists who are calling for action on common sense gun safety laws at #MarchForOurLives around the country! This is the beginning of a safer future. #MarchForOurLives.'

The Kardashian family showed their support for the movement on social media as well, with Kris Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, and Khloe calling attention to the issue.

Some 800 other 'sibling' events are being held around the world, with the DC march as the one that students hope will finally force congress to change gun laws.

Rally: Kardashian took to social media to share one of the poster boards she came across

Hobnobbing! Kim leaned in affectionately with a member of the Baltimore Children's Choir, a group that were seen onstage, where there were musical performances by famous artists

Fan favorite! Kim made the day of several fans as she posed with them at the event

Strike a pose! The star made a puckered up face as she posed with one fan

Up above the world so high: The little girl sailed over the crowd on her father's shoulders

Keeping cozy: Her parents made sure she stayed warm, bringing her to the march in a thick hoodie

Over 500,000 people are expected at the main rally in the country's capital, which began at noon on Pennsylvania Avenue between 3rd street and 12th street NW but large crowds had already formed by 8.30am.

Meanwhile, across the country, Kendall Jenner attended the Los Angeles rally with her friend Hailey Baldwin.

The global event has been orchestrated by the survivors of the Parkland massacre in Florida on February 14.

Looking out for their little tyke: Kimye also ensured their daughter was hydrated, giving her a cup with a straw to carry as she sat on her dad's shoulders

Background: North is her parents' firstborn child together

Party of five: She has a two-year-old brother called Saint and an infant sister named Chicago

Mismatch: Kanye had dyed the hair on his head blonde, by contrast to his black beard

Memories: Kanye could be seen lifting his phone high into the air, seemingly to either snap a selfie or to photograph something in the distance

Against violence: The reality television star tweeted in support for the gun reform rally

Seventeen students and teachers died in the mass killing by gunman Nikolas Cruz.

Celebrities have been vocal in their support of the gun control rally and have donated their money.

All have, however, been eager not to snatch the spotlight from the events' young organizers.

George Clooney and his wife Amal donated $500,000 to the Washington DC march as did Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg.

Paul McCartney attended the rally in New York City. Oprah Winfrey also attended in D.C.

Family affair: Kim also retweeted her sister Kourtney, who posted this picture herself

Never again: The main march was in Washington DC where hundreds of thousands gathered

Thinking of the future: As a mother of three, it's no surprise she has a keen interest in the safety of schoolchildren - pictured in January holding North alongside husband Kanye with son Saint

Star support: McCartney was at the New York City protest on Saturday, as well as many other celebrities

Stellar support: It was also attended by Amal and George Clooney

Making voices heard: Others at the rally held up banners

President Trump announced on Friday that the Department of Justice would issue a 'rule' banning bump stocks - the firearm accessory which can turn non automatic guns into semi-automatic and automatic killing machines.

'Obama Administration legalized bump stocks.

'BAD IDEA. As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period.

'We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns,' he said.

On February 14, gunman Cruz did not use a bump stock to kill 14 students and three teachers.

The most infamous use of the accessory was by Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas gunman who murdered 58 people by spraying bullets into a crowd at a country music festival in October. He later shot himself.

Solidarity: Khloe Kardashian also tweeted her support for the cause

'I am so proud': Kris Jenner also tweeted about the event

'There is nothing more important than the safety of our children': Jenner used her platform to call attention to the rallyThey are parents to twins Ella and Alexander.

And George and Amal Clooney campaigned to protect their future with an end to gun violence on Saturday.

The 56-year-old double Oscar winner joined the March For Our Lives rally in Washington D.C., alongside his 40-year-old human rights' lawyer wife.

At the rally: George and Amal Clooney left the babies at home as they campaigned to protect their future with an end to gun violence on Saturday

Dressed to keep warm in the cold weather, the stellar couple joined celebrities throwing their weight behind the movement, organized by the student survivors of the tragic high school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The actor posed with 16-year-old Mya Middleton, who spoke at the march.

'Im here because Ive been personally affected by the lack of gun control and I believe guns have taken over the minds of individuals who want an easy way out of their dilemma,' Middleton said.

Stellar support: The 56-year-old double Oscar winner joined the March For Our Lives rally in Washington D.C., alongside his 40-year-old human rights' lawyer wife

Dennis Rodman was also there in Washington, DC, and posed with Clooney,

Ben Platt and Lin-Manuel Miranda performed, as did Miley Cyrus and Jennifer Hudson.

Even Kim Kardashian West and Taylor Swift got political, along with the likes of Paul McCartney and Jimmy Fallon, to name a few, as more than 800 demonstrations kicked off across the country on Saturday.

Support: The actor posed with 16-year-old Mya Middleton, who spoke at the march

Celebrity attendees: Dennis Rodman was among those showing his support

Getting political: The Clooneys chatted to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi

Famous faces: George also met up with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jimmy Fallon and Scooter Braun

Big names: John Molner and Katie Couric chatted to the Clooneys

Bundled up: They wrapped up warm against the cold weather

The marches are being held to show unity in calling for stricter gun control, after yet another school shooting took the life of a 16-year-old girl in Maryland on Thursday.

Kim Kardashian West tweeted that she arrived in Washington, DC with Kanye West and 4-year-old daughter, North, on Saturday at 10.16 am Eastern:

'So ready to March today! Landed in DC w North & Kanye. We stand in solidarity with the survivors of gun violence & students who are calling for action on common sense gun safety laws at #MarchForOurLives around the country @AMarch4OurLives @Everytown.'

Taylor Swift, who is notoriously apolitical, shared a photo of the March For Our Lives logo to Instagram.

She captioned it: 'No one should have to go to school in fear of gun violence. Or to a nightclub. Or to a concert. Or to a movie theater. Or to their place of worship.'

Star support: McCartney was at the New York City protest on Saturday, as well as many other celebrities

She added: 'Ive made a donation to show my support for the students, for the March For Our Lives campaign, for everyone affected by these tragedies, and to support gun reform. Im so moved by the Parkland High School students, faculty, by all families and friends of victims who have spoken out, trying to prevent this from happening again.'

Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon, who announced her candidacy for governor of New York on March 19, joined marchers in New York City.

She tweeted: 'Ran in to a group of fellow @BarnardCollege alumni today at the NY #MarchForOurLives. Incredibly moved at how many people came out today to stake a stand for our kids and demand action against gun violence.'

Showing their support: Kim Kardashian West and her husband Kanye West showed their support for the March For Our Lives rally as the couple proudly attended the protest in Washington D.C. on Saturday

Doting father: Kanye doted on daughter North West as they headed to the protest

She was spotted at a subway station with marchers carrying signs that read, 'arms r 4 hugging,' 'armed with knowledge not guns,' and #enough.'

Miley Cyrus also shared her support, using song lyrics from her hit song, The Climb, to express how she's feeling ahead of partaking in the march.

'These lyrics mean more to me now than ever. I wont ever give up & neither will the millions that march with us today! #EndGunViolence,' she wrote, adding a photo of the following lyrics:

'I can almost see it, That dream I'm dreaming but here's a voice inside my head saying, "You'll never reach it," Every step I'm taking, Every move I make feels lost with no direction. My faith is shaking but I gotta keep trying, gotta keep my head held high.

She also shared a photo, including her sister Noah Cyrus, with her marching group outfitted in hooded sweatshirts featuring the March For Our Lives logo and the hashtag, '#MSDStrong,' standing for 'Marjory Stoneman Douglas Strong.'

Huge turnout: The primary march was in Washington DC (above) where hundreds of thousands gathered

Something to say: Others at the event held up banners

Reese Witherspoon shared her support on Instagram, writing 'I'm so proud of these students who are using their voices to speak truth to power.' She shared a March For Our Lives logo with the phrase, 'We will march as if our lives depend on it, because they do.'

Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama shared a message offline to Parkland school shooting survivors, dated March 10, which was first obtained my.Mic News.

'We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy,' the two wrote.

Former President Bill Clinton also expressed his support for the cause and called others to join in their efforts to get Congress to reform gun control legislation. He tweeted on Friday:

'America owes its gratitude to the students of Stoneman Douglas and their peers across the country who have joined their cause. We also owe them our support. Join #MarchForOurLives tomorrow to stop mass school shootings and give our kids their futures back.'

Jimmy Fallon, who had pledged he would be joining the march with his wife and two children back in February, took his support a step further on Saturday.

'Im partnering with @MTV and @NAACP to sponsor a bus full of smart young young people traveling from NYC to #MarchForOurLives Washington, DC today. Thank you for standing up and saying youve had #ENOUGH. See you there.'

Mindy Kaling shared an image of the cover of Time Magazine featuring Parkland shooting survivors.

She wrote: 'Its happening! So proud of these young people behind #MarchForOurLives. Lets join them!'

Will Smith shared a photo of a March For Our Lives tee shirt, calling it his 'wardrobe for today.'

He wrote: 'I am honored to support these students from all around the world who are coming together to, as Gandhi said "Be The Change"!'

Smith implored more to join him in marching, writing: 'Add YOUR voice and join them on the streets today to show that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. To find the march closest to you, visit MarchForOurLives.com.'

Madonna shared a photo on Instagram of bold letters, stating, 'Not one more.'

She captioned the image: 'It is our Responsibility, our Duty and our Right to Stand Together, with every Student, every Family, Every Human!! Every Heart! And Demand an End to Gun Violence!'

Other celebrities simply showed up to march, without making a separate verbal or written statement, like former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and Steven Spielberg.

McCartney was seen marching in New York City, carrying a sign showing the March For Our Lives logo, alongside his wife, Nancy Shevell.

The two of them also wore tee shirts that read, 'We can end gun violence.'

Before the marches kicked off, Parkland school shooting survivors took to the microphone to share more about their message, seeking common sense gun reforms.

The speakers included David Hogg, Sarah Chadwick, Jaclyn Corin, Ryan Deitsch, Aalayah Eastmond, Sam Fuentes, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, Delaney Tarr and Alex Wind.

The other speakers from around the country included Trevon Bosley, 19, from Chicago, Edna Chavez , 17, from Los Angeles, Zion Kelly, 17, from Washington DC, Alex King, 18, from Chicago, D'Angelo McDade, 18, from Chicago, Mya Middleton, 16, from Chicago, Matt Post, 18, from Maryland, Matthew Soto, 19, from Connecticut and Christopher Underwood, 11, from Brooklyn, New York.

It was the Parkland school shooting massacre that happened on Valentine's Day in Florida that has ignited the current nationwide debate on gun control.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, admitted to killing 17 people and injuring 15 others on February 14 with an AR-15 that he had obtained legally.

The March For Our Lives demonstrations seek to call attention to the need for common sense gun reform that prevents tragic like this from happening.

Cruz remains in custody in Florida, charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.Lieve Schreiber joined the March For Our Lives rally in New York City on Saturday.

The Ray Donavan actor was spotted holding hands with sons Alex, 10, and Sam, 9, as they walked in solidarity for the student-led protest of gun violence.

And the proud father posted pictures of his children getting ready for the march as he captioned the snaps: 'The future. Our kids.'

Scroll down for video

Family affair: Liev Schreiber, 50, was spotted holding hands with sons Alex, 10, and Sam, 9, as they walked in March For Our Lives protest in NYC on Saturday

Alex and Sam are pictured holding a sign with a no-gun symbol as they carry their pet pooch Woodrow along for the ride.

Liev bundled up in a sweater and scarf as he held hands with Sam while walking Woodrow down the streets of the Big Apple.

In one snap, Liev carried Alex on his shoulders as he donned a grey beanie for the chilly climate.

The family walked alongside actress Gina Gershon for the nationwide protest which was organized after the Parkland, Florida high school shooting that left 17 dead on February 14.

Bundled up: Liev bundled up in a sweater and scarf as he held hands with Alex while walking Woodrow down the streets of the Big Apple

United: The family walked alongside actress Gina Gershon

Proud papa: The proud father posted pictures of his children getting ready for the march as he captioned the snaps: 'The future. Our kids.'

The Washington D.C. rally featured a group of entertainers - including Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, and Jennifer Hudson - that performed for the crowd.

'We're fighting for change and love and safety and for our future. I love you all so much,' the Ariana told the crowd after her rousing rendition of Be Alright.

And Miley got the crowd to sing along with her captivating The Climb performance.

Meanwhile, Liev shares his two sons with ex Naomi Watts.

The ex-couple were first an item back in 2005 but they called it quits for good on their relationship in 2016.

Representing: Alex held a sign with a no-gun symbol

Crowded: The actor stood in support with the large crowd gathered in the streetsShe's no stranger to flaunting her killer physique both on social media and at high-profile events.

So it's no surprise Charlotte Dawson cut another sultry figure in a thigh-skimming silk dress as she attended Miss Swimsuit UK in Newcastle's Bonbar on Friday evening.

The Ex On The Beach star, 25, was joined by Geordie Shore's Chantelle Connelly, who looked equally fierce in a ribbed beige bralet, teamed with a pair of form-fitting jeans.

Turning heads: Charlotte Dawson (left) and Chantelle Connelly (right) ensured all eyes were on them as they attended Miss Swimsuit UK in Newcastle's Bonbar on Friday evening

The TV personality set pulses racing in her short frock, which was adorned with elaborate ruffled sleeves and lace panels.

Injecting a hint of pizzazz to her look, the brunette added to her height in a pair of classic stilettos by Christian Louboutin.

Charlotte ensured her daring dress took centre stage as she kept it simple in the accessory department - sporting a gold watch and diamond stud earrings.

Legs for days: The Ex On The Beach star, 25, set pulses racing in her short frock, which was adorned with elaborate ruffled sleeves and lace panels

The make-up artist wore her thick tresses in loose waves, and complemented her striking features with heavy strokes of make-up.

Charlotte was joined by her rugby player beau Matt Sarsfield, who looked every inch the hunk in a pair of grey skinny jeans, which was tied in with a bold white tee.

Geordie Shore star Sarah Goodhart also attended the glitzy bash in a strapless maxi dress, embellished with a thigh-high split.

Smitten: The make-up artist was joined by her rugby player beau Matt Sarsfield, who looked every inch the hunk in a pair of grey skinny jeans, which was tied in with a bold white tee

Pals: The brunette was spotted with Geordie Shore star Sarah Goodhart at the glitzy bash

Chantelle, 28, looked typically sexy in her revealing number, flashing a glimpse of her toned abs and ample cleavage.

The Newcastle native elevated her look with a pair of metallic pointed heels and toted a chic black handbag.

Beaming with delight, the heavily-inked star swept her hair into a slick ponytail to reveal her stunning beauty - which was enhanced with heavy make-up.

Striking: Chantelle, 28, looked typically sexy in her revealing number, flashing a glimpse of her toned abs and ample cleavage

Attention-grabbing: Sarah wowed in a strapless maxi dress as she posed up a storm in a sports car

The Heat 1 event - which featured a live catwalk with contestants - also saw the attendance of Manchester-born Helen Briggs and Miss Universe UK 2018 winner Poppy Haskell.

Meanwhile, it was plain to see the passion between Charlotte and her beau Matt, who first split just before Valentine's Day 2017, with the reality star saying at the time her heart 'had been ripped out'.

She reunited with Matt in October after spending eight months apart, during which time Charlotte starred on Celebs Go Dating.

On the show, she struck up a romance with shamed X Factor star Frankie Cocozza, yet their relationship was short-lived as Frankie soon moved on with another woman.

Vixens: Chloe gave a peek at her perky posterior in the slinky number while Helen Briggs (left) showcased her hourglass frame in a figure-hugging dress

Passing on the baton: The Heat 1 event - which featured a live catwalk with contestants - also saw the attendance of Miss Universe UK 2018 winner Poppy Haskell

Charlotte burst on to screens when she entered Ex On The Beach's all-star fifth season as the ex-flame of Gary 'Gaz' Beadle of Geordie Shore fame.

She was seen growing closer to Celebrity Big Brother winner Stephen Bear before she unceremoniously dumped her in favour of Lillie Lexie Gregg.

Outspoken Chantelle recently underwent a bottom enhancement in Spain, and credited her surgeons for 'changing' her life thanks to their handiwork.

This is not the first time the star has attempted to perfect her plump rear, as she underwent a non-surgical bottom lift in March 2017.

Hopefuls: The former redhead put on a friendly display as she posed with the glamorous contestantsHe's about to star in the new action-packed blockbuster, Ready Player One.

And ahead of its release, actor Tye Sheridan has gushed over the film's iconic director Steven Spielberg.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, the handsome 21-year-old star of the new film didn't hold back when talking about the veteran Hollywood director.

'He is a god': Actor Tye Sheridan, 21, has gushed over iconic director Steven Spielberg ahead of the release of their new film, Ready Player One

'He is a god,' the actor spilled, before adding, 'That's a crazy concept to think about - how one filmmaker has impacted that many people with stories.'

In the dystopian fantasy film, Tye plays Wade Watts, who is billed as a struggling orphan who can't catch a break in life.

However, his life takes a turn when he enters 'The Oasis', a sort of virtual world, where his avatar is is a gun-toting, fast-driving man called Parzival, who has plenty of swagger.

His impact has been enormous! The iconic director, who has made such films as ET and JAWS, will release sci-fi blockbuster Ready Player One later this year

Although a sci-fi film, the millennial actor said he didn't believe it was that far-fetched, with people turning to technology once the world starts dealing more acutely with climate degradation and over population.

The film is creating plenty of buzz, with avid Stephen Spielberg fans excited for his imagination of the future. The famous director known for his iconic films like JAWS, E.T. and Schindler's List.

According to Warner Bros: 'the film is set in 2045, with the real world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But people have found salvation in the OASIS, an immersive virtual universe where you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.'

A great mentor! The millennial actor, who was born in 1996, said the iconic filmmaker's work has had a huge influence on him and other people

The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, dies, leaving behind his fortune and a contest to find keys that will lead to the winner taking control of the virtual world.

Wade manages to find the first key, but immediately becomes a target for nefarious forces bent on claiming OASIS and Halliday's immense fortune for themselves.

The unlikely young hero then joins forces with a group of friends who call themselves the High Five to save OASIS and defeat the forces of evil threatening it.

Actor Tye says the film is ultimately about accepting yourself, which is what his character 'learns to do,' adding it is a theme he hopes audiences take away from the film.

Ready Player One has a scheduled release date in Australia for March 29, 2018.

Dystopian fantasy! The plot of the new movie Ready Player One centres about the creator of OASIS, James Halliday, who dies, leaving behind his fortune and a contest to find keys that will lead to the winner taking control of the virtual world

The future? Tye said while the plot might be far-fetched, more people could turn to technology as the world suffers from over-population and climate dedegrationShe has been spending some quality time with her hunky other half Mark Wright in Los Angeles.

And Michelle Keegan was paid a visit from her doting parents Jacqueline and Michael in the sunny climes of Los Angeles on Saturday, with the happy family heading to brunch at The Mondrian Hotel.

The 30-year-old actress put on her typically stylish display in a pair of denim overalls as she enjoyed some quality time with her family.

Family time: Michelle Keegan was paid a visit from her doting parents Jacqueline and Michael in the sunny climes of Los Angeles on Saturday, with the happy family heading to brunch

Michelle looked sensational as she dressed her slender figure in a simple black tee and trendy blue dungarees.

She lived up to her beauty icon status by sporting a heavily curled brunette mane and shielded her bronzed features from the glaring sun with a pair of cool shades.

Michelle toted her belongings in a pastel pink bumbag as she conversed with her parents.

The star's husband Mark was also present at the casual brunch outing and looked handsome in a black hoodie and grey skinny jeans.

Style queen: The British actress, who was also joined by husband Mark Wright for the casual outing, put on her typically stylish display in a pair of denim overalls

Wow: The actress lived up to her beauty icon status by sporting a heavily curled brunette mane and shielded her bronzed features from the glaring sun with a pair of cool shades

Fashionista: Michelle toted her belongings in a pastel pink bumbag as she conversed with her parents

The Our Girl star had been working on the latest series of her BBC war drama, spending eight months abroad while Mark established his Stateside TV presenting career.

And despite the long distance between them, Michelle recently revealed that it was her decision that Mark pursue his job as an Extra TV host

Speaking to Cosmopolitan, she said: 'Before I went to South Africa last April, we were sat in the gym car park and he was asking how long [I'd be away for]. I said, "What do you want to do?" He said, "I don't know."

Jean-ius: Michelle looked sensational as she dressed her slender figure in a simple black tee and trendy blue dungarees

Husband and wife: She has been spending some quality time with her hunky other half Mark Wright in Los Angeles

'And I said, "When I'm away, why don't you go to America?" He had an agent here. So he did - and look what's happened. It's unbelievable.'

While she's immensely proud of Mark's achievements, she can't believe he doesn't get more star-struck when he's interviewing big-name stars like Sir Elton John, Liam Neeson and Kim Kardashian West.

She added: 'He met Kevin Costner the other day. I was like, "Oh my God, how was it?" He said, "Yeah, alright. Have you had any lunch?"'Dec Donnelly and his wife Ali Astall are reportedly expecting their first child.

According to The Sun, the pair, who wed in 2015, are 'delighted to be expecting - especially since they have been trying for some time.'

Reports of their growing family comes hot on the heels of Dec preparing to host Saturday Night Takeaway himself, in light of presenting partner Ant McPartlin heading to rehab following his recent drink-drive arrest.

'They are delighted': Dec Donnelly, 42, and his wife Ali Astall are reportedly expecting their first child

It is alleged that the couple first learnt they were pregnant soon after Dec left the Australian jungle after the last series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Oh Here! finished in December.

'They have been keeping the pregnancy a closely guarded secret, but now that Ali is safely over 12 weeks, they are starting to let people know,' it is claimed of the happy news, with the source quickly adding that they have told 'key people at ITV'.

Ali has reportedly told her close colleagues and will be stepping away from work commitments to 'look after herself' and to enjoy an 'easy' pregnancy.

'They have both always wanted a family but worried that it might not happen for them.'

A representative for Dec and Ali refused to comment on the claims when approached by MailOnline.

Growing family: According to The Sun, the pair, who wed in 2015, are 'delighted to be expecting - especially since they have been trying for some time'

Woes: Reports of their growing family comes hot on the heels of Dec preparing to host Saturday Night Takeaway himself, in light of Ant McPartlin heading to rehab following his recent drink-drive arrest

It has also been inevitable to ignore the fact that his happy news comes hot on the heels of his best friend Ant's woes.

'This has come at a difficult time for them both, given everything that Ant is now going through and the pressure that has put on Dec in the past week,' it was said, before adding that 'their priority now is their baby and an experience that they see as the best of their lives.'

Dec and Ali - who has acted as the presenting duo's manager for over a decade - married in Elswick, Tyne and Wear in August 2015 after two years of dating.

Happy news: It is alleged that the couple first learnt they were pregnant soon after the last series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Oh Here! finished in December

It is claimed of their delight: 'They have been keeping the pregnancy a closely guarded secret, but now that Ali is safely over 12 weeks, they are starting to let people know'

In an interview with Fabulous magazine in February last year, Ant and Dec both said that the focus in their lives has always been on their families as they bared all about marriage and hopefully having children in the near future.

Ant - who had previously spoken about his struggles with having children and of course has since split from his wife - revealed he would be 'over the moon' to become a dad, while Dec echoed similar wishes.

Dec said: 'Absolutely at some point, when the time is right! Well have to put some time in the diary. Things are pretty busy!'

In April of last year, while recording the finale of the 2017 season of Saturday Night Takeaway at Walt Disney World in Florida, both men admitted that being there made them feel a little broody.

Mum to be: Ali has reportedly told her close colleagues and will be stepping away from work commitments to 'look after herself' and to enjoy an 'easy' pregnancy

As reported in OK!, Dec said: It is almost like a prescription  everyone should come and spend a couple of days in Disney once in their life. Would we come back with a little Ant and Dec? Oh, definitely!

'We saw it on the show, what it means for young ones to come out here. It would be one of those things to do with children, definitely.

This comes after Ant - who split from wife Lisa Armstrong earlier this year after 11 years of marriage - was arrested for a drink drive incident over the weekend and has since made the quick decision to return to rehab earlier this week.

One onlooker, Jake Spencer, said the Britain's Got Talent star was argumentative towards cops when they tried to put him in a police car after he failed a breath test.

A source added: 'They have both always wanted a family but worried that it might not happen for them'

Love: Dec and Ali - who has acted as the presenting duo's manager for over a decade - married in Elswick, Tyne and Wear in August 2015 after two years of dating

'This has come at a difficult time for them both': It has also been inevitable to ignore the fact that his happy news comes hot on the heels of his best friend Ant's woes

He told The Sun newspaper: 'Ant looked in a right state and was acting argumentatively toward a policewoman. I couldn't believe it when I saw who it was.

'The woman was trying to arrest him and get him in the police car but he clearly wasn't having it. He was not making it easy for her and he seemed to be trying to wriggle out of her clutches. He was not in a good way.

'Eventually she got him in the police car. There were about six or seven police cars in total.'

Candid: In an interview last year, Ant and Dec both said that the focus in their lives has always been on their families and hopefully having children in the near future

'It's tougher than you think': Ant has previously spoken about his struggles with having children

Marital breakdown: Ant split from his wife of 11 years, Lisa Armstrong, earlier this year

It is thought Ant veered into the wrong lane after coming round a sharp bend, hitting a green Mini before crashing into a BMW X5. A three-year-old girl was taken to hospital to be checked over as a precautionary measure.

In 2013, Ant also discussed he and his estranged make-up artist wife were finding it difficult to conceive.

At the time he confessed to Radio Times: 'Lisa and I would love to have kids. Were trying. Its tougher than you think when you get a bit older.'

Explaining the issue in terms of his friendship with Dec, Ant revealed: 'Theres a rumour that we do everything together and Im holding off having kids till Dec finds himself Mrs Right. I love that idea, but Im afraid its not true.'Electric planes and other highly-efficient aircraft will race from London to Darwin next year to mark the centenary of the Great Air Race.

The race and a series of other events in the Top End will celebrate 100 years since Captain Ross Smith, Lieutenant Keith Smith and Sergeants Wally Shiers and Jim Bennett won the first event.

"The 1919 Great Air Race captured the imagination of people across the globe," Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner said on Saturday.

"Under the command of Captain Ross Smith, the journey has been described as the flight that changed the world and paved the way for national and international air travel."

The 2019 event, to be known as the Centenary E-Race, will start in London late next year and stop over in at least 15 countries before making its way to Darwin.

It is hoped that world-leading technology companies including Tesla, NASA, Airbus, Virgin and Boeing will enter in celebration of a century of aviation innovation and achievement by engineers, designers and aircraft constructors.

Captain Smith and his colleagues flew a Vickers Vimy Biplane more than 18,000km in 28 days in 1919, with the race acting as a catalyst for international travel and improved communications.

John Storey, an expert in battery and solar technology, said the 2019 race would fast-track renewable flight technology by years and contribute to improving the e-aviation industry.

"The event is technically feasible, however, completing the route in an electric aircraft is by no means a foregone conclusion," Professor Storey said.

"That makes 2019 the right time to stage it. In 2009 it would have been impossible, in 2029 it will be routine."

The program of celebrations in Darwin will include an air show, centenary ball, commemorative ceremonies and education programs for schools.

The Ross Smith Memorial at Fannie Bay will also undergo significant conservation work.A Russian refugee who used fake qualifications to scam work as a psychologist in Queensland hospitals has been found guilty of fraud.

Vincent Victor Berg was on trial for two weeks at Southport District Court, where the jury heard he used bogus credentials from the Voronezh State University to convince administrators at Gold Coast Health in 1999 he could act as an observer.

Later, while working at four north Queensland hospitals, he prescribed medications that gave serious side-effects to several patients.

Assault and grievous bodily harm charges were dropped during the trial.

His deception lasted about four years, from May 1999 to April 2003.

A former employee of the university who searched for Berg's records told the court she couldn't find any trace of him in records that stretched back 75 years.

Berg claimed to have obtained his qualifications in 1969 to 1977.

But the graduation number on documents he produced was so different from the number on a legitimate degree issued a month before Berg supposedly graduated that it raised suspicion.

During the trial Berg's former supervisor at Gold Coast Hospital, associate professor Leon Petchkovsky, told the court he found him "quite credible".

He was never given any reason to believe Berg wasn't a doctor and felt he was good with patients.

Following deliberations that began on Wednesday afternoon, the jury on Friday convicted Berg, who had been charged with seven offences, including three counts of fraud.

Berg will remain in custody until a sentence date is set.Homeless people in Tasmania will have more beds and accommodation options this winter thanks to a funding package of nearly $500,000 from the state government.

The money will go towards a mix of cabins and motel-style accommodation for Tasmanians most in need over the cold winter months, including 15 new beds at the Hobart Women's Shelter.

The funding was announced on Saturday and comes after the recent Tasmanian Housing Summit, which was partly prompted by homeless people camping at the Hobart Showgrounds.NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she doesn't care when the federal election is held, rejecting a Liberal MP's claim the coalition "secretly" wants the prime minister to go to the polls later this year.

Liberal MP Peter Phelps said the coalition is "secretly hoping Malcolm Turnbull faces a crisis" that forces him to the polls in November or December, so federal issues don't affect the state government's chances of being re-elected in 2019.

"The aggravation against the federal Libs can be taken out and we don't wear some of the opprobrium come March," he told AAP on Friday.

But Ms Berejiklian has no preference for the timing of federal election, dismissing Mr Phelp's comments as "his opinion".

"It doesn't matter to me," the premier told reporters on Saturday.A 12-year-old boy is in a serious condition in hospital after he was accidentally shot in the abdomen at a rural property in southern NSW, police say.

At about 10.45am on Saturday emergency services were called to the Waugorah property about 250km northwest of Deniliquin.

The boy was treated by NSW Ambulance paramedics at the scene before being airlifted to The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, in a serious condition.

Police have launched an investigation, including whether there are any suspicious circumstances surrounding the incident.Australia is about to be directly linked by air to the UK for the first time with the start of non-stop flights from Perth to London onboard Qantas' new 787-9 Dreamliner.

The 14,498km route will take about 17 hours, shaving several hours off the journey for those departing the West Australian capital.

It is expected to improve tourist numbers from Britain, providing a much-needed boost to the economy.

That's especially needed in WA, given data earlier this month showed the state recorded Australia's only fall in overseas tourist numbers over the past year, with its isolation proving a turn-off.

For travellers coming to Perth from Melbourne, however, the total time saving for the journey to Heathrow is only about one hour.

But travellers from London to Melbourne and vice versa are allowed one free stopover in Perth.

Convenience is also expected to be a drawcard, given passengers fly to Perth then embark on their long-haul journey from the same airport.

Previously, travellers had to take the short but fiddly trip from the domestic airport to the seperate international terminal.

That's no longer necessary for those flying Qantas because Terminal 3 at Perth Airport has been converted to a dual domestic-international operation, hosting all of the flying kangaroo's overseas routes.

Guests on the inaugural flight on Saturday night include the airline's chief executive Alan Joyce, WA Premier Mark McGowan and his tourism minister Paul Papalia along with a throng of local and interstate media.

They'll be the first to experience new lighting features and healthy, lighter dining options that aim to reduce jetlag and help passengers touch down feeling more rested.

KEY FACTS ABOUT PERTH-TO-LONDON DIRECT FLIGHTS

* The first regularly scheduled non-stop service between Australia and the UK, and the longest Boeing Dreamliner flight in the world

* Longest flight on the Qantas network (14,498km), followed by the airline's non-stop Sydney to Dallas service (13,730km)

* When travelling from Heathrow to Melbourne, one free stopover is permitted in Perth in each direction

* Eight Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners have been added to Qantas' fleet for the new service

* The aircraft seats 236 passengers

* Windows are 65 per cent bigger than comparable aircraft and can be adjusted electronically

* New cabin lighting includes a simulated sunrise to gently wake passengers on morning flights

* Turbulence-sensing technology smooths out the ride while various solutions reduce cabin noise.A dog food product has been recalled after a group of Victoria Police dogs were struck down with illness, including one who was euthanised.

Mars Petcare Australia is voluntarily recalling its ADVANCE Dermocare dry dog food on Saturday, after several police dogs were affected by megaesophagus, an enlargement of the oesophagus that is not generally associated with food.

The company has run hundreds of tests and has not found a link between the condition and the product, but says it is recalling as a precaution.Protesters will march through Brisbane as part of a day of national action calling for the closure of offshore detention centres.

The Very Reverend Dr Peter Catt, Dean of St John's Anglican Cathedral, will join with Ali Kadri from the Islamic Council of Queensland and Ros Mclennan, the head of the state's council of unions, in a rally that starts at King George Square on Sunday afternoon.

The Palm Sunday rally for refugees will proceed through the city to St John's Cathedral, where several speakers are expected to address the crowd.

The focus of the event is the plight of asylum seekers who face an unfair processing system, according to organisers.

Similar events are happening at 21 other locations, from Townsville to Tasmania and across to WA.Police are investigating a deadly boat incident on the NSW South Coast after a 13-year-old girl died.

Three men and three children were in the 6.3-metre vessel when it overturned while attempting to cross the Moruya River bar at about 7am on Saturday.

The girl was trapped underwater for up to 40 minutes in the hull of the overturned boat, according to police, who say they are investigating the circumstances of the incident.

The girl is understood to have been the daughter of the skipper.

Police said none of the six people on board were believed to have been wearing life jackets.

The boat was crossing the Moruya River bar when it was hit by three consecutive waves which caused it to capsize.

Acting Superintendent Darren Wood said the boat had been crossing the bar during an outgoing tide, which he said was the most dangerous time to attempt it.

"When you do cross a bar on an outgoing tide, the waves will become steeper and closer together therefore making any bar crossing at an outgoing tide the most difficult time to cross," he said.Pet owners are being urged to return a dog food product after a number of Victoria Police canines fell ill, including one who was euthanased.

Mars Petcare Australia has voluntarily recalled ADVANCE Dermocare dry food, after learning a number of dogs have been affected by megaesophagus, a condition not usually linked to food.

Nine police dog squad members, including one who was euthanased, have been struck down by the condition - an enlargement of the oesophagus.

The company has run hundreds of tests on ADVANCE Dermocare and has not found a link to the condition.

"Regardless, we are voluntarily recalling these products as a precaution while we work to get to the bottom of the issue as soon as we can," a spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday.

The condition first emerged in the force in December and several possible causes have already been ruled out.

Investigators are looking at a number of "common factors".

"One of them does include the food that we're feeding the dogs," squad Inspector Jon Woodyatt told 3AW Radio on Friday.

People who have bought ADVANCE Dermocare dry dog food in 3kg, 8kg and 15kg bags are being asked to return them to the place of purchase for a refund.

No other ADVANCE products are affected by the recall.Even runner-up Jamie Whincup couldn't begrudge Scott Pye an emotional maiden Supercars race win on the Holden journeyman's 165th attempt.

The seven-time series champion admitted he "would have felt guilty" if he had pounced on a late error by Pye and snatched victory in race three of the Australian Grand Prix support event at Melbourne on Saturday.

Six years after his first Supercars race, Pye's long wait to stand on top of the podium appeared over with victory in sight with just over two of the race's 25 laps left.

Then disaster looked to have struck.

Pye lost a three second lead over Whincup when he locked up his brakes on turn 13 and went off track in what appeared to be a golden chance for the Holden star to overtake.

However Pye regained composure and held out Whincup's challenge to claim line honours by 0.2612 of a second.

"He ran wide at the end of the back straight and, to be honest, I was actually hoping he got away with it because I would've felt a bit guilty, me grabbing that (late lead)," Whincup told Supercars.com.

"He made a mistake but defended well so there was just no opportunity to pass.

"If there was an opportunity, I would've taken it but he drove well."

Instead of Whincup grabbing his 110th career win, Pye notched a long awaited No.1.

It was also the first win for Pye's Walkinshaw Andretti United team.

Pye certainly earned it.

He held his nerve when his team opted not to follow some of the field's lead and pit for wet tyres when the heavens opened at Albert Park with nine laps left.

Then Whincup loomed large in his rearview mirror after his late error.

Pye, 28, revealed he had more pressing concerns as the twilight race finished in darkness following the late storm.

He was being blinded by his dashboard lights in the gloomy conditions and had no idea how to lower the brightness.

"It was dark but my biggest problem was that I couldn't remember which button turned my dash down so the lights on my dash were on full brightness," Pye told speedcafe.com.

"If you can imagine a car driving towards you with their headlights on, that's what it was like.

"I wanted to ask (engineer Rob Starr) which button but there was enough going on so I just kept my eyes forward ... and just pressed on."

Whincup won Saturday's earlier 13-lap race, his first of 2018.

The Supercars round concludes with a 13-lap event from 1345 AEDT on Sunday ahead of the Formula One Australian Grand Prix.A man has been extradited from Perth and charged with the indecent assault of a 12-year-old girl on a Sydney train.

It's alleged the girl was indecently assaulted by a man who sat next to her on a train to Parramatta on New Year's Day. A 33-year-old man was arrested in Perth on Thursday following a public appeal by NSW Police.

His extradition was approved by Perth District Court on Friday and he was flown to Sydney, where he was charged with aggravated indecent assault. He is due to face Parramatta Bail Court on Sunday.The blaze that destroyed Tasmania's historic Bronte Park Lodge was accidental, a fire investigator says.

The Friday morning fire took hold of the 75-year-old timber structure very quickly, with staff and guests forced to flee for their lives. Damage was estimated at a million dollars.

The hotel was completely destroyed but fire investigators were able to determine that the fire began in the wiring in the foyer ceiling.

Tasmania Fire Service regional investigator Andrew Emery praised the the staff who, when alerted by the fire alarms, quickly evacuated guests from the building.

"The fire took hold of the building quickly and if it wasn't for the prompt actions of the staff at the lodge following their pre-determined emergency evacuation plan, the result could have been a lot more devastating," Mr Emery said.Sonny Bill Williams will miss up to two months of Super Rugby, setting up a race for the No.12 jersey at the Blues and possibly the All Blacks.

The Blues have confirmed Williams suffered a broken wrist during last week's 37-20 loss to the Stormers in Cape Town.

His recovery time has been estimated at six to eight weeks, delivering a blow to the hopes of the struggling Kiwi franchise.

Without a play-off appearance in seven years and currently bottom of the New Zealand conference with one win from four games, they must recover quickly from the loss of defensive kingpin Williams.

The 32-year-old's place could go to one-Test All Black George Moala, although up-and-coming TJ Faiane has been used at centre this year.

Williams will only have a handful of weeks to prove his readiness for the All Blacks' home Test series against France in June.

If deemed unready, his spot could go to Hurricanes powerhouse Ngani Laumape, who made his Test debut last year and is in compelling early-season form.A secret list used by doctors to set rates for their services for thousands of procedures shows that many charge up to 10 times more than the fee Medicare recommends, News Corp Australia reports.

The Australian Medical Association's "List of Services and Fees" which has never been made public, explains why patients are left $1.6 billion out of pocket each year, News Corp says.

The excessive charges covers everything from having babies to replacement hip and knee surgeries as well as cancer treatments.Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said Russia is trying to move the epicenter of the hybrid war to the Ukrainian capital city.

"The less there is shooting in the war zone, the more active the enemy is in the rear. The aggressor is insistently trying to shift the epicenter of the hybrid war as close as possible to the heart of Ukraine, and the heart is our ancient capital, the beautiful Kyiv," Poroshenko said during the events on the occasion of the day of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv region on Saturday.

The president stressed that the forces financed from Russia were preparing a coup d'etat in Ukraine in the interests of the Russian Federation, using the so-called theory of controlled chaos.

The president of Ukraine thanked the SBU for disclosing and documenting the link between the so-called "protest camp outside the Verkhovna Rada" with "the Malorossiya political emigration into Russia", for blocking the financial channel from Russia.

"You masterfully uncovered the enemy lair that was preparing large-scale terrorist attacks with numerous victims," he said.

Poroshenko noted that within the framework of countering enemy propaganda, more than 100 Russian citizens were banned entry to the territory of Ukraine. "We are talking about the spiritual heirs of Goebbels, who take part in the information war against Ukraine, posing as journalists, bloggers or experts," he said.

The president recalled that the courts had already passed 36 convictions on owners and administrators of anti-Ukrainian communities and pages in social networks VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Facebook.

According to him, sentences were also passed for actions aimed at violent change or overthrow of the constitutional order or seizure of state power (Article 109 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

In 2017, 13 convicts were sentenced under the high treason charges. "Any attempts by Russians, and even the fifth column inside the country, to revive the so-called idea of ''Novorossia' and stimulate artificial separatist movements in various regions are immediately suppressed," the president said.

"The activity of a group of persons coordinated from the territory of the Russian Federation that staged protests posing as various ethnic minorities was stopped," Poroshenko said.

He also recalled the "Russian trace" and the Russian involvement in provocations with the aim of fueling a conflict between Ukraine and its neighbors - Poland and Hungary.Labor frontbencher Ed Husic is far from impressed by Facebook's handling of its users' data although he doesn't believe such platforms should be regulated.

But, he said, these companies do have to demonstrate - and not just to their shareholders and the people who invest in them - what is in the best interest of the people who use their products.

"My preference is not to regulate in this space. We are not expecting them to run artist communes," the opposition's spokesman for the digital economy told Sky news on Sunday.US President Donald Trump, who ended a program shielding hundreds of thousands of immigrants from deportation, has accused rival Democrats of failing to strike a deal to give them permanent legal status

America's so-called "Dreamer" immigrants and supportive lawmakers were left fuming and fearful Friday after anti-deportation measures were left out of a federal spending bill signed by President Donald Trump.

More than six months after Trump announced he was scrapping an Obama-era program that protected hundreds of thousands of immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children, he signed the controversial measure into law -- then blamed Democrats for the collapse of immigration negotiations.

"The Republicans are with you, they want to get your situation taken care of," Trump said at the White House.

Democrats, he said, fought against a deal for Dreamers "every single inch of the way. They did not want DACA in this bill."

Some 690,000 immigrants are registered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that Trump ended on March 5.

After that deadline came and went, and the spending bill left out immigration, Trump's claim that he had Dreamers' best interests at heart provoked an uproar among immigrants and Democratic lawmakers.

"I'm actually angry at this point," Francis Madi, a 28-year-old Dreamer and activist in New York, told AFP.

"We don't know what's the next step," said Venezuelan-born Madi.

Student Lizbeth Huitzil, 19, who arrived from Mexico 14 years ago, said she felt let down by the president "blaming another party, when it's he who can make a decision" on supporting a DACA fix.

"It's still scary, because you don't know what your status is going to be," she said.

The hopes of hundreds of thousands of immigrant "Dreamers" were on hold after the US Congress failed to pass legislation to legalize immigrants who arrived illegally as children

Several Democratic lawmakers blasted Trump for his remarks.

"You are the one who put an expiration date on Dreamers' backs, then refused to compromise to fix #DACA," Senator Ben Cardin tweeted.

Senator Dianne Feinstein added: "If there is no DACA fix today it's because the president didn't want one."

Trump had multiple chances to craft a DACA fix with Congress. But one never materialized, despite overwhelming public support for letting Dreamers stay.

In January he implored lawmakers to pass a "bill of love" to resolve the standoff. But he rejected a plan providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers in exchange for $25 billion in border security, including his much-promised wall.

Meanwhile the fate of Dreamers rests with federal courts, whose rulings have blocked Trump's administration from ending DACA for now, and ordered the resumption of DACA permit renewals.

But the actions can be overturned by a higher court.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus chairwoman Michelle Lujan Grisham said Trump is to blame for the latest impasse.

"By not including a permanent fix for Dreamers in the omnibus (spending bill), the president and Republicans have prolonged this self-inflicted crisis and have left Dreamers in limbo and at the mercy of a temporary court injunction," she said.Veteran FBI agent Andrew McCabe, pictured in 2017, said he found out about his firing "in the most disembodied, impersonal way"

Veteran FBI agent Andrew McCabe, who was fired just before his retirement, condemned on Friday the "extended humiliation" and "unhinged public attacks" he endured from President Donald Trump and his administration.

McCabe, writing in The Washington Post, said he found out about his sacking earlier this month third-hand from a friend who called to tell him about a news report, only later receiving an email from the Justice Department.

"After two decades of public service, I found out that I had been fired in the most disembodied, impersonal way," he said.

According to the Justice Department, McCabe, who was the FBI's deputy under former director James Comey, was fired because he made unauthorized disclosures to the media, and had not been fully honest "on multiple occasions" with the department's inspector general.

He denied those allegations, saying that he "did not knowingly mislead or lie to investigators," and that his contact with a reporter was "fully within my power to authorize as deputy director."

Trump has repeatedly accused McCabe and Comey of having protected presidential candidate Hillary Clinton from prosecution over her misuse of a private email server while she was secretary of state, and over the actions of the private Clinton Foundation set up by her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

Trump was also publicly upset about McCabe's defense of Comey -- whom the president fired in May 2017 in frustration at the ongoing FBI probe into alleged collusion between his election campaign and Russia.

McCabe is potentially a key witness in that probe.The summit between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and EU chiefs is seen as crucial to setting up the future framework of Turkey's relationship with the bloc

Turkey on Friday condemned a statement by European Union leaders bitterly critical of Ankara's policies towards bloc members Cyprus and Greece, raising tensions just days ahead of a key summit.

"The statement that was issued contained unacceptable comments against our country that serve the interests of Greece and the Greek Cypriots," foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy told reporters in response to Thursday's EU statement.

EU President Donald Tusk and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker are due on Monday to hold talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Bulgarian city of Varna.

Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik later said Ankara "cannot accept" the statement just before the summit in the Black Sea city.

"We consider the Turkey-EU summit of March 26 in Varna to be an important opportunity to move relations forward. We expect the same positive and constructive approach from the EU," Celik said on Twitter.

The statement by the 28 EU member states meeting in Brussels called out Turkey for "illegal actions" towards Greece and Cyprus, after Ankara's arrest of two Greek soldiers and its promise to prevent the internationally-recognised Greek Cypriot government from exploring for oil and gas.

Aksoy complained that the EU had backed Athens and Nicosia simply because they are members, "without considering whether they are right".

"The EU has lost its objectivity on the Cyprus issue," he said.

- 'Important summit' -

Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded and occupied the northern third of the island in response to a Greek military junta-sponsored coup.

While the Greek-majority Republic of Cyprus is internationally recognised, the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is recognised only by Ankara.

Erdogan has warned foreign energy companies not to "overstep the mark" after Turkey's warships blocked an Italian drilling vessel of energy giant ENI off Cyprus in February.

The Greek soldiers were arrested on March 2 for entering a military zone in the northern Turkish province of Edirne and have now been remanded in custody ahead of trial.

"The legal process continues. We expect the EU council to avoid statements which represent interference in the judiciary," Aksoy said.

In a discussion with French President Emmanuel Macron Friday evening, Erdogan asserted the need to "defend the legitimate rights of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus towards hydrocarbon sources in the eastern Mediterranean", according to Turkish presidential sources.

Erdogan also stressed "the importance of reviving the process of accession" to the EU for Turkey.

The summit between Erdogan and the EU chiefs is seen as crucial in setting up the future framework of Turkey's relationship with the bloc.

Turkey had sought to join the EU for over half a century but membership talks hit the buffers over Ankara's crackdown imposed in the wake of the 2016 failed coup.

Some EU leaders have suggested membership is no longer realistic and a pragmatic partnership should be forged instead.

"Of course this summit is important for us. We are expecting relations with the EU to be energised," said Aksoy.US First Lady Melania Trump presents an International Women of Courage Award to Iraqi widow Aliyah Khalaf Saleh who saved 58 military recruits' lives by hiding them from jihadists

Aliyah Khalaf Saleh had already lost a husband, a son and a nephew to the terror that engulfed northern Iraq in 2014.

But when a group of military cadets fled to her community near Tikrit to escape killers from the Islamic State group, she risked all to save them.

In June 2014, the jihadists slaughtered hundreds of mainly Shiite Muslim recruits from the nearby Speicher military base.

A smaller group of young men tried to escape by crossing a river but Aliyah, now 62 and known at home as Umm Qusay, stepped in.

"They were moving from Camp Speicher to Baghdad" when they came upon IS killing their comrades, she told AFP.

The young men retreated 20 kilometers (12 miles) to an area where Umm Qusay's neighbors were clashing with the militants, and she took them in.

"There were Kurds and Iraqis, Muslims, Yezidis and Christians," she recalled. "I got them to my home."

She gave women's clothes to some of the young men and hid them in the women's quarters on her farm. Others dug holes in a forest.

IS fighters were hunting for the recruits, so Umm Qusay obtained university identity cards for some of them, giving them local names.

She taught those who were Shiite how to say their prayers like a Sunni to protect them from sectarian suspicions.

And, over five months, she smuggled them to safety in Kurdish-held Kirkuk, hiding them in trucks surrounded by female relatives.

"At first, the terrorists did not bother women," she said.

In all she got 58 young men to safety before the Islamic State group's spies got wind of what she had done and she had to flee.

Her family -- her surviving sons plus their wives and children, 25 people in all -- fled on foot through the night, she said.

- Beacon of hope -

They remained displaced, living in a single room, for a year before Iraqi government forces recaptured their home and they could return.

Now, the government is triumphant, the Islamic State group is on the run and Umm Qusay's bravery and love has made her a beacon of hope.

A Sunni, she has received a high Shiite religious honor and a national medal, but that is not her greatest satisfaction.

"God took my husband, my son, and my nephew but he has given me in return these young men to console me," she said of the recruits.

After the fighting, many of the young men returned to thank their savior, and to tell her story to a nation in need of hope.

"They come to visit me, I come to visit them. Whenever there's a conference in Baghdad, they come with me," she said.

"Two of them got married, I attended their weddings. I was the happiest person there," she said, blinking back tears.

Umm Qusay was honored again on Friday at the US State Department in Washington, where she was named an International Woman of Courage.

Alongside nine other brave women, each with a story of their own, she received her award from First Lady Melania Trump.

"In recognizing the International Women of Courage, we stand for what is right," Trump told the guests.

"In telling their stories, we can teach young women and girls all over the world what it means to have courage and to be a hero."

It was a long way from the life of an Iraqi woman who married at 13 and lived through dictatorship, occupation and terror.

But, as the women gathered for their group photo, Umm Qusay led them all in laughter, gesticulating to bridge the language divide.

"I was reluctant to come at the beginning. I was also so tired, but I feel much better now," she said before the ceremony.

"People smile at me in the street. It's like the smile regenerates you and makes you feel safe and secure," she explained.

"People in Iraq have not been able to smile for many years now. All we do is cry and feel sad."Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's belated apology did little to quell the crisis at the social network, which has called into question the data-driven business model which is the lifeblood of Silicon Valley

With Facebook mired in its worst-ever crisis, the rest of Silicon Valley is looking to come to terms with the dark side of its data-driven business model where tech titans have mined fortunes from what people reveal online.

There are signs the crisis could spread to other internet firms that have made no secret about using what they glean from digital data for targeted advertising.

That same personal data can be used effectively by those with malicious intent when it comes to influencing people.

"It is Facebook this week, but it could be others," tech industry analyst Rob Enderle said of the crisis of confidence laying siege to the social network.

"At the very least, this is the common problem across the tech industry."

The tumultuous week ended with Facebook losing 14 percent of its market value, wiping out more than $50 billion from one of the biggest and most powerful companies.

A public apology by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg failed to quell outrage over the hijacking of personal data from millions of people by Cambridge Analytica.

Belatedly speaking out about the harvesting of Facebook user data by the British firm linked to President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, Zuckerberg admitted to betraying the trust of its more than two billion users, and promised to "step up."

But some point out that Facebook is just one of many firms which mine data for profit --- albeit the most successful, along with Google -- as digital lifestyles take root around the world.

"Phones, apps, and the web are so indispensable to our daily lives -- a testament to the benefits they give us -- that we've become a captive audience," the nonprofit Center for Humane Technology said.

"With two billion people plugged into these devices, technology companies have inadvertently enabled a direct channel to manipulate entire societies with unprecedented precision."

Early Facebook investor Roger McNamee argued in a USA Today opinion piece that "Russia never would have been able to conduct information warfare against the United States" in 2016 without the social network as well as Twitter and Google.

- Hard to quit?-

Facebook is one of many companies that mine personal data for profit, albeit the most successful, along with Google

What happens now? Some users are joining the #deleteFacebook movement, but it remains unclear if advertisers will abandon the important platform.

High-profile entrepreneur Elon Musk joined the critical chorus on Friday, saying in an exchange on Twitter that he was shutting down the Facebook accounts of his Tesla and SpaceX enterprises.

"What's Facebook?" Musk quipped rhetorically in an exchange on Twitter.

While it may seem tempting to join a movement to abandon Facebook, it does raise the question of where one will go to stay connected with friends, celebrities, or businesses that have become part of the fabric of the online community.

Facebook is also intertwined in the fabric of the web, with its "like" buttons and communities which rely on its connections.

New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway said advertisers could have an impact if they left Facebook but said it was unlikely to lose many of its five million ad customers.

"Advertisers have just two platforms to market their products online," Galloway said in a blog post.

"Advertisers need Facebook much more than Facebook needs any one, or thousand, advertisers."

- Questioning the model -

Quitting Facebook may be harder than it seems because of the social network's importance to consumers and advertisers

The data scandal has shined a spotlight on the unabashed practice of internet companies using information people willingly provide to make money in exchange for free services or content.

Amazon uses what it knows about online shoppers to target offerings or deals.

Google-owned Waymo and ride-share firm Uber are among companies developing self-driving vehicle technology with the help of data collected by people using them on roads.

Smart watches boast ability to aid medical research with health data amassed from wearers, and Google has dabbled with using search data to model trends in the spread of flu.

Enderle lamented that people using online services can be treated as "digital slaves" exploited to the benefit of advertisers.

"They are thinking that the people who use the product don't matter," Enderle contended.

"Once you do that, you will make a lot of mistakes. We are at risk of losing the tech market one company at a time."Delegations from the two Koreas will meet March 29 in the border truce village of Panmunjom

North Korea on Saturday agreed to hold high-level talks with Seoul next week to discuss logistics for a rare inter-Korean summit, the South's Unification Ministry said, as a diplomatic thaw on the peninsula gathers pace.

The two sides will each send a three-member delegation to the border truce village of Panmunjom on Thursday for talks aimed at paving the way for a summit due in late April, it said.

South Korea on Wednesday had proposed holding high-level talks with the North to discuss details including the summit's dates and agenda.

The talks will take place at the Unification Pavilion building on the northern side of Panmunjom, which sits on the border, with Seoul's delegation led by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon and his counterpart Ri Son Gwon heading Pyongyang's.

The decision by President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to meet came amid a rapid rapprochement kicked off with the recent Winter Olympics in the South.

The United States and South Korea announced Tuesday that their annual joint military drills would go ahead next month, but the main exercise will be shortened by a month. The exercises have caused tensions for years, with Pyongyang condemning them as preparations for an invasion of the North.

The inter-Korean summit is due to be followed by a face-to-face meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kim by the end of May.

- 'Humiliation and defeat' -

Following a period of heightened tensions stoked by the North's nuclear and missile tests last year, a rapid rapprochement has been underway on the Korean peninsula

Following a period of heightened tensions stoked by the North's nuclear and missile tests last year, a rapid rapprochement has been underway on the Korean peninsula.

The North on Wednesday broke its silence on the diplomatic thaw with Washington and Seoul, with its official KCNA news agency saying Pyongyang was driving the peace initiative and rejecting suggestions that sanctions forced it to dialogue table.

As diplomats scurry to arrange the North-South talks as well as the proposed Trump-Kim meeting, the North's silence has raised concerns over its intentions.

North Korean state media have not yet directly mentioned the summits.

Analysts say the North is carefully watching to see how events -- including the US-South Korea military drills -- play out before making them public to its people.

State media in the North have not reported any public activities by Kim since March 6, when they said he held talks with South Korean envoys and made a "satisfactory agreement" on the proposed inter-Korean summit.

On Friday, Rodong Sinmun, the official daily of the North's ruling Workers Party, attacked the US for continued sanctions and pressure on Pyongyang despite diplomatic progress.

"The good atmosphere appearing on the Korean peninsula has been created by our aggressive efforts and initiatives. It has not been brought about by sanctions by the US and its sycophants," the newspaper said

"The United States has miscalculated. The stronger the US pressure, the stronger the DPRK (North Korea)... If the US fails to draw a lesson and continues acting recklessly, it would surely be in for a greater humiliation and defeat."

The commentary came as President Trump named John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk, as his new national security adviser.

Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, has championed pre-emptive strikes against North Korea and regime change in Iran -- making him an outlier even among Republicans.Sole challenger Moussa Mostafa Moussa faces no chance of beating Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a man he has supported, at a vote starting on Monday

As a supporter of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and yet his sole challenger, Moussa Mostafa Moussa is seen by critics as a token candidate to try to legitimise the Egyptian leader's re-election.

The 65-year-old businessman had already started campaigning for Sisi when he himself was declared a candidate on January 29, the final day for applications to run in this month's presidential election.

A Facebook page in Moussa's name at the time featured a photograph in support of the president, but the post has since been deleted.

"No to taking part in this charade," Hamdeen Sabbahi, who was a candidate in 2012 and 2014 presidential elections, told a press conference held by opposition parties the next day.

Before Moussa's inclusion in the race, all serious presidential hopefuls had dropped out one after the other.

Two, including General Sami Anan, a former armed forces chief, were arrested, while others including rights lawyer and 2012 presidential candidate Khaled Ali said their campaigns faced harassment from the state and withdrew.

To avoid Sisi running alone, supporters tried to push one of their own to throw his hat into the ring: Sayed al-Badawi. But the liberal Al-Wafd party which he leads refused.

Finally, Moussa, who since 2011 has headed Al-Ghad (tomorrow), another liberal party, emerged as the candidate to oppose Sisi in the March 26-28 polls.

It was necessary to "balance" the vote, Moussa told AFP. Now, the elections are "very clear, very democratic" because Sisi "is no longer the only candidate".

However, he remains loyal to the president. "This is nothing new. We have the same political ideals," said Moussa.

Ever since then army chief Sisi led the July 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi amid mass protests against his rule, Moussa has remained in the camp of Sisi, who was voted into office in 2014.

Moussa admits that his campaign, financed by his own funds, "isn't comparable to that of the president".

-'Rhetorical competition'-

Questioned on international criticism of Egypt's human rights record, Moussa declined to answer. "I do not wish to judge things that I do not know," he said.

But the challenger insists he is his own man.

"I have ideas and concepts, and I see things from another angle," said the candidate who has received the support of Arab tribal groups.

"I'm going into this election with the intention of winning," Moussa said, despite all the cards being stacked in Sisi's favour.

The goal of boosting exports is at the core of his "well-established" economic programme, the challenger said, although details were still being finalised.

He will "work on bridging the gap that allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to rise" to power in 2012 before they were ousted by Sisi, said Adel Esmat, Moussa's spokesman.

Morsi, who hailed from the Muslim Brotherhood, was Egypt's first democratically-elected civilian president, but his year in power proved deeply divisive.

Moussa's smiling face has appeared on banners in Cairo, vastly outnumbered by Sisi's ubiquitous posters.

The challenger was "a relatively unknown politician" prior to his candidacy, said H.A. Hellyer, a non-resident researcher at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

With limited financial means, little known by the public, and facing an incumbent who remains popular, Moussa does not pose any threat to Sisi.

But his "participation will be able to provide the Sisi administration with the appearance of some kind of competition, if only in terms of rhetoric", said Hellyer.An image grab taken from a handout on February 9, 2018 shows Egypt's Army spokesman, Colonel Tamer al-Rifai, reading a statement annoucning the launch of a major operation next to a map of northern Egypt and the Sinai peninsula

Egypt's military is conducting a sweeping assault to crush a resilient Islamic State branch in Sinai, but the jihadist group is unlikely to be vanquished quickly, analysts say.

The operation was launched on February 9 after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is expected to sweep to a second term in polls next week, gave the armed forces and police a three-month deadline in November to wipe out the jihadists.

The deadline has since been extended, and the armed forces launched their most comprehensive campaign yet to end the five-year-old jihadist insurgency.

The military gives regular updates on the operation, saying it has killed more than 100 jihadists so far while losing at least 20 troops.

"Egypt is doing a really good job controlling the narrative," said Zack Gold, an analyst with the US-based CNA research group.

"Even ISIS has been challenged to put out statements. This suggests Egypt is in control," he said, using an alternative name for IS.

"But (it) makes it hard to assess what's really going on and whether long term impact will be different."

Egypt had already launched several operations against jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula, who have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen.

The Egyptian Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group pledged allegiance to IS in 2014, gaining expertise and logistical support from the international group, which controlled a self-declared "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

The Sinai jihadists soon ramped up their attacks on civilians, planting a bomb on a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a south Sinai resort in 2015, killing all 224 people on board.

Starting in late 2016, they also began targeting Christians, killing more than a hundred in church bombings and shootings across the country.

Sisi's ultimatum came after suspected IS gunmen massacred more than 300 worshippers in a Sinai mosque associated with Sufi Muslims, seen by IS as heretics.

"There appears to be greater emphasis on actively targeting individual militants alongside degrading their logistical supply," wrote EgyGreenfly, an anonymous blogger for Egypt Defence Review.

"Whereas previous Egyptian offensives focused on a particular area independent of the others at any one time, 'Sinai 18' appears to have finally coordinated efforts across the country."

- Election threat -

The military has said about 60,000 soldiers are taking part in the campaign, launched after a period of intelligence-gathering in the peninsula, which borders Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Omar Ashour, an associate professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said the latest operation was different from previous assaults in several ways.

He cited "intensive media propaganda/coverage, the size of the forces mobilised... the sustained cooperation with 'militias' or armed tribal formations fighting alongside regular army, and the increased tactical and operational coordination with Israel."

The operation is likely to weaken IS in Sinai, which consists of no more than around 1,000 hardcore combatants who increasingly rely on hit-and-run attacks, roadside bombings and sniping attacks, analysts say.

But it will not bring about a decisive victory and end attacks.

"The military appears to be relying on a combination of air strikes and ground operations to degrade the capabilities of terrorist groups in northern and central Sinai," said Stephanie Karra, research associate for North Africa with The Risk Advisory Group.

"That said, the latest campaign does not appear to differ significantly from operations in the area in the past few years. And the military seems to be using the same conventional tactics that it has used in the past," she added.

In response, IS has vowed to attack election-related installations and to redouble its efforts to target tourists across Egypt.

Security will be boosted for the poll, set for March 26-28.

IS in Sinai "continues operations against security forces in the Sinai but it has certainly been disrupted," said Jantzen Garnett, Middle East analyst with the Navanti Group analytics firm.

"This may frustrate any plans the terrorist group had to disrupt the upcoming presidential elections."

However, Garnett added, "if the Islamic State's mainland cells, which have not conducted attacks in several months, operate independently, the Sinai campaign will have little effect on its capabilities."Protesters display placards against US President Donald Trump during a demonstration in front of the US Army career center in Times Square, New York, in 2017

US President Donald Trump late Friday rolled back his blanket ban on transgender people serving in the military -- but they will still face major restrictions in the American armed forces.

Trump signed a memorandum in August that effectively barred transgender people from the military but the ban faced multiple legal challenges.

The White House has now come back with a modified version of the original plan -- as with Trump's efforts to ban travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, which was repeatedly challenged in court.

"I hereby revoke my memorandum of August 25, 2017, 'Military Service by Transgender Individuals,' and any other directive I may have made with respect to military service by transgender individuals," Trump's new memorandum said.

Trump instead sought to shift responsibility to two of his cabinet secretaries.

"The Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, with respect to the US Coast Guard, may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals," the memorandum said.

Trump's memorandum said the two cabinet secretaries recommended people diagnosed with gender dysphoria be barred from military service.

The Defense Department released a copy of a report with further details on the restrictions outlined in the memorandum.

"Transgender persons who have not transitioned to another gender and do not have a history or current diagnosis of gender dysphoria... are eligible for service" if they meet mental and physical health standards and "are capable of adhering to the standards associated with their biological sex," the report said.

People who have undergone gender transition treatment are barred because it may not "fully remedy... the mental health problems associated with gender dysphoria," the report said, also noting the time required for treatment.

- 'Many' could be disqualified -

A report from the Defense Department, which is headed by James Mattis (C), laid out details of the restrictions on transgender people serving in the US military

"Although the precise number is unknown, the department recognizes that many transgender persons could be disqualified under this policy," it said.

The number of transgender troops among America's approximately 1.3 million active duty service members is fairly small, with estimates topping out at 15,000.

There are some exceptions to the restrictions: people who have a history of gender dysphoria may join the military if they "can demonstrate 36 consecutive months of stability -- i.e. absence of gender dysphoria -- immediately preceding their application," the report said.

And those diagnosed with gender dysphoria after joining the military who do "not require gender transition" may remain.

There is also an exception for people currently in the military who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria between the implementation of an Obama-era policy allowing transgender people to serve and the start of the new Trump administration policy.

But the US Senate's top Democrat Chuck Schumer said the policy still amounted to a ban, calling it "yet another Trump-Pence decision intended to drive a wedge in our society."

"No matter what @realDonaldTrump says, this is a transgender ban - plain and simple," Schumer tweeted. "This decision breaks faith with those serving today and those who aspire to serve."

The American Civil Liberties Union rights group condemned the new policy, calling it "transphobia masquerading as policy."

"This policy is not based on an evaluation of new evidence," the ACLU's Joshua Block said in a statement.

"It is reverse-engineered for the sole purpose of carrying out President Trump's reckless and unconstitutional ban, undermining the ability of transgender service members to serve openly and military readiness as a whole."

"The policy effectively coerces transgender people who wish to serve into choosing between their humanity and their country."

The Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBTQ rights group, also took aim at the restrictions.

"There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence Administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops," the organization's president Chad Griffin said.Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and French Minister for European and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian have signed an agreement on the purchase of 55 helicopters produced by Airbus Helicopters for the needs of the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry.

"Minister of Foreign Affairs of France Le Drian and I signed an agreement on the purchase of 55 modern Airbus helicopters. Together with our Mi-8 helicopters, Airbus helicopters will carry out the tasks of the National Police, State Emergencies Service, Border Services and the National Guard as part of the modern mobile helicopter service," Avakov wrote on Twitter on Friday.

According to the Interior Ministry's press service, Ukraine expects to receive the first helicopters this year already. The Interior Ministry plans to receive helicopters of three models - 145, 125 and 225. The French-produced helicopters will help operation of the State Service for Emergency Situations, the National Guard, the National Police and the State Border Service of Ukraine.

The main tasks of helicopter units of the Interior Ministry will be: rescue and public order, criminal investigations, anti-terrorist and special missions, state border protection and road safety.

"This is the largest project between Ukraine and France, which is a very large structural project within Ukraine supported by President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman," Avakov said.Farmers and other landowners are concerned that fracking, an extraction method under which high-pressure water and chemicals are used to split rockbeds, could contaminate groundwater sources

Thousands of Australians including farmers on horseback rallied in the heart of Sydney on Saturday, calling on authorities to ditch coal and gas mining developments in rural regions in favour of renewable energy projects.

There were unusual sights in the harbour city's central business district as horses trotted down a major street to join demonstrators -- including indigenous peoples, knitting grandmothers and environmental campaigners -- outside the parliament of New South Wales state.

Campaigners in rural regions across the vast continent have been protesting against mining projects near residential, agricultural and farming areas, saying they would damage productive land.

"The global market for coal and gas is changing and global approaches to energy are changing," said Georgina Woods, the "Time2Choose" rally organiser from anti-coal group Lock The Gate told AFP.

Protesters including farmers on horseback rally in the heart of Sydney, calling on authorities to ditch coal and gas mining developments in rural regions in favour of renewable energy projects

"We don't want our state to sacrifice sustainable agriculture and community for the short-term money that comes with mining that will only bring long-term environmental degradation."

While Australia is a major gas exporter and has large offshore projects, there has been a backlash against onshore developments such as coal-seam gas mining.

Farmers and other landowners are concerned that fracking, an extraction method under which high-pressure water and chemicals are used to split rockbeds, could contaminate groundwater sources.

Some states and territories have imposed fracking bans citing environmental reasons, while others have increased their investment in renewable energy projects.

"Our farms are being ruined, our food bowls have no water, they have drill pads or coal mines in the middle of their farms," Clare Twomey, one of the co-founders of Knitting Nannas Against Gas, told AFP.

"It's a huge disaster for our planet."

The issue has taken on a new dimension over the past year amid rising energy bills for households, with some observers blaming the onshore gas moratoriums for supply shortages and price spikes in the domestic market.

Non-renewables such as coal and gas are Australia's primary fuel source for generating electricity, although renewable generation has been rising in recent years.The Times says President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has created an oppressive environment for the press in Egypt

A British journalist for The Times has been expelled from Egypt, the newspaper said Saturday, in a move it said reflected the "oppressive environment" created there for the press.

Bel Trew was driven to the airport and forced to board a flight in February, but the London-based paper held off commenting publicly as it sought to negotiate her return to cover elections starting on Monday.

This had proved fruitless, and a spokeswoman said: "The Times deplores this attempt to intimidate and suppress our coverage.

"This is sadly in line with the oppressive environment that President (Abdel Fattah) al-Sisi has created for the press."

The paper said Trew, who had lived in Cairo for seven years and had been reporting for The Times since 2013, was held after interviewing a relative of a man who died on a migrant boat to Europe.

"In late February, Bel Trew was arrested and forced to leave. Her detention and the threats made against her were sufficiently outlandish to suggest a mistake had been made," the spokeswoman said.

"We have been trying to ensure her safe return to Cairo to cover the presidential election. It is now clear that the authorities have no intention of allowing her to return."

A spokesman for the British embassy in Cairo told the paper that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson "has raised the case directly with the Egyptian foreign minister".

"The Egyptian authorities have not shared any evidence of wrongdoing. We will continue to press them on this," the spokesman said.

AFP sought a response from the Egyptian foreign ministry but it was not immediately available.

The media in Egypt have been under close scrutiny in the lead-up to the elections, in which Sisi is the main choice on the ballot paper.

There has been an increase in the number of cases of journalists being arrested and websites blocked.US Army Maj. Gen. James B. Jarrard leaves a meeting on March 22, 2018 in the Kurdish-held northern Syrian city of Manbij, where the US has a military presence

In Syria's Kurdish-controlled Manbij, salesmen shout as customers bustle through the city's packed marketplace -- an everyday scene that masks residents' deep fears of a Turkish attack.

Despite the presence of US troops nearby, Manbij could become the next target of a Turkey-led battle against Kurdish militia in Syria's north.

Ankara and allied Syrian rebels seized the northwestern city of Afrin on March 18, and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to push eastwards and take Manbij.

"Everybody's scared, me included," said Hameed al-Damalkhi, 50, bent over a sewing machine as he stitched the sole back onto a used trainer at his shop in Manbij's covered market.

He said he was still shocked by images of pro-Ankara fighters looting in Afrin, breaking into shops and homes and heading off with food, blankets and even motorbikes after Kurdish fighters retreated.

"What we hear about them is they're all thieves. You saw, they looted the whole (Afrin) area," he said, wearing a stained grey robe and greying beard.

Turkey has said it aims to dislodge the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia, which it labels a "terrorist" group, from the length of its border with Syria.

A Syrian boy carries a sack on March 22, 2018 at a make-shift camp near Manbij for people displaced by a Turkish offensive on the Afrin area

"Where does he think he's going?" Damalkhi said, referring to Erdogan. "There are men here who can protect the area."

The YPG has gained a reputation as a formidable force, especially as the backbone of a US-backed alliance that expelled the Islamic State group from much of Syria.

- 'Guarantees' from the US -

Since Syria's war started in 2011, Manbij has exchanged hands several times.

Rebels overran the town in 2012. IS seized it two years later, turning it into a key transit point for fighters, weapons and cash between the Turkish border and its then de facto capital of Raqa, further southeast.

The US-backed and YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) took control of Manbij last year, handing the city's management over to a civil council.

Dozens of American troops have since been stationed on the city's outskirts, with additional troops deployed there around a year ago.

Their presence offers some comfort to residents, especially after a delegation from the State Department and the US-led coalition visited the city council this week.

Ali al-Sattaf, 50, who works at a money exchange, said the presence of US troops nearby was reassuring.

Manbij residents fear their city could share the fate of Afrin, pictured here on March 22, 2018 after it was seized by Turkish-led forces

"It makes us feel that nothing will rain down from the sky," he said.

The YPG retreated from Afrin in the face of formidable Turkish and rebel fire power, including air strikes that pounded the Kurdish enclave.

The US-led coalition stayed out of the battle for Afrin, but its presence outside Manbij has raised the spectre of a potential conflict between two NATO allies should Turkey attack the city.

On Thursday, State Department official William Roebuck and US Army Major-General James B. Jarrard, who heads a US-led force fighting IS, visited Manbij Civil Council.

The aim of the visit was "to reassure the population", council co-chair Ibrahim al-Kaftan said after the meeting.

"There will be no attack on Manbij, and we received guarantees from the delegation on this matter," he said.

- 'We're tired' -

In Manbij's Martyrs Square hang portraits of SDF fighters -- women and men -- killed in the fight against IS.

Some of the city's wall still bear the marks of the jihadists' brutal rule, its slogans and infamous black flag.

A file picture shows a convoy of US armoured vehicles passing near the village of Yalanli, near Syria's Manbij, on March 5, 2017

In the market, a man wearing a red-and-white scarf walked by carts piled high with apples. Another man darted past on a motorbike, while women in long black robes inspected shoes in a shop window.

Rim, a veiled 30-year-old mother who had come shopping, said she didn't want to see fighting in Manbij.

"We live in safety now, but we fear for our kids," she said, as she clutched the hands of her two children.

"We're tired and our kids are tired from all the fear, the planes and the war," she said.Egyptian forensics check a destroyed vehicle at the site of a bomb attack in the northern port city of Alexandria, which hit a convoy of the city's security chief, on March 24, 2018

Two policemen were killed in a car bomb attack Saturday targeting the security chief of Egypt's Alexandria, officials said, two days before the start of the country's presidential election.

The bomb, which exploded near a convoy transporting General Mostafa el-Nemr through a residential area of the Mediterranean city, killed one officer on the spot, while a young recruit died later of his wounds, a security source said.

Five other people wounded in the blast were being treated in the city's military hospital, the official said.

Nemr was not among the casualties of the "terrorist bombing that targeted the convoy", his office said, quoted by state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram.

The security chief, escorted by guards, appeared on Egyptian television visiting the scene shortly after the attack.

Prosecutor General Nabil Sadek ordered an "urgent and wide inquiry".

Photographs posted online showed black smoke rising above the site of the attack near a police station on Al-Moaskar Al-Romani street.

An AFP correspondent at the scene said security and military units had cordoned off the area of the attack, which left several burnt-out cars. Police forensics experts were examining the charred remains of the vehicle used for the bombing.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which came ahead of Egypt's presidential election starting Monday, in which incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi looks certain to sweep to a second term in office.

- Army securing election -

Egypt's military said Saturday on Twitter that it was making "intensive preparations for the armed forces to secure the presidential election" on March 26-28.

Sisi stormed to victory in a 2014 poll, a year after leading the military in ousting Egypt's first freely elected leader, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi.

Egyptian riot police cordon off the street at the site of a bomb attack in the northern city of Alexandria, which hit a convoy of the city's security chief, on March 24, 2018

Since the ouster of Morsi and a crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood, security forces have sought to quell attacks by jihadists.

The Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group, which has declared allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group, has killed hundreds of soldiers, policemen and civilians, mainly in its North Sinai stronghold but also elsewhere in Egypt.

IS claimed the 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner carrying tourists from the South Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, which killed all 224 people on board.

It has also killed scores of members of Egypt's minority Coptic Christian community in church bombings and shootings.

During Palm Sunday celebrations in April 2017, suicide bombers killed 45 worshippers in attacks on churches in Alexandria and Tanta, also north of Cairo. Sine then Egypt has been under a state of emergency.

Sisi gave the armed forces and police a three-month deadline in November to wipe out the jihadists.

The president's ultimatum came after suspected IS gunmen massacred more than 300 worshippers in a Sinai mosque associated with Sufi Muslims, seen by IS as heretics.

The deadline has since been extended and the armed forces have launched their most comprehensive campaign yet to end the five-year-old jihadist insurgency.

The military gives regular updates on the operation, saying it has killed more than 100 jihadists so far while losing at least 20 troops.Aiden Markram lived dangerously but made 84 as South Africa took control of the third Test against Australia

Aiden Markram survived two dropped catches and went on to make 84 as South Africa extended their lead beyond 200 in the third Test against Australia on Saturday.

Markram was out for 84 shortly before tea on the third day, which South Africa reached on 151 for three, an overall lead of 207, at Newlands.

Markram, out for nought in the first innings, could have completed a "pair" but he was dropped off the fourth ball of the second innings when he edged Mitchell Starc low to the left of Usman Khawaja at gully.

He survived another much more difficult chance on 59 when Australian captain Steve Smith flung himself to his right at second slip and got his fingertips to a flying edge off Josh Hazlewood.

Smith, who held a world record-equalling five catches in the first innings, had already added to his tally by catching first innings century-maker Dean Elgar off Pat Cummins for 14.

Markram, who made a century in the first Test in Durban, batted solidly despite his lapses and hit ten fours and two sixes in a 145-ball innings. He shared partnerships of 76 with Hashim Amla (31) and 47 with AB de Villiers, who was unbeaten on 18.

Markram was out in the last over before tea when he chipped Mitchell Starc to mid-on where Cummins held a low catch.

The series is poised at one match apiece.

De Villiers opened his scoring with a slapped six off the back foot over cover off Cummins but it was the only scoring shot in the first 20 balls he faced as he made a cautious start to his innings.

There was a moment of potential drama when the umpires questioned fielder Cameron Bancroft over what appeared to be an object in his pocket when he had the ball in his possession.

But play continued without the ball being changed and it was unclear what was discussed.A malnourished child gets measured in a clinic treating cases of severe malnourishment in Tshikapa in the restive region of Kasai

A war of words has broken out between the United Nations and the DR Congo government which is shunning a donor conference in Geneva to raise $1.7 billion to tackle a humanitarian crisis that Kinshasa says has been vastly exaggerated by aid workers.

Prime Minister Jose Makila on Friday said the UN had overreacted and that aid bodies and NGOs in the country were propagating a "bad image of the Democratic Republic of Congo throughout the world".

"The Democratic Republic of Congo declines to participate in the Geneva conference" on April 13, he said.

The United Nations has declared the humanitarian crisis in the DR Congo to be a Level 3, the UN's highest-level emergency.

"While recognising that the country is facing an emergency situation ... the activation of the top-level humanitarian emergency acts as a brake" for development and discourages investors, Makila said.

At least 13.1 million Congolese are in need of humanitarian aid, including 7.7 million who are severely food insecure, the UN Security Council said Thursday in a unanimous statement.

The UN children's agency had sounded the alarm at the end of last year saying 400,000 children risked dying in the central diamond-rich Kasai region, which has been ravaged by conflict.

At least 3,000 people have died and about 1.4 million have been displaced.

"We are not now saying that children risk dying, but we are saying that children are already dying," UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac told AFP.

UNICEF has only been able to care for 65,000 children diagnosed with Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), the most acute form which can lead to death, Boulierac said. "That's far too few.

"This is not the time to discuss strategies," he said. "If we act now, we can save lives."

An AFP team visited Kananga, one of the main cities in Kasai this week and found an overwhelming number of children with SAM at the Saints Martyrs health centre where in a matter of minutes, eight out of 10 children were diagnosed with the condition.

- 'Catastrophic situation' -

The other two had chronic malnutrition which stunts mental and physical development.

"Children with SAM are nine times more prone to dying than a properly nourished child," said Marie-Louise Misenga, a nurse at the centre.

Bibomba, aged about seven, sat patiently in front of the centre next to a 17-year-old boy. Both had skeletal figures.

"My granddaughter is facing death. She's very sick and she's not eating or going to school," wailed Angele, the grandmother of nine-year-old Aimee.

The region has been ravaged by conflict

At Tshikapa, another town in Kasai, eight children died of malnutrition in a few days at the Eben Ezer church where 200 displaced families are being housed and receive support from British charity Oxfam.

"I was shocked to see the reality. The situation is catastrophic," said Ghislain Mumbere, an engineer who had come from Kinshasa to clean up local sources of drinking water.

Greater Kasai, grouping provinces created in 2015 in a change of internal borders, exploded into violence in September 2016, after soldiers killed a local traditional leader known as the Kamwina Nsapu.

Fighting between security forces and Kamwina Nsapu loyalists has since killed more than 3,000 people and displaced 1.4 million, according to the Roman Catholic church. Successive harvests have been destroyed.Opposition candidate Julius Maada Bio beat rival Samura Kamara of the ruling party by a narrow margin on March 7

Sierra Leone's High Court on Saturday ordered the electoral commission to halt preparations for a March 27 presidential run-off following a legal filing by a lawyer linked to the ruling party.

The order stops the National Electoral Commission (NEC) from working until "the hearing and determination of this court", adjourning the matter until Monday, the eve of the vote.

This would allow time for the commission to submit a question to the Supreme Court, it said, after which the High Court would sit again to reconsider the matter.

The decision means the commission will be unable to transport election materials or organise polling until the injunction is lifted.

Lawyer Ibrahim Sorie Koroma, a member of the ruling All Peoples' Congress (APC), argued in his filing that electoral fraud allegations should be investigated before the vote goes ahead.

The APC's candidate, Samura Kamara, finished slightly behind Julius Maada Bio of the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) in the first round of voting on March 7, but neither candidate gained the 55 percent of votes needed to win outright.

Tensions are high ahead of the vote with a campaign marked by violent attacks and intimidation against politicians and supporters, along with an increase in inflammatory tribal rhetoric.

There are already opposition accusations the police are in the pocket of the APC after they entered NEC premises and interrogated staff this week.

That follows a raid on the home of SLPP candidate Bio after polls closed on the day of the first round.

That vote was declared fair and credible by international and domestic observers.African migrants demonstrate with their arms crossed in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on February 24, 2018, against the Israeli government's policy to forcibly deport African refugees and asylum seekers

Thousands of people demonstrated Saturday in central Tel Aviv to protest against Israel's plan for the mass expulsion of Eritreans and Sudanese who entered the country illegally.

Israeli media said more than 20,000 people -- migrants and Israelis -- took part in the rally, with footage broadcast live on the Ynet news website showing them chanting: "we are all human beings".

"There is no difference between their blood and our blood," chanted the demonstrators.

Israel's supreme court earlier this month suspended the controversial government plan to deport thousands of Eritrean and Sudanese migrants in response to a challenge from those opposed to the move.

The court said in its decision the state was given until March 26 to provide further information and the suspension on deporting them to a third country would remain in place until then.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January said migrants who entered illegally have the choice of leaving voluntarily or facing indefinite imprisonment with eventual forced expulsion.

On Tuesday, he said an electronic fence along the Israel-Egypt border has saved the Jewish state from "severe (jihadist) attacks... and something much worse, a flood of illegal migrants from Africa".

The interior ministry says there are some 42,000 African migrants in Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea.

Most of them began arriving in 2007, through the border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Netanyahu on Tuesday said a tide of non-Jewish immigration would threaten the very fabric of Israel.

During Saturday's protest, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the far-right Jewish Home party, appealed to the government in a tweet not to give in to those opposed to the deportations.

Describing the migrants as "the illegal infiltrators" who enter Israel in search of work, he said allowing them to stay would turn the country into "an employment agency for the entire world".People take part in the March For Our Lives event at Pine Trails Park in Parkland, Florida, where a school shooting left 17 dead in February 2018

A little over a month after a school shooting killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida, hopeful locals gathered on Saturday to demand change.

Carrying signs with slogans such as "Love people more than assault weapons" and "Take away your guns not our lives," they joined hundreds of thousands of people around the US taking part in "March for Our Lives" events to call for stricter gun regulations.

The protesters met at Parkland's Pine Trails Park, the same place where a somber vigil was held in the wake of the February 14 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

But this time, the mood was different.

"The vigil was a night of mourning and this day is an active day," Kuishawn Cole, a 17-year-old Stoneman Douglas student, told AFP.

"This day is to say, 'Yes, we are sad but we are doing something about it,' to not be another statistic or victim,'" Cole said.

The event started with the screening of a video from the movement's leaders, sending love and good wishes to their classmates in Parkland.

That was followed by speeches from parents, teachers and survivors of the attack, among them organizer Casey Sherman.

"Those 17 people did not die in vain. They are the force and spirit that drives this movement," 17-year-old Sherman said.

"We are here because we know we can make a change... Our voices do matter."

- From 'heartbroken to energized' -

Protesters gathered at the same park where a somber vigil was held soon after a school shooting killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida, but this time, the mood was different

Sitting on the grass, three youngsters with hearts painted on their cheeks held a sign reading "Never Again."

Nearby, a man displayed a banner that said: "The only thing easier to buy than a gun is a congressman," an apparent reference to donations that the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby gives to politicians in exchange for support.

Elyse Brunt, 59, said people have gone from "heartbroken to energized."

"I think what changed is the knowledge that we can make a change together, and we are not going to let other people step on us. That we are going to all step up and make a difference. We have the power of change," the elementary school teacher said.

Another teacher, 69-year-old Linda Fisher, remembered the fights for gay marriage and abortion, drawing from them hope that gun policy change could too come about.

"Popular opinion has changed the government in the past and I'm hopeful that the popular opinion that was initiated by the kids is going to make a difference here," she said.

The marches in Washington and across the US were spearheaded by survivors of the Parkland shooting, many of whom were in the nation's capital on Saturday.

They are demanding tighter controls on the sales of weapons, especially assault rifles, and directing their fury toward the NRA and politicians who have failed to enact meaningful legislation to address rampant gun violence that kills 30,000 people per year in the US.A woman prepares her ballot at a polling station in Cocody, a district of Abidjan, on March 24, 2018 during the first senatorial elections in Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast voted Saturday in its first senatorial elections, boycotted by the opposition who have accused the electoral commission of bias.

The commission is due to announce the results by the end of Sunday.

However, the ruling Houphouetist Rally for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) coalition are expected to win a comfortable majority of seats in the face of independent candidates.

The opposition had called for a reform of the commission and for all votes - including future municipal and presidential elections - to be postponed.

The Senate was created in 2016 under a new constitution, following a referendum.

About 3,000 people died when rival supporters clashed on the streets of Abidjan following the disputed 2010 presidential elections.

Former president Laurent Gbagbo is currently on trial in The Hague accused of inciting the post-electoral violence after losing to bitter rival and current leader Alassane Ouattara.Over the past day, militants opened fire on the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Donetsk sector three times, the press center of the ATO headquarters said on Saturday morning.

On Friday, militants continued to violate the conditions for a complete ceasefire having carried out three shellings: one of the populated area and two of the Ukrainian army strongholds.

In the Donetsk sector, militants shelled Avdiyivka. All in all, they launched six mines at the village. As a result of the shelling, a small house and an economic building were partially destroyed. There are no casualties among civilians.

Also around midnight, militants used rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and small arms to shell Ukrainian positions near Maryinka, and 82-mm mortars to shell Kamyanka. No Ukrainian soldier were hurt in the shelling.

The ceasefire was observed in the Luhansk sector, the ATO headquarters wrote on their Facebook page.ELGIN, Ill. (AP) - The Latest on the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding woman by police in Illinois (all times local):

5:15 p.m.

Lawyers for the family of a knife-wielding woman fatally shot by a police officer along a Chicago-area interstate say her death raises questions about tactics used by the Elgin Police Department.

The attorneys issued a statement in response body-camera and dashcam video that showed events leading up to the shooting. Police released the video publicly on Thursday.

Attorney Andrew Stroth said that officers need more training on how to de-escalate situations to avoid using deadly force.

Stroth and Antonio Romanucci say in the release that they also are moving ahead with a lawsuit following the March 12 death of 34-year-old Decynthia S. Clements of Elgin.

Police say Clements' death on Interstate 90 followed an hourlong standoff with officers. An Elgin officer shot her after she got out of her vehicle while holding the knife.

Illinois State Police are investigating.

__

4:30 p.m.

Authorities have released video showing the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding woman by a police officer along a Chicago-area interstate.

The footage released Thursday includes police body-camera and dashcam video. Elgin Police Chief Jeff Swoboda also released a summary video detailing events leading up the shooting along Interstate 90, including smoke and fire pouring from the interior of the woman's SUV.

An officer also can be heard saying, "she's got the knife to her neck. She's got the knife to her neck."

Police have said an officer fired at 34-year-old Decynthia S. Clements after an hourlong standoff along the interstate on March 12.

Swoboda released a statement Thursday warning that the video footage could be "very troubling to view." But he says releasing the videos "is one step we can take toward transparency and accountability."

Illinois State Police are investigating the shooting. There have been calls for an outside group to investigate from activists, residents and a city council member.

___

10:30 a.m.

Police say they will release video showing the officer-involved fatal shooting of a woman armed with a knife along an interstate outside Chicago.

Elgin Police Chief Jeff Swoboda said Wednesday evening that more than 30 hours of video from police body cameras would be released Thursday along with an 18-minute summary video. The video is to show the shooting and events leading to it and include footage from various police camera angles.

Police have said the officer fired at 34-year-old Decynthia S. Clements of Elgin after an hourlong standoff on March 12. Swoboda says her family and community leaders will have a chance to view the video before it is released publicly.

Illinois State Police are investigating. There have been calls for an outside group to investigate from activists, residents and a city council member.NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A man accused of killing a New Orleans police officer in 2015 was convicted Saturday, as jurors rejected his insanity defense.

After a six-day trial, the jury deliberated just 66 minutes before finding 35-year-old Travis Boys guilty of first-degree murder in the death of 46-year-old Daryle Holloway, a 22-year veteran officer. Boys had pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.

Holloway was shot in a police SUV in June 2015 as he was transporting Boys to jail after an earlier arrest. Boys escaped the vehicle and was caught the next day after an intense manhunt.

FILE - This photo provided by the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office shows Travis Boys. After a six-day trial, jurors on Saturday, March 24, 2018 convicted Boys, accused of killing a New Orleans police officer in 2015. The jury deliberated just 66 minutes before rejecting Boys' pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity in the death of 46-year-old Daryle Holloway. (Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office via AP)

The verdict found that Boys was not suffering from a mental disease or defect and understood the difference between right and wrong when he fatally shot Holloway, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said in a statement.

"I am grateful this jury saw through the facade of this murderer's concocted insanity defense and arrived at the only appropriate verdict," Cannizzaro said. "Travis Boys not only had a clear understanding of his intentions to shoot this officer with a smuggled gun and escape from custody, but he also knew it was wrong. He will now spend the rest of his life in prison contemplating his heinous and unforgivable acts."

Boys will receive a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole when state District Judge Karen Herman sentences him May 3.

"We are thankful for these jurors' hard work and close attention to the law. And we pray that this outcome provides some measure of comfort and relief to Officer Holloway's mother, children, former wife and loving family and friends," Cannizzaro said.

"Today, justice has been served," Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a statement. "Nearly three years after his murder, our city continues to mourn his senseless death. While this verdict cannot ease the pain created by losing Officer Holloway, it does send a powerful message that if you attack our police, you will be brought to justice."

In October 2015, a former police officer pleaded guilty to malfeasance and obstruction of justice charges related to Holloway's death. Wardell Johnson is awaiting an April 13 hearing at which Herman will sentence him to up to 40 years in prison. Police said he failed to adequately pat down Boys after his arrest, and tried to cover up his shoddy police work.

Boys had been set for trial in October. But he brought an abrupt end to jury selection in those proceedings by smearing his head and face with feces he had smuggled into the courtroom.

Herman, who ordered a mental evaluation for Boys after the feces-smearing incident, later declared Boys competent for trial and stated that he had "hijacked" the proceedings with his stunt. "He will no longer be allowed to control these proceedings," Herman told the defense at a November hearing.

Holloway's body camera was on when he was shot. Media accounts of Tuesday's testimony say a New Orleans police lieutenant walked jurors through the video recording, pointing out images of Holloway's arm trying to control the handgun used in the shooting. It also captured the sounds of a struggle, Boys yelling "Let me out before you kill yourself," and a gunshot.

Defense attorneys have focused on Boys' mental capacity, eliciting testimony from one expert who testified that an IQ test he took as a teenager indicated "borderline retardation," and a sister who said Boys had trouble remembering basic information.BANGKOK (AP) - The elephant is Thailand's national animal, so it's only natural that King Mongkut in 1861 offered to send a pair to the United States as a gift of the friendship between the two countries.

President Abraham Lincoln, likely bemused and relieved at the distraction from America's then-raging Civil War, politely declined, saying his country uses the steam engine and would have no use for the working animals.

As part of the 200th anniversary celebrating the long-lasting relationship, the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok is showcasing historic gifts the two countries have exchanged on the grounds of Thailand's Grand Palace.

In this March 22, 2018, photo, a letter written by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 replying to Thailand's King Mongkut is on display at the exhibition "Great and Good Friends," inside Grand Palace Bangkok, Thailand. Lincoln, likely bemused and relieved at the distraction from America's then-raging Civil War, politely declined Mongut's offer to send a pair of elephants as a gift to the United States, saying his country uses the steam engine and would have no use for the working animals. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

It includes the first-ever official letter sent in 1818 from a Thai diplomat to President James Monroe - there are documents spanning two centuries - as well as some spectacular Thai objects d'art and portraits.

Then there's the elephants story, also documented among the exhibits.

In his 1861 letters, Mongkut offered the elephants after learning they were not native to America. He also sent along three gifts: a sword and scabbard, a photograph of the king with one of his daughters, and an impressive pair of elephant tusks.

He addressed the letters to then-President James Buchanan "or whomever would become president" with elaborate paragraph-long salutations.

Lincoln was already president by the time the letters arrived a year later. He penned a reply, addressing the king simply as "Great and Good Friend."

The offer of elephants did not neglect practical details. Mongkut stated, "On this account, we desire to procure and send elephants to be let loose to increase and multiply in the continent of America." But Thailand - then called Siam - did not have a large enough vessel to transport them, the letter said.

It continued: "In reference to this opinion of ours if the President of the United States and Congress who conjointly with him rule the country see fit to approve, let them provide a large vessel loaded with hay and other food suitable for elephants on the voyage, with tanks holding a sufficiency of fresh water, and arranged with stalls so that the elephants can both stand and lie down in the ship - and send it to receive them. We on our part will procure young male and female elephants and forward them one or two pairs at a time."

Mongkut then in his letter directs that the elephants should be kept away from the cold and under the sun, and to also "let them with all haste be turned out to run wild in some jungle suitable for them not confining them any length of time."

"If these means can be done we trust that the elephants will propagate their species hereafter in the continent of America," the letter said.

Thai monarchy expert Tongthong Chandransu said the offer of elephants reveals that Mongkut wanted to be part of building the young United States.

"You have to consider that 200 years ago, elephants were an important means of transportation and helped a lot with our work, not to mention warfare, but also the building of homes and cities," Tongthong said.

The ever-practical Lincoln rejected the offer to send wild elephants running through American forests, saying the country "does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant." He said in his 1862 letter that "steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce."

The exhibition runs until June 30.

___

Online:

https://www.greatandgoodfriends.com/

In this March 22, 2018, photo, the signature of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at the end of his letter in reply to Thailand's King Mongkut in 1862, is on display at the exhibition title "Great and Good Friends," inside Grand Palace Bangkok, Thailand. Lincoln, likely bemused and relieved at the distraction from America's then-raging Civil War, politely declined Mongut's offer to send a pair of elephants as a gift to the United States, saying his country uses the steam engine and would have no use for the working animals. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

In this March 22, 2018, photo, a letter written by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 replying to Thailand's King Mongkut is on display at the exhibition "Great and Good Friends," inside Grand Palace Bangkok, Thailand. Lincoln, likely bemused and relieved at the distraction from America's then-raging Civil War, politely declined Mongut's offer to send a pair of elephants as a gift to the United States, saying his country uses the steam engine and would have no use for the working animals. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

In this March 22, 2018, photo, a letter written by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 replying to Thailand's King Mongkut is on display at the exhibition "Great and Good Friends," inside Grand Palace Bangkok, Thailand. Lincoln, likely bemused and relieved at the distraction from America's then-raging Civil War, politely declined Mongut's offer to send a pair of elephants as a gift to the United States, saying his country uses the steam engine and would have no use for the working animals.(AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

In this March 22, 2018, photo, the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Glynn Davies talks to media in front of hand-written letters from U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Thailand king Mongkut on display at the exhibition titled "Great and Good Friends," inside Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand. Elephants are Thailand's national animal, so it's only natural that King Mongkut in 1861 offered to send a pair to the United States as a gift of friendship that has now endured 200 years. President Abraham Lincoln politely declined, saying his country uses the steam engine and would have no use for the working animals. As part of the anniversary celebrating the long-lasting relationship, the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok is showcasing historic gifts the two countries have exchanged.(AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - Former Vice President Joe Biden, still grieving the loss of his son to cancer and unsure whether he'll run for president in 2020, said Friday that America is in a battle for the nation's soul.

The Democrat spoke before more than 1,500 people at Southern Connecticut State University, hours after he was in Maryland to accept the Naval Academy Alumni Association's Distinguished Graduate Award on behalf of Republican Sen. John McCain. McCain is battling glioblastoma, the same aggressive brain cancer Biden's son, Beau, died from in 2015.

"He's a very close friend of mine, and a political opponent, and he's in tough shape and he asked me to go to Annapolis and speak for him," Biden said. "He's my friend. So of course I went."

FILE - In this March 6, 2018 file photo, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a rally in support of Conor Lamb, the Democratic candidate for the March 13 special election in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District in Collier, Pa. Biden says he would "beat the hell" out of President Donald Trump in high school if Trump disrespected women. He spoke Tuesday at an anti-sexual assault rally at the University of Miami. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

The New Haven Register reported that Biden talked of being a young senator, the current political climate and losing family members to death during his lecture.

He said only time would tell if he runs for president in 2020. "I have to be able to stand in front of a mirror and know that if I don't run, it's not because I'm afraid of losing, it's because there's somebody better to do it and/or because I'm not in a position to be all in," he said "The jury is still out. I've done nothing to promote running."

But Biden - who has traded harsh fighting words with President Donald Trump over who would come out on top in a hypothetical fistfight - said the U.S. can't afford eight years of the current Republican administration.

"We're in a battle for the soul of this nation," he said.TACTICAL BASE GAMBERI, Afghanistan (AP) - In fits and starts, for nearly a decade, the U.S. has talked about and struggled to make progress on building an Afghan military that can take control of its own nation's security and lay the groundwork for a stable government.

This time, they think they have it right.

After five days criss-crossing Afghanistan, meeting with everyone from the Afghan president to the new American trainers on the ground, Gen. Joseph Dunford headed home Friday with a palpable sense of optimism.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks to the media at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on March 21, 2018. Dunford says he's optimistic about Afghanistan after visiting the country this week. (AP Photo?Lolita Baldor)

Just months after the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan declared the war against the Taliban and other insurgents a stalemate, Dunford - chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - said he can see the makings of a shift.

"What we're already starting to see is, I think, momentum is going to favor the Afghan forces," Dunford told the small group of reporters traveling with him, adding that the deployment of 800 new Army trainers "will serve as an accelerant to the Afghans being able to achieve momentum."

One thing that gave him hope was a recent Afghan military operation in the east, where the Taliban have long been strong. It delivered, in his words, a "eureka" moment.

Dubbed Saleb 1-23, the Afghan military operation was launched in mid-February in a move to oust the Taliban from a critical 10-kilometer stretch of valley in Laghman Province. Taliban fighters have used that area as a transit route across the border with Pakistan, where they enjoy safe havens.

U.S. Army Maj. Marc Pfrogner, the operations adviser for the Afghans' 201st Corps, said the complex mission took 50 days to plan. He said it lasted until March 9, and got fiercer as the Afghans moved up Sangar Valley. Four Afghan forces died in the fight, and 30 Taliban were killed.

But what impressed the Americans was the coordinated battle the Afghans waged, using their own intelligence, gathered in part from the Scan Eagle drone they got last September.

With guidance from their American advisers, Afghan commandos launched the initial assaults, supported by Afghan aircraft. The Afghan National Army forces followed, clearing the area, and National Police units moved in to hold the ground, enabling local political leaders to retake the government.

U.S. surveillance and strike aircraft provided support, but American military commanders said much of that was invisible to the local people, who saw the Afghan forces as their liberators.

The coordination between the intelligence collection, the fighting forces and the police, said Dunford, is what the U.S. has been waiting to see.

"If you want to talk about what right looks like - from the Afghan security force and the government rolling in behind it - that operation was about textbook," said Dunford. "I'm trying to restrain my enthusiasm here, but I'm having trouble, because that is the most positive observation that I've had over the last two days. You're kinda like, eureka!"

Tempering that optimism, however, are the steep challenges ahead - from government corruption and political infighting to regional diplomatic tensions and struggles to build a consistent, enduring military. Too often in recent years, U.S. officials have seized on a glimmer of hope, only to watch the Taliban regroup and surge again, taking back territory and fueling its fight with the profitable poppy harvest.

That is all compounded by the persistent turmoil with Pakistan, which U.S. officials complain has still not done enough to eliminate Taliban safe havens and control the traffic of militants back and forth across the border.

Military leaders and commanders know well the risks of a backslide, so the next several months will be critical as they watch for the progress they believe is possible. And they know that success will depend on more than battlefield victories.

"The military effort is necessary but not sufficient to get us to reconciliation," said Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, referring to the renewed campaign to get Taliban fighters to the peace table. "There's a significant political component and diplomatic component."

He and others agree, however, that battlefield wins are key ways to pressure insurgents to surrender. And he said the influx in recent months of several thousand U.S. troops and trainers, additional strike aircraft and drones is helping the Afghans go on the offensive.

Other U.S. commanders said the renewed American commitment to the war, driven by the strategy rolled out by President Donald Trump last August, has helped embolden Afghan forces.

Down at Camp Leatherneck in the Taliban heartland of Helmand Province, Marines said the Afghan soldiers still struggle with logistics and maintenance issues, but they are seeing some progress.

"It's different now because they understand now it's their responsibility," said Marine Lt. Col. Ryan Benson, an adviser for the Afghan army. "Before there was the understanding that they were in the lead, but there was always that crutch" of coalition forces they could fall back on.

As the summer fighting season looms, Dunford said he will gauge success based on specific benchmarks. He said he wants the number of Afghan casualties to go down, and the percentage of the population living in secure, government controlled areas to go up. Currently, he said, about 68 percent of the population is living in secure areas, and the goal is 80 percent.

He also wants to see more Taliban abandon the fight and ease back into society through a formal Afghan reintegration program. And he said he'll be watching the Taliban's reaction when fighters increasingly see they're being targeted by Afghan aircraft and the number of Afghan commandos - who have been their toughest enemy - has doubled.

"This is not another year of the same thing we've been doing for 17 years," Dunford said. "All of this should bring pressure to bear on the Taliban. ... They are not going to win on the battlefield, they have to be convinced of that."PATNA, India (AP) - A powerful Indian politician was sentenced Saturday to 14 years in prison for embezzling 37 million rupees ($570,000) from a state government's treasury while he was the state's top elected official.

Lalu Prasad Yadav was convicted of embezzling the money to buy fictitious medicines and cattle fodder while he was chief minister of Bihar state from 1990 to 1997.

Eighteen former Bihar state officials, contractors and suppliers were sentenced in the case to jail terms ranging from 3 1/2 to five years.

FILE - In this Oct. 16, 2006 file photo, Indian railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav attends a function at the Indian Council for Agriculture Research Institute in Patna, India. The powerful politician was sentenced Saturday, March 24, 2018, to 14 years in prison for embezzling 37 million rupees ($570,000) from a state government's treasury while he was the top elected official of Bihar state. (AP Photo/Prashant Ravi, File)

Yadav, who already has been convicted three times in related cases, was also fined 6 million rupees ($92,307).

Yadav, 69, who served as India's railways minister from 2004 to 2009, is barred from contesting elections. Earlier this month, he was shifted to a hospital from a prison after he complained of chest pains in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state.

Corruption is endemic in Indian politics. Judges are now expediting trials of lawmakers accused of crimes including murder, fraud and extortion following a Supreme Court order to reach verdicts within one year in such cases. Indian lawmakers are now barred from running in elections if they are found guilty of offenses carrying a jail term of at least two years.

Yadav has turned his political party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, or the National People's Party, into a family enterprise, with his wife, two sons and a daughter running it. The daughter is a member of India's Parliament and the two sons have become lawmakers in Bihar state.

Around 15 percent of Indian lawmakers are facing court trials on criminal charges such as rioting, murder and extortion, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms, an activist group.WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on student-led protests against gun violence (all times Eastern Daylight Time):

7:15 p.m.

A contingent of survivors of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting is among the thousands of marchers at a gun control rally in Denver.

Thousands of protesters look at at a rally following a march in favor of gun control at the Seattle Center Saturday, March 24, 2018, in Seattle. Summoned to action by student survivors of the Florida school shooting, hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied in the nation's capital and cities across America on Saturday to press for gun control in one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam era. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Students and their supporters packed into Civic Center Park near the state Capitol for a rally Saturday afternoon before spilling out onto streets through downtown. They held signs like "The Second Amendment Needs Amending" and "Prayers are Not Enough."

Sixteen-year-old Columbine student Kalli Honeycutt, says her mother, who survived that shooting, has drilled it into her head to always be on the lookout.

Honeycutt said she is demonstrating because she wants lawmakers to make it harder for people to get guns and cause tragedies like school shootings.

Survivors of last month's Florida school shooting have described themselves as the "mass-shooting generation," noting that they were born after the Columbine shooting.

___

5:50 p.m.

High school students led thousands of protesters in Seattle on Saturday, part of a nation-wide youth movement demanding tighter gun regulation in the wake of a Florida school shooting that left 17 people dead.

Students held signs reading "Not One More" and chanted "Right now, right here, we refuse to live in fear." Teachers protested President Donald Trump's proposal to arm some of them in order to protect students from potential attackers.

Much of the protest was directed at the National Rifle Association.

"I want to know that they care more about lives than profit, the NRA," said Naa'Rai Taison, a 19-year-old student at Cornish College of the Arts. "We can still hold on to our traditions without having to lose lives."

Similar "March for Our Lives" events were held at other cities across the country Saturday by demonstrators spurred to action in the wake of school shootings and other gun violence.

___

5:10 p.m.

Dueling rallies were held at the same time in Helena, Montana, by gun-control and gun-rights advocates.

At the gun-control rally, two teen sisters who helped organize the protest said they felt hope for the first time after the Parkland, Florida shooting survivors advocated for change.

"Finally, somebody was doing something about it, except it wasn't who you'd expect - it was us," Mariah Thomas, 17, said to cheers. "It was students my own age who decided they wanted to put an end to gun violence."

Across town outside the Montana Capitol, a smaller crowd of gun-rights advocates swore that no outsiders would dictate gun laws in Montana. One speaker, Montana State University student Joey Chester, drew boos when he referenced the other protest.

"If something went wrong there, the first people to show up are going to be people with guns," Chester said.

The gun-control advocates gathered in Montana were among hundreds of thousands rallying nationwide at "March for Our Lives" events on Saturday. The events are intended to rally support for stricter gun control laws in the wake of school shootings.

___

4:10 p.m.

Pro-gun activists held counter-protests at some cities across the western United States on Saturday, even as hundreds of thousands of people rallied at gun control events at the same time.

In Salt Lake City, Utah about 500 pro-gun marchers walked to the state Capitol building, advocating for fortified schools and more armed teachers. An hour later, about 6,000 anti-gun violence demonstrators marched the same route in a call for more gun regulations.

About two dozen gun-rights supporters staged a counter-protest in Phoenix, Arizona, holding flags and sometimes challenging opponents to debate gun issues.

They were far outnumbered, however - the Arizona Department of Public Safety estimates that 15,000 people attended the "March for Our Lives" gun-control rally at the state Capitol. Two of the student organizers of the event opened it by urging young people to register to vote and boot out officeholders who won't act.

___

3:35 p.m.

Chin high and tears streaming, Florida school shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez stood silent in front of thousands gathered for the "March for Our Lives" rally in Washington, D.C.

She continued to stand silently as a few crowd members shouted out support. She remained silent as tentative chants broke out. Her silence continued as those attending also fell quiet, many weeping.

The gripping moment stretched for 6 minutes and 20 seconds, the amount of time Gonzalez said it took a school shooter to kill 17 people and wound many others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last month.

Gonzalez is one of several teens from the school to become gun control activists in the wake of the shooting. Their efforts have galvanized youth nationwide, with hundreds of thousands attending similar rallies across the country.

Gonzalez wrapped up the Washington, D.C. rally with some homework for those who demonstrated nationwide:

"One final plug," she said. "Get out there and vote."

___

3:15 p.m.

Fifteen-year-old Brooke Solomon led thousands of demonstrators in a march through the downtown streets of Detroit. Ten-year-old Jack Thorne attended a similar event in Atlanta, Georgia with his mom. South Salem High School student Allison Hmura told protesters in Salem, Oregon that students shouldn't have to learn to "duck and cover."

The youths were among hundreds of thousands at "March for Our Lives" events nationwide calling for stricter gun control in response to school shootings and gun violence.

"I'm here marching for the thousands of under-represented black and brown kids, especially in Detroit," said Solomon, who wants background checks in all gun sales. "I'm looking for tougher gun laws and legislation that includes banning semi-automatic and assault weapons."

In Atlanta, Thorne held aloft a sign reading "Guns Don't Kill People. Ummm... Yes They Do," as he described how he and his classmates recently underwent active shooter drills in school.

And Hmura called on the nearly 2,400 people gathered at the Salem rally to fight for change.

"There cannot be two sides to our safety in school where we should be learning, growing and making friends - not learning how to duck and cover," Hmura said.

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3 p.m.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said in a prepared statement Saturday that he supports demonstrators' rights to march at anti-gun rallies across the country, but called for activists to find common ground with opponents.

"While protests are a legitimate way of making a point, in our system of government, making a change requires finding common ground with those who hold opposing views," the Republican from Florida said.

Rubio's district includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed in a school shooting last month. He said that a ban on bump stocks (used to make guns fire more rapidly), improvements to the gun background check system and other efforts were achieved by finding common ground with those who don't want certain gun bans.

"And finding common ground is what it will take to pass our red flag law so we can take guns away from dangerous people," Rubio said.

Hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the United States are attending "March for Our Lives" rallies, calling on lawmakers to enact legislation to help stop school shootings and reduce gun violence.

___

2:20 p.m.

Thousands of people are flooding the streets of downtown Los Angeles to demand stricter gun laws in the U.S.

The rally was one of several being held across California and the United States on Saturday.

Protesters held signs and chanted as they marched to Los Angeles City Hall for the "March for Our Lives" rally.

Zoe Lopez, a 15-year-old high school freshman from Garden Grove, said she's attending the rally to demand additional regulations on gun purchases.

In Sacramento, thousands chanted: "hey, hey, ho, ho, the NRA has got to go" as they assembled at the state's capitol.

Rallies in Oakland and San Diego also drew hundreds of demonstrators.

Similar rallies were being held in cities across America to march for gun control and ignite political activism among teenagers.

___

2:10 p.m.

The granddaughter of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. told tens of thousands of "March for Our Lives" demonstrators gathered in Washington, D.C. that she too has a dream - for a gun-free world.

"I have a dream that enough is enough," Yolanda Renee King said, referencing her grandfather's famous speech. "That this should be a gun-free world. Period."

The crowd roared in response. The Washington, D.C. event has thousands thronging Pennsylvania Avenue to hear speakers including survivors of the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and singers like Miley Cyrus.

Hundreds of thousands of people attended youth-led, anti-gun rallies across the United States and the world on Saturday, calling on lawmakers to tighten gun control in order to stop mass shootings and gun violence.

___

1:55 p.m.

Hundreds of students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School arrived for the Washington, D.C. march on three flights donated by Delta Air Lines.

They'll return to Florida with Delta after the march too.

The airline, which broke ties with the National Rifle Association after last month's school shooting that left 17 dead, said they offered the round-trip charter flights "as part of our commitment to supporting the communities we serve.

After the shooting in Parkland, Delta said it would no longer offer discounted fares to NRA members to reflect its neutral status on the gun-control debate.

The move triggered a backlash from gun advocates, and the state of Georgia killed a proposed tax break on jet fuel in retaliation.

___

1:45 p.m.

A series of protests held across the United States Saturday in support of gun control is shaping up to be one of the biggest youth protests since the era of the Vietnam War.

The "March for Our Lives" rallies are a call to action by student survivors of last month's school shooting in Florida that left 17 people dead.

At Washington's "March for Our Lives" rally, throngs jammed Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks. Tens of thousands of teenagers and their supporters roared their approval as survivors of the Parkland, Florida, assault spoke from the stage. One of them, Delaney Tarr, laid down the students' central demand, a ban on assault-type weapons, and declared "We will continue to fight for our dead friends."

The Washington crowd was well into the tens of thousands. A vast crowd also rallied in New York City and large marches unfolded in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis and scores of other cities. More than 20,000 rallied in Parkland near the school.

___

1:35 p.m.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators at student-led anti-gun rallies held across the United States on Saturday were joined by counterparts the world over.

In Paris, France about 100 demonstrators rallied near the Eiffel Tower in solidarity with the American "March for Our Lives" events.

Caitlin Waters, co-organizer of the Paris event, said it's important for Americans overseas to let Washington know that they want more gun control. Similar rallies were planned in New Zealand, Japan and other countries around the world.

In the United States, rallies stretched from sea to shining sea, with people marching in huge cities like Los Angeles and New York City as well as in smaller ones like Boise, Idaho and Omaha, Nebraska.

___

1 p.m.

Prominent civil rights leader U.S. Rep. John Lewis says that the student-led, anti-gun protests occurring across the United States remind him of the early days of the civil rights era.

"I think it's amazing," Lewis said in an interview with The Associated Press. "They will be the leaders of the 21st century."

Lewis joined the "March for Our Lives" protest in Atlanta, Georgia, one of several anti-gun rallies being held across the U.S. on Saturday in response to last month's Florida school shooting and other mass shootings.

The Democrat also implored his Republican colleagues in Congress to "come to the right side" and to pass meaningful gun-control legislation.

Lewis wore a button with a large red letter "F'' on it, proudly displaying the grade he said he has received from the NRA. Lewis said hundreds of Democratic members of the House were wearing them today.

___

12:35 p.m.

Tens of thousands gathered at a "March for Our Lives" rally in New York City on Saturday held a moment of silence to honor 17 people killed during a school shooting in Florida just last month.

Sam Hendler, a 16-year-old student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was at the rally to read the victims' names.

Another MSD student, Meghan Bonner, told the demonstrators that she wasn't surprised when she learned the identity of the shooter because it was obvious something was wrong with him.

"There was so much more that could have been done to prevent this," she said, fighting back tears. "I want to see change."

The rally in midtown Manhattan is one of several being held across the United States on Saturday in response to gun violence.

____

11:55 a.m.

The mayor of Houston, Texas told thousands of demonstrators at a "March for Our Lives" rally that adults have a responsibility to protect all children.

Mayor Sylvester Turner spoke at the Tranquillity Park event Saturday morning, one of several anti-gun rallies being held across the U.S. on Saturday in response to last month's school shooting in Florida and other mass shootings.

"We have a responsibility for those of us as adults, we have a responsibility to stand up and protect our children," said Turner.

Turner also chanted with the crowd "Now is the time" to "do the right thing."

___

11:15 a.m.

Students chanted "enough is enough" and held up signs with slogans like "our ballots will stop bullets" at a rally in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed in a school shooting last month.

More than 20,000 people filled the park near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for the "March for Our Lives" rally Saturday morning.

Others from the area traveled to Washington, D.C., where the main "March for Our Lives" event is being held. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft let over 100 people, including families of victims of the Parkland shooting, use the team's charter plane for the trip.

Team spokesman Stacey James says astronaut Mark Kelly reached out to Kraft for the favor.

"It's a hard thing to say no to, especially involving these victims," James said.

___

10:40 a.m.

More than 20,000 people are expected at the "March for Our Lives" rally nearest the Florida school where last month's deadly shooting occurred.

Police presence was heavy early Saturday at a park near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High as organizers set up and demonstrators streamed in.

Eighteen-year-old Sabrine Brismeur and 17-year-old Eden Kinlock came from schools 20 miles away to pass out water.

Kinlock said that may seem "like a small thing but it helps in the bigger picture."

___

10:35 a.m.

The White House is applauding "the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights" at gun control marches in Washington and in cities around the nation.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters says "keeping our children safe is a top priority" of President Donald Trump and points to his calls on Congress to pass legislation related to expanded background checks and school safety.

Trump is at his Florida home for the weekend. His motorcade took him to his West Palm Beach golf club on Saturday morning as hundreds of thousands of people were preparing for marches after the deadly mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

The president has ordered the Justice Department to ban bump stock devices that enable guns to fire like automatic weapons.

___

9:10 a.m.

Dozens of protesters are rallying outside the U.S. Embassy in London in solidarity with the "March for Our Lives" protest against gun violence.

Students, families with children and other protesters raised placards reading "Protect kids not guns," ''Never again," and "Enough is enough" Saturday outside the new embassy building in south London.

Amnesty International U.K.'s director Kate Allen referred to the 1996 school killings at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland, in which 16 students and a teacher were killed.

She said: "After our own school shooting at Dunblane, new gun ownership laws were introduced in Britain and that's exactly what's needed in the United States, where gun deaths are a national tragedy."

Hundreds of marches are planned in U.S. cities and dozens of locations abroad.

___

1 a.m.

With thousands of demonstrators gathering in Washington, organizers of the March for Our Lives rally say the country has reached a historic emotional tipping point on gun violence.

They predict a half-million demonstrators Saturday near the U.S. Capitol building for a several-hour rally. That would match last year's women's march and make it one of the largest Washington protests since the Vietnam War era.

A poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 69 percent of respondents and half of Republicans now favor stronger gun control laws.

Activists are looking to channel the energy of this youth-led initiative into the midterm congressional elections this fall with elements like on-site voter registration booths.

__

This story has been changed to correct that Jack Thorne was at a march in Atlanta, not Savannah, Georgia and the spelling of Tranquillity Park in Houston, Texas.

High school students toss roses in memory of those lost to gun violence in front of the stage during a rally before a march in favor of gun control Saturday, March 24, 2018, in Seattle. Summoned to action by student survivors of the Florida school shooting, hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied in the nation's capital and cities across America on Saturday to press for gun control in one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam era. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Protesters wave signs at a "March for Our Lives" rally in Helena, Mont., on Saturday, March 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Matt Volz)

Kendall McKee, 11, is shown during a pro-gun march designed to advocate for fortified schools and more armed teachers Saturday, March 24, 2018, in Salt Lake City. Hundreds of people are expected to march to the Utah state Capitol in separate protests aimed at improving school safety - in very different ways. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., closes her eyes and cries as she stands silently at the podium for the amount of time it took the Parkland shooter to go on his killing spree during the "March for Our Lives" rally in support of gun control in Washington, Saturday, March 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

People participate in a "March For Our Lives" rally at the state Capitol, Saturday, March 24, 2018, in Phoenix. Students and activists across the country planned events Saturday in conjunction with a Washington march spearheaded by teens from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where over a dozen people were killed in February. (AP Photo/Matt York)

High school students toss roses in memory of those lost to gun violence in front of the stage during a rally before a march in favor of gun control Saturday, March 24, 2018, in Seattle. Summoned to action by student survivors of the Florida school shooting, hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied in the nation's capital and cities across America on Saturday to press for gun control in one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam era. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Edna Chavez of Manual Arts High, south of downtown Los Angeles, speaks during the "March for Our Lives" rally in support of gun control in Washington, Saturday, March 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Looking west away from the stage, the crowd fills Pennsylvania Avenue during the "March for Our Lives" rally in support of gun control, Saturday, March 24, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

People hold banners during the "March For Our Lives" event in Paris, France, Saturday, March 24, 2018. The march is one of hundreds happening across the U.S. and the world to urge U.S. lawmakers to pass stricter gun safety legislation after deadly school shootings. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

People hold banners during the "March For Our Lives" event in Paris, France, Saturday, March 24, 2018. The march is one of hundreds happening across the U.S. and the world to urge U.S. lawmakers to pass stricter gun safety legislation after deadly school shootings. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

American students and expats hold signs calling for stricter gun control during in a solidarity rally with 'March For Our Lives' on the "Place des Nations" in front of the European headquarters of the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday, March 24, 2018. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, center, and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, far right, join demonstrators during a "March for Our Lives" protest for gun legislation and school safety Saturday, March 24, 2018, in Houston. Turner has told several thousand people demonstrating for stricter gun control that adults have a responsibility to stand up and protect all children. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Protesters fill Pennsylvania Avenue, as seen from the Newseum, during the "March for Our Lives" rally in support of gun control in Washington, Saturday, March 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)ISTANBUL (AP) - Turkey's president has criticized anti-war students at a top university, calling them terrorists following a fight there.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that "communist, traitor youth" tried to mess up a student stand opened by "religious, nationalist, local youth" at the public Bogazici University. Erdogan announced an investigation and said "we won't give these terrorist youth the right to study at these universities."

On Monday, a group of students opened a stand distributing sweets dubbed "Afrin delight" to commemorate fallen soldiers in Turkey's cross-border operation in Syria. Another group protested against them, holding anti-war banners.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during an event called "Greener Turkey" in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, March 21, 2018. (Kayhan Ozer/Pool Photo via AP)

Turkey's official Anadolu Agency said a fight broke out and 12 people were later detained.

Turkey hasn't tolerated criticism of its military offensive to oust a Syrian Kurdish militia that it considers a terror group.COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Utility companies around the nation are reacting in varied ways to states' demands that they return federal tax cut proceeds to their customers. Some companies are readily complying, while others are balking.

Pressure to send the savings back to electricity, gas and water customers regulated at the state level escalated recently after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission demanded federally regulated utilities report back to them about the potential tax windfall and returning the money to customers.

David Hayes, director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, said that should boost efforts by consumer groups, elected officials and public utilities commissions from California to Maine who have been pushing for state-regulated utilities to pass along the tax cuts to customers.

"Hopefully, the fact that FERC came out so quickly and emphatically about this issue will help the advocates in the states - attorneys general, and others - to push the PUCs and the utilities to return those funds to ratepayers," he said.

At issue is an estimated $1 billion in tax savings this year and $5 billion over the next two years.

President Donald Trump signed the $1.5 trillion tax cut package into law in December. It provides generous tax cuts for corporations, including utilities, but more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families. The law's corporate tax rate reduction affects regulated utilities because taxes are an expense the companies pass along to consumers.

Among the big questions posed by the law's passage is how much should go back to customers and over what period, said Ken Costello, of the National Regulatory Research Institute, which represents state utility regulatory commissions.

"It's not as easy as it appears on the surface," Costello said.

Democratic Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey was the first attorney general to call for the return. Others soon followed. A bipartisan coalition of attorneys general, state agencies and consumer advocates from 18 states called on the federal government to assure public utility customers - not utility shareholders - receive the benefits of the federal tax cut.

Among the group was Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear, a Democrat, who sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking for a rate reduction that would pass the tax savings directly to customers.

"Kentuckians were called upon to pay utility bills at the previous, higher tax rate, and now that the companies' taxes are lower all the savings should be returned immediately to each ratepayer," he said.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, a Republican, filed five motions with the state's utility regulatory body seeking immediate customer rate reductions. The Corporation Commission approved his proposals in a 2-to-1 vote. At least one utility serving the state, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, has said it will embed the tax savings in its upcoming rate package.

Alternatively, some utilities want to put the tax savings toward infrastructure. Florida Power & Light Co., for example, says it will put the money toward repairs from Hurricane Irma, eliminating the need for a surcharge for customers and saving them an average of $250.

Costello said other power companies contend there are factors complicating the issue and that they first need to know more about the new tax law.

After the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio instructed American Electric Power, Dayton Power & Light, Duke Energy and FirstEnergy to treat any tax savings received after Jan. 1, 2018, as potential consumer savings in January, utilities filed an unusual joint response to regulators' orders to track tax savings requesting reconsideration. They argued the order lacked specifics, potentially violated a rule against retroactive utility refunds and fell outside the normal rate-making process.

The commission's order for companies to begin tracking how much they are over-collecting when using delivery rates developed under the previous 35-percent federal tax rate, rather than using the new 21-percent rate is still under negotiation.

"This is a significant and complex undertaking, and the (companies) urge the commission to methodically pursue the task in a thorough manner using a process that is fair and deliberate for each utility," the companies said in the filing.

___

Seewer reported from Toledo.AFRIN, Syria (AP) - The Turkish army and Syrian opposition fighters it backs have "total control" of the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria, according to the country's official news agency on Saturday, nearly a week after they captured the main town that carries the same name.

Anadolu news agency said the Turkish military was continuing its sweep for mines and explosives to allow Afrin's resident's to return, following airstrikes and clashes with Syrian Kurdish forces.

Associated Press journalists on a press tour organized by the Turkish government Saturday passed through the northwestern town of Jinderes en route to central Afrin.

Turkey-backed opposition fighters of the Free Syrian Army patrol the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of Syrian Kurdish forces. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Jinderes, captured by Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters, was the scene of heavy street clashes earlier in March. The AP saw a widely destroyed and empty town.

Turkey launched a ground and air offensive on Jan. 20 codenamed Olive Branch to oust the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, from Afrin. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.

Syrian Kurdish officials and the country's state media said the Turkish offensive displaced more than 200,000 people from their homes.

In Afrin's town center, captured Sunday, allied Syrian forces patrolled the streets as Turkish tanks and armored personnel carriers drove past.

Ismail Montaser Billah, a Syrian fighter, said the YPG withdrew from Afrin after resisting the offensive. "They had left mines but thank God we took (the town) and we will step on their heads God willing," he said. Turkish and Syrian opposition flags were flying in the area.

Civilians, including women and children, were out and about in central Afrin. Abdul-Rahman Mohammed, a civilian, said the YPG mistreated locals who did not cooperate with them. "We are suffering because of a lack of food and water," he added.

The Turkish Red Crescent distributed food and aid in Afrin. Kerem Kinik, the organization's president, said some 100,000 civilians remained in and around Afrin.

A Syrian child sits in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Syrians queue for food at a distribution centre in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A Syrian man, carrying bread he received from a distribution centre, walks past destroyed cars in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Turkish soldiers atop a tank patrol the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018.Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Syrians queue for bread at a distribution centre in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A Syrian man smokes in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A Syrian man waits outside a food distribution centre in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Garbage litters a street of the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Syrians queue for food at a distribution centre in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Syrian children carrying food walk in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A Turkey-backed opposition fighter of the Free Syrian Army stands at a food distribution centre, in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Syrians queue for food at a distribution centre in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Turkish soldiers atop an armoured personnel carrier patrol the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018.Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Syrians queue for food at a distribution centre in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

People sit in the damaged streets in the outskirts of the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. The graffiti reads in Arabic: "Hassakeh Shield" referring to the rebel group Hassakeh which is also a northeastern province in Syria. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of Syrian Kurdish forces. Turkey considers the YPG a terror group and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within its own borders.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Members of a Syrian family talk from inside their yard to members of the media in the outskirts of the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of Syrian Kurdish forces.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Syrians queue for food at a distribution centre in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of Syrian Kurdish forces.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A man walks in a damaged street in the outskirts of the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of Syrian Kurdish forces.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A Syrian man walks after he received food at a distribution centre, in the northwestern city of Afrin, Syria, during a Turkish government-organised media tour into northern Syria, Saturday, March 24, 2018. Turkey and allied Syrian opposition fighters captured the city of Afrin on Sunday, March 18, nearly two months after the launch of an operation to clear the area of Syrian Kurdish forces.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)The Ministry for Temporarily-Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) has said the Russian Federation's law-enforcers have unlawfully detained in the occupied Crimea a citizen of Ukraine, journalist Nariman Memedeminov.

"In connection with the illegal detention of a citizen of Ukraine, Nariman Memedinov, the Ministry for Temporary Occupied Territories again stresses the illegality and unlawfulness of such actions by representatives of the Russian law enforcement agencies," the Ministry said on its Facebook page on Friday.

"The government of Ukraine is doing everything possible to support the citizens of Ukraine, who remain under the occupation," the Ministry said.

Facebook users reported earlier Nariman Memedeminov was detained in Kholmivka, Bakhchysarai district, Crimea, on Thursday, March 22. He was charged with allegedly extremist statements in a YouTube video shot in 2012-13.

According to media reports, on Friday, March 23, Kyivsky District Court of Simferopol ruled to arrest Crimean Tatar activist Nariman Memedinov until May 16.Michael van Gerwen continued his dominance over Michael Smith with a 7-2 victory which moved him two points clear at the top of the Premier League.

Smith, a surprise challenger in the competition so far this season, entered the top-of-the-table clash in Glasgow having won just one of his last nine meetings against the Dutchman.

The 27-year-old was on track to end that poor record, taking advantage of missed doubles from Van Gerwen to move 2-0 ahead, but the defending champion bounced back in emphatic fashion.

Michael van Gerwen is sitting pretty at the top (Steven Paston/PA)

Van Gerwen, appearing to suffer from a slight shoulder issue, blew Smith away by winning the next seven legs to make a huge statement, finishing with a 101.56 average.

STUNNING DARTS FROM MVG | Van Gerwen confirms top spot as he brushes away Michael Smith 7-2 #Unibet180 #LoveTheDarts pic.twitter.com/t7vjkbTUoG  PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) March 22, 2018

Last years runner-up Peter Wright is staring relegation in the face after suffering a 7-1 hammering for the third consecutive week  this time to play-off hopeful Raymond van Barneveld.

Winless Gerwyn Price is two points adrift of Wright at the bottom of the pile following a 7-1 defeat to world champion Rob Cross, who is hot on the heels of Van Gerwen following a fifth consecutive triumph.

Daryl Gurney celebrated his 32nd birthday in style with his maiden Premier League win, reeling off four consecutive legs to see off Mensur Suljovic 7-3.

Gary Anderson claimed his fifth straight victory on the SSE Hydro oche in front of his home fans as he averaged 102.68 to beat Simon Whitlock 7-4 and end a four-match winless streak.Kat Slater sparked a bar brawl after she walked in on a benefit for her own funeral as the soap character returned to EastEnders.

The beloved character, played by Jessie Wallace, made her highly-anticipated return over two episodes on Thursday.

She was last seen in Albert Square in January 2016 ahead of appearing in spin-off series Redwater.

Kat Slater returns to the Queen Vic. (Kieron McCarron/BBC)

Her relatives Jean and Mo Slater (Gillian Wright and Laila Morse) have already returned to the soap, with Mo claiming that Kat is dead.

Mick Carter (Danny Dyer) was in the middle of raising a glass to Kat as her old neighbours raised money for her funeral when she made her dramatic return to the Old Vic pub.

Toasting their friend, the group said: Kat Slater, may you rest in peace. But she then walked through the door, prompting Mick to spit out his drink.

This may not be the best time to LOL Kat!

How will the Slaters style this one out?! pic.twitter.com/CATE7N1Yay  BBC EastEnders (@bbceastenders) March 22, 2018

Surveying the scene, dressed in a leopard print fur coat, Kat laughed and said Blimey has someone died? before adding: As you can probably see, Im not dead.

It had previously emerged Mo had lied about Kats death to raise money to pay off her debts.

During a confrontation about her deceit, Mo faked a heart attack before a fight broke out in the pub, after Kat called Karen Taylor (Lorraine Stanley) Waynetta.

We like to call this : The Kat Effect pic.twitter.com/J4v33RtSgT  BBC EastEnders (@bbceastenders) March 22, 2018

As chaos continued, with a bar stool flying through a window, Kat left with Mo and Stacey Fowler (Lacey Turner), as Stacey said: I had forgotten what a proper Slater night out was like.

Laughing, Kat replied: Hold on to your hats, because Ive got a feeling we might be having a few more.

Hold onto your hats Walford! The Slater girls are back, and we all know what that means...



Trouble. 



#EastEnders is back on Monday at 8PM.  pic.twitter.com/8c6KdX9WCE  BBC EastEnders (@bbceastenders) March 22, 2018

It was also revealed that Kat was having a break from her husband Alfie (Shane Richie), who she said was in Spain with the children.

In the previous episode, Kat emerged from a black taxi wheeling a leopard print suitcase and wearing a thick coat of her famous red lip gloss.

Leopard print: 

Red lips : 

Bit of a mouth on her: 



SHE'S BACK!!



#EastEnders is back in in ONE HOUR at 9PM. See you then!  pic.twitter.com/9Jcn2nqjwg  BBC EastEnders (@bbceastenders) March 22, 2018

Finding a poster on the ground for a benefit night in her memory at the Queen Vic pub with the words RIP Kat on it, she expressed her shock saying: What the?

Wallace, 46, has played the role of the loudmouth, leopard print-wearing Kat on and off since 2000.

Fans expressed their jubilation at her return, with one writing on Twitter: This is the best its been in years!

This is the best it's been in years! #EastEnders pic.twitter.com/1sFCrcaI8y  Tariq Latif (@tariqlatif42) March 22, 2018

Another wrote: First episode in a long while that #eastenders has felt like the old times!! Best thing they could do was bring back the slaters! If it carries on this the other soaps dont stand a chance.

First episode in a long while that #eastenders has felt like the old times!! Best thing they could do was bring back the slaters! If it carries on this the other soaps dont stand a chance.  Shakiya JUSTICE (@kidrauhlsquad94) March 22, 2018

EastEnders continues on Monday on BBC One at 8pm.Hollywood stars Amy Schumer, Yara Shahidi and Olivia Wilde will address crowds as an anticipated one million people across the US protest against gun violence in the student-led March For Our Lives.

The main rally organised by pupils in the wake of the Valentines Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will be held in Washington DC on Saturday.

But sibling marches will be held across the States and the world, including in Los Angeles where stars and survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, will speak in support of the mass movement.

Amy Schumer will address the crowd in LA (Ian West/PA)

Action since the 17 students and staff members killed in the attack has so far seen tens of thousands stage school walkouts.

Students have directed much criticism at gun advocates the National Rifle Association (NRA) and have called for measures including tighter background checks and a ban on assault weapons such as the one used in the recent massacre.

The outcry has so far seen some success, with Florida passing its first new gun controls in more than 20 years and the US Congress issuing funding to improve school safety and compliance with criminal background checks for firearm purchases.

But there is still much to be done before students feel safe in the nation where school shootings are a regular occurrence.

Every kid in this country now goes to school wondering if this day might be their last. We live in fear, the March For Our Lives mission statement says.

Stars have also got out their chequebooks to support the marches. Oprah Winfrey donated 500,000 dollars (354,000), as did couples George and Amal Clooney and Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw.

The Clooneys also said they will join students in DC, as will pop stars Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus.

Marches are also scheduled in the UK and Ireland, with a rallies in London, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Belfast and Dublin.World number two Caroline Wozniacki suffered an upset in the second round of the Miami Open as Monica Puig battled to a 0-6 6-4 6-4 win.

Wozniacki looked to be in command of the match as she won the first set 6-0 but Puig, ranked 82nd in the world, started to apply the pressure at the start of the second, setting up a break point in the first game.

Australian Open champion Wozniacki hold her serve after a 10-minute battle but Puig showed glimpses of what was to come, winning her first game with an ace and going on to claim the first break of the match.

Monica Puig celebrates after defeating Caroline Wozniacki in Miami (Wilfredo Lee/AP)

Her backhand proved to be key as the Miami resident charged to victory in one hour and 55 minutes.

The @MiamiOpen crowd witnessed @CaroWozniacki in vintage form as she chased down the Puig drop shot for a winner! #MiamiOpen pic.twitter.com/BY19kldvEw  wta (@WTA) March 24, 2018

Unseeded Puig will now face Greeces Maria Sakkari for her first third-round match-up in Miami.

Venus Williams booked her place in the third round after battling from behind to triumph 7-5 6-4 against Russias Natalia Vikhlyantseva.

A nervy start saw the eighth seed trail 5-2 in the first set before she rallied to claim five games in a row against the world number 88.

Going into the second set, Williams again found herself on the back foot, falling 3-0 behind. But Williams found her form to save a break point and go on to win six out of seven games to clinch the match in two hours and seven minutes.

French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko came from a break down to advance to the third round with a 6-4 6-4 win over Timea Babos, and defending champion Johanna Konta will continue her title defence after beating Belgiums Kirsten Flipkens 6-4 6-3.

Elsewhere, fourth seed Elina Svitolina defeated Indian Wells champion Naomi Osaka 6-4 6-2, Daria Gavrilova beat Germanys Andrea Petkovic 7-6 (7/3) 6-4, while ninth-ranked Petra Kvitova overcame Aryna Sabalenka 7-5 3-6 6-3 and 19-year-old Sofia Kenin beat Indian Wells finalist Daria Kasatkina 3-6 6-2 6-2.Hundreds of protesters have gathered outside the US embassy in London to demand an end to mass shootings, pledging to stay angry until gun laws are reformed.

It comes as tens of thousands are set to march on the White House on Saturday in a rally organised by survivors of the Parkland school shooting in Florida.

Student Courtney Chatterton, 21, told the Press Association about a false alarm at her university near Chicago, Illinois, on March 14, the day before she flew to visit a friend in the UK.

Protesters during the March For Our Lives anti-gun rally outside the US Embassy in London (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

She said: We got all these emergency messages saying there was a shooter on campus. It was utterly terrifying, I started shaking immediately.

People were barricading themselves in classrooms.

Courtney Chatterton,21, says her university near Chicago was put on lockdown over a false alarm the day before she flew out to the UK, calling the ordeal terrifying pic.twitter.com/UGwxyQZOt5  Thomas Hornall (@Thomashornall) March 24, 2018

The March For Our Lives movement is urging Congress to ban assault-style, high-capacity rifles which have been used with deadly efficiency in recent mass shootings.

They also want background check loopholes closed that allow dangerous people to slip through the cracks and buy guns online or at gun shows.

Protesters chanted Not one more and books not bullets before they staged a three-minute silent die-in in remembrance of shooting victims.

There has now been a three-minute silent die-in pic.twitter.com/o8fsT1NMwf  Thomas Hornall (@Thomashornall) March 24, 2018

Organiser Stephen Paduano urged the crowd to stay angry at Congress over its dereliction of duty.

Julia Langfitt, from Maryland, who moved to Surrey with her family two years ago, told the Press Association: Its time. Its ridiculous how many children are killed every week and still nothing is done about it.

Her daughter Kathrine, 16, added: My childhood friends go to class knowing they could be killed. No-one should ever be that scared at school.

They had a lockdown the other week  they happen all the time. Theyre terrified that this is the new normal.

Today, we #MarchForOurLives. This day in history belongs to us. See you out there! https://t.co/NkJy6IyNKO pic.twitter.com/NSFh4GPov6  March For Our Lives (@AMarch4OurLives) March 24, 2018

Around 800 protests are happening worldwide on Saturday, sparked after a former pupil wielding a AR-15 rifle gunned down his ex-classmates at Stoneman Douglas High School.

He massacred 17 students and teachers in the Valentines Day spree.

The marches follow synchronised national school walk-outs across the US earlier this month, when thousands of pupils left class for 17 minutes  one minute for each victim.Relatives of Dunblane massacre victims were among hundreds of people who protested outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh on Saturday as part of a campaign for greater gun control in America.

The demonstration was one of more than 800 events taking place around the world as part of the March For Our Lives movement.

It was started following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February in which 17 people were killed.

Protesters are calling on the US government to pass legislation to effectively address gun violence.

Speakers at the Edinburgh rally included Jack and Ellie Crozier, whose sister Emma was killed in the Dunblane shooting, and Ali Ross, whose sister Joanna also died.

Ali Ross (centre) at the Edinburgh March For Our Lives rally (Jane Barlow/PA)

They read a letter of support to those affected by the Parkland tragedy.

The letter, first published on the 22nd anniversary of the Dunblane shooting, stated: Wherever you march, whenever you protest, however you campaign for a more sensible approach to gun ownership, we will be there with you in spirit.

#IWillMarch for the 17 in Dunblane, the 17 in Parkland and everyone else affected by gun violence. Im marching for my sister because she cant. Im using my voice for those who have been silenced. No more. #MarchForOurLives  ellie crozier (@elliecrozier97) March 12, 2018

Ms Ross also read out a message from Mick North, who lost his daughter Sophie in the 1996 massacre.

He said: The only factor common to all mass shootings, indeed to all shootings, is that someone has a gun, and in the USA it is just far too easy to get hold of one.

If the USA really wants to turn its thoughts, tears and prayers after each mass shooting into something positive, it has to deal with the easy availability of firearms.

Catherine Wilson, who lost her sister Mhairi in Dunblane, also took part in the event, reading her poem For Parkland/The Public I.

She said: I am so overwhelmed and incredibly impressed by the teenagers in America who are walking out of schools and who are demonstrating today.

Today is a really important mix of both showing that anger and fighting against something that is incorrect, but also offering that support and that love really, to the students in America.

She added: I think we are at a breaking point, I think were at the point where the generation that I am part of now and the younger generation who are at school have seen so many school shootings in their lifetime.

They have continually grown up in the shadow of school shootings, and they are the point where they just cannot take it any more.

Today we #MarchForOurLives. If we hold up the right to life, gun control isn't luxury but necessity. We've learnt that from too many victims  Catherine Wilson Garry (@CWilsonPoet) March 24, 2018

While the Dunblane shooting led to the UK enforcing some of the strictest firearms legislation in the world, the US gun lobby has resisted change.

I dont understand why the freedom to own a gun is seen as more important than seeing your grandchildren grow up, or feeling safe when you go and watch a film in the cinema, or being able to go to the park, or not having your children have to miss education because theyre spending hours on these drills, Ms Wilson said.

I dont understand what is so precious about your guns that is more precious than human life.

She added: I am hopeful. I am praying that we make this change because it is a necessity.The March For Our Lives movement is demanding a ban on assault-style, high-capacity rifles used with deadly efficiency in recent mass shootings.

Hundreds of protests are happening worldwide on Saturday, led by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where last month 17 people were gunned down by a former pupil.

Thousands of UK supporters gathered in solidarity outside the US embassy in London and the US consulate in Edinburgh.

Blowing bubbles as crowds arrive for the March for Our Lives rally in Washington (AP)

Marching against gun violence on the streets of New York (AP)

Americans living in the UK protest outside the US embassy in London (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

A solemn crowd gathered earlier in Edinburgh (Jane Barlow/PA)

Demonstrators target the National Rife Association in Cincinnati, Ohio (AP)

(Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Demonstrators outside the US consulate in Edinburgh (Jane Barlow/PA)

Showing solidarity at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (AP)

And in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (AP)

A demonstrator makes his point with mock blood in Washington (AP)

A mother comforts her daughter after a moment of silence at a rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee (Times Free Press/AP)

`Graduations not funerals: A demonstrator at a rally in Chicago (AP)The Kremlin has denied a claim that poisoned former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be pardoned and to be able to visit his home country.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to visit his family, his friend Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury on March 4.

Police responding to the Salisbury nerve agent incident (Ben Birchall/PA)

Kremlin spox: there was no letter from Sergei Skripal to President Putin to allow him to come back to Russia pic.twitter.com/xwXbfAUfUd  Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) March 24, 2018

Moscow has stepped up its campaign to discredit Theresa Mays assertion that it is highly likely Russia was responsible for the attack.

The diplomatic crisis has plunged relations between Russia and the UK into the deep freeze and could trigger further action by European Union members in support of the Prime Ministers stance.

But the Russian embassy in London kept up its attempts to challenge the UKs case  reiterating its suggestion that the Porton Down defence laboratory was developing its own military-grade poisons.

The lab, located less than 10 miles from Salisbury, is where tests were carried out to identify the Novichok substance.

Porton Down chief executive Gary Aitkenhead told the BBC: We have got the highest levels of controls, of security around the work that we do here.

We would not be allowed to operate if we had lack of control that could result in anything leaving the four walls of our facility here.

A Russian embassy spokesman said Mr Aitkenheads comment amounts to admitting that the secret facility is a place where new components of military-grade poisons are being researched and developed.

Read our comment on MoD Porton Down secret lab activity pic.twitter.com/wyCSKugHyc  Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) March 24, 2018

On Friday, EU leaders promised an unprecedented diplomatic response to the attack after backing Theresa Mays assertion that Moscow was responsible.

The bloc is recalling its ambassador to Russia for consultations on the Salisbury attack.

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while on Sunday Vladimir Chizhov, Russias EU ambassador, said that from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him (Mr Skripal).

The 66-year-old was accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.

He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.

According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.

Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland, he said.

In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor (he told me) he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were (in Russia).

Russias ambassador to the UK sent his well wishes to Mr Skripal and his daughter on Friday, saying he hoped for their recovery.

Alexander Yakovenko wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripals aid.

Mr Bailey said his experience had been completely surreal after he was discharged from hospital.A second referendum on the Brexit deal is the only fair course of action, a Scottish Labour MEP has said.

Catherine Stihler told a pro-EU rally in Edinburgh that a second vote on the final withdrawal agreement was necessary to hold truth to power.

She was speaking after Labour MP Owen Smith was dismissed from Jeremy Corbyns shadow cabinet for backing a second referendum.

Demonstrators at a Brexit protest march in Edinburgh, which is demanding a final vote on the Brexit deal (Jane Barlow/PA)

Hundreds of pro-remain activists attended the rally organised by the Young European Movement Edinburgh and the European Movement in Scotland after marching through the city centre to demand a final vote on the Brexit deal.

Ms Stihler was joined by cross-party speakers inducing SNP MP Joanna Cherry, former Tory MEP Struan Stevenson and Green co-convener Patrick Harvie.

Addressing the crowd, she said: Yes, there was a referendum  a non binding referendum, an indicative referendum which narrowly supported a Leave vote which had forces at play which are only now being exposed and uncovered.

But when you know something will damage people, its your responsibility to hold truth to power and, as John Major said, hold truth to people.

I want to see people have the choice of whether to accept the withdrawal deal or to keep what we have at the moment: the benefits we have of being a full member of the EU.

Hundreds attended the march and rally outside the Scottish Parliament (Jane Barlow/PA)

A second referendum on the deal is the only fair course of action to ensure this government is held to account.

As things currently stand, the Government looks as though they will park the difficult decisions to the transition period, a period when we will no longer be a member of the EU.

It will not be clear what a future EU /UK relationship will look like until we are a third country with no influence no say over the rules which will affect our people.

Ms Cherry said she completely understood the arguments for a second referendum.

She added: In the last referendum Scotland voted overwhelmingly to Remain and that was ignored, so if there is going to be another cross-UK referendum on the EU there has to be some respect shown for the constitutional settlement and some respect built into it for the will of the Scottish people.

At the #MarchForEurope @patrickharvie tells the crowd he'll fight for the rights of free movement for future generations and for the environmental protections that the EU provides pic.twitter.com/UhkhrFvPWJ  Scottish Greens (@scottishgreens) March 24, 2018

Mr Harvie said: Im not willing as some Remain politicians are to say well we had the vote, we have to respect it, were going to give up and pretend that we believe the opposite of the truth.

Im not wiling to go along with those who say that we can have a deal that will give exactly the same benefits of the single market but unwilling to talk about one of the critical benefits, freedom of movement.

Im not willing to do that because I know there is hope. I intend to die a member of the European Union and not by moving, by staying here.

We are not willing to give up on our fight to stay in Europe. If we have to fight to get back in we will, but were not resigned to that fate yet and well oppose Brexit with every breath that we have.30 Seconds To Mars frontman Jared Leto intervened to calm down rowing fans at the rock band's gig on Friday night.

The Oscar-winning actor and rock star paused a performance of the group's This Is War in Cardiff and told two gig-goers to 'just chill'.

In footage shot by fan Simon Lawton Leto instructs the fans to move away from each other before adding: 'Just separate from one another.'

30 Seconds To Mars frontman Jared Leto intervened to calm down rowing fans at the rock band's gig on Friday night in Cardiff (pictured here on Sunday night in Glasgow)

'I mean what the f***  hey, the woman with the blonde one. If you want to jump around, jump around but just step aside,' Leto added.

He told the crowd: 'Our shows are all about do whatever the f*** you want to do but don't upset other people.'

The Hollywood star then restarted the song after telling fans to go 'extra f****** crazy during this song'.

The Oscar-winning actor and rock star paused a performance of the group's This Is War in Cardiff and told two gig-goers to 'just chill' (pictured here in a PA file photo)

Leto also pulled out a Welsh flag during the performance at Cardiff's Motorpoint Arena.

The band are currently on a five-stop tour across the UK ahead of the release of their upcoming album America next month.

Leto is an accomplished actor with an Academy Award under his belt for Dallas Buyers Club (2013).

He also recently portrayed The Joker in Suicide Squad and is believed to be reprising the role in three more films in the franchise.In his speech, President Quang said the event offers the two countries businesses an invaluable chance to review cooperation outcomes over the past one fourth century and share vision, prospects and development cooperation chances in the new period, contributing to deepening bilateral strategic cooperative partnership.

On the basis of sharing core interests in bilateral and multilateral partnership and supplementary economies, the RoK is now the first largest investment partner, the second largest partner in bilateral development cooperation and tourism, and the third largest trade partner of Vietnam.

With over US$ 59 billion worth of registered capital, RoK enterprises are playing active role in Vietnamese industries such as electronics, energy, automobiles, apparel, construction and services, contributing to shifting to new economic structure, creating jobs and ensuring social welfare.

Two-way trade grew to US$ 64 billion in 2017 after the Vietnam  RoK Free Trade Agreement took effect.

President Tran Dai Quang (Source: VNA)

Speaking highly of the RoKs New Southern Policy in which Vietnam plays a key role, the Vietnamese President affirmed that Vietnam always appreciates ties with the RoK, particularly in economy, trade and investment, considers Korean business community a leading strategic partner in economic restructuring, renovation, knowledge economy development, improvement of growth quality and national competitiveness.

A number of Korean enterprises working effectively in Vietnam have become an important part to propel economic growth, he said.

Vietnam commits to continue refining mechanisms, polices and laws to create a business environment up to international standards while upgrading infrastructure, financial-banking system, education and human resources quality, he said.

In order to achieve the goal of US$ 100 billion in two-way trade by 2020, the State leader wished for a more balanced trade and further support for Vietnamese tropical agro-fisheries, apparel, wooden furniture and rubber to enter the RoK.

He said Vietnam is ready to receive manufacturing spare parts and other goods of strength from the RoK.

RoK President Moon Jae-in, for his part, lauded Vietnam as a dynamic country and economic hub of ASEAN with average economic growth of 6 percent per year.

According to him, up to 5,500 Korean firms are operating in Vietnam and creating millions jobs for Vietnamese workers.

Vietnam has become one of the four largest trade partners of the RoK while the RoK is also the largest investor in the country. Last year, 2.7 million people travelled between the two countries.

He informed that during recent talks, both sides agreed to lift two-way trade to US$ 100 billion by 2020, or half of the RoKs targeted figure with ASEAN, proving the importance of Vietnam to the RoK.

Moon wished that Korean firms would continue contributing to Vietnams industrialisation and modernisation, and the two governments would facilitate start-ups by Vietnamese and Korean youths.

Later the day, President Tran Dai Quang and his spouse hosted a banquet for President Moon Jae-in and his wife at the My Dinh National Convention Centre.The French police officer who swapped himself for a female supermarket employee being held hostage had already received a lifetime of accolades by the time he walked unarmed into the store under attack by an extremist gunman.

Known for his courage and sang-froid in life, Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame was honoured as a national hero on Saturday after his death from wounds the day before.

After agreeing to the hostage swap, Mr Beltrame surrendered his weapon  but kept his mobile phone on, allowing authorities outside the Super U market in the southern French town of Trebes to hear what was happening inside.

Thanks to his quick thinking, special police units heard gunshots inside the store on Friday and stormed the building immediately, killing the attacker.

Beyond his job, he gave his life for someone else, for a stranger, his brother Cedric told RTL radio in France.

He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing if we dont describe him as a hero, I dont know what you need to do to be a hero.

Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much, President Emmanuel Macron said.

In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero.

The hostage whose life he saved, an employee named Julie, was in a catastrophic state, her manager said.

Mr Beltrames entire career seemed to lead inexorably to the moment when he responded to the attack Friday in Trebes, a 15-minute drive from the gendarme unit he had led since last August.

Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame, wounded after taking the place of a hostage in the attack yesterday at #Trebes, gave his life to save the lives of others. Truly a hero. Our thoughts this morning with his family and his comrades. And our solidarity with France pic.twitter.com/Ly2xIl90h9  Ed Llewellyn (@EdLlewellynFCDO) March 24, 2018

He joined Frances elite police special forces in 2003 and served in Iraq in 2005.

A former member of the presidential guard, he earned one of Frances highest honours, the Order of Merit, in 2012.

In December, Mr Beltrame organised a counter-terrorism training session for just such a hostage situation  down to the location in a supermarket.

At the time, he armed his officers with paintball guns, according to the Depeche du Midi newspaper.

We want to be as close to real conditions as possible, he said then.

In addition to the four people killed by the gunman on Friday, 15 others were injured.

Investigators searched the home of the attacker, Moroccan-born Redouane Lakdim, 25, and found what a judicial official said were notes that alluded to the Islamic State and appeared like a last testament. They also found a computer and a phone.

A woman places flowers at the main gate of the Police headquarter in Carcassonne (Emilio Morenatti/AP)

Inside the market itself, investigators found three homemade explosive devices, a handgun and a hunting knife, the official said.

The weapons suggested an intent to do further damage.

Mr Macron called a special Defence Council meeting with key ministers on Saturday to decide the countrys next steps in combating terror.

Across the Atlantic, US President Donald Trump tweeted We are with you @EmmanuelMacron! and condemned the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support.

French police and soldiers have been a prime target of attacks by extremists, with 10 killed in recent years, including Mr Beltrame. Dozens of others have been wounded.

Mr Beltrames mother told RTL radio that, for her son, to defend the homeland was his reason to live.

He would have said to me, Im doing my job, Mom, nothing more, she said.

Flowers piled up in front of the Gendarmerie headquarters in the French medieval city of Carcassonne to pay tribute to Mr Beltrame. Flags at all gendarmeries were flying at half-staff.

Mr Macron said investigators will focus on finding out how the gunman got his weapon and how he became radicalised.

Two people have been detained in the case, one woman close to Lakdim and a 17-year-old male friend.

Lakdim was known to police for petty crime and drug dealing.

But since 2014, he was also on the Fiche S list, a government register of people suspected of being radicalised but who have yet to perform acts of terror.

Despite this, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said there was no warning sign that Lakdim would carry out an attack.

The four-hour drama began at 10.13am on Friday when Lakdim hijacked a car near Carcassonne, killing the passenger and wounding the driver, the prosecutor said.

Lakdim then fired six shots at police officers who had just finished jogging, hitting one in the shoulder.

(PA Graphics)

Shouting Allahu akbar!  Arabic for God is great and declaring he was a soldier of the Islamic State, he entered the Super U supermarket in Trebes, 60 miles (100 kilometres) south-east of Toulouse, where about 50 people were inside, Mr Molins said.

He killed two people in the market and took an unknown number of hostages.

The supermarkets manager, who would identify herself only as Samia, was in her office when she heard the shots.

Call the gendarmes, she told her employees. Theres a terrorist in the store.

She said she helped evacuate as many people as possible. Other people sought safety in the stores meat locker.

During the standoff, Lakdim requested the release of Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving assailant of the November 13 2015 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.

The interior minister suggested, however, that Abdeslams release was not a key motive.

The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said the attacker was responding to its call to target countries in the US-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against IS militants in Syria and Iraq.

Samia was overcome by emotion when asked about the attack.

Im utterly devastated. This is really a tragedy. I feel deeply for the victims, she said, adding that Mr Beltrame is a hero. He saved our colleague  our Julie.

The mayor of Trebes, Eric Menassi, was equally emotional.

They all looked death in the eye, he said. There will be a before and an after. I think nothing will ever be the same.Hundreds of members of a rebel group and their relatives have boarded 17 buses in preparation to leave eastern Ghouta to opposition-held areas in northern Syria.

The move is part of an agreement to evacuate the second of three pockets held by opposition fighters east of the capital Damascus, Syrias state media reported.

State TV and the government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media (SCMM) said more than 500 fighters and their relatives will leave towards northern Syria on Saturday night, and hundreds more will evacuate the following day.

State TV and SCMM earlier said that a total of 7,000 people will leave four towns in eastern Ghouta before reporting that the number had dropped to just over 3,000, without providing an explanation.

The departure comes a day after an agreement was reached between Faylaq al-Rahman, the second most powerful rebel group in eastern Ghouta, and the Russians to surrender the second of three pockets in eastern Ghouta, where rebels have been holding up over the past years.

Bulldozers removing barriers from a road in the town of Harasta, east of the capital Damascus, Syria (SANA via AP)

Earlier in the day, bulldozers removed giant sand barriers from a main road in the town of Harasta that will be used by the rebels and their relatives to make their way to the countrys north.

After sunset, several buses carrying evacuees arrived at the edge of the town of Arbeen where they gathered before heading north.

The government-controlled SCMM said a corridor was prepared for Faylaq al-Rahman members and their relatives to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbeen, Ein Tarma and Jobar.

The evacuations come after thousands streamed out of Harasta, the first pocket after a similar negotiated deal for the evacuation of armed fighters and civilians.

On Friday night, Harasta was void of rebels for the first time in six years.

The city of Harasta in eastern Ghouta is free of terrorism, SCMM said referring to opposition fighters that the government refers to as terrorists.

Faylaq al-Rahman said in a statement on Friday that the deal will lead to the immediate evacuation of sick and wounded people for treatment and to allow aid to enter the besieged area.

The group added that opposition fighters and their relatives who decide to leave eastern Ghouta will head to rebel-held parts of northern Syria while civilians who choose to stay will be guaranteed safety.

It said that Russian military police will deploy in Faylaq al-Rahman-controlled areas including the Arbeen, Zamalka, Ein Tarma and Jobar.

A prisoner exchange will take place between the group and the government, the group added.

Rebel fighters and their families inside a bus that is taking them to Idlib province (SANA via AP)

Eight government supporters released by Faylaq al-Rahman told state TV about the mistreatment they were subjected to while being held underground and given little food and water.

One of those released, whose left eye appeared closed in the report, said they hit me on the eye damaging it.

Another person released said they used to beat us, keep us hungry and place us underground in the cold and we did not know when they would kill us.

Syrian state TV said Faylaq al-Rahman will hand over maps of underground tunnels as well as others marking mines planted by the group in areas it controlled.

On February 18, a concerted military offensive, backed by Russian airstrikes, squeezed the rebels and civilians in the area under an intense bombing campaign and tightened the siege.

The UN estimated that nearly 400,000 people remained in the enclave before the latest offensive began.

The government assault triggered a mass movement of people trying to escape the violence in the Damascus suburbs.

Some have moved deeper into the rebel-held enclave, while 105,000 others have crossed the front lines towards government-controlled areas or left to rebel-held parts in northern Syria, according to state news agency SANA.

The governments crushing offensive killed nearly 1,500 people and wounded more than 5,000, according to opposition activists.

After the departure of Faylaq al-Rahman fighters, the only rebel-held pocket in eastern Ghouta will be the town of Douma, which is controlled by the powerful Army of Islam group.Ant and Decs Saturday Night Takeaway fans have shared their disappointment after the show was cancelled this weekend.

The programme was postponed after Ant McPartlin, 42, was charged with drink-driving and returned to rehab.

ITV changed the schedule and pulled forward an episode of The Voice UK to fill the slot. It will air next weekend with just Declan Donnelly .

Ant and Dec (Matt Crossick/PA)

Regular viewers spent Saturday night sharing throwback clips on social media as they were forced to wait a further seven days before its return.

Olivia Hutch shared a clip from last years series in which the duo celebrated their 25 years together with an epic performance.

Throwback to one of my favourite End of the Show Shows from last year #SaturdayNightTakeaway #FanMadeSNT pic.twitter.com/GKKKzGdseA  Olivia Hutchinson (@oliviaswfc) March 24, 2018

A prank involving Louis Walsh, Stephen Mulherns make-up bungles and an Ant and Dec tango were some of the other favourite memories viewers shared.

Heres a #SaturdayNightTakeaway throwback to the first ever Im A Celebrity... Get Out Of Me Ear with Louis Walsh!



Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, BANANA PHONE!@antanddec pic.twitter.com/JhDIhlGCma  Ant & Dec - Vines (@antanddec_vines) March 24, 2018

Throwback to last years #SaturdayNightTakeaway when Stephen couldnt get the eye liner off  pic.twitter.com/ujIKuHa3ya  allantanddec (@allantanddec) March 22, 2018

Throwback to last week when i had a fantastic time watching @itvtakeaway live from the front row, best time ever. #saturdaynighttakeaway #FanMadeSNT loved the gig at the end xxx pic.twitter.com/nIANXGAfzv  Heidi-Jade Sargent (@Heidi_hojo) March 24, 2018

McPartlin was charged with drink-driving following his arrest on Sunday March 18 and will appear in court on April 4.

An ITV spokesman said earlier this week: We can confirm that Saturday Night Takeaway, presented by Declan Donnelly, will return to ITV on March 31, and the series finale will be taking place at Universal Orlando Resort in Florida a week later.

Donnelly wrote in a statement on the duos official Twitter page: Whilst I never thought Id be in this position, after much discussion and careful consideration weve decided that the remaining two shows of this series of Saturday Night Takeaway will go ahead.

We made a promise to take hundreds of deserving winners to Florida to watch the series finale, and we will honour that.

Everyone at ITV and the Takeaway team feels we owe it to the audience to complete the series.The first ever winner of the Eurovision song contest, Lys Assia, has died aged 94.

The Swiss-born songstress triumphed at the inaugural edition of the competition with winning song Refrain in her home country in 1956.

Assia  who turned 94 on March 3  died on Saturday at Zurichs Zollikerberg Hospital, organisers of the contest said.

Lys Assia has died (Daily Sketch/REX/Shutterstock)

They offered their deepest condolences to Assias friends and family and said they will be paying tribute to her life and her lasting commitment to Eurovision.

As well as her 1956 triumph, Assia also represented Switzerland in 1957 and in 1958 where she finished second with Giorgio.

Born in Rupperswil in northern Switzerland in 1924, Assia started her career as a dancer before her lifelong connection with Eurovision.

She was a guest of honour at the contest in 1985 while in 2005 she performed to Congratulations to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Remarkably, at the age of 87, she decided it was time to return as a contestant and unsuccessfully attempted to represent Switzerland in 2012 and 2013.Theresa May will carry out a whistlestop tour of the UK on Thursday, a year before the countrys exit from the European Union.

The tour will see the Prime Minister meet workers and families in every nation of the UK as she seeks to persuade them that Brexit can strengthen the bonds between them.

Her tour comes as the administrations in Scotland and Wales remain unwilling to sign up to the UK Governments plans for what to do with powers as they return from Brussels  straining the links between Holyrood, Cardiff Bay and Westminster.

Theresa May is to go on a Brexit tour around the UK (Simon Dawson/PA)

And the issue of the post-Brexit border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is yet to be resolved in talks between the UK and EU.

A Downing Street source said now was the time to bring our country back together and celebrate our union.

"This gives certainty to people and businesses, it gives them the clarity to plan for their future, and it ensures that they will only have to make one adjustment, one change when we enter into the new relationship with the European Union"  PM @theresa_may at #EUCO pic.twitter.com/2grF4rQlU6  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) March 23, 2018

Mrs Mays travels around the country will be followed in the coming weeks by other Cabinet ministers including Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who will visit fishing communities angry at the compromises made by the Government to secure an implementation period.

Chancellor Philip Hammond will visit financial centres in Leeds, Edinburgh, Bristol and London.

The ministerial tours come after the EU agreed to the implementation period sought by the UK and cleared the way for talks on a future trade deal.

A Downing Street source said: Having reached an agreement on the implementation period, businesses have the certainty they need to plan.

Crucially during that period we will be able to strike and sign new trade deals across the world but, just as it is important that we are an outward-facing nation, it is equally important that we spend the months leading up to Brexit strengthening our own union of nations.

In 12 months we will be leaving the EU and as that becomes real for people it is right that they will be asking what Brexit means from them.

That is why Cabinet ministers will go out across the country, meeting people from all walks of life, listening to their views and explaining how we can secure a new deep and special partnership with the European Union that will strengthen our union, bring together communities, grow our economies and keep our people safe.

This is the time to bring our country back together, to celebrate our union and to be confident that we are building a better future for Britain.Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain said that tour of Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena to Pakistan will pave the way to further consolidate foreign, defence, trade and investment ties between the two countries.

The Sri Lankas Presidents Media division said that leaders of Sri Lanka and Pakistan pledged to move forward joining hands in brotherhood in achieving economic prosperity while further strengthening the long standing bilateral relations between Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

President Sirisena who is on an official visit to Pakistan met with Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain today (24) and during that meeting both leaders agreed on this.

The Pakistani President thanked President Maithripala Sirisena for accepting the invitation to attend the Pakistan Republic Day Celebrations as the Chief Guest and further said that the Presidents participation was a great honour to the country.

President Mamnoon Hussain accedes the request made by President Sirisena to increase the scholarships and training opportunities given to Sri Lanka and he promised to fulfill this request in the future.

The Heads of States discussed in detail regarding the need of stand against world terrorism and the President appreciated the assistance given to Sri Lanka by Pakistan in fight against terrorism during the last war period.

President Sirisena also commended the support given to Sri Lanka by Pakistan at the United Nations Human Rights Sessions.



The Pakistan President requested Sri Lankan President to consider Pakistan as a brotherhood nation as it always willing to extend support to Sri Lanka and further requested to provide support of Sri Lanka to hold next SARRC summit in Pakistan.The event was attended by Chairwoman of the Vietnamese National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and Chairman of Hanoi municipal Peoples Committee Nguyen Duc Chung, as well as Special Advisor to the Japanese Cabinet Isao Iijima and Japanese Ambassador to Vietnam Kunio Umeda.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Hanoi leader Chung emphasised that the capital city has hosted numerous activities to promote the friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and Japan as well as many cooperation programmes in the fields of economy, culture and tourism.

Chairman of Hanoi municipal People's Committee Nguyen Duc Chung speaking at the festival (Photo: hanoimoi.com.vn)

The four-day festival includes a series of cultural and art exchange activities, introducing the unique cultural characteristics of Japan.

The highlight of the event will be a display of 50 trees and 10,000 branches of cherry blossoms, along with several kinds of flowers and bonsai trees from Vietnam.

Over 1,000 actors and actresses from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hai Phong will give performances of yosaki - a traditional dance of the Japanese people.

In addition, visitors at the festival will have a chance to learn more about the tea culture of Japan, enjoy traditional art forms and the cuisine of the two countries.

An art performance at the festival (Photo: laodongthudo.vn)

On the occasion, Japanese Embassy in Vietnam presented 172 cherry blossom trees to Hanoi. They were planted at Hoa Binh (Peace) Park.

Delegates plant cherry blossom trees at Hoa Binh Park.During a reception for Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Hanoi on March 23, Party General Secretary Trong welcomed Lavrovs official visit to Vietnam right after the Russian presidential election, hoping that under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, Russia will continue developing strongly and affirming its important position in the international arena.

The Party chief stressed that the deepening reliable political relations between senior leaders of Vietnam and Russia is a firm foundation to further step up cooperative ties in other fields.

To reach the target of US$ 100 billion in two-way trade by 2020, the two sides need to create breakthroughs in implementing the Vietnam-Eurasian Economic Union Free Trade Agreement and well carry out prioritized tasks, focusing on cooperation projects in the fields of economy, trade, investment, oil and gas and nuclear energy, he noted.

Lavrov briefed his host about Russias situation, especially the results of the recent presidential election.

Vietnam is always prioritised in Russias foreign policy and a leading partner of Russia in the Asian-Pacific region, he said, adding that Russia always wants to witness Vietnams strong development and growingly important position in the region and the world as well.

The minister affirmed that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs will spare no effort to accelerate the implementation of bilateral cooperation agreements in all spheres, thereby creating practical changes in relations between the two nations in the coming time.The statement was made by Vietnamese Ambassador to France Nguyen Thiep in an interview with Vietnamese reporters in France.

Reporter: The upcoming official visit to France made by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has a great significance in celebration of the 45th anniversary of Vietnam  France diplomatic ties. Could you tell us about the main message that the two countries wish to convey through the visit?

Ambassador Nguyen Thiep: The two countries first established the diplomatic ties on April 12, 1973. Over nearly half a century, their friendship and cooperation have developed well in a comprehensive and deep manner in many fields, especially in culture, education and decentralised cooperation. Based on that, in 2013, the two sides decided to establish a strategic partnership. France has become a leading important partner of Vietnam in Europe. Vietnam is also an indispensable strategic partner of France in Asia with its role and contributions to the peace, stability and development in the region and the world.

Vietnams participation in the ASEAN Economic Community and many free trade agreements, including The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade deal and the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), which is expected to be signed soon, will open new opportunities for Vietnam and France.

In the context of turmoil in Europe, Frances determination for change and reform and the improvement of Vietnams role in the region and the world, particularly Vietnams integration into the world trade, General Secretary Trongs visit will be an important chance to bring the strategic cooperation between the two countries to a deeper and more comprehensive stage for the common interest of both sides.

During the visit, the two sides will sign a series of important cooperative documents in the fields of defence, justice, space technology, intellectual property, climate change adaptation, tourism and education, along with major and long-term economic contracts. The two senior leaders will discuss strategic directions and new cooperative frameworks and mechanisms to further develop the strategic partnership between the two countries, which is the message of the Vietnamese Party General Secretarys visit.

Reporter: The EVFTA will be signed and passed soon. Could you talk about the prospects for trade relations?

Ambassador Nguyen Thiep: When the EVFTA is signed, passed and takes effect, the trade links between Vietnam and EU will surely see new changes both in terms of quality and quantity. In this context, I believe that the Vietnam - France bilateral trade relations will also witness strong growth, providing more benefits for enterprises in the near future.

As the EVFTA comes into force, most commodities will be entitled to enjoy lower import tariffs and access to each others markets will be more favourable. Especially, due to the structure of imported and exported commodities in Vietnam and France, the EVFTA will create a chance for complementarity, allowing enterprises from the two countries to promote their competitiveness in agricultural products and food. In this context, the combination of Frances advantages of advanced technology and capital with abundant natural resources, an open economic policy, stable politics, and creative, skillful and low cost labour resources, as well as the prospect of dynamic development of Vietnam, will undoubtedly be a driving force for the development of the business cooperation, contributing to economic growth and the improvement of competitiveness as well as creating more jobs in both countries.

With the EVFTA, French businesses will have many chances to enter and boost their exports to Vietnam, particularly agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fashion items, high-end furniture, hi-tech machinery, transport vehicles and chemicals.

Furthermore, France will help Vietnam to join its production chains as well as access and improve the advanced technologies from the industrial revolution 4.0. In addition, the two sides enterprises can jointly invest in and create joint ventures and links in producing goods for exports to not only ASEAN countries but also the EU and other countries around the world.

Reporter: Culture and education  training are among the priority fields for cooperation highlighted in a joint declaration on establishing the Vietnam - France strategic partnership (2013). Can you please tell us about the achievements gained and plans to enhance the cooperation in these areas between the two countries?

Ambassador Nguyen Thiep: As I have stressed, Vietnam and France have exchanged and shared experience with each other in culture for a long time, creating a close relationship between the two peoples. The cultural exchanges between the two countries have been increasingly developed. France allocates around EUR5 million for cultural cooperation with Vietnam each year, particularly in support of the activities of French culture centres in Hanoi (LEspace), Ho Chi Minh City (Institute of Cultural Exchange with France  IDECAF), Thua Thien  Hue and Da Nang. An agreement on cultural centres signed by the two Governments in November 2009 has created favourable conditions for Vietnamese Cultural Centre in France. France is the only European country in which Vietnam has formed a cultural centre. In addiiton, it should be recalled that with the sponsorship and active participation of France, Festival Hue has become an international cultural event which takes place biennially.

France ranks seventh among the countries and territories with the most tourism investment in Vietnam, with 14 projects worth a total of US$188 million. Vietnam identifies France as a key market for visitors. The country welcomed 255,369 French visitors in 2017, an annual increase of 6% compared to 2016. Also last year, over 50,000 Vietnamese tourists visited France (according to the number of visas issued to Vietnamese citizens to France).

The two countries have coordinated successfully to organise the France Year in Vietnam (2013) and Vietnam Year in France (2014) to celebrate 40th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations. In the near future, the two sides will work together to promote the current cooperative activities and establish new frameworks for cultural cooperation. In the immediate future, the two countries will focus on implementing a series of events in celebration of the 45th anniversary of their diplomatic ties and five years of the strategic partnership, as well as coordinating with each other to organise the 2018 Festival Hue from April 27 to May 2. The Vietnamese Cultural Centre in France will sent folk art troupes to perform in France, as well as holding Vietnamese Week and Vietnamese Film Week in France and others, such as fairs and the provision of tourism publications. Moreover, the centre will accelerate the teaching of Vietnamese and traditional martial arts as well as the introduction of Vietnamese cuisine to children of Overseas Vietnamese in France and young French people. The Vietnamese Embassy in France has always supported the initiatives of promoting Vietnamese culture in France, including the project to build a Vietnam House launched by Vietnams Tourism Ambassador to France Anoa Suzanne Dussol Perran.

The cooperation in education and training between Vietnam and France has been formed and developed since the early 1980s. France always considers education and training as a priority in its cooperation with Vietnam, focusing on the teaching of French and human resources training at the university and post-graduate levels in many fields, including economic management, banking, finance, laws and new technology.

The two sides have implemented several major projects in training, such as a training programme for high-quality engineers in Vietnam (PFIEV), the French-Vietnam Management Centre (CFVG), the establishment of two French Univeristy Poles (PUF) at the Vietnam National University - Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and the Francophone Institute for Informatics (IFI). In October 2010, the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, which received a EUR100 million fund from France, opened its first course. It is one of four universities in Vietnam that meets international standards.

Every year the French Government grants many scholarships for Vietnamese students to study in France, mostly for training programmes at master and doctoral levels. The number of Vietnamese students studying in France has increased by around 40% over the past ten years, reaching around 7,000 at present.

In the future, the two countries will continue to strengthen the cooperation in education and training. It is expected that the two sides will re-sign the agreement on the Hanoi Science and Technology University after the first term of the Agreement ends in 2019 and discuss the upgrade of the CFVG to become a European management university. The cooperation in teaching French and using French in teaching will also be promoted.

The training cooperation in the fields of justice, law and health between Vietnam and France has also been formed since the 1990s and continues to see new development.

Reporter: How have Overseas Vietnamese in France contributed to the development of the relationship between the two countries as well as promoting the image of the land and people of Vietnam in France?

Ambassador Nguyen Thiep: In the beginning of the 20th century, organisations gathering Vietnamese people in France began to appear, including the Association of Patriotic Annamite, which have made great contributions to the formation of progressive thoughts and trends, the precursors of the revolutionary movement in Vietnam. During the resistance wars against France and the US in Vietnam, the Overseas Vietnamese community in France organised numerous meetings, protests and donations, as well as calling for French people and others around the world to oppose the unjust wars in Vietnam. They also helped Vietnamese delegations during the negotiations for the Paris Agreement, ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam.

During the process of national reconstruction and development, the Overseas Vietnamese in France continued to organise donation programmes to support the disadvantaged in Vietnam, present scholarships to students, participate in accelerating science and technique development projects, provide equipment, enhance investment and contribute overseas remittances.

The Vietnamese community in France now has around 300,000 people who have always been appreciated for their successful integration into the host country. Many associations have united and supported together, contributing to fostering and developing the solidarity and friendship between the two countries. More and more Vietnamese people have taken on important positions within France's economic, political and technical apparatus, which affirms the increasing position and prestige of Overseas Vietnamese in the social life in France.

The Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trongs visit to France will be an occasion to reaffirm that the Vietnamese Party and State always pay great attention to the Overseas Vietnamese in France - an integral part of the nation. The General Secretary will listen to their thoughts and aspirations as well as suggestions and contributions for the Party and State. He will also inform them of the countrys situation, expressing his wish that the expatriates will continue to contribute to the Vietnam  France cooperation and friendship.

Thank you very much!Minister Dung said that Vietnam has received hundreds of large RoK companies that are now operating in Vietnam, noting that Vietnam supports the RoK enterprises in employing local Vietnamese workers who are highly industrious and diligent.

The Minister said that the visit to Vietnam made by RoK President Moon Jae-in has helped to promotethe strategic partnership between the two countries through the signing of a number of important Memoranda of Understanding.

According to Minister Dao Ngoc Dung, Vietnam is improving its policy system and revising certain laws, including the Law on foreigners working in Vietnam, adding that the Government and the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) will focus on increasing negotiations between employers and workers to minimise State intervention in the operations of enterprises.

The MOLISA will coordinate with the RoK Ministry of Employment and Labour to sign agreements on social insurance and social protection towards providing better care for workers, Dung added.

Chairman Kyung Shik Sohn affirmed that RoK enterprises would operate in a transparent manner in accordance with the regulations of the Government of Vietnam.

As the Chairman of Korea Employers Federation and Chairman of a RoK corporation operating in Vietnam, Kyung Shik Sohn said that he will mobilise employers to seriously adhere to fairness in their treatment of workers, whether they are Korean or Vietnamese, in order to achieve the highest efficiency in business operations.On the same day, the Vietnamese NA Vice Chairman met with Speaker of the Parliament of Madagascar Jean Max Rakotomamonjy in the capital of Antananarivo.

Madagascars Parliamentary Speaker Jean Max Rakotomamonjy expressed his hope that the multilateral cooperation between the two countries would be enhanced through the exchange of delegations.

He also highlighted several measures required to strengthen the relations between the two parliaments, including the formation of friendly parliamentary groups.

Regarding economics, the Malagasy Parliament leader said that Vietnam and Madagascar have many similarities in natural conditions, so the two sides can strengthen their cooperation in aquaculture, fishing and cultivation.

For his part, Vietnamese NA Vice Chairman Phung Quoc Hien affirmed that, in addition to the fine political and diplomatic ties, the two countries should promote their relations in economy and trade more forcefully, especially in agricultural production.

He also proposed a number of solutions to further enhance their investment cooperation, such as the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) and Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (IPPA).

At the end of the meeting, NA Vice Chairman Hien presented the invitation of NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan to Parliamentary Speaker Jean Max Rakotomamonjy to visit Vietnam in the near future.The event saw the participation of Vietnamese Ambassador to China Dang Minh Khoi and Lao Ambassador to China VandyBouthasavong,along with officials from the two embassies.

The Vietnamese Ambassador sent his best wishes to Lao AmbassadorVandyBouthasavong and the staff at the Lao Embassy on the 63rd anniversary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party and congratulated them on the great achievements that Laos has made over the last 63 years.

Ambassador Khoi also expressed his delight at the development of the special relations and friendship between Vietnam and Laos and thegood relations between the two embassies.

He noted that the two embassies have always supported each other to contribute to fostering the bilateral relationship between Vietnam and Laos and the relationship between ASEAN and China.

The Vietnamese Ambassador also congratulated VandyBouthasavong for successfully assuming the role of Chairman of ASEAN Committee in Beijing.

Ambassador VandyBouthasavong appreciated the maintenance of exchanges and meetings between the two embassies which will contribute to enhancing the understanding and solidarity among the staff of the two embassies. He also hoped that such activities would continue to be held in the future.The bank said in a new report that, over a 20-year period, Vietnam went from being a food-deficit country to being among the worlds largest exporters of rice, aquatic products, cashews and various beverages and industrial crops.



Agricultural output expansion has contributed to the plummeting rates of hunger in Vietnam, with the prevalence of food inadequacy falling by nearly 70 per cent since 1990.



But pollutions from farms has begun to tarnish the success story as intensive farming operations are a major and often under-recognised source of water, soil and air pollution in Vietnam.



According to the World Bank, surface water has degraded dramatically near intensively populated and farmed areas, while pesticides have been shown to affect groundwater extracted from wells and other drinking water sources.



In addition, manure and fertilisers were the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions between 1994 and 2010.



With such evidence, the World Bank has outlined a range of technical and policy solutions that are available to address the pollution in agriculture.



It stated that priority should be given to improving the livestock industrys waste management, reducing fertiliser losses that harm the environment, and minimising the use of toxic substances in pesticides, among others.



In Vietnam, the World Bank will help to scale up innovative aquaculture practices which increase shrimp yields, while reducing water pollution on approximately 100,000 hectares in the Mekong Delta over the next 5 years.



The country is also scaling up the adoption of biogas digesters in livestock operations and promoting the use of more sensible fertiliser and agro-chemicals among rice farmers in the Mekong Delta region.Two local militants of Hizbul Mujahideen outfit were killed in an overnight encounter with security forces in Dooru area of south Kashmir's Anantnag district, police said on Saturday.



A police official said the encounter ensued after a joint party of army's Rashtriya Rifles, Central Reserve Police Force and Special Operations Group (SOG) of J&K police cordoned off Shistargam village in Dooru on Friday evening following information about a group of militants.



"As the cordon was tightened, the militants fired at the security forces triggering a gunfight in which two ultras were killed," he said.



Police also said that two AK-47 rifles, grenades and other ammunition were recovered from the encounter spot. Following the encounter, authorities suspended train services in south Kashmir as a 'precautionary measure.'



The latest encounter came just three days after five Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants and five security personnel were killed in this year's biggest gun battle in north Kashmir's frontier Kupwara district. At least 1000 army, police and CRPF men participated in the operation which lasted for two days in the forests of Kupwara.



On Friday, the army and the police brass went into a huddle to discuss the new security strategy as there is a likelihood that in coming months, militancy will increase with the melting of snow along the Line of Control.



"The possible loopholes were pinpointed and steps to plug them discussed," sources said. "The army and the police framed a new strategy to fine-tune the coordination between the two agencies to carry out future anti-militancy operations with minimum damage to forces. Some changes were made in the operational procedures of the army and police."The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday said, investigators have made fresh seizures of antique jewellery, costly watches and paintings of Amrita Sher-Gil and M F Hussain worth Rs 26.40 crore from the Mumbai apartment of diamantaire Nirav Modi.



The searches were part of investigations into the cases filed by the CBI and ED against Modi and his relatives in connection with a Rs 12,967.84 crore fraud in Punjab National Bank.



With this, the total attachment and seizures have risen to Rs 7,664 crore. The searches were conducted by ED official along with CBI investigators at Modi's sea-facing apartment Samudra Mahal in Mumbai on March 22.

The ED said antique jewellery worth Rs 15 crore, watches worth Rs 1.40 crore and paintings of M F Hussain, K K Hebbar and Amrita Sher-Gil worth Rs 10 crore were recovered. A lone diamond ring is valued at Rs 10 crore, officials claimed.



Modi, his wife Ami, brother Nishal and uncle Mehul Choksi had left India in the first week of January, days before the CBI registered a case against them. Modi and Choksi, another prominent jeweller, were issued summons by both CBI and the ED but both have refused to return to India.

The government had earlier revoked their passports while a Mumbai special court has issued non-bailable warrants against them on the request of the ED.



So far, the ED has conducted a total of 251 country-wide searches in this case after it began the criminal probe against the accused in February.BJP chief Amit Shah has accused the Andhra Pradesh government of committing "serious lapses" in utilising funds earmarked for the state and said the TDP decision to pull out of the NDA will be seen as guided "wholly and solely" by partisan politics.



In a nine-page letter to TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Shah described the TDP decision as "unfortunate" and "unilateral" but reminded that it was "widely known" that the Narendra Modi government has "left no stone unturned" in ensuring the growth of Andhra.



The letter, which was a virtual charge sheet against the TDP that pulled out of the government over the demand for granting special category status to the state, described as "untrue and baseless" the allegation that BJP was not sensitive to the aspirations of Andhra.

"It is a decision, I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns...We were looking at TDP as our partner in the progress of the people of Andhra Pradesh. Unfortunately, partisan politics has overtaken leading to your party leaving the NDA," Shah said in the letter.



The letter, which was sent on Friday comes as a response to Naidu's communication on his decision to come out of NDA is seen as an aggressive positioning of the BJP in the state to take on TDP.

Amid TDP allegations that the BJP was going back on the assurances given in Parliament, he said it was "regrettable that some political parties are whipping up" sentiments over the special category status, a nomenclature which was removed.



He said Naidu had hailed central assistance package given to the state in September 2016 as his government's "great achievement", which was equivalent to the benefits one would get under a special status. "Suddenly two years later you have made a u-turn once again demanding special status which has become redundant in view of the financial commitments already fulfilled," he said.



Shah questioned TDP's accusation about the delay in the release of central funds, saying it was an "admission of your government's lackadaisical approach" and that the state did not act fast in implementing projects. "If public welfare was a priority, why did your government take so long to access these funds," he said.



The BJP chief's another poser was on the construction of state's capital city where he said the state has only spent 8% of Rs 1,000 crore released by the government and in such a scenario, how can one expect more release of funds?The Special CBI court in Ranchi on Saturday awarded 14 years of imprisonment to RJD president Lalu Prasad in the fourth fodder scam case RC 38A/96.



The CBI judge Shiv Pal Singh awarded him two sentences of seven years each under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA). The court also slapped Rs 30 lakh each under the two different sections. The jail sentence would increase by one year if the convict failed to submit fine, the court ordered.

The case is related to fraudulent withdrawal of 3.76 crores from Dumka treasury (then in undivided Bihar, now in Jharkhand) between December 1995 and January 1996. As per the charge sheet, the accused, mostly contractors, suppliers and officials of the Animal Husbandry department, withdrew Rs 3.76 crore by submitting 96 forged bills in merely two months. Lalu Prasad was Chief Minister of Bihar when the scam took place.

This is the most severe punishment meted out to Lalu in the fodder scam cases till now.

The CBI court, on March 19, had convicted 19 accused, including Lalu, while acquitting 12 others in this case. Those who were acquitted included former Chief Minister Dr Jagannath Mishra and two retired IAS officers, Mahesh Prasad and Beck Julius. The court also acquitted former MP Jagdish Sharma, former AHD Minister Vidya Sagar Nishad and former MLA Dhruv Bhagat, who was then Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The CBI judge on Saturday pronounced the quantum of punishment through video-conferencing as Lalu, suffering from severe ailments, is recuperating at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi.

"This is really unfortunate. This is also against natural justice that one person has been awarded punishment multiple times for the same offence. The apex court had earlier bifurcated fodder scam case into six different parts. And now the lower court is pronouncing one punishment after another in all the different (truncated) cases. This is not fair," said RJD vice-president Shivanand Tiwary, who, ironically, was one of the petitioners in the fodder scam, when he was with Nitish's Samata Party in the mid-90s.

"We will move High Court for relief," said Lalu's youngest son and former Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav. He, however, added that he feared for Lalu's life.A National Investigation Agency (NIA) special court in Kochi on Saturday sentenced Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid to seven years imprisonment in a case related to recruitment for the ISIS.



According to the NIA charge-sheet, Yasmeen (30)  a native of Sitamarhi district in Bihar  was associated with 14 others from Kasaragod district in Kerala in a plot to leave India, along with their families, to join the terrorist outfit.

The conviction is the first for an ISIS-related case registered in Kerala. Yasmeen was listed as second accused in the case related to the criminal conspiracy hatched within and outside India. She was detained from New Delhi in July 2016. At the time of her arrest, Abdul Rashid Abdulla, the first accused and key conspirator, had already left India and joined the ISIS along with others who were reported missing from Kasaragod in 2016. Rashid and Yasmeen were booked under IPC Sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 125 (waging war against any Asiatic power in alliance with the Government of India) and Sections 38, 39 and 40 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The case which was originally registered at the Chandera police station in Kasaragod was re-registered at the NIA police station in Kochi, in August 2016.

The NIA said Rashid had conducted classes in Kasaragod and other locations propagating the ISIS ideology and jihad. He motivated 14 co-conspirators, including Yasmeen, to plan for hijrah (migration) to the Caliphate announced by the ISIS, the NIA charge-sheet filed in January 2017, said.

The agency said its investigation revealed that Rashid raised funds for the ISIS and transferred them to Yasmeen towards financing her operations for the terrorist outfit. They also stayed together in Patna to obtain a passport for Yasmeen's child and renew her own passport. Yasmeen was intercepted at the New Delhi International Airport on July 30, 2016, while trying to leave the country for Kabul with her minor child, to join Rashid in an ISIS-controlled territory in Afghanistan.

The case of men and women missing from Kasaragod and Palakkad districts exposed an elaborate plan involving recruitment for the ISIS. At least two men who left Kasaragod as part of the group were reported dead last year while fighting in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday targeted Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad accusing him of peddling "fake news" instead of addressing the problems faced by a "collapsing" legal system.



Gandhi highlighted the pending cases in the subordinate courts, the High Courts and the Supreme Court and the shortage of judges to drive home his point.

"Legal system collapsing under Pending Cases: Supreme Court 55,000 + High Court 37 Lakh + Lower Courts 2.6 Crore + Yet, a staggering 400 High Court and 6,000 Lower Court judges not appointed, while Law Minister preoccupied peddling fake news," the Congress President said on Twitter.

Prasad had claimed that the Congress has used the services of disgraced data mining firm Cambridge Analytica to shore up the image of Rahul Gandhi ahead of the Gujarat assembly elections last year.

Gandhi has hit back at the BJP for using the services of Cambridge Analytica to "sabotage" the Congress prospects in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

"BJP lying factory at work: Journalist set to break the big story on how Cambridge Analytica was paid to infiltrate and sabotage the Congress in 2012. BJP rushes Cabinet Minister to lie and spin fake news: Congress worked with CA! Real story vanishes," Gandhi had said on Twitter on Friday.

Gandhi attached to his tweet an NDTV interview of the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica's Indian partner Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI).

The BJP and the Congress have been engaged in a war of words over utilising the services of the tainted firm for management of elections.

The BJP has alleged that the Congress had hired Cambridge Analytica for the Gujarat assembly elections. The Congress hit back at the BJP claimed that the ruling party had utilised the services of the disgraced firm for elections in five states as well as the 2014 general election.

Meanwhile, the Centre has issued a notice to UK-based Cambridge Analytica, asking it to give a list of clients and the source of data it had collected in India.Less than two weeks after the return of Sudans ambassador to Cairo following his recall to Khartoum for consultations, Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir arrived in Egypts capital for talks with President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi.

According to an Egyptian government source, Al-Bashirs visit followed an invitation extended by Al-Sisi via General Intelligence chief Abbas Kamel who visited Khartoum last week.

I guess it is very obvious there is an attempt to push contacts so as to ensure pending issues are addressed on a systematic basis.Where these talks will lead has yet to be seen. We do not expect fast progress on any of the files, but slow progress is not such a bad idea for now, he said.

Officials in both capitals acknowledge the list of differences between Cairo and Khartoum is long.

Red Sea security, and managing trilateral negotiations over the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) which bring together Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, are among Cairos priorities.

Egypt has not concealed its dismay with the way Sudan has positioned itself alongside Ethiopia in the trilateral talks despite Addis Ababas refusal to accommodate Egypts worries about the impact of the dam on its water needs.

Construction work on the dam is nearing completion and Cairo expects Ethiopia to begin filling its 75 billion cubic metre capacity reservoir towards the end of this year.

We have a crisis plan should Ethiopia withhold more water than we expect but we are still hoping for a better deal which should be possible if we can secure the support of Sudan, said an Egyptian government source.

Speaking after a meeting between Al-Sisi and Al-Bashir in Cairo on Monday informed sources said no Sudanese promises were forthcoming on the issue, though Khartoum did say it would try to encourage Ethiopia to be more sensitive towards Egypts worries.

A ministerial meeting of representatives from the three countries is due to be held in Ethiopia between 5 and 6 April.

On Red Sea security, Sudan has yet to firmly decline an offer from Turkey to pursue joint Turkish-Sudanese military cooperation with a possible Turkish base in Sudan overlooking the Red Sea.

An informed Cairo-based foreign diplomat said Sudan remains open to the Turkish offer.

There is so much foreign military presence around the Red Sea, some of it Arab, some of it not, and it is not all base located. Turkey and Iran have a direct and indirect presence.

Understandably, this is not to the liking of Egypt and it makes sense for Egypt to try to limit this trend, he argued.

Sudan has long expressed concern over the level of cooperation between Cairo and Juba. Egypt made no promises to reduce its levels of cooperation with South Sudan.

Egypt and Sudan agreed during last months 2+2 meeting of foreign ministers and chiefs of intelligence to discuss strategic matters related to Red Sea security measures and during their talks in Cairo on Monday Al-Sisi and Al-Bashir agreed in principle to resume security and military consultations soon.

A Sudanese source said Khartoum would host a new round of 2+2 consultations and expected other meetings to follow.

In a press statement on Monday afternoon Al-Sisi announced that he agreed with Al-Bashir the two countries should resume suspended meetings of joint committees on political consultations, security, cooperation and technical management of Nile water.

The two leaders also announced they would work on connecting their countries electricity grids and railways.

Al-Sisi and Al-Bashir also agreed to resume cooperation on border management.

According to sources on both sides, this will reduce the border infiltration both countries complain about though it will do little to resolve the long running dispute over the Halayeb Triangle.

The Egyptians and Sudanese are historically one people. Of course we are two countries  each with its own borders and flag but we remain one people, Al-Bashir said during the joint press statements he made with Al-Sisi at the presidential headquarters in Heliopolis on Monday.

There was no shortage of niceties during the two appearances Al-Sisi and Al-Bashir made on Monday, one before and the other after their talks. Al-Sisi addressed Al-Bashir as a dear friend and kind visitor.

He qualified the relations between the peoples of Egypt and Sudan as sacred. Al-Bashir said that Egypt is his second country and Sudan the second country of President Al-Sisi where he is always welcomed.

A statement issued by the press office of the presidency in Egypt said that officials in both countries would work to schedule the convening of the next Joint High Committee.

The last time the committee  chaired by both presidents  met was in Sudan in 2016.

President Al-Sisi received the Sudanese president on his arrival to Cairo International Airport, and escorted him to the airport on his return to Khartoum.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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Horticulture Minister S S Mallikarjun on Saturday welcomed the resolution passed by Akhila Bharat Veerashaiva Mahasabha rejecting the Cabinet decision on Lingayat issue, and instead seeking religious minority status to Veerashaiva-Lingayat community.



He was speaking to the reporters on the sidelines of the convocation of University of Horticultural Sciences here.

Hitting back at Water Resources Minister M B Patil's statement that Veerashaiva and Lingayats are two separate entities, Mallikarjun said, "Not all members are same in a house. A few try to keep the family united while a few others try to destroy it, the minister said making an indirect reference to Patil.

"Earlier, a proposal was sent to the Centre seeking separate religion tag for Veerashaiva-Lingayat communities. The Union government did not reject our request. So, we will seek the Centre again to reconsider our plea," Mallikarjun, son of Veerashaiva Mahasabha president Shamanur Shivashankarappa, said.

To a specific query, he said, "Let's not mix the Veerashaiava-Linagayat issue with politics."A man from Bhiwandi town in the district was arrested today for allegedly repeatedly raping a 17-year-old girl and impregnating her, police said.



The accused was identified as Lavkush Mourya, 22, who worked in a dyeing company in the powerloom town.

"The accused and the girl's father worked in the same company. On December 11, which was the victim's birthday, the accused sexually assaulted her and thereafter committed the same crime on several occasions on his company's premises," senior inspector S D Jadhav of Narpoli police station said.

He threatened the girl with dire consequences if she told anyone about the incident.

The parents of the girl, who is now two months pregnant, lodged a complaint with the police yesterday, police said.

The accused has been booked under IPC sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

Further investigation is on.Sending a signal of solidarity to the BSP whose lone candidate backed by it lost in the Rajya Sabha polls, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has cancelled the victory celebration for its nominee Jaya Bachchan to be held in the state capital today.



The BSP too has given indications that it remains positive about the new-found understanding between the two parties, with its national general secretary Satish Misra asserting that they got the SP votes and it was only "misuse" of power by the BJP which led to the defeat of his partys candidate He, however, said that any decision on alliance with the SP in future polls will be taken by BSP supremo Mayawati

The Samajwadi Party had planned a function at the party headquarters here to celebrate the victory of its candidate Jaya Bachchan, but since the other candidate, Bhimrao Ambedkar (BSP) lost, party president Akhiliesh Yadav has cancelled it, party spokesman Sunil Singh Sajan said.

Senior leaders including Akhilesh Yadav and others were scheduled to attend the programme but "there appears to be no relevance of it now" after the other candidate supported by the party failed to make it through, Sajan said.

He alleged that Ambedkar could have easily won the election but the ruling party had misused power to bag the seat .

Similar views were also expressed by BSP leader Misra, who charged the ruling party with misusing money and muscle power for winning the ninth seat.

After winning two Lok Sabha by-elections on prestigious Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats with the backing of BSP, Samajwadi Party had made it clear that it will work towards ensuring the victory of Ambedkar, ostensibly to further consolidate the new found understanding with BSP chief Mayawati, and had directed loyal MLAs to vote for the BSP nominee. However, the BSP lost out in a cliffhanger yesterday.

Misra claimed that the votes of the SP, BSP and Congress remained intact in the election.

"BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar got all the votes as well as one vote extra," Misra told reporters late last night after the completion of the Rajya Sabha election process.

The BSP leader, however, did not comment on whether the alliance with SP will continue stressing that it was a policy decision which will be taken only by party president Mayawati.

After the party's impressive show, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had claimed that the election had exposed the "opportunistic face of SP". "It can take votes but not give votes in return", he said referring to SP's victory in the recent Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.

Blaming the BJP for Ambedkar's loss, Misra said that two MLAs lodged in different jails including Mukhtar Ansari were not allowed to come for voting.

"They (BJP) knew well that they were going to lose and so misused power to clinch it," Misra said.

"Elsewhere in the country, all MLAs in jail were allowed to vote but here, despite all necessary steps taken by us, Mukhtar Ansari (BSP) and Hari Om Yadav (SP) were not allowed to come for voting as they knew that they did not have the numbers," the BSP leader said.

Earlier too Mukhtar had taken part in all elections including the President's poll despite being in jail, he said.

The BSP leader also alleged that two MLAs of other parties who wanted to vote for his party nominee were abducted and there were several anomalies in the counting.

In the keenly watched RS election, the BJP ensured victory of all its nine candidates. The tenth seat went to Samajwadi Party's Jaya Bachchan.

Besides BJP's prominent winner Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, others who made it to the Upper House of Parliament from the party are Ashok Bajpai, Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, Sakal Deep Rajbhar, Kanta Kardam, Anil Jain, Harnath Singh Yadav, GVL Narasimha Rao and ninth candidate Anil Kumar Agarwal, who pulled off a surprise win with the help of second preference votes.Goa Minister Vinod Palyekar on Saturday apologised for his remark that the Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal had a "soft corner" towards the tourist state which is locked in a bitter row with neighbouring Karnataka.



The water resources minister said it was a "mistake" on his part to give such a statement and maintained he did not intend to show any disrespect to judiciary or judges.

The tribunal is hearing an old dispute between Goa and Karnataka over sharing of water of the Mahadayi river (called Mandovi in the tiny coastal state).

"I will never disrespect judiciary or Judges. If I have said something in the flow of speech then I am sorry. I uttered it by mistake," Palyekar told reporters here.

"But whatever I said or I say is always in favour of Goa," maintained the minister, who belongs to the Goa Forward Party (GFP), an ally of the ruling BJP.

Palyekar, speaking at an event organised to celebrate the World Water Day two days ago, had said: "God will give us success in this case because even the judges on the tribunal know what the truth is and they have a soft corner towards Goa."

The hearing on the issue is reportedly in the final stages. Goa has accused Karnataka of diverting the Mahadayi water for irrigation.

The issue of sharing the river water between Karnataka and Goa - two out of three riparian states of the Mahadayi - came to the fore again after Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wrote a letter in December last year. Maharashtra is the other riparian state.

In his letter to Karnataka BJP president B S Yeddyurappa, Parrikar had said he would allow sharing of the river water for drinking purposes only.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had dismissed Parrikar's letter as an "electoral gambit" as the southern state is going to polls this year.Hours after BJP President Amit Shah wrote a letter calling the exit of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) as politically motivated the TDP chief and Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu has described the letter a big lie, insulting the feelings of the people of the state.



In a scathing attack on Shah and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing the Assembly in Amaravati on Saturday, Naidu gave point to point explanation to the contents of the BJP chief's letter in his 75-minute long speech. Explaining reasons why his government objected to the creation of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to root funds under Special Financial Assistance Measure in lieu of the Special Category Status, Naidu said, "You may have the habit of diverting funds for other purposes. Our government runs a transparent administration".

Taking strong objection to the patronage given to YSRCP MP Vijay Sai Reddy in the PMO, Naidu observed that it sends wrong signals to federal investigation agencies probing cases against him. "YSR Congress leaders told you that you can easily cheat the people of Andhra Pradesh and you fell into their trap. We have seen what happened to the Congress for the similar blunder in 2014", Naidu thundered.

Naidu took exception of Shah saying that Congress was responsible for the lope sided division of the state and said that BJP as the national party was equally responsible for the injustice meted out to the residual state. He then asked Shah, whether the centre has the guts to review the promises made in the AP Reorganization Act and by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Parliament.

Did Modi Use Singh's photos?

Referring to Shah's allegation that the AP government had suppressed the fact of getting funds from the Centre in its attempt to claim credit, Chandrababu Naidu questioned, "Did Modi ever put Manmohan Singh photos in Gujarat schemes publicity, when he was the CM for over 12 years? Do you have the courage to show some?"

On Shah's comment that TDP's exit from the NDA is unilateral, Naidu questioned, "Do you wish to call my 29 trips to Delhi without any help from you as unilateral?" He said his party had pulled out of the NDA in a phased manner and giving time for the NDA to mend its ways.The son of the successor of hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani has joined the militancy in Kashmir, even as his AK-47-wielding picture went viral on social media on Saturday.



Police sources said Junaid Ashraf Khan (28), son of Ashraf Sehrai, who was recently elected as the new chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat just two days ago, has joined the Hizb-ul Mujahideen outfit.



This is the first time that the son of a senior separatist leader of Sehrai's stature has joined the militancy in Kashmir.



"The family has lodged a missing report with us. His brother Rashid Ashraf arrived at the police station today (Saturday) afternoon and told us that his brother is missing since yesterday," a police official of uptown Sadder police station, said.



The family, according to the police, stated in the missing report that Junaid went for Friday prayers and had told his family that he will return in the evening after repairing his mobile phone.

However, he didn't return in the evening prompting his family to lodge the missing report on Saturday.



Hours after his family lodged the missing report, a picture of Junaid holding an AK-47 rifle appeared on social networking websites. The message with the picture suggests that he has joined Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.

Junaid presently resides in Srinagar's uptown Baghat area and has an MBA from Kashmir University. He is a native of Tikipora village in northern Kupwara, which is also the village of Mannan Wani, a scholar from Aligarh Muslim University, who recently joined the Hizbul. The two are reportedly friends.



The state police chief Shesh Pal Vaid termed Sehrai's son joining militant ranks as "unfortunate" and urged the separatist leader to appeal his son and other local boys to shun the gun.

"This is very unfortunate. I urge Sehari, since he is in command, to appeal to his son and other local boys wielding the gun to return. He himself should take a lead in entering into dialogue so that youth of Kashmir are saved from the path of violence," Vaid told reporters.



74-year-old Sehrai was recently elected as the chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat after Geelani relinquished his post.

Geelani was the founding chairman of Hurriyat since it was formed in 2004, while Sehrai was the organisation's general secretary.

Immediately after his election as new chairman, Sehrai lashed out at those supporting the Islamic State ideology, saying it has nothing to do with Kashmir.

"Some elements are creating confusion among masses by raising IS flags at the funeral of militants. We have kept a close watch on them, and will soon chart out a plan to stop them after the elections," he said, referring to the funeral of militant Eisa Fazili in Soura Srinagar recently.

"Daesh and Al-Qaida have nothing to do with our movement and we will never accept them," Sehrai said. He urged the youth not to get swayed by the extremist ideology and understand Islam from a correct perspective.Egyptian Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar said on Thursday that Egypt has discovered a hostile plot that aims to defame the image of the country, and is being conducted by Muslim Brotherhood fugitives in Qatar and Turkey.

The minister made the reports public in a wide-ranging interview wtih Al-Ahram magazine, published on Thursday, where he also spoke about securing the upcoming presidential elections, terrorism, human rights, and illegal migration.

Abdel-Ghaffar said that information had revealed that a plan aimed at fomenting a state of anger among citizens, as well as broadcasting false news and creating crises via the media, and included a number of TV channels and websites, which are affiliated with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhod group.

The leadership of the Brotherhood media committee for the plan is present in Qatar and Turkey, the minister said, and these leaders are fugitives.

The government has arrested those elements inside Egypt who are implementing the plans of fugitive Brotherhood leaders and has taken legal procedures against them , he said.

The Muslim Brotherhood group was designated a terrorist entity by Egypt in 2013.

Read more of the minister's comments here

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Iconic German clock-maker Hermle has entered Indian market with a range of its products.

The company's brand of table clocks, mantle pieces, wall clocks, grandfather clocks and Tellurium evoke nostalgia of inheritance even as it aims to capture attention from a small but growing interest of upwardly mobile professionals.

In this digital age, Hermle, means precision German engineering and all the clocks are hand-crafted, the company stated.

"The clocks and clock movements are our main business and we are excited to be in India. We expect good numbers here as there is a renewed interest in clocks of all kinds. It is not just as a gift, but also to adorn living rooms, office spaces and gives meaning to blank walls," Jens Quaeck, International Sales Director for Uhrenmanufaktur GmbH & Co KG, Frankfurt said.

The 96-year-old company was started by his grandfather Franz Hermle.

"Each of these pieces start with a price range of Rs 20,000 and go on to about Rs 2 lakh apiece. There are some clocks such as the Tellurium which can go upto Rs 20 lakh depending on its size and what adorns it," says Sanjay B Hasija from Skylarkk Trading Co, a Bengaluru-based company which will market the products.Unfazed by its decreasing numbers in the Rajya Sabha, Congress leaders feel that the current situation may strengthen the resolve of Opposition parties to stick together to take on the Modi government.



The Congress also believes that the improved numbers of the BJP in the Upper House still may not give the ruling alliance the desired leverage to push contentious laws.

Congress' tally in the Rajya Sabha was down to 53 from the 54 members it had earlier, while the BJP's numbers increased from 58 members to 69.

The BJP won 28 out the 59 Rajya Sabha seats for which the election process concluded on Friday. The Congress emerged victorious on 10 seats, one less than its 11 members who are retiring from the Upper House.

It was some deft political management by the Congress that helped it with three extra members - one each from Karnataka, West Bengal and Jharkhand - where it was short of the numbers.

However, the BJP trumped the joint Opposition candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar in Uttar Pradesh and managed to get its candidate, businessman Anil Agarwal, elected.

"The decreasing numbers in the Rajya Sabha will strengthen the Opposition's resolve to remain together," Congress spokesman Tom Vadakkan told reporters here.

Despite the improved numbers, it will not be easy for the BJP to push legislations of its choice in the Rajya Sabha, Vaddakan said.

BSP supremo Mayawati's declaration of the continuance of the party's alliance with the Samajwadi Party despite Friday's electoral setback also found instant support from the other Opposition parties.

"I welcome the views expressed by Mayawatiji today. We are with her and Akhilesh Yadav in this mission for the nation," TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said.

RJD's Manoj K Jha also backed Mayawati saying that the BSP chief had spoken her mind on Opposition unity.

"Let's recall May 2014. Lalu Prasad had given a call for unity in order to fight the menace of the right-wing authoritarian regime... and the churning started today... (there will be) sleepless nights for BJP," Jha said.If cement prices are increased according to whims of traders, it will have to be placed under the Essential Commodities Act, said Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways.

He was speaking at 'Industry Next Summit' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries in the city on Saturday. Gadkari said escalating cement prices are making road-laying a costly affair.

"Of the total material required for the construction of highways, about 40% is cement. If the prices for cement come down, the construction cost will also reduce," Gadkari said.

In all sectors, including transport, the government is giving priority to domestic investors and contractors. This opportunity should be used properly, he said.

The tender for the Rs 60,000-crore Bengaluru-Chennai express corridor work will be called either in March or April. Work will be started before the year ends, Gadkari said. He said that outer ring roads in the city will be developed at a cost of Rs 10 crore.

"The cost of freight transportation in India has increased more compared to European countries and China, where cost has increased at a lower rate. This cost has to be brought down," he said.

In India, a truck travels about 250 km a day on average, while in foreign countries, the average is 700 km. Gadkari said. "In the next two years, we will create facilities necessary for trucks to travel up to 400 km a day," he added.

Gadkari said that the Detailed Project Report for the plan to divert excess water from Godavari river to Cauvery river was ready.Indian and Chinese companies on Saturday signed 101 commercial deals worth nearly $ 2.368 billion (Rs 15,389 crore), even as both the nation's trade disputes with the US has escalated, of late.



The trade deals were inked ahead of a proposed meeting between Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu and his Chinese counterpart Zhong Shan in New Delhi next week.

Apart from discussing ways to expand bilateral commerce and making it more balanced, Prabhu and Zhong are also likely to discuss the US trade offensives, which of late has targeted both India and China.

Prabhu's meeting with Zhong is one of the several bilateral engagements New Delhi and Beijing have lined up over the next few months in order to bring the troubled ties between the two neighbouring nations back on track.

They are meeting at a time when Washington and Beijing is embroiled in a trade war with American President Donald Trump signing a presidential memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of imports from China to the US.

Beijing announced plans for reciprocal tariffs on $3 billion of imports from the US to China in its first response to the offensive launched by Washington.

The US also dragged China to the World Trade Organisation over discriminatory technology licensing requirements in the Communist country.

The US earlier this month also challenged India's export subsidies scheme at the WTO.

Trump last month expressed his displeasure over high import duty imposed by India on high-end motorcycles like the ones made by Harley-Davidson and other US companies.

Sources told DH that apart from discussing bilateral issues, Prabhu and Zhong might also discuss issues related to global trade.

India-China bilateral trade reached $ 84.44 billion in 2017, while the trade deficit grew to $ 51.75 billion a registering 8.5% year-on-year rise.

The commercial deals inked by Indian and Chinese companies on Saturday will give a fillip to trade in black tea, castor oil, peppermint oil, coco fibre, green coffee bean and other products.

Representatives of 30 Chinese companies are currently on a visit to India."Let the oath taken by the nursing students during graduation ceremony be a guiding star in the profession," wished Athena Institute of Health Sciences chairperson Raviraj S Shettian.



He was presiding over the graduation ceremony of the 12th batch of GNM, 10th batch of BSc, 7th batch of Post Basic BSc and MSc Nursing at the Town Hall, Mangaluru.

Stating that nurses face a Herculean task these days, Shettian rued that the thin line between business and service is fast diminishing in the profession. "You have chosen a noble profession. Wherever you go, love humanity and always think to be a better human being," he told the fresh graduates.

Addressing the gathering, AECS Group of Institutions dean and Trained Nurses Association of India (TNAI), Karnataka branch, secretary Prof P Girijamba Devi, the guest of honour, appreciated the support extended by Athena Institute of Health Sciences towards TNAI and congratulated the graduates, especially the 64 rank holders (from RGUHS).

Stressing the importance of creativity, righteousness and courage in nursing profession, she encouraged the students to believe in their individual capacities.

Chinchumol Thomas, who secured the fourth rank in the fourth year examination conducted by RGUHS in September 2017, and other 63 students who secured subject-wise ranks from BSc and PBBSc nursing and many other prizes and award holders were honoured. A total of 113 graduates received their certificates on the occasion.

AIHS secretary Asha Shettian and Institute vice principal Dr Sr Alphonsa Ancheril were present while principal Prof Sr Dhanya Devasia presented the annual report.

The graduation ceremony was followed by a scintillating cultural programme by the students.Urging the Union Government not to privatise regional rural banks (RRBs), and to fulfill the other demands of the employees of RRBs, United Forum of RRB Unions has given a call for a three-day nation-wide strike by RRB employees from March 26 to 28.

All-Karnataka Gramin Bank Employees' Federation general secretary V K Bannigol told media persons here on Saturday that more than 1,680 employees of Karnataka Vikas Grameena Bank, Pragati Krishna Grameena Bank, and Cauvery Grameena Bank in the State would take part in the stir.

Privatisation of RRBs is against the very purpose of formation of RRBs. As many as 56 RRBs in the country are offering service to more than 30 crore customers in 676 districts, especially in rural areas and to the farming sector. They are also extending help to create jobs in rural areas, and are giving financial help to the farmers, artisans and vendors. The RRBs are also paying Rs 10,000 crore tax amount every year to the Union Government, he said.

Equality in salary, appointment on compassionate grounds, simplification of service and promotion rules, and regularisation of the services of daily wage workers would be other major demands, Mr Bannigol said.

S N Savadatti, R V Pattar, G M Vaidya, and others were present.Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday hosted German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the recently restored Sunder Nursery in New Delhi.



"Had the honour of taking the President of Germany, Mr Frank-Walter Steinmeier to Delhi's Sunder Nursery. We had wonderful discussions on a wide range of issues," the Prime Minister posted on Twitter along with pictures of him and his guest taking a stroll in the park.

The Sunder Nursery, a heritage park near Humayun Tomb in Delhi, has of late been revamped by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in collaboration with the Central Public Works Department, Archaeological Survey of India and the South Delhi Municipal Corporation.

This is the first time Prime Minister hosted a foreign dignitary at the Sunder Nursery.

Steinmeier is currently on a tour to India. He was ceremonially welcomed by President Ram Nath Kovind at the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan earlier on Saturday.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also called on the German President.

"EAM @SushmaSwaraj called on President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Engaging discussion on broadening and deepening our strategic partnership. The two sides attach priority to the relationship, bilaterally and also in the global context," Raveesh Kumar, official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said.Kannada actor Arjun Dev has claimed a goon is out to kill him at the behest of some unknown people. The police, who initially took up a non-cognisable report (NCR) case, have now registered an FIR following a court order.



The 35-year-old actor claimed that Kashif, a history-sheeter from Islampur, had taken supari (killing contract) to eliminate him. Dev, who lives in Deepanjali Nagar off Mysuru Road, approached the jurisdictional Byatrayanapura police on March 19 and complained about the "death threat". He sought police protection, saying Kashif had even done a recce of his house. The actor said he learnt about the "murder plot" from a well-wisher on March 16.

When the police took up only an NCR case and sent him away, the actor filed a private complaint at a court, which then directed the officers to register a case of criminal intimidation and criminal conspiracy under the relevant IPC sections, and investigate it. The police obeyed the court orders.

A police source, however, said the actor's accusations were the fallout of a property dispute between him and another party. The property is in Ramanagaram.

Ravi D Channannavar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West), said: "We have issued a notice to the complainant to record his statement and I have instructed the ACP to conduct a thorough impartial investigation." Dev acted in a lead role in the Kannada film Yuga Purusha. He is also a local Congress functionary.Speaking a few days before polls are set to open, the sole competitor running against incumbent President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in the country's presidential election maintains he entered the race meaning to win, although he acknowledges many Egyptians still can't recognise his face.

Over the past weeks, Cairos streets, highways and public places have been festooned with banners and billboards proclaiming their support for El-Sisi; public declarations of support for Moussa Mostafa Moussa, the head of the Ghad Party, have been harder to spot.

But the 65-year-old politician told Ahram Online the competition is serious and "very strong."

"We understand we are facing El-Sisi who has popularity; no one is underestimating his weight. I'm entering to win and get more than 50 percent of the votes, but I don't know what the results will be," he said, speaking at his partys headquarters in Downtown Cairo.

El-Sisi won a landslide victory with about 97 percent in elections that brought him to office four years ago. Observers say he is likely to win next week's vote by a comfortable margin.

In January, Moussa submitted his papers to register as a candidate just minutes before the deadline was set to pass; at that point, El-Sisi was the only other candidate who has successfully submitted his application.

Moussa had not publicly declared his intention to run until the day before the deadline, but he said he had netted 47,000 pledges from citizens across the country--well more than the 25,000 endorsements required--and the backing of 27 MPs.

"If we do not win, at least we hope we get an acceptable number of votes that would give us the opportunity to perform our patriotic role for the country," he said.

Moussa, an architect and a businessman who owns a number of building material companies, is himself a supporter of El-Sisi, and last year founded a campaign comprising several political parties to endorse a second term for the incumbent.

His own Ghad Party was organising events to back El-Sisi for a second term until Moussa's surprise presidential bid at the end of the registration period.

He had also launched a movement in 2014 to drum up support for El-Sisi, then minister of defence, to run for the presidency in that years election.

Now a challenger, Moussa has nonetheless avoided criticising El-Sisi, instead praising the current president's "great achievements" and "undeniable popularity."

Should he win, Moussa tells Ahram Online, he would give El-Sisi any official role the current president would like to play to serve the Egyptian people.

Saving the vote

Moussa says his campaign has been self-funded via a limited budget, having failed to attract a single sponsor.

"I'm not saying [El-Sisi's] campaign has spent heavily. He has supporters who organised big conferences and provided him with free advertisements," he said.

"I'm new to you. I'm trying hard by myself and putting up banners so people can get to know me. People don't know my face."

Despite a flurry of criticism and ridicule directed at his candidacy, which doubters allege is only a face-saving measure to give the upcoming elections a veneer of competition, Moussa says his bid was prompted by what he sees as a "patriotic obligation" to protect the country.

He wants to save the vote from being a referendum on a single candidate, after all other credible potential candidates dropped out of the race.

A number of other prospective contenders had stated their intention to run earlier this year, but pulled out, with some citing an unfair campaigning environment.

"A referendum [one-candidate election] is very dangerous at a time when there are conspiracies against the country. No one will go to vote because it will only be one person," he said.

"I'm not a puppet. I have my weight and everyone knows our patriotic role and history. I don't get influenced by anyone. No one dictates us what to do and no one is going to give us something [in return]," he added.

Moussa lays the blame on the challengers who dropped out for their withdrawals, saying some either ran in the first place to create "media buzz" or were serving a "systematic agenda to undermine the country."

He expects 60 percent of eligible voters will go to the polls from 26-28 March, well more than the 47 percent turnout in the 2014 vote that brought El-Sisi to office.

Moussa says his policy platform is mainly economic-oriented and is aimed at improving the living standards of Egyptians struggling with harsh economic reforms, but is reluctant to criticise El-Sisi's policies.

He promises to help low-income and farmers, control soaring prices of basic commodities, reopen closed factories and offer citizens shares in national projects and future hospitals and schools the government will build.

Should El-Sisi win, Moussa says he will present his programme to the second-term president, so they can work together to carry it out and improve Egyptians lives.

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The Karnataka government has defended before the Supreme Court its criteria for Karnataka origin or minimum 10-year study requirement for candidates outside the state to get admission to Post Graduate seats in medical and dental colleges.



According to the government, it is necessary to meet the state's requirement of skilled human resources.

The state government also claimed that it has invested heavily in setting up medical colleges across the state with no help from the central government. It further said the government proposed to set up 14 more medical colleges in other districts and eight super-speciality hospitals, in addition to existing nine super-speciality hospitals, creating huge requirement of specialists to run these hospitals.

"Every year approximately Rs 2,000 crore is being spent on strengthening medical education in the state. The government of India is not assisting the state in establishing necessary infrastructure for post-graduate medical education and the entire manpower and infrastructure are being provided by the state," an affidavit submitted by the government stated. "This being so, the state of Karnataka has every right to formulate eligibility conditions to give preference to candidates who are most likely to serve the state," the affidavit added.

The Karnataka government said states like Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal have also put similar eligibility conditions. It maintained that conditions would allow the merit candidates from the state to pursue post graduate education on subsidised seats and serve the people of the state.

This will also subserve the interest of medical and dental educational institutes by ensuring adequate number of specialists year after year, it said. In its response to a writ petition filed by Dr Kriti Lakhina and 39 others against the fresh notification by the Karnataka Examination Authority issued on March 10, the state government said the petitioners cannot say that they would be deprived of their rights to compete for seats in government medical and dental colleges as 2,301 seats woulds still be available for candidates who were not of Karnataka origin. Out of 3,435 posts of specialists in 11,615 public health care institutions in Karnataka, about 1,312 posts are vacant. In educational institutions, out of 2,700 posts of specialists, 517 are vacant. A total of 16 out of 39 medical colleges in Karnataka are run by the state.

Out of 970 senior resident posts in these medical colleges, 524 are vacant. "If these posts remained vacant beyond stipulation by the Medical Council of India, de-recognition looms large with the risk of jeopardising future of both undergraduate and post graduate students studying in these colleges," it said. It claimed that the doctors, belonging to other parts of the country, cannot claim any legal entitlement on the basis that they have graduated from the Karnataka medical or dental colleges.State JD(S) president H D Kumaraswamy took to twitter on Saturday to take a swipe at Congress president Rahul Gandhi who is touring in the Mysuru region.

Taunting Rahul (in a war of words), Kumaraswamy demanded the Congress leader to clear the air on the charges he had made against the JD(S) recently. Rahul, who visited Hassan as part of his election campaign recently, had branded the JD(S) as BJP's 'B' team. He had accused the JD(S) of giving "back door" support to the BJP in the upcoming Assembly elections.

Kumaraswamy had countered Rahul's charges by terming the Congress as JD(S)'s 'B' team. Notwithstanding Rahul's silence, Kumaraswamy has now tried to elicit a response from the former.

"You have come to the land of Goddess Chamundi - Mysuru. After facing a massive defeat across the state, you have now shed your atheistism to don the fake/deceptive "devout" role as part of your temple run. Last time when you were in Karnataka, you had made childish remarks against the JD(S). I had given you a befitting reply. I am now awaiting your response, as it is important for people to know the truth. If you don't respond, then it will be a 'hit-and-run' statement. You will come to known as 'hit-and-run Rahul' -- not just 'Temple run Rahul'. May Goddess Chamundi, who inspired me to make a come back into politics after my surgery, also rid you of your immaturity," Kumaraswamy's tweet read.Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday warned the BJP against tampering with the Constitution and dared the saffron party to use "all its might" to do so.

"Snatching public money isn't the only thing the BJP does. The BJP has made it its new fashion of attacking the Constitution," he said. "Amkedkar and the Congress fought for the Constitution, but the BJP wants to remove it. Let them here it: We will not allow the BJP to change the Constitution. Let them use all their might," he said addressing a rally at Charajanagar as part of the Janaarshivada Yatra.

Union Minister Anantkumar Hegde had publicly said the BJP would "change the Constitution," a remark he later apologised for having made.

It is Rahul's fourth leg of Yatre in the poll-bound Karnataka. The Congress president raked up Hegde's remark in Chamarajnagar, where Dalits are in sizable number.

Rahul, as he has done throughout his Janaarshivada Yatra tour, hailed Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. He said the previous BJP government saw ministers and a chief minister go to jail for "looting" public money.

"The same money, we gave back to you through 7kg free rice (Anna Bhagya), free milk for schoolchildren (Ksheera Bhagya), irrigation projects, farm ponds and so on."

At a public rally in Malavalli in Mandya district, the Congress chief continued his attack on the JD(S), once again calling the regional party as the BJP's 'B' team. He even came up with a new name for the JD(S). "All these days, it was the Janata Dal (Secular). But it has changed. Now, it is Janata Dal (Sangh Parivar)," he said.

Rahul sharpened his attack on the JD(S) as the ruling Congress faces a stiff contest from the regional party in old Mysuru region.

"But let me tell you, the Congress will win the upcoming polls even if the BJP gets a B team, C team or D team," Rahul said.

He added that the upcoming Assembly polls was a battle between two ideologies, a fight he said was an old one.

"You have to choose between the BJP/RSS and Congress. The difference is BJP lies and the Congress believes in Basavanna's Nudidante Nade."'Tipu glorified India's name'



Erstwhile Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan found a mention for the first time in Congress president Rahul Gandhi's speech. "Tipu Sultan, Krishnaraja Wadiyar, M Visvesvaraya and Kuvempu...they have glorified India's name," Rahul said at the beginning of his speech in Chamarajnagar. Rahul, however, had a tough time pronouncing Visvesvaraya's name. He got it somewhat right in the third attempt.

Rahul continued to invoke 12th century social reformer Basavanna, which he has done ever since he started his Karnataka tour last month.

I've nixed the curse: CM

Chamarajanagar is considered jinxed, in that it is feared that a chief minister who visits the town will lose power. "I wanted to nix the curse. I've come here five times," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said and mocked BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa. "Yeddyurappa never came to Chamarajanagar fearing he'll lose power. He got caught taking bribe. Perhaps, he'd have remained in power if he had come here," Siddaramaiah joked.

Krishnamurthy joins Cong

Former BJP leader A R Krishnamurthy, son of Dalit leader the late B Rachaiah, formally joined the Congress during Rahul Gandhi's rally at Chamarajanagar. In 2004, Krishnamurthy, who was then with the JD(U), had lost the Santemarahalli Assembly constituency against Congress' R Dhruvanarayan by just one vote.Multi-modal transition, a huge challenge for the elderly, the disabled



Has the new walkway connecting the Majestic metro station with an existing subway that links the KSR city railway station and BMTC bus stand, made multi-modal transition easy? Not really, say senior citizens and those carrying heavy luggage.

Commuters struggle carrying their luggage two to three levels up and down. It is a painful experience, particularly for senior and differently-abled citizens to scale the stairs and walk past the foot over bridge to change platforms.

Says Naveen Kumar, an IT professional: "I have come across elderly people and women carrying children climbing up the crowded stairs, but fearing that they might fall. Wider ramps or slopes can be helpful, as the escalators here are also very narrow."

Commuters who take the back side entrance (Platform 10) of the Krantiveera Sangolli Rayanna(KSR) railway station also face the same set of issues. As the foot over bridge linking the City Railway Metro station and KSR railway station is still under construction, there is no option for people but to take the road.

Subha P Lakshmi, Assistant Manager at the New India Insurance Company, travels to Channapatna for work along with her colleague Kriti Verma. She prefers to get into the KSR station near the City Railway Metro Station. Subha elaborates, "It takes around 20 minutes to reach the platform. We walk from the metro station and then take the stairs. There are no escalators or lift here".

The narrow street that connects to the station is not well maintained. When it rains, the road turns slushy and dangerous to walk. "I have seen people slipping and falling during the rainy season. It is very difficult to walk carrying luggage on the slippery road," she says.

The old subway linking the city railway station with the BMTC / KSRTC bus stations is filled with filth and garbage. Most women refrain from taking that subway as there are no proper security measures.

"As we commute regularly for work, we prefer taking the back entry to avoid the old subway. That subway has no security and is also poorly lit. During evening hours, it is really risky for women to take that route," says Kriti Verma, an insurance firm employee.

The subway is encroached by hawkers selling products ranging from clothes, footware, toys to electronic gadgets. Transgenders and prostitutes have occupied the dingy corners of the subway making it even more chaotic.

For Lakshmi Priya, a retired teacher, enduring all this is the only way. She says: "We cannot cross the busy roads. So we have no choice other than the subway. I do not feel like travelling because of the poor facilities here. I require at least a week's rest when I do travel."

If this is the case with the elderly, the differently-abled citizens face more challenges. Moving from one platform to another to board the trains is a huge task as there are no proper lifts or slopes for the wheel chairs. They are forced to depend on others to carry them.

Sampath N, who was travelling with his mother to Hyderabad, observes: "I do not prefer sending my mother alone. It is difficult for her to carry heavy luggage and climb the stairs. Escalators are mostly crowded. So it will be helpful if better facilities are provided."Egypt's Alexandria security directorate announced on Saturday that the death toll from the bombing in Alexandria earlier today  which unsuccessfully targeted the citys security director  has risen to two policemen, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.

The interior ministry said in a statement that an improvised explosive device placed under a car detonated as security director Mostafa El-Nemrs convoy was passing in El-Moaskar El-Romany Street.

El-Nemr was unharmed in the attack.

The two policemen who died in the attack were 45-year-old Aly Galal and 19-year-old Abdalla Mohamed Abdallah.

Another five policemen were injured in the attack, including three of El-Nemrs bodyguards, according to Al-Ahram.

The minister of interior has visited the site of the attack, which he described as "a desperate attempt to disrupt the security and stability of the country," according to a statement by the ministry.

Egypts prosecutor-general Nabil Sadek has ordered that the High State Security and Sidi Gaber prosecution inspect the scene and take statements from the injured.

Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail condemned the attack in a statement issued by the cabinet.

"These desperate attempts by terrorist powers and the countries that support them aim to affect the positive atmosphere that Egypt is witnessing, which will only increase the determination of the Egyptian state to continue on its political path and economic programme, and will not hold Egyptians back from continuing the democratic process and development efforts," the statement said.

The attack comes days before Egypt is set to hold the 2018 presidential elections, which will take place from Monday to Wednesday.

Egypt's interior ministry and army have been beefing up security nationwide ahead of the elections, where incumbent President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is facing the head of the Ghad Party Moussa Moustafa Moussa.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the Alexandria attack.

Saturdays assassination attempt is the first against a security official since end of 2016, which witnessed a number of attacks that included a failed assassination attempt on a senior judicial official in September 2016, and the October 2016 assassination of an army brigadier general who had previously served in North Sinai, where the armys war against terrorism is concentrated.

It is also the first major attack in the Mediterranean city since the April 2017 bombing of St Mark's Cathedral, which killed 18 people during Palm Sunday celebrations.

Egypt has recently witnessed a number of deadly terrorist attacks on civilians, the deadliest being an attack on worshippers at a North Sinai mosque in November 2017, which killed more than 300 people.

Nearly a month later, two gunmen killed nine people at the Mar Mina Church in Helwan, southern Cairo ahead of Coptic Christian celebrations in December.

Egypt launched Comprehensive Operation Sinai 2018 on 9 February, which targets terrorist and criminal elements and organisations in northern and central Sinai, as well as parts of the Nile Delta and the Western Desert.

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Industry leading cyber defences and cutting-edge fashion from De Montfort University drew crowds on the final day of the GREAT Festival in Hong Kong.

The fourth and final day of the festival, which is the Governments flagship international trade event, showcasing the best in UK creativity and innovation, saw DMU  the sole education partner for the show  giving demonstrations throughout the day.

Architecture students Tom Cox and Khanh Nguyen returned to the festival after a headlining slot on day two, showing their designs for sustainable living and farming complexes  tall vertical villages.

Meanwhile, Fashion Design students showed off their outfit collections with a catwalk show over lunch and Professor Andy Collop, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for DMU, outlined #DMUworks and #DMUglobal, the universitys innovative programmes aiming to offer work and international experiences for all students, giving them the rounded skill sets employers look for.

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Experts from DMUs Cyber Technology Institute  including Professor Helge Janicke, who heads up the unit  put on a fascinating display which illustrated how cyber attacks could pose widespread physical threat to urban areas.

Using tanks filled with water, the team simulated a hacking attack which caused the water levels in the vessels to change  which on a bigger scale could cause city-wide flooding and blackouts.

They then showed how this attack could be defended, using the skills taught in DMUs classrooms.

Professor Janicke was asked about the demonstration by Liam Fox, Secretary of State for International Trade, who was touring the festival on the last day.

He said: He was telling me how we have to invest in cyber security and ensure our infrastructure in protected from threats.

Our demonstration shows how easy it is to launch a cyber attack but also how this can be defended against it if you have the skills, which we provide.

Professor Collop, who was earlier in the day interviewed by Gadget Show presenter Ortis Deley, said that overall, the festival had been a success.

He said: It has been fantastic for the university and for the students. Today has been a very busy day at the festival and we have had some really great discussions about creating opportunities for students, about developing work and international experiences which work for them and add real value.Egypts High Administrative Court overturned on Saturday a previous conviction against former president Hosni Mubarak, his prime minister Ahmed Nazif and former interior minister Habib Al-Adly, who were convicted in May 2011 for cutting electronic communication throughout the country during the January 2011 uprising.

The previous court ruling had levied a fine totalling EGP 540 million for the damages to the economy caused by the decision to disable communications. The defence for the three former officials filed an appeal against the decision.

During the nationwide uprisings that ousted Mubarak in 2011, all electronic communication in the country  including the internet, mobile phones and landlines  was cut on 28 January for several days to prevent protesters from communicating.

During its ruling on Saturday, the court said that "the decision to cut communications during the January 2011 revolution was a legal decision in accordance with the law and the constitution, and was issued by El-Adly to preserve the national security of the country."

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John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump's new national security adviser, said Trump should insist that any meeting he holds with North Korea's leader must be focused squarely on how to eliminate that country's nuclear weapons program as quickly as possible.

Bolton, a hawk who Trump named on Thursday to replace H.R. McMaster in the key security role, told Radio Free Asia on Monday that discussions at the proposed summit with Kim Jong Un should be similar to those that led to components of Libya's nuclear program being shipped to the United States in 2004.

"Let's have this conversation by May, or even before that, and let's see how serious North Korea really is," Bolton said, according to a transcript of his remarks posted on the RFA website on Friday.

"If they're not prepared to have that kind of serious discussion, it could actually be a very short meeting."

Bolton said North Korea had used negotiations in the past to camouflage its weapons development and he was skeptical about its intentions. He said U.S. ally South Korea, which restarted talks with North Korea this year, should be cautious before agreeing to anything with Pyongyang.

"We should insist that if this meeting is going to take place, it will be similar to discussions we had with Libya 13 or 14 years ago: how to pack up their nuclear weapons program and take it to Oak Ridge, Tennessee," he said.

Bolton said it was important for Trump to "make the point that he's not there to waste time and that we expect real denuclearization, not talks about talks about denuclearization, but concretely how we're going to eliminate their program as quickly as possible."

Bolton also said the United States should not offer North Korea economic aid, or a peace treaty, adding, "they're lucky to be having a meeting with the President of the United States."

Bolton, a hardliner who has advocated regime change and military force against North Korea, said no one wanted to see military action, but it would be a mistake to leave the country with nuclear weapons. He warned of the risk of Pyongyang selling nuclear weapons technology to Islamic State, al Qaeda, or any aspiring nuclear-weapons state.

"President Trump has unattractive options ... he doesn't have much time," Bolton said. "Somebody said, you know, we can't kick the can down the road any further because there isn't any road left."

South Korean officials met Kim Jong Un this month and told Washington the leader was open to giving up his nuclear weapons if North Korea's security was guaranteed.

Trump responded with a surprise announcement that he was willing to meet Kim before the end of May in a bid to resolve the crisis over North Korea's development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States.

North Korea argues its weapons program is needed for defense.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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A Chadian soldier and 20 Boko Haram members were killed in a clash in the restive Lake Chad region near Nigeria, a Chadian military officer told AFP Saturday.

The incident occurred on Friday on an islet named Tchoukou Hadje, the officer said, adding that five soldiers were wounded.

"Twenty Boko Haram members were killed and a large amount of weapons was recovered," he said. "The Chadian army lost one member."

Two Chadian soldiers including a captain were killed in an ambush in the area a month ago in the first attack by the Nigerian jihadist group on Chadian soil since May last year in which nine soldiers died.

Boko Haram, a militant movement opposed to Western influence and seeking an Islamic state based on Sharia law, has caused the deaths of at least 20,000 people since it took up arms in 2009 in Nigeria.

Neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger have all joined the military effort by Nigeria to crush Boko Haram.

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Look, look how she walks down the stairs. Its moving. Oh, look The little girl behind me gave her mother a running commentary on every move of actor or shadow at the Lula Del Ray manual cinema performance.

Staged several times between 10 and 13 March, it is part of the eighth Hakawy International Arts Festival for Children (8-13 March), an annual event that aims to bring theatre and other art forms to children. The event takes place at the Hanager Arts Centre expanding into the neighbouring grounds and venues.

The brainchild of Mohamed El Ghawy, founder of Hakawy and its umbrella AFCA for Arts and Culture  an independent organisation with a mission to work with children and the young in English, Arabic and French, following education through art  the festival has established itself as the most important childrens culture phenomenon taking place in Egypt.

Its importance is all the more obvious once you consider the fact that we do not have any other festivals for children, the only other one, the state-run Cairo International Film Festival for Children, having been halted. Hakawy responds to Egypts social and educational reality, and fills gaps.

With a total lack of creative activities in the majority of schools, the children are even more in need of artistic events to enrich them outside the framework of formal education.

Sporadic shows at the Metropol, home to the National Childrens Theatre or by the Cairo Puppet Theatre (which by definition offers plays for children), a weekly aragoz show in Old Cairo (thanks to the Cultural Development Fund, this beautiful traditional art form is kept alive) or workshops here and there: none of this is enough to meet the needs of the youngest population of this huge country.

But nor is it simply a question of the number of events or even quality of the art presented; the awareness and values the shows instil in young minds are also paramount.

Even if the scene is enriched by dedicated independent players who at times tailor events for children after carefully examining their longings, as is the case with Awtar Quartets occasional concerts for children, the Outa Hamra troupe, chosen events held at Artellewa Arts space or at Darb 1718, among others, the demand is still much higher than whats on offer.

And this is where Hakawy comes to the rescue, following the principle that Children have a right to take part in artistic and cultural events on a regular, not random, basis during their school and pre-school life -- the eighth principle of the Charter of Childrens Rights to Arts and Culture brought to Egypt by AFCA -- where not random is the key term. Indeed the bottom line in all creative activities for children, to quote the first and core principle of the same Charter, is that children have a right to access art in all its forms: theatre, music, dance, literature, poetry, cinema, visual and multimedia arts.

And even if Hakawy is but a few days a year, its impact is very strong. The festival is part of a bigger mission of bringing arts to children, one that is carried on throughout the year by AFCA for Arts and Culture.

While organising many creative journeys, many of them completely new to young Egyptians, Hakawy encapsulates all components that other platforms present separately, topping them with AFCAs sustainability and awareness of the gaps in the educational system.

In Hakawy, we find an evident professionalism braided with passion; the teams dedication, the hand-picked artistic selection, the strategic thinking and brilliant execution all fit into one festival to bring about the newest concepts and formats of shows, meetings and workshops.

This year, the festival came with a new assortment of plays, storytelling, fun activities and numerous new components. The international performances included H2ommes from France, Kite Without String from the Netherlands, The Secret Life of Suitcases by Unicorn Theatre from UK and Lula Del Ray from the USA.

The shows introduced a few new performing art formats to Egypts children: the US troupe for example presented manual cinema fused with shadow theatre. Taking the procedure a step further, the performances creators were present on stage, taking care of the overhead projectors, shadow theatre elements or live music. Becoming an integral part of the enveloping story they allowed the children to grasp all the elements and mechanisms that go into performing arts creation.

Moreover, following one of the shows, the Manual Cinema troupe invited the young audience on stage, explaining the technical aspects of the show and answering their questions.

Usually the audience enjoys the theatre watching the story taking place on the stage, and is not involved in the hidden components that constitute the performance. In this context the US performance was one of a kind, especially for the Egyptian children who are rarely offered this interesting approach to art. The same can be said about the H2ommes troupe from France.

In their visually captivating production, the creators brought together the projections techniques, shadows, an actor, a musician and a few props. At the same time, this dreamy and in many ways highly comic performance braided the elements of theatre with those of a musical concert, where live music, singing and sound effects are all produced by one man seated on stage. The musician is emotionally involved in the performance, reacts to the events happening two steps from his instruments, pots and pans alongside all possible tools that make sounds.

Equally interesting are Kite Without String from the Netherlands and The Secret Life of Suitcases from the UK. Both touch on many human values. The latter presents a puppeteer on stage who embarks on a wonderful journey. The play aims at pointing up and awakening our awareness of life values which we often tend to overlook, preoccupied as we are by our daily routines and responsibilities, as is the case with the plays protagonist trapped in his office life.

Apart from the shows staged at the Hanager Arts Centre, the UK and the US performers visited Cairos Children Cancer Hospital 57357 where they presented elements of their work to patients unable to leave their rooms.

This is one of the regular practices of the Hakawy festival: reaching out to all children, including those who cannot, for a variety of reasons, show up at the performance venue. On the other hand, AFCA initiated cooperation with a few NGOs working with differently abled children, bringing them to the shows in buses.

In this way Hakawy follows the 15th principle of the Charter of Childrens Rights to Arts and Culture: Children have the right to artistic and cultural projects devised in consideration of their different abilities.

Above the international plays, this year the festival added a lot of new elements to its programming, such as a film screening (Yellowbird/Gus  Petit oiseau, grand voyage, a 2014 animated movie from France), six professional storytellers in addition to the already well known to Hakawy Bibliothequebus) and two seminars for parents, one discussing aspects of positive parenting and how to immerse children in the arts through parenting (led by Sara Seif) and another tackling the issue of multiple intelligence and how we can discover and capitalise on our childrens potential (led by Zahraa Rizk).

Both seminars saw a large attendance with mothers from all social strata participating in the discussions while their children enjoyed the plays taking place next door.

Also on the fringe, Hakawy included a second phase of the Culture is a Field of Work seminar, an event that brought together several cultural players who spoke to young students about career development possibilities within the arts and culture field. The students were encouraged to apply for internships offered by the speakers institutions.

Following the previous years practice, the eighth Hakawy festival filled the Hanager and its vicinity with a bubbling commotion, with groups of children surrounding a storyteller, others enjoying a play taking place at one of the theatre spaces. Children kept running around the location, laughing, sharing their impressions with one another and their parents.

After all, the ninth principle of the Charter of Childrens Rights to Arts and Culture states, Children have the right to share the pleasure of the artistic experience with their families.

Children enjoyed the events and shared their experiences, but parents, school teachers and other caregivers all benefitted from the activities as well, and not only through the aforementioned seminars. By providing a large assortment of activities, plays, workshops, storytelling, the festival creates the general spirit of art and fun, showcasing to parents and caregivers that art is an extremely important part of the development of young minds.

As Mohamed El Ghawy reveals, the festivals audience reached 10 thousand attending and participating in activities across all levels. This includes regular families coming to attend Hakawys events, children brought by bus from public schools in Cairo and Minya, children from the NGOs, and from the Children Cancer Hospital 57357, not to mention the many beneficiaries of events tailored for parents.

With the closing of the Hakawy International Arts Festival for Children, we are left with many beautiful experiences and a touch of sadness that one more year has to pass before the festival returns with new creative, educational and fulfilling journeys. It seems like a long wait, though in the meantime children can enjoy the many offerings provided by AFCA organisation throughout the year.

El Ghawy says he will do his best to keep the level of quality work, and at the same time he hopes the festival will expand into other governorates and onto new stages, in addition to extending the number of festival days. With AFCAs dynamism and professionalism, the sky is the limit.



This article was first published in Al Ahram Weekly

Ahram Online and Al-Ahram Weekly are media sponsors of this year's Hakawy festival.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip on Friday for humanitarian cases for a period of two days, the Palestinian embassy in Cairo said.

This is the third opening of the border crossing this year so far.

The north Sinai crossing is the major gateway to the outside world for 1.8 million Palestinians living in the besieged coastal enclave, as it is the only border not controlled by Israel.

Egypt has largely kept the border closed in recent years due to security concerns, following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Palestinian rivals Hamas and Fatah agreed to hand over responsibility for the Rafah crossing to a unity government as part of an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal in October 2017 but the deal soon collapsed.



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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his bumptious way, continues to defy international will and to heap scorn on universally held humanitarian values and international law through his curious and, indeed, suspicious refusal to acknowledge Turkeys responsibility for its crimes against humanity perpetrated against the Armenian people during World War I.

Although the Ottoman Empire still existed at the time, Turkey is the heir to that empire, the glorious feats of which Erdogan never ceases to boast of.

Ironically, three years ago, the Ottoman Empires allies in World War I, Germany and Austria, did recognise the systematic campaign that Istanbul initiated against the Armenian people in 1915 as the crime of genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948.

Genocide is the ultimate crime against humanity and the atrocities that the Ottoman authorities unleashed against a significant ethnic component of their population fit the definition.

Turkeys continued refusal to recognise the Armenian Genocide is all the more curious given that, in 1919, the Ottoman government itself prosecuted a number of senior Ottoman officials on the charges of perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity (the term, genocide, had not yet been coined) against the Armenians.

Despite the volumes of concrete evidence, the tales of survivors, the first hand eyewitness reports, official correspondence by contemporary foreign ambassadors and consuls in Istanbul, the memoirs of foreign officials and other individuals, and in spite of the many governments and parliaments that have studied such documents and resolved that they contain conclusive evidence of genocide, Turkey persists in its inexplicable obstinacy.

The right to learn the truth about such human rights abuses is a basic and inalienable human right. Access to the truth about the past is fundamental to peoples ability to form accurate perceptions of the present and to shape their common future.

Turkeys Armenian Genocide denial not only flies in the face of humanitarian values, it is also the major obstacle to the normalisation of relations between Turkey and Armenia, an issue that will need to be resolved in accordance with the principles of justice and humanitarianism in order for Turkey to gain EU membership.

The current Turkish government claims that no more than 300,000 Armenians died in 1915 and that the causes of their death were hunger, starvation and poor weather conditions during their deportations to the Levant.

It claims that not a single bullet had been fired against them by the Turkish military escorts who were sent along to protect the Armenians during their forced marches.

President Erdogan, himself, has alluded to the human rights violations against the Armenians on numerous occasions but he refuses to call it genocide, as though the other systematic crimes against humanity perpetuated against them were some kind of exception to the rule.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide lists more than killing as a means of mass murder or genocide. Article II of the convention states:

In the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Clearly the intent of the foregoing provisions is to safeguard minority groups and mankind in general from the predations of despotic regimes that do not value human life or are incapable of according equal value to the lives and human dignity of their citizens without discrimination.

It is in this context that the discovery and dissemination of the truth acquires its crucial importance as the purpose goes beyond the acquisition of truth for truths sake to the realisation of numerous noble ends.

These include contributing to the restoration and preservation of peace; preventing persons who committed, conspired to commit, incited or were otherwise complicit in genocide from escaping justice; deterring the recurrence of such human rights violations and atrocities; helping the victims of such injustices seek redress and compensation; excluding former politicians associated with such regimes from the political arena; and the restoration of sovereignty and the rule of law.

Knowledge of the truth is a crucial component of the process of social reconciliation after periods of despotic rule, as it helps remedy the inter-communal rifts and fissures that were generated by dictatorial regimes. This definitely applies to the Turkish case.

Many countries have become models for processes of acknowledging international crimes they had committed against innocent civilians.

The processes have included public apologies and various forms of compensation. Italys reparations to Libya for the injustices perpetrated under Romes colonial rule is an excellent example.

Another major example is Germanys recognition of the Jewish Holocaust, the Nuremberg trials to convict Nazi war criminals and German reparations paid to the victims of the injustices perpetrated by the Third Reich and their descendants.

Moreover, these processes underscore the fact that crimes of genocide and other crimes against humanity are not subject to any statute of limitations and that their perpetrators may not be granted amnesty or vindicate themselves on their grounds of the obligations of their official duties.

Sadly, the Turkish despot, Sultan Erdogan, remains blind to such models and why they are necessary.

The recent decision on the part of The Netherlands parliament to recognise the Armenian Genocide of 1915 coincided with the appeal on the part of a large number of members of the Egyptian parliament to do likewise.

To Egypt, moreover, the Armenian cause and the justice of this cause has special historic and contemporary meaning.

Egypt was one of the first countries in the world to welcome Armenian refugees fleeing the tyranny of the Ottoman regime. These refugees would go on to contribute to the Egyptian renaissance in the decades that followed World War I.

As for the present, Egyptian-Armenian relations have broadened and deepened rapidly at both the official and popular levels in many fields.

Ultimately, the truth will prevail. It will not go away simply because Erdogan refuses to see it.

The progress of human civilisation and the future of mankind are contingent on the ability to allow the truth to shine.

Unfortunately, Erdogan and many other Turks continue to opt for the Hitler approach: Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? As history and the experiences of other countries have shown, they are placing their bets on a losing wager.



The writer is visiting professor of international law at Strasburg International Institute for Human Rights, France.

*This article was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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New York City is mourning the death of firefighter Michael R. Davidson, who was trapped and killed while fighting a fire on the set of an upcoming film.

'Motherless Brooklyn' Tragedy

On Thursday, March 22, a fire created havoc on the film set of Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, and Alec Baldwin's upcoming movie, Motherless Brooklyn. According to the New York Post, the fire broke out from the basement of 773 Saint Nicholas Ave. around 11 p.m. CBS News stated that the building where the fire took place was St. Nick's Jazz Pub.

The New York City government had designated the Harlem building one of the city's historical landmarks. Sources stated that Norton and several crewmembers were spotted preparing to film a scene for the movie when the Incredible Hulk star noticed flames erupting from the building.

"As soon as we noticed smoke coming up into our set, our crew immediately altered the fire department and began alerting residents of the building even as we evacuated our cast and crew," said Motherless Brooklyn's producers in a statement to CBS News.

New York City native Juan Rosa was one of the eyewitnesses that were there on the scene. He bravely captured several photos of the West Harlem fire. Three West Harlem residents were reportedly injured during the fire but their injuries were not life-threatening.

RIP Michael R. Davidson

Davidson and two other New York Fire Department firefighters fought their way into the building. The 37-year-old rushed into the building holding the nozzle to the water hose. However, Davidson and his two colleagues got separated as the monstrous fire's flames gained weight, and sadly, the father of four was separated from the pack.

"He was found unconscious on the floor and despite the best efforts of the FDNY and EMTs, they were unable to revive him," said FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro in a statement to the New York Post.

Before his death, Davidson served for 15 years as a member of Harlem's Engine Company 69. According to the FDNY, he is the 1,150th New York firefighter to die in the line of duty. Davidson leaves behind his wife, Eileen, and their four daughters. Two other firefighters were injured fighting the massive blaze while over 200 firefighters from across the city were able to put it under control around 2:30 a.m. on Friday, March 23.

All About Norton

In addition to filming Motherless Brooklyn, Norton's voice could be heard in Wes Anderson's animated comedy, Isle of Dogs. Several media critics such as Rotten Tomatoes, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Daily Beast gave the film high marks.

Norton may also not be vacationing with fellow actor Leonardo DiCaprio again anytime in the future. In 2016, he had to rescue the Oscar-winning actor from a watery grave in the Galapagos Islands when he lost air in his scuba gear.Even though Khloe Kardashian has three other sisters, it appears that she's really missing her baby sister, Kylie Jenner, right now.

On Friday, March 23, the expectant mom took to Instagram to share a throwback photo of herself and Jenner as they pose with Snapchat's heart filter.

"I miss you!!! (We were both blonde and pregnant here)," Kardashian labeled the photo.

Khloe And Kylie's Baby Bumps

The Good American designer is probably having sister withdrawals as she and Jenner were pregnant at the same time.

As per reports, the 20-year-old lip kit maven waited until she gave birth to her daughter, Stormi Webster, to confirm that she was with child. Stormi is the first child for Jenner and her boyfriend, rapper Travis Scott. Jenner took to Instagram to reveal that her baby girl arrived on Feb. 1. She also apologized to her fans for keeping her pregnancy a secret.

"My pregnancy was one I chose to prepare for this role of a lifetime in the most positive, stress-free, and healthy way I knew how," the reality star wrote.

Following her pregnancy announcement, Kardashian congratulated her little sister by sharing a photo of the two as they showed off their baby bumps.

"I'll miss you bumping along with me. Never in a million years did I think we would do this together but it's been that much more special because of it," Kardashian captioned the photo.

Khloe's Pregnancy

As previously reported, Kardashian is staying in Cleveland, Ohio until she gives birth to her daughter. The mother-to be wants to be closer to her boyfriend, Tristan Thompson, since he plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers. According to People, Kardashian's family will fly in to be with her when it's baby time.

"Khloe is in Cleveland and plans to stay there until the baby is born. She is too far along to fly back and forth," the source stated.

Unlike Jenner, Kardashian decided to confirm her pregnancy three months in. The Strong Looks Better Naked author also took to Instagram to reveal that she was with child. The denim designer shared a black and white photo of her and Thompson's hands around her growing belly.

Kardashian is presumed to expect her first child sometime in April.

Kardashian's baby girl will make the third girl for the Kardashian-Jenner this year as Kylie gave birth to Stormi and Kim Kardashian welcomed Chicago West via surrogate on Jan. 15.New mom Kylie Jenner has shared yet another adorable photo of her newborn daughter, Stormi Webster. This time, everyone can see Stormi's adorable face and chubby cheeks!

Jenner didn't share a photo of her daughter until she was 1-month-old. In that particular photo, Jenner is seen holding her newborn and Stormi's face is slightly soon. Prior to this, the reality star shared a photo of Stormi clinging on to her finger.

stormiiiiiiiii A post shared by Kylie (@kyliejenner) on Mar 23, 2018 at 12:23pm PDT

The 20-year-old has received nothing but praise from those close to her. From her mom, Kris Jenner, to her best friend, Jordyn Woods, everyone has stated that Jenner is "learning as she goes" and is a "great mom".

"I think no matter who your best friend is, it's important to be there for them and be supportive, and obviously you want to help guide them in whatever decision they make because everyone is their own person. They make their own decision. It's just your job to be there as a friend to be supportive," Woods said of Jenner.

Jenner has apparently always wanted to be a mom according to those close to her.

Kylie's Motherhood Journey

The reality star's pregnancy was reported in the summer of 2017. Though Jenner did not publicly confirm nor deny these reports, the beauty mogul was not seen in public throughout the rest of 2017. Jenner was also noticeably absent from the annual Kardashian Christmas card that is showcased in the month of December.

Jenner did not confirm her pregnancy until four days after her daughter was born, on Feb. 4. The makeup mogul shared a lengthy post announcing the birth of her daughter as well her decision to keep her first pregnancy a secret and apologizing to her fans for not being honest with them.

Jenner also released an 11-minute video dedicated to her daughter that also documented her pregnancy journey.

The Keeping Up with The Kardashians star has received backlash since the birth of her daughter. Jenner was criticized for allegedly drinking while on a quick trip to Miami with her boyfriend, and father of her child, Travis Scott.

The reality star was also slammed for wearing long nails around her daughter.Film director Darren Aronofsky revealed that his ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Lawrence, lost control of her emotions when they filmed Mother!

An 'Emotionally Overwhelmed' Experience

Aronofsky revealed in a new interview with The Economist Radio that he was not responsible for pushing the Oscar-winning actress to the point where she injured her diaphragm on set. The director stated Lawrence's acting method took her over the edge and added that it lead to her injury.

"I wasn't pushing Jennifer on that day. I was pulling her back, [encouraging her] to remember that we were just making a movie," said Aronofsky to The Economist Radio in a conversation transcribed by Metro.

The Black Swan and The Fighter director revealed that he does not work well with method actors. Aronofsky added that he liked working with actors who leave their work for the camera and go back to normal once he yells cut. He also stated that what happened to Lawrence was very rare.

"I've never had that situation where an actor was so emotionally ... um ... overwhelmed by the material that they lost control and hurt themselves," said Aronofsky.

The End Of Lawrence And Aronofsky

Once the film wrapped production, Aronofsky began a relationship with Lawrence that started in September 2016. However, several obstacles came between them. Many people thought that their age differences might have been a significant factor in the breakup. Lawrence was 27 years old, and Aronofsky was 48 years old when the couple broke up in November 2017. The final nail in the couple's coffin was the negative reviews that surrounded Mother! and Aronofsky's obsession with perfecting the film.

As Jennifer Lawrence Turns

The spunky star of Joy and Silver Linings Playbook has made several news headlines over the past few weeks. Lawrence admitted to that she does not want to have sex, as she is scared that she is worried about receiving a sexually transmitted disease. In that same conversation, Lawrence revealed that she is also a germaphobe.

She also faced multiple dating rumors head-on. There were rumblings in the gossip world that Lawrence was dating her Red Sparrow costar Joel Edgerton. Numerous media outlets reported that Edgerton met Lawrence's family while they were in New York City, and several sources close to the American Hustle actress stated how much her family liked him after their dinner date.

Oscars And Housewives

Lawrence turned heads at the 2018 Academy Awards. While she presented the Best Actress award for acting icon Jodie Foster, she was spotted by numerous event attendees climbing over the Dolby Theatre chairs. Lawrence was carrying a wine glass in almost every photo inside the Los Angeles performance venue.

Before she traveled to Los Angeles for the Oscars, Lawrence visited Watch What Happens Live! With Andy Cohen on March 1. Cohen surprised her with a dream Real Housewives dinner with two of her favorite cast members of The Real Housewives of New York, Bethenny Frankel and Luann de Lesseps. Lawrence was overwhelmed by Cohen's kindness and shared glasses of wine with the celebrities.Hip-hop artist Tyga may never give up his quest to prove that Stormi Webster, Kylie Jenner's daughter, is actually his.

Since the birth of the latest Kardashian-Jenner member, Tyga has reportedly begged her mother to see the beautiful bundle of joy.

Now, the rapper may be recruiting someone else to help arrange a meeting with Stormi.

Tyga Enlist Scott's Help

After reportedly harassing Jenner, the rapper has now reached out to Scott Disick for help. Disick, who is the father of Kourtney Kardashian's children, is still on good terms with Tyga and the Kardashian family.

Despite the fact that Jenner and her boyfriend, Travis Scott, do not want Tyga around their daughter, Tyga thinks Disick could potentially talk to Jenner and let him see the baby.

"Tyga has been begging Scott for help to meet baby Stormi. Tyga has been dying to see Kylie's baby to decide in person if the baby could look like him at all. It really bothers Tyga that Kylie had a baby with someone else," a source close to Tyga stated.

The rapper also decided to reach out to Disick after seeing the most recent picture of Stormi on Jenner's Instagram account. The makeup mogul shared an adorable black and white selfie with Stormi on Friday, March 23, 2018. Jenner has since taken the photo down.

Several fans did a side by side comparison of Stormi's photo and a picture of Tyga when he was a young boy.

Tyga And Kylie's Relationship

Jenner was reportedly 16 when she began dating the "Rack City" rapper. The two weren't seen in public until Jenner turned 18 and the then-couple went on vacation in Mexico for the reality star's birthday.

The couple announced their split in April 2017 and Jenner started dating Scott right away.

Prior to his relationship with Jenner, Tyga was engaged to model and former stripper, Blac Chyna. The two have a son together, King Cairo Stevenson. Ironically, Blac Chyna would later engage in a relationship with Jenner's elder half-brother, Rob Kardashian, and have a daughter with him.

Jenner gave birth to her daughter, Stormi, on Feb. 1, 2018. The makeup mogul did not confirm her pregnancy until four days after her daughter was born.Teen Mom 2 star Briana DeJesus is taking aim at her former boyfriend, Javi Marroquin, and Marroquin's ex-wife, Kailyn Lowry.

Nearly two months after their split, DeJesus continues to talk badly about Marroquin, and in her latest interview, she's targeted the reality dad as "needy" and claimed that he simply can't function when he's not involved in a relationship.

I just feel bad for him. Hes looking to fill some kind of void. He wants to be in a relationship so bad, with Kail or anybody else. He doesnt know how to stay alone. Thats his downfall, DeJesus told Radar Online on March 23.

Javi Marroquin Is Currently Dating Lauren Comeau

While Marroquin recently confirmed that he and his former girlfriend, Lauren Comeau, are back together, DeJesus told the outlet that he was recently caught texting his ex-wife while on vacation with her. As some may have seen, Marroquin and Comeau surfaced in Lexington, Kentucky with his young son, four-year-old Lincoln, and attended Comic and Toy Con while in town.

Despite Marroquin's relationship with Comeau, rumors have been swirling in regard to a potential reunion between him and Lowry, which DeJesus claims will never happen.

Theyre never going to be together. It is way too toxic, DeJesus said of their relationship.

Kailyn Lowry And Javi Marroquin Are Always Back And Forth

According to DeJesus, Lowry and Marroquin appeared to be in a vicious cycle of being friends and fighting throughout the time she was dating Marroquin. However, when it comes to the reason behind their ongoing feuds, DeJesus blames Lowry, claiming the longtime Teen Mom 2 star is only open to being civil with Marroquin when she isn't dating someone. Otherwise, DeJesus said she wants nothing to do with Marroquin.

How Does Briana DeJesus Feel About Kailyn Lowry?

During her interview with Radar Online, DeJesus said that while she doesn't hate Lowry, they certainly aren't close friends. In fact, she could care less if Lowry is in her life.

DeJesus went on to say that she hopes Lowry and Marroquin will ultimately decide to put their differences aside and maintain a healthy co-parenting relationship for the sake of their kids. As fans well know, Lincoln and Lowry's oldest son, 8-year-old Isaac, have been close for years and love getting to spend time with one another.Not long ago, the headline of an article in The Independent, a British newspaper, read Poverty in Egypt: How the Turbulence of the Arab Spring Revolution has led the Country to Economic Ruin, with the article going on to say that the policies of President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi have done little to improve the lives of ordinary Egyptians.

 It went on from there to add that some Egyptians were unable to put food on the table as they were on the brink of poverty and were having to tighten their belts further. It also spoke about tumbledown dwellings in the Doweqa district, saying that residents had nowhere to sleep when their homes collapsed. It focused on what it said were neglected rural areas with no opportunities for growth.

Though the article mentioned the social-support system available to the poor through programmes such as Takaful and Karama and the state rehousing scheme, as a whole it produced a kind of doomsday image of contemporary Egypt.

Reading the article, I wondered if the author realised how narrow his vision was.

Undoubtedly, more needs to be done for Egypts poor, but to intentionally overlook the efforts that are being made is appalling.

However, The Independent, like many other Western media outlets, has often misinformed its readers by focusing on the negatives and neglecting to mention the positive things that are happening in Egypt.

Are the poor really being overlooked in the current race-against-time to improve the status of all Egyptians? Are they getting their fair share of support? Do the governments current mega-projects really cater for the wealthy alone?

Consider the broad improvements that are affecting everyone, wealthy and non-wealthy alike. When Egypt builds a new road network, now totalling some 7,000 km, this serves the mega-projects and other businesses.

Commodities arrive faster and businesses perform more efficiently, both of which are vital for the development process.

However, that new road network also serves bus and vehicle passengers, motorists and truck drivers, and regular commuters. Safe, dependable roads save all travellers time and reduce the number of road accidents.

According to the article, by building dubious mega-projects the country is being subjected to years of austerity. Lets look at one such mega-project.

The Benban Solar Park, the biggest solar installation in the world, will have an enormous impact on Upper Egypt, the poorest region in the country. It will employ 4,000 workers, provide clean energy, jump-start growth and curb carbon emissions.

Mohamed Emara, an engineer working on the Solar Park, says the project has improved the lives of the local community in the Aswan governorate and that it is currently employing thousands of workers.

Many of the people working on this site have never had steady employment before. They were mostly day labourers. But now they are being trained and [receiving] skills that will help them find work on other projects, he said.

The same thing goes for other mega-projects. Development projects such as the countrys new cities or the Suez Canal Corridor, lead to economic growth, and this positively affects local people as much as the economy in general.

Now lets focus on how those in need are being directly helped by Egypts social-support system. In order to rid the country of its worst informal housing areas, some of which are deemed unsafe, the government has embarked on dozens of housing projects that have relocated thousands of residents to high-rise apartment buildings such as those in Hayy Al-Esmarat.

There they enjoy clean running water, electricity, a safe environment, and dignity and respect. People who previously lived in Doweqa, Establ Antar, Ezbet Khairallah and other areas of Cairo and other cities in Egypt are now being moved to cleaner, better dwellings.

The achievements of this programme are there for all to see, and they have been pointed to in a recent World Bank Bulletin.

The Egypt Inclusive Housing Finance Programme will reach 3.6 million people, including an estimated 1.6 million beneficiaries living below the poverty line. It will also contribute to generating an estimated 1.5 million construction jobs over a five-year period, the life of the programme, the Bulletin has noted.

The Takaful and Karama programmes that make up part of the countrys social security system have already reached close to two million families from the countrys poorest and most marginalised populations.

Through the income support that these programmes provide, those in need, often the elderly and disabled, are helped to live decent lives. While that assistance may in some cases unfortunately still not be enough, the fact that it is there is undeniable, and it is making an enormous difference.

Egypts current economic reform programme includes provisions to ensure that those in need continue to be protected. Electricity is thus still subsidised by the state for certain bands of consumers, bread subsidies remain untouched, and dozens of foodstuffs, including sugar, rice, tea and cooking oil also remain subsidised. Egypt set aside LE330 billion ($18 billion) in the 2017-2018 budget for such subsidies.

The Aman insurance programme is another state-led programme providing support for those who need it.

This is a life-insurance programme serving workers in the informal sector, including casual, seasonal, daily-hire and temporary workers, who are estimated to number around 15 million.

The Aman programme provides insurance coverage in cases of natural or accidental death, paying beneficiaries lump sums of between LE10,000 and LE250,000, or monthly pensions of LE200 to LE1,000 over five years or LE120 to LE600 over 10 years depending on the coverage.

It is undeniable that the Hepatitis C virus has affected many of the countrys poorer people.

However, through a state-financed campaign that has been little short of a miracle almost two million people have been cured of this disease at little or no expense to them personally.

Economic growth alone is not worth much if it does not translate into better livelihoods for all members of society, especially for those in need.

The poor are definitely not left to fend for themselves in Egypt.

*This article was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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Glendower GC, City of Ekurhuleni, Gauteng, South AfricaBIOCHAR is a product from Energy Farmers Australia (EFA) which was discussed at the Talkin Healthy Soils conference at Dalwallinu on Tuesday, March 13.

Energy Farmers Australias director Euan Beamont told the audience of 35 people about the benefit for healthy soils that he had seen using the product.

EFA company was formed in 2010 with Mr Beamonts business partner Tom Vogan, an engineer in the oil and gas sector.

Being the farmer, I am the idealist and being the engineer, he is the realist, said Mr Beamont, who farms at Mullewa.

He started the business because he believed there was an opportunity for farmers to turn their agricultural waste into something else.

EFA moved into biochar development and is trialling the product on many farms.

Our journey into biochar began with a phone call from a poultry farmer who said he wanted to create energy out of his waste, so we put the design together and built the technology, he said.

Biochar is made from agriculture residue such as poultry litter, stubble, lupin trash and wood stock that is slowly burnt under restricted oxygen conditions resulting in a charcoal.

We process anything from macadamia shells to spinifex and we are trying to build a database of different types of char, he said.

EFA had to install a dryer into their design so the moisture content remained about 15 per cent.

Testing the material beforehand and how much energy they are getting out of the process is part of a databank EFA is building.

t Continued on page 59

s Continued from page 40

Afterwards there is always an analysis of the nutrients itself, he said.

Topical at the conference was the importance of microbes and carbon with Mr Beamont explaining how biochar benefits the habitat for soil microbes and also increases carbon catchment.

For every tonne of biochar that is put in the ground now, there is the potential to generate carbon credits, which is makes biochar a market on the move, he said.

One trial that EFA is working on is a cucumber farm in Walkaway where the soil is very sandy and the farmer has had problems with nutrient leaching.

Biochar was used to see if a poultry litter mix would hold in the nutrients.

Mr Beamont said rows of biochar were laid and incorporated it into the soil of a depth about 300 millimetres.

He said the trial showed biochar increased fertiliser efficiency and with 13 kilograms of biochar, 9kg of poultry manure and 5kg of Nitrofoska, the cucumber farmer produced a gross margin of about $487 a tonne.

Poultry litter biochar is valued at about $750/t with other biochar products ranging from $100-$1000/t, its no cheap investment but Mr Beamont is certain of the benefits that the product can bring to soils.For the past two northern hemisphere winters, stylish womens fashion jackets made in a variety of styles, lengths and colours from an innovative double-faced woollen fabric, has driven apparel manufacturer and wool processor demand for WAs natural fibre.

Fashion trends have long overtaken traditional wool clothing  as in winter uniforms for the military and public services providers like train drivers  as the significant determinant of demand for wool in China.

Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX) statistics show 75 per cent of all Australian wool sold is destined for China and Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) research indicates about half of it stays there after processing and manufacture.

So Chinese winter fashion trends are expected to play a big role in determining demand and price levels into the future at the Western Wool Centre (WWC).

Wool buyers who deal into China say although it is spring there now, with winter still nine months away, the fashion houses are already looking ahead at what garments they will produce and promote for next winter.

They are also looking at what fabrics they will use and at the latest fabric innovations on offer.

According to wool buyers at the WWC, decisions those fashion houses make in the next month or so on what they produce and stockpile over summer and autumn and promote for next winter, will have a significant influence on whether the wool market continues to rise into next season.

No one is yet convinced the double-faced womens jackets will be a big fashion item for the third winter in a row, but they also expect wool to be a part of any replacement fashion trend.

Until decisions like that are made in China, most buyers like Modiano Australia wool buyer Greg Horne, expect the WWC market to mark time for a period.

I dont think we will see it (market) fall much or rise much for a while, particularly on volumes (of wool available), Mr Horne said.

Buyers expect strong demand for better specification wools to continue but faultier types  the dry autumn and winter last year, followed by sudden rains and a rush of spring growth resulted in a lot of less desirable mid-break wools this season  becoming more difficult to sell at current price levels.

This prospect appears to be borne out in last weeks trading at the WWC.

For the first time this year the volume of wool passed in at the live auction on Wednesday, having failed to reach reserve prices set by growers and brokers, went past 20 per cent.

During trading the passed-in rate at one stage hit 25pc, or a quarter of the wool being rejected by buyers because they were not happy with the specification or thought growers wanted too much money for it.

At the end of the day 22.9pc of the wool on offer failed to find a buyer, the highest passed-in rate since last September, according to AWEX technical controller at the WWC, Andrew Rickwood.

Effectively, that put demand for the wool on offer on Wednesday last week back to levels prior to its record-smashing price run from November through to mid February.

There has now been four trading days since a price record was set at the WWC and by the end of last week the Western Indicator had eased a further 25 cents per kilogram to 1834c clean, still well ahead of the benchmark Eastern Market Indicator which dropped 27c to 1751c/kg.

The finer end of the WA market, 18-19 micron wools, were hardest hit, dropping up to 70c/kg, while the mid and broader micron wools finished down between 25c and 40c.

Buyers were less critical on Thursday last week and the passed-in rate eased to 7.8pc.

This weeks WWC offering was forecast to be about 550 fewer bales than last week, at 9048, with some no doubt making a reappearance, albeit with new reserve prices.

There will be no live-auction sales next week at the WWC due to Easter.The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike.

We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve.2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Fauquier community has proven resilient. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning --

4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS.

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We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Fauquier Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come.Kylie Jenner has dropped out of a lawsuit against Blac Chyna.

Kylie Jenner

The 20-year-old reality star had joined her half-brother, Rob Kardashian, in suing his former fiancee for allegedly causing over $100,000 damage to a property they were renting to her, but as she had "no financial stake in the case", she's no longer a part of the action, TMZ reports.

Rob, 31, has sued Chyna for allegedly going on a rampage in December 2016 while high on drugs and alcohol, trying to choke him with an iPhone charging cable and trashing their home.

The sock designer repaired the damage to the abode himself, but a previous lawyer had had Kylie added to the suit.

She was withdrawn by her new lawyer, Shawn Holley.

As a result of Kylie being withdrawn from the case, a judge has denied Chyna's request for the lip kit guru to sit from a deposition.

However, the 'Rob & Chyna' star - who has son King Cairo, five, with her and Kylie's former boyfriend Tyga, and 16-month-old daughter Dream with Rob - is happy with the new development.

Her lawyer, Lisa Bloom, told RadarOnline.com: "We have maintained from the beginning that Kylie Jenner's case against my client Blac Chyna was meritless. We are pleased that after six months of litigation we were able to force Ms. Jenner to dismiss her case."

Meanwhile, Chyna has previously accused the Kardashian family of trying to ruin her career.

In her own legal action against various members of the clan - including Rob and Kylie, as well as their mother Kris Jenner and other siblings - she wrote: "The unwritten rule no one told (her) when she began her relationship with Kardashian is that the entire family will come after you if you leave, using their fame, wealth and power to take you down, including getting your television show cancelled (despite great ratings), spreading lies about you, and even funding a bogus lawsuit about a crumbled gingerbread house."Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release

SubCategory Select Sub-CategoryWhite House Chief of Staff General John Kelly had placed a call with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the last leg of his African tour, 9 March, asking him to shorten his five-country mission and head back to Washington DC, and that he may get a tweet.

The tweet in question would come from US President Donald Trump.

The news of the ouster of Tillerson came four days later, 13 March, and the promised tweet also included the appointment of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency as Tillersons successor.

Tillerson would remain on the job till 31 March, while his successor needs confirmation by the United States Senate.

The change at the helm of the State Department did not come as a surprise.

Talk of finding a replacement for Tillerson had become widespread in the Beltway from the last quarter of 2017.

The reasons were multiple and ranged from the absence of personal chemistry between the president and his secretary of state, and deep differences of opinion concerning vital questions in US foreign policy.

This ranged from how to deal with North Korea, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed between Iran and the P5+1 group in July 2015, and also, and not least, how to deal with the crisis of the Arab quartet and Qatar.

President Trump himself told reporters the same day the White House had announced the news that Really it was a different mind-set, a different thinking, speaking of Tillerson.

And true to form, he had high praise for Mike Pompeo, Tillersons replacement.

He expressed confidence that he is the right person for the job at this critical juncture, and he will continue our programme of restoring Americas standing in the world, strengthening our alliances, confronting our adversaries, and seeking the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

There are various interpretations for the decision to replace Tillerson. One pertains to framing it in a larger redirection of the Trump White House towards a multitude of international questions and crises that would put the United States in open conflict with other major powers.

In fact, the decision reflects the growing assertiveness of American foreign policy. And it would mark a clear break with the legacy of the previous US administration of former president Barack Obama, which operated in the context of building consensus with allies in dealing with major challenges to the security of the United States and NATO members  a foreign policy less confrontational in tone and practice.

We could argue that the one year that Tillerson had spent at Foggy Bottom was a transition from a foreign policy based on consensus to a confrontational and adversarial approach, not only towards enemies like Iran and North Korea, but also towards friends and allies.

Pompeo is the man best placed to carry out such a radical change in American foreign policy, whose far-reaching consequences on international peace and security are difficult to gauge at present.

This task is rendered all the more critical with rumours swirling around Washington DC that White House National Security Adviser General Herbert McMaster could also be out soon. General John Kelly assured White House staff that there wont be any changes in personnel, but this denial could be seen as something in the offing. He, himself, could be replaced.

Pompeo is a West Point graduate, went to Harvard Law School, and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2011 in the wave of the Tea Partys emergence in American politics.

He was adamantly opposed to the Iranian nuclear deal and had gone as far as calling for bombing Iranian nuclear sites in 2014.

At the time, he talked about a massive military strike that could take around 2,000 sorties to carry out, and that would have brought more havoc and destruction to the Middle East.

Early in 2017, he had written on Twitter that he was looking forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the worlds largest state sponsor of terrorism.

With 12 May as the next deadline approaching for certification or decertification of JCPOA, and the possibility that the United States will exit the deal, and with the re-imposition of American sanctions on Iran, no one knows what the recommendations of the new US secretary of state if confirmed by the Senate  will be, but a probable direct impact on the overall security situation in the larger Middle East is on the cards.

As far as North Korea is concerned, Pompeo is on record saying that regime change in Pyongyang would be a welcome development.

Speaking before the Aspen Security Forum last July, he pointed out, in dealing with North Korea, that the thing that is most dangerous about it, is the character [leader Kim Jong-un] who holds the control over North Koreas nuclear arsenal.

 Probably, he had not foreseen back then that he could someday be the secretary of state assisting President Trump negotiating these serious questions, the answers to which will have a direct impact on international peace and security.

Under Pompeo, American foreign policy is expected to become more hawkish, more assertive and confrontational.

His nomination squares with the new National Security Strategy of last December that designated, openly, both Russia and China, as in an adversarial relationship with the United States.

Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaking about the trio of Secretary of State Tillerson, Secretary of Defense General James Mattis and General Kelly, the White House chief of staff, said that they are those people that help separate our country from chaos.

One of them will be gone by the end of March, General Kelly is rumoured to be replaced, and General Mattis would find himself without moderates and consensus-seekers in the decision-making process in the White House, and more particularly in the National Security Council.

Paul Pillar, a former CIA official and a foreign policy expert working for the Centre for Security Studies at Georgetown University, as quoted in The New York Times, noted that there will be many issues in which the balance between a hard line and a more moderate view are finely balanced.

The probability is that under the stewardship of Pompeo, moderation would not characterise American foreign policy, neither in the Middle East, nor in Northeast Asia.

Let us fasten our seat belts for the bumpy road ahead.



The writer is former assistant foreign minister.

*This article was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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HON PM BAINIMARAMA AT THE UNVEILING OF THE RNZAF COMMEMORATIVE MONUMENT





Vinaka vakalevu. Nga Mihi. Thank you.

The Honourable New Zealand Minister of Defence.Honourable Ministers and members of the Fijian Parliament,The Pro-Chancellor and Chair of the USP Council,The Vice Chancellor and President of the University,Air Vice Marshal Kevin Short of the New Zealand Defence Force and service personnel,Your Excellency, the New Zealand High Commissioner to Fiji,Your Excellencies, members of the Diplomatic Corps,Distinguished Guests;Ladies and Gentlemen.Bula vinaka, Tena Koutou and a very good afternoon to you all,Today is a day of wonderful memories for many of us, and especially for those of you who once lived and worked here when it was a Royal New Zealand Air Force base and have returned five decades later to your old home. On behalf of every Fijian, I extend a special welcome to you all. You are among friends who deeply appreciate your own personal service to Fiji. And especially the strong bonds you helped forge between our nations so long ago that endure to this day.Today is also a day of celebration, as 50 years on, we unveil a permanent monument to the RNZAFs service to Fiji and also mark the first half century of the University of the South Pacific. Im proud that we have an artist in Fiji of the calibre of Shane Bower with the skill and imagination to come up with such a striking design. A fusion of technology and nature in the form of a Sunderland flying boat with the wings of a seabird. Vinaka vakalevu, Shane. Savusavu has a special reason to be proud today.Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, those of us of a certain age  and I am one of them  can still see in our minds eye the mighty Sunderlands that used to lumber over Suva as they came into land at Laucala Bay. We still remember the roar of their engines and the splash they made as they hit the water, landing as gracefully as any bird.In those days before television and the Internet, it was a favoured weekend pastime for countless families to come down and watch the take offs and landings. For any child like me at the time, it was hugely exciting. And we also remember the dashing Kiwi flight crews and support teams who became a part of the life of Suva but who suddenly left us one day in 1967. Roaring off into the distance and leaving behind a sudden stillness. And undoubtedly some broken hearts.It was the end of an era not only for the RNZAF but for every citizen of Suva whod become used to the overhead drone of the Sunderlands and the Catalinas before them. It was a reassuring sound  not a source of irritation  because you provided a sense of security, first in wartime and then through the many search and rescue missions you undertook that saved Fijian lives and the lives of our Pacific neighbours.The Kiwi presence here at Laucala Bay spanned 25 years from 1942  at the height of World War Two - to 1967, when the facilities here were turned over to create the University of the South Pacific  our first regional university.In September 1942, the 5 Squadron of the RNZAF transferred to Laucala Bay from the New Zealand mainland to take advantage of our strategic position for its wartime operations against Japan. Initially using Singapore Flying Boats and then Catalinas, the Squadron performed anti-submarine patrols and kept watch on the movements of suspected enemy ships and aircraft.Even during the war, the Catalinas were also used for humanitarian purposes, including air-sea rescues and to transport essential items to various Pacific islands. Post war, the number of military staff declined, but the Catalinas continued to carry out air-sea rescues and maritime reconnaissance. Throughout its life, the base was a large employer of Fijians, sustained a range of businesses and contributed greatly to the health of the local economy.When the Lau group was devastated by a hurricane in 1949, the Squadron flew emergency flights to 11 of its islands carrying vital food and medical supplies. In September 1951, with the signing of the ANZUS Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, New Zealand was assigned the principal responsibility for surveillance of the South West Pacific and the Catalinas were replaced with Sunderland Flying Boats. And throughout the 1950s and 1960s, these aircraft performed important intelligence gathering, search and rescue and medi-vac missions across the region.Among other things, they were engaged in the search for the missing vessel Joyita in 1955, the rescue of shipwrecked survivors from Minerva Reef in 1962. And more happily in 1963, supported the Royal Visit to Fiji by Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.Today we commemorate that proud record of service by the RNZAF to our region, which continues to this day with the aerial reconnaissance and rescue missions you still fly from the New Zealand mainland. We have been newly reminded of their vital importance just this week when one of your Orions located two missing fishermen from Kiribati adrift in their small boat 300 kilometres from home.Imagine the joy those men felt when  vulnerable and seemingly without hope in that vast expanse of ocean  the RNZAF lumbered into view. There have been many happy endings like this in the annals of your proud history. And for this, we salute you.Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, new friendships were forged just over two years ago when New Zealand came to our rescue in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Winston. The smiles and can do attitude of the flight surveillance crews and the sailors aboard the Canterbury left an indelible impression on Fijians in the affected areas. And to the Honourable Minister of Defence and the contingent of Kiwi servicemen and women here today, every Fijian joins me in again saying vinaka vakalevu, nga mihi, thank you.The ties we forged so long ago continue. They include close cooperation on defence and security and the policing of Fijis Exclusive Economic Zone. We especially appreciated the deployment last year of HMNZS Hawea for our Operation Wasawasa against illegal fishing. And we look forward to further joint operations in the future, as well as the continuation of our policing, customs and border security arrangements for Fiji and the region.Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, half a century ago, the RNZAF left us with a sound foundation on which to build this university. Money that would have otherwise had to be spent on building facilities was able to be focused on delivering quality education. And New Zealand continues to partner with Fiji and other Pacific countries to ensure that our young people are properly equipped to play their part in our development. As well as its close engagement with USP, New Zealand is working with Fijis Higher Education Commission to strengthen the standard of tertiary education in Fiji.I also want to acknowledge  as President of COP23  the support that New Zealand is providing for our presidency and your own commitment to the struggle against climate change. We look forward to working closely with the new government of Prime Minister Ardern to achieve maximum ambition and maximum action to reduce carbon emissions. And especially the forthcoming Talanoa Dialogue on raising the ambition of our Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs.It is critically important that we commit as a global community to limit the global temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above that of the pre-industrial age. With our current NDCs, we are heading for 3 degrees, which would spell disaster for everyone on the planet.So Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a fight just as perilous as the one we faced together in World War Two, if not more so. A fight for our very survival. And Fijians and other Pacific islanders look to New Zealanders to stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the climate struggle, just as you did more than 70 years ago.It is an honour to welcome the New Zealand Defence Minister and your delegation to Fiji and we look forward to more high-level visits in the future, including your Prime Minister, when the demands of a new baby permit it. Were very good with babies here in Fiji so it will be warmly welcomed too.Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, as with every family, Fiji and New Zealand have sometimes had our disagreements. But the friendship and, for many of our people, the kinship between Fijians and Kiwis is unbreakable. And we will always come to each others assistance, especially in times of crisis.I take great pride in representing the Fijian people in the unveiling of this Commemorative Monument to the 5 Squadron of the Royal New Zealand Air Force and also to mark the 50th anniversary of the University of the South Pacific. And as we celebrate this special day in our relationship, I ask you to convey the warmest greetings of every Fijian to the New Zealand people.SANTA MONICA, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 24, 2018 / If you are finding it difficult to find an affordable, small apartment to rent then the micro-unit might be your solution. Your unit can be as small as 140 square feet or as large as 400 square feet. They are also unique because they offer a choice of living arrangements. You can select from a shared-living arrangement or a self-contained unit. You will never need to go out to a laundromat as you can also select a unit with a washer and dryer.

Our country is faced with a shortage of a million housing units. Micro-units are slowly filling the need for housing in Los Angeles, Seattle and other areas needing additional units. Seattle had an increase of 550 micro-units in a span of four years. These houses are much less expensive to rent. For example, the average rent price in Seattle is $2,620. Yet, by renting a micro-unit, in one of the most desirable neighborhoods, it can be as little as $800 to $1,300. It is just a matter of time before Los Angeles takes advantage of these units in the urban areas, like in downtown.

Per Neil Shekhter, many people in the Los Angeles area would gladly support micro-units. There are few places available, under 400 square feet, in the big city. Many people, as has been witnessed around the world, will gladly exchange a smaller living space for a lower rent, as well as a more central location and the chance to live on their own. These people need to be given the option to do so.

Today, many people living in two and three-bedroom homes are no longer families. Instead, people are joining together becoming roommates, instead of families. They are choosing to live with others to save money and live in a nicer community. A recent Urban Land Institute survey discovered that 'ability to live alone' was one of the highest priorities of micro-unit tenants, following price and location. Living in a micro-unit allows for all of these. It is obvious that we need micro-unit housing for singles, young people, as well as for retirees. This also helps to remove some of the pressure off larger units, Neil Shekhter points out.

In large cities, such as Los Angeles, it is common to find surface parking lots ranging from 6,000 to 8,000 square feet. These lots would be perfect for development of micro-units. As it is now, these lots have been devalued because they are too small to accommodate multiple levels of garage parking. This is a prerequisite for most development in Los Angeles today. These parking lots offer a fantastic opportunity, today, to build affordable micro-units, according to Neil Shekhter, founder and CEO of Santa Monica-based NMS Properties.

One of the most difficult obstacles facing the building of micro-units involves density limits and parking requirements. The density issue results in larger units being built. Parking requires too much area for the space, often 350 square feet for a 300 square feet apartment. These restrictions were eliminated in 2007 while other requirements were revised, Neil Shekhter notes.

While micro-units are not for everyone they are the perfect solution for demanding jobs where the tenant simply needs a place to sleep, shower and store their belongings. The future is wide-open to new housing typologies, materials to build a home and construction techniques to meet an affordable housing market. There is no doubt that micro-units will play a major role in meeting the future housing demand.

Launching NMS Properties in 1988, Neil Shekhter assumed the role of CEO in January 1995. The real estate management company focuses on multi-family and mixed-use properties in the Greater Los Angeles area and in Santa Monica. At present, NMS properties manage more than 70 properties.

Over the course of 2017, NMS deployed 40 furnished units in Los Angeles, and Neil Shekhter plans to triple that number in 2018. The company currently manages some of its properties while testing a pilot with MY SUITE.

Apartments For Rent In Los Angeles NMS Residential: http://www.nmsresidential.com

NMS Properties - Real Estate Management Firm: http://www.nmsproperties.com

Contact Information: GAlberts@neilshekhterholdings.com

SOURCE: NMS Properties, Inc.NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 24, 2018 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Cemex, S.A.B. de C.V. ('Cemex' or the 'Company') (NYSE: CX) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 18-cv-02352, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Cemex American Depositary Receipts ('ADRs') between August 14, 2014 and March 13, 2018, both dates inclusive (the 'Class Period'). Plaintiff seeks to recover compensable damages caused by Defendants' violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the 'Exchange Act') and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder.

If you are a shareholder who purchased Cemex ADRs between August 14, 2014, and March 13, 2018, both dates inclusive, you have until May 15, 2018, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Cemex is a global building materials company that produces, distributes, and markets cement, ready-mix concrete, aggregates, and related building materials. Cemex operates throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Cemex executives had engaged in an unlawful bribery scheme in connection with the Company's business dealings in Colombia; (ii) discovery of the foregoing conduct would likely subject the Company to heightened regulatory scrutiny and potential criminal sanctions; (iii) the Company lacked adequate internal controls over financial reporting; and (iv) as a result, Cemex's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On September 23, 2016, post-market, Cemex disclosed the Company's dismissal of two senior executives after an internal probe found that payments worth $20 million relating to a land deal in Colombia had breached company protocols.

On this news, Cemex's American depositary receipt ('ADR') price fell $0.17, or 2.28%, to close at $7.26 on September 26, 2016.

On December 9, 2016, Cemex disclosed receipt of a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking information about irregular payments made at the Company's Colombia unit.

Then, on March 14, 2018, Cemex disclosed that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the Company over payments made by the Company related to a cement plant it is building in Colombia to determine whether any violations of federal bribery laws occurred.

On this news, Cemex's ADR price fell $0.12, or 1.64%, to close at $7.21 on March 14, 2018.

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.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLPNEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 24, 2018 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against BRF S.A. ("BRF" or the "Company") (NYSE: BRFS) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 18-cv-02213, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired BRF American Depositary Receipts ("ADRs") between April 4, 2013 and March 2, 2018, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"), seeking to recover damages caused by Defendants' violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act") and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, against the Company and certain of its top officials.

If you are a shareholder who purchased BRF ADRs between April 4, 2013 and March 2, 2018, both dates inclusive, you have until May 11, 2018, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

BRF S.A. is a food processor and the world's largest poultry exporter. Its portfolio includes established brands in Brazil and abroad, such as Sadia, Perdigao, Qualy, Chester, Perdix and Paty. The Company provides meat (poultry and pork), foods processed from meats, pizzas, pastas and frozen vegetables.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) BRF employees paid bribes to regulators and politicians to subvert inspections in order to conceal unsanitary practices at the Company's meatpacking plants; (ii) the foregoing conduct, when it came to light, would foreseeably subject the Company and its officers to heightened regulatory enforcement and/or prosecution; and (iii) as a result of the foregoing, BRF's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On March 17, 2017, news outlets reported that Brazilian federal police had raided the offices of BRF and dozens of other meatpackers following a two-year investigation into alleged bribery of regulators to subvert inspections of their plants. The probe, known as "Operation Weak Flesh", had uncovered some 40 cases of meatpackers who had bribed inspectors and politicians to overlook unsanitary practices, such as processing rotten meat and running plants with traces of salmonella. According to media reports, police found evidence that the companies were tampering with packages to sell products that had already expired and that higher-than permitted levels of parts such as "pig heads" were mixed with sausages and cold cuts. Police arrested three BRF employees, as well as 20 public officials.

On this news, BRF's ADR price fell $0.99, or 7.73%, to close at $11.81 on March 17, 2017.

On February 23, 2018, the Company held an earnings conference call with investors and analysts to discuss the Q4 2017 earnings results. In the call, Chairman of the Board Abilio Diniz and CFO Lorival Luz discussed the impact of "Operation Weak Flesh."

On this news, BRF's ADR price fell $0.76, or 8.00%, to close at $8.73 on February 23, 2018.

On March 5, 2018, Reuters reported that Brazilian federal police arrested BRF's former Chief Executive Officer ("CEO") Pedro de Andrade Faria ("Faria") on charges that he and other executives, including the Company's Vice President of Global Operations Helio dos Santos Junior, were aware that BRF committed fraud by trying to avoid food safety checks. According to the report, the "police cited evidence that five laboratories accredited by the Agriculture Ministry colluded with the analysis department of BRF to "falsify" test results related to the safety of its industrial process." In a court ruling authorizing the arrests, Brazilian federal judge Andre Duszczak said "Faria and other BRF officers sought to cover up claims of possible food contamination, as shown in certain laboratory tests, made by a former employee in a labor lawsuit."

On this news, BRF's ADR price fell $1.83 or 19.42% to close at $7.59 on March 5, 2018.

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

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLPA minor girl was allegedly gangraped and set on fire at Dhaniabheti Lalung Gaon in Assam's Nagaon district, police said on Saturday.

Nagaon (Assam): A minor girl was allegedly gangraped and set on fire at Dhaniabheti Lalung Gaon in Nagaon district, police said on Saturday.

One Zakir Hussain and four others raped the Class 5 girl when she was alone at home after returning from school on Friday evening, they said.

After committing the crime the rapists poured kerosene oil on her and set her ablaze. The girl died on Saturday morning at the BP Civil Hospital in Nagaon where she was admitted in a critical condition.

The police was looking for Zakir Hussain and his associates.

Angry locals attacked Zakir Hussain's house in protest, while students of the girl's school and the All Assam Students Union (AASU) demanded arrest of the accused.Any attempt by China to change the status quo along the Indian border may lead to another Doka La-like stand-off, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale has said, adding that the best way to prevent such incidents is through candid and frank talks

Beijing: Any attempt by China to change the status quo along the Indian border may lead to another Doka La-like stand-off, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale has said, adding that the best way to prevent such incidents is through candid and frank talks.

In an interview to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, Bambwale said the un-demarcated border between India and China is "the most serious problem between the two countries" and they need to redefine the boundary soon.

Bambawale said New Delhi will oppose the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) but won't let the difference over Belt and Road become a dispute with Beijing. He also downplayed the reports of India joining the bloc of the US, Japan and Australia to counter China.

The two militaries were locked in a 73-day stand-off at Doka La in the eastern sector of their border last year. The issue was resolved in August, only after souring the bilateral ties.

"In order to maintain the peace and tranquillity (along India-China border), there are certain areas, certain sectors which are very sensitive, where we must not change the status quo. If anyone changes the status quo, it will lead to a situation like what happened in Doka La," Bambawale said in the interview published on Saturday.

"The Chinese military changed the status quo in the Doka La area and therefore India reacted to it. Ours was a reaction to the change in the status quo by the Chinese military.

"... when incidents like Doka La happened last year, it meant that we were not frank and candid enough with each other. So we need to increase the level of frankness.

"In the sense that if the Chinese military is going to build a road, they must tell us 'we are going to build a road'. If we do not agree to it then we can reply that 'look, you're changing the status quo. Please don't do it. This is a very very sensitive area'," he said.

On India's concerns about China's Belt and Road project, Bambawale said if the initiative meets the norms of an international programme then New Delhi has no problem.

"One of the norms is that the project should not violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country. Unfortunately, there is this thing called the CPEC which violates India's sovereignty and territory integrity. Therefore, we oppose it."

The CPEC is the flagship project of China's Belt and Road project, a network of roads, ports and sea lanes that aims to connect Asia, Africa and Europe. India opposes it as it cuts through Kashmir held by Pakistan, but claimed by it.

"We might have differences of opinion on Belt and Road, but that we must not allow that difference of opinion to become a dispute," Bambawale said.

Asked about India's concerns over China making inroads into its neighbourhood, he said New Delhi was not worried about it.

"Let me tell you very clearly that India has its own relationships with all these countries. These are very strong relationships and India is also doing a lot of projects in countries like Maldives, Nepal or Sri Lanka. So, our relationships with these countries are very strong, they are historical, people-to-people contacts."

"I don't think we are worried about what China is doing. Those countries are free to have relationships with any third country, including China."

On the talks of India joining an emerging bloc called quad, Bambawale sought to allay China's fears. "I do not see India becoming part of any alliance. Let me also repeat what I have already said to you before."

"As far as four countries are concerned, let me tell you very clearly that India has never been a part of any alliance. I think countries like India and China are too big to be part of any alliance," he added.

The envoy said that there are hosts of bilateral meetings lined-up, including the one between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Summit in June.A student of class 12 has committed suicide in Delhi's Bakhtawar Pur area over alleged stalking by a neighbour.

A Class 12 student allegedly committed suicide in Delhi's Bakhtawar Pur area over stalking by a neighbour, according to several media reports.

Class 12 student allegedly commits suicide in #Delhi's Bakhtawar Pur area, relative says, 'She did it because a neighbour used to stalk her & also threatened to kill her parents.' Police probe underway. (23.03.2018) pic.twitter.com/8PRHQsC6if  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

The accused, 20-year-old Mayank, would often stalk the girl who was a resident of Bakhtawar Pur and upon objecting, the accused threatened to kill her parents, Zee News reported.

"The police has launched an investigation into the case. Efforts are on to arrest accused," said DCP Rohini, according to the Zee News report.

A case has been registered under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) Act, ANI further reported.The Islamic State ideology will not find buyers in Kashmir, but its propagation is not a good development for peace in South Asia where new battle lines are being drawn in times of CPEC and Indo-US bonhomie.

A raging debate over whether Islamic State really exists in Kashmir has taken social media by storm over the last few weeks. The tipping point was the funeral of Eisa Fazli, a militant who was allegedly inspired to follow Islamic State's ideology last year, and whose body draped with black flags was paraded near his Srinagar home for photographers in what looked like a carefully scripted act.

But never before in recent times has the Valley's intelligentsia, political leadership and citizenry come out in a single voice to denounce the Islamic State ideology taking roots in Kashmir. The problem, however, was that those speaking out, do that in full public view, while those espousing the terror group's murderous ideology are doing so from under the cloak of anonymity, using fake profiles, like how a group of masked men hijacked Eisa's body to make a spectacle out of it.

But Friday saw two of the most important political leaders come out openly against hate speeches on social media, to assert that Kashmir's political struggle is indigenous and that Pakistan is an important player in the regional conflict, not some radical group which has achieved notoriety for its barbaric acts done in the name of Islam which find no place in the "world's fastest growing religion".

In a veiled reference to the Islamic State's ideological supporters who argue that nation states have no role to play, since the battle in Kashmir is for the supremacy of Islam, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Yasin Malik said the growing intolerance and hate speeches, especially on social media, are meant to widen the gap between various sects of Islam and to undermine unity among them.

Indirectly hitting out at people propagating Islamic State's ideology and suggesting the supremacy of Islam over the Kashmiri struggle, Malik said, "Hate mongering has risen to an alarming level and these preachers have started showering abuses on one another, calling for fiery debates, and on occasion, even indulging in calling others infidels and non-Muslims. This state of affairs is not acceptable to us, as it is detrimental to our unity and cohesiveness."

And from the pulpit of the historic Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, Mirwiaz Umar Farooq lauded Pakistan for being the guardian of Kashmir's struggle, asserting that the world will do more to solve the Kashmir issue. "The way Pakistan has given political, diplomatic and moral support for Kashmir, I am sure it will continue," Mirwaiz said.

Political analyst and senior journalist Gowhar Geelani said the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda only represent violence, destruction and a misinterpreted form of political Islam that aims to burn bridges of understanding and justifies monstrous violence against own people and the perceived enemy.

"In Kashmir, this misinterpreted form of religion will not work for variety of reasons: One, Kashmiris are not facing a crisis of faith; two, Kashmir is an alcove of Sufi saints which believes in tolerance, cultural confluence and communal harmony; three, Kashmiris do not see their just political struggle as part of any global agenda," Geelani told Firstpost on Friday.

"Also, one may argue that the Kashmir dispute is purely a political struggle with ethno-religious undertones much like the Irish conflict. One must remember that Kashmiri struggle has drawn and continues to draw inspiration and strength from multiple sources and identities which include Kashmiri ethnicity, Kashmiri nationalism, geographical proximity with Pakistan and also religious identity. But the struggle has roots in politics and partition of the sub-continent. The struggle is indigenous, and has no global ambitions," he added.

There is no doubt that some sections of the younger generation of Kashmiris, fed up with the unending status quo, are seeing the Islamic State as a kind of vent that might aid their liberation of the land. But to say it is logistically possible would be to underestimate the ground realities. For two years, protesters around the same Jamia Masjid used Islamic State's flags to attract television crews and chide security forces, but never before was this phenomenon taken so seriously by people as it is being taken today on social media.

So much so that after Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai was anointed as Syed Ali Shah Geelani's successor, he spoke up about this issue in his first interview to local newspaper Greater Kashmir. Islamic State has nothing to do with Kashmir, and its venomous ideology will never be accepted, Sehrai said. "Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have nothing to do with our movement and we will never accept them," he said.

He said youth in Kashmir should not be swayed by the extremist ideology and understand Islam in its correct perspective. "Some elements are creating confusion among masses by raising Islamic State flags at militants' funeral. We kept a close watch on them, and will soon chart out a plan to stop them after the elections."

But who are these rabble-rousers who want to push Kashmir into Islamic State's lap? A good way of unearthing the truth is to find out who those masked men were who hijacked the funeral of Eisa Fazili in Srinagar. The Islamic State ideology will not find buyers in Kashmir, but its propagation is not a good development for peace in South Asia where new battle lines are being drawn in times of CPEC and Indo-US bonhomie.The National Commission for Women has ordered a probe into alleged manhandling of JNU students and a woman journalist during a protest march in New Delhi

New Delhi: The National Commission for Women has ordered a probe into alleged manhandling of JNU students and a woman journalist during a protest march in New Delhi.

A large number of JNU students and teachers were on Friday stopped from marching to the Parliament Complex over various demands, including academic freedom, with police resorting to lathi charge and use of water cannons.

"We have ordered a probe and sent a team today to meet the police officials and we will further pursue the matter on Monday," NCW Acting Chairperson Rekha Sharma said.

The protesting students had claimed that the "attack" by the police was "unprovoked", with a woman journalist alleging that a man in uniform "groped" her and asked her to vacate the place.

#WATCH: Policewomen rough up a photojournalist during JNU students' protest, yesterday. Police say journalist was on wrong side of the barricade, journalist refutes the claim, says her camera was also snatched away. Police also added that the matter is being looked into. #Delhi pic.twitter.com/k56GHGsY69  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

The "padyatra", which started at the varsity's campus, was organised by the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA).

The associations are demanding academic freedom and accessible and equitable education. The teachers' body had requested other associations to join the protest march.

Their other demands include withdrawal of the executive council's decision to constitute a committee to take action against teachers and the immediate withdrawal of notifications replacing chairpersons who were opposed to implementing compulsory attendance.The son of Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, the newly-elected chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, has joined the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group in Kashmir, top sources said.

Srinagar: The son of Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, the newly-elected chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, has joined the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group in Kashmir, top sources said. A photo of Junaid Ashraf Khan, 28, brandishing an AK-47 rifle went viral on social media on Saturday. This is the first time that the son of a senior separatist leader of the stature of Sehrai has joined the militancy in Kashmir.

According to a complaint filed by Sehrai in Saddar police station in Srinagar, his son, Junaid, has been missing from his residence for the past 24 hours. This prompted rumours that Junaid may have joined Hizbul Mujahideen. The militant outfit headed by Syed Salahuddin draws its cadre mostly from the disaffected Jamaat-I-Islami group in Kashmir.

Junaid, who has an MBA from Kashmir University, hails from Tikipora village in Kupwara, which is also the village of Mannan Wani, an AMU Ph.D student who recently joined the Hizbul. The two are reportedly friends.

Senior Jammu and Kashmir Police officers refused to comment. However, a top officer in the states criminal investigations department confirmed to Firstpost that Sehrai filed a missing complaint at Saddar police station, though he didnt divulge details.

Family sources said Junaid left for Friday prayers near his house in Srinagar's Bhagat locality and has not returned. We are investigating the case and a missing complaint has been received, senior superintendent of police, Srinagar, Imtiyaz Parray, said.

Sources in the states intelligence grid confirmed there are reports of Junaid having joined Hizbul Mujahideen, but the information has not been confirmed thus far. We are working on it and a confirmation will be made soon, sources said.

Sehrai, 72, who is considered to be more of a hardliner than his predecessor Syed Ali Shah Geelani, was recently elected chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat. Geelani relinquished his post after 14 years and an election paved way for Sehrais anointment. Geelani was the founding chairman of Hurriyat since it was formed in 2004, while Sehrai was the organisation's general secretary.

If confirmed, the latest development will cast a shadow on the new chairman of the Hurriyat. Sehrai, a voracious reader who has kept a low-profile over the past three decades of turmoil in Kashmir, is known for his radical ideas. In his first interview as chairman, Sehrai came down heavily on those supporting the Islamic State ideology, saying it has nothing to do with Kashmir and their venomous ideology will never be accepted.

Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have nothing to do with our movement and we will never accept them, Sehrai said. He urged the youth in Kashmir to not get swayed by the extremist ideology and understand Islam in its proper perspective. Some elements are creating confusion among masses by raising Islamic State flags at the funeral of militants. We have kept a close watch on them and will soon chart out a plan to stop them after Hurriyat elections."

Experts fear the latest development is also likely to give an impetus to the phenomenon of new insurgency in Kashmir that was popularised by the Hizbul Mujahideens Burhan Wani whose killing sparked mass unrest in 2016. According to official figures, more than 200 militants were gunned down in encounters with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in 2017, a majority of them being disaffected local boys for whom Wani became a figure of inspiration.Indigo's woes warrant a holistic examination of aviation safety in the country, particularly in terms of aircraft security and passenger behaviour.

As a frequent flyer on IndiGo and a fan of the airline, I couldnt help but express my concern about the controversy unfolding around the grounded IndiGo jets and their faulty A320 Neo engines. The airline had to ground 14 jets that operate on these engines, and cancel over 480 flights between 16 March and 31 March. Over the past eighteen months, IndiGo aircrafts have experienced 69 engine failures mid-flight: An average of one per week.

Even though the A320neo engines manufactured by Pratt and Whitney are used in jets globally, India was particularly impacted by the faulty engines because we use about 40 percent of the total engines flying worldwide. When the issue was flagged, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the airline immediately sprang into action, grounding jets and cancelling flights at the cost of revenue, productivity, and a possible loss of IndiGos flying slots. I believe this incident warrants a holistic examination of aviation safety in the country, particularly in terms of aircraft security and passenger behaviour.

Railways and safety in trains has always been a political issue: Until recently, we had a budget dedicated to the Indian Railways, and in Parliament, MPs are very well versed with railway safety issues and articulately express their concerns. However, aviation safety receives very little parliamentary oversight, particularly compared to the railways, despite the fact that many MPs travel to Delhi by air to attend Parliament.

Between 2014 and May 2017, 52 incidents of mid-air mishaps were reported, of which 35 cases were near-miss collisions: A majority of which were caused by errors in judgement on part of Air Traffic Control (ATC). Among the 151 pilots suspended between 2016 and 2017, a majority were suspended for failing their breathalyser tests either before or after their flights. There have also been reports where pilots have gotten into fights, abandoning their cockpits mid-air.

These incidents invoke serious concerns and questions about aviation safety in India.

Why is there a culture of indiscipline and protocol violation among pilots, and what kinds of checks and balances exist for vetting them? What kind of procedural training do the air traffic controllers receive?

The massive push towards aviation expansion in the country and the ever-increasing frequency of flights means that the ATC needs to be much better trained. Have we been able to procure the right kind of talent and enough manpower to handle our burgeoning needs, and provide them with adequate training?

Furthermore, are there synchronised processes that exist between airports, the ATC, the DGCA and the coastguard? For instance, in the infamous US Airways Flight 1594 incident in 2009, the pilot had to make an emergency ditching in the Hudson River after the plane encountered multiple bird strikes and lost all engine power. The well-oiled coordination between the various agencies involved meant that rescue ferries reached the site within minutes and evacuated all 155 people on board to safety.

The other side of the story are the very real hazards that passengers themselves pose to aviation safety. Ive witnessed several incidents where passengers display blatant disregard for the rules established for their own safety: Not fastening their seatbelts, for instance, and flustered crew having to tell people to take their seats while the plane is taxiing.

How many people actually listen to or care about the safety demonstrations before the flight? Are people actually equipped to operate their oxygen masks or put on their life vests? Do they know that life vests cannot be inflated before they exit the aircraft in case of a water landing? Will people sitting next to the emergency exits actually be able to open the doors in a crisis, or will it be a riot of panic and chaos? The larger question here is this: Is India a safety-conscious country?

Another way to think about this is the kind of relationships we have with our country, our environment and our fellow citizens. It is an indisputable fact that India has a culture of littering. I believe that littering (or not littering) is a good indicator of our civic sense and the respect we harbour for each other. It is fundamentally related to our connection with society, and the kind of ownership we feel about our country. I also believe that someone who litters blatantly and unconscientiously is much more likely to be cavalier and apathetic about safety regulations on an airplane.

As a country, we sometimes tend to propagate and emphasise the wrong kind of values. We are emphatic about standing up for the National Anthem or going to the temple regularly, but we have no qualms evading taxes and dirtying our environment. It is a regular occurrence, and not a one-off incident, where people gather to watch as a woman is molested on the street, or someone is involved in an accident, and exploit them further by stealing their belongings or leaving them for dead, rather than helping out or at the very least alerting the authorities.

This might seem unrelated to safety on an aircraft, but in fact it has a very fundamental connection to it: These incidents are a reflection of the kind of values that we as a society emphasise, and the mutual commitment and respect that we have for one another.

If we cant be bothered to help a victim of a road accident on the street, how can we be expected to assist each other in a mid-air crisis when our own lives are at stake?

Till such time we are able inculcate these values, I believe we must have different, Indianised versions of safety protocols that dont blindly ape the West. These protocols must be designed to suit our culture at every level: At the regulatory level, including ATC protocol and training, at the pilot and crew level, and most certainly at the level of the consumer.

Given our less than satisfactory record of aviation safety, we must work to foster a culture of safety and consumer responsibility in India, which not only translates to responsible behaviour on aircrafts, but also percolates to our relationships with our environment and fellow citizens.Special Judge S Santhosh Kumar awarded the sentence after convicting her under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Indian Penal Code.

Kochi: A NIA Special Court on Saturday sentenced woman operative Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid to seven years rigorous imprisonment in connection with Kerala Islamic State recruitment case.

Special Judge S Santhosh Kumar awarded the sentence after convicting her under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Indian Penal Code.

The NIA special court in Ernakulam also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on her.

Zahid, who hailed from Bihar, is the second accused in the case investigated by the NIA.

Last year, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had filed the charge sheet against two Islamic State operatives Abdul Rashid Abdulla as the main accused, who motivated a number of youths from Kasaragod to leave India along with their families to join the Islamic State, and Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid.

Zahid was intercepted while trying to take a flight to Kabul to join the Islamic State in Afghanistan.

There are 15 accused in the case. The NIA had chargesheeted only two as the 13 others including first accused, Rashid, were in Afghanistan and one in Syria.

Three are believed to be killed in air strikes in Afghanistan.

The agency had said the case relates to the criminal conspiracy hatched within and outside India by certain youths, originally hailing from Kasaragod district of Kerala, with the intention of furthering the objectives of Islamic State and their pursuant exit from India along with their families for joining and supporting the terror organisation.

The case was re-registered at the NIA police station, Kochi, on 24 August, 2016.

A probe by the NIA has established that Abdul Rashid Abdulla was the main conspirator, who motivated a number of youths from Kasaragod to leave India along with their families to join the Islamic State.

He conducted classes in Kasaragod and other places in support of the terrorist organisation and "its ideology of violent jihad", the agency had said.

Abdulla motivated one more set of 14 co-conspirators, including another accused Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid, to join the proscribed organisation and plan for "Hijrah to the Caliphate" announced by the Islamic State, it had said.

The NIA said the probe revealed that the conspiracy had been in operation since July 2015.

It said Zahid was intercepted at the New Delhi International Airport on 30 July, 2016 when she was trying to leave India for Kabul along with her minor child to join her co-conspirator Abdulla in the territory under the control of Islamic State in Afghanistan.

The probe has established that Abdulla had raised funds for the Islamic State and transferred the money to Yasmeen, who utilised it for her activities with the intention of supporting the terrorist organisation.In a debate on the North and South tussle over the 15th Finance Commissions formula for revenue sharing among states, BJP spokesperson Narendra Taneja made a bizarre statement and prompted anchor Zakka Jacob to intervene.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Narendra Taneja did his bit to further alienate the party from south India. On Friday, while appearing on a talk show, Taneja had made a bizarre comparison between north and south India, saying it was the former which shed more tears when Bollywood actor Sridevi died last month.

Taneja had appeared on a talk show on CNN-News18 to debate the central government's recommendations to the 15th Finance Commission. The government had said distribution of central funds to individual states must take place as per the 2011 Census and not the 1971 Census, as was hitherto the norm.

South Indian states had raised objections to this, saying it would reduce their share of funds. But when Taneja was asked about this and was asked if their grievances were genuine, he said there is no North-South divide, and called it the creation of the Congress party.

But that's when things got truly bizarre.

"When Sridevi died recently, north India probably shed more tears than south India. Was north India looking at the fact that she came from the South?" he asked.

Even CNN-News18 reporter Zakka Jacob interrupted him and asked, "What is Sridevi dying and north India shedding more tears than south India have to do with money?"

On the question of North-South divide, BJP's @narendrataneja came up with an absurd logic. Acc to him, North Indians too shed tears after Sridevis death. He says it proves there is no divide, listen in to the bizarre analogy Watch #FaceOff with @Zakka_Jacob on weeknights at 8pm pic.twitter.com/qDQT6VbibK  News18 (@CNNnews18) March 24, 2018

However, Taneja's statement is only the latest in a long series of missteps taken by the BJP regarding south India, ironically a region it has been trying hard to win over electorally.

At a time when Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah is accusing the saffron party of diverting tax revenues collected from South to fund development projects elsewhere, the BJP might find it difficult to ensure its victory march in upcoming Karnataka polls.

His Andhra Pradesh counterpart, N Chandrababu Naidu, had also accused the Narendra Modi government of diverting tax revenues collected from the South to fund projects in Northern states.

Similarly, DMK working president MK Stalin also wrote to Modi and chief ministers of 10 non-BJP ruled states expressing concerns on certain elements of the terms of reference (ToR) for the 15th Finance Commission.

He said Tamil Nadu will lose out on funds if the 2011 Census data is used.

Friction between the Centre and the south Indian states has risen not only over the ToR of the 15th Finance Commission, but also on a host of other similar issues.

Previously, a row had also erupted in Tamil Nadu after BJP leader H Raja's made remarks indicating that statues of Periyar could be the next to be pulled down after a Lenin statue was razed in Tripura.

Periyar, among the foremost Dravidian thinkers, is revered across south India and disparaging comments regarding him will not go down well.

With inputs from agenciesWhile the decision to adopt 2011's population statistics can be debated and argued over, as done so by Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah, who urged his south Indian counterparts to resist, to give it political colour is not healthy

A lot has been written about the North versus South divide since the constitution of the 15th Finance Commission. Several commentators have argued that one of the terms of reference (ToR), which mandates that figures from the 2011 Census be used instead of the 1971 Census, will benefit north Indian states at the expense of their south Indian counterparts.

This is a departure from the ToRs for previous Finance Commissions which made recommendations on the basis of the 1971 Census. It's being argued vociferously that such a move creates a clear divide between southern states, which have adopted population control measures, and north Indian states which have burgeoning populations because they failed to implement family planning measures. As per the 2011 Census, the south Indian states will receive a smaller chunk of central revenues on account of their low population growth.

While the fairness of adopting 2011 population figures for devolution of funds can be argued on economic grounds, to suggest that such a move is politically motivated and intentionally discriminatory against southern states is stretching it a bit too far.

To begin with, at Para 7 (ii), the ToR notes that the Commission may consider efforts and progress made towards achieving replacement rate of growth. Clearly, this works in favour of many south Indian states and has been duly reported. Most south Indian states have achieved replacement rate of growth and this ToR will actually work in favour of these states.

Also, contrary to what is being argued, nothing in the language of this reference suggests that states which have already achieved the replacement rate of growth will not benefit and that only those states which are moving towards it will stand to gain. The 14th Finance Commission had specifically taken note of this issue and was of the view that the population figure for 2011 is a better criteria. Page 97 of the report noted: "Though we are of the view that the use of dated population data is unfair, we are bound by our ToR and have assigned a 17.5 percent weight to the 1971 population."

By "dated population data", the commission was referring to figures from the 1971 Census. In fact, for purposes of grants to local bodies, the Commission recommended the use of 2011 population figures to determine grants to each state and also gave a 10 percent weightage to 2011 figures for horizontal devolution of central taxes. It is clear from a reading of the report that there is a strong economic rationale for adopting 2011 population figures as criteria for determining devolution of funds.

This is not to deny that opposing arguments are not worthy of consideration and deserve acknowledgement. However, given the repeated assertion by the last Finance Commission on the unfairness of using 1971 data can be seen as sufficient evidence of the apolitical reasoning behind the move. This is further proved by the fact that contrary to what is being argued, this policy measure is likely to create winners and losers on either side of the Vindhyas and has no exclusive beneficial impact on the northern states to the exclusion of those from the South.

A look at the report of the 14th Finance Commission puts things in perspective and refutes any such claims with substantial authority. Annex 8.1 of the report also provides responses of all states on this question of choosing 1971 population figures over 2011's figures. Several states from the North actually wanted the population figures of 1971 to be the basis and not 2011. These states include Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. From the West, both Maharashtra and Goa were in favour of census data of 1971 as opposed to 2011. So clearly, a switch to 2011 will not sit nicely with the interests of these states who may also lose out on quantum of devolved funds, even though they are not situated in the southern part of the country.

Punjab's share, for instance, as per the 2011 Census, was at 2.330 percent as compared to 2.495 percent as per 1971 Census, as reported in Annex 8.2 of the report. On the other hand, Telangana's share actually increased from 2.913 percent to 2.956 percent going by the 2011 Census.

In the world of policy making and implementation, it is almost axiomatic to assert that every policy creates some winners and some losers, and the move to use the 2011 Census figures instead of 1971 Census is no different. It's clear that the move creates winners and losers in pretty much every part of the country and therefore cannot be said to be targeted specifically at south Indian states.

To reiterate, while the decision to adopt 2011's population statistics can be debated and argued over, and will no doubt be highlighted before the 15th Finance Commission as well  as done so by Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah, who urged his counterparts in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry to resist  to give it a political colour and claim it to be an exercise in discrimination is not healthy. Such pernicious presentation sows seeds of discontent among south Indian states, which are not founded in rational analysis.

The author is a master in public policy candidate at LKY School of Public Policy, National University of SingaporeIn a letter to the Andhra chief minister, who broke ties with the BJP after the Centre declined to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh, Shah also said his party is a true well wisher of the state.

New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday said TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu's decision to quit the ruling NDA was guided by "political considerations" instead of Andhra Pradesh's development concerns, and dubbed his move "unfortunate and unilateral".

In a letter to the Andhra chief minister, who broke ties with the BJP after the Centre declined to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh, Shah also said his party is a true well wisher of the state.

He also cited a number of development projects undertaken by the Centre for the state, besides funds given to it, as he sought to reject the charge that the Modi government had not fulfilled its promises.

"This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision which, I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns. It is widely known that the Union government has not left any stone unturned in ensuring growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh," Shah said in the letter.

"You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both states."

Listing five infrastructure projects the Central government has initiated in the state, Shah said "a perusal of these would reaffirm what you already know and perhaps would not admit that Central government has fulfilled its obligations and that BJP is a genuine friend add true well wisher of the state."

The TDP pulled out of the BJP-led alliance over the refusal to accord special category status to Andhra Pradesh and fulfil other commitments made at the time of state's division in 2014.

The TDP has also given notice for a no-confidence motion against the Modi government in the Lok Sabha, which could not be taken up due to an unending uproar in the Lower House.

"On the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh, it is regrettable that some political parties are whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate which is the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy.

"I would like you to introspect whether political parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda," Shah told Naidu.Reeling from the relentless conversation about the possible collusion of the Congress with the now-discredited electoral consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, the grand old party decided to shift the focus of the debate.

Reeling from the relentless conversation about the possible collusion of the Congress with the now-discredited electoral consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, the grand old party decided to shift the focus of the debate.

Initiated by the Congress IT Cell head, and spurred on by Congress leaders like Shashi Tharoor and Sanjay Jha, the hashtag #DeleteNaMoApp cropped up on Twitter. Many other Congress supporters joined the fray and soon the hashtag was trending in India. Several media reports had suggested a possible security flaw in the Narendra Modi app.

#DeleteNaMoApp is top trend. About time every citizen of India fought back against a dangerous fascist party that went to Supreme Court to deny us our Right to Privacy as a fundamental right.  Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) March 23, 2018

The Narendra Modi app, possibly the most downloaded app for any world leader, acts as a direct contact point between the prime minister and millions of Indians. Experts also suggest that, unlike 2014, the next election warfare will take place on app-based platforms, instead of social media sites. Predictably, the app had to face the brunt of the Congress ire.

The Congress, accused of harvesting personal data through Cambridge Analytica, tried to turn the tables on BJP by running a coordinated campaign to target Modi's massive online popularity. But it backfired spectacularly on the Congress, leading to a surge in downloads of NaMo App.

Modi unarguably continues to remain the most popular politician in India by a huge margin. He also has his own ways of staying connected with his constituents and these mostly involve a route of direct communication. From the vastly-popular radio talk show 'Mann Ki Baat' to town-halls with students, Modi has always stayed away from media-directed public interaction. The Narendra Modi app is one such way which lets the prime minister directly engage with his supporters. Modi uses the app extensively to source questions and receive feedback on various initiatives.

Apart from giving them space to deflect attention from the flak they were receiving on the Cambridge Analytica fall out, the opportunity gave the Congress opportunity to strike a blow on one of the most successful communication models of Modi.

Apart from giving themselves space to deflect attention from the flak they were receiving on the Cambridge Analytica fall out, the reports gave the Congress an opportunity to strike a blow on one of the most successful communication models of Modi.

But many political observers and netizens found the situation extremely counter-intuitive for the Congress. They believed that the hashtag being trended by the Congress party has actually drawn the attention of even the people who were not aware about the app and has actually ended up publicizing and promoting the app instead. And in the strange way that the internet works, they were proved right by the end of the evening. The Congress strategy massively backfired and it was seen that a large number of people who may have been previously indifferent about the app, had actually gone ahead and downloaded it. In fact, BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya went ahead and urged the people to download the app on their phones and engage with the prime minister.

It is understandable that Congress is afraid of PM Modi, but it is amusing to see them so afraid of even NaMo App! I take this opportunity to urge everyone to install PMs app and connect with him directly! It is simple, just dial 1800 20 90 920 and get the link to download.  Amit Malviya (@malviyamit) March 23, 2018



The users chose to respond to the Congress trend by downloading the app and sharing screenshots of it online.

In the end, the Congress was left with a derailed plan that misfired massively and the Narendra Modi app got more users and more rave reviews online. The internet, as they say, is an unsparing place and it was the turn of the Congress on Friday to be at the receiving end of it.

The Congress must understand that it needs to speak on real issues, and not merely target Modi. His popularity and their relative lack of credibility ensured that their persistent targeting of him did not work for more than a decade and a half now. There's no reason such a strategy will suddenly start working today.

The author is a senior journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and commentary on public affairs. She tweets using the handle @missartola.Reacting to the toughest ever sentence awarded to Lalu Prasad Yadav in a fodder scam case, the RJD termed the CBI investigation 'politically motivated' and BJP said the law took its own course

Patna: Reacting to the toughest ever sentence awarded to Lalu Prasad Yadav in a fodder scam case, the RJD on Saturday termed the CBI investigation "politically motivated" and the BJP said the law took its own course.

"It is not rocket science to see that the probe was politically motivated. I do not wish to say much about the judgment since one cannot expect a verdict to be fair and just if the investigation itself was faulty," RJD national spokesman Manoj Jha told PTI.

He was reacting to the judgment pronounced by a CBI court in Ranchi, whereby Prasad was sentenced to 14 years in prison in a case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of money from the Dumka treasury when he was the chief minister of undivided Bihar.

The Rajya Sabha MP, however, expressed confidence that they would draw the higher court's attention to the shortcomings in the investigation and Prasad would come out unscathed.

"Prasad is a victim of a conspiracy by political parties like the BJP, which represents the interests of those who are opposed to social justice and communal harmony," Jha said.

He alleged that had the CBI conducted a fair enquiry in the cases of this nature, all the big shots in the Nitish Kumar government would have been behind bars in connection with the Srijan scam by now.

Prasad's younger son and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav told reporters, We apprehend a threat to Laluji's life as he has been challenging the BJP's hegemony and trying to unite the parties opposed to it across the country. He is innocent and he will get justice in the higher courts. The people of Bihar will give a befitting reply to those behind the conspiracy against the RJD supremo."

Asserting that the RJD would not get cowed down by the latest development, Tejashwi said the workers of the party would work more resolutely than ever before and added that the JD(U) and the BJP would be made to bite the dust in the next election.

Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who was one of the petitioners in the fodder scam cases in the Patna High Court, which had ordered a CBI enquiry into the scam in 1996, said, The law has taken its own course. The verdict is not the first one in the fodder scam cases and it should be respected by all."

He dismissed Tejashwi's allegation that there was a threat to his father's life and pointed out that the RJD supremo enjoyed a foolproof security in jail.

Union minister Giriraj Singh told reporters, As one sows so one reaps. This is the law of nature and it is futile to make a fuss over today's verdict. The RJD workers should remember that the BJP was not in power when the fodder scam cases were lodged. Even Prasad's first conviction came when the country was being ruled by the Congress-led UPA, of which the RJD was a part."The JD(S) on Friday demanded countermanding of election to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka, alleging that the returning officer in 'collusion' with the ruling Congress

Bengaluru: The JD(S) on Friday demanded countermanding of election to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka, alleging that the returning officer in "collusion" with the ruling Congress in the state allowed two of its members to recast their vote after they "cross-voted".

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, however, termed the charge as "false", saying before casting their votes, the two MLAs realised they had made a "mistake" on the ballot paper, so they took another one for which "there is a provision in law."

Five candidates, three from the Congress and one each from the BJP and the JD(S) are in the fray for the four seats.

As the poll process was underway, JD(S) leader and former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy claimed that two senior Congress MLAs had "cross voted" against their party's official nominees by marking for another candidate on the ballot paper.

However, on the request of the ruling party's agent, the returning officer later allowed both the candidates to vote once again by issuing them a fresh ballot paper, he alleged.

"Minister Kagodu Thimmappa, who was a former speaker, and MLA Baburao Chinchansur, both of them have cross voted in the first ballot paper, then they have shown it to their agent."

"After seeing the cross voting the agent protested. Then the Returning Officer allowed these two voters to vote once again, second vote," Kumaraswamy told reporters in Bengaluru.

Stating that the returning officer had considered the request for second vote with the a fresh ballot paper, he said "we are protesting ...illegal voting is going on."

The observer from the Election Commission has been requested to "countermand" the election process, he added.

Four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka will fall vacant early next month following the retirement of sitting members.

Claiming that both Thimmappa and Chinchanasur wanted to vote against Congress candidates, Kumaraswamy alleged that the Returning Officer is "colluding" with the government.

Rejecting the charge, Siddaramaiah said: "It appears they (JDS) are desperate...they have tried every thing, they had gone to the court (on seven rebel JDS MLA issue), they failed in the court, and desperately they are making these allegations."

The chief minister also expressed confidence that all three Congress candidates will win the election, saying "we have enough votes on our side."

The Congress has fielded Dr L Hanumanthaiah, Dr Syed Naseer Hussain and GC Chandrasekhar.

The BJP has nominated Rajeev Chandrashekar, who was an independent Rajya Sabha member, and the JD(S) nominee is B M Farooq.

With their current strength in the Assembly, two candidates of the Congress and one from BJP can get elected comfortably.

However, the fight will be between the third candidate of the Congress and the JD(S)' Farooq.

Here too, the arithmetic favours the Congress, with the party hoping for support from seven rebel JD(S) MLAs, who are expected to join the ruling party after the Rajya Sabha polls.

It also expects support of MLAs from smaller parties - BR Patil (KJP), B Nagendra (independent) and Ashok Kheny (KMP), who have recently joined the Congress.

According to reports, the Congress' decision to field its third candidate came as a blow to JD(S) that had hoped the Congress would support its candidate, keeping in mind the larger picture of post Assembly poll scenario .

Assembly elections in the state are expected in the next two months.

In the 225-member Assembly (including one nominated), each candidate will require 44 votes to win a Rajya Sabha seat.

At present the party wise strength in the Assembly is Congress- 122, BJP- 43, JD(S)- 37, BSR Congress- 3, KJP- 2, KMP- 1, independents- 8, Speaker- 1, nominated- 1, vacant- 7.

Farooq had earlier too contested from JD(S) during the biennial elections to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka in June 2016 but had lost, as eight MLAs from the party voted in support of Congress candidate.Dubbing BJP's victory for the 10th Rajya Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh as 'immoral', BSP supremo Mayawati and made it clear that the defeat will not affect its tie-up with former archrival Samajwadi Paty

Lucknow: Dubbing BJP's victory for the 10th Rajya Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh as "immoral", BSP supremo Mayawati on Saturday and made it clear that the defeat will not affect its tie up with former archrival Samajwadi Paty.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister also decried use of money, muscle power and state machinery by the state's ruling party to win the elections but refused to blame the SP.

"I would like to tell BJP that their malpractices will not succeed in breaking the ties between SP and BSP. The poll results of Rajya Sabha have not affected the SP-BSP tie up in any way. Not even by an inch," she told a press conference in Lucknow.

Mayawati said that the Bharatiya Janata Party tried to show its win in Rajya Sabha polls as "revenge" for the defeat in the bypolls to the Gorakhapur and Phulpur parliamentary constituencies but they forget that in Lok Sabha polls, people directly elect their representatives.

"This immoral victory cannot make up for their defeat in Gorakhpur and Phulpur. Even BJP is aware of this," she said.

Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah of misusing state machinery to make their candidates win, she said: "The BJP did not deter from indulging in malpractices. They exterted all their force to ensure that the BSP candidate does not win at any cost.

"The entire system was deployed to ensure that the newly formed ties between BSP and SP loosens. An environment of fear was created due to which there was also some cross-voting done."

Mayawati was reacting over Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's claim in which he blamed the Bahujan Samaj Party's loss on the Samajwadi Party's "opportunism".

Taking a swipe at SP, Adityanath described it as "opportunistic" since it got votes of the BSP in bypolls to Gorakhpur and Phulpur parliamentary seats but failed to transfer its own in the election for 10 Rajya Sabha seats of the state.

He also cautioned the BSP, saying the results are a signal as its candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar got defeated by BJP nominee Anil Agarwal in a close contest for the 10th seat.

"The opportunistic face of SP has been once again exposed. It can take from others but can't give," Yogi told media persons after the BJP won nine out of the 10 seats.

Without taking name of Mayawati, he said the election results are a "signal for some" and "they should be cautious".

"Signals are enough for an intelligent person," he added.

In a nail-biting finish, the BJP managed to get all its nine candidates in the Rajya Sabha polls elected.

The BJP candidates were Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, party's national general secretary Anil Jain, spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao, Vijay Pal Tomar, Kanta Kardam, Ashok Bajpai, Harnath Yadav, Sakaldeep Rajbhar and Agarwal.BJP national spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao attacked the TDP's decision to call off its four-year alliance with the BJP, calling the exit 'unfortunate and unilateral'

BJP national spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao attacked the TDP's decision to call off its four-year alliance with the BJP, calling the exit "unfortunate and unilateral".

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) decided to call off its four-year alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a week after party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu announced his decision to exit the Centre over the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh.



He also echoed the statements BJP chief Amit Shah made in a nine-page letter addressed to Naidu, stating the move was guided "solely by political considerations instead of development concern."

"For the last few weeks, there has been a campaign of calumny and political propaganda unleashed by political parties in Andhra Pradesh," Rao said at a press conference. He said that unlike this propaganda, Andhra Pradesh received special assistance and attention as the young state needed "nurturing and investments to give its economy a greater impetus."

"Union government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has left no stone unturned to ensure the growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh. TDPs decision to exit NDA is unfortunate and unilateral," Rao asserted.

Rao said that the 14th Finance Commission awarded to the state revenue deficit grants to the tune of Rs 22,113 crore, covering the overall revenue deficit for five years. "Andhra Pradesh is the only state to receive the award of revenue deficit grants for all the five years period from 2015 to 2020 besides the eight northeastern and hilly states. Does that not show that Modi govt has been sensitive to the needs of the state?" Rao asked.

He also took to Twitter to criticise Naidu:

Chandrababu Garu @ncbn What constitutes neglect of people of AP: BJP govt giving more than double of funds than what the Cong govt gave our state OR your poor governance in not spending funds released for state's development? Shri @AmitShah ji's letter exposes your propaganda. https://t.co/5gRTeL9hhs  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) March 24, 2018

Responding to the BJP comments in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, Naidu alleged that Shah tried to misrepresent facts and hurt the sentiments of the Telugu people.

Defending his party's decision to quit the BJP-led NDA, Naidu said this was done to respect the feelings of those feeling betrayed by the Centre. He said the NDA did not discharge its responsibility towards its ally and the state.

The TDP leader alleged that BJP had done graver injustice to Andhra Pradesh than the Congress. He said while Congress bifurcated the state in an unjust manner, the BJP failed to fulfil the commitments made in Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act.

With inputs from agenciesCongress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday accused the BJP of 'attacking' the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.

Chamarajanagar: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday accused the BJP of "attacking" the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.

Addressing a rally in poll-bound Karnataka after visiting a temple of Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru, he said the BJP was not only snatching away people's money through note ban and GST, but "there is new fashion now, they are attacking the Constitution."

"Hear it from here. We will not allow the BJP to change the Constitution. How much ever BJP forces its way to change the Constitution, we will make sure that the Congress protects the work of Ambedkar ji," he told the gathering,

Rahul is on the fourth leg of campaign tour in Karnataka, covering Mandya, Mysuru and Chamarajnagar districts during his two-day visit.

He had earlier toured the northern, coastal and Malnad regions.

The Congress president accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being "insensitive" towards problems related to jobs and demonetization.

"I interacted with young students on Saturday morning. One of the girl students stood up and asked me about Modi ji's promise to give two crore jobs every year and his "Make In India" programme... but that turned out to be an empty promise and there was no weight behind those words," he said at the rally held as part of 'Janashirvada Yatre'.

Rahul said nobody has benefited from the note ban and questioned the rationale of having five different GST rates, including 28 percent.

"A girl stands up and says nobody has been benefited by the note ban. Another girl stands up and says why are there five separate (GST) rates, including 28 percent. ... It only means that the students aged between 18 to 20 years have understood the problems, but Modi ji is yet to understand," he added.

Rahul also alleged that through demonetization, most of the "cheats" converted their black money into white by depositing it in banks.

The Congress president began his speech by invoking Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Mysore ruler, Krishnaraja Wodayar, 24th maharaja of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom, Sir M Vishveshwariah, renowned engineer, and Kuvempu, Kannada poet, by remembering their contributions to Karnataka and India.BSP chief Mayawati on Saturday said that the Rajya Sabha election defeat will have no impact on her party's association with the Samajwadi Party.

Lucknow: BSP chief Mayawati on Saturday said that the Rajya Sabha election defeat will have no impact on her party's association with the Samajwadi Party and the two will work with even more force to defeat the BJP in the 2019 general elections.

A day after her party candidate lost to the BJP in an intense contest in Uttar Pradesh despite backing from the Samajwadi Party, the BSP supremo said the BJP is expecting that she will break off ties with the Samajwadi Party.

Accusing the BJP of indulging in malpractice in the election, she said that the ruling party had "conspired" to defeat her candidate to create a rift between the BSP and Samajwadi Party. "I will not let that happen at any cost. They were up all night eating laddoos and thinking that Mayawati will get angry and break off and that they will have a field day in 2019...," Mayawati told reporters.

"The Rajya Sabha election result will have no impact on the understanding between the BSP and Samajwadi Party, and their conspiracy will cost them heavily as the workers of BSP and Samajwadi Party will now work with even more force to stop them from coming to power in 2019," she said.

Her remarks came after Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav cancelled the victory celebration for his party nominee Jaya Bachchan to be held in the state capital on Saturday as a sign of solidarity with the BSP, whose lone candidate lost in the Rajya Sabha polls.

'There will not be an iota of difference in the close understanding between the BSP and SP ," Mayawati said, making it clear that BSP is keen to consolidate its association with the Samajwadi Party which is seen as a major reason for the BJP's recent defeat in two prestigious Lok Sabha seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats.

After it wrested the two seats with the BSP's backing, the Samajwadi Party had reciprocated by promising to ensure victory of BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar. However, the BSP lost out in a cliffhanger on Friday.

"I am thankful for the support of Congress and Samajwadi Party whose seven MLAs voted for BSP candidate," Mayawati said.

"I want to warn the BJP and RSS that I will not allow their special aim of creating rift in the new understanding between the BSP and Samajwadi Party to succeed," she said.

The former chief minister, however, said that had she been in Akhilesh's place she would have ensured the victory of the candidate of the other party even if it meant making sacrifices so that the BJP could not dare make attempt to end their closeness.

'...He erred a little in this since he is a little inexperienced but he will soon learn to give a befitting reply," she said and indicated that she was ready to put behind the bitter past with the Samajwadi Party.

The BJP leaders will remind her about the state guest house case in 1995, when an attempt was allegedly made on her life by Samajwadi Party men, Mayawati said and added that the present Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav was nowhere on the political scene then. "Will it be right and justified to hold him responsible for it," she said.

Attacking the BJP she said, 'They still want to see Dalits and backwards as deprived and are not able to digest the Samajwadi Party and BSP's new understanding and have so termed it as selfish, unholy, opportunistic alliance or the friendship of snake and moles", and asked the ruling party to shun such mindset or else the people will send them to "life long exile".

On the guesthouse incident, she said, "I want to ask that by giving the highest police post to the officer responsible for the guest house case, is the BJP not out to get me murdered, so as to end the BSP movement forever?."

Mayawati also said her party has always maintained that the SC/ST Act should not be misused, but accused the Centre of not taking up the matter effectively in the Supreme Court.

She also announced the suspension of her MLA Anil Singh, alleging he cross-voted in favour of the BJP to serve his business interests. She accused the BJP of creating terror and indulging in horse trading.

The BSP chief said that Rajya Sabha election results will not compensate for the loss suffered by the BJP in the Lok Sabha by-election in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.

To a question on MLA from Kunda, Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya, she cautioned Akhilesh Yadav against relying on him.

Mayawati said that if the BJP is so assured of its victory, it needs to conduct the future elections through ballot papers instead of EVMs.

After the BJP won nine out of 10 Rajya Sabha seats seats in the state, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath had claimed that the election had exposed the "opportunistic face of Samajwadi Party". "It can take votes but not give votes in return", he said referring to Samajwadi Party's victory in the recent Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.

Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma termed the alliance of the Samajwadi Party and the BSP as "lathabandhan" (a tie-up to intimidate people). "In fact, the alliance is not based on any principle except on 'Modi hatao, BJP hatao' (Oust Modi and BJP)," he said.Formalising the split between the two parties, BJP president Amit Shah has unleashed an attack on Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, saying TDP's decision to quit the NDA was unilateral

Formalising the split between the BJP and TDP, party chief Amit Shah unleashed an attack on Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, and said the TDP decision to quit the NDA was unilaterally "guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns".

In a nine-page letter dated 23 March released on Saturday, Shah described the TDP chief's allegations that the BJP was not sensitive to the aspirations of the people of Andhra Pradesh as "untrue and baseless".

He said the Centre released Rs 1,050 crore in the first three years after it came to power as special development assistance for seven backward districts of Andhra Pradesh.

He termed as "nothing but a figment of your imagination" Naidu's claims that the Centre asked the the amount to be taken back because it was released without the sanction of the Prime Minister's Office. Shah accused the state government of "some serious lapses... which can't be ignored".

He said he learnt the Centre had not received appropriate fund utilisation details, particularly with regards to the developmental fund.

Shah said the BJP was committed to the cause of development of Andhra Pradesh, but Naidu allowed the mandate earned by the two parties to "be squandered for political reasons".

Read the full text of Amit Shah's letter here:

Dear Sri Chandrababu Naidu Garu,

First and foremost, I would like to wish you and my five crone sisters and brothers of Andhra Pradesh a Happy Ugadi. May the New Year bring happiness and good health in everyone's lives.

I am writing this letter after the Telugu Desam Party's decision to quit the NDA family. This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns.

BJP has been a firm believer in the concept of Politics of Performance and 'development for all' has been our guiding principle. Andhra Pradesh figures very prominently on our agenda of National Development and it is widely known that the Union Government led by the Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has left no stone unturned in ensuring the growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh.

Since the discussion of bifurcating united Andhra Pradesh till the present, it is the BJP that has led the voice of safeguarding the welfare of Telugu people in both the Telugu states. This is in direct contrast to the Congress Party, which not only mismanaged the bifurcation but also showed zero sensitivity towards the Telugu people, which is in line with their historic apathy to the Telugu community.

You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in the Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both the states.

Since getting the opportunity to serve at the Centre, the BJP-led NDA Government, of which you were an integral constituent, has nurtured the new state of Andhra Pradesh with the spirit that this is the state that suffered at the time of state's bifurcation. There is an element of sensitivity and a firm commitment for the cause of Andhra Pradesh's development in the way the NDA Government at the Centre has worked for Andhra Pradesh.

This becomes evident from the massive resource allocations to the state of Andhra Pradesh over the past four years and the fact that already most of the promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 are poised towards fulfilment.

The BJP has always pursued developmental politics with the objective of transforming peoples lives. The manner in which people have blessed us over the past four years throughout the country demonstrates the public support for our positive agenda. Your assertion that the BJP is not sensitive to the aspirations of the people of Andhra Pradesh and has not implemented the provisions of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 and assurances given by the then Prime Minister in the Rajya Sabha is untrue and baseless.

Cooperative federalism is the guiding credo of this Government. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Moth has worked with a 'Team India' spirit, with all the Chief Ministers and devolved far more funds - 42 percent of central revenues (as against 32 percent earlier) - amounting to an additional Rs. 2 Lakh crore, to the states. All this makes it very obvious that any claim of discrimination against Andhra Pradesh is far from the facts.

Andhra Pradesh has received special assistance and attention as the young state needed nurturing and investments to give its economy a greater impetus. Facts mentioned in the following paragraphs explain how the Central Government has not only fulfilled its statutory obligations under the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 but has gone far beyond to ensure that the state becomes financially strong.

A perusal of these would reaffirm what you already know and perhaps won't admit- that the Central Government has fulfilled its obligations and that the BJP is a genuine friend and true well-wisher of the people of Andhra Pradesh.

Schedule XIII of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 has two components namely, Education and Infrastructure. While the Act mandates the Central Government to set up 11 educational institutions of national importance by the end of 13th plan i.e 2022. nine institutions namely IIT, NIT, IIIT, IIM, IISER, IIPE, Agri University, AIIMS-type Hospital cum teaching institution, NIDM) have already been established and are functioning in the state. As regards the remaining two institutions, namely a central university and a tribal university, a provision has already been made in the current year's Union budget. Would the Central Government have established these institutions and made them functional in three years, much before the targeted year of 2022 if it was not sensitive to the needs of Andhra Pradesh?

Of the eight infrastructure projects that the AP Reorganisation Act proposes for implementation, subject to their feasibility. the Central Government has already initiated action on five feasible projects. These include:

1) HPCL's greenfield crude oil refinery and petrochemical complex at Kakinada

2) 800 km long Vizag-Chennai Industrial Corridor

3) Upgradation of three airports at Visakhapatnam. Vijayawada and Tirupati to international standards 4) The following Rapid Rail and Road connectivity projects from the new capital of Andhra Pradesh Amaravathi:

A) As informed by your Government, a Techno-economic feasibility report of Greenfield expressway connecting the new capital city of Amaravathi to Ananatapuram will spur connectivity to Kurnool & Cuddapah is being prepared with an estimated civil cost of about Rs. 24.000 cr. Earlier, the state was to provide land free of all encumbrances. But later, in a meeting, the Chief Secretary of the State said that it can only provide 50% of land cost as per Bharatmala Pariyojana norms. A formal reference from State in this regard is still awaited.

B) 180 km long outer ring road to the new capital town of Amravati with a budget of Rs.19,700 crore

C) The new railway line between Vijayawada and Guntur via Amravati at a cost of Rs. 2680 crones

D) New railway line on Nadikudi-Srikalahasti (309 km) route at a cost of Rs. 340 crore and

E) Guntakal-Guntur line doubling project with electrification at a project cost of Rs. 3,631 crore.

5) "In principle" approval has been given for Vijayawada metro rail project at a cost of Rs. 6,769 crone and a revised proposal is still awaited from the state for the approval of the Visakhapatnam metro project.

Of the remaining infrastructure projects, Duggirajapatnam port and steel plant in YSR district have been found to be unviable initially. The Government of India has given an assurance in Parliament that Duggirajapatnam or any other port will be taken up for earliest implementation. A task force set up to re-examine the steel plant in YSR district has made recommendations for making the project viable and the Centre is working out modalities to make this happen. The issue of establishing a new railway zone is under active consideration of the Ministry of Railways and a decision in this regard will be made in due course looking into all relevant factors.

Special Category Status

On the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh, it is regrettable that some political parties are whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate which is the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy. I would like you to introspect whether poetical parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda.

The 14th Finance Commission's Terms of Reference (ToR) have been amended in right earnest as per AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 as soon as our government came to power on June 2, 2014 vide President's Order published under S.O. Sc. 1424(E) to take into account the resources available to Andhra Pradesh and make recommendations thereof.

Due to the weak financial position of Andhra Pradesh, the 14 Finance Commission has awarded to the state revenue deficit grants to the tune of Rs. 22.113 crore covering the overall revenue deficit for five years. Andhra Pradesh is the only state to receive the award of revenue deficit grants for all the five years period i.e from 2015 to 2020 besides the eight north-eastern and hilly states. Does that not show that the Central Government has been sensitive to the needs of Andhra Pradesh?

The NDA government has more than doubled the extent of central assistance to Andhra Pradesh as compared to the total funds allocated in the previous five years. The total award of funds to Andhra Pradesh under tax devolution and grants under various heads during the 14' Finance Commission (2015 to 2020 which broadly corresponds to the tenure of the present NDA government) is Rs.2,44,271 crore and the break-up of this allocation is as under Rs.1,70,686 Cr (share in central taxes), Grant-In-Ad Rs. 36,225 Cr, Revenue Deficit Grant Rs. 22,113 Cr, Local bodies grant Rs. 12.290 Cr and State Disaster Response Fund Rs. 2,957 Cr. The total award of funds and grants to Andhra Pradesh in the previous five years (2010 to 2015) was Rs. 1,17,967 crone and the Congress-led UPA government was in power for most of this period. Mn Naidu. does this massive increase in the financial award to the tune of Rs.1.26.304 Cr (and a rise of 107% in percentage terms) to Andhra Pradesh not show the sensitivity of the Central Government towards the state's requirements?

Even after such massive increase in allocations, the Central Government has offered a Special Assistance Measure (Financial Package) to Andhra Pradesh in September 2016 which was equivalent to the key financial benefits the state would have got as a special category state. Your government hailed this central assistance package as a great achievement of the state government. Suddenly, two years later, you have made a U-Turn once again demanding the special status which has become redundant in view of the financial commitments already fulfilled by the Central Government.

Under the Special Assistance Measure (Package). the amount of Externally Aided Projects (EAPs) signed so far is Rs.8,991.38 Crore, while projects worth Rs.17,236 Crone are in the pipeline. Your accusation that there is a delay in the release of funds under the special package is an admission of your government's lackadaisical approach. Why is it that the state government has not acted in a speedy manner to get the externally aided projects implemented when the special assistance measure (package) was approved by the Union cabinet? If the public welfare was a priority why did your government take so long to access these funds? Why is it that your government has not responded to Central Government's suggestion of setting up a special purpose vehicle for directly receiving these funds from NABARD as desired by your government? Is it because it poses problems in diverting such funds for 'other' purposes?

As you are aware, the NDA Government had agreed to bridge the revenue gap for the year 2014-15 and a sum of Rs. 3979.50 Crore was released to the state. The Central Government has also agreed to release an additional Rs.1600 crore based on the revenue deficit estimates for the year 2015-16 by the 14. Finance Commission.

Your government's claim of Rs.16,000 crore deficit in the year 2014-15 is fallacious as this includes the state government's expenditure on farm loan waivers, pensions etc. Even our party governments in different states have implemented similar loan waiver schemes to give relief to the farmers but have met such expenditure from their own sources. The Central Government cannot be expected to meet these expenses as we cannot differentiate between state governments implementing similar welfare measures. Is it not political brinkmanship to make unjustified and exaggerated demands and then allege neglect when they are not accepted?

In keeping with the BJP's stated position at the time of reorganisation of Andhra Pradesh and articulated by the Party leaders during the debate, NDA Govt has tried to fulfil every promise made. A notification was duly issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on September 30, 2016, covering the seven backward districts of Rayalaseema and north coastal districts Are you not being disingenuous in claiming in your letter that the state of Andhra Pradesh has not received industrial and tax incentives?

As regards the special developmental assistance to the seven backward districts, the Central Government has released development grants to the tune of Rs.1.050 crore in the first three years Surprisingly, the state has spent only 12% of this amount and 88% remains unutilised. Furthermore, you have been claiming that the Central Government has asked this amount be taken back as this amount was released without the PMO's permission. This is nothing but a figment of your imagination.

The commitment of Central Government towards the development of Andhra Pradesh also gets reflected in the increased budgetary allocation of Railways. Budget Outlay in 2014-19 has been about Rs. 14,151 crore as against Rs. 5,100 in 2009-14, an increase of about 219%. It is also worth mentioning that a total of 32 projects costing Rs. 47,989 Cr for 5,016 kms is already under execution.

New Capital City

As regards the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh. the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 says that the Central Government shall provide special financial support for the creation of essential facilities including the Raj Bhawan, High Court, Government Secretariat, Legislative Assembly. Legislative Council, and such other essential infrastructure. Towards this end, the Central Government has already made available Rs.2,500 crore to the state government. This includes Rs.1,000 crore released by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India for the development of the capital region. The state government has spent only 8% of the Rs. 1,000 crore released by the MoHUA. When the state government has not utilized the funds given so far, how can it expect the Central Government to release any further funds for the purpose?

Polavaram Project

As regards the Polavaram project, an Advisory Committee of Ministry of Water Resources approved the cost of the Project at 2010-11 price level as Rs.16,010.45 crore including power and drinking water component of Rs.2,868 crore. Further, on 08.9.2016, the Finance Minister announced that the Central Government would provide 100% of the remaining cost of the irrigation component of the project for the period starting from 1.4.2014. to the extent of the cost of the irrigation component on that date. So far, Central Government has released Rs. 5,364.00 crore and is committed to funding the balance amount of the project as per the announcement made by Finance Minister on 08.9.2016.

Centre's Key Initiatives in AP

Going beyond statutory commitments made in the AP Reorganisation Act. 2014 and the special assistance package, Hon'ble Prime Minister and his government have given special focus to Andhra Pradesh since 2014. More than Rs. 3 lakh crore worth of infrastructure and industrial projects have been initiated in the state of Andhra Pradesh. These include an investment of over Rs. 1 lakh crore on highways and roads, investment of over Rs. 1.4 lakh crore by HPCL, GAIL and ONGC in the petroleum sector to make Andhra Pradesh a major petrochemical club. investment of Rs.38,500 crores in Vizag Steel Plant, UDAY (Discoms) scheme with an overall net benefit of approximately Rs.4.400 crore during the period of a turnaround, ultra mega solar power projects and Solar parks at a cost of Rs. 24,000 crores etc

The Central Government has allocated substantial resources for the implementation of pro-poor programmes such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Ujjwala Yojana, Pradhanmantri Awas Yojana etc. I am pained to learn that the efforts of Central Government on this account have been undermined by the TDP in its attempt to claim credit for these programs.

Utilisation Details

It may also be pointed out here that there are some serious lapses on the part of your Government which cannot be ignored. I learnt that the Central Government has not received appropriate fund utilization details, particularly with regards to developmental funds under desired heads. It is worth noting that the Utilisation Certificates (UCs) have been received only for 12% of the grant released for backward districts in 2016 -17 and UCs were received only for 8% for the 1000 crore released for the Capital Region. Since it is mandatory for the Central Government to have these details to release further instalments: it cannot be blamed for fund lapses. Governments are accountable to the people for every single penny spent on their behalf. Therefore, your statements that the state government has no obligation to give any such statements of expenditure are evasive and reflect governance deficit.

The above facts clearly establish that the Central Government has sincerely and expeditiously implement the provisions of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014. Going far beyond these assurances, we have demonstrated our earnest goodwill and commitment to the 5 crore people of Andhra Pradesh by several additional initiatives enlisted in this letter.

The commitment of BJP for the cause of development and justice to Andhra Pradesh, in particular, is simply unquestionable. But unfortunately, the mandate earned together by both the parties is allowed to be squandered for political reasons. We were looking at TDP as our partner in the progress of the people of the Andhra Pradesh. Unfortunately, partisan politics has overtaken leading to your Party leaving the NDA.

Regardless of these facts, BJP reiterates its commitment to the people of Andhra Pradesh and will steadfastly continue to work for the development of the State.

With regards,

Amit Shah

National President

Bharatiya Janata Party

The full text has been entirely reproduced from the BJP's official website and has not been edited by Firstpost for style and contentIn the event of a seat-sharing arrangement between BSP and SP in general elections, there is more likelihood of BSP's core votes getting transferred to her ally than SP's base votes coming to her kitty.

There are roughly three broad lessons to be gleaned from Friday's Rajya Sabha elections in context of next year's Lok Sabha polls. One, a mismatch between arithmetic and chemistry of an SP-BSP grand alliance in Uttar Pradesh may upset calculations. Two, Congress must accept the primacy of regional players in an anti-BJP coalition and be prepared to shed its ego. Three, while there will be no "wave" in Narendra Modi's favour in 2019, BJP's ability to perform as a street-fighter should not be underestimated.

The first lesson isn't new, but nevertheless a reinforcement of BSP chief Mayawati's worst fears that in the event of a grand alliance, she stands to lose more. In the event of a seat-sharing arrangement between BSP and SP in general elections, there is more likelihood of BSP's core votes getting transferred to her ally than SP's base votes coming to her kitty. Instead of a proper quid pro quo, the alliance could act as a valve and leave the door ajar for BJP to exploit.

This is because though SP-BSP grand alliance is on paper a fearsome social coalition and boasts of a joint voter base easily surpassing BJP's, elections are not just mathematical equations to be solved. The core voter base of both parties  BSP's Jatav Dalit, Chamar and SP's Yadavs  do not share an easy history. While it is easier for a cadre-based party like the BSP to respect the command of its supremo and vote for alliance candidates, the opposite isn't true for a non-cadre based party like the SP.

A grand coalition might no longer be a matter of choice but a compulsion for the arch-rivals to join hands against a common enemy. However, electoral obligations at the top may not flow seamlessly to the bottom where party workers and local leaders from both parties have built their careers on mutual antagonism. Coercive pressure from the top may result in the creation of local dissidents and rebels.

We saw an inkling of this possibility during the Rajya Sabha polls for the 10th seat in Uttar Pradesh  where BJP's ninth nominee Anil Kumar Agrawal defeated BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar via second preference votes in a bitter fight marred by cross-voting. While BSP MLA Anil Singh claimed to have cast his vote in favour of BJP, the saffron unit was boosted by cross voting from at least one SP legislator and votes from Nishad Party MLA Vijay Mishra and two 'independent candidates' Raghuraj Pratap Singh and Vinod Saroj who are apparently "close" to Akhilesh Yadav.

Mishra, who was an ally of SP during the recent Phulpur and Gorakhpur Lok Sabha bypolls where BSP had provided tacit support to plot BJP's defeat, reportedly refused to support BSP candidate Ambedkar.

Similarly, Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias 'Raja Bhaiyya', who attended an SP "dinner" on Wednesday, on the voting day posted a tweet clarifying that his backing of SP does not extend to BSP. Singh called on Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath soon after casting his vote, according to a report in The Indian Express.

In a tweet which he later appeared to have deleted, Akhilesh had shared a picture with Singh and "thanked" him for backing the SP.

It now turns out that though Singh had helped SP candidate Jaya Bachchan in retaining her Rajya Sabha seat, he refused to back BSP's Ambedkar, and consequently Mayawati's bid to get one seat in the Upper House ended in failure. Now let's step back and see how the 'grand alliance' shaped up for Mayawati.

The BSP chief's call for a defeat of BJP candidates in Gorakhpur and Phulpur helped the SP, but when the time came for returning the favour and helping BSP gain a seat in Rajya Sabha, Akhilesh failed to deliver. He, however, succeeded in getting own candidate Bachchan through. If these elections are a testing ground for the 'grand alliance', then Mayawati has just received more fodder for skepticism. The upcoming bypolls in Kairana Lok Sabha seat and Noorpur Assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh will likely be the acid test.

The second lesson is for Congress, whose one of the 10 winning candidates on Friday should thank Mamata Banerjee. The TMC supremo had enough strength to send five candidates to the Upper House but she left one for the Congress. Abhishek Manu Singhvi finally received 47 votes, 15 more Congress' total strength of 32 votes in the West Bengal Assembly. This move comes a year after TMC had forfeited one seat in 2017 for Congress' Pradip Bhattacharya.

Mamata's "magnanimity" runs contrary to the ground realities in Bengal where Congress is TMC's fierce competitor and is an unofficial alliance partner of the Left. It is no less interesting that the TMC chief, who gave Sonia's dinner a miss and sent Sudip Bandopadhyay instead, is reportedly keen to meet her at Sharad Pawar's upcoming dinner in New Delhi.

Mamata had made no bones about the fact that she prefers dealing with Sonia over Rahul Gandhi. She has been critical of the new Congress president a number of times, most notably after the recent Tripura Assembly polls where she blamed Rahul for turning down TMC's proposal of an alliance.

When Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao recently came calling in Nabanna, Mamata met him to indicate her interest in KCR's "non-Congress, non-BJP federal front" but stopped just short of keeping Congress out of the equation.

All these careful signaling from the Bengal chief minister is meant to convey one unambiguous message, that an anti-BJP coalition against Narendra Modi in 2019 cannot be on Congress' terms. It is here that the grand old party has to shed its ego and accept the ground realities.

The third lesson from the Rajya Sabha polls is for the Opposition. The BJP will doubtless find it very difficult to replicate its 2014 performance in the Hindi heartland. Anti-incumbency, lack of any 'hawa' in Modi's favour and return of caste equations are powerful headwinds that BJP will run into, but it may also spur the party into greater mode of activism. The BJP's ability to fight for every seat in every election should not be underestimated.

Ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls, the BJP made two strategic moves. It inducted SP dissident Naresh Agarwal, who was smarting from Akhilesh's move to deny him a Rajya Sabha ticket. This paved the way for Naresh's son Nitin to vote for BJP. It had also sent Union Minister for Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal to Uttar Pradesh on Thursday to chalk out a winning strategy.

As The Economic Times reported, "Goyal supervised a mock voting drill of all NDA MLAs on Thursday as many of them were first-time MLAs. BJP also succeeded in getting three upper-caste MLAs outside its camp to vote for its ninth candidate, Anil Agrawal, who ultimately got 16 first preference votes instead of 12 alloted for him by NDA."

The party also worked behind the scenes to get a BSP legislator and independent MLAs to vote in its favour. The strategy worked as all nine BJP nominees from Uttar Pradesh went through. The BJP would have also noted the lack of coordination among SP and BSP. Yogi wasted no time in commenting that Rajya Sabha polls have exposed the "opportunistic face of SP" which "can take from others but can't give." Without taking any names, he said the election results are a "signal for an intelligent person".

The reference to Mayawati couldn't be clearer. Yogi's comments also raise the tantalising possibility of BSP supremo tying up with the BJP for 2019. Such a move looks improbable at this stage but isn't politics an art of the possible?tech2 News Staff

Rumours are floating online about a foldable Galaxy device from Samsung and it is speculated to be called as the Galaxy X. At the MWC 2018, Samsung CEO DJ Koh had reiterated the fact that the Galaxy X is not a gimmick and that the phone will be launched. Not wanting to be outdone, Apple may also reportedly be in the process of making a 'foldable' iPhone by 2020.

As per a CNBC report, Bank of America Merrill Lynch has said that the Cupertino-based tech giant is working with Asian partners to make this foldable iPhone.

Analyst Wamsi Mohan told CNBC, "We expect the iPhones this fall to be largely unchanged for the OLED versions although size changes have proved to be a catalyst in the past. Our checks also suggest that Apple is working with suppliers on a foldable phone (that potentially could double up as a tablet) for launch in 2020."

Apple has already introduced a massive design overhaul on the iPhone X with the removal of the home button, something that has been on an iPhone since the very beginning, and introducing a notch. Bringing out a foldable iPhone, which can double up as a tablet could be the next step in design innovation from Apple. Already competitors such as Lenovo and Samsung have demoed concept foldable phones while some other companies, as per the report, have filed for patents.

A Korean news outlet had last year reported that Apple might partner with LG for these foldable OLED displays. However, the report has cited anonymous sources. As we usher in a new age of smartphone designs, it is quite a possibility that foldable displays become the next design element for smartphones in the future.Reuters

U.S. lawmakers on Friday formally asked Facebook Incs Mark Zuckerberg to explain at a congressional hearing how 50 million users data got into the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

The worlds largest social media network is under growing pressure from governments, investors and advertisers. This follows allegations by a whistleblower that British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016.

The hearing will examine the harvesting and sale of personal information from more than 50 million Facebook users, potentially without their notice or consent and in violation of Facebook policy, chairman Representative Greg Walden, a Republican who chairs the panel, and Frank Pallone, the top Democrat, and other committee leaders wrote in the letter.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee did not say when they planned the hearing but it will not happen until Congress returns from a two-week recess. Zuckerberg said this week he would be willing to testify if he is the right person at the company to speak to lawmakers.

A Facebook spokesman confirmed the company had received the House letter and was reviewing it, but did not say whether or not Zuckerberg would agree to testify.

Separately, the leaders of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee also asked Zuckerberg to testify. Senator John Thune, the committee chairman, and Bill Nelson, the top Democrat, said the committee would work with Facebook to find a suitable date for Mr. Zuckerberg to testify in the coming weeks.

Facebook executives spent Wednesday and Thursday on Capitol Hill briefing congressional committee staffers.

Two senators also asked the Federal Trade Commission, the leading U.S. consumer regulator, to investigate if other firms improperly obtained user data from Facebook users. The FTC is reviewing whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree it reached with the authority over its privacy practices, a person briefed on the matter told Reuters this week.

Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday for the mistakes his company had made and promised to restrict developers access to user information as part of a plan to protect privacy.

His apology has failed to appease investors and advertisers.

Facebook shares fell on Friday, although not at the pace of earlier in the week. After opening higher, they were down 1.6 percent at $162, and have fallen around 12 percent since last Friday. The company has lost more than $50 billion in market value since the allegations surfaced.

Advertisers Mozilla and German bank Commerzbank have suspended ads on the service and the hashtag #DeleteFacebook remained popular online.

On Friday, electric carmaker Tesla Incs and its rocket company SpaceXs Facebook pages  each with more than 2.6 million followers  were deleted after Chief Executive Elon Musk promised to do so.British regulators on Saturday began searching the London offices of Cambridge Analytica (CA), the scandal-hit communications firm at the heart of the Facebook data scandal

London: British regulators on Saturday began searching the London offices of Cambridge Analytica (CA), the scandal-hit communications firm at the heart of the Facebook data scandal, shortly after a judge approved a search warrant.

Around 18 enforcement agents from the office of Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham entered the company's London headquarters at around 1.30 am IST to execute the warrant.

The High Court granted the raid request less than an hour earlier, as Denham investigates claims that Cambridge Analytica may have illegally harvested Facebook data for political ends.

A full explanation of the legal ruling by Judge Anthony James Leonard will be issued on Tuesday, according to the court.

"We're pleased with the decision of the judge," Denham's office said on Twitter.

"This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes," it added in a statement.

"As you will expect, we will now need to collect, assess and consider the evidence before coming to any conclusions."

The data watchdog's probe comes amid whistleblower accusations that Cambridge Aanalytica, hired by Donald Trump during his primary campaign, illegally mined tens of millions of users' Facebook data and then used it to target potential voters.

Fresh allegations also emerged Friday night about the firm's involvement in the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign.

Brittany Kaiser, Cambridge Analytica's business development director until two weeks ago, revealed it conducted data research for Leave.EU, one of the leading campaign groups, via the UK Independence Party (UKIP), according to The Guardian.

Kaiser, 30, told the newspaper she felt the company's repeated public denials it ever worked on the poll misled British lawmakers and the public.

"In my opinion, I was lying," she said. "In my opinion I felt like we should say, 'this is exactly what we did.'"

Cambridge Analytica's suspended chief executive Alexander Nix told MPs last month: "We did not work for Leave.EU. We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, okay?"

Nix was suspended this week following the Facebook revelations and a further media sting in which he boasts about entrapping politicians and secretly operating in elections around the world through shadowy front companies.

He has already been called to reappear before British lawmakers to explain "inconsistencies" in past testimony about the firm's use of the data.

Meanwhile Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been forced to issue a statement outlining his firm's role in the scandal and apologised Wednesday to its billions of users for the breach.

The company has seen its stock market value plunge by around $75 million amid the crisis, as shares closed the week down 13 percent - their worst seven days since July 2012.

Cambridge Analytica denies any wrongdoing, and said Friday it was undertaking an independent third-party audit to verify that it no longer holds any of the mined data.President Donald Trump released an order Friday night banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under 'limited circumstances,' following up on his calls last year to ban transgender individuals from serving.

Palm Beach: President Donald Trump released an order Friday night banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under "limited circumstances," following up on his calls last year to ban transgender individuals from serving.

The White House said retaining troops with a history or diagnosis of "gender dysphoria"  those who may require substantial medical treatment  "presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality."

Trump surprised the Pentagon's leadership in a 2017 tweet when he declared he would reverse an Obama-era plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly. His push for the ban has been blocked by several legal challenges, and four federal courts have ruled against the ban. The Pentagon responded by allowing those serving to stay in the military, and began allowing transgender individuals to enlist beginning 1 January.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said his state will continue its legal fight against the ban.

"California will take every measure available to prevent President Trump's discriminatory action that harms or marginalizes transgender service members  or any other transgender Americans who wish to courageously defend our nation," he said.

"This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards  including those regarding the use of medical drugs  equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday.

The new policy was promptly assailed by congressional Democrats and civil rights groups. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted, "No one with the strength & bravery to serve in the US military should be turned away because of who they are. This hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor & dignity."

No one with the strength & bravery to serve in the U.S. military should be turned away because of who they are. This hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor & dignity. #ProtectTransTroops  Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) March 24, 2018

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT civil rights organisation, accused the Trump administration of pushing "anti-transgender prejudices onto the military."

"There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops," said HRC President Chad Griffin.

Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, said the policy "effectively coerces transgender people who wish to serve into choosing between their humanity and their country, and makes it clear that transgender service members are not welcome."

Trump received recommendations from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in February for dealing with transgender individuals serving in the military. The White House said Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen agreed with the policy.

In Mattis's 22 February memo to Trump explaining his recommendation, which the Pentagon made public late Friday night, he cited exceptions to the ban.

"Currently serving service members who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since the previous administration's policy took effect and prior to the effective date of this new policy, may continue to serve in their preferred gender and receive medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria," Mattis wrote.

Earlier Friday, Maj David Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, said the announcement of a new policy would have no immediate practical effect on the military because the Pentagon is obliged to continue to recruit and retain transgender people in accordance with current law.

The issue has become mired in a complicated string of political statements, court decisions and policy reviews since Trump first stunned his administration with his tweets last July. It's unclear how much impact the court decisions will have on Trump's decision.

The Justice Department issued a statement Friday saying it will continue to defend the Pentagon's "lawful authority to create and implement personnel policies they have determined are necessary to best defend our nation. Consistent with this new policy, we are asking the courts to lift all related preliminary injunctions."

Activist groups had worried the administration could enact such strict enlistment and health care restrictions that it would become all but impossible for transgender troops to join or continue serving.

Under guidelines presented in December, the Pentagon could disqualify potential recruits with gender dysphoria, those with a history of medical treatments associated with gender transition and those who underwent reconstruction. Such recruits could be allowed in if a medical provider certified they've been clinically stable in the preferred sex for 18 months and are free of significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas.

Transgender individuals receiving hormone therapy must be stable on their medication for 18 months.

The requirements make it challenging for a transgender recruit to pass. But they mirror conditions laid out by President Barack Obama's administration in 2016, when the Pentagon initially lifted its ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military.India is a brother, but China is like a long lost cousin found, Maldives ambassador to China Mohamed Faisal has said, asserting that his country would push ahead with Chinese projects despite New Delhi's concerns.

Beijin: India is a brother, but China is like a long lost cousin found, Maldives ambassador to China Mohamed Faisal has said, asserting that his country would push ahead with Chinese projects despite New Delhi's concerns.

The Maldives will further embrace Chinese investment but is aware it risks getting caught between China and India, Faisal told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"China is like a long-lost cousin that we have found, a long-lost cousin who is willing to help us," he said on Thursday after Maldivian president Abdulla Yameen lifted a state of emergency in the troubled South Asian nation after 45 days.

"India is a brother. We are a family, we may quarrel and we may have arguments but in the end, we will sit down and resolve it," the diplomat said.

He claimed that the Maldives has taken a number of projects to India for finance "but we did not receive the necessary finance."

China, which looks at Maldives as a major participant in its 21st century Maritime Silk Road plan in the Indian Ocean, has made heavy investments in the nation of islands which has 26 tropical atolls and 1,000 small islands.

China has put up a staunch defence of Maldives president Abdulla Yameen, stonewalling international pressure and enabling him to stay in power during the current crisis.

The picturesque Indian Ocean archipelago was plunged into chaos early in February when the Supreme Court called for the release of nine imprisoned Opposition politicians, ruling that their trials were politically motivated and flawed.

The government refused to implement the ruling.

Yameen imposed a state of emergency and arrested apex court judges and former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Opposition party leaders in Maldives alleged that China is tacitly backing Yameen, which emboldened him to resort to unconstitutional actions like arresting Supreme Court judges.

Former president Mohamed Nasheed who was in exile abroad had called for Indian intervention in Maldives to save the democracy in the island nation. He had alleged that China is indulging in land grabbing, threatening not just the Maldives, but the peace and the stability of the entire region.

Faisal said Maldives will not allow any foreign military establishments.

"Our government has made it very clear that we are not going to allow any kind of military establishments or military undertakings in the Maldives. Not for China, not for any other countries," he said.

More than 70 percent of the Maldives' foreign debt is owed to China, but Faisal said it was not having trouble making payments, adding that the country had taken some concessional loans to pay as its tourism market expanded.

"Right now, it's only seven islands that Chinese have invested in, in the tourism sector. For a country with such capacity as China I think it is a very low number  it should be more than that."

China had expressed interest in building a port in the Maldives, Faisal said, but there was no confirmed plan at present.The dismay on social media on the appointment of John Bolton as the National Security Advisor is already evident. His reputation is that of a warmonger, fired by the conviction that the United States should remain the unchallenged super power, deciding the fates of lesser countries for their own benefit. In short, a kind of Hunger Games reloaded foreign policy that is typical of the neoconservatives.

The dismay on social media on the appointment of John Bolton as the National Security Advisor (NSA) is already evident. His reputation is that of a warmonger, fired by the conviction that the United States should remain the unchallenged super power, deciding the fates of lesser countries for their own benefit. In short, a kind of Hunger Games reloaded foreign policy that is typical of the neoconservatives.

Thats the general consensus. But heres the thing about Bolton: Hes not afraid to say what others are secretly thinking. Just a month ago, he argued powerfully for pre-emptive strikes against North Korea, citing decisions from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan to support his position. His arguments are probably supported by recent revelations that Israel struck a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, in a textbook case of pre-emption.

That move was quietly approved by the then president George Bush, under whom Bolton served as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. Bolton was also briefly part of the delegation holding talks with North Korea, but was removed after he chose to make some scathing remarks about the leadership. On the face of it, therefore, hes bad news for Pyongyang. And he is likely to strongly oppose President Donald Trumps decision to parley with the "supreme leader". He would much prefer to pulverise him.

With regard to North Korea, it is his reputation for being a non-proliferation guru that is likely to be of interest to India. Proliferation from North Korea has long been a serious problem for New Delhi, since there is a considerable body of evidence that it benefitted Pakistans missile program. Bolton would be fully aware of this. He was, after all, virtually the architect of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a programme aimed at preventing nuclear or missile related equipment being illegally shipped to states of concern.

What will interest Bolton is whether there is a continuing pattern of nuclear assistance taking place, particularly after Pyongyang claimed it tested a miniaturised nuclear weapon in August 2017. The parameters collected would be of immense interest to both Pakistan and China. The likelihood of either or both financing the North Korean tests  which costs a prohibitive amount of money  is possible. Indian intelligence agencies, therefore, need to exert themselves in this direction to provide grist to the Bolton mill of non-proliferation.

Boltons views on Iran are similarly harsh. His own writing on the subject  and he writes a lot  is unequivocal, calling it former president Barack Obamas diplomatic waterloo, which is as clear as it could possibly get.

While Bolton is widely known to have been the architect of the war against Iraq, there was also enough to indicate that he would have liked to have extended this to Iran as well in one broad sweep of regime change. Thankfully, that didnt take place.

At present, however, Bolton and his coterie are driven by the fear that the Ayatollahs are still fixated on getting a nuclear weapon for themselves. Unfortunately, this is a view shared by many, most worryingly by Trump himself. The hard fought nuclear deal by the earlier administration is, however, the bedrock of regional stability, and as such is also vital for Indian security. Though India has now begun the process of investment in our national currency, the difficulties inherent to balancing our Iran policy with an intransigent US administration is likely to be fraught with difficulties.

The most problematic area of concern is likely to be Pakistan. Boltons knowledge, and more importantly, his concerns about Pakistan are largely limited to its nuclear weapons, and not terrorism per se. Following the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and the ensuing anger in the US, Bolton argued that cutting aid was not an option since Pakistans nuclear weapons (from 60-100) could fall into the hands of radicals.

This seems to point to a very poor knowledge about the dynamics inherent to Pakistans proxy war strategy and its shrewd rattling of a nuclear sabre in aid of this. The most recent statements attributed to Bolton where he warned that as a nuclear capable terrorist country, Pakistan would be like Iran or North Korea on steroids, typifies this view and underlines what his foremost concerns are: Of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands.

Expect that in the coming days, Pakistani analysts will be sent far and wide to take about just how unstable their country is likely to get in the midst of an upswing in radicalism, and ergo, the need for American aid to prevent such a horror. Hopefully however, Trump has Pakistans measure. A businessman to the core, he would still want to know what he gets out of his billions in aid.

Bolton as NSA will certainly retain all crusading convictions against the bad guys, in part because this is what the American public likes to hear. But going adventuring abroad goes against the grain of Trumps beliefs that the administration should concentrate on building America and leave the rest of the world to chase itself round the block.

Bolton's policies on North Korea and Iran are therefore likely to be tempered by Trump, even as he gives free rein to his NSA to build up the military and modernise the nuclear arsenal. Another round of nuclear one-upmanship is inevitable, particularly in anti-ballistic missile technologies. India has no particular reason to fear a hardening of policy other than on trade, and that was inevitable anyway.

However, it might well consider speeding up ways to get around the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, and allow the India-US nuclear deal to reach its full potential so that US entry into the lucrative nuclear energy business can be facilitated. Money talks, always, to neocons and liberals alike.Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy poisoned in Britain, wrote to President Vladimir Putin several years ago asking for a pardon for selling secrets to British intelligence, a friend told the BBC.

London: Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy poisoned in Britain, wrote to President Vladimir Putin several years ago asking for a pardon for selling secrets to British intelligence, a friend told the BBC on Saturday.

Vladimir Timoshkov said his old school friend  who had moved to Britain in a spy swap in 2010  had called him in 2012 revealing that he wanted to be allowed to visit Russia.

Moscow denied the claim, with the London embassy saying on Twitter: "There was no letter from Sergei Skripal to Putin to allow him to come back to Russia."

Timoshkov said he lost touch with Skripal after they were at school together but contacted his daughter Yulia on social media after hearing about his imprisonment for treason.

"In 2012, he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor," Timoshkov said in an interview with the British broadcaster.

He said Skripal told him that "he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were here".

Timoshkov said his friend "regretted" being a double agent "because his life had become all messed up".

"Many people had shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the motherland," he said. Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter are both in a coma after being poisoned with a nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury on 4 March.

London, the United States and the European Union have blamed the Russian state for the attack, although Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement.

The incident has caused a major diplomatic row, with the EU recalling its ambassador to Moscow and several EU countries set to follow Britain's suit in expelling diplomats it believes are posing as spies.

Russia responded by expelling its own diplomats and shutting down the British Council cultural organisation.Maithripala Sirisena on Friday met Pakistan's prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and expressed support for organising SAARC summit in Pakistan.

Islamabad: Sri Lanka's visiting president Maithripala Sirisena on Friday met Pakistan's prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and expressed support for organising SAARC summit in Pakistan, according to an official statement.

Sirisena, who arrived in Pakistan on Thursday on a three-day visit, was Guest of Honour at the Pakistan Day military parade held in Islamabad.

He also called on Prime Minister Abbasi for a one-on-one meeting which was followed by delegation level talks.

According to an official statement, issues of mutual importance were discussed during the meeting and the two sides expressed hope that the bilateral ties will continue to grow in the future.

The two sides also agreed to diversify and deepen the bilateral relations, it said.

"The Sri Lankan president extended support for the holding of SAARC Summit in Pakistan," the statement said.

After the meeting, the two sides signed three MoUs related to youth development and training of civil and diplomatic personnel.

A presentation ceremony of corneas also took place, it said, adding that the corneas were presented by Sirisena to Abbasi for treatment of visually impaired persons in Pakistan..                  ,       ,   EU Observer.        ,    []             ,  ,            ...-  -      

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Samsung launched the Galaxy J7 Prime (SM-G610F) smartphone back in 2016. Now the company listed the Galaxy J7 Prime 2 (SM-G611F). It has a 5.5-inch 1080p screen with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass protection and is powered by a 1.6GHz Octa-Core processor, has a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a fingerprint sensor on the front, but this comes with a 13-megapixel front camera, runs Android 7.1.1 (Nougat) and has 32GB of storage compared to 16GB in the predecessor.

It also has Samsung Mall app app that offers Visual search just by clicking an image of the product using machine learning. This was first introduced with the Galaxy On7 Prime earlier this year. It also has Samsung Pay Mini that lets you transfer money using wallets just by scanning the code or sending it using mobile number and send to bank account using UPI (Unified Payment Interface).

Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime 2 specifications

5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD TFT display with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass protection

1.6GHz Octa-Core Exynos 7870 processor

3GB RAM, 32GB internal memory, expandable up to 256GB with microSD

Android 7.1.1 (Nougat)

Dual SIM (nano + nano)

13MP rear camera with LED flash, f/1.9 aperture

13MP front-facing camera with f/1.9 aperture

Fingerprint sensor

Dimensions:151.7 x 75.0 x 8.0mm; Weight: 170g

4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS

3300mAh battery

The Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime 2 comes in Black and Gold colors, is priced at Rs. 13,990 and should go on sale through Samsung Shop online as well as offline retailers soon.Tara Reid never thought shed land her role in The Big Lebowski.

It was a Coen Brothers film, she told Page Six via phone on Tuesday. At the time, I was in the waiting room with Charlize Theron and Liv Tyler. And I thought, Yeah, right, like Im ever going to get this movie. But I wound up getting it and everyone was like, Whos this unknown girl who got the Coen Brothers film? And it was me.

The cult classic, which turned 20 earlier this month, stars Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey The Dude Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker and bowler whose life briefly turns into a Raymond Chandler novel (only with stoner jokes) after hes mistaken for a millionaire who shares the same name.

In the film, Reid, 42, plays Bunny, the other Jeffrey Lebowskis young trophy wife, whose disappearance sets the films plot in motion.

Bunny Lebowski is funny, she said. Shes kind of like this legend, she doesnt care. Shes just like, La la la la la. And shes kind of the main line of the storyline. Everybody is looking for Bunny the whole time. And she was clueless. The whole thing is about Bunny, yet she has no idea. And I kinda like that.

As a young actress, just getting started in movies, the experience of working with two of Americas most respected filmmakers was truly valuable for Reid. Theyre fantastic, she said of Joel and Ethan Coen. They really work as a team. Theyre very in sync with each other. If one comes up to you, you know the other is thinking the same thing. I know theyre not twins, but its almost like being twins.

It wasnt just the filmmakers who made an impression on the actress: Reid said the whole cast  which also included John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and Julianne Moore  proved themselves to be very good people whom shes really lucky to have worked with.

I remember being at the Academy Awards. I was going to one of the parties, she recalled. Julianne Moore, she came up to me and she goes, Tara! I knew who she was even though Id never met her. I introduced myself, she was so nice. Im Julianne, I did The Big Lebowski with you  since I had no scenes with her  You were amazing in it! She didnt have to do that. It was so kind either way. I thought, Wow, how cool is this.

Aside from her big scene, a playfully profane flirtation with the Dude poolside at her husbands house, the scenes that stick out to Reid all involve Bridges now-iconic character.

I always love when the Dude gets his head flushed down the toilet, she said with a laugh. I love that scene.

Even though she loved the film from the get-go, Reid admitted she never expected it to become the pop culture phenomenon it has, leading the Library of Congress to add it to the National Film Registry in 2014, having deemed it culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

But you never do, she said. American Pie is the same thing. You never know that its a hit. Because you think, with biggest directors, the biggest actors, you think its going to work. And it doesnt. Movies are fickle. You just never know what the audience is going to respond to.

But even if it hadnt proven to have such lasting power, the film gave Reid, just 22 when it was released, the momentum she needed to get her career going, and helped her land some of her biggest roles, including the part of Vicky Lathum in American Pie the next year.

This is definitely the breakout role that opened up all the areas for me, she said. Without this I dont think I would ever have had the success that I got, on such a big level.  Hollywood always wants to have that next big star, next big thing. And, by far, this is the movie that transformed me into that.

Reids next movie, the Burning Man horror film Party Bus to Hell, will be released in May. Then the sixth Sharknado film, which she says will most likely be the last, will air on Syfy later this summer.

This story originally appeared in the New York Post.Digital wunderkind Casey Neistat, once hailed as CNNs bridge to the future, slammed his former employer this week, calling the network an old-school media company devoid of entrepreneurial or innovative thinking.

Neistats denunciation of the news giant follows CNN abruptly cutting ties with him after reportedly paying more than $20 million for his video sharing startup, Beme.

Top-heaviness is not something that is conducive to a startup environment, he said on the Verges Vergecast podcast, calling CNN a case study for the innovators dilemma.

CNN signed Neistat to great fanfare in 2016 -- reportedly on the advice of CNN boss Jeff Zuckers teenage son. The network put a major publicity push behind their acquisition of Neistat and his app. In March 2017, Neistat appeared on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter with Zucker and three of the networks biggest stars: Jake Tapper, Anthony Bourdain and W. Kamau Bell.

Jeff says to me, You know, we have a huge news operation here; it's a global enterprise But my son says that you're the only person who matters in media, Neistat told the magazine at the time.

But the marriage was barely consummated before a swift divorce. After years of spending big on flashy digital projects that garnered great publicity but few real results, CNN is now cutting back mercilessly, ending ties with Neistat, shuttering other digital initiatives, and laying off dozens of staff. BuzzFeed reported that, last year alone, CNNs digital unit was facing a $20 million budget shortfall.

When it came to Beme, I think what I wanted it to be and what they wanted it to be didnt exactly look the same, Neistat said about creative difference he had with CNN brass.

Neistat told the Verge he feels that CNN should have focused on bootstrapping, to go beyond its comfort zone. That is where real innovative spirit comes from, he said.

I wanted it to be about technology and thats why I started Beme, Neistat said. With CNN and them expressing what their desires were in the tech space, you know they have an app and some interesting tech but they dont have anything that I would describe as outside of the realm of what youd expect from a news media company.

CNN did not immediately respond when asked for comments.

Zucker, a legacy media executive, came to CNN after a long career at NBC, and the executives hes hired at CNN have largely come from ABC News, another old-school operation.

Neistat said that because he didnt feel CNN had innovative technology, he saw an opportunity for forward-thinking software products. He explained that he wanted to leverage CNNs resources to develop cutting-edge apps, with a built-in media component, but the company wasnt up to the task.

That kind of entrepreneurial thinking that kind of innovators thinking, just doesnt really mesh necessarily with a larger entity like a [CNN parent company] Turner, Neistat said. That was where a lot of the struggles came from.

Neistat feels CNNs dearth of innovation stems from lacking the kind of nimble thinking that enables startups to operate and disrupt and that company executives were concerned that digital content would outshine television. During the revealing conversation, Neistat said he had to be careful because CNN was a fantastic partner aside from the lack of innovation.

Neistat ultimately said it wasnt his decision to split with CNN but the companys executives essentially wanted to cut their losses.

Industry insiders have been abuzz that CNNs digital operation could face more layoffs this year -- with cuts coming from New York-based, staff-heavy units that arent drawing sufficient traffic or revenue. In a recent restructuring, CNN reduced the responsibilities of some embattled New York executives and centralized editorial control in Atlanta, where CNN.com has its roots.

Its time to stop spending money and giving interviews about yourself, a CNN insider told Fox News.

Further dialing down of flashy, expensive initiatives and a focus on core competencies is expected, CNN insiders told Fox News.Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made a surprise visit to Northern Ireland on Friday as part of their pre-wedding tour of the United Kingdom.

The trip was not announced ahead of time in keeping with security procedures used for royal travel to Northern Ireland.

Kensington Palace officials said the couple would meet with young people and other members of the public and would also tour some of Belfast's most popular sites.

They had lunch at the popular Crown Liquor Saloon, a landmark in central Belfast.

As they toured Northern Ireland, approved commemorative china marking the couple's May 19 wedding went on sale Friday.

The collection uses cornflower blue with white detailing and a gold monogram of the bride and groom's initials.

The design also references the couple's wedding venue at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The decorative border is based on the ironwork of the 13th century chapel door.

The china is finished in 22 carat gold. It was made by hand in Stoke-on-Trent, 160 miles (260 kilometers) northwest of London, using traditional methods.

Profits will go to the Royal Collection Trust charity.Russell Simmons is facing another rape allegation and a $10 million lawsuit.

In court documents filed and obtained by Page Six on Friday, a woman accused the disgraced hip-hop mogul, 60, of sexually assaulting her in a hotel room and threatening to rape her son if she didnt comply.

The woman, referred to only as Jane Doe in the suit, says she and her elementary school-aged son were attending a concert in Sacramento for an artist who worked with the Def Jam founder, when he invited them to go backstage. She then accompanied Simmons to his hotel bar and a nightclub after dropping off her son with a babysitter.

The woman claims she later returned with Simmons  who has been at the center of sexual assault accusations for months  to his hotel, but says he assured her he wasnt interested in having sex with her, as he was in a relationship with a well-known model. But after reluctantly joining him in his room, she claims he shut the door and told her, I am going to fk you.

[The] Plaintiff said she had no intention of having sexual relations with Simmons  but he replied I am going to fk you or Im going to fk your son. You decide,' according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

She alleges that he threw her on the bed and raped her. She is now seeking at least $10 million in damages over allegations of forcible rape and emotional distress.

As a father of a young daughter, I am grateful to my client and the other women who have had the courage to bring these cases that will help make the world safer for women everywhere, the womans lawyer, Douglas Mastroianni, told Page Six on Friday.

Simmons denied the accusations in a statement to Page Six on Friday.

I vehemently deny all the allegations made against me, he said. They have shocked me to my core as I have never been abusive or violent in any way in my relations with women.

I have submitted myself to multiple lie detector tests, Simmons statement continued. I denied forced sex and sexual harassment allegations brought against me in each test; I also answered no to the question, Have you ever physically forced any woman to have sexual intercourse? I passed all of the lie detector tests.

The famed music producer  a father of three who was once married to Kimora Lee Simmons  has faced sexual misconduct allegations since the fall of 2017, including an accusation of attempted rape by PR guru Kelly Cutrone.

Simmons launched a #NotMe campaign on Instagram in response to the #MeToo movement. He later halted the initiative after saying that this is a time for women to speak.

This article originally appeared in the New York Post.The thousands of students rallying in Washington, D.C. on Saturday for the March for Our Lives movement are sure to work up an appetite, making the generosity of select restaurants near the march route all the more sweet.

Dubbed the Food For Our Lives movement, various chains and local eateries throughout the nations capital will offer free or discounted meals to high school aged protesters to show solidarity and support. #FoodForOurLives is currently trending on Twitter to promote the cause.

WALMART, COSTCO, TARGET IN TEXAS WON THE RIGHT TO SELL LIQUOR, BUT SOME ARE FIGHTING TO APPEAL

We proudly stand with the students who have come to make their voices heard against gun violence," the organizations website states #FoodForOurLives will provide free or discounted meals on Saturday, March 24 to any student 18 and under with a valid ID, while supplies last.

We wanted to be able to provide something to people making an effort and going out there and speaking up," Mallory Finnigan, general manager participating restaurant aThe Pig, told TODAY Food. "People just flood down 14th Street. We wanted to get a chance to feed them and to do something to show our solidarity."

RUTH BADER GINSBURG RULES THAT HOT DOGS ARE SANDWICHES

From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., various promotions and deals are available at Beefsteak, Sugar Shack Donuts, Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, Cava, Rasa, Taco Bamba, Protein Bar, Matchbox and Buredo, according to Food For Our Lives. Celebrity chef Jose Andres ThinkFoodGroup will also be giving out free meals to students while supplies last.

For protesters over 21, Finnigan said that The Bird, Grillfish, Comissary and Logan Tavern will be offering a specialty cocktail with all proceeds going to Everytown for Gun Safety.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWSImitation is certainly the highest form of flattery for one Kim Kardashian West super fan, who has spent $500,000 on plastic surgery to resemble the reality star.

Jennifer Pamplona from Sao Paolo, Brazil celebrated her recent recovery from a $30,000 procedure in Turkey with a naked, glittery photoshoot, inspired by famous campaign images from Kardashian Wests KKW Beauty line

Pamplona told The Daily Mail in a March 23 interview though going under the knife has come with complications, its all been worth it.

WARNING: IMAGES MAY BE GRAPHIC IN NATURE

'MOSTING' IS THE LATEST MADDENING DATING TREND

After all my surgery and procedures I'm pretty happy, sometimes I think all the money I spent could be in my bank account but at the same time I'm so happy, the 25-year-old said. I have spent a lot of money, but I feel very confident with myself and have the power to make more money because of my looks.

Over the years, the doppelganger has spent serious sums to transform nearly inch of her body to resemble the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, including a face lift, two nose jobs, cheek filler removal as well as having four ribs removed to and getting four pints of fat injected into her butt. For Pamplona, pain is beauty, and all the effort is worth it.

I think I will still feel confident doing naked shoots into my old age, I did all of my surgeries to remain beautiful - whether I'm 30, 60, 70 I'll still be beautiful, with age comes beauty too, she said. When you're not happy with yourself, feeling upset and not great, you're not going to succeed, now I love myself and I feel happy looking in the mirror.

If I had to, I definitely would do it all again, all of the surgeries and procedures, but for now I know it's time to focus more on my career, life and business, she admitted.

MEGHAN MARKLE'S LATEST HAIRSTYLE BROKE ROYAL TRADITION, AGAIN

Pamplona hopes that her looks can inspire other women to realize that they can be both attractive and successful, and has recently launched a perfume and chocolate line, the Daily Mail reports.

This is part of the reasoning behind why I like Kim Kardashian so much, she's really beautiful, very sexy, very smart and a savvy business woman, she said.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Though she has been criticized for her extensive surgeries, Pamplona says she wouldnt have it any other way.

People say Im stupid, but I have achieved a lot, she says. I came from a poor Brazilian village . . . [now Im] famous and [have] created a company, she told Caters New Agency of her cosmetic obsession, according to New York Post.

Im a good person, I support my family, support charities, I dont drink or do drugs, I do my best for the world and try to be a better person every day.NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles!

Will he or wont he? Rumors continue to swirl and speculation abounds about whether President Trump will order the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election and alleged misconduct by the Trump campaign and the president.

President Trump is a high-risk, high-reward player and he often wins. Hes a man of action who is impatient with delays. But in this case, he needs patience. He needs to let the Mueller probe finish on its own time, politically and legally, because thats the only way for the president to shut down all the speculation and be cleared of doing anything wrong.

So firing Mueller should be off the table  something President Trump doesnt even consider. The president needs to focus on his job, do his best to serve the American people, and just hit pause and stop being preoccupied by the Mueller probe. Talking about it and tweeting about it again and again, day after day, simply creates more news coverage and more public concern about the investigation.

President Trump needs vindication from Mueller to push legislation through Congress, manage international affairs with proper authority, protect Americas national security without distraction, and guide America through these complex times. He also needs vindication to win a second term. So waiting for Mueller to wind up his investigation, even if it goes on for several more months, is in the presidents best interest.

For obvious reasons, the president is frustrated. Who wouldnt be? The Russia collusion story is at a dead end. In terms of what is on the public record, the claims of collusion dont add up. Indeed, the facts known to the public point toward illegal collusion among top Obama administration officials who apparently aimed to stop Donald Trump from becoming president, or hobble him if he won.

Still, the Mueller probe continues on and on and on.

On the public record, we know that senior FBI and intelligence officials were apoplectic  texting with adolescent anxiety, fear and fury  in their determination to assure that Trump was defeated by Hillary Clinton.

The devotion of these federal employees to Clinton remains peculiar, almost religious. Perhaps it was fed by fear of the inexperienced, conservative, and irreverently tweeting candidate Trump.

While federal employees have First Amendment rights to an opinion, what is now obvious is that some abused their positions and power and engaged in a conspiracy to bend the law to serve their opinions. That is not acceptable or excusable, regardless of whether it is directed against a Democratic or Republican candidate.

What is also obvious is that the conspiracy to undermine President Trump both before and after he took office was undertaken without compunction, with gloves-off zeal and continued into 2017.

Andrew McCabe, former No. 2 official at the FBI, was recently fired for substantive, non-political reasons. His self-defense was breathtaking. He wrapped himself in the American flag and in the FBIs reputation for integrity. But he failed to rebut nonpartisan infractions detailed by the Justice Department Inspector Generals Office, the departments Office of Professional Responsibility and Justice Department leadership.

Distilled from an array of 2016 election-focused investigations  some already completed, some ongoinghere are some key facts:

? The largest cache of Hillary Clinton recovered emails  a topic we are all sick of talking about  cast the Democratic presidential candidate in a very negative light. McCabe and others chose not to release the emails when they were found in September 2016. That is unforgivable.

? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (ACT) court, meant to protect all Americans from abuse by a politically twisted Justice Department, was tricked. The FBIs McCabe, Director James Comey and others knowingly sought and gained an invasive warrant to surveil members of the Trump campaign by using information paid for by the Clinton campaign. Without that information, the surveillance warrant  by their own admission  would not have been granted. That is unforgivable.

? Increasingly, it looks like the zealous effort to first stop candidate Trump and then undermine President Trump had appendages. One reason McCabe was summarily let go, without his full pension, is that he was allegedly untruthful under oath multiple times about leaking anti-Trump material to the media.

? Curiously, Comey, who knowingly reverted to calling the Clinton investigation a matter during the election campaign when directed by Obamas attorney general, reportedly leaked sensitive law enforcement information to the media.

? Likewise, one reason former British spy Christopher Steele of dossier fame was let go by the FBI, which had mysteriously contracted with him to provide information about Trump, was that Steele had also been briefing the media on anti-Trump material.

These are just some of the holes in the anti-Trump narrative alleging misconduct by the candidate and his campaign. Put it all together and so far  as far as we know from whats public  and the accusations just dont add up.

The biggest take-away is this: If collusion is a bad thing  and for undermining the integrity of any federal election it is  the white-hot spotlight belongs elsewhere, and seems to be moving that way.

Why, then, should the Mueller probe continue?

The reason is simple, legal and is why our impatient president and his supporters  including all those unfairly accused, unjustifiably hobbled, and frustratingly made to wait  should take a deep breath, stop being preoccupied by the probe and simply let it finish.

The reports that special counsels and prosecutors typically issue at the end of their inquiries  on average after 22 months of investigation  are usually thorough. Sometimes a prosecutor colors outside the lines, nabbing side players for singular acts of obstruction, perjury without a predicate act, or for unrelated misconduct discovered in the course of an investigation. But generally they focus on the mission and dont go too far afield.

In this case, reams of exculpatory information have found their way into the media, chiefly by way of congressional investigators and private sources, validating President Trumps contention of innocence.

Additionally, this information shows that Russian President Vladimir Putins government is a bad actor  no surprise  and that all Americans, regardless of political party, have a right to be unsettled, indignant, and on guard against Russian meddling in our elections.

But none of this implicates President Trump in any wrongdoing. In fact, Muellers probe is helping protect America by ferreting out how pervasive, invasive and invidious the Russian intentions are.

So, in the end, the president and his team have a right to that clean bill of health, whether he answers more questions or lets the record speak for itself. He needs a timely conclusion to the Mueller probe, in order to best serve Americas domestic, international and national interests  to do his job unencumbered by this pasty, perfidious fiction, propagated by misguided former federal officials.

Let Mueller reach that conclusion without interference, and the president and our country will be better off.NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles!

Once again the country is dealing with the aftermath of another mass shooting and in the midst of a national debate about the best way to keep children safe at school. At the forefront of our national consciousness are mass shootings like the one last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that led survivors of the shooting to organize Saturdays March for Our Lives, a nationwide protest.

In Parkland, a former student shot and killed 17 people on campus on Valentines Day. Since 1996 there have been eight mass shootings at schools, defined as incidents involving more than four deaths, excluding the assailant.

While the focus on mass shootings is warranted, it may eclipse the more common forms of violence students face. Every year about three out of four public schools report at least one incident of serious violence such as a fight or physical attack. One in five students is bullied, one in 12 has been in a physical fight and one in 20 has carried a weapon onto school property.

Its obvious that when it comes to keeping kids safe at school, the country is failing. But how can the U.S. do better?

Congress is currently considering school safety legislation that would improve school security infrastructure and set up school threat assessment and crisis intervention teams, among other measures. It is part of a wide range of proposals being introduced or developed in local, state, and federal governments. Many proposals promote technology such as metal detectors and video cameras to try to enhance campus safety, but the experts and the evidence are mixed about how effective the devices are.

In our 2015 study for the nonprofit RAND Corporation , we investigated how technology can be used to make schools safer. We profiled communities like Londonderry, New Hampshire, which remodeled schools to attach vestibules to entrances to make it harder for visitors to gain entry. Clark County, Nevada, installed more than 12,000 video surveillance cameras in its nearly 360 schools. And in Floridas Miami-Dade school district, security officers used wands to randomly conduct metal-detection screenings of students and their bookbags.

But does this technology make a difference? We dont know. Evidence of the effects of various school safety technologies is scarce. So in its absence, we interviewed dozens of school safety experts from school safety organizations and urban and rural school districts about their views regarding a range of school safety technologies.

The experts were divided about metal detectors, X-ray machines and video surveillance technology, which some felt made schools seem unwelcoming. One said these types of technologies send a mixed message to students: We want you to be a part of the community, but we dont trust you.

But the experts acknowledged some benefits of these security measures as well. Video surveillance can provide retroactive evidence for investigations when property crime or violence occurs. And metal detectors can help some educators, students and parents feel safer.

Some of the experts said the potential for serious harm to students and others on campus that can result from a mass shooting, regardless of how infrequent or remote a possibility, may justify any investment in technology. But none expressed strong confidence that any one school safety technology could prevent such tragedy.

Since our research was about the role of technology in keeping schools safe, we were surprised when both the evidence and experts stressed the importance of non-technological approaches. By and large, such approaches foster positive school climates: Students and staff have strong and trusting relationships with each other, students are engaged and enthused about learning, and a system is set up to attempt to handle disciplinary infractions justly and fairly.

Whats concerning is that there is emerging evidence that some technologies, such as metal detectors and video surveillance, may even detract from a schools climate. But this is a difficult theory to test.

A study recently published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice found that visible security measures were associated with higher levels of student exposure to drugs and fighting. A 2010 review of studies found mixed evidence about metal detectors, with some surveys showing that students actually felt less safe when attending schools with metal detectors in place. Taken together, the two studies imply that visible security measures are not a panacea to ensure safety at school.

While the research is far from conclusive, it suggests that schools need to carefully invest in school safety technology. Moreover, if investments are made in technology alone without taking into consideration school climatesand how engaged and welcomed students feel in their classroomsthe answer to the question Is the U.S. doing enough to keep its students safe? is likely to be a resounding no.NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles!

The deadly school shooting that claimed 17 lives in Parkland, Florida, last month has highlighted the need for major reforms and improvements to the safety and security at our nations schools. The massive March for Our Lives in Washington on Saturday and smaller demonstrations around the country demanded action to reduce gun deaths.

Every child has the right to walk into a classroom and feel safe and encouraged to learn, not scared of violence. This week in Great Mills, Maryland, we saw the benefits of having school safety measures and resources in place, when a school resource officer fatally shot a 17-year-old gunman who had shot two other students  including a 16-year-old girl who later tragically died of her wounds.

We have also seen the terrible consequences when precautions, protocols and coordination with law enforcement are not in place or are not followed and school shootings end with greater numbers of students dead and wounded.

Thats why Republican Main Street members have taken the lead to prioritize legislation and funding in Congress to keep our schools safe. We started the Republican Main Street Caucus School Safety Working Group to identify ways Congress can help and continue to make this issue a national priority. We have been working closely with leadership in the House to ensure we can follow through on these promises.

Last week the House began its effort to provide the necessary infrastructure and resources for students nationwide by overwhelmingly passing a bill led by one of us, Working Group member and former sheriff Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla. The STOP School Violence Act strengthens several vital layers of security and improves school safety by providing funding to give students, law enforcement, teachers, and school officials the tools and training they need to identify signs of violence or suicide and prevent events before they happen.

The STOP School Violence Act also provides schools with resources for technology and equipment to aid in the prevention of violent events. This includes anonymous reporting systems, the development of mobile security apps, and developing local hotlines to report warning signs. The funding can also be used for physical equipment to keep students safe, like metal detectors or locks.

A key provision authored by another one of us, Working Group member and former first responder Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., helps more schools install panic buttons to directly signal law enforcement during a crisis. Nationwide, our banks, office buildings, and even most retail locations, have panic buttons  our schools should have the same ability to contact law enforcement when faced with an emergency. Lastly, the STOP School Violence Act also provides funding to support coordination between our schools and local law enforcement.

These efforts are needed NOW. Thats why another one of us, Main Street Chair Rodney Davis, R-Ill., along with many members of Main Street, called on leadership to fund school safety grants immediately by including them in this years must-pass funding bill.

Main Street members were pleased to see our voice make a difference this week, when the must-pass 2018 funding bill not only included the STOP School Violence Act to authorize future school safety programs, but also designated funds for critical school safety grants so we can help schools improve their security systems and protocols immediately.

The legislation passed this week also includes critical funding for other important programs within the Department of Justice, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services that address mental health, student safety and well-being, and fund critical law enforcement programs. Members of Main Street, under the leadership of another one of us  Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., head of the School Safety Working Group  will continue to find ways we can stop violence in our schools.

One bill we have already identified is sponsored by Rep. Steve Knight, R-Calif., called the School Training, Equipment, and Protection (STEP) Act. Before coming to Congress, Rep. Knight was a Los Angeles Police Department officer for 18 years.

The STEP Act was crafted following extensive discussions with law enforcement professionals about improving school safety. This bill would designate $50 million of an existing Department of Education grant program to be used for more physical security measures, like barricade technology, to enable faculty to quickly strengthen doors and windows in the event of an active threat situation.

The safety of our students, teachers and school personnel should be paramount. While there are many facets to this problem and more solutions needed to put an end to this devastating violence, equipping our schools with adequate safety measures is a critical first step. We will continue to work with our partners in Congress, as well as with school officials and law enforcement, to ensure the next generation of students can learn in schools free from violence.

Republican U.S. Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska; Mike Bost and Rodney Davis of Illinois; and John Rutherford of Florida are founding members of the School Safety Working Group, part of the Republican Main Street Caucus. Bacon is the leader of the working group and Davis is the caucus chairman.NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles!

A couple of events over the past few weeks brought to mind two towering people who had a tremendous effect on the Archdiocese of New York and the U.S. more broadly. Their witness is worth remembering, especially in this political moment.

Last Saturdays feast of St. Patrick, the patron saint of our cathedral and archdiocese, reminded me of Archbishop John Hughes. As the first archbishop of New York (1842-64), Dagger John displayed dramatic reverence for the dignity of Irish immigrants. Thousands arrived daily in New York  penniless, starving and sometimes ill  only to be met with hostility, bigotry and injustice.

An immigrant himself, Hughes prophetically and vigorously defended their dignity. Because the schools at the time were hostile to these immigrants, he initiated Catholic schools to provide children with a good education sensitive to their religion and to prepare them as responsible, patriotic citizens. The schools worked. Many remain open to this day, their mission unchanged.

The second event was the recent funeral of a great African-American woman, Dolores Grier. A convert to Catholicism, she was named vice chancellor of the archdiocese three decades ago by Cardinal John OConnor; she was the first layperson and first woman to hold the prestigious position. Grier was passionate about civil rights, especially the right to life of babies in the womb. She never missed an opportunity to defend, lovingly but forcefully, their right to life.

Grier attributed her pro-life sensitivity to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who preached that abortion was an act of genocide against minorities. No wonder, she often observed, abortuaries were clustered in poor black and brown neighborhoods. The statistics today confirm her observation: In 2013 there were more black babies aborted in New York City (29,007) than were born here (24,758), according to a report from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

In 2013 there were more black babies aborted in New York City (29,007) than were born here (24,758).

The values Archbishop Hughes and Dolores Grier cherished  the dignity and sanctity of human life, the importance of Catholic schools, the defense of a babys civil rights  were, and still are, widely embraced by Catholics. This often led Catholics to become loyal Democrats. I remember my own grandmother whispering to me, We Catholics dont trust those Republicans.

Such is no longer the case, a cause of sadness to many Catholics, me included. The two causes so vigorously promoted by Hughes and Grierthe needs of poor and middle-class children in Catholic schools, and the right to life of the baby in the womb  largely have been rejected by the party of our youth. An esteemed pro-life Democrat in Illinois, Rep. Dan Lipinski, effectively was blacklisted by his own party. Last year, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez insisted that pro-life candidates have no place in the modern Democratic Party.

Last year, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez insisted that pro-life candidates have no place in the modern Democratic Party.

It is particularly chilly for us here in the state Hughes and Grier proudly called their earthly home. In recent years, some Democrats in the New York state Assembly repeatedly blocked education tax credit legislation, which would have helped middle-class and low-income families make the choice to select Catholic or other nonpublic schools for their children. Opposing the bill reduces the ability of fine Catholic schools across the state to continue their mission of serving the poor, many of them immigrants.

More sobering, what is already the most radical abortion license in the country may soon be even more morbidly expanded. For instance, under the proposed Reproductive Health Act, doctors would not be required to care for a baby who survives an abortion. The newborn simply would be allowed to die without any legal implications. And abortions would be legal up to the moment of birth.

The big tent of the Democratic Party now seems a pup tent. Annafi Wahed, a former staffer to Hillary Clinton, recently wrote in this newspaper about her experience attending the Conservative Political Action Conference. She complimented the conservative attendees, pointing out that most made her feel welcome at their meeting. They listened attentively to her views  a courtesy, she had to admit, that would not be given to them at a meeting of political liberals.

The big tent of the Democratic Party now seems a pup tent.

Im a pastor, not a politician, and Ive certainly had spats and disappointments with politicians from both of Americas leading parties. But it saddens me, and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish, when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.

To Archbishop Hughes, Dolores Grier, and Grandma Dolan, Im sorry to have to write this. But not as sad as you are to know it is true.

Cardinal Dolan is archbishop of New York.NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles!

I had the opportunity to glimpse a large part of the future this week. I think you will find it as amazing as I did.

Dr. Kiron Skinner, a remarkable scholar, hosted me at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

According to the U.S. News & World Reports Best Colleges rankings, Carnegie Mellon has the nations top graduate level artificial intelligence (AI) program and one of the top five undergraduate computer engineering programs. On Wednesday, the people at Carnegie Mellon showed me a few of the reasons they are held in such high regard.

Before I get into what I saw this week, let me better explain what I mean by seeing a glimpse of the future.

Every aspect of government procurement will have to be replaced (not just reformed  replaced) given the speed of new capabilities inherent in the artificial intelligence revolution.

Years ago, while serving as commanding general of the Training and Doctrine Command for the U.S. Army, Gen. Fred Franks told me he looked for glimmerings of the future. He said glimmerings were ideas, events or developments that were not yet clear but might evolve into something important.

I was intrigued with glimmerings because of two earlier developments in my life.

First, in 1965, as an undergraduate student at Emory University, I began working with Pete Jensen at what would later become the Rich Computer Center at Georgia Tech. Pete was one of the great pioneers of computing and in a few years introduced me to ideas (glimmerings), which evolved over the next half century into the Internet and modern computing. My own activities had been dramatically enriched by Petes ideas and teaching.

Second, I had been privileged to work with Alvin and Heidi Toffler as their thinking evolved from their bestselling book, Future Shock, to their even more important book, The Third Wave. The observations and insights they developed for The Third Wave are still valid over three decades later. They gave me an entirely different perspective on the scale of change our civilization was going through. The Tofflers and their work were very influential in the thinking that led to the Contract with America in 1994.

With this background, I have always been looking for the breakthroughs that will dramatically change our way of doing things. Starting in 2001, I began looking at nanoscale science and technology, quantum computing and the revolution these two systems would bring about  a revolution that is still only in its infancy.

Around 2007, I began talking with oil and gas experts about the revolutionary breakthroughs in fracking, and their inevitable impact on our ability to produce oil and gas. In 2008 that led me, in collaboration with my former colleague Vince Haley and Sean Hannity, to launch Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.

My wife Callista and I also made a documentary, We Have the Power. The left, led by President Obama, ridiculed the whole idea of using Americas resources to become energy independent.

Influenced by the growth of fracking, in 2012 I wrote the book, $2.50 a Gallon. Again, President Obama singled it out and attacked me as a demagogue who was suggesting the impossible. Of course, he was totally wrong, and the fracking revolution has made America dramatically better off.

On Wednesday, in Pittsburgh, I saw another powerful glimmering of technologies that will change our world. The ability to develop intelligent systems that can learn and adjust is rapidly evolving. These systems will give us new capabilities and new insights in ways we have never imagined.

In a few brief hours at Carnegie Mellon, I saw a voice analysis system that could be combined with cellphone technology to enable remote medical analysis of virtually everyone on the planet. It would create an extraordinary new approach to early diagnostics and constant monitoring at an astonishingly low cost.

I watched a robotic assistant reduce the invasiveness of heart surgery so that instead of patients taking 14 days to recover, they could leave the hospital after one day.

And the potential for 3-D printing and robotics, combined with reusable rockets, will totally change how we think about space. This is just astonishing.

Every aspect of government procurement will have to be replaced (not just reformed  replaced) given the speed of new capabilities inherent in the artificial intelligence revolution.

We will also have to rethink adult education.

Artificial intelligence will displace many traditional service jobs, while also creating new jobs. The challenge will be helping adults make the transition from outdated skills to the new, higher-paying and more interesting skills made possible by artificial intelligence.

Of course, during this development, we must constantly work to improve these systems to make sure they are safe. This constant development in itself will require advancements in both human and machine learning.

We must learn from and continuously work to prevent tragic accidents like the one this week in Tempe, Arizona where a woman was struck and killed by an autonomous car.

It is also clear that we have to invest heavily in artificial intelligence if we are going to maintain our competitive and national security advantages in the face of massive Chinese investment in the artificial intelligence field. We already know Chinese companies are working to build a huge fleet of self-driving vehicles. You can bet they will use and apply everything they learn in this endeavor in their military programs.

As I learn more over the next few months I will report on additional exciting new developments.

The future is going to be amazing, and we should be optimistic that as a free people we can lead the world into that future  just as we led the world with new developments in cars, airplanes, computers and the Internet.

There is much more to come.The saga between President Trump and the pornographic film star Stormy Daniels took on a new dimension on Friday evening when Daniels' lawyer discussed a DVD he claimed contains evidence relating to the pairs relationship.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is this worth?????, Michael Avenatti, the lawyer, tweeted on Thursday. The message was accompanied by a photo of what appeared to be a DVD in a white sleeve on a countertop. Avenatti finished the tweet with hashtags of #60minutes #pleasedenyit and #basta, the foreign word for enough.

An interview Daniels (whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford) recorded for 60 Minutes is to air Sunday.

That DVD, Avenatti said to CNN on Friday, contains evidence substantiating the relationship. And the tweet is a warning shot. I want to be really clear about this. It is a warning shot. And its a warning shot to Michael Cohen and anyone else associated with President Trump that theyd better be very, very careful after Sunday night relating to what they say about my client and what spin or lies they attempt to tell the American people.

Records released earlier this week show that Avenatti's client passed a 2011 polygraph test in which she claimed she had unprotected sex with Trump in 2006.

The president has denied the allegations.

The adult film actress is suing Trump over a nondisclosure agreement, which she claims is invalid because the president never signed it.

Daniels has offered to return the $130,000 payment she received from Trumps longtime attorney Cohen in 2016 in exchange for a nullification of the nondisclosure agreement and the freedom to speak about the alleged affair.

Cohen has sued Daniels for $20 million, alleging she violated the agreement.

Fox News Barnini Chakraborty contributed to this report.President Donald Trump on Friday officially authorized the ability of the Pentagon to ban transgender individuals from joining the military, with limited exceptions, following through on a pledge he made last year.

"Among other things, the policies set forth by the Secretary of Defense state that transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery -- are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances," a memo released by the White House on Friday night said.

Maj. David Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, said the announcement of a new policy would have no immediate practical effect on the military because the Pentagon is obliged to continue to recruit and retain transgender people in accordance with current law.

The Department of Justice issued a statement defending the Pentagon:

After comprehensive study and analysis, the Secretary of Defense concluded that new policies should be adopted regarding individuals with gender dysphoria that are consistent with military effectiveness and lethality, budgetary constraints, and applicable law," the statement reads. "The Department of Justice will continue to defend DODs lawful authority to create and implement personnel policies they have determined are necessary to best defend our nation.

"Consistent with this new policy, we are asking the courts to lift all related preliminary injunctions in order to ensure the safety and security of the American people and the best fighting force in the world.

But criticism came quickly from LGBT advocates and from the leadership of the Democratic Party.

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT civil rights organization, accused the Trump administration of pushing "anti-transgender prejudices onto the military."

"There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence Administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops," said HRC President Chad Griffin.

The Democratic National Committee released a statement signed by Chairman Tom Perez, DNC LGBT Caucus Chair Earl Fowlkes, and DNC Treasurer Bill Derrough, whom the DNC says was prevented from serving in the military because he is openly gay.

This decision is an insult to our brave transgender service members and all who wear our nations uniform," the statement reads. "Instead of fulfilling his oath to protect the American people, Donald Trump and Mike Pence are putting our nations security at risk and shoving real American patriots back in the closet."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote, "This latest memorandum is the same cowardly, disgusting ban the President announced last summer. No one with the strength and bravery to serve in the U.S. military should be turned away because of who they are."

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in February sent Trump a memorandum laying out policies that "in the exercise of his independent judgment" should be implemented by the Defense Department. The memo reads, in part:

Based on the work of the Panel and the Departments best military judgement, the Department of Defense concludes that there are substantial risks associated with allowing the accession and retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria and require, or have already undertaken, a course of treatment to change their gender.

"Furthermore, the Department also finds that exempting such persons from well-established mental health, physical health, and sex-based standards, which apply to all Service members, including transgender Service members without gender dysphoria, could undermine readiness, disrupt unit cohesion, and impose an unreasonable burden of the military that is mot conductive to military effectiveness and lethality."

In July, Trump tweeted that the federal government "will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military" - reversing a 2016 policy under President Barack Obama. The move caught the Pentagon by surprise.

"Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail," the president said at the time.

Trump's push for the ban has been blocked by several legal challenges and the Pentagon began allowing transgender recruits to seek enlistment in January.

A 2016 study by the Rand Corp. estimated that nearly 4,000 transgender troops were on active duty and in the reserves, Politico reported. But LGBT advocacy groups in the military put the figure at around 15,000, the report said.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson, Lukas Mikelionis and the Associated Press contributed to this report.The Trump administration declined to say Saturday whether it will follow Britain in expelling Russian diplomats after an ex-spy was poisoned on British soil but acknowledged considering a range of options in response to the attack.

Britain earlier this week expelled nearly two dozen Russian diplomats after the March 4 poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter. They were apparently poisoned with a Soviet-produced, military-grade nerve agent and remain unconscious and in critical condition.

The United States stands firmly with the United Kingdom in condemning Russias outrageous action, White House spokesman Raj Shah said Saturday. The president is always considering options to hold Russia accountable in response to its malign activities.

At about the same time, State Department official Heather Nauert made a similar statement while also making clear that the administration would not announce any action Saturday on the matter.

The United States is considering a range of options to respond to Russias outrageous actions in the UK, both to demonstrate our solidarity with our ally and to hold Russia accountable for its clear breach of international norms and agreements, said Nauert, one day after several European Union countries said they may follow Britain in expelling Russian diplomats.

At a summit in Brussels, the 28 EU leaders agreed with Britain that it is "highly likely" Russia is responsible for the attack on Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

The White Houses National Security Council has reportedly advised Trump to expel Russian diplomats.

Trump critics have repeatedly said the president is too supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putins leadership style. Trump earlier this week congratulated Putin on his successful re-election, despite purportedly being advised not to make the call.

Trump previously joined British Prime Minister Theresa May and the leaders of France and Germany in condemning the poisoning.

"It is an assault on U.K. sovereignty and any such use by a state party is a clear violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and a breach of international law. It threatens the security of us all, they said in a joint statement.

They also wrote there is no plausible alternative explanation for the attack and that the Kremlins failure to respond to a legitimate request for an explanation further underlines its responsibility."

Russia has fiercely denied any involvement in the poisoning, saying that it had destroyed its chemical weapons and had no motive to kill Skripal, who was convicted of spying for Britain but released in a 2010 spy swap. Still, Moscow has in turn ordered 23 British diplomats to leave.

The EUs position follows May sharing with group leaders information about why Britain is convinced Moscow was behind the attack, including the type of poison used -- a Soviet-developed nerve agent known as Novichok -- and intelligence that Russia has produced it within the past decade.

Fox News Rich Edson, John Roberts and Lucia Suarez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.President Trump faces losing support from his base in the wake of his decision Friday to sign a controversial and much-derided $1.3 trillion spending bill -- over not only its size but its failure to fund his campaign promise of a wall on the U.S. southern border.

Trump briefly threatened to veto the legislation, voted through the House and Senate on Thursday and early Friday in order to avoid a government shutdown.



Conservatives balked at the $1.3 trillion price tag, as well as the failure to promote Republican causes such as the defunding of Planned Parenthood and the funding of the wall on the southern border in particular. While the legislation served up $1.6 billion for border security, it mainly consisted of repairs and additions to already existing fencing.

Congressional leaders and the White House noted that it increased funding for the military, infrastructure and also grants to fight the nation's opioid epidemic.



Trump blindsided White House aides and lawmakers when he tweeted Friday morning that he was considering vetoing the legislation over its failure to include funding for the border wall as well as a fix for the expiring Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that grants protection to illegal immigrants brought to the country as children.

But Trump eventually signed the mammoth legislation reluctantly, saying in remarks to the press with other members of the administration that, in order to secure a necessary increase in military spending, he had to give money to Democratic projects that he derided as a "wasted sum of money."

"It's not right, and it's very bad for our country," he said.

But he said military spending was vital and it was that concern that overrode his thoughts about vetoing the legislation.

TRUMP SIGNS $1.3 TRILLION SPENDING BILL, DESPITE EARLIER THREAT TO VETO

Therefore, as a matter of national security, I've signed this omnibus budget bill. There are a lot of things Im unhappy about in this billBut I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again, he said.

Yet despite his distancing himself from it, the very act of him signing it enraged his base. A White House official told Axios that the reaction to the signing "is the hardest I've ever seen the base turn on Trump over anything."

"A big reason why people voted for him was because of his apparent willingness to stand up to the entrenched political class in both parties," the official said. "Voters wanted a fighter who wouldn't back down to 'the swamp' like a 'typical politician.'"

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who in 2016 wrote a book called In Trump we Trust, told Fox News Radios Tom Shillue that the ramifications will hit the GOP in the midterms, particularly in the House.

The House will definitely flip; why would anyone vote Republican? she said.

On Twitter, she also congratulated President Schumer and agreed with Trump that he wont sign another bill like that, but added that was because a Democratic House would impeach him.

"The president was really sold a bill of goods here," Christopher Ruddy, Newsmax's chief executive, who is regularly in touch with Trump, told The Washington Post. "Conservatives look at this omnibus bill and say, 'This is not why they elected Donald Trump. This is not a good bill for him to sign.'"

Commentator Michelle Malkin said on "Fox and Friends" that she was disgusted with the legislation but aimed most of her anger at congressional leadership.

Im beyond disappointed; Im disgusted, Malkin said. Im disgusted with the so-called GOP leadership. This falls squarely on the shoulders of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. It is business as usual.

Even in Congress, there was significant opposition to the legislation. The conservative House Freedom Caucus had encouraged Trump ahead of the signing to veto the bill, while budget hawk Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., repeatedly slammed the bill, later saying: Maybe the GOP holding hands Democrats isnt such a great idea.



The Trump team continued to point the blame at Congress, with Trump campaign advisor Katrina Pierson tweeting back to Paul: It would be more helpful to change out your leadership instead of doing everything possible to keep them in place.



But other advisers were less supportive of the president.

This was the worst day since the 2016 win. Signing that Bush/Obama budget was a kick in the gut, a conservative advisor to Trump, but not in the White House, told Fox News. I still love this President but, wow, hard to swallow this bitter pill. Funded Planned Parenthood and not a wall. What did we fight so hard for?

Fox News' Serafin Gomez contributed to this report.Federal agencies issued criminal charges and sanctions Friday against nine Iranians accused of hacking sensitive information from hundreds of universities, private companies and U.S. government entities.

The Iranian defendants, accused of working at the behest of the Iranian government-tied Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, hacked the computer systems of about 320 universities in the U.S. and abroad to steal expensive science and engineering research that was then used by the Iranian government or sold for profit, prosecutors said.

More than 100,000 professors worldwide were targeted with spear-phishing emails, making the hacking scheme one of the largest state-sponsored cybercrime cases ever charged by the Justice Department, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The affected professors and universities were not identified.

The Justice Department said the hackers stole roughly 31 terabytes of academic research and intellectual property that was then sent to servers outside the United States for profit. That amount of data is said to far exceed the total content of the Library of Congress.

"Just in case you're wondering, they're not admiring our work," FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said. "They're stealing it, and they're taking credit for it, and they're selling it to others."

"Just in case you're wondering, they're not admiring our work. They're stealing it, and they're taking credit for it, and they're selling it to others."  FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich

The information that was stolen, which was sold through two websites to customers in Iran, cost U.S. universities about $3.4 billion to procure and access.

The hackers are also accused of breaking into the networks of government organizations, including the Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the United Nations and private sector entities, including 36 American companies, the Journal reported.

The Justice Department said the hackers were affiliated with an Iranian organization called the Mabna Institute, founded by two of the defendants, which prosecutors said contracted with the Iranian government to steal scientific research from other countries.

"By bringing these criminal charges, we reinforce the norm that most of the civilized world accepts: Nation-states should not steal intellectual property for the purpose of giving domestic industries an advantage," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in announcing the charges.

The defendants are unlikely to ever be prosecuted in an American courtroom since there's no extradition treaty with Iran. But the grand jury indictment, filed in a federal court in New York City, is part of the government's "name and shame" strategy to publicly identify foreign hackers, block them from traveling without risk of arrest and put their countries on notice.

"People travel. They take vacations, they make plans with their families," Bowdich said. "Having your name, face and description on a 'Wanted' poster makes moving freely much more difficult."

"Having your name, face and description on a 'Wanted' poster makes moving freely much more difficult."  FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich

On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department also imposed sanctions against the nine defendants and the Mabna Institute, the Journal reported. The sanctions block their access to U.S. companies and entities, including financial transactions.

Tehran responded with Bahram Ghasemi, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, condemning the move and calling it "provocative, illegal and without justification."

Ghasemi said the charges are "another sign of hostility of the U.S. government towards Iranian nation." He said the U.S will not take any benefit from the move aimed at "thwarting" scientific growth of Iran.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.TAP Air Portugal has apologized for leaving over 100 passengers stranded at Stuttgart Airport in southwestern Germany after canceling a flight last-minute because the co-pilot was intoxicated.

Flight TP523 was scheduled to depart from Stuttgart to Lisbon, Portugal on the evening of March 23 when an airport staffer noticed the co-pilot walking unsteadily and smelling of alcohol.

Alerting airport authorities, the decision was made to keep the plane grounded.

UNITED GIVES PASSENGER $10,000 TRAVEL CREDIT TO GIVE UP HER SEAT

It wasn't immediately clear if the 40-year-old co-pilot was detained.

Further, all 106 passengers were given hotel rooms to stay overnight, German news agency DPA reported on March 24.

BRITISH AIRWAYS EMPLOYEE ACCUSED OF RAPING SENIOR FLIGHT ATTENDANT DURING STOP IN SINGAPORE: REPORT

Moving forward, the carrier tweeted on March 24 that the flight TP523 to Lisbon has been rescheduled for March 26,

TAP Air Portugal did not immediately return Fox News request for comment.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

The Associated Press contributed to this report.The company that owns a Kansas City waterpark -- where 10-year-old Caleb Schwab was decapitated while on a waterslide in 2016 -- has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Schlitterbahn Waterpark of Kansas City, Kan., was indicted with over the August 2016 death, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said on Friday. Former executive Tyler Miles was also indicted and has pleaded not guilty.

The 29-year-old former operations director faces 19 other charges, including 12 charges of aggravated battery, five child endangerment charges, and two charges of interference with law enforcement, Fox 4 reported.

Schlitterbahn also face charges of interference with law enforcement.

Court documents cite negligence during the construction of the ride.

Schwab died while riding the 17-story Verruckt waterslide. The raft that he was in with two other women went airborne, causing them to hit a pole that supported nets designed to keep riders safe. One of the woman suffered a broken jaw and the other broke a bone in her face, Fox 4 reported.

The young boy and his family, Olathe state Rep. Scott Schwab, were enjoying a free day at the park to celebrate Lawmaker Day.

A spokeswoman for Schlitterbahn said that the company stands by Miles and is "deeply disappointed" that someone was charged for the "terrible accident."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.A Virginia man was arrested on Friday, accused of threatening to kill his congressman over a disagreement on marijuana policy.

Wallace Godwin, 69, was arrested after meeting with staffers for Rep. Scott Taylor, R-Va., on Thursday and threatening to shoot the congressman and two staffers over Taylor's support of marijuana decriminalization, The Washington Post reported.

Goodwin reportedly said, Scott is having an event this Saturday. I am going to get my shotgun and do something about this, according to court documents.

Pointing to two staffers, Goodwin allegedly also said that you two are next.

Godwin has a concealed-weapon permit and is said to have previously engaged in other aggressive interactions with the congressman and his staff.

Godwin faces a charge of threatening to murder and assault a United States official. That crime carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.An aspiring actress who mysteriously disappeared from her Hollywood apartment last month is believed to be dead, and the man she was romantically involved with committed suicide Thursday after a police pursuit.

Adea Shabani, 25, a native of Macedonia, came to the United States fewer than two years ago to pursue a career in acting. She had been living in Los Angeles when she was last seen Friday, Feb. 23, 2018, near her home. Police confirmed to FOX11 that family and friends believe Shabani is dead.

Chris Spotz, 33, who is also an aspiring actor, was linked to Shabani romantically. KTLA reported Shabani and Spotz met at acting school.

ASPIRING ACTRESS DISAPPEARS FROM HOLLLYWOOD HOME PROMPTING FEARS FROM FRIENDS AND FAMILY

The Riverside County Sheriffs Office said Spotz led officers on a police chase in a stolen truck on Thursday. Spotz reportedly had a passenger in the stolen vehicle but stopped to let the person out before continuing the pursuit. The driver shot himself in the head as officers tried to deploy a felony traffic stop.

Authorities told NBC Los Angeles the vehicle might have been used in a homicide. Further details on the homicide were not immediately available.

Police believe Shabani was killed in the region between Hollywood and Sacramento. Officers have asked anyone with information to come forward.

IOWA FAMILY OF FOUR THAT WENT MISSING IN MEXICO FOUND DEAD

Police are continuing to search for Shabanis body and her mysterious disappearance. The young womans mother hired a private investigator to help in the search. She also flew in from Macedonia to aid with the search.

Family and friends became worried about Shabani after she was not active on social media and was not returning phone calls.

"This is not her, this is not her," Emma Joe, a friend of Shabanis, told KTLA earlier this month. "Something is going on with her, we dont know where she is. Its just so sad, were just hoping shes alive."A Dallas pastor was sentenced to 99 years in prison on Friday for starving a child to death after she believed it was the only way to exorcise a demon from the boys body.

The pastor, Aracely Meza, 52, was convicted of felony injury to a child causing serious bodily injury; investigators say both she and the parents of the toddler, Benjamin Aparicio, believed he was possessed by a demon and could only get rid of it by fasting.

Prosecutors say the boy was denied food for three weeks.

Videos were shown in court, depicting a resurrection ceremony led by Meza where she is seen holding the frail, lifeless body of Aparicio, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Jurors were shown one video of Meza spanking the toddler, who appeared unable to support his own head, after he fell on the kitchen floor.

Aparicio died on March 22, 2015.

Meza testified that she'd been acting on Gods orders.

She was sentenced to 99 years in prison and was also ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. The boys parents, who are also facing charges, are believed to be in Mexico, the newspaper reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.The fiancee of convicted murderer David Sweat, who became famous for his Shawshank Redemption-style escape from a prison, has denied engaging in sexual acts with Sweat during a visit, insisting she was simply checking for a lump in his groin area.

The fiancee, Frances Malanik, 45, was visiting Sweat on March 8 when a corrections officer noticed the inmate fondling himself. That, sources say, is when she reached through a window of the partition and engaged in the act, according to the New York Post.

She was kicked out and banned from visiting Sweat for 60 days.

However, Malanik told the Post on Friday, that her fiance was complaining about a lump in his groin area. So, she explained, she did what any nurse might do -- she checked.

It was just a natural reaction to check on him. I used to be a nurse, she told the newspaper. I never thought for a minute theyd think it was sexual in nature.

Sweat had a very different explanation.

He told the Post that he just had to really pee.

Id drank about three and a half 20-ounce iced teas. Like any little boy or man would do, I grabbed it like, Man, I really have to pee.

HUSBAND OF JOYCE MITCHELL, WHO HELPED 2 NY INMATES ESCAPE PRISON, ANGRY OVER WIFES DELAYED PAROLE HEARING

Sweats version of events doesnt explain Malaniks purported role in this latest incident.

Back in 2015, Sweat and fellow inmate Richard Matt escaped the facility using tools given to them by prison worker Joyce Mitchell. It was later learned that Mitchell had a relationship with both Sweat and Matt.

Sweat was serving a life sentence without parole for killing a sheriffs deputy. Matt was doing a stint of 25 years to life for the 1997 kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of his former boss. Matt was shot and killed by police three weeks after the pairs escape.

Fox News Ryan Gaydos and the Associated Press contributed to this report.A Fort Bragg soldier has been shot and killed after an altercation with another soldier at a North Carolina home, according to reports.

Both were soldiers serving with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

Deputies responded to a report of a shooting at a private home in Fayetteville Wednesday and found Mark Daneil Leshikar, 33, unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Cumberland County Sheriffs Office spokesman Lt. Sean Swain told the Fayetteville Observer that the soldier who shot Leshikar was still on the scene when deputies and investigators arrived.

The sheriffs office said in a new release Thursday that detectives spoke to the residents of the home who were present when the incident occurred.

No charges have been filed in the case, the news release said.

Lt. Col. Robert Bockholt, a spokesman for the command, told the Army Times that Leshikar and the other soldier were acquaintances.

Bockholt could not confirm if they were Special Forces soldiers or support troops.People from around the world came together Saturday for the March for Our Lives gun control rally organized by the students of the Florida high school impacted by a deadly school shooting last month.

The primary march is taking place in Washington, D.C., on Pennsylvania Avenue at 12 p.m. EST. Some 500,000 people were expected to attend.

In addition to Washington, D.C., some 800 sister marches were also being planned in London, Tokyo, Sydney, New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and the city where the shooting occurred: Parkland, Florida.

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School organized the rally following the deadly school shooting on Feb. 14, 2018, that left 17 people dead. The shooter, Nikolas Cruz, 19, used a legally purchased an AR-15 assault rifle to carry out the shooting. The students hope the rally will push lawmakers to pass legislation on gun control. Some students said the ultimate goal of the grassroots movement is to inspire people to vote in November for lawmakers wiling to reform gun control.

While the activists support the right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, as set forth in the United States Constitution, they also have a list of demands, urging members of Congress to pass laws to end the sale of high-capacity magazines, improve background checks, and more safety measures.

"The high-schoolers and the college students are sick of this normalcy in this environment that we live in where we have to live with mass shootings and code red drills," said Alex Wind, a junior at Stoneman Douglas, told the Associated Press.

Its going to be very revolutionary, Sheryl Acquaroli told The Guardian. We are going to change laws there, and I want to be part of that change.

Some of the teenagers have pulled all-nighters organizing the event that will come together Saturday. Celebrities such as Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, George Clooney, Miley Cyrus, and Demi Lovato are expected to march alongside students in Washington. Cyrus, Grande, Hudson, Lovato, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt were also expected to perform.

MARCH FOR OUR LIVES GUN CONTROL RALLY TO DRAW THOUSANDS ACROSS US: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

The Washington Post reported protesters started filing into Washington, D.C., this week and held tailgate parties, concerts, dinners and sign-making events on Friday. The New England Patriots lent its team plane to Parkland students to travel to the city for the march. The teams owner, Robert Kraft, contacted the school offering the use of the plane. Delta Air Lines also donated two planes to the students to ensure safe and fast travel.

Many celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, Clooney, and Taylor Swift donated thousands of dollars to the march.

However, some people feel left out from the march or believe the rally will not do much to change what is already in place.

Kyle Kashuv, a junior at Stoneman Douglas, has been a prominent advocate for preventing violence while respecting gun rights following the shooting. He has visited the White House, met with President Trump and legislative leaders across party lines, and unveiled an app to prevent school shootings. He slammed Time magazine for not including supporters of the Second Amendment on the cover of their Parkland issue.

Zion Kelly, 17, whose brother, Zaire, died during an armed robbery last year told The Washington Post the students from Parkland appear to be getting media attention because of the school they attend is in a predominantly white, affluent community.

This is happening over and over again. Dozens of students have been shot and killed  more than in Florida  and were not getting the same attention, Kelly said. He attends Thurgood Marshall Academy, a charter school in Washington, D.C.

Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro told Fox News he has been contacted by students who are conflicted because they support both the Second Amendment and the school shooting victims.

Shapiro said the media is celebrating the marches, putting students in photo ops, or using as political human shields.

WATCH THE MARCH FOR OUR LIVES LIVE STREAM HERE

However, the organizers of the march claim it is not political.

School safety is not a political issue, a mission statement on the organizations website reads. There cannot be two sides to doing everything in our power to ensure the lives and futures of children who are at risk of dying when they should be learning, playing, and growing.

The White House told Fox News in a statement: "We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today. Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the President's, which is why he urged Congress to pass the Fix NICS [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] and STOP School Violence Acts, and signed them into law. Additionally, on Friday, the Department of Justice issued the rule to ban bump stocks following through on the Presidents commitment to ban devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns."

Fox News Madeline Farber, Gregg Re and the Associated Press contributed to this report.Arizona GOP Rep. Martha McSally made clear Saturday that she's kidding about building a border wall with California but argued that dangerous policies in the neighboring state allowing violent, criminal illegal immigrants to go largely unchecked is a very serious concern.

The left has gone hysterical as usual, and it seem like they cant take a joke. But the issue is very serious, McSally told Fox News Fox & Friends after mentioning the border wall at a White House conference on so-called sanctuary city policies earlier this week.

Such policies, which allow state and local law-enforcement authorities to protect illegal immigrants from federal immigration law, have been in place for decades, with California leading the way.

Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Trump administration is suing California, citing a series of state laws that he says are unconstitutional and violate common sense.

"I can't sit by idly while the lawful authority of federal officers are being blocked by legislative acts and politicians," Sessions said.

The lawsuit was filed in Sacramento and argues three state laws intentionally undermine federal immigration law -- including barring police from asking people about their immigration status or participating in federal immigration enforcement activities. Another law offers protection against workplace raids.

These dangerous policies out of California are choosing to let violent, criminal aliens be released from jail and not contact the feds, McSally, a former Air Force fighter pilot running for Senate, said Saturday. Thats not just impacting California communities. This has the opportunity to impact safety and security across the country, not just in Arizona.

McSally, who represents a congressional district near the Mexican border, said she voted earlier this week in support of the roughly $1.3 trillion spending bill signed into law despite it giving President Trump just $1.6 billion toward a U.S.-Mexico border wall because it provided much needed money for the military and its troops.A Utah woman was sentenced to nearly 50 years in prison Friday for helping her husband as he killed two Northern California sheriff's deputies in 2014.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White sentenced Janelle Monroy after jurors last month rejected her argument that she feared her husband Luis Bracamontes would have killed her if she didn't help him.

"Ms. Monroy, you did not start this reign of terror, but you joined in immediately after as an active participant," White said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Monroy, 41, willingly moved her husband's assault-style rifle from vehicle to stolen vehicle after he killed Sacramento County sheriff's Deputy Danny Oliver and before he killed Placer County sheriff's Detective Michael Davis Jr. hours later, prosecutors said.

Monroy is a U.S. citizen while Bracamontes is a Mexican citizen who repeatedly entered the United States illegally. President Donald Trump has cited his case to illustrate problems with the nation's immigration policy.

Bracamontes has repeatedly said in court that he killed the deputies and wished he had killed more.

The deputies were killed shortly after the couple arrived in Sacramento during what Monroy said was a wandering journey spurred by Bracamontes' drug-infused paranoia.

The court also heard victim impact statements from Davis family, the report said.

"I feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest," Debbie McMahon, Davis mother, said.

White rejected arguments from defense attorney Pete Kmeto that Monroy was a battered wife and victim of an abusive, threatening husband, who "was armed to the teeth, raving about killing people" and abused methamphetamine, the Bee reported.

"She's not the person who killed law enforcement officers," Kmeto said, noting that Monroy never pulled a trigger during the crime spree. "This client is not an evil person, this client has been victimized and has had a tough life."

In opposition, Sacramento prosecutor Rod Norgaard told the judge that Monroy knew before the rampage that her husband wanted to kill police officers, the newspaper reported.

"She did not commit a crime with the devil," Norgaard said. "She married him."

Monroy faced a life sentence after she was convicted of 10 charges including murder, attempted murder and carjacking, attempted carjacking and possessing an assault rifle.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Bracamontes, who was convicted by a separate jury. Closing arguments in his case are set for Monday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.A Wisconsin man was sentenced to 60 years in prison in Texas Friday for attempting to sell his 4-year-old daughter for sex on Craigslist.

Andrew Turley, 30, was convicted of trafficking a child and compelling prostitution of someone under the age of 18, the Houston Chronicle reported.

In 2015, Turley posted an advertisement on Craigslist titled Play with Daddies Little Girl. The Houston Police Department exchanged emails with Turley who told them he had a girl younger than 10 who he could drug with sleep meds before the meeting, the Harris County District Attorneys Office said.

WALMART, COSTCO, TARGET IN TEXAS WON THE RIGHT TO SELL LIQUOR, BUT SOME ARE FIGHTING TO APPEAL

Turley told the officers it was $1,000 for two hours with his daughter and stated the child might be too young for intercourse but everything else was OK.

An officer went to meet with Turley and his daughter at the Houston apartment she lived in with her mother.

"Upon the undercover officer's arrival, Turley checked the cash, then escorted him to a bedroom where the girl was lying in bed and appeared to be 'under the influence of an unknown substance,'" the attorneys office said.

GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH, FLOATING ISLAND OF TRASH IN OCEAN, IS NOW TWICE THE SIZE OF TEXAS

Assistant District Attorney Stewanna Miskell, one of the prosecutors, said the case broke her heart.

"A father is supposed to be a protector not a predator. Jurors saw the need to keep him out of our community, she said.

Turley will be eligible for parole in 45 years.next Image 1 of 2

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An 1862 letter from President Abraham Lincoln politely declining an offer of elephants from the King of Siam is on display at an exhibition in Thailand.

King Mongkut in 1861 offered to send a pair of elephants to the U.S. as a gift of the friendship between the two countries.

Lincoln, likely bemused and relieved at the distraction from America's then-raging Civil War, respectfully refused, saying his country uses the steam engine and would have no use for the working animals.

The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok has included the historic letter in an exhibition highlighting the long ties between the two countries.

Mongkut offered the elephants after learning they were not native to America. He also sent along three gifts: a sword and scabbard, a photograph of the king with one of his daughters, and an impressive pair of elephant tusks.

He addressed the letters to then-President James Buchanan "or whomever would become president" with elaborate paragraph-long salutations.

Lincoln was already president by the time the letters arrived a year later. He penned a reply, addressing the king simply as "Great and Good Friend."

The offer of elephants did not neglect practical details. Mongkut stated, "On this account, we desire to procure and send elephants to be let loose to increase and multiply in the continent of America." But Thailand  then called Siam  did not have a large enough vessel to transport them, the letter said.

It continued: "In reference to this opinion of ours if the President of the United States and Congress who conjointly with him rule the country see fit to approve, let them provide a large vessel loaded with hay and other food suitable for elephants on the voyage, with tanks holding a sufficiency of fresh water, and arranged with stalls so that the elephants can both stand and lie down in the ship  and send it to receive them. We on our part will procure young male and female elephants and forward them one or two pairs at a time."

Mongkut then in his letter directs that the elephants should be kept away from the cold and under the sun, and to also "let them with all haste be turned out to run wild in some jungle suitable for them not confining them any length of time."

"If these means can be done we trust that the elephants will propagate their species hereafter in the continent of America," the letter said.

Thai monarchy expert Tongthong Chandransu said the offer of elephants reveals that Mongkut wanted to be part of building the young United States.

"You have to consider that 200 years ago, elephants were an important means of transportation and helped a lot with our work, not to mention warfare, but also the building of homes and cities," Tongthong said.

The ever-practical Lincoln rejected the offer to send wild elephants running through American forests, saying the country "does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant." He said in his 1862 letter that "steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce."

The exhibition runs until June 30.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.The French police officer who died after offering himself up in exchange for a hostage in a deadly supermarket siege on Friday served in Iraq in 2005 and was also a member of the presidential guard, among other notable achievements.

The officer, identified as Lt. Col Arnaud Beltrame, 44, died of his injuries after he took the place of a female hostage when a gunman went on a rampage at a Super U supermarket in the southern French town of Trebes.

His death brings the death toll to four. Authorities said that 15 others were injured in the attack.

Beltrame, who traded himself up unarmed, secretly left his cellphone on so police outside could hear what was going on inside the store. When they heard gunshots, they stormed the supermarket, killing the 25-year-old gunman who was later identified as Moroccan-born Radouane Lakdim.

Beltrame was fatally wounded and later died of his injuries.

"Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much," President Emmanuel Macron said. "In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero."

Read on for a look at who Beltrame was.

A long career of service

Beltrame, who was married with no children, graduated from a top military academy in France in 1999, the BBC reported. A few years later, he joined an elite police special forces group.

In 2005, he served in Iraq. Upon his return, according to a statement released by President Macron, Beltrame served as a member of the presidential guard.

He also received an award for bravery in 2007, CNN reported, and earned the Order of Merit -- one of Frances highest honors -- in 2012.

Prior to his death, Beltrame had organized a training session in the Aude region in December for a similar type of hostage situation. At the time, he armed his officers with paintball guns, according to the Depeche du Midi newspaper.

Remembered as a hero

Cedric Beltrame, the officers brother, told RTL radio Saturday that his brother died "a hero."

"He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing," Cedric Beltrame said.

Beltrame's mother also told the radio station that, for her son,"to defend the homeland" was "his reason to live."

"He would have said to me, 'I'm doing my job, Mom, nothing more,'" she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.A powerful Indian politician has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for embezzling 37 million rupees ($570,000) from government treasury to buy fictitious medicines and cattle fodder.

Judge Shiv Pal Singh on Saturday also convicted 18 former Bihar state officials, contractors and suppliers in the case.

A former top elected official in the state, Laloo Prasad Yadav was also fined 6 million rupees ($92,307). He and others can challenge the conviction in an appeals court.

Yadav already has been convicted three times in related cases. He is currently in prison and barred from contesting elections.

Corruption is endemic in Indian politics. But courts are now expediting trials of politicians accused of crimes like murder, frauds and extortion.Russias dogged defense of Syria at the United Nations Security Council has resulted in an ongoing diplomatic game of chess between Russia and U.S. Council allies. Russian has used its veto 11 times to protect the Assad regime since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

The latest Russian move came at a Security Council meeting on Libya earlier in the week when Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia chose to bring up Syria and publicize a documentary showing civilians leaving war-torn areas.

One Security Council diplomat told Fox News, Russia hijacking an open meeting to push their own propaganda on an entirely different subject was absurd. Russia would have had a fit if any other Council member had pulled what they pulled. It's yet another clear abuse of their status as a permanent member of the Council.

At the end of that meeting on Libya, Ambassador Nebenzia publicized a documentary showing civilians leaving besieged areas of Eastern Ghouta and also read two press reports.

Nebenzia gave his reason for the Syria update saying his remarks were made to show that resolution 2401 was being implemented by Russia.

He said, As regards a documentary it is a documentary, not a fiction film  the documentary gives you the real picture of what took place in the recent days in that enclave under Damascus and I hope that members of the Security Council will find the time to watch the film."

Resolution 2401 demanded an immediate 30-day cessation of hostilities so that humanitarian aid could reach the hardest hit areas of Syria. Several members of the council including the U.S., France, and the U,K, have accused Russia of blatantly violating it.

Hugh Dugan, a former US diplomat at the United Nations who served as an adviser to 11 U.S. ambassadors, said the Russians play the U.N. like a game of chess and are always three moves ahead.

He said the Dutch president of the Security Council handled the Russian move on Syria smartly.

The Netherlands opted to let it pass, thinking that otherwise the Russians might have extended the meeting on procedural grounds bringing even more publicity to their point, he added.

Dugan, who is the director of U.N. Engagement at Seton Hall University School of Diplomacy in New Jersey, said the Russians are well aware of how the system works. We know they exploit the procedures and the atmospherics, and its always a matter of not playing into their hands any further than what is inevitable.

Two days before the Libya meeting the Russian delegation placed the council in check again when it won a procedural vote at the Security Council that led to a planned briefing by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation in Syria being stopped. But the U.S. and its allies did not let it go unanswered.

A U.S. diplomat told Fox News, Russia's vetoes and procedural moves, they're all designed to delay and distract - particularly on Syria, where Russia seems to stop at nothing to defend the Assad regime. But what happened on Monday is a good example of how quick and creative thinking can work around Russia's obstruction.

The US diplomat continued, When Russia hid behind a procedural vote to block the Council from hearing a briefing on the human rights situation in Syria, Russia once again proved that it cares more about protecting the atrocities of the Assad regime than about the suffering of innocent Syrians. But they were not successful. Other members of the Council came together - quickly - to continue the conversation at an Arria-formula meeting (informal) and allowed High Commissioner Zeid to give his briefing to a full room of member states, press, and NGOs.

Another Security Council diplomat told Fox News that, Its difficult to deal with Russia on Syria. The diplomat continued, We have different agendas, thats why its difficult. We see it time and again.

Last month Ambassador Nebenzia complained to Fox News of continued efforts to defame his country. We were invited by the legitimate Syrian government to help defend terrorists, which we did since 2015, while the U.S. was never invited to Syria. Who is the aggressor tell me?

He went on to say that as soon as any progress is made on the political front, there are new reports and accusations against Russia regarding questions on Syrias use of chemical weapons.

These reports are a shame. Again these chemical episodes happen, intensify and start to happen out of the blue when something is going on positively on the political front that is clear for us as well. Thats the other side of the same coin.

Russia vetoed a Joint Investigation Mechanism of the Security Council and the OPCW on investigating the perpetrators of chemical weapon attacks in Syria last November. The so-called JIM had accused the Assad regime of using chemical weapons on its citizens.

It has been exactly a month since the U.N. Security Council passed a watered-down resolution to get Russia on board to push forward with a humanitarian cease-fire.

According to figures from the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), and given to Fox News by the Syrian American Council, since the adoption of resolution 2401 the number of dead now stands at 1,366, with nearly 6,000 injured.

Jonathan Wachtel, the former director of communications and spokesperson for the U.S. Mission under Ambassador Nikki Haley, told Fox News that while there have been some moments of cooperation it remains a problem.

He said, The last years have seen Russia undermining U.S. policy on major crises of our time. From insisting that North Korea had not tested ICBMs to refusing to hold the Syrian government accountable for chemical weapons attacks on civilians, Moscow has far too often chosen denial and spin to avoid taking a moral stance.Three homemade explosive devices were found inside a supermarket that was the site of a deadly attack by a man calling himself a soldier for ISIS, a French official said, as President Trump condemned the violent actions.

Investigators also found a 7.65-caliber handgun and a hunting knife inside the Super U market in the southern French town of Trebes, about 60 miles from Toulouse.

It wasn't clear whether the knife and handgun found were the weapons he wielded when entering the supermarket.

Four people were killed in the hours-long attack Friday when a gunman, reportedly yelling Allahu Akbar, went on a rampage before barricading himself inside the supermarket.

The 25-year-old Morocco-born attacker, identified as Radouane Lakdim, was killed when special police stormed into the market hours later.

One of the victims was a French police officer who swapped himself for a hostage. At least 15 others were injured in the attack.

Two people were detained for alleged links to a terrorist enterprise, one woman close to Lakdim and a 17-year-old male friend of his, Paris prosecutor's office said.

Mayor Eric Menassi of Trebes, a town of 6,000, said people there were forever marked.

"There will be a before and an after ... yesterday we were able to measure how much radicalism can affect anyone," he said.

On Saturday morning, President Trump condemned the attack and offered his support to French President Emmanuel Macron.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the horrible attack in France yesterday, and we grieve the nations loss," he tweeted. We also condemn the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support. We are with you Emmanuel Macron! he added.

Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron are meeting in Washington on April 24 for the first state visit of Trump's presidency. The French leader, who has already put in place stronger police measures since being elected in May, is expected to address a joint session of Congress the following day.

The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said the attacker was responding to the group's calls to target countries in the U.S.-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against IS militants in Syria and Iraq since 2014. France has been repeatedly targeted because of its participation.

France has been on high alert since a series of extremist attacks in 2015 and 2016 killed more than 200 people.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.Turkey's president has criticized anti-war students at a top university, calling them terrorists following a fight there.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that "communist, traitor youth" tried to mess up a student stand opened by "religious, nationalist, local youth" at the public Bogazici University. Erdogan announced an investigation and said "we won't give these terrorist youth the right to study at these universities."

On Monday, a group of students opened a stand distributing sweets dubbed "Afrin delight" to commemorate fallen soldiers in Turkey's cross-border operation in Syria. Another group protested against them, holding anti-war banners.

Turkey's official Anadolu Agency said a fight broke out and 12 people were later detained.

Turkey hasn't tolerated criticism of its military offensive to oust a Syrian Kurdish militia that it considers a terror group.Free Freightnet Membership

List your company in the Freightnet directory. It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours.British farmers have nothing to fear from a trade deal between the USA and UK after Brexit, says an adviser to the Washington government.

USDA Foreign Agricultural Service adviser Steve Knight made the comments during a Deben Farm Club meeting at Ufford, Suffolk, on Thursday (22 March).

Trade was a two-way street and the USA wants strong trading partners  including the UK, Mr Knight told the farmers meeting at the Ufford Park Hotel.

The way to achieve this was to make sure any relationship was mutually beneficial, he added.

See also: Cheap food imports inevitable post Brexit

The US and the UK are the largest investors in each others economies  and trade was almost perfectly balanced with goods and services worth $54bn annually flowing in each direction between the two countries.

Transatlantic trade

Of this, the UK imported 3bn of agricultural products from the USA and 1bn of agricultural products flowed back across the Atlantic in the other direction, said Mr Knight.

Products traded included wine, snack food, salmon, grain-based products such as animal feed and bread-making wheat, as well as wood pellets.

As a standalone country, the UK is the fifth largest economy in the world and a significant trading partner, said Mr Knight.

The USA is seeking to allay concerns that UK farmers could be exposed to food imports produced to lower standards after Brexit, Mr Knight said.

On the subject of chlorine-washed chicken, the USA was not in the game of pushing certain products, but it would be seeking to better communicate what it does.

Food safety

Both the USA and the UK have high food standards, said Mr Knight. The suggestion that US food safety is not as high as the UK is wrong.

Chlorine wash was a useful tool against issues such as campylobacter, said Mr Knight  but, ultimately, consumers will decide.

I am sure the USA will be looking to counter some of the negative messaging  to open up the conversation  to explain why we use some technologies, he said.

We need to better communicate what we do.

Lower barriers

It was also more likely that both the USA and UK will concentrate on securing quick wins that can increase existing trade, suggested Mr Knight.

If barriers can be broken down, for example, there is an opportunity for British farmers to increase exports of UK dairy products to the USA.

Equivalency agreements between the USA and the UK  which mutually recognise each others standards  could get rid of some of those barriers.

There are also opportunities for the UK to export more beef, added Mr Knight. The US cant get enough ground beef, he said.Free

GCHD: County clinic patients potentially exposed to HIV, hepatitis

kelseywalling / KELSEY WALLING/The Daily News Philip Keiser kelseywalling / KELSEY WALLING/The Daily News A car drives past the Coastal Health & Wellness clinic in Texas City on Friday, March 23, 2018. People who received medical or dental procedures at the two Galveston County clinics between March 1, 2015, and Feb. 13 were potentially exposed to the infectious diseases because of infection control failures.

About 9,500 people treated at dental clinics in Texas City and Galveston over the past three years will be notified about potential exposure to hepatitis and HIV as a result of poor sanitation at the facilities, the Galveston County Health District announced Friday.

After what officials called a very scary breach of medical protocols, the district was preparing to activate a medical hotline and offer thousands of free screenings for people who might have been exposed to the diseases.

The concerns about possible infection was first raised 38 days ago. In that time, the district has not identified anyone infected during treatment at the Coastal Health & Wellness Clinics in Texas City and Galveston, said Dr. Philip Keiser, the Galveston County local health authority.

Still, after consulting with state and federal authorities, the district on Friday moved to inform the public about the risk of exposure and begin soliciting former patients to identify themselves and be tested.

To date, our investigation has not found that anyone was infected as a result of the dental procedures at Coastal Health & Wellness, Keiser said.

However, after consulting with the Texas Department of State Health Services, as well as several federal agencies, we have concluded that there is sufficient concern to ask all patients who received dental services at Coastal Health & Wellness between March 15, 2015, and Feb. 12, 2018, to be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.

During an accreditation inspection on Feb. 12, officials identified 11 immediate threat-to-life violations at the Coastal Health & Wellness dental clinic in Texas City, Keiser said.

He didnt outline all 11 violations, but said they all involved the cleaning and sterilization of dental instruments used for minor surgeries, such as root canals and tooth extractions. Because the tools potentially werent cleaned properly, patients may have been exposed to infectious diseases carried between procedures, Keiser said.

There are many (violations) about sterilization, about poor sterilization, not adequately documenting sterilizing of dental instruments, dirty areas that were not being properly cleaned where sterile instruments were passing through, Keiser said. There was a breakdown of the sterilization.

The health district suspended all procedures that use sterilized instruments at the clinics in February and began an investigation, Keiser said.

In the past month, district epidemiologists reviewed infection reports of people diagnosed with HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C to determine whether they had any connections to the dental clinic.

So far, none have been found, Keiser said.

The district is most concerned about people treated at the dental clinic in Texas City, but people treated at a Coastal Health & Wellness clinic in Galveston also will be contacted, Keiser said.

He said the district was most concerned about exposure to hepatitis C, he said.

The district is sending letters to former patients who may have been exposed during the three-year time period. Its also going to open a telephone hotline to answer questions about the warnings. The hotline will be activated at 7:30 a.m. Monday.

The district will allow people to schedule free screening appointments, during which a blood sample will be drawn, Keiser said.

The screening will determine within three to five days whether a person is infected with one of the diseases, Keiser said,

If people test positive for exposure, theyll be referred for more evaluation and treatment, Keiser said.

We are happy that we havent found anything, but were unhappy that we havent found enough to say theres no problem, Keiser said.

The Coastal Health & Wellness clinics serve patients regardless of their ability to pay and are one of the primary care options for low-income people in Galveston County.

Keiser emphasized during the news conference that Coastal Health & Wellness is an organization with its own board of directors and administrative staff, separate from the health district.

However, the Coastal Health & Wellness bylaws available on its website specify that governing board members are nominated by the health districts United Board of Health  whose members are nominated by Galveston County Commissioners.

We want to make sure that there hasnt been harm done, Keiser said. Were really concerned about the patients at this point. Were not prepared to issue a final report yet.

Milton Howard, the chairman of the Coastal Health & Wellness governing board, did not respond to a voicemail left at his dental office in La Marque or to an email sent late Friday afternoon.

In a press release sent at 7 p.m. Friday, Howard said Coastal Health & Wellness had made strides in honing its infection control procedures in the past month.

Patient safety is our highest priority, Howard said.

Mary McClure, the executive director of Coastal Health & Wellness, did not respond to a note left with her office on Friday after the news conference.

She did not return a phone call left at the number listed on the Coastal Health & Wellness website, which was directed to an administrative assistant. Her listed email on the Coastal Health & Wellness website is not active.

Keiser said representatives of Coastal Health & Wellness were informed about Fridays news conference and were invited to attend. He could not explain why they were not there, he said.

The health district has informed local government leaders and the University of Texas Medical Branch about the concerns, he said.

The health district plans, sometime in the future, to issue a report about how the sanitation breaches occurred, Keiser said.

No criminal investigation was underway into the issue, he said.

Related

Hotline and testing The Galveston County Health District is urging people who received dental procedures at Coastal Health & Wellness clinics between March 1, 2015 and Feb. 13, 2018 to be tested for Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV. The district has set up a hotline for people to receive information about potential exposure and to schedule appointments. The hotline number is 409-938-2397. The hotline will be available starting Monday, March 26, at 7:30 a.m. The hotline will be available until 7 p.m Monday through Thursdays. And from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays and Saturday. Testing appointments can also be made at gchd.org. Free testing services will be offers from March 26 until April 13.The attorney representing Trinity Episcopal School against claims that its leaders failed to stop a child from being bullied and subjected to racist filed two motions in the 405th District Court asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed.A new segment of the Grand Parkway is an important piece in the puzzle of League Citys future, and how it affects the citys growth depends on whether the giant loop around Houston is a toll road or not, officials said.Country

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United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of ZimbabweThe Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach is one the biggest event in Long Beach. Here are some numbers that put the three-day event in context.kacylee at 24-03-2018 05:08 PM (3 years ago) (f)

Ten Nigerians suspected to be internet fraudsters, have been arrested in a house at Ashongman Estate, Accra, by the Kwabenya Police.

Ten Nigerians suspected to be internet fraudsters, have been arrested in a house at Ashongman Estate, Accra, by the Kwabenya Police.

The suspects are identified as Diamond Andy (22), Benson Romeo (20), Randy Samuel (25), Kelvin Agho (23),Osas Igbo (21), David Okondu (23), Praise Onyekwena (22), Ohis David (25), Duru Wisdom (22) and Uyi Ighodaro (24).



Six internet modems, 54 different SIM cards, 9 laptops and 5 mobile phones were retrieved from them.



The suspects, according to DSP James Aseidu, District Commander of Kwabenya Police Station, who led the operation, had set up computers in a room.



The Greater Accra Regional Police Commander, DCOP George Alex Mensah, said the arrests were made on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 around 2pm.







The suspects are often not seen during the day and often move out at night everyday to have fun with friends. Police also discovered that the suspects do not work but lead lavish lifestyles in the area. This prompted the police to raid the said house to arrest the suspects. The suspects are identified as Diamond Andy (22), Benson Romeo (20), Randy Samuel (25), Kelvin Agho (23),Osas Igbo (21), David Okondu (23), Praise Onyekwena (22), Ohis David (25), Duru Wisdom (22) and Uyi Ighodaro (24).Six internet modems, 54 different SIM cards, 9 laptops and 5 mobile phones were retrieved from them.The suspects, according to DSP James Aseidu, District Commander of Kwabenya Police Station, who led the operation, had set up computers in a room.The Greater Accra Regional Police Commander, DCOP George Alex Mensah, said the arrests were made on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 around 2pm.

Post Reply I have been reporting for several years now and I am very interested in visual news reportage with strong inclusion of photos and video multimedia. Posted: at 24-03-2018 05:08 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted HeroNassau, Bahamas, March 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD), the management company responsible for The Bahamas busiest airport, reported today that air arrivals at Nassaus Lynden Pindling International Airport during December 2017 and January 2018 were the highest in the companys 11-year history and for the first time in a decade exceeded pre-recession travel levels.

Some 151,454 passengers landed at LPIA in December, 140,314 in January, the largest numbers since the pre-recession holidays of 2007/2008. Decembers increase was the highest in a single month, up nearly 15,000 over the second-best year a decade earlier. Preliminary results for March are even more impressive  up by 24% over 2017 arrivals.

The strong increase in air travel to LPIA is excellent news, said NAD CEO Vernice Walkine. While we are handling more passengers than ever before, we are also pleased that enhanced systems including pre-clearance check-in kiosks have made the LPIA experience smooth, efficient and enjoyable for passengers from around the world. Overall, a 15% increase is projected in non-U.S. international seat capacity through June 2018.

The uptick in arrivals is being driven by several factors, according to airport officials. Among them, an increase in airlift, the return of Sunwing Airlines, strengthening of the Canadian dollar and a brutally cold winter in the U.S. northeast and Canada. They also credit a marketing and promotional ramp-up by Ministry of Tourism and destination partners, especially in Canada and specific markets in the U.S. and U.K. Canada is driving growth in international arrivals all on its own, said Jan Knowles, Vice President, Marketing and Commercial Development.

Canada has led the impact on the higher numbers with both West Jet and Air Canada seeing significant growth in their passenger numbers this season and capacity on flights averaging 89%. The bitter cold and a change in flight times help account for the Canadian boost. British Airways also enjoyed about a 10% increase in air arrivals. According to another NAD official, a Baltimore to Nassau route operated by Southwest Airlines showed a strong increase over last years performance.

The Baha Mar factor is yet to be quantified but officials report that nearly every U.S. airline has added seats in anticipation of increased demand driven by marketing of the new luxury resort and casino. Various promotion boards marketing efforts are also credited with the image of Exumas famed swimming pigs driving traffic from far-off places to the islands of The Bahamas.

According to Walkine, the company which has employed Bahamahost training for front-line staff across LPIA has focused on excellence in service delivery. That focus has paid off. Earlier this month LPIA walked away with third place honours when the Airports Council International announced its Best Airports in the Latin America and Caribbean Region. More than 600,000 passengers throughout the region participated in the ranking process.

More than 3.3 million passengers pass through LPIA every year with the airport serving 55 destinations via 24 airlines.

ABOUT THE BAHAMAS

The Islands Of The Bahamas have a place in the sun for everyone. Each island has its own personality and attractions for a variety of vacation styles with some of the worlds best scuba diving, fishing, sailing, boating, as well as, shopping and dining. The destination offers an easily accessible tropical getaway and provides convenience for travelers with preclearance through U.S. customs and immigration, and the Bahamian dollar is on par with the U.S. dollar. Do everything or do nothing, just remember Its Better in The Bahamas. For more information call 1-800-Bahamas or visit www.Bahamas.com. Look for The Bahamas on the web on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3eec4be0-f62d-4558-a2bf-c0ab148072ff

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/363c37f5-e550-489b-8403-4d12478fb7e0The marine environment is critical to Grenadas economy and closely linked to the islands income generating tourism sector. Grenadas tri-island ocean state is not just a hub of maritime activity, but also home to unique marine biodiversityDenver

Hartford, Conn.

Pittsburgh

Vallejo, Calif.

In Danbury, Conn., there is an ongoing challenge to provide enough affordable, quality child care to meet demand, according to city officials. This problem has prompted a municipal effort to help unlicensed child-care facilities upgrade to licensed.As part of this work, a number of stakeholders have come together, including the mayors office, the health department and the local chapter of United Way, all with a shared goal of helping unlicensed child-care providers get licensed, thereby increasing the number of options in the city and reducing costs. This collaborative effort has led to Danbury being selected as one of 35 champion cities in the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge 2018 , which had an initial pool of 320 applicant jurisdictions. As part of that program, Danbury will soon embark on a six-month testing phase for their work, which officials said will involve a tech component.That tech component must, of course, be explored further, said Austin Samuelson, a community services coordinator with the Danbury mayors office, but part of the testing phase will likely be developing ways to include tech and the use of iPads and Web-based apps that are already available to help link child-care providers to parents.Were very excited to move forward and continue to explore how were really going to solve this issue, Samuelson said. We have a very good sense of direction at this point, and technology will be a component of our innovation solution.The stakes are high for this project. In fact, fueled by a recent grant, a project aimed at addressing poverty rates and unemployment among the immigrant community in Danbury recently found that a recurring challenge for residents was child care and how not being able to get affordable child care of a suitable quality put a strain on families and limited career options.The exact details of the Danbury project, of course, will remain flexible until idea and testing phases are wrapped up.This article is the third in a series looking at the innovative ideas of 35 cities, including Danbury, that are currently conducting testing with support from Bloomberg. The ultimate goal for all of these projects is to create a solution that can be scaled by other cities that face similar challenges. With that in mind, these pilots have the potential to have a major impact on the gov tech market. In October, four of these cities will receive an additional $1 million in support, while one grand prize winner will get $5 million to support its idea.Denvers project involves developing and implementing a real-time, hyper-local air quality data monitoring system for 10 public school campuses throughout the city.In a press release announcing Denvers selection as a champion city, organizers note that children are particularly susceptible to the acute and long-term health effects of air pollution  including decreased lung function, increased respiratory infections and missed days of school.This project, which is being led by Denvers Department of Public Health and Environment, uses air pollution sensor technology that will be placed on public school buildings. The exact campuses that will receive the sensors have not yet been determined.The press release, however, did note that part of the goal of this work is to decrease health and financial burdens for vulnerable residents, and that Denver families currently spend an average of $3,100 a year on asthma-related costs, which totals more than $30 million of citywide annual spending.The sensors will likely collect data about air quality that can be used to inform both policy decisions by the local government as well as the behaviors of the residents themselves.The project from Hartford, Conn., is also aimed at improving quality of life for young residents, this time by helping public servants that work with children recognize and respond in real time to those who have been exposed to gun violence.This, of course, is a depressingly timely project, as ongoing gun violence in schools has been in the headlines and debated on the national political stage. Hartfords project to help those suffering from related trauma is called Alleviating Child Trauma in Our Neighborhoods (ACTION), and in a press release, city officials emphasized its importance.In too many communities around the country, young people who are exposed to the trauma of gun violence in their neighborhoods never get the support, treatment, or even the acknowledgement that they need, said Mayor Luke Bronin in the press release. Our proposal was designed to help provide timely support and assistance to kids exposed to gun violence in our own community. Im proud of our teams innovative proposal, and Im thankful to Bloomberg Philanthropies for selecting Hartford as a Champion City. Our team is looking forward to developing the proposal further, in partnership with all of our stakeholders, including Hartford Public Schools, the Hartford Police Department, and the Village for Families and Children.How the city plans to identify and address those suffering from trauma remains, of course, to be determined by the work it does in the upcoming testing phase.Pittsburghs aging and inefficient housing has earned the city the dubious distinction of being sixth worst in the country in terms of energy burden, which according to a press release from the city results in residents spending more than double the national average on their utility bills.To combat this, the city has proposed a solution that would increase demand for retrofitting residential properties, accomplishing this through reduced costs via group purchasing of materials, as well as through facilitating do-it-yourself product installations. Ultimately, Pittsburghs goal is to reach 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2035, an inherent challenge given the citys location in fossil fuel-rich Pennsylvania.In the past , the city has compared this project to group discount platforms such as Groupon, noting that it could aggregate purchasing demand across the city in order to make high-quality efficiency products more accessible at lower costs. These products would be aimed at retrofitting, weatherizing and other achievements that would make homes more energy efficient. The goal would be to create an easy-to-use platform that incorporates offers from regional nonprofits and utility providers. Other potential components include do-it-yourself workshops and a mobile van program that would help make the new platform known and accessible to residents.The project in Vallejo, Calif., centers around creating a system that can map subsurface pipes in order to boost the citys ability to improve its infrastructure.To accomplish this, Vallejo is taking a design-centered approach, one that would potentially use ground-penetrating radar technology to generate data sets to be processed through an image identification process and as well as through a machine learning algorithm. The overall goal would be using technology to learn all that the city can about its pipes and other below-ground infrastructure, as well as to take a data-driven approach to making necessary repairs.In a press release announcing Vallejos status as a champion city, Mayor Bob Sampayan expressed his excitement for the upcoming Bloomberg testing phase, noting that if successful, This innovation will enhance our ability to assess and monitor critical systems in our community.WHAT LIES AHEAD?

CITIES TAKE ACTION ON BITCOIN

Four state legislatures are at varying stages on bills that would allow citizens or businesses to pay taxes with cryptocurrencies. While individuals that have invested in digital currency may be uncertain as to how the IRS will treat their tax obligation, Arizona, Georgia, Vermont and Wyoming are considering proposals to allow citizens to pay state taxes digitally.The Arizona State Legislature passed Senate Bill 1091 , which would allow taxpayers to use a "payment gateway" or cryptocurrency recognized by the Arizona Department of Revenue. Under the plan, the state would hold responsiblity for converting the payments into U.S. dollars at the prevailing exchange rate and would credit taxpayers any difference. The taxpayer would be responsible for any costs or fees related to the conversion.In Georgia, Senate Bill 464 would amend the tax and licensing fee code to allow the state to accept cryptocurrency as a valid form of payment. The state  specifically the treasurer  holds the responsibility for converting digital payments within 24 hours of receipt.Meanwhile, the Vermont Legislature has been busy laying out its fintech strategy in Senate Bill 269 , which would exempt currency limited liability companies from taxes as long as the company maintains a physical presence in the state or conducts some or all of its activities there.If a company creates or mines cryptocurrencies, it must pay the state a transaction tax equivalent to $0.01, at the then current exchange rate for the digital coin with the U.S. dollar, per transaction for each unit of currency mined or otherwise created, as well as each sale or other transfer of one or more units of currency.Wyoming has a fairly sophisticated strategy for digital coin and blockchain. Senate Bill 111 would exempt cryptocurrencies from state property taxes. The act would add cryptocurrencies to money and cash on hand, effectively treating it like gold, silver, certified checks and cashier's checks. This proposal places bitcoin in the category of a medium of exchange and not as legal tender.Are there any roadblocks that states want to consider when addressing digital coin and tax payments? Absolutely. Bloomberg speculates that states that enact this type of legislation could emerge as leaders in developing infrastructure like payment gateways.Any legislation that allows taxpayers to use a digital alternative to dollars for state payment signals openness to new technology, but it is hard to predict how many people would actually use cryptocurrencies to pay their income taxes.Critics suggest that cryptocurrency also raises concerns about its role in crime, like money laundering. A state might know who paid income taxes in bitcoin  but not who sold the bitcoin to that person.In a first for the nation, Tennessee legislators have moved two identical bills that would block state retirement funds from investing in cryptocurrencies. House Bill 2093 amends the Tennessee Code, to include "notwithstanding any law to the contrary, the trustees shall not invest in any cryptocurrency."City regulation, too, is addressing cryptocurrencies when they work at cross purposes to citizen rights. Plattsburgh, in Upstate New York, had to institute a ban on new crypto-mining businesses when the electrical costs jumped as a result of cryptocurrency mining operations setting up shop.On March 15, in a first for the nation, the city placed an 18-month moratorium on new cryptocurrency mining operations, attracted by the low cost of energy.According to Motherboard , Plattsburgh gets 104 megawatt-hours of electricity per month from its power source, and if it exceeds its allotment more must be purchased on the open (or spot) market at a significant premium. We have some unusual circumstances here, Mayor Colin Read told the publication.In January, Plattsburgh used too much electricity, and the bills for everyone in town rose. While this has been known to happen in the winter months, the state Public Service Commission (PSC) concluded that the average resident in Plattsburgh saw a $10 increase on their bill in January just because of two cryptocurrency companies.To prevent more ratepayer pain in Upstate New York, the State Public Service Commission also ruled on March 15 that upstate municipal power authorities could charge higher electricity rates to cryptocurrency companies that require vast amounts of electricity to conduct business.We always welcome and encourage companies to build and grow their businesses in New York," Commission Chair John B. Rhodes said in a press release . "However, we must ensure business customers pay an appropriate price for the electricity they use. This is especially true in small communities with finite amounts of low-cost power available. If we hadn't acted, existing residential and commercial customers in upstate communities served by a municipal power authority would see sharp increases in their utility bills.Like many governments worldwide, the City and County of Denver, Colorado, had to act quickly to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. To support more than 15,000 employees working from home, the government sought to adapt its new collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams. By automating provisioning and scaling tasks with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, an agentless, human-readable automation tool, Denver supported 514% growth in Teams use and quickly launched a virtual emergency operations center (EOC) for government leaders to respond to the pandemic.Major city systems remain operational, but Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms again urged those who have done business with the municipality to monitor their online and financial information closely, during a press conference March 23 to discuss the previous days ransomware cyberattack.The situation surrounding the early morning breach March 22 remains somewhat fluid, and three federal agencies  the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI  are continuing to work with the city and incident response teams from Cisco and Microsoft, the mayor said.That said, systems including watershed management and water quality; public safety and emergency response; human resources, payroll and procurement; 311 and the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport were not significantly impacted by the attack  though some processes have been altered out of caution.Notably, an airport spokesman told The Associated Press that its Wi-Fi network had been taken down, and parts of its website temporarily disabled. During the March 23 press conference, which was livestreamed on Twitter , Chief Operating Officer Richard Cox said water meter sales are not currently being processed.Municipal court defendants arrested by the Department of Corrections will be seen Sunday with manual tickets, the COO continued, and for the time being there will be no online ticket payments. However, Cox said, no failure to appear notices will be created for cases generated during this time, should confusion arise as a result of any service disruptions.The Atlanta Journal-Constitution s John Spink obtained a photograph of an informational handout given to City Hall employees arriving to work on March 23. It described the incident as a data breach, warned staffers not to log on to their computers and indicated Atlanta will be implementing a new employee notification system to alert them to critical work-related information.The mayor, Cox, and acting Chief Information Officer Daphne Rackley emphasized that while many systems are operational, there were areas and details about the ongoing investigation which they would not discuss.Were working on this in real time, and what that means is information changes really dynamically. We want to be very careful not to make definitive statements because theres a chance that they may change, Bottoms said.Rackley echoed the mayors comment, pointing out that the probe is still very much active.Again, were in deep investigation and incident management mode so we dont have any details that can be released, but as was articulated by the mayor and the COO, we feel confident that were doing the right things and will continue to be transparent, Rackley said.Asked whether the attack was ongoing or if it had been stopped, Rackley said: Were still in incident management mode, which means that were still on the look-out that other threat vector management systems arent being compromised. Were looking at the perimeter, so were looking at the network and our customer-facing systems as well as our internal systems.The attack, however, has been described by media outlets including Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA-TV as involving a ransom demand. In an interview on March 22 with, Kennesaw State University Professor Andrew Green, who lectures on information security and assurance, said he reviewed screengrabs of information the TV station said it obtained from a city employee, and which called for a ransom to be paid in bitcoin.The demand, Green said, amounted to .8 bitcoins per individual system or device, or 6 bitcoins for a mass encryption key  the latter, equating to around $50,000 based on then-current exchange rates.Based upon his review of the information, Green said the attack could be based on a virus from the Samas or SAMSAM family, which dates at least to 2015 and, like typical ransomware, encrypts portions of a disc.When asked whether the city will pay a ransom demand, Bottoms said: We are continuing to work with our federal partners and other stakeholders who are advising us on how best to manage the situation.This is a very fluid situation and we want to make sure that we are operating in a way that would be best for the city, the mayor added.As for when services may return to normal, Rackley indicated the agency is erring on the side of caution. I cant give you any definitive timelines, but I will tell you were working around the clock, Rackley said.Cyberattacks, Bottoms said, are a threat to our national security that is happening across the world to the public and private sector.Asked when the city had last performed a full cyberthreat assessment, and whether the breach might highlight deficiencies that originated in the previous administration, she pointed out the necessity of repeating such metrics and the newness of the current incident.Even with every upgrade we do, theres still a threat ahead of us that needs to be addressed. Weve not done the autopsy, if you will, because right now, we have an immediate threat in front of us that we are addressing. I think we are well aware that there are system upgrades that are needed in the system, Bottoms said.(TNS)  PORTSMOUTH, N.H.  Two Police Department technology employees have been working with the city for more than a week to try to stop a computer virus that has infected municipal and police computers, said Police Chief Robert Merner.The chief said police are assisting with an effort to thwart the attack since it was discovered March 14 and he was "on the phone all weekend" monitoring the efforts. Merner said the virus has been causing City Hall computers to malfunction in a number of different ways and he's been informed it appears to be a virus launched to collect information. He said no systems have crashed and employees have all changed passwords, but acknowledged "there are (still) bugs in the system.""My people have been working to search it out and destroy it for days now," Merner said. "It clearly has been a problem for us. It's caused a lot of angst for the city."The police chief said the goal of his IT professionals is to first stop the virus from attacking. When that's accomplished, he said, a criminal investigation may follow.Alan Brady, the city's director of information technology, told the Portsmouth Herald Wednesday that 40 to 50 city computers are impacted by the "browser-based" virus, which is targeting user and password information. He described the virus as a "pretty good one," adding it has not caused city staff to lose files or anyone's personal information to be compromised.Brady said he believes the virus breached the city computer system when someone in City Hall opened an attachment in an email or on a website that was linked to the virus. He said information that residents provide for payments to the city is stored on outside servers.How it Began

Trolls or Russians?

A Local Target?

(TNS)  Nearly 50 suspicious emails  including two dozen with ties to Russia  recently were sent to the Texas Democratic Party , trying to register for political gatherings that could have led the senders to the party's state convention in Fort Worth this summer.But party officials say this move, the latest example of potential Russian interference in U.S. elections , was unsuccessful."We don't know what their goal was," said Glen Maxey, a former state lawmaker from Austin who serves as legislative affairs director for the Texas Democratic Party. "Russians are attempting to get into voting systems around the country."The system caught it," he said. "They tried to register and they failed. No Russians are coming to Fort Worth."Even so, at a time where top cyber officials say Russia remains determined to disrupt U.S. elections , and 13 Russians already have been indicted on charges of interfering with the 2016 presidential election, political observers say the questionable emails should be a concern."Russian election meddling didnt stop in 2016 and has clearly infested the Lone Star State," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. "The targets are now the party systems instead of voter registration systems. The parties and the state must be as vigilant as ever in weeding out foreign influence in Texas elections."This latest intrusion is modest but suggests a new nefarious strategy to influence elections."This comes after Dallas County election officials said last year that Russian hackers unsuccessfully tried to access voter registration rolls there. If they had been successful, and had been able to delete or manipulate the voter database, officials said there could have been big problems on Election Day.Republican and Democratic precinct and senatorial conventions  which lead to delegates being chosen to attend their party's state convention  are scheduled Saturday.Maxey recently decided to double-check online registrations for the Democratic conventions.When he looked at the list of registrations that automatically had been rejected, he found 48 emails from people who didn't cite a Texas address.Two dozen of those emails had Russian domain names and Russia-based IP addresses.Among the names of the Russian email senders: Patsy Beer, Roxie Male, Michaela Beaumont, Lily Abbott, Mei Mickey and Gustavo Chubb."If these folks are attempting to go on to any political site and get in, it gives another data point for folks trying to influence elections," Maxey said. "For whatever reason they went to this system, I have no idea."The Star-Telegram sent emails to the Russian email addresses asking whether the sender was trying to register for the Democratic convention. No one responded."The fact that they are using Russian email addresses suggest they aren't really trying to hide anything," said Robert Lowry, a political science professor at UT Dallas. "So maybe this is just an attempt to create some confusion and sow doubt in the overall integrity of the process."Republican officials say similar problems were not found through their convention registration process, likely because potential delegates have to register in person and not online."All delegates are selected in person after being verified on the voter rolls," James Dickey, who heads the Republican Party of Texas, has told the media.Maxey said he wasn't sure which agency to contact about the emails, but he wanted to draw attention to them.Texas secretary of state officials say they reached out to him after learning what he found."It's important to note that the party conventions are wholly separate and apart from any of our voting systems and the statewide voter registration database," said Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the state elections office. "The Democratic and Republican parties of Texas are private entities and our office does not have purview over either their cybersecurity operations or the registration process for their state party conventions."He said the FBI or Department of Homeland Security would be the best agencies to contact in the future. And he noted that security measures for county elections have been strengthened."Our office is focused on ensuring that our state's election system remains secure and that all Texans can cast a ballot with confidence," he said.Some say the suspicious emails may well have been sent by anyone  pranksters, trolls or Russians."I suspect that this is another attempt by Russia to interfere with the US electoral process," said Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, who heads the political science department at the University of North Texas in Denton. "They may be emboldened because there has been little coordinated effort by the U.S. government to make this a top priority."Id be more interested to know if other state parties have experienced something similar," he said. "Hopefully, there is a mechanism in place where these anomalies can be reported and shared so that the proper authorities can monitor the situation and improve detection of election tampering."Texans chosen during Saturday's political gatherings will move on to their party's state conventions this summer  a time to reinvigorate grassroots members to present a united front in the November general election.The Republican Party of Texas will hold its state convention June 14-16 in San Antonio. The Texas Democratic Party will hold its state convention June 21-23 in Fort Worth.GOP officials, who agree that more security is needed now in today's digital age, say no unusual emails or correspondence have been received locally."The Russians are not meddling in Tarrant County Republican politics," Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Tim O'Hare said. "Absolutely not."Tarrant County Democratic Party Chairwoman Deborah Peoples said it's crucial to remain vigilant and protect against potential Russian interference with the party convention being held in Fort Worth."The Russians will stop at nothing to put their candidates in office. Texas, and specifically Tarrant County, would be of interest," she said. "Two years ago, during the last election cycle, we never would have thought Texas would remotely be in play for anything purple or blue. That has changed. And that would be of interest to anyone who is adverse to change."But Peoples said she believes the convention team will be able to prevent any interference."I think we have a good team working on it now," she said. "But you never say never. That is why the people who are planning our convention are hyper vigilant to any type of interference."Should Russians try to hack into our system, they would be caught quickly."Mark Webber has hit out at Williams' 2018 driver lineup.

Many have criticised the once-great British team's decision to overlook Robert Kubica in favour of the well-sponsored Russian rookie Sergey Sirotkin.

Sirotkin pairs with Lance Stroll, making it among the youngest, least experienced but also the most lucrative 'pay driver' F1 lineups of all time.

Former Williams driver Webber said in Melbourne when asked how he feels about the pairing: "Not happy.

"There's not a person out there that doesn't want to see Williams do well, and to do that they need a marriage between experience and the future," he told Metro newspaper.

"You need chemistry between the drivers. F1 isn't a finishing school, it needs drivers who can deliver from the off," said Webber.

(GMM)Credit: Nicole NapierBreaking Benjamin has shared a new song called "Psycho" from their forthcoming album Ember. The heavy cut is available now for digital download.

The song appears to be the source of the album's title, since it features the lyrics, "In the cold eternal light/I am the ember fading."

Ember, the follow-up to 2015's Dark Before Dawn, also features the previously released songs "Feed the Wolf," "Blood" and lead single "Red Cold River." The album arrives on April 13.

Breaking Benjamin will kick off a headlining tour in support of Dark Before Dawn April 25 in Richmond, Virginia. In the summer, they'll embark on a co-headlining trek with Five Finger Death Punch.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.The People's Liberation Army Navy will carry out combat exercises in the South China Sea in the coming days, the Navy said on Friday.

According to the Navy's staff department, the training is a routine part of the Navy's annual training plan and is intended to boost the troops' training and hone their combat capability. It is not aimed at any specific country or target, the department said in a statement, without elaborating.

The announcement came two days after defense authorities in Taiwan reported that the PLA Navy's CNS Liaoning aircraft carrier and CNS Hulun Lake replenishment ship sailed through the Taiwan Straits earlier this week. The move has yet to be confirmed by the Navy.

A researcher close to the PLA Navy who wished not to be named told China Daily that it is possible the Liaoning carrier battle group will take part in the coming exercises in the South China Sea to verify its operational capabilities after recent training.

The coming exercises will be the first such operations by the Navy in the South China Sea in 2018, according to available information.

In February, a three-vessel flotilla headed by the CNS Changsha guided-missile destroyer performed combat drills in the Indian and western Pacific oceans.

Earlier this month, two PLA Marine Corps forces, totaling more than 10,000 troops, traveled about 2,000 kilometers in a mobility exercise, which was said by military observers to be the largest-ever maneuver by the Marine Corps.

The Chinese military has been paying great attention to combat drills and joint operations since President Xi Jinping, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, took office.

As a result, all of the Navy's combat vessels now spend about eight months each year on the sea, carrying out patrols, drills and training operations, much longer than before, according to the Navy.Australian GP 2018

Saturday Press Conference

DRIVERS

1 - Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

2 - Kimi RAIKKONEN (Ferrari)

3 - Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

TRACK INTERVIEWS

Q: Lewis, that was a lap of some commitment to take the record here, seven pole positions. How does that one feel?

Lewis HAMILTON: You would think that with the results we've had in these years, it would be the norm. But it doesn't. It's still just as intense and my heart is racing, I wish you could feel it right now. It's great to see this crowd here. Thank you so much for all coming out. I'm so grateful to the Aussies having us here every year and mostly the generally good weather but a beautiful city. And a lot of British flags here, so I'm really grateful for it. But I'm so happy with that lap; it was such a nice lap. And, you know, I'm always striving for perfection and that was as close as I could get.

Q: More than six tenths for pole position. We've heard some talk about 'party mode'. Was party mode engaged? Was it party time in the car today?

Hamilton: I'm always in party mode, so you know... No, what was surprising was to see how quick the Ferraris were. I mean I don't really know... during that lap I was in the same mode that I was in before but it was just really hooking up the tyres, getting them at the right temperature and then putting the lap together. I had good sectors before, maybe the first lap of qualifying but after that I had to put them together so...

Q: Phenomenal job. Congratulations. Great job today Kimi, a phenomenal lap from you. Talk about your lap, talk about your pace today, a great job for Ferrari.

Kimi RAIKKONEN: I think it was a pretty decent job. But obviously the lap time difference is still pretty big but it wasn't a very straightforward session, because of the weather this morning and the disturbance in the last qualifying but we have to be happy about where we are starting but there is still an awful lot of work to be done to improve things, but not too bad.

Q: Great job, Kimi, well done. Sebastian, maybe not the day you were hoping for, the pace of the looks good, but just that massive push from Lewis at the end. Are you happy with today?

Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, I think we can be. Yesterday I wasn't happy; I didn't really feel the car. It just coming better in qualifying. I think the last lap I had a bit of a moment into 13, I tried to brake really late; it didn't work. But yeah, it was really close. Exciting for us as it was that close. A shame that Lewis had quite a big gap at the end but I guess his lap was pretty good. Looking forward to tomorrow, we did improve the car today and see what happens tomorrow.

Q: We know that Mercedes always turn it on on Saturdays. But for Sunday for tomorrow how confident are you that you can take it to those guys and we get a proper fight for the win?

Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah, I hope they did turn it on today, as that means they have turn it off tomorrow. I think it's very close. I think we saw yesterday in the long runs that the pace is very close, so let's see. It's not the easiest place to overtake but who knows, if we have an opportunity at the start and then in the race you never know. Really happy for the team, it's a good result, so let's get going.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Lewis, that was some mighty lap, but tell us about the journey to it, as it didn't look straightforward today.

Hamilton: It definitely wasn't straightforward. It was not the easiest of sessions. It was a real surprise to see how quick the Ferraris were, from already Q1. The speeds they had on the straights; they've obviously made an improvement in their power mode. I think we were similar speed through the corners but definitely their power mode was quite strong. And that remained the same through the session. But obviously getting out and getting the tyres working optimally and staying in the right zone through the whole lap was definitely difficult, it was always is here, particularly with the rears. Yeah, getting the balance and putting the sectors together, obviously we had some runs, or at least one on used tyres, and then you had that break and then the incident. It was tricky. But that last lap was the best of this weekend. I'm very, very happy with that lap. It was one of my best I would.

Q: You look in good shape for the race. You were quick on the two harder compound tyres in the long runs yesterday. The only disappointment I guess is that they're on your own against these two tomorrow; Valtteri in the wall unfortunately?

Hamilton: Yeah, that's OK. It's not like I've not been there before, fighting two Ferraris, in my career. Of course it's always going to be tough having two red cars, or a red car either in your mirror or ahead, fighting with them. They are a great team. But we are the best prepared we can be. I am excited. We had a great crowd here today. It was great that it dried up. And it was progressing. The track was getting better and better through qualifying, so you were constantly discovering new grip, new improvements as you go along and I guess that's why I'm as happy as I am.

Q: Kimi, great performance, it looked pretty close in Q2, first runs of Q3 as well, Lewis used the word 'surprised' to talk about the performance of Ferrari there, were you surprised them when he pulled out that lap?

Raikkonen: We didn't really know what to expect, it's the first qualifying so everybody's been a bit unsure of where you are against the others and obviously today was like this. If you purely look at time differences it's bigger than for sure we want but I think it wasn't very straightforward, the whole day with conditions and everything. We have to see in the next ones but I think everything was more or less OK. One mistake in Q2, lost one run and obviously then we used, like a half a lap used tyres in the first try but yeah, I think feeling-wise, not too bad. For sure things could be better here and there, we try to make a good job tomorrow and keep working and see what we can do.

Q: Seb, obviously, strategy played a part in your win here last year. There are two of you, one of him, there's Red Bull starting on Supersofts, lots of different permutations: how do you see the race panning-out tomorrow?

Vettel: Well, I don't know. Depends on how we get off the line and then hopefully we can play two against one. I think in terms of race pace we should be closer. We were closer yesterday and then we see. It depends how close we can be. Yeah. I think it also depends. We have more cars now in range. So, it changes probably a little bit the race as well. So, we'll see.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Yianni Mavromoustakos) To all three drivers, did the track conditions affect your times significantly - and if so by how much? The dampness, as it started to get a bit drier throughout from Q1 to Q3.

Hamilton: Oh, no, it was already dry from the beginning. The tracks generally evolve, the temperature was coming down in this session but the track just grips-up as we apply more and more rubber to the road. Obviously, this morning's practice, the rain just resets the track a little bit. So, it just kept progressing and getting faster and faster throughout the session.

Q: (Christian Menath) Question to Seb: are you concerned by the gap to Mercedes and do you think it was due to the 'party mode' from Lewis' engine?

Vettel: I don't know. I haven't seen much of the qualifying. I think I had a little bit in hand. I messed up a bit in the final sector, going into Turn 13. So not ideal from my side but still, felt like a good lap and a good session. The car was coming alive so I'm pretty happy with what we did. Obviously the gap is bigger than we want it to be. I don't think it was very close, seven-tenths obviously is quite big. So, some homework for us, but yeah, as I said, tomorrow, we've seen many times now, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 that, usually on Sunday, things get a little bit closer. We bet on that.

Hamilton: I can assure you, we don't have a party mode. I use the same mode from Q2 to the end of Q3. There was no extra button, there was no extra button that I engaged.

Vettel: Then what were you doing before?

Hamilton: eh?

Vettel: What were you doing before?

Hamilton: I was waiting to put a good lap in. Wipe the smile off your face!

Q: You have mentioned looking forward to the party mode:

Hamilton: Who did?

Q: I think you said at some point...

Hamilton: I've never heard of that suggestion, the Party Mode - but it sounds pretty cool.

Q: (Frederic Ferret - L'Equipe) Question to the three of you. Are you surprised by the choice of the tyre of the Red Bulls?

Hamilton: I'm not surprised, it is a better tyre. It is a better tyre so they will be very strong. The only scenario... the difficult thing is, being that's it's generally a one stop, tomorrow they'll have to go to either the ultrasoft or the soft at the first stop. But the tyres are quite close. They will most likely be able to go longer and remain at a very decent pace. Strategy wise it's probably not a terrible thing but it'll be interesting tomorrow for sure.

Q: Kimi, any thoughts?

Raikkonen: No, free to do what they want.

Q: Did you think about it?

Raikkonen: For sure. There are a lot of things that we think about and we try to chose the best that we think is going to work for us but obviously, there's a lot of options that you can do. To be honest, the end result, if you purely take the speed, might not be an awful lot different.

Q: To phrase it slightly differently, why didn't you do it?

Vettel: Because we believe what we did is better for the race.

Q: (Heikki Kulta - Turun Sanomat) Kimi, it's the second time you're on the front row here and the last time you won it. Is a front row position giving you a better chance in the race because it's so difficult to overtake?

Raikkonen: I don't think it's going to change an awful lot, honestly. You want to be as far forward as you can but it doesn't guarantee anything. Whatever has happened in the past doesn't make any difference tomorrow. We will try to make a good race out of it and see where we end up. Obviously it's a bit unknown as it's the first race so we do our own stuff and hopefully get a good result out of it.

Q: (Phil Branagan - Auto Action) Lewis, last year you gave up the lead and you gave up track position to Sebastian and we know how that worked out. How much does that play, if anything, into your strategic thinking about tomorrow's race?

Hamilton: Up until this point, I haven't thought at all about the race. You know, you're just taking one day at a time and one session at a time so I haven't even reviewed - apart from last week at the factory, for example - but I've not reviewed it up until now. So tonight and tomorrow morning I'll start obviously putting my focus into the race. Whether I've given up the position is the right thing, they ultimately did a better job in strategy so yeah, I think we generally learn from mistakes or scenarios like that so I'm hoping that we're better prepared for tomorrow and ultimately I guess, it's also how we manage the tyres at the start of the race. Sebastian was really on my tail towards the end of my stint last time which forced me to come into the pits and then he continued on for several laps and then I got stuck behind Verstappen. But I'll definitely bear that in mind and try my best to make sure that I'm in a better position tomorrow.

Q: (Paul Gover - Herald Sun) Sebastian, there are a lot of fans around the world who enjoyed the rivalry between you and Lewis last year. We saw a little frisson just then when he's talking about wiping the smile off your face. It's a question to both of you. I know it's a joke but it's a good quote and I work for a tabloid paper. I want you to be honest so I'll be honest. Are you looking forward to resuming battle and do you plan to wipe the smile off his face?

Vettel: I think he said it so quick the first time I didn't get it, so now I got it, thanks for repeating it. I think what goes around comes around. At the end of the day that's why we're here, we want to have fun. If that's what he enjoys, obviously on Saturdays he's doing pretty well.

Hamilton: It was a joke.

Vettel: I know but... He's free to have a party tonight and then hopefully Kimi and myself will have a party tomorrow.

Hamilton: Kimi parties all the time so...

Q: (Heikki Kulta - Turun Sanomat) Lewis, how disappointed are you that Valtteri is not with you here in the top three?

Hamilton: Again, I haven't put a lot of thought to it but of course I know how hard Valtteri's been working and so I would know how difficult and the pain he'll feel right now but he will recover for sure, he was very quick through practice and he's been putting a lot of effort into growing as a driver and as a member of the team. Definitely unfortunate but I have all the confidence in him to pull through again tomorrow quite quickly.ANKARA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Syria's Afrin region has been taken under "full control" as part of ongoing Operation Olive Branch, the Turkish military said on Saturday.

Turkish General Staff said in a statement that all villages located in the Afrin region were cleared of terrorists.

Search operation for mines and improvised explosive devices around the region is underway.

On Saturday, Turkish Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar said at a conference in Ankara that the army will arrive in the suburb of Aleppo called Nubl-Zahra.

A total of 3,733 terrorists have been killed or captured since the start of the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin region, according to the military.

Numerous informative leaflets in the Kurdish and Arabic languages were distributed to civilians in the area, local media reported.

The efforts to help Syrian civilians return home is undergoing, said the army.

On Sunday, The Turkish troops and Free Syrian Army fighters took control of the Afrin town center, the strategic Kurdish-held town in northern Syria.

Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20 to clear the People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers a terror group affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) from northwestern Syria."I'm happy with the ending although I felt bittersweet as I wrapped it up," Lee said.

Based on a 2010 Japanese drama of the same title, the drama is about a young single teacher who abducts an abused girl to become her mother. The Korean version had a different ending where Lee's character adopts the girl, while in the Japanese original, the mother is arrested and separates from the girl.

Actress Lee Bo-young concluded her journey in the tvN drama "Mother" last week. The series drew its curtain on March 15 after 16 episodes on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

"While shooting the drama, I really felt that everyone should have a mother," she said. "For children who don't have one, we all should work to care for them in society as a whole so that they can feel looked after sufficiently."

A mother herself, Lee drew upon her own experiences while preparing for her role. "My life has revolved around my daughter, not me," Lee said, since she gave birth in 2015. She married fellow actor Ji Sung in 2013.

She also said marriage and childbirth widened the range of emotions she could express.

Looking ahead, Lee said that she is looking for a change of pace.

"There aren't that many roles that an actress my age can do in the current market," she said. "I want to do something more light-hearted next time, but if there is something dark that seems worth doing, then I will go for it."U.S. President Donald Trump grudgingly signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill into law Friday, hours after threatening to veto the measure because it didn't protect undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children or fully fund his proposed border wall.

At a hastily arranged White House briefing Friday afternoon, Trump told reporters he signed the sweeping funding package "for the purpose of national security" even though he was "unhappy about a lot of things" in the massive funding package.

"I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again," he said. "Nobody read it. It's only hours old. Some people don't even know -- $1.3 trillion, it's the second-largest ever."

His signing of the bill averted a federal government shutdown at midnight Friday. Trump told reporters he looked "very seriously at the veto" but decided to sign the bill given "the incredible gains" for the military.

He said the measure will keep the military funded and provide the largest pay increase for U.S. troops in over a decade. It also increases defense spending by more than $60 billion from 2017. As part of the bill, overall defense spending will jump to $700 billion, the largest increase in 15 years.

At the media briefing, the Republican president blamed Democrats for the lack of protections for DACA recipients in the bill.

"DACA recipients have been treated extremely badly by the Democrats. We wanted to include DACA, we wanted to have them in this bill, 800,000 people and actually it could even be more. And we wanted to include DACA in this bill. The Democrats would not do it," the president said.

DACA recipients are undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. They were protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that began in 2012. Trump, however, rescinded the program late last year while giving Congress six months to come up with a permanent plan for the program recipients.

Despite Democrats' efforts, the bill makes no mention of protections for these so-called Dreamers. Democrats had called on Republican leaders to bring to a vote on the House floor a range of proposals to fix DACA. Meanwhile, federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to keep in place certain parts of DACA while legal challenges make their way through the court system.

A piatto unico or one-plate meal: rigatoni and chicken meatballs together at last. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Its funny to think that young members of todays food cognoscenti may not have even heard of Pino Luongo, but the restaurateur was something like a one-man Major Food Group back in the day  the day being the 80s and 90s. He schmoozed, he schemed, he feuded. He also cooked. An employee named Anthony Bourdain, whom Luongo hired and fired in two months flat, referred to him in the foreward of Luongos 2009 memoir, Dirty Dishes, as the Dark Prince of Italian Fine Dining.

Along the way, Luongo helped define a certain style of New YorkItalian cuisine. And before his business empire went bust (one of those potentially mogul-making but ultimately bankrupting expansion deals), he racked up quite an impressive collection of restaurants: Il Cantinori, Sapore di Mare, Le Madri, and the fantastic Mad. 61 in the basement of Barneys, which was like a miniature precursor to Eataly.

Not least among these celebrity-infested feedlots was Coco Pazzo on East 74th Street and Madison Avenue, which the Times awarded three enthusiastic stars after the restaurant opened in late 1990, and which New York once called the hippest Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, which might sound like faint or overly qualified praise, but thats just because Le Madri was located downtown in Chelsea.

Nowadays, Luongos holdings have dwindled to the discreetly tony Morso off Sutton Place. But Coco Pazzo has always held a special place in his heart. I always thought that if I were going to open another restaurant, it would be Coco Pazzo, he says. So when a prime piece of Soho real estate, the longtime home to dive bar Miladys, became available, Luongo joined forces with fellow Florentine and onetime Da Silvano manager Alessandro Bandini.

Unlike the original, Coco Pazzo 2018 is two-pronged: The fast-casual Coco Pazzo Kitchen dishes out lunchtime soups, salads, and sandwiches, like chicken Milanese on Sullivan Street Bakery strecci from a nook with its own Prince Street entrance. Theres pasta like Luongos signature rigatoni alla buttera, too, but he would prefer you eat it on premises, in the adjacent trattoria, so it doesnt get cold and gloppy by the time you get it home. I wont twist your arm about it, though.

Chicken Milanese on Sullivan Street Bakery bread. Photo: Liz Clayman

The trattoria dinner menu hews to classic dishes, with one Luongo-ian innovation: a menu category called piatto unico, a one-dish meal that unites  Italophile purists avert your eyes  a pasta and a hunk of meat or seafood on the same plate. Theres pappardelle with stracotto (braised beef brisket), orecchiette with grilled octopus, and (gasp!) even meatballs and rigatoni  though it should be noted that the two keep a respectable distance from one another on the long, rectangular platter theyre served on. Another piatto unico pairs bucatini with whole grilled sardines, in a sort of deconstructed pasta con le sarde.

If these blue-plate specials of sorts seem at odds with the whole expansive, leisurely paced idea of Italian cuisine, Luongo insists that its how he ate growing up in Tuscany, and if it was good enough for young Pino, then presumably, its good enough for Soho.

In addition to the piatto unico, the dinner menu offers lots of seafood antipasti, cheese and salumi platters, and a per la tavola menu section, including family-style spreads like grilled rib eyes with Tuscan fries and Caesar salad, or the seafood stew called cacciucco followed by pasta, with many dishes plucked from the restaurateurs playbook.

Ive always loved the name Coco Pazzo  you know it means crazy chef? says Luongo. It allows me to interpret Italian cuisine any way I want.

Bucatini cacio e pepe. Photo: Liz Clayman

Rigatoni alla buttera. Photo: Liz Clayman

Artichoke salad. Photo: Liz Clayman

Coco Pazzo Trattorias dining room. Photo: Liz Clayman

160 Prince St., at Thompson St.; 917-261-6321Intra-Communal Conflict Leaves 5 Dead In Gok State

At least five people have been killed and more than six others wounded in an intra-communal clashes between Pagok and Pathiang in Gok State.

By Mabor Riak Magok



CUEIBET, 24 March 2018 [Gurtong]-The deadly intra-communal fighting broke out in Abiei-cok on Wednesday when a person shot a customer at a shop on the head in what was believed to be a revenge attack.



In an interview with the Gurtong , the Speaker of Gok State legislative Assembly Ujima Philiph Dak confirmed the incident between the two warring communities of Pagok and Pathiang in Gok State.

Ujima said the government of Gok State has created a buffer zone to separate the fighting between the two communities of Pagok and Pathiang.



She warned the youth on both sides to refrain from further attacks and revenge killings, saying any group that may cross to attack the other side of the community will face the military deployed in that zone.



We have a State of emergency in Gok State declared by the president of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit and it is being implemented in Gok State and whoever does not abide by the law will face the full force of the law immediately. Ujima said.



We want our people in Gok State to have peace and cultivate freely this year without any fear of insecurity after the government arms collections from the hands of civilian. She said.



She urged both warring communities to remain calm and cease revenge killings and further attacks.







"Now, foreigners are getting rich in South Sudan and nationals are getting agitated in some ways and little do they know that even if the foreigners leave those properties to them, they will still not be beneficial to them..."Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print.

Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition.

If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create.Imperial Valley News Center

International Competition Network Adopts Guiding Principles for Procedural Fairness and New Recommendations for Merger Review

Washington, DC - The International Competition Network (ICN) held its 17th annual conference, hosted by the Competition Commission of India, on March 21-23, 2018. Nearly 500 delegates from more than 70 jurisdictions participated, including competition experts from international organizations and the legal, business, academic, and consumer communities. Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roger Alford of the Department of Justices Antitrust Division led the U.S. delegation. The conference showcased the achievements of the ICN working groups on competition advocacy, agency effectiveness, cartels, mergers and unilateral conduct, and featured discussion of current competition issues and the future direction of the network.

The ICN continues to play a critical role in addressing evolving issues and challenges that confront the international competition community, said FTC Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen. As exemplified by this years work product on merger review and procedural due process, work that was led by the FTC, there has been substantial progress toward convergence of competition policy around the world.

The Division looks forward each year to this opportunity to engage face to face with enforcer colleagues from around the world, said Assistant Attorney General Delrahim. The relationships that we develop through ICN are key to our enforcement program, and to promoting sound competition policy worldwide. We commend the Competition Commission of India for hosting an excellent conference.

Acting Chairman Ohlhausen helped lead the conferences panel discussion of how competition authorities can communicate the benefits of competition and advocate for pro-competitive policies when the political, social, or economic context is not in their favor. The panel explored how advocacy strategies may differ and recognized that competition advocacy, whatever the context or climate, is a crucial component of a competition agencys work. Randolph Tritell, Director of the FTCs Office of International Affairs, led the concluding panel, showcasing the implementation of the ICNs work across the globe.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Alford spoke on a panel discussing online markets and vertical restraints. The panel was part of the Unilateral Conduct Working Groups ongoing work on vertical restraints. The Working Group, co-chaired by the Department of Justice, presented an interim report examining a series of hypothetical vertical restraints and their effect on competition and potential resulting efficiencies.

The FTC co-chairs the ICNs Merger Working Group, which promotes convergence toward best practices in merger process and analysis and seeks to reduce the public and private costs of multijurisdictional merger reviews. This year, the Merger Working Group presented revised Recommended Practices on: 1) international enforcement cooperation; 2) timing of notification; and 3) review periods. The working group also presented results of its agency survey on vertical merger analysis and related economic assessment.

The Agency Effectiveness Working Group produced new recommendations on due process in competition law enforcement. The FTC-led project developed Guiding Principles for procedural fairness, recommendations for internal agency practices that support sound decision making, and implementation tips for good agency enforcement process. The group also studied how economic thinking and economic analysis can be incorporated into agencies investigations and decision-making processes. The working group introduced new video training modules on merger remedies and enforcement cooperation as part of the ICNs online interactive educational center for competition authorities from around the world.

The Cartel Working Group addresses the challenges of anti-cartel enforcement, including the prevention, detection, investigation and punishment of cartel conduct. The Cartel Working Group presented an interim report on survey findings regarding major characteristics of leniency regimes, incentives and disincentives for leniency applications and interaction between leniency and other policies.

The Advocacy Working Group provides guidance and facilitates experience-sharing to improve the effectiveness of ICN members competition advocacy initiatives. At the conference, the group released its second report as part of the Strategy Project. The report analyzes survey results on how competition agencies assess their advocacy actions and programs, and identifies common practices and trends. This work will inform the development of guidance covering the planning, monitoring, and evaluation of advocacy actions and programs. The working group also expanded the Market Studies Information Store, which now includes over 700 new market studies conducted by member agencies, and facilitates knowledge-sharing, collaboration, and best practices in market studies.

Created in October 2001 to increase understanding of competition policy and promote convergence toward sound antitrust enforcement around the world, the ICN, founded by 15 members including the FTC and the Department of Justices Antitrust Division, has grown to 138 member agencies from 125 jurisdictions, supported by a wide network of non-government advisors from around the world.Imperial Valley News Center

Chief of Staff for Former Federal Congressman Convicted for Obstructing Congressional Investigation

Washington, DC - The chief of staff for a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives has been convicted for obstructing a congressional investigation into the alleged misappropriation of Congressional funds to pay for campaign activity, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Departments Criminal Division.

David G. Bowser, 45, of Arlington, Virginia, was convicted of one count of obstruction of proceedings, one count of concealment of material facts and three counts of making false statements. A sentencing date has not been set.

David Bowser abused his position as a chief of staff on Capitol Hill to fund political campaigns with taxpayer funds, and then lied to cover up his crimes, said Acting Assistant Attorney General Cronan. The Criminal Division is committed to preserving the publics confidence in our government by investigating and prosecuting corrupt public officials. I commend the career prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section, as well as the dedicated agents of the FBI, for their exemplary work on this case.

Bowser was indicted in April 2016. From 2008 until January 2015, Bowser served as the chief of staff for a then-U.S. congressman and worked on behalf of and served as a decision maker for the congressmans political campaigns. In or about June 2012, Bowser, on behalf of the congressmans office, hired Brett ODonnell, a communications consultant, to assist the congressman with his messaging. Immediately upon joining the congressmans office, ODonnell assisted the congressman with his reelection campaign for the House of Representatives in 2012, at Bowsers direction. From January 2013 until his termination from the congressmans office in March 2014, ODonnell also provided substantial services to the congressmans Senate campaign at Bowsers direction, including preparing for political debates, drafting and practicing campaign speeches and advising on campaign messaging, among other services. Bowser caused the congressmans office to pay ODonnell approximately $43,750 in congressional, taxpayer funds. Such funds must be used for official, congressional purposes, and cannot be used in furtherance of a congressmans political campaign or to pay for any campaign-related expenses.

Bowser was convicted for obstructing a congressional ethics investigation into the payments to ODonnell. In March 2014, the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), a non-partisan office established in the House of Representatives to investigate allegations of misconduct, began to investigate allegations that ODonnell was being paid with congressional funds for performing campaign-related services. During the course of OCEs investigation, Bowser attempted to obstruct the investigation by, among other things, delaying and failing to produce relevant documents; influencing the testimony of witnesses; and falsely stating that ODonnell was solely hired to provide official services.

On Sept. 3, 2015, ODonnell pleaded guilty in the Middle District of Georgia to one count of making false statements in connection to this case. During ODonnells interview with OCE, in which he discussed the work that he performed for Bowser and the congressman, he made several false statements in an effort to minimize and conceal his role with the campaigns.

The FBI is investigating the case. Trial Attorneys Todd Gee and Sean F. Mulryne of the Criminal Divisions Public Integrity Section are prosecuting the case.Imperial Valley News Center

Key Outcomes of U.S. Priorities at the UN Human Rights Council's 37th Session

Washington, DC - At the 37th Human Rights Council session in Geneva, February 26-March 23, the U.S. addressed urgent human rights situations around the world. This session brought attention to human rights issues in Iran, Syria, North Korea, Burma, Cambodia and South Sudan, among others. Acting Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee delivered our national statement on February 28, underscoring the U.S. commitment to human rights, as well as our continued concerns about the Councils disproportionate focus on Israel and our commitment to reforming the Council.

The United States introduced a resolution on South Sudan that the Council adopted with broad cross-regional support. Our active engagement on all other Council actions allowed the U.S. to protect critical legal and policy equities and achieve successful outcomes. In addition, through national and joint statements, the United States addressed human rights situations in China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, the DRC, Egypt, Turkey, Burundi, Azerbaijan, the Maldives, Vietnam, and Bahrain.

Supporting Israel: The United States worked closely with Israel and other partners to combat the institutionalized bias against Israel both by opposing Agenda Item 7, the only Council agenda item focused on a single country, and by voting against every resolution introduced under Item 7. Australia joined in voting against all Item 7 resolutions, while many other partners changed votes to either vote no or abstain. This session demonstrated the largest shift in votes towards more abstentions and no votes on Israel related resolutions since the creation of the HRC.

Standing up for the Integrity of UN Human Rights Mechanisms: The United States voted against a China-led resolution on mutually beneficial cooperation, which sought to weaken international human rights frameworks by demanding that governments be respected (i.e. not have their human rights records criticized) and suggesting that governments could agree on win-win exceptions to human rights concerns. In a strong explanation of vote, the United States underscored that feel good language about mutually beneficial cooperation is intended to benefit autocratic states at the expense of individuals whose human rights and fundamental freedoms we should all respect.

Iran: The United States played a key role in garnering support for the resolution renewing the mandate of the Special Rapporteur. The United States also read, on behalf of a group of 27 countries, a joint statement addressing the recent crackdown in Iran.

North Korea: The United States supported a resolution renewing the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, condemned the ongoing systematic and widespread human rights violations and abuses, called for accountability, and voiced ongoing support for monitoring and documentation efforts by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Syria: The United States supported an urgent debate on the dire situation in eastern Ghouta, which culminated in a resolution condemning the violations of the ceasefire. The United States also co-sponsored the resolution renewing the mandate of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which condemned the violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law throughout Syria, primarily by the Assad regime, including the use of chemical weapons, abuse of detainees, and denial of humanitarian aid.

South Sudan: The United States led a resolution to renew the mandate of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan for another year to collect and preserve evidence that can be used in future judicial efforts, including the AU Hybrid Court for South Sudan. We worked closely with South Sudan, members of the African Group, and other member states to ensure the text was adopted by consensus. South Sudans support for the resolution reaffirmed its commitment to continue cooperating with the Commission and UN bodies and mechanisms.

Burma: The United co-sponsored an EU-led resolution to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and support the work of other special procedures, including the Fact Finding Mission, which are invaluable in investigating and highlighting the human rights situation in Burma. The resolution was adopted following a vote called by China.

Cambodia: The United States joined 44 other countries in supporting New Zealands joint statement highlighting the decline in civil and political rights in Cambodia in the run up to national elections scheduled for July 29. The joint statement noted that an electoral process from which the main democratic opposition party is arbitrarily excluded cannot be considered genuine or legitimate.

Other Country Situations: The United States co-sponsored priority resolutions that renewed mandates on Burma and North Korea, as well as a resolution drawing attention to the human rights situations in Georgia, including the Russian-occupied territories of Georgia. We supported cooperative resolutions on Libya and Mali. The United States also delivered a statement supporting the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights engagement in Yemen, Georgia, Afghanistan, and Haiti. Additionally, the United States joined joint statements highlighting serious concerns regarding the human rights situations in Cambodia, Maldives, and Sri Lanka.

Development Resolutions: The United States worked actively to remove trade-related language from resolutions on development, and to ensure that all resolutions that touch on development make clear that states may not use their lack of development or related concerns to excuse a failure to uphold their human rights obligations or commitments. We re-stated our long-standing opposition to recognizing a right to development.

Thematic Issues: The United States co-sponsored resolutions on freedom of religion or belief, good governance, the prevention of genocide, the rights of minorities and of persons with disabilities, and the impact of corruption on torture, among others. The United States also opposed a cynical Russia-led resolution on integrity of the judicial system, which failed to address issues of judicial independence, and inaccurately reflected aspects of international law.Imperial Valley News Center

Irvine Man Found Guilty of Defrauding Businessman out of $648,000 with Claims Investment would Develop Stem Cell Research Product

Santa Ana, California - A jury has convicted an Irvine man of federal charges for running an investment scam that defrauded a businessman who believed he was investing in products related to stem cell research.

Aiman Alexander Ataba, 52, was found guilty late Tuesday of eight counts of mail fraud and three counts of money laundering. The jurys verdicts followed a two-day trial in United States District Court.

The jury found that Ataba victimized a Riverside County man by convincing the victim to invest in his Fountain Valley business, Innovation Validation and Design Technologies. Ataba falsely claimed that the investments would be used to manufacture and sell a device that would be used in hospitals for stem cell research.

The victim was given stock warrants that would purportedly enable him to purchase stock in Ataba's company at a discount. Ataba falsely claimed that his company was on the verge of being acquired. Based on the false claims, the victim invested $648,000 in Atabas company over a 4-year period.

Immediately after receiving the victims money, however, [Ataba] immediately went about spending it on his own personal expenses, according to a case summary filed by prosecutors. The money was not invested in any company for the development of a device involving stem cell research. Instead, defendant used it to pay for his rent, various living expenses, dining out, gambling, etc. The victim never received any dividends or other form of return or profit on the investment.

Ataba diverted funds from his business account to his personal account and withdrew approximately $350,000 in cash withdrawals. Many of the withdrawals were made at casinos in Las Vegas and on Indian reservations. Some of the victims money was spent to purchase a new Toyota vehicle, which was seized in 2016 by the FBI.

Ataba is scheduled to be sentenced by United States District Judge David O. Carter on July 9, at which time Ataba will face a statutory maximum penalty of 220 years in federal prison.

The investigation into Ataba was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The case was tried by Assistant United States Attorneys Robert J. Keenan and Gina J. Kong of the Santa Ana Branch Office.Imperial Valley News Center

FBI Provides Update on Travis Air Force Base Security Incident

Sacramento, California - During a press conference at the Sacramento Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Friday, the FBI provided an update regarding a March 21, 2018 attempted security breach at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California.

A vehicle entered the base without authorization and a fire occurred in the vehicle. The driver died at the scene. The investigation is in the early stages.

Travis Air Force Base first responders and local emergency officials responded to the incident, which took place at the main gate entrance. Travis Air Force Bases Explosives Ordinance Disposal Team, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation also responded to the scene. The FBI is currently leading the joint investigation to determine the circumstances that led to the incident.

We know that the community is concerned but we can assure everyone that we are unaware of any specific threat to Travis Air Force Base and the Fairfield community, said FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sean Ragan. We continue to seek the answer to the question of why this man acted in the manner he did. We appreciate the publics concern and patience as we continue to follow all investigative leads in order to provide a factual basis for the events that occurred.

The driver of the vehicle was Hafiz Kazi, 51, of Sausalito.

Within the vehicle, investigators found five propane tanks, a gym bag with personal effects, three phones, three plastic one-gallon gas cans, and several lighters.

Investigators have been reviewing all available information about Hafiz Kazi. If someone has information about Hafiz Kazi, they are encouraged to provide a tip online at https://tips.fbi.gov or call the FBI Sacramento Field Office at 916-746-7000.Man Wearing Hoodies, Ball Caps Wanted for Four Northern California Bank Robberies

Sacramento, California - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seeks assistance from the public to identify an individual suspected of committing four bank robberies in Northern California:

November 28, 2017, at approximately 5:20 p.m. Wells Fargo Bank located at 2121 Colwell Boulevard in Davis

Thursday, March 8, 2018, at approximately 5:33 p.m. First U.S. Community Credit Union located at 424 Grass Valley Highway in Auburn

Friday, March 16, 2018, at approximately 6:20 p.m. U.S. Bank located at 4805 Granite Drive in Rocklin

Monday, March 19, 2018, at approximately 6:20 p.m. U.S. Bank located at 1080 Pleasant Grove Boulevard in Roseville

The bank robbery suspect was also seen at two banks prior to robberies that occurred on the same day. He was seen at Wells Fargo located at 8650 Sierra College Boulevard. Roseville at approximately 5:50 p.m. on Friday, March 16, 2018. He was also seen at Chase Bank located at 1800 Douglas Boulevard in Roseville at approximately 5:45 p.m. on Monday, March 19, 2018.

The robbery subject is described as a white adult male who is believed to be 20-30 years old. He stands approximately six feet tall with a large build. He has frequently worn hoodies and ball caps during the robberies. Photos of this suspect are available on the FBIs Wanted Bank Robber website: https://bankrobbers.fbi.gov/robbers-container/2018-01-23.3134005022 .

During the commission of the robberies, the subject made a demand for money upon reaching a teller. After receiving an undisclosed amount of money, the subject left each of the locations on foot without incident.

In addition to the FBI, the bank robberies are being investigated by the Auburn Police Department, Davis Police Department, Rocklin Police Department, and Roseville Police Department.

FBI Unknown Bank Robber Website https://bankrobbers.fbi.gov/

FBI Unknown Bank Robber App See Google Play Store or iTunes

Submit a Tip to the FBI Online https://tips.fbi.gov/Susanville Man Indicted for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm

Sacramento, California - A federal grand jury returned an indictment Thursday against David Lopez, 33, of Susanville, charging him with unlawful possession of a firearm, U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott announced.

According to court documents, on March 17, 2018, Lopez was found in possession of a Glock 26 handgun, along with a loaded extended magazine. Lopez has previously been convicted of a felony and is not permitted under federal law to possess firearms.

This case is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Susanville Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Owen Roth is prosecuting the case.

If convicted, Lopez faces a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Any sentence, however, would be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables. The charges are only allegations; the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

This case is brought as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), an initiative that brings together federal, state and local law enforcement to combat gun and gang crime. At the core of PSN is increased federal prosecution to incapacitate chronic violent offenders as well as to communicate a credible deterrent threat to potential gun offenders.Interim Calexico Police Chief Reggie Gomez Relieved of Duties

Calexico, California - Effective today, March 23, 2018, Interim Police Chief Reggie Gomez was relieved of his duties at the Calexico Police Department. Mr. Gomez was hired by the City of Calexico on November 30, 2015. Upon his hire, Mr. Gomez spearheaded the transition of the department and contributed to the operational improvements that are essential in administering public safety.

The City of Calexico acknowledges Mr. Gomez for working diligently to secure public safety grant awards that have enabled city police officers to be properly equipped to conduct their duties, in addition to promoting public safety awareness events that engaged the work of police officers with community members and local businesses. Lastly, the City of Calexico commends Mr. Gomez for his dedication and support to the citizens of Calexico.

For immediate assistance please contact City Administration at (760) 768-2110.On the Occasion of Greek National Day

Washington, DC - John J. Sullivan Deputy Secretary of State: "On behalf of the Government of the United States of America, I congratulate the people of Greece on the 197th anniversary of your independence.

"The United States and Greece share a commitment to freedom and liberty rooted in democratic values. We work together to promote regional stability and security, trade and investment, and the diversification of energy resources.

"Our two nations maintain strong cultural and economic ties: Over the course of 2018, we will celebrate the strength of our bilateral relationship as the United States will be the Honored Country at the Thessaloniki International Fair, showcasing American technology, enterprise, and innovation. This year also marks the 70th Anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Greece, which, as the U.S. governments flagship educational exchange program, has facilitated academic and cultural linkages between our two countries for over 5,500 participants.

"I wish all Greeks a joyous Independence Day celebration and look forward to the continuing expansion of the U.S.-Greece friendship."Presidential Transition Reaffirms Strength of Democracy in Peru

Washington, DC - The United States looks forward to working with President Martin Vizcarra following the constitutional transfer of power. We will continue advancing our bilateral relationship based on our shared values of democracy, security, mutually beneficial trade, and respect for human rights.

The United States is pleased to work with Peru at the April Summit of the Americas in Lima, where we will reaffirm our hemispheres collective commitment to democracy.

As a hemisphere, we believe in representative democracy, including the separation of powers, the exercise of power in accordance with the rule of law, and accountability in governance. Perus adherence to its constitution during this transition reflects its strength as a resilient democracy consistent with the principles articulated in the Inter-American Democratic Charter.The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) and the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) issued an alert this week to warn residents of an increase in opioid overdose activity throughout the state. The alert comes on the heels of the state recording 48 reports of opioid overdoses from hospital emergency departments from September 12-18. Have you or your family been personally affected by the opioid epidemic in Rhode Island? Let us know in this week's poll question below.

You voted:Veteran Bollywood actress Zeenat Aman has said in her complaint against a Mumbai-based Businessman that he prepared a forged 'nikaahnama' (certificate of marriage as per Islamic laws) document in her name by which he used to threaten and rape her. (IANS photo)Composer Pyarelal, who has scored Shirdiwale Sai Baba, the hit song from Amar Akbar Anthony, is an ardent admirer of television show Mere Sai and has composed a song for it. (photo provided)We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to formPhoto of Long Island restaurateur Harendra Singh (right) and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, entered as evidence in the corruption trial of Edward Mangano, a former Nassau County executive. (U.S. Department of Justice photo)Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) listens during a news briefing March 20 at the Capitol in Washington, DC. More than 7,000 young undocumented Indian Americans currently receive relief from deportation and the ability to get work permits under the Deferred Action for Childhood program. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)By Juan Cole

March 23, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - John Bolton helped lie our country into an illegal war of aggression that killed several hundred thousand Iraqis, wounded over a million, and displaced 4 million from their homes, helped deliver Baghdad into the hands of Iran, and helped create ISIL, which blew up Paris. In a just world, Bolton would be on trial at the Hague for war crimes. Instead, he has been promoted into a position to do to Iran what he did to Iraq.

He is also in the back pocket of the MEK Iranian terrorist organization, which despite its violent and smelly past has proved so useful to those plotting the apocalyptic destruction of Iran that the Washington elite decided to take it off the list of terrorist organizations in 2012.

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The acceptable political spectrum inside the Beltway in Washington DC is a marvel to behold. Bernie Sanders, a long-serving senator and public servant won 13.2 million popular votes to 16.8 million votes for Hillary Clinton (i.e. he was backed by 43% of one of the two major parties in the country). But Sanders was virtually blacked out from corporate television coverage during his impressive presidential bid, while Jeff Zucker turned CNN over to Trump every night at 7:30 pm throughout the summer and fall of 2016 and just let him talk, or whatever he does, for an hour without even a semblance of journalistic analysis. Supposedly left-leaning MSNBC did the same thing.

Americas corporations love the fascist side of the spectrum, which is obvious from the way they promoted Trump and Trumpism. Zucker also hired Cory Lewandowski, who was at the time contractually obligated to avoid criticizing Trump, as a CNN commentator. Fascism after all favors big corporations and vilifies and punishes workers and the poor. Under Mussolini, the Italian poor were plunged into much deeper poverty.

Television news also loves the maniacal side of the spectrum. You seldom see normal people as commentators on cable news, and much of the commentary is polarized and superficial and often simply incorrect on the facts of the matter. Sometimes it is even just a criminal conspiracy. During the Iraq War, the NYT revealed that the Pentagon successfully pressed on CNN a gaggle of former generals, many of them actively making money off of the Iraq War through contracting while they were promoting it on television. They presented an Alice in Wonderland view of the brutal US occupation of that country as a shining success. Tom Fenton, a career television journalist, once wrote a book suggesting that television news is so bad that it is actually a standing risk for US security, since an uninformed or misinformed public cannot play the democratic role of watchdog and is not being alerted to genuine threats. Maybe the maniacs draw eyeballs and increase advertising dollars. Maybe Wall Street doesnt see people as maniacs as long as they advocate giving billionaires more money.

The fascination with the far right wing and with the maniacal dovetails in the person of Bolton, now Trumps National Security Adviser. Jesus said that if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch. The ditch in this case could well be a ruinous war with Iran.

In an sane society, people like Bolton wouldnt be allowed on television, much less put in charge of American security.

Bolton has assiduously tried to do the same thing he did to Iraq to Iran. Big corporations like wars. Wars mean you have to manufacture more shiny children-murdering weapons and bombs, the ultimate in planned obsolescence. No war, and the factories fall silent and the money-counting stops. People called hawks in Washington, a euphemism for murderous maniacs, often get supported one way or another by the arms industry. Sometimes it is direct and their bank accounts should be examined.

Iran has never had a nuclear weapons program, and as long as the nuclear deal holds, it has no opportunity to develop them. It has no heavy water reactor. It has a limited number of centrifuges. It destroyed its stockpile of uranium enriched to 19.5% for its medical reactor. It is being actively inspected. No country under active UN arms inspections has ever developed a bomb.

Bolton wants to bomb Iran so badly that he does not care about these facts. He wanted to bomb Iran himself if he could, sort of like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. If not he wanted to have the Israelis do it.

He has a list. Hed like to bomb nuclear-armed North Korea, too.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that keeps that clock showing how many minutes the world is away from a nuclear midnight can put it away. With Boltons appointment, it is past midnight.

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. https://www.juancole.comIs that anti-Semitism or political discourse? asked U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman with feigned innocence, in response to what Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had said about him, as if he were a helpless pogrom victim at the beginning of the last century in Eastern Europe rather than an ambassador of the worlds strongest superpower, which encourages Israel to ride roughshod over the Palestinians.

Abbas attacked Friedman on Monday for saying Jewish settlers were building on their lands in the West Bank. Son of a dog. Building on their land? Your are a settler and your family are settlers, Abbas said.

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Anti-Semitism? What sanctimoniousness on Friedmans part. What cheap manipulation. Poor Abbas, poor Palestinians. They cannot say what is self-evident. Nobody can. Even Jews must be wary of telling the truth. Better to go cool off in Yad Vashems air conditioned halls to preserve ones restraint. Its inconceivable that Friedman, the Jew who owns property in Talbieh, who identifies in public with the ultra-nationalist messianic Israeli right, was appointed American ambassador.

The Israelis, through U.S. President Trump, are sticking a Jewish finger consisting of Friedman, Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kusher into the Palestinians faces, in front of the whole world. In the name of the Jewish people, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blew up negotiations with the Palestinians over their refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state while shamelessly insisting that they recognize three Jewish political hawks as honest, unbiased political brokers. Suddenly the Palestinians are required to make the healthy distinction between Israelis and Jews, a distinction that Netanyahu dedicated his political life to smashing. When it suits him, citizenship is everything.

The Palestinians are required to take part in the agreed-upon lie that Friedman, Greenblatt and Kushner are Americans for all intents and purposes; that they could just as well have been Hispanic; that their Jewishness is a private, personal, marginal, apolitical matter. So what if the Israel Hayom daily described Friedman in this way: He may be American (and a New Yorker) to the core, but his ties to Israel and Zionism and his command of Hebrew turn him into a homeboy here. So what if, as a private citizen, he helped raise funds for an organization associated with the West Bank settlement of Beit El? So what if he denies the occupation and claims that the settlers are permitted to build on their land, lambasts the left in rhetoric of the Israeli right, sees J Street supporters as worse than kapos and enjoys bashing Haaretz and Gideon Levy? Does this infringe on his statesmanlike diplomacy?

Its wrong to stick stereotypes on African-Americans or Hispanics and its wrong to do so to American Jews as well I wasnt chosen because Im a Jew, but because I have the presidents confidence, Friedman told Israel Hayom. Yeah, sure. So if hes American, how come hes talking like one of the internet trolls on Netanyahus Facebook page?

Netanyahus Israel is walking a thin line, swapping the Jewish hat and the Israeli hat according to need. When its convenient, Netanyahu is the leader of the Jewish world; and when Jews wearing American hats represent Israels presumed interests with unlimited brazenness, nobody is allowed to say a word, because thats anti-Semitism.

Abbas is not an anti-Semite. He has criticism about Israels rejectionism on the one hand and Americas biased policy on the other. He is critical of the series of troubling appointments of officials tasked with solving the conflict; of the decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem, which ignores the Palestinians demand to recognize East Jerusalem as their capital; and of the decision to stop funding UNRWA, the UN agency which aids Palestinian refugees, without offering alternatives.

But if Israel continues to blur the line between the state and independent Jewish existence in the Diaspora, it should not be surprised if Abbas, like others, turn into anti-Semites. Precisely because of the healthy, important affiliation between the worlds Jews and Israel, its important that this deliberate, transparent blurring of that line is stymied.Watch

March 23, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - The $1.3 trillion omnibus offers the most significant increase in defense funding in the past 15 years, including a pay hike for personnel.

The Department of Defense is set to gain $61 billion more than last year's enacted funding for a top line of $700 billion.

The omnibus allocates $144.3 billion for military equipment procurement, including big-ticket items such as:

$23.8 billion for 14 Navy ships

$10.2 billion for 90 F-35 fighter jets

$1.8 billion for 24 F/A-18 fighter jets

$9.5 billion for the Missile Defense Agency

The defense-friendly bill also provides $238 billion for operations and maintenance, $89.2 billion for research and development, and $137.7 billion for personnel pay  a 2.4 percent increase from fiscal year 2017.

President Trump signed a memorandum that imposes up to $60 billion in new tariffs on China. At a White House signing ceremony, he cited unfair trade practices with the nation, but said there are ongoing negotiations with China that involve his request to reduce the U.S. trade deficit by $100 billion.March 23, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - John Bolton, President Donald Trumps pick to be his new national security adviser, has a long association with a group infamous for its role in publishing fake news and spreading hate about Muslims.

Bolton wears many hats. He serves as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributor to Fox News, and controls a Super PAC that used money from the billionaire Mercer family to help elect congressional Republicans.

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But one role that has received relatively little scrutiny is his work as chair of the Gatestone Institute, a nonprofit that focuses largely on publishing original commentary and news related to the supposed threat that Islam poses to Western society. He has served in that role since 2013. (Bolton did not respond to an email seeking comment.)

A steady drum beat of vitriol is visible on the Gatestone website on almost any given day.

Just this week, the Gatestone Institute published stories claiming that the mostly Muslim male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East in Germany are fueling a migrant rape crisis and that Muslim mass-rape gangs are transforming the United Kingdom into an Islamist Colony.

The website routinely portrays Muslim migrants and refugees as an existential threat to Europe and the United States, claiming that immigrants bring highly infectious diseases, genital mutilation practices, and terror to any nation that accepts them. The site spent years sharply criticizing the Obama administration for having a traditional Muslim bias against Christians.

The lurid headlines, which are translated into multiple languages and distributed widely through Gatestones social media page and its partners in conservative media, are rarely supported by the evidence.

Take the story this week about the migrant rape crisis in Germany. Penned by Gatestone senior fellow Soeren Kern, the piece lists recent rapes and sexual assaults in Berlin and other cities, attributing all the crimes to Muslim immigrants even though the story simultaneously concedes elsewhere that the attackers identities have not been revealed by German police.

Similar farfetched tales about the threat posed by Muslim migrants in Europe has been debunked. Last year, Gatestone claimed that officials in Germany were seizing homes to be provided to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The racially tinged article wasnt remotely true. German media noted that under Hamburgs strict housing laws, a single house in the city was placed into temporary trusteeship after it remained vacant. Refugees did not play a role in the districts decision, noted Correctiv, a local watchdog group.

The fact-checking website Snopes has found multiple false viral stories originating with Gatestone. For instance, the site claimed falsely that in London  called Londonistan in the piece  423 mosques were built on the sad ruins of English Christianity, as 500 churches closed. But the story cherry-picked the data to ignore hundreds of newly opened churches.

Many of the fake stories have percolated into mainstream U.S. politics. Gatestone was largely responsible for the false claim that there are no-go zones through Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, and other European states where Muslim immigrants have set up a parallel society in which local police no longer enforce the law.

The idea infiltrated the 2016 Republican primary, as Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump repeated the uninformed no-go zone claim (to the later great embarrassment of U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra). While many conservative outlets eventually parroted the myth, Gatestone had pushed the idea since 2012 and has published dozens of pieces on the claim since.

As The Intercept previously reported, Gatestone is largely funded by Nina Rosenwald, the heir to the Sears, Rosebuck & Company department store fortune. Though the Rosenwald family was once a champion of Jewish refugees during World War II, Rosenwald has financed a number of efforts to vilify Muslims attempting to escape bloodshed in Africa and the Middle East.

Bolton has made no effort to conceal his close ties to the forces of Islamophobia. As reporter Eli Clifton noted, Bolton wrote the foreward to a book authored by Robert Spencer and Pamella Geller, two American activists that have led the charge in protesting mosques and spreading conspiracy theories about the threat posed by Islam.

The hate has in someways been a lucrative career path. Bolton, for his efforts, has collected at least $310,000 from the Gatestone Institute in payments, according to publicly available tax disclosures.

The Gatestone website has not only influenced U.S. politics, but also attempted to influence recent European elections in France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany. The site has promoted far-right, anti-Muslim populists running for office across the continent. In Germany, politicians from Alternative for Germany, or AfD, the rabidly anti-immigrant far-right party, regularly shared Gatestone articles on Facebook and Twitter during the election last year. Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-Muslim firebrand, is a guest author on the site.

And now its chair will be the national security adviser to the president of the United States.March 23, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Evidence submitted by the British government in court today proves, beyond any doubt, that Boris Johnson has been point blank lying about the degree of certainty Porton Down scientists have about the Skripals being poisoned with a Russian novichok agent.

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Yesterday in an interview with Deutsche Welle Boris Johnson claimed directly Porton Down had told him they positively identified the nerve agent as Russian:

You argue that the source of this nerve agent, Novichok, is Russia. How did you manage to find it out so quickly? Does Britain possess samples of it? Let me be clear with you  When I look at the evidence, I mean the people from Porton Down, the laboratory  So they have the samples  They do. And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, Are you sure? And he said theres no doubt.

I knew and had published from my own whistleblowers that this is a lie. Until now I could not prove it. But today I can absolutely prove it, due to the judgement at the High Court case which gave permission for new blood samples to be taken from the Skripals for use by the OPCW. Justice Williams included in his judgement a summary of the evidence which tells us, directly for the first time, what Porton Down have actually said:

The Evidence

16. The evidence in support of the application is contained within the applications themselves (in particular the Forms COP 3) and the witness statements.

17. I consider the following to be the relevant parts of the evidence. I shall identify the witnesses only by their role and shall summarise the essential elements of their evidence.

i) CC: Porton Down Chemical and Biological Analyst Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the findings indicated exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent OR CLOSELY RELATED AGENT.

The emphasis is mine. This sworn Court evidence direct from Porton Down is utterly incompatible with what Boris Johnson has been saying. The truth is that Porton Down have not even positively identified this as a Novichok, as opposed to a closely related agent. Even if it were a Novichok that would not prove manufacture in Russia, and a closely related agent could be manufactured by literally scores of state and non-state actors.

This constitutes irrefutable evidence that the government have been straight out lying  to Parliament, to the EU, to NATO, to the United Nations, and above all to the people  about their degree of certainty of the origin of the attack. It might well be an attack originating in Russia, but there are indeed other possibilities and investigation is needed. As the government has sought to whip up jingoistic hysteria in advance of forthcoming local elections, the scale of the lie has daily increased.

On a sombre note, I am very much afraid the High Court evidence seems to indicate there is very little chance the Skripals will ever recover; one of the reasons the judge gave for his decision is that samples taken now will be better for analysis than samples taken post mortem.

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March 23, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Donald Trump sparked outrage this week in the US over his congratulatory phone call to Russian leader Vladimir Putin on his re-election. But his obscene indulgence of a Saudi despot in the White House hardly ruffled any concern.

How disconnected from reality can you get?

There was furious reaction across US media to news that Trump phoned Russias President Putin to congratulate him on his landslide election victory last weekend. Republicans and Democrats were up in arms about what is just basic protocol of one leader calling another to express customary election compliments.

After all, former president Barack Obama did the same when Putin won the previous 2012 presidential election.

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This time, however, US-Russian relations have become toxic after a raft of unproven allegations against Moscow, including alleged meddling in the American presidential vote in November 2016 in which Trump was elected, and the latest row over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in England.

All these anti-Russian claims are unsubstantiated, if not outlandish, but they are repeated often enough to cast a permanent cloud over international relations. Republican Senator John McCain was widely quoted by way of expressing the bipartisan outrage over Trumps phone call. An American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators, he said.

American critics of Russias Putin can quibble all they like about the merits of his re-election. They contend the vote was a foregone conclusion, rigged in his favor. But such sniping seems churlish against the overwhelming fact that Putin was supported by a huge majority of voters  nearly 77 percent.

In any case, another way of looking at this outpouring of American bile is to enquire just how credible are the detractors?

Their consternation with regard to Putin and Trumps customary phone call seems way out of proportion, and strangely at odds with their relative silence over the visit in the same week to the White House by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Bin Salman is the de facto leader of the desert kingdom in place of his ailing father, King Salman. The 32-year-old crown prince consolidated his autocratic power last year in a purge against other members of the House of Saud, in which hundreds of rivals where rounded up, detained, reportedly tortured, and shaken down for billions of dollars.

MBS was feted by Trump in the White House mainly because of the giant weapons purchases he has made since the American president visited the oil kingdom last year  which was Trumps first official overseas visit.

In a bizarre photo-op, Trump held up gaudy cardboard posters proclaiming various multi-million-dollar arms sales to the Saudi regime. One such deal was depicted as being worth $525 million, to which the president quipped to his Saudi guest, Thats peanuts to you.

It was a grubby spectacle of just how sordid the decades-old relationship is between the US and its Arab client regime. All in the seeming salubrious setting of the Oval Office.

If the outrage over Trumps perfunctory call to Putin had any principle over the matter of elections and autocratic rule, then the critics in Washington would have more than ample cause to fulminate against the Saudi Crown Prince being greeted in the White House. But there was barely any protest.

Admittedly, there was an attempt this week by some senators to pass a resolution limiting American military support for the Saudi war in Yemen. In the end though, the resolution was rejected by a majority of lawmakers.

However, aside from that minor show of dissent, in the scale of things the disconnect with reality in Washington and the US corporate media shows a grotesque distortion of moral priorities.

MBS was visiting Washington in the same week, marking three relentless years of US-backed Saudi slaughter in Yemen. Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who also holds the position of defense minister, is the architect of the Saudi war in Yemen.

The United Nations has called the conflict in the Arab regions poorest country the worst humanitarian crisis in decades.

Some eight million people  a third of the population  are facing starvation, largely because the Saudi-led war has blockaded the country from receiving food imports, medicines, and other humanitarian aid.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in airstrikes by Saudi warplanes that are supplied and refueled by the Americans, British and French. The Americans also share intelligence to direct the Saudi bombing campaign, which even pro-Western human rights groups have reported as being indiscriminate in striking civilian centers. In other words, the US and its NATO allies are fully complicit in this ongoing barbarity.

Saudi claims of fighting against Houthi rebels because the latter are orchestrated by Iran to destabilize the region are not credible. The war is all about trying to re-install a puppet leader, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who was kicked out by rebel fighters in January 2015. The Saudis launched their war with Washingtons approval in March 2015, partly out of spite over the international nuclear accord that was being negotiated at the time. The Iran nuclear deal was finalized in July 2015. Trump wants to axe it to further placate his Saudi clients.

What is going on in Yemen is nothing short of a bloodbath. Arguably, it is a genocide, given the collective punishment imposed on the entire nation by the Saudi military coalition supported by Washington.

Trumps hosting of the Saudi crown prince this week in the White House is an obscenity. Celebrating the sale of warplanes, tanks, missiles and other munitions was a macabre drooling over the slaughter of thousands of innocents.

Of course, Trump participated in the charade that the war in Yemen is a just cause to counter Iranian malign influence. Iran denies any involvement, as do the Yemeni rebels. There is no evidence to support the US-Saudi claim. Besides, how could Iran supply weapons to a country that is blockaded by land, air and sea?

What is truly disturbing is how little concern the US-enabled carnage in Yemen provokes in official Washington circles and among the corporate media. Millions of Yemeni children are dying from bombardments, hunger, and diseases. The horror is real and unalloyed, unlike the situation in Syria, where the Western media have distorted Syrian Army and Russian liberation of towns besieged by NATO-backed terrorists.

For Yemen, the official silence in Washington is astounding. The very personification of the Yemeni horror  a blood-soaked Saudi despot  is welcomed and cheered, with barely a murmur of protest in Washington or the mainstream news media.

Such people have no moral compass or integrity when all they seem concerned about is their president making a phone call to an elected Russian leader.

Thus, anything they have to say regarding Putin, Russia, its elections and foreign policy is best ignored. People with such a glaring disconnect from reality are impossible to reason with. They are beneath contempt.March 23, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Too often, when you raise the issue of guns in this country, it sparks highly divisive rhetoric with both sides drawing lines in the sand and pointing their arrows at each other. Caught in the middle, we see the faces and hear the voices of children whove witnessed the slaughter of their friends and teachers and who are crying out for action. The question is, will we hear them? Will we care enough to do something about it?

Horrific tragedies like the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School just over one month ago is something that touches every one of us, regardless of political party or ideology. Sadly, it is something that could happen to any community, family, or school. This is why its so important that the humanity and aloha (respect and care) that unites us all must come to the forefront of our dialogue as we try to prevent these tragedies from ever occurring again.

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On February 14th, 17 lives were lost in Parkland when a former classmate brought an AR-15 to school and opened fire on the students and teachers. He used a weapon that he had purchased legally - but he shouldnt have been able to.

There have been more shootings since that day, and there will be more in the coming weeks and years if we dont come together and find solutions. Survivors and allies across the country have gathered in a show of solidarity, calling for change  to do whatever possible to prevent more of these horrific tragedies from occurring and taking innocent lives. They have organized country-wide protests and walk-outs, and on March 24th thousands will march on Washington and at marches across the country. We are proud to stand with these courageous young people today and every day.

But Congress has yet to act.

The majority of people across this country believe that we need to pass common sense gun safety legislation. A Gallup poll found that two thirds (67%) of Americans feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict; A Quinnipiac University poll found that over six in ten Americans (63%) support stricter gun laws in the United States; And a CNN poll found that seven-in-ten Americans (69%) favor stricter gun control laws.

There are a number of legislative actions that have been proposed but have yet to see the light of day on the House floor. Passing this legislation would be a step in the right direction to protecting our kids and innocent people across this country:

Restrict Access to Assault Weapons

Assault weapons have been, by far, the most used weapon in mass shootings in recent history. They are used for a number of reasons: they are easy to acquire, and they are designed to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time. The shooter who killed 59 people in Las Vegas on October 1st last year used a semi-automatic gun modified with a bump stock, turning it into an automatic rifle. The 19-year-old shooter who killed 17 people at his former school on February 14th of this year used an AR-15, a semi-automatic weapon.

The fact assault weapons are so frequently used to kill enormous numbers of people in this country, and that bump stocks are not illegal, are issues that we must address. A Quinnipiac University poll found that six in ten Americans (61%) support a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons, and an NPR-Ipsos poll found that 82% support banning bump stocks.

Restrict Access to High Capacity Ammunition Magazines

High-capacity ammunition magazines are frequently used by mass shooters in the United States. The Giffords Law Center explains that shooters with such magazines can fire at large numbers of people without taking the time to reload, those in the line of fire do not have a chance to escape, law enforcement does not have the chance to intervene, and the number of lives shattered by senseless acts of gun violence increases dramatically.

"Despite the publics lack of trust in Congress, the American public has not given up hope that change can happen."

A majority of Americans believe that access to these high-capacity ammunition magazines should be banned. A CNN poll found that over six-in-ten (63%) Americans favor a ban on the sale and possession of equipment known as high-capacity or extended ammunition magazines. A Quinnipiac University poll similarly found that over six in ten (63%) of Americans support a nationwide ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Increase Legal Age to Buy A Gun

In America, licensed firearm dealers are allowed to sell a gun to an 18-year old, before a bartender is legally allowed to sell that person an alcoholic drink or before they are able to rent a car. To make matters worse, unlicensed persons are legally allowed to sell, deliver, or otherwise transfer a long gun (rifles and shotguns) to a person of any age. This irony is not lost on Americans, causing a vast majority of respondents to believe that the legal age to buy a gun should be increased to 21. A CNN poll found that seven-in-ten (71%) Americans favor preventing people under the age of 21 from buying any type of gun, while a Quinnipiac University poll found that almost 8-in-10 (78%) of Americans support requiring individuals to be 21 years of age or older in order to purchase a gun.

Universal Background Checks

Currently, there is a gaping loophole in federal firearm laws regarding background checks. While federal laws require licensed gun dealers to perform background checks, federal law does not require unlicensed sellers (like private sellers, and those who sell online and at gun shows) to run background checks. According to the Giffords Law Center, A 2017 study estimated that 42% of US gun owners acquired their most recent firearm without a background check. This allows people who might otherwise have been prevented from accessing a gun, to easily acquire one.

In addition, The Washington Post reported in 2017 that The FBI's background-check system is missing millions of records of criminal convictions, mental illness diagnoses and other flags that would keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands. In addition to requiring universal background checks, we must make sure that the database is complete and those who should be flagged, are. For example, Ive introduced bipartisan legislation to close a loophole that has allowed those whove been convicted of domestic violence charges to purchase firearms.

A Monmouth University poll found that over eight-in-ten (83%) Americans support requiring comprehensive background checks for all gun purchasers. A Quinnipiac University poll found that almost all Americans (97%) support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.

While a majority of Americans want the government to implement many of these common-sense gun safety measures, they dont have much hope that Congress will take action. Three quarters of Americans (75%) think that Congress needs to do more to reduce gun violence, while only 17% think Congress is doing enough. This disapproval is not relegated to one party. A majority of Americans disapprove of how both Republicans (70%) and Democrats (70%) are handling the issue of gun violence. Mass shootings including those at Sandy Hook, the Pulse nightclub, and the Las Vegas concert, each a devastating demonstration of inhumanity of gun violence, resulted in no significant legislation.

"This is not and should not be a partisan or divisive issue."

The American peoples lack of faith in the ability of Congress to pass common-sense gun control measures is, unfortunately, founded in reality. Instead of discussing and passing many of these common-sense and favored ways to mitigate gun violence in America, some politicians are talking about arming teachers and bringing more guns into schools. This defies reason. On March 13th of this year, a teacher accidentally fired a gun in a classroom and injured a student, demonstrating the increased possibility of accidents throughout the country if this were made universal. For this and other reasons, almost six in ten (58%) Americans oppose allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns on school grounds.

Despite the publics lack of trust in Congress, the American public has not given up hope that change can happen. 77% of Americans think that the students from Parkland, Florida, who are speaking out about the shooting at their high school and the issue of gun violence, will have an impact on gun safety reform in this country.

Here is the bottom line: Congress needs to act now, and pass legislation to help improve our gun safety laws. And law enforcement must enforce those laws. The shooter in Parkland was flagged by numerous people who had concerns about what was clearly a serious mental illness, and even made reports to the FBI. The FBI failed to act, and no one has been held accountable. Local law enforcement failed to act quickly to take out the shooter when responding to the scene. Passing these laws is imperative, but such action is useless unless these laws are implemented and enforced.

This is not and should not be a partisan or divisive issue. People on all sides of this debate felt pain and sadness as our nation mourned the loss of those 17 lives in Parkland. The only way we can really solve the problems is by recognizing that we are all Americans, and we all want safe communities--a place where we can raise our families, where our children arent faced with the fear of a shooting when they go to school every day. We must stop demonizing each other, and instead respect each others humanity, and work together to find common ground. It is up to each and every one of us to choose whether we will act in love and light or darkness and hate. By focusing on the love and care that we have for one another, we can bring about real change.

Tulsi Gabbard is the U.S. Representative for Hawaiis 2nd Congressional District and is a Founding Fellow of The Sanders Institute.Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, friends,

Good afternoon.

We are glad to see you at the Foreign Ministry on this cold wintry day that nevertheless carries a promise of spring.

We are grateful to you for responding so quickly to our invitation, which we issued only yesterday.

The situation is indeed unusual. There is an urgent need for a non-politicised and highly professional discussion of the Skripals poisoning case. We have distributed a position paper. We ask you to bring it to the notice of your governments.

The language of this position paper, just as any other such paper, is dry legalese with technical details.

It would be wrong to invite you here just to say this. I propose that we hold an open discussion in this closed diplomatic group.

Let us look at hard facts, beginning with the humanitarian aspects of the case at hand.

On March 4, 2018, two people, one of them Russian citizen Yulia Skripal, were attacked in Salisbury, a flourishing city in the south of England.

Various versions of the circumstances of this tragedy have been voiced in the UK. They highlight the use of chemical agents, which the British call Novichok, for some reason. All of these versions do not stand up to any criticism.

In this situation, UK officials have laid the blame on Russia hastily, hysterically and without presenting any evidence, and demanded explanations from us.

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I would like to repeat that it was a Russian citizen who has been attacked in the UK. Logic suggests two possible variants. Either the British authorities are unable to ensure protection against such terrorist attacks on their territory, or they were directly or indirectly involved in the preparation of this attack on a Russian citizen. There is no other alternative.

We are surprised, to put it mildly, that the British authorities had denied even consular access to the Russian citizen who has been attacked contrary to the elementary norms of civilised interstate relations. They are prevaricating, but at the same time they distribute video footage from the hospital where the Skripals are allegedly being treated. But this only raises more questions.

The British have refused to share the information obtained by their investigators and have not replied to the Russian requests regarding Yulia Skripal. We have no reliable information about what happened to this Russian citizen over the past two weeks and why this happened to her. This is hard to comprehend: these events are unfolding in the 21st century in a country that is considered civilised.

Naturally, demanding any explanations from Russia in this situation is simply absurd. Russia does not owe anything to anyone in this context, and it cannot be held accountable for the activities or inactivity of the British authorities in their national territory.

We see that the British authorities are becoming increasingly nervous, which is logical. The clock is ticking. They have driven themselves into a corner. Ultimately, they will have to answer a growing number of questions, but they have no answers.

The inference that they have made a mess of things but Russia is responsible anyway and must be held accountable is the wrong kind of logic. This logic may be good for a British or US movie, but it does not work in real life, especially in relations with Russia.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the attack on the Skripals in Salisbury is most likely a clumsy staged provocation. We must expose those who have orchestrated this attack and the reasons behind it.

One thing is clear: Russia has absolutely nothing to do with this if only because such an audacious undertaking would be unacceptable and damaging for Russia in every respect.

But the United Kingdom has a completely different record. Suffice it to recall how former Prime Minister Tony Blair openly admitted not so long ago that the British leadership and intelligence services lied to themselves and to the British nation while plunging it into the bloody war in Iraq. Well, he did make this confession now, but hundreds of thousands of absolutely innocent Iraqi citizens had been killed as a result of that war, and no one has been brought to account for this.

One can only speculate as to who is trying to plunge the United Kingdom into another dirty and a priori unwinnable campaign against Russia, and for what purpose. Is this some kind of a hypnotic trance under the influence of Michael Bassets Strike Back television series, aired in the United Kingdom several months ago and featuring the Novichok chemical agent?

Now let us look at the more serious and more formal aspect of this affair.

According to our British colleagues, this incident involved the use of chemical warfare agents.

This prompts the question whether these British officials have any idea of chemical warfare agents. Any self-respecting expert will tell you that the use of real chemical warfare agents inevitably causes numerous casualties in the immediate vicinity. However, judging by statements from London, the situation in Salisbury is absolutely different.

The subject of the investigation has not been accurately determined so far, and all the facts are being deliberately concealed. Moreover, real evidence could have disappeared during this time period, as has repeatedly been the case in the United Kingdom. Therefore it is difficult to understand what they are talking about, and what CWC obligations have to do with this.

Let us go on.

They are telling us that the United Kingdom contacted the OPCW on March 8, 2018. But London suffered a setback straight away.

The United Kingdom declined to cooperate with Russia, although the CWC stipulates a clear mechanism for interstate cooperation and for eliminating suspicions through open information exchanges and consultations. It appears that there is no other more constructive, simpler and more logical option. All one had to do was send an official inquiry to the Russian side and receive an official reply in ten days, as stipulated by the CWC. However, the British side rejected this option from the very beginning. In other words, London clearly demonstrated that it was not interested in resolving any issues and that it was probably pursuing some other goals.

I repeat, the CWC stipulates a simple and transparent mechanism of bilateral consultations. If the parties concerned really want to resolve issues, then this seems to be the most acceptable scenario for launching dialogue, to say the least. And if one of the parties does not want to resolve issues, then the entire affair inevitably becomes deadlocked.

Instead of conducting constructive expert dialogue and searching for solutions, one can, of course, run out into the marketplace and start screaming that someone has attacked him or her, that the culprit is obvious, but that, for some reason, that attacker is unexplainably far away. But this resembles some substandard thriller, one of many being generated by the film industry, and has nothing to do with politics.

It is unclear why all this surrealism should become part of real politics and real interstate relations.

In any event, Russia certainly has no intention of encouraging or even responding to these brazen actions of a seemingly civilised state.

Nevertheless, we met the British side halfway once again and suggested jointly investigating the Salisbury incident, so as to expose the culprits.

To this end, we, naturally, requested access to all materials of this case being investigated by the Scotland Yard. Otherwise it is simply impossible to gain an insight into the March 4 Salisbury incident.

Well, they turned down our proposal once again, without explaining their motives.

Moving on, we learned that on March 19, 2018 experts from the OPCW Technical Secretariat paid a visit to Great Britain after being invited formally by Mrs Theresa May to independently verify the analysis that had been made by the British government of the Salisbury incident.

Yesterday, the UN Security Council held a meeting with Director-General of OPCW Technical Secretariat Ahmet Uzumcu to discuss chemical weapons in Syria. However, our British colleagues also mentioned the Salisbury chemical incident. At the meeting, Russia was provided with yet another opportunity to ask Director-General of OPCW Technical Secretariat, as well as our British colleagues a few simple questions. Unfortunately, we did not get any convincing answers. The speakers provided elusive replies to the questions that we viewed as being most important.

Russia expects both London and the OPCW to provide a formal detailed review on all matters related to the Skripal case. We need full opinions with detailed evidence of the implementation of the appropriate chain of custody procedures under the CWC.

In addition to this, we intend to clarify with the OPCW under which paragraph of CWC Article VIII is the OPCW Technical Secretariat cooperating with Great Britain. It is important to note that Article VIII is devoted to the OPCW structure and the distribution of powers among its bodies.

Moreover, another thing to keep in mind is that under the CWC the Technical Secretariat is not entitled to analyse national findings, as Britain has requested.

Here is another very important element.

Our British colleagues went as far as questioning the performance of the OPCW, the most reputable and effective international organisation in disarmament affairs.

The Russian Federation has successfully completed its national programme to eliminate its chemical weapons stockpiles in cooperation with 17 reputable OPCW state parties and the whole European Union and under OPCWs strict control. The chemical weapons stockpile of about 40,000 tonnes that Russia inherited from the Soviet Union was eliminated in its entirety. These data were carefully reviewed and confirmed by multiple inspection teams sent by the OPCW Technical Secretariat.

On September 27, 2017 the OPCW officially confirmed that Russia had completed the elimination of its chemical stockpiles ahead of schedule. For Russia, this matter was settled once and for all.

To be honest, dirty attempts by British politicians to muddy the waters of this noble undertaking do them no credit. London will never succeed in undermining the OPCW and CWC. We strongly believe that all 192 full CWC state parties will prevent this from happening.

Londons malign attempts also suggest that the whole affair could have been orchestrated from the other side of the Atlantic. There is no secret that Great Britains closest partner remains the only country in possession of the largest chemical weapons stockpile in the world. Of course, the increasing critique from CWC state parties does not suit them. Maybe this is the reason behind the dirty fuss around the Salisbury incident?

It is not my intention to indulge in conspiracy theories at this point. This is not something Russia plans to do. At the same time, we have more and more questions we would like to ask Great Britain, and not a single one of them has been answered so far in an intelligible manner.

The main issue still remains unclear. What actually did happen on British soil to two Russian citizens? So far, our British colleagues have been saying a lot of things which are rather confusing. There were too many inconsistencies.

Let me emphasise that we are carefully monitoring the developments around the Skripal case, and take note of all the details. We are confident that the masterminds and perpetrators of this provocation will be held to account.

In conclusion, allow me to mention one more important element so that you get a clear understanding of the matter.

Russia is not accusing anyone of anything.

May I ask foreign capitals not to distort messages coming from us.

Yes, in our statements we referred to chemical and technology capabilities of the Czech Republic, Sweden and several other countries. This was just to provide an example of advances in research and development across the world.

Again, please note that in this context Russia is not accusing anyone of anything. Professing groundless accusations against someone is not our style.

Thank you.

My colleagues from the Defence Ministry and the Industry and Trade Ministry have joined me for this briefing, which means that we can have an in-depth, substantial and open discussion.

I give the floor to Major General Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Forces of the Defence Ministry.

Igor Kirillov: Ladies and gentlemen,

We invite you to take a broader look at this problem. In light of the developments in Eastern Ghouta, Damascus has been again accused of using chemical weapons. At the same time, the international community prefers to close its eyes to the fact that the terrorists use chemical weapons against the Syrian government forces and civilians.

The Syrian government forces have found secret facilities for the production of chemical weapons in the liberated populated areas in Eastern Ghouta. It is obvious that these facilities were used to manufacture chemical munitions for provocations, which were subsequently blamed on the Syrian government forces.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry announced in early March that the militants in Eastern Ghouta were preparing a large-scale provocation against the Syrian government. Damascus officially confirmed readiness to provide all the necessary assistance for investigating chemical attacks in Syria. International organisations refused to cooperate with the Syrian government, thereby abetting the terrorists illegal actions. The Syrian Foreign Ministry pointed out that over 40 tonnes of chemical warfare agents had been found in the areas liberated from the terrorists. The ministry added that the Syrian authorities had requested more than once that OPCW experts be sent to Aleppo, Khan Sheikhun and Eastern Ghouta. But the OPCWs Technical Secretariat rejected the request, arguing that this would be too dangerous.

Before of the 87th session of the OPCW Executive Council, the Russian Foreign Ministry received information to the effect that the terrorists were preparing provocations using chemical weapons to discredit Bashar al-Assads government and to provide grounds for an anti-Syria decision that is being advocated by the US together with its allies.

The revelation of these intentions has prevented the US-led coalition from delivering the planned attacks at the key military facilities in Syria with the purpose of changing the balance of forces in favour of the so-called moderate opposition.

The fact that the 87th session of the OPCW Executive Council has shifted its focus from the Syrian chemical file to accusing Russia, without good reason, of the chemical attack in Salisbury and of violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is proof of the inability of the US-led coalition to attain its goals in Syria.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has made a series of tough statements, saying that the Novichok nerve gas, which was allegedly used to poison Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia, could only be produced in Russia. Our British colleagues have not provided any hard evidence. They disregard our requests for mutual consultations, explanations or samples collected at the site of the tragedy. It looks like Britain is afraid of what an objective and professional investigation by top experts might reveal.

In fact, all groundless accusations against Russia are based on the interview and statements by Vil Mirzayanov. Let me remind you that he immigrated to the US in 1996, and now lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and works for the US Government. He supported the Russian opposition on numerous occasions and signed a petition titled Putin Must Leave. In 2008, Vil Mirzayanov published State secrets: An insiders chronicle of the Russian chemical weapons program. The book featured a formula of the substance known in the UK as Novichok along with a detailed description of how to synthesise it.

According to Mirzayanov, Novichok is a nerve agent that is ten times more deadly than any agents known or developed until now. This powerful chemical warfare agent can be easily produced using formulas provided in this book. All is needed for that is to have a degree in chemistry, the necessary equipment and elements.

The Russian Federation views the publication by Vil Mirzayanov of the formulas for making toxic agents and ways to synthesis them as an act of abetting terrorism. Consequently, all questions on Novichoks alleged existence and properties should be addressed to Vil Mirzayanov, who works for the US Government. It was he who said that Novichok was a powerful chemical warfare agent. Russia has nothing to do with this.

Since 1970s, programmes to develop new-generation toxic agents have been carried out in Western Europe. Great Britain was and still is one of the countries involved in this programme, and has extensive experience and expertise in developing substances of this kind. Let me remind you that it was Great Britain who developed and on June 21, 1962 filed a patent under the number GB1346409A for the production of VX organophosphorus chemical agents. The patent was later sold to the US.

One of Great Britains most important facilities in terms of developing and researching toxic agents is the Porton Down laboratory, located just a few kilometres from Salisbury  what a strange coincidence. It is well known and was officially acknowledged by the British Government in 2006 that the country carried out experiments on Ronald Maddison and 360 other people to study the effects of sarin on humans.

The Porton Down laboratory remains a top-secret location. Its official purpose is not only to dispose of old chemical weapon systems, but also experiment on protections against chemical and biological weapons, as the laboratorys official website claims. Recent media reports on the allocation by the UK Government of about 50 million pounds to the laboratory beg the question whether Porton Down researchers were planning to destroy that same Novichok they have been talking about so much. Yesterday, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in an interview that the country had samples of this agent.

According to recent media reports, the Porton Down laboratory was under a lot of pressure to conclude that the toxic agent used in Salisbury was of Russian origin.

As countries across the world seek to get rid of the existing chemical weapons stockpiles, Great Britain on the contrary expands its Porton Down laboratory and continues experiments, putting its own people in great danger, under the pretext of developing ways of countering chemical and biological weapons.

At the same time, the Russian Federation has been acting in good faith strictly in keeping with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). This fact was confirmed by Director-General of OPCW Technical Secretariat Ahmet Uzumcu, who issued a statement on September 27, 2017 confirming that Russia completed the elimination of chemical weapons on its soil. Despite the confirmation that Russia had eliminated its chemical weapons stockpile, Great Britain and the US continue to make groundless accusations against Russia of violating the CWC.

Accusations against Russia coming from the US are especially cynical, since the US has been unable to eliminate its chemical weapons stockpiles so far, citing the lack of resources to complete this effort. This is perplexing and outrageous. Can it be that a country with the largest defence budget in the world is unable to allocate funds in order to deliver on its commitments under the CWC? This is impossible to believe, taking into consideration that the US points to deficient funds whenever it faces international commitments that run counter to its interests, despite having ratified international instruments to this effect.

Comparing the Salisbury situation with the earlier provocations in Eastern Ghouta and Khan Sheikhun, it is obvious that Western countries are ready to use any dubious or illegal methods and means in order to discredit the Russian Federation and its legitimate Government.

Vladimir Yermakov: You will receive a memo in English. Our statements today serve as additions to it. What we said today was hardly news to anyone as we basically relied on the recent statements made by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and our permanent representatives to the OPCW in The Hague and the UN in New York.

It is exceptionally important that there are no unanswered questions on such serious matters. If we do pursue the goal of resolving the existing problems then they must be uncovered, discussed and solved. This is the only way to achieve a positive result. Unfortunately, we have not seen any positive steps on behalf of our British counterparts. I hope there will be a time when our British colleagues return to their highest diplomatic professionalism and top expertise. This was my personal attitude towards Great Britain and British experts. I am shocked at what we had to hear from their so-called politicians (it is hard to even call them politicians). It is a shame for the diplomats and experts from the UK with whom I have been in constant contact for years that such people are speaking out from London.

Question (representative of the Slovakian Embassy): Foreign Ministry Official Spokesperson Maria Zakharova named several countries developing chemical substances, including Slovakia. Would you please comment on this?

Vladimir Yermakov: Fortunately or unfortunately, Slovakia was named as part of Czechoslovakia. Later, we checked our database and Czechoslovakia indeed had a high potential of chemical technology development. Once again, this does not mean at all that we are accusing Czechoslovakia of anything. On the contrary, we positively described the high potential of the chemical industry in the country. By accident, through an oversight, it happened that not only the Czech Republic but also Slovakia were named on this list. We apologise for the accidental mistake. Again, we have absolutely no claims against the Czech Republic.

Question (representative of the British Embassy) (retranslated): In the context of this briefing it would be helpful to shortly clarify the situation and the actions taken by us with regards to the Russian Government, as they are seen through the British perspective.

After the said incident, we proposed to discuss the matter with Russia in a bilateral format but we have not received any constructive response yet. Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were poisoned with the Novichok agent, which we consider an attempted murder. Great Britain concluded that there is a high probability of Russia being responsible for attempting to murder those people based on the following facts: the chemical substance was identified by our leading scientists and we had information that Russia used to produce the substance and still has the capacity to produce it. Russia did not offer any explanation on how the substance could be used in Great Britain and why Russia has an undeclared chemical programme in violation of international law. We have seen misinformation, attempts to manipulate facts and came to the conclusion that force was used against Great Britain, that the British society was put at risk, which is a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and international law.

We need an answer. Did Russia produce the agent and why did Russia not declare it according to the CWC? We have asked Russia to explain how the agent got into Great Britain. We have not been given a response.

Vladimir Yermakov: I am very pleased that we have an opportunity to hear the British view. I think it is very helpful to everybody and confirms how far we are in our evaluations and approaches.

We are talking about two Russian nationals attacked in Great Britain. We have asked that you provide all the evidence of, as we believe, a terrorist attack against Russian nationals in Great Britain. The British refuse to give us anything and instead talk about some Novichok and some Russian attack against Great Britain. It is not our duty to provide anything to Great Britain as it was an attack on two Russian nationals on British soil. Lets carry out a joint investigation with fully transparent data instead of making absolutely vague assumptions regarding any novichoks, starichoks(old-timers), or durachoks(fools). Please understand this is the verbiage of British television shows. Arent you embarrassed to speak about this in the presence of this audience, ambassadors from 150 states? This is ridiculous. I feel sorry for British diplomacy.

Russia has completely different goals and objectives in the world. Perhaps you should try and shake off your Russophobia and insular thinking (I do not mean to offend you, I hold very high regards for the British diplomacy and I am ashamed to hear all this). We have learned so much from our British colleagues and experts. Your expertise is of the highest possible level. So how about our experts and yours sitting down together and finding out what did happen? Why did you simply shut down and hide behind a shell? Why are you pointing fingers at us and saying that everything is our fault? What will happen next? We will definitely not respond to that.

I would like to give Viktor Kholstov, Director of the Centre for Analytical Research on Chemical and Biological Weapon Conventions under the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, an opportunity to speak.

Viktor Kholstov: I would like to say the following regarding the question from a representative of the British Embassy. I want to make it perfectly clear that Russia has not produced any toxic agents other than those it has declared under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1997. Consequently, we have no such weapons among our stockpiles. Russia declared all its chemical stockpiles, which were subsequently inspected by experts from the OPCW Technical Secretariat, whose inspection teams also verified the destruction of Russian chemical weapons.

The problem developed following publications by Vil Mirzayanov, who had moved to the US, probably to improve his financial standing after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the ensuing economic hardships. Let us look at what he writes. His first publications did not contain any formulas of any new toxic agents. His first large monograph was published in Russian in the early 2000s. It did not contain any formulas or descriptions of a production technology, despite the fact that many other known toxic agents could be included in the category he subsequently named. I can cite the following examples. Slovakia has been mentioned here in connection with Czechoslovakia. I have great respect for the Czech scientist who was working on protecting the public from potential chemical weapon attacks. Professor Jiri Matousek is a big scientist, and I do respect him. However, back in 1994 he wrote about the danger of certain toxic agents in terms of their use in chemical warfare. Other scientists, including Ivan Macek, identified several dozen such chemicals.

Here is a list of such agents that was compiled back in 1994. It has no relation to Russia or any of the other current developments. The list provides complete data on the toxicology of these agents and their structural formulas. There are several dozen such agents. The CWC was submitted for signature in 1993 and any amendments to the text, despite the fact that the convention stipulates a procedure for amending the list of toxic agents, would have delayed its implementation. This is why no state with knowledge about such chemicals did anything at the time.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that extensive research involving these toxic agents was conducted at the Edgewood Arsenal facility of the US Department of Defence. I cannot say that this research was based on the data provided by Professor Matousek or other scientists. Here is the database for one such toxic agent, with the spectra of toxic chemicals, which was a novelty at that time. Professor Matousek did not have this information; he only had the toxicology data. It is an official database for one of such compounds. It dates back to 1998 and comes from the Edgewood Arsenal.

Vil Mirzayanov did not have these formulas in the early 2000s. Trying to earn a living and to improve his finances, Mirzayanov published a new book, probably in cooperation with the Edgewood Arsenal, titled State secrets [An insiders chronicle of the Russian chemical weapons programme]. This book included some formulas. Naturally, he implied a Russian connection for political reasons, as he would not have benefitted from this publication otherwise.

Why didnt he write this before, if he knew about it? Because he had to provide proof, which was only available in the above database. The US sent the book to the OPCW Technical Secretariat. The OPCWs Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) carefully analysed the problem and ultimately presented its conclusions.

According to the SAB, the issue of new toxic agents has been attracting increasing attention in recent years, particularly among non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Although only a small amount of information has been made public, it was claimed that a new type of nerve agents named Novichok has been developed. In December 2008, a former Soviet defence scientist published a book, claiming that the toxicity of certain Novichok agents may exceed that of VX. At the same time, the SAB stated that it had insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of Novichoks. In this connection, the SAB said that the OPCW as the organisation established to oversee the implementation of the CWC must expand its knowledge about such toxic agents in order to facilitate the implementation of the Convention.

Any state has the right to issue a statement if it has the data for creating a database and submit it to the CWC. However, Mirzayanov clearly provided the formula only after this information had been confirmed by Czech scientists within the framework of permitted research, which takes a very long time, and only after he gained access to the data of the Edgewood Arsenal facility. And he probably did so at the prompting of his American colleagues.

As it was rightly said by General Igor Kirillov, head of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Forces, Article I of the Convention stipulates that each State Party to this Convention undertakes never under any circumstances to develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain chemical weapons, or transfer, directly or indirectly, chemical weapons to anyone. The publication of materials such as those in Mirzayanovs book is evidence of indirect transfer of knowledge about chemical weapons, which is tantamount to indirect transfer of chemical weapons. Why has the US administration published this book? Can anyone answer this question? I dont think so, because it is a clear and flagrant violation of Article I of the CWC.

This problem was later discussed many times at the OPCWs review conferences, all of which adopted similar decisions.

Question (by a representative of the Embassy of Serbia): Serbia was exposed to hysteria coming from Western countries in the 1990s as well. Fake news and lies were rife. I would like to draw a parallel with what led to the bombing of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then Serbia. Im referring to the Sarajevo market bombing, of which the Serbs were accused. Later, in 1999, when they wanted to take Kosovo and Metohija away from Serbia, the British and the Americans collected the bodies of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers and invited CNN reporters over telling them that the Serbs killed those people. This caused the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 with the use of unconventional weapons, such as depleted uranium. As a result, the cancer incidence in Serbia increased 12-fold. Those who bombed us did not pay attention to this. Remember, in 2003, Colin Powell showed a test tube allegedly containing a chemical substance and accused Saddam Hussein of producing chemical weapons, which led to bombing Iraq, including, reportedly, with the use of chemical weapons. Do you draw any parallels with the current situation surrounding Sergey Skripals poisoning?

Vladimir Yermakov: I believe, one can draw lots of parallels. We understand the assessments of our Serbian comrades and brothers, with whom we, of course, agree. Weve been helping them and will continue to do so. By the way, I appreciate Colin Powell as a professional. I knew him personally. We talked when I worked at the Russian Embassy in Washington and was responsible for the military-political aspect of relations between our countries. Of course, this was a case of high-level policy when Powell mustered enough strength to admit his mistake. I would like to see more politicians in the UK who are really trying to understand what is going on, rather than jump to hasty conclusions, so that at the end of the day you dont have to regret what you did earlier. Probably, such a parallel is more appropriate in this particular case. Pigeonholing is the easiest thing to do. Our goal is different though. We want to build mutually beneficial relations with all states, including, of course, the UK. Perhaps, everyone would benefit from reducing the number of such cases in our interstate relations. It would be much better if we gathered for briefings to discuss absolutely different topics and talk about our interaction in addressing real matters, rather than some fictitious events.

We are grateful to our Serbian comrades for remembering those events which may not be forgotten under any circumstances. NATOs bombing of Yugoslavia is a black stain on relations between the states. Nobody should forget this, because, unfortunately, back then the world was a place where just about any state could be subjected to such a bombardment based on the contents of some obscure test tubes. However, we hope that such a world is already history, and no one will now even harbour such a thought. Right in the centre of Europe, civilised democratic states and members of the European Union use bombs filled with uranium. Talk about the highest degree of democracy, humanism and European values at their best I can keep talking on this subject, as there are things to say.

Question by a staff member of the French Embassy in Russia (via interpreter from English): First, I would like to express our solidarity with our British colleague in connection with the chemical attacks in the UK. We are interested in an investigation conducted by the British authorities. Notably, chemical weapons have not been used in the EU since World War II. Thats why the Salisbury incident has become a matter of international security for us. I believe we can all agree that the OPCW is one of the most reputable international organisations. Will you trust the results of the work being carried out by the OPCW experts in conjunction with British experts on the Salisbury incident?

Question by a representative of the Embassy of Sweden, (via interpreter from English): I have two comments that, in my opinion, might be useful. The first comment is linked with what my colleague from Slovakia has already said. Sweden has also been mentioned in this context. I would like to note that Sweden has stated its position on this issue very clearly. We have denied unacceptable accusations, expressed by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova, that the nerve gas used in Salisbury might have been originating from Sweden. Second, I would like to say that, like my colleague from France, Sweden, as well as the EU, has expressed solidarity with the United Kingdom and expressed support for it.

Vladimir Yermakov: I would like to thank the representative of Sweden very much. If you have come across any accusations with regard to Sweden in the remarks of Maria Zakharova, Director of the Foreign Ministrys Information and Press Department, then I am ready to apologise to you because the Russian side certainly did not express any accusations with regard to Sweden. It is probably good that you are showing solidarity with the United Kingdom because you have to help each other. Maybe we should all solidarise and start a truly professional investigation of this matter, instead of misusing such words as novichok, starichok (old man) and durachok (fool). There are many such words in the Russian language.

Question by a representative of the Embassy of Germany (via interpreter from English): Earlier, you said that to resolve this issue, the United Kingdom should have addressed it in a bilateral format, under the Chemical Weapons Convention. On March 13, the Russian Foreign Ministry made its first statement on this issue. If I am not mistaken, it suggested that, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the official British response was a clear provocation aiming to discredit Russia. In your opinion, does this statement meet Moscows obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention to resolve the issue in a conscientious manner and bilaterally, especially with due consideration for the legitimate questions raised before Russia the previous day by British Prime Minister Theresa May?

Vladimir Yermakov: To be honest, I dont know what your area of expertise is. Any expert on arms control knows the procedure for setting forth ones position and how to conduct international talks. It goes without saying that if you want to accomplish something, you first present an argument and then jointly reach a conclusion. If a representative of another state approaches you and starts accusing you of something, without presenting any evidence, it is impossible to quickly resolve the issue.

I dont quite understand your question. I would like to emphasise once again that Russia insistently and consistently advocates a comprehensive investigation of the Salisbury incident. We are ready to take the most active part in this process. If they simply tell us that someone has found something somewhere, and that we are to blame for everything, then we wont make any headway. The United Kingdoms actions are its own problem. To put it simply, we will not respond to the question if it is put this way. If you want to conduct an investigation  invite us and disclose all data, and we assure you that we will find out the truth together. Thats all, everything is simple and easy-to-understand. This is how serious interstate issues are resolved. Otherwise nothing will come of it.

Question (representative of the US Embassy): It is important in this forum to demonstrate that we in the United States also stand in complete solidarity with our partners in the United Kingdom, in the European Union and in NATO. Its important, especially in this forum, since you have mentioned former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the courage that you suggest he demonstrated. It is very important that you, instead of demonstrating a similar type of courage, you attack, attack, attack my British colleague. In this forum in particular, instead of demonstrating the type of courage that we would hope to have seen in the 21st century, the Russian Federation continues its tried and true tactics of denying responsibility, distracting and disinforming. Again, we stand with our colleagues in the United Kingdom, and we will, as our colleagues in the United Kingdom, hold Russia accountable for its illegal actions.

Vladimir Yermakov: We are grateful to the respected representative of the US Embassy for his remarks. It would be interesting to know what American lawyers would make of them. You probably worked at the US State Department? Have we met before? I used to know everyone at the US State Department, and everyone there used to know me. Thats water under the bridge In the past, nobody in the US State Department talked to me in this manner. You are probably on a mission from Washington. Well, everyone has a mission to accomplish.

As for solidarity, we would like to see the day when the United States expresses solidarity with the Serb people who have been affected by the NATO bombing raids. Nobody can understand what happened in Salisbury. It is very good that you stand in solidarity with your NATO ally, your closest NATO ally. Overall, I can respect that. I am not being sarcastic. This is really very good, and it is the right thing to do. But we need to move forward. Let us really investigate this event. We have heard so many accusations thrown at Russia that we have stopped worrying. So, if you really want to investigate the Salisbury case, lets do it. This will be real solidarity.

Again, there is nothing to answer, because the question has not been formulated so far. We must have complete information regarding the investigation that is underway  I hope  in Salisbury, starting with the video monitoring cameras. This is the 21st century, after all, and the United Kingdom is one of the most technologically advanced countries. You have recorded everything. Share it with us, and we will help you to investigate this case.

Our Serbian colleague has said correctly that some analogies come to mind. Or take the crash of the Malaysian Boeing.

Do you remember that you had information blaming Russia for that tragedy even before the plane hit the ground? Or have you forgotten this? You ought to be ashamed. Dont you in the United States have any recorded data showing who really shot down the Malaysian Boeing? I understand that you will tell me that you work for the US State Department and that you have no relation to this. But you did record everything, because your satellite was right over the site. You know for sure who shot the Malaysian Boeing down. But everyone kept silent, and the investigation was deadlocked. And Russia was not invited to take part in it. Again, the blame was laid on Russia even before the Boeing crashed, which has been proved without any doubt. The United States has complete information regarding who did this and how it was done. Have you shared this information with Malaysia or the Netherlands?

Question (from the Ambassador of Venezuela): I would like to express our support for the Russian Government as it strives to resolve this matter in a responsible and transparent manner, and to invite the Government of Great Britain to do so as well.

We would also like to know who these people are who are bringing charges. As our friend from Serbia said, there were the bombers, as it was in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why do you think this was done?

Vladimir Yermakov: You are asking interesting questions, but they are not quite in my portfolio. I deal with arms control, while your questions are more philosophical in nature. In general, your question already suggests some answers. Perhaps, you had the chance to hear the assessments that were provided at the high political level with regard to this incident, so I will not repeat them here, so as not to be misunderstood.

Our main job is not to wonder whether someone wanted to hurt Russia with this incident. Frankly, we have recently grown accustomed to painful blows from our colleagues in the United States and Great Britain, now even France has started making some obscure gestures. We almost dont react to them. We talk and think about ways to build new relations between states under the new abruptly changed circumstances. The world is definitely past the era of unipolarity, and it is absolutely clear that US clout is no longer what it used to be in the 1990s, when almost everything was decided by Washington, and no one dared to object. Our country and the Foreign Ministry were led by the people who couldnt even think about doing anything in defiance of what the US State Department said. Every person must decide for themselves whether its good or bad. These times are gone forever. We must build our state-to-state relations based on the realities of 2018, rather than rely on past schemes developed by Colin Powell and Tony Blair, for which they had to apologise publicly.

Frankly, if you ask me for my personal take on what happened and the underlying reasons for what happened in Salisbury, I would say these were some pre-planned actions against Russia that could not stop this flywheel. So, it somehow manifested itself. I hope that reason will prevail in London. They may even not admit that they made a mistake  we do not need this. Lets interact to address matters that arise. We will not demand an apology from you. If theres a problem, lets deal with it. If you dont have a problem, then roll it back quietly. The key problem is that people are suffering. Two Russian citizens were hurt in the UK. We have serious doubts that anyone will be held responsible. This is not the first time such things are happening.

Drawing an analogy, we can evoke the case of Boris Berezovsky who asked President Putin to allow him to come back to Russia, but then committed suicide in London. Such accidents never stop happening to our British colleagues. This is not an isolated incident, it has already become a trend with the potential to make conspiracy theorists out of all of us. I would very much like not to see such accidents happen. If they do happen, then lets investigate them, if you want. If you are a civilised state, then make all the data available and lets investigate it together. Blaming Russia is foolish. Russia will never answer to you.

Question (from the Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina): Id like to ask my colleagues not to use the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the sake of these deliberations.

Vladimir Yermakov: We understand. Everyone has their own position, which is only right. Good thing we didnt touch upon the conflict between North and South Korea, otherwise we would continue for another three or four hours here. Im not saying this tongue-in-cheek. Each state has its own stance, which it must make public. Of course, we will not use the Bosnia and Herzegovina conflict in our discussion here.

We have already gone over our allotted time. I would like to thank everyone again. Thank you very much for coming here and participating in this discussion. I would like to express my hope that our briefing today was helpful for our British colleagues in finding avenues of interaction. I cant say we have aided the investigation in any way. Of course, its up to you how you want to go about it. However, since Russian citizens are involved, we will demand that all pertinent data be disclosed.

source: http://www.mid.ru/en/press_service/spokesman/briefings/-/asset_publisher/D2wHaWMCU6Od/content/id/3134581A Truly Historical Month for the Future of Our Planet

March 23, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - March 2018 will go down in history as a truly historical month

March 1st, Vladimir Putin makes his historical address to the Russian Federal Assembly.

March 4th, Sergei Skripal, a former UK spy, is allegedly poisoned in the UK.

March 8th, British officials accuse Russia of using nerve gas to attempt to murder Sergei Skripal.

March 12th, Theresa May officially blames Russia for the poisoning and gives Russia a 24-hour ultimatum to justify herself; the Russians ignore that ultimatum. The same day, the US representative at the UNSC threatens to attack Syria even without a UNSC authorization.

March 13th, Chief of Russias General Staff Valery Gerasimov warned that in case there is a threat to the lives of our military, the Russian Armed Force will take retaliatory measures both over the missiles and carriers that will use them. The same day Chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, Deputy Defense Minister, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov had a phone conversation with Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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March 15th, the UK blocked Russias draft UN Security Council statement on Skripal poisoning case asking for an urgent and civilized investigation into the Skripal case. The US, UK, France, and Germany issue a statement backing the UK and blaming Russia. The UK Defence Minister tells Russia to shut up and go away.

March 16th, Major General Igor Konashenkov calls the British Defense Minister an uncouth shrew and intellectual impotent.

March 17th, Russian Generals warned that the US is preparing a chemical false flag attack in Syria

March 18th, Putin overwhelmingly wins the Presidential election. The same day, General Votel, Commander of CENTCOM declares in a testimony to the Armed Services Committee that differences with Russia should be settled through political and diplomatic channels. When asked whether it would be correct to say that with Russia and Irans help, Assad has won the Civil War in Syria? General Votel replied I do not think that is too  that is too strong of a statement. I think they have provided him the wherewithal to  to be ascendant at this point.

March 19th, the EUs Foreign Affairs Council issues a statement fully backing the UK.

March 21st The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summons all ambassadors to a briefing on the Skripal case. The language used by the Russian representative at this briefing possibly is the bluntest used by any Russian (or even Soviet) official towards the West since WWII. The French, Swedish and US representative at the meeting all stood up to declare their solidarity with the UK.

March 22nd, The Chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, Deputy Defense Minister, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov had another phone conversation with Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So what is really going on here? Surely nobody seriously believes that the Brits really think that the Russians had any motive to try to kill Skripal or, for that matter, if they had a motive, that they would do it in such a stupid manner? And whats the deal with Syria anyway? Is the US going to execute their false flag and bomb?

I think that at this point we should not get bogged down in the details of all this. There is a forest behind these trees. What matters most now, is that the most powerful factions of the AngloZionist Empires ruling elites are making a concerted effort to create a unified anti-Russian coalition. In this regard it is quite telling that the US, France, and Germany issued a statement on March 15th without even bothering to consult with their so-called allies in NATO or the EU. You can immediately tell who is boss in those crisis situations when the rest of the Euro-riffraff simply doesnt matter (poor East Europeans with their delusions about being appreciated or even respected by the West!). Furthermore, it is quite clear that in this case, the Anglo component of the AngloZionist Empire is far more involved than the Zionist one, at least insofar as the front of the stage is concerned (behind the scenes the Neocons are seething at Trump for calling Putin to congratulate him and offer negotiations). I think that a number of crucial developments forced the US and the UK into trying to strong-arm the rest of the western nations to circle the wagons around the Empire:

The US humiliatingly failed in its attempts to frighten and force the DPRK into submission The AngloZionists have lost the civil war in Syria The UK and the rest of the NATO are becoming militarily irrelevant The Ukraine has crashed and is burning and a Ukronazi attack on the Donbass is most likely The political forces in Europe who opposed anti-Russian policies are on the ascent The Russians are winning many EU countries over by economic means including North Stream whereas sanctions are hurting the EU much more than Russia The anti-Putin campaign has miserably failed and Russia is fully united in her stance against the Empire

What this all means is very simple: the Empire needs to either fold or double down and folding is just not something the imperial elites are willing to consider yet. They are therefore using the tools which they perceive as most effective:

False flags: this is really a time-honored western tradition used by pretty much all the western powers. Since the general public is brainwashed and mostly cant even begin to imagine that freedom loving liberal democracies could use methods usually ascribed to evil, bloodthirsty dictatorial regimes, false flags are an ideal way to get the public opinion in the correct state of mind to approve of aggressive, hostile and even violent policies against a perceived threat or obstacle to hegemony. Soft power: have you noticed how the Oscars or the Cannes festival always pick exactly the kind of artists which the Empire happens to politically promote? Well, this is true not only for the Oscars or the Cannes festival but for almost all of the cultural, social and political life in the West. This is especially true of so-called human rights and peace organizations which are simply political pit-bulls which can be sicked on any country in need of subversion and/or intervention. Russia has never developed that kind of political toolkit. Verbal escalation: this tactic is extremely crude yet very effective. You begin by vociferously proclaiming some falsehood. The fact that you proclaimed it in such vociferous and hyperbolic matter achieves two immediate results: it sends all your friends and allies a clear message you are either with us or against us, that leaves no room for nuance or analysis, and it gives otherwise rather spineless politicians no way to back down, thus strengthening their resolve. Herding: there is safety in numbers. So when dealing with a potentially dangerous foe, like Russia, all the little guys flock together so as to appear bigger or, at least, harder to single out. Also, when everybody is responsible, nobody is. Thus herding is also politically expedient. Finally, it changed the inter-relational dynamic from one of friends or allies to one typically found among accomplices in a crime. Direct threats: the Empire got away with making threats left and right for many decades, and this is a habit which is hard to break. The likes of Nikki Haley or Hillary Clinton probably sincerely believe that the US is quasi-omnipotent or, conversely, they might be terrified by the creeping suspicion that it might not. Threats are also an easy, if ineffective, substitute for diplomacy and negotiations, especially when your position is objectively wrong and the other side is simply a lot smarter than you.

The big problem is that none of these methods work against Russia or, let me correct that, dont work anymore (they sure appeared to work in the past). Russian public opinion is fully aware of all these methods (courtesy of a Russian media NOT controlled by AngloZionists) and Margarita Simonian beautifully summarized the feelings that all this elicits in the Russian population:

all your injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to stop respecting you. You and your so-called values. We dont want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we wanted to live like you, but not any longer. We have no more respect for you, and for those among us that you support, and for all those people who support you (). For that, you only have yourself to blame () Our people are capable to forgive a lot. But we dont forgive arrogance, and no normal nation would. Your only remaining Empire would be wise to learn the history of its allies, all of them are former empires. To learn the ways they lost their empires. Only because of their arrogance. White mans burden, my ass! (this last sentence in English in the original text  trans.)

The stark truth is that far from wanting to invade, appease or otherwise please the West, Russia has absolutely no need, or even interest, in it. None. For centuries Russian elites have been western-focused to some degree or other and none of them could even begin to imagine a West-less Russia. This is still true today, the Russian elites still want to live like (very rich) Brits or Germans and they still hate the common Russian people and Vladimir Putin. But those Russian elites have now been crushed by the magnitude of Putins victory in the presidential elections. Normally, this should result in an even bigger exile of Russian businessmen to the UK, France or Israel, but the problem now is that the British are making noises about punishing them for, well, being Russians (even Russophobic, pro-western, Russians). As a result, these poor pro-western liberals can only whine on the social media and in the few pro-western media outlets left in Russia (no, not due to repression, but due to their political irrelevancy being backed, as they are, by something between 2% and 5% of the population).

But setting aside the wealthy elites for a moment, Russia as a country and as a nation has simply no use for the West and what it represents. Those who fantasize about Russia being interested in Europe, White identity or Western Christianity are only kidding themselves. They hope that the current cultural and spiritual revival in Russia will somehow spill over to them and allow them to extricate themselves from the gutter in which they are currently prostrated. It wont. Just read again what Simonian said about the western values in the quote above. For most Russians Europe reeks of Napoleon, White identity of Hitler and Western Christianity of the creation of the Ukraine and the Eastern Crusades. No, Russia has no interest in revenge against any of that, she just has no respect or interest for what these concepts stand for. (Poland  is possibly the last country where all these things are taken seriously and fondly remembered). Still, the Russians remain willing to negotiate to establish a viable coexistence between the Western and Russian civilizational realms. Putin clearly said so in his speech

There is no need to create more threats to the world. Instead, let us sit down at the negotiating table and devise together a new and relevant system of international security and sustainable development for human civilization. We have been saying this all along. All these proposals are still valid. Russia is ready for this.

But if the AngloZionists are dead set on world domination by means of war, then Russia is ready for that too. Not a war of aggression, of course, not even against the tiny Baltic statelets, Putin made that clear too when he said w e are not threatening anyone, not going to attack anyone or take away anything from anyone with the threat of weapons. We do not need anything. Just the opposite (emphasis added). But if attacked, Russia is now ready to defend herself:

And to those who in the past 15 years have tried to accelerate an arms race and seek unilateral advantage against Russia, have introduced restrictions and sanctions that are illegal from the standpoint of international law aiming to restrain our nations development, including in the military area, I will say this: everything you have tried to prevent through such a policy has already happened. No one has managed to restrain Russia () Any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, weapons of short, medium or any range at all, will be considered as a nuclear attack on this country. Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant consequences. There should be no doubt about this whatsoever.

Why is the nuclear issue so central? Because the Russians are fully aware of the fact that the AngloZionists cannot win a conventional war with Russia. Thus it is crucial for the Russians to convince the AngloZionists that they are neither militarily superior nor invulnerable (see here for a full analysis of these two myths). But once some kind of modus vivendi is achieved with the West, Russia will focus her efforts in different directions: much needed internal reforms and development, the work with China on the establishment of a single Eurasian zone of economic security, peace and prosperity, the restoration of peace in the Middle-East, the development of the Russian Far East and North  you name it. Russia has plenty of work which needs to be done, none of which involves the West in any capacity.

And that is, of course, what is so totally unacceptable to the West.

Hence this months historical developments which have placed Russia and the West in a direct collision course. As I said above, the Empire can now either fold or double down. If it decides to fold, war will be averted and meaningful negotiations finally entered into. If it doubles down, something the Neocons always do, then this means war with Russia. This is a stark and very difficult choice (no, not for normal people, but for the psychopaths ruling the West). And there isnt much Russia could, or should, do at this point. As is the case every time a serious crisis takes place, the apparently united elites running the West will now break-up into separate factions and each one of these factions will pursue and promote its own, narrow, interests. There will be an intense, mostly behind the scenes, struggle between those who will want to double down or even trigger a war against Russia and those who will be horrified by that notion (not necessarily for profound moral reasons, just out of basic self-interest and a healthy instinct for self-preservation).

As to who will prevail, your guess is as good a mine. But the fact that today Trump replaced McMaster with a warmongering psychopath like John Bolton is a clear sign that the Neocons are in charge in the US and that the Axis of Kindness is about to get a heck of a lot kinder.Ten Nigerians suspected to be internet fraudsters, have been arrested in a house at Ashongman Estate, Accra, by the Kwabenya Police.

The suspects are identified as Diamond Andy (22), Benson Romeo (20), Randy Samuel (25), Kelvin Agho (23),Osas Igbo (21), David Okondu (23), Praise Onyekwena (22), Ohis David (25), Duru Wisdom (22) and Uyi Ighodaro (24).

Six internet modems, 54 different SIM cards, 9 laptops and 5 mobile phones were retrieved from them.

The suspects, according to DSP James Aseidu, District Commander of Kwabenya Police Station, who led the operation, had set up computers in a room.

The Greater Accra Regional Police Commander, DCOP George Alex Mensah, said the arrests were made on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 around 2pm.

The suspects are often not seen during the day and often move out at night everyday to have fun with friends. Police also discovered that the suspects do not work but lead lavish lifestyles in the area. This prompted the police to raid the said house to arrest the suspects.Punch

The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, in this interview with IFEANYI ONUBA speaks on Nigerias rising debt profile, infrastructure funding and efforts by the government to reposition the economy to the path of sustainable growth

Vanguard

A FORMER governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido has said that his presidential ambition is not a product of desperation, noting that he wants to give back to a nation that gave him many opportunities in life. Lamido

The SunPopular Nigerian kid dances, The Dream Catchers from Ikorodu are already going global. After being celebrated by popular American and British celebrities, they are now being featured on a mini-documentary on BBC.

Recall that, Rihanna shared their dance video in admiration of the young talents as she celebrated a new milestone in her career, being the first female artist to cross 2 billion worldwide streams on Apple Music.

The Dream Catchers have gone further to catch the attention of top American entertainers like Diddy and Rihanna while supermodel Naomi Campbell has also featured them on her Instagram page.

The latest progress the dance crew has recorded is a feature on a mini-documentary by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Dream Catchers, which is made up of 10 children  seven girls and three boys have been dancing together since November 2014.

According to their social media bio, they are street kids from Ikorodu.

Dance puts us in school and off the streets, it says. The kids and their 26-year-old instructor, Seyi Oluyole, were recently nominated for the Best Creative Social Enterprise Award via African Creative Exhibition and Awards.

In one of the groups Instagram posts, the caption reads:

This time last week, we didnt have lunch, but here we are this week getting so much love with 12,000 followers! (That number has since climbed to 42,000.) Our hope has been renewed.

A post on the Dream Catchers Instagram page shows the gratitude the kids have for Oluyole, the force behind the group:

You see all our smiles and dance videos, there is someone behind it all. There is a special person who took us off the street and takes care of us. She feeds us, sends us to school, buys us clothes and takes care of us even when we are sick. She is Aunty Seyi.A surprising photo of Social media bodysprays spotted in a supermarket in Babcock university is currently trending.

Twitter user @badgalmaddie_ says she spotted the bodysprays during a recent visit to a supermarket at Babcock university.

She posted the photo and wrote;

So thats how i went to Babcock University & found this in their supermarket,

im done with Nigeria, Im going back to my country

What a tweet!

The replies to her tweet will leave you in stitches.

See reactions below;A yet to be identified young boy has landed in a hospital after he was allegedly injured by his teacher in an Islamic school in Gombe state.

It was reported that the boy was brutally flogged on both hands  which got him seriously injured in the process.

The boys hand which was badly infected had to be amputated by doctors.

It was also gathered that the teacher who allegedly committed the act has been arrested.

See more pictures below;

This is coming after a video which went viral earlier this year, showed students of Government Science Secondary School, Nassarawa-Eggon being flogged mercilessly by the school teachers.

The video reportedly led to suspension of the school teachers and the principal.

-GistreelA Youth Corp member who is yet to be identified has been arrested for allegedly defiling an eleven-year old JSS2 student.

The Corp member is serving in Delta, Warri area of Delta state, where the incident also occurred.

According to reports gathered, the Corp member was assigned to carry out home lessons for the young girl but he had other plans for the girl.

This resulted to an early pregnancy and also put the little girl in a bad position.

The girl, who is a student of The Nana College, Warri now goes through the pain of abuse and molestation.

In addition, the suspect has been arrested and is currently in custody at Division B police station in Warri.

Furthermore, a notification has also been sent to National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) National Secretariat as the suspect is yet to be charged to court.

Consequently, a Facebook user, Israel Joe shared the news on the platform, he wrote:

A youth corp member defiled an eleven (11) year old JSS 2 student. Simple instruction to carry out home lessons have ended the little girl with pregnancy.

The Nana College Warri student now goes through the pain of abuse and molestation.

While he will be charge to court and a notification has been sent to NYSC national secretariat, we insist that parents must be careful with those they leave with their children. Trust no man.

The suspect is right at the custody of B Division Warri and we are much impress with the non compromising investigations by the working DPO.

Again Im saying trust no man with your female child. Dont suspect them, dont trust them. Be street wiseSponsored

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Alex Partridge was on spring break vacation at the beach when she heard that one or more tornadoes had plowed through Jacksonville State University. Her mind immediately went back to 2011, when she huddled in a storm shelter in Hueytown watching trees bent over to the ground as tornadoes devastated much of Alabama.

For her, the vacation was over.

I stayed up until 3 a.m. shaking, and looking at pictures of the damage in the Jacksonville area. I know what its like, and I know what the morning after looks like, she said.

Now, even though shes unable to get into her residence at JSU to retrieve her clothes and other belongings, shes back in Jacksonville and was signing up to work as a volunteer to help other storm victims.

And because of her experience in 2011, she also knows firsthand how a disaster can pull people together and make a community stronger.

Im already seeing it. Today, people were putting together care packages to take to people who have had belongings destroyed or who cant get into damaged buildings to get to them, said Partridge, who currently has only the clothes she took to the beach.

In many cases, victims and relief volunteers were the same people. She described sorority sisters opening their closets and saying Just go in and take whatever you need.

I just hope people realize this is going to take a long time. Its easy to lose interest after a few days, but the work will go on. I just hope people keep pitching in and helping each other, she said.

Also on vacation with her and other friends was Wesley Waddell, a senior biology major from Dallas, Georgia. My house is fine, but others nearby were destroyed. I was shocked when we got back and saw the damage. We always watch the forecasts and hear about these horrible things that are going to happen, but when you see the reality, its worse than pictures can ever show you, he said.

Tia Pendleton, a senior Jacksonville native majoring in kinesiology, said she is relieved that her friends are safe. A few of my sorority sisters and friends lost their apartments, and some cant get to their stuff, but theyre all safe, she said. She noted that two friends are staying with her until their parents can come get them.

But people have been great. Weve had people who sell clothes coming around and giving away clothes, and donating gift cards, she said.Proven guilty before the crime? China using big data to detain suspicious individuals before any crime is even committed

Chinese citizens are already under an enormous amount of pressure to fall in line as it is, what with all of the surveillance going on inside of the countrys borders, but now the Chinese government have taken things one step further yet again. Based on a report unearthed by Human Rights Watch, China now has a fully-functional real-time system that marks suspicious individuals and arrest them shortly thereafter before theyve even committed any crimes.

This system, reportedly dubbed the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), uses big data to perform its pre-programmed tasks. It takes data from various banking records, facial-recognition cameras, license plate cameras, police check points, police reports, and even Wi-Fi internet sniffers in order to make any decisions regarding suspect individuals.

According to a report, the system can see all of the activity of Chinas citizens and immediately flag anything thats suspicious, such as a huge purchase of fertilizer all at one time, then notify the police. They are then expected to respond to the suspicious activity flagged on the same day, and are authorized to act based on what they do find.

According to Maya Wang, a senior China researchers at Human Rights Watch, her organization has been able to document the connection between detentions and so-called big data programs. We are no longer saying that mass surveillance is deeply and widely intrusive when it comes to privacy rights, which of course is a big alarm, she explained.

It goes further than that. People are being detained in an arbitrary manner because they are put in these political-education facilities.

The system, which has been deployed and in use already in Chinas far Western Xinjiang region, is reportedly meant to be implemented on political education centers. But the methods being applied in these facilities arent geared towards any real education at all, according to reports. It is said that the re-education involves forcibly detaining people for months on end, even when no charges have been pressed against them, just so they can be inculcated in political doctrine thats deemed acceptable by the Chinese state.

Though largely unreliable and, according to Wang, often exacerbates some of the biases, China has already decided to put a lot of trust in this new system. Its built upon ideas of Chinese police theorists, who have identified certain extremist behaviors, which include if you store a large amount of food in your home, if your child suddenly quits school and so on, she said. When a computer is trained on how to search for these particular parameters, youll end up with a big data program modeled upon pretty racist ideas about peaceful behaviors that are part of a Uyghur identity.

The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group living in East and Central Asia that are prone to discrimination in the region.

Although considered a massive violation of human rights and privacy to citizens who are living in many developed countries, this latest move by China can be considered business as usual. A similar system was already in place even before this new one was implemented. The only difference here is, now theyre doing it with the help of technology.

One police officer named Xu Linglei, who took part in an interview with the Chinese Nanfang magazine, remarked that the system is working perfectly for what it was designed for. Before the application of big data, police often only arrested people after they had committed wrongdoings and the victims suffered a losses as a result, he stated.

Now, relying on information technology, then can take preventive measures in advance.

Could you live in such a society? Would you like to see something similar implemented where you live?

See other ways that human rights and privacy get violated in PrivacyWatch.news.

Sources include:

TheGlobeandMail.com

Reuters.comHARBOR, Ore.  Two wanted suspects have been arrested in Harbor, according to the Curry County Sheriff's Office (CCSO). Both suspects were fugitives from Coos County, wanted on charges of Manslaughter I, Assault I, and Criminal Mistreatment I.

The Coos Bay Police Department reached out for assistance from the CCSO and local law enforcement agencies in Curry County around 1:15 p.m. on Thursday, according to CCSO. They had reason to believe that the two suspects were in the Brookings or Harbor area.

Law enforcement agencies in Curry County were provided with photos, descriptions, and vehicle information for 46-year-old Michael Bowman and 42-year-old Christine Bush.

A CCSO detective located a vehicle matching the provided description around 2:53 p.m. outside of a residence in Harbor. Sheriff's deputies, aided by Oregon State Police (OSP) troopers, made contact with Bowman and Bush at the residence and arrested them on felony warrants.

The OSP helped transport both suspects to the Curry County Jail, after which the CCSO conveyed them to the Coos County Jail.1 of 3

30 Minutes of exercise reverse heart damage



We all know how important exercise is in prevention and management of various diseases. Now, a recent study has concluded that exercise can reverse the damage to sedentary, aging hearts and help prevent risk of future heart failure -provided it's enough exercise, and it's begun in time.

Cardiologists at UT Southwestern and Texas Health Resources conducted this study. To get the maximum benefit, exercise regimen should begin by late middle age (before age 65), when the heart apparently retains some plasticity and ability to remodel itself. Results also conclude that exercise needs to be performed four to five times a week. As two to three times a week was not enough, according to an earlier study.



Sedentary aging can lead to a stiffening of the muscle in the heart's left ventricle, the chamber that pumps oxygen-rich blood back out to all the organs and tissues of the body. When the heart muscle stiffens, you get high pressure and the heart chamber doesn't fill as well with blood. In its most severe form, blood can back up into the lungs. That is when heart failure develops. Read More...

FOREST CITY, Iowa  An ATV chase from Iowa into Minnesota results in probation for a Winnebago County man.

Miguel Angel Romo, 22, received seven days in jail, two years of probation, and a $315 fine. He was arrested in July 2017. Law enforcement says the Buffalo Center man was seen riding a 4-wheel ATV at 67 miles an hour. When an officer tried to pull Romo over, he reportedly accelerated to 80 to 90 miles an hour in a pursuit that went into Faribault County, Minnesota.

A Winnebago County sheriffs deputy says he and his K9 partner found Romo hiding beside his ATV in the middle of a corn field. A bag containing marijuana and a scale and grinder was found nearby.

Romo wound up pleading guilty to eluding and possession of marijuana  1st offense.Power was out for many north Iowa residents and some agencies advised no travel. This March storm packed a punch.

According to the Alliant Energy outage map, there were more than 5,000 outages reported in north Iowa Saturday morning. That number was cut to around 4,000 as of 8 a.m. and was at 3,556 at 9:15 a.m.

At 10:40 a.m., Alliant Energy reported 1,547 customers without power in the viewing area. There were around 2,500 without power Saturday afternoon.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LATEST ROAD CONDITIONS.

"No one should be out unless necessary," the Worth County Sheriff's Office said in a social media post Saturday morning.

Some areas reported seeing well over a foot of a snow.

"During inclement weather, your safety is the citys number one priority. The Police Department issues a parking ban in order to allow Public Works to efficiently plow city streets. Violators of the ban impede our crews ability to do their jobs and inconvenience city residents and visitors," the Clear Lake Police Department said on Facebook Saturday morning.

A tow ban was in effect Saturday morning in many counties. It went into effect around 1 a.m. Saturday and lasted deep into the day.

You can check updates on the outages here.





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WEATHER APP: iOS | AndroidROCHESTER, Minn.  An ATM stolen out of a hotel and put into the front seat of a Toyota Prius resulted in two arrests Friday morning.

Robert King, 43, of Chicago, and 47-year-old Anthony King, no address, are facing charges for burglary, felony theft and possession of a burglary tools.

A Microtel employee said two masked men were in the process of removing the hotels ATM when they were spotted and 911 was called at 4:47 a.m. Friday.

Using a dolly, the two men loaded the ATM into the front seat of the Prius, police said. The vehicle was stopped on 48th St. during a high-risk stop.

Both men were taken into custody.Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Plenty of sunshine. High near 80F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few passing clouds. Low 56F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.North Korea has accepted South Korea's proposal to hold high-level talks on March 29 to discuss the date and agenda items for an inter-Korean summit slated for late April, the Ministry of Unification said Saturday.

On Thursday, Seoul notified Pyongyang via a border communication channel of its proposal for talks next Thursday on the northern side of the border truce village of Panmunjom, saying the South's three-member delegation will be led by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon.

President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un plan to hold a meeting in late April, the third summit, after meetings in 2000 and 2007.

"North Korea delivered its agreement via the border communication channel today, saying it will send a three-member delegation headed by Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for Peaceful Reunification," said the ministry in a release.

"The government will make full preparations for the inter-Korean summit through the March 29 talks," it added.

Cho and Ri met at Panmunjom on Jan. 9 to hold the two Koreas' first formal talks in more than two years to discuss the North's participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics and ways to improve bilateral ties.

Ri later visited South Korea as part of Pyongyang's Olympic delegation, led by Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. (Yonhap)President Moon Jae-in eats rice noodle at a casual restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam, Saturday. / Yonhap



By Kim Rahn



HANOI  President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook had breakfast at a local restaurant in Vietnam, Saturday, on the last day of their state visit to the Southeast Asian country.



It was part of their effort to have close contact with Vietnamese people.







By Kim Ji-soo



The recent flurry of breakthroughs and meetings between South and North Korea, the United States and other concerned countries has invariably prompted the public's anticipation for peace and renewed exchanges on the Korean Peninsula.



President Moon Jae-in captured the sentiment last week during a meeting with his presidential aides when he said, "We now have a very precious chance to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, establish a permanent peace system and build a path of joint prosperity for South and North Korea."



It's a precipitous moment, and South Koreans remain hopeful but cautious. According to Gallup poll results announced last Friday, 53 percent of respondents said they believe North Korea had changed following the South Korean delegation's visit to Pyongyang and pledges to meet with the United States.



But the 30,000 plus North Korean defectors who have settled in South Korea are somewhat skeptical.







Jung Gwang-il, who defected from the North and arrived in the South in 2004, does not really believe in the significance of the recent steps taken by the two Koreas. Jung, who leads the activist group No Chain for North Korea which aims to help liberate North Koreans by sending factual information via balloon or other methods to North Korea, was part of the delegation, along with fellow defector Ji Sung-ho who met with U.S. President Trump in February.



"I don't know if the United States-North Korea talks can take place. The inter-Korea summit will happen, but the former, I'm not sure," Jung said.



Similarly, Lee Ae-ran, the first North Korean female defector to receive a Ph.D. in South Korea at Ewha Womans University, sounded skeptical about the flurry of engagements involving the North and the South's stalwart ally. Lee, who defected in 1998, heads the Institute of Traditional North Korean Food and operates Neungna Bapsang, a restaurant in Jongno-gu, central Seoul.





Lee Ae-ranSouth Korean President Moon Jae-in arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Saturday for a summit with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and talks with other UAE leaders on ways to improve the countries' relationship.

Moon's official visit to the UAE followed his three-day state visit to Vietnam, which ended earlier in the day in Hanoi.

His four-day trip to the UAE began with a visit to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, apparently to show his respect to the first UAE president, Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.



The South Korean leader is set to hold a bilateral summit with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan on Sunday.

This is Moon's first official visit to the UAE since he took office in May 2017.Independence Gate circa 1900



By Robert Neff



In the spring of 1895, following China's defeat by the Japanese during the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War, Yeongeunmun (the Welcoming Gate of Obligation), where emissaries from China were met, was torn down to reinforce Joseon's complete independence. Only two pillars of the gate were left standing as a testimony to the past.



In June 1896, Homer Hulbert, editor of the Korean Repository, declared King Gojong had decided to replace Yeongeunmun with a new gate that would be known as Dongnimmun (Independence Gate). "We rejoice at this decision of His Majesty," Hulbert wrote. "Let the Arch be erected and may the real independence of this country be placed on as firm a foundation as are the side pillars of the arch."



But was the Korean monarch responsible for its construction? On July 4, 1896, The Independent  a Korean newspaper owned by Dr. Philip Jaisohn, a Korean-American  published the following account:



"Thanks to the will of the God, Korea, after many suns (years) of serving as a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty, has become a fully independent nation. Now, the monarch of Korea is on equal footing with the world's leaders, and the Korean people are free. Because of the significance of this auspicious event, this symbol will serve as a reminder to the world and to future generations of Koreans of Korea's everlasting independence as well as be a place where the Korean public can exercise and enjoy the fresh air, quiet, and scenery."





Independent Gate circa 1900-1910



Throughout the summer of 1896, contributions by Koreans and foreigners were received almost daily and soon the estimated $4,000 needed for the construction of Independence Gate was raised.



The groundbreaking ceremony was held Nov. 21 and was well-attended by the residents of Seoul. One American guest described the event in her diary:



"All things went off beautifully  some good speeches, the Governor of Seoul, a very intimate friend of ours, made a good speech in Corean and at the last, near the close, Dr. Jaisohn made in English a splendid speech 'Foreigners in Corea,' which we all listened to eagerly. Then he turned and made an address in Corean to the natives about the same thing. Then singing by the school boys and some very good drilling too, and then we all gathered nearby to a large building, where a long table was filled with splendid [food] and we were all waited on by the 'rank' and they seemed very proud to do it."



It was "a good clear morning" she declared and professed she had never enjoyed herself more than she had at the event.



The gate was officially opened on Nov. 20, 1897  almost exactly a year after the groundbreaking ceremony. Nearly 1,850 pieces of granite were used and, somewhat ironically, part of the construction crew was made up of Chinese workmen.





Seoul Independence Arch circa 1905-1910Casey Lartigue Jr., co-founder of the Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center, compiled these statements from interviews with the refugees.



Question: What would you do if and when the two Koreas are reunited?



-------------------------------------------------



Sohyun, female, arrived in South Korea in 2011



Before I recently changed jobs, I was working here as an insurance counselor. I learned so many things. After reunification, I believe that I could upgrade insurance in North Korea. I would like to be an insurance counselor for North Koreans after reunification, to make sure they have good insurance coverage.



It may sound like a personal grudge, but I would also like them to know that juche is a lie, that North Korea was never really independent. I was brainwashed by the regime. Now that I am free, I can read anything and watch documentaries, and I know that North Korea told me so many lies.



I would like North Koreans to know the truth about the government and to be free to learn as they wish. So in addition to my possible career as an insurance counselor, I would like to have opportunities to give speeches to North Koreans, spreading information and being able to talk with people about the lies North Korea has told them.



Hyun, male, arrived in South Korea in 2013



I have always been interested in architecture. I hope to make that my career here in South Korea. After reunification, I will go back to my hometown, then I will rebuild the home I grew up in and also try to improve my neighborhood.



I believe that it is important to contribute to society not only as a person who does valuable things in my career, but also to contribute to society in other ways. The house I grew up in was always in poor condition. The way houses are designed in North Korea has always seemed inefficient to me. I hope to be able to make a difference one day.



Jihye, female, arrived in South Korea in 2015



So many bad things happened to me in North Korea and China that sometimes I want to forget about them. I was usually starving in North Korea and so many terrible things happened to me in China that at first I blocked everything out of my mind. When people I don't know well ask me questions about them, I have nothing to say.



I think people cannot understand what North Koreans go through. But some people in South Korea have been so nice to me  especially a nun who is like a big sister to me, you and (TNKR co-founder) Eunkoo Lee  that it has let me know that there are good people in the world.



I hope that after reunification I can help North Koreans find good people who can help them. I want to share love and kindness so that people who are suffering can live good lives.

Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

A shower or two around the area early, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 46F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

A shower or two around the area early, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 46F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%.Rome, March 20 - Italy's media watchdog AGCOM on Tuesday asked Facebook for information on the use of data analytics for the purpose of political communication by third parties, the watchdog said in a statement. The move came amid the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook is under investigation in the US and the UK on the suspected vote-influencing profile harvesting scandal over Brexit and the US presidential elections. Mark Zuckerberg has been summoned by a British parliamentary panel and the European Parliament.Im books editor Carolyn Kellogg; welcome to this weeks books newsletter.

THE BIG STORY

Is America on the brink of losing its historic democracy? Thats the question Yascha Mounk raises in The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger & How to Save It. Combining trains of political thought with sometimes surprising data-driven analysis, Mounk has written a brilliant book, writes former congressman Mickey Edwards in our review, that is an important read.

Then-candidate Donald Trump campaigns in traditionally Democratic Ambridge, Pa., in 2016. (Jeff Swensen / Getty Images )

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SPRING PREVIEW

This week in Sunday Calendar, youll find the Arts & Books spring preview, which includes shows and happenings in pop music, classical music, dance and theater. And also book events. See my editors picks here.

Author James Ellroy will discuss L.A. Confidential after a screening of the film. (Quique Garcia/EPA/Shutte )

BESTSELLERS

Now in its fifth week on our bestseller list, Kristin Hannahs The Great Alone  about a family that finds itself in trouble after a move to Alaska  is the No. 1 L.A. Times fiction bestseller.

Michelle McNamaras debut book, Ill Be Gone in the Dark, about her amateur investigation of a cold case  the terrifying Golden State Killer  climbs to No. 2 on our nonfiction bestseller list. After McNamaras sudden death, her husband, Patton Oswalt, brought the book to publication. Hell talk about it at the L.A. Times Festival of Books.

See all the books on our bestseller lists here.

Michelle McNamara is seen with husband Patton Oswalt in 2012. (Matt Sayles / Associated Press )

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MORE IN BOOKS

Harry Mathews posthumous novel, The Solitary Twin, is a fitting digression, writes Tyler Malone in our review.

Items owned by poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were auctioned in London this week.

Former FBI Director James Comeys memoir, A Higher Loyalty, wont be out for weeks, but it has reached Amazons bestseller list based on pre-orders (perhaps spurred by goings-on in Washington, D.C.)

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If events in the news have got you down, Rochelle OGorman reviews humorous audiobooks from Lewis Black, Tim Dorsey, Peter Carey and Alexander McCall Smith.

Cultural superheroine Claire L. Evans sings in a band, created a popular app and has now written a book about the history of women in technology, Broad Band. She talks to Agatha French.

Claire L. Evans book is Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times )

Thanks for reading!

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carolyn.kellogg@latimes.com

@paperhausIf you cant trust a social network to protect your data, what can you do?

For some in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the answer is the hashtag spreading this week: #DeleteFacebook. For others, though, quitting the worlds largest social network isnt a viable option.

Some use Facebook for their jobs. For many who run an online business, Facebook is essential. For others, it remains the best way to remember birthdays, schedule events, post photos and stay in touch with friends and family across the globe  privacy concerns aside.

So what can you do if you want to protect yourself without deleting your Facebook account? Theres no perfect solution, but there are a few steps you can take to keep your account more secure.

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What happened with Cambridge Analytica wasnt a data breach in the traditional sense: Facebook was not hacked and its systems were not infiltrated. Instead, Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm with ties to the Trump campaign, is accused of purchasing personal information on millions of Facebook users from University of Cambridge psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan.

Kogan had permission to collect data from the 270,000 people who filled out his personality survey through an app he created called thisisyourdigitallife. The survey also collected data on respondents entire networks of Facebook friends, totaling around 50 million people.

Until Facebook changed its third-party data-sharing rules in 2015, such information-gathering was allowed by the sites Terms of Service. What wasnt allowed was selling the data collected to a commercial entity such as Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly used the information to target political messages. Since the scandal erupted, Kogan and Cambridge Analytica have been banned from Facebook.

People feel that they were being spied on, and that their data and their privacy is being breached without their consent, said Karen North, a professor of digital social media for USCs Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Though deleting your Facebook account makes a statement, its not a permanent solution to protecting your data online, said Gennie Gebhart, a researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that advocates for free expression and privacy online.

In her opinion, people shouldnt have to delete Facebook. Facebook should do better.

If you want to use a platform or a service that adds value to your life, you shouldnt have to sell your soul and kiss your privacy goodbye, Gebhart said.

Any time you interact with Facebook  whether youre checking into a location, posting vacation photos, or liking a friends status  you are giving Facebook data. Any time you interact with a third-party developer  games such as FarmVille and apps that show you what your profile photo would look like if you were older or a different gender, or tell you what the most popular song was the year you graduated from high school  you are giving your data to Facebook and to that developer. (Sometimes in ways you might not realize: sharing a post about the most popular song during the year you graduated high school tells Facebook what year you graduated from high school, even if that information isnt on your profile.)

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If youre done turning your data over to Facebook, it offers two options: Deactivating your account, and deleting your account. Deactivating essentially puts your profile on pause. If you decide later on that you want to use Facebook again, you can reactivate it and all your posts will still be there.

Deleting it is a more permanent solution. After a 90-day waiting period during which Facebook lets you change your mind, your profile ceases to exist. Facebook says it doesnt retain anything youve posted or any information that could identify you. (It does retain de-identified data to track usage.)

Of course, even if Facebook itself deletes your data, that still leaves the third-party apps. Once you disable an app from your profile, Facebook stops sharing your data with it. However, you need to reach out to the app directly to ask its developer to delete the data you have already handed over.

One problem with that: Basically, theres no enforcement mechanism to make sure the developer actually deletes your data when you ask them to, said Serge Egelman, the research director of the Usable Security and Privacy Group at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley. Facebook just takes it on faith that everyone complies with this and doesnt use data inappropriately, which is obviously ridiculous.

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Facebook says its trying to change that. In Mark Zuckerbergs statement Wednesday on the Cambridge Analytica debacle, he outlined the steps the company would take to boost enforcement, including an investigation into apps that had access to large amounts of data prior to the companys data-sharing rule changes and a full audit of apps with suspicious activity.

Gebhart of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the changes were a good start, but dont go far enough. Furthermore, Facebook is asking people to trust it to fix a problem it was responsible for in the first place  something she feels Facebook really hasnt owned up to.

Overall, she said, the onus should be on Facebook and other tech companies to fix these problems and protect users, and to have full accountability and transparency in doing so.

You shouldnt have to be a settings wizard and technology expert to enjoy these platforms with security, she said.

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In the meantime, heres what she and other experts recommend to make your data as safe as possible.

Unfriend people you dont know or barely speak to

Its fun to have a high friend count, but as the Cambridge Analytica incident proved, your data could be vulnerable through your network. Weed out anyone you dont really know or havent spoken to in years.

Be aware of whats publicly available from your profile

Facebook has an option to see what your profile looks like to the public. Go to Settings > Timeline and Tagging > Review > Review what other people see on your timeline, and click View As.

Lock down any information you dont want to be public.

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For instance, you might not want anyone and everyone to know your hometown, your marital status, or where you work.

Review which apps have access to your data

If youve been using Facebook for a long time, youve probably enabled a staggering number of apps that youve completely forgotten about. Go to Settings > Apps > Logged in with Facebook and remove anything that doesnt absolutely need access to your Facebook profile.

Deleting those apps means Facebook will no longer provide them with your data, though you have to reach out to the app developer directly to get them to delete the data they already have. Facebook provides you with a link to contact the developer to begin the process.

Disable API sharing

Many websites and apps allow you to sign in with your Facebook account. This means one less password to remember. But it also means Facebook is connected to whatever youre doing in that app or on that site. If you really want to disconnect, disable API sharing by going to Settings > Apps > Apps, Website and Plugins, and click Edit. Disable it.

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Its worth noting that this is something of a nuclear option: Some dating and ride-sharing apps and other sites require you to use a Facebook login as a way of proving youre really who you say you are. If you disable API sharing entirely, you wont be able to use them, so you might want to review and revoke permissions on a case-by-case basis.

Lie  or at least limit what you share about yourself

If youre committed to throwing Facebook and advertisers off your trail, make it harder for them to pin down exactly who you are. Mark Marino, director of the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab at USC, says he tells people to create a little noise in their profile. Basically, lie. Make your birthday a different date than it actually is. Tell Facebook youre 100 years old. Theres no reason Facebook needs to know your hometown, or which of your friends are actually your family members. A lot of people fill in those fields just because theyre there, but they are not mandatory to having a Facebook account.

Gebhart said theres no way to make sure your online data is completely safe and protected, but steps like these should give you peace of mind. She likened it to locking your door at night: You know someone could hypothetically pick the lock or break the door down, but you can feel reasonably safe with the door locked.

To read this article in Spanish click here

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Tell me your mothers maiden name, the street you grew up on and your first pets name on Twitter @jessica_roy.

jessica.roy@latimes.comIn Barry, premiering Sunday on HBO, Bill Hader plays Barry Berkman, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan working out of Cleveland as a freelance contract killer.

Created by Hader and Alec Berg (Seinfeld, Silicon Valley), it has something in common with Danny McBrides HBO comedies Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals in how it makes a hero out of an adult in a state of sometimes dangerous arrested development. But Haders character is more complex and less self-involved  he barely has a self, it seems at times. Half weary grown-up, half innocent child, hes shaped by Hader into a plausible single person.

The show is similarly binary: silly and engaging, sunny and dark. Its funny where it wants to be, and sometimes isnt funny at all.

Barry is repped, to use the appropriate show business term, by Fuches (Stephen Root), an old family friend whose cure for Barrys post-military depression was to get him back killing people  for money. Fuches, who takes a large agents cut, calls this Barrys purpose. But Barry, who has grown less sure of this, has lapsed back into depression and isnt sleeping.

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Fuchs books Barry for a job with a Hollywood-based Chechen mobster (Glenn Fleshler), which takes them out of the familiar dun of the Rust Belt to the disorienting brightness of Southern California. In following his target, Barry stumbles into an acting class run by Henry Winklers Gene Cousineau, where he is taken for a student and begins to think his life could change.

I was really good, Barry reports to Fuchs of his accidental time onstage (he wasnt really), and afterwards I hung out with all them  They made me feel really good about myself.

Youre a killer, you kill the bad guys, Fuches replies. This is what you do, this is all you do. (The point where Fuches taking care of Barry becomes taking advantage of Barry is not always clear.) Circumstances play a part  its a tightly plotted series  as small slips lead to big problems and bad things lead to worse ones.

Unlike other hoods-go-to-Hollywood stories  Get Shorty, for example, whose second season as a television series is on the way, or the straight-faced Ray Donovan  Barry is not about power but dreams. Nobody here is living in a Case Study house in the hills. Berg and Hader playfully mock the student actors self-involvement without becoming condescending. (Says one student actor, I did one of those online quizzes to find out whether I was living in a bubble or not, and it turns out  I am.) The classmates are competitive yet supportive; generous is their compliment of choice.

But other characters have creative impulses too. A mobster has been workshopping a threatening message; a man whose job is cutting people up finds himself standing on a stage and begins to sing; a detective slides a bust mix CD into his car stereo (though he has mistaken Rimsky-Korsakovs Flight of the Bumblebee for Wagners Ride of the Valkyries).

A jovial soundtrack signals comedy; that each episode comes with a chapter heading suggests we are to take it seriously. (The titles are acting-class dictums: Make the Unsafe Choice, Listen With Your Ears, React With Your Face, Know Your Truth.) Most of the time in Barry, no one is killing anyone, or being beaten up or tortured. But there are violent scenes and tragic ones.

Much that occurs, among the acting class, the mobsters and the police, is absurd, but Barrys pain and hope and yearning are real enough. We feel for him and fret for him and wonder what sort of happy outcome there might be for a hitman in the straight world. The happy, guilt-free future life he pictures himself living with acting classmate Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg) is assembled from scraps of pop culture; ordinary life is beyond his imagining.

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Hes not an antihero, as we have come to know them (all too well) on television. He wins only insofar as he becomes a better person  and we want him to win. Indeed, apart from the questions of who might be killed or might be caught, the suspense hangs on whether Barry might become a good actor, which is also to ask will he find himself? Its a question of soul, not of mere material success.

In part, Barry is a study of a life spent following orders, of being tossed on the waves other people make. Barry is torn between an old mentor and a new, but where Fuches has a vested interest in keep Barry working, Cousineau wants him to look inside himself to find himself. You are deferential to every character in a scene, the teacher observes.

Winkler, whose career as of late has included recurring roles on Parks and Recreation, Arrested Development and Childrens Hospital  Fonzie feels so long ago  is very funny as Cousineau, a marginal Hollywood figure who makes restaurant reservations under the name Neil Patrick Harris because I find I get a better table that way. Cousineau gets his own connected thread here, romancing Paula Newsomes Det. Moss. Newsome does lovely work here. Indeed, the cast is universally fine and notably also includes DArcy Carden (Janet on The Good Place) among the student actors and Anthony Carrigan (Gotham) as NoHo Hank, a particularly cheerful Chechen mobster.

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As followers of Saturday Night Live and Documentary Now! know, there are a lot of people inside Hader. Tall and lanky with a boyish face, he can turn hard as necessary, sweet in a complicated way; there is something about him that recalls leading men of the 1930s and 40s, like a cross of Henry Fonda and James Stewart. Hes given himself a good part here, satisfying in its eight-episode arc but with room to grow if a second season follows. Fingers crossed.

Barry

Where: HBO

When: 10:30 p.m. Sunday

Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)

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robert.lloyd@latimes.com

Follow Robert Lloyd on Twitter @LATimesTVLloyd

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SNL alum Bill Hader returns to his roots to channel his inner ScaramucciA rainy Thursday night gave celebrity hairstylist and recently appointed Living Proof brand ambassador Mara Roszak the perfect entree to talk about the product range. Billed as an evening of Styling + Science, the event, which was at Milk Studios in Hollywood, featured defrizz demonstrations, hair consultations, cocktails and hors doeuvres.

I love to connect with women, Roszak said, wearing a black skirt by Proenza Schouler that she purchased while working in Singapore a few years back with Zoe Saldana. The hairstylist, who counts Emma Stone, Brie Larson and Haley Bennett among her clients, said the weather reminded her of a predicament she faced with Saldana years earlier. It was raining for the Golden Globes, and I was like, What am I going to do? Had I known about Living Proofs products, I would have felt a lot more confident knowing that her hair would be fine with a little bit of moisture in the air.

Hairstylist to the stars Mara Roszak, right, tends to the locks of a guest at the March 22 Styling + Science event at Milk Studios in Hollywood. (Amy Graves )

Roszak said it was nearly the same scenario at this years Academy Awards  but for the brands defrizzing and humidity-shielding products, which turned a nerve-racking moment into a confident one. I was able to use [those products] on Emma [Stone] this year before she walked out the door, Roszak said. Luckily it wasnt raining, but it really does prevent those climatic difficulties.

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A self-professed product addict, Roszak said shes enjoyed taking a deep dive into the science that goes into what goes onto her clients hair. (Among the things shes learned is that the silicone-free, humidity-blocking line was developed by MIT scientists in Cambridge, Mass., where the brand is headquartered.) Some of the favorite Living Proof products  this is the brand shes fronting, mind you  include its Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo ($23); Restore Blowout Concentrate ($29); and the not-quite-yet-available-to-consumers No Frizz Instant De-Frizzer ($26), which will launch on the livingproof.com website March 26, followed by a bricks-and-mortar rollout May 1.

Roszak helped Emma Stone, left, and Hailey Bennett, right, achieve their distinctive dos for the Academy Awards earlier this month. (Kyle Grillot / AFP / Getty Images (left), Mike Nelson / EPA-EFE / REX / Shutterstock (right) )

Among the standout hairstyles from this seasons awards-show circuit that she (and Living Proof) can take credit for: Emma Stones sleek, straight, side-parted Oscar look; Haley Bennetts windswept Oscar hair which featured real flowers (Haleys inspiration was, I want to look like I was rolling or running through a field of flowers. I said, We could actually use real flowers and glue them into the hair); and Brie Larsons SAG Awards look, achieved with the aid of Living Proofs Flex Hairspray. ([It] is super touchable and really soft, Roszak said, so the style stays intact without it looking like its super shellacked and hard in any way.)

While this years awards-show derby may be in the rearview, the hairstylist, who owns the Mare Salon in West Hollywood, isnt taking her foot off the gas any time soon. She said there are a few jobs with Stone on the horizon, some planned travel, and a wedding to plan  her own.

I know were talking about work, she said with a laugh, but thats a big event thats coming up.

image@latimes.com

For fashion news, follow us at @latimesimage on Twitter.Good morning. Im Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, March 24, 2018. Multiple March for Our Lives events will take place in the L.A. area; click here to find out where they are. Lets take a look back at the week in Opinion.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump bashed China. A lot. It was perhaps the most normal thing he did before his improbable election victory, as China  the land of communism, cheap manufacturing and lax enforcement of intellectual property laws  serves as the perennial bipartisan antagonist.

But U.S. policy on China gives Trump a chance to display both his most admirable qualities and his total recklessness: On the one hand, the president deserves credit for following through on an oft-made promise that his predecessors failed to fulfill; and on the other, Trump seems willing to disrupt the American economy and our fragile relationship with China, no matter the consequences.

And its the potentially dire consequences of the presidents recent decision to slap up to $60 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports that troubles The Times Editorial Board:

China's bad trade practices were damaging enough when the country was mainly a source of cheap consumer goods. But now that China's industrial policy is focused on dominating such crucial 21st century fields as health sciences, artificial intelligence and aerospace, the stakes are considerably higher. That's why Trump's tough talk and actions are drawing plaudits from some lawmakers in both parties, whose patience with China has understandably grown thin. And two pieces of Trump's latest order  imposing restrictions on Chinese investments in the U.S. to match the ones China imposes on U.S. companies, and asking the World Trade Organization to rule against China's "discriminatory licensing practices"  are welcome steps that respect the WTO and international trade agreements that the U.S. has pushed the world to embrace. On the other hand, it's hard to see how slapping tariffs on as-yet-identified products will induce China to honor intellectual property rights, permit more investment by U.S. firms or stop trying to steal trade secrets online. The tariffs will no doubt raise the price that U.S. consumers pay for those products. And they will just as surely prompt China to retaliate against U.S. exports, even as it finds new buyers for its own goods. That's been the result when the U.S. has unilaterally imposed tariffs in the past, and there's no reason to think the outcome would be any different this time. >> Click here to read more

Gov. Jerry Brown always makes for an interesting profile subject. Californias governor is indefatigable, rhetorically confrontational and refreshingly apolitical compared with his fellow progressive Democrats. Those of us who live here and have witnessed Browns five-decade political career know this, but the Trump presidency gives journalists a chance to rediscover Californias one-of-a-kind, retiring leader. Read the latest such profile, focusing on the states war with Trump, in the New Yorker.

The kids are the adults in the room. Teens and twentysomethings get a lot of grief these days for failing to get their act together (adulting, anyone?), but on gun control, its we grown-ups who have failed everyone, writes Ann Friedman. Today, as millions of these young people march in the streets because of Congress total inability to protect the country from gun violence, its worth remembering whos slacking off and whos getting their act together. L.A. Times

Please, dont look away from his disabled child. Daniel T. Willinghams daughter has trisomy-18, a rare chromosomal disorder that shortens life spans and gives those who have it a distinct appearance. Chances are youll notice someone like Willinghams daughter and experience the urge not to stare. Thats understandable, but, Willingham writes, you should use it as an opportunity to get to know his daughter and interact with her. L.A. Times

Andrew McCabe will be fine. The rule of law might not be. The deputy FBI directors sacking immediately before his retirement doesnt mean McCabe will struggle financially or have trouble finding a job, writes former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, but it represents the most intense strike yet in Trump's overall assault on independent, apolitical law enforcement, an indispensable feature of our democracy. L.A. TimesFocus turns to midterm elections as marchers across the state demand stricter gun laws

Demonstrators rally at the March for Our Lives in Santa Ana on Saturday. (Nick Agro / For The Times)

As thousands of people participated in March for Our Lives rallies in Orange County, Los Angeles, San Francisco and across the state, one message appeared to be propelling many participants forward: Today we march. Tomorrow we vote.

At marches across the country, Vote them out! was a frequent refrain and signs condemning the National Rifle Assn. and Republican lawmakers were plentiful.

From Los Angeles to Sacramento @CASOSvote was out in force pre-registering hundreds of California 16- and 17- year-olds to vote today. #MarchForOurLives #VoteCalifornia pic.twitter.com/furTinnRCA  CA SOS Vote (@CASOSvote) March 24, 2018

Three teenagers from San Fernando Valley taking part in March For Our Lives on streets of Los Angeles to demand that their lives and safety become a priority, and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today. @latimes @latimesphotos @LANow #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/Djl67I3IMz  Irfan Khan  (@latfoto) March 24, 2018

In downtown Los Angeles, Secretary of State Alex Padilla set up booths to register voters and pre-register teens who have not yet turned 18 under a new state law that prepares them to vote.

Organizers in Santa Ana said at least two dozen young people were helping register marchers to vote there, many of them holding clipboards and pens as they made their way through the crowd. Among them were organizers with NextGen America, a group started by California billionaire and activist Tom Steyer, who has already put aside $1 million in a nationwide youth voter registration effort.

As much as we love your voice, we want to make sure your voice is counted on Nov. 6, Steyer told the crowd in Santa Ana. He plans to spend $30 million helping Democrats flip the House of Representatives this year, $3.5 million of it organizing young people in California.

Billionaire activist Tom Steyer addressed youth in crowd at #MarchForOurLivesOC in Santa Ana after march, urging them to vote.

As much as we love your voice, we want to make sure your voice is counted on Nov. 6.,@TomSteyer said. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/9zFdWwBBoU  Cindy Carcamo (@theCindyCarcamo) March 24, 2018

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has touted her support of an assault weapons ban in her tough reelection campaign, urged rallygoers outside San Francisco City Hall to extend their activism into November.

There is a bill in the Judiciary Committee to ban assault weapons with 30 co-sponsors, the California Democrat told them. The problem is the gun industry. They will go out and they will support mightily people in other states that will refuse to do this. Heres what Im asking you to do. Will you march? Will you register? Will you see that people vote and see that you vote and your friends vote for those that would rid this country of guns? The crowd yelled back loudly, Yeah!

In Irvine and San Diego, Democratic candidates for Congress used Saturdays marches as an opportunity to remain visible in several crowded, competitive races that could prove crucial to Democrats chances this fall. Track the California races that could flip the House here.USC names retired aerospace executive Wanda Austin as acting president, announces Nikias departure By Harriet Ryan USC appointed a retired aerospace executive as interim president and laid out a detailed plan for selecting a permanent leader Tuesday, ending speculation about whether outgoing President C.L. Max Nikias might remain in the post. Nikias, embattled over his administrations handling of a campus gynecologist accused of sexually abusing patients, relinquished his duties after a meeting of USCs board. The trustees tapped one of their own, Wanda Austin, an alumna and former president of the Aerospace Corp., to temporarily run the university. The trustees also approved the formation of a search committee and the hiring of firm Isaacson, Miller to coordinate the selection of a successor. A second search company, Heidrick & Struggles, will also advise trustees. Read More Facebook

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Ex-student sues elite Brentwood School after teacher is charged with sexually abusing him By Richard Winton A former student sued the elite Brentwood School on Monday in the wake of a female teacher being charged with repeatedly having sex with the minor, alleging that other faculty members encouraged the unlawful behavior and failed to report it to authorities. The lawsuit accuses the private school, whose students include the children of many of Hollywoods elite and L.A.s powerful, of acting negligently and allowing Aimee Palmitessa to abuse and batter the teenager sexually. The suit alleges that the student was abused in summer 2017 after one of the schools counselors offered words of encouragement to the then-17-year-old, identified in the suit as only John Doe, to engage in an illegal relationship with the teacher. Read More Facebook

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Civil jury vindicates fired Montebello school executives in whistleblower case By Howard Blume The Montebello school district is in dire straits  at risk of insolvency and under apparent criminal investigation. An outside audit in July found some teachers earning more than $200,000 a year, as well as improper raises, excess paid vacation time and inappropriate overtime, sick leave and car allowances. Fixing the district and pinpointing blame could take time. Read More Facebook

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L.A. schools fall short on safety measures, new report warns By Howard Blume After the mass shooting at Floridas Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February, Los Angeles school officials reassured parents that much had been done to keep local schools safe. California had tougher gun laws, after all, and the school district paid close attention to students mental health. But a new report issued Monday by a panel convened to take a close look offers some cause for concern, flagging inconsistent campus safety measures, thinly spread mental health staff and inadequate coordination between the school district and other public agencies. With the stakes this high, we must strive to do better, said L.A. City Atty. Mike Feuer, who assembled the panel. Read More Facebook

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L.A. school district says more are graduating, but rate may not show it By Howard Blume The L.A. Unified School District has hopes of continuing its winning streak this year with another record graduation rate, but the official numbers may not show it. A senior district administrator warned the board Tuesday that graduation rates were likely to decline 2% to 3% across the state, even though L.A. Unified is likely doing better than ever in producing graduates, he said. The issue is that the state will now count high school students who transfer to adult school as dropouts, said Oscar Lafarga, who heads the districts office of data and accountability. Previously, schools treated these students as though they had simply enrolled in another high school, he said. Read More Facebook

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Betsy DeVos to California: Not so fast on that federal education plan By Joy Resmovits Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (Erik Lesser / European Pressphoto Agency) In April, Californias top education officials breathed a sigh of relief. After months of debate and back-and-forth with Betsy DeVos staff, they had finalized a plan to satisfy a major education law that aims to make sure all students get a decent education. The state focused on aligning its plan to fulfill the requirements of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act with Californias Local Control Funding Formula, which gives extra money to districts to help students who come from low-income families, are in the foster system or are English learners. But this week, DeVos team said not so fast. Jason Botel, the U.S. Department of Educations principal deputy assistant secretary, sent California education officials a letter asking for more information in such areas as measuring student progress, graduation rates and English learners. In an unsigned statement, the California Department of Education declared itself surprised and disappointed because officials thought  after a meeting with federal officials in Washington  that they were on the right track to get approval. Now the Every Student Succeeds Act plan will be up for discussion once again at the July meeting of the State Board of Education. The U.S. Department of Education has already approved most state plans. Every Student Succeeds is the Obama administrations 2015 replacement for the No Child Left Behind Act. Facebook

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L.A. school board sets a new goal: prepare every grad to be eligible to apply for Cal State or UC By Sonali Kohli Last month, Los Angeles school board president proposed a spate of highly ambitious mandates aimed at ensuring that every district graduate be eligible to apply to one of the states public four-year universities by 2023. By the time the L.A. Unified school board unanimously approved the resolution Tuesday, the original language had been watered down. The goal is no longer that in five years 100% of students meet the long list of benchmarks, which include not just college eligibility for graduates but first-grade reading proficiency and English fluency by sixth grade for all students who enter the district in kindergarten or first grade speaking another language. The original college-readiness goal, for example, called for 100% of all high school students to be eligible to apply to one of the states four-year universities. Now the goal seems to offer more wiggle room: Prepare all high school graduates to be eligible to apply to a California four-year university. Read More Facebook

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We have been hurt. More women say they were mistreated by USC gynecologist By Richard Winton USC student Anika Narayanan says she vividly recalls her first appointment with Dr. George Tyndall at the campus health center, alleging that he made several explicit comments during an examination she felt was inappropriate and invasive. When she came back for a second visit in 2016 after a nonconsensual sexual encounter, he allegedly chastised her, she said in a civil lawsuit and at a press conference Tuesday. He asked me if I had forgotten to use a condom again,  said Narayanan, 21. At one point, she said, Tyndall asked if I did a lot of doggy style,  she said. Read More Facebook

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L.A. Unified gives inspector general brief contract extension By Howard Blume The Los Angeles school board on Tuesday extended the contract of Ken Bramlett, its inspector general, by three months, though his job is far from secure and questions remain about the future direction of his watchdog office. Board members also unanimously promoted Vivian Ekchian, who had been the runner-up for the superintendents job, to deputy superintendent  the districts No. 2 position. Both moves had elements of peacemaking between different factions on the board. Read More Facebook

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USCs handling of complaints about campus gynecologist is being investigated by federal government By Harriet Ryan The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it has launched an investigation into how the University of Southern California handled misconduct complaints against a campus gynecologist, the latest fallout in a scandal that has prompted the resignation of USCs president, two law enforcement investigations and dozens of lawsuits. In revealing the inquiry by the departments Office of Civil Rights, officials rebuked USC for what they alleged was improper withholding of information about Dr. George Tyndall during a previous federal investigation. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who has been criticized for taking a less vigorous approach to examining sexual misconduct than predecessors, called for a systemic examination of USC and urged administrators to fully cooperate. Read More Facebook

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Judge to sentence woman and her boyfriend for the murder of an 8-year-old that led to L.A. child welfare reforms By Marisa Gerber A woman and her boyfriend are expected to be sentenced Thursday for the torture and murder of an 8-year-old boy whose killing in 2013 provoked public outrage, prompted sweeping reform of Los Angeles Countys child welfare system, and led to unprecedented criminal charges against social workers who handled the childs case. Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, 34, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for her role in the death of her son, Gabriel. A jury decided last year that her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, 37, should be executed. When paramedics arrived at the boys Palmdale home in May 2013, Gabriel had slipped out of consciousness. He had a fractured skull, broken ribs, burned skin, missing teeth and BB pellets embedded in his groin. A paramedic would later testify that every inch of the boys small body had been abused. Read More Facebook

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L.A. Unifieds spending out of step with similar school systems, task force says By Howard Blume The Los Angeles school district is out of step with similar school systems, spending more on teachers pay and health benefits and less on activities that could enhance student learning, according to a new report by an outside task force. The L.A. Unified School District Advisory Task Force did not make specific recommendations, but instead posed a series of questions it said the district needs to answer to make sure its funding is aimed at providing a full opportunity for all students to succeed. What were trying to say is: Lets put the data on the table. Lets look at the truth. Lets be transparent and here are the numbers, said task force member Renata Simril. This is not to say that  we should cut teachers salaries. Read More Facebook

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Top USC medical school official feared dean was doing drugs and alerted administration, he testifies By Paul Pringle A former vice dean of USCs Keck School of Medicine testified Tuesday that he feared the schools then-dean, Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito, could be doing drugs and expressed concerns about his general well-being to the universitys No. 2 administrator before Puliafito abruptly left his job in 2016. Dr. Henri Fords testimony at a hearing of the state Medical Board marks the first suggestion that any USC administrator had suspicions about Puliafitos possible drug use before he stepped down. A Times investigation in 2017 found Puliafito led a secret second life of using illegal drugs with a circle of young criminals and addicts. Puliafito testified about his behavior at the hearing Tuesday, saying he took drugs with one young woman on a weekly basis. Ford said that he decided to alert USC Provost Michael Quick after receiving reports in early 2016 that Puliafito was partying in hotels with people of questionable reputation, and that he came to worry about his mental stability. Read More Facebook

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Why L.A. Unified may face financial crisis even with a giant surplus this year By Jessica Calefati With more than half a billion dollars socked away for next school year, the Los Angeles Unified School District hardly seems just two years from financial ruin. Its a scenario that is especially tough to swallow if youre a low-wage worker seeking a raise or a teacher who wants smaller classes. But budget documents show that todays $548-million surplus cannot be sustained  and that even basic services face steep, seemingly unavoidable cuts because of massive problems barreling the districts way. Theres a disconnect between the rosy short-term picture and what we know is coming, said board member Kelly Gonez. Read More Facebook

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We have failed: Top USC officials try to reassure students amid gynecologist scandal By Joy Resmovits Top administrators at USC are reaching out to students in the wake of misconduct allegations against the universitys longtime gynecologist, acknowledging failings and vowing reforms as they try to address growing outrage over the revelations. Several USC deans have sent out messages trying to reassure students and faculty that the university is committed to changing. We have failed, wrote Jack H. Knott, dean of USCs Sol Price School of Public Policy, in a May 24 letter. What happened is antithetical to everything we know is right. Read More Facebook

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Rick Caruso is named chair of USCs trustees, vows swift investigation of gynecologist scandal By Thomas Curwen The University of Southern Californias board of trustees has elected mall magnate Rick Caruso to be the new chair of the board, giving fresh leadership as the university navigates a widening scandal involving a longtime campus gynecologist. The move marks the latest effort by USC to address the case, which has sparked a criminal investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department and dozens of civil lawsuits. More than 400 people have contacted a hotline that the university established for patients to make reports about their experience with Dr. George Tyndall. In his first act as chairman, Caruso announced that the white-shoe L.A. law firm OMelveny & Myers would conduct a thorough and independent investigation into the gynecologists conduct and reporting failures at the clinic. He set an ambitious timeline for the review, pledging it would conclude before students return for the fall semester. Read More Facebook

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UC Berkeley students persistence helps win more liberal rules for in-state tuition By Teresa Watanabe Ifechukwu Okeke thought shed be a shoo-in for in-state tuition when she was admitted to UC Berkeley for fall 2016. She had moved to the United States from Nigeria in 2012 to go to Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga. By the time she got her acceptance to transfer to UC to study molecular and cell biology, she had lived in California four years. She had a California drivers license, bank account and rental records as proof. UC Berkeley, however, ruled she was a nonresident  which meant she would have to pay nearly $27,000 more. Read More Facebook

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State medical board calls former County-USC doctor a sexual predator, suspends his license By Matt Hamilton A UCLA cardiologist has been temporarily stripped of his medical license after state regulators described him as a sexual predator who assaulted three female colleagues when he was working and training at L.A. County-USC Medical Center. Read More Facebook

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Global California 2030' aims to get more students learning more languages By Joy Resmovits Tom Torlakson (Andrew Seng / Associated Press) Outgoing state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson on Wednesday announced a new statewide effort to encourage students to learn more languages. Called Global California 2030, its goal is to help more students become fluent in multiple tongues. Torlakson said that by 2030, he wants half of the states 6.2 million K-12 students to participate in classes or programs that lead to proficiency in two or more languages. By 2040, he wants three out of four students to be proficient enough to earn the State Seal of Biliteracy. Torlakson announced the initiative at Cahuenga Elementary School, which offers a dual-language immersion program in English and Korean. Californias public school students speak more than 60 languages at home, and 40% come to school with knowledge of a language other than English. Torlakson called his plan a call to action that invites parents, legislators, educators and community members to pool resources to expand language offerings in schools and get more bilingual teachers trained. He said the state already is working with Mexico and Spain to expand a teacher-exchange program. Fluency, the plan argues, can help students succeed economically  and language acquisition can help their overall critical thinking. The initiative builds on Proposition 58, a ballot initiative passed in 2016 that undid an earlier requirement that English learners be taught in English-immersion classes unless their parents signed waivers. Torlakson recently visited Mexico and met with that countrys education secretary. They later signed a pact to increase collaboration, particularly in language education. This [Global California 2030] is great follow-through on Toms part and very important, Patricia Gandara, a UCLA education professor who hosted the Mexico meeting, said in an email. It hands over a plan to move forward in an area in which California has a unique advantage, but must seize the opportunity. Facebook

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Jury convicts man of murder in 2015 slaying of UCLA student found inside her burning apartment By Marisa Gerber A jury on Tuesday convicted a man in the 2015 slaying of a UCLA student found dead inside her burning apartment  a gruesome stabbing case that led to a fierce rebuke of the police response amid concerns that the killing could have been prevented. The panel deliberated for about six hours before finding Alberto Medina, 24, guilty of murder, arson, burglary and animal cruelty. On Sept. 21, 2015, firefighters found the charred body of Andrea DelVesco inside her apartment after responding to the complex a block from campus. The 21-year-old student  an Austin, Texas, native known to her sorority sisters as a fearless giver who befriended others with ease  was stabbed at least 19 times, authorities said. Read More Facebook

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LAPD begins sweeping criminal probe of former USC gynecologist while urging patients to come forward By Adam Elmahrek The Los Angeles Police Department said Tuesday it is investigating 52 complaints of misconduct filed by former patients of USCs longtime campus gynecologist as detectives launch a sweeping criminal probe into the scandal that has rocked the university. LAPD detectives also made an appeal for other patients who feel mistreated to come forward, noting that thousands of students were examined by Dr. George Tyndall during his nearly 30-year career at USC. More than 410 people have contacted a university hotline about the physician since The Times revealed the allegations this month. Tyndalls behavior and practices appear to go beyond the norms of the medical profession and gynecological examinations, said Asst. Chief Beatrice Girmala. We sincerely realize that victims may have difficulty recounting such details to investigators. We are empathetic and ready to listen. Read More Facebook

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At L.A.'s only school for the deaf, parents want leaders who speak the same language By Anna M. Phillips Ever since her son was 6 months old, Juliet Hidalgo has been bringing him to the Marlton School, a low-slung building in Baldwin Hills that for generations has been a second home for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in Los Angeles. Marlton staff taught Hidalgos brother and sister, both of whom are deaf. The school was where her deaf son learned to make the signs for milk and food. Hidalgo had planned to enroll her daughter, taking advantage of a popular program that allows hearing children to learn American Sign Language alongside their deaf siblings. But after more than a decade of involvement, she and other family members are considering withdrawing their children. They are not alone. Read More Facebook

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Fueled by unlimited donations, independent groups play their biggest role yet in a California primary for governor By Ryan Menezes An unprecedented amount of money from wealthy donors, unions and corporations is flowing into the California governors race, giving independent groups  unrestricted by contribution limits  a greater say in picking the states chief executive than ever before. The groups have already spent more than $26 million through Thursday, the most ever spent by noncandidate committees in a gubernatorial primary, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance reports. California elections have always been expensive, and the future is even more expensive, said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former state Republican leader. The stakes are very real. Read More Facebook

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2 hurt in Indiana middle school shooting; suspect in custody, authorities say By Associated Press Authorities say two victims in a shooting at a suburban Indianapolis school are being taken to a hospital and the lone suspect is in custody. Bryant Orem, a spokesman for the Hamilton County Sheriffs Office, said in a news release that the victims in Friday mornings attack at Noblesville West Middle School are being taken to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis and their families have been notified. He says no other information is available about the victims. Orem said the suspect is believed to have acted alone and was taken into custody. No additional information about the suspect was made public. Read More Facebook

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For new L.A. schools chief Austin Beutner, some key unions are giving no honeymoon period By Howard Blume In the less than two weeks since Austin Beutner took charge of Los Angeles schools, unions representing teachers and administrators have staged a job action and a protest. Theyve made it clear that they will not give the new superintendent the traditional honeymoon period, and they are bashing him for his wealth and lack of experience running either a school or a school district. Beutner is a billionaire investment banker with zero qualifications, local teachers union President Alex Caputo-Pearl told members in a phone alert urging them to participate in a Thursday afternoon rally in Grand Park. The board is saying that billionaires who made their money blowing institutions up and making money off it know best  not the education professionals who have dedicated our careers to working with students. Read More Facebook

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Pressure grows on Board of Trustees amid USC gynecologist scandal By Paul Pringle USCs large and powerful Board of Trustees is coming under growing pressure to provide a stronger hand as the university faces a crisis over misconduct allegations against the campus longtime gynecologist that has prompted calls for President C.L. Max Nikias to step down. Allegations that Dr. George Tyndall mistreated students during his nearly 30 years at USC have roiled the campus, with about 300 people coming forward to make reports to the university and the Los Angeles Police Department launching a criminal investigation. USC is already beginning to face what is expected to be costly litigation by women who say they were victimized by the physician. So far, the trustees to whom Nikias reports have expressed sympathy for the women who have come forward and launched an independent investigation while also publicly backing the president. Read More Facebook

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UC regents approve leaner budget for Janet Napolitano By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents on Thursday unanimously approved a leaner, more transparent budget for President Janet Napolitano, moving to address political criticism over the systems central office operations. The $876.4-million budget for 2018-19 reflects spending cuts of 2%, including reductions in staffing, travel and such systemwide programs as public service law fellowships, carbon neutrality and food security. Napolitano shifted $30 million to campuses for housing needs and $10 million to UC Riverside to support its five-year-old medical school. She also permanently redirected $8.5 million annually to help enroll more California students, as required by the state. Read More Facebook

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USCs Academic Senate calls on university president to resign after a series of scandals By Matt Hamilton The body that represents USCs faculty called on President C.L. Max Nikias to resign Wednesday in the wake of relevations that the universitys longtime gynecologist faced years of accusations of misconduct by students and colleagues at the campus health clinic. The Academic Senate took the vote late Wednesday afternoon after a fiery town hall meeting attended by more than 100 faculty members, many of whom voiced outrage over Nikias and the Board of Trustees leadership. The vote came a day after the trustees executive committee stood firmly behind Nikias, saying it has full confidence in his leadership, ethics and values. At the town hall meeting, Senate President Paul Rosenbloom said he did not think Nikias or Provost Michael Quick committed wrongdoing but that the university president deserved criticism for a lack of transparency. Read More Facebook

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Californias public universities on the way to getting a big longed-for boost in funding By Teresa Watanabe The University of California and California State University systems are poised to get major funding boosts that will help them enroll thousands of additional state students and eliminate the need for tuition increases in the coming school year. A key Assembly budget panel on Wednesday approved $117.5 million in new funds for the UC. A Senate panel approved a similar sum last week. The same committees recently approved even more funding for the Cal State system. Read More Facebook

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UC regents to scrutinize Janet Napolitanos office budget in a step toward stronger oversight By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents this week plan to scrutinize the budget of President Janet Napolitano, whose office came under political fire last year for questionable spending and murky accounting. Regents will vote on the proposed $876.4-million budget for 2018-19 during their two-day meeting, which starts Wednesday, at UC San Francisco. They also will discuss state funding, financial aid, online education and transfer student policies. Board Chairman George Kieffer said regents are stepping up to exert stronger oversight of the presidents office after a blistering state audit last year found financial problems including an unreported $175 million budget reserve. Read More Facebook

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State legislative panels approve major funding boost for Cal State By Teresa Watanabe Cal State students protest against a tuition increase outside the chancellors office (Irfan Khan) After months of intensive lobbying, Cal State University has convinced two key legislative panels to approve funding to enroll nearly 11,000 more students, hire more faculty and expand housing aid to those without shelter this fall. An Assembly budget panel on Tuesday approved $215.7 million more for Cal State, adding to Gov. Jerry Browns proposed $92.1 million general fund increase. A Senate budget panel approved a similar increase last week. The extra funding  which went beyond Cal States own request to the Legislature of $171 million  is still subject to final budget negotiations with Brown. But the actions by the Senate and Assembly panels amount to a demand from Democrats that the governor hike higher education spending. Cal State University is the workhorse undergraduate university serving hundreds of thousands of Californians, said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), who heads the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance. We need more graduates for the California workforce and higher education is the ticket to the middle class. Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White hailed the actions, but said it was too soon to celebrate. The CSU has a singular focus on helping students earn high-quality degrees sooner, and the entire university community has rallied to reinforce that message to our states lawmakers, he said in a statement. The actions taken thus far by the Assembly and Senate are promising and show that our message is being received, but there is still work to be done. Funding for the University of California was not taken up Tuesday as originally scheduled. McCarty would not comment on sticking points but said he was confident that a resolution would be reached this week. Were looking to provide resources above whats in the governors budget, but negotiations are ongoing, he said in an interview. State per-student funding is not what it once was, leaving both Cal State and the UC in a tough financial squeeze. Both systems raised tuition last year after a six-year freeze on higher costs. For this year, Cal State had asked for funding to enroll an additional 3,621 students, but both the Senate and Assembly panels approved three times that amount. Cal State, the largest public university system in the nation, turned away 32,000 eligible students last year because its campuses werent able to accommodate them. The panels asked that at least $50 million of the extra funding be used to hire more tenure-track faculty to help boost graduation rates. The Assembly panel also approved one-time funding of $5 million to ease hunger on campuses and $14 million for rapid rehousing pilot projects at three campuses, offering needy students rental support and short-term case management. Other items approved include $5 million to support the CSU Long Beach Shark Labs research on sharks and beach safety and $2 million for equal employment opportunity practices. This post has been updated to include comments from Assemblyman Kevin McCarty and Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White. Facebook

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Faculty members call for USC president to step down: He has lost the moral authority to lead By Matt Hamilton Two hundred USC professors on Tuesday demanded the resignation of university President C. L. Max Nikias, saying he had lost the moral authority to lead in the wake of revelations that a campus gynecologist was kept on staff for decades despite repeated complaints of misconduct. Read More Facebook

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Gun battle, negotiations lasted 15 minutes before Texas school shooter was apprehended, sheriff says By Molly Hennessy-Fiske Minutes after a school shooter opened fire in an art class last week, killing 10 people and wounding 13, including a local police officer, fellow officers returned fire in a protracted gun battle before isolating the suspect, the local sheriff said Monday. Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset praised first responders as well as Santa Fe Police Officer John Barnes, who was working as a resource officer at the school the day of the shooting. Their actions, he said, prevented the attack from spreading to other classrooms and potentially claiming additional victims. As officials continue to probe last Fridays shooting at Santa Fe High School, students are worried about returning to the scene of the attack when classes resume next week. Read More Facebook

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6 women sue USC, alleging they were victimized by campus gynecologist By Richard Winton Six women filed civil lawsuits Monday alleging that a longtime gynecologist at the University of Southern California sexually victimized them under the pretext of medical care and that USC failed to address complaints from clinic staff about the doctors behavior. One woman alleged Dr. George Tyndall forced his entire ungloved hand into her vagina during an appointment in 2003 while making vulgar remarks about her genitalia, according to one of the lawsuits. Another woman alleged that Tyndall groped her breasts in a 2008 visit and that later he falsely told her she likely had AIDS. A third woman accused the doctor of grazing his ungloved fingers over her nude body and leering at her during a purported skin exam, the lawsuit states. The wave of litigation comes as USC continues to grapple with the scandal, which legal experts said could prove costly to the university as scores of former patients come forward about their experiences with the gynecologist. Read More Facebook

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Fatalities reported in Texas high school shooting; suspect arrested, officials say By Associated Press Houston-area media citing unnamed law enforcement officials are reporting that there are fatalities following a shooting at a local high school Friday morning. Television station KHOU and the Houston Chronicle are citing unnamed federal, county and police officials following the shooting at Santa Fe High School, which went on lockdown around 8 a.m. The Associated Press has not been able to confirm the reports. The school district has confirmed an unspecified number of injuries but said it wouldnt immediately release further details. Assistant Principal Cris Richardson said a suspect has been arrested and secured. Read More Facebook

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This student followed the new L.A. schools chief on his first-day tour L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner is greeted by Van Nuys High School principal Yolanda Gardea. (Melissa Barales-Lopez) Melissa Barales-Lopez, a senior at Garfield High School followed Supt. Austin Beutner on his first day on the job, as he toured a variety of programs around the Los Angeles Unified School District. Heres what she took from the experience. LAUSD students and staff alike are looking for a personal champion, someone who will address and improve the difficulties afflicting their education.  What LAUSD students need is someone whos willing to listen and learn, someone who can understand the current issues affecting their schools and act to efficiently amend them, someone who can unlock the full potential of LAUSD students and enable them to reach their goals. During the entirety of his first day, superintendent Austin Beutner did indeed demonstrate a willingness to learn. Posing questions to teachers and students, Beutner engaged with the student communities he encountered to gain a better comprehension of the minutiae and nuances that distinguish each school inside an overwhelmingly large district. From inquiries about Grand View Boulevard Elementary Schools dual language program to questions regarding the services of LAUSDs after-school program, Beyond the Bell, Beutner revealed he has a lot to learn about the system. But, Beutner also showcased a willingness to tackle challenges head-on on his first day. Read More Facebook

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USC let a gynecologist continue treating students despite years of misconduct allegations By Matt Hamilton For nearly 30 years, the University of Southern Californias student health clinic had one full-time gynecologist: Dr. George Tyndall. Tall and garrulous with distinctive jet black hair, he treated tens of thousands of female students, many of them teenagers seeing a gynecologist for the first time. Few who lay down on Tyndalls exam table at the Engemann Student Health Center knew that he had been accused repeatedly of misconduct toward young patients. The complaints began in the 1990s, when co-workers alleged he was improperly photographing students genitals. In the years that followed, patients and nursing staff accused him again and again of creepy behavior, including touching women inappropriately during pelvic exams and making sexually suggestive remarks about their bodies. Read More Facebook

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Cal State trustees to discuss Browns latest budget proposal, which they say still falls $171 million short By Joy Resmovits Just how much money does California State University need to serve its students? In recent years, this question has been front and center for the nations largest public university system. Cal States leaders say that to keep their campuses quality from slipping, they need much more money than the state is giving them. This year, theyre also at odds with Gov. Jerry Brown on the question of whether any extra money should come in one-time bursts or be ongoing. Read More Facebook

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On his first day as L.A. schools chief, Beutner plans a day of visits across the district By Howard Blume L.A. Unifieds new superintendent, Austin Beutner, will kick off his first day of work on Tuesday with a choreographed tour of the nations second-largest school district, from the San Fernando Valley to Carson. His day is scheduled to begin at 5:15 a.m. at a school bus depot and end more than 12 hours later at a parent meeting at Garfield High School. Along the way, Beutner is expected to be joined by school district administrators, L.A. Unified board members and the vice president of the union that represents school bus drivers. Though he will be covering a lot of ground, Beutners tour has him skipping Tuesdays school board meeting, when board members are expected to discuss labor negotiations in closed session. Read More Facebook

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Cal State trustees to discuss Browns latest budget proposal, which they say still falls $171 million short By Joy Resmovits Just how much money does California State University need to serve its students? In recent years, this question has been front and center for the nations largest public university system. Cal States leaders say that to keep their campuses quality from slipping, they need much more money than the state is giving them. This year, theyre also at odds with Gov. Jerry Brown on the question of whether any extra money should come in one-time bursts or be ongoing. Read More Facebook

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Why a handful of rich charter school supporters are spending millions to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as governor By Ryan Menezes California voters have seen a barrage of sunny television ads in recent weeks touting former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosas record on finances, crime and education, aired by Families & Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa for Governor 2018. But the group is, in fact, largely funded by a handful of wealthy charter-school supporters. Together they have spent more than $13 million in less than a month to boost Villaraigosas chances in the June 5 primary  at a time when his fundraising and poll numbers are lagging. Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, jump-started the group with a $7-million check, by far the largest donation to support any candidate in the election. Their efforts are part of a broader proxy war among Democrats between teachers unions  longtime stalwarts of the party  and those who argue that the groups have failed low-income and minority schoolchildren. Read More Facebook

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Talking schools with L.A. Unifieds new superintendent By Anna M. Phillips Al Seib / Los Angeles Times ( Incoming L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner talks to students at Belmont High School.) Austin Beutner, who officially starts Tuesday as the new superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is taking on a famously difficult job at a particularly difficult time. The school board is divided and did not back him unanimously. The nations second-largest school district has deep-seated problems, including declining enrollment, lagging academic achievement and rising pension and healthcare costs that eat away at its budget. The 58-year-old former investment banker and former L.A. Times publisher has years of experience in the financial world but none as an educator. Earlier this week, he sat down with the Times education team to discuss the challenges facing the district, which has about 60,000 employees and 500,000 students in traditional public schools. He did not talk about his plans  saying repeatedly, stay tuned  but he spoke in broad terms about his mindset in approaching the tough decisions ahead. Read More Facebook

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Suspect detained, authorities search campus after reports of armed man at Palmdale high school By James Queally One person has been detained after a report of an armed man at a Palmdale high school sparked a massive law enforcement response Friday morning. The suspect was spotted at 7:05 a.m. on the campus of Highland High School in Palmdale, according to Sheriffs Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida. The person was detained in a nearby parking lot, according to Nishida, who did not know whether that person was an adult or juvenile. Deputies at the scene are clearing the school methodically, and students will be transported home via school buses once the campus is deemed safe, Nishida said. Read More Facebook

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The education of Bertha Perez: How a UC Merced custodians disenchantment led to a political awakening By Robin Abcarian Its the third day of a three-day strike, and UC Merced custodian Bertha Perez is taking a break from a picket line at the universitys unremarkable entrance, an intersection with stop lights. Photos from other UC campuses this week have shown big crowds of striking service workers  members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees  marching and chanting pro-labor slogans as they try to force the University of California back to the negotiating table. But here, at UC Merced, whose handful of big buildings rise from a flat expanse of farmland, the picket line is tiny, maybe two dozen workers and a few students. Its not a big-city-style show of force. Then again, a union sympathizer is banging relentlessly on a snare drum, so its noisier than youd expect. Read More Facebook

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Ref Rodriguez resigns from teacher credentialing commission By Howard Blume Ref Rodriguez appears during a court appearance. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez has resigned from the states Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which oversees the integrity and quality of Californias teachers. Rodriguez faces felony and misdemeanor charges for political money laundering. Separately, his former employer, a charter school organization, has accused him of improperly authorizing checks to a nonprofit under his control. Rodriguez has denied wrongdoing. Rodriguezs resignation from the state body was effective May 4, days after he cast a crucial vote as part of a narrow majority that voted to authorize contract negotiations with Austin Beutner to become superintendent of the L.A. Unified School District. Beutners first official day on the job is Tuesday. Rodriguez remains in his $125,000-a-year position on the Los Angeles Board of Education. The mission of the state body is to ensure integrity, relevance, and high quality in the preparation, certification, and discipline of Californias teachers. Critics had questioned Rodriguezs continued service on the commission, given that teachers can be suspended from work if they face criminal charges. They also can lose their jobs for lapses in personal behavior, such as excessive drinking, with the potential to affect their performance. Police in Pasadena arrested Rodriguez on a Friday afternoon in March for public drunkenness. He was not charged in the incident and has apologized. The state commission reviews teacher discipline cases and can take action to remove a teachers credential to work in a California classroom. The commission has 15 members. Rodriguezs departure was disclosed in a one-sentence announcement on the agencys website. Facebook

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School board members request for restraining order against blogger is rejected By Priscella Vega An Orange County Superior Court judge on Wednesday denied a school board members petition for a permanent restraining order against a Huntington Beach blogger. Attorney Jeffrey W. Shields filed the petition on behalf of Ocean View School District trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin, 46, who alleged in court documents that Charles Keeler Johnson, 56, has threatened her on social media and at school board meetings, causing her to fear for my own safety and for that of my immediate family members. Johnson, who goes by Chuck and publishes HBSledgehammer.com, said the trustee tried to stifle his freedom of speech. He also contended that Clayton-Tarvin took his blog posts and Facebook comments too seriously and out of context, saying anyone who is afraid of metaphors has serious issues. Read More Facebook

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Deal with workers averts one-day strike that could have shut down L.A. schools By Howard Blume Los Angeles school district and union officials announced a contract agreement Tuesday night that averted a one-day strike planned for next week. The pact, which runs through June 2020, removes one labor problem from the desk of incoming Supt. Austin Beutner  whose first day on the job would have coincided with the strike. Plenty of other challenges remain. Read More Facebook

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UC labor strike expands with show of support from more unions By Teresa Watanabe Fong Chuu is a registered nurse who has assisted with countless liver transplants, kidney surgeries and gastric bypasses during 34 years at UCLA. Working with her are scrub technicians who sterilize equipment, hand medical instruments to the surgeon and dress patient wounds. They are a team, Chuu says, which is why she walked off her job Tuesday in support of those technicians and other members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299. The 25,000 member AFSCME local, the University of Californias largest employee union, launched a three-day strike Monday. Read More Facebook

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We are humans too: Voices of UCLAs striking custodians, hospital aides and imaging technicians By Joy Resmovits Demonstrators parade in front of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) This week, thousands of UC employees are staging a three-day strike for better pay and working conditions. On Monday, more than 20,000 custodians, cooks, lab technicians, nurse aides and other members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 walked off their jobs. By Tuesday, two more unions joined in sympathy strikes. The union and UC reached a bargaining impasse last year. The university has said it wont meet the workers demands. The strikers said they wanted better pay, more equity in the allocation of work, stable healthcare premiums and an end to the universitys use of contract workers. These are their stories. Read More Facebook

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Massive UC workers strike disrupts dining, classes and medical services By Joy Resmovits A massive labor strike across the University of California on Monday forced medical centers to reschedule more than 12,000 surgeries, cancer treatments and appointments, and campuses to cancel some classes and limit dining services. More than 20,000 members of UCs largest employee union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, walked off their jobs on the first day of a three-day strike. They include custodians, gardeners, cooks, truck drivers, lab technicians and nurse aides. Two altercations involving protesters and people driving near the rallies were reported at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. At UCLA, police took a man into custody Monday after he drove his vehicle into a crowd, hitting three staff members. They were treated for minor injuries at the scene and released, said Lt. Kevin Kilgore of the UCLA Police Department. Read More Facebook

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Sen. Kamala Harris to skip UC Berkeley commencement in support of striking workers By Teresa Watanabe Sen. Kamala Harris (Chris Dekmas) California Sen. Kamala Harris has canceled plans to deliver UC Berkeleys commencement address this weekend in support of UC workers who are on strike over wages and health benefits. Due to the ongoing labor dispute, Sen. Harris regretfully cannot attend and speak at this years commencement ceremony at UC Berkeley, said a statement from Harris office issued Monday. She wishes the graduates and their families a joyous commencement weekend and success for the future. They are bright young leaders and our country is counting on them. UCs largest employee union, the 25,000-member American Federation of County, State and Municipal Employees Local 3299, launched a three-day strike Monday and had earlier called for a speakers boycott. The union and university reached a bargaining impasse last year and subsequent mediation efforts have failed to produce an agreement. The union is asking for a multiyear contract with a 6% annual pay increase while the university is offering 3% annual increases over four years. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ will deliver the keynote address instead, the university announced. About 5,800 students are expected to participate in the ceremony Saturday. Facebook

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School mural depicting Trumps bloody, severed head sparks controversy By Gary Warth A Chula Vista school mural that depicts the bloody, severed head of President Trump on a spear sparked a controversy that prompted officials to cover it and issue a response distancing themselves from the work. The statement also said the artist will alter the painting. We understand that there was a mural painted at the event this past weekend that does not align with our schools philosophy of non-violence, read the statement from MAAC Community Charter School director Tommy Ramirez. We have been in communication with the artist  who has agreed to modify the artwork  to better align with the schools philosophy. Read More Facebook

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New blackface incident at Cal Poly prompts calls for state investigation By Kim Christensen Cal Poly San Luis Obispo officials have asked the state attorney generals office to investigate after a new photo of a white student in blackface surfaced on a fraternity groups private Snapchat. I am outraged, Cal Poly President Jeffrey D. Armstrong said in a video address Friday to the campus. These vile and absolutely unacceptable acts cannot continue. We must not allow these acts to define us as an institution. Armstrong said the latest photo was intended to imitate an incident last month in which a white member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity was photographed at a party wearing blackface. Read More Facebook

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More than 50,000 UC workers set to strike this week but campuses will remain open By Teresa Watanabe More than 50,000 workers across the University of California are set to strike this week, causing potential disruptions to surgery schedules, food preparation and campus maintenance. The systems 10 campuses and five medical centers are to remain open, with classes scheduled as planned. UCs largest employee union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, plans to begin a three-day strike Monday involving 25,000 workers, including custodians, gardeners, cooks, truck drivers, lab technicians and nurse aides. Read More Facebook

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New L.A. schools chief Beutner pledges to listen, learn and take action By Howard Blume New Los Angeles schools Supt. Austin Beutner proved Wednesday that hes a quick learner even without an education background. Like countless public officials before him, he appeared at an important event  his first speech and news conference  with a photogenic background of students. His message  that he would put those students first  seemed heartfelt if hardly original. Nor was it a huge surprise that he pledged to push cooperatively but unflinchingly to improve the districts academic performance and stabilize its finances. As an introduction, Beutner, a former investment banker who made a fortune on Wall Street, offered little flash, but that was partly the point. Read More Facebook

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In a school lockdown, one student takes stock of the stressful scene (Phalaen Chang) At the beginning of lunch one day late last month, Duarte High School, Northview Middle School, and California School of the Arts-San Gabriel Valley were advised by the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department to go into lockdown mode due to police activity in the immediate area. Phalaen Chang, a junior at the California School of the Arts, wrote a series of notes on her iPhone while she sat in a room with her classmates. By the time the lockdown ended an hour later, she wrote, she knew which of her friends would hold open the door for others, be the ones calming others down, be the ones barricading the doors. She knew that all of them have the potential to be such strong people. Read More Facebook

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Tale as old as time: L.A. Unified superintendent pick follows a historical pattern of outside-the-box choices By Joy Resmovits Navy Vice Adm. David L. Brewer III, superintendent from 2006-2008. (L.A. Times file photo) L.A. Unified has long gone back and forth between picking insiders and outsiders to run the nations second largest school district. The choice of Austin Beutner, announced Tuesday, places the district squarely back in the outsider camp  months after a consummate insider, Supt. Michelle King, announced that she had cancer and would not return to the job. Check out this timeline of former L.A. superintendents to see how the school board members have changed their minds, sometimes favoring leaders who come from the world of education and sometimes executives from elsewhere, recruited to shock the system into change. At one point, the district hired someone from the military  retired Navy Vice Adm. David L. Brewer III, who served as superintendent from 2006-2008. In hiring Brewer, board members had opted for a non-educator  largely because they sought a fresh thinker, unwedded to the bureaucracy, unafraid to make bold, even unorthodox moves, reads a 2008 Times story. Facebook

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Austin Beutner named superintendent of Los Angeles schools By Howard Blume Austin Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker, on Tuesday was named superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nations second-largest school system. His selection was the biggest move yet by a Los Angeles school board majority elected with major support from charter school advocates. The decision came after lengthy public testimony, most of it in support of the other remaining finalist, interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian, who is well known within the school system. Beutner, 58, has no background leading a school or school district. Less than 2 years ago, a school board with a very different balance of power named Michelle King, a former teacher who rose through the district throughout her career, to L.A. Unifieds top job. Read More Facebook

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Hearing delay gives both sides more time in Ref Rodriguezs potential trial By Howard Blume Ref Rodriguez and his attorneys will have more time to prepare their defense against charges of political money laundering, a judge ruled Monday. The preliminary hearing in the case had been scheduled to begin May 9, but that date will now be pushed back to July 23 per the ruling from L.A. Superior Court Judge Deborah S. Brazil. Rodriguez, 46, faces three felony charges of conspiracy, perjury and procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, as well as 25 misdemeanor counts related to the alleged campaign money laundering. Read More Facebook

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L.A. school board poised to name Beutner as superintendent By Howard Blume The Los Angeles Board of Education is poised to select philanthropist and former investment banker Austin Beutner to be the next superintendent of the nations second-largest school system. Barring a last-minute development, the only mystery is whether Beutner emerges with four or five votes from the boards seven members. Terms of his contract already have been under discussion, according to sources close to the process who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak. The selection of Beutner, 58, who has no experience managing a school or a school district, would be a signal that the board majority that took control nearly a year ago wants to rely on business management skills instead of insider educational expertise. Read More Facebook

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Teacher walkouts in Arizona and Colorado continue national debate on money for schools By Michael Livingston Following the lead of teachers who walked off the job in other states in recent weeks, thousands of teachers and their supporters took to the streets in Arizona and Colorado for the second day in a row to demand better pay and more funding for education. Read More Facebook

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Three decades before the #MeToo movement, UC San Diego led the way against sexual assault By Teresa Watanabe When Nancy Wahlig first started her fight against sexual assault, one company was marketing a capsule for women to stash in their bras and then smash to release a vile odor. Because of the very nature of society, the only person who can prevent rape is the woman herself, read a 1981 advertisement for the Repulse rape deterrent. Ideas about how to prevent sexual violence have come a long way since then, and Wahlig has helped lead that evolution on college campuses. In 1988, she started UC San Diegos Sexual Assault Resource Center (SARC), the first stand-alone program at the University of California. Today, she remains the systems most senior specialist. Read More Facebook

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Andres Alonso withdraws from consideration for L.A. schools job By Howard Blume Andres Alonso, believed to be one of three remaining finalists to lead the Los Angeles school system, has withdrawn from consideration. The remaining known candidates in the confidential search are former investment banker Austin Beutner and interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian. Alonso, 60, announced his decision on Twitter on Thursday night, saying he had notified the L.A. Unified School District on Monday. The exit of Alonso, the former Baltimore schools chief, seems to solidify the front-runner status of Beutner, who also was a former L.A. Times publisher and a Los Angeles deputy mayor. He held each of those positions for about a year. Read More Facebook

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Heres why the apparent increase in autism spectrum disorders may be good for U.S. children By Karen Kaplan The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among American children continues to rise, new government data suggest. And that may be a good thing. Among 11 sites across the U.S. where records of 8-year-olds are scrutinized in detail, 1 in 59 kids was deemed to have ASD in 2014. Thats up from 1 in 68 in 2012. Normally, health officials would prefer to see less of a disease, not more of it. But in this case, the higher number is probably a sign that more children of color who are on the autism spectrum are being recognized as such and getting services to help them, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read More Facebook

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UC shelves tuition increase for now, in hopes of getting more state funding By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents will not vote on a tuition increase next month, shelving the plan for now in hopes that state lawmakers will come through with more funding. Raising tuition is always a last resort and one we take very seriously, UC President Janet Napolitano said Thursday in a statement. We will continue to advocate with our students who are doing a tremendous job of educating legislators about the necessity of adequately funding the university to ensure UC remains a world-class institution and engine of economic growth for our state. Last week, Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White said the 23-campus system no longer would consider a plan to raise tuition for the 2018-19 academic year. But unlike Cal State, UC officials have not taken a tuition increase off the table entirely. Read More Facebook

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A chemical spill, unchecked eyewash stations, poor training: Audit details Cal States lax lab safety By Joy Resmovits In May 2016, two bottles tumbled off a poorly supported shelf and broke, leading to a chemical spill in a Sacramento State University lab. The liquid got onto one students legs and soaked anothers feet. Five employees cleaned up the mess, even though no one knew for sure what it was and whether it was dangerous. They called fellow employee Kim Harrington, their union representative, to let her know what happened. Read More Facebook

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After blackface incident, minority students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo say they dont feel welcome By Hailey Branson-Potts Aaliyah Ramos was walking through the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus last year when a prospective student approached her. Ramos was the only black person, the young woman said, that she and her mother had seen that day. They asked about the quality of education and the diversity of the student body. Ramos, a mechanical engineering student, didnt want to sugarcoat the truth: Cal Poly long has been predominantly white. But she told the young woman  who also was black  that she didnt want to discourage her from applying, because that wouldnt help with diversity at a school where only 0.7% of students are African American  the lowest percentage of any university in the California State system. Read More Facebook

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El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills wins the 2018 U.S. Academic Decathlon By Carlos Lozano El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills has won the 2018 U.S. Academic Decathlon, officials said. The winner was announced early Saturday at a ceremony in Frisco, Texas. More than 600 students from the U.S., Canada, China and the United Kingdom gathered there over the last three days to compete in the 37th annual U.S. Academic Decathlon. Congratulations to El Camino Real Charter High School for another impressive victory, said Vivian Ekchian, interim superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Your academic stamina and competitive spirit to win is remarkable. The entire L.A. Unified family is so proud of you. Read More Facebook

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Anticipation mounts as L.A. school board meets over superintendent selection By Howard Blume L.A. schools superintendent candidate Andres Alonso got an endorsement Friday, but Austin Beutner and Vivian Ekchian also have supporters. (Elizabeth Malby) The Los Angeles Board of Education is reconvening in closed session Friday at noon as anticipation mounts about the choice of the next leader of the nations second-largest school system. The presumed front-runner is former investment banker and philanthropist Austin Beutner, but interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian and former Baltimore Supt. Andres Alonso also are in the running. Most district insiders appear to be rooting for Ekchian, who has spent her entire career in education within the school system. After her 10 years as a teacher, her roles have included head of human resources, chief labor negotiator and regional administrator for campuses in the west San Fernando Valley. Shes managed the district since September, when then-Supt. Michelle King went on medical leave and chose Ekchian to fill in for her. King, who is battling cancer, never returned and announced her retirement in January. Numerous influential civic leaders have urged  and pressured  the board to select Beutner. Also lending their weight have been advocates for charter schools, which are independently operated, growing in number and competing for students with district-operated campuses. Four of the seven board members  enough to control the outcome  were elected with major financial support from charter supporters. Beutner has two ongoing connections with the L.A. Unified School District. The first is his leadership of an outside task force that is making recommendations on how to improve the school system. The second is his charity, Vision to Learn, which supplies glasses to low-income students. The charity and the school system are in a dispute at the moment over who is responsible for delays in providing services to students as part of a $6 million contract, half of which is paid for by L.A. Unified. Unlike Ekchian and Buetner, Alonso, who currently teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has no deep-seated local constituency, but the prospect of his selection has generated some excitement. While in Baltimore, Alonso was recognized for pushing for progress at low-performing schools, and for being willing to take strong action. While in Baltimore, he also weathered a test-score cheating scandal and occasionally rocky relations with the teachers union. But by the time he resigned, after six years, he and union leaders seemed to be working together without rancor. Leaders of some community groups have split from the pro-Beutner camp. They worry that Beutners approach to confronting the districts financial problems could shut out their voices or involve severe economic cutbacks that would undermine programs that are helping students. Some prefer Ekchian; some Alonso. Theyve been reluctant to speak out publicly because theyll have to work with whoever is selected, but they have tried to get the ear of board members. On Friday morning, one leader of a community group decided to come out in favor of Alonso. L.A. Unified has the opportunity to bring in an instructional leader of color with a history of success, said Alberto Retana, president and chief executive of Community Coalition, which works on behalf of low-income students and families in South Los Angeles. If we have a shot at that, we should go for it  because its in the best interests of our kids and of our community. Retana said his statement was not meant to criticize Beutner or Ekchian but to alert board members that there also is community support for Alonso. Facebook

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Cal State leader shelves proposed tuition hike: Its the right thing to do, but its not without risk By Joy Resmovits Cal State, the nations largest public university system, will no longer consider a plan to raise tuition for the 2018-19 academic year, Chancellor Timothy P. White announced Friday. The decision is a bet that Sacramento will come through in the end. If Cal State loses that bet, it could mean cuts to campus programs. White said in an interview that Californias economy is strong enough that families should not be shouldering the burden of higher college costs. Read More Facebook

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L.A. students to participate in national walkout activities on Friday By Joy Resmovits (Los Angeles Times) Students are taking to the streets again Friday to protest gun violence on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. Starting at 10 a.m., students at many schools will spend 13 seconds honoring the 13 people  12 students and one teacher  killed on that day in Littleton, Colo. After that, theyll participate in a host of different activities. Within L.A. Unified, one school is having an open-mic event for students to talk about school violence, and lawmakers are visiting campuses to hear students thoughts. According to a central hub for organizing the protests  written by the students of Ridgefield High School in Connecticut  the walkouts are intended to drive the political change necessary to curb school violence. The day is also a time for students to interact on an elevated platform they have never had before, the site states. It is a day of discourse and thoughtful sharing. Bringing together communities and students to get a national discussion rolling. Organizers have suggested using the event to convey the importance of curbing gun violence to legislators. They are encouraging students to push legislation that would ban assault weapons and tighten up rules around who can buy guns and how. Over 2,500 schools nationwide are expected to participate. In L.A., some students  at campuses including Eagle Rock High School, the Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts and Bravo Medical Magnet  plan to walk out. Students from various schools expect to join area marches, including those in Santa Monica and Huntington Park. Other schools are hosting career days and voter registration drives. At 1 p.m., students plan to start a rally in front of L.A. Unified headquarters. For the record: An earlier version of this article stated that 12 teachers and one student were killed in the Columbine shooting. The opposite is true: twelve students and one teacher died. Facebook

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Stabbing of popular student devastates South El Monte High School; teen friend suspected in slaying By Sonali Kohli When administrators at South El Monte High School called Jeremy Sanchezs parents to say he never showed up for class Wednesday, his father began to worry. It was unusual for the 17-year-old junior to miss school, so his father filed a missing persons report and assembled two of Jeremys close friends to look for the popular student-athlete. Their search took them to a scenic stretch of the San Gabriel River Trail, where one of the friends  a 16-year-old boy  made a tragic discovery. Among the bushes in the riverbed near Thienes Avenue and Parkway Drive was Jeremys body, punctured with stab wounds, according to Lt. John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. Read More Facebook

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Racist fliers spark outrage at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo By Alene Tchekmedyian Soon after Neal MacDougall arrived on the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus Tuesday, the professor noticed university police standing outside a restroom near his office. A racial slur against African Americans had been scrawled in red marker on a stall wall. Later, he discovered a series of racist fliers pinned up next to his door. Someone had also slashed posters hed hung outside his office supporting students in the country illegally. The discovery was the latest controversy on the prestigious campus  which the president said is less than 55% white  that MacDougall said demonstrates a culture of racism at the university. Last week, photographs emerged of white fraternity members, including one in blackface, flashing gang signs. Read More Facebook

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The superintendent waiting game, paying for L.A.'s College Promise, Princetons slave history: Whats new in education By Joy Resmovits Acting LAUSD superintendent Vivian Ekchian is a finalist for the permanent job. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) In and around Los Angeles: The L.A. Unified school board spent 10 hours interviewing and discussing candidates for superintendent. When they adjourned after 10 p.m., they said they would reconvene on Friday. Who is paying for Mayor Eric Garcettis much-touted College Promise, a program that promises two years of community college for LAUSD grads? In California: The Legislature is considering a proposal that would boost K-12 education funding for black students. When the cost of living is taken into account, California has the highest rate of child poverty. Nationwide: The families of two children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School are suing Alex Jones and Infowars for saying the school massacre never occurred. Princeton will name two spaces  an arch and a garden  after slaves who lived or worked on the campus. Facebook

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L.A. school board meets privately with finalists and debates choice for school district leader By Howard Blume The Los Angeles Board of Education adjourned late Tuesday after spending more than 10 hours interviewing candidates and trying to reach a decision on who would be the next leader of the nations second-largest school system. When the meeting finally recessed at 10:11 p.m., a spokesman announced only that the school board would reconvene Friday at noon. Going into the days meetings, there were apparently four finalists, according to sources who could not be named because they were unauthorized to speak. Read More Facebook

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Two Sandy Hook families sue Alex Jones and Infowars for saying the school massacre never happened By David Altimari Families of two children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School have filed lawsuits in Texas against controversial radio host Alex Jones for continually claiming the massacre never happened. Neil Heslin, the father of Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah Pozner died in the massacre, filed separate lawsuits late Monday in Travis County, Texas. The lawsuits allege that Jones defamed the parents by constantly calling them crisis actors and insisting the shooting was a false flag operation; they also claim Jones accusations have led to death threats against the Sandy Hook families by Jones followers. Read More Facebook

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Beutner emerges as a top pick for L.A. schools superintendent amid last-minute jockeying By Howard Blume Austin Beutner has emerged as a leading contender to run the Los Angeles school district, with backers saying he is smart enough and tough enough to confront its financial and academic struggles. Though he does not have a background in education, the former investment banker has in the last year examined some of the districts intractable problems, serving as co-chair of an outside task force with the support of then-Supt. Michelle King. Sources inside and outside the school district said Beutner appears to have more support on the seven-member board than other finalists, and his name could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday. Read More Facebook

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Challenge at Chicago school construction site: Watch for 38,000 unmarked graves By Nereida Moreno A 15-year effort to build a school in Chicagos Dunning neighborhood is underway with an unusual complication: Construction workers are taking careful steps to avoid disturbing human remains that may lie beneath the soil. The $70-million school is to be built on the grounds of a former Cook County Poor House, where an estimated 38,000 people were buried in unmarked graves. Among the dead are residents who were too poor to afford funeral costs, unclaimed bodies and patients from the countys insane asylum. There can be and there have been bodies found all over the place, said Barry Fleig, a genealogist and cemetery researcher who began investigating the site in 1989. Its a spooky, scary place. Read More Facebook

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Oklahoma teacher walkout winds down despite lawmakers failure to meet demands By Washington Post Oklahomas largest teachers union has announced an end to a walkout that has drawn thousands of educators out of classrooms and to the state Capitol demanding greater investment in the states schools, which have endured the nations steepest funding cuts. The announcement Thursday from the Oklahoma Education Assn. does not necessarily end the protests at the Capitol, as teachers not affiliated with the union vowed to stay longer. Instead of a walkout, the union and school districts across the state have said they plan to send delegations of teachers to Oklahoma City to keep the pressure on lawmakers. Teachers and their supporters have also promised to push education issues to the forefront of November elections, when the state chooses a new governor. As school districts begin to reopen, the protests may lose steam. The Legislature is not in session Friday, and observers are waiting to see what happens Monday, when lawmakers return. Read More Facebook

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Most Californians are worried about school shooting threats and oppose arming teachers, survey finds By Joy Resmovits Hamilton High School student Aiyana Dabriel holds a sign during a March 14 walkout in support of the Parkland shooting victims. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Most Californians are worried that a school shooting like the one that occurred in Parkland, Fla., in February could shed blood closer to home, a new survey found. Some 73% percent of adults and 82% of public school parents said they were very concerned or somewhat concerned about school shootings. The Public Policy Institute of California surveyed 1,704 adults in the state by phone just after the March for Our Lives protest against gun violence. Latino and black respondents were significantly more likely to be concerned about school violence than white or Asian respondents, the institute found. Two-thirds of adults and public school parents said they opposed letting more educators carry weapons in school. The response differed across party lines, with 86% of Democrats and 69% of independents voicing their opposition, while 60% percent of Republicans said they would support a measure to arm educators. The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.2% in either direction, also asked Californians about school funding, educational issues in the governors race and the impact of immigration enforcement on students. You can find the full results here. Facebook

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Californias largest virtual charter school network agrees to contract with its teachers By Anna M. Phillips Nearly four years after teachers at Californias largest online charter school voted to unionize, they have reached a deal to increase pay and create job protections, according to a spokesman for the California Teachers Assn. The contract, which is still tentative and subject to ratification, is a victory for the teachers union. Although charter schools are publicly funded, most are privately managed and their employees arent protected by labor contracts. Under the terms of the contract  the result of years of negotiation and legal wrangling  approximately 500 teachers working for California Virtual Academies will no longer be at-will employees who can be dismissed for almost any reason. Their average salary will rise to just over $45,000, according to union estimates, a figure that remains far below the norm for traditional public school teachers. Still, it is an improvement over the previous average of $38,000. The accord also places a limit on the number of students each teacher is responsible for monitoring in online homeroom classes. Were very satisfied with the gains we made, said teacher Brianna Carroll, president of California Virtual Educators United. I think were going to see some extraordinary changes in our schools. According to Carroll, teachers at California Virtual Academies  better known as CAVA  had grown frustrated with the organizations foot-dragging and were making preparations to go on strike when CAVAs leadership agreed to the deal. CAVA and K12, the Virginia-based for-profit company linked to its schools, did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday asking for comment. The network currently operates nine virtual charter schools across California. In 2016, the charter network agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle claims of false advertising, misleading parents and inadequate instruction. The state attorney generals office had also accused K12 of controlling the charters for its own financial benefit. Neither CAVA nor K12 admitted to wrongdoing in the settlement. A year later, the state imposed a $2-million fine on CAVA after an audit found that it had misspent public funds. The network disputed the findings. Facebook

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School board approves a new formula for funding high-need schools By Sonali Kohli L.A. schools will soon get more money if they are located in neighborhoods with such problems as high levels of gun violence and asthma. The Los Angeles Unified school board voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt a new formula to determine how to dole out some funding to schools, based not only on the characteristics of the student populations but on the traumas that affect the communities around campuses. The new formula will be applied to $25 million in funding next fiscal year and about $263 million annually in future years  a small part of the districts $7.5 billion annual budget. Read More Facebook

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Protesters demand Ref Rodriguez resignation outside school board meeting By Sonali Kohli Students, parents, teachers and UTLA marching outside the board meeting chanting "Ref resign" pic.twitter.com/W0LRWZSIXY  Sonali Kohli  (@Sonali_Kohli) April 10, 2018 A few dozen parents, students and teachers marched outside the Los Angeles Unified School Board meeting Tuesday, some calling for board member Ref Rodriguez to resign the week after news broke that he was taken into custody on suspicion of being drunk in public at a Pasadena bar and restaurant. Rodriguez was not cited or charged in that incident, but was held for more than five and a half hours before being released. The school board member faces felony and misdemeanor charges for political money laundering. He is accused of getting more than two dozen people people to donate to his campaign for his school board seat with the understanding that he would reimburse them. He stepped down from his post as school board president after he was charged last fall, but he did not give up his seat on the board. He has pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of conspiracy, perjury, and procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, as well as 25 misdemeanor counts related to the alleged campaign money laundering. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May. He cant give his full focus to our students, said Rebecca LaFond, a Highland Park parent whose three children marched with her as she chanted, Ref resign. One daughter marched in front of her, using a drum stick to hit the bottom of a gallon-size empty water jug. Our kids deserve someone who has the utmost ethical standards representing them, LaFond said. The protests continued into the board meeting, where some addressed Rodriguez directly, calling on him to step down during public comment portions of the meeting. Rodriguez, through his chief of staff, declined to comment. Some parents outside the board meeting did not know about the charges against Rodriguez but came out to protest the possibility of sharing their school campuses with charter schools. Protesters also oppose colocation  not all of the parents are here to ask Ref Rodriguez to step down pic.twitter.com/1Co8zQ9zSi  Sonali Kohli  (@Sonali_Kohli) April 10, 2018 Cynthia Martinez said her son, who goes to Christopher Dena Elementary School in Boyle Heights, has been bullied in the past by students from a charter school sharing the campus. She said she didnt know who Rodriguez was. Some parents and teachers are worried about losing computer labs, robotics rooms and fitness centers if they are required to share their campus with charter schools, said Ilse Escobar, a parent community organizer for United Teachers Los Angeles. The issues of Rodriguez and colocation are related, Escobar said. Rodriguez is part of a majority on the school board elected with financial backing from charter school supporters, and many parents, she said, feel that the school board is compromised if he is a part of it. Staff reporter Howard Blume contributed to this post. Facebook

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Delaine Eastin tries to gain momentum in the California governors race, one voter at a time By Seema Mehta Delaine Eastin was a sophomore in high school when a drama teacher urged her to try out for a part in The Man Who Came to Dinner. She hesitated until he told her: This is a metaphor for your whole life. If you never try out, you will never get the part. Eastin auditioned and won the role. Decades later, the advice sticks with the former state schools chief, this time in her unlikely run for governor. Despite calls for more women in leadership roles in state politics following sexual misconduct allegations in Sacramento, Eastin has been largely overlooked in the race, lagging far behind her Democratic rivals in fundraising and the polls. Read More Facebook

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Arizona high court rejects in-state tuition for DACA recipients By Associated Press Young immigrants granted deferred deportation status under a program started by President Obama are not eligible for lower in-state college tuition, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday. The unanimous ruling will affect at least 2,000 students attending the states largest community college district and hundreds more at other colleges and the states three public universities. The Maricopa County Community Colleges District and state universities said they would begin raising tuition immediately for the coming school year. Read More Facebook

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New York high school students injured when bus strikes overpass By Associated Press A charter bus carrying teenagers returning from a spring break trip Sunday night struck a bridge overpass on Long Island, seriously injuring six passengers and mangling the entire length of the top of the bus. The crash happened shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday on the Southern State Parkway in Lakeview, according to New York State Police. One of the six injured passengers had very serious injuries, said State Police Maj. David Candelaria. Thirty-seven other passengers suffered minor injuries. Read More Facebook

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Some good news for California in national student test scores By Joy Resmovits National test scores for fourth- and eighth-graders were generally flat from 2015, but eighth-grade reading scores showed some improvement. Every two years, the nations fourth- and eighth-graders are tested in math and reading  and newly released results from last years tests give California at least a little reason to be pleased. The 2017 results  out Monday night  were mostly flat nationwide compared with 2015, though the average score in eighth-grade reading went up. But while that improvement largely came from the increased scores of the highest-performing students, California eighth-graders showed some reading progress from the lowest levels to the highest. Read More Facebook

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Under state control, Inglewood school districts financial picture worsened By Anna M. Phillips When Eugenio Villa agreed to return to the Inglewood schools for a second tour last summer, he knew the district remained one of Californias most troubled. Inglewood Unified had been nearly insolvent when it was taken over by the state Department of Education in 2012. Six years later, its enrollment was still declining. Its school buildings were tired  some edging into decrepitude. Its test scores and graduation rates were still below the state average. And the public was out of patience. Still, Villa, who had signed back on as the districts chief business official, was shocked at what he found when he arrived in June 2017. Two years earlier, he had left the school system on what he thought was firm ground. Read More Facebook

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Charter school group drops two lawsuits against L.A. Unified By Howard Blume A charter schools advocacy group last week announced that it would end two long-running lawsuits in which it was seeking more classroom space and construction money from the Los Angeles school district. The decision, the California Charter Schools Assn. said, reflects better relations between charter schools and the L.A. Unified School District. But the move also suggests that the litigation, which already contributed to significant gains for area charters, was unlikely to produce much more. It takes time, money and effort to litigate, said Ricardo Soto, general counsel for the charter group. Maybe its better to see if we can find the time and opportunity for collaboration. Read More Facebook

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L.A. school board member Ref Rodriguez is arrested on suspicion of public intoxication By Richard Winton Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez was arrested recently on suspicion of being drunk in public at a Pasadena restaurant, the latest trouble for an elected official who faces political money-laundering charges. Pasadena police took Rodriguez into custody on March 16, according to city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian. Officers arrested Rodriguez at about 4:30 p.m. at the Yard House restaurant and bar at the Paseo Mall and held him in jail for more than five-and-a-half hours. Rodriguez was ultimately released without being cited or charged, Derderian told The Times. Other details about the arrest were not available, she An immigrant in the country illegally who was tried twice on charges of driving while drunk and causing a crash in San Ysidro that seriously injured a 6-year-old boy will not be tried a third time, a judge ruled Friday.

The case against 39-year-old Constantino Banda Acosta, a Mexican citizen who has been deported from the United States more than a dozen times, was dismissed.

Chula Vista Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sontag had declared a mistrial on Monday after jurors informed her they were unable to reach verdicts on the felony charges, including hit-and-run causing serious injury and driving under the influence of alcohol.

In September, a different jury that had heard the case announced that it was deadlocked on the felony charges, but convicted him on misdemeanor counts of vandalism, battery and driving without a license.

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Sontag on Friday sentenced Banda on the three misdemeanor convictions, giving him credit for the more than two years of time he has already served while going through the two trials.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Chandler said immigration authorities had placed a hold on Banda so that he is not released from custody before federal prosecutors decide whether to pursue charges.

Banda was arrested after the May 6 crash that left then-6-year-old Lennox Lake with serious injuries, including a fractured skull. The family had been returning home to San Ysidro from a trip to Disneyland.

The case drew national interest after federal authorities said Banda had repeatedly crossed the border illegally. He had been deported to Mexico or allowed to return there voluntarily 17 times since 2002, according to records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Chandler argued in both trials that Banda was behind the wheel of a Chevrolet Silverado when he ran a stop sign and broadsided the Lake familys Honda Accord.

Banda was in the drivers seat of the pickup when Border Patrol agents pulled him from the vehicle less than two miles from the crash site.

Deputy Public Defender Juliana Humphrey contended that another man, Jorge Adame Ariza, was driving at the time of the crash.

Surveillance video shows Adame behind the wheel of the pickup earlier that evening when the pair left a Chula Vista restaurant.

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Humphrey argued that police assumed too quickly that Banda was the driver, and they didnt question Adame until three days after the crash.

Chandler has said that Banda and Adame switched seats before the crash because Adame did not have a drivers license. Adame, who was in the country illegally, also testified that it was Banda who ran a stop sign and struck the Lake familys car.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Littlefield writes for the San Diego Union-TribuneA second alleged gunman in a Compton shooting that left a toddler dead has been arrested, Los Angeles County sheriffs homicide officials said Friday.

Kevaughn Harris, 27, was taken into custody Wednesday in connection with the Jan. 20 killing of 3-year-old Franklin Pon-ros, who was sitting in his mothers car when he was fatally struck.

According to Sheriffs Lt. Joe Mendoza, Harris and Dwayne Ward, 30, recognized each other as rival gang members in a liquor store and began shooting at each other in the parking lot.

Harris had gone to the store with his girlfriend and the boy.

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After the shootout, Harris and Ward sped off in their vehicles, Mendoza said. Initially, Harris and the boys mother didnt know the child had been hit.

When the couple realized Franklin was wounded, they called 911. Sheriffs deputies raced the boy to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Mendoza said.

Investigators identified Ward as the boys suspected killer soon after. Surrounded by family and with his attorney present, Ward turned himself in Jan. 22 and was held on suspicion of a parole violation.

After the shooting, Harris stayed with his girlfriend when she called 911 and was interviewed by deputies. In the intervening weeks, authorities gathered evidence and built their case before arresting him Wednesday, Mendoza said.

On Friday, both Ward and Harris were charged with murder because they were both engaged in behavior that led to that murder, Mendoza said.

Both men also were charged with shooting at an occupied vehicle and being felons in possession of a firearm. They each face life in prison if convicted on all charges.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

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For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.Joining demonstrators around the country, tens of thousands of Southern California residents enraged by the gun violence that has ravaged American schools and other public places flocked to downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to call for stricter gun control laws.

Under grey skies, demonstrators in L.A.s March for Our Lives rally walked from Pershing Square to Grand Park, carrying handmade signs and banners that said, Protect kids, not guns and I shouldnt be afraid to send my child to school.

The sound of drums, tambourines and call-and-response chants rippled through the crowd of thousands of students, parents and grandparents and echoed off the historic buildings of Broadways theater district.

What do we want? Gun control! When do we want it? Now!

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At a rally in front of L.A. City Hall, Mayor Eric Garcetti led the crowd in a call and response chant: Whose streets? he said, as the crowd roared, Our streets! Whose Lives? Our Lives! Whose nation? Our nation!

The mayor said it was an historic day led by the countrys future leaders, the students who are here today.

Garcetti pointed out Californias bans on assault rifles, bump stocks and waiting periods on gun sales as a model for federal legislation and closed with a message for President Trump.

Get with the program Mr. President, or get the hell out of the way!

Comedian Amy Schumer, cousin of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) who also attended the march, spoke to the survivors of the Parkland shootings.

We stand together for your senselessly slain classmates and friends and say this has to stop!

At the end of the march, actress Rita Ora sang a rendition of the 1960s protest song For What Its Worth, and some members of the crowd chimed in. She told the demonstrators: Youre going to inspire the whole damn world.

Crowds gathered Saturday in more than a dozen California cities, including San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Santa Clarita, Long Beach and elsewhere.

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Speaking at an afternoon rally in Santa Ana, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, touted Proposition 63, which he proposed and campaigned for, as Californias answer to the NRAs sway over federal gun policy. The 2016 voter-approved initiative banned ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and makes it a crime not to report lost or stolen guns.

We changed the trajectory of the debate, not just in this state but all across the rest of the country, Newsom, who is running for governor, said of the states laws. Gun control saves lives!

Organizers with NextGen America, a group started by California billionaire and activist Tom Steyer, who has already put $1 million into a nationwide youth voter registration effort, were helping to sign up new voters in Santa Ana.

As much as we love your voice, we want to make sure your voice is counted on Nov. 6, Steyer told the crowd. He said he plans to spend $30 million helping Democrats flip the House of Representatives this year, $3.5 million of it organizing young people in California.

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At a rally outside San Francisco City Hall, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein noted her support for an assault weapons ban in her tough re-election campaign and urged demonstrators to extend their activism to the November mid-term elections.

There is a bill in the Judiciary Committee to ban assault weapons with 30 cosponsors, she told the crowd. The problem is the gun industry. They will go out and they will support mightily people in other states that will refuse to do this. Heres what Im asking you to do...Will you march? Will you register? Will you see that people vote and see that you vote and your friends vote for those that would rid this country of guns?

The crowd responded: Yeah!

The worldwide day of action against gun violence was sparked by student activists who have pushed lawmakers to forgo campaign contributions from the National Rifle Assn. and enact stricter gun control laws in the wake of a Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. that left 17 students and teachers dead.

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In the thick of the march on Broadway, a group of teenagers that included Myles Pincus, 15, carried a long banner adorned with red handprints that read, NRA has blood on its hands.

Myles, a student at Fusion Academy, urged people not to conflate the issues of mental health and gun violence as they advocated for change. He said he had myriad mental health issues, and ostracizing people like him wont solve anything.

I dont need to go to school and get patted down just because I have depression, Mylessaid. This is not a mental health issue. This is a gun issue, period.

Many teenagers at Saturdays rallies said they looked forward to turning 18, when they could vote for candidates who will support national gun control measures.

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California election officials staffed a booth where adults could register to vote, and 16- and 17-year-olds could pre-register. The initiative, which activates teenagers voting eligibility when they turn 18, has pre-registered more than 88,000 people since its launch in 2016.

Sheva Gross, a child development professor at UCLA, came to the march with her daughters Talia, 8, and Flora, 11. Gross carried a sign adorned with peace signs that read, Im so mad, I cant even think of a slogan.

The girls have gone through lockdown drills at their Culver City elementary school that make them nervous, Flora said. She added: To not come home again, like, ever  its overwhelming.

Gross was in the classroom with future teachers and child welfare workers 15 minutes after the San Bernardino massacre and an hour after the Parkland shooting. She said the fear in her students eyes was evident.

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They grew up with this, and theyre terrified, Gross said, breaking into tears. Flora hugged her.

Retired school principal John P. Johnson, 68, and his wife, Margy, came from Corona to march for their 13 grandchildren. Johnson, who knows the AR-15 well from his time in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, held a sign that read: Veterans against assault weapons.

There is no reason to purchase an AR-15 here or anywhere in the world, Johnson said. Its used for the battlefield. The bullets kill within seconds.

Brianna Cornejo-Perez, a 14-year-old student at Santa Monica High School, came to the march with her mother, a former teacher. A fellow student in Santa Monica had posted a Snapchat photo of himself holding a gun, making fun of gun control and the Parkland shootings, unnerving her.

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We used to have lockdown drills  now we have active shooter drills, Brianna said. Its a bit scary.

Brianna and her mother said they support school psychologists, anti-bullying campaigns, and other resources for kids who dont fit in, rather than armed security guards or police officers.

Giselle Jimenez, 17, of Alexander Hamilton High School, held a sign reading, Silly me, I didnt know that not wanting kids to be slaughtered by assault rifles was being political.

A school shooting could happen anywhere, Giselle said. The next victims could be me, my sister, any one of my friends.

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Ariel Burgess, 22, who recently graduated from UCLA, said there was a shooting the month she was accepted to the university. It made her question whether she would be safe there.

Every shooting Im saddened but never surprised, she said. With every shooting, the urge to change gun laws gets stronger, but nothing gets done.

Cara Rosenbaum, 32, of Leimert Park held a sign that read, My daughter is due in May. Im afraid to send her to school.

She said its terrifying to think about bringing a child into the world and having to worry every day about whether she will come home from school.

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As Im preparing for parenthood, there are so many things I need to think about, she said. The safety of my child while shes trying to get an education should not be one of those things.

At the end of the march, about a dozen pro-gun activists gathered outside Los Angeles Police Department headquarters. They waved American flags and held signs reading, Ban Jihad, not guns and Guns will ensure our freedom.

They were separated from the March for Our Lives participants by yellow caution tape, a line of officers, a line of police bicycles, and a line of volunteers who wore orange vests and black shirts that said, We can end gun violence.

How long have you been pro-mass shooter? one man shouted across the barriers.

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All lives matter! a pro-gun protester shouted back.

Another said, My best friend is black!

Jarime Uzziel, 43, said he was standing against additional gun control. He said he wants teachers to be trained and able to carry firearms.

Natali Valle, 20, stood on the other side and shook her head, pulling her friend into a hug. They had come by to see if the counter-protesters had any valid points, and quickly decided the answer was no.

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When people argue back and forth, theres no communication happening, said Valle, a student at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut. This division is  whats causing America to fall apart.

Times staff writer Sonali Kohli contributed to this report.

gale.holland@latimes.com

andrea.castillo@latimes.com

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laura.nelson@latimes.com

UPDATES:

6:35 p.m.: This article was updated with new comments from speakers in Santa Ana and San Francisco.

5:05 p.m.: This article was updated to include comments from speakers at an afternoon rally in Orange County.

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3:50 p.m.: This article was updated to include comments from Mayor Eric Garcetti and others.

2:35: This article was updated with more comments from demonstrators.

1:35 p.m. This article was updated with quotes from pro-gun counter-protestors, and from singer and actress Rita Ora.

12:30 p.m.: This article was updated with more quotes from demonstrators.

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11:50 a.m.: This article was updated with more comments from demonstrators and more details about other marches around Southern California.

10:20 a.m.: This article was updated with new comments from demonstrators.

This article was originally posted at 8:40 a.m.A Los Angeles Superior Court judge sided Friday with a man who was accused of running an illegal hotel in Venice Beach, concluding that renting out apartment units in his building for short stays was not banned under city codes.

Carl Lambert was one of several people targeted by the city attorney two years ago and accused of operating apartment buildings as illegal hotels.

In his civil suit, City Atty. Mike Feuer argued that Lambert was defying city law and exacerbating the housing crisis by taking units off the rental market, and that he and his company were well aware that what they are doing is illegal. The Venice Beach building falls under city rent stabilization rules.

Lambert and his attorneys countered in court filings that it was consistent with city rules to rent out the building on Ocean Front Walk for short stays, arguing that an occupancy certificate issued decades ago had authorized it to be used as an apartment-hotel.

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More broadly, his attorney Matthew Hinks wrote that the municipal code simply does not contain a restriction on renting on a short-term basis.

Backing that argument, Judge Teresa Beaudet wrote in a tentative order this week that there is no statutory basis for restricting the use of an apartment house based on length of occupancy.

Night-to-night rentals at the Venice Beach building do not violate the zoning code, she concluded. Beaudet added that even if the building is only allowed for apartment use, as city attorneys contend, that would not matter. City attorneys had not shown that short-term rentals change the use of an apartment building into a hotel, the judge wrote.

The judge exercised a very careful legal analysis that determined that I am allowed to rent for less than 30 days, Lambert said after Fridays ruling.

It is unclear whether the city attorneys office will challenge the decision. City attorneys are still reviewing their options, said Ivor Pine, a spokesman for the office. Legal records indicate that in two other cases pursued by Feuer involving such rentals, courts have at least tentatively sided with the city attorney.

Although the recent decision focuses specifically on the Ocean Front Walk building, the legal arguments outlined in the case could help other people defend themselves against city citations for renting out apartments for short stays, said Tom Nitti, an attorney who specializes in real estate law and attended the Friday hearing as an observer.

Ive been saying for a number of years now, theres no law to prohibit short-term rentals in Los Angeles, Nitti said. People are going to hear about this case and pick up this argument.

The decision troubled activists who have argued that such rental practices worsen the housing shortage in neighborhoods like Venice. In essence shes ruling that any apartment house can be a hotel, without a permit, said Judith Goldman, co-founder of Keep Neighborhoods First. Hopefully a higher court will correct this error.

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Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenant advocacy group, said the ruling makes it even more imperative for the city to act swiftly to regulate short-term rentals, to ensure that more housing is not lost.

Nearly three years have passed since L.A. lawmakers first proposed prohibiting people from renting out a house or apartment for short stays if it is not their primary residence, in order to stop commercial operators from buying up buildings and running them like hotels.

Renting out homes or units night to night has become more popular with the rise of online platforms such as Airbnb and HomeAway that link travelers to hosts.

At the Friday hearing, Beaudet did not rule on whether advertising the building as a hotel was false or misleading, as the city attorney had alleged, or whether Lambert had violated state law by engaging in unfair competition. Those two issues could still be decided at trial.

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emily.alpert@latimes.com

Twitter: @AlpertReyesFaced with the need to find additional space to house Orange Countys homeless population, there is a new push for Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa to be used as an emergency shelter.

The proposal comes at a critical moment. Faced with a federal lawsuit, the county Board of Supervisors voted this week to consider putting emergency shelters in Huntington Beach, Irvine and Laguna Niguel.

But those cities vowed to sue to block the move. Hundreds of Irvine residents protested this week, and the Board of Supervisors is now considering withdrawing the plan.

Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson and state Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa) said the 114-acre, state-owned property at 2501 Harbor Blvd. is an attractive option given its central location and the fact that existing infrastructure could be used to accommodate and provide services to the homeless.

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If we can find a campus to address a significant need in this county that we can rally around, then this is one of those opportunities that we just dont want to let pass by, Moorlach said.

In a statement Friday afternoon, Nelson said the plan provides an additional boost and momentum to establish another temporary transitional homeless shelter for the countys homeless population.

Fairview will provide additional relief from the lack of emergency beds throughout the county, he added.

Denis Bilodeau, Nelsons chief of staff, said Friday that Fairview is just one of many sites were considering.

The emergence of Fairview as a potential emergency shelter is the latest wrinkle in the countys strategy to house hundreds of people who recently were evicted from encampments along the Santa Ana River.

The move to clear the camps prompted a federal lawsuit by homeless advocates.

Earlier this week, county supervisors approved a plan to eventually move those formerly living along the riverbed  many of whom are currently housed in motels  to temporary shelters in Huntington Beach, Irvine and Laguna Niguel.

However, the plan was met with immediate backlash from city residents and officials. Leaders in Irvine and Laguna Niguel voted to sue the county to block the shelter plan, and Huntington Beach officials pushed to drop the location there, as well.

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The Board of Supervisors plans to take up the shelter issue again Tuesday.

Hanging over everything is what U.S. District Judge David Carter might do if the county cant find sufficient shelter space.

For weeks, Carter has been trying to broker a plan and has warned officials that he doesnt want the homeless people displaced by the riverbed sweeps to end up at the Santa Ana Civic Center, which already is overwhelmed with homeless camps.

Its unclear exactly what would need to be done to use a portion of the Fairview Development Center property as a shelter. The center opened in 1959 and currently provides services and housing to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. As of Feb. 28, it had 133 residents, according to the California Department of Developmental Services. At its peak population in 1967, it housed 2,700.

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Fairview  like other such facilities around the state  is slated to close in coming years as part of an effort to transition people out of institutional-style centers and into smaller accommodations that are more integrated into communities.

The state said last year that Fairview is scheduled to transition its remaining residents to other living options by 2019.

In Moorlachs mind, that presents a rare opportunity. He has long been looking for ways to ensure that the property doesnt slip away and that local leaders have a say in determining its future after it closes.

A benefit of the site, he said Friday, is that it could be easily secured and controlled with appropriate security personnel and with appropriate gates or other fencing options so that it would not be a burden on the neighbors.

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Heres an alternative that would, maybe, be helpful to our business community and our residents, he said.

Money writes for Times Community News.Angry protests continued into the wee hours Saturday morning on the streets of Sacramento over the shooting of an unarmed African American man by police.

Protests began Friday at the state Capitol and continued into the streets of downtown, with marchers briefly blocking both lanes of traffic on Interstate 5. Demonstrators and police officers clashed in south Sacramento on Friday night, and video showed protesters surrounding, kicking and climbing on top of a police car. Another video from early Saturday morning showed a tense standoff between protesters and a line of police in riot gear.

RELATED: How the shooting of Stephon Clark happened.

It was the latest in a week of unrest over the death of Stephon Clark, who was shot at 20 times by police in the backyard of the home where he lived with his grandparents. Police said they believed he had a gun, but authorities recovered only a cellphone near his body.

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Thinking back to this interview from earlier. Elijah Johnson, 24, lives 15 minutes away from where Stephon Clark was shot in his own backyard. You think, Man, that could have been me, that could have been my brother, that could have been my sister, he said. You hurt. pic.twitter.com/RyEqFJ1kt5  Jazmine Ulloa (@jazmineulloa) March 24, 2018

Protests continue into the night in Sacramento. Employees and patrons on J street watch, film and some join as helicopter flies overhead. Say his name. Stephon Clark. pic.twitter.com/nT3WtPBGVl  Jazmine Ulloa (@jazmineulloa) March 24, 2018

Some more footage: More than 100 people marching toward the Capitol. #StephonClark pic.twitter.com/2ZCFrXvLxn  Jazmine Ulloa (@jazmineulloa) March 24, 2018

On Friday, protesters held their fists up in a moment of silence. They denounced the killing of young black people at the hands of police and the mainstream media for what they said was unfair news coverage of shooting victims who are minorities. Some in the crowd had gone to school with Clark and remembered him as good father and loyal friend.

Former classmates Chrishayla Treadwell, 23, and Dominique Rodriguez, 22, took the day off from their jobs as healthcare workers to join the demonstration. They wore black shirts with Clarks photo and bold, red block lettering that read, Long Live Zoe.

We had to be here, Rodriguez said. He was like family. It would be wrong if we werent.

Treadwell said she had been shocked and heartbroken to hear the news of Clarks killing.

He was always smiling, she said. We never saw him mad.

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Elijah Johnson, 24, said he was disturbed to learn Clark had been killed in his own backyard, 15 minutes away from Johnsons home.

When you hear, you think, Man, that could have been me. That could have been my brother. That could have been my sister,  he said. You hurt.

A petition circulating on the Color of Change website Friday demanded that Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert bring charges against the officers who shot Clark.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg was more reserved, saying the department should consider increasing its use of less-than-lethal weapons, but he did not fault the officers involved in Clarks shooting. He expressed concern about demonstrators resorting to vandalism or violence.

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Thats not right. Strength is in peaceful resistance, Steinberg said in an interview Friday, putting his hands over his face. There has to be a better way.

He said Clarks death, though still under investigation, was wrong and points to the need not only for more administrative change, but also a reckoning with racism itself.

Stephon Clark vigil/march after 2 hours still going strong https://t.co/KPHfRGS4GB  Paige St. John (@paigestjohn) March 24, 2018

Todays Stephon Clark march included police confrontations, anger, but overall restraint pic.twitter.com/FPr2bHirP8  Paige St. John (@paigestjohn) March 23, 2018

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Stephon Clark vigil turns into another much just one route south Sacramento pic.twitter.com/ON0Igys9Za  Paige St. John (@paigestjohn) March 24, 2018

We have to stand up for our children, said Diane Gomez, a city resident who brought a hand-written placard that read, Where was his constitutional right to due process?

Our kids and men dont feel safe, said Steinberg, adding that he welcomed the spotlight the city is now under. There is no danger if we do the right thing, if we push aggressively to change what must be changed.

Recordings released by the Police Department include a 911 call about a man in a black hoodie breaking car windows Sunday night.

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The man busted both my truck windows out, and hes in peoples backyards right now, the caller said.

About 9:25 p.m., officers in a sheriffs helicopter spotted a man who they said had picked up a toolbar and broken a house window.

Video from the helicopter appears to show Clark scaling a tall fence and peering into a vehicle before running into his own backyard.

Shaky body cam footage shows officers running up a dark driveway. Hey! Show me your hands! Stop! Stop! one officer yells. They turn a corner and spot Clark in the glare of their flashlights, then take cover behind a building before confronting him once more and firing a barrage of bullets at him.Federal investigators on Friday said that the person who drove a burning minivan filled with propane and gas tanks into the front gate of Travis Air Force Base in Northern California was a 51-year-old Bay Area man originally from India.

Hafiz Kazi was a legal permanent resident and had lived in the United States since 1993, said Sean Ragan, FBI special agent in charge of the Sacramento field office. Kazi had lived in the Bay Area, including Sausalito, Ragan said, but his most recent place of residence was not known.

Investigators have yet to determine a motive for the Wednesday night attack or evidence that anyone else was involved.

We dont have any nexus of terrorism at this point, Ragan said, adding that aspect of the case was still being investigated. Now the question is, why. Why was he there? What led him there? And we dont know answers to that, quite frankly.

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Kazi drove the Kia minivan through the front gate of the military base, which is near Fairfield, around 7 p.m. Wednesday. Security personnel saw flames inside the van, which crashed shortly after going through the gate, Ragan said.

Emergency responders initially did not know if it was an attack or some sort of mishap. But when they opened the doors to the minivan they found five propane tanks, three plastic one-gallon gas cans, several lighters, three phones and a gym bag with personal items, Ragan said.

The bases explosive ordnance disposal team quickly responded to the scene as did Air Force investigators, the FBI, fire crews and local police.

Kazis body was severely burned, but coroners officials were able to identify him through his fingerprints.

Ragan said investigators are trying to glean information from Kazis phone and other items recovered from the scene. He said agents also are pursuing multiple leads to piece together Kazis life and a possible motive.

The dead mans religious beliefs and affiliation are not known at this point, said Ragan, who debunked a rumor that some sort of jihad video was found on Kazis phone.

Authorities were able to contact one of Kazis relatives in India to inform them of his death, but theres no indication that person was interviewed as part of the investigation. Agents continue to search for any potential relatives or other people who knew Kazi.

Thus far, investigators have not found any evidence to indicate continuing threats to the air base, home to 7,000 active military members, or surrounding communities.

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phil.willon@latimes.com

Times staff writer Jack Dolan in Los Angeles contributed to this report.Back in World War II when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were allied against the Nazis, hundreds of Soviet aviators were trained on the North Carolina coast as part of a secret spy project. But now, an effort to honor their mission has triggered a miniature Cold War in a small American city.

The Russian Ministry of Defense wants to place a 25-ton bronze monument in Elizabeth City, where the recently declassified Project Zebra was carried out. Russia would pay for the 13-foot-tall monument, with the city footing the bill for improvements to the as-yet-undeveloped park on the Pasquotank River where it would be located.

But amid international tensions and fears about Russian hacking of U.S. elections, elected officials in this North Carolina city have rejected a memorandum of understanding that was to be the next step.

We are living in troubled times, and people are very concerned about a lot of things, council member Anita Hummer said at the meeting where the council voted 5-3 to reject the memorandum. And I realize that its about honoring fallen heroes from World War II, and we have Americans who fought in World War II who are buried in Russia. But times were different then.

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One council member warned that the monument could be a Trojan horse. Johnnie Walton worries the Russians could put something in it that could be triggered remotely to disrupt the internet or electrical grid.

Russia is known for hacking now. Theyre experts at hacking, and then weve got the largest Coast Guard base [that] cant help anybody because our computers have gone down, because Russia controls our mouse, Walton said at a committee meeting, according to the Daily Advance of Elizabeth City.

A Russian-American joint commission on prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action wanted the monument in Elizabeth City because of a top-secret World War II operation at the U.S. Coast Guard station there. Declassified just a few years ago, Project Zebra helped train about 300 Soviet aviators. Their mission was to find German submarines and bomb them.

One night in 1945, three Russians, a Ukrainian and a Canadian were killed when a seaplane bound for Russia crashed in the Pasquotank River. Their sacrifice was never publicly recognized, and the crash was forgotten for decades.

After Project Zebra was declassified in 2013, efforts slowly developed to honor it with a monument, which would feature three aviator figures  one each from the Soviet Union, U.S. and Britain.

The previous City Council unanimously approved the statue in May 2017. So supporters were caught off-guard by when the new council backtracked and voted nyet in February  especially because three of the negative votes came from incumbents who had supported it earlier.

Located in northeastern North Carolina near the Virginia border, Elizabeth City was founded in 1793 and has a population of about 18,000. Locals describe the area as progressive in some ways but also fiscally conservative.

In 2013, the local Republican Party challenged an African American college students candidacy for City Council. Eventually, the State Board of Elections interceded, and the student ran for office and won.

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And for what may be the first time, the councils majority is African American and so is the mayor.

Public discussion has played out along mostly racial lines; four of the five council members who oppose the monument are black, and two of three who support it are white. At one meeting, council member Darius Horton asked the city manager whether Elizabeth City has any monuments to minorities or women.

Information about the monument didnt filter to the African American community as well as it did to the white community, said Hezekiah Brown, one of two citizens who spoke against it. Not that hes convinced that more information would matter.

Were at war with Russia still. Were in a cyberwar here, Brown said. They interfered in our election. And theyve not said they wont do it again. ... The war has to end. Then you do something. You dont do it while youre at war.

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For its part, Russia is sensitive to actions it regards as disrespectful to the Soviet Unions military campaign against Nazi Germany. In 2007, weeks of cyberattacks shut down websites of government ministries, banks and news media in the former Soviet republic of Estonia amid a dispute with Moscow over plans to relocate a statue of a Red Army soldier in the capital, Tallinn. Estonian officials accused Russia of orchestrating the onslaught.

Elected officials in Elizabeth City also are hearing from citizens such as Rick Boyd, who turned in a petition with 569 local signatures supporting the project. He said 200 other people have signed an online petition. The monument offers the two rival nations a chance to show that we worked together in the past and that we can work together in the future, he told the council.

Mayor Bettie Parker suggested the vote might have turned out differently if it had happened earlier. I keep hearing now is not the time to deal with anything thats coming from Russia, said Parker, who only votes in case of a tie.

Council member Billy Caudle, who supports the monument, says people who are concerned about the appearance of an alliance with Russia are confusing current events with history.

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Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Robert Foglesong, chairman of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, has asked the City Council to reconsider its vote. But for now, the council majority seems steadfast.

Walton said he was sick of discussing the monument and recommended that it be erected in Russia.

Those peoples relatives live in Russia, he said. Give them the opportunity to ride by on a Sunday, say a prayer, do all the things that people do when youre memorializing somebody.

Waggoner writes for the Associated Press.People facing deportation proceedings, as well as those who arrive at the border seeking asylum from persecution in their home countries, often wind up in federal detention centers. In fact, on any given day some 44,000 such people are detained in the U.S., two-thirds of them in facilities owned and operated by private prison companies. There, the detainees get the chance to volunteer to work  at appallingly low rates of $1 or $1.50 a day  as cooks, dishwashers, food servers, janitors, groundskeepers, barbers, and even clerks helping to process new arrivals.

The private prison companies argue in court papers that the federal government authorizes them to run those voluntary work programs, and no one is compelled to take part. But according to a number of federal lawsuits by current and former detainees challenging the practice, the notion that the detainees have a choice is illusory. Given the imbalance of power between jailers and the jailed, detainees say they dont feel they can refuse to work, and many report they have been coerced through threats of withheld privileges, such as family visits, and in some cases that they have been sent off to solitary confinement if they declined. That is atrocious.

Cheaper and more flexible is no excuse for abusing the fundamental rights of people being held against their will as the government seeks to deport them.

Prison labor is not a new concept for the country. The 13th Amendment, ratified seven months after the end of the Civil War, abolished slavery but allowed involuntary servitude  as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Courts have held that prisoners and detainees can be compelled to keep their immediate housing area clean, and people sentenced for crimes can be compelled to work for the congressionally set minimum of $1 a day because the work is considered part of their punishment and rehabilitation.

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Well leave unexplored here whether prison labor is inherently inhumane (defenders see it as part of the rehabilitation process and a way to break the tedium of prison life) to focus on the key difference between prisons and immigration detention. Prison inmates are serving time because they have been convicted of a crime. But immigration detainees are being held pending civil proceedings to determine whether they will be deported, not as a punishment after a conviction. In fact, unless they were deemed a flight risk or a threat to public safety, people going through deportation proceedings shouldnt have been jailed in the first place.

It is unconscionable that the government and its contractors abuse them further by effectively compelling them to work. Its even more outrageous that they receive as little as $1 a day for doing jobs central to operating the detention centers and caring for the detainees. Ironically, many detainees do not have green cards and cant legally work in the U.S., a technicality avoided by calling the $1-a-day wage an allowance, as though the workers were children rewarded for doing chores. Some of the lawsuits seek back pay for unpaid work, which seems a fair demand. We also hope courts see this practice for what it is  in essence, forced labor  and order the detainees be paid at least the local minimum wage, and ensure that taking a job truly is a matter of choice.

President Obama took steps to break the governments reliance on private prisons, both for the federal prison system and the immigration detention system, but President Trump reversed those moves. (Not coincidentally, stock prices for the two leading private prison companies have doubled since the inauguration.) Trump has also sought to expand the immigration detention system despite persistent reports by human rights and immigrant advocacy groups, sometimes confirmed by government audits, of mistreated detainees and poorly maintained facilities.

Proponents of privatization say relying on private contractors is cheaper and gives the government more flexibility because it can then grow or shrink the systems capacity through contracts instead of building facilities that it must then maintain. But cheaper and more flexible is no excuse for abusing the fundamental rights of people being held against their will as the government seeks to deport them. Letting private operators pad their profit margins by conscripting the detainees into all-but-unpaid labor must end. Its astounding that this ersatz slavery system was allowed to take root in the first place.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or FacebookThe word breach evidently struck terror in the heart of Facebook last week. On March 16, the company brass pressured the Guardian not to use it, threatening to sue, according to a reporters tweet.

As Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his coterie well knew, the U.K. newspaper was readying a dramatic expose that was not exactly going to redound to the glory of Facebook.

Facebook, the world was about to learn, had not just been infested with Russian trolls creating cacophony and discord. It had been undermined by alleged data thieves.

Whats worse, Facebook had been hospitable to the breach. Even solicitous.

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These revelations drew notice even from Americans skeptical of the notion that attacks on the internet represent acts of war. A grass-roots #DeleteFacebook campaignbegan, which Zuckerberg, usually blase about such things, admitted made him nervous. Alex Stamos, the chief security officer at Facebook, announced he would resign from the company in August, having reportedly been appalled by the companys failures of vigilance. Leaders of two separate congressional committees called on Zuckerberg to testify. In primetime, Zuckerberg offered a halting mea culpa that reassured neither investors nor investigators.

All the while, the deluge.

Evidence has surfaced daily and sometimes hourly this week that the internet is under assault. And not just from the Kremlin, or from corrupt far-right consultancies with unscrupulous methods and shadowy foreign ties. But from nine Iranian hackers tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, whom the Justice Department indicted on Friday for a massive campaign of cyberattacks. According to the indictment,the attacks netted more than 31 terabytes of stolen academic data and intellectual property, the bulk of it from American universities, government agencies and NGOs.

What a week for the internet.

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, called the indictments one of the largest state-sponsored hacking campaigns ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

That announcement came just six days after the initial revelations about Facebook and the wacky and arrogant cloak-and-dagger firm known as Cambridge Analytica. Now notorious for reports of what might be called customized ethical solutions for political campaigns, Cambridge, which is capitalized by the right-wing Mercer family, is also  as it happens  buddies with one John Bolton. Bolton, of course, is the presidents brand-new national security advisor, who was named to the post Thursday.

In 2014, Bolton hired the then-embryonic Cambridge to harvest data, including from tens of millions of  you got it  Facebook profiles.

What a week for the internet.

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But back to last weekend. On Saturday, we learned the story of Aleksandr Kogan, a British academic andFacebook collaborator, who harvested personal data from 50 million unconsenting Americans on Facebook four years ago. We also learned that Kogan turned the haul over to Cambridge Analytica.

With vast data caches like that one, Cambridge, its brass later boasted, cinched political victories for charmers like Uhuru Kenyatta, the president of Kenya, and Donald Trump, the president of the United States. Others disagree.

Dont say breach, Facebook had warned. The Guardian didnt care. Major data breach, it announced. Facebooks stock price did care. The company lost some $60 billion in market value in the first two days of the week, which is more than Teslas entire market cap.

Unlike at the other breached internet firms  Yahoo, Uber, Ashley Madison  we know something about what was done with the 50 million names, liking histories, and other intimate info that Cambridge acquired. The flamingo-haired Christopher Wylie, who says he built Cambridges psychological warfare tool, told the media the idea was to confuse the hell out of targeted Facebook users  with a view to affecting their behavior and even their votes.

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As Wylie put it in an interview on morning TV, Cambridge aimed to explore mental vulnerabilities of people and inject information into different streams or channels of content online, so that people started to see things all over the place that may or may not have been true.

If your head is spinning, thats the point. According to still-breaking news, the data of hundreds of millions of Americans have been exploited. According to the March 22 indictments, intellectual property has been stolen. Our power grids have been threatened (Russian hackers, apparently) and by now we ought to know our social media has been choked with disorienting lies optimized to upset us.

The vertigo online is an effect of what information warfare expert Molly McKew calls data pollution  pervasive digital noise that can stultify democracy, media and markets.

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We are all getting false signals, journalist Craig Silverman said this month in testimony before the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy.

Our human faculties for sense making, and evaluating and validating information, are being challenged and in some ways destroyed.

Were certainly in the thick of false signals and data pollution right now. And maybe, also, the fog of war.

Twitter: @page88

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Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand FacebookAs Americans get ready to hear Stormy Daniels spill the story of her alleged 2006 affair with President Trump, we might want to acknowledge that she isnt the first adult entertainer to reportedly hook up with a future president. In 1955, the politician was Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy and the other woman was a stripper named Tempest Storm. The different manner in which Americans have digested these parallel tales reveals a lot about how our nation has evolved  and not  over the past half century.

Tempest Storm, born Annie Blanche Banks in Eastman, Ga., was an internationally famous burlesque star by her mid-20s and headlined feature films such as French Peep Show and Striptease Girl. She first encountered Kennedy after a performance at the Casino Royale in Washington, D.C.

She later wrote in her memoir that she had no idea who Kennedy was and had little interest in talking with him initially. But she was taken by the senators stunning good looks, and said their sexual relationship began the next evening. She said their occasional trysts, which ended well before he became president, typically took place at the Mayflower Hotel. According to Storm, who is now 90, Kennedy confided that he was not happily married, that Jackie was cold toward him.

The largely male Washington press corps looked the other way then and likewise kept Kennedy insulated from sexual scandal during his presidency. Not until 1975, when the name of his mistress Judith Campbell popped up during a congressional hearing, did most Americans realize Kennedy had been unfaithful to his wife. Still, when Campbell wrote her well-documented 1977 memoir about the multi-year affair, Kennedy loyalists did their best to discredit and degrade her.

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Tempest Storms 1987 memoir got similar dismissive treatment. The mainstream press ignored it as undignified gossip. The tide turned only when several academic Kennedy biographers acknowledged that her story meshed with their research. For instance, in 1955, Kennedy indeed was temporarily living in a suite at the Mayflower Hotel where he also spent intimate evenings with other lovers, including actresses Lee Remick and Audrey Hepburn.

Kennedys track record as a playboy and philanderer may well have been even worse than Trumps is.

Kennedys track record as a playboy and philanderer may well have been even worse than Trumps is. Remarkably, this information still remains largely buried by the work of countless apologists over the decades  including journalists and biographers who continue to minimize Kennedys extramarital sexual adventures. Take the fawning 2011 bestseller Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero by the MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who has been reprimanded by his network for sexual harassment. According to the TV pundit, after marrying Jackie in 1953, Kennedy simply decided not to forgo his bachelor pleasures.

But the details are considerably more disturbing. During his presidency, Kennedy engaged in casual sex with dozens of women, including strangers whom aides would procure for him. And while Trump presumably confined his grabbing of womens genitals to his pre-presidential days, Kennedy continued to do so while living in the peoples house. As described by biographer Geoffrey Perret, Kennedy brazenly put his hand up their skirts, propositioned them within minutes of meeting and groped their breasts and buttocks even as he danced with them.

Sometimes a porn star is just a porn star. But for JFK, as for Trump, his inability to resist her allure indicates a much deeper character issue. And yet a romanticized image of Kennedy still survives intact. Even as Americans debate what to make of Trumps reported lover with the weather-themed name, our nostalgia endures for the Mad Men era, when lecherous behavior was viewed not as a potential violation of the civil rights of women, but as the right of powerful men.

JFK (decidedly unlike Trump) did have some shining moments as a leader. One was his famous and eloquent speech on civil rights in June 1963. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue, he said. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.

That is still the heart of the question, as the #MeToo movement reminds us.

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Joshua Kendall is the author of First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama. He is writing a book about how the #MeToo movement will affect our view of presidential history.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand FacebookRep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday asking the agency to look into the possible noise impacts of the Next Generation Air Transportation System around Hollywood Burbank Airport.

Schiff tells Daniel Elwell, acting administrator of the FAA, in the letter that Burbank residents have been complaining about an increased amount of aircraft noise during takeoffs since the implementation of NextGen, a satellite-based radar system used by airports in Southern California since last March.

Schiffs letter comes on the heels of another letter sent by the city of Burbank and the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, in which both entities also asked the FAA to determine whether NextGen is the cause of the increased noise.

Its important to get good answers, Schiff said Friday. People do sense an increase in noise in certain neighborhoods and would like to be able to determine whether this is the result of NextGen or some other cause, and the best way to do it is by asking the FAA to do an analysis and give us the objective data. We hope they take us up on this request.

Burbank resident Audrey Ford, who started a group called Burbank for Quiet Skies, has been at the forefront of raising the noise issue around the airport and said she was glad to hear that her congressman is supporting their efforts.

Ford had met with Schiffs staff members about two months ago, asking if the congressman would be willing to send a letter to the FAA to let the federal agency know about the concerns expressed by her and her neighbors.

Were beyond thrilled because the residents have been experiencing an increase in noise since the spring of last year and it is life-altering, Ford said. Were experiencing noise not just between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., but there are flights that go out after hours, too, that are low and loud.

Ford said the letters sent by Schiff, the city and the airport authority are big steps into figuring out how to find a solution to the noise issue, and that hopefully planes departing from Hollywood Burbank wont have such shallow takeoff angles.

Were just hoping that enough awareness is brought to the issue that this is happening here in Burbank, Ford said. We just want the flights back up to the altitudes they once were.

anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com

Twitter: @acocarpioFaced with the need to find additional space to house Orange Countys homeless population, county Supervisor Shawn Nelson and state Sen. John Moorlach are calling for the Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa to be used as an emergency shelter.

The 114-acre, state-owned property at 2501 Harbor Blvd. is an attractive option given its central location and the fact that existing infrastructure could be used to accommodate and provide services to the homeless, the officials said Friday.

If we can find a campus to address a significant need in this county that we can rally around, then this is one of those opportunities that we just dont want to let pass by, said Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa).

In a statement Friday afternoon, Nelson said partnering with Moorlach provides an additional boost and momentum to establish another temporary transitional homeless shelter for the countys homeless population.

Fairview will provide additional relief from the lack of emergency beds throughout the county, Nelson added.

Denis Bilodeau, Nelsons chief of staff, said Friday that Fairview is just one of many sites were considering.

The emergence of Fairview as a potential emergency shelter is the latest wrinkle in the countys strategy to house hundreds of people who were recently evicted from encampments along the Santa Ana River.

The move to clear the camps prompted a federal lawsuit by homeless advocates.

Earlier this week, county supervisors approved a plan to eventually move those formerly living in the riverbed  many of whom are currently housed in motels  to temporary shelters in Huntington Beach, Irvine and Laguna Niguel.

However, the plan was met with immediate backlash from city residents and officials. Leaders in Irvine and Laguna Niguel voted to sue the county to block the shelter plan, and Huntington Beach officials pushed to drop the location there, as well.

The Board of Supervisors plans to take up the shelter issue again Tuesday.

Hanging over everything is what U.S. District Judge David Carter might do if the county cant find sufficient shelter space.

For weeks, Carter has been trying to broker a plan and has warned officials that he doesnt want the homeless people displaced by the riverbed sweeps to end up at the Santa Ana Civic Center, which is already overwhelmed with camps.

Its unclear exactly what would need to be done to use a portion of the Fairview Development Center property as a shelter. The center opened in 1959 and currently provides services and housing to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. As of Feb. 28, it had 133 residents, according to the California Department of Developmental Services. At its peak population in 1967, it housed 2,700.

Fairview  like other such facilities around the state  is slated to close in coming years as part of an effort to transition people out of institutional-style centers and into smaller accommodations that are more integrated into communities.

The state said last year that Fairview is scheduled to transition its remaining residents to other living options by 2019.

In Moorlachs mind, that presents a rare opportunity. He has long been looking for ways to ensure the property doesnt slip away and that local leaders have a say in determining its future after it closes.

A benefit of the site, he said Friday, is that it could be easily secured and controlled with appropriate security personnel and with appropriate gates or other fencing options so that it would not be a burden on the neighbors.

Heres an alternative that would, maybe, be helpful to our business community and our residents, he said.

luke.money@latimes.com

Twitter @LukeMMoneyDrawings by two Mariners Christian School students inspired two leather purses made by a Newport Beach handbag designer for auction at a school fundraiser. And a limited number will be sold online to help raise money for the Costa Mesa campus.

Suzan Lee Paek of Suzan Lee Designs chose fifth-grader Mary Jane Pfaff, 11, and sixth-grader Kawaii Sanita, 12, as winners in a schoolwide contest in which more than 100 designs were submitted by students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The contest was formed in hope of encouraging the next generation of artists, Lee Paek said.

Suzan Lee Paek of Suzan Lee Designs received more than 100 entries from Mariners Christian School students for a schoolwide handbag design contest. (Courtesy of Suzan Lee Paek )

Some students turned in pizza- and hot dog-shaped handbags, while others attached swatches of fabric they had in mind.

Lee Paek said she took the top 10 designs in the contest to her manufacturer in Seoul, South Korea, and she ultimately chose Mary Janes and Kawaiis entries because they would work well with the python and lizard leather she uses to make her handbags.

I didnt want to create something that wouldnt sell at their auction, Lee Paek said. I wanted to monetarily give back to their school and make sure it was something a person could carry and use.

Starting bids on the purses at Friday nights auction: $500.

The bags also will be available for purchase on Lee Paeks website, suzanlee.com.

Fifth-grader Mary Jane Pfaff designed a purple and yellow cross-body handbag with a silver buckle. (Courtesy of Suzan Lee Paek )

Mary Janes winning design was a purple and yellow cross-body handbag with a silver buckle. It was one of seven drawings she submitted for the contest.

Mary Jane said she envisioned creating a bag that would go with a fancy dress. She researched popular designers and looked at Lee Paeks website for inspiration and guidance.

Now that I see how good it turned out, I can totally see myself making more different designs, Mary Jane said. I have so many ideas. I just need to put them down on paper and create them.

Kawaii drew a handbag with a collage of colors to create a simple but classy look. Lee Paek added a floral patch to the final product.

Making art and drawing is fun for me, Kawaii said. I like expressing my imagining into designs, and at home I design purses and dresses.

Sixth-grader Kawaii Sanita drew a handbag with a collage of colors to create a simple but classy look. (Courtesy of Suzan Lee Paek )

Im sure theyre told by parents that theyre talented, Lee Paek said. But its very special when it comes from a stranger.

She said she wishes she could have created bags from all the submissions she received but hopes the experience will encourage the students to pursue their art.

Priscella.Vega@latimes.com

Twitter: @vegapriscellaA celebration of life for Hassan Haghani, who spent more than a decade serving in various planning capacities with the city of Glendale, will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.

The celebration will be held at Brandview Collection, 111 E. Harvard St., Glendale.

Guests can arrive at any time. They are asked to not wear black nor bring flowers, according to celebration organizers

Haghani died unexpectedly last week. He was 58.

According to a city of Glendale biography, Haghani began his municipal career in 1989 with the Los Angeles Planning Department. He then spent seven years with the city of West Hollywood, where he became a senior planner.

In 2003, he was hired by Glendale, where he was named community development director in 2010.

He later resigned his Glendale post to become executive director of the Planning and Building Agency for the city of Santa Ana, and he was named development director of the city of Ontario last August.

mark.kellam@latimes.com

Twitter: @lamarkkellamAuthorities arrested a pair of men suspected of illegally selling prescription drugs in Glendale on Thursday and recovered several thousands of dollars in cash from the two.

Detectives with the Glendale Police Departments narcotics division were surveilling the two men when they spotted an alleged drug deal take place between them and another person who had driven from Orange County to allegedly purchase pills, according to a statement from Sgt. Dan Suttles, a spokesman with the department.

Suttles said detectives identified the two suspected dealers as Jofreh Davtian and Boris Mkhitarian.

The two, along with the person from Orange County, were soon detained by police. Suttles said a bottle of Xanax and $400 in cash were recovered from Mkhitarian.

Jofreh Davtian, left, and Boris Mkhitarian, right, were arrested by Glendale police on suspicion of selling drugs. (Courtesy of the Glendale Police Department )

Authorities then conducted a search of Davtians Glendale home, where officers discovered a hidden compartment within one of the walls that contained 25 bottles of promethazine with codeine, a type of narcotic syrup. Thousands of dollars in cash and a second bottle of Xanax were also found in a safe at the home.

Mkhitarian was arrested on suspicion of selling Xanax, while Davtian was arrested on suspicion of selling a controlled substance.

andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_TrucAcross Egypts vast capital, the smiling visage of President Abdel Fattah Sisi looms from billboards erected along major thoroughfares, from rows of posters affixed to lampposts and bridges and from banners dangling between palm trees.

Days before an election that critics labeled a farce, a few posters also appeared for Sisis lone challenger, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, an obscure politician whose party endorsed the president before its leader entered the race hours before a January deadline.

But to the presidents critics, the message is clear: Seven years after massive street protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak and inspired Arab Spring uprisings across the region, the country has sunk back into repression reminiscent of the former strongman who ruled for nearly three decades.

An election billboard for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi looms over downtown Cairo. (Jonathan Rashad / For The Times )

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Any credible contenders for the presidency were arrested or exited the race soon after declaring their intention to run. Authorities also clamped down on the media, reportedly blocking access to hundreds of websites, detaining journalists said to serve the forces of evil by deliberately spreading false news and urging citizens to report to police any content they deem harmful to the countrys image.

The word election is a generous way of describing what is taking place, said Timothy Kaldas, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington. I think its a kind of show of force.

What puzzled observers, however, was why Sisis camp would go to such lengths to guarantee a victory many believed was already in the bag.

During the latter part of Mubaraks rule, the government and security establishment tolerated certain forms of dissent and even allowed the opposition Muslim Brotherhood to field candidates, spreading a veneer of democracy over an autocratic regime. The thinking was that by engaging its critics, the government could prevent the emergence of more potent threats.

Sisi is obviously not like that, and for whatever reason, has decided that the limited opening that existed under Hosni Mubarak is what led to 2011 taking place, and hes utterly uninterested in that ever becoming a possibility again, said H.A. Hellyer, a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

The former military chief has presided over a broad crackdown since seizing power from Egypts first democratically elected president, the Brotherhoods Mohamed Morsi, amid a popular uprising in 2013. Untold numbers of opponents have been jailed, sentenced to death or fled the country.

In 2014, Sisi garnered nearly 97% of the vote against a lone opponent.

The word election is a generous way of describing what is taking place. I think its a kind of show of force. Timothy Kaldas, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy

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The imposition of painful austerity measures while carrying out large-scale infrastructure projects aimed at reviving Egypts battered economy may have cost Sisi some popular support.

There also have been persistent attacks by Islamist extremists. At least two policemen were reported killed Saturday in a bombing in Alexandria that targeted the northern citys security chief. Gen. Mostafa Nimr survived the attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Some have speculated about possible discontent with Sisis presidency within a section of the armed forces, which analysts say continue to play an outsize role in the countrys politics and economy. Both the military chief of staff and the head of the general intelligence service were replaced in recent months, raising questions about whether they were deemed sufficiently loyal.

But Kaldas said it was worth noting how quickly and decisively Sisis government was able to dispatch any challengers from the security establishment, which again speaks to his relative power.

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Two former army commanders, Lt. Gen. Sami Anan and Col. Ahmed Konsowa, were arrested and jailed for violating military rules after declaring their intention to run.

Another hopeful, Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander who served as prime minister in 2011, announced his candidacy from self-imposed exile in the United Arab Emirates only to be arrested and deported back to Egypt, where he briefly disappeared. He later posted a statement on Twitter saying he was not the ideal person to run the country because he had spent too much time abroad.

In addition to the former military officers, two other would-be candidates  Khaled Ali, a prominent human rights lawyer, and Mohamed Anwar Sadat, a former lawmaker and nephew of assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat  also decided against entering the race, citing intimidation and other obstacles.

Mohamed Anwar Sadat, one of the candidates who withdrew from Egypts presidential election, sits in his office in Cairo. Through a window, a banner supporting incumbent President Abdel Fattah Sisi is seen. (Jonathan Rashad / For The Times )

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Sadat said threats were made against his campaign staff, and three hotels refused to host their events.

It was obvious that they dont want to have any serious candidate, he said in an interview that took place under the seemingly watchful gaze of Sisi, whose image was visible on a banner erected outside Sadats office window.

Not that I or Shafiq or Anan will win, he added. We all know that President Sisi is the one who has a chance, but at least a serious candidate who can speak out, who can debate. They dont want to see this happen.

Sadat declared the vote over before it began, calling it more of a referendum than a genuine election. What concerns me is what comes next, he said.

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Although Sisi has said he wont seek a third term, Sadat and other critics expect the presidents backers to use a victory at the polls to push for constitutional amendments allowing him to remain in office for more than eight years.

Opponents say there is no one to prevent such a maneuver. Egypts major Western allies, including the United States, have said little publicly about the way the election is being carried out.

Senior members of the Trump administration say they have brought up Egypts human rights record in private discussions with Sisis government. In August, the U.S. cut or delayed $290 million in military and economic assistance to Egypt in response to harsh restrictions on civic and other nongovernmental groups.

In an interview broadcast this week on Egyptian television, Sisi said it was not his fault there were only two election candidates.

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I swear to God, I wished there would have been one, two, three and 10 of the best people, he said. But we are not ready yet. Isnt it a shame?

Sisis only opponent, whose last-minute candidacy was widely regarded as an attempt to give the vote some credibility, has been careful to avoid antagonizing the government, telling a state-run television program that he was not here to challenge the president. But at a news conference this week, Moussa insisted he was no puppet.

Moussa Mostafa Moussa, the lone challenger to Egypts incumbent president, addresses a news conference in Cairo. (Jonathan Rashad / For The Times )

Although he said he did not have the funds to do much campaigning, he said he was in the race to win and hoped that, even if he loses, the president might consider his ideas to bring relief to Egyptians hit hard by escalating prices and the elimination of government subsidies.

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The countrys electoral authority has promised a free and fair vote.

With Sisis victory a foregone conclusion, authorities concentrated on ensuring a strong turnout. Three days of balloting were scheduled, beginning Monday. Sisis supporters blanketed Cairo with posters and organized rallies across the country, urging voters to take part. Pro-government media warned that a failure to do so was tantamount to treason.

In a predominantly Christian neighborhood of the capital, residents filed into a tent festooned with fairy lights to hear a bishop and lawmakers tout Sisis achievements. Long live Egypt, they chanted, as they waved flags and danced to patriotic songs.

Sobhy Asaad, who runs a nearby engineering supplies store, acknowledged that the election was not a real contest and said he had no problem with that. He considers it treasonous to criticize the government while the country is at war against Islamist extremists in the Sinai Peninsula, including a branch of Islamic State.

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I dont care about democracy, he said. I care about my safety, and I care about my business.

Next week, he will cast a ballot for Sisi, whom he regards as a hero for delivering the country from the Muslim Brotherhood. Others in the neighborhood said they saw no point in voting.

We know who is going to win, said a mother out buying groceries with her 19-year-old daughter. They should have saved the billions of [Egyptian] pounds and given the money to the people. I dont even know the other guy.

Like others who were critical of the authorities, she provided only one name, Rehab.

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As the pair hurried home, several other residents were putting up another banner urging Sisi on for a second term.

Special correspondent Ayat Al Tawy contributed to this report.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Twitter: @alexzavis

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War of words heats up between Trump administration, Palestinian leadership

UPDATES:

2:45 p.m.: This article was updated with at least two policemen killed in a bombing in Alexandria.

This article was originally published at 1:35 p.m.The 45-year-old man who allegedly ran off with a 16-year-old girl to Mexico has been returned to the Lehigh Valley where he remains in custody, the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office announced Saturday.

Kevin Esterly

Kevin Esterly, of Lowhill Township, was extradited Saturday from Florida where he was arrested March 18, the district attorney said.

Esterly is accused of taking 16-year-old Amy Yu, of Allentown, on a one-way flight to Cancun on March 5. Authorities said on multiple occasions he previously signed her out of a Northampton County charter school, posing as her stepfather. Yu did not have a stepfather, authorities said.

Yu left the Lehigh Valley willingly, authorities previously said. Various published reports indicate Yu failed to get on a school bus the morning of March 5 and met up with Esterly, who took her to Philadelphia International Airport.

Yu's family previously said the two met at church years ago, and the 16-year-old girl is friends with one of Esterly's daughters.

They were found by Mexican authorities and sent to Miami. Yu was returned to her family unharmed.

Esterly is charged with one count of interference with custody of children, a third-degree felony. His bail is to be set an an arraignment hearing Saturday, the district attorney's office said.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.They marched in Easton, Allentown, Washington, D.C., and hundreds of other cities across the country, united in a call to end gun violence.

Called the March for Our Lives, the events Saturday across the country were organized by student protesters in response to school shootings.

In Easton, there was a hopeful air on the Lafayette College campus, where well more than 100 college and high school students gathered late on the clear morning. They posed for photos and selfies in the warm sun and admired each others' handmade signs.

"We all just have positive attitudes about it," said Maddy McLaughlin, a Lafayette sophomore from Doylestown and one of the student organizers. "We're hoping to have our voices heard."

Just before noon, the call to march went out. Down the steps from College Hill they went, a solid line of young protesters making their way along city sidewalks to Centre Square, where hundreds more met them with cheers.

Easton's was one of more than 800 similar marches planned across the U.S., including one in nearby Allentown. Other advertised marches in the region included Stroudsburg, Pottstown and Doylestown in Pennsylvania, and Newton, Princeton, Somerville, and Morristown in New Jersey.

The crowd fills Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., during the March for Our Lives rally in support of gun control. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Half a million demonstrators were expected Saturday at the primary march in Washington, D.C. -- matching last year's women's march and make it one of the largest since the Vietnam era, according to the Associated Press.

The main march in Washington, D.C., was led by survivors of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the March for Our Lives website says. Seventeen people, including a school staffer with Easton ties, were killed in the shooting.

The Huffington Post reported this week that a board of adults is supervising fundraising efforts that have topped $3 million that is meant for gun safety legislation and support for victims' families.

Students were said to be the primary drivers of the other organized marches as well.

'We are the change.' Students flood streets across the US to press for more gun control. Read more of @AP's complete coverage of the March for Our Lives here: https://t.co/KJ5fPaXzFY pic.twitter.com/F8HlIgSu3S  The Associated Press (@AP) March 24, 2018

The stated goal of March for Our Lives is to make students' lives and safety a priority, and that Congress take action to end gun violence and mass shootings.

"This isn't a political rally. It's literally a march for our lives," writes Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of Parkland shooting in a message on the March for Our Lives site.

"I believe the young people in this country can change the world," Gonzalez writes. "And wouldn't that be something?"

A poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 69 percent of respondents and half of Republicans now favor stronger gun control laws.

March for Our Lives, a national protest against gun violence, is happening today in hundreds of cities around the country. We are at one march in Eastons Centre Square. Posted by lehighvalleylive.com on Saturday, March 24, 2018

The march in Easton did not shy away from politics. Student speakers, encouraged by the crowd, spoke openly of gun control measures. They sang songs, recited poetry and read aloud a list of every school shooting since 20 children were killed in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Students from Easton and Phillipsburg high schools were among the speakers. Adults and children listened from the square, some who crossed through a fountain (empty for the winter) to sit on the city's Civil War monument.

"Enough is enough," one person's sign said.

"It could have been any of us," said another, with mimicked blood spatter.

"History has its eyes on you," said yet another among the sea of placards.

The protesters also had their eyes on a small counter-demonstration happening around the square. A group of about 15 stood on a street corner just outside the protest with signs affirming the Second Amendment, with a handful of others standing within the circle but on the edge of the protest.

"I will protect you," said a sign held by one man who was openly carrying a handgun. In smaller letters underneath: "Don't tread on me!"

When the rally officially wrapped up about 1 p.m., both sides stood opposite each other on the street facing each other with their signs.

Eventually, the protest and counter-protest were intermingled. While some spoke to each other, there were no apparent signs of trouble and all dispersed after some time.

March for Our Lives brought hundreds to Easton's Centre Square as part of a national protest against gun violence happening in hundreds of cities on March 24, 2018. (Steve Novak | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Matt Bensa, a Lafayette freshman from Reading and another of the organizers of Easton's March for Our Lives rally, said the display showed opinion is on the students' side.

"Protesting is ... a sign of social change," he said. "Seeing 400 or 500 people here and five counter-protesters is a distinct sign of what people believe."

The March for Our Lives is the second of three similar but separate national events focusing on gun violence.

National Walkout Day was March 14, when students left class for 17 minutes -- one minute for each victim of the Parkland shooting. Students in several Lehigh Valley-area schools participated, and other districts held in-school events.

On April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, the Network for Public Education encourages a "day of action to prevent gun violence." Its suggestions to educators include wearing orange, organizing sit-ins, assemblies and a moment of silence.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.One of Northampton County's public lakes will receive a large financial boost from the county.

Minsi Lake, a 117-acre lake in Upper Mount Bethel Township, will get $500,000 from the county for restoration efforts surrounding the lake.

The money will come from the Open Space Initiative and Act 13 Marcellus Shale Legacy Fund as matching dollars for grants from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and other organizations.

Northampton County Council voted on March 15 to release the funds for the popular fishing and boating destination.

Pennsylvania acquired the entire 311-acre site and installed a dam and resulting lake in 1970. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection deemed the 48-year-old dam to be structurally deficient and the lake was drained in 2017 to rehabilitate the dam.

Construction bids are expected to be advertised this month and construction may begin this summer. Estimates are that the lake will refill naturally through rain and runoff by the end of 2019.

The county and DCNR money are dedicated for improvements to the surrounding site, which will include a handicap accessible fishing pier, kayak launch, hiking trails, picnic areas and restrooms.

"The big goal is to make it accessible," Jim Wilson, a recreation specialist with Northampton County Division of Parks and Recreation, said.

In a separate fundraising effort by a committee known as the Friends of Minsi Lake (FOML), there are a variety of constructed habitats for fish and turtles being considered.

Wilson said FOML has raised about $40,000 toward the $100,000 needed to build the planned 861 habitat structures. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission will build the habitats.

"With the draining of the lake, what a perfect opportunity for Fish and Boat to come out and do a visual survey and asses the existing habitat structures, which they deemed to be poor," Wilson said.

Wilson said the commission has built these structures at many lakes across the state but Minsi Lake would be its largest effort, so far.

Fish habitats include a variety of stone and wood structures that will dot the lake floor, which are meant to promote breeding and species' population growth.

While some anglers might appreciate making the lake deeper, officials have previously said dredging the lake would not be allowed with current safety regulations and, due to the local geology, dredging could breach bedrock and cause the lake to lose water.

Those interested in donating for the habitats can call 610-829-6404 or visit the FOML Facebook page for more information.

John Best is a freelance writer. Find lehighvalleylive on Facebook.TROPHIES

Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Seth Kelly says he has no memory of what happened to him Nov. 7. That's the day he went to back up a fellow trooper making a traffic stop on Route 33. Kelly, a resident of Upper Nazareth Township, was shot four times by the driver, Daniel Khalil Clary. Kelly survived the injuries after a 12-day induced coma and multiple surgeries at St. Luke's University Hospital. Last week he was named 2017 Trooper of the Year by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, among four finalists nominated for the honor throughout the U.S. and Canada. Clary is awaiting trial on attempted homicide and other charges.

Northampton County Council is extending a tax abatement program to the northernmost part of the county, to help Upper Mount Bethel Township deal with blighted properties. Fifty-three properties along Route 611, from Portland to Mount Bethel, will be eligible for the Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance program, which gives property owners a 10-year break on school, county and municipal taxes on improvements. This is a welcome addition to the Slate Belt, which has suffered from the loss of industry and lack of business development for decades.

The Easton Opioid Awareness Committee is focusing on the threat posed by prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl. The group, organized by Boys and Girls Club of Easton Executive Director Dean Young, is seeking to educate kids and parents about the dangers of opioid use, bringing community resources together to help young people make good life decisions. The committee will meet at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Lafayette College's Hugel Hall to talk about the fentanyl plague and hear from three speakers: Linda M. Johnson of Forks Township, who started the nonprofit Voices for Change to fight for addiction treatment; Dan R., a recovering addict who's pursuing a college degree; and Joe Kane of Clearbrook Manor, a chemical dependency treatment facility in Wilkes-Barre.

TURKEYS

Upper Mount Bethel Township is looking to ban exploding targets after receiving complaints from neighbors about rattled nerves and shaken houses. Township Manager Rick Fisher said he believes the explosions violate the township's zoning and noise ordinances, and will recommend that supervisors ban the devices. Last Sunday 911 centers in Northampton and Warren counties received complaints about the noise and shocks, some from as far away as Hackettstown. Supervisors Chairman John Bermingham said at least one window was reported broken, and a woman reported thinking the noise was her husband falling from a heart attack. The targets, which detonate when hit by a high-velocity round, are sold by several manufacturers and can be made at home.The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!

Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.

The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.

The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.

The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.

Access to college recruiters and advisors  its harder to line up higher education.

Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.

Vote

View ResultsMotoring

YACHT STYLEs Whos Who of Yachting in Asia, salutes those who have made it to the top 100 power-list. This year, emphasis has been given to the dealer and broker faces who are particularly active in Asian emerging markets. Overall, with close to 20 per cent new entries, it shows how the industry is vibrant and reinventing itself.

Mar 24, 2018 | By Yacht Style

CURTIS Richard, Dato (MALAYSIA)

As a Malaysian-resident businessman, past Commodore of the Royal Selangor Yacht Club

and Chairman of the Raja Muda Selangor International Regatta, Curtis is known for his years spent refining the Regattas format and for his joint ownership  with HRH Sultan of Selangor  of the oldest Asian built sailing yacht: the 105-year-old gaff rigged cutter Eveline, a familiar sight in the regions regattas.

IBRAHIM Tunku Ismail Ibni Sultan (MALAYSIA)

Best known in watersports for his Cigarette speedboat, HRH the Sultan of Johor has dabbled in small fast superyachts and provided an impetus for the creation of marinas in this southern Malaysian state opposite Singapore. He also has a gold 737-800 private jet, helicopters and is a Harley Davidson aficionado.

IDRIS Tengku Sharafuddin (MALAYSIA)

The Sultan of Selangor sailed around the world in his Swan 68 Jugra. As Raja Muda (Crown Prince), he was a co-founder and Royal Patron of the Raja Muda Selangor International Regatta, which he has frequently participated in. Tengku Idris is the Royal Patron and Life Commodore of the Royal Selangor Yacht Club.

OH Kean Shen (MALAYSIA)

As managing Director of a family-owned shipyard in Penang, Oh founded Pen-Marine which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2018 as representative of leading boat brands in Malaysia  such as Princess Yachts, Wider, Grand Banks and Leopard Catamarans. Oh is a pioneer member of the Association of Marine Industries of Malaysia and assisted with the formation of the Langkawi International Yacht Registry and was an advisor to the EPU (Economic Planning Unit) on the development of marinas in Malaysia.

***This article is republished from Issue 41 of Yacht Style. View the full list from page 62.Beijing has announced a plan to consolidate film, news and publishing under one regulatory body. With control over all media content, Chinas Communist Party can project its ideal image and quash dissent.

China introduced a round of media regulation restructuring on Wednesday, aiming to improve the countrys image domestically and abroad by centralizing film, news and publishing regulations under the Communist Partys publicity department.

Announced through the state-run Xinhua News agency, the move is part of Beijings plan to impose stricter surveillance on media content that undermines the Communist Partys message. The announcement stated that the consolidation will ensure that all broadcast media acts as the partys mouth piece.

This includes everything from films, television and video games to books and radio. Based on the plan, the publicity department would have total control over media content while setting the tone for Beijings messages domestically and abroad.

Several state media outlets, including CCTV, China Global Television Network, China Radio International and China National Radio, would be merged into one broadcaster called Voice of China, which would broadcast content tailored for foreign audiences.

Spreading socialist values

By consolidating control of all media content, Chinas President Xi Jinping is attempting to recentralize Beijings dominance over all aspects of politics and society in China. Merging multiple state media outlets creates a streamlined institution that can dominantly project the Communist Partys ideal image.

According to David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project and a fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, the restructuring would increase the Partys message control while also seeking ways to expand the dissemination of the Partys agenda and ideal image.

The Partys idea is a highly centralized media network, with pooled resources, that can be innovative in its production and distribution of messaging, Bandurski told DW.

To remain connected with social trends, the Communist Party in recent years has also been focusing on spreading socialist values through different cultural assets such as film, music and video games. However, Bandurski predicts that Beijings new approach of expanding its soft power through a single centralized media outlet would struggle to be responsive and to understand its audience.

It has always been a deep challenge for Chinese state media to push their products abroad, said Bandurski. These latest moves only compound this aspect of the problem.

In comparison with major international news outlets, the international arm of Chinas state-run CCTV faces challenges in growing its audience and being seen as a propaganda mouthpiece of the Chinese government.

In recent years, China has invested heavily in expanding CCTVs international reach, opening two foreign production centers, CCTV Africa and CCTV America.

According to a 2014 report by the Reuters institute for the study of Journalism, CCTV is available in 140 foreign countries with seven international channels broadcasting in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese. The report also said that in contrast to Western broadcasters closing foreign offices, CCTV is expanding. Its headquarters in Beijing cost more that $ 1 billion ( 0.8 billion).

Challenges to legitimacy

Bandurski said that Beijing would have to deal with growing international awareness of its aggressive posture in exploiting the open media environment in the West.

The Reuters report said that CCTV didnt face a resource problem but lacked personnel skilled in Western content production and values. CCTV also faces a public perception problem.

The low popularity of CCTV and its limited relationship networks mean that Chinese correspondents are not fully accepted as trustworthy and their reports are often doubted or rejected, the report said.

Instead of blocking China entirely out of the global media landscape, Bandurski suggested that other countries should remain cautious about the underlying agenda of Chinas state-owned media.

We should ensure in our own societies that we understand and acknowledge the repression behind these state-led voices, he said.

Chinas soft power push

The restructuring also strengthens Chinas United Front Work Department, a clandestine government agency responsible for advancing Chinas influence and interests around the world. It is at the forefront of Chinas growing soft power campaign.

As part of the restructuring announced Wednesday by Xinhua, the United Front will now oversee ethnic and religious issues and Chinas foreign affairs.

The agency works by attempting to improve relationships between the Communist Party and non-Communist elites, including other political parties, former government officials, religious groups and Chinese living overseas

Xi Jinping has referred to the United Front as a magic weapon for Chinas soft power.

To counterbalance Chinas growing ambitions abroad, Bandurski said that other countries need to understand how China exploits the United Front strategies worldwide through more responsive research.

China has made its intention brutally clear, so our eyes need to stay open said Bandurski.The pleas of students across the country resounded in Boston on Saturday, as thousands of supporters marched the streets and rallied for stricter gun laws in the United States.

The movement sparked by high school students after a deadly shooting spree in Parkland, Florida erupted in major U.S. cities Saturday. In Boston, protestors chanted and carried various handmade signs bashing guns, politicians, the National Rifle Association and proclaiming that student lives were more important than gun rights.

Throngs of people marched from Madison Park High School in Roxbury to Boston Common, a 2.5-mile walk intended to demonstrate the group's commitment to safer gun laws.

Organizers behind March for Our Lives and the #NeverAgain movement believe comprehensive gun reform -- such as the elimination of background check loopholes and the ban of automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines -- is necessary in order to prevent future school shootings, sentiments echoed by those marching in Boston Saturday.

The Bay State has some of tightest gun laws in the books, which officials like Attorney General Maura Healey say have shown success in lower gun death rates. But advocates in Massachusetts are now fighting for a "red-flag" bill known as Extreme Risk Protective Order.

The law would provide a legal mechanism to prevent a harmful individual from obtaining a gun. If passed, a family member, law enforcement officer or district attorney could petition, in court, to temporarily prohibit a person in crisis from possessing or purchasing a gun. If the judge agrees, they will issue an ERPO civil court order, preventing that person from buying a gun. Advocates say this method could prevent many suicides by guns.

The Gun Owners' Action League of Massachusetts has firmly opposed the bill, referring to it as "yet another empty shell that only attacks our civil rights" that "offers no real solutions and solves no real problems." The group said in a statement that the state should address mental health and crime instead of gun ownership.

Mass. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and others joined the leagues of protestors in Boston on Saturday.

This story will be updated.A total of nine Massachusetts State Police troopers have been suspended without pay and another nine troopers have retired in connection with the investigation into troopers getting paid for overtime shifts not worked.

A total of 21 troopers ranging in rank from trooper to lieutenant were accused of getting paid overtime while skipping out on shifts while they were supposed to be conducting traffic enforcement on the Massachusetts Turnpike. The shifts were part of the Accident and Injury Reduction Effort patrols, known as AIRE patrols.

All of the troopers were from Troop E, which is made up of four barracks stretching across the Massachusetts Turnpike. An audit into the AIRE patrols was conducted when officials discovered discrepancies between pay for overtime shifts and actual shifts worked.

The results of the audit were announced Tuesday. A total of 19 troopers were scheduled for duty status hearings. The remaining two included a Troop E member who already retired and a Troop E member already suspended without pay for another matter.

WCVB News reported the already suspended trooper is Matthew Sheehan, who was suspended without pay for allegedly authoring multiple racist posts on MassCops under the name "Big Irish."

Following Tuesday's announcement by Col. Kerry Gilpin, three troopers retired before being called before hearings. Another 16 troopers were brought in for status hearings Friday.

"Of those 16 members, six retired today prior to their duty status hearings. The remaining 10 members had duty status hearings," State Police said in a statement. "As a result of those hearings, the Department ordered nine members suspended without pay. The 10th member to have a duty status hearing was kept on active duty."

The troopers remaining on the job will still be under investigation by Internal Affairs and the results of the audit were sent to the state attorney general's Office. The attorney general's office could file criminal charges.

"The nine members flagged in the audit who retired since the start of the investigation on Tuesday (three who retired between Tuesday and today and six who retired today) were given general discharges," State Police said. "Department members who retire while subject of an Internal Affairs investigation do not receive honorable discharges."

The troopers now under suspension were ordered to turn in their department-issued vehicles, weapons and other equipment.

The troopers will remain suspended until the investigation is complete. State Police officials will determine whether policies, rules or regulations of the State Police were violated, and will also seek to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

"Integrity, honesty, and accountability are core values of the Massachusetts State Police. Those are values that I, as Colonel, expect and demand, that Governor Baker and Secretary Bennett demand, and that the hard-working men and women of this Department -- the overwhelming majority of our people -- expect and demand of their peers," Gilpin said Tuesday. "Most importantly, those values of honesty and integrity are what our citizens rightly expect and demand. For us to fulfill our mission as a police agency, we must have the public's trust."

Department records, received by MassLive and first reported by WCVB News, show Lieutenants David Keefe, Jack O'Grady, James Canty and John Giulino along with Trooper Kevin Maple were being paid for overtime, but in some cases rarely wrote citations or tickets.

The television station reports Troopers Keith Sweeney, Greg Raftery and Sheehan are among the troopers flagged in the audit.

State Police officials said the audit began after the investigation of one trooper, then grew once officials received more information.

The troopers accused of skipping overtime shifts conducting enforcement on the Massachusetts Turnpike missed as few as one shift and as many as roughly 100, authorities announced Tuesday.

"The number of missing shifts range from as few as one to as high as 100," Gilpin said. Officials did not say how many troopers hit the high mark of 100 missed shifts. A dollar amount for the overtime money paid to these troopers was not released.

The funding for the specialized patrols came out of state money and involved having troopers work overtime shifts on the Massachusetts Turnpike to look for any type of motor vehicle violation.SPRINGFIELD -- The Springfield Police Department owes alleged crack cocaine dealer Asante Kamau $1,520, his lawyer claims.

Three weeks after getting evidence against Kamau thrown out due to an illegal strip search, defense lawyer Matthew Hutchinson wants city police to give back the cash taken from his client's pocket during an arrest.

Kamau, 35, of Springfield, was searched by city narcotics detectives around 6:30 p.m. on April 13, 2017, on Andrew Street. Police said the search turned up a rock of crack cocaine from Kamau's underwear, leading to a charge of possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute.

Police also took $1,520 from Kamau's pocket -- the alleged profits from drug sales he conducted earlier in the day.

Kamau pleaded not guilty in Springfield District Court, and was released on $460 bail. Last month, in a ruling that effectively ended the prosecution, Judge Mark Pasquariello barred police from using the drug evidence because the search violated Kamau's privacy.

The ruling came in response to a motion from Hutchinson, who claimed police violated his client's constitutional rights by strip searching him on a city street in daylight. The judge found that police took Kamau behind a building in an attempt to preserve his privacy, but should have taken him to police headquarters before conducting the search.

Hutchinson, a former prosecutor, filed a motion last week demanding police refund the cash taken from his client. Assistant District Attorney Kerry Koehler opposed the motion, arguing that the money was profits from drug sales.

"This property was used, or intended to be used, to ... commit felony violations," the prosecutor wrote.

The judge scheduled a hearing for arguments on the issue for April 23.A man who was seriously injured in an explosion in Ayer Friday evening has died, authorities confirmed Saturday.

Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan, State Fire Marshal Peter Ostroskey, Ayer Chief of Police William Murray and Ayer Fire Chief Robert Pedrazzi said in a joint statement that the explosion claimed the life of a man in his 50s.

The explosion happened at 5:22 p.m. at Advanced Vacuum Systems on Fitchburg Road. Two employees were brought to local hospitals where one was later pronounced dead. Authorities said the preliminary investigation suggests that the explosion was the result of an apparent pressure vessel malfunction.

Two mutual aid firefighters sustained minor injuries.

An investigation is being conducted by the Middlesex District Attorney's Office, the State Fire Marshal's Office, State Police assigned to the Middlesex District Attorney's Office, the Ayer Police Department, the Ayer Fire Department, the Boiler and Pressure Unit of the State Fire Marshal's Office and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The Middlesex District Attorney's Office said the death is not considered suspicious and no additional information will be released.SPRINGFIELD - A convicted drug dealer is being held on $100,000 bail after allegedly selling a batch of powerful heroin that led to the death of a Ludlow man.

Frank R. Jimenez, 34, of Springfield, pleaded not guilty Friday in Springfield District Court to one count of possession of heroin with intent to distribute (second offense).

The arraignment came two weeks after a Ludlow man suffered a heart attack at his apartment after snorting two bags of heroin with North Face logos, according to an arrest warrant application filed by state police Capt. Christopher Wilcox.

The Ludlow Fire Department took the man to Baystate Medical Center, where he died four days later, Wilcox wrote.

Ludlow and state police traced the heroin back to Jimenez, who allegedly sold it to a person identified in court documents as Witness 2. On March 10, the victim and a second person, identified as Witness 1, obtained the heroin from Witness 2, who warned them that it was very strong, the trooper said.

Later that day, Witness 1 called 911 when the victim collapsed. The man was unresponsive when the Ludlow Fire Department arrived, and tests later showed heroin in his system, according to the trooper's statement.

Both witnesses told police they feared Jimenez, who allegedly sold the fatal batch of heroin from his apartment on Washburn Street in Springfield's North End. State, local and federal agents have made hundreds of arrests while targeting drug sales on Washburn and Orchard streets.

The two witnesses have also been charged with heroin distribution, Wilcox noted. They "significantly implicated themselves in the crime of selling heroin (to the victim) which ultimately resulted in (his) death," the trooper wrote.

A criminal complaint was filed against Jimenez on Thursday, leading to his arrest and arraignment Friday. In setting bail requested by Assistant District Attorney Carrie Kenniston, Judge John Payne cited the defendant's criminal record, history of court defaults and the potential sentence he faces if convicted.

In October 2016, Jimenez was convicted in Hampden Superior Court of heroin distribution and given a one-year jail sentence, court records show.

Payne agreed to recommend that the defendant be held at the Hampshire County House of Correction.

Jimenez is due back in court for a pretrial hearing on April 23.WASHINGTON -- Nancy Moriarty says she didn't mind boarding a bus in Springfield at 3:20 a.m. Saturday, nor the seven-hour trip to the March for Our Lives rally against gun violence in Washington.

Moriarty, a fifth-grade teacher in Longmeadow, said the long overnight trip was worth it because she could no longer be silent about school shootings.

"This has gotten to a point where we need to make change, and Congress needs to make tougher gun laws," Moriarty said as she joined more than 300,000 people who descended on the nation's capital for one of the largest protests against violence since the Vietnam era.

Moriarty was among 51 people from Springfield and surrounding communities who boarded a bus at Trinity United Methodist Church on Sumner Avenue and traveled all night in time to join the afternoon rally.

The Feb. 14 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead sparked the movement that led to Saturday's March For Our Lives.

The marchers from Massachusetts included both seasoned protesters and those who had never taken part in a rally in Washington, D.C.

Among them were Cynthia Waring of Sunderland, a retired teacher and her son, Nathaniel.

"I've been marching for 60 years at least," Cynthia Waring said, proudly adding, "I helped stop the Vietnam War." She wore a homemade apron with a sign, "Safe School, Free From Fear."

Nathaniel Waring, a student at Greenfield Community College, was taking part in his first national protests. He said part of his motivate are his 9-year-old twins, who regularly have school drills teaching them how to react to a shooting.

We're here today to make it known that guns no longer take precedence over lives," Waring said.

Erin Freed, a former high school English teacher from Longmeadow who made the trip, said members of Congress from Massachusetts have been supportive of proposals for stricter gun laws, including a ban on assault-style rifles and universal background checks.

But Freed said she joined the March For Our Lives to help put members of Congress from other states on notice.

"The reason we're here today is because we haven't seen any action out of Congress," Freed said. "We're going to have to do it ourselves. We're going to have to vote people into office who are not taking money from the NRA. The NRA are not the people who should decide what's right for our schools."

Emmy Batchelor, a student at Longmeadow High School, said she'd like Congress to ban assault-style weapons. But in the end, she wanted the world to known Saturday that students deserve better.

"I think school is a place where you should feel safe and not be worried about a shooting," Batchelor said.A Springfield man was arrested in a Methuen motel Thursday after police linked him to an earlier double shooting, the Lawrence Eagle Tribune reported.

Jesus Rivera, 20, was taken into custody Thursday night at the Days Inn in Methuen along with 18-year-old Julio Alexis Saldana of Lawrence.

Rivera is accused of shooting two men in Lawrence Tuesday evening. Both victims ended up in the Lawrence General Hospital before each was transferred to a Boston hospital with serious injuries.

Lawrence police who arrested Rivera on a warrant said the shooting took place on Brook Street in Lawrence in front of a crowd. Police described the incident as a fight that escalated.

Rivera is charged with assault with intent to murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, illegal possession of a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling, illegal possession or use of a silencer, trafficking in a Class B substance with 100 grams or more, illegal possession of a firearm without a firearms identification card and improper storage of a firearm.

Saldana is being charged with trafficking in a Class B substance (200 grams or more), improper storage of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, illegal possession of a firearm without an FID card and intimidation of a witness.Less than a week after Worcester Fire Department's longtime deputy chief of operations announced he is leaving to head up the Brookline Fire Department, the city named District Chief Andrew J. White as his replacement.



White, 57, has been provisionally appointed deputy chief of operations for the Worcester Fire Department. He is a 34-year veteran of the department and currently serves as district chief of training.

Sullivan announced earlier this week that he is leaving Worcester after more than 30 years to become fire chief in Brookline.



"Throughout his career, District Chief White has been instrumental in initiating transformative programs to raise professional standards department-wide," City Manager Edward Augustus said in a news release. "He is a proven, natural leader. I appreciate his continuing dedication to lead the men and women of the Worcester Fire Department and to serve the residents of this community."

Over the course of his career, White has focused on special operations and safety. As a firefighter, he was selected to organize the Special Operations Task Force and was tasked with designating and implementing training and equipment standards.



White was also a co-founder of the Worcester Firefighters Safety and Survival Seminar and held seminars for 10 years after the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire that claimed the lives of six firefighters. The seminar provided state-of-the-art safety training to firefighters from 39 states.

As a lieutenant, White joined the Massachusetts Hazardous Material Team and was detailed to the Training Division and led the Candidate Investigations Unit in 2013 after being promoted to captain.

He also served as drill master for the Massachusetts Fire Academy in 2014 and was promoted to district chief of training the following year.

White holds a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Fitchburg State College.Zachary Trudell says high school is stressful enough - he doesn't want to have worry about getting shot at school.

That's why Trudell, a sophomore at Wachusett Regional High School, attended Saturday's March For Our Lives rally in Worcester. The event was part of a nationwide movement against gun violence started by students from Parkland, Florida, following last month's shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School that claimed the lives of 17 people.

"High school is stressful enough alone, I don't want to have to worry about getting shot in my school, so that's why I'm out here," Trudell said.

Similar rallies were held throughout the country on Saturday, including in Boston and Washington, D.C.

Holding signs that read, "I'm armed with my vote," "Books not bullets" and "Let teachers teach," at least 1,000 people gathered in front of Worcester's City Hall Saturday afternoon to protest gun violence.

The event kicked off at noon and featured a number of student speakers from local high schools and colleges, who spoke about their memories of recent school shootings, their own experiences with gun violence and the steps people can take to combat gun violence.

"We have a number of students speakers at the rally, they're all either high school or college students who want to share their thoughts on what's happening in the country and specifically about the gun violence," rally organizer Allison MacMilliam said. "Worcester is the second largest city in the state and we should be involved in what's happening, we should not be running up to Boston, we should take responsibility for it happening in our city."

A number of state legislators attended Worcester's rally, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who took a selfie with the crowd as the rally kicked off. After listening to speakers for about an hour, attendees marched to Lincoln Square and back to City Hall.

Burncoat High School sophomore Clara Chambers was among those in attendance, holding a sign that read, "Women's bodies are more regulated than guns." Chambers said she wanted to tie March For Our Lives in with the Women's March - a worldwide movement advocating for legislation regarding women's and human rights.

She said women have to jump through hoops to get abortions or even birth control, while it's relatively easy for anyone to buy a gun. She hopes Saturday's march will eventually result in change on a federal level.

"I think with the current political situation it's not likely, but I'm hoping for a huge turnover in the November election and then in 2020 with a new president, I think we can really make some change this time because the students that are protesting now, we're going to be able to vote soon," she said.

Mason and Reese Lane, who are in eighth and ninth grades, respectively, said they were also glad their voices were being heard.

"I'm here to protest the gun violence because I think it is ridiculous that students are afraid of going to school, afraid that something is going to happen to them and just have meltdowns, breakdowns over just being afraid to walk out the door and go to school," Reese Lane said, adding it was important for him to attend a local rally.

"Boston is a big place, but just one big place won't do it, we need multiple people to come together to end gun violence for good," he said.

For MacMillian, student voices were particularly important to hear. She said her generation has dropped the ball when it comes to gun control, and hopes the younger generation will be able to create change.

"I'm obviously older and we have not done any kind of job ending the gun violence, it's been getting worse over the years," she said. "We in our generation have done nothing to put an end to the gun violence so I'm hoping the new voices, the students' voices, will be the voice of change."A 15-year-old boy has been arrested and charged with the rape of a female Plymouth North High School classmate, Boston25 News reported.

Plymouth North Principal Kathleen E. McSweeney notified parents Friday that Plymouth police were investigating the reported attack, which she said took place after school hours.

The Plymouth County District Attorney's Office said the boy was charged with rape and indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or over, Boston25 reported. He was released on personal recognizance and ordered to stay away from the alleged victim.File photo / The Republican

Massachusetts House and Senate lawmakers cast ballots on measures ranging from regulations on short-term rentals to requirements for civics education in public schools, as they met for various legislative sessions this week.

Here's how members from the Western part of the state voted on those proposals:

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HOUSE:

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John Locher

Regulation and taxing of short-term rentals

The House, on a 118 to 30 vote, approved and sent to the Senate a bill regulating and taxing short-term rentals of less than 28 days that are offered by Airbnb, HomeAway and VRBO. Taxes would range from 4 percent to 8 percent based on how many units a host offers. No excise would be imposed if the total amount of rent is less than $15 per day or if the renter is in the United States military traveling on official military business.

Residential hosts renting two or fewer units would be taxed at 4 percent, investor hosts with three to five units would have a 5.7 percent tax, and professionally managed hosts renting six or more units would face an 8 percent tax per rental. All professionally managed hosts would be required to hire a property manager for each residential unit and maintain $1 million or more in liability insurance. Cities and towns would also have the option to impose local excise taxes of up to 5 percent for residential hosts, 6 percent for investors and 10 percent for professionally managed hosts.

Cities and towns that impose the local excise tax are required to conduct a safety inspection on the residential unit within 60 days of the unit being listed on a newly-created short-term rental registry. Municipalities are required to distribute 50 per cent of the excise tax collected by professionally managed hosts to programs addressing either local infrastructure needs or low- to moderate-income housing programs.

Supporters said the bill strikes a balance and levels the playing field of taxes and regulation of these untaxed and unregulated short-term rentals and hotels and motels that are currently regulated and taxed.

"The House took a thoughtful and holistic approach to regulating short term rentals," said House Speaker Bob DeLeo. "For the first time in Massachusetts, we go beyond taxation and implement a necessary regulatory framework to ensure public safety and accountability."

Opponents said the last thing Massachusetts needs is another tax.

"This proposal is onerous and overly burdensome for our host community, and the kind of legislation the hotel industry has promoted across the country to prevent middle class families from earning additional income," said Airbnb spokeswoman Crystal Davis. "The commonwealth and its residents can only truly benefit from fair and reasonable short-term rental rules."

Voting "yes," or for the bill were: Reps. Brian Ashe, John Barrett, Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Michael Finn, Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Carlos Gonzalez, Stephen Kulik, Paul Mark, Thomas Petrolati, William Pignatelli, Angelo Puppolo, John Scibak, Jose Tosado, Aaron Vega, John Velis, Joseph Wagner, Susannah Whipps and Bud Williams.

Voting "no," or against it were: Reps. Donald Berthiaume, Nicholas Boldyga and Todd Smola.

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SENATE:

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Staff-Shot

Financial literacy

The Senate, on a 37 to 0 vote, approved and sent to the House a bill requiring the state to develop and allow cities and towns to institute a program to teach financial literacy to students in kindergarten to grade 12. The topics covered would include understanding banking and financial services, loans, interest, credit cards, online commerce, renting or buying a home, balancing a checkbook, state and federal taxes and charitable giving.

Supporters said it is important to start educating children about finances at an early age and to continue through their high school years.

"Today's youth are bombarded with a multitude of financial options and responsibilities at an increasingly young age, yet many are ill-equipped to make informed decisions about financial matters," said Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton. "By teaching children the financial education basics in school, we will help them make educated financial decisions in the future, preventing future bankruptcies, foreclosures, and unmanageable debt. The investment we make in teaching our children financial literacy now will pay substantial future dividends."

Voting "yes," or for the bill were: Sens. Anne Gobi, Adam Hinds, Donald Humason, Eric Lesser, Stanley Rosenberg and James Welch.

No one voted against the measure.

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Kimberly P. Mitchell

Civics education

The Senate, on a 32 to 4 vote, approved and sent to the House a bill that updates the requirement that all public schools provide instruction in American history and civics.

Provisions include requiring all public-school students to participate in two student-led civics projects; making it mandatory beginning in 2021 for all students to complete one student-led civics project after 8th grade in order to graduate; permitting the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to establish an annual convention to assess the current state of civic education; and establishing a special commission to study the development of civic education for youth.

"Anyone who spends time in or follows the news from Beacon Hill or Washington knows that now more than ever before we need more people engaged in public life," said Sen. Eileen Donoghue, D-Lowell. "The consolidated bill that passed the Senate will empower students with the knowledge they need today so they can more effectively improve our society tomorrow."

"This bill is an important step toward fulfilling our responsibility to pass the torch of democracy to the next generation of voters and problem-solvers," said Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, D-Boston.

"Unfunded mandates are big issues with local governments especially those involving schools," said Sen. Dean Tran, R-Fitchburg. "It is very unfortunate that the Senate has imposed another unfunded mandate on struggling schools across the commonwealth when we should be lessening the burden and increasing funding."

"I understand the importance of educating students on the importance of being civically active and engaged in our democratic process, said Sen. Ryan Fattman, R-Webster. "That being said, time and time again I hear from my constituents and school committee members about the undue financial burden of unfunded mandates on our communities."

Voting "yes," or for the bill were: Sens. Anne Gobi, Adam Hinds, Eric Lesser, Stanley Rosenberg and James Welch.

Voting "no," or against the bill was: Sen. Donald Humason.

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Mark M.Murray

Tolerating different opinions

The Senate, on a 7 to 29 vote, rejected an amendment that would add "respectful tolerance of differing opinions" to the list of subjects that would be included in the history and social science curriculum framework that would be taught. The framework already includes American and local history; the function and composition of the branches of local, state and federal government; the roles and responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy; community diversity and the role it plays in the democratic process; and opportunities to identify and debate issues relative to power, economic status and the common good in democracy.

Amendment supporters said that especially in todays political climate and a divided nation, it is important to teach students to respect each others opinions.

Amendment opponents said respect of each others opinions is already covered under other existing requirements including community diversity and the role it plays in the democratic process and the roles and responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy.

Voting "yes, or for including respectful tolerance of differing opinions was: Sen. Donald Humason.

Voting "no, or against including it were: Sens. Anne Gobi, Adam Hinds, Eric Lesser, Stanley Rosenberg and James Welch.

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Mark Lennihan

Unfunded mandate

The Senate, on a 7 to 29 vote, rejected an amendment requiring the state to conduct a study to determine whether the new civics education law is an unfunded mandate being imposed on cities and towns.

Amendment supporters said it will cost money for the schools to implement this new law.

Amendment opponents said there are no anticipated costs to cities and towns in implementing the new law.

Voting "yes," or for the amendment were: Sens. Anne Gobi and Donald Humason.

Voting "no," or against it were: Sens. Adam Hinds, Eric Lesser, Stanley Rosenberg and James Welch.

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Last week's votes:

How they voted: Western Mass. lawmakers weigh in on sexual harassment policies, protecting puppies and kittensSPRINGFIELD -- Massachusetts lawmakers turned out in force Saturday to show support for the March for Our Lives movement, joining protesters across the state and in Washington D.C. in calling for action to end mass shootings and gun violence.

In Massachusetts, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren traversed the state to take part in March for Our Lives events in Boston, Worcester and Springfield.

The Massachusetts Democrat, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with marchers across the state, praised students for forcing Congress to confront the issue of gun violence in the wake of last month's deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

"Every time these kids get out and march, every time people take to the streets, every time they lift their voices, they make it harder for Congress to pay attention only to the (National Rifle Association) and ignore the people of this country," she told reporters in Springfield. "This is an important step. What the kids are doing today makes a difference.

"We may not see the change on Monday, we may not see it next week, but it makes a difference: They are demanding that this government no longer work for the NRA, that this government work for the people," Warren added.

The senator stressed that the March for Our Lives "is not a moment, this is a movement."

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, a Springfield Democrat who also marched alongside Western Massachusetts students and activists Saturday, called on his congressional colleagues to support "reasonable" gun policies, like requiring universal background checks and setting a minimum purchasing age for firearms.

The congressman further called on the NRA to "stop frightening the American people that we're all out there to take away the Second Amendment."

"That's not what any of this is about," he said. "This is about keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't hold a gun."

U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Melrose, meanwhile, joined protesters at the March for Our Lives in Washington D.C.

The congresswoman, who led a 2016 sit-in demonstration that sought to force Congressional action on gun control measures after a mass shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub, told The Republican that she's "so heartened" to see students shaping the debate on firearms.

"I think that the student who are organizing in my district, here today in Washington and around the country are going to make a true difference in this debate," she said. "They are motivated, they are not going to let us forget what is at stake with Americans and gun violence, and specifically for our students and school safety. Their voices and their votes come November, and as they age into becoming voters, are going to be a powerful political force."

Bold and courageous is right. And its exactly what we need to #EndGunViolence #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/hVNAQjsdtf  Katherine Clark (@RepKClark) March 24, 2018

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, said he had "never been so proud of our young people" than he was standing alongside demonstrators at the March for Our Lives sister rally in Boston.

The senator added that he's "confident that if we follow their lead, we can accomplish real change and finally get the gun laws that the American people demand and deserve."

As I stand with these amazing students at the #MarchForOurLives in Boston, I've never been so proud of our young people, or so confident that if we follow their lead we can accomplish real change and finally get the gun laws that the American people demand and deserve. #Enough pic.twitter.com/DTPZUMR0ry  Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) March 24, 2018

Congressman Joe Kennedy III, D-Brookline, also turned out for the Boston March for Our Lives event.

The Massachusetts March for Our Lives protests took place in conjunction with the national demonstration, which was organized by students who survived the February school shooting in Florida.SPRINGFIELD -- Western Massachusetts students, activists and lawmakers took to the streets of downtown Springfield Saturday to bring attention to gun violence and call on national leaders to take action to reduce firearms-related deaths.

Several hundred people gathered outside Springfield City Hall for the afternoon March for Our Lives protest, which took place in conjunction with the national march organized by students who survived the deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida last month.

Sarah Reyes, a 16-year-old Longmeadow High School sophomore who helped organize the Springfield March for Our Lives rally with other local students, said she was surprised by the turnout for Saturday's march.

"I'm impressed, I didn't expect us to have this many people. I'm really happy there are this many people who are really eager to affect change on this and really passionate about raising their voices to stop gun violence."

Reyes added that she felt it was important to bring the national movement to the Western Massachusetts city.

"Right here, it is the home of Smith & Wesson, who manufactured the weapon that was used in the Parkland shooting that killed 17 people," she said in an interview. "So, it's an important place to have this kind of consciousness and to be using our voices to ask people to effectuate change."

Hussein Abdi, a Springfield Central High School student, told rally-goers that teens are still calling on Smith & Wesson CEO P. James Debney to detail how his company will "be part of the solution to gun violence."

"This company, just down the street from my high school is no longer going to be free to keep making profits while ignoring this issue," he said. "We need a solution to gun violence -- a solution to start right here in Springfield."

Delayna Moore, a 17-year-old Springfield Conservatory of the Arts student, said she decided to lend her voice to the March for Our Lives movement because she was disappointed with how Washington lawmakers have handled gun-related policies.

"The first shooting I ever heard of was the Columbine shooting -- my mother was 17, she was my age -- and ... no one really did anything about the Columbine shooting. It happened and then it blew over," she said in an interview. "Now, 20 years later, I'm the age she was and I'm taking action against it."

Dayasia Martin, a 19-year-old Springfield Conservatory for the Arts student, meanwhile, said she decided to take part in the march so that her younger siblings never have to worry about being shot at school.

"I have a little sister, who is five, and I have a brother on the way. It's important to me to know that I'm sending my younger siblings (to school) knowing that they're going to come home safely to my mom," she said. "There's already too much happening out in the world for me to worry about if my siblings are safe at home and at school."

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, who marched in Springfield after attending similar rallies in Boston and Worcester, praised students for pushing back on gun control policy and forcing lawmakers to confront the issue.

"This is what democracy looks like and that makes it really exciting," she told reporters. "Congress has worked long enough for those who have money, for those who have power; what's going on right now is these young people are demanding that Congress work for the people. It's exciting to be a part of this."

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, who also joined Springfield marchers, called on fellow members of Congress to support "commonsense" legislation that would require background checks on all gun purchases, set a minimum age those buying firearms and prevent domestic abusers from purchasing guns, among other things.

"Reasonable people ought to be able to have a level of conversation about this issue and stop the notion that we're out to take weapons away from a gun collector or we're out to take weapons away from a legitimate sportsman or hunter -- or that we're a threat to the Second Amendment," he said. "These are all reasonable measures that reasonable people should be able to agree upon."

The Springfield event, which took marchers from Court Square to the U.S. District Court House on State Street, before looping them back to City Hall for a speaking program, was among several sister rallies held in conjunction with the Washington D.C. march.

Several groups helped sponsor the Springfield march, including: Rise Up Western Mass, the League of Women Voters Springfield, Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, Pioneer Valley Women's March, Massachusetts Parents United, Springfield Area Interfaith Climate Action Network, Young Democrats of Massachusetts and Massachusetts High School Democrats, among others.LOS ANGELES, March 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CURE Pharmaceutical (CURE or the Company) (OTC:CURR), an innovative drug delivery and development company, today announced that the Company will participate in an educational panel about cannabis science in Hawaii. This Dinner & Dialogue is sponsored by Lau Ola, Hawaiis leading medical cannabis provider, and will highlight current research and industry trends. The panel will take place on Tuesday, March 27, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

CURE is leveraging the synergism created by combining cannabinoids and terpenes into its advanced oral thin film, CUREfilm, a proprietary polymer and encapsulation platform. CUREs CEO, Robert Davidson will participate on the panel in Hawaii and will discuss the companys pharmaceutical cannabinoid projects.

It is essential to share our knowledge and understanding on potential pharmaceutical cannabinoid drug formulations and delivery systems because many medical needs are not currently being met by traditional pharmaceuticals, Davidson said. This panel is made up of some of the leading minds in the field so we can work together to get FDA-approved drugs to market for those who need them.

Richard Ha, Lau Olas CEO, believes the value of such information is far-reaching, and helps to materialize what is at stake for the State. "According to Forbes magazine the global cannabis market is worth $7.7 billion. Its projected to hit $31.4 billion by 2021. Thats a compounded rate of growth of 60%, which means a doubling every 14 months. It took sugar and pine a hundred years to commoditize.



If we dont brand ourselves, cannabis will become a commodity like most food items. Hawaii grows only 15% of the food we eat because it can be grown cheaper elsewhere. The result is money leaves our economy.



Hawaii must brand itself. We have an opportunity because the west coast went recreational and they cannot go back to medical. Hawaii is different. Our emphasis is on the patients. And, this is in keeping with who we are as a people. What can be more Aloha than taking care of the health of our people and taking care of the health of our visitors? Could we become the Mayo Clinic of the Pacific? Money will come into our economy instead of leave our economy.

Joining Davidson on this panel are other industry leaders and experts in the medical cannabis industry, including:

Tracy Ryan, CEO of CANNAKIDS & Founder of SAVINGSOPHIE.org  In addition to being a member of CUREs advisory board, Ryan has dedicated a huge part of her life to educating herself on the medicinal powers of medical marijuana in treating her own daughters disease, as well as all other pediatric and adult cancers, epilepsy, autism, and beyond.

 In addition to being a member of CUREs advisory board, Ryan has dedicated a huge part of her life to educating herself on the medicinal powers of medical marijuana in treating her own daughters disease, as well as all other pediatric and adult cancers, epilepsy, autism, and beyond. Joshua Crossney, President & Founder of JCANNA, Inc .  Crossney is working to bridge the gap between analytical sciences and the medical cannabis industry to help improve the quality of medicinal cannabis products being used by patients.

.  Crossney is working to bridge the gap between analytical sciences and the medical cannabis industry to help improve the quality of medicinal cannabis products being used by patients. Autumn Karcey, President of Cultivo Inc.  Karcey became passionate about creating optimal indoor environments where plants can be grown in a healthy, stable manner, free of pests and pathogens without the use of harmful pesticides and chemicals.

 Karcey became passionate about creating optimal indoor environments where plants can be grown in a healthy, stable manner, free of pests and pathogens without the use of harmful pesticides and chemicals. Dr. Dedi Meiri from Israel Institute of Technology of Cancer Biology and Cannabinoid Research  Dr. Meiri heads the "Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Cannabinoid Research" at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. His lab investigates the therapeutic potential of Phyto cannabinoids with focus on the antitumor effects of cannabinoids. CURE is sponsoring research in Dr. Meiris lab to understand how varying cannabinoid compounds within cannabis strains can affect various cancer subtypes. The results of the research will be used to predict how to match a cancer subtype with an effective cannabis extract in order to optimize treatment efficacy.

About CURE Pharmaceutical

CURE Pharmaceutical is a vertically integrated drug delivery and development company committed to improving drug efficacy, safety and the patient experience through its proprietary drug dosage forms and delivery systems. CURE has a full-service cGMP manufacturing facility and is a pioneering developer and manufacturer of a patented and proprietary delivery system (CUREfilm), one of the most advanced oral thin film on the market today. CURE is developing an array of products in cutting-edge delivery platforms and partners with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. CURE has positioned itself to advance numerous therapeutic categories, including the pharmaceutical cannabis sector with partnerships in the U.S., Canada, Israel and Germany, among other markets. The Companys mission is to improve peoples lives by redefining how medicines are delivered and experienced.

For more information about CURE Pharmaceutical, please visit its website at www.curepharmaceutical.com.

About Lau Ola

Lau Ola is a licensed medical cannabis dispensary located on the Big Island of Hawaii. We operate within the Hawaii State Medical Cannabis Program. Lau Ola cultivates, manufactures, and dispenses high quality, lab tested cannabis to qualified patients/caregivers. Our commitment to uphold the highest standards and practices helps to ensure product integrity, and patient safety.

As Hawaiis Premier Medical Cannabis Provider, Lau Ola utilizes innovative practices and technologies to produce the highest grade medical cannabis products in the Pacific. Deeply rooted in local and sustainable agriculture, we provide premium cannabis medicine to qualified patients in our Hawai`i Island community. Lau Ola is passionately committed to improving patient outcomes through education and quality medicine.

For more information about the event, please visit www.lauolapresents.com.

Forward-looking Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than statements of fact, including those statements with respect to the Company's business development, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made and are not guarantees of future performance. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements.

Media Inquiries:

Aaron Wood

aaron@cmwmedia.com

Telephone: (413) 627-2468Photo by Cory Morse | MLive.com

Michigan is full of so much beauty, it is impossible to find every spot within our state where that beauty lies.

But we can provide a list highlighting a beautiful place in each Michigan county.

There are obvious spots of overwhelming attractiveness, like the Great Lakes that surround us and the crystal blue inland lakes where we vacation.

Yes, water is a big part of our list. So are our majestic state parks. But you'll find some unexpected gems here too.

We call each one of these "the most beautiful place" in their respective counties, but beauty is obviously subjective. Plus, some of these counties are so chocked full of loveliness that we just had to deal with it and decide on one.

Perhaps there is a place in your county that you feel outshines our selection. Please take the time to tell us about it. We always love a lively discussion on all things Michigan.



How many of these special places have you visited? Start planning your summer vacation now with a road trip to a spot or two (or 83) that you need to visit for the first time or revisit for the sake of Michigan beauty.

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Alcona County

We start off our list with a couple of themes you'll see throughout -- water and state parks. Harrisville State Park is a mostly wooded park with a beautiful sand beach on Lake Huron. Not much can beat a Great Lake. Here you'll find campsites, a rental cabin, trails, day use areas and more. Plus, the park is walking distance from the shops and restaurants in Harrisville.

Where is it?: 248 State Park Rd, Harrisville, MI 48740

You might also want to check out 6 places you should visit in Alcona County

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Photo by Joel Rennich | MLive.com

Alger County

Let's be honest, every part of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is gorgeous. It is hard to pick just one spot to feature here, but we will go with Miners Castle. It is a beloved and well-known spot along the shores of Lake Superior. We suggest you get a glimpse of it from on the water as you paddle up close in your kayak.

Where is it?: About 5 miles east of Munising on Alger County Road H-58, then 6 miles north on Miners Castle Road

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Allegan County

You'll have to work for this view, but it's worth it. Take the 300 steps up to the top of Mount Baldhead and you'll be rewarded with a spectacular view of Saugatuck. As with many beautiful spots in Michigan, it will look a little different during each season. Since so much of the view is of trees, the view is extra special during the autumn months. But, if you go during the warm summer months, you can reward your hard work walking up the steps by heading to nearby Oval Beach.

Where is it?: 698 Water Street, Saugatuck, MI 49453

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Alpena County

Right in the city of Alpena, you'll find Michigan wilderness at its best by visiting Island Park & Wildlife Sanctuary. Once you enter the park and discover its adorable covered bridge, you'll find yourself surrounded by a 500-acre wildlife refuge serving as home to animals like swans, blue heron, frogs, beavers and more. The island itself is 17 acres of diverse terrain, from sand dunes to marshy areas to meadows.

Where is it?: River Street, Alpena, MI 49707

You might also want to check out these 6 reasons to visit Alpena

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Antrim County

The waters of Torch Lake are so beautiful and blue-green, it's almost unbelievable. Often compared to the Caribbean because of the incredibly clear water you'll find here, the lake is a popular summer party spot. If you are looking for a new Michigan vacation setting this year, we highly recommend a lakefront rental property here. Just be warned that the water is not warm, by any means. Bring a flotation device and/or courage to jump right in.

Where is it?: The western side of Antrim County

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Photo by Cathy Layman | MLive.com

Arenac County

The largest island in the Saginaw Bay, Charity Island is only accessible by boat. You'll want to check out the island's lighthouse and take in the beauty of Lake Huron. Mostly, though, this getaway gives you a chance to enjoy some tranquility. The island is mostly undisturbed, though there is a lodge here, if you're looking to stay the night.

Where is it?: About 10 miles from the mainland of Arenac County's Whitney Township

You can learn more about Charity Island and how to visit here.

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Baraga County

The Upper Peninsula is full of waterfalls, all unique and worthy of a visit. Canyon Falls is certainly special in its own way. You can check out the falls and then follow the trail to a gorge that is often referred to as the "Grand Canyon of Michigan." The box canyon is unusual for Michigan and luckily this destination is easily accessible to visitors. You can also take a breather here at the newly renovated roadside park.

Where is it?: About 7 miles south of L'Anse on US-41

Learn more about the Grand Canyon of Michigan here

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Barry County

An outdoor lover's dream, Yankee Springs Recreation Area offers lakes, streams, trails, bogs, marshes and more. No matter the season, you can find an activity here. Or you can just observe the beautiful scenery. We especially recommend a visit to Devil's Soup Bowl, made up of glacially carved depressions in the earth that create interesting formations. Other highlights within the large recreation area include Graves Hill Scenic Overlook and the Pines.

Where is it?: 2104 Briggs Rd S, Middleville, MI 49333

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Photo by Yfat Yossifor | MLive.com

Bay County

If you want to connect with nature and you're in Bay County, head to Tobico Marsh, part of the Bay City State Recreation Area. Designated as a National Natural Landmark, it one of the largest freshwater marshes in the Great Lakes Region. You might happen upon deer, muskrat, a variety of waterfowl and other animals while wandering along the hiking trails here. Also, keep a look out for a variety of wildflowers.

Where is it?: Near the western shore of the Saginaw Bay, about 5 miles north of Bay City in Bangor Township and Essexville

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Arcadia Dunes. Not as well known as Sleeping Bear Dunes but just about as awesome. More images at www.22northphotography.com Posted by 22 North Photography on Friday, June 17, 2016

Benzie County

If you follow the shores of Lake Michigan slightly south of the famous Sleeping Bear Dunes, you'll find another collection of dunes that deserve your attention. If you visit Arcadia Dunes you'll find 15 miles of trails, forested land and sandy dunes (obviously) overlooking the water. Known as an area to spot tons of birds and an array of wildflowers, you might want to add this to your spring day trip list. The Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy, which owns and protects the land, has a great website with all the info you'll need for your visit.

Where is it?: 7620 Scenic Hwy, Arcadia, MI 49613

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Berrien County

Yes, Warren Dunes is another set of dunes along Lake Michigan. The southwest Michigan state park that contains these dunes is a popular vacation destination for Chicagoans looking to get away for the big city hustle and bustle. Open year-round, Warren Dunes State Park is always beautiful and ready for you to take a hike on the miles of trails contained here. It's a perfect summer camping spot for the whole family. We highly recommend sitting on a dune to watch the sunset.

Where is it?: 12032 Red Arrow Hwy, Sawyer, MI 49125

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Branch County

This one is for the historic architecture fans. The Wing House Museum is magnificently preserved by the Branch County Historical Society. The 19th century Second Empire-style home is gorgeous from outside but if you are dying to see the preserved interior of the structure, visit between noon and 4 p.m. on the third Saturday of the month (April through October), when the museum is open to the public. You can make it part of a tour of the lovely historic architecture found around town in Coldwater.

Where is it?: 27 S. Jefferson St, Coldwater, MI 49036

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Calhoun County

A popular wedding venue, Southern Exposure Herb Farm provides a lush getaway near Battle Creek. If you love the look of a bountiful, blooming garden, you'll find it on the grounds here. You'll also spot fountains and grapevine arbors. You might even see some classic cars decorating the area. Check out the gift shop in a restored 1830s barn and an impressive concrete garden statuary. While just visiting the gardens is an option, Southern Exposure also holds special events, including dining experiences. Regular hours are 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Thursday through Sunday from April thought December.

Where is it?: 11269-N Dr. North, Battle Creek, MI 49015

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Cass County

One visitor aptly described Stone Lake as "serene and pristine." We agree. It is also conveniently located in the village of Cassopolis. If you are looking for a small-town getaway this summer, you can rent a room or a house on Stone Lake and enjoy the village amenities. Right on the lake, you will find the adorable and historic Pioneer Log Cabin Museum (it's free!) and a local ice cream shop.

Where is it?: Off M-60 in Cassopolis

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Charlevoix County

Michigan is home to many awesome islands, including a Lake Michigan island with a rich history and about 600 year-round residents. Beaver Island is the largest island in Lake Michigan and it offers up big time fun for visitors. Along with gorgeous views of the water, you'll find museums, campgrounds, cottages and relaxation. Take a ferry over and you can bring your car to help explore the island.

Where is it?: In Lake Michigan, about 32 miles out from Charlevoix

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Cheboygan County

There is perhaps no more iconic view in Michigan than the view from the tip of the mitten in Mackinaw City, looking out at the Mackinac Bridge. A few weeks ago, that view was really special, as blue ice piled up on the shore of the Straights of Mackinac. Even sans blue ice, you just have to stop and take a photo here. You can see the bridge from several other spots in Michigan, so it was hard to decide the county to which we would award this view. It landed in Cheboygan County, where you can say you are visiting the tip of the mitten.

Where is it?: Ummm ... it's kind of self explanatory. It's the tip of the Lower Peninsula.

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Chippewa County

According to some Michiganders, Lake Superior is the most beautiful of the Great Lakes. See for yourself while checking out the view from Whitefish Point. Besides the beautiful beach covered in colorful rocks and driftwood that looks like natural art, you'll find a lighthouse to check out. You will also feel a connection to history here, as many shipwrecks occurred near Whitefish Point. The water you'll be looking out upon is the resting place of many ships.

Where is it?: Follow M-123 until you reach the northernmost point in Chippewa County.

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Clare County

Michiganders are lucky to have such a long list of beautiful state parks within our state's borders. Wilson State Park is another of those parks worth visiting any time of year. Located on Budd Lake, you can take advantage of the sandy beach during summer months. There are plenty of campsites in the park's wooded areas and even a mini cabin to rent.

Where is it?: 910 N. 1st Street, Harrison, MI 48625

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Clinton County

If you love wildlife, check out the Rose Lake State Wildlife Area. The grassland habitat here serves as a home for pheasants. You'll also find snakes, rabbits, turkeys, deer and other creatures. There are lakes and creeks to be discovered within this expansive wildlife area that extends into Shiawassee County. This land is popular with hunters.

Where is it?: 8562 Stoll Road, East Lansing, MI 48823

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Crawford County

The largest state park in the Lower Peninsula, Hartwick Pines State Park is a place to celebrate the beauty and importance of Michigan's forests. The park is packed with huge white pine trees, and you'll also find lakes, hills and swamps. Hikers and birdwatchers love the park, as well as love birds who use the Hartwick Pines Chapel for wedding ceremonies. Camping and fishing are also popular activities at the park.

Where is it?: 4216 Ranger Road, Grayling, MI 49738

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Delta County

On the land that was once a bustling industrial town, Fayette Historic State Park is now a tourist attraction with a great view. You'll get to check out buildings from the area's heyday while marveling at the white dolomite bluffs on Lake Michigan's Big Bay de Noc. You can camp here, go fishing, take a hike or launch your boat. The museum here is open from mid-May through mid-October.

Where is it?: 4785 II Road, Garden, MI 49835

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Dickinson County

From the top of the Pine Mountain Ski Jump, you can pretty much see the rest of the world. And you don't need to be a world class skier to take a look at the view. You just need to be willing to climb 500 steps to the top of the ski jump. You can make the climb during any season and the view will be different each time. We recommend a fall visit so you can take a look at colorful foliage as far as the eye can see. Of course, it's also a great idea to make a trip up for the annual jumping tournament so you can see some amazing (and brave) skiers fly through the air.

Where is it?: N3332 Pine Mountain Rd, Iron Mountain, MI 49801

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Eaton County

Grand Ledge has a perfect name because the Ledges found here are fantastic. Oak Park and Fitzgerald Park, located on either side of the Grand River are both home to lovely rock formations that have been around for hundreds of millions of years. The ledges at Oak Park provide the only place in Michigan's lower peninsula where adventurers can go rock climbing (though some say it should be outlawed to preserve the Ledges). In Fitzgerald Park, you can only look. The parks are worth a visit just to take a scenic stroll and take a look at this intriguing terrain.

Where is it?: 133 Fitzgerald Park Dr., Grand Ledge, MI 48837

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Emmet County

Do yourself a big favor next time you are in the Harbor Springs area -- take a scenic drive along M-119. The roadway, known as the Tunnel of Trees, curves along the western edge of much of Emmet County and is considered one of the country's most scenic highways. As the name suggests, you will feel like you have entered the passageway to some forest kingdom. You wouldn't be surprised if cartoon birds started singing a song to you as you passed. In the fall, you can't beat the colors here. Plus, you can peek at the gorgeous waters of Lake Michigan, which you'll follow for the entirety of M-119.

Where is it?: Start in Harbor Springs and end in Cross Village (perhaps at Legs Inn?) or vice versa.

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Genesee County

Make a stop at Buell Lake at sunset and the beauty of the view might just overwhelm you. Located at the northern edge of Genesee County, this lovely lake is perfect for fishing, boating, swimming or just sitting near the water and contemplating the meaning of life. The lake even has its own county park that offers ball diamonds, picnic areas, a playground, and opportunities for hiking, biking and snowmobiling.

Where is it?: 14098 N. Genesee Rd, Clio, MI 48420

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One of our most popular "photo op" stops. Posted by Stone Cottage Gardens on Thursday, April 14, 2011

Gladwin County

Gardeners in the Gladwin area know all about Stone Cottage Gardens. After all, they have more than 800 varieties of daylillies and 600 varieties of perennials. The seasonal business is great for gardening classes and supplies, but that's not all. They also have a gorgeous garden you should tour, even if you have no interest in planting a garden of your own. They will host your wedding or special event on the grounds. The business typically opens for the year in late April or early May. Check out their Facebook page for updates.

Where is it?: 3740 Willford Rd, Gladwin, MI 48624

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Gogebic County

Standing atop Copper Peak will make you feel like you are on top of the world. On a clear day, you can see three states and Canada when peering out from the top of North America's largest ski jump. If you want to take the Copper Peak Adventure Ride that places you 1782 feet above sea level, you will have to visit between Memorial Day and the end of October. Mountain bikers will love the trails you'll find here and runners can participate in the challenging Red Bull 400 in mid-May.

Where is it?: N13870 Copper Peak Rd, Ironwood, MI 49938

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Grand Traverse County

If you love beautiful water views, delicious wine, adorable food stands and just an overall good time, the Old Mission Peninsula is calling your name. This glorious piece of land juts out into Grand Traverse Bay, making it a specifically scenic space in a generally scenic area of Michigan. Take a drive around the peninsula or plan an entire vacation here. Either way, just go and see it.

Where is it?: Northeast of downtown Traverse City

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Gratiot County Courthouse in Ithaca, Michigan. I love this building. Posted by Lesa Anders on Saturday, October 5, 2013

Gratiot County

Many of Michigan's original, historic courthouse buildings were destroyed and replaced by modern, less-decorative construction in decades passed. Others that still stand are no longer used for their original purpose. But in Gratiot County, they held onto a beautiful piece of history by hanging onto the original courthouse in Ithaca. The 1902 courthouse has been kept up and few changes have been made to the neoclassical structure with an impressive belfry. Those who work in the courthouse get to hang out in this lovely historic place each weekday. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Michigan State Historic Site.

Where is it?: 245 E. Newark St, Ithaca, MI 48847

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Hillsdale County

The grounds where you'll find McCourtie Park was once private land belonging to a wealthy local businessman. While his home is no longer here, the lovely land remains and is now a public area for visitors to enjoy. While you'll have a fine time no matter what you do while here, the real attraction is 17 cement bridges found around the park. The handcrafted functional art pieces, made by George Cardosa and Ralph Corona, look like wood bridges and are each a little different. You can also play tennis, baseball, have a picnic or enjoy the view of two ponds and a river while at the park.

Where is it?: 10426 S. Jackson Road in Somerset Center

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Houghton County

With a sandy beach on Lake Superior and a perfect view of the Keweenaw Waterway Upper Entrance Lighthouse, McLain State Park is pretty much paradise. Located in the Keweenaw Peninsula, this park is popular with Yoopers during all four seasons. The beach is obviously a draw during the summer months, but spectators and winter sports enthusiasts also flock here during cold weather months to see ice formations on the shore and cross country ski on the trails. Grab a campsite this summer to enjoy an extended stay and delight in the rise and fall of the sun on the lake shore.

Where is it?: 18350 Highway M-203, Hancock, MI 49930

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Huron County

Turnip Rock is a unique rock formation that's also a favorite destination of those kayaking in Lake Huron, as it's only accessible by water. The land near Turnip Rock is privately owned but you can still get to the tiny rock island if you navigate your way through the water. Another option is to wait for Lake Huron to freeze and walk your way out to the secluded landmark. This has become one of the iconic images associated with our state. Pure Michigan recently used it in a billboard campaign with the caption "classic rock."

Where is it?: Two miles northeast of Port Austin, in Lake Huron

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Ingham County

Sometimes an indoor view can rival even the beautiful Michigan outdoors. The dome inside the Michigan State Capitol provides one such view. Walk inside the building and look up to see the artistry of the rotunda and inner dome that are decorated in hand-painted designs. The designs have been restored by hand to look just like they did when originally created in the 1870s. The rotunda and dome are far from the only sights to see inside the building that houses the state legislature. From the chandeliers to the trim to the carpets, it is worth snagging a tour to see everything this historic building has to offer.

Where is it?: 100 N Capitol Ave, Lansing, MI 48933

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Ionia County

Pretty much any outdoor activity you want to pursue can happen here. Ionia State Recreation Area is the perfect place for an active Michigander with areas for canoeing, mountain biking, horseback riding and much more. Explore the trails or sit and take in a view of Sessions Lake. It's also a great place for boaters, campers and dog lovers. And don't forget to bring your kayak and put in at the walk-up Grand River launch.

Where is it?: 2880 W. David Hwy, Ionia, MI 48846

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Iosco County

For roughly 100 years, people have been visiting Iargo Springs. It's still a highly recommended destination, known for the springs that inspired its name. Dams have been built to direct the crystal cold waters. You can also take advantage of a panoramic view of the AuSable River Valley from an observation deck. Keep an eye out for a variety of lovely wildflowers.

Where is it?: Off River Road south of M-65 in Oscoda Township

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Iron County

Not far from Michigan's border with Wisconsin, you'll find the Paint River, home to the Horserace Rapids. A lively stretch of alluring rapids, you should only observe this rushing water unless you are very skilled with navigating wild rapids. The Horserace Rapids Nature Trail is perfect for taking a stroll and watching for birds. It's recommended to visit this area during the summer months.

Where is it?: South of Crystal Falls off US-2

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Isabella County

Just west of Mount Pleasant on the Chippewa River, Deerfield Nature Park is a place where Isabella County residents come to have fun. The park offers eclectic recreation opportunities like swimming, disc golf, volleyball, hiking, sledding in the winter and more. You'll want to check out the artesian well, the covered bridge and the two swinging bridges at Deerfield. You can also enjoy rustic camping at 10 remote campsites here.

Where is it?: 2425 W. Remus Rd, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858

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Photo by Jake Crandall | MLive.com

Jackson County

Sparks Foundation County Park is well known by local residents, but they mostly call it a different name -- Cascades Park. Here, you'll find an 18-hole golf course and a manor house available for special events, along with more typical park offerings. In the winter, kids love to sled here and during the summer, they play basketball or baseball. Of course, the most intriguing part of the park is Cascade Falls, a colorfully lit, choreographed set of falls. The attraction is open from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Check the website for more info.

Where is it?: 1528 Kibby Rd, Jackson, MI 49203

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Photo by Mark Bugnaski | MLive.com

Kalamazoo County

Western Michigan University's first building, Heritage Hall, opened in 1905 on top of Prospect Hill. The building itself is beautiful, and was renovated in 2015. The most spectacular sight here, though, is the incredible view you'll get of Kalamazoo from high up on the hill. The building is open to visitors during normal business hours.

Where is it?: 1903 W Michigan Ave, Kalamazoo, MI 49008

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Kalkaska County

Sure, Seven Bridges nature area only has four bridges today, but who cares? It makes up for a shortage of bridges with splendid views of the Rapid River. Take a stroll through the trails and boardwalk to marvel at the impressive cedar trees and listen to the rushing waters. You'll find the four rustic, wooden bridges near the remains of an old sawmill.

Where is it?: On Valley Road, southeast of Rapid City

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Kent County

If you want to see a spectacular view of Michigan's second largest city, head up to Lookout Park for a bird's-eye view. We recommend checking it out during different times of day (and night), as well as different times of year. Sunrises, sunsets and city lights all look fantastic from up on the hill. You'll get a different view each time. If you can snag a spot here for Fourth of July fireworks, you will surely be wowed.

Where is it?: 801 Fairview Ave. NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503

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Photo by Cory Morse | MLive.com

Keweenaw County

A place truly unlike anywhere else, Isle Royale National Park is worth the work it takes to get there. If you have ever been lucky enough to visit this island in Lake Superior, you are likely in a perpetual state of missing its beauty. If you have not visited, and you have the ability to do so, start planning immediately for a trip. You can only get to this national park via ship or plane but all the traveling is worth it. Stay perfect, Isle Royale.

Where is it?: About 60 miles out into Lake Superior from the Keweenaw Peninsula

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Lake County

If you are looking for a picturesque vacation spot that is rich in history, head to Idlewild Lake. One of Michigan's 11,000 inland lakes, this body of water is located in Idlewild, once a popular destination for African-American vacationers. A resort in Idlewild opened in 1915 and operated during a time when black Americans were often banned from white resorts. The area boasted thousands of visitors and attracted several big-name musicians, including Louis Armstrong and The Temptations. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a music festival is held each summer to commemorate the resort's history.

Where is it?: Off US-10 southeast of Baldwin

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Lapeer County

A sanctuary for various plants and animals, Seven Ponds Nature Center boasts nearly 500 acres of natural beauty. You'll find ponds, deep glacial lakes, marshes, prairies and other forms of terrain, all providing a home for various species. This is a great place to photograph animals in their nature habitats, as well as a variety of very photogenic wildflowers. Visitors pay an entrance fee and are asked to stay on the trails, in order to preserve the environment. Find out more at the Seven Ponds website.

Where is it?: 3854 Crawford Rd, Dryden, MI 48428

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Photo by Emily Zoladz | MLive.com

Leelanau County

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is arguably the most beautiful place in the entire country. Anywhere you land along the shoreline will leave you speechless as you take in the glory of Lake Michigan and gorgeous sugar-sand shores. You'll also find two islands, a lighthouse, campgrounds and more. This is a must-visit destination for any Michigander (or anyone who just appreciates natural perfection). Yes, there is a lot of lakeshore to see, but we say you just explore as much of it as you can and make return trips to catch what you missed.

Where is it?: Just head to Empire, Michigan. We are sure you'll find it.

Related: 6 magnificent Michigan Dunes you need to visit this summer

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Lenawee County

When you look up a location on Instagram and see countless photos of weddings, senior portrait sessions and engagements, you know it's a place you should see in person. Hidden Lake Gardens feels like a never-ending garden filled with all the colors of the rainbow and more. The 750+ acre botanical garden, arboretum and conservatory owned by Michigan State University is known for a huge variety of flowers and plants, including many rare varieties. Over 10 miles of hiking trails will let you explore the grounds, or you can opt to take the six miles of paved road.

Where is it?: 6214 Monroe Road (Hwy M-50), Tipton, MI 49287

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Livingston County

It's the full state park experience at Island Lake Recreation Area. There are paved and unpaved paths for hiking, biking, snowmobiling and more. You'll find four boat launches, places to swim, campgrounds and picnic shelters within the park. There is forest area as well as meadows. Bonus: It has the only hot air balloon port in the state parks system.

Where is it?: 6301 Kensington Rd, Brighton, MI 48116

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Photo by Emily Rose Bennett | MLive.com

Luce County

While the beautiful Tahquamenon State Park is split between two Michigan counties, the magnificent Upper Falls of Tahquamenon are located in Luce County. One of the most voluminous falls east of the Mississippi, the Upper Falls is pretty much the pinnacle of Michigan waterfalls (of which we have many). Tourists swarm to this area during the summer months to view the 50-foot drop of the Tahquamenon River at the Upper Falls.

Where is it?: Near Tahquamenon Falls Brewery & Pub off M-123

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Arch Rock with Mackinac State Historic Parks Posted by This Worthey Life on Thursday, June 8, 2017

Mackinac County

Mackinac Island is a major tourist destination. There is plenty to see here, including Arch Rock, a limestone arch formed long ago when high Lake Huron water levels allowed waves to shape the rock over thousands of years. This is said to be one of the most photographed spots in the area, and with good reason. It's a lovely attraction right on the island's main path that lines the water. The view of the water is fantastic from this elevated spot. Plus, the breccia limestone here is rare for the region.

Where is it?: 6131 Arch Rock Rd, Mackinac Island, MI 49757

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Macomb County

On the shore of Lake St. Clair is as lovely of an estate as you'll likely ever find. The Edsel & Eleanor Ford House is full of elegant design features. The structure itself is stunning, as is the art and antiques you'll find inside. The grounds of the house are also impeccable with gardens, trees, open spaces and deliberate landscaping plans. The destination is popular with couples getting married. Tours of the house and grounds are available for various prices, depending on what you want to see. More info is available at the Ford House website.

Where is it?: 1100 Lake Shore Road, Grosse Pointe Shores, MI 48236

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Manistee County

Michigan certainly has no shortage of impressive lake views with lighthouse backdrops. If you find 5th Avenue Beach, you've found one such view. This really is the perfect beach for a summer day with your family (or just a good book). There's a picnic area, a playground, restrooms and a concession area to compliment the sandy beach and the Manistee North Pierhead Lighthouse, which has a walkable pier.

Where is it?: 5th avenue in Manistee

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Marquette County

Marquette County is filled with beauty, but if we're forced to pick one beautiful place, we have to go with Presque Isle Park. The park offers up beautiful views of Lake Superior, pebble-covered beaches, hiking trails, playground equipment for the kids and (of course) the beloved Black Rocks. These rock formations are truly special and it is almost impossible to take a photo that explains the magic you'll find here. It's not just the sight of the rocks and the crystal waters of Lake Superior but the sounds of a summer day here. The cliff, which Northern Michigan students frequently use to jump into the lake, is so adored by the locals, there is even a brewery named Blackrocks.



Where is it?: Peter White Drive in Marquette

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Mason County

Do you want a view of Lake Michigan from your tent? Welcome to Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area, where that dream is a reality. Located within the Huron-Manistee National Forests system, this place is for the camper who likes to leave their car behind and hike in with a backpack of essentials. Not up for camping? You can just plan a hike here to take in the wildlife and the marvelous Ludington Dune Ecosystem. You might even catch a glimpse of the endangered Piping Plover.

Where is it?: West Nurnberg Road north of Hamlin Lake

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Mecosta County

Another of Michigan's lovely inland lakes, Chippewa Lake is the largest natural lake in Mecosta County. You'll find plenty of Michiganders relaxing or recreating on the lake in the summer. It's a great place for boating, jet skiing and swimming. But the locals totally take advantage of the lake during every season.

Where is it?: Between Big Rapids and Barryton in northeast Mecosta County

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Menominee County

Another park with campsites on the Big Lake, J.W. Wells State Park has 20 sites right on Lake Michigan's Green Bay. If you aren't quick enough to snag one of those spots, there are 150 other campsites in the park. No matter what spot you get or if you are just passing through, check out the sandy beach and take a dip, if weather permits. The park is open year round and is a perfect place to take part in winter sports like snowshoeing, ice fishing and cross-country skiing.

Where is it?: N9736 M-35, Cedar River, MI 49887

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Midland County

Architect laureate of Michigan Alden B. Dow had a distinct vision for his home. Luckily, he fulfilled that vision and the mid-century modern home he created in Midland is able to be toured by the public. The Alden B. Dow Home and Studio is a National Historic Landmark created with Dow's design philosophy that "gardens never end and buildings never begin." Check out both the grounds and the interior for views of flowers, a pond and a variety of colors, textures and angles. The historic home was recently named one of the best in the U.S.

Where is it?: 315 Post St., Midland, MI 48640

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Missaukee County

Lake City is on the eastern edge of a lake bearing the name of the county it's in. They have names down in Missaukee County. And the locals have relaxation down, since they spend lots of time on Lake Missaukee. People especially enjoy sunsets on the lake. Fishing is a popular activity for visitors. Plus, of course, it is a great place to take your boat. Perhaps you should take your boat out to fish and stay for the sunset.

Where is it?: Head to Lake City and you'll find it

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Monroe County

If you want to visit a state park on Lake Erie, it will have to be Sterling State Park. Like a couple of our Lake Michigan parks on this list, Sterling has the option for campers to set up their tents with views of a Great Lake. You can also swim in Lake Erie, use the boat launch to spend a day on the lake or hike through six miles of trails. Keep an eye out for wildlife while walking through the park.

Where is it?: 2800 State Park Rd, Monroe, MI 48162

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Montcalm County

Clifford Lake, a naturally spring-fed lake in Montcalm County, is a perfect place for a family vacation. There are rentals right on the lake with beachfront. You can fish or hang out in the water on a boat or raft. Head over to Clifford Lake Inn for a meal, a drink and a great view. You don't even have to leave the water to get to the inn, since they have a dock.

Where is it?: East of Stanton off of West Stanton Road

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Montmorency County

The name of Clear Lake State Park tells you one thing you'll find here -- a clear lake. You'll also find tranquility in this park, nestled in one of the least-populated areas of the state. You'll also encounter more trail than you'll be able to tackle. If wandering on the trails isn't your thing, enjoy disc golf, horseshoes or playgrounds. There is plenty of space to camp in the park, which is part of the Mackinaw State Forest.

Where is it?: 20500 M-33, Atlanta, MI 49709

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Photo by Jenica Miller | MLive.com

Muskegon County

Where do we even start with Muskegon State Park? We would challenge you to find a park that is as equally awesome during the winter and summer. There is a beautiful Lake Michigan beach that simply doesn't get as much attention as some of the other Lake Michigan beaches. If a view of the Big Lake wasn't enough, you'll also find access to Muskegon Lake. There are forested dunes to explore and plenty of trails. There are two campgrounds with summer and winter camping (plus, a yurt!). If that wasn't enough, the Muskegon Winter Sports Complex makes this the ultimate winter destination, offering ice skating, sledding, cross-country skiing and even the most publicly accessible luge track in the United States.

Where is it?: 3560 Memorial Dr, North Muskegon, MI 49445

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Newaygo County

Yes, Newaygo State Park is another state park you should visit. You'll find large, private campsites on the scenic, forested land next to Hardy Dam Pond. You can rent a kayak and paddle around in the water or hang out on the beach. You'll find a boat launch and a disc golf course. There are also picnic areas for day use. The park looks especially lovely in the autumn months when the numerous oak and poplar trees change colors.

Where is it?: 2793 S. Beech Ave, Newaygo, MI 49337

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Oakland County

If you live to visit perfectly groomed gardens, we have one for you. Cranbrook House & Gardens is home to some spectacular landscape gardening that looks like natural artwork. But the garden isn't all. The Cranbrook House is metro Detroit's oldest surviving historic mansion. The English Tudor-style estate was designed by Detroit architect Albert Kahn and is filled with art and antiques that belonged to Cranbrook founders George and Ellen Booth. House tours are given late June through October and the gardens open to visitors in May each year. For more info, visit the Cranbrook House & Gardens website.

Where is it?: 380 Lone Pine Rd, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304

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Oceana County

Sure, the term "unique" is overused, but a mile from Lake Michigan at one of the area's oldest operating farms, you'll find something that really is unique. Cherry Point Farm & Market is home to the lavender labyrinth and herb garden. If you want to walk through the labyrinth during peak lavender season, head to the farm during the latter half of July or the early days of August. Of course, the farm is open April weekends and daily from May through October. Even if the lavender isn't in bloom, something will be popping up through the labyrinth and garden. While you are there, you can also shop for fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs at the market. You'll definitely want to try the cherry turnovers. Yum!

Where is it?: 9600 W. Buchanan Rd, Shelby, MI 49455

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Ogemaw County

A huge 4,000 acre plot of land, Rifle River State Recreation Area is home to 10 scenic lakes. You'll find modern and rustic campsites, as well as 14 miles of paths and trails for hiking, biking, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. Those looking for a wildlife viewing spot will likely have success here. The land was once a private hunting and fishing retreat that was opened to the public after it was acquired by the parks department in the 60s. Hunting and fishing are still popular activities here.

Where is it?: 2550 Rose City Rd, Lupton, MI 48635

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Photo by Brian Masck | MLive.com

Ontonagon County

Lake of the Clouds is the most photographed spot in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park and when you visit, you'll see why. This is just a breathtaking spot where you can really fall deeper in love with Michigan. Unlike many parts of the Porcupine Mountains, which provide some killer hiking trails, this spot is pretty easily accessible during most seasons. Don't forget your camera!

Where is it?: 412 S. Boundary Road, Ontonagon, MI 49953

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Photo by Jessica Shepherd | MLive.com

Osceola County

We've given a lot of love to Michigan lakes, but what about the rivers? Here's a shout out to the Hersey River, a 13-mile stream that flows into the Muskegon River. Enjoy a warm day of tubing or kayaking on the river, which runs through Hersey and Reed City. You could also just spend some time sitting near the river, listening to the gentle rush of water. There is a great little spot at Rambadt Park with a bench near the water. Plus, you can see the adorable Little Mac bridge.

Where is it?: The southwest corner of Osceola County

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Oscoda County

Head to Muskrat Lake in rural Oscoda County and you will find a space for peaceful reflection. Located in the Grayling State Forest Area, the lake is described by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources as a " shallow, secluded, warm-water lake with good canoeing and pan fishing." You can snag a campsite and enjoy the wilderness.

Where is it?: Muskrat Lake Road, northwest of Mio

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Otsego County

Michigan wilderness at its best can be found at Pigeon River Country State Forest. It's known as the home of the state's elk herd and there are designated viewing spots where you can try to catch a glimpse of the stately creatures. You'll find both forests and fields filling the 100,000-acre piece of land. When you visit, keep an eye out for all kinds of animals because elk are far from the only wildlife you'll see. There are also lakes, streams and several campgrounds to explore here.

Where is it?: 9966 Twin Lakes Rd, Vanderbilt, MI 49795

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Photo by Emily Rose Bennett | MLive.com

Ottawa County

Breathtaking views of truly natural Lake Michigan shoreline await you at Rosy Mound Natural Area. The dunes, wooded areas and beach come together for a great representation of all that makes the shores of the Great Lakes so spectacular. There are boardwalks and scenic outlooks here to catch a glimpse of the Big Lake in any weather. If you make your way down to the beach, you'll get a workout from traveling along all the steps required to get there. But the undisturbed freshwater coast is worth it.

Where is it?: 13925 Lakeshore Dr, Grand Haven, MI 49417

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Presque Isle County

You almost won't believe how crystal clear the waters of Lake Huron are at Hoeft State Park. Also, it seems no one has really caught on to the beauty here, so the beach will be less populated than busy Great Lakes beaches elsewhere. As a contrast to the beach, you find a heavily wooded park with campsites and trails. Make sure to bring your bike and ride the trails.

Where is it?: 5001 US-23, Rogers City, MI 49779

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Roscommon County

Speaking of crystal clear water, you'll also find an ample supply of it here at Higgins Lake. There are many who would argue this is the most beautiful lake in Michigan. It's actually been referred to as one of the most lovely lakes in the entire world. You'll find plenty of beachgoers enjoying their favorite lake activities here during the summer months.

Where is it?: Off I-75 in northwest Roscommon County

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Saginaw County

Managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge covers nearly 10,000 acres on the Shiawassee River, smack dab in the center of Saginaw County. Within the marsh, forest and grasslands you'll find plenty of wildlife, as the name suggests. Birdwatchers are particularly attracted to the refuge, since it was formed specifically as a sanctuary for our feathered friends. The prothonotary warbler makes a home here during warm weather months and it is one of the only places in Michigan where you'll find the species. You can walk the trails or take the driving path to catch a glimpse.

Where is it?: 6975 Mower Rd, Saginaw, MI 48601

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St. Clair County

Located on the largest freshwater delta in North America, Harsens Island is almost as far east as you can go without leaving Michigan. On the north side of Lake St. Clair, this island is full of diverse wildlife. The sapphire water here is perfect for kayaking and the recently popular sport of paddleboarding. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources manages much of the island, while other property is owned privately. This is a popular summer destination and you'll see residents and visitors taking advantage of the water and wilderness by boating, birdwatching and partaking in various outdoor activities.

Where is it?: Clay Township, south of Algonac

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St. Joseph County

In the northeast corner of St. Joseph County, you'll find a restored, historic mill surrounded by beautiful gardens, walking paths, bridges and gazebos. Rawson's King Mill Park is a destination for a day of exploration or perhaps a special event. The park is perfect for a wedding. Check out the scenic dam before launching your kayak in Nottawa Creek. You can even cook a meal on one of the barbecue grills and enjoy a picnic surrounded by the park's beauty.

Where is it?: King Rd in Leonidas

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Sanilac County

History and beauty combine for a special experience at Sanilac Pertoglyphs Historic State Park. It's a lovely place for a hike, like any state park, but what makes this place so special is the petroglyphs. This is the only known place in Michigan to find rock carvings attributed to Native Americans. There are specific times to view the carvings between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Check out the park's Michigan DNR page for more info.

Where is it?: 8251 Germania Rd, Cass City, MI 48726

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Schoolcraft County

Known as "The Big Spring," over 10,000 gallons per minute flow from Kitch-iti-kipi's limestone bed. Two-hundred feet across and 40-feet deep, it is Michigan's largest freshwater spring. Visitors can view the spring from a moving platform or from the shore. The water is a lovely color and the area is perfectly calm. That is, except for the tourists who are clamoring to experience the beauty here.

Where is it?: Palms Book State Park off Sawmill Road in Manistique

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Shiawassee County

You'll find farmland, forest, gardens and prairie when visiting DeVries Nature Conservancy. You can walk your dog or launch your canoe into the Shiawassee River. Check out the chicken coop and the wildflowers. Kids will love the nature playscape. A highlight of the grounds is the pollinator garden where you can view fluttering butterflies. If you fall in love with this place, you can even get married here.

Where is it?: 2635 N. Michigan 52, Owosso, MI 48867

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Tuscola County

There is a place in Unionville that comes to a point and juts out into the Saginaw Bay. That place is home to Fish Point Wildlife Refuge. While the area surrounding the refuge is popular for bird hunting, the refuge itself is off limits to hunters. In the winter, this is a great place to see snowy owls. In the warm weather months, you can spot plenty of birds that migrate to the area. Bring your binoculars and your camera.

Where is it?: 7968 Ringle Rd, Unionville, MI 48767

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Photo by Kaytie Boomer | MLive.com

Van Buren County

At sunset on South Beach, looking out on the big, red, South Haven Light, true magic happens. Sure, you'll share that magic with lots of others visitors, since this is a busy beach. But with true beauty, the more the merrier, right? You can walk out on the pier to get a close-up view of the lighthouse, an attraction that is photographed constantly. For a different and equally magnificent sight, check out the beach on a really windy day when the waves are crashing into the lighthouse. But keep your distance! Those waves are dangerous.

Where is it?: Water Street in South Haven

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Photo by Katy Kildee | MLive.com

Washtenaw County

If you've visited Ann Arbor, hopefully you made a stop at Nichols Arboretum. Everybody should see the Arb! There are lovely trails, access to the Huron River and you might even see students getting a lesson in the fresh air at the outdoor classroom. But, let's be real, it's all about the peonies, baby. When in full bloom, from May through mid-June, the garden holds 800 peonies, including varieties that are no longer commercially available. The Arb, run by the University of Michigan, is free and open to the public every day. If you have time, you should also check out U of M's Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

Where is it?: The Arb is located at 1610 Washington Hts. Ann Arbor, MI 48104; Matthaei Botanical Gardens is located at 1800 N. Dixboro Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48105

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Wayne County

Belle Isle is something truly special. You can spend a whole day exploring the nearly 1,000-acre island park. There's an aquarium, an amazing fountain and the only marble lighthouse in the U.S. The Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory is a must-see destination. It's the oldest continually running conservatory in the country and is home to exotic and rare plants you'll want to see up close. The only way to end your day at Belle Isle is to head to Sunset Point to enjoy a beautiful sunset falling over the Detroit skyline. Oh, and we almost forgot, there's a beach! And a golf course! For attraction hours and more info, check out the Belle Isle Conservancy's website.

Where is it?: You'll find the bridge to Belle Isle at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and East Grand Boulevard.

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Wexford County

Get a truly scenic view of Wexford County's wooded hills at the High Rollways Observation Deck. Get a stunning birds-eye view of the land surrounding the curving Manistee River. It will be pretty whenever you go, but the truly perfect time to take a trip here is during autumn. Add this spot to your fall color tour this year.

Where is it?: Halfway btween M-37 and US-131, south of Kingsley at the northern edge of Wexford County

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The most unusual place in each of Michigan's 83 counties

What is your Michigan county known for? A look at all 83

One adorable, quirky shop to visit in each Michigan county

Don't EditANN ARBOR, MI - More than 4,000 people joined March For Our Lives in Ann Arbor on Saturday, March 24, to call for an end to mass shootings and other types of gun violence.

Cities across the country - including 28 Michigan communities - held March For Our Lives events Saturday. The main event in Washington, D.C. -- which was organized by high school students in the wake of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida -- was expected to draw up to a half-million people.

Organizers of the Ann Arbor event estimated the turnout at between 4,000 and 8,000 people, and thousands marched along Woodward Avenue in Detroit and joined the March For Our Lives rally there.

In Ann Arbor, people started gathering in a parking lot at Pioneer High School, 601 W. Stadium Blvd., before 11 a.m. for a rally to hear from students, a teacher, a pediatrician, a social worker, gun violence survivors and state Rep. Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, and U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn.

"We can do better as a nation," Rabhi said. "This is not the America that we believe in. We believe in a nation where our kids can be safe when they go to school."

Following the rally, attendees marched around Pioneer High School and then east on West Stadium Boulevard and south on South Main Street. It took almost 15 minutes for the crowd to completely exit the parking lot, and the line of people stretched for nearly one mile.

March for Our Lives - Ann Arbor March For Our Lives Ann Arbor starts at Pioneer High School on Saturday, March 24 Posted by The Ann Arbor News on Saturday, March 24, 2018

Speakers and attendees called for gun control policies that would make it more difficult for people to access guns and criticized the National Rifle Association for lobbying politicians to oppose gun control measures supported by their constituents.

Kennedy Dixon, an Eastern Michigan University freshman, helped organize the local march with Washtenaw County's chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

South Lyon East High School junior Gretchen Ascher recapped five priorities for gun control set by students from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida:

Digitize data from Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to make it easier to track gun sales;

Require background checks for all gun sales;

Ban high-capacity magazines, which allow a gun to shoot more rounds of ammunition without needing to reload;

Repeal the Dickey Amendment, which says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may not spend its funding for injury prevention and control on advocating for gun control; and

Ban high-powered assault rifles.

"I am fed up with grief. I am tired of giving thoughts and prayers and hoping it stops," said Ashley Dunn, a Howell High School student. "These aren't isolated incidents. We are facing a growing problem in our society, and simply doing nothing about it is not going to change it."

Dunn said limiting access to guns has the potential to reduce mass shootings as well as the number of suicides by firearms and the number of fatal domestic violence incidents.

"There's the belief that these deaths are inevitable, even acceptable, that this the price we pay for freedom," Dunn said. "Our framers (of the Constitution) could have never have predicted the world we now occupy. There have been qualifications placed on all of our rights in response to specific events and the evolving nation over time. Our freedom of speech is limited by numerous clauses concerning libel, slander, obscenity, hate speech and any language creating a clear and present danger. Why is the Second Amendment unique?"

University of Michigan freshman Morgan Showen credited teenagers and young adults with responding to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in a way that forced a national conversation about gun control.

"This time is different because an entire generation of young Americans have called BS," he said. "We call BS on the idea that so many other industrialized nations can protect their students but America somehow cannot. (Stoneman Douglas High School student) Emma Gonzalez has made these two letters a rallying cry for an entire generation that is sick of wondering if their school or community is next in the cycle of gun violence."

Siblings Soha Dey, Aeva Dey and Ayon Dey, ranging in age from 6 to 11, came from Birmingham with their mother to attend the march in Ann Arbor, and their friends from West Bloomfield joined them.

"People are dying because of this, and we need to do something about," said Aeva, 11.VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP, MI - Police have identified a person of interest in the 2017 death of a Belleville area woman.

The department has been unable to clear the man in connection with the June 2017 death of 27-year-old Egypt Covington, Van Buren Township Police Department Deputy Director Jason Wright confirmed Friday, March 23, reading a statement from a detective in the case.

"We're continuing to investigate the case on a daily basis and have been following up on leads since Egypt's tragic murder," he said.

Police identified the man, but The Ann Arbor News isn't publishing his name because he hasn't been charged and was not being sought by police.

The department doesn't have enough evidence to call the individual a suspect, but has not been able to clear him, said Van Buren Township police Lt. Charles Bazzy.

Police interviewed the man in the past, and are hoping he will either return to speak with police or new information will be brought forward, Bazzy said. The individual retained an attorney and was not currently in communication with the department.

"We'd love to be able to clear him, but at this point we can't clear him," Bazzy said.

Police continually follow up on leads in the case, Bazzy said, noting his department won't let the case go "cold."

Egypt Covington was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head about 7:15 p.m. June 23 in her home in the 45000 block of Hull Road in Van Buren Township.

She was last seen the previous night, when she went out with a friend, officials previously said. Family said she also texted her stepmother about getting off their family phone plan and texted her siblings about wanting a French Bulldog puppy and a photo of her niece.

No one was in custody in the death as of Friday.

Egypt Covington's father, Chuck, said Friday that he became aware of the person of interest early on in connection with his daughter's case.

"It's my hope that the truth comes out - that people who know and suspect things will feel freer to talk," Chuck Covington said of the announcement.

He said he hopes the community will continue to remember his daughter's positivity and the good she tried to do.

He said Arbor Brewing Company continues to plan on releasing a beer in her memory - "A Girl Named Egypt" - to provide funding to women's shelters, animal shelters and a music scholarship.

Egypt Covington was an account manager for beer and wine distributor Rave Associates, and her father said she was passionate about those causes.

Family and friends have said Egypt Covington was "angelic" and had a loving spirit. She was known locally for her singing as well as her previous employment at Fraser's Pub in Ann Arbor.ANN ARBOR, MI - University of Michigan Vice President of Development Jerry May will retire at the end of the year after nearly three decades of helping fundraising efforts, the university announced Friday, March 23.

May, who oversees all fundraising activity at the university, most recently spearheaded UM's Victors for Michigan campaign, which surpassed its $4 billion goal in April 2017. During the 2017 fiscal year, UM collected a record-breaking $467 million in cash gifts and pledge payments.

The record-breaking fundraising year also saw UM receive funds from a record of 130,000 donors. Throughout the campaign, UM has received cash and pledges from around 346,000 donors.

May's departure Dec. 31 will coincide with the end of the Victors for Michigan campaign, which has been focused on funding key university priorities since 2013.

"I am excited to help prepare for the next iteration of fundraising at the University of Michigan, knowing that our team has the talent and ability to move into the future emerging always stronger," May wrote in a message to colleagues.

Prior to the Victors for Michigan campaign, May was responsible for leading The Michigan Difference campaign, which exceeded its $2.5 billion goal to raise a record-setting $3.2 billion at its conclusion in December 2008.

Before becoming vice president at Michigan, May served as vice president for development at Ohio State University and president of the Ohio State University Foundation. At Ohio State, he planned and implemented the most successful campaign in the school's history, raising $1.23 billion.

Prior to OSU, Jerry spent 13 years at Michigan in various senior fundraising positions. During that time, he helped plan the campaign and lead the nucleus fund in Michigan's $1.4 billion campaign.

May, has been with UM for 29 years in total, spent his first 13 in various senior fundraising positions. During that time, he helped plan the university's Campaign for Michigan, which eventually brought in $1.4 billion and became the first billion-dollar campaign by a public university.

"The success of Jerry and his team is apparent throughout our university -- in student support, facilities, programs, patient care and research breakthroughs," Schlissel said in a news release.

May is one of UM's top-paid executives, earning $507,754 in base salary in 2017.DETROIT, MI -- Detroit Police Chief James Craig said Friday he demoted an officer accused of an unreported St. Patrick's Day altercation that left a man in a coma.

Timothy Leach "has been de-appointed as a commander down to the rank of lieutenant," Craig said. "And we'll be making some decisions in the coming days as to what his status will be; will he remain suspended with pay, or do we bring him back in restricted duty capacity as a lieutenant working at another assignment.

"So I'm not at the place where I'll be making that decision, but I'm considering some options."

Chief Craig live 3-23-2018 Chief Craig live 3-23-2018. Posted by Detroit Police Department on Friday, March 23, 2018

Patrons of Ottava Via restaurant, located on Michigan Avenue, along the route of Detroit's St. Patrick's Day parade in Corktown, called 911 after an encounter between Leach and Michael Karpovich, 41, of Washington Township.

Leach, in addition to working as a Detroit police commander, operates a security business. He and up to six employees were providing security and door services at the restaurant during the parade, according to Craig.

Detroit police responded to the 911 calls and were waived off, told by restaurant staff that Karpovich slipped and fell, Craig said during a press conference on Tuesday, March 20.

Craig said the hospital didn't initially report the injuries as possibly being caused by an assault, because they were also informed they were the result of a fall. It wasn't until several days later that the police administration learned of Leach's involvement. He was suspended on Thursday, March 15.

There were internal affairs and criminal investigations being conducted.

Another Detroit police detective was among Leach's employees that day, and he's since been placed on restricted duty, Craig said Friday.

"What the investigation has shown so far is he was working unauthorized. He was not part of the force incident," Craig said of the detective. "At this point, we have no information that he actually witnessed the force. He may have been in another part of the tavern, a vestibule area or check-in, applying wristbands, so at this point, there is no connection."

The police chief says he's watched two surveillance videos that show Leach did use force against Karpovich, but he declined to elaborate about what he saw in the video.

Detroit police policy requires officers report any use of force, even if it occurs while off duty, Craig said. Leach did not report a use of force, nor had he obtained authorization to work at Ottava Via.

"As a matter of practice, I do not authorize officers to work inside taverns and bars," the chief said.

Medical staff had to remove portions of Karpovich's skull to remove pressure caused by swelling following the incident and he remained unconscious Tuesday, the Detroit News reported, based on a statement made by Jennifer Damico of the Mike Morse law firm, who is representing the Karpovich family.

MLive was unable to reach Damico for an update on Karpovich's condition on Friday.

"I will tell you that the investigation is ongoing, but there was certainly an encounter between Leach and the subject," Craig said during a nearly 40-minute press conference Tuesday. "There are allegations that the subject was under the influence of alcohol and at some point the commander used force."GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Grand Rapids Community College is investing in new technology that will enable the school to institute a security lockdown of its buildings with the press of a button, officials say.

Enhanced security features have been a priority for many higher education institutions coping with the threat of mass shootings and general security vulnerabilities from being an open campus.

"We want to be able to do all we can to make it as safe as possible on our campuses," said GRCC President Bill Pink, about investing the resources available.

"This is a big step in that direction.''

The purpose of a lockdown is to limit accessibility to buildings on campus to reduce the risk of injury or danger during a threat.

Lisa Freiburger, vice president for finance and administration, said in addition to the building lockdown feature, the security system would also let staff know if a door is ajar or unlocked. She said the college has around 400 exterior doors.

The Board of Trustees on Monday, March 19, approved entering into negotiations with Atrium, a Virginia-based company that provides a wide variety of campus systems and devices.

The board signed off on spending $1.87 million to provide a campus access and point of sale transaction system for the main campus, DeVos campus and the Tassell M-TEC Center. GRCC had a fall enrollment of 14,285 students.

Atrium's partner, S2 Security Corporation, would be charged with the security component, according to David McQuillin, vice president of sales for Atrium. He said Atrium would provide the campus card solution for things such as parking, meals, building access, and printing and copying.

Massachusetts-based S2 security does have a presence in Michigan colleges and universities, including Mott Community College in Flint and Wayne State University in Detroit, according to McQuillin.

Campus Police Chief Rebecca Whitman said the ability to lock down buildings remotely will make the campus safer from internal and external threats. She said it will also prevent custodians and other facilities personnel from being put at risk because they won't have to lock the doors manually.

She said the college is committed to putting in place the appropriate practices, technology, and protocols to keep students, faculty, staff, and visitors safe, not just give the perception of safety.

"This will be an integral part of our toolbox,'' said Whitman, who said she and other officials have spent about 18 months researching an enhanced security system.

Cale Merdzinski, president of the Student Alliance, said their organization appreciates the administration's commitment to investing in the latest technology to provide a safer learning environment.

"I feel like it helps students feel more comfortable,'' said Merdzinski, who said there are safety conversations among students when there are incidents on campuses nationally and in Michigan.

"The administration is always proactive on issues that might be of concern to students.''

The board Monday also authorized spending $1 million on DeVos Campus renovations.

The project will consist of repaving all the surface parking but not the small ramp. There will also be a two-way drive installed with an entrance and exit lane at the back of the lot off Fulton Street to address accessibility issues.

For safety, a raised student walkway will be added across the administrative lot. Freiburger said many students walk back and forth between the main and DeVos campuses and tend to cut through the administrative lot off Prospect Street into the Welcome Center in Sneden.

She said the renovations also permit the college to address some environmental issues such as with bioswales.

The renovations are expected to begin in May and end in July. The security system is projected to be in place later this year.NEW ORLEANS, March 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC (KSF) and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until April 6, 2018 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against MetLife, Inc. (NYSE:MET), if they purchased the Companys securities between February 27, 2013 and January 29, 2018, inclusive (the Class Period). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.



What You May Do

If you purchased securities of MetLife and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect 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-met/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by April 6, 2018.

About the Lawsuit

MetLife and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On January 29, 2018, MetLife disclosed a material weakness in internal controls over financial reporting that caused reserves to be reduced incorrectly relating to outstanding payouts for annuity and pension recipients and that its Q4 earnings release was postponed, with reserves expected to increase by $525 million to $575 million, Q4 earnings to decrease by $135 million to $165 million, and 2017 profits cut by $165 million to $195 million. MetLife also revealed a SEC investigation into the outstanding pension payments matter.

On this news, the price of MetLifes shares plummeted.

About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is a law firm focused on securities, antitrust and consumer class actions, along with merger & acquisition and breach of fiduciary litigation against publicly traded companies on behalf of shareholders. The firm has offices in New York, California and Louisiana.

To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com.

Contact:

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

Lewis Kahn, Managing Partner

lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com

1-877-515-1850

206 Covington St.

Madisonville, LA 70447Two days after the release of a report critical of Michigan State University's sexual assault education and prevention programs, MSU is creating new oversight office and expanding staff dealing with Title IX issues, the university announced Friday.

"We are greatly expanding our capabilities to investigate reported civil rights and Title IX incidents and deliver effective prevention, education and outreach programs," MSU Interim President John Engler said in a press release.

"We heard the feedback loud and clear and are taking immediate steps to be more efficient and effective," he said.

The new Office of Civil Rights and Title IX Education and Compliance will oversee the Office of Institutional Equity, which investigates civil rights and Title IX complaints, and the Title IX Prevention, Outreach and Education Office, responsible for prevention, education and outreach efforts.

Jessica Norris, currently MSU's Title IX director, is being promoted to associate vice president for the new executive office.

In addition, 12 new positions are being created, mostly in the areas of prevention, outreach and education.

There will be a national search for a replacement of Norris in her old job, and new positions also include additional investigators and a case manager to address bottlenecks in the investigation process.

New service coordinator positions will directly address community concerns about accessing support services during the investigations.

The move comes two days after MSU released a prelimary report from the law firm Husch Blackwell, which was hired to look at its Title IX compliance.

The report said MSU has struggled to build trust and create awareness of campus sexual assault education and prevention programs, resulting in significant "misunderstandings" and "misinformation" among students, faculty and staff.

The report also found that many feel there's a lack of "clear accountability" in the university's Title IX program, and others were unsure "who was really in charge" between the Office of Institutional Equity - which oversees the Title IX program - and MSU's senior leadership.

"This new office will go a long way in providing additional clarity within our community about responsibility for civil rights and Title IX-related activities," Norris said in the press release.

A copy of Husch Blackwell's preliminary report is available on the Title IX website.

To help finalize the report, the Sexual Violence Advisory Committee and Husch Blackwell are hosting Campus Climate Forums on March 25 and 26. Participants will have the opportunity to provide reactions to the preliminary report and additional feedback on the programs, efforts and services to the external review team. Click here for information about the events.

The issue of sexual assault has dominated the conversation on campus in the wake of the Larry Nassar sex-abuse scandal.

Nassar was a MSU faculty member and a physician at the university's Sport Medicine Clinic for 20 years until he was fired in September 2016 after reports emerged that he had molested scores of women under the guise of medical treatment. He's expected to spend the rest of his life in prison after being sentenced in federal court for possession of child pornography and sexually penetrating women and girls in Ingham and Eaton counties.GRAND RAPIDS, MI - The only thing cuter than a lap full of wiggly puppies on National Puppy Day? Eight little puppies that are being named by Michigan pizzerias.

The Pizza Pups, being raised by Hearts of Hope dog rescue in Grand Rapids, are all being sponsored by a handful of restaurants that produce some tasty pies.

The pizzerias are paying $100 each - a few chipped in more - for naming rights to one of the puppies. The pups will visit each of the eight pizza sponsors for an event and pictures with the staff.

Then the Pizza Pups, all black and white Labrador/hound mixes, will be ready for adoption in about a month. Right now, they're busy growing - and getting into everything.

"They all have little personalities," said Hearts of Hope founder Janelle McFarlane. "We've got a couple that are really spunky and get in trouble. They are smartest, so they are the first to figure out something naughty - and then they teach all the others.

Photo courtesy of Lynae Marie Photography

"They are very social. They love company," she said. McFarlane is fostering this litter, and when she has friends over, they all want to go sit in the puppy room. The dogs love that idea. "They just climb all over us and they end up in a pile on our laps, sleeping," she said of the group, which will be 5 weeks old on Sunday.

Hearts of Hope has had success with this kind of community-building sponsorship before. Last year, a litter of its rescue pups became "The Brew Crew," their care underwritten by Michigan breweries.

This time, the pizza idea was a winner for rescue volunteers. "We were trying to think of another way to do something similar," McFarlane said. "We are all kind of pizza fans in the rescue, so it kind of naturally came up."

Within a week of sending out the idea on social media, eight West Michigan restaurants had signed on: Fatzo's in Rockford; Mitten Pizza in Gun Lake; Papa Piccione's in Kent City; Bobarino's at the B.O.B in Grand Rapids; Big O's Cafe in Grand Rapids; Mitten Brewing in Grand Rapids; Flo's in Belmont; and Big Bob's Pizza in East Grand Rapids.

McFarlane also has asked all the restaurants for name ideas for the puppies' mother, a slender little Lab mix from Alabama. A Facebook poll going up soon will allow fans to pick her name. For now, she's known as "Teen Mom," as she's just a year old herself.

The rescue group and its network of volunteer foster homes has raised and adopted out hundreds of dogs across Michigan in the last few years. It often takes dogs who aren't doing well in local shelters, or pregnant dogs who would do better delivering their puppies in a home.

In this case, the puppies' mom was a stray that landed in an outdoor shelter in rural Alabama. Hearts of Hope rented a cargo van and headed south. They brought back 21 dogs from shelters there.

These dog transfers from Southern states have become a common thing for Michigan shelters and rescue groups, which often have an easier time finding these dogs a home.

About 10 days after the mother dog arrived here with McFarlane, the puppies were born.

If you're interested in adopting one of the pups, the cost will be about $250. It includes a spay/neuter, microchip and vaccinations.

For more details on the rescue's adoption and foster programs, check the Hearts of Hope website and its Facebook page.JACKSON, MI - A successor trustee to a wealthy Jackson couple filed a complaint against a financial adviser now charged with 30 felonies counts when the trustee discovered money was missing from the couple's estate.

The husband and wife had a net worth of about $6 million in investable assets when their nephew introduced them in the late 1990s to Robert Byrkit Morley Jr., who was arrested Friday, and Morley began managing their wealth in 2009. He met with them every 10 days while they were in their late 80s, developed a close relationship with them and considered them to be like an aunt and uncle, states a document signed last year by a Michigan administrative law judge.

It notes Morley, 69, arranged investments for the pair, who died in 2012, totaling $763,900 in "(real estate investment trusts), real estate and private placement."

Morley is accused of converting more than $700,000 from unnamed clients, now deceased, while he managed their investments, Attorney General Bill Schuette on Friday announced. He allegedly used the money to pay off personal debts, according to the attorney general.

Schuette's office began investigating after the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs took action against Morley.

The administrative law judge's findings and conclusions in 2017 led the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs to fine Morley $80,000 in 2017 for offering and selling Creative Wealth Strategies Inc. securities to the man and woman when the securities were not registered, as is required by law.

Morley incorporated Creative Wealth Strategies Inc. in 2001. He was formerly employed by Cigna Financial Services from 1977 to 1993, providing financial services to entrepreneurs throughout the Midwest, states the judge's "proposal for decision."

In 2011, he "borrowed" money from the man and woman, identified only with initials, while he was having a difficult time financially and needed "to keep the cash flow of his business going," states the document. He, however, termed the contracts "investment agreements." Morley led his clients to believe they would agree to invest an unspecified amount, made in a series of payments, over a six-month period, the judge found.

At the time, the pair were in their late 80s and the woman had broken her hip, was admitted to an assisted living facility and might have been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Morley testified the amount received was $130,000 and he repaid $143,000.

A complaint was filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees brokers and their agents. Initial efforts to contact Morley about the complaint were unsuccessful. He claimed he did not receive mail because he was in Florida with a sick relative.

In March 2016, he admitted he collected the cease and desist orders and informed the state he was no longer acting as a registered investment advisor and had not been involved in such work since his license expired in 2014.

The couple died - the husband shot his wife and killed himself - four months after Morley paid off the investment agreements. This was less than a year after the husband and wife paid Morley $130,000. "This is very concerning," wrote the judge.

Morley had represented in his Form ADV, used by investment advisers to register with both the Securities and Exchange Commission and state securities authorities, that he would not sell to clients any securities in which he or a related person had a propriety interest, reads a cease and desist order signed in February 2016 by the acting director of the Corporations, Securities and Commercial Licensing Bureau.

On Friday, Morley was arrested at Detroit Metro Airport, Schuette's office reported in a statement. He was lodged in the Jackson County Jail and arraigned on charged of conducing an continuing criminal enterprise and 29 counts of embezzling more than $1,000.

"Stealing from someone who has entrusted you with their life savings for any reason is beyond the pale," Schuette said in the statement. "I want to thank my Corporate Oversight Team and the Department of Insurance and Financial Services for diligently working to protect Michigan citizens from these kinds of criminals."

A jail record indicates Morley was living in Maple City, northwest of Traverse City. His bond was set at $500,000.

"The trustees of the estate have attempted to secure the alleged stolen funds but have been unsuccessful," reads Schuette's statement.CLINTON TWP., MI - A Macomb County sheriff's deputy was injured Saturday morning in a collision while chasing a suspicious Chevrolet Suburban that fled police through several townships and cities before police arrested the driver in Warren.

A deputy had tried to stop the Suburban, which had a Texas license plate and was towing a Utah UHaul trailer, about 8:45 a.m. for a traffic violation, but the driver kept moving on Hall Road in Macomb Township. The SUV drove through a median and side swiped another vehicle, causing the Suburban to lose the trailer, according to a statement from the county sheriff's office.

The driver continued to flee, onto westbound I-94. It left the road, traveled down and embankment and continued through Mount Clemens, the sheriff's office reported.

Deputies ended the pursuit on 16 Mile Road near Moravian Drive in Clinton Township, but not before one deputy vehicle collided with another on Gratiot Avenue near Wellington Crescent in Clinton Township.

No others were hurt and the injured deputy went to a hospital for treatment. He has been with the sheriff's office for 16 years and the Michigan State Police are investigating.

Warren police eventually took the man into custody after a brief foot chase, according to the sheriff's office.

The 31-year-old Texas man is expected to be formally charged Sunday or Monday. Police did not specify his alleged crimes or explain any suspected reason for his flight.

He led police through Macomb and Clinton townships, Mount Clemens, Sterling Heights and Warren, the sheriff's office reported.KALAMAZOO, MI -- Police say they have located a woman who was reported missing by family members.

Kalamazoo County sheriff's deputies said Carrie Whalen, 57, is no longer considered missing or endangered.

Police issued an advisory about Whalen late in the afternoon of Friday, March 23, and said she had been missing from the Comstock Township area since March 13.

But just two hours after issuing the advisory, police said they had made contact with her.UPDATE: Police at 6:15 p.m. on Friday, March 23 said Whalen had been located and is no longer considered missing or endangered.

KALAMAZOO, MI -- The Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office is seeking the public's help to locate a woman missing from the Comstock Township area.



Carrie Whalen, 57, was reported missing by family on March 13. Deputies issued information seeking help to locate her on Friday, March 23.

Whalen is described as a white female, approximately 5 feet tall and 115-120 lbs.

She has black, shoulder-length hair and was last seen wearing jeans, a flowery black and red blouse, and a purple coat.



Deputies ask anyone with information pertaining to her whereabouts to contact the Sheriff's Office at 269-383-8822.MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI - The Muskegon Area Transit System plans to purchase six small buses to replace aging vehciles used in the systems' GoBus program.

GoBus is countywide shared-ride service that offers curb-to-curb transportation services for the elderly and people with disabilities that cannot use fixed-route buses, said MATS System Manager Jim Koens. Personal care attendants, resident companions and service animals are also permitted to use the service.

The Muskegon County Board of Commissioners approved the purchase agreement on Thursday at its regular meeting. According to the request, the buses will cost a total of $482,410 - paid for with federal state capital grants.

In his request, Community Development Director Bob Lukens said the vehicles most likely will be purchased from Hoekstra Transportation in Grand Rapids through the Michigan Department of Transportation's Extended Purchasing Program. MDOT has a contract with Hoekstra Transportation.

Lukens said he plans to file a separate request to sell five of the six aged-out buses, along with a 1994 minivan, which currently is being used as a support vehicle.

The purchase and sales come months after MATS increased monthly pass rates for average riders, as well as discounted passes for people with disabilities and the elderly. However, GoBus prices did not increase during the last round of MATS rate hikes.

This map shows MATS GoBus fare "zones" located throughout Muskegon County.

GoBus prices vary throughout the county.

One-way rides in the major Muskegon metro area cost $2, $3 just outside of the urban core of Muskegon County and $5 in the outskirts of the county to the north and east of downtown Muskegon.

Ten-ride ticket booklets are also available at $20 for rides in the metro area, $30 outside of the urban core and $50 for the rest of the county.SAGINAW TWP, MI -- Bishop Joseph Cistone issued a statement Friday evening regarding raids conducted by law enforcement agencies on his home and other Saginaw Catholic Diocese properties as part of an ongoing investigation into sexual abuse in the church.

The statement, which was sent shortly after 8 p.m. on March 23, said that the diocese "has made a sincere effort to cooperate with law enforcement to date and will continue to do so moving forward."

Search warrants were executed on March 22 at the bishop's home on Corral Drive in Saginaw Township, the rectory at Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption, 615 Hoyt in Saginaw, and the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw offices in Saginaw Township.

Saginaw County Assistant Prosecutor Mark Gaertner previously said the raids were related to the diocese's lack of cooperation.

Only one diocese priest, Rev. Robert DeLand, known as "Father Bob" has been criminally charged. He was accused of sexually assaulting two males -- a 21-year-old and a 17-year-old -- in his Saginaw Township condominium.

Since DeLand's Feb. 26 arrest, numerous tips and allegations about further sexual abuse dating back as far as three decades have flooded area police departments, investigators previously said. Among the tips were allegations against other clergymen.

Another diocese priest, Rev. Ronald J. Dombrowski, was recently suspended by the diocese after they received a report he allegedly sexually assaulted a person when they were a minor. He has not been criminally charged.

The full statement reads:

"As you are aware, yesterday, March 22, the Diocese was served with a search warrant. This warrant included the Diocesan offices and Center for Ministry, the Bishop's residence, and the Cathedral.

"I understand this news is distressing and disheartening for the greater community and most especially our Catholic faithful.

"The Diocese has made a sincere effort to cooperate with law enforcement to date and will continue to do so moving forward."KOCHVILLE TWP, MI -- More than 200 people attended March for Our Lives 2018 - Saginaw, calling for gun control, mental health resources and an end to school shootings.

The protest was one of 28 in Michigan and many across the U.S. taking place Saturday, March 24, in response to the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla. which saw 17 people killed.

The marches are largely student-led, and the Saginaw County event was no different.

Heritage High School Junior Kaylin Bradshaw began organizing the local march after a threat in late February prompted officials to cancel classes across all Saginaw Township schools for a day.

"You just ask yourself, how am I any different from these other students who were killed?" Bradshaw said. "I was just hoping students and everyone in our community would come together and voice their support for this movement."

From parents to children to young adults, at least 200 people showed up at Krossroads Park, 5656 Bay Road, to show their support.

March for Our Lives 2018 - Saginaw Posted by The Saginaw News on Saturday, March 24, 2018

Bradshaw, who spoke before the crowd, said she was nervous at first but quickly overcame that.

"All we want are safer schools," Bradshaw told the crowd, citing issues of gun control, mental health resources, bullying and school security. "We can't be next."

Celia Allen, a senior at Heritage High School, said lockdowns, drills and threats are becoming so commonplace that they're often laughed at.

"I know a lot of people make fun of it, about finding places to hide, but it's serious," Allen said. "If we keep taking this as a joke, one day it might happen and we'll never expect it, just like the other schools."

Bradshaw said it was heartening to see so many adults attend the march and hear the voices of the youth.

"This is really a student-led movement," Bradshaw said. "But we're not old enough to vote, so we need to make sure that adults understand how big a problem this is."

Saginaw County 911 Director Randy Pfau, retired-District Judge Kyle Higgs Tarrant and U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Twp., attended the event and spoke in support of the movement.SEVILLE TWP, MI -- Police arrested a suspect Friday in the homicide of a 67-year-old man found dead inside a trash bag in a Gratiot County ditch, according to the Mount Pleasant Morning Sun.

The Morning Sun reports Gratiot County Sheriff's Office investigators, working with state police, pieced together a timeline of Robert Jack Counterman Jr.'s last days and identified an Otsego County man as a person of interest.

When investigators interviewed the Otsego County man in his Gaylord home, they found evidence related to the homicide, according to the Morning Sun. The Gratiot County Sheriff's Office handed the case over to their counterparts in Otsego County, who arrested the man.

Counterman was found dead inside a trash bag in a ditch on Warner Road near Olive in Seville Township about 10:30 a.m. on March 11. Investigators previously said hunters in that area saw the trash bag and reported the dead body inside to police.

Initially, the Gratiot County Sheriff's Office requested the public's help in identifying Counterman by broadcasting images of his tattoos. With the assistance of Sparrow Hospital and the Michigan State Police latent print division, he was identified.

The Otsego man arrested in connection with Counterman's death has not yet been arraigned.The chronicle of a life split between urban Manhattan and rural Montana.On March 24th, 2018, Dayton Ohio participated in a sibling march at Courthouse Square to support the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C. The march was created by, inspired by, and led by students who are rightfully scared of the rampant mass shootings across the country, particularly in public schools. They are demanding that their lives and safety become a priority.

All the Dayton area students and teachers who spoke were powerful and passionate, rejecting the current governments proposed solutions and half measures. Arming teachers is a dangerous and unfunded idea, a heros tale that is based on fantasy and not fact. The lack of universal background checks and gun show loop hole is a crime. And reminding politicians who are bribed by the NRA that theyre time is up. They are now, or soon will be, of voting age. It was a powerful and moving display of solidarity that will not soon be forgotten.

Organizers of the March For Our Lives are suggesting that all concerned citizens do three things: Register, Educate & Vote. Here are some ways to get started:

Register to Vote here  April 9th Deadline for voter registration for May 8 primary election (30 days before primary election). Oct. 9th Deadline for voter registration for Nov. 6 general election.

Educate yourself about Candidates here

Vote in upcoming Elections:

May 8, 2018. Primary Election Day. Polls open from 6:30 am to 7:30 pm

November 6, 2018. Election Day. Polls are open 6:30 am to 7:30 pm

Connect with March for Our Lives Dayton:

You can also follow March for Our Lives Dayton on Twitter: @MarchForOurLivesDayton

Or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/MarchForOurLivesDayton

The National March for Our Lives website: https://marchforourlives.com/Vous etes confrontes a une infestation par la puce, la punaise de lit ? Voici plusieurs actions qui sont a mettre en uvre pour faire []In Focus with Allison Walker is a 30-minute public affairs program, featuring a roundtable of newsmakers representing a range of perspectives, including local officials and expert analysts as they tackle topical issues of importance to Floridians.

In Focus airs Sundays at 11:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., right after Political Connections.A Florida Missing Child Alert has been issued for 2-month-old Diana Hernandez-Santellan.

FL Missing Child Alert issued for 2-month-old

Authorities searching for Diana Hernandez-Santellan

Child may be with Stacey Santellan, 34

Authorities said she was last seen in Zolfo Springs, Florida.

Diana is a white/hispanic female with black hair and brown eyes. She is 2'5" and weighs 30 pounds.

Authorities said she may be in the company of Stacey Santellan, 34. Santellan is a white female with brown hair and brown eyes. She is 5'1" and weighs 105 pounds.

Diana was last seen wearing a cream colored sweater over a onsie.

Stacey was last seen wearing a white shirt, a grey zip up hoodie, and denim jeans.

Anyone with information on their whereabouts is asked to call the Hardee County Sheriff's Office at 863-773-4144 or 911.UPDATE (9:30 p.m.):

Two children who were reported missing from Marion County have been located, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Deputies were searching for Kaiden Locke, 4, and Brook Locke, 2. Both children are under the custody of the Florida Department of Children and Families.

The children are safe, according to deputies.

PREVIOUS STORY:

The Marion County Sheriff's Office is searching for two missing children who are under the custody of the Florida Department of Children and Families.

Marion deputies searching for missing brother, sister

Brooke, 2, Kaiden, 4, last seen on March 16 with mom, uncle

Brooke, Kaiden under custody of FDCF

Authorities said Brooke Locke, 2, and Kaiden Locke, 4, were last seen on March 16 with their mother, Kelsey Null, and their uncle, Russell Locke. They were riding in a 1998 black jeep.

Authorities said Kelsey and her children were last seen by their case manager on Feb. 12.

A judge has issued a pick up order for the kids to be taken into custody.

Brooke is a white female with blue eyes and blonde hair. She is 2'0" and weighs 25 pounds.

Kaiden is a white male with brown eyes and brown hair. He is 4'0" and weighs 50 pounds.

Anyone with information on their whereabouts is asked to cal 911 or 1-800-96-Abuse.Hi, this is Hetq photographer Narek Aleksanyan, here to tell you, via photos, about my recent hitchhiking to the south of Armenia. Although me and my friend Tsovinar planned to hitchhike to the north - Lori Province, in the end we found ourselves heading to the south - Vayots Dzor and Syunik Provinces.

Unusually designed gas station on the North-South Highway.

The Ararat Valley.

Yeraskhavan. The writing on the wall says Water.

Artak drove us from Yeraskhavan to Rind village. While driving, he told us various stories about Vayots Dzor and Zangezur.

Artak's son, Miro. He attends karate classes.

We met some familiar hikers in the next car.

Photo evidence: actually, it was a group of hikers.

They were heading to Artsakh: the idea sounded tempting.

In Goris, mattresses were absorbing their doses of vitamin D under the sun.

The children talked to us in English and Russian, even if we replied in Armenian.

Waiting for our breakfast.

Resting backpacks.

After Goris, the hitchhiking turned into a trek toward the Vorotan Gorge.

Arthur and his son, Saro. They treated us to some coffee.

A homemade power plant.

The old woman left her work to come to ask how we were, if we were hungry and if we had a place to stay overnight.

A lizard came out to enjoy the sun.

The most convenient transportation in the gorge.

This is Liana, living most of the year in a hut located in the gorge together with her family. They are eight brothers and sisters. Her little brother was too shy to be photographed.

A multifunctional agricultural tool.

Liana showed us the short way to Old Shinuhayr.

The residents of Old Shinuhayr moved to New Shinuhayr during the Soviet era, but the villagers still care about their former dwelling place: its clean everywhere, being an ideal place to put up a tent.

We had a lot of fun using our mattress to protect ourselves from the little hot stones jumping toward us from the fireplace.

Old Shinuhayr in the morning.

Toward New Shinuhayr, toward having breakfast.

Horizontal fog line over the Vorotan Gorge

We were hungry, but the beautiful scenes made us stop a lot on the way.

Old Khot.

In New Shinuhayr.

Toward Goris.

To make the trip even more interesting, we thought that next time we were greeted in English, one of us should pretend to be a foreigner.

Goris ATMs are not designed for people with backpacks.

On the way out of Goris, we were welcomed in English. I pretended to be a Spanish- Armenian who knows only a few words in Armenian, although this role would suit Tsovinar better - at least she speaks Spanish. Our joke lasted quite long, since after the welcoming, we were invited to have some coffee, which turned into a supper with homemade vodka. I hope nobody will get angry with us when our little secret is revealed. It was a wonderful evening with a wonderful family.

After Goris, we were thinking of going to Kapan, but it was already dark, there were almost no cars, so we decided to put up a tent next to the road. The nearby shop workers treated us to some homemade vodka and pickles.

We came back on a big Iranian truck. It was a new experience for Tsovinar, who said that climbing a mountain was easier than climbing into a truck.

There was a mirror for selfies on the truck.

On the way to Goris. It seemed that it was the same homemade vodka in the bottle.

Goris. Almost everyone here thought we were foreigners.

The next car was also an Iranian truck. The driver, Said, knew a few words in Armenian, Russian and English, but he mostly talked in Persian. After two hours, we thought we could understand what he said. Said's energy was inexhaustible.

Said offered us some pickled vegetables, saying in Farsi that they were very tasty.

The roads in Syunik resemble the mountains.

Lunch break. The dogs at this gas station seemed to know Said, waiting for their food.

Toward Vayk.

Everything looked even prettier from the truck's salon.

A modern, comfortable canteen has been opened in Vayk.

We said goodbye to the children in Vayk and caught a car to Yerevan. Maybe we will manage to go north next time.By Reuters

BEIJING: Apple Inc's Chief Executive Tim Cook on Saturday called for "calm heads" and more open trade, amid rising fears of a trade war between the United States and China.

Trade tension between China and the United States flared this week when President Donald Trump unveiled plans on Thursday to slap tariffs on potentially up to $60 billion in Chinese goods.

China's Commerce Ministry on Friday urged the United States to "pull back from the brink", saying it was not afraid to engage in a trade war.

"I'm cognizant that in both the U.S. and China, there have been cases where everyone hasn't benefited, where the benefit hasn't been balanced," Cook said.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the annual China Development Forum in Beijing, Cook said he hoped "calm heads" would prevail.

The sparring has cast a spotlight on hardware makers such as Apple, which assemble the majority of their products in China for export to other countries. Electrical goods and tech are the largest U.S. import item from China.

Global trade war | China hits back with retaliatory taxes on US imports, markets dive

In the past year, Apple and other foreign tech firms have grappled with a string of new regulatory requirements in China, including a controversial law requiring firms to house user data in data centers overseen by Chinese firms.

Last month, Apple officially moved to store keys for its iCloud data in China, provoking intense criticism from rights groups who say the decision makes it easier for Chinese officials to tap and collect private data.

Despite challenges, the company has sought to expand its services in China, its third-largest market, where roughly 1.8 million developers use its platform.

"My belief is that businesses should be engaged with governments in countries where they are doing business, whether they agree or disagree," Cook said.

Cook has come to China several times in the past year, and was among executives who met Chinese President Xi Jinping last October.

Others attending the three-day forum include the chief executives of IBM Group, Google Inc and Qualcomm Inc.

Cook, who this year co-chaired the event, also attended last year when he called for China to increase trade and continue opening itself up to the world.By Express News Service

Beijing imposes 15% tariff on 120 goods worth almost $1 billion, including fresh fruit, nuts and wine; 25% on eight goods worth nearly $2 billion, including pork and aluminium scrap; commerce ministry in India plans internal meet, weighs options.

Markets across the world took a beating late Thursday and Friday after US President Donald Trump followed through his earlier metal import tariffs with an executive memorandum directing the US trade representative to level tariffs on around $60 billion worth of Chinese imports.

This has been long in the coming Trump said, going on to accuse China of stealing six million US jobs and perpetrating massive intellectual property theft worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also dragged China to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Friday alleging Chinese denial of basic patent rights to foreign firms and imposing mandatory adverse contract terms.

READ HERE | Why India has to keep a close watch on developments as world inches closer to trade war

China on Friday said it was ready to fight a trade war and unleashed its own proposal to levy retaliatory taxes on imports of 128 US products worth $3 billion.The back and forth between the two global economic superpowers saw stock markets take a pounding, especially in the US and Asia. Indias Sensex and Nifty mirrored the global trend. However, market volatility was minimal in the hope that the implications on India arent as destructive as it appears, at least for now.

But, for India, macro risks are rising even though the economy has some buffers, pointed out Radhika Rao, India Economist, DBS Bank, adding that in the immediate term sentiments and the rupee remain susceptible to US monetary policy trajectory and trade war concerns.

ALSO READ | India may want to retaliate, says US Trade Representative on high import tariffs

If the situation escalates into a free-for-all trade war our exports are bound to be buffeted. The expected double digit growth in exports in FY19 may not happen, CARE Ratings said.

The commerce ministry is planning an internal meeting with senior economists and foreign policy experts ahead of the visit of the Chinese trade minister. Commerce ministry is weighing options on taking a stance as they are the two most important markets for India, an official with DGFT told The New Indian Express.

Trade barriers to harm global economy: WTO

WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo warned states that creating barriers to international trade would jeopardise the global economy at a time when economic recovery, though fragile, has been increasingly evident around the world and called for restraint and urgent dialogue. Actions taken outside these collective processes greatly increase the risk of escalation in a confrontation that will have no winners, and which could quickly lead to a less stable trading system, he said.

READ HERE | US accuses China of stealing patents in WTO complaint

Trade deficit costs jobs: White House

Senior White house officials on Friday defended US President Donald Trumps move, stating that every billion of trade deficit costs the US around 6,000 jobs. By some calculations, every billion dollar of trade deficit that arises from market-distorted policies, costs us about 6,000 jobs. A very conservative calculation, by some estimates, is that trade deficit results in about two million more jobs in China and two million less here. This is a problem we are aware of, an official said.

ALSO READ | Trade war: Extent of US-China trade fight depends on Trump's goals

How it happened

US moves first

US President Donald Trump signs an executive memorandum on Thursday proposing tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports

Donald Trump says tariffs on Chinese goods will help redress the USs $375bn trade deficit with China, and accuses China of stealing six million US jobs

1,300 Chinese products might attract higher tariffs according to reports

The US also plans to impose new investment restrictions and take action against China at the World Trade Organisation

US Trade Representative says Chinese firms steal software, patents and tech secrets from US firms that are mandated to enter China through joint ventures

35bn worth of Chinese imports to the US will be affected by the first salvo of tariffs on steel and aluminium

China retaliatesState Police report into Terri Flynn's property released

"It very clearly finds, as expected, that there was no crime committed," attorney Allyson Quay said in an email to The Daily News.Reporting on the military situation along the Karabakh Line of Contact, the Artsakh Ministry of Defense says that Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire 150 times and fired 3,500 rounds of small caliber arms.

The ministry says Artsakh forces shot down an unmanned Azerbaijani drone on March 19.Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.Russia, China, Switzerland, Germany and Bulgaria are Armenias largest trading partners.

Together they comprise 52% of Armenias foreign trade.

In 2017, Bulgaria, fifth on the list, took in 12.8% of total Armenian exports, but only accounted for 1% of Armenias imports.

In 2017, trade volume between the two nations rose by 75.2%. amounting to US$ 327 million. Most of the increase was due to greater Armenian copper exports to Bulgaria.

Last year, Armenian exports to Bulgaria increased by 87.8%, and Armenian imports from Bulgaria rose by 18.9%

Bulgaria is one of the few countries with which Armenia enjoys a trade surplus. Armenias ore exports are the reason why. The same situation holds for Switzerland, China and Germany.

In 2017, Armenia exported $286 million worth of goods to Bulgaria; the largest dollar amount in the last ten years.

As for Armenian imports from Bulgaria, they reached a pinnacle in 2008 at $118.6 million. The low point was 2014 - $25.5 million. Theyve been creeping up since.

Over the past few years, most of Armenias copper exports have gone to Bulgaria, China, Switzerland, Georgia and Germany.

Armenia exported some $152 million in copper ore to Bulgaria in 2016. In the first half of 2017, of the $133.8 million in goods Armenia exported to Bulgaria, $133.6 was copper ore.

Of the $15.4 million in goods that Armenia imported from Bulgaria in the first half of 2017, $5.6 million was oil and oil products, $1.5 million  clothes, and $1.3 million  detergents and cleansers.

In February of this year, during his visit to Sofia, Armenian President discussed economic matters with Bulgarian President Romen Redev, noting that while trade volumes had increased of late, the potential for greater commerce existed.Reporter

Debra Pressey is a reporter covering health care at The News-Gazette. Her email is dpressey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@DLPressey).This is indeed ample testimony of the bright future ahead and the potential of our great nation, President Mnangagwa said. He said Zimbabwe had so far received at least $7 billion in investment commitments since the coming in of the new dispensation, way above the $400 million that the country got annually under the old Government.Cavers Say They Made It

to Bottom of the 'Well of Hell'(Newser)  At least two lawsuits filed at a top European court claim Russia violated Europe's Human Rights Convention by removing organs from the recently dead without telling relatives. Russia's response: Asking relatives' permission would be "inhumane." Documents provided to the AP detail how Russia is fighting charges over the way it harvests organs in two cases submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, last year. Separate decisions are expected in the coming months. It is simply "inhumane" to ask family members about organ removal "almost simultaneously with notification of the death of their loved one," Russia claimed in a July memo to the court. And there is not enough time to get consent before taking organs, government lawyers added.

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When Galina Valyuschenko's son, Igor Verevkin, 49, suffered injuries to his head, lungs, ribs, and elsewhere during a bar fight in Omsk, southwestern Siberia, in September 2010, she asked doctors not to disconnect him from life-support machines and not to remove his organs. He died within two days of being hospitalized. It was only when Valyushchenko read an autopsy report two months later that she realized the hospital's chief physician had taken her son's kidneys. That failure to inform grieving families has Valyushchenko and others arguing the Russia's "presumed consent" law goes against fundamental human rights guaranteed in Europe. If Russia is found to have violated the European human rights convention, the court could order Russia to overhaul its organ donation law. The AP has much more here.

(Read more organ donation stories.)(Newser)  As hundreds of thousands march Saturday in cities around the US in support of gun control, the editorial staff of the Eagle Eyethe school newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 17 people were killed in a shooting in Februaryare pushing nine changes to fight gun violence in the US. "We have a unique platform not only as student journalists, but also as survivors of a mass shooting," the staff writes in an editorial published in the Guardian. "We believe federal and state governments must put these [changes] in place to ensure that mass shootings and gun violence cease to be a staple of American culture." The Eagle Eye editorial staff recommends nine changes; here are five of them:

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A ban on semi-automatic weapons that fire high-velocity rounds A ban on bump stocks and other accessories that simulate automatic weapons The creation of a database for gun sales and universal background checks Raise the legal age to purchase guns to 21 Close the gun show loophole and loophole for second-hand gun sales

Read the full editorial here for the rest of the list and the editorial staff's reasoning. (Read more gun control stories.)(Newser)  Every state has been home to at least one major historical eventyes, even Nebraskaand 24/7 Wall St. has picked the most majorly historical event for each of the 50 states. The website chose the eventswhich range from court battles to actual battles, scientific discoveries to natural disastersby looking at the political, economic, and cultural impacts they had. It ignored events that could have happened anywherelike the signing of international treatiesand favored events that could have only happened in a certain state. Here are 10 of those major historical events and their states:

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Arkansas: The desegregation of Little Rock schools in 1957

Colorado: The legalization of marijuana in 2012

Indiana: The Native American uprising of 1811

Louisiana: Hurricane Katrina in 2005

Michigan: The Model T built in 1908

New Hampshire: The first government independent from England in 1776

North Dakota: The last of the great bison hunts in 1882

Rhode Island: King Philip's War in 1675

Tennessee: The Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925

Wyoming: The establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872

Check out the full list here to complain about your state's event. (Seriously, no Boeing, Amazon, grunge music, or Real World slap for Washington?)(Newser)  The lawyer for a woman who accused Roy Moore of touching her sexually when she was 14 says two supporters of the former US Senate candidate tried to bribe him to "cloud" the allegations that were piling up against Moore, the Washington Post reports. Eddie Sexton says Gary Lantrip and Bert Davi offered him $10,000 and meetings with then-White House adviser Stephen Bannon and others in DC if he dropped Leigh Corfman as a client and gave a statement that he didn't believe her claims to reporters from Bannon's Breitbart News. Sexton says the offer was first made Nov. 13a month out from the Alabama election that was won by Doug Jones. The lawyer has recorded phone calls, texts, and confidants to corroborate parts of his claim.

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What theyre saying, all they want to do is cloud something, Lantrip said on a call recorded by Sexton. They said if they cloud, like, two of them, then thats all they need. He also spoke of the money Sexton would receive. We got some chance to do something, make some quick little-bitty for you  and then, on down the line, we can go to DC, Lantrip said. Lantrip and Davi, both of whom are Sexton's clients in an unrelated case, admit asking Sexton to make the statement and arranging a meeting with Breitbart reporters. Lantrip also admits to telling Sexton that if he came out against Corfman he would get legal work from Bannon and Breitbart. But both men deny doing anything wrong. Ill protect what I did, because I know I didnt do nothing, Lantrip tells the Post. Moore says his campaign wasn't involved in efforts to pay off Sexton. Read the full story here

(Read more Roy Moore stories.)(Newser)  Active shooters in one Pennsylvania school district better watch out: the teachers and students are armed with rocks. David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, raised the plan at a state House committee meeting on education last week, the Hill reports. "If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks," he says. "And they will be stoned." He tells Buzzfeed the plan is a "last resort" but cautions the media against mockery: "We have some people who have some pretty good arms. They can chuck some rocks pretty fast."

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The rocks are only part of an effort that began two years ago, when Helsel brought in a company to train teachers about school shooting lock-ins and lockdowns. Every classroom door "has a device installed that secures the door shut," he says, and staff is "trained to barricade the door." As a last defence each classroom has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones. Sure, some are ridiculing the notionincluding lawmakers who who attended the House meeting. "Everyone laughed," says an education advocate in attendance. "That's what I had a problem with ... school districts in Pennsylvania are so under-funded, then they joke about kids having to defend themselves." (Read more school shootings stories.)(Newser)  President Donald Trump is issuing an order to ban transgender people from serving in the military except under "limited circumstances," following up on his calls to ban transgender individuals from serving, the AP reports. The White House says retaining troops with a history or diagnosis of "gender dysphoria"those who may require substantial medical treatment"presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality." Trump received recommendations from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in February for dealing with transgender individuals serving in the military.

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Trump surprised the Pentagon's leadership in a 2017 tweet when he declared he would reverse an Obama-era plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly. His push for the ban has been blocked by several legal challenges (like this one), and the Pentagon began allowing transgender recruits to seek enlistment in January. Trump's current ban allows transgender people already in the military to remainif they identify only with their birth genderand gives the Pentagon leeway to grant exceptions to the ban, the New York Times reports.

(Read more President Trump stories.)(Newser)  Police say a 25-year-old Georgia woman is in jail after tryingand failingto prove the existence of God to her children, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Bahari Warren was driving with her two childrenages 5 and 7Wednesday in Norcross when she crossed into oncoming traffic and drove straight into a telephone pole. Police say Warran later admitted that she crashed the car on purpose to prove to her children that God was real and would protect them.

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"Her eyes (were) closed and she was saying, Blah, blah, blah, I love God, one child told police. She didnt want us to just have a car accident. She wanted us to know that God is real. Police say Warren told her children to buckle their seat belts before the crash. Warren is facing two counts of child cruelty, and her children are currently with their grandparents. (Read more child cruelty stories.)(Newser)  A member of a National Guard Green Beret unit was killed during a fight with a fellow elite Army special operations soldier Wednesday in North Carolina, ABC News reports. Sgt. 1st Class Mark Leshikar and an unnamed soldier had returned to a house outside Fort Bragg following a vacation in Florida with their families when Leshikar was kicked out of the house for an unknown reason. A senior defense official says a child let Leshikar back into the house, where he attacked the unidentified soldier with a screwdriver. The soldier then shot the 33-year-old Leshikar, the official says. According to WNCN, Leshikar was pronounced dead at the scene.

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The unidentified soldier was still on the scene when deputies arrived at the house in Fayetteville, a sheriff's office spokesperson tells the Fatyetteville Observer. No charges have yet been filed against the soldier. An Army Special Operations Command spokesperson wouldn't confirm the soldier's identity, but the defense official says the shooter is an active duty soldier on a Special Missions unit. Leshikar was a member of the 19th Special Forces Group, a National Guard Green Beret unit. (Read more shooting stories.)(Newser)  Summoned to action by student survivors of the Parkland school shooting, hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied in the nation's capital and cities across the US on Saturday to press for gun control, the AP reports. Organizers of the March for Our Lives rally in DC hoped their protest would match in numbers and spirit last year's women's march. Bearing signs reading "We Are the Change," ''No More Silence," and "Keep NRA Money Out of Politics," protesters packed Pennsylvania Avenue from the stage near the Capitol, stretching many blocks back toward the White House. "We will continue to fight for our dead friends," Delaney Tarr, a survivor of the Florida tragedy, declared from the stage. The crowd roared with approval as she laid down the students' central demand: a ban on "weapons of war" for all but warriors.

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Large rallies also unfolded in such cities as Boston; New York; Chicago; Houston; Fort Worth, Texas; Minneapolis; and Parkland, the site of the Feb. 14 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead. The police presence was heavy as more than 20,000 people filled a park near the Florida school, chanting slogans such as "Enough is enough" and carrying signs that read "Why do your guns matter more than our lives?" and "Our ballots will stop bullets." Gun violence was fresh for some in the DC crowd: Ayanne Johnson of Great Mills High School in Maryland held a sign declaring, "I March for Jaelynn," honoring Jaelynn Willey, who died Thursday two days after being shot by a classmate at the school. "For our kids, feeling safe is fundamental, and they don't feel safe," said the mother of an 11-year-old marching in DC.

(Read more gun control stories.)(Newser)  "Not in my worst nightmares did I ever dream my FBI career would end this way," Andrew McCabe says. That way being fired immediately before his "long-planned" retirement after 21 years with the FBI then having that firing celebrated on Twitter by the President of the United States of America. McCabe, who served as both deputy director and acting director of the FBI prior to his firing March 16, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about his experience. He says he spent the day of his firing with his family, waiting to see if he would be allowed to retire. He found out he wouldn't when a friend called to tell him CNN was reporting he had been fired. "After two decades of public service, I found out that I had been fired in the most disembodied, impersonal waythird-hand, based on a news account," McCabe writes.

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McCabe says he was not deserving of accusations of "lack of candor" that were lobbied at him. He says he "did not knowingly mislead or lie to investigators" and "answered questions as completely and accurately as I could." And while there was occasional confusion or misunderstandings, he says he definitely didn't deserve "the very public and extended humiliation of my family and me that the administration, and the president personally, have engaged in over the past year." McCabe accuses President Trump of "unhinged public attacks" and "cruelty." Still, he encourages young people who want to do good to consider joining the FBI: "It is the best job you will ever have. Even if a president decides to attack you and your family. Even if you get fired on a Friday night, one day from your retirement." Read the full piece here. (Read more Andrew McCabe stories.)Sorry!

This content is not available in your regionEstelle Levy shows sandwiches in her bakery in Paris. Figures released this week have revealed that sales of the jambon-beurre  the ham and cheese sandwich, a classic of French snacking  have been surpassed by sales of American-style burgers.Attendees get a closer look at the F-35 during the F-35A Lightning II Media Day event in the Eielson Air Force Base Thunderdome Tuesday morning, October 17, 2017. One of the state-of-the-art fifth-generation fighter aircraft manufactured by Lockheed Martin is at Eielson for arctic testing. On-base construction is underway in preparation for the 50-plus F-35s that will be stationed at Eielson by 2020.Let us know what you're seeing and hearing around the community.

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Tata Steel Ltd on Friday said it has won the bid to acquire debt-laden Bhushan Steel (BSL) in an insolvency auction.

In a statement, the company said it has been "declared as the successful resolution applicant by the committee of creditors of Bhushan Steel Limited on March 22, 2018, subject to obtaining necessary regulatory approvals, including approval from the NCLT and the Competition Commission of India."

Tata Steel said it has accepted the letter of intent (LoI) for BSL under the corporate insolvency resolution process of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 (IBC).

Also Read: Tata Sons to sell 1.48 percent stake in TCS for Rs 8,127 crore, funds likely to be used for paying off wireless division's debt

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

The Central Board of Secondary Education has set up metal detectors for students appearing for the prestigious Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains, which will take place on April 8, 2018 all over India. A top official from the board confirmed the news on Saturday.

According to CBSE coordinator Balvinder Singh, the stringent system is introduced in order to prevent candidates from carrying electronic devices which are being used for cheating and wrong deeds.

Earlier, several students have been found using bluetooth-enabled devices in different examination centres across the country. Such electronic devices help candidates to stay connected with people outside the exam hall and seek answer for the questions.

"The banned items include mobile phone, electronic watch and calculators," Balvinder said.

CBSE has also directed examinees to carry their admit cards, Aadhar cards, passport or any other identification document in order to be allowed in the examination centres.

Over 1.3 million students have registered their names for JEE Mains 2018. This is the first stage for gaining entrance to the top most engineering institutes in the country.

Post that, candidates need to clear JEE (Advanced) to get admission in their dream colleges.

Also Read | SSC exam paper leak: Mumbra school principal questioned, eight students sent to juvenile home

About Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains:

Every year the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducts this national level competitive test for admission to various undergraduate engineering and architecture courses in institutes accepting the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) score, mainly 31 National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and 23 Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIITs).New Delhi:

The 2002 Gujarat riots which were called anti-Muslim riots in the NCERT political science textbook for Class XII has dropped the word "anti-Muslim" from a passage on Saturday.

The NCERT has also dropped against Muslims from a sentence that describes the violence that broke out in the state. Meanwhile, in the same paragraph, the 1984 riots are described as anti-Sikh, media reports said.

The passage earlier read: In February-March 2002, large-scale violence against Muslims took place in Gujarat. In the updated books, it now reads: In February-March 2002, large-scale violence took place in Gujarat.

The change has been made in a Class 12 textbook published in 2007 when the Congress-led UPA was in power.



NCERT officials said that in the approved syllabus, which is used for preparing the textbooks, the word anti-Muslim doesnt exist. The syllabus clearly uses the word Gujarat riots. However, the textbook had included the word Anti-Muslim.

When we started the work on updating the books, we were informed about it and we have reverted to Gujarat riots, said a senior NCERT official on condition of anonymity.

This is the first time since 2007 that NCERT textbooks are being reviewed. Former CBSE Chairman RK Chaturvedi suggested the changes in June 2017, The Indian Express reported.

This review is an ongoing process and before every reprint, we do incorporate new, acceptable feedback and also update the information with the latest developments, another senior NCERT official told a leading English daily.

We have made other changes, too, such as including information on demonetisation, digital literacy, the Goods and Services Tax, and updated figures, too.New Delhi:

BJP President Amit Shah on Saturday said TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu's decision to quit the ruling NDA was guided by political considerations instead of Andhra Pradesh's development concerns and dubbed his move unfortunate and unilateral.

In a letter to the Andhra chief minister, who broke ties with the BJP after the Centre declined to grant Special Category Status to AP, Shah also said his party is a true well-wisher of the state.

He also cited a number of development projects undertaken by the Centre for the state, besides funds given to it, as he sought to reject the charge that the Modi government had not fulfilled its promises.

"This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision, I am afraid will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns. It is widely known that the Union Government has not left any stone unturned in ensuring growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh," Shah said in the letter.

"You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both states."

Also Read | Rahul Gandhi inaugurates Indira Canteen in Karnataka's Kollegala

Listing five infrastructure projects the Central government has initiated in the state, Shah said "a perusal of these would reaffirm what you already know and perhaps would not admit that Central government has fulfilled its obligations and that BJP is a genuine friend add true well wisher of the state."

The TDP pulled out of the BJP-led alliance over the refusal to accord special category status to Andhra Pradesh and fulfil other commitments made at the time of state's division in 2014.

The TDP has also given notice for a no-confidence motion against the Modi government in the Lok Sabha, which could not be taken up due to an unending uproar in the Lower House.

"On the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh, it is regrettable that some political parties are whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate which is the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy.

Also Read | Lok Sabha polls 2019: BJP will win over 21 seats in Northeast, says Amit Shah

"I would like you to introspect whether political parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda," Shah told Naidu.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

In a heart-wrenching incident, a class five student in Assam's Nagaon district was allegedly gang-raped and then set on fire by five people at her home on Friday.

The girl, who had suffered 90 per cent burn injuries, died late night.

At the hospital where the victim was rushed, she told the police that she knew the three boys who poured kerosene and set her on fire after raping her.

"We have recorded a dying declaration... Based on that two of the accused have been caught; they will be produced in court today," Shankar Raimedhi, Superintendent of Police, Nagaon, told an English leading daily.

Also Read: Delhi: 16-year old girl commits suicide, leaves suicide note

A medical test to confirm rape could not be conducted "due to the severity of the injuries," Mr. Raimedhi added.

Meanwhile, police have arrested two accused in connection with the case.

A case has been registered in this regard and further probe is underway.

Five-year-old girl died after she was allegedly gang-raped & then set ablaze by five persons at her home in Nagaon's Bordua yesterday. Case registered, two men arrested. Further investigation underway  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

Indian Armed Forces on Saturday gunned down two terrorists in Jammu and Kashmiras Anantnag district. The encounter which started on Friday evening is over now.

The security personnel recovered arms and ammunition from the site of encounter in Dooru, reported news agency ANI.

Anantnag Police along with 19 RR and CRPF had launched a joint search operation in Dooruas Shishtargam area which resulted in an encounter with the militants.

Preliminary investigation suggests that both the killed terrorists are from Pakistan. Based on seizures made from the spot & other incriminating materials collected so far confirmedthey were a part of outlawed JeM outfit: Police on Anantnag's Dooru encounter #JammuAndKashmir a ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

Shesh Paul Vaid,A Director General of Police (DGP) of Jammu & Kashmir took to Twitter to inform thatA two AK47s, pistols, grenades and arms were recovered from the militants. Vaid wrote, ''In an encounter in Shishitergam Police station Dooru Anantnag; today morning two bodies of terrorists have been recovered along with two AK47s, pistols, grenades and arms and ammunition. Efforts are on to identify the bodies. Operation concluded. Keep up the good work boys.''

In an encounter in Shishitergam Police station Dooru Anantnag; today morning two bodies of terrorists have been recovered along with two AK47s, pistols, grenades and arms and ammunition. Efforts are on to identify the bodies. Operation concluded. Keep up the good work boys. a Shesh Paul Vaid (@spvaid) March 24, 2018

This is the second encounter this week after security forces launched an operation in Kupwaraas Arampora and killed five terrorists who opened fire at an Army patrol party.

#SpotVisuals: 2 terrorists gunned down in an encounter with security personnel in Anantnag's Dooru area, encounter over. #JammuAndKashmir (visuals deferred) pic.twitter.com/OGUvAHcbq6 a ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

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For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.New Delhi:

The high voltage Indian Premier League is gearing up to roll out on April 7 with eight teams battling it out in sixty matches to become the champions of the eleventh edition.

Over the course of IPL history, there are many strategies which teams have employed to emerge victorious. One such has been the use of spinners on the low and turning tracks of the Indian subcontinent. The spinners have come to the party in the IPL and have been the cutting edge for many champion sides in winning the coveted trophy.

Since the inception of the IPL, spinners have played a dominant role in churning out wins for their teams by picking up heaps of wickets. The IPL has been graced by some world class spinners all through its history. In the first few seasons, spin legends- Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan and Anil Kumble bamboozled the best of batsmen with their craft.

While Warne and Murali cast a web by turning the red cherry toppings on placid tracks, our very own 'Jumbo' Anil Kumble deceived the batsman with his deceptively quick top spinners and flippers.

ALSO READ: International Roundup: Ronaldo steals the show, Messi sits out, Muller thunderbolt and more

The 'turbanator' Harbhajan Singh became the frontline spinner for the Mumbai Indians by choking the runs for the opposition with his turn and bounce. 'Bhajji' outwitted the batsmen with his surprise weapon-the 'Doosra', the off-spinner that turns the other way. Meanwhile, left arm spinner Pragyan Ojha bowled many economical spells for the Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers in his IPL stint.

It, however, was MS Dhoni who got the best out of his spin armory as the skipper of the highly successful Chennai Super Kings team. Dhoni made CSK an impregnable force on their home turf at Chennai by out spinning most of their opponents.

Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja were the spin twins who ran through batting lineups with ease with their spin magic. While Ashwin had a bagful of variations including the carom ball, Jadeja bowled an immaculate line to tighten the grip around the opposition.

Shadab Jakati was another effective spinner in his own merit making major breakthroughs for the 'Whistle Poddu' team. CSK also had the services of West Indian Samuel Badree who did a decent job opening the bowling in the powerplays.

ALSO READ: TTFI suspends Soumyajit Ghosh, set to miss Commonwealth Games

The Royal Challengers Bangalore team which has has been known to be batting heavy had their share of quality spinners. First, it was the Kiwi offie Daniel Vettori who scalped many a batsman with his subtle change in flight. In recent seasons, the Virat Kohli-led team had a rising star in Yuzvendra Chahal who has been consistently among the wickets with his leggies.

Kolkata Knight Riders have been lucky to have the services of West Indian Sunil Narine who has arguably been the best overseas spinner in the league. Narine bowls a tight line and turns the ball just enough to trouble the best in the business.

He has been smartly used as a run choker by Gautam Gambhir in the slog overs. The purple brigade was served well by Indian leggie Piyush Chawla who foxed many customers with his googlies.

Seasoned campaigner Amit Mishra has been the most lethal spinner for Delhi Daredevils and Sunrisers Hyderabad in their IPL campaigns over the last couple of seasons.

'Mickey' has been the spearhead of their spin attack, scalping many batsmen his uncanny flight and natural drift through the air. Mishra is also the only spinner to take three hat-tricks in the IPL.

There have been many more spinners who have left an impression on the IPL by scalping wickets for their sides. Some of the notable mentions are Shakib Al Hassan, Karn Sharma, Murali Karthik, Pravin Tambe and Axar Patel.The US military has shown to the media for the first time F-35B fighter jets deployed in Japan.

The state-of-the art aircraft boasts stealth capabilities. It is also capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings.

The US military started deploying the fighters at its base in the western city of Iwakuni in January last year. It was the jets' first deployment outside the US mainland.

This month 6 of the F-35Bs were deployed on the US Navy's amphibious assault ship the USS Wasp, which is stationed at a base in the southwestern city of Sasebo. The fighters have since been placed under the command of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit in Okinawa, southern Japan.

On Friday, media were allowed to view the fighters taking off and landing on the Wasp in the Pacific off Okinawa.

The Wasp is about 250 meters long and has a displacement of more than 40,000 tons. Its appearance is more like an aircraft carrier. It was upgraded so it could launch and land F-35Bs.

The US military is apparently aiming to counter China's advanced maritime activities and to respond to any possible situation on the Korean Peninsula.

The commander of the Expeditionary Strike Group 7, Rear Admiral Brad Cooper, stressed their improved capabilities in northeast Asia.

He praised F-35B's flexible operational capabilities, and called the deployment of the jets on the navy's amphibious force fleet a historic event. - NHKYasunori Kagoike, former head of school operator Moritomo Gakuen, who has been indicted for alleged subsidy fraud, told opposition lawmakers Friday that he has certainly heard Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife saying, "Please push ahead," in support of the group's plan to open an elementary school on then state-owned land in Osaka Prefecture.

Kagoike, currently held in an Osaka detention center, made the claim when the members of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, Kibo no To (Party of Hope) and the Japanese Communist Party visited him there for a 45-minute meeting, according to the lawmakers.

The quoted remark by Akie Abe was included in the original of Ministry of Finance documents related to the massive discount sale of the land plot to Moritomo Gakuen, before the documents were manipulated after the controversial land deal came to light last year.

The opposition camp suspects that ministry consideration for the prime minister's wife was behind the controversial land deal.

According to the original documents, during talks with ministry officials Kagoike quoted Akie as saying, "Please push ahead because it is a good site."A host of tourists and work trainees in Japan sought refugee status in Japan last year, fueling a jump in applications.

The applicant count rose about 80% on the year to 19,629 in Ministry of Justice statistics released Friday -- a record high in figures going back to 1982.

Applicants staying in Japan as trainees nearly tripled to 3,037. Applicants who had entered Japan on temporary-visitor visas doubled.

By nationality, applicants from the Philippines more than tripled, accounting for a quarter of the total. Those from Vietnam and Sri Lanka also logged notable increases. But these countries are not suffering the kinds of crises that would lead to mass displacement.

Large numbers of people likely sought to take advantage of a 2010 rule letting applicants for refugee status work from six months after they apply until the process is complete.

Many trainees look to have applied after suffering violations of employment agreements, or nonpayment of wages.

The Justice Ministry tightened the regime in January to deny new residencies to -- and ultimately deport -- those who apply for obviously inappropriate reasons.

Only 20 applicants were granted refugee status, down eight from the previous year. These included people from Egypt, Syria and Afghanistan. An additional 45 from places like Myanmar received permission to stay for humanitarian reasons. - NikkeiPolice in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, have arrested an unemployed 39-year-old man on suspicion of corpse abandonment after his wife was found dead inside a car.

According to police, Daisuke Ogawa, a resident of Midori Ward in Chiba City, allegedly abandoned the body of his wife Yukie, 35, in the rear seat of the car at around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sankei Shimbun reported. The vehicle was found on the sidewalk of a road along the coast in Ichihara City.

According to police, Yukie's neck showed visible signs of strangulation and several days had elapsed since her death.

The body was found after police received a phone call from a passerby who said there was a car on the sidewalk. A man in his 40s who resides in the same apartment building as the couple was quoted by local media as saying, "I would often see the two of them go for a drive in their car. They appeared to have a good relationship, and I never heard them argue." - Japan TodayChiba Prefectural Police on Friday referred a 33-year-old motorcyclist to prosecutors for allegedly hitting a speed of 239 kilometers per hour on an expressway near Tokyo last year, reports TV Asahi

At around 3:50 a.m. on May 24, the man rode a Triumph Daytona 675 SE at a speed of 239 kilometers per hour on the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line, which extends between Kisarazu City, Chiba and Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture. The speed limit is 80 kilometers per hour on the expressway.

According to police, the man, a resident of Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture, also uploaded a video to YouTube that shows the digital speedometer reaching 279 kilometers per hour while challenging viewers to top the mark.

In addition to showing the speedometer of the suspect, police put his helmet, smartphone and digital camera on display.

The man, who has been accused of violating the Road Traffic Act, admits to the allegations. "I thought I could earn money if the number of views increased," the suspect was quoted.

Earlier this month, Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested a 41-year-old man for allegedly driving a Dodge Challenger at a speed of 235 kilometers per hour on the Chuo Expressway in Kunitachi City two years ago. - tokyoreporter.comTokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a 20-year-old man for allegedly assaulting a high school girl in an attempt to steal her underwear in Kita Ward, reports the Sankei Shimbun

At around 6 a.m. on Feb 25, Kiyu Takise, an employee at a shipping company, allegedly came up behind the girl and embraced her on a walkway in the Akabane-Kita area. He then dragged her to the ground and tried to take her underwear.

After the girl resisted the attack, Takise fled the scene empty-handed. The girl suffered injuries to her left foot that required about two weeks to heal, according to police.

Takise, who has been accused of robbery resulting in injury, admits to the allegations. "I did it due to work stress," the suspect was quoted by police.

Takise emerged as as a person of interest for police after a car belonging to Takise was seen in surveillance camera footage taken near the crime scene, according to Fuji News Network (Mar. 20). During a search of the vehicle belonging to Takise, police found pairs of women's underwear.

Takise is also under investigation over a similar incident in which a man forcibly removed the underwear of a middle school girl in Itabashi Ward at around 9:30 p.m. on February 22. - tokyoreporter.comThe United States Government has reacted to the release of the Dapchi schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram.

The United States Government has reacted to the release of the Dapchi schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram.

The world power noted that there still remained enormous challenges in Nigeria which would require the attention of the United Nations and other international players.





This is part of remarks by the American Deputy Secretary of State, John Sullivan, during the International Advisory Councils closing luncheon held at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington.





His words: Its a whole-of-government effort. It sounds trite to say, but its certainly true. We work closely with our colleagues at the Department of Defence, USAID, and the State Department. I was in Abuja, Nigeria a few months ago, and the challenges are enormous.





The threat from Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa, particularly in north-western Nigeria, is very serious, as weve seen just in the last few weeks with the kidnapping of another 110 schoolgirls, most of who have been released, but only on the condition that they not are allowed to go back to school, which is astounding on its face. But were thankful that at least most of those young girls have been released. But weve got to address the security situation.





But there are deeper problems  economic and social  that require not just U.S. Governments assistance but assistance from a wide array of private organisations, other countries, and the United Nations. So thats what were looking to mobilise to address the causes of the refugee flows out of that area and prevent these crises from developing, the American diplomat stated.





Sullivan added that the problems of illegal migration and terrorism facing Nigeria and few other African countries would require more efforts and global cooperation to solve.





He disclosed that the US would work more closely with the G5 countries and national governments to tackle the issues.





Looking at what we do in the U.S. Government, Id focus, for example, on Africa, particularly in countries like Nigeria, the countries in the Sahel and Northern Africa, the tragic scenes that we have seen of refugees and migrants leaving Libya, Tunisia, Algeria for southern Europe.





And those people are coming from countries farther south in Africa, where there is conflict, poverty, et cetera. So weve got to have  from the U.S. Governments perspective, it requires an integrated strategy with our colleagues at the Department of Defence to partner host governments.



The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, has approved the appointment of Mr Bolaji Kazeem, as his new Special Assistant on Media.Mr Henshaw Ogubike, the Deputy Director, Press and Public Relations in the ministry, announced the appointment in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria on Saturday in Abuja.According to the statement, Kazeem attended the University of Ibadan, International Institute of Journalism (IIJ) and Nasarawa State University for his higher and professional education including Master of Public Administration.Mr Kazeem was a Press Secretary at the Special Duties Office (SDO), Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.He was part of the media team of the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment from 2007-2015 before he was posted to Special Duties Office from the Federal Ministry of Information.Bolaji has participated in local and International conferences and seminars such as Annual Seminar for Industry, Trade and Investment Correspondents and Editors, Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP).He participated in Trade Facilitation (Establishment of Transnational Border Market Pilot Project in Okerete); Quarterly Luncheon with Business Leaders; 2010 Shanghai Expo; China and Nigeria Business Forum, Beijing.The new media aide was also part of an interactive session on Investment Drive, New Delhi; America and Africa Business Forum, Washington; Kenya-Nigeria Business Forum Nairobi among others, the statement added.He is a member of the Nigeria Union of Journalism (NUJ), Federal Ministry of Information Chapel.The Senator representing Kogi West, Dino Melaye, has written the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to help resolve the ongoing f...

The Senator representing Kogi West, Dino Melaye, has written the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to help resolve the ongoing fracas between him and officers of the Nigeria police.





Melaye said he was ready to submit himself to the police on the condition that he was investigated by police officers from Abuja, and not Kogi.





In a five-page letter written by his counsel, Rickey Tarfa, the lawmaker alleged that police officers in Kogi state were compromised and were controlled by the governor.





He alleged that the plan was orchestrated by Governor Bello.





Our client told us that from information made available to him by his supporters, the intention was to abduct him and whisk him to Kogi State where he would be at the complete mercy of the governor and where plans had been perfected and were being implemented to frame him on spurious charges, arrest and detain him, and then murder him in prison while he is awaiting trial, his lawyer wrote.





It is worthy of note that our client has severally stated in the media that he is aware of this nefarious plan and the involvement of Kogi State Police Command in implementing the same. The sheer number of armed policemen and security personnel deployed from KogiState on 1st March 2018 to abduct our client from the FCT High Court premises gives credence to our clients fears. Our client was however lucky not to be noticed by the policemen laying siege, as he left the court premises.





Sir, as the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, we urge that you intervene in the circumstances. It is obvious to our client that there is no plausible reason for him to believe that his personal safety is guaranteed in the hands of Kogi State Police Command.





Sir, we urge for your urgent intervention in this matter. As we have stated, our client, convinced of his innocence is ready to submit himself for investigation and to answer any charge against his person but by police officers of whose neutrality he is confident in this matter, police officers from Abuja.





Our client being a prominent serving senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chairman, Senate Committee on FCT, Chairman, Senate Ad-hoc Committee on Publicity and member of several other senate committees, will not and cannot run from justice, but balks at being delivered directly into the hands of people who have made public threats against his person.



There is disquiet in the All Progressives Congress (APC) In Ondo State over the verdict of the Supreme Court on a case between Governor Ol...

There is disquiet in the All Progressives Congress (APC) In Ondo State over the verdict of the Supreme Court on a case between Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu and the first runner up in the September 3rd, 2016 governorship primary election of the party, Segun Abraham.





Abraham is challenging the victory of Akeredolu at the primary elections, alleging that a doctored delegates list was used to manipulate the election in favour of Akeredolu.





The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed an appeal by Akeredolu for lack of merit. Akeredolu had, by the appeal, challenged a July 2017 judgment of the Court of Appeal, Abuja, which upheld an order by a Federal High Court in Abuja, granting permission to Olusegun Abraham to serve Akeredolu through substituted means.





The news of the judgment has caused panic among members of the party in the state who believed that Abraham was wining the legal battle.





Loyalists of Abraham stormed the street of Akure to celebrate the Supreme Court judgment.





A top party member who spoke on condition of anonymity said the case will not affect the mandate of the governor.





He said I am sure there is nothing coming out of this case. I was involved in the primary election, we used authentic delegate list. Abraham himself did not complain about the list.





But our party members are scared, the way things are going, if we dont manage our information strategies very well, some of our uneducated or uninformed members might think Abraham is winning, that, will sure create a big hole in the party.





Meanwhile, the party has said Akeredolu remains the Governor of the state despite the Supreme Court ruling.





The Director of Media and. Publicity of the party in the state, Steve Otaloro in a statement titled Akeredolu remains the Governor said





We have read the verdict of the Supreme Court to allow the commencement of the hearing of a case filed by one of the aspirants who participated in the 2016 All Progressives Congress(APC) governorship primary in Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Abraham on the outcome of the primary in the court of law





It has come to our notice that some political almajiris and confusionists have started misinterpreting the apex courts verdict as outright removal of Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu from office and to be replaced with the applicant, Abraham





Its unfortunate that this group of people decided to confuse members of our party and the good people of Ondo State in favour of their leader





Without prejudice to the judgement handed down by the Supreme Court, every member of APC is convinced that the primary was free, fair and transparent.





It is established that the authentic party register was used at the primary, which was adjudged free, fair and acceptable by the party which would still form the basis for the application of the plaintiff.



Adebayo Shittu, minister of communications, says he is entitled to estacode as a public servant, wondering why Victor Oluwadamilare, his for...

Adebayo Shittu, minister of communications, says he is entitled to estacode as a public servant, wondering why Victor Oluwadamilare, his former aide, attempted to castigate him over it.





Describing Oluwadamilare as satanic, Shittu said some of the foreign trips he embarked upon brought benefits worth billions of naira to the country.





He also refuted the claim that he had collected up to $800,000 as estacode since he was appointed in 2015.





In a strong-worded letter which went viral on Thursday, Oluwadamilare accused Shittu of being corrupt.





He said despite living in flambuoyance, the minister refused to pay the emoluments of some of his aides.





Oluwadamilare said Shittus inhumanity almost ruined his life, vowing to ensure he recovers the debt the minister is allegedly owing him.





But in a statement by his media team, Shittu said the former aide would have his day in court.





While we challenge Mr. Oluwadamilare to come out with evidence to support his nefarious claims, we can assuredly promise that he would have his day in court to prove these fictions, the statement read.





In a bid to play down the contribution of the Honourable Minister, the sacked SA (Media) referred to the Minister as an Estacode Minister. For the sake of clarity, the minister does not embark on a foreign trip that is not sanctioned by the President. If by regulation, the minister like any public or civil servant, is entitled to estacode, can it now be said that it is unlawful or criminal? Besides, these trips were undertaken to represent the country as well as draw foreign direct investment to her.





The minister said he is not known for running away from battles.





A devout Muslim, Shittu cited Proverbs 26 vs 5





The statement in full





Our attention has been drawn to a letter written by one Mr. Oluwadamilare Victor, sacked Special Assistant (Media) to the Honourable Minister of Communications, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, and circulated to some select online and conventional news media. While we would have ordinarily chosen to ignore the Ananias, who started his letter with falsehood by backdating it to 12th of March 2018 two days to his dismissal, the basis of the blackmail, we understand that when a lie is allowed to fester, it will be taken as truth. It is imperative that we respond to the litany of lies which Mr. Oluwadamilare dished out. It is unfortunate that Mr. Oluwadamilare who reeks of various frauds and should bury his head in shame could defy every sense of decorum by attempting to run down the honourable Minister with blatant lies.





In his characteristic mischievous manner, Mr. Oluwadamilare referred to his appointment letter dated 23rd November, 2015 but decided to downplay the content of another letter sent from the office of the Honourable Minister and dated 10th June, 2016. Like the proverbial leper who boasted that he punched his assailant and then pinched him, Mr. Oluwadamilare exhibited his deceitful stock-in-trade by misleading the public.





It is however pathetic that someone of the years of experience of Mr Oluwadamilare would come out at this time to throw invectives at the Honourable Minister. In our magnanimous manner, we would like to educate Mr. Oluwadamilare that it is an extant provision in the law of contract that consideration does not have to be adequate but has to be of value. He had the liberty to leave but decided to stay (obviously because he did not want to go jobless again) but like the slyful soul that he is, he had it all planned out to blackmail the Honourable Minister. Mr. Oluwadamilare was quick to point out that he was earning the sum of a hundred thousand naira monthly for doing absolutely nothing but he did not tell Nigerians of other benefits made available to him ranging from estacodes for travelling (through the minister he has travelled to countries such as Spain, China, South Korea, Cameroon among others) free accommodation, mobility to a host of other unaccounted cash donations to him. It is pertinent to inform Nigerians that the letter written by Mr. Oluwadamilare Victor was only a smokescreen for him to ventilate his bile against the Minister for not engaging in untoward practices for him. He had expected that the Minister would play a hanky-panky game of injecting his name into the payroll of the Federal Civil Service so that he would be getting as much as he wanted at the expense of the Nigerian State. However the Minister, given his sterling position against corruption and corrupt practices, refused to do such. Hence, his outbursts.





It suffices to state that Mr. Oluwadamilare made some allegations that are characteristic of a sinking man. He said that the minister, within his two years in the office has procured twelve houses, a printing press, and twenty-five cars among others. These allegations would definitely fly as a phantasmagoria or an over-bloated comedy. While we challenge Mr. Oluwadamilare to come out with evidences to support his nefarious claims, we can assuredly promise that he would have his day in court to prove these fictions.





him. In a bid to play down the contribution of the Honourable Minister, the sacked SA (Media) referred to the Minister as an Estacode Minister. For the sake of clarity, the Minister does not embark on a foreign trip that is not sanctioned by the President. If by regulation, the Minister like any public or civil servant, is entitled to estacode, can it now be said that it is unlawful or criminal? Besides, these trips were undertaken to represent the country as well as draw Foreign Direct Investment to her. It is instructive to state that it was one of these trips that earned Nigeria over four billion dollars pledged in investment from India Business Community. Another case in point is the securing of a reduction of thirty million dollars ($30m) in the price of the procurement of two new satellites from China for the Nigerian Telecommunications Satellite Limited. May we also quickly add that the claim of Mr Oluwadamilare that the Minister has so far earned the lump sum of $800,000 as estacodes for his foreign trips is nothing but a figment of his imagination. This is the most ridiculous of allegations coming from a confused man such ashim.





It must also be on the record that the debt burden which Mr. Oluwadamilare Victor alluded to in his letter is just to finance his licentious lifestyle. He alleged that he stayed in a hotel for twenty-nine months but maliciously refused to add that it was his decision to stay in the hotel despite the fact that comfortable accommodation was made available to him. He will be in a position to explain if he needed the hotel to attend to other urgent matters of state. He also played up an appeal to pity by saying that his appointment has caused much emotional trauma to his family and friends but did not explain how he squandered the several monies he got on urgent matters of state and not his family.





Mr. Oluwadamilare in his wisdom of foolishness tried to pass on burden of his past wrong decisions on the Minister. Here is a man whom the minister gave an appointment in order to save from the jaws of joblessness but like the typical pig, he could not live beyond dirts. This is a man who was disgraced out of office as Oyo State NUJ chairman, who has worked with several politicians but was dishonorably relieved of his appointment by them all, who has used the Ministers name to perpetuate fraud but was caught, and severally snitched on the Minister to opponent politicians.





Also having collected salary from the minister for doing almost or absolutely nothing for many months, Mr. Oluwadamilare Victors action cannot only be described as satanic but also absolutely luciferous. Anyone will agree with the assertion that the Minister did not have an effective media aide in the past two years. If this assertion has continuosly been validated by even his colleagues in the media profession, the sacked media aides spurious claims can only be regarded as shameful.





His action can best be described as a clear descent into barbarism and we want him to note that Barrister Adebayo Shittu does not start a fight but never runs away from any.





We would have heeded the words of Proverbs 26 verse 4 but we are encouraged by the admonition in verse 5 of the same chapter. We admonish Mr. Oluwadamilare and his co-travellers to note that the Adebayo Shittus campaign drive is a moving train, a project sanctioned by God.





We hope that the sacked media aide will experience an epiphany, turn a new leaf and live right.



Adebayo Shittu, minister of communications, has described himself as incorruptible, saying President Muhammadu Buhari is his mentor.

Adebayo Shittu, minister of communications, has described himself as incorruptible, saying President Muhammadu Buhari is his mentor.





In an interview with Tribune, Shittu denied all the allegations levelled against him by Victor Oluwadamilare, his former spokesman.





In a strongly-worded letter which went viral on Thursday, Oluwadamilare accused Shittu of being corrupt.





He said despite living in flambuoyance, the minister refused to pay the emoluments of some of his aides.





Oluwadamilare said Shittus inhumanity almost ruined his life, vowing to ensure he recovers the debt the minister is allegedly owing him.





But the minister said Oluwadamilare was acting the script of those bent on destroying him politically.





He said he employed his former aide out of humanitarian consideration, disclosing that of all those who showed interest in being his spokesman, Oluwadamilare was the only Christian.





I thought that I could use the appointment I gave him to rehabilitate him. More so, at the time I appointed him, of all those who applied as media aide, he was the only Christian. I didnt want a situation where all my aides would be Muslims, so I decided to appoint him. And I thought the appointment would rehabilitate him because I knew he was jobless at that time, he said.





He is being used by my political enemies, all of whom, by the grace of God, will fail.





I am a moralist, I am incorruptible and I try to take after my leader, my mentor, President Muhammadu Buhari and I do not do anything that I cannot justify. I go on economy class whenever I am flying, whether within or outside the country.





So, I dont know what type of luxury life he claims I am living. A lot of people will take pictures with me in the economy class and they do pray for me. There is this adage that you give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. Because they have a target, they want to stop me, but I will not allow them to succeed.





I am ready for the battle and he will certainly get destroyed in the process because he has bitten the fingers that fed him. He was living in a free house in Abuja and he has taken so much, apart from the other monies that I have given him. He has also had several opportunities. He called me Estacode Minister and by my grace, he has also had the privilege of attending conferences and collected estacodes. He didnt reject these estacodes because they were not unlawful. So, why should I not take estacode if I have to travel and the travel is approved?





Shittu also denied the allegation that he had acquired 12 houses and 25 luxury cars in the last three years.





He said the only house he has in Abuja through a loan he obtained from Jaiz Bank and that two influential personalities in Oyo state donated two cars to him.





I want to put you on notice that I am taking him to court over all these allegations to justify himself. In law, he who asserts must prove. If he is accusing me of having houses in Lagos, Abuja and Ibadan, he should have the courage to state the locations. I will not assist him in his job. He has the herculean task of proving that in the court. I can give you the list of the houses that I have. I dont have any house in Lagos. I have one house in Abuja, which I bought on mortgage from Jaiz Bank. I have two houses in Ibadan. So, those extra houses in Lagos, Abuja and Ibadan, he will have to justify them in court.





Where will I, Adebayo Shittu, with my anti-corruption posture, with my very modest lifestyle all through and with my religious inclination, get the money for all of those vehicles? Does it make sense that somebody with socialist orientation will have that number of vehicles? Since I came on board as minister, two people donated two cars to me. Seyi Makinde donated one of the jeeps that I have and a former Accountant General of the Federation, Mr Jonah Otunla, donated one and I bought one for myself. So, Victor Oluwadamilare will have to explain where the other vehicles are.



Former President, Goodluck Jonathan has returned to Sierra Leone to observe the countrys presidential run-off polls scheduled for Tuesday...

Former President, Goodluck Jonathan has returned to Sierra Leone to observe the countrys presidential run-off polls scheduled for Tuesday, March 27.





A statement issued by Mr Ikechukwu Eze, the spokesman to the former president, noted that Jonathan, who is leading the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) Election Observation Mission, arrived Freetown on Friday.





Jonathan also led EISA to the first round of the elections on March 7, in which none of the candidates polled the required 55 per cent of votes to win at the first ballot.





EISA had declared the process of the March 7 general elections as peaceful and credible.





The mission in its interim report presented to the media on March 9 added that the elections were conducted substantially in line with sub-regional, continental and international standards.





It also observed that voter turnout was impressive while the conduct of electoral personnel was professional.



A Nigerian anti-corruption youth group, the Creative Youth Initiative Against Corruption (CYIAC), has emerged the winner of the Innovative Category of the first UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Action Awards.Ms Foluke Michael, the Project Director of CYIAC in a statement said the Innovative Category top award was presented to the group in Bonn, Germany by Mr Markus Hipp, the Director, BMW FoundationShe said the campaign that led to the awards demonstrated the extraordinary momentum towards achieving the SDGs in different parts of the worldAt the event, the Global Director of the UN SDG Action Campaign, Mitchell Toomey disclosed that the Awards ceremony was held in tandem with the second edition of the Global Festival of Action for Sustainable Development in BonnToomey added that the awards ceremony honored initiatives in the categories of communicator, connector, includer, innovator, mobiliser, storyteller, and visualizer.These are Action Awards because we need more than words: our winners dared to believe and act for change.They are perfect examples of the wonderful work thats happening around the world led by thousands, if not millions, of people, Toomey saidThe SDG Director said winners of the Awards span over private and public sectors, as well as civil society and grassroots movements.He said the winning initiatives included fighting corruption in Nigeria and mobilising Belgians to implement the SDGs in their daily livesOthers were empowering children through photography and digital skills in Bangladesh, promoting human rights education in Sri Lanka and much more.Toomey also disclosed that over 700 nominations from 125 countries in 7 continents were submitted.An expert judging panel evaluated the submissions against the degree to which actions were deemed to be transformative, inclusive and impactful.In addition, an open vote was held on the website of the UN SDG Action Campaign, where visitors could rate their favourite among the 38 finalists to win the Peoples Choice Award, he said.The SDG Director noted that great solutions for the worlds challenges can come from anywhere.We hope everyone is inspired by these stories and consider submitting their nominations for future Awards.These are the first winners of a community that will continue to grow.The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has thrown its support behind the Governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike, for assenting to the Neighbourhood Watch Corps bill, adding that the step would strengthen security in the state.PDP also flayed the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state for claiming that the Neighborhood bill signed by Wike was aimed at witchhunting their members during the 2019 Elections.The party, however, noted that the Bill was initiated by an APC Lawmaker in the state House of Assembly, stressing that the corps would promote peace and development in the state.Recalled that Hon Fredrick Anabraba, an APC member and Minority Leader of the State House of Assembly, representing Akuku-Toru constituency I, had moved motion for establishment of the Neighborhood Watch Safety Corps, noting that the passage of the bill would strenghten the fight against crime in the state.The Publicity Security of PDP in the state, Nwanosike Samuel, who spoke while receiving APC defectors to PDP through the Grassroots Development Initiative (GDI) at Andoni Local Government Area of the state, noted that many states in the country have similar security outfits.Nwanosike said: We run a democratic government. And in democracy, the minority will have their say but the majority will have their way. The Rivers State House of Assembly members are our representatives. That law, Neigbourhood Watch was proposed by an APC Lawmaker, the Minority leader of the House, and other APC Lawmakers supported the Bill.Today, the Rivers State House of Assembly has passed that Bill into Law and the Governor has assented. The Governor has gone ahead to appoint an active Director in the person of Dr. Uche Mike Chukwuma, a retired ACP of Police to head the corps. We are in support of the passage of the bill.Dont worry yourselves. In Lagos they have the same neighbourhood watch, they have same in Edo, Imo and Anambra states. Just today I read in the newspaper that Katsina, the state of President Muhammadu Buhari has also joined to propose a security law. Why would Rivers State be different. That law has come to stay, it will provide security for our people, provide job for our people and make us happy.Boko Haram members willing to surrender their arms will be granted amnesty, President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday.

Boko Haram members willing to surrender their arms will be granted amnesty, President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday.The President made the offer while receiving 105 Dapchi secondary schoolgirls and two Dapchi Primary School pupils earlier abducted by the insurgent group at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.The insurgents had invaded Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi, Yobe State on February 19 and abducted 111 girls.Receiving the girls in Abuja two days after they were returned by the militant sect, Buhari said the Federal Government was ready to rehabilitate penitent members of the sect and reintegrate them into the society.He said: While further efforts are being made to secure the release of every abducted citizen in Nigeria, Government is ever ready to accept the unconditional laying down of arms by any member of the Boko Haram group who shows strong commitment in that regard.We are ready to rehabilitate and integrate such repentant members into the larger society.This country has suffered enough of hostility. Government is, therefore, appealing to all to embrace peace for the overall development of our people and the country.Making a formal announcement of the return of the abducted girls, the President said: I am delighted to formally announce to Nigerians and our International friends and partners this morning that 107 Dapchi students previously abducted have been unconditionally released by their abductors.This cheering and hearty development signifies our commitment to the security and wellbeing of all Nigerians.We are never in doubt about our focus and direction since the assumption of this Administration. Security, anti-corruption and revamping of our economy are the main focus of our government.You will recall that on the 14th of this month, I paid a visit to Yobe State during which I sympathised with the parents, families, government and people of the state for the tragic abduction of the students in Dapchi.I made a solemn pledge on my word of honour that this administration would do everything possible to ensure the unconditional release of the girls.I further tasked all the appropriate security agencies to safely bring back the girls.We also reached out to our contacts at home and abroad. We embarked on backchannel shuttles with a clear view to bring this tragedy to an end.We entered into negotiations solely to make sure that no single girl was hurt. This strategy paid off as the girls have been released without any incidents.Turning his attention to the rescued girls, the President assured them of their security and freedom to pursue their dreams as Nigerian citizens.He said: To the rescued students, we want to reassure you as our daughters that you will freely live and pursue your dreams in Nigeria of peace and order without fear of violence or molestation.While parents of the Dapchi girls rejoice because of their reunion with their children, I want to appeal to the Chibok community never to lose hope or to despair.We are determined as never before, to bring back our remaining Chibok daughters. This we must accomplish, and that will be soon by Gods grace.The President also warned politicians who play politics with security issues to desist from it, saying that government would no longer tolerate it.He said: May I also warn against those elements who have chosen to make political fortune of our citizens misfortune.Government would not tolerate any attempt by any person or group to trivialise or politicise security issues for politically motivated ends.Accordingly, security agencies would not hesitate to decisively deal with such unscrupulous characters.The President also warned security agencies against any laxity that could result in any form of abduction, saying that those involved in such laxity will be viewed seriously.The President said: Let me re-emphasise our administrations commitment to the fight against terrorism and insurgency, and also call on all Nigerians to join in this task.The security services have since been directed to put in place further measures around all schools vulnerable to attacks to ensure the safety of our pupils/students and teachers and school workers.I have tasked all the security agencies to work to ensure that we do not witness any reoccurrence of these incidents. Security Chiefs have been warned in clear terms that any lapse on their parts will be viewed seriously. he saidHe thanked all Nigerians, who prayed and showed solidarity with families of the abducted students during the period of the abduction in spite of their political differences.This, undoubtedly, is the Nigerian spirit. We can and should sustain it beyond moments of sorrow.I remain thankful to the International Community and our friends who offered varying degrees of assistance during the backchannel communications.May I on behalf of the Government and people of Nigeria extend our appreciation to the security agencies for their loyal and tireless efforts in making this day a reality.One of the pupils, Fatima Bashir, who spoke on behalf of the students, thanked God for saving their lives.The 14-year-old JSS 3 pupil concluded her speech by saying God bless you sir.Federal prosecutors are looking into a February incident when a Camden County police officer was caught on camera punching a man 12 times in the head.

The attorney for Edward Minguela, 32, of Camden, has demanded criminal charges be filed against the officer he said threw the punches: Nicholas Romantino, a 24-year-old who has been on the job for less than two years.

Camden County Police Chief J. Scott Thomson said he was "extremely disturbed" by the video and has suspended the officer without pay while the county prosecutor investigates.

But the county revealed Friday that the case is also being investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office of New Jersey.

The information came out when the county was denying an OPRA request for body camera footage, claiming it was exempt due to the ongoing federal investigation.

Camden County Prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Alexandra McVeigh said Friday that the prosecutor is still investigating the incident. She declined to comment on the feds' involvement.

It's the latest development in the case that came to light in late February, when Minguela posted the surveillance video of his own beating on his Facebook page.

Minguela told NJ Advance Media that he was walking away from Fairview Liquors on Collings Road Feb. 22 when police ran up with guns drawn and told him to put his hands up. They were responding to a 911 call about a man with a gun, and he matched the description, according to the county.

The surveillance video, which Minguela said he obtained from the liquor store, shows him holding his hands up as an officer approaches him and takes him to the ground. He then punches Minguela 12 times in the head while two other officers appear to hold him down, and others look on.

Police never found a gun on Minguela, but they charged him in municipal court with resisting arrest and obstruction.

He claims officers took him to the hospital but told him there that if he told hospital staff he needed treatment, they would also charge him with the more serious offense of assaulting a police officer. Minguela said he followed officers' instructions and declined medical care, but he went back to the hospital the following morning.

His attorney, Devon Jacob of Pennsylvania, said his client was treated for a concussion and a fractured wrist.

"I look forward to learning the outcome of the police department's internal investigation, and the state and federal criminal investigations," Jacob said in a statement Friday. "These three independent investigations will undoubtedly reveal the disparate treatment, and the malicious intent of the prosecutor's office, in continuing to violate Mr. Minguela's civil rights by refusing to dismiss the frivolous criminal charges."

Last week, McVeigh said the prosecutor's office had stayed the charges against Minguela while it continued investigating.

Chief Thomson said he was aware that someone had requested that county, state and federal officials look into the matter, but said he could not comment on any ongoing investigation other than to say that the police department is cooperating.

"I was extremely disturbed by what I saw on the video," Thomson said in a statement Friday. "The observed actions are completely contrary to how we train our officers and the culture of this organization and will not be tolerated."

Jacob and the Camden County chapters of the NAACP have called for Romantino to be charged and fired and for the Attorney General's Office to investigate. While Romantino is suspended without pay, the other two officers involved are on paid leave.

Matthew Reilly, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, said he could not confirm or deny that the office was investigating Romantino, per office policy.

No federal charges have been filed against Romantino, who earns a salary of $41,158.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tipsSECAUCUS -- Armed with a handgun, a Jersey City couple robbed a $30 bottle of perfume from a Secaucus clothing store, but they were caught by Jersey City police a short time later, authorities said.

Joseph Cosme, 45, was charged with robbery, possession of burglary tools and conspiracy to commit robbery, Secaucus police Capt. Dennis Miller said. He was also wanted on two outstanding warrants from Jersey City. Teresa Valentin, 43, of Jersey City, identified as Cosme's girlfriend, was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery.

Secaucus police responded to TJ Maxx at 7:42 p.m. on March 6 on the report of an armed robbery, Miller said.

Valentin took a bottle of Michael Kors perfume and as he was leaving the store he "motioned towards his waistband as if he had a handgun and attempted to grab the (handgun) while stating 'you want some of this?'" to the store's loss prevention officer, the criminal complaint said.

The pair fled, but after being notified by Secaucus police of the vehicle involved in the robbery, Jersey City officers stopped the vehicle and held Cosme and Valentin until Secaucus officers arrived.

The police report did not say where Cosme and Valentin were stopped by Jersey City police.

In another incident in town, a 56-year-old Rahway man was charged with shoplifting from Home Depot on March 8, Miller said.

The following day, Secaucus police again responded to Home Depot on a call of shoplifting. A 27-year-old Union City man was arrested on an outstanding warrant for $750 from Bellmawr, Miller said.Thousands of Hudson County residents on Saturday participated in the national March for Our Lives rally, joining millions across the country in demanding an end to gun violence.

In Jersey City, at least 500 people -- children, adults, community advocates and local leaders -- marched from the James J. Ferris High School to City Hall, holding signs and chanting "Enough is enough."

And in Hoboken, more than 1,000 gathered outside City Hall and on Washington Street, according to Mayor Ravi Bhalla.

Amazing scene outside City Hall with over 1,000 people in attendance. Today we March for our children. Today we March to end gun violence. Today we March to make our schools safe. And today we #March4OurLives. #enoughisenough pic.twitter.com/FQ3UgMrmTj  Ravinder S. Bhalla (@RaviBhalla) March 24, 2018

They joined thousands of others in "sister marches" across the state -- including Morristown, Ocean City, Asbury Park and Union -- as well as millions across the country in a historic rally to push for an end to gun violence through legislation.

The Jersey City rally was dominated by local high school students, inspired to act after the killing of 17 students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

"(After Parkland) I said to myself 'You know what, lets do this.' I started emailing my friends and we got the ball rolling," said Jai Patel, a senior at the Ronald E. McNair Academic High School. "Look where we are now."

Patel, along with a number of other students, organized the local rally and led a massive crowd down Christopher Columbus Drive through Downtown.

On the steps of City Hall, Patel, his sister Maya (a student at MS 4), and dozens of other local students pressed lawmakers to pass stronger gun regulations, while lambasting the National Rifle Association.

"We don't want high school students, concert-goers, movie-goers, church-goers -- and innocent first graders -- slaughtered by an assault rifle," he said to rousing cheers. "I have a job for all of you in the audience -- contact your state senators, your congress people and your governor and inform them that we want change and we want it now."

Patel, a resident of Society Hill, spoke alongside local leaders including Mayor Steven Fulop, Councilman James Solomon, and State Sen. Sandra Cunningham.

"It is both sad that we are here, yet fills us with strength," Solomon said. "We are a nation awash with gun violence, mass shootings, murders and suicides and too many of us accepted it as normal. The work that you're doing today -- you are going to change this country and you will save so many families from the heartache that so many others have already experienced."

Before the march, several organizations registered people to vote. Patel, who recently turned 18, said he planned on registering before the days end.

"This is about holding politicians accountable," Patel said, speaking to The Jersey Journal. "I feel like people need to put this in the politicians' faces and say 'Listen, if you're on our side, you need to know we support this and this isn't going away anytime soon.'

"For those of them who do not agree, we are their constituents (and) come election season, they might not be around anymore," he added.

Corey W. McDonald may be reached at cmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @coreymacc. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.JERSEY CITY -- A 29-year-old Jersey City man has been charged with telling his ex-girlfriend and their son to scram and then beating the boy up on the street in a 5-month-old incident.

Almalik Hogan, of the 100 block of Grant Avenue, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child in connection to the Oct. 22 incident, the criminal complaint says.

The mother told police that on the day of the incident, she and her son were at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive when Hogan, her ex-boyfriend, approached and told them to get out of the area, the complaint says.

She said Hogan then punched the boy several times in the face and ribs before throwing him to the ground. The boy was taken to Christ Hospital suffering from swollen ribs, sprained knees and other injuries, the complaint says.

The complaint does not say the boy's age. The indictment says only that he is under 16 years old.

Hogan made his first appearance on the charges on Tuesday in Criminal Justice Reform Court in Jersey City via video link from Hudson County jail in Kearny.

At the hearing, the state moved to detain him through the course of his prosecution. A detention hearing was held yesterday, but the outcome could not immediately be determined.Jersey City police officers who arrived before firefighters rescued a woman in a wheelchair from a burning building, authorities said.

The fire, which broke out at 6 a.m. at a multi-family home at 219 Fowler Ave. last Saturday. It displaced a total of nine people, six adults and three children, Jersey City police and fire spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said.

The three police officers and the woman in the wheelchair were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation, Wallace-Scalcione said, noting that the three officers returned to work afterward.

There was minor structural damage to the second floor of the building, Wallace-Scalcione said. The cause of the fire was undetermined, but there was no appearance of arson, officials said.When Froylan Lopez found his friend knocked out and bleeding on a Jersey City street in December 2015, he made a fatal mistake that cost one man his life and 40 years of his own.

Believing that Troy Brandon -- the man who was standing over his injured friend -- had carried out the attack, Lopez went back to his SUV and got a knife.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

Troy Brandon was not to blame for the violence -- he was merely a good Samaritan who dialed 911 and waited with the injured stranger while an ambulance rushed to the scene.

Brandon, 26, only made it a few steps after Lopez plunged the knife into his chest piercing his heart, lung, and aorta on Dec. 5, 2015 at Monticello and Storms avenues.

Yesterday, Lopez, 30, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the slaying and must serve more than 38 years of the term before becoming eligible for parole. A jury convicted him on Dec. 14, eight days after the trial began.

When given the opportunity, Lopez spoke through a Spanish translator saying: "I am innocent. I didn't commit that crime. I didn't do it."

"You received a fair trial before a jury of your peers," Hudson County Superior Court Judge John Young replied. "They didn't agree with you. I don't agree with you."

The judge noted that the entire crime was captured on video.

The footage also captured an unidentified man knocking out Lopez's friend and walking away before Brandon arrived. The judge said that denying his guilt in the face of the evidence "shows no remorse and is regretful."

Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Leo Hernandez said Brandon came across a stranger in need and did what a good person would do -- he called 911.

"Unfortunately, as we know, those responders came eventually for Troy, as he was found lying in a pool of his own blood after he was viciously attacked by the defendant.

"He did what was right and he paid with his life," Hernandez added.

Hernandez noted that Lopez is a native of Honduras and is in the United States illegally. He said many in Honduras would give all they have to come to the U.S. to make better lives for themselves, but Lopez came bringing violence and death.

"Some people in this country want to build walls," the prosecutor said. "I don't know how effective those walls will be, but the walls this defendant will see for the next couple of decades will protect the people of New Jersey from his violent acts."

Brandon's sister addressed the court tearfully saying she remembered the joy she felt when she was told she was going to be a big sister prior to her brother's birth. She spoke of the call telling her to get to the hospital quickly on the night he died.

"I don't like to use the word 'hate' but this is one time I can honestly say that's what I have," said Terina Brandon. "The pain I feel, you and your family will never understand... From the first time I looked at you in court and at every hearing until today, you have not shown no sign of remorse... You have no mercy."

After Terina Brandon finished her statement, Young addressed the sister saying: "Please accept my condolences. Your brother died doing everything right."

As Lopez was being led from court by sheriff's officers, the killer gave two thumbs up.A 29-year-old Jersey City man has been charged with telling his ex-girlfriend and their son to scram and then beating the boy up on the street in a 5-month-old incident.

Almalik Hogan, of the 100 block of Grant Avenue, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child in connection to the Oct. 22 incident, the criminal complaint says.

The mother told police that on the day of the incident, she and her son were at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive when Hogan, her ex-boyfriend, approached and told them to get out of the area, the complaint says.

She said Hogan then punched the boy several times in the face and ribs before throwing him to the ground. The boy was taken to Christ Hospital suffering from swollen ribs, sprained knees and other injuries, the complaint says.

The complaint does not say the boy's age. The indictment says only that he is under 16 years old.

Hogan made his first appearance on the charges on Tuesday in Criminal Justice Reform Court in Jersey City via video link from Hudson County jail in Kearny.

At the hearing, the state moved to detain him through the course of his prosecution. A detention hearing was held yesterday, but the outcome could not immediately be determined.One officer described a chaotic scene when he arrived at an arrest last year to find a bruised 16-year-old cuffed and face down in a bed of rocks with "blood all over the f-----g place."

A second described his appalled reaction on seeing the injured teen at Carteret police headquarters. Another said the incident was "indefensible."

They said they knew their now-indicted fellow officer had pummeled the teen, but believed the department would cover for Officer Joseph Reiman, according to a previously unreleased dashboard-camera video.

"Things don't look good," an officer says on the recording.

"Didn't look good at the scene," another responds.

The candid conversations between three officers from the early morning of May 31 were revealed this past week after NJ Advance Media reviewed hours of previously unreleased police dashboard and body camera videos in the arrest of a borough teen -- an encounter that has spurred criminal charges and a federal lawsuit.

Carteret Police officer Joseph Reiman appears in Judge Joseph Paone's courtroom on charges of official misconduct at Middlesex County Municipal Court in New Brunswick on Friday, Feb. 9, 2018.

One of the police car videos, obtained through a records' request, was left on for more than three hours after the arrest and gives further insight into the incident and Reiman's reputation on the 50-person force.

"I've been doing this less time than you but I've never punched anybody in the face like [inaudible]... never," an officer says in the recording.

"That's what I told Jerome last time," another officer responds.

In a later separate conversation, as two officers are driving back to the borough after following the teen to the hospital, one asks, "If he does this as a cop, what did he do before actually when he was in war?"

"Uh, huh. I was thinking the same thing the other day," another responds.

"Holy s--t.... there was probably a wave of freakin' innocent victims," the officer says.

Reiman, 31, a former Marine who joined the force in 2015 as a disabled veteran, has been suspended with pay as the case continues. The officer is the youngest brother of Carteret's longtime mayor, Daniel Reiman.

Joseph Reiman's attorney, Charles Sciarra, said in a statement Friday, referring to the police heard in the videos, that these "officers are known malingerers who slow roll to calls like they did on this one, and are cut from the same cloth as the officer in the Florida school shooting who stayed outside the building while those kids were slaughtered."

Sciarra also called on NJ Advance Media to name the officers so the attorney could "review their pitiful arrest numbers and lack of law enforcement activity as well as their agenda."

Borough officials didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.

NJ Advance Media has not named the three officers heard in the video. None of the officers has been accused of any wrongdoing, nor are they named in the lawsuit stemming from the incident.

The officers who were recorded on the running dashcam video in two separate conversations were not there when Reiman first encountered the teen but had seen the teen after the incident at the scene, at police headquarters and in the hospital.

"They know, they know how he is and they just let him continue," an officer says on the recording. "And here you are... just letting it go... and you keep making excuses."

The official narrative to explain the events, according to the officers, started at the scene and continued at headquarters: One recalls, "When I was there, they were like, 'Well, he was in a car accident. He was in a car accident.' I'm looking at this kid's face, I'm like, "that ain't a f-----g car accident... the whole side of his face has to be away from his skull and it's like repeated... lump... lump... lump."

Officer Charles Reiman, the middle Reiman brother who was the second on scene, had repeated, "He wouldn't show his hands," the same officer recalls.

"Charlie's already, ya know, writing his thesis," he says.

Another officer can be heard later in a separate recorded conversation,"They are going to blame it on the car accident... Nothin's gonna happen. They're gonna say nothing happen... he didn't have his body camera on."

The officer already knew Reiman's body camera wasn't on and questioned whether anyone's recorded the incident.

"What do you want to bet... they're all sitting around a table right now trying to get their f-----g story straight?" one officer asks after leaving the hospital.

The officer later recalls being annoyed at the hospital after the ER doctor remarked, "Wow you guys beat the s--t out of him."

"I'm just looking at him, like, would you go away?" the officer says. "Everybody we passed ... 'Hello, we didn't do this, it was this f-----g crazy guy.'"

The teen, who was unlicensed and driving his parent's car, crashed a sedan into a suspension wire at the corner of Edwin and Bergen streets following a brief police chase.

NJ Advance Media first published his account of the arrest two days before the officer was charged.

Joseph Reiman's attorney says the teen was injured in the crash and has maintained his client's innocence, saying the officer followed his training.

"Joe Reiman makes no apology for his military service and his law enforcement efforts," Sciarra said in the statement. "Face it, if your readers needed a critical response to their own life-or-death situation, they'd want Joe Reiman who runs in and not these cowards who run away."

However, two of the officers recorded on the video say what Reiman did that night went against how they've been taught to restrain someone during an arrest. None believed his injuries were from the crash.

"This is indefensible, you look at this kid and this kid is not overpowering Joe," one says after leaving the hospital. "Joe is just punching this kid in the face and not attempting at all to get control of his arms."

"We're all trained, to hold arms," another says. "You get a grip on someone's arms, there's not a lot of strength to control what they're doing."

"You're not getting a f-----g facial injury from a motor vehicle... here... and here... and here," another officer says later in the recording.

"This is just Joe f-----g pounding this kid," an officer responds.

Last summer, the prosecutor's office released videos from two police cruisers, which they said confirmed the teen's account.

The existence of the additional recordings emerged earlier this month in an amended civil lawsuit, which brought more allegations of misconduct, and were obtained through records' requests.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the teen in the weeks after the arrest, claims multiple officers were involved in the "savage beating" and that the mayor had previously protected his brother from discipline.

Two of the body camera records, which were released by Carteret, show the officers wearing them arrive at the scene minutes after the arrest and the footage runs until a tow truck takes the sedan away.

"We're are gonna need a towel," an officer can be heard saying before picking up a bloody watch. "Just be careful there's a lot of blood around there."

Those videos, for the first time, provide a view of inside the car where there does not appear to be any blood. The videos do show that the airbags deployed and an 8-inch indent can be seen on the inside of the windshield on the driver's side, which NJ Advance Media reported in its initial interview with the teen.

"Knocked the windshield pretty good," one officer can be heard saying in a body camera recording.

"That's what happens when you don't wear a seat belt," another responds. "...I don't understand why he ran, there's nothing in the car."

Reiman's attorney has argued in court that the car was prematurely totaled by the teen's family leaving him unable to do forensics on the vehicle. He claims glass was taken out of the teen's eye.

In a February hearing, Sciarra accused the prosecutor's office of failing to maintain evidence because it didn't take steps to keep the car for the defense to inspect.

The borough has not yet provided a copy of Charles Reiman's body camera video, citing an inability to redact the video to protect the identity of the juvenile.

The attorney for the teen, Eric Pennington, said previously he could not comment beyond the complaint because a judge had marked the videos confidential in the civil case. It was unclear if Charles Reiman's recording captured any of the incident or accusations made in the lawsuit.

Officer Antonio Dominguez and special officer Kevin Horn -- the two other officers involved in the arrest, according to police documents -- did not have the body cameras on during the arrest, Carteret's law director, Robert Bergen, said.

No other officers have been accused of any wrongdoing.

NJ Advance Media previously reviewed Joseph Reiman's use-of-force records from his 23 months on the job and found the officer had accounted for more than a fifth of all the department's arrests involving force over that time.

In a Feb. 9 court appearance, the assistant prosecutor Christine D'Elia said she would not use the officer's prior records of use-of-force in her main case but still may use the information against Joseph Reiman if he takes the stand. The assistant prosecutor had previously ordered a probe of the officer's history following an NJ Advance Media investigation.



Sciarra objected, but the judge said he would give the defense time to find an expert and order the state to hand over the additional discovery if the state's motion to use the officer's history was approved.

The teen, who is not being named because he is a minor, was mailed a series of traffic summonses the week after the incident but was not charged criminally, according to his father.

Reiman has been charged with assault and multiple counts of official misconduct, including falsifying records and failing to turn on his body camera.

He also faces three other lawsuits over alleged excessive force.

Craig McCarthy may be reached at 732-372-2078 or at CMcCarthy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @createcraig and on Facebook here. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tipsOn the eve of what would have been Sarah Stern's 21st birthday, a judge ruled Friday that a video prosecutors say shows the man accused of killing Stern telling a friend how he strangled her with such force that she was lifted off the ground and then watched for 30 minutes as she died can be used as evidence in his trial.

"It's Sarah's birthday present from the judge," her father, Michael Stern, said in a phone interview after the ruling. "The process moves pretty slowly. It's one step at a time. This was a big step for Sarah."

The chilling video was filmed by a friend working with police as authorities honed in on Liam McAtasney, 20, as a suspect in the Dec. 2, 2016, disappearance of Stern, 19.

McAtasney and Preston Taylor, who both grew up with Stern in the close-knit seaside community of Neptune City, were charged in connection with her death two months after her car was found abandoned on the Route 35 bridge in Belmar.

McAtasney's attorney, Charles Moriarty, tried to get the tape tossed from evidence because he argued police improperly used the friend, identified only by the initials A.C., to circumvent attorney-client privilege.

"They can't use A.C. to get around what they can't do themselves," Moriarty said at a previous hearing on Feb. 22.

Liam McAtasney, 20, of Neptune City. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Richard English wrote in his written opinion that, at the time of the conversation, McAtasney was not indicted and therefore had no rights to an attorney.

"There was no pressure on the defendant to confess, because he was speaking to a good friend," English said. "He was speaking to someone he implored to meet up with him in order to tell what had happened to Sarah Stern."

The cooperating witness helped detectives with the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office and Belmar Police Department break the case.

He decided to go to police after his conversations with McAtasney about Stern's disappearance concerned him.

"He felt that if he didn't participate in this that Liam McAtasney would kill him and/or hurt his family," one of the lead detectives on the case, Brian Weisbrot, testified at a previous hearing.

During their investigation, authorities learned that McAtasney was the last person seen with Stern before police located her abandoned car on the Route 35 bridge early Dec. 3, 2016.

Moriarty also attempted to have McAtasney's interviews with police thrown out, but English denied that motion at the Feb. 22 hearing.

Defense attorney Charles Moriarty, right, speaks with Liam McAtasney, left, at a court hearing on Jan. 3, 2018. Moriarty no longer represents McAtasney. (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Moriarty claimed McAtasney embellished stories he told A.C., an aspiring independent horror film producer, because he was constantly trying to pitch him movie ideas.

Authorities say McAtasney strangled Stern at the home she shared with her family and then stole $10,000 she had recently acquired from her grandmother.

McAtasney then had Taylor remove Stern's body from the home and help him dump it off the bridge, authorities said.

Authorities never recovered Stern's body.

Taylor, 20, has admitted his role in the coverup and agreed to testify against McAtasney.

McAtasney and Taylor attempted to thwart investigators by making it appear as if she committed suicide, authorities said.

The two, authorities say, went to extreme measures to cover their tracks, including burying the stolen money in the ground and participating in a community-organized search to find clues to help crack the case.

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.The old lions were gathered at the side of the stage where Sarah Emily Baum was delivering her speech.

They had front row seats among the 5,000 or so people gathered in Newark's Military Park during the anti-gun violence "March for Our Lives" event in the state Saturday.

As this slight young woman -- a Marlboro High School senior no more than 5-foot-3 and 100-pounds spoke with a force and passion about gun violence that drew the rapt attention of the crowd -- the old lions smiled approvingly. They had been waiting 20 years for a moment like this.

MORE: Recent Mark Di Ionno columns

And as young Ms. Baum built a seasoned preacher's rhythm to her speech, the old lions of the Newark anti-gun violence movement applauded as wildly as the rest of the crowd.

"We march to send a message to our lawmakers: Enough is enough," Baum said.

That was one of the slogans of the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition (NAVC) started by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka almost 10 years ago.

"We march for the Parkland 17 and for the 1,300 children lost to gun violence each year," Baum said.

One of the co-founders of the NAVC, Weequahic history teacher Bashir Akinyele has had 46 of his students murdered over a 20-year period.

"We march because gun violence is a public health epidemic," she said. "School shootings are not the illness, they are a single symptom. We march because our government defunded critical CDC (Center for Disease Control) research on gun violence that would save tens of thousands of lives."

Urban groups like the NAVC have been asking for gun violence -- and the costs associated with it -- to be viewed as a public health problem from the time the funding was killed in 1996 during the Bill Clinton administration.

"We march because too many children have had to scrape friends' bodies from the asphalt beside schoolyards and playgrounds," Baum said.

It was 2007, when Newark four college students were shot execution-style in the Mount Vernon School playground by members of the MS-13 gang. The "Enough is Enough" cries started strong but eventually faded out.

Larry Hamm and other members of the Newark-based People's Organization for Progress held a large sign "Stop the Violence" sign that was as old as Sarah Baum.

"That sign is 18 years old," Hamm said.

He has been protesting violence even longer, since 1993.

Hamm, along with "The Street Doctor" Earl Best, Rev. Thomas Ellis, and Zayid Muhammad of the NAVC, were among the old lions who all had the same opinion of the march.

"I've been dreaming about this for 18 years," said Best, a charismatic figure who has spent his life trying to reach and better Newark's youth.

"We've been at this a long time," said Muhammad, whose group has protested at the scene of a Newark homicide every week since 2009, drawing their own few-dozen members and family members of the those killed. "To see this, all these people, well, it's about time."

When Baum came off the stage, she posed for pictures with these groups behind their banners. It was all part of the "intersectionality" of suburbs and cities, school shootings and urban violence.

"Gun violence knows no color," said Princess Sabaroche, a senior at North Star Academy in Newark, who, like Baum, was an organizer of the event.

"The pain that the people in Parkland are feeling is the same pain that the citizens of Newark go through daily," she said.

Chartered buses from the suburbs began pulling into Military Park at 9 a.m., while NJ Transit trains carried marchers into Penn Station and Broad Street Station.

The speakers stand was set up on the NJPAC side of the park, in the shadow of the Trinity and St. Phillip's Cathedral, which predates the American Revolution by more than 50 years. The crowd gathered on the lawn between the church and Gutzon Borglum's colossal "Wars of America" sculpture.

With the backdrop of a colonial church, Baraka's mother, Amina Baraka, sounded like a Founding Father herself when she encouraged the crowd to "restore Civics" in the classroom and "study the Constitution of the United States of America."

"Resist tyranny!" she said as her parting words.

It was a crowd as demographic as the nation itself with people of every age and color. While students from 29 urban and suburban high schools organized the event with the support of several women's groups, there seemed to be more adults in the crowd than kids.

"I'm marching for my grandchildren," said one sign.

"The most lethal weapon a teacher should carry is a red pen," said another.

"I should be reading books not eulogies," said another.

There were professional banners of organizations and signs drawn in the hand of elementary school kids.

And this one captured the feeling of the day, made by a woman with a student coalition from Bloomfield, Montclair and Nutley.

"You are leaders. We've been waiting for you."

Essex County Executive Joe Di Vincenzo, moving through the crowd, seconded that opinion.

"Adults have failed these kids," he said. "They're amazing. They're going to take over. They're going to vote for people who support and respond to the them."

Zachary Dougherty, a Toms River North High School junior, enlightened the crowd on National Rifle Association political donations saying it had "contributed $5.9 million in (campaign donations) in the 2016 election cycle alone," a number that is constant over the last 20 years.

"Our generation will no longer tolerate public servants who heed the demand of the gun lobby," he said.

Dougherty introduced Gov. Phil Murphy, who warned the crowd to "never underestimate the power of the gun lobby," but implored them to show "muscle and strength" to keep at it and "win elections."

That remains to be seen. But this new partnership between cities and suburbs and blacks and whites could be the start of real gun reform.

If nothing else, it should send this message to the leaders of the gun lobby: The youthful and energized lions sneaking through the grass threatening your Second Amendment rights is not the government -- it's crime and mass shootings, and the people fed up with both.

And the NRA and the gun manufacturers that support it should think about strategies of reform before they're faced with repeal.

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.Don't Edit

Matt Gray | For NJ.com

When off-duty New Jersey State Police Trooper Kenneth Minnes came upon a crashed pickup truck a few weeks ago, a young passengers was bleeding heavily from his mangled arm.

"I saw how much blood was on his clothes," Minnes said. "I knew it was a critical injury."

He also knew that, given the extent of the damage, the man could bleed to death in minutes.

The young trooper was trained for this and that training took over. He grabbed a nearby tree branch. Other motorists had stopped to help. "I need a shirt," Minnes yelled.

With a T-shirt and that stick, Minnes fashioned a makeshift tourniquet to stop the blood loss and buy the man time until EMTs arrived.

The trooper's actions saved the man's life.

While tourniquet training is nothing new for EMTs, many police departments are now pursuing training for their officers.

Firefighters, teachers, even regular citizens are learning these skills.

Don't Edit

From the battlefield to Main Street

Tourniquet techniques were used to treat battle injuries in the Middle Ages, updated through the ages and perfected on the 21st century battlefields of the Middle East. Injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq drove aggressive use of tourniquets and other bleeding control methods.

The lessons learned in wartime are inspiring the fight to save victims of car accidents, household mishaps, stabbings and shootings.

A basic tourniquet consists of a strap formed into a loop and placed over an arm or leg. A handle is inserted through the loop and twisted to tighten the strap and restrict blood flow to that limb.

March 31 is "National Stop the Bleed Day," when instructors around the country will offer free training in bleeding control to anyone willing to learn. That includes training in using tourniquets, as well as packing and bandaging wounds.

The leading cause of preventable death among trauma patients is bleeding, according to "Stop the Bleed" organizers. An estimated 20 percent of people who have died from traumatic injuries could have survived with timely bleeding control.

Don't Edit

A former Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student weeps at a memorial for victims killed in the Feb. 23 shooting at the Florida school. (Associated Press)

Mass casualty shootings at schools, churches, nightclubs and public gathering spots have drawn attention to this issue.

"Part of this is being driven by some of the unfortunate incidents that have occurred around the country," said Gloucester County EMS Chief Andy Lovell.

Gloucester County EMS is one of those organizations offering free training on March 31.

Just as automated external defibrillators have become common fixtures in public spaces in the last 20 years, taking their place next to fire extinguishers, bleeding control kits are now joining them, Lovell said, complete with tourniquets, gauze and bandages.

You don't have to be a firefighter to use a fire extinguisher, so the same thinking goes for bleeding control. When arteries and veins are severed, the roughly 1 1/2 gallons of blood in a human body can drain away quickly.

"Some wounds are so life-threatening that they can bleed out literally within minutes," Lovell said.

Don't Edit

Cops as EMTs

Police officers are often the first on the scene of an emergency.

Recognizing this, police departments in major cities are equipping officers with tourniquets and the training to use them. But what about smaller departments?

Woodbury Police Sgt. Brian Beckett lobbied for tourniquet training for his department of 32 officers.

"I recognized the need for tourniquets and the benefits that they could provide our officers as well as the citizens we serve," he said. "Lives have been saved because of the use of tourniquets and the fact that we now have them available to us is invaluable."

Nurse Rhonda Browning, who works in the trauma center at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia, provided the training to Woodbury cops free of charge. The department also lined up funding to outfit all 32 officers with tourniquets.

"As with any new tool, proper training on its uses and techniques is imperative," Beckett said. "Rhonda Browning graciously provided this training to our officers free of cost and did so on her own time."

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

'They get a gun. They should have a tourniquet'

Browning has a personal stake in making sure officers receive this life-saving skill.

Her son is a West Deptford cop  she also trained that department  and she hopes all departments will soon make this training and equipment standard.

Penn Trauma has provided tourniquet training for Philly police, as well as city school district employees and staff at the sports stadiums.

"We're trying to get it out to everybody," Browning said.

She assumed South Jersey police departments had gone through similar training. When she found out her son's department still needed it, she got involved "and then it kind of grew from there."

She wants to see all police officers equipped and trained on tourniquet use. "The police officer is almost always the first person on the scene," Browning said. "They get a gun. They should have a tourniquet. It should be a mandatory piece of equipment."

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A standard tourniquet, this one manufactured by Tactical Medical Solutions, costs around $30.

Training already paying off

While Woodbury officers haven't needed to use their tourniquets yet, other departments have.

When Camden cop Patrick O'Hanlon was shot in the thigh while struggling with a gang member in November, he couldn't stop to take care of his injury.

O'Hanlon overpowered the suspect and subdued him until other officers arrived.

Fellow officers applied a tourniquet to O'Hanlon's leg until they could get him to a hospital for treatment.

"We got that tourniquet on him right away, got him immediately to a car and straight to Cooper Trauma," explained Camden County Police Deputy Chief Albert Handy.

The days of waiting for an ambulance to arrive are over when it comes to a serious injury like this one.

"We can get a victim to Cooper within seconds or minutes, so that time can be critical," Handy said. "The quicker we can get them there, the better chance we have of saving that life."

He recalled another case in which officers used a tourniquet on a man who suffered serious arm injuries in a dog attack.

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Instructors apply a tourniquet to the leg of a training simulator. (Robert Sciarrino | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

A change in their role

For New Jersey police officers, providing medical aid is nothing new. Most departments now supply officers with the overdose antidote naloxone in response to the opioid epidemic.

It's all part of a changing pattern in policing.

"The officer's role has kind of changed a little bit with regards to first response and delivering medical treatment," Handy said. "I think we're at the forefront when it comes to this training, carrying and application of this type of equipment."

While the traditional policing motto is "To protect and serve," Camden police have expanded on that concept.

"Our culture here is one that is embedded with the concept of the sanctity of human life," Handy said. When officers have to use force on a suspect, an arrest is immediately followed by an assessment of their quarry's medical needs, he said.

Police don't only use tourniquets to save others. They're also trained to treat themselves.

A Pennsylvania state trooper used one on himself after he was shot multiple times during a traffic stop last year. Officials credited the device with saving his life.

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Tragedies spark a movement

The national Stop the Bleed movement was born out of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and the string of mass shootings across the country in recent years.

Medical experts looked at why so many were dying in these incidents and found that blood loss was often the cause, Browning said.

The goal now, she explained, is to show teachers, secretaries, concert attendees and anyone else who encounters a traumatic situation that they don't need to wait for EMTs to arrive. With the right training, they can save lives.

That message is already having an impact, she said, pointing to the response to the Las Vegas shooting in October that claimed 58 lives and left hundreds wounded.

"If you look back at some of the pictures, a lot of people were putting makeshift tourniquets on victims," she said.

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$30 to save a life

In a conference room at the Gloucester County EMS offices, Lovell and Patrick McIlhenney, clinical education coordinator with the organization, stand over a convincing replica of a lower leg amputation. This is a training simulator attendees will practice with during the upcoming public sessions.

This is no department store mannequin leg. Between its weight and lifelike skin texture, this feels real.

Red LEDs light up in the severed end to indicate blood loss. As the tourniquet is tightened, the lights gradually blink out to signify that blood loss has been reduced. A digital readout in the upper end of limb reports how much blood was lost before the tourniquet was applied and the time it took to get bleeding under control.

"With a wound like that, that person potentially could bleed to death in two minutes," Lovell stressed.

A basic tourniquet, which costs about 30 bucks, consists of high-strength fabric, a steel handle and a buckle for locking in the handle after its been twisted as tight as possible.

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Patrick McIlhenney, clinical education coordinator for Gloucester County EMS, prepares to place a tourniquet over the leg amputation simulator. (Matt Gray | For NJ.com)

It's easier than watching someone die

McIlhenney begins by sliding the tourniquet over the severed end of the leg, bringing it as high up on the limb as possible. He pulls the tourniquet strap tight. "Make the strap as tight as possible," he says. "You really want to grab ahold of it and wrench down."

Red lights begin to blink out, showing his efforts are already yielding results. He twists the handle several times to tighten the tourniquet further. More lights go dark. He snaps the handle into the buckle, locking it into place. All of the lights are off and the "patient" is saved.

As for those who feel they might not be up to this task in the real world, Lovell has this message.

"It's far easier to apply a tourniquet and save somebody's life than to sit back and watch them die."

Because of strong public response, Gloucester County EMS has added seats for its March 31 training sessions. (ADD LINK)

To find a training session in your area, visit bleedingcontrol.org. There are currently 33 training programs being offered around New Jersey between March and October.

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A readout on the leg simulator provides feedback on how much blood was lost and how long it took to stop blood flow from the injured limb. (Matt Gray | NJ.com)

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us: nj.com/tips.A former Woodcliff Lake rabbi has been charged with sexually assaulting a boy in 1999, according to the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

Rabbi Menachem M. Weiss (Photo: BCPO)

Menachem M. Weiss, 46, of Los Angeles, was indicted by a Bergen County grand jury on March 22 on two counts of aggravated sexual assault.

Weiss is a married teacher but the prosecutor's office did not say where he teaches.

Woodcliff Lake police received information in December 2016 that a boy was sexually assaulted by Weiss between January and June 1999 when he lived in the borough, authorities said.

Weiss was arrested by the Port Authority police and was being held in the Bergen County jail pending a detention hearing.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook.Getting swallowed by a swamp on the side of the turnpike would have been a uniquely Jersey way to go.

Authorities say state troopers rescued a man stranded and freezing waist-deep in the marsh along the highway's shoulder in Elizabeth last weekend.

It's nothing unusual for an officer on patrol to find someone standing on the shoulder with their hazard lights flashing, but when Trooper Victor Rios pulled over at 4:43 a.m on St. Patrick's Day, he could hardly believe his ears.

"My cousin's stuck in the swamp," the man told him, according to dashboard video released by the State Police on Friday.

What?

"My cousin is stuck inside the swamp."

How?

The victim had unwittingly waded into the muck near mile marker 102.3 in Elizabeth while trying to walk toward a friend's disabled vehicle on the other side of the marsh, according one of the troopers at the scene.

It was a crisis right out of Bruce Springsteen's "Rosalita" -- "out stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey" -- made all the more dangerous by the frigid March night.

The man, whom police did not identify, did not realize how deep the mud was until his feet "became entrenched" halfway through his ill-fated shortcut, according to the State Police.

Trooper Reinaldo Cruz said that when he arrived to assist Rios, the scene was so dark he had to point his troop car toward the swamp and turn on a spotlight in order to see the victim trapped in the muck.

"It's as if it was quicksand or cement," Cruz told NJ Advance Media in an interview Friday. "He was already above waist-high."

The troopers spent half an hour making increasingly elaborate attempts to pull the man to safety. Rios and Cruz first took a large tree branch and extended it toward him, but the man was already in the throes of hypothermia and was too weak to grab on, police said.

More troopers arrived and attempted to make a human chain, but were unable to reach the man. Eventually another trooper, Renato Antunese, grabbed a lifeguard buoy and rope from his car and threw it toward the victim, who wrapped it around himself.

The video shows at least seven troopers pulling the yellow rope from the marsh back onto the highway's shoulder and draping the man in an emergency blanket. He was taken to Trinitas Emergency Medical Center, where he was treated and later released, police said.

Cruz said he's seen a lot in his five years patrolling the turnpike, but the incident was his first roadside swamp rescue.

"You're never going to think with freezing temperatures that you're going to have someone that will even entertain the idea of entering the water," he said.

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.The man who killed Brendan Tevlin three years ago in a terror-inspired slaying has admitted to another separate armed robbery in Ocean County that happened just days after the murder.

Ali Muhammad Brown, 34, of Seattle, Washington, pleaded guilty Friday to robbery and weapons possession charges in connection to a 2014 incident in Point Pleasant Beach, the Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph D. Coronato said in a release.

Brown admitted to approaching Harold Fournier outside of the Green Planet Coffee Shop on June 29, 2014, the release said. Brown demanded Fouriner go with him while displaying a handgun that was tucked into his waistband, according to authorities.

Fournier instead, ran inside the coffee shop screaming for help, according to the release. Brown then ordered the victim and others to the ground at gunpoint demanding the victim's keys, cellphone and wallet.

Fouriner handed over his keys and wallet, but Brown was couldn't drive away because he could drive a manual transmission car.

Brown then fled to Essex County where he committed another armed robbery, for which he was tried and convicted.

Just days before the armed robberies, Brown killed Livingston native Tevlin at a traffic light in West Orange.

Brown is scheduled to be sentenced on May 11, 2018. The state is seeking a life sentence without parole.

Brown is currently serving a 37-year sentence for the Essex County robbery, and he also faces life in prison without parole for charges of terrorism, murder, robbery and associated weapons offenses stemming from Tevlin's death.

Brown will then await extradition to the State of Washington, where he is charged in the murder of three people. He confessed to those murders when he pleaded guilty in Telvin's death.

Olivia Rizzo may be reached at orizzo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @LivRizz. Find NJ.com on FacebookGreat news: Your local police chief and school superintendent haven't been sick in 20 years. That's something that should make you knock wood and toast their good health, maybe even join in the chorus of attaboys at their retirement ceremonies. Instead, it's costing you obscene gobs of money.

Many municipal employees have banked unused sick pay for decades, which is one of the more infuriating reasons why New Jersey's property taxes are stratospheric, as this practice has dropped a $1.9 billion property tax liability on the state, according to research from N.J. Spotlight.

This gravy train must end, so the state Senate is moving a bill that caps accumulated unused sick pay for all public employees at $15,000, the same limit that was applied to state workers who were hired after 2010.

Currently, there is no cap on county and local workers, which is why people like Jersey City police chief Phil Zacche walked away with an extra $512,000, the result of banking 450 unused sick and vacation days. That's more than enough to cover the $250,000 fine he received after pleading guilty to fraud and embezzlement in January, but we digress.

But Zacche is hardly alone, and if you ask the average taxpayer, they'd probably say he is entitled to nothing at all. You don't get to pile up unused sick pay if you work in the private sector. Sick pay is for when you get sick, just as unemployment is for the unemployed.

Yet despite its absurd tax burden, New Jersey has tolerated this scam for years. It should have been shut down in 2010, when Gov. Christie signed a bill that capped unused absences for new state employees at $15,000, and then asked for another bill that would scrap such payouts entirely. It never came, and billions later, the bank is still open.

The new bill, sponsored by Budget Committee chair Paul Sarlo, D-Bergen, and Sen. Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth, allows some to be grandfathered into the old system: Everyone can keep what they've banked, but that's where the vault door slams shut. They can still collect days to use toward extended illnesses, but they cannot cash in more than $15,000 upon retirement.

Both Gov. Murphy and Senate President Steve Sweeney have expressed support for the bill, but both will face a union stress test. The objection from PBA president Pat Colligan is predictable: "It's discouraging that the Legislature wants to collectively bargain for us," he says. "If the towns can't afford to pay, they can negotiate it away."

A colleague, John Sierchio, an Essex County cop for 27 years and a police union rep for 17, disagrees.

"Union leadership has always fought this, but the rank and file guys are for this bill," said Sierchio, a trustee for the police and firefighter pension plan. "It's never the patrolman who gets these ridiculous payouts, it's always the chief or captains - the fair-haired boys at the top of the food chain. At the end of the day, we're all taxpayers, and this is just wrong."

Gopal put it this way: "This is a property tax issue, and it gives all public employees a bad name when people cash out like this. But remember, these people collecting checks took advantage of the rules. It's up to government to change it."

In a state where the average homeowner paid $8,549 in property tax last year, this is one of the easy ways for government to change it. Don't pass it up.

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.WASHINGTON -- Your lawmakers in Washington last year spent spent more than $666,000 in taxpayer money on mailings, robocalls and other communications to show you what they're doing, according to a new report tracking members of the U.S. House.

Known as "franking," the funds go to such things as legislative updates, newsletters and notices about upcoming public events featuring the officeholder, leading critics to question the practice.

"All this franked mail looks just like campaign mail," said Craig Holman, a lobbyist with Public Citizen, an advocacy group that supports stronger ethics laws.

"It will have a picture of the candidate and what wonderful things he or she has done in Congress. It then is sent to the constituents who vote for the member of Congress."

Rep. Chris Smith, R-4th Dist., spent more than any other New Jersey lawmaker in 2017, $158,665, according to reports from the Clerk of the House.

Smith spokesman Matt Hadro had no immediate comment.

Second was Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-3rd Dist., who represents one of the 33 GOP-held districts that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said it has the best change of capturing in this fall's election because he has supported President Donald Trump on tax cuts and killing Obamacare.

He spent $154,845.

"Every member of Congress gets the same annual budget, which Congressman MacArthur prefers to spend on communicating with his constituents instead of paying for swanky office space and exorbitant travel," spokeswoman Camille Gallo said. "Tom is not going to apologize for telling the people he represents what he is working on in Congress and that his offices are here to help them."

The top Democrat was Rep. Donald Norcross, D-1st Dist., who also hit six figures by spending $114,789.

Norcross said the mailings provide lawmakers with a much-needed way to let their constituents know what's going on.

"With so much news happening and so many issues facing New Jersey's families, it's important for me to communicate directly with residents, inform them about my work in Congress, invite them to community events, and explain how our office helps people every day," said Norcross, D-1st Dist.

At the other end of the scale, Reps. Donald Payne Jr., D-10th Dist., and Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd Dist., spent no money. LoBiondo is retiring after his term ends next January.

"Congressman LoBiondo made a 'No Franking' promise when he came to Congress in 1995, to not spend taxpayer dollars on the 'glossy brochures' that members send to their constituents," said Jason Galanes, a spokesman for LoBiondo, who is not seeking re-election. "He has kept that promise throughout his 24 years."

These mailings give lawmakers a taxpayer-funded edge over their challengers, even though they can't be sent out close to an election, Holman said.

"It is designed to give the incumbent a leg up over their opponents," Holman said. "First of all, the opponents don't get the franking privilege and second, the incumbent is actually using taxpayer dollars to have an advantage over anyone who wishes to challenge him or her."

New Jersey could see several competitive congressional races change parties, especially in Republican-held districts in a state where only 32 percent supported Republican Trump.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.It was smooth sailing.

A cargo ship carrying two massive cranes from China safely edged its way under the twin spans of the Delaware Memorial Bridge around midnight Friday, officials said.

The Zhen Hua 16 was carrying the cranes on the last leg of an approximately 90-day voyage from their manufacturer in Shanghai to the port in Philadelphia.

All went as planned with the trip under the two four-lane bridges, according to Jim Salmon, spokesman for the bridges' operator, the Delaware River and Bay Authority.

Traffic was halted on the spans for about 15 minutes as a precaution and to prevent drivers from being distracted.

Stopping traffic on both spans of the bridge was a rarity, officials said. The cranes are believed to be one of the largest cargoes ever to sail under the twin spans.

Originally it was thought the Zhen Hua 16 would pass under the bridges sometime around 1 a.m. Saturday.

The passage came at low tide to give the cranes extra clearance under the bridge. While it was first thought it might be a tight squeeze, there was a space of 5 feet, 8 inches between the top of the cranes and the steel supports under the roadway of the bridges.

The bridges at mid-span are just under 200 feet above the river.

The cranes heading up the Delaware Rive to pass under the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Posted by Ted Kingston Photography on Saturday, March 24, 2018

After navigating under the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the Zhen Hua 16 was set to clear the Commodore Barry Bridge which crosses the river between Chester, Pa., and Bridgeport.

Michael Howard, principal engineer for the Delaware River Port Authority, the Commodore Barry's operator, said Friday that span would also be closed to traffic briefly.

Howard said there would be plenty of clearance under the five-lane bridge since the Zhen Hua 16 was expected to arrive overnight at a lower tide period.

Once it approaches its final destination, the ship will wait in the Delaware River at the Mantua Creek Anchorage near Philadelphia International Airport. It is scheduled to sail from the anchorage to the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal between 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. where it will dock to unload the cranes.

Once in place, the cranes will be used to unload cargo from ships at the terminal.

Suggested locations to see the ship and its unusual cargo from the New Jersey shoreline include Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park and Proprietors Park and Freedom Pier, both in Gloucester City.

Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tipsTwo young people are accused of posting on social media pictures of an overdosed teen's body before deciding to drive the woman to the hospital instead of calling 911.

After an "extended period of time," John Garrett Guffey and Lillie Marie Cooper drove the victim to the hospital, according to Marshall County, Alabama, authorities. But, they ran out of gas before reaching the emergency room, said Heath Thomas, a spokesman for the sheriff's office.

Guffey, 19, and Cooper, 18, have been indicted on charges of corpse abuse and criminally negligent homicide, Thomas said. They are held in the Marshall County Jail with bail set at $10,000.

The incident happened April 23, 2017. Guntersville Fire and Rescue crews were called to the Mapco station on U.S. 431 to help an unresponsive woman who was in a vehicle.

Investigators determined the woman had died from an overdose at a home on Old Union Road in Grant. Rather than calling 911, the suspects took a picture of the woman's body and posted it to social media, authorities said. The victim's name hasn't been released by authorities.

"After an extended period of time, the two decided to take the young lady to the hospital in a privately owned vehicle rather than calling 911," the sheriff's office news release says. "They ran out of gas near the Mapco station as they neared downtown Guntersville."

The sheriff's office sent the investigative file to the Marshall County District Attorney's office for review, and a grand jury determined there is enough evidence to prosecute the suspects. A prosecutor wasn't immediately available for comment, and the sheriff's office didn't release further details.In the month since Azrial Moye's older brother was shot dead in New Orleans, Moye has often found himself playing the drum his brother gave him the last time they saw each other and reflecting on his sibling's life, "and what has happened."

His brother, Muhiyidin d'Baha, a 32-year-old Black Lives Matter activist well known in Charleston, S.C., where d'Baha lived, was killed Feb. 6 while riding his bicycle in New Orleans. An activist in the movement against police violence and also a musician, d'Baha was in town for Mardi Gras and staying in the Mid-City area.

New Orleans police believe he was shot in the 2400 block of Bienville Street, then left a five-block trail of blood when he apparently continued to pedal. His body was found about 1:30 a.m. in the 2200 block of Bienville, across the street from a bloody mountain bike.

Moye said his family is eager for justice in his brother's death but has heard few updates to indicate the NOPD has leads to help catch his killer. "We haven't got much details from investigators as far as what actually happened," Moye said.

The NOPD issued a news release about two weeks after the d'Baha was killed, asking for tips and stating police believed the shooter might have been trying to rob d'Baha. A spokesman for the department, Aaron Looney, said in an email Friday (March 23) there were no updates NOPD could publicly release.

Moye said he worries the case will go cold.

d'Baha, whose legal surname is also Moye, was one of nine siblings, said his 24-year-old brother. d'Baha played many instruments -- guitar, flute, piano, marimba -- but was best known for the Djembe drum. Moye said playing the drum d'Baha brought him back from Ghana, has taken on new meaning since his brother's death. When he plays, Moye said, "I reflect on my brother's life, reflect on how he lived in service to others."

It is time, Moye said, for that service that defined d'Baha's life to be paid forward to honor his brother's memory.

"If anybody is... knows anything or heard something, come forward to honor my brother in that way," Moye said. "My brother was a voice for justice for so many who didn't have a voice." People who know something, he said, "can do the same."

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

A year ago, d'Baha drew national attention with a famed leap on a live TV news broadcast, hurtling past yellow police tape and throwing himself toward a Confederate battle flag in someone's hands, tearing it down during a protest in Charleston.

(Warning: This video contains offensive language)

The flag was being waved before an appearance by activist Bree Newsome at the College of Charleston. In 2015, Newsome became an iconic figure after she scaled a flagpole to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse, following the killing of nine African-American members of the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.

D'Baha's passing has brought to light all the good work he had been doing when many people "from different walks of life" shared how he touched their lives, Moye said. "We're proud of that."

While God gives him peace, Moye said, he and his family are yearning for justice in the case.

"I think what justice demands is an account of what happened -- and not for it to be ignored," Moye said. "A man was killed."

New Orleans murder map 2018

Anyone with information about the Feb. 6 fatal shooting of d'Baha is asked to contact NOPD Homicide Detective Brett Mathes at 504-658-5300. Anonymous tips can be submitted to Crimestoppers by calling 504-822-1111 or toll-free 1-877-903-STOP.A graduate of Isidore Newman School pleaded guilty Friday (March 23) to vandalizing the Uptown high school and several other buildings with graffiti --including "threatening and vulgar" messages -- nearly two years ago, according to the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office.

Peter Curtis, 21, pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanor counts of criminal damage to property as part of a plea deal that spared him a felony conviction, the DA's office said. The charges were amended from felony counts of criminal damage to property greater than $500.

Curtis, a 2015 graduate of Newman, was arrested Aug. 18, 2016, shortly after authorities say he vandalized his alma mater, at 1903 Jefferson Ave., sparking an investigation that involved the FBI and delayed the start of school.

The "threatening and vulgar" graffiti appeared Aug. 17, 2016, on several areas of Newman's campus. One of the messages read, in part: "No one belongs here so tear down this f---ing place." The message went on to threaten deadly violence. Another two-word message used expletives.

As part of the plea agreement, Curtis, who now attends college out of state, received a six-month suspended jail sentence for each count, to run concurrently, along with six months of inactive probation, according to Cannizzaro's spokesman Ken Daley.

Curtis must also pay $4,831 in restitution to affected property owners, per order of Orleans Parish Criminal District Judge Arthur Hunter.

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

At the request of the DA's office, Hunter also issued an order banning Curtis from the properties he vandalized, along with an order prohibiting Curtis from owning or possessing guns while on probation.

In addition to the August 2016 graffiti, investigators also tied Curtis to two other graffiti acts at Newman, both reported in July 2016. In those same months he also vandalized the front door and a sign at Tulane University's Newcomb Children's Center, on Plum Street, church doors at St. George's Episcopal School and two walls at the Children's Advocacy Center in Children's Hospital, authorities said.

Surveillance video from some of the sites and from near Curtis' Uptown home helped lead New Orleans police to Curtis, according to an arrest warrant.

Curtis entered his guilty plea the morning he was scheduled to begin trial. Assistant DA Eric Cusimano prosecuted the case, and attorney Gary Bizal has represented Curtis, according to Orleans Parish court records.

According to the DA's office, Newman School officials said they had no objection to Curtis pleading guilty to misdemeanor counts. Curtis has undergone counseling since his arrest and has begun college without "further incident," Daley said.

NOLA.com|The Times-Picayune's Emily Lane contributed to this report.Police are searching for a man suspected of twice attacking a Thai food truck parked at the Algiers Point ferry terminal.

Just after 8 p.m. on March 14, the man stuck his head inside the driver's side window of the Thai D-Jing truck and threatened to shoot the employees if they did not hand over their money, police said. The employees complied and the man fled on foot, according to NOPD.

A week later, at the same location and roughly at the same time, Thai D-Jing employees saw the man again approaching the truck and locked the doors. The man tried to open the doors before jumping on the hood of the truck, screaming and pointing a gun, according to the truck's owner. Fearing for his life, the owner pulled out his own gun and fired one shot through the window, causing the man to flee.

Nearby surveillance video caught the man on camera the night of the second incident. Police described him as a 20 to 30 year old man of thin build and roughly 5 feet 7 inches tall, possibly with a very thin beard. He was last seen wearing a black, red and yellow hat, a dark colored hoodie, dark jeans, black and white shoes and a bright orange or red backpack. He was armed with a small revolver.

Anyone with information regarding these incidents or the man's whereabouts is asked to contact Detective LaKeith Jernigan or any Fourth District detective at 504-658-6040 or 504-658-6045 or to contact Crimestoppers anonymously at (504)822-1111 or toll free at 1-(877)-903-7867.Buried at sea: As cemeteries on Louisiana's coast wash away, so does historyThe youngest victims of the opioid epidemic in Louisiana could be helped by a proposal headed for a full vote at the House of Representatives on March 29.

Authored by Sen. Walt Leger, HB 658 proposes the creation of a neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) pilot project within the state's Department of Health.

Infants born with this condition often experience withdrawal after birth, resulting in side effects such as sweating, trembling, vomiting, seizures and trouble sleeping. The project aims to establish a multi-disciplinary team within the department that will guide best treatment options for babies born in withdrawal from opiates.

The number of newborns in Louisiana born in withdrawal from drugs and alcohol almost tripled over an eight-year period ending in 2016, according to the Department of Children and Family Services.

In 2008, hospitals reported 569 newborns with drugs or alcohol in their systems at birth. That number increased to 1,659 in 2016. Opiates were a big driver in the increase.

Infants born with NAS jumped from 2.1 per 1,000 births to 8 per 1,000 births in the Medicaid population.

In February, a Louisiana family became what is believed to be the first in the country to file a class action lawsuit against several pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributers on behalf of babies born addicted to opioids. The legal team representing the lead plaintiff, a now 3-year-old boy from Slidell, is seeking damage payments to fund his long-term treatment for developmental issues he has experienced since birth, such as difficulties learning how to speak.

Maria Clark covers healthcare and immigration for NOLA.com | The Times Picayune and NOLA Mundo. Reach her at mclark@nola.com or 504.258.5306. Or follow me on Twitter at @MariaPClark1.Waiters and servers may sigh with relief now that President Donald Trump has signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill to keep the government operating through Sept. 30. Tucked into the measure is a little-known provision that forbids food service outlets from pocketing a portion of tips, CNN Money reports.

Last year, the Labor Department proposed a rule authorizing restaurants to share waiters and servers' tips with cooks. Under the rule, employers could do so if each worker made at least the minimum wage.

Workers' right groups protested nationally. The National Restaurant Association said it never asked for such a rule.

The matter was put to rest in the spending bill that the House passed Thursday and the Senate passed Friday. It prohibits the practice of pocketing tips, but still allows for tip pooling.Salt Grass Steak House is coming to Slidell and will build on a site at the Fremaux Town Center mixed-use development, said Stirling Properties, which owns and operates the development.

The steak house will be built on 1.58 acres in Fremaux Park, a tract surrounding the Fremaux Town Center, the company said in a news release this week.

The company said the Texas-themed steak house will be 7,127 square feet and will be adjacent to LA Fitness at the intersection of Town Center Parkway and Levis Lane.

Construction will begin in the next couple of weeks.

This will be the first Saltgrass restaurant on the North Shore. Saltgrass operates five restaurants in Louisiana, including one in Metairie.

Last August, Slidell Mayor Freddy Drennan mentioned the anticipated construction of the steak house during his annual state of city address to the East St. Tammany Chamber of Commerce.The state will soon be pushing the locally elected officials of Powhatan out of the way to administer the finances of the northwest Louisiana village that in mid-July had only $105 in its general fund and is hiring a cop to drum up some money fromMar 24, 2018 NR

Lakshya Productions has in association with People Media Factory today launched its Production No. 1 titled '2 States'. An adaptation of Chetan Bhagath's best-seller '2 States', the film stars Adivi Sesh and debutante Shivani Rajasekhar in lead roles.

The launch event was a big affair graced by some of the most respected names. The first clap was given by SS Rajamouli garu, and K Raghavendra Rao garu directed the first shot. Senior actor & Rebel Star Krishnam Raju garu switched on the camera. T Subbarami Reddy garu was there to bless the team, while Kodi Ramakrishna garu made it a point to call Shivani his "family heroine". VV Vinayak was there to bless his disciple, director Venkat Kuncham.

Speaking on the occasion, producer MLV Satyanarayana said, "We need the blessings of the audience. We are very confident that '2 States' will turn out to be one of the best films."

Vivek Kuchibotla, the film's co-producer, said, "On behalf of TG Vishwa Prasad garu of People Media Factory, I thank you all for making this launch event a grand success. We are coming up with a very good film."

Cinematographer Shaneil Deo, who has previously worked on 'Kshanam' and who is working on 'Goodachari', said, "I am looking forward to capturing the lovely lead pair of the movie with my lens." The talented cameraman was once nominated at Cannes Film Festival.

Anup Rubens said, "I am happy to be doing this project. I have watched the original. The story has plentiful scope for music. With their writing, the writing department has taken the film to the next level. MLV Satyanarayana garu is a passionate producer. I am glad to be associated with Vivek Kuchibotla garu. The film has a lot of positive vibes going for it.

Director Venkat Kuncham said, "It's a big day for us. We are happy you showed your love for us. Since the time I came on board as the director, we have worked on the script many times. It's not easy to make an adaptation. Together with my writing team comprising Madhu Srinivas (co-screenplay writer) and Mithun Chaithanya (dialogue writer), we have brought out a fresh script. Adivi Sesh is an extraordinary performance. And Shivani is a fresh talent. When I approached her with the script, she was excited to do the film. Anup Rubens has already composed three excellent tunes. I thank VV Vinayak garu, who is my Guru, for being here today."

Shivani Rajasekhar said, "I thank director Venkat for offering me a challenging role. Venkat and Chaithanya have done a great job as co-writers. I have known Anup Rubens for many years now. I love his songs a lot. The producers are taking care of me like a princess. I thank my parents (Rajasekhar and Jeevitha) for letting me act!"

Adivi Sesh said, "Venkat is a dear friend of mine. I always wanted to do a true-blue love story. I watched the Hindi '2 States' thrice in the theater. A very energetic team is on board. Shivani, my co-star, is quite expressive. Hit or flop, I have always tried to do fresh films in my career."

Shooting schedules:

The film's first schedule will start in Hyderabad from April 5 and end on April 19. The second schedule will happen in May in Kolkata. The third schedule will happen in the US. Click the Movie button below for more info:

2 States RemakeThe age of the classic 4x4 is truly upon us. Iconic 4x4 vehicle shapes are re-emerging everywhere, and classic vehicles are fetching impressive used market values. The "new" Mahindra ROXOR sets to capitalize on this trend and reintroduce the classic Willys CJ3 to the North American market, but not in the way you might hope.



The ROXOR is being sold through powesports dealers as a UTV, or side-by-side. It will not be street legal in the US, as there is no way it could meet safety, crash or emissions standards. So yes, you can now buy a new modern interpretation of the Willys CJ3, but you'll have to keep it off public roads in most states.

READ MORE: How Much Does the Mahindra Roxor Cost? We Compare it With the Competition

Mahindra has continually made a version of the old Willys CJ3 since 1947. The version they make for the Indian street legal market today is called the Thar. The Thar looks much more like a Wrangler from the 1990s than it does an old CJ, but that is because it has been modernized to meet the road legal standards that have developed in India.

MANA, Mahindra Automotive North America, is exclusively building the ROXOR at its new headquarters and manufacturing facilities, 400,000 sq/ft worth, in Auburn Hills, MI. They have already invested over $230 million into the program, and plan to invest another $600 million by 2020. The $19 billion Mahindra Corporation has big plans for the North American automotive market, and the ROXOR is just the beginning. With 50% of global off road vehicles (ORV) sales coming from the US, Mahindra thinks it's a good place to start.

Knock-down vehicle kits will be manufactured in India and shipped to Michigan, where they will combine with about 20% US sourced content to create the ROXOR. MANA is aiming for 51% US content in the ROXOR, but that will take some time to accomplish.

The DNA of the original CJ is alive and well in the new ROXOR. While it offers a few modern touches, it has nearly the same metal body, boxed steel frame and solid axels suspended from leaf springs at all four corners. Modern touches like hydraulic power steering, front disk brakes, quality high/low beam headlights and proven all terrain tires make the ROXOR easier to live with than the original.

Be prepared for the ride you'd expect from a classic fully leaf sprung CJ3. It is certainly not smooth off road, especially at speed, but I would call it fun. While Mahindra recommends 28 PSI in the 30-inch BFGoodrcih T/A KO2 tires, airing them down to a much lower PSI greatly improves the off-road ride characteristics. The ROXOR also comes with a very basic mono-tube shock, which is ripe for replacement with an upgraded aftermarket unit.

Powered by a 2.5-liter inline four-cylinder turbo-diesel this little off-road machine isn't exactly fast, and there is a Bosh engine controller that limits the vehicle to 45 mph. The turbo-diesel puts out 62hp and 144 lb-ft of torque, resulting in great low-end that makes driving the ROXOR at slow speeds through difficult terrain extremely enjoyable. The power delivery is smooth and overall it's impressively quiet.

One thing you won't get with the ROXOR is an automatic transmission, at least not yet. You must be able to handle a proper 5-speed manual transmission in order to drive the ROXOR, making it one of the more unique setups on the side-by-side market, as most models use CVTs. Besides being unique, it's one of the easiest manuals that I've ever driven. The clutch pedal is light, the gearbox smooth and the engine is really hard to stall.

At launch the ROXOR will come in a base model ($15,400) and a Limited Edition LE ($18,400) model. The vehicle is essentially the same, but the LE model adds on a ton of useful bolt on accessories like a 40-inch KC HiLights Light Bar, Bestop Bikini Soft Top, Warn M8000 Winch, HD front bumper and winch mounting plate, HD battery and an MTX AM/FM Bluetooth Sound Bar.

Useful features aren't limited to the LE model though, as every ROXOR gets some thoughtful touches, like the under seat locking storage, under both seats. There are quite a few accessory switch cutouts, with covers, in the firewall, which will make it extremely easy to add electric accessories. A solid grab bar is mounted within easy reach of the passenger, with a fun sticker behind it that says "Don't Do Anything Stupid!" While that might not be too hard for the passenger, the driver might have trouble following that suggestion, as the ROXOR is a hoot to drive and push the vehicle's limits.

A ton of accessories are in the works for the ROXOR, both by the company itself and the aftermarket industry. Things like a hardtop, full soft cabin enclosure, e-lockers, bead lock wheels and more are coming very soon. Comfort features like AC and heat are also in the works. Even heated and cooled seats and a heated steering wheel are already being tested. While the ROXOR is just a two-seater now, rear passenger seats will also be available soon.

As with any new vehicle there are still kinks to work out and improvements that can be made. At over 20-feet, the turning radius on the ROXOR is quite bad. Apparently in order to get the gearbox into 2wd you need to be in 4Hi and rolling. While I was never able to get the ROXOR into 2wd, 4Hi and 4Lo were easy to engage and are really the only drive modes you're going to need with this off road only vehicle.

Another little gripe we have is with the headlight rocker switch, which has its low beam on an up click and high beams on a down click. The issue is that the neutral centered position turns the lights off, which is not intuitive. More than once myself and other test drivers left the headlights on without knowing it. The standard horn on the ROXOR can also be best described as cute, as it makes a pathetic little sound. A dead pedal for the driver's left foot would also be a welcome addition, as when bouncing around off road it's nice to brace yourself into the seat with pressure on your left foot.

Both models of the ROXOR are arriving at powersports dealers across North America now. The company has over 150 dealers already signed up, and expects to have about 300 very soon. It shouldn't be hard to find a dealer near you to go check one of these fun machines out for yourself.

A former Clackamas County probation officer was sentenced Friday to 35 years and one month in prison for repeatedly raping two girls beginning when they were 5 and 7.

Clackamas County Circuit Judge Michael Wetzel sentenced Gordon Mead Jr., 69, for first-degree rape, first-degree sexual abuse and first-degree sodomy of the two girls, which occurred separately between 2004 and 2012, court records show. A county jury found Mead guilty of the charges on March 2.

One of the girls told her parents about the abuse in November 2015 when she was 12 and police were notified, court documents show. She also directed investigators to the older victim, who had revealed to her that Mead had abused her as well.

Mead was indicted in June 2016.

Mead worked for the Clackamas County parole and probation office from November 1983 until he resigned in May 2001, state records show. He was a Clackamas County deputy between August 1975 and February 1982.

A third person testified during a pre

-

trial hearing in the case, saying Mead raped her in the mid-80s, when she was 9, according to a memo by the district attorney's office. The woman claimed she was too frightened to tell anyone for years.

Mead wasn't charged for any alleged abuse against her.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBaileyThe "Keep On The Sunnyside" mural along Southeast 30th Avenue at Belmont Street. (Dave Killen/Staff)

A fresh coat of paint and a new look have come to the "Keep on the Sunnyside" mural.

The mural, at Southeast 30th Avenue and Southeast Belmont Street, celebrates the history and character of Southeast Portland's Sunnyside neighborhood. But the mural's 10 panels, first painted in 1996, faded over the years from multiple power washings, time and neglect. The Portland Street Art Alliance, which promotes the work of muralists and other street artists in Portland, gained permission from the original muralist, Jennifer "Jenny" Joyce, to re-paint the mural.

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A panel of the "Keep On The Sunnyside" mural along Southeast 30th Avenue at Belmont Street. (Dave Killen/Staff)

One of its panels features the Thaddeus Fisher House and the house that is home to the Pied Cow Coffeehouse, both Victorians listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Portraits of people, and a dog, meant to represent those who live in Sunnyside, populate another panel.

The street art alliance celebrated the mural's completion in January. It is one of dozens of murals that have been painted in Portland in the last five years. One can hardly drive down Southeast Stark Street or through other parts of Portland without seeing murals on the walls of businesses and other buildings.

That's because as art galleries in Portland are closing due to rising rents, murals have become a way for Portland artists to continue working in the city. In the process, they've brought art to all Portlanders, whether they were looking for it or not.

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"Women Making History in Portland," a mural on North Clark Avenue in Portland. (Beth Nakamura/Staff)

Traditionally, murals portray a scene or person evocative of the history of a place. "Women Making History in Portland," a mural painted in 2007 at 2335 N. Clark Ave., celebrates women who have made political and social contributions to Oregon. Another mural, on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, commemorates "Working" Kirk Reeves, a street performer who entertained countless motorists and passers-by on the Hawthorne Bridge before his death in 2012.

But the murals being painted in Portland now show an eclectic range of style and bring contemporary art to the streets.

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A mural near Southeast Stark Street and 11th Avenue in Portland. (Mark Graves/Staff)

One shows a Cheshire Cat-like monster, smile stretching across the entire wall. On another, a fox looks back at a rabbit, both leaping in mid-air. The words "nothing good comes easy" are interspersed through the scene. Cheerful robots that adorn one wall alongside Southeast Stark are accompanied with the question, "What brings you joy?" On a wall of the Academy Theater in the Montavilla neighborhood, an outstretched hand catches drops of rainwater.

Tiffany Conklin, co-founder and co-director of the Portland Street Art Alliance, says that murals of contemporary art give artists more autonomy and allow for greater artistic expression. "Artists are coming up with conceptual and abstract designs, playing around with designs," she says.

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A mural near 2735 E. Burnside St., Portland. (Mark Graves/Staff)

Gage Hamilton, a founder of the public art nonprofit Forest for the Trees, which brings muralists from around the world to Portland, says traditional murals can be "really limiting" and that murals with a wider range of style can convey different messages, whether they be political, emotional, or critical of the mural's subject. Or, he says, they can simply bring "beauty or joy" to someone's day.

Many of Portland's new murals are due to the work of Forest For The Trees. Hamilton and Matt Wagner, the owner of Hellion Gallery in Northwest Portland, founded the organization five years ago with the goal of bringing contemporary public art work to Portland and ensuring "that the creative community was still strong and has a place in the visual landscape of the city," Hamilton says.

"We feel that people's visual surroundings make a big difference in how they feel about their identity, the city's identity," Hamilton says. "And people should have access to that, rather than having things hidden in galleries and institutions."

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A mural titled "Soul" by artist Paola Delfin on the Lovejoy Medical Building at 525 N.W. Lovejoy St. in Portland. (Drew Vattiat/Staff)

Each August, Forest For the Trees hosts a weeklong event that brings close to two dozen artists to the city to work on murals. Since the organization's founding, it has sponsored the creation of 75 murals in Portland.

When Forest For the Trees first started, Hamilton walked along Southeast Stark Street, which is close to where he lives, asking permission of building owners to paint murals. Now, he says, there is a "market demand" from business owners and neighborhood associations to have murals painted.

"It activates an area that was maybe neglected before," Hamilton says. "It just draws more attention."

For emerging artists, murals have become a way of expanding their repertoire and building their portfolios.

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The "Other Hand" mural at 7818 S.E. Stark St., Portland. (Mark Graves/Staff)

"Other Hand," the mural on the Academy Theater's wall, is the first mural that Olivia Knapp, a Seattle-based artist, has painted. Knapp, who primarily does commercial commissions for advertising agencies, got the mural commission from Wagner, the gallery owner, who knew of her work.

Without the connection, Knapp doubts she would have been able to work on the project. "I know firsthand that most people will not commission you to do work unless there's proof that you've done that work before," she says.

Conklin agrees, adding that many emerging artists resort to "working in the streets illegally to build a portfolio."

Painting a mural takes a tremendous amount of time - Knapp worked 12 hours each day for 12 days to paint "Other Hand." The "Keep on the Sunnyside" mural took more than 300 hours over six months to paint.

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A mural near 1005 S.E. Stark St., Portland. Mark Graves/Staff

Murals can also be quite expensive, costing upwards of $10,000 in labor and materials. Funding for the $4,800 budget for repainting "Keep on the Sunnyside" came from the community nonprofit Southeast Uplift, the neighborhood association and a fundraising campaign.

Conklin and Hamilton say their organizations can help artists with fundraising and other logistics. For "Keep on Sunnyside," the Portland Street Art Alliance also spent hours researching the Sunnyside neighborhood's history at the Oregon Historical Society and Architectural Heritage Center, as well as gathering oral histories from longtime Sunnyside residents.

Conklin says those interested in the mural, its history and the neighborhood's history can visit the website keeponthesunnyside.org, and she hopes that anyone who sees the newly redone mural will appreciate the history of the neighborhood, painted "in a fresh, cool way."

For locations of murals painted by Forest For the Trees, visit forestforthetreesnw.com.By Daniel Schwoerer and Lani McGregor

There is widespread agreement that Oregon must do more to curb its toxic air emissions. But important lessons should be learned from the state's treatment of Bullseye Glass in 2016 after the community raised concerns about emissions from our glass factory. Despite our small company's decades of compliance with Oregon Department of Environmental Quality regulations and the immediate actions we voluntarily took to address concerns, the state scapegoated our company, employing scare tactics, flawed science and discriminatory standards. Even now, Bullseye continues to be subjected to standards and timelines far more rigorous than those now offered to major polluters. Cleaner Air Oregon (SB 1541) reveals the hypocrisy of the state's position on Oregon's air quality.

If the key to creating a better way to control air toxics in the future is to avoid the mistakes of the past, what can we learn from Bullseye Glass that's useful while rejecting the flaws of SB 1541?

Make sure regulations are based on real science and clear standards

Avoid creating a cottage industry of lawsuits based on poor data and false and inflammatory government statements.

Protect public health by implementing clear, tough regulations developed through

In the wake of the Bullseye fiasco, the Legislature has passed a flawed measure -- SB 1541. If the health standards embodied in this bill and the 10-year period of compliance constitute acceptable standards and risks for the state, then Gov. Kate Brown and her agencies need to admit that they rushed to judgment in the Bullseye case, scared a neighborhood, panicked an entire city and put people out of work, all to burnish their reputation as tough politicians and regulators. On the other hand, if Gov. Brown believes the state acted appropriately with respect to Bullseye Glass, then she should veto SB 1541 for failure to implement stronger regulatory air standards.

Dan Schwoerer and Lani McGregor are co-owners of Bullseye Glass Co., a factory that Schwoerer founded in 1974 to make colored glass for art and architecture.A Keizer police officer won't face criminal charges for fatally shooting a man authorities say was on the run after robbing a Pizza Hut at gunpoint on March 14.

A Marion County grand jury ruled Friday that Officer Tyler Wampler was legally justified in shooting 26-year-old Ryan Chapman in a cul-de-sac on Springtime Court. He had a .22-caliber silver pistol in his hand when he was shot, the county district attorney's office said.

According to witnesses, Chapman drove away from the Pizza Hut along River Road North and was soon spotted and chased by Wampler, a 26-year-old veteran, and three other officers around 6 p.m. Chapman crashed into another car after a mileslong chase, ran from his car and was chased down by Wampler and Officer Carrie Anderson, who has been with the Keizer Police Department for 23 years.

Chapman kept running after Wampler, carrying an AR-15 rifle, told him to stop or he'd be shot, the district attorney's office said.

At one point, Chapman was stopped between two cars in a driveway. He raised one hand when the two officers told him to and yelled that he had a gun, which he was holding in his other hand.

Wampler ordered Chapman to drop the handgun several times, but he didn't, the district attorney's office said. Wampler shot Chapman once in the head sometime after. The $540 taken from the Pizza Hut was found in Chapman's backpack, the district attorney's office said.

An autopsy determined Chapman had methamphetamine, opiates and THC in his system when he was killed. Police said he matched a physical description and was wearing similar clothes to a suspect believed to have committed several other armed robberies this year in the Salem and Keizer area.

Chapman is the fourth person killed by police in Oregon this year. Two occurred in Washington County and the other in Lane County.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBaileyA Washington County sheriff's employee who was sexually harassed by a former jail corporal told an investigator that his colleague repeatedly sexually touched him at work, laughed about it and threatened to rape his dog, police reports in the criminal investigation show.

The reports show Kevin Kearns had a work reputation for improper conduct but was never disciplined, despite warnings from some of his superiors. About half a dozen sergeants and other sheriff's office workers also were interviewed related to the criminal case, and they described Kearns as "super inappropriate," "often 'foul,'" and said he had a habit of making "really bad, off-color comments."

The accuser told an investigator that Kearns "enjoys shocking people," and that co-workers routinely wrote off his inappropriate behavior as normal.

Kearns, 45, of Cornelius pleaded guilty in Washington County Circuit to harassment and was sentenced to a year of probation on Feb. 26. Kearns admitted to poking the male employee's buttocks with his thumb while they were both working at the county jail in October.

The co-worker filed a formal complaint with the sheriff's office about Kearns on Dec. 6. Kearns was placed on leave the next day and arrested a week after that. The accuser told three sergeants of his concerns just before and after he filed the complaint.

Claims that Kearns touched the man's genitals were dropped as part of a plea deal. Kearns also agreed to quit the sheriff's office, where he had been for nearly 12 years, and give up his state corrections certification.

A female sheriff's office employee also came forward after Kearns' arrest, saying he had inappropriately touched her and made sexual comments to her at work that she initially brushed off, but decided to tell her superiors after receiving a work email mentioning the Kearns criminal case, the reports said.

The misconduct she recalled included Kearns repeatedly putting his hand on her inner thigh and moving it toward her crotch, simulating a sex act on her arm while grunting, and making comments about her dating history, the reports said.

The woman said she at times would say inappropriate comments back to Kearns because she always thought he was joking with her and once held his hand while at work. She said she has since regretted it because she feels it likely encouraged his behavior toward her, the reports said.

Both employees said they didn't socialize with Kearns outside of work.

The Washington County District Attorney's Office declined to charge Kearns in his interactions with the female employee, saying that while Kearns' behavior was inappropriate, it wasn't criminal.

"We cannot prove that he intended to harass or annoy the victim with this behavior, and we cannot prove that the behavior was non-consensual," according to a January memo from Washington County Deputy District Attorney Allison Brown.

Kearns declined to be interviewed for the police investigation but said in a March 10 letter to Washington County Sheriff Pat Garrett that he considered the male co-worker he was convicted of harassing a friend and never suspected the man found his "sense of humor offensive."

Kearns said he routinely tried to boost the morale of his colleagues at the jail, was never reprimanded for anything he said during his entire career and was at times praised for his humor during his evaluations.

"Sir, there is a systemic culture in your office of the same type of horseplay, or 'locker room antics' that I was convicted of," Kearns wrote. "But I feel that most, like myself, found it humorous and not offensive."

Kearns said he felt singled out because he was criminally charged and felt betrayed because he was often told during his career that the county sheriff's office was a family and "there's nothing you can't come back from" if you're honest.

Garrett in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive said sheriff's office employees are held to a "high standard of conduct," that allegations of misconduct are thoroughly investigated and then forwarded to the district attorney's office for an independent review.

According to the investigation, Kearns' accuser said:

Sometime between September 2017 and December 2017, Kearns called him over to stand with him by the refrigerator, then traced a line down the front of the accuser's pants, touching his penis.

Kearns ran his hand down the accuser's buttocks, which he compared to a person swiping a credit card, two or three times in the jail intake and release offices sometime after touching the front of the employee's pants.

Kearns repeatedly talked about coming to the employee's house and raping his dog. He would often ask the employee about the dog to tease him.

The male employee told a Washington County detective in December, two days after filing the formal complaint, that he would often try to forget what Kearns did or said to him while they worked at the jail, but couldn't, the police reports said. The employee said he would shake from anxiety and stress when he came home after work, have trouble sleeping because of his anger about what was happening, cry and at times have trouble motivating himself to go to work.

Three sergeants told an investigator said they hadn't witnessed any sexual harassment by Kearns but were aware for years of inappropriate comments he made at work and had to tell him "to watch his language," among work colleagues, according to the police reports.

One of the sergeants said Kearns apologized every time he was confronted over things he said.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBaileyAuthorities arrested a 35-year-old Oregon coast resident who they say made four hoax distress calls in 2016 that sent the U.S. Coast Guard scrambling to find people in danger and sinking boats that didnt exist.

Bud ONeil Burkleo was arrested Friday morning in his hometown of Warrenton, just west of Astoria and several miles from the nearest Coast Guard station. Later in the day, he made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Portland.

Burkleo is charged with four counts of communicating a false distress message on April 8, June 3, Oct. 1 and Nov. 3 in 2016.

Hes also charged with lying to an investigator who spoke with him in December 2016 when he claimed he didn't make the calls.

Earlier that same month, the Coast Guard issued a public plea for help in identifying the caller. Investigators at the time said they thought the man was responsible for 22 hoax calls.

Officials released several recordings from the calls, which were made over marine radio channels. In one, a man can be heard saying "mayday, mayday, mayday." In another, the man says "taking on water." In a third recording, he sounds as if he's announcing coordinates. Listen to a recording here.

Investigators thought many of the calls were coming from somewhere between Warrenton and Seaside. Voice analysts suspected the man was between 35 and 40 years old and had an East Coast or Southeastern dialect.

Coast Guard officials say hoax calls waste time and resources. They also divert rescuers from responding to actual emergencies.

Burkleo is scheduled for trial in late May.

When Burkleo was 18 or 19, he was convicted in Clatsop County Circuit Court of an attempted sex offense, but the exact offense wasn't immediately available in electronic court records. Five years later, he also was convicted of failing to register as a sex offender.

If convicted of making false mayday calls, in addition to jail time, he could be ordered to pay for the costs of deploying Coast Guard equipment and staff. Hourly rates vary widely, according to the Coast Guard, with a small response boat costing $2,000 and helicopters costing $11,000 to $16,000.



-- Aimee GreenMANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE  When it comes to a possible run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Jeff Merkley says "we'll leave the future to the future."

The Oregon senator's comments came in an interview minutes before he headlined a meeting Saturday of the New Hampshire Democratic Party's executive committee.

Merkley's visit to New Hampshire  which traditionally holds the first primary in the race for White House  was his first since the 2016 election. And it sparked additional speculation that he's mulling a 2020 bid for his party's presidential nomination.

The senator demurred when asked a couple of times about his mindset regarding a possible White House run.

"I'm keeping the option open but I'm completely focused on driving the blue wave this year," he said.

New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley, who invited Merkley to address the state party meeting, said he thinks the senator's "very serious about considering" a 2020 run.

"He brings a perspective of being more of a grassroots organizer and community leader," added Buckley, who's also a member of the national Democratic Party's executive committee. "I think his experiences and perspective are very much needed on the national stage."

Prior to his address, Merkley met with the leadership of the New Hampshire Young Democrats as well as top supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont 2016 campaign in New Hampshire. Merkley was the only Democrat in the Senate to endorse Sanders' White House campaign.

"I have just enormous respect for Bernie," Merkley said.

Sanders convincingly won the state's 2016 Democratic presidential primary, launching him into an epic battle against eventual nominee Hillary Clinton. That victory also emboldened his New Hampshire supporters, some of whom now have leadership roles in the state party.

In his 15 minute speech to the state party's executive committee, Merkley applauded New Hampshire for being the"first state outside the court system to establish marriage quality."

And he complimented the state for having an expanded Medicaid system. Discussing health care, Merkley pushed for a Medicare for all system. And on the environment, he urged the crowd "to fight to create a transition over the next couple of decades to 100% clean and renewable energy."

Later, Merkley was a featured guest at "Citizen Action Against Gerrymandering" forum at the University of New Hampshire School of Law in Concord. The event was sponsored by several progressive groups.

The senator told The Oregonian/OregonLive that "there are three things that are really, really, corrupting our national politics. One is gerrymandering. One is voter suppression. And one is Citizens United money in our political elections. We've got to take on those three things to restore the vision of the voice of the people."

-- Paul SteinhauserAn employee at Oregon's tax collection agency copied the data of 36,000 people, including social security numbers, and stored the files to a personal account, the state announced on Friday.

The Department of Revenue detected the breach on Feb. 23 and moved quickly to remove the files from the employee's cloud account, according to a news release. But officials waited a month to disclose the news because it took that long to identify how many people were affected, spokeswoman Joy Krawczyk said.

There was no evidence that anyone other than the state employee viewed or otherwise accessed the files, according to the state.

It was unclear why the employee copied the information, because Krawczyk said the department cannot disclose any explanation the man might have provided until it finishes an investigation. However, she said, based on the volume of the data it didn't appear to be an accident.

"The employee is entitled to due process for employment related matters and we need to let that process finish before releasing any information about it," Krawczyk said.

The data breach did not include taxpayers' bank account information, because the files were related to a list of individuals who paid their taxes using checks and turned out to have insufficient funds. "It is a bit puzzling why it was this specific information," Krawczyk said.

The tax agency may require additional identity validation from affected taxpayers when they file their returns this year, and the state will provide identity theft recovery services to them.

-- Hillary Borrud

503-294-4034; @hborrudA sixth-grader created a category on Google Maps labeling Northwest Portland's Forest Park Elementary School a "slaughterhouse," as "an immature attempt at humor," police said Friday.

The child attends a different school and likely won't face criminal charges, according to Portland police. There was no credible threat to students or staff.

The label was noticed Wednesday and was visible whenever anyone searched for the elementary school's location. The school principal told a school resource officer about it and contacted Portland Public Schools security, said Dave Northfield, a Portland Public Schools spokesman.

@Oregonian have you seen this? If you google my daughter's school on your cell, look at the category some sick, jerk added to the category! pic.twitter.com/Gp5XpbMtio  Jagger  (@JaggerMafia) March 22, 2018

An extra Portland police officer was stationed at the school Thursday as a precaution. Police and school officials were able to determine the student's involvement, police said. The child's parents have been cooperating in the case.

Portland police ask anyone who suspects alarming or suspicious behavior to report it immediately to law enforcement.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBaileyThey've been told to go back to class. That they're too young to understand. That children should be seen, not heard.

But the organizers of Portland's March For Our Lives, which drew an estimated 12,000 people to the North Park Blocks and Pioneer Courthouse Square on Saturday, said they're fed up with a cycle that starts with thoughts and prayers and ends with lots of talk before it's triggered by another school shooting.

"This won't solve all of our problems," Southridge High School junior Ellie Younger said of the nationwide series of demonstrations meant to pressure Congress and state legislatures to pass gun control laws. "But it's a good first step in solving some of them."

They'd seen the response on Facebook, where upwards of 20,000 people had indicated they were at least interested in attending Saturday's demonstration. But, like anyone who's ever used the social network to plan an event, they weren't sure how many would turn out to the North Park Blocks.

West Burnside to Glisan was packed by the rally's 10 a.m. start. And the ensuing march to Pioneer Courthouse Square, which featured a route less than half a mile in length, took more than 90 minutes to carry out from start to finish.

Hundreds of thousands turned out in Washington, D.C., for the rally organized by the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, which left 17 dead Feb. 14. Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande and other performed in the shadow of the Capitol.

In Portland, organizers had the backing of recent Grammy winners, Portugal. The Man, who approached the students to ask how they could help.

"They're fighting for my future great grandchildren," band co-founder Zach Carothers said.

Younger and her fellow Portland organizers weren't expecting to draw a crowd rivaling the estimated 70,000 to 100,000 that filled the waterfront for last January's Women's March. But they were stunned by the steady stream of supporters as the crowd made its way up Broadway.

"It's insane to see so many people from so many different walks of life come together like this," said De La Salle High School senior Tyler White, another march organizer. "It's amazing how it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from. This is something we're all very passionate about."

The students said they've heard from gun control opponents who tell them they don't know what they're talking about. That legislation like the Oregon ballot initiative that seeks to ban assault weapons is a slippery slope that leads to a loss of Second Amendment rights.

"What's the danger of trying something, anything, right now?" White said. "Dissenting and disagreeing is a defining feature of our society."

The one solution they won't back? Arming teachers. A chorus of "no" followed mentions of the suggestion with organizers and attendees alike.

Bodie Dachtler and Lex Jeffery, students at Sisters Middle School who traveled three hours with their siblings and parents to attend the Portland rally, said the policy favored by President Trump puts too much pressure on educators and students.

They wondered aloud how they'd have to act if a teacher was shot.

"What am I supposed to do then? Am I supposed to pick up the gun and shoot the shooter?" Dachtler said.

Instead, students say they're pressing their legislators to pass more laws like the one Gov. Kate Brown signed last month closing the so-called boyfriend loophole. Or the ballot initiative that would limit magazine and clip capacities.

Those are steps in the right direction, they say. But even Oregon has a ways to go.

The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave the state a "C" grade in its 2016 scorecard. Younger said that's unacceptable.

"I've never gotten a C on anything before in my life. I don't want to get a C on this," she said.

--Eder Campuzano | 503.221.4344

ecampuzano@oregonian.comUPDATED WITH FULL STORY: March For Our Lives Portland: Thousands flood the streets as students demand stricter gun control

12:47 p.m.: The demonstration has ended. We'll have a full story up on OregonLive shortly.

12:46 p.m.:

Looks like thats a wrap. Folks streaming out of the square after @portugaltheman closed with a cover of Dylans The Times They Are A-Changin pic.twitter.com/iVhsh7QgzU  Dave Killen (@killendave) March 24, 2018

12:39 p.m.: Looks like things are wrapping up.

12:27 p.m.:

Up front at the stage, young speakers rallied the crowd, a common theme being that students shouldnt have to be afraid in school pic.twitter.com/rHbOl0DhL4  Dave Killen (@killendave) March 24, 2018

12:26 p.m.:

Down on the street, personal space is at a premium. Video from earlier: pic.twitter.com/U2wYvpVO4O  Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) March 24, 2018

12:25 p.m.:

Looking down on Pioneer Courthouse Square: pic.twitter.com/NnbSfApef0  Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) March 24, 2018

12:24 p.m.:

There was a #BlueWave2018 float of sorts a while back pic.twitter.com/IB1MhC1pg5  Dave Killen (@killendave) March 24, 2018

12:23 p.m.:

Dogs cant join the protest at Medford Spiegelberg stadium. Jill Calamar of Grants Pass wears hand-knitted #Enough headband with dog Rio #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/skkpd9BFEe  Janet Eastman (@janeteastman) March 24, 2018

12:08 p.m.:

12:06 p.m.:

11:49 a.m.:

11:47 a.m.:

11:46 a.m.:

11:41 a.m.:

11:40 a.m.:

11:37 a.m.:

11:36 a.m.:

Gretchen Geraths, 15, goes to Wilson High School in #Portland. Why shes here: I dont want to be afraid to go to school. And I dont believe that guns keep us safe. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/uj24pYcSZl  Beth Nakamura (@bethnakamura) March 24, 2018

11:31 a.m.:

Pioneer Square is packed and hundreds of people are still slowly marching down Broadway pic.twitter.com/5rOWmcCTO4  Dave Killen (@killendave) March 24, 2018

11:30 a.m.: In Medford:

11:28 a.m.: In Medford:

11:23 a.m.:

Pioneer Courthouse Square is mega busy. pic.twitter.com/2mmWizM41e  Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) March 24, 2018

11:14 a.m.:

#MarchForOurLives Portland crowd getting warmed up  after marching - not quite @portugaltheman but theyll be on this stage soon enough. pic.twitter.com/pibILfsSto  Beth Nakamura (@bethnakamura) March 24, 2018

11:13 a.m.:

I'm joining the @Oregonian crew covering the #MarchForOurLives in Portland today. I hear cellphone service is bad downtown, but I'll tweet along when I can. https://t.co/E6EwezNbB6  Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) March 24, 2018

11:10 a.m.: In D.C.:

11:03 a.m.:

Thousands of people are exercising their First Amendment rights today in Portland! Our volunteer legal observers are here too. #KnowYourRights #MarchForOurLives #pdx #Oregon pic.twitter.com/xTW8WiT1k3  ACLU of Oregon (@ACLU_OR) March 24, 2018

11:02 a.m.:

Overheard at the #MarchForOurLives: I think if people want to cite laws created in the 18th century, they should only be able to use weapons that existed in the 18th century. pic.twitter.com/6GGeh7Kuu7  KATU News (@KATUNews) March 24, 2018

11:01 a.m.:

The faces that are going to change the world! #MarchForOurLives portland pic.twitter.com/QwJnT6PELC  Earl Blumenauer (@repblumenauer) March 24, 2018

10:57 a.m.:

Aerial footage shows the turnout at various March for Our Lives across the US today https://t.co/sPJ25LfDKd pic.twitter.com/E230ciayf0  CNN (@CNN) March 24, 2018

10:48 a.m.:

10:45 a.m.:

Scratch that FB live as connectivity problems have reared their head... this is the biggest crowd Ive seen since #WomensMarch and cell signal is being gobbled up. Weve made our way to pioneer square, thousands still streaming down broadway. pic.twitter.com/swt3BMbwKu  Dave Killen (@killendave) March 24, 2018

10:45 a.m.: In D.C.:

Granddaughter of MLK speaks. " I have a dream that enough is enough." #MarchforOurLives pic.twitter.com/Vee2WlP6MT  FOX Baltimore (@FOXBaltimore) March 24, 2018

10:39 a.m.: Don't yet have an estimate on the crowds in Portland, but we know the number's in the thousands, and we know it's big enough to affect our transmission of tweets, photos, video and even texts. Bear with us, folks!

10:38 a.m.:

10:37 a.m.:

10:36 a.m.:

10:36 a.m.:

10:35 a.m.:

10:30 a.m.:

Scenes from the March For Our Lives rallies around the world https://t.co/cFa9TaT5PI  TIME (@TIME) March 24, 2018

10:23 a.m.:

Paul McCartney honors John Lennon at the NYC #MarchForOurLives https://t.co/Q9KDGTOTvU  The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 24, 2018

10:22 a.m.:

10:15 a.m.:

10:13 a.m.: In St. Louis:

UPDATE: At least 10,000 attend #MarchForOurLives rally in downtown St. Louis; Sen. @clairecmc says it could be tipping point for "common sense" gun control https://t.co/w9hnGbZ15s pic.twitter.com/gfIcGFNSDw  St. Louis Post-Dispatch (@stltoday) March 24, 2018

10:12 a.m.:

"I've learned how to duck from bullets before I learned how to read," says 17-year-old Edna Chavez, of Los Angeles, at #MarchForOurLives. pic.twitter.com/cZo88wKAyG  BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) March 24, 2018

10:07 a.m.:

"We choose life!" Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Alex Wind at #MarchForOurLives rally in D.C.: https://t.co/hMNqq2Dd5U pic.twitter.com/q1xagFeAJm  Good Morning America (@GMA) March 24, 2018

10:03 a.m.: Hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied in the nation's capital and cities across America on Saturday to press for gun control and ignite political activism among the young. Organizers of the March for Our Lives rally in Washington hoped their protest would match in numbers and spirit last year's women's march, one of the biggest protests in the capital since the Vietnam era and one that far exceeded predictions of 300,000 demonstrators.

10:03 a.m.:

"How can we be the future if we never live long enough to get there?"



Here are some of the signs seen at #MarchForOurLives rallies https://t.co/i7MB0Gx3zu pic.twitter.com/SXPyttO6n7  BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) March 24, 2018

10:02 a.m.:

9:58 a.m.:

Incredible #MarchForOurLives crowd in DC today. Organizers were expecting 500,000 but could be even higher pic.twitter.com/NbeYGpb5OR  Ari Berman (@AriBerman) March 24, 2018

9:57 a.m.:

9:53 a.m.: On the event's Facebook page, 7,500 said they'd be attending, and 13,000 said they were interested in it.

9:51 a.m.:

Portlanders have formed an orderly line *blocks long* to *get* to the march. True PDX. #MarchForOurLives #marchforourlivespdx  Shawn Levy (@shawnlevy) March 24, 2018

9:50 a.m.:

9:47 a.m.:

9:43 a.m.:

9:39 a.m.:

Todays #MarchForOurLives event in Downtown Portland will start in the North Park Blocks at 10:00 a.m. then will proceed along a designated route to Pioneer Courthouse Square starting at approximately 10:30 -10:45. Officers will be assisting to ensure safety for all. #PDXTraffic pic.twitter.com/oJ3WFc5IJh  Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) March 24, 2018

9:32 a.m.: Meanwhile, in Medford:

Easy, flat march for a protest on a heavy topic: Stop gun violence. Student-organized #MarchForOurLives #Medford #Oregon 11 a.m-1 p.m. Jackson County Courthouse, 10 S. Oakdale, to Spiegelberg Stadium, 815 S. Oakdale, for common sense gun reform #NeverAgain #Enough #Oregonian pic.twitter.com/MYUXlXzXYV  Janet Eastman (@janeteastman) March 24, 2018

9:26 a.m.:

9:20 a.m.:

9:16 a.m.:

If youre going to the #MarchforOurLivespdx event, we encourage public transit, biking and walking. Check https://t.co/8qTTHtrAsd for service alerts, delays. If u drive, try Smart Park Garages & walk from there. Thx for working w us to plan a safe event! #pdxtraffic  Portland Bureau of Transportation (@PBOTinfo) March 23, 2018

9:10 a.m.: Message from TriMet: "Saturday, March 24, from 11:30 a.m. until about 2 p.m., Pioneer Square North and Pioneer Square South stations will be closed due to large crowds expected at March for Our Lives. Please use stops before or after Pioneer Square. Expect possible delays."

Thousands are expected to flock to Portland on Saturday as part of the national, student-led March for Our Lives protest lobbying for gun reform.

Cities across Oregon and southwest Washington will play host to at least 21 such protests Saturday.

In Portland, things kick off at 10 a.m. at the North Park Blocks with a rally. Student leaders will speak before ushering participants to march south and across Burnside Street.

The half-mile route will end at Pioneer Courthouse Square, where the crowd is estimated to finish marching around noon. That's when Portugal. The Man will take the stage in the midst of a final rally to cap off the afternoon.

We'll update this post throughout the event.

In the meantime, here's what you need to know about today's happenings.Thanks to grieving teens who are pissed off and shaming us all, YouTube is pulling videos of guns that are intended to "sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales... or links to sites that sell these items," according to Motherboard. In other words, YouTube  and Google, by extension  will no longer host videos that attempt to hawk firearms for profit. This includes videos from commercial gun retailers and manufacturers, as well as smaller home-grown operations.



Naturally, the gun people are not best pleased. On such channel, reports Motherboard, is circumventing YouTube's new rules by hosting their videos on Pornhub. Makes sense, right? Guns are phallic, in a way? Jokes aside, Pornhub hosts a variety of content that isn't pornographic, including a Hannukah-themed music video. Whether the firearms migration to the land of free porn will continue remains to be seen, but YouTube is undoubtedly feeling the pressure to crack down on such content.

YouTube told Bloomberg News that "we routinely make updates and adjustments to our enforcement guidelines across all of our policies. While we've long prohibited the sale of firearms, we recently notified creators of updates we will be making around content promoting the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories." We can all rest a little easier knowing that tutorial videos on how to 3D-print a handgun will be gone from the web, where it never should have been in the first place. Too much knowledge is not a good thing.

Meanwhile, the teen control activists are gearing for the March For Our Lives this weekend, with major speakers and participants expected to attend. Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson, among others, are performing; those two artists in particular have dealt with gun violence in their own personal lives. Let's hope that those in power care about their lives enough to protect them through legislation.

Photo via GettySurvivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida began organizing less than a week after a gunman killed 14 of their classmates and 3 staff, and have launched an impressively effective campaign against gun violence, #NeverAgain, with the nationwide protest March for Our Lives on Saturday, March 24 marking a key moment in the movement.

"Not one more," the March's Mission Statement reads. "We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of a firing assault rifle to save the lives of students. We cannot allow one more family to wait for a call or text that never comes. Our schools are unsafe. Our children and teachers are dying. We must make it our top priority to save these lives."

Marches will happen nationwide and in hundreds of cities around the world, with over 800 events currently planned.

Here's what you need to know:

Where and when is it?



The main march will be in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, March 24 at noon. Sister marches are also happening in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, West Palm Beach, Dallas, Boise, Liverpool, England, and around the world. Search "March for Our Lives" on Facebook to find an event near you (or check out this helpful map).



The main event is being put together by #NeverAgain, founded by the survivors of the Parkland shooting you've seen everywhere in the news lately, including Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky and David Hogg. Gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety is helping the students plan the event, and according to the march's website, "March For Our Lives is created by, inspired by, and led by students across the country who will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar."

Celebrities including George and Amal Clooney, Gucci's Alessandro Michele, Oprah Winfrey, studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw have all donated $500,000 to the cause. Celebrities including Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian West, Debra Messing, Cher and Bette Midler have expressed their support online.

What is the goal?



The march's stated goals are similar to those of the National School Walkout last week, which was organized by the team behind the Women's March: to show solidarity with victims of gun violence, and to send a message to lawmakers. The march's mission statement says:

School safety is not a political issue. There cannot be two sides to doing everything in our power to ensure the lives and futures of children who are at risk of dying when they should be learning, playing, and growing. The mission and focus of March For Our Lives is to demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues.

March participants will also be registering voters at events across the country to ensure that those who are protesting today will vote in November's midterm elections.

The official New York City branch of March for Our Lives outlined specific legislative goals they are asking Congress to achieve:

1. To ban the sale of assault weapons.

2. To prohibit the sale of high-capacity magazines.

3. To close the loophole in our background check law that allows dangerous people who shouldn't be allowed to purchase firearms to slip through the cracks and buy guns online or at gun shows.

"We are hoping to energize, inspire, and propel future movements for social change. We hope that everyone taking part in this March feels empowered to voice their concerns on other, intersecting issues," NYC March for Our Lives deputy director and press liaison Julia Ghahramani said. "We want to fight against apathy, against cynicism, and for empowerment and action.

How can I get involved?

Aside from attending a march or event near you, there are many ways to get involved in the movement against gun violence. You can donate to the GoFundMe page Stoneman Douglas students set up for the march (any money past their $2 million goal will be used for victims' funds). You can sign the organizers' petition calling for Congress to pass gun violence legislation. And you can sponsor a student to travel to the march (contact [email protected] to do so).Embattled media mogul Russell Simmons is being sued for $10 million in damages in civil court by a woman who alleges to Simmons raped her, reports Deadline. The anonymous woman, who is being identified as Jane Doe, alleges that the rape occurred during an undisclosed time period.

Jane Doe describes the alleged rape in the civil court filing (please note that the description may be upsetting to some readers). She attests that she had taken her son out to a concert featuring Def Jam artists; her son was reportedly "elementary school-aged" at the time. After the show, she was invited to meet Simmons, who founded Def Jam, and the artists backstage; she did, with her son. Simmons then invited her out to an afterparty at his hotel. At this point, Jane Doe alleges that she dropped her son off with a babysitter and proceeded to meet Simmons at the hotel. They have drinks at the hotel's bar. Simmons then allegedly invited Jane Doe up to his hotel room; he said that he's not interested in sex because he was dating a "well-known model." Jane Doe accepted the invitation and goes up with him to his room, where the assault is alleged to have occurred.

Jane Doe also alleges that there are contemporaneous witnesses to the alleged attack. She is seeking $10 million in damages to cover damages that will be discussed in court. The $10 million sum, according to the filing, is also intended as a punitive fine and deterrent against Simmons.

Simmons has also been accused of sexual misconduct by 15 other women, including publicist Kelly Cutrone and screenwriter Jenny Lumet. The alleged incidents range from attempted sexual assault to rape. The NYPD opened an investigation into criminal complaints against Simmons in December 2017.

Simmons has denied allegations of sexual misconduct in a statement sent to the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Paul Redmond/Wire ImageNews and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko has dispelled accusations of financial loss involving the sale of crude by the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation (BOST) Company Limited to BB Energy Company.



Executive Secretary of COPEC-GH, Duncan Amoah, had said in a statement that the deal left Ghana at a loss GHS23million.



COPEC-GH has, therefore, urged the Economic and Organised Crime Organisation (EOCO), Police CID, the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and the Office of the Special Prosecutor (SP) to take up the matter to unravel the circumstances and details regarding the sale.



Whats the loss? the Minister, however, asked during an interaction with journalists on Thursday, 22 March 2018.



He continued: Look, the current matter that all of you are jumping up and down about, the Qua Ibo Crude was not put in those tanks yesterday. It is part of our inheritance and the complexity about that matter is what BOST is trying to resolve. If you leave me with a problem and Im trying to unwind the problem and solve it and you stand on the sidelines and hoot, Ill ignore you.



Ill respectfully say that we all have to try and understand the pricing methodology in the crude trade. I think that is one big gap that all of us suffer for. Ill respectfully say that lets sit down and come to an understanding of how these pricings are done. Once you understand the pricing and methodology then well come to understand that nothing untoward has happened.



But even then, lets investigate it. But to say that youre going to the special prosecutor to me is notfor want of a better word Id leave it at that, he added.







Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured VideoScores of mourners, including soldiers thronged the Adidome Township to welcome home the body of late Francis Atsu Vondee, the military officer who died in a gory accident alongside Ebony Reigns and Franky Kuri.



The late soldiers corpse was conveyed from the 37 Military Hospital Mortuary on Friday 23rd March 2018, sent to Burma Camp for his colleagues to pay their last respect after which it was transported to his hometown, Adidome in the Volta Region for the final burial rites.



Before then, a delegation of soldiers were reported to have inspected where his body will be laid for the wake and the cemetery where he will be laid to rest.



Burial service for the late soldier will be held on the March 24, 2018 at the Global Evangelical Church, Old Town Council in Adidome.



About 150 soldiers and a lot of other well-wishers are expected to attend the funeral.



Background



Lance Corporal Francis Atsu Vondee died when he was on unsanctioned protection details with Ebony Reigns on the 8th February 2018 when they met their untimely death.



Francis Atsu Vondee, Francisca Maame Yaa Teboa Nkansah and Ebony Reigns died in a gory accident when their jeep collided with a VIP passenger Bus on the Sunyani- Kumasi Highway after they had gone to visit Ebonys mother in Sunyani.



Franky Kuri was buried on Saturday, March 3, 2018 in Accra.



Meanwhile, the dancehall diva, Ebony Reigns funeral ceremony will be held at the forecourts of the State House in Accra.



<iframe src="http://content.jwplatform.com/players/dYMGnrPO-GtVgZhNx.html" width="470" height="375" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto"></iframe>

Source: Ghanaweb.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured VideoThe Minority in Parliament has blocked the laying before Parliament, the report of the Joint Committee on Defence and Interior and Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, on the agreement seeking to ratify the hosting of US military troops in Ghana.



In a brief protest between the two sides in Parliament today [Thursday], the leadership of the Majority said the report was ready to be laid before the House to allow for debate.



However, the Minority disagreed, insisting that the report wasnt ready.



Deputy Majority Leader, Adwoa Safo, said she had been informed by the Chairman of the Committee that the report is ready, but it is not being taken today, we are only laying it and the report will be taken tomorrow [Friday].



The Deputy Minority Leader, James Avedzi, disagreed and said: The indication I have from the ranking member of the committee says that the 5(C) is not ready so I dont know where the chairman is coming from. So the report for this agreement is not ready, he stated.



The Speaker subsequently ruled that the laying of the report should be skipped until the two sides can come to a consensus on it.



If the report is ready it is ready. If it is not ready, you negotiate and if there is a negotiation and there is understanding I [will] proceed. [But] it appears there is clearly no negotiation so no progress.



NDC MP walks out of Committee meeting



A Member of the Committee and member of the Minority in Parliament, Rockson Dafeamekpor, on Wednesday walked out of a meeting to consider an agreement with the United States of America for a defence cooperation arrangement that will allow them to have a camp in Ghana for its military forces.



Mr. Dafeamekpor, said the agreement which had been brought before the House for ratification had not been signed by government, hence his decision to leave the meeting.



As a Member of Parliament, I cannot be part of a process that will go and vary the terms of a memorandum that is yet to be signed. There is no signature on the memorandum. The memo accompanying the memorandum to Parliament says in paragraph three that Cabinet approved the memorandum and approved and recommended same for Parliament for ratification. So the exercise we are being called upon to engage in is to ratify. We are simply to look at it and by consensus or voting approve of the agreement, he said.



Nitiwul lays document in Parliament



The Minister of Denfense, Dominic Nitiwul, on Tuesday laid before Parliament the document seeking to ratify an agreement for space around the Kotoka International Airport, which will serve as a camp for some US military forces in Ghana.



The agreement will among other things, exempt the US government from paying taxes on equipment that is brought to Ghana.



They will also be given the chance to set their own telecommunication system, although they will be allowed to use Ghanas radio spectrum free of charge.



Although many Ghanaians have expressed resentment over the clauses of the agreement, the Defence Minister, Dominic Nitiwul, said the agreement is in the best interest of Ghana.



The United States Embassy in Ghana also denied reports that the US government is planning to establish a military base in Ghana.



It said it is only planning joint security exercises with Ghana, which will require that US military personnel are allowed access to Ghanas military facilities.



But the Minority had called on government to withdraw the agreement in its current form, saying it is not in the best interest of Ghana.



Ghanaians not ready to live with foreign troops  Rawlings

Former President Jerry John Rawlings, also waded into the controversy and said Ghanaians may love Americans but not to the extent of living with [the] foreign troops, he said.





Source: citifmonline.com









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Featured VideoPresident Nana Akufo-Addo is back in Togo to continue the mediation process between President Faure Gnassingbe and opposition political parties.



Todays meeting comes weeks after the leaders of the political parties met the President in Accra to report on progress made so far.



The 14 opposition parties suspended all forms of protests and demonstrations as agreed in their last meeting.



They are pushing for a return to the countrys 1992 constitution which imposes limits on presidential terms.



Faure Gnassingbe has been in power since 2005 when his father, Eyadema Gnassingbe, died. His father had ruled the country for 38 years.



There have been protests against the Togolese government in demonstrations that were in some cases met with acts of violence by state security forces.



The demonstrations were started by the main opposition PNP and CAP 2015, a coalition of five smaller opposition parties before expanding.



The 14 parties decided to suspend all forms of protests and demonstrations aimed at forcing President Faure Gnassingbe to step down, following a meeting between President Nana Akufo-Addo and representatives of the government in Togo.



Support in Ghana



Their cause has gathered some support in Ghana notably from the Ghana-Togo Solidarity Movement, which is led by Bernard Mornah.



Just like protesters in Togo, Ghana-Togo Solidarity Movement supposedly fell foul of law according to Police.



Bernard Mornah

In December 2017, Mr. Bernard Mornah, Chairman of Ghanas Peoples National Convention, PNC, and some members of the group were arrested for a supposed illegal protest against the continuous rule of Gnassingbe and his disrespect for Togos constitutional term limit.



He has complained that the Ghana Police Services frequent interruptions in their lawful protests only gives the impression that the government of Ghana is in support of Faure Gnassingbes ill-governance.



This is despite the governments consistent assurances of its neutrality.



Mr. Mornah vowed that the movement will support Togolese citizens to ensure that Gnassingbe steps down.





Source: citifmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured VideoThe controversial Ghana-US Military Cooperation agreement has finally been ratified by Parliament but not without drama and chaos.



Before the ratification, the Speaker of Parliament, and the Minority members walked out at different stages of the sitting after heated exchanges for and against an agreement that will give US military unfettered access to some facilities in Ghana.



The Minority did not hide their objection to the agreement and did not fail to express same during proceedings in the House, Friday.



In their numbers, they washed their hands off the Ghana-US Military Cooperation agreement by staging a walkout in Parliament shortly after the report of the committee on Defence was presented on the floor.



The opposition legislators do not want to have anything to do with a military agreement they say will mortgage the countrys sovereignty to a superpower.



Before walking out, the House was reduced to a marketplace with Minority shouts and taunts of objection to the controversial agreement which had been brought before the House.



The incensed members banged tables, with others singing until some majority members joined in the chaos with their own shouts as well, Joy News parliamentary correspondent Joseph Opoku Gakpo reported.



The Speaker, Prof Mike Ocquaye, in the midst of the chaos, walked out of the Chamber.



The Minority members were incensed by the failure of the leadership to allow a minority member to second the motion on the military agreement after the chairman of the Defence Committee had read the outcome of its report.



Instead, the Vice Chairman of the Committee was called to second the motion, a decision that threw the house into chaos.



According to Gakpo some NDC executives who were seated at the public gallery pulled out placards with inscription Ghana is not for sale but the security personnel quickly moved in to stop them.



APC Presidential candidate in the 2016 election Hassan Ayariga also removed his chequebook ostensibly to sign off $20 million to the government in order to stop it from ratifying an agreement he says was inimical to the interest of the country.



Ghana is expected to receive an amount of $20 million on account of the agreement.



This deepened the chaos in Parliament for a while.



After several of minutes of chaos, the Speaker returned to restore order and to continue the proceedings.



The Minority demanded amendments to be made to the report of the committee that had been brought to the floor for a debate.



After arguing his case out, the Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu led his members out of the chamber, leaving the members of majority to have a one sided debate.



The Majority Leader Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu and the Defence Minister Dominic Nitiwul had their say and later their way as the house adopted the committee report and ratified the agreement.

Source: Today









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Featured VideoThere is no better city to be in for National Cheesesteak Day than Philadelphia.

It's the home of the legendary Pat's and Geno's and the less famous (but decidedly delicious) Jim's, Delassandro's, Max's, Steve's... and the list can go on and on.

But when National Cheesesteak Day comes around (it's on March 24 this year), you don't have to indulge in the traditional cheesesteak to get your fix.

Why not try a pizza version?

Urban Village Brewing Company is putting a cheesesteak pizza on its menu on March 24. It's a one-day only affair, but Eagles fans in Northern Liberties, where the brewing company is located, will recognize it.

That's because this is a good luck pizza. The cheesesteak pizza originally went on the menu during the playoffs for the Philadelphia Eagles -- and we all know how that turned out.

The pizza features four different kinds of cheese: provolone, American, mozzarella and parmesan. It's topped with brisket, sourced from farms in Lancaster, sweet pickled chillies, pickled onions, green onions and a dash of sea salt. The crust is Urban Village's special sourdough, which is fermented for three days.

Cheesesteak pizza isn't the first nontraditional twist on the classic Philadelphia dish. Urban Village owner Tom Revelli points out that cheesesteak egg rolls (famous at the Continental) can also be found in the city.

"You can put cheesesteak on anything," Revelli said.

For those who order the pizza, Revelli recommends pairing it with the company's Space Station, a kolsch hybrid.

"It's super aromatic with passionfruit, but finishes a little dry like a lager," Revelli said. "Something as flavor as this pizza needs something to complement it more than challenge it."

The 12-13 inch cheesesteak pizza is $16. Urban Village Brewing Company is located at 1001 N. 2nd St. in Northern Liberties in Philadelphia. For more information visit urbanvillagebrewing.com.

Want more stories about Philly? Click here for all our coverage of the City of Brotherly Love. You may also enjoy these videos of other unique eats in Pennsylvania.The nation's largest public company grocery wholesaler has selected Harrisburg to locate a warehouse distribution facilty, which is expected to create at least 350 jobs over the next three years.

SUPERVALU Inc. will occupy a 750,000-square-foot warehouse facility that it bought and renovated earlier this year at 3700 Industrial Road, near Harrisburg Area Community College.

Along with the job creation, the company, headquartered in Minnesota, committed to investing approximately $69 million of its own into the project in exchange for a funding proposal from the Department of Community and Economic Development that includes a $740,000 Pennsylvania First grant and $166,500 in WEDnetPA funding for employee training.

"Any time a large employer like SUPERVALU chooses to expand in Pennsylvania, not only is it fantastic news for our workers, but it's more evidence that Pennsylvania has the workforce and business climate that makes companies want to grow here," Gov. Tom Wolf said. "My administration is looking forward to building on our efforts to support our business climate in the years ahead so companies like SUPERVALU can continue to thrive. I applaud SUPERVALU for choosing to expand in the commonwealth."

Hiring and shipping for certain departments has begun and the company is looking to add more employees throughout the year as additional departments come online, said its spokesman Michael Wilken.

While he wouldn't publicly disclose the wage range the company is offering, he said, "I can tell you we are offering a competitive and comprehensive pay and benefits package for our associates."

The project was coordinated by Governor's Action Team, a group of economic development professionals who report directly to the governor and work with businesses that are considering locating or expanding in Pennsylvania.

"Harrisburg is a terrific geographic center for serving our wholesale customers in the Northeast," said Mark Gross, president and CEO of SUPERVALU. "We are very appreciative of the support and financial commitments from the Governor's Action Team in helping us bring our business and jobs to the area. SUPERVALU is committed to growth and we are thrilled to be a part of the Harrisburg community and the great state of Pennsylvania."

The company, which has annual sales of approximately $16 billion, sees this site as a prime location to better serve its customers in the Northeast. SUPERVALU Inc., which employs about 31,000, serves customers across the United States through itsnetwork of 3,324 stores composed of 3,111 wholesale primary stores operated by customers serviced by SUPERVALU's food distribution business and 213 traditional retail grocery stores operated under five retail banners in six geographic regions: Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbachers, Shop N' Save, and Shoppers.

*This post has been updated to reflect the company's hiring plans and compensation package being offered.Like thousands of people across the country, York residents gathered on Saturday to protest gun violence and demand gun control in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., last month.

For the hundreds who showed up outside the courthouse in downtown York, however, the rally was also a time to remember the area's own experience with a school shooting.

Led by a percussion group and chanting "no more silence, end gun violence," the marchers walked from the corner of Market and George streets to in front of the York County courthouse, where speakers voiced their support for gun control. Several former students and teachers also shared their experiences from the shooting at Red Lion Area Junior High School nearly 15 years ago with the crowd.

The march was largely organized by former students of Red Lion Area Junior High School, who were in classes on April 24, 2003, when Principal Eugene Segro was shot and killed by a student in the school's crowded cafeteria.

For Chera Stough, a former teacher at the school, the memories of going into lockdown, hiding with several students in her classroom and calling her husband to tell him she was okay are still with her. The event caused a ripple event in her life, Stough said, and it took her years to deal with the pain the shooting caused.

"It has changed me immensely as a person and especially as a teacher," Stough said to the crowd. "I could continue to allow this event to dictate my existence or, I could get myself out of this vicious downward spiral and actually live my life."

The marchers in York joined millions who attended over 800 marches across the country on Saturday to protest against gun violence. The protests come over a month after 17 people were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The shooting has spurred a wave of school walkouts and protest led by students across the country.

Ali Kochik, a senior at Red Lion Area High School, said she questions her and her classmate's safety after every school shooting.

"I know that this violence can happen in our school because it has. It happened 15 years ago in our junior high," she said to the crowd. "Education is a weapon of change. We will not let guns prohibit us from learning and changing the future for the better."

Kochik said she and her classmates are part of the movement to demand sensible gun legislation, and she is hopeful that future students won't have the same fear she has of a shooting in their school. Event organizers Kelsey Lauder and Maggie Stauffer-Holroyd, both Red Lion Area Junior High School graduates, invited all the students at the march up to the front of the crowd towards the end of the event.

About 50 students, many holding signs, streamed onto the courthouse steps to cheers from the crowd.

Ethan Snyder, 16, of Dover echoed Kochik's fear of violence occurring at his school. Snyder said he came to the march because he doesn't "want my school to be next."

York College student Marissa Itterly, holding a sign with crayons drawn on it that read "bullets are not school supplies" said she wants to see gun violence stop.

"I don't want to have to call my mom from under a desk," she said.

Some in the crowd said they were appreciative of the students' efforts. York resident Sheila Strothers said she felt the students were brave to speak out on the issue.

"I, as an adult, need to stand there and support them," she said.

Speakers at the rally encouraged the crowd to continue taking action against gun violence by voting, supporting gun control groups and demanding their lawmakers support gun control measures. State Rep. Carol Hill-Evans of York said she and other legislators are working on "real, practical and thoughtful legislation" to protect their constituents.

"We know the work is not finished," she said. "We march because together we can come together to make our communities safer, our schools safer, and our nation stronger."SCRANTON - A federal inmate has been sentenced to another 10 years in prison for threatening to kill a federal prosecutor in Vermont.

Dakota J. Gardner, 27, who wrote the letter while at the Allenwood Federal Penitentiary, on Friday pleaded guilty in U.S. Middle District Court to a charge of threatening a federal official.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Geoffrey W. MacArthur read for Judge Robert Mariani the Sept. 18, 2015, letter in which Gardner threatened to kidnap, torture and kill a female assistant U.S. attorney.

Gardner also was charged with writing a March 30, 2016, letter in which he threatened the life of the president. That count was dropped as part of a plea agreement.

The letters were written while Gardner was serving time for other threats he had made to public officials.

Gardner's new sentence, which is the maximum for the charge, is consecutive to one he is serving in Vermont in an assault case.

When Gardner was arraigned in June 2016 MacArthur described him as a dangerous person who had every intention of carrying out his threats.A man was taken to the hospital after police say he was shot at a bar in Harrisburg.

Officers were dispatched at 12:53 a.m. Saturday to Jazzland Bar in the 1900 block of Walnut Street for a report of shots fired.

Officers arrived and were flagged down by patrons, who directed them to a man who was lying on the ground with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, according to police.

The man was transported to Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and taken in for immediate surgery.

About an hour later, shots rang out at another bar in Harrisburg, leaving one man dead and another injured. The injured man in that shooting was also taken to Hershey Hospital for surgery.

Police are asking anyone with information to contact Harrisburg City Police at 717-558-6900. Tips can also be submitted through Crimewatch.York residents and a regional first responders network have set up two vigils in honor of the York firefighters killed in a building collapse Thursday.

Neighbors from Walnut Street are hosting a vigil in memory of York firefighters Ivan Flanscha and Zachary Anthony at 8 p.m. Friday on Walnut and Broad Streets near the Goode School, said York Mayor Michael Helfrich. Both men died Thursday at York Hospital after a wall at the former Weaver Piano & Organ building collapsed on them and two other firefighters.

Flanscha died of injuries sustained from multiple blunt force trauma to the torso. Anthony's cause and manner of death is pending, according to a news release from the York County coroner's office.

Chief David Michaels took several minutes during a news conference Friday afternoon to talk about Anthony and Flanscha, who served the department for eight and 20 years respectively. Flanscha was even-keeled and laid back, while Anthony was the company jokester who was fun to be around, Michaels said.

"What they did have in common was that they were both great, dedicated firefighters," Michaels added.

Neighbor's heart sank as she watched collapse that killed two York firefighters

Flanscha was married and had three daughters, a stepson and stepdaughter. Anthony had a girlfriend and was planning to get married, Michaels said. Both had earned honors while with the department and a complete list will be released at a later time, Michaels added.

The Southern Pennsylvania Incident Network is hosting the second vigil at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Goode School, Helfrich said.

Assistant Chief Greg Altland and firefighter Eric Swanson were also injured in the wall collapse. They are expected to recover, Helfrich said.

The chief thanked those sending in support, donations and condolences to the fallen firefighters' families and the department. He noted that the International Association of Fire Fighters will coordinate any services for the Anthony and Flanscha. The association has set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for their families.

Cody Santiago, the emergency manager for York, also announced the site safety plan for the area, which includes mandatory personal protective equipment, a clear perimeter and fencing around the area, and the use of heavy equipment to investigate the scene. Earlier in the day the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives activated its role in the investigation, including working with other investigators to interview witnesses, do digital mapping and "provide a forensic blueprint of the scene."

Two families are receiving assistance from the American Red Cross, Helfrich said, adding that authorities are working to determine if another family is in need of assistance as a result of the fire.

York firefighters are offering support to the families of the fallen comrades, so they can get back to normal as soon as possible, Michaels said. Firefighters from surrounding municipalities are handling calls from York fire stations, allowing those from the city to take time and grieve as needed.

"That means a lot," Michaels said of the help. "It's what's going to get us through this."By Bryan T. Stinchfield and Jeff Brownley

In various areas of the economy and public policy, many Americans have come to believe that private industry offers better solutions than the government.

Bryan T. Stinchfield (Franklin & Marshall College photo)

For example, the United States currently outsources half of our military force in Iraq and Afghanistan to private military companies, and we've also outsourced management of prisons, schools, roads, bridges, and many other services to private industry.

But why stop there?

There is another area of the economy and public policy that we should outsource to private industry.

We should outsource the management of our 2

nd

Amendment freedoms to private insurance companies.

Let us explain.

Insurance companies have one objective, which is of course to make money. They do this by providing services to minimize the financial burden resulting from risk.

They're not ideological, religious, liberal, or conservative. They are in the business of figuring out how to make a profit by managing risk.

They are staffed with thousands of people who systematically analyze data, not their gut or squishy feelings, to make decisions. If they get the analysis wrong, they lose money.

There is a financial cost to getting it wrong, which acts as a huge incentive to not letting feelings, the "gut," politics, or religion get in the way of effective decision-making. This is a tremendous strength of the private sector.

Why don't many car rental companies rent cars to people younger than 25 years old? Because insurance companies' data show that, statistically speaking, 20-year-olds take more risks driving cars than do 50-year-olds.

In addition, auto insurance companies charge a premium to insure a 20-year-old driver vs. a 50-year-old for a comparable policy.

So, Congress and President Donald Trump should take advantage of this risk analysis and superior decision-making and management in the private sector by outsourcing management of our 2

nd

Amendment rights, "the right to bear arms," to for-profit insurance companies.

Their staff of analysts can sort through data and backgrounds to determine who is at risk of shooting up a school or casino and who isn't.

We (the two authors) are former military officers. We were trained in how to handle a variety of weapons; are mentally stable; are almost 50 years old, and pose little risk to society by owning handguns, AR-15s, or any other weapon.

A mentally ill 18-year-old with no training in how to safely handle weapons is a much higher risk, and so he should "pay" more than we do to own a weapon.

To put this idea into practice, a very large and profitable insurance company would bear the financial risk of every American's 2nd Amendment right to own firearms.

Everyone who is of legal age to own a gun would need to be insured by a for-profit, private insurance company.

Just like one needs auto insurance to drive a car, one would need firearm insurance to own a firearm.

If the insurance firm issued a policy to an 18-year old, mentally unstable person who shot up a school, then the insurance company would be liable for billions of dollars in damages. Thus, the insurance company would be careful about to whom they issued a policy.

If we are comfortable outsourcing our national security, education, crime prevention and rehabilitation, and infrastructure to private industry, then why not our 2nd Amendment?

If business can always do it better than the government, then let two private industries manage our 2

nd

Amendment.

Let the insurance companies and their lobbyists fight it out with gun companies and their lobbyists.

They are more likely to find a solution than our elected leaders in our statehouses and in Washington.

Bryan T. Stinchfield is an associate professor of organizational studies at Franklin & Marshall College and teaches business, strategy, and international security. Jeff Brownley, a pharmaceutical industry representative, calls on hospitals in the Parkland, Florida, area. Both men served in the United States Army in Korea and Panama, respectively.By Paul J. Mather, Mike Sturla, and Dwan Walker

If you follow the news, it's no surprise that there are some serious issues facing our Commonwealth right now, and our state legislature has many important things to focus on: a unified response to the opioid crisis, redrawing congressional maps, and creating a state budget that keeps our state functioning and funds important priorities such as education and health care.

These are all issues that must be addressed while our elected leaders gather in Harrisburg. There are also times when state leaders must respond to important issues that impact every corner of our state or must act to protect the basic needs and rights of people or the environment.

These are decisions the voters elect legislators to make and decisions that must be addressed at the state level.

However, it is important that locally elected leaders maintain the ability to make decisions that will impact the fate and future of their own communities.

In fact, the authors of our state constitution recognized centuries ago that most decisions should not be made by a centralized government; rather, decisions are best made by people who live in those communities.

Pennsylvanians still agree.

The American Heart Association recently commissioned a poll conducted by Susquehanna Polling and Research on the matter of local control.

The results are profound. The poll shows that voters express very strong, and very negative, opinions on the state taking away local control.

Specifically, 71 percent of likely voters agree with the belief advanced by the Founding Fathers that "government closest to the people governs best."

The belief crosses party lines: 73 percent of self-identified Republicans and 65 percent of self-identified Democrats support local control.

And the support is consistent across the state: from 77 percent in central Pennsylvania to 64 percent of voters in Philadelphia and 69 percent of voters in the western part of the state.

Across the Commonwealth, the people, through their locally elected representatives make decisions that align with the values and needs of their communities.

For example, many municipalities make decisions pertaining to liquor sales. Recently more than 1,000 municipalities chose not to have "mini-casinos" in their backyard.

The common denominator in these instances is the power of local communities to act on matters themselves.

Over the years it has become a trend, unfortunately, in Pennsylvania and across the country, for lawmakers to enact statewide policies that seize local control when it benefits special interests.

These laws have a chilling effect on a community's ability to cultivate a place that reflects the needs and values of its residents.

For example, in the early 2000s, several Pennsylvania municipalities (Allegheny County, Erie County, Scranton and New Hope) passed clean indoor air ordinances that would protect workers in all workplaces, including restaurants, bars, and casinos, from secondhand smoke.

Unfortunately, legislation from 1988 already preempted that action by localities, and when the legislature enacted the state's current smoke-free law in 2008, it took away the rights of municipalities and prohibited them from enacting or enforcing any smoke-free laws that were stronger, at the expense of the health of hospitality workers.

When Jim Kenney ran for mayor of Philadelphia, he talked about important issues that needed to be addressed: too many children from low-income neighborhoods were starting kindergarten unprepared; community centers and libraries were in disrepair; and rates of type 2 diabetes and obesity were some of the highest in the nation.

Voters in Philadelphia agreed and elected him. When now-Mayor Kenney took office, he announced a plan to fund these important projects and improve health: a sugary drink tax.

The tax has been in effect for more than a year and is working. More than 2,000 students from low-income neighborhoods are now in Pre-K; community schools have been created; plans are being made to update parks and libraries; and sugary drink purchases have declined, which should lead to improved health.

Today, there are rumblings of the state limiting local control again.

There is a proposal in the making in Harrisburg that will strike down Philadelphia's sweetened beverage tax and forbid any local governmental body - or voters through a ballot initiative - from accessing this solution that can both improve health and provide much needed revenue to support local initiatives.

We, the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, need to make our voices heard that we appreciate our legislators and need them to focus on the important tasks that only they can accomplish, and leave local decisions in our hands.

Dr. Paul J. Mathers is the president of American Heart Aassociation's Great Rivers Affiliate and a professor of clinical medicine at the Perleman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. State Rep. Mike Sturla, a Democrat, represents the Lancaster County-based 96th House District. Dwan Walker, a Democrat, is the elected mayor of Aliquippa Borough in Beaver County.When Maddie Levy saw the students fleeing Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., last month, she saw something familiar.

She saw her reflection.

Those kids, the ones running with their hands up past a cordon of heavily armed police officers? The ones lying dead in the halls inside? That could have been her. It could have been any one of her friends.

"What if it happened here?" Levy, a junior at Cumberland Valley High School, asked last week, already knowing the answer.

"Parkland isn't any different from our school," she said. "They're kids, just like us, that are going through this." They're kids going through an experience that's "absolutely terrifying," she said.

But it's "not surprising at all," chimed in Madeline Bailey, who, like Levy, is a junior.

"It's very possible it could happen in a place like this," she said, her voice more flat and practical than any 11th-grader's should be of the prospect of facing down AR-15 fire in her school's broad and clean hallways.

Like Bailey, Madison Himler, who's seated a few feet away, said she "honestly wasn't surprised when I heard that another [shooting] had occurred.

"And we're at a point now where we might start becoming desensitized to things," she offers.

And then this: "Something definitely needs to happen," she says, and her voice goes all quiet.

Levy, Bailey, Himler and four more of her classmates, all young women, all juniors, and all students in CV's academically rigorous International Baccalaureate class, sat down to chat with PennLive last week about that something they want to get done.

They're the Sandy Hook Generation, the young people who have come of age at a time where wholesale slaughter in the hallways of America's public schools is depressingly commonplace; where safety drills are a regular occurrence, and where fear creeps in from the edges, as it does in the soft sadness of Himler's voice.

And they're tired of it.

They're tired of the fear; of the drills, and, most of all, they're tired of the hard reality that, when it comes down to it, there may be no safe place for them when a classmate or some other psycho finally has that bad day that drives them over the edge.

"Something definitely needs to happen."

And like the students at Parkland, these Cumberland Valley students have found their voices.

On March 14, like other students across the area, Levy and her classmates are planning to walk out of class as part of National School Walkout Day.

Four days later, on March 18, a Sunday, they're also planning a 2 p.m. rally on the square at High and Hanover streets in Carlisle, to similarly demand action on gun violence in the classroom.

"We're calling for people to come together - this is a bipartisan movement," Levy said of the March 18 event, which she framed as a search for solutions by gun-control advocates and pro-gun forces alike. "That might take the shape of gun control. We're not proposing a specific solution."

Their teacher, Amy Miller, exhibited clear pride at the initiative that her young charges showed. At the same time, though, there was palpable regret that the young women lived in a world where they had to protest violence in the classroom.

"I started teaching in 1999 - Columbine," Miller said. "So, for 20 years, I've wondered when I'll start worrying less. I just worry more."

But in the face of that, Miller said she also knew she had to be there for her students. There was "a lot of reassurance," in the hours and days after the Parkland shooting, she said.

At midafternoon on a Wednesday last week, the high school's hallways were still filled with students.

In a corridor near the main office, students sat in clumps on the floor, their backpacks and books spilled out around them. Other stood in knots of friends, their laughter and chatter filling up the space.

It's any high school. In any town. Anywhere.

But what if it did happen here?

These kids on the floor; the ones in the hallway; Levy and her friends. Still students, they become targets. And it would be appalling easy for someone to mow them down.

And so they practice, so that if the unthinkable does happen, they're ready.

Or as ready as anyone can ever be for that kind of thing.

"It would come on the announcement that we're having a lockdown," Anjana Ramesh said. "And then we'd all have to close, to lock our doors; and turn off the lights, and like, huddle in a corner."

That's when Bailey adds, with the kind of sarcastic laugh that no 17-year-old should be able to muster: "You sit in a corner and pray you don't get shot."

The young women all laugh too, but it's a kind of knowing laughter. They know hiding in a corner and pretending that no one's there is an empty gesture.

"If a shooter was to come in, they would be smarter than to think that a school was just completely empty on a school day," says Adriane Delicana. "So I think these intruder drills aren't really doing anything to help us."

Himler's words echo again.

"Something definitely needs to happen."

So maybe when this is when it all happens. Maybe we've hit the tipping point.

After years of "thoughts and prayers" that ring pathetically hollow from an utter lack of action, maybe in the words and deeds of the Parkland kids who have stormed social media and daytime TV; maybe in the high school kids like Levy and Bailey and Himler and Ramesh who will walk out of class next week; maybe in the teachers like Miller who have helped them find their voices, maybe this when it all starts to change.

Himler nailed it.

"Something definitely needs to happen."

Because, dear God, no high school kid should have to sit in a corner and pray she doesn't get shot.Pirates play to win against Blackcats Perryville football has had a flair for the dramatic this season. This past week was no different as they held on late for a 21-14 victory over Fredericktown on Friday at Pirate Stadium. Perryville 

St. Vincent keeps foot on the gas in victory St. Vincent made quick work of Herculaneum in week four. The Indians got off to a quick start and kept it rolling as they dispatched of the Blackcats 49-0 on Friday at Herculaneum High School. That This newsletter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.



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We were getting ready to leave for work when observer 1 noticed a strange substance in our front yard. She then told me to come and look at this strange substance in our yard. The strange substance was noticed because it was out of the ordinary. Something told her to look in the yard. Maybe intuition but she noticed something out of place. At 1st she thought it was coffee ground and what looked like cooked rice. The substance looked like it was hot when it made contact with the yard since the snow was melted all around the substance. But there were no tracks leading up to the substance which was strange. I decided to take a picture of it before leaving for work. To me the substance looked like nothing from this earth. The black stuff looks like space rocks or some kind of debris from take off? Can't explain what the white goo is but it looks sticky and clumped together like a food of some sort. How can we get sample of the substance to an investigator so it can be tested? -**********When I was living in Georgia a few years ago, a young male (early 20's) told me about an abandoned house that was about a half mile from him. He and a friend took a trip to the house went up the stairs then realized they were not in the house no more. I asked 'where were you two then?' We were in a large school with period setting. I asked about what possible time period, possibly the progressive era was a good guess. They do not know how long they were in there, but long enough to know that something was wrong. He told me they walked the halls and every room was identical. They walked into one of the rooms and sat in the classroom. Being young they did not sense any danger or what was going on. He told me that they sat there for a few minutes and then they turn around as if the stairway was behind them. He asked his friend if he wanted to go down the stairs. They went down the stairway with ease, exited the house and walked out. They hesitated for a brief moment. He asked his friend if he wanted to go back in to look around again, and the both agreed to go back upstairs. As they went upstairs again, it was like the classrooms never existed, because I knew what house he went in and it should have only taken them no more then 10 seconds to walk across from one side to the other. What I knew he did not, and that was the woman that owned the house many years ago (through records) she was a school teacher. So I do not know if her ghost was there or something and his spirit became intertwined with hers. I do not know, but it was one of the most interesting stories I have ever heard.**********Port Charlotte, FL - 2018-03-21: A larger Xenomorph looking creature saw me as I entered our screen porch area, and escaped through a missing screen lost during hurricane. It used one foot to push off, and jumped clear onto the one story roof, scattering rocks into the patio area. Then it went over the roof, I think back to the canal and escaped into the water. Dark black a little shiny large maybe nine foot, exoskeleton, looked like an ant like Xeno, it was not hostile it only looked to escape. Someone else from the house was there but I don't know who I heard the door close. -**********I had a glitch in the world. I've lived in the same state for over 14 years. SINCE I WAS BORN, and while I was going to my friend's house, I realized something was wrong, I was on the wrong street. Somehow the WHOLE street moved over and another one was there which never knew about, which was there all this time. (MY friend says the street has always been there.) I don't know how, but it wasn't there before, somehow a WHOLE ENTIRE street was made overnight. I'm serious, like, what happened?********************About two dozen protesters Saturday show support outside Pennridge High School in Perkasie for kids forced to serve detention for taking part in National School Walkout Day on March 14. Read more

A few weeks ago, Bryce O'Connor of Perkasie, Bucks County, probably didn't picture spending his 17th birthday quite like this  standing on a frigid, windswept sidewalk near the Rite Aid that stands kitty-corner from his Pennridge High School, getting the occasional honk-honk or a wave from passersby when they realized he and a dozen other folks were protesting gun violence.

But, then, Bryce didn't plan on defying school officials and walking out of school March 14, earning a two-hour Saturday detention that he'd served last week. Now he was here with his dad and his also-birthday-celebrating twin brother, showing support for the next batch of detainees who've branded themselves the #Pennridge225.

"I was walking by the doors that everybody was walking out of and thinking, 'In 20 years from now, what am I going to tell my kids about what I did on this day?'" Bryce recalled of March 14's National School Walkout Day, after the Pennridge School District had warned that anyone leaving the building would be punished. "So I walked out. I thought it was something I had to do."

And when Bryce and others in the first detention batch of 46 teens staged and filmed "a modern sit-in" last Saturday morning when they took their punishment, it became a viral act of defiance that may have angered some grown-ups, but earned praise and even amazement from other grown-ups, like his dad, Jim O'Connor.

"There are times  very rare  when you do have to stand up and break the rules," the 48-year-old O'Connor said, as the wind whipped across the ridge that gives the high school its name. "And understand there are good people out there who will support you." The dad held aloft a sign from a week earlier. It read: WAITING While My Child Is PUNISHED FOR BEING AWESOME! #ENOUGH

The prevailing winds on Saturday were heading south for the epic March For Our Lives, to Washington, D.C., where some of Bryce's Pennridge classmates traveled to join a human tsunami of 500,000 or more demonstrators, or to satellite events like a packed Philadelphia protest. Yet I found myself, in dawn's early light, heading north against those gusts to Perkasie, 30 miles north of Philadelphia, to witness the hardy two dozen teens, parents, and allies. They were there to show support for some kids who couldn't march on the U.S. Capitol because they were forced to reenact The Breakfast Club.

It's a protest that captures the imagination because in this supercharged moment of a fresh generational uprising, with a million people in the streets, singing songs and carrying signs, the Pennridge 225 have injected the one element most likely to spark a real change:

They broke the rules.

Sometimes you have to sit before you can march  which explains why the video of the Pennridge kids protesting their detention, locking arms on the floor, and holding the names of 14 teens who were gunned down last month in Parkland, Fla., has been viewed more than 3 million times. Rep. John Lewis  who knows more about fighting for social change than any living human, the only person who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington and at Saturday's March For Our Lives (in his hometown Atlanta)  has a phrase for what these kids are doing. He calls it "good trouble."

Lewis wrote earlier this year that "I think we're going to have generations for years to come that will be prepared to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. And lead us to higher heights." And here come some kids from Pennsylvania Trump Country (the president carried the area around Pennridge High School by about 10 percentage points) to prove his point.

Hundreds of thousands of kids across America walked out March 14 to honor the dead from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and call for stricter gun laws, but few on the Eastern Seaboard faced as much hassle as the Pennridge 225. Their initial plan for a 17-minute protest didn't pass muster with the GOP-led school board, including one  Joan Cullen  who later tweeted at Philadelphia talk radio hosts that the protests were "truly radical, anti-police, anti-U.S. govt."

There were moments when things got nasty in the hallways. Makenzy Portney, a 16-year-old junior, said someone called her "a liberal retard" as she headed for the door that morning. Indeed, some kids decided the protest  and the mandatory Saturday morning detention that awaited anyone who walked  wasn't worth the risk.

"I have a scholarship that rides on me not getting a suspension," said 18-year-old senior John Bordo, recently accepted at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. But Bordo did what he felt he could by showing up this Saturday to cheer on his classmates who waved from the windows of minivans as their parents drove them to their punishment.

Ironically, what could have been mostly over 10 days ago, in 17 short minutes, has instead become a running civics lesson for the Pennridge kids  on the meaning of civil disobedience and how to best celebrate the First Amendment and the rights of free speech and free assembly. For the second Saturday in a row, the allies of the Pennridge 225  who'd been ordered off school property by police  faced about a half-dozen counterprotesters, Pennridge seniors who've used the controversy to show support both for Second Amendment gun rights and for Trump, occasionally breaking out into "God Bless America" or Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be an American."

"We didn't feel it was fair that they were getting all the media attention," said Daniel Mainieri III, 18, an activist in the local Young Republicans who wore a "Make America Great Again" hat and wants to run for office one day. "We wanted to show the press and the people of the country that there are people who aren't in agreement with what they're standing for."

Yet Mainieri shared one thing with several teens on the other side of the street: A desire to make a life in politics, despite the current stench in Washington.

When the two-hour detention ended at 10 a.m., one of the kids who streamed out to applause  15-year-old Emma Hawkins, bearing a batch of posters including one with a semiautomatic that read AN ASSAULT ON OUR FUTURE  said she also wants to go into politics, prompting her mom to blurt out that means she plans to run for president. But for right now, the Pennridge activists are focused on the more down-to-earth goal of getting 18-year-olds to register  and vote in school board elections.

"I didn't consider it a punishment," said Emma, who said school officials on Saturday prevented a sit-in similar to the one that took place a week earlier, although it wasn't immediately clear how. "I consider it a badge of honor."

So do a lot of impressed grown-ups. Yes, I realize that comparisons to the 1960s (of which I've made way more than my fair share) can be overwrought, that there's a new generation with a new explanation. That said, one can't look at the events of 2018 so far and not be reminded of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964, when adults foolishly tried to restrict what young people can say  and instead opened a Pandora's box of righteous grievances against war and social injustice.

My hunch is that the remarkable scenes we witnessed Saturday were the cusp of another great youth awakening in America. I can't predict where it's headed, and neither can you. But expect a lot more good trouble. Necessary trouble.John Koen, a Philadelphia Orchestra cellist, plays at SEPTAs Walnut-Locust subway station on March 23, 2018 as part of Bach in the Subways. Read more

Two days after Johann Sebastian Bach's 333rd birthday, John Koen pulled out his cello at the SEPTA Broad Street Line's Walnut-Locust stop.

Sitting just steps from the turnstiles, a stark contrast to his usual place on stage at the Kimmel Center, the Philadelphia Orchestra cellist dove into Bach's Cello Suite No. 6 in D major.

His free lunchtime performance Friday was part of a worldwide initiative known as "Bach in the Subways." Three more subway shows will unfold this afternoon, including one with eight string players from the Philadelphia Orchestra, who will convene at 4:45 p.m. at Jefferson Station.

"I'm in high school, so it's not often that I get to see someone from the orchestra perform," said 12th grader Grace DiMeo. "Not a lot of people have the funds to see an artist play work like this."

"Bach in the Subways" is a grassroots campaign, with volunteer organizers in 150 cities worldwide this year, including amateur organist Jim Pavlock in Philadelphia.

"I want it to inspire kids to want to play music," Pavlock said. "But I also just want to watch it put a smile on commuters' faces as they come across a cello or a pipe organ planted in the middle of Jefferson Station."

Competing with the roar of trains rolling through the station, Koen's cello performance attracted a modest but attentive crowd, including teenagers shouldering backpacks, grandmothers with toddlers in tow, runners in shorts, and others among the diverse crowd that always fills Philadelphia's SEPTA stations.

"It's beautiful, and I admire him for coming out in the winter," Peter Bartholomew, a recent graduate of Temple University with a jazz-bass minor, said, pointing to the two tiny humidifiers on Koen's instrument. "It's brave because the air is really dry, which isn't ideal for the wooden instrument."

Koen's virtuosic bow strokes cut through the arcadelike sounds of SEPTA Key cards being swiped and school kids shouting, like a new composition drawing layers of sound from the surroundings. "It gives you a chance to be experimental, so slowing down or holding a note as the train is drawing near," said Koen. "The challenge is part of the intrigue."

To keep its performances free, "Bach in the Subways" discourages participating musicians from accepting donations. Pavlock is looking to expand the program in Philadelphia next year. Interested musicians can register online at bachinthesubways.org. "It's open to anyone," he said. "The only requirement is that you don't do it for money and that you play Bach."

Other performances today:Bill Cosby's defense team is seeking to remove the Montgomery County judge who presided over his last trial, arguing that his views on the case may have been unduly influenced by his wife's work as an advocate for sexual assault victims.

In a motion filed Thursday, the lawyers said there was a "clear appearance of partiality" in Judge Steven T. O'Neill's recent decisions and requested that he recuse himself before before Cosby's April 2 retrial.

They pointed to the work of O'Neill's wife, Deborah O'Neill, a psychotherapist who coordinates a sexual-trauma outreach program at the University of Pennsylvania, and highlighted a financial contribution she made last year to a group planning a rally next month in support of Andrea Constand and Cosby's other accusers.

Neither O'Neill nor his wife returned calls for comment Thursday. But prosecutors quickly fired back, dismissing the effort as little more than an "eleventh-hour, last-ditch attempt to stall the wheels of justice and taint the jury pool."

"After casting blame on everyone but himself  the prosecutors, the investigation, the media, the victim, the many women accusing him of sexual assault, a federal judge and his past attorneys  [Cosby] plays his last card by blaming the court," Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele wrote in a response filed late Thursday with the court.

The defense filing  submitted just over a week before Cosby's retrial is set to begin in Norristown  is only the latest request by 80-year-old entertainer's attorneys that, if granted, would delay the proceedings. O'Neill denied a push last week from Cosby's team to give them three more months to prepare for the trial.

Whether their latest bid will succeed remains uncertain, said Robert H. Davis, a Widener University law professor who specializes in legal ethics. State judicial conduct rules give wide latitude to judges to decide for themselves whether they can fairly oversee any given case.

"Typically, the conflicts of interest involving spouses relate to whether the spouse has a direct financial interest" to a party in the case, he said. "The question is going to be whether there is enough here to believe [his wife's work] would have an overall inappropriate effect on the judge's outlook."

It will initially be up to O'Neill to decide whether or not he can continue to impartially preside over the case he has overseen since Cosby was charged in 2015. If he refuses to step aside, Cosby's lawyers have already indicated that they will seek to put the case on hold while they appeal that decision to a higher court.

Thursday's filing was not the first time Cosby's backers have publicly questioned O'Neill's impartiality or the influence his wife's work may have over his views of the case, though his lawyers had never before raised the issue in court.

Cosby's wife, Camille, blasted the judge last June as "overtly arrogant and collaborating with the district attorney" in a blistering statement read by a spokesman from the courthouse steps just minutes after her husband's first trial ended with a hung jury.

Kia Soto  a celebrity gossip blogger and founder of the website TattleTailzz.com, who attended every day of the trial as a guest of Cosby  penned an op-ed in 2016 demanding O'Neill's recusal based on many of the same arguments put forth Thursday by the defense.

In their filing, Cosby's lawyers took particular issue with the donation that Deborah O'Neill made to V-Day UPenn, the student group planning to protest outside the Montgomery County Courthouse during the retrial.

"Dr. O'Neill  the spouse of the trial judge presiding over this case  has apparently donated marital assets to the very organization that will be protesting against Mr. Cosby at his upcoming retrial," their court papers state.

The lawyers also argued that several of the judge's recent decisions  including one to allow up to five additional accusers testify during the second trial, four more than he allowed during the first  show signs of bias.

Cosby has denied charges that he drugged and assaulted Constand, a former Temple University employee, with whom he had become friendly in 2004.For as long as locals can remember, the Woodbury City Council opened its business meetings with prayer.

But in the latest move to showcase the Gloucester County community as a welcoming place for people from all walks of life, city leaders have eliminated the prayer tradition. Instead, the council last month began its meeting with a moment of reflection under a policy announced in February.

"At that time, everybody can pray the way they want or they don't have to pray at all," said Mayor Jessica M. Floyd. "Nobody can be offended."

The issue has divided religious and political leaders in the city of nearly 10,000, which is home to more than two dozen places of worship, mostly Christian. It was founded in 1683 and settled as a Quaker religious center.

"It is sad that a tradition, which has existed for hundreds of years, has been stopped," council member Kenneth J. McIlvaine, who is Catholic, said Friday. "I am unhappy and disappointed the invocation has ended."

About 50 people, mostly from local churches, packed a meeting Monday with the newly created Human Rights Commission to share their concerns. Clergy members on both sides of the issue were passionate during the debate, which lasted about two hours.

"God is in full control of whether they have it or not," said the Rev. Norwood Cuff, pastor of Campbell AME Church. "I have my own convictions. I'm not going to fight it."

The seven-member commission earlier this year asked the city to change the prayer tradition, which is believed to date back hundreds of years, said Tony Doran, commission chairman. Some residents and city employees who were required to attend council meetings said they were uncomfortable with the prayer, he said.

"We really think that diversity and inclusion for everybody make us a better community," Doran said in an interview this week. "We're looking out for everybody."

Last year, the council adopted a citywide anti-discrimination policy and launched a promotional effort to brand Woodbury, the county seat, as a welcoming place for LGBTQ visitors and residents. Rainbow banners were placed along Broad Street, the city's main thoroughfare.

In a message on the city's website, Floyd, a Sunday school teacher at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church, says: "Woodbury is full of diversity, making it a great place to raise open-minded and tolerant children. Our residents take pride in being a welcoming community that embraces people of all walks of life."

"I go to church to practice my faith," said Floyd. "For anybody who's not Christian, I can see why it would be uncomfortable."

Doran said removing the prayer from the council meetings has nothing to do with the gay pride branding movement. The intent, he said, was to "bring more people together who historically felt excluded by the invocation."

Council President Tracey L. Parker made the decision to remove prayer from the February meeting agenda, a move that Floyd said she backed. Some council members were irked that they were not given a vote on the matter. Parker did not respond to a request for comment.

Only four Gloucester County towns  Clayton, Elk, Monroe and West Deptford  currently open their meetings with an invocation, according to a survey conducted by Woodbury. Nine towns have a moment of silence, five allow a prayer only at the annual reorganization meeting and three on special occasions.

"I believe there has to be prayer, whether aloud or silent," the Rev. Glenn DeShields, of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Woodbury, said Friday. As a compromise, the council should consider a standardized prayer that doesn't mention "Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad," he said.

"There has to be something workable so that we can still pray," DeShields said.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation has rigorously opposed government bodies opening their meetings with prayer, arguing that it is inappropriate. The group, based in Madison, Wis., believes that citizens tending to business matters with their local government "should not be subjected to a religious show or test, or be expected to bow heads and demonstrate religious obeisance at a government function."

"We fail to see why divine guidance is needed over such earthly matters, anyway," the group argues on its website.

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that legislative bodies, including city councils, can begin their meetings with prayer, even if it plainly favors a specific religion. The court cited history and tradition in finding that Christian prayers said before meetings of an upstate New York town council did not violate the constitutional prohibition against government establishment of religion.

"Ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond the authority of government," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the decision.

The prayer practice in the New York town of Greece, just outside Rochester, bears resemblance to the custom that had been used in Woodbury for years. In both cases, the council regularly opened its meetings with a prayer delivered by a community member. The speakers, recruited from local houses of worship, were overwhelmingly Christian.

McIlvane said he would like to have the invocation reinstated, but agreed with some religious leaders in acknowledging that prayer could be offensive to those who may not share his Christian beliefs. He said he would likely feel uncomfortable if certain groups with views counter to his were invited to give the invocation.

During the moment of reflection, McIlvane said, he plans to "mindfully ask for my Lord's help in guiding the city council to deliberate and return moral, practical and prudent decisions that will benefit the citizens of our diverse and welcoming community. In doing this, I believe my father will reward all of us."Marchers on Market St. during the March for Our Lives march and rally in Phila., Pa. on March 24, 2018. Read more

When University of Pennsylvania freshman Rachel Steinig took the stage as the first speaker of the day at Philadelphia's March for Our Lives rally, it didn't take her long to start talking about the "racist and classist media coverage of school shootings."

"Through movements like Black Lives Matter, black youth have been fighting for gun reform for years and haven't been given the support and media coverage that the Parkland students have," she said to many cheers. "This is a problem."

It's a concern that's been voiced by students across the city, from Mastery Charter-Shoemaker to Parkway Center City Middle College, and the reason why many said they'd sit out the national school walkout on March 14 and Saturday's March for Our Lives  both of which were organized in response to the Valentine's Day massacre that left 17 students and faculty dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

>> READ MORE: March for Our Lives: Recap of gun control rallies in Philadelphia, D.C.

That gun violence is a reality black and brown students have been facing for decades was a prominent theme of Philadelphia's student-organized, crowdfunded March for Our Lives, one that several of the more than two dozen speakers made sure the audience did not forget.

There were performer Suzann Christine, who sang about victims of alleged police brutality Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner "and even a girl named Sandy," noting that gun violence intersects with many issues that the black community faces; 16-year-old Saamiya Muhammad of Olney, who said, "Where I live, gun violence is the most prominent sport"; and Camryn Cobia, a Central High School student and member of the Philadelphia Student Union, who affirmed that she stood in solidarity with the Parkland students but reminded the audience  15,000 by organizers' count  that black and brown youth have been coming together to find solutions to gun violence for years.

There were also reminders of gun-violence victims among the marchers, as women carried portraits of young black men. Among them was Shakira Fagan of North Philadelphia, who said she joined the demonstration to make sure that her son, Irell Williams, who was shot to death when he was 17, was not forgotten.

Other prominent themes were outrage at the influence of the National Rifle Association on elected officials, what many described as misdirected emphasis on mental health instead of gun control, and the importance of voting. Dozens of organizers with groups like Philly Young Democrats and OnePA roamed the crowd in hopes of registering people to vote.

During the 2-hour program featuring high school and college students, politicians, hospital workers, and musical performers, speakers seemed to be putting their elected officials on notice.

"We are here today because we remember and we will be here in November," student Brooke Dowling repeated over and over, addressing Sens. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), and "NRA puppet" Marco Rubio (R., Fla.).

Temple sophomore Benjamin Aitoumeziane's message to elected officials who don't support gun control? "Start packing."

Ethan Block, a high school sophomore and student organizer of the march who roused the crowd as if he had been giving speeches at rallies all his life, said that when it came to politicians who don't support the movement: "We will do everything we can do to make sure you never set foot in congressional office again."

Among the politicians who spoke were Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat from Montgomery County, and State Rep. Brian Sims (D., Phila.). Sims decried the "false superiority of white men" and encouraged the white men in the crowd to "step out from the ignorance our privilege affords us."

The march, which began at Fifth and Market Streets and snaked down Columbus Boulevard to Columbus Circle, featured many young families, with parents pushing strollers, pulling wagons, and carrying toddlers on their shoulders.

It was the third march for the Hancock family  parents Christine and Ian, and sons Logan Stout, 11, and Colin, 8  of Telford, a suburban community straddling Bucks and Montgomery Counties.

"I want to stop danger in schools," Logan said.

Some spoke of the hope they felt in seeing the youth lead this movement.

"It's the first hope I've had since you know when," said 67-year-old Aliceanne Manning, of Germantown, who, along with her friend Laurel Sweeney, 65, held a sign that many stopped to take photos of. "Grannies against guns," it read.

Organizer Romaine Wright said she didn't know if the organizing crew would do another march next year  it was too soon to say  but they wanted to make sure the conversation kept going, whether at town halls, meetings, or something else.

And while some will criticize the newcomers to this issue, wondering where they were when black and brown people were getting gunned down, Scott Charles, director of Temple University's violence-prevention program Cradle to Grave and a professed "old head" who knows gun violence is nothing new, said it's not the time to be divided.

"I'm a firm believer in, 'It's not where you've been, it's where you're at,' " Charles said. "And right now, you're here."The bodies of three people were found Friday night inside a house that was struck by a fire that claimed the life of a man late Tuesday in North Philadelphia, according to TV news reports.

Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel told television reporters at the scene in the 1800 block of North 21st Street that a 64-year-old man, his 25-year-old daughter, and her 3-year-old son were found on the third floor of what he said was an illegal rooming house.

Two firefighters were injured battling the blaze Tuesday. Thiel said fire damage to the property hindered firefighters' ability to thoroughly search for victims.The awning-fronted house on North 21st Street in North Philadelphia where three people were found dead Friday, three days after a fire. Photo taken Saturday, March 24, 2018. Read more

As the flames licked up the sides of the awning-fronted rooming house near the end of the block on North 21st Street, someone told the firefighters on the scene that people were trapped inside.

It was Tuesday night in North Philadelphia, and firefighters were battling what would escalate to a two-alarm blaze. They headed for the third floor, through smoke, flames, and low visibility  until the staircase collapsed, sending a group plummeting to the first floor. Later, firefighters dragged a ladder inside, extended it to the third floor, and searched what they could reach. They found no one.

By the wee hours of Wednesday morning, with the fire out, the scene was declared cleared, said Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel, who described the events in an interview Saturday. The firefighters left.

On Friday, the Fire Marshal's Office fielded a call: Three relatives of the person on the line lived in the house on 21st Street and had not been heard from since the fire.

A unit sent back to the building searched again. In a bathroom on the third floor, they found the bodies of a young woman, her father, and her little boy. On the street, neighbors watched as the family's relatives sobbed.

The victims' identities had not been released as of Saturday evening.

On Saturday, Thiel said his department was investigating. "The real challenge for us is what happened between when we believed the building was clear and [Friday]," he said, "and that's the timeline we're working on pulling together."

He said investigators from the Fire Marshal's Office, as well as police officers and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives remained on the scene after the fire-and-rescue crews left.

But he could not say why it had taken three days for crews to reenter the building to search for the family, or when the department first realized that the family's relatives had reported them missing. NBC Philadelphia reported that relatives said they spent several days calling the department.

Thiel said the fire had been a serious one from the beginning. Another man had died on the scene, possibly because he had tried to jump from a window to escape the flames, Thiel said. It had been unclear whether anyone remained inside the house, Thiel said. But firefighters' "first priority is to search for life," he said, and so a team headed up the stairs until the staircase collapsed. Several of them were buried under fallen debris on the first floor  one pulled a "mayday" signal  and were dug out by colleagues. Two firefighters were injured in the collapse, one of whom spent the night at a hospital.

The house, on the 1800 block of North 21st Street, had been divided into illegal apartment units, Thiel said. That made it difficult for residents to escape, and difficult for firefighters to fully search the property, he said.

According to records from the Department of Licens es and Inspections, the house is owned by Granite Hill Properties, a property management company, but has not had an active rental license since 2015. The firm did not return a call for comment Saturday. Karen Guss, a spokeswoman for L&I, said the house was zoned as a single-family unit and should not have been rented to multiple households.

Thiel said the crews on scene had done what they could to search the house.

"We average seven or eight structure fires every day, we have reports of people trapped and it turns out they're not," he said. "Unfortunately, and tragically in this case, they were. And we didn't find them."

The firefighters who went back to the third floor to search again during the fire would have fallen through the floor "exactly as their colleagues did" if they had tried to reach the bathroom where the family's bodies were found, he said.

Thiel said the Medical Examiner's Office would determine the causes of death.

The neighbors on 21st Street said they had watched the fire Tuesday night and worried about the tenants they'd sometimes pass on the street  and were especially concerned about the young woman and her family who they said had lived there just a few months.

The day after the fire, one of her friends on the block had been calling her cellphone, over and over, to no avail. The neighbors hoped that she was staying with relatives. But on Friday morning, the woman's relatives arrived on the block and told neighbors they hadn't heard from her either. "It was terrible," said John Choice, who's lived on the block for 40 years.

Thiel said the department sent investigators to the house after the family called on Friday, who, "in the light of day," were able to find the family in the bathroom. The next several hours were spent shoring up the house so it was structurally sound enough to remove the bodies, he said.

"We are also troubled by the timeline and we're trying to understand," the commissioner said. "This was a tragic outcome, and one we wish we could have averted in some way. A lot of the family members were out there [Friday] night. They were rightfully upset, and we're upset too. We're going to look at every detail of this incident and this response and we're going to figure out the entire timeline."Eddie Sexton became Leigh Corfmans attorney when her allegations about Senate candidate Roy Moore became public. Read more

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.  Days after a woman accused U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual impropriety, two Moore supporters approached her attorney with an unusual request.

They asked lawyer Eddie Sexton to drop the woman as a client and say publicly that he did not believe her. The damaging statement would be given to Breitbart News, then run by former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

In exchange, Sexton said in recent interviews, the men offered to pay him $10,000 and promised to introduce him to Bannon and others in the nation's capital. Parts of Sexton's account are supported by recorded phone conversations, text messages and people in whom he confided at the time.

The effort to undermine Leigh Corfman's allegations  beginning on Nov. 13, a month before the election  shows how far some of Moore's most fervent supporters were willing to go to salvage an Alabama campaign that many hoped would propel a nationwide populist movement and solidify Bannon's image as a political kingmaker.

In the phone conversations and texts, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Post, one of the men spoke of ties to Moore and Bannon while urging Sexton to help "cloud" the allegations, which included other women's claims that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.

"What they're saying, all they want to do is cloud something," Gary Lantrip, who attended at least one private fundraising event for Moore, said during a phone call recorded by Sexton. "They said if they cloud, like, two of them, then that's all they need."

Lantrip also made references to money  at one point speaking haltingly about "the ten [pause] dollars," a shorthand for the $10,000 offer, Sexton said.

"We got some chance to do something, make some quick little-bitty for you . . . and then, on down the line, we can go to D.C.," Lantrip said during the recorded call.

Sexton was initially reluctant to talk publicly about the alleged offer, because the men  Lantrip and Bert Davi, business partners in a small construction firm  are his clients in an unrelated court case, a dispute over a real estate venture. Sexton decided to speak publicly after repeated requests over months from Post reporters, who contacted him after obtaining one of the recordings.

Sexton vouched for the authenticity and accuracy of the recordings and messages.

In a statement, Moore said Thursday that Lantrip and Davi had attended rallies but that the campaign was not involved in any effort to pay Sexton. "I nor anyone else in the campaign offered anyone money to say something untrue, nor did I or anyone else authorize someone else to do such a thing," he wrote.

A spokesman added that, although Lantrip and Davi had met Moore, "they did not have any special access to Judge Moore, nor were they ever commissioned with any special tasks by the campaign team."

A spokeswoman said Bannon, who worked in the White House until August, could not be reached for comment.

In separate interviews on Monday, Lantrip, 55, and Davi, 50, acknowledged seeking the statement and arranging a meeting between Sexton and two Breitbart reporters but denied doing anything improper.

During a 20-minute interview at a construction site in Birmingham, Davi parried questions about money, saying his partner would know details of what was offered to Sexton. "That was between Eddie and Gary," Davi said. Asked where the money would have come from, he said, "Probably Gary."

Davi said he has known Bannon for years but declined to say how they met or describe the nature of their relationship. He added that Bannon never knew about any offer to pay Sexton.

"Our effort was really to let the truth come out," Davi said.

At one point, Davi suggested it was Sexton who raised the idea of payment, saying the lawyer indicated that if he were to issue a statement about Corfman, he "wouldn't do it for free." Sexton denied that.

Davi ended the interview but said he would talk later that day. He was not available at the scheduled time, however, and refused to talk to a reporter as he left the site.

Approached outside his home that afternoon, Lantrip declined to comment on whether Sexton was offered money or about his own references to money during the recorded call. He acknowledged telling Sexton, however, that if he made the statement he would get legal work from Bannon as part of a Breitbart expansion in Alabama.

"I'll protect what I did, because I know I didn't do nothing," Lantrip said shortly before ending the interview.

A spokeswoman for Breitbart said the two reporters were not aware of any offer to pay Sexton or provide him with legal work and did not know who penned a handwritten statement he says he was asked to sign.

Two people interviewed by The Post said Sexton told them about the alleged offer around the time it was made, including a lawyer he was consulting for advice. They provided time-stamped texts and private Facebook messages that show their discussions with Sexton as he considered how to handle the situation.

Also, Sexton said he reported the incident to a federal prosecutor in Alabama. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Posey told Sexton in a Dec. 5 email that the events Sexton had described by phone did not appear to constitute a federal crime.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment.

  

In October and November, Corfman told Post reporters that she met Moore in an Alabama courthouse nearly 40 years ago, when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. She said he later drove her to his house, where he took off her shirt and pants and touched her sexually.

Corfman asked Sexton to help manage the media scrutiny that would follow the story's publication, Sexton said in a recent interview. Sexton was an unconventional choice. A partner at a small firm outside Birmingham, he specializes in product liability cases and had spent most of the past decade on a class-action lawsuit involving defective drywall. But Corfman and Sexton were childhood friends from Gadsden, Alabama, Sexton said.

After the story broke on Nov. 9, Alabama website AL.com identified Sexton as Corfman's attorney and quoted him as saying she stood by the account she gave The Post. Amid the barrage of media calls, Sexton said a partner at his firm expressed angst about being associated with such a politically charged issue. Sexton said that, though they made no public announcement, he and Corfman privately agreed to part ways.

Two days later, on the campaign trail, Moore predicted that Corfman's claims would unravel under scrutiny. "There are investigations going on. In the next few days there will be revelations about the motivations and the content of this article," Moore said at a news conference.

Breitbart jolted into action, too.

The conservative website had a lot riding on Moore. Bannon had backed him in a primary against Luther Strange, the favorite of establishment Republicans. The website had heralded Moore's win in the primary as proof of Breitbart's "enduring power and reach."

On Breitbart's daily radio show, Bannon called The Post's report a "weaponized hit" during a segment with Matt Boyle, one of three Breitbart reporters he dispatched to Alabama after the story broke.

"We expect that there will come out evidence that demonstrates the collusion between the Democrat establishment, the Republican establishment and the media," Boyle said.

Lantrip reached out to Sexton that same day.

"Hey buddy call me if you can. It's important," Lantrip wrote.

Sexton and Lantrip had been friends for decades, both men said. Sexton had represented him in several civil cases, including a bankruptcy and construction billing disputes, records show. Their kids, now grown, had been friends when they were younger, Sexton said.

The men spoke by phone on Nov. 12, a Sunday, and agreed to meet Monday at Sexton's law office in Hoover.

Lantrip brought Davi, his partner in the construction firm they launched in 2015.

The three chatted on a concrete slab behind the law office, Sexton told The Post. Davi mentioned that he knew Bannon, Sexton said. Davi said the Breitbart executive wanted to talk about whether Sexton would say publicly that he did not believe Corfman, Sexton said.

Sexton said he told them such a statement would not be credible, in part because he had already made supportive statements about Corfman on his Facebook page. He sent Lantrip images of those comments by text message early that afternoon, records show.

Sexton said Lantrip told him by phone a short time later that "Bannon's group" still wanted to talk to him.

Sexton said he doesn't recall whether money first came up during this phone call or at the meeting behind his law office, but he said Lantrip or Davi told him that he could collect $10,000  and possibly more.

Sexton said he was pressed for money at the time, and Lantrip knew it. Sexton had told his friend about the pressure that built up as he invested years working on the drywall case, he said.

Sexton said he was disturbed by the offer but also intrigued by the prospect of meeting Bannon. He said he did not know how Lantrip and Davi got involved in the Senate race, and he did not ask.

In interviews with The Post, the men said they were courted by the campaign. Davi said they were asked to hang banners touting Moore at a construction site. Lantrip said they met Moore three or four times, adding that he was "trying to get us on his side to campaign for him."

More than a week before Corfman's allegations surfaced, Davi and Lantrip had access to the candidate's inner circle.

On Nov. 1, the pair attended a Moore fundraiser at a townhouse in Washington, D.C., arriving in a black SUV with an unidentified third man, video obtained by The Post shows. The private gathering, hosted by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., featured a handful of senators and other high-profile supporters. Moore was there, as were Bannon and Boyle, according to footage shot by operatives with the progressive group American Bridge.

Davi told The Post the third man was their business partner, whom he declined to identify but described as "more involved politically." Shown images of the three of them outside the Capitol Hill fundraiser, Lantrip said he did not recognize the man.

Davi said during the interview that he has long known Bannon but would not say how. "Let's just say that I know Steve," he said. "I've known him for a while."

Davi has the kind of background that most campaigns try to avoid.

He spent years in state and federal prison in the 1990s, convicted of multiple felonies including auto theft in both Colorado and California, forgery in Wyoming, and a federal charge in Louisiana for being a felon in possession of a firearm, records show.

Davi had claimed to be a former member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, federal prosecutors wrote in the 1997 weapons possession case. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. In 2005, he pleaded guilty in San Diego for distributing methamphetamine, identity theft and firearms violations, records show. He was sentenced to five years in state prison.

"My past has nothing to do with any story," Davi wrote in a text message.

  

After their conversation behind the law firm, Sexton agreed to meet that afternoon at the office where Lantrip and Davi run their construction business, in a low-slung industrial building at the end of a cul-de-sac in Pelham, south of Birmingham. Before he went inside, Sexton called a friend and told him what was happening.

"He told me that he had been asked to turn on his client, to state that he didn't believe his client, and he would be paid to do it," Kevin Hodges, who met Sexton through their children's rodeo competitions, said in an interview. "He was concerned about what he needed to do, and he was calling for my advice."

Hodges said that he told Sexton not to go to the meeting but that Sexton wanted to confirm the offer. Hodges said Sexton told him he was considering recording it. Hodges provided a partial billing statement for his cellphone, at The Post's request, showing a 24-minute call with Sexton starting at 2:16 p.m. that day. Hodges said he leans Republican and supported Moore. He did not vote in the December election, state records show.

Sexton said he arrived at the Pelham office and joined Lantrip and Davi in a conference room. He said Lantrip told him that they had the money for him. Boyle, Breitbart's Washington bureau chief, soon joined them, he said. Minutes later, Aaron Klein, Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief walked in, Sexton said.

Sexton said he was too nervous to record the meeting from his phone.

On the table was a notebook, he said, opened to a page that contained the handwritten statement he was expected to sign. There was little small talk, Sexton said. He said they began discussing the possibility of issuing a statement about Corfman's credibility.

Sexton said he told them he didn't see any way he could make a statement disparaging his client  that he would lose his law license if he did  and besides that, he hadn't even asked Corfman about the details of her allegations against Moore.

"I don't know how y'all, or how anybody, would ever believe me," Sexton said he told them. "And Matt and Aaron kind of tell me, 'Well, that's not really the point of whether or not anybody believes you. It's just, you know, getting other information out there.' "

Sitting to the left of Sexton, Davi put his head down on the table in apparent exasperation, Sexton said.

"And I kind of started getting, I guess, maybe irritated and agitated, or I think everybody kind of did when they realized that I wasn't going to sign a statement," Sexton said. "I said, 'I don't know what I could say.' I said, 'This is a pretty big deal.' And I said, 'I just need to go. I'm going to think if I can do anything at all. I will let you all know.' "

Sexton said he ripped the page with the handwritten statement from the notebook as he left the meeting. He says he does not know who wrote it.

The statement, which Sexton provided The Post, says: "After reviewing the allegations, after taking Leigh Corfman as my client, I believe there is not sufficient evidence to back up the allegations and that the case lacks credulity. I decided that since I would have difficulty representing a client that I don't believe I have to recuse myself from this case. I hope the best for Leigh."

As he backed his truck out of the parking lot, Sexton aimed his phone out the window and recorded a shaky video of a man he says is Boyle.

Boyle did not respond to a request seeking comment, and Klein did not respond to an email.

"Hey brother sorry if I was a dick. If you weren't comfortable you were right to leave," Davi texted Sexton at 5:24 p.m. "it's a big deal and you have to make smart decisions. I understand"

  

Sexton said he decided to begin recording his subsequent interactions with Lantrip and Davi because he was concerned they might mischaracterize the meeting as his attempt to solicit a bribe. He recorded an eight-minute phone call with Lantrip later that evening.

"Where in the hell did you get these guys?" Sexton asked Lantrip, referring to the Breitbart reporters.

"That's the first time I met them today, and we just been talking with Bannon and then with Roy Moore and then with Rand Paul. We never met those guys until today," Lantrip said in the recorded call, a copy of which was obtained by The Post. (A spokesman for Rand Paul said the senator does not know Davi or Lantrip and had no involvement in seeking the statement.)

"I mean, have y'all  have they already paid y'all money?" Sexton asked.

"No, just what I'm about to give you," Lantrip replied.

"We got the 10," Lantrip said, pausing briefly, "dollars. We got that, but it, it don't matter."

Sexton told Lantrip that he'd like to help, but making a statement  they did not specify about what  would be "bombastic." He reiterated his concern that it could also lead to the loss of his law license.

"I'm just going to say you called and you need a little more time," Lantrip said. "You're gonna think about, you ran into some problems and you'll call us tomorrow."

During the call, Lantrip also assured Sexton he would meet Bannon one day.

The next day, Sexton discussed the alleged offer with a lawyer and friend, Michael J. Evans, who gave The Post copies of private messages showing that Sexton told him about the meeting and phone call with Lantrip. Evans was politically active during the campaign. He started a Facebook group that created memes critical of Moore and supportive of Moore's opponent, Doug Jones. He said he also made multiple small contributions to the Jones campaign.

The overtures from Lantrip continued.

"Hey buddy we'll be with Roy Moore tonight if you come up with anything. Thx," Lantrip wrote to Sexton at 2:29 p.m. on Nov. 14, 28 days before the election.

That evening, Moore was set to appear at a church in Jackson, three hours southeast of Birmingham. When Moore arrived, he and his wife, Kayla, were trailed by Lantrip and Davi, video of the event shows. They walked down the aisle behind Moore as he shook hands.

Lantrip and Davi took seats in the front row, near Moore and his wife. At one point, Davi motioned to someone in the audience, the video shows. Soon after, Boyle took a seat next to him.

Davi leaned in and whispered to Boyle several times as the church choir sang. After Moore's speech, Lantrip and Davi huddled with him and his wife, along with several other people, just off the stage. Later, Davi held back television cameras as Moore ducked into a car, according to video of the event.

At 9:49 p.m. that evening, Lantrip sent Sexton another text: "Hey brother just got done with that meeting. Call me when you can"

As Lantrip made the late-night drive back to Birmingham, he also left a voice mail, asking Sexton to call him "first thing in the morning."

"We got some business to talk about," Lantrip said in the message.

  

Sexton, who was in New Orleans for the drywall case, didn't respond to multiple text messages sent by Lantrip and Davi over the next few days.

"Ok buddy call me in the mourning before you get started got some important info from Bannon," Lantrip wrote on Nov. 15.

"Maybe you could respond to Gary even to say can't help you," Davi wrote later that day.

Sexton was silent, according to the string of messages reviewed by The Post.

"Hey Eddie call me it's real important I've got some info that benefits you and me," Lantrip pleaded two days later.

The men persisted until Nov. 25, when Sexton wrote in a text message that he would be at his farm if they wanted to meet him.

"We are heading out to see ya brother," Davi wrote.

At the farm, Sexton said, Davi pressed him on why he wouldn't make a statement. Sexton said he did not record the conversation.

Sexton said he challenged Davi to "call Bannon's lawyers and get them to indemnify me and hold me harmless and support me the rest of my life if something happens and get them to tell me what they think I can say."

The next morning, on Nov. 26, Davi sent Sexton a text message: "DC attorneys agree with you. You cannot say anything further than you declined to represent her. Nothing more, no reasons, no explanations."

Davi told The Post that the attorneys referenced in the text were his lawyers. He declined to identify them.

As Sexton played coy, he and Evans were weighing the options.

Go public? Sexton said that possibility was complicated by the fact that Davi and Lantrip were his clients. Plus, Evans and Sexton said, Corfman had told them she preferred if they waited until after the election because it might otherwise look like an attempt to influence the results in the final days.

Sexton and Evans said they decided to report it to federal authorities.

"I think I slept well because you are going to FBI today," Evans wrote on Nov. 29 in a private Facebook message he provided to The Post. "I feel like that is the right move."

The following day, Sexton contacted the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Alabama, according to an email.

"Do you have a few minutes to discuss something?" he wrote to Posey, an executive assistant U.S. attorney. They spoke later that day, Sexton said, and Posey said he would be back in touch.

The election was less than two weeks away.

Lantrip called Sexton on Dec. 4, the day before Bannon was to appear at a Moore campaign rally in Alabama.

"On that other thing we've been talking about, with Bannon and them," Lantrip said during the recorded call. "They was wantin' to see if you'd make a statement saying you declined . . . to take the case and don't represent her anymore. Period."

Sexton demurred.

The following day, Posey, the federal prosecutor emailed Sexton back.

"We don't find any applicable criminal provision in federal election law," he wrote.

On Dec. 8, Boyle reached out to Sexton directly.

"Hey Eddie," he texted. "Give me a call when you get a second."

"Only need a few minutes of your time," he wrote the following day.

Sexton said he didn't respond.

On Dec. 12, Moore lost the election. The stakes for Bannon and Breitbart were soon clear.

"Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans," Trump said in a statement on Jan. 3.

Less than a week later, Bannon was pushed out of Breitbart News.

During the interview Monday, Davi said he and Lantrip initially did not believe Corfman's claims but do now.

"At the end of the day we came to believe the allegations," Davi said. "We stepped away from Roy Moore."

  

Alice Crites and Michael Scherer contributed to this report.Workers from crane manufacturer ZPMC and PhilaPort watch the Zhen Hua 16 dock with the ports new giant cranes . Read more

Two new giant cranes capable of unloading the world's largest container ships arrived in the city Saturday on a slow boat from China, the 21-story-tall structures so huge they literally stopped traffic when they cleared the Delaware Memorial Bridge with only six feet to spare.

The cranes, manufactured by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co. Ltd.(ZPMC) of Shanghai, at a cost of $12 million each, will allow the Port of Philadelphia to keep pace with other port facilities, port officials said.

"Now we have the cranes so we can be competitive on the East Coast," said Jeff Theobald, the port's chief executive, who was among the officials and workers who turned out to gawk at the oddly configured vessel dock at the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal.

"This is a great day for the Port of Philadelphia," said Jerry Sweeney, chairman of the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.

The heavy-load Zhen Hua 16 vessel, owned by ZPMC, is specially designed to ride low in the water so that the cranes, which weigh 1,684 tons each and are 252 feet high, can be slid directly off the ship's deck onto the wharves.

But the small amount of space separating the deck from the water means that the vessel must travel very slowly in the open water. It needed 91 days to sail to Philadelphia, passing below South Africa, with an intermediate stop in South Carolina, where it unloaded two cranes for the Charleston port.

"They're massive," said Dave McGuire, PhilaPort project engineer, who traveled to Charleston to observe the elaborate unloading operation that will be repeated in the next few days in Philadelphia. "The closer they get, the more impressive they are."

The Zhen Hua 16 needed to take on extra ballast and wait until low tide to pass under the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and just to be safe, authorities halted vehicular traffic on the bridge during the passage.

The port corporation bought one of the cranes, and Holt Logistics Corp. and Greenwich Terminals LLC, which operates the Packer Avenue terminal, paid for the second.

"This will allow us to be more productive," said Thomas J. Holt Jr., president of Astro Holdings LLC, the Packer Avenue lease-holder. "We can get ships in and out more quickly, which means more cargo, which means more jobs."

Holt and the other officials praised Gov. Wolf for approving a $300 million grant in 2016 aimed at doubling the port's container cargo capacity and creating about 2,000 more direct port jobs.

The port and Holt have ordered three more of the new super post-Panamax cranes  so named because they can reach across larger vessels designed to pass through the widened Panama Canal. The three new cranes are scheduled to arrive next year.A French policeman was shot by a gunman Friday after swapping himself for a hostage in a siege at a supermarket in the southwest town of Trebes. (screenshot: CBS News)

A French policeman who was shot by a gunman Friday after swapping himself for a hostage in an apparent terror attack at a supermarket in the southwest town of Trebes is being praised as a hero. The policeman was among a group of officers who rushed to the scene after the attacker, who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, stormed the store and fired on shoppers and staff before taking them hostage.

The suspect, identified as 26-year-old Redouane Lakdim, reportedly shot dead two people at the supermarket after earlier opening fire on passengers in a car, killing one of them, and injuring a police officer in nearby Carcassonne, reports CBS News.

"Everything leads us to believe it is a terror attack," said French President Emmanuel Macron.

The officer, who was reportedly seriously injured, was later identified as Col. Arnaud Beltrame.

An officer from the police SWAT team was also hurt in the operation. The gunman was killed.Silence is different than not doing anything. Our local Quaker community, called Rochester Friends, taught me that and much more on a recent Sunday morning.

This week for the Lent series, were focused on the spiritual practice of silence. In order to learn more about why its important, I reached out to the Quakers. Id heard somewhere along the way that their worship services included a fair amount of silence. I sent an email requesting a conversation to learn more, and in response, they warmly invited me to join them for Sunday morning worship before the interview.

The worship experience was powerful and beautiful and unlike anything Id ever been part of before. There were about 15 of us in attendance. We sat in chairs in a circle in the living room at 1300 10th Ave. NE in Rochester. What followed was a sacred space of holy listening.

During most Quaker worship services anywhere in the world, those gathered spend the majority of the hour sitting in silent contemplation. There is no pastor. Quakers believe that the Holy Spirit can move within anybody anytime. Everyone in worship is free to speak if they feel moved to do so.

The service that I participated in ended after about an hour. After contemplation came announcements and the singing of a few hymns a capella. We transitioned to coffee and treats after that. Then four members of the community (Bob Hoxie, Rich VanDellen, Mike Resman and Jan Wiersma) sat down with me for a brief interview so that I could learn more about the spiritual practice of silence.

"For me, silence has become where worship really happens. Its where God can work," Wiersma said.

Resman said, "Many people talk to God. Quakers also place a strong emphasis on listening."

VanDellen then added a helpful point of clarification about the purpose of Quaker worship. It isnt just about being quiet.

"Our worship is often called silent worship but it really should be called waiting worship," he said. "We are trying to ascertain the Spirit/Gods will."

Several with whom I spoke that morning differentiated between meditation and stillness/contemplation. The Rochester Friends were quick to express the value of both in a spiritual life. Meditation is often thought to be a practice of quieting ones mind. Contemplation seeks to quiet the inner and outer world with the specific goal of listening to the voice of God. Both meditation and contemplation make good use of silence.

"In the cacophony of our modern world, silence is something that may be helpful to people," VanDellen said.

For those interested in incorporating contemplative silence into their lives, Resman recommends praying every day for five minutes. "Spend 2 minutes speaking and then spend 2 minutes listening," he suggested.

The Rochester Friends also want the wider community to know that they welcome everyone to their worship. In addition to being a peaceful space to contemplate and worship with others, the community also has a library full of great spiritual reading material.

Ill leave you this week with a bit of wisdom that Hoxie shared after worship: "Between all our thoughts, theres a millisecond of space. Thats silence. The practice of silence/worship/contemplation  whatever you want to call it, thats where we learn to expand those spaces. Those spaces are where we give God room to work."

May you find such spaces in your journey this week.She is playing the role of Cinderellas stepmother in this weekends Childrens Dance Theatreproduction of "Cinderella." While she did not choreograph her part, director and choreographer Matthew Keefeencouraged Jennifer to put her own mark on it.

She is enjoying the role "because its not super physically demanding and is more acting so you get to have more fun with fellow cast members."

Having spent her formative dance training years here in Rochester at Janet Lang Dance Studio and Rochester Ballet School, it is especially meaningful for Jennifer to return to the stage at the Mayo Civic Center. At a recent rehearsal, the mother of a young dancer brought her daughter over to Jennifer to reassure the little girl that the stepmother "wasnt scary."

In the midst of the conversation, Jennifer realized she and the other woman had danced together with Childrens Dance Theatre as teenagers and had not seen one another since they were 16. Such unexpected encounters have made this production and role so special to Mack.

Jennifer can be seen performing in Cinderella at the Mayo Civic Center this weekend. Shows are at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. today, and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Film star

Born in Iceland, raised in Italy, and having lived in New York City and Washington D.C., world traveler Alexis Pattonnow divides her time between Rochester and Los Angeles.

After earning a degree in romance languages and literature from Princeton University, Patton worked as an actress and a writer. She then returned to school to study film and television production at the University of Southern California, where she is currently an MFA candidate.

As part of her coursework, Alexis was assigned to make a film in which one of the constraints was "no dialogue." The end result was her film "Angels in Disguise."

Patton wrote and directed this black-and-white short, gathering inspiration from Hebrews 13:2. ("Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.") It is the story of a young woman assisting a homeless man. She wanted to make an "inspirational film where the audience feels uplifted at the end."

With no dialogue, Alexis was able to "tell the story visually." But even without conversation between the actors, "sound becomes critical." Patton was ever so intentional with the selection of all sound in her film.

"Angels in Disguise" is receiving much acclaim worldwide. While at the Durango Film Festival in Colorado, Pattons film was screened twice for local schoolchildren, giving them exposure to art, critical thinking, and an awareness of social justice.

Closer to home, Pattons film was named an Official Selection at The Mespies 2018, a Minneapolis film festival. In addition, she was honored with nine nominations, including Best Short, Best Writing, and Best Directing.

"Angels in Disguise" will be honored at the 2018 Mespies Awards ceremony this evening at the Heights Theater (3951 Central Ave. NE) in Minneapolis. A screening of the film, free and open to the public, will be at 5:15 p.m. March 25 at the Heights Theater.

Librarians pet

Some careers are driven by circumstance. As an undergrad studying drama with an emphasis on costume design at San Francisco State University, Heather Acerroneeded money to pay the rent. She took a job at the Ventura County Library and "forgot to leave."

Heather was no stranger to the Ventura County Library system. As a child, she frequently rode her bike to the local library.

"I remember visiting one summer with my pet rat Gmork (named for the character from "The Neverending Story")riding on my shoulder. He was very calm, enjoyed bike rides, and could even do a few tricks.

After several visits with Gmork, the librarian noticed him and let me know that pets were not allowed in the building. I left him home for future library visits."

Acerro went on to the University of Southern California to earn her masters degree in library science. It was Rochesters good fortune when she arrived here in 2011, where she now serves as head of Youth Services for the Rochester Public Library.

Heathers good work has not gone unnoticed. Library Journal recently honored her as one of the 2018 Movers and Shakers. Specifically recognized in the category of "Change Agents," Heather has been instrumental in our community.

In 2014, she and her Youth Services staff along with community partners worked to "become a safe space for LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual) youth and families." One of the highlights has been the Pride Prom, a summer event planned and hosted by q club, a teen group that resulted from the safe and welcoming environment Heather helped facilitate at the library.

What do librarians like to read? Heathers recent choices include "non-fiction about minimalism and whole-foods, plant-based eating." However, soon she will only be reading picture books in her free time. Acerro is also serving on the 2019 Randolph Caldecott AwardCommittee. She and fellow committee members will have the honor of selecting the most distinguished picture book of the year.

Acerro says there is no typical day in the library. She might start her day in a staff meeting, followed by singing in the auditorium with kids and stuffed animals, and end up helping a child find a book for a school project. There was no mention of any pet rats accompanying her to work.iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Four members of an Iowa family were found dead in Mexico after they were reported missing just after midnight Friday.

The bodies of Kevin Wayne Sharp, 41; his wife, Amy Marie Sharp, 38; Sterling Wayne Sharp, 12; and Adrianna Marie Sharp, 7, were found at the condominium where they were staying in Tulum, according to the Creston Police Department.

Autopsies are being conducted in Mexico, police said.

According to ABC Des Moines affiliate WOI-TV, the family left for Mexico on March 15 and were expected back in the U.S. on Wednesday.

Amy Sharp's cousin Jana Weland told ABC News the family flew out of St. Louis and called Amy Sharp's mom that same day to let her know they had arrived.

It was the family's second time in Mexico, and their planned activities included meeting up with some friends and going to a water park, Weland said.

But "they never showed up at that water park to meet them," Weland said.

On Thursday night, the family had a "gut feeling" that something was wrong when they watched for the last flight to St. Louis and they "didn't hear from them," Weland said. She added that it was "unusual" that they weren't posting photos because "last year they shared pictures about every day."

"I guess we were all kind of hoping for the best -- that maybe they were just planning to stay another day," she said.

ABC affiliate KETV in Omaha reported there were no signs of foul play.

"To my knowledge, they went to sleep and never woke up," Weland said.

No further details were released by police.

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said: "We are able to confirm the deaths of four U.S. citizens in Akumal, Mexico. We extend our sincere condolences to friends and family. Our consulate in Merida is providing consular services. Out of respect for the family during this difficult time, we have no further comment."

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.Star Tribune reporter Maura Lerner covers the unsuccessful efforts of an indomitable college student to bring Ben Shapiro to another crazy campus. The indomitable student is Kathryn Hinderaker. The crazy campus is St. Olaf College. Online Lerners story is headlined Ben Shapiro barred from St. Olaf College during protest anniversary.

In the print edition of the Star Tribune, at the top of page B1, the headline is couched in euphemism: Ben Shapiro is asked to reschedule. Really. As the jailer in Cool Hand Luke might put it, according to St. Olaf, what we have here is failure to reschedule.

On its face, the story sounds like another chapter in the ongoing saga of the suppression of conservatives on campus. St. Olaf, however, has taken it one step beyond. Lerner reports:

St. Olaf College is defending its decision to bar a conservative activist from speaking on campus in April, saying it was a matter of poor timing. The college said it would be inappropriate to bring Ben Shapiro, a controversial author and podcast host, to the Northfield campus on April 23 because the date coincided with the anniversary of anti-racism protests that swept the campus last year. The reasoning didnt go over well with the students who invited Shapiro, or Shapiro himself. Whats the connection? asked Kathryn Hinderaker, a conservative student leader who led the effort to bring Shapiro to campus. The protests, she noted, were sparked by reports of students receiving racist notes, one of which turned out to be a hoax. There shouldnt be any reason he cant come in on this specific date, she said. Shapiro, who has drawn protests at campuses across the country for his provocative views, dismissed St. Olafs argument as nonsense. I fail to understand why exactly my presence on campus has anything to do with a racial hoax, he wrote in an e-mail to the Star Tribune. He spoke at the University of Minnesota in February, drawing protesters. Shapiro is a Harvard Law School graduate who delights in mocking liberal politics. Among his books: Bullies: How the Lefts Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans, and Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate Americas Youth. Carl Crosby Lehmann, the colleges vice president and general counsel, said there was no intention to link Shapiro to last years incident. We nonetheless believe his appearance on our campus at that time would have been counterproductive, he said. I dont think its debatable that he is a divisive person. Hinderaker, a junior, said she began working with college officials in December to arrange Shapiros April appearance. She said the speech was being funded by Turning Point USA, a national group for conservative students. But about a week before the contract was to be finalized in February, she said, she learned that the college would not agree to the scheduled date. We are open to having Mr. Shapiro speak at St. Olaf, Lehmann told her in a Feb. 13 e-mail. But having him here during the anniversary of last years protests is not appropriate. He asked her to explore other times. Can we look at dates next winter or spring? Hinderaker says she was told that Shapiro had no other available dates in 2018, although the college believed otherwise. She appealed her case to David R. Anderson, the college president, and launched an e-mail campaign to try to reverse St. Olafs decision. In an e-mail reply, Anderson wrote on Feb. 15: I share your interest in ensuring that diverse viewpoints are expressed on our campus, including the perspectives of conservative speakers like Mr. Shapiro. But the scheduled date, he said, is at a time that coincides with the anniversary of last years protests. This is deeply concerning. Our campus is still healing from that experience. Last April, students staged sit-ins and protests after a series of racist notes and graffiti were reported on campus. On April 29, a black student reported that she had found a threatening note on the windshield of her car, and two days later, the college canceled classes after students threatened a boycott and took over the administration building. A week later, college officials announced that the last note had been exposed as a hoax. The other incidents are still under investigation, Lehmann said. Since then, St. Olaf has formed a working group to address the concerns that led to the unrest. The protest made us take stock of how we as a college make students of different cultures, races, socio-economic backgrounds, and beliefs feel not only welcome, but included, the college said in a statement Friday. We hope that the anniversary of last year will be an opportunity to bring the campus closer together and not to divide us further apart. The college has offered to find another time to bring Shapiro to campus, Lehmann said. For us, this has always been just about the timing, he said. Hinderaker, though, believes there was more to it. Its absolutely their right to say no, but I dont think that means we should let them get away with that, she said. I want to go to a college that promotes the free discussion of ideas. Thats the college I thought I was going to.

St. Olaf College has taken the leftist campus hatefest to new heights. Shapiro is not to appear on campus because the date coincides with ongoing festivities triggered by last years faked racial incidents. I covered them at length in posts including The trouble at St. Olaf and The farce at St. Olaf.

College president David Anderson now takes St. Olaf beyond farce to the Twilight Zone. Like any sane person, Kathryn fails to see the logic of the colleges position here. The colleges logic adds a defamatory component to the usual suppression of conservatives on campus. It would be wrong to acquiesce rather than call it out. Like the boy in the story of the emperors new clothes, the courageous Ms. Hinderaker has the temerity to call out the nakedness on display. All honor to her for resisting when her resistance actually requires bravery.

JOHN adds: Kathryn is, of course, my daughter. While St. Olaf thought Ben Shapiro too divisive to appear on a campus that was still healing from a racism hoax, the college had no problem with Professor Ted Thornhill of Florida Gulf Coast University, who spoke at the colleges invitation on March 14. St. Olaf student Kyle Hooten reports at Campus Reform: Prof calls conservative students a racist mob.'

A controversial Florida Gulf Coast University professor who drew national media attention for his white racism course recently gave a lecture equating conservative students to Nazis. Professor Ted Thornhill delivered the comments during a March 14 guest appearance at Minnesotas St. Olaf College, his former employer, where he called the institution a violent place for people of color.

***

Thornhill then explained that he has more respect for the KKK than the aforementioned groups because it is more honest about its white supremacist beliefs. America is a racist countrythis is a racist society, thats unarguable, he added, displaying a PowerPoint of the central characters in the on-campus white racist mob and labeling Campus Reform, The College Fix [for which Kathryn writes], Turning Point USA [Kathryn is the TPUSA coordinator for St. Olaf], the College Republicans [Kathryn is president of the St. Olaf college Republicans], and Students for Liberty among them. You cant be capitulating to these folks, they use evil and insidious strategies and dont have facts, dont use logicyou can immediately spot emfolks of color get it, he stated, saying such organizations feed into Fox.

Having students like my daughter publicly denounced as an evil white racist mob is not too divisive for St. Olaf, apparently. Interestingly, however, Thornhills speech appears to have stirred concerns at Gulf Coast, as someone from that university has contacted students who were present to corroborate the statements attributed to Thornhill by Hooten.HAMILTON, Bermuda, March 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

OIL held its 2018 Shareholder's Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Thursday, March 22nd at the Fairmont Southampton Bermuda. During the meeting, it conducted the review and approval of the 2017 annual financial statements as well as the election of directors.

For 2017, OIL recorded a $71.3 million underwriting loss. After factoring in net investment income and administrative expenses, OIL's net income for the year was $587.7 million. For additional information about OIL's 2017 financial results, please visit http://www.oil.bm to view our audited financial statements. After the review of the year-end financials, shareholders approved the financial statements and the re-appointment of KPMG as auditors for the fiscal 2018 year.

In addition, the Company reported at the AGM that the Board of Directors had declared a dividend in an aggregate amount of $450 million to all shareholders on record as of January 1, 2018 payable on or before June 30, 2018 in recognition of OIL's continued financial success and solid financial condition. Lastly, the shareholders approved a minor change to the Shareholders Agreement that focused on the application of the company's eligibility rules.

Bertil C. Olsson, President & CEO, commented that "OIL's strong performance in 2017 allowed the company to return value to our shareholders through a substantial dividend for the 5th straight year. Providing long term value to its membership in the form of significant policy limits with broad terms and conditions, returning excess capital when appropriate as well as adapting as our members' needs defines OIL's unique value proposition."

George Hutchings, Senior Vice President & COO, stated that "I am very pleased with the progress the company has made executing the strategic plan during the year. It undoubtedly will help position us for the future. As an example and during 2017, the Board approved the introduction of the Renewables Sector, which will allow the company to adapt to and embrace the significant investments its members are making in this segment of the energy industry."

Roberto Benzan, OIL's outgoing Chairman, commented, "The $450 million dividend demonstrates the Board's commitment to return value to OIL's shareholders when it is prudent to do so." He further added, "OIL is firmly footed on a tremendously strong foundation established over its 46 year history. Over that time frame, the company has steadfastly focused on shareholder value and will continue to do so in the years ahead."

After the AGM adjourned, the Board of Directors met and elected Theodore Guidry II as Chairman of the Board and Fabrizio Mastrantonio as Deputy Chairman for 2018.

For more information about OIL's property coverages and related value go to http://www.oil.bm

Oil Insurance Limited (OIL) insures over $3.0 trillion of global energy assets for more than fifty members with property limits up to $400 million totaling more than $19 billion in total A- rated property capacity. Members are medium to large sized public and private energy companies with at least $1 billion in physical property assets and an investment grade rating or equivalent. Products/coverage offered include Property (Physical Damage), Windstorm (excluding Offshore GOM), Non Gradual Pollution, Control of Well, Removal of Wreck, Terrorism, Cyber, Construction and Cargo. The industry sectors that OIL protects include Offshore and Onshore Exploration & Production, Refining and Marketing, Petrochemicals, Mining, Pipelines, Electric Utilities, Renewables and other related energy business sectors.

SOURCE Oil Insurance Limited (OIL)Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi arrives to offer a 'Chadar' at Ajmer Sharif Dargah on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ajmer on March 19, 2018. Image Source: IANS

Ajmer, March 19 : Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Monday offered the ceremonial 'chadar' at Sufi Saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti's shrine here on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

According to informed sources, Modi had handed over the 'chadar' to Naqvi on Saturday to be offered at the shrine.

A huge crowd had gathered at the dargah premises to see the 'chadar'.

In a message, Modi conveyed greetings and best wishes to the followers of the Sufi saint in India and abroad on the occasion of the 806th annual Urs.

"Peace, unity and harmony is at core of various philosophies in the country. Sufism is one of them. When we talk of Sufi saints in India, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti appears as a symbol of great spiritual traditions. The service of humanity made by 'Gharib Nawaz' will continue to be an inspiration for future generations," the Prime Minister said.

"On the occasion of the annual Urs of this great saint, I am offering 'chadar' and Khiraaj-homage to Dargah Ajmer Sharif and wish for a harmonious co-existence of our culture. Greetings and best wishes to the followers of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti across the world on the annual Urs," he added.

Speaking to reporters, Naqvi said terrorism was the biggest enemy of both Islam and the entire humanity.

"This message is at the core of principles and teachings of the great Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti. Principles and commitment of Khwaja Gharib Nawaz is a strong weapon to defeat those evil elements trying to weaken human values and disturb peace," Naqvi said.

He said India was an example of social and communal harmony.

"We will have to strengthen this fabric of social harmony and unity. This unity can defeat the forces engaged in the conspiracy to create divide and conflict in our society."

Naqvi also inaugurated a 100-toilet complex, constructed by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, at "Vishramsthali" on Kayad road near the Dargah.

Thousands of pilgrims have arrived in Ajmer for the Urs, which is revered equally by Hindus and Muslims.

Sameer Chishti from Ajmer Dargah told IANS that two dozen LCD screens were installed in and around the dargah where Modi's video message will be aired.New Delhi, March 20 : Delhi power distribution major BSES on Tuesday urged its over 40 lakh consumers to "Switch-Off" their electric appliances during Earth Hour on March 24, 2018 to show their concern for the environment.

According to the company, consumers should show their concern for the environment by switching-off their electrical appliances and non-essential lighting fixtures for one hour starting 8.30 p.m. (local time) on Saturday.

Commenting on the importance of a sustainable planet, a BSES spokesperson said: "As conscientious corporate citizens of Delhi, BSES urges its consumers to opt for paper-less bills, thus giving up paper waste."

"BSES discoms are leading the distribution of highly subsidised LEDs being facilitated by Government of India. We are also actively involved in renewables push being seen in the country," added the spokesperson.

The company further said that Earth Hour 2018 will also be the platform that launches the "Give Up To Give Back" movement, encouraging millions of Indians to give up wasteful practices, habits and lifestyles to give back to the planet that makes life possible.Mumbai, March 21 : Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt is planning legal action against the writer and publisher of his "unauthorised" biography "The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy". In response, the publisher has decided not to put out any "extracts" from the book in short-form media.

The actor also said his "authentic" autobiography will be out soon.

Sanjay issued a statement via social media about the book penned by Yasser Usman and published by Juggernaut.

"I have not authorised either Juggernaut Publications or Yasser Usman to write/publish my biography. Our lawyers had sent them a legal notice, in response to which Juggernaut Publications said that contents of the proposed book are based on information available in public domain from authentic sources.

"However, from the excerpts that are appearing in the newspaper are partly based on my old interviews, but rest all seemed to be based on hearsay, 1990s' tabloids and gossip magazines, most of which are figments of imagination and not true. I have consulted with my legal team on the next course of action," the actor wrote.

In an accompanying post, Sanjay said: "I hope better sense will prevail and there will be no further excerpts that will hurt me or my family."

Juggernaut, in its statement, said the team is "sorry" to know Sanjay is "upset" by the book. However, in their defense, they have said the book has been "painstakingly footnoted, and the sources the book has relied upon have clearly been mentioned".

"To pay respect to Mr Dutt's wishes, we won't put out any more extracts from the book in short-form media," read the statement said.

On his part, Sanjay also gave fans something to eagerly look forward to.

"My official autobiography will be out soon which will be authentic and based on facts," Sanjay added.

"The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy" traces Sanjay's life starting from how his parents -- Sunil Dutt and Nargis Dutt met and got married, his birth, how he coped with life in boarding school, the tragedy of his mother's death, his relationship with his father and sisters, his drug addiction and de-addiction.

Several parts of the book shed light on his very public love life and breakups, his interactions with the underworld, the tryst with the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case and his present image as the 'reformed goon' much like his role in his beloved role as "Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.".Within a week, a government reeling under charges of failing to save such massive loot, being friends and complicit with alleged thieves, allowing PSBs to be bankrupted under its watch, had morphed into the exact opposite: A government of relentless, unforgiving corruption fighters.

That's the art of politics by headline management, says Shekhar Gupta.



IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra D Modi, left, and Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit A Shah. Photograph: Kind courtesy @BJP4India/Twitter

Look back at the headlines screaming out of your front pages that caused prime time shout-rage last month.

They were all about the nephew-uncle duo of Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, and the money they had stolen from the Punjab National Bank.

In their wake, came Vikram Kothari of Rotomac Pens and sundry others, in the sub-Rs 10 billion zone. It seemed there was a run on public sector banks.

It wasn't good for a government that came to power on the plank of fighting corruption.

Critics and the Congress were mocking Prime Minister Narendra D Modi for claiming to be the chowkidar (watchman) of public money.

Commentators were saying the Bharatiya Janata Party had lost its anti-corruption plank, especially as Nirav Modi had featured close to the PM in that Davos group photo.

Vijay Mallya and Lalit Modi, the names of two other celebrity tax/debt exiles, were added to the latest ones. The doughtiest BJP spokespersons were struggling on television channels.

Their argument -- that the theft took place under the United Progressive Alliance in 2011 -- was defeated by the Central Bureau of Investigation's own first information reports.

Those headlines were looking ugly. Then it all changed. These headlines died. New ones appeared.

No, I am not suggesting that Sridevi's death had something to do with it. That was obviously a pure and tragic coincidence. But the larger change was manmade, or rather BJP-made.

So think of the headlines: Did Karti Chidambaram take $700,000 from Indrani and Peter Mukerjea? Did his father help in striking that 'deal'?

Karti Chidambaram is denied home-cooked food while in custody, but the judge has allowed him to keep wearing his gold chains, and so on.

The discourse has changed. He could have been arrested any of these days over the past several weeks. Please note he wasn't arrested when he was leaving the country, but when he arrived at airport immigration. Because, if you want to control the message, the timing is the thing.

This was a sledgehammer blow, but check out the other, more artful stuff that has been happening. After remaining frozen for four years, the appointment of a Lokpal has made a comeback.

As expected, the Congress protested and another set of virtuous headlines emerged.

Then the latest, at a Cabinet meeting earlier this month, the decision to pass an anti-fugitive law, whereby anybody not responding to enforcement agencies within six weeks will be declared a fugitive.

You'd wonder what further difference it would make to Mallya or the jeweller Modi if they were also declared fugitive.

Besides, the question we can reasonably ask: Aren't they fugitives already?

On another day, I would have dismissed it as 'Law-lipop Politics' (throw in a law when you can't fix a problem). Not now. Because it serves the purpose beautifully.

Another set of leaks emerged saying the government may bring in new rules whereby immigration authorities will prevent all wilful defaulters of bank loans from leaving the country.

Now, in terms of just legality and fundamental rights, who would decide whether a citizen is a wilful defaulter or if it is a case of business loss?

Further, isn't it like the typical old Indian police method of posting cops outside any house that has just been burgled -- never mind that it failed to prevent the burglary?

Compare the state of politics today with just a few weeks ago when the BJP was on the ropes.

On every television channel, the BJP is back on the offensive and the Congress is defending the Chidambarams.

Elsewhere, the editorial commentary and talk is about the Lokpal, the anti-fugitive Bill, and immigration restrictions on defaulters. A new regulator has been announced to oversee the chartered accountants who, in turn, oversee the nationalised banks.

These banks have apparently been also ordered to report to the CBI all wilful defaults above Rs 500 million.

The CBI also registered a case against the promoters of Simbhaoli Sugars, including Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's son-in-law, for 'loan fraud' on a PSB.

Remember, it started with those fat-cat jewellers escaping before all this fortification was put in place, with about Rs 200 billion in all, that one of them featured in that Davos photo and another was addressed by the PM with a familiar 'Mehul Bhai', though in a light-hearted jibe.

That was bad news, so forgettable, and forgotten.

Within a week, a government reeling under charges of failing to save such massive loot, being friends and complicit with alleged thieves, allowing PSBs to be bankrupted under its watch, had morphed into the exact opposite: A government of relentless, unforgiving corruption fighters.

That's the art of politics by headline management.

List the big crisis points in the nearly four years of this government and you will see the same strategy at work.

The setback in Uri was set right soon enough with highly dramatised 'surgical strikes'.

Questioning that would amount to doubting the armed forces so the Opposition also mostly shut up and applauded.

When the pain of demonetisation seemed building to unacceptable levels, stories and pictures of several millions of cash found in different parts of the country came up.

In the course of time it became evident that most of these pictures of cash-piles were fake. But for the moment, the mood had shifted.

The Rohith Vemula suicide saw the scene shift immediately to Jawaharlal Nehru University and registration of sedition cases against 'Bharat tere tukde' speeches allegedly by Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid although nobody has as yet seen a video with either of them saying it.

The crisis in Doklam was a more urgent issue and a simpler method was used: Just 'persuasion' with television channels and newspapers to not make a big deal of it in the national interest.

None of our commando-comedians, who sound like they are itching every evening to carry out their own surgical strikes across the Kashmir LoC, even mentioned Doklam.

All governments try owning the message, but the Modi-Shah Bharatiya Janata Party has developed it into a fine art.

All new headlines conform to the three essential attributes of Brand Modi for the voters: An incorruptible corruption fighter, an unabashed protector of Hindu-ised nationalism, shoulders so broad and chest so wide that no crisis ever brings a crease to his face. Because he knows he has done nothing wrong and that he is unassailable.

That's why he has chosen never to respond to any setback.

Compare that with Manmohan Singh and his government. It would go into hiding even if it was rumoured that somebody stole tomatoes from a sabzi-wala (vegetable-seller) cart under their watch.

They must see the Modi government's performance during its crises with awe, and should also applaud its political genius.

By Special Arrangement with ThePrintNew Delhi, March 21 : Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday ordered a departmental inquiry into the suicide by a Class 9 student of a Delhi school in Noida.

Sisodia said the student committed suicide on Tuesday allegedly due to academic pressure. He said the FIR quoted the girl's parents as alleging that the student was molested.

Sisodia, also the Deputy Chief Minister, said the student got her report card on March 16 and she had compartment in science and social science and she did not go to school after that.

Sisodia told the Delhi Assembly that he would table a detailed report in the House.New Delhi, March 22 : Parliament on Thursday passed the Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill which seeks to empower the government to fix the period of maternity leave and the tax-free gratuity amount with an executive order.

The Bill got Parliament's approval after it was passed by the Rajya Sabha through a voice vote. It was passed amid din by the Lok Sabha on March 15.

The Bill will now be sent to President Ram Nath Kovind, whose assent will validate it as a law.

The passage of the bill paves the way for government to enhance the ceiling on tax-free gratuity to Rs 20 lakh from the existing Rs 10 lakh for formal sector employees, under the Payment of Gratuity Act.

Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar moved the Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill, 2017, which was passed by a voice vote without any discussion.

"I would urge the chair to pass the Bill without discussion," said Gangwar while moving the Bill.

Earlier, Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu held a meeting with the leaders of different political parties and sought their cooperation for the passage of the Bill.

Hailing the passage of Bill as a historic move, the government thanked the opposition parties for their support.

Talking to reporters, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "It's historic and an indication that this government is pro-worker and committed for their cause."

He said that a group of ministers met the Chairman before the start of proceedings and urged him to pass the Bill, as it was for the workers.

"Without support of opposition parties it was not possible. Now, the workers will get benefits of the Bill," he said, adding that the government would soon send the Bill to the President for his assent.

The Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, provides for payment of gratuity to employees in any establishment, factory, mine, oil field, plantation, port, railways, company, or shop that employs 10 or more workers.

Employees are paid gratuity if they have offered at least five years of continuous service at the time of termination.

This Bill empowers the Central government to notify the period of maternity leave eligible for qualifying as continuous service and determine the amount of gratuity available to employees.

The maximum maternity leave, for the purpose of calculating continuous service under the Act, was based on the maternity leave provided under the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961.

The maximum maternity leave under the 1961 Act was changed from 12 weeks to 26 weeks by the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017. The latest Bill removes the reference to 12 weeks and empowers the Central government to notify the maximum maternity leave period.

Under the existing Act, the maximum amount of gratuity payable to an employee cannot exceed Rs 10 lakh. But, this Bill removes the existing ceiling and states that the ceiling may be notified by the Central government.

At present, the formal sector workers with five or more years of service are eligible for Rs 10 lakh tax-free gratuity after leaving job or at the time of superannuation.

The Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill, 2017 was initiated in the Lok Sabha by Gangwar on December 18, 2017.Kolkata, March 22 : India's Test wicketkeeper-batsman Wriddhiman Saha, who was roped in by Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) this Indian Premier League (IPL) season, said he's ready to bat anywhere and the team has star openers like David Warner and Shikhar Dhawan to give them a solid start.

"I prefer batting at the top but I have kept rotating in terms of my batting position. With SRH, I will probably bat in the lower middle order," Saha told reporters at the Mohun Bagan club ground where he will play the J.C Mukherjee Trophy.

"We have great openers (Shikhar Dhawan and David Warner) so they will do well. I am ready to bat anywhere for the team."

Saha was bought by former champions SRH for Rs 5 crore.

"I was playing in Mohali (for Kings XI Punjab) and I know the wicket there. Now I will be playing for Hyderabad, so I will have to adjust to the wicket. As far as gelling with the players is concerned, it won't be a problem. Everybody is familiar at this level," Saha added.

Saha picked up a back injury and had to return midway from India's tour to South Africa after playing only the first Test in Cape Town.

"I am fit now and have started playing a few office matches," Saha said.

Asked about keeping to Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan, he said: "I will practice with him at the nets. I have played his bowling and got out too."

On the toughest opponents, he said: "I would like my team to win but Chennai have a good team and have bench strength."

Talking about the England tour later this year, Saha admitted wicket-keeping would be difficult on swinging conditions expected there.

"England will be tough. We have to play well. It will help if we can go there early. In England first is T20 and one-dayers. We are ready to go one month in advance as well for the Tests.

"I have never played in England for India. I have played with the India A team there. It is challenging to keep wickets there as the ball moves quite a lot. There is dampness also," he added.

India will play five Tests in England from August 1, preceded by the T20Is and ODIs.Mumbai, March 23 : "Baa Baaa Black Sheep" director Vishwas Paandya says his movie, which released on Friday, combines the two interesting genres of crime and comedy. He feels it's a new space for the audience to watch.

On the film, the debutant director told IANS: "It is a comedy and thriller. Anupam Kher's character has a dark secret of being a contract killer, and the story changes once the secret gets unveiled.

"I started writing the story as a dark comedy and then it got into that zone where crime meets comedy. I think comedy and crime are two interesting genres to combine."

His idea was to make the story more accessible to the larger audience, and so he chose against making it as a "hardcore dark comedy".

"Baa Baaa Black Sheep" features Anupam, Annu Kapoor, Maniesh Paul and Kay Kay Menon in pivotal roles. It revolves around the dark secret of a father and his son.

Regarding the cast, Paandya said he wanted to bring on board a melange of "good actors".

"Not that stars are not good actors, but this is my first film. So, I wanted to set my level high before I collaborate with a big star, because as a director I also have to offer them something big. My first film is very content-based," he said, explaining why he didn't go for a "star".

Paandya started his career from television in acting. He believes that the film industry should nurture more talent in terms of writing original stories.

"This is a good time for writers because cinema is changing and if the story is not offering something new, the presence of stars will not recover a bad film. That is why I think our film industry should encourage and nurture more writing talents," said the former actor.Chennai, March 23 : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has launched an investigation into the Rs 824.15-crore bank fraud involving Kanishk Gold Pvt Ltd, and searches are being conducted at the premises of company staffers, an ED official said.

"We have started investigation in the Kanishk Gold case and searches are being conducted in the premises belonging to the company officials," the ED official told IANS.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against the city based Kanishk Gold, accusing it of defrauding a consortium of 14 banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI).

The jewellery company had taken a loan of Rs 824.15 crore from the consortium and the loan account has turned bad.

The SBI, which tops the list with Rs 240 crore of loans, is followed by Punjab National Bank (PNB) (Rs 128 crore), Bank of India (Rs 46 crore), IDBI (Rs 49 crore), Syndicate Bank (Rs 54 crore), Union Bank (Rs 53 crore), UCO Bank (Rs 45 crore), Central Bank (Rs 22 crore), Corporation Bank (Rs 23 crore), Bank of Baroda (Rs 32 crore), Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank (Rs 27 crore), HDFC (Rs 27 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 27 crore) and Andhra Bank (Rs 32 crore).

The CBI had questioned company Directors Bhoopesh Kumar Jain and Neeta Jain in Bengaluru on Thursday.Brussels, March 24 : European Union (EU) leaders said here on Friday they regretted the decision by the US to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminium, adding these measures could not be justified on the grounds of national security.

The spring European Council, held on Thursday and Friday, focused on economic affairs, in particular on trade, where EU leaders noted that shipments of steel and aluminium from the bloc had been temporarily exempted from tariffs, and called for that exemption to be made permanent, Xinhua reported.

The EU leaders supported the steps taken by the European Commission to respond to the US measures as appropriate and in a proportionate manner.

They also reaffirmed the EU's commitment to an open and rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its core.Washington, March 24 : US President Donald Trump has moved to formally ban most transgender persons from serving in the military with limited exceptions, according to a White House memorandum.

The memorandum was issued on Friday night on policies determined by Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, stating that transgender persons were "disqualified from military service except under limited circumstances", reports The Hill magazine.

The memorandum, filed in the US District Court in Seattle, states that "transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery -- are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances".

Mattis will have some leeway in implementing the policy, the memo states, as will Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen when it comes to the Coast Guard.

The two top officials "may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals", the memo stated.

However, LGBT advocates quickly denounced the move, The Hill reported.

"There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence Administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops," Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said in a statement.

"The Trump-Pence administration's continued insistence on targeting our military families for discrimination is appalling, reckless, and unpatriotic," added American Military Partner Association president Ashley Broadway-Mack.

The Palm Centre, a group that promotes the study of LGBT people in the military, accused the Pentagon of having "distorted the science on transgender health to prop up irrational and legally untenable discrimination that will erode military readiness".

Trump first called for a ban on transgender troops in a series of tweets last year, and followed up in August by issuing a memo banning transgender people from enlisting.

The ban has since been battled over in court, with Mattis in February giving Trump a final recommendation. It was expected that he would recommend Trump allow transgender troops to remain in the military.

Several federal courts blocked Trump's initial ban, with one ruling in November that the military would be forced to resume accepting transgender recruits starting this year.

In February, the Pentagon confirmed that one transgender recruit had joined a branch of the military after the ban was lifted due to the court order. That individual passed all tests including medical, officials said.

It was unclear what Trump's decision will mean for that unnamed recruit and the estimated thousands of other transgender Americans currently serving active duty in the military.

While the exact number of transgender individuals in active duty service is unknown, a 2016 Rand Corporation study commissioned by the Pentagon estimated the number to be anywhere from 1,320 and 6,630, with 830 to 4,160 others serving in the reserves.Srinagar, March 24 : Two foreign militants were killed on Saturday in a gunfight with the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district, police said.

"The militants killed in the Shistargam village gunfight have been identified as foreigners and most likely of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror outfit," police sources said.

The gunfight started on Friday evening when security personnel from the Rashtriya Rifles, Central Reserve Police Force and the Special Operations Group (SOG) surrounded the village following a tip-off about the holed-up militants.

"As the cordon was tightened, the militants fired at the security forces triggering the gunfight which ended on Saturday morning," the sources added.New Delhi, March 24 : German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was accorded a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Saturday in the presence of his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Steinmeier, accompanied by his wife Elke Budenbender was received by Modi.

He was also accorded with the Guard of Honour.

After receiving the ceremonial welcome, the German President visted Rajghat and paid floral tribute to Mahatma Gandhi.

Later in the day, Steinmeier will hold a bilateral meeting with Modi to explore ways to further broad base ties between the two countries.

Steinmeier, who is on his first visit to India as the German president arrived in India on Thursday. He began his five-day trip with a visit to Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi.Ranchi, March 24 : A special CBI court here on Saturday sentenced RJD chief Lalu Prasad for a total of seven years in jail each in two cases pertaining to the fourth fodder scam case and fined him Rs 60 lakh.

Though there is ambiguity as to whether the two sentences would run concurrently or consecutively, Lalu's lawyer will clarify in the same as early as possible.

CBI judge Shivpal Singh pronounced the sentence.

"Lalu Prasad has been awarded seven years imprisonment and slapped Rs 30 lakhs fine under the Indian Penal Code and another seven years under the Prevention of Corruption Act and a fine of Rs 30 lakhs (each)," the former Bihar Chief Minister's lawyer Prabhat Kumar told reporters.

If the the sentences run consecutive then Lalu Prasad will remain imprisoned for 14 years.

The court on March 19 convicted Lalu Prasad in the fourth fodder scam case but acquitted another former Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra.

Both Lalu Prasad and Mishra are facing five cases each in the fodder scam in Ranchi.

On the whole, there were 31 accused in this case, of which 19 were convicted and 12 acquitted.

Lalu Prasad was convicted in the first fodder scam case in 2013 and awarded five years in jail.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal chief was convicted by a special CBI court in the second case on December 23, 2017, and awarded three-and-half years' imprisonment on January 6.

He was convicted in the third case on January 24, related to fraudulent withdrawals from the Chaibasa treasury, and awarded a five-year jail term.

The multi-million-rupee fodder scam surfaced in the 1990s when Lalu Yadav was Chief Minister of undivided Bihar. The probe was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation on Patna High Court's order. Most of the cases were directed to Ranchi soon after Jharkhand was separated from Bihar in 2000.

-- With inputs from IANSNew York, March 24 : The war on children in Syria continues relentlessly and with no mercy, UN children's agency Unicef has said.

"Across Idlib, 1 million children live amid escalating violence and attacks. Unicef is calling on those fighting in Idlib to spare children in East Ghouta, Afrin and other parts of Syria," said Geert Cappelaere, the agency's Regional Director in the Middle East and North Africa, on Friday.

"We received reports that an underground shelter where children took refuge came under attack earlier this week. Even shelters were no longer safe in the war-torn country.

"Heavy violence -- just 300 metres from a Unicef-supported school in Idlib, forced children attending classes, to seek shelter in an improvised shelter nearby. The building was later hit and 17 children were reportedly killed," Cappelaere said.Jammu, March 24 : Protests in Nowshera town of Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, demanding district status for the area, turned violent on Saturday, as agitators clashed with security forces, leaving at least 14 persons, including the District Magistrate, injured, police said.

Police said protesters resorted to intense stone pelting at security forces in the town and a baton charge and tear smoke canisters was used to control the protests.

Police sources said ten protesters, four security men and Rajouri's District Magistrate Shahid Iqbal Chowdhary were injured during these clashes.

According to sources, Chowdhary was hit on his head by a glass bottle hurled by protesters.

For the last nearly two months, people in Nowshera town have been agitating f or grant of district status to the area.

Saturday's protests followed the state government's decision announcement on Friday that an Additional District Development Commissioner would be posted in Nowshera town instead of granting the area full-fledged separate district status.Gurugram, March 24 : Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday hailed the CRPF for its contribution in facing various security challenges posed by terrorism, leftwing extremist violence and insurgents in the Northeast, saying the force played a prominent role in ensuring security for the country's development.

Addressing the force personnel here on the occasion of CRPF's 79th anniversary, he also recalled several incidents where the valiant CRPF troopers successfully thwarted miscreants' evil designs and said the country is proud of it.

"The force played a prominent role in ensuring safety and security which is a prerequisite for the economic development of the country," he said.

Urging the CRPF personnel to inform people about the government's development programmes while highlighting anti-development activities of the Maoists, he said the central force was successful in inflicting heavy losses on Maoists who were using tactics of desperation as the battle is in the final stages.

Highlighting the multidimensional role of the force, he said whether it is Jammu and Kashmir, leftwing extremism, the northeast, elections or Internal security, the country looks up to the CRPF.

Terming Maoism a serious challenge, he said due to the gallant and determined action of the CRPF and other security forces, it has entered in its last phase.

Rajnath Singh said that incidents of leftwing extremism have drastically come down in the recent past and the casualty rate of the rebels has gone up, noting that during 2017-18, the force gunned down 172 extremists while losing 63 of its personnel.

Maoists are now resorting to coward ambushes against security forces as they are unable to undertake a direct fight, he said, and also paid tributes to the 9 troopers who were killed in a blast in Chhattisgarh's Sukma early this month.

The minister praised the courage of CRPF Commandant Chetan Cheetah who took nine bullets during an operation in Kashmir valley last year and displayed rare grit during recuperation. Cheeta joined duty few days back at the force headquarters in Delhi.

Assuring the troopers better facilities, including accommodation, he also also presented various police awards to 21 troopers for their gallantry and meritorious services.

The Home Minister added that CRPF was not only organising civic action programmes, but also taking active part in Swachhata Abhiyan, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Abhiyan and encouraging digital transactions.

Earlier he inspected the CRPF Contigents and took the salute.Ranchi, March 24 : Former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad will be jailed for 14 years in the fourth fodder scam case he has been convicted in, with a special CBI court here on Saturday sentencing him to seven years each in two cases under it, and ordering the sentences run consecutively.

Pronouncing the sentence, CBI judge Shivpal Singh sentenced the Rashtriya Janatya Dal (RJD) supremo to seven years rigorous imprisonment on the various sections of the Indian Penal Code he has been charged under and levied a fine of Rs 30 lakh, which if unpaid, would entail a further year's simple imprisonment.

Lalu Prasad was sentenced to a similar sentence and fine on the charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

"The sentences run in the consecutive way, not concurrently," says the judgment of the special court.

The court on March 19 convicted Lalu Prasad in the fourth fodder scam case but acquitted another former Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra.

Both Lalu Prasad and Mishra are facing five cases each in the fodder scam in Ranchi.

There were 31 accused in this case, of which 19 were convicted and 12 acquitted.

Lalu Prasad was convicted in the first fodder scam case in 2013 and awarded five years in jail.

He was convicted by a special CBI court in the second case on December 23, 2017, and awarded three and half years' imprisonment on January 6.

He was convicted in the third case on January 24, related to fraudulent withdrawals from the Chaibasa treasury, and got a five-year jail term.

The multi-million-rupee fodder scam surfaced in the 1990s when Lalu Prasad was Chief Minister of undivided Bihar. The probe was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation on the Patna High Court's order.

The bulk of the cases were transferred to Ranchi after Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in 2000.Damascus, March 24 : The Syrian Army on Saturday announced it had taken full control of Harasta town in Eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus, following the surrender of Islamist fighters.

Harasta was declared free of militants after the departure of a second convoy of Islamist militiamen and their families on Friday night for the northwestern province of Idleb, which is almost entirely under the control of opposition groups, Efe news reported.

The combatants handed over their heavy weapons and left Harasta as part of an agreement reached between the Syrian authorities and the Islamic Movement of the Free People of the Levant (frequently referred to as Ahrar al-Sham).

Syria's state-run SANA news agency claimed that a little over three thousand people left Harasta on Friday, including 1,072 armed men, to join the first group of over 1,500 people who left for Idleb a day earlier.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK based war monitor, reported that the last group of evacuees arrived Saturday in the town of Qalaat al-Madiq in Hama province, from where they will head for neighbouring Idleb.

The SOHR said a total of 4,700 people left Harasta in the past two days, including 1,300 combatants and some 2,500 women and children.

Following the evacuation of the last group of armed men, the SOHR added that Ahrar al-Sham's combatants were no longer present in Eastern Ghouta.

The Syrian Army, reportedly gained control of 90 per cent of the territory in Eastern Ghouta, considered the main opposition stronghold near Damascus, in a month-long government offensive to take the area.

Eastern Ghouta's largest city Douma remained the only part still under rebel control.New Delhi, March 24 : The government and insurers have well laid out support system to treat diseases like diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure, joint replacement and kidney failures but there is no cognisance of mother of all these diseases -- obesity.

"Today obesity is not identified as a disease in India. Bariatric surgery is considered as a cosmetic surgery," said Arun Prasad, President, Obesity Surgery Society of India (OSSI) on Saturday on the culmination of a two-day conference of bariatric and metabolic surgeons.

"They will do heart surgery putting stents in a patient who has developed heart disease due to obesity, replace joints when a person is obese and his joints have stopped working, or do a kidney transplant on an obese-diabetic. But they fail to see obesity as a disease," he said.

The force behind organising the 1st World Consensus Meeting on Bariatric Metabolic Surgery Standardisation in New Delhi is OSSI executive member Mohit Bhandari, who runs a leading weight loss and diabetes surgery centre, Mohak Bariatric and Robotics, at Indore.

"The situation is very alarming because nobody realises that we are in an era of non-communicable diseases. At one end, we are dying of malnutrition, at the other we are dying because of obesity and diabetes. The government is not spending anything on obesity," he said.

There are national communicable diseases programme for tuberculosis and malaria, but there is no programme for obesity, he said.

Five per cent of India's population is obese and of them 2.5 per cent are morbidly obese. India is world's third most obese nation after US and China. In urban cities like Delhi, about 22 per cent women and about 18 per cent men are obese.

In childhood (0-16 years) obesity, 15 per cent of Indian children are obese, which is second largest in the world after China. A quarter of these obese children are likely to become diabetics when they grow up.

As for the insurance coverage for obesity, Prasad said: "It is covered in most of the European and American countries, but not in our country. One or two insurance companies have come up with it but there should be a government policy which identifies obesity as a disease."Islamabad, March 24 : Pakistan and Sri Lanka have agreed to further diversify and enhance relations especially in the realm of trade and people-to-people contacts, a statement from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

The move came after Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi briefed visiting Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on issues of regional and international importance. President Sirisena concluded his three-day visit here on Saturday.

"The Sri Lankan President appreciated the support and assistance extended by Pakistan to his country during the difficult times," the statement said.

The Sri Lankan President presented 20 corneas (10 corneas each) to the president and the Prime Minister of Pakistan, who appreciated the generous donation for the people of Pakistan.

Three MoUs were signed during the visit of the Sri Lankan president to further strengthen bilateral cooperation on capacity building of diplomats, public policy research and training of civil servants.

"President Maithripala Sirisena's visit further cemented the good will between the two countries and provided renewed impetus to strength bilateral cooperation," the statement said.

According to the statement, Pakistan also sought help from the Sri Lankan president to convene the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)New Delhi, March 24 : Over 100 journalists protested here on Saturday, as the Delhi Police failed to register an FIR into an alleged molestation of a woman reporter of an English national daily by a police officer.

With about a 150-strong crowd of journalists and police surrounding her, the woman reporter, who was allegedly molested, looked at a top Delhi Police officer to ask: "Why are you not registering an FIR?"

She was allegedly molested during a student protest which she was covering on Friday evening.

Also, no FIR has been filed into the complaint of another women photojournalist, Anushree Fadnavis, of being manhandled by women police personnel and her camera being taken away by police during the same student's protest.

She was yet to receive her camera back.

Special Commissioner of Police and Delhi Police's Chief Spokesperson Dependra Pathak told media that they have ordered a vigilance inquiry into the molestation complaint and "strict action" would be taken and sought two day's time.

He also said that about 40 policemen were injured in Friday's protest.

Meanwhile, citing police inaction, the group of journalists protested outside the Delhi Police Headquarters at ITO in central Delhi, demanding an FIR into the molestation and strict action in both cases.

Pathak told IANS that a separate FIR has not been registered into the molestation case, but said that on Friday night, police have filed an FIR into the student protest which turned violent.

Asked why a separate FIR has not been registered into the molestation case, despite one into the protest, he said: "The FIR which has been registered was into the whole incident of the student protest and a vigilance inquiry was underway."

Asked whether a separate FIR would be registered after the inquiry, he said that "it would be decided after the vigilance inquiry".

During the journalists' protest, the women journalist who was allegedly molested came face to face with Pathak and asked him why an FIR has not yet been registered into the incident.

The reporter, who alleged that she was molested by SHO Vidhyadhar Singh, told IANS that Singh had apologised to her after the incident.

"Just after the incident when my friend and I confronted him (Singh) and asked him how he can behave like he did, he said that I was lying.

"Later when IPS officers intervened, he came and apologised to me," she said.

The reporter said that she along with a male reporter were standing on a service road at the Friday's protest site, when the SHO first came and pushed them by their shoulders.

"We said that we are journalists and he took his hands off. We walked to the side and was filming the protest," she said. "He then came back and looked at my chest. Then he pushed me by my chest."

"The police man groped her after saying she was a journalist," Raja Lakshmi, Vice President of Indian Women's Press Corps, which had given the call for the protest, told IANS. "The SHO should be suspended pending inquiry."

On the incident of Fadnavis being manhandled and her camera being taken away, Pathak said that "they were yet to trace the camera" and "it was not with police".

But Fadnavis told IANS that her camera was snatched by a woman police personnel, while she was trying to take the photo of police stamping a protestor.

"The police (men) asked women police to 'take me away' and also 'break my camera'," Fadnavis said. She said that a women police personnel then snatched the camera from her hand.

"They (police) told me that I would get my camera back once the crowd is dispersed. Even Madhur Verma (police spokesperson) told me that," she said.

DCP Romil Baaniya was investigating into Fadnavis' complaint of manhandling and missing camera.Kolkata, March 24 : Euros, worth Rs 58 lakh, were seized from two Bangkok-bound passengers, who had concealed the money in their rectum, as they were about to board a flight at the NSCBI International Airport here, a DRI release said here on Saturday.

Acting on intelligence that a smuggling syndicate would be attempting to smuggle illegally acquired foreign currency out of Kolkata Airport to Bangkok, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence sleuths targeted two passengers belonging to the syndicate - Raju Bahadur and Sonia Kapoor.

"These two were slated to travel to Bangkok by an Indigo Flight while carrying the illegally acquired foreign currency. DRI officers intercepted the two passengers as they were about to board their flight.

"After intense questioning, the duo admitted to carrying the foreign currency in their rectums and voluntarily ejected out the currency which had been rolled up and wrapped in a rubber," the release said.

The euro currency notes recovered from the duo were seized under provisions of the Customs Act, 1962.

In quite a few cases in the past, rectum concealment has been used to smuggle and ferry gold biscuits.

However, this is the first instance in Kolkata in recent times, where foreign currency has been attempted to be smuggled through this route.

A few days back, an airhostess of a prominent Airlines was intercepted carrying foreign currency illegally outside India.Chennai, March 24 : Tamil Nadu's anti-corruption bureau, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) on Saturday said it has filed corruption cases against two former Vice Chancellors of two major universities in the state.

In a statement issued here, the DVAC said it has registered a case against former Anna Unversity Vice Chancellor Rajaram and six others for allegations of corruption in the recruitment of teaching faculties in the varsity between 2013-2016.

The DVAC conducted searches at seven places in Chennai and Theni and 65 documents pertaining to properties worth about Rs 20 crore were seized.

The second case is against Vanangamudi, former Vice Chancellor, Tamilnadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University and five others.

According to DVAC, it is alleged that during his tenure, Vanangamudi entered into conspiracy with other accused and violated the admission procedure for Non-Resident Quota of 15 per cent.

The DVAC organised search at six locations and 74 documents which reveals properties worth about Rs 95 lakh were seized during the search.

Both the cases are under investigation, the DVAC said.

Last month the Vice Chancellor of Bharathiyar University, Coimbatore, was arrested by the DVAC while demanding and receiving a bribe of Rs 30 lakh.

According to DVAC, 67-year-old A. Ganapathy was caught redhanded while receiving the bribe.

The DVAC has also booked Dharmaraj, a Professor of Chemistry for aiding Ganapathy.

According to DVAC, Ganapathy had demanded the bribe from T.Suresh, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry to complete his probation in the post.

The DVAC said Ganapathy received Rs 100,000 in cash and Rs 29 lakh in post-dated cheques.

Ganapathy accepted the bribe amount at his residence in Coimbatore around 500 km from here.

Meanwhile the state BJP unit said it is a matter of shame for the state intellectuals to see Vice Chancellors getting arrested on corruption charges and other irregularities.Bonomi's new automated wafer V-ball packages offer more ball options for greater control. They comply with NACE MR 0175, NACE MR 0103 AND ISO 15156.

Bonomi North America has introduced a new line of wafer-style V-port ball valve packages designed for precise industrial and commercial flow control in severe service applications. The new valves feature balls offering a choice of seven V shaped ports for superior control of viscous or corrosive fluids, gases and steam.

Bonomis new automated control valve packages are available in ANSI Classes 150 and 300 (1/2-inch to 6 inches), and 600 (1/2-inches to 4 inches) with carbon or stainless steel bodies. Ball port choices include 15, 30, 60 or 90 V-balls plus variable tapered 15/30, 30/60 or 60/90 V-balls for even greater control.

The factory-assembled packages combine Bonomis Italian-made low-torque Valpres valves matched to the companys own Valbia electric or pneumatic actuators. They are designed and built to work together for the ultimate in precision control and a long, reliable service life.

The space-saving wafer valves feature a blow-out proof stainless steel stem with adjustable packing, stainless steel ball and P.T.F.E. seats, packing and thrust washer. They comply with NACE MR 0175, NACE MR 0103 AND ISO 15156.

Like all Bonomi ball valves they are 100% tested in the open and closed position before shipping. For more information on Bonomi automated control valve packages or other Bonomi products, contact Bonomi North America at (704) 412-9031 or visit online at http://www.bonominorthamerica.com.

About Bonomi

Bonomi North America has served the U.S. and Canada since 2003 and is part of the Bonomi Group of Lumezzane, Italy. Bonomi Group brands include Rubinetterie Bresciane Bonomi (RB) brass ball valves and check valves; Valpres carbon and stainless steel ball valves; and Valbia pneumatic and electric industrial actuators. Bonomi North America maintains an extensive distribution network for these products from its headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. and a facility in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.Window Genie announces the grand opening of its newest location in Chesterfield. Local married couple Lori and Keith Medlin are the owners. Window Genie is a national home service franchise specializing in residential and light commercial window cleaning, window tinting, pressure washing, gutter cleaning and more. Window Genie of Chesterfield will service the western St. Louis communities including Chesterfield, OFallon, Ballwin, and Wildwood.

Before purchasing their Window Genie franchise, Lori served the Webster Groves School District as an administrative assistant for both Avery and Bristol elementary schools. Keith has spent the past 35 years in the retail furniture industry. Looking for a new way to connect to the community, and build equity and success for their family, the Medlins looked for a service business to open in the community theyve raised their family in for over 14 years. Lori said, Were looking forward to working in a partnership with this common goal of creating success for ourselves through business ownership while filling a need in the community and creating jobs.

Keith will remain at his current job and assist as needed for Lori who will run the business full-time. The lifestyle that Window Genie allows us was appealing, Lori said. I can run the business from home, so Im never strapped to a desk or a store-front. Also, running this type of service business will never require me to work nights, weekends or holidays. Its a wonderful thing for our family.

Window Genie of Chesterfield is officially open for business. All field technicians are fully trained, insured, bonded and have passed a background check. Estimates on all services are free. For more information, contact owner Lori Medlin at LMedlin(at)windowgenie(dot)com or by calling 636-242-1100.

About Window Genie:

Window Genie, a Neighborly company, is a nationally ranked mobile window cleaning service franchise offering residential and light commercial window cleaning, window tinting, pressure washing, gutter cleaning and more. Recognized as one of the fastest growing franchise systems in North America, Window Genie started in 1994 has since grown to more than 120 franchise partners operating in 31 states. In 2016, Window Genie became a subsidiary company of Dwyer Group, a service-based franchise organization. Neighborly brands include: Aire Serv, Five Star Painting, Glass Doctor, Portland Glass, Molly Maid, Mr. Appliance, Mr. Electric, Mr. Handyman, Mr. Rooter, Protect Painters, Rainbow International, Window Genie and The Grounds Guys. Window Genie Franchise opportunities available nationwide; to learn more, visit http://www.windowgeniefranchise.comKC Healthy Kids Legislators from both sides of the aisle have been continually coming together in support of lowering the state sales tax rate on food, and last night their work paid off, Ashley Jones-Wisner, State Policy Director.

Senate Bill 444 passed unanimously out of the Kansas Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee last night. The bill would lower the state's 6.5% sales tax rate on food to 4% in 2020 and down to 2% in 2021.

KC Healthy Kids' Ashley Jones-Wisner has worked with statewide partners and legislators over the last several years to draft and pass legislation that would lower the state sales tax rate on food.

"It's a huge success. The measure committee members approved will benefit the Kansas economy while putting dollars back into the pockets of Kansas families who need it most, Jones Wisner said.

Legislators from both sides of the aisle have been continually coming together in support of lowering the state sales tax rate on food, and last night their work paid off, she added.

Senate Assessment and Taxation Chairwoman Senator Caryn Tyson showed great leadership on this issue and ensured the bill was passed favorably out of her committee.

In reports published by KC Healthy Kids, Wichita State University researchers said the tax hurts low-income families and rural grocery stores and drives shoppers across state lines to buy groceries.

KC Healthy Kids rallies the people in our communities to improve access to affordable fresh food and safe places to walk and play. When our neighborhoods support healthy habits, we are less likely to suffer from obesity, which is linked to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and poor mental health. To make a lasting impact, we shape policies that improve our food system and physical surroundings, and, ultimately, the places where we live, work, learn, and play.NEWSALERT-US-CDC-PFIZER-BOOSTERS CDC advisory panel backs Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots for millions of older or otherwise vulnerable Americans. (AP)CDC advisory panel backs Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots for millions of older or otherwise vulnerable Americans. (AP)The "March for Our Lives" protests come just over a month after 17 people were fatally gunned down at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

On February 14, a gunman shot and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Following the shooting, on Saturday, tens of thousands of students, parents, teachers, and others supporting gun control filled the streets in Washington, DC.

Students and families from all over the country traveled to DC to join the march.

One family from Westchester, New York told Business Insider they traveled there to raise awareness about gun violence and to support the Parkland students.

Nine-year-old Emma Weill-Jones participated in a rally in Philadelphia.

Over 200 students, teachers, and parents from Newtown, Connecticut, marched as well in honor their friends and family who were killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

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The main event was organized in Washington.

Student survivors from the Parkland massacre, who have since mobilized against gun violence, organized the march.

"In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 were injured, and everyone in the Douglas community was forever altered," Emma Gonzalez, a student survivor and gun control activist, said in a speech Saturday. "Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands."

Some celebrities, lawmakers, and gun control groups supported the march, helping fund the organizers and bus people into Washington who otherwise might not have been able to attend.

Lin Manuel Miranda, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Hudson, and Ariana Grande were among the celebrities who performed at the event in DC.

"To every friend, parent, sister, or brother who lost a loved one, my heart is with you," Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai said in a a video message to the rally goers on Saturday. "Whatever your politics, I know that no one wants another child to witness what these children have seen."

Hundreds of other protests took place in cities around the world as well.

The protestors aimed their frustrations at the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of the country's most powerful lobbying groups and a key defender of the Second Amendment.

Gun control activists are also calling on lawmakers who support the NRA to be voted out of office.

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"We are going to make this the voting issue," David Hogg, a senior at Stoneman Douglas and staunch supporter of gun control, said during a speech at the march. "We are going to take this to every election in every state and every city. We are going to make sure the best people get into our elections to run not as politicians but as Americans."

Gun control activists tend to perceive the NRA as an impediment to what they refer to as "common sense" solutions to gun violence.

Some activists are already seeing some change. I think were effectively agitating and peoples strongly-held opinions are starting to loosen up," Pia Tiimob, a 17-year-old who marched in DC, told Business Insider.

Kyle Kashuv, another student survivor from Stoneman Douglas who has been an outspoken advocate of the Second Amendment, decided not to attend Saturday's march in DC.

Kashuv, who disagrees with gun control and has met with lawmakers to shore up background checks, explained his decision not to attend to Fox Business Network: "I could march, but I think my time would be much better well spent meeting with legislators."

Source:

One of the lawmakers Kashuv met with was Sen. Marco Rubio, who commended the protestors for exercising their First Amendment rights.

"While I do not agree with all of the solutions [the protestors] propose, I respect their views and recognize that many Americans support certain gun bans," Rubio said in a statement. "While protests are a legitimate way of making a point, in our system of government, making a change requires finding common ground with those who hold opposing views."

The Trump administration praised students for engaging in the political process. "We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights," White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a statement.

Many of the protestors who attended the march are pushing for stronger background checks.

They're also calling for a ban on assault rifles like the AR-15, which was the type of gun used in the Parkland shooting and many others.

"In other countries, this isn't really a problem anymore because they realized the problem and they fixed it," Nafisat Pade, 20, told Business Insider. "They found a solution, which would be stronger gun control."READ MORE: Ebony to be laid to rest today

"Ebony we love you," the crowd roared.

"Ebony we ever you are, you can never be erased from our heart," Abeiku Santana, who was part of Ebony's management team said in his last tribute to the artiste.

Ebony will be laid to rest today [March 24,2018] at the forecourt of the state house.

The funeral service will be officiated by Dr. Lawrence Tetteh, leader of UK-based World Miracle Outreach

Ebony died after she was involved in a gory accident on the KumasiSunyani road on February 8, 2018 when she was returning to Accra from Sunyani.

READ MORE: Prophet to reveal names of late Ebony killersThe amount was presented in cash to the father of Ebony at his Dansoman residence.

Headed by the companys head of communications, Samuel Atuobi Baah, Zylofon made the donation to the family of Ebony Reigns to help them in preparation for her funeral. They had promised to support the family and have therefore honoured it.

A report on Zionfelix.net confirming the news also says they gave the family a Xylophone as well when they met her family members.

The late Ebonys father was extremely grateful for the donation and expressed his gratitude to Zylofon.

It is our prayer that their work would continue to be successful and we want Nana Appiah Mensah to know that, we are extremely grateful for his kind gesture, late Ebonys father said.

Late Ebony Reigns died in a gory car accident with 2 others, Franki Kuri and Atsu Vondee.A former Attorney General and a legal adviser to Unibank, Dominic Ayine, had told Reuters "We intend to go for arbitration."

In in u-turn, he told Joy Business news that the new managers of the bank have been very cooperative.

He also rejected claims that seeking arbitration would have been futile.

He said: "Well, it is not about not having a case to be made, because a case could definitely be made in terms of the way the Bank of Ghana served the notice and the manner in which it conducted its affairs.

READ MORE: uniBank to be investigated by key agencies

The bank insists that uniBanks challenges have been ongoing for the past two or so years. Bank of Ghana said Unibank has been on life support for a while now.

"This is no liquidation, but we are saving the bank and hand it over to competent management. The new management will assess the bank and give way forward," the Bank of Ghana said in a statement.

READ MORE: uniBank to be investigated by key agencies

Audit firm KPMG will oversee the day to day management of the bank with a six months period.Nana Adjei Ampofo argues that the agreement will jeopardise Ghana's security interest, adding that it is an affront "to our dignity."

READ MORE: How parliament was under tight security as MPs approve hosting of US military

The court challenge to the agreement, he says, will be filed at the Supreme Court hopefully on Wednesday March 28.

"Everything is ready and by next week Wednesday, the writ would be filed at the Supreme Court," Ampofo told Graphic Online.

"It [agreement] will jeopardise our security and it is an affront to the dignity of Ghana as a whole," he added.

The agreement gives unimpeded access to the US to deploy troops and military equipment in Ghana.

It gives tax exception to US military contractors and requires Ghana to provide the US with runway for US military operation.

"United States forces shall be responsible for the operation and maintenance, construction, and development costs of agreed facilities and areas provided for the exclusive use of United State: forces unless otherwise agreed," it said.

In return, the US will invest $20 million in the Ghana army and police service as well as host joint-military exercises together.

Parliament on Friday voted to host United States troops.The former Interior Minister under the John Mahama administration noted that the word "materiel" in the agreement which grants United States military "unimpeded" access to Ghana could allow the US to bring in chemical weapons on the blindside of the Ghanaian authorities.

READ MORE: How parliament was under tight security as MPs approve hosting of US military

He sounded the warning on Joy FM's news analysis programme "Newsfile" on Saturday in a panel discussion on the military cooperation agreement which was ratified by parliament on Friday.

A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans.

Parliament in a voice vote approved the deal to allow US troops in Ghana despite a boycott of proceedings by the minority National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The deal gives unimpeded access to the US to deploy troops and military equipment in Ghana.

It gives tax exception to US military contractors and requires Ghana to provide the US with runway for US military operation.

"United States forces shall be responsible for the operation and maintenance, construction, and development costs of agreed facilities and areas provided for the exclusive use of United State: forces unless otherwise agreed," it said.

In return, the US will invest $20 million in the Ghana army and police service as well as host joint-military exercises together.

The minority leader Haruna Iddrisu warned against ratifying the agreement because it has no signature.

READ MORE: Parliament approves hosting of US military

He also noted that the military cooperation deal was not in the interest of Ghana, noting that the presence of US troops in Ghana could invite extremists to attack Ghana.READ MORE: NDC MPs boycott approval of hosting US military

The pressure group had march to parliament to persuade their MPs not to approve the deal which will give the US military "unimpeded" access to Ghana.

The unarmed protesters, wearing red, were blocked from entering parliament, a scene last seen in military rule.

Many security analysts decried the military pack as a bad deal, urging MPs to renegotiate the deal as it was not in the interest of Ghana.

Parliament Friday night approved the deal in a vote boycotted by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

"We will not be part of the process to endorse this deal in its current form because it is not in our national interest, minority leader Haruna Iddrisu said.

The military deal gives unimpeded access to the US to deploy troops and military equipment in Ghana.

It gives tax exception to US military contractors and requires Ghana to provide the US with runway for US military operation.

"United States forces shall be responsible for the operation and maintenance, construction, and development costs of agreed facilities and areas provided for the exclusive use of United State: forces unless otherwise agreed," it said.

In return, the US will invest $20 million in the Ghana army and police service as well as host joint-military exercises together.Ghana is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a group of states that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc with at least 120 members.

READ MORE: NDC MPs boycott approval of hosting US military

It was created and founded during the collapse of the colonial system and the independence struggles of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and other regions of the world and at the height of the Cold War

"The purpose of the organization has been enumerated as to ensure "the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries" in their "struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics," by Fidel Castro in the Havana Declaration of 1979.

The countries of the NAM represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations' members and contain 55% of the world population.

It started when Presidents Sukarno of Indonesia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Josip Tito of Yugoslavia and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India co-hosted the Bandung Conference of 1955.

They invited all governments who did not wish to join one of those two world power alliances.

They would later be joined by Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah in Belgrade in 1961, a meeting conventionally seen as the start of NAM.

"We face neither east nor west, we face forward, Kwame Nkrumah said regarding the NAM.

Ghana's new military cooperation with US, many security analysts have said, contravenes Ghana's foreign policy tradition of not aligning with any military power.

They argue Ghana has taken sides with a major world power and that Ghana has betrayed the African continent owning to its enviable foreign policy record.

Daughter of Nkrumah, Samia, reacting to the Ghana-US military pack, quoted her father's warning to African countries of the danger of signing individual defence packs with foreign powers.Many security analysts have said it constitutes a military, a move in sharp contrast to Ghana's foreign police.

The US embassy in Accra has denied the claim, saying the agreement, which has no termination clause, is just for one year and that $20 million will be invested in the Ghana army and police service.

The minority leader Haruna Iddrisu warned against ratifying the agreement because it has no signature.

He also noted that the military cooperation deal was not in the interest of Ghana, noting that the presence of US troops in Ghana could invite extremists to attack Ghana.

READ MORE: Police block US military deal protestors from entering parliamentThe military deal gives unimpeded access to the US to deploy troops and military equipment in Ghana.

It gives tax exception to US military contractors and requires Ghana to provide the US with runway for US military operation.

"United States forces shall be responsible for the operation and maintenance, construction, and development costs of agreed facilities and areas provided for the exclusive use of United State: forces unless otherwise agreed," it said.

In return, the US will invest $20 million in the Ghana army and police service as well as host joint-military exercises together.

Interior Minister Ambrose Dery and Defence Minister Dominic Nitiwul argued that the deal was in the best interest for the nation, citing growing terrorism in countries bordering Ghana.

Before the minority stormed out of parliament, the minority leader Haruna Iddrisu slammed the deal.

"We will not be part of the process to endorse this deal in its current form because it is not in our national interest, he said.But the bill and a similar one passed last summer by the Senate do little to address the main barrier that patients face in getting unapproved treatments: permission from the drug companies themselves.

In recent years, the arrival of breakthrough drugs for everything from cancer to rare diseases has led to a surge in the number of patients wanting early access to treatments.

The pleas  sometimes driven by viral social media campaigns  have proved vexing for companies that have invested millions to get a drug to market and are wary of doing anything to jeopardize their chances.

Today, companies policies on granting early access to drugs are a confusing patchwork that tends to favor affluent and well-connected patients at leading medical centers, who have the resources and know-how to navigate the system.

You have to be pretty sophisticated, said Dr. Arthur L. Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University who has been working with companies, including Johnson & Johnson, to develop better early-access programs. But the bill passed this week, he said, does somewhere between nothing and absolutely nothing to help you.

The bills passage represented a victory for proponents of right to try, a campaign championed by Vice President Mike Pence and initiated by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank that favors limiting the scope of the FDA.

At least 38 states have passed local versions of right-to-try laws, which allow patients to sidestep FDA approval once they have received permission from a company.

The right-to-try measures are opposed by a broad coalition of groups, which contend the bill will not help patients and will undermine the authority of the primary regulatory agency, the FDA. Four former FDA commissioners, including two each from Democratic and Republican administrations, oppose the bills, as do dozens of patient groups, including the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and the American Lung Association.

The pharmaceutical industry, while not taking a position on the issue, has been circumspect. A spokesman for its main lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said Friday, We believe any legislation must truly benefit and protect patients and not disrupt the future of clinical trials, U.S. Food and Drug Administration oversight and the research and approval of new medicines.

The bills future is unclear. On Thursday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., failed to secure unanimous consent in the Senate to pass the House version of the bill after it was blocked by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Schumer said that the Senate had already passed its version and that he wanted to work on a compromise bill.

In a statement, Johnson said the next step would be to persuade the House to pass his version.

Patients and their families are running out of time, Johnson said in the statement. I promise to continue to work tirelessly on behalf of desperate patients for their right to try  their right to hope.

Supporters say that right-to-try measures will eliminate an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy  obtaining approval from the FDA. The legislation includes incentives they say could encourage companies to participate, such as shielding them from lawsuits and preventing the FDA from considering the experiences of patients on the drugs in their eventual decisions about whether to approve them.

All were trying to do with right to try is open up another avenue for patients who need it and arent served by existing programs, said Starlee Coleman, a senior policy adviser at the Goldwater Institute.

The FDA already approves 99 percent of such applications, and the agency has streamlined the approval process. Drug companies also have many other reasons to bar access  often, companies do not have enough extra product to give to patients, or they worry that the logistical work of granting access could slow efforts to get the drug approved, when it would become available to any patient who needed it.

There is also the possibility that the drug does not work  many experimental products fail in late-stage trials.

Its not going to fix the problem because there are still a lot of reasons why the companies will choose not to share their drugs, said Nancy Goodman, the founder and executive director of Kids v Cancer, an advocacy group that helps connect patients with companies offering early access to treatment. Goodmans son, Jacob, died in 2009 at age 10 of cancer, and she said she asked eight companies for access to their experimental therapies and was turned down every time.

Goodman said that dying patients do need better access to drugs during what she described as the uncomfortable period between when there is consensus that a drug works and when it reaches the market.

Still, she said of the companies, I can understand why they say no, even though my heart was broken so many times.

Some companies said they would continue to seek FDA permission, even if a right-to-try bill becomes law.

In our view, the FDA plays a really important role, Dr. Joanne Waldstreicher, the chief medical officer of Johnson & Johnson, said in an interview Thursday. Johnson & Johnson initiated a program in 2015 that delegates decisions about early access to a program set up by Caplan. The FDA, Waldstreicher said, has information that we dont have necessarily; they see safety and efficacy information on products that may be similar.

It is not always clear which patients would benefit under such a law, including those whose names are included in the bills title. Both the House and Senate versions carry the name of Jordan McLinn, an Indiana boy with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a degenerative and ultimately fatal disease with no cure. Jordan and his mother, Laura McLinn, have campaigned with Pence in favor of a law, and a video about them is prominently featured on the Goldwater Institute website.

In the video, McLinn discusses an unnamed medicine that she said she believed would allow her son to live a long, productive life. But in separate remarks at a public event in February, McLinn said that her son was in a clinical trial for an experimental drug.

In an email message Thursday, she said, Our journey has evolved over time with right to try, adding, There is not a drug that we are presently trying to access.

She said she still supported the measure because we should have that option if it is a pathway that makes sense and works for a treatment we may want to access in the future.

Coleman, of the Goldwater Institute, said the video about the McLinns was 3 years old, and all of Lauras statements were accurate at the time and are still reflective of the situation many patients experience.

In recent years, more companies have developed formal policies on what is often called compassionate use in the wake of high-profile campaigns by dying patients and their families.

In 2014, executives at the biotechnology company Chimerix received death threats after refusing to give an experimental drug to a 7-year-old boy, Josh Hardy of Virginia, who was dying from a viral infection.

The company ultimately provided the drug to the boy, but the episode led to the firing of the chief executive, Kenneth I. Moch, who has since become a proponent of granting fairer access to experimental drugs. (In 2016, Josh died at age 10 of complications from a rare cancer.)

Before the Hardy family made its request, Moch said, he and his company had been flooded with pleas, ranging from longtime friends to a billionaire, seeking access to the drug, brincidofovir, which still has not been approved by the FDA.

You get these requests and you have to make your judgment, he said.

Since the episode, he said, dozens of companies had contacted him for advice. In addition to Goodmans group, another organization, the Reagan-Udall Foundation, also provides information about company programs.

Moch and others who oppose the legislation acknowledged that it has served a positive purpose.

The only good thing I see coming out of the right-to-try legislation is the increased awareness within the medical community about expanded access, he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.Now, however, Singh is cooperating in a different bribery trial  that of two Long Island politicians  and on his fourth day on the stand, he testified about bribing de Blasio in extensive, if not quite incriminating, detail.

For weeks before the trial, in a pre-emptive protest of his innocence, the mayor told reporters on the radio and at news conferences that Singh was a liar: someone he barely knew and for whom he certainly did no favors.

But in an ironic legal twist, de Blasio may have protested a bit too much  or perhaps just enough to end up on the witness stand himself.

On Thursday, not for the first time, defense lawyers at the Long Island trial raised the possibility they might call the mayor as their own witness, and have him repeat to a jury the attacks on Singhs credibility he has made in other public places.

While the defense has not yet subpoenaed de Blasio, such a move could result in the unprecedented spectacle of a sitting New York mayor being hauled into court to describe as dishonest a man who has described him as corrupt.

The actual defendants at the trial, in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, in Central Islip, are Edward Mangano, the onetime Nassau County executive, and John Venditto, the former town supervisor of Oyster Bay, both of whom Singh has already pleaded guilty to bribing.

For much of the week, Singh has been testifying about the mens alleged misdeeds  among them accusations of accepting thousands of dollars in furniture, plane tickets, discounted limousine rides and other gifts from Singh, in return for helping him get bank loans and county contracts between 2010 and 2014.

As part of his testimony, Singh said on Thursday that he had also improperly raised money for de Blasio to win better terms for a lease on the Waters Edge, his restaurant on city-owned property in Queens. Earlier this year, de Blasio said he was thoroughly looked at by investigators, and that there were no charges brought because there was nothing there. On Friday, both the citys Law Department and de Blasios personal lawyer declined to comment on the prospect of him being called as a witness.

If, however, de Blasio does get a subpoena, he would not be the first big-city mayor to be asked to testify at a federal court proceeding. In 2016, two Chicago police officers sought to compel testimony from Mayor Rahm Emanuel after Emanuel spoke about his police departments code of silence in a speech to the Chicago City Council.

Lawyers for the city tried to block the court appearance, arguing that Emanuel was busy at City Hall and had no actual and unique knowledge of the case. They contended it was absurd to suggest that the mayor of the third largest city in the United States should be required to testify in a case of which he has no personal knowledge.

Nonetheless, a federal judge ruled against them and ordered Emanuel to testify. It never happened, though, because the case was settled before it went to trial.

In a similar situation, a group of black firefighters who were suing New York City for racial discrimination asked a federal judge in 2009 for permission to depose Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in their case. The judge, Nicholas G. Garaufis, sided with the firefighters and allowed the deposition, ruling that Bloomberg had direct personal knowledge of the matter and that his testimony would not significantly interfere with his management of city business.

But mayors  in New York City and elsewhere  have only rarely appeared as witnesses at criminal proceedings. In 1988, Mayor Ed Koch took the stand as a prosecution witness at the federal bribery trial of Bess Myerson, his onetime cultural affairs commissioner. Myerson stood accused of trying to influence a judge in the divorce case of her married boyfriend, Carl A. Capasso, a millionaire sewer contractor. Fidgeting and sighing, Koch showed up in court and told the jury he had no recollection of the matter. Myerson was eventually acquitted.

Last year, lawyers for the Lake Boyz, a group of gang members in Fort Myers, Florida, issued a subpoena to the citys mayor, Randy Henderson, trying to force him to testify about policing practices at their trial. But the subpoena was quashed by the citys chief lawyer, Grant Alley, who successfully argued to a judge that the citys manager, not its mayor, was in charge of the police.

Alley, however, noted that things might turn out differently for de Blasio.

In a criminal case, you have to err on the side of the rights of the criminal defendant, he said. If a mayor has relevant information related to a theory of defense, it will be difficult to shield that mayor from a protective order.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.Makinde Kayode is one brilliant teenager, who incredibly achieved this rare academic achievement even before he completed his

This 14-year-old pupil has proved he is exceptionally bright as he passed his first external examination at first sitting with impressive performance.

In 2017, Kayode was registered for General Certificate Examination GCE and to the surprise of his teachers and parents, he made distinctions in five subjects including Mathematics and Further Mathematics.

ALSO READ: Best student in WASSCE gets scholarship to study Medicine

While speaking with Pulse about the academic feat of the young boy, who is now in SSS3, at Rhema International College, Alaafin, Oluyole Estate, Ibadan, his uncle, Oladeji Stephen, said, ''Kayode sat for WAEC GCE last year and he got 7 Distinctions in Math, Physic and Chemistry. He made A1 in Further Math, Mathematics A1, Technical Drawing A1, Geography A1, Economics A1, Physics B2. Chemistry B3. English C4 and Biology C6''

Also, in the just concluded 2018 UTME, Kayode is among the outstanding candidates who scored above 300 in the exam.

His UTME result again testifies to his academic strength in Mathematics, Physic and Chemistry as he scored 88, 89 and 77 in these subject respectively. His score in Use of English, 67 earned him a total score 321 in the 2018 UTME.What might seem like a simple career change to you, is what Orji describes as a leap of faith.

ALSO READ:Actress talks saving her virginity till marriage

During a recent interview with Huffington Post, Orji opened up on her hustle, faith and of course, "Insecure" season three.

She revealed that she hustled for seven years, perfecting her craft, writing, taking acting classes, waiting tables and seizing every opportunity that to perform after moving to New York.

I remember my mom [saying], I dont know this acting thing, I dont know, the actress said while speaking of her moms reluctance to buy into her career change.

Then Lupita won an Oscar, and then she said, Your friend has won. I didnt even know Lupita at the time  but it became real for my mom.

Orji eventually got a job as an artist in residence at the University of Richmond before moving to Los Angeles to write for TV Ones Love That Girl.

She also wrote a web series, First Gen, while still in L.A.

After a decade of constant hustle, Orji finally got her break in October 2016, after auditioning for what has quickly become one of the biggest shows for black millennials.

Orji has toured with Chris Rock and reportedly has a forthcoming project with Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish.

Very big deals.

According to her, the recipe for her success has been preparedness and faith.

Stay ready has been like my mantra before Insecure and all. A lot of people hustle differently, and I was like, you know what, let me hustle and create and let me have something to show, cuz my hustle led to opportunity, she said.

She took the opportunity to share this same message in her latest campaign with Colgate Total, advising folks to stay ready and you dont have to get ready, because an opportunity is likely to knock when you least expect it.

Orji also cited her Christian faith as the source of her strength which keeps her going when the path to the finish line isnt always as clear.

I let [my faith] guide me, because if I try to take the wheel, its about to be a mess, she said. I can only see whats in front of me, but God can see whats behind, whats ahead of me, whats beside me, and it just makes it so much easier to release control, cuz at the end of the day, if He brought me to it, Hes gonna have to bring me through it.

ALSO READ: Actress talks being a virgin at 33

Orji, whos currently filming Season 3 of Insecure, is growing the complexity and diversity of black people, making them even more celebrated on screen.

I learned so much about black friendships, black experiences, through the show. Im like yo, Im learning a different type of blackness by being in the show, she said, calling the opportunity a blessing.

There are different types of experiences, and all of them are valid and all of them deserve to be portrayed in a real way.According to the reports, the Islamic scholar, one Sirajo, flogged Zubairu and brutalised his hands with a knife for an undisclosed offence.

ALSO READ: Woman in trouble for burning niece's legs with hot stone

Following the abuse, the victim's wounds only worsened, causing both of his hands, just above his wrist, to rot.

Progress Radio reports that Zubairu's hands had to be amputated at the Federal Medical Centre, Gombe.

The fate of the teacher was not revealed as at the time of this report.

Child Abuse

It is sad to say that Zubairu's case is far too common. In September 2017, there was a report of a nursing mother who set her husband's 10-year-old nephew on fire.

The Lagos State Police Command arrested the 36-year-old nursing mother, Gift Igwe, for setting the young boy on fire at their home on Adenugba Street, Agunfoye, Ikorodu.

Punch reported that Igwe was angry that the victim identified as Chimobi, had misplaced his trousers and could not produce it when his aunt demanded them and out of anger, she brutalized him, poured kerosene on him and set him ablaze.

The young boy who was taken into protective custody by the Lagos State Government, according to neighbours, was a victim of serial abuse by Igwe who maltreated him at the slightest provocation.

It was gathered that the Ishielu, Ebonyi State-born indigene, was arrested after residents of the community reported her to the police when they heard the cries of the victim and managed to put out the fire during which he reportedly passed out.

Chimobi was subsequently rushed to the Ikorodu General Hospital, Ikorodu, while police from the Igbogbo division were said to have arrested the suspect.

A source said that the child was brought to Lagos in 2016 by the uncle to start living with his family but all through his stay, his aunt never saw anything good in him and brutalized him at will.

A police source said that the matter came to a head when Igwe set the boy on fire on Wednesday, September 6, 2017.

The victim who spoke with Punch correspondent on his hospital bed, said he was in a primary school in their hometown before he was brought to Lagos from Ebonyi.

The State Police Public Relations Officer [PPRO], ASP Olarinde Famous-Cole who confirmed the incident, said that Igwe had been granted bail because of her child, saying she was mandated to be reporting at the police station daily.

ASP Famous-Cole, however, said she would be charged to court as soon as the police conclude investigations into the matter while the husband will also be prosecuted.The lady identified only as Caroline was reportedly meant to lead the psalm on Palm Sunday, during the Easter celebrations before her untimely death.

ALSO READ: Missing student found dead without vital organs

Instablog9ja reports that the deceased was found dead after reportedly leaving home with her boyfriend on Wednesday, March 21, 2018.

According to the reports, the yet-to-be-identified man is said to have returned to her home to ask if she had arrived.

However, the police arrested him after the body of the deceased was found by the roadside, yesterday morning, Friday 23, 2018.

Late Caroline was reportedly meant to sing Psalms on Palm Sunday at the St. Francis Catholic Church, Adikpo.

May her soul rest in peace.

Cleric found dead after vigil

Similarly, the General Overseer of Jesus Covenant Bible Ministries was found dead inside a gutter on Friday, February 3, 2017, in Nnewi, Anambra state.

The deceased, Pastor Ime Etim, is said to have been on his way back from a private vigil on Thursday night when he was murdered.

The body was found in the drainage behind Fidelity Bank Plc, close to Nwayi-Imo bus stop, Nnewi.

The deceased was stripped down to his boxers, tied up and gagged by his assailants before his murder.The amount was money expected after a purchase of rice. Pressures from seller soon forced the mother, Mrs. Veronica Igwe, to offer the child in a bid to fulfill obligations, Punch News reports.

Mrs. Cecilia Elom, in charge of cases relating to child abuse and maltreatment at the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, confirmed this while interacting with newsmen.

She added that the mum was handed over the police after honouring a meeting invitation.

On reaching the area, we saw little Uloma with another seven-year-old boy hawking.

"When we interrogated them, they said Nwali, whom they were living with, forced them to hawk.

Officials of the Ministry of Women Affairs invited the suspect to the office.

"She honoured the invitation and was handed over to the Ebonyi State Police Command for interrogation, Elom told reporters.

The shocking incident resonates with the action of 30-year-old Rosemary Okafor, who used money realised from the sale of a newborn baby to groom older children.

Mom sells newborn baby to raise older kids

Rosemary Okafor, a 30-year-old mom has been arrested for selling her newborn baby for the sum of N350,000. She had planned to use the money acquired to raise three other kids.

She was apprehended by reps from the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP). Okafor, it was gathered, was lined up among a group of human traffickers engaged in the abduction and sale of children.

The mother is part of a crop of 8 men and 3 women, nabbed on suspicion of abuse related to the sale of human persons in Lagos, Abuja and the south-eastern part of Nigeria.With the ceremony holding at Eko Hotels and Suites, Victoria Island, yesterday, March 23 2018, the couple was at the centre of everything glamorous and colourful as friends and family as well as the cream of society turned up for the wedding party of the year so far! [We doubt anything will beat that till they year ends!]undefined

Guests

Despite the bride's father's reported ban of alcohol at the ceremony, guests of the couple still included top politicians, entertainers, socialites and the cherry on top of the guest list was the presence of the World's Richest man, Bill Gates!

ALSO READ:Fatima Dangote gets the cutest prewedding message from groom

undefinedHaving missed Fatima and Jamil's wedding Fatiha in Kano due to their daughter, Damilola's glorious nuptials in Abuja a last week, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo were there; First Lady Aisha Buhari; Senate President, Bukola Saraki; Bola Ahmed Tinubu and a host of others represent the politics contingent at the dazzling ceremony.

ALSO READ:Fatima Dangote stuns at bridal shower

undefinedDavido spearheads entertainers at the event and even drops a customary energetic performance. Bovi, Seyi Law, Toolz, DJ Cuppy, Omawunmi, Waje, Debola Lagos, Dolapo Oni, Dele Momodu, also attends with her billionaire father, Femi Otedola.

undefinedAgain, Congratulations to Fatima and Jamil on their mindblowing, gorgeous nuptials!On April 14, 2014, the terror group abducted 276 pupils of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State but 57 of the students managed to escape, leaving 219 in captivity.

In October 2016, the Federal Government paid a ransom for the release of some of the girls - the terrorists freed only 21 of them.

The insurgent group released 82 more Chibok girls in May 2017 as others remain in captivity.

The parents of the remaining girls, who had arrived at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library on Saturday, urged the former president to help use his regional and global influence to facilitate the release of their daughters.

Addressing the sad parents, Obasanjo appealed to them not to lose faith and confidence in God despite their anguish.

The visit comes after the Federal Government negotiated the release of Dapchi girls, who were similarly abducted from their school in Yobe State by a Boko Haram faction.

ALSO READ: Buhari says Chibok Girls will return soon

The terrorist kidnapped 110 girls from Dapchi town on February 19, 2018, but they returned 104 of them on March 21.He's been accused of being autocratic, incompetent, negligent and blind to his own failures, or just plain old heartless.

With the disconcertingly 'cheerful' mood of the Federal Government this past week, the president might have affirmed some of those accusations.

It is no longer news that the 110 girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, from Government Girls Science and Technical Secondary School in Dapchi, Bursari local government area of Yobe State on February 19, 2018, have been released.

Well, almost all of them.

I'll not descend into the cesspool of the conspiracy theories that have been swirling around the whole Dapchi situation, neither will I get caught up in the government's failure to prevent a 'national disaster' it had promised would never happen during its time from happening in a laughable manner.

However, I'll deal with the facts of what proof is lying around; and despite the government's sense of achievement over the return of the girls, the president and his entire government have questionably glossed over the most tragic part of the Dapchi story.

Since the girls returned on Wednesday, March 21, the Federal Government has made several press releases that bothered on how no ransom was paid to Boko Haram, how they negotiated the deal to get the girls back by appealing to the good graces of the group, how the terrorists made the Army stand down to deliver the girls, how the government had fulfilled its promise to get the girls back, and how naysayers should desist from 'politicising' the abduction.

Late on Thursday, March 22, when the story of Leah Sharibu gained traction as she remains the only girl still held by the terrorists because she refused to renounce her Christian faith and convert to Islam, the president addressed her situation.

"His heart goes out to the isolated parents who must watch others rejoice while their own daughter is still away. The Dapchi girl, Leah, will not be abandoned," a presidency statement read.

A casual observer would be tricked into believing that the Federal Government has covered its bases and handled communication in the most effective way possible; but you'd be terribly mistaken.

One of the schoolgirls, Khadija Grema, had reported on Wednesday that five of her schoolmates died of heart attack and stress as a result of the long trip.

If Buhari's reaction to Sharibu signified anything, it is his acknowledgement of the fact that the 110 girls that were abducted were not the same 110 that returned.

The final official count for the girls that returned is 105, excluding the two unconnected hostages that were also released.

The official count might signify that there's some inaccuracy in Grema's report as only four girls remain unaccounted for currently if you add Sharibu to the 105 that have returned.

However, despite the deficiency in the number and the account from the released girls who said five of them died, the Federal Government has not said a single thing about it.

No press statement acknowledging that some girls died or did not return, no statement expressing condolence to their parents, no press statements that even suggested that they all existed just a little over a month ago.

Bereaved father of one of the girls, Inuwa Garba, told Associated Press on Thursday, March 22 that some of the released girls told him that his 16-year-old daughter was the first to die and was buried in the bush alongside the other four.

"They told me five of the girls died and my daughter, who was among them, was the first to die," he said.

Another father, Adamu Jumbam, revealed how troubled he's been by his daughter's death and the events that led to it.

He said, "I was troubled when other girls were seen on arrival but my daughter, Aisha, was said to have died alongside four others. All the same, I thank Almighty Allah for this and pray for the repose of their souls.

"The surprising thing is that Boko Haram abducted these girls and still returned them in broad daylight and went back freely. All these things trouble our imagination."

While this oversight could have been chucked down to the government's usual lapse in duty, like we've sadly come to expect in Nigeria, President Buhari tried to erase the existence of those girls from history on Friday, March 23.

During a meeting with the released girls at the Presidential Villa on Friday, the president explained how his government had engaged in careful negotiations with Boko Haram to secure their release.

Most crucially, the president said something that should have got stuck in his throat and never seen the light of day, but unfortunately did.

He said, "We entered into negotiations solely to make sure that no single girl was hurt. This strategy paid off as the girls have been released "

While it's forgivable enough, considering what we've come to expect, that this government will try to neglect the decent duty of at least acknowledging the existence of the dead girls, trying to erase them from memory is the most heartless thing the president of a country could do, no matter how low the bar is set for him.

One girl dying IS AN INCIDENT; five (or four) is a national disaster that should mean the president has to wipe dozens of eggs it leaves on his face.

For President Buhari to attempt to pull a wool over the eyes of Nigerians and act as if the death of those girls is unimportant, in the grand scheme of things, is a disgrace.

That the president had the time in his speech to caution 'political profiteers' is even more worrying because it sounds so much like he is more invested in making sure people don't point out his failures than he is with dealing with his actual failures.

Those dead Dapchi girls that remain unacknowledged by Buhari and his government have parents and siblings and friends; people who'll miss them and remember them and mourn their passing.

To downplay their unfortunate deaths, Mr President, in an attempt to magnify your own sense of achievement, is a violation of your vow to cater to ALL Nigerians.

Embrace your failures as much as your successes and be the leader Nigerians half-expect you to be.The retired general said the army has failed in its responsibility to secure the country from attacks and accusing the military of bias.

Danjuma stated this on Saturday, March 24, 2018, while speaking at the maiden convocation of Taraba State University.

ALSO READ: Middle Belt group faults Danjuma, Dogonyaro over Jihad claims

He said, "[The armed forces] are no longer neutral there is need for Nigerians to rise up and defend the country, defend the state and defend yourselves.

"If you depend on the armed forces to stop the killings you will all die one by one. The Nigeria armed forces are not neutral."

Imminent war

The former minister, who described Taraba as a "mini Nigeria", said the peace of the state is threatened, adding that the killings across the country must stop to avoid a full-blown war.The terrorists were said to have peacefully driven into the town to drop off the girls and warned their parents not to send the children back to western schools.

On February 19, 2018, the sect abducted 113 pupils of the Government Girls Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State.

But 105 of the girls were released following negotiation with the Federal Government - six of them reportedly died during the abduction process while the only Christian among the girls, Leah Sharibu, remain in captivity because she refused to convert to Islam.

Arrival of Dapchi girls

A Dapchi resident, Ibrahim Husseini, who was quoted by Premium Times, said the terrorists were celebrated when they brought the girls back.

He said, "It was a thing of joy for us in Dapchi when suddenly we began to see trucks moving into the town at about 8:00 a.m in the morning.

"They brought the girls and then they were telling the general public that they should not go back to Western education schools; that what they did was not terrorism but rather the propagation of Islamic knowledge."

The secretary of the abducted Dapchi schoolgirls parents' group, Kachalla Bukar, was also quoted to have said he was present when Boko Haram returned the girls, unlike other villagers who fled fearing that it was another attack on the town.

"...we, the parents of the missing girls, did not run as other villagers did, because we cannot run and leave our girls in the hands of the Boko Haram.

"When they came, they told us that they were returning the girls not because somebody gave them money, but out of their freewill. We thanked them. Then they told us that we must never return our girls to western school again; we said we will do as said. They preached to us for some time, and we said we will heed to their sermons.

"They shook our hands and asked us to forgive them for whatever pains that they might have caused us; then we shook hands and they asked us to snap photos with them using their mobile phone which we all did", Bukar said.

Mixed feelings have trailed the released of the girls, with many condemning security operatives for giving the terrorists a safe passage after the girls were dropped off.

ALSO READ: Buhari offers repentant Boko Haram members amnesty

The Federal Government has also said that no ransom was paid for the girls' freedom, a story many Nigerians believe did not add up.

Some critics accused the government of conspiracy given how Boko Haram took the girls and returned them so easily - a move contrary to the known operational pattern of the group.

In April 2014, the Abubakar Shekaufaction of the group abducted 219 girls in Chibok, Borno State during the Goodluck Jonathan administration.

It took a year after the PresidentMuhammadu Buharigovernment assumed power for 21 out of the 219 girls to be released and a huge ransom was paid to secure their freedom.Akinterinwa made the plea at the 3rd Memorial Lecture for the late Gabriel Olubunmi Fakeye, the Spiritual Leader and founder of the Cherubim and Seraphim Movement Church (Ayo Ni O), Lagos.

The lecture was entitled: The Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace  The Divine Panacea for Strong Nationhood.

Akinterinwa, who spoke on the theme, urged Nigerians to seek the face of God for peaceful coexistence.

Without a scintilla of doubt, there is no unity of purpose amongst the people, governance is largely characterised by ethnic chauvinism.

Nigeria has become a country where honours are given to those who should be in jail. Many things are wrong with the conductors of Nigeria.

Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace can be a good and divine panacea to Nationhood, if godliness is allowed in the political governance of Nigeria.

In his remarks, a cleric, Special Apostle Funsho Korode, decried the spate of killings of people and the wanton destruction of property in some parts of the country.

According to Korode, life is sacrosanct and should not be toyed with.

He is the General Leader, Cherubim and Seraphim Movement Church, Surulere District Headquarters (Ayo Ni O).

Korode said: The church is not happy at the wanton destruction of human lives and property either for political, economic or religious reasons.

In the globalisation world we are today, with the rapid assimilation of people into culture, Creeds and colours, it is saddening that as a nation, we have suddenly woken up into self-destruction.

Our choice of topic for discussion is centered on Baba Fakeyes orientation and perspective that Christians have the responsibility, as appointed watchmen, to pray and stand in the gap for their communities and the nation.A statement signed by the Convener of the group, Mr Lawrence Akpa, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said the late statesman lived, worked and laid down his life for the state.

It stated that the late Audu was a pride to the Igala kingdom and a strong promoter of a united and progressive Kogi.

Akpa said that Audu also contributed immensely to the growth and development of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and democracy in the state.

He noted that the victory at the 2015 state governorship polls was a reflection of the peoples confidence in late Audus leadership style.

The convener said that the former governor laboured for the emancipation of the state and where it became inevitable, he paid with his dear life.

Unfortunately, this act of patriotism has not been recognised by the present State Government.

Our memory of Audu is that of a strong charismatic politician, who fought for the emancipation of the people.

He was also a strict disciplinarian, who would not condone any form of executive lawlessness.

The Igala nation will not forget the man, who paid the supreme price that Kogi may be reckoned with across the globe, he said.

In the same development, the Igala Vanguard, has urged Bello and Sen. Dino Melaye (Kogi-APC) to put an end to the disagreement between them, as it was becoming embarrassing to the state.

The group urged the leaders to put aside their differences and concentrate on good governance, which they promised the electorate in their party manifesto.

They urged the leaders to work in synergy with other elected officials for the development of the state and bequeath a legacy for the upcoming generations.He stated this when addressing students of Government Girls Secondary School, Damaturu, Yobe.

We will deploy additional policemen to the schools to see to your welfare, safety and security.

They will be here 24 hours and I want you to cooperate with them, give them information on strange faces and movements for maximum security, he said.

The IG-P donated 10 bags of rice and a bull to the students.

Idris later told journalists that his visit to the liberated areas was to put appropriate measures in preparation for the total withdrawal of the military.The State Commissioner for Health, Dr Saka Audu, disclosed this to journalists after an inspection of medical facilities at the State Specialist Hospital (KSSH), in Lokoja.

The commissioner, who led OSJs team to the facility, said that the efforts of Gov. Yahaya Bello to improve the healthcare in the state were beginning to bring results.

We thank God that the efforts of His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, are beginning to show as Kogi State is now more attractive to partners from across the world.

In our quest to upgrade this centre, Kogi State Specialist Hospital, Lokoja, to a reputable hospital, I think this partnership is worthy.

The state government is committing everything to make sure that what is planned here today is actualised successfully, Audu said.

Amb. Reginald Ejekwe, the Team Leader of OSJ, said that the essence of the visit was that his team was ready to work with Kogi government in the health sector.

We want to have a five star hospital in Kogi State; we want to partner with Kogi government to build a good hospital that will help people save lives.

It will also make our people not to be travelling abroad for medical treatment but to be treated in Nigeria, Ejekwe said.

He said that the hospital would be a place where all manners of disease would be treated, including transplant and any type of surgery, cancer and orthopaedic.Boko Haram did not release Sharibu because she reportedly refused to denounce Christianity.

Omokri in a post on Twitter, said Vice President @ProfOsinbajo, a Pastor, is quick to publicly speak lies against @GEJonathan and others. Yet this same man has not thought it wise to even say one word of comfort to the parents of Leah Sharibu and the Christian community who are in deep anguish over her ordeal!

Adeboye rains curses on Boko Haram

Meanwhile, Pastor Enoch Adeboye rained curseson Boko Haram for refusing to release the Christian girl, Leah Sharibu.

The minister called on God to intervene and asked on Jesus Christ to set all kidnappers on fire.

Isaiah49:25: But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.

Every kidnapper in this country by whatever name they are called, please set them on fire right now in the name of Jesus, he said.

ALSO READ:How girl who refused to deny Jesus was held back by Boko Haram

Buhari promises to rescue Leah

The Presidency has said that the Buhari administration will not relent in efforts to bring Leah Sharibu,the only Dapchi schoolgirl still in captivity safely back home to her parents.

Malam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity gave the assurance in a statement in Abuja on Thursday, March 22, 2018.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) also called on the government for the rescue of Leah Sharibu from the captivity of the terrorists.On March 21, terror group Boko Haram released 104 of the 110 abducted girls. Five of them were said to have died while Sharibu remained in captivity.

The Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris on Saturday, March 24, confirmed that Sharibu's release is imminent.

He stated this an interview with journalists at the Military Command and Control Center in Maiduguri where he visited the Theatre Commander Operation Lafiya Dole.

Idris said he had been scheduled to travel to Dapchi but shelved the trip so as not to jeopardize the girl's release.

According to The Cable sources in Dapchi, the residents and family of Sharibu confirmed that the Boko Haram terrorists were on their way to the town to drop her off.

"As of 3pm, we heard that they were 20 kilometres from Dapchi," a resident who pleaded anonymity was quoted as saying.

Another source said; "The news that they are bringing back the girl was received with mixed feelings. Some people are jubilating but many have abandoned their homes out of fear. There is confusion as I speak to you. What if they decide to abduct more people. Those guys are lunatics."

On February 19, 2018, the girls were abducted from their school, Government Girls Science Technical College (GGSTC) Dapchi, in Yobe state.

ALSO READ: Freed Dapchi girls undergoing counseling in Abuja

Following negotiations with the Federal Government, the terrorists freed 104 of them and two other abductees - a boy and a girl.The police had accused Melaye of criminal offences of conspiracy and unlawful possession of prohibited firearms.

A statement issued on Saturday, March 24, by the Police Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, said that the Kogi senator has refused to honour an invitation and a court summon sent to him.

On January 19, the police had said it arrested two men in Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State, who confessed to having committed various crimes such as kidnappings and armed robbery.

The suspects were also said to have revealed that Melaye had handed them a bag containing firearms.

The statement reads in part:

"During investigation, they confessed to the various criminal roles they played in the commission of several kidnappings and Armed Robbery, Murder and other Violent Crimes in different parts of Kogi State for which they have been on the wanted list of the Police for more than two years now.

"The gang leader KABIRU SAIDU a.k.a OSAMA revealed that he and his gang have been working as a Political Thug for one Alh. Mohammed Audu a Politician in the State and that Alh. Mohammed Audu invited him to Abuja and introduced him to Senator Dino Melaye and they met on Airport road, Abuja inside the Senator Dino Melayes Car in the month of December, 2017.

"KABIRU SAIDU a.k.a OSAMA 31 YRS further confessed to the Police investigative team that Senator Dino Melaye handed over a bag containing the following firearms one (1) AK47 rifle, two (2) Pump Action guns and the sum of four hundred and thirty thousand naira N430,000.00 to share with his boys.

"The Police conducted investigation into the criminal indictments against Sen. Dino Melaye and Mohammed Audu and discovered that the two (2) of them have case to answer. The two (2) suspects namely; KABIRU SAIDU a.k.a OSAMA and NUHU SALISU a.k.a SMALL were paraded at the Kogi State Command Headquarters, Lokoja on 19th March, 2018."

The police spokesman, therefore, advised Melaye and Mohammed Audu to voluntarily honour the invitation or risk arrest.

"As we speak, Sen. Dino Melaye despite the letter sent to the Senate President, refused to honour Police Invitation till date and also refused to appear in court and has also continued to evade the service of criminal summon on him to appear before the Federal High Court, Lokoja on the 28th March, 2018 to answer to the charge of Criminal Conspiracy and unlawful possession of prohibited firearms against him and Mohammed Audu.

"The Nigeria Police Force is therefore using this medium to advise Senator Dino Melaye and Mohammed Audu in their interest to comply with the order of the court and appear on 28th March, 2018 before Federal High Court, Lokoja to answer to the criminal charges against them.

"If they continue to be evasive and fail to comply with criminal summon issued on them by the Federal High Court, Lokoja to appear on 28th March, 2018 to answer to the criminal charges of Conspiracy and Unlawful Possession of Prohibited Firearms against them, the Force, will obtain Warrant of Arrest for the arrest of Senator Dino Melaye and Mohammed Audu and will definately declare them wanted throughout the country and on INTERPOL platform for them to be arrested in any country where ever they are sighted and handed over to the Nigeria Police Force for continuation of their trial," Moshood said.

However, Melaye has since denied the allegations levied against him by the police, accusing the governor of Kogi state, Yahaya Bello being behind his plight.Mr Kola Ajayi, the Chairman, spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) against the backdrop of allegations of electoral malpractices witnessed in some polling booths in Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Area.

Ajayi said that such development was retrogressive.

NAN reports that by-elections is holding in Ward B, Ogunoloko and Ward B, Dopemu in the Oshodi-Isolo and Agege Local Government Areas of the state respectively to fill vacant seats.

This followed the death of the former occupants of the councillorship seats in the two council areas.

Ajayi, while monitoring the poll in the area, said that he was not too pleased with the reports of alleged malpractices in Ogunoloko Ward `B`.

It started well, but what I hear now is giving me some concerns.

I learnt that there are some polling centres where people that are not supposed to vote are casting votes.

LASIEC has been preaching free, fair and transparent elections. All these things are supposed to be checked by the security operatives.

I want the two parties to embrace transparent election for us to move forward, he said.Adekunle emerged winner after polling 980 votes to defeat MrAbdul- Rasheed Lawal of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who got 480 votes and Lookman Afogunlowo of Accord who scored 288 votes.

The Returning Officer, Mr Samuel Agosu, while announcing results, said the APC candidate met the requirements to be declared winner and elected councillor.

By the power conferred on me as Returning Officer, I hereby declare Rasheedat Adekunle of the All Progressives Congress as winner of todays by-election.

And Adekunle, having scored the majority number of votes and met the requirements of the law, is hereby returned and elected, he said.

The APC chairman of the ward, Mr Tunde Azeez, expressed excitement at the result.

He told newsmen that the outcome meant that the APC was solidly on ground in the area.

Azeez thanked all the supporters of the party for being with the party throughout the process.

I am glad at the outcome and the particular support of the Executive Chairman of the local government for the party in this election.

We are happy with the process and we hope to use this victory as a launch pad for more victories for the party in this area, he said.

Mr Lanre Ogundare, the state Secretary of Accord declined comment after announcement of results.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the election was largely peaceful in all the polling units in the area.As it happened, Bolton went on to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, perhaps the most undiplomatic of diplomats. But if President Donald Trump wanted a national security adviser who would match his blunt, hard-edge, confrontational approach to the world, then Bolton fits the bill.

With his trademark bushy gray mustache and his take-no-prisoners style, Bolton positioned himself to the right even of the foreign policy veterans who emerged from President George W. Bushs administration, a hawk among hawks, a hard-liner who thrills conservatives and chills moderates and liberals. From his perch on Fox News, he has impressed Trump with a muscular vision of U.S. power and a dark assessment of Americas adversaries.

When he takes over as Trumps third national security adviser in 14 months, Bolton will almost surely encourage Trumps instincts against diplomatic agreements that both consider weak and unwise. He shares the presidents derisive opinion of the Iran nuclear deal and will presumably prod him to scrap it when a May deadline arrives. He likewise takes a dim view of international agreements like the Paris climate change accord, from which Trump announced last year that he would withdraw the United States. He has called the two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians dead.

But Bolton is not always in step with a president who sometimes veers back and forth between threatening fire and fury and eagerly seeking talks with foreign leaders. Bolton argues the virtues of pre-emptive military action against North Korea and scorns diplomacy of the sort Trump has embarked on with Kim Jong Un. He promotes more punitive sanctions against Russia rather than the kind of hand-holding flattery of President Vladimir Putin that Trump practiced even this week. He supported the Iraq War, which Trump calls a catastrophic mistake.

In an interview Thursday evening on Fox, Bolton said he recognized that his role would be to play the honest broker bringing different views to the president, and that it would be up to Trump to make the decisions.

But he made clear that he also planned to be Trumps enforcer. When the president makes a decision, he said, part of his job will be making sure the bureaucracies get the decision and implement it.

Bolton criticized the frequent leaks out of Trumps national security team, saying that a president cannot conduct diplomacy if some munchkin in the White House is leaking information to the news media. Leaking of that sort is simply unacceptable, he said.

Boltons appointment elicited mixed reviews. Selecting John Bolton as national security adviser is good news for Americas allies and bad news for Americas enemies, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. He has a firm understanding of the threats we face from North Korea, Iran and radical Islam.

Critics, however, expressed concern that a bomb thrower in words could become a bomb thrower in deeds. Bolton played a key role in politicizing the intel that misled us into the Iraq War, Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., wrote on Twitter. We cannot let this extreme war hawk blunder us into another terrible conflict.

Clifford Kupchan, the chairman of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, sent a note to clients warning that Boltons appointment increases risk across the board, adding that it makes U.S. foreign policy America First on Steroids.'

At one point, Bolton toyed with running for president himself, only to back off. Instead, he created an organization to support like-minded candidates. His super PAC was one of the earliest customers of Cambridge Analytica, which has found itself confronting a deepening crisis after reports this past weekend that the firm had harvested the data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles in its bid to develop techniques for predicting the behavior of individual U.S. voters.

The firm was founded with a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor who has backed both Boltons PAC and Trump. Cambridges so-called psychographic modeling techniques, which were built in part with the data harvested from Facebook, underpinned its work for the Trump campaign in 2016, setting off a furious debate about the merits of the firms methods. The same techniques were also the focus of its work for Boltons PAC.

Using psychographic models, the company designed advertisements for candidates supported by Boltons PAC, including the 2014 campaign of Thom Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina. One advertisement, a video that was posted on YouTube, was aimed at fearful and neurotic voters  it emphasized security and the idea that Tillis could keep America safe.

Bolton also recorded a video used by a Russian gun rights group in 2013 to encourage Moscow to loosen gun laws, according to a report by NPR. The report said the video was part of an effort by Russian and U.S. gun rights groups to collaborate in the years leading up to the 2016 election.

A native of Baltimore, Bolton, 69, received undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University. Between stints in private practice, he took a series of increasingly important jobs in government, starting at the U.S. Agency for International Development under President Ronald Reagan and later as an assistant attorney general.

After the 2000 election, Bolton joined the Republican legal team in Florida during the recount battle between Bush and Vice President Al Gore. After the Supreme Court halted the recount, resulting in Bushs victory, Dick Cheney, the new vice president, persuaded the incoming secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, to make Bolton an undersecretary in charge of arms control. In that role, he helped pull the United States out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty but negotiated a separate treaty with Russia paring nuclear arsenals.

When Condoleezza Rice succeeded Powell, she rebuffed pressure from Cheney to make Bolton her deputy. Instead, Bush nominated him for the U.N. post, but key Republicans opposed him, including a former assistant secretary of state who testified that Bolton was a kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy who abused underlings.

After the Senate refused to confirm Bolton, Bush gave him a recess appointment instead  a decision he would come to regret. Bolton clashed regularly with Rice and, after leaving office, broke with Bush over what he saw as weak-kneed policies on North Korea and Iran.

He titled his memoir Surrender Is Not an Option and called the Foreign Service officers in the State Departments East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau the EAPeasers. He even went after Bush. Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse, he wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Bush bristled and, in a private meeting with a group of conservatives, said, Let me just say from the outset that I dont consider Bolton credible. Other former colleagues fought back more publicly. Christopher Hill, who negotiated with North Korea for Bush, dismissed Bolton as Phyllis Schlafly with a mustache.

After Trumps election in 2016, Rice and other Bush administration veterans like former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Stephen J. Hadley, the former national security adviser, privately warned against an appointment for Bolton.

Trump considered Bolton for several posts but ultimately backed away each time. Unlike some of those positions, national security adviser does not require Senate confirmation. In the interim, Bolton has repeatedly praised Trump on television and in his Wall Street Journal columns even when the two disagree.

He wrote on Twitter this month that sanctions on Putin and his inner circle needed to be tougher. If you want to punish a country for behavior you dont accept, you need punishing sanctions that are broad, not targeted, and they need to be enforced, he wrote.

In a Journal column, he made the case for a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea. Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute, he wrote. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation. Other options, he told a reporter, would be persuading China to topple North Koreas government or reuniting the peninsula under South Korean rule, although he acknowledged neither was likely.

A couple of weeks ago, he went on Fox to disdain South Koreas willingness to negotiate with North Korea. Theyre like putty in North Koreas hands, he said. As the great international relations theorist P.T. Barnum put it, theres a sucker born every minute. Two days later, Trump accepted an invitation to meet with North Koreas Kim.

As he prepared to take on his new assignment, however, Bolton was careful to minimize any differences with Trump. Asked Thursday evening on Fox about the presidents decision to congratulate Putin on winning an election that most of the world considered a sham, Bolton said, I dont consider it a significant point one way or the other, adding, its a matter of being polite.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.Okello bitterly complained that his political detractors had wished him death even though "he was as fit as a fiddle".

He stated that the fake new reports of his death had caused a lot of pain to his family and his constituents.

The ODM Senator spoke shortly after landing from India where he had undergone treatment.

And it is bad these people are using pseudo accounts in order to disguise their identity. They must respect feelings of our family members, relatives, and friends, the Senator stated.

The former radio journalist added that he had fully recovered and was ready to return to his routine duties.Speaking during a meeting with Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), Mr. Orengo stated that Miguna will jet into the country using an Ethiopian Airline on Monday 26 March 2018.

The Senator further noted that the flight is expected to land in the country at 10.30 am.

Miguna Miguna will be arriving on Monday 26 March on an Ethiopian Airway flight at 10.30 in the morning, he said.

Orengo urged KNCHR to ensure that security is beefed up at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airpot (JKIA) in a bid to see Migunas family members and his legal team access the Canadian based lawyer when he arrives.Thank you for reading!

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We're sorry, this article is not currently availableBlackmail on one side and bullying on the other doesn't make for a constructive partnership, says Sunanda K Datta-Ray.

Sheikh Hasina's intriguing comment the other day that India should make an effort to keep neighbours happy raises a number of possibilities that it would be unwise of Narendra D Modi to ignore.

Since she was speaking to Indian journalists, the warning was obviously meant to be conveyed to New Delhi where the prime minister alone matters in our one-man government.

The obvious first inference is that the Bangladesh prime minister wants Mr Modi to know bilateral relations are not quite as hunky-dory as Indians believe. But there are bound to be wider implications.

Bhutan's Dawa Tsering, once the world's longest-serving foreign minister, claimed that many South Asian leaders had welcomed Pakistan's nuclear capability. Without necessarily being pro-Pakistani or anti-Indian, they felt there should be some check on India's authority.

With one crucial difference, India's relationship with the other seven members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is not unlike the equation between the United States and the 40 other North American countries and colonies.

The US is far too rich and powerful for any question of parity with any of them. Cuba was the only odd man out but it, too, has moved closer to the US sphere of influence.

In contrast, every South Asian country, led by Pakistan, sees itself as India's equal, and is encouraged to do so by the US and China which have their own agendas in the region.

Geography often aggravates the effects of this imbalance. A landlocked country like Nepal additionally suffers from disadvantages that a victim complex magnifies.

Disparity in size doesn't prevent defiance as in the Maldives. There are complications over sharing natural resources (Indus water with Pakistan), defending a land border (India-Bangladesh) or upper and lower riparian rights (China, Nepal and Bangladesh).

India's security sometimes demands extending its military presence into neighbouring sovereignty as during the Doklam stalemate with China.

Sri Lanka's ethno-cultural affinity is a source of both strength and weakness.

As a result, relations are less than harmonious. The world heard of what were presented as Indian blockades of Bhutan and Nepal.

The Indian peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka (1987 to 1990) was an utter and embittering failure. Both India and Pakistan accuse the other of covert operations in each others territory.

If independent Bangladesh was a signal victory from the humanitarian, Bangladeshi nationalistic and Indian points of view, it also reminded the neighbourhood that India has the will and capability to act as the US did when it helped to break up Colombia and create a sovereign Panama whose canal it controlled.

The extreme case was India's 1975 annexation of the protected Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim for which, too, a parallel was available in the US absorption of the kingdom of Hawaii some 77 years earlier.

India must forge a viable partnership with the other SAARC members against this historical background and given these geopolitical drawbacks.

It was Inder Kumar Gujral who said as prime minister that although India could not shrink in size to oblige its neighbours, it could create a climate of confidence to dissolve fears.

That was exactly the advice Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew had given Rajiv Gandhi, citing the case of Suharto's Indonesia setting fear and suspicion at rest among smaller members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Again, there's a vital difference. Unlike India, Indonesia surrendered territory for Timor-Leste to emerge as a sovereign republic in 2002. In contrast, the legitimate and agreed transfer of a speck of West Bengal territory to Bangladesh was delayed for decades.

Returning to Sheikh Hasina's comment, she probably had in mind the aborted agreement between West Bengal and Bangladesh on sharing the Teesta river's waters.

In June last year, the two countries swapped tiny islands in the Bay of Bengal ending a dispute that had kept thousands of people in stateless limbo for nearly 70 years.

The Teesta dispute should similarly be settled amicably. But it must also be stressed that no stable relationship can be based on the bigger partner forever giving.

An old incident involving a Bangladeshi landowner and fringe politician, Morshed Ali Khan Panni, illustrates the attitude of some of India's neighbours, not, of course, the outright hostile ones.

When gas was discovered in Bangladesh, Panni suggested to H M Ershad, then Bangladeshi president, that it should be sold to India which desperately needed energy.

'Then we can turn it off if India is disobliging!'

Blackmail on one side and bullying on the other doesn't make for a constructive partnership. Both sides must concede and compromise.

IMAGE: Then Nepal prime minister Sushil Koirala, Bangladesh Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, then Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa, then Mauritius president Navin Ramgoolam, then Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif, then vice-president Hamid Ansari, then President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra D Modi, then Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, Maldives President Yameen Abdul Gayoom and Bhutan Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay soon after the Modi government was sworn in, May 26, 2014. Photograph: Press Information BureauThe Bharatiya Janata Party has made a significant gain of 11 additional seats while the Congress made an overall loss of four in the biennial elections to 58 Rajya Sabha seats, consolidating the saffron party's position in the House and leaving its main rival far behind.

Its 28 candidates emerged victorious in the polls held on Friday against 17 retiring members, while the Congress won only 10 seats while 14 of its members will retire next week.

A calculation of tallies show that the BJP's strength in the 245-member House will go from the existing 58 to 69 and that of the Congress will fall from 54 to 50 when the new MPs take oath next week.

However, a majority in the Council of States will continue to elude the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

It recently suffered a setback when the Telugu Desam Party, its ally of four years, decided to break ties. The TDP has six members in the House.

However, NDA managers are upbeat following the loss in numbers of most vocal opposition parties like the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, which won only one seat while its six members are retiring.

BJP sources said treasury benches will now be more comfortably placed in the House as regional parties like the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Telangana Rashtra Samiti, which has gained three more seats, Yuvajana Shramika Rythu Congress and the Biju Janata Dal, all of whom are outside the NDA, have been more open to supporting the government's legislative agenda.

The Modi government's bills have often been stalled in the House, where it has lacked a majority, by a united opposition after it managed to pass them in the Lok Sabha, where it enjoys a strong majority.

BJP's winning spree in state assembly polls have resulted in a steady rise in its numbers in the House, whose members are elected by assemblies, while the loss of power of the Congress in many states has led to a fall in its numerical strength.

Photograph: PTI PhotoThe BJP is still short of the halfway mark of 123 in the 245-member House, but can now muster a 'working' majority with help of allies, friendly parties, some Independents and nominated members.

Archis Mohan reports.

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday, March 23, moved closer to a 'working' majority in the Rajya Sabha as it improved its tally from 58 to 68 seats.

Its biggest gains came from Uttar Pradesh. It won 9 of the 10 seats from the state for which voting and counting took place on Friday.

The Samajwadi Party's Jaya Bachchan won. But the Bahujan Samaj Party's Bhimrao Ambedkar, who had been assured support by the SP, Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal, lost because of cross-voting.

BSP chief Mayawati had promised support to SP candidates in the Phulpur and Gorakhpur Lok Sabha by-elections in return for support to her candidate in the Rajya Sabha.

Among the BJP's winners from UP was Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who was earlier a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat.

At a meeting of the BJP parliamentary party on Friday evening, Prime Minister Narendra D Modi said the Opposition was spreading lies against his government out of frustration stemming from electoral losses. He asked BJP MPs to make better use of technology to take the truth to the people.

Party chief Amit A Shah asked MPs to hold press conferences in their constituencies to explain to the people how the Opposition was not letting Parliament run.

As for the Rajya Sabha polls, of the two seats in Jharkhand, the Congress candidate defeated the BJP's nominee by the thinnest of margins. The BJP won the other seat.

Of the four seats in Karnataka, the Congress won three seats, the third with the help of Janata Dal-Secular rebels. The fourth seat was won by the BJP's Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

The Congress lost seats in some states, but also gained in Bihar, Gujarat and Karnataka, which kept its tally at 54 seats in the Rajya Sabha.

In West Bengal, the Congress's Abhishek Manu Singhvi won with the Trinamool Congress's help.

In Kerala, the Left Democratic Front ensured the victory of dissident Janata Dal-United leader MP Veerendra Kumar.

Voting was held on Friday for 26 of the 59 seats which will fall vacant in April.

Candidates for the rest of the 33 seats were elected unopposed on the last day of withdrawal of nominations for the election on March 15.

The counting of votes was marred by controversies in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand, where elections were held for 10 seats, four seats and two seats respectively.

The SP lost the most number of seats, its tally coming down from 18 to 13.

The Telangana Rashtra Samiti doubled its tally to six, while the RJD's went up from three to five.

After the Rajya Sabha polls, the BJP is still short of the halfway mark of 123 in the 245-member House, but can now muster a 'working' majority with help of allies, friendly parties, some Independents and nominated members.

Apart from the 68-odd seats the BJP has, its allies have 18 seats.

Of the five Independents, at least four are inclined towards the BJP.

Of the 12 nominated, four have already officially joined the BJP.

Of the rest, four are set to retire by June.

These four -- Sachin Tendulkar, Rekha, Anu Aga and K Parasaran -- were nominated during the UPA years. Apart from Parasaran, who retires in June, the other three retire on April 26.

The others among the nominated list are Swapan Dasgupta, Narendra Jadhav, K T S Tulsi and M C Mary Kom. Tulsi was sent to the Rajya Sabha by the UPA while the current government nominated Mary Kom.

In recent months, the government has relied on the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (13 members), YSR Congress Party (2), Telangana Rashtra Samiti (6) and other smaller parties for support.

The Telugu Desam Party (6) may have walked out of the NDA, but it could still support the government at critical junctures.Hundreds of thousands of people have flooded the American capital on Saturday for the March for Our Lives to support tougher gun controls and protest Congress's refusal to consider them.

The event is being led by the student survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on February 14 when 17 were slaughtered by a teenage gunman carrying a legally-purchased AR-15.

Some 700 other events are being held around the world in solidarity.

Take a look.

Carrying anti-gun violence signs, protesters in the thousands gathered at Washington, DC to make their message of peace be heard loud and clear.

Photograph: Aaron P Bernstein/Reuters

Daisy Hernandez, age 22, joins the protest at Washington, DC. The protests orchestrated by survivors of the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are aimed at breaking through a legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to tighten firearms controls. Mass shootings at American schools and colleges have become a regular occurrence.

Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Celebrities such as George Clooney, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato and many more have extended their support to the march. Organisers want Congress, many of whose members are up for re-election this year, to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers. Photograph: Javier Galeano/Reuters

Saturday's march comes on the heels of last week's National School Walkout, which saw students from various schools walking out of their institutions for 17 minutes in honour of the 17 who died in the Stoneman tragedy in Florida.

Photograph: Eric Thayer/Reuters

The marches aren't only being held in America. Sister marches are being held in Australia and in the United Kingdom.

Photograph: Aaron P Bernstein/Reuters

Angela Sitaras, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, holds a sign referring to the 17 students killed in the February 14 mass shooting at her high school as she rallies with thousands of other students and young people at the "March for Our Lives" event demanding gun control in Washington.

Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

David Hogg, a senior at Stoneman Douglas, said the protests were a way for young Americans to show their opposition to the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun lobby. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Hogg, a survivor of the Florida shooting said, "We are the children. We are making our voices heard and we will change America with or without these politicians and today is the beginning of that revolution."

Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Americans have been reluctant to give up their guns and there have been few changes in gun laws in response to mass shootings.

Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

A new poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, however, indicates that sentiment may be changing. The poll found that 69 per cent of Americans surveyed now think gun laws should be tightened, up from 61 per cent in October, 2016, and 55 percent in October 2013.

Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images



The March for Our Lives website reports that it has almost reached its goal of raising $3.8 million.

Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

There has been no comment by US President Donald Trump to the march, but deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters issued this statement: "We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their first amendment rights [right to free speech] today.Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the presidents, which is why he urged Congress to pass the Fix Nics and Stop School Violence Acts, and signed them into law." Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesBahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Saturday said that the Rajya Sabha election result will have no impact on her partys association with the Samajwadi Party and the two will work with even more force to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2019 general elections.

A day after her party candidate lost to the BJP in an intense contest in Uttar Pradesh despite backing from the SP, the BSP supremo said the ruling party, which secured the win through undemocratic and unconstitutional means, is expecting that she will break off ties with the SP and it (BJP) will have a field day in 2019, but she will not let it happen.

Accusing the BJP of indulging in malpractice in the election, she said that the ruling party had conspired to defeat her candidate to create a rift between the BSP and SP.

I will not let that happen at any cost. They were up all night eating laddoos and thinking that Mayawati will get angry and break off and that they will have a field day in 2019, Mayawati told reporters.

The Rajya Sabha election result will have no impact on the understanding between the BSP and SP and their conspiracy will cost them heavily as the workers of BSP and SP will now work with even more force to stop them from coming to power in 2019, she said.

Her remarks came after Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav cancelled the victory celebration for his party nominee Jaya Bachchan to be held in the state capital as a sign of solidarity with the BSP whose lone candidate backed by the SP lost in the Rajya Sabha polls.

There will not be an iota of difference in the close understanding between the BSP and SP, Mayawati said, making it clear that BSP is keen to consolidate its association with the SP which is seen as a major reason for the BJPs recent defeat in two prestigious Lok Sabha seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats.

After it wrested the two seats with the BSPs backing, the SP had reciprocated by promising to ensure victory of BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar. However, the BSP lost out in a cliffhanger on Friday.

I am thankful for the support of Congress and SP whose seven MLAs voted for BSP candidate, Mayawati said.

I want to warn the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that I will not allow their special aim of creating rift in the new understanding between the BSP and Samajwadi Party to succeed, she said.

The former chief minister, however, said that had she been in Akhileshs place she would have ensured the victory of the candidate of the other party even if it meant making sacrifices so that the BJP could not dare make attempt to end their closeness.

He erred a little in this since he is a little inexperienced but he will soon learn to give a befitting reply, she said and indicated that she was ready to put behind the bitter past with the SP.

The BJP leaders will remind her about the state guest house case in 1995, when an attempt was allegedly made on her life by SP men, Mayawati said and added that the present SP chief Akhilesh Yadav was nowhere on the political scene then. Will it be right and justified to hold him responsible for it, she said.

Attacking the BJP she said, They still want to see Dalits and backwards as deprived and are not able to digest the SP and BSPs new understanding and have so termed it as selfish, unholy, opportunistic alliance or the friendship of snake and moles, and asked the ruling party to shun such mindset or else the people will send them to life long exile.

On the guesthouse incident, she said, I want to ask that by giving the highest police post to the officer responsible for the guest house case is the BJP not out to get me murdered so as to end the BSP movement for always.

Mayawati also said her party has always maintained that the SC/ST Act should not be misused, but accused the Centre of not taking up the matter effectively in the Supreme Court.

She also announced the suspension of her MLA Anil Singh, alleging he cross voted in favour of the BJP to serve his business interests. She accused the BJP of creating terror and indulging in horse trading.

The BSP chief said that Rajya Sabha election results will not compensate for the loss suffered by the BJP in the Lok Sabha by-election in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.

To a question on MLA from Kunda, Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya, she cautioned Akhilesh Yadav against relying on him.

Mayawati said that if the BJP is so assured of its victory, it needs to conduct the future elections through ballot papers instead of EVMs.

Meanwhile, the Samajwadi Party said it had planned a function at the party headquarters to celebrate the victory of its candidate Jaya Bachchan, but since the BSP candidate, Bhimrao Ambedkar lost, party president Akhilesh Yadav has cancelled it.

After the BJP won nine out of 10 Rajya Sabha seats seats in the state, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had claimed that the election had exposed the opportunistic face of SP. It can take votes but not give votes in return, he said referring to SPs victory in the recent Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.

Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma termed the alliance of the SP and the BSP as lathabandhan (a tie-up to intimidate people). In fact, the alliance is not based on any principle except on Modi hatao, BJP hatao (Remove Modi and BJP), he said.

Image: BSP supremo Mayawati addresses a press conference at her residence in Lucknow. Photograph: Nand Kumar/PTI PhotoSubmitted photo

The 2017 Super Plunge team. The Saturday event will see the group plunge into the waters off Salty Brine Beach 24 times - once every hour on the hour for an entire day - in benefit of Special Olympics Rhode Island (SORI). The 24th and final super plunge coincides with SORIs annual Torch Run Plunge.Army missiles step up attack on Saudi army and its mercenaries [24/March/2018] br> SANAA, March 24 (Saba)  The army and popular forces fired an artillery and missile toward gatherings of Saudi soldiers and their mercenaries over the past 24 hours in the combat fronts in several provinces, leaving large losses, a military official told Saba on Saturday.



In Asir province, the army fired a ballistic missile, Zilzal 2, with an artillery shelling on military sites of the mercenaries in Qama'h al-Sheikh and Alib crossing point.



In border Najran, the army' missiles fired toward Saudi soldiers' groups and their mercenaries in military sites of Raqabat Salah, al-Shabakah, al-Makhruqa, al-Dhabah, Rajla Talah, al-Ashajar desert, Rasha and al-Khadra crossing point.



In border province of Jizan, the rocket units of the army fired a ballistic missile ,Badr 1, on Saudi military camp of Saudi Special Forces and fired Katyusha rockets on al-Abadih site and al-Quza camp.



Separately, the army waged an artillery shelling on sites of Saudi-paid mercenaries in Sadah site in al-Maslub and Khab Washaf districts of Jawf province, killing and wounding dozens and bombing an allied military vehicle.

Also In Jawf, the army attacked the mercenaries in the sites al-Higah and Bait al-Santel in al-Maslub district, killing, wounding several of them and seizing qualities of weapons.



In Taiz province, the army waged an offensive on the mercenaries in Jabel al-San of al-Kadah area, killing and injuring tens.



In Lahj province, the artillery of the army shelled gatherings of mercenaries in al-Jawaza area of Tawr al-Bahah district, the official added.



AA

sabaPresident: US is key sponsor of aggression on Yemen [24/March/2018] br> SANAA, March 24 (Saba)  President of the Supreme Political Council Saleh Al-Sammad on Saturday said the fact that the US is the main sponsor of the aggression on Yemen has been revealed.



This came in the presidents speech during the conclusion of a mobilization workshop for military and security officers in provinces, which was organized by Defense Ministry and Presidency of General Staff.



Al-Sammad referred to the US Senates voting with a majority of more than 55 votes against 44 in favor of the continuation of US support to the aggression alliance, which  he said  means that the aggression is an American since the first day.



The UAE and Saudi Arabia are too weak to continue in this aggression without American political cover and logistical support, the president said.



It is strange that America goes too far to declare its direct participant in this aggression, he added.



He continued to say: The American boast and its official announcement in the Senate, which approves the US policies, as a key partner in the aggression on Yemen is a dangerous matter.



After this blatant American challenge, there must be an unprecedented rising for everyone who has an ounce of dignity or freedom to support the army and the popular committees, the president said.



He pointed out that the current stage is a stage of mobilization and not a normal response. There must be a state of alert in all military units and in villages and cities.



We have several options to lift the suffering of the Yemeni people, he said, noting that the honorable peace is to sit at the dialogue table to stop the aggression.



He added that the option of peace may not be acceptable to the aggression coalition and We can not give up after all the sacrifices.



In his speech, the president stressed that there is no solution but to strengthen steadfastness to accelerate the hour of victory and lift the suffering of the Yemeni people.



BA





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Lalu Prasad (file photo) A special CBI court here on Saturday sentenced RJD chief Lalu Prasad to seven years in jail each in two cases pertaining to the fourth fodder scam case and fined him Rs 60 lakh. It was not immediately clear whether the two sentences would run concurrently or consecutively. Lalu Prasad's lawyer said that a clarity on this would be available in the evening.



CBI judge Shivpal Singh pronounced the sentence.



"Lalu Prasad has been awarded seven years imprisonment and slapped Rs 30 lakhs fine under the Indian Penal Code and another seven years under the Prevention of Corruption Act and a fine of Rs 30 lakhs (each)," the former Bihar Chief Minister's lawyer Prabhat Kumar told reporters.



If the the sentences run consecutive then Lalu Prasad will remain imprisoned for 14 years.



The court on March 19 convicted Lalu Prasad in the fourth fodder scam case but acquitted another former Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra.



Both Lalu Prasad and Mishra are facing five cases each in the fodder scam in Ranchi.



There were 31 accused in this case, of which 19 were convicted and 12 acquitted.



Lalu Prasad was convicted in the first fodder scam case in 2013 and awarded five years in jail.



The Rashtriya Janata Dal chief was convicted by a special CBI court in the second case on December 23, 2017, and awarded three-and-half years' imprisonment on January 6.



He was convicted in the third case on January 24, related to fraudulent withdrawals from the Chaibasa treasury, and awarded a five-year jail term.



The multi-million-rupee fodder scam surfaced in the 1990s when Lalu Yadav was Chief Minister of undivided Bihar. The probe was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation on Patna High Court's order.



The bulk of the cases were transferred to Ranchi after Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in 2000.



Dear Editor,

Just wanted to point out a couple of things.

1. If Samoa does not pay its debt then there is a world body that will rule against Samoa, no matter how shoddy the goods or Projects received.

2. If for example we cede the port of Apia, the planned Vaimoso or Faleolo ports, one guess what will happen. The sea ports will be converted to strategic naval bases

3. Faleolo will be converted to a strategic Air force base.

4. Uncle Sam will just love this! Especially being so close to an American possession. The Chinese could walk into Pago overnight and next thing knowing Mr Trump, Samoa will be a mirror image of Syria/Lebanon or Iraq  Paradise lost!

The Australian State Governments have been stupid enough to sell the ports of Darwin and Melbourne but lets not allow this to happen here.

Perhaps the Australian and New Zealand Governments could come together on the issue of Samoas debt and pay it for us as a reduced interest loan, or if theyre feeling generous, as a grant.

The only problem then would be to stop our Leaders from taking out more loans. Perhaps if we concentrated on the service industry (tourism) and improved our quality of service, we might get more tourists which would help dramatically with our hard currency reserves and help pay our debts!

But who cares!

Charlie MansfieldDear Editor,

Since 2011 through the Cabinet Handbook 2011, the double standard policies became a standard practice in our government. Its target is just about the finishing products. Only the finishing products and that is it. In other words, the H.R.P.Ps political interests are better served by not having meaningful and proper consultations with people than having meaningful and proper consultations with people. That is how dictatorship works and operates.

In dictatorship, governments can get what ever they want 100% from the people and the country through policies like Prime Minister Tuilaepas and the H.R.P.Ps Cabinet Handbook 2011. In democracy, a government cannot get anything 100% from the people and the country because Human Rights Protection always comes first.

Democracy in Samoa, God always comes first because our human rights and our freedom are under the control of the commandments of God. Unfortunately for Samoa these days, that is not happening anymore because Prime Minister Tuilaepa and H.R.P.P have already turned things around in order to suit their political interests. When the public criticized them about their wrong doings, they jumped straight to their double standard policies in the Cabinet Handbook 2011 to justify their wrong claims and inappropriate actions. The Cabinet Handbook 2011 is their shield.

It was so unbelievable when I came across with the word defend in the double standard policies in the Cabinet Handbook 2011. Why did a government that is owned by the people of Samoa to serve the people of Samoa establish defensive policies to defend the government from the people who owned the government? What is the point?

Those kinds of thinking have two evil intentions.

1) Those kind of thinking are establishments for protection of one another because they are scared of being exposed and that is going to put them in difficult positions to try to defend what they have done to Samoa, the Constitution of Samoa and customary lands of Samoa.

2) Those kinds of thinking are establishments for justification in order to increase power, to maintain power and to keep them in government for a very long time.

Remember Mr. Editor when the public criticized the H.R.P.P government about the L.T.R.A 2008 because it is un-Constitutional. The H.R.P.P government starting from Prime Minister Tuilaepa rejected all the criticisms and defended the their position.

That is the same reaction of any Cabinet Ministers. But where is the right standard [the mandate by the people is to govern in the best interests of Samoa] that is highlighted in the foreword of Prime Minister Tuilaepa in the same handbook, the Cabinet Handbook 2011?

Remember when the public criticized the H.R.P.P government about the new tax law for taxing Church Ministers because it is un-Christian and un-Constitutional. The H.R.P.P government starting from Prime Minister Tuilaepa rejected all the. That is the same reaction of any Cabinet Ministers. So where is the right standard [the mandate by the people is to govern in the best interests of Samoa] that is highlighted in the foreword of Prime Minister Tuilaepa in the same handbook, the Cabinet Handbook 2011?

How about Samoas failure to cast a vote for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel during the United Nations vote? As always, members of Cabinet starting from Prime Minister Tuilaepa continuing doing the same thing; defending the untruths according to their double standard policies in the Cabinet Handbook 2011.

That is the same reaction of any Cabinet Ministers. So where is the right standard [the mandate by the people is to govern in the best interests of Samoa] that is highlighted in the foreword of Prime Minister Tuilaepa in the same handbook, the Cabinet Handbook 2011?

What about the releasing of a convicted murderer from the prison to attend his matai bestowal ceremony?

This the reason why corruption remains a big problem in government.

And if a Cabinet Minister wants to stand up for the truth by challenging the rest of Ministers of Cabinet about the wrongdoings during Cabinet proceedings, that Minister cannot challenge it in the Cabinet. If the same Minister wants to keep his position about the truth then he/she is requiring to resign from Cabinet according to the double standard policies in the Cabinet Handbook 2011 known as Collective Responsibility 1.23 If any Minister feels conscientiously unable to support a decision of Cabinet, he or she has one recourse and that is to tender his or her resignation to the Prime Minister.

Not only that, that same Minister cannot tell the truth publicly of what has been happening in Cabinet after he/she resigns because he/she is still tying to another double standard policies call Secrecy of Proceedings 1.26 This undertaking of secrecy is binding not only when a Minister is serving in Cabinet. It also continues to bind the incumbent even when he or she is no longer a Minister.

I understand, the basis of Secrecy is the Constitution of the Independent State of Samoa however, the constitutionality of the framing of that specific Secrecy policy by the H.R.P.P government in the Cabinet Handbook 2011, is not right.

If we look at the whole picture of our Constitution, then this is the message from the Constitution about Secrecy for the H.R.P.P party. The H.R.P.P government must never interfere or meddle up the truth with their political interests. Apart from that situation, the H.R.P.P must never violate the human rights of any Samoans to speak for the truth because of their political interests.

The one thing that we are sharing in common with members of the H.R.P.P when it comes to the law is our human rights. Prime Minister Tuilaepa must never use the colour of law to deprive other peoples rights.

The H.R.P.P party must always keep this in mind that all government Ministries and organisations are not political Ministries or political organisations because they do not belong to any political elected government like the H.R.P.P party. They belong to the people of Samoa.

All government Ministries and government organisations are free of politics or politically neutral because they were founded upon the Constitution of the Independent State of Samoa but not upon a political elected government like the H.R.P.P party.

Therefore the H.R.P.P party should never politicize and standardize the Public Service as well as our system of government according to the H.R.P.Ps political interests. They should stop establishing political alliances with members of the Public Service, it is wrong.

The example of the truth that is free of politics is the reverse version of the double standard policy call Collective Responsibility 1.23 If any Minister feels conscientiously unable to support a decision of Cabinet, he or she has one recourse and that is to tender his or her resignation to the Prime Minister. That double standard policy needs to be changed with the right one.

If a Minister wants to stand up for the truth by challenging the rest of Ministers of Cabinet about wrongdoings, it should be considered 100% by Samoas system of Cabinet but not the H.R.P.Ps system of Cabinet that is based on their political interests. That is the right standard; [the mandate by the people is to govern in the best interests of Samoa].

The Cabinet can still continue on its proceedings on other matters but the proposals of policies that have been challenged by the Minister who is standing up for the truth must be sent back to the responsible Ministries to be reviewed and to be re-investigated. Let public opinions involved during the processes of reviewing and the re-investigation. That is democracy.

That is a new challenge for the Public Service in our government. They should stand up for the truth according to the Constitution of our country. With that being said, the Cabinet Handbook 2011 and the Standing Orders for Parliament are in need of a massive overhaul in order free them from dirty politics.

Nanai Malonuu Lealaiauloto Nofoaiga.The Eye Clinic Unit at Motootua Hospital received a timely donation from the Latter Day Saints (L.D.S.) Charities-Vision Initiative.

On Thursday, L.D.S. donated a variety of new equipment worth more than NZD$100,000 (T$183,358).

The equipment included slit lamps, applanation tonometer, an automated visual field analyser and two portable retinal fundus cameras.

Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Leao Tuitama, welcomed the donation.

With this equipment, we are able to offer the gold standard in diagnostic services for our glaucoma and some of our neuro-ophthalmology patients, he said.

Glaucoma is a significant cause of blindness seen in the eye clinic. We currently follow up patients with glaucoma in the clinic and having this equipment available in Samoa will instantly enhance the standard of care for these patients.

And eliminate the burden on patients to obtain these tests overseas, he said.

The portable retinal fundus cameras are used to examine the retina or back part of the patients eyes. This technology will further enhance our diabetes eye screening programme for our diabetic patients, especially those in the rural community.

Diabetes is a leading cause of blindness in our working age group population. We need to screen patients and treat them early in order to prevent them from becoming blind.

Both these cameras can be taken right to the patients home, further improving accessibility to this much needed service, said Tuitama.

L.D.S. representatives included the President of the Apia Central Stake Jason Joseph, Sister Cameron and Brother Douglas with his wife, Connie Mehr.

Brother Douglas, also a retina surgeon from Salt Lake, Utah, donated the equipment.

We are part time service missionaries for the church and our job or calling we visit various countries throughout the world on behalf of the L.D.S. Charities with the vision project.

We are fortunate to come to the islands, being assigned to Samoa and this is my second trip. We absolutely love it here. It is a beautiful country.

As far as the vision project, we go to various parts of the world to find out what they need in equipment or training to help their people. We dont merely go in as doctors into these countries do surgeries then leave.

But in this case, we have partnered with Doctor Lucilla and other doctors throughout the world who had trainings already or perhaps they need resources or training on certain areas. So our job was to come and help with equipment.

Dr. Lucilla Ah Ching-Sefo, who is the first Ophthalmologist in Samoa and also heads the eye unit, said there was a great need for these machines.

Towards the end of last year, the eye care team was approached by members of the L.D.S. Church, Elder and Sister Vellinga and Dr. Doug Mehr.

It was regarding their interest to help the eye clinic through various avenues including procurement of needed equipment.

We gave them a list of the things that we needed, which would make the service more accessible for the people.The Museum of Samoa hosted a Museum Discovery Trip for local school children this week.

The discovery trip will continue until the first week of April.

Senior Museum Officer, Ailini Ah Ken Eteuati said they mainly want to target primary school children.

The purpose of the event is to encourage students to develop an interest in Samoan culture and history.

We started this educational workshop programme in 2010, Ailini said.

The museum will showcase many artifacts from more than 500 collections. The ground floor focuses on Samoan culture and exhibits traditional objects such as lapita potteries, traditional house (fale) model, traditional rowboat (vaa) models, fine mats, and tapa (siapo). 

First floor focuses on modern history. There are a lot of panels which describe Samoan modern history deeply. Some of them are given by the Australian Museum and the Auckland War Memorial Museum. 

On the wall of the stares there are historical pictures taken by photographers from New Zealand in early 1900s, she added.

Students and teachers were led through the different sections by the staff members of the museum.

A history teacher, Peato Vailiko says: The museum is a good place for students to learn their own history by the real objects. It motivates them to learn about the past.

Mark Benedict, a history student said: We dont only learn about history by looking in the textbook, but I can learn Samoan culture by looking at the exhibitions in here. It helps me understand Samoan culture more deeply.

A curator of the museum, Yuka Keino said they usually give out sheets of paper to students to encourage them to draw what their favourite displayed objects were.

I believe this work will help them to view exhibits more carefully. Moreover, it encourages students to explain what they feel and learn in the museum freely. It also tells us what they learn by this event. These pictures and comments are exhibited at the entrance, Ms. Keino said.

The museum holds another vocational workshop twice a year, which looks at teenagers learning about traditional textile.

Ms Keino added they plan to start an exhibition on teachers dance group, Ausiva a Faiaoga this year.

This is one of the most important tasks for modern Samoans to understand our culture and history well and tell them to young generation.

We provide information such as database materials to help your understanding. When you want to feel your roots or identity, please take time to visit the museum.Culture is what brought Greg and his family to Samoa.

While some come for relaxation, Greg and his wife, Eden Baker came to Samoa with the intention of showing their kids, Annabelle, 4, and Tommy, 3, Samoas beautiful culture.

It is important for us to let the kids see the different cultures and that they appreciate more what they have. This is a part of life a young child needs to experience, Greg explained to Dear Tourist.

We want to go out and really see the country and bring the culture closer to the kids. We are planning to go to a village and local schools, so the kids can compare that to what it is like home, he said.

The family arrived in Samoa yesterday morning. They have just spent a few hours in Samoa. Even in this short time, they have already had a little impression of the beautiful country here compared to New Castle in Australia, where they live.

The people are laid back and relaxed, Eden shared.

Very friendly and helpful as well, Greg added.

The couple has been to Fiji with their family. They enjoyed their time there. After hearing from their neighbours about Samoa, they decided to come to this piece of paradise.

It is quite similar, we stayed both times in a resort. Fiji was great, that was the reason we wanted to come again to a place near the beach, so we came here, Greg said.

I do like the beaches. I will go snorkelling for the very first time, Annabelle said.

Greg explained: She is more confident in the water now and they can do some more stuff. So they are going to try new things.

I work six days a week, so I am here to spend time with my family and relax, Greg said, adding they are not interested in big cities.

So for them, Samoa is a perfect place to find the balance between learning more about a new culture, exploring and just lying on the beach.

We are looking forward to going out and seeing more of the country than just the pool in the resort, he said.

They are in Samoa for nine days.On Friday last week, when Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, told Parliament: I am not the Father of the Nation, right away we sensed the feeling, that hed known all along he had done enough for this country, so that it was now time for him to think about stepping out.

Now the question is: What happens if he did step out, and then one morning when he wakes up, he finds that he is no longer the man who has, over the years, been screaming obscenities at everyone?

What would he do in such a situation?

We would dearly love to know.

In Parliament that day though, Tuilaepa went ahead and set the record straight by making absolutely clear, that he is not the Father of the Nation, as some have been addressing him.

No, he told Samoa as they were listening in on government-owned, Radio 2AP: That title is befittingly assumed by the Head of State.

He is, indeed The Father of the Nation, Tuilaepa explained. I am the Leader of the Country.

Now is that so?

Whats the difference between The Father of the Nation, and the Leader of the Country?

Indeed, what does the Father of the Nation do, and what does the Leader of the Nation do?

It would interesting to know.

All this interesting stuff, by the way, was included in a bill from the Ministry of Revenue, where an increase in the cost of imported foods, such as chicken products, turkey tails, and so forth, were being discussed.

And now speaking on imported foods, Prime Minister Tuilaepa said he was concerned that heath problems were continuing to grow.

He also pointed out, that the number of dialysis patients was continuing to increase dramatically, as a result of eating unhealthy foods.

He insisted that the bill therefore is critical in addressing growing health concerns, which is why were encouraging all Samoans, to go back to farming free-range chicken and pigs, as opposed to relying on cheap imported chicken.

As it turned out though, the bill was approved in its final reading, that very day.

Wonderful.

As it turned out though, it was at that point that Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, gave particular emphasis on the subject, called: Father of the Nation.

He said: Many people think Im a fool because they use that only when they want some money from me.

Members of the public come to see me for everything, Prime Tuilaepa said.

They come to me to help them pay the bills, also for the faamati and food for their children.

They then use this title The Father of the Nation to lure me to help them.

Tuilaepa said: Now let me make this clear. I am not The Father of the Nation. Each and every person in Samoa has his own father.

Indeed, this is why the Government wants to encourage the use of customary land, Tuilaepa added. Since that way, they dont develop that dependency mentality.

Anyway, that was when the sole Opposition M.P,, Olo Fiti Vaai, intervened.

He said he disagreed with the governments decision to tax imported chicken, saying: Today, the average people can only afford chicken.

If its peoples health that theyre worried about, then why did they allow chicken in the first place?

He said the move to tax frozen chicken is a clear indication the government has no love for the people.

However, Tuilaepa was not listening; it looked as if his mind was elsewhere. Soon it was established that his mind was with the former Head of State.

Said Tuilaepa: By the way, my being addressed The Father of the Nation by members of the public, has apparently upset the former Head of State, because he is The Father of the Nation.

Now thats interesting! What about the present Head of State? Is he not upset if Prime Minister Tuilaepa is being addressed by people as The Father of the Nation?

Perhaps Prime Minister, Tuilaepa, should ask him?

Who knows? The present one has done some pretty interesting things himself in the past, and yet we dont think hed mind being called, The Father of the Nation; not now anyway.

Still, why is the Former Head of State being harassed, and yet he has not done anything wrong, other than keeping quiet even though his allowances have been terminated by Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, of Lepa?

As for people begging Tuilaepa for money, he said he was encouraging them to work the land.

He said: I asked these people. Does your family not have a pig farm or a chicken farm? Of course they lie to me.

So Mr. Speaker, these people are lazy to go and work the farm, and this is our fault, because we have been very lenient on them, and that way we would not tell them truth, that would snapped them out of their laziness mode.

Tuilaepa added this was why the Government wanted to encourage the use of customary land, so that people dont develop that dependency mentality.

In response, Member of Parliament, Olo Fiti Vaai, disagreed. Instead, he asked the government to reconsider their decision on the taxing of imported chicken.

He said: Today, the average people can only afford chicken

If it is their poor health the government is worried about, then why was the chicken allowed in the first place?

He also told Parliament: The move to tax frozen chicken is a clear indication the government has no love for the people.

Now for a brief glance behind us, to reassure that all is well here in Paradise, lets go back in time to 2 July 1997.

On that day, on the first page of the Samoa Observer, the story titled: MP behaves like a wounded man, was published.

The story said the MP in question accused other MPs of being fools and perpetrators of misleading information, and still others of being wet in the ie (lavalava).

The MP was adamant that those who believed in publications whose intentions, were to fool others are themselves fools. He went on to warn not to judge the government or you also will be judged.

The P.M. was unleashing his anger at another M.P. who, at the time, was addressing the passport scandal.

When a letter from the Acting Financial Secretary was produced, it showed that 590 passports could not be accounted for, by the Immigration Office.

In addition, the letter said the Immigration Office had requested $300,000 to buy 20,000 passports, adding that there were not enough in stock for members of the public.

The letter went on to say Treasury was not committing itself as it was trying to sort out, how much had been made from the sale of passport.

It asked that the Immigration Office provide urgently what Treasury needed, in its investigation especially the details of the sale of passports overseas, including funds that had been made.

Please also provide an explanation as to where the 590 missing passports went as it had been mentioned by Treasury, the letter said.

It also asked that the information should be given to Cabinet at its meeting on 13 December 1995.

It is not clear if Cabinet had received this information.

At the time, Prime Minister, Tofilau Eti Alesana, who is also the Minister of Immigration, admitted that the request for more passports that had been referred to, had been made by his department.

The request was mine, Tofilau said. It was a request for more passports. The reason Treasury was difficult was that it needed accountability.

Tofilau also said that at the time, Treasury knew that passports were indeed being sold.

They were being sold for $US5,000 overseas.

A government MP said the introduction of this information was a dirty ploy, in that it was not included in the PMs ministerial statement, being debated.

But Tofilau wanted to offer an explanation anyway. He was reported to have said: Passports cost $100 each, those for naturalised citizens cost $2,000, but that price was increased to $10,000 in about November last year.

The report also said: The increase in price is to discourage people from applying for Samoan passports.

At one point, a letter about Samoan passports being sold overseas, was introduced. However, a senior government official, said it was not relevant to the passport issue that was being discussed.

What followed was that the senior government official in question, said: The problem is that those involved are fools. It was intended to fool which shows that those who are involved are themselves fools.

Asked Tuiatua. Referring to a snide thats been previously made, he asked: What about a person with a wet lavalava? Is he smart or a fool?

Speaker Toleafoa Faafisi, reminded that the remark had been made the day before, so it had no more relevant.

He also said: Those words were not made today. They are in the past.

And yet, other government MPs, were not satisfied. They objected, saying that Tuitatua should be ordered, to withdraw his remarks.

Replied Tuiatua: Parliament knows to whom those words belong. But does that mean he whod said them is also a fool or is he smart?

According to the Speaker, there was nothing he could do because the person whod asked that question, had offered no objection.

Now lastly! What do you think?

Is a person who wears a wet ie (lavalava) an idiot, and also a fool?

The question is, with crime and poverty every where, who wants the Head of State?

Have a peaceful Sunday Samoa, God bless.

* ie (lavalava) - wraparound ones waist!Re: NZ urged to change law

I disagree with the policy for the fact it is humiliating and disrespectful.

New Zealand being the Nation to blame for many of our peoples deaths in War and in Peace.

Just because Helen Clarke apologised for the murder of our Mau leader, does this make the past better?

The mass deaths due to the influenza brought here by New Zealand. So many things we and other Pacific Nations are being taken for granted for.

Our duty in war times, and assistance during peace times ignored at the border. An insult to many Samoans. The elections, how many of us by way of loyalty voted for Labour?

Time to change and time to change our allegiances...Australia/New Zealand? Colonialists, and thats a fact.

We need to carefully look at China and Russia and look at how they climbed the ladder from oppression, lies and Death from the west?

Change with the times!

Emile G.Former Deputy Prime Minister Fonotoe Lauofo Meredith has reassured the nation that they should not have to worry about the mortgaging of leases of customary lands.

The reassurance was issued by the Member of Parliament during an interview with the Sunday Samoan on the Alienation of Customary Land Amendment Bill 2017, discussed in Parliament this week.

Leases of customary lands have been in the Constitution since 1965, he said. So it is safe. Even my career as a lawyer, I have drafted leases of customary lands and again it is safe.

Fonotoe assured there is nothing to worry about.

This week, Parliament Members debated the proposed amendments in relation to mortgages of leases over customary land.

Most of them expressed concerns.

But Fonotoe is optimistic.

It is very simple. There is nothing to worry about. I have done leases, on customary lands registration and also motragtes on leases of customary lands and they are legal, he said.

According to the Alientation of Customary Land amendments, it seeks to facilitate the mortgaging process and put in place a number of legal prohibitions and requirements that will protect the ownership rights of the beneficial land owners, whilst also providing for the interests of mortgagors and mortgagees.

The bill further notes that overall, the amendments aim to strengthen the legal framework to safeguard the constitutional protection against the alienation of customary land, and while ensuring the authorised manners of alienation (i.e. lease, license and mortgaging of leases over customary land) comply with the Constitution.

The outcome is to improve the peoples standard of living through promoting greater economic use of customary land via leasing, licensing and mortgaging of leases over customary land. All Samoans stand to benefit from these amendments.

This week, Deputy Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mataafa, called some Members of Parliament liars and irresponsible over this same issue.

She was responding to claims from certain Members of Parliament that the Alienation of Customary Land Amendment Bill 2017 violates the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, some Members have said we have overstepped the Constitution, she said.

I am in shock because these comments are brainwashing the public.

This is far from the truth, she said.

Why were we elected by our Constituencies? To make hard decisions for the betterment of Samoa, and that is the spirit behind this Bill, she said.

However, some comments that been uttered are literally brainwashing our Chiefs and our children. They are irresponsible comments.

This is not what the Members of Parliament should be doing; lying to the public. It is not true that the Constitution has been violated. I want to set the record straight, the Constitution has not been violated.

We can change the Constitution, but in accordance with the law.Prime Minister Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi is calling on members of the public to heed the warning issued by the Central Bank of Samoa (C.B.S.).

This is in relation to the rising number of cryptocurrency promotions in Samoa.

Ive had people come visit me here at my office explaining their promotion but I always refer them to the Central Bank, he said.

That is the role of the Central Bank if there are such issues that arise.

Last week, C.B.S. pointed out in a public notice that cryptocurrency is a form of digital money that is designed to be secure and in many cases anonymous.

It is a currency associated with the internet that uses cryptography - the process of converting legible information into an almost uncrackable code - to track purchases and transfers.

According to the Central Bank of Samoa, cryptocurrency remains unregulated, which makes things even more difficult.

It has come to our attention that there are promotions such as Onecoin cryptocurrency that are currently being promoted in Samoa, the Bank warns.

How it works is that people are encouraged to sign up an account and purchase a package of tokens. These tokens can then be used to invest in a cryptocurrency, as the value of the cryptocurrency goes up, so too will your proposed reward. In essence, you invest in the cryptocurrency and are guaranteed a substantial return on the rewards in a certain period of time.

The C.B.S. advises that such a scheme is very risky and people who invest in it stand to lose their investment.

The great risk here is that once these funds are lost then there is a huge possibility that these funds will never be recovered. C.B.S. does not endorse this cryptocurrency venture due to the high risks that it poses to unsuspecting people.

The Bank has also confirmed from multiple credible media sources that the founder and main Onecoin headquarters in Bulgaria has been raided by Bulgarian Police as part of a centralised cryptocurrency pyramid scheme.

Onecoin is also banned from countries such as Germany.

Several crypto currency promoters have contacted C.B.S. seeking endorsement for their business and product. However they were not able to satisfy the governments requirement of providing the relevant information for due diligence purposes (where the Central bank thoroughly scrutinises a company and its products, if we do not have all the information to make an informed decision.

As a result, C.B.S., on behalf of Government, has refused to endorse such ventures. C.B.S., as the Regulator for financial institutions in Samoa, does not wish to prohibit new ventures that will benefit Samoas public and economy; however, as with every new venture such as cryptocurrency, there are always risks involved.

Cryptocurrency at this current stage is unregulated.

The Bank says this makes it difficult to put in place procedures that will protect the public because the lack of regulation will attract criminal participation such as fraudsters and scammers (pyramid schemes).

It can also be used for money laundering purposes and tax evasion.

There is currently a lack of information and public awareness as to how these cryptocurrency works, as such, this will often lead to people making ill informed decisions, such as investing in get rich quick schemes.

There is also a high risk to Samoas economy because certain cryptocurrencies may pose a security risk, such as vulnerability to cybercrime, and as a result, cause significant damage to our financial system and infrastructure.

C.B.S. encourages the public to be alert and aware of these schemes. They may look like an attractive investment to quickly make more money, but you risk losing all your hard earned money without any possibility of recovering it.

Should you require any further details on this, please contact the Financial Intelligence Unit of C.B.S.The Land and Titles Court has two new Vice Presidents.

They are Moananu Tuasivi Setu and Mulipola Iosefo.

They took their oath before Chief Justice, His Honour Patu Tiavaasue Falefatu Sapolu last week.

The C.E.O. of the Ministry of Justice and Courts Administration, Papalii John Taimalelagi, said Moananu and Mulipola were recommended by the Judiciary Service Commission.

Two of our Vice Presidents for the Land and Titles Court have retired. They were Misa Pita Anae and Faamausili Solo Brown, he said.

So the position had been vacant from then on until now.

Moananu and Mulipola were our Samoan judges until they were chosen to be Vice Presidents.

They commenced their appointment as recommended by the Judiciary of the Government, which began on 7 March this year.

The swearing in of the position of Vice Presidents, under the law, it is just the appointees and the Chief Justice, so it was just the two of them inside the Courtroom where they were being sworn in.

Their selection was approved by the Head of State after the recommendation was given to him by the Judiciary. So thats what happened.

According to Papalii, the new Vice Presidents have been serving the Judiciary for more than 10 years.

They were former Judges of the Lands and Titles Courts and they have been serving for more than 10 years, he said.Hard work and faith in God has seen Tiaseu Meripa Eleitino Siaosi Samoa achieve her dream.

This week, she graduated with a Master in Science International Cooperation Policy at the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan.

Tiaseu is the third child of Rev. Siaosi Samoa and Kathys seven children. They are from the villages of Vailele and Lona, Fagaloa.

She was educated at Samoa College from 2004 to 2007 before entering the National University of Samoa where she attained her Bachelor in Science.

In 2016, she decided to take on to a whole new level at the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan studying Master in Science International Cooperation Policy for two years.

It has been one of my dreams to challenge the Master level, she said.

Patricia Margot Netzler was the coordinator between Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University and National University Samoa at the time. She gave me a lot of help and encouragement to make this dream come true.

I applied and got through.

She shared: With the help of my family, my parents, sisters and brothers, I managed to make this dream come true.

I called it a family team work.

When asked of her plans when she returns to Samoa, she responded: I would like to work in an organisation that is related to my field of interest, climate change impacts in small island States.

She acknowledged everyone for their support, especially her father Rev. Siaosi and mother, Kathy, who serve as Church Ministers at Lona, Fagaloa.

I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Reverend Salesulu and my grandmother Mrs. Mulitalo.PR - As part of its 2018 workplan and in preparation for the 6th Operational Phase (OP6) core funds grant allocation call for proposals, the National Steering Committee (N.S.C.) and Technical Advisory Group (T.A.G.) of the G.E.F. Small Grants Programme held its first annual joint workshop and monitoring of projects in Savaii last week.

The main objectives of the joint workshop are to align and update the progress of S.G.P. projects with the monitoring and evaluation framework and results framework; identify opportunities and strategies for innovative and high impact projects; review and develop technical guidelines for all focal areas of S.G.P. incorporating lessons learnt from operational phase projects.

In her opening remarks, the U.N.D.P. Resident Representative Simona Marinescu emphasized S.G.Ps immense contribution to climate change resilience in Samoa and how communities can improve their livelihoods, food security and income generating opportunities from the successful implementation of the S.G.P grants.

She also mentioned the importance of documenting the projects in a video to be presented at the inter-regional forum on the Samoa Pathway to be held in Apia this year in October.

In her capacity as the Chair of the S.G.P. National Steering Committee, Anne Rasmussen acknowledged the technical support and substantial expertise of the S.G.P. partners such as Samoa Umbrella of Non-Government Organizations, Secretariat of Pacific Regional Environment Programme, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Samoa Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Enterprise Center, and Conservational International in the overall performance delivery of the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme in Samoa.

The National Steering Committee and Technical Advisory Group visited all the G.E.F.-S.G.P. projects in Savaii which received funding from the Operational Phase 5 core funds grant allocation.

The feedback from the village communities in Savaii was extremely positive as they expressed appreciation and gratitude to the G.E.F.-S.G.P. for the grants they received to implement the projects that conserve and restore the environment while enhancing their well-being and livelihoods.

Established in 1992, the G.E.F. Small Grants Programme (S.G.P.) embodies the very essence of sustainable development by thinking globally, acting locally.

S.G.P. demonstrates that community action can maintain the fine balance between human needs and environmental imperatives, by providing financial and technical support to projects that conserve and restore the environment while enhancing peoples well-being and livelihoods.

The programme provides grants of up to 50,000 USD directly to local communities (including community-based organizations and other non-governmental groups) since these primary stakeholders are most at risk due to their strong de-pendency on access to natural resources for their livelihoods and often live in fragile ecosystems.Customers of the National Bank of Samoa (N.B.S.) and Digicel Samoa can expect a new cost-effective and easy mobile banking and remittance service.

The service was announced in a joint press statement by the two companies, which states that Digicel would work with N.B.S. to integrate its Mobile Money platform with N.B.S. banking systems.

This will allow beneficiaries to transfer their money received from family and friends from their Digicel Mobile Money wallet into their N.B.S. bank account, the statement read.

This new digital financial service is funded by the United Nations Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (P.F.I.P.), which aims to improve the adoption and usage of financial services in Samoa, where only half the adult population are financially included.

According to the statement, it is estimated that about 15 percent use formal financial services. However, more than half the population of Samoa receives remittances on a regular basis.

Using an Innovation Lab model, the project will research and test the viability of this digital platform, and Mobile Money cash merchant network. This will help determine what combination of products, price, customer experience, marketing, and engagement will drive usage and build the components of a successful financial service delivery model for scale.

Over a period of 18 months, the Innovation Lab will develop banking payment products, such as prepaid power, airtime top-up and payment for government services which over time could improve the adoption and use of digital financial services in Samoa.

N.B.S. Chief Executive Officer, Tuuu Amaramo Sialaoa, in the statement said: In line with N.B.S.s mission to digitally enable our customers, this project will help Samoans receive money sent from family members overseas directly into their bank accounts via the Digicel Mobile Money Platform.

Customers will soon have control and access over their money via their mobile phone at any time. As a Samoan owned bank, N.B.S. understands the challenges faced by our customers to access remittances and our efforts to provide digital services that will help them access remittances easily, our customers deserve the best.

Digicel Samoa Ltd C.E.O., Farid Mohammed said: We are moving into the Digital World and this partnership with N.B.S. will allow Digicel to bring to its customers another innovative service. This will be a first for the Pacific region where customers will be able to transfer funds between their Mobile Money Wallet and their Bank Account. This will provide the customers a much more efficient and convenient way of receiving and withdrawing their remittances.

P.F.I.P.s Programme Manager Bram Peters said the new service will not only allow Digicel customers to have a bank account, but it will also motivate them to save and for N.B.S. customers to use digital channels to improve their financial lives.

Digital financial services are the cost-effective way to reach the unbanked especially for rural dwellers and women. We believe that this new service has the potential to impact 10,000 new customers and in time could be rolled out nationwide making it easier for Samoans to access financial services, he added in the statement.

P.F.I.Ps work in Samoa has been funded by the New Zealand Government.Kilino Ioanes family has been living without a stable water supply for more than 30 years.

The 56-year-old father is appealing to Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi to instruct the Samoa Water Authority (S.W.A.) to invest in installing water pipes for Tapatapao residents.

Mr. Ioane said it is a struggle living without a stable water supply.

It is ironic that the S.W.A. tanks are about 200 meters from my house, yet we dont have access to a stable water source.

I understand that because we live on a hill and it is difficult, but at this time and age where we are at, I would think the Government should focus to help vulnerable families like us.

It is pathetic that my house is almost situated on the tanks and yet our family, who has been living here for more than 30 years, does not have access to water, said the frustrated father.

The father of three said his children struggled to fetch water from the waterfall and now he has grandchildren, yet it is the same predicament.

So please Mr. Prime Minister, Samoa has graduated from the least developing countries as you proudly say all the time, can you please help us?

If the Government does not have the finances to invest in installing of water pipes for our families, can we please have a water tank?

I am now a grandfather and yet my family is still without stable water supply and I hope the Government will consider the plea.

That would be greatly appreciated, said Mr. Ioane.

He told the Village Voice team one of the daily chores for his family is to fetch water for drinking, cooking and shower.

It gets tiring fetching water daily, but you know the saying beggars cannot be choosers, so we have no choice.

We literaly depend on the rain but as you know, it does not rain all the time.

If it does not rain then we have to fetch water, he said.

A farmer, Mr. Ioane said they live off the proceeds of their plantation.

We dont make much but we live with what we have and as a farmer, we always have food, but what my family needs is a water tank.

We cannot afford it and yet we see other families selling their donated water tanks. So I hope that sooner or later a Good Samaritan or the Government will consider the plea.

Mr. Ioane uses buckets, pots and whatever clean plastics available to store water.The Samoa Stationery and Books (S.S.A.B.) Meka Silver HP Promotion came to an end on Friday last week.

And to commemorate their first Meka Silver HP Promotion, the staff as well as the management, held a competition among the staff members.

Speaking to the Sunday Samoan, President of S.S.A.B, Tofilau Fiti Leung Wai, said this is something that they have decided to do to commemorate the end of their promotion.

This is our first HP Promotion for the year 2018, she said.

And S.S.A.B. is very proud to be the authorised dealer for HP in Samoa. We are also the authorised service center for the HP products in Samoa, which include the laptops, copiers and all the HP products.

So every year, we have to do promotion on behalf of HP, but one of the most proud moment for us was last year when we won the HP Silver award.

Never before in the history of business a Samoan company was ever recognised by overseas by its service and also products.

Its usually the companies in the islands like Fiji, who are recognised by overseas companies or these big brand names, so I am very proud that a company from Samoa was recognised last year.

In addition to that, HP now offers their full support for Samoa through S.S.A.B.

So theyve decided to do something to remember such award.

So to commemorate and also to celebrate our HP Award, we decided to name this promotion the HP Silver Award. On the last day of the promotion, we asked everybody to come to work wearing a black outfit with some silver colour on their outfit, she said.

There are prizes as well, and we have three categories. Theres the best dressed female employee and the best dressed male employee and then there is also a category for the interview.

We also have a competition for the best sales employee and the best sales team who have put in the most HP sales throughout the promotion, but for these categories, we will find out the winners by next week because accounts have to confirm all the sales.

Is there a plan for S.S.A.B. to fight for the Gold Award for HP?

Well we want to, but realistically there are much bigger companies overseas and their sales are actually beyond the market here in Samoa, she said.

Nothing is impossible but the reality is just different because there are really big companies in New Zealand, like BB-tech, so some of these companies who have won some of the Gold Categories are our own suppliers.

For the award we received, we didnt enter, HP just recognised us and selected us and they only select from their authorised HP dealers and S.S.A.B. is the only authorised HP dealer here in Samoa.

At the end of the competition, Taupau Carlton Chadwich, won the best male dressed, Veronika Sia Namulauulu, won the best dressed for female and Titilua Moors Taulapapa, won for both the male and female and interview category.The Cyclone Gita response by Electric Power Corporation (E.P.C.), and Samoa Water Authority (S.W.A.) ground crews was acknowledged Friday evening at the Ooh la la Ice Cream Bar at Matautu.

Organised by Siva Afi owners Leota Lene Leota and Clare Leota, the thank you dinner and show brought together a group of businesses, which shared the Leotas passion to acknowledge the response by the two government agencies to effectively to restore water and power to residents in the wake of Cyclone Gita.

Many of these public servants were on the ground restoring water and power even though their families had also sustained damages to their homes and personal properties by Cyclone Gita, said Leota.

Considering the swift response by E.P.C. and S.W.A., they deserve recognition and appreciation.

Leota says that the business advocates who supported the Dinner and Show event Friday evening were all receptive to the idea to put their resources together for the event to become a reality.

Its a united effort with Siva Afi and EMD taking the lead to organise the Dinner and Show. Its the least that we can do and again a huge faafetai, faafetai, faafetai tele lava to EPC and SWA but mostly to our business sponsors.

The Businesses include; Vailima Breweries, Liquor Planet, Ah Liki Wholesale, Apia Fish Exporters, Samoa Meat Supplies, Seafood Gourmet, EMD, WT Media

The Cyclone Gita response by Electric Power Corporation (E.P.C.), and Samoa Water Authority (S.W.A.) ground crews was acknowledged Friday evening at the Ooh la la Ice Cream Bar at Matautu.

Organised by Siva Afi owners Leota Lene Leota and Clare Leota, the thank you dinner and show brought together a group of businesses, which shared the Leotas passion to acknowledge the response by the two government agencies to effectively to restore water and power to residents in the wake of Cyclone Gita.

Many of these public servants were on the ground restoring water and power even though their families had also sustained damages to their homes and personal properties by Cyclone Gita, said Leota.

Considering the swift response by E.P.C. and S.W.A., they deserve recognition and appreciation.

Leota says that the business advocates who supported the Dinner and Show event Friday evening were all receptive to the idea to put their resources together for the event to become a reality.

Its a united effort with Siva Afi and EMD taking the lead to organise the Dinner and Show. Its the least that we can do and again a huge faafetai, faafetai, faafetai tele lava to EPC and SWA but mostly to our business sponsors.

The Businesses include; Vailima Breweries, Liquor Planet, Ah Liki Wholesale, Apia Fish Exporters, Samoa Meat Supplies, Seafood Gourmet, EMD, WT Media.Legendary alto saxophonist Charles McPherson is coming to Cuyamaca College next month to talk and give a music demonstration as part of a class at the Rancho San Diego school.

Conversations with a Legend: Charles McPherson is set for 11:30 a.m.-12:50 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in Cuyamacas Digital Theater, Room B-101. The free, public event is organized by communication instructor Lindy Brazil as part of her class, Arts and Culture in San Diego.

McPherson, who will turn 79 this July, lives in the Talmadge area with his wife, Lynn. A neighbor and friend of Brazils, he has come to her classes before to give clinics in a smaller setting.

I come in, bring my horn and we talk, McPherson said. I give a little of my bio, try to relate to the kids and tell them about myself and about jazz, without being too technical. Now were doing it in a little bit bigger situation. It might be kind of a freewheeling thing and Im OK with that.

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Known for his work from 1960-1972 with virtuoso bassist and composer Charles Mingus, McPherson has worked and recorded with Barry Harris, Art Farmer, Kenny Drew, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.

McPhersons style is rooted in the blues and bebop, and his jazz-improvising skills are still very much a part of the jazz music scene, which he will talk about.

He and Brazil will also talk about about jazz history and the current state of the genre, as well as race and culture as it pertains to music.

We will also talk about how jazz has influenced pop music, so I may play a tune students know, and add aspects of jazz, he said.

He relates one story about his own history growing up in the 1950s in Detroit. At that time, despite segregation issues and heated racial tension, as a musician of color he would regularly socialize and play gigs with white friends.

The time period of the day, the 1950s, things were so much different, he said. During that time, racism had less do in our world than in the rest of society. Artists have a little less of the herd instinct. We are more of the free thinkers, the ones considered most dangerous by every power.

When we grew up and we wanted to play, wed go with our white friends in the car. It happened often, the police would stop us. They would ask, What are you doing with him? They would wonder, Whats wrong with this picture? You would expect to be stopped.

McPherson tours worldwide and gives clinics, including at summer jazz programs at Stanford University and UC San Diego.

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He recently returned from playing at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen, a high-profile jazz club in Europe.

His next major local gig will be A Night of Jazz and Dance on May 18 and 20 with the San Diego Ballet, where he is the resident composer and his daughter, Camille, is a principal dancer.

Since moving to San Diego in the late 1970s, McPherson has dedicated his time to both performing and music education. He holds an honorary doctorate from Cal State San Marcos for his effort mentoring future generations of musical artists. In 2016, he received the Don Redman Jazz Heritage Award for his contributions to jazz education and music.

Cuyamaca College is at 900 Rancho San Diego Parkway in El Cajon.

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karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.comUnlike last spring, this is not the year of the wildflower in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. In many ways, its better.

A year ago, historic levels of rainfall had drenched the arid ground of east San Diego County, and the drab hues of desert sand were painted with a spreading palette of colorful spring blooms.

It was an epic flower season, promoted as the Superbloom by many, but considered to be Flowergeddon by some visitors trapped in traffic jams or unable to get food in the little town of Borrego Springs.

The Superbloom also attracted unprecedented crowds that jammed roads and trails and for a time turned the tranquility of the desert into a carnival atmosphere.

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While there are no crowds this year, there is still much to discover and enjoy from a spring that is more muted and subtle.

Call it a microbloom, or a botanical treasure hunt, but spring, this year, offers a wonderful adventure of discovery in Anza-Borrego. This is a spring where you see more by lacing up your boots and heading out into the open wilderness.

I did just that this week, exploring what nature has to offer in Coyote Canyon, north of Borrego Springs.

As I bumped along the dirt road into the canyon, I passed a few campers. Some were in motorhomes, some in small trailers, and a few in camp chairs next to simple tents. All were enjoying the peace, quiet, open space and fresh air of spring in the desert.

I drove until the road required four-wheel drive. This is at Lower Willows where even in this relatively dry year, water still flows in Coyote Creek.

Water is life in nature, and no more so than in the desert. There was water here along with the animal and plant life that depend upon it.

Along the edges of the creek there were small clusters of bright-yellow brittlebush blooming, along with magenta beavertail cactus and stalks of lupine. Spindly ocotillos were covered in green leaves and their buggy whip stalks tipped with waxy red blossoms. A few clumps of sand verbena looked like purple stepping stones from a distance.

Flocks of yellow-rumped warblers were feeding on the ocotillo blossoms, while just below on the desert floor, black-throated sparrows foraged for insects.

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A yellow-rumped warbler beside Coyote Creek. (Ernie Cowan )

At the base of a small hill there was evidence from another time when Native Americans also came here because of the water. A large granite boulder was dimpled with grinding slicks and one deep pocket, created when the residents here used rocks to grind seeds into flour.

It was comfortably warm in the sunshine, and just a tad chilly in the shade. I picked a sunny spot to sit beside Coyote Creek to watch and listen to the natural world around me.

I sat quietly for a while to just listen to spring. Lesser goldfinch chattering as they foraged; the clean, fresh water gurgling over ancient rocks, now worn round by eons of tumbling in the flow, the wind softly whispering through a nearby palo verde tree.

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Another sound caught my ear. A clattering above me. I glanced up to see a single bighorn ewe looking at me, perhaps wondering what this curious beast was doing in her neighborhood.

A bighorn sheep watching from above. (Ernie Cowan )

On the opposite bank, a desert iguana scurried by and I instinctively ducked when a Costas hummingbird whizzed past my ear, seemingly on a mission, but only to perch at the top of an ocotillo branch.

While walking back to my truck I saw a roadrunner dash between the creosote bushes like an iconic exclamation point to a perfect desert day.

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On the drive out, I stopped to visit with a group of hawk watchers waiting for migrating Swainsons hawks to descend into palm groves for the night. These magnificent birds will be on their way in a day to two as they travel from South America to Canada and beyond. Thousands of the hawks will pause here as the migration continue into mid-April.

I returned to Borrego Springs for dinner. No waiting, no traffic, a wonderful little desert town that has returned to the Zen that typically brings people here.

Maybe this dry winter is not so bad. There is still beauty here, but you need to look more closely to find it.

Unlike last year where there was almost an overload of spring glory, this spring invites desert visitors to explore, discover and contemplate this unique place.

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Email ernie@packtrain.com or visit erniesoutdoors.blogspot.com.Country music has a storied tradition of songs that feature memorably barbed kiss-offs to former lovers.

Lindi Ortegas The Day You Die has one of the best in recent memory: You said youd love me till the cows come home / Well, I hope they all go blind.

A Canadian native with Irish-Mexican parents, Ortega has a high, fetching voice that suggests a cross between Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Melanie.

Ortega is now on tour to promote her newly released Liberty, which she describes as a concept album reflecting, loss, seance, resurrection and freedom.

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How those themes play out, live on stage? Well find out when Ortega and her band perform Friday at Soda Bar.

Lindi Ortega, with Hugh Masterson: 8:30 p.m. Friday. Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd., City Heights. $15 (must be 21 or older to attend). (619) 255-7224. sodabarmusic.com

george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Twitter @georgevargaA military jury on March 15 acquitted Navy Lt. Joseph Joey Benevento in two rape cases.

The Navy SEAL had faced six specifications of rape tied to two separate charges involving civilian women.

Beneventos defense attorney complains that a senior military prosecutor in the case was unprofessional.

A military jury has acquitted a commissioned SEAL officer in a rape case his defense team called a witch hunt.

During his March 15 court-martial trial, Navy Lt. Joseph Joey Benevento, 33, faced six specifications of sexual misconduct tied to two civilian women during a pair of separate incidents that allegedly occurred in 2015 and 2016.

In the earlier case, commanders at the Coronado-based Naval Special Warfare Command accused Benevento of forcing himself on a woman in his hotel room. In the second, he was alleged to have ripped a womans pants off and raped her in his apartment.

The defense team put on no witnesses and entered no evidence, instead relying on cross-examination, prior statements by the women and text messages to each other to raise doubts about the their testimony and whether they unfairly colluded against the suspect.

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The case was absurd, said Beneventos Miami-based defense attorney, Michael Waddington, during a telephone interview. Thats not just a defense attorney saying that. The district attorney that reviewed the case passed on it.

On March 14, 2017, San Diego County Deputy District Attorney John Stuart Rice wrote a letter to Benevento telling him that no charges were filed and none are presently contemplated.

Three months later, Navy officials charged Benevento, sparking calls from Waddington that the case against his client was a witch hunt.

In the wake of his court victory, Waddington continues to raise concerns about the senior military prosecutor in the case, Navy Cmdr. Andrea Lockhart.

Waddington alleges that after the verdict was read, Lockhart rushed into the deliberation room and berated the jury for their decision before trash talking about Benevento, conduct he said is completely unprofessional.

The Navy appears to dispute that.

Region Legal Service Office Southwest has not received any complaint, and maintains that trial counsel adhered to all legal and professional standards, Navy spokeswoman Patricia Babb said by email.

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Military Videos  On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France  at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal

cprine@sduniontribune.comCalifornias court system paid more than $500,000 over seven years to resolve sexual harassment complaints against judges and staff, according to records released Friday.

In response to a public records request by The Times, the Judicial Council, the rule-making body for the court system, said it paid $296,000 to resolve three complaints against judges for alleged sexual harassment and $225,000 to settle two lawsuits against court staff.

In addition, the council reported spending $79,750 since 2010 for outside attorney-investigators to look into sexual harassment allegations or other complaints against five judges.

The Judicial Councils brief response to The Times request, citing attorney-client privilege and a court rule, did not reveal the names of the courts, judges or employees alleged to have been involved in the sexual harassment.

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The response came from the councils legal services division. The council acts as a lawyer for the courts in addition to doling out state money to county courts and providing services.

Your request raises complicated legal and ethical issues, including attorney-client privilege and other legal and ethical obligations, the response said.

It added that the council was contacting the courts and individuals it represented to determine whether they would waive their privilege to allow the actual legal records to be released.

By contrast, the California Legislature last month disclosed 18 cases of sexual harassment involving lawmakers and staff, and identified the names of the legislators involved.

The legislative records, released in response to a separate public records request by The Times, disclosed details about resolved cases where the allegations were determined to be well-founded.

The more than $500,000 that the Judicial Council reported spending is likely less than the actual cost to taxpayers of resolving sexual harassment complaints against judges and staff.

County courts can resolve such cases themselves without reporting to the statewide council.

Although the council revealed no names, the California Commission on Judicial Performance has identified errant judges in the past, and a news organization reported a settlement last year.

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One of the settlements paid by the Judicial Council stemmed from a lawsuit against former Tulare County Superior Court Judge Valeriano Saucedo.

He was ordered removed from the bench in late 2015 for inappropriate behavior with his court clerk, who sued him.

Kevin J. Little, who represented Priscilla Tovar, Saucedos clerk, said Friday that the terms of the settlement in Tovars suit prevented him from disclosing anything about what she might have recovered. The suit charged Saucedo with making inappropriate and unwanted sexual overtures.

The Commission on Judicial Performance, the watchdog agency for judges, called for Saucedos removal after finding that he pressed his clerk to be his special friend, gave her $26,000 in gifts and cash and lied about his behavior to investigators.

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The Courthouse News Service also reported that the state paid $100,000 to settle a federal lawsuit brought against Lassen County Superior Court Judge Tony R. Mallery.

A Lassen County court executive had charged Mallery with screaming and yelling at female employees and hugging a defendant in open court.

Neither Mallery nor the court admitted wrongdoing in the settlement.

In December, court officials confirmed that Presiding Justice Conrad Rushing of the San Jose-based Court of Appeal faced allegations of bigotry, sexual harassment and discrimination against women when he retired last year.

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Cathal Conneely, a spokesman for the California Supreme Court, called the limited number of reported incidents still too many.

California has robust judicial ethics programs with a Code of Ethics, ongoing training, access to guidance and an independent state agency responsible for investigating complaints of judicial misconduct, Conneely said. We continue to strive to be responsive to the workplace needs of public servants at every level of the court system.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Twitter: @mauradolanWhy are you going to Beirut? Pastor Doug Reid has been asked that question many times.

He answers by mentioning 1.5 million Syrian refugees, uprooted by civil war, are existing in cramped tent cities in Lebanon, which has been overwhelmed by the influx of displaced Syrians.

Confronted with an escalating humanitarian crisis, United Nations workers have reached out to religious leaders around the world.

A group of 12 spiritual leaders from Southern California took notice, including Reid, of Coast City Church in Oceanside, and Pastor Brad Griswold, of The Place, in Fallbrook.

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They just returned from a 10-day tour  guided by the U.N. and aid group World Vision  of refugee settlements in Beirut and Lebanons Bekaa Valley.

To Reids surprise, one of the greatest unmet needs, aside from food and water, is for early childhood education.

Most young Syrian children have never attended school and are denied enrollment in Lebanese schools because they lag too far behind, says Reid.

Instead, the boys often go to work in the fields for 10 hours a day, earning the equivalent of $4. Facing a hopeless future, these boys have become prime targets for recruitment by terrorist groups.

The Southern California religious leaders visited two pre-schools created by World Vision, an interdenominational Christian group that helps coordinate refugee services there. Each school is educating 500 refugee youngsters so they can transition into Lebanons school system.

The American visitors realized that this was a way they could provide a brighter future and discourage terrorist recruitment.

They developed a plan to raise money to convert space in churches throughout Lebanon into classrooms. World Vision agreed to partner with them to train teachers and to oversee education and transportation.

On Easter Sunday, Reid will show his Assembly of God congregation videos of his trip to Lebanon.

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It was like stepping into a different world  one you only see on TV or in the movies, Reid says. I was totally taken back by the volume of people and level of need. It was overwhelming.

To get the pre-school program started, hell be entreating his 500-member congregation to give $100 each to a Syrian refugee school fund.

Pastor Griswold, who returned this week, says he is already $5,000 toward his immediate goal of $50,000 to help create one school facility, which includes a kitchen as well as classrooms. Im very excited to be part of 500 children being fed and loved, he says.

Their tour colleagues, likewise, are rolling out refugee fundraising projects.

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Doing nothing is no longer an option, stresses Reid. The world needs to stand up and take notice.

State Sen. Toni Atkins, right, was sworn in March 21 as Senate president pro tem in Sacramento by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. Looking on is Atkins spouse, Jennifer LeSar, Sen. Kevin de Leon, left, and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, right. (AP )

Capitol news: State Sen.Toni Atkins has a couple of firsts to add to her resume. The former speaker of the state Assembly was sworn in as president pro tem of the California Senate on Wednesday.

I am so honored ... and humbled to be the first woman and first member of the LGBTQ community in the position, Atkins posted on Facebook. It was apropos that her special day began with a Legislative Womens Caucus breakfast and ended with a party thrown by the LGBT Caucus.

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It was wonderful to be surrounded by my family and so many good friends from San Diego, noted Atkins, who was joined by her spouse, Jennifer LeSar. She thanked, among others, San Diego Rabbi Laurie Coskey who traveled to Sacramento to deliver the invocation.

When festivities were over, the new Senate President pro Tem Atkins announced, Lets get back to work!

San Marcos Mayor Jim Desmond has entered the race to replace county Supervisor Bill Horn. (Courtesy photo )

Say, what? San Marcos Mayor Jim Desmond and Oceanside City Councilman Jerry Kern, both Republicans, are running against each other for the seat of Supervisor Bill Horn, who is termed out.

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Jerry Kern, a member of Oceanside City Council, is also running for Supervisor Bill Horns seat. He and Jim Desmond are both Republicans and friends. (Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune )

One question Desmond, a former Delta pilot, and Kern, a retired school teacher, may be asked during the primary election campaign is why each agreed to sign the others nomination papers. In essence, that endorses their opponents run for the Fifth District supervisor seat.

As it turned out, Kern was one of the 20 required backers for Desmond but never actually got Desmonds signature on his own nomination papers. Nevertheless, Desmond admits, I told him I would sign his.

UPS driver Thomas Camp, from Michigan, is the most senior driver to wear the Circle of Honor patch on his sleeve. He has driven his truck without an accident for 55 years. (Tom Lopez photo )

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Not by accident: Imagine driving a UPS truck  or any vehicle  for 25 years without an accident.

This month, the United Parcel Service recognized its drivers for doing just that  and 14 of them work in San Diego and Imperial counties.

They were inducted into the Atlanta-based companys Circle of Honor and will add the elite patch to their uniforms.

Californias senior most-safe UPS driver is Len Edelmann, of Anderson, who has 42 years of accident-free driving under his steering wheel.

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Nationwide, the most seasoned Circle of Honor designee is Michigans Thomas Camp. He has delivered packages for 55 years without a fender bender. Not bad.

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diane.bell@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1518

Twitter: @dianebellSD

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Facebook: dianebell.newsSome folks call her Mary Ellen Outrage.

Theres a reason. Mary Ellen Attridge is rather extroverted, sometimes brash and occasionally unfiltered. She is also one of the fiercest criminal defense attorneys around, and for the last 27 years, she has devoted her services to those who cant afford to pay for a lawyer on their own.

As a public defense attorney, Attridge didnt get to choose her cases, but her colleagues say she provided top-notch legal representation  in cases that drew national attention and many more that drew little attention from the public at all.

Attridge has represented defendants in several high-profile cases in San Diego County, including one of three teens accused of killing 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe in 1998, and a man accused of killing a professional surfer in a case that came to be known by the name Bird Rock Bandits.

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As of this week, the 56-year-old North County resident is calling it quits. After upwards of 1,000 cases  including many murder trials  she says its time to retire.

The future is open. There will be some sailing, some hot yoga, some wine, plenty of cooking, certainly some family time. And maybe someday, shell hang a shingle advertising her services as private attorney.

Attridge sat down Friday at the Vista offices of the Alternate Public Defender and talked about her work as a formidable advocate and adversary.

She is loud, she is talkative, and she boasts a sarcastic wit.

Whats even funnier is the stuff I dont say, she said with a laugh. Theres a lot of stuff that comes into my head that I dont say.

As a longtime defense lawyer, Attridge said she is used to the inevitable question: How can you represent criminals, even if you suspect they are guilty?

You have to be able to embrace the constitutional importance of what we do,she said. If I decide you are guilty, instead of a jury or a judge, then there is no point to the system.

Colleagues praise her work, her aggressive representation of her clients and her skill in the courtroom.

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San Diego County Public Defender Randy Mize, who has known and worked with Attridge since the early 1990s, said she was never afraid to throw down.

Across the board she had a reputation as a superior litigator who was never afraid to go to trial, Mize said.

She is the Sinatra of the office, he added. Mary Ellen always does it her way.

Deputy Chief District Attorney David Greenberg, who has faced off in courtrooms with many a local defense attorney including Attridge, praised her for her hard work and commitment to their shared profession.

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I like Mary Ellen, he said. I get along with people that work hard, that work hard for their clients, that are ethical.

When people are prepared, when people are good,  its always good and its better for justice, he continued. The right thing is going to happen.

The appeal of court

Attridge is a New York native and the youngest of six children  her parents were second-generation Irish Catholics. She grew up watching cops shows and Perry Mason reruns on television, and at 11 years old, the daughter of a school teacher and corporate executive was hooked on criminal law.

There was something about court itself that appealed to me, she said.

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As an English major at the University of Northern Colorado, she was into the big themes  sorrow, fear, angst, poverty. Out of college, she headed toward San Diegos sunshine, and graduated from California Western School of Law in 1987.

After a few years in real estate law, when she described as boring, then-29-year-old Attridge leapt at a job in the county-run Office of the Alternate Public Defender.

Its the office that steps in if the Public Defenders Office has a conflict of interest in representing a client. It happens sometimes, say in cases of two (or more) defendants. The Public Defender can only represent one defendant in a case; the Alternate Public Defender will represent the other.

Both offices handle indigent clients, people unable to afford an attorney.

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She is a feisty character, said Mize, the public defender. I am glad she is on my side.

The big cases

Attridge spent her early years representing kids in Juvenile Court. Thats where she landed her first big case, in which a local theater actor was shot and killed on Laurel Street bridge in 1994. Attridge represented the shooter, a teen girl tried as an adult in a shooting some called the Balboa Park murder.

The years that followed brought other cases with monikers. At some point, she grabbed one of her own. Mary Ellen Outrage was from a judge who liked her work and her assertive style in the courtroom, she said.

In 1998, she was assigned what she would later refer to as the most significant case of my career.

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In January of that year, a 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe was stabbed to death in the bedroom of her Escondido home. The girls 14-year-old brother was soon accused, as were two of his friends. Attridge represented one of the friends.

After a 10-hour overnight confession on his 15th birthday, her client told investigators that the three of them had plotted and killed the girl. Attridge said she knew the confession was false the first time she spoke to him.

I was struck by how incredibly naive he was, she said last week. I have an accurate B.S. meter and I thought, wow, I think this kid did falsely confess.

She pressed for DNA testing of clothing police had taken from a transient who had been seen by the home that night  and it turned out spots of the childs blood were on the clothing.

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The boys walked free. Years later, after two of them petitioned the court, a judge found them factually innocent in Crowes death.

The transient was later convicted of killing the girl, but the verdict was overturned and he was eventually acquitted.

In 2007, Attridge was assigned a case she said still bothers her. It involved five young men accused of fatally beating a 24-year-old surfer named Emery Kauanui Jr. during a confrontation outside his mothers La Jolla home.

Prosecutors said the defendants, all graduates of La Jolla High School, were part of a group called the Bird Rock Bandits, named for the coastal neighborhood where they would party and often get into fights.

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Attridge represented Seth Cravens, the only member of the group who went to trial on a murder charge (the others pleaded guilty to manslaughter and accessory after the fact). Cravens, who threw a single punch that caused Kauauni to fall and hit his head on the pavement, was convicted of second-degree murder.

An appellate court reduced it to voluntary manslaughter for lack of evidence, but in 2012, the state Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction.

I dont think that Seth Cravens meant to kill Emery Kauanui, she said. That one is never going to make me happy.

Not entirely done

Over her 27 years as a public lawyer, Attridge has tried hundreds of cases, and for 20 of those years she supervised the Alternative Public Defenders three branch offices in Vista, Chula Vista and El Cajon.

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She has been a mentor to attorneys in the office. Attorney Jeff Reichert called his supervisor for two decades a great person to have in your corner.

What gets lost in her handling some big cases and doing a great job is that she is a very kind person, Reichert said. She has a great sense of what is happening around the office and what is going on with people, emotionally.

Attridge, he said, has a good sense of when to encourage you, when you need support, when you need to be left alone, when you need to be bought a drink.

Even though she is set to retire, she is not entirely done. For roughly the last year and a half, she has represented a client who was 16 years old in 2006 when an Oceanside police officer was gunned down less than a block from the then-teenagers home.

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Prosecutors said three teenage gang members had been drinking when they happened to spot the officer at a traffic stop and decided to open fire.

Two were found guilty in the ambush and are serving life sentences. But Attridges client saw his charges dismissed at his preliminary hearing for lack of evidence.

In 2016, prosecutors charged her client again, citing new evidence. Once again, Attridge is representing him.

Its a case she will hang on to even after retirement. She will come back to work on it  the county will pay her  but the rules mean she must wait six months after retirement before returning.

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The client  in custody since fall 2016  has agreed to continue sitting in jail rather than have anyone else take his case.

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teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUTJerry Cohen, the first lawyer hired by the United Farm Workers, encouraged a group of about 140 students gathered for the annual Las Mananitas Cesar Chavez Service Club breakfast not to wait until theyre adults to try to make a difference in their communities.

The organization, which has 37 clubs in 24 schools in San Diego County, honored Cohen Friday morning at its ninth breakfast, attended by elected officials, school leaders, community activists and at least two dozen people who served with UFW. Founded by Carlos and Linda LeGerrette, who worked with Chavez in the UFW movement, the Cesar Chavez Service Club is a leadership development program that empowers students, known as Chavistas, to organize projects that benefit their communities.

Linda LeGerrette said part of the reason she wanted to recognize Cohen was how young he was when he became the first general counsel for the union. When Chavez hired Cohen in 1967, Cohen was 26 years old.

Thats amazing when you think about it, LeGerrette said. Between Jerry and Cesar and many supporters throughout the country, history was made.

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Cohen worked for the union until 1981, pushing back in court battles when growers tried to make the unions demonstrations more difficult and then managing negotiations when the owners finally came to the table.

He credited the farm workers for organizing the strikes and boycotts that generated enough power for him to do his job. Hes proudest of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which gave farm workers collective bargaining rights.

Farm workers and domestic workers were left out of federal labor laws of the 1930s, Cohen said, which he likened to blatantly racist laws from 1920s South Africa that prohibited black workers from organizing.

Congress didnt do it as boldly but it had the same effect, Cohen said. It took Cesar and his skills and the people he attracted to put farm workers on the map.

Being honored by the youth organization meant more to Cohen than other awards hes received for his work with the labor movement, he said, because talking with students was productive.

It gives people the opportunity to talk about whats possible, Cohen said. When youre just sort of getting recognized, you tell old war stories, and its a mutual admiration society, and you dont get as much done.

He praised youth who have spoken out against gun violence and stood up for young unauthorized immigrants known as dreamers.

He said current events dont give him immediate optimism, but he has hope.

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Hope lies with you, he said to the Chavistas.

He told them that they dont have to wait until theyre voting-age to make a difference, and that organizing for change takes two qualities  resilience and a good sense of humor.

Lillian Shallow, president and co-founder of the current club at San Diego High School, talked about learning to appreciate those traits in her time with the organization.

She recalled a moment during a food drive organized by her club that raised more than one ton of food. She and other club members heard a loud crash and found two students with boxes that had burst, dropping cans onto the floor. The group laughed together as they cleaned up the hall.

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I used to believe this club contained magic answers, said Shallow, who has been with the service organization since 6th grade. Now I know it doesnt, and I respect it even more.

Lillian Shallow, from San Diego High, Jacob Dadmun, also from San Diego High, at the Cesar Chavez Service clubs 9th annual Las Mananitas breakfast at the Hilton Hotel in Mission Bay. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune )

She and Jacob Dadmun, who co-founded the chapter with her, focus on student advocacy.

Our goal is to create effective members of society, Dadmun said.

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Dadmun said he appreciated Cohens story because it didnt follow the negative stereotype often associated with lawyers.

Its inspiring to see people who care and help people with the tools that they have, Dadmun said.

Eliana Licon, who advises the San Diego High group, said that the students run the group and she works to support them.

Im just proud of the leadership, Licon said. All of the quiet students who didnt used to speak are blossoming.

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Hiyab Misghina, a sophomore in the San Diego High School club, said that many at her school feel like they dont have a voice, but thats not the case for students in the organization.

We have the opportunity to make change, Misghina said.

The breakfast was filled with cries of Si se puede! As the event ended, everyone linked arms and swayed gently while a band played the iconic De Colores.

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kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on TwitterA federal appeals court panel has concluded that a revised version of an Indiana public high schools annual holiday show that included a mannequin Nativity scene doesnt violate the U.S. Constitution.

Concord High School came under scrutiny after the Freedom From Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit alleging the 2015 Concord Christmas Spectacular violated the First Amendments prohibition on government establishment of religion, The Goshen News reported.

The judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago issued their review of the show on Wednesday.

The district court agreed with the plaintiffs that the 2014 show and the version initially proposed for 2015 violated the First Amendments Establishment Clause and awarded nominal damages. The judges said the nativity scene was problematic in 2014 and in the proposed show.

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But the three-judge panel also said that the show as it is now wouldnt lead reasonable observers to feel the school is signing off on a particular religious message because the Nativity scene has become just another visual complement for a single song. They said the show may go on in its current state.

Freedom From Religion Foundation officials called the ruling a partial win.

Although FFRF is disappointed that the court was persuaded by the schools superficial changes to its longstanding Christian performance, the court also affirmed that the plaintiffs are entitled to damages and a declaratory judgment that prior versions of the show violated the Establishment Clause, calling the live nativity in particular problematic, officials said.

Concord Community Schools Superintendent John Trout thanked the court for thoughtful analysis in reaching its decision.In fits and starts, for nearly a decade, the U.S. has talked about and struggled to make progress on building an Afghan military that can take control of its own nations security and lay the groundwork for a stable government.

This time, they think they have it right.

After five days criss-crossing Afghanistan, meeting with everyone from the Afghan president to the new American trainers on the ground, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr. headed home Friday with a palpable sense of optimism.

Just months after the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan declared the war against the Taliban and other insurgents a stalemate, Dunford  chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff  said he can see the makings of a shift.

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What were already starting to see is, I think, momentum is going to favor the Afghan forces, Dunford told the small group of reporters traveling with him, adding that the deployment of 800 new Army trainers will serve as an accelerant to the Afghans being able to achieve momentum.

One thing that gave him hope was a recent Afghan military operation in the east, where the Taliban have long been strong. It delivered, in his words, a eureka moment.

Dubbed Saleb 1-23, the Afghan military operation was launched in mid-February in a move to oust the Taliban from a critical 10-kilometer stretch of valley in Laghman Province. Taliban fighters have used that area as a transit route across the border with Pakistan, where they enjoy safe havens.

U.S. Army Maj. Marc Pfrogner, the operations adviser for the Afghans 201st Corps, said the complex mission took 50 days to plan. He said it lasted until March 9, and got fiercer as the Afghans moved up Sangar Valley. Four Afghan forces died in the fight, and 30 Taliban were killed.

But what impressed the Americans was the coordinated battle the Afghans waged, using their own intelligence, gathered in part from the Scan Eagle drone they got last September.

With guidance from their American advisers, Afghan commandos launched the initial assaults, supported by Afghan aircraft. The Afghan National Army forces followed, clearing the area, and National Police units moved in to hold the ground, enabling local political leaders to retake the government.

U.S. surveillance and strike aircraft provided support, but American military commanders said much of that was invisible to the local people, who saw the Afghan forces as their liberators.

The coordination between the intelligence collection, the fighting forces and the police, said Dunford, is what the U.S. has been waiting to see.

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If you want to talk about what right looks like  from the Afghan security force and the government rolling in behind it  that operation was about textbook, said Dunford. Im trying to restrain my enthusiasm here, but Im having trouble, because that is the most positive observation that Ive had over the last two days. Youre kinda like, eureka!

Tempering that optimism, however, are the steep challenges ahead  from government corruption and political infighting to regional diplomatic tensions and struggles to build a consistent, enduring military. Too often in recent years, U.S. officials have seized on a glimmer of hope, only to watch the Taliban regroup and surge again, taking back territory and fueling its fight with the profitable poppy harvest.

That is all compounded by the persistent turmoil with Pakistan, which U.S. officials complain has still not done enough to eliminate Taliban safe havens and control the traffic of militants back and forth across the border.

Military leaders and commanders know well the risks of a backslide, so the next several months will be critical as they watch for the progress they believe is possible. And they know that success will depend on more than battlefield victories.

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The military effort is necessary but not sufficient to get us to reconciliation, said Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, referring to the renewed campaign to get Taliban fighters to the peace table. Theres a significant political component and diplomatic component.

He and others agree, however, that battlefield wins are key ways to pressure insurgents to surrender. And he said the influx in recent months of several thousand U.S. troops and trainers, additional strike aircraft and drones is helping the Afghans go on the offensive.

Other U.S. commanders said the renewed American commitment to the war, driven by the strategy rolled out by President Donald Trump last August, has helped embolden Afghan forces.

Down at Camp Leatherneck in the Taliban heartland of Helmand Province, Marines said the Afghan soldiers still struggle with logistics and maintenance issues, but they are seeing some progress.

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Its different now because they understand now its their responsibility, said Marine Lt. Col. Ryan Benson, an adviser for the Afghan army. Before there was the understanding that they were in the lead, but there was always that crutch of coalition forces they could fall back on.

As the summer fighting season looms, Dunford said he will gauge success based on specific benchmarks. He said he wants the number of Afghan casualties to go down, and the percentage of the population living in secure, government controlled areas to go up. Currently, he said, about 68 percent of the population is living in secure areas, and the goal is 80 percent.

He also wants to see more Taliban abandon the fight and ease back into society through a formal Afghan reintegration program. And he said hell be watching the Talibans reaction when fighters increasingly see theyre being targeted by Afghan aircraft and the number of Afghan commandos  who have been their toughest enemy  has doubled.

This is not another year of the same thing weve been doing for 17 years, Dunford said. All of this should bring pressure to bear on the Taliban. ... They are not going to win on the battlefield, they have to be convinced of that.U.S. and European officials said Saturday that President Donald Trump is close to expelling 20 or more Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain.

The move, which could prompt a new wave of retaliatory expulsions of U.S. diplomats in Russia, may come as early as Monday. But U.S. officials are still seeking clarity on how major European powers are responding to the nerve-agent attack, which critically injured a former spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement that the United States is considering a range of options to respond to Russias outrageous actions in the UK, both to demonstrate our solidarity with our ally and to hold Russia accountable for its clear breach of international norms and agreements.

She declined to say what those options could be or when they might come into force.

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The leaked proposal to expel Russian diplomats, first reported by CNN, raised questions about whether people inside the U.S. government disclosed the pending action to force the presidents hand in taking tough action against Moscow. The proposal was advanced by the presidents advisers during meetings on Wednesday and Friday, the officials said.

A senior European diplomat said the United States has been considering the expulsion of 20 or more Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain. The decision rests with the White House, the official said, but close allies have urged the Trump administration to take the symbolic but dramatic step as a signal that the assassination attempt was a test of Western resolve that must be answered, the diplomat said.

Officials, including two senior White House officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive decision that hadnt been finalized.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have pressed the White House to move more aggressively against Russia in the wake of its alleged interference in the 2016 election. In August, lawmakers passed legislation limiting the presidents ability to lift sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its military intervention in Ukraine.

Since coming to power, the Trump administration has taken forceful action against Moscow, closing its consulate in San Francisco and approving lethal aid to Ukraine in its battle with pro-Russian separatists, a move the Obama administration opposed.

Earlier this month, the administration imposed fresh sanctions on Russian government hackers and spy agencies for interfering in the 2016 election and for a global cyberattack that officials have described as the most destructive and costly in history.

Trump, however, has refrained from criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin, including in a phone call last week after Russias disputed presidential elections.

In advance of the call, the presidents staff included a section in his briefing materials in all-capital letters stating DO NOT CONGRATULATE and recommending that he raise the poisoning of the former Russian spy. The president chose to congratulate Putin and did not raise the poisoning incident, U.S. officials confirmed.

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A number of European countries - close to 20 - are expected to expel Russian officials and take other measures as early as Monday. The countries include the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as Sweden, Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, France and the Netherlands.

Its a big test for the U.K., especially in the post-Brexit context, to see how many real allies they have, said a European official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk on the record.

On Saturday, White House spokesman Raj Shah said the United States stands firmly with the United Kingdom in condemning Russias outrageous action. The president is always considering options to hold Russia accountable in response to its malign activities.

The Washington Posts Carol Morello and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.Wisconsin Republicans refused Friday to accept a court order to hold special elections to fill two vacant legislative seats, calling lawmakers back to Madison to rewrite election laws in an extraordinary session.

Legislators returned to their districts to campaign this week after the Senate and Assembly wrapped up their two-year sessions. But Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in a joint news release the court order means special elections and regular elections for the open seats will occur simultaneously, confusing voters and wasting tax dollars. The Legislature must reconvene to revise special election statutes, they said.

They didnt specify what changes they want, saying only that they want to clean up the laws and ensure they comply with the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act. Fitzgerald mentioned during a question-and-answer session with reporters that hes concerned military voters wont be able to obtain and return ballots for so many elections and special elections should be aligned with regular ones.

The logistics of this (ruling) are very messy, Fitzgerald said. We still have an opportunity to straighten this out at the last minute here.

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Gov. Scott Walker said in a statement that it would be senseless to waste tax dollars on simultaneous elections for the same seats. He promised he would sign the Legislatures plan into law, an unusual announcement given that specifics are murky and the governor rarely commits publicly to signing bills.

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling said in a statement that Republicans were throwing a temper tantrum because they lost in court and fear the open seats could flip to Democratic control.

Republicans are clearly intimidated by the thought of losing power and would rather create chaos and confusion going into a tough re-election year, Shilling said.

Sen. Frank Lasee and Rep. Keith Ripp, both Republicans, left the Legislature in December to join Walkers administration. Wisconsin law says the governor must call special elections to fill legislative vacancies that occur before the second Tuesday in May in an election year. But Walker refused to call the elections, arguing those statutes apply only if vacancies occur after Jan. 1 of an election year.

Democrats contend Walker wants to delay the elections because the GOP could lose the seats. Republicans hold an all-but insurmountable 63-35 Assembly majority but their margin in the Senate is 18-14.

A national Democratic group led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sued to force the special elections. Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds ordered Walker on Thursday to schedule the elections by March 29, calling the governors position textbook voter disenfranchisement.

Fitzgerald denied any attempts to slow down or halt the special elections during his question-and-answer session, saying Republicans just want elections to work.

Holder issued a news release pointing out that Lasee and Ripps constituents have gone unrepresented since December because of Walker. He said the call to revise the election statutes was stunning.

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"(Republicans) appear to be afraid of the voters of Wisconsin, Holder said.A man suspected of stabbing his girlfriend in a Carlsbad Costco parking lot poured gasoline on his clothes and attempted to light himself on fire when he was pulled over by the Border Patrol in Temecula Friday afternoon.

According to Carlsbad police, officers responded to a call about a stabbing at the Costco on Palomar Airport Road at 2:47 p.m.

Officers found the victim in serious condition with multiple stab wounds. The suspect, a 62-year-old man, had fled the scene.

Shortly after 5:40 p.m., Border Patrol agents in Temecula spotted the man traveling north on Jefferson Avenue near Winchester Road and pulled him over.

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Agents said the suspect ignored all verbal commands and poured gasoline on his clothes. They were able to open the drivers door, knock a lighter out of his hand and remove him from his vehicle.

The mans clothes had a large amount of blood on them.

The man, identified later as Charles Higgins, and his vehicle were turned over to the Carlsbad Police Department, which is investigating the man for attempted murder.

The victim has been hospitalized for life-threatening injuries. Her condition was not immediately available.

Carlsbad police located and arrested Higgins in Temecula with assistance from the Murrieta Police Department, the Border Patrol and Riverside Sheriffs Department.

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gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

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760-529-4939

UPDATES:

March 27, 2018: This story was updated with additional details.

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The article was originally published on March 23, 2018.Someone who was reported to have made a threat against workers at the County Administration Building near downtown San Diego was contacted quickly by investigators on Wednesday, county officials said Friday.

Detectives quickly interviewed the subject and took appropriate action to minimize the threat, said the letter, drafted by the Sheriffs Department.

The letter was released to reporters Friday afternoon.

It said they were alerted to a potential threat from someone who is now a former county employee. The threat was said to have been made against unspecified employees at the county building on Pacific Highway.

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The person who made the threat was contacted at home in San Diego Wednesday night, sheriffs spokesman Lt. Karen Stubkjaer said.

She said the person was taken into custody for a mental health evaluation, so no further information about him or her was released.

The county building was not locked down as a result of the threat, Stubkjaer said.

Deputies and security personnel at the county building are familiar with the person said to have made the threats, the sheriffs letter said.

A separate letter sent to county workers by Chief Administrative Officer Helen Robbins-Meyer at 3:09 p.m. Friday said sheriffs and District Attorneys personnel were working closely together on every legal means possible to prevent this individual from accessing County facilities.

Robbins-Meyer also said extra security would be in place at the county building on Monday, and possibly at other county facilities.

She urged county workers to not share their identification badges or security keycards, and to report anything suspicious.

The sheriffs letter said that after the person was contacted and the threat minimized, people were asked to remain vigilant. It noted that that sheriffs officials have actively trained to handle these types of incidents.

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pauline.repard@sduniontribune

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Twitter: @pdrepardAbout 90 minutes before the March for Our Lives demonstration was set to begin in downtown San Diego Saturday, 18-year-old Sydney Cummings was asked what she wanted people to take away from the march.

Were not okay with the current gun legislation, said Cummings, a senior at West Hills High School in Santee. And then added after a pause, Youth have a voice. And its a powerful one.

That voice resonated loudly through downtown, joined and amplified by the voices of thousands of adults joining in a huge demonstration calling for tighter gun laws, less gun violence and meaningful political change.

The San Diego march, which started at the San Diego County Waterfront Park, was led and largely organized by students from across the county. It was one of numerous similar marches in cities nationwide, all in response to the massacre at a Parkland, Fla., high school last month that killed 17 people and wounded another 17.

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San Diego police estimated the crowd size between 5,000 and 10,000 people.

The marchers had three demands: a law banning the sale of assualt-style weapons like the AR-15 used in the Parkland shooting; a ban on selling high-capacity ammunition magazines; and closing loopholes in background checks that can allow some people, such as the mentally ill, to purchase weapons online or at some gun shows.

A smaller march attended by about 500 people was held in Escondido, and a third in Encinitas.

The events featured speakers, nearly all of them students, giving impassioned speeches calling for an end to gun violence, stricter gun control laws, and urging politicians to stand up to the National Rifle Association. The organization, which is the leading gun-rights group in the country, was not only a particular target of speakers but also the subject of signs and various chants by demonstrators during an hour-long march.

1 / 24 Poway High School senior Hannah Williams, 17, holds a sign as she and fellow Poway High students, one of them emotional after the the names of the Parkland victims were read aloud. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 24 Logan Palm, 10, spoke to the hundreds of people that rallied out front of the Escondido Civic Center for the March For Our Lives event on Saturday. (Don Boomer) 3 / 24 Members of the student organizers hold photos of the Parkland, Florida shooting victims. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 24 A woman holds a sign during the March for Our Lives rally. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 24 A young girl holds a sign during the March for Our Lives rally. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 24 Thousands of people attend the March for Our Lives rally at the San Diego County Administration Center. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 24 Hundreds of people took part in the March For Our Lives walk that started from the Escondido Civic Center on Saturday. (Don Boomer) 8 / 24 A woman holds a sign during the March for Our Lives rally. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 24 Student organizers cheer as one of the speakers talks to the crowd gathered for the March for Our Lives rally at the San Diego County Administration Center. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 24 A man holds signs during the March for Our Lives rally. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 24 Eighty-six-year-old Shirley Meyers was one of the hundreds of people that rallied out front of the Escondido Civic Center for the March For Our Lives event on Saturday. (Don Boomer) 12 / 24 A man carrying a Trump flag makes his way to the center of the crowd. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 24 Hundreds rallied for the March For Our Lives out front of the Escondido Civic Center on Saturday, (Don Boomer) 14 / 24 People in support of the March for Our Lives rally surround a man, center, who was carrying a Trump flag, and hold their signs in front of him. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 15 / 24 Children hold up signs while on top of playground equipment at Waterfront Park. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 16 / 24 Student organizers lead the March for Our Lives as they walk south on North Harbor Drive. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 17 / 24 Student organizers lead the March for Our Lives as they walk south on North Harbor Drive. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 18 / 24 People fill North Harbor Drive as they participate in the March for Our Lives in San Diego. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 19 / 24 Zachary Patterson, 14, left, an eighth grader at Standley Middle School, and Tahir Siddig, 17, a senior at Scripps Ranch High School, who are both members of the student organizer group, lead a chant as they and thousands of people walk south on North Harbor Drive. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 20 / 24 A man holds up a sign during the March for Our Lives rally. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 21 / 24 Canyon Crest Academy senior Michaela Magpile, 17, speaks to the crowd during the March for Our Lives rally at the San Diego County Administration Center. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 22 / 24 Izzy Jameson, 10, who is a student at Heritage Elementary School in Escondido, gets large applause as she speaks during the March for Our Lives rally at the San Diego County Administration Center. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 23 / 24 Sarah Farouq, 19, a student at Grossmont College, holds up her fist as Izzy Jameson, 10, who is a student at Heritage Elementary School in Escondido, speaks to the crowd. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 24 / 24 Jasmine Criqui, 13, left, Victoria Dinov, 15, center, Yasmine Mabene, 15, right, and fellow student organizers sing Shine, a song written by Parkland survivors, at the conclusion of the March for Our Lives rally at the San Diego County Administration Center. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune)

The NRA has said the mounting protests since the Parkland shooting and the high-profile advocacy of students are really a product of adults manipulating and exploiting. On Saturday the group posted a similar message on its Facebook page.

Todays protests arent spontaneous, the message said. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.

 Thousands of people of all ages began marching throughout San Diego County Saturday morning as part of a nationwide student-led movement calling for politicians to take action on tighter restrictions to quell gun violence at schools.

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A strong theme running through the speeches and comments from marchers was the vulnerability students said they feel in schools and their communities, as well as a frustration that more strict gun control laws have not been adopted.

Some speakers also referenced other issues like police reform, citing the controversial killing this week of black Sacramento resident Stephon Clark by police as he held a cellphone officers said they thought was a gun in his grandparents backyard. But much of the focus was on guns, students and schools.

Everyone is concerned we are going to school, and we wont come home, said Amara Vorties, 16, a junior at Monte Vista High School who came to the rally with her friend Terriona Adams, 17. They held signs saying School Should Never Feel Like a Battlefield and MV Will Not Stand 4 This.

One speaker, Khadijah Abdulmatten from El Camino High School, said legislators should heed the calls of the marchers. For those who dont she had a warning, which was greeted by a massive cheer from the crowd: I have four words  Midterm elections are coming.

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The crowd was boisterous and orderly. At one point a man carrying a Trump for President flag on a flagpole made his way near the front, causing a momentary disturbance. But rally leaders urged protesters not to engage with him. The man was soon surrounded by others holding anti-NRA signs and a large Rainbow flag of the LGBTQ community, without any noticeable conflict.

One of the organizers of the San Diego rally, Mohamed Elnakib, 23, said in an interview Friday that the rally had been planned for more than a month by student leaders from around the county.

A lot of people were interested in this topic, but its one that affects students directly, said Elnakib. For that reason he said it was important that students  and not the usual lineup of elected officials  organize, speak and lead the rally and march.

We wanted to make sure it was the student voices that were heard, he said.

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The march began just before 11 a.m. heading south on North Harbor Drive, then looping back north up Pacific Highway. The crowd was large enough that it almost looped the route.

Dave Levin of San Diego, who marched while carrying his 2-year-old daughter Melina, said he hopes the protests are an indicator that Congress would adopt what he called reasonable gun control measures.

It seems as though there is a wave of people supporting change, he said. I hope that gets through to the politicians who are on the fence and convinces them to do what the people want.

That, too, was the hope of 20-year-old Emily Landers as she paused along the route. I want reasonable legislation, she said. As angry as I can get over this issue, I really want there to be change.

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In Escondido, the crowd gathered in front of City Hall at the corner of West Valley Parkway and Broadway. It was organized by Melissa Leonard, a Palomar College student and Escondido resident who created a Facebook event page and then contacted the national March for Our Lives organization to coordinate events.

I just said enough is enough, so I reached out to my community to see who was interested in doing a march, Leonard said. Im so tired of seeing people get hurt. Im so tired of the violence.

Student speakers had similar concerns as their counterparts in San Diego.

Jose Moreno, 17, a senior at Mission Vista High School in Oceanside, told the crowd gun violence was a given in his Vista neighborhood as he grew up but that school had always been the one place he used to feel safe and comfortable.

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But weve been practicing active-shooter drills every month for years now, he said. My first priority at school should be about my education. It should not be a place to worry about my safety.

Among those in the crowd were Bonsall residents Rachel Thomas and her 9-year-old daughter, Taylor.

Were just here to show support for the students and to bring an end to school gun violence and to help pass stricter gun laws, Rachel Thomas said. Its time our government officials listened.

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kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavisSouthern California Edison halted work at San Onofre earlier for 10 days after crews discovered a loose bolt inside one of the canisters designed to store spent radioactive fuel at the waterfront site.

Nearby residents are afraid the broken canister is indicative of larger safety problems at the former nuclear plant north of Oceanside.

The utility says work has resumed safely, employing original canisters that do not include a new design feature introduced by manufacturer Holtec International of New Jersey.

Works crews transferring spent fuel at the San Onofre nuclear plant from cooling pools into dry storage discovered a loose bolt inside one of the canisters, prompting Southern California Edison to temporarily halt the relocation effort.

To the horror of some nearby residents, the job resumed earlier this week.

The loose piece of bolt, about 4 inches by 1/2-inch, was discovered in one of 43 freshly manufactured canisters that featured a new design aimed at improving storage capability. The bolt was part of redesigned system called a shim that aims to improve the balance and storage of the spent fuel assemblies.

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The work ceased on March 5 after the discovery and resumed 10 days later, the company said, using 30 other canisters that do not include the new design.

Edison, which already filled four of the newly designed canisters with radioactive waste, is unable to check whether those casks have the same flaw. The utility said the unattached part was found while a fifth canister was being filled with spent fuel assemblies.

Safety is our top priority, Tom Palmisano, the Edison vice president and chief nuclear officer said in a statement. Our first step was to confirm this fabrication change poses no safety risk to workers or the public.

Edison acknowledged the mishap at a meeting Thursday night of the community engagement panel, a utility-funded group monitoring the plant decommissioning. San Onofre was shut down after a small amount of radiation leaked in 2012 and was closed for good the following year.

We also directed the manufacturer to conduct extensive evaluations to ensure we have a comprehensive understanding of this change, Palmisano said. Additionally, we briefed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and have kept the regulator apprised of our actions.

Several people at the Thursday night meeting were alarmed by the announcement that one of the canisters malfunctioned even before it was buried in the ground. On Friday, activists and lawyers suing over plans to bury the waste on site were calling on Edison to stop transferring the spent fuel into dry storage.

We warned them that this was going to happen, and nobody listed to us, said Donna Gilmore, an Edison critic who runs a group called SanOnofreSafety.org. Now they are trying to tell us, Everything is O.K. Dont worry. This is insane. Edison has proven they cant keep us safe.

The plant, which has been in the decommissioning process since 2013, generated some 3.6 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel that remains on the property just north of Oceanside.

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Current plans call for Edison to transfer the fuel assemblies from cooling pools on the grounds of the abandoned power plant into steel-lined canisters that will be placed in a concrete encasement just over 100 feet from the shoreline.

Gilmore and others worry that the canisters could leak or become weakened by saltwater intrusion or other factors, threatening the 8 million people who live within 50 miles of the plant. Utility executives say the storage is safe.

The transfer process, approved by state and federal regulators, has been underway since January even though Edison agreed last summer to settle a lawsuit by exploring ways to move the nuclear waste away from the beach.

Earlier this month, utility officials and plaintiffs in the San Diego Superior Court lawsuit agreed to set up an independent panel of nuclear experts to debate alternatives to storing the spent fuel at San Onofre.

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Potentially, the waste could be moved to a more permanent storage facility under development in New Mexico or to the grounds of another nuclear plant in Arizona co-owned by Edison.

San Diego attorney Maria Severson, one of the lawyers who sued Edison over its plan bury the waste in San Diego County, said the equipment failure should be the first order of business for the newly installed panel of experts.

This issue is one that we hope will be the first taken up by the expert team we assembled, she said Friday. It would seem rational in the context of moving it. It seems like they need to assess what happened to assure that it doesnt happen again.

The canisters being used at San Onofre were designed and built by Holtec International of New Jersey.

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The company apparently altered the design midway through the fabrication process. Forty-three of the 73 canisters feature an amended shim-basket element, which is designed to support spent fuel assemblies for improved storage and transport.

Holtec issued a statement Friday saying that a loose bolt was found broken off at the bottom of a canister. The company is investigating what happened and checking if other canisters might be vulnerable to the same weakness that caused the bolt to break.

Analyses demonstrate that the separation of the bolt does not impact the safety of the basket or the performance of the dry storage system in storage or transportation, Holtec project manager Fred Bidrawn wrote.

Edison said it will continue the fuel-transfer project using the balance of canisters that do not feature the altered shims.

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The remaining canisters with the new design are on hold until Holtec completes its root cause evaluation, Edison said.

Not everyone was bothered to learn of the equipment failure.

David Victor, the University of California San Diego professor of international relations who chairs the community engagement panel, said he is comfortable with Edisons handling of the problem and the process is working as intended.

I am encouraged that Edison shared this news with the (panel) in real time and will be sharing updates, Victor said by email Friday. The key thing right now is a thorough analysis of whether this affects in any way the safety of the canisters that used this design that were already loaded with spent fuel.

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Glitches happen with all sorts of new technologies, Victor said.

This is the nature of technology -- that improvements in design come with unexpected side-effects, he said. And what is key to making defense-in-depth a reality at San Onofre is vigilance around how the technologies actually perform in practice.

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Watchdog Videos On Now Sexual misconduct accusers worry deputy is being protected 6:16 On Now City funded $2-million waterfront bathroom 1:26 On Now Public water district charges customer for legal work, response to records request On Now Video: Tiny homes won't be reused amid housing, homeless crisis On Now Attorney General seeks documentation for Miss Middle East On Now Rep. Hunter probe covers possible fraud On Now Video: SDG&E delaying solar credit for some low-income housing tenants On Now Video: Former San Diego Junior Theatre teacher sentenced for sex with teen girl 0:24 On Now Video: Shelter volunteers believe they were fired for finding a dog a home 0:49 On Now McKamey Manor is leaving San Diego 3:35

jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1708 @sdutMcDonaldSan Diego officials say that since 17 people were killed in the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, San Diego school police officers have investigated about 50 threats of campus violence. Thats nearly two every school day between then and now.

One threat, at La Jolla High School, led to a 60 percent drop in attendance. All of them led to 125 hours of overtime for school police investigations.



For the record: An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly said the La Jolla High School threat alone resulted in 125 hours of school police overtime.

Meanwhile, the San Diego County District Attorneys Office has reviewed 26 school threats since Valentines Day, shattering the rate that was in place before Feb. 14 of 45 cases over the four years since the office created a special unit to assess school violence. None of the new threats were deemed valid, but 11 juveniles face criminal charges.

These are all indications that students, parents and school staff may be as fearful of school shootings as at any other time in the two decades since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.

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Luckily, school officials are taking heightened fears seriously. Last week, the San Diego school board fast-tracked $15 million of already approved safety upgrades at about 180 school campuses. The new upgrades include improvements in perimeter fencing, gates, security cameras, door locks, reconfigured points of entry and public address systems.

On Saturday, the Florida shooting survivors expect to be joined by hundreds of thousands of supporters for their March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of related rallies against gun violence are planned worldwide, including three locally. If the Florida tragedy has fueled fears at far too many campuses, the students unrelenting advocacy is also increasing safety in San Diego and elsewhere.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

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Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & OpinionRe Difficult storage center vote one of many (March 22): I too commend the San Diego City Council for its thoughtful vote on creating sorely needed storage centers for those who are homeless while at the same time trying to be responsive to community concerns.

In my work with the homeless, I am aware how sorely needed the storage facilities are. I also am aware of the abuses that some homeless individuals inflict upon neighborhoods and understand how the residents and business owners feel fearful and angry.

Homelessness is a difficult social problem and doesnt have easy solutions. However the more we listen carefully to all sides, the better we can meet everyones needs.

The City Council demonstrated the will to grapple with the issues and come up with a compromise solution.

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Judy Leshefka

Clairemont

Mayor Faulconer, addressing homelessness, said, We tried to please everyone. ... Those days are over.

Not quite. He continues to please everyone except a small part of San Diego: the junction of East Village, Barrio Logan, Sherman Heights and Logan Heights hold more homeless and give services to more homeless people than the rest of the city combined. Its been that way for years.

Yet since December, that is almost the only place the mayor and City Council are placing new and massive homeless services: 500 new shelter beds (70 percent of the new bed total), a $7 million navigation center for hundreds of homeless and new storage facilities for 500 (forcing this area to hold 100 percent of the homeless storage facilities).

Continuing to gang up on this area mollifies and pleases constituents in most council districts, which the mayor exploits.

Thats daring leadership?

John Auther

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Logan Heights

San Diegos City Council members voted 8 to 1 in favor of a storage facility for 500 homeless to store their possessions next to a school for children.

I wonder what the vote would have been if someone had applied to open a gun store at the same location.

Gary Faunce

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Spring Valley

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.

Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.The topics of water, farm labor, and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) dominated presentations at Indivisible Ramonas second community meeting to discuss issues of importance to San Diego County.

Speakers at the meeting held in the Ramona Library Community Room included Luawanna Hallstrom, involved with California agriculture for more than 25 years, and Warren Bacon, retired agriculture standards inspector for Agriculture Weights and Measures in San Diego County.

Democratic candidate for Congress Ammar Campa and Republican candidate Shamus Sayed also offered their comments.

The title of Hallstroms presentation was The Farming Community: Immigration, Labor and the Changing Faces of Agriculture.

Luawanna Hallstrom focuses on farm labor and immigration in her presentation at the Indivisible Ramona event. (Joyce Strand )

To understand the changes required for agriculture, Hallstrom said the community must first understand the needs and challenges. In a survey, farm labor remains within the top four issues. Less than 2 percent of the population feeds 100 percent of the population. The U.S. agriculture work force makes up about 2.5 million workers. California has about 500,000 workers with approximately 75 percent foreign born and half unauthorized.

San Diego has the most small farms  fewer than 9 acres  of any county in the country and has the 12th largest farm economy. California farms produce 400 specialty crops, which include two-thirds of the countrys fruits and nuts and one-third of its vegetables.

Although agriculture needs are diverse across the country, whats really important is the stabilization of the workforce through a legal presence  work authorization & assurance that workers families will be OK, said Hallstrom. The 1986 Immigration Reform & Control Act (IRCA) was the last broad reform. Since then, Congress has tried multiple times to offer legislation that attempts to stabilize the workforce, but has not succeeded.

Bacons topic was The Farming Community: Water Runoff and Exports and the Changing Faces of Agriculture.

We all live downstream, he said, noting that runoff from one property can pollute others downstream. The major pollutant is silt or dirt runoff. Best management practices for agriculture storm water includes a map of the property that lays out areas of production, material storage and grade. Most small farmers can create these maps themselves, but regulations require civil engineers to sign off on the plans, which can be a financial burden.

Farmers in the county produce $1.75 billion in crops. They are first in the U.S. with avocados, nursery products and part-time farmers  and are number 1 for women farmers.

In addition, crops go through California, 77.7 percent to Mexico. If NAFTA fails, Mexico  whose middle class is growing  has lined up South American countries to replace what they purchase from the U.S. This could jeopardize $18 billion of agriculture products out of the county, said Bacon.

Democratic Congressional candidate Ammar Campa, Republican candidate Shamus Sayed, agriculture expert Luawanna Hallstrom and retired inspector Warren Bacon. (Joyce Strand )

The Road Ahead: Sustainable Solutions for Agrarian Economies was Sayeds topic. Sayed noted that San Diego County has more small farms than any other county in U.S. agriculture production. The food products from these farms plus food processing provide $2.8 billion to the local economy.

Increased enforcement of immigration laws without reforming the worker visa program could cost America $60 billion in agriculture production, he said. Undocumented labor is approximately $180 billion a year.

NAFTA causes loss of jobs and low salaries for workers, he said. Sayed posed the question: Are these issues local, state or federal?

Campa discussed Water and Workers. In discussions with farmers in San Diego County, Campa said that the themes of water and farm labor emerge as the key issues. Farmers are concerned about the variabilities of climate change. In addition, farm workers need housing and fresh water.

He believes that the U.S. should improve NAFTA and offer trade adjustment assistance. More people are being displaced, he said, adding that only 80 farmers benefited from the recent tax plan.

Above all, he cited the need to align values.

Once weve done that, we can talk about common sense solutions, he said.

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/23/2018 -- Payments Landscape in Portugal:



"Payments Landscape in Portugal: Opportunities and Risks to 2021", report provides detailed analysis of market trends in Portuguese cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including cash, credit transfers, direct debit, payment cards, and cheques during the review-period (2013-17e).



The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry, and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, transaction values and volumes during the review-period and over the forecast-period (2017-21f). It also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including the market shares of issuers and schemes.



Request a Sample Report @ https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2989126-payments-landscape-in-portugal-opportunities-and-risks-to-2021







Key Player cove in report:



Multibanco



Caixa Geral de Depositos



Millennium bcp



Novo Banco



Banco BPI



Santander Totta



WiZink



Visa



Mastercard



American Express



Major Highlight of the report:



To promote electronic payments and reduce dependence on cash, in August 2017 the Portuguese government restricted the amount of cash per transaction to 3,000 ($3,599.60) for residents, while for non-residents the limit is 10,000 ($11,998.60).



The government has also mandated personal income tax payments over 1,000 ($1,199.90) to be made via bank transfer, cheque, or direct debit. Failure to do so incurs a fine of between 180-4,500 ($216-5,399) per transaction.



The government is fostering the growth of digital channels within the banking industry. In July 2017, the central bank issued regulations enabling institutions with headquarters or branches in Portugal to allow customers to open accounts exclusively through digital channels, in a move to remain in line with European peers.



Previously, bank accounts could only be opened at bank branches in the physical presence of the applicant.



Consequently several banks such as Novo Banco, Millennium bcp, and Santander now allow consumers to open bank accounts through digital channels.



Rising unemployment has forced consumers to default on payments, resulting in high debt during the review period.



Amid increasing debt and decreasing profitability, banks were forced to shut down their operations, which eventually triggered mergers and acquisitions in the banking sector.



Banco do Brasil shut down its retail business in Portugal in September 2017, and transferred its existing accounts to Banco CTT.



Previously, in November 2016 Barclays sold Portugal's Barclaycard consumer payments business to WiZink Bank. Likewise, Banco Santander Totta acquired Banco Banif in December 2015.



Continued.



For Detailed Reading Please visit @ https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/2989126-payments-landscape-in-portugal-opportunities-and-risks-to-2021



About Wise Guy Reports

Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.



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Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Enjoying sauna with a friend in Finland (Photo credit: Harri Tarvainen/ Visit Finland)





My experiences in a nude sauna in Finland

Typically you would go for a swim in the open, we instead went to the pool (Photo credit: Eetu Ahanen/ Visit Finland)

Culture of sauna in Finland

A sauna get-together, clothes only for the shoot (Photo credit: Harri Tarvainen/ Visit Finland)

Why naked sauna?

This is a question thats often asked by people from other countries where sauna is common, but its never nude, including India. Ive been to a sauna in India numerous occasions but never without a towel around my waist.

Why is being naked important? (Image credit: Ville Hyvonen)

So why do Fins (and Germans and Russians, among others) prefer nude sauna?

The Sauna ritual

Whipping with birch (Photo credit: Visit Finland)

The fire in the sauna (Photo credit: Elina Sirparanta/ Visit Finland)

This to to throw water on stone and create steam (Photo credit: Harri Tarvainen/ Visit Finland)

Jump straight into a cold pond, or a cold shower (Photo credit: Harri Tarvainen/ Visit Finland)

Saunas across Finland!

Well, that's an impossible question to answer. There are so many designs and almost all of them are unique. Here are some of the more interesting ones - if you end up going to Finland, make sure you try one of these :)

Snow sauna, my favorite type (Photo credit: Harri Tarvainen/ Visit Finland)

In the wild (Photo credit: Anne Saarinen/ Visit Finland)

Sauna in Helsinki (Photo credit: Eero Ahanen,/Visit Finland)

Can the setting get any more beautiful? (Photo credit: Visit Finland)

Mobile sauna (Photo credit: Visit Finland)

Sauna in the forest (Photo credit: Saara Kostama/ Visit Finland)

A modern sauna (Photo credit: Pekka Keranen / Visit Helsinki , Visit Finland)





are a place of physical and mental cleansing and they are almost held sacred by almost all Fins. The saunas can be mixed or gender-based, yet they have absolutely no connection to anything sexual. It's also a place where the entire community meets and interacts, and people of all age groups, except newborns and people with serious illness, visit them.Steve opened the door with his right hand and peeked in first a little, while doing his best to cover his manhood with the other. He saw me and we smiled; he embarrassingly admitted that he had never been to a nude sauna before and hence the hesitation. This was a complete role reversal from me - my visit to an unexpectedleft me mortified beyond my wits, though I eventually did come to accept it as normal.So you really cant cover yourself at all in theere?Hmmm...well, you will certainly be the odd one out if you do. But why dont you get the towel to put underneath. It will save your bums from burning, I said with a smile. I tried to make it a bit funny to make him more comfortable.Over the next hour or so we sat together, threw water occasionally on the stones to maintain humidity, and chatted about our countries. Its certainly very odd to think now, but we eventually also became comfortable sitting naked next to each other. Steve lived in London and was visiting Finland to ski, and was very surprised to learn that I was an Indian. He also mentioned how saunas in UK are never nude and how just like me, even he had to overcome inhibitions to give it a shot. I was not surprised at all.We talked about India, a bit about Englands history as a colonial power and I learnt something else again - they dont actually study much about their countrys dark past in India and other parts of the world. Of course we let bygones by bygone and discussed more about today.We also took turns taking a couple of cold showers during the session, something I had a much harder time doing. I must confess that during the second round I cheated and took a shower with luke warm water instead.Men who do sauna together also dress up together, but we actually decided instead to go for a swim. Unlike sauna you are expected to wear swimming trunks and I think both of us were relieved to be not strutting around in the buff.Later I caught up with my friends over drinks. Why didnt my friends join me for sauna? Well all of them were women and I guess a little more prude than me. I also think that guys dont quite care about being naked in each others company. But I didn't quite explore this question more, or discussed about my story.Anyway, we had some chilled local beer in a warm bar and I reached the conclusion that Northern Lights were just a myth built to fleece gullible tourists! Of course thats not true (I saw some recently on a trip to Norway), but its still a running joke between me and my traveller friend Archana :)Anyway coming back to sauna in Finland, the two are very closely linked. In fact the term sauna as well as the concept of sauna was actually first invented in Finland.Today its a part of life and an almost everyday ritual, especially during winters. All the hotels have a sauna and its typically free to use for the guests. Most Fins also have a sauna inside their house or a common one in their apartment for use.Friends meet, drink beer and talk about their days. Just like how I meet my friends here over Old Monk, just that its all in the buff. Even though Ive gone skinny dipping with my friends in Diu, this isnt something anyone of us would be comfortable with. But I guess its completely cultural, the Fins grow up living this lifestyle and so there ar clearly no inhibitions to see your friends naked. In fact they would have seen their friends make their physical transition all the way to adulthood, something that we dont even discuss with friends.Coming back to Finland, its not at all uncommon for office colleagues to meet in a sauna to discuss work and make important business decisions. In fact if you are an outsider, and invited to join in for a sauna session, it means youve been accepted in the inner circle and you must absolutely not refuse the invitation.Well, its everything to do with hygiene. You clean yourself thoroughly in a sauna and if you wear undergarments you will never be able to clean those regions at all. Also, if you follow the steps, by the time you leave the sauna you will be cleaner than ever before. Germs often grow in wet clothes, and that's another reason to not wear wet clothes while taking a sauna. Swimming suits are also a no-no because often the chloride which is used for keeping the swimming pools clean is left in these suits, and when it evaporates in the heated sauna, the air isn't so good for you.I am not a nudist by any means, but being completely naked in a sauna feels absolutely great and not at all uncomfortable. Humans were created naked and that's how we lived with fellow humans for thousands of years, before we decided to cover up and become more 'decent'. Being naked in company of fellow humans is primal and very natural state of being.Well, sauna is almost like religion in Finland and often there is also a ritual to it, of course, with some modifications based on where you do it.You would typically start with a shower before you enter the sauna. It's a good idea to grab a towel - not to wear it but put in under your butts to save them from burning!While you are in there, there are two rather interesting customs.is a birch stick and whipping with one is considered an essential part of the experience. You can do it yourself, but it's better if you have a friend who can do it for you, and then you can take turns. Of course, it's a given that you need to be completely comfortable naked for your friend to do it on you.The second one is calledand is the process of throwing water on the stones to keep the sauna humid and comfortable.You can also take a bottle of beer or other alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks with you inside the sauna. Make sure you check the rules and follow them.It's also part of the ritual to take breaks from the hot sauna room and jump outside into an ice-cold pond. If you are not in nature, a cold shower will also do!The export of Armenian products by the US privileged regime will again be possible after extension of the Generalized System of Preferences by the Congress, Hovhannes Azizyan  Armenias deputy minister of economic development and investments said.

March 24, 2018, 11:52 Armenia waits for extension of US GSP trade program

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 24, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS:The deputy ministers delegation recently participated in the second session of the Armenia-US Council on Trade and Investments in Washington D.C..

He informed that after the extension of this program the economic entities, who have made additional expenditures, will be compensated. The US GSP program doesnt operate for all countries at this stage. The Congress is going to adopt a decision to extend it in the near future. And the companies, which during this period imported goods and paid high customs duties than envisaged within the GSP framework, will receive back their money after the adoption of the decision by the US Congress, the official said, adding that they hope the system will continue operating and the exporters will not face any problems.

Commenting on the added 10% customs duty on import of US aluminum foil, the deputy minister said here as well there are some regulation mechanisms. As the aluminum foil is one of our exported products, we have also discussed this issue. We were informed that a special procedure has already been set and transferred to the Armenian side within the frames of the session. According to the procedure, the companies importing from the American side can apply and, in case of explaining the necessity to import that product at a lower customs duty, may receive a privilege, and the additional 10% customs duty will not be charged, he said.

The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) is a US trade program designed to promote economic growth in the developing world by providing preferential duty-free entry for up to 4,800 3451 products from 129 designated beneficiary countries, including Armenia.'I'm writing this letter after the Telugu Desam Party's decision to quit the NDA family. This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns,' Shah wrote.

: Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah writes to Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on his decision to withdraw from the National Democratic Alliance.

'Andhra Pradesh figures very prominently on our agenda of national development and it is widely known that the Union government led by the Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has left no stone unturned in ensuring the growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh.

'You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in the Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both the states,' Shah wrote to Naidu.

Shah also didn't miss accusing the Congress of 'ignoring Telugu people'.

'Since the discussion of bifurcating united Andhra Pradesh till the present, it is the BJP that has led the voice of safeguarding the welfare of Telugu people in both the Telugu states.

'This is in direct contrast to the Congress party, which not only mismanaged the bifurcation but also showed zero sensitivity towards the Telugu people, which is in line with their historic apathy to the Telugu community,' he wrote.Lucknow : In a photo-finish to the keenly watched Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday took a sweet revenge on the opposition by ensuring victory of all its nine candidates, days after it lost two crucial seats in the Lok Sabha bypolls in the state.

The remaining seat went to the Samajwadi Party in the polls marred by cross-voting from both the sides, which led to the defeat of the Bahujan Samajwadi Party candidate in the prestigeous battle of ballots, touted as a test for the new-found bonhomie between the parties headed by Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati.

Besides BJP's prominent winner Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, others who made it to the Upper House of Parliament from the party are Ashok Bajpai, Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, Sakal Deep Rajbhar, Kanta Kardam, Anil Jain, Harnath Singh Yadav, GVL Narasimha Rao and ninth candidate Anil Kumar Agarwal, who pulled off a surpise win with the help of second preference votes.

Other candidates, including SP's actor-turned- politician Jaya Bachchan won with the help of first preference votes.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told media persons that the BJP's victory in all the nine seats it contested exposed the "opportunistic face" of the SP.

"The people of the state have seen the opportunistic face of the SP. It can take votes but not give votes in return," he said, a reference to the SP's victory with the help of BSP votes in the recent Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.

The chief minister said the SP's "opportunistic character" was not new and that "the people of the state have seen it over the years".

Adityanath said it was time to be careful to avoid falling into a deep pit in the future.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, who was BJP's central observer, said with more BJP members in the Rajya Sabha, the government would be able to ensure passage of bills in the Upper House, where the National Democratic Alliance does not enjoy a majority.

Counting of votes began after a two-hour delay as the opposition SP and BSP lodged a complaint with the Election Commission.

The opposition parties moved the poll panel against two MLAs who are believed to have cross-voted.

"We have given a written complaint to the EC that our MLA Anil Singh did not show his vote to the election agent of the party before casting it and we are awaiting a reply from the EC in this regard," Deputy leader of the BSP in the assembly Uma Shankar Singh said.

The SP also lodged a similar complaint with regard to MLA Nitin Agarwal, who had switched sides after his father quit the party and joined the BJP recently.

"Nitin Agarwal cast his vote without showing it to the election agent and we have demanded the cancellation of his vote," SP MLC Sunil Singh Sajan said.

With one BSP MLA believed to have cross-voted and two others in jail being denied permission to vote in the polls, the opposition faced a challenge of numbers to ensure victory for their second candidate.

While the ruling BJP was sure of bagging eight of the 10 seats, the SP fielded Jaya Bachchan and the BSP Bhimrao Ambedkar for the remaining two seats.

As the parties totted up the numbers, BSP MLA Anil Singh indicated that he had cross-voted in favour of the BJP, saying "I am with Maharaj-ji", a reference to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

The Allahabad high court had denied permission to BSP's Mukhtar Ansari, currently lodged in Banda jail, to vote in the polls. And a court in Firozabad had rejected a petition by SP MLA Hariom Yadav, who is in Firozabad jail.

The opposition banked heavily on the votes of two independents -- Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya and his close associate and MLA Vinod Saroj.

Raja Bhaiya, who has had a rocky relationship with BSP chief Mayawati, had tweeted this morning that he was with "Akhilesh ji" and specified that it did not mean that he was with the BSP.

The BSP did not take an adverse view of Raja Bhaiya's comment. "... had he had any reservations he would have said openly," said Uma Shankar Singh.

He added that he could not be sure that Anil Singh had voted for the BSP candidate.

Adding a tinge of surprise, Raja Bhaiya later met the chief minister, leaving political analysts wondering as to why he met Adityanath.

"I discussed issues pertaining to my constituency (Kunda). Every MLA has the right to discussed matters related to his or her constituency with the chief minister," he said.

Keeping it ambiguous, Anil Singh said that he had cast his vote and showed it to BSP agent Lalji Verma and the rest could be known from him.

"I have cast my vote after showing it to Lalji Verma and he will tell you the details...I am with Maharaj-ji," he said after voting at the Tilak Hall in the Assembly complex.

According to Uma Shankar Singh, 17 MLAs of the total 19 BSP legislators had cast their votes by midday and shown them to Verma. The BSP leader exuded confidence that all the nine surplus MLAs of the SP as well as seven of the Congress and one of the RLD have voted in favour of his party candidate.

"All the seven Congress MLAs went together to vote, while the SP has given us a list of their loyal MLAs," Uma Shankar Singh said.

Independent MLA Aman Mani Tripathi also said he was with "Maharaj ji" and would vote for the BJP.

There were 11 candidates for the 10 Rajya Sabha seats and 37 first preference votes were required for victory in each seat.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The Staten island Zoo is known to be the home of a plethora of wondrous animals, but there seems to have been an influx of rabbits Saturday... or at least kids with rabbit ears.

The Staten Island Zoo held its EGGstravagant Feast with the Bunny, which featured both a breakfast portion at 9:30 a.m. and a separate lunch portion at 1 p.m. Both sessions featured great food, live music for the kids courtesy of Patrick Raftery, a hilarious and talented Staten Island musician and a regular entertainer at the Zoo's events, and a chance to get a photo with the Easter Bunny himself.

Some of the Zoo's animals even made an appearance, including the adorable Waffles the sloth.

After the food was the Easter egg hunt, where kids foraged for sweets through the African and tropical wings of the Zoo.

Kerry Gallagher, education director of the Staten Island Zoo, says that this feast always draws huge crowds, with Saturday's celebrations in particular drawing around 150 people for both the breakfast and lunch spots.

"I think what makes it so successful is that it's early," she said. "People come here and have fun and still have their whole day ahead of them."

Parents, unsurprisingly, agree. Many expressed their happiness with what events like this mean for their blooming families of young children, and the good weather only made things more enjoyable.

"It's good to get the families together," said Steven Smith, motioning toward his brother Larry, who also brought his family. "It keeps our kids in the same category."

Since we're on the subject, let's take a look at all the upcoming opportunities to don your rabbit ears and head out for your fill of Easter festivities!

-NEW DORP MORAVIAN EGG HUNT: 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday, March 31, New Dorp Moravian Church, 2205 Richmond Road, New Dorp.

This beloved mainstay gathering is back for another round! Bring your own basket and some cookies to share with your hunting partners for next Saturday's event.

Tickets need to be bought in advance at the church office during their hours on Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., which go for $6 each. There's only 130 tickets per hunt, and they go quick!

The hunt is billed for children from ages 1-10, and unlike usual, this time it's shine only. If the weather goes south, the church will let you know what you can do for a refund. Call them at 718-351-0090 for more info and visit their website for all the details you could shake your tail at.

-HISTORIC EASTER EGG HUNT: 11 a.m. Saturday, March 31, Historic Richmondtown, 411 Clarke Ave., Richmond.

It's time to get Victorian! Bring an egg carton (minus the eggs) to decorate, and you'll be using it to carry your quarry of up to six candy-filled eggs. You can even meet Easter Bunny himself.

Refreshments will be served. The hunt is best for kids 3 and up, and tickets are $12 for kids, $6 for the grown-ups. Call 718-351-1611 for more info or visit Historic Richmondtown's website to get your tickets.

-EASTER EGGSTRAVAGANZA: 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, March 31, Willowbrook Park Baptist Church, 1780 Richmond Ave., Bulls Head.

This is gonna be a big one! Given the incredible turnout last time, the church is stepping up its efforts to bring you one for the books. The Easter Bunny will be hopping around while your kids will be hopping in the bouncy house, along with face painters, door prizes, and more.

Here's the kicker: the egg hunt will feature...get this...10,000 EGGS! No, you didn't misread that. They'll be strewn across three fields divided by age groups with a new round of hunting every 20 minutes. You can find it all behind the church, with signs in the church yard directing you where to go. Bring your own basket and join the fun!

-BEEPING EGG HUNT: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Thursday, April 5, Commons Cafe, 2 Teleport Drive, Bloomfield.

Now here's a feat worthy of a golden egg. Katherine Garlisi, a Girl Scout cadette from Troop 5278, has been working alongisde Holly Bonner, director of accessibility services for City Access New York (CANY), to start the first ever Beeping Egg Hunt. This special twist to the formula was done to help those with impared sight or blindness use their ears to hunt for Easter Eggs, allowing them to participate in the fun in their own way.

Garlisi joined up with Bonner, who was already in the process of working on this event, in order to earn her Silver Award, the second-highest commendation a Girl Scout can achieve.

"A Silver Award project is meant to give you a chance to do big things and make your community better in the process," said Garlisi.

Nearly 1,000 eggs encasing a battery powered beeper will be put in play, and the duo is recieving some help in the form of Garlisi's fellow Girl Scouts and members of the St. Joseph by-the-Sea Pay-It-Forward Club. If you know someone who is visually impared who'd love to be a part of this, Bonner and Garlisi would love to put a smile on their faces!

KEEP US IN THE LOOP: We're still on the hunt for more hunts! If you know of an upcoming Easter event that we've missed, send the details to vcaputo@siadvance.com or lay it out in the comments.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - We've got a big enough problem with people shooting up heroin on Staten Island and across New York. We don't need to city to give them a clean, well-lighted place to do it.

But that's exactly where it looks like the city is going.

AP photo

Health Commissioner Mary Barrett the other day told the City Council's Health Committee that she backs the sites, saying that the "public health literature is clear" on their effectiveness.

City Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan), chairman of the committee, backs the concept as well, saying it was "imperative" that the city move forward, despite expected legal challenges.

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A city study on the question is still to come, but it's easy to see where all this is headed. So get ready.

We're in the middle of an opioid epidemic, driven by the use of heroin and ever-deadlier fentanyl. We want to stop people from using heroin. So let's give them a safe environment to do it. Hard to imagine a more backward concept.

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Here's how it would work: Addicts would be able to come to city-run facilities with pre-obtained drugs and inject them under the supervision of health professionals. Proponents say that such an approach reduces overdose deaths.

The fact that the addicts would be bringing illegally purchased drugs into a city facility is obviously something that's going to be overlooked. After all, this isn't about law enforcement. And we know that what constitutes a "crime" is sometimes based on how you classify an incident and who the alleged perpetrator is.

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Why doesn't the city just look to provide the drugs as well? After all, we want to make it safe and hygienic for the addicts. It's not hard to see the city heading down that road. In Vancouver's injection sites, addicts are offered a prescription form of heroin.

And why should the city stop at injectable drugs? How about a safe place to smoke meth? Or to snort coke? Or to trip on acid? There's no end to the public service that the city can provide with this model.

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Some people could be saved through this method, but it's clearly no dis-incentive for addicts to put the needle down for good. And it gives the city a chance to create a whole new "health care" infrastructure, which means more jobs and more funding. And more votes for the officials who created the system in the first place.

Because what's the message that this sends to addicts? Shoot up as much as you like, but don't worry, we'll save you. Think of how far this could go toward creating a permanent class of people who are high all the time thanks to government enabling. Will they get the message that drugs are destroying them? Or will they just be permitted to bop along until their luck runs out?

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Here's the bottom line: Living through a heroin overdose isn't the end of the battle. Getting clean is. Encouraging people to keep using heroin in a safe environment is not the way to do it unless some kind of mandatory treatment comes along with the free place to shoot up. But when you read about these sites in Canada or elsewhere in the world, the treatment aspect definitely seems to be a secondary consideration.

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Never mind the potential that such facilities have to become sites of illegal drug activity. Because where do the drug dealers go? They go where the users are. And now the pushers will know exactly where to find their clients. So let's make a good neighborhood into a seedy one, or a seedier neighborhood into a worse one.

Maybe Barrett would like the first such facility to be in her neighborhood. The second one can go in Levine's. A third can go in Mayor Bill de Blasio's neighborhood of Park Slope if the mayor gives the green light for the program. Because if they really believe this is the way to go, they should put their money where their mouths are.

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Let's spend money on treatment. Or drug interdiction. Or more anti-drug counseling in schools. Not on the modern-day equivalent of opium dens.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The landscape of Staten Island is shifting -- quite literally -- from the development of St. George to new businesses and housing on the South Shore.

Local community boards give residents an opportunity to offer input in the decision-making process for many of these long-term projects.

Community Board meetings are open to the public and afford a great way to learn more about what's going on in your neighborhood and to get involved.

If you have something you would like to speak out about, all you need to do is sign up -- before the meeting is called to order -- to speak in the public session.

The following meetings are scheduled for the week of March 26 to Mar. 30.

COMMUNITY BOARD 1

Arlington - Castleton Corners - Clifton - Concord - Elm Park - Fort Wadsworth - Graniteville - Grymes Hill - Livingston - Mariners Harbor - New Brighton - Port Richmond - Randall Manor - Rosebank - St. George - Shore Acres - Silver Lake - Stapleton - Sunnyside - Tompkinsville - West Brighton - Westerleigh

There are no Community Board 1 meetings scheduled for the week of March 26.

The board office is located at 1 Edgewater Plaza, Suite 217, Stapleton. The office phone number is 718-981-6900. The board chairman is Nicholas Siclari; the district manager is Joseph Carroll.

COMMUNITY BOARD 2

Arrochar - Bloomfield - Bulls Heads - Chelsea - Dongan Hills - Egbertville - Emerson Hill - Grant City - Grasmere - High Rock - Lighthouse Hill - Midland Beach - New Dorp - New Springville - Oakwood - Ocean Breeze - Old Town - Richmond - South Beach - Todt Hill - Travis

There are no Community Board 2 meetings scheduled for the week of March 26.

All committee and full board meetings are in the board office, which is located in the Lou Caravone Community Service Building on the campus of Sea View Hospital Rehabilitation Center and Home, 460 Brielle Ave., Sea View. The office phone number is 718-317-3235. The chairman of the CB 2 board is Dana T. Magee; the district manager is Debra A. Derrico.

COMMUNITY BOARD 3

Annadale - Arden Heights - Bay Terrace - Charleston - Eltingville - Great Kills - Greenridge - Huguenot - New Dorp - Oakwood - Pleasant Plains - Prince's Bay - Richmond Valley - Richmond - Rossville - Tottenville - Woodrow

There will be a General Board Meeting on Tuesday, March 27, at 7:30 p.m. at United Woodrow Methodist Church, 1075 Woodrow Road.

All committee meetings take place at the Community Board 3 office, located on the second floor of 1243 Woodrow Rd. All general board meetings take place at the Woodrow Methodist Church Hall located at 1075 Woodrow Rd. The office phone number is 718-356-7900. The CB 3 board chairman is Frank Morano; the district manager is Charlene Wagner.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- One Staten Island mom knows the sobering pain of losing a child to senseless gun violence.

Diana Alvarado of Mariners Harbor lost her 18-year-old daughter, Samantha Guzman, during a shooting in the Bronx on Mother's Day in 2006.

The teen was shot twice in a hail of bullets, and died two hours later at Lincoln Hospital, according to Advance records.

"It has a special meaning for me today," said Alvarado, who joined dozens of Staten Islanders for a prayer service to end gun violence. "It's time to start saving our children."

Approximately 50 people, including students, interfaith leaders, clergy and borough residents, held an anti-gun rally at Borough Hall in St. George Saturday morning before heading to the "March of Our Lives" in Manhattan.

A contingent of Staten Islanders was also heading to Washington, D.C., for the march in the nation's capital.

The rallies are in response to the 17 people killed last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Many held colorful signs that read "Ban assault rifles" and "Enough with the thoughts and prayers."

"I wish I didn't have to be here," said a New Dorp student who read the names of the 17 victims.

"We need to ban all assault rifles," said a New Dorp resident. "I think it's wonderful students are leading the change. They are every inspiring."

Many of Staten Island religious leaders, including. Rev. Karen Jackson of Project Hospitality and Bishop John O'Hara, spoke about the need for government interventions on gun laws and to remember the Florida victims.

"We stand in solidarity with the students in Parkland who have had enough of gun violence," Rev. Jackson said. "We're asking assault rifles be banned and for politicians to step up with more than thoughts and prayers."

"Young people are creating the environment for change, and want to thank them for converting prayer into action," said Bishop O'Hara, episcopal vicar of both Staten Island and southern Manhattan.

During the prayers, the crowd shouted "we will be triumphant" and "never again"

The group ended the gathering with a rousing rendition of "Down by the Riverside" before heading to the Staten Island Ferry to catch the boat to Manhattan.

"Let's march," they chanted.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Staten Islanders are heading to the country's capital Saturday to join in the "March for Our Lives" rally to demand an end to gun violence in the country.



The rally was planned just days after a former student opened fire and killed 17 people on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.



In response, the young survivors and students across the country are asking elected officials to pass gun control laws.

Scores of borough residents gathered at Borough Hall in St. George before dawn to rally, then board buses to Washington, D.C.

Here is a look at how their morning unfolded:

12:40 p.m. -- Thousands marching across the country

The Staten Island contingent has been at the march for about an hour, and are listening to speakers.

The scene at the White House, via Associated Press:

Bearing signs reading "We Are the Change," ''No More Silence" and "Keep NRA Money Out of Politics," protesters lined Pennsylvania Avenue from the stage near the Capitol, stretching back toward the White House. The route also takes in the Trump International Hotel.

Large rallies also unfolded in such cities as Boston; New York; Chicago; Houston; Fort Worth, Texas; Minneapolis; and Parkland, Fla., the site of the Feb. 14 attack.

12:30 p.m. -- Standing behind our children

"This is about all you young people," said Bobby Digi of the Staten Island Democratic Association, who attended the rally with his sons. "Once the young people stand, we as adults must stand behind them."

11:30 a.m. -- Shuttling to subway

Participants from Staten Island have gotten off their buses. They are currently on a shuttle to the subway.

10:45 a.m. -- Waiting to park

The four buses that left from St. George have arrived in Washington and are waiting in a long line of coach buses from around the country to park at RFK Stadium.

10 a.m. -- A quiet setting on bus

Staten Islanders catch up on naps aboard the D.C.-bound bus Number 2.



Only a light snore and the squeaking of seats as the bus wheels glide over the paved road can be heard.



Students get excited over spotting horses out the window.

9:30 a.m. -- Arriving shortly



As the buses pull out of the rest stop, a group photo is taken and the estimated arrival time is announced, 10:30 a.m.

9 a.m. -- A rest stop, and a refresher on D.C. subways

More than halfway there, the four buses roll into a rest stop off I-95, so participants get to use the bathroom and walk outside.



Chet Cutick, a former teacher at Susan Wagner High School, jokes with two students. Cutick, who spoke at Borough Hall earlier, advises the bus passengers on the D.C. subway system and how card fare works based off distance traveled.



As much as New Yorkers complain about the MTA, he said, we actually have got it made.

6:20 -- Participants board buses

Organizers group rally participants onto four buses to make the journey to D.C.



The Staten Island participants bring signs and boxed lunches onto the warm buses. The drive is about four hours.

The borough contingent numbers about 200, organizers say. The group consists of mainly teenagers and political activist groups on the borough.



5:30 a.m. -- 17 photos for Parkland victims



Community leaders, parents, teachers and high school students stand on the steps of Borough Hall and remember the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting.



Seventeen Staten Islanders hold indvidual photos of each person who lost their life in the Valentine's Day massacre, and read words of loved ones describing who they were.



"Enough is enough" is chanted by the crowd as speakers say they march for the people who cannot.



As Lorie Honor, leader of Staten Island Women Who March, read about 14-year-old Gina Montalto who died in Parkland, her voice broke.



"It's just so normal," Honor said. "She was in the marching band."



After each victim was remembered, organizer Lindy Crescitelli turned to student activist John Papanier, of Wagner High School, and asked him when he was turning 18.



He handed him a voter registration form with the advice to march to the voting polls in November.



5 a.m. -- An early morning gathering in St. George

People from across the borough braved the early morning hours Saturday and gathered at Borough Hall in St.George for a pre-dawn rally.



Many high school students, as well as parents and their sons and daughters, woke before the sun is up to stand together before heading to Washington.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Rev. Louis Jerome, the pastor of St. Charles R.C. Church in Oakwood, called the recent theft of the church's donation box "regrettable."

Peter Depaola, 49, a homeless man, faces petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property charges in connection with two thefts from the parish this month, the most recent occurring during the winter storm this week.

"After the mass on Wednesday, a lady remained afterward to pray in the church," Father Jerome said, "and she saw this man ruffling around the bookstand and the candles."

"She went to investigate and saw him tampering with things, so she came to the rectory and told us, and that's when we called the police," Father Jerome said.

Depaola walked into the church and to the lobby collection box, where he then exposed the rear of the box where the money is stored, according to allegations in the criminal complaint.

After his arrest, Depaola later identified himself in a surveillance video and stated, "This is me taking from the church," according to the criminal complaint.

The pastor noted this wasn't the first time Depaola had been caught stealing from the church.

"We have a camera now, so we saw this fellow on the camera last time," Father Jerome said, referring to a previous donation box theft that Depaola was charged with.

"Several weeks ago, he pilfered a box from the candles, just took it out," Father Jerome said.

The aforementioned incident took place on March 3, when Depaola took the entire collection box from the church, placed it in his bag and fled the scene, according to the criminal complaint.

Again, Depaola, once in custody, allegedly identified himself on surveillance video in relation to this incident.

Depaola accepted a court offer at arraignment and pleaded guilty to petit larceny, according to a spokesman for District Attorney Michael E. McMahon. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and a five-year full order of protection.

For the church, theft is not so uncommon.

According to Father Jerome, the church's new surveillance system "is a response to someone in September who just stole the whole collection one mass."

"We used to put it on the altar, and he just walked out with the box," Father Jerome said.

Father Jerome mentioned that he had seen Depaola in the church before during "a private mass."

He stated that Depaola "was just sitting there and wasn't doing anything bad, so I didn't think of it, but it turns out that was the afternoon he lifted the candle box."

Father Jerome says that the church community is "supportive and understanding" to Depaola's situation.

"He only got 13 dollars," the pastor said. "If he had asked me for the 13 dollars, I would have given him the 13 dollars or help."

"If you need help, the church is always there," Father Jerome commented. "The church is here to help people and be charitable."

"It's an offense to steal," he said. "We would rather you come to us and ask for help and we'd be glad to give it to you."By ALLIE GRIFFIN, MIRA WASSEF

and EDDIE D'ANNA



STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Whether they traveled by bus to Washington, D.C., or by ferry to Manhattan, several hundred Staten Islanders made their voices heard during "March for Our Lives" rallies against gun violence Saturday.

Nationwide, the rallies marked a historic groundswell of youth activism, as hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters took to the streets of the nation's capital and such cities as Boston, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Oakland, California, in the kind of numbers seen during the Vietnam era, sweeping up activists long-frustrated by stalemate in the gun debate and bringing in lots of new, young voices.

About 200 students and community leaders from Staten Island arose before dawn, rallied at Borough Hall in St. George before 6 a.m. and traveled on four buses to Washington to show support for gun control and stopping the increasing occurrence of school shootings.

Susan Wagner High School student John Papanier, who helped organize the trip, said he was proud to be a part of the movement both in D.C. and New York.

"I just looked at all those pictures, it's touching to me," he said.

On the bus ride, he said, "Now I have to register myself to vote, so who has that application?"

"I will vote them out. I'm not afraid to vote them out."

During the pre-dawn rally before the buses departed, community leaders, parents, teachers and high school students stood on the steps of Borough Hall and remembered the 17 victims of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting.

Seventeen Staten Islanders held indvidual photos of each person who lost their life in the Valentine's Day massacre, and read words of loved ones describing who they were.

As Lorie Honor, leader of Staten Island Women Who March, read about 14-year-old Gina Montalto, who died in Parkland, her voice broke.

"It's just so normal," Honor said. "She was in the marching band."

Several hours later, once the original group departed for Washington, a contingent of 50 demonstrators held a second rally at Borough Hall before taking the Staten Island Ferry to the march in Manhattan.

One of the participants was Diana Alvarado of Mariners Harbor, who lost her 18-year-old daughter, Samantha Guzman, during a shooting in the Bronx on Mother's Day in 2006.

The teen was shot twice in a hail of bullets, and died two hours later at Lincoln Hospital, according to Advance records.

"It has a special meaning for me today," said Alvarado. "It's time to start saving our children."

Staten Island religious leaders in attendance, including. Rev. Karen Jackson of Project Hospitality and Bishop John O'Hara, spoke about the need for government interventions on gun laws and to remember the Florida victims.

"We stand in solidarity with the students in Parkland who have had enough of gun violence," Rev. Jackson said. "We're asking assault rifles be banned and for politicians to step up with more than thoughts and prayers."

"Young people are creating the environment for change, and want to thank them for converting prayer into action," said Bishop O'Hara, episcopal vicar of both Staten Island and southern Manhattan.

Nationwide, participants were called to action by a brand-new corps of leaders: Student survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead Feb. 14.

"If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking," Parkland survivor David Hogg said to roars from the protesters packing Pennsylvania Avenue from the stage near the Capitol many blocks back toward the White House. "We're going to take this to every election, to every state and every city. We're going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run, not as politicians but as Americans.

"Because this," he said, pointing behind him to the Capitol dome, "this is not cutting it."

Some of the young voices were very young. Yolanda Renee King, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 9-year-old granddaughter, drew from the civil rights leader's most famous words in declaring from the stage: "I have a dream that enough is enough. That this should be a gun-free world. Period."

The National Rifle Association went silent on Twitter as the protests unfolded, in contrast to its reaction to the nationwide school walkouts against gun violence March 14, when it tweeted a photo of an assault rifle and the message "I'll control my own guns, thank you."

President Donald Trump was in Florida for the weekend and did not weigh in on Twitter either.

White House spokesman Zach Parkinson said: "We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today." He pointed to Trump's efforts to ban bump stocks and his support for school-safety measures and extended background checks for gun purchases.

-- Associated Press material was used in this report.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The idea is to put cash into the tip jar, not take it out.

And now, a Brooklyn teen is in hot water over his alleged light-fingered escapade at a Port Richmond eatery on Tuesday.

Unique Baptiste, 18, of Willmohr Street, snatched about $200 in cash from the tip jar at G-Knows Cheesesteaks at 1310 Forest Ave. at about 8 p.m., then walked out, said a criminal complaint.

Baptiste was charged with misdemeanor counts of petit larceny and stolen-property possession.

Staten Island has seen a rash of tip-jar thefts in recent months.

Dana Williamson, the so-called "tip-jar bandit," is accused in three such incidents - at the Starbucks on Richmond Avenue in New Springville on Jan. 10; M&M Deli and Bagels in Annadale on Jan. 13 and the Hawaii Poke Bowl restaurant in Graniteville on Jan. 16, according to an NYPD spokesman.

Cops allege the Concord resident swiped about $20 from the deli, and unknown amounts from the other two locations.

Williamson, 28, is charged with multiple misdemeanors counts of petit larceny and stolen-property possession, police said.

Those cases are pending in Staten Island Criminal Court where her lawyer, Tamara Giwa, said Williamson's actions have been triggered by "underlying substance-abuse issues."

Williamson is also accused of stealing tip jars at two Manhattan stores in February: The Kung Fu Tea shop in Tribeca and Poketeria on East 36th Street.

Those cases are pending in Manhattan Criminal Court.STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Well, he probably smelled good.

A Meiers Corners man was busted early Tuesday morning in New Springville after cops found him with a backpack containing a cologne bottle, five pairs of sunglasses and another person's pay stub he allegedly stole from several cars.

But the purported purloined booty could be the least of Joseph Mizrachi's problems.

He's also accused of possessing two gravity knives.

The heists occurred around 2 a.m. in the vicinity of Kelly Boulevard and Klondike Avenue, said a criminal complaint.

Mizrachi, 30, of the 100 block of Wellbrook Avenue, was charged with felony and misdemeanor counts of criminal weapon possession.

He's also accused of three misdemeanor counts of stolen-property possession.

The defendant was arraigned on Wednesday in Criminal Court and subsequently posted $1,000 bail, according to online state court and city Correction Department records.

He's due back in court on April 2.

This isn't Mizrachi's first brush with the law.

On Feb. 21, he pleaded guilty in Criminal Court to misdemeanor stolen-property possession stemming from an unrelated incident on Dec. 14, online court records show.

He was sentenced to time served.Top Chinese, US officials to continue trade talks: Xinhua



Beijing, March 24 (AFP) Mar 24, 2018



China's top economic official Liu He spoke by phone with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Saturday and "agreed to continue to communicate" on trade issues, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The call came at a time of heightened tensions after US President Donald Trump on Thursday authorised tariffs on as much as $60 billion of Chinese imports, targeting sectors in which Washington says Beijing has stolen American technology.

Liu He, a Harvard-educated Communist Party official who was elevated on Monday to the key role of vice premier, is expected to oversee China's financial and economic sectors.

On the phone, he accused a US investigation of violating international trade rules and told Mnuchin that Beijing was ready to defend its interests, Xinhua said.

"China is ready to defend its national interests and hopes that both sides will remain rational and work together to safeguard the overall stability of China-US economic and trade relations," Xinhua cited Liu as saying.

China warned the US on Friday that it was "not afraid of a trade war" as it threatened tariffs on $3 billion worth of US goods in retaliation to Trump's new measures.

It unveiled a hit list of products from fresh fruit to pork that could face duties of up to 25 percent, though it stopped short of pulling the trigger as it indicated its readiness to negotiate an agreement.

In August, the US formally launched a trade investigation into China's intellectual property practices and the forced transfer of US technology under Section 301 of US trade law, which addresses intellectual property.Muzzled China feminist group to sue over online censorship



Beijing, March 24 (AFP) Mar 24, 2018



Feminist activists are preparing to sue China's biggest social media platforms for deleting their organisation's account, the group's founder said Saturday.

On March 8, International Women's Day, staffers operating the prolific Feminist Voices account on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform found it had been deleted.

Weibo customer service representatives told them by phone that the account could not be reactivated due to the posting of "sensitive and illegal information", the group's founder Lu Pin told AFP.

The next day, the group's WeChat public account had also disappeared.

The group has run into trouble before on social media, with their accounts being temporarily suspended and individual posts deleted, but "this time they say it's a permanent deletion", Lu said.

Feminist Voices has "already begun legal procedures and is preparing to sue Weibo and Wechat", she said, adding that they have sent letters of complaint to both the government department in charge of the internet and the All-China Women's Federation.

Neither Sina Weibo nor internet giant Tencent, which runs WeChat, responded to requests for comment.

The black-out prompted Lu to pen an open letter to British actress Emma Watson -- "one of the feminist idols held in highest esteem by young Chinese women," she said -- to solicit the celebrity's support.

"We are struggling to reactivate our accounts so that we can continue our work and are asking you to demonstrate your open support for Feminist Voices on Twitter," she wrote in the English-language missive, posted to Twitter Friday.

China's ruling Communist Party runs one of the world's most restrictive online censorship regimes.

Feminist Voices, which established an account on Weibo in 2010, was temporarily blocked by authorities last year after it translated and posted parts of an article by American academics calling for a "general women's strike".

The article in question spoke of the need for "a new wave of militant feminist struggle" against US President Donald Trump's "aggressively misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and racist policies".

The post was deleted and the group's Weibo account suspended for 30 days -- the first instance of a black-out since its founding, with a notice stating they had "violated Chinese laws and regulations".

Feminist Voices has garnered some 250,000 followers since 2010, according to Lu.

rld/amuPentagon looks to counter ever-stealthier warfare



Washington, March 24 (AFP) Mar 24, 2018



The US military has for years enjoyed a broad technological edge over its adversaries, dominating foes with superior communications and cyber capabilities.

Now, thanks to rapid advances by Russia and China, the gap has shrunk, and the Pentagon is looking at how a future conflict with a "near-peer" competitor might play out.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson recently warned that both Russia and China are experimenting with ways to take out the US military's satellites, which form the backbone of America's warfighting machine.

"They know that we are dominant in space, that every mission the military does depends on space, and in a crisis or war they are demonstrating capabilities and developing capabilities to seek to deny us our space assets," Wilson said.

"We're not going to let that happen."

The Pentagon is investing in a new generation of satellites that will provide the military with better accuracy and have better anti-jamming capabilities.

Such technology would help counter the type of "asymmetric" warfare practised by Russia, which combines old-school propaganda with social media offensives and cyber hacks.

Washington has blamed Moscow for numerous cyber attacks, including last year's massive ransomware attack, known as NotPetya, which paralyzed thousands of computers around the world.

US cyber security investigators have also accused the Russian government of a sustained effort to take control of critical US infrastructure systems, including the energy grid.

Russia denies involvement and so far, such attacks have been met with a muted US military response.



- Public relations shutdown -



General John Hyten, who leads US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told lawmakers the US has "not gone nearly far enough" in the cyber domain.

He also warned that the military still does not have clear authorities and rules of engagement for when and how it can conduct offensive cyber ops.

"Cyberspace needs to be looked at as a warfighting domain, and if somebody threatens us in cyberspace, we need to have the authorities to respond," Hyten told lawmakers this week.

Hyten's testimony comes after Admiral Michael Rogers, who heads both the NSA -- the leading US electronic eavesdropping agency -- and the new US Cyber Command, last month said President Donald Trump had not yet ordered his spy chiefs to retaliate against Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

Russia has also been blamed for the March 4 poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in England.

NATO countries are working to determine when a cyber attack might trigger the alliance's Article 5 collective defense provision, General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of NATO forces in Europe, said this month.

NATO "recognizes the difficulty in indirect or asymmetric activity that Russia is practising, activities below the level of conflict," Scaparrotti said.

In 2015, the Air Force opened the highly secretive National Space Defense Center in Colorado, where airmen work to identify potential threats to America's satellite network.

After officials told a local newspaper, The Gazette, that the center had started running on a 24-hour basis, Air Force higher ups grew alarmed that too much information had been revealed.

In an example of how sensitive the issue of cybersecurity now is, the Air Force reacted by putting its entire public operations department on a "stand down" while it reviews how it interacts with journalists.US hostility means Iran must boost China, Russia ties: official



Tehran, March 24 (AFP) Mar 24, 2018



Growing hostility from US President Donald Trump means Iran must strengthen its ties with Russia and China, a top official said on Saturday.

"The use of radical elements hostile to the Islamic Republic shows that the Americans are trying to increase the pressure against Iran," said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs committee.

His comments, carried by the semi-official ISNA news agency, were the first reaction by a senior Iranian official to Trump's appointment of conservative firebrand John Bolton as his national security chief.

That came days after Trump picked hardliner Mike Pompeo as his top diplomat.

The appointments raised fears of US military action against Iran.

Bolton, a former UN ambassador and outspoken supporter of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, opposes a historic 2015 Iran nuclear deal which Trump has threatened to scrap.

Bolton has also championed regime change in Tehran, writing in a 2015 op-ed that "only military action ... can accomplish what is required".

Boroujerdi said that Trump was working "to reassure the Zionists (Israel) and Saudi Arabia".

"We need to strengthen our relations with important countries like China and Russia, which are also subject to US sanctions and face significant challenges from that country," he said.

Boroujerdi said boosting ties with China and Russia, permanent members of the UN Security Council, would "help reduce the impact of US pressure".

Iran has in recent years developed its relations with China and Russia.

Tehran and Moscow are key backers of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, while China is Iran's top trading partner.Hero French policeman dies after jihadist shooting spree



Trebes, France, March 24 (AFP) Mar 24, 2018



A French policeman who offered himself as a hostage to help end what President Emmanuel Macron branded an "Islamist terrorist attack" died of his wounds Saturday, becoming the fourth victim of the shooting spree and supermarket siege.

Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, 45, was among a group of officers who rushed to the scene in the town of Trebes in southwest France on Friday after the attacker, who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group, stormed a supermarket and fired at shoppers and staff.

Beltrame offered to take the place of a woman who was being held as the attacker's final hostage, according to Interior Minister Gerard Collomb.

Gunman Radouane Lakdim, 25, shot and stabbed the policeman before anti-terror officers moved in to kill the attacker and end the siege.

Macron led a flood of tributes to Beltrame, saying he had "died a hero" and deserved "the respect and admiration of the whole nation".

Lakdim killed a total of four people in Trebes and the nearby medieval town of Carcassonne, in France's first major jihadist attack since October.

The Islamic State group claimed the attack was in response to its call to target Western enemies -- as is customary when the assailant has pledged allegiance to the jihadists.

With IS seeking to inspire lone-wolf attacks in its name as its self-proclaimed "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq crumbles, Defence Minister Florence Parly said France would not let up in its pressure on the jihadists.

"The fight against Daesh will continue without relenting," she said in a statement, using another name for IS.

The shootings come as France remains on high alert following a string of deadly attacks that have killed more than 240 people since 2015.



- Gunman was suspected radical -



Lakdim, a Moroccan-born French national, had been monitored as a potential extremist.

Top anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins said Lakdim had convictions for carrying a banned weapon and for drug use and had spent a month in jail in 2016.

"He had been on a watchlist for his radicalisation and links to the Salafist movement," Molins told reporters in Carcassonne on Friday, adding that Lakdim had been tracked for his online contacts with extremists.

His partner, who lived with him in Carcassonne, has been detained along with another friend.

Lakdim started his rampage in Carcassonne at around 10:30 am (0930 GMT), hijacking a car and shooting the two people inside.

The passenger was killed, and the driver remains in a critical condition.

Lakdim then shot and wounded a policeman who was out jogging with colleagues before driving to nearby Trebes, bursting into a Super U supermarket and shooting a customer dead along with the store's butcher.

"The attacker entered the store shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) and saying he was a soldier of the Islamic State, ready to die for Syria," Molins said.

He further demanded the release of certain prisoners -- notably, according to a security source, Salah Abdeslam, prime suspect in the November 2015 Paris terror attacks.



- 'We felt powerless' -



The attack has rocked the normally sleepy town of Trebes, which went on lockdown Friday with heavily armed and masked police carrying out a massive operation in Lakdim's neighbourhood.

Supermarket boss Samia Menassi, whose store remains closed and surrounded by police tape, was still in shock Saturday as she recalled hearing the first gunshots and a cry of "Allahu Akbar".

"I said to the girls, 'Call the police, there's a terrorist in the shop," she told AFP.

"We felt powerless because we still had colleagues in there."

Of around 50 who were in the store at the time, most were able to get out through an emergency exit, some after sheltering in a meat refrigerator.

The shootings took place in a part of France still scarred by a killing spree in 2012 in the city of Toulouse and nearby Montauban where another jihadist, Mohamed Merah, shot dead seven people including three Jewish schoolchildren.

That assault marked the first of several big Islamist attacks in France since 2015, including the massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, the November 2015 attacks that killed 130 in Paris, and the 2016 Bastille Day truck attack in Nice.

The most recent assault came in October when a Tunisian man stabbed to death two women at Marseille's railway station.

A state of emergency put in place just after the 2015 Paris attacks was lifted in October when Macron's centrist government passed a new law boosting the powers of security forces.

Thousands of French troops remain on the streets under an anti-terror operation known as Sentinelle, patrolling transport hubs, tourist hotspots and other sensitive sites.

burs-kjl/spmChad soldier, 20 Boko Haram fighters killed in clash: army source



N'Djamena, March 24 (AFP) Mar 24, 2018



A Chadian soldier and 20 Boko Haram members were killed in a clash in the restive Lake Chad region near Nigeria, a Chadian military officer told AFP Saturday.

The incident occurred on Friday on an islet named Tchoukou Hadje, the officer said, adding that five soldiers were wounded.

"Twenty Boko Haram members were killed and a large amount of weapons was recovered," he said. "The Chadian army lost one member."

Two Chadian soldiers including a captain were killed in an ambush in the area a month ago in the first attack by the Nigerian jihadist group on Chadian soil since May last year in which nine soldiers died.

Boko Haram, a militant movement opposed to Western influence and seeking an Islamic state based on Sharia law, has caused the deaths of at least 20,000 people since it took up arms in 2009 in Nigeria.

Neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger have all joined the military effort by Nigeria to crush Boko Haram.US air strike in Libya kills two jihadist 'leaders': government



Tripoli, March 24 (AFP) Mar 24, 2018



A US air strike hit a house in southern Libya on Saturday where jihadist "leaders" were meeting, killing two of them, the spokesman of the Libyan prime minister said.

Spokesman Mohamed El Sallak, in a statement on his Twitter account, said the strike was "coordinated" with the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.

The raid targeted "a meeting of terrorist leaders" in a house in the Ubari region, 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) south of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, said Sallak.

He later told AFP he was not immediately able to identify the jihadists targeted in the air strike.

The United State has carried out frequent raids on the Islamic State group in southern Libya.

Libya has been gripped by chaos since a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, with rival administrations and multiple militias vying for control of the oil-rich country.

Jihadists and people-traffickers have taken advantage of the chaos to gain a foothold in the North African country.

IS seized Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte in June 2015 but were driven out of the coastal town in December the following year by pro-GNA forces with US air cover.

The jihadists are still active, however, in central and southern Libya.

IS has claimed several attacks in Libya, the latest in February when a suicide car bombing against the forces of Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar killed three militiamen.

Haftar supports an administration in the east of the country, opposed to the Tripoli-based government of Serraj, who has struggled to assert his authority across the country.New York, March 24, 2018 (SPS) - United Nations Security Council on Wednesday has expressed full support for the efforts of the UN Secretary General's Personal Envoy, Horst Kohler, for the relaunch of the peace process in Western Sahara.



"The members of the Security Council express their full support for the efforts of the UN envoy," said Security Council's President Karel Jan Gustaaf Van Oosterom (Netherlands) at the end of the first briefing with Kohler.



The UN body has welcomed the recent bilateral meetings between Kohler and the parties to the conflict and neighbouring countries with a view to relaunching the negotiation process with a new dynamic and a new spirit.



In this regard, the Security Council underlined the importance of maintaining a constructive commitment in order to advance the political process in Western Sahara.



It also expressed concern over the situation in El Guergarat, stressing the need to maintain the status quo in the buffer zone and to fully implement the resolution 2352 of 2017 on the extension of the mandate of the UN Mission for Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).

062/SPS/APS



New York, March 24, 2018 (SPS) -Speaking to the Security Council, the United Nations Envoy for Western Sahara Horst Kohler on Wednesday stressed that his mediation targeted direct and unconditional negotiations between the Polisario Front and Morocco in 2018.

According to concurring sources, Kohler briefed the Security Council on his mediation, namely holding negotiations this year, although he recognized that talks are not an end in itself since they require the good will of parties to conflict and their commitment to engaging in negotiations without preconditions.

The UN envoy also expressed willingness to pursue broadened talks and meet Security Council members, according to information leaked after the briefing.

Kohler, to whom the Security Council expressed support, said that he will keep the same momentum, stressing that his approach aimed at broadening the mediation scope.

The German mediator is willing to continue his mediation mission despite Moroccos attempts to undermine his efforts. However, he stressed that the settlement of this conflict is the exclusive responsibility of the Security Council, where he fully supported by France.

On Wednesday, France attempted to prevent the Security Council from underlining the importance of the other parties with whom Kohler has been holding since January, namely the conflicting parties, neighbouring countries, the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU).

However, the final statement, read to the press by Security Council Chairman Jan Gustaaf Van Oosterom, did not mention this reference.

"The Security Council welcomes the personal envoy's presentation on his recent bilateral meetings with the conflicting parties and neighboring countries," the Security Council said in a statement released after the meeting. (SPS)

062/SPS/APSLondon (United Kingdom), March 24, 2018 (SPS) - UK government has reiterated support to Saharawi People's self-determination and a just political solution to Western Sahara conflict, based on United Nations' principles and resolutions.

In reply to an MP's written question, Minister of State for International Development and Minister of State for the Middle East at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Alistair Burt reaffirmed the position of the United Kingdom government on Western Sahara issue, supporting a just and lasting solution that guarantees Western Sahara people's right to self-determination.

He stressed that the United Kingdom supports the efforts of the MINURSO (United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara) and UN efforts to reach a lasting and mutually acceptable solution to Western Sahara issue, providing for Saharawi people's self-determination. (SPS)

062/SPS/APS



Reflecting Chinas growing focus on the production of higher-value goods, the output of computers, telecommunications equipment and other electronics rose 12.1 percent on year.





by N.S.Venkataraman





Chinas growth and dominance





( March 24, 2018, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is well accepted all over the world that during the last one decade or so, the world economy has been largely driven by the industrial and economic growth in China, which is more than any other individual country. Chinas share of world output has gone up from 6.3% in 1996 to 17.8% in 2016.





China is the worlds 3rd largest country after Russia and Canada. China is only 15% of the global economy but contributes 25 to 30% to global growth. Chinas installed capacity and production of steel, aluminium, coal, power and most of the chemical products have increased by leaps and bounds in the last ten years. China is the largest single consuming country in the world for chemicals. Its share in the global chemical consumption is now around - 30%.





Of the global annual production of around 58 million tonne of aluminium, Chinas share is around 32 million tonne. Chinese manufacturers continue to augment production capacities in the North-Western provinces at lower cost. This is expected to increase global aluminium supply in the coming years.





Steel production in the world is dominated by China and followed by Japan. Chinas crude steel production is around 790 million tonne per annum, which is around 52% of the world crude steel production.





Reflecting Chinas growing focus on the production of higher-value goods, the output of computers, telecommunications equipment and other electronics rose 12.1 percent on year.





Such steep increase in capacity and production with regard to several products inevitably resulted in China aggressively seeking export market to find outlet for the products, as the installed capacity and production growth has been much higher than the domestic demand growth for the products.





In the process ,Chinas thrust on export have created problems for the other countries, as Chinese prices have been much less than the price quoted by producers in other countries, leading to fall in production or industrial plant closures in several countries including USA and India.





For example, production of citric acid in China which was 6,00,000 tonne in 2003 climbed to 15,00,000 tonne in 2016. China now exports citric acid to more than 100 countries. As a result of export penetration by China, several citric acid plants have closed in number of countries. China now supplies 60% of the global demand for citric acid.





China has been repeatedly accused by several countries of artificially keeping the price of the Chinese products low to compete in the world market, by providing soft cushions for the Chinese industries by way of concessions , unsustainable state subsidized production practices, , soft loans etc. Also, Chinese industries have been criticized for not observing the required environmental norms and violating the safety issues for the sake of boosting the capacity build up and production.





However, in the last few years, China has realized the need to ensure the optimal performance of industry, by imposing strict environmental rules and stipulating norms for consumption of raw material and utility and enforcing closure of unviable units . Several units have also been forced to shift from unsafe location to industrial parks. China could take such corrective steps boldly, since it has built so much of over capacity, with the units operating at low capacity utilization level in the last few years. and therefore, closure of some capacities do not really result in significant loss to overall production.





According to a survey of a basket of 16 chemicals studied by the European Union of Chamber of Commerce of China, as many as eleven face low capacity utilisation issues in China.





A few examples of plant closures in the past.

Industry Capacity closure Number of units closed Petroleum refineries 57.95 million tonne 84 (below 2 million tonne per annum for each unit) Ammonia 4.13 million tonne 40 Urea 5 million tonne Pesticide unit 25 (which were engaged in pesticide technical) Tire 19 million pieces 9 Caustic soda 9.093 million tonne 13 PVC 6.4 million tonne 14

While the growth rate in China has slowed in 2017 compared to 2016, these growth rates remain higher than in any other country in the world.





Chinas vulnerability to global trade war





Chinas total debt has been building up in the economy during the last several years to support growth. Chinas debt surpassed 300% of GDP in 2017.





The Peoples Bank of China has enabled the buildup of debt with huge lending to commercial banks. Debt-fueled consumer demand accounted for 71% of Chinas economic growth in the first three quarters of 2016. Chinas economic growth is being held up through extremely high credit generation, that is not sustainable for long without substantial damage to the economy and financial system





In such difficult scenario, Chinas product offerings have to shift from mid to high end in the value chain based on innovation driven development to remain globally competitive without price slashing in the coming years. China has to upgrade its manufacturing sector and take market share from high tech countries such as Japan, South Korea,USA and Europe for higher end products. Obviously, to achieve such requirements, Chinas export market has to be sustained and its global market penetration has to be enhanced.





In such scenario, any fall in Chinese export due to trade war can cause huge setback to Chinas plans and strategies.

Chinas compulsive need for export

Overcapacity in industrial enterprises is the biggest problem that China is facing today





China now has far more capacity than it  or for that matter, the world  needs. In some cases, over capacity exist to the level of 30% of domestic need.





Over capacity has been built up not only by domestic private Chinese companies but also by foreign companies, who target both Chinese and global market.





The overcapacity problem has been exacerbated in recent times by the clear slowdown of Chinas economy. Particularly, impactful is the slowdown in infrastructure projects and in the real estate sectors. Over capacity in the manufacturing sector could take far longer to be sorted out, especially given the state of the global economy





To tackle such conditions and avoid an impending crisis, China faces compulsive need to boost export, as its domestic demand cannot absorb the production at higher capacity utilisation level that are needed to sustain the economy.





Trade attack by USA





US President Trump announced at least $50 billion worth of annual tariffs and other penalties on China, due to what US terms as Chinas theft of technology and trade secrets, which US administration officials say has robbed American companies of billions of dollars in revenue and killed thousands of jobs.

.

The measures of US government are targeted at imported Chinese goods in as many as 100 categories  hitting everything from shoes and clothing to consumer electronics  and will impose restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States..





President Trump says that he has instructed the Treasury Department to pursue restrictions on certain types of Chinese investments to counter Chinas ambitious industrial policy, which aims to dominate cutting-edge sectors like artificial intelligence and mobile technology.





The announcement comes hard on the heels of Mr. Trumps tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and are aimed at combating a flood of cheap metals into the United States, including Chinese steel.





What about vulnerability of USA and other countries?





In China, 31% of the ownership of industrial and production enterprises is by foreign companies and 21% is owned by state owned enterprises and the remaining 48% by domestic private sector.





Billions of dollars are being invested by foreign companies in China year after year .





In the year 2016 alone, following investment have been made

Mode of utilising foreign investment Realised FDI value in US$ 100 million



Period : January to December 2016 Foreign direct investment 1260.02 Equity joint venture 302.04 Contractual joint venture 8.3 Wholly foreign owned enterprise 861.26 Share company with foreign investment 88.42

Almost every major multinational company in the world have investment in China. For example, BASF, multi national giant , has invested approximately 6 billion and above 8 billion with partners in China during the last 20 years.





Clearly, entry into the Chinese market is a high priority for foreign companies, in order to participate in this major growth region.. Foreign companies remain optimistic about the prospects and opportunities in the Chinese market and continue to invest in the country.One strategy the foreign companies are adopting is in the building of local manufacturing facilities in China.

Any fall in economy or trade of China will adversely impact the performance and profit of foreign companies operating in China, most of which are multinational companies based in USA, Japan, South Korea, Western Europe and Middle East region. In view of their huge investment in China, any problems faced by them in China will directly and indirectly impact the economy of the developed countries where these multinational companies are based.

U S President Trump believes that the imposition of tariffs will safeguard American jobs, but many economists say the impact of price increases for users of steel and aluminium, such as the auto and oil industries, will destroy more jobs in USA than curbs on imports create. Further, the effect of the China tariffs imposed by USA would have a bigger impact on United States consumers, who are heavy purchasers of electronics, clothing and other Chinese products.





China has argued that both USA and China benefit from the flow of Chinese money into the United States.





Why US think trade war necessary ?





Though US President claims that US has imposed steep tariff on Chinese goods to protect US economy., this may not be entirely true. It has to be noted that he has not imposed similar tariffs on other European countries and India so far, though these regions also have substantial share in US imports. Obviously, the focus of US is on hurting China.





China, in recent years, has shown expansionist tendency with its aggressive postures in South China sea, Senkaku island , threatening India with border war and claiming Indias Arunachal Pradesh as its own and several other claims. Chinas aggressive take over of Tibet is a classic example of Chinas territorial expansion targets.





Last year, military spending in China was budgeted to increase by 7 percent, to 1.044 trillion yuan ($164.60 billion) about one-quarter of the proposed U.S. defence spending for the year, which is obviously to support Chinas war like posture towards its neighbours.





Apart from territorial expansion ambition, China has also been focusing on economic domination of the world. It has considerably penetrated into the economy of weaker neighbours such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Myanmar and others.





Key infrastructure projects across Asia,Africa And Europe under Belt and Road (BRI), are aimed at extending Chinas global influence on the basis of its economic prowess. BRI is interwoven with official efforts to export Chinese rail, hydropower and other technology and steel, aluminum and other industrial goods. Around $1.8 trillion of infrastructure investments across Asia, Africa and the Middle East include Chinese money or other involvement.





Obviously, USA and several other countries are concerned about Chinas aggressive approach and are of the view that China has to be checked to avoid it becoming an aggressive super power, perhaps, even stronger than USA.





While military warfare with China is ruled out, the only option left for USA is to impose check and control on China by starting a trade war.





Can China afford trade war ?





China says that it does not want a trade war with the United States but it will defend its interests, if US would choose to launch a trade war.





However, it is extremely doubtful as to whether China can sustain a trade war, since Chinese economy will virtually collapse if the export of Chinese products would be considerably curbed.





It remains to be seen as to what would be President Trumps further strategies and whether US would ask its allies also to join in the trade war against China. While the allies may not go to the full extent in supporting USA, nevertheless, they are watching with sustained interest the moves of President Trump and perhaps, want US President to succeed.Pakistans Military President Yahya Khan governments double-faced or Janus-faced vicious game-bag full of zest or vigour zingy diddled and defrauded the whole caboodle nation or res-publica designedly happed most high-pitched in the guise of pretension in March 1971 with Bangabandhu Mujib and his lieutenants.





by Anwar A. Khan

( March 25, 2018, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) I wish to begin with the words of Ann Clwyd, Genocide is the responsibility of the entire world. Some scientists have even gone so far as to assert that genocide leads to the extinction of Neanderthal man or homo sapiens neanderthalensis. It is a positive reinforcing stimulus that Bangladesh parliament on March 11, 2017 nem-con espoused a declaration stating emphatically and authoritatively that March 25 to be observed as the Genocide Day in the country. Now the country wants the UN to recognise the 1971 genocide globally, in commemoration to the barbarities carried out by the Pakistans army along with their local collaborators in the soil of Bangladesh on the same day in 1971. Bangladesh now would reach out to the UN for this purpose. From now onwards, the country will fete March 25 as Genocide Day all across the world.





I wish to tell confidentially that Bangladesh would have been liberated much earlier had the Bangla-speaking Pakistanis, especially, Jamaat-e-Islami goons not made the Pakistans army known the freedom-loving people and the scale of massacre of our people could have been reduced to a great extent. Because Pakistans military did not know the residents of freedom-loving people, the countrys villages, roads, highways, bridges, culverts, railway stations,  The Biharis or the non-Bengalis were aliens to us who came from a foreign country to our country and after participation of India in 1947, we welcomed them to our part of the land but they did never honour to our gesticulates; they did never owe allegiance to this part of land belonged to us; instead, they thought it was their own land only like the Pakistanis; they always behaved with us very rudely; they posed to be our masters and treated with us as slaves; once the Pakistnans army cracked on us down with full fury, they equally became monstrous to annihilate us from our own land whereas they should have coalesced with us as our people long before and treated us as their brothers and sisters and learnt Bangla to speak to us, but they forced us to speak to them in Urdu. I saw their ferocious nature long before 1971 and during our 1971 war. Many Biharis or the non-Bengalis are still living in Bangladesh, but they do not recognise the country, Bangladesh; they still think that it is their country and it is a part of their beloved Pakistan, but the despicable Pakistanis are still not agreeable to take them to Pakistan. Rather, they consider them as treacherous people. I strongly believe had India along with our freedom fighters started a full-fledged war long before December 1971, Bangladesh came into being long back. I believe then all the misdeed-mongers could have been reduced to ashes long time back. And that should have happened in 1971.









Many Biharis or the non-Bengalis are still living in Bangladesh, but they do not recognise the country, Bangladesh; they still think that it is their country and it is a part of their beloved Pakistan, but the despicable Pakistanis are still not agreeable to take them to Pakistan.









Pakistans Military President Yahya Khan governments double-faced or Janus-faced vicious game-bag full of zest or vigour zingy diddled and defrauded the whole caboodle nation or res-publica designedly happed most high-pitched in the guise of pretension in March 1971 with Bangabandhu Mujib and his lieutenants. Like the Nazi Holocaust, drunkard, philanderer, double-dealer and brute Yahya Khan and his clique including deceitful character and deft schemer like ZA Bhutto took Adolf Hitlers philosophy of final solution to the Jewish question to decimate us in 1971. Jared Diamond has suggested that genocidal violence may have caused the Neanderthals to go extinct. Ronald Wright has also suggested such genocide or the systematic extermination of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status, etc. Pakistans military junta, like Genghis Khan, was genocidal killers who were known to kill whole nations, leaving nothing but empty ruins and bones. They ordered the extermination of the Bengalis. So, their rule was genocide. If genocide is defined as a state-mandated effort to annihilate whole peoples, then their actions in this regard must certainly qualify. What they did deserve calling them "brutal, hypocritical, opportunistic, and even genocidal in the fullest sense of the word." They carried out deliberate use of massacres. Large scale massacres by Pakistani Forces, and a deliberate scorched earth policy, contributed to the massive death toll. Thusly, the use of the word genocide is wholly accurate and appropriate to their regime. Their policy has been summed up by a phrase attributed to Pakistans army and their local cohorts "To Hell or to Connaught or Amiodarone or Cordarone" and that has been described by historians as genocide. The Almighty sent the potato blight... but they created the havoc all around this part of land. What they did all constituted one of the modern horrible genocides in modern history, where a whole population was attempted to annihilate to satisfy the desires of a group of power-hungry people belonged to Pakistan. They took possession with all sophisticated weapons of destructions in accordance with their customs and they caught all the people. Not one escaped...





In view of these crimes of Pakistan against humanity and civilisation, we hold them responsible for these crimes, as well as those of their agents who were culpably involved in such massacres. They sent their brutal soldiers along with their local accomplices to the former Eastern part of Pakistan only their 'Death's Head Units' with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Bengali race or language. Only in such a way, they boastfully said they would win the vital space that they needed. Once the Pakistans army cracked down on us, they implemented a highly organised strategy of persecution, murder, and genocide aimed at ethnically purifying former eastern part of Pakistan, a plan like Hitler called the Final Solution. This was a crime so monstrous, so undreamt of in history  that the term genocide has had to be coined to define it. Allyson Schwartz has by right appealed to the world indwellers, The 20th century taught us how far unbridled evil can and will go when the world fails to confront it. It is time that we heed the lessons of the 20th century and stand up to these murderers. It is time that we end genocide in the 21st century.









Bangladeshs genocide is the most brutal, for especially because it did not only kill 3 million people directly. But it killed a whole culture and history - the history of an ancient civilisation and the cradle of civilisation.









The Bangladeshs genocide is the most brutal, for especially because it did not only kill 3 million people directly. But it killed a whole culture and history - the history of an ancient civilisation and the cradle of civilisation. All that land was destroyed, stolen and denied. That is the most brutal. +It seems unthinkable that humans are capable of atrocities as fierce and as devastating as genocide, yet they committed with near nonchalance. The United Nations has defined genocide as, acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. This includes not only the mass killing of the Bengali people but the attempt to eradicate it as a living culture. Every genocide, regardless of its scale, is a tragedy of epic proportions  the loss of a people, a culture, and a language is an extinction that hits far too close to home. How many times must we say never again? This is a question we still seem to be asking ourselves and one another as I personally watched these massacres happened in 1971; they used our holy religion-Islam and pronouncing the holy words Naray-e-Takbir, Allah-hu Akbar. Pakistan Zindaba and Pakistan is the holy place of Islam and slaughtered our freedom-loving people pitilessly. They did never permit for burial of those dead bodies. Instead, they then vauntingly allowed those lamentable dead bodies to eat by the vultures, jackals, dogs and other human flesh eaters and thus celebrated such brutal darts with all unkindness. Lets avoid repeating such history anymore.





Synonymous with the word genocide, Yahya khan junta and his coterie were responsible for one of the most systematic and nauseatingly efficient genocides in history in 1971. Combining all of his concentration camps disgorges, and mass executions together led to a death toll in the three of millions. Today, however, we can see how wrong the Pakistani military junta and some political leaders were and just how merciless their reign of terror was. Bangladesh Genocide is known as the one of the most gruesome genocides in the history. The crimes committed by Pakistani troops during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 were unfortunately remaining somewhat unknown in the greater world even today.





The genocide began on 26 March, 1971 with the commencement of Operation Searchlight by West Pakistan rulers in order to curb the rising agitation for the legitimate political and social demands of the Bengalis who formed the majority of the united Pakistan till 1971. The genocide was deliberately brutal since the Pakistanis considered Bengalis as inferior race and used to discriminate against East Pakistan in economic and political terms. The genocide is widely known for heinous crimes against women with estimates of 400,000 women being raped by Pakistani troops as well as their local collaborators. Rape was widely used as a form of political weapon to intimidate people to submit themselves to atrocities of West Pakistan's regime. The genocide committed by Pakistani Army was assisted by various groups like Jamaat-e-Islami, Shanti committees, Al-Badr and Al-Shams, Razakars which were generally dominated by the Bangla-speaking Pakistani people and the Bihari Muslims. The killings also included deliberate destruction of Bengali culture through the mass killing of intellectuals and other nationalists who regarded Bengali culture as their own.





The move by Pakistan army also sought to get rid of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh who used to be one of the biggest communities in Bangladesh. Because of that ground, whenever we came across them, they with their red eyes on the first instance enounced the words, Tum Hindu Hai (you are a Hindu). Like so many people, I had to show my genital organ on many junctures to prove my Muslim identity at gun points by the Pakistans military and their local heinous collaborators-the Bangla-speaking Pakistanis and the Bihari Muslims. Even I narrowly escaped murder attempts five times at their hands during that time. The killings were estimated 3 million which is a huge number considering the fact that the killings took place during the 9 months of Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. The genocide led to the fleeing of 10 million refugees towards India which caused huge economic hardships for her and forced Indira Gandhi to seek international support for recognition of Bangladesh and the training of Mukti Bahini (Freedom Fighters).





The Bangladesh genocide ended only after the involvement of Indian troops with our valiant Freedom Fighters in the war on 3 December 1971 due to Pakistan's pre-emptive attack on Indian air-force bases and ended with the crushing defeat of Pakistan, surrendering of 93,000 Pakistani soldiers and formation of Bangladesh within two weeks. Time magazine reported the genocide to a high US official as saying "It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland. The Guinness Book of World Records has registered this genocide as the second largest genocide in the history. The unfortunate fact is that all Pakistani participants, whether political or military were never prosecuted under the provisions of International Law on the lines of Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials or UN tribunals like in the case of genocides in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Cambodia. The biggest irony is that USA, who claims to be a big supporter of Democracy and invaded various nations in the name of promoting rule of law, chose to remain apathetic to the plight of Bengali population caused by the West Pakistan in-spite of receiving various news about the genocide from their embassy in Dhaka, especially from Archer Blood for the sake of building bridges with Communist China to create rift between USSR and China and in the this meeting, Pakistan was playing the role of facilitator and so her role in the genocide was not only ignored by Nixon Administration but also encouraged China to intervene against Bangladesh and India or create pressure for immediate ceasefire which would prolong the Bangladeshs victory and ensured that the genocide against Bengali people remained unabated.





The systematic mass killings in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in 1971 can be classified as genocide. The conflict started with Operation Searchlight as said above earlier, a planned military pacification carried out by the West Pakistani Army on 25 March 1971 to curb the Bengali nationalist movement by taking control of the major cities and then eliminating all opposition, political or military personnel. Major human right abuses and killings were a sad reality of the crisis; those killed included men, women, students and pregnant women also. This act of genocide is officially termed human rights abuses by the Bangladesh authorities. History has proven in its course that it has been a producer of the most horrifying and daunting stories the world has ever known. Terrifying! Unimaginable! These facts depict the shocking and inconceivable pictures the evils of men could do: blood splattered on barren lands; the stench of death overcoming the fragrance of life.









25 March, the day before Bangladesh's Independence Day, will now onwards be commemorated as the Genocide Day for the grave genocides committed by the Pakistani military junta and their local accomplices during the 1971 liberation war.









Genocide, a crime of unprecedented proportions is a sin not worthy of any mercy. It is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group. From the past to the present, from Bangladesh to Rwanda, this herculean crime has been experienced by innocent people and children who have been stripped of their future; men and women who have been degraded to mere objects of ridicule; and of the old whose dignity of life have been taken away from them. More than any horror movie you will ever see, reality always is the best shocker. Bangladeshs Genocides that the world will remember and will never forget. Because Genocide is the most potent of all crimes against humanity because it is an effort to systematically wipe out a people and a culture as well as individual lives has correctly been written by Jerry Costello. Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Bangladesh has indicated that, however, thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, the country has risen from the ashes as a model or truth. We can say in the words of Kendrick Meek, We can make a difference. We can save lives. We can stop the genocide. It is time to recognise the Bangladeshs Genocide. Bangladesh has emerged from the devastation of genocide and become more secure and prosperous than anyone has a right to expect. So, let us call genocide, genocide. Let us not minimise the deliberate murder of 3 million people. Let us have a moral victory that can shine as a light to all nations.





25 March, the day before Bangladesh's Independence Day, will now onwards be commemorated as the Genocide Day for the grave genocides committed by the Pakistani military junta and their local accomplices during the 1971 liberation war. We have to remember always those horrible genocides. 25 March, shall live as the Eternal Flame in our history. This was a tragic event in human history, but by paying tribute to the Bengali community, we ensure the lessons of the Bangladeshs genocide are properly understood and acknowledged. Words without deeds violates the moral and legal obligation we have under the genocide convention but, more importantly, violates our sense of right and wrong and the standards we have as human beings about looking to care for one another. Jon Corzine has aptly said, Never again is the rallying cry for all who believe that mankind must speak out against genocide. With faith and courage, decades of Bangladeshs people have overcome great suffering and proudly preserved their culture, traditions, and religion and have told the story of the genocide to an often indifferent world. International community should come forward to recognise the Day as Genocide Day. It also will create awareness in combating and preventing the crime of genocide everywhere in the world. Say a prayer for them all who met with tragic murders on 25 March 1971 and throughout the months of 1971. Commemorating such a dark period in history means a solemn affair, with the day marked by remembrance services for those who lost their lives.



"The monk protected us. He was the only reason that we weren't attacked," said Hassan, a business leader from the community.





by Lisa Fuller





( March 25, 2018, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) On March 4th, Sinhala Buddhist mobs began sweeping through Sri Lanka's Kandy district, hurling petrol bombs at Muslim-owned houses, shops and mosques. The attacks came as a shock, as Sri Lanka has not seen violence on this scale in nearly a decade. The government deployed On March 4th, Sinhala Buddhist mobs began sweeping through Sri Lanka's Kandy district, hurling petrol bombs at Muslim-owned houses, shops and mosques. The attacks came as a shock, as Sri Lanka has not seen violence on this scale in nearly a decade. The government deployed thousands of security forces , armed with automatic weapons, tear gas and water cannons, but they failed to stop the violence until four days later. By then, mobs had wreaked havoc in a dozen towns and destroyed 465 properties . Yet the death toll was astonishingly low: The mobs ultimately killed just one person.





What accounts for the disparity? Dozens of ordinary civilians and local leaders used a variety of innovative strategies to protect one another and prevent violence from escalating.

Paradise in Tears

During Sri Lanka's 26-year-long civil war, which ended in 2009, it was often referred to as "paradise in tears." With pristine beaches, ancient Buddhist temples and diverse wildlife all conveniently packed into an island the size of West Virginia, the country seems like an unlikely backdrop to three decades of ethnic conflict. Since the war ended, it has become one of Asia's top tourist destinations , but the recent violence has led many to fear that Sri Lanka could be on the brink of another war.





The situation has some parallels to Myanmar's current Rohingya crisis: Hardliners from the majority Sinhala Buddhist population, including several monks, have engaged in a sustained propaganda campaign, using social media to spread anti-Muslim sentiments, proliferate hate speech and organize attacks. In fact, Buddhist monks organized and carried out an attack on 200 Rohingya refugees in Sri Lanka last year . But unlike in Myanmar, anti-Muslim violence is a relatively new phenomenon in Sri Lanka.





Muslims did their best to stay out of Sri Lanka' civil war, which was fought between the Sinhala-dominated government and a separatist group from Sri Lanka's other minority population, the Tamils. After the war ended and Tamil separatism no longer posed a threat to nationalist ideals, militant Sinhala Buddhists began to target the Muslim population instead.





Over the last five years, Sinhala Buddhist nationalists have exploited global trends in Islamophobia to bolster myths that the nine percent Muslim minority is plotting to wrest control of the country away from the Sinhala majority and transform it into an Islamic nation. Rumors suggesting that Muslims are trying to stifle Sinhala population growth have become ubiquitous. Accusations that Muslim restaurants are lacing food with pills that cause permanent infertility have motivated attacks on Muslims. They became so prevalent that the government carried out tests on the food. As it turns out, the "pills" were actually just clumps of flour . Sinhala nationalists also frequently use Muslims as a scapegoat for their economic frustrations, as Muslims have traditionally been associated with Sri Lanka's business sector.





Yet, despite the prevalence of such divisive propaganda, most Sri Lankans have refused to resort to violence. Meanwhile, Muslims have largely responded to attacks with nonviolence.





During the recent attacks, Muslims leaders used mosque loud speakers (which are normally used for the call to prayer) to urge Muslims to remain calm and refrain from retaliating. In many areas, Sinhalese and Tamils stepped in to protect Muslims, using a variety of strategies.

Early Warning

When a mob approached a neighborhood in the town of Pallekele, Sinhala Buddhist families called their Muslim neighbors to warn them.





"We were on the way back from a wedding when the attacks began, but we turned around when our neighbors called us and told us it wasn't safe to come home," Hassan, a Muslim father of three explained. With their home and all of their belongings destroyed by fire, the family has been subsisting almost solely on the kindness of their neighbors who bring them food and buckets of water and charge their phones for them every day.





In Kengalla, the town that sustained the most damage in the attacks, Nussair's friend, who had personal connections to some of the organizers of the attacks, called to warn him the day before the attacks.





"We didn't think it was really going to happen," Nussair said. He and his son stayed in the house, but he sent his daughter and four-month-old granddaughter out of town, just in case. Nussair and his son were still in the house when the mob began attacking it, but managed to escape. "We were so scared, we ran out the back as fast as we could," he said.





In at least one other town, ample warning allowed Muslims to evacuate before the mobs began to attack. In a WhatsApp group that was used to organize the attacks, a group member sent a message saying "when we went to attack, there was no one, they had left," while another member said, "someone had given them the news."

Providing Safe Shelter

The mobs systematically targeted Muslim homes, shops and mosques, but other buildings remained untouched. Dozens of Sinhalese and Tamils were therefore able to provide a safe haven for Muslims during the attacks. Some hotels and families even posted invitations on Twitter.





In one particularly organized effort, a Tamil priest went to each of his parishioners' homes and asked them to provide shelter for Muslims. He then drove Muslim families to each parishioner's home, where they remained for the next 48 hours. When they returned home, many found that their homes had been burned down, but the community's actions allowed them to escape unscathed.

Violence Interruption

In Rajawella, a Muslim-majority village, men decided they would defend their homes and their families when they heard the mob was heading their way. Fifty men and boys gathered at the village entrance, armed only with sticks and kitchen knives, and prepared to take on the mob of 300 people. When a local monk heard about the developing situation, he feared that it would end in a bloodbath. He came to the town, and stood in front of the men and boys when the mob began to approach. The mob saw him, stopped and retreated.





"The monk protected us. He was the only reason that we weren't attacked," said Hassan, a business leader from the community. Dozens of displaced Muslim families are now living at the town mosque, as it is one of the few in the area that remained unharmed.

Protective Presence

In the town of Balagolla, the Muslim community was afraid of being attacked during Friday prayers and reached out to Ven. Thalpotha Dhammajothi Thero, a local monk, for help. In response, the monk and his welfare committee stood outside the mosque throughout the prayers to deter any perpetrators.





"When I arrived, [the Muslim leaders] invited me inside, but I told them I am here to guard the mosque", Dhammajothi Thero said. He insisted that he stay outside so that he was visible if any attackers arrived. As the mobs were carrying out the attacks in the name of Sinhala Buddhism, he knew that they would not attack if a monk was standing in their way.

Civilians Protecting Civilians

These interventions were remarkable, but not unprecedented. Civilians have intervened to protect each other in previous conflicts, as well. During the holocaust, Danish communities organized to warn Jews of an imminent Nazi plan to roundup and deport them to concentration camps, and then helped them escape. During the Rwandan genocide, many Hutus saved the lives of their Tutsi neighbors by providing them with safe shelter









In the wake of violence, the obvious response is to focus on what went wrong. But equally important is to figure out what went right. Violence is, quite literally, contagious , but so is altruism . When we see someone engage in heroic actions, we often feel inspired to take such actions. And when we help others, we feel good about ourselves and are motivated to repeat such actions in the future. By highlighting civilian peacekeeping efforts -- both organic and organized -- we encourage others to take similar actions in the future.







It is very difficult to expect the two Rajapaksa brothers to forgive President Sirisena despite the saying that there are no permanent enemies in politics.





by Jayadeva Uyangoda





( March 25, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) One fascinating dimension of the current political developments in Sri Lanka is the maturing power struggle between three groups of the Sinhalese political class. They are led by three prominent political personalities, President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa.





The last local government election, held a few weeks ago, marked the first occasion presented to these three groups to compete with each other in the public arena for popular support. The post-election days saw the intensification of their contradictions. Developments around the no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister, proposed by the Joint Opposition in Parliament, will be crucial to understand the emerging trajectories of this three-cornered power struggle. The forthcoming provincial, presidential, and parliamentary elections beginning the end of next year, might lead to some sort of resolution of it. We still cannot speculate its shape and consequences. Nevertheless, Sri Lankan politics is obviously heading for some interesting times.





This essay seeks to shed some light on the sociology and political economy of this intra-elite power struggle currently unfolding in the country. Before that, some preliminaries are in order.

Factions

First of all, there is no unified ruling class as such in Sri Lanka, as many, even intellectuals, appear to believe. Instead, what we have is fractured, or fragmented groupings of a ruling class that constantly compete with each other while making occasional alliances as well. Electoral democracy has also enabled these groupings to organize themselves politically and bid for state power on a competitive and adversarial basis.





Factions of the ruling classes can also be described as political or ruling class elite groups. In Sri Lanka, they are ethnically fragmented along Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim group identities and interests. This is the second important characteristic of Sri Lankas ruling class groupings. This ethnic fragmentation of the political elites is a reflection of their economic competition and rivalries organized along ethnic group interests since the mid 19th century. Thus, the relationship among ethnically identified ruling class groupings is primarily structured around their economic and political antagonisms. However, it is also a relationship that accommodates inter-group political alliances.





Thirdly, there are two dominant ruling groupings in Sinhalese society that are politically organized around the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). They originally came from two similar, not different as some claim, strata of the Sinhalese elite with competing claims to political power. Family rivalries among those who led these two parties and the intense competition for the loyalty of the rural, peasant electorate sustained their social and political antagonisms. However, their close relationship with Sri Lankan business groups, irrespective of their ethnic origins, has fostered their intra-class linkages. In fact, the dependence of leading families of the UNP and SLFP on the Sri Lankan capitalist class factions, across their ethnic group identities, is the main reason why one can make the argument that Sri Lankas dominant political and economic classes have had identical class interests.





Fourthly, in both, Sinhalese and Tamil societies, challenges to the dominance of established social and political elites from non-elite social classes have failed. The stories of failed LTTE rebellion in the North and East and the JVP rebellion in the Sinhalese South are also stories of the re-affirmation of the dominant, and upper caste as well as upper class elites in controlling Sri Lankas state. This dimension has a greater salience in Sinhalese society, because its two dominant elite/ruling groups have successfully obliterated any room for a third elite group to join the competition for political power.

Social Dimensions

The last point we just mentioned is the one that enables us to unravel the hidden social dimensions of Sri Lankas evolving power struggle at the top. A closer look at President Sirisenas new political project, as it has so far unfolded during the past few months, is useful for us to make the connection.





Briefly stated, after the presidential election of January 2015, the SLFP developed a debilitating internal crisis, with President Sirisena becoming its new leader and the Rajapaksa family opposing him. President Sirisena became the SLFP leader not out of choice, but because it was thrust upon him. The SLFPs party constitution dictates that whoever becomes the countrys President will automatically become the party leader as well. It led to an informal split of the party. Some of its leading members left the Rajapaksa camp and joined President Sirisenas UNP-led government and his cabinet, as SLFPers, since President Sirisena was the official SLFP leader. Thus, the new government after 2015 became an unusual coalition of two leading rival parties, the UNP and the SLFP.





This created a unique anomaly in Sri Lankas politics, as it is becoming clearer only now, with some drastic consequences for the countrys political party system, dynamics of coalition politics as well as the composition of the political elites. A possible split of the SLFP, with two powerful rival camps, would have led to an alteration of Sri Lankas dominant two-party system. The formation of Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and its surprisingly good showing at the recently held local government elections, show that Sri Lankas party system is in for some significant change. Its contours are yet to be crystallized. However, the question that is posed in this context is whether there is political room for a third camp of political elites in Sinhalese society.

Coalition Blues

President Sirisenas acceptance of the SLFP leadership and his ability to persuade a good number of SLFPers to join him in the new government, initially appeared to be good news for the coalition government jointly led by President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe. But after less than a year, it appeared that this only weakened the coalition government. Although the coalitions political base was expanded and the voting strength in Parliament strengthened, it actually developed internal fissures that soon became unbridgeable. The two leaders called the new coalition a unity government, but failed to cement the unity in any ideological or programmatic sense.





To make matters worse, those who joined President Sirisena and became even Cabinet Ministers began to oppose quite openly the UNP branch of the coalition government. They even advocated the old position that the UNP had always been the SLFPs enemy. Their strategy, which President Sirisena seems to have initially tolerated and subsequently endorsed, was to renew the traditional rivalry between the two parties and in turn re-position the SLFP under President Sirisena as the legitimate heir to the traditional SLFP politics that was defined primarily in opposition to the UNP. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe reciprocated this rift and even deepened it by allegedly trying to exploit for the UNPs electoral benefit the Sirisena-Rajapaksa rivalry within the SLFP. Thus, ironically, President Sirisena becoming the leader of SLFP contributed to the weakening of the coalition regime to which he gave joint leadership with Prime Minister Wickremesinghe.





Now this is the appropriate moment for us to return to our main theme. The UNP-SLFP adversity within the coalition government on the one hand, and the split of the SLFP into two rival camps, one led by President Sirisena and the other by former President Rajapaksa, have redrawn the battle lines of Sri Lankas elite competition.





The two-cornered battle quite unexpectedly became a three-cornered one, each led by a very ambitious political leader. Now, the question of the question, as we mentioned earlier, is: Is there room for a third political elite group in Sinhalese society? A related, no less important, question is: will the two dominant political elite groups in Sinhalese society allow a third player to succeed?

Tactics

The tactics which President Sirisena seems to have been employing for the past few weeks indicate that he is not unaware of this challenge. If the stories about his attempts to bring Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to his fold are accurate, this very clearly suggests that President Sirisena is attempting a tactic of politically splitting the Rajapaksa family. At the same time, there is hardly any possibility of the other two Rajapaksas  Mahinda and Basil  joining hands with Sirisena to fight the latters battle with the UNP. They will only tactically respond to President Sirisenas tactics.





It is very difficult to expect the two Rajapaksa brothers to forgive President Sirisena despite the saying that there are no permanent enemies in politics. The Rajapaksas view themselves as a ruling family  there are only a handful of them in the whole country -- and they are unlikely to forgive anybody who has humiliated members of their powerful family. That is probably a lesson they have learned from Sirimavo Bandaranaike and J. R. Jayewardene. It is no secret that Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has tried to prevent the personal humiliation of Rajapaksa family members. President Sirisena, by his own admission, has now extended this kindness to Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and we have to wait a little to see its political dividends.

New Kid

In the emerging intra-elite competition, President Sirisena is the new kid in the bloc, so to speak.





Compared with the other two Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa  President Sirisena has only limited resources. He does not have close family, social or class links with the Colombo social or economic elites. He is still a rural outsider, a shy villager not used to the trappings of class power. Mahinda Rajapkasa too initially had this disadvantage. He, within a few years in power, overcame all of his class, social, and family disadvantages by establishing very close links with Colombos business, industrial, and financial elites through an elaborate network of patron-client benefits. In this, he easily outclassed his Colombo rival, Ranil Wickremesinghe.





It is no small irony that the new economic and social elites, who emerged after the economic liberalization which the UNP initiated in 1977, love Mahinda and his SLFP and -- one must be careful to use a neutral word here -- dislike Ranil and his UNP.





That also tells us a lot about the kind of capitalism that has evolved in Sri Lanka after 1977. A discussion of that theme requires another essay.





Meanwhile, President Sirisenas links with Colombos economic elites are both weak and tenuous. There is no doubt that the business groups look at his renewed campaign against corruption with a great deal of consternation, because it goes against the grain of both politics and economics of private-public partnership in the age of economic liberalization.





The private sectors attitude to corruption and governance is not guided by moral principles either. Both Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe know it well. This is where President Sirisena would be perceived as an outsider by Colombos powerful business elites. In brief, in the current power struggle among the three political elite groups, odds do not necessarily seem to favour President Sirisena.





But who knows, Sri Lankas politics has always had a strong element of surprise and unpredictability.



The primary objective of the visit was to brief the officials and governments of the ground reality considering the deteriorating situation with law and order, appraisal of status on the constitutional reform process and implementation of UNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka





( March 25, 2018, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) A joint delegation of TNA and GTF visited the United States of America at the time when Sri Lanka has been under scrutiny at the UN in Geneva, with appointments secured from the relevant highest levels of authority at the UN, US Administration and Government and the Norwegian Government.





This visit at this critical juncture was based on TNA's and GTF's continued engagement with the Government of Sri Lanka to encourage to implement their 2015 manifesto commitments and commitments made to all Sri Lankans and the international community.





This visit was significant especially considering that the US still hasnt appointed an Ambassador in Geneva.





Delegation included, Mr M A Sumanthiran, Sri Lanka Member of Parliament of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Father S J Emmanuel, President of the Global Tamil Forum (GTF), now resident in Sri Lanka and members from the various member organisations from the US - United States Tamil Political Action Council (USTPAC), Canada - Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC), Norway - Norwegian Tamil Forum (NTF), Australia and the United Kingdom.





The primary objective of the visit was to brief the officials and governments of the ground reality considering the deteriorating situation with law and order, appraisal of status on the constitutional reform process and implementation of UNHRC resolutions 30/1 and 34/1.





Among other serious concerns, the delegation discussed the need to demand Government of Sri Lanka to commit to a timebound implementation plan of resolutions 30/1 & 34/1 of the UNHRC and the need for UNHRC monitoring and oversight over Sri Lanka beyond March 2019.





The delegation was delighted that the United Nations Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Mr Jeffrey Feltman and Director for Asia and Pacific Division Ms Mari Yamashita with her team spent substantial amount of time discussing their observations and of hearing out concerns of the delegation at the main UN building in New York. Under Secretary General Feltman's team has been to Sri Lanka only weeks ago and had a very good understanding of the current political situation.





Deputy US Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Kelley E Currie, who is also the Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, met the delegates at the US Mission at the UN Plaza, 1st Avenue. Ambassador Currie was well informed, reiterated US government commitment for the full implementation of HRC resolution 30/1 and promised to discuss points of concerns with the missions in Geneva and in Colombo.





Similarly, the Norwegian Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Tore Hattrem also agreed to share the delegation's concerns with Oslo and the Norwegian Mission in Geneva recognizing the need for time-bound implementation plan with benchmarks.





Tuesday, 20 March 2018, the delegation met with Ambassador Alice J Wells, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia and her senior staff, at the State Department in Washington DC. Ambassador Wells too was well informed, very engaged and discussed options and alternatives by way of questions and answers. Ambassador Wells also promised to discuss points of concerns with the missions in Geneva and in Colombo.





Delegation also had the privilege to meet with the Senior Republican Congressman Bill Johnson and senior staff of the Foreign Relations Committee at the Hill.



Nonetheless, Trump back-stepped abruptly, saying no one was in the mood for war, in so many, not so harsh, words. He was right. But, the truth is, this sentiment has to grain in much deeper, if now nationwide non-animosity between religious sects, unlike in Sri Lanka and Burma, is to be upheld.





by Shani Punjab Rajah





( March 24, 2018, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The erring over the ominous clash of civilisations thesis meant that Donald Trump tried, horribly, to make the next international war against, yes, North Korea. So, it was a reversion of communist-capitalist antagonism, to explode, in him, instead of hellish religious rivalry on the agenda, as Huntington predicted. But it was not to come, in any global bi-polar or multi-polar way, for now at least.





Only local territories have seen the former religiously-inspired attacks bite, by and large, according to mainstream news analysis, who refrain from branding the Middle East war zones as a Christian-Muslim abode  globally alight.





Nonetheless, Trump back-stepped abruptly, saying no one was in the mood for war, in so many, not so harsh, words. He was right. But, the truth is, this sentiment has to grain in much deeper, if now nationwide non-animosity between religious sects, unlike in Sri Lanka and Burma, is to be upheld.





The end of merciless wars, was never imaginable at our beckon call, until recently. The idea that Socialism is the Politics of co-operation didnt apply without firstcourse to the economy, and business, as its way. Not now. We can after it, say, by logic, that politics, or political theory, like Aristotle wanted, was the study of political actors in the state. Further, non-state political participants can, similarly, wash in, if we want to dig more deeply, and thats where cooperative politics leads.





Jeremy Corbyn, has made the point, recently, on Channel 4 News, in an interview. Applied Marxism, here, is a lesser scope than political economy, but is still vibrantly pertinent. Especially, as a soluble product for all conflict ending, by its simple capacity  Political Co-operation - ingrained, practised and at ones fore in the political arena. Corbyn, however, has not made another tangible brief as recognisable which he ought: Namely, that the politics of co-operation, again, worldwide, and internally, is just how little that is required, by everyone involved, in clashes, carefully, to stop it  a field, in potency, of neurology in future-classic-texts, when trusted. When we dont have the evolutionary capacities of co-operational behaviour beyond capitalism, we backfire.





Sounds absurd. But co-operation, in political caps, is not mentally ill. Nor is selflessness there. And ongoing war is, when not much is given. Sounds absurd again. But not in some Buddhist interpretations. It is, sadly, what makes us mad at others not crazy (a craze started by leaders) for whatever reason, that causes fully-blown war. Some say, Ive spotted, it is even anger produced by the mathematics of gain that is at fault at wars start on Earth initially. So, it is madness at the war-crux, in a manner of speech, for now.





Different from other religious views of conflict like the Sikh take of present woes in-country in trouble spots. Committee Member of the Sikh temple in Brent, UK, Narinder Mudhar, says The Sikh religion is apolitical. Sikhism teaches to serve the community, [and] help the needy. Its three tenets are: honest living, shar[ing] your earnings with the needy and worshiping the creator i.e. God. He adds that Sikhs are regarded as a warrior race but not to build an empire, instead to create a [Godly] nation by helping the oppressed and ensuring human rights. He cherishes that free food is available in the [temples] around the world as an example of service to the community.





But is this enough? If anger still beckons the Sikh region of Punjab to everyones dismay? So how can it end? Is Socialism the answer? Some say it is, until a more heavenly Kingdom lowers beautifully into the earths settling climate, political, sooner, rather than later. Thats what political selflessness, after co-operation, is  religion based, but not sectarian, only commonly understood, where the downtrodden can be saved next to the ideas of God. Can Socialism get us there? If yes, when will global politics yield?





So who has to change? In Buddhist circles, it is not always clear cut, who is right, the people or the leaders, if divergent. Reverend Pannavamsa, a Sri Lankan monk, says he would have to disagree on the fact that people are hate-filled, actively seeking war over peace. For some, he says, especially for those who live in developing countries, riots and processions would seem the only place where the working class is given an ear to.





But for those who wallow in anger, he goes on, the use of Mindfulness based tools and techniques has been proven to aid in emotional stability and better decision-making skills, as per research conducted by University of Massachusetts and University of Oxford. However, he insists, in most situations, good governance should be more efficient than any other tool. Racism is something we all face even while living in 'first world countries', he laments.





This ambiguity infers, we all have a part to play, whether we are politicians or ordinary folk. Especially if race-hate is a factor that threatens to exist in all of us who lack enough care to do the opposite. Good governance, as Reverend Pannavamsa, calls it, requires leaders to have foresight and vision which resonates, justly, to all, within and outside their sovereignty. For this, the mind has to bright and alert, and, therefore, lean towards, a more compassionate state- of-awareness, according to our scriptural take on good action  political or not. Only, then, will kind Socialist decisions prevail, impactfully, for the sake of others, wisely and rightly.





What this implies, is, that World Socialism, now, as the next stage, still, even as home-grown, as Bernie Sanders and Corbyn instill, and peaceful, is, or can be, potentially, or truly, the philosophy of no hate. Gandhi wanted non-violence. Even better, is no-violence, which means not less attacks after vile behaviour has gone on. But stopping it before it adds. The greatest triumph in Socialism will be this. When no hating leads to friendships everywhere, the dialectical opposite of enmity. Thats the outcome Socialists have been yearning for, for centuries. And yes, that really is an agenda thats worth rooting for, until love replaces hate irreversibly, as the dominant trend in society, once and for all. The implication: Both you and I are wiser to be corporal, on a street level, too, even if governments lag behind, until, eventually, institutions have all caught up to the trend of, in the end, a-much-sought-after and needed, yes, - an International-Socialist-Peace, kept steady from thereonin.





The need for this is self-evident explains Ishara de Silva, a Socialist and former editor of once Britains longest serving South Asian national community paper, Asian Times. De Silva said: Nothing will prevent wars from restarting until each nation-state co-operates with a fully functioning Socialist cabinet, even if the general type of Socialism for each country is characteristic of the traits of each nation individually, so long as the basic idea of the politics of co-operation is understood across the board, between states. A Socialist world, therein, means everyone will act with co-operation as the foremost capacity held within, as in neurology, and when this is encouraged, hopefully, a greater peace on the street level, also, will ensue, he proclaimed.





Socialism will be triumphant, De Silva continued, when we see Socialist thinking as a step higher and forward than capitalist and is in our best interest as a species and as Earth living organisms for which there are many in sea-life too. Even they can only rely on a more sane humanity which has to take the next leap from selfishness, as science points out, until it gets far beyond even co-operation. When this is flattened out across the globe we will evolve in much more fairer and just ways together and in common. That is why Karma is in, I expect! De Silva explained.SRINAGAR: In an unprecedented development, a management post-graduate and son of Hurriyat leader and Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (TeH) chairman Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai has joined militant ranks to fight for freedom against Indian rule.

According to reports emerging from Srinagar, Junaid Ashraf Khan Sehrai, the youngest son of the chairman THK Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, joined the militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen in Srinagar on Saturday.

Junaids decision to join Hizbul Mujahideen comes on the heels of his fathers elevation as new chairman of TeH after veteran Kashmiri leader and Hurriyat Conference Chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani stepped down last week. Sehrai is an old associate of Geelani and a seasoned basic member of Jamaat-e-Islami.[the_ad id=24879]

According to the Srinagar Police officials, Junaid Ahmad Khan, 26, a resident of Jehangir Colony in Srinagars Baghat area, went missing Friday afternoon from his home, after which Junaids elder brother lodged a missing person report with the police.

Junaids family has lodged a missing report after his brother Rashid Ashraf Khan arrived at the police station Saturday afternoon and told us that his younger brother [Junaid Khan] went missing yesterday, a police official from Saddar Police Station, Srinagar, told reporters.

The family, as per the police official, has stated in the report that Junaid went for Friday prayers and had told his family that he will return in the evening after repairing his mobile phone at Lal Chowk, the citys centre.

However, a picture of Junaid went viral on social networking websites Saturday morning reflecting the youth holding an assault rifle. The message with the picture suggested that Junaid had joined Hizbul Mujahideen outfit. Police have also confirmed the development.12 fake examinees arrested from NA exams

Police have arrested 12 fake examinees from two exams centers during a Nepal Army examinations on Saturday.Call to open ancient foot trail of Queen Mayadevi

Senior archaeologist Basanta Bidari has proposed developing an ancient foot trail between Lumbini and TilaurakotCommunications minister vows new law

The Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, Gokul Prasad Baskota, has pledged to enact a new communications law on the basis National Mass Communications Policy.by Vladimir Rozanskij

Francis is travelling to the Baltics in late September; Kirill will be Belarus in mid-October. In power for almost 25 years, Belorussian President Lukashenko would be quite happy to see a meeting take place. The nunciature and the patriarchate are working at it. Belarus has an ecumenical vocation. A new concordat giving Catholics the same rights as the Orthodox is close at hands.

Moscow (AsiaNews)  Belarus could be the setting for another meeting between Pope Francis and the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill (Gundyayev). Although the country might be less exotic and far away than Havana, Cuba, where the two religious leaders met for the first time on 12 February 2016, it could nevertheless see their paths cross next autumn, as they did during their visits to the Americas, since Francis plans to travel to the Baltics (22-25 September) whilst Kirill will be in Belarus on 13 October.

Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, Archbishop of Minsk, spoke a few months ago about a possible visit by the pope in Belarus when he welcomed the presidents of the Council of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe (CCEE) who met in late September in the Belarusian capital for their annual plenary session. On that occasion, the country's president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, had expressed his support for a papal visit, and perhaps even a new meeting between the pope and the patriarch of Moscow. In Minsk, Russia and Ukraine signed the only agreements about their ongoing conflicts. This has at least lessened the level of fighting, with the conflict now referred to as "low intensity" or "hybrid" war. Belarus, also known as White Russia, has always been a place of mediation between the other two Eastern Slavic countries, Greater Russia and Little Russia (Ukraine). Lukashenko has been in power since 1994, following the fall of Communism, five years before Putin himself became president. His "subjects" call him batka, "godfather", and he wont dislike marking a quarter century in power with a great initiative of peace between peoples and religions.

Reports about a possible autumn visit by Kirill have revived the suggestive idea of a meeting between the two religious leaders in a country where Catholics and Orthodox live side by side and support each other in a much more positive way than elsewhere. In fact, Belarus is an offspring of the history of Latin Poland and Byzantine Russia. Today still, out of almost 10 million inhabitants, the Catholic minority numbers almost 3 million. The capital Minsk, a metropolis of 3 million people, is one of the most "mixed" places for the two main Christian denominations. The Metropolitan of Minsk, Pavel (Ponomaryov), the Exarch of the Belarusian Orthodox Church in communion with Moscow, also expressed his interest in a papal visit. In a show of humility, he said, "Concerning a visit by the pontiff to Belarus, it is a question that must be assessed by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and that of the Catholic Church. It is not an matter at our echelon, nor at the level of inter-confessional relations, but is eminently a Church-to-Church issue. As soon as the Pope of Rome discusses a possible visit with the patriarch, they will let us know at what level we must place ourselves."

The Vatican nuncio in Belarus, Archbishop Gabor Pinter of Hungary, told the press that Pope Francis has an "exceptionally positive" view of a possible visit to the country, but there are no precise dates nor plans at the moment. However, the diplomat pointed out that "intense work is currently underway so that this event could take place in the near future", perhaps around the time of the popes visit to the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia next September.

The pope's visit could even celebrate a "concordat" between the Catholic Church and the Republic of Belarus, which is currently being discussed by the two sides. Local Catholics want the same rights as the Orthodox Church, whose official pact with the State is a model for the one now being negotiated. The latter would recognise the historical role of Catholicism in the development of the culture and traditions of the country, historically on the border between East and West. In addition to acknowledging the right to organise and set up their own Church institutions, Catholics would be given complete freedom to engage in social, educational and charitable activities at every level, in harmony with the Orthodox. In short, Belarus could serve as a model for ecumenical relations, especially in a region that has always been traversed by deep tensions and ethnic-religious conflicts.Experts doubt new labour offices will ease centres load

The government decision to set up foreign employment offices in three new places outside Kathmandu Valley will not ease pressure on the central office, say some foreign employment experts.Fickle policy holding back hydro sector

Independent power producers have blamed inconsistent government policy for the countrys failure to tap its immense hydropower potential.IBSLs Ms. Sugathadasa steps down View(s):

Insurance regulator, the Insurance Board of Sri Lanka (IBSL) is headless after its Chairperson, Indranee Sugathadasa stepped down last month. Two names  Mano Tittawella, Senior Adviser to Finance and Media Ministry, and Manjula de Silva, Chairman of the National Insurance Trust Fund Board  are still being debated as the replacement, industry officials said. Ms. Sugathadasas term ended on February 9 after eight years in which she served two terms as IBSL head. When contacted Ms. Sugathadasa told the Business Times that after more than 40 years in the public service, she decided to step down as she wanted to spend more time with her family. (DEC)Netherlands farmers and Sri Lankan doctors View(s):

Sandra was born to a Sri Lankan mother, and adopted by a Dutch mother. She was a 12-year old child, when I met her and her foster parents, some time ago in the Netherlands. Sandras foster parents wanted me to help her.

I was there on a scholarship, studying for my doctorate at the Free University of Amsterdam and living in a quiet and beautiful city by the North Sea  The Hague.

Sandra and her parents had come to Sri Lanka, searching for Sandras biological mother. And they had found her; what a moment it would have been for the Sri Lankan mother who saw her daughter after 12 years! But there was no direct communication between the mother and the daughter, as they didnt understand each others language.

After they returned from Sri Lanka, Sandras biological mother started sending letters to her daughter, of course written in Sinhala. Sandras foster mother also wanted to read them and reply. The help that was asked from me was to provide translations of the letters to both sides and, I started doing that.

There was something in this correspondence, which struck my mind and heart: The Sri Lankan mother did not forget to emphasize in her letters to the daughter, Whenever you come again to see me, it is my desire to see you as a lady doctor!

As this request, or rather the advice appeared quite often in her letters, Sandras foster mother once replied to it: Sandra doesnt like to be a medical doctor; rather she wants to be a farmer! I didnt think they understood what each other was saying. But I was quite certain that the heart of the Sri Lankan mother would have been blown to pieces if I had done the literal translation of that reply.

Farmers here

Recently, I was disturbed by seeing the pictures of disappointed, hopeless and helpless farmers who were sitting on their vegetable loads, trucks and tractors parked at Sri Lankas major vegetable markets. Only after they brought their vegetable produce to the wholesale markets, they found that there were no buyers!

Being unable to sell their harvest of months of labour and sweat, they had to spend a sleepless night in the market awaiting the buyers. They were exhausted by morning to the point that they were more than happy just to get rid of the load, as there was no hope of selling the produce. Even if they never sold it, they still had to pay the transportation costs to the vehicle owners.

The middle stretch of the vegetable value chain is a peculiar area where much of the transaction costs, rent-seeking costs, and wastage costs are added to the price. As a result of weak market mechanisms controlled by external forces, neither the producer nor the consumer has any bargaining power.

Farmers there

Farmers in the Netherlands are agri-business owners and, belong to the upper-income class. Their social, political and economic status is much higher than that of the doctors who are engaged in an average profession.

Agriculture in the Netherlands is modernised and mechanised, while farmers work with all types of land vehicles, machines, and computers, all owned by themselves.

In most of the cases they also run their own post-harvest packaging, processing, storing, and transporting facilities. They also focus heavily on technological upgrading. They are not subject to the impact of seasonal variations in climate conditions: they control artificial temperature and artificial light within greenhouses so that even in the freezing winter they can bring out a better agriculture harvest.

According to 2016 World Bank data, real agriculture value added per worker in the Netherlands is US$84,142 a year or $7,011 a month; this is not different from the agriculture value added even in the US as a large country. Compared to that, real agriculture value added per worker in Sri Lanka is only $1,415 a year or $118 per month.

It is noteworthy that the real value added is calculated in constant prices, and is only part of the total output sales value. Nevertheless, this simple illustration is sufficient to understand that farmers in the Netherlands are rich and the farmers in Sri Lanka are poor. This difference can also explain why the farmers in the Netherlands enjoy much higher economic, social and political status, compared to farmers in Sri Lanka.

What makes the difference?

Now we have a fundamental question to answer; what makes the difference between a farmer here and a farmer there? I have no dispute against the fact that the Netherlands is a developed country in the Western hemisphere which has over $45,000 per capita income, compared to $4,000 in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, even for achieving the developed country status in the Netherlands, the contribution made by its agriculture sector was important.

Why the agriculture value added per farmer in the Netherlands is so high and can be comfortably compared to that in the US is because the number of farmers there is small: there are less than 200,000 farmers in the Netherlands, which is only 2.2 per cent of the countrys total employment in 2016. The Netherlands is a small country with 33 thousand square kilometres of land area and, 17 million population.

In Sri Lanka there are 2 million farmers which is 28 per cent of the countrys total employment. Sri Lanka, which is bigger than the Netherlands has a population over 21 million and, land area over 62 thousand square kilometres. Thus it is clear that the Sri Lankan agriculture sector has too many people, producing too small output and, consequently earning too little average income. They are vulnerable to shocks and, dependent too much on governments handouts.

Average farm size

In fact, in the Netherlands agricultural land is scarce and population density is high; it has only 18,370 square kilometres of agricultural land. Compared to that, Sri Lanka has 27,400 square kilometres of agricultural land. But the difference is that the average farm size in the Netherlands is 26 hectares, compared to half a hectare in Sri Lanka (excluding the plantation sector).

Even after being a smaller country and still constrained by high population density, the Netherlands managed to have a reasonably large average farm size because just a few farmers are left in the entire agriculture sector.

When the scale of production is too small, each farmer produces too little and the average income is too low  the main problem of being too small. In addition, that smallness determines not only the economic status, but also the social and political status of the farmers who are left helpless and hopeless in the market which is not a level playing field for them.

When the scale of production is reasonably big enough, the farmers are also capable of modernization and mechanisation of their production activity and of undertaking the application of research and development for technological upgrading. Thus, even though the country is small, the agriculture sector in the Netherlands competes well with large countries in the international markets, producing specific horticulture, dairy products, meat, vegetable, and fruits.

Raising the farmer standards

Can we improve the status of Sri Lankan farmers? Well, you cant really do that with Samurdhi, fertiliser subsidy, and other types of handouts from the government or even with agriculture protection. If we can, we would have already done it for long ago, because there has been no shortage of such policy measures in Sri Lanka.

Farmer status will improve when non-agriculture sectors (industry and services) grow fast enough in order to accommodate labour from the agriculture sector, leaving a few thousands of farmers in reasonably large farm lands.

This will then result in agriculture transforming into modern agri-businesses and, farmers into agri-entrepreneurs with higher bargaining power in the market. If anyone decides to be a farmer in such an environment it is a rational choice rather than not having any other choice. (The writer is Professor of Economics at the University of Colombo).Political bourgeoisie kill Ceylon Tea By Sunimalee Dias View(s): View(s):

Threats, intimidation and political pressure are mounting against the tea industry, the minister and Tea Board officials by factory owners opposing detections that revealed 53 factories had adulterated the 150 year old Ceylon Tea.

Out of the 740 tea factories in the country the Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB) found 53 to have added sugar into the teas to increase the weight and dark colour as a result of which the Tea Factory Owners Association (TFOA) President Harith Ranasinghe has received anonymous telephone calls from overseas numbers insulting him in obscene language; the former SLTB Chairman Dr. Rohan Pethiyagoda and Tea Commissioner being yelled at a recent meeting held on March 20 in the presence of other factory owners as well. The former had also being berated at a recent gathering of these factory owners in Ratnapura; and Plantation Industries Minister Navin Dissanayake has come under intense political pressure to go soft on these offenders some of whom have been warned previously as well and not cancel their licences.

The process involved is first a fine of Rs.50,000 and a warning followed by a suspension of licences for three months and next a cancellation of the licences.

Factories owned by at least two politicians from the ruling parties and another relative of an MP from the opposition were found to have adulterated the teas as a result of which the SLTB has sent a notice of show cause to provide an explanation why action should not be initiated against them. Another factory owner is learnt to have abused SLTB officials stating that he had got away previously as well and noted that he was a donor to the Mahaweliseya as a result of which the government should give cover to him.

However, Minister Dissanayake during this weeks media briefing held to announce the new chairman of the SLTB Lucille Wijewardena said that he would not be lenient with any factory owners but would have a meeting with them next week on the next course of action. But he pointed out that cancelling their licences would only impact the workers and with the New Year around the corner it would hurt them.

Of the 53 factories that have been asked to show cause some of them have agreed to the allegations leveled against them while others have said they would seek legal action against the authorities for carrying out the detections and questioned the basis of the methodology adopted in testing the teas.

TFOA President Ranasinghe told the Business Times that they had been complaining to the authorities and government officials to ensure that detections were carried out against these factories that were adulterating the teas.

As a result, Mr. Ranasinghe said that they were scheduled to have a meeting with the SLTB authorities who would clarify to them the methodology adopted.

For the past six years the association has vehemently opposed the adulteration of tea and asked the industry to stop it and authorities to find the culprits and bring them to book.

Compared to previous detections carried out in this instance the scale has been higher with a large number being netted in. Last year there were 12 factories that were detected.

As an association they would call for explanation from their members once they receive the list of factories that are under inquiry, he said adding that in the past some members had quit their membership when such detections were carried out.

It is learnt that the SLTB had carried out the detections by obtaining samples from the factories and sent it to the laboratories for testing as anonymous. As a result it was only after the final result was received that the samples could be checked to find out who had actually adulterated the teas.

The detections was carried out to look for the sugar in tea by obtaining samples of teas before and after rolling as it has been found out that the sugar is added at the point of rolling the tea leaves.

The detections found that the teas were adulterated with glucose, sucrose and fructose and the factories were found to be mainly from Ratnapura, Galle and Matara.

In addition to testing by the SLTB, the Tea Research Institute (TRI) had also carried out the testing using the sophisticated method  high performance liquid chromatography that detects the high performance of sugar and glucose. Samples had also been sent to an external laboratory as well all of which had fully corroborated with the TRI and SLTB results.

Moreover, in obtaining samples from the factories, one sample was given to the factory manager and another sample stored in the laboratories for future reference while another was sent for testing.

Industry persons opine there needs to be a process of punishment, and the cancellation of the licenses of these offenders is required to ensure no such activity would be carried out in the future as well.Seeing red in blue-green Lanka View(s):

An agitated Kussi Amma Sera was red in the face (anger, not embarrassment) after something she appeared to have read in Thursday mornings newspaper.

A vociferous reader, peering occasionally to see the big print with an old set of spectacles, she spends at least 30 minutes in the morning while preparing tea scanning the headlines of the paper like any smart reader and then selects what she should read and what should be passed on.

This morning, she is involved in an over-the-fence, chit-chat with Serapina (often amusing to passers-by due to their loud conversation interspersed with high-pitched laughter or high-pitched anger, depending on the content).

This time it sounded serious. Again, without giving any indication that I was listening to their conversation from my work-room from where I could clearly see them through the window, I heard snatches of the conversation which went like this:

They are taxing hard-earned money sent by our people in the Middle East

Are you sure? Eke hari wedak neda (this is a fine state of affairs)?

Meka hari asadaranai (this is unfair).

Apey sallee ekka manthri-la sel-lung karanawa (parliamentarians are playing with our money).

While pondering on their conversation and looking at a blank wall wondering what todays topic should be, the phone rings. Its my banker amba yahaluwa (mango friend) Seeni Bola on the line. He earned this sobriquet after once boasting that other banks were handling seeni bola (peanut) deposits compared to his bank!

I say, there is a hue and cry over the new taxes on deposits, he says in a baritone voice over the phone (ideally suited to be in a choir).

Say what? I ask.

My banker friends say there is some misunderstanding over new taxes on these accounts. People are calling the banks and complaining, he said.

Whats the issue?

That there is a tax on all deposits and money sent by our migrant workers will be taxed. This is a misunderstanding of this budget tax, he added.

Realising that this is an issue that needs to be addressed and politely ending the conversation after promising to call later, I find that this was the problem that Kussi Amma Sera and Serapina were discussing over the fence and as usual, bashing the politicians without a clear understanding of who and what is being taxed.

However, this misunderstanding and treading into the unknown by many people is a reflection of the Governments poor communication mechanism showing time and time again its inability to explain to the people with clarity, taxes that directly affect them.

For the record, even at the Business Times there were people calling and complaining about the unfair taxes on deposits and that this would further reduce remittances from abroad. Separately, banks are still waiting for clarity on the tax on transactions called the Debt Repayment Levy which is also enforceable on April 1.

The bone of contention is Circular No. SEC/2018/01 to banks and financial institutions titled Withholding tax (WHT) on interest paid by banks or other financial institutions issued by the Department of Inland Revenue (DIR).

Dated March 16, the circular sets out the taxes on interest effective from April 1 which customers have learnt, triggering concern and in some cases hysteria by depositors that a new tax is being enforced.

A WHT of 5 per cent is being imposed on the interest income of a deposit account, increasing from 2.5 per cent earlier. In the case of senior citizens, the 5 per cent WHT is being applied on aggregated interest income (from all deposits) above an annual income of Rs. 1.5 million (or Rs. 125,000).

This 5 per cent WHT on interest income is being enforced for the first time on foreign remittances which applies to export earnings and money sent home by Sri Lankan migrant workers, the last named being the subject of conversation by Kussi Amma Sera and Serapina.

Bankers believe the tax on interest income on foreign earnings could be a disincentive to exporters to bring back their money. On the other hand, it is unlikely to make a major dent in remittances by Sri Lankan workers abroad, many of whom send money to keep the home-fires burning and hardly have any cash left in accounts to earn interest.

Nevertheless, the Government is sending the wrong signal by taxing foreign remittances which serves as a disincentive rather than an encouragement to bring your money home.

Having said that, taxes are an integral part of the functioning of a state in providing public services like free health and free education (for all, irrespective of whether you are rich or poor), subsidised transport (railways and buses, again without discrimination) and other services.

While taxes need to be collected, the issue is whether the authorities over the years have got the tax structure right and there lies the problem. There arent enough people paying income tax in Sri Lanka (particularly those who should be taxed!) reflecting the inefficiency of the DIR and compelling the government to resort to indirect taxes which are easier to collect.

This problem was also alluded to recently by Senior Minister Sarath Amunugama (a former, distinguished civil servant) at a public forum, where he said that one of the major problems in the economy is that revenue from traditional sources of taxation (income tax) hasnt worked.

He said people have to be taxed, particularly those who have the ability to pay and because this is not happening there are distortions in the economy where indirect taxes are higher than direct taxes. Indirect taxes now bring in 80 per cent of the tax revenue, whereas the ideal ratio should be 60 per cent in direct taxes and 40 per cent indirect.

But, he noted, because of the inability of the DIR to bring more people under the income tax net, administrations are forced to resort to indirect taxes to meet the governments spending needs.

Eventually, everyone ends up paying consumption taxes where there is no discrimination on the ability to pay. The poor pays the same tax as the rich on consumption goods, which is unequal, unfair and unjust with the worst affected being the middle class who are sandwiched between the upper class and the working class.

The WHT on interest income was announced in the 2017 budget but as usual in technical jargon that no one except tax advisors understand. It is meant to confuse the public, at least thats the peoples perception. One of the reasons why accountants and audit firms immediately issue a statement the day after the budget explaining to clients the changes in taxes is because corporates are also unable to understand clearly the changes, particularly the exemptions. If that is the case, how does one expect the public to understand taxes that affect them?

In fact, the November-presented budget said that regulations would be announced later in the case of bank interest paid to senior citizens. If the banks dont inform customers of these changes (and in this case, with the circular being issued just two weeks before its enforcement), how are people expected to know?

Furthermore the tax on interest income on migrant workers remittances, the biggest foreign exchange earner for the Government, should have been explained clearly to the public, instead of worried customers calling banks a few days before the April 1 rule to express their concerns. The March 16 circular should have been issued in January or early February and banks directed (this should have been stated in the budget, if its not a common practice) to inform their customers of these changes.

Taxing the people is inevitable but failure in proper communication of those decisions has been the bane of this Government compelling Kussi Amma Sera and her ilk to see red in the Governments supposedly acclaimed blue-green budget exercise.Unimos Bezza Most Affordable Sedan in Sri Lanka View(s):

Malaysias first Energy Efficient Vehicle (EEV) Perodua Bezza has become one of the best-selling brand new sedans in Sri Lanka in a short period of time, a media release issued by United Enterprises Ltd (UEL), a fully-owned subsidiary of United Motors Lanka PLC, revealed.

This was due to its all options and most importantly the price factor of an all-inclusive price of Rs. 3.6 million, it said.

Bezza is equipped with a 1000cc VVTI engine coupled to a four-speed automatic electronically controlled transmission providing ample power for quick acceleration and effortless pulling.

Its safety features including the dual airbags, Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS) and Electronic Brake Force Distribution (EBD) system have won it New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP)s four star safety rating, media release highlighted.

The NCAP is an independent body which assesses driver, passenger and pedestrian safety standards of vehicles in the event of an accident.So does anybody tell the president View(s):

These last couple of weeks in Sri Lanka have been exciting, comic and sad. Mob rule in the guise of ethno-religious differences and confrontation has brought shame and disgrace to a country trying to keep western rottweilers from chewing up Sri Lankas misled and misleading politicians who were made to believe that a pat on the dogs head and a bone to its mouth are sufficient to win their friendship and keep them at bay.

The stirring of ethnic and religious antagonism and fears by rampaging mobs encouraged by extremist blowheads in the name of patriotism and a determination to preserve the countrys current demographics and religious supremacy has only provided more fodder for ongoing western demands for Sri Lanka to honour its pledges to the UN Human Rights Council and blood thirsty beasts in it and elsewhere, braying for the countrys blood.

Now the so-called patriots at home who have let loose their vicious brand of nationalistic fervour against ethnic minorities in the last decade or so by their violence have only helped buttress the calls from the worldwide Tamil diaspora and other revenge seekers for strong international action against Sri Lanka.

Cabinet Spokesman dentist Rajitha Senaratnes mistaken belief that Sri Lanka did not co-sponsor UNHRC Resolution 30/1 of October 2015 (perhaps the only one in government who still believes so)  should have been shaken by the gruelling experience of being tackled and forced on to the mat in Geneva the other day. But one doubts that even this would make him concede that he was wrong and that Sri Lanka would have fared better had we done just what the dear doctor believes we had done in Geneva nearly three years ago.

Instead we tried to please the Rottweiler pack already preparing to attack us and others who were already growling, with blandishments hoping that yahapalanas docility to the west and ideological friendship would win the day. Alas that approach seems to have failed as the pressure still continues and the demand for the pound of flesh promised to them has not subsided, as the Geneva meeting has shown.

It would serve the cause of yahapalana, which of course has taken a severe beating in recent times, better if spokesman Senaratne gets his facts right and tries to stop playing the Thracian gladiator Spartacus at media briefings in the belief that loquacity is an adequate substitute for fact and reasoned analysis and response.

To begin with if he is there to brief the media on what transpired at the cabinet meeting, what could be disclosed and answer media questions relevant to what emerged from the cabinet that is fine for that is his task. But to entertain irrelevancy, engage in verbal combat and then stand up and walk off as he did last week, is hardly doing the government he represents any favours, particularly when the chinks in his armour clearly show.

Lets leave the Geneva mess aside for the time being and look elsewhere. How far is it correct that those who came from outside the embattled areas were largely responsible for fuelling the flames of racial and religious hatred?

It may be quite true, especially when it is said that saffron-robed Buddhist monks had visited the areas. Some might believe that the intention that brought them there was genuine and praiseworthy. It was to douse the fires that were beginning to rise as a result of an incident that had little connection with a Sinhala-Muslim confrontation except that the individuals involved in the roadside incident happened to be a Sinhala victim and four Muslim assailants.

Adding to the physical presence of those referred to as fired up extremists were those who turned to social media to spread hate speech and apparently fabricate stories  what Donald Trump constantly calls fake news.

There is little doubt that blown up stories coming from the affected areas or from elsewhere did add to the churning pot of false and exaggerated stories fed into it by religious and racial extremists or by mischief makers waiting for such an opportunity.

There was evidence to show that during the jihadist attacks on towns and cities in some European countries including the UK, during the last couple of years social media not only played a part in dissemination of information between jihadist moles and active participants but also in spreading misinformation to create confusion and fear among citizens.

To some the social media has turned into an instrument for the dissemination of hate and revenge and to others a means for social good and easier communication between family and friends.

While there has been an ongoing debate for some time now on whether social media that create social disturbance and chaos should be controlled to prevent national disintegration and internal ethno-religious conflict, the question is how far could and should one go without trampling on other rights that citizens enjoy.

While this debate flared up again in the box and elsewhere there was an item in social media exchanges that has quite rightly raised other concerns. It seems that one particular item that was planted by someone and was in circulation (I personally did not see it) caused presidential ire to rise by several degrees.

Readers might recall the recent incident of two persons who left a night club at around 6 am (a day and night club perhaps) and ended up in the Diyawanna Oya. Now there are lots of things that really should end up in this particular waterway which would be a valuable contribution to the health and well-being of our nation but a new BMW still carrying a garage number plate is not it.

Anyway the night clubbers seemed to have dragged themselves out of the water and fled where we do not know. Its most unlikely they headed home in their wet clothes without some explanation ready  like this was a driverless car which took off on its own volition as our lady high commissioner in London departing today from a still wintery city.

If the story said to have been in circulation and that annoyed the president was a social media concoction that the car which ended up in the drink was driven by his son Daham there seemed to be proof that young Sirisena was nowhere around.

Now there have been all sorts of stories about young Daham from the days when he turned up at the UN during a general assembly session and had somehow managed to sit with the Sri Lankan delegation.

There were photographs of Daham Sirisena at the delegations seats at the UN which suddenly disappeared from sight when the news broke. Since then his visage has not illumined the newspapers.

Since then Daham Sirisena appeared to have pinned to the ground and his travels terminated. That is what most people thought. That was of course not the truth. He travelled with his Presidential father even to Putin country if I remember correctly.

If all these stories in circulation are true then Daham Sirisena could not have been at the wheel. He was said to have been in Japan with his parents. If that is evidence to exonerate Daham from driving into the Diyawanna waters, for he is visiting Japan as part of the presidential entourage but keeping it all quiet from the Sri Lankan people.

Why is it that young Sirisena is not in any photographs? If he has been a member of delegations visiting foreign countries why should they hide when Rajapaksa children also had their fair share of travel at state expense.

If one asks the Presidents Media Unit you might or might not get an answer. If one asks the foreign ministry it might provide an answer on its own volition, if one gets an answer at all, compelling one to seek remedial action from the Right to Information Commission under the RTI Act.

May be neither of these institutions are inclined to reveal how many visits members of the presidential family have made abroad as part of a Sri Lankan delegation or just for the ride, who they were and how much it cost the government for each of them.

I ask this not in jest or to ridicule. But surely there must be someone in his secretariat with backbone enough to advice the head of State. If he is determined to visit every country on this planet before his term is up he should at least think of leaving some of his progeny behind to mind the store at home.

He surely cannot exhort others on frugality and saving public money while spending money on family tours at public expense.

Would defenders of presidential conduct tell of any other President of Sri Lanka since the executive presidency was born who has travelled abroad so many times in such a short time? I suppose his next foreign visit will be to London for the Commonwealth Summit in the second half of April. Will some of his progeny tag along too giving the Tamil diaspora another opportunity to mount a protest against him.

SLFP Secretary General Duminda Dissanayake said after a party meeting last week that Maithripala Sirisena will contest a second term. If that is so then there is no need to rush around the world as though these countries will disappear from the face of this planet.

May be he knows a secret we do not. Hence the haste.Rotaract marks World Down Syndrome Day By Hiranyada Dewasiri View(s): View(s):

The Rotaract District 3220 Sri Lanka and Maldives will mark World Down Syndrome Day for 2018. A special programme targeting 300 diagnosed children, their parents and teachers will be held on Thursday March 31, 2018 from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm at Visakha Vidyalaya, Colombo 04.

The morning session of the full day programme will consist of a medical camp, an art competition and exhibition, games and activities for children running parallel with the training programme for teachers and empowerment programmes for parents of the participant children. This would be followed by the sustainable educative programme targeting parents and teachers, which is a new addition to this years program. A variety show that will display the talents of the participating children will colour the evening session of the World Down Syndrome Day celebrations. Winners of the art competition and participants of the programme will be awarded with prizes during the variety show.

The medical camp organized in collaboration with the Lady Ridgeway Hospital will be conducted by doctors attached to the Lady Ridgeway Hospital. The camp will consist general pediatricians, ophthalmologists, ENT specialists, neurologists, surgeons, cardiologists, nutritionists, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, dermatologists, speech therapists and occupational therapists. The sustainable educative program targeting parents and teachers will be held in two parts. The open forum conducted together with the Ministry of Education and the Sri Lanka association for Child Development will be a discussion on opportunities in education that are already established for students with Down Syndrome which will be followed by a Question and Answer session with a representative from the Ministry of Education. The project is organized by Rotaract District 3220 and is hosted by the Rotaract clubs of University of Moratuwa, University of Kelaniya, University of Peradeniya, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Faculty of Management and Finance  University of Colombo, Faculty of Science  University of Colombo, Faculty of Law  University of Colombo, Faculty of Arts  University of Colombo and General Sir John Kotelawala Defense University in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka Association for Child Development. Lady Ridgeway Hospital, National Hospital of Sri Lanka and the Jellybean Foundation.

World Down Syndrome Day is a project that Rotaract has been supporting since 2010 and it has been a main event in the Rotaract calendar ever since. This is the first time World Down Syndrome Day is organized as a sole initiative of the Rotaract movement.

The organisers invite the public to be a part of World Down Syndrome Day to celebrate the colourful abilities of children with down syndrome and strive to raise awareness to create a society that is more inclusive and welcoming.

For contributions, donations, registrations and more information, contact Nipun on 0779538558 or Amristar on 0772760063.Floating storage regasification unit: Expert says Sri Lanka must call for open tender By Namini Wijedasa View(s): View(s):

Sri Lanka must call for an open, transparent tender for its first floating storage regasification unit (FSRU), a global oil and gas industry expert said, warning that plans to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from a single source could saddle the country with long-term overpriced contracts leading to high, not cheaper, electricity prices.

The Government signed a memorandum of understanding with India and Japan for an LNG terminal and FSRU in Kerawalapitiya. The State-owned Sri Lanka Gas Terminal Co Ltd will hold just 15 percent of equity in the joint venture (JV) while Indias Petronet LNG Ltd will have 47.5 percent and Japans Sojitz Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation will secure 37.5 percent.

Sri Lankas status as junior partner in the JV makes its position highly vulnerable, said Nalin Gunasekera, who has spent the last 37 years in the upstream exploration and production sector. This project could well turn extremely bitter and not sweet, if it is mismanaged by the Government of Sri Lanka.

For the past six years, Mr Gunasekerawho works out of Perth and Singaporehas been making presentations and reviewing with the Sri Lankan Government its attempt to monetise the countrys offshore gas reserves and a proposal to introduce LNG to the energy mix.

Petronet has a clear conflict of interest in seeking a market for its overpriced LNG, he signalled. The Indian Government has contracted LNG procurement into the future via Petronet (and others) well above market price. Some of these agreements have been renegotiated. India has long-term overpriced supplies through to 2038 to offload, with Sri Lanka probably not having the right of refusal, he said.

India has been scouting for a market for this overpriced LNG as a re-exporter and is now turning to Sri Lanka, having been rejected by others, Mr Gunasekera analysed. How Sri Lanka manages to procure LNG for its FSRUwhether overpriced gas from India or a through lower-priced long term deal or from the spot marketmay determine the affordability of electricity for the Sri Lankan consumer for decades to come.

Qatar has a monopoly of Indian LNG imports and has used this as a bargaining chip. Sri Lanka should be cautioned against having a single source of LNG from the lessons learnt by India.

Are Sri Lankas consumers paying a premium to rescue Indias predicament with their long-term overpriced LNG contracts, ultimately paying an unaffordable price for electricity? Mr Gunasekera asked. These are questions being raised in the international marketplace watching these global transactions making ignoramus poor countries still poorer.

Given Sri Lankas past record of oil price hedging (incurring a penalty of US$ 168mn), lacking the basic skills in the complex business of LNG procurement makes the guaranteed success of this project questionable. Other LNG brokers such as Woodside, TOTAL and Shell have also approached the Government. Their offers at prevailing prices and interest in participating in these projects were not reported in the public domain.

The advantage of engaging with these companies is the technology transfer and the management expertise they bring along with their 100 years in this business, Mr Gunasekera, who has worked with Shell, said.

In Sri Lanka, the lack of transparency and basic skills required in these major undertakings leaves much concern when, ultimately, the public purse has to bear the penalty of the Governments missteps into the future. Other countries openly tender such requirements to secure the best price, later negotiating improved terms for the sake of public transparency, he saud.

India, which is guiding Sri Lanka, still has no functioning or operating FSRU. And there are no known FSRUs installed in Japanese waters. Thus, all partners sponsoring this project have no direct record of past operational experience, Mr Gunasekera said. Indias very first FSRU by H-Energy, having had a turbulent history due to volatile LNG prices, is likely to be operational by the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019.

FSRU leased contracts are known in the offshore oil and gas industry to be notoriously complex. They will also not be under Sri Lankan jurisdiction or governing law. Eventually, high penalties become payable by those least knowledgeable of the stakeholders, Mr Gunasekera said.

The Government of Sri Lanka has decided on the location for the FSRUnominated by the Sri Lanka Ports Authority as being West Container Terminal No 1without calling for expressions of interest (EoI). It will later be moved to the new breakwater arm when the existing one is extended to facilitate West Container Terminal No 2.

There appears to be little justification for the proposed location when a number of them should have been reviewed before a final is selected, Mr Gunasekera said. There have been no navigational simulations or quantified risk assessment. The regasified natural gas is to be transferred to the power station through subsurface and land pipelines or trucks, according to SLPA. No environmental impact assessment (EIA) has yet been done in choosing the location or for routing of pipelines or trucks carrying LNG.

Lacking definition makes this project still at the pre-feasibility stage, he said. At the conception stage of any FSRU project, specialist contractors, consultants and potential FSRU suppliers should be engaged to examine the proposed site location, subsea and offshore metocean conditions, soils and bathymetry and to perform feasibility studies for optimum project configuration.

Commercial risk-sharing terms have to be reviewed with potential FSRU suppliers, Mr Gunasekera advised. This can be a lengthy process for a first FSRU project, often taking many months to complete.A special bond with SOS Sri Lanka By Shakya Wickramanayake View(s): View(s):

In 1949, on seeing the pain and suffering of young children orphaned by World War II, Hermann Gmeiner was moved. A child welfare worker in Austria, Gmeiner committed himself to giving those children a loving family and a supportive community to grow up in, founding the first SOS Childrens Village in Austria. Almost 70 years later the organisation has spread over 118 countries, with over 500 villages.

The suffering Gmeiner saw back then still affects millions of children worldwide. Children are the most vulnerable in any society and when tragedy hits, be it war or natural disasters, theyre likely to be disproportionately affected. Every child needs a family. So that one day he or she can find their own place in society, says Shubha Murthi, the international director for the Asia Region of SOS Childrens Village International who was in Sri Lanka recently.

Sri Lanka is very special to us, she says, explaining how the organisation was first established in the 1980s in the island, on the invitation of the then Director of the Childrens Secretariat Malsirini Dias.

Those on the international board have at various points in time been personally involved in the efforts in Sri Lanka. Current president of SOS Childrens Village International, Siddarth Kaul, oversaw the relief programmes in India and Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, where over 7000 homes were built on the eastern and southern coastlines.

For Shuba Murthi herself, having first visited the country in 1994 during the height of the war, seeing the country move forward to peace and reconciliation has been an uplifting experience. One such defining moment for her, was the reunification of over 270 children displaced during the war with their parents after it ended. A process which was long and arduous, but ultimately satisfying she says.

But the work of SOS Childrens Village isnt confined to relief programmes alone. For 40 years the organisation has been providing orphaned, abandoned, or underprivileged children a loving home. The Villages function as an alternative to the state run orphanages and a child is placed under the care of a foster mother, with each mother having between 8 and 10 children under her care, until her retirement. The first of these Villages was established in Piliyandala in 1981 and since then five other villages have been established in Nuwara Eliya, Galle, Anuradhapura, Moneragala and Jaffna. Currently they house over a thousand children, and its estimated that over 41,000 children have passed through the system.

A large part of the organisations work includes financing state run homes which are heavily underfunded. According to Ananda Karunarathne, the National Director for SOS Childrens Village in Sri Lanka the state provides a mere Rs. 50 per day for a child, with it being as low as Rs. 30 in some provinces.

In addition, the organisation also works with families in the villages of Peraliya and Gandara in Galle, to strengthen their capacity to care for and protect their children. Its an empowerment system, says Ms. Murthi. We teach them to save. We help enhance their businesses and establish community based organizations to facilitate this.

Though focused primarily on the care of children, SOS does provide facilities for the development and upliftment of young adults as well, mainly through their vocational training facilities in Anuradhapura, Moneragala and Jaffna. The project which has seen over 1500 students pass through has been a resounding success, with an over 98% graduate employment rate.

Such programmes are especially important in todays economic climate explains Ms. Murthi, as the youth population in the Asian region is rapidly expanding.

In Sri Lanka the organisation has advocated against the practice of separating siblings in the adoption process, which causes further psychological turmoil to children already in a vulnerable state. Though laws banning the practice have yet to be enacted, their efforts have led to courts in the Western Province following the best interest of the child policy and ruling against separation of siblings during adoption.

In its four-decade history SOS Childrens Village has had a significant effect on the lives of children and their families in this country, with thousands of people benefiting from its work. The organisation has been able to do so through funding and support it received from international donors. But now, with the war behind it, Sri Lanka is classified as middle income country. What this means according to the National Director, is that island now has the capacity to support the work of the organization.

Its time to give back, says Karunarathne, as he urges people to contribute on a regular basis. A child cant eat or go to school only for a month.

For more information, please contact SOS on 0112702712 or see www.soschildrensvillages.lkPakistan community in Sri Lanka celebrates 78th National Day View(s):

The High Commission of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Pakistani community based in Sri Lanka celebrated the 78th National Day of Pakistan with traditional fervour and resolve to make Pakistan a strong, vibrant, progressive and democratic welfare state.

The National Day of Pakistan is celebrated every year on March 23 to commemorate the outstanding achievement of the Muslims of the Sub-Continent who passed the historic Pakistan Resolution on this day in Lahore in 1940 which culminated in creation of Pakistan after 7 years.

The Acting High Commissioner of Pakistan hoisted the national flag of Pakistan in a colourful ceremony, held at the Pakistan High Commission on Friday morning. Later, the messages of the President and the Prime Minister of Pakistan were read out to the audience.

The Acting High Commissioner, on the occasion, said that Pakistan greatly values its

Sri Lanka relations which are based on mutual trust and understanding. It is a matter of great satisfaction that these mutually beneficial relations, rooted in history, have become truly multi-dimensional, covering fields of politics, economy, defence and security, culture, education and people-to-people contacts.

The Acting High Commissioner also extended sincere greetings and best wishes on behalf of the Government and people of Pakistan to the Government and people of Sri Lanka for the continued progress, peace, national unity, reconciliation and harmony in the years ahead.

The ceremony was attended by a large number of participants from various walks of life including members of the Sri Lanka Pakistan Friendship, Trade and Investment Association, Sri Lanka-Pakistan Business Council and the Pakistani community based in Sri Lanka.Govt asks diplomats to get prior approval

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked diplomatic missions, the United Nations and other international organisations in Nepal to seek its prior approval before meeting with state and local level authorities.Govt mulls formation of large cardamom dev board

Minister for Agriculture, Land Management and Cooperatives Chakra Pani Khanal said that the government is serious in setting up a large cardamom development board or similar entity to address problems faced by farmers and to capitalise on the untapped business potential of the valuable spice.MEXICO, N.Y. -- A 14-year-old was arrested and charged with falsely reporting an incident, according to New York State Police.

A 12-year-old received a message from an "unknown source" that alerted the 12-year-old to a possible school shooting on Monday, March 26 at Mexico Middle School, police said.

After an investigation, the 14-year-old was arrested, police said. The teen was issued an Oswego County Family Court appearance ticket, police said. The teen's name was not released because of their age, police said.

New York State Police said they are working with the Mexico Central School District to ensure students and teachers have a safe learning environment.SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- More than 1,000 students and supporters marched across downtown Syracuse today to deliver a message about gun violence:

Enough is enough.

The Central New York students joined the hundreds of thousands of people holding March for Our Lives rallies around the world. Teenagers organized the protest after 17 people were gunned down on Valentine's Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The Syracuse rally started at the Everson Museum of Art. Students -- along with parents, educators, bus drivers, activists and siblings too young for school -- gathered outside the museum carrying homemade signs.

At noon, the protesters marched from the South State Street museum to the Federal Building Plaza on Washington Street.

The march ended with a round of speeches from determined students. Invited by a teacher, a grieving mother whose teenage son was shot to death last month in Syracuse stepped up to the mic to share her story.

Temperatures hovered below freezing. But the protesters were not deterred -- shouting chants that echoed across downtown:

"What do we want?"

"Safe schools."

"When do we want them?"

"Right now!"

Stay tuned: We'll post more photos, videos and scenes from the march.WASHINGTON -- Beth Currado drove all night with her family from Syracuse to Washington, D.C., arriving in time to take part in today's March for Our Lives rally against gun violence.

Currado, a nurse practitioner in Syracuse, said she didn't mind the seven-hour trip, arriving at 1 a.m., or having only a few hours of sleep. She wanted to be part of history, joining a crowd of some 500,000 people at one of the nation's largest rallies ever held against gun violence.

Currado, 54, had never taken part in a protest march, and had little or no interest in political issues. But Currado explained she was so inspired by student organizers of the rally from Parkland, Fla., that she had to be in Washington on Saturday.

"These high school kids are amazing," Currado said, referring to the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where a Feb. 14 shooting left 17 people dead.

"They got me off the couch," she said. "It's the one thing I feel I want to be political about. Owning guns is one thing, but nobody needs to have an AR-15."

Currado's two daughters, Carol Ann, 26, and Olivia, 19, and her sister, Christy Livingston, of Syracuse, joined her on the trip.

"The very least we could do is get in our car and support these kids because they are the ones that are going to make the change," said Livingston, who lives in Syracuse's Valley neighborhood.

Organizers of the student-led rally to end gun violence are calling for a federal ban on assault-style semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Beth Currado said she thinks it's a sensible request for members of Congress to pass such laws.

"Like the kids say, 'enough is enough' and it's time for sensible gun laws to be enacted," she said.

Olivia Currado said she told her mother she wanted to join the march in Washington after viewing a viral video of a speech by Parkland student Emma Gonzalez.

"I think it's the best thing I've ever done," Olivia said, as she stood only a couple blocks from the U.S. Capitol, hoping that members of Congress will hear the message of marchers.

At the same time as the rally in Washington, an additional 837 sister marches occurred around the world, including one in Syracuse at the Everson Museum of Art.

Contact Mark Weiner anytime: Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- President Donald Trump released an order Friday night banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under "limited circumstances," following up on his calls last year to ban transgender individuals from serving.

The White House said retaining troops with a history or diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" -- those who may require substantial medical treatment -- "presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality."

Trump surprised the Pentagon's leadership in a 2017 tweet when he declared he would reverse an Obama-era plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly. His push for the ban has been blocked by several legal challenges, and three federal courts have ruled against the ban. The Pentagon responded by allowing those serving to stay in the military, and began allowing transgender individuals to enlist beginning Jan. 1.

"This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards -- including those regarding the use of medical drugs -- equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday.

The new policy was promptly assailed by congressional Democrats and civil rights groups. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted, "No one with the strength & bravery to serve in the U.S. military should be turned away because of who they are. This hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor & dignity."

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT civil rights organization, accused the Trump administration of pushing "anti-transgender prejudices onto the military."

"There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence Administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops," said HRC President Chad Griffin.

Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & HIV Project, said the policy "effectively coerces transgender people who wish to serve into choosing between their humanity and their country, and makes it clear that transgender service members are not welcome."

Trump received recommendations from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in February for dealing with transgender individuals serving in the military. The White House said Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen agreed with the policy.

Earlier Friday, Maj. David Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, said the announcement of a new policy would have no immediate practical effect on the military because the Pentagon is obliged to continue to recruit and retain transgender people in accordance with current law.

The issue has become mired in a complicated string of political statements, court decisions and policy reviews since Trump first stunned his administration with his tweets last July. It's unclear how much impact the court decisions will have on Trump's decision. Activist groups had worried the administration could enact such strict enlistment and health care restrictions that it would become all but impossible for transgender troops to join or continue serving.

Under guidelines presented in December, the Pentagon could disqualify potential recruits with gender dysphoria, those with a history of medical treatments associated with gender transition and those who underwent reconstruction. Such recruits could be allowed in if a medical provider certified they've been clinically stable in the preferred sex for 18 months and are free of significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas.

Transgender individuals receiving hormone therapy must be stable on their medication for 18 months.

The requirements make it challenging for a transgender recruit to pass. But they mirror conditions laid out by President Barack Obama's administration in 2016, when the Pentagon initially lifted its ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military.High-level panel grills Oriental chief Basnet

The Problematic Cooperatives Management Committee has started grilling Oriental Cooperative chief Sudhir Basnet over the misappropriation of billions in deposits besides freezing his assets. Basnet has served one year out of the two-year jail sentence he was awarded after being convicted of fraud.U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter could fiercely debate legislative opponents on the House floor, then sing harmony with them for charity, use her scientist's mind to argue for human rights and sweeten a discussion with homemade rhubarb pie, Washington colleagues recalled Friday at her funeral.

"Even her opponents couldn't help liking her and respecting her," Hillary Clinton said inside a Rochester, New York, auditorium filled with family, constituents from her western New York district and two planeloads of congressional colleagues and staff.

Slaughter, a Kentucky coal miner's daughter who never lost her lilting Southern accent, died March 16 following a fall in her Washington home. She was 88 and had represented her district for 31 years.

Clinton said Slaughter, a fellow Democrat, took her under her wing when the former first lady was elected to represent New York in the Senate in 2000. Slaughter had done the same for many other women in Washington, said Clinton, who attended with her husband, former President Bill Clinton. She said Slaughter found inspiration in the region's history as a cradle of women's rights.

"Louise never forgot she stood on the shoulders of brave trailblazers and history makers. She picked up their torch. She carried it proudly throughout her career," Hillary Clinton said.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, of Alabama, recalled meeting Slaughter during their freshmen orientation after being elected to the U.S. House the same year. Slaughter, he said, later invited him to Rochester, where she introduced him to two nuns who had taken care of injured civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

"They cried. They hugged me. I cried, and Louise cried," the civil rights icon said. "That moment demonstrated to me the true nature of Louise. She was a beautiful, unbelievably gifted, loving sister."

With a degree in microbiology, Slaughter championed a 2008 law intended to protect people with genetic predispositions to health conditions from facing discrimination from their employers or health insurance companies. She also helped write the Violence Against Women Act and was the chief force behind a 2012 law to ban insider stock trading based on congressional knowledge.

Slaughter was the first woman to chair the powerful House Rules Committee, leading it from 2007 through 2010, and was her party's top member on the panel when she died.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called Slaughter, "a perfect balance of grit and grace" with whom there was little point in arguing.

"Louise shortened always the time and distance between what was inevitable to her and inconceivable to others," Pelosi said.

Slaughter was born Dorothy Louise McIntosh on Aug. 14, 1929, in Appalachian coal country. She married Ohio native Robert "Bob" Slaughter in 1957 and moved to the Rochester area for her husband's job. Bob Slaughter died in 2014 at age 82. The Slaughters are survived by three daughters, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo order that flags on state government buildings fly at half-staff in Slaughter's honor Friday. Cuomo will set the date for a special election to fill the remainder of Slaughter's term, which expires Dec. 31.

- By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated PressHIGHLAND -- A new 2-mile-long railtrail will link the Walkway Over the Hudson west to the village of New Paltz and from there to Kingston and eventually to Canada in the north and New York City to the south, officials said at a press conference Friday morning.

Officials made the announcement at the town of Lloyd's Tony Williams Park where the existing trail from the Walkway stops. The town of Lloyd will supervise the first piece of the work, extending the trail 7-tenths of a mile west, including tunneling under South Riverside Road to an existing but unused railroad path.

Ulster County will pick up the work and extend the new trail another 1.25 miles to Route 299 in the area of the Lowe's building supply center, accoding to County Executive Mike Hein. The state Department of Transportation will add lane markings on the existing roadway to allow cyclists and hikers to continue into the village of New Paltz. There the visitors can take Henry Dubois Road to the Wallkill Valley Railtrail. That opens up travel to Kingston and soon to the Shawangunk Ridge and eventually to Canada as part of the Empire State Trail under development. That Empire State Trail will also allow cyclists to travel all the way to Manhattan.

The entire local project will cost $3.6 milllion and should be completed this year, Hein said.

- By Paul Brooks, The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y.Eight priests from the Diocese of Buffalo accused of sexually abusing children live within a short walk of area elementary and middle schools.

Beyond naming the priests, the diocese has declined to disclose addresses or any other information about the 42 priests it said on Tuesday had credible allegations of sexual misconduct involving minors brought against them.

Seventeen of the 42 clergy on the list are alive.

A Buffalo News search of public records showed eight of the living priests resided within blocks of a school. In some cases, they lived across the street from a school or down the road a few houses.

ICYMI: Removed from churches, some Buffalo Diocese priests accused of sexually abusing kids now live near schools https://t.co/PIsa5wYd29  Mike McAndrew (@mikemcandrew1) March 24, 2018

"Obviously, it's a cause for concern. It's an issue that the community needs to recognize," said Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn. "The problem is that these individuals are not required to be registered. They were never found guilty of any offense. They're not in any local database for sex registry offenses. So legally, there's nothing that anyone can do to prevent them from living near a school. That's the unfortunate reality here."

Two of the living priests on the diocesan list were prosecuted for crimes, but their convictions didn't stipulate that their names be added to a sex offender registry, and they are not on the federal sex offender registry or on registries in states where they reside. The other men weren't charged with any crimes and as such would not be included on any sex offender registries.

The Rev. David W. Bialkowski , 56, former pastor of St. John Gualbert Church in Cheektowaga, was removed from ministry following accusations in 2011 from two altar boys that he had behaved inappropriately with them years earlier.

Former Buffalo Bishop Edward U. Kmiec placed Bialkowski on "administrative leave" under the terms of a nationwide Catholic church policy aimed at protecting children from sex abuse. Despite several inquiries by The News at the time, diocesan officials revealed no other information about the case, and Bialkowski quietly moved on.

He now lives in an apartment across the street from a playground and near William J. Grabiarz School of Excellence on Lawn Avenue.

A few years ago, attorney Kevin Stocker said he learned that Bialkowski was working as an organist for a Lutheran church in the City of Tonawanda. Stocker represented at least two clients who had come forward with allegations about Bialkowski in 2011, and he was concerned about his proximity to children. Stocker said he urged the Lutheran pastor to warn members of his church about Bialkowski.

"How could you have a person who's been accused of these types of things around children?" said Stocker. "I just felt like a community should be put on alert."

Bialkowski did not return a phone from The News. His attorney, Kevin Spitler, returned the call on Bialkowski's behalf and said in a voice message that neither of them will comment.

The Rev. Martin L. Pavlock, who also is on the diocesan list, admitted that he had "crossed the line" on one occasion during his ministry as a priest many years ago.

Pavlock, 78, said he is not a serial abuser and made a mistake that he regrets.

"I went to the bishop and I told him I believed I crossed the line. I said I needed help and I got it," he said.

Pavlock said he spent seven months at Southdown Institute, a counseling and therapy facility outside Toronto where the Buffalo diocese sent priests for mental health treatment and other issues.

Pavlock declined to provide more details about what happened or when he went to Southdown.

"I can't go into all of that," he said. "I just did something I shouldn't have done."

Pavlock was without an official assignment in 1986, according to the official diocesan Catholic Directory, which listed his address that year as being "in care of" the diocesan chancery. He was assigned to St. John Fisher Church in South Dayton and St. Elizabeth Church in Cherry Creek in 1985.

His next assignment was at St. Gregory the Great Church in Amherst in 1987.

Pavlock said he had no other incidents before or after his treatment at Southdown, but was removed in 2002 from Holy Trinity Church in Dunkirk when the diocese needed to comply with a new policy adopted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on handling allegations of sex abuse. The new policy called for the removal of any clergy with even a single credible allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor.

Pavlock said he doesn't know if anyone came forward with an allegation against him, but because of his admissions to the bishop years earlier, he was removed. The News has not spoken to anyone who has accused Pavlock of sexual abuse.

After the removal, Pavlock said he took care of his aging mother. He now lives in her home, which is located seven houses away from Persell Middle School, which is on Baker Street in Jamestown.

In retirement, he still goes to therapy sessions. He also works out at a gym, visits a church daily for Eucharistic adoration and celebrates Mass at home, he said.

Other accused priests who live close to schools are:

* Rev. Douglas F. Faraci, 74, who lives near Thomas E. Edison Elementary School on Grayton Road in the Town of Tonawanda;

* Rev. Mark M. Friel, 83, who lives in a residence for retired priests that's around the corner form West Side Academy, a Catholic elementary school on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo;

* Rev. Thomas Gresock, 61, who lives across the street from Christian Academy of Western New York, a K-12 school on Gilmore Ave., North Tonawanda;

* Rev. Fred D. Ingalls, 69, whose home is five blocks from Westminster Community Charter School on Westminster Avenue and six blocks from Highgate Heights Elementary School on Highgate Avenue, both in Buffalo;

* Rev. Thomas J. McCarthy, 76, whose apartment is about a five-minute walk to West Middle School on Center Road in West Seneca;

* The Rev. Donald S. Fafinski, 76, lives less than a block away from School 7 on East Lake Shore Drive in the City of Dunkirk.

Ordained in 1966, Fafinski served as a priest for 35 years, including nine years at Archbishop Walsh High School in Olean and a couple, a couple years at the former Cardinal Mindszenty High School in Dunkirk and a couple of years in youth ministry in Dunkirk and Fredonia.

A 58-year-old man who now lives in Boston, Mass., told The News that Fafinski sexually abused him in the 1970s when he was a student at Archbishop Walsh. The man, Steve Lilly-Weber, reported the abuse in 1994 and two years later reached a settlement with the diocese for $28,000.

The settlement bound Lilly-Weber to confidentiality but he said he agreed to discuss it because he wanted to see the name of his alleged abuser made public.

"I think it's important that these people be named publicly," said Lilly-Weber.

Lilly-Weber said he wasn't necessarily alarmed by Fafinski's residing near a school, as long as he's not involved in any kind of direct ministry with kids.

"If he were running a youth activity, that would be a concern," he said.

Two of the accused priests had rural addresses that aren't near schools: Norbert F. Orsolits in Springville and Brian M. Hatrick in Friendship.

Some of the accused priests or former priests on the list no longer live in Western New York. John P. Hajduk appears to be residing in Alexandria, Va.; Donald Becker is in Fort Myers, Fla.; James A. Spielman owns property in Hawaii and in Allegany County; and Gerald C. Jasinski is in Midlothian, Va.

Jasinski, 76, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of attempted sexual abuse in 1986, after he was accused of molesting two males, 18 and 15, in a cabin in Wyoming County. He was sentenced to five years probation and later left the priesthood. When reached by telephone on Friday, Jasinski had no response to his name being on the diocese's list or to the 1986 charges.

"I have nothing to say," he said.

The News was unable to locate addresses for the Rev. Timothy J. Kelley, the Rev. Thomas L. Kemp and the Rev. Robert W. Wood.

The News found addresses for most of the priests using a computer database of records, double-checked the addresses against property and voter registration records, and attempted to contact the priests by phone.

- By Jay Tokasz, The Buffalo News, N.Y.The deal was struck last week in an ornate room just off the House floor, where two New Yorkers discussed a big infrastructure project in their home town as dignitaries milled around a St. Patrick's Day luncheon.

President Donald Trump's message to Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., was simple, King recounted Thursday: Federal money would flow to the $30 billion Gateway project, but Trump had to be in control.

In the end, that is largely what happened: After weeks of precarious negotiations, the $1.3 trillion spending bill the president eventually signed Friday doesn't explicitly mention Gateway and reverses some earlier attempts to steer funding its way.

Trump's puzzling intervention to seemingly derail the kind of megaproject that a self-styled master builder might be expected to champion was less about Gateway's merits and more about who was backing it - specifically, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., according to multiple lawmakers and congressional aides involved. His decision to prioritize a political blow to Schumer offers a fresh demonstration of how Trump dealt with his political rivals in the months leading up to his signing of the spending bill - hours after he delivered one last veto threat over its failure to deliver substantial border wall funding.

"I think he was upset by a lack of cooperation on other issues, and I think he wanted to show that you don't take anything for granted," said King, who kept details of his conversations with the president private until the House passed the bill Thursday.

Trump's priority quickly became a Republican priority. At a Thursday news conference, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., counted handing the administration more control over Gateway among the GOP's key wins in the sweeping spending bill. He detailed how he overruled efforts by his own Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., to direct $900 million to the project.

"We stripped that language from this bill so that there's more discretion for the administration," Ryan said.

Whether it made a difference to the future of the project - a rail tunnel and bridge connecting New Jersey and Manhattan - is a matter of debate. Those who support the project, Republicans and Democrats, assert that it remains on track even after Trump's intervention.

Schumer told reporters Thursday that the bill continues to offer a "reliable pathway" for Gateway through accounts controlled by Amtrak and the states, not by Trump. King, too, said that money would keep flowing to Gateway and that Trump would ultimately support the project.

"It doesn't say Gateway. It's not specific to Gateway. But the money is there," King said.

But the final bill brings the funding more firmly under the administration's control. Accounts that appropriators had proposed pumping up for Gateway shrunk in the final deal, and guidelines that would have given the project a leg up in administration funding decisions disappeared. Even project backers acknowledge that only $541 million will be easily accessible to the project this fiscal year, vs. the $900 million eyed last year.

David Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and an expert on major infrastructure projects, said Trump's opposition to Gateway - as a builder and as a New Yorker - is mystifying and potentially discourages investors in the sort of public-private projects his administration is advocating.

"When he gets involved in a project like this, it's hard to understand . . . what is his preferred alternative?" he said. "What is the underlying set of goals? He's for something until he appears to be against something."

The deal struck this week followed more than a year of hardball politics - dating back to Schumer's decision to vote against confirming Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch Connell, R-Ky., as transportation secretary. Schumer later held up other Transportation Department nominees in part to advance Gateway, according to aides familiar with the dispute.

By September, Trump was well aware that Gateway was a top priority for Schumer. A bipartisan delegation that included Schumer, the governors of New York and New Jersey, and numerous lawmakers visited the Oval Office to garner the president's support.

They left the meeting - where by all accounts Trump was at his charming, black-slapping best - confident that his administration would back the project as it started moving through the long pipeline for federal funding. And they had an ace in the hole: As House appropriations chairman, Frelinghuysen could steer dollars in its direction.

A spending bill that passed the House in September was accompanied by a report ordering the Transportation Department to give preference to grant applications addressing "major critical assets which have conditions that pose a substantial risk now or in the future to the reliability of train service." Another provision reserved $400 million for new projects that only Gateway could qualify for.

But as the Oval Office meeting broke up, there was a signal that Trump saw a bargaining chip, not just a vital project: Trump pulled Schumer aside, according to a person familiar with the encounter, and offered to trade Gateway funding for his border wall.

That offer went nowhere. "I didn't want to get involved in any trading," Schumer said Thursday, speaking generally about his approach to Gateway.

Still, the project remained on Trump's mind, and White House aides fueled his doubts, portraying Gateway as a politically motivated boondoggle that was sucking dollars away from other administration priorities.

"You put that much money into one project, it's going to crimp projects across the country," Marc Short, Trump's legislative affairs chief, told reporters Tuesday.

Matters came to a head Feb. 28, when Trump came to the Capitol to welcome the casket of the late preacher Billy Graham. As he waited to enter the Rotunda, Trump cornered Ryan, raised the Gateway proposal and made clear he would veto any bill that funded it.

The next week, after The Washington Post reported Trump's opposition, Chao appeared before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and told lawmakers supporting Gateway that the September meeting might have been "cordial" but the president had doubts about the project. She dismissed a proposed funding scheme floated by New York and New Jersey, and tentatively endorsed by the Obama administration, that would have had state taxpayers and transit riders pick up half the project's cost.

"They need to step up and bear their fair share," she said.

The hearing infuriated Democrats who thought that the project remained on track after the Oval Office meeting and were blindsided by Trump's opposition. Party leaders spent the next two weeks sparring in closed-door negotiating sessions, trying to salvage the project as GOP aides rejiggered the legislation to bring the funding under the administration's control.

Rep. Sean Maloney, D-N.Y., a member of the Transportation Committee, said Trump appeared intent on "screwing New York" - citing not only Gateway, but also the GOP tax bill and health-care plan.

"Look, we're New Yorkers, I think we know better than to think anybody's going to give you what you deserve by being nice," he said. "They should do it because it's important to America, and we shouldn't have to tell them that."Months before 17 students were killed by a gunman at a Florida high school, officials at a central Pennsylvania school district installed a unique last-ditch defense against an active shooting incident.

Since last fall, all 200 classrooms at Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg have been equipped with buckets of rocks.

River rocks, to be exact.

Before you give out a depressed chuckle, consider this.

Blue Mountain Superintendent David Helsel told Reuters Friday that those rock buckets represent exactly the kind of desperation defenses recommended by experts in dealing with mass shootings.

Helsel said he got the idea from the widely-respected ALICE active shooter defense program. ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.

Indeed, the rocks do fit into the "counter" part of the ALICE equation. ALICE recommends that instead of freezing during an active shooter event, people who have no avenue to escape should pummel the gunman with whatever might come to hand. The idea is to create distractions, put the gunman off kilter and spoil his aim.

That is, of course, a defense of absolute last resort. ALICE doesn't advise fighting active shooters if there are any other viable options.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security offers similar advice. In dire straits, it recommends displaying physical aggression, throwing objects at the shooter and trying to disable him.

Helsel explained the bucket of rocks defense employed by his Schuylkill County district when he testified before the state House last week.

"We didn't want our students to be helpless victims," he told Reuters. "River stones were my idea. I thought they would be more effective than throwing books or book bags or staplers."NACs new Airbus jet set to arrive in early June

Nepal Airlines Corporations (NAC) brand new wide-body Airbus A330-200 jet is expected to touch down at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) by the first week of June, a reliable source at the corporation said.A mysterious mummy that was found in the Atacama Desert in Chile looks like an alien skeleton, but scientists have now determined its true nature.

There have been numerous reports of alleged evidence of extraterrestrial life, with recent ones including spotted fossilized alien tracks on Mars and what appears to be a crashed UFO in Antarctica. The Atacama skeleton, however, was one of the most important clues to the existence of aliens  until now.

Alien Skeleton Found In 2003

In 2003, a 6-inch skeleton was found inside a leather pouch behind an abandoned church in the deserted mining town named La Noria. The skeleton, named Ata after the region where it was discovered, had an elongated skull, slanted eye sockets, an underdeveloped face and jaw, only 10 pairs of ribs instead of 12, and bone composition of a 6-year-old despite its size.

The skeleton found its way into the black market, ending up in the possession of a private collector based in Spain.

Looking at the skeleton, it was impossible to think that it belonged to a human. There were theories that it was the remains of an unidentified primate, but the popular explanation was that Ata was an alien who passed away on Earth.

The True Identity Of The Atacama Mummy

Garry Nolan, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, first received the chance to examine the supposed alien skeleton in 2012. The results from his initial investigation showed that the skeleton belonged to a human girl, debunking the theories that it was a mummified alien.

Five years of genomic analysis now confirms the earlier findings, while providing even more answers to the true identity of Ata.

The results of the study, which was again led by Nolan, were published on the Genome Research journal. The investigation confirmed that Ata was a Chilean female, through a whole-genome sequence analysis on DNA extracted from the bone marrow of one of the skeleton's ribs. The skeleton likely belonged to a fetus.

After identifying that Ata was human, the researchers moved on to finding out what caused the extraordinary features of the skeleton. Further analysis revealed that there were mutations within seven of Ata's genes, combining to create bone and musculoskeletal deformities such as scoliosis, and skeletal dysplasia, which is more popularly known as dwarfism.

The combination of all these mutations explained the appearance of Ata, but it was the high number of the mutations that surprised the researchers. According to director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco Atul Butte, it was very rare to find all these symptoms in one person.

Butte further speculated that the reason for the high number of mutations found in Ata were due to the environment where the child was developed. Ata's family lived in a town with abandoned mines, and the exposure to nitrates may have caused the mutations.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Asteroid Bennu, a space rock the size of the Empire State Building, is expected to fly by close to Earth in 2135.

Asteroid Impact Effects

Scientists said that the chances of the asteroid colliding with Earth are slim, but if such impact would happen, its effects could be devastating, as Bennu could generate force 80,000 times more powerful than the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during the final stage of World War 2.

"Because it passed within half an Astronomical Unit (AU) from Earth, it is listed among the potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs)," NASA said.

Protecting Earth From An Asteroid Impact

NASA and Russian scientists are already making plans and conducting experiments to protect Earth from an asteroid impact. Russians are now zapping mini asteroids in the laboratory, and NASA mulls on nuking the space rock.

It appears though that there are other less destructive options to save Earth from an incoming asteroid. Scientists, for instance, could alter the path of the space rock by painting its surface.

Using Paint To Alter Path Of Asteroids

NASA's OSIRIS-REx Flight Dynamics System Manager Michael Moreau said that just painting the asteroid's surface with a different color on one side can change the thermal property of the space rock and change its orbit. A spacecraft could be sent to change the color of some asteroids that pose threats to our planet.

The sun continuously bombards everything in the solar system with solar particles. These tiny particles do not have significant impact on objects as massive as Earth. Asteroid Bennu, however, is only 13 times as massive as the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is relatively light.

Scientists can influence Bennu's orbit by giving solar radiation better chances of pushing the space rock away from Earth. One way of doing this is to paint one side of the asteroid a different color, which could make a difference on the amount of radiation that the asteroid absorbs. More radiation means more pressure can be exerted to divert the near-Earth object.

Paintballs

The idea of painting a potentially dangerous asteroids has been around for a while. In 2012, MIT graduate student Sung Wook Paek proposed firing pellets full of white paint powder at asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

Paek said that the initial force from the paintballs would help nudge the space rock slightly off course, and the paint job from the splattered pellets can double the asteroid's sunlight reflectivity. He suggested that the increased amount of photons bouncing off the space rock's surface could enhance solar radiation pressure and bump the asteroid further off course.

The idea won the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are set to receive the ARCore support, which should have been included in the flagship's launch in the first place.

ARCore, Google's answer to Apple's ARKit, supports many flagships today. It is even compatible with Samsung's past flagships, from the Galaxy S7 to the Note 8.

ARCore Coming Soon To Galaxy S9 And S9 Plus

The Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are yet to join its compatibility list. However, this will soon change as Google's AR team finally spoke up about the impending release of ARCore Support for Samsung's latest flagships.

"Support for the S9 and S9+ will be added in the next release, which should be released in the coming weeks," a team member said on Github.

Github made the statement in response to Github users complaining about a certain app that won't install on their S9 and S9 Plus.

Although the statement is quite vague, it does confirm that the team is indeed making a progress. The Galaxy S9 owners are hopeful, though, as it means that the support will be released sooner.

Millions Of Android Phones Have Access To New ARCore Apps

Once the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus receive ARCore support, users will be able to access hundreds AR apps, 60 of which were released on March 20.

Ikea and Pottery Barn are now using the technology to allow users to place virtual furniture in their homes via their AR-capable apps. The e-commerce company eBay also has an app, which helps users determine what size of box they'll need for an item.

Among these useful apps are new games that creatively make use of augmented reality for a more immersive experience. The Walking Dead Our World, for example, populates the reality in the screen with virtual zombies that users can fight or hide from. Another popular game is My Tamagotchi Forever, a throwback to the 90s game but with AR features this time.

Over 100 million Android phones are now taking advantage of these ARCore apps. While ARCore remains missing on the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, it already works on Asus Zenfone AR, LG V30 and V30 Plus, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, Pixel and Pixel XL, Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus.

The list will still expand, but owners of Android phones with OS 6.0 Marshmallow or older will not be able to receive ARCore support. As for Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, users are advised to stand by for further announcements.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Customers in the United States may soon see higher prices for electronic gadgets such as smartphones and laptops, and they will have President Donald Trump to blame for that.

The increased prices may affect brands such as Huawei and Lenovo, with the possibility that Apple will also have to make its iPhones more expensive.

Trump To Place Tariffs On Products From China

The Trump administration announced that it will be placing tariffs on up to $60 billion worth of goods from China, with most of the products to be from the technology industry.

The complete list of affected products from China will be released within the next 15 days, and the tariff will be 25 percent.

The proposed plan has not yet specified how exactly gadgets such as smartphones and laptops will be affected. However, the tariffs will likely make the prices of the products go up, with the worst case scenario that the 25 percent increase will be passed entirely to customers.

Will The iPhone Be Affected?

The tariffs will affect major Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei and Lenovo, which have penetrated the U.S. market. The tariffs, however, may make their products too expensive for most consumers. One example that was given was the Lenovo Yoga 920, which has a starting price of $1,300. With the 25 percent tariff, the price may increase all the way up to $1,625. This will likely make customers look at other brands.

One of the most important questions in relation to the tariffs on China, however, is whether it will affect Apple and its iPhones. While the smartphones are designed in the United States, they are assembled in China. Since the iPhones are being shipped from China to the United States, they will be affected by the proposed taxes.

To illustrate, if Apple decides to pass on the tariffs to its customers, the 64 GB iPhone 8 price will go from $699 to $873.75. The 64 GB iPhone X price, meanwhile, will increase from $999 to $1,248.75, taking its cost deeper into the four-figure territory.

Trump, however, may decide to make an exemption. Last year, Apple committed to build three big plants in the United States to help Trump's goal of bringing life back to the U.S. manufacturing industry.

Does this make Apple an ally in the eyes of Trump, saving the iPhone from a significant price increase? Or will the administration include iPhones in the tariffs to force Apple to transfer its manufacturing facilities from China to the United States? It looks like the answer will be revealed in about two weeks.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Persona non grata staff at foreign labour office barred from daily attendance

Minister for Labour, Employment and Social Security Gokarna Bista has stopped the regular attendance of the employees who had already been transferred elsewhere but continue to attend the Foreign Employment Office (FEO) in Tahachal, Kathmandu.Scientists have witnessed and documented a killer whale infanticide, with a 32-year-old orca killing an apparently unrelated baby orca for an unbelievable reason.

This is supposedly the first reported case of the aggressive behavior, which the scientists say is "almost unheard of" among killer whales themselves.

Killer Whale Kills Infant Orca

The incident, which was published in the Scientific Reports journal, was recorded by a group of scientists from British Columbia, Canada off the coast of Vancouver Island.

"We knew right away that this was a remarkable event," said Jared Towers, from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and one of the three researchers who witnessed the killer whale infanticide in December 2016.

"We've been looking at killer whales for years on this coast and around the world - I study populations in different parts of the world - and witnessing aggressive behaviour between killer whales is almost unheard of," Towers added.

The group of scientists headed out to the water after they detected unusual sounds coming from the killer whales in the area. When they arrived at the location, they saw a 46-year-old female orca and her 32-year-old adult son swimming behind a 13-year-old mother orca, her baby, and a younger sister who they saw had fresh cuts at her rear that were inflicted by another killer whale. They then spotted three more female relatives of the 13-year-old mother, including the grandmother of the baby.

The two families then clashed, and after the chaos, the researchers saw the 13-year-old mother orca giving chase to the mother-son pair, with the corpse of the baby orca hanging from the 32-year-old orca's mouth. The infant's grandmother slammed into the male orca, sending blood flying through the air. After a few minutes, the mother-son pair swam away, but the infant was then in the jaws of the mother. The larger family was still following them when the scientists decided to end their observations as it was already sunset.

The Reason For The Killer Whale Infanticide

The reason for the first-ever documented killer whale infanticide may as well have come from the plot of a TV drama.

The researchers did not see exactly what happened, but they believe that the 32-year-old orca killed the infant orca by drowning it. The perceived reason for the murder was that the orca killed the baby so that its mother would enter a fertile state and mate with him.

The mother, meanwhile, was helping her son because mother-son relationships between orcas are usually strong. It has been suggested that mother orcas help their adult sons find mates, and this case shows just how far they will go.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.The rumors are true. Starbucks has dropped its latest viral concoction called the Crystal Ball Frappuccino, which is loaded with both magic and sugar.

On March 22, the company finally announced this limited-edition drink after its mystical existence has been rumored across social media. That evening, Starbucks Rewards cardholders received e-mails officially confirming the availability of the colorful drink.

The cream-based beverage will be on the menu in the United States, Canada, and Mexico from March 22 through March 26. It comes in three colors: purple, green, or blue.

Starbucks has some high expectations for the Crystal Ball Frappuccino. It's supposed to follow in the footsteps of the chain's trending masterpiece, the color-changing Unicorn Frappuccino that was released April 2017.

At this point, the drink's future is still a little murky. Although customers aren't so enthusiastic about the flavor, it's been making waves on Instagram.

What's In The Crystal Ball Frappuccino?

Starbucks describes the new drink as a "mystical, swirling peach infusion topped with peach flavored whipped cream, turquoise sprinkles and one of three different candy gems that reveal your fortune."

A report states that a green gem drizzle is supposed to bring good luck, the blue ones signal an upcoming adventure, and purple foretells wonder and enchantment in the future.

What's so mysterious about the Crystal Ball Frappuccino is that customers are not allowed to order their preferred color. In fact, Starbucks claims its baristas have no idea which of the three available colors will be served as it's the drink that "chooses you."

Each serving of the beverage contains 380 calories, 16 grams of fat, and 55 grams of sugar. It's basically a mix of water, apples, licorice root, rose hips, hibiscus, orange peels, lemon verbena, chamomile, lavender, and various other natural flavors.

Reviews On The New Starbucks Limited Edition Drink

This explosion of ingredients make the Crystal Ball Frappuccino sound interesting but reviewers aren't so impressed by its flavor.

According to a report, it initially tastes like "syrupy peach" but the notes that follow seem unrecognizable. The reviewer compares the experience with translating a code, with the task becoming harder to accomplish as one's blood sugar level suddenly spikes.

Furthermore, the same report points out that it appears as though Starbucks is making drinks that appeal more to the camera than to a customer's palate.

Another report comments particularly on the beverage's high sugar content, which comes with a crash that is scarier than several Halloweens combined.

Aside from concocting "viral drinks" such as the Unicorn and Crystal Ball Frappuccinos, Starbucks has also recently modified its Mobile-Order-and-Pay facility to allow non-Starbucks Rewards cardholders to use the service.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.An alien star flew by the Solar System and threw comets and asteroids off of their normal orbits at the time in our history when early humans and the Neanderthals were still walking on Earth.

The Scholz's Star

In 2015 study, astronomers revealed that the Scholz's star appears to have grazed our star system about 70,000 years ago. It approached the solar system five times closer than our current closest star, the Proxima Centauri.

A new study supported the findings of the 2015 analysis using a different type of evidence. Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, from the Complutense University of Madrid, and colleagues analyzed 339 solar system bodies whose paths through space are V-shaped instead of circular or elliptical.

The researchers said that the trajectory of some of these objects was influenced by the passage of the Scholz's star.

"The pronounced over-density appears projected in the direction of the constellation of Gemini, which fits the close encounter with Scholz's star," the researchers wrote in their study, which was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

Our Ancestors May Have Seen The Scholz's Star

The Scholzs star is a binary system composed of a small red dwarf about 9 percent the mass of the sun, and a less bright and smaller brown dwarf.

At its closest approach, the Scholz's star would have been a 10th magnitude star, which means that it is 50 times too faint to be seen with the naked eye. Brief flares on the star, however, could have lit it up thousands of times brighter and it could have made the star potentially visible to our wandering ancestors, who had looked up the sky. At this time, modern humans were on the verge of migrating from Africa, and the now-extinct Neanderthals, have not yet died out.

"While the binary system was too dim to see with the naked eye in its quiescent state during its flyby of the solar system ~70 kya, flares by the M9.5 primary may have provided short-lived transients visible to our ancestors," Eric Mamajek, from the University of Rochester in New York, and colleagues wrote in their 2015 study.

Red Dot In The Sky

Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and his team said that the star likely appeared as a faint reddish light to those who saw it at the time it flew by our solar system.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Police arrest two men for raping girls

Police have arrested two men on charges of raping two girls in separate incidents in Athrai and Hilihang.Railway project stalls on land compensation row

The construction of an 18.1-km cross-border railway linking Morang and Bihar in India has been on hold for the past year following a row over land compensation.The Chief Ministers

Our seven Chief Ministers (CMs) recently met with Oli dai and vented their frustration on not being able to be our Maharajas in the provinces.You have permission to edit this article.

Edit CloseWhile there's nothing on the ballot for East Baton Rouge voters in Saturday's election, in nine area parishes voters will be busy filling such positions as district judge, state representative, Parish Council members and deciding on a number of property tax issues.

Statewide, where there are elections in 41 of the 64 parishes, the Secretary of State's Office expects low voter turnout in general.

"We think it's definitely going to be low, less than 20 percent" because a majority of the items on the 41 ballots are propositions, which don't typically attract high voter turnout, Meg Casper Sunstrom, press secretary for the Secretary of State, said Friday.

Voter participation will likely be higher, though, she said, in parishes where candidates for high-profile offices are on the ballot.

Voting precincts will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

A runoff, if needed, would be April 28.

In West Baton Rouge an Pointe Coupee parishes, five candidates are running for former 18th Judicial District Judge Robin Free's position. He resigned in June, just weeks before he was set to return to the bench after a yearlong suspension on a number of issues involving his behavior in court.

Seeking Free's position are two Republican candidates, Thomas W. "Tom" Acosta Jr. and Tom McCormick; two Democrats, Kevin Lovell "Celestine" James and Miracle Myles, and no-party candidate Tonya Smith Lurry. Within the 18th Judicial District, only voters in West Baton Rouge and Pointe Coupee parishes will cast ballots in the race.

The winning candidate will serve through the end of 2020 when Free's term was set to expire.

+2 Qualifying begins Wednesday for 18th, 19th Judicial District Court seats The three-day candidate qualifying period kicks off Wednesday for a pair of seats on the 18th and 19th Judicial District Court benches.

In the 19th Judicial District in Baton Rouge Fred Crifasi will become a new judge after he was the only candidate to qualify for the position that will be left vacant after Judge Tony Marabella announced in the fall that he will retire May 1.

Tangipahoa Parish voters will select a state representative for District 86 after Chris Broadwater, a Republican, announced in December 2017 that he would resign his seat, effective earlier this month, to spend more time with his family.

+2 State Rep. Chris Broadwater resigning, says it's time to refocus attention on family A special election to fill the legislative seat of Chris Broadwater is scheduled for Feb. 17, House Speaker Taylor Barras said in a proclamati

The two candidates seeking Broadwater's seat in District 86 are Nicholas Muscarello Jr. and David Vial, both Republicans.

Three property tax renewals are on the ballot in Tangipahoa Parish: a 10-year, 3-mill property tax for the parish library system; a 10-year, 5-mill property tax for drainage works and the implementing of a comprehensive master drainage plan; and a 10-year, 10-mill tax for fire protection equipment, facilities, water supply and employee salaries for Fire Protection District 1.

Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

St. James Parish voters choose their next Parish Council member for District 6, formerly held by Ken Brass, who was elected to the state House in a special election in October.

Candidates for the St. James Parish Council seat are Vondra Dee Etienne-Steib, Jarred G. Favorite and Shea Stewart, all Democrats.

Also in St. James Parish, the towns of Gramercy and Lutcher each have new sales tax propositions on the ballot.

Both towns are seeking sales and use taxes in perpetuity beginning July 1, 2018, for streets, drainage and sewerage works; police department equipment and the purchase of equipment and land for any of the projects.

Gramercy is looking at a half-cent sales and use tax, and Lutcher is proposing a 1 percent sales and use tax.

Two other parishes, Assumption and Iberville, also have candidates on the ballot for local office.

In Assumption Parish, three candidates are running for the School Board, Ward 2 seat: Joseph "Joe" Harrison Jr, a Republican; Lee "Rick" Meyer Jr., a Republican, and Deneen T. Stevenson, a Democrat.

In Iberville Parish, candidates for Justice of the Peace, Ward 3 are Carrie Thistlewaite Booksh , no party; Angela Gros and Kerry "Smokie" Verret, both Democrats.

Elsewhere, voters will decide the outcomes of property tax propositions in:

 Donaldsonville, with a proposed renewal of a 10-year, 5-mill property tax for capital outlay projects for the Donaldsonville Fire Department.

Donaldsonville seeks property tax renewal to help build new fire station DONALDSONVILLE  Voters in this city will decide March 24 whether to renew a 5-mill property tax to provide the final portion of funding for a

 St. Helena Parish, with a proposed 10-year, 10-mill property tax for the parishwide Law Enforcement District.

 West Feliciana Parish, with two propositions for the parishwide Consolidated School District 1.

One of the propositions in West Feliciana would renew a 10-year, 14.75-mill property tax for additional support to the district's schools, including paying the salaries and benefits for school personnel.

The other proposition would renew a 10-year, 11-mill property tax for school support, including maintaining and upgrading computers and technology for grades pre-K through 12th, as well as maintaining and operating school buildings.by Kamran Chaudhry

A petition is sent to the prime minister to intervene in favour of two Christian cousins accused of blasphemy. The plea calls for effective measures to ensure their and their families safety and security. An ecumenical group is created to help persecuted Christians.

Lahore (AsiaNews)  Church leaders and civil society groups have issued an urgent plea to Pakistani Prime Minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, to act against the rise number of blasphemy cases against Christians.

In a petition sent by the Pakistan Christian Action Forum (PCAF) on 13 March, the signatories note that The cases under blasphemy laws are based on false accusations to settle personal vendetta, sometimes leading to the killing of innocent people, and mob violence against minority communities.

The petitioning Church leaders and civil society groups want Abbasi to do something right away for Patras and Sajid Masih, two Christian cousins who were accused last month of posting blasphemous photos on Facebook.

Sajid Masih is currently in the hospital, having jumped from the fourth floor of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) headquarters in Punjab during interrogation.

The petitioners want the prime minister to "intervene and help the Government of Punjab to overcome the abuse of the blasphemy laws in general as well as do something in relation to incidents involving the cousins.

The petition proposes several measures for the Punjab and federal governments to consider, such as setting up an independent investigation team to look into the circumstances involving the two cousins. Its report must be made public within two weeks, the petition requests.

It also calls for the First Information Report by the FIA against Sajid Maish for attempted suicide to be withdrawn and the personnel involved to be held to account for misusing their power.

At the same time, effective measures should be take to ensure the safety and security of the accused and their aggrieved families.

The petitioners want the authorities to go further and set up a committee to implement a ruling issued on 19 June 2014 by the Supreme Court that orders the federal and provincial governments to protect the life, liberty and property of religious minorities.

They also call for compliance with the report of a commission of inquiry established in 2009 following riots in August of that year in Gojra that left seven Christians dead.

At the time, the Lahore High Court had also proposed reviewing five provisions of the blasphemy legislation as they relate to Islam so as to find a consensus among Mujtahideen of all Muslim schools of thought with due consultation with the Council of Islamic Ideology.

For PCAF coordinator Peter Jacob, the country is paying a heavy price for the abuse of the law, especially Punjab, where 74 per cent of all blasphemy cases were reported.

PCAF is an ecumenical support group for persecuted Christians established in early March. Its members include Mgr Humphrey Sarfaraz Peter of the Church of Pakistan; Able Majeed, Presbyterian Church of Pakistan; Cecil Shane Chaudhry, executive director of the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP), and Michelle Chaudhry, president of the Cecil and Iris Chaudhry Foundation (CICF).Protesters march in New Orleans for the March for our Lives protests.Opponents viewed last weeks Louisiana House vote, which overwhelmingly approved extending probation terms, as a shot across the bow in the atBig Chief Thomas Tom Sparks Sr., who was the oldest known living Mardi Gras Indian, died March 13. He was 86.

He died at his home surrounded by loved ones, according to his daughter, Lottie Sparks.

Born in 1932, Sparks was a member of the Yellow Jackets tribe. By the time he died, he had "masked Indian" for 70 years, his daughter said.

"He found the culture and he loved to go out and perform in front of people and give people joy," said Lottie Sparks, a 45-year-old nurse. "He spent so many hours creating his Indian suit ... it was just his life. He loved it."

Sparks had been enthralled with Mardi Gras Indian culture since he was a young boy, partially because his mother was a full-blooded Native American of the Cherokee nation, according to an Offbeat Magazine article written by Geraldine Wyckoff in 2015.

"When I seen them, I was right behind them," he told Wyckoff. "That's how I got started in it. ... I was gone."

In 1947, when he was a teenager, Sparks got his first opportunity to join a tribe. He became the flag boy  the member of the tribe who carries the "gang flag" staff decorated with feathers and symbols  for the Bumble Bee Hunters.

Being in the Bumble Bee Hunters gave Sparks a chance to meet Indians who have become legendary in New Orleans culture. They included Allison Tootie Montana's father, Alfred, who led another tribe, the Monogram Hunters, as well as Black Benny, a bass drummer who played in local brass bands in the early 20th century.

Sparks left the tribe to join the military and served in the Korean War.

Upon his discharge in 1953, he joined the Yellow Jackets. He entered as a flag boy but was promoted to chief, a position he held until he died, in just two years.

In later years, he served as an adviser to the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame and a mentor to younger generations.

His dedication to Mardi Gras Indian culture often put him in the spotlight, taking him around the country and to other countries, according to the Hall of Fame. Even so, friends and family described him as humble and dedicated to loved ones.

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

"He was our backbone," Lottie Sparks said. "He was the pillar of our family. He was so strong."

Sparks also relished continuing the tradition with his own family, his daughter said. All seven of his children have masked Indian at some point, and his wife, Barbara, reigned as Big Queen of the Yellow Jackets until she died in 2008.

His family described him as a man of many talents who didn't just craft with feathers and beads. He was a mason and a master carpenter who held membership in the Carpenters Union.

He built his home in New Orleans East in the 1970s and, after Hurricane Katrina, rebuilt it singlehandedly.

During his career as a carpenter, he worked on the original Greater New Orleans Bridge, the Mercedez-Benz Superdome and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

He also was a racing pigeon handler, called an avian fancier, according to the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame.

Sparks was the recipient of several honors, including recognition by the U.S. Senate, the Louisiana Legislature, the New Orleans City Council and the Masons.

He received the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fames Crystal Feather award for masking for more than 50 years.

His family will honor Sparks by carrying on his tradition of masking, his daughter said. "I am going to continue," she said.

Survivors include a son, Thomas Sparks Jr.; six daughters, Sharon Walburg, Shelia Sparks, Margueritte Sparks Kelly, Jennifer Sparks, Lottie Sparks and Patrice Robertson; 23 grandchildren; and 19 great-grandchildren.

Relatives and friends are invited to a celebration of his life at 11 a.m. Saturday at Charbonnet-Labat-Glapion Funeral Home, 1615 St. Philip St. Visitation will begin at 9 a.m.St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith is defending the five deputies who are accused of beating a military veteran in January, saying that they followed protocol during the incident, including the agency's policy on use of force.

Chris Cambre, a 48-year-old Pearl River resident, said he was severely beaten, Tased and handcuffed by the deputies on the night of Jan. 21, when law enforcement officials came to check on him at his trailer.

Cambre, who is a veteran of the Iraq War, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and had posted on social media that he was struggling, prompting someone to call the police.

A report written by a Pearl River police officer who was on the scene corroborates Cambre's claim that he had behaved calmly and had showed the deputies that he was not armed when they arrived with their weapons drawn.

The officer and Cambre both say that he did not resist the deputies prior to the beating.

"They were screaming at me to stop resisting, but there was no resistance," Cambre said. "I was laying, pretty much face-down, in the mud. My palms were facing skyward. I'll never forget."

He was not arrested but was taken to a hospital, where he was released the following day.

The sheriff said in an email to The Advocate and WWL-TV: "This incident was investigated by our Internal Affairs Division as soon as it was brought to our attention.

"After all the facts in this case were reviewed, including witness statements, the complaint was not sustained," Smith said. "Our deputies followed protocol including the STPSO use of force policy and their training practices when dealing with a non-compliant individual. In order to have full transparency, this case has been turned over to the FBI Civil Rights Division for their review."

However, Cambre's complaint was turned over to the FBI this week, not by the Sheriff's Office, but by 22nd Judicial District Attorney Warren Montgomery following what he called a "preliminary investigation" by his office.

"It says a lot that prosecutors thought it was significant enough to refer to another agency for consideration," said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.

Smith declined to be interviewed for this story. But in a statement posted on the agency's Facebook page, he said his deputies were dispatched to assist the Pearl River Police Department with a possible "suicide by cop" incident, or one in which an individual tries to provoke officers into killing him.

Smith said that a doctor had ordered Cambre to be taken into protective custody and that he had a history of suicidal threats during encounters with first responders.

"He was also known to be in possession of firearms and had prior military training," the post said.

Smith also said his agency was called in by the chief of St. Tammany Fire Protection District 11, who was concerned that the lone Pearl River police officer on the scene would not be able to ensure her own safety or that of his emergency personnel.

The sheriff's post differs from the Pearl River officer's account of the interaction between Cambre and the Sheriff's Office deputies.

Smith said that after the deputies arrived, there was a brief struggle during which the man was subdued with a Taser, taken into custody and then released to fire district personnel and Pearl River police for transportation to a local hospital "in accordance with the doctors orders."

The police officer said in her report that Cambre did not offer resistance but had seemed fearful when deputies arrived with their weapons drawn. He showed them he was not armed, she wrote, and they put away their weapons.

She said she told the deputies that she was checking on Cambre's welfare, but she said the deputies did not talk to Cambre or try to get a "sense of his demeanor." She said one yelled obscenities at him and ordered him to kneel while another Tased him, after which all five "jumped on Mr. Cambre while one deputy continuously struck Mr. Cambre with a baton."

Pearl River Police Chief JJ Jennings said Friday that his department was not aware of any doctor's order concerning Cambre and had gone to his trailer only to check on him, not to enforce a protective custody order. Cambre said he is not aware of any physician's order about him.

Smith said in the Facebook post that after Cambre complained, his agency began an Internal Affairs Division investigation, interviewing deputies and reconciling their reports "with interviews of multiple witnesses who were at the scene." He said investigators decided the deputies' actions were "in compliance with both agency policy and their training."

Peter Scharf, a professor at the LSU School of Public Health and the Institute for Public Health and Justice who has worked with Smith in the past, said the legal standard for use of force is whether there is a reasonable belief on the part of the officer, given the totality of the circumstances, that force is necessary.

Residents and police officers often have a different perception of what constitutes reasonableness, Scharf said. But the law allows for a range of error. "The standard is not perfection but reasonableness," he said.

Scharf said that law enforcement agencies across the state and the country need more training on the legal standards, citing a number of incidents, including the death of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge.

John Wells, a Navy veteran and lawyer who specializes in veterans' issues and heads the nonprofit Military-Veterans Advocacy Inc., said that law enforcement agencies need to have a better understanding of how to deal with people suffering from post-traumatic stress.

He said such people startle more easily, fear for their own safety and have trust issues. And while police tend to approach potential threats with a show of strength, he said, individuals suffering from PTSD require a calmer touch.

When Smith was running for sheriff, one of his campaign promises was to create a crisis intervention unit to deal with people having mental health crises. He later pointed to that as an accomplishment in his first year in office, noting that four deputies had been trained and certified in San Antonio, which he said has the model agency for crisis intervention.

Smith did not respond to a question about whether the deputies who handled the Cambre incident were part of that unit.

"They roughed me up pretty good," Cambre said. "I had bruises from the top of my leg down to my knee. The bottom of my rib cage was all bruised up. The side of my face ... was bruised and lacerated.During World Water Day on Thursday, several Jakartans went to City Hall and took a shower there. They were protesting against water privatization in Jakarta, which they said had failed to improve public access to water. They demanded that water management be returned to the public, as part of a global trend called remunicipalization.

A 2015 report by global NGOs, including the Transnational Institute, recorded that in 2000, there were two cases of remunicipalization affecting less than one million people. But in 2015, the number reached 235 cases, affecting over 100 million people. Most of the cases  184  occurred in rich countries.

The protesters also expressed disappointment over the contract restructuring between city-owned PT PAM Jaya and two private operators  PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya and PT Aetra Air Jakarta. They said the municipality should have taken over the water management, in compliance with an earlier Supreme Court order.

Mounting evidence shows less public participation in clean water management in Jakarta has led to high water rates and poor performance. Jakarta and two private water operators entered a contract almost 20 years ago, but their performance is consistently lower than that of other cities.

Data compiled by the Amrta Institute for Water Literacy showed in 2012, the average water rate in Jakarta  Rp 7,020 (49 US cents)  was higher than in Surabaya (Rp 2,600), Medan (Rp 2,294), Semarang (Rp 2,600) and Makassar (Rp 2,000). Thus, Jakartas tap water coverage, at 59 percent, was lower than Surabayas 87 percent and Medans 66.6 percent.

Meanwhile, Jakartas water leakage level at 44 percent was higher than Surabayas 34 percent and Medans 24 percent. Surabaya has a public tap water management system, while others have a limited cooperation with private companies.

Jakartas contract with the water companies expires in 2023, but the capital still has a long way to go to achieve universal water access and many still rely on groundwater. Jakartas water pipes chronically reach around 60 percent of households which supply only around 35 percent of Jakartas clean water demand. The rest comes from groundwater, bottled water and other sources, such as a costly independent reverse osmosis facility.

While the poor mostly lack easy access to tap water, many rich households and commercial facilities also rely on groundwater extraction, which is blamed for land sinking in Jakarta.

Instead of confusing the public with legal technicalities of contract restructuring, Jakarta should just return water management to the public. Like Paris, it should form a Water Observatory, a space where citizens can ensure that the water company is publicly held accountable.

While Governor Anies Baswedan has called on Jakartans to stop using groundwater, he must ensure more investment from the private operators profits  not from public money  is made to improve water services.

It is now up to the city administration to make clean water available and affordable to all.Indonesians are obsessed with sambal. For locals, sambal is not merely a condiment, but also an integral part of Indonesian cuisine.

Kaum restaurant brand director Lisa Virgiano estimated that there are around 1,500 types of sambal in Indonesia.

Lisa reasoned that such a number was due to the fact that the country is home to 300 ethnicities. Imagine if one ethnicity creates one sambal, she said.

Sambal plays a crucial role in local cuisine, yet there are also some myths revolving around the condiment. During the launch of Kaum Jakartas (which was named the capital's restaurant of the year) new menu, Lisa gave a brief explanation about these sambal myths.

Sambal can only be made by one person

The most prevalent myth is that sambal can only be made by one person. Even if you see that the cook feels tired while crushing the chili, you should not offer to help as it may ruin the taste.

Lisa said that each cook has their own style and ngulek (crushing ingredients to make it into a paste) skills, resulting in different flavors.

Read also: Indonesia's sambal love affair some like it hot

Dont make sambal while on a period

Lisa shared that there was a myth saying that women should not make sambal while on their period.

Lisa mentioned that the human body is made up of water and a period influences the body's condition and emotions.

Making sambal is not only about ingredients, pestle and mortar, said Lisa. To create a delicious sambal, one needs to have a feeling while mixing it. Hence, the flavor of sambal might be different when created during a period.

Dont make sambal using the left hand

Lisa mentioned that the myth is related to local tradition. In Indonesia, the left hand is seen as the dirty hand as it is used for toilet duties.

We were taught to use our right hand in any activity, said Lisa. This tradition creates the assumption that one should not use the left hand to make sambal. (kes)A team of explorers set off on a pioneering deep-sea expedition yesterday afternoon, hoping for a glimpse of an area where no man has ventured.

Over the next 14 days, they will sail from Jakarta to the Sunda Strait and waters off the Indonesian port of Cilacap. Off the southern coast of West Java, they will mine the rich seascape for living treasures living 500m to 2km under the sea, at 29 separate sites.

Led by Professor Peter Ng from Singapore and Dr Dwi Listyo Rahayu from Indonesia, the multinational team of 30 researchers, scientists and support staff will give daily updates of the dredging - a first for any expedition - as they scour through depths that hold the greatest diversity of animals.

Their focus will be on crabs, prawns, shells, sponges, jellyfish, worms, starfish, urchins and fishes.

They hope to discover new species in a bid to expand on existing knowledge of the Earth's biodiversity.

But with countries looking to deep-sea activities such as deep-sea mining to meet their mineral demands, such research is also crucial in providing information that will ensure such activities are carried out without severely damaging the environment, according to Prof Ng, head of the National University of Singapore's Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.

Singapore is among nations poised to venture into deep-sea mining, with a unit of rig builder Keppel Corporation, Ocean Mineral Singapore, securing a 15-year contract in 2015 to explore how metal-rich rocks can be harvested from the bottom of the Pacific.

"As we progress into the deep sea to use its resources, there is increased pressure to understand the deep sea," Prof Ng said. "You need to know what is there."

He said that the team will also hone skills to allow them to conduct deep-sea environmental impact studies.

This is the first time Singapore and Indonesia have organised a deep-sea biodiversity expedition together, reaffirming the strong diplomatic ties between the two nations, he added.

Read also: Literacy expedition boosts children's reading interest

The team was met with much fanfare yesterday morning at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, as the voyage was officially launched. Among those present were Indonesia's Minister of Research, Technology and Higher Education H. Mohamad Nasir and Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

The expedition, the largest to be organised by South-east Asian scientists, will cost both countries about $400,000 in total.

The team is sailing on the Indonesian research vessel Baruna Jaya VIII, and will collect samples at three or four sites each day. Each sampling exercise will last at least three or four hours.

Once the animals are brought on board, they will be photographed, preserved and labelled. Some will be kept in special chilled aquariums for short periods, so they can be observed and filmed.

Past expeditions have been rewarded richly. One in central Philippines organised by the Philippines, France, Taiwan and Singapore in 2005, for instance, yielded more than 1,500 species of crabs, shrimps and lobsters, 150 of which were new to science.

"You want the eureka moment, the discovery that you have seen something that has been on Earth for millions of years but no one has realised it," said Prof Ng.

Dr Rahayu, senior research scientist at the Research Centre for Oceanography of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, said: "This deep-sea expedition will reveal the diversity of demersal organisms on the south-western part of Java island, an area where almost no exploration has ever been conducted." Demersal organisms are those which live close to the seabed.

Prof Ng admitted that there will be some damage to the environment as the animals are being taken from their homes.

"But since this area has not been sampled before, we decided the damage is acceptable, and it is minimal. You have to take those risks," he said. "We are not defending it, we are explaining it."

After the expedition, the samples will be studied, and the findings will be shared and discussed at a workshop slated to be held in Indonesia in 2020, and later published in The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.

***

(Clockwise from top left) The giant sea cockroach, blind lobster, Saudade six-legged crab and deep sea carrier crab. (NUS via The Straits Times/File)

Creatures of the deep sea

Deep sea carrier crab (Homologenus exilis)

This crab was discovered on an expedition to Tungsha Islands in the South China Sea in 2015 by Professor Peter Ng and French marine biologist Bertrand Richer de Forges.

Saudade six-legged crab (Hexaplax saudade)

This crab is found in various parts of the South China Sea, as well as the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. It was discovered by Professor Peter Ng and Dr Dwi Listyo Rahayu, who named it in 2014. It has large glowing red eyes, and unlike other crabs, has six instead of eight legs.

Blind lobster (Polycheles typhlops)

This lobster was collected by scientists during an expedition to the Philippine Sea, east of Luzon Island. This species is known to inhabit areas near coral banks on soft muddy substrates.

Giant sea cockroach (Bathynomus kensleyi)

A Darth Vader lookalike, this Isopod was caught during an expedition to the Bohol Sea in the central Philippines. They live close to the seabed, between depths of 300m and 2.5km.Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 24, 2018 11:00 1279 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cb53fe8 1 World #ForeignMinistry,Retno-Marsudi,Foreign-Affairs-Ministry,Youth Free

The Foreign Ministry has taken a move to inform the public about its foreign policies by holding dialogues with Indonesian youths, including awardees of various overseas scholarships.

The ministry on Friday evening invited dozens of such awardees to take part in a dialogue with Minister Retno LP Marsudi at its headquarters in Central Jakarta.

The event, titled Talkshow with the Foreign Minister: Direction on Indonesia's Foreign Affairs and Policies, involved dozens of professionals who previously received scholarships to study in various countries, such as Australia, Germany, the United States, China and the Netherlands.

Retno emphasized in the dialogue that in this social media era, it was unlikely that Indonesia could hide its policies and measures particularly in regard to foreign affairs.

"Therefore, we organized this event so that you find out about all the policies directly from us," said Retno during the dialogue. "This event can be a communication forum to exchange ideas."

The participants took the chance to get the latest information on various topics related to foreign affairs, including on the protection of Indonesian citizens and migrant workers abroad.

They also made suggestions about how to create solid diaspora groups that could reflect Indonesia's interests and aims in the global community.

Azis Nurwahyudi, the ministry's public diplomacy director, told The Jakarta Post that the ministry was also planning to disseminate information to university students across the country.

In addition, Cecep Herawan, the Foreign Ministry's director general for information and public diplomacy said it was also aiming to share its foreign policies with professional groups.

Last week, Deputy Foreign Minister Abdurrahman Mohammad Fachir conducted similar events in two Islamic boarding schools in Yogyakarta, namely Mu'Allimin and Ali Maksum schools, where he discussed foreign issues with high school students. (evi)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 24, 2018 10:00 1279 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cb4dbca 2 City #StreetVendors,street-food,street-vendors,informal-sector,jakarta Free

To a group of seven young volunteers calling themselves Rame Rame Jakarta (Hustle and Bustle Jakarta), the informal sector is a fascinating aspect of city life, full of interesting layers of information.

Rame Rame Jakarta relies mainly on Instagram (@rameramejakarta) to spread human interest stories about the citys informal entrepreneurs and their role in sustaining the economy.

Juggling between their main jobs and interviewing the entrepreneurs, the group, which was formed in mid-2017, has published seven interviews with pictures on rameramejakarta.com.

In one of the published interviews, Rame Rame Jakarta interviewed Rofi and Marwiti, owners of a warteg (Tegal food stall) in Kampung Karet, South Jakarta.

The couple told Kris K., the groups co-founder, that they had come from Tegal in Central Java, where they had started their business more than 30 years ago.

They opened a warteg in Setiabudi in Central Jakarta before moving to Karet in 1997.

The entrepreneurs said they had experienced a lot of changes in their industry. But warteg meals are always popular, they said.

Eating and drinking is something that everyone has in common. Its one of the most obvious and easy ways to explain the interaction most people have with the roots economy, Kris told The Jakarta Post.

Rame Rame Jakarta also met with Syaifudin, a peddler selling paraphernalia especially for construction workers in Kebon Sirih and on Jl. Jaksa, Central Jakarta, since 2012.

Syaifudin, who lives in Manggarai, South Jakarta, sells hats, bags, measuring tape and more.

I sell [the goods] on the street, because there are many building projects in the area. The [construction workers] are my customers, he said.

Another initiator of Rame Rame, Andesha Hermintomo, said he and his friends wished to show that residents, especially of the middle-class, actually needed informal entrepreneurs and vice versa.

Andesha said by featuring the human side of these street vendors, Rame Rame Jakarta wanted to encourage a warmer encounter.

Kris echoed that statement, saying sometimes it was hard for people to imagine the lives of informal entrepreneurs.

Too often people forget that behind every pushcart or a bowl of soto there is a person, whose life is just as dynamic and complex as our own, Kris said. (evi)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 24 2018

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has called on G20 countries to make a joint effort to tax global and regional digital companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Uber, Lazada and Grab.

Speaking at the recent G20 meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sri Mulyani stressed that taxes should be paid by the companies based on economic significance, as opposed to based on decisions by the companies central or branch offices.

Therefore, she called for international cooperation to fight for the right for governments to collect fair taxes, particularly from tax evaders.

[We have to cooperate] to deal with tax evasion by individuals and corporations, she said as reported by tempo.co on Friday, adding that taxes were crucial for development.

She said both technical and legal assistance were needed by small and developing countr...Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Glen Chapman (Agence France-Presse) San Francisco, United States  Sat, March 24, 2018 11:20 1279 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cb558a7 2 World Facebook,social-media,Silicon-Valley Free

With Facebook mired in its worst-ever crisis, the rest of Silicon Valley is looking to come to terms with the dark side of its data-driven business model where tech titans have mined fortunes from what people reveal online.

There are signs the crisis could spread to other internet firms that have made no secret about using what they glean from digital data for targeted advertising.

That same personal data can be used effectively by those with malicious intent when it comes to influencing people.

"It is Facebook this week, but it could be others," tech industry analyst Rob Enderle said of the crisis of confidence laying siege to the social network.

"At the very least, this is the common problem across the tech industry."

The tumultuous week ended with Facebook losing 14 percent of its market value, wiping out more than $50 billion from one of the biggest and most powerful companies.

A public apology by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg failed to quell outrage over the hijacking of personal data from millions of people by Cambridge Analytica.

Belatedly speaking out about the harvesting of Facebook user data by the British firm linked to President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, Zuckerberg admitted to betraying the trust of its more than two billion users, and promised to "step up."

But some point out that Facebook is just one of many firms which mine data for profit --- albeit the most successful, along with Google -- as digital lifestyles take root around the world.

"Phones, apps, and the web are so indispensable to our daily lives -- a testament to the benefits they give us -- that we've become a captive audience," the nonprofit Center for Humane Technology said.

"With two billion people plugged into these devices, technology companies have inadvertently enabled a direct channel to manipulate entire societies with unprecedented precision."

Early Facebook investor Roger McNamee argued in a USA Today opinion piece that "Russia never would have been able to conduct information warfare against the United States" in 2016 without the social network as well as Twitter and Google.

What happens now? Some users are joining the #deleteFacebook movement, but it remains unclear if advertisers will abandon the important platform.

High-profile entrepreneur Elon Musk joined the critical chorus on Friday, saying in an exchange on Twitter that he was shutting down the Facebook accounts of his Tesla and SpaceX enterprises.

"What's Facebook?" Musk quipped rhetorically in an exchange on Twitter.

While it may seem tempting to join a movement to abandon Facebook, it does raise the question of where one will go to stay connected with friends, celebrities, or businesses that have become part of the fabric of the online community.

Facebook is also intertwined in the fabric of the web, with its "like" buttons and communities which rely on its connections.

New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway said advertisers could have an impact if they left Facebook but said it was unlikely to lose many of its five million ad customers.

"Advertisers have just two platforms to market their products online," Galloway said in a blog post.

"Advertisers need Facebook much more than Facebook needs any one, or thousand, advertisers.

The data scandal has shined a spotlight on the unabashed practice of internet companies using information people willingly provide to make money in exchange for free services or content.

Amazon uses what it knows about online shoppers to target offerings or deals.

Google-owned Waymo and ride-share firm Uber are among companies developing self-driving vehicle technology with the help of data collected by people using them on roads.

Smart watches boast ability to aid medical research with health data amassed from wearers, and Google has dabbled with using search data to model trends in the spread of flu.

Enderle lamented that people using online services can be treated as "digital slaves" exploited to the benefit of advertisers.

"They are thinking that the people who use the product don't matter," Enderle contended.

"Once you do that, you will make a lot of mistakes. We are at risk of losing the tech market one company at a time."Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Jakarta  Sat, March 24, 2018 10:52 1279 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cb53f53 2 National orangutan,Kalimantan,conservation Free

Young orangutan Utu clings to one of his rescuers as he is freed from the tiny wooden cage that has been home for five years.

The tiny primate, covered in fuzzy auburn hair, is one of three Bornean orangutans saved in Indonesia over the past two weeks.

Environmentalists and local officials rescued Utu and another youngster, Joy, from tiny 1.5 by one meter (five by three feet) cages where they were kept as house pets in West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.

A third orangutan named Tomang was moved from a village in the same province where he had been raiding fruit trees, angering local villagers.

Joy and Utu will now spend years learning to fend for themselves before being released into the wild, while Tomang has been set free into Gunung Palung National Park.

The rescues are a rare spot of bright news for the critically endangered species, after a string of fatal attacks on the great apes that have been blamed on farmers and hunters.

Four Indonesian men were arrested over the killing of an orangutan shot some 130 times with an air rifle in February.

Borneo police have also arrested two rubber plantation workers and accused them of shooting an orangutan multiple times before decapitating it.

Plantation workers and villagers are sometimes known to attack an animal that they see as a pest, while poachers also capture them to sell as pets.

A viral video of an orangutan puffing on a cigarette flicked into its zoo enclosure by a visitor this month highlighted Indonesia's abysmal record of animal protection.

Conservation workers said rescues like those of Joy and Utu were doomed to be repeated unless forest clearing was tackled.

"We need to work with all stakeholders, not just citizens and governments, but also companies that have plantation land in or around orangutan habitat," said Karmele L. Sanchez, program director for International Animal Rescue.Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, March 24, 2018 13:55 1279 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cb5b407 1 Politics Jokowi,Airlangga-Hartarto,Golkar,presidential-election Free

President Joko Jokowi Widodo spent the morning jogging with Golkar Party leader Airlangga Hartarto at the Bogor Palace in West Java on Saturday, during which time they talked about the 2019 presidential election.

The meeting between the two politicians came a day after Golkar, the second-largest party to back Jokowi, announced during its working meeting in Jakarta that it was seeking to pair one of its members, including perhaps Airlangga, with Jokowi.

Airlangga, however, said that Golkar would give Jokowi the freedom to choose his running mate. That depends on the President. The most important things is Golkar will safeguard the NKRI [Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia].

Airlangga, who also serves as industry minister in Jokowi's Cabinet, said that Golkar wanted a figure who could support the President and maintain the integrity of the nation.

"[The candidate] must be able to support the President and both of them can work together in maintaining the nation's integrity," he said as quoted by Antara.

Previously on Thursday, Airlangga said Jokowi was comfortable working with a Golkar member, citing the fact that Jokowis vice president is Jusuf Kalla, a former Golkar chairman.

He said he was convinced that Jokowi would be re-elected in 2019. (foy/ahw)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Tangerang  Sat, March 24, 2018 20:00 1279 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cb64091 1 City Tangerang,persecution,couple,trial Free

Prosecutors of the Tangerang District Court have demanded a seven-year prison term for a neighborhood unit (RW) head who stands accused of initiating the persecution of a couple in Cikupa, Banten, last year.

Komaruddin, 44, has been charged with violating Article 29 of Law 44/2008 on pornography, as well as articles 170 and 335 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) on assault and indecent conduct, respectively.

Other defendants in the case are Iis Suparlan, also known as, Ocong, 32; Anwar Cahyadi, alias Jabrik, 42; Suhendang, also known as Anong, 41; and Nuryadi, 42.

Each faces four years in prison for allegedly violating articles 170 and 335 of the Criminal Code.

One defendant, Gunawan Saputra, 44, the community unit (RW) head, face two years imprisonment for allegedly violating article 351 and 335 of the Criminal Code

According prosecutor Rahmadi Seno, Komaruddin barged into the home of a Cikupa resident on Nov. 10 as she and her fiance were just finishing dinner.

He then allegedly forced the couple out of the house while accusing them of having premarital sex.

The RT head took [the victims] ID and cellphone and handed them over to Iis and another person, Rahmadi said during the sentence demand as reported by tempo.co.

Komaruddin then forced the couple to take their clothes off. This created a public spectacle.

Iis and Anwar allegedly beat the male victim before parading him and his fiance naked around the community.

While hitting the victim, Suhendang allegedly shouted: This is the man who conducted immoral acts in our neighborhood.

Nuryadi, meanwhile, reportedly encouraged the gathering crowd to take a picture or video of him, just do it.

Gunawan, who came last also allegedly took part in assaulting the couple.

Several days after the incident, the couple had a nikah siri (unregistered marriage) at the groom's house in Kadu Agung subdistrict, Banten, attended by relatives and local officials. (vny/iwa)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Remy Zaka with Pauline Talagrand and Katy Lee (Agence France-Presse) Paris  Sat, March 24, 2018 10:00 1279 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cb4e5a5 2 World France,Islamic-State,terror-attack Free

At least two people were killed after a gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group opened fire and took hostages at a supermarket in southwest France on Friday.

A security source said the two were killed in the attack at a Super U store in the town of Trebes.

Armed police were also responding to the earlier shooting of a policeman in the town of Carcassonne, 15 minutes drive away, which took place at around 11 am.

It was unclear if the two incidents were linked.

In Trebes, a picturesque medieval town of around 5,000 people, the man "entered the Super U supermarket at around 11.15 am and shots were heard," a source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

A witness reported he shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) before going into the premises, the source added.

The gunman claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group, the local prosecutor's office said, and the incident was being treated as a terror attack.

Local authorities tweeted that the area around the supermarket was off-limits to the public, while Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said it was a "serious" incident.

The shootings come with France still on high alert after a string of jihadist attacks since 2015, starting in January that year with the assault on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead.

France also suffered major attacks in Paris in November 2015 when IS jihadists killed 130 people in bombings and shootings at bars, restaurants, the Bataclan concert venue and the national stadium.

In July 2016, in another attack claimed by IS, a man drove a truck through revellers celebrating Bastille Day in the Riviera resort of Nice, killing 84 people.

A state of emergency put in place just after the Paris attacks was finally lifted in October last year, but soldiers continue to patrol major tourist sites and transport hubs under an anti-terror mission.

If the link to Islamic State is confirmed, the hostage-taking would be the first deadly attack in France since October, when two young women were stabbed to death outside Marseille's main train station.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb was heading to the scene, he wrote on Twitter.

The area of southwest France where Friday's shootings took place has been scarred by Islamic extremism before.

In 2012, Mohamed Merah shot dead seven people including three Jewish schoolchildren in the nearby city of Toulouse.Around a four-hour road trip from Jakarta, Cirebon in West Java offers an interesting destination for tourists, from breathtaking landscapes to cultural heritage.

One of the must-visit places in the port city is Kraton Kanoman (Kanoman Palace), especially for culture and history enthusiasts.

Situated at the back of Kanoman Market, 3 kilometers from the city of Cirebon, it was established in 1678 by Prince Mohamad Badridin, also known as Prince Kertawijaya or Sultan Anom I -- his official title.

Because of its convenient location at the back of a traditional market, the palace can easily be accessed by the public. "This kraton is open to anyone," said Diah, a local visitor, as quoted by Antara.

Even without purchasing a ticket, visitors can freely enter and explore the site, including the sultan's house and ritual places used for ceremonies. They can also communicate with members of the royal family who live in the 6-hectare palace area.

Read also: Keeping legacy of Javanese script alive

A post shared by Ita Dh (@itdhamayanti) on Nov 28, 2017 at 5:26pm PST

The palace itself consists of three parts. Art performances are usually held in the front area; gamelan and other equipment owned by the kingdom are stored there as well.

At the center there is a building named Jinem, which is the main house where the king's coronation ceremony took place.

Meanwhile, the back area of the kraton hosts the houses of the king and his children, with the original exterior well-preserved. Nearby there is a place named Witana, which serves as the royals bathing place. An ancient well where special rituals are held can be found there.

The palace can be reached by public transportation that goes to Kanoman Market in front of Cirebon Station, priced Rp 4,000 (29 US cents) one-way. Visitors can also opt to rent a motorcycle for around Rp 80,000 per day. (kes)Exploring the vertical Jomblang Cave in Pacarejo village, Gunung Kidul regency, Yogyakarta, for the very first time was an experience to remember for Alain Rigodin, the general manager of Marriott Yogyakarta Hotel. Accompanied by his wife, Rigodin, he bravely entered the 60-meter-deep cave.

I was given some kind of boots that allowed me to explore the muddy cave, Rigodin said.

After walking around for 30 minutes, which was not easy to do, he discovered stalagmites and a hole where the sunlight enters, popularly known as "the light of heaven". Although he admitted that it took a lot of energy to explore the cave, he planned to go back.

The inner part of Jomblang Cave, Pacarejo village, Gunung Kidul regency, Yogyakarta. (Shutterstock/File)

The former general manager of The St. Regis Beijing said he liked to explore and understand the country where he worked. In Indonesia, he has traveled to several provinces, such as Jakarta, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara and Kalimantan.

Read also: Foreign travelers search for her Yogyakarta hero goes viral

You have so much to offer in this country, he said. People are nice, the food is good. Every time you eat a nasi goreng (fried rice), you know it will taste different.

As he spends most of his time in Yogyakarta, he suggests that visitors ride a bicycle if they have more time on their hands.

Its safe, its not complicated to go around; just get a tourist map. People will help you if youre lost, he said.

I think youll be able to appreciate [this city] a bit more [that way]. You can stop whenever you want to.

Alain Rigodin suggests that people ride a bicycle if they have more time in Yogyakarta. (JP/Ni Nyoman Wira)

Meanwhile, for those who have limited time in the city, Rigodin said visitors should not miss out on Yogyakartas famous tourist destinations, such as the temples of Borobudur and Prambanan, or the kraton (the palace of Yogyakarta).

He also advised tourists to shop for batik. Theres more to explore outside the city, but it requires more time.

Rigodin, who began his career in 1989 as an executive sous chef, said the food in Yogyakarta was too sweet for his taste, although gudeg (jackfruit stew with palm sugar and coconut milk) was one of his favorite local dishes. He advised visitors to make time to try local restaurants that offer an authentic taste of Yogyakartan cuisine for a complete travel experience. (kes)Thirteen airports operated by state-owned airport operator PT Angkasa Pura I (AP I) will join the global campaign "Switch Off Earth Hour 2018" on Saturday, including I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali.

The campaign, however, will not affect the airports flight schedules or operations.

To show its support to the global environmental campaign, the switch-off will only be implemented in some parts of the airports.

"The lights in some areas in the 13 airports will be switched off at 8:30 p.m. local time for one hour," AP I airport service vice president Ramdan Pradarma told a press conference in Bali on Friday.

Ngurah Rai airport in Bali will become the center for the switch-off campaign. The switch-off will be conducted in at least three locations, namely at the I Gusti Ngurah Rai statue at the traffic circle near the airport, the airports name board and at the Balinese-style gate, Bentar, which is close to the international terminal.

Read also: Jakarta joins Earth Hour campaign

"We could not conduct the switch-off at the airport terminal as it would affect the airports operations," Ramdan added.

Besides Ngurah Rai, the other airports participating in the campaign are Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport in Makassar, Sepinggan International Airport in Balikpapan, Frans Kaisiepo International Airport in Biak, Sam Ratulangi International Airport in Manado, Syamsudin Noor International Airport in Banjarmasin, Ahmad Yani International Airport in Semarang, Adi Sutjipto International Airport in Yogyakarta, Adi Soemarmo International Airport in Surakarta, Lombok International Airport in West Nusa Tenggara, Pattimura Airport in Ambon and El Tari Airport in East Nusa Tenggara.

AP I marketing and service director Devy W.A. Suradji said that the government was eager to join the Earth Hour campaign as it was in line with the company's mission. "As a company that connects many tourist destinations, which mostly are natural destinations, we consider this a global campaign in line with our mission as were not only building airports, but also destinations. And we want to educate all passengers to be smart and green travelers," she said.

Related activities have also been conducted by airport and local communities in the 13 airports since March 23, such as trash clean-up programs and collecting petition signatures from passengers to support the Earth Hour campaign.

The coordinator of Earth Hour Bali, Sutan Tantowi Dermawan, said he was grateful the airport could participate in the global campaign. "This campaign aims to educate the public about the importance of preserving our environment," he said, adding that the campaign, which was initiated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 2007, has been adopted in at least 180 countries across the world. (kes)The world is getting more familiar with capsule hotels, a type of accommodation originating from Japan. It is a practical solution for travelers, businessmen and backpackers who only need a space to sleep. Whats the point of paying a fortune for a hotel room when all we do is sleep for a few hours?

A capsule hotel manufacturer from Japan is planning to venture into Indonesia this year. Under the brand Capsule Indonesia, capsule hotels will open at a number of airports in the archipelago.

Rere, a marketing and communication representative of Capsule Indonesia, said to kompas.com that there is already a capsule hotel open in Surabaya, using the technology and original concept hailing straight from Japan.

Capsule Indonesia met Kompas.co at INAPA 2018, an automotive show held from Tuesday to Thursday at Jakarta International Expo (JIEXPO) Kemayoran. The brand showcased a few types of capsules at the expo. A white capsule measuring 2.3 cubic meters fits one adult. There are also capsules with double bed and offices at its base, called the office capsule.

The capsules can be unlocked with a sensor key card and are equipped with control buttons, a 22-inch television, air temperature controller, USB and earphone ports and an alarm. Meanwhile, shared bathrooms are separated from the capsules.

Read also: Japan's capsule hotels catching on among tourists from abroad

Our upcoming opening will be at Soekarno-Hatta airport, with rates starting from Rp 180,000 (US$13.1), said Rere.

Made of ABS plastic that is commonly used in aircraft cabins, the capsules also come with smoke detectors to ensure safety. (mut)Irish low-cost airline Ryanair said Friday it would launch flights to Ukraine from October, in an about-face after dropping such plans just months earlier.

"Ryanair is pleased to announce that low fares have officially arrived in Ukraine, our 36th country of operation," CEO Michael O'Leary said in a statement, adding the flights would start in October.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko hailed the airline's decision.

"I am very pleased that we started this fantastic cooperation," he said during a ceremony which saw Ryanair sign an agreement with two airports, in Kiev and Lviv, on Friday.

Ryanair said it would operate 10 new routes from the Ukrainian capital to Barcelona, Bratislava, Gdansk, Krakow, London, Poznan, Stockholm, Vilnius, Warsaw and Wroclaw.

It will also launch five new routes from the Western city of Lviv to Dusseldorf, Krakow, London, Memmingen and Warsaw.

Read also: Tired of waiting, Ryanair passenger gets out and sits on wing

O'Leary estimated that some 800,000 customers would use the routes annually.

Several foreign low-budget airlines are already present in Ukraine.

But the arrival of the no-frills Irish carrier is expected to be a boon for the country, making fares cheaper and boosting its battered tourism sector.

Ukraine, which in 2013-2014 saw a pro-EU revolt, is still struggling to end a conflict with pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.

It is trying to get its tourism industry back on its feet, after the number of travellers to Ukraine plummeted because of the unrest.

In March 2017, Ryanair said it would enter Ukraine with four new routes departing from Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands.

But in July last year it abandoned the plans, claiming that Kiev's airport had not fulfilled pledges made as part of an unspecified "growth agreement".

The carrier did not provide any details explaining its change of heart.Ten diaspora restaurants across three continents signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Tourism Ministry during the 2018 Tourism National Coordinating Meeting in Bali on Friday as part of their support for promoting Indonesian tourism.

Among the restaurants were Gastrobar Indonesia in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Djakarta Bali in Paris, France, The Yono's Indonesian Fine Dining in Albany, United States, Kasih Restoran in Los Angeles, WIN (Wonderful Indonesia) Grill and Gastrobar, Fluffy lamb in Perth, Australia, Sendok Garpu in Brisbane, Ubud Resto di Sydney, Sari Ratu in Singapore, and Bumbu Desa in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The already popular brands will soon put the Wonderful Indonesia logo on their establishments and provide promotion media for Indonesian tourism. They have also agreed to promote five national foods designated by the Tourism Ministry, namely rendang (beef simmered in coconut milk), nasi goreng (fried rice), sate (grilled meat skewers), soto (aromatic soup) and gado-gado (mixed vegetable salad with peanut sauce).

Read also: Indonesian diaspora can help boost exports, foreign investment: Jokowi

These restaurants will be added to a special website dedicated to this partnership program, wonderfulindonesiarestaurant.com, said Tourism Minister Arief Yahya.

The ministrys shopping and culinary tourism acceleration team head, Vita Datau Mesakh, was optimistic that Wonderful Indonesia would be able to maintain its lead over its main rivals in Southeast Asia, Malaysia Truly Asia and Amazing Thailand.

Since 2015, Wonderful Indonesia has led in front of our two rivals, climbing to rank 47th in the world, meanwhile Malaysia and Thailand are on 96th and 83rd position, respectively. After this MoU, Im sure our tourism brand will be able to lead even more, said Vita. (kes)Share this article Whatsapp

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Linkedin Keshie Hernitaningtyas (The Jakarta Post) Singapore  Sat, March 24, 2018 09:09 1279 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cb4d6bd 1 News technology,career,student,Education,Microsoft Free

Technology is arguably one of the most popular sectors these days and people, who have strong backgrounds in the field, are considered to be the most sought after by giant companies and employers everywhere.

During a Skypeathon event hosted by the Indonesian delegation at the Microsoft Education Exchange (E2) 2018 in Singapore on March 15, which was joined by students from 82 schools across Indonesia, Microsoft Worldwide Education vice president Anthony Salcito shared these crucial tips on what students can do to start preparing for a future as a programmer.

Microsoft Worldwide Education vice president Anthony Salcito answers questions from several Indonesian students during the Skypeathon event hosted by the Indonesian delegation at the Microsoft Education Exchange (E2) 2018 in Singapore on March 15. (JP/Keshie Hernitaningtyas)

1. The skills you learn today in school matter

"You can start with understanding that in the world of programming today all the skills youre learning in your school and classroom are valued. We're looking for people who can work well with others; the collaboration that happens is critically important," said Salcito.

Sharing ideas and collaborating on projects with other students are among the skills companies like Microsoft value highly. "Because in most projects, like building games, or building products like Microsoft Word or Skype, there are thousands of people involved from all different disciplines. So being able to work well with others is critically important," he said.

2. Learn how to communicate your ideas

"Being able to communicate your idea effectively is also critically important," advised Salcito.

"Whether youre working in a small development studio or a large company, you need to articulate your design concept, point of view; communicate what your goal is to others so they can help build on your vision."

Read also: Marvel's CB Cebulski shares tips for aspiring comic book artists, writers

3. Get the foundation right

"Getting a foundation with technology tools, whether its block editing or JavaScript, is helpful. But what you want do is actually have a blended environment because technology will continue to evolve, so understand the foundation of computational thinking and that can be applied very broadly," shared Salcito.

"As the landscape of technology continues to change, the languages and capabilities of platforms will continue to change. So get the foundation right."

4. Be passionate

"I suggest doing stuff you're passionate about. Finding a thing that you love and trying to express solutions and ideas with technology is a great way to start. I always see students who go further with regard to technology development because theyre trying to solve something else," added Salcito, who previously worked as a teacher.

"At the end of the day thats what the core skill is. How do you use the power of technology to create an emotion; whether a game or storytelling idea? How do you solve a challenge in society with an application or program? Thinking about what you're trying to solve is actually a great way to start your journey."

5. Be open to anything

"Do recognize that theres a great need for programmers of all kinds; the world is getting more diverse," said Salcito.

He then shared how Microsoft hired different types of people; from visual artists, people who understand sound design, to writers and people who understand language and linguistics.

"All of these work across the world of technology. Increasingly whether you want to be a coder or involved in technology development in a broader way, theres plenty of need and opportunity for you in this field."A Briton who was accused of producing pornography when he posted images promoting a party online has been sentenced in Cambodia to a suspended one-year prison term.

On the 25th of January, a

group of ten foreign tourists were arrested

in the Cambodian town of Siem Reap for breaching the

countrys strict local laws

regarding culturally offensive behaviour.

Briton Daniel Jones was one of the ten who was arrested, and is the only member to have actually been convicted.

During Jones' sentencing the judge said the 31-year-old Briton, unintentionally produced pornography that affects Khmer culture and handed out the maximum sentence of one-year to him.

Defending Jones following sentencing, his lawyer said: There was no evidence against my client. As a lawyer, I am not happy with this decision.

The police claimed images and videos promoting a party called Lets Get Wet were both offensive to Cambodian culture and illegal because they were 'pornographic'.

Credit: Cambodia National Police

Jones said he didn't realise the images - which showed people dancing and playing games at a party - were disrespectful to Cambodian culture, but speaking during the trial he said: "Now I understand in Cambodia that these pictures are not good".

Jones has spent nearly two months in custody, the judge has decided to suspend the remaining ten months of his sentence and ordered him to leave the country.

The other nine tourists, including four other Britons and Canadian, Dutch, and New Zealand nationals, have been released without being charged.

Cambodia is well-known for its extremely strict approach to drug offences and the disrespectful conduct by foreigners but it still remains a very popular destination among young backpackers.

This particular sentencing comes only days after the Foreign Office launched a new campaign urging the British public to educate themselves on local laws before travelling abroad.For Subscribers Noem's shift on curriculum highlights disconnect with education dept.

Lawmaker says revision process was highjacked by 'leftist bureaucrats' in South Dakota Department of Education.The new generation is the true foundation on which to rebuild after years of divisions, violence and extremism, says Mgr Yousif Thoma Mirkis who met 700 university students from Mosul, lodged in Kirkuk during the Islamic State rule. Two young men from Mosul, one Christian and one Muslim, shot a video telling the story of a friendship that is stronger than the jihadi madness.

Kirkuk (AsiaNews)  Rebuilding Iraq, after years of wars, extremism, divisions and violence culminating in the rise of the Islamic State, which is down but not yet out, must be based "on the young, who are the basis on which to build the future," said Mgr Yousif Thoma Mirkis, archbishop of Kirkuk, northern Iraq.

The prelate recently met with a group of students from the University of Mosul who were lodged in his diocese when the Islamic State controlled the city.

In a context of "social strife and devastations that have struck streets, houses, places of worship and cultural centres", the University of Mosul "has resumed activities trying to secure a future for its students, the archbishop said.

For him, the new generation is the starting point to revive Iraqs social, economic and cultural fabric, torn by conflicts and divisions over identity and sectarianism.

Pope Francis has repeatedly stressed that young people play a leading role in building a "healthier and more supportive" society.

The pontiff is set to meet with a group of over 300 young people from all over the world, who will be in the Vatican from 19 to 24 March to discuss the issues that will be on the agenda of next years Synod of Bishops, dedicated precisely to new generations.

At this meeting, participants will present their experiences and their requests to Pope Francis, for both Catholics but also young people from other religions or no religion.

For Mgr Yousif Thoma Mirkis, the experience of meeting, dialogue and sharing is what "pushed me to host about 700 university students, Christians and Muslims, from the University of Mosul" (pictured) during the period of Islamic State occupation.

"It was great to see them again, the prelate said. In my recent visit I went to the university. I have never shaken so many hands, taken pictures, smiled next to them. Muslim students were the first who wanted to greet me, happy to immortalise the meeting in an image."

About 3,000 young Christians study at the University of Mosul, and every day they travel from the villages and towns in the Nineveh plain to the big city in northern Iraq.

The student dormitory is still damaged and there are no rooms or places in the city to accommodate them because of the devastation by the Islamic State, which left traces that are still visible today.

"As rebuilding continues, the Church pays their transportation costs. People want to turn the page, be alive again, resume their interrupted journey.

For the prelate, young people are the engine of this renaissance, "putting aside religious ideologies or policies of the past that have failed, leaving behind only death and destruction".

"We cannot start up with the same pro-Islamic politicians and radical religious leaders, he said. We have had enough of divisions between Sunnis and Shiites; we must not turn back the clock.

We must look at unity, based on the principle of citizenship in one nation free from corruption, and free from external interference from regional and international powers."

To counter the jihadi brainwashing of the past few years and the ideologies of death and destruction, the archbishop of Kirkuk suggests initiatives that encourage exchange and dialogue.

One is a short film entitled Back to Mosul, which tells the story of the bond between Alaa and Ali, a Christian and a Muslim, that is stronger than jihadi madness.

The videoclip "is the work of the two young people who wanted to show that it is possible to go back to living together, overcoming the divisions". (DS)An American court has dealt a major blow to Indivior as it battles to stop rivals making cheaper versions of its painkiller addiction treatment.

The District Court of Delaware ruled that pharmaceutical rival Alvogen has not infringed any patents with its generic version of Indiviors Suboxone drug, its biggest seller.

It will be a bitter pill for Indivior to swallow, but the FTSE 250 drug maker believes it has grounds to appeal the decision.

An American court has dealt a major blow to Indivior as it battles to stop rivals making cheaper versions of its painkiller addiction treatment

It is thought the US drugs regulator has not yet approved Alvogens copycat drug.

However, if it does, Indivior says it would result in a rapid and material loss of market share for it in the US.

Shaun Thaxter, chief executive, said: We will appeal this ruling and continue to vigorously defend our intellectual property.

The companys shares dived more than 20 per cent in early trading, but recovered to a 6.2 per cent loss  down 25.5p to 382.8p.

The FTSE 100 followed world markets down as Donald Trump slapped $60billion (42.4billion) of import tariffs on China. It ended down 0.44 per cent, or 30.65 points, at 6921.94.

Investors saw their shares in fire alarm supplier Sprue Aegis go up in smoke due to a messy split with a key partner.

The FTSE 100 followed world markets down as Donald Trump slapped $60billion (42.4billion) of import tariffs on China. It ended down 0.44 per cent, or 30.65 points, at 6921.94

Consumer giant Newell Brands has terminated an agreement for Sprue to distribute its BRK smoke alarms in Europe over an alleged trademark breach.

Sprue refuses to say what the breach relates to.

The deal was due to end on March 31, but Newell has brought that forward because of the dispute and says it will not purchase any unsold stock that Sprue holds. AIM-listed Sprue, one of Europes leading smoke alarm sellers, says it is seeking legal advice. As a result, it is delaying the release of its full-year results.

STOCK WATCH: Smiths Group Engineer Smiths Group was rooted to the bottom of the FTSE 100 after a slip in profits. Smiths, which makes everything from defence to medical equipment, says it had been hit by higher research and development costs, as it announced a 12 per cent fall in profits. However, group chief executive Andy Smith says the firm has made an encouraging start to the year. Shares fell by 11.2 er cent in morning trading before recovering. It ended the day down 4.4 per cent, or 67.5p, at 1468.5p.

Its shares tanked 23.2 per cent, or 44p, to 146p.

Butcher Crawshaw Group propped up the AIM index after revealing bad weather had hit sales and two directors had quit. Chief executive Noel Collett says he will stay until a replacement is found, although finance chief Alan Richardson will leave in early May.

AIM-listed Crawshaw has 40 butchers across the country. The announcement butchered its shares, which plunged 29.2 per cent, or 1.65p, to 4p.

Sticking with AIM, Fever-Trees shares slid 5 per cent, or 150p, to 2807p after it emerged co-founder Charles Rolls had cashed in 82.5million of shares. Deputy chairman Rolls originally intended to sell 1.5million shares, as announced on Thursday, but ended up flogging 3 million due to significant institutional demand.

A $15 million (10.6 million) investment to boost mining production sent shares in Serabi Gold through the roof. Under the terms of the deal, private equity group Greenstone Resources will get a 29.8 per cent stake in Serabi, a gold miner operating in Brazil.

The money will be used to extend the life of its Palito and Sao Chico projects, as well as to kick-on with its newly acquired Coringa project.

Shares leapt 17.4 per cent, or 0.63p, to 4.25p.

Plans to raise 100million to fund the purchase of healthcare centres caused Primary Health Properties shares to slide.

Small Cap-listed PHP, which owns more than 300 doctors surgeries in the UK, will issue nearly 92.6m shares at 108p each to raise the cash.

However, the board can increase the size of the issue by 25 per cent if there is enough demand among investors, the firm says.

Investors were not impressed, however, and PHPs shares fell 3.5 per cent, or 4p, to 110p.Nex founder Michael Spencer's fortune is put at 800m

Michael Spencers party at Scotts restaurant on the night of the 2015 General Election was a customarily civilised affair. Champagne. Excellent shell-fish. I dare say a few oysters shucked here and there.

When the exit polls flashed up predicting a surprise Conservative victory, the Mayfair restaurants glint-eyed proprietor Richard Caring gamely bet the evenings host that should the Tories win an overall majority, hed happily pick up the tab.

By 6am, the Tories had a 12-seat margin and Spencer, barring a generous 5,000 tip for the waiting staff, waltzed off without having to pay a penny.

This yarn offers three telling insights into Spencers personality. First, he loves a good party. Second, he knows a decent bet when he sees it. And third, hes ruthless about seeing it through.

He is founder and chief executive of Nex group, one of the worlds largest inter-dealer brokers, formerly known as Icap. Rumours swirl he may be about to offload it to Chicago-based CME Group, which, if true, will represent the end of an era.

For among the San Pellegrino-sipping dullards who occupy the City these days, Spencer, 62, remains one of the Square Miles dwindling characters. His wry charm and playful nature is offset by a brooding temperament, prone to volcanic eruptions.

He epitomises, in many ways, the work hard/play hard ethos of the 1980s, as committed to exhaustive hours roaming the trading floor as he is to expansive lunches in Mount Street power joint George Club.

His fortune, put at 800million, has certainly allowed him to enjoy the finer things in life  Jack Vettriano paintings, bespoke tailoring, Turnbull & Asser shirts.

He has homes in London and New York, plus a beautiful safari ranch in Kenya which he shares with second wife Sarah, formerly the Marchioness of Milford Haven (he divorced first wife Lorraine, with whom he has three children, in 2008). Meanwhile, his impressive wine cellar is stacked with first growth clarets which he isnt afraid to uncork.

Spencer has homes in London and New York, plus a beautiful safari ranch in Kenya. Meanwhile, his impressive wine cellar is stacked with first growth clarets which he isnt afraid to uncork

Success didnt arrive overnight. Born in Kuala Lumpur, the son of a civil servant, he was brought up in Sudan and Ethiopia before being packed off to a Sussex boarding school. While studying physics at Oxford, a 30,000 windfall from a trade made him lust after making oodles of cash.

His initial foray into the City proved a disaster. Sporting a hippy perm and unsatisfactory moustache, he joined stockbroker Simon & Coates, and was promptly fired for racking up trading losses on the gold market.

He made a similar dogs dinner at investment bank Drexel Burnham, where he was sacked after he tried to cover up a trading error.

After three years at futures firm Charles Fulton, he decided to go it alone. In 1986, armed with just 86,000 and a computer, he formed Intercapital Brokers. Just over a decade later, he was so successful he could take over Londons biggest money broker, Exco.

The following year, he merged the business with a rival to form Icap, which became one of the top-three inter-dealer brokers in the world, acting as an intermediary in the financial markets between banks and finance houses.

There have been a few bruising spats down the years, notably with rival broker Terry Smith, who accused Spencer of poaching his staff.

An early supporter of David Cameron, he became Conservative treasurer in 2005 and, for four years, the Tory coffers brimmed with cash, including 4million of Spencers own donations.

Thrice he has been denied a peerage for his efforts. Some say he was paying the price for a gamey incident in 2011 when Icap was hit with a 55million fine for Libor rigging, though Spencer was never personally implicated.

Privately he fumes over the secretive honours committees snub, which his friends dismiss as sour grapes. No matter. Michael Spencer can look back on a City career thats premier cru.GlaxoSmithKline has pulled out of the race to buy Pfizers $20billion consumer healthcare arm  the second major pharma firm in quick succession to do so.

GSK was considered favourite to pick up the business following Reckitt Benckisers decision on Thursday, but the group indicated that the deal did not meet its investment criteria.

GSK chief executive Emma Walmsley said: While we will continue to review opportunities that may accelerate our strategy, they must meet our criteria for returns and not compromise our priorities for capital allocation.

GlaxoSmithKline has pulled out of the race to buy Pfizers $20billion consumer healthcare arm  the second major pharma firm in quick succession to do so

Shares in GSK rose towards the top of the FTSE 100 following the announcement, closing up 3.3 per cent, or 41.8p, at 1315.6p.

When Reckitt pulled out, the household goods giant said it had wanted to buy only part of the Pfizer division, but this had proved impossible.

Separately, GSK announced that its shingles vaccine Shingrix has been approved in Europe and Japan.Next is planning to fit out stores with prosecco bars, hairdressers, coffee shops and even a car showroom as it battles to win back customers.

Lamenting the fashion retailers most challenging year in a quarter of a century, chief executive Simon Wolfson yesterday unveiled his blueprint to revive the High Street chain, which traces its roots back to 1864.

With profits from its shops tumbling 24 per cent last year, Next is launching a fightback by renting out space to travel agents, florists, wedding-dress makers and spas to coax shoppers back.

Next is planning to fit out stores with prosecco bars, hairdressers, coffee shops and even a car showroom as it battles to win back customers

The company is even opening a car showroom at its store in the Arndale Centre in Manchester, where Ford will display five models.

The shake-up  which Wolfson admitted could leave Next looking like a department store  comes just days after John Lewis opened its department store of the future in west Londons Westfield shopping centre.

The store has its own spa, personal stylist service and offers classes for customers to learn how to host a dinner party or make Easter cards.

High Street chains face an onslaught from online retailers such as Amazon.

Toys R Us and Maplin crashed into administration this year, New Look is preparing to shut 60 stores, leaving 980 staff unemployed, while the future of Mothercare and Moss Bros hang in the balance.

The company is even opening a car showroom at its store in the Arndale Centre in Manchester (pictured), where Ford will display five models

In many ways, 2017 was the most challenging year we have faced for 25 years, said Wolfson.

He admitted Next made mistakes last year  stocking clothes that customers did not want even after they were put on sale.

Store sales fell 7.9 per cent to 2.1billion while shop profits were down 24 per cent to 268.7million. But online sales rose 9.2 per cent to 1.9billion.

Overall profits fell 8.1 per cent to 726.1million  its second consecutive annual drop  while total sales slid 0.5 per cent to 4.1billion.

With profits from its shops tumbling 24% last year, Next is launching a fightback by renting out space to travel agents, florists, wedding-dress makers and spas to coax shoppers back

Natalie Berg, retail analyst at NBK Retail, said: The store of the future wont just be a place to buy stuff, but also to eat, discover, play and even work.

Next has introduced as many different concessions as possible in its biggest store at the Arndale so customers have the option of getting a massage or a glass of prosecco at the same time as buying a sofa or pair of shoes.

The store already features an activity centre for children, a Paperchase stationery shop and an Italian restaurant backed by celebrity chef Gino DAcampo.

The Arndale store will be used as a test centre to see which concessions work before they are rolled out to other regions.

Wolfson claimed Next was not trying to replicate John Lewis or other department stores.

Were not trying to be anything thats already been done; were just trying to make money, he said. If it doesnt work, we wont do any more of them.

But Neil Wilson, an analyst at ETX Capital, said: I think the department store is not the way to go. Debenhams and House of Fraser are clearly struggling.

But there is an argument for it  its cheap to do and makes the most of the existing space.

My contention is they then get bogged down in more and more stores which may boost sales but margins will suffer.Every year, millions of people are failing to claim valuable tax breaks, refunds and compensation because they dont know about them.

Here, we reveal five perks you could be missing out on and how to get them.

TRAVEL HICCUPS

If your train is cancelled or severely delayed and you decide not to travel, you can typically demand a refund.

If you continue your journey and arrive at your destination more than 30 minutes late, you should be able to claim back at least part of your fare.

Too late? If your train is cancelled or severely delayed and you decide not to travel, you can typically demand a refund

Each train operator has its own rules on when and how much it will pay. For example, if you bought a single ticket with Virgin Trains, you should get a 50 per cent refund for delays of between 30 minutes and an hour, and the full fare back if you are delayed longer.

Southern Rail pays 25 per cent of the fare for hold-ups of between 15 and 30 minutes, 50 per cent between half-an-hour and an hour and a full refund after that. You can claim online or by post using a Delay Repay form.

Travellers who hold a monthly or annual season ticket usually get a proportion of the total cost back based on the average number of journeys a typical passenger makes during that period.

If you are travelling by plane and your flight arrives at its destination more than three hours late, you may be entitled to up to 530 (600) in compensation.

Rules: Each train operator has its own rules on when and how much it will pay for delays

If you think youre eligible, contact your airline and request compensation under EU regulation 261.

You cannot claim for delays caused by so-called extraordinary circumstances, such as bad weather and strikes.

FEE REFUND

If you applied for power of attorney between April 1, 2013 and March 31, 2017, you may be entitled to a refund of up to 54.

Power of attorney is a vital document that gives someone the legal authority to manage your finances should you fall ill or have an accident.

The fee for registering this document is only supposed to cover the cost of providing the service.

But around 1.8 million people were charged too much, so the Government has set up a refund scheme.

How much you get back depends on when you applied. You should receive 54 if you registered between April and September 2013, 34 between October 2013 and March 2014, 37 between April 2014 and March 2015, 38 between April 2015 and March 2016 and 45 between April 2016 and March 2017. You should also get a 0.5 pc interest payment on top.

Claim online at gov.uk/power-of-attorney-refund. Or you can apply by phone  call 0300 456 0300 and choose option six. You have until January 31, 2021 to claim.

TAX PERKS

If you are married or in a civil partnership, you could be missing out on a 662 tax perk by failing to claim the marriage tax allowance.

The so-called marriage allowance was introduced in 2015 to help married couples and civil partners where one partner earns less than the other. The taxman lets the lower earner transfer up 1,150 of any unused 11,500 tax-free personal allowance to the higher earner.

Allowance: If you are married or in a civil partnership, you could be missing out on a 662 tax perk by failing to claim the marriage tax allowance

This reduces their annual tax liability by up to 230.

Claims can be backdated to the 2015-2016 tax year, which means you could be entitled to up to 662.

If you were eligible and your partner has since died, you should still be able to claim.

To qualify, you must both have been born on or after April 6, 1935. The higher earner must also be a 20 pc basic-rate taxpayer.

Visit gov.uk/marriage-allowance or call 0300 200 3300.

CARD MISSELLING

Around 1.2 million borrowers who took out a credit card with Vanquis Bank are owed around 169 million in compensation.

According to the City watchdog, customers who took out a card between June 2003 and March 31, 2014 were mis-sold an add-on product called a Repayment Option Plan.

This allowed customers to freeze their accounts for up to two years so they wouldnt have to make any payments and take a repayment holiday for one month a year without being hit with any late payment fees.

It typically cost about 1.29 a month for every 100 owed, or 1.19 if you were a student or unemployed.

Compensation: Around 1.2 million borrowers who took out a credit card with Vanquis Bank are owed around 169 million in compensation

But Vanquis failed to make clear that borrowers would pay interest on this fee if they didnt clear their balance each month.

So the Financial Conduct Authority has ordered the firm to pay these customers compensation, which could be worth more than 100 each.

Vanquis also sold ROP to people with Argos, Aquis, Black Diamond, Chrome, Granite, NEO, Origin, Progress and Xylo credit cards for 13 years between 2003 and 2016.

Visit vanquis.co.uk/existing-customers/repayment-option-plan-refund or call 0330 099 3000.

HELP WITH HEATING

Temperatures plummeted when the Beast from the East swept Britain earlier this month. It means many will be eligible for a perk known as a cold weather payment.

This is 25 paid out when the temperature in your local area is recorded at or below 0c for seven consecutive days. The scheme runs from November 1 to March 31.

You must be in receipt of pension credit, income support, income-based jobseekers allowance, income-related employment and support allowance or universal credit to qualify. Check if a payment is due in your area at coldweatherpayments.dwp.gov.uk.MBABANE  A trip to socialise and compete with fellow students from other universities in the region ended in tragedy for team Swaziland.



This was after members of the University of Swaziland Students Representative Council (SRC) were involved in a fatal accident, which claimed one life and left another admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU).



Two others were also admitted to hospital but their conditions could not be established at the time of compiling this report.

The accident is said to have happened in South Africa on Thursday night as the students were making their way back home from attending the annual Intervarsity Games, which were held in Gaborone, Botswana this year.



The deceased has been identified as Melusi Manyatsela Dlamini, who was the Mbabane Campus SRC Secretary, according to Swaziland National Union of Students.



It is said Melusi was travelling with UNISWA SRC President Sakhile Ndzimandze, Mbabane Campus SRC Member, Cebolenkhosi Dlamini and Mzwandile.



The accident was confirmed by both the university and the students union, the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS).

According to UNISWA Registrar Dr Salebona Simelane, they were informed about it on Thursday by their staff members who had accompanied the students to the intervarsity games in Botswana.



Speaking about this particular accident, the students had acquired the car. We are told that accident happened between Pretoria and Rustenburg, that is where the students unfortunately met the accident. One of them lost his life, he said.PIGGS PEAK  The adage, you shall reap what you sow, does not quite apply to *Muzi.



This follows that Muzi dismally failed Grade Seven but still managed to secure a place at Mhlatane High School with alleged fraudulent results.



Muzi did his Grade Seven at Mshingishingini Nazarene Primary School and twice he did not succeed at this grade.

He recorded failed (Fs) in all but one subject in the 2017 Swaziland Primary Certificate (SPC) results.



In his second attempt at Grade Seven, he recorded the following results: English F, Mathematics E, SiSwati F, Science F, Social Studies E, Agriculture F and Religious Education F.



secured



The learner only passed Consumer Science with symbol C.

Despite that, he somehow secured Form One results from Siteki Nazarene High School and presented them to Mhlatane High School to secure a place in the same grade.



Dr Mandla Dlamini, Head teacher at Mhlatane High School, confirmed that he had such a pupil enrolled at the school but said he was not conversant with how the said learner was admitted.



We have lots of learners who seek space within the school and the deputy head teacher with his team is responsible for that.

Upon enquiring with his team, Dr Dlamini said the pupil was admitted after he had presented Form One first term results from Siteki Nazarene High School.



The results were for last year and that he had been forced to drop out after falling sick and did not return to class, which is why he was seeking space in Form One at Mhlatane this year.



Dr Dlamini noted that it was hard for the school to know pupils who had forged their way into the school and lamented the thievery that was displayed by pupils in recent days.



Weve since checked for the results he used and we discovered that we gave them back to the pupils after they were admitted.

Despite this setback, Dr Dlamini said they would follow up on the allegations that the pupil presented forged results.



Siteki Nazarene High School Head Teacher Phindile Makhanya dismissed knowledge of the pupil at the school.

Makhanya further expressed shock that someone would allege that they had a pupil at the school without having even having set foot on the premises.



I checked my records and he wasnt registered in my school, she said.



confirmed



One person who confirmed knowing Muzi and remembers him very well is the Mshingishingini Nazarene primary Head teacher, Samuel Mdluli.



According to Mdluli, he had caught wind that the said pupil was enrolled at Mhlatane high in Form One.

He said this was surprising given that the pupil had not done well, not once, but twice in the SPC examinations.



Giving an example of the pupils performance, he said even if Muzi were to remark, his results did not warrant him to proceed to the next class.



About a week ago, I heard a rumour that one of the 13 pupils who had failed Grade Seven was now in Form One. This is disturbing as it sends the wrong message to his peers currently in the same grade.



Mdluli said this was the first time he heard of such being committed by a pupil from his school.

Such an act, according to Mdluli was disturbing as it brought forth a number of issues that were troubling him, pertaining to the conduct and location of the school.



This school is remote and there are few homesteads around thus allowing pupils to bunk classes and hang out in the fields.

This, he said, resulted in learners absenting themselves frequently from school and scheming on devious ways to advance in life.



Explaining further, he stated that at some point, learners from the school were also involved in illegal activities that entailed ploughing, weeding, harvesting and even the sale of dagga.



immensely



He said this affected them immensely as their grades dropped drastically.

However, he was quick to note that he was not particularly sure if their involvement in the illegal activities were the ones that contributed to Muzis failure and subsequent forging of results.



Ill enquire on what to do in relation to this matter given that he is no longer a pupil in the school I administer.

Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) Secretary General Zwelithini Mndzebele said the law should take its course as this was fraud.



We are not used to this and such pupils should be reported to the police.

Mndzebele further said it would be unfortunate if the pupils were being assisted by adults.



He said if so, then the adults were just breeding fraudsters who would never be accountable but would believe that they could get away with anything.



The Minister of Education and Training, Phineas Magagula, lambasted the students for the fraudulent and thievery ways they were using.



The Minister, Phineas Magagula, said pupils who presented forged documents to solicit scholarship from government were actually depriving deserving ones from getting the necessary funding.

They are stealing from those who need the funding the most.



dealing



The minister said they were already working with the police in dealing with this.

Chief Police Information and Communication Officer Superintendent Khulani Mamba said they had arrested a number of fraudsters and further advised the public to desist from presenting false information to government officials.

He said this was equivalent to forgery or fraud when one had already benefitted by getting the sought help.An audience of about 25 people attended a program titled, Creating a Caring Community, sponsored by the Titusville Area Community Council. The program included a presentation on suicide prevention. According to local statistics, Crawford County had 17 suicides in 2015 and 11 in 2016.



By Ko Dong-hwan







South Korean low-cost carrier Air Seoul has introduced an annual pass that slashes fares on flights to Japan by up to 75 percent.







Air Seoul's "Mint Pass" offers discounts from 67 to 75 percent, the Asiana Airlines subsidiary said Wednesday. The deal name refers to the airline's livery color.







The airline, with destinations in Japan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and Guam, has been targeting niche markets in Japan. The Mint Pass deals are limited to Yonago, Hiroshima, Takamatsu, Shizuoka, Toyama, Nagasaki and Ube.







For three roundtrips, the "Mint Pass J1," originally 600,000 won ($560), is available for 199,000 won. The "J2," for five roundtrips, is down from 1 million won to 299,900 won, while the "J3," for seven roundtrips, has been slashed from 1.4 million won to 399,000 won.







The deals can be purchased by submitting a registration form downloadable from the airline's site, starting Wednesday. The Mint Pass can be used anytime between May 1, 2018 and Apr. 30, 2019.







"Mint Pass destinations have excluded major cities and only comprise small cities with rising needs," said Park Bo-kyung from Air Seoul's PR department.







Air Seoul committed to the drastic discounts to promote itself after its launch in July 2016.







"We have not been popular yet but passengers who have used our service mostly praised our quality, including spacious seats," Park said.







The Mint Pass emerged as South Korean tourists' interest in Japan has increased. Japan's tourism ministry said Wednesday that overseas travelers in 2017 spent about 44 trillion won.







Among 28.69 million visitors to Japan in 2017, 62 percent visited at least twice. Among the visitors, South Korea (30 percent) topped the list, followed by Taiwan (25 percent), China (18 percent) and Hong Kong (13 percent).







The findings showed that tourists who visited Japan twice or more spent more than when they visited the first time. Those who visited the country 10 times or more spent as much as 40 percent more than their first visit.







The statistics also showed that South Koreans mostly purchased food and liquor during their first visit and increasingly bought cameras, watches and clothes on subsequent visits.

404 - Page Not Found

Sorry, this page was not found. Try visiting our homepage or using the search function in our menu.Monitor tech has come a long, long way in the last few years. Weve seen ultra-high refresh rates (like in Alienwares 240Hz AW2518H). We've seen variable refresh for smoother gaming via Nvidia G-Sync (and AMDs competing FreeSync tech). We've seen full-array backlighting and 1,000-nit brightness for excellent HDR output (in Dells UP2718Q, for example), among many other advances.

But while monitors have undoubtedly improved in myriad ways, the high-end models always seem to be prohibitively expensiveespecially when compared to the gobs of screen real estate you can get by going with a similarly priced HDTV. Thats why, last summer, I swapped my 28-inch G-Sync-equipped Acer XB280HK monitor for a 49-inch Sony XBR49X900E TV.

Scandalous? Maybe to some PC gamers. But clearly Im not alone in my desire for a really big PC screen, as evidenced by Nvidias announcement of its so-called Big Format Gaming Displays (BFGDs) back at CES 2018 in January. (Were still awaiting availability and pricing on those, but I wouldnt be surprised at all to see BFGDs sell for north of $3,000.)

BFGDs Aren't TVs, and Most TVs Aren't Great for Gaming

That said, the Nvidia displays (which will be sold by Asus, Acer, and HP) really are 65-inch monitors, and not TVs. They sport 120Hz refresh rates and G-Sync support, and they dont have a built-in TV tuner. Many TVs are non-starters for serious gaming (due to input lag and refresh rates that are usually locked at 60Hz). But if youre the type of gamer who wants to just enjoy your gamerather than amassing every hardware advantage to out-frag the quick-clicking teenagers of the worlda properly chosen TV can deliver a great gaming experience.

Plus, a TV can deliver the goods for other types of content better than any similarly priced monitor, because 4K HDR content just looks better on a big screenespecially when you arent sitting a foot in front of the panel and leaning in.

In my experience, a (very) big screen also makes for less eyestrain when working on productivity tasks. There is a whole lot of screen real estate available for documents, spreadsheets, and Web pages when your display is both 4K resolution (3,840x2,160 pixels) and you dont have to ramp up Windows Scaling higher than 100 percent.

At that setting and resolution, a UHD screen is the same as stacking four 1080p screens in a 2x2 grid (minus, of course, the middle bezels). The same is in some ways true, of course, of smaller 4K monitors. But if the screen isnt large enough to see things such as small text and UI details, all that extra real estate is uselessunless maybe you do your computing with the assistance of a loupe. The 27-inch 4K LG screen Im writing this on, for instance, looks great. But Windows (rightly) suggests that scaling should be set to 150 percent. Dropping it to 100 percent makes onscreen text really tough to read unless I lean in close and squintnot great for my eyes, or my spine. I leave the scaling at 150 percent, and even then, things are sometimes smaller than Id like.

A well-chosen 4K TV solves that text-size problem, and it excels in other areas, though youll of course need serious desk/wall space. My 49-inch Sony TV at homewhich Ive mounted to the wall for easy access to the rear ports and to move it back a bit from my deskgets nearly as bright as current high-end HDR monitors. (Reviews peg the XBR49X900E at a bit under 1,000 nits.) HDR content, of course, looks great, and I dont need a recent-model PC connected to the screen to watch protected content. Netflix and Google Play support are baked into the TVs smartsand Ive recently added to that by plugging in an Amazon Fire TV.

I also personally have zero issues with gaming performance, as the input lag on the Sony XBR49X900 is quite good for a TVRtings.com pegs it at about 34ms in Game Mode. 2016s Doom reboot is about as frenetic as my gaming gets, and it looks gorily great and plays just fine. And as I noted in my recent post about the excellent game They Are Billions, most of my gaming interests lean toward real-time strategy, with the occasional RPG thrown in when something grabs my interest. If youre a competitive online gamer, youre almost certainly going to want a dedicated monitor with speedier response times.

All-Around Performance and Value

Really, though, what sold me on the idea of using an UHDTV as a monitorand the Sony XBR49X900E in particularis its ability to do many things surprisingly well, and at a reasonable cost. At about $900 as I write this, my chosen TV-made-monitor is far from cheap. But it saves me the serious additional cost of having an expensive monitor and a pricey good-looking TV. Its excellent for productivity work and surfing the Webespecially when I come home from work after staring at my puny 28-inch 4K office monitor all day.

And my Sony TV even works well for photo editing. Im no professional photographer, but I do have a travel blog and accompanying Facebook page where I share my images and experiencesprimarily from several trips to Northern Scotland. After a couple of calibration tweaks, Ive been very happy editing photos on this screenespecially given I can catch up on Ash Vs. Evil Dead in a big window while working, or tinker with how an image looks in the Web interface on my site, while looking at alternatives at the same time.

So, while monitors continue to advance, and some like Samsungs recent 49-inch ultra-wide GHG90 are also getting massive, I think Ill stick with my big-screen TV. And given that TV prices continue to fall (and my eyes certainly aren't getting any younger), my next monitor will probably be a TV, as well.

My only real complaint? TV companies dont seem to make high-end TVs below the 49-inch class these days. I originally wanted a 43-inch TV for my monitor replacement because my home workspace is a bit cramped. But I couldnt find a model in that size range last year with solid HDR abilities, low input lag, and accurate color. Thats okay, though. Im extremely happy with the performance of the 49-incher I bought last year. I just push my chair back a few extra inches, pull my keyboard drawer forward, and get lost in the pixels.A report commissioned by the Kansas Legislature made clear just how much it might cost to improve student outcomes at public schools. It's so expensive, says a new lobbying group, that it threatens the quality of Kansas roads, health care and other government functions.KC Jewish Chronicle: On BDS, Kansas is on the right side of history

There have been numerous efforts made throughout the years to delegitimize the state of Israel and its core connection to Judaism  a campaign so systemic and enduring that the U.S. State Department considers it a modern-day form of anti-Semitism.





The most insidious of these efforts are not always obvious to the casual observer. Case in point  the push for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.





Hiding under the laudable rhetoric of human rights advocacy, proponents of BDS are far more interested in advocating for economic warfare against Israel than they are in promoting the rights of Palestinians.





What is the motivating factor behind this initiative?





The answer is simple  its hate. Hatred for Jews and hatred for Israel.

For the past few months we've been talking about the local implications the Kansas BDS debate . . .is a global campaign promoting various forms of boycott against Israel . . .As usual, we want to share an alternative and thought provoking perspective . . .Jacob Millner is senior policy analyst and Midwest director at The Israel Project and a recent community news column he penned not only decimates the "BDS as Free Speech argument" but also offers brilliant insight.In one of his most salient points and a fact check revealing that this entire hot mess is really about taxpayer cash, he notes:For TKC, that's really the heart of the matter and reminds readers that the issue isn't really about the discourse but more accurately relates to allocations and accountability to taxpayers, voters and U.S. policy overall. Elected officials are well within their rights to assert that companies whom they do biz with aren't joining forces against a U.S. ally. These companies can say whatever they like but expecting taxpayer cash as a reward for destructive rhetoric is another proposition altogether.Here's the argument explained far more eloquently . . .Check the premise . . .############You decide . . .IS THE KANSAS CITY "MARCH FOR OUR LIVES" THE START OF A GENERATIONAL SHIFT TO THWART GUN VIOLENCE OR JUST A MIDTERM ELECTION 2018 WARM-UP RALLY AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION AND CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATES?!?!













Newspaper Editorial Board: Stopping gun violence is this generations moment





NBC News: Hundreds of thousands expected to participate in March for Our Lives

This morning locals take to the streets to rally support for stricter gun regulations in the aftermath of a horrific school shooting massacre.Never mind that KCMO is in the midst of a homicide spike and nobody has really raised much of the a fuss about all of the po'folk in the urban core who are habitually gunned down over money, drugs, women and thug life.But the cruel reality of typical local violence isn't the topic . . . At it's heart, today's march is a youth movement. Even thoughNevertheless, while there is partisan angle to this march . . .Today's event highlights passionate pleas of protesters who simply want to prevent more violence against youngsters and across the nation overall.To that end, today there will be a lot to contend with . . .A few counter-protesters are slated to arrive andto mix it up with some of their more moderately liberal rivals at virtually every public event. Luckily, we expect a high level of security in order toCrowd control aside, we put it to our TKC blog community . . .Of course we have our suspicions about the proclivities of gun grabbers vs. the tough talk of firearm fanatics and how very little of the conversation is focused on all of the broke-ass plebs shot down out of the media spotlight.Check the links:You decide . . .A man was shot and killed at one home two years ago and neighbors say it was a drug deal gone bad.





Now, the windows are boarded up and the backyard is cluttered with old furniture and personal information from a previous tenant who the property manager said is locked up in jail.





Also, neighbors say the illegal activity hasn't stopped.





On Friday, a city inspector showed up.





Were asking if there are different standards for different communities, a Kansas City Neighborhood and Housing Services inspector said.

As KCMO gives away MILLIONS for luxury development, here's a look at other priorities in local communities neglected . . .Deets:Developing . . .Charlie Hustle returning to vintage Jayhawk roots with Lawrence shop A new retail space in Lawrence will be a homecoming of sorts for Chase McAnulty - taking Charlie Hustle back to the college city where he first wove his passion for vintage threads into a business. "It's huge for me personally because it's kind of come full circle," the founder, owner and CEO said.

Startup celebration of the dude who cleverly licensed theand then sold it to hipsters across the metro on $40 t-shirts as he now returns to his roots where University officials love to battle over copyrights . . . Best of luck to the KC creative class hero . . .Tawazun Economic Council has announced the closure of Alfia after successfully fulfilling its purpose of serving as an investment fund for defence contractors.



Tareq Abdul Raheem Al Hosani, chief executive officer of Tawazun Economic Council, said: Alfia Fund has successfully realised Tawazun Economic Councils objectives of creating wealth for economic development in the UAE, investing in viable public and private ventures and providing job opportunities to the Emiratis.



He pointed out that seven defence contractors, along with Tawazun Economic Council, subscribed to the Alfia Fund.



"Alfia Fund has performed well over its period which is reflected in a 13 per cent percent growth in returns to its investors, accounting for Dh85 million ($23.1 million) in total, he added.



"The purpose of the fund was to maximise returns from a diversified portfolio of investments in local ventures under the 'Tawazun Economic Program' administered by the Industrial Development Unit of Tawazun Economic Council

Investments in the fund," Al Hosani said, adding that it enabled the defence contractors to fulfil their respective obligations, and to contribute to the ongoing economic development drive. "With the closing of Alfia Fund, we now have yet another successful case on doing business in UAE," he said.



Mohamed Helal Al Muhairi, director of the Alfia Fund, said the fund made six select investments in UAE and has successfully divested from these profitable ventures by selling its shares to private Emirati investors, thereby maximising the value for their investments.



The fund has created many companies in various sectors, ranging from education, third-party health insurance, construction etc, he added.

Khaleefa Al Hemairi, Member of Alfia Funds Board of Directors, said upon its closure, the fund had distributed both initial investments and earnings to the investors.



"All investments from this fund were done in UAE which has generated good returns enabling defence contractors to not only meet offset obligations but also to gain sizable premium over their initial subscription," he noted.



Formerly known as the Chescor Capital Offset Fund, or CCO, Alfia Fund was established in Mauritius under the management of Chescor Capital Middle East (CCME), and under the administration of International Financial Services Limited. The fund operations were managed by one of the leading banks in UAE with a high level of expertise in investment funds.



Since its establishment, Tawazun Economic Council has facilitated the creation of over 90 companies and joint ventures, at a total value of Dh36 billion ($9.7 billion), generating more than Dh70 billion ($19 billion) in revenues and creating over 95,000 jobs. The consolidated assets of these companies have grown exponentially to Dh542 billion ($147.5 billion). - TradeArabia News Service

The second Innovation to Impact Forum is being held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) today as a commitment to fostering greater collaboration among academia, the private sector and government in Saudi Arabia and the US.



The forum, organised by a joint planning committee of institutions from Saudi Arabia and the Greater Boston area, is part of an ongoing collaboration among King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the Saudi Small and Medium Enterprises Authority (SMEA), MIT and other leading academic institutions and corporations from the US.



The highlight of the forum will be the inauguration of several collaborations between US and Saudi organizations by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, including a major new effort between KAUST, MIT and the new Saudi "destination of the future" NEOM.



Together, the three institutions will undertake new joint projects in research, student exchange, and entrepreneurship to enable the US and Saudi entities to accomplish shared innovation goals. Dr Klaus Kleinfeld said: "Thanks to the unique capabilities of MIT and KAUST, this collaboration will advance technology in many of the fields relevant for NEOM."



The 2018 Innovation to Impact Forum builds on the success of last year's inaugural meeting, which took place at KAUST in Jeddah with key decision makers and experts in energy, agriculture, technology, healthcare and bioscience. This year, in a set of roundtables, attendees will explore solutions that align with Saudi Arabia's goals for its Vision 2030 and US goals to advance cutting-edge scientific research.



In this shared spirit of innovation, attendees will strive to identify and create meaningful opportunities for researchers, students, and entrepreneurs in both nations to advance sustainable energy and infrastructure technologies, improve health, advance education for women, and foster entrepreneurship. In addition to the roundtables, the gathering at MIT will feature an exhibit showcasing technologies, innovations and technical collaborations currently underway with Saudi and US entities.



"We are delighted to bring the event to Greater Boston this year  to one of the world's greatest innovation hubs  further strengthening the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US," said Eng. Nadhmi Al-Nasr, interim president of KAUST. "With our deep commitment to advancing the innovation landscape in the kingdom, and expanding opportunities for Saudi students and entrepreneurs, this gathering and exchange of knowledge between experts will have a positive impact on our economy as well as the goals of our partners in the US"



"Thanks to Vision 2030, the kingdom is moving towards a promising future. A key element of this strategy involves building collaborative relationships around the world, including with leading universities, hospitals and corporations in Greater Boston, and MIT is pleased to bring this impressive group together for this year's Innovation to Impact forum," said MIT President L. Rafael Reif.

"Today, as we hear from our Saudi guests about their aspirations and their progress, and as we showcase the strength of our region's innovation ecosystem, we are delighted to commit to further opportunities for creative and mutually beneficial collaborations on important technology and societal issues."



This year's Innovation to Impact Forum coincides with the first official visit to the US by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who will tour a technology showcase exhibit and hold an open dialogue with Saudi students, scientists and inventors to discuss the technologies, solutions and innovations that are being advanced by Saudi talent in Cambridge, Boston and the surrounding metropolitan area. - TradeArabia News ServiceThe United States has started shifting its air base in Qatar's Al Udaid to Saudi Arabia in a major move that could redefine the country's ties in the region, media reports said.

The move follows a meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, currently visiting the US, and President Donald Trump at the White House, a Gulf Daily News report quoting a prominent Israeli intelligence website said.

This is an earthshaking event for the Middle East, which far transcends US-Saudi relations, said the Israeli website DEBKAfile quoting military sources.

US installations are being shipped out of Al Udaid in Qatar to the Prince Sultan Air base in central Saudi Arabia near Al Kharj, which lies 77km south of Riyadh, DEBKAfile added.

Fifteen years ago, this base was the main US air force hub for the Gulf, home at times to more than 60,000 US service personnel.

The sources also disclose that, despite repeated denials, the Trump administration is in the process of another momentous move, packing up its air force and quitting Incirlik in southern Turkey, the biggest air base in the region.

The two moves are interconnected. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has become an avid supporter of the Amir of Qatar, (Shaikh) Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who is locked in a feud with the Saudi rulers, the report said.

The relocation of the two US bases stems additionally from the sharp reduction in fighting against IS in both Iraq and Syria, it said. There is, therefore, less need for US air force operations in those parts.

The US facilities and aircraft based in Incirlik are already being shifted to bases in East Europe, the sources said. The Pentagon is also looking at Andravida in southern Greece as a replacement for Incirlik.

The relocation of the two big US air bases in the Middle East is bound to shake up the regions strategic dynamic. American soldiers are now in place to defend the Saudi kingdom. This will no doubt convey a clear message to Iran that the Trump administration has the back of Riyadh, it said.

The Saudi Crown Princes continued discussions in the US includes ways of combating terrorism, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir said during a Press conference at the countrys embassy in Washington yesterday.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 24

The Punjab Government honoured its commitment to Panjab University (PU) by enhancing its grant for 2018-19 by six per cent.

In 2017-18, Punjab provided the PU Rs 33 crore which included Rs 6 crore for constituent colleges. It left Rs 27 crore for the PU.

The PU has been seeking old arrears of Rs 17.94 crorefrom the state government to which it agreed in the Board of Finance (BoF) meeting held on February 13.

For 2018-19, the Punjab Finance Minister announced Rs 42.6 crore for the PU which included Rs 8 crore for constituent colleges. It will leave Rs 34.6 crore for the PU. Out of Rs 34.6 crore, Rs 6 crore is towards the past arrears to which the state government has committed that it would pay in phases. It leaves Rs 28.6 crore which is six per cent more than the last year when Rs 27 crore came to the kitty of the PU.

However, PU teachers are upset that there is no commitment towards implementing the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission.

In an affidavit before the Punjab and Haryana High Court dated February 7, 2018, the PU said as per the letter dated June 17, 2017, from MHRD, the previous uncovered deficit of the university should be met by the Punjab Government and internal income of the university. Out of the total uncovered deficit of Rs 46.31 crore, the university had already met Rs 28 crore, but Rs 17.94 crore is still pending.

Punjab had called for special a BoF meeting as Haryana had offered to bring the PU out of financial mess if it agreed for affiliation of some of its colleges. But Punjab has been opposing Haryanas entry. A case is going on at the Punjab and Haryana High Court on PUs financial mess.

Online admissions

Like last year, the PU will carry out admissions online. Prof Sukvinder Singh has been appointed as coordinator for online admissions. The last date for the submission of online admission forms would be July 7, and July 13 would be the last date for making any correction. The same firm would carry out online admissions, which was hired last year.

Reactions

We had anticipated this. We are happy that the Punjab Chief Minister and the Punjab Finance Minister have honoured their commitment to the PU.  Arun Kumar Grover, PU Vice-Chancellor

We are thankful to the Punjab Government as they kept their promise made in the BoF meeting convened at the behest of Finance Minister Manpreet Badal.  Navdeep Goyal, Senator

We are happy that the Punjab Government has almost doubled the grant in the past two years. It is a great moment that both stakeholders have raised their support for the PU. This has primarily happened because of intervention of the High Court.  Rajat Sandhir, Senator

It is good to have the hike, but more important is the regularity in disbursal of funds. We were looking forward to have the budget allocation for new pay scales for faculty of colleges and universities since the Centre is contributing 50 per cent. With the arrears mounting, it will be more difficult to get these as time goes.  Rajesh Gill, PUTA presidentmonicakchauhan@gmail.com

London, March 23

Two truck drivers guilty of killing eight Indians last year in one of Britain's worst road accidents were jailed by a UK court on Friday.

Ryszard Masierak, a 31-year-old Polish national convicted of dangerous and drink driving at the end of a trial earlier this month, was jailed for 14 years.

Second truck driver David Wagstaff, 54-year-old courier company worker involved in the highway pile-up, was sentenced to 40 months in prison after pleading guilty to causing death by careless driving.

He had been cleared by a jury of the more serious charge of dangerous driving at the end of the trial at Aylesbury Crown Court.

The crash had led to the deaths of Nottingham-based Keralite minibus driver Cyriac Joseph and seven of his passengers all Indians.

The 52-year-old had been hired to drive his passengers from Nottingham to London to join a European holiday tour group when they met with the fatal accident.

"This was a prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of very bad driving. He had consumed significant amounts of alcohol," Prosecutor Oliver Saxby told the court.

Judge Francis Sheridan described the crash as the most serious in the UK for more than 26 years, for which the Masierak had shown "no remorse".

What you have tried to do is blame everyone and everybody except yourself," the judge told him.

In reference to Wagstaff, the judge blamed his use of a mobile phone while driving for his role in the collision.

You took no action whatsoever because you weren't concentrating on what was in front of you they were there to be seen and you didn't see them," he said.

Masierak was also disqualified from driving for 17 years after he was convicted of eight counts of causing death by dangerous driving and four counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. Wagstaff was banned from driving for three years.

The catastrophic and tragic collision was caused by both the individuals. We lost a great father, loving husband and a very good friend," a family spokesperson for Joseph's family said outside the courtroom.

The other victims in Joseph's minibus were from Nottingham's Malayali community and their relatives.

The entire group was on its way to London to catch a bus to Disneyland Paris when their vehicle crashed with the trucks near Newport Pagnell in southern England on August 26 last year.

Among them were IT professionals employed by Indian software company Wipro. PTIeditorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Karnal, March 24

Governor Prof Kaptan Singh Solanki on Saturday exhorted students to be job creators instead of job seekers. He also suggested to the students that they should not depend on book knowledge alone and set an example in society.

Solanki was chairing the 54th convocation and prize distribution function of Dyal Singh College here. As many as 378 graduates and postgraduates were awarded degrees.

He said Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia was a philanthropist, visionary and educationist who made enormous contribution to welfare of society. Dyal Singh College in Lahore and in Karnal were the results of his vision. Dyal Singh College is equipped with the best of faculty, infrastructure and system to support its mission to teach and train socially sensitive and globally competitive citizens, he said. Besides knowledge and skills, the college encourages moral and ethical values to nourish the young minds.

The Governor said that the college had produced a large number of graduates and postgraduates who are serving the country on high positions.

He gave the example of astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who was also a student of this college, and asked the students to give priority to the ideals of sacrifice and spiritualism. The Governor noticed that a large number of prize winners and degree holders were girls and said that the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao programme in Haryana has gained momentum.

He said the convocation ceremony is a healthy tradition and advised the graduates and the postgraduates to be morally upright, socially committed, spiritually inspired and responsible citizens.

Earlier, RC Sharma, former Director of the CBI and president of the Dyal Singh College Trust Society, said that the convocation represents a changing moment in the lives of the students.editorial@tribune.com

Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, March 24

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has asked opposition parties to stop misleading farmers on the issue of the Swaminathan Commission report, as his government has implemented most of its recommendations. Swaminathan himself has expressed satisfaction over the efforts made by the state government to implement the recommendations of his report, the Chief Minister said while addressing the 3rd Agri Leadership Summit-2018 here today.

Khattar said that former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was the chairman of the working group of Chief Ministers on Agriculture Production, but he did nothing to implement the Swaminathan Commission report, which contained 28 points. This is despite the fact that he (Hooda) was Chief Minister for 10 years and the Congress was also in power at the Centre at that time, he said.

The Chief Minister said that the farmers of Haryana are progressive and in a better position as compared to those in other states. The state government was committed to the welfare of farmers and was making all efforts to improve their condition.

In agriculture, neither the cost of production nor benefits lie in the hands of farmers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that from next year, the minimum support prices (MSPs) of all notified crops will be at least 1.5 times their cost of production, said Khattar.

He added that it had been also decided to use solar power and pond water for irrigation. Of the total 14,000 ponds, about 6,000 ponds are overflowing and their water would be tapped for the purpose.

Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Parshottam Rupala appreciated the Haryana Government for taking effective steps to realise the vision of the Prime Minister to double the income of farmers by 2022.

State Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar said that the state government was implementing the concept of peri-urban farming to meet the growing demand of vegetables, fruits, milk and flowers of four crore people of Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).

He urged farmers to link with market and sell their produce directly to consumers, as this would help them increase their income. The government plans to set up Kisan Bazaars in all towns of the state, he said.

Bihar Agriculture Minister Prem Kumar said Haryana and Bihar should work together in the areas of mutual interest for their progress.

Progressive farmers honourededitorial@tribune.com

Sumedha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Gurugram, March 24

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has said Naxalism in the country is gasping for breath.

Naxalism has plagued us for decades, but it is dying now. Maoists are resorting to cowardly ambushes against security forces as they are unable to undertake a direct fight. Soon, it will be studied as one of the historical challenges which our forces defeated, said the Home Minister while addressing personnel of the CRPF on the occasion of its 79th Raising Day at Kadarpur here on Saturday.

Rajnath said due to the gallant and determined action of the CRPF and other forces, the left wing extremism (LWE) was coming down and casualties among security personnel and civilians had reduced.

The minister paid tributes to the nine CRPF personnel killed in a Naxal ambush in Chhattisgarhs Sukma area early this month.

Be it the LWE problem, insurgency in Kashmir or northeast, you have always given a befitting reply to these activities. We will never have enough words to thank you for that. Every single thing you do makes us beam with pride. I assure you that every Indian has deepest respect and gratitude for you, he said.

The minister lauded the gallantry of the troops of the countrys largest paramilitary force as he underlined that the CRPF men and women did not lose their patience during the deteriorating security situation in the Kashmir valley.

He praised the courage of CRPF Commandant Chetan Cheeta, who was part of the anniversary parade. Cheeta took nine bullets during an operation in Kashmir last year and displayed rare grit and brilliance during recuperation.

He also joined duty a few days back at the force headquarters in Delhi. Talking about better facilities for jawans of the Central Armed Police Forces, he said infrastructure such as more residential facilities would be enhanced in addition to facilities like air courier and e-ticketing of railway tickets.editorial@tribune.com

Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 24

After becoming the first state to launch electric vehicles on the eco-sensitive Manali-Rohtang route, Himachal has decided to purchase 100 battery-operated buses and vans in most of its tourist destinations.

The state government has written to the Union Ministry of Heavy Industries to fund 50 electric buses so that more routes can be covered by electric buses.

A total of 25 buses, each costing Rs 1.9 crore, are plying mainly in the Kullu-Manali area, following the directives of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). These buses will be funded by the Centre in the 60:40 ratio.

We have written to the ministry to finance 50 buses and 50 seven-seater vans each so that Himachal can gradually switch over to electric buses, disclosed Sanjay Gupta, Principal Secretary, Transport.

As part of its preparedness, the Transport Department has asked Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board (HPSEB) to set up charging points in most places for the smooth running of the buses.

The state government had procured electric buses which were imported from a Hyderabad company Gold Stone at a cost of Rs 1.9 crore. The cost of these buses is likely to come down now as more states are toying with the idea of starting battery-operated vehicles and the technology too has advanced.

It was on the directives of the NGT that Himachal had ventured into the experiment of electric buses. The green Bench had directed that Himachal should try and switch over to environment-friendly mode of transport.

There has not been much progress with regard to compressed natural gas (CNG) buses as there is no supply line and setting up of the mother and daughter stations at Una and Manali too is still pending, revealed an official of the Transport Department.

Considering the success of the electric bus experiment, Himachal is contemplating shelving the idea of having CNG buses as having a CNG pipeline in the immediate future seems difficult.

We are planning moving before the NGT to allow us to add more electric buses to our fleet and abandon the CNG idea as it is not taking shape, said an official.

To be funded in 60:40 ratioeditorial@tribune.com

Rajiv Mahajan

Nurpur, March 24

Anxiety gripped family members of Sushil Kumar of Nagrota Surian in Jawali when pirates called the family on Saturday and threatened them of dire consequences if the ransom money was not transferred to their account by Monday (March 26).

He was one of the three crew members of a ship who had been kidnapped by Nigerian pirates on January 31.

Vinay Kumar, brother of Sushil Kumar, received the call on his fathers mobile on this afternoon. Sushil first talked to his brother for 45 seconds then one of the pirates snatched his mobile phone and talked to his brother for one minute.

Vinay told The Tribune that the whole family was upset and tense after receiving the threat from the pirates. He said the pirates had demanded 11 million naira (Nigerian currency) equivalent to nearly Rs 22 lakh. He said initially, the family was in touch with Nesto, the owner of the private ship company Max Marine Services in Cortnou Benin, and lamented that he had been giving false assurances to the family that Sushil was alright. He has appealed to the Union External Affairs Ministry to take all necessary steps to ensure the safe release of Sushil Kumar by Monday. The ministry had rung the families of all three kidnapped crew members on Friday and assured them all possible assistance for their safe return.

The other two abducted crew members of the ship are Pankaj from Samloti and Ajay from Palampur in Kangra district.

Family in paniceditorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Mandi, March 24

The Youth Congress, Mandi, held a protest march here on Saturday to express its resentment over the functioning of the state government.

The protest was held under the leadership of Anil Sharma, vice-president of the Youth Congress in which a large number of party workers joined the protest.

They raised slogans against the state government and alleged that the government was working with political vendetta as it had cancelled the number of decisions taken by the Congress government.

They said the law and order situation was deteriorating day by day where crime against women was on the rise.

Later, they tried to burn an effigy of Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, but the police stopped them from doing so.

It was a state-wide call of the Youth Congress to hold a protest against the state government at the district level.editorial@tribune.com

Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, March 24

Two Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militants, believed to be foreign nationals, were killed in an overnight encounter with security forces in the Dooru area of Anantnag district, some 85 km from the summer capital Srinagar.

Preliminary investigations suggest that both slain are from Pakistan, said a senior police officer from the district.

According to the police reports, a joint cordon and search operation was launched in Shistergam village of Dooru on Friday evening following inputs about the presence of militants in the area.

As the cordon was being laid, the militants, who were hiding in a house, opened indiscriminate fire and tried to escape, the police officer said.

The fire was duly retaliated, triggering a gunfight, he said, adding that the militants then took position in an orchard nearby.

They were subsequently killed in the early hours of Saturday, the police officer said. Some incriminating material, AK-47 rifles and grenades were recovered from them.

The bodies of the slain militants, as per police sources, have been sent to Baramulla district in north Kashmir for burial at an undisclosed location after medico-legal formalities.

Local sources said there was a lull in the firing after the initial burst of fire.

The firing resumed in the wee hours of Saturday briefly before the guns fell silent, they said, adding that hundreds of residents rushed to the encounter site and clashed with security forces at the break of dawn. The clashes continued in the area for most part of the day.

Meanwhile, thousands offered a funeral prayer in absentia for the two slain militants.

A complete shutdown was observed in most parts of Anantnag district with clashes being reported from a few places.

The JeM issued a press release owning the men killed in the encounter. Their sacrifices will yield results, the Jaish statement read. It further read: The killing of the martyrs will be avenged. We will continue to fight.editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 24

Director General of Police (DGP) SP Vaid along with Jammu Inspector General of Police SD Singh Jamwal visited the house of Selection Grade Constable (SGCT) Deepak Thusoo who was killed during an encounter at Halmatpora, Kupwara, on March 21.

Assuring all help from the department to the family, the DGP said the relief would be provided expeditiously. Thusoo is survived by wife, two children, mother and unmarried sister.

The DGP acknowledged the exemplary courage shown by the constable in the line of duty.

After meeting the family, the DGP wrote on Twitter, It was heartbreaking to meet children and other family members of our martyr SGCT Deepak Thusoo who made the supreme sacrifice while fighting terrorists. The department will do everything within its powers to support the family. May God give strength to the family.

The DGP was accompanied by Senior Superintendent of Police Vivek Gupta, Assistant Inspector General (Personnel) Aftab Kakroo, Superintendent of Police (Rural) Shivdeep Singh Jamwal, Assistant Inspector General (Welfare) Manoj Pandit, Deputy Superintendent of Police Madanmohan Singh Jamwal and Nagrota Sub-Divisional Police Officer Jasbir Singh.editorial@tribune.com

Majid Jahangir

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, March 24

Days after Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai took over as the chief of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, his 28-year-old son Junaid Ashraf Khans photograph appeared on the social media holding an AK rifle, with a message claiming that he has joined the Hizbul Mujahideen.

After Junaid, an MBA from the University of Kashmir, went missing on Friday, his family lodged a complaint with the police on Saturday.

His family said Junaid had left home for the Friday prayers in the Baghat locality and had not returned. As he did not return home, the family approached the police and lodged a missing report.

Yes, we received a complaint from his brother that Junaid is missing and we are looking into it, said Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, central Kashmir, Vidhi Kumar Birdi. His photograph also appeared on the social media, but we are corroborating the claim, the DIG said.

Junaid had completed his MBA from the University of Kashmir in 2013 and had left a private job six months ago.

He was religious minded like his father. We saw his picture with a gun on the social media immediately after we lodged a complaint, said Junaids relative.

If true, Junaid will be the second highly educated youth this year to have joined Kashmirs indigenous militant group Hizbul Mujahideen.

Earlier this year, a research scholar from Kupwara, Mannan Wani, had joined the Hizb. Junaid originally hails from Kupwara districts Tikipora which is also the native village of Mannan Wani.

Junaids 73-year-old father Sehrai took over the leadership of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat from Syed Ali Geelani last week. In his first interview after replacing Geelani, Sehrai had said there was no role in Kashmir for the organisations (Daesh and Al-Qaida) with an international agenda.

Director General of Police, Shesh Paul Vaid urged Sehrai to appeal to his son and other local militants to shun the gun. He (Sehrai) should take the lead and appeal to his son and other local boys to return, Vaid said.editorial@tribune.com

Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 24

Describing the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a political front of the Hurriyat Conference and separatists, the Ladakh unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has alleged that some prominent ministers in the state government are making attempts to sabotage the popular demand for Union Territory (UT) status to Ladakh.

The party feels it would be very difficult for it to face the people in the Lok Sabha elections next year if the Centre does not seriously considers the UT status demand.

We had great expectations from the party that it would do something positive on abrogation of Article 370 but the way the constitutional provision has been pushed to the backburner, it will cost us heavily. It will be very difficult to face people in the next general election, Thupstan Chhewang, the lone BJP Lok Sabha member from Ladakh told The Tribune.

The BJP leader said Article 370 was the main stumbling block for the grant of UT status. There were hopes that the party would take a call on abrogation of Article 370 after coming to power at the Centre. However, the party did opposite and formed a government in J&K with a party which was the political front of the Hurriyat Conference and separatists, Chhewang said.

No doubt, it is really worrying us that how we will face the people in the next general election because they voted for the party on the UT status poll plank. In October last year, when we met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Leh, all political and religious groups demanded UT status only but there were differences among them during their meeting with Centres representative Dineshwar Sharma last week. Some prominent state ministers are involved in dividing the people on communal lines and sabotaging their demand, he said.

Chhewang said the opposition parties had been exploiting the issue. We are planning to bring different sections of society from Ladakh on a single platform and deliberate on as to what should be done to achieve this political goal, he said.

The MP, however, said the right-thinking people in Kargil too understand the importance of UT status to Ladakh as it would change the developmental landscape of the region. We want to convince them that if Ladakh is granted UT status, it will be another Muslim majority UT after Lakshdweep, Chhewang said.

Leh Council members to meet Modi

Official sources said the members of the newly constituted Leh Council, headed by its Chief Executive Councillor Dorjay Motup, had decided to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pursue the demand for a UT status."The schedule of the meeting is yet to be decided but they are expected to meet the Prime Minister next week," the sources said.vinaymishra188@gmail.com

Shyam Sood

Rajouri, March 24

At least 28 persons, including Rajouri Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Choudhary and a Station House Officer, were injured in violent clashes in Nowshera throughout Saturday following which Internet services in the district were snapped.

The protesters, demanding district status, have been on a strike since more than a month. The Jammu and Kashmir government, in an order issued on March 9, had appointed an Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADC) for Nowshera and Sunderbani sub-divisions on a rotational basis. But Nowshera residents rejected the move.

Teams of BJP ministers and senior bureaucrats held meetings with the people of Nowshera, Kalakot and Sunderbani on Friday after which the order was modified and separate ADCs appointed for the three towns. This failed to placate the protesters, who called it a mere eyewash and yet another deliberate attempt to befool the people of Nowshera.

Subhash Kapoor, president, Joint Action Committee (JAC), said: The protesters, who had gathered from every part of Nowshera, unanimously rejected the post of ADC. We decided to discuss the new order with 35 sarpanches and were hopeful of a breakthrough. But the police suddenly swung into action and turned Nowshera town into a battlefield. He alleged at least 30 civilians were injured.

Another JAC member said the action was pre-planned as the administration had on Friday ordered the closure of schools located within a radius of 5 km of the LoC.

A student reportedly lost an eye as the police allegedly fired tear gas shells inside the Emergency Ward.shalender@tribune.com

Amarjot Kaur

In 2002, Neha Bhasin, along with Anushka Manchanda, Pratichee Mohapatra, Mahua Kamat and Seema Ramchandani, made a legendary debut on Indian television, giving the country its first all-girl music band called Viva. Though the band split up after a two-year fling with fame, they deserve a worthy mention in defining the creative, original, and non-filmy independent music scene.

At a swish hotel in Chandigarh, Neha rewinds her memory back to 16 years ago when she landed a stint with Channel V Popstars. Then a student at LSR, Delhi, Neha, like every other 20-year-old of the 90s was inspired by the world music scene, especially pop music that came from the likes of Michael Jackson, Salt n Pepper, Madonna, and many others.

We wanted to make original, non-filmy music. Blame it on poor management or inexperience of the too young kids, the band didnt work out, she says. Viva still exists, but only in a WhatsApp group. Today, Neha is singing for Bollywood and reviving some of Punjabs lost folk songs.

Inspiration: What not to do

Cut to 10 years when Neha got back to singing only to mount her music videos on YouTube some four years ago, she neither had any inkling to sing Punjabi alternate folk music, nor was she very savvy with the language. She was, however, inspired to reckon that while most independent music was put on ventilator in the absence of cassette, CD, and album culture, Punjab was still slaying with all that music brought to them by their cool cousins abroad. They were emulating the hip-hop music that comes from the blacks, borrowing only the misogynistic content, and not their tales of oppression. Nevertheless, in this part of the country, independent music was still making waves. However, the more I listened to Punjabi music, I thought, is this all? Is there nothing more to it than auto-tune, same content, same haircuts, same objectification of women. Thats what inspired me to make the kind of music we make, shares Neha.

Neha compliments Punjabi music production, but suggests that the quality of writing needs to improve. Hum me Swag zyada aa gaya hai; the more people are getting swaggier, the more cultured I want to be. Its Punjabs culture that needs to be tapped, just like the folks back in Pakistan are doing.

No labels, please

Having started her career with signing a 50-page contract, Neha had her set of apprehensions when she got back to music. Sameer, my producer and now my husband, was the one who asked me to sing Punjabi folk; and the first song that came to my mind was, Latthe di Chaadar. Since it turned out well, we thought of taking it to the net. Our channel is called 5 AM and we do everything, right from recording to producing to marketing, ourselves. I had the voice, Sameer had the vision and I found my expression in folk music, Neha shares. Having made a series of songs on YouTube and even Bollywood, with Dhunki, Jag Ghoomeya, and Dil Diyan Gallan, Neha feels that it is more liberating to produce her own music.

Talk sexy to me...

In her song, Akh Kaashni, Neha faced a bit of a backlash from the moral police for stripping down her bridal wear and wearing a pair of shorts and snickers. In every bridal video, we show women getting dressed. In the video, we wanted to show otherwise. The aim of the video was to show that marriage can be liberating; its not just slavery, Neha clarifies. On sexuality, she shares, In Punjab men sing womens lyrics too. One-sided sexuality is not called sexuality. If I talk about my body, it has to mean something to me. When the woman talks about herself, then thats sexuality. To an artiste, sexuality is the innate power with which s/he creates.

amarjot@tribuneamil.comeditorial@tribune.com

Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, March 24

Industrys hopes for some miracle from the second Budget of the Congress government were today dashed to the ground. The industry has termed the Budget presented by Finance Minister Manpreet Badal as merely a replication of the previous budgets of the SAD-BJP governments that had forced 18,000 industrial units to close down in the past six years.

We strongly oppose the imposition of new tax of Rs 2,400 a year on taxpayers. We will start a protest if the government collects any such tax from the taxpayers, said Badish Jindal, president of the Federation of Punjab Small Industries Association.

Power subsidy useless

Jindal said Rs 1,400-crore power subsidy was useless for the industry as last year, the government had increased the tariff by 9.33% besides an increase of 10% in new reading of meters with KVAH factors. In October, the state government had imposed 2% municipal cess and last week again, it imposed 2% development cess, so the total increase in power charges during last year came to 23.33%.

The government has made a fool of the whole industry and imposed two-part tariff that increased the bills from 10 per cent to 40 per cent.

For skill development in Punjab, the state Budget has a mere allocation of Rs 10 crore.

In his Budget speech, the Finance Minister talked about Industrial Policy 2017 but forgot to mention that subsidies worth more than Rs 3,000 crore are pending for 2012 and 1998 industrial policies. Looking at all these factors, we strongly condemn this Budget for ignoring the industry, said Jindal.

No package for bicycle industry

Office-bearers of the Federation of Industrial and Commercial Organisation said it was no industry friendly Budget since there is no package for the bicycle industry, which is the mother industry of Punjab. India is the second largest manufacturer of bicycles in the world. There is no special announcement for the MSME sector either, they said.

No mention of pending VAT/GST refunds

Narinder Bhamra, president of the Fasteners Manufacturers Association of India, said once again, the state Budget had disappointed the entire trade and Industry, MSMEs in particular. The major drawback of the Budget is that the debt has gone up to Rs 2,11,523 crore against the existing Rs 1,95,975 crore, which will put more burden on the entire Punjab

There is no mention of pending VAT refunds or GST refunds. The entire trade and industry is facing a financial crisis on account of non-payment of refunds. The Budget is very disappointing and will further hamper the growth of trade and industry, said Bhamra.

Will encourage multi-tax system

Ashok Kumar Juneja and BR Kaushal, president and secretary-general, respectively, of the Punjab Tax Bar Association, said while nothing had been announced for trade and industry which was reeling under a slump, free electricity worth Rs 6,256 crore would be given to farmers.

Juneja, who is also vice-president of the Chamber of Industry and Commercial Undertakings, said taxpayers are already paying GST at the rate of 18% and income tax at the rate of 5% to 30% besides surcharge. The imposition of development tax will encourage the multi-tax system which is controlled through the GST regime, he added.by Wang Zhicheng

The reform, wanted by the Partys Central Committee, was voted by the National Peoples Congress and made public yesterday. Some Christians see no change: the repression continues. A Protestant professor: It's an important change since the Mao era. What it reveals is the unlimited expansion of Party power. Doubts about the dialogue between China and the Vatican: The Catholic Church will become an instrument of support for the Party. The promotion of Xia Baolong, the destroyer of Zhejiang crosses.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - The State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), also known as the "Religious Affairs Bureau ", so far under the authority of the Council of State, has passed under the direct rule of the Communist Party. The move is among a detailed program of reforms on the Party and the state institutions released yesterday.

The decision to eliminate SARA was passed in the third plenary session of the 19th Communist Partys Central Committee in late February. Part of the program was reviewed in the recently concluded National Peoples Congress, Chinas parliament. Detail of the program was made public on March 21, with indication that the reform should be implemented by the end of 2018.

Among the reforms, religious affairs are now managed by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), an organ of the Communist Partys Central Committee, whose main function is to manage relations with the non-Communist elite, including individuals and organizations, such as religious groups. Also now under the management of the UFWD are the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the Ethnic Affairs Commission, both also originally under the State Council.

The structural change received mixed views among Chinese Christians and observers. There wont be big change to religious environment, neither loosen nor tighten. It is only a change on management structure and they will do the same thing, said Father Liu, a priest who serves in a Southern province.

The reform is to put all authority under the Party, no more sharing power with the State Council, said a Chinese observer who asked not to be named. However, he agreed that there is nothing to surprise as the UFWD has always been the supervising unit of the SARA, adding that the UFWD will still keep the signboard of the SARA as it needs an executive office to implement the work.

The move could unify different voices on the management of religions, the observer said, noting that religious management could involve a number of departments, such as national security, public security, buildings and education, etc.

But Eric Lai, a Catholic commentator, sees the move shows the Chinese Communist Party no more regards religion as a target to liaise but actively using it as a tool to maintain stability.

It is nothing new for an authoritarian government to use religion as a tool for stability. The Russian Orthodox Church actively safeguards the Putin regime is an example. In the future, if the Vatican and China sign an official accord, will the China Catholic Church follow the path of maintaining stability like the Russian Orthodox Church or have true religious autonomy to preach in the country? Under the current situation, no doubt the former is more likely, said Lai, a Hong Kong native.

Ying Fuk-tsang, director of the Chinese University of Hong Kongs Divinity School, also questioned on his Facebook if this is reform or moving backward?

Religion is a citizens basic rights endowed by the Constitution. If it is assigned as specialized duty of the Party, this is undoubtedly a major change in the religious work since the founding of the Communist-rule China. It reflects the unlimited expansion of the Partys power, interfering directly the basic rights of citizens. This kind of retrogression is definitely negative for the development of religious freedom in China, he said.

Following closely recent China-Vatican developments, the Protestant professor said he could not help but ask whether Vatican recognized these facts or still believe in wishful thinking that Chinas freedom of religion is stepping forward to the bright side and that the Chinese citizens religious freedom will be fully safeguard?

Or will the Holy See make another interpretation to justify the Party's leadership over religions, and believe that it could bring greater space for freedom of religion in China by its own efforts?

On the same day of the official announcement, SARA director Wang Zuoan held a meeting for all staff to relate the spirit of the deepened reforms. According to the SARAs website, he said the decision fully demonstrates the Partys central high priority for religious work and is more conducive to strengthening and improving the Partys leadership in religious work.

Wang added that it [the reform] will also benefit the implementation of the Partys central important decision and planning on religious work, he added while urging his staff to understand the urgency and importance of the reforms by taking a political and overall view.

According to media reports, the main duty of the UFWD after the adjustment is to implement the basic principles and policies of the Partys religious work, study and formulate policies and measures for religious work and supervise their implementation, coordinate religious works, mange religious administrative affairs according to the law, protect citizens freedom of religious belief, consolidate normal religious activities and develop a patriotic united front with the religious communities.

The reform comes as another surprise to Chinese Christians following the news of Xia Baolong, former Party secretary of the Cross-removal Zhejiang province, being elected vice chairman and secretary general of the 13th Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference on March 14. As the CPPCCs secretary general, 66-year-old Xia is regarded as powerful housekeeper of the top advisory body of Beijing.

The promotion of Xia surprised many because when he was transferred to the NPC from his Zhejiang post last April, with many regarded it was the end of his political path waiting for retirement. Furthermore, Xia was not even elected to the Partys Central Committee during the 19th Communist Partys National Congress last October.

Xia worked in Zhejiang since 2003, with four years overlapping when Chinese President Xi Jinping was party secretary of the province. Before reassigned to the National People's Congress as a vice chairman of the Environment and Resources Protection Committee last year, Xia was party secretary of Zhejiang from 2012 to April 2017, during which there were three years of Cross removal and Church demolition in the name of city planning.

During the campaign that began in late 2013 and gradually subsided around April 2016, about 1,500 Church Crosses were removed, mostly from Protestant Churches. A few dozens of pastors and laypeople who defended their Church crosses were detained, threatened or prosecuted. The authority also prosecuted lawyers who defended them.rchopra@tribunemail.com

Bijay Sankar Bora

Tribune News Service

Guwahati, March 24

Enraged locals on Saturday attacked the residence of one Zakir Hussain, prime accused in rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl at Lalung village in Batadrawa in Nagaon district of Central Assam.

The girl was gang-raped and subsequently set on fire by a group of criminals led by Zakir Hussain on Friday while she was alone at home after coming back from school. The girl later died of severe burns at Guwahati Medical College Hospital here, police said.

The situation has turned tense in the area as the police, who have already arrested two accused, have failed to nab prime accused Zakir Hussain.

Meanwhile, BJP MLA from Khumtai constituency, Mrinal Kumar Saikia, while denouncing the ghastly incident, alleged before the media, It was one of the planned crimes executed by Bangladeshi migrants in the state who have become a major threat to society here. Such acts must be reciprocated in the same way.

Another BJP MLA representing Hojai constituency, Siladitya Deb, said, These criminals speak Assamese, wear Assamese Gamocha around their neck but leave no opportunity to torment locals through such heinous crimes. Time has come for the people of the state to come out en masse against the designs of such Bangladeshi migrants.

The BJP MLA from Batadrawa constituency, Angoorlata Deka, recently demanded in the Assembly that security measures in her constituency must be augmented immediately as tension was running high in the communally sensitive area.editorial@tribune.com

Tel Aviv, March 23

Air Indias maiden flight to Israel has landed in Tel Aviv, reducing the travel time substantially after Saudi Arabia for the first time allowed a commercial flight to use its airspace, indicating a thaw in ties between Arab kingdom and the Jewish state.

Heralding a new beginning in the people-to-people contact and diplomatic ties between India and Israel, the state-run Air India introduced the direct thrice-a-week flight from New Delhi to Tel Aviv on Thursday.

Saudi permitted the airline to use its airspace, enabling it to take a shorter route, covering the distance in 7.25 hours, 2.10 hours less compared to only other airline that flies between the two countries Israels El Al.  PTIamansharma@tribunemail.com

Ravi S. Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 24

Former President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday said the Congress has evolved as an organisation with its deep association and synchronisation with development of Modern India.

Mukherjee was speaking at a function after he released a book Dilli Meri Dilli- Before and After 1998, authored by former Delhi Chief Minister and Congress leader Sheila Dikshit.

He said post Independence, public figures generally did not pen down their feelings and experiences in marked contrast to those before pre-Independence era, including Congress presidents. He named WC Banerjee (first president of the party) and Dadabhai Naoroji in this regard.

Mukherjee said: Their writing helps the future generation to find evolution of the national organisation and its linkages to development of Modern India.

He lauded Dikshit, a public figure in post-Independence India, to have authored a coffee table book which brings to the fore the city-states multi-cultural diversity, its vibrancy in its past and present perspectives.

Lauding the former CM, Mukherjee said she symbolised the metamorphosis of Indian psychology. Born in Kapurthala (Punjab), won from Kannauj Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh to become Union Minister and later becoming the longest-serving Chief Minister for uninterrupted 15 years of Delhi since it became the capital state of India.

He praised Dikshit for taking to Delhi to new heights of development and progress during her stewardship.

He reminisced the growth of Delhi since he came to the place in 1969 as an MP. Then it looked like an expanded or extended village. It has changed with mind-boggling speed.

Delhi is one of the places which is not a mere geographical expression or extension, but one which strikes an emotive chord. The word Delhi (which in vernacular colloquy in large parts of India is prononced Dil-li) reflects emotions of entire India. Delhi holds a special place even for those who have not visited it, he added.

Speaking on the occasion, Dikshit said it took her about two years of research work to bring about the book.

The book digs into the growth of Delhi for the past millennium in all its historical, geographical and cultural dimensions. The book bring to the fore the melting pot dynamics of evolution of the place an attain a microcosm of countrys plurality.

She also records the developments, modernisation and progress of the city-state during Congress rule under her.pardeepdhull@gmail.com

New Delhi, March 24

JNU professor Rakesh Bhatnagar has been appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), the HRD Ministry said on Saturday.

Bhatnagar, who was Vice-Chancellor of Kumaon University from 2012 to 2013, has been teaching at JNU for two decades and his areas of interest include molecular biology of infectious diseases, recombinant vaccine development and programmed cell death in prokaryotes.

President Ram Nath Kovind, who is the Visitor to the university, approved Bhatnagars appointment this week, a senior HRD Ministry official said.

He will take charge from BHU Registrar Neeraj Tripathi, who had been holding the additional charge of the top post since October last year.

Bhatnagars predecessor, Girish Chandra Tripathi, had gone on leave two months before his tenure came to an end, following a ruckus on the campus in September last year.

The development came amid indications from HRD Ministry sources that the central government was upset with the manner in which the former Vice-Chancellor had handled the entire episode, including a protest by women students following an incident of alleged harassment.

The ruckus started when a number of students, including women, and two journalists were injured in a baton-charge by the police after a protest against an alleged eve-teasing incident turned violent at BHU, one of the 43 central universities in the country. PTIrchopra@tribunemail.com

Kochi, January 27

An NIA Special Court on Saturday sentenced woman operative Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid to seven years rigorous imprisonment in connection with Kerala IS recruitment case.

Special Judge S Santhosh Kumar awarded the sentence after convicting her under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Indian Penal Code.

The NIA special court in Ernakulam also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on her.

Zahid, who hailed from Bihar, is the second accused in the case investigated by the NIA.

Last year, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had filed the chargesheet against ISIS operatives Abdul Rashid Abdulla as the main accused, who motivated a number of youths from Kasaragod to leave India along with their families to join the Islamic State, and Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid.

Zahid was intercepted while trying to take a flight to Kabul to join the IS in Afghanistan.

There are 15 accused in the case. The NIA had chargesheeted only two as the 13 others, including first accused, Rashid, were in Afghanistan and one in Syria.

Three are believed to be killed in air strikes in Afghanistan.

The agency had said the case related to the criminal conspiracy hatched within and outside India by certain youths, originally hailing from Kasaragod district of Kerala, with the intention of furthering the objectives of ISIS and their pursuant exit from India along with their families for joining and supporting the terror organisation.

The case was re-registered at the NIA police station, Kochi, on August 24, 2016.

A probe by the NIA has established that Abdul Rashid Abdulla was the main conspirator, who motivated a number of youths from Kasaragod to leave India along with their families to join the Islamic State.

He conducted classes in Kasaragod and other places in support of the terrorist organisation and its ideology of violent jihad, the agency had said.

Abdulla motivated one more set of 14 co-conspirators, including another accused Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid, to join the proscribed organisation and plan for Hijrah to the Caliphate announced by the ISIS, it had said.

The NIA said the probe revealed that the conspiracy had been in operation since July 2015.

It said Zahid was intercepted at the New Delhi International Airport on July 30, 2016 when she was trying to leave India for Kabul along with her minor child to join her co-conspirator Abdulla in the territory under the control of IS in Afghanistan.

The probe has established that Abdulla had raised funds for the IS and transferred the money to Yasmeen, who utilised it for her activities with the intention of supporting the terrorist organisation. PTImonicakchauhan@gmail.com

Ranchi, Mar 24

RJD supremo Lalu Prasad was on Saturday sentenced to 14 years in jail and fined Rs 60 lakh by a special CBI court in connection with the fourth fodder scam case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 3.13 crore from Dumka treasury in the early 1990s, a CBI counsel said here.

CBI judge Shiv Pal Singh awarded two separate sentences of seven years each to Prasad under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Acts, counsel Rakesh Prasad said.

Both the sentences would have to be served consecutively, he added.

Advocate Vishnu Sharma, while explaining the courts decision, said, Lalu Prasad has been sentenced to seven years in prison under IPC Sections 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged), 477 (fraudulent cancellation, destruction of will or valuable security) and 120B (punishment of criminal conspiracy), and penalised Rs 30 lakh.

He was awarded another seven-year jail term and slapped with a fine of Rs 30 lakh under the Prevention of Corruption Act...Both the sentences will run consecutively.

For default or non-payment of fine, the convict would have to spend one more year in prison for each of the two sets of sections, Sharma said.

The court also pronounced the quantum of sentence for 18 other convicts in the case.

Former regional director of Animal Husbandry department OP Diwarkar received the same punishment as Prasad.

Nine other Animal Husbandry department officials and former IAS officer Phoolchand Singh were sentenced to seven years in prison and fined Rs 30 lakh each for their involvement in the case.

Sharma said failure to pay the fine would entail an additional 18-month prison term for each of them.

Seven fodder suppliers were given three-and-a-half years of prison terms and Rs 15 lakh penalty each.

Prabhat Kumar, Lalu Prasads counsel, told reporters he would appeal in a higher court against the judgment.

The court had on March 19 held the 69-year-old RJD chief guilty along with 18 others in connection with the Dumka treasury case.

Former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra, however, was acquitted in the case, along with 12 other accused.

Prasad has been serving prison term in Birsa Munda Jail in Ranchi since December 23 last year after being convicted in the second fodder scam case pertaining to illegal withdrawal of money from Deogarh treasury.

In the first case, dating back to 2013, the RJD supremo was convicted of illegal withdrawal of Rs 37.7 crore from Chaibasa treasury. He got five years in the case following which he was disqualified from the Lok Sabha.

The RJD chief was granted bail by the Supreme Court three months later.

In another Chaibasa case pertaining to withdrawal of Rs 37.62 crore, Prasad got five years on January 24 this year.

The fifth case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 139 crore from Doranda treasury in Ranchi is still pending with the court.

Prasad is currently undergoing treatment at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi, where he was admitted last week after he complained of chest pain and discomfort in jail. PTIuttara@tribuneindia.com

NEW DELHI, March 24

India's biometric ID programme, Aadhaar, has been hit by another major security lapse, allowing access to private information, business technology news website ZDNet reported on Saturday.

A data leak on a system run by a state-owned utility company can allow access to private information of Aadhaar holders, exposing their names, their unique 12-digit identity numbers, and their bank details, ZDNet said.

Even though the security lapse had been flagged to some government agencies over a period of time, it has yet to be fixed. ZDNet said it was withholding the name of the utility and other details.

Karan Saini, a New Delhi-based security researcher, said that anyone with an Aadhaar number was affected.

"This is a security lapse. You don't have to be a consumer to access these details. You just need the Uniform Resource Locator where the Application Programming Interface is located.

These can be found in less than 20 minutes," Saini told Reuters.

UIDAI response

UIDAI denied there was any leak.

We refute the reports in a certain section of media sourced from ZDNet which quote a person purportedly claiming to be a security researcher that a state-owned utility company has vulnerability which can be used to access huge amount of Aadhaar data including banking details, the agency said in a tweet on Saturday evening.



There is no truth in this story as there has been absolutely no breach of UIDAIs Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure.

Aadhaar, a biometric identification card with over 1.1 billion users, is the world's biggest database.

But it has been facing increased scrutiny over privacy concerns following several instances of breaches and misuse.

Last Thursday, the CEO of the UIDAI said the biometric data attached to each Aadhaar was safe from hacking as the storage facility was not connected to the internet.

"Each Aadhaar biometric is encrypted by a 2048-key combination and to decode it, the best and fastest computer of our era will take the age of the universe just to hack into one card's biometric details," Ajay Bhushan Pandey said. Reuters



There is no truth in this story as there has been absolutely no breach of UIDAIs Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure. 2/8  Aadhaar (@UIDAI) March 24, 2018

Even if the claim purported in the story were taken as true, it would raise security concerns on database of that Utility Company and has nothing to do with security of UIDAIs Aadhaar database. 4/8  Aadhaar (@UIDAI) March 24, 2018

If one goes by the logic of ZDNets story, since the Utility companys database also had bank account numbers of its customers, so would that mean that all Indian banks databases have been breached? The answer would obviously be in negative.5/8  Aadhaar (@UIDAI) March 24, 2018

Mere availability of Aadhaar number with a third person will not be a security threat to the Aadhaar holder or will not lead to financial/other fraud, as for any transaction, a successful authentication through fingerprint, Iris or OTP of the Aadhaar holder is required.7/8  Aadhaar (@UIDAI) March 24, 2018rchopra@tribunemail.com

Suresh Dharur

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, March 24

More than a week after the Telugu Desam Party pulled out of the NDA over denial of Special Category status to Andhra Pradesh, BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday termed the decision of the regional party as unilateral and politically motivated.

In an open letter to TDP president and AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, he accused the former ally of trying to whip up public sentiments over the special status issue to further its political interests.

I am afraid your decision (to end the alliance with the BJP and exit NDA) will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns. This is unilateral and unfortunate, Shah said in his six-page letter.

Refuting the charge that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had failed to handhold AP which is grappling with post-bifurcation problems, the BJP chief said, It is widely known that the Union Government led by Narendra Modi has left no stone unturned in ensuring the growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh.

Holding the Congress responsible for the hasty bifurcation of AP in 2014 and showing zero sensitivity towards the people of the successor state, Shah pointed out that the BJP had lent its voice of support to safeguard the welfare of the Telugu people.

When the TDP was not having adequate representation in both the Houses of Parliament, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done, Shah said.

The TDP, the biggest southern ally of the saffron party, ended the alliance earlier this month after the Centre ruled out granting Special Category status to the state. The 16-member party has also given no-confidence notice against the NDA government in the Lok Sabha, which could not be taken up due to continuous uproar in the Lower House.

Stating that the issue of Special Status was nothing but whipping up of sentiments by certain political parties, Shah said, I would like you (Naidu) to introspect whether political parties should be pitting sentiments against each other to further their political agenda.

Citing the amended terms of reference by the 14th Finance Commission, the BJP chief said the Commission had awarded Rs 22,113 crore to bridge APs revenue deficit for five years. He assured that new railway zone, Kadapa steel factory and Duggirajapatnam port were under active consideration of the central government.

Shah asserted that the BJP would continue to work for the development of AP despite the fact that the TDP had squandered away the public mandate earned together for political reasons.editorial@tribune.com

Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 22

Pakistan High Commissioner Sohail Mehmood on Friday hosted the 70th National Day celebrations at the mission in Delhi even as bilateral ties continue to be tense. The event was attended by Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Minister of State for Agriculture in the Modi cabinet, instead of any junior foreign minister as is mostly the practice, though not a norm.

Pakistan desires peaceful and good neighbourly relations with India on the basis of sovereign equality and mutual respect, Mehmood said.

The celebrations happen at a time when the two neighbours have been levelling allegations of harassment of each others diplomats by security agencies in respective countries in violation of the Vienna convention.

Pakistan and India have completed 70 years as free nations. At the time of Independence, our founding fathers had envisioned an amicable relationship between the two countries. The relations however, evolved on a different trajectory, said Mehmood.

Mehmood returned to the capital Thursday late evening after weeklong consultations with the foreign ministry in Islamabad on the issue of harassment of diplomat. Sources in Pakistan foreign ministry in apparent posturing had told local media that the envoys return would be subject to resolution of the issue. India has also so far sent 15 note verbales and summoned Pakistani diplomats to lodge protest against reported intimidation of Indian High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria and mission staff in Islamabad.amansharma@tribunemail.com

Mysuru, March 24

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said if his party comes to power, it would impose one slab of Goods and Services Tax instead of five and abolish the 28 per cent GST slab.

During an interaction with students at Maharanis College here in Karnataka, Afreen, a student, asked the Congress chief why there was free health care in Singapore though they have one GST slab of 7 per cent, but India lacks despite having 28 per cent GST.

Gandhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be better positioned to answer the question.

He, however, told her that the Congress favoured one GST as multiple slabs encourage corruption.

Gandhi said his partys position on GST was very clear.

GST is basically the Congress partys idea but our thinking was that as in Singapore there is one GST of 7 per cent. Similarly, there should be one tax but the BJP government imposed five different slabs. They have a tax of 28 per cent too, he said.

We are absolutely against the 28 per cent tax, he said.

Our system was that the products used by weaker sections should be kept out of the purview of GST and then have one tax for all. So, in terms of conceptualisation, there is a difference between their GST and our GST. If our government comes to power, we will abolish 28 per cent GST and impose one GST across India, Gandhi said.

He claimed that the existing GST encourages corruption and alleged that the government would use it to favour or hurt any businessman.

If you do a five-layered GST, you will not have GST, you will have a Gabbar Singh Tax. What it means is there will be extortion and there will be a lot of mischief to decide which bracket what product should go, Gandhi said.

The Congress president accused Modi of doing nothing to bring back black money stashed abroad.

He said the Centre was having the list of those who have accounts in Swiss Banks but it is reluctant to table in Parliament the list of black money hoarders.

The governments focus should not be five per cent of cash stashed abroad but the focus should be Swiss Bank, gold and real estate, the congress president said.

Gandhi said transparency alone can check corruption and black money and the Congress government had taken certain steps like Right to Information.

He said defaulters like Nirav Modi and others were getting exposed because of transparency, empowering citizens, Panchayati Raj, Lokpal and decentralisation of power.  PTIROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Rs 30 cr for GoG, but falls short

While allocation for Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh's pet scheme, Guardians of Governance (GoG), has received a significant jump for 2018-19 at Rs 30 crore. Sources said the requirement projected for the scheme was Rs 40 crore. The GoG, comprising ex-servicemen, was launched last year with the intention to monitor the implementation of government scheme at the grass-roots level. When the Congress government had assumed office, it had envisioned an outlay of Rs 100 crore for the scheme. The government has provisioned Rs 10 crore for Sainik Schools, with the bulk of this allocated amount intended for the school at Kapurthala, which requires substantial renovation. In addition, Rs 8 crore have also being proposed for the completion of the Punjab State War Heroes Memorial and Museum at Amritsar that showcases Indian military history and heritage from ancient times to the present day. Vijay Mohan

More for Dalit students, women

The Punjab Budget increased the outlay for welfare of Dalit students and women but the promised Rs 1,500 old age pension per month by the Congress in its election manifesto has not been implemented in its second Budget as well. Though the pension was increased to Rs 750 from Rs 500 in this Budget, it is still far away from the election promise. While presenting the Budget-2018-19, Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal said there were 17.35 lakh beneficiaries belonging to weaker sections of society. I do hope that our resource position strengthens and we shall be able to raise it further, he said. He said Rs 1,634 crore had been allotted for the purpose in the Budget proposals. A number of other welfare schemes for educational, socio-economic and development programmes have been announced. The state government has decided to enhance the grant to beneficiaries under the Ashirwad scheme to Rs 21,000 from Rs 15,000 from July last year. tns

50,000 farmers to get relief in April

The government would provide debt relief to the tune of Rs 200 crore to 50,000 beneficiaries of six districts in third phase at a state level function to be held in first week of April at Gurdaspur. A spokesperson said that beneficiaries from Gurdaspur, Pathankot, Hoshiarpur, SBS Nagar, Amritsar and Tarn Taran would get the relief. The scheme has been amended to obtain a self-declaration from the beneficiaries simplifying the disbursement procedure. At least 46,556 marginal farmers of Mansa, Bathinda, Faridkot, Muktsar and Moga were provided relief of Rs 167.39 crore in January. So far, 75,748 farmers of 10 districts have been provided relief of Rs 329.55 crore, he said. TNSrchopra@tribunemail.com

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 24

The Congress-led Punjab government on Saturday proposed a development tax of Rs 200 per month on income tax payees as the budget for 2018-19 focused on fiscal consolidation, with the state finance minister exuding hope of putting economy back on rails over the next two years.

The budget's key focus areas remained agriculture and farmer welfare, industry, health, employees and students.

While presenting the second budget of the Congress government, Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal said, We have tried to mobilise resources and cut down on expenditure.

The total budget size was kept at Rs 1,29,698 crore, though the effective budget size is Rs 1,02,198 crore.

Manpreet Badal proposed raising Rs 1,500 crore through additional resource mobilisation measures. He further informed the Assembly that the government has decided to bring in a legislation for imposing a "nominal development tax" at the rate of Rs 200 per month "only on the Income Tax payees who are engaged in professions, trades, callings and employments".

The new tax will be called 'Punjab Development Tax', under which government is hoping to garner Rs 150 crore annually.

As the state goes for resource mobilisation, Manpreet said the move will help the state access cheaper loans from institutions like Asian Development Bank.

Many of the progressive states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have been collecting such tax for development for a long time.

"The state also intends to bring in a new Social Security legislation to create a dedicated fund to meet its commitment towards the weaker sections of the society," he said in his budget speech.

In the education sector, the state will provide all requisite text-books free of cost to students of Classes I to 12 studying in government schools during 2018-19, for which Rs 49 crore has been provided for.

The government will provide free sanitary napkins to all girl students from Classes 6-12 in all government schools with an objective to promote menstrual hygiene and reduce dropout of girl students.

All municipal towns/areas would be made Open Defecation Free by June 30, 2018, under the Swachh Bharat Mission.

Manpreet informed that the total outstanding debt of the state is Rs 1,95,978 crore, which is 41.04 per cent of GSDP for 2017-18. The outstanding debt liability is likely to be Rs 2,11,523 crore in 2018-19, 40.82 per cent of GSDP.

The debt servicing (principal plus interest) for 2018-19 is a whopping Rs 24,870 crore as against the allowed net borrowing limit of Rs 15,545 crore approved by Government of India for financial year 2018-19.

Manpreet said the only way left for government is to mobilise more revenue while at the same time cutting down on our non-committed expenditure.

Manpreet Badal's budget speech was disrupted for a while by slogan-shouting opposition MLAs of Akali Dal and Aam Aadmi Party, who protested near the Well of the House and later walked out alleging that the Congress government backed out from its promise of complete debt waiver made to farmers.

..We have been able to contain the fiscal deficit to 4.36 per cent during 17-18 as compared to 12.18 per cent for 16-17," he said, adding this has been targeted to be 3.81 per cent in 2018-19 in the given circumstances of "huge committed liabilities".

The state's revenue expenditure rose from Rs 55,296 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 71,183 crore in 2017-18 and during the same period, expenditure on salaries, wages and grand-in-aid has risen from Rs 21,729 crore to Rs 24,938 crore, and on pensions from Rs 8,773 crore to Rs 9,469 crore, he said.

The expenditure on interest payments rose from Rs 11,642 crore to Rs 15,175 crore. The total revenue expenditure on these committed liabilities is itself 87 per cent of total revenue receipts of state during 2017-18.

"Despite my best efforts, I have only been able to peg the revenue deficit at 2.42 per cent of GSDP in 2018-19. However, we remain committed to reducing this deficit consistently and getting the state into an era of revenue surplus," he said.

During 2017-18, the GSDP of the state has increased from Rs 4,33,660 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 4,77,482 crore, and it is projected to increase to Rs 5,18,165 crore in 2018-19.

The per capita income of the state has also increased from Rs 1,31,112 in 2016-17 to Rs 1,42,958 in 2017-18 and is 28 per cent higher than national average of Rs 1,11,782, he said.

Touching on farmers' welfare, Manpreet said that the total outlay for the year 2018-19 has been increased from Rs 10,581 crore (17-18) to Rs 14,734 crore.

On the Congress government's key poll promise of debt waiver, an amount of Rs 4,250 crore has been proposed for implementation of this scheme during 2018-19. During 2017-18, Rs 370 crore had been disbursed to 71,166 marginal farmers.

"The focus of this government is the farmer of the state and we have decided that our policies on agriculture and rural economy shall be centred only on the welfare of farmer," he said.

Free power is being provided by the state government to farmers and subsidised power to SC, BC and Non SC-BPL category and a provision of Rs 8,950 crore is being made in the budget 2018-19.

Highlights

*Rs 124 crore to strengthen law and order machinery

*The budget has revenue deficit of Rs 12,539 crore

*AAP MLAs come back to the House

*Rs 1,235 crore set aside for welfare schemes

*Government is setting up Mahila Shakti Kendras, to provide interface for rural women to approach the government for availing their entitlements

*740 villages to be covered under solid waste management scheme in 2018-19

*According to the demand of Panjab University, the state government to give Rs 42.62 crore in next fiscal, up from Rs 33 crore for this year. Budgetary allocations for all universities increased by 6 per cent over previous years allocations

*Rs 25 crore for promotion of Punjabi language

*Free wi-fi in all 48 government colleges by July 2018

*A skill university at Chamkaur Sahib to be set up and a new scheme for skill training--Punjab Naujawan Hunar Vikas Yojana--announced

*Health outlay for 2018-19--Rs 4,015 crore, an increase of 13 per cent over this year. New hospitals to be set up at Doraha in Ludhiana and Ghanour in Patiala

*Rs 20 crore set aside for setting up trauma centres on important highways

*A state cancer institute at Amritsar and tertiary cancer care centre at Fazilka at a cost of Rs 84 crore

*Two new medical colleges to be set up

*One park each to be developed in 16 towns having population of over one lakh

*Rs 8,950 crore set aside for power subsidy to farmers, SC, BC and BPL families

*FM says they are examining 100 MW solar power plant at ash dykes area of the now closed-down Guru Nanak Dev Thermal plant, Bathinda

*Rs 100 crore for new judicial complexes at Mohali, Ferozepur, Patti, Bathinda, Ludhiana, Nawanshahr, Baba Bakala and Mukerian

*16 new bus stands to be set up in PPP mode at Amritsar, Barnala, Batala, Bathinda and other towns

*Several schemes for relining of canals. Budgetary allocation of Rs 167 crore made for this

*Special lift irrigation system at Rs 46 crore to boost agriculture at Anandpur Sahib

*A development tax at Rs 200 per month imposed on all income tax payees of the state

*A social security legislation to be brought in to create a dedicated fund to pay social security pensions

*Rationalisation of non tax revenue promised by the FM, though he admits that there will be an unfunded resource gap of Rs 4,175 crore

*Badal says this will be met through efficiency in tax compliance and administration and efficient delivery of public services

*Free textbooks will be provided to all students from Class 1 to 12, in government schools. A sum of Rs 49 crore has been provisioned for this

*Smart schools in each educational block. Rs 50 crore to be provided for this

*1,597 additional classrooms to be constructed by spending Rs 120 crore

*Punjab to develop tourism circuits--spiritual circuit, maharaja circuit and Mughal circuit at a cost of Rs 10 crore

*40 per cent increase in allocation for agriculture sector. Rs 14,734 crore allocated for this sector

*Rs 4,250 crore allocated for the Crop Loan Waiver Scheme

*Akali Dal and BJP MLAs protest against insufficient allocation for Crop Loan Waiver

*They raise slogans against the government. Led by Bikram Singh Majithia, all MLAs rush into the well of the House to protest

*Manpreet continues with his proposals, amidst slogan-shouting by Akali-BJP MLAs

*He announces special emphasis on horticulture. Citrus cultivation to be diversified by introducing 12 new sweet orange and five mandarin varieties

*Small cold stores (15 mt capacity) to be set up at Kapurthala and at Hoshiarpur (30 MT capacity). Rs 180 crore allocated for sugarcane growers to buy the cane for 2018-19 crushing season

*AAP MLAs too storm into the Well of the House and protest

*Akali-BJP MLAs walk out of the House over the insufficient Crop Loan Waiver allocations

*Centre for Excellence in Shooting Range at Muktsar and Mohali to be set up

*For industry, modernisation of infrastructure in existing focal points at Rs 10 crore. Punjab to develop Chandigarh-Ludhiana-Amritsar and Chandigarh-Hoshiarpur-Gurdaspur urban industrial corridors

*Rs 100 crore for the 550th birth anniversary celebration of Guru Nanak

*AAP MLAs stage a walkout

*Manpreet continues to read his Budget proposals with all opposition members having walked out

 With PTI inputsharinder@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

Khatkar Kalan, March 23

Union Minister of State for Cultural Affairs Mahesh Sharma did not turn up for the inauguration of the Shaheed Bhagat Singh museum here on Friday. Akali MP Prem Singh Chandumajra, who had stated on Thursday that Sharma would do the honours, blamed Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu for the Union Ministers absence.

Addressing the gathering during a parallel event organised by the SAD here, Chandumajra said, After the state government announced that the inauguration would be done by the CM, I told Sharma that even though the project was started during UPA rule, it was after 2014 that about Rs 16.73 crore was pumped in. So, the minister agreed to come here.

Chandumajra said Sidhu misinformed the minister that the inauguration programme had been cancelled and only a political conference would be held.

Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal also targeted Sidhu over the controversy.

Refuting Chandumajras allegations, Sidhu said: Through Additional Principal Secretary K Srinivasan, I sent emails to invite Mahesh Sharma, informing him about the timing of the inauguration and that Shivdular Dhillon (Director, Tourism) would receive him at the airport. At 6:40 pm on Thursday, we received an email saying that owing to official reasons, he would not be able to attend the event.editorial@tribune.com

Sudha Pillai

Recently, I came across a fellow traveller who was sending a travel postcard to her friend back home. Surely an anomaly in this age of social media. Its been a ritual for many years now, she said.

My journeys are incomplete if I dont buy a travel-postcard. However, I dont post it to anyone but to myself.

I fell in love with travel postcards when my father went to work in the Middle East. I was 10 years old. It was the first time we were apart. I missed him. But I missed our dinner table conversations more. Over rice and fish curry, my father would regale me with tales from faraway lands. Few, he had visited; many, he wished he had. His stories about kings and queens, forts and secret tunnels, pirates and piranhas, Siberian landscapes and tall pyramids, ancient rituals and exotic women were always riveting.

My mother who mistook my pining for these stories ticked off my father. Do something to wipe away your daughters pain or come back, she told him. My father who knew me well, instead, began sending me travel postcards. Thus, began my dalliance with these palm-sized picture cards. Once in 10 or 12 days, I would receive a card from my father along with a hand-written note; he called them travel tales.

After four decades, I still have many of those cards tucked away in a box. One of my favourites is a 3D postcard  Made in Japan but sent from Arabia. It has a picture of horses galloping over dunes against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. A few horses, in the foreground, are running in one direction and the rest in another.

My father wrote: In the desert run the legendary Arabian horses. A long time ago, after a lengthy journey, Prophet Mohammed spotted an oasis and let his thirsty horses race towards the water. But to test their loyalty, the Prophet called out for the horses to return when they were a few yards away from the much-needed drink. Only five horses returned. And he named these loyal five Al Khamsa. The famous Arabian horses are said to be the descendants of the Al Khamsa. The sturdy breed became the mainstay and protectors of the Bedouins in the desert.

I cannot vouch for the veracity of the story as my father was a great spinner of tales, but it captivated me. From that day on, I dreamt of walking with the Bedouins and caressing the Al Khamsa progeny.

The postcards not only connected me to my father who was far away, but it also enabled me to travel, vicariously, to places that I might never visit. The postcards gave me travel goals in life. The cards also encouraged a sort of community bonding. The postman too began travelling by proxy as we would spend a few minutes exchanging travel stories and discussing dads postcard. The box of postcards would often come out during family gatherings and house parties. They made for good conversation starters and fillers.

Postcards have been in existence since 1840. The first card was published in Austria. However, the commercial journey of the postcard began in 1861 via Lipmans Postal Card in the US. These cards were plain cards with borders. Soon pictures began to appear on postcards. British seaside towns, scenes of indigenous people and their culture, especially India and Africa and famous landmarks, were a few of the favoured themes. Though there were postcards of different kinds and for every occasion, it was the travel postcard that became the most sought after by travellers. Until the fridge magnets came in. Today, social media has given travel postcards endangered status.

For a traveller, both social media (especially Instagram) and travel postcards serve the same purpose  sharing a slice of ones journeys with others. Strangely, on Instagram, the very act seems impersonal, pretentious and flaunting, while it becomes an intimate and thoughtful gesture on a postcard. The latter seems to say: I was here and I was thinking of you. Or I wish you were here to share this marvellous experience with me.

Travel postcards speak the language of intimacy eloquently than social media. Therein lies the reason why some of us still cant abandon the postcard.Saba Naqvi

Saba Naqvi

The defeat in the Rajya Sabha polls of a BSP candidate evocatively named Bhimrao Ambedkar cannot be seen as definitive marker of political trends; its very different from the Lok Sabha defeat of the BJP in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, Uttar Pradesh, as that comes from the peoples court, including the chief ministers constituency.

Let me stick my neck out and say that as a woman I am delighted to note that it is a woman who holds the key to any forceful anti-BJP fight back in 2019. Another woman, Mamata Banerjee, would also play a cameo, but the starring role must belong to Mayawati. Let me explain why I suggest positing her nationally although I know that a section of the chattering classes would be aghast at the idea.

First, lets be clear that there is not much of a contest without the BSP agreeing to an alliance with the SP. Thats the key to what can (or cannot) happen and the reason the BJP was defeated in the UP byelection. Without Mayawati, theres nothing, pitted as the Opposition would be against the most efficient electoral machine in recent history, as the BJP has indeed become under Narendra Modi, also an unflagging campaigner. Their unlimited resources are now the stuff of legend. Only if the BJP can be bottomed out in Uttar Pradesh, does the political game open up.

Mayawati alters the chemistry if she comes in whole-heartedly into the business of defeating the ruling party, not as a bargaining chip but as a strategy that must be imagined on a grand scale. We have seen the arithmetical possibilities of an SP plus BSP alliance. The BSP has the most transferable voter bloc in Uttar Pradesh that does not dip below 20 per cent.

The BSP is also different from state specific parties because it has small loyal (and transferable) bases in other states. In the recent Gujarat assembly polls, for instance, the BSP took away votes in a few seats that the Congress lost narrowly. Were the BSP to be inclined to help the Congress elsewhere, say in Madhya Pradesh, they could make a difference in close contests. But this would have to be conditional on the Congress recognising that it is not a serious contender in Uttar Pradesh and leaving the space for the SP and BSP to work out their seat sharing.

If its serious about fighting the BJP (and not just projecting Rahul Gandhi) then the Congress must recognise that while it would be the principal opposing force in states where there are direct contests with the BJP, it brings nothing to the table in Uttar Pradesh. It has no definitive voter bloc of its own. Look at the pathetic showing in Phulpur, once the seat of Jawaharlal Nehru (Congress got 19,000 of 17.25 lakh votes cast). In Gorakhpur, it got 18,000 of the 9.25 lakh. It would be wise for the party to limit ambitions to Amethi and Rae Bareli.

There are benefits to be reaped elsewhere by positioning a Dalit woman as a prominent face in any front that emerges. True, there are corruption charges against Mayawati but these are moral questions that are debated and do not impact on the ground when it comes to the subaltern leaders (see how well the RJD did in recent byelections, though chief Lalu Yadav is in jail). Besides, in the hammam of politics no party is clean and corruption actually incentivised in a system where political funding remains so opaque. Thats no excuse for corruption, just an explanation for the way the cookie now crumbles in politics.

Mayawati is not just the first Dalit chief minister in our countrys history. She is a metaphor for social change and Dalit empowerment. She is as flawed as politicians can be, but she has come up the hard way and proven her mettle. In one of her avatars, she also reached out, successfully, to a section of the upper castes; in another attempt at power, she reached out to minorities, so she quite understands the need to expand beyond her own voter bloc.

She is tough, certainly a requirement for taking on men with broad chests. In one of her four reigns as UP CM, she jailed figures such as Raja Bhaiya and a host of other Thakur landlords-cum-strongmen. It was a woman who dared to do what men could have done decades ago. I remember visiting a village near Lucknow where acid was thrown on Dalits for taking water from a Thakur well; because Mayawati had become a force multiplier, then CM Rajnath Singh had to act strongly against his own community. And let there be no doubt that on the law and order front Mayawati has a better record than either Mulayam or Akhilesh Yadav (the less said the better about current CM Adityanath Yogis recourse to encounter rule).

All those Ambedkar parks and statues make a statement and in the villages are intended to emancipate a section of society from its historical fears. For that, Mayawati will always be remembered, along with her mentor, the late Kanshi Ram.Azhar Qadri

Azhar Qadri in Srinagar

Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai is the new face of Kashmirs most pro-Pak political outfit, Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, as he replaced its long-time chief Syed Ali Geelani (89). The decision to appoint Sehrai in an interim role will have little impact as the new man on the job has been a shadow of Geelani, who will continue to be his godfather.

On March 19, Majlis-e-Shura, the Tehreeks decision making body, unanimously decided to appoint Sehrai as the interim chairman. Geelani founded the Tehreek and remained the organizations chairman since 2004. An ailing Geelani is long confined to his home on Srinagar outskirts. He has said he has willfully stepped down. Yet, Geelani will continue to wield the influence that he has exerted in his role as the lifetime chairman of the faction of separatist amalgam Hurriyat Conference. The Tehreek is a constituent of

Hurriyat Conference.

Days after Sehrais elevation, his youngest son, Junaid Khan, reportedly joined the militant ranks on Saturday. Khan has a post-graduate degree in business administration. His move consolidates the stature of Sehrai in the separatist camp. Sehrais son appeared in a picture in which he is seen holding an assault rifle. It is for the first time that the son of any top-tier separatist has joined militants. He was reportedly missing from home for two days.

Who is Sehrai?

Mohammad Ashraf Khan, a young and teenage boy from a village in north Kashmir, first became radicalized by speeches of a new-comer orator who had mastery over the works of revivalist poet Muhammad Iqbal and theologian Abul Ala Maududi. It was early 1960s and Khan became an ardent supporter of the orator, Geelani, who was then a fringe figure in Kashmir politics, dominated by the politics and stature of National Conference founder Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah.

Geelanis influence on Khan grew. He was first arrested in 1965 when he was 21. It was in jail that Khan got the name Sehrai, which reluctantly stuck with him though the rest of his life which became intertwined with that of Geelani. Sehrai followed in Geelanis footsteps and joined a fledgling socio-religious outfit, Jamaat-e-Islami, which had its roots in Pakistan and which espoused the goal of creating an Islamic society.

The two men rose within the ranks of Jamaat-e-Islami. In 1977, when Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah had to contest a by-election in the aftermath of his accord with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Sehrai contested against him from Ganderbal constituency. In the aftermath of the election, Jamaat-e-Islami was banned, its schools were shut and Sehrai was arrested.

When militancy first erupted in Kashmir, Jamaat-e-Islami maintained a safe distance from it as independence seeking Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) popularized the gun. Soon, Jamaat-e-Islami jumped into the cauldron and parented Hizbul Mujahideen, which sought accession to Pakistan.

Geelani and Sehrai became the patrons of Jamaats militant cause  gaining recognition among the hard-line sections and Islamist militants  and as Geelani served as the head of Jamaats political bureau, Sehrai served as its deputy emir.

Whats Tehreek-e-Hurriyat?

Sehrai has come into limelight at a time when the militant numbers are reduced to a few hundred. Most of the militants are young men belonging to a generation which is dominating the separatist politics. Geelani founded Tehreek-e-Hurriyat in August 2004 as divisions grew between him and his parent body, Jamaat-e-Islami which sought to return to social, religious and welfare work.

In 2004, Geelani had already emerged as a hardline figure after he caused a split in the main separatist amalgam, the Hurriyat Conference. Sehrai was, as always, at his back.

On the website of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, the organisation says that its formation was consented by the central consultative body of Jamaat-e-Islami. The central consultative body of Jamaat-e-Islami  also consented in favour of a new political organization, on the basis of division of work, that would struggle to achieve the goal with full support of the statewide organization of Jamaat, it said.

Just a routine?

Nasir Aslam Wani, the provincial president of National Conference, describes Sehrais new role as more of a continuation of the routine. So did CPI(M) state secretary, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami. I do not see any significance in it, Tarigami said.

The BJP, which governs the state in alliance with PDP, downplayed Sehrais new role. They are self-styled leaders so it is no development for us, said BJP spokesman Khalid Jehangir said.

Sehrais nomination, however, was quickly backed by Syed Salahuddin, who is the chief of a conglomerate of Pakistan-based militant outfits. It will have positive impact on Kashmir struggle, Salahuddin, who has a former associate of Sehrai in Jamaat-e-Islami and now heads the conglomerate United Jehad Council, said in a statement.Sarika Sharma

Sarika Sharma in Chandigarh

He may be known as the spiritual father of Pakistan, but poet Allama Iqbal stood by Bhagat Singh and his comrades when the British decided to constitute a special tribunal for their trial.

As the magisterial proceedings in the case started generating public sympathy, the British decided to set up a special tribunal in the 1929 Lahore Conspiracy Case. A special ordinance was brought in to set up the tribunal, but it met with strong opposition from the Lahore High Court Bar Association. Among the members was poet, scholar and lawyer Mohd Iqbal, better known as Allama Iqbal. One of the greatest Urdu poets, he was the national poet of Pakistan and is better known in India for Saare jahan se achcha Hindustaan hamara.

The association had constituted a sub-committee to examine the validity of ordinance No. 3 of 1930, dated May 1, 1930. Its report dated June 19, 1930, was signed by top lawyers from the Lahore High Court -- Allama Iqbal, Gokal Chand Narang and Malik Barkat Ali among others. The report termed the ordinance as ultra vires of the governor-general and called it invalid. ...its promulgation was inexpedient and inadvisable; and that there was no justification whatsoever for depriving the high court of its power of hearing the appeal from the final order of the special tribunal constituted under the ordinance.

The ordinance was brought about by the powers conferred upon the governor-general by Section 72 of the Government of India Act. However, they said that an ordinance could only be promulgated in case of an emergency or for the peace and good government of India or any part of it. However, the committee said that while it felt no such emergency existed, it opined that the ordinance, instead of promoting peace and good government, had jeopardized both. Far from restoring respect for law, this ordinance, being most unprecedented and allowing the trial of a large number of persons accused of the most serious crimes in their absence and without any right of appeal, has brought not only the administration of law and justice into contempt but has also gone a great way in making the government unpopular.

Bhagat Singh, too, in a letter to the governor general of India had emphasized that the ordinance under which the tribunal is established is illegal and established with ulterior motive. In the letter dated May 2, 1930, he had called the ordinance a victory of the revolutionaries. let us declare once and for all that our spirits cannot be cowed by ordinances. You may crush certain individuals but you cannot crush this nation. As far as this ordinance is concerned, we consider it to be our victory. We had been from the very beginning pointing out that this existing law was a mere make-believe.

Bhagat Singhs nephew, Prof Jagmohan, says the fact that these top lawyers stood by the revolutionaries needs to be highlighted because recently the Lahore High Court has been moved to review its delivery of justice to Bhagat Singh and his compatriots.singhking99@yahoo.com

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, March 24

A scuffle broke out between Congress and BJP MLAs during a discussion on farm loan waiver on the fifth day of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly session in Bhararisain (Gairsain).

During the discussion on the Budget, Leader of the Opposition Indira Hridayesh charged the TS Rawat government with doing little to increase the income of the farmers, At least make things simpler for farmers, if you are not ready to waive their loan in Uttarakhand.

The farmers are committing suicide in the state, she said.

However, there was a sharp reaction from the Treasury Benches as the Minister for Education Arvind Pandey got up and objected to the charges levelled by the Leader of the Opposition. I urge the Speaker of the House to expunge the remarks made by her, he said.

Pandey then went on to level allegations against the Congress and said the wrong policies of the Congress were responsible for the plight of the farmers.

Soon, the angry Congress MLAs were on their feet protesting against the remarks made by Pandey and reached the Well of the House.

Soon the MLAs from the Treasury Benches, including Cabinet Minister Subodh Uniyal, Madan Kaushik and Harak Singh Rawat, too stood up and started questioning the attitude of the Congress.

This angered Congress MLAs Qazi Nizammudin and Karan Mehra who made their way towards the Treasury Benches, but they were stopped mid-way by BJP MLA Rajkumar Thukral who blocked the way, soon a scuffle ensued between the Congress and BJP MLAs.

Sensing that the situation was getting out of hand, the marshals made a ring around the Congress MLAs. In-between, BJP MLA Puran Singh Fartyal tried to break the ring and there was heated exchange with the Marshals and the Congress MLAs. However, he was rescued by Cabinet Minister Arvind Pandey, whose clothes got torn in the scuffle.

Then, Uttarakhand Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Prakash Pant urged the Speaker to expunge the allegations made by the Leader of the Opposition from the proceedings of the House. This angered the Congress MLAs who created a ruckus. After which, the Speaker was forced to adjourn the House for a few minutes.

Unruly House

Sensing that the situation was getting out of hand, the marshals made a ring around the Congress MLAs. In-between, BJP MLA Puran Singh Fartyal tried to break the ring and there was heated exchange with the Marshals and the Congress MLAs. However, he was rescued by Cabinet Minister Arvind Pandey, whose clothes got torn in the scuffle.uttara@tribuneindia.com

BEIRUT, March 24

The Syrian army paused its bombardment of Douma, the last rebel bastion near Damascus, after midnight, a war monitor said on Saturday, as insurgents prepared to leave the rest of their former enclave of eastern Ghouta.

Thousands of fighters and their families departed neighbouring Harasta by bus on Friday after a deal with the government to surrender the town. Insurgents in several other towns nearby have agreed to leave on similar terms.

Some army soldiers and other people captured and held by the rebels were freed on Saturday as part of the same deal and were shown on state television leaving Harasta in a minibus.

Buses queued at a crossing point and moved into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades, debris and unexploded ordnance. They are to carry thousands more peoplefighters and civiliansinto exile.

The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit, state media said.

It means only Douma is left of the opposition's eastern Ghouta enclave, which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400,000 people and constituted the rebels' main stronghold near Damascus.

The army offensive to capture it, heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the seven-year war with warplanes, helicopters and artillery, has killed more than 1,600 people, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.

Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminatelyinaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally Russia, which has helped his air campaign, have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians.

Evacuation

About 7,000 fighters, along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad's rule, were to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday, rebels and state media said.

They will go to Idlib province in the northwestthe destination for many such "evacuations" after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years.

It will not mean an end to their experience of war. Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week, killing dozens of people.

Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups. On Saturday, an explosion at a headquarters for al Qaeda's former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others.

The rebels leaving the eastern Ghouta towns will release several thousand captured Syrian soldiers, state media reported.

The Britain-based Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish al-Islam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners.

Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted, rebels said on Friday. However, rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting.

A Russian military webcam at the al-Wafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory on Saturday, carrying children and sacks of belongings.

Russia's military said on Saturday more than 105,000 people had left eastern Ghouta, including over 700 on Saturday.

Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters already too full to take them. ReutersROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Paris, March 24

France was in mourning on Saturday for a French security officer who died from gunshot wounds after voluntarily taking the place of a woman hostage during a supermarket siege by an Islamist militant.

Arnaud Beltrame, 44, a gendarme who once served in Iraq, had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after being shot by the gunman during the siege at the Super U store in the southwestern town of Trebes near the Pyrenees mountains.

He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist, President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday.

Fridays attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, not far from Trebes, a tranquil town of about 5,000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon.

Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, Paris prosecutor said on Friday.

The attacker, whose rampage began when he fired on a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole, killed three persons and injured 16 others on Friday, according to a government readout.

Beltrames death takes the number killed to four. He was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene; most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit.

He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding, where after he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table, line open. When shots rang out, elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant. Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times.

The police arrested two people after the attack, one of them a woman connected to Lakdim, on Friday and a 17-year-old man said to be one of his friends overnight, judicial sources said. Beltrame was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005.  Reuters

Nation salutes heroic officerROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

New York, March 24

An Indian-origin man unauthorisedly drove past into a major air force base in the US and died as the vehicle crashed and burst into flames, with the FBI saying they are investigating the motive behind his action.

Hafiz Kazi, 51, of Sausalito drove his minivan into the Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California on March 21 without authorisation.

FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sean Ragan said in a statement that as the vehicle entered the base, it caught fire and Kazi died at the scene.

Within the vehicle, investigators found five propane tanks, a gym bag with personal effects, three phones, three plastic one-gallon gas cans, and several lighters.

The investigation is in the early stages, he said.

A report in Fox News quoted Ragan as saying that Kazi was a native of India who has lived in the US since 1993 and was a permanent legal resident. Ragan said investigators have been unable to find any of Kazis family living in the US, but a family member in India has been notified of his death.  PTITruck driver pay may finally be getting the attention it needs. Photo: Dupre Logistics

I called Kyle Kottke, one of our Emerging Leaders from 2016, to talk about how things are going in the refrigerated business for an update for our upcoming May issue. Kottke Trucking is a third-generation interstate hauler, in operation since 1938.

Were nearly turning down as much work as were hauling, he told me. But are they buying new equipment to handle some of that business theyre turning down? No. Our pipeline for drivers is currently not very healthy, so were just replacing our equipment, he said. In fact, theyre looking at having their first unseated truck.

This is hardly unusual, of course. Were hearing the same story all over. Business is booming and drivers are scarce.

Many drivers, when they read articles about fleets facing a driver shortage, will tell you, its not a driver shortage, its a pay shortage. And weve seen a rash of pay raise announcements from fleets in the past several months like weve never seen before. Not only per-mile pay going up, but various bonuses, and some creative approaches to addressing driver benefits and overall compensation. (See my March editorial, Money Is Not the Only Thing That Speaks to Truck Drivers).

The latest release of ACTs For-Hire Trucking Index showed fleet equipment purchase intentions are strong, that they have or plan to increase driver pay, and that they currently have power in contract negotiations with shippers.

The capacity crunch is allowing fleets to charge higher rates, which in turn in many cases are being used to pay drivers more.

As part of this months survey, ACT Research asked fleets about their drivers pay in the past and coming three months. It was a near unanimous response from our fleet panel that they have or plan to increase driver pay, said Kenny Vieth, ACT Researchs President and Senior Analyst. Many respondents expressed concern about the industrys practice of sign-on bonuses as a way of attracting new drivers.

But is it possible that increased pay is having some effect?

Kottke Trucking says it's facing an unseated truck  a first, at least in a long time. Photo: Kottke Trucking

American Trucking Associations this week reported that the driver turnover rate for truckload carriers fell in the final three months of 2017. But the rate remained higher than it was for the previous year, according to ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello.

Despite this dip in turnover, the driver market remains tight and the driver shortage remains a real concern for fleets and the industry, said Costello. If the economic climate continues to improve, I expect both turnover and driver shortage concerns to rise in the near future.

Why the drop? Costello pointed to a couple of likely reasons. First, freight demand was very strong, which may have encouraged drivers to stay at their current fleet because they were making even better money with strong volumes. And second, many fleets implemented or announced pay increases last quarter, which may have disincentivized drivers from moving to new jobs.

Meanwhile, FTRs Jonathan Starks points out in the upcoming April issue of HDT that February 2018 was a milestone for employment in the for-hire trucking industry. The 1.47 million-plus payroll employees recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was the highest level ever. It was also the most workers added in a single month since May 2015. In fact, trucking has added more jobs in each of the last three months than it had in any month since March 2017.

It appears that wage increases, sign-on bonuses, and other recruiting tactics are paying off, Starks says. Moreover, an all-time high in employment levels comes a couple of months after the industry surely lost some drivers over the ELD mandate. Of course its difficult to really know the true impact of ELDs, due to the delay in hard enforcement until April 1 and several temporary exemptions and waivers.

Orders for new trucks have been quite strong since last fall, with January orders nearly setting a record high for any single month. There were concerns that all of these orders couldnt be filled by additional drivers, but the payroll increases, combined with strong increases in new authorities being issued, would seem to say otherwise.The domain turkeytelegraph.com may be for sale. Please click here to inquireThe Karimis are moving into their new home, lugging a mountain of luggage from a minivan into the ground floor apartment in the seaside town of Heraklion, capital of the Greek island of Crete.

On hand to meet the family of seven is a tall, young man with striking features. The 22-year-old, Ali Sher Kashimi is an ethnic Hazara from Afghanistan, just like the asylum seekers he is helping. His role is vital: he is the interpreter who can help them navigate language challenges and make their daily life easier.

The Karimis are delighted to find a kinsman with fluent Greek and they pepper him with questions. Without the help of an interpreter like Ali, a refugee who has spent the last decade in Crete, they would find it hard to get by. Its the same for most of the refugees and migrants who arrive by sea as well as for the people who help them, including staff from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

All the people of concern need interpreters, explains Ali, who is fluent in Urdu, Farsi, Dari and of course Greek. Youre the bridge connecting two nations, adds fellow interpreter and Hazara ethnic, Habibala.

The two friends interpret for about 80 of the more than 600 people who have been provided with apartment places and support in Crete under UNHCRs ESTIA accommodation and cash assistance programme, which has helped tens of thousands of people.

Ali-Sher Kashimi, 22, is an interpreter and works with the Heraklion Development Agency (HAD). He helps newly arrived refugees navigate language challenges.  UNHCR/Markel Redondo

Ali-Sher Kashimi, 22, translates for a family that has just arrived to their new home in Heraklion, Crete, in Greece.  UNHCR/Markel Redondo

Ali-Sher Kashimi, 22, interprets for about 80 of the more than 600 people who have been provided with apartment places and support in Crete.  UNHCR/Markel Redondo

The EU-funded accommodation scheme did not exist when Ali and Habibala arrived in Greece in 2008. As youngsters, they were taken to Anogia, the first shelter for unaccompanied children in Crete which opened in 2001. Now, they are involved in every step of the process to welcome asylum seekers, starting with arrival.

Its very important for the refugees to communicate, Ali notes, as the Karimis explore their apartment with staff from the Heraklion Development Agency (HDA), which is implementing the scheme in Heraklion, Sitia and Chania.

HDA employs 11 interpreters, including Ali and Habibala, working in Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Sorani and Urdu. Interpreters with other languages have to be found when necessary. UNHCR also uses interpreters in the rest of the country, working through partners like METAdrasi.

In Heraklion, Ali explains how the washing machine works and he tells them where to shop and how to use public transport. They will pay using their cash cards, once Ali has helped them register their address. Social orientation is important and how to function in a new community and adapt to their hosts culture and lifestyle.

Many of those arriving have health problems and disabilities, so they need help in explaining to the medics what ails them. Then there is school enrolment, which Ali puts extra value on.

"Im helping people to rebuild their lives."

The young man, who joined HDA last year and receives a salary, is proud of his work. I feel that I am doing something important. Im helping people to rebuild their lives and that gives me great satisfaction.

And he empathizes with them and knows their needs, which is not surprising given the ordeal that he underwent as a child, starting with his familys flight from Jaghori, in the highland Afghan region of Hazarajat, to Quetta in Pakistan to escape escalating fighting with the Taliban and the Afghan government.

Life was good for a year or so, but then ethnic tensions and attacks mounted. One day a bomb exploded in a mosque that I had left only five minutes before. About 200 people were killed, Ali recalls. After he was badly beaten up and robbed of his school books by thugs, Ali decided at just 12 years old to flee.

He knew where he would go. When I was young, my father used to talk about Greece and he read stories about ancient Greece. It sounded like a nice place, with nice scenery and people, he says. He did not tell anyone of his plan to leave.

Accompanied by his uncle, also 12, Ali headed to Iran, calling his tearful and anxious mother from the border town of Zahedan. The journey to the Greek islands was much tougher. They climbed mountains, spent time in detention, begged for food and worked to pay off smugglers. They saw others die en route.

With some luck and money wired from home, they joined four adults to buy a dinghy and crossed the straits separating Turkey and Samos Island. Scared of being sent back, they destroyed the boat on the shoreline and headed into town. When they tried to board a ferry without a ticket, the boys were arrested and detained.

"I regard the whole of Crete as my home."

When the two boys launched a hunger strike, officials accepted an offer by the Anogia home to take them in. They stayed there until coming of age six years later. They learnt Greek, how to cook and socialize and much more. The most important thing that I learned was how to become a good man, how to talk to people and communicate, Ali explains. Now, a funding problem threatens to close Anogia and other shelters despite the growing concern of UNHCR and others.

Since leaving Anogia, which he regards as his home village, Ali has found work, made many friends and lives in an apartment with his Romanian girlfriend. Hes very popular, especially in our programme, says an HDA colleague Dimitra Kampeli. He is also taking photography classes and works part-time in a restaurant.

Ali has integrated into Heraklion society and he is seen as a local. I regard the whole of Crete as my home, he says. But among all the good that has come his way since his epic journey in 2008, there is one thing missing. I am a refugee, but I want to apply for citizenship, he stresses.From March 23 to March 25, the Japanese Cultural Fair 2018 held in celebration of the 45th anniversary of Japanese-Vietnamese diplomatic relations, bringing 10,000 iconic cherry blossoms from "the country of the rising sun" to people living in and visiting Hanoi.

To keep the flowers fresh and hydrated, plant preservation was a significant consideration The 45th anniversary of Japanese-Vietnamese relations brings a Japanese atmosphere to the Vietnamese capital A corner of the Japanese cultural fair The fair revolving around sakura flowers welcomes visitors from 8 PM on March 23 to March 25 in Ly Thai To Park Vietnam - Japan, a 45-year tie Visitors were eager to take photographs even before the opening ceremony The cultural fair offers nature-lovers not only seemingly endless beds of flowers but also a variety of Japanese traditional games Besides sakura, hundreds of other types of flowers will be displayed at the fair Another corner inside the Vietnam-Japan cultural fair Each of the branches was carefully handpicked and delivered from Japan Hanoi abloom with cherry blossoms on the heels of Lunar New Year 10,000 cherry blossoms celebrate Vietnam, Japan ties By Sam HuyForeign professionals are increasingly attracted to Vietnams banking sector by competitive salaries and benefits as well as by the opportunity to challenge themselves, Photo: Le Toan

Foreign expertise in need

Expats filling managerial roles in local commercial banks are not rare, with positions like chief risk officer at VPBank taken by Ukrainian Dmytro Kolechko and Chester Gorski working as chief technologies and operations officer at Techcombank. Up to one third of VPBanks board of management members are foreigners.

With state-owned Vietcombank appointing former HSBC Vietnam CEO Thomas Tobin its head of Retail Banking last year, things seem to turn further into foreign banking experts favour.

Vietcombank chairman Nghiem Xuan Thanh expects that with 30 years of experience in finance and banking as well as a deep understanding of the Vietnamese and global markets, Tobin will create breakthroughs in the banks retail banking arm and help it achieve its goals.

According to Trang Nguyen, country head of Permanent Recruitment and Consulting Services at ManpowerGroup Vietnam, local banks tend to look for foreign personnel to fill up roles in the wholesale, retail, and corporate banking divisions, as well as in IT, products, transactions, and capital units. These are the areas where local banks claim they cannot find qualified local personnel to take jobs.

The process of selecting suitable candidates has become more professional, more and more in line with international norms, with numerous rounds of interviewing and evaluating potential candidates through their presentations, said Nguyen.

She went on to say that in the past five years or so, Vietnamese banks have entered a massive stage of development, with an increasing scope of recruitment covering everything from high-level executives to specialists and managers in risk management, product development, retail, and IT. Demand is definitely on the rise and recruiting often goes through recruitment agencies with a multitude of branches and a worldwide network.

Competitive compensation

While many banks in Vietnam have been actively seeking overseas candidates with skills and experience to help with their long-term visions for growth, many overseas candidates are marketing themselves across the board for a potential job opportunity in an emerging market like Vietnam.

Nguyen of ManpowerGroup told VIR that although Vietnamese banks were in an early stage of development some five to 10 years back, they already had strong ambitions for growth. As a result, local banks were able to attract a great deal of both domestic and foreign candidates to work with them in the overall expansion of the banking system.

During that time, ManpowerGroup connected numerous candidates to executive positions at many local banks. Most of these have yearned to diversify their work experience in different international markets, she noted.

Local banks, in return, are prepared to offer competitive benefit and remuneration packages that are equal to regional standards to attract expats, including salary or wages, bonuses, accommodation, schooling for children, and travel expenses. Therefore, it has become commonplace to see them working here in the country.

As to the nationality of the candidates, Nguyen said that there is no preference of one country over another, but banks will tend to pick those relevant to the business areas that they want to focus on. For instance, should product development or network expansion become a lenders priorities, the employer will select a candidate with the equivalent experience in Asian markets and local knowledge. For tasks related to risk management and control, a lender will widen its search to incorporate international standards in its recruitment criteria.

Fulfilling financial goals

Working elsewhere rather than in your home country might not sound too bad when it comes to the income and material benefits acquired when moving abroad. And this is true for those who have chosen Vietnam as the destination for their career path and financial goals.

According to HSBCs Expat Explore survey, the worlds largest and longest-running study of expat life, expats in Vietnam revealed in 2017 that they earn $88,096 a year on average, compared to a global average of $99,903, with 36 per cent of them seeing an income rise of 25 per cent. 72 per cent of expats said that moving to Vietnam helps them save more and 67 per cent agreed that they have more disposable income than they did in their home country.

Whats more, expats gain other material benefits by working overseas, with nearly half of expats in Vietnam saying they can take more holidays while at the same time enjoying housekeeping services and being able to live in a better property.

With challenging oneself being one of the top reasons for expats to move to Vietnam, some 47 per cent of those surveyed agreed that the country is a good place to advance their careers.

Expat employment also comes with perks. A vast majority of 79 per cent of expats in Vietnam receive benefits as part of their employment contract, with 49 per cent receiving health and medical allowances, 42 per cent getting an accommodation allowance, and 42 per cent enjoying an annual trip home or airfare allowance, compared to the global averages of 44 per cent, 20 per cent, and 19 per cent, respectively.

Sabbir Ahmed, head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management at HSBC Vietnam, noted that Vietnam remains a fascinating economy for foreigners, with expats from around the world continuing to enter to challenge themselves and boost their careers. A satisfactory expat life, however, is associated with how people experience social and cultural aspects of their host country and whether it offers convenience and quality of life to expats and their families.

The survey suggests several areas for improvement to make Vietnam more attractive to expats, Ahmed said. It is clear that expats expect a better experience in organising their finances and healthcare, as well as an advantageous environment to bring up their children. This poses challenges to the capacity of the financial, medical, and educational institutions, as well as opportunities to grow businesses from better serving this segment.

Those looking to land a job in the banking sectors all hope for the local banking system to speed up with its restructuring process and get more aligned with the international norms, so that they can pursue a long-term career path in Vietnam, according to ManpowerGroups Nguyen.Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction will develop its first offshore wind farm in Vietnam

The two parties signed an agreement to develop the project on March 23, according to newswire Pulsenews.

Under the initial agreement, Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction will supply wind power equipment, including energy storage systems in the form of engineering, procurement, and construction for a 3MW wind farm.

Doosan Heavy will also be in charge of the operation and maintenance along with Korea South-East Power Co., while EVN will be responsible for securing the test site and providing support to gain project-related licences and approval.

Doosan Heavy also signed an agreement with Vietnams Construction Corporation No.1 for a wind power development project. Doosan Heavy is hoping to supply major equipment to CC1 for two projects in a wind power complex in the southern province of Binh Thuan and take charge of operations and maintenance. CC1 has obtained business licences for wind power projects totaling 105MW in capacity.

Vietnam stands out among Southeast Asian peers in the transition to clean fuel sourcing. The Vietnamese government plans to increase its wind power capacity from the current 180MW to 6,000MW by 2030.

Doosan Heavy has also been expanding its wind power business in recent years. In 2011, it developed a 3MW level wind power plant model and it is also expected to commercialise a 5.5MW offshore wind power technology. In September last year, the company also built the countrys largest offshore wind farm in Tamra off the western coast of Jeju Island.

The Vietnamese government plans to increase its wind power capacity from the current 180MW to 6,000MW by 2030.

In June 2017, Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with its five partners at its Vietnamese operation Doosan Heavy Industries Vietnam Co. (Doosan Vina) to help them enter the Vietnamese market.

Accordingly, it will provide consultancy services on administration, financial management, and business management to support its partners to establish their subsidiaries or manufacturing facilities at the site of the Doosan Vina plant.Visitors at the exhibition presented in Vietnamese and English, featuring a number of valuable photos and information on the novelists life and career.

Activities running from now until April 14, co-sponsored by a wide range of embassies and cultural partners, aim to help Vietnamese readers better understand Kafkas life, vision, philosophy and career, said Czech Ambassador Vitezslav Grepl at a press briefing yesterday.

An exhibition entitled Kafka  A Journey to Vietnamese Readers will be on display at the East-West Cultural Space, Heritage Space and Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities until April 14.

The exhibition, presented in Vietnamese and English features a number of valuable photos and information on the novelists life and career, which were collected and presented worldwide by the Franz Kafka Society in Prague , Czech Republic . Before coming to Vietnamese readers, the exhibition was held in Hong Kong (2013), Bangkok (2014) and other Asian cities.

During the exhibition, a number of rare publications, such as translations of Kafkas works and books about him, which have been printed in Vietn am since the 1960s, will also be displayed for visitors to grasp the legacy of Franz Kafka in Vietn am .

Cinema lovers can enjoy various films and documentaries includingWho Was Kafka?( Switzerland ),Joseph Kilian( Czech Republic ),The Castle( Germany and Austria ) and The Trial( France , Germany and Italy ).

Kafkas Corners with souvenirs and books available at a discount are arranged in more than 20 cultural spaces in Hanoi.

Writer Kafka was born in Prague in the Czech Republic , in a German-speaking Jewish family. He wrote mostly in German. He travelled through many European countries, including Austria , France , Germany , Switzerland and Italy . Many of his famous works were inspired by and written during his journeys.

His works present a vision that was ahead of his time in their content and artistic style, said Grepl. Therefore his legacy is an inestimable treasure for our people that we will continuously admire and try to discover.

Kafka is widely studied across the world. In literature, he is regarded as a critical influence on postmodern writers. But his work also contributed to many other literary schools and later philosophies such as irrationalism, magical realism and existentialism.

Accordingly, the Kafka Festivals programming spans diverse events and spaces.

Kafkas Corners with souvenirs and books available at a discount will be arranged in more than 20 different cultural spaces in Hanoi including East West Cultural Space, Heritage Space, Nha Nam bookstores, TPD Cinema Development Centre, Bluebirds Nest cafe and Tranquil Book cafe.

The screening of the filmWho Was Kafka?,which recreates the life of the author through stories and memories from his relatives, including his best friend Max Brod, fiance Felice Bauer and lover Milena Jesenska, will be attended by Swiss Ambassador Beatrice Maser Mallor. She will share with audiences the importance of Kafkas legacy to humanity in general as well as to the people of Switzerland in particular  a country he loved and visited many times.

The Old Quarter Cultural Exchange Centre (50 ao Duy Tu Street, Hoan Kiem district) will host a Kafka-inspired dance performance by dancers Charlotte Spitzer and Ziga Jereb ( Austria ).

An international conference entitled Perceptions of Kafka in Asia, Particularly in Viryn am will gather many Vietnamese and foreign experts at the Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities on April 14.

Another seminar, Franz Kafka - Life And Legacy will analyse Kafkas Letter to His Father, a literary masterpiece, and an important document often used by researchers to explore the relationship between him and his father, which is often believed to have had a strong influence on his motivation to write.Earth Hour, which annually takes place at the end of March, has become familiar with everybody, especially those in two big cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

As many as 63 cities and provinces across Vietnam, and over 7,000 cities and towns across 200 countries and territories over the world have joined the Earth Hour campaign this year on March 24.

Several locations in Hanoi's downtown has lighted off in one hour:

At Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi

McDonald's Ho Guom

Trang Tien Plaza

Dinh Tien Hoang Street

Vietnam first joined the Earth Hour campaign in 2009 as part of efforts to deliver on its commitments to reducing 8 per cent of greenhouse emission by 2030 in response to climate change.

Vietnam in general and Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi in particular are always some of top ten cities in the world having so many environmental protection activities to promote Earth Hour campaign.

In 2017, up to 471,000 kWh of electricity was saved during one-hour light off. Many businesses and organisations across the country have joined the effort.

The Trang Tien walking street fell in dark

Children playing with candles

Playing with light toys

Earth Hour event at the Hanoi Opera House Square

People watching Earth Hour event

Earth Hour is a worldwide movement organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The event is held annually encouraging individuals, communities, and businesses to turn off non-essential electric lights for one hour, as a symbol of commitment to the planet.

It was started as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Since then, it has grown to engage more than 200 countries and territories with the participation of more than two billion people.The ransomware assault on the Atlanta city government shut down multiple internal and external applications for city, including apps that people use to pay bills. (Photo: AFP/IOPP/Michael Jung)

The ransomware assault shut down multiple internal and external applications for the city, including apps that people use to pay bills and access court-related information, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told a news conference Thursday (Mar 22).

"This is a very serious situation," Bottoms said.

City officials said they learned of the attack before dawn Thursday when they detected unusual activity on their servers. Some of the city's data had become encrypted.

A ransom note sent to the city gave instructions for paying to free up files encrypted by the hackers.

Investigators say the total ransom being demanded was around US$51,000 payable in bitcoin, local news media reported.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were called in to help investigate.

Last year a ransomware attack hit more than 200,000 companies, hospitals, government agencies and other organizations in 150 countries.

Those attackers were believed to have used tools developed by the US National Security Agency and leaked by a hacker group that calls itself the Shadow Brokers.Secretary of Ho Chi Minh Citys Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan inspects Carina Plaza apartment complex

The blaze broke out at 0:30 am from the parking basement, and its smokes suffocated 11 out of the 13 victims. Six of the victims have been identified.

Stressing the serious consequences of the fire, Nhan asked for drastic measures to tackle the consequences, as well as further investigations on firefighting work at Carina Plaza and other apartment complexes in the city.

He stressed the need for relevant agencies to train emergency exit events and plans in case of fires.

Visiting the victims and their families at Nguyen Tri Phuong hospital, he expressed his deepest condolences to families of the deceased.

He asked the municipal Police Office and relevant agencies to quickly define the identity of the remaining victims.

Hospitals were required to provide the best and free treatment for people injured in the fire.

The city decided to provide 60 million VND (2,634 USD) for the family of each dead victim, and 10-15 million VND for each person in emergency aid at hospitals.

Also present at the fire scene, Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong emphasised the need to treat the injured, visit families of the deceased, and take measures to help affected people soon stabilise their lives.

Phong also asked the police to clarify locals statement that the fire alarm did not work when the fire broke out.

Major General Phan Anh Minh, deputy head of the municipal Police Office, said that the fire originated from a vehicle in the basement.

The fire doors at the basement and several storeys remained open at the time when the incident occurred, making smoke go up to the upper floors easily, he said.

The Fire Fighting Police Department of the city sent 34 fire trucks and 200 firefighters to the site to control the blaze and rescue the people remained stuck. Five cars and over 150 motorbikes parked in the basement were completely damaged.

Carina Plaza is a high-end apartment complex including three buildings with 15-21 storeys and 736 apartments. It was put into use six years ago.Police at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes, Aude, France on Mar 23, 2018 in this picture obtained from a social media video. (Photo source: La Vie a Trebes via Reuters)

Five people were also shot and wounded in France's first major militant attack since October, including a heroic policeman who offered to take the place of hostages being held at the supermarket.

"Our country has suffered an Islamist terrorist attack," President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address following the rampage in the medieval town of Carcassonne and nearby Trebes.

The Islamic State militant group claimed the attack was in response to its call to target Western enemies - as is customary when the assailant has pledged allegiance to the militants.

The shootings come as France remains on high alert following a string of deadly attacks that have killed more than 240 people since 2015.

Top anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins named the gunman as Radouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old who had convictions for carrying a banned weapon and for drug use.

"He had been on a watchlist for his radicalisation and links to the Salafist movement," Molins told reporters in Carcassonne, adding that Lakdim had been tracked for his online contacts with extremists.

Security sources said Lakdim was born in Taza in northern Morocco and held French nationality. His partner, who lived with him in Carcassonne, has been detained, Molins said.

Lakdim started his rampage in Carcassonne at around 10.30am (0930 GMT), hijacking a car and shooting the two people inside, Molins said. The passenger was killed, and the driver remains in a critical condition.

Lakdim then shot and wounded a police officer who was out jogging with colleagues before driving to the Super U supermarket in nearby Trebes.

"The attacker entered the store shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) and saying he was a soldier of the Islamic State, ready to die for Syria," Molins said.

He further demanded "the release of his brothers" from prison before shooting a supermarket customer and an employee dead.

"I was five metres away from him," the store's security guard said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"He shot at me twice." Luckily for the security guard, "he shot badly."

HERO POLICEMAN WOUNDED

About 50 people were in the supermarket at the time, and though some people managed to escape, several remained inside.

Senior officer Arnaud Beltrame, 45, offered to take their place while his colleagues negotiated with Lakdim, Molins said.

When the special forces officers heard shots they stormed the store, killing the gunman and recovering Beltrame, who had been "seriously wounded".

Macron led tributes to the police officer, who has been hailed as a hero.

"He saved lives and honoured his colleagues and his country," Macron said.

"He is currently fighting for his life and all our thoughts go out to him and his family," he added.

A Portuguese national was among those killed, the government in Lisbon confirmed.

TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR GOVERNMENT

Trebes, a tranquil town of 5,000 people along the famed Canal du Midi, was on lockdown throughout Friday as helicopters swirled overhead and heavily armed and masked police carried out a massive operation in Lakdim's neighbourhood.

The fact that Lakdim had been monitored as a potential extremist will raise difficult questions for Macron's government as to how he slipped through the net.

"We had monitored him and did not think he had been radicalised," Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said of Lakdim after flying to the scene.

"He was already under surveillance when he suddenly decided to act."

Friday's violence took place in a part of France still scarred by a killing spree in 2012 in the city of Toulouse and nearby Montauban where another militant, Mohamed Merah, shot dead seven people including three Jewish schoolchildren.

That assault marked the first of several big Islamist attacks in France since 2015, including the gun massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, the November 2015 attacks that killed 130 in Paris, and a summer 2016 truck attack during Bastille Day festivities in Nice.

The most recent assault came in October when a Tunisian man stabbed to death two women at Marseille's railway station, shouting "Allahu Akbar".

A state of emergency put in place just after the 2015 Paris attacks was lifted last October when Macron's centrist government passed a new law boosting the powers of security forces.

Soldiers continue to patrol major tourist sites around France and transport hubs under an anti-terror mission.

"We are in a small and calm town, but sadly the threat is everywhere," Collomb said.Decree 163, which introduced new regulations for the logistics market, has yet to deliver on its promises, Photo: Le Toan

According to Jan Segers, member of the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnams (EuroCham) Transport and Logistics

Sector Committee, Decree No.163/2017/ND-CP  promulgated in late 2017 and regulating conditions for logistics services  has yet to meet expectations of foreign businesses operating in the field.

At the moment, foreign investors in the logistics sector have yet to see an expansion of market access rights. Decree 163 was expected to have such an effect. However, it introduces an explicit requirement to comply with e-commerce regulations, he told VIR.

Under Clause 2, Article 4 of Decree 163, investors providing logistics services partially or entirely via internet-linked electronic networks, mobile phones, or other open networks have to comply with the regulations on e-commerce. At the same time, they have to abide by the regulations on specific logistics services regulated in the decrees Article 3.

Article 3 lists the services that fall under the category of logistics business. They include, among other things, operations and maintenance, cargo handling services other than services provided at airports; container warehousing services as part of shipping support services and warehousing services of all modes of transportation; and delivery services, cargo agency, and customs clearance agent services.

In addition, the same category encompasses wholesale and retail support services, including the management of warehousing, collection, assembly, sorting, and delivery; cargo transportation services of sea transport, inland waterway transport, rail transport, road transport, air transport, and multimodal transportation; and technical analysis.

In spite of the concerns, the Vietnam Logistics Business Association (VLA) and lawyers have issued positive statements on the new decree.

According to Vaibhav Saxena, associate at the Vietnam International Law Firm, the requirement to comply with e-commerce regulations is a good move by the government.

Linking e-commerce to logistics sector is an important move by the Vietnamese government in order to ensure better accountability and entrust into fair business practices in Vietnam, he said.

Moreover, Decree 163, having come into effect on February 20, puts an end to the restriction of mandatory joint venture establishments for foreign investors.

Decree 163 provides relief to foreign investors and aims to boost foreign investment in the logistics sector, by eliminating the pre-requisite mandatory condition of a joint venture set-up and giving the green light for foreign investors to establish an enterprise in Vietnam, Saxena said.

With the removal of restrictions on the form of commercial presence of foreign investors in logistics, Decree 163 will considerably enhance the flow of foreign investment into Vietnams logistics market and encourage the sustainable development of this sector in all modes of transportation.

Echoing Saxenas view, VLAs deputy general secretary Nguyen Tuong said that Decree 163 is a sizeable improvement. This is a good signal for foreign investment in logistics services and one in line with Vietnams World Trade Organization commitments, he said.

The logistics business has proven its indispensable importance in supporting and facilitating other industrial business activities. In light of the incredible growth of the industry and the economy, the demand for logistics services will certainly surge, leading to immense opportunities for business development in the sector.

These are in anticipation of potential foreign investors  especially those from Japan and northern Europe  that seek to establish either wholly-owned entities or joint ventures in Vietnam.

At the moment, there is a substantial presence of foreign companies in Vietnams logistics market, particularly in the international transportation segment, with more than 40 active foreign shipping firms. These include Denmarks Maersk Line, Singapores APL Logistics, Germanys Hapag-Lloyd, and Japans NYK Line.French President Emmanuel Macron. (Photo: AFP/Peter Dejong)

"The EU must be united and determined ... if we are attacked we will react without weakness," Macron said at the end of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels.

"We talk about everything in principle with a friendly country that respects WTO rules. Nothing should be addressed when it is with a gun to your head", he said referring to the World Trade Organization, the body that handles trade disputes.

The French leader spoke after Trump on Thursday authorised the suspension of controversial tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from key trade partners including the European Union, but only until May 1.

"It doesn't seem to me that this date is a realistic one given the broad issues we have to discuss with the US," said Jean-Claude Juncker, chief of the European Commission, which handles trade talks for the 28 member states.

Given the timing, EU leaders said in a statement the bloc would "reserve its rights, in compliance with WTO rules, to respond to the US measures as appropriate and in a proportionate manner."

The commission earlier this month drew up a list of potential counter-measures, including tariffs on peanut butter, motorcycles and denim jeans, in case Trump slapped on the tariffs.

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a tweet that "these discussions between allies and partners should not be subject to artificial deadlines," she added.

Trump's exemption landed just before a Friday deadline, and came after eleventh hour talks in Washington between Malmstrom and top US officials.

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and South Korea were also spared.

"We are just starting a negotiation with the European Union because they've really shut out our country to a large extent, they have barriers ... very strong tariffs," Trump said in Washington on Thursday.

'GUN TO OUR HEAD'

Some leaders bristled at Trump's tactics and said that his methods were unworthy of close allies.

"This gives the impression that the head of the United States is looking to negotiate with the European Union with a gun to our head," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.

Speaking in Paris, EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici warned that the "devil was in the details".

"This decision is temporary and will require exchanges with Washington and we will have to prepare for all eventualities," Moscovici told France Inter radio.

Despite the apparent climbdown toward Europe, Trump has sparked fresh trade war fears by imposing huge tariffs on Chinese imports with Beijing unveiling its own measures against US goods.Investigations are continuing in Britain over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent. (Photo: AFP/Geoff Caddick)

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hit out at Britain for garnering EU support over the poisoning of a former double agent, suggesting that London's focus was now on making "the crisis with Russia as deep as possible".

Diplomatic pressure is growing on Moscow over its role in the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury in early March.

The European Union is recalling its ambassador to Moscow for consultations and a number of member states are considering whether to follow Britain's lead and expel Russian intelligence agents posing as diplomats.

"As for the decision taken, we regret in this context that again such decisions are taken using the wording 'highly likely'," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"We don't agree with this and we repeat again that Russia absolutely definitely has nothing to do with the Skripal case."

Russia's top diplomat Lavrov accused Britain of "feverishly trying to force allies to take confrontational steps".

"We still do not see any facts," state news agency RIA Novosti quoted him as saying on a visit to Hanoi.

"The absence of which makes one think that all of this is a provocation, the investigation has not even been finished yet."

The Russian foreign ministry said it regretted "the European Union opted to take its cue from yet another anti-Russian campaign unleashed by London and its allies across the ocean."

In a televised address, Putin thanked Russians for giving him the "highest level of support in the history of our country" in Sunday's elections and urged the nation to come together amid the "difficult internal and external challenges we face."

'ATTACK ON EU SOVEREIGNTY'

French President Emmanuel Macron said in Brussels that "we see this attack as a serious challenge to our security and as an attack on European sovereignty."

He told a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that "it calls for a coordinated, determined response from the European Union and its member states."

Merkel said further steps were "necessary" to respond to the attack.

Latvia said it would expel "one or several" Russian diplomats while EU President Donald Tusk said more moves were expected as early as Monday

May briefed other EU leaders on the probe into the Salisbury attack over a summit dinner on Thursday.

She managed to overcome reluctance from countries such as Greece and Italy to jeopardise close Kremlin ties and persuaded them to back Britain's conclusion that Moscow was to blame.

Merkel said May had shared "certain findings" that left little doubt Moscow was behind the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War II.

"We believe that the analyses are already very well-founded and this has not been questioned by anyone," Merkel said.

She backed further action from EU states, saying: "We agreed - Germany and France at least - that such reactions are still necessary in addition to recalling the ambassador."

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said the ambassador's recall was an "extraordinary measure" never before taken by the bloc.

But divisions remain over how far to go, with Austria already ruling out expelling diplomats.

Tusk said it was not clear how many countries would join the expulsions.

"More than one but I don't think that it will be the whole group," he said.

The leaders of the Czech Republic, Denmark and Ireland all said they were considering further unilateral steps, including expelling diplomats.

DIPLOMATS LEAVE MOSCOW

Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats they said were spies, and Russia responded in kind, also halting the activities of the British Council cultural and educational organisation.

On Friday afternoon British diplomats left the Moscow mission in several minibuses as remaining diplomatic staff sent them off with a round of applause, Russian television showed.

The Kremlin has angrily rejected Britain's claims and Russian officials have offered numerous alternative explanations, including that London directed the attack itself or that Washington may have been involved.

The Skripals are both in a coma after being found collapsed on a park bench, although a policeman who was also contaminated was released from hospital on Thursday.Nexen Tech and Hoang Dan join hands for the project

A pioneer in automation, Nexen Tech Corporation Limited Company has realised its expansion strategy to Southeast Asia by developing a new facility in Gia Phu Industrial Complex (Ninh Binh) which is 140 kilometres from Haiphong Port.

Nexen Tech signed a memorandum of understanding with Hoang Dan Investment and Construction Single Member Limited Company on land leasing for the construction project.

The signing ceremony was attended by Nguyen Cao Son, director of the Ninh Binh Department of Planning and Investment, Lee Hyun Chul, vice chairman of Nexen Tech, and Nguyen Van Dan, director of Hoang Dan.

The facility will focus on manufacturing wiring harnessthe company's flagship product with a production volume of about 450,000 products a yearused in large and small buses as well as battery module harness (battery module system) and electric vehicle charger cables, among others, to prepare for a forecast boom in hybrid electric vehicles from 2020.

The company also plans to increase the product volume for automakers in Southeast Asia who are rapidly growing, and then expand outside of Asia with the hopes of reaching the global market.

Nexen Tech is currently operating two manufacturing facilities in Qingdao (China), named GoHyeon and RaeSeo. The third plant will be built with a total area of 63,5000sq.m and a construction area of 45,000sq.m. After receiving approval for the environmental assessment report in June, the company will hold the ground-breaking ceremony in July.

Kim Jeong Hoon, CEO of Nexen Tech, also attended the Vietnam-Korea Business Forum during the official visit of Korean President Moon Jae-in to strengthen the partnership between the two countries and encourage Korean enterprises operating in Vietnam.

Nexen Tech is showing very positive moves in opening up the Southeast Asian market to access new growth drivers.

Kim Jeong Hoon, CEO of Nexen Tech

Earlier this March, Nexen Tech partnered up with Volex from the UK, which is expanding its business network with wiring harness, including the exclusive supply of Tesla Model 3 rechargeable cables expected to be launched in 2018.

Thus, Nexen Tech's products have the potential to be used in electric vehicles developed by Tesla or equipment from Dyson UK.

"This new plant will be our next step in entering Southeast Asia. We will build and operate this plant with a long-term vision through competitive products, said Hoon.Vietnams deeper economic intergation in the region has helped it further improve its infrastructure and the life of its people, Photo: Le Toan

The sixth Greater Mekong Subregion Summit (GMS-6) and the 10th Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Summit (CLV-10)  to take place in Hanoi from March 29-31  are to be attended by about 2,000 delegates and 150 local and foreign journalists. The events will highlight the close relationship between Vietnam and its neighbouring countries, while forging links between regional and global firms.

In particular, leaders of more than 200 foreign groups, including many from China, will be participating in the events, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dang Dinh Quy told VIR. They will meet with one another to find investment and business opportunities, and may ink co-operation deals. They will also be able to have direct dialogues with top leaders of GMS nations to voice their investment and business plans, as well as their concerns.

The six GMS countries are Cambodia, China (specifically Yunnan province and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region), Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under the theme of Leveraging 25 Years of Co-operation, Building an Integrated, Sustainable and Prosperous GMS, GMS-6 aims to celebrate the 25th founding anniversary of the GMS programme, and define co-operation orientations for building a region of prosperity, integration, and sustainable development.

Notably, it is expected that GMS-6 will officially adopt a five-year action plan framework that includes $64 billion in projects to help the subregion achieve inclusive growth and sustainable development.

The framework  known as the GMS Regional Investment Framework 2018-2022 (RIF 2022) and endorsed last September in Hanoi  includes 222 investment and technical assistance projects. These are focused on a large number of sectors, such as transport, environment, tourism, foodstuff safety and hygiene, energy, trade, and agriculture.

The projects will be implemented across borders and/or within member countries and have a co-ordination office for each. They are expected to yield great benefits for Vietnam.

The $64 billion fund comes from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the six GMS countries, and other stakeholders, including private investors.

RIF 2022 will be utilised for supporting the Hanoi Action Plan (HAP) 2018-2022, which will also be officially adopted by GMS country leaders at GMS-6.

HAP calls for an expansion of economic corridors to boost connectivity between countries, as well as within rural and urban centres, to ensure a more equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth.

GMS was established in 1992 as an initiative of ADB. Its priority fields cover infrastructure development, energy, telecommunications, tourism, trade-investment, human resources, and the environment.

Meanwhile, CLV-10 aims to review the implementation of the Master Plan for Socio-Economic Development of the CLV Development Triangle Area for 2010-2020. Participants will discuss new co-operation orientations for the near future, with a focus on measures to increase trilateral economic connectivity.

The CLV Development Triangle Area was founded in 1999, with its key co-operation sectors being security, external affairs, transport, industry, agriculture, trade, investment, and environmental protection.Document 563 sought tighter control over credit growth to meet the SBVs target of 17 per cent for 2018, Photo: Le Toan

According to experts, real estate firms need to apply more effort to cope with more stringent lending requirements starting this year, and with the coming influx of new supply.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) recently asked credit institutions and local offices of foreign banks to give lending priority to production and business and to strictly monitor the acquisition of consumer loans that are used, in reality, for investment and trading in real estate and/or securities.

SBVs recent Document No.563/NHNN-TTGSNH, issued in January by SBV, asked for tighter control over credit growth in order to meet its target. The credit growth target for 2018 was set at 17 per cent, lower than the growth rate of 18.17 per cent the year prior.

SBV Governor Le Minh Hung has instructed financial institutions to lessen the focus on real estate and construction and stabilise fund sources over medium and long terms.

Financial institutions will also have to review regularly and trace the financial capacity and progress of real estate projects in order to have proper solutions when problems arise, Hung said.

According to Tuan Bui, general director of Indochina Kajima, the real estate development platform of Indochina Capital and Kajima Corporation, the new document may put some pressure on banks to curb lending to real estate projects. However, the extent of the impact is difficult to estimate, given that there is no specific quota capping of credit allocated to the real estate sector.

As the real estate and stock markets continued to experience strong growth in early 2018, SBV has warned financial institutions to monitor credit growth in these two sectors. The impact of Document 563 on the market may not be significant at present, as this is mainly a generic guidance document rather than a quantitatively restrictive legislation. Still, the market will have to watch out for more detailed regulations implemented by SBV in this area, especially if they find it necessary to impose stronger measures to control future lending activities, said Tuan.

Michael Piro Director, Indochina Strategic Initially, we were not very optimistic with this news. Document 563 may be interpreted in the wrong way, suggesting real estate lending is risky and thus should be prohibited in general. However, we have to understand that the document is not issued to block all real estate lending. Instead, it emphasises the importance of risk management in lending activities to generate sustainable credit expansion without escalating the non-performing loan burden. Lending to good developers can provide healthy credit growth to banks and the reputation of the developers is currently the most crucial element that banks will consider when evaluating real estate loans. Therefore, this document will hopefully not affect reputable real estate developers who can deliver great products to the market. The timing may not be right for the ratification of Document 563, because if we look at credit growth during January and February of 2018, it has been lower than the levels experienced in 2017. Nonetheless, with this document, SBV is sending assertive signals to the market that lending will be carefully monitored, suggesting that although Vietnam is setting a GDP growth target of 6.8 per cent for 2018 (similar to 2017), the country will not pursue credit expansion by all means to achieve the GDP target. Nguyen Tri Hieu Economist As with any other SBV-issued circulars or documents, Document 563 will certainly have an impact on the local real estate market. Given the tightened rules on the use of consumer credits for the purpose of investing in the real estate business, banks are warned to revise their loans allotted to the high-risk real estate sector. I suppose we might not be able to see at this stage to what extent banks will follow this instructions and how the real estate market will be affected. Nevertheless, we do know that banks have set their target credit growth for the year, and such targets will take in credit for the real estate sector, including lending for real estate investment or business, for property purchase, housing renovation, and housing construction. The real estate sector, as such, would remain a meal ticket for banks in terms of a steady source of income, and a contribution towards their set credit targets. At present, real estate credit is sorted for commercial purposes, whereas property purchase, housing renovation, and housing construction are considered consumer credits or on an individual scale. Combining them together, the total would be large and in my view, this will be an indicator for how the capital is actually flowing into the real estate sector, and thus act as a guide for the central bank to monitor its credit target.

In response to VIRs inquiry about which segments the new document would have the most impact on, Tuan said that high-end and luxury products would be most affected if more stringent credit controls are applied.

Barry Weisblatt, head of research at Viet Capital Securities JSC (VCSC), stated that the differences between mortgage lending and lending to property developers must be cleared.

SBV grants special treatment to mortgages by giving them a lower risk weighting than normal loans. That has not changed following Document 563s issuance. Property developer lending has always been subject to a risk weighting treatment, even before Document 563. That is why most property developers get customers to pre-pay for the property during construction, Weisblatt told VIR.

He added that for unsecured consumer finance, in reality a bank cannot do anything to use the funds. This sort of money does not go into real estate, but it might go into the securities market, he cited.

In fact, bank credit is still directed towards real estate, especially the segment of home loan customers. Also, thanks to better real estate liquidity, banks can better handle bad debts, thus freezing the credit flow.

Nevertheless, since the real estate market has always consumed huge capital investment  and not all investors are financially strong  many experts are worried that credits for the real estate sector will breed more bad debts for banks.

Economist Tran Du Lich said that the market needs to enact selection and only investors with sufficient financial strength will survive, while those relying heavily on bank loans will not last long.

This is also the reason that we need banks guarantees in real estate projects. Given the direction SBV is headed and the risks of pouring money into this sector, many banks are more cautious about lending, Lich said.

According to SBV, total outstanding loans for real estate investment and business activities reached VND471.02 trillion ($21.41 billion) at the end of last year, accounting for 6.5 per cent of total outstanding loans of the economy. This ratio decreased from 7.7 per cent in 2016.

At the same time, SBV has taken measures to exert strict control over credits in real estate, by way of regulating safety rates and the misuse of short-term loans for medium- and long-term loans.

This SBV roadmap has been in effect since early 2015  encompassing Circular No.36/2014/TT-NHNN (dated November 20, 2014), and Circular No.06/2016/TT-NHNN (dated May 27, 2016)  having gradually reduced the aforementioned misuse of short-term loans, and increased the risk coefficient for real estate assets.

Circular No.19/2017/TT-NHNN, issued by SBV late last year, put forth the target of reducing the use of short-term capital for medium- and long-term loans to 45 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively, in 2018 and 2019.Over 150 vehicles burned in the Carina Plaza fire

At 1 AM on March 23, the fire and big explosions started at the basement parking lot of Carina Plazas block A and B at 1648 Vo Van Kiet Street, District 8, Ho Chi Minh City, while residents were sleeping and the fire bells failed to go off. Residents were woken by the smell of smoke and the screams of others, but no fire bells. People said that they tried to the small fire extinguishers to little effect.

The fire has killed at least 13 people, injured a hundred, burned 13 cars and 150 motorbikes, and damaged the properties of residents. The conflagration caused the highest number of fatalities in Ho Chi Minh City in the last 16 years, which shows the weakness of fire prevention and management at Carina Plazas management board.

Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan asked for a clear explanation why the fire bells were not active that night. Why did the fire start at the empty basement, and how did it kill 13 people living on higher floors? Nhan emphasised.

He also ordered a review of the process of handling fire and explosion incidents at Carina Plaza. How many times do they check and drill every year? What are the responsibilities of the building management board and the apartment developer? Nguyen Thien Nhan asked, ruminating on the responsibilities of Hung Thanh Co., Ltd. and 577 Investment Corporation.

Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong also asked: People said they did not hear the fire alarm. The District 8 Fire Department reported that the fire prevention drills were held twice a year, but why did the fire alarms not go off at the Carina Plaza fire? We cannot trust the lives of people on blankets and clothes tied together to escape.

He also emphasised the need to overcome the consequences of the fire, ensuring the safety of residents and households of Carina Plaza, and helping them to stabilise their lives soon.

People collected their personal belongings to leave Carina Plaza after the fire

At first, the city will provide support of VND15 million ($661) for each casualty and VND5 million ($220) to the injured. However, the developer - 577 Investment Corporation and management board of Carina Plaza has yet to make an announcement related to their responsibilities or compensation for the damage.

Although holding a huge land fund, the business results of 577 Investment Corporation are getting increasingly worse. According to Viet Capital Securities Company (VCSC), NBB had to pay interest of around VND170 billion ($7.5 million) per year during 2010-2013. To tackle these issues, 577 Investment Corporation divested from other business operations to focus on real estate as well as renewed loans and raised equity capital.Vietnam is Italys main partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). On 21 January 2013, the two governments signed a strategic partnership agreement. Trade between the two countries is expected to reach US$ 6 billion this year. Italy is 31st out of 128 countries in terms of investments in Vietnam, with 88 projects worth more than US$ 388 million.

Rome (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Italy and Vietnam today celebrated 45 years of diplomatic relations, established on 23 March 1973 during a brutal war that was tearing the country apart and ended with the victory of Communist insurgents in the south and the countrys reunification.

Over this period, the two countries have developed close ties and cooperation. Italy has actively supported greater cooperation between Vietnam and the European Union (EU) and the normalisation of relations between Vietnam and international financial, commercial and monetary institutions.

On 21January 2013, the two governments reached a strategic partnership agreement signed during the visit to Italy of Nguyen Phu Trong, Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Since then, Vietnam has become Italys main partner inside the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

With an annual increase of almost 9 per cent, bilateral trade reached US$ 4.7 billion in 2016, and should rise to US$ 6 billion in 2017-2018.

The Vietnam-EU free trade agreement, which comes into effect this year, will play an important role for both nations, helping to promote trade and investment between Europe, especially Italy, and Vietnam.

In terms of investments, Italy ranks 31st out of 128 countries with 88 projects worth more than US$ 388 million. For its part, the Italian government has included Hanoi on its list of top ten emerging markets for trade and investment.

The two countries have set up a Joint Economic Cooperation Committee, which met for the first time in October 2014 in Hanoi, then in October 2015, November 2016, and more recently in November 2017.

Italy is also intensifying cooperation in the cultural field, particularly in heritage conservation, museums and human resources development. This includes restoring the ancient Hindu sanctuary of My Son.

Tourism is also a rapidly growing. In 2017 Vietnam welcomed 50,000 Italian visitors, a record. Furthermore, Vietnam and Italy have reached 72 agreements in education and training.

Currently, about 5,000 Vietnamese citizens live, work or study in Italy.Thank you very much for coming along to attend todays briefing.

And, like I think many people in this room, we were all represented, I hope, at yesterdays briefing in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Skripal incident. I was not there. That was a decision on our side that it would not be appropriate for me to attend. I do though know from the member of my team who did attend what sort of event it was; including a rather unpleasant barrage in some cases of personal insults and disinformation.

What we would like to do, what I would like to do today, is to set out some of the facts as we see them and to answer any questions or comments that you might wish to make.

So to start with the facts. There was an attempted murder in Salisbury a couple of weeks ago of 2 individuals, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, using a nerve agent of a type that we know was developed in the Soviet Union, kept by the Russian Federation, and not declared under the Chemical Weapons Convention as the Russian Federation was obliged to do.

We asked for an explanation of the Russian Federation as to how this had come about. That explanation was not given and then events took their course. We announced a number of measures that we would take including the expulsion of 23 undeclared intelligence officers from the United Kingdom working in the Russian embassy, and as you know 23 of my staff will be leaving this embassy later this week as required by the Russian Federation.

So Ill set out a timeline of events and then say a bit about why we think the evidence points towards Russian involvement in this attack and also about what the UK is doing in a bit more detail.

So first the timeline. On the 4th of March Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found on a park bench in Salisbury, they were slipping out of consciousness. They were taken to a hospital by our emergency services. They are still in hospital. They remain in a very very serious condition.

When we established that a nerve agent had been used we immediately informed the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that chemical weapons had been used in the United Kingdom.

Four days later the analysts at Porton Down, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in the UK, established and made clear that this was a military-grade chemical weapon. One of the Novichok series; a nerve agent as I said produced in Russia. Porton Down is an Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons accredited and designated laboratory.

On the basis of the information we had, we concluded that there were only 2 plausible explanations for how this material had been used in the United Kingdom. Either it was a direct act by the Russian state against our country or the Russian government had lost control of this catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.

We summoned the Russian ambassador to account for the use of a Russian military-grade nerve agent on the 12 of March, giving Russia until the end of the following day to provide an account of what had happened. There was then no credible explanation or response from the Russian government. So our Prime Minister set out the UKs response. On the 18th of March Russia announced its retaliation.

Ill now set out why weve concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

First, there is no doubt that the weapon used in the attack was the military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok series. This has been confirmed by specialists, our specialists. An Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission is in the UK now to independently confirm this analysis.

There is also no doubt that Novichok was produced in Russia by the Russian state. It is not a weapon that can be manufactured by non-state actors. It is so dangerous it requires the highest grade state laboratories and expertise to produce it.

The existence of the Novichok programme has been confirmed by a number of scientists who worked on the programme of the time. The Russian scientist Vil Mirzayanov has testified that Novichoks were developed as part of the Soviet Unions offensive chemical warfare programme and inherited by the Russian Federation. Vladimir Gutenev, a Duma member and member of Russias Commission for Chemical Disarmament has confirmed that the Novichok programme existed. Yesterday, Vladimir Uglev, a scientist who worked on the programme in the 1970s and 1980s, confirmed that the Soviet Union developed hundreds of new generation Novichok-group nerve agents.

We also have other information that supports that conclusion. The Foreign Secretary made clear on Sunday, last Sunday, that we have information indicating that within the last decade Russia has investigated ways of delivering nerve agents likely for assassination purposes. Part of this programme has involved producing quantities of Novichok agents.

Russias claims that Novichok could have been produced elsewhere have no credibility. We have no information to indicate that this agent could have been produced anywhere else except in Russia. So we have no doubt that the nerve agent was produced in Russia.

With that in mind we asked the Russian government to explain how it came to be used in the UK. As I said, Russia offered no explanation and yesterdays briefing demonstrated Russia has instead offered disinformation, distraction and accusations. We have, as of yesterday, counted over 30 lines of disinformation which go back to the Russian state  which include the possibility that the United Kingdom did it, Ukraine was responsible, the materials were made in Sweden, or that it was Skripals mother-in-law who attempted to kill him.

Russia has therefore offered no explanation of how this agent came to be used in the UK, and has offered no explanation either as to why Russia has an undeclared chemical weapons programme in contravention of international law.

I should just remind you that under the Chemical Weapons Convention all signatories to the Convention are required to declare all capabilities that go back to 1946. Russia is the successor state of the Soviet Union and therefore is obliged to declare that capability. It has not done so.

We also know that an assassination attempt of this kind is consistent with Russian state behaviour in recent years. Russia has a record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations in Russia and overseas, including in 2006 the assassination of Litvinenko using the radioactive substance Polonium-210. We also know from public statements by Russian officials that Russia views defectors as legitimate targets for assassination.

So the fact that the Novichok was produced in Russia, the fact that Russia has a history of state-sponsored assassinations, and the fact that Russia has responded with the usual playbook of disinformation and denial left us with no choice but to conclude that this amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.

This is the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War and is a violation of the fundamental prohibition on the use of chemical weapons  Article 1 of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Since the attack Russia has attempted to undermine the UKs position, accusing us of not following the OPCW conventions and refusing to provide any evidence. These accusations are designed to confuse and to weaken our resolve and that of the international community.

All of the UKs actions have been fully consistent with our obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. There is for example no provision in the Chemical Weapons Convention that requires the UK to share samples with Russia of the agent that was used in Salisbury. Russias history in other spheres, in particular for us the Litvinenko case, makes it entirely clear that we have no reason to work with or to trust the Russian state to provide credible or independent analysis on issues where its interests might be affected.

As I said earlier we are facilitating independent analysis of the material used in Salisbury. An OPCW team arrived at our request in the United Kingdom on the 19 of March. They are meeting officials from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down and the police to discuss how to collect samples. These samples will then be sent to 2 highly reputable international laboratories selected by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for testing, and we expect to see the results in the next couple of weeks.

At the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday Russia said it would not respect the conclusions of that independent OPCW analysis. Russia has also claimed that the UK has not followed its legal obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, especially Article 9. This is simply not true. The Chemical Weapons Convention makes clear that the UK has the right to lead our own response, engaging the OPCW and others as appropriate. The 10-day window for consultations Russia refers to is a right, our right, not an obligation. Article 9 contains nothing prohibiting states from seeking a rapid response to their immediate and urgent concerns from another state party, which is exactly what we did on the 12 of March when we asked Russia to account for what had happened.

Novichok is a horrific weapon. It is a weapon of war. It was used with tragic consequences for Sergei Skripal and his daughter. It also affected a policeman, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was one of the first to respond to the incident, and it affected a large number of UK citizens. 51 people have been assessed or treated in hospital. 131 civilians have been put in potential contact with this nerve agent.

The events on the next slide I think need no explanation. They are about a pattern of behaviour specifically on chemical weapons. Russia has blocked action against President Asads use of chemical weapons in Syria, including multiple vetoes of Security Council resolutions designed to bring that use to account  following particularly the attack using sarin gas on Khan Sheikhoun in 2017. This undermines the international non-proliferation regime on which all countries, including Russia, depend for their security.

Ill say a few words now about the UK response. As you know we have expelled a number of Russian diplomats. There has been a Russian response.

The underlying point though here is that we were compelled to move to protect our national security in this case. We have dismantled the network of Russian undeclared intelligence operatives working out of the diplomatic mission in the UK. We have enhanced border controls and we are tackling criminality and corruption by individuals linked to the Russian state in the UK. We of course have further options if we need them. But our chief aim as I said is to protect our national security.

Finally, before I throw the floor open to questions Id like to thank all of our partners for the solidarity in recent weeks. Russias modus operandi here is to divide, confuse and sow the seeds of doubt. Your support in the coming months in taking action to protect everybodys security, the global security regime, will be essential to demonstrate that Russia must be held to account for what has happened here.

As my Prime Minister made very clear in Parliament last week, this is a dispute between governments, not between the peoples of our countries. A very large part of what my embassy is here to do and will continue doing is to develop mutually beneficial relations with Russia in all the areas that have been so successful over the last 25 years. Trade, education, people-to-people links, science and technology links. That remains as important today as we go forward as it has ever been. Thank you.WWFs Earth Hour Tonight - 8.30pm

WWFs landmark Earth Hour movement is set to once again unite millions of people from around the planet to shine a light on climate action. As the earth continues to break climate records, the need for greater ambition and commitment must increase also.

Earth Hour as the worlds largest grassroots movement for the environment is mobilising individuals, communities and organisations to do their part to help change climate change. As skylines darken, people are invited to take a stand for climate action.

The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Climate Changes invites the whole community to support the campaign by setting aside an hour to switch off lights and generally raise awareness of climate change.

As in previous years, the North Face of the Rock, the Moorish Castle and the Supreme Court will not be lit to coincide with Earth Hour. The Castle will be unlit all night on Saturday and the North Face will be unlit over the whole of the weekend.

The Plus sign on the Earth Hour logo symbolises that the campaign is beyond just 60 minutes.Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

From the moment Cynthia Nixon announced that she was mounting a primary challenge to Andrew Cuomo in this years New York gubernatorial election, the Sex and the City references began to roll in. Nixon is, of course, best known for her role as Miranda on the show  and while there is the risk that people will reduce her to that character, there is also an upside. And that upside includes Andrew Cuomo, who has been known to describe himself as a big, tough Italian guy, being forced to answer questions about Sex and the City.

For instance, during a Friday interview with NY1, the governor was asked who his favorite character on the show is. I dont have a favorite, he replied. I dont want to pick favorites. Fun!

NY1s Bobby Cuza asked NYC mayor  and Cuomo nemesis  Bill de Blasio the same question in a recent interview about Nixon. De Blasio went with Anthony Marentino (Mario Cantone), citing ethnic loyalty. Ey!Matt Damon. Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Earlier this month, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, the head of strategic outreach for Ben Affleck and Matt Damons Pearl Street Films, announced the production companys decision to adopt inclusion riders on all their upcoming projects. Inclusion riders, if youll remember from Frances McDormands Oscar shout-out, are a contractual measure designed to ensure gender and racial equity on film productions. A similar commitment was made recently by Michael B. Jordans Outlier Society, and Matt Damon discussed his companys decision today with The Hollywood Reporter. There have been a lot of back channel conversations that have been going on, the actor explained. I would say most of the people I know are activated around this and talking about this. Theres no reason our industry shouldnt look like our country demographically.

The concept was developed back in 2014 by Stacy Smith, the director of USC Annenbergs Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative, and according to Damon, it was DiGiovanni who brought it to Pearl Streets attention and stressed the impact their use of riders could have on the industry. We hired Fanshen a few years ago with issues of inclusion because we needed to do better, said Damon. And she brought us the Annenberg study that was done out of USC, which was just the data collection on the real numbers industry-wide. And they were horrible. It was alarming and embarrassing. So she kind of challenged us with that.

Damon, who THR says sees inclusion riders being implemented on a case-by-case basis, seems optimistic that riders will help bring the industry to a point at which it organically incorporates the wide breadth of talented individuals working in Hollywood. Hopefully, if you can use it as a tool to combat implicit bias, when Dr. Smith does her study again, well see better inclusion in Hollywood. Thats the hope, Damon said. The rider itself is not the point. Thats the means to the end. The point is inclusion and hopefully this is the tool that can get us there.Steven Spielberg. Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

In recent years, Netflix has found a decent amount of success by diversifying and expanding its original film slate, with some outings, such as Dee Rees Mudbound and Ava DuVernays documentary 13th, going so far as to receive nominations at the Academy Awards. (Icarcus even picked up Best Documentary this year.) Its been well documented how Academy voters are incredibly divisive whether Netflix, a streaming giant primarily catering to television viewers, should be submitting films for Oscars consideration, and they may have found their new celebrity spokesperson: Steven Spielberg. Because, surprise, he really dislikes Netflix gunnin for that awards season hardware. Once you commit to a television format, youre a TV movie. You certainly, if its a good show, deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar, Spielberg said in an ITV News interview. I dont believe films that are just given token qualifications in a couple of theaters for less than a week should qualify for the Academy Award nomination.

Interestingly, Spielberg isnt the first prolific director to challenge Netflix for the way it approaches awards season. Christopher Nolan previously said Netflixs streaming and theatrical film release strategy was bizarre and mindless, although he later apologized to Netflixs chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, for his undiplomatic stance. Care to weigh in, Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson? Maybe?Former Georgia Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller has passed away at age 86.

He died at his home after being treated for Parkinson's Disease. After his diagnosis for Parkinson's, Miller retired from public life. "Zell has good days and bad days," his grandson Bryan told CBS46 News in 2017.

Political Career

Miller served as Georgia's governor from 1991-1999. He defeated Johnny Isakson in the race after beating Andrew Young and Roy Barnes in the primary. He was later succeeded by Barnes.

He is currently the longest serving Lieutenant Governor in Georgia history. Miller also served as the keynote speaker during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

He was born in the Towns County community of Young Harris in 1932 and served as mayor of the town from 1959-1960 before becoming a Georgia State Senator from 1961-1964.

He's also very well known for the creation of the Georgia HOPE scholarship. More than 1.8 million students have gone to college in Georgia on HOPE Scholarships and more than 1.6 million four-year olds have begun their education through Georgia's Pre-K Program.

These were his proudest achievements in his 46-year career in public service.

Statements on his passing

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal released this statement Friday morning on the passing of Miller:

"It is with a heavy heart that Sandra and I offer Shirley our deepest condolences on the passing of her devoted husband, Zell. Georgia has lost a favorite son and a true statesmen, and I've lost a dear friend. Zell's legacy is unequaled and his accomplishments in public service are innumerable. Without question, our state and our people are better off because of him."

"But the mark Zell made in his private life-as a dutiful son, a loving husband, and a proud father and grandfather-are the ones of which I'm sure he was most proud. I was honored to serve with him in the Senate and have cherished his counsel for decades. My thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and loved ones, of which he had many. May God bless him and keep him."

Former Georgia Governor and current U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue

"Mary and I are saddened to learn of the death of our friend, Zell Miller. A son of the mountains of north Georgia, he dedicated his life to this country, and to Georgia, as a veteran and faithful public servant. His legacy as a state legislator, lieutenant governor, governor, and U.S. senator, particularly in expanding educational opportunities for Georgia students, will resonate for generations to come. We have no doubt that in Heaven, the Marine is having a feisty debate with some of his old friends right now. Mary and I are praying for Shirley, the entire Miller family, and Zell's many friends. May he rest in peace."

U.S. Senator David Perdue

"Bonnie and I join all Georgians in mourning the loss of former Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller. Zell Miller touched the lives of many as a teacher, Marine, public servant, and friend. Throughout his career, Zell Miller was a strong advocate for the value of a public education and made it his mission to ensure Georgia students had the opportunity to pursue a college degree."

"Because of his work on the HOPE Scholarship Program, over 1.8 million Georgians have been able to attend a public college or university in Georgia who may not have been able to otherwise. His legacy will live on through them. Bonnie and I are praying for Shirley and the Miller family during this very difficult time."

Georgia Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle

"One of the great honors of my time in public service was serving under Governor Zell Miller. We will remember Zell as the Governor who gave Georgia Hope  a true statesman who helped build the foundation that allowed our state to prosper. Through his passion for education, love for the people of our state, and dedication to giving Georgians the same opportunities that led a boy from a small mountain town to become one of the greatest leaders of the 20th Century, Governor Miller leaves a legacy that will always be honored and celebrated.

"All of Georgia's families and communities will feel the benefits of Governor Miller's dedicated service for generations to come, and he will continue to set an example for what public service should be about. I know I speak for many Georgians when I say we will truly miss Zell Miller.

"Nita and I send our most sincere condolences to Shirley and the entire Miller family."

Georgia State Representative Barry Loudermilk

"Zell Miller, former Governor and U.S. Senator, served our state and nation with integrity. We thank him and his family for a lifetime of service. Our prayers are with you."

Georgia State Senator Butch Miller

"Governor Miller was a friend to all who knew him. I knew him through my father-in-law, Jack Carey. Jack and Governor Miller were very close, having attended college together. One of my fondest memories of him is when he appeared on the Billy Dilworth Show.

Governor Miller truly had a positive impact on everyone he met and his impact on their lives will never be forgotten. He is an example of someone whose kingdom and legacy is not measured by what he had, but by what he did and the legacy he left behind. His commitment to this state and its citizens is truly commendable and will never be forgotten. He will have a lasting impact on Georgia through his message of honesty, decency, integrity and public service.

We will keep his family, friends and all of those he impacted in our thoughts and prayers. Today Georgia lost a legend, but his legacy will live on forever."

CARE President, CEO Michelle Nunn

"I am so saddened to learn of Zell Miller's death. He was a strong and independent voice for Georgia whose legacy will live on in the hope he inspired in close to a million scholarship students. He and Shirley lived their lives with a deep commitment to public service and an abiding love for our state. His friendship and support was a great honor to me and so many others who enjoyed it over the years. I will always relish the opportunity to sit with him on the front porch of his old stone house in Young Harris, built by his mother, and beloved until the end by a unique and historic Georgian."

Georgia Lottery Corporation

We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of former Georgia Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Miller family during this difficult time.

Gov. Miller's vision to establish a lottery in Georgia with profits earmarked for specific educational programs has made an indelible mark on our state.

"On behalf of the Georgia Lottery Corporation board, employees, and most importantly, Georgia's students, we are grateful for Governor Miller's foresight and leadership. Thanks to him more than 3 million students have benefitted from HOPE and Pre-K," stated Georgia Lottery President and CEO Gretchen Corbin.

Since the Georgia Lottery's inception in 1993, $19.3 billion has been raised for education in Georgia, including Georgia's HOPE Scholarship Program and Georgia's Pre-K Program. More than 1.8 million students have benefited from lottery-funded HOPE scholarships and grants, and more than 1.6 million 4-year-olds have attended lottery-funded Pre-K.

The legacy of Gov. Miller will live on in the millions of students and their families who have been positively impacted by Georgia Lottery-funded HOPE and Pre-K.

Georgia Congressman David Scott

"It is with deep sadness to hear of the passing of my dear friend and partner Zell Miller.

"Governor Zell Miller is a legend. His contributions to Georgia are legendary in so many ways, especially higher education as the author and creator of Georgia's Hope Scholarship Program.

"Governor Miller was not only my good friend and partner, but he was my mentor throughout my career in public service as a State Representative for 8 years, State Senator for 20 years and now 15 years as a U.S. Congressman. He appointed me when he was Lieutenant Governor and helped me to become Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, making me the first African American to hold that powerful position. He also appointed me as Chairman of the Higher Education Committee.

"I not only admire Zell Miller, but I truly love Zell Miller because he truly loved and helped David Scott make it all the way up the ladder to serve today as a United States Congressman of Georgia. May we all be inspired to continue Zell Miller's deeply impactful legacy of service."

Georgia Congressman Jody Hice

"Today is a sad day for the State of Georgia as we mourn the loss of an icon who fearlessly advocated for our state," said Congressman Hice. "We, as Georgians, are grateful for Zell Miller's principled leadership and service to our state and our country. His public service and commitment to serving the people of Georgia remains unparalleled. He was a trailblazer and role model for many who would follow in his footsteps. It is with great sadness and respect that I extend my deepest condolences to the Miller family, especially his wife, Shirley, his children and grandchildren, and his many friends. I hope it is a comfort to his family and friends that so many people share their tremendous loss and are praying for them in this difficult time."

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Stay with CBS46 News for updates.(CNN) -- A Tennessee man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 31 years has been awarded $1 million by the state.

In 1978, Lawrence McKinney was sentenced to 115 years in jail on rape and burglary charges. He was cleared of those charges in 2008 and was released from jail in 2009. At the time, the Tennessee Department of Corrections gave him $75 to start over.

"It's been a long road for Lawrence," said his attorney, Jack Lowery.

The governor recently exonerated him

Since his release, McKinney's been on a mission to clear his name. Before he could get the $1 million payout -- the maximum allowed under Tennessee law -- he needed a formal exoneration from the governor's office. But it wasn't easy.

In 2016, the Tennessee Board of Parole unanimously decided not to recommend that McKinney receive clemency.

"After considering all of the evidence, the board did not find clear and convincing evidence of innocence and declined to recommend clemency in this matter," Melissa McDonald, a spokeswoman for the board, told CNN at the time.

Fortunately for McKinney, 62, and his lawyers, the final call rested with Gov. Bill Haslam. And last December, five days before Christmas, Haslam went against the recommendation of the parole board and exonerated McKinney, Lowery said.

On Wednesday, the Tennessee Board of Claims voted 7-0 to give McKinney the maximum $1 million payment. Members of the board said they wished they could give McKinney more.

The $1 million will be split into an initial sum of $353,000, said Lowery, which will mostly go toward legal fees and a car for McKinney. The remaining $647,000 will be divvied up in monthly payments of $3,300.

Lowery said the payment is guaranteed for a minimum of 10 years, and if McKinney dies, his wife -- who was his pen pal while in jail -- will continue to receive the monthly annuity.

McKinney says he's happy to have the money. "In my age, it helps me so I won't have to work so hard," he told CNN on Friday. "In prison I had to work so hard for nothing."

"My blessings and praise go out to God," he added. "And number two, my pastor. He's always been there for me and my church has always been behind me. But my wife has really been right hand. She has always been there for me."

A 'humble man'

John Hunn, McKinney's pastor, and his church have spent years working with McKinney to clear his name.

"He's so used to injustice," Hunn said, "that I think he's really trying to get his head around what justice looks like."

McKinney is a "humble man" who cares more about the time he has left in life than the amount of money to his name, Hunn told CNN.

Lowery agreed.

"He hasn't shown as much interest in the money part of it," he said. "He wanted his name cleared, and the amazing thing, he wasn't angry at anybody."

McKinney said he doesn't hold any grudges about the years he was in jail. God, he said, took all of the anger out of his heart.

"If people paid attention to the situation that I went through, they'd see it's just a blessing," he said.

Hunn said he was glad McKinney's story could positively impact so many people, and "put a smile on peoples' faces."

The-CNN-Wire

 &  2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama lawmakers have rejected a proposal to require police officers to collect data on race and traffic stops.

The House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly voted down a procedural measure to bring the bill up for debate.

The legislation, which had cleared the Alabama Senate, sought to require police agencies to record data about the race and ethnicity of stopped motorists.

After the vote, Democratic Rep. Merika Coleman from Pleasant Grove said lawmakers were sending a message that, "Bama is still backwards."

The House vote was largely split along racial and party lines.

During debate on the bill, African-American lawmakers had shared stories of being stopped by police.

Some law enforcement groups had expressed opposition to the proposal, saying it would be a record-keeping burden.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

3/22/2018 10:02:23 PM (GMT -5:00)NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Thousands of people have marched in Tennessee cities to push for gun control and school safety as part of a national campaign sparked by the recent Florida school shooting.

In Memphis, media reports say about 1,500 people took to the streets Saturday in a march that went to the civil rights museum. Students led the way, yelling "enough is enough." The event included voter registration efforts.

Hundreds of people gathered in downtown Nashville. Nashville Mayor David Briley urged everyone 18 and up to vote. One of the marchers, Heather Larkin Vogler, says she wants her daughter and other children to be safe as participants spoke out against gun violence.

In Chattanooga, at least 1,000 students and adults took part in a march that took them to the Hamilton County Courthouse.The city of Huntsville, along with hundreds of military contractors, are gearing up for the largest convention the city will host all year.

The Association of the United States Army (AUSA) holds its annual Global Force Symposium and Exposition" at the Von Braun Center March 26-28, 2018.



This year, an announcement could come out of the meetings that would have a direct impact on all of the Tennessee Valley. Sam Torrey is president of the local Redstone chapter of AUSA. He said the three-day event, that starts Monday, is bringing top brass here to discuss the best way to move the US Army into the future.

"The key topic for this year's symposium is modernization. The purpose of the event is to share the latest information from the army, as well as industy's opportunity to engage with the army. It puts on a forum for the Army to have a professional meeting to talk about the latest and greatest modernization," he said.

And industry is involved in a big way. Military contractors from all over the country are coming to town, along with 6-thousand attendees. And they have money to spend. It's "all hands on deck" for the Huntsville Madison County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"It's 3.5 million (dollars) for the city and 300-thousand for local taxes," said Bureau sales manager Jo Seay. This is the fifth year of the symposium in the Rocket City, said Seay, "And we do a lot to keep it here and make sure that they're happy in Huntsville."

Organizers of this convention started planning it back in August. It's so big, every hotel room in the immediate Huntsville area is booked. Attendees are having to stay as far away as Athens, even southern Tennessee. At the back of the VBC the load-in has already begun. Hundreds of companies showing off the latest in military hardware and technology, many with local ties, which are important to the economies of Huntsville and north Alabama.

It's our area's deep military roots, and manufacturing and research base, that many feel could go a long way to attracting a new army command center to the area. No one is saying it out loud, but for the first time in the five-year history of Huntsville's involvement with this symposium, the Secretary of the Army himself will be here. That's leading to speculation of an announcement that Huntsville will be the new home of the Army Futures Command. This new command will oversee streamlining and R&D of new and better technology for modern soldiers.

Torrey won't come right out and say it, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing in Huntsville's favor. "Other than the fact that the Secretary of the Army is going to come here and the topic is modernization and there have been announcements since last October about the Army standing up a new modernization command. We don't know where that's going to be."

Of course, the six thousand attendees will also have plenty of opportunities to explore the Rocket City. Several meet-and-greets are planned for AUSA members, including a young professionals meeting at Campus 805, and the Rocket City Bash fundraiser at the US Space and Rocket Center.

WAAY 31 will be following the symposium next week and watching for the announcement of the Army's new Futures Command.With its white sands, clear waters and jutting mountains, Lord Howe Island is a slice of world heritage-listed paradise in the Pacific Ocean. There's just one problem - it is besieged by rats.

Rodents, which were introduced to the island by accident 100 years ago, are a major threat to its unique environment, including the endemic howea forsteriana or Kentia Palm.

Authorities have kept the rat population under control while planning a massive, multimillion-dollar extermination project that was supposed to take place last winter.

Idyllic Lord Howe Island, 600 kilometres from the mainland, has a rat problem.

But bungling and incompetence at Barnaby Joyce's pet agency, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, has now delayed the crucial eradication drive for a second time.A coalition of Australias most prominent welfare groups has implored Senate crossbenchers to reject the Turnbull governments corporate tax cuts, saying the policy is unconscionable when millions live in poverty.

Over the weekend a letter was sent to all Senate crossbenchers, who are being lobbied hard by the government to pass the signature economic legislation before the May budget.

A homeless woman sleeps in Martin Place in Sydney. Credit:Daniel Munoz

The proposed change would lower the tax rate for companies with a turnover of more than $50 million from 30 per cent to 25 per cent over the next eight years.

The move is opposed in a letter signed by groups including Anglicare, Oxfam Australia, the Salvation Army and the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS).Some of the neediest Catholic schools in Victoria are still being short-changed by administrators who are shuffling millions of taxpayers dollars to schools in wealthier areas, documents reveal.

While the federal government nominally allocates funding for each Catholic school, this is distributed to Catholic education authorities as a lump sum. They then use their own funding model to distribute the money as they see fit.

Money was diverted away from St Stephens in Reservoir. Credit:Paul Jeffers

Previously secret records taking in 14 Victorian schools show that in 2016, several needy schools had up to 37 per cent of their allocated government funding diverted elsewhere.

St Thomas Aquinas School in Norlane, which has a low socio-economic status score of 73, received $600,000 less from head office than the $2.4 million allocated by the government.

That worked out to a loss of about $4000 per student.Last week, I sat the mid-term exams for my final year of high school. In the exam room in Sydney, waiting for the clock to tick over to 8.45am, the anxiety was tangible. In that moment, my mind turned to you, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida.

Sitting there waiting, I wondered how you felt as you waited; waited for a killer with a semi-automatic gun to burst into your classroom; waited for him to kill your friends; waited to die.

Makenzie Hymes, 13, calls for gun law reform during a protest at the White House. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

So I write this letter to you, the survivors, as you prepare to "March For Our Lives" in Washington DC today, to encourage you to maintain your rage; to stand with you; to tell you that gun control can work, as it has worked here in Australia.

But, this is not a letter from the other side of the world written with self-righteous arrogance; it is from a schoolboy who shares your hopes for change, but also your fears, as I watch with alarm while our current crop of politicians dilute Australia's stringent gun laws.The bar has been raised for airport transit lounges with the start of long- awaited direct flights from Perth to London.

The days of weary travellers being offered mere crudites, beer, wine and soft drinks if they were well-heeled enough to afford airport lounge access have long gone.

QF9 departs on Saturday night for the first of Qantas' non-stop flights to London. Credit:Perth Airport

And at Qantas' new Perth Airport lounge, everything has been painstakingly designed with the aim of improving not just comfort but wellbeing by encouraging hydration and reducing the effects of jetlag.

The airline consulted with Neil Perry for food, Australian industrial designer David Caon and SUMU design for the layout and decor, and the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre for sleep medicine expertise."Usually it is a south westerly swell, but this is a direct result of the tropical cyclone off shore," she said.

A Bureau of Meteorology WA spokeswoman said north westerly swells were unusual for the WA coast.

WA surfers are gearing up for rare north westerly swells off the west coast this weekend, brought about by Tropical Cyclone Marcus which battered Darwin last weekend. Coming in mainly Saturday night and Sunday, swells off the west coast could reach up to 3 metres.

Swellnet's Ben Matson said Tropical Cyclone Marcus would most likely push a north westerly swell down the WA coast.

"This scenario is not too dissimilar to Severe Tropical Cyclone Bianca, which delivered incredible waves across many parts of the West Oz coastline in 2011," he said.

"North west groundswells are very rare events in WA, and thus result in unusual surf conditions just about everywhere."

Keen surfer Matt Rodriguez said he was getting out of town and would be leaving early for a surf on Sunday to maximise conditions.

"Perth is in a swell shadow off the reefs and Rottnest Island so most surfers are heading south to spots that only break once in while," he said.



Tropical Cyclone Marcus is currently a category two system and was located at 8:00 am 670 km west of Carnarvon and 860 km west northwest of Geraldton.France: Just hours before killing three people and terrorising shoppers in a supermarket in southern France, 25-year old Redouane Lakdim took his younger sister to school, French media said, leaving his family's flat outside Carcassonne's medieval city walls.

Lakdim, a French national born in Morrocco, was known by police for petty crimes and possession of drugs - for which he spent one month in jail in 2016.

French interior minister Gerard Collomb said nothing suggested he was violent: "We had monitored him and thought there was no radicalisation," Collomb said. "He was known for possession of drugs, we couldn't have said that he was a radical that would carry out an attack."

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said although nothing suggested imminent action, Lakdim had been on France's terrorism watch list since 2014 and had links to networks of Salafists.Username: Password: or Register Thread Rating: 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average

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Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing' LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: kaput

03-24-2018 02:35 AM











Post: #1 Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'

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Earlier Friday, China announced plans for reciprocal tariffs on 128 U.S. products, including pork, wine, fruit, and steel. It came a day after Trump's announcement of tariffs on up to $60 billion on Chinese imports.



Chinese President Xi Jinping "had a list that was so ready of what they're blocking," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street" Friday. "They are so ready for what we do, it's embarrassing."



"Do you think that [China] has not figured this stuff out," asked Cramer. "They've got a game plan."



Trump said his tariffs on China, which primarily target certain products in the technology sector, would be "the first of many" trade actions. Beijing said it would take measures against the U.S. goods in two stages if it cannot reach an agreement with Washington.



Cramer said Trump will have to "up his game," because China was more prepared than the U.S., calling it a "beat down."



https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/...li=BBnbfcN China's response to President Donald Trump's tariffs was so swift that it was actually quite embarrassing for the United States, according to CNBC's Jim Cramer.Earlier Friday, China announced plans for reciprocal tariffs on 128 U.S. products, including pork, wine, fruit, and steel. It came a day after Trump's announcement of tariffs on up to $60 billion on Chinese imports.Chinese President Xi Jinping "had a list that was so ready of what they're blocking," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street" Friday. "They are so ready for what we do, it's embarrassing.""Do you think that [China] has not figured this stuff out," asked Cramer. "They've got a game plan."Trump said his tariffs on China, which primarily target certain products in the technology sector, would be "the first of many" trade actions. Beijing said it would take measures against the U.S. goods in two stages if it cannot reach an agreement with Washington.Cramer said Trump will have to "up his game," because China was more prepared than the U.S., calling it a "beat down." Damrod

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 02:39 AM











Post: #2 RE: Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'

F*ck them and f*ck anyone that does not see the merit of making your essentials at home



Globalist propaganda is all this is...



I don't care what China does as long as I can buy a f*cking hammer made in the USA...



do you not get it fucktard? LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 02:45 AM











Post: #3 RE: Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'

who gives a sh*t about their response its only going to hurt those that deserve to be hurt for doing business with or relying on china in the first place, f*#k em for being globalists instead of americans Dirk

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 02:46 AM











Post: #4 RE: Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'

On this issue I stand with Trump. Tired of being ass raped by a bunch of Chinese goons. They can suck it. Go USA!!! LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 02:50 AM











Post: #5 RE: Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'





USA is going to be a third world country when he's finished with us.



And that's all according to the neocon plan! Trump is a flippin retardUSA is going to be a third world country when he's finished with us.And that's all according to the neocon plan! LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 02:55 AM











Post: #6 RE: Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'

Damrod Wrote: (03-24-2018 02:39 AM) F*ck them and f*ck anyone that does not see the merit of making your essentials at home



Globalist propaganda is all this is...



I don't care what China does as long as I can buy a f*cking hammer made in the USA...



do you not get it fucktard?

Where is YOUR hammer factory ? "fucktard"



Where is YOUR hammer factory ? "fucktard" Damrod

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 02:56 AM











Post: #7 RE: Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 02:55 AM) Damrod Wrote: (03-24-2018 02:39 AM) F*ck them and f*ck anyone that does not see the merit of making your essentials at home



Globalist propaganda is all this is...



I don't care what China does as long as I can buy a f*cking hammer made in the USA...



do you not get it fucktard?

Where is YOUR hammer factory ? "fucktard"





I got it right here...close your eyes and kiss it pole smoker I got it right here...close your eyes and kiss it pole smoker LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 02:57 AM











Post: #8 RE: Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'

Damrod Wrote: (03-24-2018 02:56 AM) LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 02:55 AM) Where is YOUR hammer factory ? "fucktard"





I got it right here...close your eyes and kiss it pole smoker

You are going to hit me with a FACTORY ? You dumbass twat ! You are going to hit me with a FACTORY ? You dumbass twat ! LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 03:14 AM











Post: #9 RE: Cramer on China tariffs: Beijing is so ready 'it's embarrassing'

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 02:50 AM) Trump is a flippin retard



USA is going to be a third world country when he's finished with us.



And that's all according to the neocon plan!

It is, and that was the plan all along. It is, and that was the plan all along.















Unemployment down across western Kentucky in AugustUsername: Password: or Register Thread Rating: 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average

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china want south african farm land as is paying LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: kaput

03-24-2018 05:39 AM











Post: #1 china want south african farm land as is paying

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saying you dont need them you need us now. Government and local officials to kill off the whitessaying you dont need them you need us now. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 05:53 AM











Post: #2 RE: china want south african farm land as is paying





In December 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into South Africa for the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation with great fanfare. There were lots of announcements about prospective investments across Africa. Agriculture featured prominently. But what is the real story of China in Africa on the ground, beyond the hype?



As Deborah Brautigams investigative research has so effectively shown, the assumptions about Chinas role in Africa are often not borne out in reality. The level of investment and linked aid flows are much lower than the high numbers sometimes touted; the numbers of imported Chinese workers are much lower than often suggested; the areas of land grabbed for investment are small compared to the vast areas identified by some.



And, as Brautigams recent book shows, Africa will not be feeding China or China feeding Africa anytime soon.

Reality on the ground



We set about finding out what was happening on the ground. Working with African, Chinese and European colleagues, our team investigated Chinese engagements in agriculture in four countries  Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. All have featured prominently as priorities for Chinese investment and aid.



Our just-completed project is reported in a new open access special issue of the journal World Development. So what exactly has been going on?



This proved surprisingly difficult to find out. The data on land acquisition, investment flows and aid projects is limited and confusing. It often doesnt add up. Ghost projects are listed that never happened, and others are missed out.



Our original idea of doing a simple geomapping exercise based on available data was quickly abandoned. Instead, we had to triangulate between multiple sources to find out what was happening where.



Certainly there is a great deal going on, and the Chinese presence in Africa is important. The Chinese role in agriculture  in terms of business investment, technology transfer, demonstration efforts, training and more  is growing, and shaping perceptions.



We chose cases across the four countries to investigate in more detail. The studies aimed to explore the detail of investments, technology projects, training and development encounters more generally.



The central question we asked was: is China reshaping African agriculture?

No singular Chinese model



The Chinese Agricultural Technology Development Centres are flagship investments. There are now 23 across Africa, funded in their first phase by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce under their aid program. They are run mostly by companies, and are linked to a commercial model for training and technology demonstration and sale.



As Xiuli Xu and colleagues show, the centres performance very much depends on who is running them. Different provincial companies have very different characteristics, demonstrating that there is no singular Chinese model of development, or state-business partnership.



We also explored a number of cases of business investments in agriculture, primarily led by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Chinese development efforts mix aid with commerce, linking both provincial and central state involvement with different businesses.



For example, as Jing Gu and colleagues explain, in Xai Xai in Mozambique, the Wanbao agricultural development company from Hubei province took over 20,000 hectares on a state farm to farm rice, and develop a contract farming arrangement with surrounding farms.



It has not been easy. There have been a number of changes in company leads, disputes with local communities, and shifting alliances with local elites, as Kojo Amanor and Sergio Chichava set out.



The training of government officials is an important aspect of the Chinese engagement in Africa. More than 10,000 are trained in numerous courses in China each year, many in agriculture. This far exceeds any training initiative of any western aid programme.



Henry Tugendhat and Dawit Alemu explored the impacts of these courses, participating in training in China, and interviewing officials who had returned home to Ghana and Zimbabwe. While there have not been many immediate impacts, the longer-term building of relationships and the exertion of soft power diplomacy is important.

The role of informal Chinese migrants

Chinese migrants supply specialist Chinese foods to burgeoning expatriate populations. Reuters/Noor Khamis



Perhaps the most far-reaching but least understood dimension of Chinese involvement in African agriculture is the growing number of informal migrants getting involved in the agri-food sector, from farming to processing to retail to restaurants.



Seth Cook and colleagues investigated this in Ethiopia and Ghana. They discovered a range of activities: relatively few farmers, but growing investment in supplying specialist Chinese foods to burgeoning expatriate Chinese populations.



Those involved are very often migrants who came as part of Chinese government contracts, and have since established business connections and stayed, encouraging others to join them from China.



Through our work, we were able to gain a snapshot of the early stages of Chinese engagement in African agriculture. Our results show successes as well as failures. But Chinese engagement is certainly not yet at the scale sometimes assumed.



In the longer term, activities may accelerate as more opportunities open up. But China is also changing. As its economy restructures to a new normal, there are different demands. Food will certainly remain one, but this is not likely to come from Africa.



As a new global power, China will want to maintain business, aid and diplomatic relations with Africa, and sustaining relationships will be important. China plays the long game, and our studies were observing just the opening stages.

https://theconversation.com/chinese-enga...eems-56779 Chinese engagement in African agriculture is not what it seemsIn December 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into South Africa for the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation with great fanfare. There were lots of announcements about prospective investments across Africa. Agriculture featured prominently. But what is the real story of China in Africa on the ground, beyond the hype?As Deborah Brautigams investigative research has so effectively shown, the assumptions about Chinas role in Africa are often not borne out in reality. The level of investment and linked aid flows are much lower than the high numbers sometimes touted; the numbers of imported Chinese workers are much lower than often suggested; the areas of land grabbed for investment are small compared to the vast areas identified by some.And, as Brautigams recent book shows, Africa will not be feeding China or China feeding Africa anytime soon.Reality on the groundWe set about finding out what was happening on the ground. Working with African, Chinese and European colleagues, our team investigated Chinese engagements in agriculture in four countries  Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. All have featured prominently as priorities for Chinese investment and aid.Our just-completed project is reported in a new open access special issue of the journal World Development. So what exactly has been going on?This proved surprisingly difficult to find out. The data on land acquisition, investment flows and aid projects is limited and confusing. It often doesnt add up. Ghost projects are listed that never happened, and others are missed out.Our original idea of doing a simple geomapping exercise based on available data was quickly abandoned. Instead, we had to triangulate between multiple sources to find out what was happening where.Certainly there is a great deal going on, and the Chinese presence in Africa is important. The Chinese role in agriculture  in terms of business investment, technology transfer, demonstration efforts, training and more  is growing, and shaping perceptions.We chose cases across the four countries to investigate in more detail. The studies aimed to explore the detail of investments, technology projects, training and development encounters more generally.The central question we asked was: is China reshaping African agriculture?No singular Chinese modelThe Chinese Agricultural Technology Development Centres are flagship investments. There are now 23 across Africa, funded in their first phase by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce under their aid program. They are run mostly by companies, and are linked to a commercial model for training and technology demonstration and sale.As Xiuli Xu and colleagues show, the centres performance very much depends on who is running them. Different provincial companies have very different characteristics, demonstrating that there is no singular Chinese model of development, or state-business partnership.We also explored a number of cases of business investments in agriculture, primarily led by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Chinese development efforts mix aid with commerce, linking both provincial and central state involvement with different businesses.For example, as Jing Gu and colleagues explain, in Xai Xai in Mozambique, the Wanbao agricultural development company from Hubei province took over 20,000 hectares on a state farm to farm rice, and develop a contract farming arrangement with surrounding farms.It has not been easy. There have been a number of changes in company leads, disputes with local communities, and shifting alliances with local elites, as Kojo Amanor and Sergio Chichava set out.The training of government officials is an important aspect of the Chinese engagement in Africa. More than 10,000 are trained in numerous courses in China each year, many in agriculture. This far exceeds any training initiative of any western aid programme.Henry Tugendhat and Dawit Alemu explored the impacts of these courses, participating in training in China, and interviewing officials who had returned home to Ghana and Zimbabwe. While there have not been many immediate impacts, the longer-term building of relationships and the exertion of soft power diplomacy is important.The role of informal Chinese migrantsChinese migrants supply specialist Chinese foods to burgeoning expatriate populations. Reuters/Noor KhamisPerhaps the most far-reaching but least understood dimension of Chinese involvement in African agriculture is the growing number of informal migrants getting involved in the agri-food sector, from farming to processing to retail to restaurants.Seth Cook and colleagues investigated this in Ethiopia and Ghana. They discovered a range of activities: relatively few farmers, but growing investment in supplying specialist Chinese foods to burgeoning expatriate Chinese populations.Those involved are very often migrants who came as part of Chinese government contracts, and have since established business connections and stayed, encouraging others to join them from China.Through our work, we were able to gain a snapshot of the early stages of Chinese engagement in African agriculture. Our results show successes as well as failures. But Chinese engagement is certainly not yet at the scale sometimes assumed.In the longer term, activities may accelerate as more opportunities open up. But China is also changing. As its economy restructures to a new normal, there are different demands. Food will certainly remain one, but this is not likely to come from Africa.As a new global power, China will want to maintain business, aid and diplomatic relations with Africa, and sustaining relationships will be important. China plays the long game, and our studies were observing just the opening stages.















The agreement was signed during the meeting between President Trump and the Saudi hereditary prince, who is visiting the United States. Congress now has30 days for ratification, which provides for the supply of 6700 anti-tank missiles. Amnesty International: Its not just the United States fuelling the conflict in Yemen with the arms trade, but also the United Kingdom and France.

Washington (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The US administration led by President Donald Trump has signed a 1 billion dollar arms deal with the leaders of Saudi Arabia. The signature came in the context of the visit of the Saudi hereditary prince Mohammed Bin Salman (Mbs), the first diplomatic overseas trip since he was appointed number two in the kingdom.

In the late afternoon yesterday, the US State Department informed Congress of its intention to approve the sale. The parliamentarians will have 30 days to give the go-ahead to the agreement or try to stop its implementation; however, this hypothesis seems very unlikely because President Trump's party controls both chambers.

The package includes up to about 6,700 U.S.-built anti-tank missiles. Raytheon Co. makes the missiles.

Other items include support, maintenance and spare parts for American tanks, helicopters and other equipment already in Saudi Arabia's arsenal.

The US Defense Sources point out that the sale is in line "with US foreign policy" and pursues "national security objectives" by improving the security of a friendly country. Riyadh continues, the note continues to be "an important force for economic growth and political stability" in the Middle East [read in an anti-Iranian key].

The United States seems to have overcome the "doubts" of the past on the sale of weapons to the Saudis and that they were used to fuel the bloody war in Yemen. A conflict that also involves, at the supplier level, other nations of the Western bloc: Amnesty International have accused the United Kingdom and France [as well as Spain and Italy] of "continuing to transfer weapons for billions of dollars" to the Arab coalition. A trade, they add, which ends up "inflicting terrible suffering on the population".

Riyadh has long been the leader in the arms race in a region that holds the record in the global weapons trade. "We believe that Saudi Arabia - said US Defense Minister Jim Mattis - is part of the solution" to the problems of the Middle East and the Yemeni conflict.Username: Password: or Register Thread Rating: 1 Vote(s) - 5 Average

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Page: 1 2 3 4 5 ... 7 What is it like living in Phoenix Arizona near Nevada Pinguu

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 05:40 PM



Posts: 6,186









Post: #31 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Advertisement DirtyAnnie Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:38 PM) it's not "a bit of heat" it's HOT. If you park your car in the sun you cannot touch the door handle to open it. I carried a hankie in my pocket just to open the door and touch the steering wheel. It helps to be bi-lingual as well.

Puedo hablar espanol aunque no necesito hablar en espanol IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. Puedo hablar espanol aunque no necesito hablar en espanolIF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 05:41 PM











Post: #32 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Pinguu Wrote: (03-24-2018 03:55 PM) I could finally get a great big American car or truck and not get laughed at like people do if you buy and drive one in the UK.



It would be like normal to drive an F150 .....Brilliant

Get a quad cab eco-boost with a water methanol injection kit properly installed. Get a quad cab eco-boost with a water methanol injection kit properly installed. BlackCat

Every day is an extra day

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 06:00 PM



Posts: 13,444









Post: #33 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 05:41 PM) Pinguu Wrote: (03-24-2018 03:55 PM) I could finally get a great big American car or truck and not get laughed at like people do if you buy and drive one in the UK.



It would be like normal to drive an F150 .....Brilliant

Get a quad cab eco-boost with a water methanol injection kit properly installed.

Pinguu will fit right in















https://youtu.be/zQs9r01a6j0 Pinguu will fit right in Do not grow old no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.



~ Albert Einstein LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-24-2018 06:31 PM











Post: #34 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

DirtyAnnie Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:38 PM) it's not "a bit of heat" it's HOT. If you park your car in the sun you cannot touch the door handle to open it. I carried a hankie in my pocket just to open the door and touch the steering wheel. It helps to be bi-lingual as well. You can always spot an Arizonian by they way they drive! They're the only ones that can steer a car with two fingers! You buy your driving gloves in the kitchen department. The rest of you call them oven mitts! After the first year, you're pretty much acclimated, and the rest is just learning to adjust your activities. Yard work? it can wait till after summer. Living in the city sucks. If you live out of the city people are nicer. A good example would be Cave Creek no dense population yet close enough to stores etc. Grew up between living in Las Vegas & White Hills Arizona. Groceries were bought in Kingman every week so planning helped. Got to the point I hated going into Vegas, Knew all my neighbors & if some stranger or hinky looking people showed up all the neighbors were there to direct them or escort them back to the highway. Need help working on something? Usually ended up with more help than needed! In the Phoenix area? You could be broken down & 50 people will walk / drive past without offering a hand. If you're thinking about relocating from the UK, think Cave Creek, Flagstaff, Prescott, Sedona for less weather shock. You can always spot an Arizonian by they way they drive! They're the only ones that can steer a car with two fingers! You buy your driving gloves in the kitchen department. The rest of you call them oven mitts!After the first year, you're pretty much acclimated, and the rest is just learning to adjust your activities. Yard work? it can wait till after summer. Living in the city sucks. If you live out of the city people are nicer. A good example would be Cave Creek no dense population yet close enough to stores etc. Grew up between living in Las Vegas & White Hills Arizona. Groceries were bought in Kingman every week so planning helped. Got to the point I hated going into Vegas, Knew all my neighbors & if some stranger or hinky looking people showed up all the neighbors were there to direct them or escort them back to the highway. Need help working on something? Usually ended up with more help than needed! In the Phoenix area? You could be broken down & 50 people will walk / drive past without offering a hand. If you're thinking about relocating from the UK, think Cave Creek, Flagstaff, Prescott, Sedona for less weather shock. Donald J Trump

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Post: #35 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 06:31 PM) DirtyAnnie Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:38 PM) it's not "a bit of heat" it's HOT. If you park your car in the sun you cannot touch the door handle to open it. I carried a hankie in my pocket just to open the door and touch the steering wheel. It helps to be bi-lingual as well. You can always spot an Arizonian by they way they drive! They're the only ones that can steer a car with two fingers! You buy your driving gloves in the kitchen department. The rest of you call them oven mitts! After the first year, you're pretty much acclimated, and the rest is just learning to adjust your activities. Yard work? it can wait till after summer. Living in the city sucks. If you live out of the city people are nicer. A good example would be Cave Creek no dense population yet close enough to stores etc. Grew up between living in Las Vegas & White Hills Arizona. Groceries were bought in Kingman every week so planning helped. Got to the point I hated going into Vegas, Knew all my neighbors & if some stranger or hinky looking people showed up all the neighbors were there to direct them or escort them back to the highway. Need help working on something? Usually ended up with more help than needed! In the Phoenix area? You could be broken down & 50 people will walk / drive past without offering a hand. If you're thinking about relocating from the UK, think Cave Creek, Flagstaff, Prescott, Sedona for less weather shock.

"Go with the flow, like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream" Del Griffith



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Post: #36 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

I've been to Phoenix, you wouldn't think it was possible to spoil a desert but the yanks found a way...

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.





H.L. Mencken 1920. (This post was last modified: 03-24-2018 06:45 PM by Spiddy .) LoP Guest

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Post: #37 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:39 PM) The cops are brutal in America. Especially in Arizona. Re: Sheriff Arpaio.

He's outa here.



As to your question, OP, the novelty wears off after your first summer here. You want somebody to kill ya by about July 2nd. Even natives of this state say they will never be used to the summer heat. Your blood actually gets thinner. The heat is relentless........Don't do it. He's outa here.As to your question, OP, the novelty wears off after your first summer here. You want somebody to kill ya by about July 2nd. Even natives of this state say they will never be used to the summer heat. Your blood actually gets thinner. The heat is relentless........Don't do it. Pasta Lover

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Post: #38 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Pinguu Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:30 PM) silversides Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:14 PM) Phoenix Arizona is better....

Thats the one....



Im looking around the world....I like a bit of heat.



I quite like Americans..



America was a former colony of Britain....They just wised up....I like that.

I lived in the southwest for many years. You can find lot of great towns out there with very reasonable costs. I lived in Vegas, Reno, Tahoe city, Truckee CA, LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson etc. Wonderful place. I lived in the southwest for many years. You can find lot of great towns out there with very reasonable costs. I lived in Vegas, Reno, Tahoe city, Truckee CA, LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson etc. Wonderful place. Pasta Lover

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Post: #39 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 06:55 PM) LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:39 PM) The cops are brutal in America. Especially in Arizona. Re: Sheriff Arpaio.

He's outa here.



As to your question, OP, the novelty wears off after your first summer here. You want somebody to kill ya by about July 2nd. Even natives of this state say they will never be used to the summer heat. Your blood actually gets thinner. The heat is relentless........Don't do it.

Not true. The cops in Phoenix, and San Diego are cool. Vegas too. Not true. The cops in Phoenix, and San Diego are cool. Vegas too. LoP Guest

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Post: #40 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Pasta Lover Wrote: (03-24-2018 07:02 PM) LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 06:55 PM) He's outa here.



As to your question, OP, the novelty wears off after your first summer here. You want somebody to kill ya by about July 2nd. Even natives of this state say they will never be used to the summer heat. Your blood actually gets thinner. The heat is relentless........Don't do it.

Not true. The cops in Phoenix, and San Diego are cool. Vegas too.

They are as long as you co-operate with them. Mouth off or have an attitude, you will have bruises in your mugshot. They are as long as you co-operate with them. Mouth off or have an attitude, you will have bruises in your mugshot. Pasta Lover

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Post: #41 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

On the heat thing. It can be great. If you are coming from the UK, You will never want to go back. Every retired person I knew said the same thing, "The hotter the better". The nickname for Phoenix is the second second city because so many people are from Chicago. It also won the award for best run city in the world many times. It's a great town. You would love it. (This post was last modified: 03-24-2018 07:10 PM by Pasta Lover .) LoP Guest

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Post: #42 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

DirtyAnnie Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:38 PM) it's not "a bit of heat" it's HOT. If you park your car in the sun you cannot touch the door handle to open it. I carried a hankie in my pocket just to open the door and touch the steering wheel. It helps to be bi-lingual as well.

Don't buy a black car! Don't buy a black car! Pasta Lover

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Post: #43 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 07:09 PM) Pasta Lover Wrote: (03-24-2018 07:02 PM) Not true. The cops in Phoenix, and San Diego are cool. Vegas too.

They are as long as you co-operate with them. Mouth off or have an attitude, you will have bruises in your mugshot.

What? So you judge a town by how much you can mouth off to the cops? Great. What? So you judge a town by how much you can mouth off to the cops? Great. (This post was last modified: 03-24-2018 07:14 PM by Pasta Lover .) LoP Guest

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Post: #44 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 07:10 PM) DirtyAnnie Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:38 PM) it's not "a bit of heat" it's HOT. If you park your car in the sun you cannot touch the door handle to open it. I carried a hankie in my pocket just to open the door and touch the steering wheel. It helps to be bi-lingual as well.

Don't buy a black car!

Or a car eith leather seats!!!!!! Or a car eith leather seats!!!!!! Pasta Lover

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Post: #45 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 07:10 PM) DirtyAnnie Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:38 PM) it's not "a bit of heat" it's HOT. If you park your car in the sun you cannot touch the door handle to open it. I carried a hankie in my pocket just to open the door and touch the steering wheel. It helps to be bi-lingual as well.

Don't buy a black car!

Ha Ha True that. Phoenix is hard on car batteries and tires too. I had new tires just fail. poof. Ha Ha True that. Phoenix is hard on car batteries and tires too. I had new tires just fail. poof. Advertisement

















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Page: 1 2 3 4 5 ... 7 What is it like living in Phoenix Arizona near Nevada Pinguu

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Post: #1 What is it like living in Phoenix Arizona near Nevada

Advertisement



I wouldnt be so rude as to turn up expecting a country to look after me....No I would buy a house on the city outskirts and bring enough money to live on and put into that economy....



It looks hot in summer obviously.....but I like the heat and if anyone ever seen pics of me on here Im of a Mediterranean complexion so its not an issue...



I like the desert idea as its such a juxtaposition to my British life...



What are the people like?



The food looks good as I love Mexican.



Anyone here think my weird sense of humour might be thought offensive out there.? IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. I was looking at Phoenix Nevada last night and wondering if it would be a good place to retire after Im 65...I wouldnt be so rude as to turn up expecting a country to look after me....No I would buy a house on the city outskirts and bring enough money to live on and put into that economy....It looks hot in summer obviously.....but I like the heat and if anyone ever seen pics of me on here Im of a Mediterranean complexion so its not an issue...I like the desert idea as its such a juxtaposition to my British life...What are the people like?The food looks good as I love Mexican.Anyone here think my weird sense of humour might be thought offensive out there.?IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. (This post was last modified: 03-24-2018 08:11 PM by Pinguu .) Pinguu

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Post: #2 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

I read theres a lot of snakes....Im not scared of snakes.



They eat rats and I dont like rats....



But is it like Im going to have to fight or reason with a snake every day? IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. Pinguu

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Post: #3 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Phoenix and all of Arazona has loads of UFO activity...



I bloody love UFOs.....I would be in my element. IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. Pinguu

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Post: #4 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada





It would be like normal to drive an F150 .....Brilliant I could finally get a great big American car or truck and not get laughed at like people do if you buy and drive one in the UK.It would be like normal to drive an F150 .....Brilliant IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. Pinguu

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Post: #5 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Imagine going out to a Mexican styled or American restaurant and although its themed....Its actually authentic because its in its rightful place...And the staff are all real Americans not just putting on fake accents.



I always feel cheated eating in American themed restaurants in the UK.....Especially when all the staff are Polish or Romanian.....It just ruins the experience. IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. (This post was last modified: 03-24-2018 04:01 PM by Pinguu .) LoP Guest

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Post: #6 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Pinguu Wrote: (03-24-2018 03:59 PM) Imagine going out to a Mexican styled or American restaurant and although its themed....Its actually authentic because its in its rightful place...And the staff are all real Americans not just putting on fake accents.



I always feel cheated eating in American themed restaurants in the UK.....Especially when all the staff are Polish or Romanian.....It just ruins the experience.

Ironic you will have Mexicans playing Polish music for your authentic experience. Ironic you will have Mexicans playing Polish music for your authentic experience. silversides

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Post: #7 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Phoenix Arizona is better.... Monkey Magic

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Post: #8 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Phoenix is very hot in summer....



It also lacks water....



Why would you retire in the US?



Why not a current or former part of the british empire? Monkey Magic

(This post was last modified: 03-24-2018 04:18 PM by silversides .) anonymous cowardice

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Post: #9 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Personally, if you are British, I would not retire in America.

I would stay in the UK.



The mind control that Brits grow up with versus the mind control that people in the US grow up with is different.



While if you are from the US and spending time in Britain, you adapt to how people are different there and expect it to be different, when a Brit comes to the US and acts British there, most people in the US haven't travelled to Britain and therefore have trouble adapting to a Brit who is in the US.



It is the same for a US citizen when they travel to Britain in terms of whether Brits can adapt to the US citizen.



Being in a foreign country, even if "you" feel like you can take the culture shock, you can't expect the host country to adapt to the culture shock of the individual being different from the whole.



Basically, Nevada is a state where the Mofia runs the government because they own all the casinos, which is what fuels the state's economy. Almost all of the casinos are smoking, so most of the jobs require you to be exposed to harmful air all day, so they don't care if you die from toxic air pollution at your job so the people who work there are being poisoned.



Yeah, the desert is nice to get away from it all, but culturally, it is a wild west state and if you don't adapt to a roughneck way of being (and that does not include having a British accent and walking like you went to boarding school), men are men here and they won't hesitate to start some sh*t if you don't know where their boundaries are psychologically.



I'll give you an example. A few years back, I was less familiar with the state and passing through ... and I am American ... and a big guy ... and I parked my vehicle in one of the only places I could find shade for my dogs to keep the car cool in a massive parking lot with a huge number of spaces available. I had to park way in the back away from the shopping. The car parked next to me was also parked way out there and the owner expected nobody to park next to his car because it was so far from all the other cars. However, there were only a couple of spots with shade in the entire lot, so I had no choice.



When I got back to my car, he was waiting there to get angry at me. I'm not saying angry like in Britain where someone wants to make an intellectual point in parliament and have a laugh at someone else and move on with their day feeling superior.



I mean, he was ready to go to war with me. And this was a dad with 2 little girls throwing fighting words around unprovoked.



If you want to go to Nevada, don't buy a truck. Buy a gun and keep it loaded. Grow a beard. Dress rough. Don't get too close to other men. Learn how to keep your distance and speak the blue collar trade. Don't dress like you work in an office for sure. And damn sure watch when you park somewhere, you don't park too close to someone else who might be looking to let off some steam.



And don't smart off to anyone. Know how to look like someone other people won't want to f*#k with to begin with.



And if you are used to gloomy Brit weather, you have no idea how hot it gets in Nevada in the summer. It is not a Mediterranean climate. It isn't Spain or Greece. Some places can get upwards of 115 degrees and climb. There are places with no trees for hundreds of miles. If your skin has few wrinkles and you come to this state, it will get real wrinkly real fast.



Unless you are living close to Vegas or Reno, where the housing is going up (costwise), the other towns don't have much in the way of services through most of the state. Pinguu

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Post: #10 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

silversides Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:14 PM) Phoenix Arizona is better....

Thats the one....



Im looking around the world....I like a bit of heat.



I quite like Americans..



America was a former colony of Britain....They just wised up....I like that. Thats the one....Im looking around the world....I like a bit of heat.I quite like Americans..America was a former colony of Britain....They just wised up....I like that. IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED...CLAIM YOU ARE OPPRESSED.. LoP Guest

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Post: #11 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

Pinguu Wrote: (03-24-2018 03:50 PM) I read theres a lot of snakes....Im not scared of snakes.



They eat rats and I dont like rats....



But is it like Im going to have to fight or reason with a snake every day?

I lived in a gated community in Green Valley Arizona and only saw two or three Western Diamondback rattlers every year. The snakes will leave you alone if you dont mess with them. You should check out Green Valley as it is the wettest desert in the world. The food is great and you are only 30 min from Mexico and 30 min from Tucson. I lived in a gated community in Green Valley Arizona and only saw two or three Western Diamondback rattlers every year. The snakes will leave you alone if you dont mess with them. You should check out Green Valley as it is the wettest desert in the world. The food is great and you are only 30 min from Mexico and 30 min from Tucson. DirtyAnnie

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Post: #12 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

it's not "a bit of heat" it's HOT. If you park your car in the sun you cannot touch the door handle to open it. I carried a hankie in my pocket just to open the door and touch the steering wheel. It helps to be bi-lingual as well. LoP Guest

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Post: #13 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

The cops are brutal in America. Especially in Arizona. Re: Sheriff Arpaio. LoP Guest

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Post: #14 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:33 PM) Pinguu Wrote: (03-24-2018 03:50 PM) I read theres a lot of snakes....Im not scared of snakes.



They eat rats and I dont like rats....



But is it like Im going to have to fight or reason with a snake every day?

I lived in a gated community in Green Valley Arizona and only saw two or three Western Diamondback rattlers every year. The snakes will leave you alone if you dont mess with them. You should check out Green Valley as it is the wettest desert in the world. The food is great and you are only 30 min from Mexico and 30 min from Tucson.

BTW ... Phoenix is a shithole.



Green Valley is an upscale retirement community, Sahuarita is nice too. BTW ... Phoenix is a shithole.Green Valley is an upscale retirement community, Sahuarita is nice too. LoP Guest

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Post: #15 RE: What is it like living in Phoenix Nevada

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 04:39 PM) The cops are brutal in America. Especially in Arizona. Re: Sheriff Arpaio.

DERP



Arpaio was a great Sheriff.

You listen to too much propaganda. DERPArpaio was a great Sheriff.You listen to too much propaganda. Advertisement

















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Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria? LoP Guest

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Post: #1 Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?

Advertisement Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria? [written by



In its offensive launched on January 20 against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, Turkey has deployed more than 25,000 Syrian rebel fighters who have been equipped and trained by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powerful military.



The offensive, code-named Operation Olive Branch, aims at dislodging the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) from the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. On March 18, Turkish military and allied jihadist rebels took control of Afrin's city center. Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an insurgent group that has been fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy in Turkey's southeast. Backed by the United States, the YPG has been instrumental in the U.S.-led war on terror in Syria since 2014.



Nine days after the start of the operation, the pro-Turkish government website, Suriye Gundemi, published an infographic showing the Syrian rebel groups involved in the Afrin offensive. The website says that three divisions are part of the National Army that is under the command of the Syrian interim government, an anti-Syrian regime body based in Turkey.



This so-called army consists mainly of Islamist militants who were part of the most radical Islamic factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at some point during the Syrian conflict, and was formed only two weeks prior to the Afrin operation. Most of these fighters fled to Turkey after they were defeated in battles across Syria, including in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and Hama. While in Turkey, they were recruited by Turkish intelligence agencies to be part of forces invading the Kurdish-held Afrin.



The remaining 17 groups that make up the Syrian portion of Operation Olive Branch are a combination of Salafist, jihadist and ultra-extremist militants who have been either formed or supported by Turkey at various stages of Syria's seven-year civil war.



Read More [written by Sirwan Kajjo https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12061...ists-syria 3/20/2018In its offensive launched on January 20 against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, Turkey has deployed more than 25,000 Syrian rebel fighters who have been equipped and trained by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powerful military.The offensive, code-named Operation Olive Branch, aims at dislodging the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) from the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. On March 18, Turkish military and allied jihadist rebels took control of Afrin's city center. Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an insurgent group that has been fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy in Turkey's southeast. Backed by the United States, the YPG has been instrumental in the U.S.-led war on terror in Syria since 2014.Nine days after the start of the operation, the pro-Turkish government website, Suriye Gundemi, published an infographic showing the Syrian rebel groups involved in the Afrin offensive. The website says that three divisions are part of the National Army that is under the command of the Syrian interim government, an anti-Syrian regime body based in Turkey.This so-called army consists mainly of Islamist militants who were part of the most radical Islamic factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at some point during the Syrian conflict, and was formed only two weeks prior to the Afrin operation. Most of these fighters fled to Turkey after they were defeated in battles across Syria, including in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and Hama. While in Turkey, they were recruited by Turkish intelligence agencies to be part of forces invading the Kurdish-held Afrin.The remaining 17 groups that make up the Syrian portion of Operation Olive Branch are a combination of Salafist, jihadist and ultra-extremist militants who have been either formed or supported by Turkey at various stages of Syria's seven-year civil war. LoP Guest

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Post: #2 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?

Say bye bye to Kurds. A gift from Trump. Armenians next. LoP Guest

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03-25-2018 12:52 AM











Post: #3 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-24-2018 09:36 PM) Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria? [written by Sirwan Kajjo]

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12061...ists-syria 3/20/2018

In its offensive launched on January 20 against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, Turkey has deployed more than 25,000 Syrian rebel fighters who have been equipped and trained by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powerful military.



The offensive, code-named Operation Olive Branch, aims at dislodging the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) from the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. On March 18, Turkish military and allied jihadist rebels took control of Afrin's city center. Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an insurgent group that has been fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy in Turkey's southeast. Backed by the United States, the YPG has been instrumental in the U.S.-led war on terror in Syria since 2014.



Nine days after the start of the operation, the pro-Turkish government website, Suriye Gundemi, published an infographic showing the Syrian rebel groups involved in the Afrin offensive. The website says that three divisions are part of the National Army that is under the command of the Syrian interim government, an anti-Syrian regime body based in Turkey.



This so-called army consists mainly of Islamist militants who were part of the most radical Islamic factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at some point during the Syrian conflict, and was formed only two weeks prior to the Afrin operation. Most of these fighters fled to Turkey after they were defeated in battles across Syria, including in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and Hama. While in Turkey, they were recruited by Turkish intelligence agencies to be part of forces invading the Kurdish-held Afrin.



The remaining 17 groups that make up the Syrian portion of Operation Olive Branch are a combination of Salafist, jihadist and ultra-extremist militants who have been either formed or supported by Turkey at various stages of Syria's seven-year civil war.



Read More Turkey and Germany have a 2000 year fascist relationship. Commonality. Love to kill the chosen. Turkey and Germany have a 2000 year fascist relationship. Commonality. Love to kill the chosen. LoP Guest

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Post: #4 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?

Everyone is trying to fight for a piece of Syria...must be a lot of oil or something valuable there. LoP Guest

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03-26-2018 07:07 PM











Post: #5 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?





LoP Guest

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Post: #6 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?

Quote: http://dckurd.org/2018/03/18/turkeys-invasion-of-afrin/ 3/18/2018

Since Syrias civil war began in 2011, Erdogans government has allied with, funded, and trained a number of Syrian rebel groups who not only espouse a takfiri jihadist or an extremely conservative political Islamist religious ideology but also have engaged in brutal inhumane acts. These groups include Nour al-Din al-Zenki, Ahrar Al Sham, Sham Legion, among others. Many of these groups have expressed their support for ethnic cleansing of Kurdish and Yazidi areas unless they convert to their extremist views of Islam. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-27-2018 04:32 PM











Post: #7 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?

Jihadists may be back in north Syria - analysis



Islamist militiamen may be back in control of northern Syria, thanks to NATO ally Turkey, journalist David Ignatius wrote for the Washington Post.



Seeing the militiamen strutting about Afrin city after the Kurds vacated it under a Turkish bombardment it seemed eerily possible that jihadist allies of Islamic State (ISIS) were ruling the roost again, Ignatius



Read More https://ahvalnews.com/syria-turkey/jihad...a-analysis 3/19/2018Islamist militiamen may be back in control of northern Syria, thanks to NATO ally Turkey, journalist David Ignatius wrote for the Washington Post.Seeing the militiamen strutting about Afrin city after the Kurds vacated it under a Turkish bombardment it seemed eerily possible that jihadist allies of Islamic State (ISIS) were ruling the roost again, Ignatius said LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-28-2018 08:42 PM











Post: #8 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?





LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

04-15-2018 07:30 PM











Post: #9 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?

Quote: https://stream.org/turks-genocide-syria/ 4/2/2018

Throughout the Turkish invasion, we heard reports that its Jihadi ground troops were executing civilians, stealing even their goats and chickens, their vehicles, and looting their homes. Videos they publish show a remarkable number of farm tractors being used as vehicles. In one video, they kill a fleeing farmer in order to steal his tractor. Turkey promises to withdraw from Afrin when it finishes its Olive Branch mission. But the people it forced to leave will likely never be allowed to return to their farms and homes.



Reports abound of war crimes. The Syrian Islamic Council gave the Turkish ground troops a fatwa allowing them to kill indiscriminately anyone who rejects their version of Islam. Their favorite targets? Christians and Yazidis. A source I trust reports that Jihadi troops have been told that killing a Christian gives them an automatic admission to heaven with its peculiar female delights. This is a new and particularly frightening concept, not previously promoted even by ISIS. (Before the only sure admission ticket was to die in Jihad.) Like ISIS, these Jihadi warriors view Yazidis with particular contempt as infidels. [...] So soldiers have gone door to door, hunting for Christians and Yazidis and shooting them on sight. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

04-20-2018 03:36 PM











Post: #10 RE: Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria?

Jihadists allied with Turkey are hunting down religious minorities to kill them in Syria's northwest, Christian activists warn



Turkey is using hardline jihadist proxies, including Islamic State and al-Qaida militants, to eliminate the presence of Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities along its border, the activists said.



Read More http://www.catholicnews.com/services/eng...-syria.cfm 3/16/2018Turkey is using hardline jihadist proxies, including Islamic State and al-Qaida militants, to eliminate the presence of Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities along its border, the activists said.















Lunaticoutpost.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program , anaffiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.Amazon, the Amazon logo, MYHABIT, and the MYHABIT logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.Don't be a pest to the forum.No profanity in thread-titles or usernamesNo excessive profanity in postsNo Racism, Antisemitism + HateNo calls for violence against anyone..This website exists for fun and discussion only. The reader is responsible for discerning the validity, factuality or implications of information posted here, be it fictional or based on real events. The content of posts on this site, including but not limited to links to other web sites, are the expressed opinion of the original poster and are in no way representative of or endorsed by the owners or administration of this website. The posts on this website are the opinion of the specific author and are not statements of advice, opinion, or factual information on behalf of the owner or administration of LunaticOutPost.Com. The owners or administration of this website can't be hold responsible for content hosted on sites that posters link to in; including, but not limited to, posts, signatures, private messages and such. This site may contain content not suitable for minors and if you feel you might be offended by such content, you should log off immediately.This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Users may make such material available in an effort to advance awareness and understanding of issues relating to civil rights, economics, individual rights, international affairs, liberty, science & technology, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.In accordance with industry accepted best practices we ask that users limit their copy / paste of copyrighted material to the relevant portions of the article you wish to discuss (no more than 50% of the source material) provide a link back to the original articleIf you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe a post on this website falls outside the boundaries of "Fair Use" and legitimately infringes on yours or your clients copyright please contact [email protected] This website is owned by :Marco ZwaneveldDrijfriemstraat 522516 XR The HagueNetherlands.I will not rent, sell, share or otherwise disclose your personal information to any third party.We might contact you from time to time regarding your purchases or the services (like forums and announcement lists) you have subscribed to.Some of the 3rd party advertisers on lunaticoutpost.com may use cookiesto track peformance and/or to serve relevant ads.If you wish to read more and/or opt out of such cookies, please visit: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/Taste the food at Three Brothers Restaurant in Bay View and theres no question why the Serbian eatery has attracted local and national acclaim as one of Milwaukees best dining spots.

The foodie website Eater.com recently named it one of only two Milwaukee restaurants  out of 38 establishments in five states  on its Midwestern must-visit list.

Serbian cuisine is a culinary crossroads of sorts, combining eastern European and western Asian traditions. The best of it blends Mediterranean influences with heartier German/Austrian fare, Ottoman Turkish accents, and other Slavic techniques and dishes.

Three Brothers recipes have been featured in Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazine, and on the Food Network. In 2002, the James Beard Foundation placed the restaurant on its American Classics list as an eatery that has carved out a special place on the American culinary landscape.

The restaurant has been a family affair for 63 years. It was founded by Milun Mike Radicevic and his wife Milunka, the family matriarch whose recipes and techniques have fueled Three Brothers success ever since.

Weve been blessed being named one of Milwaukees top restaurants, says Milunka Radicevic, her grandmothers namesake and  with her brother Branko Radicevic Jr.  now third-generation restaurant owner. One of my father and mothers greatest moments in life was when Julia Child came here to dine with them in the 1990s.

Following the American Dream

To know the restaurants backstory is to understand why Three Brothers, located in an old Schlitz tavern built in 1897, has survived and thrived as a family-owned business.

Its success stands in testament to founder Mike Radicevic and the abilities of an immigrant allowed to pursue his own version of the American dream.

Mike owned two restaurants, a soda works and a wine wholesale business in Belgrade in the Serbian area of the former Yugoslavia when World War II broke out. He joined the Yugoslavian armed forces and pro-Serbian Chetniks.

In 1941, Yugoslavian forces requisitioned one of Mikes trucks for a mission. Since his son, Branko Radicevic Sr.  who also had joined the pro-Serbian movement  knew how to drive, he went along with the truck.

During the course of the war, Branko Sr. was shot twice in the leg and endured torture at the hands of the Nazis. In 1944, the pair was brought before a Nazi tribunal to plead their cases. Branko Sr. was released, but Mike was sent to a concentration camp. He eventually escaped and fled to France.

Sponsored by a Lutheran family in Milwaukee, Milunka and Mike immigrated to America.

When my family first came to America, we had lost everything, Milunka says. My grandparents were in their 60s when they arrived, a lesson to us all that its never too late to start again.

Three Brothers has been our familys Ellis Island, and its the first place Serbian immigrants new to the area stop, she adds. Its like a sanctuary.

Mike opened the restaurant in 1955 and called it Three Brothers in hopes of enticing his sons to emigrate and join them.

Branko Sr. arrived in the U.S. in 1959. He was pursuing a successful finance career, working for Bank of America with his wife Patricia  first in New York and then Los Angeles  when Mike took ill. In keeping with Serbian tradition, his eldest son Branko Sr. came to Milwaukee to care for his father and take over the restaurant.

The family shared the small apartment above the restaurant. It had no kitchen, so they prepared and ate all their meals in the 15-table restaurant. Their constant presence helped build a bond with the community and regular customers who visited Three Brothers.

As kids we felt like our extended family was coming to dinner with us every night, Milunka says. Serbs love to share the food they make, opening their homes and, in the process, opening their hearts.

Our business is more than a business, she adds. Its a home where everyone can have a nice meal.

Branko Sr. worked at the restaurant daily until his death in 2015.

Serbian delicacies

The roster of recipes on which the restaurant was first founded continues to fuel the success of Three Brothers. The restaurant promotes dining at a leisurely pace  especially if you order its signature dish, burek.

Burek consists of layers of paper-thin filo dough filled with ground Black Angus beef, cheese, or spinach and cheese. The dish takes 45 minutes to an hour to prepare.

Sarma is pickled cabbage leaves filled with beef and rice, while the goulash consists of beef cubes simmered in a light paprika sauce. Both dishes are served with potato dumplings.

The menu also offers roast lamb, roast suckling pig, roast duck and roast free-range goose, each served with pickled cabbage and vegetables. Chicken paprikash, simmered in a sweet paprika sauce and served with potato dumplings, is another house specialty.

Tradition and family define the success of Three Brothers, Milunka Radicevic says. The immigrant familys adopted home of Milwaukee and its welcoming attitude have made it all possible.

Milwaukee has a diverse culture and a beautiful immigrant story, she says. We were blessed by God and the community that embraced us.Republicans will call an extraordinary session to change the law. Democrats say the GOP is stalling because it's afraid of losing.WiGBits Headline News Would you like to receive our WiGBits? Signup today!

WiG Entertainment News Would you like to receive our WiG Entertainment News? Signup today!

Digital Issue Would you like to receive our Digital Issue? Signup today!ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - New Yorker's wishing to attend the open house Gov. Andrew Cuomo is hosting at the Executive Mansion on Easter weekend can register online for tickets.

The Democrat's office says the third annual Easter egg hunt at the governor's Albany residence will be held March 31 during the open house, set for 12:30-2:30 p.m. Visitors will be able to tour the mansion, meet the governor and participate in the Easter egg hunt.

People looking to attend must register for a ticket on the governor's website: www.governor.ny.gov . Registration closes at 1 p.m. March 28. Tickets are required to enter the mansion grounds.

If the number of requests exceeds available space, attendees will be selected by lottery. Cuomo's office says guests will be notified of their selection via email on March 29.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)ONEIDA- U.S. Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, made an appearance on Friday at Oneida Healthcare. The Senator discussed his concern for the shortage of medical doctors in Central New York and how change needs to be made.

We have tremendous doctors providing amazing are here at Oneida Healthcare, said Senator Chuck Schumer. Unfortunately, here in Madison County, our hospitals and community health centers are struggling to provide enough doctors to meet the needs of our growing population.

The Senator wants to add 15,000 medicare-funded residencies. His plan is to do this within the next 6 months, with funding coming from Medicare providers. NewsChannel 2s Cody Mooney asked Senator Schumer if this will affect the working-class paycheck.

No this wont affect [paychecks], said Schumer. The amount of money drug companies and others are paying into will be increasing.

If this proposal is passed, hospitals such as the Oneida Healthcare Center will see increases from federal funding by over 2 million dollars.



China News on Women





Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home pageNext Game: vs. California State Monterey Bay 3/24/2018 | 7 p.m.

Stanislaus

Game 1: Dominican def. Western Oregon, 4-3

Mady

Christenen

Tayler

Persi

Game 2: Western Oregon def.

Stanislaus

State, 4-3 (8 inn.)

Stanislaus

Lizzet

Ayanna

Arceneaux

Arceneaux

Creach

Cheyanne

After falling by a 4-3 score to Dominican (Calif.) in the opener, the Western Oregon University softball team rebounded with a 4-3 win over the host Warriors fromState in the nightcap to wrap up opening day action at the Tournament of Champions on Friday.With the split, Western Oregon's record stands at 14-12. The Wolves will face Holy Names (2 p.m.) and California State Monterey Bay (7 p.m.) on Saturday before closing out the tourney with two more matches on Sunday.Down 3-1 after the first inning, Western Oregon scraped together single runs in the second and third innings to tie the contest but were denied a complete comeback as Dominican used a sacrifice fly in the 6th for a 4-3 win in the opening game of the Tournament of Champions.Without recording an out, the Penguins loaded the bases in the home half of the 1st inning and went on to plate three runners. A bases-loaded hit by pitch brought the first runner home while Alexis Chinchilla followed with a double to right for a 3-1 score. The Wolves turned to its defense to avoid additional damage as the infield turned a double play following a pop up to third to end the assault.WOU mounted an immediate response in the top of the 2nd with Jenna Kelly pouncing for a 1-out triple where Kennedy Coy came through with an RBI single to left.WOU continued its advance in the 3rd by loading the bases with only one out on the board. Jenna Kelly sent one runner home as the Dominican defense traded a run for an out after a grounder to second. Another grounder to second, however, ended the threat as WOU stranded a trio of runners.After two scoreless innings, Dominican manufactured the go-ahead run in the bottom of the 6th withdoubling to left to start the frame. Christensen advanced to third on a WOU throwing error to set up the eventual game-winning swing via a sacrifice fly off the bat ofMunoz.The Wolves connected on back-to-back singles to initiate the 7th inning and after a sac bunt, placed the tying run at third and the go-ahead run in scoring position. The runners, however, remained in their positions as Dominican forced a pair of fly outs to end the contest. In all, the Wolves stranded nine runners on base.Haley Fabian was charged with the loss while tossing a complete game from the circle. Laurenpicked up the win after allowing seven WOU hits.In a near reverse course from the opener, Western Oregon jumped out to a 3-0 lead before allowingState to crawl back and tie the tilt. With two no-hit innings thrown byDominguez, the Wolves went on to capture a 4-3 win for a Friday split ascame through with an RBI single in the 8th inning.Batting with two outs in the top of the 8th, Zoe Clark beat out an infield single to shortstop to place runners at the corner forwho then placed a single to left for the lead-changing run.Now pitching with the lead, Dominguez retired the Warriors in order for the win.In the start, Chandler Bishop allowed just four hits in six innings of work before turning the ball over to Dominguez. Tylerled the Wolves at the plate with a 2-for-4 performance with a stolen base.Rimer and Clark provided the RBI hits in the first for WOU with Clark's single to right brining two runs home.On Monday, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed into law the United States most stringent abortion restrictions. That same day, Mississippis only remaining abortion provider filed a suit to block the law.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Mississippi blocked the law for 10 days. US District Court Judge Carlton Reeves in Jackson, Mississippi is currently considering arguments for and against blocking the law before it takes effect, after which it would have to be challenged on its constitutional merits.

In his two-page ruling, Judge Reeves wrote that women are guaranteed a right to privacy about their bodies. Citing the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, he wrote, The Supreme Court says every woman has a constitutional right to personal privacy regarding her body. The temporary stay against Mississippi House Bill 1510 was warranted, he said, because its 15-week limit is outside of the medically accepted definition of fetal viability. Twenty weeks is currently agreed upon as the outer limit of fetal viability.

The Supreme Court has struck down similar laws. In 2016, the court ruled that an Arkansas law restricting abortion past 12 gestational weeks was unconstitutional. It similarly ruled against a South Dakota measure that restricted abortions after six weeks.

Even prior to the enactment of HB 1510, abortions in Mississippi were extremely difficult to access. The Jackson Womens Health Organization, located in the state capital, is the only clinic in the state that provides abortions. Few physicians dare provide abortions in a state where failing to adhere to the letter of the law can result in prison terms ranging from two to 10 years, or where a mothers death could result in a murder charge.

A minor seeking abortion must have signed consent forms from both parents before undergoing a procedure. Abortion providers are required to provide state-sanctioned counseling to women who seek abortions, giving them information expressly designed to discourage abortion. A woman must wait 24 hours after counseling before receiving an abortion. This process necessitates two trips to the clinic.

Mississippi is the nations poorest state, with over 20 percent of residents living in poverty. The median income in Mississippi is a meager $41,754 annually. The lack of abortion access therefore proves especially costly for Mississippi women, many of whom are likely to face significant obstacles in funding an abortion and finding transport to the states only clinic.

On Tuesday, Governor Bryant issued a statement saying, House Bill 1510 protects maternal health and will further our efforts to make Mississippi the safest place in America for an unborn child. We are confident in its constitutionality and look forward to vigorously defending it.

The statement is mendacious. Mississippi has historically had the nations highest maternal morbidity and mortality rates. Between 2010 and 2012, when the rates were last measured, an average of nearly 40 maternal deaths were reported per 100,000 live births. Infant mortality, last measured in 2017, was 8.8 deaths per 1,000 births.

Nevertheless, Mississippi has consistently refused to expand Medicaid coverage in the state, which leaves over 100,000 residentshalf of them womenuninsured. The state has done nothing to address a shortage of qualified physicians, which currently stands at 159.4 doctors for every 100,000 people.

Maternal and child health experts agree that most of the causes of perinatal mortality, for both mothers and infants, are preventable. Actual prevention, however, rests upon the political will of the government. Mississippis government has demonstrated that its interests lie, not in making pregnancy and childbirth safer for mothers, but in using pregnant women as political capital to erode the basic constitutional rights of all residents.

Mississippi is the starkest example of how political rhetoric is contradicted by policy, yet these attacks on reproductive rights are growing in both number and stringency throughout the United States.

On Wednesday, the Kentucky Senate passed a law that would make it all but impossible to obtain an abortion after 11 weeks gestation. A procedure commonly known as dilation and evacuation, or D&E, was targeted by House Bill 454. While second trimester abortions are statistically rareaccounting for only 11 percent of all abortionsmost are done via dilation and evacuation, and almost all are done when the mothers life is imperiled by the pregnancy or when the fetus has a lethal deformity. In 2016, of 3,312 abortions in Kentucky, the procedure was used in 537 cases.

Prior to the bills passage, Tamarra Wieder, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Indiana and Kentucky, told Senate Judiciary members that the bill was part of an overarching strategy to ban abortion law by law, method by method.

HB 454 is likely to be blocked by federal courts, as have similar laws in other states. Opponents of the bill pointed this out in debate. The measure still passed 31-5. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, who has worked to strip Medicaid coverage from hundreds of thousands of poor Kentuckians, is likely to sign it into law.

The United States maternal and infant mortality rates are some of the worst among industrialized nations. American women face multiple obstacles, including poverty, unavailability of care, and poor overall health when they become pregnant. These issues require focused attention, funding and prioritization. However, this past week, legislators in Mississippi and Kentucky indicated that the nations lawmakers would rather waste time and money in passing measures to restrict abortion than tackle the poor odds facing mothers and infants in the nations poorest areas.

These measures, moreover, do not pose a threat only to women. Roe v. Wade rests upon the right to privacy. The erosion of reproductive rights, therefore, gives impetus to other measures that would subordinate constitutional rights to the will of the state.The Socialist Equality Party (UK) is holding an online and call-in forum for lecturers, college staff, other education workers and students on Tuesday, March 27 at 7.30 p.m.

It will discuss how to take the struggle out of the hands of the University and College Union (UCU)  following the revolt by lecturers against the UCUs attempted sell-outby establishing rank-and-file committees based on a socialist programme and organising a turn to workers throughout the education sector in Britain and internationally who face the same attacks.

To participate in the meeting, click here when the meeting begins, or call +44 330 221 0088 and enter access code 900-111-333. Note, if using your phone from the UK, the number will be billed at the national call rate.The appointment of the notorious warmonger John Bolton as Trumps national security adviser on Thursday is a clear sign that the White House is being put on a war footing. Bolton is well known for his advocacy of illegal wars of aggression, in particular against North Korea and Iran, his contempt for the UN and international law, and his belligerent stance towards US rivals such as China and Russia.

North Korea is immediately within Trumps crosshairs. The president indicated earlier this month that he would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in May. However, the installation of Bolton in place of H.R. McMaster and the hawkish Mike Pompeo as US secretary of state in place of Rex Tillerson two weeks ago demonstrates that the purpose of any meeting will not be to negotiate, but to deliver a US ultimatum or stage a provocation.

Bolton is an open advocate of pre-emptive military attacks on North Korea on the pretext of ending the so-called military threat posed by its nuclear arsenal. Just last month, he seized on Pompeos remark that North Korea was a handful of months from having a nuclear missile capable of reaching the US, to set out a sham legal case in the Wall Street Journal for attacking North Korea. We should not wait until the last minute, he emphasised.

In another Wall Street Journal comment last August, Bolton scathingly dismissed any prospect of a deal with North Korea and declared that some sort of strike is likely unavoidable unless China agrees to regime change in Pyongyang. While well aware of the huge casualties that such a war would bring to South Korea and Japan, he nevertheless insisted that the US had no option but to carry out pre-emptive strikes on North Korea and set out several strategies up to and including a full-scale air war and invasion.

Bolton is a bitter critic of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran done under the Obama administration that placed severe limitations on that countrys nuclear programs, and is thus in tune with Trumps threat to withdraw from the agreement in May if it is not drastically changed. In a bellicose comment in 2015 in the New York Times entitled To stop Irans bomb, bomb Iran, he advocated US military strikes combined with a concerted effort for regime change in Tehran.

Likewise Bolton is a strident advocate of a confrontational approach to China, pushing for far stronger action to challenge Chinese maritime claims in the South China and East China Seas. His views on Taiwan are in line with the Trump administrations questioning of the One China policy and steps towards forging closer ties with Taiwanmoves that would gravely undermine relations between the US and China and greatly heighten the danger of conflict.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2016, Bolton called on the US to play the Taiwan card by upgrading official ties with the island that China regards as an integral part of its territory. For a new US president willing to act boldly, there are opportunities to halt and then reverse Chinas seemingly inexorable march toward hegemony in East Asia, he wrote.

The appointment of Bolton has provoked alarm in sections of the American political establishment and media. Democratic Senator Bob Menendez declared that while Trump might view Bolton as a sympathetic sycophant, I would remind him that Mr Bolton has a reckless approach to advancing the safety and security of Americansfar outside any political party.

Richard Painter, a former White House lawyer under President George Bush, described Bolton as by far the most dangerous man of that administration. Hiring him as the presidents top national security adviser is an invitation to war, perhaps nuclear war. This must be stopped at all costs, he told the Guardian.

In its editorial yesterday Yes, John Bolton really is that dangerous, the New York Times warned: There are few people more likely than Mr Bolton is to lead the country into war  Coupled with his nomination of the hard-line CIA director, Mike Pompeo, as secretary of state, Mr Trump is indulging his worst nationalist instincts. Mr Bolton, in particular, believes the United States can do what it wants without regard to international law, treaties or the political commitments of previous administrations.

While it is certainly true that Bolton is an infamous advocate of criminal wars, such criticisms and warnings ring completely hollow. There is no anti-war faction of the American ruling class as the past quarter century of US invasions and interventions demonstrates. Rather the bitter political infighting and crisis in Washington revolves around how best to use US military might to shore up its position in the geopolitical order and which rival or rivals to attack first.

Significantly, the New York Times editorial cites Boltons attitude to Russia as his one saving grace. Mr Boltons position on Russia, it declares, that NATO must have a strong response to the Kremlin-linked poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain is somewhat better than Mr Trumps. This remark reflects the right-wing campaign waged by the newspaper in league with the Democrats and sections of the military-intelligence apparatus to remove Trump over his alleged collusion with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential election campaign. This is nothing less than a push for confrontation and war with Russia.

Bolton, in fact, has a militarist response to any challenge posed to US imperialist interestsChina and Russia alike. In a series of tweets over the past month, he has called for the US to strengthen its allies in Central and Eastern Europe against alleged Russian cyber war; a strategic response to new Russian nuclear missiles to show we will not let Russia push the US and its allies around; and a long term strategy to deal with countries like Russia and China with longstanding rulers.

Boltons appointment as Trumps national security adviser does not require congressional confirmation. The only way to block his installation would be through a broad campaign which the Democrats and other critics are not about to initiate as it would mean alerting the public about the danger of war and risk triggering an anti-war movement that would rapidly go beyond their control.

Bolton was one of the gang of war criminals in the Bush administration that invented and promoted the lies about Iraqs non-existent weapons of mass destruction that were used as the pretext for the brutal US-led invasion and occupation. Neither Bolton nor anyone else was prosecuted under the Obama administration, which intensified the drive to war against Russia and China. As a result, Trump is able to install Bolton as his administration prepares for even more disastrous wars.A Federal Court judge last week rejected an application by history professor Jenny Hocking for the release of secret letters between the British Queen and John Kerr, the Australian governor-general, in the lead-up to Kerrs dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on November 11, 1975.

In an extraordinary decision, the judge ruled that the correspondence was not a public record under the Archives Act, but remained the personal property of Kerr and the Queen. Therefore, it could be withheld from public view indefinitely.

The case points to concerns at the highest levels of the Australian and British ruling classes to cover up the role of the royal family and other elements within the state apparatus in the Canberra Coup that removed the Labor government.

Equally critically, it indicates that much is at stake for the ruling elites in protecting, and shielding from public scrutiny, the anti-democratic and potentially dictatorial powers of the governor-general. These powers include reserve powers to dismiss elected governments and dissolve parliaments in times of political crisis.

Hocking, a biographer of Whitlam, challenged the National Archives of Australias decision to withhold the palace letters by classifying them as personal and private correspondence between Kerr and the Queen. This designation took them outside the reach of the Archives Act, which requires all Commonwealth recordsand those of the official establishment of the Governor-Generalto be made public after 30 years.

By arrangement between Kerr and the Queen, the correspondence was lodged with the National Archives, and the Royal Archives in Britain, with instructions that it not be released for 60 years after the end of Kerrs term of office, that is, until 2037. That embargo was later reduced to 50 years, on the Queens instructions.

But the British monarchs private secretary and the governor-generals official secretary can still veto any release. In other words, the letters might never be disclosed to the public. Moreover, even if the Archives Act were to apply, access can be banned permanently to documents that might, in the opinion of the government and the intelligence agencies, cause damage to the security, defence or international relations of the Commonwealth.

Justice John Griffiths, in his judgment, quoted a September 1976 personal and confidential letter that Kerr sent to the Queens Private Secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, about the need to keep his papers, especially about the [1975] crisis, under embargo for a very long time.

Kerr wrote: Having regard to the probable historical importance of what we have written, it has to be, I think, preserved at this end as well as in the Palace.

Clearly, the letters contain critical information about how Whitlams dismissal was organised. But the judge did not confine himself to the events of 1975. Citing a 2013 decision by the High Court, Australias supreme court, he emphasised the wide range of powers and functions of the governor-general.

Griffiths did not refer explicitly to the reserve powers, which have remained in the hands of the monarchy and its vice-regal representatives for centuries. But he stressed, as the High Court had done, that some of these powers involve conduct and actions taken other than on the advice of the Prime Minister, a Minister or the Executive Council.

The judge said the governor-generals unique role included providing personal briefings to The Queen, which briefings are made by the Governor-General without reference to, or advice from the government.

That is, acting in the name of the monarchy, the governor-general has powers to defy, overrule, or remove, an elected government.

Both the two long-time ruling parties, the Liberal-National Coalition and the Labor Party, have strongly backed keeping secret all the politically sensitive aspects of the governor-generals role.

In 2015, on the 40th anniversary of Whitlams dismissal, Liberal-National Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he would ask the palace to release the letters. Since then, he has said nothing publicly on the issue. Instead his government, via the Australian Government Solicitor, vigorously opposed Hockings Federal Court application.

Back in 1983, when the Hawke Labor government introduced the Archives Act, its attorney-general, Senator Gareth Evans, assured parliament in his second reading speech that its provisions did not apply to the governor-generals private or personal records.

In its government-backed submission, the National Archives insisted that the correspondence was highly sensitive. Treating all such material as totally confidential, it told the court, was consistent with convention.

It is already known that from early September 1975 Kerr, who was secretly consulting the chief justice and another High Court judge, wrote to the palace up to three times a day, reporting that he was considering using the reserve powers to oust Whitlam.

The Queen, in effect, gave the green light to proceed. Just one week before the dismissal, her private secretary, Charteris, told Kerr that if Whitlam requested that the Queen remove Kerr from his vice-regal post, the Queen would try to delay things for as long as possible, to allow Kerr to strike first.

What is not yet documented is the part played by key figures in the British and Australian political, military and intelligence establishments, all of which have close ties to Washington. There is no doubt that the CIA and the US ambassador to Australia, Marshall Green, were actively involved in the intrigues.

Kerr himself had intimate links with Australian, British and US spy agencies, dating back to World War II. US intelligence whistleblower Christopher Boyce reported that senior CIA officials referred to Kerr as our man Kerr.

Whitlam was a loyal supporter of the US alliance and the capitalist profit system itself, but he was removed because of the anxiety in ruling circles, both in Australia and the US, that his government had failed to stem the powerful movement of the working class that had brought it to office in 1972, after 23 years of conservative party government.

These volatile political conditions were part of the international upheavals that erupted between 1968 and 1975, shaking the foundations of capitalist rule. A global upsurge of the working class had begun in France with the MayJune general strike in 1968. Strikes and social struggles erupted in Australia in 197374, just as the US defeat loomed in Vietnam and US President Richard Nixon faced impeachment over the Watergate affair.

The ruling classs determination to prevent any public access to the 1975 correspondence is a warning that conditions are emerging once again in which the authoritarian powers of the governor-general could be used. Since 2014, Peter Cosgrove, an ex-chief of the armed forces, has held the post.

Today, the situation is even more unstable than it was four decades ago. Widening social inequality, mounting global economic and military tensions, and decades of suppression of working-class struggles are propelling youth and working people worldwide into battle against the worsening living conditions, shredding of basic democratic rights and threat of war.

There is also intensifying pressure on the Australian corporate, political and military-intelligence establishment to align ever-more closely with the US as it prepares for trade war and war against its rivals, particularly China.

The author also recommends:

Forty years since the Canberra Coup

[11 November 2015]

An exercise in myth-making Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History by Jenny Hocking

[26 November 2012]On Thursday, more than one hundred thousand people took to the streets throughout France to protest President Emmanuel Macrons plan to slash jobs and freeze wages in the public sector, and to privatize the French National Railways (SNCF) and destroy rail-workers social rights.

The strikes and protests were called by seven unions in the public sector. According to the unions, more than 150 protests were organized nationwide, and around 500,000 people marched across France, including 65,000 in Paris, 55,000 in Marseille, 20,000 in Toulouse, 35,000 in La Rochelle, 15,000 in Bordeaux and Rouen, and 10,000 in Nantes. Between 1,000 and 10,000 people marched in other towns.

Students and high school students mobilized to mark the fiftieth anniversary of student revolt on March 22 that launched the events of May/June general strike in 1968.

In Paris, protesters carried banners expressing anger at the government and its plan to destroy social rights, reading Macron resign!", "No to the destruction of public services!" and "We do not negotiate a social retreat. We fight it by the general strike!"

The sectors hit by strikes included railway, school, air transport, hospitals, libraries and other public services. Hundreds of flights and train services were cancelled and scores of schools closed.

The train service in the Paris region and in the provinces were hit. Air traffic was disrupted, with 30 percent of short haul flights cancelled at Paris airports. Yesterday, Air France staff staged a walkout as they protested working conditions and demanded a six percent pay rise across the board.

The protests indicate the social opposition that is developing against to Macron government amid growing radicalization in the working class internationally.

With Macrons approval ratings plunging, there is a growing public anger at his plans to impose a social counter-revolution. Having imposed labour decrees allowing bosses and unions to negotiate contracts, facilitating mass sackings and the imposition of salaries less than the minimum wage, Macron now aims to smash the public service workers.

In February, the government announced a sweeping attack on the public sector, which employs around 5 million people, including the elimination of 120,000 jobs, freezing wages, hiring more contract workers and slashing budgets across the board.

The government is moving to privatize the French National Railways (SNCF), together with destroying rail workers social rightsincluding a standard salary schedule, a retirement age of 52 for train drivers and 57 for other workers, and guaranteed lifetime employment established after World War II.

The trade unions and their pseudo-left allies including the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) and Jean Lucs Melenchons France Insoumise felt compelled to call for a symbolic action to defuse social anger. They are doing so while negotiating with Macron, encouraging illusions in the government, while doing everything possible to prevent an independent movement of the working class.

Laurent Berger, of the French Democratic Labor Confederation (CFDT), told Frances RTL radio, Either the government listens or civil service workers will be extremely mobilized".

Expressing his hostility to a broader social movement in the working class, Berger said, The convergence of struggles is not the CFDTs cup of tea for a simple reason, it is that the convergence of the struggles never has concrete results.

On its part, Yves Veyrier, a spokesman for Force Ouvrier (FO), said, We would prefer not to strike and would prefer to have a debate with the government, but we have asked Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and now Emmanuel Macron and we are still waiting for it.

Workers must take these comments as a warning. The trade unions are preparing to suppress them, while seeking a deal with the government to impose its measures.

Macron is counting on the unions to suppress social opposition in order to ram through further cuts in the public sector and railway. He made clear that he wont retreat from his reform plan.

Despite growing militancy in the working class, workers are confronted with nationally oriented trade unions that seek to negotiate austerity with Macron. To oppose Macrons attacks, workers cannot rely on a few symbolic trade union protests organized at the national level. The key question is to take the struggle out of the hands of the union bureaucracy and its political allies and organizing independently to wage a political struggle against the anti-democratic and militarist policies of Macron and the EU.

The Socialist Equality Party spoke to striking and protesting workers about what brought them onto the streets.

Jacques, who is a maintenance worker on the railway, said, Im demonstrating against the reform of the official status of train worker and against privatization as well. I myself have a status which is hardly exceptional. I earn $1,854 per month. Its better than some people that earn the minimum wage, but it is a far cry from having a privileged life because I earn such a wage!

Today with the privatization what is likely to happen, if they open us up to competition, is a social onslaught. Our wages will fall to the official minimum wage (SMIC) or below because this will be the case with our competitors. Already many at the SNCF are paid much closer to the SMIC than myself. Little by little, when we bid for projects we will lose because we will be too expensive. After that there will be redundancies and we will find ourselves unemployed.

I dont understand what the rich want with all the money they have. My father worked in industrial agriculturein meat. Often he used to tell me, Those people will eat steak at every meal. Today there are many people who cant afford to eat meat. If we redistributed all that money, we would restart the economyits obvious really.

Macron, the European Union and the rich dont even realize whats going on in the world we live in  they live in another world. They dont realize the difficulties we face every day. I, myself, am renovating a house while living in it. Im surrounded by bits of cinderblock walls. Ive been living here for seven years and Im progressing bit by bit. They have gold and fineries, they just dont realize. In seven years Ive only just finished insulating the house. Now, were not so cold as before.

For me Macron is a liberal extremist. Ive often heard of left and right-wing extremists, but liberal extremists are the same We have to get together all of us. I support workers in other countries with all my heart. If its days like today, we could all come together and we would be that much more powerful.

The problems we have in France are the same problems all over the world, from liberalism and globalisation. The problem is international. Even if we had good politicians leading France, finance is stronger. We would be blocked internationally from doing good things. Thats why we need an international movement because a single country in todays world system cannot succeed in following a progressive social policy. It must be the whole world together. Its hard to deal with this but thats the truth.

Theres something I want to add. Ive seen it for quite some time, but it has been getting worse. Its the way in which the media manipulates rail-workers. Every time the media show train workers, they show those with the most privileges to denigrate all rail-workers. But there are many who earn little more than the SMICthey are paid between $1,482 and $1,606 per month and the media dont speak about that. They only show drivers and others, who work on the trains, because they get bonuses. But this is justified because they work long hours and have to sleep over in other parts of the country. I spent two years in a depot repairing trains. It was night work. Today Ive changed my job because I got health problems from that work. Now, I work in logistics, still on the maintenance of trains.

Thibaut, a train driver, explained, Today were demonstrating to defend our rights and conditions. We find it unjust that they are threatening to take them away.

All the rights that we have won for our status and conditions of work. If tomorrow our health fund disappears and all the rights for which previous generations fought, well its up to us to make sure that we dont lose these rights.

Our right of work security does not mean a job for life. In any company, an employee who does something wrong can be fired. Our only advantage is that we have the opportunity to change jobs within our company.

This can mean that the type of professional activity we carry out changes because our company has so many different types of work. Myself, I am a train driver. Tomorrow, if I have health problems, I might not be able to continue. I would be moved to a different activity, whereas in other companies if I no longer pass the medical I can be fired. That is the only difference. When I hear people say we have a job for life, its ridiculous.

People say were paid too much. Thats another debate. I would like to show my paycheck to people so they can see my base pay. Yes, there are train workers who are well paid, but its because of the bonuses. However, if you are ill all the bonuses stop. I think there are many people in private industry that get a bigger base pay than me.

Yes, you can a relatively high standard of living in certain jobs at the SNCF. Its mainly the drivers and others that work on the trains. But if Im ill for say six months I lose all of it. Everyone who works at a station or another location does not get bonuses and has a salary that is no more than the private sector.

I support all the other workers who are on strike internationally. Every worker must defend his rights and fight to keep them. Even to fight for better working conditions. Im for it!

I dont support giving the military, all these weapons and all the funding. Theres better things that money can be used for than buying armaments.Hold Me Down is a 28-minute short film by Swedish director, Niclas Gillis, about a day in the life of a 19-year-old single mother who works as a stripper at an illegal nightclub to support her young child in the South Bronx.

All the roles in Hold Me Down are played by nonprofessionals who have experienced the impoverished underground world portrayed in the film. Based on true events, the movie was shot on location in public housing projects in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx and an actual brothel. The film premiered at the Gothenburg International Film Festival in January 2017, and this last week was released for free viewing online.

Tanisha (Tanisha Lambright) and Chastity (Tianna Allen)

Only 28 years old, Gillis has produced a work that shines in comparison to most of what appears in movie theaters today. He notes on the films website that he set out to shed light on a life led by millions of women in the shadows of mainstream America.

The film is most successful in speaking to the universal figure of the struggling mother, and the difficulties of scraping together the basic necessities of life. It is a story that is sadly commonplace and one which seldom sees the light of day in Hollywood, particularly in such a realistic manner.

Hold Me Down centers around Chastity (Tianna Allen), who lives with her mother, sister and young daughter. The film opens with shots of flies landing on the faces of Chastity and her daughter as they sleep. It then cuts to Chastity changing her daughter. Unable to afford the disposable versions, Chastity wraps her daughter in toilet paper and a plastic bag to fashion a makeshift diaper.

The story of this young mother is never separated from society and the outside world. Even in this quiet scene, neighbors arguments can be heard through the walls and the viewer gets a sense of the ways in which poverty bears down on every social relationship.

In a subway scene, speakers boom that Backpacks and large containers are subject to random search by the police. While her friends buy lunch, Chastity, unable to pay, insists she is not hungry.

Back at home, her mother, a middle-aged woman, rages at Chastity for not making enough money to buy diapers for her child, Why you out at night if you not making any money?  I work all day ... Im f------ tired, do you understand! and threatens to throw her out.

Chastitys mother (Cheryl Juniaus) is another universal character: a working class woman for whom life is nothing but endless, frustrating struggle and who has been emotionally hardened by poverty and want. The reduction of the family relationship to a mere monetary connection is a central theme as the weight of financial burdens strains the protagonists relationships.

Chastity has a somber disposition, is quiet and generally reserved. She accepts an invitation to dance at a bachelor party, only to realize that the party is for Prince (Prince Richard Combs), a man whom she had been in love with and who no longer returns her calls. The only happiness to be caught in her voice in Hold Me Down comes during an old video taken when she and Prince were together.

Chastitys daughter watches while she gets dressed to work the bachelor party. Tragically, one feels that the little girl will fare no better in this life. As Chastity dresses, the music of a millionaire pop star plays on the radio.

She walks alone in the silent corridors of the projects where she lives and in dark streets and subways. Exiting her building, Chastity is approached by a van and the viewer feels the dangers she faces.

Later at the party, she self-medicates to cope with being ignored by Prince, and a friend, Tanisha (Tanisha Lambright), tries to boost Chastitys self-esteem.

Chastity (Tianna Allen) and her daughter in Hold Me Down

While Chastity is dancing she attempts to leave the stage, but is pushed back by a crowd and raped by a group of men. The event is a regular one and she is required to give $60 to a manager and tip the bouncer on her way out of the party. Still in her dancing outfit, Chastity walks home in the morning light with a bag of diapers. She slips quietly into her room, deposits $27 in a drawer and cries over her young daughter asleep in bed.

Vignettes posted on the films site by actors Allen and Lambright offer interpretations of the films title. Hold Me Down, they explain, is akin to asking someone to please have my back, be there for me, and look out for me. A condition clearly absent from the lives of these women and the millions forced into varying degrees of exploitation, including sexual exploitation.

The Hold Me Down website references the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. Furthermore, all children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

The website continues: According to recent studies by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the US currently has the second highest level of income inequality in the developed world, second only to Chile; and the second highest level of income heritability, second only to the United Kingdom; which means that there is almost no other country in the developed world where the disparity between rich and poor is greater, and the likelihood of a person making it from one to the other is worse.

There is no doubt that Gillis has produced a deeply sincere work, which exposes the deep poverty and inequality in the US. The film should be seen by a wide audience for its realistic and moving depictions.

Film poster

The Hold Me Down website offers links for assistance programs aimed at getting women and girls out of prostitution. This, along with the reference to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, points to the limitations of the filmmakers perspective.

What happens to Chastity is appalling. But so much about the existence in which her assault occurs is appallingthe almost unrelieved coldness and harshness of Mott Havens projects, the poverty-stricken streets of the south Bronx, the starvation wages and precarious economy, the often cruel and brutalized relationships that develop under these conditions.

American capitalism has created the unbearable poverty depicted with considerable honesty in Hold Me Down. In the richest country in the world, only a revolutionary movement by the working class can reorganize society to rid it of want and suffering.Niclas Gillis, the 28-year-old Swedish director and actress Tanisha Lambright, spoke recently to the WSWS about their film Hold Me Down (2017). The film depicts a day in the life of Chastity, a 19-year-old single mother who works as a prostitute in an illicit club in the South Bronx, New York, to support her young daughter.

Born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, Gillis began studying film production at Stockholm University at fifteen.

* * *

Norisa Diaz: Niclas, how you did you come to learn of the reality of women like Chastity?

Niclas Gillis

Niclas Gillis: In 2009, I moved to America from Sweden to attend SUNY [The State University of New York] on Long Island. Within three months, I was invited to what I thought was going to be a regular house party in Harlem, but which turned out to be an illicit event similar to the one depicted in the film.

I saw a young woman have sex with a stranger on the floor of a crowded room for single dollar bills and was shocked that, though we were the same age, our realities were so radically different. Afterward, I asked her if she was okay and she told me she had a two-year-old daughter, and this was what she had to do to survive.

That put a worm in my head. I couldnt understand what developed country could allow a young mother to go through this to support her child, and of course I feared for what would become of her daughter. But most troubling of all was that her predicament seemed so common.

I realized that the underlying factors must have existed for such a long period of time and affected so many people. I started to research American history and its bearing on the present day.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, there is almost no country in the developed world in which the disparity between rich and poor is greater than it is here. In spite of the so-called American Dream, the likelihood of a person making it from one end of the economic spectrum to the other is less here than it is in almost any other developed nation.

There seemed to be a great disparity between reality and peoples perception of reality. I wanted to make a film that would show very truthfully what reality is like for so many women born into poverty in the United States and give them a platform to tell their own stories in their own voices, and raise awareness about the conditions they face and inspire change.

Norisa Diaz: Tanisha, the vignettes of you and Tianna Allen speaking are extremely powerful in explaining that social mobility is really a fairytale. You say that this world makes you think you cant be nothing else.

Tanisha Lambright: I am one of the lucky ones that had an outlet like this film. That wont happen for many women who dont have that hope. Most women I know are single mothers. I can name on the fingers of one hand women I know who grew up with a mother and father. I come from where its just single mothers, and they just do what they have to do to get by. You look on TV and they tell you you can make something of yourself, that is true when you get a head start, or Im sorry to say this, when youre white.

I know people including myself who have been to college, but it was so hard financially I couldnt finish because of the position I am put in. There are women struggling in poverty and are still trying to get out, but its so hard. At the end of the day, when I go to school and I go to work and I do all the right things, and I still have to be in the streets doing side things just to get by, it makes you feel like youll just never have a way out. Its a never-ending cycle.

The way life is portrayed in this movie is the way it is. Sometimes on TV its portrayed in a way where its not scary enoughit doesnt show the truth. It shows the glorified parts, the money, but it doesnt show the rape, the abuse, it doesnt show those things. I am hoping those things help young ladies look at the situation, at this lifestyle, and try not to go down same road.

Norisa Diaz: There are some who argue that one can only make art or music about ones own race, gender, nationality, etc. The artist Dana Schutz, for example, who is white, was attacked for her painting about the black youth, Emmett Till, killed by racists. The story behind your coming to learn of the experience of women in situations such as Chastitys and the production of this film really helps explode those notions.

Niclas Gillis: If we are ever to bring an end to racism, we have to step outside of complacent racism. Because I am not directly affected by this, then I dont care.

As a humanist, I believe we all matter equally. I believe that we all bleed the same color and we all deserve the same basic human rights, so I dont see a distinction between myself and Tanisha based on the shade of our skin.

Norisa Diaz: There are some academics that emphasize the so-called agency or empowerment of sex workers and even call for their unionization. Your film powerfully shows there is little or no choice in the matter.

Niclas Gillis: Sex work encompasses a wide variety of circumstancesfundamentally, whatever two consenting adults should be allowed to do.

This is not a criticism of prostitution as a phenomenon, but a criticism of system that puts certain women in a situation where they have to prostitute to make ends meet. So in that way, prostitution as seen in the context of this film is really a consequence of a much bigger problem as opposed to being the problem itself.

Norisa Diaz: To what degree is it totally consensual under capitalism, when you have to make money to meet basic needs and put food on the table?

Tanisha Lambright

Tanisha Lambright: To be honest, the way I see it, the sex business is glorified, which makes it seem like it is something acceptable. What about women and children who are forced economically into prostitution. What about those women? Its not a choice for them. I think its more about the have and have-nots.

Norisa Diaz: Today we see immigrants being blamed, for poverty, unemployment. Historically, there is a continued use of immigration or race to divide people.

Tanisha Lambright: Immigrants are the scapegoat of everything. The poor are meant to stay poor, the rich are meant to stay rich. It doesnt matter where you were born or if you come to America, you are a minority. If you were born in a social class, especially if you are a minority, you can give up the fact that you will have an equal life or equal anything as a white woman.

Racism and immigrants are being scapegoated. In my mind, everything is a plan for poor people to stay poor, stay in poverty, minorities to stay in low income, it keeps the social status. Its not a secret.

Niclas Gillis: Now we have this man, Trump, who is the president. Power never abdicates. The people in power most often do their best to preserve the current power structure regardless of who suffers.

Norisa Diaz: What is the way forward to eradicate poverty and inequality?

Niclas Gillis: James Baldwin said that not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until its faced, and that really resonates with me. We need to recognize there is a problem.

In my mind, it is imperative that all children regardless of their birth or circumstances have the same access to quality education, quality nutrition, a safe place to live and a visible path out of poverty.

The film can be viewed here.Asia

Indian taxi drivers strike for higher pay

About 1.5 million Uber and Ola drivers began an indefinite strike last Sunday midnight to demand better pay. While the strike was centered in Mumbai it also included drivers in New Delhi, Bengalaru, Hyderabad and Pune and other major cities.

The strikers said they were only making a fraction of what they had been promised when they began working for the taxi companies. According to reports, ride-sharing companies made $US371 million in India last year.

One driver, Tanveer Pasha, told the media that he makes about $10 a day but that most of this goes to repaying his car loan. I cant live on the remaining Rs200 [$3] and run a family, he said.

Strikers told the Times of India that they had been promised monthly incomes of about $1,500 and that many workers quit their salaried jobs and took out car loans to become Uber or Ola drivers. Small farmers also reportedly sold their land and bought cars. The drivers are threatening to remain on strike until Uber and Ola commit to paying the monthly wages they had promised.

Indian rural healthcare workers demonstrate

Hundreds of rural healthcare (anganwadi) workers and helpers and midday meal employees demonstrated in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, on March 20 for payment of long overdue wages and better working conditions. The protest organised by the Centre for Indian Trade Unions, which is affiliated to the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Andhra Pradesh Anganwadi Workers and Helpers Union officials denounced the state and central Indian governments at the protest and called for anganwadi workers minimum salary to be set at 18,000 rupees per month ($US359) and for payment of a 3,000-rupee monthly pension.

Municipal workers protest in India over non-payment of wages

Municipal workers in Ludhiana, Punjab protested on March 20 over the non-payment of wages. Members of the Municipal Safari Union, Municipal Workers Union, Municipal Mechanics Union and the Disposal Workers Union were involved the demonstration.

The cleaning workers said that they had not received any wages for the past eight to nine months and that if the council did not pay in the near future, they would take indefinite strike action.

Rajasthan ambulance workers take state-wide strike action

Ambulance workers began a state-wide strike in Rajasthan on March 19. The walkout impacted on about 1,500 emergency services across the state.

The strikers called for the government to end privatisation of the services and for a 1,000-rupee annual pay rise, introduction of a pension scheme and an end to inhumane and backbreaking working conditions. The ambulance workers struck for similar demands in 2010, 2013 and 2015 but the government ignored their demands.

The Rajasthan Ambulance Employees Union called off the industrial action Thursday night following a 5 percent pay increase deal with management and a 2 percent performance increase starting on April 1. Ambulance management has reneged on previous deals.

Pakistan livestock department workers demand promotions

Livestock & Dairy Development Research of Agriculture Department workers in Peshawar demonstrated outside the Press Club on March 14 to demand faster promotions.

During the protest workers denounced the government for failing to upgrade employees positions despite previously agreeing to do so. Most workers, especially low-ranking laboratory workers, have not received a promotion for the last ten years.

Pakistan steel workers demand outstanding pay

Hundreds of Pakistan Steel Mill (PSM) workers blocked the National Highway in Karachi last Saturday to demand five months outstanding wages from the state-owned enterprise. Union officials called off the demonstration hours later after authorities promised to release the pending salaries.

PSM has been targeted by Pakistans Privatisation Commission, whose program is closely monitored by the International Monetary Fund. The mills operations have drastically been reduced in the past three years and hundreds of contract and daily-wage employees positions axed from PSMs workforce.

Steel workers have repeatedly opposed privatisation of the steel mill and ongoing salary payment delays.

Bangladesh cleaners end industrial action

About 1,600 temporary workers and 541 permanent employees from Barisal City Corporation (BCC) called off an indefinite strike on Tuesday. The walkout began on February 17 and was over the non-payment of six months salaries.

Barisal mayor and Barisal Deputy Commissioner met with workers and assured them that the BCC would pay them two months salaries and three months provident fund. The remaining arrears, workers were told, would be paid gradually.

BCC workers have taken industrial action four times in the past two years over unpaid salaries. The BCC is a self-governed municipal administration. Most of its temporary workers are involved in cleaning the city.

Bangladesh garment workers attacked by police

At least 20 workers from United Trousers Garments in Gouripur, near Dhaka, were injured when police attacked a demonstration last Friday. The workers were protesting outside their factory the night before to demand unpaid salaries.

The police attacked one worker at about midnight on Thursday and then provoked other garment workers. Protesters refused to return to work the next day.

Sri Lankan university non-academic workers continue strike action

About 15,000 non-academic university workers remain on strike, three weeks after walking out at the end of February to demand a 20 percent wage rise, a language-proficiency allowance, increased concessionary loans and the introduction of medical insurance and a pension scheme.

Last week the industrial action was extended to all essential services, bringing university operations throughout Sri Lanka to a standstill. Thousands of strikers protested in Colombo on March 20.

The University Trade Union Joint Committee (UTUJC), which called the strike, said that March 19 talks with the finance ministry and the coordinating secretary to the prime minister had collapsed and the strike would continue.

Sri Lankan government surveyors union ends strike

Around 700 striking government surveyors returned to work on March 21, following negotiations between their union, the Sri Lankan Government Surveyors Association, and the government. The union shut down all industrial action after agreeing to present the government with new productivity proposals.

The strike was in protest against a governments decision to transfer surveying to the US-based Land Administration Solutions group. Hundreds of surveyors demonstrated in Colombo on March 16 as part of their industrial action.

Cambodian villagers protest shoddy road construction

About 100 protesters blocked a road at the Ang Knol commune in Cambodias Takeo province last Sunday morning. Villagers closed the road by burning tires and demanded that state authorities address their concerns about the road, which generates large amounts of dust during the dry season.

According to residents, heavy vehicles pass through the 18-kilometre stretch of road. Construction of the road began in 1998 but has never been completed or covered with asphalt.

Takeos deputy governor, Chhour Sothea, issued an empty promise, claiming that the Transport Ministry would fix the road but also cited budgeting issues. More than half of Cambodias 6,000 kilometres of roads are classified as poor or bad.

Australia and the Pacific

Melbourne waterside workers strike over wages and conditions

Maritime workers at the MIRRAT car unloading facility at Melbournes Webb Dock struck on March 17 and 18 after negotiations with their employer, Qube Logistics, broke down over the terms of a new workplace enterprise agreement. The company responded to the walkout and a picket by flying in strike-breakers by helicopter to unload a ship.

The Maritime Workers Union (MUA) says that negotiations over a new agreement have been going on for the last two and a half years and the company has reneged on a promise to restore previous rosters at the facility. In 2015, the MUA negotiated a cost-cutting deal with the company which ended a roster system consisting of seven weeks work and one week off.

Qube Logistics has applied to the Fair Work industrial relations courts to have the agreement terminated. If this occurs, workers wages could be cut by up to 40 percent. MUA members returned to work this week but will only work seven-hour shifts.

Sydney waterside workers call snap strike at Port Botany

MUA members at Hutchinson Ports at Port Botany in Sydney walked off the job on Wednesday in a dispute over training issues. The union wants the company to appoint a union-employed trainer.

The walkout violates Australias Fair Work laws, which only allow industrial action during the bargaining period for a new enterprise work agreement, and then only after a secret ballot and approval by the Fair Work Commission (FWC).

Hutchinson Ports issued a memo threatening to fine individuals involved in the strike, which it claims is unlawful behavior. The MUA members have since returned to work and the training issue conflict will be heard in a conciliation conference in the FWC.

Queensland brewery workers plan rolling work stoppages

The United Voice union issued a press release on Wednesday stating that 100 workers at the Castlemaine Perkins brewery in Milton, Queensland will walk off the job on March 26 as part of a campaign of rolling stoppages for a new enterprise agreement.

The workers previously voted to take industrial action over the companys new enterprise agreement offer, which includes job cuts. In recent years the company has slashed the brewerys workforce by about one third or about 40 jobs.

Perkins management has threatened to shut the brewery if workers do not accept the latest attacks on their conditions and further increased casualisation of the workforce.

Castlemaine Perkins is owned by Japanese-based brewing giant Lion, which has other breweries in Australia, including Tooheys in Western Sydney, West End in South Australia and Boags in Tasmania.

New Zealand port workers continue strike at Lyttleton

Around 200 workers at the South Islands Lyttleton Port continued strike action this week, starting midnight Tuesday and continuing for five days. The strike began on March 13 and was set to run for two weeks but the Rail and Maritime Union (RMTU) deferred the strike after one day.

The union issued the deferral after media reports claimed the strike would have an adverse impact of Lyttleton Port Companys profits and other industries in the Canterbury region.

The workers are striking over pay and safety concerns because the LPC wants to introduce a 24/7 roster. There is also division over workers represented by the RMTU and the Maritime Union NZ. RMTU workers have rejected the roster that Maritime Union NZ workers have but want equal pay.

The RMTU continues to divide the port workers, cutting them from the rail workers in Auckland and Wellington, where the union is working with management to impose deals that will result in the destruction of hundreds of jobs and lower wages.

New Zealand nurses prepare for industrial action

New Zealand nurses are preparing to reject a pay offer from the District Health Boards (DHB) and vote to strike for a better deal. The ballot ended on March 23.

The DHBs, which are critically starved of funding from decades of successive National and Labour governments, offered a 2 percent annual salary increase in December last year. New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) rejected this deal.

Nurses have issued a petition demanding the government increase pay and have established a Facebook page, which now has over 40,000 members, to discuss and take forward their demands. While the union plans to organise nationwide protests, NZNO spokesperson Cee Payne has rejected strike action, claiming that everybody in hospital is critically ill.Mehring Books is pleased to announce the publication of The Struggle against Imperialism and For Workers Power in Iran: A reply to a proponent of Iranian Islamic Socialism. It addresses pivotal issues of socialist strategy in a country that for decades has been a target of US imperialist intrigue and aggression, and where the working class, as heralded by the protests that opened 2018, is now striving to find the road of independent class struggle.

The Struggle against Imperialism and For Workers Power in Iran was written in answer to Iranian journalist Ramin Mazaheri, who has accused the World Socialist Web Site of betraying its socialist and anti-imperialist principles because it champions working class opposition to Irans bourgeois-clerical regime. Based on an examination of Irans history and the global struggle against imperialism, the pamphlet demonstrates that a viable strategy to defeat imperialism can only be founded on the working class, and requires its mobilization as an independent political force in opposition to all factions of the bourgeoisie.

It reviews the Iranian working class long socialist-secular traditions and explains how the betrayals of the Stalinist Tudeh Party created conditions where the Iranian bourgeoisie, through a faction of the Muslim clergy espousing Shia populism, was able to politically derail the revolutionary upsurge that toppled the Shahs brutal US-backed regime in 1979. It also examines the subsequent evolution of the Islamic Republic, refuting the claims of Mazaheri and others that Tehran is pursuing an anti-imperialist policy.

Keith Jones, the author of The Struggle against Imperialism and For Workers Power in Iran, is a member of the WSWS International Editorial Board.

To order, click here.The question of mass violence in American society has evoked a powerful reaction among student youth, who have responded to the shooting deaths of 17 people at Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida by organizing nationwide protests.

The new pamphlet from Mehring Books, The social and political roots of mass shootings in America, provides a deeper insight beyond the sensational headlines.

Unending wars, police murders, massive social inequality, a surveillance state and an unresponsive political system have had a deep impact on broad layers of the population. Millions of young people are seeking to come to grips with the roots of the diseased state of American society, beyond simplistic calls for tighter gun control.

This collection of articles from the World Socialist Web Site makes the case that the root cause of mass violence in America lies in the capitalist systemits wars and repressionand the nightmarish world it has created. Spanning nearly two decades, the essays in this pamphlet provide penetrating insight into the present situation and offer a program for young people and the working class as a whole. The Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, take as an encouraging sign the growing interest among young people in socialism and seek to give conscious expression to these strivings.

Click here to order (price $3.50)The Russian presidential elections on Sunday ended with a clear victory for incumbent President Vladimir Putin, who is now set to go into his fourth term, putting him in complete control of the Russian government for another six years.

The weeks before the election had been dominated by the imperialist campaign over the Skripal poisoning, in what amounted to an overt provocation and attempt to pressure the Russian oligarchy, both with regard to its foreign policy and its economic policies.

The voter turnout had initially been reported to stand at just 60 percent, which would have been the lowest percentage in any presidential election since 1991. However, on Monday morning Russian officials dramatically revised the figure upward to 67 percent without providing much of an explanation. According to the final official results, Putin received 76.7 percent of the votes, the equivalent of some 56.4 million people. This was significantly more than in the last presidential elections in 2012. Significantly, Putin won about 70 percent in Moscow and St. Petersburg, two cities which, as centers of the narrow upper middle class and oligarchy, have traditionally been bulwarks of the liberal opposition.

The multimillionaire Pavel Grudinin, who ran for the Stalinist Communist Party of Russia (KPRF), received 13 percent; the far-right nationalist Zhirinovsky 6 percent. Ksenia Sobchak, a mouthpiece of a section of the Kremlin that seeks a negotiated settlement with US imperialism, received only about 1.5 percent of the votes, despite an extensive well-publicized campaign. This is the equivalent of about 1.25 million votes, which, as some pro-Putin commentators scathingly noted, was about four times less than the followers on her Instagram account. The head of the liberal opposition party Yabloko received fewer votes, only 0.9 percent.

The fact that Putin could win the vast majority of votes despite the fact that the past few years have since a massive deterioration of the living standards of the working class and broad layers of the middle class, is above all an expression of the deep hostility toward the liberal opposition. This opposition is associated with the worst social crimes of the 1990s, and collaboration with the blatant efforts of imperialism to encircle and carve up Russia.

However, in stark contrast to these sentiments, the sections of the oligarchy that support Putin see the election result first and foremost as giving it an improved bargaining position in its desperate attempts to find a negotiated settlement with US and European imperialism. For them, the election result means a green light to press ahead with the very policies of the liberal opposition toward which the vast majority of the Russian population has expressed its hostility. This clearly emerges from a series of commentaries that were published in the wake of the election on the pro-Kremlin website Vzglyad, and in the more business-oriented Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

Thus, Andrei Kolesnik, a state duma deputy of the ruling United Russia party and former member of the Russian navys special forces, celebrated Putins electoral victory in a commentary for Vzglyad as the beginning of the spring after four years of Cold War. According to Kolesnik, now was the chance to reconcile.

We have to thank Theresa May, in particular. In the two weeks before the elections she convincingly showed to the Russian voters how successfully Putin defends the interests of his country in foreign policy. This powerful vote of confidence will make the West understand: there is no sense in waiting for a different, more convenient negotiator to appear in the Kremlin. And this means, the moment to reach an agreement has come. The Western leaders now have a wonderful opportunity to tell their voters, without losing their face: not all of us like Putin, we do not like everything about Russian politicsbut we will accept it as it is.

Without the participation of Moscow none of the global political problems can be solved. Our relations have come to a dead end. And this means we inevitably need to seek a compromise. All the more since Putin is precisely the kind of man who holds his word (unlike many of his international partners). He is someone you can find an agreement with (s kotorym mozhno dogovaritsia).

Nezavsimaya Gazeta was even more blunt. In an editorial, it acknowledged that the vote reflected overwhelming hostility toward the liberal opposition, which now finds itself and its positions in an extreme minority, but then it concluded: However, now that he has received the mandate from his voters, Putin will be forced to engage with the actual agenda, the sharpness of which is better understood by those who have lost in the elections. In other words, in one way or another he will have to base himself on the minorityon those who voted for the liberals or did not take part in the elections at all, or who support Putin but were frightened by the second half of his [State of the Nation] Speech. To take into account the interests of the minority means, above all, to create conditions for it to express itself. Including on a political level.

Another commentator for Vzglyad, Petr Akopov, announced that, Putins new presidential term will be a time of change, the scale of which will outstrip everything he has previously done.

In his Speech on the State of the Nation on March 1, Putin, before warning the imperialist powers in a calculated show of military strength of Russias newly developed nuclear armed weapons, had announced that he planned on enacting a series of economic reforms which, in the spirit of the liberal opposition, were aimed at creating conditions for free competition among businesses, and a reduction of the role of the state in the economy. In other words, he announced that he was willing to make far-reaching concessions to the demands of the liberal opposition and imperialism to open up the Russian economy much more to foreign capital. Any such concessions will be bound up with massive social attacks on the already impoverished Russian working class. (See: Putins state of the nation speech highlights crisis of Russian oligarchy)

These developments confirm the warnings of the WSWS about the reactionary nature of the Russian oligarchy as a whole. Having emerged out of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the destruction of the Soviet Union, which it carried out hand in glove with imperialist institutions and governments, the Russian oligarchy has no, nor has it ever had any, independence from imperialism.

As the WSWS wrote back in 2000, on the occasion of the second war waged by the Kremlin in Chechnya, the threat posed by the growth of US militarism cannot be combated on the basis of the Great Russian chauvinism being whipped up by Putin and his allies in the military. Any support for the war by working people will only strengthen the hand of their own oppressors and the very government through which the international banks and industrial conglomerates seek to dominate Russia. The aim of the Kremlin in Chechnya is to reassert Russias Great Power status, strengthening their bargaining position with the imperialist governments and Western banks and thereby maintaining their right to share in the exploitation of the Russian and Caucasian peoples. (See: The political and historical issues in Russia's assault on Chechnya)

While the imperialist encirclement of Russia and the systematic attempts to undermine it economically and politically have since massively escalated, the essential strategy of the Russian oligarchy around Putin has remained the same: whipping up Russian nationalism and feigning to defend the interests of the country, while seeking above all to strengthen its bargaining position with the imperialist powers to continue and expand the exploitation of its own working class.

A struggle against the danger of an imperialist carve-up or invasion of Russia, and of a new world war, can only be conducted in opposition to all forms of Russian nationalism and the oligarchy, including the sections Putin represents. It requires an international unification of the working class on a socialist basis and, as part of that, the building of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Russia.As 3,000 contract faculty, graduate assistants and teaching assistants conclude their third week of strike action at Torontos York University, Ontarios Liberal provincial government is preparing to intervene to end the dispute on the employers terms.

The big business Liberals, who have enjoyed the unions steadfast support since coming to power 15 years ago, have repeatedly resorted to back-to-work legislation to criminalize workers job action and impose concessionary contracts. This includes adopting an emergency anti-strike law against the very same group of York University workers in January 2009, The York University Labour Disputes Resolution Act.

The striking contract-teachers and research and teaching assistants, represented by Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903, are demanding substantial pay increases, as most currently receive poverty wages, and enhanced job security. Contract faculty are frequently employed on a semester-to-semester basis, meaning they have to reapply for their posts every few months.

Immediately after management provocatively walked away from the bargaining table earlier this week, Liberal post-secondary education minister Mitzie Hunter demanded that the strike be brought to a quick conclusion. Underscoring that the government could legislate an end to the strike and impose binding arbitration, Hunter added, The best deals ... happen at the bargaining table.

In what was clearly a test-run for arguments that the government would use to publicly justify illegalizing the strike, Hunter added, I know everyone is working very hard. everyone knows that the priority is the students and their learning.

Hunters remarks are further proof that striking faculty and student assistants face a political struggle against the Liberal governmentwhich holds the purse strings of all Ontarios universities, their autonomous status notwithstanding and their trade union allies. To achieve their just demands, striking workers must break with the CUPE bureaucracy and fight for the broadest possible mobilization of workers and students in defence of education, all public services, and workers social and democratic rights.

The possibility for such a mobilization was underscored late Thursday, when more than a hundred students occupied York Universitys Senate in support of the strike.

A post by the group, Students for CUPE 3903, on Twitter urged students to join the occupation to demand that our education + the working conditions of our educators be taken seriously. Another message declared that the occupation would continue until the administration cancels all classes for the duration of the strike. The group declared that it is in solidarity with all university workers and teachers on strike: CUPE 2424 at Carleton, the University and College Union in the UK, Oklahoma teachers, and all teachers striking throughout the world.

If this initial expression of solidarity by students for the strike is to strengthen the strike and contribute to a broader political mobilization for decent-paying and secure jobs, striking faculty and students must draw political conclusions from the treacherous role being played by CUPE.

Since the strike began, CUPEwhether at the local, regional, or national level has remained silent on the threat of government intervention and the Wynne Liberal governments role in imposing austerity, casting the struggle in the most narrow collective bargaining terms. Yet only last November, the Ontario government imposed back-to-work legislation on 12,000 college teachers.

Similarly CUPE has chosen to remain silent on Hunters intervention, although it is manifestly the Liberals first step in imposing a rotten settlement on the strikers, whether through an agreement reached under the threat of direct government intervention, or by outlawing the strike and empowering an arbitrator to dictate the workers terms of employment.

The York administration, knowing full well that it can rely on the big business Liberal government to enforce its attacks, has refused point blank to negotiate on the basis of a union proposal to include a handful of extra permanent positions in the new contract.

CUPEs actions are in keeping with the role that unions across Canada have played for more than three decades. Under conditions of an ever-widening ruling-class assault on public services and workers rights, they have systematically suppressed worker resistance, while supporting pro-austerity and pro-war parties like the Liberals, Parti Quebecois, and NDP.

The federal government has resorted to back-to-work legislation 19 times over the past three decades and provincial governments have used such laws 79 times, according to Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights, yet the unions have organized no opposition. Instead they have used the anti-strike laws and the threat of such legislation to shut down strikes and to impose concession contracts.

Under conditions of mounting working class struggles internationally, including strikes and protests by teachers and university staff in the United States and Britain, CUPE fears that the York strike could rapidly escape its control. In West Virginia, 33,000 teachers and other school employees won significant support from other sections of workers when they rebelled against their unions efforts to send them back to work with a concessions-filled deal, while UK university lecturers forced the continuation of a strike over pensions, repudiating a concessionary deal endorsed by the University College Union.

CUPE knows full well that anger over decades of austerity and rampant social inequality are fueling like oppositional sentiments among workers across Canada.

At Carleton University in Ottawa, 800 administrative and support staff, who are also represented by CUPE, have been on strike over the universitys attempt to undermine their pensions since March 5. Although the York and Carleton strikes have unfolded simultaneously, CUPE has made no attempt to unify the two struggles, let alone called for other workers, including its own hundreds of thousands of members, to come to their support

CUPEs opposition to the mobilizing the working class in defence of the York strike goes hand in hand with its close alliance and that of the entire union bureaucracy with the Ontario Liberals and the federal Liberal government of Justin Trudeau. Over the course of successive election campaigns, the unions have funneled millions of dollars into Liberal election campaigns, promoting the fatal illusion among workers that the Liberals offer a progressive alternative to the Conservatives.

At York, CUPE has presided over the betrayal of past strikes and the cutting of hundreds of student assistant jobs.

In 2015, CUPE worked tirelessly to play one section of workers off against the other in order to sell-out the struggle and undermine militant opposition to its acceptance of concessions. Faced with angry denunciations of its bargaining strategy and the rejection by rank-and-file teachers and support staff of a rotten concessions deal, CUPE proceeded to divide the 3,700 strikers by cutting a separate deal with management just for contract faculty. Teaching assistants and graduate assistants were left to fight on alone for a further three weeks before the union succeeded in shutting down the strike.

On the basis of the labour agreement CUPE rammed through, management moved in 2016 to slash 600 to 800 teaching and graduate assistant positions, more than 20 percent of the workforce.

If the current strike is not to be similarly betrayed, striking faculty and assistants, and their student supporters, must break CUPEs stranglehold over it. Strikers and students should form an independent strike committee to organize a struggle against poverty wages and job insecurity, and for free education for all, outside the organizational and political control of the union bureaucracy. An urgent appeal should be made to university staff across Canada and internationally, who all confront similar problems due to endless austerity and the marketization of higher education, and to other sections of the working class, who have experienced decades of wage cuts and declining living standards as a result of the attacks imposed by provincial and federal governments of all political stripes, including the NDP.

The author also recommends:

An interview with a striking York University contract faculty member

[8 March 2018]Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin has spent the last six months attempting to do the impossible: find a solution inside the US Capitol to an immigration quagmire.

Standing on a marble staircase just off the Senate floor, he lamented Thursday that one of his worst legislative fears had come true: after a brief shutdown over immigration, fits and starts of negotiations with the White House and more than one bipartisan bill, Congress would leave for the Easter recess without enshrining in law a program that has given individuals who entered the US illegally as children a chance to live, work and be educated in the United States without fear of deportation.

"We are one court decision away from hundreds of thousands of young people being deported," Durbin said on the floor as he attempted to force a vote on a bill to protect recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Donald Trump chose to end last year but is in limbo in the judicial system.

The nuances, specificities, and friction points vary from issue to issue, but the ultimate reality is the same: While public support for fixing immigration and changing the country's gun control laws is high, members across the Capitol admit that Congress is unable -- and at times unwilling -- to lead social change.

The body -- slow and precise -- doesn't act on moments of outrage, marches or walk outs. And while Congress was arguably not designed to react emotionally to the country's problems, the inaction on big-ticket items can give some constituents the impression that the Legislative Branch is not being responsive to its constituents. It instead waits, and at times, hopes, that the courts, the President and the state houses will do the work for them.

"My philosophy is very simple," said Rep. John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia. "Leaders must lead and we're not leading."

But Trump also complained about how Congress operates Friday, as he signed a $1.3 trillion spending package.

"I looked very seriously at the veto," Trump said at the White House after signing the bill. "I was thinking about doing the veto, but because of the incredible gains we've been able to make for the military, that overrode any of our thinking."

Similarities between guns and immigration

Immigration wasn't the only thing left undone.

Congress left Washington in the early hours of Friday morning with a long list of items left unfinished. Even their most basic role -- funding the government -- had taken the form of a monstrous $1.3 trillion spending package that they voted on just a little more than 24 hours after the 2,200-page bill was released.

"This whole budget process, it really is an embarrassment," Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said. "I've got a beagle and he drags stuff into the backyard every now and then and hides it under the porch. This looks like something my beagle's been keeping under the porch for about three days. It just makes no sense."

Congress also left without passing legislation aimed at lowering health care insurance premiums after partisan disagreements over abortion-restriction language bogged down a near win. They also left without engaging in a serious floor debate on guns despite overwhelming public calls for one. Instead -- after a gunman in Parkland, Florida killed 17 people at a high school -- Congress agreed to tuck a few modest proposals inside the spending bill: funding school safety programs and giving state and federal agencies more money to enter data into the country's gun background checks system.

If the country wanted a robust debate on guns, they got some behind-the-scenes negotiations, a side-effect members say of the tendency in Washington to legislate while always having one eye on the next election.

"We're much more risk averse than we have been in the past," Durbin said.

It's not to say Congress does nothing every time. But, members lament -- despite some wins on banking legislation and sex trafficking in recent weeks -- Congress isn't in a position to tackle big problems -- at least on a bipartisan basis.

On party line votes, Republicans have been able to accomplish goals.

After failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act last year, Republicans in the House and Senate passed a massive tax bill by Christmas that slashed the corporate tax rate, wiped out some loopholes and lowered taxes for many individuals, too.

But those big-ticket items had to be done using an arcane process known as reconciliation, a kind of legislative short cut that allowed the Senate to pass the bill with just a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes, meaning they didn't need a single Democratic vote.

The Trump factor

Members have their own answers as to what is holding them back from sometimes even debating -- not to mention solving -- some of the country's most contentious issues. Members blame arcane Senate rules, leadership, polarization, fear, outside groups, long memories and short tempers.

A spending bill was stalled in the Senate Thursday for hours, for example, because of a decades-old rivalry in Idaho where sitting senator Jim Risch, a Republican from Idaho, objected to a advancing a spending bill because it renamed a wilderness area for a late political rival.

But members also blame Trump.

"It's tough. You just don't know where he's going to be. You don't know if you can rely on what you hear on one day. Is it going to change the next day? That makes it tougher," said Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona who will retire at the end of the year. "Not all the blame is his, we can still bring these things up. ... My biggest gripe right now is that we defer too much to the President."

Never was that clearer than on Friday morning when Trump left Capitol Hill scrambling after tweeting he was mulling vetoing the spending bill Congress had just stayed up late to pass the night before. He eventually signed the bill Friday afternoon.

But Trump's inconsistencies are especially damaging for Congress when it comes to the social issues, the ones that are as much about cultural identity for Republican voters as they are about policy. On things like guns and immigration, it was always going to be Trump who could make the difference. He -- unlike no other lawmaker in Congress -- could stake out new positions and challenge traditional GOP orthodoxy, but he'd have to decide to spend some of his political capital as well as his time and focus.

On guns, Democrats said the President had squandered an opportunity.

Emerging from a bipartisan, televised meeting with Trump in February, they were downright elated. For one hour on live national television, Trump defied the National Rifle Association, called for expanding background checks, entertained Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein as she urged debate on an assault weapons ban, called out Republicans for cowering to the National Rifle Association and gave the House's Majority Whip Steve Scalise a dose of political reality that his idea to attach a background check fix bill to a conceal-carry reciprosity bill didn't stand a chance in the US Senate.

Days and a few meetings with the NRA later, Trump stopped pushing so hard for those reforms.

"I'm frustrated, but not shocked," said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who has been a leader pushing for gun overhauls in Congress since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. "It felt like the President was getting a little bit out far ahead of his skis in that meeting, and I didn't know walking out of that meeting that the NRA was coming in for another meeting, untelevised that night. That clearly changed the dynamic very quickly."

Immigration solution continues to elude Congress

On immigration, it's been a similar story.

Trump ran on the promise of a deportation force and a Mexico-financed border wall. His base doesn't question his allegiance to the rule of law and they trust him in a way they never trusted President Barack Obama to secure the border. If anyone could give the Republican Party cover on immigration, it was Trump. Democrats had hoped that unique position would give Trump room to cut a deal on DACA.

Instead, what they found was --in the words of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer -- working with Trump was like "negotiating with Jell-O."

"I think there is a real fear amongst a large number of my Republican colleagues to cross the President, and yet the President's position on a lot of these issues is always a moving target," said Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner.

Republicans blame Democrats for being intransigent and walking away from opportunities to add DACA into the spending bill, but Democrats say it's Trump they couldn't trust.

Members on Capitol Hill often use shorthand to describe the two versions of Trump they know: "Tuesday Trump" vs "Thursday Trump," a reference to two separate meetings Trump held with members of Congress in the span of a few short days back in January. In one, Trump signaled in a televised meeting an openness to finding resolution on DACA. In another, he privately rejected a bipartisan deal and referred to African countries as "shitholes."

RELATED: Did Trump say African countries were 'shitholes'? Here's a breakdown of conflicting memories of people in the meeting

In February, the administration rejected a second bipartisan attempt. This time, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell allowed the Senate to debate the issue. In the end, none of the proposals passed. The one with the most votes -- 54 -- included a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million DACA recipients in exchange for $25 billion in border security. It was cobbled together by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who'd negotiated the compromise over a hours-worth of meetings and Girl Scout cookies in Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins' office.

Just hours after they announced it, the Trump administration blasted it with statements, tweets and an all-out campaign to stop it before it hit the floor.

"I think the administration lost a great opportunity to get wall funding, take care of the DACA recipients. They overreached and they lost so we're going to have another shot at this when the court rules, and if you overreach, you're going to lose," said South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Immigration advocates like Juan Escalante, a DACA recipient and communications manager at America's Voice, said it's been hard to sit back and watch Congress wait for Trump while he waits anxiously to see if they'll be resolution.

"Unfortunately, the people who are elected to represent our interests were waiting for the President to tell them how to do their job," he said.

Congress needs deadlines

In the aftermath of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, the mood was different for a brief period on Capitol Hill. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, appeared on a CNN town hall and confessed he was rethinking past positions on guns.

RELATED: 6 things Marco Rubio said at the CNN town hall that made news in the US gun debate

Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida, wrote an op-ed calling for a new ban on assault style weapons and Pat Toomey announced he was going to try and resurrect his legislation to expand background checks at gun shows and on internet sales. Trump was tweeting and demanding action from Congress daily. He wanted something and soon. But, even as thousands of students prepare to descend on Washington to march for changes to the country's gun laws this weekend, Congress has largely moved on.

Public support is high, but most members haven't changed their minds. And unlike a spending bill you can fill with sweeteners to entice members to vote "yes," there is no amount of money that will change decades-worth of identity politics overnight. There's no deadline forcing a vote any time soon and with an election looming, a debate carries more risks than it does a guarantee of substantive change.

"We had a DACA debate and we ended up with nothing to show for it," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said when asked why the Senate hadn't engaged in a robust floor debate on things like immigration and guns.

An open debate would expose members on both sides of the aisle to tough, political votes just months before the midterm election.

The Democratic Senate Whip Durbin told CNN that he believes the blame falls on both sides of the aisle when it comes to ducking.

"Particularly on the Republican side, If you tend to stray away from the party line, you could invite a very expensive primary," Durbin said. "I haven't seen it as much on the Democrat side, but the fear of big money coming in and obliterating you has led many Democrats to try to avoid contentious debate or dangerous votes."

On immigration, lawmakers told CNN that the courts have largely allowed Congress to stay silent on DACA since their last attempt. While tens of thousands of DACA recipients are left in limbo as they wait to see how their future unfolds, Congress has yet to feel the heat of the program actually ending.

"I don't know when we'll get" a fix, Flake said. "We just have to wait until the court rules and maybe that will force a deadline that forces us to come back, but without a deadline, it's tough to do. It's very difficult. It's difficult under the best of circumstances in an off (election) year."

Members call for more votes

Members say if they could vote, they could tackle more.

One of the leading complaints members expressed was that they don't vote. In part, in the Senate, voting takes time. Any one member can hold up and slow down the process.

Floor time is precious and leaders aren't inclined to force votes that they don't already know stand a good chance of passing.

Asked what he thought the problem was with Congress not being able to tackle major items very often, Kennedy, a senator who has only served just more than a year, said he thought the key obstacle was "leadership on both sides of the aisle not letting senators be senators."

"I think leadership has the best of intentions. They do want to protect us, but we're all big boys and girls. We don't need protecting. I think most people would like to go back to having unlimited amendments and having a full discussion," Kennedy said. "I know it will change some votes. Maybe not on the gut check issues, but on some of the nuances of it, It will change some votes."

"Even though my mind is made up on the assault weapons ban, I think most thinking people constantly test their assumptions against the arguments of their critics. I'm going to sit there and listen. I (probably) won't change my mind today, (probably) won't ever change my mind, but it's sure going to give me something to think about," Kennedy said.

In the House, there are many more votes than in the Senate. But, some Republicans in swing districts, say they'd like to spend more time on some of the hot-button social issues to distinguish themselves from their party. Rep. Ryan Costello, a Republican from Pennsylvania, says he'd be ready to engage in a gun debate on the House floor.

"The absence of those votes means that Democrats can paint me as conservative as some of my colleagues who would vote not support a bill I would like a DACA bill or some gun safety bills I would support," Costello said.

But Costello doesn't blame leadership.

"I don't point the finger at the Speaker at all," Costello said. "When we have messaging votes around here, everybody bitches about it and then when we don't have messaging votes, some people wish they did."

But voting on even the most basic functions of government present loads of obstacles. The Senate's vote on their spending bill underscored just how intensive the process is.

Before the votes on the omnibus, Sen. Bob Corker blasted the process that brought Congress to yet another early morning vote, calling it "ridiculous" and "juvenile". He berated the leadership for forcing a vote well after 10 p.m. ET at night.

On the floor, before all of his colleagues, he demanded McConnell tell him what the hold up was.

McConnell had spent most of his day trying to talk Risch and GOP Sen. Rand Paul out of delaying the bill and forcing the Senate to burn more than 30 hours debating a bill that everyone knew would pass anyway. This wasn't a politically contentious vote. This was a spending bill.

"My good friend from Tennessee knows that my principal responsibility is begging, pleading and cajoling, and I've been in continuous discussions, shall I say, with some of our members who are legitimately unhappy about one aspect or another, and spent a lot of time thinking over whether or not they wanted to expedite the process, and I must say after a long and intense day of such discussions with several of our members who had legitimate concerns, I'm relieved rather than depressed that we might be able to actually finish tonight," McConnell said.

The most recent spending deal goes through September meaning Congress will have to do this again this again, a fact Trump used as a warning for the Hill.

"I said to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again."They're 911 calls that cover the spectrum of emotion.

Fear: "The whole family, all scared, you know?"

Disbelief: "Was that a typo? A really, really bad typo?"

Anger: "Somebody needs to get their a-- whooped!"

The calls were placed to the Honolulu Police Department on January 13 -- the morning a phone text alert was mistakenly sent out, warning of an incoming ballistic missile threat to Hawaii.

"Seek immediate shelter," it read, injecting panic into more than a million Hawaiians and tourists with its ominous tag line. "This is not a drill."

Honolulu police this week released 24 calls at the request of local media, calling them representative of 2,000-plus calls placed to dispatchers at the height of the confusion. CNN affiliate KHON posted the calls on its website.

The state had already been on edge on the day of confusion, having undergone various missile drills after learning North Korea possessed a long-range missile that could reach Hawaii.

After the alert went out at 8:07 a.m. local time, police dispatchers -- who were not responsible for the mistake -- were just as confused as the callers and were relying on the media for information.

Several times, callers were instructed to watch CNN.

"At this time, we're trying to see on the news, like CNN, cause we just got the message, too, and we don't have any answers," a dispatcher told one caller two minutes after the alert went out.

"I don't own a TV, what should I do?" the woman replied.

"OK, if anything... do you have radio access?" the dispatcher asked.

"I don't know, no I don't," she said, sounding disoriented with confusion. "I have just Internet. Should I go to a neighbor?"

"Can you please? Cause we don't have the answer either because we just got the message too, just now, I'm sorry," the dispatcher said.

By 8:15 a.m. -- eight minutes after the alert -- police dispatchers were finally warned of the mistake, which occurred when a state employee hit the wrong button during a planned drill.

But it would be 30 minutes after that before the public would get that same information declaring a false alarm. In that time, many callers were still in the dark, hearing from dispatchers about the mistake for the first time.

Caller: "My hotel is under alert, is that true?"

Dispatcher: "OK, that information is wrong. The information is wrong. That was a mistake. There is no danger."

"Yeah, they're idiots," another caller said, after being told of the state's error.

Even after the public received its second alert -- the "all clear" at 8:45 a.m -- many 911 callers still appeared confused and afraid. Others simply vented in anger.

Caller: "North Korea could have landed their missiles in 20 minutes, everybody knows that!

Dispatcher: "I'm sorry, sir. I am so sorry..."

Caller: "Well they need to get the system up and running much better than it is so people are not left hanging, not knowing what to do!"

Dispatcher: "We were in the dark, too. I'm so sorry."

Caller: "911 should get tied to the televisions... nobody in the government of Hawaii is listening to this situation to make something happen! They're giving it mouth service, that's all, mouth service!"

The calls released by police fall into a 61-minute time span from that morning, during which operators were chastised ("That's not an answer, there has to be an answer as to what happened!"), served as counselors and even sounding boards for a wary public.

Caller: "It's not fun, you know, it's not fun. They got to find out who did that, you know?

Dispatcher: "Yes, they do. They do... they're going to find out."

Caller: "Go find out and go catch them, you know? Don't let them go."

The state employee who pushed the wrong button during the drill was eventually fired. According to an investigating officer, he claimed not to know it was an exercise, even though five other employees in the room reported hearing "exercise, exercise, exercise."

Even as chaos was unfolding that morning in the police dispatch center, one operator managed to sum up the event while giving audience to a man who was unsure where to take shelter.

"It was like a wake-up call," she said.

"A wake-up call," the man agreed.

"Yeah, because what if it was real, right?" the dispatcher said.INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Gov. Eric Holcomb has signed four bills that he says will help attack Indianas opioid epidemic from every angle.

Holcomb said Thursday that the bill will increase the number of opioid treatment locations, jack up criminal penalties for drug dealers and expand the system that monitors opioid prescriptions. Another measure will improve data collected from local coroners on overdose deaths.

The measures were part of the Republican governors agenda.

Like many states, Indiana has been struggling to contain the opioid epidemic, which has caused the number of overdose deaths to skyrocket and has led to a surge of children in foster care.INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The Say's Firefly will soon be Indiana's official state insect after Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a new law that elementary school students have championed for years.

Friday's bill signing took place at Cumberland Elementary School in West Lafayette. Students there successfully persuaded the Republican governor to include the legislation in his agenda for the year.

Holcomb praised the young students for their perseverance and civic engagement. The measure takes effect in July.

The insect was named by Indiana native and entomologist Thomas Say in 1826. The students argued that it best represents Indiana for its agricultural benefits and place in American history.

The governor's office says Indiana is no longer on a list of the only three states without an official insect.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Elgin, Illinois, police officers tried for more than an hour to get a woman they believed was suicidal and possibly armed with a steak knife out of her car on the side of Interstate 90, including threatening her with arrest.

Authorities say she refused, and at one point she set something on fire and threw it into the back seat. As smoke filled the car, police moved toward it to force her out. But she opened the door, choking on the smoke, and got out of the car as three gunshots rang out. Police say she had a knife in her left hand, but it's not clear in the video.

Decynthia Clements, 34, was killed, and her family wants answers.

Elgin Police Chief Jeff Swoboda is trying to provide some information with the release Thursday of about 30 hours of video from police body cameras at the scene. It's an effort to be transparent, he said in a news conference.

"We are trying to lead the way in what a transparent police department looks like," Swoboda told reporters. "And what a transparent police department looks like is that you get in front of the cameras and you talk with the people before you have all the answers."

An attorney for her family told CNN that Clements was emotionally disturbed and the situation should have been handled differently.

The Illinois State Police is leading an investigation into the March 12 shooting, the police chief said. The Cook County state's attorney will review the case when it is completed, but the process is expected to take months, Swoboda said. The police department also will conduct an internal investigation to determine whether its policies were properly followed.

At the news conference, police showed a video about 20 minutes long, compiled from different cameras and angles and meant to establish a narrative of the shooting. Clements' family watched the video before it was released Thursday, Swoboda told reporters.

How the shooting unfolded

In the footage, police are seen trying to get Clements to exit her vehicle, which is stopped on the shoulder of I-90 in Elgin, about 40 miles west of Chicago. She periodically tries to drive away, but her car is missing two tires and can be heard scraping against the pavement. As more officers arrive, one tells them he saw Clements with a steak knife and a "white powdery substance" on her hand, which he assumes to be crack cocaine.

Officers discuss strategies to get Clements -- whom they believe to be suicidal -- out of the car. They repeatedly tell her she is under arrest, but she refuses to get out. Eventually police close the interstate as a safety precaution.

Police continue to talk tactics. One officer says if Clements exits the vehicle with the knife, they will try to stop her. But if she has the knife to herself, he says, "we're not going to end it for her." Officers discuss using multiple methods of nonlethal force, including Tasers and rubber bullets.

At this point, Swoboda said, police have spent an hour on I-90 trying to get her out of the car.

Officers pin Clements' vehicle between two squad cars in an attempt to keep her from leaving. But a sense of urgency takes over after she lights something on fire and throws it in the back seat of her vehicle, which begins filling with smoke.

When a fire erupts inside the vehicle, officers decide to extract her from the car. One can be seen removing his Taser from its holster before several officers approach. From the body camera, the car door can be seen opening, and Clements is heard choking on smoke, billowing out of the top of the car.

Officers again tell her to exit the vehicle, and Clements steps out and moves toward the officers, when one of them fires his weapon three times. Police say she was holding a knife.

Clements was emotionally disturbed, family attorney says

Antonio Romanucci, an attorney for Clements' family, told CNN in an interview Friday that police had "no reason" to open fire.

"There was no evidence that police were in fear of their own bodily harm," Romanucci said, adding it's clear in the video that officers saw she was "clearly emotionally disturbed."

Romanucci believes the situation should have been handled differently, and that a crisis intervention team should have been on scene. "Since they did not deal with this as a medical situation, they dealt with this as a militarized, police situation," he said. "Because one officer perceived her as deadly threat, despite the plan not to kill her, with all those officers there, it was predetermined that she would die."

Swoboda said in the Thursday news conference that one of the officers on scene led the department's hostage negotiation team until recently, and that a "high percentage" of Elgin police officers have crisis intervention training.

"The family is grieving right now," Romanucci told CNN. Clements, he said, will be buried Saturday.

"We hope the right thing is done," he said. "We hope the investigation is transparent. And hope they find that this officer was not justified in using deadly force."

Swoboda said his department wanted to begin the healing process and chose to release the video now, though he recognizes it will initially cause more pain for the family.

"It's cases like this though that also force some tough conversations," he said. "And I want the community to know that the Elgin Police Department is ready to have those tough conversations."March for Our Lives and other demonstrations that have students at the forefront protesting gun violence are showing the nation a new, formidable political force. These young people are eloquently and passionately demanding meaningful gun reforms, and developing the organizational capacity and resources required to effect real change.

The best way for them to use their growing political power is to advocate for the recruitment, training, funding and campaigning of Republican primary challengers who want to run on a pro-gun control platform.

A recent CNN poll shows that Republican voters are starting to pull away from the GOP's traditional stance on guns. This indicates that many Republicans are willing to support new candidates. Moreover, some of these Republicans have the talent and ambition to run for elected office. They just need encouragement and support.

Although many may believe that voting against all Republicans will get the nation closer to enacting gun control measures, Republicans -- not all or even most but a sizable minority -- are actually needed to do so.

The Republican Party controls each branch of government. Even if Democrats win back control of the House and Senate in the November midterms -- and that is a big if -- they will still have to work with a Republican President and get at least 60 votes in the Senate. If Democrats do win back Congress and enact meaningful gun regulations, these reforms will be fleeting if the GOP simply repeals them once they regain power. And regardless of federal policy, state laws will continue to play a major role, and Republicans have unprecedented control of state governments.

Swift, meaningful and durable reform is only possible if gun control advocates can alter the electoral calculation for Republican politicians.

To understand how students can help do this, we need to put our finger on the exact political problem. Why is the GOP so steadfast in its opposition to reasonable gun regulations?

The National Rifle Association notoriously provides campaign contributions to the Republican Party, but donations are not the real source of the gun lobby's influence. The NRA largely controls the GOP on gun policy by mobilizing its members in Republican primary elections. The NRA closely monitors and grades legislators, and shares this information with members. If a Republican lawmaker supports gun control reforms -- or even wavers in opposition -- the NRA can send out an email that mobilizes mass opposition in the next primary.

Imagine yourself as a typical Republican legislator under these political conditions. You invested a great deal of your own money and time to run for office and you really want to win re-election. You sincerely want to protect the Second Amendment, but in private you also recognize the need for some of the gun reforms staunchly opposed by the NRA. When it comes down to it, you know that voting for stricter gun laws will prompt a fiercely competitive primary election that can quickly snuff out your political ambitions. And you can be equally confident that no primary challenger will attack you for being too conservative on gun policy.

Gun reform advocates need to change this electoral calculation. And they can by threatening incumbents though the nomination process. This has happened before in the Democratic Party.

By the 1960s, a powerful alliance of unions and civil rights organizations reshaped the Democratic Party, from the bottom up, and made racial liberalism a core party commitment. However, during the 1970s, activists opposed to school integration policies weakened this commitment by supporting primary challengers. Anti-busing activists empowered House candidates to run competitive challenges against Democratic incumbents in states as diverse as Massachusetts, Michigan, Kentucky and Texas. These activists were diligent and persistent.

For example, Rep. Louise Day Hicks, a Massachusetts Democrat, entered office on the anti-busing wave in 1970, but was challenged two years later by another-movement backed candidate, who criticized the congresswoman for being insufficiently committed to the anti-busing cause.

Most of these movement candidates did not beat their incumbent opponent, but the threat was real, and the message was clear. The anti-busing movement neutralized powerful pro-integration forces in the party, and altered the electoral calculation for Democrats in Congress. Some congressional Democrats remained deeply committed to civil rights, but many others, including a young Joe Biden, abandoned earlier positions and supported a series of bills that tied the federal government's hand in enforcing integration policies.

A similar effort can move the Republican Party to the center on gun policy.

The gun control movement -- catalyzed by the students from Parkland, Florida -- should channel their energy and resources to play this supportive role for Republican office-seekers. This can include founding an organization that recruits and trains candidates, similar to Emily's List, which recruits and trains women, and forming a political action committee to spend money on their behalf. By recruiting, training and supporting sympathetic Republicans, gun reform advocates can neutralize the power of the NRA.

Since legislators pay close attention to potential threats long before a primary election, mobilization influences legislative behavior almost immediately. Even if the pro-gun control Republicans can't win many primaries, their presence in the races is enough to make a difference. By recruiting and training candidates to run for the 2020 elections, and demonstrating the ability to fund and mobilize support for them, Republican legislators will defect well before their next primary.

Gun control activists across the ideological spectrum should provide financial and organizational support to pro-gun control conservatives if they hope to achieve real change. This approach can pull the Republican Party back toward the center on gun policy and produce meaningful and durable reforms that may save many thousands of lives. Right now, students have the power to make this happen.Students from Hartford, Newtown and Farmington are traveling to the nation's capital to call for an end to gun violence and mass school shootings at the 'March for our Lives' rally.

Roughly 60 youth leaders from 'Hartford Communities That Care' departed from the Wilson-Gray YMCA for Washington D.C. at 3:45 a.m. on Saturday morning to unite with thousands of other students, who also feel inspired to make a change.

"I guess it means I'm taking another step forward for safety I support which is the end of gun violence as well as the end of violence in general," Car'je Sanders of University High School said.

'Hartford Communities That Care' wasn't the only group to leave for Washington D.C. on Saturday morning. The 'Newtown Action Alliance' partnered with 'Sandy Hook Promise' to bring four hundred students to the demonstration.

'Sandy Hook Promise' is an organization "founded by several family members whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012."

Family members and students in Shelton, West Hartford, Stonington and many other cities and towns across Connecticut will also march in solidarity following school shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School, Great Mills High School and other schools across the country.

Senator Chris Murphy will speak at the 'March For Our Lives' programs in Guilford at the town green at 12:30 p.m. and the state capitol at 2 p.m.

Senator Richard Blumenthal will deliver remarks at the Enfield town green at 10 a.m., the state capitol at 12:30 p.m., and the Westport library at 6:30 p.m.

Channel 3's political reporter Susan Raff will be live at 6 p.m. on Saturday with a special report from the nation's capital. Raff will also be live for a special edition of Face the State on Sunday morning.

You can take part in a march at the following locations:

Enfield, Town Green, 10 a.m.

Guilford, Town Green, 12:30 p.m.

Hartford, State Capitol, 12:30 p.m.

Shelton, Veterans Memorial Park, 12:30 p.m.

Stonington, Stonington High School, 2 p.m.

Waterbury, Sears Auto parking lot, 9 a.m.

Westport, Town Library. 6:30 p.m.Republican donor Al Hoffman Jr. announced the launch of an advocacy organization on Saturday that will push Congress to pass comprehensive gun control legislation.

The launch of the group -- Americans for Gun Safety Now! -- was timed to take place against the backdrop of the March for Our Lives demonstrations unfolding in Washington, DC, and across the country in support of stricter gun control.

"Americans for Gun Safety Now! is honored to stand in solidarity with the thousands of students, including survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, to rally for change in our nation's capital," Hoffman said in a statement.

According to the organization's website, Americans for Gun Safety Now will call on Congress to take a number of steps that would tighten gun control as part of a legislative package. Those include eliminating bump stocks, limiting high-capacity magazines and armor-piercing ammunition and expanding universal background checks.

A press release publicizing the new group says it has support from a diverse range of stakeholders, from elected officials to business leaders.

Hoffman, a Florida real estate developer, served as the US ambassador to Portugal under former President George W. Bush and was a Republican National Committee finance chairman. Last month, he told CNN's Ana Cabrera that he planned to withhold money from politicians who will not support an assault weapons ban, an ultimatum he issued in the aftermath of the mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 people dead.AMORY, Miss. (WTVA) - More local Mississippi National Guard soldiers have left for a nearly yearlong mission overseas.

Approximately 80 members of an Amory-based unit boarded buses in Amory before sunrise Saturday. A smaller number had departed prior to this weekend, and the regiment has other units in Nettleton, Pontotoc, Booneville, Fulton, Iuka, Corinth and Ripley.

Mississippi National Guard soldiers with loved ones in Amory prior to departure for overseas duty (Craig Ford) Mississippi National Guard soldiers with loved ones in Amory prior to departure for overseas duty (Craig Ford)

The 1st Squadron, 98th Cavalry Regiment is going to Fort Bliss, Texas, before spending nine months in the Middle East as part of Operation Spartan Shield.

The soldiers are among the roughly 4,200 soldiers with the Tupelo-based 155th Armored Brigade Combat Team called for duty to deal with threats in that part of the world.SB 100 Taxes and Fees for Veterans and Low-Income Persons  This bill cuts taxes and fees by creating an exemption from local business taxes for honorably discharged veterans and their spouses, allowing veterans to receive an identification card or driver license with the word Veteran at no cost, and reducing driver license service fees for veterans.

CS/CS/SB 140 Marriage Licenses  This billprohibits the issuance of a marriage license to youths.

SB 168 Nonnative Animals  This bill creates a pilot program within the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to remove nonnative species.

CS/SB 382 Transportation Facility Designations  This bill makes 39 honorary or memorial transportation facility designations throughout the state, including Senator Greg Evers Memorial Highway.

CS/SB 566 Unlawful Detention by a Transient Occupant  This billclarifies persons that may be considered transient occupants of residential property, provides for the termination of transient occupancies, and authorizes the recovery of personal belongings by a transient occupant.

CS/CS/SB 740 Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services  This bill makes various changes within the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, including increased protections for consumers and efficiencies.

CS/SB 872 Young Farmers and Ranchers  This bill creates an advisory council and clearinghouse for resources to support young adults and veterans working in farming and ranching.

CS/SB 1552 Juvenile Justice  This bill continues the direct support organization within the Department of Juvenile Justice and enhances public safety.

CS/CS/SB 1576 Animal Welfare  Thisbill creates a process to return lost cats and dogs to their owners, especially after storms, and increases penalties for animal cruelty.

HB 37 Direct Primary Care Agreements  This bill establishes a provision for a direct primary care agreement between a patient and health care practitioner.

HB 283 Cardiac Programs  This bill expands the criteria for adult cardiovascular services for hospitals seeking licensure as a level 1 program.

CS/CS HB 351 Prescription Drug Pricing Transparency  This bill requires pharmacy benefit managers to register with the Office of Insurance Regulation and increases drug price transparency.

CS/HB 395 Martin County  This bill creates the Town of Hobe Sound in Martin County if approved by a referendum of local voters.

CS/HB 547 Reports Concerning Seized or Forfeited Property  This bill changes the date that law enforcement agencies are required to submit an annual report relating to the Contraband Forfeiture Act.

CS/HB 581 Subpoenas in Investigations of Sexual Offenses  This bill enhances investigative or law enforcement agencies use of subpoenas in investigations involving certain sexual offenses.

CS/HB 631 Possession of Real Property  This bill updates real property provisions relating to access of real property and the establishment of customary use.

CS/HB 675 Pharmacies  This bill creates a Class III institutional pharmacy permit and provides parameters for the permit.

CS/CS/CS/HB 841 Community Associations  This bill revises numerous provisions relating to community associations regarding reporting requirements, official records, websites and bylaws.

HB 869 Ranger Drainage District, Orange County  This billremoves approximately 3,000 acres of land west of the Econlockhatchee River from the Ranger Drainage District.

CS/CS/HB 875 Limitations of Actions Other Than for the Recovery of Real Property  This bill clarifies the statute of limitations in actions based on a defect in the design, planning, or construction of a building or other improvement to real property and provides that certain time-barred claims may be filed within a specified period.

HB 889 West Palm Beach Police Pension Fund of the City of West Palm Beach, Palm Beach County  This billimplements police pension benefit enhancements agreed upon between the City of West Palm Beach and their police union.

HB 891 St. Lucie County  This bill returns the Special Restaurant Beverage licensing law to general law in St. Lucie County.

CS/CS/HB 901 Acme Improvement District and Pine Tree Water Control District, Palm Beach County  This billtransfers 50 acres of land from the Acme Improvement District to the Pine Tree Water Control District for land development in the Flying Cow Ranch area.

CS/CS/HB 937 Perinatal Mental Health  This bill requires the Department of Health to provide perinatal mental health information through the Family Health Line toll-free hotline.

HB 1013 Daylight Saving Time  This bill declares the Legislatures intent to observe Daylight Saving Time year-round throughout the entire state of Florida if approved by Congress.

HB 1015 Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, Monroe County  This bill limits the service of Florida Keys Mosquito Control District members to three terms or a total of 12 years.

CS/HB 1017 Seminole County  This bill requires a referendum of local voters to approve cardroom gaming within Seminole County, following the Seminole County Charter.

CS/CS/CS/HB 1059 Exploitation of a Vulnerable Adult  This bill creates an injunction against the financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

CS/HB 1065 Expunction of Criminal History Records  This bill permits a person that receives a judgment of acquittal or not guilty be eligible to have his or her criminal record expunged.

CS/HB 1071 City of Clearwater, Pinellas County  Thisbill removes the prohibition against certain land in the City of Clearwater from being used for carnivals and shows.

CS/CS/CS/HB 1073 Department of Financial Services  This bill modifies requirements and procedures within divisions of the Department of Financial Services, including the Divisions of Treasury, Risk Management, Investigative and Forensic Services, and State Fire Marshal.

CS/CS/HB 1079 Child Welfare  This bill strengthens the child welfare program within the Department of Children and Families and enhances parental accountability.

HB 1089 East Mulloch Drainage District, Lee County  This bill establishes the East Mulloch Water Control District as a dependent district of Lee County.

HB 1093 Loxahatchee Groves Water Control District, Palm Beach County  If approved by a referendum of local voters, this bill dissolves the Loxahatchee Groves Water Control District as an independent special district and establishes it as a dependent district of the town to use public funds more efficiently.

HB 1115 Indian River Farms Water Control District, Indian River County  This billremoves the 99-year term limitation on the Indian River Farms Water Control District.

CS/HB 1117 Sebastian Inlet Tax District, Indian River and Brevard Counties  This billauthorizes the Sebastian Inlet Tax District to enter into agreements with local law enforcement agencies to provide and facilitate security services on District properties.

CS/HB 1119 Lakewood Ranch Stewardship District, Manatee and Sarasota Counties  This bill expands the boundaries of the Lakewood Ranch Stewardship District to include 47 acres of land it currently surrounds.

CS/CS/HB 1137 Pinellas County Construction Licensing Board  This billtransitions operations of the Pinellas County Construction Licensing Board to Pinellas County, revises board composition, provides term-limits and creates additional financial and auditing reporting requirements. The bill also authorizes dissolution of the Pinellas County Construction Licensing Board if approved by referendum.

HB 1139 City Pension Fund for Firefighters and Police Officers in the City of Tampa, Hillsborough County This billauthorizes the City of Tampa to enter into a supplemental contract with every firefighter and police officer who is an active member of the Citys Pension Fund.

CS/HB 1141 Firefighters Relief and Pension Fund of the City of Pensacola, Escambia County  This bill creates a defined contribution plan, in addition to the already established defined benefit plan, for firefighters serving the City of Pensacola.

HB 1201 Education for Prisoners  This bill provides correctional agencies access to increased workforce programs and educational services.

CS/HB 1239 South Lake County Hospital District, Lake County  Thisbillrepeals the special act containing the charter of the South Lake County Hospital District and dissolves the District as of October 1, 2019.

CS/HB 1301 Sexual Offenders and Predators  This bill enhances registration requirements for sexual offenders and sexual predators.

CS/CS/HB 1337 Nursing  This bill makes changes to terms and requirements to the Florida Nurse Practice Act to conform to those laws in a majority of states.

CS/CS/HB 1373 Medication Administration  This bill revises training requirements for the administration of medication.

CS/HB 1393 City of Tampa, Hillsborough County  Thisbill creates the Water Street Improvement District in the City of Tampa, Hillsborough County.

CS/HB 1395 City of Marco Island, Collier County  This billauthorizes the Florida Department of Health to issue the City of Marco Island a license to provide basic and advanced life support services.

CS/HB 1397 Hardee County Economic Development Authority, Hardee County  This bill revises the membership of Hardee County Economic Development Authority, makes all terms limited to four years and repeals travel and per diem reimbursements for members who reside outside of the county.

CS/CS/HB 1423 Tohopekaliga Water Authority, Osceola County  This billmakes several changes to the Tohopekaliga Water Authority, including revising board membership, establishing term limits and removing board compensation and expense reimbursements.

HB 1447 City of Orlando, Orange County  Thisbillcreates the Downtown Restaurant Area in the City of Orlando and reduces the size requirements for a restaurant in Orlandos downtown area to obtain a Special Restaurant Beverage license.

CS/CS/HB 1449 Campellton-Graceville Hospital District, Jackson County  This billauthorizes the sale of assets by the Campbellton-Graceville Hospital District and terminates the Districts authority to impose ad valorem taxes.

CS/HB 1451 Charlotte County Tourist Development Council, Charlotte County  This billexpands the eligibility requirements for the membership of the Charlotte County Tourist Development Council.

CS/CS/HB 1435 Child Welfare  This bill authorizes a family finding program within the Department of Children and Families.

HB 6501 Relief of Cristina Alvarez and George Patnode  This bill directs the Florida Department of Health to provide $2.4 million in relief to Cristina Alvarez and George Patnode for the wrongful death of their son, Nicholas Patnode.

HB 6505 Relief of Vonshelle Brothers  This bill directs the Florida Department of Health to provide $1 million in relief to Vonshelle Brothers for injuries sustained by her daughter.

CS/HB 6509 Relief of C.M.H.  This bill directs the Florida Department of Children and Families to provide over $5 million in relief to C.M.H., an individual formerly in the care of the Department.

CS/HB 6523 Relief of Ashraf Kamel and Marguerite Dimitri by the Palm Beach County School Board  This bill directs the Palm Beach County School Board to provide $360,000 in relief to Ashraf Kamel and Marguerite Dimitri for the wrongful death of their child, Jean A. Pierre Kamel.

CS/HB 6527 Relief of Christopher Cannon by the City of Tallahassee  This bill directs the City of Tallahassee to provide $500,000 in relief to Christopher Cannon for injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident caused by a City of Tallahassee Dial-A-Ride vehicle.

CS/CS/HB 6535 Relief of the Estate of Dr. Sherrill Lynn Aversa  This bill directs the Florida Department of Transportation to provide $650,000 in relief to the estate of Dr. Sherrill Lynn Aversa for her wrongful death in a car accident caused by a Department vehicle.

CS/HB 6545 Relief of Ramiro Companioni, Jr. by the City of Tampa  This bill directs the City of Tampa to provide $5 million in relief to Ramiro Campanioni, Jr. for injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident caused by a City of Tampa Water Department truck.

HB 7021 Florida Statutes  Thisbill revises Florida Statutes.

HB 7023 Florida Statutes  Thisbill revises Florida Statutes.

HB 7025 Florida Statutes  This bill revises Florida Statutes.

HB 7027 Florida Statutes  This bill revises Florida Statutes.

HB 7033 Trust Funds  This bill continues the Land Acquisition Trust Fund within the Florida Department of State.

HB 7045 The Legislature  This bill requires the 2020 regular session of the Legislature to convene on Tuesday, January 14, 2020.

HB 7051 Trust Funds  This bill continues the Land Acquisition Trust Fund within the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

HB 7075 A Review Under the Open Government Sunset Review Act/Payment Instrument Transaction Information  This bill continues the public records exemption for certain payment instrument transaction information held by the Office of Financial Regulation.

HB 7077 A Review Under the Open Government Sunset Review Act/Agency Employee Misconduct Complaint  This bill continues public records exemption for complaints of misconduct against an agency employee.

CS/HB 7087 Taxation  This bill saves Florida families and businesses $170 million in taxes, including $38.5 million in savings from a 3-day back to school tax holiday and a one-week disaster preparedness sales tax holiday. Read more HERE.

HB 7093 Corporate Income Tax This bill conforms Florida's corporate income tax law with the federal corporate income tax changes adopted by Congress in 2017.

HB 7095 A Review Under the Open Government Sunset Review Act/Local Government Electric Utility  This bill continues the public records exemption for proprietary business information for electric utilities.

HB 7097 A Review Under the Open Government Sunset Review Act/Citizens Property Insurance Corporation  This billcontinues the public records exemption for proprietary business information obtained by Citizens Property Insurance Corporations clearinghouse program.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - On Tuesday, a group of 100 students, all from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, will head to Tallahassee to meet with state legislators and join in on a variety of meetings.

Stoneman Douglas student Jaclyn Corin organized the trip and says theyll be splitting the students up into groups of 10 so they can have a voice in every meeting.

Theyre hoping to change preexisting bills, specifically those focusing on the assault rifles.

All of the students are part of the Never Again movement. Corin described it as a student led movement. It shows that we are mature enough. We will come at them and do whatever it takes to change the way our state runs and the nation.

Corin reiterated this isnt about Republicans or Democrats, adding they want to show the truth about all politicians, while giving them a second chance to take action.PENSACOLA, Fla. (WTXL) - Nicholas G. Peacock, 34, of Salisbury, North Carolina, was sentenced to 27 and a half years in prison Friday for enticement of a minor and interstate travel for illicit sexual activity.

In April 2016, the victim's grandmother reported that her 12-year-old granddaughter was missing and that she believed the child had met someone online and left with him.

When officers visited the grandmother's home, the child had returned.

The child said she traveled to North Carolina for the weekend with a white male named Nick, who was later identified as Peacock.

The grandmother later told officers that she found information on a laptop that she had allowed the victim to use that led her to believe the victim had been sexually active with Peacock.

In interviews with investigators, the victim said that she had been sexually active with Peacock over the weekend while they were in North Carolina, that she had met Peacock online via Skype, and that Peacock had drove her to North Carolina and then back to Florida after Peacock had found a missing person report.

In addition to telephone and hotel records, investigators reviewed thousands of Skype chats on the laptop from the time period of Dec. 2015 through April 2016, which revealed many sexually explicit conversations, images, and videos exchanged between the victim and Peacock.

Peacock pled guilty on July 17, 2017.iStock/Thinkstock(ATLANTA) -- Atlanta officials are reassuring the public that operations will continue as normal as they deal with a cyberattack on the city's systems.

While most of the citys websites are working normally, a number of web pages that customers use to pay bills began to be affected Thursday morning. Access to court information was also affected.

Whoever is behind the attack is asking for a $50,000 ransom.

As the city struggled to contain the spread of the attack, city officials have been forced to take down web pages in other departments and literally unplug city computers. Some city workers arent even receiving email.

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said that her office is working with the FBI.

We are continuing to work with our federal partners and other stakeholders who continue to advise us on how best to navigate and approach this, Bottoms said.

City leaders stress that there have been no impacts to police, water service, 911 and Atlantas Hartsfield International Airport. The city, they point out, was built before computers. As a protective measure, Wi-Fi at the airport has been turned off. Security wait time signs and flight information signs may not be accurate as a result, officials cautioned.

The greatest impacts appear to be at municipal court and the city detention center -- with computers down, many taken down protectively, city employees are having to manually admit inmates, handle tickets and warrants. The city court currently cannot validate warrants or process ticket payments online or in person.

Customers will not be penalized for late payments, the city said.

The city government isnt getting specific about who the demands are from, what kind of data has been stolen and whats being held hostage, but its clear that citys systems have been severely compromised.

Bottoms did not say Friday whether the city planned to pay the $50,000 ransom, but already city council members are promising her millions if she needs to build a new secure system from the ground up. She referenced similar ransom attacks on corporations, and on other government agencies in Colorado and North Carolina.

What we know is that someone is in our system, and that there is a weakness there, Bottoms said.

It is absolutely not what we wanted to have happened in the city of Atlanta. But to the extent that there are changes and upgrades that we need to make to our system, we need to do it now.

She added: This is a massive inconvenience to the city.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.People endanger themselves by crossing on foot, with loads of produce carried in coconut-woven baskets on their backs. Income levels are very low in the Rai Coast District, and education is a luxury, while health is rarely taken seriously  even in a place that is plagued by tropical malaria.

Despite the economic advantages in Madangs Rai Coast District, the only road connecting it to the rest of the country is a rough dirt track, and there are no bridges to traverse two fast-flowing rivers that cross the track.

PORT MORESBY - Madang is a scenic town on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. Surrounded by jungle-covered mountains and active volcanoes, it is a popular tourist destination and home to the PNGs only nickel cobalt mine.

This story is from Real Lives, Real Stories, a series written by Transparency International staff from national chapters in the Asia Pacific region. The stories have a common message: change is possible when citizens get involved, even when the odds seem stacked against them. This story is from Papua New Guinea, where Transparency International PNG works to help empower local communities to demand accountability and ensure transparency from their government

When construction on a major bridge across one of the rivers suddenly stopped, Rai Coast resident Justin Balop knew something was not right. The government had hired a foreign-owned company to build the bridge and the project was now clearly behind schedule.

Justin knew the bridge was important to his community and he knew that he had to do something.

Justin formed a village drama troupe to act out plays about corruption. The plays helped people understand what corruption is and generated discussions about community issues.

The people were engaged: they wanted to take action, but they needed more information.

It was at this point that Justin approached Transparency International PNG to facilitate a community information workshop on fighting corruption and budget tracking.

As a result of the workshop, Justin mobilised his community: a protest march took place and a petition was delivered to their provincial government demanding an explanation for the incomplete bridge.

The community also requested improved services for their district. The bridge construction has since restarted.

The story of the mobilisation of Justins community quickly spread throughout Madang Province and more communities began organising themselves, requesting assistance from Justin to help them tackle issues of corruption in their communities.

I always thought there was nothing left for me to do as a citizen after voting for a leader during an election, said Justin.

Transparency International PNG helped me to understand that citizens have a higher calling to ensuring accountability and transparency by demanding it from their leaders.

TI PNG continues its work to build a coalition of anti-corruption communities that are committed to ensuring transparency by empowering citizens to demand quality public services from their government and local authorities.

As a result of the workshop, Justin mobilised his community: a protest march took place and a petition was delivered to their provincial government demanding an explanation for the incomplete bridge.WORLAND  For generations the Worland Rotary Club has had a tradition of hosting exchange students coming to Worland and Worland students going to other countries. But sadly, that may come to an end because of a lack of host families.

WORLAND  For generations the Worland Rotary Club has had a tradition of hosting exchange students coming to Worland and Worland students going to other countries. But sadly, that may come to an end because of a lack of host families.

Its been a great program but its drying up and not just here, across the country. Its bigger in other countries than it is here. The U.S. is less apt to open their homes to people than in other countries it seems. Worland has gone up and beyond, weve had two [exchange students] for years and with the size town we have thats way above most other communities, Rotary member Ken Westphal said. We are close at this point to having to pull the trigger and not having a student this year. This would be the first time in quite a long time that we havent had one come. The problem is for years we kind of used the same host families over and over again, we have kind of burned them out I think. We used to always have two students coming in but we dropped down to just one because there wasnt enough host families. At this point we are down to zero if we dont get some commitment [from host families]. The rule is if we dont have anyone coming in, we wont be able to have anyone go out, he added.

Westphal stated that for each student coming to the U.S. three host families are needed. He said that anyone can become a host family, the only criteria is that the exchange student needs to have their own defined living space, but that exchange students can share a room with a Worland student as long as they are the same sex. He stated that single parents, married couples, retired couples and parents with children in school can be host families as long as they are financially and emotionally able to host.

The only thing that host families are asked is to provide room and board. The Rotary Club provides exchange students with an allowance. We host as the Rotary Club and the parents do it, the individual host families, but the actual club is the host as well. We will usually give allowances to the kids that come here and the kids that go there usually get allowances from the Rotary there, so they have spending money. Its a program, overall in the state of Wyoming especially, its been a long-term program, but more and more communities have stopped doing it, sometimes because its hard to get host families. Thats the biggest hold up at this point. There is plenty of money in the Rotary to help fund the program but we cant pay host families, they have to do it voluntarily, Westphal said.

He added that exchange students while here are prohibited from driving, dating and doing drugs.

Anyone interested in hosting an exchange student is asked to contact a Rotary member or Westphal at 347-9233.Spring has finally sprung in Wyoming, as much as Wyoming ever gets a spring. Local columnist John Davis wrote Tuesday about some of the signs of spring he witnesses. Ill add mine along with some other random thoughts.

Spring has finally sprung in Wyoming, as much as Wyoming ever gets a spring. Local columnist John Davis wrote Tuesday about some of the signs of spring he witnesses. Ill add mine along with some other random thoughts.

Spring brings with it all the birds returning. Its been pretty quiet this winter at our house but this week especially there has been lots of chatter between small song birds, pheasants and the loud sandhill cranes. Its the wonderful sounds of Wyoming spring.

~~ ~~ ~~

Spring also brings with it spring burning in the area. Already there have been two out-of-control controlled burns. County regulations can be found on the Washakie County website. In an article in this Wednesdays issue, County Fire Warden and Worland Fire Chief Chris Kocher cautioned people that just because the ground is still wet and muddy it doesnt take much time with the sun shining for cheatgrass to dry and become strong fuel for fire.

If you burn, be cautious, make sure you are aware of weather patterns, that you have fire suppression tools at the ready and abide by the countys regulations.

~~ ~~ ~~

Moving on from spring topics, we go to taxes. There have been a little over 100 people who have completed the sales tax survey to prioritize the 10 entities seeking revenue from the general purpose one-cent sales tax. I dont know what the response was like four years ago but considering how important the tax is to these entities, the response seems quite low. Fortunately, there is still time to fill out the survey online, or copies are available here at the Daily News, the Worland and Ten Sleep city halls and senior centers. Washakie County Commission Chairman Terry Wolf reminds people that if the survey is incomplete or filled out improperly it will not be counted. Residents must rank the entities 1-10 and only use a ranking once. In other words you cannot rank your top three or five and then put all the others at 10. It skews the averages and thus wont be counted.

~~ ~~ ~~

Now lets run over to national news and the privacy of Facebook. According to the Associated Press, Breaking five days of silence, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized for a major breach of trust, admitted mistakes and outlined steps to protect user data in light of a privacy scandal involving a Trump-connected data-mining firm.

I am really sorry that happened, Zuckerberg said of the scandal involving data mining firm Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has a responsibility to protect its users data, he said in a Wednesday interview on CNN. If it fails, he said, we dont deserve to have the opportunity to serve people.

Well kudos to him for apologizing but really, in my opinion, nothing is private on the internet, especially on social media, and you are fooling yourself if you think otherwise. This is why Im cautious what I post, even when I post only to friends. I never post about being away from my home until I return.

And seriously havent you noticed some of the suggested ads on Facebook look a lot like things you may have searched for on the internet, no matter which search engine you used. Pay attention. Zuckerberg may be apologizing for collecting data that a company that was collecting for President Trump gained access to, but dont let that fool you into thinking that Facebook or any other social media wont be collecting information for other paid advertisers and companies. Theres a reason Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and others are free.

The only way for your data to be truly private is to stay off of the World Wide Web.

~~ ~~ ~~

And, finally, we arrive at food trucks and other itinerant or transient vendors. I agree with City Attorney Kent Richins that the current city code is too cumbersome, which is why it isnt being enforced. I disagree with Council member Dennis Koch that a fee needs to be equal to the brick and mortar businesses.

Should there be a reasonable city fee for vendors? Yes. Emphasis on reasonable. Why? Because I believe all businesses should help support the community in which they are doing business. And, its important for the city to know who is doing business in the community.

But there is a reason they are doing business in a food truck, including a much lower overhead cost. Those entrepreneurs should not be punished just because they choose to do business differently than the norm, i.e., in a vehicle (whether food truck, produce truck or other).Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-23 21:07:16|Editor: pengying

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HANOI, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam and Russia will strengthen cooperation and reinforce the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, officials from both sides said on Friday.

Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh made the remarks at a joint press briefing in Hanoi on Friday after holding talks with visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The two sides agreed to beef up cooperation in such fields as defense, security, science, technology, education, trade and economy. They have targeted two-way trade of 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, up from nearly 3.6 billion dollars in 2017.

Lavrov said oil and gas is still the spearheaded industry in economic cooperation between Vietnam and Russia. Russia wants to bolster cooperation in other fields as peaceful use of nuclear energy, education, training, banking, transport and infrastructure.(File photo)A man looks at a Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) model by Lockheed Martin at an international military fair in Kielce, Poland September 7, 2017. (Reuters photo)

ANKARA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Turkey is in talks with the U.S. on purchase of Patriot missile defense systems, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday.

Speaking at a press conference in Ankara, Hami Aksoy said that Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Umit Yalcin would pay a visit next week to Washington for a face-to-face meeting regarding the missile deal.

Aksoy stressed that Turkey continued to establish a NATO-integrated defense system, adding "our consortium with France and Italy over Eurosam (air defense systems) is being carried out in this framework".

Turkey signed a 2.5 billion U.S. dollars deal with Russia on purchase of the S-400 anti-ballistic defense systems last year amid criticism and doubts from other NATO allies.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary-General, described on Feb. 20 Turkey's purchase of Russian S-400 missile systems as "a difficult issue" for the alliance.

Some experts said that Turkey's S-400 deal with Russia would further strain ties between Ankara and Washington and could trigger U.S. sanctions on Turkey.BRUSSELS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- European Union (EU) leaders said here Friday they regretted the decision by the United States to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminium, adding these measures could not be justified on the grounds of national security.

The spring European Council, held on Thursday and Friday, focused on economic affairs, in particular on trade, where EU leaders noted that shipments of steel and aluminium from the bloc had been temporarily exempted from tariffs, and called for that exemption to be made permanent.

The EU leaders supported the steps taken by the European Commission to respond to the U.S. measures as appropriate and in a proportionate manner.

They also reaffirmed the EU's commitment to an open and rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its core.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 02:28:25|Editor: Mengjie

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XINING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Northwest China's Qinghai Province plans to build or upgrade 400 toilets at tourist sites in the next three years as part of nationwide efforts to spruce up public toilets, according to the provincial commission of tourism development.

The commission said that 346 new toilets will be built and 54 toilets will be renovated to meet the needs of tourists.

Earlier this month the provincial government announced that they will spend 3.2 billion yuan (about 500 million U.S. dollars) in building or upgrading more than 198,000 public toilets across the province in the next three years.

China's toilet "revolution" began in 2015 in an attempt to make the worst facilities cleaner and better regulated. More than 30,000 new toilets were built and close to 25,000 public facilities were renovated between 2015 and 2017.

Nationwide, around 64,000 toilets will be built or improved at tourist destinations by 2020.

Qinghai boasts a broad nature reserve including pastures, snow mountains and Gobi desert. Qinghai Lake, the largest inland saltwater lake in China, is a major tourist attraction. The province also has a number of Tibetan-inhabited areas, attracting tourists with their ethnic culture.

The province received more than 34 million tourists in 2017, up 21.1 percent.WASHINGTON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he has signed the 1.3 trillion-U.S. dollar spending bill hours after he threatened to veto it.

"As a matter of a national security, I've signed this omnibus budget bill," Trump said at a press conference on Friday.

However, he added that "there were a lot of things I'm unhappy about in this bill."

In a tweet earlier Friday, Trump threatened that he was considering to veto the massive spending bill which will fund the federal government through Sept. 30.

Trump argued in the tweet that 800,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program "have been totally abandoned by Democrats" and his long-promised border wall "is not fully funded."

The 1.3-trillion-dollar spending bill was approved by the House of Representatives on Thursday and by the Senate early Friday morning. It helps to avert a government shutdown as the current funding expires midnight.

The spending package allows big spending increases for defense and domestic programs, while adding money for infrastructure projects, veterans and measures to combat the opioid crisis, among other programs.

It also includes measures meant to strengthen gun sale background checks and improve school safety.

But the bill also provides 1.6 billion dollars -- far short of what the Trump administration has sought -- for border security measures, including construction of a border wall with Mexico.

"I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again," Trump said at the press conference.

Trump has been frustrated that Congress has not provided enough funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Trump's campaign promises.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 03:08:29|Editor: Lifang

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Policemen are seen outside a supermarket in Trebes, southern France, on March 23, 2018. The perpetrator of the hostage-taking incident was shot dead in the police raid, according to French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb. He held several hostages early on Friday, causing two persons dead and an officer wounded. (Xinhua/Jose Santos)

PARIS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed Friday that the shootings and the hostage-taking at a supermarket in the southern town of Trebes were "an Islamist terrorist attack."

"Our country has suffered an Islamist terrorist attack. The terrorist was identified and shot dead during the assault," Macron said.

The French president added that three people were killed and 16 others were injured, including a senior police officer. Among the injured, two are in critical condition.

"The investigation will give answers to a number of important questions: when did he become radicalized? How did he obtain the weapon?" he added.

Earlier on Friday, Redouane Lakdim, 26, killed one person and wounded another before stealing a car. Later on, he opened fire on police officers while they were jogging in Carcassone, injuring one person. Then he headed to Trebes where he killed two people before he was shot dead.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack. French security services are studying the authenticity of this claim, Macron said.

Speaking to reporters as he arrived at the scene, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said Lakdim was believed to have acted alone. He was known to police for robbery and drug trafficking, but had no sign of radicalization.

"He was known for possession of drugs. We couldn't have said that he was a radical that would carry out an attack," he said.

The French anti-terrorism division of the Paris prosecutor has opened an investigation into the attack.

France has become a major target of frequent terrorist attacks following its military operations in Syria, Iraq, and the Sahel region.

A wave of attacks, claimed by the Islamic State, has disrupted the usual calm in France. The bloodiest was in Paris where a series of explosives and shootings left 130 victims dead on Nov. 13, 2015.

On October 2017, Macron signed an anti-terrorism law which he said was necessary to combat the high threat of terrorism.

The bill enshrines emergency security rules into ordinary law that allow police to have more power to search and make arrests without a judge's approval and restrict people movements and gathering.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 03:23:32|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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UNITED NATIONS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations continues to support evacuees from the besieged rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta in the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus, said a UN spokesman on Friday.

As of Thursday, an estimated 66,000 evacuees from Eastern Ghouta were being hosted in collective shelters in rural Damascus, said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Most of the shelters do not have the capacity or infrastructure to accommodate the large number of people arriving, he told a daily press briefing.

Though the United Nations is not in charge of the management of these shelters, it has, together with its partners, mobilized a rapid response, with nonfood items, food, shelter items, water, sanitation and hygiene, health, nutrition and protection assistance being provided to those in need through the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, he said.

In a separate development, airstrikes on the main market in the town of Harim near the Syrian-Turkish border reportedly caused the deaths of dozens of civilians and injured many more, said the spokesman.

The United Nations continues to call on all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure as required by international humanitarian law and human rights law, he said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 04:23:45|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DAMASCUS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The last batch of rebels and their families have evacuated the city of Harasta in Syrian capital Damascus' Eastern Ghouta countryside on Friday, leaving the city empty of rebels, according to the state TV.

The evacuation of rebels and their families from Harasta started on Thursday and ended Friday evening, with a total of 59 buses transporting 3,000 people, including 1,000 rebels.

The rebels in Harasta have handed over their heavy weapons to the Syrian army before they left Harasta towards rebel-held areas in the northwestern province of Idlib.

The TV aired live footages of the entrance of Harasta with Syrian soldiers, celebrating and chanting for President Bashar al-Assad.

The TV titled its coverage as "Harasta is empty of terrorists," as the Syrian government regards most of the rebels as terrorists.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Syrian forces have controlled 90 percent of Eastern Ghouta, as part of the wide-scale offensive that has been ongoing since late last month to clear this area on the eastern rim of the capital from the rebels.

Eastern Ghouta, a 105-square-km agricultural region consisting of several towns and farmlands, poses the last threat to the capital due to its proximity to government-controlled neighborhoods east of Damascus and ongoing mortar attacks that target residential areas in the capital, pushing people over the edge.

Four major rebel groups are currently positioned inside Eastern Ghouta, namely the Islam Army, Failaq al-Rahman, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Levant Liberation Committee, known as the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.LUSAKA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Zambian President Edgar Lungu said Friday he was not bothered by a decision by opposition to lay a motion for his impeachment in parliament.

On Thursday, opposition lawmakers from the United Party for National Development (UPND), Zambia's main opposition party, submitted a motion to commence impeachment proceedings against Lungu.

The opposition lawmakers have tabulated a number of accusations against the Zambian leader in their motion, which they claim borders on breach of the country's constitution.

But Amos Chanda, presidential spokesperson, said the move will not go anywhere.

"We have looked at the motion and it contains nothing but full of gossip and does not deserve the dignity to be tabled before the House," he told reporters during a press briefing.

The presidential spokesperson added that the motion will not succeed as the opposition party lacks the numbers in parliament to make two-third of the lawmakers needed to pass voting.

He further said the impeachment motion was a slap on the current dialogue process by political partners being spearheaded by the Commonwealth following the disputed 2016 general elections.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 05:28:57|Editor: Mengjie

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ANKARA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Turkey and the United States are continuing talks for procurement of Patriot missile defense system after Ankara signed an accord with Moscow to purchase S-400 surface-to-air missile systems.

"Our work on Patriots and other systems that are compatible with NATO will continue," Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters on Friday noting that Turkey, as a NATO member having the alliance's borders, is "positive for all sort of joint work" that will maintain the security of its borders.

"We have not given up for NATO-compatible systems," he said, adding that the U.S. is "still an ally of Turkey despite its mistakes in the region of Syria."

Yildirim was referring to disagreements between Ankara and Washington with regards to U.S. support given to Syrian Kurdish militia which Turkey sees affiliated to Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

These talks would not be "alternative" to Turkey's procurement of Russian S-400 anti-missile defense systems as S-400 is an "independent" system, the prime minister said.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy has also confirmed talks with the U.S. for Patriot systems. "Turkey continues to hold talks with the Franco-Italian Eurosam consortium and the U.S. to buy missile defense systems," he told reporters on Friday.

"The system we are buying from Russia cannot be integrated into NATO systems, but we are maintaining our target to develop a system that is compatible with NATO," Aksoy said in reply to allegations that Ankara and Washington are in talks for procurement of Patriot systems.

"Our cooperation with Eurosam is in line with this target. On the other hand, we continue our talks for Patriot systems with the U.S.," Aksoy noted.

Tina Kaidanow from U.S. State Department will pay a visit to Turkey in late March for talks on Patriot systems, local media reported.

In December, Turkey and Russia finalized a deal to supply Ankara with S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries. Turkey will be the first NATO member to acquire the Russian system.

Ankara says it urgently needs an air defense system and Russia provided the best option.

Turkey's procurement of the Russian system has raised concerns with NATO allies who often warn that the country Ankara should invest in defense technology that is compatible with NATO systems.

The U.S. warns Turkey that the country might face sanctions for its decision to purchase Russian S-400 defense system because of a recent law recently adopted by Washington against some Russian companies.

In an apparent move to balance its relations with the Western world, in January Turkey took a step towards closer defense cooperation with France and Italy with a contract for a study into the development and production of a long-range missile defense system called Eurosam.

Turkey's motivation to purchase Patriot systems is mainly strategic and political, according to experts.

"Turkey conducts a joint development program, on the other hand, makes immediate procurement of S-400 systems, now it makes another immediate procurement of Patriots, along with carrying out work to develop its national systems. These procurements seem like elements of a strategic and political equation," defense industry expert Arda Mevlutoglu told Xinhua.

"These systems have specific weights. Purchase of them may be part of other negotiations, such as Afrin or Manbij," he said referring to Turkey's ongoing military operation into Syria's Afrin and discussions between Ankara and Washington for the retreat of Syrian Kurdish militia from Manbij region of the country.

If it was just a technical procurement, Turkish government should initiate a tender and Turkish Air Forces should be prominent in the process, Mevlutoglu said.SAN FRANCISCO, March 23 (Xinhua) -- U.S. aerospace leader Boeing Company said Friday that it has obtained a 678-million-U.S.-dollar order from Japan's largest airline All Nippon Airways (ANA) for two 777 freighters.

The 777 freighter is the world's largest and longest range twin-engine cargo jet, and the new order will make the Japanese carrier the first airline in Japan to operate 777 freighters.

The ANA said it plans to fly its new planes on international routes, particularly to Asian countries and North America.

It placed the order to complement its medium-sized 767 freighter fleet amid a strong growth in air cargo.

"Air cargo is an essential part of global trade growth," said Hiroshi Sugiguchi, vice president of Corporate Planning and Administration of ANA Cargo.

Boeing said the 777 freighter is capable of flying 4,900 nautical miles (9,047 kilometers) with a payload of 102 metric tons.

The airplane's long range translates into significant savings as fewer stops mean lower landing fees, less congestion, lower cargo handling costs and shorter delivery times, said the U.S. top aircraft manufacturer.Source:Xinhua| 2018-03-24 07:30:27|Editor: Mengjie

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People look at handicrafts during the 53th National Crafts Trade Fair in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, March 23, 2018. The trade fair kicked off Friday attracted 1300 enterprises to attend. (Xinhua/Liu Xiao)CHICAGO, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) grains closed mixed on Friday, with soybean futures tumbling to its lowest in over a month on worries about trade tensions between the U.S. and China.

Corn closed modestly higher after notching a six-week low on the trade jitters, while wheat rose on bargain-buying and a drier outlook for the U.S. Plains production belt.

The most active corn contract for May delivery rose 1.25 cents, or 0.33 percent to close at 3.7725 dollars per bushel. May wheat delivery went up 4.5 cents, or 0.99 percent to close at 4.6025 dollars per bushel. May soybeans went down 1.5 cents, or 0.15 percent to close at 10.2825 dollars per bushel.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China, the latest unilateral move that could draw retaliation from China and lead to trade war.

The American Soybean Association (ASA) on Friday expressed its concern that China may impose tariffs on the oil seeds it sells to China. If that happens, soybean prices would likely fall to lower levels.

"There is a real struggle in agriculture to keep everything going right now. It's extremely frustrating to have the administration taking aim at our largest trading partner," said ASA President John Heisdorffer.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 07:24:16|Editor: Lifang

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UNITED NATIONS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- UN officials on Friday highlighted the link between hunger and conflict, saying that famine is man-made in today's world.

"There is no reason that there should ever be famine in the world today. There's actually no reason that there should be hunger in the world today when we have 300 trillion (U.S.) dollars of available wealth," David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, told the Security Council in a briefing.

"The question we should ask ourselves today is what is driving this extreme hunger rate. And the answer ... is man-made conflict."

The number of people on the brink of starvation rose from 80 million to 124 million in the past three years, he said. South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and northeastern Nigeria are on the brink of famine, he said.

Beasley stressed that the link between hunger and conflict is as strong as it is destructive. Each one-percent rise in the rate of hunger is matched by a two-percent increase in migration, he said.

He also stressed the importance of putting war-torn countries and regions back to their feet through development aid.

He asked the Security Council to help end conflict and to make sure that aid agencies have the access to deliver humanitarian aid and development support. "Until we do that we will never solve hunger."

UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock also briefed the council.

He said it is possible to eradicate famine within our lifetime owing to a dramatic expansion in agricultural output and productivity.

In the past 50 years, food grain production increased four-fold by using only 12 percent more agricultural land, he said.

Nearly two-thirds of the world's hungary live in countries in conflict. Nearly 490 million undernourished people and almost 80 percent of the world's 155 million stunted children live in countries affected by conflict, he said.

The behavior of combatants in these contexts is often atrocious, he stressed. Humanitarian access is too often difficult or denied. In some cases, starvation is being used as a weapon of warfare. Warring parties continue to damage or destroy water systems, farms, livestock and markets.

Lowcock said the Security Council has the means to investigate violations of international humanitarian law. There are no humanitarian solutions to conflict, it is peace and political solutions that will disrupt the vicious cycle of conflict and hunger, he said.ABUJA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Nine deaths have been recorded following an outbreak of cholera in Nigeria's northeastern state of Bauchi, local authorities confirmed on Friday.

A total of 324 cases of cholera have been confirmed so far across five districts in the state, local officials said.

The State Commissioner for Health Zuwaira Hassan told Xinhua that a cholera isolation center has been set up to care for the patients.

According to Hassan, the facility is now active, with at least 26 patients admitted.

She said poor hygiene and open defecation are likely causes of the present outbreak of cholera in the northern state.

The infectious cholera disease causes severe watery diarrhea and can lead to dehydration and even death if untreated.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 08:29:25|Editor: Lu Hui

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Policemen are seen outside a supermarket in Trebes, southern France, on March 23, 2018. The perpetrator of the hostage-taking incident was shot dead in the police raid, according to French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb. He held several hostages early on Friday, causing two persons dead and an officer wounded. (Xinhua/Jose Santos)

PARIS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) killed three people and injured 16 others in a series of terror attacks in southern France on Friday, before being gunned down by anti-terror police.

It was France's first major terror attack since October of 2017, when the country enacted an anti-terrorism bill which enshrines emergency security rules into ordinary law. It allows police to have more power to search, arrest without judge approval and restrict people movements and gathering.

The gunman, identified as 25-year-old Redouane Lakdim, began his attacks by hijacking a car on Friday morning in the southern French town of Carcassone. He shot one passenger dead and injured the driver. The body of the victim was later found hidden in a bush.

Lakdim then opened fire on police officers while they were jogging in Carcassone, injuring one person. Following that, he drove a few kilometers to Trebes and headed into a Super-U supermarket around 11 a.m. local time (1000 GMT).

He stormed the supermarket, shouting the religious slogan "Allahu Akbar" and telling about 50 people who were inside the supermarket that he was "a soldier of the Islamic State" and was seeking "to liberate brothers".

According to BFMTV news channel, Lakdim asked for the release of Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspect of Paris shootings and explosions that left 130 victims in 2015.

The police officers managed to get people out but Lakdim used one woman as a human shield, according to BBC. A 45-year-old police officer asked to replace the hostages, putting his phone on a table with an open line for the convenience of police monitoring the situation.

Then a gunshot was heard and an elite Swat team rushed into the supermarket, killing the gunman. The police officer was badly injured.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb confirmed the death. The Moroccan origin gunman was known to police for robbery and drug trafficking but had no sign of radicalization, and he acted alone, according to Collomb.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the shootings and the hostage-taking were "an Islamist terrorist attack". Among the 16 injured, two were in critical condition.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. The claim was being checked by French security services, Macron said, after chairing a crisis meeting with ministers and security officials.

"I urge our fellow French citizens to remain aware of the terrorist threat, but also to remember the force and resistance our people have demonstrated each and every time they were attacked," Macron said.

The president also said that anti-terror prosecutors had opened an investigation into the attack to "give answers to a number of important questions: when did he become radicalized? How did he obtain the weapon?"

In another development, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said that French investigators had placed in custody a woman close to Lakdim.

"A person close to him, who shared his life" was taken into custody for criminal association in relation with a terrorist attack, Molins told a press conference in Carcassone, without elaborating.

France has become a major target of frequent terrorist attacks in recent years. One of the bloodiest was in Paris where a series of explosives and shootings left 130 victims dead on Nov. 13, 2015.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 09:09:29|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- China's securities regulator approved three new IPO applications Friday, which will raise up to 2.6 billion yuan (410.7 million U.S. dollars) in the A-share market.

All three companies will be listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).

The firms and their underwriters will confirm dates and publish prospectuses following discussions with the exchanges.

The CSRC has introduced rigorous approval procedures for IPOs since a new review committee came into office in October, rejecting or suspending more than half of IPO applications.

China has sought to normalize IPOs to improve financing efficiency and direct more money into the real economy since it suspended IPOs between July and November 2015.

The regulator is seeking a balance between easing the IPO backlog, keeping the market calm and improving the quality of listed companies.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 10:59:40|Editor: Mengjie

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HOUSTON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The Trump administration's decision to restrict Chinese investment will have a rippling effect on U.S. jobs, a U.S. economic expert said Friday.

Jon Taylor, a professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, said setting barriers for Chinese companies doing business in the United States means "nothing but reducing foreign direct investment which is the key here."

Instead of blocking investment, the United States should invest in areas such as infrastructure, artificial intelligence, big data and technology, he told Xinhua.

"The largest single number of patterns currently being issued right now are in China not the U.S.," Taylor added.

Taylor believes that the U.S. decision to restrict Chinese investment is against globalization and will be detrimental to its own economy and the global economy ultimately.

"Simply stated, protectionism and economic isolation are losing propositions," he said, adding that "globalization has created an integrated supply chain over the past 20 years. Tariffs on imports make U.S. exports less competitive, not more competitive."

Amid strong warnings from business groups, U.S. President Donald Trump Thursday signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of Chinese products, and restrict Chinese investments in the United States, fueling fears that the world's two largest economies could be sliding towards a trade war. The Chinese side on Friday reaffirmed its stance against the U.S. moves.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 11:09:42|Editor: Mengjie

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By Xinhua Writer Guo Ying

BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Fu Haohuan and his team are using the world's fastest supercomputer to forge ahead China's research on Earth system science.

With a strong academic background in computer science, Fu joined the Department of Earth Science Systems at Tsinghua University in 2010 and has been conducting interdisciplinary research in the two areas.

"I think research across boundaries may prompt new ideas and has great potential to generate revolutionary technological innovation," Fu said.

In 2017, Fu's team used the world's fastest supercomputer, Sunway TaihuLight, to simulate China's Tangshan earthquake in 1976. They achieved great efficiency in performing the simulation and creating 3D visualizations of the devastating earthquake, which will help improve earthquake modeling and preparedness.

Their research won the 2017 ACM Gordon Bell Prize, nicknamed the "Nobel Prize" of supercomputing applications.

Fu's team is now using the supercomputer to conduct a simulation of the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008, which he believes is "a more challenging research problem" considering the more complex geological structure and the landslides the earthquake caused.

"This calls for more interdisciplinary research and talent from the intersections of dynamics, geology and engineering," Fu said.

China implements national strategies for innovation-driven development, and interdisciplinary research has become an important path for obtaining high-level innovation results.

In January, the State Council issued a guidance on intensifying basic research, encouraging interdisciplinary research, and balanced and coordinated development of basic disciplines and applied disciplines.

"China will promote the construction of national centers of interdisciplinary research," said the guidance.

MORE PLATFORMS

More interdisciplinary research platforms and projects have been launched across China's universities, institutions as well as enterprises.

In December 2017, Tsinghua University established the Tsinghua Laboratory of Brain and Intelligence (THBI) and the Future Laboratory, both platforms to promote interdisciplinary research.

Wang Xiaoqin, director of the THBI said brain science is a discipline where engineering and life sciences intersect to a high degree.

"The THBI will make the most of Tsinghua's advantages in these subjects to explore the complex issues at the frontier of brain science, and to promote fundamental research in AI," Wang said.

Peking University set up an interdisciplinary research center for medical studies and information science in January.

Zhan Qimin, vice president of Peking University, said medical science can be a platform where a variety of cutting-edge disciplines intersect.

Fu, also deputy director of the National Supercomputing Center where Sunway TaihuLight is located, believes that the supercomputer itself is a platform for interdisciplinary research.

"Scientists from different disciplines may harness the computational resources to advance their research. More than 100 institutions have used Sunway TaihuLight in more than 60 research domains," Fu said.

NURTURING TALENT

He Conghui, a PhD student at Tsinghua, is also a member of the research team that won 2017 ACM Gordon Bell Prize. He is devoted to the intersection of earth system modeling and high performance computing.

He said that interdisciplinary research does not simply mean researchers from different disciplines working together to solve a problem.

"Only when you have mastered the knowledge of different disciplines can you put up constructive ideas and develop critical thinking ability," He said.

As a computer science major, He has stepped out of his "comfort zone" and started to study Earth system science.

"I also benefited a lot from the open seminars that draw experts from different countries and different disciplines together. The brainstorming has generated a lot of inspiration and the culture of collaboration is vital for interdisciplinary research," He said.

Fu compares talent in interdisciplinary research to babies growing up in a multilingual environment.

"They may have difficulties at the beginning but they have more potential to master different languages," Fu said.

Fu believes that China has a large talent pool for interdisciplinary research.

"China abounds in talent with solid knowledge of mathematics and physics, some of which are open-minded and willing to broaden their academic horizon," Fu said.

INSTITUTIONAL REFORM

Fu said conducting interdisciplinary research means choosing a different path and researchers may face institutional challenges as well as academic risks.

"Sometimes we feel that we are caught between different departments and we don't know where to apply for research funds," Fu said.

Tsinghua University has rolled out measures to improve the management, cultural environment, support systems, and organization of interdisciplinary research.

According to Qiu Yong, president of Tsinghua, the university has set up a working committee to promote interdepartmental cooperation and leverage university resources in support of interdisciplinary research projects. It has also secured funding for this purpose.

"We allow teachers to work part-time in different departments and schools. In addition, we have also set up an interdisciplinary degree system," Qiu said.

These institutional reforms have reassured Fu.

"We are greatly inspired as we are given more support and space in conducting interdisciplinary research," Fu said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 11:29:44|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu He had a phone conversation with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Saturday morning, urging concerted efforts to maintain the stability of China-U.S. trade ties.

During their conversation, Mnuchin briefed the Chinese side on the latest development of Section 301 investigation report released by the U.S. side.

Liu, for his part, noted the report violates global trade rules, and is detrimental to the interests of China, the United States as well as the whole world.

The Chinese side is ready and capable of safeguarding its national interests, said Liu, who is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, director of the General Office of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs and the leader of the Chinese side in the bilateral Comprehensive Economic Dialogue.

He expressed the hope that the two sides will stay rational and work together to maintain the overall stability of their economic and trade relations.

The two sides agreed to maintain communication over the issue.by Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- With this week's firing of U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump will move in a more hawkish direction, reflecting Trump's desire to rid the administration of voices of dissent, experts said.

"McMaster was fired because he acted as a restraint on President Trump," Darrel West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua.

"He did not like the chief executive's bellicose rhetoric and often sought to deter Trump from doing things the President wanted to do," West said.

The sacking followed a spate of other administration firings, most notably that of now former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was replaced by Mike Pompeo earlier this month.

The prospect of packing more hardliners into the administration has caused an outcry that a confrontational foreign policy would mean more volatility for the United States. Experts said the shake-up in the senior ranks of the Trump administration will cause the administration to behave in a more hawkish manner.

As McMaster's replacement, John Bolton, the hardline former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has a long history of favoring pro-military action. "He thinks the United States should be aggressive in using its military advantage," West said.

Christopher Galdieri, associate professor at Saint Anselm College in the U.S. State of New Hampshire, told Xinhua that Bolton is far more hawkish on foreign policy questions than McMaster was, and shares with Trump a disdain for the idea of diplomacy as a solution to international crises and conflicts.

"Bolton is sympathetic with Trump to the extent that Trump -- in his rhetoric, at least -- likes to talk about international relations in terms of conflicts that can be won through strength and force. I suspect Trump is tired of having advisors who are there to restrain or handle him ... and sees Bolton as someone who will indulge his inclination toward force as a solution," Galdieri said.

McMaster's firing was rumored for a long time, and it reflected both a divergent world view on policy and the fact that the president and McMaster never gelled on a personal level, said Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency.

"I'd imagine for President Trump, he is happy to have someone who has always taken a more hawkish view of national security issues, as well as someone with experience on cable television communicating for more hawkish policies," he said, referring to Bolton's frequent appearances on cable news shows in the United States.

"Bolton brings mostly a hardline attitude ... a belief that the U.S. under previous presidents did not press America's case forcefully enough," Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua.

"Confrontationalism appears to be the way ahead," Paal added.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 12:54:52|Editor: Jiaxin

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GUANGZHOU, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Chen Yongqiang owns a company with only 20 staff in a small Chinese town, but his business card has English on one side.

Two years ago, Chen established Leayol, a light manufacturing company in Guzhen Township under the jurisdiction of the city of Zhongshan in south China's Guangdong Province.

The company had a production value of more than 5 million yuan (791,000 U.S. dollars) last year.

"Although my company is small, we plan to further explore the markets along the Belt and Road," Chen said.

Leayol is among 25,000 lighting companies based in Guzhen, which covers an area of less than 48 square kilometers and has 150,000 permanent residents. The town welcomes one million business people from around the world every year.

Guzhen has benefited from foreign trade as China pushes forward the Belt and Road Initiative, which is aimed at building trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road trade routes to seek common development and prosperity.

"The initiative brings new opportunities for small and micro manufacturers," said Ou Decheng, deputy chairman of the Zhongshan lighting and electric appliances association.

About 30 percent of the lighting products manufactured in Zhongshan are exported, and the proportion has been rising in recent years, Ou said.

Dubbed China's "Lighting Capital," Guzhen rivals international lighting manufacturing centers such as Milan, Frankfurt, and Dallas.

Its products are sold to more than 130 countries and regions. The town's lighting industry has exceeded 100 billion yuan, accounting for more than 70 percent of China's total.

Zhu Yongqing worked in the industry in Guzhen for nine years before setting up a foreign trade company in 2014 to assist local small and micro-sized businesses.

The primary service of Zhu's company is organizing exhibitions in countries and regions along the Belt and Road.

"I want to provide a platform to help more companies transform from the current mode of 'basing sales on production' to 'basing production on sales,' which would be win-win for sellers and buyers," Zhu said.

With more businesses active in the international arena, 'Belt and Road' has become a common phrase in negotiations with foreign customers, said Zhang Diansheng, a market advisor.

China's foreign trade volume rose 14.2 percent to 27.79 trillion yuan in 2017, ending a two year decline, according to the General Administration of Customs.

The National Bureau of Statistics said China's trade with the countries along the Belt and Road rose to about 7.4 trillion yuan last year.

As most companies in Guzhen are small and micro-sized businesses, they are attempting a strategy of engaging as a group to go global.

"We used to join foreign exhibitions in groups of two or three, but it's time-consuming and inefficient. Like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Chen.

Now, the companies work together as an alliance, renting venues, inviting targeted guests, and holding exhibitions in foreign countries, Chen added. "It saves time and effort."

China has the largest lighting industry and the most complete industrial chain, said Wang Yongfu, CEO of an alliance of 11 companies.

"We formed this alliance to sell our designs globally instead of just our products, therefore changing our roles as traditional equipment manufacturers," Wang said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 13:04:54|Editor: Mengjie

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WASHINGTON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- China opposes trade protectionism and will fight against any possible trade war, said Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai in a TV interview with U.S. Bloomberg on Friday.

Cui said the Chinese side is clearly against any unilateral protectionist moves and a trade war, which "would hurt everybody, including the United States itself, and that would certainly hurt the daily life of the American middle-class people, the American companies and the financial market."

"We (the Chinese authorities) don't want a trade war with anybody, and we still try to avoid one. But if a trade war is forced on earth, we have to fight back," he said, adding that "We will take all measures necessary."

The ambassador said that there is great potential for China-U.S. cooperation, "but the key is that both sides have to take a cooperative and constructive approach; a confrontational one will not help anybody."

He said any disputes and differences between the two countries should be solved through dialogues and consultations, and China will never yield to threats or coercion.

As for the impact of the U.S. actions, the ambassador said the world economy is closely interconnected with shared interests among countries.

Despite a surplus with the United States, China has large deficits with other countries at the same time, which is a good illustration of the nature of the global supply chain, Cui said.

"People have to be careful when they take actions, they may hurt everybody, including themselves," he also said.

Besides, the diplomat said: "We have a surplus with the United States, which is quite big. We want to cut it down ... It is an agreement between China and the U.S. that this has to be reduced for the benefits of both countries."

He also said there is an ongoing conversation between the two governments, and "we don't quite understand why such a unilateral action is taken."

Cui added that the U.S. accusation of China's trade practices, as well as that on intellectual property rights, for instance, is groundless.

"Chinese laws protect intellectual property rights, and we are ready to help any business that sees violations, but there is no evidence provided," Cui explained.

"There is no law or regulation that forces technology transfers (in China) ... And businesses will only make deals that they believe are good for them. But if they have any complaints, they should resort to Chinese law, and we will help them," he added.

When asked about the proposed U.S. restrictions on investments from China, Cui said that action will not make any positive political or economic sense since the measure "is not based on good reason," which may hurt the U.S. local economies, cause losses of jobs and eventually do harm to the U.S. economy as a whole.

Despite warnings from business groups and trade experts, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China and restrict Chinese investments in the United States, fueling fears that the world's two largest economies could be sliding towards a trade war.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying on Friday reaffirmed China's position on the U.S. trade moves, saying that China will fight to the end in any trade war and urging the United States to make rational and prudent decisions.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 13:14:55|Editor: Lifang

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LIMA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Martin Vizcarra, former vice president of Peru, was sworn in as the new president on Friday after the Congress accepted the resignation of scandal-hit Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Vizcarra, 55, faces the task to restore trust in government as he serves out the term until July 2021.

Born in Lima in 1963, he is the son of Cesar Vizcarra, who served as mayor of Moquegua in southern Peru and as a member of the 1978-1979Constituent Assembly, and Doris Cornejo, a teacher.

He graduated from the National Engineering University in 1984 with a degree in civil engineering and later studied business administration.

Vizcarra worked in the construction sector as operations manager at the family-owned firm C&M Vizcarra (1992-2010) and was dean of the School of Engineering in Moquegua (2008-2009).

He first ran for public office in 2006, narrowly losing the governorship of Moquegua as candidate of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, the same center-left party his father belonged to.

Though he lost, he remained politically active and ran again. In 2011, he was elected as the governor of Moquegua and served until the end of 2014.

During his term, Vizcarra was recognized for improving Moquegua's living standards, and helping resolve a dispute in 2012 between the Anglo American mining company and the local community over water contamination at the Quellaveco copper mine.

Vizcarra joined Kuczynski's 2016 presidential campaign as an adviser, and the pair narrowly defeated the Popular Force (FP) party's candidate Keiko Fujimori in a runoff. The FP, however, won a controlling majority in the Congress.

Vizcarra also served in the cabinet as minister of transport and communications in 2016, but he resigned one year later amid questions over a delay in the construction of the Chinchero International Airport in Cusco, a city in southeastern Peru.

Shortly thereafter, he was named Peru's ambassador to Canada in October 2017.

Vizcarra is married to Maribel Diaz, a teacher, and they have four children.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 13:19:56|Editor: Yamei

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UNITED NATIONS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Friday called for efforts to eliminate hunger through development and the resolution of military conflicts.

Development is essential for solving various global issues, Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said at a debate of the Security Council on hunger and conflict.

The UN system should push for the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and take as its priority the elimination of poverty and hunger, he said, adding that the UN should continue to increase investment to help with development in developing countries.

The United Nations, its Security Council and the international community as a whole should have a sense of urgency in the political settlement of conflicts, he said.

Wu asked for efforts to help carry forward peace processes and national reconciliation in countries concerned to create conditions for common development.

Wu said China has always insisted on the peaceful settlement of conflicts through dialogue and consultations, and at the same time helps other developing countries eliminate poverty and hunger.

In 2017, China provided urgent food assistance to 38 countries and four international organizations, and donated generously to international organizations such as the World Food Program, according to the Chinese diplomat.

China is willing to work with the international community to further contribute to lasting peace and common prosperity in the world, he said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 13:29:57|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- An industry insider said that China's electricity consumption this year would grow about 5.5 percent, provided there are no extreme weather conditions on a large scale.

The pace is slower than the 6.6 percent in 2017 and 13.3 percent for the first two months of this year.

"There will be a generally loose environment for power supply and demand, as the supply capability will continue to rise," Yang Kun, deputy head of the China Electricity Council, said Friday at a meeting.

Yang saw a general surplus in power supply this year, saying short supply will only be seen in some regions during peak hours.

China's economy expanded 6.9 percent last year, picking up for the first time in seven years and well above the government annual target of around 6.5 percent.

The International Monetary Fund forecast in its latest World Economic Outlook released in January that China's economy will grow 6.6 percent this year.MEXICO CITY, March 23 (Xinhua) -- A four-member family from the United States was found dead on Friday at a condominium apartment in the beach resort of Tulum, in the Mexican Caribbean.

Police acted following the U.S. embassy's report that the family was missing. Relatives of the family contacted local authorities in the county of Creston, in the U.S. Midwestern state of Iowa, after they lost touch with the family on vacation on March 14-21.

Authorities said there were no signs of violence and the victims, a couple and their two children, showed no visible injuries, though the corpses were already decomposing.

"During the inspection, (the authorities) found no trace of violence on the bodies or in the room," the prosecutor's office of Quintana Roo state, where the resort is located, said in an online statement.

In the predawn hours, Tulum police found the bodies of the children in front of the television at the apartment inside a complex known as Tao Residences. The bodies of the couple were in the bedroom.

They were identified as Kevin Wayne Sharp, 41, Amy Marie Sharp, 38, Sterling Wayne Sharp, 12, and Adrianna Marie Sharp, 7.

The apartment involved was registered in the name of the man.MAIMANA, Afghanistan, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Ten Taliban militants were killed and four others wounded in an accidental blast in Afghanistan's northern province of Faryab, an army source said Saturday.

The explosion took place roughly at 10:30 p.m. local time Friday, in Sar Hawz village, Pashton Kot district, south of provincial capital Maimana city, Hanif Rezai, a press officer of army Corps 209 Shaheen based in the region, told Xinhua.

The militants were busy in a compound in building improvised explosive devices (IEDs) when the blast occurred, he said, adding two Taliban bomb-making experts were among those killed.

Taliban militants and Islamic State fighters have been using IEDs to make roadside bombs and landmines for targeting security forces, but the lethal home-made weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.

The Taliban has yet to make comments on the report.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 15:15:09|Editor: pengying

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CARACAS, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan Vice President Tarek El Aissami confirmed Friday that the country's oil-backed cryptocurrency became publicly available for purchase.

Anyone can buy the Petro on its website using currencies such as Chinese yuan, Russian ruble, Turkish lira and euro, or virtual currencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and the New Economy Movement.

Buyers from more than 133 countries purchased Petros during the pre-sale period, generating sales over five billion U.S. dollars. The money raised was enough "to build a million new homes" in Venezuela, said El Aissami.

The Venezuelan government launched the digital currency in a bid to overcome economic difficulties caused by sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.

Training centers were opened by the government in order to help the public, especially young people, learn more about virtual currencies and how to carry out transactions.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 15:15:09|Editor: Yurou

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DUBAI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The recent U.S. proposal to impose huge tariffs on Chinese imports may lead to China's retaliation and disruption of global trade, exposing the U.S. economy to risks, say economists.

Dr. Nasser Saidi, former chief economist of the Dubai International Financial Center, told Xinhua by e-mail on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump kept his protectionist campaign promises by imposing tariffs on aluminum and steel earlier and now on intellectual property products on the pretext of "unfair practices," which may trigger a trade war.

This poses "a clear risk that the Trump trade war will disrupt the global trade engine and derail the ongoing global economic recovery," he said.

Trump's moves "are likely to lead to retaliation by China," and the Asian country as the world's second largest economy has "a wide range of options including (imposing) tariffs on aircraft (Boeing and others) and transport equipment, as well as non-tariff barriers," the economist added.

This tit-for-tat scenario poses a risk for global trade, he said, with the global stock markets as an example, which have plunged since Thursday in response to the growing economic policy uncertainty.

In another e-mail interview with Xinhua on Friday, Tim Fox, chief economist of Dubai's biggest banking group Emirates NBD, said these measures by the Trump administration "also expose the U.S. economy to risks if China retaliates, especially against the U.S. agriculture sector."

"Of course, China has the ultimate retaliation card if they want to play it, namely it's holding of U.S. treasuries," Fox said.

Fox warned "Once (the United States) starts a trade war with China, (it) could be very hard to reverse."

U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China and restrict Chinese investments in the United States, fueling fears that the world's two largest economies could be sliding toward a trade war.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 15:20:09|Editor: pengying

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Rescuers transfer a body found inside the capsized dredger in Muar in southern Malaysian state of Johor, on March 24, 2018. Rescuers searching for the missing crew members of a capsized dredger off Malaysia found one body from inside the ship on Saturday morning, as death toll from the tragedy rose to two since the sand dredger capsized off the southern state of Johor in the Malacca Strait on Wednesday morning. (Xinhua/Chong Voon Chung)

MUAR, Malaysia, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Rescuers searching for the missing crew members of a capsized dredger off Malaysia recovered one body from inside the ship on Saturday morning, as death toll from the tragedy rose to two since the sand dredger capsized off the southern state of Johor in the Malacca Strait on Wednesday morning.

Another two bodies were also found in the search operation waters in the last 24 hours, but authorities are yet to confirm their identities and cannot confirm whether they are from the crew members, said Sanifah bin Yusof, deputy director of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency Southern Region.

Sanifah said diving operations carried out by professional and military "frogmen" will continue under the water to sweep every compartment, while surface search involving helicopters will expand to make sure no trace will be missed.

As for the two crew members saved by rescuers on Friday, a doctor from Muar hospital said their conditions are now stable and they have been moved from "emergency wards to normal ones."

Malaysia launched search and rescue operations involving multi-agencies including the coast guard, the navy and the police after the incident.

There were a total of 18 onboard the ship, including 16 Chinese, one Malaysian and one Indonesian. Three Chinese were rescued previously while one was dead. Another two Chinese were rescued by divers on Friday after being trapped inside the ship for more than 50 hours.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 15:30:11|Editor: pengying

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TRIPOLI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) held discussions with the Libyan government in Tunis on a strategic plan to support economic and social sectors in Libya over the next two years, the mission said in a statement on Friday.

"The Government of Libya and the United Nations discussed new way forward to support Libya in a round of consultations on the United Nations Strategic Framework (UNSF) for the period 2019-2020 and Country Program Documents of UNDP, UNFPA and UNICEF," it said.

"The Strategic Framework constitutes a renewed partnership between the UN and the government of Libya, and aims to work towards a more sustainable path to development, prosperity, peace, and security," the statement said.

"The new framework is a qualitative leap in terms of content coming as a result of a broad consultation process that was based on technical assessments in several economic, social and service areas, with the participation of many international and Libyan competences and expertise," said Taher Jehaimi, Libyan Minister of Planning.

The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Maria Ribeiro, stressed UN's support for the Libyan Government, on order to realize its national priorities.

"The UNSF demonstrates the commitment of the UN to work towards a more integrated approach and enhanced humanitarian, development and peace nexus that will support Libya in responding to the humanitarian crisis while working towards sustainable development, " Ribeiro said.

Libya faces great political and economic difficulties and challenges in terms of meeting humanitarian needs and providing job opportunities.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 15:44:54|Editor: ZD

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Chinese scientist Mee-Mann Chang (C) poses for photos with UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay(R) and Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of cosmetics company L'Oreal, after being honored with the L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science Awards 2018 in Paris, capital of France, on March 22, 2018. At a ceremony held at the UNESCO's headquarters in Paris on Thursday, the 82-year-old female scientist was honored for "her pioneering work on fossil records leading to insights on how aquatic vertebrates adapted to life and land," the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said. (Xinhua/Zhang Man)Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 16:05:14|Editor: pengying

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by Juan Limachi and Carlos Acat

LIMA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Martin Vizcarra, who was sworn in as Peru's new president Friday following his predecessor's resignation due to graft allegations, represents a new opportunity to forge an effective and transparent government, analysts said.

In his first presidential address Friday, Vizcarra, who was vice president until scandal-hit Pedro Pablo Kuczynski stepped down Wednesday, pledged to fight corruption and unify the country.

"We will be very firm in combating actions that go against the law, no matter where, no matter what the cost," Vizcarra said.

Kuczynski's fall from grace should mark "the start of a new era," he added.

Vizcarra is set to govern Peru through the rest of Kuczynski's scheduled term to 2021.

Peruvians are responding to the transition "with a lot of calm and a lot of hope," Carlos Canales, a political observer and president of the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Lima, told Xinhua.

According to Canales, Vizcarra's main task is to restore people's trust in the government by assembling a cabinet of professionals representing the society.

"This is the start of a phase where we must seek a ministerial cabinet composed of a wide base ... in which there are no political party appointments," Canales said.

Vizcarra, who like Kuczynski came to politics from the business sector and is considered untested in dealing with the opposition-controlled Congress, needs to compensate for his weak entry into office by being firmer with the legislative body than his predecessor, Fernando Tuesta, a political science professor at Peru's Pontifical Catholic University, told Xinhua.

However, the mere fact that Vizcarra represents a change has generated hope among average Peruvians, Tuesta said.

"A new president always brings new hope, the possibility that something good can happen, that he will be able to solve daily problems," he said.

Like Canales, Tuesta said the new president should put together a strong governing team that is above "petty politics."

It remains unclear how the new president will manage the government, especially with the powerful opposition in Congress, Arturo Maldonado, a political analyst at Vanderbilt University, said.

"He runs the risk of being a figurehead, the one who is out in front while those who are really governing are the Popular Force," Maldonado said, referring to the opposition party led by Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, which dominates Congress.

Vizcarra will need to dialogue with Keiko Fujimori to get things done, but avoid the pitfall of his predecessor, who made too many concessions, Maldonado added.

In December 2017, Kuczynski pardoned Alberto Fujimori despite widespread public opposition. Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2009 for ordering security forces to massacre 25 people.

Many Peruvians saw the concession as payback for the Fujimori family's support during a December impeachment vote in Congress that Kuczynski survived.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 16:15:15|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Jennifer Crewe (L), director of the press affiliated with renowned Columbia University, and Cai Zongqi, professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pose for photos at the launch ceremony of the book series titled "How to Read Chinese Literature" in Washington D.C., the United States, on March 23, 2018. The Columbia University Press launched a book series titled "How to Read Chinese Literature" here on Friday, with an eye to transforming the learning and teaching of Chinese literature, language, and culture in the English-speaking world. (Xinhua/Yang Chenglin)

WASHINGTON, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The Columbia University Press launched a book series titled "How to Read Chinese Literature" here on Friday, with an eye to transforming the learning and teaching of Chinese literature, language, and culture in the English-speaking world.

The series is a collection of Chinese literary anthologies and language texts covering all major literary genres, with non-Chinese students and scholars as target readers.

Cai Zongqi, professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is one of the series' general editors.

The series is aimed at bridging the gap between learning and teaching for non-Chinese students and scholars, especially in traditional Chinese poetry and prose, the professor told Xinhua at the launch ceremony.

The most challenging part about teaching non-Chinese students is the need for an interpretive and analytical approach instead of using descriptive, abstract words that could be well-perceived by Chinese speakers, Cai stressed.

Since 2008, Columbia University Press has published three books edited by Cai -- now all part of the series -- starting with "How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology."

The book has been popular among students, scholars and other readers, paving the way for the idea of publishing a series.

"I think it was a great idea," Jennifer Crewe, director of the press affiliated with renowned Columbia University, told Xinhua. "A good way to learn and understand another culture is through its literature."

"It's a successful formula that will help students for years to come," Crewe said of how Cai and other editors have compiled the books, which put together the English translation of traditional Chinese poetry and prose, their Chinese texts, and translation into modern Chinese.

The whole book series is expected to be out by 2020.

Columbia University Press is one of the oldest and the most prestigious publishers of translations of Asian classics and literary anthologies.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 16:25:16|Editor: ZD

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BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The Care and Rehabilitation Expo China 2018 will feature health and rehabilitation products using intelligent bionics and wearable robots in October in Beijing.

The China Disabled Persons' Federation said that the expo, to be held from Oct. 11 to 13, will be attended by more than 350 companies and organizations from 22 countries and regions.

With more than 85 million disabled people and 40 million elderly people who need nursing care and assistive devices, China has the largest demand for assistive products and is a huge potential market for the industry, said Li Xi, head of China Assistive Devices and Technology Center for Persons with Disabilities.

According to a document on accelerating the development of the rehabilitation and assistive tool industry released by the State Council in 2016, China's assistive device industry will hit 700 billion yuan (110.6 billion U.S. dollars) by 2020.

The Care and Rehabilitation Expo, which was started in 2007, has become a platform that brings together the latest technology and products for the care of disabled and elderly people from around the world.PARIS, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The French gendarme who swapped himself for a female hostage during an attack on a supermarket in Trebes, southern France, on Friday, has died of his injuries, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb tweeted Saturday.

The gendarme, Arnaud Beltrame, offered himself up unarmed to the attacker in exchange for the woman who was taken as a human shield, and managed to leave his phone on a table with an open line so that police could hear what was going on inside the supermarket.

Police stormed into the supermarket and killed the gunman once they heard gunshots inside.

The gendarme, who once served in Iraq, was seriously injured in Friday's attack and succumbed to his injuries in hospital where he was rushed once the siege ended.

"Dead for his country. France will never forget his heroism, bravery and sacrifice," Collomb said in the Twitter message.

In a statement Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron said: "In offering himself as a hostage to the terrorist holed up in the Trebes supermarket, Lieutenant Colonel Beltrame saved the life of a civilian hostage, showing exceptional self-sacrifice and courage."

"He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist," the president added.

The gunman, identified as 25-year-old Redouane Lakdim, began his rampage by hijacking a car on Friday morning in the southern French town of Carcassone. He shot one passenger dead and injured the driver. The body of the victim was later found hidden in a bush.

Lakdim then opened fire on police officers jogging in Carcassone, injuring one person. Following that, he drove a few kilometers to Trebes and headed into a Super-U supermarket around 10 a.m. local time (0900 GMT).

He stormed the supermarket, shouting "Allahu Akbar" --God is great -- and telling the 50-odd people inside that he was "a soldier of the Islamic State" seeking "to liberate brothers."

The Moroccan-origin gunman was known to police for robbery and drug trafficking but had no sign of radicalization, and acted alone, according to Collomb.

It was France's first major terror attack since October 2017, when the government enacted an anti-terrorism bill incorporating emergency security rules into ordinary law. It allows police more power to search and arrest suspects without a judge's approval, and restrict people's movements and gatherings.

While the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday's attack, the claim is being checked by French security services, Macron said after chairing a crisis meeting with ministers and security officials Friday.

"I want to tell the nation tonight of my absolute determination in leading this fight," Macron said.

"I urge our fellow French citizens to remain aware of the terrorist threat, but also to remember the force and resistance our people have demonstrated each and every time they were attacked," he added.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 16:34:56|Editor: ZD

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Norwegian Minister of Education and Integration Jan Tore Sanner (C), Minister of Research and Higher Education Iselin Nybo (R) and Minister of Finance Siv Jensen attend a press conference in Olso, Norway, on March 23, 2018. Norway said on Friday it sent a bill to parliament proposing to ban the use of face-covering garments in all kindergartens and educational institutions such as schools, colleges and training centers for newly arrived immigrants. (Xinhua/Liang Youchang)Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 17:10:21|Editor: pengying

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TEHRAN, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry on Saturday condemned recent U.S. sanctions on a number of Iranian individuals and company.

The U.S. "illegal and provocative" measures could not affect the country's scientific growth, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said.

The U.S. move proves the country's inherent hostility towards the Iranian nation.

The U.S. Treasury announced on Friday that it has imposed sanctions on one Iranian entity and 10 Iranian individuals for their alleged "malicious cyber-enabled activities."NEW DELHI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The Indian government has slapped a notice on Cambridge Analytica, a global data firm which allegedly manipulated social media data in many countries to influence voters for its clients.

India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has also threatened to initiate legal action against Cambridge Analytica in case it fails to respond to the notice by March 31, a senior official said Saturday.

"Two of the questions asked by the government are -- whether the firm has been engaged in any assignment to utilise data of Indians and the entities that has engaged the firm for using data of Indians," he said.

The Indian government on Wednesday asked the main opposition Congress party to come clean on its "links" with Cambridge Analytica, citing media reports that it has hired the data firm to run their campaign for 2019 general elections.

Indian Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had also made it clear that "any covert or overt attempt" to misuse social media, including Facebook, "to influence country's electoral process through undesirable means" will neither be tolerated nor be permitted.

"The National Democratic Alliance government is committed to free and fair elections," he added.

The Congress party has refuted the allegations, while both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny any wrongdoing.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 17:45:26|Editor: pengying

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XIAMEN, March 24 (Xinhua)--- Olivier Latry, chief organist at Notre-Dame de Paris, held a recital Friday evening on Gulangyu Island in east China's Fujian Province.

Known as one of the leading grand masters of organ music, the French organist has performed in some of the world's most prestigious venues and worked with top orchestras and conductors, in addition to producing a number of impressive musical works for the organ.

The organ that Olivier Latry played, the Casavant Opus 700, is the largest pipe organ in the Chinese mainland. Standing 13 meters tall, 12.5 meters long and weighing 35 tonnes, the Casavant Opus 700 pipe organ was built in 1917 under the supervision of American organist Lynnwood Farnam.

At the recital, Latry played masterpieces by Johannes Brahms, Charles-Marie Widor, and Claude Debussy. His fingers danced along the four-tier keyboard as beautiful music flowed from the organ, winning thunderous applause from the audience.

Latry also improvised three Chinese folk songs: "Jasmine," "Butterfly Lovers" and "Waves of Gulangyu."

"It is really moving to play [this] organ because the instrument has some relationship with Notre-Dame de Paris. The owner of the organ and the organist of Notre-Dame de Paris were really good friends," Latry said.

Latry said he hoped the instrument would gain a bigger presence and become more common in China.

In 2007, Hu Youyi, an Australian-Chinese pianist, bought the organ from a church and donated it to his ancestral home, the island of Gulangyu in Xiamen, where a museum was specifically built to house the instrument.

Gulangyu was listed as a UNESCO world cultural heritage site in July 2017 for its varied architecture and multi-cultural history. It is also known as an "Island of Music" as it is the hometown of many accomplished Chinese musicians.NEW DELHI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Indian authorities have carried out fresh raids on the palatial residence of billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi in Mumbai in connection with the biggest-ever bank fraud and seized expensive jewellery, watches and paintings worth millions.

"ED (Enforcement Department) searches Nirav Modi's Samudra Mahal (Mumbai residence) & seizes high end/ antique jewellery..., watches... & paintings...," the agency tweeted Saturday.

In earlier raids on Modi's home and his firms, the Enforcement Department and the Central Bureau of Investigation seized high-end jewellery, luxury cars and expensive watches. The agencies also sealed several jewellery outlets belonging to Modi.

Modi is said to have defrauded Punjab National Bank, India's second largest state-run bank, of 1.8 billion U.S. dollars, though he has claimed that he owes the bank only 775 million U.S. dollars in a letter sent to the bank's management.

Though Indian investigators have so far arrested nearly 20 people in the fraud probe, they have failed to nab Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi. Recently, they sought Interpol's help to track them down, days after India's External Affairs Ministry revoked their passports.

The celebrity jeweller and Choksi are said to have fled the country before the fraud came to light in February this year. Modi was reportedly last seen in New York after his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos as a member of the Indian delegation.BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Apple CEO Tim Cook on Saturday called for countries to embrace openness, trade and diversity, hoping that "calm heads will prevail" in trade relations between China and the United States.

Cook made the remarks at the China Development Forum Economic Summit, when asked to comment on recent Sino-U.S. trade frictions.

"My belief is that one plus one equals three," said Cook, adding that "the pie gets larger if working together."

More attention should be paid to inequality and the reasons behind it, which over time will "lift everyone up," he said.

China Development Forum, hosted by the Development Research Center of China's cabinet, is being held from March 24 to 26 in Beijing.

Despite strong warnings from business groups and trade experts, U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China as well as restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States.

China's Ministry of Commerce on Friday urged the United States to "pause on the brink of a precipice" and make prudent decisions so as not to put bilateral trade relations in jeopardy.Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta speaks during the launch of Ngong road phase one and expansion of phase two in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, March 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Charles Onyango)

NAIROBI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Political talk and activities have declined significantly in Kenya, giving the country a chance to focus on development after grueling elections.

There are no political rallies, name-calling among politicians, threats and antagonism and declaration of political ambitions as was in the case in the last few months.

All is quiet on the political front, with the situation attributed to the decision by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his main challenger in last year's polls Raila Odinga to make peace two weeks ago.

Their talks have lowered political animosity among leaders and citizens, effectively wiping away the toxic environment that had engulfed the East African nation.

On social media where there was a lot of negative political talk that fanned ethnicity, Kenyans are now discussing social and economic issues that include crime, poverty and unemployment.

"It now time to forge unity and build the country. Time for politicking is over as our leaders Odinga and Kenyatta have shown," George Aladwa, an opposition MP and an ally of Odinga, said.

Ruling Jubilee party senator Johnson Sakaja, initially a fierce critic of Odinga, now refers him to a "statesman." He said Odinga and Kenyatta have shown the country the direction it should take.

"I attended a meeting with opposition politicians and people lauded us when we declared unity. It showed me Kenyans were tired of negative politics," he said.

According to Sakaja, the strength of a country is measured by the actions, programs, policies and the thoughts that are put towards the most vulnerable in society.

On Thursday, Kenyatta emphasized that time for politicking was over, noting the unity deal ended the political period.

"You saw me meeting with Odinga where we agreed to cool things down and work together for the benefit of citizens. Let us put politics aside and work for the people," he said while opening a road.

Issues hogging the talk on the East African social media platforms now include the environment, joblessness, unity, constitution and crime, as politics takes back seat.

"One thing that the unity deal has done is to expose the state officials who hoped they'll hide behind the toxic partisanship to evade accountability questions. We should celebrate them," said blogger Dikembe, who supported the opposition.

"Clause 24 of the Cybercrime Bill 2017 Contravenes Article 24(2) and 31 of the constitution. Police authorized to conduct a search without a warrant. All Kenyans must defend the constitution," Rein Asamoh, a blogger, tweeted on Friday, with several Kenyans taking the matter up.

On the streets Kenya are happy with the turn of events, noting the economy can now improve, creating the much-needed jobs.

"I was among the people who were afraid that Odinga and his coalition National Super Alliance was going to escalate rift with Kenyatta making life tough for citizens. The turn of events is good for the country," said Moses Nzando, an insurance agent.

The sector was among the worst affected by the lengthy electioneering period, with uptake of policies declining due to despondence.

"Any politician who would want to hold rallies now has no good intentions for the country," he said.

At the height of the political season last year, George Odongo, a welder, would not miss any opposition rally in Nairobi.

"I used to close my business and attend the rallies. Right now I cannot because we have work and I want to grow my business," he said.

Henry Wandera, an economics lecturer, noted that leaders have read the mood in the country and complied with it.

"People currently want development, peace and unity. They have taken cue from Kenyatta and Odinga and anyone going against it is seen as a traitor. It is a good thing because a country cannot politic forever," he said.

He added that the deal would spur economic development and already business people are enjoying the benefits as the political environment remains positive.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 18:55:34|Editor: Yurou

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BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- International SOS, a provider of risk management and emergency services, is positive on the Chinese market and looking at opportunities from the Belt and Road Initiative as Chinese companies go global.

Headquartered in London and Singapore, the world's leading medical and travel security service company believes that the Chinese market shows huge potential, according to Arnaud Vaissie, Co-founder and CEO of International SOS, in an interview.

"As China enters the second phase of high-quality development with even more of an open door policy, we can better help Chinese companies establish their global mobility plans," he said.

China's business travel market has become the largest in the world, ahead of the United States, according to Vaissie, citing the 9-percent growth rate last year and referencing a recent study on corporate travel conducted by Ctrip.

The company is about to launch a new platform on WeChat for Chinese employees of its clients and to provide more services in Mandarin, he said.

He said he was impressed by "the speed at which Chinese companies are expanding."

Under the initiative, which aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa, Chinese companies are showing interest in "complex territories," according to the CEO.

For Vaissie, more Chinese companies, especially state-owned enterprises, are seeking global standards that offer advice from home to better protect the safety of their employees during their overseas expansion.

"When we arrived in China, we were actually commissioned by the government to help foreign companies in China. Today more than half -- and a growing part of what we do -- is to help Chinese companies going outside of China, which is a huge change," he said.

Established in 1985, International SOS operates companies in 90 countries with 11,000 employees, and its Chinese clients have included infrastructure-related state-owned enterprises, government agencies and organizations since it entered the Chinese market in 1989.

"Now we see the emergence of the tech industry in particular," said the CEO, who sees the potential of the tech and education sector in the Chinese market.

In December last year, International SOS released its 2018 global travel risk map, which listed China as one of the safest travel destinations in the world.

For Vaissie, safety in China is not a big issue for foreigners, while he applauded the development of China's medical care.

"The capability and equipment of large hospitals in China have massively improved. Now they are at top international standards," he said.

International SOS, which started as an emergency response company, now provides a wider range of services, including assessments, advice and emergency assistance services.

"We manage 4 million cases a year, 80 percent of which are assessment and advice," said the CEO.

"If you want to prevent emergencies, it is all about planning and preparation," he said, addressing the importance of prevention in crisis management.

Facing an explosion in travel worldwide, Vaissie advises integrated management of both security and medical risks.KUALA LUMPUR, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Malaysian police said on Saturday seven terror suspects had been arrested in recent operations for plotting attacks in Malaysia.

A Philippine national was arrested on March 15 in Malaysia's Sabah state. The 31-year-old-man was a member of Abu Sayyaf Group in the southern Philippines and had link with Mahmud Bin Ahmad, a Malaysian who joined the Islamic State (IS), according to Mohamad Fuzi Bin Harun, Malaysia's police chief.

The suspect was wanted by the Philippine authorities and was an improvised explosive device expert. He was believed to be planning attacks in Sabah and making it a safe haven for the terrorists in the neighboring Philippines, Fuzi said in a statement.

Meanwhile, six Malaysians were arrested by police counter-terrorism force in the southern state of Johor since late February in several operations. They were from a local cell of IS and were believed to have been involved in plotting attacks on worship places as well as kidnapping and killing police personnel, Fuzi added.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 19:25:37|Editor: Jiaxin

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Photo taken on March 24, 2018 shows an explosion site in Alexandria, Egypt. An Egyptian policeman was killed Saturday in Alexandria province in a bomb blast that targeted the region's security chief, according to Egyptian interior ministry. (Xinhua)

CAIRO, March 24 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian policeman was killed Saturday in Alexandria province in a bomb blast that targeted the region's security chief, according to Egyptian interior ministry.

The bomb, which was planted under a car, went off when the car of Alexandria's security commander passed by, the ministry said.

Four others were also injured in the explosion in Alexandria, which located 200 km north of the capital Cairo.

Investigation teams rushed to the scene to inspect the site of the blast, the ministry said.

Egypt has been suffering a wave of terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military ousted former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

Attacks had been centered in restive North Sinai province bordering the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Israel before they later expanded to reach other provinces including the capital Cairo.

The Sinai-based branch of the Islamic State regional terrorist group claimed responsibility for most of the terror operations in Egypt over the past few years.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian forces killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested thousands of suspects during the country's anti-terror war.Source: Xinhuanet| 2018-03-24 19:39:23|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Brazilian President Michel Temer (Xinhua)

Michel Temer

Access to drinking water and basic sanitation is a right and one of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations. It is a condition for human life. However, up to two billion people on the planet do not have access to a safe source of water at home, and up to 2.3 billion people suffer from lack of sanitation. Approximately 260 million peoplemore than the entire population of Brazilmust walk more than thirty minutes to gather water. Guaranteeing access to water is one of the main challenges of our time.

Brazil has 12% of the planets fresh waterbut, despite this fact, we are not immune to water-related problems. Major cities in Brazil have been enduring water shortages. An unacceptable sanitation deficit persists, and the suffering caused by drought to the people of Brazils northeast region is a well-known fact.

The search for answers to such urgent issues has led us to host the 8th World Water Forum in Brasilia this week. The forum is expected to gather more than 40,000 participants from over 160 countries. We will welcome heads of state and government, state governors, mayors, members of congress, judges, representatives of international organizations and academia, the private sector, and civil society. This diversity of participants will enrich the forum.

The choice of Brazil to host one of the most important global events on water resources is no surprise. We have long been committed to this matter on the international stage. We hosted the Rio 92 and the Rio+20 conferences, in which the close link between water sustainability and development were recognized. More recently, we were among the first countries to ratify the Paris Agreement, which deals with one of the main threats to the right of access to water: climate change.

This traditional protagonism on the world stage is anchored in solid measures on the domestic side. Brazil knows that water and sanitation are synonymous with environmental preservation, and we made water security a pillar of our environmental policies. To preserve our waterways, we implemented the River Planting program, which uses digital tools to protect our springs and permanent preservation areas.

We have also made significant progress towards protecting our forests. We have increased our forest conservation areas. We reversed the deforestation curve in the Amazon that we found to be on the rise, and we are about to create two vast marine biodiversity conservation areas. By protecting our ecosystems we protect our water sources. Having water is essential, but it is not enough. The water must get to those who need it.

Getting water to those who need it is what the transposition of the Sao Francisco River is all about. The long-awaited project, now in its final stages, will benefit a population of 12 million in Brazils northeast. With the portion that supplies water to the states of Pernambuco and Paraiba completed, the final phase involves enabling water to reach the state of Ceara. By completing this enormous public works project, we did not neglect our sustainability goals. We have launched a new project (Novo Chico), aimed at revitalizing the Sao Francisco River.

Our attention, once again, is focused on sanitation and the great deal that must still be done. We are putting the final touches on a bill of law aimed at modernizing our regulatory framework in sanitation and encouraging new investment in the area. What inspires us is the need to make this basic service universal.

This is the Brazil that is hosting the World Water Forum: a country in search of common solutions to global problems; a country that will continue to do its part in preserving our most precious resources.

This article was originally published in the 19/03/2018 edition of the Brazilian newspaper Correio Braziliense.ADDIS ABABA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Talks between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt on a 6,450 megawatts hydro dam Ethiopia is building on Blue Nile River will resume next month, an Ethiopian official said on Saturday.

Speaking exclusively to Xinhua, Meles Alem, Spokesperson of Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), said talks will be held from April 4-5 in Khartoum, Sudan.

"The tripartite talks will focus on the dam operation and the modalities of water sealing of the reservoir, as part of efforts to create a wider consensus on the usage of Nile waters," he said.

The tripartite meeting was scheduled for Feb. 24-25 in Khartoum, but Ethiopia's ongoing political unrest is thought to have caused the delay.

Ethiopia and Sudan eye massive benefits from the construction of the project named Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), while Egypt is concerned it might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of the Nile River water.

GERD, which will be Africa's largest dam upon completion with a total volume of 74 billion cubic meters, was started in April 2011 with a cost of about 4.7 billion U.S. dollars.

The GERD project, owned and financed by the Ethiopian government, is located some 40 km east of Ethiopia's neighboring country Sudan and is currently 64 percent complete.

The Ethiopian government even sees the electricity generated from the dam being sold in the future as far north to Morocco and as far south to Tanzania.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 19:45:40|Editor: ZD

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LONDON, March 24 (Xinhua) -- A joint research institute has been launched by Britain's University of Birmingham and China's Nankai University to tackle global green challenges.

Delegates from the Chinese university traveled to Birmingham this week to meet their British counterparts and define the next steps for the institute in addressing issues across the green economy and sustainable development.

Led by vice president Professor Tong Jiadong, the Nankai delegation met the University of Birmingham's Vice-Chancellor David Eastwood as part of the formal launch of the Joint Research Institute on Green Economy and Sustainable Development.

Meetings with experts across the University of Birmingham helped members of the new joint institute map out how they will work on a range of environmental health challenges, including air quality control; nanomaterials, micro-plastics and other emerging pollutants; and strategies for dealing with air, soil and water pollution.

Professor David Eastwood said: "Our two universities have established a global research institute, which we believe will produce high-profile work that will improve the environment and the health of millions of people in China and around the world.

"We are delighted to welcome our partners from Nankai to the University of Birmingham and begin our research journey into the effects of climate change and pollution, which will help policy-makers respond efficiently to the challenges we face."

The joint research institute will allow research activities in interdisciplinary areas, faculty exchange, and joint PhD education.

Tong said: "Our partnership with Birmingham will create research and teaching collaborations that allow our students to pursue academic achievement at a top British university, whilst our academics help to solve a host of environmental problems facing China and the wider world."

Researchers from Nankai and Birmingham will evaluate the impact of China's green policies, as well as how policies can be improved and examining links between inequality and environmental challenges.

The joint project brings together research excellence between the two universities to allow cross-disciplinary research in global challenge topics.

It will also establish a hub of postgraduate education and research training, pursuing research funding opportunities in China and Britain and speeding up the development of new and sustainable industries in both countries.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 19:55:41|Editor: Jiaxin

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A Turkish military armoured vehicle advances on a street in Afrin, Syria, on March 24, 2018. Syria's Afrin region has been taken under "full control" as part of ongoing Operation Olive Branch, the Turkish military said on Saturday. (Xinhua)

ANKARA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Syria's Afrin region has been taken under "full control" as part of ongoing Operation Olive Branch, the Turkish military said on Saturday.

Turkish General Staff said in a statement that all villages located in the Afrin region were cleared of terrorists.

Search operation for mines and improvised explosive devices around the region is underway.

On Saturday, Turkish Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar said at a conference in Ankara that the army will arrive in the suburb of Aleppo called Nubl-Zahra.

A total of 3,733 terrorists have been killed or captured since the start of the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin region, according to the military.

Numerous informative leaflets in the Kurdish and Arabic languages were distributed to civilians in the area, local media reported.

The efforts to help Syrian civilians return home is undergoing, said the army.

On Sunday, The Turkish troops and Free Syrian Army fighters took control of the Afrin town center, the strategic Kurdish-held town in northern Syria.

Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20 to clear the People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers a terror group affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) from northwestern Syria.TOKYO, March 24 (Xinhua) -- An airport in Fukuoka, southwestern Japan had to close its runway for two and a half hours on Saturday after tires of a jet were punctured when landing.

According to local reports, the two front tires of a Peach Aviation jet from Kansai International Airport were punctured when the jet landed in the Fukuoka Airport Saturday morning.

The Airbus A-320 plane could not move off the runway due to the punctured tires, causing the runway to be closed.

Some 159 passengers and six crew members were onboard the plane when the incident happened and none was injured, according to officials.

The runway was reopened about two and a half hours later.

Due to the incident, about 82 flights were cancelled and dozens of flights had to be diverted to other airports, according to officials.

Japan's Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry, ranking it as a "major incident", has sent three officials to investigate the case.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 20:20:45|Editor: pengying

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DUBAI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Emirates Airline and Australia's Qantas Airways hailed on Saturday the Australian regulator's reauthorization of their partnership until 2023, Emirates said in a statement.

The two carriers stated that the continuation of the joint business, started in August 2017, "will deliver expanded services, greater schedule choice and increased frequent flyer benefits."

Qantas International CEO Alison Webster hailed the move as an important milestone to deliver benefits for travellers and Australian tourism for the next five years.

Emirates Chief Commercial Officer Thierry Antinori also vowed to continue cooperation with Qantas over the next five years.

Since the start of the trans-continental alliance which dates back to September 2013, Qantas had been the only foreign carrier which is allowed to fly its A380 aircraft to Dubai International Airport's terminal 3. Terminal 3 was solely used by Emirates Airline.

However, Qantas said it will stop flying its planes to Dubai as the Australian flagship carrier opted to reroute its daily A380 flights from Sydney via Dubai to London, also known as the "Kangaroo route," via Singapore's Changi Airport instead.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 20:35:47|Editor: Mengjie

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TIRANA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The recently adopted Visa Waiver Policy marks a new era in tourism and trade relations between Albania and China as more Chinese tourists will be able to visit Albania without a visa, director of Albania's national tourism agency Albin Gega told Xinhua Saturday in an interview.

"In cooperation with the Chinese government, several meetings have taken place to achieve the outcome of visa abolition and policy-making to be implemented in increasing the economic incomes flow for both countries," Gega said.

On Wednesday, the Albanian government decided to lift visa regime for nine countries, including China, in a bid to attract more tourists from these countries to Albania.

"The visa waiver will start from April 1 to Oct. 31 of 2018 and will this enable the development and deepening of tourism relations between Albania and China," Gega noted.

He added that so far, the presence of Chinese citizens in Albania had been limited because of visa regime.

"This fact has made the government think something concrete and in the end it decided to lift visa regime with China a way to facilitate the movement of Chinese tourists in Albania," Gega highlighted.

He added that relationships between the two countries have early origins and precisely for this, nostalgic tourism was one of the kinds of tourism in Albania, especially with the Chinese market.

"Many Chinese citizens have lived and worked in our country, giving a huge contribution and leaving their footsteps in the works they were engaged. This makes them want to return to Albania," the NTA Director noted.

Further, he said that the Albanian cinematography has now become one of the trends of the Chinese people as films made by Albanian film making companies are now transmitted to Chinese by some local TV channels.

"Precisely based on this reality, tourist packages for Chinese tourists are organized by combining with other tourist attractions of our country," Gega told Xinhua.

Besides this, he underscored that construction of new accommodation structures in accordance with world standards would make it possible to bring Chinese tourists closer to the Balkan and Mediterranean ones.

Talking about the way how visa waiver policy will be implemented or chances to be extended, Gega told Xinhua that visa regime was decided to be lifted for the tourism season in 2018, mainly for tourism purposes.

"This process is the implementation of a regional policy, which will be accompanied by a special monitoring to make the normal progress of this goal possible. If the whole process results in a normal functioning by creating a solid platform, we can say that the premise is to extend the period of visa waiver until the full exemption from this obligation," Gega explained.

In the end, he invited Chinese tourists to visit Albania under the slogan -- Discover "The Last Virgin Destination of the Mediterranean".by Tian Dongdong

BRUSSELS, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) has restated its interest in a close future partnership with Britain, while taking into account London's repeated demand to leave the single market and the customs union, said newly endorsed guidelines for the second-phase Brexit talks.

Given the green light by the EU 27 (all EU countries except Britain) leaders during a two-day summit in Brussels which concluded Friday, the guidelines were widely seen as a starting point for future EU-Britain talks.

RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS BASED BALANCE

"The European Council reiterates in particular that any agreement with the United Kingdom will have to be based on a balance of rights and obligations, and ensure a level playing field. A non-member of the Union, that does not live up to the same obligations as a member, cannot have the same rights and enjoy the same benefits as a member," said the guidelines.

It further noted that "the four freedoms are indivisible and that there can be no 'cherry picking' through participation in the single market."

The four freedoms refer to the free movement of goods, capital, services and labor.

But the EU may eventually offer less than what Britain expected. Local media mainly focus on two types of future relations -- Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)-type, the Canadian model, or European Economic Area (EEA)-type, the Norwegian model.

The CETA-type deal would fall much shorter of what Britain is looking for, because it offers relatively limited access in services, with no passporting rights for financial services -- an important sector for Britain, said Maria Demertzis, deputy director of the Bruegel think tank based in Brussels.

On the other hand, the EEA-type agreement could give Britain much of what it is looking for in trade, including passporting rights for financial services. But the EU insists that access to its single market, which EEA countries enjoy, must mean not only free movement of goods, services and capital, but also of labor -- a demand Britain is unwilling to accept, she added.

EU READY TO INITIATE WORK FOR FTA

"As regards the core of the economic relationship, the European Council confirms its readiness to initiate work towards a balanced, ambitious and wide-ranging free trade agreement (FTA) insofar as there are sufficient guarantees for a level playing field," said the guidelines.

The FTA will cover areas including trade in goods, access to reciprocal fishing waters and resources, and appropriate customs cooperation and trade in services, among which reciprocal fishing rights have been a headache for British Prime Minister Theresa May.

May is facing further pressure from her own backbenchers over government concessions on the issue during the transition.

In a letter to the prime minister, 12 Tories and a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP hinted that they could vote down the transition plan. In a protest against the deal, MPs joined fishermen to dump fish into the Thames opposite the Parliament.

The MPs said that the proposal for Britain to remain in the EU's fisheries policy for almost two years after Brexit day next March with no say over the allocation of quotas would not command the support of the Commons.

IRISH BORDER ISSUE LINGERS

"Leaders will assess in June if the Irish question has been resolved," said Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, during the concluding press conference of the summit.

In the guidelines, the EU also called for intensified efforts on the remaining withdrawal issues and reiterates that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

Some British media argued that Tusk's words as well as the above statement in the guidelines gave May three months to solve the Irish border dilemma or Brexit trade talks may stall.

Britain must come up with a concrete solution to the issue by the next EU summit in June or sign a legally binding backstop to keep Northern Ireland in the customs union. Failure to do so could result in a suspension of talks on the future relationship, said The Times.

The EU and Britain agreed on Monday that there must be a backstop solution to ensure that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.BANGKOK, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Thai Airways International plans to install new seat belts with airbags in the business class cabins of its new Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets but there's a catch.

These belts are not designed for overweight people.

According to The Bangkok Post, the airline has decided to introduce a 142-cm waistline limit.

The company claims the airbags prevent the seat belts from extending. The new airbags will also make flying difficult for parents with young children seeking to travel with their kids sitting on their laps.

It is not the first airline to come up with special policies against overweight passengers.

In November, European airline Finnair started a program to encourage passengers to weigh themselves and their luggage before boarding. The Finnish airline said the program was not intended to penalize passengers for being overweight, but only designed to give it a better sense of the amount of weight its flights would carry.

Hawaiian Airlines introduced a controversial policy in 2016 that passengers flying out of American Samoa could no longer preselect their seats, in an effort to optimize weight distribution.

The policy received heavy bashing as weight is a sensitive issue and American Samoa has a high obesity rate.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 21:19:31|Editor: pengying

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Former Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (front) attends the election of Senate's speaker at the Senate during the first session of parliament since the March 4 general election in Rome, Italy, March 23, 2018. (Xinhua)Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 21:10:54|Editor: Yamei

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BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- History tells that trade wars are a losing game. No one benefits, and everyone ends up a bit bruised.

Despite the risk of triggering a trade war, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive memorandum that could result in heavy tariffs on up to 60-billion-U.S.-dollar imports from China as well as restrictions on Chinese investments.

The unilateral move is a bullying tactic long played by Washington in the face of trade disputes, which uses its superior economic status to force concessions from its partners.

The strategy isn't a wise one, especially in today's world where the economic and trade interests of all countries are intertwined. If a trade war breaks out, no one escapes unscathed.

Some say China benefits more in its trade with the United States, and therefore China would lose more in a trade war; others argue China stands to lose little given its status as the world's second largest economy.

Both arguments miss the mark for one simple reason: trade ties between the world's two largest economies are fundamentally reciprocal. Statistics from the U.S.-China Business Council show that the bilateral economic relationship supports roughly 2.6 million jobs in the United States across a range of industries, among which about 104,000 jobs were created by Chinese investment.

Today, American consumers enjoy low-priced products made in China, and Chinese businesses realize profits in the United States. The relationship is win-win.

The last thing Beijing wants is a trade war spoiling this positive dynamic. But should it happen, the Chinese economy is resilient enough to manage it.

After years of painful adjustment, the Chinese economy today is less dependent on foreign trade, and as the economy continues to expand while the country's debt growth slows, Beijing has a broader macro-economic policy space.

In the meantime, by deepening domestic reforms, promoting industry restructuring and diversifying its export markets, China is capable of turning a crisis into an opportunity for further economic progress.

For example, in Japan's trade war with the United States in the 1980s, Japanese industries were forced to lower their production costs and promote technological innovation. As a result, the country's exports resumed growth after a short period of stagnation. China could follow Japan's lead should a full-blown trade war occur.

Currently, the global economy is in the midst of a delicate recovery. Any protectionist or unilateral move -- such as the one taken by the Trump administration -- could stifle momentum and threaten a long-awaited return to growth.

Trade isn't a zero-sum game, something Washington ought to realize. If not, all parties will be dragged into the abyss of a conflict where no one emerges a winner.PARIS, March 24 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan showed convergence on the need to pursue "close dialogues" to come out with political alternatives to end hostilities in Syria and handle Cyprus crisis, the French presidency said Saturday in a statement.

During Friday's phone conversation, both leaders agreed that "deep and intense exchanges will continue in the coming days on Syria", the statement said.

Macron also "recalled the strategic importance of our partnership with Turkey, especially on the fight against terrorism and in addressing all regional crises, as well as our attention to Turkey's security interests", it said.

Differences tainted the two NATO allies' diplomatic ties after Ankara launched, in January this year, a military offensive to eradicate Kurdish insurgents in Afrin, northern Syria near Turkish borders.

A biggest critic to the operation, Macron warned Turkey of the risks of an "invasion" that "poses a real problem" by "not respecting the Syrian sovereignty".

Expressing concerns over the situation in Syria, Macron told Erdogan "to give top priority to the fight against the Islamic State" in Syria and respect "without more delay" commitment to halt hostilities throughout Syria and build a lasting political solution.

The two leaders also discussed the situation in Cyprus after Turkish warships blocked Cypriot offshore drilling in the east Mediterranean, further fuelling tension between Cyprus and Turkey.

Macron "expressed his willingness to continue close dialogues with Turkey on the situation off Cyprus and in the Aegean Sea", according to the statement.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 21:25:57|Editor: pengying

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DUBAI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia's Gulf neighbors Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) position their economies increasingly in a way to bank on the Saudi Vision 2030 reform program.

The Vision 2030 poised to transform not only the kingdom from an energy-based country to a diversified economy, but also the entire Gulf Arab region.

Launched in April 2016 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, Vision 2030 aims to erase Saudi Arabia's dependence on oil revenues by expanding the non-oil economy.

The sectors including banking, trade, tourism and a knowledge-based hi-tech market shall mushroom in the kingdom by investment into existing and new projects, among them the 500 billion U.S. dollars mega city Neom ("new") and Mustaqbal (Arabic for "future") at the Red Sea coast northwest of Saudi Arabia.

As one of Saudi Arabia's neighbors, Kuwait is located on its opposite coastline, in the northeast, and it aims to become the Gulf's northern gateway to the region.

The aim goes in line with the master plan of Kuwait Vision 2035 "by opening up to foreign direct investments and by positioning the under construction Mubarak Al-Kabeer (Arabic for "Greatly Blessed") Port on Kuwait's Bubiyan Island," Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, Kuwait's first deputy prime minister, said earlier on Tuesday at the Kuwait Investment Forum 2018.

The port shall later be connected through the planned Gulf Railway project to ensure the seamless transport of goods to Kuwait's neighbors, said Ahmed Al-Hassan, director-general of Public Authority for Roads and Transportation in Kuwait.

Saudi Vision 2030 is the biggest privatization scheme the Middle East has seen so far, hence smaller Gulf countries are eager to secure their slice of the growing non-oil cake.

Bahrain, on the other hand, has implemented its own Vision 2030. But with a total population of 1.35 million people, the smallest Gulf Arab state hopes to benefit likewise from Saudi Crown Prince's brainchild.

According to the Bahrain Economic Development Board, the vast majority of cargo arriving at Bahrain's ports is shipped to Saudi Arabia through the 25 km long King Fahd Causeway which connects the island state with its bigger brother.

Scores of Bahrain-based foreign banks have been serving Saudi clients through their beachhead in Bahrain for many years, among them Swiss private bank Julius Bar which in 2013 took over the Manama office of the U.S. bank Merrill Lynch.

In 2004, Julius Bar was the first bank ever starting operations in the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), when it received license number "000001" from UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

DIFC Governor Essa Kazim said "Saudi Vision 2030 is definitely an opportunity for the DIFC," adding that "since its inception in 2004, scores of financial firms have used their foothold in the DIFC as a stepping stone to do business in Saudi Arabia."

Dubai is also a preferable beachhead for Saudi financial entities to reach out to the globe as the emirate harbors Dubai International Airport, known as DXB, the world's busiest civil aviation hub in relation to international travelers.

In addition, Saudi Arabia is currently completing with the King Abdullah Financial District its own financial center in the capital Riyadh, rivalling Dubai's and Manama's duopoly as the leading bank hubs in the Gulf region.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 21:40:59|Editor: ZD

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BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government's latest tariff plan on imports from China will bring harm to both sides and the world, Chinese experts said.

The experts called on the U.S. side not to make bigger mistakes, while attending the China Development Forum Economic Summit on Saturday.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China and restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States.

Zhu Min, head of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University, pointed out the potential repercussions on the global industrial chain.

Once a trade war starts, the cost, price and flow of commodities will all change, affecting an estimated 400 billion U.S. dollars or more of the global industrial chain, according to Zhu.

Although the trade frictions are inevitable, Zhu believes "a serious full-blown trade war is unlikely," as there is a consultation period before the yet-to-be published tariff list, which create room for further negotiations.

The memorandum signed on Thursday is based on a Section 301 investigation, launched by the Trump administration in August 2017, into alleged Chinese intellectual property and technology transfer practices.

"The investigation, based on U.S. domestic laws, went against the international trade rules," Wang Yiming, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, told Xinhua.

Wang, referring to the logic behind the U.S. trade moves as "rough and outdated," said the results of the investigation were not objective.

In response to the move, China's Ministry of Commerce on Friday urged the United States to "pause on the brink of a precipice" and make prudent decisions so as not to put bilateral trade relations in jeopardy.

According to Zhu, China's response once again called for rational and careful decisions by the United States.

"China never made a conscious effort for a trade surplus," said Long Guoqiang, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council.

According to Long, China has been a major market where the United States enjoys its fastest export growth, and an important cause of the trade imbalance is the fact that U.S. goods are less competitive in the Chinese market.

"Solutions to the U.S-China trade deficit do not come from cutting exports from China, but for U.S. enterprises to make their products more competitive," he said.

The experts shared the view that the solution for U.S.-China trade disputes lies fundamentally in rational negotiation between the two sides, and that unilateralism will not work under globalization. EnditemLaptops made in China are on sale at a Best Buy store in New York, the United States, on March 22, 2018. Despite strong warnings from business groups and trade experts, U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China, the latest unilateral move that poses a threat to global trade. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- History tells that trade wars are a losing game. No one benefits, and everyone ends up a bit bruised.

Despite the risk of triggering a trade war, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive memorandum that could result in heavy tariffs on up to60-billion-U.S.-dollar imports from China as well as restrictions on Chinese investments.

The unilateral move is a bullying tactic long played by Washington in the face of trade disputes, which uses its superior economic status to force concessions from its partners.

The strategy isn't a wise one, especially in today's world where the economic and trade interests of all countries are intertwined. If a trade war breaks out, no one escapes unscathed.

Some say China benefits more in its trade with the United States, and therefore China would lose more in a trade war; others argue China stands to lose little given its status as the world's second largest economy.

Both arguments miss the mark for one simple reason: trade ties between the world's two largest economies are fundamentally reciprocal. Statistics from the U.S.-China Business Council show that the bilateral economic relationship supports roughly 2.6 million jobs in the United States across a range of industries, among which about 104,000 jobs were created by Chinese investment.

Today, American consumers enjoy low-priced products made in China, and Chinese businesses realize profits in the United States. The relationship is win-win.

The last thing Beijing wants is a trade war spoiling this positive dynamic. But should it happen, the Chinese economy is resilient enough to manage it.

Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, the United States, March 22, 2018. U.S. stocks ended lower on Thursday, with the Dow plunging over 700 points, after the U.S. President Donald Trump announced to impose tariff on imported products from China. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

After years of painful adjustment, the Chinese economy today is less dependent on foreign trade, and as the economy continues to expand while the country's debt growth slows, Beijing has a broader macro-economic policy space.

In the meantime, by deepening domestic reforms, promoting industry restructuring and diversifying its export markets, China is capable of turning a crisis into an opportunity for further economic progress.

For example, in Japan's trade war with the United States in the 1980s, Japanese industries were forced to lower their production costs and promote technological innovation. As a result, the country's exports resumed growth after a short period of stagnation. China could follow Japan's lead should a full-blown trade war occur.

Currently, the global economy is in the midst of a delicate recovery. Any protectionist or unilateral move -- such as the one taken by the Trump administration -- could stifle momentum and threaten a long-awaited return to growth.

Trade isn't a zero-sum game, something Washington ought to realize. If not, all parties will be dragged into the abyss of a conflict where no one emerges a winner.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 22:21:04|Editor: Jiaxin

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Newly elected lower house speaker Roberto Fico (C) speaks at the lower house of parliament in Rome, Italy, on March 24, 2018. Italy's center-right bloc and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement joined forces Saturday to elect a speaker for each chamber of parliament, in what could be a test run for a possible government alliance in the wake of an inconclusive March 4 general election. (Xinhua)

ROME, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Italy's center-right bloc and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement joined forces Saturday to elect a speaker for each chamber of parliament, in what could be a test run for a possible government alliance in the wake of an inconclusive March 4 general election.

The new Senate speaker is veteran politician Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati from media mogul Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party. The 71-year-old lawyer from the northwestern Veneto region was re-elected to a sixth term in the March 4 election. She is a member of the Superior Council of Magistrates, which is the self-governing body of the Italian judiciary, and is considered to be a Berlusconi loyalist.

The new speaker of the Lower House is Roberto Fico, a prominent member of the Five Star Movement since its inception in 2009. Born in Naples in 1974, he has a degree in communications and was elected to a second term in the Lower House earlier this month.

Italy's newly elected parliament, which convened for the first time on Friday, was at an impasse after talks broke down between the two relative winners of the national vote -- the center-right bloc led by the rightwing, anti-immigrant League, which also includes Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, and the populist Five Star Movement.

The 315-member Senate and the 630-seat Lower House must each elect a speaker -- powerful positions, which act as referees during parliamentary debate -- before President Sergio Mattarella can initiate formal government talks between the various parties.

The two houses of parliament have equal powers and both must vote their confidence in any new government, so Mattarella must weigh the abilities of each political force to form a lasting majority before giving any one of them a mandate.

The two relative winners of the general election have pledged to crack down on immigration, roll back unpopular pension reforms, introduce drastic tax cuts and generous welfare measures, cut government waste, and break European Union rules on public spending if necessary.

League leader Matteo Salvini, whose party made huge gains in the wealthier north, and Five Star chief Luigi Di Maio, whose Movement made inroads in the impoverished south, both claim the right to be the next prime minister of Italy.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 22:26:04|Editor: Jiaxin

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VANCOUVER, March 23 (Xinhua) -- With a new "sleep wearable" device designed to reduce snoring, a group of students from Canada's Simon Fraser University (SFU) have joined the HAX accelerator program, the world's first and largest hardware accelerator based in China.

The team of five students, from an SFU student venture named Zennea Technologies, are joining 14 other start-ups "in the latest cohort intake to relocate to Shenzhen, China," where the HAX accelerator program is based, according to a news report on SFU's website.

The device, ZENS, sits underneath the chin in a fabric holster. It aims to reduce snoring while providing sleep data for the user. The students said they hope that the device will bring more restful sleep to millions of people around the world.

"It kind of looks like a pollution mask but it doesn't cover the mouth or the nose," said Rachel Chase, co-CEO of Zennea Technologies. "It's able to open up the airway while people sleep and it's paired to a mobile app that's controlling it."

The HAX accelerator is a two-stage program that takes place in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and San Francisco on the U.S. West Coast. It's known as the world's first and largest hardware technology accelerator program.

The program helps start-ups scale their business by offering seed capital, in-house manufacturing and engineering expertise, access to mentors, and investor pitch training.

In an interview with Xinhua, Chase said getting accepted into HAX "is a very big deal" and will help them soft-launch their product commercially.

"It means you get funded," Chase said. "You get 150,000 U.S. dollars in cash, and then 100,000 U.S. dollars. It gives you access to resources to help you build (the product), all the manufacturing equipment, different prototyping equipment and workspace."

Zennea Technologies has recently won the Coast Capital Savings Venture Prize in an entrepreneurship competition at SFU, and taken home the Best Overall Venture Prize award, a cash and in-kind package valued at over 35,000 Canadian dollars (27,000 U.S. dollars).

Chase said what they experienced during the three-week stay in China so far "really fast tracks what we're able to do."

After the first stage of the program, Chase and her colleagues will head to San Francisco and Silicon Valley to showcase their product, develop a supply chain and seek additional funding, she said.by Deng Qian

LONDON, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The City of London has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with China, and "I hope my visit will lead to even closer cooperation in this Golden Era of relations between our two great countries", Lord Mayor of London Charles Bowman said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Bowman has been leading a business delegation to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing from March 19 to March 28, in a bid to strengthen the commercial ties with China and promote London's role as the natural western hub of the Belt and Road Initiative.

"We see China very much as a key and critical market to us, and the opportunities of expanding the golden ties that exist between our two countries is very much part of my remit," he said.

Bowman believed as an international financial center, the City will help Chinese firms realize their international ambitions and build the relationships and support they need to retain and expand their operations in Britain.

He hoped to promote the message that London remains a confidant global city and that is well beyond the Brexit.

He emphasized that London is a very unique cluster as a top international financial center based on a series of extraordinary fundamentals, including the rule of law, history, culture, talent, education, regulation, tax, innovation, time zone, infrastructure, language, security, property and above all a great place to live and work, which is an unique ecosystem.

"These are the things that over thousand years have generated the reason for, and support us for being a truly global cluster, which is very difficult to replicate," he said.

"As I mentioned we are a national jewel, we are a global jewel, very much a global hub for financial and professional services, and we recognize the great strength and ties between London, the UK and China, and we are keen to extend those," he added.

With respect to UK-China financial cooperation, he said London has developed a very strategic fintech center since the global financial crisis.

It's a wonderful one-stop shop -- tech and financial services right next door to each other, with good governmental tone for the top, user friendly regulatory environment and very sound private investment. "We are very keen to make sure we collaborate with China, and make sure we will have win win between the two countries."

Speaking of the Belt and Road Initiative, He said, "We see ourselves very much as the natural western hub for the Belt and Road, and we for one are very keen to make sure we offer our expertise across all sorts of service provision in the support of what is an extraordinary vision, the size and scale of which the globe has never seen before."

He noted he will also promote the importance of creating the digital silk road, where the City of London's expertise in fintech and technologies such as blockchain can play a strong role.

In regard to the ongoing Brexit negotiations, Bowman said: "We're quite confident we will find the right pragmatic, practical and ambitious deal with Europe, that provides for a win-win -- a win for the UK, a win for the Europe, and also a win for our global partners."

He said the City has been promoting the three "T"s -- transitional arrangement, talent and trade.

The City has confidence that the UK will arrive at the right place in relation to a transitional agreement, put in place an immigration policy that is absolutely fit for purpose, and reach a pragmatic, practical but ambitious free trade agreement that benefits all sides, he added.

The lord mayor of the City of London represents the City's business circle and helps companies make advises to the government on what is needed to make sure the financial sector function well.

The City of London is a historic, financial district -- an enclave surrounded by Greater London -- with a mayor distinct from that of the rest of London.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 22:51:08|Editor: Jiaxin

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UN special envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths (front) speaks to the media upon his arrival at Sanaa International Airport in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 24, 2018. UN special envoy Martin Griffiths arrived in Yemen's Sanaa on Saturday in striving for resumption of stalled peace talks after three previous efforts produced no results. (Xinhua/Mohammed Mohammed)

SANAA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- UN special envoy Martin Griffiths arrived in Yemen's Sanaa on Saturday in striving for resumption of stalled peace talks after three previous efforts produced no results.

Griffiths was set to meet dominant Shiite Houthi leaders and members of the party of slain ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed by then his Houthi ally last December.

Griffiths' visit aimed at bringing the Houthis to the negotiating table after the peace process between the battling forces has stalled since August 2016.

Last week, Griffiths met with Yemeni President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where they discussed ways to resume the UN-brokered peace negotiations between the internationally-recognized government and the Houthi rebels.

Griffiths succeeded recently the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed in February.

Three previous peace talks sponsored by the United Nations and hosted in Kuwait and Switzerland in 2016 had failed to end the war.

Earlier this month, the Houthis said they had secret talks with the Saudi side since two months ago to end the three-year war. However, the Saudi government denied the allegations.

Yemen has been locked in a civil war for three years after the Iranian-allied Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces including Sanaa in late 2014.

Saudi Arabia has been leading an Arab military coalition since March 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Houthis forced him into exile.

The war has killed more than 10,000 Yemenis, half of them civilians, and displaced over 3 million others, according to UN humanitarian agencies.

The ongoing war has hit a stalemate, creating the largest humanitarian crisis in the world and pushing the country into the brink of famine, with an estimated 385,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition, according to the UN.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 22:56:08|Editor: pengying

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Photo taken on March 13, 2018 shows a view of a historic archaeological site in the western Libyan city of Sabratha. The Libyan historic archaeological sites face multiple threats, mainly thefts and armed conflicts near historic sites. (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia)

by Mahmoud Darwesh, Nawas Darraji

TRIPOLI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan historic archaeological sites face multiple threats, mainly thefts and armed conflicts near historic sites.

It is a constant concern for government agencies to develop protection plans and international agreements to secure these sites. This seems elusive in the chaos and political division in Libya.

"Libya's contribution to international agreements is an important way to protect archaeological sites from the threat of theft. Therefore, these agreements must receive attention," Mohammed Faraj, head of Libya's Antiquities Authority, told Xinhua.

"An important agreement was signed recently with the United States, which prohibits the import and export of a collection of antiquities listed and circulated by Washington on all its channels to prevent their smuggling," Faraj added.

Faraj also said that the agreement, if circulated to the countries of the world, would help protect Libyan monuments in a time of great security vacuum "because a large number of looted artifacts are being sold in public auctions in France, Spain, Britain and even in Israel."

"The issue of stolen artifacts is not new. There are international gangs still active in this field, because they choose the right time to display these pieces. Important Libyan artifacts have been smuggled illegally," he said, when asked about the smuggling activities in Libya.

Faraj stressed that the Libyan Foreign Ministry informed the Antiquities Authority of its desire to sign similar agreements with a number of European countries to protect and restore stolen artifacts from Libya.

The United States and Libya later in February signed a five-year bilateral agreement aimed at combating the smuggling and trafficking of Libyan artifacts.

According to a report by the International Council of Museums published last January, the Libyan historic cities under threat are Ghadames, Sabratha, Labda, Sousse and the Acacus Mountains.

The Libyan cities that have suffered the highest amount of artifacts robberies over the past few years were Sousse, Shahhat, Sabratha, Sirte, Bani Walid, Nafusa Mounain, Tocra and Tolmeita.

The ancient city of Sabratha in western Libya, which is classified as a historic world heritage, was damaged by armed clashes in September 2017 between government forces and armed groups involved of human trafficking.

Armed conflicts affect all the Libyan cities in light of the proliferation of weapons. Sabratha was, unfortunately, subjected to several conflicts. The archaeological city was the victim of those clashes.

"The theater was hit several times with shrapnel, missiles and bullets. Some of the city's walls were also hit," Mohamed Abo-Ajela, Sabratha's monument control official, told Xinhua.

The Authority has a plan to repair the damage. The head of the Authority visited the city following the recent conflict and pledged with the representative of Libya to UNESCO to repair the damage once the necessary financial allocations have been made.

"We have qualified Libyan technical teams who are able to repair such damage," Abo-Ajela said, when asked about plans to repair the damage on the monuments.

General Mohammad Emsallem, head of Sabratha's tourist police, said that the recent clashes near the historic city forced all parties to adopt a security plan to enhance the level of protection in the city.

"There is a security plan in coordination with the anti-IS operation chamber and things are under full control," he told Xinhua.

"The human resources are available and we are in contact with the Ministry of the Interior to provide four-wheel vehicles to carry out patrols on an ongoing basis, especially that the city is wide and needs such reinforcements."

Sabratha has witnessed violent clashes in September 2017 between the anti-IS operation chamber of the UN-backed government and and armed groups accused of involvement in human trafficking.

The three-week fighting ended the chamber's forces taking over the city, after 35 people were killed and 200 were injured on both sides, according to medical sources.

The Roman ruins and the famous theater in Sabratha are one of the five Libyan sites included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1982.

During the clashes, UNESCO expressed concern about the military action's effect on Sabratha's monuments and called for protection of archaeological sites in compliance with the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

Khaider Beshir Malek, Chairman of the Libyan Tourism Authority, called on official authorities to pay special attention to Sabratha in particular and archaeological sites in general.

"Sabratha is a city of ancient history since the Roman rule. It represents an important front for Libya throughout the ages. We strongly rely on it to promote tourism again, especially domestic tourism," Malik told Xinhua.

"I call upon decision-makers in Libya to pay attention and develop such world-class archaeological sites, because they are an invaluable world treasure," he said.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-24 23:16:11|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, also chairman of the 13th National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), visits the Central Committee of the China Democratic League, on March 22, 2018. Entrusted by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, Wang Yang visited the central committees of the non-Communist parties and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC) recently. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

BEIJING, March 24 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisor Wang Yang urged to give full play to the unique advantages of the country's new type of party system.

Wang, chairman of the 13th National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), made the remarks during recent visits to the central committees of the non-communist parties and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC).

Wang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, laid stress on studying and implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the spirit of the 19th CPC National Congress, and unswervingly consolidating and developing the system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation led by the CPC.

As socialism with Chinese Characteristics entered a new era, the stage for multiparty cooperation is very broad, he said.

Wang urged the non-communist parties to constantly consolidate the common ideological and political basis for concerted efforts, focus on the major tasks of promoting high-quality development, ensuring and improving people's livelihood, and winning the key battles against major risks, poverty and pollution.

They should also strengthen self-building, especially the leading group construction, implement democratic centralism, and enhance their capabilities in various fields, he added.

Wang urged the ACFIC to ensure its comprehensive and effective coverage of the non-public sector of the economy, and promote the establishment of a new type of government-business relation.

Leaders of the non-communist parties and the ACFIC briefed their situations and work plans to Wang during his visits, and put forward their suggestions on developing the united front and multiparty cooperation in the new era.

You Quan, head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, also joined the visits.TRIPOLI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- A foreign airstrike on Saturday afternoon targeted a site of a terrorist group in the southern Libyan city of Ubari, according to a security official.

"An airstrike targeted Al-Shareb district north of Ubari, where the Tuaregs live, and destroyed a house with terrorists inside it," Ubari's security coordinator, Ramadan Saleh, told Xinhua.

"The airstrike took place at 12:45 local time (1045 GMT) and destroyed a number of vehicles parked next to the house," Saleh said.

The security official revealed that a number of terrorists after the strike went to the site and cut off the heads of other terrorists there and left their bodies, without knowing the reasons for this action.

Local media published images of dead bodies near the site.

Southern Libya witnesses active movement of IS terrorists who fled from Sirte, in addition to large presence of members of al-Qaida in Maghreb, due to the area's desert and mountain nature and mobility between borders with Chad, Niger and Sudan.

U.S. airstrikes occasionally target remnants of terrorists in Sirte, some 450 east of the capital Tripoli, as well as southern Libya.ALGIERS, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Saturday called for the preservation of social cohesion and national unity of Algeria amid regional instability.

"It is crucial to keep close sight on current challenges amid the upsurge of risks and perils that hover over large areas of our borders," said the president in a message on the occasion of Lawyer National Day, read on his behalf by the Minister of Justice Tayeb Louh.

"These realities are additional factors that should encourage the sons of Algeria to preserve social cohesion and national unity, as well as ease tension and bias that are detrimental to the consensus that we vitally need," said Bouteflika.

He recalled that Algeria has managed to defeat terrorism and put up national reconciliation by "transforming the loss of balances and benchmarks into positive energy to serve security and stability."

Bouteflika concluded that the North African nation also "succeeded in laying the foundations for a new beginning to continue the process of development and progress."

Such a statement comes a week after Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Gaid Salah, warned that "Algeria's sovereignty, security and stability is a red line that no one can cross."ISLAMABAD, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan and Sri Lanka have agreed to further diversify and enhance relations especially in the realm of trade and people-to-people contacts, a statement from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

The move came after Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi briefed visiting Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on issues of regional and international importance. President Sirisena concluded his three-day visit here Saturday.

"The Sri Lankan president appreciated the support and assistance extended by Pakistan to his country during the difficult times," the statement said.

The Sri Lankan president presented 20 corneas (10 corneas each) to the president and the prime minister of Pakistan, who appreciated the generous donation for the people of Pakistan.

Three MoUs were signed during the visit of the Sri Lankan president to further strengthen bilateral cooperation on capacity building of diplomats, public policy research and training of civil servants.

"President Maithripala Sirisena's visit further cemented the good will between the two countries and provided renewed impetus to strength bilateral cooperation," the statement said.

According to the statement, Pakistan also sought help from the Sri Lankan president to convene the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 01:36:26|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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GUANGZHOU, March 24 (Xinhua) -- China has become a larger contributor to original research papers on Nature, the Greater China subsidiary of the scientific journal's publisher Springer Nature said Saturday.

Chinese researchers published more than 90 original research papers on Nature in 2016, accounting for about 11 percent of all, compared with 0.4 percent in 1997, it said.

China was the world's second largest contributor to high-quality scientific research papers, only after the United States, according to the Nature Index 2016 which tracked 68 scientific journals including Nature, Science and Cell.

Nature held an international symposium on women and children's health in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, between Thursday and Saturday.Civilians and soldiers, kidnapped by rebels, arrive to a government-held area at the entrance of Harasta in Eastern Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus, on March 24, 2018. (AFP photo)

DAMASCUS, March 24 (Xinhua) -- A total of eight people who were kidnapped by the rebels in the capital Damascus' Eastern Ghouta were set free on Saturday under a fresh agreement with the government, according to Xinhua reporter at the site.

The the abductees were brought to the government-controlled area in the Panorama area on the outskirts of the town of Arbeen in Eastern Ghouta in ambulances.

They are the first batch of people to be released from rebels' captivity under a deal reached a day earlier between the Syrian government and the rebels of Failaq al-Rahman in Eastern Ghouta.

A Syrian officer in the Panorama area told Xinhua that more abductees are expected to be freed soon.

A day earlier, an agreement was reached for the evacuation of rebels and their families from new areas in Eastern Ghouta countryside.

As many as 7,000 rebels and their family members will leave areas of Jobar, Zamalka, Arbeen, and Ayn Tarma in Eastern Ghouta, and the deal covers the main rebel groups in control of those areas, namely the Failaq al-Rahman, and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

The agreement, which was mediated by the Russians, will also see the release of kidnapped people by the rebels ahead of their evacuation and lists of names were handed over to the Russian side, the report said.

The evacuation was initially planned to take place at 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) Saturday after the rebels hand over maps of the tunnels they dug and mines they planted in the aforementioned areas, but the process took longer than expected.

Earlier on Saturday, a total of 15 buses started entering the Arbeen town to transfer the first batch of rebels.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 03:16:36|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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KUWAIT CITY, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah condemned on Saturday a terrorist blast that occurred in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria in Egypt, the Kuwait News Agency said.

In a cable sent to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the Emir expressed condemnation on the terrorist blast, saying that the terrorist operation contradicted all covenants and humanitarian values.

He affirmed support for Egypt regarding any measure taken to safeguard its security and stability, expressing condolences to the president and the victim family.

An Egyptian policeman was killed and four others were also injured Saturday in Alexandria province in a bomb blast that targeted the region's security chief, according to Egyptian interior ministry.

The bomb, which was planted under a car, went off when the car of Alexandria's security commander passed by, the ministry said.A trader has a rest after market closing at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, the United States, March 22, 2018. U.S. stocks ended lower on Thursday, with the Dow plunging over 700 points, after the U.S. President Donald Trump announced to impose tariff on imported products from China. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

NEW HAVEN, United States, March 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs are "counterproductive" to the American economy, said Paul Kennedy, a history professor at Yale University.

Trump has taken a simplistic view of the trade relationship, the 72-year-old Kennedy told Xinhua in an exclusive interview on Thursday. He is best known for his 1987 epic book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers."

NO SIMPLE WIN-LOSE GAME

Despite strong warnings from trade experts, Trump on Thursday signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China, the latest unilateral move that poses a threat to global trade.

The move follows Trump's recent tariff plan on steel and aluminum imports and January's tariffs levied on imported solar panels and washing machines, which have been chided by business groups as an act of protectionism.

"The simplistic view of a win-lose in an economic, visible trade of goods would be derided by every economist we know, even by Republican economists," said Kennedy, commenting on the decision of the Republican-backed president.

The Yale professor pointed out that, following Trump's logic, China's trade surplus with the United States is because "the Chinese are selling more to us then we're selling to them."

But the tariffs "will be more counterproductive than helpful to the American economic position," said the historian, who also specializes in international relations.

"There are many, many more workers employed in the use of aluminum and steel than there are in the production of aluminum and steel," said Kennedy.

"So for every one American worker who will be pleased at Mr. Trump's announcement of tariffs, there will be ten American workers whose own products in his or her factory will be affected by the cost of the tariff," the scholar added.

"It is less of a concern economically really, I think, than it is a concern politically," said Kennedy, emphasizing that it showed "a lack of understanding of the complexity of a relationship."

Kennedy noted that Trump regarded relations with other nations as "almost a sort of single win-lose game of chess," while U.S.-China ties are "incredibly important and complicated."

TWO ELEPHANTS IN THE JUNGLE

In the interview, the British professor noted that Trump's China tariffs were "bad for general U.S.-China understanding," warning that it could cause China to "do some tit-for-tat measures."

"Of course, China can think, Chinese officials can think: Which American goods shall we put a tariff on just to hurt them," Kennedy said.

In fact, China said Friday that it is considering tariff increase on imports of some products from the United States to make up for losses caused by the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from China.

"China has made clear its position several times that it stands firmly against such unilateral and trade protectionist practices from the U.S. side," an official with the China's Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday.

Laptops made in China are on sale at a Best Buy store in New York, the United States, on March 22, 2018. Despite strong warnings from business groups and trade experts, U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China, the latest unilateral move that poses a threat to global trade. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

Citing the example of Europe, a potential target of the impending U.S. tariffs and which has already announced it will respond by slapping import duties on a greater number of U.S. products, Kennedy believed that it could make the situation "infinitely complicated."

Meanwhile, Kennedy said that as "the two biggest elephants in the jungle" the trade relationship between Washington and Beijing has an impact on all other relationships in the Asia Pacific and other areas.

"Each of them has the capacity to do a good contribution to international trade, said Kennedy, "(and) each has a capacity to make it sour, to make it less effective."by Xinhua writer Yang Shilong

NEW YORK, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Braving the chilly weather on Saturday morning, thousands of teenagers, teachers and parents in New York took to the streets in their support for a nationwide students march calling for the U.S. Congress to pass tighter gun-control laws.

The New York "March For Our Lives" began with a rally near the Central Park during which a moment of silence was observed as the names of 17 victims killed in the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, were read.

Then the protesters walked all the way to the midtown Manhattan, holding signs including "Enough is Enough," "We're the Change," "Gun violence hurts," and "I am a Teacher NOT a Security Guard," etc.

"I am marching for kids in school. I hope they get protected and don't have to worry about being shot in school," Daisy Rymer, a university student from New Orleans, told Xinhua as she and her friends started to move with the crowds from the Central Park West Avenue.

THIS TIME IT FEELS DIFFERENT

Many experts say the U.S. teenager activists are building a momentum for a gun-control campaign which their parents generation failed to make.

More than 800 other similar events were held in cities across the U.S. on Saturday. Marches were planned in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, and Parkland, Florida. And half-million marchers are expected to show up in Washington, D.C. alone.

Saturday's demonstrations follow a national school walkout on March 14, exactly one month after the Parkland shooting, in which students across the country walked out of classes for 17 minutes to honor the 17 victims in the Parkland school killing.

Another national school walkout is planned on April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colorado.

Despite the public outcry for stricter gun laws after the mass shooting, the gun debate in the United States tends to fade away until the next tragedy takes place.

About 63 percent of American voters surveyed support the March for Our Lives movement, though 62 percent said they do not believe the marches will be effective in getting new gun legislation passed, according to a recent poll by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut.

But "this time it feels different," said daily newspaper amNewYork in one recent editorial. "Soon enough, if our children cannot persuade us to give them a safer, better nation, they will make one for themselves."

Molly Jenkins, a 20-year-old communications student at Montclair State University in New Jersey, came with her friend Malinda DiPasquale.

"Something needs to be done after all the shootings, especially the school shootings," she said. "The message needs to come across. The more people who show up the more people who will make a change."

She said she wants people to register to vote for the 2018 elections and that she's pressing for a ban on assault rifles.

POWERFUL GUN LOBBY

An updated tally of gun violence-related deaths in the United States shows that 2,883 people have already died this year and another 4,909 injured, according to Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a non-profit organization tracking gun violence incidents in the United States.

Some 120 children, aged below 11, have been killed or injured in such incidents so far this year, said the GVA.

The failure to bring down the gun-related violence and murder rate in the country is a result of many factors, according to experts.

For one thing, with the vast and growing gap between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, gun control has become an increasingly partisan issue, with Republicans more uniformly opposed.

It also involves the powerful gun lobby, mostly by the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of America's richest and most influential lobbying groups.

America's electoral structure also lends NRA supporters outsize influence, as many gun-rights advocates live in rural areas where a few votes can swing a congressional election, experts said.

Due to the complicated web of interwoven political and business interests, the U.S. Congress has not been able to approve major gun-control legislation since 1990s.

But analysts argued that even if stricter laws were enacted, there is reason to wonder how much of a difference these laws would make as hundreds of millions of guns are already in civilian hands across the United States.

HIGHEST NUMBER OF GUNS PER CAPITA

The number of guns held by Americans is around 357 million, according to an estimate by the Washington Post, based on federal manufacturing tallies and figures of U.S. arms trade.

Although different agencies have come up with slightly different figures for the total number of guns in the country, they mostly agree that the country has the highest number of guns per capita in the world, given its population size.

"So even if all new gun purchases were banned tomorrow, there are enough rifles floating around the country to fuel countless more mass shootings," the Economist magazine once remarked in a story about U.S. gun control.

Moreover, there are loopholes in the current gun control laws.

Licensed firearms dealers are required to perform background checks on customers by submitting their details to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which checks them against databases.

But there are provisions under U.S. gun laws for individuals to sell firearms privately and at gun shows without making background checks on the buyer.

Some gun control advocates suggest that to curb rampant gun violence, the United States could learn from Australia.

Australia enacted a mandatory buyback of firearms and tightened rules on gun ownership in 1996 after a mass shooting in which 35 people were killed and 23 injured at a cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania.

Since then Australia has not had a mass shooting and over the same period, the United States has suffered more than 90 mass shootings, according to the advocates.

(Xinhua reporter Zhang Mocheng in New York contributed to the story)RABAT, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's BMCE Bank of Africa (BOA) and the China Development Bank (CDB) have inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to enhance bilateral trade and investment, local media reported Saturday.

During a ceremony held at the BOA's headquarters in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, the MoU was signed between Liu Xin, head of CDB's Zhejiang branch, and Brahim Benjelloun Touimi, chairman of the BOA Group, the financial news site Medias24.com reported.

This deal aims to boost joint ventures in infrastructure programs, transport, car manufacturing, technology park, investment and trade, and sustainable development projects, in line with the MoU on the Belt and Road Initiative signed by Morocco and China in November 2017.

The initiative, which comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, with the aim of building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes.

The latest agreement offers a solid basis for the Sino-Moroccan cooperation in the private sector, with a view to consolidating Morocco's position as a major gateway to Africa and creating new momentum for the development of the bilateral ties.

The BOA Group is also planning to open a branch in the Chinese city of Shanghai as soon as possible, the report said.Libyan historic archaeological sites face multiple threats, mainly thefts and armed conflicts near historic sites. (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia)

TRIPOLI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan historic archaeological sites face multiple threats, mainly thefts and armed conflicts near historic sites.

It is a constant concern for government agencies to develop protection plans and international agreements to secure these sites. This seems elusive in the chaos and political division in Libya.

"Libya's contribution to international agreements is an important way to protect archaeological sites from the threat of theft. Therefore, these agreements must receive attention," Mohammed Faraj, head of Libya's Antiquities Authority, told Xinhua.

"An important agreement was signed recently with the United States, which prohibits the import and export of a collection of antiquities listed and circulated by Washington on all its channels to prevent their smuggling," Faraj added.

Faraj also said that the agreement, if circulated to the countries of the world, would help protect Libyan monuments in a time of great security vacuum "because a large number of looted artifacts are being sold in public auctions in France, Spain, Britain and even in Israel."

"The issue of stolen artifacts is not new. There are international gangs still active in this field, because they choose the right time to display these pieces. Important Libyan artifacts have been smuggled illegally," he said, when asked about the smuggling activities in Libya.

Faraj stressed that the Libyan Foreign Ministry informed the Antiquities Authority of its desire to sign similar agreements with a number of European countries to protect and restore stolen artifacts from Libya.

The United States and Libya later in February signed a five-year bilateral agreement aimed at combating the smuggling and trafficking of Libyan artifacts.

According to a report by the International Council of Museums published last January, the Libyan historic cities under threat are Ghadames, Sabratha, Labda, Sousse and the Acacus Mountains.

The Libyan cities that have suffered the highest amount of artifacts robberies over the past few years were Sousse, Shahhat, Sabratha, Sirte, Bani Walid, Nafusa Mounain, Tocra and Tolmeita.

The ancient city of Sabratha in western Libya, which is classified as a historic world heritage, was damaged by armed clashes in September 2017 between government forces and armed groups involved of human trafficking.

Armed conflicts affect all the Libyan cities in light of the proliferation of weapons. Sabratha was, unfortunately, subjected to several conflicts. The archaeological city was the victim of those clashes.

"The theater was hit several times with shrapnel, missiles and bullets. Some of the city's walls were also hit," Mohamed Abo-Ajela, Sabratha's monument control official, told Xinhua.

The Authority has a plan to repair the damage. The head of the Authority visited the city following the recent conflict and pledged with the representative of Libya to UNESCO to repair the damage once the necessary financial allocations have been made.

"We have qualified Libyan technical teams who are able to repair such damage," Abo-Ajela said, when asked about plans to repair the damage on the monuments.

General Mohammad Emsallem, head of Sabratha's tourist police, said that the recent clashes near the historic city forced all parties to adopt a security plan to enhance the level of protection in the city.

"There is a security plan in coordination with the anti-IS operation chamber and things are under full control," he told Xinhua.

"The human resources are available and we are in contact with the Ministry of the Interior to provide four-wheel vehicles to carry out patrols on an ongoing basis, especially that the city is wide and needs such reinforcements."

Sabratha has witnessed violent clashes in September 2017 between the anti-IS operation chamber of the UN-backed government and and armed groups accused of involvement in human trafficking.

The three-week fighting ended the chamber's forces taking over the city, after 35 people were killed and 200 were injured on both sides, according to medical sources.

The Roman ruins and the famous theater in Sabratha are one of the five Libyan sites included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1982.

During the clashes, UNESCO expressed concern about the military action's effect on Sabratha's monuments and called for protection of archaeological sites in compliance with the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

Khaider Beshir Malek, Chairman of the Libyan Tourism Authority, called on official authorities to pay special attention to Sabratha in particular and archaeological sites in general.

"Sabratha is a city of ancient history since the Roman rule. It represents an important front for Libya throughout the ages. We strongly rely on it to promote tourism again, especially domestic tourism," Malik told Xinhua.

"I call upon decision-makers in Libya to pay attention and develop such world-class archaeological sites, because they are an invaluable world treasure," he said.TRIPOLI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan UN-backed government is coordinating with the United States to target terrorist leaders in Libya's southern city of Ubari, said the spokesman of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj on Saturday.

"Following joint coordination between the Government of National Accord and the United States, two terrorist leaders were targeted and killed during a meeting in a house in Ubari," Mohamed Sallak told a news briefing on Saturday.

Sallak did not reveal the nationalities of the killed terrorists or the organization to which they belong, however, security sources pointed out that the targeted terrorists belonged to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which attacked the French troops in Mali.

The spokesman said that the operation came within the framework of strategic cooperation between Tripoli and Washington in the fight against terrorism.

A foreign airstrike on Saturday afternoon targeted a site of a terrorist group in Ubari, according to Ramadan Saleh, Ubari's security coordinator.

Southern Libya witnesses active movement of IS terrorists who fled from Sirte, in addition to large presence of members of al-Qaida in Maghreb, due to the area's desert and mountain nature and mobility on the borders with Chad, Niger and Sudan.

U.S. airstrikes occasionally target remnants of terrorists in Sirte, some 450 east of the capital Tripoli, as well as southern Libya.KIGALI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda has been selected to host the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) 2019, a senior health official said Saturday.

Rwanda has launched the preparatory phase of the conference which is expected to bring more than 10,000 participants including government officials, researchers and representatives from academia and private sectors, said Patrick Ndimubanzi, Rwanda's Minister of State in the Ministry of Health in charge of Public Health and Primary Health Care.

The conference will discuss policies to put in place and see how Africa can tackle the HIV prevalence, he said at a press conference in Kigali, capital city of Rwanda. The conference will also talk about the diseases that are associated with HIV, he added.

The ministry of health of Rwanda will organize the conference with the Society for AIDS in Africa, founded in 1989 by a group of African scientist, activists and advocates in response to HIV and AIDS.

The conference has been organized since 1990 to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and their debilitating effects.

UNAIDS estimated that 200,000 to 250,000 Rwandan people live with HIV in 2017. The total population of Rwanda is around 12 million.A Saudi woman counts banknotes as she makes a purchase at a jewellery shop in the Tiba gold market in the capital Riyadh on Feb. 27, 2018. (AFP photo)

DUBAI, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia's Gulf neighbors Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) position their economies increasingly in a way to bank on the Saudi Vision 2030 reform program.

The Vision 2030 poised to transform not only the kingdom from an energy-based country to a diversified economy, but also the entire Gulf Arab region.

Launched in April 2016 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, Vision 2030 aims to erase Saudi Arabia's dependence on oil revenues by expanding the non-oil economy.

The sectors including banking, trade, tourism and a knowledge-based hi-tech market shall mushroom in the kingdom by investment into existing and new projects, among them the 500 billion U.S. dollars mega city Neom ("new") and Mustaqbal (Arabic for "future") at the Red Sea coast northwest of Saudi Arabia.

As one of Saudi Arabia's neighbors, Kuwait is located on its opposite coastline, in the northeast, and it aims to become the Gulf's northern gateway to the region.

The aim goes in line with the master plan of Kuwait Vision 2035 "by opening up to foreign direct investments and by positioning the under construction Mubarak Al-Kabeer (Arabic for "Greatly Blessed") Port on Kuwait's Bubiyan Island," Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, Kuwait's first deputy prime minister, said earlier on Tuesday at the Kuwait Investment Forum 2018.

The port shall later be connected through the planned Gulf Railway project to ensure the seamless transport of goods to Kuwait's neighbors, said Ahmed Al-Hassan, director-general of Public Authority for Roads and Transportation in Kuwait.

Saudi Vision 2030 is the biggest privatization scheme the Middle East has seen so far, hence smaller Gulf countries are eager to secure their slice of the growing non-oil cake.

Bahrain, on the other hand, has implemented its own Vision 2030. But with a total population of 1.35 million people, the smallest Gulf Arab state hopes to benefit likewise from Saudi Crown Prince's brainchild.

According to the Bahrain Economic Development Board, the vast majority of cargo arriving at Bahrain's ports is shipped to Saudi Arabia through the 25 km long King Fahd Causeway which connects the island state with its bigger brother.

Scores of Bahrain-based foreign banks have been serving Saudi clients through their beachhead in Bahrain for many years, among them Swiss private bank Julius Bar which in 2013 took over the Manama office of the U.S. bank Merrill Lynch.

In 2004, Julius Bar was the first bank ever starting operations in the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), when it received license number "000001" from UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

DIFC Governor Essa Kazim said "Saudi Vision 2030 is definitely an opportunity for the DIFC," adding that "since its inception in 2004, scores of financial firms have used their foothold in the DIFC as a stepping stone to do business in Saudi Arabia."

Dubai is also a preferable beachhead for Saudi financial entities to reach out to the globe as the emirate harbors Dubai International Airport, known as DXB, the world's busiest civil aviation hub in relation to international travelers.

In addition, Saudi Arabia is currently completing with the King Abdullah Financial District its own financial center in the capital Riyadh, rivalling Dubai's and Manama's duopoly as the leading bank hubs in the Gulf region.ALGIERS, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Several official institutions in Algeria went dark for one hour as a symbolic gesture to mark the global event of Earth Hour and highlight concerns over climate change.

In the capital city of Algiers, members of SIDER, an association affiliated to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which organizes the event globally, gathered in Ibn Khaldoun Hall in downtown Algiers, and lighted candles while lights were turned off.

They were joined by some government ministers and officials in addition to citizens. A music concert was later held to mark the event.

Lights were turned off from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time in several official institutions, businesses and monuments in the capital city.

The event is held annually in more than 7,000 cities across some 190 countries to encourage individuals, communities, and businesses to turn off non-essential electric lights for one hour, as a symbol to commitment to global efforts aiming at protecting planet Earth.

The event aims also at raising people's awareness about the necessity to reducing power consumption, as well as raising their awareness about global issues and challenges, including climate change and pollution.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 05:16:58|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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CHICAGO, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) agricultural commodities closed lower over the trading week which ended March 23, with soybean futures tumbling over two percent on worries about trade tensions between the U.S. and China.

The most active corn contract for May delivery fell 5.5 cents weekly, or 1.44 percent, to 3.7725 dollars per bushel. May wheat delivery went down 7.5 cents, or 1.6 percent, to 4.6025 dollars per bushel. May soybeans dropped 21.25 cents, or 2.02 percent, to 10.2825 dollars per bushel over the week.

Although it has corrected some 20 cents off mid-March's high last week, corn futures still fell another 5.5 cents. This is due to simple fund liquidation, but the market is also wary of growing tensions between major U.S. trading partners.

Wheat futures fell sharply for a second consecutive week amid early-week rainfall in Kansas and the weakness in EU and Black Sea cash prices. Currencies in major exporting countries, including Russia, Australia and Canada, have fallen from recent highs, which places yet more burden on the U.S. to boost its share of world trade.

It was a wide week of trade in the CBOT soy market that left soybean lower while soy meal ended higher on a strong late week rally. Fund liquidation took markets sharply lower at the start of the week, and prices stayed under pressure into Friday.

Concern over U.S. and China soybean trade tensions resulted in a deep late week sell off, which uncovered end user demand in soy meal market.

Argentine crop ratings continue to deteriorate and world soy meal traders are worried over where supplies will be sourced.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Argentine farmers are holding 70 percent of last year's crop, but with yields expected to fall 30-40 percent below trend, producers are still holding tight to last year's stocks.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 05:21:59|Editor: Yamei

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Photo taken on March 24, 2018 shows a poster supporting Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, Egypt. Egypt's 2018 presidential election will be held from March 26 to 28. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

by Mahmoud Fouly

CAIRO, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Terrorist threats in Egypt are not expected to affect the country's presidential elections slated for March 26-28, in which incumbent President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi is expected to make an easy win for a second four-year term due to the lack of strong challengers.

As the countdown is ticking for the presidential polls, a car bomb attack on Saturday targeted a convoy of the security chief of the country's northern coastal province of Alexandria, killing two policemen and wounding at least four others.

TERROR INEFFECTIVE

Egypt has been suffering a wave of terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military ousted former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

The Sinai-based branch of the Islamic State (IS) regional terrorist group claimed responsibility for most of the terror operations in Egypt over the past few years.

Saturday's terrorist attack in Alexandria was meant to intimidate citizens from taking part in the election rather than to target the security chief himself, yet such terrorist attempts to affect the polls would be fruitless, said Saeed al-Lawindi, a researcher at Cairo-based state-run Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

"Terrorists do not want the success of the polling process, and so it's a real challenge for Egyptians," Lawindi told Xinhua.

The pre-election terror attack came amid a massive anti-terrorist campaign, "Sinai 2018" comprehensive operation, which was launched in early February and have killed 157 terrorist and 22 soldiers.

Terror operations in Egypt had been centered in restive North Sinai province bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip before they later expanded to reach other provinces including the capital Cairo and started to target the Coptic minority via church bombings and shootings.

The terrorists did not stop at targeting security men and Copts, as they further targeted a mosque in North Sinai's Arish city last November, killing at least 310 Muslim worshippers and injuring more than 120 others, which marks the deadliest terror attack and the first against a mosque in Egypt's modern history.

"I don't think terrorism will affect the elections. On the contrary, I think it will give an opposite message, as terror attacks and explosions will only strengthen the people's determination to go out and vote," said Gamal Salama, dean of the political science department of Suez University.

"Egyptians are resolute people and terror attacks will increase their will to take part in the vote, as they realize that the danger of terrorism is not over," the professor told Xinhua.

The Egyptian forces killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested thousands of suspects during the country's anti-terror war declared by President Sisi, the army chief then, following Morsi's ouster.

EASY WIN EXPECTED FOR SISI

Sisi came to office in mid-2014 through a landslide victory in an election held a year after he led Morsi's ouster.

The incumbent president's sole rival in the race this time is little known politician Moussa Mostafa Moussa, chairman of liberal Ghad Party, after a couple of possible strong challengers have either withdrawn or disqualified for violations.

Sisi's posters and banners of different sizes could be seen everywhere on the streets, squares, buildings, store fronts, main bridges and bus stations.

He said in a recent speech that he wished there had been more competitors in the presidential polls.

A pro-Sisi non-official campaign called "So That You Can Build It (Egypt)," launched by some politicians and lawmakers, said last December that it collected over 12 million signatures from Egyptians who support Sisi's re-election for a second term.

"We cannot say that there is a strong electoral competition, for Sisi's challenger is a little known candidate," Salama said, adding that "this election is a renewal of the Egyptian people's trust in their president that saved them at a very critical stage."

The political science professor said that Sisi performed well during his first presidential term whether at political or social levels.

Under Sisi, Egypt started in late 2016 a strict three-year economic reform program based on austerity measures, fuel and energy subsidy cuts and tax hikes, which led to nationwide rising prices.

Egypt's reform plan, which started with full local currency floatation, has been encouraged by a 12-billion-dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund, half of which has already been delivered to the most populous Arab country.

"Sisi also took massive steps in construction and economic reform that we hope they will continue and become even better. I believe the Egyptian people are aware of that," the professor explained.

Security and stability in Egypt have greatly improved under Sisi following years of political chaos and relevant security challenges, despite a declining wave of terrorism that the Egyptian military and security forces are currently fighting.

"Egyptians in general believe that the current regime rescued them from similar chaos that happened in Syria, Libya and Yemen," Al-Ahram researcher Lawindi stressed.

He added that the real desired purpose of a successful election in Egypt is the country's stability. "Taking part in the vote means saying 'yes' for Egypt's security and stability."

"The most important thing is that a citizen goes out and vote, for the election is key to maintain Egypt's security and stability," Lawindi told Xinhua, urging for a high voter turnout.GDANSK, Poland, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Visitors from China are still very important for Polish amber industry, although their number reduced compared to that of last year, said Michal Kosior, general manager of the International Amber Association said on Saturday at the AMBERIF fair.

It was the last day of the 25th AMBERIF International Fair of Amber, Jewellery and Gemstones in Gdansk, north Poland. The fair was the largest event of such kind in central and eastern Europe and one of the most important in the world.

"The exhibitors are content," Kosior told Xinhua at the fair,"There are less Chinese visitors than those in previous years, but these who come are much better buyers," adding that the overall transaction volume of Chinese customers has remained basically the same as in previous years.

"Moreover, visitors from western Europe and the United States, who would not buy amber in last years, now tend to appear in large numbers," Kosior said.

AMBERIF is an event for individuals and business which carry out trade in amber jewellery. This year it brought together 470 exhibitors from all over the world and 6,000 trade visitors. Workshops, scientific seminars and discussion panels were also held during the event.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 05:47:02|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DAMASCUS, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The first batch of the Failaq al-Rahman rebels and their families evacuated the capital Damascus' Eastern Ghouta area on Saturday evening, state TV reported.

Some 17 buses transporting 981 rebels and their families evacuated areas in Eastern Ghouta through a crossing point on the outskirts of the town of Arbeen in Eastern Ghouta.

The convoy headed toward rebel-held areas in the northwestern province of Idlib, under a recently-reached deal with the Syrian government under the Russian mediation.

Ahead of the rebels' evacuation, a total of eight people kidnapped by the rebels in Eastern Ghouta were released, as part of the deal that was reached a day earlier.TEHRANIran on Saturday slammed new US sanctions against 10 of its citizens and an Iranian company over their alleged involvement in a massive state-sponsored hacking and intellectual property theft scheme. The US Treasury Department unveiled charges on Friday against nine Iranians along with sanctions against 10 individuals and the Mabna Institute, which it accused of hacking hundreds of universities on behalf of Irans Revolutionary Guards. Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi called the accusations false. Iran condemns the United States provocative, illegal and unjustified actions, which are a major new sign of the hostility and animosity of US leaders towards the Iranian people, he said in a statement on the ministrys website. They will not prevent the scientific development of the Iranian people. The two founders of the Mabna Institute, Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38, and Ehsan Mohammadi, 37, were among the nine Iranians indicted in New York and whose assets are subject to US seizure. Since 2013, the Mabna Institute carried out cyber intrusions into the computer systems of 144 US universities, the Treasury Department said, and 176 universities in 21 foreign countries. Mabna Institute employees and contractors engaged in the theft of valuable intellectual property and data from hundreds of US and third-country universities... for private financial gain, it said.For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and, specifically, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said. The US Department of Labour, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, dozens of private firms and non-governmental organizations such as the United Nations Childrens Fund were also allegedly targeted. Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the Iranians conducted spearphishing attacks designed to steal passwords from email accounts in what he called one of the largest state-sponsored hacking schemes ever uncovered. Since taking office in January 2017, US President Donald Trump has adopted a tough stance against Iran and repeatedly denounced a landmark deal that Tehran reached with world powers to curb its nuclear programme. Trump said in January that the 2015 deal must be fixed by May 12 or the United States will walk away.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 06:07:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BAGHDAD, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Five paramilitary Hashd Shaabi fighters and four civilians were killed Saturday in two incidents in the Iraqi provinces of Kirkuk and Diyala, a security source and official said.

The Iraqi forces found the bodies of five Hashd Shaabi fighters from the Turkoman minority, who were kidnapped three hours earlier in the day by gunmen outside their base in the town of Hawijah, some 45 km southwest of Kirkuk," Captain Ahmed al-Obeidi from Hawijah police told Xinhua.

The five bodies were found handcuffed and blindfolded with bullet holes in the back of their heads, Obeidi said.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, Islamic State (IS) militants opened fire on a civilian car on a road in Himreen area in east of the town of Sa'diyah, some 120 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the mayor of the town Ahmed al-Zarkoushi told Xinhua.

The attack left four people killed inside the car, including a woman and a child, and wounded two others, Zarkoushi added.

The attackers fled the scene to the nearby mountainous area of Himreen, Zarkoushi said.

Earlier in the day, Lt. Gen. Raid Shakir Jawdat, the commander of the federal police forces, said in a statement that IS militants executed federal policemen who were kidnapped four days ago by the extremist militants.

On March 20, IS militants kidnapped 10 federal policemen at a fake checkpoint on the main road near the mountainous Himreen area when they were travelling in two civilian cars heading to their homes in Baghdad for vacation.

During the past few months, dozens of IS militants fled their former urban strongholds in Mosul, Salahudin province and Hawijah area in the west of Kirkuk after the Iraqi forces cleared these areas during major anti-IS offensives.

However, remnants of IS militants resorted to hideouts in rugged areas near the rivers of Tigris and Zab, as well as Himreen mountainous areas to continue their almost daily attacks against civilians and Iraqi forces.

On Dec. 9, 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi officially declared full liberation of Iraq from IS militants after Iraqi forces recaptured all the areas once seized by the extremist group.

However, small groups and individuals of IS militants regrouped in the rugged areas and are carrying out attacks against the security forces and civilians despite operations from time to time to hunt them down.RABAT, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The landmark Hassan II Mosque in Morocco's Casablanca switched off its lights for one hour on Saturday to mark the Earth Hour.

The mosque, which is built on a promontory over the Atlantic Ocean and can be seen from miles away, went dark from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time, joining other global landmarks in a move to raise awareness about the impacts of climate change.

The Foundation of Hassan II Mosque said in a statement that its participation in the Earth Hour movement stems from its awareness of the greenhouse gas emissions and therefore the importance of energy savings to protect our environment.

Many Moroccan companies and public bodies took part in Earth Hour 2018 by symbolically turning off non-essential lights.

Every year, millions of people around the world join the event and switch off their lights for one hour to show support for protecting the planet and stopping climate change.

Earth Hour started as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Since then it has grown to engage more than 180 countries and territories worldwide.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 06:32:07|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DAMASCUS, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The first batch of the Failaq al-Rahman rebels and their families evacuated Syria's Eastern Ghouta area on Saturday evening, state TV reported.

Up to 17 buses transporting 981 rebels and their families evacuated areas in Eastern Ghouta through a crossing point on the outskirts of the town of Arbeen in Eastern Ghouta.

The convoy headed toward rebel-held areas in the northwestern province of Idlib, under a recently-reached deal with the Syrian government under the Russian mediation.

Ahead of the rebels' evacuation, a total of eight people kidnapped by the rebels in Eastern Ghouta were released, as part of the deal that was reached before.

A day earlier, the state TV declared the agreement for the evacuation of Failaq al-Rahman rebels and their families from new areas in Eastern Ghouta countryside.

According to the deal, as many as 7,000 rebels and their family members will leave areas of Jobar, Zamalka, Arbeen, and Ayn Tarma in Eastern Ghouta, and the deal covers the main rebel groups in control of those areas, namely the Failaq al-Rahman, and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

The agreement will also see the release of kidnapped people by the rebels ahead of their evacuation and lists of names were handed over to the Russian side, the report said.

The evacuation was initially planned to take place at 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) Saturday after the rebels hand over maps of the tunnels they dug and mines they planted in the aforementioned areas, but the process took longer than expected.

The fresh deal comes a day after the Failaq al-Rahman group declared a unilateral cease-fire to negotiate its withdrawal from the region.

The War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army, reported that the Failaq al-Rahman rebels, or the Rahman Legion, declared a cease-fire in the central part of Eastern Ghouta as of midnight Friday.

These areas have been the launching pad for firing mortar and rocket shells on the Syria capital of Damascus throughout the last seven years of crisis.

This development came as the Syrian army has so far captured over 90 percent of Eastern Ghouta in an offensive that has been dragging on since late last month.

Eastern Ghouta, a 105-square-km agricultural region consisting of several towns and farmlands, poses the last threat to the capital due to its proximity to government-controlled neighborhoods east of Damascus and ongoing mortar attacks that target residential areas in the capital, pushing people over the edge.

Four major rebel groups are currently positioned inside Eastern Ghouta, namely the Islam Army, Failaq al-Rahman, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Levant Liberation Committee, known as the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

The UN humanitarian agencies have sounded the alarm about the worsening humanitarian situation for 400,000 people in that region, where activists said around 1,000 people have been killed since late last month by the heavy bombardment and military showdown in areas of Eastern Ghouta.

As the Syrian army advanced in Eastern Ghouta, tens of thousands of civilians have fled toward government-controlled areas for the first time in six years, with activists placing the number of the civilians that have so far left at 120,000.Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-25 06:42:08|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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GAZA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Israeli war jets struck overnight a Hamas military facility in Rafah town in southern Gaza Strip with five missiles. No injuries were reported according to Hamas security officials and paramedics.

The Israeli airstrikes were a response to an earlier infiltration of four Palestinians who managed to cut the fence of the borders between eastern Gaza and Israel and damaged an Israeli army machine that digs the ground to destroy underground tunnels.

The Israeli airstrike was also a response to Gaza militants shooting at a small Israeli army drone that hovered over southeast Gaza Strip, according to the security officials, adding that during the Israeli airstrikes, militants fired on the attacking Israeli war planes.

The Israeli media reported that the Israeli war jets struck targets that belong to Hamas militants in southern Gaza Strip in response to damaging Israeli army digging machines and also in response to firing at Israeli drones.

Meanwhile, Islamic Hamas movement spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in an emailed press statement that the Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip was aiming at foiling the preparations for the big march of return the Palestinians are preparing.

Hamas movement and other Palestinian factions are preparing for a large popular Palestinian march that will start on March 30 and end on May 15. Hamas called on Gaza populations to peacefully demonstrate during the big march close to the borders with Israel.MAPUTO, March 24 (Xinhua) -- The Police in Mozambique's province of Nampula detained 29 people on Saturday who were allegedly to join the rioters in Mocimboa da Praia, in the northernmost province of Cabo Delgado.

According to Manuel Zandamela, provincial commander in Nampula, the 29 individuals, including children and women, were lured by money and job opportunities in Cabo Delgado by Islamist extremists who had carried out sporadic attacks on police stations and civilian houses since October 2017.

"We have no doubt that these people, including 12-year-olds, would join the riots that are taking place in Cabo Delgado," said Zandamel, adding that "because they are innocent people who have been deceived, they will not be arrested, and will be released to their homes."

So far, the Defense and Security Forces have arrested at least 400 people, including Zimbabweans, Somalis, Ugandans and Tanzanians.Thousands of people in U.S. New York City join the nationwide "March For Our Lives" protest against gun violence on March 24, 2018. (Xinhua/Zhang Mocheng)

NEW YORK, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Braving the chilly weather on Saturday morning, thousands of teenagers,teachers and parents in New York took to the streets in their support for a nationwide students march calling the U.S. Congress to pass tighter gun-control laws.

The New York "March For Our Lives" began with a rally at near the Central Park during which a moment of silence was observed as the names of 17 victims killed in the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, were read.

Then the protesters, holding signs including "Enough is Enough" "We're the Change" "Gun violence hurts" and "I am a Teacher NOT a Security Guard," walked all the way to the midtown Mahattan.

"I am marching for kids in school, I hope they get protected and don't have to worry about being shot in school," Daisy Rymer, a university student from New Orleans, told Xinhua as she and her friends started to move with the crowds from the Central Park West aveune.

Hundreds of thousands of people join the nationwide "March For Our Lives" protest against gun violence in Houston, Texas, the United States, on March 24, 2018. (Xinhua/Song Qiong)

THIS TIME IT FEELS DIFFERENT

The U.S. teenager activists are building a momentum for a gun-control campaign many experts say their parents generation failed to make it.

More than 800 other events were reported held across the United States, with hundreds of cities participating on Saturday. Marches were planned in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Boston, Houston, Philadelphia, New York City, and Parkland, Florida.

A half million marchers are expected to show up in Washington, D.C. alone.

Saturday's demonstrations follow a national school walkout on March 14, exactly one month after the Parkland shooting, in which students across the country walked out of classes for 17 minutes to honor the 17 victims in Florida.

Another national school walkout is planned on April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colorado.

Despite the public outcry for stricter gun laws after a mass shooting, the gun debate in the United States tends to fade away until the next tragedy takes place.

About 63 percent of American voters surveyed support the March for Our Lives movement, though 62 percent said they do not believe the marches will be effective in getting new gun legislation passed, according to a recent poll by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut.

But "this time it feels different," said daily newspaper amNewYork in one recent editorial. "Soon enough, if our children cannot persuade us to give them a safer, better nation, they will make one for themselves."

Molly Jenkins, 20, a communications student at Montclair State University in New Jersey, came with her friend Malinda DiPasquale, 19.

"Something needs to be done after all the shootings, especially the school shootings," she said. "The message needs to come across. The more people who show up the more people who will make a change."

She said she wants people to register to vote for the 2018 elections and that said she's pressing for ban on assault rifles.

POWERFUL GUN LOBBY

An updated tally of gun violence-related deaths in the United States shows that 2,883 people have already died this year and another 4,909 injured, according to Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a widely quoted non-profit organization tracking gun violence incidents in the United States.

Some 120 children, aged below 11, have been killed or injured in such incidents in the country so far this year, said the GVA.

The U.S. failure to bring down the gun-related violence and murder rate is a result of many factors, according to experts.

For one thing, with the vast and growing gap between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, gun control has become an increasingly partisan issue, with Republicans more uniformly opposed.

It also involves the powerful gun lobby, mostly by the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of America's richest and most influential lobbying groups.

America's electoral structure also lends NRA supporters outsize influence, as many gun-rights advocates live in rural areas where a few votes can swing a congressional election, experts said.

Due to the complicated web of interwoven political and business interests, the U.S. Congress has not approved major gun-control legislation since the 1990s.

But analysts argued that even if stricter laws were enacted, there is reason to wonder how much of a difference these laws would make as hundreds of millions of guns are already in civilian hands across the United States.

HIGHEST NUMBER OF GUNS PER CAPITA

The number of guns held by Americans is around 357 million, according to an estimate by the Washington Post, based on federal manufacturing tallies and figures of U.S. arms trade.

Although different agencies have come up with slightly different figures for the the total number of guns in the United States, they mostly agree that the country has the highest number of guns per capita, given its population size.

"So even if all new gun purchases were banned tomorrow, there are enough rifles floating around the country to fuel countless more mass shootings," the Economist magazine once remarked in a story about U.S. gun control.

Moreover, there are loopholes in the current gun control laws.

Licensed firearms dealers are required to perform background checks on customers by submitting their details to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which checks them against database.

But there are provisions under U.S. gun laws for individuals to sell firearms privately and at gun shows without making background checks on the buyer.

Some gun control advocates suggest that to curb rampant gun violence, the United States could learn from Australia.

Australia enacted a mandatory buyback of firearms and tightened rules on gun ownership in 1996 after a mass shooting in which 35 people were shot and killed and 23 injured at a cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania.IRONWOOD  Two men are facing drug charges following their arrest in Ironwood Wednesday.

Ira Asher Wilson-Johnson, 21, is charged with possession with intent to deliver less than 50 grams of cocaine, possession of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a school, possession with intent to deliver marijuana, possession of marijuana within 1,000 feet of a school, possession with intent to deliver alpazolam (a Schedule 4 controlled substance also known as Xanax), possession of Alprazolam within 1,000 feet of a school and felony firearm.

Morgan R. Gibson, 22, of Chicago, is charged with possession of ma...News

Washington, DC - Presidential Proclamation Adjusting Imports of Aluminum into the United States:

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

1. On January 19, 2018, the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) transmitted to me a report on his investigation into the effect of imports of aluminum articles on the national security of the United States under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended (19 U.S.C. 1862).

2. In Proclamation 9704 of March 8, 2018 (Adjusting Imports of Aluminum Into the United States), I concurred in the Secretarys finding that aluminum articles are being imported into the United States in such quantities and under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States, and decided to adjust the imports of aluminum articles, as defined in clause 1 of Proclamation 9704 (aluminum articles), by imposing a 10 percent ad valorem tariff on such articles imported from all countries except Canada and Mexico.

3. In proclaiming this tariff, I recognized that our Nation has important security relationships with some countries whose exports of aluminum articles to the United States weaken our internal economy and thereby threaten to impair the national security. I also recognized our shared concern about global excess capacity, a circumstance that is contributing to the threatened impairment of the national security. I further determined that any country with which we have a security relationship is welcome to discuss with the United States alternative ways to address the threatened impairment of the national security caused by imports from that country, and noted that, should the United States and any such country arrive at a satisfactory alternative means to address the threat to the national security such that I determine that imports from that country no longer threaten to impair the national security, I may remove or modify the restriction on aluminum articles imports from that country and, if necessary, adjust the tariff as it applies to other countries as the national security interests of the United States require.

4. The United States is continuing discussions with Canada and Mexico, as well as the following countries, on satisfactory alternative means to address the threatened impairment to the national security by imports of aluminum articles from those countries: the Commonwealth of Australia (Australia), the Argentine Republic (Argentina), the Republic of Korea (South Korea), the Federative Republic of Brazil (Brazil), and the European Union (EU) on behalf of its member countries. Each of these countries has an important security relationship with the United States and I have determined that the necessary and appropriate means to address the threat to the national security posed by imports from aluminum articles from these countries is to continue these discussions and to exempt aluminum articles imports from these countries from the tariff, at least at this time. Any country not listed in this proclamation with which we have a security relationship remains welcome to discuss with the United States alternative ways to address the threatened impairment of the national security caused by imports of aluminum articles from that country.

5. The United States has an important security relationship with Australia, including our shared commitment to supporting each other in addressing national security concerns, particularly through our security, defense, and intelligence partnership; the strong economic and strategic partnership between our countries; our shared commitment to addressing global excess capacity in aluminum production; and the integration of Australian persons and organizations into the national technology and industrial base of the United States.

6. The United States has an important security relationship with Argentina, including our shared commitment to supporting each other in addressing national security concerns in Latin America, particularly the threat posed by instability in Venezuela; our shared commitment to addressing global excess capacity in aluminum production; the reciprocal investment in our respective industrial bases; and the strong economic integration between our countries.

7. The United States has an important security relationship with South Korea, including our shared commitment to eliminating the North Korean nuclear threat; our decades-old military alliance; our shared commitment to addressing global excess capacity in aluminum production; and our strong economic and strategic partnership.

8. The United States has an important security relationship with Brazil, including our shared commitment to supporting each other in addressing national security concerns in Latin America; our shared commitment to addressing global excess capacity in aluminum production; the reciprocal investment in our respective industrial bases; and the strong economic integration between our countries.

9. The United States has an important security relationship with the EU and its constituent member countries, including our shared commitment to supporting each other in national security concerns; the strong economic and strategic partnership between the United States and the EU, and between the United States and EU member countries; and our shared commitment to addressing global excess capacity in aluminum production.

10. In light of the foregoing, I have determined that the necessary and appropriate means to address the threat to the national security posed by imports of aluminum articles from these countries is to continue ongoing discussions and to increase strategic partnerships, including those with respect to reducing global excess capacity in aluminum production by addressing its root causes. In my judgment, discussions regarding measures to reduce excess aluminum production and excess aluminum capacity, measures that will increase domestic capacity utilization, and other satisfactory alternative means will be most productive if the tariff proclaimed in Proclamation 9704 on aluminum articles imports from these countries is removed at this time.

11. However, the tariff imposed by Proclamation 9704 remains an important first step in ensuring the economic viability of our domestic aluminum industry and removing the threatened impairment of the national security. Without this tariff and the adoption of satisfactory alternative means addressing long-term solutions in ongoing discussions with the countries listed as excepted in clause 1 of this proclamation, the industry will continue to decline, leaving the United States at risk of becoming reliant on foreign producers of aluminum to meet our national security needs  a situation that is fundamentally inconsistent with the safety and security of the American people. As a result, unless I determine by further proclamation that the United States has reached a satisfactory alternative means to remove the threatened impairment to the national security by imports of aluminum articles from a particular country listed as excepted in clause 1 of this proclamation, the tariff set forth in clause 2 of Proclamation 9704 shall be effective May 1, 2018, for the countries listed as excepted in clause 1 of this proclamation. In the event that a satisfactory alternative means is reached such that I decide to exclude on a long-term basis a particular country from the tariff proclaimed in Proclamation 9704, I will also consider whether it is necessary and appropriate in light of our national security interests to make any corresponding adjustments to the tariff set forth in clause 2 of Proclamation 9704 as it applies to other countries. Because the current tariff exemptions are temporary, however, I have determined that it is necessary and appropriate to maintain the current tariff level at this time.

12. In the meantime, to prevent transshipment, excess production, or other actions that would lead to increased exports of aluminum articles to the United States, the United States Trade Representative, in consultation with the Secretary and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, shall advise me on the appropriate means to ensure that imports from countries exempt from the tariff imposed in Proclamation 9704 do not undermine the national security objectives of such tariff. If necessary and appropriate, I will consider directing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of the Department of Homeland Security to implement a quota as soon as practicable, and will take into account all aluminum articles imports since January 1, 2018, in setting the amount of such quota.

13. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended, authorizes the President to adjust the imports of an article and its derivatives that are being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security.

14. Section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (19 U.S.C. 2483), authorizes the President to embody in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) the substance of statutes affecting import treatment, and actions thereunder, including the removal, modification, continuance, or imposition of any rate of duty or other import restriction.

Now, Therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended, section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended, do hereby proclaim as follows:

(1) Imports of all aluminum articles, as defined in clause 1 of Proclamation 9704, from the countries listed in this clause shall be exempt from the duty established in clause 2 of Proclamation 9704 until 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on May 1, 2018. Further, clause 2 of Proclamation 9704 is amended by striking the last two sentences and inserting the following two sentences: Except as otherwise provided in this proclamation, or in notices published pursuant to clause 3 of this proclamation, all aluminum articles imports specified in the Annex shall be subject to an additional 10 percent ad valorem rate of duty with respect to goods entered, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, as follows: (a) on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on March 23, 2018, from all countries except Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, South Korea, Brazil, and the member countries of the European Union, and (b) on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on May 1, 2018, from all countries. This rate of duty, which is in addition to any other duties, fees, exactions, and charges applicable to such imported aluminum articles, shall apply to imports of aluminum articles from each country as specified in the preceding sentence..

(2) Paragraph (a) of U.S. note 19, added to subchapter III of chapter 99 of the HTSUS by the Annex to Proclamation 9704, is amended by replacing Canada and of Mexico with Canada, of Mexico, of Australia, of Argentina, of South Korea, of Brazil, and of the member countries of the European Union.

(3) The Article description for heading 9903.85.01 of the HTSUS is amended by replacing Canada or of Mexico with Canada, of Mexico, of Australia, of Argentina, of South Korea, of Brazil, or of the member countries of the European Union.

(4) The exemption afforded to aluminum articles from Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, South Korea, Brazil, and the member countries of the EU shall apply only to aluminum articles of such countries entered, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, through the close of April 30, 2018, at which time Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, South Korea, Brazil, and the member countries of the EU shall be deleted from paragraph (a) of U.S. note 19 to subchapter III of chapter 99 of the HTSUS and from the article description of heading 9903.85.01 of the HTSUS.

(5) Any aluminum article that is admitted into a U.S. foreign trade zone on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on March 23, 2018, may only be admitted as privileged foreign status as defined in 19 CFR 146.41, and will be subject upon entry for consumption to any ad valorem rates of duty related to the classification under the applicable HTSUS subheading. Any aluminum article that was admitted into a U.S. foreign trade zone under privileged foreign status as defined in 19 CFR 146.41, prior to 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on March 23, 2018, will likewise be subject upon entry for consumption to any ad valorem rates of duty related to the classification under applicable HTSUS subheadings imposed by Proclamation 9704, as amended by this proclamation.

(6) Clause 3 of Proclamation 9704 is amended by inserting a new third sentence reading as follows: Such relief may be provided to directly affected parties on a party-by-party basis taking into account the regional availability of particular articles, the ability to transport articles within the United States, and any other factors as the Secretary deems appropriate..

(7) Clause 3 of Proclamation 9704, as amended by clause 6 of this proclamation, is further amended by inserting a new fifth sentence as follows: For merchandise entered on or after the date the directly affected party submitted a request for exclusion, such relief shall be retroactive to the date the request for exclusion was posted for public comment..

(8) The Secretary, in consultation with CBP and other relevant executive departments and agencies, shall revise the HTSUS so that it conforms to the amendments and effective dates directed in this proclamation. The Secretary shall publish any such modification to the HTSUS in the Federal Register.

(9) Any provision of previous proclamations and Executive Orders that is inconsistent with the actions taken in this proclamation is superseded to the extent of such inconsistency.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-second day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand eighteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-second.

DONALD J. TRUMPSince then, Wren said, efforts have been made to figure out what exactly lead to up to that point.

"Any time we find something that works we want to find out why something works and how we can do it better," Wren said.

Wren said he believes the school provides an "even playing field" for students, allowing pupils to establish a level of trust with staff.

"I don't think it matters who the kids are, the staff really works to develop positive relationships with them," Wren said.

The school has a framework "that targets specific students so we're providing instruction that targets them at their particular level," Wren said. The school has implemented both stations involving teacher-lead work and stations where students are working independently or are given instruction allowing students to work independently within that framework, Wren said. The independent work features at the higher grades more heavily at the elementary, he said. Wren praised staff for their work.

Wren added that over his time with the school, he has emphasized the importance of detailed work that will reflect which students will come across in state assessments.

"I've really been trying to raise expectations, especially in the area of writing," Wren said.

Wren said the school will not be resting on its successes and will celebrate its achievements while continuing their work.

Staff writer Kelly Rocheleau can be reached at (315) 282-2243 or kelly.rocheleau@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @KellyRocheleau.

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Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.BRUSSELS, BelgiumEuropean countries are set to take further steps as early as Monday to punish Russia over the poisoning of a former spy in England, officials said, as diplomatic pressure builds on Moscow over the nerve agent attack. Russia, for its part, accused London of trying to force its European allies to take confrontational steps and unleashing an anti-Russian campaign. EU leaders meeting in Brussels have agreed to recall the blocs ambassador from Moscow over the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury. French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday the poisoning with the Soviet-made Novichok agent was an attack on European sovereignty, after EU leaders unanimously backed Londons assessment that it was highly likely Moscow was to blame and that there was no plausible alternative explanation. Several member states are considering following Britains lead and expelling Russian intelligence agents posing as diplomats, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying further coordinated actions were necessary to respond to the attack. The 23 diplomats expelled by Moscow in a tit-for-tat move have returned to the UK safely, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Twitter late Friday. The question of whether to expel Russian diplomats will be left to individual member states and EU President Donald Tusk said action was expected as early as Monday. But divisions remain over how far to go, with Austria already ruling out expelling diplomats, and Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, said it was not clear how many states would join the expulsions. More than one but I dont think that it will be the whole group, Tusk said. Macron told a joint news conference with Merkel after the summit in Brussels that the March 4 incident -- for which Russia denies responsibility -- was a serious challenge to our security and... an attack on European sovereignty. It calls for a coordinated, determined response from the European Union and its member states, the French leader said. - Extraordinary measure - British Prime Minister Theresa May briefed other EU leaders on the probe into the attack over a summit dinner on Thursday. She managed to overcome resistance from countries like Greece and Italy who were reluctant to put their close Kremlin ties in jeopardy to persuade them to back Britains conclusion that Moscow was to blame. Merkel said May had shared certain findings which left little doubt Moscow was behind the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War II.We believe that the analyses are already very well-founded, and this has not been questioned by anyone, Merkel said. We agreed -- Germany and France at least -- that such reactions are still necessary in addition to recalling the ambassador. European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said the recall of the ambassador was an extraordinary measure never before taken by the bloc. The leaders of former Soviet bloc EU states the Czech Republic and Lithuania, as well as Denmark and Ireland, have said they were considering further unilateral steps, including expelling diplomats. Latvia was the first to commit explicitly to expelling Russians, saying it expected to make an official announcement on Monday. - Confrontational steps - Moscow denounced the moves by Britain and the EU. As for the decision taken, we regret in this context that again such decisions are taken using the wording highly likely, President Vladimir Putins spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday. We dont agree with this and we repeat again that Russia absolutely definitely has nothing to do with the Skripal case. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on a visit to Hanoi, separately accused Britain of feverishly trying to force allies to take confrontational steps, suggesting Londons focus was now on making the crisis with Russia as deep as possible. The Russian ambassador to Britain wrote Friday to a policeman exposed to the nerve agent used against the Skripals, insisting on Moscows innocence and thanking him for his bravery. Alexander Yakovenko told Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was released from hospital Thursday following two weeks of treatment, that he hoped the officer and the Skripals get well soon. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for your bravery when reacting to the assault on two Russian nationals, he wrote.News

Washington, DC - An indictment was unsealed today charging Ross Roggio, 49, of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and Roggio Consulting Company, LLC, a firm with which Ross Roggio was associated, for alleged involvement in a conspiracy to illegally export firearm parts, firearm manufacturing tools, and defense services, including items used to manufacture M4 rifles, from the United States to Iraq, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers; U.S. Attorney David J. Freed of the Middle District of Pennsylvania; Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Carson of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement, New York Field Office; and said Special Agent in Charge Marlon V. Miller of Homeland Security Investigations Philadelphia Office made the announcement.

The indictment charges Ross Roggio and Roggio Consulting Company, LLC with criminal conspiracy, illegal export of goods, wire fraud and money laundering. Pursuant to regulations of the U.S. Department of Commerce, a license is required to export certain goods and services from the United States to Iraq for reasons of regional stability and national security. Similarly, defense services and defense articles may not be exported to Iraq without a license from the U.S. Department of State.

The indictment alleges that, beginning in January of 2013 until the date of the indictment, Ross Roggio conspired to export both items and services from the United States to Iraq, without the required U.S. Commerce Department and U.S. State Department licenses. The conspirators allegedly purchased firearms parts and manufacturing tools from the United States, illegally exported the items to Iraq where the items were utilized and incorporated in the manufacture and assembly of complete firearms in a firearms manufacturing plant constructed and operated in part by Ross Roggio. It is alleged that the items illegally exported included: M4 Bolt Gas Rings MIL; Firing Pin Retainers; Rifling Combo Buttons, and defense services. The defense services allegedly provided by Ross Roggio and his firm include the furnishing of assistance to foreign persons in the manufacture of firearms.

In addition to the charges relating to export controls violations, the indictment also alleges that Ross Roggio and his firm committed wire fraud on at least three occasions by purchasing items from a United States company and providing said company with false information about the end-user of the items. Finally, the indictment charges Ross Roggio and his firm with 27 counts of money laundering in the form of bank transfers from Iraq to two accounts within the Middle District of Pennsylvania, in furtherance of their unlawful export conspiracy.

The combined maximum penalty under federal law for these offenses is 705 years of imprisonment, a term of supervised release following imprisonment, and a fine. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes. Any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors. The charges contained in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd K. Hinkley for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and Trial Attorneys Scott Claffee and Heather Alpino of the National Security Divisions Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.Latest News

Salt Lake City, Utah - Following a three-day trial, a jury found Mark Porter, 59, of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, guilty yesterday of committing a federal hate crime when he used a stun device during the racially-motivated assault of a neighbor at his apartment complex in Draper, Utah.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division John Gore, U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah John W. Huber, and Special Agent in Charge for the Salt Lake City Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Eric Barnhart announced that the defendant was found guilty of the only offense charged in the indictment, a violation 42 U.S.C.  3631 for using force and the threat of force to injure, intimidate, and interfere with an African-American man because of his race and because of his occupancy of a nearby apartment in the complex. The jury further found that the defendant used a dangerous weapon  a stun cane.

Evidence presented at trial showed that the defendant shouted a racial slur at the victims 7-year-old son as the boy rode on a scooter in a common area at the apartment complex. After the defendant told the child to get out of here, he used the stun cane to injure the victim, knocking the victim to the ground. The defendant then used a racial slur to refer to the victim and his son and told them both to get out of here.

Evidence presented at trial also established that, prior to the incident, the defendant had told an employee and maintenance staff at the apartment complex that he did not want to live near any African-Americans. Immediately prior to the incident with the boy and his father, the defendant told another neighbor that he thought that African-Americans needed to be exterminated.

Porters violent conduct, motivated by his intolerance of another race, is an egregious crime that will not be tolerated by this Justice Department, said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore of the Civil Rights Division. We will continue to protect the civil rights of all individuals and vigorously prosecute hate crime cases.

There is no place in Utah for race-motivated hatred and violence, said U.S. Attorney John W. Huber. All families deserve the opportunity to live peaceably in their homes where they may pursue happiness in safe environments. The jury in this case spoke on behalf of our Utah communities and definitively stated that this criminal conduct will not be tolerated.

Sentencing is set for May 30 before U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of the District of Utah. The defendant faces a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of $250,000.

The case was investigated by the Salt Lake City Field Office of the FBI. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Drew Yeates of the United States Attorneys Office and Trial Attorney Rose E. Gibson of the Civil Rights Divisions Criminal Section.HYDERABAD: Hours after Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah wrote a letter to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu accusing him of quitting the National Democratic Alliance due to politics, the Telegu Desam Party chief has hit back. Responding to the letter, Naidu alleged that the BJP chief was trying to misrepresent the facts, hurting the sentiments of the Telugu people.

"TDP had won local body elections before bifurcation. After bifurcation, people were in an insecure position so we allied with BJP for the welfare of the state. Amit Shah in his letter wrote we quit NDA for political reasons. But we did so in accordance with people's aspirations," Naidu said.

Defending the TDP's decision to quit the BJP-led NDA, Naidu said that it was done to respect the feelings of people, who were feeling betrayed by the Central government. He claimed that the NDA did not discharge its responsibility towards its ally and the state.

Taking a strong exception to the BJP President's remark that he was looking to divert the funds received from the Central government, Naidu said: "You may have that habit, I don't have." Slamming Shah for using some strong words in the letter, Naidu said it reflect the functioning of the Prime Minister`s Office (PMO).

Naidu read out excerpts of Shah's letter and made a point by point rebuttal to assert that the Central government failed to come to state's rescue. He also held Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Central government responsible for the 'unscientific division of Andhra Pradesh. "The unscientific division of the state pushed us 10 years back. Centre is responsible for that. You claim you're sensitive to our problems. But in reality, you too were equally responsible for passing bifurcation bill within 20 minutes behind closed doors," the Andhra Pradesh CM claimed.

He lamented that despite being the highest contributor to the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST), the state is lagging behind. "Andhra Pradesh is the highest contributor to CGST. Despite our strong efforts and better development in GDP, Andhra is still lagging behind all the southern states in per capita income," Naidu said adding that the TDP is synonymous with development.

Earlier in the day, Shah had written a nine-page letter to the TDP chief saying that the party's decision to quit the NDA was unilateral "guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns". He had also described the allegations of the TDP chief that the BJP was not sensitive to the aspirations of the people of Andhra Pradesh as "untrue and baseless".New Delhi: Actress Jacqueline Fernandez, who recently suffered an eye injury on the sets of her upcoming film 'Race 3', has resumed filming again. However, to hide her injury mark, the actress will be filming the climax scene wearing sunglasses.

Jacqueline is currently in Abu Dhabi where she is shooting for the high octane action film. As per a report, the actress suffered an eye injury while playing squash. She was immediately taken to a hospital and was given primary treatment following which she was discharged.

While we expected her to take a break from acting for a day or two, Jacqueline left us in complete surprise as she quickly returned to the sets to continue her shoot. However, due to the visible injury, the actress will have to shoot the climax sequences wearing sunglasses.

On Saturday, she took to Instagram to thank her fans and shared a video with the caption, "Thank you all for your get well soon wishes, really means a lot. I did kind of injure my right eye and I have to do an entire climax scene in sunglasses now, so dont be shocked."

"Moral of the story is, try and wear goggles when you are playing squash and never look back at your opponent when he is about to hit the ball," she added.

The action-thriller film is being directed by Remo D'Souza and produced under Tips Films. Though not much has been revealed about the plot, Jacqueline is expected to play the role of a RAW agent in the film.

It also features Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Saqib Saleem and Daisy Shah. The film will hit the theatres on Eid 2018.New Delhi: Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio's all-IP network with VoLTE calling support has set a new benchmark for other Indian telecom operators. Airtel took the big leap into VoLTE calling on its network, but it's still far from bringing it to all the users across India.

To make sure the network doesn't lag or encounter early glitches, Airtel has launched a new VoLTE Beta Program to test out the upgraded network. But it needs real users to test the network and provide regular feedback, so Airtel is offering an incentive to lure its subscribers into the program.

After joining Airtel VoLTE Beta Program, users will be given 30GB free data. But Airtel expects you to return the favor by giving feedback on the quality of its VoLTE calling service. Users will get the first installment of 10GB data to download the latest OS and enable VoLTE switch, then the next installment of 10GB will be credited after four weeks of regularly providing network feedback and the final 10GB data will be credited after the eighth week.

How to become a VoLTE Beta tester?

Firstly, Airtel is testing the VoLTE services in select circles, including West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, Kerala, Bihar, Punjab, and Andhra Pradesh. Then you need a VoLTE handset with an Airtel 4G SIM.

Users can go to Airtel's official website to check if your number is eligible for beta testing of VoLTE and proceed as per instructions.

How is VoLTE better?

If perfected, VoLTE will significantly improve the quality of voice calls in India. HD voice calls will enable crystal clear conversations and you could forget about the initial beeps before connecting a call as it happens instantly. Finally, making calls using VoLTE will not disrupt your internet sessions so you can easily multi-task.New Delhi: A special court on Saturday granted an anticipatory bail to Karti Chidambaram, the son former Union minister P Chidambaram, in connection with the Aircel Maxis alleged bribery case.

The special court judge, OP Saini, while granting Karti the anticipatory bail, directed him to appear before the investigating officer whenever he is summoned.

The court also posted the matter for next hearing on April 16.

Ahead of the special court order, the Enforcement Directorate filed a reply and opposed the anticipatory bail plea filed by Karti Chidambaram in connection with Aircel-Maxis matter.

Karti had on Friday filed an anticipatory bail plea in the Delhi court in the case which pertains to the alleged irregularities in FIPB clearance to a company in the Aircel-Maxis matter arising out of the 2G spectrum cases.

Karti had sought protection of arrest in the case in which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the ED have lodged cases in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

The ED also accused Karti of 'forum shopping' and said, "Karti has approached multiple courts through multiple applications."

Meanwhile, the counsel of Karti Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal said, "The allegation is that the then finance minister P Chidambaram granted the approval without going to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA). The question is whether the Finance Minister's approval was valid or not. What has that got to do with Karti Chidambaram?".

The Aircel-Maxis deal refers to a series of allegations of kickbacks in the telecom sector, which was part of the wider 2G scam that engulfed the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.

(With ANI inputs)NEW DELHI: A woman journalist on Friday was manhandled by women personnel of Delhi Police during a Jawaharlal Nehru University protest march.

She lodged a complaint and alleged that a police official molested her.

According to police, the photojournalist was on the wrong side of the barricade. She, however, refuted the claim and said that her camera was also snatched away.

Policewomen rough up a photojournalist during JNU students' protest, yesterday. Police say journalist was on wrong side of the barricade, journalist refutes the claim, says her camera was also snatched away. Police also added that the matter is being looked into. #Delhi pic.twitter.com/k56GHGsY69

 ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

Delhi police took to Twitter and said that the vigilance branch will enquire the matter following which further action will be taken.

"In this situation, one female journalist has given a complaint of molestation and the same will be enquired into by the vigilance branch for further action," Delhi Police tweeted.

In this situation, one female journalist has given a complaint of molestation and the same will be enquired into by the vigilance branch for further action.  Delhi Police (@DelhiPolice) March 23, 2018

In this situation, one female journalist has given a complaint of molestation and the same will be enquired into by the vigilance branch for further action.

On Friday, unruly scenes of violence broke out in the afternoon when a protest march of JNU students and members of JNU Teachers'Association (JNUTU) to Parliament was brought to a halt by Delhi Police. The protestors were demanding suspension of Professor Atul Johri - accused of sexually harassing students.New Delhi: Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga has initiated an award  the biggest liar of the country - after AAP chief and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over latter's habit of making big promises but not delivering the same.

Bagga took to Twitter on March 22 and announced the launching of an award after Delhi Chief Minister describing him as the world's biggest liar since he has made several baseless and false allegations his political rivals without any proof.

         pic.twitter.com/FJ0kr374dE  Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga (@TajinderBagga) March 22, 2018

Taking a pot shot at the AAP convenor, Bagga invited entries from the general public, asking them to send the proof if their biggest lie on WhatsApp number 9115929292 mentioning their name and location.

He tweeted that the person who would be adjudged as the biggest liar will be rewarded a cash prize of Rs 5100 and the Kejriwal Award.

Speaking to a TV news channel, Bagga said that the inspiration for initiating an award after Arvind Kejriwal came from Delhi chief minister who had cheated the people of Delhi by making several false promises.

He attacked the AAP chief for promising free Wi-Fi, special security for women in DTC buses, opening at last 500 new schools and at least 20 colleges in Delhi and not fulfilling any one of them.

Bagga's latest attack on Kejriwal came after the latter tendered an apology to Congress leader Bikram Singh Majithia and BJP's Nitin Gadkari for falsely accusing them of indulging in corruption and links with drug pedallers in Punjab.VADODARA: Owing to the popularity of Malayalam actor Priya Prakash Varrier, Vadodara city police is looking to engage with the people and create awareness of safe driving. Using an illustration of the internet sensation, the police wrote, "Drive carefully, without distraction." The poster also had Priya's unmissable wink with a caption: 'accidents happen in the wink of an eye #TrafficEkSanskar". The poster since has gone viral with people applauding the police for being creative.

Im from Kerala..and the Tweet from your side depicting the wink of eye of #PriyaPrakashWarrier ...will make waves .."accidents happen in the wink of an eye"...

Great way to convey message....!  ANIL PILLAI (@anilkumarnaveen) March 24, 2018

Haha @Vadcitypolice Sir, really love this innovative banner....appreciate your work in spreading awareness..!!  Simply Shiv (@ExclusivelyShiv) March 22, 2018

Good one  Sajan Brahmbhatt (@sajan1405) March 22, 2018

In another poster, it used the famous 'Hasina Maan Jayegi' song to draw the attention of people to harassment and stalking. "Harassment and/or stalking can make you a #SarkariMehmaan. The police goes by the tagline: 'Proactive. Positive. Progressive.'

The city police in the past too has used social media creatively to reach out to the younger audience. In an earlier campaign on safe driving, the police had written: "If you are driving and talking on your phone #LetsCatchUp."

Along with Vadodara, Mumbai Police and the Bengaluru Police have been making headlines with their catchy phrases and youth appeal. Many of their campaigns on drinking and driving cyber crime have gone viral in the past.

The eighteen-year-old girl from Thrisshur in Kerala had made netizens go crazy after a short clip from the song Manikya Malaraya Poovi from Omar Lulus upcoming Malayalam movie Oru Adaar Love went viral on social media. The song sung by Vineeth Sreenivasan and composed by Shaan Rahman became popular but it was Priya who stole the show. In the video, Priya can be seen making adorable expressions and winking to grab her crushs attention.CHANDIGARH: An 18-year-old youth was shot dead by miscreants in Haryana's Sonepat, while he was accompanying his sister to school for an examination.

Following the incident, the family of the youth blocked the highway to protest against it. The incident reportedly took place on Friday.

They said that the same people had killed the elder brother of the deceased a few months ago.

No action was, however, taken against the accused.

The police said that the investigation is currently underway.Alden Richards is performing for Kapuso fans in New Jersey and Toronto for the second edition of GMA TVs 'Sikat Ka, Kapuso!'

Following the huge success from last years event in California, the Kapuso abroad can once again get the chance to see their idols perform live in key cities in the US and Canada. Alden Richards, who was the most requested artist in the Kapuso concert last year, returns on GMA TVs Sikat Ka, Kapuso! stage together with Dennis Trillo, Jennylyn, Lovi Poe, Dingdong Dantes and Betong Sumaya. Dennis feels fortunate to once again be part of a group of Kapuso stars headlining the concert happening in two of North Americas major cities. According to the actor, its his second time to entertain Filipinos based abroad, and he considers it a rare opportunity to give them a slice of home through music and production numbers. For sure, some of them feel homesick. Its nice that once in a while we get to interact with them because there are people who cant come home. Its like giving them something that theyve been missing for a long time, Dennis told Manila Standard in an interview. At the concert, the Kapuso actor will have a duet with Jennylyn, who like him, was part of the contingent that performed in California last year. Worth it ang pagod seeing the audience enjoy the show. Imagine, our schedule is going to be tight. From New Jersey well go to Toronto, then there will be presscons before the show and meet and greet events after the concert. But all these are nothing when you see our kababayans enjoying the show we put up for them, Jennylyn shared.She added that she and Lovi have prepared a sing and dance production number specially choreographed for their fans abroad.Its going to be a big show. We are a bigger group this time. Most of all, there will be audience interaction, which is the main reason why we are staging the show  to reach out to our kababayan who terribly miss home, she said. Agreeing to what Jennylyn said, Lovi reflect on the dynamics of performing for Filipino audience overseas.We are known for being warm people, its nice that we get to experience Filipino hospitality in a different country. Thats what Im really looking forward to, Im excited to interact with our fellow Filipinos and share some stories with them, Lovi noted. The star-studded event will see the Kapuso stars perform live on April 7 at the Newark Symphony Hall in New Jersey, USA and on April 8 at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, Canada. We are definitely doing this for our kababayans. We are equally excited if not more excited especially for me being the new addition to the lineup of stars performing. Through music and our show, we kind of bring Philippines closer to them. And thats already really something that makes me feel proud being part of this concert, Dingdong shared with us. Sikat Ka, Kapuso! is a GMA-produced event which aims to bring Filipinos abroad closer to home via its international channels GMA Pinoy TV, GMA Life TV, and GMA News TV International.. For ticket inquiries, contact (917) 858-2356 for Sikat Ka, Kapuso! New Jersey and 1-866-7KAPUSO for Sikat Ka, Kapuso! Toronto.NEW DELHI/MYSURU: Attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the eve of five hundred days of demonetisation, the Congress compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a 'sheep' with 'harebrained idea'.

Taking to Twitter on Saturday, the Congress shared, Today marks 500 days of one of the greatest disasters in Indian history. On this day, we remember all those innocent people who lost their lives because of one persons harebrained idea #DemoDisaster. In the accompanying image, the party wrote, #DeMonetisation reminds us of sheep who cheered when their leader promised them a blanket each. Till one sheep asked, 'Where will the wool come from?' - Merwyn Ferrao

Today marks 500 days of one of the greatest disasters in Indian history. On this day, we remember all those innocent people who lost their lives because of one persons harebrained idea #DemoDisaster pic.twitter.com/OP3dgcUg3s  Congress (@INCIndia) March 24, 2018

Rahul Gandhi, who's currently in fourth-leg of the political campaign for upcoming Karnataka polls, also attacked the concept of demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax or GST.

I think Demonetisation was a mistake and shouldn't have been done, said the Congress President at Maharani's Arts College for Women in Mysuru.

Demonetisation and GST were massive damage to Indian economy and job creation. I have a problem with the way demonetisation was carried out, RBI Governor, Chief Economic Advisor, Finance Minister, none of them knew of it, he added.

In a country the size of India, ideas should be tested before implementing on a large scale. Demonetisation was badly conceived and it was an extremely damaging step on Indian economy, added Gandhi.

He went on to say, We are growing pretty decently as an economy but we are not creating jobs, it is because those who have skills don't have access to finance and support. The problem is, huge amount of money goes to 15-20 people.

Adding to his rhetoric, Gandhi said that giving power to civilians and decentralisation are the right ways to curb black money

A big step to fight black money is Right to Information. Giving power to civilians and decentralisation are the right ways to curb black money: Congress President @RahulGandhi #RGinMysuru #JanaAashirwadaYatre  Congress (@INCIndia) March 24, 2018

Training his guns on the recent Punjab National Bank scam, the Congress chief said, Nirav Modi took Rs 22,000 crore of bank money. Can you imagine how many businesses could have been built by young women like you if we had given Rs 22,000 crore to you.

The campaign battle between BJP and Congress has heated up on the ground with polls for 224-member assembly in Karnataka are scheduled to be held in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the BJP on Friday registered a major victory when the party managed to get all its nine candidates in the Rajya Sabha polls elected from Uttar Pradesh. In Karnataka, Siddaramaiah-led ruling Congress bagged three Rajya Sabha seats and BJP one in the biennial election, amid a boycott of the poll by the JDS, alleging electoral malpractice.New Delhi: BJP chief Amit Shah on Saturday said that 'a bomb to every bullet coming from Pakistan' is the only solution to cross-border terrorism and infiltration.

Shah made these remarks while speaking to a TV channel during which he said that the country's armed forces will respond with a bomb to every Pakistani bullet.

"This is the only solution. We can't have peace talks amid bullets and bombs," he was quoted as saying while replying to a query why despite the surgical strikes, the situation along the Line of Control has not changed with Pakistan still infiltrating terrorists into India.

Shifting focus to party's loss in recent Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, Shah claimed that the BJP will win with a massive majority in the forthcoming Karnataka assembly polls and the 2019 General Elections under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"We have formed a committee to look into the reason for the losses and will deliberate on its report. Bypolls are fought with local issues in mind. Every local poll has different dynamics. But in general elections, big leaders and issues are involved. In 2019, the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will get more seats," Shah said.

Shah stated that the BJP started preparation for 2019 Lok Sabha polls the very next day after the government took oath in 2014.

"We will contest the elections under his (Modi) guidance and popularity. The way Narendra Modi has run the government for four years, every state feels that India is going ahead. He is one of the most popular leaders in the world," he said.

When asked to comment if his party could win more than 50 seats in 2019 if Samajwadi Party and Mayawati's BSP come together, he said, "This is not easy. Now, the media is gung-ho about the results in these two seats (Gorakhpur and Phulpur). We have lost eight seats, but have won in 11 states so far. No one mentions Tripura, where we won with a clean sweep."

Shah also ridiculed Congress president Rahul Gandhi for visiting temples, churches and mosques in Karnataka to win over voters.

"He went to temples in Gujarat and Himachal too. But what happened? After 1967, the Congress has never won more than 50 percent of votes. We won 50 percent of votes in Gujarat, Himachal and Tripura. To win 50 percent of votes in a multiparty democratic system is a big mandate," he said.

Asked about election promises made during 2014 Lok Sabha poll campaign and party's biggest achievement that it will tout in the general elections, Shah said the BJP has tried to raise the living standard of the poor, brought in an impartial and decisive government and boosted India's pride and image.

On Sonia Gandhi's likening of BJP's slogan 'India Shining' in 2004, with the party's 2014 winning slogan 'Achhe din aane waale hain', Shah shot back, "What do you expect from her. Will she say Modi will win?"

He added that could anyone imagine that India will carry out surgical strike across the border like Israel and America to avenge the deaths of our soldiers, ISRO will place 104 satellites in the orbit and an Indian PM would address the plenary session of the World Economic Forum.

Shah also heaped praise on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, saying the state is on the right track.

"There is zero corruption, problems of farmers have been solved and there is law and order. Many investment summits will be held. Akhilesh Yadav (former chief minister) could not hold such summits fearing untoward incidents. The state is moving in the right direction and will have double-digit growth," he said.

(With IANS inputs)HYDERABAD: A week after Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP) walked out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over the demand for 'special category status' for Andhra Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Saturday wrote a letter to the Andhra Chief Minister.

In the letter, Shah termed the decision as 'unfortunate and unilateral'. "It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns," he added.

Here is the full text of the letter:

Dear Sri Chandrababu Naidu Garu,

First and foremost, I would like to wish you and my five crone sisters and brothers of Andhra Pradesh a Happy Ugadi. May the New Year bring happiness and good health in everyone's lives.

I am writing this letter after the Telugu Desam Party's decision to quit the NDA family. This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision; I are afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns.

BJP has been a firm believer in the concept of Politics of Performance and 'development for all' has been our guiding principle. Andhra Pradesh figures very prominently on our agenda of National Development and it is widely known that the Union Government led by the Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has left no stone unturned in ensuring the growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh.

Since the discussion of bifurcating united Andhra Pradesh till the present, it is the BJP that has led the voice of safeguarding the welfare of Telugu people in both the Telugu states. This is in direct contrast to the Congress Party, which not only mismanaged the bifurcation but also showed zero sensitivity towards the Telugu people, which is in line with their historic apathy to the Telugu community.

You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in the Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both the states.

Since getting the opportunity to serve at the Centre, the BJP-led NDA Government, of which you were an integral constituent, has nurtured the new state of Andhra Pradesh with the spirit that this is the state that suffered at the time of state's bifurcation. There is an element of sensitivity and a firm commitment for the cause of Andhra Pradesh's development in the way the NDA Government at the Centre has worked for Andhra Pradesh.

This becomes evident from the massive resource allocations to the state of Andhra Pradesh over the past four years and the fact that already most of the promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 are poised towards fulfilment.

The BJP has always pursued developmental politics with the objective of transforming peoples lives. The manner in which people have blessed us over the past four years throughout the country demonstrates the public support for our positive agenda. Your assertion that the BJP is not sensitive to the aspirations of the people of Andhra Pradesh and has not implemented the provisions of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 and assurances given by the then Prime Minister in the Rajya Sabha is untrue and baseless.

Cooperative federalism is the guiding credo of this Government. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Moth has worked with a 'Team India' spirit, with all the Chief Ministers and devolved far more funds - 42 percent of central revenues (as against 32 percent earlier) - amounting to an additional Rs. 2 Lakh crore, to the states. All this makes it very obvious that any claim of discrimination against Andhra Pradesh is far from the facts.

Andhra Pradesh has received special assistance and attention as the young state needed nurturing and investments to give its economy a greater impetus. Facts mentioned in the following paragraphs explain how the Central Government has not only fulfilled its statutory obligations under the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 but has gone far beyond to ensure that the state becomes financially strong.

A perusal of these would reaffirm what you already know and perhaps won't admit- that the Central Government has fulfilled its obligations and that the BJP is a genuine friend and true well-wisher of the people of Andhra Pradesh.

Schedule XIIII of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 has two components namely, Education and Infrastructure. While the Act mandates the Central Government to set up 11 educational institutions of national importance by the end of 13th plan i.e 2022. nine institutions namely IIT, NIT, IIIT, IIM, IISER, IIPE, Agri University, AIIMS-type Hospital cum teaching institution, NIDM have already been established and are functioning in the state. As regards the remaining two institutions, namely a central university and a tribal university, a provision has already been made in the current year's Union budget. Would the Central Government have established these institutions and made them functional in three years, much before the targeted year of 2022 if it was not sensitive to the needs of Andhra Pradesh?

Of the eight infrastructure projects that the AP Reorganisation Act proposes for implementation, subject to their feasibility. the Central Government has already initiated action on five feasible projects. These include: 1) HPCL's green field crude oil refinery and petrochemical complex at Kakinada

2) 800 km long Vizag-Chennai Industrial Corridor 3) Upgradation of three airports at Visakhapatnam. Vijayawada and Tirupati to international standards 4) The following Rapid Rail and Road connectivity projects from the new capital of Andhra Pradesh Amaravathi: A) As informed by your Government, a Techno-economic feasibility report of Greenfield expressway connecting new capital city of Amaravathi to Ananatapuram will spur connectivity to Kurnool & Cuddapah is being prepared with an estimated civil cost of about Rs. 24.000 cr. Earlier, the state was to provide land free of all encumbrances. But later, in a meeting, the Chief Secretary of the State said that it can only provide 50% of land cost as per Bharatmala Pariyojana norms. A formal reference from State in this regard is still awaited.

3) 180 km long outer ring road to the new capital town of Amravati with a budget of Rs.19,700 crone C) New railway line between Vijayawada and Guntur via Amravati at a cost of Rs. 2680 crones

D) New railway line on Nadikudi-Srikalahasti (309 km) route at a cost of Rs. 340 crore and

E) Guntakal-Guntur line doubling project with electrification at a project cost of Rs. 3,631 crore. 5) "In principle" approval has been given for Vijayawada metro rail project at a cost of Rs. 6,769 crone and a revised proposal is still awaited from the state for the approval of the Visakhapatnam metro project. Of the remaining infrastructure projects, Duggirajapatnam port and steel plant in YSR district have been found to be unviable initially. The Government of India has given an assurance in Parliament that Duggirajapatnam or any other port will be taken up for earliest implementation. A task force set up to re-examine the steel plant in YSR district has made recommendations for making the project viable and the Centre is working out modalities to make this happen. The issue of establishing a new railway zone is under active consideration of the Ministry of Railways and a decision in this regard will be made in due course looking into all relevant factors.

Special Category Status

On the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh, it is regrettable that some political parties are whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate which is the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy. I would like you to introspect whether poetical parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda.

The 14th Finance Commission's Terms of Reference (ToR) have been amended in right earnest as per AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 as soon as our government came to power on June 2, 2014 vide President's Order published under S.O. Sc. 1424(E) to take into account the resources available to Andhra Pradesh and make recommendations thereof.

Due to the weak financial position of Andhra Pradesh, the 14 Finance Commission has awarded to the state revenue deficit grants to the tune of Rs. 22.113 crore covering the overall revenue deficit for five years. Andhra Pradesh is the only state to receive the award of revenue deficit grants for all the five years period i.e from 2015 to 2020 besides the eight north-eastern and hilly states. Does that not show that the Central Government has been sensitive to the needs of Andhra Pradesh?

The NDA government has more than doubled the extent of central assistance to Andhra Pradesh as compared to the total funds allocated in the previous five years. The total award of funds to Andhra Pradesh under tax devolution and grants under various heads during the 14' Finance Commission (2015 to 2020 which broadly corresponds to the tenure of the present NDA government) is Rs.2,44,271 crore and the break-up of this allocation is as under: Rs.1,70,686 Cr (share in central taxes), Grant-In-Ad Rs. 36,225 Cr, Revenue Deficit Grant Rs. 22,113 Cr, Local bodies grant Rs. 12.290 Cr and State Disaster Response Fund Rs. 2,957 Cr. The total award of funds and grants to Andhra Pradesh in the previous five years (2010 to 2015) was Rs. 1,17,967 crone and the Congress-led UPA government was in power for most of this period. Mn Naidu. does this massive increase in financial award to the tune of Rs.1.26.304 Cr (and a rise of 107% in percentage terms) to Andhra Pradesh not show the sensitivity of the Central Government towards the state's requirements?

Even after such massive increase in allocations, the Central Government has offered a Special Assistance Measure (Financial Package) to Andhra Pradesh in September, 2016 which was equivalent to the key financial benefits the state would have got as a special category state. Your government hailed this central assistance package as a great achievement of the state government. Suddenly, two years later, you have made a U-Turn once again demanding the special status which has become redundant in view of the financial commitments already fulfilled by the Central Government.

Under the Special Assistance Measure (Package). the amount of Externally Aided projects (EAPs) signed so far is Rs.8,991.38 Crone, while projects worth Rs.17,236 Crone are in the pipeline. Your accusation that there is a delay in the release of funds under the special package is an admission of your government's lackadaisical approach. Why is it that the state government has not acted in a speedy manner to get the externally aided projects implemented when the special assistance measure (package) was approved by the Union cabinet? If the public welfare was a priority why did your government take so long to access these funds? Why is it that your government has not responded to Central Government's suggestion of setting up a special purpose vehicle for directly receiving these funds from NABARD as desired by your government? Is it because it poses problems in diverting such funds for 'other' purposes? As you are aware, the NDA Government had agreed to bridge the revenue gap for the year 2014-15 and a sum of Rs. 3979.50 Crore was released to the state. The Central Government has also agreed to release an additional Rs.1600 crore based on the revenue deficit estimates for the year 2015-16 by the 14. Finance Commission. Your government's claim of Rs.16,000 crore deficit in the year 2014-15 is fallacious as this includes the state government's expenditure on farm loan waivers, pensions etc. Even our party governments in different states have implemented similar loan waiver schemes to give relief to the farmers but have met such expenditure from their own sources. The Central Government cannot be expected to meet these expenses as we cannot differentiate between state governments implementing similar welfare measures. Is it not political brinkmanship to make unjustified and exaggerated demands and then allege neglect when they are not accepted?

In keeping with the BJP's stated position at the time of reorganisation of Andhra Pradesh and articulated by the Party leaders during the debate, NDA Govt has tried to fulfill every promise made. A notification was duly issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on September 30, 2016 covering the seven backward districts of Rayalaseema and north coastal districts Are you not being disingenuous in claiming in your letter that the state of Andhra Pradesh has not received industrial and tax incentives.

As regards the special developmental assistance to the seven backward districts, the Central Government has released development grants to the tune of Rs.1.050 crore in the first three years Surprisingly, the state has spent only 12% of this amount and 88% remains unutilised. Furthermore, you have been claiming that the Central Government has asked this amount be taken back as this amount was released without the PMO's permission. This is nothing but a figment of your imagination.

The commitment of Central Government towards development of Andhra Pradesh also gets reflected in increased budgetary allocation of Railways. Budget Outlay in 2014-19 has been about Rs. 14,151 crore as against Rs. 5,100 in 2009-14, an increase of about 219%. It is also worth mentioning that a total of 32 projects costing Rs. 47,989 Cr for 5,016 kms are already under execution.

New Capital City

As regards the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh. the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 says that the Central Government shall provide special financial support for the creation of essential facilities including the Raj Bhawan, High Court, Government Secretariat, Legislative Assembly. Legislative Council, and such other essential infrastructure. Towards this end, the Central Government has already made available Rs.2,500 crore to the state government. This includes Rs.1,000 crore released by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India for the development of the capital region. The state government has spent only 8% of the Rs. 1,000 crore released by the MoHUA. When the state government has not utilized the funds given so far, how can it expect the Central Government to release any further funds for the purpose?

Polavaram Project As regards the Polavaram project, an Advisory Committee of Ministry of Water Resources approved the cost of the Project at 2010-11 price level as Rs.16,010.45 crore including power and drinking water component of Rs.2,868 crore. Further, on 08.9.2016, the Finance Minister announced that the Central Government would provide 100% of the remaining cost of the irrigation component of the project for the period starting from 1.4.2014. to the extent of the cost of the irrigation component on that date. So far, Central Government has released Rs 5,364.00 crore and is committed to fund the balance amount of the project as per the announcement made by Finance Minister on 08.9.2016.

Centre's Key Initiatives in AP

Going beyond statutory commitments made in the AP Reorganisation Act. 2014 and the special assistance package, Hon'ble Prime Minister and his government have given special focus to Andhra Pradesh since 2014. More than Rs. 3 lakh crore worth of infrastructure and industrial projects have been initiated in the state of Andhra Pradesh. These include an investment of over Rs. 1 lakh crore on highways and roads, investment of over Rs. 1.4 lakh crore by HPCL, GAIL and ONGC in the petroleum sector to make Andhra Pradesh a major petrochemical club. investment of Rs.38,500 crores in Vizag Steel Plant, UDAY (Discoms) scheme with a an overall net benefit of approximately Rs.4.400 crore during the period of turnaround, ultra mega solar power projects and Solar parks at a cost of Rs. 24,000 crores etc

The Central Government has allocated substantial resources for the implementation of pro-poor programmes such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Ujjwala Yojana, Pradhanmantri Awas Yojana etc. I am pained to learn that the efforts of Central Government on this account have been undermined by the TDP in its attempt to claim credit for these programs.

Utilisation Details

It may also be pointed out here that there are some serious lapses on the part of your Government which cannot be ignored. I learnt that the Central Government has not received appropriate fund utilization details, particularly with regards to developmental funds under desired heads. It is worth noting that the Utilisation Certificates (UCs) have been received only for 12% of the grant released for backward districts in 2016 -17 and UCs were received only for 8% for the 1000 crore released for the Capital region. Since, it is mandatory for the Central Government to have these details to release further installments: it cannot be blamed for fund lapses. Governments are accountable to the people for every single penny spent on their behalf. Therefore, your statements that the state government has

no obligation to give any such statements of expenditure are evasive and reflect governance deficit.

The above facts clearly establish that the Central Government has sincerely and expeditiously implemented the provisions of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014. Going far beyond these assurances, we have demonstrated our earnest goodwill and commitment to the 5 crone people of Andhra Pradesh by several additional initiatives enlisted in this letter.

The commitment of BJP for the cause of development and justice to Andhra Pradesh in particular is simply unquestionable. But unfortunately, the mandate earned together by both the parties is allowed to be squandered for political reasons. We were looking at TDP as our partner in the progress of the people of the Andhra Pradesh. Unfortunately, partisan politics has overtaken leading to your Party leaving the NDA.

Regardless of these facts, BJP reiterates its commitment to the people of Andhra Pradesh and will steadfastly continue to work for the development of the State.

With regards,

Amit Shah

National President

Bharatiya Janata PartyNEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday mocked Congress President Rahul Gandhi and said his campaign in the Karnataka Assembly elections will lead to his party's defeat. BJP Karnataka in-charge Muralidhar Rao while addressing the BJP Golla Samavesha in Tumakuru on Friday claimed that Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is sure to lose power in the upcoming elections.

"Rahul Gandhi aaye, Siddaramaiah gaye (Rahul Gandhi has arrived and Siddaramaiah will go). The chief minister has done nothing for the state in the last five years. He was sleeping till now and is now touring the state carrying bricks in his car to lay foundation stones of projects. When he had time, he did nothing and now he is fooling people with his slogan of building Nava Karnataka," Rao said.

Seeking votes for the BJP, Rao added that Congress was a spent force and it would lose the election. He accused the Siddaramaiah government of being indifferent towards the state and allowing mafias to flourish.

At the same rally, former Karnataka chief minister and current BJP state president BS Yeddyurappa announced that his party will put up candidates from Golla (Yadava) community, who number about 35 lakh in the state, in three Assembly constituencies where they are numerically significant.

Yadavas have a significant presence in Karnataka's Chikkaballapur, Kolar, Chitradurga, Tumakuru and Belagavi districts. "Support the BJP candidates in every seat. You should also support the candidates belonging to your community which have been put up by the party to win this election. Rs 1 crore will be granted to the Krishna Yadavananda mutt when BJP returns to power after the elections," said Yeddyurappa.

Yeddyurappa also announced that the Kadu Golla community will be included in the Scheduled Tribes list if BJP comes to power in the upcoming Assembly elections. The community has been demanding reservation in government-run educational institutions and government jobs for a long time.Beijing: Any attempt by China to change the status quo along the Indian border may lead to another Doklam-like stand-off between the two nations, Indian envoy Gautam Bambawale has warned.

The Indian envoy, however, suggested that the best way to prevent such incidents is through candid and frank talks.

Bambawale made these remarks in an interview to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, during which he said that the un-demarcated border between India and China is "the most serious problem between the two countries".

The Indian envoy also pressed upon the need to redefine the boundary soon.

Bambawale said New Delhi will oppose the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) but won't let the difference over Belt and Road become a dispute with Beijing.

He also downplayed the reports of India joining the bloc of the US, Japan and Australia to counter China.

During the interview, Bambawale also confirmed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit China to take part in the SCO summit in June during which there will "definitely" be a bilateral meeting between him and President Xi Jinping.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a China-dominated security grouping, is increasingly seen as a counterweight to NATO. The SCO summit is due to be held in the Chinese city of Qingdao from June 9-10.

The remarks from Bambawale came several months after the peaceful resolution of a bitter stand-off at Doklam in the eastern sector of their border last year. The issue was resolved in August, only after souring the bilateral ties.

"In order to maintain the peace and tranquillity (along India-China border), there are certain areas, certain sectors which are very sensitive, where we must not change the status quo. If anyone changes the status quo, it will lead to a situation like what happened in Doklam," Bambawale said in the interview which was published on Saturday.

"The Chinese military changed the status quo in the Doklam area and therefore India reacted to it. Ours was a reaction to the change in the status quo by the Chinese military. When incidents like Doklam happened last year, it meant that we were not frank and candid enough with each other. So we need to increase the level of frankness, '' he said.

On India's concerns about China's Belt and Road project, Bambawale said if the initiative meets the norms of an international programme then New Delhi has no problem.

"One of the norms is that the project should not violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country. Unfortunately, there is this thing called the CPEC which violates India's sovereignty and territory integrity. Therefore, we oppose it."

The CPEC is the flagship project of China's Belt and Road project, a network of roads, ports and sea lanes that aims to connect Asia, Africa and Europe. India opposes it as it cuts through Kashmir held by Pakistan, but claimed by it.

"We might have differences of opinion on Belt and Road, but that we must not allow that difference of opinion to become a dispute," Bambawale said.

(With PTI inputs)Panaji: Ailing Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is responding well to treatment in the United States, Union Minister Suresh Prabhu said on Saturday.

Former union Railways minister took to Twitter and informed that Parrikar was in good shape at a US hospital.

"Spoke to @manoharparrikar who is responding well to treatment in the US. Hospital. Wished him a speedy recovery, early return home to lead Goa," Prabhu said in the tweet.

Spoke to @manoharparrikar who is responding well to treatment in the US. Hospital.Wished him speedy recovery, early return home to lead Goa  Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) March 24, 2018

Parrikar has not been keeping well for some time and was been admitted to a New York hospital earlier this month.

After being admitted to the Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai twice since February 15, he was flown to the US on March 7 for further treatment.

The Goa CMO has repeatedly maintained that Parrikar suffers from "mild pancreatitis"

(With IANS inputs)NEW DELHI: In the wake of alleged misuse of user data on Facebook, the government on Saturday issued a notice to UK-based Cambridge Analytica, asking it to give a list of clients and the source of data collected.

The notice comes amid reports that political parties had used the data analytics firm during elections.

The IT Ministry has asked Cambridge Analytica - the firm at the centre of Facebook data breach scandal - to respond by March 31 on six questions. The questions include how the company had collected user data, whether consent was taken from the individuals, and how the data was used.

The move assumes significance as the BJP, earlier this week, had questioned links between the Congress and Cambridge Analytica, the data mining firm accused of harvesting personal information from Facebook illegally to influence polls in several countries.

On Wednesday, Union Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned the social media giant Facebook of stringent action for any attempt to influence polls through data theft. Prasad had even threatened to summon its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if needed.

Taking a stern view of reports on the misuse of user data obtained from social media platform Facebook, the IT Ministry in a statement said, "breach of privacy cannot be tolerated."

"The government is deeply concerned about such developments and is committed to ensuring the protection of the fundamental right of privacy and safety and security of data for every citizen of India," the ministry added.

The IT Ministry said it had issued a notice to Cambridge Analytica "wherein the serious breach of propriety and misuse of data intended to profile and influence voting behaviour has been highlighted".

"...The notice addressed to Cambridge Analytica seeks an immediate response to the following questions...Whether they have been engaged in any assignment to utilise data of Indians from the above-cited breach. Who are the entities that have engaged them for the above," it said.

The ministry also questioned the company on how it had come to be in possession of user data and whether user consent had been taken for the same. The company has also been asked to divulge details of how the data collected was used and whether any profiling was done on basis of such data.

"The intermediaries cited above have been given time till March 31, 2018, to submit their responses on the above issue," the ministry said.

Referring to media reports of "gross abuse of social media platform to influence the sanctity of polling process", the ministry said, "any attempt to influence the sanctity of the electoral franchise through dubious and questionable means is unacceptable".

"In particular, all intermediaries and their associates have the legal obligation to maintain security, confidentiality and sanctity of data and any unauthorized use of data can entail legal action," it warned.

The statement said that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued advisory laying down security best practices to be followed by social media users, to safeguard personally identifiable information on social network sites.

(With inputs from PTI)NEW DELHI: Soon after a special court on Saturday granted anticipatory bail to Karti Chidambaram in the Aircel-Maxis cases, the son of former Union minister P Chidambaram made his Twitter followers know that he is back. "Vanakam, Hello, Hola, Howdy folks. I am back :), (sic)" he tweeted on Saturday.

Vanakam, Hello, Hola, Howdy folks. I am back :)  Karti P Chidambaram (@KartiPC) March 24, 2018

In a relief for Karti, a city court on Saturday granted him protection from arrest till April 16 in the Aircel-Maxis matter arising out of the 2G spectrum cases lodged by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED). Special Judge OP Saini granted the relief to him considering that both the investigative agencies sought three weeks to file their responses on the anticipatory bail plea moved by Karti, son of former union minister P Chidambaram.

"Since three weeks' time is prayed for by the CBI, by submitting that during this period law shall prevail, apparently it means that as a matter of legal and judicial propriety, the applicant (Karti) shall not be arrested by the CBI during the pendency of the instant application. This is in consonance with the provisions of section 41A of the CrPC," the court said.

The court however said that Karti shall not leave the country without its permission and will have to appear before the investigating officer as and when directed to join the investigation.

Meanwhile, the counsel of Karti Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal argued that there was neither any allegation against Karti in the Aircel Maxis case nor there was anything to show that he knew the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) officials. He argued that Karti's name has not figured in any FIR in the case and he was only called by the CBI as a witness in 2014.

Karti had sought protection of arrest in the case in which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the ED have lodged cases in 2011 and 2012 respectively. In the ED case, senior advocate Gopal Subramaniam, also appearing for Karti, argued that Karti has cooperated in the other matters as well and there was no question that he would flee the county or tamper with evidence.

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, also a senior advocate himself, was present in the court room along with his wife Nalini Chidambaram seeking relief for his son. Both were in advocate's attire. While senior Chidambaram wore black coat and trousers, Nalini was seen wearing an advocate's black robe.

Besides them, a battery of senior lawyers appeared in the court for Karti, including Sibal, Subramanium, Salman Khurshid, also a Congress leader, and Mohit Mathur to secure anticipatory bail for him.ISLAMABAD: In a first, senior Indian military officials and diplomats posted in Islamabad on Friday attended the military parade to mark the Pakistan Day, said a media report.

The move of the Pakistan Army chief was aimed at sending a message of peace to New Delhi, claimed the report.

Amid heightened tensions between the two neighbouring countries, the Pakistan Army invited, for the first time, Indian Defence Attache and senior diplomats of the Indian High Commission to join the March 23 celebrations, a senior Pakistani military official told The Express Tribune.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initiative came from Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and the idea was to send a message of peace to India.

Indian deputy high commissioner J P Singh and Defence and Military Adviser Brigadier Sanjay P Vishwasrao were among those who attended the event, according to media reports.

The move comes at a time when tensions have been simmering between Islamabad and New Delhi with frequent incidents of clashes along the Line of Control and Working Boundary.

While the Pakistan Army chief is believed to be in favour of improved ties, the ball is now in India's court to see how the unprecedented gesture will be reciprocated, the report said.

India has made it clear to Islamabad that the onus is on Pakistan to create a conducive atmosphere for dialogue between the two countries.

At the Pakistan Day event, President Mamnoon Hussain accused India of cease-fire violations and human rights abuses, saying New Delhi's actions have put regional peace at stake.

He had also raised the Kashmir issue, saying, "the only solution to the dispute of Kashmir is providing the right of self-determination to the Kashmiri people, and Pakistan will continue to play its role...."

The participation of Indian diplomats at the Pakistan Day came a day after Pakistan High Commissioner to India Sohail Mahmood returned to New Delhi a week after he was called back for consultations amid the raging row between India and Pakistan over harassment of diplomats.

(With inputs from PTI)BEIJING: India is a brother, but China is like a long lost cousin found, Maldives Ambassador to China Mohamed Faisal has said, asserting that his country would push ahead with Chinese projects despite New Delhi's concerns.

The Maldives will further embrace Chinese investment but is aware it risks getting caught between China and India, Faisal told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"China is like a long-lost cousin that we have found, a long-lost cousin who is willing to help us," he said yesterday after Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen lifted a state of emergency in the troubled South Asian nation after 45 days.

"India is a brother. We are a family, we may quarrel and we may have arguments but in the end, we will sit down and resolve it," the diplomat said.

He claimed that the Maldives has taken a number of projects to India for finance "but we did not receive the necessary finance."

China, which looks at Maldives as a major participant in its 21st century Maritime Silk Road plan in the Indian Ocean, has made heavy investments in the nation of islands which has 26 tropical atolls and 1,000 small islands.

China has put up a staunch defence of Maldives President Abdullah Yameen, stonewalling international pressure and enabling him to stay in power during the current crisis.

The picturesque Indian Ocean archipelago was plunged into chaos early last month when the Supreme Court called for the release of nine imprisoned opposition politicians, ruling that their trials were politically motivated and flawed.

The government refused to implement the ruling.

Yameen imposed a state of emergency and arrested apex court judges and former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Opposition party leaders in Maldives alleged that China is tacitly backing Yameen, which emboldened him to resort to unconstitutional actions like arresting Supreme Court judges.

Former president Mohamed Nasheed who was in exile abroad had called for Indian intervention in Maldives to save the democracy in the island nation. He had alleged that China is indulging in land grabbing, threatening not just the Maldives, but the peace and the stability of the entire region.

Faisal said Maldives will not allow any foreign military establishments.

"Our government has made it very clear that we are not going to allow any kind of military establishments or military undertakings in the Maldives. Not for China, not for any other countries," he said.

More than 70 per cent of the Maldives' foreign debt is owed to China, but Faisal said it was not having trouble making payments, adding that the country had taken some concessional loans to pay as its tourism market expanded.

"Right now, it's only seven islands that Chinese have invested in, in the tourism sector. For a country with such capacity as China, I think it is a very low number it should be more than that."

China had expressed interest in building a port in the Maldives, Faisal said, but there was no confirmed plan at present.Ramkumar Sarma, founder and CEO, Bank-Genie

BANKING solutions company Bank-Genie, with corporate headquarters in Singapore has announced it will establish its presence in Manila to service a growing clientele that includes Universal Banks, Saving and Lending Banks, Rural Banks and Multi-Finance Institutions across the globe. Bank-Genie is backed by SBI-FMO, a private equity fund, set up by two large global institutionsThe SBI Holdings Group, a leading internet-based financial services conglomerate in Japan and FMO, the Dutch development bank.Drawing from their expertise, knowledge and experience, Bank-Genie provides innovative banking solutions to help lower the cost of service of the Financial Institution while expanding its reach to the unbanked and under-banked sectors. The young company founded in 2016 had already acquired over 10 clients and have since rapidly expanded its footprint across Africa and Asia. To support these plans, customer support is critical, said Ramkumar Sarma, Bank-Genie Founder and CEO. After our study, it became apparent that the Philippines is the right location for our GlobalCustomer Support Centre for our growing client base. It offers a number of considerable advantages such as the availability of well-trained and hard-working talent. To this end, Ram cited that the company has already begun to roll-out its plans and is presently looking at potential locations in Metro Manila and the recruitmentof local talents immediately.Bank-Genies flagship product is a mobile native software running on a tablet, POS device or smartphonethat enables banks and financial institutions to create virtual, integrated, secured and seamless retail branches freeing the teller from brick and mortar branch. The state-of-the-art solution enables banks to set up branches where customers can access complete set of banking services at a fraction of the cost of a full traditional branch. CEO Ram explains, What we have done with Bank-Genie is to take out all the dependencies and connectivity of a bank teller to branch facilities. Ram added: Today, one of the key challenges faced by banks and financial institutions is their inability to set up multiple branches or access points due to capital and operational constraints. With the elimination of these physical dependencies, banks may conduct business at the convenience of the customer through mobile bankers, bank-appointed agents or vehicular branch thereby providing essential financial services to the unbanked, under-banked and community at large.PATNA: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was on Saturday sentenced to fourteen years in prison and fined Rs 60 lakh in connection with the fourth fodder scam case. CBI judge Shiv Pal Singh awarded two sentences of seven years and fine of Rs 30 lakh each in the two cases to the former Bihar chief minister. A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Ranchi had on March 19 convicted the former Bihar chief minister in the case relating to the multi-million rupee fodder scam.

Judge Shiv Pal Singh had held him and 18 others guilty and acquitted 12 accused in the fourth case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 3.13 crore from Dumka treasury between December 1995 and January 1996. There were a total of 47 accused in the fourth fodder scam, fourteen of whom had died during the course of the trial, while two had turned approvers.

#WATCH: Vishnu Sharma, counsel appearing for CBI, says, 'Lalu Prasad Yadav has been sentenced to 7 years each under different sections of !PC & sections of Prevention of corruption Act, both sentences to run consecutively.' #FodderScam #DumkaTreasuryCase pic.twitter.com/HhpQ8WvRWb  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

Lalu has already been convicted in three other cases of the scam which took place when he was the chief minister of Bihar. He has been in Birsa Munda jail at Ranchi since December 23, 2017, after being convicted in the second case pertaining to illegal withdrawal of money from Deogarh treasury.

He was convicted on September 30, 2013 in the Chaibasa case pertaining to illegal withdrawal of Rs 37.7 crore in the 1990s. He was awarded five years prison term in the case following which he was disqualified from the Lok Sabha and barred from contesting elections for six years after completion of jail term.

In the second case, Lalu was convicted in connection with fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 89.27 lakh from Deoghar Treasury in the 1990s. He was awarded 3.5 years sentence in the case on December 23, 2017.

In another Chaibasa case of Rs 37.62 crore fraud, Lalu got five years prison term on January 24, 2018, while Mishra was acquitted in two fodder cases while being convicted in two cases.

The fifth case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 139 crore from the Doranda treasury in Ranchi is pending with the court.Gurgaon: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday said the "serious" challenge of Naxalism in the country has entered its "last leg" and Maoists are now resorting to coward ambushes against security forces as they are unable to undertake a direct fight.

Addressing troops of the country's lead anti-Naxal operations force CRPF on the occasion of their 79th Raising Day, the home minister said due to operational efforts of these forces incidents of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) have "drastically" come down in the recent past and the casualty rate of extremists has gone up.

The demoralised Naxal cadres are now not able to undertake a fight head on with security forces and hence with their limited capabilities are now resorting to coward ambushes and attacks, he said while addressing the men and officers of the force.

The minister, during his speech, paid tributes to the 9 men of the force who were killed in a Naxal ambush in Chhattisgarh's Sukma early this month after a deadly explosive was clandestinely triggered by ultras underneath a mine protected vehicle.

"Maoism has become a serious challenge...But because of the gallant and determined action of the CRPF and other forces, these incidents have come down drastically.

"Earlier, the casualty amongst security forces personnel and civilians was higher but now it is the reverse and the casualty rate of the Maoist cadres is higher," Singh said at the parade ground of the CRPF officers academy here in Kadarpur.

"I can say that the LWE problem in the country has entered its last leg and the people very well understand that Naxlas are anti-poor, anti-tribal and anti-development," the top boss of the country's internal security establishment said referring to killing of CRPF men during road construction work in LWE affected areas.

He asked the CRPF personnel to continue rendering their "multi-dimenisonal" role in various theatres like insurgency in the Kashmir valley and the north east as also against the LWE menace.

"You have always given a muh tod jawab (befitting reply) to these activities," Singh said.

The minister lauded the gallantry of the troops of the country's largest paramilitary force as he underlined that the CRPF men and women did not "lose their patience" during the deteriorating security situation in the Kashmir valley.

He praised the courage of CRPF Commandant Chetan Cheeta who was part of the anniversary parade.

Cheeta took nine bullets during an operation in Kashmir valley last year and displayed rare grit and brilliance during recuperation and he also joined duty few days back at the force headquarters in Delhi.

Singh said security forces like the CRPF need to ensure that no obstacle comes in the way of India becoming an economic super power.

Talking about ensuring better facilities to jawans of the force and for those of other Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), the minister said infrastructure to have more residential facilities will be enhanced in the future.

He said facilities of air courier (dedicated flights for transport of troops to forward areas) and e-ticketing of railway tickets has been started for CAPF personnel recently.

The home minister asked the force to create awareness about goverment-run schemes amongst "peace loving" people in troubled areas so that these citizens can have an increased trust on their country and the government.

The over 3.18-lakh personnel strong CRPF was raised in 1939 under the British rule and is celebrating its 79th Raising Day on Saturday.

The anniversary was to be celebrated on March 19 when country's first Home Minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel presented colours to it in 1950 but the event was organised today owing to Singh's busy schedule.Headlines of the day:

1. Rajya Sabha polls: BJP avenges by-poll defeat in UP, Congress wins big in Karnataka

While BSP has cried foul and said money power triumphed, BJP said it is win of truth in UP. In other results, Congress bagged three seats in Karnataka and Trinamool managed four in West Bengal. Read more



2. Government issues notice to Cambridge Analytica over FB data breach

The notice came after reports that political parties had used the data analytics firm during elections. Read more



3. In a first, Indian diplomats attend Pakistan Day parade

The move of the Pakistan Army chief was aimed at sending a message of peace to New Delhi, claimed the report. Read more



3. Mumbai's iconic dabbawalas shift to motorbikes for more efficient service*

Motorbikes also help conserve physical energy, say the dabbawalas. Read more



4. India is a brother, but China a long lost cousin found: Maldives envoy

The Maldives will further embrace Chinese investment but is aware it risks getting caught between China and India, Faisal told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. Read more



5. Need help with love letters? This Italian will ghost-write for you

And it costs 70 euros ($85.90)... Read more



6. 2 terrorists killed in encounter with security forces in J&K's Anantnag

The encounter operation was launched on Friday night in Anantnag's Dooru area. During the operation, arms and ammunition have also been recovered. Read more

7. Bigg Boss 11 winner Shilpa Shinde and Sunil Grover come together for a digital show

The show will be produced by Preeti and Neeti Simoes. Read moreNew Delhi: Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Saturday lambasted Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad over a huge number of pending court cases, alleging that the legal system was collapsing due to it.

Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter and expressed his concerns over millions of pending cases in various courts of the country and the acute shortage of judges.

Hitting out at the Union Law Minister, Rahul charged him with "peddling fake news" instead of strengthening the collapsing legal system.

Rahul's attack came after Prasad accused the Congress of hiring the services of controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica, which has been accused of harvesting data stolen from Facebook, in previous elections.

The BJP's charge has been denied by the Congress, which instead accused the BJP of using the services of the firm.

''Legal system collapsing under Pending Cases: Supreme Court 55,000+, High Court 37 Lakh+, Lower Courts 2.6 Crore+. Yet, a staggering 400 High Court and 6,000 Lower Court judges not appointed, while Law Minister preoccupied peddling fake news,'' Gandhi said on Twitter, using the hashtag #JudiciaryDemonetised.

Justice K M Joseph, overturned Presidents rule in Uttarakhand in 2016. When his name was proposed for the Supreme Court, Modi jis ego was hurt. Approval of over 100 judges, cleared for the Supreme Court and various High Courts are now on hold.#JudiciaryDemonetised  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 24, 2018

The Congress and the BJP have been engaged in a war-of-words over-using the services of the controversial data firm.

The Facebook data scandal erupted after a whistleblower revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to Trump's 2016 campaign, accessed personal data from 50 million users of the website without their knowledge, and might have kept that data even after the social media giant told the company to delete it.

Prasad recently insisted that the Congress has used the services of Cambridge Analytica and said several media reports about the opposition party using the services of the firm had appeared in October and November last year and it never denied those stories till the BJP raised the issue.

(With Agency inputs)Ram Navami 2018 vrat or fast is compulsory for anyone religiously observing the nine-day festival of Chaitra Navratri. It is also compulsory for followers of Rama. Others can choose to opt out. As per the Hindu Calendar, Ram Navami is celebrated on the ninth day of Chaitra Navratri which falls during Shukla Paksha (bright phase) of the lunar month. By keeping this vrat or fast, one can atone their sins and achieve Mukti or liberation, claim religious texts. Below we present the rules of observing the fast of Ram Navami 2018:

Rules of Ram Navami vrat (fast) in 2018

Worshippers or observers of Ram Navami can choose from three kinds of fasts:

1. Fasting from midnight till noon or 12 pm.

2. Fasting from midnight till midnight or 12 am.

3. Taking one-time meal in the day.

The one-time meal can comprise of fruits, shakes and light beverages (milk or water-based). One can also choose to have a meal of potatoes without garlic, ginger, onion, Haldi (turmeric).

Chaitra Navaratri 2018, which began on March 18, will concludes on March 25 with Rama Navami, a day referred to as the birth date of Lord Rama. The celebrations and prayers of Navaratri are initiated after Ghatasthapana which symbolises Devi Durga. The Goddess is invoked to accept sincere prayers and humble offerings.PATNA: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav on Saturday alleged that there is a threat to his father Lalu Prasad Yadav's life and claimed that a conspiracy is being hatched by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). "I am sure there is a threat to LaluJi's life, looking at the conspiracy being planned by BJP," he said.

His statement comes after Lalu was on Saturday sentenced to seven years in prison each in connection with two cases in the fourth fodder scam case. He will be serving a 14-year-jail term and will have to pay Rs 60 lakh in fine for the case. Tejaswi said that they will challenge the verdict in High Court. "We will challenge it in HC and decide the further strategy on the basis of overall judgement in all the four cases," he said.

The fourth case pertains to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 3.13 crore from the Dumka treasury in the early 1990s. Lalu has been sentenced under different sections of the Indian Penal code and the sections of Prevention of Corruption Act.

Reacting to the verdict, BJP leader and Union Minister Giriraj Singh said Lalu is paying the price for what he has done. "Law is doing its work, this is not a party's judgement. As you sow so shall you reap. (Kanoon apna kaam karta hai. Ispar meri koi tippani nahi hai. Na ye koi party ka judgement hai. Jaisi karni, waisi bharni), Singh said.

Prabhat Kumar, Lalu Prasad's counsel, told journalists that he will appeal in a higher court against the judgment. The court had on March 19 held the 69-year-old RJD chief guilty along with 18 others in connection with the case.

Former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra, however, was acquitted in the case along with 12 other accused.

Lalu has been serving prison term in Birsa Munda Jail in Ranchi since 23 December 2013 after being convicted in the second fodder scam case pertaining to illegal withdrawal of money from the Deogarh treasury.

The RJD supremo is currently undergoing treatment at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi, where he was admitted last week after he complained of chest pain and discomfort in jail.NEW DELHI: Even as the government tries to sell underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's properties, his empire across the world has diversified and become consolidated. According to latest reports, D-company  Dawood's terrorist outfit based out of Pakistan  has diversified in multiple fields and built a powerful transnational crime-terror organisation in part from drug proceeds.

Pakistan-based crime-terror group D-company, whose origins lie in India, expanded Karachi's historic role as a drug transhipment point, and built a powerful transnational crime-terror organisation in part from drug proceeds," Dr Louise Shelley, Professor at Schar School of Policy and Government at the George Mason University told US lawmakers during a Congressional hearing organised by the Committee on House Financial Services Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance.

Comparing D-company to Mexican drug cartels, Shelley added, D-company, like Mexican drug organisations, has diversified. They traffic weapons, counterfeit DVDs and provide financial services through their extensive system of hawala operators."

In the meantime, fed up with no one buying Dawood's property out of fear, the government is looking into the possibility of buying hid properties in Mumbai at a base price for development projects.

India's sustained campaign against Dawood was finally acknowledged by America in 2003 when the US declared him a global terrorist having links with al-Qaeda. He also faces sanctions from the UN under its anti-terror resolution.

Vindicating India's position that Pakistan has been sheltering Dawood, the US had said that he was in Karachi and possessed a Pakistani passport under the individual category.

Testifying before the same Congressional sub-committee, Celina B Realuyo, Professor of Practice, William J Perry Centre for Hemispheric Defence Studies, National Defence University, said a number of recent attacks in Kabul were planned and launched from safe havens in Pakistan.

The year 2018 has already witnessed many deadly attacks.

On January 20, at least 22 people including four Americans were killed during a 12-hour standoff with security forces after gunmen dressed as armymen raided a hotel in Kabul, frequented by many foreigners, he said.

On January 27, an attacker detonated explosives in an ambulance in Kabul, killing over 100 people and injuring some 158, according to Afghan officials.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mojahid claimed responsibility for the attack, one week after the attack on the Kabul hotel attack, Realuyo added.

In June last year during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US, India and the US, in a joint statement after talks between Modi and President Donald Trump, vowed to strengthen cooperation against terror outfits like Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba and D-Company.

With PTI inputsNEW DELHI: Social activist Anna Hazare on Saturday sternly said that he will not tolerate involvement of any political party or group in the hunger strike which he started a day ago at Delhi's Ram Lila Maidan. "I will not let any political party or group to come on this stage," he said.

The social reformer also said that whoever joins the movement will have to sign an affidavit which states that they will neither join any political party/group nor will contest elections. They will ensure service to the country, the society and maintain good character.

"Whoever joins the movement, signs affidavit which states, that they'll neither join any political party/group nor will contest elections, ensure service to country, society and maintain good character," he said.

Anna Hazare called for an indefinite fast on Friday nearly seven years after his anti-corruption movement shook the then Central government led by prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2011. March 23 was chosen as the date to begin the fast as Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged to death on this day by the British.

Hitting out at the Narendra Modi led government, Anna called all politicians 'fraud'. "Farmers are suffering and politicians are not capable to rule people. I will fight till the last breath," he said.

On the first day one of his protest, the agitation of social activist Anna Hazare witnessed the participation of about 5,000-6,000 people, mainly from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Assam.

He started fast against the Narendra Modi led Central government and pressed for setting up a Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in the states to probe corruption cases. He is also pressing in to bring in new electoral reforms and implementation of the MS Swaminathan Committee report to address the agrarian crisis in the country.NEW DELHI: On the first day one of his protest, the agitation of social activist Anna Hazare witnessed the participation of about 5,000-6,000 people, mainly from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Assam. He started an indefinite fast on March 23 against the Narendra Modi led Central government and pressed for setting up a Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in the states to probe corruption cases. He is also pressing in to bring in new electoral reforms and implementation of the MS Swaminathan Committee report to address the agrarian crisis in the country.

Hitting out at the Centre, Anna said that he wrote several letters to the PM but got no reply from the government. "I have written 43 letters to the Modi government in the last four years but did not get any reply. So I have been forced to sit on an indefinite fast," he said after starting his hunger strike at the Ramlila Maidan on Friday.

Anna said Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and some ministers from Maharashtra met him on Thursday and gave some assurances but he does not trust them. "They said the government will look into our concerns. But I said I don't trust you. How many promises have you fulfilled so far? Nothing," he said.

He also said that he will hold discussions with the government but will continue his indefinite hunger strike - 'Satyagraha' till the government comes out with a 'concrete action plan'.

Speaking on the agrarian distress in the country, Anna said farmers are not getting their due. "The farmers in the country are in distress as they are not getting remunerative prices and the government is not acting to ensure fair prices," he said. He added that the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which decides prices for 23 crops, should be made autonomous for fair price fixation.

Holding the Modi government responsible for low participation, he said that the Centre is not letting people join his protest. "You cancelled trains carrying protesters to Delhi, you want to push them to violence. Police force deployed for me as well. I wrote in many letters that I don't need police protection. Your protection won't save me. This sly attitude of the government is not done," Hazare said.

Echoing his views, some farmers claimed that the police stopped them from boarding trains. A Maharashtra farmer from Ahmednagar, Popatrao Sathe, said people from his area were not allowed to board the train by police at Bhusawal on Thursday night. Some farmers said they dodged the police and made it to Delhi. "We removed all banners from the buses we were in and remained quiet throughout the journey. Police let us go assuming we were regular passengers," said Kanaihya Sharma, a farmer from Jaipur.

Rakesh Pegu from Assam's Madhuli said he was compelled to participate in the agitation as the livelihood of farmers was at risk due to consistent incidences of price fall.SRINAGAR: Two terrorists were on Saturday gunned down in an encounter with the security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag.

The encounter operation was launched on Friday night in Anantnag's Dooru area. During the operation, arms and ammunition have also been recovered.

Reports suggest that the gunbattle is currently over.

#SpotVisuals: 2 terrorists gunned down in an encounter with security personnel in Anantnag's Dooru area, encounter over. #JammuAndKashmir (visuals deferred) pic.twitter.com/OGUvAHcbq6  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

Earlier this week, five terrorists and an equal number of security personnel were killed after a 48-hour long gunbattle in J&K Kupwara district.

The gunfight had broken out on Tuesday inside Halmatpora forest area of Kupwara, about 110 km from Srinagar city.

It had left five security personnel, including three Army jawans and two policemen, dead and five terrorists killed.

Giving details of the incident, a police spokesman had later said that the encounter broke out in the Halmatpora area, at least 8 kms from the Line of Control (LoC), after a police party intercepted a group of terrorists.Posted Saturday, March 24, 2018 6:30 am

Missouri Farm Bureau recently completed its annual member trip to Washington, D.C. About 100 members participated in the four-day visit, which included visits with elected members of Congress, Presidential appointees, policy experts and foreign dignitaries.

While this trip has been an annual staple for decades, longtime attendees noted a distinct shift in tone this year. Nearly every policy expert and elected official who is familiar with agriculture expressed strong concern about President Trumps changes to American trade policy.

A primary concern expressed by these speakers was the danger American agriculture faces from other countries targeting it through retaliation. President Trumps recent steel and aluminum tariffs will make almost no positive impact on Missouri, where no steel or aluminum is made. However, if other countries target agricultural commodities to raise retaliatory tariffs, Missouri and other Midwestern states could be hard-hit. Several speakers in Washington mentioned that America is by far the most productive agricultural country in the world, so food and agriculture products will be some of the most sensitive pressure points for retaliation.

Experts and elected officials are also deeply troubled by Americas lack of ability to grow export markets through new trade agreements. Agricultural production is at an all-time high and prices are at record lows. With a saturated domestic market, the only place for farmers to grow is out. However, President Trumps withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and failure to enter bilateral negotiations with new countries has led to a stagnant export market. Without new buyers at good prices, agricultural products will continue to languish.

Multiple speakers also spoke about misconceptions regarding international trade, especially politicians and the medias focus on bilateral trade deficits and surpluses. Dr. John Hamre, CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), offered a particularly poignant example. Dr. Hamre gives a large amount of money to his local grocery store each week to purchase food and other products. Since he is not providing them any goods or services in return, like stocking their shelves at night, he is running a massive trade deficit with that store. However, in another area of his life he produces valuable goods and services that other people want and buy from him, giving him a massive surplus with that person. He uses this money to buy his weekly groceries.

Clearly no one would see this arrangement as problematic; it is simply how transactions work. However, this is exactly how many politicians view trade  they view each separate country as a zero-sum game. Taking a broader view than the bilateral picture would benefit all parties. Some countries will run a surplus and some a deficit, but the overall picture is far more important.

Educational and sharing experiences like this visit expand our horizons and help inform our lawmakers. This years trip was a huge success, and we look forward to returning for many decades to come.

Eric Bohl, Columbia, is director of public affairs for Missouri Farm Bureau, the states largest farm organization.Mysuru: Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Saturday attacked the Narendra Modi government at the Centre over its notes ban move, GST and rising joblessness in the country.

Rahul Gandhi, while interacting with a group of students at Maharani`s Arts and Commerce College for Women in Mysuru, lamented that the Indian economy was growing but not generating jobs for the citizens.

"We are growing decently as an economy, but we are not creating jobs because those who have skills aren't getting access to finance and support," the Congress chief said.

Rahul Gandhi, who is on a two-day visit to the poll-bound Karnataka's old Mysuru region, made these remarks while taking questions from the students in the 30-minute long interaction.

The young Congress leader had in past too attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not keeping up his promise of delivering 2 crore jobs a year.

This is Rahul Gandhi`s fourth visit to Karnataka since February.

''Huge amount of money was going into the hands of very few people in the country,'' he remarked.

Referring to the recent PNB scam, Rahul said, ''(Diamond jeweller) Nirav Modi has absconded with crores of people's money. Can you imagine how many businesses could have been built by young women like you all if you had access to that kind of money."

Nirav Modi has been accused in a Rs 13,540 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

Responding to a student's question on what he thought of high-value currency note ban in November 2016, Rahul Gandhi said it was a "disaster".

"Demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) were very badly conceived and damaging steps for the country. (Former Finance Minister) P. Chidambaram said the step was insane," the 47-year-old recalled.

''One person experimenting with the nation was dangerous,'' he added.

"Congress believes that in a country of the size of India, one cannot do experiments. Ideas need to be tested on a small scale and then rolled out," Rahul said.

''No economist in the world would admit that demonetisation did any good to the Indian economy,'' he asserted.

Earlier in the day, he visited the popular Chamundeshwari Temple along with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, party state unit president G Parameshwara and other senior leaders to pray for the ruling party's success in the Assembly polls due in April-May.

The Congress leader is scheduled to hold public meetings and interactions with party cadres and people in Mysuru, Mandya and Chamrajnagar districts.

(With IANS inputs)MYSURU: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday obliged a girl in Mysuru with a selfie when she asked him for the same at an event at Maharani's Arts College for Women. When Rahul was addressing the event, the girl said: "Sir I want to take a selfie with you." The Congress President readily got down from the stage towards the girl and got the photo clicked with her.

Speaking at the event, he continued his tirade against demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) hitting out at the government and saying that both did massive damage to the Indian economy. "I think demonetisation was a mistake and should not have been done. Demonetisation and GST were massive damage to the Indian economy and job creation. I have a problem with the way demonetisation was carried out, RBI governor, Chief Economic Advisor, Finance Minister, none of them knew of it. When I called Chidambaram, he called demonetisation insane," Rahul said.

#WATCH: Rahul Gandhi gets off the stage, poses for a selfie with a student after she said, 'Sir my request is I want to take a selfie with you!' The Congress President is at an interaction with students at Maharani's Arts College for Women in Mysuru #Karnataka pic.twitter.com/SeghSlyywd  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

Raking up the issue of the multi-thousand-crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case, the Congress leader said that because of such scams people who actually need money do not getit. "Nirav Modi took Rs 22,000 crore of bank money. Can you imagine how many businesses could have been built by young women like you if we had given Rs 22,000 crore to you?" Rahul said.

"We are growing pretty decently as an economy but we are not creating jobs, it is because those who have skills do not have access to finance and support. The problem is, huge amount of money goes to 15-20 people," he added.

Rahul is on a visit to poll-bound Karnataka where he also visited Chamundeshwari Temple in Mysuru earlier in the day.Malappuram: Angry over marrying a boy from a lower caste, a 22-year-old girl was allegedly stabbed to death by her father a day before her marriage. The shocking case of honour killing took place in Kerala`s Malappuram district on Thursday.

Athira, a dialysis technician at the state-run Manjeri Medical College Hospital, had been dating Brijesh, an army man posted in Lucknow, for several years. The girl's family belonged to Ezhava caste (OBC) while Brijesh belongs to Scheduled Caste, said the police. The couple had once eloped but were convinced to come back home by their families.

Athira's father  42 year-old Rajan  a casual labourer, had reluctantly agreed to give his nod to the wedding.

A day before the wedding, while preparations were in full swing, the father-daughter entered into a heated argument. Rajan, who was in an inebriated state, which he stabbed Athira several times with a kitchen knife.

Athira was rushed to a nearby hospital immediately where she succumbed to her injuries.

"Rajan was opposed to their relationship. The marriage was fixed for today (Friday) at a temple. Yesterday at 4.30 p.m., Rajan came home drunk. As Athira tried to run away, he chased her and stabbed her to death," said investigating police officer NB Shaiju.

Rajan has been arrested. "We will certainly look into every aspect," the officer added.

With agency inputsMUMBAI: A change is brewing in the service and supply chain of Mumbai's dabbawalas. The lifeline of Maximum City, dabbawalas are now slowly shifting to motorbikes from the traditional cycles for more efficiency and on-time hot lunch.

The traditional cycles balances can carry up to 60 dabbas or lunch boxes. But bikes can balance nearly 150 dabbas at a time. More lunch boxes in one trip translate into more money.

Motorbikes also help conserve physical energy, say the dabbawalas. It also helps in quick parking, saving time.

But not all dabbawalas have given up their cycles. There are several routes in Mumbai that only allow cycles. It also remains the most efficient mode of transport during a traffic jam.

Mumbai's iconic dabbawalas have been in action for more than 125 years now, delivering about 1 lakh lunches everyday to office goers, school children, and students.

Their impressive accuracy earned them a six sigma quality certificate and a global business fan club, which includes Prince Charles and Richard Branson. Their unique management and operational models have become subjects of management study beyond textbooks for global business schools.

The dabbawalas recently launched their parcel courier system, where along with the daily tiffin, one can hand over a parcel or two to be couriered to its destination in the city within a day.

With agency inputsNew Delhi: Bollywood stunner Jacqueline Fernandez, who will next be seen in Salman Khan starrer 'Race 3' reportedly suffered eye injury on the sets, has resumed shooting.

"Yes, it was a minor injury. Jacqueline is hurt above the eye while playing squash. She is better now and has resumed shooting," producer Ramesh Taurani told news agency IANS.

The actress is currently shooting for 'Race 3' in Abu Dhabi was supposed to reach Pune for Salman's 'Da-Bangg' Tour. However, with this eye injury, chances of her performing on the dance look highly bleak.

Race 3' is helmed by ace choreographer-turned-filmmaker Remo D'Souza and boasts of having an ensemble star cast. Besides Salman, Jacqueline, the film features Daisy Shah, Bobby Deol, Anil Kapoor, Saqib Saleem etc to name a few.

The action thriller is the third part of the super hit 'Race' franchise. The two parts had Saif Ali Khan play the male lead. Now, Sallu Bhai has stepped into this shoes and it will be interesting to see how he plays it.

The film is produced by Tips Films and Salman Khan Films. It is slated to hit the screens on this Eid.

(With inputs from IANS)New Delhi: Rumours of Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja's wedding have been doing rounds for sometimes. Recently, there was buzz that the couple would tie the knot in London after the release of Sonam's upcoming film, 'Veere Di Wedding'.

However, as per a Mumbai Mirror report, the wedding will take in Geneva, and not London as reported earlier.

Apparently, Sonam and Anand will have a two-day ceremony as per the Hindu rituals on May 11 and 12. The preparations for the wedding, which is less than two months away, is in full swing.

As per the report, the date and the venue have been locked and mass bookings for flights are being done. Meanwhile, father Anil Kapoor is personally inviting his guests to the wedding. An engagement ceremony is expected to set to take place before the wedding, which will be attended only by close friends and family members.

The report also claimed that the Kapoor family had also considered Jodhpur and Udaipur for the wedding but the family finalised Geneva after months of planning.

Sonam, who had gone to Swiss city, sometime back for a brand commitment, decided to make it her wedding venue after visiting the place. Sonam and Anand were first spotted together when they made an appearance together at Akshay Kumar's Rustom success bash in 2016. Since then, they have been spotted together on multiple occasions including their family gatherings. Recently, Anand, an entrepreneur, was spotted attending Sonam's cousin Mohit Marwah's wedding, that took place in Abu Dhabi.

However, the actress has never spoken about her relationship openly.Washington D.C.: Hip-hop artist Russell Simmons, who has been accused of rape in a new $10 million lawsuit, has 'vehemently' denied the allegations.

According to the lawsuit, filed Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a woman identified as Jane Doe accused the Def Jam Recordings co-founder of luring her to his hotel room and raping her.

The 60-year-old, who is 'shocked' by the accusations, told E! Online, "I vehemently deny all the allegations made against me."

"They have shocked me to my core as I have never been abusive or violent in any way in my relations with women. I have submitted myself to multiple lie detector tests. I denied forced sex and sexual harassment allegations brought against me in each test; I also answered no to the question, 'Have you ever physically forced any woman to have sexual intercourse?' I passed all of the lie detector tests."

In her complaint, the plaintiff alleges Simmons raped her in a hotel room after she met him at a concert - which she was attending with her son - where he had lured her with an invitation to an after party. He then allegedly forced her onto a hotel bed and raped her.

In recent months, at least 14 women have accused the Simmons of sexual misconduct, which he has denied.NEW DELHI: Pakistan has been dealing with intense international pressure to act against banned militant outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba or LeT, co-founder Hafiz Saeed and it's alleged charitable wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD).

Despite the global outcry and US' cutting off military aid, top LeT leader Saeed is free and is planning to contest national elections in a bid to go mainstream. To pacify the US, Pakistan has started seizing JuD and other UN-banned organisations' assets.

But what does the common man or aam aadmi of Pakistan feel about all this? What do they think of LeT and Saeed?

The country's leading daily Dawn, quoting data from Pew Global Attitudes survey, states that while Pakistanis do not support terrorist groups, they do tend have a favourable outlook towards LeT.

But their (Pakistanis) views towards LeT tend to be slightly more favourable than their views towards the TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan). For instance, according to the Pew Global Attitudes poll in Pakistan in 2015, 14 per cent of respondents reported favourable views of the LeT, relative to 9 per cent who reported favourable views towards the TTP, states the article.

Pakistanis are also more uncertain about, and less unfavourable towards, the LeT than towards the TTP. 36 per cent reported unfavourable views of the LeT, while 49 per cent did not respond when asked about it, it adds.

The article goes on to explain that the publics narrative on LeT is muddled.

The group has been allowed by the state to function as a socio-political entity, and allowed to rebrand under different fronts. Its propaganda is vast and accessible, and its charitable arm is successful and effective.

Whats more, the Kashmir cause and LeTs negativity on India resonate with the population  but it is important to note that the LeT propaganda is not anti-India alone. It is anti-West and anti-Israel as well.

Saeed-led JuD has been at the forefront of civic, medical and emergency relief measures.

A Washington Post report from the time (2005 Earthquake) refers to a man who received medical help from the JuD after the 2005 earthquake, saying he 'did not know whether the group was involved in violence, nor did he care.' What mattered to him was that 'every 10 minutes a doctor or medical attendant comes in to check on'", leading to high public opinion about the organisation.

LeT, with it's anti-India and anti-West rhetoric and strong Islamic ties, helps normalise the group.

The article goes on to explain that Pakistans younger population has more favourable opinions of the LeT and are likely to sympathise with all extremist groups, reflecting an increasing tolerance of extremism on multiple dimensions in the younger generation.London: Teenager Ahmed Hassan was sentenced on Friday to life in prison with a minimum term of 34 years for planting a bomb on a packed rush hour train at Parsons Green in London in September last year. Hassan, 18, was described as "dangerous and devious" by a judge. His home-made device partially exploded during London`s rush hour on September 15, 2017, injuring 51 people, Xinhua reported.

The Iraqi asylum seeker, from Surrey, was on Friday found guilty of attempted murder. Before the attack, he had been referred to a government de-radicalisation programme. Hassan was sentenced by the judge in line with section 30 of the Terrorism Act 2008.

He was arrested at the Port of Dover on September 16, 2017 and was charged six days later with the above offence.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon, said, "Hassan built a home-made bomb packed full of shrapnel that was designed to kill, maim and injure as many people as he could. It was only through good fortune that it didn`t fully detonate. Had it done so, I have little doubt that we would have been dealing with many fatalities."

Chief Superintendent John Conaghan, who is from British Transport Police, said, "We thoroughly welcome the lengthy sentence that Hassan has been handed by the court today. In September last year, he put Londoners through a frightening ordeal when he left his home-made bomb on a District Line train."

"His appalling attack could have claimed many lives on that busy rush hour train. Thankfully, no one was killed and his imprisonment will prevent him from posing any further threat to the public."

Prosecutors at the sentencing hearing said there would have been "serious harm, if not fatality" if the bomb -- packed with 2 kg of screwdrivers, knives, nuts and bolts -- had fully detonated.

In a January 2016 immigration interview, Hassan told British officials he had been in contact with the Islamic State group and had been "trained to kill". The trial also heard he blamed Britain for the death of his father in Iraq.Attending Pakistan's Republic Day celebrations on Friday, Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena said his country was pleased with the progress shown by Pakistan by utilising the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Upon landing in the country, Sirisena first met Sindh Governor Muhammad Zubair at the Karachi airport and it is here that he reportedly said Pakistan's progress courtesy CPEC is appreciable. Local media reports attributed the statement to an official statement issued by the Governor House. According to it, Sirisena said CPEC is a promising sign for Pakistan's economic progress. He also reportedly thanked the country for being a key ally of Sri Lanka and for the close ties shared by the two.

On a three-day visit to Pakistan, Sirisena also called on Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi for a one-on-one meeting which was followed by delegation level talks. According to an official statement, issues of mutual importance were discussed during the meeting and the two sides expressed hope that the bilateral ties will continue to grow in the future.The two sides also agreed to diversify and deepen the bilateral relations, it said. "The Sri Lankan President extended support for the holding of SAARC Summit in Pakistan," the statement said.The Shia Houthi rebel group fighting the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said Friday it will unite with the Lebanese Shia armed and political group, Hezbollah, and Palestinians should Israel enter into conflict with the two.

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, leader of the Iran-backed rebels told Lebanese local Al-Akhbar that the Houthis will fight on the side of Hezbollah or Palestinians by principles.

Abdul Malik Al-Houthi and his group have declared Israel as enemy.

We will not be reluctant to send fighters in a new war. Many of Yemens tribesmen are ambitious to fight against Israel, and they are looking for the day to participate along with the freemen of the Islamic nation against the Israeli enemy, he was quoted as saying.

The rebel leader claimed that they have discovered Israeli military activities in the Red Sea and Mandeb Strait. Israel, according to the rebel top official, participated alongside UAE officers in planning some military activities in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and its allies entered Yemen in 2015 in a move to end the advance of the rebels who flashed out the international recognized President Mansour Hadi and his government from capital Sanaa.

The rebels have conquered vast swathes of the Yemeni territory from where they have launched several missiles targeting Saudi Arabia.

The rebel group said it informed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader, of their readiness to fight with his forces.Armed conflict in Donbas, Savchenko's detention, reaction of Ukrainian authorities on Russia's presidential elections, etc - the whole week on one page

Armed conflict in Donbas

Savchenko: lifting immunity, detained and arrested

Ukrainian pilot blamed for downing MH17 bid farewell in Mykolaiv

Ukrainian authorities' reaction on Russia's presidential elections

Armed conflict in Donbas

Quite surprisingly, Donbas conflict in Ukraine seems to have cooled down this week  at least for the time being, and in terms of fire density. The overall amount of attacks decreased compared to that of the last week. Specifically, on Monday, Ukrainian military reported no attacks on its positions in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The same tendency remained on Wednesday and Thursday, as over the 24-hours-long period, there were no firefights in the entire combat area.

On Tuesday, the SBU, Ukraines security service busted two car dealers who supplied vehicles for pro-Kremlin militants in Donbas. The men were arrested while trying to move an SUV across the Russian border. According to the SBU's press department, the criminals set a dealing network, which provided the transit of vehicles registered in the EU to the temporarily occupied areas of Luhansk region. The cars were moved to Russia, where members of the self-styled 'people's police of LNR' took them.

On March 20, Russian mercenaries attacked Ukrainian outposts near Stanytsia Luhanska so that there would be no disengagement of troops in this area  in the breach of Minsk agreement.

On Thursday, the OSCE extended the mandate of the Special Monitoring Mission in Donbas until March 31, 2019. The press service of the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to international organizations in Vienna reported this on Twitter. The mandate of the OSCE SMM was extended until March 31, 2019. The delegation of Ukraine issued its interpretative statement, in which it stressed that the SMM should have full and unhindered access to the entire territory of Ukraine, including Crimea and Sevastopol. All states of the EU, the USA and Canada have supported this, the message says.

On March 23, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent to a convoy with construction materials and medical supplies to Donbas. Eleven trucks crossed Novotroitske checkpoint in Donetsk region, reaching the militant-held territory. According to the Border Guard, they carried sand, construction materials and medications with the total weight of 190.4 tons.

Savchenko: lifting immunity, detained and arrested

Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian MP and former Air Force pilot, was the only news on March 22. Early in the morning Parliamentary Regulatory Committee considered her detention and arrest and recommended the parliament to lift immunity, investigate and arrest her.

Prosecutor General accused her of a planned assassination attempt on Interior Minister, National Security Council Secretary, the President of Ukraine, MPs and to explode the building of the parliament. Savchenko was detained and delivered a notice of suspicion right after lifting immunity.

The next day the court was considering a restrictive measure.

The detained Ukrainian MP Nadiya Savchenko refutes any charges against her, calling the whole case 'politically motivated'. The prosecutors insist that Savchenko should be kept in custody; the defense team demands to release her, saying that the detention is illegal.

In the result, the court arrested Savchenko for two months without bail. Savchenkos defense intends to appeal against the decision of Shevchenkivskyi District Court to retain peoples deputy in custody on Monday.

Ukrainian pilot blamed for downing MH17 bid farewell in Mykolaiv

On March 21, over a hundred citizens of Mykolaiv bid farewell to Vladyslav Voloshyn, the military pilot, acting director of Mykolaiv International Airport, a hero of Donbas Conflict who reportedly committed a suicide. The last farewell took place at the territory of the Forensic Medical Bureau. The family of Voloshyn, his friends, familiars, coworkers and the representatives of the authority were present.

The 29-year-old acting director of one of the local airport committed suicide by shooting himself from a gun in his apartment. The police opened a criminal proceeding under the Criminal Code article on intentional suicide.

Vladyslav Voloshyn was one of the Donbas conflict heroes; he was awarded the Order of Courage of the third degree. The Russian authorities accused him of attacking the Malaysian Boeing MH17, shot down over Donbas in the summer of 2014. Later this version was completely refuted by the investigation of the prosecutor's office of the Netherlands and Ukraine. Voloshyn is known to have engaged the Russian troops and pro-Kremlin mercenaries in Donbas  specifically, during the Ilovaisk battle in August 2014, when his ground attack aircraft landed an air strike on Russian airborne troops in Donetsk region.

The Dutch government submitted the draft law in the case of MH17 tragedy for the Parliaments consideration. In the document, the Cabinet reveals the legal framework allowing to prosecute and judge those involved in the deadly attack that claimed almost 300 lives in the sky over eastern Ukraine in 2014. The respective session will be held in the Hague. Foreign citizens and those who do not come will be interrogated in the video conference mode.

Ukrainian authorities' reaction on Russia's presidential elections

The election of the president took place in Russia and on the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea on March 18, 2018.

Petro Poroshenko, the President of Ukraine claimed that holding the Russian presidential election in Crimea is another rude violation of international law by Russia and that Russia will use the result of the past presidential election in the information war. He also urged the world community to extend the sanctions against Russia due to the presidential election held by it in Crimea.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin during a meeting in Brussels Monday, March 18, handed over to the Foreign Ministers of the European Union a list of 140 people who participated in the organization of illegal presidential elections in the occupied Crimea.

Also, Refat Chubarov, the Head of Crimean Tatar Mejlis claimed that the power of Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia should not be recognized as the citizens of other countries were involved in the participation in the election against their will.

Moreover, Ukraine filed an application to the PACE, offering the Assembly to hold the debates on non-recognition of the Russian presidential election in the annexed Crimea as Vice President of the PACE, head of the Ukrainian delegation Volodymyr Ariev said.

On March 21, the Verkhovna Rada received a proposal to acknowledge Russian presidential elections in annexed Crimea illegal and note that the voting questions the legitimacy of elections results.

On March 22, the Parliament of Ukraine has proclaimed Russian presidential election in the annexed Crimea illegal. The bill #8168-1 was supported by 255 MPs.

In the world: a number of countries, particularly, the EU countries, US, Japan and others did not recognize the results of the election of the president of Russia due to its holding at the territory of annexed Crimea.Since 2014, privatization in Ukraine has made little progress. Well-connected oligarchs could no longer dominate the privatization process, as had often been the case in the past because of strengthened public scrutiny and involvement of international donors, yet vested interests were still powerful enough to block privatizations and the lingering problems associated with the countrys business climate prevented the participation of foreign investors.



Last years attempts to restart a privatization drive failed despite the governments increased openness to international advice and absence of obvious manipulations with privatizations. The head of the State Property Fund had to resign after two futile attempts to sell the chemical giant Odesa Portside Plant. The range of unresolved disputes around the company deterred investors despite substantial price reductions. The only large privatization of 2017 was the sale of a minority packages of shares in energy distribution companies, which was purchased by Ukraines richest man Rinat Akhmetov, who already held stakes in these companies. This has not brought more outside players to the market, which was what the government had hoped to achieve.



But this time may be different: Ukraine is serious this time. The new IMF-supported privatization law, which came into effect on March 7, outlines clear procedures to sell state-owned companies fast even if demand is low.



The law helps to deal with the large number of smaller state-owned companies, which are usually loss-making and inefficiently managed. The program divides companies into three categories: those to be privatized, liquidated, or retained. The new law replaces numerous and often contradictory regulations, cuts the privatization timeline, and makes the online Prozorro electronic system mandatory for privatization of small state-owned enterprises. While the law is a revolutionary one for the privatization of small state-owned companies and is important to help structural transformation of the economy, more might be necessary to ensure the privatization of large companies.



Aivaras Abromavicius, former minister of economic development and trade, believes that using the Prozorro system will help unload small state owned enterprises, but privatization of large companies might be delayed again. It is going to get more difficult by the day as we are approaching elections, due next year. I have higher hopes, however, for offloading some really small SOEs with the help of online auctions via the Prozorro electronic system. There might not be enough political will to sell large assets so close to the elections.



The law also reduces the period of time allocated for big-ticket privatization, increases transparency requirements by requiring the involvement of independent advisors and evaluators, and strengthens investor protection by providing an option to review privatization disputes in international arbitration.



Still, much more needs to be done. Many of these companies have substantial debts, and some are undergoing bankruptcy. Two chemical plants, Odesa Portside Plant and Sumychimprom, to be offered for privatization this year have a host of issues associated with their debts to Dmytro Firtash, the Ukrainian oligarch under international sanctions. These debts are deal breakers for privatization and cannot be treated as ordinary debts because of the additional risks of transferring payments to a sanctioned entity. Without a clear policy on this debt, the third attempt to privatize the Odesa Portside Plant will likely fail.



The energy sector lies at the heart of privatization this year. Its successful privatization would bring new players to the sector, give impetus for market development, and increase its transparency. Of the top twenty-one companies slated for privatization in 2018, eleven represent the energy sector, including six regional power distributors and the second largest energy generator Centerenerho.



The State Property Fund hopes to triple the revenue from the privatization of six oblenergoes and Centerenergo by introducing a new energy pricing mechanism which starts in April. The new pricing may stimulate investment and make future cash flow to investors more predictable. However, success of this reform is not certain. The new pricing mechanism, the so-called RAB-rates, offers the same profitability for energy companies on all their assets and has been criticized for not attracting enough new investment and benefitting those who purchased energy distribution companies in the 1990s at non-transparent auctions for ridiculously low prices. The reform is especially sensitive as the new pricing mechanism will almost inevitably translate into even higher residential utility rates, which has been a politically sensitive issue after several recent price increases.



The new law creates grounds for optimism in terms of fast and transparent privatization in Ukraine, which is an important pro-market and anti-corruption measure. While the resolve to privatize is important, more work is required for large privatization to succeed.



If Ukraine will not be able to solve the outstanding issues such as debts to sanctioned entities or energy sector pricing reform, the attempt at privatization may facilitate yet another redistribution of assets from Yanukovychs weakened oligarchs to the new generation of oligarchs. Privatization is a chance to bring efficiency gains to the economy and part with past practices when business models of whole sectors were unsustainable without government favors and murky deals. Otherwise, the $750 million in planned privatization revenue envisaged in this years budget could be added to the unfunded budget deficit again, as has been the case since 2014.



This time Ukraine is determined to part with the Soviet legacy of maintaining a large number of inefficient and loss-making state-owned companies. However, more work is needed to ensure the successful privatization of bluechip companies in Ukraine.Mortar in Donbas joinfo

Over the last 24 hours, Ukraine's military suffered no casualties in Donbas. Dmytro Hutsulyak, the speaker of Ukraine's defense ministry reported that duering the daily breifing in Kyiv.

The official said that the Russian mercenaries opened fire from Minsk-banned mortars, hitting residential quarters of Avdiivka. Thus, they also breached the ceasefire in the combat area which lasted for almost 48 hours.As a result, two country houses and a shed were destroyed

Open source

Russian occupational troops continue violating ceasefire agreement  one shooting was documented from the beginning of the day. Donbas conflict one HQ reported on Facebook.

Illegal armed formations shot at Avdiivka (Donbas region) from 120-mm mortars. Six mortar rounds were performed in total. Upon the preliminary information, two country houses and a shed were destroyed, the HQ reports.

It was also mentioned, that militants did not shoot in the Luhansk sector.

The situation on the demarcation line is controlled by Ukrainian soldiers.

Earlier, another ceasefire, agreed by the Trilateral Contact Group, came into force in Donbas at Monday midnight on March 5. Later, the militants shot Ukrainian positions in an hour afterwards.Another serviceman was injured and taken to hospital

A soldier of Ukraine's Armed Forces deceased in the combat area in Donbas. It appeared to be the non-combat casualty; according to the HQ of counter-terrorism operation, the serviceman was fatally wounded in the ammunition mishandling incident.

Another Ukrainian fighter suffered injuries and was taken to the hospital; his life is beyond danger now.

The investigation into the incident is underway.Open source

The very assumption that Nadiya Savchenko was recruited by Russian special services, while in detention in the Russian prison, is a complete nonsense. Dmitriy Peskov, press secretary of Russian president, said that in his interview for MIR 24 TV channel - as quoted by RIA Novosti.

'That probaly comes from the British, they like assuming such things. Of course, it's a complete nonsense. Savchenko's case is a deeply domestic affair of Ukraine', he said.

Peskov reiterated that the European leaders intend to negotiate with Ukraine about Savchenkoas release. 'I wonder if by the end of the day they make a statement, demanding to release her. Let's see,' he said.

On Wednesday, Ukraine's parliament agreed to deprive Savchenko of her MP's immunity and approved her detention. Savchenko was taken to the main building of the SBU (Ukraine's security service) in Kyiv. The court decided that Savchenko remains in custody for two months.

Savchenko, the former pilot of Ukraine's Air Force and participant in the Donbas conflict, is charged with a number of crimes against the state: a coup d'etat attempt, organization of murder attempt on the lives of top officials, preparing a terrorist act, aiding terrorist activity and the illegal gun handling.

The Ukrainian government assumes Savchenko acted in the interests of the Russian Federation.The drone and its owners ended up in police department; Air Force command asks citizens to abstain from tresspassing on guarded military units

Open source

A patrol team of Ukraine's Air Force spotted a drone over the military unit in Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine. The Air Force HQ reported that on Facebook.

According to the message, the drone conducted an unauthorized flight over the military infrastructure object at 10.45 p.m., March 23.

The drone and its owners were identified; the police now investigates the tresspassing incident.

The Air Force command asks citizens to abstain from tresspassing on the premises of the guarded military units.The man kept nine hand grenades, two TNT blocks and 200 ammunition cartridges

The National Police of Ukraine and the state security service (SBU) searched the apartment of a resident of Bilyaivka town in Odesa region, southern Ukraine. It turned out that the man hid an arsenal at his place.

Accordingto the police regional branch's press service, the law enforcers found and confiscated nine hand grenades, two TNT blocks and 200 ammunition cartridges.

The ammunition was sent for an expertise. The police began an investigation into the incident, defining it as 'illegal gun, ammunition or explosives handling'.

Head of the regional olice branch Dmytro Golovin said that the 'collector' could not explain what his intentions were and why would he keep the weapons.Rebecca Harms, Member of the European Parliament from Germany, stated that it was important to regard the success of National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine or Naftogaz-Ukraine, which has recently won at Stockholm Arbitration over Gazprom, and the issues as well

Rebecca Harms, Member of the European Parliament from Germany, resented a fact that the adoption of Anti-Corruption Court Bill in Ukraine is not progressing. She stated this in her comment for DW.

According to her, it is important to regard the success of National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine or Naftogaz-Ukraine, which has recently won at Stockholm Arbitration over Gazprom, and the issues as well.

Our voters expect us to Not remain blind when there is no success, the politician said.

Earlier, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine supported the Presidents Anti-Corruption Court Bill with 282 votes of peoples deputies.

The Bill provides the Anti-Corruption Court to hear cases, if the subject of crime and damage done is 500 more than the living wage for able-bodied people, which is around $34,000 since January 1. This is the main condition. Besides, it does not matter who investigated the case  either it was the National Police, or General Prosecutors Office or the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Some articles consider violations, related to drugs or arms, yet, there is not any article on e-declaration.Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman told the Washington Post that US President Donald Trumps December decision to move the US embassy to the city of Jerusalem is a painful step.

President Trump in December unilaterally declared Jerusalem capital of Israel and announced plans to transfer the US diplomatic mission from Tel Aviv  a move that caused anger in the Muslim world.

Saudi Arabia condemned the decision but is accused of secretly condoning the move as critics noted that local media were prohibited to criticize the decision.

Speaking in a 75-minute interview with the Post editors and reporters, the young royal ranged over a set of topics, from the war in Yemen to the Middle East peace process, Iran, his domestic reform agenda, human rights and Saudi Arabias nuclear plans.

The Trump administration is pushing for Saudi Arabias support to a peace plan being worked by Trumps son-in law Jared Kushner who is the White House advisor.

Late last year, Mohamed bin Salman reportedly summoned leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and attempted to persuade him to toe the US line.

The heir to the Saudi Throne had a luncheon at the White House Tuesday, met with a number of congressional leaders, as well as with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, as he also serves as the kingdoms Defense Minister.

Before ending his nearly three-week tour of the United States, he will visit Boston, New York, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Houston, according to the Washington Post.South Korea delegation will be led by Cho Myung-gyun, Minister of Unification

Open source

North Korea accepted South Koreas offer to meet on March 29 to discuss the terms and agenda of the inter-Korean summit in April, as Yonhap News reported.

North Korea agreed to conduct a high-level meeting in the northern part of a demilitarized zone between the states.

"North Korea delivered its agreement via the border communication channel today, saying it will send a three-member delegation headed by Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for Peaceful Reunification," the website reports.

South Korea delegation will be led by Cho Myung-gyun, Minister of Unification. Chung Eui-yong, Presidents Advisor, Kang Kyung-wha, Foreign Minister, Song Young-moo, Defense Minister. Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, and Moon Jae-in, Republic of Korea President will meet at the inter-Korean summit.

Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that he was ready to meet Kim Jong-un till May 2018 to discuss the current situation in the region. North Korea agreed to adopt a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests.The final revision of the National Security Bill provides parliamentary control of SBU work. Poroshenko stated that on the test site in Kyiv during the celebrations dedicated to the Security Service of Ukraine, broadcasted by 112 Ukraine.

The final revision of the National Security Bill provides control of SBU work by the civil parliament. It is important, as the Bill has to correspond with NATO standards, and our strategic aim is to become NATO member state, Poroshenko said.

Earlier, Petro Poroshenko introduced the Bill to the Verkhovna Rada on February 28.

Parliamentary representatives stressed the priority of the Bill, which will make Ukraine closer to NATO standards and provides a reform of the State Security sector. The USA insisted on this Bill to be adopted earlier.

Yet, EU and NATO criticized Ukraines Bill on National Security. Svitlana Zalishchuk, Ukrainian peoples deputy, published a letter by EU representative in Ukraine, USA Ambassador in Ukraine, the Head of NATO delegation in Ukraine and the Chairman of EUAM Ukraine, where the Bill is criticized. They stressed that the series of articles in the Bill contradicts the practice of EU and NATO.Poroshenko stated that Ukraine's aspirations concerning EU and NATO membership should be indicated in the Constitution

Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko intends to initiate amendments to the Constitution to embed the states strategy towards Euro-Atlantic integration  EU and NATO membership. Poroshenko stated that on the test site in Kyiv during the celebrations dedicated to the Security Service of Ukraine, broadcasted by 112 Ukraine.

In the near future I indents to introduce amendments to the Constitution to make this process irreversible by indicating a strategic aim of states development  EU and NATO membership, Poroshenko said.

Earlier, Petro Poroshenko expressed his support of Ukraines aspiration to become EU and NATO member state and indicate this in the Constitution.According to the Bill, the Pentagon allocates $200 million to provide military technical assistance for Ukraine, which is $50 million more than in 2017

Open source

U.S. President Donald Trump approved security and defense assistance for Ukraine in the amount of $620,700 million. The press-office of Ukrainian Embassy in the USA wrote on Facebook.

U.S. President Trump signed the Omnibus Spending Bill, adopted by the States and the House of Representatives for 2018 financial year. The total amount of assistance for Ukraine is $620,700, which is more than last year budget, the message says.

According to the Bill, the Pentagon allocates $200 million to provide military technical assistance for Ukraine, which is $50 million more than in 2017.

$420,700 million is to be allocated for Ukraine by the U.S. State Department and other agencies involved. It is $10 million more than the budget in 2017.

The document also assigns $250 million to counterwork Russian informational propaganda, corruption and other enforcement actions.

It should be mentioned that U.S. House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Spending Bill for 2018 on March 22. The Bill provides assistance for Ukraine in the amount of $620,7 million.Mozarts Double Piano Concerto in E-flat Major played by Olga and Vladislav Kern. Prokofievs 1st Piano Concerto and Beethovens Symphony No. 7 in A Major conclude the show.

FREE Pre-Concert Lecture begins at 5:00pm. Brent Stevens, KHFM 95.5, hosts an interactive discussion with conductor, guest artists, & special guests. Followed by a Q & A with the audience.

Mozarts Double Piano Concerto in E-flat Major is ambitious, effervescent, and surprising, yet also tender, gentle, and harmonic. Be a part of this extraordinary concert as New Mexico favorite  phenomenal Russian pianist Olga Kern  is joined by her brilliant son, pianist Vladislav Kern  for a truly special experience. Then Olga will launch into Prokofievs 1st Piano Concerto. The concert concludes with Beethovens heroic, joyful Symphony No. 7 in A Major.

Roberto Minczuk, conductor

Olga Kern, piano

Vladislav Kern, piano

Performance Set List:

MOZART Double Piano Concerto in E-flat Major

PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat Major

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A Major

https://www.facebook.com/NMPhilharmonic

FREE Parking & FREE Shuttle when Parking in G LOT.

The Special Event shuttle is fast, easy to use, and free. It's a great option even if you're running late. Buses run continuously beginning 90-120 minutes before the show, drop you off at Popejoy Hall and return you to the shuttle lot up to an hour after the show. Should you have an emergency, buses are available any time during the show to take you back to your car. All of our shuttle buses are wheelchair accessible.

ADA ACCESSIBLE & ASSISTED LISTENING DEVICES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!)Affordable dining tables, coffee tables and benches made from rescued New Mexico woods plus jewelry and mezuzahs from found branches, made by Hershel Mutka Weiss. Runs through 4/9.

Opening Reception and Sale

Affordable dining tables, coffee tables and benches made from rescued New Mexico woods plus jewelry and mezuzahs from found branches. Made by long time Albuquerque Furnituremaker Hershel Mutka Weiss.

The tables and benches are made from land being cleared to create firebreaks near Weed, New Mexico. Planks sawn three inches thick were the starting point for this new furniture.

The work is a departure for Weiss, who is known for his finely crafted work. The tables are made with simple and direct joinery and retain their natural edges and in some cases the bark as well. Weiss also experimented with bark inlay in several pieces, creating a combination of rustic and refined.

Also shown in this exhibit Weiss's first in six years are his first attempts at jewelry, made from found branches, as well as the Jewish ritual objects known as mezuzahs, carved from found branches as well.Medical schools are uniquely positioned to teach current and future physicians about the health risks posed by guns, and to study how to reduce gun violence, said Daniel Bernstein, MD, associate dean for education at the School of Medicine, in his opening remarks at a March 14 teach-in on campus addressing gun violence.

One of the other missions of a medical school is to encourage and foster dialogue, he said. Theres no way to move forward on an issue as politically charged as this one without learning how to talk with our colleagues and friends about it.

The forum included presentations on the epidemiology of gun violence, the financial cost of gun violence, the laws and regulations governing gun ownership in the United States, a trauma surgeons perspective on gun injuries, and a pediatricians call to action on the issue. Among the highlights:

 Understanding the national gun-violence epidemic requires delving into specifics, said Jahan Fahimi, MD, PhD, assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at the University of California-San Francisco. Are we talking injury or death? Homicides or suicides? Black or white? These three [categories], at the very minimum, are needed to get us to a place of understanding the scope of the problem in a more nuanced way, he said. He showed data indicating that gun deaths among African-Americans are primarily homicides. However, most gun deaths, and the majority of those among white Americans, are suicides.

There are few injuries as violent as those from firearms.

 Stanford trauma surgeon Lisa Knowlton, MD, assistant professor of surgery, spoke about her experiences caring for gunshot victims. As trauma surgeons, we like to think we are prepared for anything, but there are few injuries as violent as those from firearms, she said. Knowlton took the audience through the process of assessing and caring for a gunshot victim, enumerating the difficulties of stabilizing these patients and the priorities in trauma surgery for treating gunshot wounds. Patients who survive the initial surgery face multiple surgeries, prolonged stays in the hospital, complications, loss of work, depression, mental health issues, PTSD; the impact can really be very devastating even if they do manage to leave the hospital alive, Knowlton said.

 The financial cost of gun injuries can be measured many different ways, with the annual total cost across the country estimated at $174-$229 billion, Stanford medical student Sarabeth Spitzer told the audience. Last year, Spitzer was the lead author of a study of the costs of initial hospitalizations for gun injuries, which totaled $734.6 million per year nationwide. Other costs, such as lost wages or the toll on quality of life following a gunshot injury, are harder to measure, she said. We also need clearer information on who bears the costs, which now typically land on gunshot victims, insurance companies and taxpayers. The more reliable and transparent the data, the more informed public health decisions can be, Spitzer said.YEREVAN, MARCH 24, ARMENPRESS. The export of Armenian products by the US privileged regime will again be possible after extension of the Generalized System of Preferences by the Congress, Hovhannes Azizyan  Armenias deputy minister of economic development and investments, told Armenpress.

The deputy ministers delegation recently participated in the second session of the Armenia-US Council on Trade and Investments in Washington D.C..

He informed that after the extension of this program the economic entities, who have made additional expenditures, will be compensated. The US GSP program doesnt operate for all countries at this stage. The Congress is going to adopt a decision to extend it in the near future. And the companies, which during this period imported goods and paid high customs duties than envisaged within the GSP framework, will receive back their money after the adoption of the decision by the US Congress, the official said, adding that they hope the system will continue operating and the exporters will not face any problems.

Commenting on the added 10% customs duty on import of US aluminum foil, the deputy minister said here as well there are some regulation mechanisms. As the aluminum foil is one of our exported products, we have also discussed this issue. We were informed that a special procedure has already been set and transferred to the Armenian side within the frames of the session. According to the procedure, the companies importing from the American side can apply and, in case of explaining the necessity to import that product at a lower customs duty, may receive a privilege, and the additional 10% customs duty will not be charged, he said.

The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) is a US trade program designed to promote economic growth in the developing world by providing preferential duty-free entry for up to 4,800 3451 products from 129 designated beneficiary countries, including Armenia.

English translator/editor: Aneta HarutyunyanFlorida Gov. Rick Scott, shown here at the end of the legislative session on March 11, signed a $88.7 billion budget, just days after receiving it, on Friday, March 16, 2018. Mark Wallheiser AP

Gov. Rick Scott signed more than 70 bills into law on Friday, including one that would limit child marriages and another asking Congress to make Daylight Saving Time year-round.

If approved by Congress, Floridians would see darker mornings and brighter evenings year-round. The state would become the third, after Hawaii and most of Arizona, to exempt themselves from a 1996 law that set a uniform time for all time zones across the country.

Sen. Marco Rubio has already introduced a bill in Congress a bill to make the time change permanent in Florida - and the rest of the country.

Scott also approved on Friday new law stripping Pinellas County's embattled construction licensing board of its independence, following a series of Tampa Bay Times stories detailing how the licensing board's leaders and staff operated without oversight or accountability, disregarding agency rules and state law.

The law puts county commissioners in charge of the board.

"We're glad he signed it," Pinellas County Commission Chair Ken Welch said. "We can start to move forward and offer better services to residents."

Scott also approved the nation's strictest ban on child marriages, limiting them to people 17 or older.

Previously, 16- and 17-year-olds could marry with their parents' consent, and county judges could approve marriages with even younger minors if there is a pregnancy involved.

Scott also signed off on allowing the City of Tampa to pay Ramiro Campanioni, Jr. $5 million for injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident caused by a City of Tampa Water Department truck 22 years ago.YEREVAN, MARCH 24, ARMENPRESS. During the second session of the Armenia-US Council on Trade and Investments in Washington D.C., the sides affirmed that the most important issue in the fields of trade and investments is to boost the existing cooperation, Hovhannes Azizyan  Armenias deputy minister of economic development and investments, told Armenpress. He said during the session the sides discussed and reached different agreements on the issues relating to the technical obstacles of trade, customs cooperation, sanitary and phytosanitery norms, intellectual property and labor rights, GSP and investments.

Overall, it was quite a productive discussion, and the sides are committed to take consecutive steps that will contribute to diversification and expansion of our bilateral trade. Based on the agreements reached we must develop an action plan and have a major work to do jointly, the deputy minister noted.

According to the official, the sides stated that a progress was recorded in the field of trade in 2017, but it is not enough taking into account the existing potential. The US and Armenian sides agreed to make an exchange of information on current procedures and make the mutual trade regulations more available through which Armenias investment field will become more favorable and predictable for the American investors.

During the session we presented the current procedures on the trades technical regulations field, also conditioned with Armenias membership to the EAEU. We have presented their development trends, and the same was done by the American side. We have agreed to thoroughly inform each other about the current regulations and understand in which spheres we can create more available and understandable field for the business, for instance, in the technical regulation and standardization field, the deputy minister said, adding that the overall vision is to provide assistance to small and medium business with all possible measures so that they will be able to more easily make export.

Hovhannes Azizyan said from the perspective of export from Armenia to the US, the fresh agricultural goods and reprocessed products are the most important. There is a demand, for instance, for canned food, fresh agricultural products, drinks (wine, brandy). If we are able to jointly carry out a work that will further facilitate the current procedures for our exporters, additional opportunities will be created for SMEs, the deputy minister noted.

The sides also reached an agreement on cooperation between the customs authorities through exchange of information.

As for the improvement of the investment environment, issues relating to the protection of intellectual property were discussed.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan



YEREVAN, MARCH 24, ARMENPRESS. The New South Wales (NSW) Armenia - Australia Parliamentary Friendship Group has passed a resolution, declaring the cross-party collective's solidarity with the Republic of Artsakh and its people's right to self-determination, reported the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU).

The resolution was adopted based on the meeting results between members of the NSW Armenia - Australia Parliamentary Friendship Group and the Republic of Artsakh's visiting Minister of State Arayik Harutyunyan.

The resolution, in particular, states that the Legislative Council of New South Wales in 2012 recognized the right to self-determination of all peoples including those of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh and called on the Commonwealth Government to officially recognize the independence of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh and strengthen Australia's relationship with Artsakh and its citizens.

The Parliamentary Friendship Group stands in solidarity with the 2012 resolution by the Legislative Council, including to recognize the right to self-determination of people in Artsakh.

English translator/editor: Aneta HarutyunyanYEREVAN, MARCH 24, ARMENPRESS. The Political Science Association of Armenia at its March 24, 2018 convention, held at the National Defense Research University, expressing concern over the exacerbating confrontation between the Russian Federation and the United States, adopted an Address Prognosis of Political Scientists for the Threat of Nuclear Catastrophe Confirmed to the Presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States of America, Their Excellencies Mr. Vladimir Putin and Mr. Donald Trump, urging to implement all necessary steps to return to the reset policy in the relations between the Russian Federation and the US, the Association told Armenpress. The text of the Address was delivered to the embassies of the RF and the US in the Republic of Armenia.

The Address was presented by Lieutenant General Hayk Kotanjian, Chairman, Political Science Association of Armenia, Doctor of Political Science, Professor, Founding head, NDRU. At the convention Dr. Kotanjian presented the innovative guidelines of the Armenias National Security Strategy review implemented at the NDRU. He emphasized that the NDRU has employed the constantly updated methodological knowledge gained at the US, RF and Israeli think tanks through that process.

Below is published the full text of the PSAA Address.

In its Address of 7 October, 2014, the Political Science Association of Armenia expressed its stark concern for the tensions between the two nuclear superpowers  the US and the RF  growing deeper and threatening to transform into confrontation. Today, in the light of the ongoing war in Syria, the escalation of the Kurdish Issue, the unsettledness of post-Soviet military-political conflicts, and instability in the east of Ukraine, the increasing tensions among the states led by you and your allies in military-political organizations may prompt destabilization all over the world, which is freight with a catastrophe of global scale.

In its previous Address, the Political Science Association of Armenia expressed the hope that the deepened rift between the two world leading states would not entail confrontation between the US and RF. Academic experts have long been raising the alarm that the nuclear arsenals of both of Your states are quite sufficient to destroy multiple times our common home  the planet Earth. We expressed assurance that the Leaders of the Russian Federation and the United States of America would never let this speculative conclusion become a reality. Meanwhile, nowadays many politicians and political scientists of NATO and CSTO member states articulate more frequently the reality of such developments, which was forecast by the PSAA back in 2014. We consider it our professional duty to note that allowing the further escalation of the conflict with statements and actions overstepping the limits of diplomatic traditions may well facilitate the mankind to approach the point of no return beyond which global catastrophe waits.

The practice of such development of situation in the 20th century indicates that the availability of the nuclear capacity at the conflicting party states is a containing factor, which in the end did prevent the US and the USSR from turning the Cuban Missile Crisis into the Third World War with the lethal aftermath for the entire humanity. The diplomatic efforts made then by American and Soviet leaders were directed in particular, towards the establishment of direct and effective communication between the two superpowers, whereas, today, just the contrary, the possibilities of such communication and dialogue are intentionally diminished. The political leaders of the 21st century, playing their parts in the global system of network relations, are entrusted the accountable mission of thinking and acting not only in the interests of their citizens and societies, but also to the benefit or to the detriment of the entire humanity. The very right of being in command of the fate of multi-centennial civilizations, material and spiritual resources accumulated by them, and the ecosystem, serves as a compulsory obligation for nowadays leaders to preserve and protect everything the contemporary generation has inherited.

Distinguished gentlemen!

The Political Science Association of Armenia is honored to ask You as leaders, who have been entrusted by the peoples the responsibility for the fates of generations, to undertake all the measures required for going back to the reset policy. We strongly believe that in contemporary circumstances, guided by the interests of global security, You and the nations led by You, are called to serve as credible guarantors of peace and dialogue between the venerable nations and states of Yours, as well as the other participants of the global political developments.YEREVAN, MARCH 24, ARMENPRESS. No one of the international and regional players reacts to the ongoing military operations in Syrias Afrin and this is concerning, expert on Turkish studies Anush Hovhannisyan told reporters, Armenpress reports.

This shows that the Syrian crisis has become a test field for this changing policy, she said.

According to Hovhannisyan, nobody, in fact, is interested in the Syrian crisis and no one is going to adhere to its promises.

Turkey, in fact, carries out a military operation or occupies the territory of a neighbor state, and implements this with the silent consent of Russia and the US, Anush Hovhannisyan said.

As for the main operations in Afrin, the expert on Turkish studies highlighted two issues:

The first one is what Turkey is going to do after Afrin, will it stop or move forward, how will be the relations with the US, Russia and other regional players in connection with the Operation Olive Branch. The second issue, which is also very important, is how Erdogan will capitalize his victory in his inner-political life, Anush Hovhannisyan said, reminding that the Turkish authorities announce that the operation will not end only with Afrin.

Hovhannisyan is confident that with its inner-Islamist trends Turkey will clash also with Iran, although now they are situational allies on Syria. Given these developments, Anush Hovhannisyan says its impossible not to worry about the fate of Armenians in Syria as the developments of events are unpredictable. She said there are doubts that despite the seeming stabilization and political talks there is a danger that this war is endless. She urged also not to forget the Azerbaijani factor.

English translator/editor: Aneta HarutyunyanYEREVAN, MARCH 24, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Ambassador to Germany Ashot Smbatyan on March 22 delivered a report titled Armenia and Europe: Look to the Future in the Johannes Lepsius House-Museum in Potsdam, the foreign ministry told Armenpress.

The event was attended by representatives of German scientific circles, diplomats and journalists.

In his report the Ambassador touched upon the Armenian history, rich culture, international recognition of the Armenian Genocide and the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement process. Speaking about Armenias positive cooperation experience with the European family, the Ambassador noted that Armenia, maintaining its strategic allied relations with Russia, can be exemplary in terms of the use of both, and principle in foreign policy.

After delivering the report the Ambassador answered questions of the meeting participants.

English translator/editor: Aneta HarutyunyanYEREVAN, MARCH 24, ARMENPRESS. The State Service for Food Safety of Armenias ministry of agriculture reported to the Police about the discovery of production of soft drinks with counterfeit trademarks of Coca Cola, Fanta Orange and Fanta Exotic.

Edgar Janoyan  head of communication, analysis and media department of the Police, told Armenpress that investigation was launched based on these reports, the amounts of the damage caused are being clarified.

Spokesperson of the State Service for Food Safety Nvard Arakelyan told Armenpress that the fake products were discovered in January, after that they have been completely collected from the market.

The information to clarify the source of the fraud or all possible illegal actions has been transmitted to different relevant structures, including the law enforcement agencies. The Police conduct investigation, she said.

According to media reports, the talk is about more than 3000 bottles of counterfeit drinks, but the State Service for Food Safety didnt mention concrete numbers.

English translator/editor: Aneta HarutyunyanKazakhstan is trying to sell military vehicles to its neighbors, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In an interview with InformBuro, the general director of Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering (KPE), Erbol Salimov, stated that the firm is looking to export several types of military vehicles to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.



Arlan Armoured Personnel Carrier at KADEX 2016, the Kazakhstan Defense Exhibition held in Astana (Picture source: Army Recognition)

Responding to a question about where KPE plans to sell its products beyond Kazakhstan, Salimov noted that the firm is focused on Central Asia. He said the Arlan, a locally-produced version of Plasan's Sand Cat, would be demonstrated soon in Uzbekistan and that the country was extremely interested in the vehicle. KPE's Alan, a locally-produced version of Paramount Group's Marauder, was demonstrated in Uzbekistan last year.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan signed a military cooperation plan in August 2017, followed by an agreement on military-technical cooperation the following month.

Salimov did not discuss how many vehicles Uzbekistan is interested in purchasing. It is likely that Uzbekistan would equip its military as well as other security services with both Alan and Arlan.

According to Salimov, Turkmenistan is another potential Central Asian customer for the Kazakh vehicles. KPE is planning to send several Arlan vehicles for that country to test.

Turkmenistan purchased a number of military vehicles in recent years. Suppliers to the country include the UAE and Turkey.Voters in at least a dozen counties will have tax on ballot; referendums have not fared well since option allowed in 2007

Dare County: Allow Hatteras Village Community Center District to expand the use of ad valorem taxes to include funding the construction and maintenance of multi-use pathways.

Gaston: Authorize $250 million in school bonds to fund school construction needs.

Greene: To permit the sale of mixed drinks in hotels, restaurants, private clubs, community theaters, and convention centers.

Jones: Authorize a tax for fire protection in the Maysville Fire Protection District.

Moore: Approve a $103 million school bond.

Rowan: Approve the lease by the city of Salisbury of its Fibrant Communications system to Hotwire Communications Ltd.

Voters in numerous North Carolina counties will vote for more than candidates in their districts. Twelve counties feature ballots in the May 8 primary with an option to approve a one-quarter percent sales tax hike.Bertie, Clay, Gaston, Jones, Lenoir, Lincoln, Pasquotank, Person, Rockingham, Rutherford, Washington, and Watauga counties are asking voters to choose whether to raise the sales tax. More counties could add a similar measure to their ballots in the next few weeks.In 2007, the General Assembly passed legislation allowing counties to propose an additional one-quarter percent sales tax. Voters are asked to approve the taxes in a referendum, and while the counties can use the revenue for whatever they choose, they're prohibited by law to say on the ballot where that money would go.Julie Tisdale, the John Locke Foundation's city and county policy analyst, said most counties plan to use the sales tax increase to fund education.Thirty-one counties have already introduced the tax since the law passed. Tisdale said most sales tax referendums have failed on their first attempts, including in the 12 counties now holding a sales tax referendum for the upcoming election.Tisdale said.Tisdale said research suggests that when local taxes are raised and are higher than nearby counties, people will cross county lines to shop. Small decreases in employment and payroll, particular in retail and manufacturing jobs, are also a possible consequence of sales tax hikes.While the effects are most profound when the taxes are first implemented, Tisdale said they do tend to equalize a bit over time. Still, she recommends counties exercise caution before hiking sales tax because the negative effects may outweigh the increased revenue.Sara Mogilski, chief communications officer at the N.C. Association of County Commissioners , said it is up to each county and its voters to decide whether to increase resources to meet the demand for services."The association promotes strengthening local decision-making to respond to local needs, including paying for state-mandated services they provide," Mogilski said. "Supporting efforts to preserve and expand the existing local revenue base of counties is one of NCACC's long-standing goals, as determined by our members."The one-quarter percent sales tax increase isn't the only item on upcoming ballots. Some other ballot amendments include:The N.C. Court of Appeals released three separate rulings in Map Act cases, dealing another blow to the North Carolina Department of Transportation.On Tuesday, March 20, the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of landowners in NCDOT v. Stimpson NCDOT v. Chapman , and NCDOT v. MDC Investments . Chief Judge Linda McGee wrote the opinions in all three cases. In each instance, Appeals Court judges Rick Elmore and Hunter Murphy concurred.All three cases pertain to the Map Act, a 1987 statute allowing NCDOT to restrict private land in the path of future roadways. Hundreds of property owners were stuck with land they couldn't use or sell, while NCDOT refused to buy the properties. Since 2009, nearly 500 property owners from various counties sued the state. In July 2016, the General Assembly effectively nullified the law In November 2016, the N.C. Supreme Court ruled for the landowners and ordered NCDOT to start appraising properties and pay up. The transportation department instead opted to stall, filing several unsuccessful appeals and spending at least $3.8 million in taxpayer dollars for outside legal fees.In May of that year, landowners in Forsyth County filed complaints arguing that NCDOT had essentially taken their property in November 2008 as part of the Northern Beltway project. The landowners filed for inverse condemnation to force the department to buy the land, but a few months later, NCDOT filed for direct condemnation of the properties.By filing for a direct condemnation, the department argued it had tried to take the properties in December 2016 and not November 2008 as the landowners claimed. NCDOT would pay owners the December 2016 value of the property, instead of also paying damages, various fees, and interest incurred from taking the property eight years earlier.In turn, the landowners filed motions to dismiss NCDOT's complaint, if effect arguing they had beaten the department to the punch. A trial court agreed, but NCDOT appealed.The three cases reached the Court of Appeals in November 2017.NCDOT's argument, as summarized by McGee in NCDOT v. Stimpson, claims the department has the right to file a complaint and declaration for a property at any time, even if an ongoing condemnation action is underway for the same property.McGee wrote.Matthew Bryant, an attorney who has represented numerous landowners in the Map Act cases, said he is very pleased with the court's decision.Bryant said.Meanwhile, NCDOT released a report on possible means of protecting transportation corridors without infringing on property rights. The report provides five options for legislators to consider. The department recommended option C as the most equitable.Option C proposes a statute letting NCDOT file transportation maps placing no restrictions on the affected property with one exception: Property owners within a corridor would have to notify the department of any plans for zoning, subdivision, or building permits. In those cases, the department could purchase the property if the proposed development was likely to impede transportation work in the corridor.Government intervention in the economy has failed time and again, notwithstanding the narrative of the Left

The ink is dry, but the howling from the Left continues. The 2017 tax reform law is in place and working as advertised - lower personal and corporate taxes, more money in the pockets of Americans, repatriation of billions of dollars of corporate profit, and an economy that will be robust. Still, the Left's version of taxes and economics continues to be the dominant narrative of our nation's 20th century history. Wrong as it is, it seems impervious to correction; a hydra-headed monster that does not die. "History," says the eminent historian Peter Geyl, "is an argument without end."Many articles have recounted the following litany of liberal touchpoints in American history: early 20th century Progressives rescued America from the "economic injustices" of 19th century free-market capitalism; the 1920s saw "wages remain stagnant as profits grew"; the Great Depression was the result of too much capitalism; the New Deal saved the country from collapse; World War II spending restored prosperity; high post-war tax rates brought on "the affluent society"; the War on Poverty "diminished the percentage of Americans living beneath the poverty line." The narrative concludes that we've seen a reversal of all this "progress" as tax rates were lowered under presidents Reagan, Bush, and now Trump. Wringing his hands, one writer sees the U. S.For his summation, he cites a poverty expert from the United Nations, who proclaims America isWhile some historians would like to pretend that these liberal perspectives are beyond question, there is a very different view held by prominent, modern historians such as Paul Johnson, Amity Shlaes, Marvin Olasky, Niall Ferguson, Arthur Herman, and others. These historians would agree with Reagan's assessment,Fact is, the economic growth of the 19th century was truly remarkable. Olasky has chronicled the commensurate progress made in fighting poverty through private charity during that century. In contrast, Olasky, Charles Murray and others have documented the devastating results of well-intentioned government welfare programs in the 20th century, which have created a vast underclass of dependency.As for the supposed "chaos" of the 1920s, America actually experienced widespread prosperity. Reduced taxes and limited government interference fostered unprecedented economic growth through this decade. Gross National Product grew at an astounding annual rate of 4.7 percent, while unemployment declined from 6.7 percent to 3.2 percent and consumer prices remained stable.People across all tax brackets benefited. Between 1922 and 1928, the number of taxpayers earning more than $100,000 quadrupled, and the average income in this group rose 15 percent. Similarly, the number of taxpayers in the $10,000-to-$100,000 bracket increased 84 percent. In the lowest bracket, those earning below $10,000 actually declined. Historian Thomas Silver notes the tax reforms championed by President Calvin Coolidge alleviated 98 percent of Americans - the working class and the poor - from paying any income tax.The still-popular liberal tenet that the New Deal saved America has been contested by a number of modern historians. Most notably, Shlaes, in The Forgotten Man, has ably chronicled how government intervention - first by President Herbert Hoover, somewhat timidly, and then by President Franklin Roosevelt, very aggressively transformed a sharp recession into a 10-year depression. As FDR's own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, lamented in 1940,Herman has documented the change of perspective that the reality of World War II produced. Roosevelt rejected calls to nationalize the economy and relied on the free market - a decision that was critical to winning the war. U.S. production far outstripped our enemies and our allies. It also left America well positioned to dominate the post-war economic world.Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty is the poster child for liberal policy failure. The heralded 1966 expansion of government entitlement spending was designed not only to reduce the rate of poverty but also to eradicate the root causes of poverty. It failed on both counts. After over 50 years and trillions of dollars in expenditures, the overall rate of poverty in the U.S. remains essentially unchanged. More tragically, millions of Americans are consigned to permanent underclass status and trapped in dependency on entitlements.Given the ample evidence of government's intervention results, how can liberals call for more of the same?The "argument without end" will continue, but conservatives should be confident the facts are on our side. For Americans who know their history, the productive path forward is clear. The Tax Reform Bill of 2017 is a step in the right direction. We should reject the Left's age-old fables, no matter how many times they are told.In the first installment of this series, I offered several reasons why conservative families ought to consider sending their kids to the local community college. This time, I would like to examine some of the reasons why conservative state legislators and other policymakers should be supportive of the two-year colleges in their states.I do not mean to imply that they are not already supportive-although my experience as a long-time community college faculty member and administrator suggests that they often are not supportive enough. Perhaps that is because elected officials, regardless of party, tend to come from privileged backgrounds. Few of them, if any, attended a community college. So while they may recognize such institutions as a general good, or at least pay lip service to that idea, they do not really give them much thought. Certainly, they do not pay as much attention to two-year schools as they do to their own famous-name alma maters, whether on Saturday afternoons in the fall or during the appropriations process.In talking about community colleges from a conservative perspective, I begin with an assumption that some fellow conservatives might not share: namely, that public higher education is indeed a public good as well as a private good, worthy of being supported by tax dollars. I believe it is, for a number of reasons. But whether you agree or not, the fact remains that public higher education is probably here to stay. The question is not whether we will spend money on it, but how much and for whom.In the ongoing debate over how to allocate tax dollars for higher education, community colleges often get a bad rap due to their "abysmal" graduation rates-as low as 15-20 percent, in some cases. Why spend money, the argument goes, on something that is clearly not effective, anyway? If we invest millions in institutions and programs where students do not graduate, what do we get in return for our money? Such arguments, focused solely on graduation rates, are misleading. Anyone associated with community colleges knows that a large number of our students transfer to four-year schools without actually graduating-that is, without earning an associate's degree. Some just stay for a year before moving on, but many stay the entire two years and earn enough credits to graduate (or very close)-they just do not go to the trouble of filling out the paperwork to apply for the degree.Try as we may to persuade them of the importance of receiving that diploma, most simply do not see the point. They are transferring to a university, anyway, with the goal of earning a bachelor's. What's an associate's degree to them? (Students are mistaken in this, by the way. Research from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University clearly shows that those who earn an associate's degree before transferring are much more likely to complete a bachelor's degree than those who transfer without the associate's. Getting students to understand that, however, is another matter.)In addition, community colleges serve many other types of students that are not as common at universities, like dually enrolled students and adults coming back to take a course or two for personal enrichment or professional development. Few of those students stay long enough to earn a degree, either.When all those students are lumped into our graduation statistics, it looks as though we have failed even though we have not. We gave them what they needed in order to move on and further their educational goals, which was our mission in the first place. (It's worth mentioning that quite a few highly successful Americans began their college education in community colleges , including H. Ross Perot, George Lucas, and Dr. Craig Venter.) And sure enough, as the CCRC's findings suggest, when transfer rates are factored in along with graduation rates, the overall "success rate" at a typical community college begins to look much more like that of a mid-sized regional university.Which is not to say that community colleges do not have their struggles with graduation and even success rates. They do. But much of that can be attributed to the fact that many community colleges have "open door policies," meaning they accept anyone with a high school diploma or GED, regardless of grades or standardized test scores. Some even offer programs on campus to help high school dropouts earn their GED so they can enroll in college.As a result, many community college students begin their careers in remedial math, reading, and writing courses-and far too many of them never make it any further. This problem has been the subject of much debate lately: How do we help remedial students persist and ultimately succeed? Some progress has been made in states like California and North Carolina , primarily by "mainstreaming" such students into college-level courses, with additional lab work or tutoring required.Still, the fact remains: A lot of community college students fail or drop out. Is not that a waste of money?I believe this is where conservatives' principles are truly put to the test. Those of us on the right talk love to talk about the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. We rightly accuse liberals of pursuing equality of outcome at the expense of freedom and justice by favoring some groups over others. Such equality of outcome is ultimately unachievable and attempts to force it upon society only lead to greater problems.But here is the rub: Do we genuinely believe in equality of opportunity? Because that is precisely what community colleges represent in our society: An opportunity for students who might not have been brought up in an affluent area or had supportive parents, who might not have attended the best high schools or taken a bunch of AP courses, who might not have had many of the advantages that today's adult conservative professionals enjoyed. Maybe they cannot get into a university-but they still deserve an opportunity to pursue a college education, or at least some sort of technical degree if that is what they want. Sure, many of them will fail. That is inevitable. But many others will succeed, becoming productive citizens, all because we provided them that opportunity to begin with.And just how much money are we talking about "risking," anyway? Relatively speaking, not that much. According to the Lumina Foundation , to educate students at a public four-year university, states spend an average of $14,000 per student per year. For community college students, that figure is only $9,000 per student per year. When we use the Department of Education's guidelines for comparing graduation rates-150 percent of the "normal time to degree," or six years for four-year institutions and three years for two-year institutions-that equates to $84,000 for a bachelor's degree versus $27,000 for an associate's degree. Thus, even factoring in lower graduation rates-60 percent at six years as compared to 30 percent at three years, according to the DOE-the associate's degree is still a bargain for states. Every million dollars invested in a four-year university effectively yields seven graduates, while each million invested in a two-year college yields 11 graduates.Admittedly, many other variables come into play. A bachelor's degree is, generally speaking, worth more to a state's economy than an associate's degree (although that is not always true, as some technical degrees are highly valuable). And as I've already noted, many community college students go on to four-year universities, further complicating one-to-one financial comparisons between the two types of institutions. My point is that the perception of two-year colleges as a "waste of money," sadly all too common among conservative policymakers, is simply false.Given that waste is a fact of life at all levels of education-indeed, all levels of government-community colleges are among our leanest, most efficient institutions. They do not need rock-climbing walls, expensive health clubs, or luxurious dormitories to attract students. All they need is adequate staffing, competent, fairly-paid faculty, and reasonably modern facilities. I call on conservative policymakers to renew their commitment to making sure two-year colleges in their states are well positioned to fulfill the promise of conservatism: that anyone can succeed in this country, with a lot of hard work and a little bit of opportunity.Contact: White House

White House Press Office

President Donald J. Trump is taking action to address Chinese policies and practices that are harming American innovation. The President has directed his Administration to consider a range of actions to respond to China's acts, policies, and practices involving the unfair and harmful acquisition of U.S. technology. President Trump's Administration will propose for public comment adding 25 percent additional tariffs on certain products that are supported by China's unfair industrial policy. Sectors subject to the proposed tariffs will include aerospace, information communication technology, and machinery. USTR will confront China's discriminatory technology licensing practices through a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute proceeding. The Department of Treasury, in consultation with other agencies, will propose restrictions on investment by China in sensitive U.S. technology.President Donald J. Trump based his actions in large part on the findings of the Section 301 investigation conducted by his Administration. In August, President Trump's Administration launched an investigation into Chinese acts, policies, and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) led the investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which gives the USTR broad authority subject to Presidential direction to eliminate unfair trade practices or policies that burden U.S. commerce. This was the first Section 301 investigation since 2013. USTR led an extensive investigation based on a thorough analysis of evidence and comments received from academics, think tanks, law firms, trade associations, and American companies and workers. The investigation concluded that China uses foreign ownership restrictions, such as joint venture requirements and administrative review and licensing processes to force or pressure U.S. companies to transfer technology to Chinese entities. China requires foreign companies that access their New Energy Vehicles market to transfer core technologies to a joint venture and disclose development and manufacturing technology for the entire vehicle. The investigation concluded that China forces U.S. companies seeking to license technologies to Chinese entities to do so on non-market based terms. China imposes contractual restrictions on the licensing of intellectual property and foreign technology into their country, but does not put the same restrictions on contracts between two Chinese enterprises. The investigation concluded that China directs and unfairly facilitates investments and acquisitions to generate large-scale technology transfer from U.S. companies to Chinese entities. A Chinese government-backed fund helped Apex Technology Co., a Chinese investment consortium, acquire a U.S. computer-printer maker which had previously sued Apex over patent infringement. The investigation concluded that China conducts and supports cyber intrusions into U.S. companies to access their sensitive commercial information, such as trade secrets. In 2014, the U.S. charged five Chinese military hackers for cyber espionage committed against U.S. corporations and a labor organization for commercial advantage. An interagency analysis estimates that China's unfair acts, policies, and practices cause tens of billions in damages to the United States each year.President Trump has made clear that his Administration will confront unfair trade practices that harm American commerce. Since taking office, President Trump has sought to confront unfair trade practices that have harmed American commerce for far too long. The President's Administration conducted 82 antidumping and countervailing duty investigations in 2017. This was a 58 percent increase in investigations over 2016.In January, the President announced new safeguard tariffs on imported large residential washing machines and solar cells.The President's decision to implement the tariffs was based on recommendations by the bi-partisan, independent International Trade Commission. President Trump's Administration has successfully litigated WTO disputes targeting unfair trade practices and upholding our right to enact fair trade laws. In February 2018, USTR won a WTO compliance challenge against China's unfair antidumping and countervailing duties on U.S. poultry exports, and China announced the termination of those duties. In November 2017, the United States won a WTO dispute regarding Indonesia's unfair import licensing regime restricting U.S. agricultural exports. In October 2017, a WTO compliance panel found that U.S. tuna labeling rules designed to inform consumers about safe fishing practices were consistent with WTO standards. In September 2017, the WTO rejected allegations by the European Union that Boeing was receiving prohibited subsidies. In June 2017, a WTO compliance panel rejected almost all claims by the European Union that alleged U.S. subsidies to Boeing were causing serious prejudice to Airbus, instead finding that 28 of 29 challenged programs were consistent with WTO rules.Now that it is fully apparent, to all who have the ability to pay some modicum of attention, that Imposter President Biden has extreme cognitive issues, in addition to being an inveterate liar: Can OUR Republic continue with this Executive Office that has completely failed, so many times, on far too many issues here at this early date in this abysmal presidency?

No, Joseph R. Biden is completely unqualified, morally and cognitively, to represent real Americans, and lead this Republic of disparate peoples.

Yes, Joseph R. Biden has started whispering again, even softer now than before; so, I know he still cares, plus, OUR media will soon stop reporting on Afghanistan in favor of OUR Socialist ideals.The New York Times reports that Uber's autonomous vehicles require human intervention every 13 miles, on average, while Google's go 5,600: they were "not living up to expectations months before a self-driving car operated by the company struck and killed a woman in Tempe, Ariz."

When Mr. Khosrowshahi took over as Uber's chief executive, he had considered shutting down the self-driving car operations, according to two other people familiar with Mr. Khosrowshahi's thinking.

But he became convinced that it was important to Uber's long-term prospects. His visit to Phoenix was seen by the Arizona team as a critical opportunity to demonstrate their progress, according to the people familiar with the company's operations in the Phoenix area. They wanted to take him on a ride without human interventions to demonstrate that the cars could handle so-called edge cases, tricky road situations that are hard to predict.

"With autonomy, the edge cases kill you, so you've got to build out for all the edge cases," Mr. Khosrowshahi said at a conference in November.News / National

by Staff reporter

The list released by President Emmerson this week, which contained the names of companies and individuals accused of "externalising" money from Zimbabwe, generated a lot of chatter but, quite predictably, there was more heat than light in the whole fiasco.In the first place, "externalisation" as a crime does not exist in our laws. On that account alone, the legality of the whole exercise is rendered questionable.According to the president's list, hundreds of companies and individuals have failed to bring back to Zimbabwe US$827 million stashed offshore after the expiry of an amnesty.While there is nothing wrong with the idea of a naming-and-shaming approach to fighting corruption, it is our considered view that there is no room for cheap populism in matters of serious public policy. At all times, public officials must be guided by the law. Arbitrary actions, knee-jerk reactions, political grandstanding and smoke-and-mirrors manoeuvres give a bad name to the fight to combat corruption.Rushing to name and shame people on the basis of sloppy and unverified information  a shoddy job  has created a situation where people and corporate entities are recklessly defamed and subjected to untold reputational damage.Government should have put together a team of financial and legal experts, with clear terms of reference, to carefully study these financial flows before a decision was made to name and shame anyone.While the idea of stemming illicit financial flows is commendable, the unintended consequences of going about it in a desultory manner is that the whole effort comes across as an ill-conceived, populist and opportunistic campaign.Before going public with the names, the authorities should have privately conferred with these companies and individuals to afford them a chance to explain themselves  a principle of natural justice.Put simply, the idea, though good, was badly executed. Already, there are indications that some of the companies on the list closed shop a long time ago. Other companies are not even registered.According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the continent loses as much as US$50 billion in illicit financial flows every year."This is approximately double the official development assistance that Africa receives and, indeed, the estimate may well be short of reality as accurate data does not exist for all transactions and for all African countries," says the commission.Illicit financial flows impede economic development in various ways. Corruption and tax evasion erode the economic base, making it difficult for a government to mobilise money to fund public health, education, infrastructure and other vital amenities and services.There is reason to believe that funds smuggled across borders are the proceeds of the plunder of precious minerals, drug dealing and even human trafficking.To enhance the fight on illicit financial flows, Mnangagwa should now ensure that these crimes are tackled in a legal, coherent and efficient manner  without fear or favour  and in a way that does not harm innocent victims and rattle investor confidence.News / Press Release

by TZ

I appreciate you all for coming to this momentous event in the history of our party. Pastors, traditional leaders from Bikita and Binga, our Alliance partners represented by Brig Mutambara and students. Thank you all. It is my honour, as substantive TZ President to welcome you to this historic inaugural congress.The failure of Zimbabwe has been the failure of leadership. God has blessed Zimbabwe so much with all forms of resources like diamonds, gold, platinum, amd other minerals which our country's presidium cannot even pronounce, yet Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate. The failure of Zimbabwe has been a failure of leadership and this is precisely a question we have to deal with.This People's Congress is coming against a backdrop of a recent coup in Zimbabwe. Though it was popular, it still remains very illegal. The architects of the coup, Emerson Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and the junta have been propping up ousted President Robert Mugabe. They organised the preemptive coup of 2008 to prevent the late Morgan Tsvangirai from taking over after winning the 2008 presidential election. Since 1980 they have destroyed this nation together with Mugabe. Even the tribal division in our nation, Gukurahundi was a big part in creating them and ED was the right hand man in all of those.Life has not changed for the people of Zimbabwe since the illegal coup. There is no change to talk about.This congress has five objectives:1. Election of substantive leadershipThe first task of this Congress is to elect the leadership to lead this party for the next 5 years, the Leadership we can believe in to Transform Zimbabwe and Make it a Jewel.2. Launch IGNITESince 1980, Zimbabwe has had over 17 economic blueprints, but none has worked. The implementation phase has been the grave yard of all Zimbabwean policies because of the leadership deficit we have. The real deal is leadership. IGNITE will work because we have the leadership to make it work.3. Crafting election strategyThis congress will develop and shape our roadmap to victory in the upcoming 2018 elections. Zimbabwe must accept a new generation of leaders who fear God without which there will be no change.4. Review TZ participation in the AllianceWe believe in working with others and this we did in NERA and MDC Alliance. We did so guided by the resolution of the TZ National Executive Council and our way forward in the Alliance will be determined by this Honourable house. This Congress will discuss our participation in the Alliance and make a resolution that will protect our place in the Alliance.5. Lastly, this Congress will prepare the people of Zimbabwe in crossing over into the promised land led by the leadership here present. Our crossing over will be miraculous and let's prepare our people for that.I thank you all for coming.God bless Transform ZimbabweGod bless Zimbabwe #TZ Communications_www.jacobngarivhume.com_Opinion / Columnist

President Mnangagwa is an interesting character with a fascinating history. His story reads like a Hollywood script where the main actor should not die for the continuity of the film.As the main actor in Zimbabwe's political soap opera, President Mnangagwa has survived countless attempts on his life. He first survived the guillotine in 1964 after blowing up a Rhodesian steam locomotive with his colleague, Matthew Malowa. Young Emmerson was only saved by his age as the law at the time did not allow a death sentence on persons under the age of 21.When he was appointed Vice President in 2014, he survived yet another life-threatening attempt when his office at the Zanu-PF headquarters was sprayed with cyanide. After missing the target, the deadly poison ended up causing serious injuries to his secretary, Mrs Catherine Magaya.The innocent lady was the first person to enter the office unaware it had been sprayed with poison.At the height of Zanu-PF infighting instigated by the G40 cabal fronted by the strident former First Lady Mrs Grace Mugabe, President Mnangagwa had numerous break-ins at his New Government Complex offices. What happened to police investigations relating to those incidents is a matter for another day.The worst was yet to come for the "main actor".Things reached a crescendo when President Mnangagwa was poisoned during a youth interface rally in Gwanda in August last year. The incident saw him being airlifted to South Africa for treatment in what is now commonly known as the "icecream saga". Again, in a typical movie style, President Mnangagwa survived.Slowly, things were reaching a tipping point in Zanu-PF. Former president Mugabe was pushed into an invidious position by the G40 cabal fronted by his ambitious wife who sought to gab power by any means.During the 9th Youth Interface Rally on November 5, 2017 in Bulawayo, Mr Mugabe drew a line in the sand and threatened to fire Mnangagwa who was his deputy then. This was after multitudes of party supporters booed Mr Mugabe's wife for defending then Minister Higher and Tertiary Education Professor Jonathan Moyo. Mr Mugabe concluded that those who jeered his wife were Mnangagwa's "hired" supporters. Prof Moyo, who is now a fugitive, was accused of embezzling more than US$400 000 from the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (ZIMDEF).Two days later, Mnangagwa was expelled from Government and as Zanu-PF's Second Secretary. His expulsion broke the camel's back and to borrow a phrase from Lieutenant-General Sibusiso Moyo (Retired): "the situation . . . moved to another level". Soon after his expulsion, Mnangagwa's security was withdrawn. The move was designed to leave him exposed and vulnerable as plans were already afoot to arrest him on trumped-up charges. Mnangagwa got wind of the plot and made another movie style escape to South Africa via Mozambique.He left a strongly worded statement threatening to return to take control of the levers of power in two weeks. True to his word, in two weeks, things changed in spectacular fashion.Zimbabweans from all walks of life and political persuasions took to the streets with the support of the military under an operation code named "Operation Restore Legacy" demanding Mugabe's resignation. Zanu-PF convened an extraordinary Central Committee meeting that recalled Mugabe as its First Secretary and State President. Mnangagwa was re-admitted into the party as a Central Committee member. The party recommended his elevation to the position of First Secretary and State President pending ratification at its scheduled December Congress. Things were happening too fast for Mugabe who then resigned when impeachment proceedings were already in motion. On November 24, 2017 Mnangagwa was inaugurated as Zimbabwe's second Executive President. The rest is now history.Thus, events leading to Mnangagwa's ascension left everyone convinced that the man is one of the best political minds to emerge in the land between Zambezi and the Limpopo rivers.However, many are not aware of how and where President Mnangagwa shaped his political career let alone that he once occupied a powerful position Zambia's United National Independence Party youth wing as secretary-general. UNIP was Zambia's first black ruling party at independence led by founding nationalist President Kenneth David Kaunda. In fact, President Mnangagwa pursued the greater part of his education in Zambia where he later joined other nationalists to wage our war of liberation.The Herald last week explored how President Mnangagwa as a rural boy from Mapanzure in Zvishavane ended up settling in Zambia in the late 1950s together with his family; how he shaped his political career in Lusaka and how he connected with other nationalists to launch the war of liberation.The "great trek" to Zambia took The Herald to Chief Shakumbila, Myooye Primary School, Mumbwa Secondary School and the University of Zambia where President Mnangagwa studied law. To visit all these areas, President Mnangagwa's nephew based in Lusaka, Mr Wilfred Miga, played a central role. He facilitated interviews with the President's relatives and some of his classmates.President Mnangagwa's brother based in Mumbwa, Mr Socha Mnangagwa, said the Mnangagwa family relocated to Zambia in 1957 to escape the Land Tenure Act that restricted blacks to five head of cattle and eight acres of land. For the Mnangagwa family, Zambia became the best option for settlement for two reasons. First, they had an auntie who was married to a Zambian and, second, the soil in Mumbwa area where they later settled was good for agriculture. Mr Socha Mnangagwa, a member of the United Church of Zambia, gave an account of the family's history in a wide-ranging interview at Nangoma Business Centre.The highlight of his account was about President Mnangagwa's intellectual prowess which he said was evident from childhood."(President) Emmerson (Mnangagwa) is my younger brother," said Mr Socha Mnangagwa."He came to Zambia with our parents in 1957 and I followed in 1959. I remained behind because I wanted to finish my Standard Six. When he (President Mnangagwa) came here, he continued with his education at Myooye Primary School before enrolling at Mumbwa Secondary School. He passed with flying colours and proceeded to the University of Zambia where he studied law. He joined politics when he was still a student."After completing his school we heard that he had blown up a Rhodesian steam locomotive. How he connected with other nationalists and how he travelled back to Rhodesia we don't know. The incident became very a popular story during those days because it was aired daily on all radio stations both in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) and Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia). He was arrested and sentenced to death and he was only saved by his age because then he was just about 17 years old, if I am not mistaken."Mr Socha Mnangagwa continued: "Emmerson was intelligent and during his entire stay here, we never heard of his involvement in any illegal activity. He made a lot of friends here and most of them are now prominent people occupying influential positions."When President Mnangagwa's family migrated to Zambia, it settled in Chimana village under Chief Shakumbila. The Herald traversed the rough terrain to meet the current Chief Shakumbila, Dr Chikumbe Chibamba. The idea was to get an impression on President Mnangagwa's development.Upon arrival at thechief's palace, The Herald crew was accompanied to his office by his aides. The spacious office is decorated with a portrait of Zambia's fifth president Edgar Lungu and modern furniture. The chief's computer was neatly placed on the centre with a pile of documents stacked in a tray on the left corner of the desk."When the Mnangagwa family settled here I was still a toddler," Chief Shakumbila said."What I know is that the current President of Zimbabwe worked as the first black interpreter at our local court. I met him when he came here to attend the funeral of his late brother, Mr Judah Mnangagwa, last year. He called me to say we are in your area and we met. What I can say is that the Mnangagwas are good people. We have been staying with them here for a very long time and they don't have any bad record. We enjoy an excellent relationship with them.From my interaction with President Mnangagwa, he is a good gentleman and if you give him a chance Zimbabwe is destined for a greater future."Most of President Mnangagwa's classmates are now big guns in Zambia occupying influential positions. For instance, Mr Alexander Chikwanda at one point was Finance Minister, Justice Esau Chulu is the current chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Zambia while Mr Richard Shamilimo Chella is the former Police and Prison Services Commissioner.The Herald caught up with Mr Chella in Lusaka who impressed that President Mnangagwa was always keen to liberate his country from colonial yoke from his childhood days."I came to know President Mnangagwa back in the 1950s," said Mr Chella."We happened to be together at Mumbwa Primary School from Standard Three to Standard Six. When UNIP was formed we both joined it. President Mnangagwa inspired us as Zambian youths to be brave and to be resolute in fighting for a right cause and he was a member of the UNIP youth wing. The most interesting thing about President Mnangagwa is his bravery. At times when some of us wanted to chicken out he would say 'No, no, if you show cowardice how are we going to achieve the independence of our country?' He said our country and not your country although he was Zimbabwean."One thing I never forget is that he said after my school I will go into the bush and fight for the liberation of our country Zimbabwe. On that one he never wavered and Dr (Kenneth) Kaunda loved him as a young man. He (Dr Kaunda) kept telling us that 'you should emulate your brave friend Emmerson'. He was very loyal and we were trained not betray our leaders."Mr Chella added: "President Mnangagwa is a strong-willed man who focused on the truth. When he came here recently, he introduced me to the audience to say this man is my brother. I was with him. That shows he has a photographic memory. Just imagine almost over 50 years of separation we never met again but he was able to recognise me from a distance. Perhaps I should urge my brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe, particularly the young people, to give him maximum support."He has goodwill for Zimbabwe. Knowing his upbringing, how much he loves the country, just imagine the way how he helped us youths in Zambia to fight for the independence of our country? He never said 'I come from Zimbabwe'. We are very appreciative that he was always with us in Zambia and through him I came to know most of the leaders in Zimbabwe such as Herbert Chitepo and Joshua Nkomo."We know Emmerson didn't want to usurp power. He always said whatever the position our leaders give us, we should accept. As of now, I believe Zimbabwe will never be the same with (President) Emmerson Mnangagwa. He is a genuine leader and I have known him for a long time. He has never been power hungry. I remember one time when our school captain was trying to victimise us, he came to our rescue. He was very powerful. He hit the captain and said 'Why are you taking advantage of young people' yet we were of the same age. To me that meant he did not want people to take advantage of the weaker ones."Five new members have been appointed to the board of Manitoba Hydro, two days after nine members of the 10-member board resigned.

The newly appointed directors of the Crown corporation are Marina James, who will serve as chair, Michael Moore, who will serve as vice-chair, Lisa Meeches, Melanie McKague and Wade Linden, according to a news release from the province Friday morning.

The only remaining member of the previous Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board is Progressive Conservative MLA Cliff Graydon, who will continue to serve on the new board.

James has been CEO of WinnipegRealtors since 2016, the province said. Before that, she served as president and chief executive officer of Economic Development Winnipeg.

Moore is a consultant for the Urban Development Institute. He recently retired as the president of the Manitoba Home Builders' Association, the province said.

Board members are appointed by the government.

Crown Services Minister Cliff Cullen said in Friday's news release that the new members come from diverse backgrounds and bring a "wealth of knowledge and experience."

"Our government is confident and excited that these qualified and capable individuals are willing to take up the challenges that lay ahead of Manitoba Hydro and that they will work in the best interest of the corporation and of all Manitobans," Cullen stated in the release.

Meeches is the president of Winnipeg-based Eagle Vision Inc. and Meeches Video productions. McKague is the senior legal counsel for Bell Canada and formerly served as the director of corporate communications and community investment for Manitoba Telecom Services.

Linden was most recently the operations director at Southport Aerospace Centre Inc.

The appointees will take over the positions vacated by the former board, which was appointed by the Pallister government after the 2016 provincial election.

Former board resigned

Nine individuals from that board, including chair Sandy Riley, resigned on Wednesday.

Story continues

The other outgoing members are vice-chair Steve Kroft, Dave Brown, Earl Edmondson, Jennefer Nepinak, Michael Pyle, Allen Snyder, Dayna Spiring and Annette Trimbee.

A statement from Riley cited multiple points of disagreement with the province, most importantly that they couldn't get an audience with the premier.

But Premier Brian Pallister said the key issue was that the province wouldn't agree to a $67-million payment the board wanted to make to the Manitoba Metis Federation over 50 years, to smooth the process for the Minnesota-Manitoba transmission line.

Pallister referred to the payment as "persuasion money."

Riley, however, dismissed that characterization as "cynical, offensive and wrong."

MMF president David Chartrand accused the premier of using "race card tactics" in his response, and MMF lawyer Jason Madden said the federation will take the government to court if it tries to cancel the deal.

On Thursday, the premier pledged to replace the board by noon Friday.An Alberta-based cannabis production company is looking to set up shop in B.C., specifically in the province's transportation hub of Kamloops.

Sundial Growers Inc., a licensed medicinal marijuana company, recently agreed to supply up to 20 million grams of cannabis products each year to the Alliance of Beverage Licensees, or ABLE BC, an advocacy group for B.C.'s private liquor industry.

In anticipation of that, the company wants to open a production plant in an easily accessible part of the province.

"We like the central location in B.C.," said chief marketing and producer officer Ryan Hellard.

"We like to find municipalities that have a size where we can find a good labour pool, but also aren't too big where the cost becomes prohibitive or becomes a challenge to have people commute and get to our facilities."

The company has submitted an application with Health Canada and hopes to gain approval so they can begin construction on the space within the next four months. Hellard expects to have it running by the end of the year.

Hellard said the Kamloops branch of Sundial will create a multitude of jobs in the city, in fields outside cannabis production, specifically. He said they'll need electricians, architects, heating and ventilation specialists, engineers and material suppliers to help build the facility and keep things running.

Sundial says it expects to be one of the leading cannabis companies in the country by 2020.

With files from Daybreak KamloopsBEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is planning a mainland listing via depositary receipts that could come as early as the middle of this year, Thomson Reuters unit IFR reported, citing a person with knowledge of the matter. China has been looking for ways to lure home its offshore-listed tech giants such as Alibaba, giving Chinese investors more access to the fast-growing firms that have traditionally opted to list overseas or in Hong Kong. Any listing would use so-called China depositary receipts (CDRs), similar to American depositary receipts, which while not technically shares, are certificates that allow investors to hold shares listed elsewhere. Reuters reported earlier this month, citing sources, that China's securities regulator was likely to finalize guidelines for CDRs in the second half of this year. "The new rules on CDRs may be introduced as soon as the end of next month," the person told IFR. "So the first batch of issuers may launch CDRs as soon as the middle of this year." Alibaba, which has a market capitalization of $473 billion, currently has a listing in the United States. The person with knowledge of Alibaba's CDR plans said the fundraising size was yet to be determined, but may be more than 10 billion yuan ($1.58 billion). Alibaba has repeatedly said it is open to issuing shares on the mainland if compliant with Chinese regulation. "Since our IPO in the U.S., we have stated that if regulations allow, we would consider a listing in China," Alibaba said previously when asked about plans for issuing CDRs. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. China's plan to allow CDRs could also open the door to other Chinese tech firms listed outside the mainland, including JD.com Inc, Tencent Holdings Ltd, Baidu Inc, Weibo Corp and Sogou Inc. (Reporting by Yikun Wang in BEIJING and Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI; Additional reporting by Cate Cadell in BEIJING;Editing by Christopher Cushing)It's been a whirlwind week for Manitoba Hydro.

The Crown corporation got a nearly all-new board Friday, two days after nine of its 10 members left in an unprecedented mass exodus, leaving only Progressive Conservative MLA Cliff Graydon (Emerson) remaining.

Their exit gave rise to questions about why they left and heated debate about the nature of a nearly $70-million proposed payment between the corporation and the Manitoba Metis Federation, which Premier Brian Pallister has said his government will not support.

Pallister's opposition, and his characterization of the payment as "persuasion money," prompted federation president David Chartrand to suggest Pallister should resign, and to promise a legal challenge if the province won't move forward with the payment.

In case you missed any of it, here's what you need to know.

1. What's the issue?

You'll get a different answer depending on who you ask.

According to a letter signed by all nine outgoing board members to Crown Services Minister Cliff Cullen, the problem was the board couldn't get a meeting with the premier "to resolve a number of critical issues related to the finances and governance of Manitoba Hydro, including matters related to Hydro's efforts to further develop its relationships with Indigenous peoples."

In the letter, the board said outgoing chair Sanford Riley hadn't been granted a face-to-face meeting with Premier Brian Pallister since October 2016, "notwithstanding numerous requests," and board members "have never been permitted to make a presentation to the cabinet or the caucus to explain the problems we face at Manitoba Hydro, and how these problems are a risk to the province."

Premier Brian Pallister, for his part, said that accusation is not fair. He told reporters Wednesday the government has been in "regular communication  collectively and individually on an ongoing basis" with the board.

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But the premier also turned the focus away from a lack of meetings, and said the resignations were actually because the province won't agree to a $67-million payment Hydro wants to make to the Manitoba Metis Federation, spread over 50 years.

"I would describe it as more persuasion money," Pallister told reporters after question period Wednesday, saying it was to smooth the process for the Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission Line.

On Wednesday, Crown Services Minister Cullen sent a directive to the board instructing it not to proceed with the agreement with the MMF, and stating all agreements between Hydro and Indigenous communities require Cullen's review before being executed.

In a statement sent on Wednesday, Riley dismissed Pallister's characterization of the agreement as "cynical, offensive and wrong."

Watch Pallister call the payment 'persuasion money':

2. What's this agreement with the Manitoba Metis Federation?

According to Jason Madden, legal counsel for the federation, the deal is what's officially called an impact and benefits agreement, designed to help develop projects in partnership with Indigenous people regarding land rights and to address potential impacts ahead of time. The goal is to "get to consent and win-win scenarios," Madden said.

According to a copy of the agreement proposal obtained by CBC News, the deal would see Manitoba Hydro pay the MMF $1.5 million per year over 20 years, plus a lump-sum payment of $37.5 million. The money would be used at the sole discretion of the MMF, "for short-, medium- and long-term investments in capacity and other socio-economic areas designed to improve the overall quality of life for the Manitoba Metis community."

Under the deal, Hydro would also have provided funding to the MMF to cover studies and other engagement on future Hydro transmission projects, based on the length of the project. Hydro also included a commitment to create a preference in its public tenders for Indigenous peoples, including Metis people and businesses, under the Indigenous Content portion of its procurement policy.

In exchange, the MMF agreed not to oppose current projects  barring any material changes  or future domestic transmission lines less than 250 kilometres in length for up to 50 years.

The federation would also have to support Manitoba Hydro licence applications and "agree not to appeal or contest any approvals or licences issued," according to the deal.

That document says the payments "fully and finally address and satisfy all concerns of the Metis with respect to existing transmission projects as well as identified projects," including Bipole III and the Manitoba-Minnesota transmission line.

3. Is this unusual?

Manitoba's Metis community has a right to be consulted on major resource development projects like Hydro transmission lines, and that right is enshrined by the courts, said Paul Thomas, a Manitoba political science professor.

In 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Metis people have many of the same rights as Indigenous people, including the right to consultation.

According to Premier Pallister and Crown Services Minister Cliff Cullen, the $67-million payment is unusual for Manitoba, because it's not compensating for lost land or displacement that has already happened.

That was the case in the 1977 Northern Flood Agreement, which the province and Hydro signed with four First Nations to compensate them for existing damage, and the settlement agreements that followed.

Cullen told CBC News Wednesday the government was concerned it could "set a precedent for both Crown corporations and government," and doesn't believe the deal was legally binding.

MMF lawyer Madden, however, said the idea that the agreement is unprecedented is "absolutely untrue," and said Hydro signed similar community benefit agreements during the development of the Keeyask dam project.

"As I said earlier, these agreements are signed from one end of Canada to the other," he said. "There are thousands of them, called impacts and benefits agreements, with Indigenous groups, and that is the whole point of this, to be forward-looking as opposed to doing the damage and then having to sign agreements subsequent."

Madden pointed to the 2013 Supreme Court decision that upheld a legal challenge by the MMF over the 1870 government land deal that ended the Red River resistance.

"The courts have been extremely clear on this. Governments are not above the law and they're not above the constitution," Madden said.

"Metis rights are a fact in law and they derive from Metis pre-existence within Manitoba before Manitoba was a province, and those are undeniable rights."

4. What is each side saying about it?

MMF president David Chartrand says the deal would save taxpayers millions by avoiding legal action and delays over major Hydro projects.

"You know this is a good deal, premier, you know this is a damn good deal," he said Wednesday.

Watch MMF president David Chartrand weigh in on the premier's comments:

Outgoing board chair Sanford Riley told CBC News in an emailed statement Wednesday the board felt the deal was a "good transaction" for Manitoba Hydro.

"The agreement with the Manitoba Metis Federation was carefully vetted by the board. It met our legal obligations, encompassed a multiplicity of projects, covered a 50-year period, and was structured to ensure the money went to the people who should benefit from it," he said.

In addition to referring to the deal as "persuasion money," Pallister told reporters Thursday the government stopped the deal in part to protect the rights of future generations of Metis people in the province.

"This would be like a father selling a daughter's right to vote and to me, on that basis, this agreement  is one that has real concerns," Pallister said.

5. How did Hydro and the MMF reach the agreement?

The deal builds upon a previous agreement between the MMF, Hydro and the province of Manitoba, called the Turning the Page Agreement (or Kwaysh-kin-na-mihk Ia paazh, which means "turning the page" in the Metis language Michif).

The tripartite agreement was signed in November 2014 by MMF president David Chartrand and the federation's Minister for Hydro Jack Park, as well as NDP Minister Eric Robinson and Scott Thomson, who was the president and CEO of Hydro at the time.

That agreement laid out a $2-million lump sum payment at the time, plus a $1-million payment from Hydro to the MMF for the following 19 years  which isn't included in the $67-million Minnesota-Manitoba project deal. It also stated the MMF would withdraw its appeals regarding Bipole III and Keeyask, and said any new issues could be addressed through mitigation or compensation measures.

Watch the premier being grilled on when he knew about the agreement:

Madden, the MMF lawyer, said the Turning the Page Agreement gave Hydro and the MMF permission to negotiate a deal on transmission projects, and going back on it now would be "pulling the rug out from under an Indigenous people."

"What's so shocking about all this is that that agreement, which is a public agreement, and which was signed to great fanfare, expressly delegated the negotiations to Manitoba Hydro, and Manitoba Hydro did the right and honourable thing and the MMF participated in good faith, and they got to an agreement," he said.

"And then the idea that political masters could interfere at the 11th hour and attempt to pull the rug out from under an Indigenous peoples is just unconscionable."Matthew Mahoney was a little boy with platinum-blonde hair and bright blue eyes who lived life with his arms wide open  offering a hug to anyone who needed it.

On Wednesday, as a 33-year-old who struggled with schizophrenia and other mental health battles, he died in a barrage of police gunfire.

His family is struggling to cope with his death, but Michael  his older brother by just 18 months  blames a lack of resources in healthcare and limits to the legal system for failing his brother, not police.

"Our police aren't trained to deal with people who are suffering the way my brother is. That can make it really hard when they encounter someone like him. You're not sure if this person is dangerous or just needs a hug. I think my brother needed a hug that morning," he said through tears. "I wish I could have been there."

Michael was at work in Toronto when family members started calling. They had seen news of a shooting in downtown Windsor and photos of a man who looked like Matthew lying on a stretcher, receiving CPR.

Police shot Matthew 'multiple times'

The older brother was on a plane and back in Windsor within hours, where he tried to comfort his distraught family and struggled to understand how this could have happened.

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has dispatched 10 investigators to do the same thing. On Friday they provided a small update  confirming Matthew was shot by two officers and "struck multiple times."

Windsor police have reported two officers were injured in the confrontation that led up to the shooting, but are barred from commenting further on the shooting until the SIU completes its investigation. On the morning of the shooting, yards of yellow police tape surrounded almost an entire city block surrounding the McDonald's near the corner of Goyeau and Wyandotte streets.

A butcher block was resting in the restaurant parking lot, surrounded by scattered knives.

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"We definitely want to know what my brother was going through that morning. We want to know how the police became involved and we want to know that they did everything they could to deescalate the situation," said Michael. "Right now we're just trying to focus on remembering Matthew the way we remember him and we're trying not to think about that morning because your mind just races and there's no answers right now."

The Mahoneys noticed a change in Matthew sometime in his mid-teens.

"Matt was the kind of kid, who it didn't matter what he had to do to make someone smile," said Michael. "If he had to embarrass himself, or tell a bad joke, he could come into a room and my dad says 'He'd have his arms wide open and run to anyone who needed a hug.'"

But that brilliant boy who could fix anything and used to steal Michael's girlfriends with his charming smile suddenly began going through long, dark periods. The family knew it was more than typical teenage withdrawal, but they refused to stop fighting for him.

Medication helped that loving boy come back at times, but as he grew into an adult and was able to refuse medical treatment, he spent more time confused.

"Being in the health care system can be extremely terrifying, extremely dangerous and he did everything in his life to try to avoid going back to hospital," said Michael. "Every decision he made was to try to avoid interactions with police or mental health services. They were his biggest fears."

Family tried everything to help

The family explored legal means of forcing Matthew to get help. They spoke with police and healthcare officials, but ultimately there was little they could do.

"The system just isn't set up right to help people with extreme needs like my brother."

The last time Michael saw Matthew was Christmas. The family was driving along the E.C. Row Expressway when they passed the plastic flowers of a roadside memorial to someone who died in a crash.

"My brother was worried about the family that must have been in that accident and that was what he was always like," said Michael. "That's all he talked about for the rest of the car ride over, worrying about if the family was OK."

'This didn't need to happen'

Now it's the Mahoneys who are not OK as the realization that Matthew is gone starts to sink in and the worries their good memories about him will start to fade.

It's not easy for Michael to talk about his brother's constant battle with his mental health. He said Matthew often called police when he was hurting and "lots of good police showed him a lot of patience," but the family always worried about what would happen if he ran into officers when he was in a bad place.

They fear that's what happened on Wednesday.

"We're struggling to understand all of the places were people that could have helped my brother had their hands tied and couldn't," said Michael. "There were so many opportunities where we could have helped. This didn't need to happen."The latest cod stock survey by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) shows that the small improvement reported in recent years is already on the decline.

Cod stocks had been showing improvement since 2012, but according to a stock assessment released Friday, the stock declined by 30 per cent in 2017 to 315,000 tonnes.

According to the federal department, one of the biggest reasons for that decline is the natural mortality rate, and it projects a high probability of continued decline into next year.

"These large increases in natural mortality can happen, and they're very hard to predict," said Karen Dwyer, a DFO scientist.

"We do have external evidence that says that maybe there isn't a lot of capelin and shrimp, which are food sources for cod."

The stocks had been expected to increase this year, but Dwyer said projections are not guarantees.

"It was projected to increase this year, but if something changes from year to year your projections are not going to bear out. And that's what happened in this case."

Still in the 'critical zone'

When asked about the return of the commercial cod fishery, Dwyer said it's a waiting game.

"We're still in the critical zone. We're seeing improvements in some areas and maybe not such improvements in other areas. I don't have any timelines," she said.

In addition to the increase in natural mortality rate, fishing mortality rate has also increased gradually every year since 2015.

"This is a reminder that where we are in that critical zone, it's a very precarious place to be. We have to be careful with all sources of removal," Dwyer said.

Keeping quotas as low as possible is the recommendation from scientists.

No need for panic

The union that represents fish harvesters in Newfoundland and Labrador is taking a cautious approach to the stock assessment numbers.

"While this news is not what fish harvesters had hoped for, these types of fluctuations are to be expected in any species that is recovering and is certainly not a cause for panic," said FFAW-Unifor President Keith Sullivan in a news release.

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The stock is still healthier than it was in 2005, he said, when it was at 25,000 tonnes

Sullivan said the union would like more research done on the impact of predators such as grey and harp seals, and a bigger cull of the seals.

Tracking the amount of cod taken in the recreational fishery is also crucial, he said.

Sullivan also took a swipe at the offshore fleet, which he said continues to operate draggers in the "vulnerable" 3PS area.

"Clearly, we are concerned," said Derek Butler, head of the Association of Seafood Processors. "It is not the news the industry had hoped for."

Butler said processors will be reviewing the assessment, and its ramifications, in advance of DFO consultations planned for mid-April.

The World Wildlife Fund, in a statement Friday afternoon, called the stock assessment "a significant setback" and blamed the decline, in part, on a changing climate and ecosystem.

"This means we need to think differently about how cod is managed, including taking into account cod's main food source, capelin," said Sigrid Kuehnemund, vice president of ocean conservation for WWF Canada.

Critics question quota increases

One of those is Sherrylynn Rowe, a biologist at the Marine Institute at Memorial University in St John's.

"I think a lot of questions will be asked in the days and weeks to come about whether this was the right decision," Rowe said.

"But my position is that given the changes that we've seen in the stock at present and projected decline moving forward, a continuation of the present approach and associated removals stands to jeopardize the long-term stock recovery and having a rebuilt fishery."

Kris Vascatto of the Groundfish Enterprise Allocation Council, which represents large offshore companies, is another that warned the comeback projections were overly rosy.

"In 2016, the stock was expected to grow, through indicators, by 22 per cent. We only realized seven per cent growth. At the same time, we saw very poor conditions, lowered growth estimates and we saw continued ecosystems concerns," Vascatto said.

The quota increases since 2015 were irresponsible, he said.

"I view it as a stain on fisheries management. That we've seen increases of catch that far outstripped the growth in the stock at the same time we are looking at a fishery that rivals any other groundfish fishery in Atlantic Canada in terms of overall landings."

Minister responds

Provincial Fisheries Minister Gerry Byrne disputed that view.

"We are a government that follows the advice of science, of evidence, we are a conservation minded government, and we are responding positively to science," he said.

He said the changes to the quotas had no effect on the substantial drop in cod stock.

"Last year there were just over 12,000 metric tonnes of removals. This year in one year alone, they're now indicating the spawning biomass is down by over 100,000," said Byrne.

Bryne believes more research needs to be done into what's causing those natural mortalities and how this 30 per cent reduction happened in just one year.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected on Monday to exonerate six B.C. First Nations chiefs convicted of murdering white colonists more than 150 years ago in pre-Confederation British Columbia.

"We'll be in Ottawa on Monday, March 26, with the prime minister to have a statement acknowledging the wrong that was done to us many years ago," the Tsilhqot'in National Government, the tribal council, said in a video posted on their Facebook page.

A press release sent from the office of Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said Trudeau would make a statement in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister's Office wouldn't provide further details on Friday.

In 1864, five Tsilhqot'in chiefs were called to what they thought were peace talks to end the Chilcotin War.

Instead, they were accused of massacring 14 members of a road-building party and were then tried, convicted and hanged.

'No form of guilt'

Five of the chiefs were executed, under Crown authority, near the settlement of Quesnel, B.C., in the province's interior. A sixth chief was later hanged near New Westminster, B.C., after trying to offer reparations.

The chiefs opposed the construction of roads to gold-rich lands, and sought to stop the incursion into their traditional territory.

There are also allegations that the road-building crew took some Tsilhqot'in women hostage.

The prime minister is expected to "let everything go, meaning there's no form of guilt on behalf of the Tsilhqot'in in any way, shape or form," said Chief Joe Alphonse.

"The first order of business is to exonerate our war chiefs and then we'll get to work to bring back our lands as they were before contact [by European settlers]. It's time for Canada to step up to the plate," he said.

The Tsilhqot'in have long objected to the chiefs being tried as criminals, saying the killing of the colonists was carried out during a war between the First Nations and the colonial authority in B.C.

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In 2014, B.C. Premier Christy Clark also fully exonerated the chiefs of any wrongdoing.

The B.C. exoneration came after a landmark decision from the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled the Tsilhqot'in peoples had aboriginal title to a large swath of their traditional territory  over 1,700 square kilometres  not just old village sites as the provincial and federal governments had argued.

It was the first time in Canada aboriginal title had been confirmed, outside of an Indian reserve.Quebec mayors want more help protecting their water from resource drilling

A group of 338 mayors  representing close to half of Quebec's population  are demanding the provincial government help them keep resource companies further away from their water supplies.

They issued a stern message at a meeting Saturday in Drummondville: When it comes to fighting for their most precious resource, they won't back down.

The mayors are concerned about a 2015 law that allows exploratory companies to drill as close as 500 metres away from waterways.

That's not far enough, they say, and are asking for an exemption to the law that would allow them to extend that distance to two kilometres.

"Drinking water is one of the first responsibilities for any municipal government," said Francois Boulay, mayor of Ristigouche Sud-Est, Que.

"The issue with contamination of the water table is that once it's been contaminated, there is no going back."

Towns fighting off lawsuits from mining companies

Some Quebec municipalities have been forced to wage legal battles in order to protect their water supplies from resource companies who want to drill nearby.

Ristigouche Sud-Est recently won a landmark Superior Court decision against the oil-and-gas company Gastem. The company had sued the tiny municipality in the Gaspe after it passed bylaws that banned drilling within two kilometres of the wells of residents.

A small community in the Laurentians, Grenville-sur-la-Rouge, is currently facing a similar lawsuit. Vancouver-based Canada Carbon announced it is taking steps to sue the town for $96 million  five times its annual budget  for rezoning agricultural land targeted for exploration.

The municipalities meeting Saturday in Drummondville are contesting the science behind the provincial law. They believe the risk of contamination is still high when drilling occurs 500 metres risks from a water supply.

"We've been claiming this is inadequate, fully inadequate, and have been trying to obtain a response from the Quebec environment minister," said Boulay.

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He added that he's met twice with Environment Ministry officials. He met Environment Minister Isabelle Melancon last week. Boulay described the meeting as "positive" and said she committed to follow up in April.

But the group of mayors will also vote on whether to increase the pressure on the Liberal government by asking a judge to review how the 2015 law has been applied.

Strained government relations

Scott Pearce, the mayor of the Township of Gore, 90 kilometres northwest of Montreal, said relations between municipalities and the province have been strained for the last few years.

"When it's close to election time, they come and pat us on our heads and tell us how good we are. But in the meantime, they ignore the things that we find important for our communities across Quebec," said Pearce.

He said people move to areas like the Laurentians because of the high quality of life, and preserving water quality is part of their appeal.

"Our lakes, our streams, our rivers," he said. "Rural Quebec, that's what we are."

A spokesperson for the Environment Ministry told CBC News on Friday that the environment minister is approaching this issue with "openness."

She said the ministry plans to meet with municipal officials the week of April 9.Canada's Milos Raonic powered into the third round of the Miami Open with a 6-3, 6-3 straight-sets win over Sweden's Mikael Ymer on Friday.

The 27-year-old from Thornhill, Ont., needed just over one hour to get by his opponent.

Raonic, seeded 20th at the tournament, fired 16 aces and converted three of four break points.

Raonic will play the 13th seed, Diego Schwartzman, in his next match. The Argentine defeated Chile's Nicolas Jarry 6-3, 6-1 earlier in the day.

Later on Friday, Vernon, B.C.'s Vasek Pospisil came back to upset 27th-seed, Andrey Rublev, 7-6 (5), 6-4. The 27-year-old was down 0-4 in the first set.

Pospisil's next opponent is No. 2 seed Marin Cilic.

Djokovic drops 3rd-straight

Six-time champion Novak Djokovic lost his opening match to Benoit Paire, 6-3, 6-4.

Djokovic's 16-match Key Biscayne winning streak ended, and his struggle to overcome a bothersome right elbow continued. He lost serve four times, returned poorly and had difficulty anticipating Paire's drop shots.

The defeat was Djokovic's third in a row. He returned from a six-month injury absence at the Australian Open and lost in the fourth round, and was upset two weeks ago in the second round at Indian Wells by Taro Daniel, a 109th-ranked qualifier.

Naomi Osaka's breakthrough winning streak this month ended with a loss to No. 4-seeded Elina Svitolina 6-4, 6-2. Osaka said she began feeling ill before the match but didn't want to retire.PARIS (Reuters) - Nicolas Sarkozy will challenge a barring order that forbids him from meeting key accusers and allies or traveling to countries such as Libya pending a judicial investigation into allegations that Muammar Gaddafi bankrolled his 2007 election campaign. Sarkozy's lawyer, speaking publicly for the first time since the former French leader was taken into policy custody this week and told he was officially suspected of passive corruption, said he would lodge a legal appeal against the barring order. Sarkozy himself, who held office from 2007 to 2012, launched a counter-offensive on prime-time television overnight, vowing to "vanquish" his accusers, among them, in his words, "The Gaddafi gang, a gang of assassins". The 63-year-old, target of other judicial inquiries into political financing but nothing that resonates like the Libyan one, said magistrates did not have a shred of hard evidence and that the accusations against him were a "monstrosity". In an appearance on one of France's main evening news shows that was watched by 6.9 million people, or more than one in six of the electorate, Sarkozy said: "You cannot imagine how seriously I take this: if it takes me one year, two year or ten years, I will vanquish this gang. My honor will triumph. I will not cede a single centimeter to this lot." His lawyer, Thierry Herzog, used the same colorful language when he went on radio on Friday to defend his client. "I will prove (ex-) President Sarkozy innocent. I will give proof he is innocent and then we will know who the evildoers are, who the thugs are, who the assassins are, who the robbers are," he told RTL. Herzog, who is also handling a separate case where Sarkozy stands accused of illicit spending overruns in his failed 2012 re-election bid, said he was going to appeal a judicial barring order imposed on Sarkozy when he was released from custody on Wednesday after two days of questioning. That order prohibits him from traveling to Libya, Tunisia and South Africa, sources close to Sarkozy say. It bars him from meeting accusers that include members of the late Libyan leader Gaddafi's family and Libyan secret services as well as a Franco-Lebanese arms dealer who says he delivered cash in a suitcase to Paris as well as an intermediary arrested in London earlier this year. He is also barred from meeting key allies including Claude Gueant and Brice Hortefeux, two close aides who were ministers under Sarkozy and have also been questioned by the judiciary. Sarkozy said on the TF1 TV channel on Thursday that the sum police came up with for suspect money circulated during the 2007 campaign was 38,000 euros, calling that "a very far cry" from the 50 million euros cited by his accusers. He also said that, while criticized for hosting Gaddafi with red carpet treatment in late 2007 in Paris, he was one of the chief advocates of the NATO-led intervention in 2011 in Libya, where Gaddafi was killed in rebel hands. (Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Toby Chopra)U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter could fiercely debate legislative opponents on the House floor, then sing harmony with them for charity, use her scientist's mind to argue for human rights and sweeten a discussion with homemade rhubarb pie, Washington colleagues recalled Friday at her funeral.

"Even her opponents couldn't help liking her and respecting her," Hillary Clinton said inside a Rochester, New York, auditorium filled with family, constituents from her western New York district and two planeloads of congressional colleagues and staff.

Slaughter, a Kentucky coal miner's daughter who never lost her lilting southern accent, died March 16 following a fall in her Washington home. She was 88 and had represented her district for 31 years.

Clinton said Slaughter, a fellow Democrat, took her under her wing when the former first lady was elected to represent New York in the Senate in 2000. Slaughter had done the same for many other women in Washington, said Clinton, who attended with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

"Louise never forgot she stood on the shoulders of brave trailblazers and history makers. She picked up their torch. She carried it proudly throughout her career," Hillary Clinton said.A years-long trade dispute with the U.S. over Canadian paper products used for magazines and newspaper supplements is coming to an end in Canada's favour.

Canadian producers of supercalendered paper could get millions of dollars in refunds after a U.S. company decided to drop its complaint alleging unfair subsidies north of the border.

But the victory doesn't come without a price: under an agreement to resolve the dispute, the Canadian producers will give up as much as $42 million to the U.S. company.

This is the second positive trade development for Canada this week after Canada won another favourable outcome in the Boeing conflict.

Boeing announced it will not appeal a ruling by the International Trade Commission that Canadian aerospace giant Bombardier did not receive unfair subsidies.

"This is good news for Canada's innovative aerospace industry and the thousands of people who depend on well-paying aerospace jobs on both sides of the border," Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement Friday.

Paper review underway

Tariffs on supercalendered paper produced by Port Hawkesbury Paper Limited Partnership and Irving Paper Limited were introduced by the Obama administration in 2015.

The rate has changed over the years, but at one point it reached as high as 18.85 per cent.

This week, American paper producer Verso announced it would seek what is called a "change of circumstance review" from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Essentially, that means the company wants to formally drop its complaint.

Since 2015, Freeland has discussed the issue with her American counterparts on multiple occasions  including during a meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross just last week. Global Affairs says approximately 1,500 Canadian jobs depend on the industry.

The U.S. department now has to review and approve the arrangement before Canadian companies can receive a refund for some of the tariffs they have paid over nearly three years.

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Millions of dollars are at stake for the firms, which are based in Atlantic Canada and Quebec.

According to documents outlining the decision, submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Verso will "request that Commerce revoke the CVD (countervailing duties) Order retroactively to Aug. 3, 2015, which, if granted, would result in refunds to Canadian producers of supercalendered paper of all countervailing duties."

But, the document states, Port Hawkesbury and Irving have agreed to pay Verso a percentage of the duties refunded to them "over time, with the total amount payable to Verso capped at $42.0 million."

NAFTA progress

The two moves come as several significant trade challenges persist between Canada and the U.S.

NAFTA negotiations, which also involve Mexico, are progressing slowly with all sides trying to firm up dates for an eighth round of talks next month in Washington.

The U.S. negotiating team dropped a divisive demand this week that would have required all cars produced under the trade agreement to contain 50 per cent American content.

The development is considered a significant turning point in the talks, with optimistic rhetoric emerging from the highest levels in all three countries.

Still, officials acknowledge there is much more work to be done behind the scenes.As Canada geese migrate back to southern Alberta, they'll be looking for new homes.

Wildlife experts in Calgary are trying to prevent the birds from settling into nests on people's decks and patios.

Canada geese nesting near humans can be annoying but also dangerous for your family and the birds themselves, says Holly Duvall, executive director of Alberta Institute of Wildlife Conservation.

Calgary's tall condo buildings are very attractive for goose families because they have a good view of the area and potential predators, and can be near water without risking getting wet. In two- or three-storey buildings, goslings can also fall off or learn to fly from a deck without injury.

"They're very little so there's not as much of an impact when they do hit the ground. But obviously a lot of our highrises are a lot taller than that," Duvall told the Calgary Eyeopener.

"So if we can prevent them from nesting in the first place, then there won't be the issue."

Break the habit

Geese usually return to the same place each year to lay their eggs and raise their young. Duvall is hoping to break that habit, when the location is a condo tower, so that the geese go back to safe nesting places.

Another issue is that geese are increasingly comfortable nesting downtown. A few years ago, one goose family even laid eggs near the steps of Calgary City Hall.

Duvall recommends making your deck or patio as uncomfortable as possible. Move your lawn furniture around to block floor space, install netting along rails, and put up coloured flags or balloons. Bird stores sell balloons, specifically for this purpose, with big eyes on them that work well to scare geese.

"You want to humanely prevent them from accessing these areas, as much as possible," she said.

Don't touch the birds

If geese do nest in a dangerous environment, they can be moved only by a professional from the Canadian Wildlife Service with a permit. Geese are protected under the Migratory Birds Convention Act.

Story continues

Moving the geese can be dangerous, too, Duvall said. The birds have been known to attack wildlife staff or fly off, abandoning their goslings.

"If we can start preventing now, then these things will become less and less over time," she said. "The sooner we start it, the sooner we can hopefully end the nesting in these areas."

Each spring, the wildlife institute gets about 100 calls from homeowners looking to have geese moved, she said.

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With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.JavaScript is disabled on your browser.

CORDIS website requires JavaScript enabled in order to work properly. Please enable JavaScript.On March 24th each year, nations around the globe observe World Tuberculosis Day, to build public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis.

This observance commemorates Dr. Robert Koch's 1882 discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes the disease.

Tuberculosis, or TB, is the leading cause of death from infectious diseases worldwide, infecting one third of the worlds population and killing some 1.5 million. The majority of TB deaths occur in the developing world, where the disease is closely linked to poverty and marginalization, and access to effective treatments may not be reliable. TB is also the leading killer of people living with HIV.

Prior to the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s, TB was one of the most feared diseases around. Today, we are poised to return to an era when TB is no-longer treatable due to the rise in drug-resistant disease.

Nonetheless, despite significant progress over the last decades, TB continues to be the top infectious killer worldwide, claiming over 4,500 lives every day. Indeed, the emergence of multidrug-resistant Tuberculosis poses a major health security threat and threatens to roll back gains made in the fight against TB.

This years theme is Wanted: Leaders For A TB-Free World- focuses on building commitment to end TB at every level. Anyone can be just such a leader, be he or she a head of state or minister of health, a community and society leader or a person affected by TB. Indeed, anyone can join this fight by helping to educate others about TB, and by urging governments to take action.

The United States is committed to fighting tuberculosis. In focusing our efforts in countries where the burden of TB is highest, we support programs that save lives, improve access to health services for everyone, and foster a more secure world. Across the federal government, we have made this fight a priority.

By joining in a global commitment to stop the spread of TB, and by continuing to invest and innovate, we can achieve a world free from TB.Paris-based political analyst Morteza Kazemian and Berlin-based political journalist Ehsan Mehrabi have discussed the most significant events of the past Iranian year, which ended on March 20, with Radio Fardas Farin Asemi on the Viewpoint program this week.

The Iranian year 1396, which started on March 21, 2017, began with the presidential election in May and ended with widespread street protests in December and January.

Asemi opened the debate by asking Kazemian about the significance of the May 2017 presidential election.

Irans Presidential Election, a Choice Between Moderation and Extremism?

Kazemian began the discussion saying, The election left its mark on the whole year." After the initial stage of the campaign, it turned out to be a choice between a realtive moderate, Hassan Rouhani and a hardliner Ebrahim Raisi.

Voters had to choose between Rouhanis reformist economic policies and relatively open-minded foreign policy, and a Raisi-led administration made up of radical elements he said.

According to Kazemian, there were serious concerns about Raisis involvement in the mass executions of 1988 in Iranian prisons. At the same time, both Rouhani and Raisi were reportedly among the candidates to succeed Khamenei as Irans Supreme Leader. One mans election as president could significantly reduce the other mans chance of succession.

Evaluating Rouhanis performance so far, Kazemian said: What Rouhani promised during his campaign and what he did later were two different things. While people expected some meaningful changes, his choices for the cabinet, and the cabinets output did not satisfy even his own supporters.

Kazemian went on that in the post-JCPOA period, Rouhani failed to attract foreign investment; and President Trumps arrival into the scene limited Rouhanis maneuvers. More limitations were imposed on him by hardliners around Khamenei and the IRGCs intelligence organization. Thus, there was increasing disappointment; and support for Rouhani shrank. The dissatisfaction later manifested itself during the unrest in December-January, Kazemian said.

Implications of Protests

Mehrabi said: These protests and the ones against compulsory hijab were the most eye-catching events of the year. First the government and hardliners around Khamenei somehow welcomed the protests as they thought they were against the Rouhani administration and the result of economic dissatisfaction. But as protests spread, they attributed them to foreign countries and the diaspora-based opposition.

The Rouhani administration showed conflicting reactions. Rouhani first attacked the protests and predicted they would be sorted out quickly. But later some of his officials said protests were not limited to economic issues, and that there is serious dissatisfaction about social restrictions and heavy-handed security measures in the country.

Mehrabi observed that Iranian reformists first saw the protests as a kind of coup against the Rouhani administration. But the course of events later prompted them to admit the protests were legitimate.

However, Irans rulers do not appear to have taken any lesson from the events. Security forces have been reinforced to suppress future protests, Mehrabi said.

Meanwhile, Kazemian opined that the protests were so significant that Iranian political developments could be divided into two periods before and after the unrest.

Peaceful Protests Compulsory Hijab, Paying a Price for Civil Rights

Kazemian said that peaceful protest against compulsory hijab was a key event. The girls of Revolution Street protested against what has been imposed on them as a social norm and paid for it by going to jail and making it known that they do not regret standing up for their human and civil rights.

According to Kazemian, one of the most important things about anti-hijab demonstrations was Khameneis reaction. He tried to belittle the movement by saying that those girls were deceived or paid by foreigners, but even such a reaction added to the significance of the protest, making it one of the most important social movements in present day Iran.

Deaths in Custody

Asked to comment on the deaths in custody during recent months, Morteza Kazemian said: Obviously, these events have taken place as a result of terrible violence against inmates and sometimes because of extreme psychological pressures exerted on them in jail. Those who died in jail were not only those who had taken part in the January unrest. Kavous Seyed Emami, the environmental activist also fell victim to such a behavior by interrogators.

Accusations made against detainees were often outlandish. For instance, General Hassan Firouzabadi, an adviser to Khamenei said that the environmentalists were monitoring IRGCs missile sites and testing lizards for traces of radioactivity! Kazemian remarked.

Tehran Mayor Resigns Under Pressure

Ehsan Mehrabi commented on the Tehran Mayor Mohammad Ali Najafis resignation at the end of the year, saying that Najafi wishes to attract support from the public, Tehran City Council, President Rouhani and the reformist camp and in parliament.

Mehrabi added: The main pressure comes from the Judiciary and Khameneis close aides. They want to prevent the disclosure of financial corruption that overwhelmed Tehran Municipality under former mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

Ahmadinejad, A Thorn in Khameneis Side

Kazemian described Ahmadinejad as one of the stars of the past year for his unprecedented criticism of the establishment, particularly the Judiciary and the IRGC Intelligence Organization and targeting Khameneis men without any hesitation.

According to Kazemian, it was quite meaningful that Ahmadinejad, a member of the regimes expediency council voiced these criticisms. He also leveled some justifiable accusations against the conservative-led judiciary system.

Kazemian observed, It appears that Ahmadinejad challenged the focal point of power in Iran, which is Khameneis inner circle. It is understandable that Khamenei has a very hard feeling towards all this as he was Ahmadinejads sole supporter while everyone else in the power structure in Iran was against him.

Summing Up, Preparation for Post-Khamenei Iran

At the end of the debate, Kazemian observed that the same crises that have paralyzed the government have also been affecting civil society, the Rouhani administration and the entire country.

He added: It was a different year full of other events such as opposition leader Mehdi Karroubis outspoken letter to Khamenei in which he said Khamenei is responsible for all the problems of the country and accused him of rigging elections and putting opposition leaders under house arrest.

Mehrabi said, The year was marked by discussions about succession and life after Khamenei. Candidates for the post of Supreme Leader fiercely fought each other in an all-encompassing smear campaign.

Apart from that, yet another important issue in the past year was the idea of a referendum to bring about political and economic reforms. Both Rouhani and the opposition brought up the discussion, but Khamenei and his hardline supporters harshly attacked those who had put forward the idea, Mehrabi concluded.The chairman of the influential National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Islamic Republics parliament has once again called for closer ties with the East.

Reacting to John Boltons appointment as the new U.S. National Security Adviser, Alaeddin Boroujerdi said on Saturday, March 24, The use of hardline elements against the Islamic Republic of Iran shows that the Americans seek to exert more pressure on Iran."

In an interview with state-run Iran Students News Agency (ISNA), Boroujerdi, a long-time supporter of expanding ties with Beijing and Moscow, added that, as far as he knows, recent development in Washington makes the move toward Russia and China more urgent.

Many analysts believe that John Boltons appointment is the final nail in the coffin of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Tehrans nuclear deal with world powers.

Boroujerdi, 68, a close ally of the Islamic Republics Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also insisted that Tehran must continue its active presence in the Middle East and turn to Eastern countries to thwart US policies.

"We must strengthen our relations with important countries like China and Russia, which have also been subjected to US sanctions and face serious challenges from that country," Boroujerdi added.

"China and Russia are two important and influential members of the [UN] Security Council and the expansion of relations will help neutralize and reduce the impact of US pressure," the hardline MP said.

Boroujerdi believes that Israel is behind Washingtons harsher stance vis-a-vis Tehran, noting, U.S. policy is mainly aimed at appeasing the Israeli regime and Saudi Arabia to solve Washington's economic issues. Therefore, it was predictable that we would witness toughener US policies in this regard."

Furthermore, Boroujerdi asserted, The US president has always sought to destroy the landmark nuclear agreement.

Earlier, long before John Boltons appointment as the U.S. National Security Adviser, Boroujerdi had repeatedly encouraged Tehran to expand its relations with Beijing and Moscow.

In an interview with state-run Mehr News Agency (MNA) on March 18, Boroujerdi maintained, Iran should turn further toward East and its neighbors and do great businesses with countries like Russia and China as that is definitely the best option Iran has.

Moreover, on March 5, the Islamic Republics official news agency, IRNA, cited Boroujerdi as telling an international conference held in Saratov, Russia, Iran, Russia and China should boost bilateral and multilateral relations with countries like India, Pakistan and Turkey and establish new frameworks for economic cooperation in the region.

He called for the establishment of a new economic mechanism in the region given the US President Donald Trump's irrational policies, IRNA reported.



However, the Islamic Republic has always looked at Beijing and Moscow as its strategic allies. While Russia has been given the unprecedented right to use military airbases in Iran, China has flooded the country with its products, regarded as low quality by Iranian consumers.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has called on the European powers to "fix" what he has called "the terrible flaws" of the 2015 nuclear deal or he will refuse to extend U.S. sanctions relief for Iran as required under the deal in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear activities.

President Trump has laid down a May 12 deadline for reaching an agreement with the Europeans, which are among the six world powers that signed the deal negotiated by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama.

In a passing reference to Washingtons stance vis-a-vis Tehran, the Islamic Republics Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, in a speech on Saturday, March 24, described U.S. political shenanigan as foolish.

Eshaq Jahangiri reiterated, We shall see after May 12, if Americans are trustworthy or not.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

Azerbaijan has reached forefront in the world, and today the country stands out not only for stability, but also for rapid development, member of Russias State Duma, head of the Russia-Azerbaijan inter-parliamentary friendship group Dmitry Savelyev told Trend.

He said that Azerbaijan is recognized as a reliable partner throughout the world.

"A strong and flexible multi-vector policy allows the country to maintain constructive relations simultaneously with the West and the East, successfully protecting its interests at all international meetings and in high-level negotiations. Election of Azerbaijan as a member of the UN Security Council was the biggest foreign policy achievement of the independent state," Savelyev said.

Head of the Russian-Azerbaijani Friendship Center, political scientist Natalya Krasovskaya, for her part, said that the influential rating agencies and leading experts share the opinion that Azerbaijan is safe from economic shocks thanks to the GDP growth and stabie macroeconomic situation.

"In the shortest time, industrial production in the country increased by 2.7 times, while agricultural production rose by 1.5 times. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan remains one of the few countries that can ensure its own food security. Over the past 15 years, 838,000 new jobs have been created in the country, and poverty level decreased from 49 to 5.4 percent, "she told Trend.

Krasovskaya went on to add that the country showed the world its own model of democracy as a synthesis of global integration and national and cultural identity.

"Focusing on secular values, Azerbaijan has become an example of multiculturalism, allowing all peoples and all religions on its territory to fully develop. Along with this, the country carefully preserves national and cultural wealth and promotes achievements of the Azerbaijani culture and art worldwide," Krasovskaya said.

They also spoke about the relationship between Russia and Azerbaijan.

They noted that Azerbaijan showed its reliability and potential while implementing global economic plans such as the North-South project. They further stressed that the trade turnover between the two countries is growing every year and investment flow from Russia to Azerbaijan is rising.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 106 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said March 24.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:

The comments of the representatives of the Armenian Foreign Ministry are becoming more and more unprofessional and ridiculous, Spokesman of Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend on March 24.

Hajiyev made the remarks commenting on Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan's statement on the Sarsang reservoir.

"The comments by the Armenian Foreign Ministry's representatives are becoming more and more unprofessional and ridiculous day by day. Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan's absurdity prevails in all spheres. As one can see there is lack of serious and substantial arguments to defend the position of Armenia which tries to keep status quo of occupation by all means. It is interesting whom do they want to deceive with this short-sighted policy? Supposedly only the Armenian people," Hajiyev said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:

Azerbaijan's military superiority over Armenia is more and more obvious, RBC reported citing the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, which is a leading Russian research organization.

The report notes that in the 2000s, after a sharp increase in the oil price, the influx of petrodollars allowed Azerbaijan to increase military spending and the army strength. In 2001, according to the authors of the report, the military budget of the country was $300 million, but in 2013, it reached $3.7 billion and equaled the entire budget of Armenia.

The manpower of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in 2016 reached 126,000 people, according to Military Balance. However, according to the report, the manpower of the Armenian army is about 45,000 people from 2002 to the present.

"The influx of oil money allowed to start a large-scale rearmament of the Azerbaijani Army. Modern main tanks, combat armored vehicles, air defense systems, aircraft, helicopters, anti-tank guided missiles, artillery systems, detection equipment (night vision devices, laser reconnaissance devices, thermal imagers) and unmanned aerial vehicles were purchased in large quantities. Baku's new capabilities were demonstrated during the April battles," the report reads.

The April 2016 clashes showed that the Azerbaijani troops, equipped with modern technology, have an advantage in combat operations.

The experts emphasize that another factor is the demographic crisis in Armenia.

"In 1993-1995, the population decrease [in Armenia] was 3 percent a year. Given the initially smaller population of Armenia, this led to an increase in the demographic imbalance."

"Young people, who are more likely to serve in the military service, prevail in the age structure of Azerbaijan's population, while the population of Armenia is growing older. In 2016, the number of people of conscription age in Azerbaijan amounted to 800,000 people compared to 225,000 in Armenia," according to the report.

"If the demographic trend does not change, then, according to experts, Armenia's population can fall to three million people in 2030 and 2.7 million in 2050. The population of Azerbaijan, according to the calculations of the UN, will increase to 10.7 million by 2030 and to 11 million people by 2050," analysts say.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Over the last 26 years, the Republic of Azerbaijan has made important accomplishments in the fields of agriculture, oil production and natural gas industry as well as became a major hub of logistics, political analyst and international relations expert at the Milwaukee-based Marquette University Peter Tase told Trend.

It is impressive to observe Azerbaijan's economic growth, its influential and ever growing role in global affairs, knowing that twenty percent of Azerbaijan's sovereign territory has been occupied by the Armenian armed forces, said Tase.

He stressed that despite all obstacles Azerbaijan has showed to the world that it has an efficient government, transparent institutions, supports free trade and open markets, and above all is a source of stability and security in the Caucasus region and Europe.

Azerbaijan has become a developed nation in the crossroads of Europe and Western Asia. Over the last decade, Azerbaijan has emerged as a global player in the fields of international trade, logistical parks, oil and gas production and transportation, as well as a staunch advocate of environmental protection laws, said the expert.

Touching upon Azerbaijans significant economic projects, Tase stressed Southern Gas Corridor and Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway.

A decade ago, the European Commission issued its Energy Security and Solidarity Action Plan, making it a priority to help Eastern European countries diversify its gas imports and now identifies Southern Gas Corridor as the backbone of the greater project for substantially decreasing Europes dependency on a single supplier, Tase said.

The Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) is a mega-pipeline which stretches for 2,175 miles by connecting South Caucasus Pipeline (from Azerbaijan to Georgia), Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP which crosses Turkey), and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP, picking up on Turkish-Greek border, crossing Greece, Albania, Adriatic Sea and ending in Southern Italy).

By far, one of the largest energy projects in the world, SGC will transport 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from Azerbaijani gas fields to Europe starting from 2020. At the initial stage, the two-phase Shah Deniz offshore gas and condensate field located in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, is the only supplier of the natural gas through the SGC.

As expected, nine European buyers have already committed to import Azerbaijani gas coming through SGC and are likely to increase their imports once the mega-pipeline fills its full capacity with gas from additional sources. According to the European Commission, EU intends to increase these imports to 80 to 100 billion cubic meters of gas per year in the future.

He recalled that the European Investment Bank approved a 1.5 billion euros loan for construction of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

The project has gotten consistent support from both Obama and Trump administrations. In his letter addressing attendees of an annual Oil and Gas Exhibition in Baku in June 2016, President Obama underlined the importance of Southern Gas Corridor for energy security in Europe. Secretary Kerry, in turn, extended unwavering support of the US government to the Southern Gas Corridor in the meeting with Azerbaijani president in Washington in March 2016, noted Tase.

The Southern Gas Corridor is transforming and uplifting the unique image that the Republic of Azerbaijan has garnered and acquired in the international arena, he said.

The recently launched Baku-Tbilisi-Kars rail road project will also generate a greater economic and commercial cooperation between Ankara and Baku as well as a greater flow of goods from Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan into Europe, according to the expert.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project is a strategic enterprise that ought to be taken as an example by other countries in Southeastern Europe, where Rail Service is obsolete and non-lucrative. The BTK railway is poised to increase regional commerce, bolster economic cooperation between the landlocked nations of Central Asia and European Countries, increasing strategic importance of Azerbaijan, said Tase.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

Four organizations have submitted their documents to the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Azerbaijan to conduct exit polls at the April 11 presidential election, the CEC Chairman Mazahir Panahov said March 24.

"Organizations that want to conduct exit polls during the election in Azerbaijan must submit their accreditation documents to the CEC in accordance with the Accreditation Rules no later than 20 days before the voting day," he said.

The CEC will decide on accreditation of the organizations applying for exit polls no later than 10 days before the voting day.

Eight candidates were registered to participate in the presidential election in Azerbaijan. Moreover, 115 international observers and over 42,000 local observers will monitor the election.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

Trend:

Azerbaijan's Defense Minister, Colonel-General Zakir Hasanov will take part in a trilateral meeting of the defense ministers of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia in the Turkish city of Giresun on March 31, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on March 24.

The ministry reported that Hasanov will leave for Ankara on March 28 with an official visit upon the invitation of Turkey's Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli.

During the visit, Hasanov is expected to hold meetings with the heads of military-political and other structures of Turkey.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

Trend:

The Central Election Commission (CEC) of Azerbaijan has registered four organizations for conducting exit polls at the April 11 presidential election.

The decision was made at today's meeting of the CEC.

The four organizations are Els Independent Research Center, RY Monitoring Center, the Citizens' Labor Rights Protection League (together with the US-based Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates Inc.), and the Independent Counseling and Support Center for Civil Society (together with French organization Opinion Way).

Deputy Chairman of CEC Natig Mammadov said the Independent Counseling and Support Center for Civil Society together with France's Opinion Way will conduct monitoring at 118 polling stations, Els Independent Research Center - at 118 polling stations, RY Monitoring Center - at 48 polling stations, and the Citizens' Labor Rights Protection League together with Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates Inc. - at 40 polling stations.

Eight candidates were registered to participate in the presidential election in Azerbaijan. Moreover, 115 international observers and over 42,000 local observers will monitor the election.

There are 5,309,434 voters in the country.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

The Central Election Commission (CEC) of Azerbaijan will also consider appeals in connection with social networks, Chairman of the CEC Mazahir Panahov said at a meeting of the CEC March 24.

He said that along with the media, social networks will be at the center of attention.

The CEC chairman also warned district and precinct election commissions.

"Best conditions have been created for the district and precinct election commissions, trainings continue to improve the professionalism of the members of the commissions. Given this, I declare that the shortcomings in the work of commission members will not be forgiven, "Panahov said

Eight candidates were registered to participate in the presidential election in Azerbaijan scheduled for April 11.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

Trend:

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has sent a congratulatory letter to Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos.

On my own behalf and on behalf of the Azerbaijani people, I am pleased to convey my sincerest congratulations to you and the whole people of your country on the occasion of the national holiday of the Hellenic Republic  Independence Day.

On this joyous day, I wish you robust health, success in your work, and the brotherly people of Greece everlasting peace and prosperity, President Aliyev said in his congratulatory letter.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 25

Trend:

Azerbaijani Grand Master Shahriyar Mammadyarov has lost to China's Ding Liren in the twelve round of The Candidates Tournament.

This is the first defeat of Mammadyarov within the tournament.

After 12 rounds Mammadyarov scored 6.5 points, he won two games, drew nine times and lost once.

On Monday within the framework of the 13th round the Azerbaijani grandmaster will meet with the representative of Russia Alexander Grischuk.

The tournament is held in Berlin in the building of the exhibition center "Kulhaus". The prize fund of the tournament is  420 thousand.Baku, Azerbaijan, March. 24

Trend:

Astara (Azerbaijan) - Astara (Iran) wailway will be opened on Thursday, March 29 through video conference within the framework of the visit of Iranian President Hassan Ruhani to Azerbaijan, Member of Board of Directors of Islamic Republic of Iran Railways Hossein Ashuri said, according to IRNA.

During the inspection of the Astara (Azerbaijan) - Astara (Iran) railroad project, Ashuri noted that an agreement for the construction of the railway of Resht-Astara worth $500 million is expected to be signed during the visit.

The railway segment is a part of the International North-South Transport Corridor which is meant to connect Northern Europe with Southeast Asia. It will serve as a link connecting the railways of Azerbaijan, Iran, and Russia. At the initial stage, it is planned to transport 5 million tons of cargo per year through the corridor and over 10 million tons of cargo in future.

In order to complete the mega project of the North-South Corridor, three railroad segments connecting the northwestern city of Qazvin to the border city of Astara should be constructed inside Iran.

The first segment is Qazvin-Rasht according to Iranian officials, will be completed in the coming months.

The second segment connecting the cities of Rasht and Astara is expected to be constructed within three years with Azerbaijans financial aid.

The Astara-Astara segment which connects the two border cities of the same name in Iran and Azerbaijan is almost ready to come on stream.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

In January-February 2018, Azerbaijan increased the import of goods from Georgia by 2.4 times as compared to the same period of 2016, up to $43.72 million, according to a report of the Georgian National Statistical Service.

Azerbaijan's share in Georgian exports was 9.8 percent (5.2 percent in January-February 2017). Azerbaijan took the third place among the countries importing Georgian products in the first two months of 2018.

Azerbaijan mainly imported are cars, tobacco products, medicines, cattle and other products.

Georgia exports bulk of its goods to Russia - $ 61.92 million, with a specific weight of 9.8 percent. Turkey is ranked second with $ 53.87 million and a specific weight of 12.1 percent.

During the reporting period, Azerbaijan exported goods to Georgia worth $ 138.48 million, which is 14.3 percent more than in January-February 2017. Azerbaijan occupies the second place among the main exporters to Georgia with a share of 11.2 percent (11.1 percent in the same period last year).

Georgia mainly imports from Azerbaijan gas, electricity, oil, cement and other goods.

The leader in exports to Georgia is Turkey - $188.9 million (15.3 percent), while Russia occupies the third position - $136.66 million (11 percent).

According to the report, Georgia's trade with Azerbaijan amounted to $182.2 million in the first two months of 2018. The share of trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Georgia makes 10.8 percent in the total volume of foreign trade operations of this country. Thus, Azerbaijan took the third place in the list of the main trade partners of Georgia.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

Uzbekistan will allow withdrawing cash funds in foreign currency from international banking cards beginning April 1, a decree of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev reads.

Currently, Uzbeks are allowed to withdraw cash funds from their cards only outside Uzbekistan. They also arent allowed to purchase cash in Uzbek banks.

The document, however, mentions not the direct sale of cash funds to individuals, but rather possibility of its withdrawal from cards via ATMs. Individuals will be able to withdraw funds only in certain limits set by commercial banks.

Automated 24/7 currency exchange points will also be opened in Uzbekistan until Nov. 1, especially in popular tourism locations. Currently, most of the exchange points are located in the branch offices of banks and work from 09:00 until 18:00.

Uzbekistan allowed natural persons to sell currency to banks at market rates on Sep. 5, 2017. Earlier, the banks had been accepting the money only at the official exchange rates, which were over two times lower than the market rates.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

Customers of Uzbek banks will be allowed to visit bank offices without presenting their IDs in line with the new order established by the Uzbek presidents decree.

Currently, Uzbek bank offices have turnstiles at their entrances, as well as the special policemen, who check the presented documents. The clients, on their part, not only present their documents, but also register in a special logbook.

From July 1, however, the banks will be obliged to grant a free access to the customer service area to get prior consultation concerning the services from the bank reception employees, Uzbek media reported on March 24.

President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev also ordered the banks to solve one more essential issue. The banks will have to launch a transparent system of registration and loan request consideration. The system will have a step-by-step tracking of decision making procedure and notifications about loan issuing or refusal.

The presidents order also prohibits credit organizations to charge interest, commission, forfeit, fine or penalty, as well as implement other measures on micro-credit agreements and pawn-shop agreements by more than half of the loan sum.

Moreover, the credit organizations will also be prohibited from charging for considering loan requests, maintaining loan accounts, issuing loans as well as for advance paying of loans and micro-credits by natural persons and small entrepreneurs.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan discussed prospective cooperation on border control as well as development of checkpoint infrastructure on the Kyrgyz-Kazakh state border in line with the international standards and Kyrgyzstans Eurasian Economic Union integration, press office of the Kyrgyz State Border Service said March 24.

The discussion was held during a meeting between Chairman of the Kyrgyz Border Service Ularbek Sharsheyev and Kazakh Ambassador in Kyrgyzstan Karim Kokrekbayev.

The head of the border service informed Kokrekbayev about reconstruction of the Tokmok-Avtodorozhny, Ken Bulun-Avtodorozhny, Ak-Tilek-Avtodorozhny and Chaldybar-Avtodorozhny checkpoints.

Currently, the two countries consider changing status of the Ken-Bulun and Tokmok checkpoints from bilateral to multilateral (international). The Kyrgyz side proposed to introduce the year-round operation at the Karkyra-Avtodorozhny checkpoint, which is currently operating from May to October.

Cooperation between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan on border control is one of the most important points of the bilateral relations, where the joint activity against the international terrorism, religious extremism and separatism plays a key role. Development of partnership and safety of the interstate border are priority directions of interaction between the two countries in the border control sphere, Sharsheyev underlined during the meeting.Prime Minister Sapar Isakov met with Bolormaa Amgaabazar is the World Bank Country Manager for the Kyrgyz Republic, Kabar reports.

The Prime Minister expressed gratitude to the World Bank for the support provided to the Government's initiative in implementing Taza Koom digital transformation program.

"Financing the Digital CASA - Kyrgyz Republic Project opens up new opportunities for our people to improve access to the Internet and provide quality public services to the population of the country using modern information technologies," Prime Minister Sapar Isakov said.

In turn, Bolormaa Amgaabazar recalled that World Banks Board of Executive Directors approved a decision to allocate $ 50 million for the implementation of the Digital CASA - Kyrgyz Republic Project.

"The World Bank office in the near future will make a package of necessary documents on the project agreement for conducting internal procedures," Bolgarmaa Amgaabazar said.

During the meeting, the sides also discussed a number of issues related to the implementation of joint projects and coordination of activities aimed at improving the country's socio-economic development.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

Trend:

Tajik president has signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Tajik Telegraph Agency TajikTA reported.

"President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon has signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in New York on the eve of participation in an event marking the beginning of the international 'Water for Sustainable Development 2018-2028' decade," press service of the Tajik head of state reported.

The signing ceremony was attended by UN Deputy Secretary General Miguel de Serpa Soares.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol were adopted on Dec. 13, 2006 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and were opened for signature on March 30, 2007. There were 82 signatories to the Convention, 44 signatories to the Optional Protocol, and 1 ratification of the Convention. This is the highest number of signatories in history to a UN Convention on its opening day. As of November 2017, 175 countries are parties to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Presently, about 150,000 people with disabilities, among them 26,000 children, live in Tajikistan.

In Tajikistan, people with disabilities are divided into several categories: those disabled in wars and persons equal to them, people with general illness, persons with disabilities from occupational diseases, persons disabled in Chernobyl, persons disabled during military service, and children with disabilities.

In 2016, the Tajik government adopted the National Program for Rehabilitation of the Disabled for 2017-2020. This program has a social and anti-crisis character; its implementation will be carried out taking into account the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030. The program is mainly aimed at strengthening the social protection of disabled people, including their medical and social rehabilitation.

The first national congress of disabled people of Tajikistan was held in October 2017.Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, March 24

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Election of members of parliament as well as local authorities will be held March 25 in Turkmenistan, the Turkmen government said on March 24.

The Central Election Commission of Turkmenistan has announced complete readiness at all polling stations in the country.

A mission of observers from the CIS states and experts of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights arrived in Turkmenistan to monitor the election process.

Voting will begin at 07:00 (local time) and end at 19:00.

A total of 2,963 observers were registered from the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the Agrarian Party, public organizations and associations, as well as groups of citizens of the country.

A total of 284 candidates have been nominated for the election of members of parliament.

There are 2,604 polling stations in the country; 39 polling stations were formed at diplomatic missions of Turkmenistan abroad.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Gazenfer Hamidov  Trend:

Iran continued to decrease its oil output in February 2018 for third straight month according to the OPEC data.

The countrys oil output has decreased by 4,400 barrels per day month-on-month to 3.813 million barrels per day in February 2018, OPEC said in its latest monthly report released on March 16.

Irans oil output decreased to 3.818 million barrels per day in January compared to 3.822 mb/d in December 2017.

According to the report, Irans February output was 1,000 b/d more than the 2017 average and 298,000 b/d more than the 2016 output.

The Islamic Republics oil output was 3.810 mb/d in February, according to an OPEC report based on direct communications, indicating a 3,000-barrel difference between OPEC's estimates and Irans data.

Irans heavy oil price decreased by 5.4 percent or $3.58 month-on-month to $62.27 per barrel in February.

OPEC members decreased their oil output by 77,100 b/d in February to 32.186 mb/d, according to the report.

Crude output increased mainly in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Libya, while production mainly declined in Venezuela and Angola.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Gazenfer Hamidov  Trend:

The industry sector products maintained their largest share among Irans non-oil exports during the first 11 months of the last fiscal year (March 20, 2017-Feb. 20, 2018).

The country exported $14.64 billion worth of industrial products during the 11-month period, equal to 35 percent of countrys overall non-oil exports including gas condensates, according to the data, released by the countrys industry ministry.

The value of the industrial exports witnessed a rise by 9 percent, year-on-year.

The Islamic Republic exported 35.94 million tons of industrial products, indicating a rise by 13.7 percent compared to the same period of the preceding year.

The mining sector registered highest growth among the sub-sectors of Irans non-oil economy in the last fiscal year in terms of value of exports.

Iran exported $1.937 billion worth of mineral products during the 11-month period, registering a 60.3 percent increase year-on-year.

However, the volume of the exports (26.021 million tons) was 0.7 percent less compared to the 11-month period of the preceding year.

The petrochemical products ranked second among Irans non-oil exports in the period. During the 11-month period, the value of Irans petrochemical exports increased by 0.02 percent to $9.936 billion.

Meanwhile the volume of petrochemical exports registered a fall by 12.5 percent to 18.926 million tons in the same span of time.

Iran exported 15.796 million tons of gas condensate, worth $6.33 billion, which, compared to the same period last year, indicates a 7.4 percent decrease in volume and 5.4 percent in value.

Agricultural products stood at the next place with a share of 7 percent from total non-oil exports value.

The value of Irans agricultural exports accounted to $2.973 billion or 3.8 percent less, year on year.

The volume of the exported agricultural products was 3.802 million tons, 7.3 percent less in comparison to the 11-month period of the preceding year.

The Islamic Republic also exported $406 million worth of hand-made carpets and handicrafts in the 11-month period, 17.2 percent more year-on-year.

Hand-made carpets and handicrafts, minerals, natural gas and industrial products were the only products among Iranian exported goods that witnessed value growth compared to the preceding year.

In the 11-month period, Irans total non-oil exports, which include gas condensate and natural gas as well, stood at $41.69 billion, which indicates a 5 percent rise.Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi has condemned the new US sanctions against several Iranian nationals and an engineering company as an act of provocation, saying the policy will fail to prevent the technological progress of the Iranian nation, Press TV reported.

"The US will definitely not benefit from the sanctions gimmick aimed at stopping or preventing the scientific growth of the Iranian people," Qassemi said in a statement early on Saturday morning.

On Friday, the administration of US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions against 10 Iranian nationals and a tech firm over allegations of launching what it described as "state-sponsored hacking campaigns" against several US and foreign universities as well as dozens of US companies and government agencies.

Qassemi condemned the sanctions as "provocative, illegal and unreasonable," calling them a vivid example of Washington's hostility against the Iranian nation.

Washington has adopted a much more belligerent stance against the Islamic Republic since Trump took office in January 2017.The UN Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution extending the mandate on Iran, according IRNA.

Adopted along with five other resolutions in a meeting in Geneva on Friday, the resolution on Iran extended by a period of one year the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran.

Some 21 members of the Council voted in favor of the resolution, while 7 others voted against, with 19 abstentions.

The resolution requested the Special Rapporteur to submit a report on the implementation of the mandate at the Councils fortieth session and to the General Assembly at its seventy-third session.

Introducing draft texts were Bulgaria on behalf of the European Union, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Russian Federation, Sweden on behalf of a group of countries, and the United States.

The Council's thirty-seventh session, which opened on Feb. 26, was closed on March 23.Georgia and the United Kingdom have signed a deal on furthering their bilateral cooperation as officials from the two countries held a meeting in Tbilisi on Friday, Agenda reports.

The two-year agreement, designed for the years 2018-2019, was signed by First Deputy Minister of Defence of Georgia Lela Chikovani and UK Ministry of Defence head of department Paula Hothersall.

Its signing followed a meeting at the Defence Ministry in Tbilisi where the two sides reviewed their partnership in areas including defence education and participation in international exercises.

Chikovani expressed her gratitude to the British colleagues for the support in implementation of the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package (SNGP), an initiative for developing closer security cooperation and interoperability between Georgia and the alliances members.

The meeting also involved presentations from the Defence Ministry and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Georgia about reforms at the institutions and security matters facing the country.

Georgias Defence Minister Levan Izoria and his British counterpart Michael Fallon signed the Bilateral Cooperation Plan between the countries last year.

The plan included prospects for increased participation of UK troops in defence drills held in Georgia as well as British support for the SNGP.Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili has welcomed the United States 2018 Spending Bill increasing US assistance for Georgia, Agenda reports.

US President Donald Trump signed the $1.3 trillion spending bill into law yesterday. $105,325,000 will now be made available for assistance for Georgia.

I would like to thank the US Congress and the Administration of President Donald Trump for yet another demonstration of firm support at a legislative level, PM Kvirikashvili said.

Georgia is among key European countries that will receive United States funding.Hungary is in no rush to join the euro zone and should adopt the single currency only if its economic output approaches the average of the euro area or Germany, Economy Minister Mihaly Varga was quoted as saying in an interview on Saturday, Reuters reports.

Like the Czechs or the Poles, we will not enter the waiting room for the euro, which is a requirement to fix the exchange rate two years before adoption (of the euro), Varga was quoted as telling the daily Magyar Hirlap.

This is a favorable position and it is up to us when we decide to take the next step, Varga said, adding Hungary should also wait for the outcome of debates on deepening integration between members of the single currency bloc.

Hungarys central bank has also said Hungary should not join the euro before its economy is sufficiently strong.In the first stage, 20% of the Israel Postal Company's shares will be sold to an investor from Israel or overseas in a private placement, Globes reports.

The ministerial privatization committee is scheduled to discuss on Sunday a proposal by Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon and Minister of Communications Ayoob Kara to privatize the Israel Postal Company. The two-stage privatization was prepared by the Government Companies Authority, after Kahlon approved it in principle.

In the first stage, 20% of the Israel Postal Company's shares will be sold to an investor from Israel or overseas in a private placement. The maximum number of directors on the company board at this stage will be 11, three of whom will represent the buyer or be recommended by him or her, depending on the appointment mechanism established.

In the second stage, 20% of the Postal Company's shares will be issued on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). Following the offering, the maximum number of directors on the company boards will be 12, only two of whom will be from the private placement purchaser.

The sale process will be an auction, as is the usual practice in a private placement by the Government Companies Authority. In this process, the Government Companies Authority will be entitled to take into account the price offered for the shares and the purchaser's capability in the company's fields of business or tangential fields of activity, including postal bank activity.

The second part of the process will take place within two years of the completion of the private sales, through an offering to the public via a prospectus that will include an offer for sale by the state and/or a financing round for the company on the TASE. After both stages are completed, the state's fully diluted share will not fall below 60%.At least 71 Taliban militants were killed and 34 others wounded during clashes with Afghan security forces and airstrikes throughout the country within the past 24 hours, Afghan Defense Ministry said Friday, Xinhua reported.

Out of the killed militants were 14 fighters of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, the ministry said in a statement.

An additional four militants were arrested after Afghan National Defense and Security Forces launched seven cleanup operations and 70 special operations in nine of the country's 34 provinces, the statement added.

Among the arrested militants was a French female fighter affiliated with the IS group who was arrested in Darzab district of northern Jawzjan province on Thursday, according to the statement.

Afghan National Army (ANA) Air Force also conducted 70 supportive flights and 14 airstrikes in the period.

Several militants' hideouts were destroyed and the security forces also found and seized amount of weapons and ammunition besides defusing dozens of roadside bombs and landmines, the ministry said.Peru's congress has voted to accept the resignation of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Sputnik reported.

Martin Vizcarra is sworn in as Peruvian president after predecessor ousted over corruption charges. Martin Vizcarra, a 55-year-old engineer and technocrat who also was Peru's ambassador to Canada, took the oath of office shortly after 1 p.m. and was presented with the presidential sash by congressional president Luis Galarreta.

"With faith and optimism, Peru will always move forward," Vizcarra said in brief remarks.

105 lawmakers voted for the president's resignation, while 11 voted against and 4 abstained.

Earlier, the Peruvian Congress, which has accepted Kuczynski's resignation, stated that it would debate the matter. Peruvian Vice President Martin Vizcarra will likely be sworn in as president, according to reports.

The president announced his resignation on Twitter and thanked his people for "the love he has received."

Kuczynski, 79, has decided to resign in light of the heated scandal involving the alleged bribery of lawmakers.

The People's Power opposition party earlier alleged that attempts to bribe lawmakers had been made to prevent the impeachment of Kuchinski during the March 22 vote in the Congress.Former Peru President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who resigned this week over allegations he was involved in the continent-wide Carwash bribery scandal, has been barred from leaving the country, the prosecutors office said on Twitter.

Prosecutors Hamilton Castro and Sergio Jimenez signed the order as their colleagues searched two of the ex-leaders homes in and around Lima, the South American nations capital, according to a second tweet. The order stops Kuczynski from traveling abroad for 18 months and his passport has been rescinded, AP reported.

Congress accepted Kuczynskis resignation on Friday after he stood down hours before a second impeachment vote. Kuczynski, a 79-year-old Wall Street veteran and former finance minister, had beaten a first attempt at impeachment in December after facing allegations that a company he owned took money from Brazilian builder Odebrecht SA, which doled out hundreds of millions in bribes across the region.

Former President Alberto Fujimori fled to Japan when his term ended in 2000 as he faced accusations of corruption and human rights abuses. More recently, another ex-leader, Alejandro Toledo, was believed to have fled to the U.S. and then was stopped from boarding a flight to Israel, which doesnt have an extradition treaty with Peru, in February 2017. Toledo was also embroiled in the Odebrecht scandal.

Peru since the 19th century has watched the sad show as presidents and ex-presidents flee the country and justice, Castro told AP. This is the historical behavior that we seekers of justice have to take into account.

Former First Vice President Martin Vizcarra has replaced Kuczynski.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told reporters that he knows new US National Security Adviser John Bolton from when he served as Russias Permanent Representative to the United Nations, TASS reports.

"I worked with him, as he was the United States acting permanent representative to the United Nations back then," Lavrov said. "He was an acting envoy, the Senate did not approve his appointment. He worked there for less than a year," he added.

According to the Russian top diplomat, Bolton remained in politics after that. "We used to have occasional phone conversations. Once he came to New York from Washington and we met to discuss the situation at that moment," Lavrov said.

He added that Bolton was undoubtedly a tough diplomat and politician. "But I repeat, he is a professional," the Russian foreign minister concluded.Baku, Azerbaijan, March 24

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkish Armed Forces liberated the last five settlements in the Syrian district of Afrin, said Hulusi Akar, head of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, the General Staff said in a message March 24.

Today, the Turkish Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army have established complete control over Afrin within the Operation Olive Branch, the message reads.

Turkeys Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army liberated Afrin city from PYD/YPG terrorists on March 18.

On Jan. 20, the Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Free Syrian Army, launched the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, Syria.

On Aug. 24, 2016, Turkish Armed Forces, with the support of the Syrian opposition, launched the Euphrates Shield Operation against the IS militants and liberated the city of Jarabulus as well as the city of Al-Bab in northern Syria.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizogluTurkey on Saturday denied Lebanese media reports claiming Turkish warplanes bombed archaeological site of Brad near Syrias Afrin region during Operation Olive Branch, Anadolu agency reported.

Fridays reports claimed the airstrikes destroyed the Julianus Church and Brad monastery in the Brad ancient site near Afrin.

In a written statement, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy termed the reports completely untrue.

No airstrike targeting the Brad [ancient] site, Julianus Church and Brad monastery has been carried out by Turkish Armed Forces so far.

He said it could be easily proved that the Julianus Church was destroyed by armed groups in 2013, he added.

Contrary to the claims, every kind of measures had been taken for not damaging regional and cultural structures, historical artifacts and archeological sites since the start of the operation, Aksoy said.

The spokesman said Turkey had taken necessary steps to correct all such reports.

Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20 to clear terrorist groups from Afrin in northwestern Syria amid growing threats from the region.

The operation is being carried out under the framework of Turkey's rights based on international law, UN Security Council resolutions, its self-defense rights under the UN charter, and respect for Syria's territorial integrity, it said.

The military also said only terror targets are being destroyed and "utmost care" is being taken to not harm civilians.The United States has flouted trade rules with an inquiry into intellectual property and China will defend its interests, Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call on Saturday, Reuters with reference to the Chinese state media reported.

The call between Mnuchin and Liu, a confidante of President Xi Jinping, was the highest-level contact between the two governments since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods on Thursday.

The escalating tension sent shivers through financial markets as investors foresaw dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up.

In the call with Mnuchin, Liu, a Harvard-trained economist, said China still hoped both sides would remain rational and jointly work together to keep trade relations stable, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Washington is concerned at what it says is the misappropriation of intellectual property following an eight-month investigation under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act. It has also pressed China to cut its staggering $375 billion trade surplus with the United States by $100 billion.

Liu said the Section 301 investigation report violates international trade rules and is beneficial to neither Chinese interests, U.S. interests nor global interests, Xinhua cited him as saying.

China has already prepared, and has the strength, to defend its national interests, Liu said, adding that China hopes both sides can work hard to protect generally stable Sino-U.S. trade and business relations.

Both sides agreed to continue to communicate on the matter, the report added, without providing further details.Hundreds of thousands of Americans galvanized by last months Florida school massacre rallied on Saturday at nationwide March For Our Lives protests led by students demanding tighter gun laws, Reuters reports.

Carrying signs with slogans including If they choose guns over our kids, vote them out, protesters in Washington jammed Pennsylvania Avenue as students from the Parkland, Florida, high school where 17 people were killed called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue.

The massive rallies aim to break a legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become frighteningly common.

Politicians: either represent the people or get out. Stand with us or beware, the voters are coming, Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old junior at the high school, told the crowd.

Another Parkland survivor, David Hogg, said the sun was shining on a new day. You can hear the people in power shaking, he said to loud applause.

Were going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians, but as Americans. Because this - this - is not cutting it, he said, pointing at the white-domed Capitol. We can and we will change the world!

Television images showed youthful marchers filling streets in cities across the United States including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis and New York.

More than 800 demonstrations were set to take place in the United States and around the world, according to coordinators, with sister events taking place as far afield as London, Mauritius and Stockholm.

Organizers want the U.S. Congress, many of whose members are up for re-election in November, to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers. On the other side of the debate, gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms.

In Los Angeles, marcher Carly Dutcher, a high school freshman from Studio City, California, said she was shocked when a theater teacher showed her and her classmates how they could pull a tampon dispenser off a bathroom wall and use it to battle a school shooter.

Regardless if I can vote or not, it (gun violence) is the most important issue affecting me and the most important issue in the country right now, Dutcher said.KYODO NEWS - Mar 24, 2018 - 21:18 | Urgent, All

Two tires of a plane operated by low-cost carrier Peach Aviation Ltd. went flat after landing at a southwestern Japanese airport Saturday morning, stranding the aircraft and causing the runway to be closed for over two hours.

There were no injuries to the 159 passengers and six crew members aboard the Airbus A320 aircraft, but the transport ministry decided to treat the case as a "serious incident" after confirming damage to the aircraft's nose landing gear in addition to the flat tires.

The plane became unable to move on its own after two tires of its nose landing gear went flat at Fukuoka airport at around 8:10 a.m., according to the ministry.

A total of 81 domestic flights and one international flight leaving and arriving at the airport were canceled due to the incident, while a total of 22 flights were forced to divert their destination to other airports including Busan in South Korea, Saga and Nagasaki prefectures in southwestern Japan.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism confirmed damage to a steering device used to change direction of the nose landing gear wheels, it said.

The ministry's safety board has decided to dispatch three officials to the site to investigate the aircraft and interview related people on Sunday.

According to Peach Aviation, it found no abnormality to the tires when the aircraft was checked before leaving Kansai airport. "We sincerely offer apologies. We will cooperate fully with the investigation by the Japan Transport Safety Board, while the company will work as one to recover trust," it said.

The passengers of the aircraft were transported to a terminal building some 90 minutes after the incident occurred.

"I didn't feel a big impact. I couldn't see what was going on outside so I felt uneasy about having to wait inside the plane," a 62-year-old man said, looking tired at Fukuoka airport, which was packed due to a series of flight cancellations.However, the Adani Group has taken the dispute regarding the delay in completion for arbitration and has argued that the first phase could be fully operationalised only by 2024.Acquisition

USAF head praises OTAs, but warns on micromanagement

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told a Capitol Hill panel that she was pleased with new acquisition authorities, but said micromanagement is still slowing the pace of procurement.

"If you push authority down but you still require some of the sub-decisions to go all the way back up the chain [it] may not result in the speed that you really want," Wilson told the House Armed Services Committee in a March 20 budget priorities hearing.

Wilson said other transaction authorities, a contracting tool that allows the Defense Department to carry out experimental projects and rapid prototyping, were "tremendously valuable" but said that OTAs needed milestone decision authority, which allows programs or projects to move through the research and development process, at lower command levels.

The defense secretary has milestone decision authority over major acquisition programs. But for certain programs, such as costing and fielding estimates, independent technical readiness assessment, and the acquisition scorecard, that requirement can create a "strings attached" situation that slows down the development and eventual deployment of new capabilities, Wilson said.

"In general, I would say these are tremendously helpful. We are accelerating our use of them," Wilson said of the new authorities granted in the 2016 and 2017 national defense spending bills. "But there are few things that we need to make sure the details also get pushed back to the milestone decision authority."

Wilsons criticisms follow comments earlier this month from Air Force Materiel Commander Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, who urged DOD and industry to see beyond OTAs as the latest contracting buzzword and come to a common understanding on where their best use makes sense.

"First of all we need to both understand what an other transaction authority means" and not to expect more than what we can get out of them, Pawlikowski said during an Air Force Association event March 14.

"We have to truly embrace this idea of experimentation in prototyping," Pawlikowski said, "Recognizing that we will spend money to build things that we will never buy because we will find out early it doesn't do what we really want."MGIC (MTG) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues.

On Mar 21, oil prices registered the best two-day increase since last November, following a surprise fall in domestic crude inventories and renewed geopolitical uncertainty. After weeks of rise, domestic crude inventories declined recently, which boosted oil prices. Additionally, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmans meeting with President Trump during the Saudi princes two-week visit to the U.S. also raised fears of Trump re-imposing economic sanctions on Iran, which were lifted on the first month of 2016.

This move may affect crude production of OPECs third biggest oil producer. This development along with other OPEC countries and Russias continued capping of crude output had a positive impact on oil prices.

Following the recent recovery in oil prices, mutual funds that have significant exposure to the energy sector could be solid investments.

U.S Crude Stockpiles Post Surprise Slump

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories fell 2.6 million barrels to 428.3 million for the week ended Mar 16. U.S. commercial crude oil inventories posted their first weekly fall since the week ended Feb 16. Per EIA, domestic crude oil inventories slumped mainly because crude imports plunged 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) to an average of 7.08 million bpd last week.

The EIA also reported that total motor gasoline inventories and distillate fuel inventories slumped by 1.7 million barrels and 2 million barrels, respectively. Decline in domestic crude and gasoline inventories led both WTI and Brent crude to climb 2.5% and 3% to $65.17 per barrel and $69.47 a barrel respectively on Mar 21.

Geopolitical Tensions Benefits Oil Prices

On Mar 20, oil prices advanced before the meeting between Trump and Saudi Arabias crown prince. Trump said that Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation and the U.S. will be getting some of the countrys wealth in the form of the purchase of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world."

Story continues

Additionally, the Saudi prince said that "Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but if neighbor Iran developed a nuclear bomb, Saudi Arabia will follow suit as soon as possible." Prince Salman said this during an interview with CBS, just a week before his two-week meeting with the U.S. President.

These developments, raised concerns of a possible end of the provisional deal reached between Iran and P5+1 during 2015, with Trump imposing nuclear sanctions again on Iran within two months. Further, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members, and Russia continued to trim crude production by 1.8 million bpd till the end of this year.

Following these arrangements, supply concerns reduced and oil prices increased. Both WTI and Brent crude prices advanced around 5% and 5.2%, respectively, on Mar 19 and 20, registering their best two-day increase since Nov 6.

5 Best Energy Funds to Buy

Against this backdrop, we have highlighted five energy mutual funds that carry a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy). We also expect these funds to outperform their peers in the future. Remember, the goal of the Zacks Mutual Fund Rank is to guide investors to identify potential winners and losers. Unlike most of the fund-rating systems, the Zacks Mutual Fund Rank is not just focused on past performance, but also on the likely future success of the fund.

These funds witnessed encouraging returns during their last bull market, and their minimum initial investment is within $5000.

Dreyfus Natural Resources Fund Class A DNLAX seeks appreciation of capital for the long run. DNLAX invests more than 80% of its assets in stocks issued by companies engaged in natural resources and natural resources-related sectors. The fund may invest in non-U.S. securities, including emerging markets securities.

In the ongoing bull market, DNLAX had returned 16%. Annual expense ratio of 1.35% is lower than the category average of 1.38%. The fund has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1.

Vanguard Energy Investor VGENX invests a major portion of its assets in equity securities of companies from the energy sector. VGENX normally invests in stocks of companies that are engaged in the production, marketing, transmission and research of energy and energy fuels. The fund seeks growth of capital for the long run.

In this bull market period that started in 2009, VGENX has returned 19.3%. Annual expense ratio of 0.41% is lower than the category average of 1.35%. The fund has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #2.

Columbia Global Energy & Natural Resources Z UMESX seeks capital growth for the long run. UMESX invests a huge part of its assets in securities of domestic and foreign companies. The fund primarily focuses on acquiring securities of companies from the natural resources and energy industries. Moreover, UMESX invests more than half of its assets in petroleum and crude oil companies.

In the ongoing bull market, UMESX had returned 17.6%. Annual expense ratio of 1.10% is lower than the category average of 1.38%. The fund has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1.

Franklin Natural Resources Advisor FNRAX seeks growth of return. The fund invests a bulk of its assets equity as well as debt securities of companies involved in the natural resources sector. FNRAX may also invest part of its assets in those small-cap companies whose market-cap is lower than $1.5 billion at the time of investment.

During the last bull market, FNRAX has returned 19.9%. Annual expense ratio of 0.81% is lower than the category average of 1.38%. The fund has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #2.

Fidelity Select Energy FSENX invests a large chunk of its assets in securities, including common stocks of companies that are involved mainly in the energy industry. FSENX seeks growth of capital and invests mainly in common stocks. The fund focuses on acquiring securities of both U.S. and non-U.S. companies.

In this bull market, FSENX has returned 21.9%. Annual expense ratio of 0.79% is lower than the category average of 1.35%. The fund has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1.

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Zacks Investment ResearchMOSCOW, March 22 (Reuters) - The Kremlin on Thursday warned against talking about a breakthrough in Russia-U.S. relations despite a possible meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Let's not talk about any breakthroughs; firstly we should talk about as a starting point getting a dialogue going. We have a long way to go before any breakthrough," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a daily conference call.

Trump on Tuesday congratulated Putin on his re-election and said they would likely meet soon as relations between the two countries grow more strained over allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. electoral system. (Reporting by Polina Nikolskaya Writing by Maria Kiselyova Editing by Andrew Osborn)FILE PHOTO: Chinese Vice Premier Liu He attends the news conference following the closing session of the National People's Congress (NPC), at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee

By Ryan Woo and Hallie Gu

BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States has flouted trade rules with an inquiry into intellectual property and China will defend its interests, Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call on Saturday, Chinese state media reported.

The call between Mnuchin and Liu, a confidante of President Xi Jinping, was the highest-level contact between the two governments since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods on Thursday.

The deepening rift has sent a chill through financial markets and the corporate world as investors predicted dire consequences for the global economy should trade barriers start going up.

Several U.S. chief executives attending a high-profile forum in Beijing on Saturday, including BlackRock Inc's (BLK.N) Larry Fink and Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) Tim Cook, urged restraint.

In his call with Mnuchin, Liu, a Harvard-trained economist, said China still hoped both sides would remain "rational" and work together to keep trade relations stable, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

U.S. officials say an eight-month probe under the 1974 U.S. Trade Act has found that China engages in unfair trade practices by forcing American investors to turn over key technologies to Chinese firms.

However, Liu said the investigation report "violates international trade rules and is beneficial to neither Chinese interests, U.S. interests nor global interests", Xinhua cited him as saying.

In a statement on its website, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said it had filed a request - at the direction of Trump - for consultations with China at the World Trade Organization to address "discriminatory technology licensing agreements".

China's commerce ministry expressed regret at the filing on Saturday, and said China had taken strong measures to protect the legal rights and interests of both domestic and foreign owners of intellectual property.

Story continues

COUNTER MOVES

During a visit to Washington in early March, Liu had requested Washington set up a new economic dialogue mechanism, identify a point person on China issues, and deliver a list of demands.

The Trump administration responded by telling China to immediately shave $100 billion off its record $375 billion trade surplus with the United States. Beijing told Washington that U.S. export restrictions on some high-tech products are to blame.

"China has already prepared, and has the strength, to defend its national interests," Liu said on Saturday.

According to an editorial by China's state-run Global Times, it was Mnuchin who called Liu.

Firing off a warning shot, China on Friday declared plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium, imposed after a separate U.S. probe.

Zhang Zhaoxiang, senior vice president of China Minmetals Corp [CHMIN.UL], said that while the state-owned mining group's steel exports to the U.S. are tiny, the impact could come indirectly.

"China's direct exports to the U.S. are not big. But there will be some impact due to our exports via the United States or indirect exports," Zhang told reporters on the sidelines of the China Development Forum in Beijing on Saturday.

Global Times said Beijing was only just beginning to look at means to retaliate.

"We believe it is only part of China's countermeasures, and soybeans and other U.S. farm products will be targeted," the widely-read tabloid said in a Saturday editorial.

Wei Jianguo, vice chairman of Beijing-based think tank China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, told China Daily that Beijing could impose tariffs on more U.S. products, and is considering a second and even third list of targets.

Possible items include aircraft and chips, Wei, a former vice commerce minister, told the newspaper, adding that tourism could be a possible target.

SOYBEANS, AUTOS, PLANES

The commerce ministry's response had so far been "relatively weak", respected former Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei said at the forum.

"If I were in the government, I would probably hit soybeans first, then hit autos and airplanes," said Lou, currently chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund.

U.S. farm groups have long feared that China, which imports more than third of all U.S. soybeans, could slow purchases of agricultural products, heaping more pain on the struggling U.S. farm sector.

U.S. agricultural exports to China stood at $19.6 billion last year, with soybean shipments accounting for $12.4 billion.

Chinese penalties on U.S. soybeans will especially hurt Iowa, a state that backed Trump in the 2016 presidential elections.

Boeing (BA.N) jets have also been often cited as a potential target by China.

China and the U.S. had benefitted by globalisation, Blackrock's Larry Fink said at the forum.

"I believe that a dialogue  and maybe some adjustments in trade and trade policy  can be in order. It does not need to be done publicly; it can be done privately," he said.

Apple's Tim Cook called for "calm heads" amid the dispute.

The sparring has cast a spotlight on hardware makers such as Apple, which assemble the majority of their products in China for export to other countries.

Electrical goods and tech are the largest U.S. import item from China.

Some economists say higher U.S. tariffs will lead to higher costs and ultimately hurt U.S. consumers, while restrictions on Chinese investments could take away jobs in America.

"I don't think local governments in the United States and President Trump hope to see U.S. workers losing their jobs," Sun Yongcai, general manager at Chinese railway firm CRRS Corp, which has two U.S. production plants, said at the forum.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Hallie Gu; additional reporting by Ben Blanchard, Kevin Yao, Matthew Miller and Cate Cadell; Editing by Richard Pullin)trader

REUTERS

Companies that consistently buyback their shares outperform those that regularly pay dividends, according to Citi's Tobias Levkovich.

Buybacks have helped support stocks at times when mutual funds and other large investors backed off.

Critics of buybacks say that they're often done solely to meet Wall Street's earnings-per-share estimates and help company executives earn bonuses tied to stock performance.

There are two primary ways public companies return capital to their shareholders: by paying out dividends or buying back shares.

When companies throw cash at their own stock, they reduce the number of shares outstanding and signal their stock is undervalued. This year, companies are set to spend up to $800 billion on buybacks thanks to the windfall from corporate-tax cuts, according to JPMorgan's estimates.

Critics of buybacks say that they're often done to boost earnings per share and help company executives earn bonuses tied to the stock's performance.

Dividends, on the other hand, are paid straight to shareholders.

According to Tobias Levkovich, Citi's chief US equity strategist, it's more profitable in the long run to stick with companies that consistently buy their own stocks over those that regularly pay dividends.

"Our focus remains on serial share shrinkers or companies that reduce their share count every year and thereby show managements' dedication to generate shareholder value," Levkovich said in a note on Wednesday.

"Episodic buybacks are less interesting to us versus companies that seem to have the excess cash flow and strategic desire to return cash regularly. We often consider dividends to be a longer term commitment, but sustained share shrinkage typically rewards investors via outperformance."

Levkovich acknowledged that company buybacks have intervened in periods when mutual funds and other large investors were reluctant to buy stocks. He added that in fact, domestic mutual fund and exchange-trade fund flows have been negative every year since 2015, but buybacks have helped fill the void.

Story continues

But the chart below shows that on a total return basis, companies that consistently buy enough of their stock to reduce the count of outstanding shares are more rewarding. Examining share-price performance is the most useful way to assess which is better between buybacks and dividends, Levkovich said.

Screen Shot 2018 03 22 at 11.57.42 AM

Citi

NOW WATCH: In 50 years we'll have 'robot angels' and will be able to merge our brains with AI, according to technology experts

See Also:

SEE ALSO: 21 stocks set to surge as companies spend billions buying their own shares, according to Deutsche BankAs Dropbox had its IPO moment this morning, more than 10 years after launching, we can finally put one myth to rest. Dropbox and Box were never targeting the same customers.

As Anshu Sharma, founder at Prekari, a stealth startup and former partner at Storm Venture tweeted earlier today:

If you are a VC and still don't get why Box and Dropbox are fundamentally different businesses, maybe stay away from SaaS. https://t.co/4O7Xks8Dbb  Anshu Sharma  (@anshublog) March 23, 2018

Same goes for investors, analysts and journalists. If you don't believe they're different, consider that in Dropbox's S-1 paperwork they filed with SEC, you will note they didn't even list Box as a primary competitor: "We compete with Box on a more limited basis in the cloud storage market for deployments by large enterprises," the company wrote.

They had something in common, of course, but Dropbox has always been about managing files in the cloud, while Box has been focused on enterprise content use case cases in the cloud -- and that's a very different approach.

As Shria Ovide pointed out in her analysis on Bloomberg after the filing, the S-1 also proved that Dropbox has always been a "a consumer software company with a side hustle." That side hustle was the enterprise business. (She also pointed out on Twitter that they may be the first company to use a cupcake emoji in their S-1, which is actually kind of cool).

Consumer with a dash of enterprise

It turns out that vast majority of Dropbox's combined business and consumer revenue of more than a $1 billion came from consumers. Dropbox has always offered an attractive consumer storage tool. It's well integrated into desktop OSs and it has a nice mobile tool.

I use it and for $10 a month I get a terabyte of storage. I can back up my life there and it incorporates neatly into Finder on my Mac. When I capture screens they go automatically to Dropbox. It provides a place to back up my photos from my phone. It's convenient and easy and it works.

Story continues

It seemed that such a tool would translate nicely to business, but Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder and principal analyst at Deep Analysis, who has been following this space for years, says Dropbox has always primarily been confined to teams on the business side. "Dropbox is primarily a consumer company with 500 million users, [with] only about 300,000 teams using their business offering," he told TechCrunch.

That's not to say they aren't trying to capture more of the enterprise. In the weeks prior to the IPO, they made a pair of announcements designed to increase their enterprise credibility including one with Google to store G Suite documents natively in Dropbox and one with Salesforce to embed Dropbox folders in Salesforce Sales and Marketing clouds.

For now though, even with this business push, Pelz-Sharpe points out that most of Dropboxs business customers are small teams of 3 or more people with a dash of larger implementations. "Nor are people building much on top of Dropbox in the way of business applications - it remains primarily a very efficient file sharing system," he explained.

Differences with Box

This in contrast to Box, which has been working primarily with large enterprise companies for years to solve much more complex problems around content. Aaron Levie from Box said he's absolutely rooting for Dropbox, but they have always been going after different markets, since Box decide to go enterprise about two years into its existence.

"We are fundamentally building two very different companies. Both are large markets. While there is no limit to the scale they could become, we have built a very different business around how do you serve [large companies] and deal with unstructured company data -- and its a very different product set [from Dropbox]," Levie told TechCrunch.

Dropbox was off to a great start today with stock soaring, up nearly 40 percent in early trading, but however Dropbox ends up doing in the days and months ahead, they will do it having made their mark mostly as a consumer company -- and that's fine. If they continue to build their enterprise business over time, it will be all the better for them, but it turns out up until now, the only thing Box and Dropbox had in common was both had "box" in their names.

__

Have a look at Dropbox's debut at the TechCrunch 50 (the precursor to TechCrunch Disrupt) in 2008:Elon Musk isn't afraid of a bad idea. In fact, the billionaire CEO recently tweeted, "Creating a rocket company has to be one of the dumbest and hardest ways to 'make money'."

Tweet

And as USA Today pointed out, the billionaire CEO recently described starting SpaceX and Tesla, the two companies he's best known for founding, as possibly "the dumbest things to do" in terms of new ventures.

That's surprising, to say the least, especially considering that Tesla has a market cap over $52 billion, while Forbes values the private rocket company SpaceX at more than $20 billion .

"If you were to do a risk-adjusted rate of return estimate on various industry opportunities, I would put building rockets and cars pretty close to the bottom of the list. They would have to be the dumbest things to do," Musk told Jonathan Nolan , the co-creator of HBO's "Westworld," during a SXSW Interactive panel in Austin in March.

Musk said he founded SpaceX and became CEO of Tesla because he believed in the companies' abilities to change the world for the better.

"I gave basically both SpaceX and Tesla from the beginning a probability of less than 10 percent likelihood to succeed," Musk said, citing the wide array of challenges associated with building rocket ships within the private sector. He also noted the difficulty of launching a mass-market electric car in the ultra-competitive auto industry, where he said there is a "graveyard of companies" that went bankrupt trying to do so.

Despite the risks, Musk said he wanted to find solutions for "things that don't seem to be working that are important for our life and for the future to be good."

And Musk's career shows that he is nothing if not a risk-taker.

Musk has said that a "crazy" number of people tried talking him out of going into the rocket business before he founded SpaceX in 2002. "One good friend of mine collected a whole series of videos of rockets blowing up and made me watch those. He just didn't want me to lose all my money," Musk said on CBS's " 60 Minutes " in 2014.

Story continues

Musk reportedly earned $180 million in 2002 from eBay's $1.5 billion purchase of PayPal. Musk had been the largest shareholder of the money-transfer service after it merged with his own online payments company, X.com, in 2000.

Musk said during his talk at SXSW, that after the sale of PayPal, he was trying to decide between new ventures involving either electric cars (he had planned to study "advanced energy storage techniques for electric vehicles" at Stanford before dropping out of his PhD program at age 24) or space. He felt that space ventures were the least likely to attract a lot of entrepreneurs.

"I thought, 'nobody is going to be crazy enough to do space, so I'd better do space,'" said Musk.

But instead of focusing solely on what was already an ambitious venture in SpaceX, Musk decided two years later, in 2004, to get involved with Tesla, leading a Series A investment round and joining the company's board as chairman.

At SXSW, Musk said it was the "biggest mistake of my career" to think that he could easily balance his time between SpaceX and Tesla.

Instead, Musk noted, SpaceX had to endure a series of failures before becoming a viable private rocket manufacturer. In 2008, SpaceX nearly died completely, as the company's first three launches of its first rocket, the Falcon 1, failed. A fourth failure "would have been absolutely game over," Musk said, speaking about that period at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) conference in Adelaide, Australia in 2017. Luckily, the fourth launch attempt was successful, and the company then landed a government contract from NASA worth about $1.6 billion .

Tesla also nearly went bankrupt in 2008, Musk has said , and the company continues to face challenges that include current production delays on the company's Model 3 sedan. Nevertheless, Tesla's shareholders recently approved a $2.6 billion stock compensation plan for Musk.

Meanwhile, Musk is still not shying away from taking on further risky ventures, such as the cheekily named The Boring Company's plan to dig tunnels and build an ambitious high-speed, underground transportation system. (Musk has even sold more than 50,000 branded hats at $20 each, as well as 20,000 flamethrowers for $500 a pop, to raise money for The Boring Company.)

Musk also confirmed to CNBC Make It that he's looking to get into the media business with a new venture called "Thud," which he's reportedly staffing with former writers for the satirical publication The Onion.

"It's pretty obvious that comedy is the next frontier after electric vehicles, space exploration and brain-computer interfaces," Musk recently told CNBC Make It via a Tesla spokesperson. "Don't know how anyone's not seeing this."

If Musk is concerned about any of his multiple risky ventures, he isn't letting on. At SXSW, Jonathan Nolan asked the billionaire if he tries to plan around failures based on his experience dealing with SpaceX and Tesla obstacles in the past.

"I don't really have a business plan," Musk said at SXSW, noting that he hasn't had a formal business plan since he launched Zip2, his first successful startup in 1995.

"These things are just always wrong, so I didn't bother with business plans after that."

Don't miss: Elon Musk explains his motivation to succeed: "There need to be things that inspire you"

Like this story? Like us on Facebook !

This story has been updated.





More From CNBC

* EU states prepare expulsions, possible other measures

* Moscow slams EU backing for British accusations

* Governments to act individually, not as a bloc (Adds UK diplomats back in Britain)

By Noah Barkin and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS, March 23 (Reuters) - European Union member states agreed at a summit on Friday to take additional punitive measures against Russia for a nerve agent attack in Britain, as Moscow accused the bloc of joining a London-driven hate campaign against it.

Moscow has denied that it is behind the attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the first known offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War Two.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel said evidence of Russian culpability presented by British Prime Minister Theresa May was "very solidly based" and promised new measures after EU leaders agreed late on Thursday to recall their ambassador to Moscow.

"Germany and France agree that additional steps, on top of the recall of the ambassador, are necessary," Merkel said at a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron called the attack "unprecedented" and said Europe must respond: "It is an aggression against the security and sovereignty of an ally that is today a member of the European Union. It demands a reaction. This is clear."

In a boost for May, the 28-member EU collectively condemned the attack and declared in a Brussels summit statement that it was "highly likely" Moscow was responsible.

A British judge said on Thursday that both victims may have suffered brain damage from the attack. A policeman who was hospitalised after discovering the two unconscious on a park bench has now been discharged.

"Additional steps are expected as early as Monday at the national level," summit chair Donald Tusk told reporters.

TENSIONS

The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and the three Baltic states - Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania - were among those predicting further expulsions of Russian diplomats from their capitals.

Story continues

However, Boyko Borissov, prime minister of Bulgaria which holds the EU's rotating presidency, wanted more evidence so that "high probability becomes full probability" of Russian involvement.

"I expect very rapid tensions in the coming weeks because many countries will start to recall their ambassadors too. The current times are harder than the Cold War," Borissov said, making clear his discomfort with further measures.

Moscow has retaliated against Britain's move to expel 23 Russians by ordering out the same number of Britons.

On Friday, the Russian foreign ministry described the EU allegation as "baseless" and accused the bloc of spurning cooperation with Moscow and joining "another anti-Russian campaign deployed by London and its allies overseas".

The expulsion of British diplomats went ahead on Friday, with a convoy of minibuses speeding out of the embassy compound to applause after British embassy staff said their goodbyes in the courtyard under a light snowfall.

"I welcomed 48 colleagues/families plus 4 dogs. Safe at home," Foreign Office official Simon McDonald said on Twitter after the diplomats arrived back at a British air force base later on Friday.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, on a visit to Kiev, signalled that Paris was considering expelling Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain. "You will see," he said.

The summit statement hardened previous EU language on Russia's alleged role as Macron and others helped May to overcome hesitation on the part of some states that feel friendlier to Moscow. Some of them had questioned how definitive Britain's evidence is.

Welcoming the solidarity she secured from the summit, May told reporters on leaving: "The threat from Russia is one that respects no borders and I think it is clear that Russia is challenging the values we share as Europeans and it is right that we stand together in defence of those values." (Additional reporting by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Dmitry Madorsky in Moscow and Richard Lough, Gabriela Baczynska, Robin Emmott and Elizabeth Piper in Brussels Editing by Richard Balmforth and Gareth Jones)MULHOUSE, France, March 23 (Reuters) - The hostage-taking ongoing in the southwestern France town of Trebes seems to be a "terrorist act," Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told reporters on Friday.

"The hostage situation is ongoing. The operation is not over," Philippe said during a visit to Mulhouse. "All the information we have as I speak lead us to think that this would be a terrorist act."

Philippe also said that one police officer had been injured but that his life was not in danger.

BFM TV has said the hostage-taker claimed allegiance to Islamic State. Philippe did not mention that.

(Reporting by Philippe Genthon in Mulhouse, Bate Felix and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris Writing by Ingrid Melander; ediitng by John Irish)What you need to know on Wall Street today

Welcome to Finance Insider, Business Insider's summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours. Sign up here to get the best of Business Insider delivered direct to your inbox.

President Donald Trump signed the massive $1.3 trillion spending bill despite an earlier threat to veto it.

If Trump went through with the veto of the the bill, the federal government would have almost certainly shut down at the midnight deadline. Despite Trump's signature on the bill, Trump blasted the process that brought the bill to his desk calling it a "ridiculous situation that took place over the last week."

"There are a lot of things that I am unhappy about in this bill, there are a lot of things that shouldn't have been in this bill," Trump said. "But I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again."

Fears of a trade war between the United States and China, the world's two largest economies, are unnerving financial markets around the world. New US tariffs on Chinese imports and the immediate threat of retaliation raise the "distinct possibility of a tit-for-tat trade war which would be damaging for everybody," Dan North, the chief economist at Euler Hermes North America, told Business Insider.

In related news, President Donald Trump's fiscal stimulus may have set global financial markets on a "collision course for disaster," according to Scott Minerd, Guggenheim Partners' chief investment officer.

In other news, Dropbox surged by as much as 44% during its trading debut on Friday, marking a strong start to the most prominent tech initial public offering so far this year. Elsewhere in tech news:

NOW WATCH: Traders should be focused on the massive growth opportunities in Asia right now, says an HSBC investment chief

See Also:President Donald Trump said he has signed a spending bill funding the federal government for the next six months, reversing a veto threat he made earlier Friday that shocked Washington after his administration had previously said he would approve the legislation.

Trump's turnabout came after a meeting with Defense Secretary James Mattis, who advocated for the bill's increases in defense spending and wanted the relative certainty of six months of assured funding.

"My highest duty is to keep America safe. Nothing more important," Trump said at the White House. "But I say to Congress: I will never sign another bill like this again."

The spending bill appeared to only be waiting for Trump's signature when he tweeted Friday morning that he was "considering a VETO" because the bill does not fully fund a wall on the Mexican border or create a solution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a program protecting some undocumented immigrants from deportation that Trump chose last year to end.

The veto threat injected chaos into what appeared to be the end of a protracted struggle to settle on a funding plan for the federal government. A month of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats culminated in a deal to raise defense and domestic spending following a bruising fight that triggered a shutdown in January.

Trump called it a "ridiculous situation" before handing over his podium to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to briefly discuss a trade deal with South Korea. Afterward, Trump said he wants the power to issue line-item vetoes on spending bills  a power many presidents have demanded, and that Congress has never granted  and that the Senate should eliminate the ability of a minority to filibuster legislation.

The federal fiscal year began Oct. 1.

Top administration officials including Vice President Mike Pence and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney gave assurances on Thursday that Trump would sign the bill, which cleared both chambers of Congress that day.

Story continues

Trump said he had seriously considered vetoing the bill but "because of the incredible gains we've been able to make for the military that overrode any of our thinking."

A veto would have almost certainly triggered a partial government shutdown, the third since the start of the year, since many lawmakers left Washington after the legislation won final passage. Funding for the federal government was set to run out at 12:01 a.m Saturday.

"We wanted to include DACA in this bill, but Democrats wouldn't do that," Trump said.

Congressional aides said that the White House had suggested a three-year extension of the DACA program in exchange for $25 billion in funding for the border wall, a proposal Democrats rejected. Democrats offered to provide the money but only if Trump agreed to provide DACA recipients with a path to U.S. citizenship, as he had in an earlier debate. The White House rejected the counteroffer.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.comThe Senate voted to pass a massive $1.3 trillion spending bill.

The proposal would significantly boost spending on the military and domestic programs.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign the legislation into law.

The Senate passed a massive $1.3 trillion spending bill in the early morning hours of Friday, sending it to President Donald Trump desk for his signature.

Congress approved the more than 2,200-page legislation swiftly with a midnight Friday government shutdown deadline looming. The plan was released only Wednesday night.

The Senate passed the proposal by a bipartisan 65-32 vote. The House approved the bill Thursday afternoon by a 256-167 vote with bipartisan backing.

The legislation would fund the government through the end of September. It would significantly boost military spending and increase funding for border security, infrastructure and efforts to fight the opioid epidemic, among other programs. It also includes measures meant to strengthen gun sale background checks and improve school safety.

Some members criticized the rushed process to pass the proposal. They expressed concerns about the limited time to read and understand the massive legislation.

Throughout Thursday night, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voiced objections to the spending increases and left it unclear whether he would hold up a vote on the bill. He delayed a vote on the budget deal that set up the spending increases last month, carrying the Senate past a government shutdown deadline.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., personally talked to Paul and Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, to ensure they did not hold up the vote and increase the shutdown risk. Risch threatened to trip up the bill by demanding lawmakers remove a provision naming a federal wilderness area after a deceased political rival.

The bill now heads to Trump, who is expected to sign it into law despite misgivings about it earlier this week. Trump had concerns over such issues as the amount of money set aside for his proposed border wall, the lack of a sanctuary cities provision, and whether funding would go toward a rail tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York that he opposed.

Story continues

He reportedly threatened to veto it days ago, but tweeted his support for it Wednesday night after a discussion with House Speaker Paul Ryan and McConnell.

Trump tweet

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney reiterated Trump's support on Thursday and said he "looks forward to signing it." The president will support it "because it funds his priorities," Mulvaney said.

Leaders from both parties touted victories in the compromise bill, but acknowledged they made concessions. Republicans like Ryan promoted the boost to military funding and border enforcement efforts.

"What this ultimately is about is giving our military the tools and the resources it needs to do its job," he said before the House approved the bill.

Both major parties cheered increased funding to fight the opioid crisis and improve infrastructure.

Democrats touted provisions such as higher funding for child-care subsidies and low-income housing tax credits. They also got wins from what was not included in the legislation: measures championed by conservatives to pull funding for Planned Parenthood or so-called sanctuary cities.

The bill "is legislation that neither side sees as perfect, but which contains a host of significant victories and important achievements on behalf of the American people," McConnell said Thursday on the Senate floor.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer , D-N.Y., also acknowledged concessions from both major parties on Thursday.

"Now, it certainly doesn't have everything Democrats want. And it contains a few things Democrats aren't thrilled about. The same is true of our Republican friends. That is true of all compromises," Schumer said Thursday.

Here are some of the bill's notable provisions:

It would boost Department of Defense funding by nearly $80 billion, the largest increase in 15 years, according to lawmakers. That includes a 2.4 percent pay increase for the military.

It would put $1.57 billion in new funding toward fencing along the border with Mexico and border security technology such as aircraft and sensors. Trump had sought billions more in funding for a physical barrier on the border after he promised to build a wall as a candidate.

The legislation would allocate billions in new funding toward opioid abuse treatment, prevention and research. Overall, it would put $4 billion toward those efforts.

The bill would put more than $10 billion more toward infrastructure projects to improve highways, airports, railroads and bridges. It will also put money toward high-speed broadband development. It would not directly fund a rail tunnel from New Jersey to New York that Trump opposed. But the project would be eligible for funding from programs that are getting a boost in the bill.

It would include a provision to strengthen the gun sale background check system, by pushing agencies to better follow existing procedures for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The so-called Fix NICS bill had bipartisan support.

The proposal would put more than $2 billion in new money toward mental health and school safety programs.

The legislation would adjust an issue from the GOP tax bill passed in December that helped agricultural cooperatives relative to corporate competitors. In return, Democrats secured an expansion of the low-income housing tax credit.

The bill would not include measures to shore up Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplaces, as some Republicans and Democrats hoped. It also would not pull funding for so-called sanctuary cities or Planned Parenthood, as some conservatives had hoped.





More From CNBC

Jahantab Ahmadi had never heard of Facebook before this week, when an image of the Afghan mother of three nursing her baby during a university entrance exam took social media by storm.

Good news quickly followed.

She passed the exam, bringing her closer to her dream of an education. Then came news of a crowd-funding campaign to help assuage her fears that she would be unable to afford fees at the Nasirkhosraw Higher Education Institute in central Afghanistan's Daykundi Province.

Speaking to RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan during a trip to Kabul on March 23, the 25-year-old student appeared largely oblivious to her global exposure.

But she expressed a desire to help bring positive change to the Afghan people, "especially women" in her home province.

"Many women in Afghanistan, especially in the provinces, are illiterate," Ahmadi said.

The photos that brought her fame were taken by a lecturer who was monitoring the entrance exam for the institute's social-sciences program. Yahya Erfan was struck by the sight of the young woman, clad in a blue head scarf and a long overcoat, continuing to write out her exam answers even as she tried to calm her 2-month-old daughter.

Erfan recalled to RFE/RL that when the child began fussing, Ahmadi moved from her desk in the open-air classroom to the ground, where she could more comfortably nurse her baby.

Erfan said that he couldnt resist taking a few photos of the scene, and later posted the images on Facebook.

The images have since been shared on Facebook and Twitter, with some social-media users starting the hashtag #JahanTaab and urging support for a GoFundMe campaign to help pay Ahmadis fees at the private university.



In an earlier interview with the Etilatrooz Daily newspaper, she had expressed concerns about being able to afford her tuition. When RFE/RL spoke to her, she said she was unaware of the efforts to help her financially.

The baby, Khezran, is the youngest of Ahmadi's three children, all of whom are under the age of 5.

Ahmadi, her husband, Musa Muhammadi, and Khezran all made the trip from their home village to Nilli, the capital of Daykundi Province, so she could take the entrance exam.

"I have always wanted to go to university, but we couldnt afford it before," Ahmadi says.

"I want to continue my studies. I want to send my children to school so they can get an education and build comfortable lives for themselves."



"My wife has to study," Muhammadi, a farmer from an impoverished family, tells RFE/RL. Saying he believes in women's rights, he says, "I will support her as much as I can, to the best of my abilities."



In a conservative society where many men oppose womens education and career ambitions, Muhammadi says, "It doesnt matter if its a man or woman when it comes to getting an education."

Written by Farangis Najibullah based on an interview conducted by RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Sabawoon Kakar in Kabul.

TORONTO, March 19, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Galane Gold Ltd. (Galane Gold or the Company) (TSX-V:GG) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an earn-in option agreement (the Earn-in Agreement) with B2Gold Corp. (B2Gold).



Under the Earn-in Agreement, B2Gold has the option to indirectly acquire, in tranches, up to 70% of the shares of a newly incorporated subsidiary (Newco) of Galane Gold which has applied for two gold prospecting licences over an aggregate of approximately 520 km2 located around the Companys Mupane property, excluding its current operations and mining licences, in Botswana.

Galane Gold CEO, Nick Brodie commented: This represents a great opportunity for Galane and B2Gold to join together to target exploration in the Tati Greenstone Belt. The Tati Greenstone Belt is highly prospective and it is hoped with our large historic exploration database, which has identified numerous targets, and B2Golds exploration expertise that we will identify a significant resource.

The option is exercisable in tranches upon meeting certain exploration project related expenditure thresholds as follows: (i) B2Gold is to contribute US$500,000 within one year of the Conditions Satisfaction Date (as described below); (ii) B2Gold is to receive a 51% indirect interest in Newco upon contributing an additional US$2,000,000 in exploration project related expenses within three years of the Conditions Satisfaction Date; and (iii) B2Gold is to receive an additional 19% indirect interest in Newco upon contributing an additional US$1,500,000 in exploration project related expenses within four years of the Conditions Satisfaction Date. If B2Gold has not completed the last tranche of expenditures in the stipulated timeframe, B2Gold must transfer its 51% indirect interest in Newco to Galane Gold for no additional consideration.

It is expected that the Earn-in Agreement will be replaced by a definitive shareholders agreement governing the parties interests in Newco.

The Conditions Satisfaction Date will occur upon the satisfaction or waiver of various conditions precedent in the Earn-in Agreement, including completion of due diligence by B2Gold and the issuance of the prospecting licenses to Newco. After the Conditions Satisfaction Date, B2Gold will carry out exploration on the properties with guidance received from a jointly formed technical committee. B2Gold may terminate the Earn-in Agreement if all conditions are not fulfilled or waived by June 13, 2018.

About Galane Gold

Galane Gold is an un-hedged gold producer and explorer with mining operations and exploration tenements in Botswana and South Africa. Galane Gold is a public company and its shares are quoted on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol GG. Galane Golds management team is comprised of senior mining professionals with extensive experience in managing mining and processing operations and large-scale exploration programmes. Galane Gold is committed to operating at world-class standards and is focused on the safety of its employees, respecting the environment, and contributing to the communities in which it operates.

Cautionary Notes

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements, including timing for first production at Galaxy and increasing capacity at the processing plant. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release, including, without limitation, those regarding the Companys future financial position and results of operations, strategy, proposed acquisitions, plans, objectives, goals and targets, and any statements preceded by, followed by or that include the words believe, expect, aim, intend, plan, continue, will, may, would, anticipate, estimate, forecast, predict, project, seek, should or similar expressions or the negative thereof, are forward-looking statements. These statements are not historical facts but instead represent only the Companys expectations, estimates and projections regarding future events. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual results may differ materially from what is expressed, implied or forecasted in such forward-looking statements.

Additional factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially include, but are not limited to: the Companys dependence on two mineral projects; gold price volatility; risks associated with the conduct of the Companys mining activities in Botswana and South Africa; regulatory, consent or permitting delays; risks relating to the Companys exploration, development, plant expansion and mining activities being situated in Botswana and South Africa; risks relating to reliance on the Companys management team and outside contractors; risks regarding mineral resources and reserves; the Companys inability to obtain insurance to cover all risks, on a commercially reasonable basis or at all; currency fluctuations; risks regarding the failure to generate sufficient cash flow from operations; risks relating to project financing and equity issuances; risks arising from the Companys fair value estimates with respect to the carrying amount of mineral interests; mining tax regimes; risks arising from holding derivative instruments; the Companys need to replace reserves depleted by production; risks and unknowns inherent in all mining projects, including the inaccuracy of reserves and resources, metallurgical recoveries and capital and operating costs of such projects; contests over title to properties, particularly title to undeveloped properties; laws and regulations governing the environment, health and safety; operating or technical difficulties in connection with mining or development activities; lack of infrastructure; employee relations, labour unrest or unavailability; health risks in Africa; the Companys interactions with surrounding communities and artisanal miners; the Companys ability to successfully integrate acquired assets; risks related to restarting production; the speculative nature of exploration and development, including the risks of diminishing quantities or grades of reserves; development of the Companys exploration properties into commercially viable mines; stock market volatility; conflicts of interest among certain directors and officers; lack of liquidity for shareholders of the Company; risks related to the market perception of junior gold companies; and litigation risk. Management provides forward-looking statements because it believes they provide useful information to investors when considering their investment objectives and cautions investors not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Consequently, all of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein, and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, the Company. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect subsequent information, events or circumstances or otherwise, except as required by law.

Information of a technical and scientific nature that forms the basis of the disclosure in the press release has been approved by Charles Byron Pr. Sci. Nat., MAusIMM., MGSSA and Chief Geologist for Galane Gold, and a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

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.

For further information please contact:

Nick Brodie

CEO, Galane Gold Ltd.

+ 44 7905089878

Nick.Brodie@GalaneGold.com

www.GalaneGold.comNEW ORLEANS, March 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Bauxite Corporation (First Bauxite or the Company) (TSX-V:FBX) (FRANKFURT:FBI) (BERLIN:FBI) is pleased to announce that it has completed independent third party testwork on the final industrial scale trial production campaign of ultra high strength proppant (UHSP-11).



Ceramic Proppant (UHSP-11)

During the period April 2016 to November 2017, First Bauxite shipped 5,600mt of bauxite ore from its Bonasika deposits in Guyana to a ceramic proppant plant in Shanxi Province, China for processing into UHSP-11. Three trials were conducted over July 2016 to January 2017 to optimise plant and process conditions. These trials, as previously disclosed, provided encouraging results but due to processing challenges did not result in a product that was considered to be ready for this competitive market. A final production trial was conducted over August to November 2017 and approximately 800mt of conforming UHSP-11 was produced and shipped to a warehouse in New Orleans.

Representative samples from the final production trial were sent to two independent recognised proppant testing laboratories in the USA and one independent recognised proppant testing laboratory in the UK for long term conductivity and permeability testing. The testwork results from the industrial scale production trials confirmed earlier favourable R&D results that, compared to the market leading ultra high strength proppant products, UHSP-11 had:

superior strength

superior conductivity

comparable sphericity and roundness

The technical data sheet for UHSP-11 has been updated and is available on the Companys website (www.firstbauxite.com).

Discussions are being held with oil and gas operators and service companies on conducting market trials in offshore deepwater wells. While this is a relatively small market at the time, the Company believes it has the potential for significant medium-term growth.

Sintered Refractory Bauxite

In addition, the Company is also focusing its development activities on sintered refractory bauxite following some major fundamental changes on the supply side of the market. Enforcement of strict environmental regulations by the Chinese Central Government has led to the closure of significant numbers of sintered refractory bauxite plants in China (some on a permanent basis). This has been compounded by bauxite mine closures and a growing shortage of high quality Chinese bauxite ore. China is the largest supplier of sintered refractory bauxite and accounts for over 90% of the worlds production. First Bauxite conducted a small scale production trial processing 260mt of bauxite ore from its Bonasika deposits into sintered refractory bauxite in a refractory bauxite plant in Europe. The results compared favourably to the market leading sintered refractory bauxites from China and Guyana and further large scale production trials are planned.

Bonasika Production Campaign and Government of Guyana (GOG) Approvals

The GOG has granted approval for First Bauxite to ship up to 40,000mt of bauxite ore to Europe, Asia and North America for further industrial scale product and market development activities in ceramic proppants and sintered refractory bauxite. Two mining contractors have been engaged and mine production commenced at First Bauxites Bonasika deposits in March 2018.

The Company will provide additional business updates as further progress is achieved on the various activities discussed above.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of First Bauxite Corporation

Alan Roughead

President & CEO

About First Bauxite

First Bauxite Corporation (TSX-V:FBX) is a Canadian natural resources company engaged in the exploration and development of bauxite deposits in Guyana, South America. The Company intends to produce and sell bauxite raw ore from its facility in Guyana and intends to produce sintered refractory products and ceramic proppants for the refractory and energy industries in the future. The Company has its head office in New Orleans, Louisiana and is managed by experienced professionals with worldwide experience in the global industrial minerals industry across a number of industrial minerals. For further information on First Bauxite Corporation, please visit our corporate website at www.firstbauxite.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.

Certain statements contained herein constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements look into the future and provide an opinion as to the effect of certain events and trends on the business. Forward-looking statements may include words such as will, anticipates, believes, intends, expects and similar expressions. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the continued advancement of the Bonasika Project, the Companys development plans and the Companys outlook for potential growth in the use of UHSP-11 in offshore deepwater wells. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and entail various risks and uncertainties. Actual results may materially differ from expectations, if known and unknown risks or uncertainties affect the Companys business, or if the Companys estimates or assumptions prove inaccurate. Factors that could cause results or events to differ materially from current expectations expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, include, but are not limited to, effect of capital market conditions and other factors on capital availability, availability of sufficient financing to fund planned or further required work in a timely manner and on acceptable terms, continuing support of the Government of Guyana for the Bonasika Project; execution of the Companys existing plans as budgeted, including development programs for the Bonasika Project, which may change due to changes in the views of the Company or if new information arises which makes it prudent to change such budget, plans or programs, including the results of future trials and testwork or any inability to reproduce test results on a commercial scale or in the field, and other risks affecting the Company or the mining industry more fully described in the Companys continuous disclosure documents, which are available under the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or any other reason.

For further information please contact:

First Bauxite Corporation

Telephone: +592-223-4396

Email: info@firstbauxite.com

Website: www.firstbauxite.comA 2017 story suddenly went viral again which made the misleading claim women are now free to display their breasts in public anywhere in the U.S..

The story was first published by Awareness Act on April 13, 2017 with the headline "United States Federal Court Rules Females are Free to Display Their Breasts in Public" (archived here) which opened:

This has been ruled because there is no difference when it comes to male and female breasts. This ruling is something that will anger some and empower others. In this modern day and age, it has been a battle, to say the least when it comes to whether a person should be granted the right to be nude in public or not. Of course, this questions morals and ethics and is considered 'dirty' and profane by most. When you look at places like Europe there are select places a person could go and be in the nude without being judged and in other places like say Africa a person would (mostly women) be punished for going anywhere in their birthday suit.

Fact checking website Snopes.com already looked into the matter shortly afterward on April 17, 2017:

FACT CHECK: Did a U.S. Federal Court Rule That Women are Free to Display Their Breasts in Public? Due to a recent court ruling, It is now legal for women in the U.S. to display their breasts in public. Mostly False In February 2017, a U.S. District Court judge granted an injunction on an ordinance banning female toplessness in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Their conclusion was that the story was essentially false:

WHAT'S TRUE

In February 2017, a U.S. District Court judge granted an injunction on an ordinance banning female toplessness in Fort Collins, Colorado. WHAT'S FALSE

A federal judge did not rule that all women are permitted to go topless in any jurisdiction in the United States.

This is the second time in a week that an old story from Awareness Act goes viral again: just yesterday an old conspiracy hoax about alternative doctors being murdered that appeared on the site in 2016 went viral again as well, getting about 140,000 Facebook engagements in a bit more than a day. The current story has managed to top 170,000 already.

Might there be an organised reposting campaign at work here? We'll be keeping an eye out for any new trending hoaxes from the site.As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQNew York, Mar 24 (JEN): Over the past 15 years there has been a marked increase in cyber harassment, making the safety of women journalists a major issue for reportage in todays digital era, participants highlighted Thursday at a United Nations event.

In Slovakia we see the murder of an investigative journalist, with his fiance murdered alongside him, so not only were women journalists in danger, but women in general, according to Alison Smale, the head of UN global communications.

She made this chilling observation during an event held on the side lines of 62nd UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which has been running at UN Headquarters in New York since last week and will wrap up on 23 March.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) convened the panel discussion, entitled Safe Journalists, Strong Democracies: How on and offline attacks on women journalists are hurting us all, drawing attention to numerous ways women journalists can be placed in vulnerable settings  in the workplace, the field and online  leaving them open to harassment, intimidation and violence.

Calling the Slovakia incident absolutely grotesque, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, herself a former journalist, recognized the huge value of the UN, which pledges to discuss and try to deal with everything, for example, a workshop like this.

Chairing the event, Guy Berger, UNESCO Director of Freedom of Expression and Media Development, highlighted the UNESCO World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development report, which with a special focus on gender equality in the media provides an essential perspective to understand the changing global media landscape.

On a upbeat note, he displayed one chart showing that the number of States responding to UNESCOs request for more information on the judicial follow-up of journalists killings went from 30 to 75 per cent, showing progress that Governments are becoming increasingly more sensitized.

Unfortunately, he said, you still have only one out of 10 cases of killings of journalists being resolved.

Under the framework of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and Issue of Impunity, panellists shared their first-hand experiences of these threats and consequences on the press fundamental role in strengthening democratic societies.

Maria Ressa, former CNN correspondent and Founder, Editor, Director and Chief Executive of online publication Rappler, has faced orchestrated trolling and instigated mob misogyny.

With technology and social media, women are targeted online more than men, she said, elaborating that a Rappler study in the Philippines of online, State-sponsored hate revealed that the Government aimed to stifle any type of dissent.

She spoke about weaponized propaganda and gender-charged attacks against her and other female journalists there.

The only defense weve had is to shine a light on the attacks with a frequency that only technology allows, said Ms. Ressa, adding that the day after running an expose showing the data, I received for one month exactly [] an average of 90 hate messages per hour.

Her story is featured in UNESCOs publication An Attack on One is An Attack on All.



New York, Mar 24 (JEN): As the United Nations peacekeeping mission warps up in Liberia and the West African country looks to secure a stable future, the UN deputy chief on Friday cautioned the Government that while it has made great strides, the road ahead will be challenging.

At the launch of the countrys new National Development Plan in the capital, Monrovia, Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, congratulated all Liberians on a hard-won peace after 15 conflict-torn years and the progress made during the subsequent post-war period.

She, however, outlined that along with opportunities, serious challenges lie ahead.

When I look at the young women and men, and the initiatives for peace that they have courageously carried forward, sometimes even risking their lives, I am filled with pride and hope but also with fear, said Ms. Mohammed, noting severe economic constricts in the country and high unemployment among its youth.

We cannot fail them. We must [] empower them, [] meet their needs and expectations, and help them to fulfil their dreams, she added.

Applauding the countrys new development framework, dubbed the Liberia Moment, Mohammed underlined five principles that must underpin the Plan.

These include national ownership; eliminating poverty; improve tax and revenue collection, strengthen rule of law, and end dependency on aid; enhance transparency; and ensure predictable and sustainable means for development financing.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the best tools we have to prevent conflict and we should make every effort to achieve them without delay, she said, noting that the UN stands ready to provide the Government with advice, expertise and support needed.She also underscored the need to consolidate peace and avid a relapse into conflict, and in doing so reiterated the importance of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

We will be with you every step of the way. This is our commitment, said the Deputy Secretary-General.

Liberia, went through two civil wars spanning over 14 years between 1989 and 2003. Civil war in Liberia claimed the lives of almost 250,000 people and led to a complete breakdown of law and order.

The UN mission, known as UNMIL, was established by the UN Security Council in 2003 after a peace agreement was signed to end the fighting. The mission created a security environment that enabled more than a million refugees and displaced persons return to their homes; supported the holding of three presidential elections, and helped the government establish its authority throughout the whole country following years of fighting and instability.

ECOWAS Radio to take over UNMIL Radio

Meanwhile, as part of the closure of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), its official radio station, UNMIL Radio  which had been broadcasting since October 2003 to over 80 per cent of the countrys population  will transfer to Radio ECOWAS, the radio station operated by the Economic Community of West African States.It is markedly similar to the previous years theme of resistance, insofar as both embody his commitment to an economic policy that focuses on decreasing the Islamic Republics reliance on foreign trade while encouraging internal development. However, this is at odds with President Hassan Rouhanis efforts to continue expanding economic relations with foreign powers, including the West, in the wake of the 2015 nuclear agreement.

In his speech, Khamenei acknowledged that the Islamic Republic faces difficulties, but he insisted that the prospective solutions to those problems will come from inside Iran and not from abroad. In this way, the supreme leader was arguably paying lip service to the economic anxieties and other popular grievances that were expressed by protesters during a mass uprising that began in late December and continued through much of January.

At the same time, his remarks dismissed the widespread expectations of normalized relations between Iran and its traditional Western adversaries. Furthermore, by raising the issue of foreign-sourced solutions, Khamenei may have been referencing his own claims about the protests, namely that they were instigated by foreign powers and infiltrators of the Iranian social landscape.

As well as blaming the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, the ruling Shiite cleric also characterized the leading Iranian opposition group, the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran, as the foot soldiers for those powers. The PMOI itself has embraced the suggestion that it was a driving force behind the demonstrations, although it rejects any notion of direct foreign entanglements. The organizations leader, who is also president of the coalition known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, issued her own Nowruz message this week, calling for a year full of uprisings in the spirit of the demonstrations that spread throughout all major municipalities near the end of the preceding year.

The platforms of the PMOI and NCRI have consistently called for domestically-driven regime change or, in other words, the establishment of democratic governance that is made in Iran. But compared to the clerical regime, the Resistance is far friendlier with Western and Arab governments, enjoying multi-partisan support from politicians and foreign policy experts throughout the world. Many of those experts, including those not affiliated with the Resistance, have estimated that there are good chances for a revived protest movement in the days ahead, thanks in part to the regimes crackdown on the recent demonstrations.

The Al Jazeera report helped to highlight the fact that that crackdown did not end as the protests tapered off but is in fact ongoing after the start of the New Year. The report called attention to a public celebration of Nowruz that was broken up by plainclothes police officers on the basis of public disturbance despite the fact that it consisted only of a group of Tehran residents offering free hugs to passersby. Al Jazeera described this incident as an example of the fact that any behavior that deviates from the norm is being perceived as a security threat in the wake of the January uprising.

Meanwhile, reports continue to accumulate of political activists and other types of dissenters being arrested, handed stiff sentences, or even killed in detention. The NCRI has determined that at least 14 people were tortured to death in the wake of the demonstrations, with the most recent such incident taking place in early March. Iranian officials have acknowledged that the total number of arrests resulting from those protests exceeded 4,000, and the NCRI puts that figure at 8,000.

The broader response to supposed security threats has apparently become a source of discord among the two major factions of Tehrans internal politics, although both factions have been blamed for some aspects of the repressive response to protests in January and throughout the previous year.

Radio Farda reported on Wednesday that the government of so-called moderate President Hassan Rouhani was facing increased pressure from hardliners over the Iranian peoples continued access to the popular social media app Telegram. The service was heavily filtered and at times blocked during the uprising, but access was returned after most of the protests were effectively suppressed. Yet, officials continue to widely perceive it as a threat to public order, and the High Council for Cyberspace has reportedly decided to block it permanently by the end of the year.

The head of that council, Hassan Firouzabadi, also recently published an editorial arguing that access to Telegram is not in the interest of the Islamic Republic. But as Reason Magazine noted on Thursday, there are counterarguments for this which may have influenced the Rouhani administrations decision to reverse the ban, and which have little to do with cultural freedom.

It has been reported that the government faced pressure over this issue soon after Telegram was cut off, because many Iranian businesses had come to rely on it for advertising their products, communicating with clients, and conducting transactions. Radio Farda suggested that Supreme Leader Khamenei personally criticized the subsequent decision to unblock the service. But if this is true, it indicates that Khameneis desire to curtail dissent and maintain public order is at odds with his declared focus on fostering development of the Iranian economy.

This situation naturally creates an opening for the efforts by the Iranian Resistance to spearhead a year full of uprisings, using as rallying tools either the peoples persistent economic hardships, the organizational power of social media, or both. It also challenges the clerical regime to determine which is the greater threat to its hold on power: Western infiltration through information technology or Western economic infiltration.

This in turn adds to the questions about the status of the Iran nuclear deal as the country enters its New Year. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is already under threat from the White House following US President Donald Trumps announcement that he would no longer renew sanctions waivers under the agreement unless Europe and the US formulated a plan for tightening restrictions on Iran. For its part, the Islamic Republic has threatened retaliation against any Western efforts to undermine the deal, and these threats are made more credible by Khameneis insistence on attempting to develop a relatively sanction-proof resistance economy.

Tehran refuses to entertain the notion of renegotiating any aspects of the JCPOA, as have its supporters among signatories of that deal, namely Russia and China. But as ABC News pointed out on Thursday, critics of Iran such as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies have argued that the US and EU, on their own, have sufficient economic leverage to compel Iranian cooperation if they work together toward a defined common goal.

However, the same ABC News report indicated that the progress toward establishing such a common goal was uncertain. State Department official Brian Hook recently headed talks in Berlin with representatives of Germany, France, and the UK, but would only describe those talks as constructive while acknowledging that it is not clear what steps would be taken after an agreement is realized.

Previously, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker declared that it appeared as if Europe was not on track to working together in a way that would satisfy President Trumps demands regarding the nuclear agreement and other aspects of Iranian misbehavior. Corker also predicted that if this situation did not change, Trump would likely pull the US out of the deal at the time of the next waiver deadline in May. Accordingly, CNN reports that the US is now pursuing a dual-track strategy on this topic, planning for withdrawal but still pursuing an agreement with the Europeans.

At the same time, the US Congress is also exhibiting a great deal of concern about the perceived growth in Iranian influence over the broader Middle East. As Al Monitor noted on Wednesday, this was reflected in the Senate vote that defeated a proposal to withdraw American support for a Saudi-led bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

hile acknowledging the human rights crisis associated with that campaign, many of the congressional opponents of that bill placed greater emphasis on Irans destabilizing effects in the region and the growing threat posed to longstanding US allies like Saudi Arabia.

This goes to show that under Trumps leadership, there is persistent or even escalating willingness to assertively confront Iran over its nuclear ambitions and a range of other issues. This casts substantial doubt upon the future of JCPOA, which in turn threatens Irans return to the global economy, especially in light of some leading Iranian officials resistance to any cooperation with the West, economic or otherwise.

At the same time, the collapse of the nuclear agreement will make it all the more difficult for Tehran to impose the desired restrictions on the Iranian people or to address the economic and social demands that were expressed during the January uprising. Under those conditions, an organized call for a year full of uprisings could pose an unusually severe threat to the ruling theocracy.Recently Eldar Mamedov wrote an article claiming that the exportation of revolution was only theoretically implied by the constitution and that the real goal of the export of the revolution was to provide moral support to oppressed people. Mamedov is wrong.

Many analysts, as well as Iranian dissidents, from around the world have covered this subject in detail and found no evidence that Iran has tried to help the oppressed when they intervene in other countries. Instead, they are trying to consolidate power for themselves and their Supreme Leader, who would become the ruler of any country that the revolution was successfully exported to.

Mohammed al-Sulami, the Head of International Institute for Iranian Studies, wrote: It is clear that Irans efforts to build and enhance relations with Shiite groups in the region are predicated on an objective of creating a global system of governance the doctrine of Velayet-e Faqih does not recognize geographic borders, once again helping to endorse its principle of exporting the revolution, both spiritually and practically.

Even leading members of the Regime cant help but admit to this in public speeches, with former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini stating numerous times that the Regime would export its revolution, making no note of oppressed people.

Other leading members who admitted this, include:

 Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei

 Hashemi Rafsanjani, Speaker of the Shura Council

 Mohammad Ali Jafari, Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)

 Hussein Hamedani, a senior officer in the IRGC

 General Qassem Suleimani, Commander of the Quds Force

 Brigadier Mohammad Ali Falaki, IRGC Commander in Syria

Spreading revolution is even the main reason that the Iranian Regime created the Quds militants.

Sulami wrote: [This all] make it very clear that the countrys clerical leadership has not only authorized military forces to spread Irans theocratic doctrine, but is promoting this at every level as a core component of its foreign policy. Irans political and military leadership has not only acknowledged the regimes intervention in regional nations, but openly boasts of its regional influence and control in Arab and non-Arab nations.

Indeed, make no mistake that the Iranian Regime is not helping the oppressed in Syria, where it supports the dictator Bashar Assad, or in Yemen, where it supports the Houthi terrorists, or in other countries in the region, where Iran is responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

The Iranian Regime will destroy the world through its export of revolution, if its allowed to.Leaders of Howard University takeover reflect 50 years later

The national tumult of 1968 was marked by iconic images, including the campus takeover _ students occupying critical campus buildings and shutting down institutions for days

The Columbia University takeover in April of that year was the best-known, but it appears the first one happened in D.C. 50 years ago this past week.

About 1,000 students at Howard University took over the administration building, leading to the shutdown of the school from March 19 through March 23, 1968.

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As the anniversary approached, two leaders of the protest _ Adrienne Manns Israel (then Adrienne Manns) and Anthony Gittens _ spoke with WTOP in separate interviews about how the demonstration unfolded, why it happened and how it affected the rest of their lives.

In addition to these interviews, the events have been reconstructed with the use of contemporary accounts from The Washington Post and The Washington Evening Star, as well as the 1987 documentary Eyes On the Prize and the 1968 public television documentary Color Us Black!

It was far from the first protest at Howard. The takeover was the result of months of planning and years of grievances, the two organizers said.

Gittens, now the director of the D.C. International Film Festival, said that There was a number of demonstrations at Howard when I was there, some of them I was involved in. Then, with a laugh, he said, most of them I was involved in.

The decision to demonstrate wasnt an easy one for Israel: She was on a scholarship and couldnt afford to lose it, but she said now I knew that it was possible. She decided the risk was worth it because of the implications for our future, as well as our community.

On Tuesday, March 19, 1968, about 1,000 students held a rally in front of Douglass Hall. From there, a group of students entered the administration building.

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The next move was to conduct a sit-in at President James Nabrits office until their demands were at least addressed, if not met.

The activists wanted Nabrits resignation; a judiciary system for student discipline; an emphasis on African-American history and culture in the curriculum, and the dropping of charges against 39 students inspired by the above issues who had made a protest three weeks earlier at Howards centennial Charter Day celebration.

Most important, Israel remembers now, they simply wanted negotiations, and to be heard. That was unusual at most institutions at the time, and particularly at Howard: They would not dignify us with a response, Israel said. Our demand is an answer _ we want you to say publicly what you think about these issues. And (Nabrit) never would.

As they entered the building, it turned out they had more support than they thought.

When we went in, we thought it would be the usual group . that we would be there, and it would be one more instance when they came and dragged us out, Gittens said. We turned around as we were walking into the building, and first there were scores, and then the word got out around campus about what was happening, and there were hundreds of students who joined the protest and took over the entire building.

We thought we had enough people to fill the third floor, Israel said, . but there were so many students who came into the building . we had to adjust.

The only people they let in were guards who locked the other offices in the building. And when public relations director A. Alexander Morisey tried to enter Wednesday, March 20, he was stopped by a line of students stood shoulder to shoulder, the Evening Star reported. One told him, This is the revolution.

Security guards went from classroom to classroom, locking the doors and telling students and professors that the university was closed. The medical buildings remained open, however.

The Washington Post described the gathering as a huge, noisy picnic and a joyous coup. Gittens remembers a calm atmosphere.

The scene is captured in the 1968 public-television documentary Color Us Black! Speakers included Gittens and Israel, and there was lots of singing _ including an adapted version of Down By the Riverside _ and a ubiquitous chant:

Beep Beep Bang Bang Ungawa Black Power

But the students also meant business. When Ewart Brown, one of the leaders, was asked about the prospect of administrators sending police to retake the building by force, he said that if that happened, We will react accordingly. .

No cops going to whip our heads. I hope the (D.C.) police understand that.

The changes to the disciplinary system were critical, Gittens remembered: If they decided that a student was . committing something that was unbecoming of a Howard student, they had the full authority to put you out. With no trial, no hearing, nothing.

That didnt sit well with many students, and it particularly rankled Gittens: As someone who had to work to get money to go to school, I wasnt a child anymore.

But there was a more fundamental problem: Despite a student population that was at least 90 percent African-American, a common refrain among the protesters was Howard is not a black university.

By the 1960s, half of Americas black doctors and a quarter of its black lawyers were Howard graduates. The university was called the black Harvard.

But the curriculum wasnt reflective of the students _ there were no courses on black history. The theatre department didnt do works by black playwrights. No jazz, blues or gospel performances were allowed in the fine arts building.

Virtually no black writers were taught in the literature classes, even though we had some of the foremost people in the field teaching there, Israel remembered. Sterling Brown, Arthur Davis . There were all kinds of teachers there who were equipped, and we could have had a robust program.

Nabrit, the university president, had been quoted as saying that he wanted Howard to admit more white students. Around this time, the trustees released a statement saying in part, Howard is not destined to be a black university.

The activist students at Howard considered that unacceptable. Michael Harris, the president of the freshman class, said in the Color Us Black! documentary, Howard University should serve another purpose other than preparing people to fill slots in white society.

By March 21, the third day of the protest and second of the shutdown, Lorimer Milton, the chairman of the board of trustees, told the Washington Evening Star that he didnt know when the university would reopen, but that When it does reopen, it will reopen for students who want to go to college and not for students who want to sit in the administration building. He added that the university was looking to see what legal action could be taken.

Protesters in the administration building had grown to about 1,200, the Evening Star estimated, adding that students were rotating in and out of their dorm rooms to freshen up, and plates of food were being brought in.

The university also announced that all students had to be out of the dorms by the following day. That didnt endear them to the parents who had to drive, in some cases over rather long distances, to retrieve their kids.

A father from Hartford, Connecticut, who had to take the day off to head to Howard said, I havent been able to talk to anyone from the administration. All I can talk to are students, and now Im against the administration and with the students.

The civil rights documentary Eyes On the Prize claims that one of the seismic events on the campus was the successful campaign of Robin Gregory for homecoming queen in 1966. She had an Afro _ a natural hairstyle that was modest by todays standards, but jarring to those used to processed, straightened black hair.

From there, a black-awareness movement grew: In 1967, Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service was booed off the stage at Howard, with one protester shouting America is the black mans battleground. And earlier in March 1968 came the Charter Day protests. It didnt take long, however, for the movement to bump up against some of the more established features of Howard culture.

Howard professor Charles Epps said, I dont know how Howard could have been more black. . (Theres no) black physics; theres no black engineering; theres no black medicine. The mission of the university was to train students to be competitive and competent whatever their field.

In the Color Us Black! documentary, Michael Harris, president of the freshman class, said the administrators were content to shuffle, and they say `I shuffled; I bent. I kissed some feet. I made it. You do the same thing, boy, and youll make it.

Another protester said, Our black administration seems to think that . they are showing the great white father how good we are. And the great white father is over there laughing at how stupid we are.

But many of the students _ though by no means all _ saw the development of a black consciousness, as well as a connection with the surrounding black community in D.C., as part of Howards mission.

They also were among the first college students to see their campus as a microcosm, one where students, teachers and administrators should work to create the kind of world they wanted and not just prepare them for the world that was.

Our perspective was that we should be about change, and not about replicating the status quo, Israel said. Because the status quo was not beneficial to us as a people.

On March 22, four days into the protest, some professors held impromptu classes on the quadrangle so that students wouldnt miss critical work with the end of the school year approaching. A group of protesters hung a hand-made sign over the Howard University sign on the front of the building reading Black University.

Meetings between university officials and students continued, while official statements from the administration maintained a hard line. Nabrit, who was in Puerto Rico when the protest began, never returned for the talks. He was quoted, however, as saying We have some good students, but we have some difficult ones . . I hope in dealing with them we can avoid something disastrous.

The number of protesters numbered about 1,000 out of the roughly 9,000 students at Howard at the time, and not everyone was on the activists side: Student Bar Association asked the District Court to force the university to reopen. The judge said that if the law school wasnt reopened by Monday, he would order the students to leave the administration building.

Israel at the time was quoted as saying that if the judge issued an injunction, Many of us will stay here and be arrested.

In the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, March 23, a deal was struck: Charges would be dropped against the 39 students involved in the Charter Day protests; the students got the student judiciary committee they wanted, and the next year, a seminar called Toward a Black University would be held at Howard to discuss curricula at the school, as well as other black colleges. Nabrit would not resign; he planned to retire at the end of the next school year anyway.

After an hour of discussion and a voice vote, the students agreed to the deal. It was announced that afternoon.

Israel didnt say anything at the press conference announcing the agreement because We agreed not to disagree in public. . I just wish we had asked for more.

At the time, she mentioned seeing white people being beaten by the police at a protest march on the Pentagon. If theyd do that to them, she said, I know theyd do that to us.

She agrees now with Gittens and others that I was wrong to hold out for Nabrits resignation. A leader in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and `60s and a counsel in the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that integrated American public schools, she realizes now that hed earned the right to go out on his own terms.

But there was a core of our demands that were not met, she says now, specifically regarding the welfare of the black community. And you can see now what Im talking about, in (the area surrounding Howard) thats being gentrified . the lower-income people around Howard are being forced out. She thought Howard should take the lead in redeveloping the community in an affordable way, but the administration said that wasnt in their charter.

Still, both agree that by and large, the takeover was the right thing to do. It was what we were left with to get their attention, Gittens said. And it worked. . The university changed its direction. Things that are accepted now, that was not the case back about 50 years ago.

There have been more than a few protests and sit-ins at Howard since then, most notably a 1974 protest over a tuition increase, a 1989 protest demanding that notorious political operative Lee Atwater resign from the board after his racist comments became public, and another as recently as 2015. Gittens said he gets invitations to advise or be part of such actions, but stays away. They have to make their own decisions, he said.

But I do know that there are people with concerns and issues, and who are trying to find a way to make sure the university remains on the proper course. . The need for the kind of education and training that Howard is offering is still a major need in our community.

Israel says now that Howard is a better place than it was. She returned to earn a masters degree in African studies from 1971 to 1973, and has visited a few times over the years. I think Howards come a long way, and theres a consciousness there that didnt happen before, she said, adding, black people in general, we have a better attitude about ourselves than we used to have.

Gittens said the protest taught him some of the most important lessons he learned in college: Youre called to make decisions; youre called to make assessments; youre called to be a leader; youre called to learn in order to keep it going, and survive in some instances. Thats the kind of experience that you cant go to (just) any university to get.

And hes carried a few principles from his protest days with him throughout his life: Its hard to watch people mistreated . and sometimes youve got to put your body on the line. Youve just gotta say `No. I will not let this continue. .

And thats a feeling thats risky, and it can cost, but at the end of the day, you feel as though youve lived a life that has made some contribution along the way. And so you feel pretty good about your life. I know I do.Rival Gang Members Charged With Killing 3-Year-Old Boy in Compton

Two men were charged today with the murder of a 3-year-old boy who was killed during a shootout in a Compton liquor store parking lot earlier this year, the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office announced.

Dwayne Ward (dob 3/14/88) and Kevaughn Harris (dob 5/20/90) were each charged in case TA145656 with one count of murder, shooting at an occupied motor vehicle and possession of a firearm by a felon. They are scheduled to be arraigned today in Department 12 of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Compton Branch.

On Jan. 20, Harris was walking toward a car that was parked outside a liquor store in the 2800 block of West Alondra Boulevard. Inside the vehicle were his girlfriend and her 3-year-old son Franklin.

Ward was sitting in a nearby vehicle and allegedly got into a verbal dispute with Harris. Both men, who were rival gang members, allegedly pulled out handguns and began firing at one another.

Franklin, who was sitting in the backseat of the vehicle, was fatally shot in the exchange of gunfire. His mother was not injured.

If convicted as charged, Ward and Harris face a possible maximum sentence of life in prison.

The case remains under investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.

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Today we tell a traditional American story called a tall tale. A tall tale is a story about a person who is larger than life. The descriptions in the story are exaggerated  much greater than in real life. This makes the story funny. Long ago, the people who settled in undeveloped areas in America first told tall tales. After a hard days work, people gathered to tell each other funny stories.

Each group of workers had its own tall tale hero. Paul Bunyan was a hero of North Americas lumberjacks, the workers who cut down trees. He was known for his strength, speed and skill. Tradition says he cleared forests from the northeastern United States to the Pacific Ocean.

Some people say Paul Bunyan was the creation of storytellers from the middle western Great Lakes area of the United States. Other people say the stories about him came from French Canada.

Early in the twentieth century, a writer prepared a collection of Paul Bunyan stories. They were included in a publication from the Red River Lumber Company in Minnesota. It is not known if the stories helped the companys sales, but they became extremely popular.

Here is Shep ONeal with our story about Paul Bunyan.

Many years ago, Paul Bunyan was born in the northeastern American state of Maine. His mother and father were shocked when they first saw the boy. Paul was so large at birth that five large birds had to carry him to his parents. When the boy was only a few weeks old, he weighed more than 45 kilograms.

As a child, Paul was always hungry. His parents needed 10 cows to supply milk for his meals. Before long, he ate 50 eggs and 10 containers of potatoes every day.



Young Paul grew so big that his parents did not know what to do with him. Once, Paul rolled over so much in his sleep that he caused an earthquake. This angered people in the town where his parents lived. So, the government told his mother and father they would have to move him somewhere else.

Pauls father built a wooden cradle -- a traditional bed for a baby. His parents put the cradle in waters along the coast of Maine. However, every time Paul rolled over, huge waves covered all the coastal towns. So his parents brought their son back on land. They took him into the woods. This is where he grew up.

As a boy, Paul helped his father cut down trees. Paul had the strength of many men. He also was extremely fast. He could turn off a light and then jump into his bed before the room got dark.

Maine is very cold for much of the year. One day, it started to snow. The snow covered Pauls home and a nearby forest. However, this snow was very unusual. It was blue. The blue snow kept falling until the forest was covered.

Paul put on his snowshoes and went out to see the unusual sight. As he walked, Paul discovered an animal stuck in the snow. It was a baby ox. Paul decided to take the ox home with him. He put the animal near the fireplace. After the ox got warmer, his hair remained blue.

Paul decided to keep the blue ox and named him Babe. Babe grew very quickly. One night, Paul left him in a small building with the other animals. The next morning, the barn was gone and so was Babe. Paul searched everywhere for the animal. He found Babe calmly eating grass in a valley, with the barn still on top of his back. Babe followed Paul and grew larger every day. Every time Paul looked, Babe seemed to grow taller.

In those days, much of North America was filled with thick, green forests. Paul Bunyan could clear large wooded areas with a single stroke of his large, sharp axe.

Paul taught Babe to help with his work. Babe was very useful. For example, Paul had trouble removing trees along a road that was not straight. He decided to tie one end of the road to what remained of a tree in the ground. Paul tied the other end to Babe. Babe dug his feet in the ground and pulled with all his strength until the road became straight.

In time, Paul and Babe the Blue Ox left Maine, and moved west to look for work in other forests. Along the way, Paul dug out the Great Lakes to provide drinking water for Babe. They settled in a camp near the Onion River in the state of Minnesota.

Paul decided to get other lumberjacks to help with the work. His work crew became known as the Seven Axemen. Each man was more than 2 meters tall and weighed more than 160 kilograms. All of the Axemen were named Elmer. That way, they all came running whenever Paul called them.

The man who cooked for the group was named Sourdough Sam. He made everything -- except coffee -- from sourdough, a substance used in making sourdough bread.

Every Sunday, Paul and his crew ate hot cakes. Each hot cake was so large that it took five men to eat one. Paul usually had 10 or more hot cakes, depending on how hungry he was. The table where the men ate was so long that a server usually drove to one end of the table and stayed the night. The server drove back in the morning, with a fresh load of food.

Paul needed someone to help with the camps finances. He gave the job to a man named Johnny Inkslinger. Johnny kept records of everything, including wages and the cost of feeding Babe. He sometimes used nine containers of writing fluid a day to keep such detailed records.

The camp also was home to Sport, the Reversible Dog. One of the workers accidentally cut Sport in two. The man hurried to put the dog back together, but made a mistake. He bent the animals back the wrong way. However, that was not a problem for Sport. He learned to run on his front legs until he was tired. Then, he turned the other way and ran on his back legs.

Big mosquitoes were a problem at the camp. The men attacked the insects with their axes and long sticks. Before long, the men put barriers around their living space. Then, Paul ordered them to get big bees to destroy the mosquitoes. But the bees married the mosquitoes, and the problem got worse. They began to produce young insects. One day, the insects love of sweets caused them to attack a ship that was bringing sugar to the camp. At last, the mosquitoes and bees were defeated. They ate so much sugar they could not move.

Paul always gave Babe the Blue Ox a 35-kilogram piece of sugar when he was good. But sometimes Babe liked to play tricks. At night, Babe would make noises and hit the ground with his feet. The men at the camp would run out of the buildings where they slept, thinking it was an earthquake.

When winter came, Babe had trouble finding enough food to eat. Snow covered everything. Ole the Blacksmith solved the problem. He made huge green sunglasses for Babe. When Babe wore the sunglasses, he thought the snow was grass. Before long, Babe was strong and healthy again.

One year, Pauls camp was especially cold. It was so cold that the men let their facial hair grow very long. When the men spoke, their words froze in the air. Everything they said remained frozen all winter long, and did not melt until spring.

Paul Bunyan and Babe left their mark on many areas. Some people say they were responsible for creating Puget Sound in the western state of Washington. Others say Paul Bunyan and Babe cleared the trees from the states of North Dakota and South Dakota. They prepared this area for farming.

Babe the Blue Ox died in South Dakota. One story says he ate too many hot cakes. Paul buried his old friend there. Today, the burial place is known as the Black Hills.

Whatever happened to Paul Bunyan? There are lots of stories. Some people say he was last seen in Alaska, or even the Arctic Circle. Another tradition says he still returns to Minnesota every summer. It says Paul moves in and out of the woods, so few people ever know that he is there.

You have just heard the story of Paul Bunyan. It was adapted by George Grow. Your narrator was Shep ONeal.

Now its your turn. Tell us in the comments section about a tall tale from your culture. Does the hero of the story have unusual size or strength? Visit our Facebook page, too, for more stories.

_______________________________________________________________

QUIZ

Quiz - Paul Bunyan, An American Folk Tale Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

reversible - adj. having two sides that can be used

blacksmith - n. a person who makes or repairs things made of iron (such as horseshoes)Turkey detained more suspected followers of clergyman Fethullah Gulen on Friday, police and media reported.

Turkish officials accuse Gulen of directing a plot aimed at overthrowing the government in July 2016. The overthrow attempt failed. Gulen has denied the accusation. He lives in the American state of Pennsylvania.

Since the overthrow attempt, Turkish officials have arrested thousands of his suspected followers and dismissed thousands more from jobs.

Istanbul police told the Reuters news agency about the governments actions on Friday. They said the government approved arrest warrants for 55 employees of Isik Publications, a company that published Gulens books.

Turkeys state-operated news agency Anadolu reported that warrants for 38 former police officials were also announced. It said the former officials were accused of being supporters of Gulens organization.

In addition, police targeted 62 leaders of five labor unions, Anadolu said. The labor unions were part of an alliance of unions that the government ordered closed over suspected links to Gulans group.

The United Nations (UN) says Turkey has arrested nearly 160,000 people and dismissed 152,000 government employees since the failed coup attempt. A new UN report says the numbers are through the end of December 2017.

The UN urged Turkey to end its state of emergency, which was declared after the coup and has been extended six times. The report accused the Turkish government of mass arrests and torturing detainees.

Turkeys foreign minister said the report was filled with unfounded claims. It compared the UNs criticism to propaganda from militant groups.

Western governments have accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of using the failed coup as the reason to silence dissidents. Turkey says the steps it has taken are necessary to fight threats to its national security.

I'm Dorothy Gundy.

Hai Do adpated this story from Reuters news reports. George Grow was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

warrant - n. a document issued by a court giving the police the power to do something

coup - n. an attempt to take over the government usually by forceVietnam is seeking closer relations with Australia in an effort to limit Chinese expansion in the South China Sea.

On March 15, Vietnam and Australia signed a strategic partnership to increase contacts between high-level officials of the two countries. Australian officials have described the agreement as an upgrade to partnerships in effect since 2009. The latest partnership includes promises to deal with security threats, and work together on maritime policy-making.

Vietnam wants help in controlling Chinese interests in the South China Sea. Australia hopes to increase its business and security interests in Southeast Asia.

Frederick Burke is a lawyer in Ho Chi Minh City. He spoke about the partnership between Australia and Vietnam.

To the extent that theyre both concerned about especially things like freedom of navigation and the East (China) Sea. They have a shared interest with Vietnam in keeping the sea lanes open.

China and Vietnam have disputes over sovereignty issues in the South China Sea. Taiwan and three other Southeast Asian countries also have territorial claims in the same area.

Experts say Vietnam is seeking better relations with other nations to protect fishing boats, energy exploration at sea and its territorial claims.

Australia belongs to an alliance that includes India, Japan and the United States.

Heads of state from that group met in the Philippines in November to discuss how to keep the South China Sea open. Australia and Japan called for rules-based order and respect for international law.

Vietnam and India upgraded their strategic partnership last year. In 2014, Japan agreed to sell Vietnam six ships and boats for gathering intelligence. This month, the United States sent an aircraft carrier group to Vietnam.

South China Sea dispute

Chinas government has angered other claimants to parts of the South China Sea over the past 10 years. Chinese crews have built up and developed small islands in the sea for possible military use. And Chinese coast guard ships have sailed in waters near areas claimed by other claimants. Australia has no claim to the sea.

But both Australia and Vietnam consider China their top trading partner. Observers say this means the countries are unlikely to enter into conflict with China at sea.

Trung Nguyen is international relations dean at the Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities. He says Vietnam may be interested in help from Australia because it cannot tell what the United States will do in the South China Sea dispute.

With the [multi-country foreign] policy, Vietnam can develop some kind of counterbalance against China in the case of the absence of American presence in the region. Even though Australia is a second-tier power, in some sense they can make up for the U.S. in some aspects when the U.S. is going back to an America-first policy.

Australian business interests

Australia signed the partnership with Vietnam as a way to improve relations with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Australian officials consider ASEANs members as an important market for Australian companies.

This month, the Vietnamese airline company Vietjet said it plans to begin flights between Ho Chi Minh City and the Australian city of Brisbane. It said the goal is to help with integration and trade exchange in the area.

In 2016 and 2017, trade between Australia and Vietnam reached $9 billion. That amount makes Vietnam Australias 15th largest trading partner.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Ralph Jennings reported this story for VOA News. Jonathan Evans adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

absence  n. a state or condition in which something expected, wanted, or looked for is not present or does not exist;

aspects  n. a part of something

tier  n. a level or step in a group or organization

counterbalance  n. weight than balances another weight

maritime - adj. of or relating to sailing on the sea or doing business such as trading by sea

sovereignty  n. controlling influence; unlimited power

extent  n. the point or limit to which something extends

strategic  adj. related to a general plan; useful in carrying out a plan

navigation  n. the science of getting ships, airplanes or spacecraft from place to place American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved.

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Read MoreWall Street analysts have given iShares Latin America 40 ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares Latin America 40 ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.CAE Inc., together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, and supplies simulation equipment and training solutions to defense and security markets, commercial airlines, business aircraft operators, helicopter operators, aircraft manufacturers, and healthcare education and service providers worldwide. The company's Civil Aviation Training Solutions segment provides training solutions for flight, cabin, maintenance, and ground personnel in commercial, business, and helicopter aviation; flight simulation training devices; and ab initio pilot training and crew sourcing services, as well as end to end digitally-enabled crew management, training operations solutions, and optimization software. Its Defence and Security segment offers training and mission support solutions for defense forces across multi-domain operations, and for government organizations responsible for public safety. The company's Healthcare segment provides integrated education and training solutions, including surgical and imaging simulations, curriculum, audiovisual and centre management platforms, and patient simulators to healthcare students and clinical professionals. The company was formerly known as CAE Industries Ltd. and changed its name to CAE Inc. in June 1993. CAE Inc. was founded in 1947 and is headquartered in Saint-Laurent, Canada.

Read MoreBCE Inc., a telecommunications and media company, provides wireless, wireline, Internet, and television (TV) services to residential, business, and wholesale customers in Canada. It operates through three segments: Bell Wireless, Bell Wireline, and Bell Media. The Bell Wireless segment offers wireless voice and data communications products and services. The Bell Wireline segment provides data, including Internet access and Internet protocol television; and local telephone, long distance, satellite TV service, and connectivity, as well as other communications services and products. This segment also buys and sells local telephone, long distance, data, and other services from or to resellers, and other carriers. The Bell Media segment provides conventional TV, specialty TV, pay TV, and streaming services; and digital media, radio broadcasting, out-of-home advertising services. It owns and operates approximately 35 conventional TV stations; 27 specialty and four Pay TV channels; 3 direct-to-consumer streaming services; 109 licensed radio stations; and websites. The company was formerly known as Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. BCE Inc. was founded in 1880 and is headquartered in Verdun, Canada.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of InterContinental Hotels Group: 2250 Blake Street Hotel LLC, 24th Street Operator Sub LLC, 36th Street IHG Sub LLC, 426 Main Ave LLC, 46 Nevins Street Associates LLC, Allegro Management LLC, Alpha Kimball Hotel LLC, American Commonwealth Assurance Co. Ltd., Asia Pacific Holdings Limited, BHMC Canada Inc., BHR Holdings B.V., BHR Luxembourg SARL, BHR Pacific Holdings Inc., BHTC Canada Inc., BOC Barclay Sub LLC, Barclay Operating Corp., Bristol Oakbrook Tenant Company, Cafe Biarritz, Cambridge Lodging LLC, Capital Lodging LLC, Compania Inter-Continental De Hoteles El Salvador SA, Crowne Plaza Amsterdam (Management) B.V., Crowne Plaza LLC, Cumberland Akers Hotel LLC, Dunwoody Operations Inc., EVEN Real Estate Holding LLC, Edinburgh IC Limited, General Innkeeping Acceptance Corporation, Guangzhou SC Hotels Services Ltd., H.I. (Ireland) Limited, H.I. Soaltee Management Company Ltd, HC International Holdings Inc., HH France Holdings SAS, HH Hotels (EMEA) B.V., HH Hotels (Romania) SRL, HI Sugarloaf LLC, HIM (Aruba) NV, Hale International Ltd., Hoft Properties LLC, Holiday Hospitality Franchising LLC, Holiday Inn Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Holiday Inns (China) Ltd, Holiday Inns (Chongqing) Inc., Holiday Inns (Courtalin) Holdings SAS, Holiday Inns (Courtalin) SAS, Holiday Inns (England) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Germany) LLC, Holiday Inns (Guangzhou) Inc., Holiday Inns (Jamaica) Inc., Holiday Inns (Malaysia) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Middle East) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Philippines) Inc., Holiday Inns (Saudi Arabia) Inc., Holiday Inns (South East Asia) Inc., Holiday Inns (Thailand) Ltd., Holiday Inns (UK) Inc., Holiday Inns Crowne Plaza (Hong Kong) Inc., Holiday Inns Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, Holiday Inns Inc., Holiday Inns Investment (Nepal) Ltd., Holiday Inns of America (UK) Ltd., Holiday Inns of Belgium N.V., Holiday Pacific Equity Corporation, Holiday Pacific LLC, Holiday Pacific Partners LP, Hotel Inter-Continental London Limited, Hotel InterContinental London (Holdings) Limited, Hoteles Y Turismo HIH SRL, IC Hotelbetriebsfuhrungs GmbH, IC Hotels Management (Portugal) Unipessoal Lda, IC International Hotels Limited Liability Company, IHC (Thailand) Limited, IHC Buckhead LLC, IHC Edinburgh (Holdings), IHC Hopkins (Holdings) Corp., IHC Hotel Limited, IHC Inter-Continental (Holdings) Corp., IHC London (Holdings), IHC M-H (Holdings) Corp., IHC May Fair (Holdings) Limited, IHC May Fair Hotel Limited, IHC Overseas (U.K.) Limited, IHC UK (Holdings) Limited, IHC United States (Holdings) Corp., IHC Willard (Holdings) Corp., IHG (Australasia) Limited, IHG (Marseille) SAS, IHG (Thailand) Limited, IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan LLC, IHG ANA Hotels Holdings Co. Ltd., IHG Bangkok Ltd, IHG Brasil Administracao de Hoteis e Servicos Ltda, IHG Commission Services SRL, IHG Community Development LLC, IHG Cyprus Limited, IHG ECS (Barbados) SRL, IHG Franchising Brasil Ltda, IHG Franchising DR Corporation, IHG Franchising LLC, IHG Hotels (New Zealand) Limited, IHG Hotels Limited, IHG Hotels Management (Australia) Pty Limited, IHG Hotels Nigeria Limited, IHG Hotels South Africa (Pty) Ltd, IHG International Partnership, IHG Istanbul Otel Yonetim Limited Sirketi, IHG Japan (Management) LLC, IHG Japan (Osaka) LLC, IHG Management (Maryland) LLC, IHG Management (Netherlands) B.V., IHG Management MD Barclay Sub LLC, IHG Management SL d.o.o, IHG Management d.o.o. Beograd, IHG Orchard Street Member LLC, IHG PS Nominees Limited, IHG Systems Pty Ltd, IHG Szalloda Budapest Szolgaltato Kft., IHG de Argentina SA, IND East Village SD Holdings LLC, Inter-Continental D.C. Operating Corp., Inter-Continental Florida Investment Corp., Inter-Continental Florida Partner Corp., Inter-Continental Hospitality Corporation, Inter-Continental Hoteleira Limitada, Inter-Continental Hotels (Montreal) Operating Corp., Inter-Continental Hotels (Montreal) Owning Corp., Inter-Continental Hotels (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation, Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation de Venezuela C.A., Inter-Continental Hotels of San Francisco Inc., Inter-Continental IOHC (Mauritius) Limited, Inter-Continental Management (Australia) Pty Limited, InterContinental (Branston) 1 Limited, InterContinental (PB) 1, InterContinental (PB) 2, InterContinental (PB) 3 Limited, InterContinental Berlin Service Company GmbH, InterContinental Brasil Administracao de Hoteis Ltda, InterContinental Gestion Hotelera S.L., InterContinental Hotel Berlin GmbH, InterContinental Hotel Dusseldorf GmbH (Germany), InterContinental Hotels (Puerto Rico) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (Asia Pacific) Pte Ltd, InterContinental Hotels Group (Australia) Pty Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (Canada) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (Espana) SA, InterContinental Hotels Group (Greater China) Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (India) Pvt. Ltd, InterContinental Hotels Group (Japan) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (New Zealand) Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (Shanghai) Ltd., InterContinental Hotels Group Customer Services Ltd., InterContinental Hotels Group Healthcare Trustee Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group Operating Corp., InterContinental Hotels Group Resources Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group Services Company, InterContinental Hotels Group do Brasil Limitada, InterContinental Hotels Italia S.r.L., InterContinental Hotels Limited, InterContinental Hotels Management GmbH, InterContinental Hotels Nevada Corporation, InterContinental Management AM LLC, InterContinental Management Bulgaria EOOD, InterContinental Management France SAS, InterContinental Management Poland sp. z.o.o, InterContinental Overseas Holding Corporation, Intercontinental Hotels Corporation Limited, KG Benefits LLC, KG Gift Card Inc., KG Liability LLC, KG Technology LLC, KHP Washington Operator LLC, KHRG 11th Avenue Hotel LLC, KHRG 851 LLC, KHRG Aertson LLC, KHRG Alexandria LLC, KHRG Alexis LLC, KHRG Allegro LLC, KHRG Argyle LLC, KHRG Austin Beverage Company LLC, KHRG Baltimore LLC, KHRG Born LLC, KHRG Boston Hotel LLC, KHRG Canary LLC, KHRG Cayman Employer Ltd., KHRG Cayman LLC, KHRG DC 1731 LLC, KHRG DC 2505 LLC, KHRG Donovan LLC, KHRG Employer LLC, KHRG Goleta LLC, KHRG Gray LLC, KHRG Gray U2 LLC, KHRG Hillcrest LLC, KHRG Huntington Beach LLC, KHRG King Street LLC, KHRG La Peer LLC, KHRG Miami Beach LLC, KHRG Muse LLC, KHRG NPC LLC, KHRG Onyx LLC, KHRG Palladian LLC, KHRG Palomar Phoenix LLC, KHRG Philly Monaco LLC, KHRG Pittsburgh LLC, KHRG Reynolds LLC, KHRG Riverplace LLC, KHRG SFD LLC, KHRG Sacramento LLC, KHRG Savannah LLC, KHRG Schofield LLC, KHRG Sedona LLC, KHRG State Street LLC, KHRG Sutter LLC, KHRG Sutter Union LLC, KHRG Taconic LLC, KHRG Tariff LLC, KHRG Texas Hospitality LLC, KHRG Texas Operations LLC, KHRG Tryon LLC, KHRG VZ Austin LLC, KHRG Vero Beach LLC, KHRG Vintage Park LLC, KHRG WPB LLC, KHRG Wabash LLC, KHRG Westwood LLC, KHRG Wilshire LLC, KHRG Zamora LLC, Kimpton Hollywood Licenses LLC, Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC, Kimpton Phoenix Licenses Holdings LLC, Kimpton Sedona Licenses LLC, Louisiana Acquisitions Corp., MH Lodging LLC, Mercer Fairview Holdings LLC, PML Services LLC, PT SC Hotels & Resorts Indonesia, Pollstrong Limited, Powell Pine Inc., Priscilla Holiday of Texas Inc., RM Lodging LLC, Regent Hotels and Resorts, Resort Services International (Cayo Largo) L.P., SBS Maryland Beverage Company LLC, SC Cellars Limited, SC Hotels International Services Inc., SC Leisure Group Limited, SC NAS 2 Limited, SC Quest Limited, SC Reservations (Philippines) Inc., SCH Insurance Company, SCIH Branston 3, SF MH Acquisition LLC, SPHC Group Pty Ltd., SPHC Management Ltd., Semiramis for training of Hotel Personnel and Hotel Management SAE, Six Continents Corporate Services, Six Continents Holdings Limited, Six Continents Hotels Inc., Six Continents Hotels International Limited, Six Continents Hotels de Colombia SA, Six Continents International Holdings B.V., Six Continents Investments Limited, Six Continents Limited, Six Continents Overseas Holdings Limited, Six Continents Restaurants Limited, SixCo North America Inc., Solamar Lodging LLC, Southern Pacific Hotel Corporation (BVI) Ltd., Southern Pacific Hotels Properties Limited, Universal de Hoteles SA, White Shield Insurance Company Limited, and World Trade Centre Montreal Hotel Corporation.NOTICE:

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MUGSHOTS.COM IS A NEWS ORGANIZATION. WE POST AND WRITE THOUSANDS OF NEWS STORIES A YEAR,MOST WANTED STORIES, EDITORIALS (UNDER CATEGORIES - BLOG) AND STORIES OF EXONERATIONS. OUR CONTENT REVOLVES AROUND CRIME, ARRESTS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT. WE BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION AND OUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO PUBLISH UNPOPULAR SPEECH. OPEN RECORD LAWS WERE WRITTEN TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC; BY INFORMING THE PUBLIC OF ARRESTS AND TO HOLD LAW ENFORCEMENT ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE HUMANE TREATMENT OF ARRESTEES. MOST OF, IF NOT ALL MUGSHOT LAWS WERE CRAFTED TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM FEES FOR REMOVAL OF ONLINE MUGSHOTS AND TO FURTHER PROTECT THE PRESS FROM THOSE VERY SAME "MUGSHOT LAWS".WE DO NOT ACCEPT PAYMENT FOR REMOVAL OF ARREST INFORMATION AND/OR BOOKING PHOTOGRAPHS. MORE...Contemporary artist Philip Colbert, whose colorful, high-spirited art is finding buyers around the world, had been toying with the idea of creating his own catalog system to prove the authenticity of his expanding body of work.

I had a dealer in Japan who had been telling me I needed to have better forms of certification for my artwork, because people are buying art as an investment, said the British artist, who appropriates pop culture images in his paintings, fashion and furniture. Art is a currency in a way; at the end of the day when they come to auction, the provenance is a very important element of their value.

Then he met Rob Norton, the founder of Verisart, a U.S.-based startup thats using blockchain, the ledger technology underlying Bitcoin, to verify the authenticity of artwork. Its a problem as old as art itself, said Norton, and artists have long been unreliable when it comes to documenting their own work. As far back as the 17th century, Rembrandts dealer complained of his clients poor record-keeping, Norton said.

Traceable Record

Blockchain creates an immutable, traceable record of every transaction, whether its art changing hands or Bitcoin. Widespread adoption of the technology could give a boost to the market for art online, which has yet to explode. Online sales currently account for only about 8 percent, or $5.4 billion, of the global art market, according to a report by UBS Group AG and Art Basel released this month.

Trust  or lack of it  is at the core of the challenge, with potential buyers balking at the possibility of spending considerable sums on works whose provenance cant be fully verified. Sources estimate the value of fraudulent activity in the global art market to exceed $6 billion per year and 80 percent of such activity is due to forgery, said Norton, the former chief executive officer of Saatchi Online and Sedition Art.

Last year, three men were charged in New York with making counterfeit Damien Hirst prints and selling them online for more than $400,000, according to ArtNews. The arrest followed a sting operation by undercover New York police officers, who purchased two of the pieces, which were advertised as limited edition prints online, alongside fake certificates of authenticity and purchase receipts.

When it comes to art, theres a higher hurdle of trust that you have to clear, you have to know that what youre buying is real, said Norton. Art is the second-largest unregulated market after illicit drugs and its significantly overshadowed by fraudulent activity. You can accelerate trust and liquidity by providing better standards for verifiable, global certification.

More Startups

The 800-pound gorillas have already arrived. Google, Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. are all developing blockchain-related projects, a market already worth more than $700 million and growing rapidly. Such demand is fueling several startups that use blockchain to verify artwork.

Codex, based in San Francisco and London, is going after the collectibles market, for everything from art to jewelry to antique cars. It has drawn investment from Pantera Capital, a hedge fund that invests in blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.

Newly minted crypto-millionaires and billionaires will be natural art buyers, according to Pantera. Codex is also working on an application called Biddable that will allow cryptocurrencies to be used to bid in art auctions.

Verisart is also drawing investment. It has received funding from Rhodium, an early stage venture capital firm from Israel, Sinai Ventures from San Francisco and also issued convertible notes.

Verisart started in 2015 as a phone app for artists to create their own system of art verification. That approach didnt take off, said Norton. Then the company built a Web app working with Ahmed Elgammal, a computer science professor at Rutgers University.

Got Feedback

We were a little bit early, we were figuring out where the market was, getting feedback from artists, and building a platform that people could use, Norton said. Now increasingly working with partners, those certificates can be customized.

Colberts certificates, for example, contain small reproductions of the piece itself called image hashes, along with all of the relevant information about its creation, ownership and movement, such as whether it was part of an exhibition. Hell have a show in Tokyo in September and Beijing next February.

Since Verisart uses the unaltered Bitcoin blockchain rather than a customized version, one risk may be that their effort can be easily replicated, since it brings little in the way of new technology. Some collectors, particularly those who buy and sell privately may also be reluctant to share their information in such a public way.

The blockchain is a more efficient method of verification, Colbert said. Youre not worried about the authentic value of your work, because its all about locking down the time and place. Then all those fakes arent doing you any damage. All those fake Mona Lisas dont do the Mona Lisa any harm.

Ultimately, putting art on the blockchain could lead to a decentralized art registry that would cover a significant amount of the worlds art.

Over time, different registries will be able to share those image hashes and you could consolidate and build effectively a decentralized art registry, Norton said. There wont be just one registry out there for all the art and collectibles markets but we do see the basis to build a decentralized title registry on the back of image hashes and cryptographic proofs.

Faireys Portraits

The service may potentially become popular among artists selling limited edition prints, Norton said. Shepard Fairey, a Los Angeles-based artist best known for his portraits of President Obama and pictures of immigrants, was so impressed that he not only started using Verisart, he also invested in the company.

Were excited to see Verisart develop and meet artist and gallery requirements for trusted digital certification, Shepard and Amanda Fairey, his wife and business partner, said in a statement. As artists move away from paper-based certificates of authenticity to digital ones, Verisart continues to add to and improve its service.

Faireys art is widely copied and can be seen at protests and other political events, so verification can be key.

Blockchain certification on its own may increasingly turn into a generic service, potentially being explored by big players such as Facebook and Microsoft. But Verisarts ability to allow artists to customize their own certificates and image hashes will give it a competitive edge, Norton argues.

Our view is that there wont be just one registry out there for all the art and collectibles, Norton said. But we do see the basis to build a decentralized title registry on the back of image hashes and cryptographic proofs.Armenia FM at UN General Assembly: We call on increasing pressure on Azerbaijan

Armenia PM orders to ensure enforcement of order for COVID-19 vaccination or PCR test starting October 1

Schoolchildren and parents get into massive brawl on Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border

Deputy PM: No corridor issue being discussed, any passage through Armenia's sovereign territory will imply transit

Armenia FM meets with Finnish counterpart

Armenia Deputy PM: Pashinyan-Erdogan meeting is not planned

Turkey's Erdogan: We are receiving positive messages from Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan

Armenia 1st President hosts Kyrgyzstan's ex-president

Armenia FM meets with Council of Europe Secretary General

Armenia PM sends congratulatory message to Catholicos Patriarch of Armenian Catholic Church

Armenia Emergency Situations Ministry: Iranians didn't participate in putting out fire near park

Armenian lawyer: I won't force my employees to get PCR test for COVID-19 and will protect their rights in court

Armenia PM sacks Public Council Secretariat chief

Armenian man charged under organizing of illegal migration in Russia shows up to Armenia police station

France FM to meet with US counterpart

Armenia justice minister introduces newly appointed head of Penitentiary Service

Digest: US Congress demands Armenian POWs release in Baku, more on COVID-19 vaccination in Armenia

Armenian, Russian and Azerbaijani Prosecutors General meet in Kazakhstan

Russia ambassador to Armenia underscores continued development of multipolar cooperation bridges

Armenia peacekeepers in Kosovo mark Independence Day anniversary

US Under Secretary of State: We look forward to progress, including via OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair mechanism

Azerbaijan FM declares country's willingness to normalize relations with Armenia

US, Russia start talks over sustainable development at level of business

Mirziyoyev: Uzbekistan-Armenia cooperation will continue to consistently develop

Tehran says Georgia border guards' conduct against Iran citizens is unacceptable

Karabakh emergency service: Remains of another fallen soldier found

Iranian president invites Turkish counterpart to Iran for official visit

Dollar continues dropping in Armenia

21st Catholicos Patriarch of Catholic Armenians elected

Biden plans to attend G20 summit in Rome

4 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh

Baku fires at Iranian helicopter

Armenia Ombudsman assesses observation of Russian State Duma elections

Armenia health minister: There is differentiated attitude towards COVID-19 vaccines

EU envoy reaffirms their continued assistance to democratic reforms in Armenia

Biden's advisor and Erdogan's spokesperson discuss situation in Caucasus after 44-day war

Poland to install 250 American Abrams tanks in east of country

Armenia parliament opposition faction leader: Azerbaijan, Turkey have no desire to build their policy on logic of peace

Turkey sends several thousand more troops to Syria

EU urges Iranian foreign minister to resume talks on Tehran's nuclear dossier

Syrian citizen arrested in absentia for murder of Russian military pilot in Syria

Criminal case filed for writing insulting comment under Armenia PM's photo on Facebook

Chronicles of Aurora to leave Yerevans Matenadaran for first time to be displayed at San Lazzaro Island in Venice

Armavir Province grape growers protesting outside Armenia government building

Health minister talks about getting 3rd dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Armenia

Georgia PM to Armenia counterpart: Existing challenges make cooperation between our countries more significant

Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan FMs to meet in Tehran

Armenia State Revenue Committee chief meets with US embassy drug enforcement program new director

Armenia, Nicaragua FMs highlight interest to deepen cooperation within international platforms

La Francophonie Secretary General: I reaffirm readiness to support Armenia initiatives

Armenia, France FMs meet in New York, discuss prospects for settlement of Karabakh conflict

Armenia Syunik Province governors wanted son turns himself in, is taken to prison

939 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

US welcomes China decision to stop building coal-burning power plants abroad

US Congress demands release of all Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan

FMs discuss rich agenda of Armenia-Greece relations

Serbia to open diplomatic mission in Armenia

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Newspaper: Whose interests Armenia current government serves?

Newspaper: Ex-Presidents Kocharyan, Sargsyan were invited to Armenia Independence Day anniversary event

Armenia FM to Austrian counterpart: Armenian heritage of Artsakh urgently needs to be in international community's focus

Armenia opposition MP: No protection of public interests mentioned in administrative-territorial division law

Analyst: Presidents of Turkey and Azerbaijan know the price for new and possible escalation

Embassy of Iran in Armenia on situation regarding Iranian truck drivers detained in Azerbaijan

Armenian and Slovenian FMs discuss pressing regional and international issues

Armenia Parliament Speaker receives congratulatory messages from Iranian and Indian counterparts

His Holiness Karekin II receives Samvel Karapetyan and participants of Armenian Business Forum 2021

Armenia MOD chairs consultation devoted to army's preparations for winter

Driver dies in gorge after driving off Armenias Kapan-Kajaran road

Armenia FM meets with Polish counterpart

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Armenia and Lithuania FMs meet in New York

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Armenia Supreme Judicial Council members receive Swedish National Courts Administration delegation

Level of Armenia's Lake Sevan drops 1 cm in period between September 13 and 19

Azerbaijan FM demands that counterparts of VUAM "exert pressure on Armenia"

OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs planning to resume talks with Azerbaijani and Armenian FMs

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Armenia and Karabakh territorial administration ministers discuss administrative-territorial reforms in Artsakh

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Iran-Armenia Chamber of Commerce chairman visits Embassy of Armenia

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Armenia Prosecutor General leaves for Kazakhstan on working visit

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Armenia ambassador has virtual meeting with US Congressman David PriceGenocide Prevention Resolution initiated by Armenia was adopted at the 37th session of the UN Human Rights Council by consensus in Geneva on March 23. Nearly 6 dozens of countries introducing all the regional groups of the Human Rights Council joined Armenia and co-authored the resolution. The resolution will be open for the co-authoring for two more weeks, the press service of the MFA Armenia reported.

Armenias representative emphasized in his speech that the initiation of the mentioned resolution is the demonstration of Armenias resolve and continuous commitment to the prevention of the crime of genocide. He underlined the special importance of adopting the resolution on Prevention of genocide by consensus by the HRC in the year marking the 70th anniversary of the first UN international agreement on human rights.

The resolution reaffirms that fight against impunity is a key factor for preventing genocides. It expresses concern over the attempts to deny or approve genocides, stressing that they undermine the fight against impunity, reconciliation of peoples and crime-prevention efforts.

The resolution pays special attention to the exposure of signs and reasons of genocides.

It welcomes the call of the Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide to for a universal adoption of the resolution ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Convention.

The document also expresses satisfaction over the declaration of December 9 International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime by the UN General Assembly.

The resolution recommends the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to organize a high-level discussion during the September session of the HRC dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Convention on preventing and punishing the crime of genocide.

The resolution also envisages that the Secretary General of the UN will prepare a report based on the information received from the Member States on genocide education and the illustration of the Convention.Home | News | General | We can provide 40% of Nigerias food needs - Yobe farmers

- Farmers in Yobe say the state can provide at least 40 per cent of Nigerias food needs

- The farmers said this will be possible if the partnership between the Yobe government and MardiCorp, a Malaysian firm, is properly executed

- They also indicated their interest to partner with the state government

Irrigation farmers in Yobe say the state can provide at least 40 per cent of Nigerias food needs, if the partnership between the Yobe government and MardiCorp, a Malaysian firm, is properly executed.

They also indicated their interest to partner with the state government in the project, especially in its special irrigation scheme.

The farmers spokesman, Alhaji Modu Gashua told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Gashua on Friday, March 23, that the partnership would significantly boost food production and economic growth.

READ ALSO: President Buhari receives Dapchi schoolgirls in Aso Rock

AbduKareem Usman, another irrigation farmer, said that Yobe had the capacity to make a 40-per-cent contribution to the nations food stock.

This partnership will provide more opportunities to improve food production; there is no doubt that this state can contribute 40 per cent of Nigerias food requirements.

This initiative is a welcome development, as it will boost the countrys agricultural growth and development, Usman said.

Musa Katuzu, a wheat farmer, said that the partnership would particularly boost wheat and rice production.

Governments investment in this regard is a huge; the partnership is a welcome development, he added.

In a statement, Abdullahi Bego, the director-general (media and publicity) to Governor Ibrahim Gaidam, said that partnership with the Malaysian company would also focus on the Special Irrigation Scheme at Nguru Lake, Boloram, Mugura and Garin Gada.

He said that Gaidam was in Malaysia to explore the partnership and engage the services of MardiCorp in training of extension workers and irrigation farmers.

This is why we are tapping from the companys long years of experience and expertise across many countries so that our irrigation schemes would be more successful Bego quoted the governor as saying.

He said that the Special Irrigation Scheme, which would cover over 600 hectares of farmlands, was initiated to enhance food production in the state.

He said that MardiCorp was also expected to undertake research on the under-exploited crops in Yobe, which include the doum palm (Goruba).

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had reported that the federal government said that it is currently increasing the number of rice farmers in the country in a view to make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice production.

Lai Mohammed who is the minister of information disclosed this during a tour of some rice farms.

Mohammed said it was important for Nigeria to attract more people into the rice business noting that rice farmers increased from five million to 12 million in two years.

Ebonyi state, Nigeria and West Africa's food capital - on NAIJ.com TV.

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Source: Naija.ng

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Loading...Home | News | General | My Ex-Aide lied against me over $800,000 estacodes, possession of 12 houses, 25 cars, others  Communication Minister

By Nwafor Sunday

The minister of communication, Adebayo Shittu, has denied allegations labeled against him by his former aide, Mr. Oluwadamilare, saying that his claims that he (Shittu) owned twelve houses, twenty five cars, printing machine, others under two years were lies that will soon be treated in court.

Minister for Communications, Chief Adebayo Shittu

Mr. Oluwadamilare had written a letter claiming to be owned an accumulated emoluments totaling Fourteen million naira (N14million).

According to him, the non-payment has caused my household physical, psychological and emotional trauma, he said.

Read his letter below:

March 12, 2018

Chief Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu

Hon. Minister of Communications

Federal Ministry of Communications,

Federal Secretariat,

Abuja.

Dear Sir,

RE: REQUEST FOR MY ACCUMULATED EMOLUMENTS

I am writing on behalf of myself and my colleague, Sheik Tajudeen Imam, Special Assistant (Special Duties), renowned Muslim Cleric and leader, whom you appointed to assist you 25 months ago.

I am constrained, once again, to formally request for the payment of my accumulated emoluments totaling FOURTEEN MILLION NAIRA (N14million), due at the end of March,2018, from you.

You will recall that your letter referenced HMC/026/Vol. 11/17, dated 23rd November, 2015 and titled: APPOINTMENT AS SPECIAL ASSISTANT (MEDIA) TO THE HONOURABLE MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS, stated among others in paragraph 3 that: Your monthly emolument will be decided in line with the existing practice. (Annexure 1)

Sir, for many months, running into years despite many verbal reminders, nothing has been done on this matteryou gave many promises which never materialised. I was forced to mention the issue of non-payment of my emoluments to a number of your friends and close associates, who promised to talk to you on the imperative of paying the emoluments of your aides. Indeed, I got several feedbacks on your promise to address the issue, but, after many months nothing happened!

WHY THIS LETTER

Prior to your appointment as Minister of Communications by President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, via a letter dated 16th November, 2015 with reference no. SGF.12/S.6/XI/808 (Annexure 2), I had set up what I called: ADEBAYO SHITTU MEDIA OFFICE (Annexure 3) in Ibadan. My personal office, 36 Ososami Street, off Oke-Ado, Ibadan, was made available to the media office for your 2019 gubernatorial ambition at no cost to you.

I did not stop at that, I recruited and enlisted the support of seasoned journalists and experienced media managers, to coordinate and chart a media plan for your political ambition, ahead of your other competitors. I was the Chairman and convener, for which I spent my personal resources. Some of the members are:

i) Dele Ogunsola ii) Wale Adele

3 iii) Bola Ogunlayi

iv) Tawfiq Akinwale v) Marouf Yusuf vi) Femi Popoola

4 vii) Winlade Adisa

Following your unexpected and dramatic nomination and eventual appointment, you called me on phone one Saturday in November, 2015 and requested that I should liaise with members of the Adebayo Shittu Media Office to nominate one of us to be appointed as SA Media for your new appointment then.

An emergency meeting of the group was promptly held. At the end of extensive deliberations, the group unanimously settled for me and my name was officially sent to you. This formed the basis of my appointment as Special Assistant (Media), alongside other aides appointed then in November, 2015. So, I represented a formidable group and other interests.

If I was so appointed, and having worked conscientiously with considerable impact on your tenure in office in the past 27 months and some weeks, it is imperative that I should be remunerated commensurably genuinely in line with the existing practice.

WHAT IS THE EXISTING PRACTICE?

The existing practice copiously referred to in my letter of appointment (Annexure 1) could not be in the realm of individual whims and caprices, as the matter is a settled issue in the Federal Civil Service rule and procedure in Nigeria.

According to a subsisting Federal Government circular from the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation with Ref. NO.SGF.12/5.6/1.1/23 (Annexure 4) titled: RE: APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL ASSISTANTS AND PERSONAL ASSISTANTS, addressed to All Honourable Ministers, Head of the Civil Service of the Federation and all Federal Permanent Secretaries, it stated that the Special Assistant to the Ministers should be on Grade Level 16 Step 4. Other Associated Allowances were also clearly stated.

In summary, the total emoluments due to me as a duly appointed Special Assistant amounted to N252, 300. 41 per month. This is inclusive of two Domestic Servants, who are expected to be on Level 3 step 8, according to a Consolidated Public Service Salary Structure (CONPSS), prepared by the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (Annexure 5).

THE DEBT BURDEN

Sir, be informed that your inability or inhuman refusal to arrange for prompt payment of my emoluments for over two years, no doubt, has not only made life very uncomfortable for me and my household, but had equally made me a laughing stock among my contemporaries and media practitioners.

Even though, principal officers of the Ministry, at the inception of your tenure made spirited efforts to convince you on the existing practice of settling SAs emoluments, you apparently refused bluntly.

Conversely, while you deliberately made me to suffer working for you under the most excruciating condition of deprivation, you have been living in indescribable opulence.

Your obvious insensitivity and lack of compassion for me and my other colleagues have done incalculable damages to our persons and families. Some of them are:

i) My health has deteriorated badly because I could not adequately finance my medical upkeep ii) I have been a squatter in Abuja since 2016, having lived in a hotel for many months with outstanding debts till date.

iii) For close to one year now, there has been an unresolved feud with my wife because of my inability to effectively fulfil my marital responsibilities and family upkeep.

iv) My first daughter, from all indications, may not be able to enlist in the NYSC Scheme in April, 2018 because of my failure to adequately fund her education. v) My second daughter had lost one calendar year in the University because of my inability to pay her school fees and other incidentals as at when due. vi) My other children of school age, have been traumatized and discouraged in their educational pursuit because of the irregularity in the payment of their school fees, with its attendant backslash.

vii) Your conduct has made me a perpetual debtor, with over N3million debt hanging over my neck from sundry creditors.

The irony of the above situation is that while you effectuated stagnation in my life and development (and that of others) by your deliberate ploy and insensitivity, you were doing well for yourself and your family. It is evident to all that your life has witnessed unprecedented turn-around, albeit illicitly, considering the thrust and mission of the Buhari Administration on corruption in public offices.

Thus, in a space of 29 months in office and from ground zero in 2015, you now have no fewer than 12 luxury houses in Abuja, Lagos and Ibadan and a few months ago, you bought a brand new N93 million Printing Press. You have bought over 25 luxury vehicles for yourself, family members, concubines and cronies, outside the eight official vehicles attached to your office.

In the same vein, you have expended substantial amount of money, far above your legitimate earnings as a Minister in the Buhari Administration, on your gubernatorial ambition in Oyo State, while you have equally sponsored no fewer than 22 members of your family and cronies including under-aged children to the Holy Land in Saudi Arabia and lesser Hajj (Umrah) pilgrimage.

Of course, everyone in Oyo State knows about your investments that run into hundreds of millions of naira, in your less than three years in the officethese are currently scattered all over Oyo State!

While it is your right to do whatever you like with such stupendous resources at your disposal in less than 30 months as a Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, my concern is that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. My belief, in this regard, is that a sincere leader should grow up with his followers legitimately. Ironically however, you are shockingly unperturbed by whatever happens to your aides, making the welfare of those who work with you a nullity.

The hope of working with you to properly project you and Oyo State at the Federal Executive Council that came with nostalgic feelings has been dashed. You did not only mess us up by dashing our hopes and aspirations, you inflicted on us injuries that are of permanent nature and of odious dimension.

You bruised our psyche, you rubbished our ego, you wasted our time, you exposed us to hardship, you almost destroyed our humanity, you reduced our worth before our wives, children and acquaintances and above all, if not for God, you almost turned us to beggars in Abuja.

While we were suffering under your gross insensitivity and primitive meanness, your sing-song and alibi to the unsuspecting public, both in Abuja and Oyo State, has been that we collect estacode even if you are not paying salary. Your insidious wickedness was so brazen, and, it is a provocative travesty that would make the globally condemned experience of blacks in Apartheid South Africa a childs play.

THE WAY FORWARD

You may wish to note, sir, that there are two payments made to me which could be linked to you in respect of my outstanding emoluments.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018, the sum of N500,000 was transferred to my Access Bank Account under the name of Ademola Lawal. Tuesday, February 6, 2018, the sum of N500,000 was transferred to my Access Bank Account by one SAADU A. SADIQ & SONS.

With this development, you have paid me the sum of N1million, out of my accumulated emoluments till date, remaining the sum of N13million at the rate of N500,000 per month.

To all intents and purposes, my demand for N500,000 monthly payment may seem incongruent to the provisions of the Consolidated Public Service Salary Structure (CONPSS) and the Federal Government Circular (Annexure 4 & 5), but it subsists when one considers the following:

i) Your body language and subsequent reactions showed that you have a clandestine motive to deny us our entitlements. ii) The letter written to me by your former Special Assistant (Admin), Mr David A. Awotunde, titled: PAYMENT OF MONHTLY EMOLUMENT TO HONOURABLE MINISTERS AIDES and dated 10thJune, 2016 (Annexture 6), is quite instructive.

I discountenanced the letter and its content because of its inconsistencies. It is strange and curious that you could succumb to the evil machinations of the spin doctors around you then, who suggested that you should convert a N3million largesse shared by your aides at that point in time into N100,000 monthly emolument for a few of us. Not only that the said money was paid in advance to cater for the months up till April. Isnt that novel and ridiculously curious?

The innuendoes contained in the said letter to the effect that I was entitled to N100,000 monthly is not only laughable as a notable professional and graduate of more than THREE DECADES, but also an embarrassment to your person and the totality of the Federal Government.

This suggestion, and on the basis of the fact that I learnt you are currently computing how much is due to me, is a wish that could not stand the test of time as my entitlements in this regard do not fall within your whims and caprices, and, no matter how powerful you think you are now because of your timed appointment, it will be an exercise in futility.

I believe you are well aware that it is customary for political office holders to enjoy Severance Allowance which varies from 200  300% of Annual Basic Salary. The allowance is usually pro-rated after a minimum of two years tenure.

Undoubtedly, when all these factors and others which Im holding back, are put in perspective, my demand for N500,000 monthly emolument should be regarded as very modest.

BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

Since there is A time to keep silence, And a time to speak, I had the rare grace of keeping silent in the face of your inhuman and unwarranted tyranny for almost 28 months, but the time to speak out for my entitlements is NOW.

It is quite regrettable that you have manifested in all your relationships with many of those who helped build you up to where you are today reveling as a lord and conqueror with unbridled abandonment. It is disappointingly befuddling that you have become the ironical epitome of Mayor La Guardia who once said that anyone, who extends his hand of fellowship to me, stands the risk of losing a few fingers.

Thus, while you have been living in sudden and extremely outrageous opulence as a public servant at the expense of your dutiful and hardworking aides, you seemingly forget your pitiable socio-economic status and experience in Oyo State before you got this job as you have all of a sudden become insulated to common sense, justice and fairness, the mantra on which many people sheepishly believed in you in your struggling daysincludingmyself.

It is quite bewildering that the fact that you collect your salary every month and regularly does not strike any right cord in you that your aides too deserve a better life by way of their own legitimate emoluments.

FACT SHEET

Hon. Minister, since your inauguration you have collected over N50 MILLION as salary, travelling expenses on the coffers of the Ministry runs into several millions of naira, while you have collected estacodes in excess of $800,000little wonder, youre derisively referred to as ESTACODE MINISTER in the Presidency. Yet, you inhumanly find it very convenient to ignore the legitimate entitlements of your aides! In this regard, be informed that you are like an ostrich that buries his head in the sand in delusion that it has hidden itself from the prying eyes of the public.

It is regrettable that as a member of the Nigerian Bar, justice, fairness and equity, the tenets on which the noble profession is pillared, do not matter to you; as a supposed staunch Muslim, fear of God is a strange word to youyou have indeed proved that you are a wolf in sheepskin, particularly to the unsuspecting members of your Islamic Faith and other Nigerians, who erroneously see you in the mould of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Unfortunately too, as a Chief of Olubadan, the famed Yoruba family values have taken a flight into oblivion in your scheme of things just because you are in a most ephemeral position as an appointee of His Excellency, President Buhari, a globally acclaimed leader of impeccable character and pedigree.

More disturbingly, your proclivity and debasement of humanity via your unprecedented maltreatment of your appointed aides has become falteringly odious as a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) with the change mantra; as a member of the Federal Executive Council, your fraudulent practices is novel and as a Community Leader, deceit is your way of life. The view that your conduct is a disgrace to Islam and mentoring in Nigeria is only an attestation to your greed, insensitivity, vindictiveness, avarice, wickedness and above all, self-centredness.

Dear Minister, after all said and done, I have one advice for you. Please, it will be in your best interest not to play to the gallery and listen to the counsels of your spin doctors to either ignore me or take me on. The best and dignified way out for you on this issue of my outstanding entitlements is to access funds from your various sudden investments and pay me in full. Like the celebrated former Lagos State governor, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, once said, I hope my loyalty will not be put to test. In the same vein, I hope my resolve to collect my entitlements in full will not be put to test by you.

Any grandstanding in this matter, to say the least, will be embarrassingly suffocating, as I will leave no stone unturned to retrieve my emoluments in full.

Enough should be enough for the WISE.

Yours,

Victor Oluwadamilare

But reacting to his letter, the media aides of the honorable minister said that he will not succeed in his efforts to blackmail Shittu and warned him to desist from further blackmails.

Read the statement disclosed by Shittus media aides in full

Our attention has been drawn to a letter written by one Mr. Oluwadamilare Victor, sacked Special Assistant (Media) to the Honourable Minister of Communications, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, and circulated to some select online and conventional news media.

While we would have ordinarily chosen to ignore the Ananias, who started his letter with falsehood by backdating it to 12th of March 2018 two days to his dismissal, the basis of the blackmail, we understand that when a lie is allowed to fester, it will be taken as truth.

It is imperative that we respond to the litany of lies which Mr. Oluwadamilare dished out. It is unfortunate that Mr. Oluwadamilare who reeks of various frauds and should bury his head in shame could defy every sense of decorum by attempting to run down the honourable Minister with blatant lies.

In his characteristic mischievous manner, Mr. Oluwadamilare referred to his appointment letter dated 23rd November, 2015 but decided to downplay the content of another letter sent from the office of the Honourable Minister and dated 10th June, 2016. Like the proverbial leper who boasted that he punched his assailant and then pinched him, Mr. Oluwadamilare exhibited his deceitful stock-in-trade by misleading the public.

It is however pathetic that someone of the years of experience of Mr Oluwadamilare would come out at this time to throw invectives at the Honourable Minister. In our magnanimous manner, we would like to educate Mr. Oluwadamilare that it is an extant provision in the law of contract that consideration does not have to be adequate but has to be of value.

He had the liberty to leave but decided to stay (obviously because he did not want to go jobless again) but like the slyful soul that he is, he had it all planned out to blackmail the Honourable Minister.

Mr. Oluwadamilare was quick to point out that he was earning the sum of a hundred thousand naira monthly for doing absolutely nothing but he did not tell Nigerians of other benefits made available to him ranging from estacodes for travelling (through the minister he has travelled to countries such as Spain, China, South Korea, Cameroon among others) free accommodation, mobility to a host of other unaccounted cash donations to him.

It is pertinent to inform Nigerians that the letter written by Mr. Oluwadamilare Victor was only a smokescreen for him to ventilate his bile against the Minister for not engaging in untoward practices for him.

He had expected that the Minister would play a hanky-panky game of injecting his name into the payroll of the Federal Civil Service so that he would be getting as much as he wanted at the expense of the Nigerian State. However the Minister, given his sterling position against corruption and corrupt practices, refused to do such. Hence, his outbursts.

It suffices to state that Mr. Oluwadamilare made some allegations that are characteristic of a sinking man. He said that the minister, within his two years in the office has procured twelve houses, a printing press, and twenty-five cars among others. These allegations would definitely fly as a phantasmagoria or an over-bloated comedy. While we challenge Mr. Oluwadamilare to come out with evidences to support his nefarious claims, we can assuredly promise that he would have his day in court to prove these fictions.

In a bid to play down the contribution of the Honourable Minister, the sacked SA (Media) referred to the Minister as an Estacode Minister. For the sake of clarity, the Minister does not embark on a foreign trip that is not sanctioned by the President. If by regulation, the Minister like any public or civil servant, is entitled to estacode, can it now be said that it is unlawful or criminal?

Besides, these trips were undertaken to represent the country as well as draw Foreign Direct Investment to her. It is instructive to state that it was one of these trips that earned Nigeria over four billion dollars pledged in investment from India Business Community.

Another case in point is the securing of a reduction of thirty million dollars ($30m) in the price of the procurement of two new satellites from China for the Nigerian Telecommunications Satellite Limited. May we also quickly add that the claim of Mr Oluwadamilare that the Minister has so far earned the lump sum of $800,000 as estacodes for his foreign trips is nothing but a figment of his imagination. This is the most ridiculous of allegations coming from a confused man such as him.

It must also be on the record that the debt burden which Mr. Oluwadamilare Victor alluded to in his letter is just to finance his licentious lifestyle.

He alleged that he stayed in a hotel for twenty-nine months but maliciously refused to add that it was his decision to stay in the hotel despite the fact that comfortable accommodation was made available to him.

He will be in a position to explain if he needed the hotel to attend to other urgent matters of state. He also played up an appeal to pity by saying that his appointment has caused much emotional trauma to his family and friends but did not explain how he squandered the several monies he got on urgent matters of state and not his family.

Mr. Oluwadamilare in his wisdom of foolishness tried to pass on burden of his past wrong decisions on the Minister. Here is a man whom the minister gave an appointment in order to save from the jaws of joblessness but like the typical pig, he could not live beyond dirts.

This is a man who was disgraced out of office as Oyo State NUJ chairman, who has worked with several politicians but was dishonorably relieved of his appointment by them all, who has used the Ministers name to perpetuate fraud but was caught, and severally snitched on the Minister to opponent politicians.

Also having collected salary from the minister for doing almost or absolutely nothing for many months, Mr. Oluwadamilare Victors action cannot only be described as satanic but also absolutely luciferous.

Anyone will agree with the assertion that the Minister did not have an effective media aide in the past two years. If this assertion has continuously been validated by even his colleagues in the media profession, the sacked media aides spurious claims can only be regarded as shameful.

His action can best be described as a clear descent into barbarism and we want him to note that Barrister Adebayo Shittu does not start a fight but never runs away from any.

We would have heeded the words of Proverbs 26 verse 4 but we are encouraged by the admonition in verse 5 of the same chapter. We admonish Mr. Oluwadamilare and his co-travellers to note that the Adebayo Shittus campaign drive is a moving train, a project sanctioned by God.

We hope that the sacked media aide will experience an epiphany, turn a new leaf and live right.

A word is enough for the wise.

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Loading...The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has thrown its support behind the Governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike, for assenting to the Neighbourhood Watch Corps bill, adding that the step would strengthen security in the state.

PDP also flayed the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state for claiming that the Neighborhood bill signed by Wike was aimed at witchhunting their members during the 2019 Elections.

The party, however, noted that the Bill was initiated by an APC Lawmaker in the state House of Assembly, stressing that the corps would promote peace and development in the state.

Recalled that Hon Fredrick Anabraba, an APC member and Minority Leader of the State House of Assembly, representing Akuku-Toru constituency I, had moved motion for establishment of the Neighborhood Watch Safety Corps, noting that the passage of the bill would strenghten the fight against crime in the state.

The Publicity Security of PDP in the state, Nwanosike Samuel, who spoke while receiving APC defectors to PDP through the Grassroots Development Initiative (GDI) at Andoni Local Government Area of the state, noted that many states in the country have similar security outfits.

Nwanosike said: We run a democratic government. And in democracy, the minority will have their say but the majority will have their way. The Rivers State House of Assembly members are our representatives. That law, Neigbourhood Watch was proposed by an APC Lawmaker, the Minority leader of the House, and other APC Lawmakers supported the Bill.

Today, the Rivers State House of Assembly has passed that Bill into Law and the Governor has assented. The Governor has gone ahead to appoint an active Director in the person of Dr. Uche Mike Chukwuma, a retired ACP of Police to head the corps. We are in support of the passage of the bill.

Dont worry yourselves. In Lagos they have the same neighbourhood watch, they have same in Edo, Imo and Anambra states. Just today I read in the newspaper that Katsina, the state of President Muhammadu Buhari has also joined to propose a security law. Why would Rivers State be different. That law has come to stay, it will provide security for our people, provide job for our people and make us happy.Home | News | General | PDP blacks Wike on Neighbourhood Watch Bill signing

By Davies Iheamnachor

PORT HARCOURT  The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has thrown its support behind the Governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike, for assenting to the Neighbourhood Watch Corps bill, adding that the step would strengthen security in the state.

Gov Wike

PDP also flayed the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state for claiming that the Neighborhood bill signed by Wike was aimed at witchhunting their members during the 2019 Elections.

The party, however, noted that the Bill was initiated by an APC Lawmaker in the state House of Assembly, stressing that the corps would promote peace and development in the state.

Recalled that Hon Fredrick Anabraba, an APC member and Minority Leader of the State House of Assembly, representing Akuku-Toru constituency I, had moved motion for establishment of the Neighborhood Watch Safety Corps, noting that the passage of the bill would strenghten the fight against crime in the state.

The Publicity Security of PDP in the state, Nwanosike Samuel, who spoke while receiving APC defectors to PDP through the Grassroots Development Initiative (GDI) at Andoni Local Government Area of the state, noted that many states in the country have similar security outfits.

Nwanosike said: We run a democratic government. And in democracy, the minority will have their say but the majority will have their way. The Rivers State House of Assembly members are our representatives. That law, Neigbourhood Watch was proposed by an APC Lawmaker, the Minority leader of the House, and other APC Lawmakers supported the Bill.

Today, the Rivers State House of Assembly has passed that Bill into Law and the Governor has assented. The Governor has gone ahead to appoint an active Director in the person of Dr. Uche Mike Chukwuma, a retired ACP of Police to head the corps. We are in support of the passage of the bill.

Dont worry yourselves. In Lagos they have the same neighbourhood watch, they have same in Edo, Imo and Anambra states. Just today I read in the newspaper that Katsina, the state of President Muhammadu Buhari has also joined to propose a security law. Why would Rivers State be different. That law has come to stay, it will provide security for our people, provide job for our people and make us happy.

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Loading...Home | News | General | Yobe can provide 40% of Nigerias food needs, say irrigation farmers

Gashua (Yobe)  Irrigation farmers in Yobe say the state can provide at least 40 per cent of Nigerias food needs, if the partnership between the Yobe government and MardiCorp, a Malaysian firm, is properly executed.

Farmers with their millet harvest in Yobe state

They also indicated their interest to partner with the state government in the project, especially in its special irrigation scheme.

The farmers spokesman, Alhaji Modu Gashua said in Gashua on Friday that the partnership would significantly boost food production and economic growth.

AbduKareem Usman, another irrigation farmer, said that Yobe had the capacity to make a 40-per-cent contribution to the nations food stock.

This partnership will provide more opportunities to improve food production; there is no doubt that this state can contribute 40 per cent of Nigerias food requirements.

This initiative is a welcome development, as it will boost the countrys agricultural growth and development, Usman said.

Musa Katuzu, a wheat farmer, said that the partnership would particularly boost wheat and rice production.

Governments investment in this regard is a huge; the partnership is a welcome development, he added.

In a statement, Abdullahi Bego, the Director-General (Media and Publicity) to Gov. Ibrahim Gaidam, said that partnership with the Malaysian company would also focus on the Special Irrigation Scheme at Nguru Lake, Boloram, Mugura and Garin Gada.

He said that Gaidam was in Malaysia to explore the partnership and engage the services of MardiCorp in training of extension workers and irrigation farmers.

This is why we are tapping from the companys long years of experience and expertise across many countries so that our irrigation schemes would be more successful Bego quoted the governor as saying.

He said that the Special Irrigation Scheme, which would cover over 600 hectares of farmlands, was initiated to enhance food production in the state.

He said that MardiCorp was also expected to undertake research on the under-exploited crops in Yobe, which include the doum palm (Goruba). (NAN)

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Loading...Home | News | General | Army reopens Maiduguri-Bama-Banki international highway held by Boko Haram for years

The Nigerian army on Saturday, March 24, formally reopened the Maiduguri-Bama-Banki International Highway for commercial and public traffic.

Maj.-Gen. Rogers Nicholas, the Theatre Commander, Operation Lafiya Dole, announced this at the inauguration of the highway in Maiduguri.

Nicholas said that the road was certified safe for public use following the successes recorded in the ongoing clearance operation to rout out remnants of Boko Haram insurgents in Sambisa Forest and the Lake Chad basin.

Today, mark another remarkable event in the life of people of Borno and of the military in the Operation LAFIYA DOLE.

Recall that on September 1, 2014; the Maiduguri-Bama-Banki Road was closed due top

activities of Boko Haram insurgents in the general and that affected the economic activities in Borno State and the Cameroun Republic.

In the course of our operation with our Cameroonian counterpart we had been able to get rid of the insurgents along this axis particularly the Sambisa Forest.

It is time for people to go back to their homes in Bama, I am happy that today we are opening up the road to Bama and Maiduguri-Bama-Banki

Road, in the first phase of the operation, it would also give the people the leverage to resume commercial activities along the axis and also give them confidence to return home.

We also implore the people going back and members of the road transport workers to adhere to the guidelines outlined by the military

so that they could ply the road with level of safety.

Nicholas disclosed the military authorities had designed strategies to provide escort to ensure safety of motorists plying the road and other highways in the theatre of operation.

He called on the insurgents to take advantage of the presidential amnesty, to lay down their arms and join the peace building process in the region.

Gov. Kashim Shettima, lauded the gesture, adding it would fast track social and economic development of the state.

Shettima, represented by his deputy, Usman Durkwa, said the government had adopted proactive measure to accelerate rehabilitation and resettlement of displaced persons in the liberated communities.

He called on the Federal Government to free the remaining Chibok schoolgirls and other persons in insurgents captivity.

Also, Alhaji Ahmad Musa, the Secretary, Borno Chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), said the re-opening of the

road would ease transportation difficulties and encourages growth cross-border commercial activities.

Musa pledged the union support to the military to ensure successful completion of the counter-insurgency campaign.

Some of the passengers, expressed delight over the development, adding that it would allow them to visit their hometowns after it was deserted in the past five years.

Master Abba Ali, a 15-year old displaced person, said that he would be rejoining his family, who took shelter at the Banki Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp.

My parent fled to Cameroon and I fled to Maiduguri to stay with my relatives. I learnt that my parents are in Banki camp, but I could not join them due to closure of the road, he said.

Alhaji Bana Buba, another displaced person, called on the government to rehabilitate the road and assist the affected families to enable them to return to their homes.

Source: Naija.ng

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Loading...Home | News | General | Warri South DTHA seat: Urhobos warn against imposition of candidate

The Urhobos of Warri, under the aegis of Movement For The Emancipation of Warri Urhobos, has warned against the imposition of candidate in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primaries of Warri South Constituency 11, Delta State House of Assembly, DTHA, election in 2019.

The national coordinator of the group, Comrade Lucky Ibiri, who handed down the warning in a press conference at Otor Orere, headquaters of Okere Urhobo Kingdom, Warri, Warri South local government, alleged that there are plans by highly connected persons, most of whom he said are in Warri South Constituency 1 to manipulate the PDP primaries of the Warri South Constituency 11 in favour of their sponsored unpopular candidate.

Ibiri who recalled that former Governor James Onanefe Ibori while implementing his road map to peace in Warri, after the infamous Warri ethnic crisis, in his wisdom ensured that Warri South Constituency 1 and 11 are represented by the Itsekiris and the Urhobos of Warri respectively at the Delta State House of Assembly

According to him, the status quo has remained so since the emergence of Chief Dennis Omovie, the incumbent member representing Warri Constituency 11 at the Delta State House of Assembly and that election matters are handled by the two ethnic groups in their constituencies without interference by either of the ethnic groups. But as I speak to you some people at the corridors of power have perfected plans to manipulate the delegates lists of PDP primaries in Warri South Constituency 11 for Delta State House of Assembly election in favour of their aspirant who they think they can be used against the political interest of the Urhobos of Warri.

While pledging to work for the second term bid of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa in 2019 because of his laudable achievements in Warri Urhobo areas and across the state, Comrade Ibiri appealed to the governor and the PDP leaders in the state to prevail on the said persons to stay clear of the Warri South Constituency 11 primaries in order to avoid ethnic crisis, warning that the group will not accept imposition of any candidate on the constituency.

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Loading...Home | News | General | EU agrees to partner with Nigerian Army to fight Boko Haram

The European Union (EU) has promised to collaborate with the Nigerian Army to tackle issues of insecurity bedevilling the country. The EU Ambassador to Nigeria, Ketil Karlsen, made the pledge in Abuja when he led members of his team on a visit to the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai at the Army Headquarters Abuja.

Brigadier General, Texas Chukwu, the director Army Public Relations, disclosed the information on Saturday.

The EU Ambassador praised the Nigerian Army under the leadership of Lieutenant General Buratai for excellent job in ensuring security in the country. He indicated interest of his organization to partner with the Nigerian Army in the provision of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance assets to combat Boko Haram Terrorists and other criminal gangs. The Ambassador also sought clarifications on farmers/herders clashes, the Nigerian Armys role in elections and security in the Niger Delta.

In his response, the COAS represented by the Chief of Training and Operations (Army), Major General David Ahmadu, expressed the readiness of the Nigerian Army to partner and collaborate with EU in order to totally defeat the Boko Haram insurgency.

He highlighted challenges faced by the Nigerian Army in combating isolated Improvised Explosive Devices attacks on troops and civilians by the insurgents. He thereafter urged the EU to assist the Nigerian Army with demining platforms.

The COAS said that the Nigerian government is addressing the farmers/herders clashes as well as other forms of security challenges in the country in order to create a peaceful atmosphere for socio-economic activities including elections. He reiterated that he role of the Nigerian Army is to provide security during elections, but not to interfere in the process. He stated that some suspected Boko Haram Terrorists have gone through de-radicalization programmes and are now being engaged on vocational training in Gombe State.

The COAS pointed out that the Federal Government is totally committed in the de-radicalization process to keep repentant insurgents busy. Present during the visit were some Principal Staff Officers of the Army Headquarters.

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Loading...Home | World | Africa | Gigaba probes abuse of Zimbabweans at SA border

SOUTH Africa's Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba on Thursday visited Beitbridge Border Post following alleged abuse of Zimbabwean travellers by South Africa immigration officials.

His surprise visit unearthed serious irregularities committed by immigration officials, SABC reported.

The visit comes as the neighbouring country's immigration officers are under fire over the ill treatment of Zimbabweans.

Recently, an immigration officer and her three supervisors were suspended after a video of her scrolling her phone while serving Zimbabweans sparked outrage after it was widely circulated on social media platforms.

Minister Gigaba told SABC that the Beitbridge Border Post has been on the Government's watch list as travellers had complained over poor service at the hands of immigration officers. "The Beitbridge Border Post has been under the spotlight because of long queues, corruption and inadequate staff and because of that picture that circulated on social media of the lady who was on social media while helping clients and therefore neglecting what she was supposed to do that is why we came here to improve our front line services," said Minister Gigaba.

He said officials had also tampered with the biometric security system meaning some travellers could not have been accounted for while entering or exiting the neighbouring country.

The Beitbridge Border Post is the busiest entry and exit point on the continent with nearly 19 000 people crossing daily during peak periods.

Minister Gigaba said investigations on tampering with the biometric security system will be launched as it puts South Africa at a security risk.

"It is a security risk because when we introduced the security biometric system we wanted to ensure that we have full knowledge, not only of the names and passport numbers of people who are getting into a country but even their biometric details be checked, to verify if they were ever found at the scene of a crime. There is a security threat to the country so we are going to launch an investigation into the matter so action can be taken against those people involved," he said.

The Minister said officials were ready to attend to travellers during the busy Easter holiday period next week.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: Africa

Loading...Les lunettes de marque ne sont pas ce qui manque dans les commerces. Il y en a de toutes les sortes dont les lunettes de []Helsinki (AFP) - Finnish police said Saturday they were seeking to arrest Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, but did not know his whereabouts.

Puigdemont, who lives in self-imposed exile in Belgium, has been visiting Finland since Thursday for talks with lawmakers and had been due to leave on Saturday afternoon.

It was not known if he was still in the Nordic country.

"Finland has received a European arrest warrant for a Spanish citizen visiting Finland. The person concerned will be handled in a normal extradition procedure," Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said in a statement.

"The person's whereabouts are not currently known to authorities," the statement said.

Puigdemont is wanted by Spain on charges of "rebellion" and "sedition".

Finnish police had earlier told AFP they were awaiting further information from Spanish authorities on the arrest warrant before acting on it.

"Spain provided the requested information to the National Bureau of Investigation," the NBI said in its statement.

The Finnish MP who organised Puigdemont's visit, Mikko Karna, told media he had not been in touch with him since Friday.

Puigdemont's lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas meanwhile told Catalunya Radio his client would not try to escape arrest.

"When the European arrest warrant was issued (a first time), he made himself available to the Belgian justice and police, and he would do the same thing now. I have not spoken to him yet but that is clear, yes."

In Barcelona, the Catalan parliament suspended its debates on Saturday after regional presidential candidate Jordi Turull, who had been due to seek a second-round vote in the parliament, was placed in custody over the region's breakaway bid.This blessed perfect show, all other shows bow down, all other casts bow down, all other episodes of tv bow down, all other space operas bow down, THE ORIGINAL AND THE BEST. 



Benjamin Sisko is the dad I always dreamed of having. He is the epitome of good dadhood.



Edited at 2018-03-24 03:19 am (UTC)

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I know for a fact my life would have turned out so much differently if Benjamin Sisko were my dad, and not just because I'd be living on a space station in the future

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SAME. I might be a well adjusted human being and have swerved all my messed up daddy issues. 

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yaaaas



although goddammit why do you have a damar icon sis he's the only one I hate as much as dukat

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OP convinced me by virtue of ha userpic to restart my ?th rewatch of DS9. I'm going to bed and will be back tomorrow to thoroughly enjoy this post, but for now have my favorite pic of late 90s realness. Fun fact: this image was once my laptop welcome screen pic and when I was getting it repaired the guy at the computer store was a fake fan and didn't realize who they were.

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fake geek boys smh. and i love that photo. denim dimension



yaas rewatch! I want to do one too but it's only been a few months since i finished one and i'm like, there probably is other tv i can and should watch

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YELLS

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excited for all the articles praising the best Trek in the entire 60-odd year run.

i loved this show so much. loved all the characters, the slice of life plots, the wacky transporter/holodeck issue episodes, the serious wartime ethics questions - everything.excited for all the articles praising the best Trek in the entire 60-odd year run.

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that episode, meh heart

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i'll admit Garak and Bashir were two of my fave characters on the show, and not just because i spent half of their actions whispering 'just kiss'. fantasy fun spy cleverness vs the harsh realities of war <3

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I loved DS9. This is why I hate that Discovery is a prequel series because I want to see where all my DS9ers are at nowdays!



It hurt my soul as kid when Jadiza died and it hurt my soul when I did my major rewatch last year and watched her die again only to find out that was willing to stay just not full time. She was my fave and it really made the last season weird for me.

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Yeah, i wish a star trek series would pick up back in this era.



Maybe a DS9 reboot??



That way, they can have TNG and Voyager people shift in from time to time.



I dunno.

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it's a huge no for me when it comes to rebooting DS9 or for that matter, anything in Star Trek after the film reboots were such a tragic mess



but yes to picking up the universe where Voyager left off

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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my fav of all the series.

Wish it got to feature-film status, but the end of the series kind of ended everything perfectly.



The pilot episode is still sooo good.

Seeing the Wolf 359 battle from a different perspective was awesome

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my shoooooooooow. my captaiiiiiiiiiiiin. my Kiraaaaaaaaaa. Jadziaaaaaaaaaa.



I ended up loving Discovery but I got real sick of people pointing to DS9 as their excuse for any complaints people initially had about it. DS9 earned its stripes over seven seasons. I am so super eager to see where Disco goes but I'm like "simmer down there kids" at the DS9 equivalencies.



"In the Pale Moonlight" is the best hour of television I've ever seen, period.



Avery Brooks and Nana Visitor in particular were such good stewards of their characters. Both of them had a LOT of feedback and influence on their characters. The ending of DS9 was changed to have Sisko promise Kasidy he will come back, where it was originally written to have him just be GONE, but Brooks said he didn't like the idea of a black man leaving his pregnant wife behind, and they listened. They listened to him a lot. They also listened to Nana Visitor when she heavily vetoed a Kira/Dukat hookup, THANK THE PROPHETS. People who legit wanted that ship, let me spray you with Febreze.



There are so many wonderful notes struck on DS9 -- action, comedy, morality, familial love, friendship love, romantic love, intrigue, war, spies, lighthearted little episodes, Seven Samurai retold with Ferengi... I could honestly just go on and on and on.



Also I feel like Jadzia Dax was a big clue to a certain generation that some of us girl weren't entirely hetero.



I have some complaints, sure, but the good so heavily outweighs the bad that I forgive them, mostly. It's possibly my favorite tv show of all time, but it's definitely my favorite captain, and I think Kira Nerys might be the strongest overall character in all of Star Trek.

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kira/dukat???! barf



she wasn't into the idea of kira/odo either (and neither was auberjonois), i wish they'd listened to them on that as well. that whole relationship strikes a weird note for me.



but yeah the utter wealth and richness and diversity of this show... in one of the linked articles behr talks about how he loved the fact they had such a huge strong ensemble including all the recurring cast members, and i think that's one of its key strengths, it's just this entire organic microcosm of shifting alliances and relationships. i think that's why it's the most fascinating trek.

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I didn't mind Kira/Odo, I thought it had some really good notes, but I would have been fine without it, too. I liked the resolution to that relationship, it was very...adult. Grown-up relationship writing to end it like that.



and yesss. the continuity of all these recurring characters. I think I remember when reading the DS9 companion years ago that they had something like 29 characters to tie up over the last ten-episode arc? that's amazing, and yet, they managed to accomplish it. Truly an ambitious ensemble show that paid off pretty much everyone.

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Yassss excellent comment <3



DS9 had so many amazing fucking episodes but In The Pale Moonlight easily tops the list for me, followed very closely by Far Beyond The Stars. Such magnificent writing and acting and storytelling adlkgaoisndiosagiosado



I need a post DS9/Dominion War series before I die, stg

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Emmy 4 Brooks





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I love this episode sfm. Brooks did stellar work throughout and I feel like having an African American captain, esp played by someone as uncompromising and talented as him, really allowed this show to grapple with issues previous Treks had skated over.



On a more shallow note seeing the cast in those outfits is forever amazing

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Armin had an easy week, hah

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I have no desire to play that computer game tbh but i am ENDLESSLY INTRIGUED BY BASHIR'S FACIAL HAIR IN THAT LITTLE ANIMATION. WHEN IS THIS. WHY



tbh if it was a console game with realistic graphics i'd probably be here for it but lol at this n64 realness



Proud of myself for bringing the Siddig contentI have no desire to play that computer game tbh but i am ENDLESSLY INTRIGUED BY BASHIR'S FACIAL HAIR IN THAT LITTLE ANIMATION. WHEN IS THIS. WHYtbh if it was a console game with realistic graphics i'd probably be here for it but lol at this n64 realness

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oblig Siddig for the doctor, my bro who loves ds9 says he'll finally watch doctor who if that happens



everything after the first season is the most compelling trek ever. next gen might be my fav but it's ds9 I rewatch most often.

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my bro who loves ds9 says he'll finally watch doctor who if that happens



me too bro

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DS9 has always been my favourite of the ST universe.

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Superior cast, superior post and superior OP <3



DS9 and Sisko will forever be the best Trek incarnation

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My husband and I are watching all the Star Treks and were almost finished with ds9. Were on the final season.

Quark turned out to be one of my favorite characters which I found shocking because I didn't like the Ferengi in Voyager. I didn't like how in random episodes they could casually mention how he's forcing the Dabo girls to sleep with him and just be like 'oh that quark'.



I also love Garak. I was almost crying the episode you find out how depressed he is.



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The Dabo stuff has aged painfully badly and it sticks out bc in other aspects 2018 is still trying to catch up to ds9

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Link23 Mar  Two days after she was announced as the new Miss Universe-Philippines, Catriona Gray took to social media to express her thoughts about her new title.

The beauty queen published a long post which read, "After months of preparation and guidance and prayers, I kept waiting for a wave of nerves to hit me but it never came. Maybe it was God's gift to me that night, or maybe I just knew I had done everything to be ready, now it was just time for me to enjoy and have fun."

She added that the thought of being able to say "Catriona Gray, PHILIPPINES" gives her the chills all over again.

She also expressed her gratitude to her training and make-up team in the same post, her family and boyfriend Clint Bondad, as well as pageant organiser Binibining Pilipinas Charities, Inc. and its founder, Stella Marquez-Aranet.

As for her fans, she said, "What an amazing journey we've been on. Through the highs and lows you've never left my side. For your love, dedication and ceaseless support, I am forever grateful that you've chosen me as your queen. This is all for you. Let's do this."

Gray, who previously represented the country in Miss World 2016, will be competing in the upcoming Miss Universe pageant, to be held in December.

Other contenders include Jane Teoh of Malaysia, Maeva Coucke of France, Sthefany Gutierrez of Venezuela, and Angeline Flor Pua - the Filipina-Chinese beauty queen representing Belgium.

(Photo Source: Catriona Gray Instagram)OceanaGold Corporation, a gold producer, engages in the exploration, development, and operation of mineral properties. It explores for gold, copper, silver, and other minerals. The company operates the Didipio gold-copper mine located in the Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino provinces on the island of Luzon in the Philippines; the Macraes goldfield mine on the South Island of New Zealand; the Waihi gold mine on the North Island of New Zealand; and the Haile gold mine located in South Carolina, the United States. It also has a pipeline of exploration opportunities in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific regions. OceanaGold Corporation was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in South Brisbane, Australia.

Read MoreOrmat Technologies, Inc. operates as a holding company. The firm engages in the provision of geothermal and recovered energy power business. It operates through the following segments: Electricity, Product and Energy Storage. The Electricity segment focuses in the sale of electricity from the company's power plants pursuant to PPAs. The Product segment involves in the manufacture, including design and development, of turbines and power units for the supply of electrical energy and in the associated construction of power plants utilizing the power units manufactured by the company to supply energy from geothermal fields and other alternative energy sources. The Energy Storage segment consists of battery energy storage systems as a service and management of curtailable customer loads under contracts with U.S. retail energy providers and directly with large commercial and industrial customers. The company was founded in 1965 and is headquartered in Reno, NV.

Read MoreChina Hydroelectric Corporation is a developer, owner and operator of small hydroelectric power projects in China. The projects are located in Zhejiang, Fujian, Yunnan and Sichuan. As of December 31, 2012, wholly owns 22 operating hydroelectric power projects and have controlling interests in three operating hydroelectric power projects. In March 2012, the Company sold 100% of the Yuanping hydroelectric power project. In April 2013, the Company sold the Yuheng hydroelectric power project, a 30 megawatt (MW) project located in Fujian province. In July 2014, the Company announced that it has completed the merger with CPT Wyndham Sub Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of CPT Wyndham Holdings Ltd.

Read More9 hours ago

Good News For H.B. Fuller Company, Bad News For Everyone Else

H.B. Fuller Is Raising Prices To Offset Inflation H.B. Fuller Company (NYSE: FUL) just added a new twist to the evolving narrative surrounding the Q3 earnings season. The company produced better than expected results and offered positive guidance on the back of pricing increases that are expected to restore margins, as the company put it, to their previous levels.

Read ArticleFrench President Emmanuel Macron accompanies Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan as he leaves the Elysee Palace in Paris FILE PHOTO: French President Emmanuel Macron accompanies Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan as he leaves the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, January 5, 2018. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told French President Emmanuel Macron in a phone call that he was disturbed by claims about Turkey's military campaign in Syria's Afrin region that he said were baseless, a Turkish presidential source said on Friday.

Among Turkey's Western allies, France has been one of the biggest critics of the two-month-old Turkish military operation against the Kurdish YPG militia in Afrin, which borders Turkey. Turkish forces stormed Afrin city on Sunday.

Last month, the United States and France called on Turkey to halt the operation in northern Syria to comply with a United Nations resolution requiring a ceasefire in all of Syria. The resolution excluded military operations against Islamic State, al Qaeda and groups associated with them or other groups designated as terrorist organisations by the Security Council.

Ankara, which considers the Kurdish YPG militia a terror organisation, strongly rejected the call from its two NATO allies, accusing France of giving "false information" on the issue.

In Friday's phone call, Erdogan also told Macron that the rights of Turkish Cypriots over hydrocarbon resources in the eastern Mediterranean should be protected, the presidential source said.

A vessel charted by Italy's state-controlled Eni <ENI.MI> was unable to reach an area Cyprus has licensed for drilling because of Turkish military manoeuvres in a two-week standoff in February.

Turkey says some areas of Cyprus's offshore maritime zone fall under the jurisdiction of Turkey or Turkish Cypriots.

Cyprus and Turkey have not had diplomatic relations since a 1974 Turkish invasion of the island triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup. Decades of reconciliation efforts have failed.

Despite stepping up criticism of what the EU sees as Erdogan's growing authoritarianism, the bloc's top officials will host him for talks on Monday in the Bulgarian city of Varna.

(Reporting by Murad Sezer; Writing by Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by Peter Graff and Catherine Evans)Finnish police said Saturday they were seeking to arrest Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, but did not know his whereabouts. Puigdemont, who lives in self-imposed exile in Belgium, has been visiting Finland since Thursday for talks with lawmakers and had been due to leave on Saturday afternoon. It was not known if he was still in the Nordic country. "Finland has received a European arrest warrant for a Spanish citizen visiting Finland. The person concerned will be handled in a normal extradition procedure," Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said in a statement. "The person's whereabouts are not currently known to authorities," the statement said. Puigdemont is wanted by Spain on charges of "rebellion" and "sedition". Finnish police had earlier told AFP they were awaiting further information from Spanish authorities on the arrest warrant before acting on it. "Spain provided the requested information to the National Bureau of Investigation," the NBI said in its statement. The Finnish MP who organised Puigdemont's visit, Mikko Karna, told media he had not been in touch with him since Friday. Puigdemont's lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas meanwhile told Catalunya Radio his client would not try to escape arrest. "When the European arrest warrant was issued (a first time), he made himself available to the Belgian justice and police, and he would do the same thing now. I have not spoken to him yet but that is clear, yes." In Barcelona, the Catalan parliament suspended its debates on Saturday after regional presidential candidate Jordi Turull, who had been due to seek a second-round vote in the parliament, was placed in custody over the region's breakaway bid.French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on a visit to Kiev Friday accused Russia of being directly responsible for the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine as the "aggressor country." Le Drian said he had discussed "the conflict with Russia" with the Ukrainian authorities, referring to Kiev's struggle with Kremlin-backed separatists in the country's east. "On this point, I will be very clear. In this crisis, there is for us an aggressor country and an attacked country, and there is no ambiguity," Le Drian told journalists at a joint news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin. The remarks came as relations between Paris and Moscow have been strained by disputes over the conflict in Syria and the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Britain. "Russia must organise a comprehensive and sustainable ceasefire (and) organise on the ground, and once security conditions are met, we also count on Ukraine to continue implementing measures that fall under its responsibility," said Le Drian, who was paying his first visit to Ukraine. Under peace agreements signed in Minsk in February 2015, Ukraine is expected to grant greater autonomy to the Russian-backed separatist areas as a key condition for them to return under Kiev's authority. The armed conflict between the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed rebels has claimed more than 10,000 lives since its outbreak in 2014. Kiev and the West accuse Russia of supporting the separatists by deploying troops and arms, which Moscow denies despite overwhelming evidence. A string of ceasefire deals have helped to reduce the violence but nevertheless sporadic clashes still erupt between the warring sides.Italy's parliament was left in limbo on Friday with no victor yet in the battle for speaker in both houses of parliament, a move that would lay the ground for the next fight over who will lead a new government. As expected the newly-elected lower house Chamber of Deputies and upper house Senate failed to elect their new speakers on the first day of voting, leaving the country guessing who will take up the roles. At the end of two rounds of voting, tensions also began to emerge within the leading right-wing coalition, after its leader was accused of "hostility" by putting forward a surprise candidate. The vote is important because until both speakers are chosen consultations between Italian President Sergio Mattarella and those competing to form a new government cannot begin. The right-wing alliance which gained the most votes in the March 4 election with 37 percent and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5s) which garnered 33 percent are vying for the chance to lead the country. The two sides had been working on a deal that would let the right have the Senate speaker and see M5S take the Chamber, a prelude to potential power-sharing talks between the two. The right-wing coalition had been fielding Paolo Romani, the economy minister in Silvio Berlusconi's last government and a member of the media mogul's Forza Italia party, for the post of Senate speaker. However, Luigi Di Maio's M5S, Italy's largest single party, said it could not vote for Romani due to his 2014 conviction for embezzlement for which he was given a suspended 16-month sentence that was confirmed on appeal in October. - Blank ballots - The centre-left Democratic Party (PD), whose coalition came third i with 23 percent, has refused to form an alliance with either of the two top groups in the polls. In total 592 blank ballots were returned in the Chamber's first round of voting by 630 MPs, while 312 of the 317 ballots cast in the Senate's first round were left blank. The M5S's rejection of Romani has infuriated Berlusconi, who has demanded a meeting with Di Maio. But in the second round of voting on Friday night cracks began to emerge within the right-wing coalition, when Matteo Salvini's League made the surprise move of backing a Forzia Italia candidate in the Senate -- without consulting ally Berlusconi. Save for the League's 57 votes for Anna Maria Bernini, the rest of the ballots were returned blank. Berlusconi labelled the move an "act of hostility" designed to fracture the coalition and push the League closer to M5S. - Warm up - The negotiations over speakers are a warm up for talks to form a government, with the M5S and the right saying they are ready to work with any party that would be willing to adopt their programme. The selection of the Senate speaker is relatively straightforward, with the winning candidate being chosen after a maximum of four rounds of voting over the weekend. If no-one achieves an absolute majority by the third round, the two most popular candidates of the third ballot will face a run-off. The vote for the Chamber speaker is more complicated with no limit to the number of ballots that can be held before a candidate is elected and no one group close to a majority. If the aspiring speaker fails to earn a two-thirds majority vote from 630 MPs, the quorum will progressively lower until the fourth round, when a simple majority of voting MPs is needed.FILE PHOTO: Employees work on the terminal foundations at the construction site of the new Mexico City International Airport in Texcoco on the outskirts of Mexico City FILE PHOTO: Employees work on the terminal foundations at the construction site of the new Mexico City International Airport in Texcoco on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico February 1, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/File Photo

By Daina Beth Solomon

GUADALAJARA, Mexico (Reuters) - The leftist front-runner for the Mexican presidency softened his critical stance on Mexico City's $13 billion new airport on Friday, saying he would carefully review the project instead of threatening to scrap it entirely.

Speaking in the central city of Guadalajara, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has led polls for months ahead of the July 1 election, stressed the need to examine all aspects of the project, which is already under construction.

"We are going to do a technical review of the project, without scaring anyone," he said at a construction industry conference in Mexico's second-biggest city.

"(Hold) a review, with all honesty as to whether it goes ahead or it doesn't; those are the options," he added.

Lopez Obrador proposed assembling a team of 15 experts to assess the project - five from the construction industry, five from the government and five from his team.

It was a more conciliatory stance than his remarks on Thursday, when he said his legal team would file injunctions to block the government from awarding more work contracts for the project, which he slammed as "corrupt."

His pick for communications and transport minister, Javier Jimenez Espriu, told the conference that if elected, Lopez Obrador would suspend work to conduct a financial, environmental and technical review to assess the project's full impact.

"We are not for having white elephants," Espriu said.

Contracts worth billions of dollars have already been awarded for the airport, which aims to ease the strained capacity of the capital's present hub and improve connectivity.

The largest existing contract went to a consortium that includes a construction company controlled by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men.

Ricardo Anaya, a rival presidential candidate heading a right-left coalition who is battling for second place in the race, said it would be foolish to scrap the airport, given the amount of money already assigned to the project.

Story continues

But he also called for it to be subject to scrutiny.

"What we do need to do is review the contracts to guarantee that this project is being carried out to the highest international standards of transparency, and that it's not being used for corruption," he told the same construction event.

The project, which is being built on the drained bed of Lake Texcoco, is the biggest public works project under way in Mexico. The planned terminal building was designed by British architect Norman Foster and Slim's son-in-law, Fernando Romero.

GACM, the company responsible for building the airport, said on Friday that it had raised 30 billion pesos ($1.62 billion) through an offering of an infrastructure investment trust to help finance the project.

(Writing by Julia Love; Editing by Dave Graham, Dan Grebler, Susan Thomas and Cynthia Osterman)KUANTAN: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak today reminded Barisan Nasional(BN) leaders and members to understand the component party principles which was established to protect the needs of all races. He said they must be able to understand the real principles of BN which was to ensure everyone remained united and lived in a peaceful country. Najib, who is also the BN chairman, said he wanted BN leaders and members to leave it to him to determine the partys candidates who would be fielded to contest in the 14th General Election (GE14).





Datuk Seri Najib Razak said they must be able to understand the real principles of BN which was to ensure everyone remained united and lived in a peaceful country. (NSTP/FARIZUL HAFIZ AWANG)

Not leave it solely to me but as the BN chairman I will discuss with the others including Menteri Besars, component party leaders and division leaders. I will not decide on my own but consult others in the process of making the final say. That is why we need to understand the principles on why BN has been representing all the component parties since 1973...it is to safeguard the interest and wellbeing of all races so that the people can live in peace and harmony....to make Malaysia a well respected country, he said in his speech at the Pemimpin Bersama Rakyat programme before launching the Kuantan Parliament Barisan Nasional Election Machinery at Dataran Kemunting here today. Najib said he wanted everyone to understand that when he as the partys top leader decided something, he would ensure that it benefitted everyone. Leave it to the party leadership (on matters concerning GE14 candidates). Sometimes there are decisions that will favour us or go against us but we must always see it as a long term sacrifice as our aim is to build a strong government which will be well respected by the people. As long as BN leaders and members are loyal to the leader then we will be able to be in power at both in federal and state level. When we are in power it will be easier for the government to carry out projects that will benefit the people, he said. Meanwhile Najib in his speech reminded the 62, 036 voters in the Kuantan parliamentary constituency not to be easily duped by the oppositions lies including the recent ones concerning the Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park (MCKIP) in Gebeng here. The opposition claim we are selling the countrys sovereignty to China. MCKIP is an investment project which will create jobs, new economy growth and spur the country towards greater heights. The people here should not fall to the oppositions lies just like what happened during the last general election when they claimed the Lynas rare earth plant will cause health problems which turned out to be untrue. We are tired of the lies spread by the opposition so now we need to work as a team and ensure BN wins the Kuantan parliament seat, he said. Also present were Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob, MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, Kuantan BN division chief Datuk Seri Wan Adnan Wan Mamat and his deputy Datuk Seri Abdul Hamid Mohd Nazahar,and Kuantan MCA division chief Datuk Seri Ti Lian Ker. More than 8,000 BN leaders,component party members and members of the public gathered at the venue since noon which also hosted. the Jualan Sentuhan Rakyat programme.  New Straits Times Press (M) BhdFILE PHOTO: A voter casts her ballot at a polling station during Sierra Leone's general election in Freetown, Sierra Leone March 7, 2018. REUTERS/Olivia Acland/File Photo

By Umaru Fofana

FREETOWN (Reuters) - A Sierra Leone court on Saturday upheld a request by a member of the ruling party for an injunction to delay a presidential election run-off that was meant to happen next Tuesday.

The party member, Ibrahim Sorie Koroma, filed for the injunction on Thursday, saying there was evidence of electoral fraud that needed to be investigated before the poll could go ahead.

The court said it was issuing "an interim injunction restraining the ... defendants from conducting the Presidential Election ... pending the hearing ... of this court".

It said it would review the defendants' response on Monday.

Opposition leader Julius Maada Bio, of the Sierra Leone People's Party - briefly a former military junta leader - will be standing against former foreign minister Samura Kamara of the ruling All People's Congress, after neither of the two front-runners secured an outright majority in the first round.

The largely peaceful nature of the election, and the fact that outgoing President Ernest Bai Koroma is willingly stepping down, is seen as a sign of how far Sierra Leone has come since a 1990s civil war characterised by the mutilation of civilians, the sale of conflict diamonds and the widespread recruitment of children as militia fighters.

But tensions over alleged fraud in some districts, and complaints of police harassment against the electoral commission, have marred the current process.

"It's a sad day for the country's democratic standing and the consolidation of peace," said Ibrahim Tommy, a campaigner for the Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law, reacting to the court decision.

The new president will need to revive a flagging economy that has been damaged by low prices for the main export, iron ore, and a deadly Ebola outbreak.

(Reporting by Umaru Fofana; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Andrew Bolton)When Donald Trump blurted the news earlier this month that he would impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, it seemed as if he was finally getting ready to pick a fight over trade with the whole world. While the plan lacked detail, White House officials insisted that the duties would apply to imports from all over the map; important partners like Canada, Mexico, and Germany would not be exempt. The president made clear these would be across-the-board tariffs with no exclusions, an official told reporters. One problem with exclusions is that its a slippery slope. Where do you stop?

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Flash forward three weeks, and the White Houses strategy has clearly changed. As a result, Trumps global trade war now seems to be morphing into a contained showdown with China. That much was clear during the presidents flurry of actions on trade Thursday. With one breath, he announced tariffs on up to $60 billion worth of imports from China, as retribution for the countrys national habit of filching American intellectual property. With another, he officially handed out temporary exemptions on his steel and aluminum tariffs to a handful of important alliesCanada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and South Koreaas well as the whole European Union. Some friendly countries havent won a dispensation yetmost notably Japan, where steel industry folks are apparently outraged that they havent received the same treatment as South Korea. But theyll likely have a chance to negotiate: The official proclamation invited other nations to talk about alternative ways to address the steel and aluminum issue.

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Countries that are spared from the tariffs may still face some restrictions on how much steel and aluminum they can ship to the U.S. Every country that is not facing tariffs that we are going to negotiate with will face quotas so that we protect our aluminum and steel industries, White House trade policy adviser Peter Navarro told CNN. The idea behind this is to stop countries targeted by trade tariffs, such as China, from avoiding them by shipping their products through other nations, like Canada or Mexico, that are not. Its a softer approach to protectionism that other nations may find grating, but not necessarily worth retaliating over.

Overall, this is a good thing, given the obvious downsides of the Rambo-esque, us-vs-everybody approach to trade Trump seemed to be embracing. Every country Trump hit with tariffs was another country with a reason to retaliate against American exports. And alienating allies could make it harder to organize an international response to some of Chinas trade practices, such as its massive overproduction of steel.

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Of course, a trade war with China alone is still going to upset plenty of executives and investors (see this weeks plummeting stock prices). But some of the concerns people commonly voice about ticking off the Chinese are a bit overwrought. For instance, the idea that China can kneecap the United States by selling off treasury debt, as one of its officials hinted it might this week, is the myth that wont die. And as the Wall Street Journals Greg IP wrote Friday, its obvious at this point that the Peoples Republic and the U.S. have been quietly battling it out on trade for a while. The transparent efforts of Chinas government and its corporations to leech trade secrets and tech from American companies that want to do business there has been a longstanding tension, and it was bound to come to a head at some point. Realistically, Trump is escalating a cold war into a hot one. But at least some officials in the administration seem like theyre hoping to avoid conflict. While downplaying the size of the tariffs, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC he thought they would lead the U.S. and China to work out a deal. There may be some firing shots over the bow and things like that but I believe at the end of the day this will end up in a negotiated settlement.

Could things still get out of hand? Of course they could. This is the Trump administration, where all things are provisional and policy swings with the presidents cable news consumption. But for now, there are signs the White House is at least picking its battles, which is a step up from where we were at the start of this month.This article is published through a partnership with New York Medias Strategist. The partnership is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. Every editorial product is independently selected by New York Media. If you buy something through our links, Slate and New York Media may earn an affiliate commission.

There is no shame in enjoying a glass of wine from a Mason jar, a plastic wine glass, or any other drinking glass you might have on hand. (We here at the Strategist are particularly fond of the Bormioli tumblers that make professionally tasteful person Joanna Goddard feel like shes sipping wine in Barcelona.) But it can be nice to have a set of proper wine glasses on hand, with a larger bell-shaped bowl and a thin, long stem, especially if youre investing in more expensive bottles and want to fully appreciate a wines aroma and tasteor just want to make the experience of drinking a glass of cheap wine feel more special.

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That doesnt mean you have to buy different wine glasses for every type of wine you might be drinking. There are plenty of high-quality universal wine glasses, including the culty Zalto, that will elevate your wine of choice, no matter the style or price of the bottle. And to help you figure out which wine glasses are worth the splurge, I asked sommeliers and beverage directors to share their favorite wine glasses, from the showstopping glasses made of crystal to the best cheap and durable options.

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My go-to brand for durability is the Schott Zwiesel Tritan series. The crystal mixed with a trace amount of titanium gives it great strength and feel. Jason White, beverage director, Barano

BUY: Schott Zweisel Tritan Cabernet Glass, Set of 6

$78, Amazon

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I dont like it when a wine glass itself distracts from the wine-drinking experience. I think a glass needs to be functional first, and everything else next. Libbeys Vina line of wine glasses are very classically shaped and elegant (but also reassuringly sturdy). I am always surprised when I use other glasses and realize the variance out there. Make it simple and strong! John Condon, bar manager, Left Bank

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My favorite glass is the Zalto Universal Glass. Its handblown and has a wonderful history and story, but its also extremely elegant, lightweight, and thin. All of that amounts to you experiencing the wine itself more than the physical glass as you smell and drink, and it works for every style of wine out there. (Champagne tastes particularly delicious out of one of these!) If I had to pick just one glass to enjoy every single wine in my world, this would be it. Thomas Pastuszak, wine director, NoMad; founder, Empire Estate

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BUY: Zalto Hand-Blown Universal Wine Glass (Single)

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For me, its far and away Zalto. If you were to pick just one glass, I would recommend the Zalto Universal Glass, though nothing beats drinking Burgundy out of their massive, 10-ounce red Burgundy glasses. Once you experience the ethereal thinness of those glasses, not much really compares. Theyre a bit pricey, but perfect. Frank Cisneros, consulting bar director, Bar Moga

BUY: Zalto Glassware Crystal DenkArt Burgundy Wine Glass

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Obviously, Id love to be able to use Zalto everywhere, every day. But I can be a klutz, so I try to savor that experience on nights out. At home, I really love the Ikea Ivrig glass as an all-purpose option. Its inexpensive, it has great balance, and its relatively lightweight. For the price, its a surprisingly elegant glass. I also like that the stems are a moderate lengthimperative for maximizing space in those small apartment kitchens! Lauren Friel, freelance writer and sommelier

BUY: Ivrig White Wine Glass

$3, IKEA

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I love Gabriel-Glas Gold Edition. They are very light, elegant, and also not as large as most glasses in their category. Theres only one shape, but I find it great for everything from Champagne to Bordeaux. Careful when youre polishing them, thoughthey arent cheap. Richard Anderson, sommelier, Vaucluse

BUY: Gabriel-Glas 99682 Gold Edition Mouth-Blown Crystal Wine Glass, Set of 6

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If Im really looking to enjoy that special bottle, I reach for Riedels Sommelier series glasses, which are specifically designed to distribute each particular wine, depending on focus areas of our palates. Almost like the perfect introduction to the wine, these glasses help you decipher all of the subtle notes of even the most complex wines. White

BUY: Riedel Sommeliers Burgundy Grand Cru Wine Glass, Set of 2

$112, Amazon

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The Riedel Restaurant series is my go-to for glassware. Their standard 001 glass is very large (at 35 ounces) and looks and feels like an expensive piece of glassware, but it is very reasonably priced. I use these at Catch for any table buying a nice bottle of wine, and the guests never cease to be amazed by these huge glasses. Lucas Robinson, beverage director, Catch Hospitality Group

Editors note: The Riedel 001 is only available through wholesale, but the Riedel Vinum XL Cabernet Glass has similarly awe-inspiring dimensions.

BUY: Riedel Vinum XL Cabernet Glass, Set of 4

$62, AmazonThe students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have come to Washington. You can admire them, berate them, dismiss them as fake humans, or feel just slightly terrified by their energy and single-mindedness, but any way you look at it, they plan to be heard. These kids plan to name and shame members of Congress who have been bought and sold by the NRA, and theyll be backed up by more than 800 student-led demonstrations planned in the United States and internationally this Saturday. Their actions and protests have already resulted in private companies, among them Delta, Dicks Sporting Goods, and Hertz, reordering their own relationships with the gun lobby. Theyve also stood behind a new gun bill in Florida that passed a Republican-dominated Legislature.

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These students know the next step is to translate all this energy into votes. There are plans to register thousands of young voters this weekend, with a goal of having 4 out of 5 young people sign up to vote in the upcoming midterms. The marchers are buoyed by the fact that almost three-fifths of millennial votersa group thats a bit older than the demographic represented by these high schoolage marchersidentify as Democrats. But young people are consistently unreliable voters, especially in midterm elections. And so, the question is, will any other groups follow the students lead this November?

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Female voters are an obvious choice. A Quinnipiac University poll released in December revealed a wide gender gap with respect to gun control, with 69 percent of women supporting stricter gun laws and 26 percent opposing. The split for men: 47 percent in support and 47 percent opposed. If these young people can manage to activate older women, and especially their mothers, to vote on this issue, there could be reason to believe that meaningful change will follow.

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Theres been some confusion in recent weeks over the interplay between Moms Demand Action, the Brady Campaign, MoveOn, the Womens March, and the student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The Womens March, for instance, had put its weight behind the national school walkout on March 14. Other groups are supporting an action on April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School. But despite this lack of clear consensus, the truth is that the Parkland, Florida, students have benefited tremendously from the pre-existing machinery that these other groups have created. As Rolling Stone reports, the day after the shooting, members from the Tallahassee chapter of Moms Demand Action were already on the ground protesting at the state capital. The next day, Everytown had rolled out a five-point plan to remove NRA-backed politicians from office. Days after that, [shooting victim and former member of Congress Gabrielle] Giffords had rolled out a six-figure ad buy targeting Governor Rick Scott for his coziness with the NRA. And in the weeks following the Parkland attack, Shannon Watts, who heads up Moms Demand Action, had launched Students Demand Action, adding 115,000 new volunteers.

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Indeed, the crisis actor contingent has been quick to point out that Everytown and Moms Demand Action were suspiciously early supporters of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students. This, notes the fever swamp, makes the students pawns in George Soros well-financed gun control machine.

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The March for Our Lives was explicitly modeled on the Womens March because the underlying concerns are so similar.

Maybe. Or perhaps these kids are surprisingly effective messengers who have managed to direct a whole lot of big money both to their own actions and to those of existing gun groups. They have managed to use those groups in ways that amplified their own words and have also raised awareness of other gun control projects. The Stoneman Douglas organizers have accepted help from established organizations when their agendas align and allowed for adult leadership where it was needed. But the truth is womens groups have been right behind them from the start. According to the Washington Post, since Parkland, about 1.7 million new people have signed up with Moms Demand Action or its umbrella group, Everytown for Gun Safety, to receive emails or text messages or to make a donation. Meetings that usually garner a few dozen participants have drawn hundreds. Everytown is now launching a massive voter registration drive in concert with Saturdays march. That group has also launched an initiative, Throw Them Out, to elect progun control leaders.

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Perhaps the most symbolic effort to recruit adult voters to the Parkland agenda was launched by a pair of Stoneman Douglas students, juniors Adam Buchwald and Zach Hibshman. The boys started an initiative called Parents Promise to Kids, which has children and their parents sign a contract in which the adults pledge to vote for candidates dedicated to gun control. The contract is pretty simple. Parents simply pledge that I/We [parent name(s)] promise to [child name(s)] that I/We will vote for legislative leaders who support our childrens safety over guns!

Moms are obvious recipients of the Parkland kids message. Millions of American parents have watched in fear as their children have gone off to schools that are at the mercy of lockdown drills and daily fear, without hope of government action. As Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action has written, as parents, our kids are the center of our world and the future of this country. Their lives are on the line every day in our schools and communitiesand their voices deserve our full attention.

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The March for Our Lives was explicitly modeled on the Womens March because the underlying concernsabout violence, the Trump administration, and the ways in which Washington is captive to special interestsare so similar. And indeed, the line through #MeToo and #TimesUp and #NeverAgain is a straight one. All of these are messages about frustration and citizen action, about seizing power back from an apparatus that protects corporations and the wealthy at the expense of victims. But more pointedly, theyre all about giving voice to those who feel that they have been unheard, marginalized, or condescended to for too long.

But perhaps the real reason female voters, and mothers in particular, will be moved and activated by the March for Our Lives stems from the poignant reality of what it means to raise children and watch them separate as they grow: If anything can motivate a mom, its the complicated stew of guilt and pride that allows us to recognize that we have wholly failed to protect our own children, and also that we somehow raised them adeptly enough that theyre capable of fighting for themselves.As debate rages in schools across the nation about how to best protect students during a schools shooting, the superintendent of a Pennsylvania school district has come up with a unique way to push back by equipping his classrooms with buckets of rocks. In testimony before the state House Education committee, David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in rural Schuylkill County explained his controversial plan.

Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone. If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full students armed with rocks and they will be stoned, Helsel told state lawmakers.

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Why rocks? At one time I just had the idea of river stone, they`re the right size for hands, you can throw them very hard and they will create or cause pain, which can distract, he explained. The idea is that if there is an armed intruder who attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks, he said. And they will be stoned.

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This plan is hardly new. All the classrooms under Helsels purview have had buckets of stones in the closets for two years but the plan has garnered more attention now amid debate about whether school teachers should be armed. Helsel said he came up with the plan after he realized that the existing protocol merely had students hide and wait for the worst to pass. Protocol has been that students lie down, under desks and basically become passive targets on our classrooms, Helsel said. We decided to empower our students with tools of self-defense if needed.

Helsel insists he doesnt want any of his students to play the hero unless theres no choice. Weve learned many things from these tragedies over the years, Helsel said. One of them is that evacuating makes students the safest.Is John Bolton, President Trumps incoming national security adviser, an anti-Muslim bigot? Bolton, unlike Trump, has shown that he understands the nuances of Islamic world. But he also ignores these nuances when it suits him. Thats unacceptable. Before he takes the job, Bolton must account for his past.

The caricature of Bolton as an overt Muslim-baiter is misleading. Several news and political organizations, including Buzzfeed, Vox, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have published erroneous accounts of a speech he gave in 2016. Vox says that during the speech, Bolton told a joke in which the punchline was that President Obama was a Muslim. Buzzfeed quotes Bolton as calling Obama the Muslim king of the Muslim world. Thats not true. In the speech, Bolton said that King Abdullah of Jordan, who is not simply the Muslim king of a Muslim country, unlike our president, had spoken of the fight against radical Islam as a civil war within Islam. Bolton wasnt saying that Obama was Muslim. He was saying that Obama wasnt a Muslim king, and that this gave Abdullah greater insight and credibility than Obama. The reference to Obamas religion was tasteless, but it was also ironic, and Bolton was making a serious point.

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Another report, published several days ago on Alternet, says, During the Bush administration, [Bolton] regularly railed against the infiltration of Islamists in the U.S. legal system. But the report offers no link or citation, and Ive seen no evidence to back it up.

On several occasions, Bolton has sharply rejected anti-Muslim bigotry. In 2014, during a Fox News interview, Greta Van Susteren asked him: Are we being too soft on radical Islam, in terms of how we speak about them? Bolton said yes, but he drew a distinction. He said that Obama was mistaken to think that references to radical Islam and Islamic terrorism were insulting all of Islam. Bolton explained: There is no such thing as the Islamic world. It makes no more sense to talk about that than it does to talk about the Christian world. People have different views, and they have different experiences. He chastised Bill Maher for indicting Islam as a whole. Its fundamentally flawed, said Bolton, to posit that Muslims or members of any other group all think alike.

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A year later, in December 2015, Trump called for a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. The next day, on Boston Herald radio, Bolton was asked about Trumps idea. Thats certainly completely wrong, he replied. Thats just not consistent with our views about America and how we should operate. Bolton said Trump was playing on the frustration and the fear among Americans. Bolton faulted Obama for not fighting terrorism strongly enough to assuage the publics fear. But he cautioned: Our problem is the radicals, the terrorists. Its not an entire religion. I think we absolutely have to make that clearnot because I care what the rest of the world thinks, but because I care about what we think about ourselves.

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In the 2016 speech thats been widely misquoted, the context of Boltons remark about Obama and Abdullah has been lost. He began by telling the audience that when discussing radical Islam, Its important that we try and say at the outset, every time this subject comes up, that we are talking about politics and ideology here. This is not a question of religion.  Its actually Muslims themselves who have felt the worst effects of Islamic terrorism and who suffer under its rule. Then Bolton made his point about Abdullahs message: that this is a civil war within Islam. Its a struggle for how the religion is perceived around the world.

So Bolton understands Islams complexity. But that raises a question: Why, in that case, does he consort with, coddle, and promote Islamophobes?

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Vox, Buzzfeed, CAIR, and other critics of Bolton get one thing absolutely right: He has a foul record of collaborating with Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney, and other career Muslim bashers. In 2013, Bolton wrote a glowing foreword to a book by Geller and Spencer, ignoring their incendiary ravings. On Gaffneys radio show, when Bolton was asked about a McCarthyesque campaign to hunt for Muslim Brotherhood agents in the Obama administration, he defended it as procedurally routine.

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The three Bolton statements most worthy of interrogation arent the ones that have circulated widely. The first is from a July 2009 interview with Geller. She asked Bolton about the view, which she attributed to Mitt Romney, that jihadism has nothing to do with Islam. Bolton replied: As the saying goes from the Franklin Roosevelt era  Not all Democrats are horse thieves, but all horse thieves are Democrats. Taking that forward, the terrorists today are Islamic fundamentalists. Thats where the threat lies worldwide.

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The clear implication of Boltons retort was that while not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslims. That claim is false and pernicious. Why would he say this, when he knew better? Because in the interview, Bolton was sitting on a couch with Geller. His guard was down, and he was playing along. He was thinking about her, not about the people he was insulting.

A year later, Geller recruited Bolton to speak at a rally against construction of an Islamic center in Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attack. She called it the Ground Zero Mosque, though it wasnt a mosque and wasnt at Ground Zero. Speakers at the rally, backed by Republican politicians, argued that because the 9/11 hijackers were Muslims, no mosque should be built near the site. Bolton delivered a speech by video, in which he falsely described the imam behind the project as a radical and an apologist for terrorism.

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But Bolton added a second objection that took issue with Islam, not terrorism. He accused the projects advocates of telling their opponents: We want to increase religious tolerance and understanding, and if you dont agree with that, were going to increase religious tolerance and understanding whether you like it or not. Bolton said the project should be transferred to a site that doesnt cause the emotional pain that this particular location  has aroused. At no point did he offer a principled reason for excluding peaceful Islamic worship from the vicinity of the attack. He simply postulated that it was wrong to impose religious tolerance on anyone who doesnt want it.

If Bolton had dropped that line of argument after the Ground Zero mosque debate, you could speculate that his more recent comments showed he had learned not to accord prejudice such respect. But in 2016, after the terror attack in Orlando, Bolton returned to the same theme. President Obama avoided references to Islam when describing the Orlando attack, which had been committed by a Muslim who was also a second-generation American. Obama reasoned that to speak of such attacks as Islamic would help terrorists recruit Muslims and would feed prejudice against Muslim Americans. Bolton called Obamas response outrageous. On Fox News, he accused Obama of delivering a lecture  about whats wrong with the rest of us who dont have the tolerance that he does for people that he thinks are being unfairly criticized.

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What exactly was Bolton saying? Did he not agree that Muslims were unfairly criticized? Was he defending intolerance? If so, against whom?

I cant answer these questions. Nor can I tell you which manthe exponent of Islamic diversity, or the exploiter of sectarian fearis the real John Bolton. But Bolton can. He needs to be publicly interrogated. He needs to explain what appears to be, even on a charitable interpretation, a pattern of deference to people who reject tolerance of Muslims. If he cant explain it, or if he wont, then he shouldnt be the national security adviser. You cant protect a country you dont understand.In 2006, record industry moguls Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre teamed up to create a new kind of audio empire: a headphone brand. Over the years, their company Beats Electronics built up its quality, its reputation, and its fan base largely thanks to its adoption by a huge number of athletes and celebrities. After bursting onto the scene during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games on the dome of LeBron James, Beats (formerly Beats by Dre) headphones became the most iconic alternative to Apples white earbud. Despite vocal opposition from audiophiles, by 2012, Beats had garnered a dedicated following of headphone-wearing music lovers. The company eventually extended into the software sphere with its own app, Beats Music. Apple then acquired Beats in 2014. Four years later, Beats original leadership team has moved on as Apple has swallowed the Beats brand.

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The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Iovine will leave Apple in August and transition into a role as a consultant. He follows former Beats executives Dr. Dre, Ian Rogers, and Trent Reznor, who had already left the company since Apples $3 billion acquisition. While the timing of Iovines departure makes senseAugust is when his stock fully vests, and he just turned 65his leaving is a significant marker of where Beats status lies today.

Apple didnt need Beats back in 2014, but the acquisition made sense. It gave Apple control of a buzzworthy app, Beats Music, and the ability to weave its smarts into Apples own music software; a popular and well-regarded headphone business with an iconic look; and access to a slew of the companys audio engineers. While Beats has still introduced new products since the acquisition, its clear that those first and last points were the impetus behind Apples interest.

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When Apple acquired Beats, the headphone-maker was reportedly working on its own early smart speaker, a Wi-Ficonnected competitor to Sonos. Apple quashed that project. As Variety wrote in 2015, The product was supposed to be introduced in time for the holidays last year, but was effectively killed post acquisition. Some of the engineers working on the project have since left the company, while others have been shuffled to other projects. One of those projects was likely Apples smart home speaker, HomePod, which debuted in February but began development in 2012.

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In November 2015, Apple killed Beats Music, the companys curation-focused streaming music player, after integrating some of its core features into Apple Music. This move was entirely expected: At the time of Beats acquisition, Apple already had a robust music software platform in iTunes and a burgeoning streaming service in iTunes Radio, which, combined with Beats, would evolve into what we now know as Apple Music. After Apple launched the Apple Music app that June, it was only a matter of time before Beats Music would disappear from the App Store. It had become redundant.

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Outwardly, Apple hasnt messed with Beats core headphone brandits still alive and kicking, offering headphones, earbuds, and speakers on its website and in Apple Stores. There have been new models, such as the Beats Studio 3 and Powerbeats Wireless headphones, including some with the same wireless technology as Apples wireless AirPods. But in the same way Apple held onto the iPod for years after the iPhone proved the superior mobile sidekick, Beats headphones seem like the past-friendly alternative to AirPods, the audio accessory of the future.

Beats executives likely knew this would be the case when they accepted the acquisitionthat Beats would become a shadow of its former self, with its resources, talent, and ideas redistributed throughout Apples vast corporate village. Thats what typically happens in these kinds of acquisitions. Now that Iovine and the rest of Beats core executives will be gone (with the exception of Beats President Luke Wood, who still oversees its headphone business), it feels like the end of an era. Unlike your typical billion-dollar tech acquisitionfor example, Googles 2014 acquisition of Nestnames like Iovine, Dre, and Reznor were synonymous with Beats and the celebrity cache it advertised. While the Beats brand and its headphones may not disappear, Apple is completely at the helm now. So far, this corporate entity has successfully carried on the coolness and style that Beats founders established in their products, but well see if it can continue that legacy without their day-to-day input.If the past week of news cycles has convinced you that Facebook is barely surviving the onslaught of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, cry not for the social network.

Its true that all the bad news has sent the companys stock spiraling downward all week. On Monday, two days after the stunning stories in the Guardian and the New York Times that detailed how the data-consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was able to obtain data on millions of Facebook users were published, the companys stock fell by 6.77 percent. Facebooks market cap fell by more than $36 billion. As the week continued, the hashtag #DeleteFacebook captured the ire of users upset by the companys ad-targeting practices and overbroad data collection. By Friday, even serial entrepreneur Elon Musk joined the deserters, deleting the Facebook pages of both Tesla and SpaceX.

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All of which meansbuy? Now, according to Wall Street analysts, is a perfect time to pick up more Facebook stock. Theyre telling their clients that all this bad news will eventually blow over and advising them to buy low. As the controversy begins to recede from the headlines after CEO Mark Zuckerbergs interview blitz on Wednesday, they probably have a point.

The firestorm of news headlines, and Facebooks poor navigation of those, have driven an increase in uncertainty that has far surpassed the risk to Facebooks cash flow growth, in our view, analyst Andy Hargreaves of KeyBanc Capital Markets wrote in a note to clients Tuesday, according to CNBC. We recommend investors buy Facebook at current levels and see potential catalysts in earnings, a reasonable response from the Company, and the passage of the height of negative headline volume.

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And more: Despite these negative headlines and increased concerns around user data and regulatory risk, we do not believe Facebooks business is currently being impacted, JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a note to clients, reported Investors Business Daily on Tuesday.

By Friday, two days after Zuckerbergs interviews in Wired, CNN, the New York Times, and Recodewhere he apologized and said that hed be open to some form of regulation (without going into a great deal of specifics)Facebook had jumped from the 12th ranking in Apples App Store at the end of last week to the 8th, according to a BuzzFeed report on Friday.

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While public scrutiny of the major internet companies has grown steadily over the past two years, its unclear whether this past weeks revelations will leave an indelible mark in anyones memoryor more importantly, lead to more regulations of or substantive new policies at Facebook. Then again, the news may have slowed, but it hasnt stopped: On Friday evening, British government officials raided the London headquarters of Cambridge Analytica. You can bet Facebook executives will be paying as close attention as anyone to what the U.K. investigators find.

Read more from Slate on Cambridge Analytica.ORF reporter: I was surprised by how many Slovaks had such courage

Foreign reporters recall events of the Candle Manifestation of March 25, 1988, eighteen months before the Velvet Revolution.

The communist police cars among protesters at the Candle Protest in Bratislava, March 25, 1988. (Source: The Cas Svitania / Time of Dawn booklet, Jan Simulcik)

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Cars of the communist-era police, called Public Security (Verejna Bezpecnost), raided the crowded Hviezdoslavovo Square in Bratislava and started hitting people. The protesters with candles were sprinkled by raindrops, and later by the torrents of water from cars of the city technical services.

People said prayers while police dogs barked in the background. A dozen foreign reporters from western media watched this mad show, too, with astonishment and fear. The date was March 25, 1988.

Bratislava seemed very far from Vienna, and all of Czechoslovakia looked like a hermetically closed dead-house, Karl Stipsicz, who at that time worked as reporter of the Austrian state TV ORF for eastern and southern Europe, recalled the events from 30 years ago.

Read also:

Read also: Candle Manifestation 1988: We went into it like innocent children Read more

It was thrilling, he says. I worked a lot with Barbara Coudenhove-Kalergi, who was already a very famous reporter. This bigger demonstration in Bratislava was a kind of life sign that something eventually starts moving here, that there are citizens under the surface who want to express their dissatisfaction, probably partially encouraged by what was happening in Hungary and Poland, or by what they were able to watch on Austrian and Hungarian TV, explains Stipsicz, who later settled in Hungary and is currently the chief editor of the Haszon magazine.

 Bratislava seemed very far from Vienna, and all of Czechoslovakia looked like a hermetically closed dead-house.  Karl Stipsicz, ORF reporter

He claims that the brutal intervention of security forces against protesters did not surprise him too much.

At that time, Czechoslovakia was a strong police country, the journalist recalls. We often had to wait for hours at the border, foreigners were watched here all the time  at least that was how we felt. We guessed what scenario we could expect. What surprised me rather was the resolution of protesters. I talked with Barbara that this is typical with Catholic believers. Barbara Coudenhove, my colleague, was born in Czechoslovakia, and spoke Czech well. However, Czechs did not show much resistance. Thats why I was so surprised by how many Slovaks had such courage. But this is just my subjective feeling.

24. Mar 2018 at 10:48 | Boris VanyaSlovak scientist develops vaccines to save lives

Because of conditions for science, he decided to work abroad.

Viliam Pavliak has been part of developing vaccines against many resistant bacteria, such as cholera, typhoid, salmonella, pneumococcal and meningococcal diseases. He is present in the process from the initial testing in labs through clinical testing to the final product.

Pavliak works currently in Seoul in South Korea. Before that, he worked as an intern in the Fogarty International Centre and National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, USA.

Conditions werent good for science in Slovakia at the time when I finished my internship in the NIH, in 1991, so I decided to stay abroad and left with my family to Canada where I worked at the Institute for Biological Sciences in Ottawa, recounted Pavliak, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

After his stay in Canada, he returned to the US where he worked in several biopharmaceutical companies. Step by step, he changed from research to production and characterization of vaccines for clinical testing. Since 2016, he has been working for the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul where he is the head of vaccine development.

My current job is focused on vaccine development for Third World countries and for transfer of vaccine technologies by producers in developing countries, said Pavliak for TASR, adding that they cooperate with producers in South Korea, India, Indonesia and Bangladesh on vaccines against cholera, typhoid, and salmonella.

He considers the development of the vaccine against the antibiotic-resistant bacteria Staphylococcus aureus to be his biggest work success. The vaccine is in its final stage of clinical testing.

24. Mar 2018 at 9:10 | TASR, Compiled by Spectator staffCorindus Vascular Robotics, Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells robotic-assisted systems for use in interventional vascular procedures in the United States and internationally. The company offers CorPath system, a medical device with robotic-assisted precision for coronary and peripheral interventional procedures. Its CorPath system allows the physician to perform procedures with a control console located within an interventional cockpit; and CorPath GRX system enables the precise robotic-assisted control of guide catheters, guidewires, and balloon/stent devices from the safety of a radiation-shielded interventional cockpit. The company sells its products through direct sales force, as well as through distributor and partnership relationships. It serves vascular, coronary, peripheral vascular, neurointerventional, and structural heart markets. Corindus Vascular Robotics, Inc. is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Owens Corning: 0979301 B.C. ULC, AS Paroc, Asahi Glass - Composites Business, Crown Mfg. Inc., Deutsche Foamglas GmbH, Dutch OC Cooperatief Invest U.A., European Owens Corning Fiberglas SPRL, FOAMGLAS (Italia) SRL, FOAMGLAS (Nordic) AB, FiberTEK Insulation, Fibreboard Corp., Finefiber (Shanghai) Building Material Co. Ltd., Finefiber Insulation Co. Pte. Ltd., IBCO SRL, IPM Inc., InterWrap, InterWrap (Hong Kong) Ltd., InterWrap (Qingdao) Trading Co. Ltd., InterWrap Corp., InterWrap Corp. Private Ltd., International Packaging Products Pvt. Ltd., Inversiones Owens Corning Chile Holdings Limitada, Northern Elastomeric, OC Canada Finance Inc., OC Canada Holdings General Partnership, OC Celfortec Company, OC Latin American Holdings GmbH, OC NL Invest Cooperatief U.A., OC PRO CV, OC Steklovolokno AO, OCCV1 Inc., OCCV2 LLC, OCV (Thailand) Co. Limited, OCV Chambery France, OCV Chambery International, OCV Finance LLC, OCV Intellectual Capital LLC, OCV Italia Srl, OCV Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., OCV Servicios Mexico S.A. de C.V., OOO Paroc, Owens Corning (Australia) Pty Limited, Owens Corning (China) Investment Company Limited, Owens Corning (Guangde) Rock Wood Manufacturing Co. Ltd, Owens Corning (Guangzhou) Fiberglas Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (India) Private Limited, Owens Corning (Nanjing) Building Materials Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (Shanghai) Fiberglas Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Owens Corning (Tianjin) Building Materials Co. Ltd., Owens Corning (Xian) Building Materials Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Alloy Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Alloy Canada LP, Owens Corning Argentina Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Owens Corning Automotive LLC, Owens Corning BM (Korea) Ltd, Owens Corning CV GP LLC, Owens Corning Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Canada Holdings B.V., Owens Corning Canada Holdings ULC, Owens Corning Canada LP, Owens Corning Cayman (China) Holdings, Owens Corning Celfortec Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Celfortec LP, Owens Corning Composite Materials Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Composite Materials Canada LP, Owens Corning Composite Materials LLC, Owens Corning Composites (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Composites (China) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Construction Services LLC, Owens Corning Corporate Services LLC, Owens Corning Elaminator Insulation Systems LLC, Owens Corning Enterprise (India) Pvt. Ltd., Owens Corning Fabrics (Changzhou) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Fiberglas (U.K.) Pension Plan Ltd., Owens Corning Fiberglas A.S. Limitada, Owens Corning Fiberglas Espana SL, Owens Corning Fiberglas France, Owens Corning Financial Services ULC, Owens Corning Finland Oy, Owens Corning Foam Insulation LLC, Owens Corning GlassMetal Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Global Holdings II Limited Partnership, Owens Corning Global Holdings Limited Partnership, Owens Corning HOMExperts Inc., Owens Corning HT Inc., Owens Corning Holdings 1 CV, Owens Corning Holdings 3 CV, Owens Corning Holdings 4 CV, Owens Corning Holdings 5 CV, Owens Corning Holdings Holland B.V., Owens Corning Hong Kong Limited, Owens Corning Industries (India) Private Limited, Owens Corning Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Owens Corning Insulating Systems Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning Insulating Systems Canada LP, Owens Corning Insulating Systems LLC, Owens Corning Intellectual Capital LLC, Owens Corning InterWrap Canada GP Inc., Owens Corning InterWrap Canada LP, Owens Corning International Holdings C.V., Owens Corning Japan LLC, Owens Corning Kohold B.V., Owens Corning Korea, Owens Corning Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Owens Corning Mineral Wool LLC, Owens Corning Non-Woven - Blythewood LLC, Owens Corning Non-Woven Technology LLC, Owens Corning Receivables LLC, Owens Corning Reinforcements (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., Owens Corning Remodeling Systems LLC, Owens Corning Roofing S. de R.L. de C.V., Owens Corning Roofing and Asphalt LLC, Owens Corning Sales LLC, Owens Corning Science and Technology LLC, Owens Corning Supplementary Pension Plan Limited, Owens Corning Technical Fabrics LLC, Owens Corning Treasury Services LLC, Owens Corning U.S. Holdings LLC, Owens Cornings (Hangzhou) Fiberglass Co. Ltd., Owens-Corning Britinvest Limited, Owens-Corning Cayman Limited, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Deutschland GmbH, Owens-Corning Funding Corporation, Owens-Corning Veil Netherlands B.V., Owens-Corning Veil U.K. Ltd., Paroc AB, Paroc GmbH, Paroc Group, Paroc Group Oy, Paroc Limited, Paroc Oy Ab, Paroc Polska Sp. z o.o., Pittsburgh Corning, Pittsburgh Corning (United Kingdom) Limited, Pittsburgh Corning (Yantai) Insulation Materials Co. Ltd, Pittsburgh Corning Asia Limited, Pittsburgh Corning CR S.R.O., Pittsburgh Corning Europe N.V., Pittsburgh Corning France, Pittsburgh Corning Gesellschaft m.b.h., Pittsburgh Corning LLC, Pittsburgh Corning Nederland B.V., Pittsburgh Corning Singapore Pte. Ltd, Pittsburgh Corning Suisse SA, Qingdao Novia Polymer Co. Ltd., SIA Paroc, Soltech Inc., The Modulo /ParMur Group, Thermafiber, Thermafiber Inc., Transandina de Comercio S.A., UAB Paroc, UC Industries, and Vitro Fibras.The following companies are subsidiares of Boston Scientific: 34 Biomedical Merger Corp., 9357-1867 Quebec Inc., Acurate Industria e Comercio Ltda., Advanced Bionics, Advanced Stent Technologies, American Medical Systems, American Medical Systems Europe B.V., Apama Medical, Apama Medical Inc., Asthmatx, Atritech, Augmenix, Augmenix Inc., Augmenix K.K., BSC International Medical Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BSC Medical Device Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BTG, BTG Australasia Pty Ltd, BTG Europe B.V., BTG IM Holdings Ltd., BTG International (Holdings) Limited, BTG International Asia Limited, BTG International Canada Inc., BTG International Germany GmbH, BTG International Healthcare Inc., BTG International Healthcare LLC, BTG International Healthcare Limited, BTG International Inc., BTG International Limited, BTG Limited, BTG Management Services Limited, BTG Medikal Limited Sirketi, Bard Electrophysiology, Barosense, Biocompatibles Inc., Biocompatibles International Limited, Biocompatibles UK Limited, Boston Scientific (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Boston Scientific (South Africa) Proprietary Limited, Boston Scientific (Thailand) Ltd., Boston Scientific (UK) Limited, Boston Scientific AG, Boston Scientific Argentina S.A., Boston Scientific Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Boston Scientific Benelux NV, Boston Scientific Canada Limited, Boston Scientific Ceska republika s.r.o., Boston Scientific Chile SpA, Boston Scientific Colombia Limitada, Boston Scientific Comercial de Costa Rica BSCR S.R.L., Boston Scientific Far East B.V., Boston Scientific Gesellschaft m.b.H., Boston Scientific Group plc, Boston Scientific Hellas S.A., Boston Scientific Hong Kong Limited, Boston Scientific Iberica S.A., Boston Scientific India Private Limited, Boston Scientific International B.V., Boston Scientific International Finance Limited, Boston Scientific International S.A., Boston Scientific Israel Ltd., Boston Scientific Japan K.K., Boston Scientific Korea Co. Ltd., Boston Scientific Lebanon SAL, Boston Scientific Limited, Boston Scientific Ltd., Boston Scientific Medical Device, Boston Scientific Medical Device Limited, Boston Scientific Medizintechnik GmbH, Boston Scientific Middle East FZ-LLC, Boston Scientific Middle East SAL, Boston Scientific Nederland B.V., Boston Scientific Neuromodulation Corporation, Boston Scientific New Zealand Limited, Boston Scientific Nordic AB, Boston Scientific Peru S.A.C., Boston Scientific Philippines Inc., Boston Scientific Polska Sp. z o.o., Boston Scientific Portugal - Dispositivos Medicos Lda, Boston Scientific Pty Ltd, Boston Scientific Romania S.R.L., Boston Scientific S.A.S., Boston Scientific S.p.A., Boston Scientific Scimed, Boston Scientific Scimed Inc., Boston Scientific Services Private Limited, Boston Scientific TIP Gerecleri Limited Sirketi, Boston Scientific Technology & Engineering Services Private Limited, Boston Scientific Uruguay S.A., Boston Scientific Vietnam Company Limited, Boston Scientific de Costa Rica S.R.L., Boston Scientific de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Boston Scientific del Caribe Inc., Boston Scientific do Brasil Ltda., Bravo Bidco Limited, BridgePoint Medical, Cameron Health, Cardiac Pacemakers Inc., Cardiac Pathways Corp, Catheter Innovations, Claret Medical, Claret Medical Inc., Cosman Medical, Cosman Medical LLC, CryoCor, Cryterion Medical, Cryterion Medical Inc., Cryterion Medical Ireland Limited, EKOS LLC, EMcision, EMcision International Inc., EP Technologies, EP Technologies Inc., Electron Acquisition Corporation, EndoChoice, EndoChoice Holdings Inc., EndoChoice Inc., EndoChoice Innovation Center Ltd., EndoChoice Israel Ltd., Endotex, Enteric Medical Technologies, Galil Medical Inc., Galil Medical Ltd., Galil Medical UK Limited, Guidant, Guidant Delaware Holding Corporation, Guidant Europe NV, Guidant Puerto Rico B.V., Hong Kong Medtech Trading Limited, Intelect Medical, Millipede, Millipede Inc., NXT Merger Corp., Notebook Merger Sub Ltd., Novate Medical Limited, NxThera, NxThera Inc., PT Boston Scientific Indonesia, PneumRx GmbH, PneumRx LLC, PneumRx Liimited, Protherics Medicines Development B.V., Protherics Medicines Development Limited, Protherics UK Limited, Provensis Limited, RMI Acquisition Corp., Remon Medical Technologies, Rhythmia Medical, Robert S. Smith M.D. Inc., Roxwood Medical Inc., SNS Merger Corp, Sadra Medical, Sadra Medical Inc., Securus Medical Group, Securus Medical Group Inc., Special K Merger Corp., StarMedTec, Stream Enterprises LLC, Symetis, Symetis SA, Target Therapeutics, Target Therapeutics Inc., The LumenR Tissue Retractor System, Veniti, Veniti Inc., VertiFlex, Vertiflex Inc., Vessix Vascular, Xlumena, Zuma Investment Pty Ltd, iogyn, nVision Medical, and nVision Medical Corporation.The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc..The following companies are subsidiares of CAE: 9595058 Canada Inc., AACE Vietnam Limited Liability Company, ARGE Rheinmetall Defence Electronics Gmbh/CAE Elektronik GmbH, Advanced Medical Technologies, Alpha Omega Change Engineering, Asian Aviation Centre of Excellence (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Aviation Personnel Support Services Limited, Aviation Training Northeast Asia B.V., Business Aircraft Training, CAE (UK) plc, CAE (US) Inc., CAE Academia de Aviacion Espana, CAE Aircraft Maintenance Pty Ltd., CAE Aircrew Training Services plc, CAE Australia Pty Ltd, CAE Australia Pty Ltd., CAE Aviation Services Pte Ltd., CAE Aviation Training B.V., CAE Aviation Training Chile Limitada, CAE Aviation Training Chile Limitada4, CAE Aviation Training International Ltd., CAE Aviation Training Peru S.A., CAE Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, CAE Beyss Grundstucksgesellschaft GmbH, CAE Brunei Multi Purpose Training Centre Sdn Bhd, CAE Brunei Multi-Purpose Training Center Sdn. Bhd., CAE CFT B.V., CAE CFT Holdings B.V., CAE CFT Korea Ltd., CAE Center Amsterdam B.V., CAE Center Brussels N.V., CAE Centre Copenhagen A.S., CAE Centre Copenhagen A/S, CAE Centre Hong Kong Limited, CAE Centre Oslo A.S., CAE Centre Oslo AS, CAE Centre Stockholm A.B., CAE Centre Stockholm AB, CAE China Support Services Company Limited, CAE Civil Aviation Training Solutions Inc., CAE Civil Aviation Training Solutions Inc., CAE Crewing Services Limited, CAE Delaware Buyco Inc., CAE Electronik GmbH, CAE Elektronik GmbH, CAE Engineering Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, CAE Flight & Simulator Services Sdn. Bhd., CAE Flight Solutions USA Inc., CAE Flight Training (India) Private Limited, CAE Flight Training Center Mexico, CAE Flight Training Center Mexico S.A. de C.V., CAE Flight and Simulator Services Korea Ltd., CAE Global Academy Evora, CAE Global Academy Evora SA, CAE Healthcare, CAE Healthcare Canada Inc., CAE Healthcare GmbH, CAE Healthcare Inc., CAE Healthcare KFT, CAE Holdings B.V., CAE Holdings Limited, CAE India Private Limited, CAE India Private Limited., CAE Integrated Enterprise Solutions Australia Pty Ltd., CAE International Holdings Limited, CAE Investments S.a.r.l., CAE Japan Flight Training Inc., CAE Kuala Lumpur Sdn Bhd, CAE Kuala Lumpur Sdn. Bhd., CAE Luxembourg Acquisition S.a r.l., CAE Luxembourg Acquisition S.a.r.l., CAE Machinery Ltd., CAE Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., CAE Maritime Middle East LLC, CAE Melbourne Flight Training Pty Ltd., CAE Middle East Holdings Limited, CAE Middle East L.L.C., CAE Military Aviation Training Inc., CAE Mining Equipment Canada Inc., CAE New Zealand Pty Limited, CAE New Zealand Pty Ltd., CAE Nigeria Flight Training Services Limited, CAE North East Training Inc., CAE Operational Training Services Inc., CAE Oxford Aviation Academy (Singapore) Pte Ltd., CAE Oxford Aviation Academy Amsterdam B.V., CAE Oxford Aviation Academy Pheonix Inc., CAE Oxford Aviation Academy Phoenix Inc., CAE Parc Aviation Jersey Limited, CAE Railway Ltd., CAE STS Limited, CAE Screenplates S.A., CAE Services (Canada) Inc., CAE Services GmbH, CAE Services Italia, CAE Services Italia S.r.l., CAE Servicios Globales de Instruccion de Vuelo (Espana) S.L., CAE Servicios Globales de Instruccion de Vuelo (Espana) S.L., CAE Shanghai Company, CAE Shanghai Company Limited, CAE SimuFlite Inc., CAE Simulation Technologies Private Limited, CAE Simulator Services Inc., CAE Singapore (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd., CAE South America Flight Training do Brasil Ltda, CAE South America Flight Training do Brasil Ltda., CAE Training & Services Brussels NV, CAE Training & Services UK Ltd., CAE Training Aircraft B.V., CAE Training Norway A.S., CAE Training Norway AS, CAE USA Inc., CAE USA Mission Solutions Inc., CAE Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, CAE Wood Products G.P.1, CAE-LIDER Training Do Brasil Ltda., China Southern West Australia Flying College Pty Ltd, Datamine, Embraer CAE Training Services, Emirates-CAE Flight Training (L.L.C.) ., Engenuity Holdings (USA) Inc., Flight Simulator-Capital L.P.2, Flight Training Alliance GmbH, Flight Training Device (Mauritius) Limited, GCAT Flight Academy Germany GmbH, GCAT Flight Academy Malta Limited, HATSOFF Helicopter Training Private Limited, Helicopter Training Media International GmbH, International Flight School (Mauritius) Ltd., Invertron Simulators plc, JAL CAE Flight Training Co., KVDB Flight Training Services, Luftfartsskolen AS, National Flying Training Institute Private Limited, Oxford Airline Training Center Inc., Oxford Aviation Academy, Oxford Aviation Academy (Australia) Pty Ltd., Oxford Aviation Academy (Oxford) Limited, Oxford Aviation Academy Europe AB, Oxford Aviation Academy European Holdings AB, Oxford Aviation Academy Finance Limited, Oxford Aviation Academy Holdings Pty Ltd., Oxford Aviation Academy Ireland Holdings Limited, Oxford Aviation Academy Norway Holdings A.S., Parc Aviation (UK) Limited, Parc Aviation Engineering Services Limited, Parc Aviation Engineering Services Ltd, Parc Aviation International Limited, Parc Aviation Japan Limited, Parc Aviation Limited, Parc Aviation Services Limited, Parc Aviation Training Limited, Parc Aviation UK Ltd, Parc Interim Limited, Parc Selection Limited, Parc U.S. Inc., Pelesys Learning Systems Inc., Presagis Canada Inc., Presagis Europe (S.A.), Presagis Europe S.A., Presagis USA Inc., Rotorsim USA LLC., Rotorsim s.r.l., SIM-Industries Brasil Administracao de Centros de Treinamento Ltda., SIM-Industries Brasil Administracao de Centros de Treinamento Ltda., SIV Ops Training, SIV Ops Training S.L., SKYALYNE Canada Inc., Servicios de Instruccion de Vuelo, Servicios de Instruccion de Vuelo S.L., Sim-Industries Production B.V. NN, Sim-Lease Korea Ltd., Simubel N.V. (a CAE Aviation Training Company), Simulator Servicios Mexico, and Xtend Inc..The following companies are subsidiares of Iron Mountain: AB Archyvu Centras, AB Archyvu Sistemos, AB Archyvu Sistemos Estonia Branch, AKTATRADE Iratendezo Selejtezo es Megsemmisito Bt., AS Archivu Serviss, Accutrac Software Inc, Administradora de Informacion Ltda, ArchivesOne, Archyvu sistemos, Ausdoc Group Pty Limited, Ausdoc Holdings Pty Limited, Bonded Services Group, Box Butler, Britannia Data Management Limited, Connected Corporation, Cornerstone Records Management, Crozier Fine Arts, Crozier Philadelphia LLC, Custodia S.O.S. SA, Custodia de Documentos Limitada, Data Outsourcing Centre doo, Data Security Services Pty Limited, DigiGuard, Docu-File Cape Town Proprietary Limited, Docu-File Durban Proprietary Limited, Docu-File JHB Proprietary Limited, DocuTar Iratrendezo es Tarolo Szolgaltato Kft., DocuVault, Docufile (Pty) Ltd, Docufile Holdings (Proprietary) Limited, Docufile Lesotho Proprietary Limited, Docufile Services Proprietary Limited, Docugroup Papir Szolgatato Kft., Document Holdings Sweden AB, Docuscan Cape Town Proprietary Limited, Docuscan Proprietary Limited, Endless Document Storage Services LLC, EvoSwitch, File Express Limited, Fine Paper Recyclers Sydney Pty Ltd, Fontis International GmbH, Fontis International Inc., Fortrust, G4S Secure Data Solutions Colombia, Hays IMS, Horanross Limited, IBEX IM Limited, IBEX Information Management Limited, IG2 Data Security, IMSA Peru SRL, IO.com, Information Storage Consolidation Co, Interfile Participacoes S.A., Intradis SA, Iron Mountain (Deutschland) Service GmbH, Iron Mountain (Espana) Services S.L, Iron Mountain (Gibraltar) Holdings Limited, Iron Mountain (Ireland) Services Limited, Iron Mountain (Nederland) Services BV, Iron Mountain (UK) EES Holdings Limited, Iron Mountain (UK) Limited, Iron Mountain (UK) Services Limited, Iron Mountain A/S, Iron Mountain Acquisition Holdings Pty. Ltd., Iron Mountain Argentina S.A., Iron Mountain Arsivleme Hizmetleri A.S., Iron Mountain Asia Pacific Holdings Ltd, Iron Mountain Australia Group Pty. Ltd., Iron Mountain Australia Group Services Pty. 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Ltd., Livevault, Marshgate Morangis S.a.r.l., Mimosa Systems, Mobilshred Inc., Navbharat Archive Xpress Private Limited, Nettlebed Acquisition Corp., Pipax Security S.A., Preferred Media Limited, Prism Integrated Sdn Bhd, Recall, Recall (London) Limited, Recall (Schweiz) AG, Recall (Shanghai) Ltd., Recall A/S, Recall AS, Recall Asia Pte Limited, Recall Corporation Sdn. Bhd., Recall Enterprises (Thailand) Limited, Recall Enterprises Sdn. Bhd., Recall Europe Finance Ltd. (fka Recall Europe Finance Plc), Recall Europe Limited, Recall Finance Limited, Recall Finland OY, Recall France SA, Recall France SA Belgium Branch, Recall France SAS, Recall GQ Limited, Recall Holdings, Recall Holdings Limited, Recall Holdings Sweden AB, Recall Hong Kong Ltd., Recall India Information Management Pvt. Ltd., Recall Information Services SRL, Recall International Pty Limited, Recall Italia SRL, Recall Limited, Recall Overseas Holdings Pty Limited, Recall Shredding Limited, Recall Sweden AB, Recall Taiwan Ltd., Recall Technology Pty. Ltd., Recall Total Information Management India Pvt. Ltd., Recall Total Information Mgt Pte Ltd, Recall do Brasil Ltda, Record Data Limited, Royal Seal S.R.O., Safehouse Information Management Solutions Private Limited, Santa Fe Group, Secur Archiv SA, Secure Paper Services Pty Ltd, Shuttle SRL, Silver Sky Limited, Sispace AG, Startify, Storbox SA, The Coding Company Pty. Ltd., The Imaging Centre Pty Ltd, UAB Confidento, Upper Providence Venture I L.P., Venues Australia Pty Ltd, and Xepa Digital.The Williams Cos., Inc. operates as an energy infrastructure company, which explores, produces, transports, sells and processes natural gas and petroleum products. It operates through the following segments: Transmission and Gulf of Mexico; Northeast G&P; and West. The Transmission and Gulf of Mexico segment comprises of interstate natural gas pipelines, Transco and Northwest Pipeline, as well as natural gas gathering and processing and crude oil production handling and transportation assets in the Gulf Coast region. The Northeast G&P segment includes midstream gathering, processing, and fractionation businesses in the Marcellus Shale region primarily in Pennsylvania and New York, and the Utica Shale region of eastern Ohio. The West segment consists of gas gathering, processing, and treating operations in the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado and Wyoming, the Barnett Shale region of north-central Texas, the Eagle Ford Shale region of south Texas, the Haynesville Shale region of northwest Louisiana, and the Mid-Continent region which includes the Anadarko, Arkoma, and Permian basins. The company was founded by David Williams and Miller Williams in 1908 and is headquartered in Tulsa,

Read MoreThe Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (the Code/ IBC) instituted about a year ago, continues to be in vogue. Acting as a key factor in the change of relationships between the creditors and debtors, it keeps adding a new colour to an everyday plain tabloid. The Code aims at establishing a time bound resolution of stressed assets within a maximum period of 270 days, failing which the corporate debtor will be liquidated. Much has been written about the issues under the Code vis-a-vis other regulations such as SEBI and Income Tax and the different measures taken by the government to address them. In this article, we attempt to throw light on the practical difficulties under the Code and the need to address them.

The Code still remains a work in progress and is continuously evolving. The government reviews the Code constantly to address its teething troubles. Like any new law, the Code requires regular tweaks for effective implementation. Recently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) scrapped numerous loan restructuring schemes (SDR, S4A, etc.) prevalent among banks for restructuring various defaulted loans and made their resolution time bound from March 2018. Stressed cases above the prescribed thresholds have to be resolved within the timelines, failing which the lenders shall file insolvency applications under the Code within 15 days. This appreciated move would ensure calibrated and time-bound resolution of all bad loans in the banking sector.

With the advent of the Code, the RBI had referred 12 major accounts with Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) for early resolution under the framework. Even as the 270-day deadline for these cases approaches in the next few weeks, the resolution of these cases may not see the light of the day within the stipulated deadline owing to various regulatory and commercial issues.

One of the unsettling issues was the prospect of promoters using the Code to regain control over their company by bidding for the assets and paying a fraction of what they originally owed to the lenders. To prevent this, the government released an ordinance introducing section 29A, which barred promoters from bidding for their own companies. This gave leeway to promoters to bid for their companies using clean front men. To address this, in the amendment bill replacing the ordinance, the government widened the scope of persons who are disallowed from bidding for their assets in the resolution process. Besides including promoters with NPAs of more than a year, section 29A also includes connected persons. However, the promoters can bid for their assets if they clear their dues before submitting a resolution plan. The definition of connected persons as laid out in the section includes a person who is a promoter or who are/ will be in the management and control of the resolution applicant, holding companies, subsidiary companies, associate companies or related parties of the persons referred to under the section. This provision makes a wide range of persons or entities ineligible because of their ties to entities barred under section 29A. Although the government makes a commendable effort to keep all ineligible characters away from the proceedings, this amendment could also hinder the resolution of insolvent companies.

The issue of connected persons has already become prevalent in case of many bids, thus creating apprehensions of legal logjams in the entire process. This can be seen in the bid for Essar Steel, which was locked in a battle between the two bidders: Arcelor Mittal and Numetal Mauritius. Although section 29A gives more teeth to the Code to distance dishonest promoters, it also debars indirect parties from participating in the resolution process, thereby, adversely affecting the fortunes of companies that are genuinely looking for a second chance. To avoid any mayhem under the Code, the government is considering easing the related party norms to ensure that the law is not overly restrictive and does not cut down the number of those eligible to bid for assets.

As the world shrinks into a global village with relationships developing between different economies, it is important to note that there is a missing piece in the Code, which might become significant for companies with substantial presence outside India. With an increasing number of Indian companies becoming global, there is greater need for a cross-border insolvency mechanism in the Code to help resolve insolvency cases involving foreign assets. For instance, if a holding company becomes insolvent but has a solvent subsidiary abroad, a reciprocal agreement with that country can help resolve such cases with ease. Unlike many other countries, India is not a signatory to a similar model law set by the United Nations. Lately, the government is facing problems in accessing the foreign assets of defaulters. To mitigate such barriers, the government is likely to tweak the Code and create a mechanism to resolve cross-border insolvency cases.

Banks in India place reliance on promoters and the personal guarantees they give. This is a cause of worry today because while most companies are crumbling under the weight of excessive gearing, promoters are carrying even higher leverage at the personal level. The issue faced here iscan the lenders invoke personal guarantees of promoters under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (SARFAESI Act, 2002) and liquidate their assets? In a recent decision, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (Tribunal) ruled that once a company is admitted under the IBC, a moratorium is triggered, and hence, no legal action can be taken against such company. Thus, as per the Tribunal, the lenders cannot invoke personal guarantees and liquidate assets of a debtor facing bankruptcy proceedings. However, the lenders hold that since the insolvency proceedings are against the company and not against the guarantor, the moratorium period should apply to the company and not to the guarantor. Reviewing this and on recommendations of the insolvency law committee, the Code may be amended to allow lenders to invoke the personal guarantees of promoters, even if the resolution process has been initiated.

Inspired by other nations, in an attempt to bring together all the proceedings related to insolvency under one umbrella, the Code overlooked some of these domestic issues, which if addressed properly, would result in an efficient revival and certainly enhance the ease of doing business in India.Are you ready for a future car-buying option of picking out a 3-D printed, cozy, inexpensive automobile? The day is not far, considering the recent announcement by an Italy-based company along with a company based in China.

The Italy-based electric car company X Electrical Vehicle (XEV) and 3-D printing material company Polymaker organized a joint press conference at the China 3-D-Printing Cultural Museum earlier this month in Shanghai. The announcement: The first mass-producible 3-D-printed electric car.

This car, named LSEV, created by XEV, made news for car parts that were 3-D-printed with materials from Polymaker.

What does the car look like? As you can see in the video and pictures, the two-seater looks like a little around-town car ideal for easy parking.

This car's top speed is about 43 miles per hour, said Andrew Evers of CNBC. Reports said the range will be about 93 miles. Expected costs ranged depending on which site was reporting. The numbers ranged from $9,478 to 9,450 to $10,000.

In an interview, Dr. Luo Xiaofan, the co-founder and CEO of Polymaker, talked about mass producing a 3-D printed car and the company's dedication to developing new and functional materials for 3-D printing.

Polymaker was founded 2012 and for the last six years their focus has been on materials for 3d printing.

While 3-D printing in the beginning was only used for rapid prototyping, a change has come. As 3-D printing becomes more of a production tool, he said, there has been a growing need for high performance materials like engineering plastics. He said the LSEV collaboration and its success could inspire other companies to adopt 3-D printing in final production.

Could this 3-D printing technology showing mean revolutionary changes to the automotive manufacturing industry in particular?

One obvious benefit is that lighter-weight parts can lead to greater fuel efficiency.

The success points for XEV include a decrease in plastic parts and number of components in a car, from more than 2,000 down to 57. The LSEV weighs 450 kilograms (992 pounds), lower than similar-sized vehicles. And while the R&D process of a car model may consume several years, XEV finished a new design in months.

"XEV was the brainchild of Guo [Guo Xiaozheng, a senior designer] and a handful of Chinese auto industry professionals, and started less than a year ago," reported Daniel Ren in South China Morning Post (SCMP).

SCMP carried a quote by Zhu Li, director of China 3-D-printing Culture Museum. "We are bullish on XEV because it turns 3-D printing into real productivity."

Sam Sheehan, Autocar, said, "XEV expects production to eventually total around 500 units per year on a single production line."

According to reports, the cars will be available next year.

 2018 Tech XploreU.S. aviation authorities have remained silent on a request to continue its technical review to see if Vietnam meets requirements to start launching the long-awaited direct flight between the two countries, a top Vietnamese aviation official complained.

An International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) assessment provided by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a crucial requisite for Vietnam to open a nonstop service to the U.S.

In 2013, FAA conducted its first technical review on the preparations by the Vietnam Civil Aviation Authority (CAAV), and recommended that as many as 47 issues be fixed or improved.

In October 2017, the second review was launched, with the number of recommendations reduced to 16, CAAV deputy chief Vo Huy Cuong told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Friday.

This is great news for Vietnams aviation authorities as all of the remaining issues are not crucial and systematic ones, Cuong underlined.

Encouraged by these improved results, the CAAV called on the FAA in mid-January to carry out its next technical review within the first quarter of this year, but the request remained unanswered as of the end of Friday.

The FAA has yet to confirm any plan to conduct the IASA technical review for Vietnam despite our readiness, Cuong said.

International passengers arrive at Tan Son Nhat International Airport. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The FFA-backed IASA program assesses the civil aviation authority (CAA) of any country that has carriers flying to the States.

An IASA assessment determines if the foreign CAA provides sufficient oversight on carriers that operate in the U.S., and in accordance with international standards developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

A qualified CAA is granted a Category 1 rating, whereas those who do not meet the standards are given a Category 2 rating.

At present the CAAV remains a Category 2 CAA, meaning a nonstop Vietnam-U.S. flight will not be launched until the Vietnamese aviation watchdog achieves a higher rating.

The lack of a direct flight means passengers have to transit at a third country, extending the time of travel by three to six hours, when they want to travel between the two countries by air.

Vietnamese passengers wait for their connecting flight to the U.S. at a transit airport. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Duong Tri Thanh, CEO of Vietnam Airlines, said if the CAAV can obtain the Category 1 rating, the national flag carrier can launch a nonstop flight to the U.S. as early as the beginning of 2019.

Thanh noted however that the rating is only one of the three crucial factors for the direct service to be launched. A carrier must also be approved by U.S. authorities and meet the countrys security high standards to start flying to the States, he elaborated.

Vietnam Airlines have held multiple working sessions with the American aviation authorities and has already met requirements to launch a service there, he added.

We hope that the FAA will give the Category 1 rating to Vietnam within 2018, he said.

He acknowledged that it may take two to three years to fulfill the last requirement  security.

The U.S. will have to examine security abilities of the Vietnams aviation sector as well as Vietnamese airlines, he explained.Editors note: Tran Phi Tuan, who has moved between different apartment buildings in Ho Chi Minh City, explained why most Vietnamese often overlook fire alarm when it rings, in this piece sent to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper hot on the heels of an apartment fire that killed 13 on Friday.

One of the worst nightmares living in an apartment is when the fire alarm sets off.

My first unpleasant experience with fire alarm was in 2013 when I moved in a flat in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City with my family.

At that time, my wife had been pregnant for three months and I had to carry her on my back all the way down from the 11th floor to the ground.

The apartment complex had a total of 17 floors and all the tenants hurriedly filled the fire exits for escape.

Some lighted up the dark passageway with flashlights while others used their cell phones.

Upon reaching the ground safely, we were informed by a security guard that he didnt see any fire and the alarm was triggered due to smoke from a resident burning joss papers.

A fire hose reel system and instruction in case of fire are seen at a building in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Learning from that experience, I and other residents would look to see if there was really a fire before running down to the ground, whenever we heard the alarm.

If there was no fire, we would simply return to our flats. As a result, we have become accustomed to this habit.

My family and I later relocated to a flat in a different block of the same complex, this time on the 17th floor. About two months ago, I was having a shower in this apartment when I heard the alarm went off.

Having a hunch that the alarm could be real this time, I walked out to see if there was any fire, but saw nothing. However, as the fire alarm kept on ringing, I urged my wife and the kids to get out first and quickly followed them after putting on my clothes.

I ran down the fire exit and caught up with my family on the tenth floor. They were crying there as the passage was blocked by numerous junk discarded from a local tenant.

It took us a while to climb over the junk. When reaching the ground, we were informed by a female security guard that the fire alarm sounded because it had been being tested during a check by some superior officials.

Residents evacuate from the Carina Plaza apartment in District 8, Ho Chi Minh City on March 23, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

In February, my family moved to yet another apartment, where the fire alarm sounds on a frequent basis  more than ten times a month, either in the afternoon or evening.

My flat is located on the 16th floor, so I am reluctant to run down to the ground when the fire alarm sounds. Learning from previous crying wolf of the fire alarms, I simply look around for fire first. If there is no fire or smoke, I simply stay in the flat and luckily still survive.

The security guard at my place once told me that if the alarm goes off, but there is no official announcement via the loudspeaker systems, then we could safely stay in our apartment.

Since then, whenever the alarm rings for a short time, we simply stay inside. If it rings continuously, we may leave the flat, but will soon return if no announcement follows.

Hearing the shocking news of the deadly fire at Carina Plaza in District 8 on Friday, I feel thankful that luck was always there when I reacted to fire alarm with carelessness and indifference.

Just to consol myself, I believe it may be better that the alarm rings for no fire, than there is fire but no alarm, which is the case of the Carina Plaza.

But then I also feel uneasy when thinking what if the fire really occurs one day and I just ignore the alarm and stay inside as usual.

Poor me if thats the case!Cao Duc Thai, 30, said he had run the distance in 2014 in an attempt to inspire others to take up reading, a source of motivation that had helped him achieve the unbelievable.

His feat was made into a documentary Hanh trinh truyen lua (The Inspiring Journey), which had been scheduled to air on state-run Vietnam Television (VTV) from Saturday.

However, skeptics began questioning whether covering the distance in such a short time was humanly possible after a trailer for the documentary was uploaded on social media earlier this week.

Many asked to see photos and GPS track logs of Thais run as evidence of his achievement, and demanded that VTV postpone airing the documentary until it was proven that Thai had run between the two cities in 30 days.

VTV is a national broadcaster, and therefore should only report on the truth, Nguyen Quang Thach, who once traveled north to south by motorbike and on foot, wrote on his Facebook account.

If Thai wants to inspire others to take action, he should first address the controversy around his achievement.

VTV, in response, has delayed broadcasting the documentary and promised to organize a dialogue between Thai and those who cast doubt on him to clear things up.

Cao Duc Thai (R) eats while taking a break during his Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City journey in 2014. Courtesy of Thai

Meanwhile, Thai said he had planned to share his running tips after the program aired but could no longer remain silent in the face of recent developments.

I had trained for five months from July to December 2013 before I embarked upon my journey, Thai told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

When I first started training, I ran for 15-30 kilometers straight without resting, which was exhausting after a few weeks, he said.

His Eureka moment came when he learned about American ultra-distance runner Stu Mittleman, who had run over 1,600 kilometers in less than 12 days.

I started following Mittlemans training method by running in short intervals of five to ten kilometers, Thai said.

Between runs, Thai said he would rest to recover his stamina and have something to eat and drink to restore his energy.

He also ran mostly in the morning and evening to prevent loss of endurance due to midday heat.

In total, I spent ten hours on running 60 kilometers each day using this method, Thai explained.

Cao Duc Thai receives intravenous drips during his Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City journey in 2014. Courtesy of Thai

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his spouse had pho, Vietnamese typical dish, for breakfast in their last morning in Hanoi before concluding a two-day state visit to Vietnam on Saturday.

The two special guests were treated to special bowls of the noodle soup with beef at a restaurant on Hoang Minh Giam Street, Nghien Xuan Tien, the store representative, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

The bowls cost VND150,000 [US$6.5] each and were made of our most special ingredients, Tien said.

Tien added that a team of security officials visited his store last week, and they conducted the last check on the ingredients early on Saturday, before the presidents arrival.

The restaurant representative that the South Korean president spoke highly of their food.

South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha, South Korean ambassador to Vietnam Lee Hyuk and his wife, joined President Moon and his spouse for the breakfast.

A member of the South Korean delegation said pho stores are not hard to find in South Korea, but the taste here is much more special and delicious.

Upon tasting the pho, the visiting leader talked and shook hands with South Korean expats in Vietnam, who had been waiting outside the restaurant.

President Moon Jae-in left Vietnam at 11:00 am, wrapping up a two-day visit to the country.

The South Korean leader held talks with Vietnamese State President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi on Friday, during which they witnessed the signing of six memoranda of understanding on cooperation in the fields of trade, labor, information, industry, traffic and construction.

Upon the talks, the guest said South Korea will contribute to Vietnams goal of becoming an industrialized economy by lifting bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2020.

The two leaders also participated in the Vietnam-South Korea business forum, before Moon met with Vietnamese Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, chairwoman of the lawmaking National Assembly.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his spouse talk before their breakfast. Photo: Tuoi Tre

South Korean President Moon Jae-in talks to South Korean ambassador to Vietnam Lee Hyuk. Photo: Tuoi Tre

South Korean President Moon Jae-in holds the gift given by the restaurant, a pair of chopsticks. Photo: Tuoi Tre

South Korean President Moon Jae-in poses with South Korean expats in Hanoi. Photo: Tuoi Tre

South Korean President Moon Jae-in poses with the pho restaurant attendants. Photo: Tuoi TreVietnam always wishes to foster fruitful bilateral cooperation in all spheres with Russia, State President Tran Dai Quang said as he received Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Hanoi on Friday.

Speaking to his guest, who was on a March 22-23 visit to Vietnam, President Quang congratulating Russia on the successful presidential election, asking Lavrov to convey his congratulations to President Vladimir Putin on his re-election.

Vietnam always attaches importance to enhancing the comprehensive strategic partnership with Russia, the head of state underlined.

Recalling profound impressions during his official visit to Russia in June 2017 and his meeting with Russian President Putin on the occasion of the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Da Nang last November, President Quang asked Lavrov to convey his invitation to President Putin to visit Vietnam.

The Vietnamese leader also expressed his delight at the growth of bilateral trade between Vietnam and Russia, credited to the implementation of the Vietnam-Eurasian Economic Union Free Trade Agreement.

Trade between the two countries topped US$3.55 billion in 2017, up 31 percent from a year earlier and is expected to hit $10 billion in 2020.

President Quang also called on both sides to create favorable conditions for their oil and gas businesses to cooperate effectively within Vietnam-Russia joint ventures in the two countries.

In return, minister Lavrov underlined that the Russia-Vietnam comprehensive strategic partnership, built on the long-standing friendship between the two nations and the outcomes of visits by senior leaders, has grown strongly, bringing in positive achievements.

Russia highly evaluates cooperation prospects between the two countries in defence-security and military technology, he added.

The visiting minister expressed his respect for the Vietnamese peoples love for Russian culture and language, which was reflected by the expanded cooperation in education-training and tourism.

Prior to the reception by President Quang, Lavrov held talks with Vietnamese Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, where both sides recognized the expansion of the Russia-Vietnam cooperation, especially in the field of oil and gas.Vietnam and South Korea agreed on Friday to seek to boost their bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2020, or 50 percent more than last years total.

A memorandum of understanding, signed in Hanoi during a visit by South Korean President Moon Jae-in, also lays out guidelines for aiming to reduce Vietnams deficit in bilateral trade.

After meeting Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and signing the MOU, Moon said South Korea will contribute to Vietnams goal of becoming an industrialized economy by lifting bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2020.

Trade between Vietnam and South Korea has risen rapidly since a free trade agreement between the two took effect in December 2015.

In 2017, South Korea replaced the United States as Vietnams second largest trading partner, after China. It is also the largest source of foreign direct investment in the Southeast Asian economy.

Samsung Electronics Co. (005930.KS) is the largest single foreign investor in Vietnam, where it has multiple factories.

According to Vietnams official customs data, bilateral trade rose 51 percent last year to $66.56 billion. Vietnams deficit with South Korea was $31.9 billion, compared with $21.2 billion in 2016.

Vietnam exports mainly garments, cellphones and seafood to South Korea, while its key imports include electronic components, machinery, fabrics and plastics.Read whats in the news today, March 24!

Politics

-- South Korean President Moon Jae-in said at a press conference in Hanoi on Friday that Vietnam and South Korea shared a destined fate and many historical, cultural as well as social similarities that have served to bring their people closer to one another.

Society

-- Vietnams Politburo has issued a resolution paving the course for the country to become one of three leading member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in industrial development by the year 2030.

-- Director of the Transport Department of Can Tho City in southern Vietnam and his deputy have received disciplinary warnings for their lack of oversight that allowed seven local traffic inspectors to receive bribes of over VND4 billion (US$175,000).

-- Two Vietnamese fishermen are missing at sea after their ship capsized on Friday about five nautical miles off the coast of Bac Lieu Province in southern Vietnam due to the strong winds and violent waters.

-- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has pledged to invest $287 million into Ho Chi Minh City to develop a nearly 100-kilometer ring road that allows traffic to circumvent the southern hub, the third of its kind to be built in the city.

-- Thousands of workers at a Taiwanese footwear factory in southern Vietnams Dong Nai Province went on strike on Friday to protest the companys recent adjustments of their pay scale.

-- Speed cameras have been installed on the Phu My Bridge, which connects District 2 and District 7 in Ho Chi Minh City, to provide traffic police with photo evidence to slap fines on speeding drivers starting from April 1.

-- Two Vietnamese fishing vessels have been ambushed by Chinese ships and robbed off their fishing equipments while operating near the Hoang Sa (Paracel) Islands in the East Vietnam Sea, Vietnam Border Defense has confirmed.

Business

-- The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has not responded to a request from Vietnam to carry out mutual International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA), a prerequisite to establish direct flight routes between the countries, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam.

-- Former chairman of state-run telecom giant Mobifone Le Nam Tra has the said the companys 2015 secret deal in 2015 to acquire payment television service AVG at the price of $392 million was a political mission that had been approved by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

-- Developer of a resort in the central city of Da Nang that blocked access to a local beach has agreed to remove a part of its fences after facing backlash from residents and tourists.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!Survivors of a deadly fire at an apartment building in Ho Chi Minh City that claimed 13 lives and injured nearly 100 others on Friday have recalled being miraculously saved by their pets.

The District 8-based Carina Plaza was engulfed by a blaze that broke out when most of its tenants were sleeping early on Friday.

Danny Nguyen, 29, and his wife, her fifth month of pregnancy, were waken up at around 2:00 am, when the fire was on for about 30 minutes, by their pets, a Husky and an Alaska dogs.

The hounds barked vigorously and continuously scratched the door of their apartment on the buildings first floor.

Upon opening the door, Danny saw a huge cloud of smoke outside and immediately rushed out of the apartment with his wife and the Husky, having no time to take the Alaska with him.

Danny decided to return to his flat to save the Alaska and her newborn puppy. However, as his house was filled with toxic smoke, the man was knocked unconscious on his way back to the apartment.

The man was later rushed to the hospital. He and his wife only suffered minor injuries and slight burns.

One of Dannys friends managed to find and rescue the mother Alaska canine and its puppy.

The couple would have had no idea of the fire without the help of their pets, as it was confirmed that no fire alarm was sounded at the time of incident.

Le Huy Khoa, who leased the apartment to Danny for VND7 million (US$300) a month, decided to exempt the rental fee this month for his tenants after learning about tragic accident at Carina Plaza and the touching story of the dogs saving their owners.

Khoa said he hoped that his act could be replicated by owners of other apartments for rent in the Carina Plaza as a way to help the unfortunate victims of the catastrophic fire.

The Poodle dog that saved Nguyen Anh and her family is seen this supplied photo.

Another canine hero

Another Carina Plaza resident, Nguyen Anh, also recounted how her Poodle dog saved her life in the tragedy.

The dog barked continuously at around 1 am to signal us of the [upcoming] fire, Anh told members of an online forum called We love Poodle.

She and her family were sleeping deeply at the time of the fire and there was no sound from fire alarm.

Her little dog even jumped on the bed, trying to wake her up, Anh recalled.

Anh and other family members quickly ran to the corridor with their four-legged friend, intending to get out of the building by the fire escape.

However, the dog then resisted coming with them and returned to the apartment.

Anh and other family members thought the Poodle was scared of the fire and decided to stay hidden in the house.

Only after other residents of the building ran up to her floor, saying that the lower floors were completely filled with smoke did Anh know that she should stay inside her flat, as her canine seemed to suggest.

I and other family members used wet towels to cover all the gaps of the ventilation system, Anh recalled.

The big fire early on the morning of Friday at Carina Plaza took away the lives of 13 residents and left 91 others injured.

Police are still investigating the cause of the accident.Concerns about fire safety were raised by residents of the District 8-based Carina Plaza at a meeting with the apartments management board on Thursday evening, people with knowledge of the matter told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

At the meeting, held roughly seven hours before the fire started at first light on Friday, some residents reported electrical leakage from screens installed inside the apartments elevators which are used for broadcasting advertisement.

They demanded that the unsafe screens be removed to ensure residents safety.

Carina tenants also objected to the leasing of lower flats to companies to be used as warehouses, which they said could pose risks of fire to the whole building.

Security guards stationed inside Carinas basements, which are used as parking lots, had also been regularly reported for smoking on duty.

The deadly fire, which reportedly broke out at 1:30 am in a basement located between two apartment blocks A and B, sent toxic smoke up upper floors due to fire doors at all floors being left wide open.

An illustration of the fire that killed 13 at the Carina Plaza apartment in District 8, Ho Chi Minh City on March 21, 2018. Graphic: Tuoi Tre

The fire was put out at 2:10 am the same morning.

Thirteen people were killed, including two who died from falling as they tried to escape in panic, and 91 have sustained injuries of different degrees from the blaze.

Ninety-one cars and 150 motorbikes parked inside the basement were destroyed.

According to residents, no fire alarm was sounded during the entire incident, and no evacuation directions were given by the management board over the announcement system to help residents escape to safety.

As I ran from the tenth floor down to the ground floor, I smashed every fire alarm button I could reach, said a Block A resident.

I smashed them until my hands started to bleed, but no alarm was sounded.

Ho Chi Minh City authorities have provided over VND1.5 billion (US$66,000) in financial support to families of victims as police investigation continues to determine the cause of fire.

As of Saturday morning, the cause of fire still remained under investigation. Ho Chi Minh City deputy police chief said that the possibility of an explosive deliberately placed there could not be ruled out.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!A large number of dwellings have been built very close to Vietnams major roads for a long time, constituting an element of the streetscape in many places and imperiling traffic safety.

Ho Chi Minh City is crossed and skirted by five national roads, and the majority of houses transcend the building line, the limit beyond which private construction is prohibited.

One of such arteries, National Route 22, stretching from the northwestern outskirts of the metropolis to the border with Cambodia, has a long portion passing through the city, along which most houses are a few meters away from the curb.

In many sections of the road, the pavement has been appropriated for business by the residents, and no pavement even exists.

Here shop signs are jutting out from the frontage, obstructing the view of passing traffic.

The sprawl becomes more common as one moves to the Provincial Route No. 8, which connects Ho Chi Minh City, and its provinces of Binh Duong, and Long An, although a large volume of traffic, most trucks, travel on this road every day.

A similar situation can be observed along National Route 50, stretching from Ho Chi Minh City, Long An Province to Tien Giang Province, with houses and restaurant abutting the route aplenty.

How to solve the encroachment remains a thorny problem.

Many residents are tempted by the mindset that the road frontage should be utilized to the fullest for commercial purposes.

A row of houses and shops are seen on National Route 22 in this file photo. Photo: Tuoi Tre

In 2017, nearly 4,000 cases of using the public road area were reported, according to Vietnams department of road management.

The dwellers cleaned or removed construction at the area in front of their houses when the authority arrived, but when the administration disappeared, things turn full circle.

One of the great difficulties the government is facing is that it requires an enormous amount of money to compensate for the removal of the violating houses.

The financial spending is about ten times the costs for building new roads, which the national budget fails to accommodate, said architect Nguyen Ngoc Dung.

Additionally, many house owners already possess officially approved documents demonstrating that their current land, which adjoins the road side, uses the road area legally.

The problem has been attracting ideas from a number of people in Vietnam.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!     .    , , , .     ,        ,    ,        !85% of British mothers say they cannot breastfeed in public due to the stigma attached, yet 93% of parents say that they should be able to give their babies the best start in life by Breastfeeding regardless of where they are, according to a survey recently released by The Baby Show.

What are the advantages of breastfeeding?

The advantages of breastfeeding cannot be understated, both for the mother and her baby. Often referred to as "liquid gold," breastmilk contains powerful antibodies that help babies fight off viruses and bacteria as well as providing the perfect mix of fat, proteins, and vitamins for a baby to grow.

Some other benefits include breastmilk being more economical in terms of time and cost as well as it being completely clean and the right temperature. The act of breastfeeding also helps improve a mother's maternal bonding with her child as well as helping the involution of the uterus and restoring the pre-pregnancy body figure.

Why is the UK's breastfeeding rate so low?

Yet the UK has among one of the worst breastfeeding rates in the world despite 89% of new mothers having every intention of breastfeeding their newborn. This may be because 68% of new parents believe the government doesn't provide enough funding to help the 84% of mums who need help with breastfeeding, according to the survey.

However, it may also be because of the stigma which surrounds breastfeeding. Although ingrained in law across the UK with fines for organisations who prevent breastfeeding in public places, witnessing a woman breastfeeding in a cafe, restaurant or pub was uncomfortable for an average of 46% of people in the UK.

Despite it being illegal in Scotland for over a decade to prevent children under two being breastfed in a public place, a separate survey by the Scottish Maternal and Infant Nutrition Survey revealed that many women were still being asked not to feed their babies when they are out while over a quarter of the mothers surveyed said that they had been made to feel uncomfortable while breastfeeding in public.

For example, 24-year-old mother Lucy Foster in early January was left feeling humiliated by Tesco cafe staff in Plymouth when she asked if she could breastfeed her baby after ordering a cup of tea. A staff member responded to her by saying "it depends" and she was forced to feed her seven-week-old baby in a storage area which was cluttered with tables, chairs and Christmas decorations.

Similarly, in Australia, Brisbane software executive and mother of two, Kathy Smith, was forced to feed her child beside a toilet with no seat and several sanitary bins at The Qantas Club Lounge at Melbourne Airport despite recommendations from the Australian Breastfeeding Association being that nursing areas should be as hygienic as food preparation areas.

What steps have been taken to increase awareness of breastfeeding in public?

Meanwhile, high-street retailer Gap launched an ad for its new collection of cosy, comfortable intimates and lounge clothes called "Love by GapBody" which has garnered much praise after it featured a black woman breastfeeding her 20-month-old on its cover. The ad, which was originally posted on Instagram, features two photos of the Nigerian US-based model, Adaora Akubilo, who is seen breastfeeding her 1-year-old son Arinze.

The latter was a natural moment on set after Akubilo asked for a break to feed her baby which the photographer, Cass Bird, asked if she could capture.

The ad is being regarded as groundbreaking, not just because of the breastfeeding but also because only one third of children are breastfed at six months despite the NHS recommending exclusive breastfeeding for this time as the milk has everything they need - they don't even need water, even in hot climates - and then followed with supplemented feeds for another two years.

Additionally, it is significant that a black woman is feeding a baby since black mothers are statistically less likely to breastfeed than white mothers, which many believe is down to the lack of representation of black mothers in the breastfeeding world.

Indeed, in 2012, Black Breastfeeding Week was created in an effort to reduce the infant mortality rate of black babies and also to move away from the association often made between black mothers breastfeeding and slavery, as many female slaves acted as wet nurses for their oppressors.

Akubilo said that she found the photos "affirming" and also used her social media platform to say that it may not have been so easy for her to breastfeed at work in any other industry where many women are not given an adequate amount of breaks to use a breast pump. The model described these cases as "heartbreaking" and encouraged mothers to know their rights.

I dont want women to feel shamed, Adaora said. Its so important to encourage mothers.

Although Gap's ad campaign used the hashtag, #LoveByGapBody in its post and indeed seems to have had lots of new customers "fall into the Gap" after 16 consecutive down quarters and the planned shuttering of 200 Gap and Banana Republic stores, it has also led to the hashtag #NormalizeBreastfeeding going viral.

#NormalizeBreastfeeding is a movement which was started in 2014 by Ghanaian-American mother of three Vanessa A. Simmons, which encourages women not only to nurse in public (as is their legal right in most states) but to do it shame-free if it means not using a cover.

The hashtag has also been picked up by former adult actress, Jenna Jameson, who shared a photo of her breastfeeding her 10-month-old baby, Batel Lu, on Instagram in Britain whilst breastfeeding awareness has also become common in Hollywood. Actress Jessica Alba, for example, shared a photo of herself breastfeeding her 7-month-old son Hayes at work. While it is recognised that Alba is the founder of $1.7 billion worth Honest Company and has the luxury of not worrying about breastfeeding at work, she later posted a photo on Instagram of her breastfeeding her son in a Target dressing room with a dog filter and arrow to her "tired eyes." While Alba understandably sought privacy, according to California law, mothers are allowed to breastfeed their children in any public or private location and Target specifically allows breastfeeding anywhere inside its facilities.

By using the hashtags #workingmom, #entrepreneurlife and #breastfeedingmama, the actress is removing the stigma around it one post at a time.

A similar campaign also increased awareness of normalising breastfeeding in India when Gilu Joseph, a South Indian actor, poet, model and air hostess posed breastfeeding a child on the cover of a fortnightly Malayalam magazine entitled "Grihalakshmi" with a headline which roughly translates to "Mothers Tell Kerala, Please Don't Stare, We Need to Breastfeed." Despite the concerns of her mother and two sisters, the eldest of whom is a nun, Joseph said that while she understands their point of view, she was not going to be deterred from doing what she thinks is right.

While the majority applauded the effort to de-stigmatise breastfeeding in India, some were disappointed that a Christian lady was being portrayed as a Hindu woman, that she was not a mother herself, that it could have been more inclusive for unwed mothers if vermillion and other symbols of a married woman were not used and also that this was a glamorised version of breastfeeding.

Gilu responded to this saying that the assignment was simply given to her by the magazine, which wanted to send a message to all the mothers and wives to be fearless while exercising their right to breastfeed and also commented that it was not easy to make real breastfeeding mothers pose for pictures, though many were ready to speak out about it.

They are hoping, though, that this first edition of the campaign will motivate more mothers to participate and share pictures and experiences of feeding their babies in public which will be featured in future editions.

What about mothers who cannot breastfeed?

It should also be noted that we must not shame mothers who cannot breastfeed such as those who suffer from post-natal depression which affects 1 in every 10 women within a year of giving birth and for whom breastfeeding often impacts their mental health significantly, making it even unhealthier for both the baby and the child as well as those who suffer from medical conditions which make breastfeeding painful. Mastitis is one of these conditions which is a painful infection of the breast tissue which causes extreme flu-like symptoms among breastfeeding mothers which actor Aaron Paul's wife, Lauren Paul, has suffered from twice after giving birth to their first child, a daughter named Story Annabelle.

Additionally, a separate study by Our Lady of Valme hospital in Seville found that some out of the 25% of C-Section births, one in five mothers go through pain that lasts beyond three months and may not be able to breastfeed their baby. Anxiety significantly increases a woman's risk of suffering discomfort after the operation, the study also suggested.

How do we stop the stigma surrounding breastfeeding?

Unfortunately despite it being the 21st century, breastfeeding in public still remains a taboo, shameful issue, however, in something as natural as breastfeeding, the only shame is society's attempt to turn this most basic expression of love into a dirty secret and it's about time we ended that stigma.

Yes, there is more representation of breastfeeding in the media, more local schemes to help increase breastfeeding, more effective resources and literature, more spaces where breastfeeding is welcomed alongside more technological help, such as using apps and Alexa for advice, we still have more to do.

We need to educate people about the benefits of breastfeeding which is something that 77% of new parents agree with. Additionally, we need to have space for new mothers to comfortably ask questions and get advice about breastfeeding during and after pregnancy. For example, 64% of the women surveyed felt that access to 24/7 breastfeeding support such as a phone-line, website or chatbot would make mothers more likely to have a positive experience of breastfeeding while 59% said they would be more likely to try breastfeeding and 58% said that they would perhaps breastfeed for longer.

We also simply need to stop sexualising breastfeeding in any way so that a baby can be cared for in public and given the best possible start in life. The more breastfeeding is done publicly, it will #NormalizeBreastfeeding, become less taboo and we will have generations of healthier babies.The big news this week coming from the ongoing Occupation Of Palestine, is that Ahed Tamimi, the teenage Palestinian girl who has been fighting all her life, has been sentenced to 8 months in a military prison. In the meantime, Israeli soldier, Elor Azaria, is set to be released from prison after it was reduced by 4 months. Azaria was convicted of manslaughter after he executed a wounded Palestinian in Hebron.

Furthermore, Palestinian families have to wait for years for Israel to release the bodies of relatives killed by security services, Last week, a Palestinian stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli security guard in Jerusalem's Old City before being shot dead by a police office.

Injustice in Israel

Ahed Tamimi accepted a plea deal on Wednesday under which she will be sentenced to eight months in prison, the teenage Palestinian girl was filmed kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank. She was tried behind closed doors because she was being tried as a minor. Israeli forces have a history of violence towards children, with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights criticised Israeli authorities' actions in the case, while the European Union has expressed concern over Israel's detention of minors, including Ahed Tamimi.

Tamimi has been demonstrating and protesting the occupation of Palestine ever since she was a child and her family have a long tradition of protests against settlements near their home.

But what is of more concern is the disproportionate punishment doled out by the Israeli state. This should come as no surprise but within the same week as Ahed Tamimi was sentenced to 8 months imprisonment, Israeli soldier, Elor Azarias 18 months sentence was reduced by 4 months and is set to be released on the 10th May.

Azaria is an Israeli soldier who was found guilty of manslaughter of Abdel Fattah Yusri Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a 20-year old Palestinian who stabbed an Israeli soldier in the Tel Rumieda neighbourhood of Hebron on 24 March 2016.

During the incident, al Sharif was shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers, but around 11 minutes after the incident took place, Azaria, who was a sergeant and a medic at the time, executed the Palestinian by shooting him in the head. The shooting took place without any provocation from al-Sharif and was widely condemned. However, a number of politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, called for him to be pardoned.

To underline the injustice, is that a Palestinian child who kicked and slapped a soldier gets 8 months in prison, but an Israeli soldier who kills someone in cold blood only has to serve 14 months.

Escalating violence and no humanity

One person was stabbed in the upper body and was in critical condition. An Israeli police spokesman confirmed the attack, near the Western Wall, and said the assailant was "neutralised" but gave no further details. Various media reports claimed the assailant was a Turkish national, but Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service told AFP he was a Palestinian from the West Bank. At least 32 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed since US President Donald Trump announced embassy move to Jerusalem.

On 7 March, Israels parliament, the Knesset, passed legislation granting Israeli police authority to withhold bodies of Palestinians within Israel and annexed East Jerusalem - a power that had so far only been officially held by the army in the occupied Palestinian territories, albeit implemented on an ad hoc basis by police. This comes after the Supreme court ruled that the Israeli police had no legal authority to withhold the bodies, Hassan Jabareen, founder and general director of legal centre Addalah, told Middle East Eye, This law is looking to bypass the position of the court.

There have been estimates of around 250 bodies of people who have been designated enemy combatants by Israel, which are being held in cemeteries.

Some even dating back to the 1960s. Israel are the only country in the world to be implementing a policy of confiscation of remains in the world and it mandate to do so dates back regulations set by the British in 1945. However, the court ruled that the regulations gave them no such power and gave them 6 months to enact to new law.COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Boeing <BA.N> lost a lawsuit against Denmark on Friday which related to the Danish government's decision to buy Lockheed Martin's <LMT.N> F-35 Lightning II combat jets in preference to Boeing's F/A 18 Super Hornets.

Boeing had taken Denmark to court over a lack of access to documents used in the government's decision to buy the Lockheed Martin jets.

"The court has found that the authorities' decisions on refusal of access to the documents are legal and valid," Copenhagen's city court said in a summary of the verdict on its website on Friday.

Boeing said it was disappointed by the decision and would now review it and consider how to proceed.

After Denmark decided to buy 27 of Lockheed Martin's new warplanes in 2016, Boeing complained that the evaluation process for the planes competing for the order had been "flawed" and demanded access to the documents in the case.

"Boeing initiated this legal action to gain a better understanding of the evaluation process, in which we believe the Ministry made a number of critical errors and omissions in its evaluation," Boeing said in a statement on Friday.

Denmark's defence ministry had denied Boeing access because the U.S. company had not specified which documents it wanted to see, and that it would too large a task to find all documents since preparations for the order began in 2005.

(Reporting by Teis Jensen and Stine Jacobsen. Editing by Jane Merriman)TRIPOLI (Reuters) - U.S. forces carried out an air strike near the southern Libyan city of Ubari on Saturday "killing two terrorists", the U.S. Africa Command said in a statement.

The statement said the strike had been carried out in coordination with the internationally recognized Government of National Accord in Tripoli. "At this time, we assess no civilians were killed in this strike," it said.

(Reporting by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Dale Hudson)

See Also:By Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) - A former student who was stabbed by a classmate can sue the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) for failing to protect her from the assailant who had been treated for mental illness and barred from campus housing because of a prior physical altercation, California's top court ruled on Thursday.

"Considering the unique features of the collegiate environment, we hold that universities have a special relationship with their students and a duty to protect them from foreseeable violence during curricular activities," the California Supreme Court said, allowing Katherine Rosen to proceed with her lawsuit.

The decision overturned dismissal of Rosen's case by an appeals court in 2015, which said colleges "are not liable for the criminal wrongdoing of mentally-ill third parties, regardless of whether such conduct might be in some sense foreseeable." The case will now return to a lower court for further deliberations.

Rosen was doing classwork in a chemistry laboratory in 2009 when fellow student Damon Thompson stabbed her in the neck and chest with a kitchen knife.

Prosecutors charged Thompson with attempted murder, and in 2010 a judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity. That year, Rosen sued UCLA, alleging the attack was foreseeable and the university failed to take reasonable measures to protect her or warn her.

UCLA employees had been closely monitoring Thompson after he reported hearing voices and having paranoid thoughts, and a campus psychologist diagnosed Thompson with schizophrenia, according to Thursday's ruling.

The university had also expelled him from campus housing after he pushed another student.

The ruling noted another warning sign: In the days before the attack, a teaching assistant was skeptical when Thompson told him that several students, including Rosen, had called him stupid.

Rosen's lawyer, Alan Charles Dell'Ario, said she never called Thompson stupid.

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The ruling only applies in California but is likely to influence judges in other U.S. states. Many U.S. courts have ruled that high schools have a duty to protect students from foreseeable violence, but it has been less certain if the same obligation exists for universities, said Benjamin Zipursky, a professor at Fordham Law School.

"The California Supreme Court is often regarded as the leading state high court on negligence law," Zipursky said. "So I think it will have a significant impact on what other courts say on this issue."

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by David Gregorio)

See Also:FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), is seen in London, Britain, April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

Thomson Reuters

(Reuters) - A panel of European Medicines Agency on Friday recommended against granting marketing approval to Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc's oral blood thinner, saying the benefits of the drug did not outweigh risks.

The Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) said patients treated with Dexxience had more episodes of bleeding than those treated with the comparator medicine.

Dexxience, also known as betrixaban, is a treatment to prevent deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolisms in acutely ill patients who are not undergoing surgery.

The decision comes a month after CHMP informed the company of a negative trend vote for betrixaban. (http://bit.ly/2FXvYuE)

While final approvals are up to the European Commission, it generally follows CHMP's recommendation and endorses them within a couple of months.

The drug, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June, competes with injectable medications heparin and Sanofi TA's Lovenox, which are typically used in hospitals for short durations.

Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is a medical condition that occurs when a blood clot forms in a deep vein, usually in the lower leg, thigh or pelvis.

The most serious complication of DVT happens when a part of the clot breaks off and travels through the bloodstream to the lungs, causing a blockage called pulmonary embolism.

(Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Anil D'Silva)

See Also:FILE PHOTO: France's President Emmanuel Macron arrives at a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo

Thomson Reuters

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron's popularity has fallen to its lowest point so far in his presidency, a poll showed on Friday, a day after nationwide protests against his reform drive brought tens of thousands of public workers on the streets.

Despite falling unemployment and a high profile internationally, the number of people with a favorable opinion of the 40-year-old former investment banker dropped three percentage points in March to 40 percent, the BVA poll showed.

That puts his popularity down 12 points since the end of last year, although it is no worse than it was for his predecessors Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy at the same point in their terms, BVA said.

Frustrated over Macron's wide-ranging labor and welfare reforms, nurses, teachers and other public sector workers walked off the job on Thursday over concerns about his plans to cut their headcount and introduce merit-based pay.

Protesters also want to derail Macron's plans to raise a special tax used to finance welfare which hits pensioners particularly hard, overhaul unemployment insurance and shake up the highly indebted state railway company.

Pensioners' higher tax bill appears to be frustrating an age group with which he has done well so far. His popularity with voters over 65 years old fell below 50 percent for the first time in March, dropping to 47 percent.

Macron was elected last May on promises to push through reforms his predecessors stopped short of, refusing to align himself with traditional parties on the left and right.

Opinion polls indicate that though a majority of voters backed Thursday's strike, an even bigger majority support the reforms.

The BVA poll was conducted among more than 1,000 people on Wednesday and Thursday for telecoms group Orange, RTL radio and website La Tribune. The margin of error is 2.5 percentage points.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

See Also:Bandung Major Ridwan Kamil and his wife Atalia Kamil wave to reporters as they sit in his car in Bandung, Indonesia January 20, 2018. Picture taken January 20, 2018. Antara Foto/Novrian Arbi via REUTERS

Thomson Reuters

By Tom Allard, Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Kanupriya Kapoor

BANDUNG, Indonesia (Reuters) - A spate of mysterious attacks on Islamic clerics, schools and mosques in Indonesia in recent weeks has ramped up tensions as the world's most populous Muslim-majority country heads into provincial elections and a presidential poll next year.

Intelligence and Islamic officials believe that political forces are behind what they describe as a shadowy "black campaign" designed to whip up fear that Islam itself is under siege under the leadership of President Joko Widodo.

In one town near the capital, Jakarta, a mosque manager was stabbed and a religious scholar received an anonymous letter warning that 10 clerics would be killed. Videos of what police say are fake attacks on Muslim clerics and schools have also been distributed on social media, heightening a mood of unease.

The attacks on the heavily populated island of Java have come as hardline Muslim groups press for a more conservative society and decry moderate politicians, posing a threat to Indonesia's reputation for tolerance and the democracy it won with the downfall of authoritarian President Suharto in 1998.

Indeed, there are echoes today of the panics stirred up by Suharto, which typically involved attacks on religious figures and institutions and sometimes a communist scare to discredit politicians.

Elections are due across the country in June for dozens of governors, district heads and mayors. Analysts see those polls as an opening skirmish before 2019's battle for the presidency.

Ridwan Kamil, mayor of the city of Bandung and frontrunner to become governor of West Java province, says he has been hounded for months by hoax stories online that questioned the strength of his Islamic faith.

"If you are not a Muslim, they will label you an infidel. If you are Muslim, they will label you not Islamic enough," Kamil said of his opponents in an interview with Reuters, declining to identify them.

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"They're trying to send a message ... that the country is not safe, that the government is failing, that we need to replace the existing government. Who gets the benefit? Whoever challenges Jokowi," he said, referring to President Widodo, whom he supports for re-election, by his nickname.

A CAMPAIGN TO SOW DISCORD

The potency of religion as a swing factor in elections was graphically illustrated last year when the popular governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic-Chinese Christian and close ally of Widodo, lost his bid for re-election after being accused of insulting the Koran.

An online video of him speaking had been edited to make it seem that he was criticizing the Koran when in fact he was sniping at people who use a passage of Islam's holy book to warn Muslims against voting for non-Muslims.

Purnama's ouster was spearheaded by the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a hardline group that organized huge protests against him in late 2016. He was later jailed for blasphemy.

Reuters investigations into the recent attacks in Java showed that the FPI has been involved in stoking the tensions.

National police chief Tito Karnavian says the wave of violence has not been "massive or systematic", and he blames online activists for "spicing up" anxiety among Muslims. There have only been three actual assaults and about 42 fake attacks were promoted online, he said.

Even so, intelligence officials, Islamic leaders and politicians say there is a concerted effort to sow discord through vandalism and threats to Islamic leaders, schools and mosques, reinforced through social media. Intelligence agency chief Budi Gunawan described it as a "rampant black campaign".

A leader of the Islamic Union, a mainstream organization known as Persis, was killed in the early hours of Feb. 1 by a man wielding an iron bar. Senior Persis leaders told Reuters that 22 of the group's schools, mosques and teachers had been vandalized or received abusive phone calls since that incident.

Someone, said Persis deputy chairman Jeje Zaenudin, is trying to "provoke a reaction".

Mahmud Syaltout, deputy secretary general of the youth wing of Indonesia's largest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), said NU schools and mosques have been targeted.

One man who was caught vandalizing a mosque in East Java appeared to be healthy and feigning madness, he said.

Widodo's chief of staff, retired military chief Moeldoko, told local media someone was playing "old games", noting that deploying mentally ill people to create unrest was a tactic that harked back to the Suharto era.

RED SCARE

Pressed by Widodo, the NU and another moderate Islamic group, Muhammadiyah, have stepped up grassroots efforts to combat fundamentalist movements. According to a recent survey, nearly 20 percent of high school and university students support the establishment of an caliphate rather than a secular state.

On social media, much of the blame for the recent attacks has been laid on "communists" who - critics say have been allowed to flourish under Widodo and his left-leaning Indonesia Democratic Party-Struggle.

The government and independent analysts have said there is no credible evidence of a revival of Indonesia's outlawed communist party (PKI), once the world's second-largest. The party was decimated after soldiers and Islamic vigilantes slaughtered - according to some estimates - at least 500,000 alleged leftists and their families in 1965.

Even so, Islamists, ultra-nationalists and elements of the military frequently warn of a resurgence. Analysts see the fomenting of a "red scare" as partly aimed at Widodo, a reformist and moderate who has often been falsely labeled by enemies as a descendant of communists.

Earlier this year, a homeless man, suspected of planning to attack a cleric at an Islamic boarding school in West Java, was beaten and accused of being a communist.

The man was accosted by students as he paced up and down a lane by their school near the town of Bogor around 3 a.m. on Feb. 10, said Mahmud Mukhlis, one of the students.

A pin was found inside the vagrant's bag that a local cadre of the FPI Islamic group declared was "a symbol of the PKI", Mukhlis said. The pin, viewed by Reuters, was in fact a name tag from a high school emblazoned with an eagle, Indonesia's national symbol.

Members of FPI filmed the assault and shared the video on social media, said Mukhlis.

Slamet Maarif, a spokesman for FPI, did not deny his group was behind the video. He said it needed to be proven that the homeless man's "communist" plot was a hoax, and described the incident as evidence of "an awakening" of the communist party.

"The government should be following up, and not accusing the people of spreading a hoax," Maarif said.

MUSLIM CYBER ARMY

Police have arrested about 20 members of a network of online activists for spreading fake news about attacks on religious figures across Java.

Known as the Muslim Cyber Army (MCA), the network was formed after the government shut down some of FPI's websites and social media accounts following anti-Purnama demonstrations in 2016.

Police say they are investigating who funds and directs the MCA. FPI leaders have frequently praised the network, and have urged police to stop harassing it.

For a decade, West Java province has been ruled by a coalition of nationalist and conservative Islamic parties that support Prabowo Subianto, a former Suharto-era special forces commander who lost the 2014 presidential election to Widodo.

In that contest, Widodo was buffeted by an online smear campaign that he came from a family of communists and had Chinese ancestry. Warnings of a communist comeback are often linked to a surge in Chinese investment and workers in Indonesia, part of Widodo's drive to revamp the country's crumbling infrastructure.

Subianto is expected to again challenge Widodo, a moderate reformer currently riding high in opinion polls, in next years election.

Subianto was buoyed by the victory of a candidate he backed in last year's Jakarta governor election, but his Gerindra party's contestant to become governor in West Java is well behind Kamil in opinion surveys.

Gerindra's deputy secretary general, Ahmad Reza Patria, said the party had no links to the "vile and extraordinary acts" in Java. Subianto has not commented publicly on the incidents.

Bandung Mayor Kamil said he has stepped up security patrols in his city following the wave of attacks, but he is in no doubt that they are politically motivated.

"In my opinion, it is orchestrated," he said. "It's not just a person, but an organization trying to benefit politically through fear."

(Additional reporting by Jessica Damiana; Editing by Bill Tarrant and John Chalmers)

See Also:SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP)  The Macedonian and Greek foreign ministers say both their countries have entered into "essential" negotiations to resolve a decades-long name dispute over the former Yugoslav Republic's name.

Nikola Dimitrov and Nikos Kotzias said Friday during a joint news conference in the Macedonian capital Skopje that a solution was needed as an "investment for the future."

Greece's foreign minister will also be meeting Macedonia's prime minister and opposition leaders before returning to Athens later Friday.

The two countries have been at odds for a quarter-century over the name "Macedonia," which Greece claims harbors territorial aspirations on its own northern province of the same name. The dispute has prevented Macedonia, which gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, from joining NATO and the European Union.

See Also:About 60 members of the House of Representatives urged their Senate counterparts to approve the nomination of President Trump's proposed NASA administrator in a letter delivered on Tuesday. Jim Bridenstine, a Representative from Ohio, was nominated in September and spoke in front of the Senate commerce and science committee in November.

The position has been vacant since Charles Bolden resigned in January 2017. But the nomination became somewhat more pressing last week when Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot announced that he would retire at the end of April.

"With many milestones fast approaching, NASA must have a presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed leader in place," the representatives' letter to the Senate read, according to The Hill. "It would be a travesty to America's space program for it to remain leaderless at this critical time when America's space industry is making rapid advances that will set the course of space leadership for decades to come."

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Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the president's space council, took to Twitter in the wake of Lightfoot's announcement to support Bridenstine's confirmation.

Read more: NASA Administrator Nominee Bridenstine Won't Acknowledge the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

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Opposition to Bridenstine's appointment is political and also ideological. He has been a supporter of NASA's weather operations, since the state he represents in Congress is known for its tornadoes. But Bridenstine does not have a scientific background, which some people feel should be a prerequisite for leading NASA.

Bridenstine has also expressed skepticism about the precise extent to which humans may be responsible for climate change. Climate scientists are quite positive that climate change is due to human activity.

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03_22_bridenstine_nasa_nominee

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Senate science committee approved the nomination after Bridenstine's November hearing, but the Senate at large has yet to hold their own confirmation hearing. After that, they would need to vote on the appointment50 votes in order to approve.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekKeeping a journal about past failures may help change the way you react during future stressful situations, according to new research.

In a study published Friday in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, a team of postdoctoral students from various U.S. universities explored how the effects of stress affect attentional performance and production of cortisol, the stress hormone our bodies release. They also examined how expressive writing affects the harmful effects of stress, adding to the growing body of research suggesting that journal writing improves mental health.

We've been taught for years that focusing on the positive could lead us to success, Brynne DiMenichi, a psychology doctoral candidate at Rutgers University-Newark, told Newsweek via email. Our results suggest that thinking critically about a past failure could actually lead to better outcomes. Perhaps this occurs because thinking about what went wrong in a failure is what is key to achieving success when one encounters a new challenge.

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3_23_pen and paper

Michael Dalder/AFP/Getty Images

DiMenichi and her colleagues randomly assigned about 100 volunteers, who were 24 years old on average and represented a diverse group of races, to two writing groups. One group was asked to write about the plot of a movie they recently watched. The other group was assigned to a more personal task in which they wrote about a difficult time in their life that ended up in failure. To understand the participants levels of stress, their salivary cortisol levels were assessed. Both groups had comparable levels at the start of the study.

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However, upon completing a commonly used procedure called the Trier Social Stress Test, the group that wrote about personal failures had lower cortisol levels than the group assigned to writing about a movie. But the writing itself didnt affect stress levels, which surprised DiMenichi.

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Instead, we found that, in terms of preparation for stress, writing about a past failure didn't accept baseline stress levels but instead actually better physiologically prepared individuals for a new stressor, and subsequently, better improved performance while under stress, she explained.

But applying these findings to real-world environments is difficult because many other factors are at play during stressful situations. In the future, the team hopes to get a better glimpse into what specifically there is about writing that may help improve performance. To do so, they plan to examine how writing about failures affects actual brain processing when completing a new task.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekEven Russian spies apparently make mistakes when it comes to VPNs.

Like Guccifer 2.0, the self-proclaimed hacker apparently responsible for burrowing into the Democratic National Committee computer network, then sending stolen emails to WikiLeaks.

According to a new report by The Daily Beast, Guccifer, who'd long been presenting as a solo, independent hacker from Romania, infiltrating the DNC, has reportedly been exposed as working from Russia. And they would have got away with it if it wasn't for a damn VPN.

SEE ALSO: The 6 best VPNs to help keep you anonymous on the internet

The Guccifer persona apparently neglected to switch on the VPN client before logging on once.

As a result," the report reads, "he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the governments Guccifer investigation."

Yep, Moscow.

U.S. investigators used that IP address to connect Guccifer to a Russian foreign military intelligence agency known as GRU, according to the Daily Beast's sources.

It's important to note that this claim hasn't been confirmed by the U.S. government. In January 2017, U.S. intelligence officials linked Guccifer 2.0 to the Russian spying agency with "high confidence," but didn't confirm the link unequivocally.

Guccifer 2.0 leaked DNC materials to Wikileaks and pretty much any GOP operative that wanted the goods. The hack exposed embarrassing details about Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC's inner workings. It was a boon for President Donald Trump ahead of the election.

Finding a link between Russia and the DNC hack was a priority for U.S. investigators from the start. Kyle Ehmke, an intelligence researcher at cyber security firm ThreatConnect who led an investigation into Guccifer's identity, told the Daily Beast ThreatConnect tried to track the persona through their email metadata  which always led them to a French data centre.

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"Almost immediately various cyber security companies and individuals were skeptical of Guccifer 2.0 and the backstory that he had generated for himself, Ehmke told the publisher.

We started seeing these inconsistencies that led back to the idea that he was created hastily  by the individual or individuals that affected the DNC compromise."

It was reportedly Ehmke's team who figured out that Guccifer was using a service called Elite VPN, which indeed existed in France  but had Russian headquarters. Then, it was a case of tracking the one-off IP address to none other than GRU HQ on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow.

VPNs huh?JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa has detected an outbreak of avian flu in seabirds, citing the highly pathogenic H5N8 strain that infected the country's poultry industry last year.

Last year's outbreak resulted in poultry farmers culling millions of birds and prompted neighboring countries including Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana to ban poultry imports from South Africa.

In the latest outbreak of H5N8 bird flu, seabird species including African penguins and Cape gannets have been affected across the countrys coastline, South Africa's Department of Environmental Affairs said.

The department has stopped all research activities involving the handling of seabirds and warned the public to exercise caution when approaching seabirds in an effort to contain the outbreak.

"This strain of bird flu has not been found to affect people, as was confirmed through testing of people in contact with infected chickens in South Africa in 2017. However, bird flu viruses can, in rare cases, cause infections in humans," the department said.

The H5N8 strain has been detected in several countries in Europe, Africa and Asia over the past two years, with its spread aided by wild bird migrations. Highly pathogenic among fowl, it poses little risk to human health.

(Reporting by Tanisha Heiberg; Editing by James Macharia and David Goodman)

See Also:This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

The new World Happiness Report again ranks Denmark among the top three happiest of 155 countries surveyeda distinction that the country has earned for seven consecutive years.

The U.S., on the other hand, ranked 18th in this years World Happiness Report, a four-spot drop from last years report.

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Queen Margrethe of Denmark

Scanpix Denmark/Mads Claus Rasmussen/via REUTERS

Denmarks place among the worlds happiest countries is consistent with many other national surveys of happiness (or, as psychologists call it, subjective well-being).

Scientists like to study and argue about how to measure things. But when it comes to happiness, a general consensus seems to have emerged.

Depending on the scope and purpose of the research, happiness is often measured using objective indicators (data on crime, income, civic engagement and health) and subjective methods, such as asking people how frequently they experience positive and negative emotions.

Why might Danes evaluate their lives more positively? As a psychologist and native of Denmark, Ive looked into this question.

Yes, Danes have a stable government, low levels of public corruption, and access to high-quality education and health care. The country does have the the highest taxes in the world, but the vast majority of Danes happily pay: They believe higher taxes can create a better society.

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Perhaps most importantly, however, they value a cultural construct called hygge (pronounced h).

The Oxford dictionary added the word in June 2017, and it refers to high-quality social interactions. Hygge can be used as a noun, adjective or verb (to hygge oneself), and events and places can also be hyggelige (hygge-like).

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Hygge is sometimes translated as cozy, but a better definition of hygge is intentional intimacy, which can happen when you have safe, balanced and harmonious shared experiences. A cup of coffee with a friend in front of a fireplace might qualify, as could a summer picnic in the park.

A family might have a hygge evening that entails board games and treats, or friends might get together for a casual dinner with dimmed lighting, good food and easygoing fun. Spaces can also be described as hyggelige (Your new house is so hyggeligt) and a common way of telling a host thank you after a dinner is to say that it was hyggeligt (meaning, we had a good time). Most Danish social events are expected to be hyggelige, so it would be a harsh critique to say that a party or dinner wasnt hyggelige.

Research on hygge has found that in Denmark, its integral to peoples sense of well-being. It acts as a buffer against stress, while also creating a space to build camaraderie. In a highly individualized country like Denmark, hygge can promote egalitarianism and strengthen trust.

It would be fair to say that hygge is fully integrated into the Danish cultural psyche and culture. But it has also become a bit of a global phenomenonAmazon now sells more than 900 books on hygge, and Instagram has over 3 million posts with the hashtag #hygge. Google trends data show a big jump in searches for hygge beginning in October 2016.

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Nor is Denmark the only country that has a word for a concept similar to hyggethe Norwegians have koselig, the Swedes mysig, the Dutch gezenlligheid and the Germans gemutlichkeit.

In the U.S.which also places a high value on individualismtheres no real cultural equivalent of hygge. Income is generally associated with happiness; yet even though the countrys GDP has been rising and its unemployment rates have been declining, levels of happiness in the U.S. have been steadily decreasing.

Whats going on?

Income inequality continues to be an issue. But theres also been a marked decrease in interpersonal trust and trust toward institutions like the government as well as the media. In the end, more disposable income doesnt hold a candle to having someone to rely on in a time of need (something that 95 percent of Danes believe they have).

At its core, hygge is about building intimacy and trust with others.

Americans could probably use a little more of it in their lives.

Marie Helweg-Larsen, Professor of Psychology, Dickinson College.

The Conversation

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekSatellite communications services provider Inmarsat got a boost on Tuesday as RBC Capital Markets upgraded the stock to 'outperform' from 'sector perform' and hiked the price target to 1,000p from 760p.

It said the launch of the company's fourth GX satellite on 27 April offers a large catalyst, while EuropaSat's launch should drive European Aviation Network revenues.

The Canadian bank said the Global Express satellite due to be launched next month will use a Falcon 9 rocket from Space X.

"We believe there is a strong likelihood of this satellite being used, possibly exclusively, by China," it said, adding that any such wholesale deal would be very positive for Inmarsat and would be well received by the market.

"Quantifying revenue is guesswork, but since we know the three existing satellites are projected to generate circa $500m of incremental revenue five years after launch, this suggests to us that a decent fill rate is likely to make circa $167m/satellite. With a wholesale deal likely to be struck at a discount to this run rate, we would guesstimate around $100m per year as a reasonable figure."

RBC also highlighted the possibility of M&A, suggesting that Inmarsat might be too small to remain independent. It said the profit warning earlier this year due to aviation highlighted the fact that it is still a small company.

"Longer term, its ambitions could be better achieved as part of a larger, complementary business," it said, having argued in August last year that a combination with Echostar/Dish would make perfect strategic sense.

At 1000 GMT, Inmarsat shares were up 1.8% to 807.50p.2018 has already been a stressful year in regards to gun violence. The latest mass school shooting occurred on t February 14. This was the eighth mass school shooting of this year alone.

The only thing that made this shooting different from past ones is the response. The surviving students of this tragedy created a group and called themselves "#NeverAgain." You might recognize the names Cameron Kasky and Emma Gonzalez. They, and others have been working long and hard to make the March for Our Lives possible, which is happening tomorrow in DC at 12 PM between 3rd and 12th street.

Who is getting Involved?

Whether it be through donations or participation, many celebrities have made their voices heard. So far, George Clooney and his wife Amal have donated $500,000. They also say they will attend the March for Our Lives in the District of Columbia.

After hearing about their donation, Oprah Winfrey decided to donate the same amount, claiming "George and Amal, I couldnt agree with you more. I am joining forces with you and will match your $500,000 donation to March For Our Lives."'Gucci has also donated this amount. Lin Manuel-Miranda and Ben Platt have recently released a mash-up of one of the songs from their two musicals "Hamilton" and "Dear Evan Hansen." A percentage of the money they make from this track will be donated to March for Our Lives.

What can you do?

It has frankly been incredible to witness young student fight for changes that will, in the long run, better society. Not only is it inspiring, but it is a wakeup call for those who maybe thought gun violence wasn't a problem before now. So how can you be part of this necessary change? According to Glamour Magazine, there is plenty you can do to support March for Our Lives.

According to Glamour Magazine, there is plenty you can do to support March for Our Lives. You can donate directly to March for Our Lives on their website.If you can't donate, spread awareness! Put the link in your Instagram bio. Make people care like these students did. If they can do it, you can do it.

Another thing you can do is sign the petition for March for Our Lives on their website.

It's super easy and super quick! If you have done these two things but still feel as if you can help more, call your elected officials and tell them to safely act in regards to gun reform. If you are nervous and don't know what to say, there's a script on Giffords so you don't have to worry about stumbling over your words.

If you are nervous about talking on the phone or maybe can't, feel free to text them! Send "STUDENTS" to 64433 and you will be updated on the gun reform movement and be provided more ways to get involved. One of the most important things you or someone you know can do is help the families whose loved one(s) were killed in the most recent shooting. Find and follow their GoFundMe pages and figure out more ways you can help keep this movement going.France has once again been hit by a terrorist attack. This time, a gunman named Redouane Lakdim, a 26-year-old of Moroccan ancestry, hijacked a car near the city of Carcassonne and took several hostages at gunpoint at a nearby supermarket. Prior to taking his hostages, French Police officials say that Lakdim killed two different people at different locations before driving to Trebes. All told, the French government has reported that sixteen people were injured due to Lakdim's attacks.

Lakdim's assault began on Friday morning in Carcassonne. There, Lakdim shot and killed the passenger and injured the driver of the hijacked car.

Lakdim's next victim was a police officer who was wounded while out for a job. Another police officer, who volunteered to replace one of the hostages at the Super-U grocery store in Trebes, is currently fighting for his life after being severely wounded by the terrorist. The officer is said to be a 45-year-old man who is a serving lieutenant colonel in the French Gendarmerie.

By all appearances, Lakdim was motivated to carry out his attacks by extremist Islam. Eyewitnesses, at the Super-U, claim that he rushed into the store saying, "I am a soldier of Daesh [Islamic State]!" Police officials also claim that Lakdim sought the release of Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving terrorist from the November 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.

Currently, Abdeslam is being held in Belgian custody.

Petty criminal

Spokespeople for the French government in Paris have told the media that Lakdim was known as a petty criminal, but was not known to have any jihadist sympathies. In particular, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb revealed that Lakdim had previously been arrested for dealing drugs.

French news magazine Le Parisien reported that Lakdim did associate with Salafist prisoners while incarcerated in Carcassonne in 2016. Salafism is a strict, hard-line branch of Sunni Islam that has often been blamed for "radicalizing" Muslim youth in Europe and North America. European prisons, which include a high percentage of criminals of Muslim background, have also been singled out for helping to foster terrorist cells.

Unverified reports also claim that Lakdim may have journeyed to Syria at some point in the recent past. The investigation into Lakdim is ongoing, with French police officers reviewing the contents of Lakdim's apartment in Carcassonne.

State of emergency

Lakdim's attack is far from the first time that jihadist terrorists have struck in France. In October last year, ISIS claimed responsibility for the murder of two women stabbed to death in Marseille. A year before that, ISIS claimed responsibility for the murder of Catholic priest Jacques Hamel, 85, in the Norman town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray. Of course, the two deadliest attacks occurred less than a year apart. In July 2016, Tunisian national Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel used a stolen van to kill 86 people in Nice on Bastille Day.

The aforementioned November 2015 attacks saw ISIS-affiliated terrorists using guns and suicide bombs to murder 130 Parisians.

Top anti-terrorism official Francois Molins said in November of last year that approximately 690 French nationals were fighting on behalf of ISIS and other jihadist groups in the Middle East. Molins also warned that 398 known ISIS veterans had already returned to France. Making matters all the more terrifying for many French citizens are the demographic projections showing that France will be a Muslim-majority nation within forty years.In recent weeks, Kellyanne Conway has not been seen by the public as often as she has in the past, most likely due to violating the Hatch Act over remarks made during last year's Alabama special election. Fast forward to present day and Conway is back after making even more controversial remarks, this time about the opioid crisis.

Conway on opioids

Kellyanne Conway quickly became a household name back in 2016 when she took over for Paul Manafort in the role of campaign manager for Donald Trump. Just months later and Trump would pull off the upset win over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, giving the new president enough confidence in Conway that he promoted her to the newly created role of "presidential counsel" in his administration.

In addition, Trump tapped Conway as "opioid epidemic chief" to help lead the charge to fight the country's opioid crisis, despite having no prior history on the subject at hand.

Conway's advice on fentanyl: "Eat the ice cream, have the french fry, don't buy the street drug" https://t.co/fyiXLnYInO pic.twitter.com/fZxQIOocH5  The Hill (@thehill) March 22, 2018

As reported by The Hill on March 22, Kellyanne Conway appeared at a millennial forum hosted in Washington, D.C. known as "Generation Next" where she discussed various issues, including the opioid crisis and how it has impacted Young Americans. Within seconds, Conway raised eyebrows over her questionable remarks. "You folks are reading the labels, they wont put any sugar in their body, they wont eat carbs anymore," Conway said in regards to young students on college campuses.

"Then you buy a street drug for $5 or $10, it's laced with fentanyl and that's it," she added.

"My short advice is," Kellyanne Conway went on to say, "eat the ice cream, have the French fry, dont buy the street drug." Not long after her remarks, critics of the administration made sure to hit back.

Twitter backlash

Following Kellyanne Cownay's comments, social media users didn't hold back their thoughts.

"How are people so clueless that a huge majority of opiate users DON'T want fentanyl in their drugs. They know its poison and they are terrified of it," one tweet read.

its Thursday in the desolate Rust Belt, you know what that means: its time to eat a single french fry and avoid opiate addiction https://t.co/Y8J4B7NNqT  Business Industry CEO  (@ByYourLogic) March 22, 2018

I was considering doing fentanyl but now thanks to Kellyanne Im just gonna have the French fry instead. Saved me from a life on the streets! https://t.co/iPjSWBsD6l  Mike Stephens Wearing a Turtleneck (@mikeystephens81) March 22, 2018

"Let them eat cake" never works well with the suffering citizenry, @KellyannePolls You're on the wrong side of history with that attitude.  captanne (@captanne) March 22, 2018

"Not if you're lactose intolerant," Julia Manchester sarcastically tweeted.

"The folks over on capitol hill have a new plan to beat the opioid crisis: Ice Cream and French Fry. it's certainly promising, let's see how it goes," another tweet added. "She says! Dont buy the street drug if you don't want to look like me," yet another tweet added.

Why is she still there after violating the law?  Daniel (@dandenoble) March 22, 2018

Say no to drugs say YES to diabetes   Anomalys Army (@edmeyer_able) March 22, 2018

He only hires the best people  The Resa (@TheKabbest) March 22, 2018

"No shocker that the staggeringly unqualified poster child for methamphetamine Kellyanne Conway thinks the solution to the opioid crisis is...french fries. And ice cream," a social media user wrote. "Why is she still there after violating the law?" a tweet asked.On Wednesday morning (Mar. 21) over 700 Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) high schoolers missed class due to the lack of quality of security. The school community is still reeling from the traumatic 2018 Valentines Day Massacre. It was a bloody and murderous act that left 17 dead and several others wounded.

The shooter, a 19-year-old former student with a history of strange and violent behaviors, was expelled from the school over a year ago for possession of firearms. By his fellow classmates account, Nikolas Cruz was known to be quiet, a bit odd and did not seem to have any friends.

To date, it is still unclear what prompted Cruz to go on a deadly rampage, but many point to mental health issues as being the reason for the killings.

All in the family

Through investigation, authorities learned that Cruz was adopted and both parents were deceased, with his adoptive mother recently passing away in November 2017. It is thought that this may have triggered or even escalated some of Cruzs aggressive behavior. Perhaps this was the last Jenga block on his pile that led to a break from reality?

After the February shooting, Cruzs younger brother, Zachary, found himself in the middle of media coverage and the towns broken heart. Zachary told reporters that he felt bad for bullying and teasing his brother when they were younger; implying his actions may have impacted his brother's mindset.

Zachary even visited his incarcerated brother who was charged with multiple murders and attempted murders. To the average compassionate American, one would view this as a guilt-ridden brother who was reaching out to understand the why of it all.

However, things arent always what they appear to be.

Jealous much?

Wednesday (Mar.

21), CNNs Rosa Flores reported that over the past weeks, Zachary has visited his brother in jail where he had conversations with Nikolas about his newfound infamy.

According to sources, in their talks, Zachary went on and on in admiration of how popular Nikolas was now, and how his name and picture is everywhere on TV and in the media; adding, that he will probably get lots of girls and discussed the possibility of a fan club.

It would appear to the armchair psychologist that Zachary is celebrating and idolizing his brother, perhaps even consumed with envy. All of this while a nation tries to make sense of why teens have guns and support a community who is struggling to glue their shattered lives back together.

The scary part of all of this is not the idolizing of ones sibling; its the tiny intricacies of something awry.

Twilight Zone

Authorities are considering Zachary Cruz as a threat now. The labeling of being potentially dangerous is not because of his family jailhouse visits, but because Zachary Cruz had allegedly been trespassing at the school where his brother killed 17 people--a school he does not attend. He was caught three times on school campus with the third violation resulting in his arrest.

Zachary was arraigned in bond court Tuesday (Mar. 20) where the judge heard the charges and particulars warranting bail, if any, for Cruz allegedly trespassing. The prosecution presented a persuasive argument telling the presiding judge that Zachary is following in his brothers footsteps and that he is a threat to the community.

The State cited the schools incident report which detailed Zacharys statements of defense to school officials. Cruz told school personnel his reason for being in the school was because he was reflecting on the shooting and soaking it all in.

The prosecution urged the judge to set a bond that would not allow Zacharys release. It must have worked because the bond was set at a half million dollars.

First cowering, now sleeping

A bigger problem than the brother of a mass murderer aspiring to be another lost soul is the lack of concern from those hired to protect and serveour children. Parkland police deputies are making it easy for disaster to strike twice at MSD High School.

If Zacharys trespassing wasnt enough to fry nerve endings, an MSD school security officer, a Broward County Deputy, was found sleeping while on duty in his patrol carright outside of the building where the massacre occurred just last month.

This is the second Broward County deputy to shirk his responsibilities. The last deputy stayed outside while the school was being shot up, and even told others to not go inside.

That deputy has since resigned and Sleeping Beauty has been suspended.

This is what led MSD to develop stricter security protocols but 20 percent of the student population still stayed home Wednesday because they feared for their safety. Florida's Governor Scott (R) offered to provide extra security and state police at the school after hearing of the trespassing incident and the sleepy officer.

The additional officers will be in place on Thursday (Mar. 22) and stationed at all exits. This should alleviate some anxieties.

Still optimistic

Emotions are at full throttle and it seems members of Broward County Sheriffs Department continue to find themselves in the center of ineptitude. Students have commented that they are tired of feeling endangered, yet they press onward.

In spite of the lack of professional school officers and a small fraction of MSD kids bringing knives and making threatening social media posts through words and images, Parkland still looks to a brighter day. It is the hope of the nation that the upcoming march on Saturday (Mar.24), 'March for Our Lives,' will apply the ointment to the wounds that continue to heal.Memories of the Unabomber were brought back by the recent Austin, Texas bomber, Mark Anthony Conditt. Conditt conducted his attacks on March 2, through March 20, using a total of six bombs, killing two people while injuring four others.

On March 20, Austin Police were able to zero in on a suspect affiliated with the bombings that were taking place for almost three weeks. According to CNN, the bombs were being made out of household items which could be bought from any local hardware store, which gave the officers the advantage to track purchases and receipts from local stores to help narrow the search for the suspect.

These bombs included items such as nails, metal, and other bomb-making materials.

Austin, Texas finally gets relief after three weeks

Police were able to track Mark Conditt at a hotel where he sat inside his vehicle. While police were waiting for back up, Mark Conditt started his vehicle and drove as far as Interstate 35, where he sat waiting for police and the SWAT team before detonating a bomb loaded to his vehicle and taking his own life. At first, Austin police thought the bombings were meant for specific people until a third bomb detonated showing anyone close would be injured. The victims killed in this attack were Anthony Stephan House, who was only 39 years old, and Draylen Manson, a 17-year-old musician.

Police considered Conditt to be a serial bomber due to the skill needed to assemble the bombs that were created. Even after his death, police are still unclear how many extra bombs are lingering around waiting to explode. Mark Anthony Conditt mailed different packages through the FedEx company which contained homemade bombs.

Police are unsure of how many packages may still be around. Austin police are requesting any suspicious packages to be reported to the police.

Conditt's actions resemble the Unabomber

The actions that Mark Conditt used were very similar to the same actions as Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who killed three people and injured many throughout 20 years.

The bombs created by both individuals required skill and specific knowledge. According to People Crime, the Unabombers lead FBI Investigator claims that Mark Conditt sent his message from his very first bombing. Fitzgerald also states that he is surprised that Conditt had not reached out toward the media in any way before ending his life because many people want someone to know the reason behind their actions, even if it does not make sense.New mom Kylie Jenner, who just gave birth to a seven-week-old daughter, Stormi Webster, was spotted during a girls night out with her elder sisters Kourtney Kardashian and Kendall Jenner, and Kylies best friend, Jordyn Woods.

Kourtney, 38, posted on Instagram their group mirror selfie with a caption Little dinner party, on Thursday (March 22).

Kylie, 20, was wearing a black dress topped with an oversized white coat and a thigh-high boots. Meanwhile, her sisters, Kendall, 22, and Kourtney, looked similarly stylish with acid wash jeans paired with black shoes.

Kendall was wearing a black turtleneck long sleeves while Kourtney was wearing a black crop top showing off her sculpted abs. Jordyn, 20, kept it simple with a white button-down shirt and khaki pants.

The ladies were at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills, according to Kourtneys Instagram stories. It was Kylies second outing this week. Before the dinner with the girls last Thursday, she was spotted with her daughters daddy, Travis Scott, 25, having a quality time at West Hollywood eatery Sweet Chick last Tuesday (March 20). Lamar Odom, 38, Khloes ex-husband, was also seen at Mr. Chow enjoying his meal, TMZ reported. According to restaurant sources, before Lamar went out, he walked up to the ladies table and had a small talk with them.

Kim and Khloe were MIA

Kylie's older sisters, Kim Kardashian West, 37, and Khloe Kardashian, 33, both missed the party. Kim and Khloe are understandably busy with their own lives, with Khloe expecting her first child in the coming weeks, while Kim is busy with her third child, Chicago West, who is 10 weeks old.

Khloe is currently in Cleveland, preparing for the arrival of her baby girl with Tristan Thompson of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

She posted a throwback photo of herself with Kylie and said that she misses her.

Kylie adjusting well to motherhood

On Wednesday (March 21), her longtime best friend, Jordyn, spoke to media at Boohoo Block Party in Hollywood, about Kylie's adjustments as a young mother. Jordyn told People that being a mother is a whole new experience for Kylie.

Although it is something her BFF has never been through, she manages to figure it out as she goes. Woods added that she thinks it takes real strength for a woman to carry a child.

Moreover, although Kylie has become a mom, their friendship has not changed. Its definitely the same, Jordyn revealed. If anything, I feel like no matter who you are friends with, no matter what happens, the more experience together, the more you figure it out. Its just about growing up now and its cool.The wedding date of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is May 19 and invitations have been sent out to 600 guests. There are possibilities of adding another 200 to the couple's reception. The tentative program is that after the service at Windsor Castle, all the guests will attend a lunchtime reception at St. George's Hall. This reception is being given by the Queen.

According to Sky News, a certain dress code has been specified for the attendees. It should be morning coat or lounge suit, or day dress with a hat. Prince Harry is a former soldier and he could be there in his uniform.

He now holds an important rank in the Royal Marines.

It will be a grand affair

There will be 200 guests who will join the Royal couple of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at an evening reception. The venue of this will be Frogmore House which is situated about half a mile south of Windsor Castle. It has been a royal residence for nearly three centuries and was the place where Harry and Meghan had posed for their official engagement photos.

The invitation cards have been printed individually using a 1930 vintage machine. The invitations being sent out for this wedding are similar to the ones that had been sent out in 2011 for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The only difference was in the font used and it was issued with the Queen's royal cipher.

Both Harry and Meghan are waiting eagerly the great day when their fairytale romance will end as they take the marriage vows. It all started with a blind date and Meghan, an actress of Hollywood, is set to become a member of the British royalty.

The wedding cake

CNN reveals that the responsibility for making the wedding cake for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has gone to pastry chef Claire Ptak.

This has been confirmed by Kensington Palace. The chef has her roots in the United States. She was raised in California, started her bakery business in a market stall, and ended up opening a cafe in East London in 2010.

She is now the owner of a London-based bakery and Meghan is not new to her because she had interviewed Claire for a lifestyle website.

Harry and Meghan have indicated their preference. It is for a lemon elderflower cake which must incorporate the bright flavors of spring and be decorated with buttercream and fresh flowers. They want to share it with the guests at their wedding at Windsor Castle.

Incidentally, Prince William had also opted for a non-traditional cake for his wedding to Kate. His choice was a one made of cookies and chocolate. It was served alongside the official wedding cake which was a fruitcake.Tom Hanks has been named the greatest actor of all-time. With that accolade in mind, who better than to slip on some shoes and a sweater vest and take on the role of Fred Rogers in the Upcoming Film "You Are My Friend." Tom Hanks earned this title for his roles as Forest Gump in "Forest Gump" and Sheriff Woody in "Toy Story." However, in recent memory, Hanks has gone on to play roles of people involved in historical events such as Captain Sully in "Sully" and that trend seems to be continuing here.

What we know so far

Honestly, we don't know much about this upcoming film besides Hanks' starring role.

Besides that, the plot will focus on the relationship between Fred Rogers and Tom Junod, an award-winning journalist. Seeing as how Fred Rogers is viewed as a source of calm and kindness in what can sometimes be a cruel world, this film centering around the aspects Rogers has come to represent is a breath of fresh air in an industry saturated with violent and angry movies. However, seeing as this movie was announced just at the beginning of the year, more news about this should follow in the upcoming months and we hope to learn more about the shape the film will take. Production is scheduled to start this fall so there is a wait yet for Rogers fans but it will be well worth it.

This isn't the only Rogers project though

While many are excited to finally see a movie involving Rogers and the positive influence he exerts the film Hanks is to star in isn't the only one that is in the works. A trailer released on Tuesday, March 20 is a teaser surrounding Fred Rogers and his children's show. If you haven't seen it yet you really should.

When I watched it, I teared up at just how nice it was. The full documentary will be released on June 8, 2018, in select theaters and while Hanks isn't starring in this one we will never turn down more Mr. Rogers in our lives.

The last recent project involving Mr. Rogers involves the same network he fought to save and promote himself on, PBS.

PBS recently released a TV special in honor of Mr. Rogers and it is a nod to all that he has brought to those who have been his neighbors over the years.

The upcoming film and documentary are things we should all be excited about. Not only do we get to see America's top actor continues to wow us on the big screen but we also are going to get what will undoubtedly be an emotional roller-coaster that will leave us all feeling better about ourselves and with the drive and desire to go out and be a better neighbor to those around us.The second installment of the critically acclaimed film Avatar wont hit the theaters anytime soon. This is according to writer and director James Cameron, also known for his equally acclaimed movie Titanic. The reason for this long delay is his penchant for exploring and mastering new technical aspects that would bring new life to Avatar 2. However, it seems that the longer he waits, the more he loses fans. Reports by Cinema Blend and The Independent provided most of the information in this article.

Short attention span is the key

While it is true that James Cameron ruled 2009 with his spectacular film Avatar, other film studios are busy establishing their dominance on the big screen.

Back then, the Marvel Studios MCU or Marvel Cinematic Universe was only two years old, with two blockbuster hits on their belt ("Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk"). While Cameron is idling, Marvel Studios has found a way to keep the moviegoers glued to the edge of their seats. Since 2009, the MCU has released 18 feature films, the most recent of which is the blockbuster Black Panther.

Another film franchise that is successful in stealing the attention span of the moviegoers is Star Wars. Two of its installments ("Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi") have captured the audiences attention over the past two years only. Both Star Wars films have earned $2 billion worldwide, just within a shouting distance of Avatars $2.7 billion.

Why is the sequel to Avatar taking too long?

Cameron has recently announced that there would be at least four sequels to the 2009 hit Avatar. He initially intended to release the sequel in 2016, but he pulled it back to an uncertain date. The best release date that he can give now is 2019 or 2020. According to 20Th Century Fox CEO and chairman Jim Gianopulos, James Cameron has his own pace and thats why the sequels are taking a very long time to materialize.

Another reason why he kept delaying the sequel is his penchant for perfection. One of the reasons why the first Avatar was successful is because of the cinematic technological innovation. He developed the virtual camera system, a set of cameras that aims to display a view of the 3D world. In the sequel, he is exploring a new method to shoot 3D characters underwater.

This concept alone took him 18 months to explore, and he was just beginning to "scratch the surface" of the technique. While Cameron is looking best ways to shoot his film, other movies have finished their intended trilogies ("Iron Man," "Captain America," and "Thor").

It seems that both Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm Ltd. have found the formula to keep the money coming: Dont make the fans wait too long or else they will lose interest. James Cameron may be considered as one of the best filmmakers, but it is the fans that will ultimately make or break Avatar 2.GlaxoSmithKline Plc is a healthcare company, which engages in the research, development, and manufacture of pharmaceutical medicines, vaccines, and consumer healthcare products. It operates through the following segments: Pharmaceuticals; Pharmaceuticals R&D; Vaccines and Consumer Healthcare. The Pharmaceuticals segment focuses on developing medicines in respiratory and infectious diseases, oncology, and immuno-inflammation. The Pharmaceuticals R&D segment focuses on science related to the immune system, the use of human genetics and advanced technologies, and is driven by the multiplier effect of Science x Technology x Culture. The Vaccines segment produces pediatric and adult vaccines to prevent a range of infectious diseases including, hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella, polio, typhoid, influenza, and bacterial meningitis. The Consumer Healthcare segment develops and markets brands in the oral health, pain relief, respiratory, nutrition and gastro intestinal, and skin health categories. The company was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Middlesex, the United Kingdom.

Read MoreSEMAFO Inc., a mining company, engages in the exploration, development, and operation of gold properties in West Africa. The company operates the Mana Mine in Burkina Faso, which includes the Siou deposit. It also holds a 90% interest in the Boungou project. The company was formerly known as West Africa Mining Exploration Corporation Inc. and changed its name to SEMAFO Inc. in May 1997. SEMAFO Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Saint-Laurent, Canada.

Read MoreTahoe Resources Inc., together with its subsidiaries, acquires, explores for, develops, and operates mineral properties in the Americas. It explores for silver, gold, lead, zinc, and copper deposits, as well as precious metals assets. The company holds interest in the La Arena gold mine located in the Huamachuco district of northern Peru; Shahuindo mine located in the province of Cajabamba in northern Peru; and La Arena II, a copper-gold porphyry deposit located in Peru. It also holds interest in the Timmins mines, including the Bell Creek and Timmins West mines, the Fenn-Gib project, the Juby project, the Vogel project, and the Gold River project located in Timmins, Ontario. The company was formerly known as CKM Resources Inc. and changed its name to Tahoe Resources Inc. in January 2010. Tahoe Resources Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Reno, Nevada.

Read MoreConklin Clinics building new $3.1 home on Eighth Avenue Northeast

A new Conklin Clinics building, which will cost about $3.1 million is expected to be completed by the spring of 2022.USCF biomedicine professor Atul Butte, who created the database, said Ata had 64 unusual mutations linked to the skeletal system. Among these, the scientists found two variants new to the scientific literature that code for an abundant structural protein called collagen, as important to our bones as steel to a skyscraper.

All told, the story in her genes is tragic. "Given multiple mutations identified in this specimen one could speculate it didn't survive long," Bhattacharya said, even if she was born alive.

Given her origin, one could imagine, Nolan said, a distraught mother bringing her infant to a priest. "It was found, supposedly, in a house next to a church, which to me says rectory," he said. The body was positioned as if lying in state, arms to the side. "And then time goes by," he speculated, "and it gets forgotten or the priest dies."

Nolan said he does not blame the owner for wanting to study Ata. After all, it took a team of 10 scientists five years to figure out what she is. Nor did he regret his study, and his investment of what he estimated to be $50,000 in funds and a quarter-million dollars' worth of time.Last year a lone Mexican wolf set out from the wilds of Chihuahua State in Mexico. Released by the Mexican government, he was fitted with a radio collar allowing his every movement to be tracked. The lobo was likely looking for new territory and maybe a mate to spend his life with. He crossed the international border east of Columbus and headed north across the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. Somewhere west of Las Cruces, he returned south along the Rio Grande until he was back in his country of birth.

Wildlife knows no international boundaries; its all the same to them. But, as Congress considers funding for U.S.-Mexico border wall additions, some of New Mexicos most iconic wildlife and greatest conservation investments are placed at risk.

On Jan. 22, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen exercised the authority conveyed to her by Congress to waive 26 laws along the international border in New Mexico. Among the surrendered laws were the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The Santa Teresa waiver covers vehicle barrier replacement with an impenetrable, pedestrian wall along 20 miles of the border west of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry.

Like many regions along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico boundary, the borderlands of New Mexico and Chihuahua are rich in biological diversity and are home to endangered animals. Extending the border wall would fragment vital ecosystems and landscapes protected on either side of the border by the two countries, jeopardizing decades of binational conservation investment.

The borderlands of New Mexico are home to both common and extremely rare animals; the scarcest of all are the Mexican gray wolf and the jaguar. Jaguars were once widespread in the southwestern United States, ranging as far north as the Grand Canyon, before they were extirpated in the early 20th Century. There are signs the jaguar is making a comeback, and the Fish and Wildlife Service has designated critical habitat for the animal in New Mexicos bootheel.

Common animals popular for hunting also populate the U.S.-Mexico borderlands including turkey, Mearns or Montezuma quail and the Coues whitetail deer found only in the southwestern region of the state, with the highest numbers near the Arizona and Mexico borders. A population of American bison are known to cross from Mexico into the U.S.

The border wall and associated infrastructure and activity put wildlife, habitat and conservation investment at risk along the entire U.S.-Mexico border by:

 Destroying vegetation and harming wildlife directly.

 Disrupting and altering wildlife behavior as animals avoid the lights, noise, patrols and other enforcement-related disturbances.

 Making it impossible to have connected cross-border populations essential for the genetic health and persistence of species like bighorn sheep, bison, Mexican gray wolves and pronghorn antelope.

 Preventing species from crossing the border to establish new populations.

 Hindering cooperation and complicating or ending cross-border conservation.

 Wasting billions of dollars that could otherwise be spent on conservation or other worthwhile endeavors.

 Decreasing revenues in municipalities that depend on tourism and outdoor recreation.

The next time a Mexican gray wolf attempts to find a mate in the United States, it may run into a wall. Defenders of Wildlife is joining communities and organizations all along U.S.-Mexico border who dont want a border wall and 150-foot-wide enforcement zone to run through peoples lands, neighborhoods or wildlife habitat. We believe strongly that no one is above the law and that no single president has the authority to ignore the intent of Congress. We have already taken the Trump administration to court over its waiver of more than 30 environmental laws to build the border wall in California and will continue to fight this ill-advised effort in New Mexico.BAGHDAD  A Kurdish rebel group will withdraw from the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq on Friday, it said in a statement, following threats of attack from Turkeys president who has launched a series of airstrikes against suspected Kurdish rebel camps over the past week.

The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, said it moved into Sinjar to protect the Yezidi people from genocide at the hands of the Islamic State group and are now withdrawing having reached that aim, according to the statement.

PKK fighters moved into Sinjar  about 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of Mosul  in 2015 with an offensive led by Iraqi Kurdish fighters known as the Peshmerga and backed by the U.S.-led coalition.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to expand an ongoing military offensive in the Syrian town of Afrin into other Kurdish-held areas across northern Syria and even into neighboring Iraq.

Well continue this process until we completely abolish this corridor, Erdogan said earlier this week, referring to a string of Kurdish-held town in northern Syria. One night, we could suddenly enter Sinjar.

Turkey has launched a number of strikes against suspected PKK camps in Iraqs north over the past week. It views the PKK and some U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria as terrorists.

Earlier, Iraqs Foreign Ministry condemned Turkeys attacks in northern Iraq, describing them as violations that led to the death of a number of civilians in a statement released late Thursday.

Also on Friday, Turkeys prime minister said his country was partially reopening its airspace to flights to Iraqs Kurdish region, after the central government restored authority at airports in the area.

Binali Yildirim said the airspace would be open to commercial and civilian flights to and from the city of Irbil but flights to the city of Suleymaniyah would not be permitted. He cited security concerns stemming from alleged Kurdish rebel activity targeting Turkey from the Suleymaniyah region.

Turkey has shut down its airspace to flights to the Kurdish region following a controversial referendum vote in northern Iraqs self-ruled Kurdish region six months ago that overwhelmingly backed independence from Baghdad.

The referendum was vehemently rejected by Baghdad, Turkey and Iraqs other neighbors, ratcheting up tensions in the region.

___

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press writer Andrea Rosa in Irbil, Iraq contributed to this report.MEXICO CITY  An independent Mexican journalist who reported on politics and crime was shot dead Wednesday night in the violent coastal state of Veracruz, one of the worlds most dangerous places for journalists, with 22 slain there since 2000.

Leobardo Vazquez Atzin, who previously wrote for a local newspaper and recently launched an independent news page via Facebook, was killed outside his home in the municipality of Gutierrez Zamora, state authorities said. Vazquez, 42, was shot by assailants on a motorcycle. No suspects have been arrested in the case.

He is at least the second Mexican reporter slain this year in a nation that ranks among the deadliest for journalists. In 2017, journalists were killed here at a rate of about one a month. Dozens of others came under threat and went into hiding or fled the country.

The largest number of killings has taken place in Veracruz, which press freedom advocates call a zone of silence because many reporters there practice self-censorship to stay alive. In Veracruz, with a population of half a million people  about the size of Wyoming  nearly two dozen journalists have been killed in the last 18 years. Reporters and photographers from the state have been slain at holiday parties, their bodies dismembered and dumped in canals; some have been tracked down and killed after going into hiding in other parts of the country.

Human rights advocates argue that Veracruz officials, and Mexican officials more broadly, have not done enough to protect journalists under threat and have not prioritized investigations into their killings. In Mexico, just 10 percent of journalist killings have resulted in convictions, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

On Thursday, press freedom advocates complained that the state attorney generals office in Veracruz was not taking the case seriously because it released a statement dismissing Vazquez as a former journalist working as a food vendor.

Although Vazquez apparently did operate a taco stand, his Facebook page clearly indicates that he was very active as a citizen reporter, said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

His death, Hootsen said, is yet another sign that the conditions for journalists in Veracruz simply havent improved.

In a statement about Vazquez, the Veracruz State Commission for Attention and Protection of Journalists implored police to consider his journalistic activity as the principal line of investigation.

Media advocates have fought to bring attention to the issue, holding protests, suspending publication for a day, and frequently reminding audiences that journalists in Mexico are as likely to die as those working in war-torn Syria. But while they have won added protections, including government safe houses for journalists under threat, those havent made a dent in preventing killings. Despite pleas from the United Nations and U.S. Ambassador Roberta Jacobson, top officials here havent made the issue a priority.

This week, Mexican journalists reacted angrily after one of Latin Americas leading intellectuals said the increase in killings of journalists is a sign that press freedom is improving in a country that was ruled autocratically for seven decades by a single political party until 2000.

The fact that more than 100 journalists were murdered is in great part to be blamed on the freedom of the press today, which allows journalists to say things that were not permitted before, Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa said Monday. He blamed the increase in such killings on narcotics trafficking.

Vargas was criticized for blaming journalist deaths on criminal groups, when studies have shown that it is public officials  law enforcement officials and political leaders  who have been behind the majority of threats to journalists. Last year, it was revealed that the federal government used spying software to hack into the phones of several of Mexicos most prominent journalists.

In recent weeks, Vazquez published stories about a shooting in a shopping district and about a group of municipal law enforcement officials convicted of kidnapping charges. He wrote about a local mayor, whom he accused of having favors that need to be paid, and about a burned-out vehicle discovered outside a chapel.

Previously, Vazquez worked for a newspaper called La Opinion de Poza Rica. An employee of that newspaper, Armando Arrieta, was shot multiple times by an unknown gunman outside his home last year. Arrieta survived.Espanola Humane has received a $164,000 bequest, the largest in the animal shelters 25-year history. The gift, from the Ruth P. Thomys Trust, brings the non-profits endowment within a cats whisker of $1 million, according to a news release.

This extraordinary donation celebrates the life of Ruth Thomys of Santa Fe, a long-time donor for Espanola Humane. We are very grateful for this gift and others like it, said Bridget Lindquist, the organizations executive director. Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Espanola are truly animal loving communities, as Mrs. Thomys bequest demonstrates.

Ruth Thomys passed away in May 2017 at the age of 96. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, she and her family moved to Chicago when she was 7 years old. She attended Northwestern University and became a teacher.

She and her late husband Erv retired to Santa Fe in 1977, where they were very active in the Opera Guild, where she was honored as the longest-serving docent for the Santa Fe Opera. She loved animals and was a supporter of many local animal and wildlife charities.WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump is tired of being told no.

Six weeks of staff churn and pronouncement shocks reflect a president who has grown increasingly confident on the job and more trusting of his instincts. After 14 months in the Oval Office, Trump is more comfortable bucking the advice of White House staffers and congressional Republicans, and that is increasingly putting even his allies on edge.

Trump may have an even more dramatic shake-up in mind for his administration.

The president has floated to outside advisers a plan to do away with the traditional West Wing power structure, including the formal chief of staff role, to create the more free-wheeling atmosphere he relished while running his business and later his presidential campaign at Trump Tower.

The sense of apprehension is palpable in the West Wing, where tempers are running short and uneasy aides discuss their future employment prospects behind closed doors, according to six White House officials and several outside advisers. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal dynamics.

Recent blows to staff confidence have been almost exclusively instigated by the president himself. He congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election and didnt chide him about the tainted vote or the poisoning of a spy on British soil. He pushed forward with steel and aluminum tariffs, prompting his chief economic adviser to quit. And he agreed to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to the surprise of many national security officials.

Thursdays announcement of national security adviser H.R. McMasters impending exit continued the trend.

The two men never clicked personally, and Trump was known to complain when he saw extended meetings with the national security adviser on his schedule. Trump also, as he did with fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, grew frustrated when McMaster would try to curb some of his instincts on international relations, according to White House officials and outside advisers.

Now he has turned to former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, whom Trump described to one outside confidant as a killer on television and likely to forcefully advocate for the presidents beliefs, despite sometimes divergent views on American intervention overseas, according to a person familiar with the presidents views but not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Trump has admired Bolton for years, tweeting in 2014 his praise of an article in which Bolton argued for more domestic oil drilling. He has expressed appreciation for Boltons appearances defending Trump even though he has voiced some unhappiness about the look of Boltons bushy mustache, according to the person familiar the presidents thinking.

Trump is not entirely unmoored from his aides. After threatening on Friday to veto a $1.3 trillion spending agreement his staffers had already promised he would sign, Trump came back around after a concerted lobbying effort by his legislative team and Cabinet secretaries. But not before venting his frustration at the process and the bill  drafted in part by his own team  in a hastily called press availability in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

Trump has long chafed at how chief of staff John Kelly has curbed access to him in the Oval Office and has mused about doing away with the gatekeepers, according to two people familiar with the presidents thinking but not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

Trump, who frequently muses about staff shake-ups without following through, appears to have tabled the idea for now. But it received a ringing endorsement from his former chief strategist Steve Bannon during a panel discussion in New York on Thursday.

Bannon suggested a system of five or six direct reports to the Oval Office would fit the presidents preferred management style

I think the president is a very hands-on manager and feels more comfortable with such a style, said Bannon , who spoke admiringly of Kelly but said the chief of staff put too much structure into the White House.

Reince Priebus, Trumps first chief of staff, was a little bit more like President Trump was used to. General Kelly came in and it was completely different, very ordered, very structured, said Bannon, who had his own falling out with Trump. I think weve seen a reaction to that and I believe youre going to see the president much more directly in contact with staff people.More than 1,700 women, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, are gathering in Albuquerque for a weekend conference, armed with progressive ideas  and backpacks.

About 4,400 backpacks filled with school supplies and toiletry items will be donated to economically disadvantaged school children at Kirtland, Chelwood and Colinas Del Norte Elementary Schools, Van Buren Middle School, the APS Homeless Project, First Fruits Christian Academy and Barrett House, to name a handful.

We started the One Million Backpacks Initiative in 2014 because we noticed that there were a lot of kids going to school unprepared, said Morgan Gaskin Thomas, communications chair of the AKA South Central Region, which includes Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico. We want kids to be prepared from Day One, so they dont feel different from the other students.

With a year left on their campaign, the national sorority hopes to collect and distribute 1 million backpacks. Chapters in the South Central Region have already distributed 170,000 backpacks, Gaskin Thomas said.

Those attending the regional conference at the Albuquerque Convention Center will sit in on business sessions and undergo intensive leadership development training. They will also get updates on their backpack initiative and their Be the Voice campaign, which encourages members to get involved in the political process, keep their communities informed on issues and participate in voter registration drives.

Alpha Kappa Alpha is the first and oldest African-American sorority in the country. It was founded in 1908 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. It currently has 75,000 active members, 9,229 of them in their South Central Region  many of them sorority alumni.

Retired educator Evelyn Francois, 70, is one of those proud alumna. Wearing a tiara and sash proclaiming her 50-year association with the sorority, she walked the Convention Center mingling with her younger cohorts.

I was initiated in 1968 at Grambling State University in Louisiana, she recalled. I was in the process of becoming a member when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I learned of his passing while I was on an errand for one of my sorority big sisters. So its bittersweet because I always associate that event with my joining of AKA, but then it gave me the push and the drive to be active and involved, and strive for positive change, which I have done for the last 50 years.

Among the newer members of the sorority was Emajae Clements, 21, who was with a contingent from Texas A&M University. A student of international policy and diplomacy, she said she joined the sorority for the sisterhood and the opportunity to perform public service.

The most influential women in my life have been members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, she said. Those were the women I looked up to. I knew that one day, if I had the opportunity, I would be one of those women, so when little girls looked at me theyd see a reflection of what a woman should be, what a woman should stand for and what we need to do for our communities.

We welcome suggestions for the daily Bright Spot. Send to newsroom@abqjournal.com.Residents of New Mexico are getting tired of the poor economy and high unemployment rates in our state and are looking to our state leaders to take aggressive action to improve those rates.

New Mexico has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation, according to a (March 12) U.S. Department of Labor report.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that our states December 2017 unemployment rate was 6 percent, a small drop from 6.1 percent in October. Last December, the rate stood at 6.7 percent. The unemployment rate for January was 5.9 percent.

Despite this small decrease, the unemployment problem is still out of control and has been a problem in New Mexico for many years, affecting everyone with a lack of job opportunities.  Our state has a higher unemployment rate than every other state except for Alaska. Over the last 25 years, the unemployment rate in New Mexico has fluctuated between 5 and 8 percent, but there have been two periods of low unemployment when the rate dropped below 5 percent.

During Republican Gov. Gary Johnsons term in office from 19952002, the unemployment rate was under 5 percent for two years: 4.9 in 2000 and in 2001.

And during Democratic Gov. Bill Richardsons term from 20032010, unemployment dropped to 4.2 in 2006, 3.8 in 2007, and 4.5 in 2008. Richardsons term also showed the highest unemployment rate in the last 25 years, with 7.5 in 2009 and 8.1 in 2010.

Since 2010, under Gov. Susana Martinez, the unemployment rate has dropped steadily from 8.1 percent to 6.0, a rate which is still one spot from the bottom in the U.S.

It is difficult to accept that we remain near the bottom in this unsavory category year after year. After so many years of high unemployment, our legislators and business leaders should be able to come up with some solutions. Something has to be done to provide more jobs and improve the quality of life for New Mexicans.

One important factor contributing to unemployment in our state is the low high school graduation rate. New Mexico ranked the lowest in the nation in high school graduation from 2014-2015, according to the annual Building a Grad Nation survey. The survey shows a 68.6 percent high school graduation rate in our New Mexico, far below the national average of 82.3 percent.

Not receiving a high school diploma makes it incredibly more difficult for someone to get a job in the future.

Another factor which contributes to unemployment in our state is the drug abuse problem in New Mexico. According to Sage Neuroscience Center, New Mexico has the second-highest drug overdose rate in the United States, with 23.8 people out of every 100,000 dying from drug overdoses.

aBecause of the high school dropout problem and the high rate of drug abuse, it comes as no surprise that New Mexico has such high unemployment. There have to be solutions to those problems by improving our high school graduation rates and by providing better treatment and care for drug and alcohol abuse and addiction in order to help lower our high unemployment rate.

aIt is unfortunate that New Mexico consistently ranks at the bottom in negative categories. Many New Mexicans have given up and have left the state. According to U.S. Census Bureau, between 2010 and 2016, about 53,000 more people moved out of New Mexico than moved into the state.

We look to our state leaders  the governor, state legislators, business leaders and educators to come up with these solutions for the sake of the future of New Mexico.Each fire separately made it onto Cal Fires list of most destructive California wildfires.

Cal Fire is calling the Tubbs Fire, which started off Highway 128 and Bennett Lane outside Calistoga, the most destructive fire in California history. It burned 36,807 acres, destroyed 5,643 structures and is linked to 22 deaths.

The Nuns Fire, which includes Napa Countys Partrick Fire, burned 54,382 acres, destroyed 1,355 structures, and was linked to two deaths. Its number six on Cal Fires list.

The Atlas Fire is listed as the 11th most destructive wildfire in California  it burned 51,624 acres, destroyed 781 structures, and killed six people.

Together the three fires destroyed more structures and caused more deaths than any other fires in California history.

In the months following the fires, officials have focused their efforts on making sure that, if theres a next time, were better prepared.Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver hopes to bring back straight party voting  possibly as soon as November  which would allow voters to check a single box to vote for a major partys entire slate of candidates.

However, critics of straight party voting say the practice gives an unfair advantage to major party candidates  especially Democrats  over those who are independent or affiliated with minor parties.

And state Republican Party officials have indicated that they might pursue a court challenge if straight party voting is enacted.

A Secretary of States Office spokesman said Toulouse Oliver intends to hold public hearings before implementing straight party voting, and its unclear whether that will happen in time for the Nov. 6 general election. But he insisted that state law gives the secretary of state the authority to unilaterally reimpose the voting option.

There is nothing in state statute that would prohibit the secretary from restoring straight party voting, spokesman Joey Keefe told the Journal.

Critics disagree.

Straight ticket voting is an underhanded and potentially illegal power grab by an elected official who is supposed to referee partisan battles, not lead the charge, state GOP Executive Director Ryan Gleason said. Democrats are pursuing monolithic one-party control of every elected office in New Mexico and will openly undermine our democracy to get it.

Former Secretary of State Dianna Duran, a Republican, eliminated straight party voting in 2012, saying the state election code did not specifically allow the practice. Several bills were subsequently proposed in the Legislature to authorize it, but none was signed into law.

Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat who was elected in 2016, vowed on the campaign trail to bring back the straight-ticket voting option and has said she intends to make good on the promise.

The Secretary of States Office says the voting option has several benefits, including reducing wait times at polling places and allowing voters to cast their ballots more quickly.

Implementing straight-party voting is about increasing access to the ballot for New Mexicos voters, Keefe said Friday. Ballots can be long and complicated, and straight party voting makes it easier for the elderly and disabled to complete their ballots.

In addition, the Secretary of States Office says, voters who elect to use the straight party option can still vote for a candidate from a different political party in any given race  and have that vote counted accordingly.

But even some registered Democrats are wary of restoring straight party voting.

Rick Lass, who lives near Mimbres, called the practice discriminatory, because it offers voters two ways to vote for major party candidates, compared with just one way for independent candidates.

Lass, who used to live in Santa Fe, ran as a Green Party candidate for a Public Regulation Commission seat in 2008. He said he believes the races outcome was affected by Democrats casting straight party votes that benefited his opponent, former Public Regulation Commissioner Jerome Block Jr., who won the general election with about 57 percent of the votes cast in the race.

Its sort of a power play by the Democratic Party to get free votes for their candidates down the ballot, Lass told the Journal.

Overall, more than 1.2 million New Mexicans were registered to vote earlier this month, and Democrats hold a decisive edge in numbers.

There were 560,903 Democrats  or about 46 percent of the states registered voters  compared with 372,755 Republicans  roughly 29 percent of voters  and 7,858 Libertarians, who also have major party status for this years election cycle.

Voters who declined to state their political affiliation or are affiliated with minor political parties made up the remaining 25 percent of New Mexico voters  about 280,000 people fit into that category.WASHINGTON  I have learned not to be surprised by anything these days, but, even so, I did not expect that my wife and I would be flagged as possible financiers of international terrorism.

And heres the really awkward part: The people who flagged us were right to do so.

My odyssey in the criminal underworld began when I stopped at my local Citibank branch to get some cash. The teller told me my account had been blocked. My wife went to an ATM to take out $200. Denied. Soon I discovered that checks I had written to the au pair and my daughters volleyball instructor had bounced.

I began making calls to the bank and eventually got an explanation: The bank was looking into whether my wife and I were laundering money, as they are required to by the Bank Secrecy Act as amended by the Patriot Act.

Money laundering! There isnt enough money passing through my account to launder a terrorists lemonade stand. I grew suspicious: Was it because I had made fun of Steven Mnuchins air travel? Or because I flouted the law that makes it illegal to laugh at Jeff Sessions? Maybe Trump is taking this press-is-the-enemy-of-the-people thing seriously.

In reality, the bank seemed particularly suspicious that my wife was the terrorist, which will come as no surprise to anybody who knows us both. She is 5-foot-1 and fearsome. But her weapons are public-opinion surveys and focus groups: Shes a Democratic pollster.

The bank needed answers. Did she work for the government? How much money does she make? Is she a government contractor?

Our answers momentarily satisfied them. But a week later they came back with a more peculiar question: Is my wife politically influential? This created a dilemma: Would an affirmative answer result in personal questioning by Gina Haspel at a black-site prison?

I am not writing this column from Gitmo, so I surmise that our latest answers were satisfactory. Still, I have not tried to board a plane since then.

Id like to complain about crazy federal regulations and corporate heavy-handedness, but the truth is Citibank, though perhaps clumsy, was doing what it should be doing. Know your customer regulations are important because they prevent organized-crime networks, terrorists and assorted bad guys from moving money.

Banking regulations generally are a hassle, and expensive. But they protect us  not just from terrorists such as my wife and me but from financial institutions that would otherwise exploit their customers and jeopardize economic stability the way they did before the 2008 crash.

This is why whats happening in Congress now is disappointing. Years after the passage of Dodd-Frank, there is a need for regulatory relief, particularly for small community banks. Instead, the banking bill that passed the Senate last week allows big banks to return to much of the recklessness that made the 2008 crash possible.

If reducing the regulatory burden on small banks were the goal, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit lawmakers could pluck, says Scott Astrada, director of federal advocacy for the pro-consumer Center for Responsible Lending. But this is outside the realm of what this Congress wants to focus on. Among the changes that have broad support but arent in the bill: getting federal agencies to pick up more of the burden on small banks for money-laundering enforcement. Why arent we doing that instead of taking a community banking bill and packing it with provisions that benefit multinationals and Wall Street banks?

The regulatory dragnet that caught me is a sign of progress. Six years ago, federal regulators warned Citibank that it wasnt doing enough on money laundering. In January, the feds announced a $70 million fine against Citibank for failing to take sufficient action. Other banks have received similar punishments.

Now the bank is finally casting a wide net to find bad guys. Bank officials explained to me that a screening service it uses flagged my wife and me because my wifes stepmother is a member of Congress. Because shes an SPF  senior public figure  her immediate family and close associates can be flagged for extra scrutiny. When my wife didnt initially respond to the banks inquiries, our account was frozen. Thats more or less how it should work.

Of course, it would help if the president and his family were held to the same standard.

Because of Jared Kushners relationship to a senior public figure, Citigroups chief executive visited him at the White House last year, and soon after, the Kushner family received a $325 million business loan from Citi, according to the New York Times.

Because of my relationship to a senior public figure, my $60 check to the volleyball instructor bounced.

That makes me mad. But not so mad that I should be put on the no-fly list.They left at dawn Friday for the revolution, armed with coats, comfortable shoes and plenty of conviction.

They meant business.

This time, they say, the country will listen. This time, the politicians will act. This time, the hundreds of thousands of students who march in Washington, D.C., will not stop marching, not stop speaking out, not stop demanding that the bloodshed in schools and streets across the nation be stemmed, the guns  some of them for some people, anyway  be put down.

This is something we have grabbed hold of and must not let go, said Katelyn Alam, 16 and a junior from Manzano High School. We must feel safe again.

Alam is one of four students chosen from Albuquerque public high schools to attend the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., today courtesy of scholarships provided by Indivisible Nob Hill, a local chapter of the national grass-roots resistance movement. Alam, along with fellow Manzano student Faith Lopez and La Cueva High School students Caroline Heitman and Elizabeth Mather, left for Washington early Friday.

They plan to meet with members of New Mexicos congressional delegation, and they are expected to march with students from Aztec High School, where a gunman killed two students in December. Other high school students from Albuquerque also traveled to Washington for the march.

Ive always been passionate about the issue, and this gives me a chance to speak up and participate, because we know now that change is going to come from my generation, said Mather, 18 and a senior. No one else has done what needs to be done. My generation will do it.

Its the first big test for a movement inspired and organized by her generation, specifically the students of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who began the #NeverAgain movement after 17 of their classmates and teachers were killed Feb. 14 by a former student with an AR-15 in one of the deadliest school shootings in history.

The students have become ubiquitous advocates against gun violence and for common-sense gun laws and planned todays March for Our Lives in the nations capital and nationwide  about 800 demonstrations in all 50 states and on six continents. Albuquerque is holding one of the sibling marches, also organized by students.

There are a few adult advisers, but the kids are totally in control, said Rayellen Smith, president of Indivisible Nob Hill, which will be on hand today at the Albuquerque march to register voters. I dont know how they know what to do, but they know what to do.

That the movement is student-led adds a certain authenticity and urgency to the call for the country to do something about its gun problem. This is the generation that has grown up with mass shootings. This is the generation of kids who go to school or the movies or church and are never sure whether they will return alive. In Albuquerque, it is the generation growing up with record numbers of homicides, almost all committed by guns. In the past week, five people were slain in six days in the city, bringing the total to 15 dead so far this year  on par with last year, in which Albuquerque recorded the highest number of homicides in recent history.

This is the generation that is finally fed up.

Its easy to become desensitized to all the killings when you grow up in a climate of violence, said Heitman, 18 and a senior. Were so used to it that its easy to brush aside. But we cant let ourselves be numb to these deaths. Each life matters, and each life lost means another family is grieving.

We adults have been marching for years, arguing for something to be done to slow down the slaughter rate. In 2000, the Million Mom March, which advocated for sensible gun control, attracted 750,000 participants to Washington.

Groups like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Giffords, Everytown for Gun Safety, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and, locally, New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence have galvanized. Black Lives Matter has led the way in protests and marches since the shooter who killed Trayvon Martin walked free.

But the bloodshed continues. And little changes.

Now there are new voices, a new age, uncompromising, energetic, unwilling to sit back because its too soon to talk about the problem.

Its been an issue for such a long time, said Lopez, 16 and a junior. I made a list of the victims who died in school shootings. There were hundreds and hundreds of names. They were people who cared about things, people like me. And we are just sick of it. Nothing is changing, and people keep dying, and we are done with thoughts and prayers. So its time for us to do something.

Its too soon to know how successful they will be in their demands to make this world better, safer. But already Im encouraged.

So they march  and one thing more. They are at or near voting age, and they plan to vote. Expect them. Its their world now.

UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

Local teachers, parents, students and concerned community members spent their Saturday morning and afternoon demanding a voice in a gun violence conversation that has gripped the country.

Albuquerques March for Our Lives, a protest and rally that was part of a nationwide movement calling for school safety reform, started with hundreds of people gathered in Old Town Plaza earlier Saturday morning and quickly grew to thousands as the march began, organizers said.

Marches on Saturday across America came after 17 deaths in Parkland, Fla., in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month.

Stoneman Douglas students were among those at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., where the main march took place. Albuquerque students from Aztec High School, charter school Digital Arts and Technology Academy and others were among the D.C. marchers as well.

In Albuquerque, the event was organized in about three weeks by local young people.

Its great to see everything we organized come to action, lead organizer Zoey Craft, 16, of La Cueva High School, told the Journal.

Craft  along with University of New Mexico student Blair Dixon, 19, and Jonathon Alonzo, 15, of Native American Community Academy  planned the event primarily in Starbucks coffee shops and on social media.

They said they were overwhelmed with the outcome and were surprised by how smooth and peaceful the event was.

The rally drew a mass of people from across the city and state and a long list of speakers, including an impassioned Mayor Tim Keller, who held a handgun magazine up to the crowd and emphasized that magazine size matters.

This is the size of how many people die in a school shooting, he said.

Albuquerques march and rally officially kicked off at 10 a.m. but a half-hour earlier the plaza was filling up with protesters holding signs above their heads.

A school is no place for fear, one sign read.

My life or your gun. Why is this even a question? Gabby Reyes sign said.

This wasnt 10-year-old Reyes first protest. She also participated in the Womens March, a womens rights awareness effort, in Albuquerque.

Protests are important because it can change laws and help with the problems, she said.

From children in strollers and high school students not yet old enough to vote to parents and grandparents, Old Town Plaza was filled with protesters trying to spark long-term gun control change.

The approximately 1.5-mile route from the plaza to Tiguex Park was lined with Albuquerque Police Department officers and volunteers guiding the crowd.

On the route was Manzano High School special education teacher Yvonne Reneau, who said the school had a different feeling after the Parkland shooting.

She came to the march because she wants to see more students vote and to push for stricter gun legislation.

Michael Sanchez, a teacher at La Cueva High School, spoke fervently in front of the large crowd.

Our children are dying, he said.

Sanchez told of being in high school during the Columbine High School massacre.

I remember thinking, this will never happen again, he said.

But he hopes 2018 can bring the change he hoped for then.

Students had a clear message of change, too.

I want to see Congress passing more gun laws, said 16-year-old Joy Kang, a La Cueva High School student.

This is the second demonstration against gun violence that local high schoolers have participated in this month. On March 14, students across New Mexico also walked out of class for 17 minutes   one minute for each victim at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

But it wasnt just people in the education system who attended.

Taylor Cherry, 26 and 7 months pregnant, and Calvin Cherry, 29, were there for their unborn daughter.

We dont want her to worry about something happening to her, Calvin Cherry said, pointing to his wifes belly.

He noted that high school is hard enough without having to worry about being shot.

In Rio Rancho a crowd of nearly 500 marchers protested gun violence.

The Sandoval County Federation of Democratic Women and the National Educational Association of New Mexico were among the organizers, to name a few.

Several students spoke.

Lena Brazfield, a junior at Cleveland High School, said she recently put a doorstop in her little brothers backpack after she heard about a gun threat at Rio Rancho High.

My parents kept me home from school the day afterwards, and I slipped a doorstop into my little brothers backpack, because its a big concern that a gunman could shoot the lock on a door. I know that there is no way to stop them, Brazfield said. If he really wants to get into that classroom, hell find a way, but its still an extra level of protection for my 12-year-old brother to have, because I am scared for him.

In Santa Fe, a crowd of a few thousand people, led by a mariachi band, marched through downtown from the Roundhouse to the Plaza. Marchers carried signs that said Arms are for hugging and USA not NRA.

Stephen Montoya of the Rio Rancho Observer and Mark Oswald of Journal North contributed to this report.WASHINGTON  With passage of an enormous budget bill, the GOP-controlled Congress all but wrapped up its legislating for the year. But will it be enough to convince voters to give Republicans another term at the helm?

In two big ways, Republicans have done what they promised. They passed a long sought tax overhaul bill that slashed tax rates. Theyve rolled back regulations, in ways they claim are boosting the economy. In the Senate, they confirmed a justice to the Supreme Court.

But there are signs Americans wanted more: immigration reforms, gun control legislation, even an infrastructure plan that President Donald Trump promised voters. Tax cuts, for now, will have to do.

Its very clear that tax reform was going to be the biggest legislative crown jewel of this Congress, said Matt Gorman, the spokesman for the House GOPs campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee. That is a massive centerpiece of our campaign.

But polls swing wildly these days, strategists said. Voters are rarely focused for too long on single issues that can make or break campaigns, as when Republicans seized control of the House in 2010 amid the economic downturn or Democrats pushed to the majority in 2006 over opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and congressional ethics scandals.

Trumps mixed messages on the GOPs accomplishments only make the campaigning more difficult. At the White House on Friday, he toyed with a veto of the $1.3 trillion budget package, complaining it lacked his immigration deal and smacked of overspending, before ultimately signing it. Such shifting views leave Republicans without a reliable partner as they try to push through political headwinds in whats expected to be a tough battle for majority control of the House and Senate.

Lawmakers left town for a two-week recess that marks the unofficial end of the legislating season having shelved resolution of other issues.

Congress failed to pass legislation to curb rising health insurance premiums or protect young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation, two issues that have stirred voters this year. And ahead of the nationwide March for Our Lives protests against gun violence, lawmakers took modest steps to boost school safety funds and improve compliance with the federal gun purchase background check system.

Kris Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the measures are just not enough.

The American people have been screaming from the rooftops for real, bold change to fight against tragedies such as the Florida and Las Vegas shootings, Brown said. We have seen the consequences of Congresss inaction.

Congress spring agenda is thin. It includes modest plans to finish a banking bill that rolls back some of the regulations put in place after the financial crisis and pass a big farm bill that sets agriculture and school nutrition policies. The Senate also has to begin confirmation hearings for Trumps nominees for secretary of state and CIA director.

The one legislative lift will be another spending bill when the one Trump signed into law expires at the end of September. But it may bring more political risk than reward for Republicans, since conservatives largely sided with the president against this one, and could pose a more serious threat of voter revolt in the fall.

Strategists say it will be up to candidates to make the case that GOPs signature legislative accomplishment is worth their re-election.

Democrats have been hammering on the tax law as a giveaway to big business, in part because the steep reduction in corporate rates, from 35 percent to 21 percent, is permanent while the reduced rates for individuals and other provisions for families, including expanded child tax credits, expire in coming years.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has derided the lopsided benefits for households as crumbs  a quip Republicans eagerly throw back at Democrats.

To prop up public opinion of the GOPs top accomplishment, millions are being spent by outside groups. American Action Network, which is aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, is unleashing more than $30 million in ads, and the network backed by the influential Koch brothers will spend more than $20 million, heaping praise on lawmakers who voted for the tax cuts and informing voters about those who didnt.

And with passage of tax cuts so important to the GOP election effort, Republicans might take the unusual step of trying to pass them again.

We think theres more we can do, Ryan said.

House GOP leaders are seriously considering legislation this summer  Tax Cuts 2  that would try to build on the original bill that became law in December by making the individual tax cuts permanent.

A do-over tax cuts bill is not expected to pass this Congress. But setting up another showdown accomplishes political goals for Republicans by turning attention back on the tax law, and pushing Democrats into the uncomfortable position of voting against it, again.

Americans for Prosperity, one of the groups in the Koch network, launched an ad campaign urging Congress to fortify the law by making tax cuts permanent. More needs to be done, the group says on a website for its advocacy.

Even if there are things that get passed between now and the fall, the bottom line is the single most important piece of legislation is going to be the tax bill, said veteran strategist David Winston, who advises House and Senate GOP leadership. That defines what this Congress is about.

___

Follow Mascaro on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LisaMascaro and Daly at https://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDCWASHINGTON  After traveling 2,000 miles from Aztec, N.M., to Washington, D.C., and wading through thousands of people to reach the perimeter of the national March For Our Lives rally on Saturday, Laurel Paschall leaned against her mothers shoulder, looked out on the massive crowd and quietly wept.

Three-and-a-half months earlier, on the morning of Dec. 7, the Aztec High School junior was attending class in her small northwestern New Mexico town when a former student entered the school and opened fire, killing students Casey Marquez and Francisco Fernandez. The gunman then killed himself.

On Saturday, Paschall and three other Aztec High School students joined others from Manzano, La Cueva and Santa Fe high schools in New Mexico  as well as tens of thousands of students from around the nation  for an energetic and emotional march on the nations capital.

Its empowering to come see other survivors here and marching for everything they believe in, and fighting for gun reform, Paschall told the Journal at the march.

Elisabeth Valencia, another Aztec High School student who made the journey to Washington, said she also felt strength in the massive numbers of people who showed up for the march  strength that sometimes feels elusive back at school, where her classmates were murdered late last year. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 students were killed by a former student last month, were among the speakers on stage.

This proves were not alone in our experience, Valencia said. Sadly, we have a whole community of people here that have been through similar things as us.

In the months since the tragedy in Aztec, some things have changed, said Aztec High School freshmen Bastian Paschall and Irin Hofmann, who also attended Saturdays march in Washington. For example, students are now required to wear identification badges and security guards patrol the school. But all four of the Aztec students said they still feel vulnerable.

Sure, we have to wear our IDs now and there are two security guys, but someone could easily still come on campus and shoot a bunch of kids, Bastian Paschall said.

Its hard to focus on learning now, Laurel Paschall, who is Bastians cousin, added. Its hard to not be scared.

In conservative Aztec, where guns are a deeply ingrained part of the rural culture, not everyone in the community cheered the students decision to come to Washington for the march for gun reform. Some of the kids saw derogatory messages on Facebook from fellow students and even parents who criticized their decision to participate in the event. Some teachers also disapproved of their decision to come, the students said.

Our town is so pro-gun, Valencia explained. A lot of people either dont want to talk about it or dont really care. But this is important.

The Washington trip marked all four students first time in the nations capital, and they made the most of their brief visit. The kids and their chaperones scored a private tour of the White House, a visit to the Lincoln Memorial and a sit-down meeting with Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. in his Capitol Hill office on Friday.

Asked what message they would like to send to Congress, which has the power to change national gun policy, the group stressed that they arent anti-gun but would support new policies such as making it harder for mentally ill people to obtain the deadly weapons.

My family is a pro-gun family  we have plenty of them, Bastian Paschall said, adding that the December shooting caused him to re-evaluate his previously conservative viewpoint on guns. The incident has made me realize that, sure, people can have fun with them and do useful things (like hunt), but aside from a couple of those things, they are used for attacking other people and thats not good, especially against innocents.

Laurel Paschall said she hopes the divided Congress can agree on some type of reform for the sake of Americas children.

Something obviously needs to change, she said. We need to feel safe in school and we need to be safe in school. They have the power and they should put our lives first.

As he gazed out at thousands of fellow marchers crowding the intersection of Pennsylvania Ave. and 7th Street NW, Hofmann smiled and shook his head in awe. He said he felt encouraged his voice actually can make a difference in the gun debate.

I didnt expect this much (turnout) at all, Hofmann said, with wide eyes. This is the most people Ive ever seen in my life. Its crazy seeing all of these people  and how many people do care.Earlier this month the ancient French Burh bed stone from the Chiles Mill was given a new home, to become a part of the historic interpretive display in the Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park.

The stone was the gift of Harold and Katherine Schooler, and Sandy Shepard in remembrance of their close friend Mrs. Peggy Chiles, the last descendant of Joseph B. Chiles.

The millstone was accepted into the State Park museum collection because of its value in helping to tell the story of the importance of gristmills to the Spanish and European settlers of the area. According to the donors, Peggy Chiles took great pride in her heritage as the great granddaughter of Joseph B. Chiles.

Joseph B. Chiles (1810-1885) was an early pioneer and settler to the remote area east of present day St. Helena. He became a Mexican citizen in 1841, and in 1844 received an 8,546-acre land grant from the Mexican government called Catacula Rancho. That area today is known as Chiles Valley.

Its perhaps ironic that the value of the French Burh bed stone was once more than the value of Catacula Rancho itself, in that  according to author Thomas Jefferson Gregory in History of Solano and Napa Counties, California, published in 1912  all Chiles paid for this princely domain was $5 for the paper on which to write the deed.

Chiles built his mill between 1845 and 1846 making it contemporary with Dr. Edward Turner Bales grist mill which was built in 1846. According to the Society of California Pioneers Historical Landmark plaque Number 547 which now sits on the site where the Chiles mill once stood, it was the first American flour mill in Northern California.

On Wednesday the Chiles mills heavy bed stone, sturdily mounted on a pivoting iron hoop, was lifted and carried into the Bale Mills granary by a team of volunteers using planks as a litter. It required four people to carry the stone. Its permanent location now sits beneath two historic photographs of the Chiles Mill with a small plaque describing its significance.

According to Steve Harle, a miller at the Bale Grist Mill, imported French Buhr Millstones such as the Chiles mill stone were rare and expensive, and remains today highly sought after by stone millers around the world.

We hope that the donation of this millstone will serve to teach about the achievements of this true pioneer and keep his memory alive, donor Sandy Shepard said.

The stone will be on display at the Bale Grist Mill, which is itself the last functioning gristmill that is open to the public in California.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.The winners of 10 categories, including Interactive, Mobile, Design, Print Craft, Direct, Promo, Press, Outdoor, New Director and Film Craft Lotus were presented with their trophies at the end of the third day at the 21st Adfest, held at Peach, Royal Cliff Hotels Group in Pattaya, Thailand. Also announced at the Awards ceremony were the results for the Fabulous Four and the Straight8 competition.

Fifty-six Juries were invited to judge the Lotus Awards at Adfest 2018, who hail from 25 cities, in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, as well as New York, the home base of Joyce King Thomas, Grand Jury President of Adfest 2018 and Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of McCann XBC.

Joyce King Thomas expanded on her expectations of the annual festival and Lotus Awards when she was invited to head up the Super Eight Jury Presidents Adfest 2018. The opportunity to see and debate Asias best work alongside talented people from all over the world at a beach town in Thailand was irresistible. The theme of the show  Transformation  is perfect, and I look forward to seeing how this diverse and culturally rich region is reinventing what we do. I also cant wait to meet the people behind that reinvention, she said.

Interactive Lotus

This year there were 167 entries for Interactive Lotus. 20 awards were announced, including 7 Bronze, 9 Silver, 3 Gold and 1 Grande Lotus awards.

The Grande Lotus was for the Interactive category was presented to CHE Proximity, Melbourne for Lego Making the List, which also won an additional Gold Award in the Web Banner/ Display Ad/ Rich Media sub-category.

Interactive and Mobile Jury President Kitty Lun, Head of Creative Shop, Greater China from Facebook, Hong Kong, said, Im happy that the industry is using data and technology very well in their creative ideas. We saw ideas that were not just about technology, but they were a good marriage between technology and creativity.

The two other Gold Awards were won by:

Rabbit Digital Group Company Limited, Bangkok, for SMK Health Insurance By Fit Syn Mun Kong: Thank You Thailand  Viral VDO.

Choojai & Friends, Bangkok took the third Gold for AIS, Facebook Live Stunt in the Use of Social sub-category.

Mobile Lotus

Mobile Lotus received 83 entries. There were 10 awards given in the category, including 5 Bronze, 2 Silver, 2 Gold and 1 Grande Lotus awards.

The Grande Lotus for Mobile was awarded to work for Pedigree entitled, Pedigree Selfiestix by Colenso BBDO, Auckland in the Mobile Campaign category.

Mobile has come a long way  we definitely saw a lot of original ideas that are mobile-centric, inspired by good, relevant insights, said Interactive and Mobile Jury President Kitty Lun, Head of Creative Shop, Greater China from Facebook, Hong Kong.

Gold awards in Mobile were handed out to two agencies:

Cheil Worldwide, Hong Kong for Scrabble Club (HK)s Scrabble Keyboard  under the Mobile Application and Other Downloadable Tools sub-category

Choojai & Friends, Bangkok for AIS, Facebook Live Stunt  classed as Video, Viral VDO & Interactive VDO sub-category.

Print Craft Lotus

The Print Craft category attracted 156 entries in 2018. 14 awards were given out in total, which included 5 Bronze, 5 Silver and 3 Gold Lotus awards as well the Grande Lotus. The Grande award in the Print Craft category was awarded to Dentsu Inc., Tokyo for its work for The 101st Kanazawa High School Sumo Wrestling Tournament, Entitled, Sumo Girls in the Art Direction subcategory.

We could tell in our gut that this Grande-winning work was simply outstanding. Everything from the subject that makes you look twice, to the stunning contrast of colours, to layout, to the energy of the art direction, made this piece stand out from the rest, said Jury President for Design Lotus and Print Craft Lotus is Melvin Mangada, Chief Creative Officer of TBWASantiago Mangada Puno, Manila.

Three Print Craft Gold awards were given out to:

Amber China, Shanghai for Ammeloo Chefs Edition Knife Series Chop-Chop 1.0 Campaign  under the Illustration sub-category,

Illusion Co.,Ltd., Bangkok for Ammeloo Chefs Edition Knife Series Chop-Chop 2.0 Campaign  under the Computer Generated Imagery sub-category

Hakuhodo Malaysia, Selangor for Greenpeace Drought in the Best Use of Computer Generated Imagery sub-category.

Mangada shared his thoughts on this years Print Craft winners when he said, We observed fewer quality entries in photography but higher quality work for CGI and digital illustration. This is perhaps a reflection of how technology has provided us with more tools to improve our craft, if used well.

Design Lotus

Design Lotus received 230 entries. There were 30 awards given in the category, including 13 Bronze, 11 Silver, 5 Gold and 1 Grande.

Design & Print Craft Jury President, Melvin Mangada, Chief Creative Officer of TBWASantiago Mangada Puno, Manila, said, We were really pleased to see a very diverse approach to design beyond flat, formatted pieces. We spent a lot of time discussing entries in sub-categories like product design, innovation and sustainable product design, and it was great to see entries that pushed design forward.

The Grande Lotus was presented to Cogy Wheelchair for Cogy by TBWAHakuhodo Inc., Tokyo in the Production Design: Consumer Products sub-category.

For us, the Grande should be awarded to an entry that's above and beyond the category. And this Grande winner truly did that. It pushed design forward, with an innovation that combined form and function to solve a real problem, said Mangada.

The five Golds awarded in Design Lotus went to:

McCann Worldgroup India, Mumbai, for Ministry of Public Health Afghanistan Immunity Charm  Product Design: Innovative & Sustainable Design sub-category,

Dentsu Inc. Tokyo, for its work entitled Journey Around Heartland for Heartland Beer in the Brand Collateral sub-category

Dentsu Creative X Inc., Tokyo for Logistics & Forklift The Beauty of Food Logistics - Poster sub-category,

TBWAShanghai, Shanghai for Penguins Books Penguin Frozen Storybook in the Books & Publications sub-category and finally,

R/GA Sydney, Sydney for Google Play Music Through the Dark  Motion & Digital Design sub-category.

Direct Lotus

Direct Lotus received 195 entries. There were 20 awards given in this category, including 11 Bronze, 7 Silver and 2 Gold.

The two Gold Direct Lotus Awards were handed out to:

Dentsu Jayme Syfu, Manila for Refuse Plastic Dead Whale  classed as Best Use of Direct Ambient: Large Scale sub-category.

McCann Worldgroup India, Mumbai for Ministry of Public Health, Afghanistans Immunity Charm  under the Direct Campaign for Retention/Loyalty sub-category

Direct & Promo Lotus Jury President and Managing Director & Creative & Partner for CJ WORX, Bangkok is Saharath Sawadatikom. He expressed his view of the overall quality of work for the Direct Lotus category, when he explained, The Direct category today is not the category it should be  in 99 per cent of entries, the Direct Marketing component was very small and wasnt key to the campaign. Thats why we awarded two Golds.

Promo Lotus

Promo Lotus received 212 entries. There were 13 awards given in this category, including 7 Bronze, 5 Silver and 1 Gold. There was no Grande given in this category.

The winner of the Gold Promo Lotus was announced as Bacon Potato Pie Hahon Hohaho Hie by TYO Monster, Tokyo in Best Use of Merchandising & In-Store Marketing sub-category.

Saharath Sawadatikom, Direct & Promo Lotus Jury President and Managing Director & Creative & Partner for CJ WORX, Bangkok commented on this years sole Gold Promo winner: McDonalds changed the name of its bacon potato pie to mimic the muffled sound of someone eating a hot pie who cant pronounce the real name properly. The brand didnt have to pay anything more, they used a resource that was already available  packaging  to promote a product that was only available for a short time. Changing the name of the product was a clever strategy to increase sales. We loved this idea  there was no argument, we all agreed this was a winning piece.

Saharath Sawadatikom, Direct & Promo Lotus Jury President and Managing Director & Creative & Partner for CJ WORX, Bangkok summed up the overall view of the Promo Lotus Awards, when he said, In this category, the judges were looking for campaigns that were all about the offer  it could be a discount, or anything that makes people act right now, within a certain time, or youre going to miss out. Timing is key. We found that very few entries met these criteria, and I think its because few agencies do promotional campaigns anymore  they are more focused on building digital awareness, or launching brand activations, for example. Most entries were about awareness, not the offer.

Press Lotus

From 114 entries in the Press category, there were 6 Press Lotus trophies awarded including 2 Bronze, 2 Silver and 2 Gold. There was no Grande Lotus given out in this category for Adfest 2018.

Outdoor & Press Jury President, Santosh Padhi, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Taproot Dentsu, Mumbai, said, The Press Lotus category really took a beating this year. We hope that next year, Asia will bring back the joy of beautiful print that resonates with the audience.

The two Gold winners for Press Lotus include:

Hakuhodo Malaysia, Selangor for Greenpeace Drought in the Public Services & Cause Appeals sub-category

Dentsu Inc., Tokyo for Disaster Prevention Emergency Collectibles in Best Use of Print sub-category.

Outdoor Lotus

236 entries were judged in the Outdoor category at Adfest 2018. There were 23 Outdoor Lotus trophies awarded including 7 Bronze, 10 Silver, 5 Gold and 1 Grande.

TBWAHakuhodo Inc., Tokyo won the Outdoor Grande for the second year in succession, this time for its work for Pure Boost Green Light Run in the Ambient: Large Scale category.

Outdoor & Press Jury President, Santosh Padhi, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Taproot Dentsu, Mumbai spoke for the Outdoor and Press Jury Team when he talked about judging the Outdoor category. Outdoor is a growing category that's getting more and more exciting. We're now liberated from flat, static formats. Anything can be outdoor: from the smallest ambient to a brilliant tech innovation that connects to people. The jury really found this category inspiring to judge, he said.

Dentsu Jayme Syfu, Manila won 2 Golds in the Outdoor category for its work on Refuse Plastic Dead Whale. The awards were for work entered in the Guerilla Marketing and Ambient: Large Scale sub-categories.

The other three Golds were awarded to:

McCann Worldgroup India, Mumbai for Ministry of Public Health, Afghanistan Immunity Charm in Ambient: Small Scale category.

Colenso BBDO, Auckland for DB Export DB Export Beer Bottle Sand in Ambient: Large Scale sub-category

Taproot Dentsu, Mumbai for Panasonic CCTV Cameras Watching Posters in Point of Purchase (POP) Display sub-category.

New Director Lotus

There were 23 entries received for New Director Lotus, including Fabulous Four this year.

Jury President of Film Craft Lotus & New Director Lotus, Timo Mitsuaki Otsuki, Founder & CEO from Connection, Tokyo explained the Jurys decision and why there was no Grande or Golds given in the New Director category: While the entries from new directors were good, they were not amazing. New talent is what pushes film craft forward. Which is why Im hoping that more new directors step up to the challenge next year.

Two Silver and two Bronze New Director Lotus Awards were given out. The Silver awards were presented to:

Sezan Iseda at AOI Pro. Inc., Tokyo for A Drop of Freshness A Transfer Student in the Portfolio Spot sub-category

Kyra Bartley at Heckler, Sydney for Love is Love Love is Love in the Portfolio Spot sub-category

Film Craft Lotus

For the Film Craft Lotus Awards, there were 358 entries, with 40 winners in the category, including 16 Bronze, 15 Silver, 8 Gold Lotus Awards and 1 Grande.

A Grande Lotus was awarded this year in the Film Craft category. The winning recipient was Hakuhodo Inc., Tokyo for Gravity Daze 2 Gravity Cat in the Directing sub-category.

Jury President of Film Craft Lotus & New Director Lotus, Timo Mitsuaki Otsuki, Founder & CEO from Connection, Tokyo explains the reasoning behind choosing the work awarded for the Grande, Weve not seen this level of craft in Asia for a long time. The work was clearly the result of everyone, from the client, to the agency and production team, collaborating to push the envelope. It's proof that Asia still can produce amazing film craft. Hopefully, well see more work like this in the coming years.

Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, Tokyo won 3 Film Craft Golds: one for Iyemon Kyotos Fukujuens 227th Year of Innovation  Cinematography sub-category and two for Gravity Daze 2 Gravity Cat in Special Effects: Digital Visual Effects and Production Design sub-categories.

FP7/CAI, Cairo won two Golds with its work on Orange Now or Never for Casting and Original Music Score.

The other three Gold Awards in Film Craft were presented to:

ALT.VFX, Brisbane for Tile Tile  Lost Panda for Animation (In-Camera or Digital

J Walter Thompson, Bangkok for Kleenex Tiny Doll in the Use of Talent/Celebrity sub-category

CHE PROXIMITY, Melbourne for Cochlear The Hearing Test in Disguise in the Script sub-category

Timo Mitsuaki Otsuki, Founder & CEO of Connection Tokyo and Film Craft Lotus & New Director Lotus Jury President summarized the Jurys view on this years Film Craft work, We were very happy with the quality of entries. While there were not many new approaches, the quality of craft with tried-and-tested techniques went up compared to last year. Some of the best were pieces that we initially saw on the internet and were already jealous of, wishing we were the ones who had the chance to make them.

Fabulous Four

Script entries to Fabulous Four must be from directors or assistant directors with less than two years experience based in Asia and the Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand, and Middle East and their submission must be one of their first seven pieces of work.

The Fabulous Four finalists were selected from submitted scripts and are based in Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne and Tokyo this year.

Huixin Law from Reservoir World Sdn Bhd, Kuala Lumpur was awarded a Commendation for ADFEST 2018 Bird on a Wire.

The other three finalists were Shuhei Murata, from Pyramid Film Quadra Inc., Tokyo; Thuy Vy from The Directors Group, Melbourne and Haruna Kaizuka from AOI Pro Inc., Tokyo.

Scripts are judged by the Film Craft Lotus & New Director Lotus Jury and four short films are selected to go into production to debut at Adfest 2018 in front of its delegate audience. This year reflected the theme for Adfest 2018, Transform.

Jimmy Lam, President of Adfest, remarked, Fabulous Four is one of the jewels in the Adfest crown. We are proud of the Fabulous Four programme for new directors. In a way, were helping to nourish our production partners to bring new blood into the market.

Winners of Straight8 Competition announced

Six companies took part in the first-ever Straight8 industry shootout @ Adfest 2018, a one-super-8-cartridge-no-editing film competition. Ogilvy X Sydney won this years inaugural short film competition for their film Keynote.

The Straight8 industry shootout format has been going since 2016 and we were excited to bring it to Adfest for the first time this year. It takes courage to create a film with no editing or grading, and see it for the first time with your industry peers, so wed like to thank all the companies that took part. Big congratulations go to the winner: Ogilvy X Sydney for their film Keynote. Theyve chosen mental health charity, Beyond Blue, to be the recipient of the prize pot, said Ed Sayers, Founder of the Straight8 film competition.

Meanwhile, the Creative@Adfest speaker sessions kicked off for a full day at Peach, Royal Cliff Hotels Group in Pattaya, Thailand. For a full timetable of seminars is available on the Adfest App and official event website, www.adfest.com.

Adfest strives to provide a creative forum and stimulus for learning for the advertising community in Asia Pacific and the Middle East region. Every year, the great cultural diversity of work from the region is showcased, rewarded and celebrated. The festival is designed to be inspirational, educational and innovative, with integrity and openness.New York Festivals AME Awards, for the Worlds Best Advertising and Marketing Effectiveness, announced the 2018 award-winners. These winning entries successfully demonstrated ground breaking solutions to challenging marketing problems with measurable results. Agencies increased brand identity, public awareness and market share through innovative ideas that placed brands front and center.

The 2018 AME Grand Jury of CEOs, Chief Strategy Officers, Planning Directors, Global Brand Managers, and Chief Branding Strategists recruited from 40 countries around the globe awarded 1 AME Best of Show Award, 1 AME Green Award, 3 Regional Platinum Awards, 24 Gold AME Awards, 14 Silver AME Awards, 15 Bronze AME Awards and 27 Finalist Certificates.

Asia Pacific

Dentus Jayme Syfu was a triple threat in this years AME Awards, earning the prestigious 2018 AME Best of Show Award, AME Regional Platinum Award/Asia Pacific, and the AME Green Award for Dead Whale for Greenpeace Philippines. The Philippine-based agency mounted an installation of a 73-foot decomposing Dead Whale on the shores of one of the most polluted cities in the Philippines during the 2017 ASEAN Summit. The whale was created using plastic wastes collected from the ocean. The award-winning entrys stellar results included over 100 million impressions internationally and it caught the attention of ASEAN leaders, which put Coastal and Marine Protection in the proposal for the next Summit. The agency also garnered two AME Gold Awards for the entry.

With our country, the Philippines, being ranked in the world to be the third biggest contributor of plastic trash in our oceans, it is only high time to create this kind of awareness for this serious issue. And, we couldnt be happier with the results today. More communities and cities are helping in reducing the use of plastics. Our government has even become so environmentally conscious that it has plans of closing our world-famous beaches for a major clean up. A massive installation like this definitely generated massive action, said Merlee Jayme, Chairmom & Chief Creative Officer, Denstu Jayme Syfu.

Australias Tonic The Agency earned 2 AME Gold Awards for Bring Cinema Home for LG Electronics. The agencys campaign targeted 25-35-year-old Australians to promote LGs 2017 range of OLED and Spure UHD TVs focusing on the strength of their advanced imaging capabilities. A realistic pop-up LG Home Cinema in Sydneys World Square provided an unforgettable red-carpet experience for visitors. The results  a 183 per cent increase in sales of OLED TVs and a 315 per cent increase in the sales of Super UHD TVs.

M&C Saatchi Australias AME Gold Award-winning Migrant Banking for client CommonWealth Bank. The agency created the campaign for the cultural context of Chinese and Indian migrants that was authentic and reflective of their respective cultures. Tapping into the love of cinema, a campaign was created using native languages and customs with CommBank becoming the first Australian company to target migrant communities through language in cinema. The result was a 61 per cent increase in brand awareness and a 51 per cent increase in brand consideration for CommBank among Chinese and Indian audiences who had seen the campaign.

Indias Brave New World Communications earned the AME Gold Award for The Heart of the Highway - The Worlds First Talking Store for The Roadster Life Co. The campaign featured a talking store that reached out to shoppers. Personal interaction to shoppers was delivered by interactive in-store tech, including custom software, digital facade, interactive and multiTaction touch screens, augmented reality green-screen, immersive VR and virtual shopping screens. Results included a 70 per cent revenue spike in high-value apparel categories.

Social platforms created buzz for W Chinas Its Really Teeboolang, earning the agency the AME Gold Award for their campaign created to boost Timberlands sales in China. The iconic brand name was changed into a Chinese name Teeboolang, identifying the brand as unbreakable sparking conversation and praise. The online campaign resulted in the name becoming a buzzword. On Tmall.com and Taobao.com, search index for Teeboolang increased by 52 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively. Timberland saw an increase of 30 per cent during Double 11 Shopping Festival, within 40 minutes at the beginning of the festival, all the yellow boots were sold out. The video of Its Really Teeboolang has been played over 16 million times.

A cutting-edge soap design placed Dentsu One Bangkoks Clean Light Hand Soap for client Zantiis Bangkok Treasures in the winners circle earning the agency the AME Gold Award. Aiming to prevent disease by raising awareness about the length of time spent washing hands, Zantiis created Clean Light Hand Soap, a soap bar that blinks for 20 seconds to make sure hands are washed for 20 seconds. In the first week, 500 bars of the total 1,500 soaps were given away and a video clip demonstrating a proper way to clean hands within 20 seconds boosted the engage rate of Zantiis Facebook page up to 1700 per cent.

PHD China received the AME Gold Award for Embrace the Extraordinary with OMO for client OMO. Targeting millennial women, the campaign changed the way consumers see OMO from just a basic functional detergent brand to a modern and progressive brand encouraged young women to let go of the fear of getting dirty and to embrace surprises and possibilities for an extraordinary life. Market share of powder detergent increased from 1.84 per cent to 4.61 per cent in three months and liquid detergents  a more premium price point - increase from 3.03 per cent share to 6.06 per cent between April and July 2017.

North America

Zulu Alpha Kilo Canada was in the spotlight earning the 2018 AME Regional Platinum Award/ North America for Common Ground for Harley-Davidson Canada. The agency created a foreign exchange of bikers  documented in a series that followed riders from different backgrounds on a trip across Canada. The series proved so popular that Discovery Channel picked it up for a primetime special. The results  Over 47MM impressions; surpassing goals by 235 per cent; over 8.7MM views surpassing goals by 218 per cent, and over 415,000 engagements, and increase in market share of 1.9 per cent against the nearest competitor. The agency also earned a Gold Award for the entry and an additional 2 Gold Awards, one each for Story of Flash and A Balloon for Ben.

Canada is all about values like diversity, inclusion and acceptance. In creating the worlds first foreign exchange for bikers, we were proud to leverage our nation  bringing people from around the world to experience the open minds and roads of Canada on a Harley-Davidson, remarked Zak Mroueh, Founder and CCO, Zulu Alpha Kilo.

Team One Los Angeles was in the spotlight earning the AME Gold Award for Inking Our Mark on Motorcycle Culture for client Indian Motorcycles. The campaign regained market share by leveraging a brand-first lifestyle media partnership and the worlds-first tattoo production technique formulated from the burn-out carbon from Motocross legend Carey Harts Indian Motorcycle. The results include 82 per cent new visitors and Indian went from 7th to 2nd most purchased motorcycle brand in the US.

The agency also drove consumer engagement and gained traction for client Lexis IS and earned the AME Gold Award for their campaign Platforms of Expression for a Shareworthy Life. The agency leveraged the Lexus entry-level sedan, IS to connect with younger affluents via social video and thumb-stopping content. The target audience was engaged, and the campaign became the most shared campaign in Lexus history, lowered the median buyer age for the brand, and generated the first month of positive YOY sales growth for IS in CY16.

T-Mobile USAs Next Gen for T-Mobile earned the AME Gold Award for their campaign that brought the Un-carrier experience to life by humanising and demystifying the wireless shopping experience. Customers were engaged via T-Mobiles value proposition through a Human Digital experience that guides them through the purchase process and makes online shopping remarkably easy, resulting in 60 per cent fewer clicks and 485 per cent increase in web orders.

McCann Torre Lazur USA was honoured with the AME Gold Award for The Orange Project, a youth-driven and youth-focused global awareness campaign to reduce the stigma of suicide and raise awareness for its prevention by collecting handwritten notes of encouragement and hope. The Orange Project spread their message and collected notes at live events such as Pride Parade in NYC and multiple Out of the Darkness walks sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. With the help of more than 30 schools, 11 live events, and 10 companies, The Orange Project has a goal to break the Guinness World Record for the largest album of handwritten notes (20,000 out of 30,000 notes have been collected) and empowering adolescents to help save the lives of people just like them.

Europe

Heimat Werbeagentur GmbH Germany was in the winners circle earning the 2018 AME Regional Platinum Award/Europe for A New Way of Thinking for Free Democrats. Young people in Germany thought the FDP was a party for old people and unable to reflect the needs of the future generation. The agencys game-changing election campaign reached and activated young voters and bridged the gap between the Liberal party and the voters. PR Stunts and special events and created a unique digital identity: The Always-on Party in social media, generated continuous PR Buzz via highlights throughout the campaign. The digital campaign resulted in FDP returning to the German parliament with the partys highest rise ever in number of votes, even while having the smallest campaign budget among the six major parties. The entry also earned an AME Gold Award.

We are honoured that HEIMAT received this important efficiency award for this case  especially because it represents what is perhaps one of our core areas of expertise: long-term brand building, said Matthias Storath, CEO/Chief Creative Officer and Creative Director/FDP case, Heimat Werbeagentur GmbH.

Grabarz & Partner Werbeagentur GmbH Germany struck gold, earning 3 Gold AME Awards for their campaign Laughing Horses for client Volkswagen. The campaign illustrated the product benefits of the Volkswagen Trailer Assist. Using humour, the campaign shows the stress of parking a trailer. The funny social video featuring laughing horses mocking a frustrated driver attempting to park his trailer became the best performing German Volkswagen video with 40 million views.

Serviceplan Group Germany was recognised with two AME Gold Awards, one for The Truth Unveiled for IPRAS WomenforWomen, an initiative that helps acid-attack victims with plastic-surgery. The agency collaborated with Asma, a woman who was scarred in an acid-attack as a child. On International Womens Day, she hosted a special report, where for the first time an acid attack victim unveiled her scars on national news and appealed for help. Over 100,000,000 people witnessed the event. Serviceplans Give Bag was also honoured with a second AME Gold Award for supermarket retailer PENNY. Customers save 10 Cents every time they bring their own Give-Bag bag. and PENNY donates an additional 10 cents to local social organisations. The Give-Bag launch sold-out 600,000 bags within only a few weeks. The clients saved over 70,000  and spared the environment of over one million disposable bags.

Radley Yeldar UK was honoured with a Gold AME Award for The Data Dollar Store for client Kaspersky Lab. The agency created a pop-up store to increase brand awareness within the 21-35-year old demographic. Fans of artist Ben Eines work could take home merchandise for data dollars such as one-off prints, t-shirts or mugs if they were willing to hand over private photos, emails or instant messaging conversations that would then be displayed on digital media screens for all of Old Street Station to see. The impact  a geo-targeted Facebook ad campaign generated a total of 2.4 million impressions  1.86 million of which were organic, resulting in a cost per view of $0.01  outperforming the target by 1,000 per cent. The campaign achieved over 330 million earned media impressions in outlets like Time Out, Huffington Post, the Evening Standard and Hello! Magazine.Staying true to the promise to premiere the biggest blockbusters of the year, Star Movies will air Academy Award nominated film, The Boss Baby on Sunday, March 25 at 1PM and 9 PM respectively. Starring the witty Alec Baldwin as Boss Baby along with popular host Jimmy Kimmel as Ted Timothy Templeton, the film is a rollercoaster of fun, drama, suspense and hilarity.

Theodore, a cute baby with an adult mind is on earth with an arduous mission: to lead the battle between babies and puppies. He enlists his unwilling sibling, Tim for this task, and things take an unexpected turn owing to the complexities that come with any sibling rivalry. Whether its squabbling incessantly or becoming partners in crime, Tim and Theodore are exactly like every other sibling duo. A secret world where cute babies double up as undercover agents, The Boss Baby is a complete family entertainer.

The place to catch the biggest Hollywood premieres, Star Movies brings fans a tongue-in-cheek campaign centred on the qualities of a boss, that are brought out in The Boss Baby, showcasing how babies know just how to get things done their way! On the day of the premiere, Star Movies invites fans to share their version on what bosses say  and what they really mean. Star Movies will encourage their followers to share the funniest and wittiest translations of Boss Quotes.

Watch Boss Baby outsmart adults every step of the way in the television premiere of The Boss Baby on Star Movies on March 25 at 1PM and 9PMWould you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier?

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Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page.All eyes are on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now that the Turkish military has defeated the Kurdish Peoples Protection Unit (YPG) forces in Afrin.

Cengiz Candar writes, Experts, observers and even international anti-Islamic State coalition officials thought that the Syrian Kurdish fighters would have put up a stronger resistance to protect the land and that Turkeys victory would come at a great cost.  Following the decision by the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) to hand over the city center without engaging in urban warfare against the Turkey-led Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces, most now believe that Turkeys military intervention in Afrin is a prelude to a wider offensive against other cities under the control of Syrian Kurdish forces.

Turkeys Operation Olive Branch, which began Jan. 20, concluded its 58th day with a Turkish flag hoisted over Afrins city center, Candar adds. At the same time, Turkey-led FSA factions, including Salafi jihadi groups, were busy plundering the city. The images emerging from the city resembled the taking of a medieval era war booty.

Ayla Jean Yackley writes, Evidence the YPG had initially planned to stay and fight in the city includes large stores of weapons supplied by Russia and the United States that were found by Turkish forces, reported Hurriyet citing intelligence sources. But the fighters abandoned Afrin, hiding in civilian convoys headed for Tell Rifaat and Aleppo beginning March 14 after US commanders, recognizing Turkeys determination and capacity to take the area, persuaded the YPG to return to the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij and resume the fight against IS [the Islamic State], some in Ankara believe.

Now two questions persist: How will Turkeys military achievement translate into politics, and how long will the Turkish military stay in Afrin? Candar notes. The best example to find answers is the Euphrates Shield region, which came under control of the Turkish army and FSA forces in March 2017. Since then, Turkeys grip on the region has only tightened. Jarablus, al-Bab and Azaz are being ruled by officials appointed by Ankara. Turkey resettled some 140,000 Syrians in the region, and Afrin will probably witness a similar process.  However, unlike the Euphrates Shield region, Afrin is more homogenous, with an overwhelmingly Kurdish population. Some 90% of its inhabitants are  or at least were  Kurds, according to Fabrice Balanche, a prominent Syria expert.

There is no mystery about the depth to which US-Turkish relations have sunk. Yackley quotes Erdogan, in comments directed at the United States, saying, You say you are our strategic partner, and then you go collaborate with terrorists. The truth is now out there. If we are going to be strategic partners, you have to respect us and walk with us. You tried to deceive us.  You told us you would clean up IS by cooperating with this terrorist organization and did not believe us when we said we should do it together. Now you see how our soldiers and our FSA take care of business.

Erdogan may be planning an assault on Manbij if the United States does not shut down YPG operations there, according to Turkish press reports, bringing Turkish military and proxy forces close to US troops stationed there.

The crisis in US-Turkey relations stands in contrast to Russia-Turkey ties, where Moscow and Ankara are committed to managing differences through frequent and high-level negotiations, absent the threat and insult that characterizes Erdogans remarks directed at Washington.

As we wrote last month, the Astana process, managed by Russia, Iran and Turkey  whatever its limitations, and there are many  has eclipsed the Geneva process as the diplomatic forum with actual traction in Syria. The foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey met again in Astana on March 16 and issued a joint statement on Syria and began preparations for a trilateral summit that will be held in Turkey on April 4.

Anton Mardasov explains, Despite the efforts in Astana and Sochi, which were both designed to revive the UN-supported political negotiations in Geneva, the situation in Syria makes it clear that the Geneva talks have stalled and need an absolute reboot. The Syrian regime, backed by pro-Iranian factions, sees the peace initiatives as a way to divide and weaken the opposition. Turkey, which has gained control in Syria of Afrin and is eyeing Manbij, is tempted to play along.

Mardasov elaborates on some of the differences among the Astana parties. Russia's Defense Ministry declared an end to fighting in the eastern Ghouta town of Douma, which is controlled by the Islamist and Salafist coalition Jaish al-Islam, he writes. The daily newspaper Asharq al-Awsat noted that Moscow intended to stabilize the situation in the area after pushing out and relocating small groups of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants, but Damascus and Tehran insisted on destroying all opposition pockets in the de-escalation zones. In any case, pushing Jaish al-Islam out of eastern Ghouta to Idlib is barely possible; this faction is present only in the southwestern area of that de-escalation zone  the zone agreed to by the United States, Russia and nearby Jordan  meaning that the United States would need to be consulted before any action is taken. Moscow is pursuing a tough stance toward the Syrian opposition, fluctuating between issuing ultimatums and negotiating to conclude agreements in Cairo and Geneva. Yet the simplest of options  to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad without compromise  can hardly be a viable resolution for Russia.

Mardasov adds that as Erdogan weighs his next move, it will take some mighty diplomatic efforts to keep Turkey engaged on Astana. After the operation in Afrin is finished and Idlib is demarcated by creating monitoring bases and situating military groups there, Ankara may shift its focus from working as part of the Astana trio in Syria to fighting against the Kurdistan Workers Party in Iraq. Turkey also will want to address the United States on the territories taken over by the SDF [Syrian Democratic Forces], a Kurdish-Arab alliance backed by the United States in fighting the Islamic State. Moreover, the discussion between Washington and Ankara about the withdrawal of the Kurdish People's Protection Units militants from Manbij is already in progress. In these conditions, Russia and Iran are eager to keep motivating Turkey to continue its cooperation in the trio by giving Ankara options for solving its Kurdish problem in eastern Syria. The United States, for its part, is interested in reaching a compromise with Ankara on the trans-Euphrates area, which the United States, as well as many Gulf monarchies, considers to be a foothold to confront Iranian influence.

Yekaterina Chulkovskaya reports that while Turkey and Russia are managing differences in Syria, they are nonetheless deepening economic relations. At the top of the list is Turkeys intention to buy Russian S-400 Triumph surface-to-air systems, which has caused alarm in Washington. Moscow and Ankara are [also] collaborating on two big projects, Chulkovskaya adds, a Russian-built nuclear station in Akkuyu, in Turkey's Mersin province, and Turkish Stream, a gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea. The nuclear plant will be Turkey's first. Both projects have faced delays.  Moscow is very interested in developing military-technical cooperation with Ankara.

Metin Gurcan writes that the Akkuyu nuclear plant is the largest joint project symbolizing strategic relations between Russia and Turkey. The facility will have a 4,800-megawatt capacity and will cost some $20 billion. Turkish officials still say Akkuyu is scheduled to go into service in 2023  the centennial of the Turkish Republic  though it is unlikely to meet that schedule.  Turkey is highly dependent on Moscow for the plant's functioning, as Russia will train the personnel and supply nuclear fuel. So even though the Russia-Turkey relationship might not be a true alliance, the countries will definitely become close partners, which will provide Moscow with potent geopolitical benefits.Since the 2013 coup, the prevailing policy in Washington has been to support Sisis despotic rule in Egypt.

Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

The only real suspense in Egypts upcoming presidential election  scheduled for later this week  is how close incumbent Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will get to securing 100 percent of the vote.

Sisi, who took over as Egyptian president shortly after carrying out a July 2013 military coup, has systematically eliminated opposition to his rule and paved the way for an easy electoral victory. Scholars and human rights groups have proclaimed the upcoming vote a sham.

Several would-be contenders for the presidency were arrested shortly after declaring their intentions to oppose Sisi, who, in the lead-up to voting, has taken totalitarian measures to ensure a singular media narrative.

The Associated Press reported late last month that the Sisi government delivered guidelines preventing news outlets from conducting polls about the election or asking Egyptians whom they plan to vote for. The report also noted that critical television journalists were removed from the air.

Earlier this month, Sisi delivered a televised address, during which he said that he considers defamation of the police or army as tantamount to treason. Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities have recently called on Egyptian citizens to report media outlets critical of the Sisi regime.

Following recent arrests of a reporter and a cameraman in Alexandria, more than 20 journalists remain behind bars in Egypt, which ranks third in the world in imprisoned journalists. Earlier this month, Egypts prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty against photojournalist Mohmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan.

The recent wave of political eliminationism and anti-media repression comes against the backdrop of an already repressive post-coup period. Between 2013 and 2017, Egyptian authorities massacred hundreds of unarmed protesters, banned rival political parties and organisations, shut down oppositional television networks, and blocked hundreds of news and NGO websites.

The regime has also routinely used mass arrests, forced disappearance, and torture to further consolidate power and intimidate opponents.

Ready-made election results

The Egyptian election commission has allowed a single candidate, Moussa Mustafa Moussa, to remain in the presidential race, but he is widely viewed as a token figure whose candidacy is meant to justify a sham election.

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Moussa is a Sisi supporter who, as recently as two months ago, helped gather signatures on behalf of Sisis campaign. According to France 24, when Moussa announced his candidacy for president, his personal Facebook page included a cover photo with Sisis face and we support you as president of Egypt written beneath it.

In practice, the upcoming election is likely to mirror previous votes held during the Sisi era. In 2014, Sisi won 96 percent of the vote in a presidential election characterised by government intimidation of potential candidates, pro-Sisi media propaganda, and widespread voting irregularities.

Egypts 2014 constitutional referendum was marred by government and media propaganda and a basic lack of fairness. During that campaign season, thousands of billboard, television, newspaper, and radio advertisements encouraged Egyptians to vote yes, while a few citizens who attempted to post small vote no flyers were arrested.

Similarly, the 2015 parliamentary elections were rendered farcical by draconian legislation and other forms of repression.

A green light from the US?

US administrations have generally embraced Sisi, some criticisms of his heavy-handed tactics notwithstanding.

Current US President Donald Trump has lavished praise on Sisi, referring to him as a fantastic guy and noting that the two men are very close and have a good feeling between them. Comments such as these have been made as part of the larger context of Trumps proclamation that foreign allies human rights records would not be a priority for his administration.

Former US President Barack Obamas relationship with Sisi was slightly more complicated. He showed a willingness to work with Sisi, but did criticise his human rights record.

The Obama administration reportedly attempted to talk Sisi out of carrying out the July 2013 coup that brought him to power, criticised human rights abuses committed by Egyptian security forces, cancelled a joint Egyptian-American military exercise, and briefly suspended Egypts military aid package.

Nonetheless, Obama was, overall, supportive of Sisi, regarding him as a necessary strategic ally.

In particular, the Obama administration embraced the Egyptian militarys post-coup roadmap, and made little, if any, attempt to use its leverage to prevent the Egyptian armys repeated massacres of civilians, which were carried out, at least in part, with American weapons.

For months after the coup, Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki consistently echoed Egyptian military propaganda about the alleged will of the Egyptian people, downplayed the fact that Sisis deposed predecessor, Mohamed Morsi, was democratically elected, and deemphasised the importance of voting in democratic societies.

Shortly after the coup and several massacres of protesters, Obamas Secretary of State, John Kerry, refused the coup label outright and arguedthat Sisi had simply been restoring democracy.

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The Obama governments consistent refusal to officially label Sisis power grab as a military coup was telling. The coup label would have required the US government to stop funding the Egyptian military  under American law, it is illegal for the US to fund a foreign government which has come to power via military overthrow.

Ultimately, the Obama administration proceeded with regular deliveries of Egypts aid package, which has totalled about $1.6bn annually since the 1978 Camp David Accords, with the bulk of it going to the military.

I visited with US members of Congress in 2013 and 2014, discussing with them my own research on Egypt, US foreign policy, terrorism, and the Sisi regimes human rights record, among other things.

Consistently, I was told that, while Sisis human rights record was problematic, supporting Sisi was good for America because it ensured Egyptian stability, which, it was argued, was essential for US interests in the region.

When I presented evidence suggesting that military coups and mass repression can lead to greater levels of instability, rather than stability, my comments were generally dismissed.

To be fair, some members of Congress did seem sympathetic to my arguments, and appeared concerned about the US governments apparent inconsistencies on foundational US concepts like democracy and human rights.

Notably, since the coup, some members of Congress have supported cutting off aid to Egypt. In July 2013, John McCain and Lindsey Graham wrote a Washington Post op-ed calling on Obama to both use the coup label and cut off aid to Egypts military. McCain and Graham have continued to be highly critical of Sisi and the US governments relationship with him.

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Last week, another US member of Congress, Jim McGovern, said he and congressional colleagues were working on a resolution to address concerns about the upcoming Egyptian election and the nations human rights situation more generally.

Despite some congressional concerns, however, the prevailing policy in Washington has been to support Sisi.

It remains to be seen to what extent, if any, Trumps recent decision to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with Mike Pompeo will affect US policy towards Egypt. Tillerson had been more critical of Sisi than Trump, and generally refused to adopt Egypts position on its blockade against Qatar, launched jointly in June 2017 with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Tillersons position on the blockade  and larger differences with Trump on US foreign policy  likely contributed to his dismissal.

The bigger picture

To be fair, the US is not the only government to have supported Sisi. Arab dictatorships and other Western democratic governments have sometimes rolled out the proverbial red carpet for Sisi, with important countries in Europe and the Gulf offering the Egyptian leader key diplomatic support, financial aid, or both.

Moreover, and importantly, it would be wrong to place blame for Egypts authoritarian turn squarely on the American government.

Egypts descent into an authoritarian abyss is, first and foremost, the responsibility of Egypts military, police, judiciary, and media apparatuses, and also those Egyptians who supported the July 2013 military takeover and its repressive aftermath.

But it would also be wrong to altogether downplay the American role, especially given the United States historical interferences in developing countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

These interferences have included orchestrating and supporting military coups against democratic governments, and explicitly financing violent authoritarians, among other questionable foreign policies.

Given Americas status as the worlds only superpower, it arguably has a responsibility to affect change in nations like Egypt. If not, then, at a minimum, the US government should seek to live up to its lofty democratic and human rights principles. It is likely that a more consistent US approach would lead to the kind of global stability Americas leaders often claim to desire.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.Attacks against Palestinians increase by 50 percent in 2018

As attacks on Palestinians increase, Israels state comptroller has criticised Israeli police for failing to investigate crimes committed against Palestinians.The U.S. has begun the mass expulsion of thousands of Haitian migrants from a Texas border town. See photos from the border:DR Congo tension: Thousands displaced since December

Ethnic strife in Ituri province has driven thousands from their homes while local leaders say that unemployed youths are being manipulated into violence.Two killed, including one soldier, as explosion hits near motorcade of Alexandrias head of security Mostafa al-Nemr.

An explosion in the Egyptian city of Alexandria has killed at least two people, including a policeman, in what officials called an assassination attempt against the coastal citys security chief.

The blast occurred near the Tolip Hotel on Saturday afternoon in Rushdi, a neighbourhood in Egypts second city, close to the motorcade of Major General Mostafa al-Nemr, the head of security in Alexandria, an Egyptian security source told Al Jazeera.

The suspected car bomb, which also wounded at least four people, targeted the motorcade, the source said.

State news agency MENA quoted al-Nemr as saying that two people, a policeman and a driver, were killed in the blast.

The Egyptian Ministry of Interior said the attack was an assassination attempt against al-Nemr.

Former Deputy Interior Minister Rafiq Habib told Al Jazeera he suspects the perpetrators belong to an extremist group, although nothing has yet been confirmed.

The timing of this explosion, which comes just before the presidential elections, is telling of its objective to sow fear among voters, Habib said.

I do not believe that it [the attack] will have any impact on the elections, however. Im sure there will be huge numbers going to vote, he added.

Alexandria residents posted photos of smoke rising from the explosion site.

Sinai visit

The incident follows Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisis visit to Sinai on Friday, before an election that is set to grant him a second term.

During the visit to a military and police station in Sinai, Sisi instructed the army to use all necessary force to root out armed groups in Egypt.

We will come here soon to celebrate the victory over the Kharijites (secessionists from Islam) of this era, he said, referring to armed groups in the area.

A major operation was launched on February 18 with Egyptian ground, air and naval forces, along with border guards and police.

The army ordered hospitals to be placed on high alert, preparing extra beds and personnel, to deal with emergencies and medical evacuations.

Security operations against rebel groups in Sinai have been ongoing since 2000, but the uprising picked up after the military coup in 2013.

In late 2014, Egypt declared a state of emergency in the region, while Sinais most active armed group pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).Announced in 2014 as a defence border, lack of funds and corruption charges stall building with 15 percent constructed.

Kharkiv, Ukraine  A mannequin in a Ukrainian border guard uniform and a green beret low on its forehead is tied to the side rail of a 17-metre-high watchtower, facing Russia. Strong wind rocks the structure. On the ground, border guards patrol the area along a two-metre-high green fence crowned with a barbed wire.

Back in September 2014, Ukraines then Prime Minister Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk announced a plan to fortify Ukraines border with Russia.

Dubbed Project Wall, it carried the promise of a new beginning for post-Euromaidan Ukraine, caught in a war with the Russian-backed separatists in Donbas.

A mannequin in a Ukrainian border guard uniform standing on a watch tower [Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska/Al Jazeera]

But a corruption scandal has put the project under question. So far, just 15 percent of the wall has been built and it is unlikely to be completed by the end of 2018.

Last August and November, eight people from the border guard and local contractors from Kharkiv were detained on corruption charges.

In February 2018, several servicemen of the border guard, including the deputy of the Kharkiv border detachment and the head of the office of rapid responses, were also arrested. It is yet unconfirmed if their detention was related to Project Wall.

Splitting neighbours

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the border between Ukraine and Russia has been porous.

The 2,000km frontier reflected the obscure boundary between the former Soviet republics. Until recently, citizens of both countries could cross the administrative border with internal passports.

In August 2014, Russia moved artillery into Donbass, eastern Ukraine, according to NATO officials  a move which followed the Euromaidan revolution and the fall of Ukraines President Viktor Yanukovich. Soon after, Ukraine lost control over 400km of its border.

The fence was meant to halt the movement of weapons, illegal migration and act as a first line of defence.

The Goptivka border crossing in the Kharkiv region [Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska/Al Jazeera]

Symbolically, it aimed to mark a split between the neighbours. For post-Maidan Ukrainians, Russia was the source of their countrys ills: corruption, failed institutions and the cynical apathy of the post-Soviet world.

According to official rhetoric, the wall was meant to help Ukraine integrate into western structures, secure visa-free regime with the EU and tighten links with NATO.

With an allocated $136m, Project Wall became a priority on the governments agenda. The plan included construction of an electronic border control system, a steel fence, a patrol road and an anti-tank trench running along the border.

Impossible to cross

The footprint detection strip attached to the flagship part of the fence in the Kharkiv region bears traces of hooves.

According to the press secretary of the local border guard, Oksana Ivanets, they were left by deer, the borders only violators.

This part of the border has been impenetrable, Ivanets explains. Motion sensors located at the strip detect objects from 60kg, while the camera surveillance system allows for timely reaction from the command centre.

It is practically impossible to cross it, Ivanets says. Some have tried, but in order to get through you need time.

The command centre tasked with monitoring the border in the Kharkiv [Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska/Al Jazeera]





At several points, it became apparent that Ukraine, immersed in recession, could not afford the wall.

Since 2014, only a fraction of planned funding had arrived.

In 2017, allocated funds constituted only 22 percent of the plan. In January that year, the project halted due to lack of funds.

Therefore, beyond 83km of fence and 273km of trenches, what divides Ukraine from Russia is forests and fields.

Last July, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU)  an FBI-trained agency tasked with investigating corruption  said it was investigating embezzlement of $3.6m from Project Wall.

When asked about Project Wall, Ivanets admits the fence is unlikely to protect Ukraine from Russian invasion, but it may help to buy time.

Corruption allegations

The effectiveness of the anti-tank trench is extremely moderate, it is easy to overcome, especially in the absence of troops at the border, explains Vyacheslav Tseluyko, a defence expert from Kharkiv.

His assessment of the key element of the project is even bleaker.

The fence is the most unnecessary and corrupt part of the project. It is expensive and there is no need for it, he says.

NABUs investigation found that in some sections, the patrol road was narrower than the contracted three metres and that some money was spent on other purposes, or stolen. It is unclear who was behind the scheme.

No one could steal the money without the authorities taking notice, a journalist from Kharkiv Anti-corruption Centre, who wished to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera.

Following Euromaidan, Ukraine was on a reform path and tackling corruption was one of the governments main goals. The creation of NABU awoke hopes for greater accountability of the elite.

But NABU has faced pressure.

On December 7, 2017, the parliamentary agenda included a vote on a bill giving parliament right to dismiss the head of NABU. While the government backed down under Western pressure, there are fears of further attempts to thwart the agencys independence.

A vivid display of Ukrainian politics



Despite the failure of Project Wall, in May 2017, the EU approved visa-free regime with Ukraine, while in March 2018, NATO granted Ukraine the status of an aspirant country.

But the sense of disillusionment in Ukraine runs deep.

According to research by Democratic Initiatives foundation, 40 percent of Ukrainians feel that nothing has been done in terms of reforms. Moreover, only 20 percent expressed readiness to join any form of protest, one of the lowest results since the year 2000.

The pressure on anti-corruption activists has also increased.

This month two people from our organisation were beaten up, their ribs broken, head smashed, the Kharkiv Anti-corruption Centre journalist explained. It happened in broad daylight on a street.

The wall is a vivid display of Ukrainian politics, a PR object that can be shown. Yevgen Shapoval, activist

Institutions tasked with fighting corruption  the prosecutors office, courts and the police  are among the least trusted.

The corruption scandal related to Project Wall has brought even more disillusionment.

The wall is a vivid display of Ukrainian politics, a PR object that can be shown, said Yevgen Shapoval, a civic activist and former deputy of Kharkiv city council. But when you dig deeper, you understand that what they have built is some kind of illusion.Israels national carrier to take fight for access to Saudi airspace to court after commencement of Air India flight.

As Saudi Arabia opens its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel, Israels national carrier will take its own fight for access to Saudi airspace to the Supreme Court in Israel, according to officials.

Indias national carrier Air India is now reportedly offering three direct flights a week between New Delhi and Tel Aviv through Saudi Arabias airspace, effectively ending a 70-year Saudi ban on the use of its airspace for Israel-bound flights.

Saudi Arabia does not recognise Israel and flag carrier El Al must take a more circuitous path to avoid Saudi Arabia, which adds hours to flight times.

Air Indias first Delhi to Tel Aviv flight landed in Israel in seven hours, flying over Saudi Arabia. people who asked what does modi knows about foreign policy should be slapped left right and centre. pic.twitter.com/Hq9WCURhJS  #IstandWithFarmers (@indiantweeter) March 23, 2018

While a spokeswoman for El Al confirmed the company intended to bring its complaint to the Israeli Supreme Court, Yisrael Katz, Israels transport minister, welcomed the direct route breakthrough.

The first direct flight to Israel through Saudi airspace reflects the positive change that is gradually taking place in the region, Katz tweeted on Friday morning.

I hope that Israeli airlines like El Al (Israels flagship carrier) will be allowed to use this route in the future.

The court appeal will come early next week, according to one source familiar with the matter.

On more than one occasion, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israels prime minister, has claimed that Israels relations with the Arab world are now better than ever.

However, the Saudi government, for its part, has not officially commented on the development.

The new air route between Israel and India was announced by Narendra Modi, Indian prime minister, during a visit to Israel last summer.

During a January visit to India, Netanyahu asserted that the new air route over Saudi territory would drastically reduce flight time.First Iraqi-made film in 25 years in cinemas

Iraqi filmmakers say they will try and persuade local audiences to watch domestic productions.The announcement comes as thousands of people take part in the March For Our Lives protests, calling for gun control.

Jeff Sessions, the US attorney general, has officially proposed a rule that would effectively ban bump stocks, devices that turn semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic weapons.

The announcement comes as thousands of people in the US take part in the March For Our Lives protests which call for stricter gun control.

After the senseless attack in Las Vegas, this proposed rule is a critical step in our effort to reduce the threat of gun violence that is in keeping with the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress, Sessions said in a statement.

Under US law, machine guns are officially banned. However, semi-automatic rifles, like the AR-15, are legal because of their lower rate of fire.

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Bump stocks use the recoil of these semi-automatic rifles to allow the weapon to fire at a higher rate, effectively turning a semi-automatic into a machine gun.

The new rule would classify bump stocks as part of a machine gun, making it illegal to buy or sell them.

The weapon modification was heavily criticised last October after one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history.

The attacker, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, used the modifications to increase his rate of fire, allowing him to kill 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas.

Under the banner #NeverAgain students demand stricter gun control [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]

The proposal comes after President Donald Trump announced in February that he was in favour of the ban following a mass school shooting in Florida.

Following the attorney generals announcement, Trump reiterated his support for the plan on Twitter, saying we will ban all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.

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Bump stocks were not used during that incident, but calls, led by students, for stricter gun control have been heard nationwide.

That call for stricter gun control has not died down since then, leading to Saturdays rallies across the US and around the world in which thousands of people take part in the March for Our Lives rally.

The protest is led by survivors of last months shooting at Floridas Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed after a former student allegedly went on a shooting rampage inside the school.

Students, under the banner #NeverAgain, are demanding that Congress pass a law banning assault weapons, halt the sale of high-capacity magazines to restrict access to ammunition and tighten the background check process.

Saturdays protest is led by survivors of last months shooting in Florida, where 17 people were killed [Aaron P Bernstein/Reuters]

They are also calling for a bipartisan effort to ramp up gun control and demanding a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues.

Saturdays march comes off the back of the National School Walkout earlier this month when thousands of students and teachers walked out of the classroom for 17 minutes to remember the victims of last months shooting and demand stricter gun control.From Washington, DC to Tokyo, students in over 800 cities and towns rally to demand an end to gun violence.

Washington, DC  Hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and their supporters have converged on Washington, DC, and other cities worldwide to march for their lives, demanding US legislators address recent school shootings and strengthen gun control laws.

Edna Chavez, a teen from South Los Angeles, was among the students from all over the country who took the stage at the March for Our Lives rally on Saturday in the nations capital.

I am a survivor, she said.

I have lived in South LA my entire life and have lost many loved ones to gun violence, she added, speaking about the death of her brother, Ricardo, who was killed by a bullet when he was in high school, and how the trauma and loss changed her life.

This is normal; normal to the point that I have learned to duck bullets before I learned how to read.

The rally is led by survivors of last months shooting at Floridas Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed after a former student allegedly went on a shooting rampage inside the school.

Students, under the banner #NeverAgain, are demanding that Congress pass a law banning assault weapons, halt the sale of high-capacity magazines to restrict access to ammunition and tighten the background check process.

They are also calling for a bipartisan effort to ramp up gun control and demanding a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues.

No special interest group, no political agenda is more critical than timely passage of legislation to effectively address the gun violence issues that are rampant in our country, the March for Our Lives website said.

Stand in solidarity

Saturdays march comes off the back of the National School Walkout earlier this month when thousands of students and teachers walked out of the classroom for 17 minutes to remember the victims of last months shooting and demand stricter gun control.

Winter BreeAnne Minisee, a high school senior from Los Angeles, was part of the committee that organised the national walkouts. She was not going to miss Saturdays rally.

Winter BreeAnne Minisee [Andre Roman Medina/Al Jazeera]

Today is a great day to stand in solidarity with students from across the country and make sure our voices are being heard, she said.

Angela Bahena drove 10 hours with her mother and two younger siblings from Paris, Kentucky, to attend the rally.

Its my last year of high school and I want to make sure that I leave knowing my brother and sister are safe in school and they dont have to worry about someone just randomly coming in and killing people, she said.

Kaleab Jegol travelled from Cincinnati, Ohio because he says gun control is an intersectional issue.

Gun violence  not only affects people in school shootings but also black and brown communities, which is a community I come from, he said. Its very personal  because it can happen to me in my own school or community.

He told Al Jazeera legislators have ignored voters demands for extended background checks and the banning of assault rifles for far too long.

Theyre willing to take the NRAs (National Rifle Association) money and place it over my life and I and all the people that are marching are saying No, we wont take that, he said.

More than 800 sister marches are paralleling the mass demonstration in Washington, DC, including protests in Los Angeles, New York City, London and Tokyo.

Here in London at the American Embassy. So many signs here referenced the success of gun control laws in the UK and other countries. Gun deaths are a fraction per capita. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/MDlWReGoyx  Jane McManus (@janesports) March 24, 2018

I joined #MarchForOurLives in Frankfurt/Germany  because there shouldn't have to be any drills in school but fire drills, and because no kid should have to announce that they haven't a gun, but a phone in hand. #NeverAgain #blacklivesmatter #GunControlNow pic.twitter.com/EpgMFmz1aE  Freecat15 (@freecat713) March 24, 2018

March for Our Lives vigil in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Democrats Abroad standing with all those marching in the states for gun control. pic.twitter.com/wV1kK7txSg  KunitachiGirl (@KunitachiGirl) March 24, 2018

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Deaths from gun violence have remained constant through the years and have a major impact on children and teens. Gun-related deaths are the third-leading cause of death for children and approximately three million are exposed to shootings each year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, an organisation advocating for gun control.

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Meanwhile, pro-gun ownership special interest groups, including the NRA, in the country are calling for the arming of school teachers to prevent future violence  a proposal that has been slammed by many students and teachers.

Following the Florida shooting, Donald Trump embraced the NRAs position to arm teachers with guns saying he would devote federal funding to train qualified teachers to handle weapons at schools.

We need to talk about black communities too

Caught between gun control debates are the young people affected by gun violence.

While Saturdays demonstration includes diverse students from hundreds of US cities, students of colour say they have had to deal with gun violence all their lives.

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Research on the disparity in gun homicide rates has shown that gun violence has a huge impact on black children, who are four times more likely to be killed with guns, Everytown has found.

I think its extremely important that we talk about how students of colour do face other issues when it comes to guns, Jared Sterling, a New York City high school student who joined the national walkouts earlier this month told Al Jazeera, prior to Saturdays march.

Lawmakers are proposing that teachers carry guns [and] thats dangerous because youll never know if a teacher can retaliate against a student or if they worry about going outside and getting shot from anywhere else, he also said.

Angela Bahena drove 10 hours to attend the rally [Andre Roman Medina/Al Jazeera]

David Hogg, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas student and #NeverAgain activist, also said reporters failed to give Parklands minority students prominent media attention.

My school is about 25 percent black, but the way were covered doesnt reflect that, Hogg told Axios media on Friday.

Successes

So far, the Florida student activists have appeared to somewhat succeed in influencing the state of Florida to enact stricter gun control measures, including changing the minimum buying age to 21. The federal government has also moved to ban the devices that increase the firing speed of semiautomatic rifles, known as bump stocks.

Dozens of companies have also cut ties with the NRA after students launched the #BoycottNRA movement, threatening to boycott any firm that does business with the powerful gun lobby.

A sister march has also been held in Berlin [Adam Berry/Getty Images]

Moving forward, student activists plan to continue organising protests and galvanise youth to vote as a way to enact change.

I think if 18-to-21-year-olds voted we would run this country, and we would have a progressive, like-minded, big-hearted country, said Jegol.

I think this movement will be the movement that shakes my generation and makes so many people realise that I need to get up and vote or I can lose my sister or my cousin.

Students and gun control advocates have called for another national school walkout on April 20 to commemorate the Columbine High School shooting in which 13 people were killed in 1999.Human rights groups have slammed a White House order that bans most transgender individuals from serving in the US military.

There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence Administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops, Chad Griffin, the Human Rights Council president, said in a statement on Friday.

A memo, released late on Friday, laid out the new policy, which formalises a pledge first made by US President Donald Trump on Twitter to implement a ban.

The policies set forth by the Secretary of Defense state that transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria  individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery  are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances, Trump said in the memo.

Despite objections from rights groups, as well as top military personnel and politicians on both sides of the aisle, Trump ordered the policy, claiming it was developed through extensive study by senior uniformed and civilian leaders, including combat veterans.

Transphobia masquerading as policy

A similar ban, which reversed a policy shift started under his predecessor, President Barack Obama, has previously been blocked by federal judges in four separate cases, and is currently being challenged in court.

Barring further court action, the administration cannot implement this ban, HRC said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has won a case against the ban, said on Twitter the policy effectively coerces transgender people who wish to serve into choosing between their humanity and their country, and makes it clear that transgender service members are not welcome.

It added: What the White House released tonight is transphobia masquerading as policy, for the sole purpose of carrying out President Trumps reckless and unconstitutional ban. It undermines the ability of trans service members to serve openly and military readiness as a whole.

Matt Thorn of OutServe-SLDN, a group dedicated to LGBTQ equality in the military, said in a statement that this policy is a thinly-veiled and feeble attempt by the Trump-Pence administration to justify the unnecessary discrimination of qualified patriots in order to advance their own personal agendas and in defiance of the administrations top military leadership.

He added that the plan is riddled with blatant animus, bigotry, and ignorance but conveniently void of any foundational bases or facts.

#ProtectTransTroops

Many, including several trans veterans, also took to Twitter to under #ProtectTransTroops to condemn the ban and show support to the trans community.

#ProtectTransTroops because if you value military personnel, that means ALL military personnel.  Sam Riegel (@samriegel) March 24, 2018

It's yet another day that Donald Trump and Mike Pence are exploiting our military for political points. As a military veteran and proud transgender woman, tonight hits home for me. It's personal. So, let's be absolutely clear about what this means (thread)#ProtectTransTroops  Charlotte Clymer  (@cmclymer) March 24, 2018

My great grandfather was a two-star general who served with Patton. My grandfather a Marine. Cant believe either of them would have thought me unfit to serve. Today is another disgraceful day for this country under @realDonaldTrump. #ProtectTransTroops  Jay (@ThisIsJayBrown) March 24, 2018High court prohibits electoral commission from proceeding with March 27 vote amid claims of fraud and police harassment.

Sierra Leones High Court has placed an injunction stopping the countrys electoral commission from going ahead with a presidential runoff scheduled for March 27.

The ruling on Saturday came after Ibrahim Sorie Koroma, a lawyer and member of the ruling party All Peoples Congress (APC), filed a legal request arguing that allegations of electoral fraud should be investigated before the vote takes place.

The courts order stops the National Electoral Commission (NEC) from proceeding with the vote until the hearing and determination of this court, adjourning the matter until Monday, the eve of the planned runoff.

Later on Saturday, NEC issued a statement saying it was awaiting service of documents and would continue its practical and logistical preparations for the runoff.

But hours later, in a separate statement, the Commission said they would temporarily cease all logistical preparations until the matter returned to court.

Sierra Leoneans are set to choose their new president, after an initial round of voting failed to produce an outright winner.

On March 7, APC candidate Samura Kamara finished slightly behind Julius Maada Bio, the contestant for the opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party.

The run-up to the vote has been marred by tension.

On Wednesday, the electoral commission accused police of disrupting its work, saying officers had unwarrantedly entered NEC premises, unannounced and at random, interrogated NEC staff, and obstructed them from performing their duties.

Police on Thursday denied the accusations and said they were investigating 200 cases of electoral fraud nationwide and that their role was to remove from within its ranks any NEC staff member likely to undermine fair elections.

Earlier, the African Union condemned the worrisome prevalence of election-related violence before the runoff vote.

In a statement on Tuesday, the organisation said it had learned with dismay that violence had become increasingly widespread in the country, and had included an incident in Bo City in which an NEC staff member was reportedly injured.Ankara slams European Council for backing Athens and Nicosia over Turkish arrest of Greek troops and Cyprus gas dispute.

Turkey has condemned a statement by leaders of the European Union that criticised Ankara for continued illegal actions in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea, increasing tensions between Ankara and Brussels just days before a key summit.

The European Council on Thursday called on Turkey to respect the sovereign rights of Cyprus to explore and exploit its natural resources in accordance with the EU and international law.

Turkey has vowed to prevent the Greek Cypriot government from exploring for oil or gas around the divided island, claiming that some areas of Cyprus offshore exclusive economic zone fall under its jurisdiction or that of Turkish Cypriots.

Turkeys navy has been blocking private drill ships hired by Greek Cypriots from entering some of the zones off the Cyprus coast, which the European Council called illegal.

Such wordings solely based on the Greek Cypriot and Greek claims are unacceptable and create an opportunity for some other countries to hide behind them as well, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday, adding the EU cannot be an objective actor on the Cyprus dispute.

Turkeys EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik said on Twitter on European Council conclusions: When solidarity takes over legality and equity, then no one can talk about legitimacy. Solidarity is meaningful only when it is legitimate.

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The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which has its own parliament and state institutions, is recognised only by Turkey since it unilaterally declared independence in 1983, breaking away from the Republic of Cyprus.

Cyprus had been practically divided since 1974, when Turkeys militarily intervened on the island in response to a brief Greece-inspired coup. Ankara said it acted in line with a treaty of guarantee signed in 1960 when the Republic of Cyprus was founded.

Grave concern

The Councils conclusions also expressed grave concern over the continued detention of EU citizens in Turkey, including two Greek soldiers, and calls for the swift and positive resolution of these issues in a dialogue with member states.

The soldiers were arrested on espionage charges on March 2 after entering northwestern Turkey and they have been waiting for their case to be heard.

The soldiers say they accidentally passed into Turkish land. Turkish state media reported that military sketches were found on the soldiers.

The trade of barbs come between Brussels and Ankara comes only days before a summit between EU President Donald Tusk, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker EU and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on March 26 in Varna, Bulgaria.

The meeting will discuss how to move the relationship between the two sides forward, on the basis of mutual respect and common interests.

[The EU and Turkey] will assess matters of mutual interest and recent developments in Turkey, including in the area of rule of law and fundamental freedoms, a statement by the European Council, the primary legislative institution of the EU said.Third, what works to prevent the different types of shootings and to protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners? To judge whether something works, we need to test it rigorously and without bias to develop a base of scientific evidence.

Finally, how can we implement potential interventions? How can a proven intervention that is both safe and effective be scaled up to reach every community in America? How can those effective interventions be translated into policy and legislation?

For example, gun-rights advocates point out that we need to make sure gun laws already on the books are fully implemented. The church shooting last November in Sutherland Springs, Texas, showed that we need to do much better in implementing laws designed to keep guns away from people who have previous domestic-violence convictions. Our legislators and government executives need research to develop laws and regulations that will protect our communities and protect our rights. It is not a question of either/or. With the information that science can deliver, we can do both.

After the July 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, Dickey called for an end to the de facto freeze on federal gun research. Dickey concluded that the needed research should have started decades before. Dickey died in 2017, but we agreed with his call to action six years ago, and we know he would agree with us now that Congress should act to fund research into gun-violence prevention.

Victor Dizau is president of the National Academy of Medicine. Mark Rosenberg is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and was founding director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They wrote this for The Washington Post.Turkish foreign undersecretary also set to visit Washington, perhaps next week, as part of bilateral working groups.

Turkey has said that it is continuing talks with the US over buying Patriot missile systems, while trying to iron out a number of issues between the two NATO allies.

I can say that our discussions with the US regarding Patriot missile system are continuing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy told a news conference in the capital Ankara, while discussing NATO-integrated defence systems.

Meanwhile, Russia announced earlier in March that it will begin delivery of its S-400 air defence system to Turkey in early 2020.

NATO integration

Underlining that Turkeys efforts to establish a NATO-integrated defence system are continuing, Aksoy said: Thus, our consortium with France and Italy over Eurosam [air defence systems] is being carried out in this framework in addition to talks with the US over Patriots.

In January Turkeys Defense Industries Undersecretariat and Franco-Italian manufacturer Eurosam signed an anti-missile defence system agreement.

In November, Turkey announced that it was buying S-400 air defence missiles from Russia, prompting concerns from the chairman of NATOs military committee.

Differences

Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Umit Yalcin is set to visit Washington soon, possibly next week, as part of working groups established between Turkey and the US, added Aksoy.

Turkey and the US have been trying to iron out a number of issues, principally concerning the YPG militia in Syria, a group the US has worked with, calling it a reliable ally in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

On Yalcins visit, Aksoy said: Assessment of results from the working group will be done, and a joint understanding is projected.Fighters backed by UAE accused of kidnapping young men, videos and documents sent to Al Jazeera show.

A Yemeni militia backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been accused of kidnapping several young northerners in the southern port city of Aden, with relatives alleging they have been wrongly detained, tortured and denied access to a fair trial.

In a series of videos and documents sent to Al Jazeera, the relatives said they had not heard from or seen their loved ones after they were picked up by the UAE-created Security Belt  a force set up in 2016 to police southern areas in the war-ravaged country.

The sister of Ahmed Abdullah Salam al-Meshwali, who was 19 when he went missing, said all she knew was that her brother was being held at Bir Ahmed, a military camp controlled by the Security Belt in Aden.

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My brother was in the second year of his studies at the University of Aden. One day, he came to visit us in Taiz. Upon returning, he was arrested.

We later found out that hes been imprisoned at Bir Ahmed  an Emirati-run prison. We need him released.

The mother of Farouk Abdulla Sanai, a 17-year-old who was abducted at a military checkpoint in Aden, said she was only notified of his arrest 18 months after he went missing.

My son went to find work in Aden and support me and his five sisters. He was the sole breadwinner after my husband died.

After more than a year and a half of his arrest, someone from the prison called and said Im going to do you a favour and let you speak to your son.

When I talked to Farouk, he said: Mother, help me get out from here, Im going to die.'

Lynn Maalouf, director of research at Amnesty International in the Middle East, told Al Jazeera that there had been an uptick in arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances across the country.

In the south, there have been very credible investigations into a vast network of secret detention centres where hundreds of men and boys are being arbitrarily detained.

Many of them, months at a time without any contact with the outside world, Maalouf said.

The Grill

Last year, The Associated Press news agency reported that torture, heavy beatings and sexual assault were rife in the informal prisons set up by the UAE and its allied forces.

Drawing on accounts from former detainees, lawyers and Yemeni officials, AP reported that there were at least 18 clandestine prisons across southern Yemen and they were all either hidden or off limits to Yemens government.

One man told AP that he was tied to a horizontal pole and spun around inside a circle of flame, a torture method called the grill.

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Radhya al-Mutawakel, chairperson and cofounder of Mwatana, an independent Yemeni human rights organisation, said that while prisoner exchanges were regularly undertaken by both sides, civilians were being left behind.

Most of the detainees languishing in prisons are civilians. [My organisation] constantly hears of fighters being exchanged, but civilians are the ones to suffer long periods in detention, Mutawakel told Al Jazeera.

The are many reports of people being tortured until death, she said.

The international community has prioritised the end to air strikes and bombings, and continues to call for a political settlement, but nothing is being done for those held without charge.

My brother-in-law was detained almost a year ago in Marib. My sister doesnt know where he is, whether hes alive or not.

There has to be pressure on both sides to stop these violations.Despite warnings of money laundering, instability, hacking and theft, and a lack of regulatory protections, some tech-savvy Africans prefer the volatility in bitcoin trading, the most popular virtual currency, to their prospects in the continents job market.

In Ugandas capital, an enthusiastic lecturer described his financial success with the cryptocurrency while his earnings were projected on a screen.

What I have earned in one and a half years from bitcoin is more than I earned in 10 years as a teacher, Richard M Bagorogo told his audience. I am living on bitcoin because getting a job in this country is not easy.

Many bitcoin adoptees are professionals aiming to supplement their salaries, but others are jobless millennials hoping to make a living by trading the cryptocurrency, which isnt tied to any bank or government and, like cash, allows users to spend and receive money anonymously or mostly so.

Bitcoin gospel

In Kampala, Ugandas capital, and elsewhere a small community turns up at events where people like Bagorogo preach what they call the gospel of bitcoin.

On a recent morning, Bagorogo explained how he once could not afford to enrol his children in the international school where he taught. Now, he said, his lifestyle has changed: a recent holiday in Dubai and more than enough money to help out his father.

It didnt always go smoothly, as many in Africa have little idea what bitcoin is.

When I tried to bring my cousins on board, they called my father in the village and said, Your son has gone mad,' Bagorogo recalled. For me, I was fascinated by the mathematics behind blockchain technology. But the local man is interested in money, not the mathematics, so I normally sit with them and show them how I get and withdraw my money. Once they see how easy it is, they also want bitcoin.

Mining bitcoin

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rely on blockchain, or the public, distributed ledgers that track the coins ownership. The bitcoin ledger is powered by miners, so-called because they throw computational power into the system to discover and verify cryptocurrency units, occasionally receiving  or mining  new bitcoins in return.

Bagorogo encourages people to invest in one of over two dozen global mining pools. For many who cant afford to buy and hoard large amounts, the potential returns, including dividends, can seem promising.

Such facilities, however, have faced doubts about whether they are genuine and some countries have warned of money laundering and the threat to government-backed currencies.

In China, where a substantial amount of the worlds supply of bitcoin originates, the government ordered a shutdown of all cryptocurrency mining operations in January.

The crackdown, plus hacking attacks leading to the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoin from Japanese transfer Coincheck, contributed to the volatility of the value of a single unit of bitcoin, which rose to $19,000 in December but has since fallen below $9,000.

Risks

Ugandas central bank has warned that investing in bitcoin and other digital currencies is taking a risk in the financial space where there is neither investor protection nor regulatory purview.

Kenya and Nigeria have issued similar concerns, and last year Namibia officially banned the use of cryptocurrencies for commercial purposes. But other countries in Africa appear open to the possibilities.

Last year, Tunisia announced it would launch a digital currency based on blockchain technology and South Africa, Africas most developed economy, is researching the technologys feasibility.

Despite the risks, it is not wise to dismiss cryptocurrencies at this stage, said Stephen Kaboyo, a Ugandan analyst who runs the Kampala-based financial services firm Alpha Capital Partners. But those who invest in a hugely speculative asset must first understand the risks, he warned.

Bitcoin use

In Uganda, where per capita income was less than $700 in 2016, bitcoin enthusiasts are mostly unfazed by the volatility. At least one restaurant in Kampala now accepts bitcoin, with owner Jennifer Birungi saying she had to put it on the menu to get more comfortable with cryptocurrencies.

Birungi is a registered user of the exchange platform BitPesa, which serves 6,000 customers in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. They can cash out their bitcoin in return for local currency, which can be sent directly to their mobile phones bitcoin wallets or wired to their bank accounts.

Other enthusiasts cited the relative convenience of bitcoin in financial transfers.

I used to want to buy medical equipment online but it was becoming hard. Transacting online is very expensive in Uganda with all the fees, said Moses Semulya, a doctor at a Kampala hospital. Bitcoin is changing that, making things easier and faster.

Semulya said he rues a missed opportunity to invest in bitcoin in 2016 when it was still relatively cheap. Now, he holds nearly $800 worth of it in his digital wallet, an amount he hopes will swell as more people in Africa and elsewhere turn to the cryptocurrency.

He concluded: Right now I would rather invest in bitcoin and watch this space rather than buying a plot of land.Canadian government unveils a new plan to eliminate tuberculosis from Inuit communities in the Arctic by 2030

Montreal, Canada  Natan Obed does not mince words: staggering tuberculosis rates in Inuit communities across Canadas northern Arctic region have reached the level of a crisis.

Our tuberculosis rates are exceptional, Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), an Inuit advocacy organisation, told Al Jazeera.

We have to think about this as a preventable public health crisis.

But despite the grim warning, Obed said he is more hopeful than ever before, that tuberculosis can be treated, prevented and eventually eliminated from Inuit communities.

The government is considering [and] taking ownership of past wrongs. It is acknowledging the unacceptable nature of the current status of tuberculosis in Inuit Nunangat and is working with us in partnership, he said.

On Friday, the eve of World Tuberculosis Day, the federal government unveiled a plan to eliminate tuberculosis from Inuit Nunangat, the traditional Inuit homeland, by 2030.

A bacterial infection that primarily affects the lungs, tuberculosis spreads through the air when a person infected with the illness coughs, sneezes or otherwise shares tuberculosis-infected germs.

In 2016, the incidence of tuberculosis was 170.1 per 100,000 Inuit peoples in Canada, compared with just 0.6 per 100,000 Canadian-born, non-Indigenous people, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported.

That is 296 times higher for Inuit than for non-indigenous people born in Canada.

In its announcement, the Canadian government also said it intends to cut the prevalence of active tuberculosis by at least 50 percent by 2025.

It should never have taken us so long to get to this day, Jane Philpott, Canadas minister of indigenous services, said in a statement.

Our tuberculosis rates are exceptional. Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK)

Ottawa said it would address social issues tied to the disease, such as housing, food security and nutrition and access to health services and put Inuit needs at the forefront of its strategy.

It also earmarked $27.5m over the next five years in its 2018 budget to fight the disease in Inuit Nunangat, among other investments in health services and housing in the region.

We are determined to move forward with a strategy that is both community-owned and community-driven and one that addresses the social determinants of health, Philpott said.

Risk factors

While tuberculosis in Canada has been steadily on the decline over the past decades and the overall rate remains low compared with other parts of the world, the rate among indigenous peoples in general and Inuit, in particular, is disproportionately high.

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Social factors such as poverty, inadequate housing and homelessness greatly contribute to the spread of tuberculosis.

In the case of Inuit communities, a history of overcrowded and poor-quality housing in Canada is a significant factor in the incidence of the disease, said Frank Tester, adjunct professor of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba.

Tuberculosis first came to Canada with the arrival of European settlers in the 1700s, Canadas Public Health Association said, and Inuit were exposed to tuberculosis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Just over 65,000 people identified as Inuit  an indigenous population that lives in the Arctic  in Canada in 2016, according to the national census.

Most live in 35 communities in Inuit Nunangat, an area that spreads across Nunatsiavut (Labrador), Nunavik (northern Quebec), the territory of Nunavut and the region of Inuvialuit in the Northwest Territories.

But traditionally, Inuit had lived in igloos, tents or other types of shelter out on the land, Tester explained, because they migrated seasonally to access natural resources and maintain their way of life.

Beginning in the 1950s and into the 1960s, however, they were moved into more permanent settlements close to the outposts set up for fur traders and the federal police force (RCMP).

But there was no housing for them, Tester told Al Jazeera.

The result was terrible, absolutely terrible, living conditions: drafty, cold, damp, some of them had no floors in them, no proper sanitation, water problems. People basically lived in horrible, horrible slums.

The housing situation contributed hugely to the tuberculosis epidemic, he said, and it continues to be a major factor today.

Last year, a Canadian Senate report said Inuit still faced an acute housing crisis.

Severe overcrowding, substandard homes, and a lack of affordable and suitable housing options has left many Inuit families one step away from homelessness, the report said.

In its 2018 budget, the Canadian government earmarked $400m to improve housing in Inuit communities over the next decade.

Historical trauma

The way the federal government historically treated tuberculosis among Inuit and other indigenous peoples in Canada must also be addressed, Obed said.

The federal government first sent a coastguard ship to the eastern Arctic to test Inuit for tuberculosis in the early 1950s. Anyone found to be infected with the illness was taken south to hospitals and sanitoria for treatment.

One-third of Inuit in Canada were infected with tuberculosis in the 1950s, the Public Health Association said, while by 1956, one-seventh of the Inuit population was receiving treatment for the illness in southern Canada.

There were no hospitals established in the north for the treatment of Inuit. They were removed to southern institutions for the most part, said Maureen Lux, a professor of history at Brock University in Ontario.

For many, that meant being separated from their families, often for several years.

Inuit receiving treatment in the south had no way to communicate with their loved ones back home, who were often never informed if their relatives died or were buried thousands of kilometres away.

It was a basic lack of respect for our human rights that existed as government policy for a long period of time, said Obed, adding that Inuit leaders have called for the federal government to formally apologise for its past policy.

Ottawa is also working on a database that indigenous families can use to find out what happened to people who were taken south for treatment.

It was a basic lack of respect for our human rights that existed as government policy for a long period of time. Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK)

Lux told Al Jazeera that Canada had two separate systems to deal with tuberculosis at the time.

She said that while non-indigenous Canadians being treated for the illness were considered outpatients and prescribed antibiotics they could take at home, Inuit peoples were kept for years, oftentimes in institutions.

The reasons for that are complex, but at [the] heart, it was the notion that indigenous people couldnt be trusted to take their medication, so they had to be hospitalised. They had to be institutionalised, she said.

Its important to try to always link tuberculosis with living conditions and power imbalances and colonialism in Canada.

A story of colonisation

For his part, Obed said financing tuberculosis treatment and prevention is a challenge, as is having enough people to reach the many isolated communities in the Arctic to implement a plan.

Social issues will also need to be addressed.

This is a story of colonisation and its a story of resilience and the work that we do now is part of self-determination, he said.

We see this not just as treating a public health issue; we see it also as taking back our control and our place in our own society.Former first ladys ties to ivory smuggling ring under investigation after undercover mission by wildlife photographer.

Zimbabwe has launched an investigation into the countrys former first lady, Grace Mugabe, over her alleged involvement in an ivory smuggling ring.

The probe was opened after a three-month undercover mission by Australian wildlife photographer Adrian Steirn.

Speaking exclusively to Al Jazeera, Steirn said he uncovered the poaching and smuggling syndicate when he began looking into the illegal ivory trade in December.

Ivory was being sourced either from the national parks vault, being thieved or pilfered, or from live elephants being killed by poaching syndicates. The syndicate would then sell to Grace Mugabes clientele, he said.

She would then be able to pack that and send it out through the airport. Anything through that airport, that was the property of the first lady, was not searched or scanned in any way.

Steirn has gathered documents, undercover videos and testimonies, which he showed to Al Jazeeras Investigative Unit. They expose the syndicate and the former first ladys involvement in ivory smuggling, he said.





Controlled ivory trade is allowed in Zimbabwe, but its export is not permitted.

In a written statement to Al Jazeera, Christopher Mutsvangwa, a special adviser to President Emmerson Mnangagwa, said Zimbabwes government will seek answers from all parties including former First Lady Grace Mugabe  about their knowledge of the illegal export of prohibited items from our country.

Two alleged smugglers have been charged with possession of ivory.

Al Jazeera contacted Grace Mugabes staff, lawyers and relatives for comment, but they did not respond.

During the presidency of her husband, Robert, she was a controversial figure, earning the nickname Gucci Grace for her extravagant shopping sprees.

Her hopes of succeeding him were dashed when the army forced Mugabe from power in November, and Mnangagwa took over.

That was when Steirn saw an opening to investigate, going undercover as an ivory buyer.

Three weeks later, in December, authorities in Zimbabwe seized an illegal shipment of 200 kilograms of ivory destined for Malaysia at Harares Robert Mugabe International Airport.

Steirn said the evidence he gathered connects that shipment to Grace Mugabe and the smuggling syndicate.

Al Jazeeras Malcolm Webb, reporting from Johannesburg, said Mnangagwas government was eager to clean up its international image after decades of Mugabe rule.

The poaching and smuggling investigation is the first major challenge to the Mugabe family dynasty since the change of power, he said.Thousands of fighters and relatives depart for opposition-held areas after two out of three rebel groups surrender.

Syrian government forces are close to taking full control of Eastern Ghouta, the last rebel-held area near the capital, Damascus.

Two out of three rebel groups that had been controlling the enclave have already surrendered, with thousands of fighters and their relatives departing for opposition-held areas in the north of the country.

The third rebel group, Jaish al-Islam, which controls the city of Douma, has so far refused to give in.

However, it is understood that Jaish al-Islam is also close to reaching an evacuation deal following negotiations with the Russian army, an ally of Syrian forces.

Al Jazeeras Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, said on Saturday that talks between Jaish al-Islam and the Russian military had earlier collapsed due to the groups refusal to be evacuated to Idlib, a northwestern province still largely under rebel control.

Jaish al-Islam does not have good relations with the rebel groups which dominate Idlib province, said Khodr.

What we understand is that they may be sent to an eastern region  close to Lebanons border, she added.

Evacuation deals reached

On February 18, Syrian government forces backed by Russian fighter jets tightened their siege on Eastern Ghouta with a heavy military offensive that killed 1,500 and wounded more than 5,000.

Nearly 400,000 people remained in the enclave  under opposition control since mid-2013  before the latest offensive began.





On Wednesday, the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group agreed to surrender Harasta town after reaching an evacuation deal due to the bombing and [government] siege and the lack of medicine and the lack of place to move.

Two days later, Faylaq ar-Rahman, a group controlling the towns of Zamalka, Irbin and Jobar in Eastern Ghouta, announced a similar deal to evacuate fighters and civilians to Idlib.

As part of the deal, a prisoner exchange between Faylaq ar-Rahman and the Syrian government was expected to take place, while the Russian military police would be deployed in the areas that the group controlled.

Syrian state television broadcast live footage of eight Syrian men who were released after being detained by Faylaq ar-Rahman for more than a year.

Around 5,200 Syrians have been evacuated from Eastern Ghouta so far, according to a report by Anadolu news agency on Saturday.

We will leave Ghouta but one day we will return, Hazem al-Shami, an evacuee, said. They have managed to silence the revolution but it will never die.

We repeatedly asked the international community for help but they didnt do anything. Its a very difficult time for us but we will return.

Not safe

Syrian state media reported that the army has been removing barriers, landmines and improvised explosive devices along the road to Irbin to open a new corridor for the evacuation.

In the early hours of Saturday, bulldozers removed giant sand barriers from a main road in Harasta so that fighters and their families could be transported to the north.

It was a very bad situation. The children were hungry because of the siege and scared because of the bombing, said a mother evacuating Harasta.

They didnt have milk. We pleaded with the aid agencies but no one helped us.





However, those choosing to be evacuated are not heading to a safe place, according to Khodr.

Idlib is not a safe place; it has been coming under attack from the skies for years now, said our correspondent.

Its also overcrowded. More than a million internally displaced Syrians are there. Most of these people are going to the unknown; many of them will not find any jobs, so it is a very difficult situation for those people.

Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week, killing dozens of people.

Idlib is also troubled with fighting between rebel groups.

On Saturday, a car bomb exploded at the headquarters for al-Qaedas former affiliate in Idlib city, killing at least seven people and injuring 25 others.

According to UN officials, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Syrias seven-year civil war.







Dr Marc Lamont Hill is an award-winning journalist and author and is the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. Hill is known for his work addressing the intersections of race, justice, politics and culture. His latest best-selling book is We Still Here: Pandemics, Policing, Protest and Possibility which follows on the success of Nobody: Casualties of Americas War on the Vulnerable from Flint to Ferguson. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the US National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.Before making plans for your Easter celebration, consider what the Greatest Generation was doing at this time in 1946. They were making personal sacrifice, even though they had done years of that during World War II.

But now they had to sacrifice again to feed those left starving overseas in the aftermath of the war. This is essential history to remember because todays global hunger crisis is the worst since that era.

In 1946, instead of spending lots of money on Easter celebrations, Americans gave to the worlds hungry. The Reverend Elmore McKee of St. Georges Episcopal Church in New York said, It would be shocking indeed for us, to commemorate our Lords death, triumph and resurrection, by spending large sums of money for Easter flowers that burst forth for a season and then wither, instead of using the same funds (and more) to rescue lives in Europe, Asia and Africa where famine is a reality for millions of people.

The church set an example and gave up the flower displays for a food drive. When church members learned of the cause, they even doubled their donations. The church also got flowers anyway for the Easter mass because their members went to the forest to round some up.'Drain the Swamp' Becomes 'Remove the Cancer'

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump's "Drain the Swamp" rhetoric as a campaign gimmick. Many believed that's all it was. Clearly, it was a message never before heard from an elected politician. Even when he was a long shot, a "could never be elected" candidate, his message struck fear in the hearts and minds of the establishment. Oh, never mind  he didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning. But still, what if he did, and what if he meant what he said? The video below nicely tracks the ebbs and flows of the last presidential campaign. As it points out, as the impossible began to look possible, the corruption increased.

Imagine the horror as Trump went from impossible to the Republican nominee. Some in the Democratic Party were delighted, believing that it made for a sure win for their candidate. Why Hillary had trouble beating Old Crazy Bernie despite her illegal tactics never seemed to register with them or their allies in the media. Drain the Swamp Many in this country still do not believe how corrupt their government is. To many, Trump is merely a baboon  not intelligent enough to manage government and not proper or politically correct enough to represent them. To the horde of thieves inside the Beltway, he is the million-in-one shot. As such, he is now a threat that cannot be tolerated. His tenure has already highlighted and uncovered inefficiencies and illegalities. And he is just getting started and beginning to focus on the really criminal stuff. "Drain the swamp" was a catchy campaign phrase, but it was inaccurate in the sense that swamps do not metastasize. They can become more dangerous over time, but generally, they do not become bigger. Washington is more like a cancer, which does grow in size. The election of Trump has revived the cancer called Washington and caused it to metastasize. To be sure, if untreated, it would have killed the country. The fact that Trump's election uncovered it and made it virulent is a positive. It must be excised, or it will kill Trump and whatever freedom is left. Remove the Cancer "Drain the swamp" has morphed into "remove the cancer." Trump is a threat to the wealth accumulation of the criminals. Members of both parties are against him, although Republicans are more cautious and sneaky in their opposition. The wealth of many inside the Beltway is at stake. So too is their freedom from prosecution. Ditto for very, very powerful beneficiaries outside the Beltway. Trump is no longer viewed as a baboon. Instead, he is an existential threat that must be stopped. Up to this point, he has shown himself to be more clever and smarter than the criminals arrayed against him. The cancer must kill Trump, or Trump will remove the cancer. What Next? Trump has now entered the critical phase of his presidency. His very presence threatens this crooked establishment in ways never before seen. He presents risks to both Democrats and Republicans. If I could purchase a life insurance policy on him, I would consider doing so. Most voters probably think such talk is ridiculous. Perhaps, but that is likely because they don't understand the stakes. Perhaps I am overstating the case, but I think not. Trump has taken on the biggest and most powerful criminal cartel in the world. This cartel includes the police at least at the federal level (FBI, CIA, NSA). It consists of well dressed, quasi-educated types who gain office and then plunder the people they are supposed to represent. It also consists of a Pravda-like media out to protect the existing criminal cartel. Major businesses are at risk. They provide both hidden and unhidden benefits to officeholders as the quid for the quo of favorable legislation. It is never out of respect that a business contributes to a politician. These "contributions" are investments made only because they yield profitable returns for the provider. The Mueller investigation is supported by both parties. It should never have begun, but it was necessary to remove Trump from office. It also was necessary to protect the criminals in Washington who are Mueller's friends. For those who admire the "integrity" of Mueller, check out his history. It is one of bumbling investigations. Further, Mueller was at the center of some of the shady dealings in the Obama administration. Mueller has integrity compared to the rest of the swamp-dwellers in the same way that the Unabomber could claim to have integrity compared to Jack the Ripper. Integrity in Washington means something different outside the Beltway. As the Mueller investigation is increasingly viewed as a fraud, the Establishment must co-opt Donald Trump to their side. This possibility seems remote. That means they must take him out. If Mueller cannot do it, other means must be found. The stakes are too high to allow him to continue in office. Monty Pelerin occasionally blogs on a number of topics at Monty Pelerin's World.Leaks such as the one of the memo warning President Trump not to congratulate Vladimir Putin on Putin's re-election will undoubtedly stop, as McMaster and his staff were viewed as the source for many of them.

The departure of national security adviser H.R. McMaster and his replacement by former U.N. ambassador John Bolton are both significant and welcome. Bolton will be a team player on Team Trump and not someone with his own agenda who seeks the advice and counsel of those trying to undermine the Trump administration.

The White House national security team, already facing calls for the ouster of top adviser H.R. McMaster, was tagged by a key lawmaker with leaking confidential notes ordering President Trump not to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin for his election win. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a conservative leader and foreign policy expert, expressed outrage at the leak and suggested that it and others thought to come from the national security council are crimes[.] ... Meadows said that since it dealt with a foreign leader, the leak "had to" come from the president's national security staff, headed by McMaster.

It is no mystery why former national security adviser general Michael Flynn was unmasked by the Deep State and became the early target of a series of illegal leaks targeting Team Trump. Flynn was an unabashed critic of President Barack Hussein Obama and someone who would take a bullet for Trump in any political battle. The Deep State had no use for someone like Flynn and preferred someone less loyal to Trump and more accommodating to the "resistance" put in his place. That man was to be H.R. McMaster, and the story of how he got to be President Trump's national security adviser speaks volumes about his true loyalties.

As Israeli journalist Caroline Glick notes in a recent article:

[T]here is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place. Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara Lago [sic] for a half an hour. He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone. And who recommended McMaster? You won't believe this. Senator John McCain. That's right. The NSA got his job on the basis of a recommendation from the man who just saved Obamacare. Obviously, at this point, Trump has nothing to lose by angering McCain. I mean what will he do? Vote for Obamacare?

President Trump has expressed his continued support for McMaster, even after a letter McMaster sent to Benghazi liar and serial unmasker Susan Rice was revealed in which McMaster said he was perfectly fine with a person who should be a target of her very own special prosecutor retaining her security clearance. As Fox News Politics reported on August 5:

Trump issued a statement late Friday supporting McMaster. "General McMaster and I are working very well together," the statement read. "He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country." McMaster already had been in the spotlight for the series of firings he's ordered on the National Security Council. Most recently, he ousted Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council who had been viewed as a Trump loyalist. But Circa first reported Thursday that McMaster sent a letter giving Rice access to classified material, weeks after her alleged role was disclosed in 'unmasking' identities of Trump associates in intelligence reports.

McMaster may have served his country well while in uniform, but he is not serving his country well as national security adviser. McMaster insists that the letter to Rice was a pro forma letter sent to every former national security adviser and every former president. But Susan Rice's record is anything but pro forma, and precedent can be broken, especially when the individual arguably should be in jail and not in public service.

McMaster's cozy relationship with Benghazi liar Susan Rice, who thought traitor Bowe Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction" and was likely part of the cabal that unmasked Flynn, has long raised eyebrows:

Last year, McMaster drew the ire of nearly all Trump supporters when he inexplicably defended Obama flack Susan Rice's unmasking of Trump Team members for the purposes of spying. In addition, McMaster even went so far as to consult Susan Rice on issues and take her advice.

McMaster is virtually alone among Trump associates and supporters in thinking Susan Rice did nothing wrong in the unmasking and leaking of information on Trump officials like Flynn:

National security adviser H.R. McMaster has reportedly determined that Susan Rice, who served in his role during the Obama administration, did not do anything wrong amid accusations of "unmasking" the identities of Trump associates. Republican lawmakers are trying to conclude whether Rice revealed the identities of Trump transition team members that were redacted in intelligence reports. Bloomberg on Thursday cited two intelligence officials saying that McMaster had found no evidence of wrongdoing. The news comes the same day Circa reported that McMaster sent Rice a letter at the end of April informing her that she would keep her security clearance and that the National Security Council would waive her "need to know" requirement.

McMaster's activities and personnel decisions belied his loyalty to the current administration and certainly called into question his professed pro-Israel credentials.

McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump. According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews. Many of you will remember that a few days before Trump's visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers were blindsided when the Americans suddenly told them that no Israeli official was allowed to accompany Trump to the Western Wall. What hasn't been reported is that it was McMaster who pressured Trump to agree not to let Netanyahu accompany him to the Western Wall. At the time, I and other reporters were led to believe that this was the decision of rogue anti-Israel officers at the US consulate in Jerusalem. But it wasn't. It was McMaster. And even that, it works out wasn't sufficient for McMaster. He pressured Trump to cancel his visit to the Wall and only visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial  ala the Islamists who insist that the only reason Israel exists is European guilt over the Holocaust.

McMaster's actions have raised the question of just whose side he is on. As has been noted here, McMaster has retained all former Obama assistants to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, including Ben Rhodes's staffers, as the question of who is leaking classified information for political purposes remains. That under-covered story was brought up by retired U.S. Army colonel Tony Schaffer on Lou Dobbs's show on Fox Business:

Ben Rhodes and Barack Obama's staff are still in the National Security Council. H.R. McMaster has not fired any of them. Instead he fired the man who agrees with Trump's agenda, Col. [Derek] Harvey. McMaster doesn't see it as a problem. "There's no such thing as a holdover," H.R. McMaster said back in July, referring to the career professionals who stayed on the council after the presidential transition. McMaster added that career staffers are loyal to the president. Lt. Col. [Anthony] Schaffer reacted on Fox Business. "One of the things I heard today was H. R. McMaster has not fired a number of people who worked for Obama. In fact, those who worked for some of the staffers, Ben Rhodes for example, well Ben Rhodes has got his staff is still there. It's like having a rattlesnake next to your bed and thinking somehow if you're just nice enough to the snake it's going to be nice. It's not like that."

In a Facebook post, Glick comments on McMaster's keeping Ben Rhodes staff members while purging Trump loyalists:

McMaster disagrees [with] and actively undermines Trump's agenda on just about every salient issue on his agenda. He fires all of Trump's loyalists and replaces them with Trump's opponents, like Kris Bauman, an Israel hater and Hamas supporter who McMaster hired to work on the Israel-Palestinian desk. He allows anti-Israel, pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Iran Obama people like Robert Malley to walk around the NSC and tell people what to do and think. He has left Ben (reporters know nothing about foreign policy and I lied to sell them the Iran deal) Rhodes' and Valerie Jarrett's people in place.

Trump appreciates loyalty and is in turn loyal to those who faithfully share his agenda. Clearly, H.R. McMaster is not. Trump's loyalty to him was misplaced. A good step in draining the swamp is to replace McMaster with John Bolton, who will promote the Trump agenda and not fraternize with Trump's political enemies.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.Mass Murders and a Crisis in Confidence

The recent slaughter in Florida is only the latest in a long line, and unfortunately, we should expect that there will be more. The sad facts emerging from these events do not bode well for what will likely happen. What is evident: a) There is repeatedly complete incompetence by the authorities who are receiving plenty of advance warning.

b) Response by police often seems to be to keep the lucky escapees safe, and wait for the inside situation to seem safe before searching for the killer. For evidence of leadership incompetence, one need recognize only the pathetic lack of action of the local and federal law enforcement, upon multiple warnings from those who "saw something and said something" in Florida. Another sad fact is that many states, and even federal organizations, by their self-known incompetence or negligence in sending on mental health and felony conviction information, are knowingly enabling attacks and making background checks done by others nothing more than a false sense of security. Even worse, in the 2015 Garland, Texas attack, there are plenty of indications that the now thoroughly discredited FBI leadership knew the location, date, and time of the planned attack yet did nothing to prevent it. Finally, the profound lack of information now six months after the mass murder in Las Vegas has the entire country rolling its eyes at the incompetency of the leadership there  they can't even put out a decent report on what happened after the fact, so why should we think they could help the next time it happens there? For evidence of inadequate police response, one can look at the actions of the local law enforcement in Florida, who, evidently following protocol, took up safe spots outside the building until their central command deemed it safe to enter. Or one can look at how it took forty-five minutes to enter the hotel room of the Las Vegas murderer, long after the shooting had stopped. To the average American reading the news, the clear message is this: the authorities can't be trusted. The only way to gain that trust is to let the public know, county by county, that the rules of engagement are "immediately enter the building, find the killer, kill the killer." Without that, law enforcement should recognize that as these events continue to happen, they will soon have a situation where a parent, receiving panicked text messages from his child trapped inside, drives past the police waiting in their appointed positions behind trees, skids to a stop at the entrance, and enters the building to kill the killer. Most police, I'm certain, would be wishing they'd been given the standard operating procedure to enter immediately rather than being forced to listen, shot by shot, as more children are murdered while they are required to "wait in a safe space until there are three officers present" or whatever the rule happens to be. Further, they certainly don't want to be dealing with parents running into the building, complicating their decisions. With all of the talk about putting an officer in every school, it does not appear that any of the authorities are planning on informing the public of what would really happen. Apparently, things won't change much. It's just that instead of waiting for three cops to show up, the victims need to wait for only two  you see, we're about to spend all that money to put an officer on campus so that the officer can be the one to call 911 and wait for help! This proves the "leadership incompetency" point above, where the authorities are completely untrustworthy, because this sad fact has not been raised in any of the discussions to date  and likely would not be raised until the first time we had a shooting at a school with an officer on site, and results didn't change, because the officer still had to wait for others to arrive. Future killers, who clearly study a bit before they launch their attacks, readily recognize this and will not be fazed by the fact that there's a cop at the front door as their co-conspirators let them in at the back of the gym. They know they've got at least six to eight minutes to do their damage without any fear of reprisal. An elementary analysis of a typical attack would lead to a curve similar to that above, with kill rates highest in the first few minutes, then tapering off as many people have escaped and the killer must now go room to room to seek out those hiding. If a police force maintains a requirement of three officers before acting, then having one officer sitting at the school will have a minimal impact upon casualties. One can quibble about the actual numbers on the graph, but the big picture won't change much: response starting at time = 0, either by an on-site officer or by an armed teacher, is what will save lives. This graph, populated with actual data, should be a fundamental part of any discussion on proposed solutions. The fact that we haven't seen anything like this yet points again to the incompetence of the authorities even in the discussion of the topic. The police forces serve the public, so the members of the public deserve to know what type of service they're paying for. It won't take many more of these "wait while the situation quiets down" incidents before they give up and take matters into their own hands. That's certainly not a desirable development, but it likely will happen unless we see competence and communication by law enforcement leadership, down to the local level, much clearer than we've seen to date. Image: Terry Johnston via Wikimedia Commons.The British Left Must Get It Right on Russia

British prime minister Theresa May and members of her government have declared that Moscow is culpable for the poisoning of the Russian former spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury on March 4, 2018. Among other actions, May expelled 23 Russian diplomats based in London. President Donald Trump also denounced the Russian government for violating international law. President Vladimir Putin, alleging he found out about the attack only from the media, denied the allegation, saying Russia does not have such nerve agents. Russia, he said, had destroyed all of its chemical weapons under the supervision of international organizations, and did it first. Russian spokespeople provide alternative explanations for the Salisbury incident as well as for other attacks. The U.K. did it to fuel anti-Russian sentiment. The U.S. did it to destabilize international relations. The nerve agent, Novichok, came from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Sweden. It could even have come from the prospective mother-in-law of Yulia Skripal, one of the victims in Salisbury.

President Trump, apparently defying the advice of his aides, and Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the E.U. Commission, have both offered congratulations to Putin on his re-election as president of the Russian Federation on March 18, 2018 and intimated the possibility of meetings with the Russian leader in the not too distant future. These overtures, which do not endorse the election result, are different in degree from the attitude toward Russia of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labor Party. In his 1940 essay "Inside the Whale," George Orwell berated the different political writings of his time, asserting that "so much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot." His witticism is amply borne out by the equivocation and feeble response of Corbyn on responsibility for the nerve gas attacks in Britain. Every plausible explanation is that Russians, if not ordered by Putin himself, were behind the attacks. Corbyn suggested that the British government not "rush ahead of the evidence" and should wait before imposing any further sanctions against Russia. Even if the weapons were made in Russia and originally manufactured by the Russian state, he argued, there has to be an absolutely definitive answer to the question: from where did the nerve agent come? It could be someone other than the Kremlin. In view of recent films and plays relating to the lionhearted, unambiguous role of Winston Churchill in World War II, it is enticing to imagine Corbyn as P.M. in 1939-40. We would then perhaps know that Adolf Hitler was not responsible for Nazi bombing attacks on U.K. towns such as Coventry, Plymouth, and London. The assaults might have and probably did come from a rogue element in the Luftwaffe who were interested in discrediting Hitler and wanted to bring a real tough ruler to power. Allegations that Hitler was responsible were a smear campaign by the Jews, who were trying to damage the reputation of the Nazi regime. An appropriate response to the Russian denials of implication in the attempts was the reply given on December 22, 1944 by Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division defending Bastogne, to the German emissaries wanting him to surrender. The reply was simply "nuts!" Corbyn's hesitation to acknowledge Russian concealment of the truth, and his view that there was no definite answer to the question of the source of the nerve gas used in attacks in Britain, does not make him Putin's "puppet." But these actions are indications of the weak foreign policy characteristic of the Labor leader during his career and its present danger. This weakness has been exhibited by some of Corbyn's supporters, such as the far leftist Seumas Milne, Corbyn's director of communications, who doubts that Russia was behind the Salisbury attack. Corbyn has been critical of the foreign policy of the U.S. and the West on most issues. He has been selective, sometimes forgetful, in his choice of associates and meetings with controversial figures. His judgment on Middle East affairs follows a similar pattern. Only recently was it divulged that Corbyn belonged to a secret 3,200-member Facebook group called Palestine Live that posted anti-Semitic comments along with conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds and Israeli involvement in 9/11. He claimed he was signed up without his knowing and that he himself did not post any anti-Semitic comments. It is revealing that Prime Minister May, chairing the National Security Council to discuss vital security issues, did not invite Corbyn, the leader of the opposition. This weakness of the British left is important in the present context, when the U.K. has to face up to the use by Russians of chemical weapons and nerve gas against residents in Britain, as does the U.S. to deal with two other crucial issues: Russian meddling in Western elections and Russian military policies as a major power with a large nuclear arsenal now that Putin has been re-elected with 76.6 % of the vote. The U.S. and Europe have to face the reality of Putin's election. In his speech in Moscow on March 1, 2018 on the situation in the country, Putin made clear his challenge to the U.S., whose attempt to curb and control Russia, he said, had failed. Putin was critical of the U.S. directly and indirectly for a number of reasons. He blames the U.S. for withdrawing in June 2002 from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty signed in 1972. He is critical of U.S. large-scale military exercises in Eastern Europe. He asserts that Trump has introduced restrictions and sanctions that are illegal from the standpoint of international law. Most important, Putin boasts of Russia's powerful economic and defense potential. The country has 7,000 nuclear weapons and 2,000 missiles to deliver them. Russia can defend itself with new generations of weapons and technology. The modernized nuclear arsenal includes the intercontinental RS-28 Sarmat missile, which is able to fly 6,800 miles with a payload of 15 warheads; a nuclear cruise missile that can reach the U.S.; a hypersonic missile, the Kinzhal, that can travel at more than ten times the speed of sound; an RS-26 ballistic missile, Avangard; and drones launched from submarines. Putin claims that Russian nuclear weapons can evade U.S. antimissile defenses. Trump has congratulated Putin on his electoral victory, but he is no ineffectual Jeremy Corbyn. He must understand, as the British leftist does not, that Putin must be prevented from sowing disorder in the U.S. as in Britain. He must be aware that Putin is concealing nuggets of truth in a haystack of prevarications, fabrications, and misdirection. But if Putin is unpredictable, he is not irrational. He has not been more aggressive in Ukraine, largely deterred by U.S. and Western sanctions and military preparations. Putin, in his speech on October 30, 2017 at the unveiling in Moscow of the Wall of Grief, a memorial honoring the victims of Stalinism, said the terrible past cannot be erased from the national memory and cannot be justified by anything. Both President Trump and Prime Minister May, if not Jeremy Corbyn, are conscious of the danger of Russian nuclear weapons, as shown in videos of warheads aimed at Florida and its cyber-warfare. Both are equally aware of the need to de-escalate any nuclear arms race with Russia. This calls for two things: more reprisals against and checks on Russia and also dialogue with Russia and practical cooperation on controversial issues including Syria, Yemen, international terrorism, and limits on an arms race. It is too optimistic to expect no tears, no fears, but there is always tomorrow.Before you scoff, hear me out. And for the record, this is not a dig at Trump. Rather it is an observation of the inherent attractiveness of MAGA.

The BSC is different from the established left, which is epitomized by dinosaurs like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic Party. This became evident in the 2016 primaries, when the Democratic National Committee (DNC), under the inept leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, clumsily rigged primary elections and caucuses to ensure that Hillary Clinton won the party's nomination.

Although glossed over by the liberal media, that wound never healed. In fact, an argument can be made that the BSC was decisive in electing Donald Trump. Some 12 percent of those who voted for crazy Bernie in the primary ended up voting for Trump in November. Many others stayed home on election day. And then there were those who went off the reservation entirely and cast their ballots for Jill Stein of the Green Party. All this helped Trump win.

So what accounts for this chasm between the BSC and the Democratic Party establishment? A starting point is that the Sanders people are relatively young. They come from the Millennial generation, which is generally defined as those between the ages of 20 and 35 in 2016. The Millennials are 76 million strong, and they now slightly outnumber the Baby Boomers.

A second point of dispute is that the BSC is not excited by the identity politics of race, sex, and gender, which is the bread and butter of the Democratic Party. Their focus is instead centered on pocketbook issues. Granted, a good percentage of these young people tilt toward socialism. What motivates them the most are issues like free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage, universal Medicare coverage, soak-the-rich tax rates, and other pipe dreams. One could sum up this outlook as wanting to stay in a cocoon like what their parents provided for them...forever. "Snowflakes" is the term often applied to many of them.

The Sanders left also has a deep distrust for the financial, academic, and cultural elites, whereas the establishment left is more than tied to the institutions that these elites dominate. They are those institutions. The BSC also resents big corporations, Wall Street, and the media. Again, these entities are mainstays of the Democratic Party.

This is not to say there isn't considerable overlap between the BSC and the Pelosi-Schumer Democratic Party. There is on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, gun control, tax-the-rich, gender flexibility, weak religious faith, and the like, but not so much on immigration.

As to trade and tariffs, the Sanders left is anti-globalism and against what is commonly called free trade. It's not for nothing that Sanders himself has come out in support of Trump's efforts to rearrange the trading system to be more in alignment with American interests. He even tacitly said he supports Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs.

The BSC has even more overlap with Trump. The Millennials are decidedly against nation-building and foreign adventures. And they view the Washington swamp with complete disdain because they see the swamp as being elitist and a drag on their aspirations.

There will never be a political marriage between Donald Trump and crazy Bernie. But that doesn't preclude many of the BSC sneaking under the sheets to find warm comfort in the Trump agenda. Why? Because although the Millennials have been indoctrinated from kindergarten through college with the dogmas of liberalism, self-interest will eventually prevail.

The Millennials are young. They want decent careers and a chance for the lifestyle their parents had. It may take them some time, but sooner or later, it will dawn on many (not all) of them that the only chance to obtain that is with Trump's MAGA agenda and not the policies of the Democratic Party.

Some might argue that the allure of the free lunch of socialism will tightly tether the BSC to the left. No doubt it will for a number of them. But for many others, they will come to see Barack Obama's "Life of Julia" for the lie it is. The Millennials will realize in time that 1) only so many can fit in the hammock of government dependency before it breaks and 2) socialism can never expanded America's wealth; it can only diminish it, as it has everywhere it has been tried.

Critics of my view will point out news headlines that show the BSC disrupting colleges and screaming in the streets as proof of the hopelessness of the Millennials. But ask yourself: who is presenting those pictures? It's the liberal media, and as always, the media have an agenda. Just like the dishonest polls the media peddle, here the media are attempting to form opinion rather than report.

Don't misunderstand. I am not saying that such disruptions don't take place. What I am saying is that they are unrepresentative of the greater Millennial population. When conservatives like Ann Coulter, Charles Murray, and Ben Shapiro get hooted down at a campus event, the lynch mob is not students in a STEM or business program. Neither are they college jocks, ex-servicemen in college, or students working to pay their tuition. If the disruptors are students at all, they come for the most part from the small whackadoodle departments on campus, egged on by a left-wing professor. Some protesters might even have Soros money in their pockets. As is always the case, the media will never give the public a true picture.

The BSC will surely not come out en masse for Trump in 2020. But neither will they be there as a monolithic voting bloc, as, say, blacks are, for any establishment Democrat. To capture more of the BSC or at last to dissuade them from voting the Democrat line as happened in 2016, Trump does not have to accommodate their socialistic proclivities. He merely has to keep hammering away at jobs and target messages to the Millennials of how MAGA improves the economic environment and opportunities for them. It's all going to come down to the economy. My betting is that Trump can do it.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.WaPo uses calculator to excuse Palestinian terrorists

Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler, in Netanyahu goes too far in claims of Palestinian authority payments to terrorists (3/18/18), claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exaggerated how much the Palestinian Authority is paying terrorists. To most in a sane world, $1.00 would be too much, but to Kessler -- he prefers to split hairs  distracting from the reality of the issue by misdirection. No more evidence is needed than seeing his attack on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by sort of disproving the exact amount that the Palestinian leadership pays its terrorists  yes terrorists - and/or the families of terrorists who attack Israelis. Reading the fact checker article, it isnt even clear that Kessler proved his albeit lame point. Would Kessler blame a rape victim who claimed to scream for an hour rather than 45 minutes?

The main question that should be asked of Kessler is, why would anyone go through such a painstaking analysis to disparage the side of the victims -- to defend terrorists (which is what this article does in effect if not intent)? This yes but article is a defense of Palestinian terrorists which is so difficult to do that it required 2/3 of the page to solve a simple math problem! The length of the article was necessary for the Post because the obvious point -- that the Palestinians pay their suicide bombers -- blows a hole in the Post's entire case against Israel  that the Palestinians are driven to this out of some emotion -- say, despair -- or whatever the Post uses as an excuse for them. Palestinian professor Bassam Banat, as the article states, reviewed the cases of 200 Palestinian suicide bombers that killed 1,676 Israelis and found that a majority (71.5 percent) of the families of Palestinian suicide bombers support the bombings -- the murder of Israelis! That is where the article should focus. Further, the article points out that Israeli government officials point to interrogations that they say shows that the payments are considered an inducement to commit terror. Palestinians are given promotions as did Ali Jaara after he blew himself up in a 2004 suicide attack that killed 11 people and wounded dozens, according to the Post article. Does Kessler truly believes that the story that needs to be told is about the amount the terrorists or their families get paid, rather than that they are terrorists at all?First, they failed to grasp the religious implications of the devout French priest who was slaughtered on the altar by a Muslim terrorist as he said mass, calling it "tragic" and claiming it was impossible that anyone couldn't "like" the kindly old priest.

France's leaders have a way of misreading what's going on in their embattled society.

Now, they are missing the point about the French policeman, Col. Arnaud Beltrame, 44, who died after exchanging his own life for the life of a hostage held by a Muslim terrorist last night, an act of self-sacrifice that evokes only awe across borders.

According to Fox News:

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb wrote in a tweet early Saturday that Beltrame had "died for his country."

Actually, he died a martyr, a red-crown-in-heaven martyr, not for the French state but for the French "homeland," as his mother put it. His death was animated by the Christian ethos of France's founding faith, and it shows that his homeland is frankly still under attack by Muslims who confuse martyrdom with murder-suicide.

Do the French officials who let this terrorist into the country understand that?

France wouldn't exist without the animating influence of its Christian founding and faith, the kind that commands a person to give up his life for another.

Beltrame was an elite French police officer from a storied and prestigious French military academy, got a lot of promotions (he was a colonel at age 44) and obviously had a good life. Yet when the test came for him, from a Muslim militant French authorities had let into the country, he had the leonine courage to choose to give up his life for another instead of act out of self-preservation. He was no Scot Peterson.

Beltrame's act of self-sacrifice evokes saints such as Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who was sent to a Hitler death camp, and then voluntarily exchanged his own life for the life of another prisoner the Nazis capriciously marked for death.

What does compel a man give up his life in a split-second decision for another? It had to have been faith, the very faith that enabled the founding of France, which has very religious roots, recognizable in the Song of Roland, the stories of Charles Martel, in the story of Joan of Arc, and in a more distant echo, in the French Resistance of World War II with its Cross of Lorraine emblem.

The enemies of France's heroic heritage are either Muslims who would barbarcize the country or petty conniving state officials who would undermine the country to turn it into some other country.

Sound like what's going on now? Right now, France is under attack from the same Muslim scourge. And if Beltrame was willing to die for his country to save it in the same tradition as France's heroes, then his death is evidence of it. France's officials who think this is a simple police act and his death a small act of patriotism still don't get this.Can Trump win back his base after signing the abominable spending bill?

I, too, wish President Trump had vetoed that spending bill that put smiles on the faces of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and permitted them to gloat openly. The only reason for his cave-in that I find credible is what he said: that the huge spending increase for our now depleted military cannot wait. Our airplanes and helicopters are falling from the skies, and roughly half of some aircraft models are not airworthy, some of them suffering cannibalization of their parts to keep the rest flying. I suspect that his attention now is focused on the pending talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and he absolutely requires a credible threat to use our military. Iran and other bad actors are watching closely, and military weakness going into those talks would be my priority if the responsibility were on my shoulders.

But what do we, his base, want to happen? Is revenge against Trump worth handing Congress to the Democrats? Would it be so satisfying to see Trump impeached and therefore punished for allowing half a year of terrible spending to take place? (This was not even a full-year budget bill.) In my book, this was a tactical retreat, not a strategic surrender. It is up to conservatives to determine how great the losses from that retreat will be. If we stay home in November and hand the House to Nancy Pelosi and maybe even the Senate to Chuck Schumer, and Trump is impeached, will the satisfaction of "teaching him a lesson" compensate for the inevitable results? I think the congressional Democrats have big plans for what they will do if their "blue wave" materializes, and I do not relish the opportunity to see those plans realized. So what can Trump do? First, really fight with the congressional Republican leadership, and let them know he won't sign another last minute deal, as promised. I would like to see him publicly campaign against omnibus spending bills as a concept and demand that the House leadership start crafting the sort of focused spending bills that used to be voted on to fund specific departments and even projects. He has also made it clear that the filibuster is a concept that has outlived its usefulness. The argument that Republicans would regret ending it when the Dems come to a majority in the Senate no longer has any validity in the era of #resistance. I don't believe that the Dems would hold on to the filibuster if it obstructed them from passing bills. It requires only a bare majority of senators to change the rules and junk the filibuster. If the GOP leadership refuses Trump's requests for targeted spending bills and abolition of the filibuster, then he can repeat  in public and private  his promise to veto a last-minute abomination. Remember that such a veto would take place six months from now, in September, before the midterms. A lot can happen in half a year, and the possibility exists that our military may be actively engaged on a significant scale by that time. This morning, it feels as though the rug has been pulled out from under the conservative base. But we have more than seven months to get back on our feet and focus on the prospect of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer.There's one problem: nowhere in the article does it say what the actual dollar amount of the tariffs will be.

A front-page article in Springfield, Illinois's State Journal-Register by the Associated Press says President Trump proposes "huge" tariffs on China.

The AP writes:

Primed for economic combat, President Donald Trump set in motion tariffs on as much as $60 billion in Chinese imports to the U.S. on Thursday and accused the Chinese of high-tech thievery, picking a fight that could push the global heavyweights into a trade war. China threatened retaliation, and Wall Street cringed, recording one of the biggest drops of Trump's presidency. But he declared the U.S. would emerge "much stronger, much richer." It was the boldest example to date of Trump's "America first" agenda, the culmination of his longstanding view that weak U.S. trade policies and enforcement have hollowed out the nation's workforce and ballooned the federal deficit.

It says that the tariffs will be on $60 billion's worth of products, suggesting a big shakedown, but the actual tariffs collected...well, what will they be? Will they be $3 billion, or $10 billion? It's relevant because the AP calls them "huge." We are never told these figures, so we don't know why the AP calls them huge. Even if the tariffs were 100% to cover $60 billion in goods, that would be three tenths of a percent of our $20-trillion economy, so the actual tariffs would not amount to much by power of comparison.

From what I have heard, most of the tariffs Trump is proposing are mirror tariffs, which means if China imposes tariffs on U.S. companies, we impose them back. Isn't that fair?

China has been stealing our technology and intellectual property for decades, so isn't it about time we had a president who holds the Chinese to account instead of always appeasing them because they may retaliate? Previous administrations have relinquished increasing amounts of manufacturing to China, and that makes the Chinese more dangerous to us, not less.

Also, China's leader, Xi Jinping, now has a lifetime position, and that makes the Chinese even more dangerous. We should not continue to turn a blind eye to what he does.

This AP piece is entirely too dependent on a particular opinion.

Another article by the AP, talking about newly appointed national security adviser John Bolton, calls him the most divisive foreign policy expert.

The news agency writes:

Bolton, probably the most divisive foreign policy expert ever to serve as U.N. ambassador, has been a force in Republican foreign policy circles for decades. He served in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and as a Bush lawyer during the 2000 Florida recount.

What is that opinion doing in a supposed news piece? The AP authors of that article should put that comment on an opinion page, not a news page. I personally believe that President Obama's United Nations ambassador, Samantha Power, was much more divisive by supporting Obama's, Hillary Clinton's, and John Kerry's lead-from-behind foreign policies. Those policies left the world weaker, especially against North Korea.

It is a shame that a majority of supposed news articles are actually opinion pieces.Napa City Councilperson Doris Gentry provides a case in point. Gentry, an original Napa Tea Party member turned "social justice" libertarian, two-time Republican State Assembly candidate, first ran for Napa City Council in 2012. She lost, built upon her previous experiences, re-ran, and won, in 2016.

James Hinton, a Harry Martinianist" firebrand, Thompson's 2014 independent congressional challenger, follows a very similar political trajectory. Hinton beat California's 2014 top-two primary to face off Thompson in the general election. He earned about a quarter of the vote (24.4 percent), close to Randy Loftin's (25.5 percent) margin, Thompson's 2012 Republican challenger.

In 2010, before voter choice was eroded by Prop 14, Thompson's Green challenger, Carol Wolman, earned third place (3.6 percent). Hinton beat California's top-two primary, an electoral system hostile to small parties, and exceeded the Green Party's 2010 candidate's margin, by a long shot; and, he did it, not unlike Bernie Sanders, as a political independent.

Hinton now joins the Greens because they are, effectively, challenging the system by working from within it, the right way. In 2018, Hinton could easily win local office, such as Napa Valley Unified School Board or Napa City Council, following the Doris trajectory. This brings us back to Kisheneff.A new sheriff is in town, and his name is John Bolton. Bolton, named the new national security adviser by Donald Trump, is ready to fire dozens of White House staffers when he takes the job next month.

The permanent national security bureaucracy  whom many call the Deep State  is in big trouble at the White House.

Washington Examiner:

Among those who will get the boot will be Obama administration holdovers and anyone who isn't loyal to President Trump, sources told Foreign Policy. "Bolton can and will clean house," one former White House official was quoted as saying. On Thursday, Trump announced that Bolton would replace H.R. McMaster as head of the National Security Council  a move that would be effective on April 9. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President George W. Bush, hinted in follow-up interviews Thursday on Fox News and Fox Business that he would be a strong force to solve the White House's lingering issue with leaks, particularly those of a national security nature. "It's not for them to put in jeopardy the other 300 plus million American citizens just because they think their morality is better than everybody else's," Bolton said of the leakers on Fox Business.

Trump may be having trouble draining the swamp on Capitol Hill, but he's making progress on the diplomatic and national security fronts. State Department employees have been whining for months about Trump not naming new personnel. Dire warnings about how badly U.S. diplomatic efforts will suffer because there aren't enough bureaucrats to push the paper appear not to be materializing.

So now it's the turn of the NSC. It really is outrageous that Obama holdovers have access to information that, when leaked selectively, can make their boss look bad. But that's the nature of the NSC, as the appointed staffers rely heavily on others to be kept up to date on what's happening in the world.

If Bolton follows through, I fully expect most of those positions to go unfilled. And that's as good as anything when you're trying to drain the swamp.Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration on Thursday of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

Saudi Arabia has torn down a significant part of the wall that the Arab world erected around Israel in order to isolate it and strangle its economy. The U.K. Telegraph reports:

Air India 139 landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport after a flight of over 7-1/2 hours, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fuelled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region. "This is a really historic day that follows two years of very, very intensive work," Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a radio interview, adding that using Saudi airspace cut travel time to India by around two hours and would reduce ticket prices.

This a much bigger deal than saving two hours and lowering ticket prices. The blockade against overflights by airliners to and from Israel was part of the Arab world's rejection of the legitimacy of Israel and their determination to "wipe it from the map" as Iran's leaders have put it in recent memory. That policy now is tangibly rejected by the richest Arab state that is also the birthplace if Islam and guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.



File photo of Air India B 787-8, the newest type in Air India's fleet and the type used on the New Delhi-Tel Aviv flights.

Saudi Arabia made no formal announcement of the flight, preferring instead to let the "facts in the air" speak to its policy change. Israeli officialdom was not shy about publicizing it, though. The U.K. Guardian reports:

"This is a historic evening. The Israeli skies are connecting with the Saudi Arabian skies in one direct flight," the Israeli transport minister, Yisrael Katz, said when the jet landed at Ben Gurion airport. "We are celebrating the strengthening relations with India and the first civilian connection with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states."

Note that the flight also overflew Oman, as several media reports acknowledged. Here is a map from flightradar.com showing the flight plan as the historic journey was underway:

As can be seen, the Saudi route is far from the most direct line between the two cities. Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq would have to start permitting flights to Israel for that to happen. Iran is a hopeless case under the mullahs' regime (under the shah of Iran, there were direct flights from Tel Aviv to Tehran), but Oman's silent permission may indicate that the Arab world's solidarity is crumbling.

Israel and India have a growing diplomatic relationship  the two counties' leaders have exchanged cordial visits to each other's countries  and a healthy and growing economic relationship.

El Al, Israel's flag carrier, has a route from Bombay to Tel Aviv that now may take the next step: an Israeli airplane permitted to fly over Saudi territory. That would be an even bigger deal and would represent a major step toward official Saudi recognition of Israel.

El Al is not pleased that its competitor between the two countries now has a routing advantage, but in actuality, it is not a huge problem. There is far more traffic between Bombay and Tel Aviv than from New Delhi, because Bombay is the banking and commercial capital, and nearby is the India diamond industry center. Israel and India are two of the biggest centers of that industry in the world. And there is no advantage for Bombay-Israel travelers to connect in New Delhi, because that city is about two hours farther from Israel than Bombay.

The Arab airliner blockade was formerly so effective that there were virtually no flights eastward from Israel. Almost 20 years ago, I was involved in negotiations between a major Japanese company and an Israeli company that had world-leading technology that Japanese manufacturers wanted to license. The Israeli who was involved had to travel back from Osaka to Tel Aviv, and the preferred option at that time was to connect in Frankfurt  a detour of thousands of miles.

Since then, various routes from East Asia and South Asia to Israel were pioneered, making a European detour less attractive. But until this week, none of these flights could overfly Arab territory.

When a dam or a dike develops a hole, you know what happens. This is a case where that analogy may actually hold. Consider this:In a series of online posts, Coulter told Trump he will "be impeached" after signing the spending bill ahead of the 2018 midterm elections where Republican voters are increasingly disappointed with anti-border wall, pro-immigration party leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

President Trump's decision to sign the spending bill, which funds nearly all the Democrats' priorities but gives nothing for border security or reducing domestic spending, has disheartened many of his supporters. Even his base on sites like Breitbart is turning against the president, in view of many of the critical comments there. Some people like Ann Coulter think Trump is depressing his own base, which could reduce GOP turnout in the 2018 congressional elections and hand the House of Representatives to the Democrats.

If the Democrats get the House, they have made it clear that they will seek the president's impeachment.

President Trump's enemies have been after him since day one. It would be truly ironic if President Trump's own actions handed the Congress to the Democrats and got him impeached.

Another consequence of the president's failure to move forward on his major campaign promises is that he could face a primary challenge from the right. Ted Cruz has highlighted the many good reasons he voted against the spending bill.

This is why Ill vote against the omnibus spending bill:  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 In 2016, the American people voted overwhelmingly for Republicans to change Washington.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 Now, Congress is poised to do the exact opposite: pass a massive $1.3 trillion spending bill  2200 pages drafted by the Swamp in the dark of night  that will plunge our nation even deeper into debt.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 The disastrous elements of this bill are almost too numerous to list.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 It continues to fund Planned Parenthood, a corrupt organization whose horrifying abortion practices should preclude it from receiving taxpayer dollars.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 It continues to fund sanctuary cities, which are defying law & making Americans less safe. Instead of rewarding sanctuary cities, we should be passing legislation like Kates Law, a bill I introduced to put criminal illegal aliens in jail so they can't prey on innocent Americans.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 It fails to provide sufficient funds to properly secure our border, let alone build the wall that is necessary.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 It tells federal agencies that they can spend taxpayer dollars to study the causes of gun violence, a mandate that  make no mistake  will be abused by future liberal administrations to manufacture evidence to try to violate law-abiding citizens Second Amendment rights.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 It funds the Ex-Im Bank, a classic example of corporate welfare that has doled out over $100 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans, primarily to a handful of giant and well-connected corporations.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 It fails to reduce funding for the EPA, which under Obama administration zealots, killed thousands of jobs and dramatically strayed from its core mission of ensuring clean air and water.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018 All of these measures amount to piling even greater debt onto the backs of our kids and grandkids, all because we are incapable of living within our means.  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2018

It sounds to me as though Senator Cruz may be making a case for challenging President Trump in the 2020 primaries.

It's very sad that the president's capitulation to Democrats, who are in the minority, has cost him support among his core supporters. It would be a shame if he were impeached or faced a primary challenge.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.One resolution each was passed naming South Sudan, Burma, and North Korea. Two resolutions were passed naming Syria.

The United Nations Human Rights Council ended its longest session of the year Friday and issued several resolutions condemning human rights practices in several countries.

And five resolutions were passed condemning Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians.

U.N. ambassador Nikki Halley railed against the council, accusing it of bias and of looking "foolish and unworthy of its name."

Associated Press:

Haley said it is time for "the countries who know better to demand changes," saying many agree the council's agenda "is grossly biased against Israel, but too few are willing to fight it." "When that happens, as it did today, the council fails to fulfill its duty to uphold human rights around the world," she said. Haley said the Trump administration is continuing to evaluate its membership in the Human Rights Council. "Our patience is not unlimited," she said. "Today's actions make clear that the organization lacks the credibility needed to be a true advocate for human rights."

When you consider that the UNHRC has several cutthroat regimes sitting in judgment on Israel and the West, you can add "idiotic" to Haley's description.

What makes the council's bias against Israel even more ridiculous is that its members believe that people take them seriously. There are serious and nauseating violations of human rights in many places, including several Muslim countries governed by conservative clerics. By not addressing the fundamental violations of human rights in places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, the UNHRC becomes a parody of itself.

Africa is a cesspool of corruption and violence against individuals. Asia has its share of outlaw nations. The U.S. has been complaining about this almost since the UNHRC came into existence in 2006. And nothing has been done to change the bylaws that would prevent a nation like Venezuela from judging Israel.

I don't think Trump would hesitate to pull out of the council. If that happened, it would become even more irrelevant than it already is.The hacking scheme targeted college professors and stole intellectual property and research worth billions of dollars. The targets were located in the U.S. and other Western countries.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced it had indicted nine Iranians who were working for the Revolutionary Guards, as well as an Iranian government front company, for hacking hundreds of college and university professors, as well as other private and government entities.

CNN:

"(W)e have unmasked criminals who normally work in total anonymity, hiding behind the ones and zeros of computer code," said Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who called it a "massive and brazen cyberassault." The move from the Justice Department and Treasury follows other US efforts to indict foreign government-linked cyberattackers, including special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of Russian operatives for meddling in the 2016 US election, and the Obama administration's indictment of Chinese military members for the government-sponsored hacking of US companies. It also comes at a time of tension with Iran, long an adversary of the US. As President Donald Trump reshuffles his national security and diplomacy team, including firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, experts speculate Trump may be laying the groundwork to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated, though Iran's cyber efforts were not part of that deal. Officials also stressed that the hacking was conducted at the behest of the Iranian government, and Mabna Institute functioned as a contractor for the Revolutionary Guard. Sigal Mandelker, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, stressed that the elite military wing has been a primary actor behind Iran's sponsorship and encouragement of terrorism. "The IRGC plays a central role in Iran's maligned activities across the world, including fomenting terrorism," Mandelker said.

Lest there be any doubt in the matter, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are under the direct control of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The hacking scheme originated at the highest levels of the Iranian government.

What's curious is that the professors, who are supposed to be above average in intelligence, fell for one of the oldest tricks in the hacker playbook:

To break into the accounts, the sophisticated campaign started by studying each target in a reconnaissance phase, then using that information to send specialized emails to the targets that appeared to come from other university professors expressing interest in a recently published work, with links to other research that were actually links to malicious websites that would mimic the professor's login page and steal his or her login information and use it to access their accounts.

Our systems are more vulnerable than they should be because the cost of having really good security is high. Banks, most retail outlets, and the government take the threat of hacking and penetration very seriously. They feature state-of-the-art security that, at least, slows the hackers down.

But what about the rest of us? And the fact that penetrating our personal computers and devices makes it easier for a hacker to get into other commercial systems?

We are used to thinking of the internet as open and transparent, where information and knowledge are shared broadly around the world. But that very openness is a trap. Bad actors are constantly probing, looking for an opening to exploit. The answer is better security and, just as importantly, security awareness. But until we can find a way to deter the cyber-warriors, this kind of crime will continue to happen.Android P is reportedly already in testing for Chrome OS according to some recently discovered wording from a commit over at the Chromium Review. The text in that commit reads Hook up _P tests to android-container-pi builds. There is little here to go off of in regards to what the testing includes, but it does highlight that Android P testing for Chrome OS machines like Chromebooks and Chrome Boxes is already underway.

Worth noting is that Android P is still in testing with Android devices and has so far, only released as the first developer preview build, with a few more builds to go, so this showcases that Google is testing P with Chromebooks quite early. Also worth noting is that Oreo-based software for Chrome OS has yet to release and Google is already making headway in testing with the software versions that comes after Oreo, which may suggest that either Oreo-based software for the platform is close at hand and could reach public machines in the near future, or that Google plans to simply skip it and continue with testing Android P software on the platform until its ready instead, and it would appear that it may be the latter.

Why Google would choose to skip an entire version is unclear, but perhaps it feels it would make little sense to release an older version of software for Chromebooks when there is already another one on the way and due for a release on smartphones by the end of the Summer or beginning of the Fall. Another interesting thing to consider is that if Google decides to push Chrome OS software right past Oreo and into Android P territory, that doesnt mean that Chromebooks would miss out on some features that may have been planned for an Oreo-based build of Chrome OS as Google would likely just issue them with Android P instead.Its no secret that Xiaomi is betting big on its television business in India but the companys strategy may very well place it ahead of the curve in dominating that market. For starters, the smartphone and electronics manufacturer already leads in smartphone sales over its competitors in that sphere, most of which also happen to compete in the TV market. That gives its brand a level of recognition that is arguably above or at least on par with those other companies, such as LG, Samsung, or Sony. However, it is also approaching the market from a different angle to those which could help Xiaomi become a more popular brand among those looking for more affordable sets. Rather than focusing on high-end televisions, the company appears to be attacking the market with the same strategy as its smartphones. Namely, the tech company is looking to sell aesthetically modern, high-quality sets with smart features built on Android Open Source Project (AOSP) at a price range that wont break the banks of buyers.

For example, the latest in its range of TVs for the region ship in sizes between 32-inches and 55-inches for prices going from $216 to $616. Each is designed to be as slim as possible, with minimal bezels and weight while still being enabled with the smart features alluded to above. That includes Bluetooth-based remote controls, a 64-bit quad-core Amlogic CPU backed by 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage and 10W speakers. Moreover, the software will begin to fill out with India-specific features over time, adding to their overall value for consumers in the country. 80-percent of the media available already is completely free for users. With features like that and resolutions ranging from 1366 x 768 to 4K, theres a lot there to love for the price. In fact, the pricing could put Xiaomi in a position to take share from high-end model makers as well.

Furthermore, the company plans to build out a support network similar to the one in place for its smartphone business. Taking pricing, features, and support in combination, Xiaomi appears more than capable of spreading its mobile success into other technology markets. With consideration for the fact that some estimates predict as many as 17 million televisions to sell over the next year for the region, that could equate to a significant boost for the Chinese handset maker.We can verify that the domain is for sale over the phone, help you with the purchase process, and answer any questions.ALHRs concern with the Identity-matching Services Bill 2018 is that substantial infringements upon individuals privacy rights are being given away by government in the name of security, but at the same time a door is being left open for those same privacy infringements to be monetised for commercial purposes, Weste said.

This calls into question the constitutional basis of the legislation, and demonstrates that its impact upon the human right to privacy is disproportionate. Further, despite references in the Identity-matching Services Bill 2018 to the application of the Australian Privacy Principles, in our view, the bill gives rise to serious misgivings regarding the purposes for which identity can be used, who can access the information, how they will keep the identity information they hold about individuals secure, and whether consent from individuals involved will effectively be obtained by coercion, she said.

The organisation is also concerned about the rapidly growing ability of ministers and all parts of government to delegate decisions to computer programs in day-to-day decision making.

More specifically, the ALHR is concerned about computers automatically making decision even on sensitive matters. The organisation is concerned that the Australian Passports Amendment (Identity-matching Services) Bill 2018 does not distinguish between a minister using a computer program to assist in making a decision, which might be appropriate, and a minister leaving the decision entirely to the computer program.

The latter in our view arguably amounts to an ultra vires attempt to delegate a discretion, because surely a discretion can only be delegated to a human being themselves capable of exercising real and genuine consideration of an issue, Weste said. A computer is not capable of adding extrinsic facts to moderate the information it receives. It cannot take account of community values and expectations, considerations of fairness or common sense. Computer programs and algorithms will however reflect the intrinsic social biases of the programmers and are not necessarily as neutral as claimed. A risk of resultant incorrect, unfair or arbitrary decisions is therefore very real.Russell McVeagh senior partner Pip Greenwood provided independent legal advice to both AIA and its board of directors, supported by senior solicitor Aria Molteni-Luporini.

The deal was complicated by the joint venture agreements for the airport owners and the joint venture-banking arrangement, the firm said. MinterEllison provided both commercial and tax advice for four different transactions that needed to be documented for the deal, the firm said.

The MinterEllison team was led by Brisbane partner Gary Goldman. He was supported by partners Anthony Portas, Darren Sumich, and Tom Fletcher in Brisbane; David Moore in Canberra; and Mark Forman in Auckland.

Additional support was provided by special counsel Craig Bowie, senior associate Steven Grant, and lawyers Manisha Pannu and Sophie Qu in Brisbane, as well as senior associate Mellissa Lai in Canberra.As you'll notice in the image above, the ZR1 'Vette reaches dealerships in shaved form, with the aero package installation taking place after the transport phase of the car - pixel tip to Deviate Motoring for the image we have here.So, whether we're talking about the ZTK Performance Package, which includes the adjustable high rear wing and the front splitter with carbon fiber end elements or the normal package, which comes with the low wing, your car has to follow this installation procedure.Thus, the rear wing, the side skirts and the front splitter are installed at the dealer, which is why we can now check out the vehicle without all these aero bits. And yes, the Ferrari resemblance is here, not that there would be anything new about this aspect of the C7.Given the dealer arrival, the Chevy engineers who polished the final details of the new ZR1 earlier this year have completed their tasks - here's a soundcheck delivered by the 755 hp LT5 heart of the supercar during such a testing episode.Nevertheless, there is one important aspect of the C7-gen Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 that remains hidden. We're referring to the Nurburgring lap time of the supercharged V8 monster.General Motors has stated that it left the final Green Hell testing for the 2018 season, which is now open. As such, it shouldn't take long until we get to find out the chronograph number of the 'Vette.While its sub-7 status of the machine is almost certain, we're curious to see how the ZR1 compares to the current holder of the Nurburgring production car record, namely the 6:47 911 GT2 RS.The 2019 Corvette ZR1 straight-line performance numbers are in, with the 2.85s 0 to 60 mph being accompanied by a 10.6s quarter-mile.It looks like this Neunelfer might've started out in life as a Racing Yellow machine, as bits of the color are still visible in the mirror caps, as well as on the top section and sides of the beast.Nevertheless, the flat-six wielder now packs a two-sided wrap, one that mixes matte grey with matte white. The first shade matches the color of the car's wheels, while the red brake calipers stand out, with these signaling the presence of the standard steel stopping hardware.The second skin job was completed by a German specialist dubbed WrapZone, who took to social media to share its work with us.And while we don't have any pics of the cabin, we can see the full bucket seats adorning the interior of the car (these are shared with the 918 Spyder, remember?).Of course, this is but a wrap, so it means that the owner of the car can return to the original color anytime, or perhaps go for a new approach.Speaking of 991.2-generation Porsche 911 sightings, we'll remind you that dealers on the Old Continent have now started taking delivery of Touring Package incarnations.In fact, earlier today we showed you a GT3 TP, one that comes dressed in a color you simply can't ignore. The shade covering the rear-engined special is Gulf Blue, with this color allowing the Neunelfer to better connect to its ancestors.We'll keep an eye out for 911 GT3 Touring Packages as they reach dealers and we'll return with fresh media as soon as we get our keyboards on it.The America by Air gallery of the National Air & Space Museum, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., will be transformed thanks to $28 million in gifts from nine airlines, museum officials have announced. The generous contribution by the airlines not only signals their commitment to the storied history of air travel, but to inspiring young people to pursue careers in aviation and engineering, said Gen. J.R. Jack Dailey, director of the museum. These gifts help launch the museum on a trajectory to realizing the transformation of this important place. The gallery is scheduled to close later this year, and the newly renovated gallery will open in approximately 2021. The visitor experience will be improved through a refreshed layout with new design and graphics, new interactive exhibits and better accessibility throughout, the museum said.

America by Air is one of the three main halls at the museums flagship building on the National Mall. Through exhibits that include aircraft as well as artifacts such as uniforms, models and engines, the gallery traces the history of commercial aviation in the United States. The exhibits explore how improvements in technology have revolutionized air travel and how the flying experience has changed. The gallery highlights include a Douglas DC-3, the nose of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet that visitors can enter, a Ford 5-AT Tri-Motor and a Douglas DC-7. Most visitor favorites will remain in the gallery, and new features will be added, including the Lincoln-Standard H.S. and the Huff-Daland Duster, which are currently on display at the museums Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The contributing airlines are: Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit and United.The backlash to globalization is coming "at exactly the wrong time," the New York Times reports.

Why it matters: President Trump's new tariffs, on steel and aluminum and most recently against China, are working to "re-set the terms of the global economy," the NYT reports. But the globalization the world is seeing today is not focused on goods and services, but "greater connectivity and communication."A delegation of House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, is kicking off a trip through the Middle East on Saturday which includes a stop in Jordan, Politico reports.

Why it matters: The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, didn't agree with President Trump's announcement that Jerusalem would be named the capital of Israel. Pelosi said the 10 Democrats' visit to Jordan comes "at a vital time in the U.S. relationship with this key ally." Pelosi's office told Politico the trip will focus on "global and regional security and cooperation issues."It's become relatively understood with world leaders that Russia probably poisoned ex-spy Sergei Skripal.

The bigger picture: The U.S. has said so, the E.U. recently voiced support for the U.K. in saying so; the only person who won't say is Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Kremlin has "spread a flurry of theories" to explain the nerve-agent attack, with "one common theme: It was anyone but Russia."The Department of Justice will change regulations to categorize bump stocks as "machine guns" under federal law  effectively banning them. This announcement comes the day ahead of the nationwide March for Our Lives rally.

Trump tweeted ahead of the DOJ's release: "Obama Administration legalized bump stocks. BAD IDEA. As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period. We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns."Devin Kelley, the gunman who killed 26 people Sunday at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas escaped from a mental health hospital while serving in the Air Force, per the New York Times.

A 2012 police report revealed that Kelley was placed in the psychiatric facility after being charged in a military court for repeatedly assaulting his wife and baby stepson, including one attack that left the boy with a fractured skull. Kelley later pleaded guilty to the charges, and was sentenced to a year in a Navy prison.

Details of his escape:

Police took Kelley into custody at a bus station in downtown El Paso where he was planning to flee after escaping from Peak Behavioral Health Services, a hospital a few miles away.

The person who reported his escape from the hospital told authorities that Kelley "suffered from mental disorders" and "was a danger to himself." She added that he had made death threats against "his military chain of command" and had been caught sneaking firearms into the base where he was stationed.

Take note: President Trump said Monday that the Texas shooting was a mental health issue, not a guns issue. That's a debate that has continued to crop up after mass shootings.President Trump late Friday issued an order disqualifying most transgender people from serving in the military.

"[T]ransgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery -- are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances."

Why it matters: Anything short of an inclusive policy for transgender troops will be viewed as a continuation of the ban Trump announced on Twitter in August.

Whats happened: Since Trumps announcement in August of last year, the ban has been blocked in four federal courts over the likelihood that it was unconstitutional. Transgender troops have been able to enlist in the military since January 1 this year in spite of the announcement.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis had reportedly supported not implementing the ban and recommended existing transgender troops be allowed to serve.

Shannon Minter, the legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told Axios that it is the same categorical ban that Trump announced in August and that they will continue to challenge it.

The National Center for Transgender Equality issued a statement: "This plan has no basis in science, medicine, facts, or military readinessonly weak, after-the-fact justifications for President Trumps irresponsible tweets. It aims to force out trained, capable service members and prevent the military from obtaining the most qualified personnel."

Full White House statement:



Today, the President rescinded his previous memorandum on transgender service in the military in order to allow Secretary Mattis to implement a new policy developed through extensive study by senior uniformed and civilian leaders, including combat veterans. The experts study sets forth a policy to enhance our militarys readiness, lethality, and effectiveness. On the advice of these experts, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security have concluded that the accession or retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoriathose who may require substantial medical treatment, including through medical drugs or surgerypresents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality. This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standardsincluding those regarding the use of medical drugsequally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen. The Secretary of Defenses memorandum and accompanying report have been made public today.Tumblr has finally broken its silence about Russian state actors using its service and released a list of 84 usernames it believes engaged in "state-sponsored disinformation and propaganda campaigns."

Why it matters: Tumblr, which is owned by Yahoo, is the last of the social media services to comment on how it was used for attempted propaganda.

But: It's still unclear the extent to which these accounts interacted with others on Tumblr. The company has emailed users who have interacted with them, but it's not disclosed the size of their reach.Egyptians will vote March 26-28 in a presidential election that is sure to see incumbent strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi handily defeat Mousa Mostafa Mousa  the sole challenger who hasn't been jailed or intimidated into dropping out.

The backdrop: Sisi, the former minister of defense and commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces, led a military coup to topple President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. He formally came to power in 2014 after winning 96% of the vote in the presidential election, but has since seen his popularity wane under deteriorating economic conditions and an oppressive human rights record.

Setting the scene: Egypts election "will effectively be a theatrical performance, staged by the regime to contrive a popular mandate for strongman [Sisis] second term," Andrew Miller and Amy Hawthorne write in Foreign Affairs.

Sisi's struggles

Facing one of the region's highest budget deficits, Sisi agreed to economic reforms in November 2016 under a $12 billion IMF loan, causing inflation to hit a high of 30% last summer. The economy has slowly recovered since then, but the middle class  which fueled Morsi's ouster with protests  has struggled.

In April 2017, twin church bombings prompted Sisi to declare a state of emergency, which he has since extended three times. The measure has given authorities broad power to detain civilians without reason, monitor and censor all forms of communications, seize property and restrict public gatherings under the pretense of counterterrorism.

Under Sisi's direction, security forces have routinely imprisoned and tortured not only criminal suspects, but perceived political enemies as well.

The opposition

A coalition of opposition groups that called on voters to boycott the election is now being investigated by Egypt's prosecutor general. Five potential challengers were unable to get on the ballot:

Ahmed Shafiq , the former prime minister who fled Egypt after losing the 2012 election to Morsi, was arrested and deported by the Sisi-allied UAE. He subsequently dropped out of the race.

, the former prime minister who fled Egypt after losing the 2012 election to Morsi, was arrested and deported by the Sisi-allied UAE. He subsequently dropped out of the race. Retired general Sami Anan was arrested for running for office without prior approval from the military, while Col. Ahmed Konsowa was jailed for a video in which he announced his candidacy while wearing his uniform, an apparent violation of military code.

was arrested for running for office without prior approval from the military, while was jailed for a video in which he announced his candidacy while wearing his uniform, an apparent violation of military code. Lawyer and activist Khaled Ali and Anwar Sadat, nephew of the assassinated Egyptian president, both withdrew from the race due to intimidation.

That leaves Mousa Mostafa Mousa, a politician who had publicly endorsed Sisi just 10 days prior to entering the race.

Per The Guardian, Mousa's pro-government background and "bland" policy platform, which avoids anything that could be construed as a criticism of Sisi, has critics wondering if he's a puppet candidate propped up by the regime to provide "a veneer of democracy."

The bottom line: As in Russia last Sunday, there's no suspense here. Sisi has clamped down on democracy at every turn, and it won't be on display even as Egyptians go through the motions of casting ballots. Sisi remains popular with many Egyptians, but this election won't be a true test of that popularity.By Trend:

As a result of occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory by Armenia, the ecological environment of Sargsang water reservoir in Nagorno-Karabakh has sharply deteriorated, president of the International Eurasia Press Fund (IEPF) Umud Mirzayev said addressing the 8th World Water Forum in Brazil.

The resources of the reservoir, which is under Armenias control, are used as a means of political threat. As a result, Azerbaijanis living on the front line, most of whom are refugees and IDPs, face water shortage problem and cannot fully carry out agricultural work, he said.

Mirzayev noted that this reservoir was built to provide 96,000 hectares of territories with irrigation water.

Therefore, taking into account this urgent humanitarian problem, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution on January 26, 2016 on the immediate withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories and the non-use of water resources as a political tool. However, this resolution hasnt been fulfilled so far, he said.

Mirzayev also highlighted the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2010, recognizing the human right to water and sanitation.

Everyone should have a safe and physical opportunity to get water for personal and household use. But today, ignoring international documents, norms and standards aimed at supporting peace, security and sustainable development, Armenia uses water shortage for political interests, Mirzayev said.

He went on to add that the current situation cannot become worse than today. The international community must understand this problem and provide every person in the world with clean water, Mirzayev said.

IEPF president called on all representatives of civil society, refugees and IDPs, to join efforts and cooperate for turning water into an instrument of peace, not crisis.

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Azerbaijans Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Shahin Abdullayev said that Baku is seeking to establish partnerships with Saudi Arabia in the fields of satellites technology, petrochemicals, oil, gas, agriculture and tourism.

We launched two satellites and we reached advanced levels in this sector. We aim to be among the top producers of satellite parts, Abdullayev told Asharq Al-Awsat.

He said that political ties with Saudi Arabia are excellent and have contributed to economic, trade and investment cooperation in several fields.

He added that Azerbaijan is ready to export agricultural products such as wheat, vegetables and fruits, as well as some industrial products to the Kingdom.

Azerbaijan has imported huge quantities of Saudi petrochemicals in the past years, he said.

He also noted that the tourism sector in Azerbaijan is considered among the significant investment and economic sectors, lauding that 35,000 tourists from Saudi Arabia visited Azerbaijan last year.

He noted that Baku wants to increase trade exchange and investment cooperation, which recorded $17 million last year, adding that Azerbaijan government will offer privileges to investors and exemptions from taxes.

Abdullayev discussed with Council of Saudi Chambers Chairman Ahmed al-Rajhi possible ways to foster trade and investment cooperation.

Rajhi asserted that the Saudi business sector is interested in exploring investment opportunities in Azerbaijan.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend:

Throughout 2017, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk and his team conducted monitoring exercises, providing a continuous review of the situation on the ground related to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, according to OSCEs 2017 report.

The Office played an active role in assisting the Chairperson-in-Office and the co-chairs of the Minsk Group (MG) in advancing the peace process, responding quickly to any outbreaks of violence and informing about developments on the ground. Ambassador Kasprzyk continued to look for opportunities to promote further confidence-building measures with the consent of the sides, said the report.

With the support of the sides, Ambassador Kasprzyk and his team conducted 24 monitoring exercises, six on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and 18 on the Line of Contact. These activities also enabled representatives of the High-Level Planning Group to visit the region four times, the report reads.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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Azerbaijan reached many heights in any field of culture, became famous throughout the world for its unique art of mugham and jazz, carpet weaving and painting, literature and cinema, Natig Rasulzade, Azerbaijani writer, screenwriter, honored artist, chevalier of the Shohrat Order, presidential scholar, told Trend.

By the decision of ISESCO, which is the structure of science, education and culture of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries, Baku was declared the capital of Islamic culture in 2009, and this year, this honor was granted to the city of Nakhchivan, he said.

The prestige and reputation of a country depend on its contribution to the world culture, and Azerbaijan has done a lot for this, he noted. The leadership of Azerbaijan rightly considers culture as one of the main and priority areas in its extensive, multifaceted activity. The development of culture is directly related to the development of such industry as tourism, attraction of as many tourists from all over the world as possible to Azerbaijan, which, in turn, positively affects intensive development of the countrys economy.

A lot of objective articles, essays and books have been written about the extensive and fruitful creative work of President Ilham Aliyev, but in my opinion, the book of a famous Azerbaijani writer and publicist Elmira Akhundova Ilham Aliyev. Portrait of a President against the Background of Changes is one of the brightest, most impressive and profound ones in content, Rasulzade noted.

Azerbaijan is rich in talents, outstanding personalities, and our people can be proud of them, he added. They all have one thing in common: they are the children of this talented nation which is confidently led to new accomplishments by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, under whose leadership our country becomes increasingly successful, stable, respected and stronger in the whole world.

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A motion introduced by the Green group to oppose projects of common interest based on fossil fuels, including the Southern Gas Corridor, envisaging transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe was rejected by a large majority of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) last week (March 14), EUROACTIV reported.

The Greens introduced the Motion for a Resolution considering that the majority of gas projects listed in the European Commissions list of Projects of Common Interest (PCI) are incompatible with the commitments made under the Paris Agreement.

Krisjanis Karins, a Latvian MEPs who is the EPPs spokesman in the Industry Committee, slammed the attempt of the populist Greens and their followers to block the PCIs. He stated it would have been pure madness to block the projects, and that opposition to the PCIs would mean scrapping the Commissions proposal to invest 873 billion in key projects, many of which are not based on fossil fuels.

MEPs cannot cherry-pick with projects they want to oppose, he stated. He explained that the vote would endanger all 173 projects, including a sea connection for renewable energy between Spain and France in the Biscay Gulf, and a project to transport wind-generated industry between Denmark and Germany.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority projects for the EU and provides for the transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region through Georgia and Turkey to Europe.

At an initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

As part of the Shah Deniz Stage 2, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

Three people were killed in southwestern France on Friday when a gunman held up a car, opened fire on police and then took hostages in a supermarket, Reuters reported.

Police later stormed the supermarket in the small town of Trebes and the attacker was killed, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters on site.

The attacker was known to authorities for petty crimes but was not considered an Islamist threat, Collomb said, adding that he was believed to have acted alone.

More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group. Islamic State claimed responsibility for Fridays attack but offered no details.

He was known for petty crimes. We had monitored him and thought there was no radicalization, Collomb said, before adding: He was known for possession of drugs, we couldnt have said that he was a radical that would carry out an attack.

Collomb said three people were wounded.

He said that before the attacker seized hostages he killed one person while stealing a car with a bullet in the head in the nearby historic town of Carcassonne. He then shot at police officers before taking hostages at the supermarket.

President Emmanuel Macron said the incident appeared to be a terrorist attack and security forces were securing the area.

Trebes Mayor Eric Menassi told LCI TV that the man had entered the Super-U supermarket screaming Allahu Akbar, (God is greatest) Ill kill you all.

BFM TV reported that he claimed allegiance to Islamic State Collomb said the man had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam - the prime surviving suspect in the Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015.

Abdeslam, a French citizen born and raised in Brussels, went on trial in Belgium last month. He is accused of attempted murder in a terrorist context over a Brussels shootout in March 2016, four months after he fled Paris on the night of the carnage during which his brother was among the suicide bombers.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzBy Trend

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he told both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that Turkey will not step back in Syria, vowing that the ongoing campaign in Afrin will be expanded to other parts of the war-torn country, including Manbij, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

Last night I spoke with U.S. President Trump on these issues. I discussed the same things with Putin two days ago. I told them: We wont take steps backward from here. We are on the side of the suffering and the oppressed, Erdogan said in an address at a meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Istanbul on March 23.

Erdogan and Trump spoke on the phone late on March 22 about strained ties between Ankara and Washington, particularly troubled due to the U.S.s ongoing partnership with the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria. Turkey considers the YPG to be the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and therefore as a terrorist organization.

The Turkish military, along with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), launched Operation Olive Branch against the YPG in Afrin on Jan. 20, and Erdogan vowed that operations will not end in Afrin. Next are Idlib and Manbij.

Manbij, a northwestern Syrian town, is particularly important as it is still under the control of the YPG alongside U.S. troops. Turkey has long been urging the U.S. to let the YPG pull back from Manbij to the east of Euphrates amid threats that it will not hesitate to launch an attack on YPG positions even if American troops are present.

No withdrawal from Manbij: US

However, a senior U.S. official said the U.S. has no intention to leave Manbij, despite Turkeys words.

U.S. forces are located in Manbij. We have made it very clear with the Turkish government that we will continue to operate there, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said at a press conference in response to a question about the U.S.s stance on Manbij.

Nauert also said talks with Ankara have not been concluded and Washington is willing to continue conversations, referring to the three technical committees formed by Turkey and the U.S. to solve contentious issues between the two countries.

Turkish and American delegations met in Washington on March 8 and 9 to find a way to resolve the Manbij problem but the dismissal of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has caused uncertainty about how the two countries will proceed. Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Umit Yalchin is expected to travel to the U.S. to meet his counterpart John Sullivan next week.

More than 3,700 terrorists neutralized

Meanwhile, Erdogan stated that Turkeys operations against the PKK and YPG are ongoing in various parts of Syria and Iraq and the number of neutralized terrorists in Syria since Jan. 20 exceeds 3,700.

We will continue. We previously struck them through the Euphrates Shield Operation. And 160,000 [Syrian] brothers and sisters were able to return to their homes in an area of 2,000 square kilometers thanks to that operation. This piece of land is now under our control and locals are returning to their homes, he said.

Strategic partnership

In a statement issued after Erdogans phonecall with Trump, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin stated that two leaders discussed bilateral relations and regional issues.

Our president held a phone conversation with U.S. President Trump. Bilateral and regional topics were discussed in the conversation, Kalin said in a written statement.

Both leaders agreed to continue collaboration for common strategic goals and resolve issues that negatively affect bilateral relations, he added in a statement issued later on March 22.

The importance of strengthening relations between the two NATO allies and strategic partners was discussed, Kalin said.

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Numerous tourists who arrived in Azerbaijan are taking part in all festivities and fairs related to the Novruz holiday.

Trend presents photos of residents and guests of Baku, who are celebrating the Novruz holiday.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAzAfter 10 years of working in the restaurant industry together, two couples - Sarah Saldana and Bruno Nokshiqi and Zamira and Henry Gjyriqi - saw an opportunity to begin their own culinary venture.

"We all worked at Tuscany for about 10 years, and my husband's brother sold it to a different owner," Sarah Saldana said. "We decided to open up our own restaurant." 

Pooling their knowledge, the husband-and-wife duos dreamed of what could be.

"We pretty much ran it - the only thing is it wasn't ours," Zamira Gjyriqi said. "People push you and give you so much hope. That's when we thought we should do something about it. We got together and talked.

"All four of us have been in the business. We know restaurants. We're people persons. Myself, I love serving people. It was meant to be - God's plans. Sometimes, God is making your plans better than you're doing yourself."

Sarah Saldana, a full-time speech therapist, became involved in the restaurant through her husband.

"When I met my husband - we've been together for 11 years now - anytime I wanted to see him, I had to go to the restaurant, because he was always there," she said. "Then I became family and involved myself 100 percent. My husband's side of the family has about 20 years or more experience in restaurant business. They have restaurants all over Texas."

With a vision in mind, the business partners and relatives - Zamira and Bruno are cousins - began working to make their plan come alive. They opened on Jan. 17.

More Information Bruno's Italian Kitchen

Where: 3199 Dowlen Road, Beaumont

Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday

Credit cards: All major

Drink situation: Full bar service

Info: facebook.com/BrunosItalianKitchen or (409) 554-8321

Price range: $10-$22 See More Collapse

Owning a restaurant is a dream, Gjyriqi said.

"We worked for 10 years, so now working for ourselves, it's just awesome," she said. "We've been working together. We've built our friendship and our working skills. We had really high expectations for this place. We knew it was going to be something great, and so far it has been something great."

When the eatery opened, it overflowed with customers, Saldana said.

"It was such a great feeling," she said. "All of the support that we have received from the community and from our family and friends - it's just been an outpouring of people wishing us the most success.

"Zamira has a fan club of people who have been following her from Tuscany because she used to wait tables there. They knew she was no longer at Tuscany and looked for her because of the service and the relationships she built with her customers. They helped a lot to spread the word. It was incredible."

Saldana said the menu, made up of authentic, homemade Italian dishes, features a mix of classic and original recipes.

"With Bruno and my father and (Zamira's) husband, they came up with some new added recipes to our menu that aren't within the original family recipes," she said. "Using some of my dad's previous knowledge - he's a chef - and some of the ideas that Bruno always had, they kind of just decided to add some new things. We took recipes that have been in the family for years, built our own recipes, and made something bigger."

Combining the experiences of Bruno and Ricardo - Sarah's father - is "nothing but delicious," according to Gjyriqi.

Popular dishes include the Chicken Bruno and the red snapper and risotto.

"Chicken Bruno is our signature - it's one of the new recipes that we have," Saldana said. "People love it. It's a cream-based sauce with white wine and rosemary. The risotto is also served with Bruno sauce. People lean toward that sauce a lot."

Chef specials, which are not on the menu, are served on weekends.

"It varies," Saldana said. "We offer specialty items like stuffed chicken or 

osso buco. We've been posting the upcoming chef specials on Facebook."

The Italian lemonade and the Bellini are popular drinks, Saldana said.

"Those two sell a lot," she said. "I chose some things that are Italian; some that are not. I know we have to cater to a variety of customers."

Happy hour is Monday-Thursday from 2-6 p.m. and includes dollar off bottled beer, $6 sangrias and margaritas, and $5 glasses of house wine.

When designing the restaurant, they aimed for a cozy, warm feeling, Gjyriqi said.

"We tell our servers when we train them, 'Please do not rush people,'" she said. "Our attitude is 'Sit, eat and stay for a while.' We get so many compliments about the decor and the ambience, which makes you feel so proud."

Saldana hopes that people feel at home when they come to Bruno's.

"We want people to feel they're having a home-cooked meal, visiting with their friends and relatives," she said. "People come in here, and they stop at every table and greet their friends that they know. We love to see that. We have to push tables together because they know each other. That is just a great feeling."

Kara Timberlake is a freelance writer.Magnolia Brass Band Festival

Bring your lawn chairs and picnic baskets and join the Lamar University Bands for an outdoor afternoon band festival commemorating "March King" John Phillip Sousa's visits to Beaumont in 1906, 1919, 1924 and 1928. This concert will celebrate the music of the Magnolia Band, a local Beaumont band conducted by Harry Cloud and his Magnolia Refinery bandsmen (now a part of Exxon Mobil), as conducted by Sousa in January 1924. At that time, Lamar University was beginning its second semester and the Magnolia Band was nationally famous for playing the inaugural broadcast of KFDM ("For Dependable Magnoline") on Beaumont's first radio station.The University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System is working to launch a resource center to provide support for the state's nonprofit, rural, public hospitals facing economic pressures, according to AL.com.

The Alabama Legislature approved a bill that creates the Alabama Rural Hospital Resource Center, which would be staffed and managed by the UAB Health System. The center will assist rural hospitals in purchasing and supply chain management, strategic planning, insurance and cost reporting, coding, recruitment and compliance. The plan calls for the UAB Health System to add staff to provide expertise, advice and resources to hospitals requesting assistance with these issues.

"I believe that increasing access to quality healthcare for Alabamians in rural areas is essential," said Sen. Greg Reed, R-Ala., who sponsored the bill. "The physicians and researchers at UAB are among the best in the world, and this new center will give Alabama's rural hospitals direct access to game-changing innovations in medicine and healthcare management."

Although the bill was passed, it has not yet received funding. The UAB Health System will work to determine interim funding prior to the 2019 legislative session to start providing support to eligible hospitals.

Once it is funded, the center will also create two rural administrative residency positions through UAB's graduate program in health administration to provide an incentive for graduates to consider administrative careers in rural areas.

"Many rural hospitals are in crisis," said William Ferniany, PhD, CEO of the UAB Health System. "The resource center is designed to help keep those nonprofit, public hospitals operational so that Alabamians can get medical care close to home when appropriate."Board members from Starkville, Miss.-based OCH Regional Medical Center met with representatives from three major health systems March 22 to discuss their proposals for a potential affiliation, according to WTVA News.

Officials met with representatives from three Mississippi health systems, including Jackson-based Baptist Health System, Tupelo-based North Mississippi Health Services and University of Mississippi Medical Center, also in Jackson. All three health systems presented their plans for a proposed affiliation during the meeting March 22.

"We were looking at what they had to offer and looking at our priorities, at what our expectations and needs are and what system we think could best help fulfill and meet those needs," OCH Regional Medical Center CEO and Administrator Richard Hilton said.

Board members are scheduled to meet with representatives from all three systems again March 27. It is unclear when OCH Regional officials will issue a decision regarding a potential partner.Three spine surgeons from across the U.S. discuss where they see the biggest opportunities in spinal biologics and disc generation.

Question: Where are stem cells and biologics headed in the spine field?

D. Greg Anderson, MD. Rothman Institute (Philadelphia): Selective use of bone morphogenetic protein-2 continues to be seen in the market, although the amount of off-label usage has fallen. Cell-based products seem to enjoy pockets of popularity. A wide array of less-expensive, lower efficacy products continue to be used with limited clinical data to support their usage. Companies will likely have to provide stronger supportive data to support biologic products in the future in order to gain reimbursement acceptance.

Scott Blumenthal, MD. Texas Back Institute (Plano): Mesoblast just completed enrollment for its study, which was truly blinded; the physicians administering the injections didn't know who got the Mesoblast and who didn't. That will be really interesting to see. We are six months away from that data. There is another company in San Diego, Vivex, which has started a clinical trial with allograft material. They are another company to keep an eye on; we've met with dozens of these companies and Vivex is the first one that said they would put money into a study of their products.

William Tally, MD. Athens (Ga.) Orthopedic Clinic: More companies are starting to include some form of a cellular component with their products. We started three years ago with a bone graft material that had a cellular component and were one of two in the market. Now there are more, and I think there will be more studies on the regenerative use of stem cells. Clinically, they aren't really viable yet, but there will be more studies on disc regeneration.Hundreds of jobs at restaurant chain Prezzo are to be axed after the company agreed a restructuring plan that will see nearly 100 sites closed.

Of the 94 outlets earmarked for closure, two are in Belfast - Boucher Road and Victoria Square. Around 12 jobs in Northern Ireland will be lost.

The company, owned by private equity firm TPG Capital, secured the backing of creditors for a company voluntary arrangement yesterday, which will allow the Italian-themed chain to exit unprofitable branches and secure rent reductions.

Almost a third of Prezzo's 300 UK outlets will close, with around 500 jobs understood to be under threat, although many staff will be redeployed at other restaurants.

Prezzo, which worked with AlixPartners on the restructuring, employs 4,500 people across its stable of restaurant brands, which also include Chimichanga, MEXIco and Cleaver.

Prezzo boss Jon Hendry-Pickup said: "Despite this being a tough decision, the support given today by our creditors shows that they believe we have the right approach to transforming Prezzo in the eyes of teams, customers and stakeholders."A decision by aircraft giant Boeing not to appeal a US trade ruling in favour of Bombardier - which employs around 4,000 people here - has been welcomed in Northern Ireland.

Boeing had complained about Canadian aerospace firm Bombardier's selling of its C Series jets, the wings of which are made in Belfast, to Delta Airlines.

The US manufacturer claimed that they were being sold at below cost-price and that the firm was receiving unfair state aid.

The US Department of Commerce had previously recommended a near 300% duty on sale of the C Series jets for five years, putting around 1,000 jobs at risk at Bombardier's east Belfast wings factory. But the International Trade Commission (ITC) in the US ruled against Boeing and voted in favour of Bombardier in January.

DUP East Belfast MP Gavin Robinson welcomed an announcement by Boeing that it would not be appealing the ITC ruling.

"This announcement is great news for Bombardier and brings an end to this long and difficult saga.

"The US trade commission ruling came as a surprise to many, but the decisive, unanimous decision obviously sent out a very clear message.

"Boeing should feel suitably chastened that their bullying approach was justly and robustly rejected.

"I know the company are focused now on building on recent orders for the C Series and bringing more of these fantastic aircraft into service.

"For my part, I will continue to encourage government to support manufacturing and particularly our aviation sector in Northern Ireland."

A spokesman for Bombardier said: "Boeing's claim was meritless and should never have been brought.

"We are happy that it has come to an end.

"This is good news for the whole aerospace industry and the flying public, which will benefit from the most innovative commercial aircraft built in the last 30 years."

Jackie Pollock, regional secretary at trade union Unite - which led a campaign against Boeing's actions - said the company's announcement made it "very unlikely" that US President Donald Trump would now intervene to overturn the ITC decision.

Mr Pollock, who played a leading role in that campaign, welcomed Boeing's statement that it would not appeal the International Trade Commission decision against the tariffs.

"In effect this means that we have seen off the Boeing-inspired threat to Bombardier jobs from the imposition of punitive US protectionist tariffs."Pictured after clinching the top GO award are Gary Young, estates project and energy manager at SRC, Ruairi Lavery, projects director, SRC and Peter Johnston from award sponsor Wilsons Auctions.

Southern Regional Colleges new 35million Armagh campus development has been recognised as Northern Irelands best initiative at the Government Opportunities (GO) Excellence in Public Procurement Awards Northern Ireland.

The innovative, state-of-the-art campus development, designed by WYG Group, will now go forward to represent Northern Ireland at the national awards next month.

The GO Awards Northern Ireland recognise public sector procurement excellence, celebrate the role public, private and third sector organisations play in supporting the delivery of public services and are the benchmark by which progress in public sector commissioning is measured.

With over 30 finalists featuring many key organisations from within Northern Irelands supply chain, the awards, which were held at Titanic Hotel Belfast, included a wide range of standout procurement initiatives.

SRC chief executive Brian Doran said: "We are absolutely delighted to receive this prestigious award for our new campus build project in Armagh. This achievement recognises the creative and innovative approaches used in the procurement and delivery of this exciting new build project.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the entire project team, led by Project Director Ruairi Lavery, for their continued commitment and drive for quality and excellence which is recognised in this award.

This new campus will feature approximately 14,000 sqm. of specialist accommodation and is designed to facilitate world class professional and technical education and training.

Felix OHare and Company were appointed in November 2017 to spearhead the new development, which upon completion in 2020 will facilitate students and staff in the brand new landmark facility.

Grahame Steed, chair of the Northern Ireland GO Awards Judging Panel added: "The GO Awards Northern Ireland have showcased the depth of innovation, creativity and commitment in place across the countrys procurement community. The judging panel was impressed with the quality and variety of the submissions, which clearly demonstrate Northern Irelands growth in this area.

All of the finalists  whether public, private or third sector  are to be commended for their outstanding work.

This years winners included some of the countrys leading procurement innovators, including FIN Maintenance working with Northern Ireland Water and Translink.

For a full list of this years winners and those highly commended, visit www.goawards.co.uk/northernireland.Hollywood stars Amy Schumer, Yara Shahidi and Olivia Wilde will address crowds as an anticipated one million people across the US protest against gun violence in the student-led March For Our Lives.

The main rally organised by pupils in the wake of the Valentines Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will be held in Washington DC on Saturday.

But sibling marches will be held across the States and the world, including in Los Angeles where stars and survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, will speak in support of the mass movement.

Expand Close Amy Schumer will address the crowd in LA PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook

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Action since the 17 students and staff members killed in the attack has so far seen tens of thousands stage school walkouts.

Students have directed much criticism at gun advocates the National Rifle Association (NRA) and have called for measures including tighter background checks and a ban on assault weapons such as the one used in the recent massacre.

The outcry has so far seen some success, with Florida passing its first new gun controls in more than 20 years and the US Congress issuing funding to improve school safety and compliance with criminal background checks for firearm purchases.

But there is still much to be done before students feel safe in the nation where school shootings are a regular occurrence.

Every kid in this country now goes to school wondering if this day might be their last. We live in fear, the March For Our Lives mission statement says.

Stars have also got out their chequebooks to support the marches. Oprah Winfrey donated 500,000 dollars (354,000), as did couples George and Amal Clooney and Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw.

The Clooneys also said they will join students in DC, as will pop stars Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus.

Marches are also scheduled in the UK and Ireland, with a rallies in London, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Belfast and Dublin.Sir Paul McCartney has remembered his former Beatles bandmate John Lennon at a march against gun violence in the student-led March For Our Lives.

The musician, 75, was at the New York City rally on Saturday which started close to the apartment building where Lennon was shot in 1980.

Sir Paul told CNN he had come just to support the people before referencing the death of his childhood friend who he formed The Beatles with.

Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy walked the streets of Manhattan, New York, in a black tee that read We can end gun violence.



One of my best friends was shot not far from here: Paul McCartney pays tribute to John Lennon.#MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/XlLimoNMBP  jake defort (@jakedefort) March 24, 2018

One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, he said, so its important to me.

He added he was unsure if gun violence can be ended, adding: But this is what we can do, so Im here to do it.

The main protest organised by students in the wake of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is being held in Washington DC but hundreds more are taking place across the US and world including in New York City.

Lennon was shot dead outside the Dakota building where he lived with wife Yoko Ono in Manhattan on December 8 1980, two months after his 40th birthday.The story of Sudan, the northern white rhino who passed away on Monday, is particularly heart-breaking

The story of Sudan, the northern white rhino who passed away on Monday, is particularly heart-breaking. Being the last surviving male of a subspecies decimated by poaching and habitat destruction, his death signifies yet another needless wildlife loss.

Every day, we lose a little bit more of our beautiful planet, and we're the only ones to blame. Sudan's story highlights even bigger issues in the natural world, where species - from insects through to mammals - are increasingly threatened by human activity.

As David Attenborough has stressed, we are in the midst of a mass extinction.

Is there any hope for the future?

Although two female northern white rhinos - Najin and Fatu - remain, the only hopes for continuing their line lie in IVF treatments using stored semen from Sudan.

What can we do?

Born in the wild, Sudan grew up in zoos and lived the last few years of his life in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy, captivating tourists who came to learn about his plight and contribute funds to the IVF scheme.

Managed and properly controlled, tourism can be used as an effective tool to protect species and raise awareness about the natural world.

All the animals below appear in the International Union For Conservation Of Nature's Red List - the official barometer for endangered species. By visiting them now and making an economic contribution, you could be safeguarding their future.

1. Orangutans in Borneo

Classified as critically endangered on the IUCN list, which is one step away from extinction, these primates can only be found in two places - Sumatra, in Indonesia, and the island of Borneo. The main reason for their decline? Deforestation in favour of palm oil plantations. It's often tricky to see them in the wild, but sightings are guaranteed at the Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre in Sabah and Semenggoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in Sarawak - both in Borneo.

How: G Adventures (gadventures.co.uk) offers a 14-day escorted Experience Borneo trip as part of their Jane Goodall collection. A portion of funds from the 1,699pp land-only price are donated to her institute.

2. Pangolins in Namibia

Looking like creatures from a prehistoric era, these small, scaly anteaters are the most trafficked animal in the world. Their scales are dried and sold as medicine and have even been used to make coats. Having evolved over 80 million years, they can be found in parts of Asia and Africa, although being nocturnal, they are hard to spot. One relatively reliable place to enjoy encounters is Okonjima Nature Reserve in Namibia. Chris Packham saw his first pangolin here, and so did I.

How: Expert Africa (expertafrica.com) offers an 11-day tailor-made Impala Self-drive Safari from 1,241pp (land-only), including a stay at Okonjima, where the AfriCat Foundation supports wildlife conservation.

3. Tigers in India

The biggest cat on our planet is also the most under threat - once again the victim of a futile medicine market. The Bengal tiger is the most iconic of the species and can be found in parks across India. Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra state is a more under-the-radar option, where the emphasis on conservation is still greater than tourism.

How: Steppes Travel (steppestravel.com) has a 14-day tailor-made Tiger Safari to Tadoba, Pench and Kanha from 3,345pp (excluding flights). Along with searching for tigers, the trip includes a focus on conservation efforts in the parks.

4. Mountain gorillas in Uganda

Spread across Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo, mountain gorillas have suffered at the hands of poachers and civil war. A new census, about to take place, promises to show an increase in numbers, although the great apes are not out of the danger zone just yet. With cheaper permit prices and rated as one of the most stable countries in Africa, Uganda is the best place to go.

How: A percentage of the 430 one-hour permit price goes to community projects and conservation. Keep costs low by staying at the Ride 4 A Woman (ride4awoman.org) hostel in Bwindi, where doubles cost from 93 full board.

5. Ethiopian wolves in Ethiopia

Almost wiped out by cases of canine distemper, spread by domestic dogs, the world's rarest canid struggles to survive in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains and the Sanetti Plateau. The latter area is part of the Bale Mountains, where British couple Yvonne and Guy Levene run the Bale Mountain Lodge with conservation always in mind.

How: Doubles at the Bale Mountain Lodge (balemountainlodge.com) cost from US$190/135 all-inclusive.Idris Elba as Walter in Sky One comedy In The Long Run with Madeline Appiah as Agnes

It's party time. The Babycham is flowing. And shell suit-wearing guests are shuffling amid the fogged disco lights to Dead Or Alive's You Spin Me Round. But this isn't 1985. This is the nostalgic launch party set up to introduce Idris Elba's latest project, In The Long Run.

Offering up a taste of his own childhood, the Sky One comedy - created by and starring the Luther actor himself - charts the adventures of Walter Easmon (Elba) and his wife Agnes (Madeline Appiah), who arrived from Sierra Leone 13 years ago, and their British-born son Kobna (Sammy Kamara).

Happy enough to pay their bills and send a bit of money back home, the family are embracing Eighties London - that is until they're interrupted by the arrival of Uncle Valentine (Jimmy Akingbola).

"It follows two families that live in the same block of flats. Their sons play together, and it's about what it's like to live in a community, where 'in the long run' we're all the same," summarises Elba (45).

"There's no trickery, you like these people or you don't. And it's nice to have a multicultural cast, it's nice to see an African family on screen alongside an English family."

The original idea stems from an intimate short he did three years back - King For A Term - about a young boy with asthma, struggling to adjust when he is suddenly moved to a school for children with learning difficulties. A self-penned piece, he admits it was "based on me, basically".

So, just how true to life is In The Long Run, in comparison? "To be honest, the setting and the time period, a lot of that is based very closely to my life. But the storylines are slightly exaggerated from stories that I told in the development.

"The writers came along and took some strands, some stories, took the time period of London and made stuff."

As for the characters, while Elba - an only child - recalls growing up alongside such eclectic types as hapless neighbour Bagpipes (brilliantly played by Bill Bailey), it's the depiction of his mother and father that really hit home.

"My mum is Ghanaian and was raised in Sierra Leone at a certain point," he says. "I remember Madeline being really nervous to meet my mum - and when she did, she kind of got it.

"My mum is a big personality. She's very shy, but when she lets off, she lets off. And Madeline was doing parts Creole, which is Sierra Leone's language, and handling it like a Ghanaian woman. I was proud of that."

And paying homage to his father in the role of Walter? "I remember, when I first did a costume fitting and put the clothes on and the wig on, it was emotional, man, because we really designed it to look like him," he recalls, having lost his dad five years ago. "But it was also good therapy to get some laughs. My dad was funny and a jovial life-of-the-party kind of guy."

Yet there's a hard-hitting side, too, as Elba justifies his decision to shine a light on the "casual racism" of the period.

"We wanted to be honest about it; people were less sensitive because it was just the way it was, so to speak, rightly or wrongly. But the truth is that, for us to be able to put that on modern television now is a brave move, because people might go, 'We don't need to see that', but actually I think it's encouraging.

"The creators and writers were sort of freed up to have a balance - the racism comes from all angles. I'm proud that racism isn't a factor on the show, but it's definitely a presence."

If anyone knows what makes viewers tick, it's Elba.

In a career that has spanned over two decades, the Golden Globe Award-winning star has earned his stripes in everything from HBO series The Wire to biographical film Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom and fantasy adventure The Jungle Book.

His most notable role to date, of course, is that of troubled DCI John Luther on the BBC One series Luther - a gig that has seen his star rise to Hollywood heights, including his name being thrown in the mix under the ever-swirling Bond rumour mill.

His latest foray into comedy, writing and producing will surely do little to dim his shine. And he wants to create more. A lot more.

"I love telling stories and I love acting, but what happens with acting is you just turn up in your trailer, eat some food, say your lines," Elba maintains.

"But the opportunity to now produce something, to be the author of it, to really push that out there, that's different for me. I might have movies coming out, but I'm not really the producer of them.

"This one is starting from the grassroots and I love that."

In The Long Run, Sky One, Thursday, 10pmDrivers' frustrations over pothole damage may soon be eased after the biggest budget in seven years for road maintenance in Northern Ireland was announced.

Peter May, the permanent secretary at the Department for Infrastructure, revealed a starting budget of 75m for road service funding in 2018/19 - 33m more than last year.

It is hoped the increase will cover the estimated 3-4m worth of pothole damage caused by the recent cold snap.

The figure is the highest allocated to the roads maintenance since 2011.

The news was welcomed by the Quarry Products Association NI (QPANI), which represents the majority of construction material suppliers in Northern Ireland.

It said the focus should now be on identifying and planning repair schemes. QPANI regional director Gordon Best, added: "I am sure the vast majority of the travelling public in Northern Ireland, users of public transport, cyclists and motorists will warmly welcome this announcement and significant uplift in funding.

"This is the highest starting level of maintenance funding since 2011.

"The priority now must be to get road maintenance schemes identified, planned and delivered on the ground over the next six or seven months, so that work takes place during the longest days, with better weather ensuring better quality, improved safety for the road user and road worker and, importantly, ensuring better value for money."

Northern Ireland's road network is currently valued at 35bn and is considered the largest and most valuable asset that the public sector manages.

The department's own statistics show an underspend of 1bn for maintaining roads, while an independent study in 2010 recommended an annual structural maintenance funding level of 112m to keep the road network at a safe and quality standard. That level now stands at 140m, according to QPANI.

The deficit also cost the department 500,000 in payouts last year alone to almost 2,000 motorists whose vehicles were damaged by poor quality roads and potholes.

A spokesperson for the department said 15m of the budget, which will be available from April 1, would be "set aside for a roads recovery fund, which will address areas of immediate need across the road network".

Extra funding could be added to the allocated figure in the future.

The spokesperson continued: "Each year, monitoring rounds determine whether additional funding is available, and it will be some months before the first of these takes place."

The department came under fire recently when road maintenance workers warned of 200 job losses during what is usually the busiest period for the roads servicing sector.

In February, two contractors told the Belfast Telegraph that without additional funding workers would be let go and roads would fail to be repaired, but the latest announcement could be the good news the sector has been waiting for.

Mr Best said: "The announcement by Mr May is good news for everyone and our economy.

"The QPANI is now calling for a long-term commitment by the departments of finance and infrastructure to longer-term, adequately funded maintenance budgets that will ensure that our existing infrastructure is looked after and adequately maintained."Cllr Tim Morrow, Mayor of Lisburn & Castlereagh, listens to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Alliance party leader Naomi Long said the UK Government needed to inject momentum into restoring Northern Ireland power-sharing and drop its careful approach. Below is her full speech to the Alliance party conference.

"Good afternoon, Madam President, distinguished guests, colleagues, friends, it's fantastic to see so many of you here at our 48th Annual Conference in the Stormont Hotel and even better to be able to welcome you all here to my constituency of east Belfast.

Each year, as I begin to prepare my conference speech, I start by looking back over the previous years speech and reflect on everything that has happened over the course of the last twelve months.

When we met here last year, we did so in the wake of the Assembly elections, and celebrating our highest number of votes since 1979 and our highest share of the vote since 1987. Little did we know when we met, however, that we were about to do it all again in a snap General Election last June, when the Prime Minister rolled the dice to try to increase her parliamentary majority ahead of Brexit negotiations.

That closer relationship between the DUP and the Conservatives ... led to a sense they permanently had one hand tied behind their back during negotiations, with no ability to exert any pressure to get a deal done.

A divisive and rancorous campaign, yet again exploiting the politics of fear and division, was reflected in the result which almost entirely balkanised Northern Ireland.

Further, the Prime Minister's high risk and ultimately ill-fated strategy, delivered a much weakened Westminster government, now reliant on a confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP.

That closer relationship between the DUP and the Conservatives not only raised fresh questions about the ability of Government to act impartially as co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, but also led to a sense that they permanently had one hand tied behind their back during negotiations, with no ability to exert any pressure to get a deal done.

Expand Close Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister listens to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E / Facebook

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Whatsapp Belfast Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister listens to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

And so the tone for a long and frustrating year of political stagnation was set: government unwilling or unable to reconfigure the talks to enhance the possibility of success; the number of parties around the table getting fewer and fewer; the scope for agreement becoming narrower and narrower; the points of disagreement becoming increasingly intractable; and the likelihood of success becoming more and more remote with each successive attempt.

Yet, whilst it has been a year marked by political stagnation in Stormont and huge frustration both for the public and for this party at the lack of progress towards restoring the devolved institutions, for Alliance it has by contrast been a year in which we, at a party level at least, have continued to take real steps forward.

Despite the divisive nature of the Westminster election, we ran a strong campaign and largely consolidated our results from the Assembly, and I thank all of you who played a role in that: we have also continued to see new members stepping forward in record numbers over the last year.

That momentum led to continuing growth of our local associations in areas where we have currently either no or limited elected representation. We have seen Associations being reconstituted in constituencies like Newry and Armagh and activism and campaigning taking place in a number of our

These have been a difficult few years, full of uncertainty, and we hugely appreciate the dedication and commitment you have shown throughout.

key growth areas, culminating in our first one day Autumn Conference in Foyle, in October. Such was its success that we had three strong bids in for autumn 2018 before the day was over. Thats one for Sharon Lowry and her crack staff team to start work on after today  well, you can maybe wait until Monday.

On a more serious note  I do want to thank Sharon and the staff at Headquarters, the Assembly and in our constituency offices for all that they do for the party and for Northern Ireland. These have been a difficult few years, full of uncertainty, and we hugely appreciate the dedication and commitment you have shown throughout.

More recently, we have held the first of our planned action days, starting in Omagh, led ably by our local team and supported by people from right across the party and I want to thank each of you who stepped forward to help. Most of all, I want to thank Stephen Donnelly for the commitment he has shown to maintaining that development work on the ground and providing a consistent and coherent voice for the Alliance Partys values and vision.

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Whatsapp David Ford listens to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Im sure you will all want to join with me in congratulating Stephen on his official selection as our Candidate for the forthcoming Westminster by-election in West Tyrone. I hope that each of you will step forward and support him practically as we offer the people of West Tyrone a shared and inclusive vision for the future and full-time representation in Westminster.

Right across all of our associations, I have been hugely encouraged by the level of commitment and energy which you as members have demonstrated at a time when it would be easy to be cynical or jaded about politics: having had the opportunity to meet with almost all of our local council teams and local associations in the last 2-3 months, it has not only been enormously energising but has been a great opportunity to discuss how we intend to develop the party further in the months ahead and particularly in preparation for the Local Government elections in 2019.

Whilst reflection is always the starting point for my speech, I think that this year, more than most, there is good reason for reflection, meeting as we do in the run up to the 20th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Of course we knew there would be challenges ahead and a lot of hard work to do.

Last night, at our conference dinner, both in the words of Senator Mitchells message and in the panel discussion, we were reminded of how in 1998, with the signing of that historic accord, the feeling that we had crossed a Rubicon in Northern Ireland politics was palpable.

Of course we knew  indeed Senator Mitchell explicitly warned at the time - that there would be challenges ahead and a lot of hard work to do to maintain progress. However, the Good Friday Agreement set out the basic building blocks for a stable and inclusive society: commitment to peace and a culture of lawfulness; the principle of consent; the need for power-sharing within Northern Ireland; good relationships internally, with an emphasis on reconciliation and integration; and, strong, cooperative relationships with and between our nearest neighbours.

Those fundamental principles were the essence of the Alliance vision for devolution when the party was formed almost 50 years ago, and they remain the only feasible way forward for our society. The architecture and structures may change and evolve but those key elements still provide the key to resolving our difficulties, past and present.

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Whatsapp Delegates listen to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

It says much about the growth of this party that many of our members  many of you here today - are too young to have any real recollection of Northern Ireland pre 1998. Last night, Hannah Irwin spoke powerfully about her hopes for the future as someone who was born just a month before the Good Friday Agreement. For you it is, perhaps, hard to comprehend the sense not just of relief  but the sense of possibility  that accompanied that historic signing and the Yes result.

For me and for those of my generation, the Troubles were the backdrop to our entire childhood and teenage years: for some of you, it was the backdrop from which you tried to shield your own children as they were growing up.

I was born in 1971, at the start of the Troubles and so had known nothing else my entire life: the abnormal was my normal. We lived smaller lives, constrained by both geography and fear. We knew our own neighbours and neighbourhoods and there was reassurance in that familiarity in times which were turbulent and uncertain.

The Good Friday Agreement, flawed and imperfect as it was, it felt like that hope became real and tangible.

As I watched Derry Girls this year, Lisa McGees brilliantly written coming of age story of four teenage girls growing up in Derry in the 90s, it resonated deeply. Many of the misadventures could have been set almost anywhere, but the black humour was most definitely our own.

However, the last few moments of the final episode of the series captured for me the reality of growing up in the Troubles in the juxtaposition of two scenes: the first of the girls, laughing and dancing in the safety of the school, without a care in the world: the second, of a room full of adults, concern etched deep on their faces, as they gathered around the TV to watch the unfolding news of a horrific bomb attack and loss of life.

It was a timely and powerful reminder of how fragile the normality we sought to construct in the worst of times really was, and how horror and brutality managed to force its way into our everyday lives.

To see that come to an end, initially with the ceasefires of 1994, the first time in my life that I thought things might actually change, gave many of us hope. That hope was cautious and tentative, as wed seen false dawns before. But in 1998, with the Good Friday Agreement, flawed and imperfect as it was, it felt like that hope became real and tangible.

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Whatsapp Delegates listen to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

We now find ourselves in a very different context: where not just agreement but hope itself - the very sense of possibility - seems to be in short supply. Yet we need both, if we are to find a way through our current difficulties to realise the full potential of that Agreement.

And I believe it is our job in Alliance, as it always has been, to reinject that hope  that sense of possibility - back into our political discussions.

One could chose to despair that in 1998, our society could take huge steps forward on issues such as ceasefires, prisoner releases and decommissioning, yet now we are stalled by issues which seem relatively small by comparison. Then, the distance between parties was a chasm, now the gaps are much narrower, yet seemingly more difficult to bridge. But I refuse to give in to a counsel of despair: I chose instead to believe that what we were capable of once, we are capable of again.

Brexit is unpicking the political, social and economic relationships on which we have come to rely.

These are different times politically, socially, economically whether we look locally, nationally or internationally. The 1990s saw the rise of Cool Britannia, the Celtic Tiger was prowling and there was a sense of confidence about our place in the world and what the future might hold. New Labour swept to power on the promise that things could only get better, a song which captured the mood of the time and, in these islands, as much as anywhere, we were riding a wave of optimism. We were partners in Europe: we could be partners on Northern Ireland.

That optimism has long since been replaced by a sense of uncertainty for the future. Brexit is unpicking the political, social and economic relationships on which we have come to rely, more in Northern Ireland than perhaps anywhere else in these islands. Increasing protectionism and nativism in politics and growing insularity, bordering at times on xenophobia, is in stark contrast to the focus on globalism, multi-culturalism and interdependence in the 1990s.

'Ourselves alone' isnt a recipe for economic success in any language.

Supporters will argue that Brexit is about being more open and more engaged - independently, confidently - with the big, wide world beyond Europe; however, its hard to take that entirely seriously when the very same people were in a state of near apoplexy this week at news their beloved navy blue passports would be imported from France. Indeed, just like the word passport itself. How can they hope to do trade deals if the end goal is to import nothing? Ourselves alone isnt a recipe for economic success in any language.

Whilst optimism can help create fertile conditions for progress, it is trust that enables us to step forward and build for the future. Sadly, what little trust was developing between parties and, crucially, between parties and the electorate, has been badly eroded. Lack of transparency and openness and failure to deliver on commitments has poisoned the political well.

Recent revelations at the RHI inquiry that this culture of secrecy had begun to infect even the Civil Service, with the admission that they routinely failed to minute meetings to avoid embarrassing ministers and to evade the scrutiny of Freedom of Information requests is a damning indictment of a lax approach to governance in some Departments. The almost conspiratorial approach that seems to have pervaded parts of the system, keeping not just the public but other ministers in the same Executive in the dark about key decisions, is toxic to trust and confidence.

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Whatsapp Delegates listen to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Politics needs the checks and balances of accountability and scrutiny to protect the public interest and ensure independence and professionalism from both ministers and senior civil servants.

That is why we continue to place openness and transparency at the heart of our political campaigning, both in terms of party political donations and good governance, whether in the Assembly and Executive or in our local councils.

Whilst I welcome the fact that all large donations since last July will now be made public, the decision not to backdate the measure to January 2014, as anticipated in my amendment, co-sponsored by a former Secretary of State, is a massive U-turn. To hide behind consulting with local parties is a bit like holding a vote in a turkey shed about whether we should celebrate Christmas.

This isnt about what local parties want; its about the right of local voters to know who the major donors are and decide for themselves who pulls the strings.

There is a lack of optimism and of trust, but at the heart of the current malaise is lack of vision and, particularly, of a shared vision for our community.

Alliance will continue to work with others to push for the original date to be reinstated and for a review of the threshold at which donor information should be published. Just this week the Lib Dems again raised the issue in NI Questions and tabled an Early Day Motion on the matter, for which I am very grateful, and Labour have also pledged their support.

And in local councils, whether in Lisburn & Castlereagh, where we are pressing for an independent member to be added to the Audit Panel in line with best practice, or in Belfast where having successfully pursued recording of meetings, we have now taken our concerns about transparency of funding to the Audit Office, we will continue to press for the highest standards.

So, there is a lack of optimism and of trust, but at the heart of the current malaise is lack of vision and, particularly, of a shared vision for our community. The yes vote in 1998, laid a foundation on which we could build, not just a stable and peaceful future, but also one in which we were reconciled to our neighbours and integrated as a community.

Yet the hard yards of reconciliation and integration were, by and large, left to individuals, communities, and voluntary groups with little or no real political support or encouragement.

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Whatsapp Delegates listen to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Instead, politicians continued to emphasise difference, exploit divisions and use fear as a motivator to rally the vote, rather than seeing the enormous benefits than can accrue for the whole community by celebrating our diversity as an asset and recognising that it enriches us rather than diminishes us.

As most of you came here today, you passed through the legendary townland that is Ballyhackamore  this week named as the best place to live in Northern Ireland by The Times. So what makes it special? Well, apart from the fact that I live there

It is one of the most mixed, most integrated parts of east Belfast  not just in terms of the religious make-up, but also in terms of social mix and age. In that settled environment, where people feel safe and secure to live, work and socialise, businesses have flourished and a sense of community has grown.

That is my vision for everyone in East Belfast: not just the affluent suburbs like Ballyhackamore, but for every neighbourhood from Ballymaccarrett to Ballybeen. If we can create communities which are open and shared, safe and welcoming, they will flourish and prosper and everyone will benefit.

And the same is true for Northern Ireland as a whole.

Building that shared vision is challenging in an environment in which both Brexit and the collapse of the institutions are increasing pulling communities apart, with unionists looking increasingly to Westminster and Nationalists looking increasingly to Dublin. In doing so, there is a failure to focus on the challenges which our community faces together and together seek the solutions.

If we can create communities which are open and shared, safe and welcoming, they will flourish and prosper and everyone will benefit.

That requires leadership: leadership which at so many critical points over recent years has failed to materialise. We need the kind of courageous leadership which is willing to take risks to bring people to where they need to be and engender in them the confidence to make the necessary steps towards mutual respect and accommodation.

Whilst leadership may be lacking elsewhere, however, it was prominent this morning on our Local Government panel  where Lord Mayor of Belfast, Nuala McAllister, Mayor of Lisburn and Castlereagh, Tim Morrow, High Sherriff of Belfast, Carole Howard and Deputy Mayor of North Down, Gavin Walker, talked about their year in office and the opportunities it has presented for them to demonstrated what civic leadership by Alliance can achieve.

I want to congratulate you, Nuala, Tim, Gavin and your families for all you have achieved this year and for how well you have represented the party. You have done us proud. And to Carole, I wish you every success in your year ahead  and especially congratulate you for managing to get Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as your first Royal visit.

And it would be remiss of me not also to say a particular thank you to the chair of the panel, Group Leader in Belfast City Council, and all round wonderful guy: Councillor Michael Long. I know better than most just how much time and energy he invests not only in leading the team but in showing courageous and tenacious leadership to shape a better council and city for the future. I am hugely indebted to him for this and much, much more.

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Whatsapp Alliance Party leader Naomi Long pictured at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

And I see that leadership in abundance each week as the Assembly team meets in Stormont to plan ahead. It is not an easy time to be an Assembly Member, but despite that I am surrounded by a team full of energy, ideas, and guts: who continue to work tirelessly to develop policy and fresh legislation for when devolution is restored; who deliver for their constituents with practical help and advice; and who are always prepared and informed to articulate publicly the party position. To Stephen, Kellie, Paula, Trevor, David, Stewart and Chris  thank you for your leadership and for your support.

Since the collapse of the most recent talks, there has been no indication of how the government intends to move forward and get parties around the table again. There has been a complete lack of forward momentum.

We have spent the last 14 months in care and maintenance: the big decisions about the reforms required to deliver high quality sustainable health, education, infrastructure, economic development are simply not being taken. That cannot continue. The people of Northern Ireland deserve  they need  a functioning government. The current drift is simply unsustainable.

Problem solving is what politics is about.

Lack of optimism, lack of trust, lack of vision, lack of leadership and lack of forward momentum: all of which led us this week to publish Next Steps Forward, our route map to restoring devolution and dealing with the backlog of decisions affecting those who elected us.

Problem solving is what politics is about  whether developing policy, legislation or working in the constituency office. Its what Alliance has continued to do throughout this crisis whether in our proposals, to try to overcome the seeming irreconcilable positions on the Irish Language adopted by others; or publishing our Brexit paper, Bridges not Borders, with practical solutions to the challenges we face.

We will not simply stand on the side-lines, wringing our hands, or worse, add to the problems by pointing the finger. Even if we are at times slipping notes under a locked door, as Stewart so colourfully described it, we remain absolutely determined to play a positive role in getting devolution restored.

We want no part in any talking shop: we do not need yet another arena in which MLAs cut lumps out of each other for sport.

Alliance remains convinced only fully inclusive multi-party talks, chaired by an independent facilitator, can re-establish trust between the parties and hold them to account, privately and publicly, for their actions. They also provide the only prospect of delivering an inclusive Executive.

We have proposed transitional Assembly arrangements, running in parallel with the talks, as a step towards the restoration of full devolution. To be clear, we want no part in any talking shop: we do not need yet another arena in which MLAs cut lumps out of each other for sport. We need to start taking back responsibility.

By reconstituting Assembly Committees, MLAs can start to do the job we were elected to do: to give advice and guidance, scrutinise departmental spending and planning, and develop policy and legislation. Plenary sessions would allow us to progress legislation, via Committee Bills or Private Members Bills.

The formation of a cross-party Brexit committee would give NI a voice in the discussions which are shaping our future, whilst the re-constitution of the Policing Board would restore the oversight required to maintain public confidence and accountability in policing.

These time-limited transitional arrangements would allow parties to deal with issues of substance and of real concern to our constituents; to take responsibility in return for our salary; and, most importantly, to help to clear the backlog of decision-making which has developed during the impasse.

We have also proposed that Westminster legislate for key devolved matters such as the Irish language and equal marriage which have become a barrier to restoration, erasing some red lines and changing the dynamics of the talks process.

Expand Close Cllr Tim Morrow, Mayor of Lisburn & Castlereagh, listens to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E / Facebook

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Whatsapp Cllr Tim Morrow, Mayor of Lisburn & Castlereagh, listens to Alliance Party leader Naomi Long at their annual conference at the Stormont Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Indeed, this week, the first steps will be taken to introduce a private members bill on Equal Marriage at Westminster. While it has a long way to go yet, it is a major step forward towards the day when LGBT couples in NI will finally be able to say I do and get the same recognition and respect under the law as any other married couple. My only regret is that yet again it is Westminster and not Stormont delivering on LGBT rights and equality.

Finally, we have identified reserved matters which Westminster should also progress including, crucially, reform of the petition of concern. That would ensure a restored Assembly could deal effectively with other social policy and equality issues and preventing any one party frustrating the will of the electorate.

The planned Government consultation on the enabling legislation to implement the Stormont House Agreement on legacy, the funding of legacy inquests and the implementation of a pension for the seriously injured should also now proceed without further delay.

Victims and survivors have waited long enough: they ought not to suffer further due to lack of political progress. There is a moral obligation to address this issue now.

We have shared our proposals with the other party leaders in a genuine attempt to create the space politically in which broader agreement is possible and an Executive can be formed.The funeral of Catherine Martin, at St Patricks Church in Derry

Archbishop Eamon Martin (left), Primate of all Ireland, at the funeral of his mother, Catherine Martin, at St Patricks Church in Derry

The leader of the Catholic church in Ireland delivered an emotional tribute to his mother at her funeral yesterday.

Archbishop Eamon Martin returned to his native city of Londonderry for Catherine Martin's funeral service.

He was joined at the altar of St Patrick's Church, Pennyburn, by leading religious figures.

They included Cardinal Sean Brady, the Papal Nuncio, Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown, Bishop of Raphoe Alan McGuckian, his predecessor Bishop Philip Boyce, the Bishop of Down and Connor Noel Treanor, Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry Ken Good and 40 priests.

The service focused on Mrs Martin's family, which Archbishop Martin said was the most important thing in her life.

He added: "My mother prayed daily for a happy death, and God gave her the comfort of the sacraments and having her children around her in her final hours.

"In recent days, like chicks coming back to snuggle under the wings of a mother hen, we all gathered from across the world.

"We were all finally home by midnight on Tuesday, so God called her at dawn on Wednesday morning, just as the sun was rising and the birds were singing."

Archbishop Martin also described his mother as "beautiful, bright, talented and good-humoured".

He began his homily by recognising the importance of a mother's love as one of the greatest gifts humanity can give, saying mothers are the first evangelisers, the chief educators and more.

"At this Requiem Mass, my family and I thank God for the vocation to love that our mother lived out so fully and unselfishly," he added.

"For her, this was no secondary vocation, no lesser calling. On the contrary, it was a challenging daily vocation to love.

"As a young woman, Catherine was beautiful, bright, talented and good-humoured.

"She was an avid reader and broadened her mind by gobbling up knowledge and understanding. She had the additional talent of being able to pass on that learning.

"She was a born teacher and could have achieved any goal she wanted, but instead she devoted all her skills towards her husband, JJ, and her family.

"At home she could be teacher, nurse, manager, motivator, catechist, spiritual adviser, chef, fashion designer, economist, law maker and enforcer, counsellor, therapist, social worker, cleaner, nurse and hair and beauty technician, all at the same time."

Archbishop Martin recalled how his parents shared the instillation of their Catholic faith in their children.

"That's not to mention the personal prayers my mother more than likely offered for some of us, for exams, for good health and happiness," he added.

"Any time we were leaving the house, she reminded us, 'Put Holy Water on you and say your prayers', and that didn't stop, even when you became an archbishop.

"She wanted each of us to achieve our very best, to discover our personal vocation, to stretch ourselves educationally and make whatever sacrifices were necessary to achieve our goals, and not to take things for granted or expect anything handed to you on a plate.

"She taught us to pray, to forgive and to be as generous as possible, to trust God and to love our neighbour.

"She did all this by modelling it herself, by leading by example, and that is why we are all so proud of her.

"I am not trying to present my mother as a saint, although, as you probably know, given half a chance most Derry sons would canonise their mammies.

"I remember her as a humble woman who never forgot her upbringing and the values she learned from her own parents - values that she wanted to pass on to us."

Following Requiem Mass, the funeral cortege travelled to Iskaheen in Co Donegal, where Mrs Martin came from, for interment at St Patrick's cemetery.A GAA club has defended hosting an event which commemorated three IRA members shot dead in Gibraltar.

The DVD screening, which included a talk and a Q&A, was staged at Michael Davitt GAC on the Falls Road in West Belfast.

It took place on March 4 - two days before the anniversary of the SAS shootings on the peninsula.

Mairead Farrell, Sean Savage and Daniel McCann had been on "active service" when they were killed by special forces.

The club said "a local community group" with no political affiliations had booked its clubroom to show the documentary, which, it said, "featured the killing of three local people".

It said it recognised and understood the public interest in the documentary and was "content" that it was facilitated.

However, a DUP MP who had raised concerns over the event said he did not accept the explanation.

The Belfast Telegraph reported earlier this week how a flyer advertising the event appeared on the club's Facebook page.

It read: "The Gibraltar 3, 30th Anniversary Commemorative DVD Showing followed by talk and Q&A by veteran republican Joe Austin."

A Sinn Fein logo is included on the image, as well as pictures of Farrell, Savage and McCann, who were shot dead, two days before they had planned to bomb a parade of the Royal Anglian Regiment in the centre of Gibraltar.

In a statement, the club defended its role in the controversy.

"Michael Davitt GAC was established in 1912, we have almost 450 members and we proudly serve the people of the Beechmount, Clonard and Lower Falls areas," it said.

"We promote the expression of Irish culture and identity through all Gaelic games, the Irish language, traditional music, theatre and dance, along with health and well-being activities.

"Michael Davitt GAC fully supports and complies with the non-party political and non sectarian ethos of the GAA.

"On Sunday, March 4 a local community group which has no affiliations to any political party, having booked our clubroom, showed a documentary which featured the killing of three local people.

"These killings were the subject of condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights when it ruled for the first time on the use by any European Country of lethal force and the right to life."

The statement continued: "We recognise and understand the public interest in such a documentary and we are content that it was facilitated.

"This is especially so in the context of its showing as part of a wider programme of well-publicised cultural/community events which were conducted in a dignified manner."

But South Antrim DUP MP Paul Girvan rejected the defence offered by the club.

He said: "It defies logic that Michael Davitt's GAC would not be aware of the political associations of this event.

"They are attempting to tell the public that no one associated with the club was aware of any of the advertising and the clear promotion of Sinn Fein.

"Their excuses border on the ridiculous."

Calling on the GAA to intervene, Mr Girvan added: "The justification given for hosting an event honouring terrorists is downright offensive."The train was restored by the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RSPI) at Whitehead.

The former Great Northern Railway (Ireland) express engine No. 131 was back on the rails after a 400k restoration.

An historic steam engine which last operated in the early 1960s in Northern Ireland is back on track after a five-year restoration by the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RSPI) at Whitehead.

Former Great Northern Railway (Ireland) express engine No. 131, which dates from 1901 and was built for the Belfast-Dublin line, was officially launched back into service on Saturday.

The 400,000 project received funding support from Generating Rural Opportunities within South Antrim (GROW), through the Northern Ireland Rural Development Programme, which is part-funded by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs and the European Union.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester, president of the Heritage Railway Association (HRA), hailed the restoration as a stunning achievement.

He said: I congratulate RPSI on this major success story which is being applauded by enthusiasts from across Britain and Ireland. An incalculable number of hours has been put into this restoration and all concerned should be immensely proud of the result.

The 55-ton No. 131 was withdrawn from traffic in Dublin in 1963 but happily saved from the scrapmans torch. After a period in storage, it went on display on a plinth at Dundalk and was then dismantled as part of a restoration scheme that never completed.

In 2003 the engine arrived at Whitehead in a dismantled state, after having been presented to RPSI by Irish Rail. In 2014, a funding package was put together by GROW, and in 2015 the first test steaming of the boiler was carried out.

Many of its new parts had to be made from scratch to replace missing components and bit-by-bit the engine was painstakingly rebuilt. The project involved the professional staff of Heritage Engineering Ireland, the RPSIs engineering subsidiary, as well as the societys own volunteers.

The overhaul involved the rebuilding of a coal and water tender to run behind No. 131, while the engine also had to be equipped with modern electronic safety equipment to comply with current railway regulations.

Visitors will not find a finer example of the preservation of industrial or railway heritage than here in Whitehead.

RPSI chairman, Canon John McKegney described the launch of No. 131 as a red-letter day for the organisation representing the successful conclusion of the biggest restoration project ever undertaken at Whitehead.

This was an engine which we thought we would never see back in operation," he said.

"But the skills and ingenuity of the engineering team and volunteers at Whitehead have guaranteed that this historic engine will once again take to the tracks.

We are as pleased as punch and now look forward to seeing No. 131 back on the Dublin line. We give thanks to Irish Rail for donating the engine to the Society in the first place and are indebted to GROW for providing the funding which made it possible for this dream to come true.

Canon McKegney also paid tribute to individual RPSI members and supporters who donated 65,000 to the 131 appeal to help fund the restoration.

He said: This project really caught the imagination of our membership and without their generous contribution to the appeal, we would not be where we are today.

Emma Stubbs, manager of GROW, said they were delighted to see the project coming to a successful conclusion and to see the locomotive back in action.

She added: Funding of 130,000 was awarded to this project to preserve and restore this important heritage asset for future generations to enjoy. Alongside the funding, significant volunteer time was invested in the restoration, and we are delighted that the locomotive is back to working order and look forward to seeing it steaming down the track.

Alderman May Beattie, vice chair of Mid and East Antrim Borough Councils Community Planning Committee, who took part in the ceremony, said: This is an excellent example of teamwork and commitment. Well done and congratulations to all involved.

Expand Close The train was restored by the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RSPI) at Whitehead. / Facebook

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Whatsapp The train was restored by the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RSPI) at Whitehead.

Visitors will not find a finer example of the preservation of industrial or railway heritage than here in Whitehead.

Final approval procedures are in progress with Northern Ireland Railways and the Department for Infrastructure, and RPSI is confident that No. 131 will be back on the main line by mid-May.

At the ceremony, the HRA Manisty Award was re-presented to the RPSI. The Society won the coveted award at a ceremony in Birmingham in February and the plaque will be displayed at Whitehead Railway Museum.Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sparked feverish speculation about plans for a Royal baby after cooing over an innovative range for newborns during a visit to a tech hub in Belfast.

They showed particular interest in a non-slip bath, to which designer Sinead Murphy said they could have one free of charge. At that Harry quipped: "How many have you got?"

His US fiancee laughed and gestured to all the products on view, saying: "I'm sure at some point we'll need the whole (lot)."

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Harry and Meghan met Mrs Murphy and her husband Adam, the team behind Shnuggle baby products, as they toured Catalyst Inc in the regenerated docklands of east Belfast.

When Mrs Murphy showed the prince their "bum bump" device to prevent babies slipping in the bath, Harry joked: "That takes all the fun out of bath time."

Later, the designer said the couple had taken a keen interest: "Probably the one that captured their attention was the baby bath. Its 'bum bump' stops baby slipping, so as soon as Harry saw it he said, 'Oh yeah, it stops them doing that', so I just wonder if he has been involved in bath time with his niece or nephew because he instantly got it."

Afterwards the couple were greeted with loud cheers from an enthusiastic crowd outside Titanic Belfast before they were whisked off for a tour.

Ballymena siblings Lleyton (6) and Rosey (4) Jackson presented the prince with a model of the world famous vessel and gifted a bouquet of flowers to Meghan.

Titanic Belfast crew member Ellen Fitzsimons, who previously welcomed the Queen to the exact site on which the ill-fated was built, described the moment as "very cute".

"Meghan took a flower from the posey and handed it to Rosey - it was just adorable," she said.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. Pictured with Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are children Lleyton (6) and Rosie (4) Jackson from Ballygowan and staff member Ellen Fitzsimmons. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. Pictured with Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are children Lleyton (6) and Rosie (4) Jackson from Ballygowan and staff member Ellen Fitzsimmons. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. Pictured with Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are children Lleyton (6) and Rosie (4) Jackson from Ballygowan and staff member Ellen Fitzsimmons. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. Pictured with Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are children Lleyton (6) and Rosie (4) Jackson from Ballygowan and staff member Ellen Fitzsimmons. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. Pictured with Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are children Lleyton (6) and Rosie (4) Jackson from Ballygowan and staff member Ellen Fitzsimmons. William Cherry / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 23rd March 2018 - Photo by William Cherry/Presseye During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast. The Couple were guided through the venues interactive galleries, which explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of RMS Titanic, as well as the city and people who made her. During the visit, they also heard about how the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter has provided Belfast with an exciting new urban space. Pictured with Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are children Lleyton (6) and Rosie (4) Jackson from Ballygowan and staff member Ellen Fitzsimmons. William Cherry / Presseye Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Titanic Belfast maritime museum in Belfast. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Titanic Belfast maritime museum in Belfast. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Prince Harry waves to well wishers as he and Meghan Markle visit Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Titanic Belfast maritime museum in Belfast. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Titanic Belfast maritime museum in Belfast. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle watch a man wearing vertual reality goggles during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Meghan Markle arrives at Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where she and Prince Harry met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are presented with a posey by Lleyton Jackson 6 and Rosie Jackson 4, during a visit to Titanic Belfast maritime museum in Belfast. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Meghan Markle with Prince Harry during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Nuala Campbell and Eoin Lambkin from Titanic FX show Prince Harry and Meghan Markle some prosthetic limbs used in the movie industry during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are presented with a model of the ship by Lleyton Jackson 6 and Rosie Jackson 4, during a visit to Titanic Belfast maritime museum in Belfast. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are presented with a model of the ship by Lleyton Jackson 6 and Rosie Jackson 4, during a visit to Titanic Belfast maritime museum in Belfast. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle look a prosthetic foot made by the Titanic FX company during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Niall Carson/PA Wire PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp During their first visit to Northern Ireland on 23 March 2018, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visited the iconic Titanic Belfast.

Colleague Jonny Kelso, who was dressed as the ship's designer Thomas Andrews for the occasion, said both Harry and Meghan were "intrigued" as he hosted them for a history lesson in the replica drawing room. "I talked them through the design of the ship and they seemed genuinely interested, they then walked around the galleries and got a bit of a flavour of what is here."

Chief Executive Judith Owens praised level-headed staff who were only informed of the identity of the VVIP guests when they turned up for work yesterday - she also expressed relief following the "easy-going" visit.

Meghan quizzed staff about Isidor Straus, co-founder of Macy's department store, who perished on the liner in the early hours of April 15, 1912, alongside his wife Ida.

"Meghan was quite interested in the American passengers who were on board, including the Macys and the very wealthy Astor family," Judith said.

Excited members of the public who had gathered in the rain outside the visitor attraction voiced no complaints after being denied the opportunity to interact with the couple. They were satisfied with an elegant wave from Ms Markle which was issued in response to one man who shouted "what about ye".

Larne couple Lorraine (55) and Wesley (58) Magill have already made travel plans to be in Windsor for the Royal wedding in May. "We've been to the Queen's 90th birthday and Diamond Jubilee celebrations but we didn't get to William and Kate's wedding - Lorraine has decided we're not missing this one," Wesley explained. Lorraine, who shook hands with Prince Andrew when he visited Bangor in 1999, said she loves following the Royals around.

Meanwhile, US visitors Hannah Hunicke (20) and avid royalist Danielle Bomont (19) had already been on their way to Belfast when they found out that Harry and Meghan would also be in town. "Danielle is obsessed, she has their photo in her room and burst out crying when she found out they were coming - I felt obliged to sprint here with her," Hannah said.

A starstruck Danielle added: "I don't care that they didn't come over, a glimpse is all I needed."

Ulster University international student Yitian Du (20), whose name translates to Diana in English, was in awe of the couple.

"I might never get the chance to see anyone from the Royal family again, it's so exciting," she said. "I'm actually named after Harry's mother so this is quite special."

As the couple were chauffeured away under the shadow of the shipyard cranes, rumours circulated that they might return to see the famous grand staircase on their honeymoon, but Harry's model ship will be posted by courier first thing on Monday morning just in case they don't.A man has been fined 150 for twice breaching a non-molestation order by 'liking' a Facebook photo of his former partner and trying to add her as a friend on the social media site.

Curtis Neill (21), whose address was given on the charge sheet as Grahams Place, Lisburn, but who now lives at the Lighthouse Hostel in Ballymena, pleaded guilty to two breaches of the order when he appeared at Coleraine Magistrates' Court on Friday.

A prosecutor said his ex-partner felt "harassed".

Defence barrister Michael Smyth said Neill had "accidentally" sent the friend request.

He added that his client accepted he should not have been 'liking' the woman's pictures.

District Judge Liam McNally told the defendant: "Let me emphasise again that (with) an order made by the court, it is a serious matter if you breach it."A DUP politician has said receiving hundreds of abusive comments on her Twitter account is typical of what she faces on a daily basis.

South Belfast MP Emma Little-Pengelly has revealed that much of the abuse she receives from online trolls is because she is the daughter of Noel Little - who was convicted in Paris more than 20 years ago for his part in a loyalist gunrunning plot.

Describing the abuse as "shameful and disgusting", the unionist politician said the "scourge of online bullying of women in public life" must be tackled.

Mrs Little-Pengelly addressed an international conference on preventing violence towards female politicians held in London on Monday.

She said: "I had the privilege of making the closing remarks at the International Conference on Stopping Violence towards Women in Politics. An incredible group of women from all over the world - many experiencing physical violence and threats, all experiencing attacks and sexism in words, trolling and online abuse.

"Being in politics is an incredible role, I want more women to do it.

"To encourage this, we must do all we can to tackle hate including the scourge of online bullying of women in public life."

Mrs Little-Pengelly expanded on the kind of abuse she is exposed to on social media, but she vowed not to be silenced by it.

She posted on her Twitter account: "Online abuse can take many forms. The pattern is clear.

"Trolls and abusers pick on a characteristic or aspect of the person targeted, usually something completely outside their control - gender, race, disability, attractiveness or lack thereof, weight and such.

"Then hundreds of people harass that person relentlessly about that issue to attack, bring down and close down that person's voice.

"In my case I am constantly abused and attacked on almost everything I do or say daily due to alleged actions attributed to my father.

"I am being attacked for something that is alleged, that I did not do, that I had no part of and that I was in no way responsible for.

"In fact, I was seven years old at the time of the alleged actions.

"Raising this issue constantly with allegation of 'hypocrisy' against me has absolutely no relevance.

"Some days I get hundreds of these comments, most days I get at least scores of them. This behaviour, including by many who should know better, is shameful and disgusting abuse.

"My voice will not be shut down."

She is not the only female politician who spoke out against their experience of online trolls.

Sinn Fein MLA for West Tyrone, Michaela Boyle, spoke to Amnesty International about how she too is abused on social media because of a physical disability.

She said:"Life in the public eye often leaves you open to abuse and personal comments.

"Unfortunately women also seem to be targeted specifically about the way we look and what we wear. More needs to be done to tackle this.

"I have a physical disability that has often been commented on about how I should get that disability 'fixed'.

"That to me is derogatory. I am comfortable in my own skin."Arlene foster has condemned an apparent petrol bombing of an Orange hall saying it demonstrates the intolerance of some toward unionist culture.

Minor damage was caused to the hall in Augher on Saturday morning before noon.

Arlene Foster condemned the incident, she said: "A fantastic facility used by the entire community. I condemn this hate crime and look forward to the day when Orange Halls are respected. Actions such as this demonstrate the intolerance of some towards unionist culture."

Inspector Marie Stinton added: Shortly before noon today, police received a report that the remains of what is believed to have been a petrol bomb were found outside an Orange Hall in the Glenhoy Road area.

"The incident is being treated as a hate crime at this time.

"I am appealing to anyone who was in the area and noticed any suspicious activity, or anyone has information which may useful to our investigation, to contact us on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference 557 of 24/03/18.

"Alternatively, information can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime."Sinn Fein has said a shadow Assembly established in the absence of the Northern Ireland devolved institutions would represent a "retreat" from power-sharing saying it would lack credibility.

The party called again for the British and Irish governments to intervene to resolve the outstanding issues blocking a return to government.

Arlene Foster, in her speech to the DUP spring policy conference, reiterated her partys support for a form of shadow Assembly that would give locally elected politicians a role in scrutinising decisions taken in Westminster during the absence of devolution.

Alliance party leader Naomi Long, speaking at her party conference said there should be a transitional Assembly, running in parallel with talks, as a "step towards the restoration of full devolution".

"To be clear," she added. "we want no part in any talking shop: we do not need yet another arena in which MLAs cut lumps out of each other for sport. We need to start taking back responsibility.

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Responding Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald dismissed the idea.

"The way forward in the north is through real and genuine power-sharing, the delivery of citizens rights and equal partnership government," she said.

Any proposed shadow Assembly would mark a retreat from power sharing and the leadership needed to restore the Good Friday Agreement framework. It would be an unacceptable step backwards, lacking credibility."

Sinn Fein has called on the two governments to act above the heads of the Northern Ireland parties as agreement between the party and the DUP looks increasingly unlikely and with further measures being introduced from London.

Ms McDonald continued: The onus is now on the two governments to act and through their joint stewardship to remove the obstacles to restoring the political institutions.

Both governments must now convene the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference to find a way to implement outstanding agreements and to fully respect the rights of citizens to marriage equality, to language rights and the funding of legacy inquests.

Direct rule is not an option. It was a failure in the past and would be so again.

Its time to face the real challenge to deliver citizens rights and to re-establish the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster has accused Sinn Fein of trying to render Northern Ireland dysfunctional.

Addressing party faithful at the DUPs spring conference in Ballymena, Mrs Foster said her erstwhile partners in devolved government were actively seeking to sow division in the region.

Firing the latest broadside in an increasingly acrimonious war of words between the parties, Mrs Foster said the prospects of an imminent return to powersharing were not promising.

In the ongoing absence of devolution, she reiterated her partys support for a form of shadow Assembly that would give locally elected politicians a role in scrutinising decisions taken in Westminster.

The best way to deliver for everyone in Northern Ireland is through sharing power in a restored Assembly at StormontArlene Foster

Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley is currently examining the half-way house proposal as a potential means to govern the region going forward.

Citing the recent 410 million injection of funds into the region through the DUPs confidence and supply deal with the Tories in Westminster, Mrs Foster insisted her party continued to deliver for the region, while claiming Sinn Fein offered nothing constructive.

People are starting to see that not only were the naysayers who doubted that the confidence and supply money was real very, very wrong but that the DUP deliver for everyone in every part of Northern Ireland, the DUP leader said.

What are Sinn Fein delivering for our people? The answer is short and simple  absolutely nothing.

Sorry, that isnt entirely fair. Sinn Fein are at least trying to deliver. They are trying to deliver division and dysfunction. But we are not going to allow them to hold Northern Ireland to ransom any longer.

The best way, by far, to deliver for everyone in Northern Ireland, is through sharing power in a restored Assembly at Stormont.

This party is committed to devolution. We want to see power in the hands of locally elected and locally accountable ministers.

But in the absence of devolution, the Democratic Unionist Party is finding other ways to deliver for Northern Ireland.

Powersharing imploded last January amid a row over a botched green energy scheme. The rift subsequently widened to take in disputes over issues such as the Irish language, same-sex marriage and how to handle the legacy of the Troubles.

Sinn Fein has claimed Mrs Foster agreed a draft deal to resurrect powersharing last month before pulling the plug in the face of an internal revolt among party members angry at the prospect of concessions on the thorny issue of the Irish language.

It is an allegation Mrs Foster has strenuously denied.

Delivering the leaders address at the conference at the Tullyglass Hotel, Mrs Foster said: Whether its health or education or jobs or infrastructure, the DUP is prioritising what is important to people of all persuasions in Northern Ireland.

What are Sinn Fein prioritising? Theyre putting their own narrow political interest first.

Ministerial decisions being made by the Secretary of State is in no way our preferred outcome. But it is far better than no decisions being taken at all.

We will continue to work closely with Karen Bradley as she makes good on her commitment to do whatever is necessary to fulfil Her Majestys Governments responsibilities to the people of Northern Ireland including working with her on ways for the Assembly that the people elected last year to have an input.

We must support and encourage the Secretary of State to take those necessary decisions because, as much as we want to see the Assembly and Executive up and running again, lets face it, the prospects of a return of devolution anytime soon doesnt look promising.

Mrs Foster also said the DUP needed more than ideology if it was to achieve its overarching aim of preserving the union with Great Britain.

I truly believe that if we are to achieve our overarching aim of preserving the Union then we have to concentrate on our ideas and not our ideology and focus on defying our opponents by making Northern Ireland work for everyone, she said.

Having secured an historic election victory (in last years general election) we cannot fall into the trap of complacency.

We must build on that triumph and the best way to do that is to persuade people that they should vote for the DUP not just because we are the biggest party. Or because we are best placed to beat Sinn Fein. But because we have the best ideas.

Direct rule is not an option. It was a failure in the past and would be so againMary Lou McDonald

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said a shadow Assembly would represent a retreat from powersharing.

Addressing an event in London examining a united Ireland, the party president said: The way forward in the north is through real and genuine powersharing, the delivery of citizens rights and equal partnership government.

Any proposed shadow Assembly would mark a retreat from powersharing and the leadership needed to restore the Good Friday Agreement framework. It would be an unacceptable step backwards, lacking credibility.

The onus is now on the two governments to act and through their joint stewardship to remove the obstacles to restoring the political institutions.

Both governments must now convene the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference to find a way to implement outstanding agreements and to fully respect the rights of citizens to marriage equality, to language rights and the funding of legacy inquests.

Direct rule is not an option. It was a failure in the past and would be so again.

Its time to face the real challenge to deliver citizens rights and to re-establish the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.The DUP held its spring conference in Ballymena on Saturday. Below is leader Arlene Foster's speech to delegates.

"We have had a great morning together discussing new ideas about how we can help to make Northern Ireland even better. It is a sign of a vibrant and dynamic political Party that members exchange ideas, engage with business, with community organisations, and bring forward new policies, the only aim of which are to improve the place that we call home.

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"Thats exactly the sort of Party I want the Democratic Unionist Party to be. I have said before how I want us to become a party of ideas. I truly believe that if we are to achieve our overarching aim of preserving the Union then we have to concentrate on our ideas and not our ideology and focus on defying our opponents by making Northern Ireland work for everyone.

"Having secured an historic election victory we cannot fall into the trap of complacency. We must build on that triumph and the best way to do that is to persuade people that they should vote for the DUP not just because we are the biggest Party. Or because we are best placed to beat Sinn Fein. But because we have the best ideas.

People starting to see DUP delivering for all in Northern Ireland... what are Sinn Fein delivering?

This week, the Secretary of State placed a Budget for Northern Ireland before the House of Commons. It was a Budget that had the hallmarks of this Party as the resources promised in the Confidence and Supply Agreement began to flow. 410 million of additional spending without which a difficult Budget would have been far worse.

People are starting to see that not only were the naysayers who doubted that the Confidence and Supply money was real were very, very wrong but that the DUP deliver for everyone in every part of Northern Ireland.

What are Sinn Fein delivering for our people? The answer is short and simple  absolutely nothing. Sorry, that isnt entirely fair. Sinn Fein are at least trying to deliver. They are trying to deliver division and dysfunction. But we are not going to allow them to hold Northern Ireland to ransom any longer.

We want to see power in the hands of locally elected and locally accountable Ministers.

The best way, by far, to deliver for everyone in Northern Ireland, is through sharing power in a restored Assembly at Stormont. This Party is committed to devolution. We want to see power in the hands of locally elected and locally accountable Ministers. But in the absence of devolution, the Democratic Unionist Party is finding other ways to deliver for Northern Ireland.

If youre stuck every morning in traffic jams on the Westlink or the M1 or M2, the DUP is delivering hundreds millions for the York Street Interchange to make your journey to work a little easier.

If youre waiting for an operation, the DUP are delivering money to alleviate the pressures on our NHS and help you to get the care you need and deserve.

If youre home or business is struggling with a slow broadband connection, the DUP are delivering 150 million to bring us the best broadband in the UK and boost our economic competitiveness.

And if youve a loved one who is suffering with a mental health problem, the DUP are delivering more support.

Whether its health or education or jobs or infrastructure, the DUP is prioritising what is important to people of all persuasions in Northern Ireland.

What are Sinn Fein prioritising? Theyre putting their own narrow political interest first.

Prospects of a return of devolution anytime soon doesnt look promising.

Ministerial decisions being made by the Secretary of State is in no way our preferred outcome. But it is far better than no decisions being taken at all.

We will continue to work closely with Karen Bradley as she makes good on her commitment to do whatever is necessary to fulfil her majestys Governments responsibilities to the people of Northern Ireland including working with her on ways for the Assembly that the people elected last year to have an input.

We must support and encourage the Secretary of State to take those necessary decisions because, as much as we want to see the Assembly and Executive up and running again, lets face it, the prospects of a return of devolution anytime soon doesnt look promising.A British journalist has been expelled from Egypt as authorities in the country crack down on the media ahead of the upcoming presidential elections.

Bel Trew, The Times Cairo correspondent, was ordered to leave late last month having been detained three weeks ago, according to the newspaper.

The journalist was driven to the airport by police and made to board a flight to London.

I've lived in #Egypt for 7 years, it's my beloved home and I'm not sure when I can return. I was arrested after doing an interview and threatened with military trial unless I got on a plane. Like others, I still don't know what happened:https://t.co/m5EmyP8bg7  Bel Trew (@Beltrew) March 24, 2018

A spokeswoman for The Times said: The circumstances of her detention and the threats made against her were sufficiently outlandish to suggest that a mistake had been made, based on a misunderstanding.

We have since been trying to ensure her safe return to Cairo, in time to cover the presidential election. It is now clear that the authorities have no intention of allowing her to return.

The Times deplores this attempt by the Egyptian authorities to intimidate the media and suppress our coverage.

This is sadly in line with the increasingly oppressive environment that President Sisi has created for both domestic and international press.

Ms Trew says she had been listed as a persona non-grata and that Cairo authorities have reportedly threatened to re-arrest her if she attempts to return.A council has said sorry over failings in its dealings with Parsons Green bomber Ahmed Hassan.

The 18-year-old, who lived in Sunbury, Surrey, told immigration officials he had trained with Islamic State after he arrived in Britain illegally in 2015 and claimed asylum as a child.

Hassan was referred by Barnardos and Surrey social services to Prevent, but kept his plans to cause carnage a secret.

He was said by police to have engaged with the de-radicalistion scheme Prevent through its Channel programme while keeping his plot secret.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon, of Scotland Yard, said: On the one hand he was appearing to engage with the programme, but he kept secret what he was planning and plotting.

The high-achieving college student kept his dark thoughts from his foster parents, college mentor and other agencies who all tried to help him have a better life.

In his sentencing, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said he was sure Hassan had in fact been trained with IS before he committed his act of terrorism.

Afterwards, a Surrey County Council spokesman said: Our work with other agencies in this case wasnt as good as it should have been and were sorry for our part in that.

We knew before the terrible incident at Parsons Green that we needed to make changes and had already begun to do so.

Since then we have made further improvements and continue to focus on ensuring our work in this area is as good as it can be. Our thoughts remain with everyone affected.

The spokesman said staff from agencies on the Channel panel had met Hassan many times between February 2016 and September 2017.

He received extensive support in mental health and education and the panel monitored and reviewed it.

The spokesman added: This was a difficult case in tough circumstances. We have a duty as a county council to provide support to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who arrive in Surrey and were also expected to work with law enforcement agencies and others to help stop people being drawn into terrorism.

A review of Hassans dealings with Prevent is under way.Relatives of those killed in the Dunblane massacre joined a protest for tougher gun control

Relatives of Dunblane massacre victims were among hundreds of people who protested outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh on Saturday as part of a campaign for greater gun control in America.

The demonstration was one of more than 800 events taking place around the world as part of the March For Our Lives movement.

It was started following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February in which 17 people were killed.

Protesters are calling on the US government to pass legislation to effectively address gun violence.

Speakers at the Edinburgh rally included Jack and Ellie Crozier, whose sister Emma was killed in the Dunblane shooting, and Ali Ross, whose sister Joanna also died.

Expand Close Ali Ross (centre) at the Edinburgh March For Our Lives rally PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Ali Ross (centre) at the Edinburgh March For Our Lives rally

They read a letter of support to those affected by the Parkland tragedy.

The letter, first published on the 22nd anniversary of the Dunblane shooting, stated: Wherever you march, whenever you protest, however you campaign for a more sensible approach to gun ownership, we will be there with you in spirit.

#IWillMarch for the 17 in Dunblane, the 17 in Parkland and everyone else affected by gun violence. Im marching for my sister because she cant. Im using my voice for those who have been silenced. No more. #MarchForOurLives  ellie crozier (@elliecrozier97) March 12, 2018

Ms Ross also read out a message from Mick North, who lost his daughter Sophie in the 1996 massacre.

He said: The only factor common to all mass shootings, indeed to all shootings, is that someone has a gun, and in the USA it is just far too easy to get hold of one.

If the USA really wants to turn its thoughts, tears and prayers after each mass shooting into something positive, it has to deal with the easy availability of firearms.

Catherine Wilson, who lost her sister Mhairi in Dunblane, also took part in the event, reading her poem For Parkland/The Public I.

She said: I am so overwhelmed and incredibly impressed by the teenagers in America who are walking out of schools and who are demonstrating today.

Today is a really important mix of both showing that anger and fighting against something that is incorrect, but also offering that support and that love really, to the students in America.

She added: I think we are at a breaking point, I think were at the point where the generation that I am part of now and the younger generation who are at school have seen so many school shootings in their lifetime.

They have continually grown up in the shadow of school shootings, and they are the point where they just cannot take it any more.

Today we #MarchForOurLives. If we hold up the right to life, gun control isn't luxury but necessity. We've learnt that from too many victims  Catherine Wilson Garry (@CWilsonPoet) March 24, 2018

While the Dunblane shooting led to the UK enforcing some of the strictest firearms legislation in the world, the US gun lobby has resisted change.

I dont understand why the freedom to own a gun is seen as more important than seeing your grandchildren grow up, or feeling safe when you go and watch a film in the cinema, or being able to go to the park, or not having your children have to miss education because theyre spending hours on these drills, Ms Wilson said.

I dont understand what is so precious about your guns that is more precious than human life.

She added: I am hopeful. I am praying that we make this change because it is a necessity.Jeremy Corbyn is under fire over Brexit and an anti-Semitism row (Peter Byrne/PA)

Jeremy Corbyn was fighting on two fronts after sacking a shadow cabinet minister over Brexit and appearing to support the painter of an allegedly anti-Semitic mural.

The Labour leader sacked Owen Smith for calling for a second European Union referendum, leading to a backlash from Remain MPs.

And he got caught up in a row over his response to a Facebook post by street artist Mear One about the plan to paint over the controversial mural.

Responding to the rows engulfing Labour, MP Wes Streeting said: If only anti-Semites were dealt with as swiftly as Remainers.

Tomorrow they want to buff my mural Freedom Of Expression. London Calling, Public art Posted by MEAR ONE on Monday, October 1, 2012

Mr Corbyns response to Mear One questioned why the painting was being destroyed and said the artist was in good company because the Rockefeller family had covered over a work featuring Lenin in their New York development.

The mural, in east London, depicted a group of businessmen playing a Monopoly-style game on a board balanced on the backs of people.

The artist denied being anti-Semitic, saying the mural is about class and privilege and contains a group of bankers made up of Jewish and white Anglos.

If only antisemites were dealt with as swiftly and severely as Remainers. https://t.co/hnm3tCRn4Q  Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) March 23, 2018

Mr Corbyn said he made a general comment about the removal of public art on grounds of freedom of speech but acknowledged he should have looked more closely at the image before posting on Facebook.

He said: I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on, the contents of which are deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic.

It is the latest row over anti-Semitism to hit Labour and MP Chuka Umunna said there clearly is an issue within the party.

It isnt that a majority of our members are anti-Semitic but theres definitely amongst the minority a real problem here which is not in keeping with the values of the Labour Party, Mr Umunna told BBCs Newsnight.

Apparently Corbyn world free speech is allowed for antisemites but not for Labour MPs supporting the views of our members and our 2016 Conference Policy on the EU.  Mike Gapes (@MikeGapes) March 23, 2018

The decision to sack Mr Smith for deviating from the official party line led to accusations of a terrible Stalinist purge from former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hain.

Labour MP Mike Gapes said it appeared that free speech is allowed for anti-Semites but not for Labour MPs supporting the views of our members and our 2016 Conference Policy on the EU.

Mr Smith said he had been sacked for his views on the damage Brexit will do to the UKs economy and the Good Friday Agreement.

In an apparent message to Mr Corbyn, he added: Those views are shared by Labour members and supporters and I will continue to speak up for them, and in the interest of our country.

Mr Smith, who unsuccessfully challenged Mr Corbyn for the party leadership in 2016, won public support from pro-EU Labour figures.

Streatham MP Mr Umunna said: Its quite bizarre for him to be sacked from his post for expressing views that were well known about before his appointment  but also for expressing views that the overwhelming majority of our voters and members support.The Kremlin has denied a claim that poisoned former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be pardoned and to be able to visit his home country.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to visit his family, his friend Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury on March 4.

Kremlin spox: there was no letter from Sergei Skripal to President Putin to allow him to come back to Russia pic.twitter.com/xwXbfAUfUd  Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) March 24, 2018

Moscow has stepped up its campaign to discredit Theresa Mays assertion that it is highly likely Russia was responsible for the attack.

The diplomatic crisis has plunged relations between Russia and the UK into the deep freeze and could trigger further action by European Union members in support of the Prime Ministers stance.

But the Russian embassy in London kept up its attempts to challenge the UKs case  reiterating its suggestion that the Porton Down defence laboratory was developing its own military-grade poisons.

The lab, located less than 10 miles from Salisbury, is where tests were carried out to identify the Novichok substance.

Porton Down chief executive Gary Aitkenhead told the BBC: We have got the highest levels of controls, of security around the work that we do here.

We would not be allowed to operate if we had lack of control that could result in anything leaving the four walls of our facility here.

A Russian embassy spokesman said Mr Aitkenheads comment amounts to admitting that the secret facility is a place where new components of military-grade poisons are being researched and developed.

Read our comment on MoD Porton Down secret lab activity pic.twitter.com/wyCSKugHyc  Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) March 24, 2018

On Friday, EU leaders promised an unprecedented diplomatic response to the attack after backing Theresa Mays assertion that Moscow was responsible.

The bloc is recalling its ambassador to Russia for consultations on the Salisbury attack.

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while on Sunday Vladimir Chizhov, Russias EU ambassador, said that from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him (Mr Skripal).

The 66-year-old was accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.

He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.

According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.

Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland, he said.

In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor (he told me) he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were (in Russia).

Russias ambassador to the UK sent his well wishes to Mr Skripal and his daughter on Friday, saying he hoped for their recovery.

Alexander Yakovenko wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripals aid.

Mr Bailey said his experience had been completely surreal after he was discharged from hospital.Historic trip: Pope John Paul II during his visit to the Republic of Ireland in 1979

There was no surprise at this weeks confirmation from Rome that Pope Francis will visit Ireland in August. It had been well flagged in advance that the Pope would be the chief guest at the World Meeting of Families.

However most people were greatly surprised that he will not be coming to Northern Ireland in a visit that historically would complete the visit of Pope John Paul II nearly 40 years ago.

John Paul II was prevented from coming north because of the dire security situation, and this grieved him greatly.

I was told this by the Popes secretary on the eve of John Pauls funeral in Rome, which I covered for this newspaper, as well as his visit to Knock.

I was also told in Rome by the then Primate Archbishop Sean Brady that the Irish hierarchy were extremely keen on a Papal visit to Ireland because of the personal connection with John Paul II.

The invitation from the Irish hierarchy remained on the table and their patience was rewarded when Pope Francis availed of the opportunity of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin to make a long-awaited visit.

However the Vatican, with typical lack of explanation, has not told us why Pope Francis is not coming to Northern Ireland.

Is it because of pressure of other business, or a wariness to become involved in the complex local situation, or because of the disgraceful Catholic clergy child abuse scandals?

Perhaps we will never know, even if it would be courteous of the Vatican to tell us why. Or will he visit us after all, at short notice, in order to minimise any northern opposition to a visit?

If the Pope does not set foot in Northern Ireland, which now seems extremely likely to be the case, it will be a badly missed opportunity.

Armagh, not Dublin, is the place where Patrick founded the Irish Church, and the symbolism of the Pope going there would have been inescapable. It would also have symbolised a hands-across-the-border gesture of friendship to all the faithful Catholics and Protestants at a time when political relations between the two parts of the island are frosty.

One of the crumbs of comfort from this weeks Vatican announcement was the way in which the Popes visit to Dublin has been warmly welcomed by Protestant churches and individuals in the north.

The Presbyterian Church, which already showed its support for the visit, was quick off the mark this week. Its Clerk of the General Assembly, the Rev Trevor Gribben, said that the Popes visit to the World Meeting of Families would greatly enhance the affirmation of the place of the family at the heart of society, and that is to be welcomed.

This showed commendable leadership in stating firmly the Presbyterians welcome for the visit. It will make it easier for the new Moderator and/or the Rev Gribben to take up an invitation to meet the Pope in Dublin, which is sure to be forthcoming.

During John Paul IIs visit, a previous Presbyterian Clerk, the Rev Jack Weir, faced criticism for meeting the Pope. However, Jack, who was a towering visionary in Presbyterianism, handled it with typical courage and aplomb.

It has been said many times that Pope Francis will come to a very different Ireland than the one which welcomed John Paul II in 1979.This is now a multi-cultural Ireland which has legalised same-sex marriage and which may well have virtual abortion on demand after this Mays referendum.

The 2016 Census for the Republic also underlines the dramatic reduction since 2011 in the number of people who describe themselves as Catholic, from 3,831,187 in 2011 to 3,696,644 in 2016  a drop of 134,543 in five years.

In the same period, the number of people describing themselves as lapsed Catholics rose from 1,268 to 8,094, and the number who stated no religion rose from 256,830 to 451,941.

One hopes that the visit by Pope Francis will give an incentive to what used to be Holy Catholic Ireland, but which it clearly is not to the same extent today.

The disappointment remains that he has not indicated any intention to come to Northern Ireland. It really is a glaring omission.'A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind,' is a quotation from a constitutional expert, Walter Bagehot, writing in 1863 about the wedding of Prince Harry's great-great-great grandfather.

The man who became Edward VII was marrying Alexandra, a beautiful Danish princess who became immensely popular with the British public.

As I write this, 155 years on, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been wowing more than 2,500 young people at the Eikon Exhibition Centre, as well as a random collection of bystanders in Belfast fascinated by an unlikely romance between an ex-soldier and an American TV star.

Generations of royals have come and gone, and innumerable writers, politicians and activists have agitated for the abolition of the monarchy on the grounds of equality and fairness, but the words of the great writer Walter Bagehot are as relevant as ever.

As well as being the editor of The Economist, a banker and a writer full of insight on government, society, literature and all manner of other mid-Victorian preoccupations, Bagehot understood human beings.

He pointed out the simple truth that to many a marriage is a lot more interesting than anything to do with government.

It might seem very childish that the English were so enthusiastic about the marriage of the Prince of Wales, he said, and treated it as a great event, "but no feeling could be more like common human nature as it is, and as it is likely to be". Despite the best efforts of totalitarians and social engineers, the British public insist on liking the monarchy and enjoying sharing many of the family's dramas, hopes and fears.

The royals have a genius for reinventing themselves, often through the importation of young brides and bridegrooms who bring new blood and fresh ideas that rejuvenate a sometimes creaky, and occasionally scandal-riven, institution.

Queen Victoria's Prince Albert and the present Queen's Prince Philip were highly intelligent modernisers. Queen Alexandra, like the late Queen Mother, Princess Diana and the future Queen Catherine, the first middle-class recruit, had glamour and the common touch. And now, in a celebrity-crazed time, a clever, confident, beautiful American TV star arrives to up the ante.

What's more, William, Harry, Kate and Meghan can express the preoccupations of the young in contemporary language.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet well-wishers during a walkabout in Belfast after a visit to the Crown Bar in the city centre. Photo credit: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 23: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Catalyst Inc, Northern Irelands next generation science park, to meet young entrepreneurs and innovators on March 23, 2018 in Belfast, Nothern Ireland. (Photo by Chris Jackson - Pool/Getty Images) Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Catalyst Inc, Northern Irelands next generation science park, to meet young entrepreneurs and innovators. Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 23: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Catalyst Inc, Northern Irelands next generation science park, to meet young entrepreneurs and innovators on March 23, 2018 in Belfast, Nothern Ireland. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) Getty Images Meghan Markle reacts to wellwishers during a walkabout in Belfast after a visit to the Crown Bar in the city centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre. Photo credit: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet wellwishers during a walkabout in Belfast after a visit to the Crown Bar in the city centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Prince Harry shelters under an umbrella as he meets wellwishers during a walkabout in Belfast after he and Meghan Markle visited the Crown Bar in the city centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA BELFAST, UNITED KINGDOM - MARCH 23: Meghan Markle interacts with crowd as she departs from the Crown Liquor Saloon during her visit with Prince Harry to Northern Ireland on March 23, 2018 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images Meghan Markle shelters from the rain under an umbrella as she waves to wellwishers during a walkabout in Belfast after a visit to the Crown Bar in the city centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA Meghan Markle waves to wellwishers during a walkabout in Belfast after a visit to the Crown Bar in the city centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire PA BELFAST, UNITED KINGDOM - MARCH 23: Prince Harry interacts with crowd as he departs from the Crown Liquor Saloon during his visit with Meghan Markle to Northern Ireland on March 23, 2018 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images Meghan Markle shelters under an umbrella as she meets wellwishers during a walkabout in Belfast after she and Prince Harry visited the Crown Bar in the city centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Meghan Markle shelters under an umbrella as she meets wellwishers during a walkabout in Belfast after she and Prince Harry visited the Crown Bar in the city centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet wellwishers during a walkabout in Belfast after a visit to the Crown Bar in the city centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle exit the Crown Bar following a visit to learn of its heritage, as they start a walkabout in Belfast City centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Peter Byrne/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle exit the Crown Bar following a visit to learn of its heritage, as they start a walkabout in Belfast City centre. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Peter Byrne/PA Wire PA Crowds wait for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to exit the Crown Bar which they visited to learn from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and meet bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre where they learnt from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and met bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre where they learnt from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and met bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive for a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre where they learnt from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and met bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wave to the crowds as they arrive for a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City centre to learn from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and meet bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wave to the crowds as arrive for a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City centre to learn from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and meet bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Peter Byrne/PA Wire PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive for a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City centre to learn from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and meet bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Peter Byrne/PA Wire PA Crowds wait for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to arrive for a walkabout in Belfast City centre where they will visit the Crown Bar and learn from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and meet bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA The Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will visit to learn from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and meet bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Peter Byrne/PA Wire PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Crown Bar in Belfast on March 23rd 2018 at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Where Prince Charles, like his parents, has favoured reticence and the stiff upper lip, Princess Diana won hearts by projecting vulnerability and empathy.

Now the latest additions to The Firm address and share the anxieties of a new generation.

Harry had launched the peace-building initiative Amazing the Space last autumn. This time he was telling the young what they wanted to hear: that the old had made a mess of things which could be cleared up by the idealistic young.

"Clean the slates, guys. You got this."

He also put into contemporary words the pull-your-socks-up approach of his hard-working family: "the door is open and you just keep pushing at it".

They were going with the tide now, he added. "Keep it up!"

The left-wing media keep predicting the imminent collapse of the monarchy.

But with Harry and Meghan attracting cheers in all parts of the United Kingdom, it is, at least for now, the republicans who find themselves swimming against the tide.

Ruth Dudley Edwards is the editor of The Best of BagehotThe man at the centre of major drug investigation  which revealed his role in the distribution of illegal drugs into southwest Manitoba  has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/3/2018 (1279 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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The man at the centre of major drug investigation  which revealed his role in the distribution of illegal drugs into southwest Manitoba  has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

"Mr. (Leslie) Bisson was a significant presence in the drug scene in southwestern Manitoba. He was prepared to sell virtually any type of drug to further his criminal enterprise, and he introduced kilograms of substances into our community, which caused untold misery for those who used it. He showed little to no regard to the consequences of his actions  until he was caught," Judge John Combs said in Brandon provincial court on Friday.

"He was not the head of a sophisticated organization  but he was a big player in a smaller community."

Bisson, who pleaded guilty to trafficking cocaine, possessing a firearm while prohibited and possessing proceeds from a crime, was the primary target of Project Derringer, a major drug investigation conducted by Manitobas Integrated Organized Crime Task Force.

As part of that investigation, police monitored the large-scale shipment of illegal drugs into Brandon and obtained warrants that allowed them to place Bisson under surveillance, using tactics such as tracers, bugs and "sneak peeks" into homes to collect evidence.

In one of those sneak peeks into Bissons stash location, four kilograms of vacuum-sealed cocaine with a street value of $260,000 were found, along with four pounds of marijuana with a street value of $8,000, and two pounds of psilocybin  otherwise known as magic mushrooms  worth $4,000.

Police were also able to identify Bissons drug customers and his supplier  a "courier" from Toronto who would deliver multi-kilogram amounts of cocaine to Bisson every five to seven weeks.

In multiple sentencing hearings that concluded in January, Crown prosecutor Erin Magas and defence lawyer Eric Wach argued what Bissons level of involvement within the elaborate drug trafficking schemewas  with Magas asserting Bisson was a high-level trafficker and Wach downplaying his role as such.

After considering numerous factors, such as the quantity of drugs involved, the sophistication of the drug network and Bissons decision-making power within that network, Combs said there were aspects of Bissons operation that were "inconsistent with him being at a high level."

Bisson seemed to operate a relatively unsophisticated operation and handled drugs and transactions personally, Combs said, and there was no evidence suggesting he had any control over the individuals purchasing from him other than being their supplier.

On the other hand, Bisson introduced numerous kilograms of narcotics into western Manitoba and showed a willingness to sell those drugs at the kilogram level, had regular customers purchasing large quantities of drugs, and was in the process of introducing sophisticated equipment  such as encrypted cellphones  into his operation, Combs said.

"Much comment has been made of the scourge of cocaine in our society and the hardship and social upheaval caused by the use of this substance," Combs said. "A further significant aggravating factor is the kilogram of methamphetamine in the accuseds possession at the time of his arrest. This is a particularly dangerous substance which is becoming more prevalent in this area  Bisson has shown a willingness to sell any product for profit, regardless of the consequent risk to its ultimate users."

Combs said it was also aggravating that Bisson was not in the business of drug trafficking to fuel an addiction, but rather for his own personal greed.

"(Bisson) told the court he was selling drugs so he could eat, put a roof over his head, so he could live," Combs said. "The accused owned multiple properties and vehicles, including an $80,000 truck  drugs offered a lucrative income with an enhanced lifestyle."

Combs also took Bissons personal circumstances into account, he said, such as his difficult childhood filled with a lack of support, abuse and an absent father.

Bisson has also made progress through counselling and programming while in custody, showing his is a candidate for rehabilitation, Combs said.

After credit for time served, Bisson has spent a little more than two years in jail, leaving him with 70 months, or just under six years, to serve going forward.

 edebooy@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @erindebooyHey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/3/2018 (1279 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This week, the province of Manitoba released its much-awaited college review.

In short, the review found that Manitoba needs more college seats. While any 200-page report is going to have a myriad of observations and recommendations for reflection and change, the bottom line is that Manitoba needs more people to obtain credentials from colleges.

SUBMITTED Assiniboine Community College president Mark Frison was at the legislature earlier this week for the release of the provinces college review.

Manitoba has long had the lowest post-secondary educational attainment rate in the country. There are obviously a variety of social, economic and policy factors that conspire to create this situation. This seems like a ready-made problem to tackle for a government that has as one of its mantras: most improved province.

I commend the government for its selection of consultants to conduct the review. Higher Education Strategy Associates is led by Alex Usher. He is originally from Winnipeg and he is probably the leading commentator on post-secondary education in Canada. The report leads one to see that a more strategic approach is required to address the issues. Any across-the-board approach would be sub-optimal. We need to invest more heavily in those areas and populations that are underserved to help move the needle on educational attainment.

One area that received attention was the need for more of a focus on rural areas. Manitobas education system is currently highly centralized. In fact, 85 per cent of funding for post-secondary institutions is spent in Winnipeg. There is little surprise that some areas of the province, such as the Parkland region, have lower educational attainment rates as they tend to be underserved by the system.

For Assiniboine, the report suggests that we should play a more active role in a number of rural centres including Portage la Prairie, Winkler and Morden, and areas like Dauphin and Russell. This is music to our ears. I have been involved in higher education in four other provinces, all of which are more decentralized than Manitoba. I can see the benefit of being able to offer more programs closer to home for people, especially for occupations that are in high demand in those regions.

While it will obviously require additional resources to offer more programs in these communities, increased flexibility will be equally important. The report notes that Manitobas higher education system is very prescriptive and offers little flexibility to use program funds for different purposes in different locations year over year. Having dedicated funds that allow the college to respond to these needs in real time is key.

A couple of years ago, both the Brandon Chamber of Commerce and the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce adopted policies to encourage government to give colleges more flexibility and tools to allow us to respond to employers. As such, this direction could be a win for rural learners, rural employers and rural communities.

Consistent with doing more close to home, the report also calls on institutions to do more to support Indigenous learners, improving both access and program completion. Again, this is welcome news. Among the goals in the strategic direction adopted by our board in 2013 is "contributing to First Nations, Metis and Inuit prosperity by having the highest college participation rate in the province."

Assiniboines academic plan, which was heralded in the report as a template for the rest of the colleges and universities in the province, and our Indigenization strategy both try to support this goal by not only improving access but by supporting program completion and graduate outcomes. For example, graduates get jobs in their fields of study in Manitoba.

In addition to attempting to recruit increasing numbers of Indigenous learners into regular on-campus programs, the report notes Assiniboines strong record of accomplishment in partnerships with Indigenous communities and organizations in mounting programs. This past academic year alone, Assiniboine delivered education in 21 communities across Manitoba, as far west as Birtle and Melita and as far north as Swan River and Gods Lake First Nation.

Media attention following the release of the report tended to focus on completion rates, where this province lags behind the rest of the country. In fact, much of the coverage conflated the desire to increase graduation rates (the percentage of students who complete programs they start) with the need to increase the number of graduates (total aggregate number of people obtaining credentials). There is little question improving completion rates will contribute to increasing the total number of graduates. However, it is but one part of the solution to this problem.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that here too, the report highlights that Assiniboines performance is at the national average and exceeds that of other major colleges in Manitoba. Improving completion rates is an area that our board of governors established in our performance goals in 2013. Our staff have been committed to using a variety of tools to support student success. This is not about lower standards, it is about ensuring a good program fit, having well-designed programs and having appropriate supports to help learners succeed.

I am optimistic about what is possible in Manitoba. This review certainly provides some commentary and sheds light on important issues that that could improve an already strong system.

Some recommendations need to be approached cautiously and with a lot of dialogue among institutions, government, students, parents and the public. Education Minister Ian Wishart pledged to work collaboratively with the college sector to see what ought to be advanced with an eye to having the best college system in the country and making progress on Manitobas low post-secondary participation rate.

I am proud of our college and the work of our staff at Assiniboine. We have increased our number of graduates by 36 per cent over the past four years. Our annual followup surveys continue to show that our graduates get jobs in their fields of study right here in Manitoba. Students get an annual 21.2 per cent rate of return on their investment and the government gets a 10.1 per cent rate of return on its investment in our college. But we can and will do more to contribute to the prosperity and quality of life of Manitoba and Manitobans. This latest college review suggests some steps in the right direction.

 Mark Frison is president of Assiniboine Community College.Update 7.24pm: A 30-year-old man has appeared in court this evening, charged in connection with a drug find worth more than 1.4m in Dublin.

The cocaine discovery was made in Ronanstown on Thursday evening when two cars were stopped.

Cocaine, cannabis, ketamine, and drug trafficking paraphernalia were recovered during follow up searches in the Tallaght and Clondalkin areas of Dublin.

A second man, a 26-year-old already was before a court yesterday afternoon.

Earlier:Follow up search operations have taken place in Tallaght and Clondalkin following the recovery of a quantity of cocaine in the Ronanstown area in Dublin on Thursday evening.

Two vehicles were intercepted in the Ronanstown area at approximately 7.30pm as part of ongoing investigations being conducted by the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau supported by the Special Crime Task Force, targeting serious and organised criminal activity in the Dublin region.

A quantity of cocaine was recovered and two males aged 30 and 26 were arrested and detained under drug trafficking legislation at Ronanstown Garda Station.

Follow up search operations took place in the Tallaght and Clondalkin areas resulting in the seizure of significant quantities of cocaine, cannabis, ketamine and drug trafficking paraphernalia.

During the operation controlled drugs with an estimated street value in excess of 1.4 million (subject to analysis) were seized.

Investigations are ongoing.

The 26-year-old male is scheduled to appear at the Criminal Courts of Justice this afternoon charged in connection with the investigation. The 30-year-old remains in custody.A Dublin councillor is calling on the public to contact the Taoiseach and demand new resources for Dublin Fire Brigade.

Sinn Fein's Paul Donnelly says the outstanding bravery of fire-fighters at the Metro Hotel Fire in Ballymun is a stark contrast to revelations that fire crews are under-resourced.Transport Minister Shane Rosss controversial bill to overhaul the appointment of judges is a dogs dinner and needs significant work, if it is to be viable, Attorney General Seamus Woulfe has said.

Mr Woulfe, speaking at an event in Dublin, said the bill  which was the cause of a major row at the Cabinet, earlier this week  is in a poor state, because of amendments made by opposition TDs at committee stage.

Mr Woulfe said that many of the amendments made by the opposition were contradictory, inconsistent, and unconstitutional.

Among a whole myriad of amendments, which they made, which make the bill a complete dogs dinner, at the moment, because a number of the amendments are contradictory, inconsistent, and unconstitutional, he said.

Tensions are escalating within the Cabinet at the slow progress of the bill, despite it being in the Programme for Government and despite a commitment from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar that it would be fast-tracked.

As a result of the amendments, Mr Woulfe indicated that Mr Rosss demand that the bill should be introduced to the Dail next week is very unlikely to be met.

Therefore, Mr Woulfe said, it makes it a challenge to get the bill to report stage, very soon, and tidy up all that.

I am sure, under new politics, a deal will be done, involving various government ministers and opposition parties, and we await, with interest, over the next few days, how that will pan out.

At an event for the Association of European Journalists, Mr Woulfe talked about the role of the attorney general and how, traditionally, it has played an important role in the selection of judges.

However, at committee stage, opposition TDs voted to remove the attorney general from the process, which Mr Woulfe described as an absolutely crazy thing to do.

The attorney has a role in judicial appointments, as being a link person with the bar and knowing the people, knowing the candidates and the judges. Under the new Judicial Appointments Bill, the opposition decided to abolish me at committee stage, by 5-3, to knock the attorney out. Widely thought, not just because it is me, to be an absolutely crazy thing to do, down in the legal system, he said.

Because, hopefully, the AG is a good link person, and knows something about the candidates. But 5-3 went the votes, including my good friend, Jim OCallaghan, who voted, along with Clare Daly and Mick Wallace and two others, against the three Government people, Mr Woulfe said.

Attorney General Seamus Woulfe.

As attorney general, Mr Woulfe does not often speak in public and his comments are sure to be met with some shock and hostility by the Independent Alliance, which is demanding swift movement on this bill.

A Fine Gael party supporter, he was appointed by Mr Varadkar last summer.

As revealed by the Irish Examiner, three judicial appointments were only approved by Cabinet last Tuesday, following an almighty dust-up between Fine Gael and Independent Alliance ministers.

Mr Ross and super-junior health minister, Finian McGrath, became embroiled in a heated row with colleagues, especially Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan, according to sources, and threatened to block any further appointments, unless the bill was pushed through the Dail and Seanad.

Mr Ross, who is the chief sponsor of the bill, was up in arms over the delays, while Mr McGrath strongly reminded his Fine Gael colleagues that it is a priority in the Programme for Government.

The Independent Alliance has said its support for the appointment of any future judges is dependent on progress on this bill and it cannot be guaranteed.

Mr Flanagan has said work on the bill is progressing and should be back in the Dail, for enactment, within a few weeks.

The Government is fully committed to the Judicial Appointments Bill, according to a statement issued late by a Government spokesman.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke yesterday evening to Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan and Minister for Transport Shane Ross, who proposed the bill, and also to the Attorney General.

Fianna Fail Spokesperson on Justice Jim OCallaghan.

Fianna Fail Spokesperson on Justice Jim OCallaghan has called on the Minister for Justice & Equality to scrap the governments Judicial Appointments Bill in light of the comments made by the Attorney General, who described the Bill as a complete dogs dinner.

Deputy OCallaghan warned that if the Attorney General believes the Bill is unconstitutional, the government needs to set it aside and the process of drafting new legislation must begin again.

The Attorney General is correct in describing the governments Bill as a complete dogs dinner. The reason it is a dogs dinner is because the chef is Shane Ross. The governments Bill is deeply flawed and will not achieve any genuine reform. In fact, its sole purpose is to appease one Cabinet Minister.

The comments by the Attorney General should act as a wake-up call for the government, especially the remarks around the constitutionality of the legislation. Minister Flanagan needs to act on the concerns of the AG and scrap this legislation that has become a vanity project for one member of cabinet.

It is not acceptable for a government to sit back and allow flawed legislation to be introduced in a bid to keep Minister Ross on board. The European Commission has already stated that the Bill does not conform to European standards, which specify that a substantial part of the members of the judicial appointments body should be judges.

At no stage has the government ever explained the public policy reason for reducing judicial involvement in the proposed board and replacing this expertise with people who have no knowledge of which candidates are suitable, or characteristics required, for judicial appointment.

The intervention by the Attorney General should mark the death knell for this deeply flawed Bill. The Justice Minister needs to intervene immediately and scrap this deeply flawed legislation.

This story first appeared in the Irish Examiner.An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has paid tribute to former Ceann Comhairle Sean Treacy on his death at the age of 94.

Sean was a giant of politics from the 1960s to the 1990s. He gave proud service to the people of Tipperary, and particularly Clonmel.

A former Mayor of Clonmel, he was first elected to the Dail in 1961, where he served for 36 years. He also had extensive service at local authority level, was a Munster MEP for three years, and held many other positions in public life.

He is particularly remembered as an impartial, fair and independent Ceann Comhairle. I know that is how he will be remembered by many members of the Dail. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time.

Former Ceann Comhairle of the Dail, Sean Treacy, who was a TD for Tipperary South for 36 years and was also an MEP for three years passed away at the age of 94.

Mr Treacy, who lived at Heywood Road in Clonmel, died peacefully on Friday night in South Tipperary General Hospital.

He was formerly a member of the Labour Party and was first elected to the Dail in 1961, holding his seat until 1997.

He was expelled from the Labour Party in 1985 after voting against the family planning bill introduced by the partys Minister for Health Barry Desmond and was elected as an independent in 1987, going on to become Ceann Comhairle for the subsequent three Dail terms. He had also held that position from 1973 to 1977 when Fine Gael and Labour were in power.

Labour TD for Tipperary Alan Kelly has extended his sympathy to the family, friends and supporters of former Ceann Comhairle and TD for Tipperary South, Sean Tracey.

Deputy Kelly said: "I am very saddened to hear today of the death of former Ceann Comhairle and Labour TD for Tipperary South, Sean Tracey who provided decades of service to the constituency and in particular the people of Clonmel.

"Sean preceded me as TD in Tipperary and MEP in Munster, and I know he will be greatly missed by all who knew and served with him, whether as Councillor, TD or MEP.

"In particular he will be remembered for being returned seven times to the Dail alongside a further three terms when he served as Ceann Comhairle.

"He made a huge contribution to our county and our country, and in particular his immense service as Ceann Comhairle and on the Council of State.

"Ar dheis De go raibh a anam."

Mr Treacy was an MEP for the Munster constituency from 1981 until 1984 and also held membership of Tipperary South County Council and Clonmel Corporation for much of his political career, since first being elected as a senior alderman in 1955.

He was mayor of Clonmel from 1957 to 1958 and other posts held over the years included the chair of the Civil Service Commission and Local Appointments Commission, President of the Clonmel Trades and Labour Coucil, president of the Joint Board for Conciliation and Arbitration for the Irish footwear and leather industry, and membership of the Council of State due to his position as Ceann Comhairle. His first job had been in a shoe factory in Clonmel.

He was a graduate of University College Cork, where he earned a diploma in social and economic science, and retired from the Dail in 1997. He was later made a freeman of Clonmel.

Mr Treacy was regarded as being on the conservative wing of the house, even in the 1980s, but his independence of mind and fairness was admired on all sides which was illustrated by the length of time he spent in the chair.

Mr Treacys remains will repose at ODonoghues funeral home in Clonmel from 5pm on Sunday evening, with removal to St Marys Church at 7.30pm. Burial will take place on Monday in St Patricks Cemetery after funeral Mass at 12 noon.Update 3.26pm:The Green Party leader says Ireland needs to do more to tackle climate change.

Eamon Ryan has questioned the Government on their commitments to the Paris Agreement.

He says Ireland is one of four countries that have yet to submit a report on the back of the Agreement.

"The Taoiseach is saying his first priority is climate change in government but actually he's done nothing about it. There's also shocking news today that we are one of only four countries that has not put in the report we were meant to put in on the back of the Paris Climate Agreement.

That's ourselves, Belarus, Croatia and the United States of America. We're in bed with Trump on this one and it's a shame and a disgrace on the country."

Earlier:The second day of the Greens' Annual Convention kicks off today.

The party's focus will be on preparing for the elections, which it believes will happen in the next year.

Councillor Ciaran Cuffe's campaign as a candidate in the European Elections in Dublin will also start today.

Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan says they need to boost their seats.

He said: "No one knows when our next general election will be but most people think it is within the next year so we have to get ready for that.

"We know that there are local and European elections for sure in May next year and what we are planning to do is actually triple our seats - to actually increase in the councils, to go back to European Parliament and to go back to the Dail with a sufficient number of seats to try and get into Government and steer the country in a more sustainable direction."

- Digital DeskMonths of searchng, thousands of auditions, three live shows and two wildcards later, Cork-based dance group RDC have been crowned the winners of Ireland's Got Talent 2018.

A total of eight acts battled it out to be crowned the first-ever winner of Irelands Got Talent.

Wildcards Zacc Milne Matt Dodd, Aaron J Hart, Xquisite, RDC, Double Impact, FKFT and Linda McLoughlin battled it out on the Ireland's Got Talent stage tonight.

But it was RDC who proved the nations favourite and won the title of Ireland's Got Talent winners 2018.

RDC yet again delivered with a performance that was full of energy and rhythm.

All four judges were full of praise for this 31 piece group.

Michelle said, What I really love about you - when we see the choreography we know its RDC.

Louis told them "you have done your homework and its paid off, I know everybody in Cork is going to back you guys.

And it's official RDC are the winners of Ireland's Got Talent 2018! Congratulations guys!!! #GotTalentIRL pic.twitter.com/xUeavVezbM  Virgin Media Television (@VirginMedia_TV) March 24, 2018

Dancer of the judging panel, Denise, told them You are so in sync. I loved the choreography and the energy. Jason was blown away saying, that was absolutely flawless, you wrecked the gaff."

The dance act walks away tonight with 50,000 and their very own TV special on TV3 later this year.

The host of Ireland's Got Talent, Lucy Kennedy, yesterday confirmed that the show will return next year.

- Digital DeskPoisoned former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be pardoned and to be able to visit his home country, a friend has said.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to visit his family, Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.

Mr Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury on March 4.

The attempted assassination sparked a diplomatic crisis between Russia and Britain, which has been supported by its allies in apportioning blame to the Kremlin.

On Friday, EU leaders promised an "unprecedented" diplomatic response to the attack after backing Theresa May's assertion that Moscow was responsible.

Meanwhile, the EU is recalling its ambassador to Russia for "consultations" on the Salisbury attack.

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while on Sunday Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's EU ambassador, said that "from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him (Mr Skirpal)".

Sergei Skripal's house.

The 66-year-old was accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.

He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.

According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.

"Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland," he said.

In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor... (he told me) he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were (in Russia).

Russia's ambassador to the UK sent his well wishes to Mrs Skripal and his daughter on Friday, saying he hoped for their recovery.

Alexander Yakovenko wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripal's aid.

Mr Bailey said his experience had been "completely surreal" after he was discharged from hospital.

- PAThe Kremlin has denied a claim that poisoned former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be pardoned and to be able to visit his home country.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to visit his family, his friend Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury on March 4.

Moscow has stepped up its campaign to discredit Theresa May's assertion that it is "highly likely" Russia was responsible for the attack.

The diplomatic crisis has plunged relations between Russia and the UK into the deep freeze and could trigger further action by European Union members in support of the Prime Minister's stance.

But the Russian embassy in London kept up its attempts to challenge the UK's case - reiterating its suggestion that the Porton Down defence laboratory was developing its own "military-grade poisons".

The lab, located less than 10 miles from Salisbury, is where tests were carried out to identify the Novichok substance.

Porton Down chief executive Gary Aitkenhead told the BBC: "We have got the highest levels of controls, of security around the work that we do here.

"We would not be allowed to operate if we had lack of control that could result in anything leaving the four walls of our facility here."

A Russian embassy spokesman said Mr Aitkenhead's comment "amounts to admitting that the secret facility is a place where new components of military-grade poisons are being researched and developed".

On Friday, EU leaders promised an "unprecedented" diplomatic response to the attack after backing Theresa May's assertion that Moscow was responsible.

The bloc is recalling its ambassador to Russia for "consultations" on the Salisbury attack.

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while on Sunday Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's EU ambassador, said that "from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him (Mr Skripal)".

The 66-year-old was accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.

He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.

According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.

"Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland," he said.

"In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor... (he told me) he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were (in Russia)."

Russia's ambassador to the UK sent his well wishes to Mr Skripal and his daughter on Friday, saying he hoped for their recovery.

Alexander Yakovenko wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripals' aid.

Mr Bailey said his experience had been "completely surreal" after he was discharged from hospital.

- PAUnderachievement in schools is commonly attributed to ineffective teaching methods, low expectations, poor student attitudes and behaviour, inadequate school resourcing and a culture that undervalues education. These may all be contributors. But could the explanation also lie in the way schooling itself is organised and delivered?

Put simply, large numbers of our students are not performing as well as they could. And the situation is becoming worse. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for the current Gonski review.

According to the OECD, each year in Australia 40 000 students reach 15 years of age unable to read at the level required for everyday life. In mathematics, the figure is 57 000. At the same time, the top 10 per cent of Australian 15-year-olds perform at the same level in mathematics as 40 per cent of students in the worlds highest performing nations.

Schools are sometimes described as operating on an industrial model. Students are grouped by age and move along an "assembly line" from one school year to the next. The curriculum is packaged into year levels and the job of teachers is to deliver the appropriate year-level package.

Students are expected to learn what teachers teach and are assessed and graded on how well they do this. As in other production processes, higher grades are intended to indicate higher quality outcomes.

Under this approach to schooling, each school year tends to be a fresh start. The year 9 teacher delivers the year 9 curriculum to year 9 students with the intention that grades for the year will be uninfluenced by students performances in prior years.

And this might all be fine if students began each year at more or less the same point in their learning. In reality, the most advanced 10 per cent of students begin each school year about five to six years ahead of the least advanced 10 per cent of students. If school were a running race, instead of beginning on the same starting line, students would begin each year widely spread along the running track. And yet they are all judged and graded against the same finish line  the curriculum expectations for their year level.

The consequences are predictable. The least advanced students struggle. They begin the year on track to receive low grades, often year after year. The best predictor of where students will be relative to their age peers in the later years of school is where they were in the earlier years. Worse, students who receive a "D" year after year are given little sense of the absolute progress they are making. They often conclude that there is something stable about their ability to learn  they are a "D-student"  and eventually disengage.It is a $200 million industry of fakery that is stripping local Indigenous artists of their culture, their artwork and their pride.

The Arts Law Centre of Australia estimated that 80 percent of Indigenous souvenirs in Australian tourist shops were fakes.

Indigenous artist and owner of Dreamtime Kullilla-Art Michael Connolly.

Redcliffe-based Indigenous artist and owner of Dreamtime Kullilla-Art, Michael Connolly, has been in the business for 25 years and says the issue is only getting worse.

Ive been fighting this battle for 25 years... were ripped off by the fake art industry, which is worth $200 million a year, Mr Connolly said.She has been billed as the greatest actor of her generation, and there is no doubt that when Cate Blanchett enters a room all eyes are firmly on her.

Cate Blanchett raising eyebrows in Sydney to launch a perfume.

But it was what came out of her mouth in Sydney last week that really captured PS's attention, and, as her sponsors at Giorgio Armani's fragrance empire rudely discovered last week during her dash to Sydney to promote the latest fragrance, Si Passione, there is no controlling a woman like Blanchett.

Having inked a deal back in 2013 for a reported $10 million to become the face of Si, a relationship which saw her cosy up with Mr Armani as the global ambassador of his luxury fragrance, part of Blanchett's commitment means talking endlessly about rather banal topics, such as her beauty regime.

Even getting an official photo of Blanchett from the Sydney launch was tantamount to getting security clearance at the United Nations, with emails circumnavigating the globe before approval was given for a shot, which arrived days later, somewhat inconveniently given today's 24/7 instant digital news cycle.FATHER BROWN

Series return 

7.30pm, ABC

This lovely 1950s countryside whodunit begins its sixth season with a storyline that not only manages to raise questions about the chastity of Father Brown (Mark Williams), but also requires one of its racier core cast to don a nun's habit. Such gasp-inducing moments are brought about by the 11th-hour reprieve at the gallows of dastardly fifth-season villainess Katherine Corven (Kate O'Flynn, The Palace).

Father Brown is in its sixth season.

MOVIE: JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR



4.45pm, 9Gem

Behold, children! Easter is about more than chocolate. It is also a time to celebrate Andrew Lloyd Webber's and Tim Rice's bold and brilliant interpretation of the Crucifixion story. In this 1970 film version of the musical, Judas gets a more interesting part than he did in the Bible, and Jesus is a conflicted figure who must be soothed by Mary Magdalene with the catchy Everything's Alright and heralded with the showstopper Hosanna.JESUS: COUNTDOWN TO CALVARY



Tuesday (March 27), 9.30pm, ABC

Just in time for Easter comes this fascinating theological deconstruction of Christ's last six days, presented by Hugh Bonneville. Academics, including the magnificently maned Professor Helen Bond, author Amos Oz (Judas) and Christian scholars put forward plausible theories for how, when and why Jesus was crucified. In conjunction with sparing re-enactments, modern-day footage of Jerusalem cleverly serves to set the fateful scene.

Hugh Bonneville in Jesus: The Countdown to Calvary.

BRAINBUZZ



Monday 8am, 9Go!

If children must watch television before school, they could do worse than this energetic, factoid-stuffed science show hosted by Kellyn Morris (previously of Ten's Toasted TV). Along with scientist Clare Van Dorssen, Morris guides primary schoolers through quizzes and lab experiments. Down to earth and down with the kids, the pair make science and physics look more like play than schoolwork.WASTED! THE STORY OF FOOD WASTE



8.30pm, SBS

Craig Reucassel is not alone in his war on waste. This documentary into global food waste and what's being done about it is as alarming as it is motivating. Prominent crusaders passionately break down what we mostly already know about supermarkets' negligence in this area, while celebrated chefs show what can be done cuisine-wise. The erudite Anthony Bourdain has the rousing final say.

Australian Spartan - it's not supposed to be easy.

GRAND DESIGNS



7.40pm, ABC

Kevin McCloud overcomes his reluctance to feature interior designers as home builders on his blue ribbon building show by following the unusual transformation of a Victorian dairy in South London into a Parisian retreat. Designer couple Beth and Andrew are nuts about every rusted fitting and patch of peeling paint, but the way they incorporate the old with the new is mightily impressive.VIRGIN BUSH

Double episode series premiere 

10.15pm, ABC Comedy

Sydney comedian Neel Kolhatkar is the archetypal town mouse who goes to the country. Spliced with his stand-up routine back in the city are his trips to NSW towns Carina and Dubbo, in which he tries his hand at sheep shearing and pigeon racing respectively. These fairly predictable exercises are mixed with his expletive-laden stand-up routine back home.

Neel Kolhatkar in Virgin Bush.

JESUS: THE COUNTDOWN TO CALVARY



9.30pm, ABC

Former theology student Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) finds himself unexpectedly moved by relics during his investigation in Jerusalem into the last six days of Jesus' life. The theories put forward here about the events that would spawn Christianity are hard to dismiss, rooted as they are in history, with rare, yet tangible supporting evidence. This is a comprehensive take on the Easter story for people of any or no faith.One of Australias leading marine pollutant and reef water scientists has issued a dire warning about the health of Queensland's prawn industry in the wake of the latest CSIRO report into pesticides in the state's waterways.

Professor Jon Brodie heads up James Cook Universitys Catchment to Reef Processes Research Group and warned that authorities needed to act immediately to control new pesticides flowing into rivers.

Leading marine pollutant scientist Professor Jon Brodie, chief scientist from James Cook University's Catchment to Reef Processes team.

Professor Brodie was responding to 2017 CSIRO laboratory test results reported in the February 2018 edition of the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety.

The report showed pesticide run-off from farms was affecting crustaceans' nervous systems and killing tiger prawn larvae when they were exposed to the level of pesticides found in the major Queensland waterways, with the potential to have a major impact on the state's $80 million prawn industry.But these lab studies were done in a beaker and we havent yet had the opportunity to test this in the real world. Scientists are a cautious breed. This is one piece of evidence and we would like to have a weight of evidence before we can say we have a cause and effect. Professor Jon Brodie, the chief scientist from James Cook University's Catchment to Reef Processes research group, said the preliminary research was valuable. It again shows that we have pesticides above guideline levels in Queensland streams and particularly near the Great Barrier Reef where I work, he said. That in itself is not news.

But what this shows is that these sorts of levels can hurt prawns." More than 95 per cent of Australia's prawn industry is in Queensland as prawns prefer water temperatures above 25 degrees. Australian Prawn Farmers Association president Matt West said the CSIRO research showed pesticides were killing prawn larvae. I guess its the early stages of alarm bells, if you like, based on the results they have done in a lab, Mr West said. "What we are talking about is pesticides in estuaries in run-off from agricultural farms, which appears to be elevating.

So we are getting mortality with our larvae stages. Mr West insisted rigorous annual tests with Queensland's Department of Agriculture showed no pesticides at all in adult prawns. So there is no effect on human health in consuming these animals," Mr West said. Fisheries expert Dr Matt Landos said the situation was a canary in the coal mine situation for Australias prawn and crustacean industry. What they found was that at the low levels of these chemicals, in fact at staggering low levels, the prawns stopped eating, he said.

We now have the science." The CSIRO scientists investigated the impact of three common pesticides  bifenthrin, fipronil and imidacloprid - that they discovered in rivers near Mackay and Logan. The scientists said all pesticide levels in Queensland's coastal rivers were increasing as farms shifted from older-style organophosphate pesticides to modern neonicotinoid pesticides, following world trends. CSIRO research shows increasing proportions of pesticides in Queensland streams, though not all to dangerous levels. Credit:CSIRO Neonicotinoid pesticides influence receptors in the brains of sucking and chewing insects.

They make up more than 24 per cent of the worlds pesticides and were linked to honey-bee deaths in the United States in the early 2000s. They are now widely used on Queenslands cane farms and fruit and vegetable farms, and to control pests. The CSIRO report found the pesticides had low toxicity to birds and mammals, but higher toxicity to fish and arthropods. The team of scientists tested the lethal toxicity of the pesticides on baby black tiger prawns and found that: "Each of these insecticides was among pesticides detected in some samples collected from shrimp farm intake waters, and at concentrations approaching those that would either impact survival (fipronil) or their feeding rates (bifenthrin and imidacloprid)." Dr Hook said Queenslands Department of Environment and Science had decided recently to upgrade water quality guidelines on pesticides, however that could not be confirmed.

Flooded sugar cane fields near Bundaberg. Soil, sediments and pesticides wash downstream in rivers. Credit:AFP A spokesman for Queenslands Department of Agriculture and Fisheries said the CSIRO research had yet to be evaluated. As yet we cannot confirm the accuracy of CSIROs conclusions, the spokesman said. The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority described the CSIRO study as an initial limited study only. The APVMA will continue to monitor and consider any further scientific work on this issue, a spokesman said.The affordability of university in capital cities is often discussed in the context of whether students these days can afford to move out of home while they study.

If Issys so poor why doesnt she just move back in with her parents? fourth-year University of New South Wales student Isabella Lowe recalls one rich student asking.

Living rent-free is a luxury not all university students enjoy. Plenty of students live in a perpetually precarious financial state while they study, and before you ask if I'm exaggerating, consider Lowe's story.

Isabella Lowe feels supported by her university, UNSW. Credit:Kate Geraghty

Last year for 3 weeks I had 58c to my name, she says. I was waiting on a fair bit of money for work I had invoiced but both contractors were really slow to pay.Stockland is one of the countrys biggest developers of both residential communities and retirement villages. Last week they announced they were launching a new retirement living concept called Aspire. The key selling points are that there is no exit fee and residents receive all capital gain, something that seems to have really struck a chord with the market: 18 homes have already sold.

You can't directly compare a retirement village with a residential development.

These new retirement communities wont operate under retirement village legislation, but rather as a standard residential development. Buyers would own their home on a strata or community title basis, and an owners corporation would be responsible for the ongoing maintenance and management of the community. The difference between these and other residential developments is that there would be an age restriction for residents: every property would need at least one occupant aged 55 or over.

The communities will be made up of low-maintenance two and three-bedroom houses. The development in Sydney is expected to have 114 single-storey homes, with a clubhouse, heated pool, gym and bar, while the Perth development will have 142 homes and an outdoor pool, and will be co-located with an aged care facility. House prices will start at $655,000.

Like other strata/community title developments, stamp duty is payable on the purchase, and buyers can borrow against their home, bequeath the property through a will and even use it as an investment by renting it out. But whether it is the owner, the tenant or the beneficiary who wishes to occupy the property the age restriction must be observed.Three out of four children had quit swimming classes by age eight, long before they'd learned skills that could save their lives, finds a new report that says learning to swim earlier is not always better.

Children are also starting lessons earlier today than in the 1980s and 1990s, according to the report by the Royal Life Saving Society - Australia.

Katelyn and Jane Fountain do weekly swimming lessons at the Aquatic Safety Training Academy at Seven Hills. Credit:Janie Barrett

RLSS chief executive Justin Scarr said there had been a "massive transformation" in the way swimming was taught, with many children starting lessons earlier and quitting sooner.

"Younger is not always better, and our concern is many children exit swimming lessons at an age where they are less likely to learn the lifesaving skills that will protect them," he said. In particular, they would be more vulnerable later as teenagers swimming, boating, snorkelling, etc., when they're less likely to be supervised.Global research has identified a moral deficit of kindness for those people involved in bullying and violence, Mr Kelly says. As a result the Thomas Kelly Youth Foundation is promoting conversations within families, communities and workplaces, encouraging thoughts, actions, acts and pledges of kindness to bring values of kindness to the forefront of our mindsets.

But time also doesn't alter their father's determination to try and prevent youth suicide as a result of bullying, hazing, or violence with the launch of the #staykindconversations campaign.

For Ralph and Kathy Kelly both anniversaries come up in July. Six years since Thomas, aged 18, died after a drunken one-punch attack in Kings Cross and two years for Stuart, also aged 18, who took his own life after alleged bullying at St Paul's College at University of Sydney. The bullying is blamed on the family's stand on excessive alcohol consumption.

Sometimes the passage of time doesn't really alter things. You don't get over the loss of two teenage sons in tragic circumstances any time soon.

Kathy and Ralph Thomas with the Parramatta Eels NRL team at the Stay Kind charity fixture.

The kindness campaign has some solid foundations with great thinkers. The Dalai Lama said: "Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible." American novelist Henry James said: "Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind."

This year Stay Kind Day will again be marked by the NRL, Wests Tigers (Mr Kelly an avid fan) and Parramatta Eels (Stuart was a keen supporter) when they go head to head on Easter Monday in the Stay Kind cup match. More than 30,000 punters turned out for the inaugural clash last year, many of whom were not regular followers of rugby league.

Mr Kelly said a full stadium of some 65,000 would reflect the number of people known to try to take their lives each year. The real figure may be higher. Mr Kelly said: "Every time we speak to a group of people and ask people to raise their hands if they have been touched by suicide, around 90 per cent of the people put their hand up.

"What we are saying is, if you have kindness then bullying is much less likely. It's hard to bully someone if kindness is at the forefront of your mindset. If there had been kindness, Stuart would still be alive. We know he was targeted because of the family's profile. He was walking into a ticking time bomb, which we did not realise at the time."Hairstyles define an era. Think beehive and bob. Think mullet or mohican. They also start trends. Think Audrey Hepburn, Cher and Farrah Fawcett. Men have had it long, think Charles l (until it was all cut off in one go) and women have had it short, as in pixie side-swept '60s model Twiggy.

What next? Chantal Haberland who is one of six finalists in NSW category of the Australian Hair Fashion Awards may have the answer. Her winning portfolio features cuts of the moment for that essential gender neutral look. There's the Metallica, Newtown Disturbia, the Polished Oxford and the Clipperd Edge, amongst others.

Hair salon owner Chantal Haberland, in her salon Synergy Hair and Beauty, Pyrmont. Credit:Louie Douvis

The owner of Synergy Hair and Beauty in Pyrmont said the awards were all about setting trends. Chantal (as she is known to her best clients) said: "Everyone is talking about gender neutral so we need to think what sort of powerful cuts and colours would look good. It is all about what can sit well on a male or female or anyone within the LGBTQI community.

"My inspiration comes from Vidal Sassoon, he was famous for inventing short hair styles for women."Genetically-modified human-pig hybrids have taken over the ground floor of Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art, as part of the gallery's largest-ever exhibition by an Australian artist.

Patricia Piccinini's Curious Affection opened exclusively in Brisbane on Saturday and features fields of more than 3000 flower sculptures as well as 70 other sculptures, photographs, videos and drawings.

Patricia Piccinini's latest exhibition features pieces from the past 20 years. Credit:AAP - Darren England

It is the first time in five years that the entire GOMA ground floor has been handed over to a single artist, with the latest exhibition designed to get visitors thinking about ethical issues such as genetic modification, artificial intelligence and IVF.

GOMA director Chris Saines said Ms Piccinini's extraordinary creatures had been unleashed.A man and two children have died and another young boy has been taken to hospital with serious burns after a Kingaroy house fire on Saturday afternoon.

Emergency services were called to Kingaroy Street, about 210 kilometres north-west of Brisbane in the South Burnett region, just before 1pm and found the residence engulfed in flames.

The Kingaroy home was gutted by the fierce fire, which killed three and seriously injured another. Credit:Nine News Queensland - Twitter

Police have confirmed the bodies of a man and two children were found inside the smouldering remains, but their relationship to the survivors was not known.

A Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman said the child, thought to be about three years old, suffered burns to his airway and was taken to Kingaroy Hospital in a serious condition.There are scores of videos online of birds of prey attacking drones  the most recent to hit the headlines was from Skyworks WA, which filmed a dogfight between one of its drones and three eagles in the Wheatbelt. And as more drones take to the sky doing everything from checking powerlines to perhaps one day delivering food or ferrying passengers, sharing the skies is becoming ever more important. An Osprey swooping down. Credit:Grant Griffin Birds of prey in hand WA has strict regulations for flying drones, especially in national, regional and marine parks where birds of prey are more common, with users needing written permission to fly there.

But rather than seeing it as a problem to be fixed with more red tape, Yvonne Sitco from the Western Australian Birds of Prey Centre believes education will help drone pilots avoid becoming prey to these apex predators. I visited her at her private centre near Whiteman Park, where she told me drones were emerging as more of a nuisance for birds of prey, not a threat. "If an eagle sees a drone in its territory then more than likely it will seek to attack it to drive it off no matter what size it is," she said. "They see it as another bird. Its just their nature. Yvonne Sitco with Micro, a juvenile Wedge-tailed eagle. Credit:David Allan-Petale Yvonne is best known for training Auzzie, the West Coast Eagle's mascot, to fly around the old Subiaco Oval during home games, and now at the new Optus Stadium.

Weighing in at four and a half kilograms with a wingspan the height of Nic Naitanui (2.1m), Auzzie can saccade her eyes to focus on targets up to one-and-a-half kilometres away with enough clarity "to see the fine print of a newspaper." And she can turn her head 270 degrees, sweeping the air and sky for prey like a radar station. "They are primal animals. It's a basic instinct for them. They have to out think and out manoeuvre their rivals, and up to eighty percent die in the first five years. The ones you see flying around more often than not are the strongest of the species. It's kill or be killed." As we talk outside her enclosure, Auzzie stares at me, spreads her wings to their full span and even flies at the mesh, her claws pushing the fence out half a metre as she seeks to exert her dominance over me, an intruder, even though I'm with her handler. To Sitko, the threats to birds of prey in WA remain the same - land clearing, hunting, poisoning from chemicals and hits from vehicles. The risk from unmanned flying drones is low, but she considers it potentially harmful, especially if the frequency of encounters increases. "The danger is that there could be some small injury to the bird, like a cut or a broken talon. Those things can heal, but it would be best of we reduce the incidence of their encounters.

"Sounds funny but try to lighten the colour of your drone - an eagle that's mature is dark, and a mature bird is more of a mating rival or threat than a young one. I'd also have a good check that there's no mating pairs around, you can access that information through DPaW. Auzzie dives down. Credit:Steve Morice She hands me a gauntlet and asks if I want to have a hold of Micro, a young male wedge-tailed eagle who lost sight in both eyes from poison. I nervously slide the leather glove on my left hand and the noble bird steps both claws to my arm - each talon having a pressure power of up to one tonne per square inch, and a locking mechanism between the hind and index digits that can click into place with the sureness of hand cuffs. "There are Wedge-tailed eagles all over Perth, even in the CBD," Sitko explains. We often forget that we have significant wildlife in Australia, but they are part of our world."

Aerial dogfights over the local park You hear stories all the time of the really expensive drones getting taken out up north, and some of them are worth $60 to 100k. I've heard stories of losing 2 in quick succession!" Drone enthusiasts across Australia like Perths Ian Sharky Jones love to swap stories about their close encounters with winged warriors  and most see it as just another hurdle to overcome in skies already full of challenges. Birds of prey Ive not had any direct experience of yet, though many people I know have. But in the metro area the crows and the magpies do get stuck into you, he said, enjoying telling a good old fashioned flying tale. I was an early adopter and took out one of the first Parrot models down at Ocean Reef on the coast. I was photographing close to water when a couple of seagulls took off travelling in a straight line, ignoring my drone and expecting me to get out of their way! I panicked a bit And then a second later the drone was in the drink.

Ian often flies a drone with his wife acting as a spotter, and often brings his daughters along in full safety gear. Credit:Ian Jones A few years later Jones was flying a more advanced drone in Bicton when his wife  acting as a spotter  alerted him to a staffel of blackbirds just as dangerous to a drone as any eagle. What happened next was a dogfight reminiscent of the First World War, with Jones jinking his drone through classic combat manoeuvres like the Chandelle  a 180 degree turn combined with a steep climb or dive. As a last resort I flew forwards, goading them into a swoop then did a VIFF (Vector In Free Flight), which was developed by Harrier pilots in the Falklands War where they could throw off a pursuing aircraft by effectively slamming on the brakes and going vertical causing the pursuer to overshoot, doing this I found I could escape for a bit in the other direction while the crow set up another swoop" . It was like something from Alfred Hitchcock. Theres a lot of angry birds out there!

Drones are finding new uses, including checking communications towers. Drones are expensive, and to protect them from the beaks and claws of ravaging birds Jones has come up with some novel countermeasures  citing inspiration from Indian villagers who wear tiger masks on the backs of their heads. During a trip to Bunnings with his kids, he noticed some cardboard googly eyes and thought they could serve the same purpose - and it has worked well. Tigers are ambush predators so when the villagers wear the masks it can give them eyes in the back of their head, so they seem like they are watching the tiger and it deters them. Read it in National Geographic which gave me the idea to try it on the drone, along with the same tactic used in nature by butterfly fishes.

So I pasted the cardboard eyes on the top of my drone. Ive also experimented with pieces of mirror and reflective strips as well. The main thing is to just keep a good eye out though, and make sure you have a spotter who can help you avoid problems. Hes even tried putting a plastic hawk on a pole to act as a kind of scarecrow, and has an air horn  though hes not used it yet because he doesnt want to disturb people. With a deep interest in marine biology, Jones is also a keen Scuba diver and sees taking these kinds of precautions the same way as using a Shark Shield device. Its pragmatic. We are only going to be using more and more drones. Theres ones that can seed crops and spray them. Deliver food. Its big business. "Ultimately we're in their sky so we have to work with nature to deter it and understand why they swoop and how best to deter.A police officer was struck in the face at an out of control 17th birthday party in Maddington on Friday night.

Around 200 intoxicated teenagers were at the Vanda Place gathering where rocks and bricks were thrown at police officers when they attempted to move the crowd from the area just after 9pm.

A police officer was struck in the face. Credit:Paul Rovere

A WA police spokeswoman said youths were being charged an entry fee to the gathering and a number of juveniles were taken into custody.

"...a number of young juveniles were taken into custody in order to find responsible adults for them," she said.But Andrews' role is not entirely clear, because lower house MPs declined to take part in the inquiry, and the Premier himself turned down a request to be interviewed by investigators about party practices and MPs' guidelines. Instead, as the fine print of Glass report reveals, Lenders was nominated as the most appropriate person to provide this information in respect of the ALP''. As for the Premiers response last week? We didnt realise the rules were being broken, he declared. Each and every person involved in this acted in good faith, and acted on a reasonable assumption that this was an implied extension of parliamentary pooling arrangements, Andrews said, announcing that Labor would pay back the money I think we would all prefer that things had been done differently, I apologise for the fact they were not. That is the end of the matter." Declaring an issue dead and buried is hardly unusual in politics, and to the Premiers credit, hes always on message.

Former minister Steve Herbert, who stood down after weeks of pressure over the misuse of entitlements. Credit:Facebook Remember when Steve Herbert was caught chauffeuring his pets around in his ministerial car? Instead of asking the MP to step down, the Premier initially argued that Herberts pledge to repay the fuel money was the end of the matter''. Remember when former Australian Workers Union boss Cesar Melhem resigned as upper house whip as pressure mounted during the trade union Royal Commission? Thats basically the end of the matter, Andrews again noted.

Or what about when ALP operatives were involved in the theft of a journalists dictaphone in the months leading up to the last election? After initially denying his staff had anything to do with it, Andrews was forced to admit that Labor was not only responsible for taking the device, but had chopped it up with scissors after its contents were mysteriously leaked. It was destroyed, it was deleted and that was, as far as they were concerned, the end of the matter. The latest rorts-for-votes scandal  which cost taxpayers 48 times more than the $8050 car rort involving former Liberal MP Geoff Shaw - is arguably harder to shake thanks to its ill-fated timing and sheer hypocrisy. After spending years persecuting the Coalition over Shaw, the government has now had to deal with more rorts than its predecessor.

And with an election in November, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy is desperate to capitalise on the damage, announcing plans for an upper house inquiry that could kick the issue along for months. Opposition leader Matthew Guy in parliament. Credit:Justin McManus In order to launch the probe this week, the Coalition would require the support of the Greens, or the five crossbenchers in the upper house. It's also worth noting that the committee would only have the power to subpoena individuals outside of parliament and upper house MPs - meaning lower house MPs could refuse to participate, just as they did with the Ombudsmans investigation. But this in itself could prove distracting for a government that otherwise has a decent story to tell on bread-and-butter issues such as health, education, and infrastructure delivery. Think, for a minute, what might happen if any Labor MPs revealed under oath they had reservations with the scheme, or that their leader knew more than claimed.Jakarta: The Fairfax Media office, in Jakarta's Deutsche Bank building, is a journalistic time machine.

As the home of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in Indonesia, it's a snapshot of a series of working lives, the priorities and peccadilloes of previous correspondents carefully filed, full of boxes, old computers, modems, cables and newspapers stretching back more than a decade.

Where old boxes go to be sold: on Jalan Wahid Haysim, in central Jakarta. Credit:James Massola

The plates and cups, for example, date back to 2002, when former correspondent Matthew Moore set up the office after an edict from the then-government about correspondents having to work from the office, not home.

The router has a stack of ethernet cables sticking out of it but only two seem to be connected - one to my local colleague Runi's computer, the other to a black box that, as it turns out, records video right outside our office door.Brussels: Several European Union countries have said they may follow Britain in expelling Russian diplomats, as EU Council chief Donald Tusk predicted member states would introduce more measures against Moscow for the poisoning of an ex-spy in England.

At a summit in Brussels, the 28 EU leaders agreed with Britain that it is "highly likely" Russia is responsible for the March 4 attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. They remain unconscious and in critical condition after being exposed to a military-grade nerve agent.

The EU has recalled its ambassador from Moscow for consultations over an incident it called "a grave challenge to our shared security".

British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels. Credit:AP

French President Emmanuel Macron said the nerve-agent attack was an attack on Europe's sovereignty that required a "co-ordinated and determined response".Washington: Transgender troops who are in the US military may remain in the ranks, the White House said late on Friday, local time, but the Pentagon could require them to serve according to their gender at birth.

The policy directive that President Donald Trump signed flatly stated that "transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from military service." But it also largely gives the Pentagon the ability to make exceptions where it sees fit.

The policy adopts recommendations that Trump received last month from Defence Secretary Jim Mattis. It comes after court rulings froze the President's initial ban on transgender troops  issued in July  as potentially unconstitutional.

President Donald Trump on Saturday. Credit:AP

"In my professional judgment, these policies will place the Department of Defence in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win America's wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world," Mattis wrote in a summary of his recommendations to the President.Medellin, Colombia: The Northern Territory's Daly River region is 17,000 kilometres away from Colombia, but this week knowledge gleaned from the traditional holders of those lands has helped influence a report aimed at shaping biodiversity policy around the globe.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a body of 128 member states, assesses the state of biodiversity and the societal benefits of ecosystems and is holding a major plenary in Medellin, Colombia.

A calendar presenting seasonal knowledge from the Ngangikurunggurr and Ngengiwumirri traditional owners from the Daly River region in the Northern Territory. Credit:CSIRO and traditional owners

The goal is to produce the best policy recommendations on the basis of the best science, said Professor Peter Bridgewater, the Australian government delegate to the plenary, speaking to Fairfax Media in Medellin, the countrys second largest city.

In the supporting notes for the summaries aimed at the policy-makers of the IPBES land degradation report lies ancient knowledge from the Ngangikurunggurr and Ngengiwumirri traditional owners from the Daly River region in the Northern Territory.Li Ao is one of the most controversial figures both in Taiwan and on the Chinese mainland. The Heilongjiang province-born writers 200 books cover subjects as diverse as literature, political essays, academic studies and biographies. His willingness to broach sensitive political issues have seen 96 of his book banned by the Taiwan government over the course of his career. However, his novel Martyrs Temple saw him nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature in 2000. He has also gone beyond writing, running for the islands top political office and for mayor of Taipei.

Lis works are well-known for explicitness and incisiveness, especially his political essays. He wrote most of his important work while Taiwan was under the dictatorship of the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo prior to democratization in 1991. He wrote essays that attacked dictatorship and advocated freedom of speech and a democratic political system. His work as a dissident writer continued even during long stretches of imprisonment in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The excerpts below featuring his controversy and characteristics are from the perspectives of Li Xin, formerly of the SDX Joint Publishing Co., who published more than 10 of Li Aos books and worked with him for 28 years.

Li Ao died in Taipei of brain cancer on March 18.

Writer created controversy

Li Ao was a controversial man. Through his entire life, he was most criticized for his way of boasting, his bold attitudes toward sex and women, and the claims he stole his friends property.

On the one hand, bragging was part of his jocular manner. Sometimes he would say, Whenever I am looking for someone to admire, I look in the mirror. This bluster and boasting was his humorous way of self-appreciation, which was really not that narcissistic given that he really was wise, brilliant, and brave. He used this showy way to describe his talent just to attract peoples attention, like a child longing for praise and attention. On the other hand, this was the only way to fight suppression from the Taiwan government. Due to his aggressive criticism and comments directed toward the government, his books were banned, he went to jail, and his voice disappeared from the public arena. Under these circumstances, he resorted to boasting to draw attention and sell books.

In many peoples minds, Li was a playboy. However, his bold and open attitude toward sex does not mean that he was a lecher. He usually talked about different women and what happened between them and him  even in a detailed way  because he was willing to discuss such intimate topics in public while others were too discreet to mention them. When he was young and single, he had many girlfriends who were also single and wished to marry him. But he never cheated on Wang Xiaotun after he married her.

The charge that he betrayed his friend and stole his property is perhaps the personal matter that has drawn the most public ire. Xiao Mengneng, one of his friends, went abroad to prepare to emigrate and put two houses and some paintings under Lis temporary custody. However, when Xiao returned three months later, Li refused to give them back, so Xiao took him to court.

According to Li, Xiao planned to move abroad and leave his wife at home so he could marry another woman. Li said he felt it was unfair to leave her without a share of the marital assets. So he paid the mortgage on their houses and prepared to give them to Xiaos wife. When Xiao returned and asked for the houses back, Li said that they would be returned to Xiao only if he reimbursed him for the mortgage payment. Xiao refused and took Li to court. Li lost the lawsuit and was sentenced to six months in prison in 1980. However, the Taipei high court reassessed the sentence in 1988 and proclaimed that Li had been wrongly convicted.

More than 20,000 books

Li said that his advantage over his peers was that he outread them  he claimed to have read some 20,000 books.

He was also a productive writer and editor. Apart from publishing about 200 books, he also edited the political magazines Qianqiupinglun and Wansuipinglun, both of which had about 40 issues.

His academic research mainly focused on Chinas modern and contemporary history and attracted significant attention both in Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.

Courage, intelligence and humor

Fearless and distinct were the two most appropriate words one could use to describe Li.

He was courageous enough to continue to write and publish his books even after 96 of them were banned. He faced being sent to prison under a then-law in Taiwan that said that those who advocated views seen as being excessively left-wing be imprisoned for more than seven years. He also faced the risk of being assassinated for his political views.

Although he often criticized others and was independent of all political parties, he still had many friends in different parties. They may have had different views on politics, but they still respected each other and valued the friendship.

The other major facets of his personality were his intelligence and humor. I once asked him why he brought Taiwan historian Xu Zhuoyun to court, accusing him of slander, while he had let others get away with making similar remarks. He answered quickly, Cats only catch rats instead of cockroaches.

He was also warmhearted and called himself the tyrant of kindness. On the one hand, he hated injustice and evil; on the other hand, he was grateful and did whatever he could to return peoples kindness toward him.

Li once helped the desperate wife of his imprisoned teacher, Yan Qiao, with a plan. Yans younger sister was married to a man called Gu Zhenfu, whom Yans wife had asked for help paying the bills. Gu refused. So Li bought stock in Gus company and then threatened to reveal to other shareholders that Gu had broken the law. Gu immediately gave Li a large sum of money to keep him quiet and keep the affair out of the courts. Li immediately gave that money to Yans wife, who had had to turn to domestic service to keep food on the table.Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.In order to create the future leaders, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, has started inviting the online applications for the German Chancellor Fellowships. Any university graduate from Brazil, China, India, Russia, and the USA can avail this fellowship, which provides an opportunity to pursue the next level of your career in Germany.

Candidates can apply to this fellowship irrespective of their field of work. What a candidate needs to do, is develop his/her own project idea and find a host of their choice to mentor. One can apply for the fellowship only after the confirmation from the host.

Applicants who have been sponsored earlier by the Humboldt Foundation are not eligible to apply. And applicants who have been in Germany for more than six months immediately prior to the application deadlinecannot apply. However, the last date for application is Sep 15, 2018.

Requirements

Only candidates from Brazil, China, India, Russia or the USA can apply

Bachelor's or equivalent academic degree should be completed in less than twelve years before the beginning of the fellowship ( October 1 of the year following application)

One should have acquired initial leadership experience in addition to their own research activities.German or English language skills

A letter of motivation (approximately 2 pages)

Approximately 3 pages of a project plan and candidates must discuss with their host prior to applying

A detailed statement, including confirmation of supervision, by the host in Germany

Two references by individuals qualified to comment on the candidate's professional, personal and/or academic background

Benefits

Depending on the qualifications, a monthly fellowship of 2,150, 2,450 or 2,750 awarded

Financial support will be provided in travel expenses and German language course

A platform will be provided to meet the representatives of German companies and institutions while taking a study tour

A lot of extensive support from alumni

Candidates who meet all the prerequisites can visit the Humboldt Foundation's official website to start their application process. The selection processconsists of two steps. Initially, the candidates will be shortlisted based on the submitted documents. And the shortlisted candidates will be called for an interview in Bonn.

Last Date To Apply: September 15, 2018

Click Here For Programme InformationPhoto: City of West Kelowna

UPDATE: 4:35 p.m.

A local state of emergency has been declared in West Kelowna.

Mayor Doug Findlater made the declaration Friday to facilitate repairs to Lower Glenrosa Road, which was damaged due to flooding in Thursday evening's rain storm.

The state of emergency encompasses several properties along Lower Glenrosa Road and will allow the city required access on private property to conduct repairs to the compromised roadway between Glencoe and Glenway Roads.

ORIGINAL: 4:20 p.m.

Lower Glenrosa Road will remain closed until at least Monday.

The City of West Kelowna says crews have inspected damage to the road from Thursday's rain storm, and repairs to the section between Glencoe and Glenway roads have begun.

Officials say crews determined the road had been compromised due to erosion. A utility pole was also impacted.

Debris will have to be removed, and the compromised area will need to be rebuilt and the utility pole stabilized.

Motorists are asked to obey all emergency traffic signage and use Glenrosa Road as an alternative. Transit users can access Route 21 via Webber Road.

Progress will be updated Monday.

The city is conducting ongoing flood-risk monitoring of public infrastructure throughout the community.

Private property owners living in flood-prone areas or near waterways are encouraged to consider how to protect their property in case of flooding. Contact the citys planning department at 778-797-8830 before conducting any work in waterways or sensitive aquatic areas on your property.Photo: Twitter - Dogwood BC People gather near Kinder Morgan's Burnaby Terminal Saturday.

Anti-pipeline protesters are continuing to demonstrate near Kinder Morgan's terminal in Burnaby today.

As snow fell, dozens of people followed Indigenous leaders in a march toward a gate to the Burnaby Terminal, with organizers saying more than 70 of them were prepared to be arrested.

Protesters who tie themselves to the gate are violating a court injunction prohibiting them from being with five metres of the site and risk arrest.

About 115 people, including Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and Burnaby South MP Kennedy Stewart, have been arrested in the past week.

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project would triple the flow of oil products flowing from Alberta to the B.C. coast.

The federal government approved the expansion in 2016 but the project faces significant opposition in B.C.

Thousands of people have been rallying to protest the project and Premier John Horgan has raised concerns about the pipeline's possible environmental and economic impact.The Austin bombings have been in the news since March 2, but President Trump only recently made a statement. Read on for a look at how Trumps responded to the most recent national tragedies (youll see a pattern), and how Obama and Bush responded to similar issues.

The Austin bombings and President Trumps silence

Four bombs went off in residential neighborhoods in Austin, beginning March 2. Another bomb went off at a FedEx facility  it was in a package addressed to Austin. A sixth bomb was sent to the same facility but was identified before it could go off. During this time, the president was busy on Twitter. He tweeted about a tragic bridge collapse at Florida International University, he hinted to the press that he would be firing more staff members in the future, he tweeted about dangerous and violent criminal aliens, but he did not tweet about the Austin bombings.

Next: Trumps statement

His statement, three weeks later

Though the White House made a statement that President Trump did indeed know about the bombings, he only recently commented on the incident.

The bombings in Austin are terrible. Local, state and federal are working hand in hand to get to the bottom of it. This is obviously a very very sick individual or maybe individuals, these are sick people and we will get to the bottom of it, we will be very strong. We have all sorts of federal agencies over there right now, were searching. Whats going on in Austin  a great place, tremendous place  is absolutely disgraceful. So we have a lot of power over there, were looking, its not easy to find, but these are sick people and we have to find them as soon as possible, we have to find them, really, immediately. I will say, working with Texas, working with the local governments has been great but we have to produce, we have to find this very sick person or people, he said.

Next: The shooting that inspired a movement

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting

The mass shooting that started the current movement against gun violence inspired some telling comments from President Trump.

He responded with a series of tweets, first offering his condolences: My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school. Then, putting the blame on the mentally disturbed shooters neighbors and classmates: So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!

Next: Trump offered his condolences and prayers for the Texas church shooting.

The Sutherland Springs church shooting

A day into Trumps 12-day trip to Japan, a gunman opened fire in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 26 people. At this point in time, this was the third time in five weeks Trump had to address a national tragedy. Trump tweeted his thoughts and prayers. He later made a statement about coming together to get through tragedies like this as a nation. When Trump held a joint news conference with Japans Prime Minister, he was asked about the shooting and American gun control laws. We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. But this isnt a guns situation. I mean, we could go into it, but its a little bit soon to go into it, he said, a month after the mass shooting before the Sutherland Springs shooting (Las Vegas).

Next: Trump didnt want to talk about gun laws after this massacre, either.

The Las Vegas massacre

Before Sutherland Springs there was Las Vegas. A 64-year-old Vegas retiree killed 58 people and injured more than 500 at a country music festival in October 2017. Trumps initial response was to call the incident a miracle. Look, we have a tragedy. What happened is, in many ways, a miracle, Trump said as he departed the White House for a trip to Puerto Rico on Tuesday morning. The police department, theyve done such an incredible job. Despite the large number of people killed (its called the Las Vegas massacre), Trump repeatedly said that things could have been worse.

Theres a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a press briefing, a little over a year after 49 people were killed in the Orlando nightclub shooting.

Next: Obamas take on national tragedies

How Obama responded to national tragedies

Though he was repeatedly blocked from making any big changes to gun laws, Obama was extremely passionate about the issue of gun violence. When the former president would address the nation on such tragedies as mass shootings, hed open up, sometimes weep, and appear truly disturbed to be talking about the same issue without any real progress being made, despite his best efforts.

Next: Bushs take on national tragedies

How Bush responded to national tragedies

When tragedies took place during Bushs presidency, he often spoke to the American people with an emotional approach.

Being at this school reminds us that we have a special responsibility to protect our children. One of the most important jobs of those in schools and government is to make sure that children are safe, said former President Bush of the amish school shooting in 2006.

None of their words helped abate mass shootings in America, but the top-down response from the president matters to not only the victims families but also the nation as a whole. Abandoning our humanity at times of tragedy can only make this national sickness worse, says Esquire Site Director Michael Sebastian.

Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook!Meghan Markle is officially a royal. The former Suits actress already stepped away from the small screen and uprooted her life to move to the U.K She has attended various royal events with her new husband, Prince Harry, and the philanthropist is also learning what it means to be royal and all of the rules and regulations that come with it.

Though Markle is reportedly getting along with everyone in the royal family, one very important royal, the late Princess Diana, will never get to see her son and new daughter-in-law walk down the aisle. Luckily, like her sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, who wears the late princess engagement ring, Markle also had symbolic pieces from the Peoples Princess with her on her wedding day and beyond.

The ring

Since she said yes to Prince Harry in late 2017, Markle has already been wearing some jewels from Princess Dianas collection. According to The New York Times, Markles engagement ring is comprised of two diamonds from the late princess collection, along with a diamond from Botswana that commemorates a special time during the couples courtship.

In their BBC engagement interview, Prince Harry explained why the ring, which was designed by Cleave and Company, is so important.

He revealed, Its incredibly special to be able to have this, which sort of links where you come from and Botswana, which is important to us, and its perfect.

Next: An iconic family heirloom

Her something blue

Markle honored Diana in another sweet way on her wedding day. On her way to her and Harrys private reception, Markle not only swapped her elegant wedding dress for an open-back Stella McCartney evening gown, but was also seen donning Dianas emerald cut aquamarine ring on her right hand.

Diana famously wore the emerald cut Aquamarine stunner to a 1997 auction at Christies. You can catch a glimpse of the ring as Markle waves in the photo above.

Next: A gift from the Queen Mother

The sapphire and pearl necklace

One of the late princess more iconic jewelry pieces was her sapphire brooch. The queen gifted it to her at her wedding. Though the fashionable princess initially wore it as intended, she soon made into a many-stringed pearl necklace, which she wore often.

In her will, Princess Diana stated, I would like you to allocate all my jewelry to the share to be held by my sons, so that their wives may, in due course, have it or use it.

Therefore, we can certainly see the necklace getting passed on to Markle, especially since the princess wore it even after her divorce from Prince Charles.

Next: A lost necklace

The infamous Swan Lake set

Though Prince Harry and Prince William do have most of their mothers jewelry in their possession, her stunning diamond and pearl necklace, intended as part of a set that was never completed, got sold at an auction just after her death.

Princess Diana wore the necklace at one of her last public appearances, just before her death. She paired it with a light blue gown at a performance of Swan Lake ballet at Londons Royal Albert Hall. Made by the Crown Jeweler at the time, the necklace has 178 diamonds and five pearls. It was recently up for auction for an astounding g 9.6 million.

If Prince Harry doesnt wish to retrieve the necklace, he may get something similar made for Markle.

Next: A lavish set full of sapphires

The Saudi Suite

On her wedding day, Princess Dina was gifted a sapphire set by Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The set included a watch, earrings, a bracelet, a ring, and diamond necklace.

The princess adored the set and wore various pieces of it often. After they got engaged, Prince William gifted Duchess Kate with the earrings from the set, which she turned into a drop style.

This means that Prince Harry can still choose to bestow upon Markle the watch, bracelet, ring, or necklace.

Next: An arresting choker

The lush emerald choker

One of the Peoples Princess standout pieces of jewelry was her mesmerizing emerald choker. Super stylish, the princess wore the necklace in its usual fashion and also as a headband.

If we ever see Markle with this stunner on, it will be on loan. After all, the glittering jewels never belonged to Princess Diana, the choker was always a part of the queens collection.

Next: A crown for the ages

Queen Mary Lovers Knot Tiara

On her wedding day, Queen Elizabeth II loaned Princess Diana the Queen Mary Lovers Knot Tiara. Though the late princess chose not to wear it during her actual nuptials, she was a huge fan of the tiara and wore it often. After her death in 1997, the tiara was returned to the queen.

However, in 2016, Kate Middleton began wearing it to regal events. We wonder if Markle will also share the tiara or if she will choose another stunning crown from her late mother-in-laws collection.

Follow Aramide on Twitter @midnightrami.

Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook!Boebert could face legal action after using campaign funds for rent

New filings with the Federal Elections Commission show that U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert used campaign funds to pay rent, utilities at Shooters Grill.5 Christian billionaires you should know

Being a billionaire is an impressive achievement. But, what's more impressive is being both a billionaire and a Christian at the same time. It has been repeated over and over again in the Bible that money is the root of all evil, which makes these Christian billionaires all the more inspiring. Learn who these people are, what they own, and how the Christian faith helps them deal with success.

1. David Green

While many billionaires will choose to buy real estate, expensive cars, and private jets, David Green has a different thing in mind. Owner and founder of Hobby Lobby, Green is the largest evangelical benefactor in the world. According to Forbes, he has already given more than $500 million to religious causes as of 2012.

Green has always been outspoken about his faith. In an interview with Forbes, he said "So I have learned to say, 'Look, this is yours, God. It's all yours. I'm going to give it to you.' " In the same interview, he also said that 90 percent of his company will go to the ministry if the company undergoes a sale or dissolution. Further, he also sponsors the YouVersion Bible app, which is free to download.

2. Jin Sook

Jin Sook is one of the co-founders of Forever 21, the other founder being her husband Do Won Chang. Sook was raised in a born-again Christian family and revealed to The Guardian that when she came to the U.S., she went to the top of a mountain to pray. That's when God told her to open a fashion retail store. Since then, Forever21 prints the verse John 3:16 on their bags, hoping to spread God's word and make a statement.

3. Bill Gates

A man who needs no introduction, Bill Gates is one of the world's richest men. The founder of Microsoft has pursued various philanthropic causes under their own non-profit foundation. In an interview with Relevant Magazine, Bill spoke about how important his religious beliefs are to him and his whole family, with them all attending the same church. Further, he also mentioned that "...it makes sense to believe in God."

4. Mary Kay Ash

Mary Kay Ash is the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics and one of the most successful female entrepreneurs in the U.S. Although she has retired from the business, it is still important to look back on how she was able to find success. Ash started with a $5,000 investment. Her company's motto is "God first, family second, career third." This helped her grow her business and provide women with unlimited opportunity for personal and financial success, according to Crosswalk. Mary Kay also applied biblical principles to the workplace, even including Scripture verses in the company's monthly magazine.

5. Stefan Persson

H&M, one of the most loved brands in the world is owned by a Christian. Stefan Persson, the wealthiest Swedish in the world, is part of the Lutheran church. His principle behind the clothing line is to keep the designs simple and elegant, which is also what the Lutheran tradition teaches.CofE vicar named Secularist of the Year for exposing clerical abuse

A vicar who has campaigned to expose clerical sex abuse in the Church of England will be named Secularist of the Year today.

Rev Graham Sawyer of St James' Church, Briercliffe, in Burnley, is one of two winners being announced today for the 5,000 prize granted by the National Secular Society (NSS).

The other winner is Eastbourne-based Phil Johnson, the chair of Minister And Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors (MACSAS), a group that supports victims of clerical abuse. The winners will be handed their prize by human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell at a central London ceremony, at lunchtime today.

NSS chief executive Stephen Evans praised both men for their 'courageous efforts to break the silence that has allowed an epidemic of abuse to take place in the Church of England'.

He added: 'Sawyer has made strong, reliable and consistent demands for reform from within the CofE. Phil Johnson has given a voice to many voiceless people who have suffered clerical abuse. Both have faced institutional hostility and worked tirelessly to promote meaningful change which will protect children in the future, often at great personal cost.

'We hope their work will cause those in positions of power to reflect on the damage done by excessive deference to religious authority. The Church of England must be held to account for its cover-up of abuse, including through independent oversight of its safeguarding policies. And ultimately it needs to be disestablished so society can hold clerical authorities to the same standards as everyone else.'

Rev Sawyer said he was 'humbled' by the award and applauded the 'NSS's principled version of secularism that defends both freedom of and from religion'.

He added: 'When religious leaders are given secular power or one particular religion is given a position of privilege by the state, we all too often see an abuse of power: perhaps an example of this is the way that the established Church of England has treated victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by its leaders over so many years.'

Johnson said: 'I am honoured to accept this award and in doing so recognise that I am just one of many people who have stood up to institutions to try to achieve justice, recognition and redress for abuses perpetrated against them. Sadly, many victims are so harmed that they are unable to fight these powerful institutions on their own, so it is important that we continue the fight for them.

Johnson earlier this month gave evidence at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), a series of hearings over responses to allegations of child abuse in the diocese of Chichester. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby this week told the inquiry he was 'ashamed' about the CofE's record on abuse and its treatment of survivors. He warned against factionalism and deference providing a shelter for abusers, and said the current disciplinary process for accused clergy was not 'fit for purpose'.

Johnson added: 'Those who have followed the Anglican hearings at IICSA over the last 3 weeks will have seen revealed an institution that is elitist, sexist and homophobic and does not see itself as accountable to the law. This must change. At the very least we need a change in the law to require the mandatory reporting of allegations of sexual abuse to the statutory authorities so institutions like the Church of England cannot go on 'dealing with things' in-house and those who fail to report or cover up abuse can be held to account.'LG G7 flagship to keep the LCD panel instead of switching to OLED

Aside from the fact that LG has delayed the launch of its 2018 flagship, the G7, the South Korean tech firm has yet to reveal the details regarding the device's new design and features. If the latest rumors are anything to go by, the LG G7 might not offer as much innovation as the users would expect from a high-end smartphone. For one, the handset is expected to stick with an LCD panel instead of upgrading to an OLED display.

According to the South Korean publication, The Investor, LG could apply some cost-cutting remedies to their upcoming gizmos to solve the huge financial losses that it incurred over the years. One of the 2018 LG devices that will be affected by this is the G7 smartphone. In order to bring down the cost of the LG G7, the company is reportedly using the same old LCD screen. LG's rival tech makers such as Samsung and Apple have already jumped on the OLED bandwagon, with the Cupertino-based manufacturer introducing an OLED-powered iPhone X last year. In spite of this, the LG will stick to its guns and go with a try and tested formula for the G7, which is the LCD technology.

LG has already incorporated an OLED panel to one of its current premium devices, the LG V30. However, the company may need to hold back a little with the LG G7 to reduce the cost of production. Per Slash Gear, the use of an LCD panel over OLED actually poses slight disadvantage, as the OLED screen is thinner and does not require a backlight layer. Moreover, a smartphone using an OLED panel tends to be more flexible and more energy-efficient. Of course, the innovation offered by the OLED panel comes with a price, something that LG could not afford at this point.

Aside from the use of LCD panel for the LG G7, The Investor has no other fresh information about the upcoming device. Based on earlier reports, LG's mobile division is currently redesigning its latest G series flagship from scratch, as the previous G6 iteration did not perform well in terms of sales. The LG G7 is aimed to be more powerful and marketable tech, and among its rumored highlights is an optional iPhone X-like notch display.Nintendo Switch to receive a major specs upgrade in near future

Following its launch in 2016, the Nintendo Switch has proven to be a formidable contender in the console market today. The hybrid, on-to-go console has gained so much popularity that more game developers have started porting their huge game titles into the Switch. It would not be surprising to see Nintendo further improving the Switch features to keep up with the growing demands from players. In fact, the latest reports suggest that a major hardware upgrade of the Nintendo Switch is happening soon.

The latest scoop regarding the Nintendo Switch teases that a hardware upgrade is now underway, as dataminers have digged some interesting information from the recently released Switch firmware update 5.0.0. The experts had spent a few days to decode the messages in the firmware codes, and finally, it was revealed on Restera forum that a next-gen Nintendo Switch may arrive sooner rather than later.

Dataminers noted the new encrypted folders in the firmware 5.0.0 update, which could imply that these are intended to support a so-called "Mariko" hardware. It was assumed that So far, the expected improvements on the current Nintendo Switch hardware include a bump in processor speed and RAM capacity.

Specifically, the Mariko hardware that the Nintendi Switch firmware 5.0.0 update is pertaining to might actually be the next-gen console, or the Switch 2.0. Further investigation into the firmware folders spills that a Tegre 214 processor could be used in the next hardware upgrade. The current Switch uses the Tegra 210 model, and unlike the rumored Tegra 214 chip, hackers can easily break into the processor's system and take advantage of the exploit.

Another possible upgrade in the next-gen Nintendo Switch is a bigger RAM capacity. From 4GB, it is speculated that the updated Switch will boast 8GB of RAM. Likewise, dataminers have noted that a revised devkit version of the Nintendo Switch could also become available in the near future.

In spite of the Nintendo Switch 2.0 rumors that have recently surfaced, the Japanese gaming company has remained firm that the current build of the Switch console will remain for a long time. Looking into Nintendo's previous console versions, the company does not actually release an iterative update of its hardware akin to Sony's PlayStation series. If there will ever be a RAM and processor bump, this will not be enough to warrant a next-gen Switch 2,0, according to Value Walk.Pilgrimage to Jerusalem makes it onto National Geographic's list of top 14 travel destinations for spring

A trip to Jerusalem is among the top recommended travel tips from National Geographic this spring. The holy city is just one of 14 exotic sites that a team of travel experts put together for the popular magazine.

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land during Holy Week was described by the magazine as a "once in a lifetime experience." They recommended joining the procession at Mount of Olives on Palm Sunday, as well as witnessing the miracle of Holy Fire on Holy Saturday near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

But the pilgrimage to Jerusalem at this time of the year usually attracts thousands of devotees. So, for those who want to experience the Holy Land away from the maddening crowd, the travelers also suggest taking a gondola ride near the Masada fortress or a serene early morning boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.

The country's Tourism ministry confirmed that over 3.5 million Christian pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem in 2017, thus raising its annual visitors numbers to as much as 20 percent compared to 2016. While travelers came to the Holy Land all year round last year, the peak times were during Easter or Christmas.

But it's not just Christians who visited the country in recent months. In January, observers also noted the increase in Muslim tourist groups from Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey.

For additional details on this trip, National Geographic also has an Israel travel guide and a Jerusalem holiday recommendations on their website. Aside from the Holy Land, National Geographic's Best Spring Trips for 2018 also include destinations like the Columbia and Snake Rivers in Portland, Namibia, Japan, Fogo Island Inn in Canada, the Upper Amazon in Peru, The Seychelles in East Africa, the eastern coast of Sri Lanka, Colombia, Panama, Morocco, Madagascar, the Netherlands and Svalbard in Norway.Social Democratic Party in Sweden proposes banning religious schools

Sweden's ruling political party proposes to ban religious schools to do away with segregation. The country's Social Democratic Party wants to seek better integration in its educational institutions, which will be its priority if the party wins in the general election come September.

Social Democrats expressed in a press conference that religious schools, also called confessional schools, only contribute to the divide and isolation of genders and other religions. Its members have the opinion that students should learn about equality and democratic values. The members also believe students should learn that they can form their own ideas and, at the same time, not restrict their knowledge and understanding of issues based on religious perceptions.

Minister for Public Administration and Social Democrat Ardalan Shekarabi told the press that schools should be founded based on the Swedish constitution. Growing up, Shekarabi, who has Iranian roots, went to religious schools that segregated students based on genders.

"[I will] never accept the oppression that I and many with me have fled from will find its way into the Swedish education system," the minister said.

The party's pronouncement, however, has Catholic educators in Sweden growing concerned. They cited that religious schools already abide by strict laws and restrictions, such as the ban on tuition charges and prohibition of funding from the government.

Religious schools are also not allowed to hold prayers and catechisms during classes. These establishments also follow a curriculum that the state issued.

"They just think we're run by priests and imams, as they put it," Principal Paddy Maguire of the Notre Dame Catholic School located in Gothenburg said. "We have to (abide by) Swedish law and they don't understand that," he added. The principal also stated that the general public doesn't know much about these restrictions.

Maguire also believes that the proposed ban on religious schools came about because of the increasing numbers of Muslim refugees who sought asylum in Sweden. Since 2014, the numbers of Muslim schools, which practice gender segregation as part of their religion, have doubled in the country.UK Supreme Court rejects appeal to continue life support for terminally ill baby Alfie Evans

The parents of a terminally ill baby were denied permission to appeal their case to the U.K. Supreme Court in an effort to continue life support for their 22-month-old child.

Kate James and Tom Evans have been fighting in courts to keep their son, Alfie, on a ventilator. But doctors at Liverpool's Alder Hey Hospital said there is nothing they can do for the boy, who is suffering from an undiagnosed degenerative brain disease, and that his life support treatment could stop.

The parents want to continue the treatment for Alfie so that they can eventually take him abroad for treatment.

Last month, High Court Judge Mr. Justice Anthony Hayden ruled that the boy can be moved to palliative care, prompting Evans and James to challenge the decision at the Court of Appeal.

However, the High Court's ruling was upheld and the Supreme Court rejected the parents' claim that the previous courts had discriminated against them.

Court papers revealed that James and Evans wanted to continue treatment so that their son could be taken to a hospital in Rome and perhaps later to a hospital in Munich. The parents vowed to accept withdrawal of life support for the child if there was no prospect of his condition improving after "about six months."

The parents could not simply ask Supreme Court justices to consider the case due to legal rules. They needed to clear an initial hurdle first by convincing the judges that their case was worth arguing.

The three justices expressed "profound sympathy" for the parents, but stated that they had not put forward an arguable case.

"The [supreme court] will give permission for an appeal to be brought only if it would raise an arguable point of law of general public importance," the ruling stated, according to The Guardian.

"The proposed appeal is unarguable so, notwithstanding our profound sympathy for the agonising situation in which they find themselves, we refuse permission for the parents to appeal," it continued.

After the court ruling, Evans revealed that he had asked officials at Alder Hey if he could bring Alfie home to a "suitable setting with the private facilities and team."

He explained that this would allow his son to "die in his own time with no further escalation of treatment," adding that the family would not return to the hospital and would pay for a vent from donations.

The hospital reportedly denied his request, prompting the father to express his frustration on the Alfie's Army Facebook page

"We are being denied this!!!!!" he wrote, referring to his request to take the child home. "Alder Hey want Alfie dead and on their time scale with their plans!!! Whose son is he??? We are absolutely disgusted that our local hospital will not release our son who had every right to live and let live!!!!" he continued.

Evans said that Alder Hey had "failed" his son and vowed to continue fighting alongside James.BEIJING  China announced a $3 billion list of U.S. goods for possible retaliation in a tariff dispute with President Donald Trump and girded Friday for a bigger battle over technology policy as financial markets sank on fears of global disruption.

The Commerce Ministry said higher duties on pork, apples, steel pipe and other goods would offset Chinese losses due to Trump's tariff hike on steel and aluminum imports. It urged Washington to negotiate a settlement but set no deadline.

Trump said Friday that he was not concerned that the tariffs would be a drag on the stock market. He added: China is going to end up treating us fairly.

In a separate and potentially bigger dispute, the ministry criticized Trump's decision Thursday to approve a possible tariff hike on Chinese imports worth up to $60 billion over Beijing's technology policy. It gave no indication of a possible response but a foreign ministry spokeswoman said Beijing was fully prepared to defend its interests.

We don't want a trade war, but we are not afraid of it, said the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.

Asian financial markets sank on concern the escalating tensions might disrupt the biggest global trading relationship or lead other nations to raise import barriers.

China's response Friday appeared to be aimed at increasing domestic U.S. pressure on Trump by making clear which exporters, including farm areas that voted for him in 2016, might be hurt.

Beijing is extending an olive branch and urging the U.S. to resolve trade disputes through dialogue rather than tariffs, said economist Vishnu Varathan of Mizuho Bank in a report. Nevertheless, the first volley of shots and retaliatory response has been set off.

The list announced Friday was linked to Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs , but companies already were looking ahead to a battle over complaints Beijing steals or forces companies to hand over technology.

The tensions reflect the dueling nationalistic ambitions of Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

U.S. efforts to boost exports of technology-based goods, begun under Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, conflict with China's plan for state-led development of global competitors in fields from robotics to electric cars. Foreign business groups complain Chinese regulators are trying to squeeze them out of promising industries.

The Commerce Ministry announcement Friday made no mention of jetliners, soybeans or other products that are the biggest U.S. exports to China by value. That leaves Beijing room to take more drastic steps.

Chinese officials are trying to figure out how to address U.S. concerns, said Jake Parker, vice president for China operations of the U.S.-China Business Council, which represents American companies that do business with China.

Until the Trump administration articulates those concerns and how China can address them, it's going to be very, very difficult for China to make those changes, said Parker.

Washington doesn't believe it needs to give Chinese leaders another list of requests because they already know what the United States wants, said a senior U.S. official, who briefed reporters on condition he not be identified further. He said Trump and Xi agreed last year on a 100-day agenda of trade-liberalization measures but Beijing failed to act on about half of them.

Instead, the Trump administration wants Chinese leaders to address more basic structural issues that interfere with market forces, said the official.

The official cited Beijing's Made in China 2025 plan as hugely problematic. It calls for creating Chinese competitors in electric cars, robots, artificial intelligence and other fields. Business groups complain it will hamper or outright block foreign access to those industries.

The latest proposed Chinese tariffs would add a 25 percent charge on pork and aluminum scrap, mirroring Trump's 25 percent duty on steel, according to the Commerce Ministry. A second list of goods including wine, apples, ethanol and stainless steel pipe would be charged 15 percent.

Chinese purchases of those goods last year totaled $3 billion, the ministry said.

The U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs also have irked Japan, America's closest ally in Asia.

We have repeatedly told the U.S. side that steel and aluminum imports from its ally Japan will not adversely affect America's national security, and that Japan should be excluded, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

China's top economic official, Premier Li Keqiang, appealed to Washington on Tuesday to act rationally and said, we don't want to see a trade war.

The United States buys little Chinese steel or aluminum, but analysts have said Beijing would feel obligated to take action to avoid looking weak.

Beijing reported a trade surplus of $275.8 billion with the United States last year, or two-thirds of its global total. Washington reports different figures that put the gap at a record $375.2 billion.

Trump's technology order is in response to unfair and harmful acquisition of U.S. technology, said a statement by the U.S. Trade Representative's office. It said USTR would pursue a World Trade Organization case against Beijing's discriminatory technology licensing.

A USTR statement said possible measures include a 25 percent tariff on Chinese-made aerospace, computer and information technology and machinery but gave no details.

China is unlikely to respond until Washington acts but might launch an investigation of imports of U.S. corn and soybeans as a warning shot, said Parker. He noted Beijing began a probe of U.S. sorghum in February after Trump announced the steel and aluminum tariffs.

On Tuesday, the Chinese premier promised at a news conference Beijing will open even wider to imports and investment as part of efforts to make its state-dominated economy more productive.

Li said Beijing would fully open manufacturing, with no mandatory requirement for technology transfers. However, Chinese officials already insist companies aren't required to hand over technology, so it was unclear how policy might change.It will be several more months, at least, before the Montrose Management District is officially dissolved.

A judge Friday agreed to give district officials and property owners who sued for the dissolution more time to resolve related claims and determine a plan for winding down operations.

After six years in court, the management districts board voted Thursday to disband, subject to certain conditions discussed in a status hearing in state District Judge Daryl Moores court.

Barry Abrams, attorney for the management district, said there is no statutory guidance on winding down operations and obligations for this type of governmental entity due to its dissolution.

Abrams cited the U.S. 59 bridge lights among the outstanding issues.

To the extent the staff of the district can effect and transition district obligations to other parties, whether theyre nonprofits or other governmental entities to perform obligations under existing contracts, wed like to try and effect that, he said.

Andy Taylor, the attorney for the property owners, said he wants to investigate if the district had any assets or insurance policies that could be used to reimburse property owners.

Wed look at the books and records to satisfy ourselves that what the district is saying is accurate  that theyre dead broke, Taylor said in court.

Last fall, a judge ruled that the management district illegally collected nearly $6.6 million in assessments and said it must reimburse the money to property owners. That case is now on appeal.

There is also a case pending that seeks attorney fees from the district and its board.

Abrams said the district essentially has no cash.

I understand its less than $7,500 on hand, Abrams said. There are no assets to pay anyone, including the professionals continuing to try to help wind down the affairs.

Also at issue, Taylor noted, are liens that have been placed on commercial property owners who had not paid last years assessment as they were seeking the districts dissolution.

The districts vote for dissolution Thursday followed an order by Judge Moore at the end of January to conduct a more thorough review of a petition property owners filed seeking its dissolution. The management district had previously rejected the petition.

The next status hearing will be in July.

nancy.sarnoff@chron.com

twitter.com/nsarnoffA passenger who was bumped off a full flight has scored the maximum prize  a $10,000 travel voucher.

A spokesman for United Airlines confirmed Friday that a passenger got the big voucher per our company policy. He declined to name the person.

In a series of tweets, Allison Preiss of Washington, D.C., described how she was rewarded after being asked to give up her seat on a Thursday flight.

Preiss told The Associated Press she was waiting to board a flight from Dulles Airport outside Washington to Austin for a bachelorette party. A broken seat meant the airline had one too many passengers.

Agents announced in the gate area that the flight was oversold, and they offered $800 vouchers, then raised it to $1,000 in travel credit, Preiss said.

Since nobody volunteered, they then announced that the lowest-fare passenger would be pulled out of the boarding line, Preiss said.

The agents raised the offer for volunteers one more time, to a $2,000 voucher, but when no one responded, Preiss was stopped from boarding the plane.

In her tweets, Preiss said that a United employee offered her $2,000 in travel credit but she wanted cash. Then an agent offered a $10,000 voucher.

They really do not want to give me cash. They just offered me $10,000 in travel credit. TEN THOUSAND, she tweeted.

She took it. Along with two $10 meal vouchers. United drew the line, however, at letting Preiss into one of its airport lounges, she said.

Preiss said she paid $163 for her one-way ticket, not counting taxes and fees.

Asked what she will do with the voucher, Preiss, who manages communications for a liberal advocacy group, told the AP, Havent decided yet but Im thinking Hawaii.

United raised the amount airport employees could pay a bumped passenger to $10,000 last year after criticism over the violent dragging of a man off a full flight in Chicago.The New England Patriots are putting their team plane to use in the offseason by flying Parkland, Florida, high school students to Washington for Saturday's "March for Our Lives" rally.

Students who survived the deadly Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were eager to travel to Washington for the march and reached out to former Arizona representative Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, for help, according to The Washington Post.The summer months are quickly approaching and that means companies everywhere will be looking to hire a fresh batch of interns.

While the running joke may be that interns do busy work for little to no compensation, a recent report by salary-tracking site Glassdoor shows many companies are offering more than fair wages.A Galveston-based health clinic chain may have infected patients with the hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus and HIV because of potential breaches in the cleaning and sterilization of dental instruments, officials said Friday.

The Galveston County Health District said that it is working with the Department of State Health Services to investigate the risk of disease transmission related to sterilization procedures at the Coastal Health & Wellness clinics located in Texas City and Galveston.

The investigation was triggered by a recent accreditation site review conducted on Feb. 12 and 13. The investigation found that a Coastal Health & Wellness clinic in Texas City demonstrated poor sterilization procedures, including not adequately documenting the sterilizing of dental instruments. The review also found dirty areas where dental instruments were passing through.

At a press conference in Galveston, Dr. Philip Keiser from the Galveston County Local Health Authority said he anticipated that roughly 9,500 patients would need to be tested.

"To date our investigation has not found that anyone was infected as a result of the dental procedures at Coastal Health Wellness," Keiser said. "However, after consulting with the Texas Department of State Health Services as well as several other federal agencies, we have concluded that there is sufficient concern to ask all patients who received dental services at Coastal Health & Wellness between March 15, 2015 and February 12, 2018 be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV."

Keiser said the health district requested Coastal Health & Wellness to suspend all procedures using sterilized instruments, and that the clinics have complied. He added that the district has mandated that the clinics implement certain changes, but declined to elaborate until the final investigation report is released.

Representatives from Coastal Health & Wellness were expected to attend the press conference on Friday. Keiser did not offer an explanation for their absence.

"I'm surprised they're not here, we expected them to be here," Keiser said.

In a statement Friday night Dr. Milton Howard, the chairman of Coastal Health & Wellness' governing board, and Mary McClure, the executive director, said that the company's leadership is "committed to improving our processes to ensure quality patient care. The infection control concerns have been addressed and we have made great strides in honing infection control practices."

Keiser acknowledged that the findings of the investigation were "very scary" but emphasized that no one has been found to have been infected so far.

"We looked at records of people that were known to have hepatitis C and HIV and hepatitis B through Health Department records, because these are reportable diseases," Keiser said.

"By using that we were able to eliminate and find no risk of hepatitis B and find no risk for HIV. We are concerned about hepatitis C and that's all I can tell you at this point."

Coastal Health & Wellness treats people without regard to ability to pay. The clinic chain receives funding from Galveston County as well as the federal government, though it has a separate governing board and administrative structure.

Health officials will also be directly notifying patients who meet the criteria for testing; however, anyone who has a question related to their status can contact the GCHD Investigation Hotline at (409) 938-2397. Patients who have not undergone invasive medical or dental procedures requiring sterilization of equipment, such as blood draws, are not at risk and do not require testing.

Testing services will begin on Monday at the Galveston County Health District Public Health Office, 9850 Emmett F Lowry Expressway, Entrance B, Texas City and continue through Friday, April 13. Appointments can be made by going online at www.gchd.org or by calling the hotline number.

Test results will be available roughly three to seven days after blood tests are done. Anyone with any positive tests will be referred for evaluation and treatment.

Nick Powell covers Galveston County for the Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter and send him tips at nick.powell@chron.comChristie Yerby, branch manager of Baldwin Boettcher Branch Library, welled-up as she recalled one of the last good memories she has of her library before Hurricane Harvey struck.

"At the end of the Summer Reading (program,) right before the flooding, it was the week we were giving out prizes and a girl came up and said, 'I got an email that I won a prize,' and so we looked her up, we looked at what we had set aside for her and it was the Kindle Fire," Yerby said. "She had no idea she had won a Kindle Fire and I just can't describe how much joy she had on her face."

Hurricane Harvey filled the Harris County Public Library Baldwin Boettcher branch with four feet of water, destroying most of the building's contents at a cost of $916,253.

"We had recently refurbished and they had also just gotten us new computers," Yerby said.

Baldwin Boettcher Library, located in the Lake Houston-Humble area, was among the four HCPL locations that flooded during the hurricane.

The Katherine Tyra Branch Library at Bear Creek took on 9.5 inches of water, damaging $950,632 worth of supplies and equipment. The Barbara Bush branch lost $1.3 million of the library's contents.

The Lake Houston area suffered the loss of two HPCL branches during Harvey. The Kingwood Library lost $1,317,376 in contents to approximately 4, to 4.5 feet of floodwater. Nothing in the building's first floor was salvageable, explained Carolyn Allen, assistant branch manager for adult services at Kingwood Library.

"We went in when it was still squishy and muddy and started taking books out of the upstairs," Allen said.

After months of restoration, three of HPCL's Harvey-affected branches are set to come back in May, announced HCPL director Edward Melton during the annual Harris County Friends of the Library meeting on March 23 at the HPCL Administrative Offices in Houston.

"Barbara Bush Library, Kingwood Library and Katherine Tyra  those three libraries will be coming online before the summer," Melton said.

Although he does not have an exact date yet Melton said he's confident in the May re-openings.

"(For those branches) I know shelving is getting ready to go in, furniture has started to arrive, books are here and so it's just a lot of work that needs to take place between now and May in order to get those branches open," Melton said.

For Baldwin Boettcher, he said, it's a different story. Baldwin Boettcher is in a 100-year floodplain.

"But, there's a lot of different things we've got to work through like FEMA  what they covered in terms of cost; what our insurance will cover in terms of cost; and then what can we use that funding for," Melton said. "It's some of those things we have to work out before we know what the long term solution is."

The library structure was located at Mercer Park in Humble

"We are working at Mercer Arboretum in terms of doing a partnership so that we can continue to provide library services in terms of programing and some library resources through the park, but right now we're really not sure how it's going to look in the future," Melton said.

The branch does plan on continuing to offer the summer reading and summer feeding programs at the park in collaboration with Mercer Arboretum.

"It won't be inside of that physical (library) building," Melton said. "That physical building right now is gutted out and it's really just a brick frame. With recommendations from FEMA and the county engineers, they don't see us bringing that building back. This would be (about) the fourth time we'd bring it back (so) they're asking us to look at other options."

Baldwin Boettcher staff are currently working with Mercer staff to figure out summer programming and schedules moving forward into the immediate future.

Yerby said currently, library and Mercer staff are alternating weeks to continue both of their respective story time programs, which occur on Mondays at 10:30 a.m.

"Then we're bringing summer reading programs for about eight weeks of programming that will align with the (HCPL) summer reading in the summer," Yerby said. "That's going to all be outdoors since we don't have a building."

Nevertheless, she is glad the branch can continue providing services to its community.

"These programs are why I love going in to the library every day," Yerby said. "All summer long, these things make you feel good that we're able to do this for the kids."

According to Linda Stephens, Coordinator of Marketing and Programming, HCPL is working on ways to make the Baldwin Boettcher branch more mobile to more easily bring resources to people in the community.

"We're working out ways to make sure we're serving the community and it's just that we're in the experimental phase," Stevens said.

The HCPL Friends of the Library has raised $7558.41 in funds donated from across the country to help with costs associated with Hurricane Harvey.

Susan Greer, HCPL Friends of the Library president and HCPL Friends of the Library Treasurer, Marianne Kolar, presented each Harvey-affected library branch with checks for $1,875 to use on anything associated with their libraries. And according to Greer, there is more yet to come.Imagine a smart watch that surreptitiously scans your body for signs of disease. Over time, it detects a quiver in your heartbeat - the telltale pattern of a common heart condition. An alert prompts you to seek out further testing for atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat that otherwise might have lurked silently until it caused a stroke.

That's the tantalizing intersection of wearable consumer technology and medicine that lies in the future. But according to a new study that married the cutting-edge of artificial intelligence with the Apple Watch's sensor data, we're not there yet.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, set out to test the viability of using the Apple Watch to detect signs of atrial fibrillation, which is a major cause of stroke. In the scenario that was closest to a real-world use of the technology, people that tested positive for atrial fibrillation had only an 8 percent probability of actually carrying the diagnosis. The results were, according to an accompanying editorial in JAMA Cardiology, "humbling."

"It really just doesn't perform," said Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Institute who was not involved in the study. "This doesn't pass muster for use in detection of atrial fibrillation."

That doesn't mean the idea isn't an exciting one, or that limitations of the study can't be overcome. The study was seen as a proof-of-concept that screening tools could be taken out of hospitals and deployed in people's everyday lives, not as a failure. Already, the UCSF researchers are working to address the limitations and continue the work.

And the space is growing. AliveCor, a health-tech company, has developed a mobile electrocardiogram and watch band for the Apple Watch that allow people to actively monitor their heart rates. Apple in the fall announced it was launching a 500,000-person clinical trial with Stanford University to test whether the Apple Watch could be a way to detect irregular heart rhythms and flag signs of atrial fibrillation.

"We have to be very careful about false positives and causing distress when it's really not needed or adding to health care costs, for example, because of unnecessary testing - which is why I do agree more refinement is needed," said Gregory Marcus, a cardiologist at UCSF who led the work. "But it'll be coming. It's going to get better, and it's going to be coming soon. This is the first heads-up: your smart watches have the capability of doing this, so it's coming, and it's theoretically possible."

At a time when there is almost boundless excitement around the potential for consumer technologies to make medicine better, the study shows that entrepreneurs and doctors won't just be able to send sensor-laden devices out into the world to transform medicine. They will need to figure out the appropriate uses, improve and tune the technology so it won't give false reassurance or cause unnecessary alarm - and figure out how to connect data to useful interventions.

The researchers started with data harvested from the Apple Watch, from healthy people and those with atrial fibrillation. A neural network, essentially a computer system modeled on the human brain, was set loose on the data, to learn the difference between the two groups. That allowed the researchers to develop algorithms to predict who had atrial fibrillation and who did not, based on the Apple Watch sensor data.

The good news: When researchers put Apple Watches on a very select population of 51 atrial fibrillation patients who weren't moving around and were about to undergo a procedure to shock their irregular heartbeats brought back into rhythm, the algorithm worked wonderfully well. The bad news: When researchers tried to test their algorithm on data from about 1,600 people in less pristine conditions, as they wore Apple Watches in their daily lives, its ability to correctly predict atrial fibrillation plummeted.

"I think this is important, not just for the field, but to patients and consumers to understand that AI or wearables or sensors are a progressively incremental piece of the pie here," said Mintu Turakhia, executive director of the Stanford Center for Digital Health. "So the progress is going to be incremental, no differently than self-driving cars."

Many cardiologists are excited by the idea of a technology that could passively monitor people. However, one technology executive argued there's more value in making electrocardiogram technology more mobile.

"If a fitness product could get an indication of atrial fibrillation, the first thing a doctor would call for is an EKG," said AliveCor chief executive Vic Gundotra.Oak Ridge High School parents were removing their children from school Friday after a possible gun threat made on social media and a sweep of the school by Conroe ISD police and school administrators.

Students were reporting officers had found as many as three guns combined at the high school and ninth-grade campus. One student told The Courier there was a threat posted on social media Thursday night stating there would be a "bloody surprise" at the school.

"When we came in, there were police officers everywhere and drug dogs everywhere," said the student, who told The Courier there have been several recent threats made. "They had administrators coming to the classrooms and taking everyone to go get their stuff searched and dumping everything out and making us walk through metal detectors."

However, school administrators and the Conroe ISD disputed student reports.

In an email sent to parents, Oak Ridge Principal Tommy Johnson said no weapons were found during the screenings.

"These safety measures are part of our regular practice and not in response to any rumors circulating," Johnson stated.

Parents also received notice from the school district regarding the search at the school.

"As part of our continued safety awareness, we are conducting random classroom checks today," the message stated. "This includes the use of metal detectors and CISD canine officers. Today's checks are simply routine and are not based on any threat. We will continue to use checks like this to ensure your child's safety."

The students said there was a line of parents waiting to get their students earlier in the day and that many students already had left the campus by noon.

The high school and ninth-grade campuses are located near each other in South Montgomery County just east side of Interstate 45.

Earlier this month, County Attorney J D Lambright told The Courier that there had been a dozen threats through Montgomery County schools in the aftermath of the Feb. 14 school shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that left 17 students dead at the hands of a 19-year-old former student.

The threats here had resulted in 10-12 arrests, with the students charged with either terroristic threat or harassment.

The County Attorney's Office has jurisdiction over all Class B and higher offenses committed by children under the age of 17 in Montgomery County, making Lambright's office the recipient of most student-based school threats around the county.

What has typically been two or three threats a month, Lambright said, has increased to two or three a day at schools across the county.

Johnson's note to Oak Ridge parents reminded them that everyone should verify information before disseminating it, whether it is shared on social media or through text messages. He also asked parents to communicate with students about issues involving misinformation on social media and reinforced the importance of reporting suspected dangers to authorities. That includes anonymous tips on CISD's KidChat hotline at 1-888-KidChat (543-2428), which is available 24 hours a day.Nearly 15,000 descended Saturday morning on downtown Houston for the citys March For Our Lives, advocating for greater gun control in light of last months Florida school shooting.

A mix of children and adults gathered in Houstons Tranquility Park for the student-led march, many carrying signs that illustrated their fear of violence and demand for legislative action.

I didnt know what to expect here today, but I just expect change in the government, said Austin Luchak, a ninth-grader at The Woodlands College Park High School who attended the march with his father. I hope they follow through.

Hundreds of marches are taking place across the country, largely driven by students who are organizing the events. The rally in Washington included Texans like Kay Hopper, a retiree from Austin who showed up with her daughter, son-in-law and grandchild. Im hoping that what starts here will change the world in Texas, Hopper said.

There was also Melissa Miller, 59, who described herself as a transplanted Democrat from Austin.

This is momentous, Miller said, standing on the National Mall surrounded by rally-goers, many of them families with children. The way its captivating the nation should help make the shift to a more rational sense of what the country needs.

In Houston, organizers expected 10,000 to 20,000 attendees to gather in Tranquility Park and march toward U.S. Sen. Ted Cruzs office.

Today, I hope our voices are heard, because we are the ones that go to school, said Azariah Haro, a junior from Langham Creek High School in Cy-Fair ISD, who traveled to Saturdays event with three friends. I really hope were able to make a change.

As protesters milled about shortly before the 9 a.m. start, volunteers worked to register young voters inspired into political action. Many brought signs voicing opposition to the National Rifle Association, while others implored replacing legislators who have been more supportive of expanded gun rights.

The school shooting hit us pretty hard, because all the kids who died there, they all had dreams and aspirations just like us, said Jaqueline Nava, a senior at Conroe High School.

Several speakers addressed crowds that filled nearly the entire park, including students, Mayor Sylvester Turner and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. Turner lauded the student organizers for their efforts, and he called on young people to get involved in politics and ask their parents to back candidates who support more gun control to end violence.

This is a defining moment for our city, our state and our country, Turner said.

You are making a difference, the mayor told the crowd, especially speaking to the young people. Make America safe again. Protect our children. End gun violence.

Humble elementary school student Dezmond Floyd, whose Facebook post about volunteering to take a bullet from a school shooting gunman went viral last month, called on adults to make common-sense changes. Some people even held Dezmond 2028 signs.

Please protect me. Protect us, Dezmond, 10, told thousands. America, understand that the lives of our students and educators are worth more than our rights to an assault rifle.

Following a series of speakers, attendees marched a few blocks to Cruzs offices, chanting for his ouster. The marchs organizers led the way, forming an arm-in-arm chain as thousands followed behind them. While a handful of open-carry counter protestors showed up with long guns, Houston police said the event went off peacefully.

Ariel Hobbs, a march organizer and sophomore at the University of Houston, said she almost began crying as she walked arm-in-arm with Turner and Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who estimated the crowd peaked at 15,000.

It was powerful because I know there are certain parts of the country where they dont have the support from their mayor or their police department, Ariel said.

After several minutes in front of Cruzs office, marchers returned to Tranquility Park to accommodate the large crowd, which wrapped around downtown streets. Organizers originally planned to end the event outside Cruzs office. At his office, they chanted, Vote him out and Hey hey, ho ho, Ted Cruz has got to go.

Catherine Frazier, Cruzs senior communications adviser, said the senator welcomes his constituents' engagement on policy issues and the exercise of their free speech.

Hes laid out a clear path to combat horrific school shootings by targeting violent criminals, putting more resources into school safety, and directing the Department of Justice to ensure that all federal agencies report convictions to the National Background Check Database, Frazier said. He has laid out a specific and thorough approach to solving this problem by updating and reintroducing legislation he originally filed in 2013 with Sen. Chuck Grassley. The only effective way to stop these mass shootings is by targeting those who violate our laws, not by taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens.

The 2013 legislation seeks to improve compliance with the federal firearm background check system, would increase funding for school safety and create a federal task force to prosecute criminals who attempt to illegally obtain a firearm.

Sisters Rebecca and Torey Irwin, ages 16 and 14, are Atascocita High School students who made the trek downtown for the rally. Rebecca held a sign that asked, Am I next? #NeverAgain. Their school just had active-shooter lockdown drills on Friday.

Small kids who dont even know what a gun is have to learn to hide from them, Rebecca said.

The sisters followed a common theme of young people Saturday, saying they were inspired to protest and rally for the first time after being inspired by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Without them, I dont know if Id have the courage to come out, Rebecca said. Once one person stands up, its easier for everyone.

Jordan Trottie, a senior at James Madison High School, echoed those sentiments. He has immediate family who live in Florida and go to school. He held a sign reading, Ban the piece. Strive for peace.

They are terrified, Jordan said. They feel they have to go to school and learn how to survive. And its the same here in Houston as everywhere else. Were tired and fed up of being afraid.

Fellow Madison High senior Alicia Nay helped organize a group from her school after feeling empowered by the Parkland survivors and thinking she had to step up and fill a void.

Not doing anything hasnt helped, she said. We figured the people who are supposed to protect us would do that, and they havent. The lawmakers are not doing it.

Alicia argued that politicians from both parties need to come together and create solutions that address gun control measure and mental health problems.

Plenty of parents also participated in the rally with their young children. Nicole Desai and her husband brought their 3-year-old and 18-month-old out to brave the crowds. Desai said there was an unsolved incident with bullet holes found in a wall at their childrens daycare.

Its been one shooting after another, and theres the fear of them not coming home, she said. As adults, we get too involved in our own lives, but its bigger than us. We need the young people to motivate us.

Among signs carried at the rally the most popular appeared to be Never Again and Books Not Bullets.

Others were more creative, reading The only magazines we need in school are scholarly, NRA: Not Representing America, and I want to read books! Not eulogies!

And plenty skewed political, such as, In America, the only easier thing to buy than a gun is a Republican senator.

Joe Bontke, who has a long white beard and portrays Santa Claus at Christmas, took out his Santa outfit nine months early for the march. He held a sign saying that Congress and the NRA are on his naughty list. Our children represented the nice list.

We value children every Christmas. Lets value children all year long, Bontke said. Theyre learning democracy is not a spectator sport.

Kevin Diaz contributed to this story.People living in a Midtown homeless camp were ordered to leave the area by 8 a.m. Friday while the city cleans the premises, which has been declared a public health nuisance.

Those who wish to return to the encampment under Interstate 69 from Caroline Street to Almeda Road will be allowed to do so after the city finishes its cleanup. Houston performed at least two similar cleanings last year.After the flooding from the Tax Day Floods of 2016, The Woodlands Township officials decided they needed to do something about flooding in south Montgomery County. Their response was to create The Woodlands Township Storm Drainage Task Force, an entity which has grown from a dozen or so member groups to more than 30, said task force Chairman Bruce Rieser.

Rieser, who is also a member of The Woodlands Township Board of Directors, said the organization was established as a way to pull together all agencies that have drainage responsibility for drainage systems and watersheds that impact The Woodlands.

"Although the Township does not have jurisdiction over these agencies or the drainage systems, the purpose of the task force is to create a forum to discuss drainage concerns and potential solutions," Rieser said. "By creating this forum, we also create an advocacy group to seek solutions and funding for the identified drainage issues."

The task force has held eight meetings since it was founded, and the group is scheduled to meet for the second time in 2018 at 3:30 p.m. on April 10.

Many of the members of the task force have expressed their appreciation of the team effort to tackle flooding and drainage issues in the area.

Jim Stinson, general manager of The Woodlands Joint Powers Agency, said the teamwork element of the task force is important to solving flooding issues, especially when many governmental bodies and communities are involved in one region like the greater Houston area.

"In most Texas communities, installing and maintaining storm drainage facilities is accomplished by multiple governmental entities. You typically have separate but similar responsibilities for major rivers; regional stream and creek floodways and floodplains; and local man-made open ditches and underground storm sewer pipe systems," Stinson said. "Collaboration with the government entities on drainage improvements for a particular region is very helpful."

Dan Kolkhorst, vice president of land development for The Woodlands Development Co., said the Howard Hughes Corp. is involved in the task force in order to have a greater understanding of the issues and potential solutions.

More Information Members of The Woodlands Storm Drainage Task Force The task force membership list as of their Jan. 23, 2018, meeting: * Bruce Rieser, chairman & member of board of birectors, The Woodlands Township * Jim Stinson, general manager, The Woodland Joint Powers Agency * Helen Bostock - Montgomery County MUDs * Albert Tomchesson, alternate - Montgomery County MUDs * Bob Leilich, alternate at large - Montgomery County MUDs * Deborah Sargeant - Montgomery County MUDs * Renelea Black, alternate - Montgomery County MUDs * Wilson McCoy, alternate at large - Montgomery County MUDs * Laura Norton - Montgomery County MUDs * Roland Johnson, alternate - Montgomery County MUDs * Bruce Cunningham, alternate at large - Montgomery County MUDSs * Rich Jakovac, board member, Harris-Montgomery Counties MUD 386 * Zach Toups, Harris-Montgomery Counties MUD 386 * Jace Houston, San Jacinto River Authority * David Parkhill, San Jacinto River Authority * Bret Raley, San Jacinto River Authority * David Brown, U.S. Geological Service, Gulf Coast Program Office * Mark Mooney, Montgomery County Engineering Dept. * Charlie Riley, Montgomery County Precinct 2 commissioner * James Noack, Montgomery County Precinct 3 commissioner * R. Jack Cagle, Harris County Precinct 4 commissioner * Landon Reed, Harris County Precinct 4 * Russ Poppe, Harris County Flood Control District * Alan Black, Harris County Flood Control District * John Blount, Harris County Engineering Dept. * Joshua Stuckey, Harris County Engineering Dept. * Alex Sutton, The Woodlands Development Co. * Antionio Paz, The Woodlands Development Co. * Dan Kolkhorst, The Woodlands Development Co. * Steve Leakey, president The Alden Bridge Village Association * Stuart Schroeder, Cochran's Crossing Village Association * Nancy Becker, Creekside Park Village Association * Marie Brannen, Grogan's Mill Village Association * Everett Ison, Panther Creek Village Association * Jeff Andrews, The Woodlands County Club * Alan Benson, fire xhief, The Woodlands Fire Department See More Collapse

"Our participation in any solution will be dependent on the scope of the solution and how it impacts our communities," Kolkhorst said.

Alan R. Black, director of the engineering division at the Harris County Flood Control District, is also part of the task force. Black said the recovery from Hurricane Harvey could take more than 10 years, and he feels the task force and other entities like it will have a critical roll in flood mitigation moving forward.

Here are our questions and responses from the various members of the task force, including Rieser, Stinson, Black, Kolkhorst and Harris-Montgomery Counties MUD 386 General Manager Rich Jakovac.

QUESTION: How important a role do entities like the Woodlands Storm Drainage Task force place in mitigating flooding in the Houston region?

RIESER: The Woodlands area is served by a number of agencies that play some part in regulating the development and maintenance of drainage systems that serve our area residents. For example, Montgomery County and Harris County have responsibility for approving drainage plats within the County which are submitted by developers. The 12 Municipal Utility Districts that serve Woodlands residents have the responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the drainage systems that lie within their respective areas. The Harris County Flood Control District, San Jacinto River Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers oversee and approve proposed projects. As we well know, the major creeks that run though this area extend far beyond The Woodlands Township boundaries. Spring Creek runs from Waller, Texas to the West Fork of the San Jacinto River just west of Lake Houston. The creek traverses Waller, Grimes, Montgomery and Harris counties

KOLKHORST: The task force may play an important role as the community studies which options will best mitigate future flooding. By bringing together the various entities, information is more freely shared and hopefully this sharing will result in a cohesive solution to a regional issue.

BLACK: Having people engaged in the problem is extremely important as it relates to educating the general public and building support for the work that needs to be done.

QUESTION: How long have you been on the task force?

RIESER: I was appointed to the Drainage Task Force by the Township Board of Directors in December, 2016.

KOLKHORST: Howard Hughes has attended the task force meetings since July of 2016.

BLACK: Since December 2017

QUESTION: Can you envision the task force becoming permanent?

RIESER: The Task Force was initially created to address drainage issues that came about in the Tax Day and Memorial Day floods of 2016. Following the Hurricane Harvey event, it became apparent that we have a much larger regional drainage problem created by the Spring Creek Watershed Although we hope to secure the federal funding needed to initiate a study of the Spring Creek Watershed in 2018, I believe that the implementation of any mitigation solutions will take many years to plan, fund and implement as projects of this type involve many agencies such as the federal, state and county governments as well as other organizations and individuals who may or may not support a proposed project. It is for this reason that I believe that the Drainage Task Force or a similar organization, will need to be in place for the foreseeable future.

KOLKHORST: (That is) unknown, at least for the time being. We believe the task force is yielding results.

BLACK: The response to Harvey alone could stretch to 10 years or more. You could use the word permanent in the sense that there will always be flooding issues.

STINSON: The recent series of extreme event rainstorms impacting The Woodlands and Houston region has all drainage entities looking at ideas for reducing future flood-related risks. Having the various entities responsible for drainage meet on a regular basis may expedite some drainage improvement projects. I would certainly support maintaining the task force for the foreseeable future.

QUESTION: What benefits come from so many representatives banding together like this?

RIESER: The first benefit of getting this large group together is that we have created a regional forum and are able to get a comprehensive view of issues and mitigation efforts in a multi county area. There are some incredible people involved in the task force who bring storm water management expertise and historic knowledge to the group.

Perhaps the greatest benefit is creating an advocacy group of multi-jurisdictional agencies to become advocates for regional flood mitigation planning and flood mitigation projects. As noted earlier, the Spring Creek Watershed flows from a four county area and any flood mitigation projects will require the support of a large number of overlapping agencies as well as the relevant state and federal agencies.

BLACK: Like other organizations Harris County Flood Control District is involved with, the sharing of information is the biggest benefit.

STINSON: Having all parties responsible for the various segments of drainage for a community in the same room stimulates ideas, improves coordination and can result in a more efficient and timely project completion.

QUESTION: Have you seen any effects from the task force's work yet?

RIESER: Yes. The Woodlands MUD's through the Woodlands Joint Powers Agency, has made a number of local system improvements since 2016. As of January, 2018, the WJPA has bid / constructed over 54 local projects totaling in excess of $2.5 million and have another 13 project in design totaling over $820,000. MUD 386 has also been feverishly working on the planning and implementation of local system improvements.

KOLKHORST: The entities are each aware of the work each other is doing and several studies are underway. There has been an expressed intent to share data. Since we are not a part of the specific entities, we are unaware if any data has been shared to date.

BLACK: Their coordination and engagement with elected officials is impressive and I'm sure will yield benefits as we all work on efforts to reduce flood damages.

STINSON: For The Woodlands Joint Powers Agency MUDs, several cooperative drainage improvement projects with Montgomery County Precinct 3 and the San Jacinto River Authority were completed or implemented following the April/May 2016 storms. Two examples are the Lake Woodlands Drive/Herald Oaks project and the ongoing analysis of Bear Branch from Kuykendahl Road to Gosling Road.

QUESTION: MUD 386 has retained Moffat-Nichol as an engineering firm for studies, same as the Woodlands Township  what made that firm unique?

The Township sought to retain a highly qualified engineering firm to provide advice to the Township and the Township's Drainage Task Force on drainage systems planning and proposed improvements for the Woodlands area. The firm will act as the Township engineer to review and advise on improvements under consideration by the MUD's within the Township boundaries and will also advise on Spring Creek Watershed planning and mitigation proposals. We did not consult with MUD386 during the procurement process, but it is obvious that we both felt that Moffat & Nichol were deemed to be the best fit for our respective organizations.

QUESTION: MUD 386 arguably had the worst flooding from Harvey in The Woodlands, what progress has been made to stop that or mitigate it in the future?

RIESER: MUD 386 has retained Moffat & Nichol firm to independently evaluate the drainage system that serves the flood impacted areas. The firm is using data from a number of sources including both LIDAR mapping and resident interviews to develop a 2D model that simulates the flood conditions that occurred during the 2016 and 2017 events. The consultant will consider land use changes since 2002 to determine what impact this the new development may have had on the flooding that occurred in 2016 and 2017.

JAKOVAC: The number of homes flooded in MUD 386 in Harris County is roughly equivalent to the number that flooded in the rest of The Woodlands in Montgomery County which is served by MUDs that are part of The Woodlands Joint Powers Agency. In both cases, the flooding occurred in close proximity to Spring Creek. There were approximately 290 flooded homes in the Harris County portion of the Woodlands and approximately 250 flooded homes in the Montgomery County portion. MUD 386 has undertaken a leadership role among agencies and organizations concerning the active pursuit of possible solutions to future flooding. Our efforts have been documented in the local news media including The Woodlands Villager. We expect to be able to share details related to concepts aimed at flood mitigation with the public in April.Each year at The Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival one booth is dedicated to student artwork that has been deemed extraordinary.

The Woodlands Arts Council hosts a scholarship competition in which local high school juniors and seniors can enter pieces of art. The work is judged on specific criteria by local artists and art teachers, and the top three in each of six categories is given a scholarship and their artwork is displayed at the festival.

Chloe Snow, student art scholarship and exhibit coordinator for the festival, said $20,000 in scholarships is given out each year to juniors and seniors in Montgomery County.

"This year they had an online application which is pretty simple-just their name, a parent contact, what school they're coming from, their year, and they had to upload an image of what their submitted piece was going to be," Snow said.

Snow added that this year was unique because of the pop-up gallery on Market Street.

"Since this year we did an exhibition, they had to submit an artist's statement," she said. "Every piece here has its own text panel which includes that artist statement so it's very similar to an actual gallery setting."

There are six mediums displayed at the exhibit: photography, painting, mixed media 2D, mixed media 3D, digital art and drawing. Judges selected first through sixth place within each medium and then a secondary panel looked at the winners for a tie-breaking round. Snow said this was the first year that there were no first place ties; the winners in each medium distinctly stood out from the rest.

Artworks were judged on a scale of one to five upon their conceptualism (how well the student conveyed the artist statement), format (what elements and principles of design were used), technique (how well the project was made) and innovation (does the piece show creative thinking and risks). The judges also were given the opportunity to write comments about what was done correctly and what could be improved. After the art festival in April, students will receive their art along with the judges' comments.

"Their work is given back to the (students) so they're able to see the feedback, which is really helpful for them. In the event that they're still a junior in high school or if they're a senior going on to college it (can help them improve)," Snow said.

Snow, who is not an artist but has an art history background, said the entries have wowed art enthusiast who visit the gallery.

"I am very impressed with the student submissions we have this year," she said. "Even people from our sponsors and donors are super impressed. These artworks-a lot of patrons really are interested in buying them."

While the pieces are not sold at the gallery, those interested in purchasing an artwork can leave their contact information to be passed on to the artist who can then decide whether or not to sell.

The pop-up gallery is located at 9595 Six Pines Drive, Suite 1060 (between Tesla and Chipotle), and will remain open through March 31. It is open to the public from noon-6 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and noon-4 p.m. on Saturday.Houston has agreed to settle a lawsuit it filed four years ago against an actuarial firm it blamed for contributing to the citys multi-billion-dollar pension crisis for $40 million, less than 5 percent of what the city originally had claimed in damages.

Under the settlement City Council will be asked to approve Wednesday, Houstons outside counsel, Susman Godfrey, would collect $11 million, and $29 million would be deposited into the citys general fund.

Houston filed suit in July 2014, saying city officials' reliance on the advice of Towers Perrin, now known as Willis Towers Watson, led them to boost workers retirement benefits in 2001 and saddle taxpayers with unaffordable pensions costs as a result.

Rather than increasing slightly, as the actuaries had predicted, the citys pension costs spiked after the 2001 changes. The city repeatedly shorted its rising payments to its pension funds, creating a debt of more than $8 billion by the time Mayor Sylvester Turner passed a pension reform package at the Legislature last year.

In the lawsuit against Towers, the city alleged negligence and malpractice and sought damages of $832 million; that figure later was revised to $432 million.

The suit targeted only Towers work for the firefighters pension fund, but the city as part of the settlement would dismiss that case and agree not to sue Towers over its work for the police or municipal workers pension funds during the same period. Towers actuarial reports were commissioned by the worker-controlled pension boards; the city did not seek second opinions on Towers projections.

Alex Romain, lead counsel for Towers on the case, declined comment Friday.

City Controller Chris Brown, Houstons elected financial watchdog, called the settlement woefully inadequate, not only for the agreed-upon dollar amount but also because it prevents the city from pursuing claims related to the two pension funds in worse financial condition than the firefighters fund.

The city attorney at the time the lawsuit was filed, David Feldman, had said the fire pension case was cleaner but that it could be feasible to sue the firm over its work for the citys other pension funds.

A settlement of $40 million - of which only $29 million will actually be received by the city - for a multi-billion dollar actuarial mistake does not make fiscal sense, Brown said. During these lean financial times, an equitable settlement could have gone a long way in addressing the citys structural deficit - Im afraid this settlement will hardly make a dent.

A similar suit in Alaska, where state pensioners have their retirement and health care benefits covered, resulted in another actuarial firm settling for $500 million. Milwaukee County, Wis., settled a comparable case for $45 million.

The $29 million to be deposited into the general fund is equivalent to the annual operating budget of Houstons municipal courts, for example, but it also represents less than 5 percent of the citys original estimate of damages. The citys annual general fund operating budget is $2.4 billion.

Towers reported revenues of $8.2 billion in 2017.

Mayor Sylvester Turners office, in a prepared statement, said, The parties have settled the dispute in order to avoid the costs and uncertainty of litigation and to put this dispute behind them.

The statement says the parties agree the settlement does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing on Towers part.

The case created a stir in December, when Towers sought to unseal an expert's report crucial to the citys case and to let any motions or hearings that referenced its contents be debated in open court. Towers attorneys argued the city had spent years accusing it of malpractice but wanted to hide the actual substance of its case.

A federal magistrate ruled against Towers, saying the report was considered to contain confidential data about firefighters and was exempted from disclosure by an order negotiated and agreed to among all parties in the case.

City Councilman Michael Kubosh, who was among those to argue the hearings should be open, said he was pleased to see the dispute reach an end.

What we recieved is about 10 percent of what we were asking for, but its still a very large amount of money, he said. Im just glad were able to get something out of it. I never expected us to get anything.

Joe Gimenez, a spokesman for the firefighters pension fund, declined to comment, saying the fund was not a party to the suit and has not seen the terms of the settlement.

mike.morris@chron.com

twitter.com/mmorris011Lifelong educator Grenita Lathan  known for her ability to turn around chronically underperforming schools  took charge Friday of Houston ISD less than three weeks after outgoing superintendent Richard Carranza stunned the city by announcing he was leaving the district.

Lathan, 48, the districts chief academic officer, was named interim superintendent shortly before midnight Thursday after HISDs nine trustees emerged from a nine-hour session behind closed doors to a nearly empty school board meeting room.

Trustees took turns, one by one, singing the praises of Lathan before voting for her to captain the district through what promises to be an unprecedented stretch of academic and financial challenges.

You exemplify the things we look for when we look at leadership, HISD Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones told Lathan, who sat nearby, flanked by four of the districts top administrators.

Trustees on Thursday also accepted the immediate resignation of Carranza, whos set to become chancellor of New York City public schools on April 2. HISD trustees are expected to conduct a search for a permanent superintendent, but havent set a time frame for the process.

Lathan said she was excited to take charge.

Ill be very honest, (its) validation for the work thats been done not only by myself, but our entire team, Lathan said.

Although trustees spent hours deliberating and discussing the position with three other district administrators, the end result came as little surprise to Houstons education observers.

Lathan occupied one of the districts top positions, she has five years of experience as a superintendent and shes developed a reputation for pulling HISDs longest-struggling campuses out of improvement required status. Moments before finalizing her selection, several trustees lauded Lathans accomplishments during her nearly three-year tenure in the district.

Youve proven yourself as a leader, Trustee Wanda Adams said. Youre not afraid to tell us, I hear you, I understand you, but I dont think thats the best.

Lathan wont have much of a honeymoon period. In the next several weeks, district leaders must finalize plans for avoiding major state sanctions due to chronically failing schools, close a projected $115 million budget shortfall and decide whether to make significant changes to the districts campus funding and magnet systems.

Lathan has been intimately involved in the districts effort to stave off state sanctions, coordinating plans to potentially surrender significant control over 10 campuses. On financial matters, Lathan said residents, principals and trustees have provided important feedback, which she will consider over the coming weeks.

Now Im driving, so Ive really got to turn around and say, OK, lets look and see. And well start doing that Monday in our cabinet (meeting), Lathan said.

Lathans ascent to interim superintendent of HISD, home to about 214,000 students, marks another step in her gradual rise through the education ranks.

Lathan began her career in her native North Carolina in 1991, working as a high school business teacher in a small district near the Virginia border. She aspired to school leadership  in her high school yearbook, she wrote about wanting to become a principal within 10 years of graduation  and took over as the leader of an alternative school in suburban Chicago.

In 2005, Lathan returned to North Carolina to become principal of a long-troubled elementary school in Greensboro - a job that would change the trajectory of her career. Lathans ability to boost academic achievement, establish high expectations for students and inspire campus staff impressed her district superintendent, Terry Grier - who would later spend six years leading HISD before retiring.

Shes one of the hardest workers Ive ever met, Grier said Friday. Shes never been one to spend a lot of time pointing blame. Shell just say, We dont have time to do that.

When Grier left to become superintendent of San Diego Unified Public Schools in 2008, he recruited Lathan to join him as a supervisor of about 100 elementary schools. Grier jumped to HISD about a year later, and Lathan rose to interim deputy superintendent in San Diego.

Lathan left California in 2010 to become superintendent of Peoria (Ill.) School District 150, home to about 14,000 students. She swept in pledging changes to bolster student achievement, but her relationship with the community turned rocky after a few years. When a grassroots group opposing her leadership helped get two new school board members elected in 2015, Lathan resigned ahead of a planned vote to terminate her contract.

Lathan immediately reunited with Grier in HISD, taking over as chief officer over elementary transformation schools. When Grier retired in 2016 and Carranza arrived, she rose to chief academic officer.

During her first two years in HISD, the districts number of improvement required elementary schools fell from 35 to 13, while its count for all schools dropped from 58 to 27. Statewide, the number of improvement required campuses shrunk by about 40 percent during that time.

Grier, whose leadership inspired criticism from some factions of HISD, said he considers Lathan a protege who shares many similar values.

Id say that some of the very same people that didnt like me in all likelihood wont like her, Grier said. But shes her own person. Shes not me. Im not going to be calling her every day and shes not going to be calling me asking what to do and what I think.

Steve Antley, president of the Congress of Houston Teachers, a union representing about 800 district educators, said Lathans leadership in HISD has been warmly received by his members. Antley said Lathan has deftly shuffled teachers into new positions following program changes and upheaval caused by Hurricane Harvey, leading to optimism that she will successfully manage the districts financial predicament.

Shes always been very inclusive, shes a good listener and she respects our point of view, Antley said. If we had to trust anybody to take care of teachers and classrooms and schools, we would trust Dr. Lathan to do that.It took 26 publisher rejections before Madeleine L'Engle could finally get "A Wrinkle in Time" into print in 1962. The book was an instant hit, winning the Newbery Medal the following year, but despite its wild success, L'Engle still had fierce critics.

Perhaps most critical were some conservative Christians who believed that the book promoted the occult or mystical elements. While L'Engle considered herself a devout Christian, and sprinkled the book with scriptural references, she was accused of promoting witchcraft - an accusation made later against "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling.

The accusations didn't stop the book from being popular for a half century.

A Disney film adaptation of "A Wrinkle in Time," which opened this month, stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine and Zach Galifianakis, and is directed by Ava DuVernay of "Selma." In the story, 13-year-old Meg Murry is guided by three angelic beings on a quest to find her father, a scientist who had gone missing.

"If I've ever written a book that says what I feel about God and the universe, this is it," L'Engle wrote in her journal about "A Wrinkle in Time." "This is my psalm of praise to life, my stand for life against death."

Before she died in 2007 at age 88, L'Engle was the rare writer who ran in both liberal mainline Protestant circles and elite literary ones in New York City, and who also made conservative evangelical fans around the country. L'Engle was part of an exclusive society of authors, including Eugene Peterson, Richard Foster and Philip Yancey, who are popular among evangelical readers.

"Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys," L'Engle wrote in her book "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art."

L'Engle is sometimes compared with 20th century British author C.S. Lewis, who wrote popular children's literature, as well as books defending and explaining the Christian faith. She graduated from Smith College and a collection of her papers is held at Wheaton College, the evangelical school in Chicago that also holds some of Lewis' papers.

She wrote that publishers had trouble with "A Wrinkle in Time" "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?"

A woman named Claris Van Kuiken, who was a member of the Christian Reformed Church, wrote a 1996 book titled "Battle to Destroy Truth," taking on L'Engle's work specifically and tying it to New Age spirituality. She argued that L'Engle's works "preserved the 'ancient wisdom' or 'secret doctrine' condemned by God Himself."

L'Engle was baffled and frustrated by some of the vitriol she faced from fellow Christians, her granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis said. Though she once considered herself an atheist, after L'Engle became a Christian she had a daily practice of reading the Bible and praying. Her granddaughter said L'Engle's coming to her faith was slower "acceptance of what she had always known to be true" rather than a sudden conversion moment.

"She was a Christian because she was deeply rooted in its traditions and language and she was moved by and trusted in its stories," Voiklis said.

Though she did not like denominational labels, L'Engle mostly attended Episcopal churches, serving for about four decades as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, an Episcopal church and one of the largest cathedrals in the world.

"The themes that are important in Christianity permeate her writing, [including] good and bad, light and darkness," said the Rev. Patrick Malloy, subdean of the cathedral. "She was open to questions and to looking at new ways to say old things."

In the 1990s, L'Engle began attending Sunday services at All Angels Church, an Episcopal Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side known for attracting artists. She wanted the smaller community of All Angels, but still attended noon prayer and Evensong services at St. John the Divine, Voiklis said.

Voiklis, who co-authored "Becoming Madeleine," said her grandmother's faith informed everything she wrote, including numerous books, plays and poems.

"She preferred scientific metaphors, and scientists to theologians, because she understood that science is more open to revelation than religion," Voiklis said. "Religion divides us into teams."

L'Engle wrote that "A Wrinkle in Time" was her rebuttal to German theologians, whom she complained were too rigid in their answers to cosmic questions. "It was also my affirmation of a universe in which I could take note of all the evil and unfairness and horror and yet believe in a loving Creator," she wrote in "Walking on Water."

But some conservative Christians took offense to elements of "A Wrinkle in Time," including what they saw as relativism. The book lists Jesus alongside the names of artists, philosophers, scientists and Buddha.

The idea of conformity is one of the major themes in the novel, which was published during an era when Communism thrived. Conservative Christians were not only confused by the book, said Don Hettinga, an English professor at Calvin College, but they proved its point by forcing conformity to a certain way of thinking.

L'Engle was not afraid to push buttons, said Luci Shaw, a poet and a friend of L'Engle's for more than three decades. She said L'Engle was a universalist, believing that all humankind will be invited into heaven, and she loved gay people at a time when many Christians were suspicious of them.

"Many conservative churches draw a circle, and certain people can't enter the circle because they haven't been baptized or committed themselves to Christ," Shaw said. "Jesus drew a circle that was much bigger and it included everybody. She had a broad sense that we're all in this together, that God's love is the power that runs the world."

In some ways, L'Engle could be compared to Marilynne Robinson, the Pulitzer-prize winning author of "Gilead"; a member of the liberal-leaning United Church of Christ, she still finds fans among conservative evangelicals. But L'Engle was likely more controversial because she was writing for children, said Sarah Arthur, author of a forthcoming biography of L'Engle titled "A Light So Lovely."

"If Madeleine had backed off from theology, it would've been safer," Arthur said. Her literary friends often didn't understand why she had to write so much about faith, Arthur said, while she received criticism from some conservative Christians. Yet she straddled both the Christian publishing world and a nonreligious publishing world in ways most authors cannot.

Hollywood has sometimes struggled with films that have spiritual or religious undertones. The film "Noah" received backlash for its loose interpretation of biblical narratives. "Of Gods and Kings," about Moses, was criticized for whitewashing the characters. And some filmmakers don't include religion at all: Angelina Jolie's film "Unbroken," an adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's book on Olympian Louis Zamperini, did not include his Christian conversion.

Early reviews of "A Wrinkle in Time" are mixed, drawing a 40 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And a film starring Oprah, who also is controversial among some conservative Christians, might not attract the same kind of crowd that soaked up films like "Passion of the Christ," "The Blind Side" and Disney's adaptation of Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

Arthur fears that the film could turn L'Engle's work into a "'power of positive thinking' approach to spirituality."

"There are a lot of people who believe the strength that you need to fight the darkness is in you," Arthur said. "But it's because they were connected to the source of light who is Jesus. If it's unmoored from Madeleine's Christian faith, it's missing a big piece of the spiritual thrust of what she was doing."

The film, which preserves "a more vague spirituality," makes no effort to appeal to the movie-going audience that typically flocks to Christian movies, writes Alissa Wilkinson, a film critic at Vox and an English professor at The King's College in New York City. Instead of including particulars about many religions, Wilkinson writes, the film smooths "them all out into a vague swirl of 'love.' "

Would L'Engle have liked Hollywood's adaptation? Her granddaughter, who saw an early version, said it gave her the "same feelings of inspiration and optimism" as the book.

Hettinga, who had not seen the film, believes L'Engle would have loved the reinterpretation that made the main character, Meg Murry, a black girl from an interracial marriage. For its time, L'Engle's book was groundbreaking by portraying Murry's mother as a well-educated scientist with two doctoral degrees.

"I'm not expecting a one-to-one literalism but something that captures the spirit of the book," Hettinga said. "I think she would like something that caught the spirit and wouldn't try to be literal."A Wisconsin man who tried to sell his 4-year-old daughter for sex was sentenced to 60 years in prison Friday, according to the Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg's Office.

Andrew Turley, 30, was convicted for trafficking of a child and compelling prostitution of someone under the age of 18.

Turley posted an advertisement on Craigslist in 2015 under the heading "Play with Daddie's Little Girl." In emails with undercover Houston Police Department officers, he wrote that he had a girl "younger than 10" to whom he would give "sleep meds" before the encounter, the district attorney's office said.

Turley told the undercover officer he charged $1,000 for two hours with his daughter and wrote that the girl might be "too young for intercourse but everything else was OK," Ogg's office said.

The officer arrived at a time Turley set during visitation with his daughter, who lived in a Houston-area apartment with her mother.

"Upon the undercover officer's arrival, Turley checked the cash, then escorted him to a bedroom where the girl was lying in bed and appeared to be 'under the influence of an unknown substance,'" the statement said.

"This case broke my heart," said Assistant DA Stewanna Miskell, who was one of two prosecutors on the case. "A father is supposed to be a protector not a predator. Jurors saw the need to keep him out of our community."

Turley received a 30-year sentence for each charge to be served consecutively. He will be eligible for parole after 45 years.

Robert Downen covers crime for the Houston Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter or email him at robert.downen@chron.com.A woman died Saturday after a teenage motorist fleeing police officers in a stolen car ran a red light and struck her vehicle, officials said.

Chidi Onunkwo, 17, of Katy, was hospitalized and charged with felony evading, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a press release.

The Harris County District Attorney's Office has accepted a murder charge against Onunkwo after he allegedly crashed the stolen car he was driving into Adorn Strambler, 60, who died at the scene.

DPS troopers said they stopped Onunkwo for a traffic violation around 6 a.m. on State Highway 6 in Fort Bend County. Onunkwo was driving a Ford Mustang that was reported stolen in a carjacking incident in Houston hours earlier, DPS said.

He then fled, DPS said, running several red lights before crashing into Strambler at the intersection of Schiller Road and State Highway 6 in Harris County.

Onunkwo then tried to flee on foot. He was taken into custody and transported to Southwest Memorial Hermann Hospital for his injuries.

Onunkwo will be tried as an adult, and will be charged with murder because Strambler's death came as Onunkwo was "in the comission of another felony" at the time, said Sean Teare, chief of the Harris County DA's vehicular crimes unit.

"You do not technically have to intentionally kill someone for a murder charge to be filed," Teare said.

Onunkwo was still in the hospital with non-life threatening injuries Saturday afternoon. He's also being investigated for the 2 a.m. carjacking at a northwest Houston apartment complex, Teare said.

"We haven't conclusively tied him to it, but he was in possession of the car four hours after," Teare said.

"These (types of cases) are thankfully few and far between, but this is such a tragedy," Teare said. "An innocent woman lost her life because someone didn't want to face the music."



Late Saturday evening, it was revealed that Strambler, was a City of Houston employee.



"Adorn Strambler was a 26-year employee of the City of Houston and worked as a senior paralegal in the Legal Department's real estate section. This is a loss for the entire city," Mayor Sylvestor Turner's spokeswoman, Mary Benton, said in a statement. "Mayor Turner has been notified and will share his condolences privately with the family."



Jose R. Gonzalez contributed to this report.

Robert Downen covers crime for the Houston Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter or email him at robert.downen@chron.com.In Austin, a crowd of thousands covered much of the south grounds of the Texas Capitol to demand changes in gun laws to prevent future school mass shootings. More than 6,000 RSVP'd for the March for Our Lives event that drew people from as far away as Houston and San Antonio.

"Adults need to keep guns out of our schools," said Micah Leverton, 16, an Austin student who attended the rally with about 30 friends. "Enough is enough."

Carrying a placard declaring the National Rifle Association "is a terrorist organization" for resisting new limitations on gun ownership, Houston resident Gayla Ashari said she came to Austin with her four children Saturday "to make our voice known. This is where the laws get made, and get changed.

"It's time for the people in this building to come to work," she said. "Our common voices on this issue, loudly and clearly across the country today, are a message to lawmakers to stop the gun violence and the senseless deaths."

Telma Cantu, a San Antonio teacher, said she came to the Austin march for much the same reason. "I'm part of the blue wave that's going to clean out the Republicans in this building," she said, waving a poster that read: "Book bags, not body bags."

Actor Matthew McConaughey, a part-time Austin resident, was among several speakers who advocated a ban on assault weapons, new restrictions on magazine capacity and universal background checks. "It's time to step up to the line" and push for passage of new laws that will prevent future tragedies, he told the crowd to loud cheers.

"You need to demand that your elected officials do what is right," Austin Mayor Steve Adler urged the crowd, applauding the student-driven movement to change gun laws. "I would say you have done more in two months than my generation has done in 20 years," he said, noting the mass shooting at the Florida high school last month that left 17 dead.

Small groups of Second Amendment supporters ringed the rally, several carrying unloaded assault rifles, to advocate against new restrictions on gun ownership, as police stood close by. Nearby, volunteers registered new voters and were asking attendees to sign petitions on a variety of environmental and political issues.

Andrew White, a Houston entrepreneur facing a May 22 runoff for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, shook hands and reminded people that he supports universal background checks, raising the age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21, banning bump stocks and large-capacity ammunition magazines, and taking guns away from domestic abusers.

"Our current governor is proud of his A-plus rating from the NRA," said White, a hunter and Second Amendment supporter. "A B-plus or B-minus rating would be just fine, and we could better protect our children."Along Chambers Street in lower Manhattan, just north of City Hall, stands the Tweed Courthouse. When it first opened in the early 1880s, known as the New York County Courthouse, it was considered a monument to public corruption. To build it, William Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall cronies looted millions from the city treasury via an extensive kickback scheme.

Today, it has another distinction: it is one of New Yorks great public buildings not open to the public. The citys Design Commission used to offer walking tours for Tweed similar to the ones that it currently conducts at City Hall, but the program has since been discontinued. The de Blasio administration would do a public service by relaunching these tours.

The Tweed Courthouse has been unbeloved throughout most of its 137-year history, leading to misguided modifications and resulting deterioration. In the early twentieth century, the city covered up architect Leopold Eidlitzs polychrome brickwork throughout the five-story main rotunda with gray paint. In the 1940s, a WPA project widened Chambers Street to make another lane for traffic headed to the Brooklyn Bridge, necessitating the removal of Tweeds front staircase, an essential element of the original design. And extensive cultural vandalism-by-neglect took its toll on the buildings tiled floors, Corinthian columns, and marble cornice. Discussions about razing the building continued through mayor Abe Beames administration in the 1970s. Ironically, it was the citys decrepit finances that spared the building from demolition.

New York tolerated the buildings deterioration because of its notoriety. In addition to its connection with the Tweed Rings misdeeds, the Tweed Courthouse was the setting for many chapters from Tammanys outrageous history. In the 1870s, Boss Tweed himself was put on trial while the building was only half-finished. It was used by the Lexow Committee, convened in the 1890s to investigate police corruption and Tammany Hall. George Washington Plunkitt (1842-1924) was a longtime Tammany functionary whose philosophyincluding such gems as I seen my opportunities, and I took em was related in the most famous book ever written about urban machine politics: Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. Plunkitts office was a bootblack stand in the Tweed Courthouse.

The courthouses aesthetic reputation has long suffered from its association with public corruption. Writing in the 1920s, Tammany historian Morris Robert Werner called it a gloomy, meandering mess of unattractive rooms designed in the worst taste and executed with ugly materials. In Tigers of Tammany (1967), Alfred Connable and Edward Silberfarb dismissed it as a grim, gray building that was not beautiful nor does it appear to be expensive.

More recent generations of New Yorkers have given the building another look. Both the exterior and interior were landmarked in the 1980s. Rudolph Giulianis administration directed a $90 million restoration. Among other improvements, the Chambers Street staircase was reinstalled and Eidlitzs brickwork was uncovered, giving those entering, for the first time in generations, the full burst of color that Eidlitz had intended would greet them. (The effect is enhanced by the fact that, at first, you can only glimpse the central rotunda. It pulls you in, suggesting its virtues before revealing them.)

Tweeds style eludes categorization. The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes it as the product . . . of two of the most disparate 19th century architectural movements, the mid-century commercial Italianate, and the later highly theoretical Victorian Romanesque. The theoretical style was that of Eidlitz, a native of Prague who worked with Henry Hobson Richardson on the State Capitol in Albany. Eidlitz took over the courthouses design after the death of John Kellum, Tweeds first architect, when construction was still years away from completionan obvious hazard when a project takes 20 years, as Tweed did. (Twenty-first century New York did not invent interminable mega-projects.)

Eidlitz had connections to the reformers who brought down Boss Tweed, which helped him secure the commission. His chief contributions to the buildinga south wing facing City Hall and the rotundawere designed in what we might call a deliberately non-contextual manner. He set his Victorian Romanesque work against Kellums, as if he were a twenty-first century architect commissioned to install a glass addition onto a masonry-clad museum built 100 years before. The south wing not only juts out from the rest of building; its windows also have entirely different features from, and dont square with, the windows in the back of the north sections east and west wings. Kellum adorned the interior with extensive cast-iron ornamentation; Eidliz thought it looked cheap. His brickwork may seem ostentatious, but he saw in it a dignified simplicity because he used it in parts of the building essential to its structure, such as the arches in the rotunda. He felt that his ornamentation had an honesty that Kellums lacked. Eidlitz biographer Kathryn Holliday sums up his approach as an essay in brick and stone that attempts to shame the tawdriness of the adjacent cast iron.

Eidlitzs alterations made Tweed Courthouse a Frankenstein-like building at war with itself. In 2003, the city installed a massive Roy Lichenstein sculpture (Element E) that reaches up through the center of the rotunda. Its hard to decide whether this does or doesnt fit in, when so much of the rest of the building is so ungepatchket. Tweeds architectural quality remains difficult to assess.

Hence, the value of a walking-tour program. Learning about the Tweed Courthouses amalgam of the magnificent and quirky is not enough. You need to see it. Walking tours are an essential part of New Yorks cultural life, which the de Blasio supposedly wants to enhance. Failing to include a Tweed walking tour in its cultural plan was a missed opportunity for the administration, but one which it could reverse during the upcoming budget cycle. The cost would be minimalsomewhere in the low five figuresjust enough to cover expenses relating to promoting the tours and training docents to lead them. The docents themselves could be unpaid volunteers, as are those leading the City Hall tours.

The larger lesson of this work of architectureone that it shares with the citys decades-long crime decline, rise in student test scores, and repopulation of many neighborhoods given up for deadis that everythings not always downhill. Sometimes, the mistakes of the past can be reversed through the rediscovery of the wisdom of the more-distant past. What better lesson for our times, when so many on the left and the right assume that the natural drift of human affairs is toward decline?with a possible trade war and its impacts on everything from pork to wine.

Getty Images

U.S. agriculture is bracing itself to shoulder potentially costly tit-for-tat trade retaliation between Washington and Beijing that could hit everything from American pork to wine. "The producers of the commodities that are being targeted will probably feel the effects of it," said Larry Karp, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "And there's no reason to think that the Chinese will stop at this." On Friday, China's Ministry of Commerce said $3 billion in U.S. goods could face new tariffs following the Trump administration's imposition of duties on imported steel and aluminum. Among the goods listed for retaliatory tariffs were several agricultural products, including pork, wine, nuts, fresh fruit and dried fruit. Overall, U.S. agricultural exports to China represent about $20 billion annually for American farmers.

Food as weapon

"It just seems like any time there are trade disputes, food is top of the list just because it's an emotional issue," said Larry Sailer, an Iowa farmer who produces pork, soybeans and corn. "I wish these countries wouldn't use that as a weapon, but that's basically what they are doing." Still, Sailer said he "totally supports the administration we have right now," adding that trade issues with other countries such as China have been ignored for too long.

A vineyard near Santa Ynez, California, March 19, 2018. George Rose | Getty Images

Earlier this week, an editorial in China's Global Times, the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper, made a case for targeting "subsidized U.S. soybeans," charging the commodity is "dumped on China." That said, the Chinese ministry's announcement Friday didn't identify soybeans.

Trump base

Some experts suggest the Chinese have looked to target U.S. pork initially and may strike next at American soybeans since it could impact some farm-belt states where President Donald Trump has enjoyed strong political support. The U.S. ships about $14 billion worth of soybeans to the world's second largest economy, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "China no doubt considered the parts of the U.S. that Trump relies on most heavily for political support," said Karp. "It would be very surprising if they didn't make their list with the view to how this play with his base." Even so, the Chinese ministry's target list provided Friday also includes agricultural commodities such as wine, fruit and nuts  all products tied to California, a state Trump lost in the 2016 election.

California impacts

The Chinese government proposed levying up to 25 percent tariffs on U.S. pork and some other agricultural exports but they haven't actually been implemented yet. Citrus would face a 15 percent tariff. "Citrus is on the list and it does create some consternation," said Joel Nelsen, president of the California Citrus Mutual, a citrus producers trade group. "This thing could ratchet up and be just a negotiating step taken by both administrations. We're watching it closely." Nelsen said China has been a growing market for the $3.3 billion California citrus industry and now ranks as the third-largest export market behind Canada and South Korea. He said the market is dominated by orange and lemon exports. More than 80 percent of the wine produced in the U.S. comes from California and U.S. wine exports to China (including Hong Kong) were $197 million last year, according to the San Francisco-based Wine Institute. "Chinese retaliation against U.S. wine would put our producers at a significant disadvantage in one of the most important markets in the world at a critical time," said Robert Koch, CEO of Wine Institute. "As a result of free trade agreements, a number of our foreign competitors will soon have tariff-free access to the Chinese market. This, combined with additional punitive tariffs on California wine, could result in lost market share for years to come." California's $5 billion almond industry depends on exports despite strong domestic demand for the crop. Approximately two-thirds of the almonds produced in California go to the export market and China is one of the top buyers.

Pork in crosshairsMike Pompeo Eric Thayer | Reuters

President Donald Trump's massive staff shakeup in March ushered in a new chapter for his presidency  one that could bring seismic changes to America's economic and foreign policy. In less than four weeks, the Trump administration saw the replacements, either through resignation or removal, of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn and National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. Trump characterized the tumultuous period for White House job security as being part of a larger plan. "We're getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things that I want," Trump said after Tillerson was fired March 13. The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC when asked what the new staff changes could mean for Trump's second year in office. While each of the erstwhile officials brought unique skill sets and worldviews to the Trump administration, all three appointments chafed against Trump's views and personality in distinct ways. The new recruits diverge from their predecessors on ideology, experience and style. Here's how:

Tillerson vs. Pompeo

Reports of Tillerson's acrimonious relationship with Trump were a near-constant feature of the Texas oilman's tenure in the White House. Their bad blood may have boiled over following a White House leak that claimed Tillerson called Trump a "moron." But both men also held different views on policy matters. Tillerson clashed with Trump over the president's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement, for instance. And Trump publicly rebuked him in October over his approach to North Korea. The president tweeted that his top diplomat was "wasting his time" trying to communicate with Kim Jong Un. Trump tweet Rocket Man Citing a senior State Department official, NBC News reported that Tillerson learned of his firing on March 13 only after Trump tweeted his congratulations to Tillerson's appointed successor, CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump tweet Pompeo Pompeo's policy views appear to align much more closely with Trump's, especially on Russia. Pompeo echoed the White House position that Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election had no effect on the outcome. But the document he cited  a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence  said the intelligence community "did not make an assessment of the impact" of Russian meddling.

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson makes a statement on his departure from the State Department March 13, 2018 at the State Department in Washington, DC. Getty Images

Tillerson, on the other hand, said in February that Russia is already interfering in the 2018 midterm elections. One of Tillerson's final acts in the Trump administration was to quickly accept the conclusions of U.S. and British intelligence that Russia likely carried out the attempted assassination of an ex-Russian spy living in London. Tillerson said Russia was "clearly" behind the nerve agent attack long before Trump himself addressed it. Pompeo has also firmly established himself as a critic of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, which Trump has called "the worst deal ever" and sought to dismantle. But the biggest difference between Pompeo and Tillerson may be based not on policy, but on the ability to run a government agency. Tillerson had no prior diplomatic experience when he left his job as the CEO of Exxon Mobil to join the Trump administration. Pompeo, however, boasts decades of experience in politics, and could be better suited to run the State Department for that reason, The Atlantic argued.

Cohn vs. Kudlow

President Donald Trump praises departing economic adviser Gary Cohn (L) during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Washington, March 8, 2018. Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Wall Street rejoiced when Trump picked Cohn as his top economic advisor. Likewise, it lamented his resignation in March. A former Goldman Sachs executive, Cohn supported lowering taxes, limiting regulations and creating a more hospitable economic climate for corporations  all policies that thrilled finacial markets. Trump had long established himself as a business-friendly candidate, and Cohn's appointment appeared to follow through on that commitment. Trump and Cohn reached an impasse, however, after the president announced broad, global tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum in March. A free-trade advocate, Cohn had argued against tariffs in a February meeting with the president and industry executives, according to a person in the room. He resigned less than a week after Trump announced the tariffs.

Larry Kudlow Scott Mlyn | CNBC

But Cohn's replacement, longtime CNBC pundit Larry Kudlow, shares many of Cohn's economic views. Like Cohn, Kudlow is pro-free trade and pro-tax cuts, and he criticized Trump's protectionist reflexes just days before the president asked him to join the administration. Kudlow also informally advised Trump during his campaign. Kudlow's main distinction from Cohn is his friendship with Trump. Kudlow and Trump are both former television hosts and personal friends. Kudlow has also indicated a willingness to bend in Trump's direction on trade. But Kudlow could still put up a fight as the director of Trump's National Economic Council, if his recent tweets are any indication: Kudlow Watch Milton Friedman Refute Steel Protectionists Back in 1978

McMaster vs. Bolton

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster speaks at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, March 15, 2018. Brendan McDermid | Reuters

McMaster, an accomplished Army general known for his searing analysis of military strategy during the Vietnam War, drew praise from Republicans and Democrats alike as a solid choice to become Trump's national security advisor. However, the announcement on Thursday that former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton would replace McMaster received a very different response. "You can say one thing for the former UN Ambassador," wrote retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis in an op-ed for CNBC. "He has been consistent throughout his career. Consistently wrong, that is." Bolton, who served under President George W. Bush's administration, is known for his hawkish military views. Even in areas where McMaster and Bolton ostensibly agree, the new national security advisor appears to take a more uncompromising stance. While McMaster has called the nuclear deal with Iran "fundamentally flawed," for instance, CNN reported in October that Democratic lawmakers "sensed" that the general was not willing to end the entire agreement.

New national security adviser John Bolton speaking at Capitol Hill on November 8, 2017. Getty ImagesThe student survivors of February's mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. are proving that more than any activists in a generation, they have managed to take over the conversation around gun control and American safety. "The world failed us and we're here to make a new one that's going to be easier on the next generation. If you're against that, then get out," Cameron Kasky, March For Our Lives co-founder told Time magazine in a new cover story. Today, at least a half-million people, most prominently students, are expected to gather for the March For Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C. and over 800 sister marches across the world. TIME cover Organizing the march along with Kasky are survivors Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, Jacklyn Corinn, Alex Wind and Ryan Deitsch, all of whom have emphasized their mission to "demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues." "The adults know that we're cleaning up their mess," Kasky told Time. Today's March For Our Lives event is just one way the Stoneman Douglas students have mobilized since the February tragedy. Thousands of people across America took part in the #Enough National School Walkout on Wednesday, March 14 to both honor those killed at the high school in February and fight for stricter gun laws. "These students are trying to build a different kind of world and correct a lot the mistakes people in previous generations made," Columbia University professor Ed Morales, author of the upcoming book "Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture," tells CNBC Make It. Morales argues that Gonzalez, one of the most vocal student survivors, and her emblematic Gen Z peers (Americans born between 1994 and 2010) have succeeded in leading the March For Our Lives movement because of their youth, protest style and ability to hold inclusive conversations. Gonzalez, an 18-year-old senior at Stoneman Douglas, directly called out President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association (NRA) at an anti-gun rally held days after the mass shooting. A week later, Gonzalez and fellow survivors again criticized the NRA and lawmakers at a CNN town hall on gun violence. And their efforts are showing: New results from a Gallup poll conducted after the Stoneman Douglas shooting found that support for stricter laws on gun sales is at its highest since 1993. Here are three ways Gonzalez and her Gen Z peers are pioneering change when so many who came before them failed, according to Morales.

They're protesting to prevent further mass shootings

In an interview of the five students on 60 Minutes that aired on March 18, CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi asked them how their protest could be different than the parents who made it their life's mission to get real change after the Sandy Hook mass shooting. "The thing about it is we are the generation that's had to be trapped in closets, waiting for police to come or waiting for a shooter to walk into our door. We are the people who know what it's like first-hand," Wind said.

"We're the mass shooting generation," Kasky added. "I was born months after Columbine. I'm 17 years old, and we've had 17 years of mass shootings." Morales explains that while politicians in Congress and coalitions of victims' families have pushed for gun law reform after mass shootings, they haven't had the same unprecedented success in getting their voices heard like these high school students. "This is the first time that there is a mass movement among pre-college students, staging walkouts and protests in the manner that has been done about other issues in the past," Morales says. Citing the American immigration rights movement, the anti-apartheid movement, AIDS activism and the protests against American involvement in the Vietnam War, Morales says those were protests primarily led by victims directly affected by these particular issues. "One of the reasons why the protest movement against the Vietnam War in the 1960s was so massive is that everyone was exposed to this universal draft and there was a real a danger to [men] that might be drafted," Morales says. "Now, we're at this place where mass shootings are so common that young people feel [shootings] are almost as much a threat to their lives." With regard to Wednesday's high school walkouts, Morales says he's "not trying to diminish [previous movements]," but today's students are leading a "preventative movement" to avoid becoming victims of another tragedy.

Now, we're at this place where mass shootings are so common that young people feel [shootings] are almost as much a threat to their lives. Ed Morales Columbia University professor

"They want to put strong pressure on Congress to change laws. They're offering different suggestions like banning bump stocks, high capacity automatic weapons, enforcing an age limit and a background check law," Morales says. "They're trying to put pressure and force action." On Friday, Gonzalez shared an op-ed for Teen Vogue in which she repurposed the Preamble to the Constitution in honor of the #NeverAgain movement and today's march: We the Wounded of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Future, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common People, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Generations to Come, do ordain and establish this March for the United States of America.

They're using social media and their youth to create change

"People always say, 'Get off your phones,' but social media is our weapon," Corin told Time. "Without it, the movement wouldn't have spread this fast." Stoneman Douglas student survivors have primarily used social media to rally the public around hashtags such as #NeverAgain, #March4OurLives and #DouglasStrong. Morales says Gen Z's activism on social media and their youth helps them enact change so quickly. "As millennials raise their concerns, it seems like they're being taken up in a more activist fashion by Generation Z. These [Parkland] students are very motivated and are not compromising," Morales said. He argues millennials and Gen Z hold more progressive views since they face job insecurity and less opportunity to accumulate wealth than older generations.

People always say, 'Get off your phones,' but social media is our weapon. Jaclyn Corin Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School junior class president

Morales adds that Gen Z is better equipped to lead the March For Our Lives movement because millennials are, quite frankly, getting older and are busy being "successful adults" with families. That doesn't leave "a lot of time to be involved in direct action or confrontational politics," he says. "They have less to lose by devoting a lot of time to [activism]," says Morales.

They're sparking an inclusive conversationFor the past week, Mark Zuckerberg has grappled with a backlash from lawmakers, regulators and users over Facebook's mishandling of data privacy. He has also had to face another restive group: his own employees.

The Facebook chief executive has taken multiple steps over the past few days to communicate with the social network's 25,000 employees over revelations last week that a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, had improperly obtained data of 50 million Facebook users.

The Silicon Valley company held a staff meeting on Tuesday to answer questions about Cambridge Analytica, featuring one of Facebook's lawyers, Paul Grewal. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Zuckerberg addressed employees directly, according to two Facebook employees who asked not be identified because the proceedings were confidential. Mr. Zuckerberg also spoke with staff on Friday at a regularly scheduled employee meeting, said two people who attended the event.

More from the New York Times:

Zuckerberg, Facing Facebook's Worst Crisis Yet, Pledges Better Privacy

Facebook's Role in Data Misuse Sets Off Storms on Two Continents

How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions

Facebook declined to comment on the meetings.

Speaking to Facebook's employees was a crucial prong of what has become an apology tour of sorts for Mr. Zuckerberg over the Cambridge Analytica fallout. The revelations have raised calls for Mr. Zuckerberg to appear before Congress to explain himself, as well as a #DeleteFacebook movementand other criticism.

Mr. Zuckerberg had stayed silent on the matter for days, until he released a statement on Wednesday vowing that Facebook had to do betterand gave several interviews to quell the crisis. That has not stopped pressure from Congress, with bipartisan leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee saying on Friday that they had sent a formal request for Mr. Zuckerberg to appear in a hearing over Facebook's "harvesting and sale of personal information" related to Cambridge Analytica.

Calming employees was particularly vital because morale had sunk at the company, Facebook employees have said, especially after months of scrutiny over how the social network was used by Russian agents to influence the 2016 presidential election. Keeping workers engaged is crucial in Silicon Valley's highly competitive job market, where recruiting and retaining talent often is difficult against deep-pocketed rivals.

Earlier this week, some Facebook employees had said that colleagues had started looking to transfer from the main social network product to other branches of the company, such as to messaging app WhatsApp and photo-sharing site Instagram, which have been relatively unscathed by the recent scandals.

One Facebook recruiter, who declined to be identified because of a nondisclosure agreement, said there were concerns that top talent might choose other Silicon Valley companies over Facebook.

"It's such a shocking difference for company employees who are used to having esteem for where they work," said Eric Schiffer, chairman of Reputation Management Consultants, a consulting firm, and who has been speaking with people at Facebook. "Ten years ago, Facebook was the hottest place to go out of college. This year, the best graduates are not necessarily looking at Facebook."

When Mr. Zuckerberg did not appear at the Tuesday staff meeting hosted by the company lawyer, Mr. Grewal, his absence made headlines.

When he spoke to workers on Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg focused on concrete measures that Facebook was taking following the Cambridge Analytica reports, two employees said. Staff members asked questions about how Mr. Zuckerberg planned to regain user trust, especially in light of the #DeleteFacebook campaign from users, the two employees said.

Mr. Zuckerberg said the social network was investigating apps like the third-party quiz app that had obtained access to "large amounts of information" from the social network, which had then been used by Cambridge Analytica. He also said the company would restrict third-party developers' access and would notify users whose data had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica.

Of the #DeleteFacebook campaign, Mr. Zuckerberg told The New York Times in an interview, "I think it's a clear signal that this is a major trust issue for people, and I understand that."

Three Facebook employees said morale had improved following the interviews and the internal communications that Mr. Zuckerberg did on Wednesday. One of them said he had avoided a trip home to see his family last weekend because he did not want to answer questions about the company he worked for.

On Friday, Facebook's senior managers promised an open line of communication as the company continued to re-evaluate its privacy and security measures, said two employees.

There was a feeling, said one of the people, that Facebook wanted to take aggressive steps to make sure it could regain user trust. And over all, he said, confidence was up.A general view shows Egyptian riot police cordoning off the street at the site of a bomb attack in the northern port city of Alexandria, which hit a convoy of the city's security chief, on March 24, 2018.

A bomb placed under a car exploded in Egypt's second city Alexandria on Saturday, killing two people including a policeman, two days before the country is due to hold a presidential election.

The bombing, which wounded four other policemen, targeted Alexandria's security chief, police Major General Mostafa al-Nemr, the interior ministry said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing. Islamic State released a video last month in which it warned Egyptians against taking part in the upcoming vote and urged Islamists to attack security forces and leaders.

State news agency MENA quoted Nemr as saying that two people, a policeman and a driver, were killed in the blast.

Photos on social media that Reuters could not independently verify showed a burnt out car and smoke at the site of the blast.

"On Saturday March 24 an explosive device planted underneath a car exploded ... as the Alexandria security chief drove by," the interior ministry said in a statement.

Eyewitnesses said police and military personnel formed a cordon around the site of the explosion. Local television stations later showed Nemr unharmed and inspecting the area.Apple users may notice that their computers and phones are filled with well-designed sounds that effortlessly blend into the experience  from the gentle keyboard clicks to the pings that alert you when something is wrong. But what they may not know, is that three of the most famous Apple sounds  the boot up chord, the camera click and the "Sosumi" beep, all were created by one man, mostly from his San Jose living room. His name is Jim Reekes. He started working at Apple in the late 1980s as a sound designer. The story starts with a lawsuit.

The Sosumi Beep

The Beatles' record label was named Apple, so when Steve Jobs decided to name his company Apple, he promised that the budding computer company would never get involved with music. Then, Apple added support for audio recording and Midi, a set of technical standards used to connect musical instruments to computers. So the Beatles sued. "The Beatles lawyers started suing because apparently the Beatles didn't have enough money," said Reekes.

As a part of the lawsuit, Reekes was tasked with renaming any sound effect that had a musical-sounding name. One of his beeps, originally called "Xylophone," needed a new name. "I actually said I'm gonna call it 'let it beep' and of course you can't do anything like that, but I thought yeah, 'so sue me.' And then I thought that's actually the right name," Reekes said. "I'll just have to spell it funny, so I spelled it Sosumi." He told the lawyers it was a Japanese word that didn't mean anything musical. "That's how that Sosumi beep came around," Reekes explained. "It was really me making fun of lawyers."

The boot-up sound

An earlier version of the Mac start-up sound, which was a tri-tone, annoyed Reekes immensely.

"At that time, the truth was the computer crashed a lot," Reekes said. "And every time you would hear that sound it was pretty much because you were just rebooting after a crash." He decided to change it, even though he didn't have permission to do so. He recorded the c-major chord on a keyboard in his living room, drawing inspiration, ironically, from the Beatles song "A Day in the Life." He knew the engineers at Apple that were in charge of the ROMs and asked them to sneak it in there right before the computer was released. It made it into the original Quadra computer.

Jim Reekes recorded the Apple start-up sound on this keyboard in his living room.

Some engineers at Apple were not happy with the change. "Our excuse was it's too risky to take it back out at this point because something could crash," he said. "We just made up some bulls---." It stuck, and years later Apple even trademarked the start-up sound. It's one of the few sounds that's trademarked, along with the NBC chimes and the Intel signature sound. "Kind of silly right?" Reekes smirked. "I'm playing a c-major chord and it's famous and it's a copyright." But after more than a decade, Apple got rid of the infamous boot-up chord in its latest models. Now when you turn on your laptop, there is silence. "Now that there's no start-up sound, it's like sitting down at a restaurant and there's no one there to greet you," Reekes said. "It's it just feels strange."

The camera click

Apple's camera click sound is everywhere. It's the sound of a screen grab or the noise your iPhone makes when you snap a photo.

It comes from Reekes' old 1970s Canon AE-1 that he purchased in high school. He recorded his camera and then slowed down the shutter speed in order to build the custom sound. "Any time you take a photo with the iPhone it's my camera, which kind of freaks me out because, even to this day when I hear people take photos with their iPhone I look to see who stole my camera," Reekes said.

Jim Reekes left Apple in the late 1990s, right before the dot-com crash."I just hope that they sit together, work out the issues. And clearly, in that context, the next 45 to 60 days are going to be very important. So let's watch it and let's see what happens," he said.

"Our belief (is) that both China and the U.S. are great trading nations, and maybe there are some differences, but I'm sure that common sense would prevail at the end of the day," Jacques told CNBC at the China Development Forum in Beijing .

Open trade is a major driver for the mining industry wherein many products are moving from one country to another, according to Jean-Sebastien Jacques, CEO of Rio Tinto .

Trade tensions have risen significantly between the United States and China this month, but the chief of a major mining company told CNBC he's sure that common sense will prevail between the two countries.

Beijing on Friday said it may target 128 U.S. products with an import value of $3 billion in response to President Donald Trump's executive order earlier this month that imposed broad duties on foreign aluminum and steel imports.

The U.S. president had also announced tariff plans for up to $60 billion in Chinese imports, although China didn't officially connected its Friday threats of retaliation to that White House action.

But in the event trade tensions between the two countries don't simmer down, Jacques said Rio Tinto would continue to focus on its customers as well as assets, which include products like aluminum, copper, diamonds, gold, iron ore and industrial minerals.

"I cannot control the prices, I cannot control the trade regulations, I have to deal with it," he said. "In the meantime, I'm focusing on my customers and on my assets."

Trade uncertainties rose earlier this with the news of new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Since then, the U.S. has exempted Canada and Mexico from those tariffs and said it would grant the European Union and some other countries a temporary exemption.

Rio Tinto's global aluminum business is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. And it operates an alumina refinery, hydroelectric plants and aluminum smelters in Quebec and British Columbia.

"We supply around one-third of all the aluminium that is consumed in the U.S.," Jacques said.

"We're working very closely with our customer either in Canada or in the USA to make sure that the supply chain is as efficient as it can be. That's our priority," he said.

CNBC's Nyshka Chandran contributed to this report.President Donald Trump is preparing to expel dozens of Russian diplomats from the U.S., following the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the U.K., Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.

The expulsions will likely be announced on Monday, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, but the decision is still being debated and is not final. A White House spokesperson contacted by CNBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has already expelled 23 Russians she said were spies after the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

"The United States stands firmly with the United Kingdom in condemning Russia's outrageous action. The president is always considering options to hold Russia accountable in response to its malign activities. We have no announcements at this time," Deputy White House Press Secretary Raj Shah told Bloomberg on Saturday.

Trump  who as recently as this week has insisted on maintaining a cordial relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin  is waiting to ensure other European allies will take similar steps against Russia before moving forward, the publication said.

Advisers to Trump met to discuss a U.S. response to the U.K. attack at a National Security council meeting on Wednesday, Bloomberg wrote.

Read more about Trump's plans for Russian diplomats on Bloomberg.Elon Musk deleted the Facebook pages of both Tesla and SpaceX on Friday.

Should you and your company do the same?

Just like Musk, you have to guard your professional reputation  and the reputation of your company. That means you cant be associated with criminal, shady or pornographic social sites.

Establishing and maintaining a public, named presence on 4chan, for example, would not be a career-enhancing move for most executives; 4chan is discreditable.

But what about Facebook, Twitter and YouTube?

We learned something new this week about social networks that we didnt know before: Their reputations can change in an instant.

This is an important new fact.

It takes years to establish a personal, professional or corporate presence on social sites. Millions of man-hours spent on crafting posts, engaging with followers and mastering site-specific techniques and practices can be suddenly wasted when that social site starts breaking bad in the public imagination.

Just look at what happened to Facebook.

The Facebook fiascos

It all started when President Trumps 2016 election campaign hired the political data firm Cambridge Analytica, which used apparently frivolous personality quizzes and a goofy app to create personality profiles of some 50 million Facebook users and influence their voting behavior.

Data collected included personal details, friend relationships and even likes.

That sounds innocent enough. Users opted in, right? Wrong.

Only about 270,000 users consented to sharing personal data. The majority were harvested through the consenting minority, as part of their social graphs.

In other words, those 270,000 gave permission for Cambridge Analytica to harvest personal details on 50 million.

These personality profiles were then used to select highly targeted political ads. The technique used was developed by scientists at Cambridge Universitys Psychometrics Center.

Facebook has since banned the features that enabled this data collection.

But it gets worse.

Although Cambridge Analytica reportedly told Facebook that it had deleted the personal data, it turns out it had not, prompting Facebook to ban Cambridge Analytica from the network. Experts say the data is probably being sold on the dark web.

The public is also aware of the related matter of Facebooks face-recognition feature. As with the Cambridge Analytica data, Facebook allows a minority of users to give Facebook permission to violate the privacy of the majority. Any picture of you can be tagged by anyone with access to that picture, which means that Facebook can know, when any new picture of you is uploaded, that it is, in fact, you. Without your permission.

If you dont want your exact ID associated in Facebooks incredibly advanced face-recognition database, well, thats just too bad. (Note that Googles policy with Google Photos is even worse, because on that site you can never even know youve been tagged.)

The public has also grown disillusioned with Facebook over the Russian governments apparent use of it to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The Cambridge Analytica news served as the last straw for millions of users anxious about Facebooks collection and handling of personal data, triggering use of the hashtag #DeleteFacebook.

A spate of how-to articles instructing how to delete a Facebook account rippled through the internet.

Even WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton tweeted the #DeleteFacebook hashtag. Facebook owns WhatsApp, though Acton left the company last year.

The public outcry about Facebooks missteps prompted political action.

The FTC launched an investigation this week into whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent agreement over user privacy. Congress began the process of launching hearings on the matter.

A U.K. parliamentary committee asked Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to appear and answer questions.

After some silence, Zuckerberg posted a statement on Facebook saying hes really sorry that this happened and admitted the company made mistakes.

The whole fiasco leaves business executives and enterprises in a pickle: Do we really want to associate our own public reputations with Facebook?

And what about YouTube?

The YouTube debacles

Googles YouTube has also plummeted recently in the publics judgment, caused by several sordid stories in the news.

Several high-profile YouTube stars were slammed recently for racist, anti-Semitic or extremely insensitive videos. YouTube took action against these content creators, but the damage to its reputation was done.

The link between morally retrograde stunt-making and YouTube fame is not incidental. YouTubes algorithms favor the most extreme content and make them go viral. YouTube stars are in a heated arms race for attention, and YouTube rewards these stunts with fame and fortune.

As the public grapples with politically motivated fake news and viral conspiracy theories, it has emerged in recent weeks and months that YouTube is a major driver of these phenomena.

Because of the way YouTube algorithms work, an innocent search for some basic content dredges up suggested follow-on videos, which usually involve increasingly extreme content.

As one example, a curious consumer of news might search YouTube to learn more about NASA and the space program. By clicking down the YouTube rabbit hole, its only a matter of time before most of the videos offered are about how NASA faked the moon landing, documentaries revealing how the illuminati tricked the world into believing the world isnt flat, and how the space programs technology comes from aliens.

My example is amusing. But apply this same process to politics, religion, terrorism, sex or any number of topics, and you can see how corrosive algorithms that favor extremism can be.

This also proved true, by the way, for YouTube Kids content. Recent reports show that the supposedly child-friendly version of YouTube also exposed children to conspiracy theories presented as fact.

Worse, a recent scandal demonstrated that unscrupulous and anonymous YouTube accounts were using A.I. to auto-generate viral childrens content to, in the words of James Bridle, systematically frighten, traumatise, and abuse children, automatically and at scale.

YouTubes reputation has taken a beating.

The Twitter troubles

Twitter also has a great many skeletons in the closet.

A huge number of the counted Twitter users are duplicate, bot, fake or purchased accounts.

Twitter content includes violence, pornography and hate speech, most of which does not violate Twitters policies and is allowed to remain. Porn is aggressively hawked on Twitter with direct-message spam and linkbait.

As with Facebook, Twitter is a major go-to network for state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.

And while Twitter appears to work hard to shut down hate speech, harassment and trolls, it still maintains a reputation for such problems.

Do you really want to be associated with all this?

Keep your distance

Let me be very clear: My point isnt that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are bad. And Im not saying that its impossible to function on these networks without encountering the worst elements.

What I am saying is this: Events this week prove that a social networks public reputation can sour so suddenly and so thoroughly that, if youre active on that network, it rubs off on you and damages the reputation of you or your company.

Thats why Musk, Tesla and SpaceX joined the #DeleteFacebook trend.

Facebooks sudden turn changes my standing advice for how to operate on the social networks.

In the past, I would have advised professionals and companies to go all in on the social networks. Build an active presence. Engage. Commit. Become part of the communities.

This is no longer my advice. Weve now learned that a social networks reputation can be tainted overnight, and association with that network can hurt you.

The new imperative is to build your own social networks. Re-embrace older technologies that keep you in control of the access you have to fans, customers, colleagues and the public.

Favor the content subscription model. Pour your energies and budgets into email newsletters, blogs with RSS feeds and podcasts.

Move the conversations you have with the public from the social networks to your own networks.

Each of these models enables you to build sticky lists of people who voluntarily choose to interact with you, and who  because these technologies do not involve algorithmic sorting shell games  can actually see everything you post.

Dont delete your social accounts right away (except maybe for Facebook). Instead, use them for as long as you can to drive traffic to your newsletters, blogs and podcasts.

And when the social networks reputations take a turn into the gutter, you can pull the plug knowing that youve invested in social content systems that you own and control.

Musk deleted his companies Facebook pages. One day you might need to protect your own reputation, and your companys, by doing the same.

The time to prepare for this eventuality is now.Todays papers report that up to ten EU member states are preparing to expel Russian diplomats in the aftermath of the Salisbury poisoning. This follows the news that the EU has withdrawn its own ambassador from Moscow.

According to the Guardian, the countries involve include not only obvious Russo-sceptics such as Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania but also both France and Germany.

Even Italy, which apparently has stronger relations with Russia than other Member States, claims to have been persuaded by the information we got from [the British] prime minister.

Obviously, not every EU country is going to take the same approach. Nonetheless, this sort of backing is still a coup of sorts for the Government, especially considering that it initially looked as if leading players such as France might not support stronger action against Moscow.

Nor is this the only bit of good foreign policy news that Theresa May has received in recent days, at least as far as a tough stance against the Kremlin is concerned.

Donald Trumps designation of John Bolton, the neocons neocon, as his new National Security Adviser suggests that the White House may be about to adopt a much more traditional, NATO-focused foreign policy. Granted Boltons immediate priorities are likely to be North Korea and Iran, but he is nonetheless unlikely to support a conciliatory approach to Americas traditional Cold War enemy.

This newfound united front will need to be converted into action if it is to have any hope of constraining Vladimir Putin, who has been ruthless in exploiting the fact that the Wests will often falls short of its rhetoric. He would not have seized the Crimea if he had not worked out that the guarantees offered to Ukraine by the UK and US when we persuaded them to abandon their nuclear arsenal were, in fact, worthless.

But short of that, might there be other benefits for the Government? It feels optimistic to hope that this outbreak of Anglo-European solidarity might smooth the next stage of the Brexit negotiations  although one can live in hope  but Jeremy Corbyns mishandling of the Russia issue does seem to have handed the Tories a small bump in the polls.

Whether or not the Party can sustain public interest in the issue until polling day remains to be seen. But if they do struggle, at least it looks as if the Opposition are going to keep serving up dysfunction for a while yet: just last night Corbyn sacked Owen Smith, his Shadow Northern Irish Secretary, for demanding a second EU referendum.Solution providers looking beyond traditional client devices to solve customers' increasingly complicated requirements will find opportunities presented by new mobile technologies combining business capabilities with consumer-friendly features.

Thats the word from Stephen Miller, a Lenovo ambassador, who this week told solution provider members of Synnexs Varnex community that office and education environments are rapidly changing, making them fertile grounds for channel partners shifting away from a focus on devices.

"Solutions and verticals are important to Lenovo, and hopefully to partners as well," Miller said.

[Related: Synnex Intros New Channel Partner Community Emphasizing Security, Networking And Communications]

Offices and education environments are changing, Miller said. Rather than traditional cubicles, employees are now more likely to see team rooms, and are likely to be working in their break rooms, he said.

For that reason, solution providers may want to bring customers new ways of meeting, Miller said. As an example, he cited Lenovo's new ThinkSmart Hub 500, a new video conferencing system with Microsoft Skype built in. The ThinkSmart Hub 500 includes a three-color LED ring that shows Skype status. Also featured are a 360-degree rotatable screen, Dolby Premium audio, a secure cable management door, and auto-on. It works with Microsoft PowerPoint, he said.

"It is far more cost-effective than any in the business," he said.

Looking forward, Miller said Lenovo plans to offer versions more suited for larger conference rooms, as well as models with other communications capabilities other than Microsoft Skype.

For the education market, Lenovo is moving to bring augmented reality and virtual reality into the classroom to meet the changing needs of students who have grown used to streaming audio and video and who are presenting a challenge to educators, Miller said.

"Teachers are ready for it," he said. "Students are ready for it. They want the solution."

The problem is, it is still early, Miller said. "My suggestion is to get involved now ... As you look into the next couple years, the numbers are doubling," he said.

Channel partners can start getting ready for it with Lenovo's new Mirage virtual reality video immersion headset which Miller said will be compatible with applications built for a wide range of industries from oil and gas to hospitality to higher education. For instance, if there is a pipeline leak, one person or a drone can go inside while others observe via virtual reality. Alternatively, he said, medical students can do repeated training without the need for a $1,500 cadaver.

For channel partners in the education market, Lenovo is preparing to offer the Lenovo VR Classroom Kit which includes one Lenovo tablet PC, three Mirage Solo Daydream headsets, a wireless router, and a case or cart. Miller said it would start shipping May. A single system can expand to up to 24 headsets.

For the classroom, Lenovo is now starting to offer new Chromebook that students can use with #2 lead pencils instead of an expensive stylus, he said.

Lenovo is moving in the right direction for a number of its products, but could be doing better, said Glenn Pubal, sales manager at Royal Business Equipment, an Elyria, Ohio-based solution provider focused on education and government and a Lenovo channel partner.

Virtual reality offerings like the Lenovo VR Classroom Kit are interesting, but the cost is an issue, Pubal told CRN.

"It is still priced out of the range of most schools," he said. "Twenty-four headsets at $300 per headset is expensive. For a school, virtual reality could take the place of a field trip. But the students expect to take a field trip together, and won't want to wait while only three can use the headsets at once."

Pubal said his company sells a lot of Lenovo Chromebooks, and new models that replace the stylus with a #2 lead pencil look really cool.

"Styluses are expensive at $20 to $30 each," he said. "If you lose one, it's tough. A pencil costs 50 cents, and it is a more natural writing device. I'm not sure if a pencil will hurt the screen over time. But Lenovo says it's easy to clean."Religious freedom is losing even more ground in Kazakhstan: For the first time since the country gained independence in 1991, a court ordered religious literature to be destroyed, Mission Network News reports. According to Forum 18 News, 121 pieces of religious literature, mostly in the Kazakh language, were taken from a Christian in the northern part of the country. Vyacheslav Cherkasov was reportedly handing out the literature on the streets when police arrested him. He was fined a month's wages, and a suitcase full of Bibles, children's Bibles, books and Christian tracts were confiscated. This month, a judge ordered the literature to be destroyed. "Most likely the books would be burnt," an official told Forum 18. Authorities accused Cherkasov of violating Kazakhstan's Religion Law, which was rewritten in 2011 to include more things as "religious offenses." Cherkasov is currently appealing his case. "We know that religious literature has frequently been confiscated since the new Religion Law came into force in 2011," said human rights defender Yevgeni Zhovtis. "But I've never heard that religious literature is being destroyed, unless it is extremist. This is terrible, terrible!"Citing demand, Iceland ProCruises has added two departures to its 2018 program aboard a second ship, the Ocean Endeavour.

The sailings are nine days each, leaving on July 1 and July 10, respectively, and circumnavigating Iceland.

The Ocean Endeavour joins the Ocean Diamond, which operates for Iceland ProCruises on a seasonal basis on a long-term charter agreement.

Company executives told Cruise Industry News in 2017 that they were bullish on the future, and were eyeing a second ship.Police: Somerset DA Jeff Thomas showed up univited, raped Windber woman

Somerset DA Jeff Thomas was arrested Wednesday night and charged with sexual assault following an incident in a Windber Borough home Sept. 18, police said.This week the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) was given a green light at a special African Union summit in Kigali, Rwanda.

Chaired by the current AU leader, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and the chair of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the session saw 44 of the 55 AU member states sign the deal.

The #AfCFTA will create a trade bloc of 1.2 billion people with a combined GDP of more than $2 trillion. It commits countries to removing tariffs on 90% of goods and to liberalize services.#AfCFTA2018 #CFTAhttps://t.co/lDH6jS6WYQ pic.twitter.com/7TtdcHPTU0  UNCTAD (@UNCTAD) March 21, 2018

In addition, 27-member states signed an agreement on the free movement of persons. This is like a visa free agreement for 90 days for all or designated categories of people.

Today, @TonyOElumelu was presented w the African Union Passport which allows him visit all 54 African Union nations, visa-free! This is a big step towards creating an enabling environment for cross-border trade for #AfricanEntrepreneurs & indeed a big win for African integration! pic.twitter.com/844UfediZY  Tony Elumelu FDN (@TonyElumeluFDN) March 19, 2018

The Single African Air Transport Market opened for signature earlier in January continues to attract more adherents as well. Ten countries did not sign - notably, Nigeria among Africas largest economies. Several others signed the Kigali declaration, but not the CFTA.

The CFTA is expected to fulfil a major part of the integration efforts under Project 2063 of the African Union. If it emerges, it will be the largest FTA since the emergence of the stilted WTO and connect nearly 1.2 billion people (just under the population of India) in a new trade order.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) estimated that the CFTA has the potential both to boost intra-African trade by 53.2 per cent by eliminating import duties, and to double this trade if non-tariff barriers are also reduced. CFTA proposes to reduce tariffs on 90 per cent of its products.

The AU commissioner for trade and industry has elucidated that the objectives of the CFTA include:

 Creation of a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments, and pave the way for accelerating the establishment of the Continental Customs Union and the African customs union.

 Expand intra-African trade through better harmonisation and coordination of trade liberalisation and facilitation regimes and instruments across RECs and across Africa in general.

 Resolve the challenges of multiple and overlapping memberships and expedite the regional and continental integration processes.

 Enhance competitiveness at the industry- and enterprise-level through exploiting opportunities for scale production, continental market access and better reallocation of resources.

The African Union was itself born in 2002 through a reordering of the Organization of African Unity of 1963. It had faced the challenge of integration squarely. It had to contend with a vast multitude of regional institutions and groupings in Africa, but chose to engage with eight of them. Of these, the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) was the true precursor of a preferential trade area.

It engaged with the efficiently run Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) which jointly tried to negotiate common FTA and their joint Summit in 2008, started the negotiating process to bring all their three areas together.

By 2012, this had acquired sufficient momentum to have an endorsement by the AU summit in January, which adopted a decision to establish a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) by 2017.

Image: Reuters photo

The summit also endorsed the action plan on Boosting Intra-Africa Trade (BIAT), which identifies seven clusters: trade policy, trade facilitation, productive capacity, trade-related infrastructure, trade finance, trade information, and factor market integration.

This decision meant that other Regional Economic Communities like ECOEWAS, ECCAS IGAD Arab Maghreb Union and CENSAD all were brought into negotiations which nevertheless became more strategy sessions for the major economies of Africa.

Africa has largely been outside the value chains and trade facilitation measures of international organisations and businesses. It has often seen virtue in limited concessions like the EU trade concession mainly through the Lome convention and the AGOA opportunities.

These did not create local value chains, but brought African producers into closer links with international buyers under whose vagaries they stayed. Trade expansion remained limited within Africa and was 8 per cent in 2008 and rising to 10 per cent by 2010.

By 2016, nearly 21 per cent of African trade is now intra-regional as more countries trade with each other and the limited success of the SADC and ECOWAS in particular emerge.

The SADC has nearly 21 per cent intra SADC trade due to the might of the South African economy.

The ECCAS in Central Africa has barely 2.1 per cent and AMU about 4 per cent. COMESA is about 8 per cent and the EAC at about 13 per cent. In comparison, EU has inter-regional trade of about 65 per cent and the ASEAN about 23 per cent.

The trade facilitation, lowering of internal barriers and better infrastructure are all well intentioned targets, but remain challenges as well.

Supporters argue that African economies are very small to support economic diversification and industrialisation by themselves and will gain from having a unity to negotiate trade agreements and seal investments from partners.

The African Union has reverted, after a hiatus of about five years, to a NEPAD-like approach of finding a big idea that could benefit many members, but also increase focused development cooperation with its international partners. The climate change and G20 aside meetings were such ideas and now the CFTA is the most ambitious of all as it does require sacrifices for greater common good.

The model of the factory economies of Asia and East Europe are now perhaps the objective of this new idea. Under this, African countries may want to have a better realisation of their own markets.

The median age of the African population is 27 and nearly 400 million are classified as middle class, but these are fragmented into narrow domestic walls.

The CFTA provides the light to unite these opportunities and make a real common market with better opportunities for infrastructure development, movement for people and trade and investment flows.

The growth of the idea of far shoring investment to seek lower labour costs, provided there is better logistics and infrastructure is increasingly attracting European, Chinese and Indian besides Turkish investment in African countries. The Chinese are also building industrial zones now as a change from the stadium and parliaments built earlier.

However, the absence of the big boys at the table remains a matter of concern. Nigeria has not signed while South Africa has clarified that it needs to get its domestic rules in order.

Nigeria is facing a protectionist backlash within as its oil revenues have dipped and it needs its manufacturing and services sectors to be protected. Some of the 10 absentees, however, did sign the Kigali declaration, which is the intent document, and this includes South Africa and Zambia.

There is a fear that some of the more efficient economies in North Africa, which have French and other EU investment, could sap the domestic manufacturing sectors in larger African countries.

Morocco which has now returned to the AU seems a likely big gainer. India could be a gainer if this succeeds.

India has already provided duty-free tariff preferences to African LDCs. This led to a spurt in Indian investment as well.

Indian investors have been seen positively as they contribute the most to regional and intra-African trade. Their strength now could be leveraged and a common market would open more doors for Indian projects and investors, albeit also attract more competition. Our trade could rise by 12 per cent to 15 per cent on such efforts and our project implementation will need to be spruced up if we are to take better advantage of emerging opportunities.

There is no doubt that this a beginning and the details will now be negotiated. The agreement needs national ratification and has six months to conclude.

It may be recalled that the SADC FTA took from 1996 to 2012 to negotiate. The results will emerge from there and then it will be seen if more sign in or those who signed now will remain.

In Asia, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was launched in 2012 and is still being negotiated. This manifests that the problems of the CFTA are perhaps now beginning, but full marks to the intention of the leaders of Africa to try for a big new idea in integration.

Also read: Everything wrong with India's reaction to racist attack on African studentsNotwithstanding BJPs recent by-election setbacks and the rebelling NDA allies, dire predictions about Prime Minister Narendra Modis 2019 fate seem to be completely wrong.

Setback in few constituencies in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and disaffection among some allies are wrongly being extrapolated with perception to predict the end of Modi raj next year.

Four years after he won a stunning victory, the Modi wave has dissipated, he is weakened. Still, he stands tall against the Opposition leaders who fancy to challenge him.

The CPI(M), which is viscerally opposed to Modi and his ideology, has painted a realistic picture of the situation. In a frank and forthright editorial in party journal, Peoples Democracy, the CPI(M) has admitted that Opposition parties are woefully divided to put up a serious challenge to Modi.

Having played vital role in brining non-Congress parties together against the BJP on many occasions in the past, the CPI(M) has exposed the chinks in the ranks of the Opposition.

The CPI(M) party mouthpiece has advanced three convincing arguments. One, it was warned Opposition parties that an UPA 3 against Modi will not succeed in 2019.

"The Congress wont succeed with another UPA experiment as it has lost all credibility and the best way to defeat the BJP in the next Lok Sabha election will be to pool in all anti-BJP votes state-wise," the CPI(M) has said.

This is a frank and scathing critique of the Congress. Through this argument, the CPI(M) has sought to deflate the so-called resurgence of the Congress under Rahul Gandhi.

The Peoples Democracy editorial, which reflects CPI(M)s official position, suggests that party general secretary Sitaram Yechury has effectively been sidelined. Yechury, who has been advocating the need for CPI(M) to join hands with the Congress to fight the BJP, appears to have been chastened after Tripuras crushing defeat.

Two, the CPI(M) argues that regional parties such as TDP, TRS and BJD are not prepared to unite under the Congress leadership. The CPI(M) itself, it says, will not forge anti-BJP unity with the Congress. The reference obviously is to Kerala, where CPI(M) is in direct contest with the Congress.

The logic is straightforward. Regional parties will not join hands with the Congress in alliance or seat adjustments in all those states where the Congress is their main adversary.

Although the CPI(M) hasnt mentioned the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC, the West Bengal leader has no love lost for the Congress. TMCs main rival in West Bengal is the CPI(M). But the Congress-Left unity can be a headache for Banerjee.

Thirdly, the CPI(M) has also pooh-poohed the idea of a federal front mooted by TRS leader K Chandrashekhar Rao to confront the BJP. Banerjee is keen on promoting a federal front against the BJP, of which the Congress will not be a partner.

Banerjee doesnt hide her antipathy towards the Congress. Thats why she skipped the dinner called by Sonia Gandhi for Opposition leaders of 19 parties to discuss the need for uniting against Modi in 2019.

According to the CPI(M), formation of federal front will end up dividing the anti-BJP votes because some parties such the RJD and the DMK are with the Congress.

In a nutshell, one of the main anti-BJP parties and driver of anti-Modi unity has ruled out the feasibility of pre-poll alliance among Opposition parties. That is demoralising for the Opposition leaders who discovered spring in their steps after the BJPs defeat in by-elections.

The formula for taking on Modi, the CPI(M) suggests, is state-wise unity. It cites the example of SP-BSP tie-ups in Gorakhpur and Phulpur as a model to beat the BJP.

It says, The UP by-election provides important lessons for the future in terms of election tactics to defeat the BJP. If the BJP loses the bulk of the seats in UP, it cannot come anywhere near a majority in the Lok Sabha.

However, the CPMs own logic that local contradictions between parties come in the way of forging unity against Modi will prevent Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati from presenting a smooth, tension-free united front in UP.

Political strategists and commenters too are presenting the two by-elections as a model to be replicated in Uttar Pradeshs 80 seats. They forget that the SP and the BSP have sharp caste and class contradictions that wont let them enter into problem-free rainbow coalition. The SPs Yadav-led OBC followers and BSPs Dalits are in conflicts with each other in most of the villages where they are present in substantial numbers.

Its the same problem between the JD(U) and the RJD. Although they formed a mahagathbandhan or a grand alliance to defeat the BJP in Bihar, their unity didnt last long. Modi and Shah had the last laugh.

Most election analysts point to the combined vote share of the SP and the BSP and say that the two parties together would have won 50 out of 80 seats, leaving only 30 for the BJP. Thats a hypothetical situation.

India would have had coalition governments in perpetuity had all Opposition parties got united against the ruling party of the day since the time of Indira Gandhi. With dim prospects of unity among disparate Opposition parties, as outlined by CPI(M), Modi and Shah look to be in comfortable situation to win the 2019 race.

The Congress will present formidable challenge to BJP in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh - total 65 seats - where the two parties are in direct contests and where the BJP will face anti-incumbency. But to compensate, the BJP will have Modi as its lead campaigner who stands taller than any Congress leader.

Besides disunity, local contradictions and large size egos of their leaders - Mamata and Mayawati, to name just two - Opposition parties have to contend with two factors they dont possess.

One, they have to face a Machiavellian tactician in Modi, the only leader with a pan-India mass appeal who can swing voters in his favour. Two, the great electoral machine of the BJP led by Amit Shah with over 8 crore RSS workers behind him.

Opposition has no chance.

Also read: PMO asking NCC units to install NaMo App is unethicalSpeaking at first #Future conference, organised by the Kerala government to promote the state among IT companies and entrepreneurs, Nandan Nilekani - the co-founder of Infosys and the former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India - said that Aadhaar is generating data that Indians will be able to sell or barter for benefits.

He also said that selling their own data can help poor Indians improve their lives and small businesses get better access to credit. He added that the idea is to create "data empowerment architecture" through a "fundamental digital infrastructure" that comprises a digital ID number, a device to communicate/mobile phone and a bank account.

Many of the above statements seem like the statements which were spread in the support of demonetisation. No rational argument was given to substantiate the claims; they were uttered to sell an idea to an already misinformed public.

We know that Nandan Nilekani is part of the globalist "data is the new oil" brigade - a group of elite bankers, corporate heads, think-tanks and politicians - that is manufacturing consent in favour of draconian technocratic totalitarian systems, which disempower citizenry by robbing them off privacy, consent and freedom, and makes them vulnerable to be exploited by vulture corporations, state machinery and intelligence agencies.

The term "surveillance capitalism" was coined in 2015 by Harvard academic Shoshana Zuboff to describe large-scale surveillance, data collection, data processing, data analysis and trading of processed/analysed data for profit and power.

The recent Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal only proved that how data can be used with the goal to manipulate human behaviour and influence thinking, for a particular desired outcome.

We also know that WikiLeaks indicated by quoting a report by GreatGameIndiaNews (GGI news) that the CIA may have access to Aadhaar data.

Edward Snowden tweeted on January 9: "The journalists exposing the #Aadhaar breach deserve an award, not an investigation. If the government were truly concerned for justice, they would be reforming the policies that destroyed the privacy of a billion Indians."

Enough alarms have gone off and many credible people have spoken out, but the Indian government is obstinately pushing Aadhaar down the throats of the unwilling citizens.

Any government that cares for its citizens would have immediately stalled any system that might compromise the personal data of its people to a foreign intelligence agency. But our "nationalist" government thinks otherwise.

The only hope of relief and justice lies with the Supreme Court. Serious debates about the constitutional legality about Aadhaar are happening at the Supreme Court presently, and activists are demanding complete scrapping of Aadhaar, and the collected data to be destroyed.

We will know about the Supreme Courts decisions in lieu of the multiple petitions sometime this year. But we already know what Nilekani is thinking.

He accepts that Aadhaar is a data collection tool that harvests the lives of people. He reveals the totalitarian - Big brother is watching you - goal is to have a "seamless integration of data" collected from mobile phone use (including social media, Google, Amazon, YouTube etc), Aadhaar ID (quoted to avail rights, services and benefits) and banking (including usage of credit and debit card).

All the data collected from the three sources will be centralised where the state, intelligence agencies and private players will have access to the data and do whatever they want with it. Thereby, make citizenry extremely vulnerable to potential malpractice, abuse, Orwellian control and exploitation.

Such a 24x7 system gives too much power to the state/politicians in power and the private players over the citizens. Thats why, Aadhaar, fundamentally is a dream of the fascists and a nightmare of the democrats.

The fact that such a totalitarian system can sprout in democratic nations only points to the close collusion of money and power, coming together, to generate more money and power.

Nilekanis "neoliberal rational" dehumanises people as a state-owned "commodity" and suggests that a human being is nothing more than an "economic entity".

Such preposterous ideas should institutionalise people to a correctional facility. But poster boys of sociopathic ideas are part of the establishment nowadays.

One cannot expect a self-interested material technocrat like Nilekani to understand the crucial abstractions like freedom and liberty. But when the government washes away its moral authority and forgets the abstract higher ideals on which a nation is based, then it signals an era of democratic fascism and totalitarian control where citizens - and even their data - are harvested for corporate profit.

Nilekanis assertion that Aadhaar is generating data that Indians will be able to sell or barter for benefits and profits is nothing, but an enormous deception. Because, we ourselves dont own or control the data we generate. Will UIDAI hand over the data it has collected of a particular citizen? Will a pen drive of all the data of a particular time period be handed over to a citizen? The answer is no.

A person in need can sell his or her own kidney, but he or she cannot sell his or her data. The data belongs to the UIDAI - along with private players like corporations, and even intelligent agencies - who can process and sell the data to anyone they wish.

So what is Nilekani saying is akin to this: Indians - via private players- can sell someone elses kidney for profit. The consent and knowledge of the person who has the kidney doesnt matter.

The situation is even graver when the government has enacted a law where any complaint against the UIDAI will have to be forwarded to the UIDAI. No FIRs can be filed.

So, UIDAI is an extra-constitutional entity that doesnt come under the purview of Indian law. How more totalitarian can this Aadhaar nightmare be?

Dystopia is already here: a world of digital slavery where data is the new prison, and UIDAI, the judge, the jury, the jailor and the executioner.

Also read: Why India is far from being tuberculosis free by 2025National Bank of Canada provides various financial products and services to retail, commercial, corporate, and institutional clients in Canada and internationally. It operates through four segments: Personal and Commercial, Wealth Management, Financial Markets, and U.S. Specialty Finance and International. The Personal and Commercial segment offers personal banking services, including transaction solutions, mortgage loans and home equity lines of credit, consumer loans, payment solutions, savings and investment solutions; various insurance products; and commercial banking services, such as credit, and deposit and investment solutions, as well as international trade, foreign exchange transactions, payroll, cash management, insurance, electronic transactions, and complimentary services. The Wealth Management segment provides investment solutions, trust and estate services, banking services, lending services, guaranteed investment certificates, mutual funds, notes, structured products, and other wealth management solutions through internal and third-party distribution networks. The Financial Markets segment offers risk management products and services; and debt and equity underwriting; advisory services in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, and financing. The U.S. Specialty Finance and International segment provides specialty finance expertise; financial products and services to individuals and businesses in Cambodia; and the activities of targeted investments in certain emerging markets. The company also offers credit cards. It provides its services through a network of 483 branches and 1,573 banking machines. The company was founded in 1859 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

Read MoreFidessa group plc, together with its subsidiaries, provides trading, investment, and information solutions to the financial community worldwide. The company offers access to the trading community of buy-side and sell-side professionals ranging from institutions and investment banks to boutique brokers, and niche hedge funds. It operates in two business units, Sell-side and Buy-side. The Buy-side business unit offers systems to cover stages of the investment process for various asset classes. The Sell-side business unit provides solutions and tools to support the trading of cash equities and derivatives. The company also provides connectivity network and management services that connect counterparties across financial markets; and market data services tuned for trading and powering the buy-side and sell-side throughout the trading life cycle. In addition, it offers post-trade services; and open and bespoke training courses covering various aspects of product sets for the buy-side and sell-side. The company was formerly known as Royalblue group plc and changed its name to Fidessa group plc in May 2007. Fidessa group plc was founded in 1981 and is based in Woking, the United Kingdom.

Read MoreAhram Weekly, by Doaa El-Bey, Excerpt

Though numbers are yet to be released the presidential election turnout among expatriates was high, reports Doaa El-Bey

Egyptian expatriates hoisted flags, chanted and carried banners with patriotic slogans as they cast their ballots in polling stations set up in Egypts diplomatic and consular missions abroad. Some voters even brought their children to the ballot boxes as they exercised their democratic rights.

Actors Hussein Fahmi cast his vote in Abu Dhabi and Ashraf Abdel-Baki in Saudi Arabia. They were not the only familiar faces queuing to vote in the celebratory atmosphere.

We had to wait in a long queue but it was great to share the experience with other Egyptian citizens. It felt as if I was in Egypt, said Ashraf, a labourer who has lived in Saudi Arabia for more than 10 years.

Ashraf lives in Jeddah, close to a polling station. Some of his friends, however, work on the Gulf kingdoms west coast and found it impossible to travel to Riyadh or Jeddah to vote.

Hussein Al-Nazer, media adviser to the General Union of Egyptians Abroad, said the elections witnessed a turnout that exceeded expectations despite the boycott calls and negative propaganda. The union is a league for Egyptians living abroad.

He ascribed the high turnout to the timing of the elections. Elections took place on a Friday, a day off in all Arab countries, and Saturday and Sunday are off in Europe and the US, he told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Raising awareness and mobilising for participation, he added, is another factor that contributed to increasing the turnout, thanks to the efforts of the embassies abroad and the tours that the Minister of Immigration Nabila Makram did especially in the Gulf.

According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), 9.5 million Egyptians live outside the country. Of these, 6.2 million live in Arab countries  2.9 million in Saudi Arabia, 1.6 million in Jordan, 765,000 in the United Arab Emirates, 500,000 in Kuwait and 230,000 in Qatar. North and South America is home to 1.6 million Egyptians, 1.2 million live in Europe and 340,000 in Australia.

Italy hosts some 560,000 Egyptian expats. There are 365,000 Egyptians working in France, 77,000 in Germany, 62,000 in England, 45,000 in the Netherlands, 2,000 in Poland, 80 in Azerbaijan and 15 in Uzbekistan.

Said Henry, a journalist who emigrated to Canada in January 2011, voted on the day polls opened, driving five hours from Toronto to Ottawa.

It is the first time that I feel I am an Egyptian and that my vote counts. I felt this even though I am living with my family and running my business in Canada, he said.

He described the voting procedure as smooth and quick.

I had a valid ID and passport. My data was quickly scanned and I cast my vote.

A group of Henrys friends hired a bus between them and travelled to Ottawa to vote.

Expatriate voting in the presidential elections ended on Sunday at 9pm. The vote took place at 139 polling stations in 124 countries between 16 and 18 March.

Egyptians living in Yemen, Libya and Syria were unable to take part in the poll owing to ongoing security concerns.ITV plc, an integrated producer broadcaster, creates, owns, and distributes content on various platforms worldwide. It operates through Broadcast, and ITV Studios segments. The Broadcast segment broadcasts various contents on its family of free-to-air channels, including ITV, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITVBe, ITV Encore, CITV, ITV Breakfast, CITV Breakfast, and various related +1 and HD equivalents; and offers television advertising services. It also delivers content through linear television broadcasting; ITV Hub, an over-the-top service on 28 platforms, including itv.com Website; and pay providers, such as Virgin and Sky, as well as through direct content deals with services comprising Amazon, Apple, and Netflix. In addition, this segment offers online advertising, HD digital channel on pay platform, and ITV Choice subscription services, as well as licenses DTT Multiplex A. The ITV Studios segment creates and produces programs and formats that include drama, entertainment, and factual entertainment for its own channels and other broadcasters, such as the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, and Sky. It also operates as an unscripted independent producer of content in the United States; and produces content for local broadcasters in Australia, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. In addition, this segment's distribution business licenses finished programs and formats, and third-party content internationally, as well as finances productions. The company also engages in the development of platform, broadband, transactional, and mobile services; operation of Freeview Multiplex A; rights ownership and distribution of television programs and films; and scheduling and commissioning of television programs. ITV plc was founded in 1955 is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

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Limited Partnership, Energy Consulting Group LLC, Enscope, Enscope Pty Ltd, FIC GP LLC, Field Personnel Services LLC, First Infrastructure Capital Advisors LLC, First Infrastructure Capital GP L.P., Five Points Construction Co., G-Tek, G-Vac, GEM Engineering Co., Grand Electric Inc., Great Lakes Line Builders, Grid Creative Inc., Grid Manufacturing Corporation, Grid Training Corporation, H.L. Chapman Pipeline Construction Inc., Haverfield Aviation, Haverfield Aviation Inc., Haverfield International Incorporated, Heritage Midstream LLC, IM Electric Inc., IUC ILLINOIS LLC, IUC Nebraska LLC, InfraSource Construction LLC, InfraSource Field Services LLC, InfraSource Services LLC, InfraSources Construction LLC, Infraestructura ETP de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V, Infrasource Engineering Company PC, Infrasource Iowa Underground LLC, Infrasource Of Pa LLC, Integracion Tecnologica del Peru SAC, Intermountain Electric Inc., Intermountain Electric Inc. A Corporation of Colorado, IonEarth LLC, Irby Construction Company, Irby Construction Company Inc., Iron Mountain M.J. Electric LLC, Island Mechanical Corporation, J.C.R. Construction Co. Inc., J.C.R. Utility Construction Co., J.W. Didado Electric Inc., J.W. Didado Electric LLC, J.w. Didado Electric, JBT Electric LLC, Kingston Contracting Inc., Lazy Q Ranch LLC, Lazy Q Training Center LLC The Lazy Q Lineman School, Legend Foundation Services, Lex Engineering Ltd., Lindsey Electric L.P., Logical Link, Longfellow Drilling, M. G. Dyess Inc., M. J. ELECTRIC LLC IRON MOUNTAIN, M. J. Electric LLC, M. J. Electric LLC - Iron Mountain, M. J. Electric LLC DBA M. J. Electric Iron Mountain LLC, M.J. Electric LLC DBA M.J. Electric Iron Mountain, M.J. Electric LLC Iron Mountain, MTS Field Services, MTS Field Services (Richmond Co), MTS Quanta LLC, Manuel Bros. Inc., Marathon Construction Services, Mears Canada Corp., Mears Equipment Services LLC, Mears Group Inc., Mears Group Pty Ltd, Mears Installation LLC, Mearsmex S. de R.L. de C.V., Mejia Personnel Services LLC, Mercer Technical Services, Microline Technology Corporation, Mid America Energy Services Inc., NACAP Niugini Ltd., NC Northstar Energy Services Inc, NGI Construction, NGI Construction Inc., NGI Construction Inc. (FN), NLC CA. Inc., NLC FL. Inc. Northwest Lineman Center, NLC ID. Inc. Northwest Lineman College, NLC TX. Inc., NPC Energy Services LLC, Nacap Australia, Nacap PNG Limited, Network Communication Services, North Houston Pole Line L.P., North Houston Pole Line Limited Partnership, North Sky Communications, NorthStar Energy Services Inc., Northern Powerline Constructors Inc., Northstar Energy Solutions LLC, Northwest Lineman Center, Northwest Lineman College, Northwest Lineman Training Center, Northwest Lineman Training Center Inc., Nova Constructors LLC, Nova Constructors LTD, Nova Equipment Leasing LLC, Nova Group Inc, Nova Group Inc (CA), Nova Group Inc., Nova Group Inc. DBA NGI Construction, Nova NextGen Solutions LLC, O. J. Pipelines Canada Corporation, O. J. Pipelines Canada Limited Partnership, O.J. Industrial Maintenance, O.J. Pipelines Canada, One Call Locators Canada Ltd., P.D.G. Electric, PAR Electrical Contractors Inc., PDG Electric Co., Par Internacional S. de R.L. de C.V., Performance Energy Services Guyana Ltd., Performance Energy Services L.L.C., Phasor Engineering Inc., Phoenix North Constructors Inc., Phoenix Power Group Inc., Potelco Inc., Potelco Incorporated, Power Delivery Program Inc., Price Gregory International Inc., Price Gregory Services LLC, Probst Construction Inc., Probst Electric Inc., QEPC, QEPC Power Solutions LLC, QES GP LLC, QP Energy Services LLC, QPS Engineering LLC, QPS Engineering LTD., QPS Engineering PLLC, QPS Environmental, QPS Flint Construction, QPS Flint Tank Services, QPS Global, QPS Global Services, QPS Global Services (Richmond Ci), QPS Professional Services, QPSE, QS Mats, QSI Engineering Inc., QSI Finance (Australia) Pty Ltd., QSI Finance (Cayman) Pvt. Ltd., QSI Finance Canada ULC, QSI Finance GP (US) LLC, QSI Finance I (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., QSI Finance I (US) LP, QSI Finance II (Australia) Pty Ltd., QSI Finance II (Lux) S.a r.l, QSI Finance II (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., QSI Finance III (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance III (Lux) SARL, QSI Finance IV (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance IX (Canada) Limited Partnership, QSI Finance V (US) L.P., QSI Finance VI (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance VII (Canada) Limited Partnership, QSI Finance VIII (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance X (Canada) ULC, QSI Inc., QSN Lux Holdings I SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings II SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings III SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings IV SCSp, QTSL LLC, QUANTA FOUNDATION SERVICES, Quanta APL GP II Ltd., Quanta Asset Management LLC, Quanta Associates L.P., Quanta Aviation Services LLC, Quanta Canada GP ULC, Quanta Canada Holdings III Limited Partnership, Quanta Canada Holdings LP, Quanta Canada III GP Ltd., Quanta Capital GP LLC, Quanta Capital LP L.P., Quanta Capital Solutions Inc., Quanta Cares, Quanta EPC Services, Quanta Electric Power Construction LLC, Quanta Electric Power Construction Management Inc., Quanta Electric Power Services LLC, Quanta Electric Power Services West LLC, Quanta Energized Innovations Ltd., Quanta Energized Services U.S. LLC, Quanta Energized Services of Canada Ltd., Quanta Energy Services LLC, Quanta Environmental Solutions, Quanta Equipment Company LLC, Quanta Government Solutions Inc., Quanta Holdings I (Netherlands) B.V., Quanta Holdings II (Netherlands) B.V., Quanta Infraestructura de Chile SpA, Quanta Infrastructure Services LLC, Quanta Infrastructure Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Quanta Inline Devices LLC, Quanta Inspection Services, Quanta Insurance Company Inc., Quanta International Holdings (US) LLC, Quanta International Holdings II Ltd., Quanta International Holdings Ltd., Quanta International Limited, Quanta Kingsvale LP Ltd., Quanta Lines Pty Ltd., Quanta Maine Services LLC, Quanta Middle East LLC, Quanta Pipeline Services Inc., Quanta Power Australia Pty Ltd, Quanta Power Generation Inc., Quanta Power Inc., Quanta Power Solutions India Private Limited, Quanta Resource Development, Quanta Services Africa (PTY) Ltd., Quanta Services Australia Pty Ltd., Quanta Services Chile SpA, Quanta Services Colombia S.A.S., Quanta Services Costa Rica Ltda., Quanta Services Guatemala Ltda., Quanta Services International Holdings II LP, Quanta Services International Holdings LP, Quanta Services Management Partnership L.P., Quanta Services Netherlands B.V., Quanta Services Panama S. de R.L., Quanta Services Peru S.A.C., Quanta Services Puerto Rico LLC, Quanta Services of Canada Ltd., Quanta Subsurface Canada Ltd., Quanta Subsurface LLC, Quanta Tank Services, Quanta Technology Canada ULC, Quanta Technology LLC, Quanta Technology UK Ltd., Quanta Tecnologia do Brasil Ltda., Quanta Telecom, Quanta Telecom Services, Quanta Telecommunication Services, Quanta Telecommunication Services LLC, Quanta Telecommunications Services LLC, Quanta Underground Services, Quanta Underground Services (Culpeper Co), Quanta Underground Services (Spotsylvania Co), Quanta Underground Services Inc., Quanta Utility Engineering Services Inc., Quanta Utility Installation Company Inc., Quanta Utility Operation LLC, Quanta West LLC, Quantecua Cia. Ltda., R. R. Cassidy Inc., RMS Holdings LLC, RMS Holdings LLC (Delaware), RMS Welding Systems, RMS Welding Systems LLC, Ranger Directional, Realtime Engineers Inc., Realtime Utility Engineers Inc., Redes Andinas de Comunicaciones S.R.L., Riggin & Diggin Line Construction, Rms Welding LLC, Rms Welding Systems LLC, Road Bore Corporation, Ryan Company Inc. The, Ryan Company Inc. of Massachusetts, Ryan Company Inc.(The), Seaward, Seaward Corp, Seaward Corporation, Service EC (DE) Inc., Service Electric Company (DE), Service Electric Company Inc., Service Electric Company of Delaware, Servicios Par Electric S. de R.L. de C.V., Servicios de Infraestructura del Peru S.A.C., Southwest Trenching Company Inc., Specialty Tank Services L.P., Specialty Tank Services LP, Specialty Tank Services Limited Partnership, Specialty Tank Services Limited Partnership, Specialty Tank Services Ltd., Specialty Tank Services Ltd. (LP), Specialty Tank Services Ltd. L.P., Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, Specialty Tank Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold General LLC, Stronghold Holdings (BVI) Limited, Stronghold Inspection L.P., Stronghold Inspection Limited Partnership, Stronghold Inspection Limited Partnership, Stronghold Inspection Lp, Stronghold Inspection Ltd L.P., Stronghold Inspection Ltd., Stronghold Inspection Ltd. L.P., Stronghold Inspection Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Limited Partnership, Stronghold Ltd., Stronghold Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Management Holdings LP, Stronghold Specialty General LLC, Stronghold Specialty Ltd., Stronghold Specialty Ltd., Stronghold Specialty Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Tower Group LP, Stronghold Tower Group Ltd LP, Stronghold Tower Group Ltd., Stronghold Tower Group Ltd. LP, Stronghold VI LLC, Subterra Damage Prevention Specialists Ltd., Summit Line Construction, Sumter Utilities Inc., T. G. Mercer Consulting Services Inc., TA Construction, TC Infrastructure Services Ltd., Taylor Built, Texas Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, The Aspen Utility Company LLC, The ComTran Group Inc., The Hallen Construction Co. Inc., The Massachusetts Ryan Company Inc., The Ryan Company Inc Of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Inc., The Ryan Company Inc. (Massachusetts), The Ryan Company Inc. of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Incorporated of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Of Massachusetts Inc., The Ryan Company of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company of Massachusetts (FN), Tom Allen Construction Company Inc., Tom Allen Construction Company of Delaware, Trans Tech Electric, TurnKey Automation Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Ltd., TurnKey Automation Ltd. Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Ltd. Limited Partnership, TurnKey I&E Ltd., Turnkey Automation Ltd. L.P., Turnkey Automation Ltd. LP., UCC Underground Construction Co. Inc., Ucc - Underground Construction Co., Underground Construction Co. Inc., Underground Construction Co. Inc. (Delaware), Underground Electric Construction Company LLC, Utilco Inc., Utility Fleet Services, Utility Line Management Services Inc., Utility Testing & Maintenance LLC, Utility Training Services Corporation, VALARD Polska sp. Z o.o., Valard, Valard, Valard Construction (Ontario) Ltd., Valard Construction (Quebec) Inc., Valard Construction 2008 Ltd., Valard Construction Australia Pty Ltd, Valard Construction LLC, Valard Equipment (AB) Ltd., Valard Equipment GP Ltd., Valard Equipment Limited Partnership, Valard Geomatics (Ontario) Ltd., Valard Geomatics BC Ltd., Valard Geomatics Ltd., Valard Mechanical Ltd., Valard Norway AS, Valard Sweden AB, Valard Zagreb d. o. o., Wade D. Taylor Inc., West Coast Communications, Winco Helicopters, Winco Inc., Winco Inc. an Oregon Based Corporation, Winco Powerline Services, Winco Powerline Services Inc., Winco Powerline Services Inc., Winco Services Inc., World Fiber Inc., and mmit Line Construction Inc..Wall Street analysts have given RAIT Financial Trust a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but RAIT Financial Trust wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.The following companies are subsidiares of Laboratory Co. of America: 1957285 Ontario Inc. dba Quality Underwriting Services, 2089729 Ontario Inc., 2248848 Ontario Inc., 3065619 Nova Scotia Company, 3257959 Nova Scotia Company, 896988 Ontario Limited, 9279-3280 Quebec Inc., Accupath Diagnostic Laboratories Inc., Alpha Medical Laboratory LLC, Assets of Pathology Inc, Beacon LBS IPA Inc., Beacon Laboratory Benefit Solutions Inc., CannAmm GP Inc., CannAmm Limited Partnership, Center for Disease Detection International, Center for Disease Detection LLC, Centrex Clinical Laboratories Inc., Clearstone Central Laboratories (U.S.) Inc., Clearstone Holdings (International) Ltd., Clipper Holdings Inc., Colorado Coagulation Consultants Inc., Colorado Laboratory Services LLC, Correlagen Diagnostics Inc., Covance Inc., Curalab Inc., Cytometry Associates Inc., Czura Thornton (Hong Kong) Limited, DCL Acquisition Inc., DCL Medical Laboratories LLC (DE), DCL Medical Laboratories LLC (FL), DCL Sub LLC, DIANON Systems Inc., DL Holdings Limited Partnership, Decision Diagnostics L.L.C. (aka DaVinici/Medicorp LLC), Diagnostic Services Inc., DynaLifeDX, Dynacare - Gamma Laboratory Partnership, Dynacare Company, Dynacare G.P. Inc., Dynacare Holdco LLC, Dynacare Laboratories Inc., Dynacare Laboratories Limited Partnership, Dynacare Northwest Inc., Dynacare Realty Inc., DynalifeDX Infrastructure Inc., Endocrine Sciences Inc., Esoterix Genetic Counseling LLC, Esoterix Genetic Laboratories LLC, Esoterix Inc., Execmed Health Services Inc., FirstSource Laboratory Solutions Inc., GDML Medical Laboratories Inc, Gamma Dynacare Central Medical Laboratories GP Inc., Gamma Dynacare Central Medical Laboratory Limited Partnership, HHLA Lab-In-An-Envelope LLC, Health Trans Services Inc., Home Healthcare Laboratory of America LLC, IDX Pathology Inc., Impact Genetics Corp, Impact Genetics Inc., Kaleida LabCorp LLC, Lab Delivery Service of New York City Inc., LabCorp BVBA, LabCorp Belgium Holdings Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (Canada) Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (China) Inc., LabCorp Central Laboratories (Singapore) Pte., LabCorp Development Company, LabCorp Employer Services Inc., LabCorp Health System Diagnostics LLC, LabCorp Indiana Inc., LabCorp Japan G.K., LabCorp Limited, LabCorp Michigan Inc., LabCorp Nebraska Inc., LabCorp Neon Ltd., LabCorp Neon Switzerland S.a.r.l., LabCorp Specialty Testing Billing Service Inc., LabCorp Specialty Testing Group Inc., LabCorp Staffing Solutions Inc., LabCorp Tennessee LLC, LabCorp UK Holdings Ltd., LabWest Inc., Laboratoire Bio-Medic Inc., Laboratory Corporation of America, Lifecodes Corporation, LipoScience Inc., Litholink Corporation, MEDTOX Scientific Inc., Medical Neurogenitics LLC, Medtox Diagnostics Inc., Medtox Laboratories Inc., Monogram Biosciences Inc., Monogram Biosciences UK Limited, NWT Inc., National Genetics Institute, New Brighton Business Center LLC, New Imaging Diagnostics LLC, New Molecular Diagnostics Ventures LLC, Orchid Cellmark Ltd., Orchid Cellmark ULC, PA Labs Inc., Path Lab Incorporated, Pathology Associates Medical Lab LLC, Pee Dee Pathology Associates Inc., Persys Technology Inc., Pixel by LabCorp, Princeton Diagnostic Laboratories of America Inc., Protedyne Corporation, ReliaGene Technologies Inc., SW/DL LLC, Saint Josephs-PAML LLC, Sequenom Biosciences (India) Pvt. Ltd., Sequenom Center for Molecular Medicine LLC, Sequenom Inc, Sequenom Inc., Southern Idaho Regional Laboratory, Tandem Labs Inc., The LabCorp Charitable Foundation, Tri-Cities Laboratory LLC, Viro-Med Laboratories Inc., and Yakima Medical Arts Inc..Bank of America Corp. is a bank and financial holding company, which engages in the provision of banking and nonbank financial services. It operates through the following segments: Consumer Banking, Global Wealth and Investment Management, Global Banking, Global Markets, and All Other. The Consumer Banking segment offers credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses. The Global Wealth and Investment Management provides client experience through a network of financial advisors focused on to meet their needs through a full set of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. The Global Banking segment deals with lending-related products and services, integrated working capital management and treasury solutions to clients, and underwriting and advisory services. The Global Markets segment includes sales and trading services, as well as research, to institutional clients across fixed-income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity businesses. The All Other segment consists of asset and liability management activities, equity investments, non-core mortgage loans and servicing activities, the net impact of periodic revisions

Read MoreBlack Diamond Group Limited rents and sells modular space and workforce accommodation solutions. It operates through two segments, Modular Space Solutions and Workforce Solutions. The Modular Space Solutions segment provides modular space rentals to customers in the construction, real estate development, manufacturing, education, financial, and resource industries, as well as government agencies in North America. Its products include office units, lavatories, storage units, large multi-unit office complexes, classroom facilities, banking and health care facilities, custom manufactured modular facilities, and blast resistant structures. This segment also sells new and used space rentals units; and provides delivery, installation, project management, and ancillary products and services. The Workforce Solutions segment provides workforce housing solutions, including rental of accommodations and surface equipment, and provision of turnkey lodging and travel management services in Canada, the United States, and Australia. This segment also provides associated services, such as installation, transportation, demobilization, and sale of used fleet assets. This segment primarily serves the resource, infrastructure, construction, disaster recovery, and education sectors. The company also provides specialized field rentals to oil and gas industries. Black Diamond Group Limited markets its rental assets, custom sales, and ancillary products and services through in-house sales personnel, its website, social media, web campaigns, and its digital marketplace. The company was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.

Read MoreCVR Refining, LP operates as an independent petroleum refiner and marketer of transportation fuels in the United States. The company owns and operates a complex full coking medium-sour crude oil refinery in Coffeyville, Kansas; and a complex crude oil refinery in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. It also controls and operates logistics assets, including approximately 570 miles of owned and leased pipelines; approximately 130 crude oil transports; a network of crude oil gathering tank farms; and approximately 6.4 million barrels of owned and leased crude oil storage capacity, as well as approximately 4.6 million barrels of combined refined products and feedstocks storage capacity. In addition, the company owns 170,000 barrels per day pipeline system that transports crude oil from Broome Station facility to Coffeyville refinery; approximately 1.5 million barrels of crude oil storage capacity, which supports the gathering system and Coffeyville refinery; approximately 0.9 million barrels of crude oil storage capacity at Wynnewood refinery; and approximately 1.5 million barrels of crude oil storage capacity in Cushing, Oklahoma, as well as leases crude oil storage capacity of approximately 2.3 million barrels in Cushing and approximately 0.2 million barrels in Duncan, Oklahoma. CVR Refining GP, LLC operates as the general partner of CVR Refining, LP. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in Sugar Land, Texas. CVR Refining, LP is a subsidiary of CVR Energy, Inc.

Read MoreCellcom Israel Ltd. operates and maintains a cellular mobile telephone system in Israel. It operates in two segments, Cellular and Fixed-line. The company offers cellular communications services, such as basic cellular telephony services comprising voice mail, cellular fax, call waiting, call forwarding, caller identification, and conference calling; text and multimedia messaging; and cellular content and data services. It also provides international roaming services; value-added services, such as short message and multimedia messaging; cloud backup; and content services, including Cellcom Volume music, Cellcom TV, and other applications. In addition, the company sells handsets, tablets, streamers, smart watches, and home security cameras, as well as offers repair services. Further, it provides internet infrastructure and connectivity services, over-the-top TV services, international long distance services, and landline telephony and transmission services; transmission and data services through fiber-optic infrastructure and complementary microwave links; IP switchboard services; and cloud services and data protection products, as well as operates and manages business telecommunication systems to selected business customers and telecommunications operators. As of December 31, 2019, the company had approximately 10.6 million cellular subscribers. Cellcom Israel Ltd. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Netanya, Israel.

Read MoreThe Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited, together with its subsidiaries, produces, distributes, and markets gas in Hong Kong and Mainland China. It is involved in the provision of liquefied natural gas, methanol, and coal and other chemicals; conversion and utilization of biomass, and industrial and agricultural waste; and operation of natural gas refilling stations, piped city-gas projects, upstream and midstream developments, water and wastewater treatment projects, energy exploration and utilization ventures, and aviation fuel facilities. The company supplies town gas to approximately 1.9 million customers. It also provides network connectivity, and data center and cloud computing services; and engages in the software development, solution implementation, and systems integration activities. In addition, the company offers consultancy and engineering contractor services, including utilities installation, infrastructure construction, and civil and building services engineering for public and private projects; and designs and manufactures gas meters and metering systems. Further, it is involved in water supply and wastewater treatment serving 2.4 million customers. Additionally, the company manufactures polyethylene piping and fittings; and engages in the customers center, cafA, restaurant, retail sale, automatic meter reading system development, laboratory testing, payment gateway and related, project management, landfill gas project, financing, logistics, oil, research and development, property development, and securities investment activities. The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited was founded in 1862 and is headquartered in North Point, Hong Kong.

Read MoreLVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE engages in the manufacture of luxury goods. It operates through the following business segments: Wines & Spirits, Fashion & Leather Goods, Perfumes & Cosmetics, Watches & Jewelry, Selective Retailing, and Other Activities & Eliminations. The Wines & Spirits segment produces and sells high quality champagne wines and sparkling wines. It also distributes vodka and white liquor. The Fashion & Leather Goods segment engages in the manufacture of luggage items, bags, accessories, shoes and clothes. The Perfumes & Cosmetics segment engages in the production and distribution of make-up, perfume and skin care products. The Watches & Jewelry segment manufactures luxury watches and accessories form men and women. It specializes in the field of chronographs and ultimate precision. The Selective Retailing segment is organized to promote an environment that is appropriate to the image and status of the luxury brands. It engages in the sale of luxury products to international travelers and on board cruise ships. This segment also manages beauty stores that combine direct access and customer assistance to customers. The Other Activities & Eliminations segment i

Read MoreSmart & Final Stores, Inc. operates as a food retailer in the United States. It operates in two segments, Smart & Final and Smart Foodservice. The company's stores offer fresh perishables and everyday grocery items, such as produce, meat and deli, dairy and cheese, grocery, and beverage products, as well as paper and packaging, and restaurant equipment and janitorial supplies. It also provides various private label products under the First Street, Sun Harvest, Simply Value, La Romanella, Montecito, Iris, and Ambiance brands. The company sells its products to household and business customers; restaurants; caterers; and various other foodservice businesses, such as food trucks and coffee houses through vendors and suppliers. As of December 30, 2018, it operated 326 grocery and foodservice stores, including 59 Smart & Final stores, 201 Smart & Final Extra! stores, and 66 Smart Foodservice Warehouse stores located in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Utah, as well as 15 stores in Northwestern Mexico operated through a joint venture. Smart & Final Stores, Inc. was founded in 1871 and is headquartered in Commerce, California.

Read MoreRalph Lauren Corp. engages in the design, marketing, and distribution of premium lifestyle products. The firm offers apparel, accessories, home furnishings, and other licensed product. It operates through the following segments: North America, Europe, and Asia. The North America segment consists of sales of Ralph Lauren branded apparel, accessories, home furnishings, and related products made through the Company's wholesale and retail businesses in the U.S. and Canada, excluding Club Monaco. The Europe segment caters to sales of Ralph Lauren branded apparel, accessories, home furnishings, and related products made through the Company's wholesale and retail businesses in Europe and the Middle East, excluding Club Monaco. The Asia segment covers the sales of Ralph Lauren branded apparel, accessories, home furnishings, and related products made through the Company's wholesale and retail businesses in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. The company was founded by Ralph Lauren in 1967 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

Read MoreKinaxis Inc. provides cloud-based subscription software for supply chain operations in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Canada. The company offers RapidResponse, a cloud-based software-as-a-service platform empowers planners, business leaders, and IT professionals to know sooner, act faster, and remove waste, as well as provides demand planning, supply planning, inventory management, sales and operations planning, and command and control center services. It also provides professional services, such as implementation, configuration, technical, and training services, as well as maintenance and support services to its software products. The company serves technology and electronics, aerospace and defense, life sciences and pharmaceuticals, industrial, automotive, consumer products, and retail markets. The company was formerly known as webPLAN Inc. and changed its name to Kinaxis Inc. in May 2005. Kinaxis Inc. was incorporated in 1984 and is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada.

Read MoreMorgan Stanley Emerging Markets Fund, Inc. is a closed ended equity mutual fund launched and managed by Morgan Stanley Investment Management Inc. The fund is co-managed by Morgan Stanley Investment Management Limited and Morgan Stanley Investment Management Company. It invests in the public equity markets across the global emerging markets. The fund invests in stocks of companies operating across diversified sectors. It invests in companies across all market capitalizations. The fund benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the MSCI Emerging Markets Net Index. Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Fund Inc. was formed on August 27, 1991 and is domiciled in the United States.

Read MoreWall Street analysts have given Vanguard Mid-Cap Value ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but Vanguard Mid-Cap Value ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.Jenoptik AG engages in the optics and photonics business in Germany and internationally. The company operates through Light & Optics, Light & Production, and Light & Safety divisions. It offers automation solutions and application products, such as welding and fastening systems, material handling, transfer devices and systems, fixtures, end of arm tooling, and positioners; develops and manufactures metrology solutions comprising dimensional, form, in-process, optical, optical surface inspection, and roughness and contour metrology, as well as laser distance sensors for monitoring and optimizing production processes; microscope and thermographic camera, imaging modules, polymer-based camera modules, and digital imaging platforms; and diode and solid state lasers, laser distance meters, laser machines, and objective lenses and beam expanders for laser perforation, laser cutting, and laser welding applications. The company also provides light detection and ranging sensors; optical systems; optoelectronic systems and components. In addition, it offers traffic safety systems; digital camera technology with license plate recognition; lasers, radar, piezo sensors, and induction loop sensors; back-office software for evaluating traffic monitoring data; and stationary and mobile traffic monitoring. Further, the company provides civil security solutions, such as automatic number plate recognition (ANPR); and TraffiData analysis software, which provides analysis in real time on the incoming data. It serves semiconductor equipment, automotive and suppliers, mechanical engineering, medical technology, traffic, aviation, and security and defense technology companies. Jenoptik AG was founded in 1846 and is headquartered in Jena, Germany.

Read MoreRoyal KPN NV operates as a supplier of telecommunications and information technology services. It serves customers at home and abroad with fixed and mobile networks for telephony, data and television. The company focuses on both private customers and business users, from small to large. It also offers telecom providers access to widely branched networks. The company's brands include KPN, XS4ALL, Simyo, KPN Security, Ortel Mobile, Cam IT Solutions, Solcon, KPN Interned services and StartReady. Royal KPN was founded in 1852 and is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Read MoreWe have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription.Legg Mason, Inc. is a publicly owned asset management holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the firm provides investment management and related services to company-sponsored mutual funds and other investment vehicles including pension funds, foundations, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, private banks, family offices, individuals, as well as to global, institutional, and retail clients. It launches and manages equity, fixed income, and multi-asset customized portfolios through its subsidiaries. The firm also launches and manages mutual funds and exchange traded funds for its clients through its subsidiaries. It invests in private and public equity, fixed income, and multi asset markets across the globe through its subsidiaries. Through its subsidiaries, the firm also invests in alternative markets. It also employs a combination of fundamental and quantitative research to make its investments through its subsidiaries. Legg Mason, Inc. was founded in 1899 and is based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Read MoreSalzgitter AG, together with its subsidiaries, engages in steel and technology businesses worldwide. It operates through five segments: Strip Steel, Plate/Section Steel, Mannesmann, Trading, and Technology. The Strip Steel segment manufactures branded and special steels, such as hot-rolled strip steel and steel sheets, sections, tailored blanks, and components for the construction industry. The Plate/Section Steel segment produces various high-grade heavy plates for engineering, shipbuilding, and mechanical engineering, as well as trades in scrap. The Mannesmann segment is involved in the manufacture of line pipes, HFI-welded tubes, precision and stainless-steel tubes, and spiral-welded and longitudinal-welded large-diameter pipes; and seamless and welded tubes for the energy, automotive, and mechanical engineering sectors. The Trading segment operates a European sales network, as well as trading companies and agencies worldwide. The Technology segment engages in the provision of machinery and plants for the filling and packaging of beverages, as well as special machinery engineering for shoe manufacturing and elastomer production. The company also provides IT, facility management, logistics, automotive engineering, and research and development services, as well as supplies raw materials. Salzgitter AG was founded in 1858 and is headquartered in Salzgitter, Germany.

Read MoreVermilion Energy Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and production of petroleum and natural gas in North America, Europe, and Australia. It owns 81% working interest in 642,300 net acres of developed land and 87% working interest in 376,700 net acres of undeveloped land, and 613 net producing natural gas wells and 3,034 net producing oil wells in Canada; and 96% working interest in 248,900 net acres of developed land and 91% working interest in 222,100 net acres of undeveloped land in the Aquitaine and Paris Basins, and 325 net producing oil wells and 3.0 net producing gas wells in France. The company also owns 49% working interest in 930,000 net acres of land and 51 net producing natural gas wells in the Netherlands; and 36,900 net developed acres and 965,900 net undeveloped acres of land, and 61 net producing oil wells and 8 net producing natural gas wells in Germany. In addition, it owns offshore Corrib natural gas field located to the northwest coast of Ireland; and 100% working interest in the Wandoo offshore oil field and related production assets that covers 59,600 acres located on Western Australia's northwest shelf. Further, the company holds 138,000 net acres of land in the Powder River basin, and 136.6 net producing oil wells in the United States; and 951,200 net acres of land in Hungary, 244,900 net acres of land in Slovakia, and 2.4 million net acres of land in Croatia. Vermilion Energy Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.

Read MoreVTG Aktiengesellschaft, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a wagon hire and rail logistics company worldwide. It operates through three segments: Railcar, Rail Logistics, and Tank Container Logistics. The Railcar segment hires out its rail freight wagons in its own fleet; provides management and technical support services to external wagon fleets, as well as maintenance services for rail freight cars and their components; and manufactures tank wagons. This segment operates a fleet of approximately 83,000 rail freight wagons. The Rail Logistics segment offers rail-related logistics solutions. This segment primarily engages in the transportation of mineral oil and chemical products, liquid gases, and industrial and agricultural goods in the form of block train, single-wagon, and wagon group transport, as well as leases wagons. It also provides project logistics services, including the transport of products for machinery and plant engineering sectors, as well as other tailored services to customers. The Tank Container Logistics segment organizes tank container transport of goods, as well as leases tank containers. This segment primarily transports liquid and temperature-controlled products of the chemical, mineral oil, and compressed gas industries through a fleet of approximately 8,800 tank containers. The company serves chemical, petroleum, automotive engineering and supplier, and paper industries. VTG Aktiengesellschaft was founded in 1951 and is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. As of April 8, 2019, VTG Aktiengesellschaft was taken private.

Read MoreWilliam Lyon Homes (NYSE:WLH) released its earnings results on Wednesday, November, 6th. The construction company reported $0.37 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.30 by $0.07. The construction company had revenue of $466.90 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $487.15 million. William Lyon Homes had a net margin of 3.04% and a trailing twelve-month return on equity of 6.98%. William Lyon Homes's revenue for the quarter was down 12.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $0.68 earnings per share.

View William Lyon Homes' earnings history.Logan Mock-Bunting/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- A fight between two elite Army special operations soldiers on Wednesday left one person dead, the Army confirmed to ABC News.

Shortly after 5:30 pm on Wednesday, the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office was dispatched to a private residence outside of Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina after reports of a shooting, the sheriff's office said in a statement.

Deputies found the victim, Sgt. 1st Class Mark Leshikar, 33, dead at the scene. According to a senior defense official, Leshikar was a member of the 19th Special Forces Group, a National Guard Green Beret Unit.

A spokesperson for Army Special Operations Command would not confirm the identity of the shooter. But, a senior defense official said he is an active duty soldier belonging to a Special Missions Unit. The Army's only special mission unit is known as Delta Force.

According to the official, the soldiers had allegedly just returned from a vacation in Florida with their families. Leshikar was kicked out of the house where they were staying in Fayetteville after getting into some kind of altercation.

After Leshikar was let back into the house by a child, he allegedly went after the unidentified soldier with a screwdriver before being shot and killed by that soldier, the official said.

Deputies who arrived on the scene spoke to occupants of the home who were present when the incident occurred, but no charges have been filed, the sheriff's statement said.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.A demonstration of a bump stock installed on an AK-47. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images

The Justice Department has proposed a new regulation effectively banning bump stocks, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Friday. The new rule will reclassify the gun modification devices, which are used to mimic automatic fire with a semi-automatic weapon, as machine guns, which are banned under federal law.

The Trump administrations strategy to ban the devices goes against the recommendations of federal law enforcement officials. In 2010, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives concluded that it could not regulate bump stocks since the devices could not be classified as machine guns since they do not permanently alter the trigger mechanism of a firearm. Another review conducted by ATF officials last year concluded that bump stocks could only be banned by an act of Congress. Sessions apparently hopes to get around that problem by reinterpreting the term machine gun.

The new DOJ-proposed rule will now go into the Federal Register and face a 90-day comment period before going into effect. If that happens, the possession of bump stocks would be criminalized and owners of the devices would have to immediately surrender or destroy them. But since bump stock manufacturers specifically designed the devices to avoid being classified as machine guns, expect the rule-based ban to face lawsuits from them and gun rights advocates, as a ban of the devices in Florida already has.

The rule change came on the eve of Saturdays nationwide March for Our Lives protests against gun violence, and Sessionss statement quickly followed a Friday tweet from President Trump announcing the ban.

The gunman behind last falls mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas used a bump stock to allow him to fire more rounds into the crowd. 58 people were killed in that attack, and hundreds more wounded. Though bump stocks played no role in the mass shooting that killed 17 people at a Florida high school last month, President Trump and others quickly focused on banning bump stocks in their response to the outrage that followed.

President Trumps Friday tweet also attempted to blame President Obama for having legalized bump stocks in the first place, a misleading reference to how the original ATF review of the devices happened during the Obama administration. At that time, law enforcement officials concluded that the federal government could not legally ban the devices without Congress. The Trump administration is now disregarding that conclusion and trying to impose the ban anyway. Well soon find out who was right.There are two dates and two locations being speculated as the right one for the wedding.

Sonam Kapoors wedding dates and locations are doing the rounds on the Internet again. The actress may be very vocal on social media expressing her love and like for beau Anand Ahuja, but her silence on her personal life has got the media very busy.

There are two dates and two locations that are being speculated as the right one for the wedding. One set of wags are very sure that the marriage is taking place at Geneva in Switzerland on May 11 and 12, 20 days before the release of Sonam Kapoors film with Kareena Kapoor  Veere Di Wedding.

The second date that is being speculated is somewhere in June and beyond after the release of Veere Di Wedding on June 1. This time the location is being speculated as London.

Some sources however state that the wedding may not be in May. Sonam may not want to field queries on her married life immediately if she gets married in May because she will be out promoting the film. It is obvious that everyone will ask her questions on the wedding, says the source.Rating:

Director: Sidharth P. Malhotra

Cast: Rani Mukerji, Neeraj Kabi, Harsh Mayar, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Sachin Pilgaonkar.

Writer-director Sidharth P. Malhotras Hichki is not a great film in terms of originality of plot, or even inspired writing, direction. But its a very special film for reasons both big and small. For one, Rani Mukerji, who plays the 15th oddball to join a class of 14, is in excellent form.

Second, Hichki mainstreams and normalises a condition  a mechanical locha, so to speak  in a way I havent seen done often. Hichki is neither maudlin, nor preachy nor peacocky, like, say Taare Zameen Par was. It treats the disability it picks as something that needs to be acknowledged, and then focuses on the person, not the problem.

Per say, Classrooms are not sexy, unless of course Farah Khan is standing at the other end and instructing Sushmita Sen, resplendent in Manish Malhotra chiffons, to pout and preen. They can, however, be transformative.

In cinema, they are natural settings for affecting coming-of-age tales that involve conflict, tears, defeat before the disempowered, unruly lot get empowered.

Its a place where teachers attach little wings and help kids fly.

Like epic love stories, theres a kind of universality to classroom stories. They travel easy, they travel far.

Hichki, a Bollywoodised version of Brad Cohens book on which the 2008 film Front of the Class was based, has a lot weve seen before. To Sir, With Love, Stand And Deliver, The Class (French and fabulous), Good Will Hunting, Dangerous Minds, and even our own  Hip Hip Hurray, Sir, 3 Idiots

Apart from some minor tinkering here and there, most films set in classrooms dutifully follow the template immortalised by To Sir, With Love, the 1967 Sidney Poitier classic with performances, songs and an ending that still makes me feel warm and fuzzy even though its been years since I last watched it.

Hichki puts a teacher with a disability in charge of a class of huffy misfits.

Hers is not the kind of disability that is quiet and heartbreaking  something that leaps out and forges an instant, melancholic connect, injecting the audience with expected compassion.

Naina Mathur (Rani Mukerji) has Tourette syndrome, and it calls for attention, repeatedly, with clucking, wrist bumps to the chin, involuntary jerking of the head.

And the more people stare at her, the more nervous she gets, her jitters, shaking gets uncontrollable.

Educated, articulate, at times self-consciously over smart, Naina is always ready with sharp replies to FAQs about her condition, signing off with a smile and a pinching remark.

With inspiration from one of her teachers, and the love and support of her mother and brother, Naina has learnt this coping mechanism after having to change 12 schools as a student.

And now, as she desperately looks for a teaching job, her father, who checked out of her life long ago, makes special appearances only to aggravate her ticks with patronising suggestions about career choices.

Though an MSc, BEd, he doesnt think she can teach a class full of students given the movements and sounds she makes.

But one school, desperate and unable to cope with a class of boys and girls from the nearby basti, offers her a temporary job  an short assignment till they pass out.

Mumbais St. Notkers High School, having to take in kids from the municipal school next door, have dumped them in Class 9F. Its an irritating, embarrassing nuisance that, thankfully, is going to be over soon.

In this class, one girl carries a chooha in a cage to school, while another is always chopping bhindi. One boy raps, another one takes bets, while one carries little bottles of adhesive that he likes to sniff. These kids are not cute. They are downright nasty.They taunt Naina, make fun of her, call her Hakli and go to great lengths to force her to give up and leave.

In their bad behaviour, Naina sees their fears, vulnerability and a sense of despair. They dont think their lives will change with some textbook learning.

And in their elaborate plans to humiliate and insult her, she sees talent, brilliance that can be applied to science, mathematics...

Egging her on with his nasty comments and disdain for her students is Mr Wadia who is proud of leading 9A, a class of the schools brightest and best.

After overt rejection and efforts from the school to invisibilise them, 9F kids have become hardered non-achievers. They know they dont fit in, so they try to stand out with their worst behaviour.

While nervously jerking her head, making quacking sounds and repeatedly jabbing her wrist on her chin, Naina tries to offer them a chance. Her tough love accompanies creative teaching techniques that others scoff at.

Hichki, which is not just about the kids taking flight, but also about Naina not failing herself, follows the usual trajectory where, at the end, lies school prefectship, a prestigious science competition trophy, and a group hug.

Though populated with stock characters whose fates are sealed  not just the peripheral ones like Mr Wadia, but even Naina and the students  its the talented cast and their performances that bring alive these characters and make the film rather special.

The kids in 9A, but especially the ones in 9F, are all flesh and blood. The film doesnt try to make them cute. It keeps them real.

Rani Mukerji is a very fine, very astute actress. With eyes that never stop acting, she expresses a lot with very little. As Naina, whose sartorial choices are rather peculiar, she internalises the ticks as part of her character throughout.

Even in the emotional, dramatic scenes  ones where you think the director, writer and actor wont dare to disturb the rhythm, the sanctity of the moment  she quacks and jerks her head, and then boxes her chin.

This is rather brave for Bollywood.

Another very interesting thing that director Sidharth P. Malhotra does is that he doesnt make us look at Nainas Tourette. He makes us look at the people who stare at her as she shakes and makes strange sounds.

These are not always judgmental shots, but as they place us on the good side  the one that sees her, and just her condition  it makes the problem fade without undermining it.

The credit for this goes to the writers and the director, but also Rani Mukerji.

Not for a second does she let us off, never letting us to think that her condition will go away. It wont and it doesnt.

While watching and admiring Rani in Hichki, I kept thinking, Bollywood ko sharam aani chahiye.

Bollywood, which is still mourning the shocking passing of Sridevi, should really go and doob-maro in chullu bhar paani.

While their grief is real, of course, to have any meaning it needs to be accompanied with huge amounts of regret, remorse and some serious self-loathing.

The passing of a talented actress like Sridevi should make them look at how they treat them when they are alive.

After having hit that arbitrary set expiry date  which mostly translates to cant play sexy eye candy next to our prized heroes when actresses either get married, have kids or simply age  Bollywood stops seeing them.They have no clue what to do with them, offering them, at best, idiotic behen, bhabhi, mummy roles.

Most big actresses decline these, and are reduced to waiting for that annual invite to handover this award or the other.

Its left to the determination of some individual, inspired writer, director to think of and find funding for some hatke scripts for them.

So, when a few women in the industry, use their box-office power, spunk and, well, the production house they marry into, to demand that scripts be written for them, I do hope a glass ceiling somewhere develops a crack.

But here too I have a grouse.

Sorry to remind you, dear reader, but do you recall that nonsense called Befikre?

Aditya Chopras YRS apparently spent Rs 64 crore on that vacuous crap, and I suspect a lot more on training and promoting Vaani Kapoor. Hichki was apparently made for Rs 20 crore.

This is the kind of inherent sabotaging behaviour that keeps the myth in perpetuity that only films with big stars prancing around in foreign locales work.

Its a cunningly skewed attitude designed to produce an outcome they have already decided and, perhaps, want: Spend loads of money on a big movie with a big star, then throw more money on promoting it and bombard theatres with its prints. But spend very little on a small film, next to nothing to promote it, and then wait for a week after its release to say, Dekho, chhoti filmein, films without big male stars nahin chaltin.

This should be a topic of discussion at the Chopra house jismein at least one dinner set needs to be sacrificed.

I implore you, Raniji. Nahin toh kuch nahin badlega.MALAPPURAM: The fiance of 22-year-old Athira who fell victim to honour killing has alleged that it was on the insistence of the police that she agreed to go with her father after the reconciliation talks held at the police station last week. The fiance, Brijesh from Panthalayani in Kozhikode, told media on Friday that Athiras father Rajan remained opposed to the match even though he gave his consent to the wedding during the mediation talk between the two families held at the Areekode Police station on March 16.

However, the police denied Brijeshs allegation and said that they had asked her consent many times and she decided to go with her father Rajan after he agreed to her wish to marry Brijesh. The mediation talk was peaceful and concluded after both parties agreed upon the wishes of Athira and Brijesh. They had also fixed the wedding for March 23. We have no information on what happened afterwards and there were no complaints of threat to Athira, sub inspector Shinod K.. said.

The talk was initiated after both parties approached the police to resolve the issue and police settled it amicably with the cooperation of both parties, he said.

The police investigation after Thursdays murder has confirmed that it was an honour killing. The police said Rajan, the victims father, had admitted that the act was in retaliation for her alliance with a lower caste youth, which affected him socially.

The police found that there was hostility between Rajan and Athira over her affair with Brijesh, a Dalit and it grew after Athira rejected several proposals brought by Rajan. He was disturbed due to the differences in the caste of Brijesh which prompted Rajan to kill her, police said. Athira belonged to Thiyya caste. Athira, who was working as a lab technician at Government Medical College in Manjeri, had left home following Rajans strong opposition to the relationship with Brijesh and was reunited after the mediation talk. Brijesh is an army man.

Rajan chased Athira and stabbed her to death on Thursday following an argument between the duo. The incident took place at a neighbours house where Athira had taken shelter running away from her father during the heated argument. Rajan, who was in inebriated state surrendered before the police at the murder spot with two knives. Rajan will be produced before court on Saturday. Athira body was handed over to relatives after autopsy which was held at Kozhikode Medical College on Friday.The Congress president accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being 'insensitive' towards problems related to jobs and demonetization. (Photo: PTI/File)

Chamarajanagar: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday accused the BJP of "attacking" the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.

Addressing a rally in poll-bound Karnataka after visiting a temple of Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru, he said the BJP was not only snatching away people's money through note ban and GST, but "there is new fashion now, they are attacking the Constitution."

"Hear it from here. We will not allow the BJP to change the Constitution. How much ever BJP forces its way to change the Constitution, we will make sure that the Congress will protect the work of Ambedkarji," he told the gathering.

Gandhi is on the fourth leg of campaign tour in Karnataka, covering Mandya, Mysuru and Chamarajnagar districts during his two-day visit.

He had earlier toured the northern, coastal and Malnad regions.

The Congress president accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being "insensitive" towards problems related to jobs and demonetization.

"I interacted with young students this morning. One of the girl students stood up and asked me about Narendra Modiji's promise to give two crore jobs every year and his "Make In India" programme... but that turned out to be an empty promise and there was no weight behind those words," he said at the rally held here as part of "Janashirvada Yatre" .

Gandhi said nobody has benefited from the note ban and questioned the rationale of having five different GST rates, including 28 per cent.

"A girl stands up and says nobody has been benefited by the note ban. Another girl stands up and says why are there five separate rates, including 28 per cent. ... It only means that the students aged between 18 to 20 years have understood the problems, but Narendra Modji is yet to understand," he added.

Gandhi also alleged that through demonetization, most of the "cheats" converted their black money into white by depositing it in banks.

The Congress president began his speech by invoking Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Mysore ruler, Krishnaraja Wodayar, 24th maharaja of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom, Sir M Vishveshwariah, renowned engineer, and Kuvempu, Kannada poet, by remembering their contributions to Karnataka and India.Mayawati said that her party along with SP had come together with a plan to defeat the BJP candidate. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

Lucknow: A day after the BJP won nine out of the 10 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Friday said that the saffron party will not succeed in breaking the ties between SP and BSP.

"I would like to tell BJP and company that their malpractices will not succeed in breaking the ties between SP and BSP. Yesterday's results have not affected the SP-BSP tie up in any way, not even by an inch," Mayawati said.

Accusing the BJP of indulging in malpractices, Mayawati said the party exterted all of its force to ensure that the BSP candidate does not win at any cost.

"The entire system was deployed to ensure that the newly formed ties between BSP and SP loosens," she added.

Attacking the BJP in sharp words, the BSP supremo said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had used the system to make their candidates win, adding that an environment of fear was created due to which cross-voting happened.

However, exuding confidence in the tie-up, she said the "immoral" victory was not enough to make up for BJP's defeat in Uttar Pradesh bypolls.

Mayawati said that her party along with SP had come together with a plan to defeat the BJP candidate. She said that efforts were also made to ensure that Rajya Sabha election does not become a blot on the face of democracy.

Mayawati's BSP earlier on Friday suspended MLA Anil Singh who cross-voted in favour of BJP candidate in Rajya Sabha polls to serve his business interests.

Also read: Mamata welcomes Mayawati stand on SP-BSP understanding

Polling in the Rajya Sabha elections in UP on Friday were marked by cross voting and high drama.

Though elections for 59 seats in the Rajya Sabha was elected on Friday, the result of the BSP candidate  backed by the Samajwadi Party and the Congress  hogged limelight owing to the electoral impact that the SP-BSP alliance could have in Uttar Pradesh in 2019 polls.

A tough contest was seen between the BJP-backed independent candidate Anil Agarwal who got 22 first preference votes and the BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar who got 33 first preference votes. The BSP candidate was backed by SP and Congress.

This election is expected to allow the BJP to consolidate its position as the largest party in the Rajya Sabha.The launch of Indias second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2, slated for next month, has been postponed to October as the experts have suggested some tests, Isro chairman Dr K.Sivan said here Friday.

Chennai: The launch of Indias second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2, slated for next month, has been postponed to October as the experts have suggested some tests, Isro chairman Dr K.Sivan said here Friday.

He told reporters at the airport that experts had met recently and recommended some more tests before the mission launch, which led to the postponement. Chandrayaan 2 will not be in April, it has been changed to October, he said.

Union minister of state in the Prime Ministers Office, in-charge of the department of space Jitendra Singh had on said on February 16 that the lunar mission under which the ISRO will for the first time attempt to land a rover on the moons south pole, will be launched in April. Sivan had earlier said the window to launch the Rs 800 crore mission was between April and November 2018. While the targeted date was April, Isro would launch the mission in October or November, he had said.

According to Isro, Chandrayaan-2 is a totally indigenous mission comprising an orbiter, lander and rover. The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft weighing around 3,290 kg would orbit around the moon and perform the objectives of remote sensing the moon. The payloads will collect scientific information on lunar topography, mineralogy, elemental abundance, lunar exosphere and signatures of hydroxyl and water-ice, Isro said on its website about the lunar mission. Isro had launched its maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 in 2008.Union Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad Prasad had even threatened to summon Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if needed. (Photo: PTI | File)

New Delhi: Cracking the whip on alleged misuse of user data on Facebook, the government on Friday issued a notice to UK-based Cambridge Analytica, asking it to give a list of clients and the source of data it had collected. The notice came after reports that political parties had used the data analytics firm during elections.

The IT Ministry has asked Cambridge Analytica - the firm at the centre of Facebook data breach scandal - to respond by March 31 on six questions, including how the company had collected user data, whether consent was taken from the individuals, and how the data was used.

The move assumes significance as the BJP, earlier this week, had questioned links between the Congress and Cambridge Analytica, the data mining firm accused of harvesting personal information from Facebook illegally to influence polls in several countries.

Read: Cambridge Analytica behind Rahul's 'Gabbar Singh Tax', implies I-T minister

Taking a stern view of reports on the misuse of user data obtained from social media platform Facebook, the IT Ministry in a statement on Friday said "breach of privacy cannot be tolerated".

"The government is deeply concerned about such developments and is committed to ensuring the protection of the fundamental right of privacy and safety and security of data for every citizen of India," the ministry said.

The IT Ministry said it had issued a notice to Cambridge Analytica "wherein the serious breach of propriety and misuse of data intended to profile and influence voting behaviour has been highlighted".

The notice comes just days after Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned the social media giant Facebook of stringent action for any attempt to influence polls through data theft.

Prasad had even threatened to summon its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if needed. "...the notice addressed to Cambridge Analytica seeks an immediate response to the following questions...Whether they have been engaged in any assignment to utilise data of Indians from the above-cited breach. Who are the entities that have engaged them for the above," it said.

Also Read: Ravi Shankar warns Facebook of strong action if it sways poll process

The ministry also questioned the company on how it had come to be in possession of user data and whether user consent had been taken for the same.

The company has also been asked to divulge details of how the data collected was used and whether any profiling was done on basis of such data.

"The intermediaries cited above have been given time till March 31, 2018, to submit their responses on the above issue," the ministry said.

Referring to media reports of "gross abuse of social media platform to influence the sanctity of polling process", the ministry said, "any attempt to influence the sanctity of the electoral franchise through dubious and questionable means is unacceptable".

"In particular, all intermediaries and their associates have the legal obligation to maintain security, confidentiality and sanctity of data and any unauthorised use of data can entail legal action," it warned.

The statement said that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued advisory laying down security best practices to be followed by social media users, to safeguard personally identifiable information on social network sites.New Delhi: A day after a Delhi photojournalist, covering JNU padyatra (protest march), was molested by Delhi Cantt SHO police, a sit in protest was carried out by media professionals this afternoon outside the Delhi police headquarters to protest Delhi Police personnel roughing up with the journalist.

The police had stopped hundreds of students and teachers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) near INA Market in South Delhi from marching towards Parliament complex to highlight various points, ranging from opposing privatisation of education to demanding the arrest of the university's professor Atul Johri accused of sexually harassing female students.

Also Read: Delhi police 'molests, manhandles' woman photojournalist during JNU protest

When the students stopped from entering Lutyens' Delhi refused move back, the police also resorted to water cannons and baton charge to disperse the agitators.

Anushree Fadnavis of the Hindustan Times was one of the journalists covering this march.

Never thought I would be manhandled by lady delhi police officers while doing my job. My camera was snatched and I haven't yet received it https://t.co/qYXnCVyg7b  Anushree Fadnavis (@anu_fadnavis) March 23, 2018

On video, a group of policewomen is seen roughing her up. "Please, at least don't break my camera," a woman's voice is heard in the background. According to reports, some other journalists were also manhandled.

"Never thought I would be manhandled by lady Delhi police officers while doing my job. My camera was snatched and I haven't yet received it," Fadnavis later tweeted.

#WATCH: Policewomen rough up a photojournalist during JNU students' protest, yesterday. Police say journalist was on wrong side of the barricade, journalist refutes the claim, says her camera was also snatched away. Police also added that the matter is being looked into. #Delhi pic.twitter.com/k56GHGsY69  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

Delhi Police ignored the complaints through the day.

On Saturday, police spokesperson Madhur Verma tried to explain the manhandling to a misunderstanding.

Verma said the police personnel were not aware that the woman was a photo journalist, adding that when a senior police officer identified her as a journalist, she intervened. He said the the incident happened due to misunderstanding and called it an unfortunate one.

He, however, added that an inquiry would be carried out.The top court had on January 10 sought the response of probe agencies NIA and CBI and the two state governments on the allegation of Uma Devi that no substantial investigation has been carried out so far in the murder case. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Centre on Friday told the Supreme Court that the NIA, being a special agency to probe national and inter-state terrorism cases, cannot investigate the murder of noted scholar and rationalist MM Kalburgi in 2015 at Dharwad in Karnataka.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra was hearing the plea of Uma Devi Kalburgi, the widow of the slain scholar, seeking a SIT probe into the sensational murder.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Pinky Anand, appearing for the Centre, referred to the National Investigaiton Agency (NIA) Act and said the instant offence did not fall under the category of 'Schedule offence' under the law and hence, the probe agency cannot investigate it.

The bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, considered the submission of the ASG and ordered listing of the plea in the first week of July.

It asked the CBI and the governments of Maharashtra and Karnataka to file their responses in the meantime.

77-year old Kalburgi, the former Vice-Chancellor of Hampi University and a well-known scholar and epigraphist, was shot dead in broad daylight at his residence in Kalyan Nagar in Dharwad, Karnataka, on August 30, 2015.

Born in 1938, he was a Sahitya Akademi award-winning writer of old Kannada literature.

The top court had on January 10 sought the response of probe agencies NIA and CBI and the two state governments on the allegation of Uma Devi that no substantial investigation has been carried out so far in the murder case.

Kalburgi's wife, in her petition filed through advocate Krishna Kumar, has alleged that there was common link between the murder of her husband and that of intellectual activists, Narendra Achyut Dabholkar and Govindrao Pansare, who too were assassinated in August 2013 and February 2015 respectively.

Dabholkar was shot at on August 20, 2013 in Pune, while Pansare was killed in Kolhapur in Maharashtra on February 16, 2015.

She said the investigations in Dabholkar and Pansare murder cases were in a "sorry state" and no progress has been made in bringing the killers to book.

The petition said that in 2016, the then Karnataka Home Minister had in a statement claimed that as per the forensic analysis of cartridges recovered from the three separate crime scenes, the three murders were linked. It alleged that one of the weapons used in the murder of Pansare was used to kill Kalburgi and therefore coordination between Maharashtra police and Karnataka police, besides the CBI and the NIA, was required.

"Although sketches of suspects were released after four days of Kalburgi's murder and statement was issued by Karnataka government that conclusive evidence of nexus of murders of all three activists was found, there has been no progress in the investigation till date," the plea has said.McCartney on Saturday. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Beatles legend Paul McCartney was among the many celebrities who took to the streets on Saturday around the country, joining hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding action to stem gun violence in America.

Interviewed by CNN in New York City, McCartney, sporting a We Can End Gun Violence T-shirt, made clear that the issue is personal to him.

"One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, so it's important to me," says Paul McCartney, remembering his Beatles bandmate John Lennon at the March for Our Lives in New York City https://t.co/u4aBKWC1Jb pic.twitter.com/8Jnjn8A3xH  CNN (@CNN) March 24, 2018

One of my best friends was killed by gun violence right round here, he said.

McCartney was of course referring to his former bandmate John Lennon, who was fatally shot by Mark David Chapman at the entrance to the Dakota, his residence on the Upper West Side.

Since Lennons death, more than 1 million Americans have been killed as a result of gun violence.CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury rolls up his sleeves before his lecture on Challenges posed by communal fascists at a national seminar in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday. CPI leader D. Raja, MP, is also seen. (Photo: PEETHAMBARAN PAYYERI)

Thiruvananthapuram: CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Friday reiterated the need for maximizing the pooling of all anti-BJP votes in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls to defeat the fascist and communal forces in the country. Inaugurating the national seminar on 'Challenges posed by communal fascists ' organized by CPI as part of its 23rd party congress here, Mr Yechury said under the present political circumstances top priority should be given to bringing down the BJP-led government at the Centre.

He said the strength of alternative policies has to be based on the policy direction put forward by left and democratic forces. "It is not neta but neeti that is required for the country. This policy framework needs to be worked out," he said. Yechury said the main task was to defeat the BJP-RSS combine by organising mass movement based on alternative policies. But at the time of elections appropriate electoral tactics will be worked out through which maximum pooling fo anti BJP votes will be carried to defeat the BJP RSS and its fascist policies.

The CPM has identified four major challenges before the country since BJP government came to power at the Centre. The challenges which are to be fought and defeated include neo-liberal policies which are being implemented with greater aggression compared to previous UPA government, sharpening of communal polarization and projection of Hindutva nationalism, undermining of constitutional institutions to attain RSS fascist project of Hindurashtra, and India cementing itself as junior partner of US imperialism in global affairs. CPI national secretary D. Raja, MP, CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran, minister A.K. Saseendran and MLAs K N A Khader and V S Sivakumar also were present.Chennai: Chennai city police, parts of Madras high court premises, lower courts in Chennai and southern railway properties are now on the list of property tax defaulters in Chennai.

While the city corporation is going the extra mile to collect dues from property owners, the government properties are spared every year, a highly placed department insider told DC.

Meanwhile the property tax payers in Chennai are also in a state of shock as the civic authorities have silently raised the education cess fee up to Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 per fiscal for the properties in Chennai.

According to Chennai corporation database the wards in Central Chennai coming under Egmore, Chepauk, Royapuram, Harbour assembly constituencies have several government buildings with huge tax defaults.

These are buildings operated by the state and central departments and we are frequenting such buildings to collect the tax. The police stations in central Chennai have started clearing the tax and the Chennai city police headquarters has a tax arrear up to `5 lakh. There government housing plots also coming under defaulters list in Poonamallee high road,a corporation official said adding that the Southern Railway had also started clearing its dues.

We are not sparing any one and as we are forced to meet our deadlines. Buildings that are under assessed for tax are also under scanner, the official added.

The civic body earlier used to release the list of property tax defaulters on its website but has now suspended the link, protecting the identity of tax defaulters.

I was paying a half yearly tax of `5,400 as property tax to Chennai corporation, but last week the local tax collector insisted on a revised cheque for 5,900.

When I asked why the tax rate had surged he clarified that the education cess has been increased by the Rs 500 per billing, rued Mahaveer Jain of Puraswalkkam. Now I am worried that Metro Water will also do something similar and there are possibilities for a flat owner in Chennai to lose Rs 2,000 per year for such revised taxes and charges, which had been hiked silently, he said.

Taxes for schools and education institutions had also been hiked and the corporation is silently increasing the tax through indirect ways. Without any value addition, the state and centre continue to fleece public with tax revisions, said civic activist Aarani C Sreenivasan.Srinagar: Days after Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, a close confidante of Kashmir's separatist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani, replaced him as the chief of Tehrik-e-Hurriyat (TeH), the former's son has gone missing, giving anxious moments to the family and friends.

The family sources said that Sehrais son Junaid Ashraf Khan left his home in Srinagar's Baghat area on March 23 afternoon to offer Friday prayers at a nearby mosque but did not return home.

He also told them that after namaz he would be going to Lal Chowk (the City centre) to get his mobile phone repaired. The family waited for him till (Friday) evening but when he didn't return it reported the matter to the police, said the sources.

Srinagar's SSP Imtiyaz Ismail has confirmed receiving a complaint from the family and said that it has taken the cognisance of the same.

The police sources said that Junaid's brother Raashid Ashraf visited Srinagar's Saddar police station on Saturday afternoon to report that his 26-year-old brother was missing since Friday.

Sahrai took over as the new head of TeH, virtually a breakaway wing of his and Geelani's parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami, on March 19. The TeH is the dominant constituent of the Hurriyat Conference faction led by octogenarian leader (Geelani). It was launched in 2004 after Geelani reached an "agreement" with the Jamaat.

Meanwhile, a photograph showing Junaid with an assault rifle has gone viral on social media. The message with the photograph says that he has joined Hizb-ul-Mujahideen outfit. The police officials said that they are verifying the veracity of the photograph. "We're trying to find out if this is a fresh photograph taken after Junaid went missing or it is an old one," said a police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Soon after his appointment, Sehrai had asserted that those raising the Islamic State or Daesh flags in Kashmir were helping New Delhi. It set off a debate on social media and he was both appreciated and criticised for his remarks.

The septuagenarian separatist leader had told Greater Kashmir newspaper in an interview that Aazadi camp in Kashmir does not have a global agenda, it has nothing to do with the Daesh and its ideology and that the organisations with an international agenda have no role in Kashmir.

"Some elements are creating confusion among masses by raising ISIS flags at the funeral of militants. We have kept a close watch on them, and will soon chart out a plan to stop them after TeH elections. Expressing concern over the "ISIS thinking" finding resonance among a section of youth, he had said, "It could be the handiwork of agencies keen to defame the Kashmir movement and undermine its indigenous characterOur agenda is simple. We only want Kashmir to be free from Indian occupation. Nothing else."

The police sources had earlier said effort to trace Sehrai's son is underway. The police has got in touch with Junaid's close friends and some acquaintances. The sources had also said that it would wrong to jump on conclusions or try to link Junaid's disappearance with the politics of his father.

Meanwhile, two Jaish-e-Muhammad militants were killed in a gun battle with the security forces in Doru area of southern Anantnag district overnight. The police said that both of them were Pakistani nationals and that the operation ended without any collateral damage.New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear on Monday, March 26, four PILs challenging the legal validity of polygamy and nikah halala being practised in Islam.

A three-judge bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y Chandrachud will hear the petitions filed by Sameena Begum of Delhi, BJP leader and social activist Ashiwini Kumar Upadhyaya and two others seeking a declaration that Section 2 of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937, as unconstitutional and violative of Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution, insofar as it seeks to recognise and validate the practice of Polygamy and nikah halala.

The Supreme Court is to take up this issue after triple talaq was banned last year.

The petitioner said she was a victim of polygamy and was filing this petition to highlight the plight of thousands of Muslim women across the country suffering due to the draconian practices of polygamy and nikah halala that are rampant in the Muslim society.

Ms Begum said she got married in 1999 to one Javed Anwar and two sons were born out of the said wedlock. All the time when she was at her matrimonial home, she was tortured, bullied, beaten, and was asked to bring money from her parents house.

After the repeated tortures, she filed a complaint U/s 498 A of the IPC. Getting infuriated with this, petitioners husband sent a letter giving her triple talaq.

Ms Begum submitted that Muslim Marriage Dissolution Act 1939 provides nine grounds for dissolution of marriage, including impotency, incapacity to fulfill martial obligations and cruelty but there is no eligibility pre-condition for marriage.Hyderabad: The state government decided to strictly enforce maximum speed limit for vehicles on highways and panchayat raj roads to prevent accidents.

Cases would be booked against those violating the 100 kmph speed on highways and 60 kmph on panchayat raj roads.

Transport minister Patnam Mahender Reddy told the Assembly that the government would install more speed laser guns on highways to monitor the speed and catch violators.

Mr Reddy said 54 permits of private travel buses had been cancelled for speeding on highways from January 2017.

The transport department had booked 9,493 cases against private bus operators. We have booked 935 against private bus operators for running stage carriers (when permission was for contract ones) and overload, 753 cases for tax evasion, 591 for operating illegal services, 432 for running services without permits, 146 for running illegal goods services, 118 cases for making drivers to work beyond eight hours and 6,459 cases for other violations, Mr Reddy said.

In undivided AP, around 1,100 private buses used to operate in Telangana, he said, adding that the TS government had nearly halved it to 635.

He said show cause notices were also issued to 89 permit holders of private buses for speeding. And 955 cases were booked against private bus operators for not engaging a second driver.Hyderabad: The state government decided to oppose Centres terms of reference set for 15th Finance Commission for devolution of taxes based on 2011 census instead of the earlier 1972.

Finance minister Etela Rajender on Saturday said the TS, which had tax devolution share of 2.43 per cent at present, would lose in case the 2011 census was considered. The state government would fight to sec-ure justifiable share of funds from the Centre and submit a report accordingly to the Commission when it visited the state next month.

He told the Legislative Council that the government was preparing a report explaining the states needs to the commission and the funds required to fulfil them.

We are focussing on irrigation projects, Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya. Besi-des, we are also implementing a slew of welfare schemes for the up-lift of sections which are lagging behind. This requires huge funds and the Finance Commiss-ion and the Centre had to take these factors into consideration before de-termining the states sh-are in tax devolution, Mr Rajender added.

He also took a dig at Centre for not honouring the recommendations made by Niti Aayog which was constituted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Niti Aa-yog recommended Rs 20,205 crore for Miss-ion Bhagiratha and Rs 5,000 crore for Mission Kakatiya two years ago. But the Centre had not released even a single rupee so far, he said.Vijayawada: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday hit out at BJP national president Amit Shah for blaming the Telugu Desam for leaving the NDA.

He warned that the BJP will also face the same fate as that of the Congress which was routed in the state. Mr Naidu said that the details given by Mr Shah on revenue deficit was all wrong.

The Chief Minister said that he was not demanding to do any undue favour to the state but only asking for the implementation of promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act and also assurances given by Prime Minister on the floor of the House in the Rajya Sabha like the Special Category Status. He said that the state Assembly unanimously demands industrial incentives on the lines of those given to north-eastern states, Central funding under 90:10 ratio and funding of externally aided projects.

Mr Naidu further said that the state government had already submitted utilisation certificates to the funds given to both Vijayawada and Guntur municipalities and some of them will be forwarded to the Centre soon.

He said that utilisation certificates for `957 crore of the total `1,050 crore funds received for the development of the seven backward districts were already sent to the Centre.

Is this the language used and the way a national party president writes to a CM and the president of another political party? Mr Naidu questioned.

Responding to the criticism that the state government was not using Prime Minister Narendra Modis photos on Central government schemes implemented in the state, Mr Naidu questioned whether Mr Modi had used Dr Manmohan Singhs photos when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister. They have the guts to say this. Can they show any pictures? he asked.HYDERABAD: Congress MLA T. Jeevan Reddy has sharply criticised TS Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and has said that he has become a puppet in the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Mr Reddy said in the last four years, the TRS had supported the NDA government but is now criticising NDA because people are now opposing the BJP.

Speaking to the media on Saturday Mr Reddy said that in the ST reservations issue, KCR was playing the role of Shi-khandi and in getting the reservations he was blaming the Centre. He added that the TRS MPs are continuing agitation in Parliament and curbing the rights of both TS and AP prescribed in the AP Reorganisation Act.

Mr Reddy has demanded that the TRS support the no-confidence moti-on against the NDA government and protect the rights of TS.

He said the Congress MLAs did not go to the well in the Assembly but the TRS government had still suspended all of th-em. He said in Parliam-ent, the TRS MPs were trooping into the well sh-owing placards on the fa-ce of the Chair. Was this not a violation of the Constitution, he said.Vijayawada: The Central government has proposed to send Pondicherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi to AP as Governor and former Principal Secretary (Irrigation) C.V.S.K. Sarma as Telangana Governor. A decision in this regard was likely to be announced after the Parliament session.

In fact, the BJP unit in AP had already urged the Centre to appoint a new Governor for the state. Mr E.S.L. Narasimhan had been officiating as Governor for both the Telugu states since bifurcation in 2014.

A letter from the state BJP president and Visakhapatnam MP K. Haribabu on January 11 to Union home minister Rajnath Singh sought the appointment of a new Governor. There was a feeling among the people that the Governor did not give priority to AP as he functioned from Telangana capital Hyderabad, he said. A Governor exclusively would enable smooth functioning of the administration, he added.

The Centre appeared to have taken this into consideration and also the latest political developments in Andhra Pradesh and began scouting for personalities. As part of this, the BJP top leadership felt Ms Kiran Bedi was the right choice for AP, as she was believed to handle situations in an effective way. The BJPs decision on Ms Bedi came to light during a conversation between a senior BJP leader and a renowned industrialist having base in the two States. The talk was during a marriage reception in Hyderabad last week.

On the accommodation for Ms Bedi as AP had no Raj Bhavan or Raj Nivas, the BJP leader reportedly said the State Government could arrange a temporary accommodation till the Raj Bhavans permanent structure was ready. When it comes to Telangana State, it is learnt that former Principal Secretary (Irrigation) CVSK Sarmas name has been under consideration for Telangana Governors post. However, RSS has been suggesting three more names to the Centre, according to sources, according to sources.Lucknow: BSP president Mayawati said on Saturday that the defeat of her party candidate in Fridays biennial elections would not impact her partys developing relationship with the Samajwadi Party.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, the BSP president thanked the Samajwadi Party and the Congress for voting for the BSP candidate but added that her candidate had not got the RLD vote.

Ms Mayawati said that the BJP had used all tactics, including blatant misuse of the state machinery, to ensure the defeat of the BSP candidate.

The BJP thought that this would disturb the new bonhomie between SP and BSP and make it easier for them in the Lok Sabha elections next year. I want to tell them that we will now work under a new strategy and ensure their defeat in the general elections, she said

She also accused the BJP of creating anarchy by fielding an extra candidate and forcing election on the Rajya Sabha seats. They did not have the numbers and could have allowed elections to be held without polling but they encouraged horse-trading, she alleged.

Ms Mayawati said that the BJP had created fear among legislators to make them vote against their party line.

The BSP chief also questioned the state governments role in preventing one SP and one BSP MLA lodged in jail from casting their vote.

The BSP president said that she did not hold the infamous State Guest House incident of 1995, in which she was held hostage by SP leaders, against SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.

Ms Mayawati said that Mr Akhilesh Yadav lacked political experience. If he had been more mature, he would have concentrated on ensuring the victory of the BSP candidate more than his own candidate, she said.

A Las Vegas billboard advertising the porn star who seems to be running circles around the reality star in chief. Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

A running gag in political journalism is that all the bombshells drop late on a Friday, by the time most reporters are done for the week and our public servants and institutions are expected to be done making news. And sure enough, last week the Trump administration sent shockwaves through Washington with the late-Friday firing of Andrew McCabe, a former deputy of dismissed FBI director James Comey, mere days before he was set to enjoy what he calls his long-planned, earned retirement.

Planned or not, the upheaval that followed McCabes dismissal effectively buried what could soon become the most significant arbitration dispute in all of American history. That same evening, Donald Trump  through Charles Harder, the lawyer best known for helping Peter Thiel put Gawker out of business  attached his name to a court filing that, for the first time, linked him to Stephanie Clifford. The woman, better known in the adult-film industry and now the world of politics as Stormy Daniels, was fighting for her right to be ungagged  to speak freely and publicly about an affair she had with Trump over a decade ago, while he and his third wife Melania were awaiting the birth of their son Barron.

But before Harder filed that document in federal court last week, Trump was nowhere to be seen. The White House had denied any sexual encounters ever happened, the president was uncharacteristically silent about Clifford on Twitter, and his other lawyer and perennial fixer, Michael Cohen, had repeatedly denied that his client had anything to do with her. No more: Mr. Trump intends to pursue his rights to the fullest extent permitted by law, Harder wrote. By which he meant that Trump intended to seek enforcement of a non-disclosure agreement, to the tune of $20 million, that Cohen had made Clifford sign less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election. In exchange for her silence, Clifford accepted $130,000 from Cohen, who reportedly took out a home-equity loan to execute the payoff. Because who amongst us hasnt done that at some point.

A cruel irony of this hush agreement, as Clifford put it in her own lawsuit seeking to free herself from it, is that it was signed on October 28, 2016  the same day Comey, in a letter to Congress, may have cost Hillary Clinton the presidential election. The volatility of that political moment lends credence to Cliffords charge that Cohen, in concert with Trump and his campaign, aggressively sought to silence Mr. Clifford as part of an effort to avoid her telling her truth, thus helping to ensure he won the presidency, according to court papers her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, filed in a Los Angeles county court. That opens up another front for the already legally beleaguered Trump: If theres any truth to this coordination, and the Federal Election Commission substantiates it, the unreported hush money may have well violated campaign finance laws.

Cohen, for his part, has insisted that he just did this to help out a longtime client, benefactor, and friend. People are mistaking this for a thing about the campaign, Cohen told Vanity Fair this week. What I did defensively for my personal client, and my friend, is what attorneys do for their high-profile clients. I would have done it in 2006. I would have done it in 2011. I truly care about him and the family  more than just as an employee and an attorney. But do friends really take out home-equity loans, create shell companies in Delaware, use fake names, and draw up legally dubious, if not wholly unenforceable, NDAs to force someone elses silence? For all we know, Cohen could even lose his New York law license for engaging in such shady tactics.

The brilliance of Cliffords legal and public-relations moves, including this Sundays long-awaited interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, is that they outmaneuver Trump at every turn  which may explain his own reticence about the whole thing since the Wall Street Journal blew the lid off it in January. In a wide-ranging article exploring the seven-year saga, theres a fantastic quote attributed to Cohen, whom Clifford is accusing of breaching the hush agreement because he himself confirmed its existence to the press. I didnt fucking breach it! Cohen is said to have yelled, according to the Journal, sounding every bit like any concerned friend would.

Clifford has got her share of friends, too. Men and women of good conscience are coming forward to her aid. In a crowdfunding page she set up to help offset her legal fees, nearly 9,000 people have pledged close to $286,000 to support her cause  what she deems a quest to speak honestly and openly to the American people about my relationship with now President Donald Trump and the intimidation and tactics used against me. Perhaps to assuage concerned family men who may be worried her name may appear on their credit card statements, Clifford clarified that only the name of the crowdfunding site would appear: There is no reference to Stormy Daniels or Stephanie Clifford.

When all is said and done, Avenatti may even agree, if he hasnt already, to do this pro bono. The media-friendly lawyer has become a celebrity of sorts since the scandal broke  late on Thursday, he teased his clients upcoming cable appearance by tweeting out a mysterious image of a CD, as if to suggest that theres documentary evidence of Trumps tryst with Stormy. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is this worth????? Avenatti wrote on Trumps favorite medium. In a quick call with New York on Friday, Avenatti said Cliffords 60 Minutes interview will help to dispel many misconceptions about the woman he represents. I hope the American people will know a lot about my client, he said. How smart she is. How comfortable in her own skin she is. And how credible she is. Unable to bury the story any longer, Trump may even tune in himself.Vijayawada: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday hit out at BJP national president Amit Shah for blaming the Telugu Desam for leaving the NDA.

Responding to the nine-page letter written by Mr Shah, Mr Naidu said in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly that the letter lacks dignity and is in bad taste. He said that Mr Shah had twisted facts on many issues and presented all lies in the letter.

In his first attack on Mr Naidu for his decision to break ties with his party, Mr Shah said the Chief Ministers move was guided by political consideration and not development concerns, and dubbed his criticism of the Centre as untrue and baseless.

Mr Naidu found fault with Mr Shahs response that the TD walked out of the NDA in a whiff and unilaterally saying the decision was solely for states interests and not guided by any political considerations.

As we didnt have any other choice, as a last resort, as a mark of protest we walked out of the NDA. We wrote to various Union ministries several times, seeking funds, and I personally visited Delhi 29 times but there was no response. We waited patiently for four years for justice to the state. We remained a loyal friend (of the NDA) but snapped ties only when it did not honour any of the promises, Mr Naidu said.

What Shah wrote is a pack of lies and half-truths. It is not only insulting but also provoking the people of AP. It lacked dignity, he said. He also said that the BJP was also part of the past sin of bifurcating the state irrationally along with the Congress. He said that in fact, the BJP had done more injustice to Andhra Pradesh than the Congress.Hyderabad: Minister for municipal Administration and urban development K.T. Rama Rao on Saturday, held the Union defence ministry responsible for traffic woes in the Secunderabad and Cantonment areas.

Speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Mr Rao said the state government, along with the HMDA, has allocated Rs 2,500 crores to widen roads and add flyovers in these areas, and has sought 100 acres of defence land for this purpose.

We offered the defence ministry 600 acres on the city outskirts in lieu of 100 acres within the city. But they are making an unrealistic demand of Rs 30 crores towards loss in property tax to SCB, which the state government has rejected. As a result, the road and flyover works from Paradise to Kompally and JBS to Shamirpet could not be started, Mr Rao said.

He added that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had taken up the issue first with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then with former Defence minister Manohar Parrikar and finally with present defence minister Nirmala Seetharaman several times over the past three years, but had failed to receive a positive response from the Centre so far.

I myself visited Delhi many times and took up the issue with the Union defence minister in the past three years. Except for giving assurances that they will look into it, nothing has materialised so far, added Mr Rao.

Residents of the Secunderabad and Cantonment areas are facing severe hardships as a result of the constantly congested roads and Army restrictions.

Though the state government is keen to resolve the issue, the Centre is not cooperating with us. Even after four years have passed, we dont know whether we will get the Centres approval to take up road and flyover works in the final year before the elections, he said.India is keeping its fingers crossed following the hefty tariff announced by President Donald Trump on Chinese imports as there are fears that India could be next on his hit list. His move is unpopular among his own Republican partymen as it would make consumer and other items more expensive for their constituents and also hit exports of US items like Levis jeans. But Mr Trump is driving his agenda of America First and has brought back many companies that had set up their business centres outside the US with attractive incentives. First Mr Trump has already taken a dispute with India to the World Trade Organisation over what he sees huge export subsidies on several items. He recently took up the issue of hefty duties on high premium Harley Davidson motorbikes when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Mr Trump wants India to bring down its duties from the current 13.4 per cent and is expected to take up this issue with external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj. However, India has done well to point out that the trade gap of $29 billion between the two countries is narrowing with growing imports of gas and planes from the US and was already down by $1 billion. India has an order of 500 Boeing airplanes and is one of the biggest clients of Boeing. So it would be unfair of the US to equate India with China whose trade grew by $25 billion this year. India is the ninth largest trading partner of the US and exports rice, specially Basmati, wheat, fruits, cereals, meat, tea, coffee and cotton. It also exports readymade garments on a large scale. Unlike China India does not insist that American companies should have local partners and has even relaxed its rule of a certain percentage of indigenisation in the case of Apple that has set up a manufacturing unit in Bengaluru.A letter written by Karnataka IPS Association president and ADGP R.P. Sharma to the state chief secretary Ratna Prabha has set the cat among the pigeons in the poll-bound state. In the missive, Mr Sharma has claimed that the law and order situation in the state is deteriorating. But perhaps more disconcerting for the government is that he also released the letter to the media. After a series of incidents, including the recent attack on Lokayukta justice Vishwanatha Shetty, the government has been on the back foot trying to defend its record.

Expectedly, chief minister Siddaramaiah is displeased with the public airing of the officials complaint. Sources say that the chief minister has spoken to home minister Ramalinga Reddy, the chief secretary and director general of police Neelamani Raju. He has reportedly sought to know how the letter, addressed to the state chief secretary, was leaked to the media. Predictably, the leaked letter has given an opportunity to the Opposition party, the BJP, to attack the state administration. Mr Sharma is likely to face administrative action for indiscipline, sources added.

Call for separate Arunachal cadre

When smaller states such as Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim can have their own separate cadre, why not Arunachal Pradesh? A member of Parliament, Ninong Ering, has posed this query to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The MP clearly believes that the joint cadre serving Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories (AGMUT) is an impediment to efficient governance. Mr Ering is not the first to raise the issue, sources say. Chief minister Pema Khandu too had urged the Prime Minister for a separate cadre for the state during the PMs visit to Arunachal Pradesh last month.

According to the MP, IAS and IPS officers who spend a good amount of time in the state and understand it better in terms of administration are frequently transferred to other locations of AGMUT cadre which creates gaps in administrative understanding. A separate cadre for Arunachal Pradesh, therefore, would solve this old problem. There is no response yet from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to this suggestion.

Bihar chief secy in a soup

The fodder scam is now threatening to engulf Bihar chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh. Under the lens is Mr Singhs role during his tenure as deputy commissioner of Dumka, many years ago. Earlier, Jharkhands chief secretary Rajbala Varma too faced flak for her reported participation in the fodder scam earlier in her career. Other babus against whom notices have been issued are former Bihar DGP D.P. Ojha, then additional DG (Vigilance), when the alleged offence took place; retired chief secretary of Bihar and Jharkhand Vijay Shankar Dubey and additional SP of CBI A.K. Jha.

There are a total of 31 accused, including former Bihar chief ministers, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Jagannath Mishra, besides other politicians like Jagdish Sharma, R.K. Rana and Vidyasagar Nishad. However, since Mr Singh is a serving officer, sources say, there is no notice issued to him to appear before the court. Nevertheless, this has given ample fuel to chief minister Nitish Kumars political opponents to demand his (Anjani Kumar Singh) removal from the post of chief secretary.Kapil Sibal, veteran Congress parliamentarian and senior advocate, talks to Ashhar Khan on Parliament getting washed out for three weeks , with both the government and the Opposition sticking to their respective positions. Excerpts:

It has been three weeks since Parliament has not transacted any business and the government is blaming the Opposition, especially the Congress, for the prevailing impasse. Your comments...

Why should they blame the Congress? It was their alliance partner or the erstwhile alliance partner, the TDP that is creating the problem because the BJP has reneged on its promises. That is why the TDP has moved a no-confidence motion. The fact is by now all the alliance partners of the BJP have realised that its downhill for them till 2019, so its better to get out of the alliance and expose what the BJP really stands for. The BJP epitomises mayhem and disorder. It is the BJP that had enunciated this wonderful principle that disruption of Parliament is a part of parliamentary strategy and practice. The problem is there is a no-confidence motion and it is not being debated. The Speaker gives a lame excuse that it cannot be debated because there is no order in the House. But then how was the appropriation bill passed? If that can be done, why the no-confidence motion cannot be debated? Moreover, it is the treasury benches that are responsible for running Parliament, not the Opposition.

There are important issues like the PNB scam, the SC/ ST judgment the Supreme Court has given its order on and the demand for special status to Andhra Pradesh. Dont you think the Opposition should be raising them in the House instead of causing disruptions?

These are the very issues that the government does not want to discuss. Take for example the Nirav Modi issue. How under their very nose could he move out of the country on January 1? Maybe the move was pursuant to a nod by them because had he stayed back the relationship between Nirav Modi and many in the government would be exposed and we would want a full-fledged enquiry into this issue. They also would not be able to debate it because most of the LoUs were dishonoured after 2014. So they do not want a discussion on that; they do not want a discussion on the recent judgment of the Supreme Court, or, for that matter, on any issue. That is why they are making excuses and alleging disorder at the instance of the Opposition.

Two weeks are left in this Budget session. Shouldnt the Opposition be wanting to discuss the appropriation bill and other important matters, especially in the Rajya Sabha?

The government would not discuss any issue. My fear is that they (government) may adjourn the House sine die because it is not in their interest to discuss all these issues in Parliament. My fear is also that between now and the general elections; there would hardly be any proceedings in Parliament, except just the formal ones. The Prime Minister doesnt want to answer any question in Parliament.

He doesnt participate in any debate, nobody else wants to answer any question. Just see the unfortunate way in which the external affairs minister has dealt with the death of 39 Indians in Mosul. Despite common knowledge for a year, the minister kept giving false hopes to the families saying they are safe. I dont know from where did she have this information. These are very serious issues; just see the manner in which this government is dealing with its own people.

The Congress has alleged that the government did not present itself properly on the SC/ ST verdict that was delivered recently by the Supreme Court. As a senior lawyer, do you think the government should once again go to the Supreme Court to seek relief?

The government will never go to the Supreme Court for the simple reason that it is their (BJP) people who have complained that false cases are being foisted on them and that the SC/ST Act is being misused. There is a conflict there. They want the support of the SC/ STs for electoral purposes but there is a lot of opinion within the BJP that this Act is being misused. So, I doubt the government will go in for a review but I think this judgment should be reviewed. We have demanded that this be discussed in the House and we have also protested against the governments attitude.

The Uttar Pradesh government recently decided to withdraw cases against 131 people against whom cases were going on for being responsible for Muzaffar-nagar riots. Is it the right move?

Its a mockery of the rule of law. How can a government that is prosecuting people who have committed murders and other extremely serious offences, state that it is intending to withdraw 131 cases. The difference between a democracy and an autocracy is that democracy is governed by law while in autocracy, an autocrat makes the law. Here it seems that the government is making law that despite the fact these people are being prosecuted, they will be let-off. Obviously, their own people are involved.

The fact that BJP leader Sanjeev Balyan has filed a representation saying that all these cases should be withdrawn is itself evidence that these people want to extricate themselves from heinous crimes in which they are likely to be convicted. This amounts to abetment to commit an offence because if the government is telling people that it does not matter if you kill and even if you kill, we are there to support you. And if there is a case against you, we will withdraw it. They are giving an incentive.

There is a lot of talk of data leak and using data from social media platforms to help draft campaign strategies in elections. The BJP has charged the Congress of using the controversial firm, Cambridge Analytica. Whats your response?

Firstly, nobody at Cambridge Analytica has said that the Congress directed them or had a contract with them to do anything of this sort. As against this, there is hard evidence on record that those who were disseminating this data or using this data were doing so at the instance of the BJP. This is now being reflected in an interview running on a news channel. Besides, let us assume if the BJP is not involved, they should call Cambridge Analytica and Mark Zuckerberg here instead of taking selfies in California. Then explanation should be sought as to who were they helping, in what manner were they helping and more importantly, when were they helping the BJP who gave the money? Where did the funding come from? Who funded this exercise?

Now, we know it was done during the 2010 Assembly elections in Bihar. The BJP and the JD(U) were alliance partners then and they had won. Maybe the same data was used in the Lok Sabha elections, maybe it was used in other state elections as well. All this requires a grand enquiry; maybe by a select committee of Parliament to delve into the manner in which Indian democracy was being subverted through foreign hands at the instance of a political party in India.A 6-year-old girl has claimed that she was sexually assaulted by a boy at her school in Linconshire. (Representational Image)

A 6-year-old girl has claimed that she was sexually assaulted by a boy at her school in Linconshire.

The victims mother said, I couldnt believe what I was hearing - it broke my heart into a million pieces.

The girl gave details of the assault to a medic and claimed that she was attacked while she was distracted by her friend, The Sun reported.

Hearing my baby girl speak about that was gut-wrenching. It felt like I had been stabbed in the heart. It is hard to find the words. I was in shock, I was angry and I felt sick. I wanted to make it all better but I knew I couldnt, the girls mother said.

The school said they could move my daughter into the other class but that is the same one in which the boy who was there at the time is in. I feel the school has let my child down big time and I am so upset and angry, she added. My daughter is having nightmares and is scarred for life."

The incident was reported to the police who have passed the details on to Lincolnshire social services. Meanwhile, council chiefs are investigating the case.

The school claims to have found no evidence but said that they take allegations very seriously.Artificial intelligence can be difficult to explain, yet it's one of today's hottest buzzwords. Tractica described AI as an information system that is inspired by a biological system designed to give computers the human-like abilities of hearing, seeing, reasoning, and learning.

With Stephen Hawking's recent passing, I feel its worth pondering AI's current state. Media and pop culture tout its advancements, but is our enthusiasm causing us to overlook AIs societal impact, be it good or bad?

Its true that AI has several practical and advantageous applications, making this an exciting time for various industries, from transportation to retail and even health care.

Harvard Business Review found that between 34 percent and 44 percent of companies have employed AI in their IT departments to complete tasks in information technology, marketing, finance and accounting and customer service. This statistic has likely changed since that article was written, but its clear that AI is automating jobs like monitoring security incursions and predicting customer purchasing behavior.

In medicine, a branch of AI called deep learning algorithms are executing technical functions originally handled by human doctors like accurately diagnosing chest X-ray images for tuberculosis, according to Forbes.

The key is not to completely automate the job market, but to balance human strengths for more specialized work with AI that can manage mundane tasks and protect against human error.

My concern has grown exponentially over the past several years after reading quotes by leading scientists and leaders around the world.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk cautioned that AI could cause a third world war. Hawking warned that AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization. It brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many.

Musk, Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and 114 other leading AI and robotics experts have drafted an open letter to ask the United Nations to safeguard the future use and development of AI and robotics so they are not repurposed into a global arms race of killer robots. I feel the most important piece from the letter is this: Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways. We do not have long to act. Once this Pandoras box is opened, it will be hard to close. We therefore implore the High Contracting Parties to find a way to protect us all from these dangers.

I recently saw "AI Nightmare," a short VR film by Lindero Edutainment, which seemed to reflect these very concerns. The filmmakers said Hawkings speech on the dangers of unchecked AI had inspired the movie's development. Granted, the open letter to the U.N. may have focused on weapons of terror, but this virtual reality indie film questioned how even unassuming smart technology like virtual assistants (i.e., Siri or Alexa) could prove dangerous if we do not take the time to fully understand its capabilities to make AI more human-centric.

Do we need to do more to have our voices heard? We must encourage greater discussion in communities outside the scientific and academic fields about AI and its future applications rather than just mindlessly absorbing the endless stream of media noise surrounding it. Speak up before its too late!SALT LAKE CITY  The LDS Church learned in 2010 that a second woman had made an allegation of sexual abuse against a former president of the church's Missionary Training Center in Provo, the church said in a statement released Friday afternoon.

The statement expressed "anger and distress" over the allegations against Joseph Bishop, who served as the MTC president in 1983-86 and warned that, "We are committed to bringing accountability for what has occurred."

News broke earlier this week that a woman had alleged Bishop raped her while she was a missionary under his care in January 1984. The woman confronted Bishop in December 2017 and a recording of their conversation leaked on Monday. Bishop has denied that allegation.

During the recorded conversation, the woman asked Bishop about a second woman.

"Did you molest her?" she said.

"Yes," he said.

The church said Friday that the second woman on the recording reported to her ecclesiastical leaders in 2010 that Joseph Bishop sexually abused her while he was the MTC president.

"When she reported the alleged abuse to her local church leaders in 2010, they provided emotional support as well as professional counseling services," the statement said. "Mr. Bishops local ecclesiastical leaders were contacted and they confronted him with her claims, which he denied, and local leaders did not feel they could pursue church discipline for Mr. Bishop."

The first woman also reported the abuse to local church leaders in Pleasant Grove, Utah, in 2010. His local leaders also confronted him with those claims at the time and he denied them, LDS Church spokesman Eric Hawkins said earlier this week.

Hawkins said a Pleasant Grove LDS leader contacted police and reported both the abuse allegation and threats she made against Bishop. That is confirmed by a 2010 Pleasant Grove Police report obtained by the Deseret News through a Government Records Access and Management Act request.

Pleasant Grove Police Chief Mike Smith said Friday night that his department investigated only the threats because the alleged sexual abuse happened outside its jurisdiction.

"The crime that was alleged to happen in our city was the threat to a church leader, which is what we responded to," he said.

Smith said that the call from the church leader, known as a stake executive secretary, included the allegation of sexual abuse but no details. In fact, the police report says, "He reported that (she) was involved in a sexual assault situation with her MTC mission president in January 1984."

The officer reported that the woman told him her statements were meant to be humorous, not serious. The officer closed the case.

"An officer would assume if the call is not going into detail on the sexual abuse that it would be handled by the right jurisdiction and that we should take care of the allegations in my jurisdiction," Smith said.

Hawkins declined to comment Friday night.

Friday's LDS Church statement said church leaders share "the anger and distress church members and others feel to learn of incidents where those entrusted with sacred responsibilities violate Gods commandments and harm others."

It called that behavior repulsive and sinful and said that outside legal counsel for the church is conducting an investigation. Those attorneys are interviewing priesthood leaders, family members, law enforcement officials and others, the statement said.

The first woman told BYU University Police on Dec. 4, 2017, that Bishop raped her at the MTC in 1984. Bishop denied the allegation in an interview with detectives the next day. He said instead that he asked her to expose her breasts to him and that she did.

BYU released its report to the Deseret News through a GRAMA request on Tuesday, but it was heavily redacted. On Wednesday evening, BYU sent the report again with most of the redaction removed, revealing Bishop's statement about asking the woman to expose herself.

Friday's church statement said the church first received the unredacted police report on Wednesday evening.

Bishop's son, an attorney who is representing him, said this week that his father adamantly denied the allegations and was confused about the timeline of events. He said the incident he described to police happened after the woman's mission in 1985 and that she exposed herself without provocation.

Bishop's son did not immediately return a call Friday for comment.

"We continue to urge our leaders to take reports of abuse very seriously," the church statement said. "Leaders should call the church's abuse helpline, which has been established to assure that victims are cared for and that abuse reporting laws are strictly obeyed."

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that one of Bishop's accusers "said she raped him." This version has been corrected.SALT LAKE CITY  Abena Bakenra has made it a habit to scan every classroom she's in for the best hiding place.

It's not something she's proud of, but it is what she's come up with to keep her sanity when mass shootings keep happening in American schools.

"Fear no longer has a place in our schools," the West High School senior told a crowd of thousands gathered at the Utah State Capitol Saturday for the student-led "March for Our Lives."

The movement, calling for stricter gun laws, rose out of support for victims and survivors at the unsuspecting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a lone gunman killed 14 students and three faculty members on Feb. 14. Students have spoken out against local and federal politicians saying, #Enough is enough.

A month after the shooting, students at schools across the country, including thousands in Utah, staged a walkout, formally organized by the Women's March Network.

"After the walkout, we march on," read one sign carried by a Utah participant.

Utah's capital city march and rally was just one of nearly 850 demonstrations held simultaneously all over the world. Salt Lake police estimate 8,000 people attended the event, which began at West High School and ended at the state Capitol.

About 1,000 attended a separate but similar event, the "March Before Our Lives" rally, crossing the same route to defend their Second Amendment rights, but also to show that they want change in the form of more secure schools.

"We want to show that gun owners are peace-loving people, too," said local YouTube activist, "NutnfancyProject" creator Richard Hewitt. "We're not extremists. We're Americans."

Hewitt, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, said part of the problem with erratic gunmen, especially in schools, is created by broken or dysfunctional families. He also supports arming teachers.

The students chanted "Books, not bullets," "This is what democracy looks like," "Thoughts and prayers are not enough" and "Never again" as they marched to the Capitol and filled the steps before the rally. Their bright blue "March for Our Lives" T-shirts resonated in the afternoon sun.

Gun rights activists, some of whom carried concealed or openly carried weapons, donned black and some were in camouflage. Many of them carried American flags or Gadsden flags created for the American Revolution, which read, "Don't tread on me." They held their own rally, organized by the Utah Gun Exchange, at the north side of the state Capitol, cheering emphatically for those who chose to speak at the open mic.

"We're all part of the militia," said Kevin Wilson, of Saratoga Springs. He said tragedies, like the most recent one in Parkland, often incite fear in people who then assume they have to do something and "make emotional decisions."

"We all know a gun is the answer to a bad guy with a gun," Wilson said.

"March for Our Lives" participants rallied for background checks on all gun purchases, a wait period between purchase and pickup of a gun, a ban on bump stocks and sales of military-grade assault weapons  not necessarily the handguns and rifles that are owned by the majority of gun owners in Utah and the United States.

Expand"We don't wish to deprive you of your fetishism for your menacing weapons," said Ermiya Fanaeian, a student at the Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts.

In Park City, community members marched on Main Street. Three students from Parkland, Florida, who are in the area on spring break, attended the march and shared their stories.

"What we went through, no one should ever have gone through," said McKenna Pfahl. She said seeing people march in Utah is "so empowering. Its amazing."

"Theyre one of us, and that could've been them," she said. "I think its actually gonna make a difference in this."

The three students agree they have a responsibility to try to make a change. "Weve lost our classmates," Pfahl said. "We're not going to stop."

More than 500 people of all ages marched to the St. George city offices. Alicia Walker Ferree attended the southern Utah march with her husband and said it felt like a march from the 60s and 70s.

"Everyone was enthusiastic and yelling.  It was extraordinary," she said. "I have eight grandchildren  five of them are now in public schools. And I just cant imagine what it would be like to have a school shooting happen in one of their schools."

Though her feelings on gun control used to be different, she said all the school shootings within the past few years have caused her views to shift. "I do believe that there should be tighter regulations," she added.

People like Ferree, who are hungry for change, joined the national cause to "demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today," according to the "March for Our Lives" website.

Other events were held in Logan and Cedar City. The main march and rally in Washington, D.C. brought out hundreds of thousands of people.

Suzanne Bounous, of Sandy, said the rally at the state Capitol is the first she's ever attended.

"I was scared when my own children were in school and I'll be nervous for my grandchildren that I'll hopefully have when they go to school," she said, adding that it was enough to bring her  an avid hunter and rifle owner  out on Saturday.

"I can't believe the (National Rifle Association) is controlling the safety in this country," Bounous said. She supports more rigorous licensing procedures and education offerings and said her voting will be influenced by those ideas.

In early March, Florida lawmakers passed a bill that increases the minimum age for buying rifles to 21 in that state, institutes waiting periods and background checks for all purchases, bans some potentially violent or mentally unstable people from possessing guns and creates a program to hire additional school police officers and arm some school employees.

The NRA is challenging the constitionality of Florida's new law, saying 18- to 21-year-olds are classified as adults and have rights.

Utah lawmakers were abuzz after the shooting in Florida and scrambled to get something on the table to lull local fears. Rep. Steve Handy, R-Layton, proposed a bill that would've made it possible for a family or cohabitants of a potentially violent person to get a protective order or get their weapons taken away. He called it an attempt to find "some kind of balance in our society" so that kids and teachers wouldn't have to worry.

The bill was heavily questioned by and opposed by both the NRA and the Utah Shooting Sports Council, and it did not make it out of a committee hearing.

The Utah Legislature did agree to study the issues brought up during the recent session, including increasing the age requirement to purchase assault rifles and confiscation of arms when certain red flags come up, among others. The Utah School Safety Coalition was created, intending to meet between sessions and come up with recommendations to make Utah schools safer.

Funding was made available to employ more counselors in elementary schools throughout the state. And several districts already employ their own security forces at schools.

Orem High School student Levi Rodas said taking guns away "will not stop that kind of violence." He doesn't support changing the Second Amendment just because people are afraid.

"It's amazing how much fear can control a person when they're uneducated," he said. His father, Harry Rodas, was carrying two handguns at the rally Saturday and said, "We have to let people know that our view is not a minority view."

He said banning guns would have the same effects that banning drugs has had.

"It is always the hope that none of us have to use (our weapon)," the elder Rodas said. "It's always a last-ditch effort. No one carries a gun lawfully with the intent of being a murderer."

Today's high schoolers were "just kids" when the mass shooting happened at Columbine High School in Colorado 20 years ago, said Orem High student Natalie Reese. She said they're ready to act  in response to that and all the other shootings that have happened in schools since then.

"If our politicians won't do anything to protect us, we'll do it ourselves," she said. Now, they are old enough to vote.

"Watch out," Natalie said. "We're coming for you. We are what we've been waiting for."

The teens encouraged their peers and the crowd to register to vote and vote to "create a better tomorrow."

"We have begun our fight, and it is our fight," said West High student Elizabeth Love. "There is no greater motivation than the outrage of seeing kids just like us shot and killed in their own classrooms."

"After that, we need you to protect us with your wallets  and, more than anything, we need you to believe in us," she said. "Another generation of students cannot go to school in fear."

Contributing: Ashley ImlayBhushan Kumar & Remo D'Souza Team Up For India's Biggest Dance Film Starring Varun Dhawan And Katrina Kaif

T-Series' CMD Bhushan Kumar has signed Varun Dhawan to star in what is touted to be India's biggest dance film. In a fresh pairing, Katrina Kaif will be seen opposite Varun Dhawan.

The film will be directed by Remo D'Souza who earlier directed Varun in the super hit ABCD 2. It will also star actor-choreographer-director Prabhu Deva besides Dharmesh Yelande, Raghav Juyal and Punit Pathak who had featured in ABCD 2.

The film is expected to go on the floors this year and will release on November 8, 2019.

Says Bhushan Kumar, "Dance and music go together. As a brand synonymous with music, it seemed natural to produce India's biggest dance film. Having a committed director like Remo who is passionate about and master of several dance forms is a blessing."

Remo D'Souza says, "Isn't it just appropriate that a film about music and dance is produced by the man heading the biggest music company in Bollywood?

And I get to direct - Varun, one of the best dancers today, and Katrina, who has shown us she can shake a mean leg."

Bhushan Kumar adds, "Varun is a natural-born entertainer. The audience loves his antics on screen, especially his dance moves. Katrina has talent and the ability to work hard - she also has a unique mesmerising quality."

Says Varun, "Working with Remo again for India's biggest dance film is huge. I performed once in New York with Katrina and it was electric. She's gonna bring her A game so I need to get back into shape. Bhushan is not only a strong producer who has over a period of time built a great marketing and

distribution machinery, he also contributes a lot creatively specially in music department."

Katrina says, "I am super excited to be joining Remo's vision to make India's ultimate dance film. Varun's passion is so wonderful; he works tirelessly to create magic. And, Bhushan Kumar with his understanding of market dynamics, as a producer will ensure it is the most talked-about film of 2019. I can't wait to start this journey."The picture of tolerance. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

On Friday night, hours after another tumultuous week wrapped up in Washington, the Trump administration issued a vaguely worded memo that would bar transgender people from serving in the military, while giving the Pentagon some discretion over how the policy is carried out.

The memo, signed by President Trump and filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, states that persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria  including individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery  are disqualified from military service except under limited circumstances.

The move is an extension of the policy announced impulsively by President Trump on Twitter last July, in which he vowed to ban all transgender people from the military.

In August, Trump directed the Pentagon to reverse an Obama-era policy that had allowed transgender people, or those with gender dysphoria, to serve.

But in the following months, multiple judges blocked Trumps ban as unconstitutional, preventing it from going into effect.

Trump sought input from the military on the matter  or at least pretended to. In a report released on Friday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wrote that the new policy would place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win Americas wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world.

But Slates Mark Joseph Stern reports that, according to multiple sources, Mattis actually supports open transgender service, but was overruled by Vice-President Mike Pence and other anti-trans forces in the administration, which were the real voices behind the report.

The new measures provoked a furious reaction from several civil rights and LGBT groups.

What the White House has released tonight is transphobia masquerading as policy, said Joshua Block, a senior staff lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement.

The policy will face immediate legal challenges, and, given its similarity to last summers version, has a strong chance of being knocked down again in federal court.

In a 2016 study, the RAND Corporation estimated that 1,320 to 6,630 transgender people serve in the military, with 830 to 4,160 serving in the reserves. The study concluded that allowing transgender troops to serve would have minimal impact on readiness and health care costs.

Though it is often a fools game to read too much into the administrations motives, the announcement, with its odd timing, could be seen as an attempt to mollify Trumps hard-right base hours after he signed a massive spending bill that did not include significant funding for a border wall. Trump made a show of publicly considering vetoing the bill before grudgingly signing it into law.Mukesh Ambani To Finance Aamir Khans Dream Project Mahabharata?

Thousand crore boost for Mahabharata? You might be wondering about this latest rumour that Bollywood is abuzz with. The popular Bollywood actor, Aamir Khan, is expected to be busy shooting for Thugs of Hindostan. However, it appears that his other project, Mahabharata, is also running in the background.



According to reports, the Bollywood star, Aamir Khan, was waiting till date for his most ambitious project, Mahabharata. But, budget plays a crucial role in such an extravagant visual treat. And, it seems that the actor has finally got what he was waiting for, the budget, reportedly. Rumour mills are churning news that Indian business tycoon Mukesh Ambani is ready to bankroll the movie. Also, he is set to provide a boost of Rs 1000 crore to make Mahabharata, Aamirs dream project.

The PK star has always been keen to make a film on an epic story. Now, it has been speculated that Mukesh Ambani is ready to be a helping hand in fulfilling the much-awaited project of the smart producer, Aamir Khan. Also, the reports have emerged that it is yet to be ascertained whether the businessman will start a new production house for this movie or will utilize his existing media entities to produce the film. Though there is a lot of time for these speculations to reflect through real frame, the excitement is fully loaded if the deal happens between the business master and the marketing wizard.





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Source: www.bollywoodlife.comIt seems like there are some touchscreen issues with Samsungs new flagship smartphones. Android Police reports that many users are complaining about dead spots on the screen of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. As the name would suggest, dead spots are areas on the screen where inputs are not registered. Many of the users complained about the issue on Samsung official forums, but the location of the dead spots differ between users. Some are reporting that the area on on the top, making it hard to pull down the notification shade. For others, its towards the bottom, which leads to a problem when using the keyboard.

Since the issue was reported, Samsung has issued a statement which says, At Samsung, customer satisfaction is core to our business and we aim to deliver the best possible experience. We are looking into a limited number of reports of Galaxy S9/S9+ touchscreen responsiveness issues. We are working with affected customers and investigating. We encourage any customer with questions to contact us directly at 1-800-SAMSUNG. While this issue may not be as big as the last time a Samsung flagship showed hardware issues, it is good to see the company responding quickly to resolve the issue.

Both the devices have already been launched in India starting at Rs 57,900 for the standard Galaxy S9. The larger, Galaxy S9+ starts at Rs 64,900. You can check out our review of the Galaxy S9+ here.Changes to Australian immigration law to hit Indians most

The Australian government has scrapped the highly popular sub-class 457 visa category for overseas workers hoping to migrate there, replacing it with a new temporary skill shortage (TSS) visa.

Indians accounted for nearly a fourth of the migrants going to Australia under the 457 visa category and the flow from the country is expected to slow down because of the new change, which has now come into effect. Indians accounted for nearly a fourth of the migrants going to Australia under the 457 visa category and the flow from the country is expected to slow down because of the new change, which has now come into effect.

For those with the new TSS visa, it will be difficult to get a permanent residency (PR) in the country or even admission to an Australian university.

The Australian government is also discouraging companies from hiring migrants and has asked them to contribute A$1,200 per employee every year for the Australian Skilling Fund.

The government had announced plans to scrap the 457 visa last year as it was worried that many Australians were not getting skilled jobs because of migrants.

Alan Tudge, the citizenship minister of Australia, said the government is delivering on its promise to ensure we get the right balance between protectinig local jobs and supporting Australian employers to fill critical skills shortages.

The Australian government launched a migration reform process a few months ago and the recent moves are part of it.Lalu Yadav sentenced to 14 years in jail in fourth fodder scam

Former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav was on Saturday sentenced to 14 years in jail and fined Rs60 lakh by a special CBI court in the fourth fodder scam case.

Lalu Prasad Yadav

The sentence related to the fourth fodder scam and the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs3.13 crore from the Dumka treasury in the 1990s.

The RJD leader was given two sentences of seven years each under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Acts. Lalu Prasad has been in jail at Ranchi since December last year after being convicted in the second fodder scam case.

He is currently undergoing treatment at a Ranchi hospital after he complained of chest pain last week.

While Lalu Yadav was found guilty of the charges, another former chief minister of Bihar, Jagannath Mishra, was acquitted by the CBI court.

Lalu Prasads counsel said on Saturday that he would appeal in a higher court.

The former Bihar chief minister was convicted in the first scam in 2013 and awarded a five-year jail term. Last December he was given a three-and-a-half year sentence in the second fodder scam.

In January, he was given another five-year jail term in the third fodder scam.

The scandal came to light in 1996 following a raid by the Deputy Commissioner of Chaibasa, Amit Khare, at the Bihar Animal Husbandry Department. In 1997, Lalu Prasad was charged under the Prevention of Corruption Act in connection with the fodder scam.

The CBI, which was investigating allegations of misappropriations of treasury funds to non-existent companies for purchase and supply of cattle fodder in Bihar, had found alleged irregularities worth Rs 950 crore, forcing Lalu Prasad to resign as the chief minister of Bihar, anointing his wife Rabri Devi as CM.

Under pressure from critics in his party, the Janata Dal, he quit and floated his own party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal.

The CBI has filed 63 cases under IPC Sections 420 (forgery) and 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy) and Section 13 (b) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Lalu Prasad Yadav was first convicted in 2013 in the first fodder scam case and awarded five years in jail. The court charged Lalu Prasad with fraudulent withdrawal of Rs47 lakh from the treasuries at Banka and Bhagalpur districts, where alleged forged bills were drawn by the Animal Husbandry Department in 1995-96 when he was the CM.

The conviction also barred Lalu Prasad from contesting elections for 11 years in line with the Supreme Court order disqualifying convicts jailed for more than two years from contesting for six years after completion of their sentence. Later, he had got bail in the case.

His next conviction came in 2017, months after current Bihar chief minister and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar walked out from an alliance with Lalu Prasad and joined hands with the BJP to form a new government.

In December Lalu Prasad was convicted in the second fodder scam case, which pertained to fraudulent withdrawal of money amounting to over Rs89 lakh from Deoghar treasury between 1991 and 1994 when he was the chief minister and also handled the finance portfolio.

In this case he was sentenced by a special CBI court to three-and-a-half years of rigorous imprisonment, while his predecessort Jagannath Misra was acquitted. The court also imposed a cumulative fine of Rs5 lakh in connection with charges under the Indian Penal Code and Rs5 lakh pertaining to charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

A month later he was convicted in the third fodder scam case, on 25 January 2018, in a case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs37.62 crore from the treasury of Chaibasa (now in Jharkhand)  in 1992-93.

This time Jagannath Mishra was also convicted. Both Lalu and Mishra were sentenced to five-year rigorous imprisonment under various sections of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act, along with a cumulative fine of Rs 10 lakh.

A special CBI court will pronounce its judgment in the fifth fodder scam, pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs47.5 crore from the Doranda treasury in the '90s, in the months ahead.America's new NSA is 'rigid, bombastic ideologue'

John Boltons extremism could lead the country to catastrophe, warned the headline to the editorial in the Washington Post on Friday.

Americas new NSA, John Bolton

The Presidents national security adviser is meant to coordinate policy formation inside the administration, manage disagreements among agencies and tee up important decisions without imposing his or her own views, said the editorial.

But Bolton, who will take over the position next month, is unsuited for that role. His record is that of a rigid, bombastic ideologue with a history of bullying colleagues and twisting intelligence. His advocacy of extreme policies, including preventive war against North Korea and Iran, could lead Mr. Trump and the country to catastrophe, added the newspaper.

Indeed, the appointment of Bolton has stunned not just Americans, but even government leaders around the globe. Many worry that his hawkish views on Iran and North Korea may result in Trump seeking military solutions to diplomatic issues.

Boltons views match those of the American President at present, but there are fears that with Trump changing his views so rapidly, there could be a big divide between the two.

The new national security adviser has over the years expressed hawkish views with regard to US foreign policy. In the 1990s he urged President Bill Clinton to oust Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi leader. Later, during the reign of George W Bush, he was confident that the Iraqi leader had hidden weapons of mass destruction, a concept that proved to be disastrous following the war.

The new national security adviser also wants to bring an end to North Korea. Diplomats and analysts worry that the Trump-Bolton combine could wreck US foreign policy, resulting in disastrous moves that could destabilise the delicate balance of power around the globe.The path of ransomware payments exposed

Ransomware attacks, which encrypt and hold a computer user's files hostage in exchange for payment, extort millions of dollars from individuals each month, and comprise one of the fastest-growing forms of cyber attack

What systems do hackers employ to convert their bitcoins extorted as ransom, into legitimate cash?

Ransomware attacks, which encrypt and hold a computer user's files hostage in exchange for payment, extort millions of dollars from individuals each month, and comprise one of the fastest-growing forms of cyber attack.

Bitcoins are the most common currency of ransomware payments, and because most victims do not own them, the initial bitcoin purchase provides a starting point for tracking such payments. Each ransomware victim is often given a unique payment address that directs to a bitcoin wallet where the ransom is collected.

This murky ecosystem of ransomware payments comes into focus in new research led by Damon McCoy, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

In a paper slated for presentation at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in May, McCoy and a team including researchers from the University of California, San Diego, Princeton University, Google and the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis provide the first detailed account of the ransomware payment ecosystem, from initial attack to cash-out.

Key findings include the discovery that South Koreans are disproportionately impacted by ransomware campaigns, with analysis revealing that $2.5 million of the $16 million in ransomware payments tracked by the researchers was paid in South Korea. The paper's authors call for additional research to determine the reason that so many South Koreans are victimised and how they can be protected.

The team also found that most ransomware operators used a Russian bitcoin exchange, BTC-E, to convert bitcoin to fiat currencies. (BTC-E has since been seized by the FBI.)

The researchers estimate that at least 20,000 individuals made ransomware payments over the past two years, at a confirmed cost of $16 million, although the actual payment total is likely to be far higher.

McCoy and his collaborators took advantage of the public nature of the bitcoin blockchain technology to trace ransom payments over a two-year period. Bitcoins are the most common currency of ransomware payments, and because most victims do not own them, the initial bitcoin purchase provides a starting point for tracking payments.

Each ransomware victim is often given a unique payment address that directs to a bitcoin wallet where the ransom is collected. The research team tapped public reports of ransomware attacks to identify these addresses and correlate them with blockchain transactions.

To boost the number of transactions available for analysis, the team also executed real ransomware binaries in a controlled experimental environment, essentially becoming victims themselves and making micropayments to real ransom wallets in order to follow the bitcoin trail.

"Ransomware operators ultimately direct bitcoin to a central account that they cash out periodically, and by injecting a little bit of our own money into the larger flow we could identify those central accounts, see the other payments flowing in, and begin to understand the number of victims and the amount of money being collected," McCoy said.

The research team acknowledged that ethical issues prevent exploration of certain aspects of the ransomware ecosystem, including determining the percentage of victims who actually pay to recover their files. McCoy explained that despite having the ability to check for activity connected to a specific payment address, doing so would effectively "start the clock" and potentially cause victims to either pay a double ransom or lose the opportunity to recover their files altogether.

Criminal use of cryptocurrencies is one of McCoy's research focuses. He and fellow researchers previously tracked human traffickers through their use of Bitcoin advertising.

The most recent research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Google, and Comcast.Special court grants anticipatory bail to Karti in Aircel-Maxis case

A Delhi special court granted anticipatory bail to Karti Chidambaram till 16 April, the next date of hearing, in the Aircel-Maxis case.

Senior advocates Gopal Subramaniam and Kapil Sibal represented Karti. Senior advocates Gopal Subramaniam and Kapil Sibal represented Karti.

While granting anticipatory bail, special judge OP Saini stipulated that Karti would not leave the country without the court's permission, and that he would appear before the investigating officer whenever summoned.

The court gave three weeks to the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to file their replies on Karti's anticipatory bail pleas.

See: This is the second major relief for Karti, son of former finance and home minister P Chidambaram, in as many days. On Friday, the Delhi High Court had granted Karti bail in the INX media case ( Delhi High Court grants bail to Karti Chidambaram ).

Following this, he had filed a plea seeking protection from arrest in the Aircel-Maxis case, initiated by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

The ED had alleged that Karti was paid Rs26 lakh on 11 April 2006, for FIPB approval to Global Communication Holding Services Ltd for making its investment in Aircel, in the Aircel - Maxis case.

Kapil Sibal, arguing in the CBI case on Saturday, said there was neither any allegation against Karti in the Aircel-Maxis case nor was there anything to show that he knew the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) officials.

In the ED case, Gopal Subramaniam, also appearing for Karti, argued that his client had cooperated in the other matters and that he would neither flee from the county nor tamper with evidence.Musk and Mark raise the muck

It is not just Hollywood or even Bollywood celebrities who make waves when they talk, tweet or shoot their mouths off.

Increasingly, multi-billionaire entrepreneurs have also started responding to the hunger for news by tweeting their taunts. Increasingly, multi-billionaire entrepreneurs have also started responding to the hunger for news by tweeting their taunts.

The latest to do so is Elon Musk, who has got the Facebook pages of his firms Tesla and SpaceX deleted after his followers demanded he do it.

Musk had made fun of Sonos, a speaker brand, after it said it would suspend advertising on Facebook for a week, after news about the social network having allowed Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based political consulting firm, access and misuse data of 50 million users.

A #deletefacebook movement has emerged after accusations were levelled against Cambridge Analytica. And Musks followers asked him have get the pages of Tesla and SpaceX deleted from Facebook.

Musk claimed he didnt realise that his brand had a Facebook page. Literally never seen it even once, he claimed on Twitter, and promised  Will be gone soon. The pages of the two brands had a total of more than five million followers.

Of course, Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief, have been having problems for the past few years. In 2016, for instance, after a new communications satellite of Facebook worth more than $200 million got destroyed following the rocket explosion at the SpaceX launch pad, a reporter tweeted: "@elonmusk blew up Mark Zuckerberg's satellite".

Musk was quick to reply: "Yeah, my fault for being an idiot. We did give them a free launch to make up for it and I think they had some insurance."

Undoubtedly these are exciting times for the followers of these multi-billion-dollar barons, who apparently enjoy poking each other in the eye at every opportunity.Luxembourg researchers refute 20-year-old assumptions in solar cell production

Research led by the University of Luxembourg investigated the manufacturing process of solar cells. The researchers proved that assumptions on chemical processes that were commonplace among researchers and producers for the past 20 years are, in fact, inaccurate.

The physicists published their findings in the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications.

Photovoltaic solar panels convert sunlight into electrical power. The panels absorb the incoming light which excites electrons sending them off in a predefined direction in order to generate an electric current that can drive motors or light a bulb.

This works through the interaction of several layers of semiconductors and metals in the solar panel. The cells are manufactured in a complex process where several chemical elements are deposited on a glass substrate, typically by evaporation. Thereby, a solar cell "grows", layer by layer.

In the past, scientists discovered by accident that the efficiency of one type of solar cell technology improves vastly if they add sodium to the light absorbing layer. At the same time, they observed that the sodium impacts the growth of this layer and the interaction of the other chemical elements, namely it inhibits the mixing of gallium and indium.

This leads to less homogenous layers and thus impairs the results. Therefore, in the past, scientists and manufacturers believed that the ideal way to produce a solar cell was to only add the sodium after the growth process was concluded.

By using a different approach, researchers from the Physics and Materials Science Research Unit at the University of Luxembourg, along with four internationals partners, now were able to show that the truth is more nuanced.

While conventionally the light-absorbing layer is made up of thousands of individual grains, the research group chose a more demanding fabrication strategy and grew the layer as a single grain. "Essentially, in this work we show that if the absorber is made of only one grain, adding a small amount of sodium helps to homogenize the distribution of the elements," says Diego Colombara, now Marie Curie Research Fellow at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory and the principal investigator of the study. "This is very surprising, because more than 20 years of previous research have consistently shown the opposite effect on absorbers made of many grains."

The conclusion of the researchers is that sodium has a dual effect: it homogenises the elements inside each grain but it slows down homogenisation in the interplay between grains. "This gives us the opportunity to rethink how we produce solar cells. In the future, these insights might lead to improvements in the manufacturing process," concludes Dr Phillip Dale, the head of the research group at the Laboratory for Energy Materials (LEM) at the University of Luxembourg and an Attract fellow of the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).Discovered mode of drinking in mosquitoes carries biomedical implications

Mosquitoes may have a reputation for being one of the world's most intractable pests, but they're actually quite tiny and fragile. So when an international team of scientists, including several at Virginia Tech, wanted to observe the underlying mechanisms of how the insects feed, they had to get creative.

The researchers would trap wild mosquitoes in the forest edging the Advanced Photon Source in the Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago, then essentially starve the insects for 48 hours.

After anaesthetizing them with nitrogen gas, the team used nail polish to glue a single mosquito to the head of an insect pin, and then submerged its proboscis  those long, straw-like appendage mosquitoes use for drinking  into a sugar-based feeding solution. As the hungry insect sucked up the nectar, live synchrotron x-ray videos captured footage of everything that happened behind its opaque exoskeleton.

These efforts, published in Scientific Reports, not only yielded the discovery of a new mode of drinking in mosquitoes, but they could also answer a fundamental question of insect morphology  why do some insects that drink liquid have two pumps in their heads, while others have only one?

"We found that these two pumps in the mosquito's head allow for a secondary 'burst mode' of feeding," says Jake Socha, associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech and a senior author of the study.

"This burst mode involves a single, large-volume intake of fluid, which is something that had never been observed before. It potentially gives an insect with two pumps more options and allows for multi-modal feeding, as well as functional flexibility."

Due to the 2016 Zika virus outbreak and a new epidemic of yellow fever currently sweeping through Brazil, mosquitoes and the diseases they carry remain an ongoing focus of public health concern.

These new findings on the insect's feeding mechanisms and modalities could have larger implications for how scientists address mosquito-borne disease transmission in future research.

"Mosquitoes are not just a nuisance, but also a health threat," says Mark Stremler, a study co-author and professor in the department of biomedical engineering and mechanics. "The more we can understand about their robustness and how they survive, the better chance we have of figuring out ways to control them."

Despite the importance of feeding in mosquitoes, previous research has not fully understood the internal mechanics of the mosquito's two-pump system. In bouts of normal drinking, these two muscular pumps operate in a pattern of continuous reciprocation with multiple small strokes, like a back-and-forth motion of small sips on a straw.

However, in the newly discovered burst mode, a mosquito takes a single, large-volume stroke  a giant gulp through the straw  during which the two pumps expand massively to what appears to be their maximum volume. This burst mode produces a large, quick influx of fluid, but it's also far more energetically costly than the normal continuous mode of pumping.

"The burst mode creates this big expansion in volume, producing a flow rate that's up to 27 times greater than what we see in the continuous pumping mode," says Socha. "But it takes about 1,000 times more energy. So that begs the question, why do mosquitoes even use it at all?"

To explore that question, the researchers developed a mathematical model of the mosquito's fluid pumping system, which gave them a detailed mechanical understanding of how it works.

They found the burst mode allows mosquitoes to generate a low-pressure vacuum on demand, which the insects could then use to drive an obstruction  like an air bubble or a small particle, for example  up through the proboscis.

The temporary boost in volume intake could also be used for faster drinking, perhaps if the mosquito were trying to avoid detection, but that scenario seems less likely because the bursts were only observed sporadically.

"The fluid mechanics model allowed us to postulate new hypotheses about what this burst mode might do instead of just saying that it exists," says Stremler. "Now we have a parametric description that gives a basis for deliberately testing questions of potential function. Overall, the model helps direct and inform the possibilities of where we go from here with the research."

In addition to the biomedical implications of mosquito-borne disease transmission, the researchers also envision the possibility of mimicking the mosquito's two-pump system in a microfluidic device that could be used to deliver targeted drug therapy within the human body.

"For these types of tiny devices, you might never have stumbled upon that functional design unless it's something you can see in nature," says Socha. "Evolution is the ultimate tinkerer."

With a number of hypotheses remaining, avenues for future research look promising.

"As opposed to closing an open question, this study has instead opened the door to a whole new set of questions and possibilities that we didn't even consider before this burst mode was observed," says Stremler.The hammerheaded governor of Wisconsin wont let an adverse court decision thwart him. Hell just change the law the judge was applying! Photo: Andy Manis/Getty Images

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is nothing if not consistent. He refused to call two legislative special elections  to fill vacancies his own appointments created  because he didnt want to risk the kind of embarrassing Democratic wins and near-wins that have been happening all over the country since Donald Trump took office. A state judge  one that Walker himself appointed, as it happens  told him the law required that he hold these election because otherwise the citizens in the affected districts would be denied representation.

So how are Walker and the state GOP responding? Theyre trying to change the law on which the judge based her decision. And this isnt just a recommendation, either, as TPM reports:

Republican legislative leaders in Wisconsin called lawmakers back to the Capitol Friday afternoon to change state law governing special elections .

Its clear that little thought was given to the impact of the special elections ruling, Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a statement, saying an extraordinary session of the legislature was necessary to clean up the statute on special elections.

In essence, there will be two elections occurring simultaneously for the two offices, the statement continued. It will undoubtedly lead to voter confusion and electoral chaos. Also, holding the special elections after the conclusion of the regular session is a waste of taxpayer dollars and local government resources.

Theres nothing in this particular critique of special elections that isnt true of all special elections. Yet somehow its these special elections that are so objectionable that a special legislative session  which might also represent a waste of taxpayer dollars is necessary.

Unsurprisingly, Wisconsin Democrats are going ballistic over this maneuver, calling it (among other things) a clear attack on democracy. But Scott Walker has always been impervious to this sort of criticism, and like a hammerhead shark, determined to continue his course of action, no matter what. Only the voters can deter him.A report into the Tory ferry service dispute written by a government-appointed intermediary has called for two department-funded ferry services for the island.

The report has made a number of proposals to resolve the dispute which are to be voted on by islanders today.

The dispute has developed over a new ferry which is due to come into service on April 1st.

Islanders have said the new ferry is not suitable for the crossing from Machaire Rabhartaigh to Tory.

The vessel, the Queen of Aran, was built in 1976 and has been refitted for the five-year contract.

Families have threatened to leave the island over the issue and islanders have also said they will not allow the ferry dock at the pier.

Pol O Gallchoir, the former CEO of TG4, was appointed to act as an intermediary by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and has visited the island in the last week in an attempt to find a resolution.

Mr O Gallchoir presented his report yesterday and the islands Comharchumann met to discuss the proposals last night.

Under the proposals, the department will fund two ferry services from April 1st - the passenger and light cargo ferry service provided by the Queen of Aran, and a fast ferry service.

Mr O Gallchoir has also proposed to chair a committee to oversee the two ferry services. The department and the comharchumann would be represented on the committee.

The department will commission a feasibility study on a new ferry service for the island which was committed to in the governments Project Ireland 2040.

Mr O Gallchoir has also proposed an increase in the weekly helicopter service to 28 weeks a year and an increase in the cargo service to 40 weeks.

Government chief whip and Minister of State for Irish, the Gaeltacht and the Islands, Deputy Joe McHugh, welcomed the report.

I am grateful for the time and dedication Mr O Gallchoir has given to his role in the past week, he said.

 I would also wish to thank the Islanders and Comharchumann Thorai for their engagement in the process. I hope that the last week has provided the necessary groundwork for a resolution to the issues raised by the Islanders and that we can move forward in the best interests of everyone involved. I intend to study Mr O Gallchoirs report in detail before making any further comment on the matter.The price difference between each of the lower variants is less than Rs 75,000, while the top two variants: XT and XZ+ have a price difference of Rs 1.45 Lakh. Addressing this issue, the new XZ will be placed between the two to help reduce the price gap.

Recommended Video - Watch Now! Tata Nexon AMT Details, Specifications, Expected Launch & Pricing - DriveSpark

The new variant of the Nexon will remain unchanged mechanically, receiving the same 1.5-litre diesel and 1.2-litre petrol engines with various driving modes as seen in the current lineup.

Compared to the top-end XZ+, the new variant will miss out on certain external features such as LED DRLs, dual-tone roof, front and rear fog lamps and rear defogger.

The interior of the XZ will exclude features such as the front and rear centre armrest, 60:40 split-folding rear seats and the smart key push button start.

However, certain features such as projector headlamps, 6.5-inch touchscreen infotainment system with android auto and smartphone connectivity, adjustable driver's seat and seat belts, automatic climate control with rear vents will still be available.

Thoughts On The New Tata Nexon XZ Trim

Tata Motors has been working hard to push the Nexon brand for better sales. The company has also announced an AMT version for the Nexon, which is set to be launched soon.

Tata Nexon has also recently tied up with the Indian Premier League (IPL) from the 2018 season and will showcase the compact SUV at every stadium, further marketing the Nexon.At Saturdays March for Our Lives , survivors of last months Parkland, Fla., school shooting joined hundreds of thousands of people to protest against gun violence and call for more restrictive gun laws. The student-led march coincided with hundreds of other events, including at least one in every U.S. state and on six continents.

This collection of photos, videos, and social media posts examines how the march played out in Washington and across the globe. It includes on-the-ground views of the action from the students, educators, and others in attendance, and reaction from those following along.

4:00 PM ET

With the U.S. Capitol in the background, supporters fill the stage at the end of the March for Our Lives rally in Washington. (Credit: Alex Brandon/AP)

#MarchForOurLives rally is over and the students vow to keep the passion high and hold politicians accountable. @educationweek pic.twitter.com/Kn4fYaVucf  Lisa Stark (@LisaStark) March 24, 2018

3:00 PM ET

With the U.S. Capitol rising behind the stage, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Emma Gonzalez is seen on a giant video screen as she addresses the March for Our Lives rally in Washington. (Credit: Cliff Owen/AP)

Every time theres a silence at #MarchForOurLives , the crowd fills it with chants of vote them out! Sometimes it starts at one end of Pennsylvania Ave and spreads like a wave over several city blocks.  Evie Blad (@EvieBlad) March 24, 2018

Brenda Myers, center, comforts her daughter Jamie, an Ooltewah Middle School student, after a moment of silence at the March for Our Lives rally in Chattanooga, Tenn. (Credit: oug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP)

Kanawha City Elementary school student Derrick Johnson, 5, and his brother David Johnson, 3, stand with others gathered on the steps of the Capitol building in Charleston, W.Va., during a March For Our Lives rally. (Credit: Craig Hudson/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)

A demonstrator holds a sign aloft inscribed with her feelings about arming teachers, during the March For Our Lives rally outside the state capitol in Phoenix, Ariz. (Credit: Matt York/AP)

My full statement on todays marches: pic.twitter.com/ZpRNotSbyP  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 24, 2018

The guns have to go! It almost sounds like young voices raised in a cheer. But their message is so serious. #MFOL in Parkland pic.twitter.com/W69cDZd3wz  Michele Molnar (@EdWeekMMolnar) March 24, 2018

David Hogg, a survivor of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., raises his fist after speaking to the crowd during the March for Our Lives rally in Washington. (Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP)

1:00 PM ET

Gun violence is more than a Chicago problem, or a Parkland problem. It is an AMERICAN problem. Trevon Bosley #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/zeuJXCyQV0  March For Our Lives (@AMarch4OurLives) March 24, 2018

Members of the audience become emotional as Edna Chavez, a student from South Los Angeles, speaks during the March for Our Lives rally in Washington. Chavez, who lost her brother to gun violence, told the crowd: This is normalnormal to the point that Ive learned to duck from bullets before I learned how to read. (Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP)

Demonstrators march to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a March For Our Lives rally in Parkland, Fla. Thousands of people filled a park near the school, site of the Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 people. (Credit: Joe Skipper/AP)

#MarchForOurLives Teacher from Michigan who doesnt want to carry a gun into her classroom. @educationweek pic.twitter.com/eZ9Zfzso7e  Lisa Stark (@LisaStark) March 24, 2018

Are you registered to vote? The League of Women Voters reminding protesters to register to vote -- and vote. #MarchForOurLives #MarchForOurLivesdc pic.twitter.com/0omABqGf1V  Denisa R. Superville (@drsuperville) March 24, 2018

Jonathan Howell, 12, from Maryland: Its important to protect students lives. The government isnt doing much to help protect the lives of students...We need to protect them and make stronger gun laws so students can feel safe when they are in school. pic.twitter.com/2Wf4xmLdwP  Denisa R. Superville (@drsuperville) March 24, 2018

12:00 PM ET

Participants light candles in memory of shooting victims at First United Methodist church, during a March For Our Lives rally in Sartell, Minn. (Credit: Dave Schwarz/St. Cloud Times via AP)

Demonstrators fill Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington during the March for Our Lives rally. (Credit: Alex Brandon/AP)

Demonstrators rally during the March for Our Lives event in Chicago. (Credit: Nam Y. Huh/AP)

11:00 AM ET

Area high school students stand near the front of the crowd during a March For Our Lives rally in Concord, N.H. (Credit: Elizabeth Frantz/The Concord Monitor via AP)

Shelby Powell, 15, of Newport High School, holds a sign depicting lives lost in school shootings during the March for Our Lives protest in Cincinnati. (Credit: John Minchillo/AP)

If we are expected to carry guns, Im done, teacher Schuyler Pietz told me. If they think theres a teacher shortage now, just wait. #marchforourlives pic.twitter.com/ffBT9CacgN  Stephen Sawchuk (@Stephen_Sawchuk) March 24, 2018

Protests happened internationally as well, including in Paris, London, and Geneva.

Demonstrators rally near the Eiffel Tower during a March For Our Lives event on Saturday in Paris. (Credit: Michel Euler/AP)

Protesters march outside the U.S. Embassy in London on March 24 in solidarity with the March for Our Lives protest against gun violence. (Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

American students and expats demonstrate in support of stricter gun laws in the U.S. during a March For Our Lives rally outside the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 24. (Credit: Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)

Levi Rodas, 16, from Orem High School, gathers for a pro-gun march designed to advocate for fortified schools and more armed teachers on March 24 in Salt Lake City. (Credit: Rick Bowmer/AP)

10:00 AM ET

Crowds of people hold signs on Pennsylvania Avenue at the March for Our Lives rally on March 24 in Washington. (Credit: Alex Brandon/AP)

Olivia Watanabe, AishaNavarrete, Cassie Pearce, and Emma Putney, juniors at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, Vt., display their signs before the start of the March for Our Lives in Washington on March 24. (Credit: Sarah Schwartz/Education Week)

Education Week reporter Michele Molnar is in Parkland, Fla., at the march taking place there. This student was shot during the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

She was shot on 2/14.

Today she will speak to thousands in Parkland #MFOL pic.twitter.com/oUp1KmrMlS  Michele Molnar (@EdWeekMMolnar) March 24, 2018

Alumni from Great Mills High School in Md., the site of the most recent school shooting, join the march to show support.

Alumni from Great Mills High School, site of most recent school shooting, came to #MarchForOurLives to show support. No community has immunity! they chant. pic.twitter.com/2GQZMEdpvs  Evie Blad (@EvieBlad) March 24, 2018

9:00 AM ET

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is in Washington with students from Chicago.

So proud of our men!

Transforming lives, transforming communities, trying to change our country!#ChicagoCRED #AMarch4OurLives pic.twitter.com/IfqcMfTxFg  Arne Duncan (@arneduncan) March 24, 2018

6:30 PM ET

The day before the march, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser welcomed participants to the city.800m athlete added to Isle of Man Commonwealth Games team

Mon, 29 Jan 2018



Joe Reid is the 33rd member of the Isle of Man's squad for the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia.

Athlete Joe Reid has been added to the Isle of Man squad for the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia.

The 800m runner has been selected after the Island was awarded an additional space earlier this month.

The Manx team was initially made up of 32 athletes, but with other nations unable to fill their quota the Island was given one more place.

Reid met the qualifying criteria before the orginial squad was announced, but missed out on initial selection.

The team flies to Australia on March 19th for a week of acclimitisation before moving into the athletes' village.British filmmaker Ken Loach, known for his cinematic portrayal of social issues, shared how a working-class upbringing influenced his work as well as his take on poverty and Brexit during a visit to Switzerland for the Fribourg Film Festival.

The 81-year-old director of award-winning films such as Kes and The Wind that Shakes the Barley speaks to swissinfo.ch about his worldview and how he seeks to explore the origins and consequences of wealth inequality in his work.

I want to portray the logic of a system that is destroying people, he explains.

swissinfo.ch journalist Eduardo Simantob starts by asking Loach what kind of face he would give to capital.

The filmmaker also discusseshow he sees wealth inequality influencing life expectancy in modern Britain, where he sees nine years difference in the expected lifespan of people living just blocks apart in some cities.

Its a new kind of poverty, he says. Family lives are destroyed through insecure work.

In the big working-class cities like Glasgow, Liverpool or Manchester the life expectancy is much less because of thechaotic lives that these new working practices inflict.

Loach also gives his perspective on Brexit and why he thinks one argument in particular was left out of the debate over the referendum. In the clip below, he begins by explaining what he thinks a split from the EU will mean for British filmmakers.

Finally, when asked for his perspectives on Switzerland and whether he finds it a boring country, Loach replies, how can it be boring when two-thirds of the worlds wealth is in your banks?

He then raisesthe question whether Swiss people feel responsible for guarding that wealth and for what it could do for the world.

If we had all the capacity for nuclear warfare in our country, I think Id feel some responsibility to engage politically to neutralise it, he says.

You [in Switzerland] have the equivalent in wealth. Do you have any responsibility?



The two prime suspects at the centre of an alleged illegal arms contract between Switzerland and Russia have been linked to previous suspect business ventures, according to media reports.

A manager at the Swiss state-owned defence contractor RUAG has been suspended along with an employee of Swiss private bank Julius Baer as investigations continue. The Tages Anzeiger newspaper said it had unearthed evidence linking both to a previous venture.

Both were high ranking executives of the now-defunct telecoms firm Novavox some 15 years ago, a company that had strong links to Russia, the newspaper stated on Saturday.

Furthermore, the RUAG employee was linked to a United States businessman who was jailed for three years for stock market manipulation in 2014. The article says this business relationship continued for more than a year after he joined RUAG.

The Julius Baer employee was also Moscow office manager on the Liechtenstein VP Bank when it became entangled with corruption cases, the newspaper adds.

The Swiss prosecutor raided RUAG offices earlier this week following a whistleblower tip-off that sniper rifles, small arms and helicopter cameras were being illegally exported to Russias secret service. RUAG alerted Swiss officials after uncovering evidence of wrongdoing, but on Friday denied that any of the equipment had actually been shipped to Russia.













swissinfo.ch/mga





The head of the United Nations office in Geneva warned Friday that "trust" in the world body as an employer was taking a hit, as staff resumed striking over pay cuts.

Michael Moller, the director-general at the UNs European headquarters, defended staff carrying out their second work stoppage this month, and criticised the manner in which the deductions were decided.

It was not immediately clear how many of the roughly 9,500 UN staff members in Geneva joined the strike against a 3.5 percent pay cut that is expected to swell to over five percent by June.

Smatterings of employees were outside the various entrances to the UNs compound in the Swiss city, brandishing red banners reading UN staff in Geneva on strike.

A few hundred others gathered for a rally within the grounds, hoisting signs that declared no confidence in the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), the New York-based body that imposed the cuts.

Moller agreed that the ICSC  which calculates UN staff salaries across all duty stations including cost of living adjustments  needed a shakeup.

Listen, this is a body that has existed for a very, very long time and hasnt been reviewed in a long time  the reality of the world and at UN has changed, he told reporters.

He underscored that the ICSC is not supposed to be a cost-cutting machinery, but a technical department that calculates wages.

Union leaders insist the commission used faulty methodology in their recent cost of living calculations that triggered cuts in Geneva as well as steeper deductions in other duty stations, including Tokyo and Bangkok.

Moller warned the UNs competitiveness on the work market, was going to suffer.

It is a question of trust, he said.

He also rejected suggestions that he had personally tried to intimidate staff against striking.

I am not in the business of intimidating my own staff, he said, but clarified that he warned workers that their pay would be docked for time absent.

Prisca Chaoui, executive secretary of the Coordination Council of the UN staff in Geneva, insisted the strike was not over the loss of a few hundred francs.

Were fighting for a principle we really believe in, she told AFP.

UN operations in Geneva appeared to be running on Friday, including the final day of the Human Rights Council session, which was proceeding following a deal with translators who had joined a previous strike.Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont, wanted under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, left Finland for Belgium on Friday, a Finnish lawmaker who organised his visit to the Nordic country said.

Mikko Karna, an MP who hosted Puigdemont in Helsinki on Thursday and Friday for talks with lawmakers, said he had just received information that Carles Puigdemont departed from Finland yesterday evening by unknown means to Belgium, in a statement posted on Twitter.

Puigdemont confirmed to me today that in Belgium he will fully cooperate with authorities, Karna wrote.

Puigdemont is wanted by Spain on charges of rebellion and sedition.

Finnish police had said earlier Saturday they would comply with the European arrest warrant, but stressed they did not know Puigdemonts whereabouts.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said it could not confirm Karnas information.

We do not have official information regarding that This is what a member of parliament is saying, but we have no confirmation, NBI criminal inspector Hannu Kautta told AFP.Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont foiled attempts by Finnish police to arrest him under a European arrest warrant, after his lawyer confirmed on Saturday he had left the country.

Puigdemont, who lives in self-imposed exile in Belgium, had been visiting Finland since Thursday for talks with lawmakers.

Tensions are running high in Catalonia and separatist parties have abandoned plans to name a new president following the arrest of the latest candidate.

I confirm that President Puigdemont is no longer in Finland, his lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas tweeted Saturday, without stating where the former leader was.

Finnish MP Mikko Karna, one of the ousted leaders hosts in Finland, also said he had received information that Charles Puigdemont departed from Finland yesterday evening by unknown means to Belgium, in a statement posted on Twitter on Saturday.

Puigdemont confirmed to me today that in Belgium he will fully cooperate with authorities, Karna wrote, after earlier telling media that he had not been in touch with him since Friday.

Puigdemont is wanted by Spain on charges of rebellion and sedition.

Spain on Friday also issued international arrest warrants for five other separatists, including four former ministers who are also in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

 Wont escape arrest 

Separatist parties won regional elections in December called by Madrid after they attempted to secede and retained their absolute majority in parliament.

But they have still not been able to form a government and face growing legal pressures that have seen many moderate their tone.

With numerous leaders abroad or in jail, the separatists have struggled to re-organise or even remain in politics.

Finlands National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) confirmed earlier Saturday that it had received a European arrest warrant for a Spanish citizen visiting Finland, but did not know the persons whereabouts.

Weve had no contact with the person himself or his assistants, NBI criminal inspector Hannu Kautta told AFP.

Puigdemonts lawyer had earlier told Catalunya Radio his client would not try to escape arrest.

When the European arrest warrant was issued (a first time), he made himself available to the Belgian justice and police, and he would do the same thing now. I have not spoken to him yet but that is clear, yes, Cuevillas said.

 Fresh elections? 

Meanwhile in Barcelona, the Catalan parliament suspended its debates on Saturday after regional presidential candidate Jordi Turull, who had been due to seek a second-round vote in the parliament, was placed in custody over the regions breakaway bid.

The presidential candidate of the Generalitat (Catalan executive) is in prison with other lawmakers of this chamber, Catalan parliament speaker Roger Torrent said at the start of Saturdays session, which had been aimed at electing a new regional leader.

Its clear that under these circumstances the session cannot take place.

It is the third time that the parliament has been unable to nominate a new president, after Puigdemont and another pro-independence leader, Jordi Sanchez who is currently in jail, were forced to withdraw their candidacies.

If a new president is not elected by May 22, fresh elections will be triggered.

And as long has it does not have a government, Catalonia will remain under direct rule from Madrid, imposed after the independence declaration in October last year.Government is in advanced discussions with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to extend the oil palm project beyond Kalangala district.

Since the inception of the oil palm project in 2005, Kalangala, which is made of 84 islands, has been enjoying the monopoly of cultivating of oil palm in the country.

An oil palm field in Kalangala

After about 13 years of implementation of the first phase, IFAD and ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) are in discussions to extend the project to other districts across the country under the second phase of the project.

Under the second phase, which has been delayed by about 5 years, IFAD earmarked $53m for the project. The oil palm project will expand to Buvuma island in Mukono district where government already secured 5,600 hectares of land in 2011. The second phase will focus on oilseed development around four hubs (Lira, Eastern Uganda, Gulu and West Nile) covering 43 districts.

Speaking to The Observer in Kampala, IFAD country representative, Alessandro Marini, said the important issue is the projects impact on the rural communities.

The investment in Kalangala is almost through; we are not investing anymore in Kalangala. We are planning on an investment of ten years to cover another four investment hubs in Uganda, said Marini.

We are definitely considering replicating the success of Kalangala to the other districts in partnership with ministry of Agriculture and the private sector.

By September 2017, about 10,000 hectares of oil palm trees had been planted, with 6,500 hectares operated by Oil Palm Uganda Limited (OPUL) in the form of a nucleus estate. The remaining 3,500 hectares belong to 1,800 individual smallholders who sell their fresh fruit bunches to one of two local mills operated by OPUL.

As part of the project, government and IFAD established the Kalangala Oil Palm Growers Trust, for farmers to access credit. Current loans total $13 million to smallholder growers, and about $4 million has been paid back.

According to a 2018 Local Economy-wide Impact Evaluation of the Kalangala Oil Palm Project report, there has been a reduction in fishing activities and an increase in household income through oil palm production and business linkages.

Under the umbrella of the Vegetable Oil Development Project (VODP), promotion of oil palm production has been seen as a strategic effort to address high poverty rates and reduce Ugandas dependency on oil imports by increasing domestic production.

Prof Edward Taylor, lead researcher on the impact of the oil palm interventions in Kalangala, told us that a one-acre increase in oil palm increases income in Kalangala by Shs 2.2 million. To him, this impact implies the projects viability of. Taylor also attributed the reduction of fishing activities on the islands to oil palm growing.

R-L: Minister Vincent Ssempijja, IFAD country representative Alessandro Marini and researcher Prof Edward Taylor

Traditionally, fishing has been an extremely important activity in Kalangala, but it has been a troubled activity because Lake Victoria is being overfished and so the fish harvest has been decreasing, said Taylor.

What we found in our study is that as the mature fruit-bearing acreage of oil palm trees expands, people fish less.

A statistical analysis of the correlation between fishing and oil palm cultivation indicates a 28.8 per cent reduction in the likelihood of an individual participating in fishing activities once his or her household begins to harvest from oil palm groves (4 years after planting).

Asked as to whether emphasis on oil palm production would not create food insecurity, minister for Agriculture Vincent Bamulangaki Ssempijja said income from oil palm would help farmers to access food.

Food security has some connotation with income, although the agreement is that every farmer who joins the project of growing palm oil must retain two acres [to grow] food crops, says Ssempijja.

The first phase of the $35m project was funded by IFAD in partnership with the government of Uganda. The palm oil project in Kalangala was conceived in 1997 when IFAD approved the Vegetable Oil Development Project (VODP).

As a result, government in 2004 signed an agreement with OPUL, which brought on board private investors to partner with government to push the crop.

Originally, the total project cost was $60 million, consisting of an IFAD loan of $20 million, $33.1 million of co-financing from the private sector partner, $3.8 million from the government of Uganda and $3.1 million from beneficiaries.

However, due to an increase in the scale of the Oil Palm Subproject, the private investor and the government increased their contributions to $120 million and $12 million respectively, bringing the total cost to about $156 million.

A 2012 report titled Land, life and Justice: How land grabbing in Uganda is affecting the environment, livelihoods and food sovereignty of communities released by Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) pinned the oil palm project in Kalangala district for the growing deforestation.

The report noted that the oil palm project, which currently sits on 10,000 hectares of the islands land, has wiped away many trees. VODP maintains that none of the protected areas have been touched and even then, according to officials where some trees have been cut by farmers, they have replanted palm, which are also trees.

matsiko@observer.ugUS President Donald Trump on Saturday denounced an Islamist attack in France that claimed four lives, including that of a policeman hailed as a hero.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the horrible attack in France yesterday, and we grieve the nations loss, Trump tweeted.

We also condemn the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support. We are with you @EmmanuelMacron!

A gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group on Friday hijacked a car in Carcassonne, southwestern France, and shot the two people inside. The passenger was killed and the Portuguese driver was left in a critical condition.

He also shot and wounded a police officer out jogging.

In the nearby town of Trebes the gunman, Radouane Lakdim, 25, then holed up in a supermarket where he killed the supermarkets butcher and a customer.

Police Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, 45, took the place of a woman whom the gunman had been using as a human shield, but he shot and stabbed the officer, who died early Saturday from his wounds.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Beltrame died a hero.The maker of France's iconic TGV trains Alstom and German industrial leader Siemens signed on Friday an agreement on creating a global leader in the rail industry.

The Business Combination Agreement (BCA) sets the terms of combining Alstom with Siemens mobility business, including its rail traction drive business, after the two firms unveiled their plans last year.

With the signing of the BCA, we have reached an important milestone on the way to building a new leader capable of tackling the challenges of tomorrows mobility, said Henri Poupart-Lafarge, the chief executive of Alstom who will be the CEO of the new company, in a statement.

Roland Busch, a member of the management board of Siemens, is to serve as chairman of the board of directors of the combined entity, which is to be based in France.

Siemens will control 50 percent of Alstom immediately but will be blocked from taking a bigger than 50.5-percent stake for the four coming years.

Alstom trade unions objected to the merger, fearing job cuts and closures.

An Alstom-Siemens merger has been mooted for years and completes the transformation of the French group which sold off its energy business to American rival General Electric in 2015 for 9.5 billion euros.

The merger will create the worlds top firm for rail signalisation and the number two for building train carriages, which should help the firms face rising Chinese competition.

The merger is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Alstom employs 32,800 people worldwide while Siemens Mobility has 28,800 staff.

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NOTE: These settings will only apply to the browser and device you are currently using.Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned with a nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury along with her Russian ex-spy father, has been discharged from hospital, an official said Tuesday.

This is not the end of her treatment but marks a significant milestone, Salisbury hospitals deputy chief executive Christine Blanshard said.

She added that while Sergei Skripal, a former double agent who moved to Britain in 2010, is recovering more slowly than Yulia, we hope that he too will be able to leave hospital in due course.

The pair were found collapsed on a bench in the south-western city of Salisbury on March 4 in what British authorities have said was attempted murder by the Russian state.

Western allies backed Britain but Moscow strongly denied any involvement, prompting a furious international row.

Countries around the world expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats in response, prompting Moscow to launch its own expulsions.

 Moved to secure location 

The Skripals were both in a coma after the attack and there were initially fears they would not recover, but last week officials said they were both improving.

In a short statement issued through police last week, 33-year-old Yulia Skripal said: I woke up over a week ago now and am glad to say my strength is growing daily.

She said she had found the incident disorientating, without providing any further details on the attack.

The BBC reported that Yulia had been discharged on Monday and was moved to a secure location.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it was wonderful and wished her a full and speedy recovery, adding that he also hoped her father would recuperate quickly.

The Russian embassy in London also congratulated Yulia Skripal on her recovery, but raised questions about her movements now.

We need urgent proof that what is being done to her is done on her own free will, it tweeted.

Responded to reports that the pair may be resettled, it said: Secret resettlement of Mr and Ms Skripal, barred from any contact with their family will be seen as an abduction or at least as their forced isolation.

 Responded exceptionally well 

Police have said they believe the Skripals came into contact with the nerve agent at Sergei Skripals front door.

The former Russian military officer was recruited by British intelligence in the 1990s and later charged with treason in his own country.

However, he was pardoned in 2010 and moved to Britain as part of a spy swap between the United States and Russia.

His daughter was visiting at the time of the poisoning, the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War II.

British scientists have identified the chemical as the Soviet-designed Novichok, although the international Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has yet to verify this.

A police officer among the first at the scene in Salisbury was also hospitalised, but was released on March 22.

Blanshard said nerve agents work by attaching themselves to particular enzymes in the body, which then stop the nerves from functioning, leading to sickness and hallucinations.

Our job in treating the patients is to stabilise them, ensuring that they can breathe and that blood can continue to circulate, she said in a televised statement.

We then needed to use a variety of different drugs to support the patients until they could create more enzymes to replace those affected by the poisoning.

We also used specialised decontamination techniques to remove any residual toxins.

Both patients have responded exceptionally well to the treatment weve been providing. But equally both patients are at different stages in their recovery.Qantas on Saturday launched the first non-stop passenger service linking Australia and Europe, with a Boeing 787 Dreamliner departing Perth for London on one of the longest flights in the world.

The service makes Qantas one among a handful of airlines that operate on such long-distance intercontinental routes.

Here are some of the worlds longest flights:

Auckland to Doha  17 hr 40 min

Qatar Airways Flight 921 is currently the longest commercial journey in the world, flying passengers over 14,500 km (9,000 miles) from New Zealand to Qatar in nearly 18 hours on Boeing 777 airliners.

Auckland to Dubai  17 hr 20 min

Auckland is also the origin of Emirates Airline Flight 449, with Airbus A380 superjumbos travelling 14,200 km in 17 and a half hours to Dubai.

Perth to London  17 hr 20 min

The new Qantas service is the first regular link between Australia and Europe, with the airlines Boeing 787 planes connecting Perth and London in just over 17 hours. The 14,500-km route is part of the airlines ambitious plans to eventually connect Europe with airports on Australias eastern seaboard as new, more efficient aircraft become available.

Los Angeles to Singapore  17 hr 20 min

United Airlines launched its service connecting Los Angeles LAX airport to Singapore using 787s last year, saying the 14,100-km link would be the longest non-stop flight  in terms of distance  from the United States to anywhere in the world.

Houston to Sydney  17 hr 30 min

Uniteds 787s also connect Houston in the southern US to Australia, crossing 13,800 km in around 17 and a half hours.

Singapore to New York  19 hr

The longest flights operating today pale in comparison with Singapore Airlines Flight 22. The carrier flew Airbus A340 airliners from the city-state to New Yorks Newark airport  a journey of over 15,000 kilometres  from 2004 to 2013, when the service was suspended to cut costs. But the airline plans to restart flights on the route, using the ultra-long range version of the Airbus A350.British regulators finished searching the offices of Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the centre of a Facebook data scandal, before dawn on Saturday and said they would examine the evidence before considering "next steps".

After receiving a warrant from a judge, about 18 enforcement agents from the Information Commissioners Office entered the companys London offices at around 8:00 pm (2000 GMT) Friday.

Our investigators left the premises at about 03:00 am, a spokesman for the data watchdog said Saturday.

We will now need to assess and consider the evidence before deciding the next steps and coming to any conclusions.

This is one part of a larger investigation by the ICO into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors.

Cambridge Analytica, which worked on US President Donald Trumps election campaign, has been accused of illegally mining tens of millions of users Facebook data and using it to target potential voters.

The row has sparked a major crisis for Facebook, prompting investigations on both sides of the Atlantic and sending its share price plunging amid fears of additional regulation that could affect its business model.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has issued a public apology, admitting there had been a major breach of trust.

Cambridge Analytica received data harvested in an app developed by an independent University of Cambridge academic, which was downloaded by around 270,000 people but scooped up information on up to 50 million people.

It denies the data was used in the Trump campaign, and Facebook says it was used without its knowledge.

Questions are also being raised about Cambridge Analyticas role in Britains vote to leave the EU in 2016. It denies working on the campaign, but a former employee says it conducted data research for a key player, Leave.EU.

eg-ar/spmScottish author Philip Kerr, the creator of the Nazi-era thrillers featuring detective Bernie Gunther, has died at the age of 62, his wife and publisher have announced.

Kerr, who also wrote the best-selling young adults series Children of the Lamp under the pen name P B Kerr, died on Friday.

RIP beloved Philip Kerr. Creator of the wonderful BernieGunther. Genius writer and adored father and husband. 1956-2018, his wife Jane Thynne tweeted.

Fellow Scottish author Ian Rankin said he was numbed by the news, which was also confirmed by Kerrs publisher, Quercus Books.

His Bernie Gunther novels are extraordinary, a mix of great storytelling and brilliant research, with a believable (a)moral hero, Rankin tweeted.

Kerr had just published the 13th novel in the series about a tough-talking, wise-cracking, womanising detective, which had drawn comparisons with Raymond Chandler and his protagonist Philip Marlowe.

The first draft of a 14th book was also complete, due for publication next year.

Kerr blended fact and fiction in the books, set mostly in Berlin, as Gunther carried out investigations against the backdrop of the rise of the Nazis, whose reach he is always trying to escape.

Born in Edinburgh, Kerr studied law and philosophy at the University of Birmingham in central England, which drew his interest in Germany.

This led to his first visits to Berlin, which he said was not so much a city as a state of mind.

He initially worked as an advertising copywriter in London, including for Saatchi & Saatchi, where he wrote his first Bernie Gunther novel March Violets, which was published in 1989.

Another two followed, dubbed the Berlin Noir series, before a 15-year gap when he experimented with other styles, including science fiction.

Kerr wrote numerous childrens books, including the Children of the Lamp fantasy novels, which were translated into 35 different languages.

Writing childrens books is the only real secret of eternal youth I know; in order to write a good one, the author is obliged to get in touch with his inner 12-year-old, he said last year.The board of directors at Port San Antonio on Friday formally accepted the resignation of CEO and President Roland Mower, who resigned under pressure from board members who felt he wasnt aggressively promoting the port.

Board Chairwoman Victoria Garcia said an interim replacement could be named in a matter of days.

Mowers resignation as CEO is effective immediately. He will serve as special adviser to the board and continue to earn his $330,000-a-year salary until Dec. 31.

We sincerely thank Roland for his years of service to our organization and for the important contributions he has made as we serve an array of employers and as we drive our job-creation mission forward, Garcia, a managing partner of Bracewell LLPs San Antonio office who represents District 4, said in a statement.

The board met several hours in an executive session to discuss Mowers stepping down and have a robust and positive discussion about the ports near and long-term future, Garcia said.

We are in full agreement that our immediate need is naming an interim president and CEO, she said.

Mower submitted a letter of resignation to Chairwoman Victoria Garcia and Vice Chairman Victor Landa at a board meeting Tuesday morning.

He assumed the post in 2014 after terms as CEO of the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corp., the Research Valley Partnership in Bryan and the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp. near Fort Collins, Colo. He replaced retiring port CEO Bruce Miller.

The former home to Kelly AFB, the port was set up in the aftermath of the 1995 decision by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to close the San Antonio Air Logistics Center at Kelly and move some missions to the adjacent Lackland AFB. The port is a special redevelopment zone with a board thats appointed by the City Council.

The 1,900-acre campus is the regions largest industrial port with 70-plus employers  including Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics and Standard Aero  that employ more than 12,000 people. Military personnel still make up a large part of the ports workforce. While the port has brought on new business  such as a 20-year lease agreement with Bangalore, India-based Indo-MIM  during the past decade it has been rocked by layoffs in what had been a key aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul hub.

The ports revenue in fiscal year 2017, which ended Sept. 30, was reported at $33.8 million. Revenue has steadily declined since fiscal year 2013, when the port brought in $42.8 million from leases and projects. In the five years prior to 2013, revenue held above $40 million.

As we continue in our work, our finances remain strong, Garcia said. At this very moment our team is completing $60 million in development projects that will bring over 300,000 square feet of new spaces beginning this spring to accommodate additional jobs in these industry sectors. At the same time, we are adding 300 new residences that will help grow the vibrancy of the neighborhoods around us.

One of Mowers biggest initiatives at the port was to bring 5,000 new jobs there by 2020, a plan he trumpeted in September 2015. The port has since added about 1,500 jobs.

Mower also oversaw the 90,000-square-foot, $20 million Project Tech initiative, aimed as the first step in a more than half-million-square-foot office-space development tailored toward cybersecurity firms wanting high-security space.

In May, city voters approved an $850 million bond package that included $24 million for drainage infrastructure at the port.

Mowers most recent performance review may have held hints that board members were disgruntled with his leadership. Mower had been asked to take more control of decision-making within the port, said Marc Whyte, a lawyer who represents District 10.

We felt like there was perhaps too many people sort of doing their own thing  we needed more cohesion amongst the leadership team there at the port, Whyte said. The left hands got to know what the right hands doing and vice versa at all times so everybodys on the same page.

We need somebody whos willing to be out front and to be the face of the economic development thats going on down there. We need a bigger, bolder vision, and I dont think we have that.

Key parts of the job description for the interim CEO were laid out in in Garcias statement.

That person will be a proven and results-oriented leader with extensive talent and experience in economic development and job-creation, she said. He or she should also have a deep understanding of the strategic support that our customers require as they pursue opportunities that are regional, national and global in scope and that create jobs in our community.

She said the pick would have a deep knowledge of our community, our organization and the strategic framework that is already in place as we continue to move forward with creating 5,000 new jobs between 2016 and 2020.

The board during the meeting established a process to review the credentials of highly qualified individuals who meet all these criteria, Garcia said. We are moving forward with full expediency to have an interim president and CEO in place as soon as possible  in a matter of days.A Kansas grand jury has charged New Braunfels-based Schlitterbahn Waterparks along with a former company executive with involuntary manslaughter in the 2016 decapitation death of a 10-year-old at its Kansas park.

Caleb Thomas Schwab  son of Kansas state Rep. Scott Schwab  died Aug. 7, 2016 while riding the 168-foot Verruckt slide at Schlitterbahns Kansas City park.

On Friday, a Wyandotte County grand jury indicted the New Braunfels water park company and Tyler Austin Miles, former director of operations at Schlitterbahn, on one count of involuntary manslaughter, 12 counts of aggravated battery, five counts of aggravated endangerment of a child and one count of interfering with law enforcement by concealing evidence.

Miles, 29, was also charged with allegedly giving false information to a detective.

Miles pleaded not guilty to the charges during a court hearing Friday afternoon after turning himself in Friday morning to the Wyandotte County Sheriffs Office in Kansas City, according to a news release from the Kansas attorney generals office.

A spokeswoman for Schlitterbahn Waterparks did not immediately have a comment on the indictment Friday afternoon. A lawyer representing Miles did not immediately return an email requesting comment.

The grand jury indictment says officials who designed, built and operated the Verruckt slide, named for the German word for insane, knew it was a deadly weapon when they allowed Schwab to get into the raft that later went airborne and decapitated him.

The indictment alleges that officials rushed the design and construction of the Verruckt waterslide. Also, the indictment says operators were aware of at least 13 other injuries  including two concussions  on the ride and that the specific raft Caleb was on went abnormally fast and would go airborne more frequently than other rafts.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, whose office is prosecuting the case, said the indictments also involve injuries suffered by 13 other people, including four children, who rode on the slide.

Caleb Schwabs family reached settlements of nearly $20 million with Schlitterbahn and various companies associated with the design and construction of the waterslide. The two women who rode with Caleb suffered serious injuries and settled claims with Schlitterbahn for an undisclosed amount.The Commerce Ministry's investigation arm DGAD said it is terminating its anti-dumping probe on imports of solar cells from China, Taiwan and Malaysia.

The Indian Solar Manufacturers Association has made a request to terminate the present investigation, it added.

The probe was initiated by the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) on July 21 last year following complaints of dumping of the product by the association.

"The authority is constrained to terminate the present antidumping investigation concerning imports of 'solar cells whether or not assembled partially or fully in modules or Panels or on glass or some other suitable substrates'," from these countries, DGAD said in a notification.

The domestic industry has cited certain reasons for its request to terminate the probe. They have stated that post-initiation, the injury being suffered by the domestic producers on account of dumping has aggravated sharply.

Besides, the industry has said that the imports of the cells from these countries have increased substantially in the recent period.

The period of investigation covers April 2016 to June 2017 (15 months).

The directorate, however, noted that "the reason cited by the domestic industry for termination of the petition is devoid of any merit".

But it said Rule 14(a) of the anti-dumping rules does not grant any discretion to the DGAD in the matter of termination of investigation, once the domestic industry files a written request for termination of the probe.

Anti-dumping duties are levied to provide a level playing field to local industry by guarding against cheap below-cost imports.

Increasing imports and dumping of goods from China have always been an area of concern for Indian companies. India's exports to China were only USD 10.2 billion in 2016-17 but imports aggregated to USD 61.3 billion.

DGAD is also probing dumping of several other products such as certain chemicals and steel products from China and other countries.

India is one of the most attractive markets for global producers due to its large middle class population.

Imposition of anti-dumping duty is permissible under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) regime. Both India and China are members of the Geneva-based body.

The duty is aimed at ensuring fair trading practices and creating a level-playing field for domestic producers vis-a-vis foreign producers and exporters.After a harassment claim against Edgewood Independent School Districts superintendent was deemed credible by an outside investigation, the districts state-appointed board of managers asked for his resignation and accepted it Thursday night.

Board president Roy Soto said Emilio Castro resigned Monday, effective March 31. Castro will be paid his salary through that date, along with 15 days of accrued leave.

The board acted after receiving an update on the investigation this month, Soto said. The board Thursday also voted to keep Philip Chavez, Edgewoods chief academic officer, as interim superintendent as it searches for a new top leader.

Chavez took over Castros duties Feb. 23, when the superintendent was put on paid leave. A district employee had reported inappropriate physical advances by Castro to police and the districts human resources department.

We felt that, just based on the update, that the witness, the individual who made the allegation, was credible, Soto said. Theres some factors that surfaced  (that indicated to the board) that its probably a good conversation to discuss the resignation. Once that conversation began, the superintendent felt also that it was in everyones best interest that he go ahead and resign.

According to a police report, the 46-year-old woman said Castro had run his hand across the back of her neck and would not let go of her during a handshake. Amanda Gonzalez, a former Edgewood board member, told the San Antonio Express-News last month that she also had been the recipient of inappropriate behavior by Castro, to the point where she avoided one-on-one meetings and sitting next to him.

Soto said the district has been very transparent and moved very quickly in responding to the allegations, but it has not released the results of the investigation, conducted by Houston-based law firm Rogers, Morris & Grover.

Some of these things are client-attorney-privileged items, he said. When youre dealing with sensitive items like harassment, you have to consider the sensitivity of the person who made the allegation, you have to consider the sensitivity of any witnesses that might have been interviewed.

Attorneys for Castro and the district negotiated the separation agreement, Soto said. The arrangement drew criticism from state Sen. Jose Menendez, who said the board would have been seen as strong and acting on behalf of the community if they had terminated (Castro), effective immediately.

If the investigation had findings that showed that he was guilty of what he was accused of, then theres no reason to keep on paying the person, Menendez said.

He said the findings, as well as the investigations cost to the district, should be made public, with names redacted if necessary, and that he planned to raise the need for more transparency and community involvement at Edgewood with Texas Education Agency officials next week.

Castro was hired in December 2016 under a contract that was set to expire in December 2019. The board had been appointed by the state earlier in 2016 after Edgewoods elected board spent months in a 3-3 deadlock, unable to fill a vacant board seat or make other key decisions.

Because Castro led the district for less than two years, the Texas Association of School Boards search service, which conducted the search that led to his hiring, will do another one at no cost to the district.

Soto said it is possible that Edgewood could have a new superintendent in place before the start of the next school year. Castros departure is disappointing, but the district is not defined by one person, he said.

Its easy to speak about the troubles that Edgewood has had, Soto said. But if you look at where Edgewood is operationally, were in a very strong place.The federal appeals court in Georgia has paved the way for the deportation of a man from Ghana being held in a South Texas detention center whos part of a lawsuit challenging the length of time the federal government holds asylum seekers.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday lifted the stay of deportation it had issued for Sadat Ibrahim, who has been in detention since he requested asylum two years ago at an international port of entry in California. Ibrahim and others are alleging that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps asylum seekers in conditions that interfere with their ability to effectively present their cases to immigration judges.

Alicia Perez, one of Ibrahims lawyers, said an ICE officer told her client Friday morning that hell be put on a commercial flight to Ghana in the coming days.

Local immigration activists are asking ICE to hold off on deporting Ibrahim while the appellate court decides a request to reopen his case, and Amnesty International on Friday launched an online campaign to convince ICE to let him stay in the U.S.

U.S. authorities are seeking to forcibly return Sadat to Ghana, where he faces human rights violations by police and the groups he fled, the Amnesty International statement reads. Sadat must immediately be released on parole pending the resolution of his asylum claim, and under no circumstances be deported to Ghana.

ICE wouldnt say when Ibrahim might be deported, but said in a statement: Once an immigration removal order becomes final and there are no bars to removal, ICE makes travel arrangements as expeditiously as possible.

In an interview earlier this year at the facility in Pearsall where he was being held, Ibrahim, who is gay, said staff at a detention center in Georgia didnt tell him his family had sent him a CD containing video vigilantes attacking his partner, who was recorded outing Ibrahim, when he had his asylum hearing before an immigration judge. Ibrahim said he would face persecution if he returned to Ghana.

Perez said shes requested another stay and attached recent news articles showing men are being prosecuted in Ghana under a law punishing homosexuality.

A judge ordered Ibrahim removed in August 2016 and the Board of Immigration Appeals denied his attempt to reopen his case. The 11th Circuit had stayed his deportation while it heard his appeal of the earlier decisions. The appellate court hasnt yet ruled on whether it will tell a judge to rehear Ibrahims asylum request, his lawyer said.

The irony of Ibrahims case, immigration lawyers said, is that if hed crossed the border illegally and been arrested before requesting asylum, he would have been allowed to ask an immigration judge to grant him bond.

Under U.S. immigration law, if someone requests asylum at a port of entry, ICE decides whether to parole that person into the country, and their decision cannot be reviewed by a judge.Retired Air Force Reserve Col. Bob Certain had often wondered what path to take in life  others noticed it even when he said little. The slow-motion nudge he got on his final combat mission helped settle the question.

He had long thought of becoming a minister. But busy, focused and never quite ready to commit, Certain put off the decision. But things were beginning to change even before Dec. 18, 1972, when his B-52G was hit by two surface-to-air missiles over Hanoi during the Vietnam War.

On Friday morning, he looked back on that mission, his 100th aboard the fabled Stratofortress, before a crowd at the Missing Man Monument at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, saying he was pleased to be with the men who kept their honor as we lived in the hardships of incarceration in Vietnam.

Like his future path to the day he would officiate at President Gerald Fords funeral, Certains ejection from the bomber seemed to take forever. But it was only a split second before he was tumbling in the night sky under a full moon, enveloped in darkness yet ultimately headed toward the light of his faith.

I think it was God doing it. I thought it was kind of strange until I started reading the Bible and realizing that it seemed like everybody that God called  they all had arguments with God, Certain, 70, of San Antonio, said in an interview. So I wasnt so unique after all, and I think in the Bible its fairly common for people to sense this call from God and say, That cant be happening.

He was at Randolph for the 45th annual Freedom Flyer Reunion, which salutes the return of 684 U.S. prisoners from Vietnam in 1973, almost half of them airmen.

Now Playing: Retired Air Force Reserve Col. Bob Certain and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Hector Acosta, both of San Antonio, make their 'fini' flight Thursday aboard T-38 supersonic jets that flew over the San Antonio area. The flights, which traditionally end with family and friends spraying the pilots and navigators with champagne, are given each year to former POWs as part of the Air Force's Freedom Flyer Reunion at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. Video courtesy of the Air Force Video: San Antonio Express-News

Dozens of former Vietnam prisoners of war were on hand to hear Certain, who had made his champagne flight a day earlier along with retired Air Force Lt. Col. Hector Acosta, a San Antonio native and St. Marys University graduate. They sat in the back seats of a pair of T-38 jets that flew over South Texas in a four-plane formation.

The flight, a final, celebratory cap to their aviation careers, ended with Certain and Acosta being sprayed by other freedom flyers with champagne. A third former prisoner, retired Air Force Lt. Col. James W. Williams of Atlanta, got his fini flight Friday.

Retired Air Force Col. Harold Smitty Harris, 88, of Tupelo, Mississippi, watched with his wife. He recalled learning a long-forgotten 25-letter tap code while in survival training and then teaching it to prisoners in Hanoi after he was shot down in his F-105 Thunderchief on April 4, 1965.

The taps started with something like a knock on the door. Five raps on the wall was a call to start a conversation. Two was the response.

I just happened to be an early shoot-down and showed it to three other guys, and it spread like wildfire, said Harris, who was jailed in a section of the Hanoi Hilton called Heartbreak Hotel.

Certain was 25 when he flew his last mission, and he had flown in combat since 1971 as a B-52 navigator-bombardier. He had been scheduled to fly home from Guam that day but flew 13 hours west instead, his plane carrying more than two dozen bombs destined for a Hanoi rail yard. His return to the U.S. had been delayed by Operation Linebacker II, the Christmas bombings that ran from Dec. 18 to 29, 1972, aimed to pressure North Vietnam to end the war.

His Stratofortress, skippered by Col. Donald L. Rissi, closed on the target. The bomb bay doors opened, and Certain, then a captain, had started his stopwatch when a blast rocked the plane. Fire broke out near a tank containing 10,000 gallons of jet fuel. The bombs were released early. Rissi, who also should have been going home, was dying. The B-52s co-pilot, 1st Lt. Robert J. Thomas, and gunner, Master Sgt. Walt Ferguson, also would die.

Certain survived. Things had changed in North Vietnam by the time he arrived in Cu Loc prison, which he and others called the Zoo. Like all POWs, he had been trained to foil interrogations, to give worthless information or lie when at the breaking point under torture. Captivity over the years often was brutal, with acts of defiance dealt with harshly.

But their treatment was far better that winter as the war neared its end. Certain said the torture of prisoners stopped after Ho Chi Minh died in 1969. The cabbage and pumpkin soup and the half loaf of French bread in their rations now was supplemented by canned pork, beef and fish from the Soviet Union. Once they even had soybean cookies.

In his cell, Certain did a lot of thinking over his 100 days as a prisoner. He began to lead Sunday services at the urging of other POWs.

It brought Certain closer to the seminary, something he had considered when he was attending church as a teenager twice on Sundays, with a prayer meeting on Wednesday nights. At the time, such a career felt scary to me, and odd, and he had backed off, he said. Still, about every other year after that, Certain said, I would come back to this strong sense that thats what I really ought to be doing and I would struggle against it again  and the last time was the summer of 72.

Prison simply enabled his choice. But he now knows he was heading there in any case.

Had I not been a POW, I would have probably chosen to leave the Air Force when my commitment was up and go to seminary after that, Certain said.

Once freed, the Air Force gave him his pick of assignments, but he had other plans. He entered the seminary and later joined the Air Force Reserve. A parish priest in Episcopal churches across the U.S. and the author of Unchained Eagle, From Prisoner of War to Prisoner of Christ, Certain for a time was the rector at Fords church during the former presidents retirement years in California.

They became friends. Certain helped plan and officiate Fords funeral in Michigan.

One of their more memorable conversations centered over the acquisition of a ladder from the former U.S. Embassy in Saigon, used by those climbing to the buildings rooftop, where helicopters evacuated them as South Vietnams capital fell in 1975. The Saigon staircase, as the former president called it in a 1999 speech, was put on display at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.

Ford was president when North Vietnam won the war. His wife, Betty, wondered why he wanted the ladder, Certain said.

Its a sign of our failure in Vietnam, he recalled her saying. And President Ford said, No, its a sign of humans striving for freedom.Guards at an immigrant detention center in West Texas were spoiling for fights with their charges, heaping verbal abuse and threats on them and delivering beatings and using pepper spray indiscriminately, two men held at the facility said.

The West Texas Detention Facility in Sierra Blanca, which is operated by Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections under a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was criticized this week in a report by immigration rights groups. Theyre asking the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to look into allegations that immigrants from Africa were physically assaulted, called racial slurs and denied medical care.

Guled Muhumed, a Somalia immigrant who said he came to the U.S. in 1996 when he was 9 years old, said hes been in nine detention centers since he was arrested by ICE six months ago. But nowhere did he encounter the harsh and violent treatment he faced in the Sierra Blanca center, Muhumed said in a phone interview from another facility in Robstown.

On the first or second day, one of the Somali guys was thrown on the floor. Another guy, he was jumped by four or five officers because he talked back to them, Muhumed said. The day that we were leaving, a guy in front of me who was shackled was beaten too, because he told them the handcuffs were too tight.

These officers at West Texas were anxious to do something to us. Anytime one of us speaks out, says something in the hallway, they would get in the persons face and tell them be quiet, shut up, he added. You go there with your own eyes, you can see the officers, these are young officers, they look like theyre on steroids, theyre buff, big guys.

The report released by the San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, the Texas A&M School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic and the University of Texas School of Law Immigration Clinic is based on interviews with 30 Somali immigrants and alleges that, during a brief stay at the West Texas Detention Facility in late February and early March, about 80 men from Africa were subjected to brutal conditions.

In a statement, ICE said it takes very seriously any allegations of misconduct or unsafe conditions.

ICE maintains a strict zero tolerance policy for any kind of abusive behavior and requires all staff working with the agency to adhere to this policy, the statement reads. All allegations are independently reviewed by ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility. ICE has not been made aware of any allegations prior to this initial reporting from RAICES.

LaSalle Corrections did not respond to requests for comment.

Muhumed also described what he said was an indiscriminate use of pepper spray. On one occasion, guards sprayed dozens of people in a sleeping area because two detainees were fighting. On another occasion, he said, an ICE officer instigated a tense situation by insulting and cursing at the detainees.

The ICE officer left and detention center staff again filled the sleeping area with pepper spray while the detainees were menaced by Hudspeth County sheriffs deputies with shotguns, Muhumed said. On both occasions, the guards were behind a gate that protected them from the detainees.

The Hudspeth County Sheriffs Office did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

During the second pepper spray incident, Muhumed said, he tried to drag a man who was vomiting and struggling to breathe up to the gate so he could receive medical attention.

When we brought him to the gate one of the officers cocked his shotgun right at me and one of the other guys, and one of the shells from the shotgun fell on the floor, he said. I didnt understand what was the point of him doing that. His life was not in danger. None of the other officers ... was in danger. The door was closed. It was locked.

Abdilahih Mohamed, 36, also from Somalia, said he witnessed the pepper spray incidents as well.

They did a whole lot of threatening and pushing and shoving around, enticing people to get aggressive and fight, but we never did anything to them, he said So when the Macing had started, the officers were definitely not threatened. This was just one of the captains and leaders of the jail trying to show his manhood.

Mohamed said he was menaced by a guard, who threatened to gouge him with a key. After about a week in detention, as the shackled detainees were loaded onto a bus for transportation to another facility, a group of LaSalle employees stalked between the seats trying to goad the men into talking back and threatened them with a pepper spray canister, Mohamed said.

When we went inside the bus, there was four or five six officers came onto the bus, screaming at us, saying, Say something, he said. They lifted up the guys glasses and held it right up to his eye and said, Say something.

Immigrant rights advocates involved in the report said the abuses reported by detainees were extreme for immigration detention centers.

These are very severe abuses even compared to the types of things Ive seen in other detention centers in terms of the level of physical assault that we saw, Fatma Marouf, a law professor and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M University, said during a Friday conference call with reporters. Nearly half of the people we talked to have been assaulted by officers. And so that is quite extreme.

The men are not being held because theyre charged with a crime, but because they are facing deportation, a civil court proceeding, said Jonathan Ryan, the executive director of San Antonio-based RAICES. Immigration detention centers are not intended to be in any way a punitive environment, Ryan said.

It is expressly for the purpose of enforcing immigration laws, but what weve heard about here, what these individuals have suffered and seen is, its far beyond a punitive environment and into the territory of an outright criminal and persecutory one, he said.

Convictions led to detention

Muhumed said about 30 Somalis were transferred in early March to the Coastal Bend Detention Center in South Texas. Initially the men were kept under tight security, apparently a result of reports from officials in Sierra Blanca, but after a few weeks without incident theyre under fewer restrictions, he said. Theyre still only allowed one hour of exercise a day, Muhumed said.

He said his family fled Somalias civil war in the 1990s, eventually coming to the U.S. He was allowed to enter the country on a refugee visa, but never received a green card and was later convicted on drug charges and couldnt become a citizen. Muhumed said hes turned his life around and teaches at his mosque and helped found a program for teens in his Minnesota community to stay out of trouble.

Hes now married with a daughter whos about to turn 2 years old and his wife is pregnant, Muhumed said. Last year, as he went to take his daughter to day care in the morning, he found ICE officers waiting outside his apartment. They took him into custody, and began shifting him around detention centers, apparently in preparation for deporting him to Somalia.

Mohamed said he came to the U.S. as a child as well. Many of his family members are now U.S. citizens, but Mohamed never naturalized and lost his green card after a drug possession conviction in 2009. He said he signed paperwork that he believed allowed him to stay in the U.S. as long as he regularly checked in with ICE, but almost a decade later is facing deportation.

Hes afraid of going back to Somalia, Mohamed said. Islamic militants target those who have lived in the U.S. and Europe and hes heard stories about men with tattoos having an arm cut off. If hes deported, Mohamed said, hell be leaving behind a wife and two children.

I was working doing framing work, and they took my life away and brought me here, and now theyre taking me to a country where I dont have a word, I dont know a single person, he said. Everybody makes mistakes, but I feel like that little mistakes been following me since I was 25 and caught that little drug charge.

Beaten down

Muhumed said that after his treatment in West Texas, spending months apart from his family and being shuffled from detention center to detention center, hes ready to give up and accept deportation to Somalia.

Im doing this to let everyone know whats going on with this treatment thats going on here, everything that we went through. I dont want anyone else to go through the same process, the same torture, he said.

Personally, I dont want to stay anymore. I did, but not anymore after what Ive been seeing lately. The country we grew up with, we loved, its not the same anymore. Especially with this new administration and this hate thats going around. Its not somewhere that we can feel comfortable or that we can feel safe as Somali or African, as a Muslim, as black.

His U.S. citizen wife, Layla Jama, who was on the same conference call, said afterward that the separation from his family has been incredibly difficult for Muhumed.

Hes talking out of frustration right now, but obviously the conditions in Somalia are a hundredfold worse than what is here, Jama said. A lot of what Guleds saying right now, specifically its coming out of frustration. Its been a long battle  but I dont think he means it.

ICE has found it difficult to deport immigrants to Somalia, where the militant group Al-Shabab is trying to overthrow the government, said Marouf, the A&M professor. She said thats likely part of the reason the Somali men have been shuffled from detention center to detention center for months.

I dont think they really have a plan for how to remove all of them, so theyre indefinitely in detention, Marouf said. If deportation isnt foreseeable, theyre supposed to release someone. And they keep scheduling flights and saying removal is foreseeable, but they keep canceling the flights.

Several family members of the men in detention told reporters Friday that the men felt pressured to sign agreements to leave the U.S. Meanwhile, the wives and fiances of several said their husbands have been denied medical care and complaints about their treatment had been ignored.

Shantel Ismail, whose husband, Mohamed Ismail, was held in the West Texas facility, said she spoke to him on the phone one time and heard in the background the screams of a man who needed medical attention. Her husband hasnt seen his infant daughter for months and has considered accepting deportation and trying to reunite with his family in another country, said Ismail, a nurse in Ohio.

Hes just defeated at this point. His rights are being taken from him. Hes being mistreated. Hes been beaten and handcuffed, she said. Theyve beaten these men down so much they dont have anything left.Outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been mentioned as a possible candidate to replace retiring University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven, sources confirmed Friday.

Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil chairman who joined the Trump administration last year, was fired by President Donald Trump last week as part of an ongoing shake-up of his administration. Trump has nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him.

Tillerson, 66, is a 1975 civil engineering graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.

Two sources familiar with the matter said Tillersons name has circulated in recent days among UT regents who are looking for a replacement for McRaven, who is set to retire in the coming months.

Other sources said a search committee is early in its process of selecting candidates and that no interviews have been scheduled. The UT System said any names mentioned as potential replacements for McRaven are speculative at best.

Tillersons name as a possible candidate was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Senior high-ranking UT officials have been asked for potential names of candidates, one person said, adding that there are no front-runners. The UT System regents hired Russell Reynolds Associates last month to assist with the search.

Trump abruptly tweeted news of Tillersons firing March 13 after months of clashes and conflict on issues from North Korea to climate change to the response to the race riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. The president later explained to reporters that he and Tillerson just disagreed on things.

The firing ended a fraught relationship between the men and Tillersons difficult transition from imperial CEO to public servant. Tillerson quickly alienated career diplomats as he tried to remake the State Department into the image of a Fortune 500 company while chafing at Trumps style, policies and pronouncements  at one point reportedly describing Trump as a moron.

McRaven, who has served as chancellor since 2015, said in December that he would step down from the system by the end of the academic year. The 1977 UT-Austin grad attributed his decision to his health.

The retired Navy admiral was credited with overseeing the special operation that tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

But his plans to buy land and open a new campus in Houston touched off a political firestorm that eventually drew opposition from Gov. Greg Abbott and legislative leaders  and soured their support of his leadership of the UT System.

Regents have said they hope to replace him this year, well before the next legislative session begins in January 2019.

Staff and administrators at the UT System Administration or at UT institutions are not involved in the search process for the Chancellor, nor are we apprised of the names of any candidates or potential candidates, UTs vice chancellor for external relations, Randa Safady, said in a statement.

Nobody other than the members of the search advisory committee have confirmed knowledge of the names of candidates under consideration.

Tillerson was a speaker at the UT-Austin campus in February, when he delivered a speech about U.S. engagement in the Western Hemisphere.WASHINGTON  Smarting over lack of border wall funding for 2018, President Donald Trump on Friday accused Democrats in Congress of forsaking the 700,000 young immigrants now in legal limbo after he ordered an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

I do want the Hispanic community to know and DACA recipients to know that Republicans are much more on your side than Democrats, who are using you for their own purposes, Trump said.

Trump, speaking after signing the newly passed $1.3 trillion spending bill, was referring to the refusal by Democrats in Congress to accept short-term protection for DACA recipients in return for allocating $25 billion over 10 years for expanding the wall along the border with Mexico.

Instead, the spending bill appropriated $1.6 billion for border construction through September, stipulating that much of that money was for fencing, most of it where fencing already exists.

The presidents words of blame triggered a social media firestorm, with tens of thousands of people taking to Twitter to assert that it was the president who killed DACA and who now is fighting to set aside court injunctions keeping parts of the program alive.

President Trump is the one who cut off DACA, so his words are a joke, said San Antonio Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, capturing the essence of social media reaction.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-San Antonio, described the presidents assertion as error-ridden and phony as his tweets.

In a statement Doggett said: The president chose to unnecessarily end DACA. No one is stopping him from extending it to protect Dreamers now. Speaker (Paul) Ryan (R-Wis.) has repeatedly refused a House vote on alternative bipartisan proposals to resolve this. Yesterday, House Republicans blocked a vote on the DREAM Act for the 26th time.

Echoed Laredo Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar: The President dismantled DACA and now wants to blame Democrats, and that isn't how it works. We are the ones waiting on him, not the other way around. Democrats did not cause this problem and  at this point  are the only ones actively trying to fix it."

The president, citing benefits for the military, signed the newly passed spending legislation after threatening to veto it  a veto that would have generated chaos with the government shutting down at midnight Friday and Congress out of Washington for a two-week recess.

On his Twitter account, Trump wrote that he was considering vetoing the appropriations based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.

Five hours later, Trump summoned reporters to the White House to announce that he had signed the ridiculous legislation.

I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again, Trump said, adding that he will press for a line-item veto  an executive tool that the Supreme Court two decades ago ruled unconstitutional.

The $1.3 trillion legislation, approved by the Senate in the early morning hours Friday, included the biggest increase for defense in 15 years  $654.6 billion in Pentagon discretionary spending power, a $61.6 billion increase over last year.

The bill also contained an array of nondefense appropriations that ballooned the budget and set the government on a path for $2 trillion more debt in coming years. Fiscal hawks responded with outrage on conservative media outlets the president monitors.

My highest duty is to keep America safe, the president said in a meandering, 20-minute appearance in the Diplomatic Reception Room.

There are a lot of things that we shouldnt have had in this bill, but we were, in a sense, forced  if we want to rebuild our military  we were forced to have, the president said.

Trump ticked off a string of authorized Pentagon purchases, adding somewhat superficial assessments of each. Among them: $2.9 billion for 18 KC-46 tanker aircraft (the tanker aircraft is very important based on everything); and $1.7 billion for 10 P-8A Poseidon aircraft (incredible stuff.)

The president described the next steps in his quest to build a wall: Were going to be starting work, literally, on Monday, on not only some new wall  not enough, but were working that very quickly  but also on fixing existing walls and existing acceptable fences.

He added: Theres some areas that you have to see through. You have to be able to see through the other side in order to see whats coming. And in many cases, its not a pretty picture when you look.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who accompanied Trump, expressed some of the presidents frustration.

Its unfortunate that Congress chose not to listen to the men and women of DHS and those on the front lines. They told us how to build the wall, where to build the wall, she said.Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff has compared charges of corruption leveled by his challenger in the November election to the lies of President Donald Trump.

A more equivalent Washington counterpart to Bexar County Probate Judge Tom Rickhoff, though, is Rep. Louie Gohmert, a reliably kooky congressman and fellow Republican with a similar predilection for producing ornately bewildering flowcharts.

In Gohmerts case, the flowchart was unveiled last year to Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. Gohmert wanted Sessions to investigate the sale of Uranium One, a mining company, to Russias nuclear energy agency  a bogus scandal that conservatives have batted about to distract from former FBI director Robert Muellers investigation into Russian election meddling.

Weve got a chart here that shows just how integral the relationship is with (Deputy Attorney General Rod) Rosenstein, Mr. Mueller, into this whole Uranium One thing, Gohmert told Sessions. It sure stinks to high heaven, and it doesnt appear to me they ought to be involved in investigating.

Rather than incriminating, Gohmerts illustration was confounding: a labyrinth of looping lines and inane connections. Barack Obama, for instance, appears twice  and Obama, in case you were not previously aware, is connected to Obama.

Handed out to media this week at a press conference (along with a 43-page screed against the county), Rickhoffs chart is equally perplexing. A soup of graphics and fonts, it purports to show a web of waste and corruption emanating from Bexar County Commissioners Court  Wolff, naturally, is at the center  via a cacophony of ricocheting arrows. (Appending flow to the chart would be an insult to flowing.)

It is Nelsons fault, Rickhoff told reporters. He is the county judge and he is the one corrupting the court.

When I noted the resemblance to Gohmerts chart, Rickhoff said, I dont ever want to hear his name.

It reminded me of a mattress ad, he added approvingly of his own design.

Rickhoff has good cause to steer clear of comparisons to Gohmert. The Tyler congressman is infamous for kooky conspiracy theories, including his claim in 2010 that pregnant undocumented women were crossing the border to give birth to terror babies with U.S. citizenship.

The explosions will not happen for 10, 15, 20 years, he yelled at CNNs Anderson Cooper at the time. The evidence abounds. Its called birth tourism, and the only way its not happening is if you can convince America that the people who sent engineers to look at the plans and specs for the World Trade Center are more stupid than those entreprenuers in China and Mexico who are sending people in here to have babies.

Unfortunately for Rickhoff, the judges own dizzying rant at the press conference often sounded downright Gohmertian. (Incidentally, Gohmert was a district judge before he joined the U.S. House of Representatives.)

Were subsidizing the symphony, Rickhoff complained at one point. I used to have a great French horn player hosted at my house, one of the finest in the world, so Im not against the symphony, Im against the county pulling them out of trouble every time they get in trouble.

And auditioning ballets that cost $160,000 for one performance, he continued, and giving money to music around the world or across the bridges or  what the heck is that?  bridges around the world, it was one Russian piano player came in and played, and they said, Well, maybe we were gonna send some poor kids over there. Poor kids dont want to go to the Alameda Theater! They dont want to go to some Russian piano player! Theyre gonna be on the internet. Anyway.

Russian piano player, fortunately, does not appear as a nefarious figure in Rickhoffs flowchart. Unfortunately, the election is seven months away  plenty of time for more flowcharts.The Ghana Health Service (GHS) on Thursday warned that the country could lose the battle against Tuberculosis (TB) control, if the right leadership and commitment are not mobilised towards the eradication of the disease.



Dr Frank Bonsu, the Programme Manager of the National TB Control Programme (NTCP), who sounded the note of caution, at a durbar to commemorate the 2018 World TB Day in Accra, said the gains achieved so far could be eroded.



The current fear, he said arises from the fact that TB case notification have been declining in the last four years, saying in 2017 the country recorded 14,550 new cases, which was down from the 2013 new notified cases from 15,606.



There was also a decline in TB reported cases in all regions with the exception of Western, Upper East and Brong Ahafo regions, however, Greater Accra, Ashanti, Eastern and Western, continued to record exceptionally high number of cases.



According to him, the expected annual number of reported TB cases countrywide was 44,000 on the average, but the national treatment success average was 85.2 per cent, which felled short of the GHSs ambitious set target of 90 per cent.



The annual event, which falls on March 24, on the global theme Wanted: Leaders for TB-Free Ghana. End TB, is being marked in Ghana under the local theme: Wanted: Leaders for TB-Free Ghana, to encourage voluntary leadership and multi-stakeholder support to eradicate the disease by 2030.



The year-long event is being orgainsed in collaboration with the Ghana Journalists Association.



Dr Bonsu said financing mechanisms to support treatment adherence by patients were no longer available, leading to poor treatment supervision and ultimately increases in drug resistant TB, saying the number of reported drug resistant cases had gone up such that in 2017, 198 cases were reported compared to 30 in 2013.



The consequence, he said was that Ghana has recorded its first case of Extensively Drug-Resistant TB (XDR TB), which was a rare type of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis that is resistant to isoniazid and rifampin, plus any fluoroquinolone and at least one of three injectable second-line drugs.



This he said was largely due to inadequate support and care to the patient, and called for immediate action to prevent further spread of this type of the disease.



According to him the amazing and remarkable, enthusiasm, passion and drive by health care providers working in TB control, was however not palpable any more, and coincidentally, the energy of optimism in his addresses during World TB Days in the last four years had been low as a result.



Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, said there was no doubt that GHS had made tremendous progress and significant gains and that over the last decade huge investment in human, material and equipment, as well as capacity has been developed to reduce the spread of the disease.



He said the GHS had also been applauded for its capacity to adopt and deploy countrywide, new technologies and tools, citing that in 2018, the Service would be rolling its first ever child friendly TB new paediatric formulation for treating TB in children, and newer shorter treatment regimen for Multi drug resistant TB under the NTCP.



He said in line with GHSs new Vision to use lCT, the TB Control Programme has initiated and deployed CAD4 software packages, and had also acquired two mobile X-ray screening Vans, dubbed the lungs to support control activities.



This, he said has brought some relief to TB mobile screening teams, as the software serves to meet their basic needs in the absence of trained radiologist.



Dr Nsiah Asare said the Service was also working closely with all stakeholders and partners to address the shortfall in radiographers in the system whose support services were needed to enable the country attain its case detection target, which was currently low.



The GHS has further requested that access to X-ray screening services be made available for screening all first year Senior High School students, and invited all those with persistent cough to come forward and be tested, giving the assurance that TB treatment would continue to be free in all government facilities.



He acknowledged the leadership role of Nana Ahunabobirim Prah Agyensaim Vl, the National TB Ambassador, the Ghana Journalists Association and other partners, and called on all traditional and community leaders, as well as Civil Society Organisations and all Ghanaians to play supporting roles in eradicating TB by 2030.

Source: GNA









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Featured Videoby Sean Fitzpatrick | Sat, Mar 24th 4:43pm EDT

Brandan Wright will be released by the Houston Rockets as the veteran forward is still dealing with a knee injury. Le'Bryan Nash will be signed upon Wright's release. (Jonathan Feigen on Twitter)Place Your Advert

Thousands of Active jobseekers are looking for new agricultural positions in 2020. Call us now to discuss the options for advertising your vacancy in our job section.Exports of British lamb appear to be booming, according to the most recent figures released by the Government.

But with the majority of those exports heading to the European Union, there is growing concern about the impact of Brexit.

Data released by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) shows that exports of fresh and frozen sheep meat were up 17 per cent in January this year compared with the same month in 2016.

For the first time in five years sheep meat enjoyed a positive balance of trade in the first month of the year.

Phil Stocker, chief executive of the National Sheep Association, welcomed the figures, although he expressed concern about what would happen when the United Kingdom left the European Union.

Exports to Germany in January were up by nearly 60 per cent. At the same time, domestic consumption of lamb in the UK is falling.

Phil Stocker said that the improvement in exports was largely down to falls in the value of the Pound. Sterling has dropped significantly against other currencies since the United Kingdom voted to withdraw from the European Union in a referendum on June 23, 2016. The declining value of Sterling has made British lamb cheaper in export markets.

"Overall it is a situation driven by currency," said Phil Stocker. "Our declining currency has led to more favourable export conditions. So we are exporting a lot at the moment, although we do see a threat going forward. Most of our exports go to the European Union.

"We are going to be very much dependent on the United Kingdom negotiating a successful trade deal once we leave the European Union," he said.

"What the figures show is that there is a demand for UK lamb in the EU. And we think there is the opportunity to see that grow if the trade deal we get with the EU is favourable."

Sterling value

According to Rebecca Oborne, red meat analyst at AHDB, exports increased in January by 1,000 tones - 17 per cent - to 7,200 tonnes.

But she said in her reading of the figures: "Most UK exports of sheep meat are shipped into the rest of the EU, and therefore the majority of the increase also went into the EU.

"Looking at individual countries, exports to Germany recorded the largest increase to 1,500 tonnes - a 59 per cent (550 tonnes) year-on-year increase. Shipments to France remained steady year-on-year, at 3,100 tonnes," she said.

Phil Stocker said that, as well as helping to boost exports, the fall in the value of Sterling had also helped at home by making imported meat more expensive.

"The currency conditions have also been favourable in that product coming into the UK from places like New Zealand has become more expensive," he said.

NZ decline

Rebecca Oborne said the HMRC figures showed that the UK imported a total of 6,600 tonnes of fresh and frozen sheep meat during January - an increase of five per cent, or 300 tonnes - compared with the same time last year.

Imports from the European Union increased by 49 per cent - some 400 tonnes - year-on-the-year to 1,300 tonnes.

But imports from New Zealand and Australia both declined year-on-year, by one per cent (20 tonnes) and 24 per cent (300 tonnes) respectively.

"As reported recently, it was expected that the UK would receive less sheep meat from New Zealand and Australia," Ms Oborne said.

"New Zealand production was very strong during the final quarter of 2017, which means there are now fewer lambs there left to come forwards," she said in her analysis of the market.

"The UKs net trade position (reported exports minus imports) for sheep meat remained positive for the eighth consecutive month during January, which means that for the first time since 2013 the month of January recorded a positive position," she said.

Lower consumption

Despite the positive news on the export market and on the balance of trade, Phil Stocker expressed concern about the domestic market for lamb.

"One thing we are seeing is that lower consumption is limiting our UK market," Mr Stocker said.

He said: "The domestic market accounts for 65 per cent of our production and, unfortunately, domestic consumption is going down. Lamb is seen by consumers as a premium, expensive meat compared particularly with chicken and pork.

"And there is still an image that it is fatty, which is not the case these days. Fat levels in lamb have really reduced, partly through genetic change and partly as a result of selecting when leaner," said Mr Stocker.

He said that a lot of lamb was still sold in traditional roasting cuts. The modern day consumer had, to a great extent, moved away from these traditional cuts, moving towards products that could be cooked much more quickly.

Halal

One section of the community that was helping the domestic market for lamb was the Asian community, he said.

Consumers with origins in the Indian sub-continent, in particular, ate lots of lamb.

"The halal market is very important to us in the domestic market. It is probably the one area of the domestic market that is showing growth," said Mr Stocker.

And he said that much of the lamb eaten by non-Asian consumers in the UK was probably consumed in Asian cookery - whether in restaurants and take-aways or in curries and tagines made at home.

He said the HMRC figures showed that the export opportunities were there for the UK sheep industry.

But he expected volatile times ahead with the United Kingdom leaving the EU and possible delays in opening up new markets like the United States and China.

Such volatility was likely to make the domestic market increasingly important. That was where the industry needed to invest more effort.You Should See The Bigger Picture

Ahmed said, 'To begin with, Ek Do Teen is such an iconic song that if someone else had attempted to recreate it, then even I would have commented. You should see the bigger picture that we tried doing it. "

You Can't Get Positive Remarks All The Time

"Comments can be positive or negative. That's what we are here for. You can't get positive remarks all the time. There can be negative comments too!"

The Makers Of The Original Song Have Come Out In Support Of Jacqueline's Track

Ahmed said, "Whatever it is, I am happy that N Chandra is happy with the song. Saroj ji called me and praised our efforts. She blessed Ganesh Acharya who choreographed the song. Ganesh and I visited her and she got so emotional. It is important for me that these two people liked it."

Jacqueline Has Performed Really Well

"The makers of this song visualised Madhuri (Dixit) ji in the song and she went on to become legendary with the song. I would have been happy even if we were successful by five percent. Jacqueline is looking good. She has performed really well as a dancer."

Do They Want To Show The Song To Madhuri?

To this, he replied, "We would love to but Madhuri ji is a big star. And we never wanted to make publicity by showing the song to many stars and clicking pictures with them."

Meanwhile,

The 'Tezaab' actor Anil Kapoor applauded Jacqueline's recreation of 1988 iconic song 'Ek do teen'. He took to his social media handle and tweeted, "What a momentous task it was to follow in @MadhuriDixit's footsteps, and @Asli_Jacqueline has done it exceptionally! It takes a lot of courage & conviction to attempt to recreate an iconic song that so many people have loved for so long! #EkDoTeen."Boney Kapoor Is Busy With The Work

Apparently, post the demise of Sridevi, it was her husband, Boney Kapoor, who got the most affected. Even in her letter, Janhvi Kapoor had written that he has lost his jaan'. Now, the producer is finding solace in his work.

Janhvi Resumes The Shoot Of Dhadak

On the other side, Janhvi Kapoor has already resumed the shoot of Dhadak and for that alone, she deserves applauses! It takes a whole lot of guts to accept a reality like this and yet finish her work commitments.

Janhvi & Ishaan Spotted On Dhadak Sets

On that note, recently, Janhvi Kapoor & Ishan Khattar were spotted shooting a crucial scene in Kolkata.

Janhvi Sports A Traditional Look

Going by the picture, one can assume she plays a simple ordinary girl in the film and we're totally rooting for her debut film!

Dhadak Was Close To Sridevis Heart

Needless to mention that Dhadak was very close to Sridevi's heart as it marks the debut of her daughter, Janhvi Kapoor. Earlier, Sridevi used to accompany Janhvi for the shoot and their pictures used to go viral on the social media, instantly.

Sridevi Was Proud Of Janhvi

Earlier, while speaking about Janhvi's debut, Sridevi was quoted as saying, "It is a great feeling. I am excited, nervous, happy and concerned, as any mother would be. But she is a very hard working and very dedicated girl."

Lock The Date!

'Dhadak' is an upcoming romantic drama film based on 2016 Marathi language film 'Sairat'. The film is directed by Shashank Khaitan and produced by Dharma Productions. The film is slated to hit the theatres on July 20, 2018.This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.Business consulting giant Accenture (NYSE:ACN) reported results early Thursday morning. The report covered the second quarter of fiscal year 2018, and showed solid growth across all of Accenture's business lines and geographic regions.

Here's a closer look at some key details from this report.

Accenture's second-quarter results: The raw numbers

Metric Q2 2018 Q2 2017 Year-Over-Year Change Net revenue $9.59 billion $8.32 billion 15% Net income attributable to Accenture $901 million $877 million 3% GAAP earnings per share (diluted) $1.37 $1.33 3%

Excluding the impact of unique non-cash tax charges in this quarter, related to the sweeping tax code revision, Accenture's earnings would stop at $1.58 per diluted share. That's a 19% increase over the year-ago period's $1.33 per share.

What happened with Accenture this quarter?

In the second quarter, Accenture delivered positive sales growth in all five of its reportable segments. The communications, media, and technology division led the pack with a 15% year-over-year revenue boost, while health and public service trailed with a 6% sales improvement.

In geographic terms, North America and Europe saw 8% and 10% annual sales growth, respectively. Accenture's so-called growth markets earned their name with a 15% sales jump, though that category represents just 18% of total sales and remains Accenture's smallest geographic region.

"The New," which is an umbrella term for Accenture's cloud computing, information security, and digital services, showed "strong double-digit growth." These operations accounted for 55% of Accenture's overall sales in the second quarter, right in line with the first-quarter reading.

What management had to say

Our excellent performance in the second quarter and year to date demonstrate that we have the right growth strategy and we are executing extremely well. With 10% revenue growth in local currency in the first half, we continue to grow much faster than the market, and indeed we have outperformed our basket of competitors for now 16 consecutive quarters, four full years." -- CEO Pierre Nanterme

Nanterme, in a conference call with analysts, went on to highlight some recent contract wins for digital media services and Asian banking mergers, before turning back to a culture of innovation that informs everything Accenture does:

To bring even more innovation to clients, we are building a global network of more than 100 work-at centers, where we collaborate with clients and co-create innovative digital solutions. And we're expanding this network to be even closer to clients. In the last few months, we opened new innovation hubs in Zurich, Tokyo, Boston, and Columbus. We launched a newly equipped studio in Madrid, and we opened a new industry IoT Innovation Center in Modena, Italy.

Looking ahead

Management expects Accenture's revenue growth to moderate somewhat in the second half of 2018, resulting in a full-year growth rate of roughly 8% in local currency. To give you a point of reference, sales increased 10% in the first half when counted in local currencies. More specifically, third-quarter sales should land near $10 billion, give or take $100 million.

On the bottom line, full-year earnings should rise approximately 13% in 2018 and land near $6.65 per diluted share. This estimate is an adjusted figure, excluding the impact of one-time tax charges in the second quarter. Accenture did not provide any specific earnings target for the third quarter.

Beyond that, Accenture will continue to lean on The New, focusing its efforts and budgets on growing operations under that growing and profitable umbrella.Delay in New Truck Deliveries

So, my truck was built last week. It has a delivery date of 04/09. No big deal, except it has to sit in Kentucky for around 25 days before it shows up on my dealer's lot. This got me curious as to what the hold up was.



The way Ford works for trucks being delivered to Arkansas requires it to ship by rail from Kentucky to Memphis. It is then placed on an 18 wheeler and delivered into Arkansas to the dealer.



I was able to find the link to Jack Cooper Transportation PALS Portal through another forum posting. I went there and discovered it was shipped out last week to the "SHELBYVILLE MIX'G CNTR" in Kentucky. I ended up calling JCT's toll free number. I gave them my truck's freight bill for it being shipped to Memphis. They gave me the local number of the yard in Memphis.



I called the Memphis yard. They were very nice. They told me that my truck doesn't even have a rail car # assigned to it yet. They said that from their understanding there is a shortage of rail cars everywhere large vehicles such as trucks and vans are being built. It seems they put these trucks in double decker containers and the ones of a certain size that are required to fit a Super Duty are lacking in quantity. They said that Ford is actually storing trucks up to 40 miles away from the Louisville Truck Plant because of this rail car shortage. They said there are trucks that were built in February and still sitting in Kentucky waiting on a rail car.



They told me he placed a rush on my VIN #, but didn't know if that would actually do anything. He said if I don't see a change in status for my truck to call them back early next week.



Hopefully my truck makes it here by 04/09. I sold my F150 a few days ago and it is already depressing knowing I have another 2.5 weeks to drive around in an SUV.DRIVERS: 1  Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes) 2  Kimi RAIKKONEN (Ferrari) 3  Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

TRACK INTERVIEWS Q: Lewis, that was a lap of some commitment to take the record here, seven pole positions. How does that one feel? Lewis Hamilton: You would think that with the results weve had in these years, it would be the norm. But it doesnt. Its still just as intense and my heart is racing, I wish you could feel it right now. Its great to see this crowd here. Thank you so much for all coming out. Im so grateful to the Aussies having us here every year and mostly the generally good weather but a beautiful city. And a lot of British flags here, so Im really grateful for it. But Im so happy with that lap; it was such a nice lap. And, you know, Im always striving for perfection and that was as close as I could get. Q: More than six tenths for pole position. Weve heard some talk about party mode. Was party mode engaged? Was it party time in the car today? LH: Im always in party mode, so you know No, what was surprising was to see how quick the Ferraris were. I mean I dont really know during that lap I was in the same mode that I was in before but it was just really hooking up the tyres, getting them at the right temperature and then putting the lap together. I had good sectors before, maybe the first lap of qualifying but after that I had to put them together so

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 5 (L to R): Sebastian Vettel (GER) Ferrari, pole sitter Lewis Hamilton (GBR) Mercedes-AMG F1 and Kimi Raikkonen (FIN) Ferrari in parc ferme at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Sutton Images,Sutton Images Sebastian Vettel (GER) Ferrari in the Press Conference at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Jerry Andre/Sutton Images Lewis Hamilton (GBR) Mercedes-AMG F1 in the Press Conference at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Jerry Andre/Sutton Images Pole sitter Lewis Hamilton (GBR) Mercedes-AMG F1 in parc ferme at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Kimi Raikkonen (FIN) Ferrari in the Press Conference at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Jerry Andre/Sutton Images Info Close

Q: Phenomenal job. Congratulations. Great job today Kimi, a phenomenal lap from you. Talk about your lap, talk about your pace today, a great job for Ferrari. Kimi Raikkonen: I think it was a pretty decent job. But obviously the lap time difference is still pretty big but it wasnt a very straightforward session, because of the weather this morning and the disturbance in the last qualifying but we have to be happy about where we are starting but there is still an awful lot of work to be done to improve things, but not too bad. Q: Great job, Kimi, well done. Sebastian, maybe not the day you were hoping for, the pace of the looks good, but just that massive push from Lewis at the end. Are you happy with today? Sebastian Vettel: Yeah, I think we can be. Yesterday I wasnt happy; I didnt really feel the car. It just coming better in qualifying. I think the last lap I had a bit of a moment into 13, I tried to brake really late; it didnt work. But yeah, it was really close. Exciting for us as it was that close. A shame that Lewis had quite a big gap at the end but I guess his lap was pretty good. Looking forward to tomorrow, we did improve the car today and see what happens tomorrow. Q: We know that Mercedes always turn it on on Saturdays. But for Sunday for tomorrow how confident are you that you can take it to those guys and we get a proper fight for the win? Sebastian Vettel: Yeah, I hope they did turn it on today, as that means they have turn it off tomorrow. I think its very close. I think we saw yesterday in the long runs that the pace is very close, so lets see. Its not the easiest place to overtake but who knows, if we have an opportunity at the start and then in the race you never know. Really happy for the team, its a good result, so lets get going. PRESS CONFERENCE Q: Lewis, that was some mighty lap, but tell us about the journey to it, as it didnt look straightforward today. LH: It definitely wasnt straightforward. It was not the easiest of sessions. It was a real surprise to see how quick the Ferraris were, from already Q1. The speeds they had on the straights; theyve obviously made an improvement in their power mode. I think we were similar speed through the corners but definitely their power mode was quite strong. And that remained the same through the session. But obviously getting out and getting the tyres working optimally and staying in the right zone through the whole lap was definitely difficult, it was always is here, particularly with the rears. Yeah, getting the balance and putting the sectors together, obviously we had some runs, or at least one on used tyres, and then you had that break and then the incident. It was tricky. But that last lap was the best of this weekend. Im very, very happy with that lap. It was one of my best I would. Q: You look in good shape for the race. You were quick on the two harder compound tyres in the long runs yesterday. The only disappointment I guess is that theyre on your own against these two tomorrow; Valtteri in the wall unfortunately? LH: Yeah, thats OK. Its not like Ive not been there before, fighting two Ferraris, in my career. Of course its always going to be tough having two red cars, or a red car either in your mirror or ahead, fighting with them. They are a great team. But we are the best prepared we can be. I am excited. We had a great crowd here today. It was great that it dried up. And it was progressing. The track was getting better and better through qualifying, so you were constantly discovering new grip, new improvements as you go along and I guess thats why Im as happy as I am. Q: Kimi, great performance, it looked pretty close in Q2, first runs of Q3 as well, Lewis used the word surprised to talk about the performance of Ferrari there, were you surprised them when he pulled out that lap? KR: We didnt really know what to expect, its the first qualifying so everybodys been a bit unsure of where you are against the others and obviously today was like this. If you purely look at time differences its bigger than for sure we want but I think it wasnt very straightforward, the whole day with conditions and everything. We have to see in the next ones but I think everything was more or less OK. One mistake in Q2, lost one run and obviously then we used, like a half a lap used tyres in the first try but yeah, I think feeling-wise, not too bad. For sure things could be better here and there, we try to make a good job tomorrow and keep working and see what we can do. Q: Seb, obviously, strategy played a part in your win here last year. There are two of you, one of him, theres Red Bull starting on Supersofts, lots of different permutations: how do you see the race panning-out tomorrow? SV: Well, I dont know. Depends on how we get off the line and then hopefully we can play two against one. I think in terms of race pace we should be closer. We were closer yesterday and then we see. It depends how close we can be. Yeah. I think it also depends. We have more cars now in range. So, it changes probably a little bit the race as well. So, well see. QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR Q: (Yianni Mavromoustakos - Talkingtorque.com.au) To all three drivers, did the track conditions affect your times significantly  and if so by how much? The dampness, as it started to get a bit drier throughout from Q1 to Q3. LH: Oh, no, it was already dry from the beginning. The tracks generally evolve, the temperature was coming down in this session but the track just grips-up as we apply more and more rubber to the road. Obviously, this mornings practice, the rain just resets the track a little bit. So, it just kept progressing and getting faster and faster throughout the session.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 5 Kimi Raikkonen (FIN) Ferrari SF-71H at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Manuel Goria/Sutton Images Sebastian Vettel (GER) Ferrari SF-71H at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Manuel Goria/Sutton Images Lewis Hamilton (GBR) Mercedes-AMG F1 W09 EQ Power+ at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images MELBOURNE GRAND PRIX CIRCUIT, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 24: Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1, celebrates taking pole position on the pit straight during the Australian GP at Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit on March 24, 2018 in Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, Australia. (Photo by Steven Tee / LAT Images)  Motorsport Images Tel: +44(0)20 8267 3000 email: info@motorsportimages.com Pole sitter Lewis Hamilton (GBR) Mercedes-AMG F1 celebrates in parc ferme with Niki Lauda (AUT) Mercedes AMG F1 Non-Executive Chairman at Formula One World Championship, Rd1, Australian Grand Prix, Qualifying, Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24 March 2018.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Info CloseDouglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association

Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America.Motorola plans to open 1000 stores across 100 cities by end of 2018 News oi-Priyanka Motorola had announced the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs in New Delhi.

With an aim strengthen its retail presence, in southern India, Motorola plans to open 100 new Moto Hubs in Tamil Nadu including 50 Moto Hub stores in Chennai alone where users they will experience the entire portfolio of Motorola including the recently launched Moto Z2 force and Moto X4.

Sudhin Mathur, Managing Director, Motorola Mobility India said, "We are highly focussed on sharing meaningful experiences and engage with our customers in a more effective way. Moto Hubs is a way to address customers' needs by offering them a platform to interact, engage and purchase. We will continue to expand our retail presence and enhance the customer experience by making our product portfolio accessible to them and ensure that their varying needs are met with."

As part of the strategy to consolidate its retail presence across the country, Motorola, earlier this month announced the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs in Mumbai and 25 Moto Hub stores in Kolkata. Furthermore, in January 2018, Motorola had announced the opening of 50 new Moto Hubs in New Delhi. Motorola has also collaborated with Poorvika Mobiles across 43 cities in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, and Karnataka and with Big C and Lot Mobile stores across 55 cities in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to provide retail access to consumers.

All Moto Hub stores house the entire portfolio of Motorola devices, including moto e4, moto e4 plus, moto c, moto c plus, moto g families including moto g5s plus, moto g5s, moto g5 plus and moto g5 as well as moto z franchise and moto mods along with Motorola accessories like on-ear and in-ear headphones, moto shells and covers.

Motorola has been expanding its footprint in South India and according to GFK, approximately 5.5L smartphones are sold in Tamil Nadu per month out of which Chennai contributes 37 percent (2L units). Chennai has emerged as a significantly big market for smartphones in India and Motorola is amongst the top 5 smartphone brands in Chennai.

Moto Z2 Force Unboxing and First Impressions

The customers in Chennai have always valued the differentiated & premium experience offered by Motorola smartphones.

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow NotificationsSamsung Galaxy A6 gets certified by Wi-Fi Alliance; may launch soon News oi-Chandrika The Wi-Fi certification indicates that the Galaxy A6 could launch soon.

Samsung Galaxy A6 and Galaxy A6+ are two mid-range smartphones that will be launching soon. The smartphones were recently spotted on Geekbench. The Galaxy A6 has now been certified by Wi-Fi Alliance. The device is listed on the certification site with model number SM-A600FN. The website doesn't reveal much about the Galaxy A6, besides that it will run on Android 8.0 right out of the box.

As stated, the Samsung Galaxy A6 last week visited Geekbench along with the Galaxy A6+. Talking about the specifications, the Galaxy A6 (SM-A600FN) was listed on Geekbench with an Exynos 7870 SoC which is an octa-core processor. The processor is teamed with 3GB of RAM and Mali-T830 MP1 GPU. The Galaxy A3 (2017) and many phones in the Galaxy J series are powered by the same chipset.

The Galaxy A6+ (SM-A605G), on the other hand, seems to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor. The smartphone also has Adreno 506 GPU and has 4GB of RAM onboard. Both the Galaxy A6 and Galaxy A6+ run on Android 8.0 Oreo operating system, which sound impressive on paper.

Do note that Samsung had not any Galaxy A6 models previously, whereas the Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A7 series are there. Presumably these models could be the first phones in the Galaxy A6 series.

Looking at the benchmark results, the Galaxy A6 and Galaxy A6+ will not differ much in terms of performance. The former scored 2605 points on the multi-core test and 723 points on the single core test. Whereas the Galaxy A6+ obtained 739 points in the single core test and 3469 points in the multi-core test.

Samsung Galaxy S9+ unboxing and quick look

The Wi-Fi certification indicates that the Galaxy A6 could launch soon. However, we are not sure when exactly Samsung will introduce the phone. The Galaxy A6+ is also expected to launch alongside the Galaxy A6.

Via

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow NotificationsYoutube

Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) heaped praise Thursday on President Trump's decision to ck down on China's trade practices. "I don't agree with President Trump on a whole lot, but today I want to give him a big pat on the back. He is doing the right thing when it comes to China," Schumer said from the Senate floor.

He added that "unfortunately, previous presidents, Democrat and Republican, just stood by as China did what it did to us. President Trump is exactly right."

Trump is expected to announce on Thursday new tariffs against China in light of an investigation into intellectual property theft.

Democrats have pressed Trump for months to get tougher on China. They were critical of his steel and aluminum tariffs in part because they felt they didn't do enough to target Beijing.

Schumer added on Thursday that he is "very pleased" with Trump's latest move and that "I commend him."

"Today's announcement by the president will be a great start in that direction. Democrats, Republicans, Americans of ever political ideology, every region in the country should support these actions," he said.

4:01GREENWICH  What do you see? Out there in the dark.

Turbulent reds and purples flood into sight, exposing the universes entrails in all their vacuous mystery. In the vast, open space, the eye focuses on something tangible: An orange mass, small yet teeming with energy.

The voice returns, this time with an order: Reach for this burning brightness in the void. But her words are hardly necessary; under the hypnosis of space, its hard not to gravitate toward the star.

However, the celestial body does not have long  only a few million years  the viewer learns, and out of its explosion emerges a radical debris in the shape of a black hole.

Adventurers who escape the confines of place to take this voyage across the stars do not do so via alien spaceship or rocket launch. Instead, their means of transportation is the gravity-defying imagination of a Greenwich native and her virtual reality headset.

Eliza McNitts family has roots in town dating to the 1960s. As a girl, she went to Whitby, then Greenwich High School, and her childhood was filled with the sights and sounds of Lower Fairfield County.

But nowadays, the 26-year-old has strayed far from her nest. She splits her hours between New York, Los Angeles and Paris, and she seems to jump time zones every few days. Thats not counting her recent stints at major festivals and events like South by Southwest, the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Beyond the Cradle or Sundance, where her virtual reality series, SPHERES, has made waves.

A three-part project, SPHERES debuts its second chapter at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. As writer and director, McNitt has delved not only into visuals, but also noise to create a full experience of what lives beyond our horizons.

I realized that theres this wonder in the universe that we cant see, that we must listen to, because space is full of sounds, McNitt said.

Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein have orchestrated more of a soundscape than a soundtrack for the first episode, which chronicles the coming of age of a massive star that gives way to a black hole. A haunting and enigmatic score feels like alien techno music. Through its strains comes actor Jessica Chastains voice, slipping over the images as she narrates our universe at work.

Jessica Chastain is the voice of the cosmos, and when I started the project a year ago, I knew I wanted her to be involved, McNitt said.

Though the Greenwich kid may play in the big leagues now, she credits her time in town as a jumping off point for finding the place where science meets storytelling.

At GHS, McNitt migrated from circle to circle, with no steady home base. Still hazy from medication after surgery on a precancerous mole, McNitt auditioned for a role in her school play  and got the lead. In a science research class, she investigated the effect of pesticides during honeybees pollination process  and she won top awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair two years in a row.

McNitt excelled in what seemed opposite ends of the academic/artistic spectrum, and so she belonged to neither.

I never fit in at Greenwich High School. I was a theater kid who also did science, but was also student body president, McNitt said.

I think its because I never fit in that I was able to find a different perspective of how to tell stories, she added.

In her science research class, McNitt dealt with male colleagues who questioned whether she belonged in the same lab. One asked if she even knew what HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography, a technique used in chemistry) was. At the time, McNitt didnt know. But in the moment, she swore to learn.

I was challenged by the obstacle of being, you know, one of the only women in the class, McNitt remembered. I wasnt as versed in science research as my fellow students  but I had a creative mind and a deep passion for research, and a passion for telling stories.

Also in high school, McNitt found modest success in acting. But even with an agent by her side, she grew tired of auditioning for the same two-dimensional role over and over.

I wanted to create stronger characters for women, and especially tell stories about people who are in science, and those stories that you dont hear about, she said. At a certain point, you realize I can write this script better, and I will.

At the Intel fair, all of McNitts competitors were headed to MIT or Harvard. Meanwhile, she had committed to New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts. There, she honed her craft as a filmmaker so she could tell the stories she was itching to share.

Now, McNitt has finally found a niche that suits her. In her bomber jackets and styled hats, she assimilates well among the techy hipsters who inhabit her day to day, while still putting her own spin on the science nerd trope.

She looks like she belongs at Protozoa Pictures wacky Williamsburg office, surrounded by prosthetic heads and cultish kitsch, and she engages instinctually with the somewhat outlandish universe of director Darren Aronofsky, who heads up Protozoa, which produced SPHERES. Before Aronofsky released his film, Mother, McNitt heard whispers that his latest endeavor was not all too divergent from her own. They both underscored the fragility of the Earth and beyond.

We are exploring worlds with parallel themes, McNitt said.

And like Aronofsky, her work pushes boundaries, discovering new frontiers in filmmaking. For SPHERES, she has collaborated with major scientists to envision natural phenomena that have never been seen before. In fact, as she pioneers her project, concurrent scientific discoveries are being incorporated into her series as they happen.

The most adventurous part of it is that the science is constantly evolving, McNitt said.

Still, there are some places where the scientific record hasnt quite caught up with McNitts vision. For example, photos of the event horizon are everywhere, but what lies just past it remains unknown. When McNitt decided to represent the inside of a black hole, there werent any models to use as a guide, so she had to get inventive.

Fortunately, that isnt a problem for her.

As viewers strap on their headsets, they dive deep into an expanse of nothingness, lost in a forever plunge into the abyss. But above them shine brilliant tentacles of light, like a full immersion into the throes of a Star Trek scene.

The most interesting thing (scientists) told me was just make it strange, she recalled.

Those who choose to enter McNitts SPHERES are in for the ride of their lives. They zoom through the bluish fantasia that is the inside of a star. They feel cosmic energy pulse through their palms, and they watch as the universe flops like a slinky when two black holes go head to head.

And then, nothing.

Nothing, but Chastains voice.

What else can you hear? she asks. Out there in the dark.GREENWICH  Parents and educators urged the Board of Estimate and Taxation not to cut the school spending in the towns proposed budget, saying the additional money is needed for more teachers as the student population grows in Greenwich.

The BET held a hearing Thursday, the last before its vote on Monday, on the towns proposed $426 million municipal budget for 2018-19.

Most of the speakers focused on the proposed $160.3 million school budget. The school budget would add 11.3 full-time equivalent positions and could be in line for cuts on Monday because it is above BET guidelines.

With that in mind, many speakers defended the proposed school budget and urged the BET to pass it as is. Board of Education Chairman Peter Bernstein, who was at a school board meeting at the same time as the hearing, sent a letter to the BET that was read by Greenwich Public Schools COO Lorianne ODonnell.

In his letter, Bernstein defended the spending levels, saying they were necessary to meet the needs of an increased student population, especially in the middle schools and high school, meaning extra staff was needed.

The Board of Education did not add any administrative positions, Bernstein said, so the new staff would be in the classrooms.

An investment in our students and our schools is an investment in the present and future of Greenwich, Bernstein said in the letter.

Many speakers at the hearing, including the head of the Greenwich teachers union and several PTA officials, agreed. Mareta Hamre, a Representative Town Meeting member, said the schools have been taking on more responsibilities when it to comes to keeping kids safe and mentally and socially healthy.

Rather than focusing exclusively on the bottom line cost, look at what is coming in the output, Hamre said. Look at what is being put in by teachers in our school district, which is phenomenal and has increased vastly.

But some speakers criticized the school budget, with a couple calling for a change in spending, particularly with reform toward how the district works with special education students.

RTM member Despina Fassuliotis asked the BET to take a close look at the school budget, especially when it comes to the BET guidelines on spending.

It is time the BET has a serious discussion with the BOE on their budget, Fassuliotis said. Greenwich has to begin this conversation. As former teacher for 35 years I support excellence in education but with a budget of more than $150 million, the Board of Education should find it in their budget to at least adhere to BET guidelines.

But one item was targeted by many speakers. A series of residents spoke out against a $300,000 study into the feasibility of a playing field at one of the towns middle school. The school board has chosen Central Middle School as the likely site, but nothing has been finalized.

Some neighbors have spoken out against a field at Central for months and campaigned for the BET to remove the allocation. Katie Galbraith Mogaki told the BET that she was worried about the effects of an influx of high school students using the field and about the increased traffic through the neighborhood.

This town needs more fields, she said. We believe in the importance of creating more safe, reliable spaces for children to practice, to play, to sweat and to exercise. But this is not the right place for it.

Parent Warren Silver added, The Board of Education needs to slow down instead of rushing into things. They need to take the bigger picture into consideration.

Also, YWCA Greenwich called for the BET to fund a $120,000 request for violence prevention education in town schools and $35,000 to help fund the agencys domestic violence victim services.

We are committed to stopping violence before it starts, said Meredith Gold, YWCA Greenwichs director of domestic abuse services. As has been proven by prevention campaigns such as drunk driving we know the key to prevention is youth and our young people.

Sabine Schoenberg, co-president of the Think Greenwich marketing campaign, also appeared to support an allocation of $30,000 to keep the town involved with the public/private partnership. The campaign, which is committed to showing potential new residents and businesses what Greenwich is all about, recently persauded Forbes Magazine to take a negative article and, using facts, turn it into a positive story about the town, she said.

Under the proposed budget, $600,000 of the towns reserves would be used so the towns mill rate can be kept at the current level. And while that has been celebrated by some, RTM member Peter Berg, a former member of the BET, said he did not support the strategy. It makes more sense to put the money to work by improving Greenwichs quality of life through investment in infrastructure, sidewalks, traffic calming, the bicycle master plan and other benefits, he said.

I would say, go ahead make my day, raise my taxes, Berg said.

The BET will vote on the budget at 4 p.m. Monday. Once it passes, it will be sent to the RTM for a May vote.As expected, Google has launched its Home and Home Mini devices in Italy. While the former is available for 149, the latter carries a price tag of 59. Orders will begin shipping March 26 (Monday) onwards.

Moving on, the Google WiFi is now available for purchase in Ireland. The device is currently listed on the company's Google Store website for the country, and carries a price tag of 139.

For more information, head to the Source links below.

Source 1 2 | Via 1 2Samsung's transitioning its A-series from odd to even numbers for this year, and that's so far brought us the Galaxy A8 (2018) and the A8+ (2018). An A6 and possibly an A6+ are on the way also, as evidenced by a couple of earlier GeekBench listings, and now we have a new episode in the A6's development.

A Samsung device with a product code SM-A600FN, which we speculate to be the A6, has received Wi-Fi certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance. That would be the same SM-A600FN model from the benchmark database, though we're yet to see confirmation on the actual name it will have for the masses.



Samsung SM-A600FN (possible Galaxy A6) Wi-Fi certification

The certification doesn't tell much, other than confirm that the phone will run Android 8.0 - already outed on Geekbench. Oh, and that this potential A6 will support Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, but not ac - a little odd given that we've seen Samsungs with the same Exynos 7870 chip that do support the standard. Oh, well.

SourcePublished on 2018/03/24 | Source

Added episode 8 captures for the Korean drama "Queen of Mystery Season 2" (2018)

Advertisement

Directed by Choi Yoon-seok-II, Yoo Yeong-eun-I

Written by Lee Seong-min-II

Network : KBS

With Kwon Sang-woo, Choi Kang-hee, Lee Da-hee, Park Byung-eun, Kim Hyun-sook, Kim Won-hae,...

16 episodes - Wed, Thu 22:00

Synopsis

"Queen of Mystery" tells the story of a prosecutor's wife who's always dreamed of being a detective. After actually solving a case, she ends up in an unlikely crime-fighting duo with a young police captain.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2018/02/28

MorePublished on 2018/03/24 | Source

"Lenders: Soul and Cash" seems an awful lot like making a deal with the devil. The National Assembly examines the man making these incredulous deals, which is funny because politicians are often characterized by their shady dealings. I wonder if the examination of the dealmaker will reveal flaws in the politicians.

-Yours, Lisa

"Lenders: Soul and Cash" (2016)

Advertisement

Directed by Choi Woo-je-I

With Dong Bang-woo, Park Chul-min, Jang Hyuk-jin, Park Jung-hak, Jung In-sook, Jeon Jin-ki,...

Synopsis

"A loan scandal that the world has never heard of!"

The hearing of Chun Soo-gwan, the representative of 'Soul & Cash', which lends people money in exchange for their souls, is broadcasted worldwide from the upcoming Korean National Assembly. The members of the National Assembly who usually bicker with each other behind cameras band together to attack Soo-gwan with questions.

Will the great Members of the National Assembly properly investigate Soo-gwan who can't be found in any records?

Release date in Korea : 2018/04/05LIGHTNING PHOTOS: Hundreds march for school safety and gun control

View the Slideshow Related Stories

Hundreds of people of all ages marched from Hendersonville High School to the Historic Courthouse on Saturday morning as smalltown Hendersonville joined cities across the world in an extraordinary moment of protest in favor of protecting kids in schools and condemning gun violence.

Carrying signs that said "Protect Kids Not Guns," "Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough," "Pencils Not Pistols" and "Grab 'Em By the Midterms," the chain of protesters filled five or six blocks of Main Street as it slowly made its way eight blocks to the courthouse plaza.

Organizers and those who attended said they were stunned at the turnout in cool weather under overcast skies. There were not counterprotests and incidents along the route. Hendersonville police deployed a crossing guard at Church Street at Bearcat Bouleward and kept watch during the march.

"We're tired of going into our schools and just not feeling safe for fear of gun violence," said Liam Daniels, 16, of Tryon.

Daniels was with a dozen or more classmates from his school, the Outdoor Academy in Brevard, who had donned bright orange safety vests for the event.

"I'm here because it's our safety that's at risk because of their not having any gun regulations," said Mia Prausnite Weinbaum, an Outdoor Academy student from Atlanta.

Across the world, protesters carried signs, chanted and marched in solidarity with the young students from Parkland High School in South Florida spurred to activism by the slaughter of their classmates and teachers at their school on Valentines Day.

"I was impressed to see all the kids here because it's all about the next generation, isn't it?" said Ann Commito, who is from Frederick, Maryland, and was visiting friends here. "They're going to be voting soon. I think it's frankly amazing. This shows you how important this is to everybody. It's not a Democrat or Republican issue as much as it's a public safety issue."



THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY. RETURN TO THE LIGHTNING FOR MORE.The jury in the trial of two Irish rugby players accused of raping a student at a house party has been told that prejudice or emotions have no part to play in its deliberations.

In her charge to the 11-member jury, Judge Patricia Smyth said they must decide the case on the evidence they have heard and nothing else.

Judge Smyth said the jury must review the evidence dispassionately and clinically.

She said the jurors were entitled to draw inferences and common-sense conclusions but must not speculate on the evidence.

The jury was told it must guard against any prejudice against or sympathy for anyone involved in the trial.

Assumptions

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Paddy Jackson (26) and his Ulster team-mate Stuart Olding (25) have denied raping the then 19-year-old woman on June 28, 2016. Mr Jackson also denies a charge of sexual assault. Both men claim the activity was consensual.

Blane McIlroy (26) denies one count of exposure, while Rory Harrison (25) has pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice and withholding information.

Judge Smyth told the jurors they may have assumptions about what constitutes rape, or a rapist or what a rape victim might say or do. However, they must set aside these assumptions, as there was no stereotype for a rape, a rapist or a victim.

She said that a person's demeanour in court was not necessarily a clue to the truth of their account. She also said that signs of distress did not confirm the truth or accuracy of what a person had said.

She told the jury the morals of any person in this case were "completely irrelevant" and the only purpose of a court of law was to determine if a criminal offence had been committed.

She said the panel may have heard evidence of sexual activity which they found "distasteful" but said "you must not jump to a conclusion".

"You must not allow yourself to be influenced by any view. You must consider the evidence and decide whether you are sure of the defendants' guilt," she added.

Warnings for jurors to ignore press and social media reports, in particular on Twitter, were also repeated.

The judge told the jury to be "careful" when considering the text messages exchanged by all parties in this case.

She said some of the terms may be regarded as crude or offensive or derogatory to women but they were not equivalent to an intention to have non-consensual sex.

Young men may use language which is common parlance among their group but may not necessarily be reflective of their views or what they think.

Their descriptions of events may also be "incomplete" or "easily misconstrued". They may also brag in ways which do not reflect reality she said.

The judge also told the jury they may hold strong views on young people drinking to excess. However, she said that they may not make any assumptions about any person who was drinking that night.

Judge Smyth told the jurors to use their "common sense and experience of life".

She said the burden of proof was on the prosecution, who must prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. She said the defendants did not have to prove their innocence.

Offences

The judge also explained the relevant points of law which apply in each case. She said there were six offences on the indictment before the jury. The judge broke each charge down to its different elements, and said the jury must consider each element before reaching a verdict.

In Mr Jackson's rape allegation, Judge Smyth said that the prosecution must prove three things beyond a reasonable doubt, namely that Mr Jackson intentionally penetrated the woman with his penis, that she did not consent and he did not reasonably believe she was consenting.

Judge Smyth is expected to finish her charge on Monday, and the jury will then retire to consider its verdict.Celebrity architect Dermot Bannon is throwing his weight behind Na Fianna GAA Club in their opposition to Metro North plans.

The north Dublin GAA club outlined serious concerns after plans for the 3bn MetroLink, announced on Thursday, revealed major disruption to their pitches.

The club caters for 125 teams and has one of the largest memberships in the country.

The plans would see the club losing their main pitch on Mobhi Road for up to six years during the construction phase. They will also lose two all-weather pitches for the same period.

"Damn right, I'd be part of a protest," Mr Bannon, who is from Glasnevin, told RTE Radio One's The Ray D'Arcy Show.

"Every child in Glasnevin is part of Na Fianna.

"It's unusual in Dublin, I think, that a GAA club has such a massive hold in the community.

Passage

"My daughter, at the age of five, all she wanted to do was go to Na Fianna, and I know that's because she saw some of the older girls in the jerseys and that, for her, was a rite of passage."

Bannon slammed the choice of route for the city-airport link, describing it as "low-hanging fruit".

"They're saying six years [for construction works], but six years is a lifetime for a child," he added.

"There's nothing like the magic of walking down Mobhi Road and all the four, five and six-year-olds going down together. There's hundreds of them.

"There must be 300 kids in the nursery and they're all so excited.

"I just think there are loads of other spaces they can go. I think this is low-hanging fruit."Russia is preparing for instant retaliation if Taoiseach Leo Varadkar orders the expulsion of diplomats.

There was shock among Russian representatives in Ireland after the Government threatened action on the back of a nerve agent attack in the UK.

Sources say that any move to impose sanctions on officials here will be viewed as the beginning of a diplomatic war.

Tanaiste Simon Coveney has put together a group including senior officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs, An Garda Siochana and the Defence Forces to compile an options paper. It will be delivered to the Taoiseach within the next 48 hours, at which stage he seems certain to expel a number of Russian diplomats.

Russia's ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov said any attempt to eject officials would be viewed as an "unfriendly action". He implied that British Prime Minister Theresa May is manipulating the Taoiseach and other EU leaders "into fighting someone else's unjust war".A masked member of the specialist GIGN police at the siege scene. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

A French policeman who was shot by an Islamist gunman when he swapped himself for a hostage in a supermarket siege has been hailed as a hero after the attacker was killed.

The officer was among an elite team that rushed to the scene when the assailant - who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group - stormed the store in the south-west town of Trebes, firing on shoppers and staff before taking a number of hostages.

The gunman was identified as 26-year-old Redouane Lakdim, a petty criminal of Moroccan origin.

Killing

He shot dead two people at the supermarket and injured a dozen more after earlier shooting at passengers in a car, killing one, and injuring a police officer in nearby Carcassonne.

Lakdim, who was killed in the police assault after around four hours, reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" - "God is greatest" - as he burst into the Super U store. He is said to have demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the 2015 Paris attacks.

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Officials believe he acted alone, and although he had been monitored, police "thought there was no radicalisation".

Lakdim was described by a neighbour as a "pleasant young man" who lived with his parents and sisters, taking the youngest children to school every day.

Speaking later outside the store, the French Interior Minister, Gerard Collomb, described how police intervened immediately after the siege started at around 11am. "They managed to get some of the people out," he said, but the attacker kept one hostage back as a human shield.

A senior police officer, a 45-year-old police lieutenant-colonel, then offered to take the hostage's place and remained holed up with Lakdim while negotiations to end the stand-off continued.

The unnamed officer, who volunteered to swap his place with the civilian, managed to leave his mobile phone switched on so his colleagues outside could hear his conversation with the attacker.

Mr Collomb paid tribute to the "heroism" of the lieutenant-colonel, who was seriously injured when he sustained a bullet wound during the assault in which the hostage taker was shot dead by police.

Mr Collomb said because the officer inside had kept his mobile phone on he was able to retain contact with police outside the supermarket as the stand-off developed. The minister added that elite forces stormed the store and killed the gunman after hearing gunshots inside.

He did not say how or when the police officer was injured.

"When we heard shots, the GIGN - a specialist police tactical unit - intervened," Mr Collumb said, adding that the policeman was "seriously injured" during his "act of heroism".

An officer from the police Swat team was also hurt in the operation to kill the gunman.

Over the course of his rampage, Lakdim killed three people and injured at least three others.

The injured included the driver of the hijacked car as well as a police officer who was out jogging with colleagues in Carcassonne.

The French government is treating the incidents as an attack, with President Emmanuel Macron saying "all evidence suggests" the shootings are terrorism.Two women killed in a horrific crash on Thursday were friends out together for their daily walk.

Secondary school maths teacher Maureen Dooley (55) and her close pal Deirdre Kilmartin (54) were walking in Ballinasloe when they were struck by a vehicle in a freak accident.

They were struck by the car, which had collided with another car, on Station Road on Thursday evening at around 5.40pm and pronounced dead at the scene.

Numb

When word broke that night of an accident, the community of 7,000 people began to fear the worst.

Locals said they were left numb by the tragedy.

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The loop which the two were travelling is a popular 5km route to take for walkers in the town.

The road was sealed off by garda forensics until 4pm yesterday, with post-mortems on the women taking place.

Locals told the Herald that "a wave and a smile was the usual greeting" from the popular duo - who were both married with children. Ms Kilmartin had two children and Ms Dooley had three.

Ms Dooley's husband, Aidan, played for Roscommon in the 1980 All-Ireland Final.

Ms Kilmartin, meanwhile, worked at the local vet in the centre of the town.

It closed for the day, not just as a mark of respect, but because her colleagues were too heartbroken to work.

A note, in a black ribbon on the front door, read: "Due to our inexpressible grief at the death of our wonderful colleague and friend, Deirdre, the shop will remain closed."

Some flowers at the scene were left with a simple message: "Rest in peace ladies."

Sean Tully - a neighbour of the two over the years - said they even went to national school together.

"They were two beautiful girls and just great friends. As people they were outstanding. They were very warm, friendly, outgoing girls," he said.

Fighting

Meanwhile, in a separate incident, a woman is fighting for her life after being struck by a cyclist in Dublin.

The pedestrian, in her 40s, was hit when attempting to cross the road at about 9am at Grand Parade, Ranelagh.

She was initially taken to St Vincent's University Hospital in Elm Park and later transferred to Beaumont Hospital.

A garda spokesman has described her condition as critical.

Gardai are appealing for witnesses to contact Donnybrook Garda Station on 01 666 9200, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any garda station.Former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claims to have had a 10-month affair with US President Donald Trump starting in 2006, has said in an interview that she was in love with him.

Asked if Mr Trump ever said he loved her, Ms McDougal said: "All the time. He always told me he loved me."

When asked if she thought this would lead to a marriage, Ms McDougal said: "Maybe."

The White House has said that Mr Trump denies having an affair with Ms McDougal.

The interview, with CNN'S Anderson Cooper 360, was her first since suing the owner of The National Enquirer earlier this week to be released from an agreement giving it exclusive rights to her story about the alleged affair.

Ms McDougal told CNN she was speaking publicly because "I want to share my story because everybody else is talking about it".

She said she and Mr Trump had sex dozens of times without using protection after the relationship began in Los Angeles in June 2006, not long after his wife Melania gave birth to their son Barron.

She said she met Mr Trump at the Playboy Mansion during filming of The Celebrity Apprentice, in which he starred.

"I was attracted to him. He's a nice looking man. I liked his charisma," she said.

Sorry

Ms McDougal also claimed he offered her money after their first sexual encounter.

"After we had been intimate, he tried to pay me, and I actually didn't know how to take that," Ms McDougal said. "I said, 'That's not me. I'm not that kind of girl'."

She said she met Mr Trump in California and New Jersey and went with him to Trump Tower in New York.

Ms McDougal said she broke up with Mr Trump in April 2007.

Asked what she would say to Melania, Ms McDougal said: "I'm sorry. I wouldn't want it done to me."For Subscribers Promised investigation of abuse, misconduct, Heritage accusers still wait

A letter to families of Heritage Academy near Hagerstown in the summer of 2020 told of an investigation into abuse by former teachers.A family of four from Creston, Iowa died in Mexico Friday, according to a release from Creston Police. A welfare check at the condominium where the family was believed to be staying led to the discovery of the four bodies.

Autopsies are being conducted in Mexico and there is no knowledge of foul play.

"Creston is a very tight-knit community, you know, we're a small community, 1,000 people everybody knows somebody who knows the people involved so it's, it's going to hurt for a while", said Paul Ver Meer, the Creston Police Chief.

In fact, the Sharps' family members hadn't heard anything from Kevin or Amy since the day they arrived to Mexico. They were found last night in their condo deceased. The family says in a Facebook post that they were supposed to return to the United States on a flight to St. Louis on March 21, 2018.

Mexican authorities said there was no trauma to the bodies. We have also pinged cells phones and show that they are still in Mexico with no movement on their phones. The phone had not moved from its location since Thursday morning.

Turkish military continues to provide support for delivery of aid in Afrin

Turkey considers the YPG to be the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and therefore as a terrorist organization.

Palmeros de Barcelona tienen todo listo para el Domingo de Ramos

El Jueves Santo se conmemora la Ultima Cena, en la que Jesus instituyo los sacramentos de la Eucaristia y del orden saerdotal. El Viernes Santo y Sabado Santo no se puede celebrar misa porque son dias de luto en los que se recuerda la muerte de Cristo.

Finnish police receive arrest warrant for Puigdemont but whereabout unknown

Puigdemont's lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas meanwhile told Catalunya Radio his client would not try to escape arrest. The court's decision means the vote on Turull's leadership can not go ahead because his presence is mandatory.

The United States Department of State now has a Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution travel advisory out for the Quintana Roo state in Mexico, which includes popular tourist destinations Cancun, Cozumel and Tulum. Department officials cited a spike in Quintana Roo's homicide rate since 2016. It's unclear whether those tourists were deliberately drugged or became random victims of tainted alcohol, according to the investigation. Local Mexican authorities have taken over the investigation, according to the State Department. The office said that during the inspection, "no signs of violence were found on the bodies or in the room".

Paulina Chavez Alonzo, a spokeswoman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, told NBC News that the government offered its "deepest condolences to the family and friends of the Sharps".

Kevin Sharp was an avid stock auto racer known as "The Sharpshooter" in the local racing scene, and he often competed in events in his neighboring county, Cliff Baldwin, his friend and fellow racer, told the Des Moines Register.

"He was a great personal friend", Baldwin told the Des Moines Register. "The more I think about him and the family, the harder it is". "He's a big part of that community there".It is a Wednesday the three youngsters of Gyanoday College in western Madhya Pradeshs Neemuch town will never forget.

They were talking to some of their college friends when a police team arrived. Suddenly, the boys found themselves surrounded by policemen and accused of harassing the girls. The policemen allegedly slapped the three, made them do squats and walk for a kilometre to the Kotwali police station.

Police freed them a few hours later when the college authorities and a large number of students protested at the police action.

Incidentally, none of the girls complained that the boys were harassing them.

Overzealous police officials unnecessarily humiliated the boys. They were innocent, said Hanif Khan, father of one of the girls who was allegedly harassed.

Read | Improve law and order or face transfer: MP CM to police and bureaucrats

The father of one of the boys humiliated by the police said he considered approaching the court against what police did to his son. My family and friends dissuaded me not to take on the police. My son is depressed after the humiliation, he said.

Jitendra Singh Pawar, additional superintendent of police of Neemuch, admitted the boys were wrongly targeted and said an inquiry has been ordered.

The boys were made to walk because there was no vehicle available, it was not intended to humiliate them, he said.

But parading those accused of crimes against women and also history-sheeters has been repeatedly reported from across most of the states 51 districts ever since chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan told police officials over video conference last Sunday that they were not doing enough to stop criminals and crimes against women.

He had also praised the police force of Indore and Bhopal, who have been publicly humiliating those accused of crimes against women. The CM also posted a video in which he is heard saying, I want only action, action, action.

The CMs action call was made after the opposition slammed the government over the states poor record in crimes against women. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures for 2016, the state tops the country in the number of rapes (4,882) and is third in cases related to outraging modesty of women (8,717).

Following the CMs message, police are also conducting sting operations to catch people peddling porn movies. Police are also keeping a close eye on massage parlour and hotels, many of which are believed to be dens of illegal activities.

The CMs words and tweet have resulted in superintendents of police trying to outdo each other. This is resulting in allegations of excesses, said a senior police officer who did not want to be named.

At the ground level, there is apparent support for public displays of such police action.

In Chhattarpur town, police bulldozed the illegal house of a murder accused who had been absconding. He surrendered a day after his house was demolished.

The next day, a group of people from the town went and thanked the administration.

In Rewa division, police are sitting in busy paan and tea shops in civil clothes and taking action the moment they spot a woman being harassed.

The impact has been great and we are being appreciated,  said Umesh Joga, inspector general of police, Rewa zone .

State human rights commission chairperson Manohar Mamtani said they will act if they receive any complaint of police excesses.

Director general of police Rishi Kumar Shukla said he has not received any complaint of excesses by police in carrying out the drive so far. On possible violation of human rights in the course of such police action, he said, We are following all rules and regulations and there is bound to be criticism from some quarters.High Courts principal bench at Jabalpur ordered cancellation of admission of 84 students who got admission to private medical colleges in Madhya Pradesh under mop-up round. They belong to other states.

In another judgment the high court issued an order to CBSE to get the candidates of National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) to give information as to which state they belong to in the NEET form from the next year.

In the first judgment by the bench of justice RS Jha and justice Rajiv Kumar Dubey said rules were not followed and transparency was not maintained in admission to the medical colleges under mop-up round.

There were 94 students who had got admission to the private medical colleges under the mop-up round. Of them, 84 belonged to other states and 10 from Madhya Pradesh. The bench asked authorities not to interfere in admission of 10 of the students whose domicile was Madhya Pradesh.

As far as the admission of 84 students is concerned which was cancelled the high court said it was the Supreme Court which would take decision on any relief to them. Petitions were already pending in the Supreme Court in this regard.

The petitioners Prithvi Naik, Sailja Pandey and Priyanshu Agrawal said in their petition they had got good marks in NEET 2007 and expected that they would get admission to the private medical colleges as their domicile state was Madhya Pradesh. The high court and Supreme Court had already issued orders that those who belong to Madhya Pradesh should be given preference in admission. But there were irregularities in the admission process.

However, director Medical Education in his report said 84 students from other states were given admission as there was no candidate from Madhya Pradesh available for admission against the vacant seats under the mop-up.

Disposing of some other petitions which challenged admission of students from other states to medical colleges in Madhya Pradesh the bench directed the CBSE to get NEET candidates to give information on his domicile state in the NEET forms from the next year. They were, however, exempted from doing so for NEET-2018.

The petitioners include Vinayak Parihar, a spcial worjer Tarishi Verma, a student and others alleged in their petitions that hundreds of students were given admission in government medical colleges on the seats reserved for MP students under the state quota. Despite their giving information to authorities concerned about admissions made in violation of rules no action was taken by them.

The petitioners said the MP high court in its order during the hearing on their petitions issued on August 24, 2017 had categorically stated that only MPs students be given admission under the state meant for MP students.

Senior lawyers Rajendra Tiwari and Aditya Sanghi pleaded the case on behalf of petitioners.Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt has shared a picture on Instagram in which she is with Ranbir Kapoor and Ayan Mukerji. She has captioned it, And its just the beginning.

Its probably taken on the sets of Mukerjis next film, Brahmastra in which Alia is working with Ranbir.

Producer Karan Johar announced the film last year, but the team began shooting for it only in February this year. If reports are to be believed then the first shooting schedule of Brahmastra is already completed.

The film also features Amitabh Bachchan and Mouni Roy.

Earlier, Alia got injured while shooting for the film in Bulgaria. She injured her shoulder there. She shared a picture on Instagram in which she was surrounded by two team members.

Alia will soon be seen with Ranveer Singh in Gully Boy and with Vicky Kaushal in Raazi.

In a span of six years, Alia Bhatt has become one of the top Bollywood stars. Starting from Student Of The Year, she has given scintillating performances in Highway, Two States, Kapoor And Sons, Udta Punjab and recently released Badrinath Ki Dulhania.

Will she be able to impress the audiences and critics again with Brahmastra?

We need to wait till August 15, 2019 when it hits the screens.New, new, new! Thats what the world loves. And so does Bollywood. Picture these new on-screen pairings: Sonam Kapoor with Malyalam actor Dulquer Salmaan in The Zoya Factor; Hrithik Roshan and TV actor Mrunal Thakur in Super 30, directed by Vikas Bahl; Sumeet Vyas with Kareena Kapoor Khan in Veere Di Wedding; Varun Dhawan with debutante Banita Sandu in Shoojit Sircars October; John Abraham with debutante Aisha Sharma in the tentatively titled film SMJ; Sushant Singh Rajput and Sanjana Sanghi in the Hindi remake of The Fault in Our Stars; and Kannada and Tamil movie actor Shraddha Srinath with Ali Fazal in Milan Talkies.

All these pairings have one solidly established Bollywood star and opposite them a person whos either new in Bollywood or has done only small roles until now. These are films thatll either release in 2018 or will go on the floors this year.

Varun Dhawan is paired with debutante Banita Sandu in Shoojit Sircars October.

The interest in new faces is the result of [top] actors being game for it feels trade analyst Taran Adarsh. Its a mutual decision, as the film gets enhanced, [because] a new pairing can give the film a different look. Directors feel that its important. And viewers, too, like fresh faces and new pairings. If the script demands a fresh face or a pairing that has not been explored earlier, then why not? he says.

Beyond hit jodis

Hindi cinema has moved away from the phenomenon of tried and tested hit jodis, points out trade analyst Komal Nahta. Earlier, there used to be one hit jodi and then youd keep using that jodi till the audience got bored. Now the filmmakers, alongside tackling new subjects, are also willing to cast new pairs. Now, the thrust is on giving new experiences to people.

Actor Sumeet Vyas, who had a fairly small role in English Vinglish (2012), will next be seen opposite Kareena Kapoor Khan in Veere Di Wedding, out this year. Fresher storylines demand a fresh visual, says Sumeet. A different kind of pairing is because of the different stories that people are trying to tell.

Greater visibility

To be paired with a big name in Bollywood means something  definitely so for a newcomer, and also for someone whos a name in regional cinema or in the television industry. Sumeet says, It gives you tremendous visibility in all parts of the country and [even] the world. Kareena is a professional actor; I didnt feel like I was shooting with a superstar. People here have woken up to this idea now. [But] in the West, theyve been doing it for a while. When actor Toby Maguire did Spider-Man (2002), he wasnt a superstar. Rather than paying a huge sum of money to a hit actor, theyd rather get a new talent whod have time to devote to a project.

Aisha Sharma is the leading lady with John Abraham in SMJ.

Aisha (the sister of actor Neha Sharma), whos paired with John in Milap Zaveris action thriller, SMJ, says that her role is exciting at many levels. The feedback for [our] photo shoot is that [people] loved the chemistry that me and John had. The pairing of a star with a debutante is the biggest excitement. Its extremely exciting for me, and the audience, too, is excited to see this new pairing. For me, theres no pressure.

More moolah, certainly

At the end of the day, films need to make money, and a new pairing increases the chances of that. Nahta says, Anything fresh creates a buzz. Whether its a fresh story, a fresh take on an old story, or fresh casting... anything fresh definitely works. So many films are made, and there are only so many stories. People have realised that [new casting] adds to the curiosity value, excitement, and therefore translates into box-office collections, provided the film is good.

Mukesh Chhabra, who is directing The Fault in Our Stars Hindi remake, says that the fresh pairing trend is here to stay, as Bollywood is supporting and welcoming new talent. He adds, The audience [too] is ready for the new generation, like the Dangal girls were extremely new. And we know how that film fared!

Sanjana Sanghi will be starring in the Hindi remake of The Fault in Our Stars, opposite Sushant Singh Rajput. (Twitter/@castingchhabra)

Actor Sumeet Vyas has been cast opposite Kareena Kapoor Khan in Veere Di Wedding. (Photo: Aalok Soni/HT)

Director Milap Zaveri believes that new talent deserves a chance. He says, We chose Aisha because she has a great screen presence and is talented. The more deserving newcomers that enter the industry, the better it is for everyone. After all, every present superstar was once a new face.

[John and Aisha] are extremely good-looking and Im sure audiences would like to see them together. All the other pairs are also exciting. The October trailer is already out, and I must say that Banita and Varun are looking superb together, adds Zaveri.

Follow @htshowbiz for moreActor Jacqueline Fernandez, who will be doing quite a few high-octane action sequences in upcoming movie Race 3, hurt herself while shooting for the film in Abu Dhabi, reports Times of India.

She suffered an eye injury and was immediately rushed to a hospital. The producer of Race 3, Ramesh Taurani confirmed the news and said that Jacqueline suffered an injury just above her eye while playing squash. The actor was administered primary treatment and, thereafter, she returned to the sets to complete the scheduled shoot.

Race 3, which boasts of a huge cast including the likes of Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Saqib Saleem and Daisy Shah, apart from Jacqueline, will see Salman make his debut in a negative role. While director duo Abbas-Mustan directed the first two films in the Race franchise, Race 3 will see Remo D Souza take charge of direction.

In the last few days, the first looks of all the principle characters have been introduced. These include Salman, Bobby, Daisy and Jacqueline.

Meanwhile, Jacqueline has been caught in the eye of a storm, after her song Ek Do Teen from Baaghi 2, went online. It may be recalled that the song is a recreation of the iconic Madhuri Dixit number from Tezaab. Ever since its release, the newer version has had to face a barrage of criticism, which includes one by Tezaab director N Chandra who called it crass beyond imagination, a sex act.

The filmmaker claimed Saroj Khan, the songs original choreographer, planned to take legal action against the makers of the new song.

Jacueline Fernandez in a still from Baaghi 2 song Ek Do Teen.

However, Salman Khan came out in support of the new version. Sharing the song on Twitter, he wrote that Jacqueline had done full justice to Saroj Khans dance moves. He wrote: Loved the song, Jackie has done full justice to the legendary moves of Saroj Khan. Difficult to match Madhuri. Nice to see Varun and Jackie to our songs make us proud n keeps d songs alive n fans listening, dancing n having a blast. Makes me proud. Enjoy Karo!

Loved d song, Jackie has done full justice 2 d legendary moves of Saroj khan difficult to match Madhuri. Nice 2 see Varun n Jackie to our songs makes us proud n keeps d songs alive n fans listening, dancing n having a blast. Makes me proud . Enjoy Karo !https://t.co/qQ6nfnSAD1  Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) March 21, 2018

Soon, Saroj Khan too came out in support of the new version. Coming to the rescue of Jacquelines song, Saroj said in a press statement, Im so happy and proud of Ahmed Khan and Ganesh that they are giving a tribute to us. They have all my blessings.

Follow @htshowbiz for moreThe defence lawyer of the businessman, accused of raping a veteran actress on Friday refuted the allegation and said that both are husband and wife, which falsifies the charge of rape against him.

The case filed against him is false. Defence presented before the court that my client and the actress are husband and wife so there is no question of Section 376 (rape), Advocate Kishore Gaikwad told reporters here.

He further added that his client and complainant were in a healthy relationship.

But we all know that if the plaintiff is influential, anything can happen in the case, he quipped.

The accused, who allegedly raped the veteran actress, was sent to police custody till March 28. He was arrested by the Mumbai Police on Thursday.

The actress also filed charges of forgery and cheating against the accused.

However, the accuseds lawyer cried foul over the charge of forgery and said that it was a case of family dispute.

The actress had earlier filed a complaint of stalking and criminal intimidation against the accused. He got arrested in January 2018 but was later granted bail.

Follow @htshowbiz for moreOn the morning of Friday the 16 March 2018, the district of Mananara Nord and Maroantsetra in the peninsula of Masoala, Region of Analanjirofo, Madagascar, was affected by ELIAKIM, a tropical cyclone in category storm.ELIAKIM brought with him a maximum wind speed of 105 km.

But dry air from Cape York has weakened Nora and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said it would likely hit land about lunchtime on Sunday.

If the 100km-wide core of Nora hits populated areas, roof and structural damage could be caused by winds gusting up to 195 km/h.

Towns as far south as Townsville are on flood watch, with between 200mm and 300mm of rain predicted to fall over coming days.

"Large waves may produce minor flooding along the foreshore. What we are asking communities to do now is move into stronger housing - that means housing above the storm tide area and homes built post-1982", Ms Palaszczuk implored.

"You could see something around about 500 millimetres-plus mark - it's not inconceivable with an event like this", she said.

UK Diplomats Leave Moscow as EU Nations Mull Measures against Russian Federation

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said his government heard the "strong signal" from the bloc's leaders. In a statement, the European Council of EU leaders agreed "there is no plausible alternative explanation".

The real reason Zimbabwe pardoned 3000 prisoners

Speaking at a media conference in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare , Chinese embassy official Zhao Baogang rejected the list. About 3,000 prisoners will be released, said the ZPCS, bringing the prison population down to 17,000.

United States approves $1 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia

Yemen has been embroiled in a war pitting the Houthis against the internationally recognized government, which is allied with a Saudi-led military coalition.

"The winds are going to pick up in those communities and we want you to remain safe".

Warnings were in place for all Queensland areas from Karumba to Mapoon, including Weipa and Mornington Island, as it moved southeast at close to 18km/h.

Bruce Gunn, Queensland State Manager, said residents should prepare for the "immediate impact" of gale force winds and possible inundation of water to low-lying areas.

"But it's still a very severe category system with very destructive winds at its core", he said.

"For the people at Pompuraaw, Kowanyama and the extended western peninsula all the way down through the Gilbert River nearly into Karumba, here's the message: lock down tonight safe and secure, take your supplies with you and stay there until it is safe to come out", he said.

SES leaders and extra police have been deployed to remote communities to assist but when Nora hits it will be too unsafe for anyone to be outside.The heir to the British throne has been painted as a lavish spender given to sudden changes in mood in a new unauthorised biography of Prince Charles. Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles by Tom Bower claims to be based on interviews with more than 120 people associated with the 69-year-old, who collectively reveal a royal household rife with intrigue and misconduct.

Despite his hard work and genuine concern for the disadvantaged, he has struggled to overcome his unpopularity. After Dianas death, his approval rating crashed to four per cent and has been only rescued by his marriage to Camilla. Nevertheless, just one third of Britons now support him to be the next king, notes the book.

The biography alleges that Charles once took a trip on the royal train from his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire to Penrith in Cumbria to visit a pub, at a cost of nearly 18,916 pounds. On another occasion, the author claims the Prince of Wales brought his own mattress, toilet seat, toilet paper and two landscapes of the Scottish Highlands when visiting a friend in north-east England. When he leaves one of his six homes across the UK, including Clarence House, Charles reportedly travels with a large staff including a butler, two valets, chef, private secretary, typist and bodyguards.

Bower, who has previously written unauthorised biographies of other famous figures such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, claims that Charles presides at the centre of a court with no place for democracy or dissenting views...like some feudal lord.

The eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II reportedly told a visitor of his mother: Mama down the road reads newspapers; I dont. It would drive me mad.

The book, which claims the prince is obsessed with public opinion, is presented as a probe into the character and court of the Charles that no one, until now, has seen. Charles himself is quoted as saying in 2004: Nobody knows what utter hell it is to be Prince of Wales.

Bower, a self-proclaimed monarchist, concludes that the princes legacy has been tarnished by his addiction to luxury, his financial mismanagement, his disloyalty to professional supporters, and the torrid relationships with his family.

Clarence House, the office of Prince Charles, has said that no comment will be issued on the allegations made in the book.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for moreAsk me what my favourite convenience food is and Ill tell you that it is the sausage. At any given time, my fridge is full of sausages. I have all kinds: spicy Italian sausages, meaty-but-sweet Chinese sausages, pimenton-packed chorizo from Portugal, little cocktail sausages which my wife wraps in rashers of bacon and then fries, Goan sausages full of vinegar and masala, and sliceable Thai sausages from Chiang Mai, waiting to be cut into chunks and eaten with garlic and peanuts.

Ask me what my least favourite convenience food is and Ill tell you that it is...the sausage.

Yups. Because in most of India, the good name of the sausage has been dragged through the mud and then attached to the tail of a chicken. It is virtually impossible to buy good sausages in India.

The sausages of my memory were made with pork fillings that had texture and taste (Shutterstock)

I know because I have tried. The biggest problem is that an increasingly large number of sausages in the Indian market are made from chicken. This is worse than terrible; it is also bizarre. Rare is the nation that bothers to make its sausages with minced chicken. As we all know, chicken is not the most flavourful meat and it is particularly unsuited for sausages. And yet, manufacturer after manufacturer will finely mince poor quality, industrially-reared chicken and then shape the meat into a nasty little torpedo.

Oddly enough, the worst sausages in India are served at so-called deluxe hotels. Most hotel chefs prefer chicken sausages, positive proof, if any were needed, that they have no clue what a sausage should taste like.

Why do they do this? I am told that in the old days, chefs were taught to be careful of all pork because it went off easily and sometimes carried parasites. So chicken seemed safest, even if it was tasteless. The problem is that even now, when it is easy to source pork that is hygienically reared, chefs still stick to chicken sausages.

While researching this piece, I wandered around cold storages and grocers in Delhi, buying up whatever Indian sausages were available.

The Northern Thai Sausage is a fresh sausage available at the Tops supermarket branches in Bangkok (Shutterstock)

Every single sausage (including those recommended by five-star hotel chefs as great pork brands) was utterly revolting. All were tasteless and some had a nasty synthetic texture as though someone had filled a length of pipe with a rubber solution (or Fevicol or Quick Fix) and allowed it to solidify.

As I went from one tasteless rubber torpedo to another, I thought back to my childhood. The sausages of my memory were flavourful and juicy, made with pork fillings that had texture and taste. How, in this age of globalisation, was it possible that sausage quality had actually dropped all over India?

The answer seemed to be that in the pre-liberalisation era, Big Meat had still not arrived. It was a time when chickens were free range, and when small piggeries raised their own animals and either made the sausages themselves or gave their pork to butchers to make small batches of sausages by hand. There was no mechanisation and the meat processing industry had not taken off.

Now, in the age of Big Meat, manufacturers care more about increasing their profit margins than they do about taste and quality.

It is interesting that at some hotels, where the kitchen is run by quality-conscious chefs, the sausages are either imported or made on the premises. For years, I went to Celini at the Grand Hyatt Mumbai for the sausages because they were made in-house. At the Leela Gurgaon, Ramon Salto, the son of a butcher, would not use any chorizo-style sausages he did not make himself. Manu Chandra makes his own merguez and chorizo for his restaurants.

If you know a good artisanal sausage-maker, then you will be fortunate enough to be spared the plastic torpedos of Big Meat

And then there is the example of the Oberoi chain. Two decades ago, fed up of questions about the provenance of the charcuterie and weary of the crap sausages available in the market, the Oberois set up their own deli unit.

To this day, they import pork from Australia and Holland, their chefs chop it themselves and the Oberois then make the best artisanal sausages in India from high-quality pork. Its meant not only for their own restaurants but also for retail sales at the delis in their hotels.

All of which begs the question: if the Oberois can make their own sausages and if many individual chefs have identified the problem, then why are the majority of the chefs in Indias hotel sector content to serve rubbish industrial sausages?

I cannot be certain what the answer is. But Im pretty sure it does not reflect well on Indias five-star chefs.

So what do you do if you want to eat good sausages in India? Well, there is always the Oberoi option. Some food stores will sell imported sausages. And if you know a good artisanal sausage-maker then you will be fortunate enough to be spared the plastic torpedos of Big Meat.

The Goan chorise (a descendant of the Portuguese chorizo) at The Bombay Canteen

Alternatively, you can look for the delicious Goan chorise (a descendant of the Portuguese chorizo) which is always made by artisans, and which more and more chefs seem to be sourcing. Thomas Zacharias gets it for The Bombay Canteen and O Pedro. Manu Chandra serves the real thing at many of his restaurants. (Though Manu may well be making his own.) So do many others.

Margao Choriz at O Pedro, Mumbai

If you can get your hands on good sausages, what should you do?

Well, speaking for myself, I nearly always look for something interesting to do with sausages. This is a lesson I may have learnt from my mother who, though she was hardly a passionate cook, had perfected an Indian-style curry made with chunks of pork sausage sourced from a local cold storage in Mumbai.

Of late, I have been experimenting with the use of sausages to flavour rice. Most Goans are familiar with the idea of a chorise pulao (though they may call it something else) in which the white rice is streaked red from the vinegar as it escapes the sausages in the pan and in which, the fat from the chorise coats each grain of rice even as the masalas flavour the pulao.

If you are fortunate enough to gain access to more unusual sausages, then the possibilities are endless. One of the advantages of going to Bangkok so often is that my wife and I are able to buy Thai sausages fairly regularly. There is one sausage in particular  easily available at branches of the Tops supermarket chain  called a Northern Thai Sausage that we always bring back. (This is a fresh sausage, unlike the salami-style Chiang Mai Sausage which I also like).

The wife does it best: Seemas Sausage Curry

Ingredients:

Oil: 4 tablespoons

Thai sausages: 4

Thai red chillis: 3

Green Onions: One small cup  chopped small

White onions: One small cup  chopped small

Garlic: One whole bulb, chopped small

Thai galangal: 3 tablespoons, chopped small

Lemongrass: Chopped into big chunks (easy to remove later)

Kaffir lime leaves: 6

Kaffir lime: Half

Coconut milk: One can

Green curry paste: One packet

Krapow paste: One packet

Fish sauce to taste

Basil leaves: A handful

Method

Let the oil heat in a large pan. Make a vertical cut in the chillis and fry in oil. Add kaffir lime leaves and allow them to crisp up. Add ginger and garlic and saute. Then add the green and white onions and cook until translucent. Chop the sausages into rounds. Add them to the pan and cook until they are browned. Then add the curry paste and krapow paste and stir. Once the paste has coated the sausages evenly, add the coconut milk. Let the curry boil for a couple of minutes and then reduce the heat so that the curry simmers.

Add fish sauce and lime to taste. Garnish with fresh basil leaves, roughly torn. Serve with sticky rice.

A note for vegetarians

Vegetarians can substitute shiitake mushrooms and baby corn for the sausages and use the same recipe, using soya sauce instead of fish sauce. The recipe works with most artisanal sausages if you cant get your hands on the Thai sausage.

From HT Brunch, March 25, 2018

Follow us on twitter.com/HTBrunch

Connect with us on facebook.com/hindustantimesbrunchAuthor and HT Brunch columnist Shoba Narayans living room is dotted with family photos. There are framed photos of parents and kids; some even chronicle important life events. But one photograph stands out: it is of a herd of spotted cows crossing a street. A simple image, it doesnt quite tell you where it has been shot, only that these cows are focusing their energies on making it to the other side. Shoba is quick to clear the air though; her latest book, The Cows of Bangalore: And How I Came to Own One, is just out, but the cows adorning her living room wall have nothing to do with the book. This picture was shot in New Zealand more than a decade ago, in the early years of my marriage. This was long before I even thought of writing this book, she says.

That said, she concedes that with her latest book, life has, in a manner of speaking, come full circle. The Cows of Bangalore belongs to the memoir genre, one that Shoba  with titles such as Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes and Return to India to her credit  is only too familiar with. But why write a book about cows? Shoba admits that milk lady Sarala and their search for a cow was something that fascinated her right from the early days. This is also why I wrote an eight-part series on my cow buying experience for HT Mint. The book is an afterthought; its unlike my other books which were more planned works.

Holy cow

Set over the last decade when Shoba moved back with her family to Bengaluru from New York, the book offers a mildly exaggerated account of how Sarala approached her to buy a cow and the resulting search for a good cow. This is accompanied by enriching nuggets about cows in Indian mythology, the domestication of cows in India and the desi versus hybrid cow debate.

The book is about  and owes its existence to  the generosity of spirit and the eloquence of its protagonist

The idea was to infuse some humour into the story using an immigrants perspective and at the same time, draw attention to the serious fact that desi cow breeds in our country are dwindling, she points out,emphasising that it was a conscious decision to steer clear from politicising the story.

A challenge no doubt, given how easy it would be to grab attention by putting a political spin on this. True, but that would entail writing about cow killings and Hindutva politics, which would be digressing from what I set out to write. At the end of the day, the book is about  and owes its existence to  the generosity of spirit and the eloquence of its protagonist Sarala, Shoba shoots back.

The Cows of Bangalore: And How I Came to Own One is Shoba Narayans latest book

Of fond ruminations

One of Shobas favourite recollections in the book is when Sarala and she would enter the army enclave right across the street and shoot the breeze. This would be sometime in the evening, after she had milked the cows. Wed catch the sun setting as the birds chirped and shed spot some greens in the complex and rattle on about how one could cook them. It was moments like these that made writing the book totally worth it, she recounts.

Another riveting fact in the book is the absolute lack of paperwork involved in the buying and selling of a cow. Theres zero paperwork, can you believe it? Reddy, who sold us the cow Anand Lakshmi, took Rs 75,000 in cash and just loaded her onto the truck. That was it  quite hilarious now that I think about it, laughs Shoba.

Views for thought

Shobas column for HT Brunch, This Indian Life, is her take on relationships. My mother-in-law lives with me; plus a lot of my relatives live in the vicinity. This has made me a proxy daughter for several aunts and uncles. The column then is about what it means to be sandwiched between two generations  of ones parents (elders) and kids, she explains.

At a time when nuclear families are becoming more common than ever, hers is a column aimed at throwing light on, among other things, the great Indian joint family. For instance, one of the benefits of living around elders is that you may be exposed to different  and even irksome  perspectives, but they nevertheless help you stop taking yourself so seriously. I think it is imperative to encourage conversation about this topic as it is highly relevant today, especially for our youngsters, says Shoba.

From HT Brunch, March 25, 2018

Follow us on twitter.com/HTBrunch

Connect with us on facebook.com/hindustantimesbrunchAbout Mini Date of birth: August 21 Sun Sign: Leo Place of birth: New Delhi School/college: Delhi Public School, RK Puram/ Lady Shri Ram College for Women, New Delhi High point of your life: I have many professionally, but personally it was when I first held

my babies Low point of your life: The postnatal depression that followed

If you were the editor of a magazine for a day, who would you put on the cover and why?

Id put my dog, a husky named Blue Khan on the cover. He is bold and beautiful and does not give two barks about religion or political affiliations.

The best and the worst thing about Bollywood is...?

Films have the ability to influence the way a country thinks and can be almost life-changing! The worst part is its a tough place to stay relevant.

Describe yourself in three words.

Closet stand-up comic.

And, if we were to ask you to pick a dessert that describes you perfectly, itd be...?

A lava cake  firm on the outside and hot molten chocolate inside.

An era of fashion you would have loved to be in...?

1960s, when everyone wore saris for everything.

One outfit you can live in...?

A pair of jeans and my white sneakers.

The last time you had a bad hair day...?

At a fashion shoot last month. I looked like a limp dishcloth.

Your favourite social media is...?

Instagram all the way! I love its visual creativity.

The best way to handle trolls is...?

By shaming them on the platform, in brilliant English!

Tell us, what is the cutest thing your daughter has done for you...?

She has given me the opportunity to live my childhood all over again. Im doing stuff I never

had the chance to try out as a seven-year-old.

One bonding activity with your daughter that you really enjoy is...?

Well, Im doing a show called Mini Me  a 10-part travelogue series  where Im globetrotting

with Sairah!

And as a daughter yourself, what is the one thing you do better than your mother...?

My mom Veena is an absolute boss lady! Anything I can do, she does better. Maybe I can walk faster in heels, thats about it!

A classic Hindi film you would have loved to be a part of...?

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983).

Your perfect way to de-stress is...?

Travelling and cooking the hell out of my kitchen.

Whats easier  films or TV?

Neither. Both require passion, commitment and technique.

My Favourites Cuisines: Japanese, Thai, Indian Song: Walking On Sunshine by Katrina & The Waves Food: Mango and sticky rice with coconut milk Breakfast: Eggs Benedict with a pot of brewed tea Side of the bed: The right side... always

Your dream destination is...?

I want to dive in Bora Bora, French Polynesia, go to Japan for like a month and skydive in Papua New Guinea. Why did you ask!

Your strategy in a crisis...?

I always keep a cool head and see the larger picture to calm down.

One song that describes your current state of mind?

Somethings Gotta Give by Camila Cabello.

From HT Brunch, March 25, 2018

Follow us on twitter.com/HTBrunch

Connect with us on facebook.com/hindustantimesbrunchShoaib Raees, a horse cart driver, stands outside the Kalyan railway station, ready to ferry passengers. He ends up waiting at least 20 minutes to get a passenger and by the time the fourth passenger, his final one for the ride takes his place in the cart, one hour of his six-hour shift is over.

It is difficult to get passengers these days as not many want to travel in a horse cart. Sometimes, I get only two passengers after waiting for a long time at the tonga lane, said Raees, 57. A horse cart can carry four passengers and drivers wait till they all seats are full.

The decline in the number of passengers taking the horse cart has meant an unstable income for drivers, as they do dont have a fixed number of trips they make daily. Drivers said added to this is the fact that a horse cannot run for more than six hours a day.

There is no specific amount that I earn as it all depends on the number of passengers. Sometimes I take 10 trips in a day, sometimes just two, said Raees.

Around 25 horse carts run in the city. The minimum fare is Rs10 for a distance of at least 1 to 1.5 km. If one takes a horse cart from Kalyan station to Doodh naka in Kalyan (West) which is 1 to 1.5 km away from the station, it will cost Rs10. However, 10 years ago it used to cost Rs6. Autorickshaws outside the station also charge Rs10 to Doodh naka.

The number of passengers has reduced tremendously lately. We endlessly wait outside the station for passengers, said Diwakar Patil, 55, who has been driving a horse cart driver for 40 years.

Horse cart drivers said the increase in fare has reduced passengers.

A few decades ago, several families at Doodh naka, Paar naka and Tilak chowk in Kalyan (West) made their living by driving horse carts. But, only a handful has stuck to it.

The tonga, which was once a mode of transportation in different parts of Kalyan since Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharajs rule, is vanishing from the streets slowly. The major reasons for this is low income and lack of stability of the work, said Manoj Patil, 35, a resident of Paar naka, Kalyan (West).

Families in Kalyan who drove tongas for a living used to wake up early in the morning. They used to spend two hours cleaning and grooming their horses, feeding them hay, jaggery and grams. Around 7am, they would begin ferrying people from Doodh naka to Kalyan station and back.

Tongas used to play a major role in transportation before buses and autos started to ply in the city. Kalyan then was a port near Durgadi Fort, famous for trade. Horse carts decorated with colourful veils (pardah) and lights (kandil) were seen on the streets and royal families from different parts visited the city on the decorated horse carts.

Fifteen years ago, there were around 300 horse carts in the city. Today, it has reduced to 25. The drivers said their jobs are at risk.

The increasing congestion in the city is also affecting our business as the horse carriage hardly gets any space to move. The authorities have failed to address issues faced by the horse cart drivers, said Dilawar Khan, 50, another horse cart driver.

In Kalyan, the tonga will help you reach different places like Doodh naka, Paar naka, Agra road and other places in Kalyan (West).

The new generation is not interested in taking up tonga driving as the work is unstable. Most of the youngsters opt for driving an autorickshaw,added Khan.

Some of the residents in Kalyan take a tonga as a fun ride for their children. Children are very fond of animals. My son likes it, said Tausif Mirsinge, 48, a resident of Doodh naka.

The horse carts also face hurdles with parking. Initially there were three lanes for parking tongas at the railway station premises, but due to the increase in the number of autorickshaws, it has come down to one lane.

The authorities should at least preserve tongas so that the upcoming generation is aware of the historical mode of transportation of the city. It was once the pride of old Kalyan, where most of the residents chose a tonga to connect to the railway station, said Rajendra Phadke, president of Kalyan passengers association.Chaos and bedlam marked the fifth day of Uttarakhand assemblys budget session Saturday as the Congress and the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party members entered into heated exchange and twice nearly came to blows on the issue of farmers suicide. The House witnessed seven adjournments.

As the proceedings began, Leader of Opposition Indira Hridayesh raised the issue of farmers suicide. Participating in a budget debate she suggested that the BJP government initiate steps so that farmers could pay their loans in easy instalments. If you cant waive off farmers loans you should hold a meeting of bank officials so that a consensus could be reached to let them repay loans in easy installments, she said.

Hridayesh suggested that such a meeting with officials of banks is also represented by the Reserve Bank of India officials. The (BJP) government shouldnt create a situation where farmers are forced to commit suicide, Hridayesh said inviting sharp reaction from agriculture minister Arvind Pandey. His statement drowned in the din as all the Congress legislators, barring Hridayesh, rushed to the Well of the House with both sides trading charges.

Speaker Prem Chand Aggarawal made several appeals to maintain order. His repeated appeals though had no effect.

As the bedlam prevailed, Congress Karan Mehra and BJP MLA Rajkumar Thukral rushed at each other and nearly came to blows. An embarrassing situation was averted as marshals present pushed both Mehra and Thukral aside. Meanwhile, amid the ongoing din some more irate Congress and BJP legislators rushed at each other but marshals intervened. As the chaos continued, Speaker adjourned the House at 11:15am for 15 minutes, which was again adjourned twice consecutively for 15 minutes each.

When the House reassembled, finance minister Prakash Pant accused the Opposition of unnecessarily politicising the farmers issue. He also appealed to the Speaker to have Hridayeshs allegations against the government expunged from the House proceedings.

The opposition leaders statement should be expunged because she has accused the government of motivating the farmers to commit suicide, Pant said inviting a sharp reaction from the Leader of the Opposition. I strongly oppose the recommendation for expunging my statement, which was made for a genuine cause, she said. Meanwhile, minister Pandey blamed the faulty policies pursued by the previous Congress government for the farmers suicides.

The statement ended up adding fuel to fire as the Congress legislators started raising anti-government slogans and rushed to the well of the House. The Speaker again adjourned the House. As soon as the House reassembled at 1pm, state Congress president Preetam Singh accused the government of being anti-farmer inviting sharp reaction from the treasury benches.

Meanwhile, Hridayesh again rose from her chair stating that the BJP being the ruling party, the responsibility of maintaining order in the House rests with the latter. While speaking on the farmers issue on the floor of the House, I did not mention anything provocative, she said. Her speech drowned in the din as the members from both sides again started shouting at each other adding to the ongoing bedlam.

Meanwhile, the Speaker adjourned the House till afternoon. Incidentally, it happened to be the seventh adjournment in a day.A 17-year-old girl hanged herself from a ceiling fan at her house in outer Delhis Bakhtawarpur village on Friday after she was allegedly stalked and sexually harassed by a young man in her neighbourhood,

The teenager left behind a suicide note in which she hinted at harassment by some local men, but the police and her family identified a 21-year-old neighbour as a suspect.

A part of her suicide note read: Idhar jaao toh ladke, udhar jaao toh ladke, meri zindagi kharaab kar rahe the taaki main kuch na kar sakoon, (Wherever I go, I find men. They are destroying my life so that I cannot do anything).

In the suicide note, the class 12 student also mentioned that her death would save her family from eviction from their rented home. Putting things in context, her parents alleged that when they raised the sexual harassment issue with the suspects parents, they retorted by compelling them to vacate their tiny two-room set.

Rajneesh Gupta, deputy commissioner of police (Rohini), said a case of abetment to suicide and under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act has been registered at the Alipur police station. We are making efforts to nab the suspect, the DCP added.

The parents of the suspect dismissed the allegations and claimed he had nothing to do with the girl. The landowner, a relative of the accused, said that the girls family was asked to vacate the house because they hadnt been paying the rent on time.

Hindustan Times is withholding the name of the suspect to protect the identity of the victim.

The girl belonged to a migrant family of five from Bihar. Her parents run a shop and work in the fields. She aspired to become a policewoman and had been training hard for it, said her mother. When my daughter would go out jogging in the morning, that man would chase her, offer to train her and take the opportunity to touch her inappropriately, her mother alleged.

The girl complained to her parents on Tuesday morning after he allegedly called her to meet him alone in the early hours of Tuesday. Offering to get her a job with Delhi Police, he said he would marry her. But when she refused his offer, he threatened to kill her family, her father alleged.

The same morning, the girl and her parents visited his house and demanded that his parents keep him in check. They did not even care to listen to our complaint. Using expletives against my daughter and me, they kicked us out of their house. They also ordered that we vacate our rented home immediately, the girls mother alleged.

The parents said they asked for a few extra days to vacate the house. My mother died in February. My brother died of cancer just 10 days ago. It would be an ill omen to vacate the house before performing my brothers last rites, said the father.

Parents said she might have felt responsible for all the trouble the family was going through. My husband pointed to our luggage at home and asked my daughter where we were supposed to go. I think she held herself responsible for our troubles, said the mother.

Around 10 am on Friday, the girl was alone at home when she used a dupatta to hang herself. Her mother was away at work and father was in the neighbourhood. She let out a short, loud cry in her last moment. That drew the attention of a neighbour who alerted me. But by the time we broke into the house, she had died, said her father.The National Commission for Women has ordered a probe into alleged manhandling of JNU students and a woman journalist during a protest march here.

A large number of JNU students and teachers were on Friday stopped from marching to the Parliament Complex over various demands, including academic freedom, with police resorting to lathicharge and use of water canons.

We have ordered a probe and sent a team today to meet the police officials and we will further pursue the matter on Monday, NCW Acting Chairperson Rekha Sharma said.

The protesting students had claimed that the attack by the police was unprovoked, with a woman journalist alleging that a man in uniform groped her and asked her to vacate the place.

The Padyatra, which started at the varsitys campus, was organised by the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association (JNUTA).

The associations are demanding academic freedom, and accessible and equitable education.

The teachers body had requested other associations to join the protest march.

Their other demands include withdrawal of the executive council decision to constitute a committee to take action against teachers and the immediate withdrawal of notifications replacing chairpersons who were opposed to implementing compulsory attendance.Political activities by students in a municipal school in New Delhi had raised the hackles of the Crime Investigation Department (CID). The agency, in its confidential report dated November 5, 1930, sent to Delhis deputy commissioner, had said that students are wearing buttons bearing the photos of Bhagat Singh, Batukeshwar Dutt, and other revolutionary leaders in classrooms.

The incident happened about a month after the special tribunal, set up to examine the assassination of assistant superintendent of police John Saunders, had sentenced Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru to death on October 7.

On March 23, 1931, the three were hanged at Lahore jail. This day is observed as Martyrs Day in India every year.

I have reliable source information that the authorities of MB High School, New Delhi (possibly NP Boys Senior Secondary School at Mandir Marg), are being very lax in regard to the political activities of their classes... it seems that the headmaster and Dola Ram, second master are largely responsible for this state of affairs though the former ordered the removal of the photos on November 3 after a very long delay, said the note signed by the Superintendent of Police, CID.

This classified letter along with original documents and photographs related to the arrest, imprisonment and trial of Singh and Dutt in another case regarding the bombing of central legislative assembly (now known as Parliament House), are now available for public at the Bhagat Singh Archives and Resource Centre at Delhi Archives in Qutub Institutional Area.

The facility was inaugurated on Friday by Delhis development minister Gopal Rai.

The function was attended by major general Sheonan Singh, a decedent of Singh, and noted historian and professor Irfan Habib, among others.

The centre houses about 2,000 books in various languages (including English, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, and Punjabi) on the countrys independence movement and the life of freedom fighters. It has original records, digitised manuscripts and photocopies of documents about the freedom struggle including the Civil Disobedience Movement 1932, and photos of Singh and his family.

One of the rare exhibits at the centre is a file containing daily health records of Singh and Dutt while they were on hunger strike (at Mianwali and Lahore jail respectively) seeking better status of political prisoners so that they could avail better facilities like quality food, literary journals, periodicals, and toiletries.

Their health updates were shared between the Delhi commissioner and the inspector general of prison, Punjab every day. The jail authority would take their temperature twice a day in the morning and the evening and keep a tab on their blood pressure. Whenever their condition deteriorated, both were force fed. However, they would resist, says the documents, said Ashutosh Kumar Jha, an assistant archivist at Delhi archives.

Original jail records, bearing thumb impressions of Singh and Dutt are also at the display at centre. Our collection is sourced from various places like National Archives. The idea is to make available as much information to people interested in the freedom struggle and freedom fighters, said Sanjay Kumar Garg, head, Delhi Archives.

Experts on the life of Bhagat Singh, professor Chaman Lal of Jawaharlal Nehru University and Kripal Chandra Yadav of Kurukshetra University also contributed to the centre from their personal collection.Residents of south Delhi who do not clean up after their dogs on streets and public spaces will soon have to pay fines of Rs 500.

On Friday, officials said the South Delhi Municipal Corporation approved the proposal to issue an on-the-spot fine of Rs 500 for people who do not clean up their dogs faeces.

The owners of pets walk them late in the evenings or early mornings and make a mess on roads, parks, footpaths leaving them filthy. This practice has to stop because people in no other country practice such things, said Nandini Sharma, deputy chairman, standing committee, SDMC.

Moreover, the practice increases the health risks for other people living in neighbourhood as well as the pedestrians. So it would be better if the owners clean up on mess on their own, said Sharma who moved the proposal.

The civic agency will soon issue directions to the department of environment management services to form and implement the policy by the end of next month.

The sanitation staff, including sanitation inspector or assistant inspector, will be given the authority to issue challans. We will face resistance in the beginning, but we are prepared for that, said Kamaljeet Sehrawat, SDMC mayor.

We will also act on the complaints received from residents or RWAs provided they upload the photographs on SDMC website and give sufficient information, she said.

The RWAs, however, said that civic agency should first give warning to defaulters. The concept is good. But it is important that the authority should make enough arrangements before implementing norms such as developing dog parks, poop-points , Chitra Jain, member of New Friends Colony RWA.

Animal rights activist Rishi Dev, however, said that it is important to ensure that norms are not misused. There are people who have adopted strays. And they cant follow them everywhere to figure out where these dogs go. This order cant be implemented on semi-stray dogs. Also, it has to be ensured that civic officials dont harass such people.

We raised similar apprehension when SDMC came out with online registration policy of pet dogs after paying fees of Rs 500. We took it in writing from veterinary officials that the norm doesnt apply to semi-stray dogs, said Dev, a resident of Dwarka.About Me Scott Because prophetic scriptures are found throughout the bible, it is obvious that a comprehensive, systematic approach would be useful, if not necessary, for the understanding of prophecy. Past prophecies have been fulfilled in a literal manner, as confirmed by the dating of these writings and historical records of confirmation. These past prophecies also serve as a model of how to interpret future prophecies. A literal view of prophecy clearly indicates a certain sequence of events will occur within a single generation, concluding with the Tribulation and Second Advent and these events will be obvious. The prophetic signs appear to be present in this generation and we believe these signs are revealed in the news from around the world. View my complete profileHaving earlier studied the 2002 Anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, Class 12 political science students will now read about the Gujarat riots in an updated textbook.

The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has made the change in the sub-head of a chapter, Politics in India since Independence, in the textbook.

However, apart from this and the opening line, the text in the passage on the 2002 Gujarat violence remains the same and continues to highlight critical observations about the role of the then BJP state government.

In the new textbooks, two changes have been made in the passage. Besides the title, the word Muslim has also been omitted from the first sentence of the passage.

The passage earlier read: In February-March 2002, large-scale violence against Muslims took place in Gujarat. In the updated books, it now reads: In February-March 2002, large-scale violence took place in Gujarat. The change has been made in a Class 12 textbook published in 2007 when the Congress-led UPA was in power.

NCERT officials said that in the approved syllabus, which is used for preparing the textbooks, the word anti-Muslim doesnt exist. The syllabus clearly uses the word Gujarat riots. However, the textbook had included the word Anti-Muslim. When we started the work on updating the books we were informed about it and we have reverted to Gujarat riots, said a senior NCERT official on condition of anonymity. HT had first reported about this proposed change on June 7, 2017.

It is learnt that the decision was taken at a meeting of the course review committee that includes representatives of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the NCERT.

According to official estimates, nearly 800 Muslims and more than 250 Hindus were killed in the violence in February-March, 2002. The violence was sparked by the death of 57 Hindu pilgrims who were burnt alive in a train compartment at a station in Godhra.

HT has a copy of both the old and updated textbooks.

NCERT officials maintained that it is a minor change.

The passage titled Gujarat riots reads: In February-March 2002, large-scale violence took place in Gujarat. The immediate provocation for this violence was an incident that took place at a station called Godhra. A bogey of a train that was returning from Ayodhya and was full of karsevaks (volunteers) was set on fire. Fifty-seven people died in that fire. Suspecting the hands of Muslims in setting fire to the bogey, large-scale violence against Muslims began in many parts of Gujarat from the next day. This violence continued for almost a whole month.

The passage on the role of institutions and government remains the same as well. The National Human Rights Commission criticised the Gujarat governments role in failing to control violence, provide relief to the victims and prosecute the perpetrators of this violence. The EC ordered the assembly elections to be postponed.

The passage refers to the 1984 riots that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and says: As in the case of anti-Sikh riots of 1984, Gujarat riots show that the governmental machinery also becomes susceptible to sectarian passions.

This review is an ongoing process and before every reprint we do incorporate new acceptable feedback and also update the information with the latest developments. We have made other changes too such as including information on demonetization, digital literacy, GST (goods and services tax) and updated the figures too, said another senior NCERT official.Rakesh Bhatnagar, a professor of biotechnology at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), has been appointed as vice-chancellor of Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, two government officials familiar with the development said on Friday. The government had shortlisted three candidates, which included Devendra Kumar Gupta, a surgeon from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and scientist Ramakrishna Ramaswamy from JNU.

A senior official said the President has approved Bhatnagars name. Orders have been issues and he will take charge shortly, the official said.

Former V-C Girish Chandra Tripathi had gone on leave two months before his tenure ended following a ruckus on campus in September last year. Registrar Neeraj Tripathi has held additional charge as V-C since. BHU is among the 43 central universities and the V-C appointment has to be cleared by the President, said a senior HRD official.Winter sea ice on the Arctic Ocean covered the second smallest area on record this year, part of a thaw that is opening the region to shipping and oil exploration and may be disrupting weather far to the south, scientists said on Friday.

The extent of floating ice likely reached an annual maximum of 14.5 million square kilometers (5.6 million square miles) on March 17, fractionally bigger than a record set in 2017, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said.

Sea ice around the North Pole freezes to its biggest at the end of the winter in March, and thaws to an annual minimum in September. The ice has shrunk in recent decades in a trend scientists link to man-made climate change.

The 2018 winter ice is about a million square kilometers - roughly the size of Egypt or Colombia and bigger than the state of Texas - below the long-term average maximum, NSIDC data show. The centre, affiliated with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, studies satellite data of the ice going back 39 years.

The diminishing ice seems at odds with remarks by President Donald Trump in a television interview in January that The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now. But now theyre setting records.

Until now, most scientific focus has been on a trend of shrinking Arctic sea ice in summer, which is opening shipping routes from the Pacific to the Atlantic and allowing oil and gas exploration even as it harms indigenous peoples and wildlife such as polar bears.

Now, things are increasingly about the winter time, said Tor Eldevik, a professor at the University of Bergens Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.

The winter retreat means ever bigger areas are ice-free year round, especially in the Barents Sea north of Russia and Norway which is becoming more like the Atlantic Ocean, he said.

The vast Shtokman natural gas field, north of Russia, is in an area that is now ice-free even in the depths of winter  helping Gazprom if it ever develops the find. The region was ice-bound in winter until the early 1980s, Eldevik said.

Shipping company Teekay said a tanker loaded a first cargo of liquefied natural gas at a terminal in Arctic Russia and travelled to France in January 2018 - the first ship to make such a winter voyage without an icebreaker.

The retreat may also affect weather far to the south.

Researchers suspect that Arctic warmth can disrupt the high altitude jet stream and send brief blasts of frigid air south - such as a beast from the East freeze in Europe last month or bitter cold brought by a bomb cyclone in the eastern United States.

You could talk about the Arctic having a fever, and boy did the Arctic have a fever this winter, and when it does, Florida feels it, Jennifer Francis, a professor at Rutgers Universitys department of marine and coastal science, told reporters.

Florida faced freezing temperatures this year and suffers long-term threats from sea level rise.

At the other end of the planet, sea ice around Antarctica recently reached the second smallest for summertime since satellite records began in the 1970s, also behind 2017, the NSIDC said.Fashion blogging as a medium of expression and documentation is not new. But, over the years, it has evolved to become more than just a tool to voice an opinion. Terms like fashion influencers have cropped up, with online platforms like Instagram playing a massive role in driving the commercial aspect of having a blog. So, in this new scenario, does blogging continue to have the power of an independent voice? Or, has it just become a mechanised play of giveaways, designer wear and followers? When bloggers like Tavi Gevinson and Chiara Ferragni started out, it seemed to serve a very different purpose than todays blogs. But, is that really bad, considering changing times ask for changed practices? Or, is the real aim being defeated? We strived to find out when we visited the recent fashion week in Delhi, organised by Fashion Design Council of India. Here are what bloggers, fashion experts have to say.

Naina Redhu (@naina)

Blogger, photographer Naina Redhu has been blogging since 2004, and her work takes her around the globe. But, has she even been criticized for having access to luxury destinations or designer wear? Not to my face, no. I dont see why there would be criticism in any case. I put out barter collaboration proposals on my social media platforms throughout the year. I work transparently. Best to work with a designer brand professionally, wear the garment, get photographed, return the garment and get paid for doing so. And what about those who say that anyone can become a blogger? Anyone can become one, yes, because there is almost no barrier to entry. I think that is great because it keeps us on our toes. And how much does she earn? ROI (Return on investment) for me, as an entrepreneur, is hard to calculate. My revenue can vary from 1 to 3 Lakh per month. Its a long-tail investment and returns can be zero to minimal in the early years. Showing up, meeting people (regardless of who they are ), doing the work. Not every update / post is paid for. You need to have your own visual language and content.

Surbhi Suri (@surbeesuri)

Fashion blogger Surbhi Suri says that no matter how commercialization pans out, the brand one endorses wont influence if the post doesnt have a backbone. You represent yourself in a way that influences people. They like your content and start following you. Influencing is very personal; you cant force a product. I started writing about trends on a blog in 2011 and people liked it. Its an economy in itself. ROI is happening now as brands have started acknowledging bloggers and our power of influencing and they want to pay us. It goes up to 70k-80k (per month), she says. Suri adds that its not like followers dont understand the changing dynamics of blogging. The followers understand when something is sponsored, and they also know that the blogger knows the brand inside-out. I cannot endorse a product if it doesnt have a connect with me.

Prabhav Gautam (@prabhavgautam)

Gautam started blogging a little over two and a half years back, and he feels that not everyone can become a fashion influencer. A lot of people buy followers. Whatever you see on Instagram is not very genuine, as was the case before. It takes a lot of effort. People perceive it is as sitting, posing and clicking pictures, but its a lot of work. We usually generate revenue by promoting brands and designers. Some brands pay a lot, some dont, but they work on barter. It also depends on the number of followers. At the end of the month, a blogger can earn up to 20k, depending on the following and how they personally work. Gautam is also of the opinion that one cant underestimate the understanding of a follower. Even if it is a sponsored post, users know it. I think it is better to mention it. People are not dumb; they only follow content that is up there.

Raghav Gogia (@stylehighness)

A Heritage Walk  A post shared by Raghav Gogia (@stylehighness) on Nov 11, 2017 at 7:49am PST

Gogias blog is not even an year old and he makes up to 1.5 lakh a month  but there are some who can make even more. An influencer can earn anywhere between 1 to 3 lakh in a month, which is mostly through brand collaborations, he says. To be an influencer, one has to be confident. Clothes dont define you; you define clothes. The way you style them is what makes you unique. Also, when they say anyone can become a blogger, I wont take it as criticism. If you are hardworking, you can be anyone you want to be. Fashion events are for socialising and meeting new people. This not only gets us more business, but helps us make contacts and friends, too.

Karishma Kambo (@martinionheels)

Dont underestimate the work that bloggers do, urges Kambo, who has been blogging for almost two years now . Would they collaborate with just any fashion blogger? No, they are choosing people depending on the work the blogger is doing. Its not fun and games; its a lot of hard work, she says. When a style influencer wears a designer creation, she feels it gives their followers confidence to wear those clothes. We are not skinny or size zero, so they are able to relate better, she adds.

Gaurav Gupta

Designer Gaurav Gupta is of the opinion that fashion influencers are part of the fashion business. (Amal KS/HT)

Fashion blogging is a very recent phenomenon in the world and especially in this country. The country hasnt seen that kind of serious fashion journalism itself over the years. Very few bloggers (a) have an identity, and (b) are fashionable. Having said that, the few that are there, are making the right kind of choices and making the right kind of noises. Im quite excited to see what the future brings in, adding, Fashion influencers are a part of the fashion business. All kinds of celebrities and people who create aspiration in people, they affect your business, its as simple as that. Today, people are hooked on to their phones and Instagram, they are not seeing that much print. So it is obvious that the influence is rather shifting to online, he says.

Nida Mahmood

Designer Nida Mahmood feels that having an opinion is whats most important.

Its important to separate the serious ones from the copy-pasters, believes Mahmood. Because it has become a trend, everyone is calling themselves a blogger. I have seen people who dont necessarily have an opinion, and are just copy-pasting information that a designer is providing in the concept note. A blogger has to have an opinion. People follow a blogger basis the opinion they have. My only take is: have an opinion, otherwise its a pointless exercise. While agreeing that blogging is not an easy thingit takes a lot of ingenuity and effortI also feel that a lot of them jump on to the bandwagon without understanding the relevance of it. I have a lot of respect for a lot of bloggers. You need to be educated about the trends in the world to be able to speak your own languagethis is lacking with most of them. Its a responsible position, use it wisely.

Rina Dhaka

Designer Rina Dhaka says that there are no shortcuts to success. (Raajessh Kashyap/HT)

The designer says that hard work as an ingredient is essential, when it comes to blogging. I know a lot of young people who are caught up with this rave to be quickly there. They become bloggers; In fashion as you know, you have to work very hard. Its not about getting dressed and looking hot and going to parties. One can get caught in that rave. On whether blogs can impact brand sale, she says, Yes, bloggers who have a big following can impact it.

Namrata Joshipura

Designer Namrata Joshipura feels that the bloggers need to be relevant, and their content, original/ (Yogen Shah)

Designer Namrata Joshipura, says, Social media, in addition to being relevant, doesnt have any barriers to entry. So anyone who has an interest in fashion starts blogging. And in our day and age, you can buy everythingfrom followers to likes. The authenticity of an influencer or a blogger totally depends on their content as opposed to their following. I am not against them at all because in the current scenario they are very relevant, but for me personally, I would follow someone if their content appeals to me.

Does endorsing impact sales? I like to believe, yes, but to what extent, I dont know. A lot of these bloggers are young millennials and for a very established brand who caters to slightly older people, I dont know how thats going to impact. But for something like a Gucci, if a blogger endorses a product, then of course, its going to have an impact. The bottomline is they have to be relevant and their content has to be original and it has to be interesting.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for moreSomesh (name changed on request) is a regular at spas in Delhi-NCR. But hes doesnt go for the healing therapies. Hes an HIV counsellor and his mission is to reach out to people at high risk and encourage them to get tested. He doesnt reveal his identity at first. Sometimes he is shut down as soon as he does. Of the 90 people he has befriended and counselled at three spas over eight months, though, seven tested positive for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

It takes three or four visits for the staff to open up. It takes longer for clients, he says. I stay in touch with them, build a rapport, and gradually broach the topic of HIV testing.

Its not just spas. Anti-HIV activists are penetrating dating sites and open-for-all-parties too, as part of a government-run community-led effort to think out of the box when it comes to the disease.

The friend-counsellor initiative is part of a wider effort by the governments flagship National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to counsel people who would otherwise likely not get tested since they dont consider themselves at risk.

This is a section that doesnt consider itself vulnerable but runs the risk of getting infected or infecting others. They are not open to direct counselling and so we had to come up with novel methods, says a senior health ministry official, requesting anonymity. These high-risk groups include men who have sex with men (MSM), female sex workers (FSW), transgenders (TGs) and members of the open-door dating and party circuits.

We have made profiles on popular dating apps to communicate with people. I connected with about 70 people through one of the apps, of whom three tested positive, Somesh says.

This is important because early testing and diagnosis are crucial for HIV treatment; HIV-positive people can have long and rich lives once they begin treatmentand, of course, they cant prevent its spread if they dont know they have it.

I frequently get blocked on the dating app as many people dont want to interact once they know who I am, says Somesh. But some of them respond positively. In such cases, there is a consent form to be filled for testing, and total confidentiality, of course, regarding the results and future conversations they might want to have. Of the 600 people he interacted with on a popular dating app, 60 agreed to get tested.

OUT OF THE BOX

Whos at risk? Identified high-risk groups include men who have sex with men, female sex workers, transgenders and members of the open-door dating and party circuits. Early testing and diagnosis are crucial for HIV treatment. HIV-positive people can have long and rich lives once they begin treatment  and, of course, they cant prevent its spread if they dont know they have it.

Somesh works with India HIV/AIDS Alliance, an NGO supported by NACO and selected for the ongoing trial run of Project Samarth (Hindi for Capable). The peer group approach works well and hopefully this project will show good results, says Alok Saxena, joint secretary of NACO.

There is a gap in HIV testing among identified high-risk groups  our target is to get 90% of the people we reach out to, to agree to get tested. India HIV/AIDS Alliance has a presence across the country and we are hopeful that this will help.

India currently has the worlds third-largest HIV-positive population (2.1 million people)  after South Africa (7.1 million) and Nigeria (3.2 million). But the number of people living with HIV in India has dropped by more than half, from 5.1 million in 2003.

As the numbers decline, one of the side-effects is a sense of invincibility among a very young population that is becoming increasingly experimental when it comes to sex, sexuality and multiple partners. And there are concerns that what worked before will not work this time.

The epidemic started levelling off in India in the early 2000s as a result of a two-pronged strategy of intensive HIV prevention campaigns and free testing and treatment.

By 2004, India had expanded targeted interventions for FSWs, injecting drug users, MSMs, transgender people, single male migrants, long-distance truckers etc in the six high-prevalence states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Nagaland and Manipur.

But how do you reach the average urban youngster, the recreational drug user, the college student looking to experiment? This last mile is proving to be a challenge, Saxena says.

In the 1980s and 90s, HIV/AIDS was a burning issue and almost everyone was aware of it. With the rate of new infections coming down, we are now dealing with a generation that doesnt consider HIV/AIDS as big a threat, he adds. They have technology at their disposal and we also will have to make use of this technology to reach out to them.Hollywood actor Jennifer Aniston has moved on after her split with Justin Theroux and is doing fine. Since her split from Justin, Jen is doing fine, a source told People.com.

The two, who announced their separation in February, have had some contact after the breakup but wont get back together, said the source.

Justin has moved on with his life in New York, while Jen still enjoys hers in Los Angeles, the source added.

Ultimately, Anistons life now is not very different than it was before the breakup, the source said.

She loves socialising with friends.

Earlier this month, the actress headed out for writer-producer Molly McNearneys 40th birthday party, where she posed with her friends - including the birthday girl, actor Tobey Maguires estranged wife Jen Meyer, actor-filmmaker Jason Batemans wife Amanda Aanka and her manager Aleen Keshishian - in a photo booth.

Her friends always invite her out and to parties. Jen has a very caring group of friends that take care of her, the source said.

On February 15, Aniston and Theroux announced that they had split after two and a half years of marriage and seven years as a couple.

Follow @htshowbiz for moreEver since Joshua Leonard helped reinvent indie filmmaking as a star of found-footage pioneer The Blair Witch Project, he has been something of a go-to guy for groundbreaking, no-budget cinema.

Two decades on hes at it again, in an acclaimed but deeply unsettling role as a stalker in Unsane -- filmed entirely on an iPhone by Oscar-winning auteur Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Traffic).

The only reason I have a career still is that we availed ourselves of new technology and unprecedented techniques 20 years ago with Blair Witch, said Leonard, 42, enthusing about how low-fi filmmaking appeals to his impatient streak.

I think its the reason that I was so excited when I got called in to make this project, because I love making films much more than I love waiting to make films, he told AFP ahead its US release on Friday.

Unsane stars British actress Claire Foy, of the Netflix series The Crown, as Pennsylvania office worker Sawyer Valentini, who has left her hometown under mysterious circumstances.

After an online dating encounter leaves her upset, she seeks help from a counselor at a local clinic, who tells her to sign a routine form before she leaves.

Within minutes, she is committed to a mental institution against her will and pumped full of pills.

A fellow patient whose background may be more interesting than he is letting on, tells her shes been locked away as part of an insurance scam but that if she keeps her head down, she will be released within days.

However when Sawyer encounters Leonards character, an orderly she claims has been stalking her for two years, the audience begins to question her sanity as well.

Kafkaesque

Leonards nuanced, half-pathetic, half-terrifying performance has been roundly praised since the movie premiered in Berlins film festival in February, although the acclaim has done nothing for his family life.

I just I felt terrible that my wife had to watch it, come home and sleep next to me. I want to try to figure out a way that my 15-month-old daughter never sees it when shes a teenager, he says, laughing.

Understandably, much has been made of the iPhone novelty but the medium has overshadowed the message to some extent, with headlines concentrating on how the film was made, rather than what it has to say.

Ostensibly a Kafkaesque satire of the medical insurance racket, Unsane is as much a part of the #MeToo moment as any red carpet protest since the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct scandal ignited.

Foys brittle, irritable Sawyer isnt believed when she complains about her stalker, those in charge of her care assuming she is delusional.

Claire Foy in a scene from Unsane.

The significance of a woman screaming to be heard in the face of threatening male sexuality, as various characters try to gaslight her by telling her the ordeal is all in her head, is not lost on Leonard.

Unsane, he points out, was filmed before Weinstein was accused of litany of sex offenses, but he adds that anything that furthers the discussion is a good thing.

Ironically, real-life unfair treatment of women has thrust Foy into the limelight recently, with the producers of The Crown admitting she was paid less for her award-winning performances than co-star Matt Smith.

Its a conversation that is long overdue, and I think weve been operating off an old paradigm for far too long, Leonard told AFP.

Bringing some of this information to light, like the pay gap disparity, is the first step in actually making real and lasting change.

Modern horror classic

Leonard has divided his career between appearing in television that you might recognize -- Bates Motel, True Detective, CSI: Miami and the like -- and cinema you almost certainly wont.

Cast as the steadfast cameraman Josh in The Blair Witch Project, Leonard balanced shooting the 16mm footage with improvising the increasingly-creepy turn of events alongside Heather Donahue and Michael Williams.

Since its inauspicious release on 27 screens in 1999, the pioneering film from Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick has been hailed as a modern horror classic, despite having no special effects, monsters or gore.

It made use of viral online marketing in a way no movie had attempted before and, despite its tiny $60,000 budget, managed to make $248 million worldwide.

(File photos) US actor Joshua Leonard (L) speaks during a press conference for the film Unsane presented in competition at the 68th edition of the Berlinale film festival in Berlin, Germany; and British actress Claire Foy (R) attending a press conference for Breathe during the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2017 in Toronto, Canada. (AFP)

I laugh at how young I look -- that terrible mid-90s bachelor, he chuckles.

The movie spawned myriad imitations -- including a couple of its own ropey sequels -- with found-footage movies such as Cloverfield, Rec and Paranormal Activity saturating the market over the following years.

Rather than capitalizing on his sudden fame, Leonard stuck steadfastly to smaller independent films and working the festival circuit.

When you only want to spend $3 on your film, call Josh Leonard, he jokes.

Leonard says working with Soderbergh, an avid innovator who likes to play with genres and formats, felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity -- but he wasnt expecting a theatrical release to come of it.

That surprised and excited the hell out of all of us, Leonard said. Wherever it takes me, Im excited to keep telling stories in whatever manner best suits the story.

Follow @htshowbiz for moreProtests demanding district status for Nowshera turned violent as protesters clashed with police on Saturday leaving nearly 20 people, including Rajouri deputy commissioner and a police officer, injured.

In view of the incident, the administration suspended internet services in the area.

Nowshera sub-division is part of Rajouri district. The protest turned violent a day after the Jammu and Kashmir government announced appointment of additional deputy commissioners (ADC) in the three towns.

Trouble began in the morning when the police force prevented a rally of agitators from heading towards the revenue complex where they wanted to stage a protest against the government order.

After the administration failed to pacify the agitators, police used mild force to disperse them. However, the situation took an ugly turn when the mob started pelting stones at the police and civil administration officials.

Six among the injured were referred to government medical college and hospital in Jammu.

The state government on Friday upgraded three more sub-divisional magistrate posts to the rank of additional deputy commissioners in Rajouri district. This was fourth such upgradation in less than two months for Rajouri district.

Rajouri deputy commissioner (DC) Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary had on Friday said that following the government order of posting three ADCs, the protesters in Nowshera had agreed to withdraw their agitation but on Saturday refused to end their protest.

If they were not satisfied with the decision, they could have held a dialogue. There was a breach of trust from their side, he added.Five District Reserve Guard (DRG) jawans were injured in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast, suspected to be carried out by Maoists, in Chhattisgarhs Sukma district on Saturday, police said.

The incident comes 10 days after nine CRPF personnels were killed in a blast in the district on March 13.

The blast took place around 3 pm in a forest near Sirsetti village under Fulbagdi police station limits when a police DRG team was returning after an anti-Maoist operation, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police Sundarraj P told PTI.

Fulbagdi is around 500 km from state capital Raipur.

The DIG said after detonating the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), the Maoists opened fire on the DRG team, which led to a gun-battle.

However, the ultras fled after a brief exchange of fire, he said.

Assistant constables Padam Muya, Nurum Dula, Sodhi Deva, Kartam Pandu and constable Kichhe Naga were injured in the blast, he said.

Soon after getting information about the incident, reinforcement was rushed to the spot and the injured jawans were airlifted to Raipur for treatment, he said.

Earlier, nine Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed in a blast carried out by Maoists between Kistaram and Palodi villages in Sukma on March 13.

The blast hit the mine-protected vehicle (MPV) in which the CRPF men were travelling.

Sukma, considered as one of the worst Maoist-affected areas, has witnessed several major attacks on security forces in the past, more particularly in summer when the rebels carry out their annual tactical counter offensive campaign (TCOC).

Security forces are put on high alert during this period.The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Saturday refuted reports about a fresh data leak of Aadhaar holders, and asserted that there has been absolutely no breach of its database.

The statement comes after ZDNet, a technology news portal cited a security researchers claim to state that a system of state-owned utility firm was allegedly leaking information on Aadhaar holders.

In a statement issued in New Delhi, UIDAI, the Aadhaar-issuing body, said, There is no truth in this story as there has been absolutely no breach of UIDAIs Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure.

It termed the data breach claims as totally baseless, false and irresponsible.

UIDAI today has refuted reports in a certain section of media sourced from the news website ZDNet which has quoted a person purportedly claiming to be a security researcher that a state-owned utility company has vulnerability which can be used to access a huge amount of Aadhaar data including banking details, UIDAI said in its statement.

The UIDAI has argued that even if the report claims were taken to be true, the security related concerns should be around the database of utility company in question. It has nothing to do with security of UIDAIs Aadhaar database, it said.

Going by the logic of the report, since the utility companys database also had bank account numbers of its customers, would bank databases also be considered to have been breached, UIDAI questioned.

The answer would obviously be in negative, it added.

UIDAI argued that mere availability of Aadhaar number with a third person will not be a security threat to the Aadhaar holder nor will it lead to financial or other fraud. This is because a transaction is contingent upon a successful authentication through fingerprint, Iris or OTP of the Aadhaar holder, UIDAI said.

The ZDNet report had claimed that a data leak on a system run by a state-owned utility company can allow anyone to download private information on all Aadhaar holders, exposing their names, their unique 12-digit identity numbers, and information about services they are connected to, such as their bank details and other private information. The report of the alleged security lapse comes at a time when a Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court is hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar Act and the use of biometric identifier in various government and non-government services.

Earlier this week, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey had made a powerpoint presentation in the Supreme Court to defend the governments ambitious Aadhaar scheme. He had said that breaking Aadhaar encryption may take more than the age of the universe for the fastest computer on earth.



















Around dinner tables and cafes in Beirut these days, discussions are increasingly turning to one topic: the likelihood of another war with Israel It has been an ongoing debate for several years now, gaining renewed vigor each time Israeli and Hezbollah leaders publicly promise to inflict more harm on each other than ever before if, indeed, the countries went to war. However, Iran s blatant and growing military presence on Israels doorstep, and Tehrans rapidly deteriorating relationship with the United States, is introducing a greater likelihood of conflict.

Fresh from a March 5 meeting at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told his cabinet he believes President Trump will pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement before the next sanctions waiver deadline on May 12. Although President Trump has given no public indication what he will decide, his repeated threats, tweets and vocal dissatisfaction with Iran - and specifically with the Iran nuclear agreement - are reigniting fears that Washington is paving the way for a new Middle East clash. Along with Israel, Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is also a very strong opponent of growing Iranian strength and influence in the region. This week, he is being greeted with open arms and with great affection at the White House, with the question of what to do about Iran no doubt being one of the main points of discussion.

The latest rumor swirling around the Arab world speculates on the possibility of a preemptive aerial strike - by the U.S. or Israel, or a combined show of force  against Iranian forces and militias building up inside Syria.





In addition to his speculation about Mr. Trumps intentions toward the Iran nuclear agreement, Netanyahu also returned from Washington declaring that he had secured historic contributions toward Israels  national security . The educated guess is that he received some kind of promise from Trump on not only withdrawing from the agreement, but perhaps even a tacit approval on military action.









Israel most certainly faces a dilemma over Irans increasing reach. Eventually, Netanyahu - or his successor -- will have to decide to either carry out a military strike to push Iran back from southern Syria or to simply accept the new reality of a permanent Iranian threat just across the border. In any event, there is greater satisfaction in Jerusalem lately over Americas shift against Iran, thanks to the Trump administration. Instead of Obama-led policy leaning toward more diplomatic engagement with Iran and nudging the country into the international sphere on social responsibility, America has reverted to classifying Iran as a clear threat to its principles and interests. So far, the threatening arsenal of rockets owned by Hezbollah, Irans staunch ally in the region, and the overwhelming retaliatory response promised by Israel, has served as a worthy deterrent to conflict in Lebanon. But how long can this last?

Taking into account Irans close relationship with Hezbollah, any attack on Iranian targets inside Syria, or any attack on Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon, would likely, and very quickly, escalate into a greater region-wide war involving many more nations. Both Russia and the United States have large numbers of troops in the region.





Irans Revolutionary Guard is building military bases across Syria and commanders have taken leading roles in battles against Syrias enemies. In addition to its relationship with Hezbollah, Iran continues to back powerful militias inside Syria. Iranian drones now regularly cruise the skies above the Israeli-Syrian border to spy on enemies and to possibly even launch air attacks.





There is no doubt another Israeli-Lebanese war would be far more damaging, and far more costly to life and property, than the last one in 2006. Israeli military leaders have repeatedly accused Hezbollah of hiding weapons inside civilian buildings, leading many to believe Israel is preparing a case for far more liberal targeting strategies this time around; i.e., many more civilians will likely be killed and the Lebanese civilian infrastructure destroyed. For Israel, the greatest risk would be from waves of missiles raining down, indiscriminately, on cities and towns across Israel. Add to this mix a potent Iranian presence across the northeastern border in Syria - with a possible invasion attempt across the Golan Heights - and it shapes up to be an extremely tough challenge for Israel.

Notwithstanding all of these threats, Netanyahu may consider the timing for a preemptive Israeli strike to be better now, politically, than it has been in many years - and most likely better than it would be again if Trump were to somehow lose a reelection bid to someone less staunchly conservative. One thing potentially holding Netanyahu back are criminal investigations that will probably end his own stint in power before he could jump into a war. Either way, Netanyahu is aware that his era will soon be coming to an end. The question will be, does he choose to end his public career quietly, or amid a maelstrom of warfare?









Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shahs letter to him was full of false information and termed it an insult to the people of the state.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief was responding to a letter sent by Shah earlier in the day which said Naidus decision to quit the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was guided by political considerations instead of Andhra Pradeshs development concerns.

Read | TDP quitting NDA unfortunate, politically motivated: Amit Shah in letter to Chandrababu Naidu

Speaking in the state legislative assembly, Naidu said: Amit Shahs letter is full of false information, which shows their attitude. Even now, the Centre is providing special benefits to North-eastern states. Had Andhra Pradesh been given the same hand-holding, many industries would have come to the state.

Shah, in his nine-page letter, dubbed Naidus move to sever ties with the NDA after the Centre declined to grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh, as unfortunate and unilateral. He also described as untrue and baseless the TDP chiefs allegations that the BJP was not sensitive to the aspirations of the people of Andhra Pradesh.

On March 7, Naidu pulled out two of his ministers from the NDA government. A week later, the TDP pulled out of the BJP-led alliance over the Centres refusal to accord special category status to Andhra Pradesh and fulfil other commitments made at the time of states division in 2014.

Defending his partys decision to quit the NDA, Naidu said it was done to respect the feelings of the people, who were feeling betrayed by the Central government.

Naidu lashed out at Shah, saying the unscientific division of Andhra Pradesh had pushed the state back 10 years and blamed the Centre for passing bifurcation bill within 20 minutes behind closed doors.

Amit Shah in his letter says the Centre gave many funds to the state, we couldnt utilise them. They are trying to say that the Andhra Pradesh government is incapable. Our government has good GDP (growth), agriculture and many national awards. That is our capability. Why are you spreading lies?, Naidu said on Saturday.

In the letter to Naidu, Shah had said his party was a true well-wisher of the state.

He had cited a number of development projects undertaken by the Centre for the state, besides funds given to it, as he sought to reject the charge that the Modi government had not fulfilled its promises.

This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision, I am afraid will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns. It is widely known that the Union Government has not left any stone unturned in ensuring growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh, Shah said in the letter.

You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both states.

Listing five infrastructure projects the Central government has initiated in the state, Shah said a perusal of these would reaffirm what you already know and perhaps would not admit that Central government has fulfilled its obligations and that BJP is a genuine friend add true well wisher of the state.

The TDP has given notice for a no-confidence motion against the Modi government in the Lok Sabha, which could not be taken up due to an unending uproar in the Lower House.

On the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh, it is regrettable that some political parties are whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate which is the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy. I would like you to introspect whether political parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda, Shah told Naidu.A year ago on Ram Navami, residents of Kesalingayapalle , in Andhra Pradeshs Kadapa district, declared it a Hindus only village and hung a saffron board at its entrance.

This village comprises only Hindus, read the message posted on the board . Therefore, any attempt by anybody from other religions to enter the village to campaign or preach their respective religions is strictly prohibited. If anybody violates this norm, strong action would be initiated against them  villagers of Kesalingayapalle.

The board which has Jai Sri Ram slogans on either side, also bears this message : If a person converts into other religion, it amounts to changing ones own mother.

A year on, on another Ram Navami, which marks the birthday of the warrior-god, the village of 1,500 people, located 35 km from Kadapa town, remains Hindus only. No Christians or Muslims live in Kesalingayapalle, which has a mixed Hindu population of Kapus, scheduled castes and other backward classes.

B Ramana, a village elder and farmer, says the residents of Kesalingayapalle opted to keep people of other faiths out after some Chrstian evangelists  came to our village last year and lured some of our villagers to Christianity on the pretext that they would be cured of their physical ailments if they pray to Jesus..

The (Hindus only) resolution came into effect from Sri Rama Navami last year and we put up a board warning non-Hindus against preaching any other religion, Ramana said.

Those who had been drawn to Christianity were brought back into the Hindu fold.

We took them to Swamy Achalananda, a popular seer of Achalananda Ashram at Thotlapalli near Brahmamgari Matham in the district and got them brainwashed to stay back in Hinduism, Ramana said.

Whats the punishment for violators?

We parade them around the village with womenfolk carrying brooms. We make them chant Jai Sri Ram repeatedly and send them away. We also challenge them to enter into a debate with us on religious conversions, Ramana said.

Some others say the decision of the villagers was influenced by local Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh groups.

The RSS has a strong presence in Mydukur and Brahmamgari Matham areas. They are preventing the spread of other religions in the villages, said Chandra Reddy, a local journalist who works in a vernacular daily.

The RSS isrunning a shakha (branch) in Kesalingayalapalle as well. They conduct regular training for the activists besides conducting religious activities, Reddy said.

Local RSS activist Gopal Reddy denied the allegation, saying the RSS had no role in the villagers decision to put up the board. It was their collective decision, as they were disturbed by the regular meetings of Christian groups in the village, he said.

Mydukur tehsildar (administrative officer) A Nageshwar Rao said he did not know about Kesalingayalapalles Hindus only declaration.

In any case, practising and preaching of any religion is allowed as per the Constitution. We have not got any complaints from anybody about the prevention of non-Hindus (coming) into the village, he said.

Mydukur (urban) police inspector Venkateshwar said the villagers had no right to prevent non-Hindus from preaching their religion. We shall take action if there is any complaint against the villagers, he said.The Supreme Court was on Friday told that a mosque will remain a place of worship even after it has been desecrated and destroyed through a barbaric act.

A mosque will remain a place of worship even after it has been destroyed, senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan told the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice S Abdul Nazeer, hearing a batch of cross petitions challenging a 2010 Allahabad high court verdict on the Ayodhya title suit.

It is quite a different matter to say that an area has been acquired and quite another to say mosque is not a mosque forever, Dhavan said.

Dhavan appeared for the main petitioner, Mohammad Siddiqui, now being represented by legal heirs.

The bench is hearing arguments on the plea to revisit 1994 top court judgment, which had said that the mosque was not was not an essential part of Islamic religious practice and that namaz could be offered anywhere, even in open places.

Describing the December 6, 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid as a barbaric act, Dhavan said: What was desecrated was a mosque and what court is being asked to is to protect the idols (of Ram Lalla).

Telling the court that the government can acquire the place of worship, Dhavan said: It is abundantly clear that a mosque should be treated as equal any temple and Ramjanmabhoomi is equal to mosque.

Referring to two powerful Rath Yatras led by senior BJP leader LK Advani, Dhavan told the bench that there was strident, calculated and deliberate attempt to destroy Babri Masjid.

Senior counsel K Parasaran, appearing on the other side, said that the 1994 top court observation that a mosque was not an essential part of Islamic religious practice and namaz could be offered anywhere was in the context of acquisition proceedings.

At this, the bench said that if it decides to revisit the 1994 judgment, then it would be on the principle whether mosque was an integral part of Islamic religious practice.

In the last hearing of the matter on March 14, Dhavan had told the court that if the position in the 1994 judgement was to accepted then except for Makkah, Madinah and Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, rest of the mosques will be of no consequence to Muslims.

On the next hearing on April 5, Dhavan will address the court on what mosque means to Islam.For years, Komalavalli, 34, carried an empty bottle along with her lunch box to work at a cloth shop in north Keralas Kozhikkode district. The empty bottle was for her to carry water to wash up after using a filthy, clogged-up public toilet that made her retch every time she used it.

Her nightmare ended when Kozhikkodes civic body installed an eToilet, an unmanned public utility that is sensor-based, self-cleaning and eco-friendly.

Now I can go to work with much confidence. The dirty public toilet always nagged me and at times it affected my work, Komalavalli said.

Designed and produced by Thiruvananthapuram-based company, Eram Scientific Solutions, the eToilet revolutionised public sanitation in India, where millions of people still dont have access to modern toilets, especially in rural areas.

Providing toilets to the people is one of the pet projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who launched the Swachh Bharat campaign to end open-defecation across the country by October 2019 by building household and public toilets.

And Eram Scientific Solutions has played its part, supplying more than 3,000 units to 23 states since the eToilet was developed in 2011.

Driving the R&D in the company is civil engineer Bincy Baby, an MBA graduate from Changanassery in Kottayam.

I always told my team that it is not a glamorous job. It is a service. For us, it is a passion and we dream of a tidy countryside, said the 45-year-old director and mother of two.

Telling people they were developing a smart toilet initially drew laughs, but the twittering stopped when people gauged the teams commitment.

Its based on an indigenous technology developed by our R&D team that uses a pre-fabricated, unmanned and automated toilet. And these toilets can be monitored by our team constantly using IoT (Internet of Things), the first such initiative for toilets in the country, said Baby, adding that upkeep and after-service pose big problems in the usual brick-and-mortar toilets.

The Eram groups USP is the close monitoring of all eToilets installed across the country by its executives sitting in office. Theres even a mobile app that directs users to the nearest eToilet.

Eram offers eToilets to suit all pockets, ranging from Rs1 lakh to Rs6.5 lakh, with the lifespan of the steel-based product being 20 years. It needs just 35 sq feet space for installation, with water and power consumption being minimal. It can also work on solar power.

Our toilet washes its floors automatically after every five uses and are fitted with coin-based entry, voice help, LED indicators and censor-based water and electricity use, said Baby.

We want to change the countrys public sanitation scenario. Open defecation is not there in Kerala but in other states, it is still prevalent. But changes are slowly becoming visible across the country, she said. Baby started her career in 1990 with the states IT mission, where she worked for more than a decade. She and a group of friends conceptualised the eToilet after she left the mission.

We all came around and developed this idea. When funds posed a problem, we scouted for investors and it attracted the Saudi-based Eram groups founder Sideek Ahmeds attention, she added.

Ahmed, who is also a philanthropist, bought majority stake and pumped enough money to make it a full-fledged company, which got funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for innovation.

We are committed to creating a meaningful impact in sanitation and hygiene, especially for vulnerable women and children. We have groomed a good team under Bincy, said Dr Ahmed, CMD of the Eram group.

With 300 eToilets, Chennai Metro has installed the maximum toilets and now IT giant TCS has awarded a contract to build 660 toilets across 300-odd villages in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Theres another offer from Kuwait to build 100-odd eToilets.

Baby is, however, worried at the way India is managing its mounting waste.

Most of our rivers and water bodies are turning into open drains. We need a comprehensive policy and mechanism for waste management. There has to be a durable solution, said Baby, whose husband PP Ouseph is a senior scientist with the Indian Space Research Organisation at Thiruvananthapuram.

After the flush toilet, the sector hasnt witnessed any major innovation. We have to invest more in research and technology to develop a futuristic, environment-friendly technology, she said.

A clean and litter-free environment is not the sole responsibility of the government. Each of us must contribute and young people must be groomed to realise that cleanliness is next to godliness, said Baby.Farmers in nine agricultural markets across five states are getting far less than the minimum support price (MSP) for their produce, Swaraj Abhiyan president Yogendra Yadav said on Saturday citing a survey by six organisations.

Releasing the interim report here, Yadav said the exercise was part of the MSP Satyagraha, a nationwide campaign launched on March 14 to find the truth about prices being realised by farmers and efficacy of the government procurement system.

The survey report comes amid what opposition parties and activists call a growing agrarian crisis in several parts of the country, resulting in massive agitations by farmers.

The finance minister (Arun Jatiley) had said that special arrangement will be made to ensure that farmers get the MSP. We wanted to see if farmers are getting the MSP that was declared by the government. But the reality is, currently the MSP of every crop is below the market price, he said.

Jaitley had said in his budget speech in February that the government will ensure that farmers get 50% over the cost of production and that the Niti Aayog is working on a model to implement this.

Citing an example, Yadav said the Centre had announced an MSP of Rs 5,450 for red gram (tur dal) and the Karnataka government was giving an additional bonus of Rs 550, taking the assured price to Rs 6,000 per quintal.

But when we visited Yadagir, Adoni and Suryapet APMC (agricultural produce market committee) we found red gram was sold at Rs 3,885 a quintal, he said.

Similarly, groundnut was being sold at Rs 3,821 per quintal against an MSP fixed at Rs 4,450 per quintal.

Farmers in AP complained that only about a fifth of the stock was procured (by the government) while the rest had to be sold at a loss in the open market. Almost every beneficiary of procurement complained that they had not received payment even after 2-3 months, Yadav said.

Yadav claimed that the estimated loss of farmers due to selling crops below the MSP for major rabi crops  excluding wheat and winter paddy  is Rs 14,474 crore. The loss estimates are based on marketable surplus for rabi this year.

Calling it a government-sponsored loot of farmers Yadav and his associate demanded that farmers should be able to sell their entire crop at the MSP, and the government should take all steps to ensure that this happens.

Yadav did not share the methodology of the survey or the number of people surveyed.

Besides Swaraj Abhiyan, a socio-political organisation, other groups part of the campaign include the National Alliance of Peoples Movement, Kisan Sangarsh Samiti and Rythu Swarajya Vedika.

He said representatives of the organisations visited mandis in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan and Haryana and interacted with farmers, traders and market officials in those states.

Doubling farmers income by 2022 is one of the major promises of Prime Minister Narendra Modi but his government has faced massive protests by peasants over the past few months.

Last week, nearly 35,000 farmers walked 180 km from Nashik to Mumbai in an unprecedented show of protest, demanding loan waivers and adequate returns.

Last year, at least five farmers were killed in Madhya Pradesh, a BJP-ruled state, in police firing during an agitation by farmers over similar demands.Five days after Sikh rights activist Gurbaksh Singh Khalsa committed suicide by jumping off a water tank, Sikh hardliners on Saturday agreed to cremate his body following the state governments written assurance to meet their demands.

The cremation will take place at 10am on Sunday at Thaska Ali village and the decision on cremation has been taken as the government has in written accepted our demands which include transfers of Kurukshetra superintendent of police (SP) Abhishek Garg, DSP Dheeraj Kumar, suspension of station house officers (SHOs) of Jhansa and Ismailabad and a fresh FIR under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code against the two, said Baljeet Singh Daduwal, who held talks with the government on behalf of the Sikhs.

The decision was taken after repeated meetings with BJPs Assandh MLA and only Sikh face in the party Bakshish Singh Virk and Kurukshetra deputy commissioner SS Phulia.

The DC, on the behalf of the government, handed over a letter ordering a magisterial inquiry by SDM Shahbad into Khalsas suicide.

Even as there was no mention of the demands in the letter but Virk, while talking to media persons, said all the demands have been accepted, including the transfer of the SP and the DSP.

Virk also praised members of the Sikh community for holding a peaceful protest and assured his support to Khalsas family.

He also assured that the youth detained by the police when they were coming to the attend the Friday meeting will be released soon.

Punjab is our elder brother and I assure you that we will execute your demands, Virk told the hardliners from Punjab.

Talking to HT, Khalsas father Ajit Singh (85) said, I am agree with the decision taken by the panthik leaders and I am happy that the deadlock over cremation is over.

Earlier, the meeting started around 5pm and some Sikh leaders were against verbal assurance as they were accusing the police of harassment. But Daduwal said they will not go with the decision to end the protest if all the government agreed to their demands.

Khalsa committed suicide on Tuesday while demanding release of Sikh prisoners who have already completed their jail terms. The family had alleged that the police forced him to jump off the water tank.

Several meetings took place as Sikh hardliners Giani Dhian Singh Mand, Baljit Singh Daduwal, Amrik Singh Ajnala and other leader of Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and United Akali Dal and the Dal Khalsa were camping at Khalsas residence for the past two days.Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday lamented that the Indian economy was growing but not generating jobs for the citizens.

We are growing decently as an economy, but we are not creating jobs because those who have skills arent getting access to finance and support, Gandhi said while interacting with students at Maharanis Arts and Commerce College for Women in Mysuru.

Gandhi, who is on a two-day visit to the poll-bound Karnatakas old Mysuru region, was taking questions from the students in the 30-minute long interaction.

During several of his earlier speeches, Gandhi had attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not keeping his promise of delivering 2 crore jobs a year.

This is Gandhis fourth visit to Karnataka since February.

Huge amount of money was going into the hands of very few people in the country, he remarked.

(Diamond jeweller) Nirav Modi has absconded with crores of peoples money. Can you imagine how many businesses could have been built by young women like you all if you had access to that kind of money, the Congress chief queried.

Nirav Modi has been accused in a Rs 13,540 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

Responding to a students question on what he thought of high-value currency note ban in November 2016, Gandhi termed the policy a disaster.

Demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) were very badly conceived and damaging steps for the country. (Former finance minister) P Chidambaram said the step was insane, the 47-year-old recalled.

One person experimenting with the nation was dangerous, he said.

Congress believes that on a country of the size of India, one cannot do experiments. Ideas need to be tested on a small scale and then rolled out, Gandhi added.

No economist in the world would admit that demonetisation did any good to the Indian economy, he asserted.

Earlier in the day, Gandhi visited the popular Chamundeshwari Temple along with chief minister Siddaramaiah, party state unit president G Parameshwara and other senior leaders to pray for the ruling partys success in the Assembly polls due in April-May.

The Congress leader is scheduled to hold public meetings and interactions with party cadres and people in Mysuru, Mandya and Chamrajnagar districts.A special CBI court in Ranchi on Saturday sentenced Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad to 14 years in prison and slapped a fine of Rs 60 lakh on him in connection with the fourth fodder scam case out of the six lodged against him 22 years ago.

The court of special judge Shivpal Singh on March 19 had held Prasad guilty under conspiracy and corruption charges in the scam case related to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 3.76 crore from the Dumka treasury during the period of December 1995 to January 1996. It had, however, acquitted 11 accused, including former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra and four other politicians, and fixed March 24 to pronounce the quantum of sentences to the convicted persons.

Prasad has been serving jail term in Ranchis Birsa Munda Central Jail since December 23 last year after his conviction in two other fodder scam cases. He was shifted to the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Ranchi, last week after he complained of chest pain.

On Saturday, the court communicated the sentence to the convicts, who are in jail, through video conferencing facility. Since Prasad is in hospital, the court communicated the quantum of punishment to his lawyer.

It awarded seven years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) to Prasad under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and a separate seven years of RI under the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act. The court said both the sentences would run consecutively meaning thereby that Prasad would have to serve a total of 14 years in prison in this case.

It also slapped a fine of Rs 60 lakh on Prasad. The default in payment of the fine amount would result in another two years of simple imprisonment.

This is for the first time in the history of the fodder scam cases that the court announced that punishments awarded under the IPC and PC Act would run consecutively. In all other 50 fodder scam cases disposed of till date, the sentences given under the two laws run concurrently, said Prasads advocate Prabhat Kumar.

Kumar said that 14 years of rigorous imprisonment was the highest punishment ever given to any of the nearly 1500 convicts of fodder scam cases. We will soon file an appeal against the verdict in the Jharkhand high court, he added.

Besides Prasad, the court awarded similar punishment of 14 years and 60 lakh fine to O P Diwakar, the then regional director, animal husbandry department (AHD). It handed down varied jail terms ranging from seven years to 3.5 years and different fine amounts to the remaining 17 convicts.

Prasads first conviction in the fodder scam came on September 30, 2013, in the Chaibasa treasury case related to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 37.70 crore. He was given five years in prison leading to his disqualification from the Lok Sabha membership. He was granted bail by the Supreme Court in December later that year.

His trouble resumed last year when a special CBI court on December 23 convicted him in the second fodder scam case related to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 89.27 lakh from the Deoghar treasury. Prasad was sentenced to 3.5 years of jail term in this case. A month later on January 24, another CBI court convicted and sentenced him to five years of imprisonment in Chaibasa treasury case related to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 33.13 crore.

Prasad is still facing trial in the last case in Jharkhand. This is the biggest fodder scam case related to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 139 crore from Ranchis Doranda treasury and involving 120 accused.Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Saturday made it clear that the alliance between her party and the Samajwadi Party (SP) will continue despite the defeat of BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar in the Rajya Sabha election.

Ambedkar, supported by SP and Congress, was defeated by BJPs Anil Agrawal for the 10th seat on Friday. After the loss of the BSP candidate in the RS election, it was being speculated in media that the alliance between BSP and SP will break. But the alliance is very much intact, Mayawati said here.

I would like to tell the BJP and company that their malpractices will not succeed in breaking the ties between the SP and the BSP. There will not be an iota of difference in the close understanding between the BSP and the SP because of the Rajya Sabha results, she said.

This loss (Rajya Sabha election) cannot be equated with the BJPs defeat in Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha bypolls. In that election, people directly voted against the BJP. But in Rajya Sabha poll, the state government misused all its power to defeat the BSP candidate, said Mayawati while dubbing the BJPs victory for the 10th seat as immoral.

Mayawati said the ruling party used money, muscle power, and state machinery to win the elections. The BJP desperately wants the SP-BSP alliance to break before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. But this will not happen, she said.

UP health minister Sidharth Nath Singh hit back at Mayawati, saying she was frustrated over the defeat and hence was levelling baseless allegations against the BJP.

Mayawati ji did not receive the return gift, which she had expected from Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. She is disappointed and frustrated that she could not win the Rajya Sabha seat, Singh said.

He added that Mayawati was levelling baseless allegations and becoming a laughing stock.

Further targeting her, Singh accused her of adopting double standards over Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) MLA Om Prakash Rajbhar. When her MLA voted for our Rajya Sabha candidate, then she says money is being used in elections, but when Om Prakash Rajbhar voted for them, she calls it a vote of conscience, Singh said, adding the Rajya Sabha elections were done in a transparent manner.

Mayawati also attacked independent MLA from Kunda, Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya, who on Saturday voted for SP candidate but had tweeted that he was with Akhilesh but not with Mayawati.

SP must be careful from people like Raja Bhaiyya. It was the then BSP government which taught a perfect lesson to him, said Mayawati.

It is being speculated that Raja Bhaiyya did not cast his second preference vote to BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar in the election. Instead, he voted for the BJP candidate Anil Agrawal.

The BSP government had put Raja Bhaiyya behind bars when Mayawati was UP CM in 2002.

Replying to a query, Mayawati did not rule out the possibility of Congress as part of the BSP-SP alliance in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. I am thankful for the support of Congress and SP whose seven MLAs each voted for the BSP candidate as well as one SBSP MLA Kailash Nath Sonkar, who voted as per his conscience and we will stand by him in case he faces any trouble in future, she said.

Meanwhile, UP deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya claimed that the SP-BSP alliance has proved to be a complete failure. In an apparent reference to Akhilesh and Mayawati, he said, The one who could not be loyal to his father and uncle can never be loyal to his bua (aunt).

We can say the victory we achieved in 2014 (LS elections), will be repeated in 2019 and Narendra Modi will become PM again, he said. The Yogi Adityanath government has been trying to wash away the sins committed by SP and BSP governments in the last 15 years.

BSP, RLD, Nishad Party sack MLAs

The BSP, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), and Nishad Party on Saturday expelled one MLA each for cross-voting in favour of BJP candidates in the RS poll.

While BSP expelled Anil Singh, Nishad Party sacked Vijay Mishra and RLD expelled its lone MLA Sahendra Chauhan Ramala. Also, taking cognizance of alleged cross-voting by two MLAs of his party, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Omprakash Rajbhar sought an explanation from them. Nishad Party president Dr Sanjay Nishad sacked Vijay Mishra, MLA from Gyanpur, and said that he would write to the UP assembly speaker to scrap Mishras membership from the House.

Mamata welcomes Mayawati stand

Kolkata West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday welcomed Mayawatis statement that the BSP-SP understanding in UP wont be affected by the Rajya Sabha poll results in the state.

I welcome the views expressed by Mayawati-ji today. We are strongly with her and @yadavakhilesh in this mission for the nation, Banerjee said in a tweet.

(With inputs from agencies)A day ahead of Ram Navami, internet services were suspended in Odishas Bhadrak town, which saw communal violence during this period last year, for 48 hours.

This was done to stop misuse of social media, Bhadrak superintendent of police Anup Sahoo said on Saturday.

A comment on Hindu Gods in a Facebook post on the day of Ram Navami last year led to communal violence in Bhadrak and forced the government to impose curfew in the town, about 125km northeast of state capital Bhubaneswar, for nearly a month. Widespread arson and vandalism during the violence caused an estimated loss of Rs 9 crore.

The Bhadrak district administration has deployed more than 800 police personnel in the town.

Police are also keeping a close watch on the states steel city, Rourkela, where communal tension was reported during Ram Navami two years ago.The robust posture adopted by the Narendra Modi government towards Pakistani attacks from across the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir has forced Pakistan to reinforce troop deployment along the LoC and international borders to deter a possible Indian army offensive.

Indian army commanders are in no mood to let any assault from Pakistan to go unanswered .They want to raise the cost of any Pakistani belligerence either on the de facto border in J & K or its hinterland.

The Pakistan army has now moved troops from Kotli, Mirpur and even Rawalpindi to match Indian deployment on the LoC ,Indian army officers said on condition of anonymity, adding that the troops are receiving constant alerts from their superiors in headquarters.

Since the November 26, 2003 ceasefire, the Pakistan armys headcount was half for the same area as the Indian Army. While the Pakistan Army was under no stress or pressure, the Indian Army was facing the brunt on the LoC as it was being targeted by infiltrators as well as border action teams of terrorist groups, said an army commander. With Indian Army now responding to each and every firing from the other side, the Pakistan army also cannot afford to relax anymore as there is always a fear of September 29, 2016, he said, referring to the surgical strike conducted by the Indian army on terrorist camps across the LoC.

In the first two months of 2018, the number of ceasefire violations along the LoC were 633, compared to a total of 860 violations in all of 2017.

It is still not clear whether Indian retaliation has worked towards preventing Pakistan from sending armed infiltrators across the LoC to the Indian side.

The Indian army is unfazed by firing from across the LoC. It has now decided to revive and upgrade bunkers in disuse and disrepair due to the 2003 ceasefire all along the de facto border in J&K and international borders. Instructions to rebuild bunkers have been issued to civilian administration as well as beefing up defences of civilian population close to the border, said the commander cited above.

That Indian retaliatory firing is hurting Pakistan is evident from the fact that defence attaches from six nations were taken by Islamabad to the LoC last month to demonstrate purported ceasefire violations by India. We will continue our tough posture both on the border as well on the counter-insurgency grid in J and K hinterland and ensure that neither Pakistan nor its supporters in the valley hold the levers of violence in the state, said the army officer.German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Saturday held wide-ranging talks with Indian leadership including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, who stressed that the world community must be unanimous in curbing and rooting out terror in all forms.

Steinmeier, who is on a five-day visit to India, and Modi discussed ways to strengthen the strategic partnership during their meeting at the renovated Sunder Nursery, a 90-acre heritage park in central Delhi.

Had the honour of taking the President of Germany, Mr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier to Delhis Sunder Nursery. We had wonderful discussions on a wide range of issues, Modi tweeted.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj also called on the German president, who has visited India several times in the past in his capacity as the foreign minister and vice chancellor of Germany.

Engaging discussion on broadening and deepening our strategic partnership. The two sides attach priority to the relationship, bilaterally and also in the global context, Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson of ministry of external affairs, tweeted after Swaraj met the President.

While interacting with Steinmeier, Naidu said that India and Germany share similar perceptions on most of the issues confronting the world.

Without naming Pakistan, Naidu decried the activities of Indias neighbour which is encouraging, abetting and aiding terror groups.

Terror has no religion, a statement quoted Naidu as saying during the meeting.

The Vice President suggested that the world community must be unanimous in curbing and rooting out terror in all forms, it said.

Earlier in the day, Steinmeier was accorded a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The German president had arrived on Thursday and had visited Varanasi. He also had an interaction with students at the Delhi university.

On Sunday, he will travel to Chennai. His engagements there include a visit to IIT-Madras and addressing a group of business leaders. The next day he will visit the Shore temple in Mahabalipuram.

The last German president to visit India was Joachim Gauck in February 2014.

Germany is Indias largest trading partner in Europe and the sixth largest trading partner in the world. India was ranked 24th in Germanys global trade.

In 2016-17, the bilateral trade turnover was USD 18.76 billion. In 2016-17, India exported goods worth USD 7.18 billion to Germany and imported goods worth USD 11.58 billion.

Germany is the 7th largest foreign direct investor in India and the cumulative German FDI in India from April 2000 to December 2017 is USD 10.71 billion or 2.91 per cent of total FDI, according to official figures.The defeat of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate, Bhimrao Ambedkar, in the Rajya Sabha election from Uttar Pradesh has turned out to be a major setback for the SP-BSP alliance, according to political observers.

After the SP candidates won the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats with BSPs tactical support earlier this month, BSP chief Mayawati had meticulously worked to build a coalition of non-NDA political parties  the BSP, the SP, the Congress and the RLD  in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

The Rajya Sabha election was supposedly a test for the alliance.

But the BJP managed to make a dent in the alliance by winning nine of the 10 seats that went to poll from the stateone extra, thanks to the support of some SP and BSP MLAs.

After the bypoll win, Mayawati had hoped that none of her party MLAs will defect or be lured by the BJP.

But political equations changed fast after the BJPs humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha bypolls, said BSP state president Ramachal Rajbhar, who had predicted that BSP MLAs will reject BJPs overtures.

Party MLA from Purwa, Anil Kumar Singh, announced his support for the BJP candidate.

The Allahabad high court order restraining BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari, lodged in Banda jail, from voting in the Rajya Sabha poll might also have upset the BSP plans.

Aware that the fight will be tough, BSP national general secretary SC Mishra was in the Vidhan Bhawan early in the morning, discussing the strategy with the party MLAs and senior leaders.

On the request of Mishra, Congress and SP MLAs cast their votes early.

There were rumours that some BJP MLAs and Suheldev Bharitya Samaj Party members might cross-vote in support of the BSP candidate. But the BJP countered their plan.

RK Gautam, a political observer, said the BSP candidates defeat will be a setback for the SP-BSP alliance before the crucial 2019 Lok sabha election.

The defeat will force Mayawati to rethink the alliance as the SP-Congress-RLD failed to ensure the victory of partys candidate, analysts feel. The BSP chief had earlier said the alliance partners had failed to transfer their votes to the BSP in past elections.As the UN mission in Liberia successfully completes its mandate, the role of an all-female contingent of peacekeepers from India deployed with it is being highlighted for inspiring women in the West African nation to become police officers.

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) was established by the Security Council in 2003 and will officially close at the end of this month, successfully completing its mandate after almost 15 years of supporting the West African nation in the transition to peace and democracy.

At a ceremony in Monrovia on March 22 attended by President George Weah, UN deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed lauded the accomplishments of the United Nations mission.

During UNMILs nearly 15-year mandate, dozens of countries from around the world deployed troops and police, with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Sweden, Ireland and the US making significant contributions to peacekeeping in the country, a statement by UNMIL said.

It also lauded the role of the 125-strong women peacekeepers of the Indian Formed Police Unit deployed with the UN mission, saying the Indian women police personnel inspired Liberian women to join the police force.

To spur womens empowerment, UNMIL led by example, becoming the first UN peacekeeping operation to have an all-female contingent thanks to Indias deployment of a formed police unit (FPU) from 2007 until 2016. The Indian policewomen served as role models for Liberias women and girls, triggering a fourfold increase in the number of Liberian women applying to become police officers, the UNMIL said.

Mohammed celebrated the successful closure of the UN mission, which she said set the stage for sustained peace in the months and years ahead. She pointed out that the UN peacekeepers leave behind a country that has great potential for lasting peace and stability.

UNMIL helped to disarm more than 100,000 combatants, and protected millions of civilians; helped to rebuild the police, the security services and other institutions; facilitated the provision of humanitarian aid; and supported the development of national capacity to promote and protect human rights, she said.

The deputy Secretary-General lauded progress while acknowledging the remaining challenges.

Peace will not last without sustainable development; and development gains will be at risk without sustained peace. Many Liberians are still waiting for the anticipated dividends of peace. Some of the root causes of conflict remain to be addressed, including poverty, youth unemployment, illiteracy and lack of infrastructure. We need to give Liberians back their dignity, dreams and faith in a better future, Mohammed said.

She also paid special tribute to the 202 peacekeepers who lost their lives in pursuit of peace in Liberia. Today, we remember their sacrifice.

On behalf of the Liberian authorities, Weah said: UN has positively impacted the lives of Liberians as well as every fabric of the Liberian Society since its arrival in 2003.

He acknowledged the hope the UN has given Liberians adding, Liberia has to protect and sustain the peace.

The statement said that UNMIL created a security environment that enabled more than a million refugees and displaced persons return to their homes; supported the holding of three presidential elections, and helped the government establish its authority throughout the whole country following years of fighting and instability.

The conflict in Liberia took a horrific toll in terms of gender-based violence, with estimated 80 percent of women and girls affected. However as soon as the UN mission was deployed, it prioritised the empowerment of women - to vote, to run for office and to join the police and other rule of law institutions, the statement said.When I started visiting prisons in the 1990s as the special rapporteur of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the condition of jails was very poor. Overcrowding was one of the biggest issues and in one prison, I found inmates taking turns to sleep, because there wasnt space for everyone to sleep at the same time, says former director general of police Chaman Lal, who was associated with the NHRC between 1997 to 2006.

Constituted in October 1993, under the Protection of Human Rights (PHR) Act, the NHRC is currently in the 25th year of its formation. We (India) have a Constitution, which fully imbibes the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the general assembly of United Nations (UN) in Paris in 1948. But the real challenge lies in the lack of awareness about the law among, particularly, the lower level of officials, who mostly deal with and have a direct interface with the public, says NHRC chairperson, Justice HL Dattu. He adds, The Commission has a mandate to question only public authorities on their actions, omissions or inactions leading to human rights violations...

Since its formation, the Commission has taken up some important projects and has, through its reviews, reports and recommendations, taken up the cause of prison inmates, patients at mental health asylums, bonded labourers, people with disabilities, women and children and the economically and socially marginalised sections of the country.

Children working as bonded labourers, rescued in Delhi in 1994 by the Bandhua Mukti Morcha. Bonded labour is banned under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, but the problem persists. The NHRC has repeatedly drawn attention to the issue of bonded labour, a violation of human rights. It has held awareness building workshops and issued directions to the state governments to provide relief and compensation to rescued workers and take action against the accused. (HT File Photo)

It was widely felt at the time of creation of the NHRC that the body had been created under international pressure, says Lal, though in an article he wrote five years ago on the Commission, he clarified that there is no acknowledgement of the fact that the need for an external system of overseeing had arisen from the total failure of the in-house mechanisms (within each state department) to deal with complaints of violations of rights and abuse of power by the public functionaries.

In an article in the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) in February, Ujjwal Kumar Singh, teacher at Delhi Universitys department of Political Science, points out that while the provisions of the PHR Act restrict the functioning of the Commission, making it at times a mere institution of the state, there have been moments when the NHRC has opened the state to judicial and moral scrutiny.

One example of this would be the consistent watch the Commission has kept on incidences of encounter killings and deaths in custody. In 2012, replying to the observation made by UN special rapporteur Christof Henys on fake encounters, the NHRC observed that since May 2010 the Commission has issued guidelines wherein every death in police action has to be reported to the NHRC within 48 hours of the incident. Prior to it, there were guidelines for submission of half-yearly reports by the State authorities in this regard.

The NHRC has also been vocal in its opinion against laws such as the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (POTA)  which had scope for misuse and possible human rights violations. In 1995, the then NHRC chairperson, Ranganath Misra, had written a letter to members of Parliament arguing that The TADA legislation is, indeed, draconian in effect and character and that Provisions of the statute as such have yielded to abuse..., and had appealed for its end. TADA was allowed to lapse in 1995. In 2000, when the POTA Bill was proposed, the Commission reiterated its stand against the need for any such law, citing experience of the misuse in the recent past of TADA and the adequacies of the existing laws as reasons. POTA was, however, passed in 2002, but was repealed in 2004.

Expanding Reach

Over the years, as awareness about the NHRCs existence and work increased, so has its reach among the people. According to the Commissions estimate, from 169 complaints received in 1993-94, the NHRC went on to receive 68,713 complaints in 2002-2003. The number crossed one lakh in 2007-2008 and was 1,17,808 in 2015-16.

The Commission also takes suo motu cognisance of human rights violations, based on media reports or other sources of information and investigates them. In August last year, for example, based on media reports, the NHRC issued a notice to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs over the planned deportation of about 40,000 Rohingya immigrants, and asked the ministry to submit a detailed report within four weeks. Members of the Rohingya community, the NHRC had said in a statement, have a fear of persecution once they are pushed back to their native country.

This was not the first time that the NHRC has taken up the cause of any particular community or group of refugees. Soon after its creation, the NHRC in 1994 had taken up the issue of safety of the Chakma community in Arunchal Pradesh and in a letter to the state government had stated that it was the obligation of that government to accord protection to the person and property of the members of the two communities (Chakma and Hajong refugees  Hindus and Buddhists of the erstwhile East Pakistan) and to ensure that their human rights were not violated. In 1995 the NHRC also petitioned the Supreme Court (SC) for the protection of the rights of these communities, following which the apex Court in 1996 directed the Arunachal Pradesh government to ensure the same. The NHRCs intervention had gone a long way in protecting the rights of the Chakmas in the north-east.

The Commission also visits different states to organise open hearings to take cognisance of the problems of people there, says former NHRC chairperson Justice KG Balakrishnan. While some of the open hearings are issue-based  the problem of bonded labour, for example  others address every kind of human rights violation. The Commission has also gone beyond the physical violation of human rights to protect the economic, social and cultural rights of people. Laxmidhar Mishra, another former NHRC special rapporteur, remembers being assigned to look into the extreme poverty, starvation and malnutrition in Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput regions of Odisha. Another of his assignments was to study the malnutrition-related deaths of children in 15 tribal districts of Maharashtra and submit recommendations for improvement in their living conditions. Mishra says that most of his recommendations in this case were accepted by the states. But that is not always the case.

On Slippery Ground

The NHRC chairperson has himself admitted that the NHRC is a toothless tiger with no authority to ensure that its recommendations were implemented, says Shailesh Rai, director, law and policy, Amnesty International India.

The recommendations of the NHRC are not binding. Lal admits that while in over 90 per cent of cases financial compensation recommended by the NHRC is paid to the victims by the concerned authorities, the Commission has had very little success in getting the guilty punished. The NHRC may, however, move the SC if its recommendations are not accepted, says Lal.

One example of this is the Gujarat riots of 2002. One of the important recommendations by the NHRC was that in five cases  including the Best Bakery case and the Bilkis Bano case  there must be a CBI investigation. But the state government did not accept this and said that the state and state-appointed panels will carry out the investigation. NHRC, along with some civil society groups, took the matter to the SC and later a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was constituted to investigate some of the serious cases, recalls Lal.

The Commission also has limited powers over the defence forces. Unlike in most other countries, the NHRC has the power of a civil court. It can conduct investigations into any allegation of human rights violation, summon any person during the course of the investigation and reach conclusions based on it, says Justice Balakrishnan. But this is not so in the case of the armed forces, where on receiving a complaint or while taking suo motu cognisance of a violation, the Commission can only ask for a report from the concerned department and make recommendations based on it.

In August 2017, the NHRC issued a notice to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs over the planned deportation of about 40,000 Rohingya immigrants, and asked the ministry to submit a detailed report within four weeks. The Rohingyas, the NHRC had said, have a fear of persecution once they are pushed back to their native country. In the past the NHRC has also stood up for the rights of other refugees, such as the Chakmas. (HT File Photo)

This becomes a major handicap for the Commission in states under AFSPA or the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act  such as Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur  where allegations of violations are common. In the Manipur fake encounter case, where 1528 people were extra judicially killed, the NHRC did not say a word for years, says senior advocate Colin Gonsalves. However, the NHRC may not be in a position to intervene in such cases. In September 2016, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, on behalf of the Centre, opposed the NHRCs offer to probe over 1500 cases of alleged extra-judicial killings in Manipur and said even the top court cannot transplant any powers on the panel. In July, the court had said that the alleged extra-judicial killings by the Army and Manipur police, over a period of 12 years between 2000 and 2012, required a thorough probe. But in February this year, the SC, dissatisfied with the investigations of a SIT formed by the CBI to look into some of the cases, directed the NHRC to depute three people to associate with the SIT to carry out investigation in 17 of 42 incidents in which cases have been registered.

The NHRC has been of the view that the AFSPA should be repealed, the Commission had said in response to Henys comments in 2012. However, the SC has held that the Act is constitutional. Now, the NHRC feels it is for the Centre to decide whether AFSPA should be continued.

On The International Arena In 2016, the Session of the Sub-Committee on Accreditation (SCA) of the UN-mandated Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions deferred the re-accreditation of the NHRC for further consideration to its second session of 2017. The NHRC did retain its "A" status of accreditation in 2017, but here are some concerns that the SCA had about the composition and functioning of the NHRC in 2016:  The chairperson of the NHRC has to be a retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. One member has to be a present or retired judge of the Supreme Court and one a present or retired chief justice of a High Court. Two members are appointed from people having domain knowledge of, or practical experience in matters related to human rights. The SCA believed this restricts the pool of potential candidates.  The chairperson and other members of the NHRC are appointed by the President based on the recommendations of a committee that includes the Prime Minister and the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha. The SCA felt this selection process was not broad or transparent.  It had advised the NHRC to take steps to "to facilitate increased engagement and cooperation with all civil society organisations". The chairperson of the NHRC has to be a retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. One member has to be a present or retired judge of the Supreme Court and one a present or retired chief justice of a High Court. Two members are appointed from people having domain knowledge of, or practical experience in matters related to human rights. The SCA believed this restricts the pool of potential candidates.The chairperson and other members of the NHRC are appointed by the President based on the recommendations of a committee that includes the Prime Minister and the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha. The SCA felt this selection process was not broad or transparent.It had advised the NHRC to take steps to "to facilitate increased engagement and cooperation with all civil society organisations".

A bigger issue is the very nature of formation of the NHRC  by an Act of Parliament and where the chairperson and the members of the Commission are appointed by the President, on the recommendations of a committee that includes the Prime Minister  which has raised doubts in the minds of many about its ability to function independently. The NHRC is not a government body. It is an autonomous body, set up by the government in tune with its obligations under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, says Justice Dattu.

The Road Ahead

But as he himself points out The SC has dwelt at length upon the constraints of the NHRC... The SC has also said that the provisions of the PHR Act make it an obligation on part of the Centre to provide adequate officers and staff so that the NHRC can perform its functions efficiently.

One of the biggest successes for the NHRC in the last 25 years has perhaps been its ability to raise awareness about the need for human rights protection in the country and to initiate a dialogue on the same. In future, the NHRCs attention is also going to be towards new emerging concerns like business and human rights, environmental impact on human rights and LGBT rights, says Justice Dattu. The journey wont be easy, as it will doubtless involve pushing the government and the legislation in a direction it may shy away from. The Commission, if it wants to dispense its duty sincerely, may have to first fight for its own rights to protect those of others.The spiritual head of the Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan, Zainul Abedin Ali Khan, on Saturday said the solution to sensitive issues like the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case lies with the Supreme Court.

He also appealed to leaders of all religions to wait for the apex courts judgment in the case and respect its verdict.

Religious fanaticism cannot provide solutions. Efforts to settle the matter outside the court were also unsuccessful and, hence, the courts decision (in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case) should be respected in the interest of the country, he said.

Khan was addressing chiefs of various shrines during the ongoing Urs of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer. He is the Deewan of the dargah.

Present religious, political and cultural organisations are not being able to provide a practical solution to the disputed site in Ayodhya and there is doubt among followers of all religions, he said.

Looking at the present atmosphere, aware citizens and followers of religions cannot agree upon any settlement outside the court, so people should wait and respect the apex courts verdict, Khan said.

Religious fanatics, be it Hindu or Muslim, cannot allow a solution, he said.

Youths today need opportunities to grow and prosper. Religious and political organisations should stop politics on such cases and not engage youths in religious fanaticism as such politics leads to hatred in society, Khan said.

In his address, he also stressed on efforts to promoted women empowerment.

In the Hindu religion, women are considered and referred to as Devi. Women also have a special place Islam in also, the spiritual leader said.

Khan said that efforts to empower women should be there in rural and backward areas also.

Heads of various shrines, including those from Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, attended the Urs.The family of Junaid Ashraf Sehrai, son of Tehreek-e-Hurriyats new chief, reported him missing on Saturday morning, barely hours before social media was awash with a picture claiming he had joined militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen.

The family filed a report of him missing at Sadar police station in Srinagar. Photos claiming that he has joined militancy are being circulated on social media. We are investigating the matter, said Jammu and Kashmirs director general of police, SP Vaid.

Junaids father, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, 72, who replaced Syed Ali Shah Geelani as the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat party chief on Monday, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The picture doing the rounds on social media shows Junaid, who is around 30 years old, posing with an assault rifle. The text with the image states Junaids code name is Amaar Bhai and he joined the Hizbul Mujahideen, a home-grown militant outfit, on March 24, 2018.

A source close to the family said Junaid has an MBA degree from Kashmir University. The image circulating on social media mentions his MBA credentials.

He left their house in Srinagars Bhagat locality for Friday prayers and did not return, following which the family approached the police, said the source, who did not want to be named.

The family hails from Lolab area of north Kashmirs Kupwara district.

Police are closely monitoring the case in the light of a Kashmiri student from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Mannan Wani, disappearing and reportedly ending up with Hizbul Mujahideen in January.

A picture of Wani, 26, a geology research scholar at AMU, holding a grenade launcher went viral on social media. The text on the picture said Wani hailed from Lolab area of Kupwara district in north Kashmir, and his code was Hamzah Bhai.

Incidentally, Suhail Aijaz, a Kashmiri student of AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, who is also from Kupwara, is missing since February 9.The decision by Andhra Pradeshs ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to walk out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was unfortunate and unilateral and politically motivated, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah said.

In an open nine-page response to TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidus letter to him on March 16, Shah said the assertion that the BJP was not sensitive towards the aspiration of the people of Andhra was untrue and baseless.

Within hours, Naidu launched a tirade against the BJP and described the letter written by Shah as a bundle of lies.

Read | Why are you spreading lies: Chandrababu Naidu responds to Amit Shahs letter

Two TDP ministers, Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary, resigned from the government on March 8 and the party left the NDA on March 16, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP had reneged on a promise to designate Andhra a special category state, which would have entitled it to special central grants.

The TDP and its rival YSR Congress Party have since served notices of a no-confidence motion against the NDA that havent been taken up because of noisy protests in Parliament.

This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision, I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns. It is widely known that the government has not left any stone unturned in ensuring growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh, Shah wrote in his letter.

Naidu wrote to Shah last week, I have come to Delhi about 29 times to seek justice for our people. Every time, I returned only with promises and assurances.

In his response dated March 23, Shah claimed that massive resource allocations had been made to Andhra and most promises made in the Reorganisation Act that led to the states 2014 bifurcation to create a separate state of Telangana were poised to be fulfilled.

.any claim of discrimination against Andhra Pradesh is far from the facts, Shah wrote.

He listed out several schemes and projects to suggest the central government has not only fulfilled its statutory obligations under the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, but has gone far beyond to ensure that the state becomes financially strong.

On the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh, it is regrettable that some political parties are whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate which is the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy, Shah wrote.

The BJP president said the Centre had offered a Special Assistance Measure (financial package) to Andhra in September 2016, which was equivalent to key financial benefits the state would have got as a special category state.

Your government hailed this central assistance package as a great achievement of the state government, Shah said. Suddenly, two years later, you have made a U-turn once again demanding the special status, which has become redundant in view of the financial commitments already fulfilled by the central government.

I would like you to introspect whether political parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda, Shah wrote.

Meanwhile, Naidu on Saturday described Shahs letter as a bundle of lies and said it had deeply hurt the feelings of the people of the state. Within a few hours after receiving the letter, Naidu launched a tirade in the state legislative assembly, stating that the letter was full of false information which exposed the BJPs attitude towards the state.

Taking strong exception to the tone and tenor of the language used in Shahs letter, Naidu alleged that the BJP chief had tried to misrepresent facts. If the Congress had done injustice to the state by undertaking unscientific bifurcation of the combined state, the BJP has done much more injustice by failing to fulfil the promises made in Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, he said. He refuted Shahs allegation that the TDP had quit the NDA unilaterally, guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns.Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Prasad on Saturday said the CBI courts sentencing of his father and party chief Lalu Prasad was a threat to his life for challenging the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

We apprehend a threat to Lalujis life as he has been challenging the BJPs hegemony and trying to unite the parties opposed to it across the country. He is innocent and he will get justice in the higher courts. The people of Bihar will give a befitting reply to those behind the conspiracy against the RJD supremo, said Tejashwi, Prasads younger son and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly.

Asserting that the RJD would not get cowed down by the latest development, he said the workers of the party would work more resolutely than ever before and added that the Janat Dal (United) and the BJP would be made to bite the dust in the next election.

Prasad was sentenced to 14 years in prison in a case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of money from the Dumka treasury when he was the chief minister of undivided Bihar.

Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, however, dismissed the younger Prasads allegation, and pointed out that the RJD supremo enjoyed a foolproof security in jail.

The law has taken its own course. The verdict is not the first one in the fodder scam cases and it should be respected by all, said Modi who was one of the petitioners in the fodder scam cases in the Patna high court, which had ordered a CBI enquiry into the scam in 1996.

The BJP also said the law took its own course in the matter as the RJD called the CBI investigation politically motivated.

It is no rocket science to see that the probe was politically motivated. I do not wish to say much about the judgment since one cannot expect a verdict to be fair and just if the investigation itself was faulty, RJD national spokesman Manoj Jha said.

The Rajya Sabha MP, however, expressed confidence that they would draw the higher courts attention to the shortcomings in the investigation and Prasad would come out unscathed.

Prasad is a victim of a conspiracy by political parties like the BJP, which represents the interests of those who are opposed to social justice and communal harmony, Jha said.

He alleged that had the CBI conducted a fair enquiry in the cases of this nature, all the big shots in the Nitish Kumar government would have been behind bars in connection with the Srijan scam by now.

Union minister Giriraj Singh told reporters, As one sows so one reaps. This is the law of nature and it is futile to make a fuss over todays verdict. The RJD workers should remember that the BJP was not in power when the fodder scam cases were lodged. Even Prasads first conviction came when the country was being ruled by the Congress-led UPA, of which the RJD was a part.A 12-year-old class 5 girl was gang raped and set afire by three youths in Nagaon district in Assam on Friday.

The girl succumbed to burn injuries at the Guwahati Medical College and Hospital at night, according to police.

Two of the accused, who are minors and schoolmates of the girl, have been arrested, while the third, Zakir Hussain, who is from same village as the girl, is on the run, police said.

The incident happened when the girl was alone at her home in Lalungaon village. The three accused barged into her house, raped her, poured kerosene and set her ablaze, Nagaon SP, Shankar Raimedhi said.

Raimedhi said the police have recorded the dying declaration of the girl.

A hunt has been launched for Hussain. We have raided seven eight places, but he is on the run, Raimedhi said.

Last week on Thursday, a woman was gang raped in Kampur in Nagaon after she and her husband were lured by one Hasmat Ali to spend the night in his house. The eight accused, all of them arrested by the police, raped her after tying her husband to a tree.Two militants, suspected to be Pakistanis, were killed in an overnight encounter in south Kashmirs Anantnag district, officials said on Saturday.

A police spokesperson said the preliminary investigation revealed that both militants killed in the encounter at Shishtargam, Dooru, were Pakistanis and members of the militant outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).

He said, Based on seizures made from the spot and other incriminating material collected have confirmed that the terrorists killed were part of outlawed JeM outfit.

As part of a joint operation, Anantnag police along with 19 RR (Rashtriya Rifles) and CRPF launched a search in the area, which led to a gunbattle between forces and militants. Late on Friday, police confirmed that there was exchange of fire reported from the area. The JeM in a statement to local news agency GNS owned the two slain militants.

The encounter comes two days after two policemen, three soldiers and five militants were killed in the bloodiest encounter yet this year in north Kashmirs Kupwara district. The five militants were affiliated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

The JeM was behind an improvised explosive device (IED) blast in north Kashmirs Sopore town in January that left four policemen dead.Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday accused the ruling BJP at the Centre of attacking the Constitution with an aim of changing it but vowed to protect the guiding principles of the country.

Gandhis sharp attack on the BJP came during a rally at Chamarajanagar on the first day of his fourth and final leg of his statewide tour titled Janasahirvada Yatra. Gandhi has been crisscrossing the state ahead of the crucial assembly elections, likely to be held in May, with the ruling Congress facing a stiff challenge from the BJP.

The BJP has started a new fashion of attacking the Constitution. (BR) Ambedkar fought for this Constitution, but they want to change it. Through this rally I want to warn them, that we will not let this happen. No matter how hard they try we will not let them change Ambedkars Constitution, the Congress president said.

Gandhi also praised Tipu Sultan, the 18th century ruler whose legacy has been a source of constant dispute, with the Congress government in the state celebrating him and the BJP alleging that he murdered many Hindus.

Karnatakas great men have made this land what it is. Tipu Sultan, S Visvesvaraya, Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, and the poet Kuvempu, Gandhi said.

He added that the philosophy of the 12th century reformer Basaveshwara, credited with having founded the Lingayat religion, formed the Congresss ideology. Earlier this week, the Congress government led by chief minister Siddaramaiah accorded the status of a religion to the Lingayat sect, a move ridiculed by the BJP.

Invoking Basaveshwaras teachings, Gandhi attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of not following the philosophers famous dictum of practising what one preaches.

Earlier in the day, Gandhi visited the temple of Chamundeshwari in Mysuru and interacted with students at the Maharani College in the city.

Referring to this interaction, Gandhi said: In the morning, I interacted with students and one student said demonetisation was a disaster, yet another said the GST (goods and services tax) at 28% with five slabs was counterproductive. This means students can understand the problems with these policies, but not Narendra Modi.

The Congress president alleged that the BJP stole peoples money and never gave them anything back. BJP stole your money and gave it to the rich. Their four ministers and chief minister went to jail. But we give money back to you, he said, highlighting many welfare schemes of the state government.

Later, addressing a rally at Malavalli in Mandya, Gandhi took aim at the Janata Dal (Secular), accusing it of having entered into an alliance with the BJP ahead of the polls.

The JD(S) name has changed, the S no longer stands for secular. Instead, it stands for Sangh parivar, the Congress president said, adding that it was bent on ensuring the BJPs victory.

Reacting to the allegations made by Gandhi, BJP leader S Suresh Kumar said the Congress had no moral right to accuse the BJP of attempts to tinker with the Constitution.

The most heinous attack on the fundamental rights of the people and the freedom of the press were attacked during the Emergency, he said.

If there is any party that can be credited with having attacked or tampered with the Constitution, it is the Congress and that party alone, he said.

Kumar said the Congress seemed to adhere to a notion of history that was at odds with the people of the state. People have a different view of Tipu Sultan, which we agree with, that was of a person who was out to annihilate Hindus, he said.

Former chief minister and JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy said by making such statements Gandhi was setting the stage for the Congresss funeral in Karnataka. He has no moral right to accuse us, especially considering the fact that his party begged us to form a coalition with them in the Bengaluru corporation.A National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Kochi on Saturday awarded seven yeas rigorous imprisonment to Yasmin Ahmed, a native of Bihar, for helping 15 youths of north Kerala to slip out the country and join extremist outfit Islamic State.

This is the first verdict in an IS-related case in the state.

She was arrested from Delhi international airport in July 2016 when she was about to leave the country with her minor son.

Later, the Kerala police made her an accused in the case of 15 missing persons (total 21) who reportedly joined the IS. Later the case was handed over to the NIA.

While delivering the verdict, the court said she was aware of the youths plan to join the extremist outfit and helped them. The court examined 52 prosecution witnesses and one defence witness and nearly 50 material objects and found that she was guilty of waging war against the country.

The prosecution said while she was teaching at the Peace International School, she came in contact with Abdul Rashid, the leader of the missing youth from the state.

Yasmin did all the ground work for the youth to slip out of the country and was in touch with Rashid constantly. She was supposed to leave with the others, but her trip was delayed because she could not get travel papers for her son done in time, prosecution said.

Yasmin is reported to be the second wife Rashid. Hailing from Bihar, she was brought up in Saudi Arabia where her parents are settled.

She came to Kerala five years ago with her husband Syed Ahmad after getting a job in Peace International School in Malappuram.

Rashid, who used to train teachers there, soon befriended the couple. Later, the husband fell out with her and left the country. After this, Rashid and Yasmin became close.

The police zeroed in on her after intercepting her communication with Rashid. Police also found that Rs 2 lakh was deposited in her account two weeks before her arrest.

At least 21 persons, including six women and three children, had gone missing from the state in June 2016 and were reported to have joined the IS, sending shockwaves across the country.

Most of the missing persons were well educated and hailed from upper middle class families. At least six were reportedly killed while fighting for the IS in Afghanistan.

Two months back, police had arrested chairman of the Peace School group, M M Akbar for teaching study materials intended to create communal divide.

Rashid was dealing with the public relation activities of the school group that runs 12 schools in Kerala and neighbouring states.After passport office, Barmer will soon have air connectivity. The centre has decided to connect Barmer district, located along the Indo-Pak international border, with the air service, announced minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha in the parliament recently.

Replying to Barmer MP Colonel Sonaram Choudharys question over the issue on Monday, Sinha informed the house that the central government has selected Barmer under the UDAN scheme.

The centres Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (or UDAN), launched on October 21, 2016, seeks to connect unserved and under-served airports in the country.

Sinha said that during the second round of bidding under the UDAN scheme in January this year, the implementing agency has awarded the Delhi-Uttarlai (Barmer)-Delhi route to Zoom Air, an airline service. The company is expected to start operations within 180 days from the issuance of letter of award.

The passport service centre opened in Barmer on March 4 this year.

Choudhary said that after the passport office, the union government has given yet another gift to the people of Barmer. With oil and gas discovery and power projects, many multinational companies are working in the district and air connectivity is the need of the region, he said, adding that, it will not only benefit the officials of multinational companies, but also to the people in general.Seven decades after the Independence, students of a government primary school in Bhusawar sub-divison of Bharatpur district study under the trees, as they have no roofs over their heads.

The Sanskrit Primary School at Gadhi Brahmin village under Menapura gram panchayat was started with 27 students in July 2013. It aimed to provide education to the children of poor Jogi and Meena community people in the village, who had no access to education. But almost five years after, the school runs in an agriculture field under the trees.

At present, there are 17 students in all. Every day they gather at the field and sit under a tree after cleaning the ground. A black board is hanged to the tree to teach the students.

The school principal, Manglaram Koli said, We have requested (government) officials, representatives to provide building for school, but in vain. Students face heat in summer, cold in winter season. During monsoon, many times, we ask the students to return home as classes cannot be held.

The school has two students in Class 1, two in Class 2, eight in Class 3, four in Class 4 and one students in Class 5.

When contacted over the issue, Weir subdivisional magistrate Vishambhar Dayal said, I am not aware about such school, but inquire into the matter. I will order tehsildar to visit the school and then try to construct building or shift the students to any other building.

There are 1,196 primary and upper primary schools in Bharatpur subdivision. Of these, 527 are in the city alone. Most of them face shortage of teachers.Eighteen people allegedly thrashed a 55-year-old woman with sticks and iron rod over a land dispute in a village of Sawai Madhopur on late Friday, killing her on the spot, police said on Saturday.

Police said Geeta and her husband Ghanshyam had a farm next to another farm of the accused. The couple wanted a passage to their farm through the accuseds land.

The two parties were having arguments over the issue for the past few days. Earlier, the victim and her husband wanted to take their tractor through the land of the accused but were stopped, leading to a dispute. On Friday, the accused reached the victims house and attacked them, said Ajeet Singh, station house officer (SHO), Bharawana Kalan.

He said the assailants attacked Geeta with sticks and iron rod which resulted in her death on the spot.

The autopsy of the deceased was conducted on Saturday and the report is awaited, the SHO said.

The womans husband and son were also beaten but did not suffer any serious injuries, he said.

Police registered a case of murder against 18 people on the basis of a complaint filed by the victims son.Rape victims who seek justice have to fight a tough battle. When they clear the first hurdle at the police station, the next big trouble comes at the hospital where their medical examination is conducted. Often made to wait for hours, the rape survivor can be identified sitting in the middle of two lady constables or beside one of them in a corner, in a veil.

It is ironical that the person who should get the utmost attention and be attended on priority basis is made to sit without a reason, said Dr Nilam Singh, one of the experts in the Lucknows Ashiyana case and a gynaecologist working for womens welfare.

There is another reason. The guidelines and protocols for medico legal care for survivors / victims of sexual violence were brought in 2014 but never shared with doctors formally to train them in the new protocols.

None of the doctors has been provided training for the new protocols that say rape survivor should be given attention on priority. Also it describes use of technology to gather evidence but unfortunately majority of such examinations is based on conventional and poor methods, said Dr Singh.

While colposcopy can help gather semen even if there is delayed examination, most doctors still trust the finger test, which does not make the case strong, she said.

A colposcopy examination helps identify genital injury not readily visible to the naked eye, thereby clarifying the location and extent of injury as well as providing evidence for legal battle.

The guidelines were introduced after one year of examination of cases by a high level committee.Bareilly: Experts at the Indian Veterinary Research Institute here are set to monitor the prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) infection in bovines as part of a government project which envisages eradicating the disease from the country.

Statistics Number of human deaths due to TB in India in 2017: 41,5,000 Estimated budget to tackle TB in India: Rs 3412.5 crore (Rs 2524.88 crore by state+ Rs 887 crore by international funding) Infection rate in domestic cattle : Around 15% Economic impact of TB infection in cattle: Rs 5440 Cr

Tuberculosis is a zoonotic disease, meaning, its bacteria infect both animals and humans. In India, where people live in close association with cattle, this creates a precarious situation for humans, said BR Singh, bacteriologist and senior scientist at IVRI.

According to recent research, around 9% of all TB infections are transferred from animals to humans. The percentage is higher in TB cases related to children.

The project will be conducted by a consortium of major universities and research institutes in India, United States and UK. The department of biotechnology which comes under the ministry of science and technology will fund the project along with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Tuberculosis in cattle was never given consideration in projects aimed at eradicating TB in humans. This has changed with this project. Our institute will collaborate with the experts in providing required data, informed RK Singh, director IVRI.

Experts believe that the prevalence of TB infection in cattle is as high as 15% in buffalo and cow.

The economic cost because of TB infection in cattle in Indian is estimated around Rs 5440 crore, said Vivek Kapur, scientist at Penn State University, USA who compiled the programme report for the project. Kapur said, Our first priority will be to set up a national surveillance programme for TB infection in cattle. The data from the project will be used to chalk out a plan to tackle it.Where do words come from? Well give you a clue. Clue comes from the medieval word clew, meaning a ball of thread. In Greek mythology, it was this kind of thread that helped the warrior Theseus mark his way through the maze-like labyrinth to battle the Minotaur.

Minotaurs  part-bull, part-man  were jumbo-sized. Jumbo itself comes from the name of an African elephant who was born in the 1860s and wowed crowds in England, France and North America. And why Jumbo? Its possibly a corruption of the west-African word for elephant: nazamba.

How words get into a dictionary For decades, lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Dictionary would look for new as-yet-undefined words in books, periodicals and popular use. Theyd determine if it was widespread, meant the same thing in every use, and had staying power. Then theyd craft a definition. These days, popular films, songs and slang are all up for consideration. Special attention is paid to existing words with new meanings  like hashtag. Many words just walk over from other languages: emoji (Japanese), gung-ho (Mandarin). Some just get cobbled together: cronut, bromance.

Some words have twisty, intriguing histories. When millennials talk about freelancing, few know that the word using is medieval and a former term of war  freelance used to be the term for a mercenary warrior whose lance was not sworn to any kingdom, and hence free for hire by the highest bidder.

Words change too. Stew, which now means a long-boiled dish of meat or vegetables, also meant a whorehouse in the 14th century.

Lexicographers updating the dictionary even 100 years ago had their hands full. The Oxford English Dictionary added 333 new words in 1918. In America, Merriam-Webster added 191.

Many overlapped and many were formally defined for the first time. Not only was the world inching painfully and hungrily towards the end of a war, the English language itself was furiously keeping up with advancements in film, aviation and society. These were words born in the trenches; on the battlefields amid new weapons; in the theatres for moving images, which were barely 20 years old; and in bedrooms across both continents, where medicine was ushering in modernity. See some of whats stuck on a century later.

First World War: You might think the term developed around the time of World War 2, but it was first recorded in the closing months of this one, in a diary entry from September 10, 1918. It was usually referred to as the Great War or the War To End Wars at this time, but someone clearly knew there was more to come.

Defeatist: By 1918, the war had dragged on for four years, leaving everyone exhausted. This word was used to describe pacifists and those ready to lose if it meant an end to the fighting. Its still used in a martial context, except todays battles arent fought on land, sea and air; instead, this is now a terrible attitude to have in the boardroom.

Devalue: Where theres war, there are expenses, financial losses and debt. Devalue was first formally used for currency in 1918. Last years most devalued currencies came from Venezuela, Egypt and Argentina. But the fall of the British pound after the vote for Brexit remains the steepest devaluing of a major currency in recent times.

Delouse: Cooties or body lice entered the lexicon the previous year, originating in war trenches where soldiers seldom had the opportunity to bathe. Clearly a problem with a solution, delouse was coined the following year.

Mass grave: The high death toll from the war birthed the unfortunate term. It would have a very different meaning by the end of the Second World War.

Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas, etching and aquatint by Otto Dix from Der Krieg, 1924.

Stormtrooper: The Kaisers elite, handpicked and specially trained German infantrymen were collectively called Stormtroops; sing. stormtrooper. Of course all that changed in 1977, when a film called Star Wars introduced an army of white footsoldiers with lousy aim and changed forever the image that pops into your head when you hear the word Stormtrooper.

Whizz-bang: Deadly new weapons dont always have deadly words to describe them. One small, swift shell from a German gun travelled faster than sound  so you could hear it whizz past before it did its damage.

Head-hunter: In the 1800s, this was a savage who collected human heads for rituals. A century later, the term started to mean one who identifies and recruits workers for jobs, especially for specialised tasks during the war.

Interview: A face-to-face meeting used by military recruiters to identify potential among enlisted Britons, in 1918. A few years after the war, it came to mean a personal meeting to discuss any hiring or employment.

Breakthrough: While weve been breaking through barriers since the 1400s, breakthrough as a military term made it into the books at the end of the war. By the 1930s it was a common way to describe a burst of progress.

Shimmy:In 1917, Spencer Williams released a dance number titled Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble. By the following year, Shaking the Shimmy, a dance combining the foxtrot with a shaking of the shoulders, was all the rage. The word quickly became a term for any suggestive dance.

Welfare: In 1904, the word covered the well-being of children and the unemployed. By 1918, with the war squeezing pockets dry, it got a new meaning  an organised effort to provide for maintenance of members of a group.

West: Not the direction, the geopolitical grouping. The term was first recorded in 1918 to distinguish Britain, France and Italy from Russia.

Armistice: From the Latin for stoppage of arms; when an agreement was signed at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, it was called the Armistice. It marked the cessation of battle. Algerias armistice with France in 1962 is the most recent instance.

Dog-tag: Soldiers have been carrying identification since the Spartans wrote their names on sticks tied to their wrists. Metal IDs were introduced by the British Army in 1907. But its the US Armys twin aluminum tags, stamped with the wearers name and serial number, adopted in 1918, that became and has remained the standard.

Bob:That short haircut for women emerged in 1918, when it was seen as radical. Indian hairdressers gave women bob-cuts until well into the 1980s.

Friendly fire: This term was first used in a report in the New York Times on Oct 18, 1918, for when soldiers come under fire from members of the same army. Other wartime terms that made it to the dictionary include line of duty, biological weapon and triage.

Sex Drive: The term dates back to 1918, but the rise of psychoanalysis during the period means we had sex on our minds in different ways. Anthropologists started using sex symbol in 1871 (it didnt get popular until the 1950s with Marilyn Monroe). Sexual cravings came into use in 1900, sex object by the following year and sex appeal by 1904. By 1942, it was common to sex up products to make them appealing. Sex therapist however, didnt come into use until 1974.

Climax: Coined in the sexual sense by birth-control pioneer Marie Stopes in her book Married Love, which challenged the idea that it was improper for a woman to enjoy sex. The book that became so popular it went through six reprints in its first year. Stopes used climax because many of her readers would have not been familiar with orgasm.

Microclimate: By the 19th century, data and research made it possible to compare the climates of small areas and study how and why they differed from others in the same region. Microclimate was coined in 1918 and is used to this day to study how climate change affects land and life.

Multistory: Strangely, skyscraper is older, from 1888, three years after the worlds first one was completed in Chicago. It was only 10 floors high. The 1918 term multistory, however, refers to any structure with more than two levels.

Fade-out: Filmmaking was still new in the early years of the previous century. Early filmmakers initially placed an aperture in front of their lens to let the scene emerge from a hole in the screen. This iris effect soon gave way to fades  in which scenes would end by dissolving into darkness, like the lights slowly going out on a theatre stage.

Retake: With cinema, actors werent performing live. There was room for re-dos. Hence the retake.

Lifespan: Growing interests in species longevity and life expectancy prompted the coinage of this word. India didnt fare too well at the time  our average expectancy was among the worlds lowest, at under 30 years. Australians at the time lived to 61. The Indian lifespan stands at 68.3 today; the people of Canada, Australia, Japan and western Europe live to an average of 85.

Altimeter: The Wright Brothers first successful flight was in 1903, and the next few decades took aeronautics to, well, new heights. A name for an instrument for measuring altitudes entered the OED in 1918.

Queueing: Queue entered the dictionary in 1893. The verb form came out of the war, as millions lined up for rations. A book published in that year notes that queuing afforded women an occasion and an opportunity for gossip.

Rurban: The industrial revolution had rapidly urbanised some areas, creating zones for business and manufacturing. But by 1918, towns and villages were no longer watertight areas. Motor vehicles had made movement easy in farming towns; cities were expanding beyond their borders, necessitating the coinage to better manage the in-between zones.

Turbulence: Air travel meant we felt the atmospheric eddies in the sky and needed a name for them  the 15th-century word for trouble seemed apt.

Troubleshoot: HR didnt come up with this bit of corporate-speak. A troubleshooter originally meant someone who worked on telegraph or telephone lines. The verb form, born in 1918, eventually became shorthand for problem-solving.

Windbreaker: A jacket that kept the biting breeze away. What else would you call it?

Cheerio: The goodbye greeting was originally cheero a variation of cheer or cheers. Enough people preferred cheerio for it to enter the OED in 1918.

Blah: In 1918 it stood for idle, meaningless talk as in blah blah blah. The following year it also indicated that something was dull  as in, so blah.

Snooty: The adjective derived from snoot meaning proud or arrogant, which itself came from snout.

Roomie: American English-speakers had been familiar with the concept of a roommate since the late 1700s. The short form dates from 1918.

Recon: Military slang for reconnaissance.

Soppy: It usually meant wet, but the first reference of it being used to mean sentimental dates from 1918.

Zing: Bullets were already zinging past in 1911, years before war broke out. By 1918, term for high-pitched sound evolved as slang for energy or zest.A mention of Rampur may remind you of the famous Rampuri chhuri  the switchblade Bollywood villains of a certain vintage proudly flaunted. But a taste of this Uttar Pradesh towns cuisine will leave millennials surprised.

Of late, many hotels have started to showcase this delectable cuisine and one such ongoing fiesta is Dine Like Royals at K3, JW Marriott New Delhi Aerocity, from March 16 to March 26. For non-vegetarians, the cuisine is a delight all the way. But vegetarians wont go hungry either.

Whisked, stirred, pounded and cooked by a team of third-generation cooks from the royal kitchens of the Nawabs of Rampur and chefs at the hotel, the mouth-watering traditional Rampur delicacies are characterised by the use of dry spices, or khada masala (black and white peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon or cassia bark, mace, black and green cardamom pods, bay leaf, cumin and coriander), which lend the dishes a unique flavour.

Chef Suroor, who is among the team of magicians cooking up the delicacies at the restaurant, says: The cuisine was unheard of earlier  or very few knew about it  as the nawabs at the time did not want the food that they enjoyed to be had by all and become common. They wanted it to remain unique... for their palettes only. People came to know about the wonders of the cuisine when they found documented recipes in the library of Rampur.

Munch on the kachche gosht ki tikia (minced mutton tikka) and the fish anjeer tikka (fish and fig tika) while sipping on the Rampuri punch  a summer cocktail comprising Rampuri spices, and a strong shot of vodka. The combination will prepare you for the rich and heavy main course dish  tar qorma.

The word tar (wire) has been given as the consistency of the curry is like that of a wire when you slide out the spoon from the dish. Not too soft, nor too chewy, the mutton which had soaked in the flavourful spices was cooked perfectly and was not even as spicy as it looked. The speciality of the spices is that all of them are hand-pounded. None of them comes from the market, Chef Suroor explained.

The fish and fig tikka is recommended as it is a lovely amalgamation of fig with the spices and is melt-in-the-mouth soft. The taste of fig is not so strong either. Dont forget to try it with the garlic-yellow chilli dip. The yellow chilli is specific to Rampur and is hotter than the green chili that you get in the market. However, it is not as hot as the bhut jolokia found in the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland and Manipur.

The keema aloo dish is dry and looks like minced soya bean. It is delicious and can be eaten with the sheer maal roti which is different from the usual Mughlai-style preparation. In the vegetarian section, the rich and heavy paneer shorma and brinjal dish should be tried out even if youre partial to the non-vegetarian menu. For dessert, opt for the gulatthi (a cousin of kheer and phirni) and adrak ka halwa  a sweet made of minced ginger.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for moreUnion minister of state for social justice, Ramdas Athawale, said that the tally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could come down in 2019 general election, but the party will win and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will again form the next government at the Centre. Athawale was addressing the media on Saturday at Sahyadri state guest house in Malabar Hill.

The general elections in the country are slated to be held in April-May next year. However, there are speculations that the elections may be preponed to the latter half of 2018. Athawale-led Republican Party of India (RPI) is an ally of the BJP governments in both the Centre as well as in the state.

When asked about the Karnataka assembly elections, Athawale launched a scathing attack on Congress president Rahul Gandhi, and said that there is no competition between Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As long as Rahul Gandhi is the leader (of Congress), Narendra Modi will continue to win elections, Athawale said.

He said that the RPI will file a review petition in the Supreme Court on its own to challenge the judgment on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

RPI will file an intervention petition against the Supreme Courts order on SC/ST Act, as we are not satisfied with the order. There could be some cases of misuse of the Act, but it helps in the protection of the marginalised section of the society, Athawale said.

On March 20, the apex court, in a bid to prevent misuse of the SC/ST Act, ruled that preliminary enquiry in a case under the Atrocities Act would be conducted by the concerned DSP to ensure that the allegations against the accused are not frivolous, and to avoid the false implication of an innocent person. The SC held that there is no absolute bar for granting anticipatory bail in a matter under the Act.

Commenting on the relations between the Shiv Sena and BJP, Athawale said that the Sena should fight the Congress and not the BJP. He added that whatever stand the Sena has adopted against the BJP is helping the Congress. Athawale added that if the Sena and BJP do not enter into a pre-poll alliance, the former will be at loss.

Nirupam calls Fadnavis a liar, says Maharashtra has lost IFSC to Gujarat

Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam slammed chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for the latters claim related to the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Mumbai, saying that it was a blatant lie and the project was no more realistic. Fadnavis had said in the legislative council on Friday that though the central government has proposed the IFSC in Gujarat, the Maharashtra government was determined to set up another such centre at Bandra-Kurla Complex on its own.

Nirupam said, A business hub of this magnitude requires a 50-hectare area, as per international norms. There is no such space available at the BKC. Secondly, after the Union government has decided to set up one such centre in Gujarat, another at BKC does not remain feasible. Fadnavis is just lying to save face, as Maharashtra has lost the IFSC to Gujarat, after Modi took the reins at the Centre in 2014.

Reacting to Nirupams comments, the BJP said he had got his facts wrong. Nirupam has got his facts wrong once again. An IFSC set up in 1987 in Dublin, Ireland is on 11 hectares of land, as per the information available on Wikipedia.This means there is no specific norm related to the minimum area required for the Centre. Nirupam should study the facts properly before making such absurd remarks, said Krishna Hegde, city vice-president, BJP.Surely youve seen it. Across central Mumbai, in Lower Parel, Parel, Dadar (West), Dadar (East), Mahim, and Sion, someone has spray-painted a strange symbol on the walls, billboards and pillars.

You may not notice right away. The insignia looks like a triangle, with a wavy line underneath. It is created using a stencil, is no bigger than your fist, and is often accompanied by other artwork, like a flame or a blimp-like body.

But start looking for it and youll spot it soon enough  at eye-level on flyover pillars and even on the exterior boundary walls of Victoria church in Mahim and Kohinoor Square near Shiv Sena Bhavan.

Graffiti on boundary wall of One IndiaBulls building near Elphinstone Road (L). A spray-painted symbol seen on a factory wall in Sion (R). (HT Photo)

Those familiar with the work of anonymous British graffiti artist who goes by the name Banksy will know that stencils are handy tool when need to quickly execute an artwork to avoid getting caught. Banksys own graffiti has been subversive, making political and social statements, and people have been buying the same stencils to replicate his iconic work around the world. So do we have a Banksy in Mumbai or just a copycat?

The ones in Mumbai arent always black. The one on a factory wall along Ambedkar Road just south of Sions Gandhi Market is orange. It isnt always in central Mumbai either  one appears on an electricity box right opposite the Rajabai Tower in Fort. But it carries no other information.

Graffiti at Kohinoor square in Dadar West. (HT Photo)

No signature, no number to call, no witty slogan pointing to an advertising campaign teaser. Street-artist groups are just as confused. We contacted members of the Wall Project and the Bollywood Art Project, both of whom have been responsible for covering city walls and building facades in artistic, larger than life murals.

Neither could identify the icon or knew who might have painted them or when.

Mumbai has been hosting street artists since the late 2000s, when The Wall Project made formal efforts to cover street walls, subways and public areas with art.

Guerilla graffiti (created without consent from those who own the structures) is rarer, usually scrawls made with a spray can. Stencil art is rarer still. In 2011, Delhi street artist DaKu is said to have visited Mumbai and stenciled F*** in Devanagari at nine locations overnight. In September last year, the word Laden in Devnagari script showed up on walls across the city as part of the promotion for the Marathi film Laden Aala Re Aala.Mathadis (head loaders) will protest outside Mantralaya on Tuesday against the state governments plan to make changes in the Mathadi Act.

The mathadis are opposed to the governments plan to replace 36 Mathadi mandals in the state with one Mathadi Maha Mandal.

MLA Narendra Patil, general secretary of the Mathadi union, said: The state government has hatched a conspiracy to make changes in the Mathadi Act. The existence of the Mathadi board that protects the mathadis interest is at stake.

He said, The Act came into being after a long and hard struggle of the mathadis for which they have shed their blood. We will ensure that the Act stays.

Patil said that the state government has issued three notifications in February and September 2016 and January 2018. The orders have harmed the interest of the workers. We want all the three notifications to be withdrawn and demands of mathadis for security and better working conditions to be met, Patil said.

MLA Shashikant Shinde, working president of the union, said that they have been protesting for the last three years. The state will witness the biggest rally of the labour class on Tuesday when mathadis from all over the state along with their families will stand together in protest, said Shinde.A 17-year-old stabbed a 27-year-old man to death in Bhandup after a fight over smoking on Friday night.

The victim, Ramji Rajbhar, is a resident of Tokre chawl at Tanaji wadi in Bhandup (West). The incident occurred at around 8.30pm near a paan shop close to Tushar bar at Tembipada area in Bhandup.

The minor blew cigarette smoke over Ramjis face because of which there was an altercation between them, said a police officer.

The brawl escalated following which the 17-year-old pulled out a sharp weapon and stabbed Ramji. A profusely bleeding Ramji was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead. The minor has been detained and booked for murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The incident comes barely six days after the brutal triple murders in Bhandup. Abdul Ali Khan, 50, and his sons, Shaibaz, 25, and Shadab, 16, were killed by four persons from a family over hawking space. The incident took place at around 3:30pm at Jakeriya compound, behind the Jakeriya Masjid in Sonapur. The Bhandup police have arrested two accused from Delhi in this connection.Almost a week after meat from Madanpura was seized by the police, owners of meat shops have written to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, asking him to arrange for portable kits to detect the type of meat being stored or traded.

About six months back, the Forensic Science Laboratories in Maharashtra had announced that around 45 forensic vehicles would be equipped with Cow Meat Detection ELISA Kit, to check the sample of meat seized. However, there was no clarity from the department whether these kits have been provided to police personnel.

The kit works like a pregnancy test kit, wherein once tiny pieces of meat are put into the detector, there is change of colour if the meat in question is beef. The reagent in the detector reacts only to cow meat.

Various meat shops are raided by the police on tip-offs given by political organisations. However, since the police personnel do not have kits, they end up seizing meat which is mutton and not beef. We dont know if tests are conducted to ascertain whether or not the meat that was seized was beef, said Irfan Machiwala, a social activist, who has written the letter.

The Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act of 1976 was amended in 2015, where apart from slaughter of cows, the slaughter of bulls, bullocks and calves was banned too. The act states that the slaughter of these animals is a non-bailable offence, punishable with five years of imprisonment.

Machiwala added that with the rising violence in the name of cow protection, these kits would help maintain communal harmony.

In the letter, Machiwala and Mahim resident Farooq Dhala have urged the state government for immediate arrangement of beef portable kits because repeated seizures were causing inconvenience during transportation of meat for daily consumption, and their festivals.

In the last ten days, mutton shops have been raided twice claiming that beef was being sold. If a portable kit is provided, then these traders wont suffer losses, because within half an hour, the police can determine if the meat carried is beef. The meat that is sold and brought in the city during festivals is mutton, and not beef; our religious sentiments should also be respected, said Dhala.

Waris Pathan, member of legislative assembly (MLA) from Byculla, said no such kit was used when the raid was conducted in South Mumbai.

Read more: Beef ban: Maharashtra to get detection kits to identify meat within 30 minutes

There was no procedure that was followed in this case. It doesnt seem like the mobile kits have been implemented, said the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen MLA.

Last week, minister of state for animal husbandry Arjun Khotkar, had said the government was exploring the possibility of amending the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 2015, so that bovines with certain infections can be culled.A professor was detained by the police in Ghatkopar after he allegedly demanded a kiss from a 17-year-old female student, studying in a junior college, in exchange for more marks during exam.

The incident took place in a Ghatkopar college on March 8, but it was reported on Saturday. The girl narrated the incident to her family, after which the irate family members launched a protest at the Pant Nagar police station.

The accused professor is in his thirties.

Rohini Kale, senior police inspector, Pant Nagar police station, said, The accused demanded a kiss from the girl to increase her marks in an exam. We have registered a case against the professor, and he is being questioned further.

Read more: Professor booked for sending lewd SMSes

The case has been registered under Indian Penal Code (IPC) section 354 A (making sexually coloured remarks) and also under the relevant sections of the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO).Continuing its criticism of the state government, the Shiv Sena on Saturday slammed its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the alleged rat scam in Mantralaya. It said allegations made by disgruntled BJP leader Eknath Khadse discredit BJPs claim of running a transparent administration.

An editorial in the Sena mouthpiece Saamana said Mantralaya has become a rat house and it is BJPs responsibility to get rid of these rats. If not, people of the state will vote them out, Saamana said.

The rat scam has not just bit into the state exchequer, it has made a hole in the governments claim of a transparent administration. Mantralaya has become a rat house. It is still unclear why Khadse exposed this scam, but it is the governments responsibility to get rid of rats, otherwise, people of the state are sitting with rat traps, it read.

Last week in the state Assembly, Khadse alleged that the company that was awarded the contract for pest control in the state secretariat claimed to have killed 3,19,400 rats in seven days.

The work order was given by the General Administration Department, which is headed by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. However, the government later clarified that the figure 3,19,400 was of anti-rodent tablets and not of rats killed.

The Sena said the government should set up a special investigation team (SIT) to inquire how the 3.19lakh rats were disposed of.

State finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar slams Khadse

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar slammed his party colleague and former cabinet colleague Eknath Khadse for his dig at the government over the rat killing contract.

Mungantiwar said such false and misinterpreting statements would lead to fall in the governments integrity and that he has prayed to God to give politicians good sense while making statements in public.

Mungantiwar, who was in Shirdi on Saturday said people are losing faith in the government system and such statements only weaken the credibility of the government further. He said the contract, to which Khadse referred to in the Assembly on Thursday, was given for the supply of 3.19 lakh anti-rodent tablets and it does not mean that many rats were killed.

Khadse had taken a dig at the government by claiming that the government killed 3.17 rats in just seven days in 2016.The anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of Thane Unit arrested six more Bangladeshis from Bhiwandi on Friday.

The accused had prepared bogus identification documents and were illegally living in the country for long.

The ATS is also checking if they are linked to the banned terror outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), which has links with globally dreaded terrorist group Al-Qaeda.

The arrested accused are in the 19-24 age group and hail from Chattagram, Noakhali and Faridpur districts of Bangladesh. They have been booked under relevant sections of the Passport Act, Foreigners Act and IPC.

They have been remanded in police custody till March 28.A 25-year-old biker and a car driver died in an accident on Palm Beach Road at Nerul of Saturday.

According to the police, Ruben Pille, a resident of Kalamboli, was going home on his bike from Vashi. He worked in a bar and had finished the night shift.

He was going home around 4.45am. As he crossed the NRI signal at Nerul, a car which was also going in the same direction hit him from behind, said N Kadam, police inspector of the Seawoods traffic unit.

Pille suffered severe injuries and died on the spot.

After hitting the bike, 37-year-old car driver Rahul Patil lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the barricades along the road. The car toppled four to five times. Patil suffered severe injured on his neck and he died on the spot. He was a resident of Wahal village near Belapur, Kadam said.

The police and the some local residents took both of them to a nearby hospital, but the doctors declared them brought dead. The bodies were sent to NMMC hospital in Vashi for post mortem.

Prima facie, it appears that Patil was driving the car at a speed of around 200 km per hour. He could not control the car and hit the bike. We are also examining the CCTV footage of other signals on Palm Beach Road, Kadam said.

Drink driving could also be reason behind it. However, we have not got the medical reports to confirm it, said another police officer from NRI police station.

The police have registered a case under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Motor Vehicles Act.The state governments recent decision to examine if the Transferred Development Rights (TDR), which gives builders additional buildable rights, can be generated over Centre-owned and state-owned lands has appalled urban planners and development experts, while becoming the delight of builders.

Urban planners believe the state is defying the basics of urban planning by converting a planning tool into a commodity.

This will definitely become a money-making business for the government, said Bhagwanji Rayani, from the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Janhit Manch.

Rayani has been part of a long-standing legal battle with the state, demanding a total ban on the concept of TDR itself.

According to Rayani, the governments decision is likely to lead to haphazard development in the city.

Pankaj Joshi, director of Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) said, A TDR needs a receiving land parcel, as it needs a generating land parcel. In this case, government has not defined where the TDR will be used.

Another city-based planner, David Cardoz, said, When the government talks about government-owned land, we would like to know what government-owned land. For example, the Mahim Nature park, at present has no FSI (floor space index). Once it is brought under this umbrella, all its FSI will get out into the slum development. Suddenly we will see a lot of construction, and if we wonder where its coming from, we will have to look up some land parcel somewhere that is supporting it.

Pune-based businessman Milind Deshpande said, There is limited TDR in the market right now. This leads to internal trading and fraud. The move will put underdeveloped land to use, even as the government maintains its ownership.

Deshpande had first suggested to the state that government land can be used to generate additional TDR. He had also suggested that TDR can be traded online, akin to mechanisms of a stock market.

City-based developer Bhavesh Sanghrajka said, This will greatly reduce property prices. It will open up more space for buildings, and reduce the builders overall costs.A huge plastic water tank burst in a labour camp located at Hiranandani Complex, Powai, on Saturday morning, injuring seven men, all construction labourers. Two of the injured, Motilal Sahani, 31, and Khairal Aalam, 35, have been admitted to the civic-run Rajawadi hospital and are in a critical condition.

Civic officials from the disaster management department said the incident took place around 10am at a construction site. The Sintex water tank must have burst because of overflowing water and too much pressure, said a civic official, who did not wish to be named.

Five other labourers are being treated at the nearby Hiranandani hospital and are stable, officials added.

Civic officials and policemen are currently inspecting the site, and more details are awaited.The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has revised the detailed project report (DPR) of the two proposed Metro extensions  Noida Sector 62 to Sahibabad and Vaishali to Mohan Nagar. The revised parameters concerning the land cost is set to increase the project cost.

The revised cost of the project is expected to increase by nearly Rs283 crore, officials said.

The two extensions were estimated to cost Rs3711 crore, as per the original land cost estimated by DMRC. Following the receipt of the DPR of the two extensions, the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) had written to the agency to estimate the cost of land on circle rates. The DMRC later sought the circle rates and has revised the DPR based on the new land cost.

We have received the revised points of the DPR from DMRC. These include the land cost, which has been revised on circle rates sent by us. The land cost for the Vaishali to Mohan Nagar route has increased on the basis of circle rates while there is a decrease in the land cost for the Sector 62 to Sahibabad route, VN Singh, chief engineer, GDA, said.

Overall, the cost has increased due to land estimates based on circle rates. The land is required for construction of stations as well as the corridor. This will also increase the cost of the project as such. We will hold discussions and the DMRC will now send us a revised DPR, incorporating the replies. The final DPR will soon be sent to the state government, Singh said.

As per the original DPR, the land cost for the Vaishali to Mohan Nagar route was estimated at Rs115.77 crore, while the revised cost, based on circle rates, is now Rs448.15 crore. Further, the original cost for the Sector 62 to Sahibabad route was estimated originally at Rs178.09 crore, while the revised estimate is Rs125.58 crore.

For the Vaishali to Mohan Nagar Metro link, 1.316 hectares are required for construction of stations while 6.597 hectares are required for building the Metro network. The total land requirement for the extension is 7.913 hectare.

For the Sector 62 to Sahibabad link, 0.43 hectare is required for the construction of stations while 1.438 hectares are required for building the network. The total land requirement is pegged at 1.868 hectares, as per the revised estimate.

There is no change in the land requirement as such and a majority of the land identified for the project is government land. If a need for private land arises, we will procure it during the construction stage, Singh said.

Officials said they will soon hold a meeting to discuss the revised estimates sent by DMRC. According to the report, the estimated time for completion of the Metro extensions is three years.Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal began proposing his budget for the financial year 2018-19 today.

His budgetary proposals will be scrutinised closely, as the state finances have been causing serious concern. Burdened by growing financial liabilities, the finance minister faces multiple challenges in finding ways to raise additional resources and prune expenditure at the same time.

Here are the highlights:

1: 35 pm: They had to do this. What did you think, that they will keep sitting? In fact, I am surprised that they didnt wear black cloaks. They should have done it, it would have looked nice on them, Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh on SAD and AAP walkout from Punjab assembly during budget: ANI

 AAP rejects Manpreet Badals budget for 2018-19, calling it an extension of budgets presented by SAD-BJP govt for 10 years.

 A new Tax of Rs 200 per month to be levied from each tax payer. New tax will be named Punjab Development Tax

 Rs 2000 crore earmarked to repair 16,000 km road

 Rail bridges proposed at Gurdaspur, Rampura Phull, Gidderbaha, Morinda, Dina Nagar, Chuggiti Ladowali in Jalandhar

 Under the smart cities mission, Rs 500 crore earmarked for Ludhiana, Amritsar & Jalandhar in 2018-19: Punjab FM

 Rs 100 Crores earmarked for Swachh Bharat Mission

 State Cancer Institute Amritsar to come up with a cost of Rs 39 crore

 National Health Mission budget increased by 18 % as compared to last year

 Punjabi University, Patiala, to be given a one-time grant of Rs 50 crore this year: FM

 Rs 2 crore to set up Maharana Partap chair at Punjabi University

 Rs 30 crore earmarked to open up 30 new colleges in Punjab.

 Free text books to all students till Class XII.

 Medical college to come up at Mohali, announces Manpreet Badal.

 Manpreet Badals budget begins with famous Faiz Ahmad Faiz and ends with Allama Iqbal.

#PunjabBudget2018: Manpreet Badal's budget begins with famous Faiz Ahmad Faiz and ends with Allama Iqbal pic.twitter.com/cwku01f2t9  Ravinder Vasudeva (@RaviVasudeva) March 24, 2018

11: 40 am: AAP MLAs also stage walkout.

Opposition Aam Aadmi Party legislators raising slogans as they stage walkout from Punjab assembly during presentation of annual budget in Chandigarh on Saturday (Keshav Singh/HT)

11: 27 am: Akali MLAs stage a walkout from the Punjab assembly even as FM Manpreet Badal rushes through his speech. AAP legislators still in the well of the House.

Opposition Shiromani Akali Dal legislators raising slogans as they stage walkout from Punjab assembly during presentation of annual budget in Chandigarh on Saturday. (Keshav Singh/HT)

11: 25 am: Aam Admi Party legislators also reached the well of state legislative assembly protesting against complete waiver of debt on farmers.

 Government to launch Punjab Naujwan Hunar Vikas Yojna to provide free skill training to youth between 18-35 years

11: 22 am: FM Manpreet Badal announces Rs 4,250 crore for farmer debt waiver in fiscal 2018-19, while Akali Dal led by former CM Parkash Singh Badal reaches the well, in protest, demanding waiver of entire Rs 90,000 crore.

 Wi-Fi services to be provided in all 48 Government Colleges of the state

 Punjab govt to bring a new social security legislation to create a dedicated fund to meet its commitment towards weaker sections of society.

 One school in every educational block to be converted into smart school

 Rs 1,235 earmarked for various welfare schemes for education and other development programs of SCs and OBCs

 Despite raising additional resource mobilisation of Rs 1,500 crore, Punjab will have an unfunded resource gap of Rs 4,175 crore.

 Punjab to set up Software Technology Park of India at Amritsar.

 87% of budget goes into committed liabilities, meagre 13% left for development.

 State plans to develop Chandigarh-Ludhiana-Amritsar and Chandigarh-Hoshiarpur-Gurdaspur as Urban Industrial Corridors

 Government to develop industrial focal points Phase IV at Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Bathinda and Mandi Gobindgarh.

 Punjabs outstanding debt to go up to Rs 2,11,523 crore in 2018-19 from Rs 1, 95,978 crore in current financial year.

 Total budget outlay on agriculture sector increased from Rs 10,581 crore to Rs 14,734 crore for fiscal year 2018-19.

 Centre of excellence in shooting range to come up at Mohali and Muktsar Sahib.

 New cattlefield plant to be set up at Kapurthala. Rs 13 Crores to be spent on the project.

 Development tax at Rs 200 per month to be imposed on income tax payee engaged in professions, trades and employments to raise Rs 1500 crore

11: 00 am: Finance minister Manpreet Badal arrives at the Punjab assembly to present the budget.In his second budget speech after the Congress came to power in Punjab, finance minister Manpreet Badal started the section on industry and business development on a self-congratulatory note.

Claiming that no other government had provided power to industry at Rs 5 per unit, Manpreet said coupled with Rs 1,440-crore annual subsidy it will give a fillip to the sector.

However, when it came to new schemes and their allocations, the budget fell short of expectations.

The budget states that the government will make efforts to develop a strong ecosystem wherein startups and entrepreneurs can attain their optimum potential.

To strengthen its Invest Punjab initiative, the government will set up a Business First portal to provide all regular services and fiscal incentives to businesses through one common integrated platform and service delivery network.

Highlights New Software Technology Park of India in Amritsar Generating 3,000 jobs by giving incentives for setting up BPO centres Chandigarh-Ludhiana-Amritsar and Chandigarh-Hoshiarpur-Gurdaspur to be developed as urban industrial corridors Setting up of industrial training institutes and skill development centres in all blocks

The government will also set up a Software Technology Park of India (STPI) in Amritsar in collaboration with the Union government to give a thrust for an all-inclusive growth of software industry in the region. Already functional in Mohali, these parks help meet the needs of budding entrepreneurs by providing them with a gamut of services to promote software exports.

The budget also proposes India BPO Promotion Scheme, under which incentives will be given to those setting up business process outsourcing (BPO) units in the state. It is expected to translate into 3,000 jobs.

However, Manpreet failed to mention allocation to any of these plans.

Focus on focal points

Meanwhile, the government has brought industrial parks and industrial estates  areas zoned and planned to develop industries  under one umbrella. Besides providing common facilities and amenities to them, the government will simplify estate management policies, said Badal.

While Rs 10 crore have been earmarked for developing and modernising infrastructure in existing industrial estates and focal points at Khanna, Ludhiana (Phase 8) and Patiala, industrial focal points at Ludhiana (Phase 4), Jalandhar, (old), Bathinda (new) and Mandi Gobindgarh will also be upgraded. A modern focal point is coming up at Nabha in Patiala at a total cost of Rs 55.4 crore, states the speech.

Special packages for sick industry and incentives to the border zone also find mention in the budget.

Free skill training

To meet the shortage of skilled labour, the government plans to set up cluster-specific skill centres for various manufacturing sectors, including one in Ludhiana for the cycle industry.

Under its technical education head, the budget says a new scheme  Punjab Naujawan Hunar Vikas Yojana  will be launched to provide free skill training to unemployed youth in the age group of 18-35 years.

The scheme will specifically focus on scheduled castes, backward classes, specially abled, women and school dropouts. An initial allocation of 10 crore has been made in the budget.

Meanwhile, no allocation has been made to the much-hyped Skill University at Chamkaur Sahib. Requisite budgetary allocations would be provided in the due course for this purpose, reads the budget speech.

Calling the whole budget a replication of Akali government budgets that forced 18,000 industries to close down in six years, Badish Jindal, president of the Federation of Punjab Small Industries Associations, said: In the 61-page speech of the finance minister, only a half page was given to industry. It shows the importance of industry for the state government.

The state government has not made any special announcement for industrial units in Punjab, said Upkar Ahuja, president of the Confederation of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings (CICU). The micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which form the backbone of our industries, have not been granted anything in this budget and their long-pending demands have not been touched upon.Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) chief Gobind Singh Longowal, on Friday, wrote a letter to Union minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj seeking her intervention in stopping the planned construction of a gurdwara in Australia. Such a building is planned near Gurdwara Singh Sabha in Griffith city of Australia.

In the letter, Longowal has appealed to the minister to speak with the Australian government to prevent the construction. If the plant is established, it does not only hit the environment of the area, but also inject harmful chemicals into the ground water and air thereby causing the pollution, he says, adding that Jaswinder Singh, the chief of the gurdwara management there, had made them aware of efforts to establish the mixing plant of chemical fertilisers.Bollywood actor Vidya Balan is all set to make her Telugu debut in actor Nandamuri Balakrishnas biopic on his father, late actor and former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao (NTR), according to a report in The New Indian Express.

Vidya will essay the role of the first wife of NTR. She will appear as Basavatarakam in the movie, which will be directed by Teja. Balakrishna will step into the shoes of his late father. The report adds that the film will be launched on March 29 at Ramakrishna Studios, Hyderabad.

Work on the film has begun in right earnest. Quoting a source, the report adds, The team has constructed a huge set to shoot a crucial scene featuring Balakrishna for two days immediately after the launch. Incidentally, the shoot will happen at the same place where NTR filmed the first scene of his mythological film Daana Veera Soora Karna. The launch is likely to be graced by Telangana and Andhra Pradesh chief ministers K Chandrasekhara Rao and Nara Chandrababu Naidu, film stars, ministers, MLAs and other dignitaries from the Telugu states.

Incidentally, there are three biopics currently being planned on the life of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister and actor. Nandamuri Balakrishna is working on one, in which he is expected to star as his late father. Another one is by director Ram Gopal Varma, which will be narrated from the perspective of NTRs second wife, Lakshmi and will be called Lakshmis NTR. According to a report in Times of India, producer Kethi Reddy Jagdeswara Reddy, head of Telugu Yuvasakthi in Tamil Nadu, too plans to make a film on NTR.

Vidya Balan is not new to biopics, as she had also worked on Silk Smitas biopic titled Dirty Picture in Hindi. Her inclusion in the cast will be an interesting highlight of the film.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktopOne of Indias most loved stand-up comedians is battling with negative reports before the airing of his new show Family Time With Kapil Sharma.

There were reports that Kapil Sharma cancelled the shoot with Bollywood actors Tiger Shroff and Disha Patani at the last moment. It was said that the actors were supposed to shoot for the second episode of Family Time With Kapil Sharma ahead of the release of their film Baaghi 2.

Kapil took to Twitter and said, Tiger was never supposed to shoot for our 2nd episode, so shoot cancel hone ka sawaal hi paida nahi hota. kuch to authenticity rakha karo yaar. Twitter kya ab explanation dene ke liye hi reh gya hai?Best wishes to my brother @iTIGERSHROFF for #baaghi2 see u soon bro.. lots of love.

Tiger was never supposed to shoot for our 2nd episode, so shoot cancel hone ka sawaal hi paida nahi hota.kuch to authenticity rakha karo yaar.Twitter kya ab explanation dene ke liye hi reh gya hai?Best wishes to my brother @iTIGERSHROFF for #baaghi2 see u soon bro.. lots of love  KAPIL (@KapilSharmaK9) March 24, 2018

Earlier on Friday, the channel said in a statement, There has been a technical issue on the sets which cannot be resolved immediately. Hence, todays shoot had to be rescheduled. The press conference is also been rescheduled. We will update you on the revised dates. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

The show is scheduled to go on air from March 25 with Ajay Devgn as the celebrity guest on the first episode.

Kapil suffered a PR nightmare in March 2017 when he physically abused another comedian Sunil Grover on a flight. His shows ratings took a nosedive as fans rushed to Sunils side and his co-stars also decided to quit the show.

Its been a year since then and Kapil seems to have learnt his lessons. Will he be able to fight the negative reports with his new show?Chinas commerce ministry said on Saturday that China expressed regret at the United States for filing a challenge at the World Trade Organization, adding that it has always respected WTO rules.

The office of the US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Friday that the USTR had filed a request for consultations with China at the WTO to address discriminatory technology licensing agreements.

China has been consistent in highly valuing the protection of intellectual property, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

China has taken strong measures to protect the legal rights and interests of both domestic and foreign owners of intellectual property, the ministry said.Danish inventor Peter Madsen, who is accused of brutally killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his submarine, described himself as a loving psychopath, a former associate told a court on Friday.

His sexual fantasies slowly got out of hand, the associate, who had worked in Madsens laboratory, told the Copenhagen district court, adding that the inventor called himself a psychopath, but a loving one.

Madsen, 47, who is charged with premeditated murder, sexual assault, and desecration of a corpse, has changed his version of events multiple times but has maintained Walls death was accidental.

On the first day of his trial on March 8, he told the court that Wall, a 30-year-old freelancer, died when the air pressure suddenly dropped and toxic fumes filled his vessel on the night of August 10, 2017, while he was up on deck.

He has admitted dismembering her body and throwing it overboard, but denies premeditated murder and sexual assault.

Liked snuff films

The associate said in very halting testimony that Madsen toyed with the idea of making a pornographic film showing acts of torture and was interested in snuff films, or movies where a person is actually killed or kills themselves.

Walls body parts, weighed down in plastic bags with metal objects, were recovered from waters off Copenhagen.

File photo of police technicians board Peter Madsen's submarine UC3 Nautilus on a pier in Copenhagen harbour, Denmark. (AP)

The coroner has acknowledged that Madsens explanation of carbon monoxide poisoning could be the cause of death, but added that the air does not seem to have been able to leave the lungs which is not the case with lack of oxygen or inhalation of gases.

Wall had accompanied Madsen to interview him for a profile she was writing of him.

Read: Danish submarine-owner charged with abusing Swedish journalist before killing her

The prosecution has painted a picture of Madsen as a sadist who murdered Wall as part of a sexual fantasy.

The coroner testified on Thursday about numerous lesions found on Walls torso and head, with much of the questioning focused on the 14 stab wounds to her genital area.

File photo of Swedish journalist Kim Wall. (AFP Photo )

Kind and empathic

The prosecution has shown the court three videos found on Madsens hard drive of women having their throats slit, and being beheaded and impaled.

His line of defence has varied on the videos: he has denied searching for or downloading some of them, but others he admitted to watching to be able to feel emotions and to cry about the womens suffering.

The defence on Friday, meanwhile, presented an apprentice engineer who had worked with Madsen. He described the inventor as a kind, empathic, passionate man who was ready to listen.

Some press reports have described him as a man of strong temperament but that was not my first impression, the man said, after greeting Madsen with a nod after taking the stand.

Friday would have been Walls 31st birthday.

Her family and friends have created a fund in her memory and a scholarship of $5,000 (4,000 euros) to ensure the safety of women journalists on reporting missions abroad.

Madsen is due to take the stand again on March 28, with around 35 witnesses to testify in the coming days.

The verdict is due on April 25. The prosecutor has called for a life sentence, which in Denmark averages around 16 years.A former Cambridge Analytica political consultant said the companys management misled the British public about work the firm did for a pro-Brexit group before the vote to leave the European Union, the Guardian reported on Friday.

Brittany Kaiser, a business development director at the company from 2014 until earlier this year, said in an interview that Cambridge Analytica was carrying out data crunching and analysis work for Leave.EU, while publicly denying it was doing so.

The insider account puts further pressure on the London-based data analytics firm, which is already facing renewed scrutiny in the United States and Europe over allegations it improperly harvested Facebook data to target US voters.

Late on Friday, a High Court judge granted an application by the UK Information Commissioners Office for a warrant to search Cambridge Analyticas offices.

The data protection watchdog said in a statement it plans to execute the warrant shortly to confirm the company deleted data from 50 million Facebook profiles, which a whistleblower has alleged it failed to do.

Kaiser, who acted as a spokeswoman for Cambridge Analytica before and after the 2016 referendum, said she was ordered by the company to deny the firm was involved with the Brexit issue.

I was quite confident that real work was being undertaken, Kaiser said in a videotaped interview with the Guardian.

No, we didnt run the whole campaign and maybe our work wasnt used, but when I talked to the press we were actually undertaking data work and analysis for Leave.EU, she said.

Last month, Cambridge Analytica Chief Executive Alexander Nix denied to a parliamentary committee the company worked for Leave. EU, saying only that his firm had met the campaign group to discuss potential business, but did not reach a deal.

Let me be absolutely crystal clear about this. I do not know how many ways I can say this. We did not work for Leave.EU. We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, okay? he told a committee investigating fake news in UK politics.

Cambridge Analyticas board of directors suspended Nix on Tuesday shortly before British broadcaster Channel 4 aired an expose of the firms business practices in the United States.

Arron Banks, a major donor to Leave. EU, wrote in The Bad Boys of Brexit a campaign diary he published after the campaign that the group had hired Cambridge Analytica on October 22, 2015 to use big data and advanced psychographics to influence people.Just hours before killing three people and terrorising shoppers in a supermarket in southern France, 25-year old Redouane Lakdim took his younger sister to school, French media said, leaving his familys flat outside Carcassonnes medieval city walls.

Lakdim, a French national born in Morrocco, was known by police for petty crimes and possession of drugs - for which he spent one month in jail in 2016.

French interior minister Gerard Collomb said nothing suggested he was violent: We had monitored him and thought there was no radicalisation, Collomb said. He was known for possession of drugs, we couldnt have said that he was a radical that would carry out an attack.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said although nothing suggested imminent action, Lakdim had been on Frances terrorism watch list since 2014 and had links to networks of Salafists.

Survivors of the supermarket siege said he shouted Allahu Akbar and identified himself as a supporter of Islamic State willing to die for Syria.

Policemen are at work outside a Super U supermarket in the town of Trebes, southern France. (AFP Photo)

He lived with his mother and sisters, a neighbour told Reuters, in a charmless social housing block outside Carcassonnes famed walled city, a UNESCO heritage site.

It was a calm family, a 17-year old girl who lives in the same building told Reuters, declining to give her name.

Although the area was recently renovated, like many of the poor neighbourhoods that ring French cities it still suffers from crime. Local newspapers had recently reported a playground had been set on fire. On Friday, gangs of youths threatened journalists seeking reactions from locals.

Neighbours said Lakdim was a regular visitor to the Carcassonne mosque. Recent mug shots showed him sporting a long black beard.

On Friday morning, after stealing a white Opel Corsa, killing the passenger and injuring its owner, he drove towards a nearby military barracks where he waited a few minutes, the prosecutor said.

Changing target, he headed towards the riot polices garrison, where he shot at four officers jogging outside, before driving away.

Storming into a supermarket in the nearby town of Trebes, he shouted God is Greatest and shot dead a customer and an employee before taking the other 50-or-so shoppers hostage.

During his standoff with police, he briefly came out of the supermarket, threatening to blow everything up, the prosecutor said.

When he started shooting at a gendarme who had swapped himself with a female hostage, anti-terrorism police launched the assault in which he was killed.Police arrested a second person overnight believed to be linked to an attack in southwestern France on Friday that led to the death of four people, a judicial source said on Saturday.

Another source said the man, a minor born in 2000, was a friend of the gunman, Redouane Lakdim, 25.

Police arrested a woman connected to the attacker on Friday, a French prosecutor said.

Lakdim, who was initially believed to have acted alone, held up a car, fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket on Friday, in what President Emmanuel Macron called an act of Islamist terrorism.

A gendarme who voluntarily took the place of a hostage during the siege has died, France said earlier on Saturday.

Survivors of the supermarket siege said he shouted Allahu Akbar and identified himself as a supporter of Islamic State willing to die for Syria.US President Donald Trump on Friday partially reversed his earlier order and allowed serving military personnel who identify them as transgender to continue, but banned most of them for future recruitment.

The White House said in a late evening statement that Trump had rescinded his previous memorandum on transgender service in the military to allow defence secretary James Mattis to implement a new policy developed on basis of advice from experts that the accession or retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria  those who may require substantial medical treatment, including through medical drugs or surgery  presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.

Mattis, in a February memo had recommended a general ban on transgender people with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria (a conflict between a persons physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify).

They could still enlist, though, if they were stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex prior to accession, which is, in their birth gender. Also exempted were transgender people without a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

However, those already in service could continue as long as they did not require a change of gender and were found fit to deploy fulfilling conditions applicable to all. Also exempted were serving members diagnosed with gender dysphoria after the Obama-era regulation was announcement and before the new order went into effect.

Mattis had based his recommendation on the necessity for military lethality and readiness necessary to ensure American citizens enjoy their personal freedoms to the fullest extent and asked Trump to revoke his earlier memo.

I hereby revoke my memorandum of August 25, 2017, Military Service by Transgender Individuals, Trump said in a memorandum on Friday, adding that Mattis and homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen  who overseas US coastguards  may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals.

There are about 6,000 to 15,000 transgender people in the US military, according to varying estimates.

The Obama administration in 2016 opened the military to transgender people, revoking a decades-long ban. This was in continuation of Obamas decision in 2011 to end a policy barring openly gay and lesbian people from serving.

The change in the policy on transgender people had followed a study by the RAND National Defence Research Institute that concluded there would not be any significant impact on cost or lethality.

The new Obama policy on transgender people was to go into effect in 2017, but Mattis had ordered it be delayed for six month to evaluate more fully its impact on readiness and lethality.

While the review was on, Trump overturned the Obama-era regulation in a combination of tweets and memorandums and reinstated the long-standing pre-existing ban. But he allowed the Pentagon to take the final decision based on the study.

The White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday said the president had rescinded his previous memorandum on transgender service in the military in order to allow secretary Mattis to implement a new policy developed through extensive study by senior uniformed and civilian leaders, including combat veterans. The experts study sets forth a policy to enhance our militarys readiness, lethality, and effectiveness.

India is among a group of countries that doesnt allow openly gay and lesbians people to serve in the military.The head of the US forces in Afghanistan has said that Russia is supporting and supplying arms to the Taliban.

Gen John Nicholson, in an interview with BBC published on Friday, said he had seen destabilising activity by the Russians, adding that Russian weapons were smuggled to the Taliban across the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border. However, he did not say in what quantity.

We see a narrative thats being used that grossly exaggerates the number of Isis (Islamic State) fighters here, Nicholson was quoted as saying.

This narrative then is used as a justification for the Russians to legitimise the actions of Taliban and provide some degree of support to the Taliban.

He said that Russia had conducted a series of counter-terrorism exercises on the Tajik border, but weve seen the Russian patterns before: they bring in large amounts of equipment and then they leave some of it behind, the implication being that they can then be smuggled across the border.

Weve had stories written by the Taliban that have appeared in the media about financial support provided by the enemy. Weve had weapons brought to this headquarters and given to us by Afghan leaders and said, this was given by the Russians to the Taliban, he was quoted as saying.

Russia has previously denied providing aid to the Taliban.

Nicholsons allegations come at a sensitive point in Russias relations with the West. Britain and Russia are currently locked in a bitter dispute over the poisoning of a former spy in the UK, and the European Union has indicated that it backs Londons position on the issue.

Meanwhile, a US congressional intelligence committee has just concluded that Russian provocateurs meddled in the 2016 presidential election.Through his a series of tweets last year Donald Trump made his intentions known regarding Transgender eligibility in the U.S Armed Forces. It appears that he is one step closer to putting those measures into place.

Since posting these tweets, the Trump Administration began drawing up policy to put his words into action. Fast forward to present day, the policy recommendation has been finalized and Trump has quickly signed off on it, pending a congressional hearing.



The policy will allow Transgendered individuals who currently occupy a rank to remain in uniform, but they will have to submit to their sex assigned at birth. The policy also discriminates against all Trans personnel who have undergone top or bottom surgery or taken hormones.



Defense Secretary Jim Mattis expressed his confidence in their arrangement:



In my professional judgment, these policies will place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win Americas wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world,



The statement evidently provoked a strong reaction from Gender Advocacy groups and members of the public alike. Irregardless of actual implementation, the policy write-up is clear step back in our fight for human rights and privileges.



[via NYT]Chris Smither recalls the moment he became a musician for the second time.

A Florida native who spent parts of his childhood in Texas, South America and Louisiana, Smither eventually found himself in New York City at the height of the '60s folk-music boom. He made two records in the early '70s, both well-received and one of them yielding a song that would become a standard for Bonnie Raitt. Then Smither quit for more than a decade.

"When I left home in my 20s, I was doing nothing but music," he says. "But I started beating myself up so much with the drinking, just generally screwing up my life."

Smither put down the guitar and started working in construction, "because I'd always been good with my hands."

He remembers attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the early 1980s.

"A woman asked, 'Chris, what do you do for a living?' " he says. "I started to say, 'I'm a carpenter.' Then I looked at her, and said, 'Actually, I'm a musician. If you'll excuse me, I have to make a phone call.' "

Smither found a pay phone, dialed up his boss and quit.

"It was time to get back to the real business at hand," he says.

By 1984, he'd penned enough songs for a long-awaited third album, fittingly titled "It Ain't Easy." In the years since, Smither has been an unshakable force amid all manner of musical trends, with his impeccable guitar playing and world-weary voice. He's put out about a dozen albums since then, all of them well worthy of recommendation. No two members of Smither's following will have the same set of favorites, though most will rally around "Happier Blue" from 1993.

The new "Call Me Lucky" is Smither's first set of new songs in six years and will be a welcome new set to his base. Smither, who plays McGonigel's Mucky Duck Friday, remains in fine voice, and he still pulls a clear and distinctive sound from his guitar. And he threads just enough surprises into the mix to keep things from sounding the same.

Opener "The Blame's on Me" sets a strong tone, an uptempo song built around a lyric about the lost art of accountability.

Smither says some small part of the song ties back to his days in construction.

"People seem disinclined to believe that it's much easier to accept blame rather than fight things out," he says. "In the bad old days, I was doing residential construction. We had this woman, who was a very good carpenter. And every time there was a kerfuffle, some row or disagreement, the owner would come in and say, 'This is terrible work.' People would be casting about to see who could be responsible. And she'd always say, 'That's my bad.' Whether she had anything to do with it or not. Her point was that you have to fix it regardless."

Elsewhere, Smither alters some old, familiar songs. The old country-blues song "Sittin' on Top of the World" gets pulled slowly through the swamp.

More Information Chris Smither When: 7 and 9:30 p.m. Friday Where: McGonigel's Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk Details: $30-$33; 713-528-5999, mcgonigels.com See More Collapse

"I wanted it to become the antithesis of what it says," he says. "Not sitting on top of the world, but instead being about to dissolve into tears. I always like those songs that are like the guy in the ocean looking back at the beach thinking, 'I'm not waving, I'm drowning.' "

The country blues have long held sway over Smither. He spent his freshman year of college in Mexico City, learning Spanish. He planned to be an anthropologist. His roommate from College Station played Lightnin' Hopkins' "Blues in My Bottle" and Smither was captivated. "I kept trying to figure out who else was playing with him. Then I realized it was just him on the guitar. I didn't think of it as blues. I thought of it as one-man rock 'n' roll. I realized you could play rock 'n' roll by yourself. So I went around looking for other people like that."

So Smither staked out an interesting space for himself between old folk, blues, pop and rock. His first album included originals as well as songs by Randy Newman, Neil Young and Skip James.

His songs and those written by others are all exhaled in a distinctive manner unique to Smither.

To wit, "Call Me Lucky" includes a pretty drastic reinterpretation of "Maybelline."

"I don't think Chuck Berry ever played in a minor key in his life," he says. "But I thought about how different it sounded with that approach. It started with a conversation about what he might be thinking at 90 years old. Had he gotten resigned? So we tried the minor key, and at first it made us laugh. But we realized a whole other thing was going on. It changed the thrust of the song. Instead of a joy ride, it became almost sinister. It led to this whole conversation about songs, how people think they're fixed entities. But they're not. They're malleable. They're infinitely malleable."

Smither drops away for a moment to take another call.

"Sorry about the interruption," he says. "That was the guy that cuts my hair. I have to go a long way to get a haircut. He's been doing it 30 years."

People can be less malleable about some things. Like their barber of three decades. But like with his process for writing, recording and performing, Smither has his way. And for what it's worth, his mane is formidable compared to some of his peers.

"I still have all this hair, and it's still not grey. I don't understand how that happens," he says. "At 73, you just learn to take it. You learn you don't question these things."You may know nothing about Jon Snow and the rest of the characters on "Game of Thrones," but you should know that creating their costumes for the hit HBO series is no small feat.

Costumes from "Game of Thrones," along with the show's costume designer Michele Clapton, will be at the Anime Matsuri convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center Thursday through Sunday. The Japanese culture convention is expected to draw more than 30,000 visitors, making it one of the largest anime conventions in country. It features cosplay (costume play), music, fashion, anime and workshops, including a Japanese-style car and fashion shows. In addition to Clapton, Doug Jones, who played the man-fish in the Academy Award-winning "The Shape of Water," is set to make an appearance.

"Many of the fans of the convention are also 'Game of Thrones' fans because it highlights fantasy, storytelling - and the costumes are amazing," said Anime Matsuri founder and chairman Deneice Leigh. "A huge part of anime is building your own characters through cosplay. It's a lot like 'Game of Thrones.' It's all about art, fashion, fantasy and costume-making."

Clapton will take part in an onstage discussion about the costumes and her career at 11 a.m. Saturday. Later that day, Clapton will judge a professional cosplay contest featuring contestants from Korea, Japan, Germany, Brazil and more. The event benefits the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

"When people see the costumes, they look really real," said Clapton, who recently won the top honors at the Costume Designers Guild Awards and has earned multiple Emmys for her work on "Game of Thrones." She's also the costume designer for Netflix's "The Crown."

More Information Anime Matsuri When: Thursday through Sunday Where: George R. Brown Convention Center, 1001 Avenida De Las Americas Tickets: $30-$55 for single day pass; $75 for a weekend pass with $30 for ages 6-12; $195 for a VIP pass. For information, visit animematsuri.com Anime Matsuri When: Thursday through Sunday Where: George R. Brown Convention Center, 1001 Avenida De Las Americas Tickets: $30-$55 for single day pass; $75 for a weekend pass with $30 for ages 6-12; $195 for a VIP pass; animematsuri.com See More Collapse

"I'm passionate about the craft, and people want to see the costumes up close," she said. "We do so many exhibitions of them that I try to choose something different for each one to show the range of what we do."

On display at the convention will be costumes worn by GOT characters Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, Ellaria Sand, Jaime Lannister and Oberyn Martell.

Clapton has worked on the show since it debuted in 2011 with a team of 50-100 people helping to design and style each costume. That translates to thousands of costumes over the years. "There are so many costumes. So many that we have to store them in a warehouse in Belfast. We are beginning to worry about what to do with them all," she said.

Many of the costumes involve multiple layers, textures and fabrics. There also are elaborate pieces of armor and fur (mostly faux), with nearly all of the costumes involving some type of undergarment. And with all of the fight scenes, there's also a lot of cleanup, she said.

"The costumes get bloodied, then we clean them, then they get bloodied again," she said. "Some of the costumes start to disintegrate after time. There's a quite earthy, pungent smell sometimes. It's hard to keep actors who are in mud and filth for hours on end smelling like flowers."

Clapton often pulls pieces for her costumes from sites like Etsy.com and even IKEA. On the first season, she made a cape from a wool rug from the Swedish store.

Because the show is filmed in Northern Ireland (though other locations have included Croatia and Iceland), the actors often wear a rubber suit underneath the costumes to insulate them from extreme temperatures. Warm or cold water is pumped into the suits to provide insulation.

"It's always a challenge. Each character's journey helps me to come up with new ideas," she said.

So, who's Clapton's favorite character? That's a hard one, she said.

"I've enjoyed Cersei throughout because she has so many messages. Sometimes it takes a lot to create a broken, downtrodden look. Sometimes it's easier, but everything is a challenge. We take joy in it all."Outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is being proposed as a possible candidate to replace retiring University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven, sources confirmed Friday.

Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil chairman who joined the Trump Administration last year, was fired by President Donald Trump last week. Trump has nominated CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace him.

Tillerson, 66, is a 1975 civil engineering graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.

Two sources familiar with the matter said Tillerson's name has circulated in recent days among UT regents who are looking for a replacement for McRaven, who is set to retire in the coming months.

Other sources said a search committee is early in its process of selecting candidates, and that no interviews have been scheduled. The University of Texas System said any names mentioned as potential replacements for McRaven are "speculative at best."

Tillerson's name as a possible candidate was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Senior high-ranking UT officials have been asked for potential names of candidates, one person said, adding that there are no front-runners. The UT System regents hired Russell Reynolds Associates last month to assist with the search.

Trump tweeted out news of Tillerson's firing after months of clashes and conflict on issues from North Korea to climate change to the response to the race riots in Charlottesville, Va. The president later explained to reporters that he and the former Exxon CEO "just disagreed on things."

The firing ended a fraught relationship between the men and Tillerson's difficult transition from imperial CEO to public servant. Tillerson quickly alienated career diplomats as he tried to remake the State Department into the image of a Fortune 500 company while chafing at Trump's style, policies and pronouncements -- at one point reportedly describing Trump as a "moron."

McRaven, who has served as chancellor since 2015, said in December that he would step down from the system by the end of the academic year. The 1977 UT Austin grad attributed his decision to his health.

The retired Navy admiral was credited with overseeing the special operation that tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

But his plans to buy land and open a new campus in Houston touched off a political firestorm that eventually drew opposition from Gov. Greg Abbott and legislative leaders  and soured their support of his leadership of the UT System.

Regents have said they hope to replace him this year, well before the next legislative session begins in January 2019.

"Staff and administrators at the UT System Administration or at UT institutions are not involved in the search process for the Chancellor, nor are we apprised of the names of any candidates or potential candidates," UT's vice chancellor for external relations Randa Safady said in a statement.

"Nobody other than the members of the search advisory committee have confirmed knowledge of the names of candidates under consideration."

Tillerson was a speaker at the UT-Austin campus in February, when he delivered a speech about U.S. engagement in the Western Hemisphere.

James Osborne and Kevin Diaz contributed to this report.

Lindsay Ellis writes about higher education for the Chronicle. You can follow her on Twitter and send her tips at lindsay.ellis@chron.com.Today, my teacher friends and I will be marching with our students.

Really, I should say it like this: Today, my fellow citizens and I will be marching together.

Because today is a weekend, my friends and I will take off our educator hats for it is we who follow this time. It is we who will be learning what it means to be an American.

Teachers survive the years by relying on a small group of fellow educators. We rely on them to comfort us, to give us perspective, to stop us from sending that bad email. This week, I asked my little cohort of teacher geeks why they were choosing to march.

MARCH FOR THEIR LIVES: Thousands expected for downtown Houston gun violence march

Our reasons had striking commonalities, but each story is shrouded in human complexity.

My friend Jenne Chase is one of those super teachers. You know the type. She captivates any classroom she walks into, she is warm and empathetic and she volunteers for our school and our district at such a rate that I'm certain she'll be canonized as Saint Jennifer upon her death.

Jenne was a finalist for Houston ISD's Teacher of the Year. She won the Humanities Texas teaching award, and this year HEB honored her as a finalist for their Excellence in Education Award.

It's funny to me because Jenne never wanted to become a teacher. In fact, she ran from it. Daughter of a proud librarian, Jenne understood the world of education well.

"I came to teaching later in life than most, but I came with my eyes wide open. I saw how much time and effort my award-winning mother spent to be the amazing educator she still is."

But Jenne finally heard the song of her people, like loud Irish pipes, a passion to educate as fiery as her red hair. And, like her mother, she gave her life to the classroom.

It comes at a cost.

"I am continually bewildered at how much time I spend working to better my craft. The reality that I must add life and death training to protect the future of this country was not something I planned. I am marching because I believe there is no amount of training, arming, or practice that will stop these horrendous occurrences unless changes are made outside of schools."

Jenne has worked all over the Houston area, from Kashmere High School to Milby High School.

"I am tired of the expectation that schools should solve all the entrenched ills of society even as we are provided fewer and fewer resources. I'm marching because I know that I struggle to find time to mark all my papers, write lesson plans and be an integral part of my school community on a weekly basis. Asking me to prepare for the possibility of guns on my campus on top of my other responsibilities isn't going to go well."

A BLOCK VOTE: Hey, Dan Patrick: Teachers are coming for you

And it's not just Jenne who feels overwhelmed.

Charles Swan, the enthusiastic musical theater director at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, told me about what it's like to jump into a lockdown in the middle of our day.

"We knew it was coming. It was just a Tuesday. The all-staff email stated it. The principal literally tweeted it. And it was due time."

Charles and I are only a year apart. We are also close enough to our students to vaguely understand what they feel.

"My students are younger than the Columbine shooting. I show my age when I talk about the invention of the Internet, the cell phone. These are devices they have always known, and Columbine is a word they have always heard. But they weren't alive when it happened. They have always known a world in which lockdown drills are part of the routine. But Tuesday's lockdown drill was different. Everything feels a little different after the massacre in Florida."

Charles and I were both in high school when Columbine happened. "The Matrix" came out that year, and our generation accepted that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were just a couple of trench-coat weirdos. Anomalies. Charles and I didn't have to hide under desks because, like us, our society accepted that first iconic attack as simply an unorthodox oddity.

But it wasn't.

We can empathize with our students on many levels, but we didn't hide in the dark waiting for the Boogeyman at 15. Our parents hid under desks fearing Russian bombs, but those bombs never came.

The Boogeyman has.

LOCKDOWN DRILLS: Run, hide, fight? After Sandy Hook, we need a new motto

Charles continues:

Tuesday's lockdown drill was the first drill since the Times posted this headline: School Shootings Put Teachers in New Role as Human Shields.

The announcement bellowed: "We are on lockdown. Please follow procedure."

A colleague and I spent a solid millisecond to glance around and gather phones, keys, etc., and then we parted ways into our four "safe areas." There are four because not all the doors lock.

I'm on the school's Safety and Security Team, so I stay in the hall an extra few moments to look for any straggling kid. Any kid in the hall is immediately "swept" into any "safe room" regardless of where they are supposed to be.

I see a girl. She seems utterly unaware.

So, I "swept" her up, asking something along the lines of, "What are you doing? This is a lockdown!"

She replies, "Huh?" The speaker in the room she was in wasn't on.

She didn't know.

I take her inside my office, one of the secured spaces, and find another teacher and two other students. We lock the door and turn off the lights. I grab my Safety-and-Security Team issued walkie-talkie and turn the volume to its lowest setting.

I can't let myself think too much in moments like this. And so I fumble with my walkie-talkie. I pace. I fiddle with the lamps.

The doorknob jiggles. There is the split-second fear that the steel magically doesn't hold, that the door somehow opens even though I have checked it four times.

It holds.

In a different world  on a different Tuesday  this looks like a tornado drill. Not now. Not today. Three little lives  not yet begun  going through the paces of the day. This is not new to them. It's the world they have always known. This is their Tuesday. And it is my new normal. And there is nothing normal about it."

I ask Charles why he's marching.

"I'm marching to reclaim my Tuesdays."

Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post

Samantha Brower teaches United States history. She's a walking encyclopedia. We share an obsession with politics, and she's a mom, like me.

Sam tells me about the lock down at her daughter's school which took place the day after the Parkland shooting. It was on her daughter's birthday.

"It absolutely broke my heart  less than 24 hours after the incident, her Houston elementary was training to shelter in place and keep quiet  even before the high school where I teach could organize the three total drills that we would carry out ourselves."

Sam's daughter is a smart little fifth-grader. She's the daughter of a history teacher, after all.

"My daughter is not oblivious to the outside world. She knows that there is violence and danger. She regularly comes home to tell me what event was covered on CNN for Students in class that day."

Sam and I share this crippling fear and faith that, as she put it, "they will run to us in the afternoon at dismissal time."

INDELIBLE MEMORY: Five years after Sandy Hook, I can't forget his face

I'll never forget the text my ex-husband sent me on Dec. 14, 2012. Our daughter was two months old. I was still breastfeeding. "Whatever you do, don't look at the news."

Of course I looked at the news. As the Chronicle page loaded, images appeared of children the size of my 4-year-old daughter with outstretched little arms, holding the shoulders of the other tiny children in front of them.

The shooting in Sandy Hook broke everything inside of me. I fell apart, and my fourth period full of dancers and musicians held me together.

As a secondary teacher, I somehow resigned myself. I thought teenagers were disturbed. That's how I tried to make sense of shootings at high schools and universities. But these were babies. These babies were like my babies. And everything changed.

Later came the online ads for bullet-proof knapsacks. In what universe does an item like that exist?

Sam continues. "I know not even the safest campus can protect my child from an AR-15, and it is not the fault of the teachers, administrators, campus officers or anyone else patrolling the hallways. I don't expect her teacher to be a 'good guy with a gun.'"

A majority of teachers agree with Sam on this one. Just this week, Gallup shared a survey which revealed that 73 percent of educators think arming teachers is not the answer to this crisis.

Marie D. De Jesus/Houston Chronicle

Even Wyatt Bingham doesn't think he should be armed. He's my oldest friend and a United States Army Special Forces veteran. Wyatt is a gun owner. He's a fantastic shot.

In fact, it is his military background and experience on the battlefield that inspires him to march tomorrow:

"One of the most poignant moments in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting was the surviving student's declaration that it is different when you are the one being shot at.

This resonated for me as someone who has in fact been shot at while serving in the U.S. Army. It is different. It's humbling, and emotionally powerful, an experience one never forgets. It is an understanding that places everything that happens after in a completely different context.

One of those contexts is anxiety. Now, as an educator, I know that learning does not happen in an environment of anxiety. With some notable exceptions, most of our politicians have never served in the military, often due to lives of privilege that might have included draft deferments. In my view, this makes them distinctly unqualified to make decisions about reasonable gun control.

So, I stand with the students of Parkland."

We don't have the answers. Sam says, "I want a world where that AR can't be purchased in the first place." Wyatt has contemplated whether it's time to amend the Constitution. Jenne says, "I'm marching because I don't know what to say to my friends overseas when they continually ask, 'Why can't you solve this problem?'"

None of us are marching for some list of concrete solutions. We know the issue is complicated.

A TEACHER'S NIGHTMARE: The lockdown drill. My students. My fears.

The most powerful reflections I've heard in the sea of opinions about school shootings came from a teacher and a rock star. In an article from Reader's Digest, a fifth-grade math teacher shared with a parent a strategy she's developed:

"Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they'd like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored.

She also asks the students to nominate one student who they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies them. She looks for patterns.

Who is not getting requested by anyone else?

Who can't think of anyone to request?

Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?

Who had a million friends last week and none this week?"

How long has this math teacher, a former employee of NASA, been looking for patterns of lonely children? "Ever since Columbine," she says.

And when asked by Michael Moore what he would've said to Eric and Dylan, Marilyn Manson replied, "I wouldn't say a single a word to them. I would listen to what they have to say and that's what no one did."

My cohort of geeks and I know this issue is complex and ever-changing. We've known it since Columbine. We feel more pressure to produce engaged and empathetic citizens than any teacher before us.

NOT AGAIN: Another school shooting. Thoughts and prayers are not enough.

We aren't marching for policy. We're marching for and with our students.

Wyatt: "I stand with my students. I stand with all students who have a right to learn without fear that someone is going to come into their school with a military-grade weapon. I do not think I have a choice not to stand with them as an educator and as a veteran."

Sam: "Every morning before I leave for work, I wake my daughter up so she can begin to get ready. She usually stays in bed. Lately I find myself returning to her room  I go to leave but a horrible feeling washes over me  'What if?' I go back to her and give her an extra hug to try to stifle the doubt. I'm marching for my daughter  who needs to live in a world where her greatest fear at school is whether or not she showed all her work on her math problem  not hiding from an active shooter, should the worst possible fear of all parents happen."

Charles: "The faces in the photos on my desk look back at me. My two toddler nephews look up at me with their big, innocent eyes. These will be their Tuesdays, too. This is the world we are making for them. It is not good enough. I march for them."

Jenne: "I'm marching because I am tired of replaying scenarios in my head of what I would do in my own school should the worst occur. I'm marching because I actually and earnestly believe that children are the future, and as their teacher, they deserve my support. But most of all, I'm marching because my students asked me to join them. It is their march, and I am their teacher."

Yesterday morning through my radio, I hear the voice of Cameron Kasky, survivor of the Parkland shooting turned activist. He talks about the march in Washington, D.C.:

"Everyone speaking is young. We don't have anybody over the age of 20. I think it might even be younger than that. Because this is our story. This is our generation. Our generation's had to deal with this. It's our time to talk. You can send your thoughts and prayers, but these are our thoughts. You have to listen now."

We march to follow our students. We march to learn from our students. Mostly, we're marching because it's our turn to listen.

Gaby Diaz is an English teacher in Houston.

Bookmark Gray Matters, with your big, innocent eyes.Plano police said they arrested a man who they believe suffocated an 81-year-old woman with a pillow to steal her jewelry.

Authorities arrested Billy Kipkorir Chemirmir, 45, on Tuesday and charged him with capital murder.

When police arrested Chemirmir on an outstanding warrant, they found him in possession of a jewelry box containing an address, Dallas Morning News reported. Plano officers went to the address and found the body of Lu Thi Harris, 81, believed to have died of homicidal violence.

According to the Star-Telegram, police were following Chemirmir because he was a suspect in another case, an attempted murder of a 91-year-old woman.

DEADLY TOXIN: Texas man guilty of possessing 'Breaking Bad' poison ricin

Now Playing: James Rose reports. Video: Fox4

Now, Plano police said they will examine 750 unattended deaths of elderly women in the area to see if they can connect any additional murders to Chemirmir.

"Suspect Chemirmir has worked as a healthcare worker and has a history of impersonating maintenance personnel at a retirement community in Dallas," Plano Chief of Police Gregory Rushin said in a news conference. "Chemirmir uses his healthcare experience to his advantage in targeting and exploiting seniors."

"We're worried that we could have more [cases]," he said. "We will go back to the very first time we have any kind of record in the Metroplex of him and begin searching from that point forward."

Above: See notable crimes that have taken place in the Houston-area in 2018.The Harris County Flood Control District is exploring the possibility of building several massive, deep tunnels aimed at keeping storm water out of flood-prone neighborhoods and carry it underground for miles to the Houston Ship Channel during major storms.

Never before tried around Houston, the project likely would cost several billion dollars and it is not clear where the money would come from, officials said. Specialized machines methodically digging 100 to 200 feet underground would take several years to complete the tunnels, which would seek to drain floodwaters from bayous across the county.

Officials with the flood control district said the idea could be a bold answer to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey, and dramatically improve Houstons defenses against deadly floods where other strategies have fallen short.

"What the flood control district has been doing for decades doesn't occur fast enough or it doesn't have the benefits that the public really wants," said Matthew Zeve, director of operations at the flood control district. "We've been challenged to try to think of new ideas and new strategies and this is an answer to that challenge."

Commissioners Court is slated to vote Tuesday on whether to pursue a feasibility study to examine the tunnel proposal in detail, charting out the exact paths of the tunnels, where intake shafts would be located and how to address any environmental or structural constraints.

The full project envisions a network of tunnels across the county to carry water from several of Houstons waterways, including White Oak Bayou, Hunting Bayou, Greens Bayou, Halls Bayou, Buffalo Bayou, Clear Creek and Cypress Creek. The goal under the plan would be for those waterways to be able to keep a 100-year storm event within their banks.

That would remove tens-of-thousands of homes and buildings from those waterways 100-year flood plains.

A 100-year storm refers to rainfall that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year, and typically ranges from 12 to 14 inches in 24 hours. Houston has suffered a 500-year flood each of the last three years. A 500-year storm has a .2 percent chance of happening in any year.

A feasibility study is expected to cost around $400,000 and be completed by October.

News of the proposal fueled optimism and skepticism Friday  optimism that Harvey finally could force radical changes to Houstons flood control strategy, and skepticism that such a monumental project could be accomplished when much less ambitious ideas have languished for decades.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, said in a statement he is encouraged the flood control district is thinking outside the box and plans to conduct a feasibility study on this proposal. It certainly seems like this type of project could be partially funded by FEMA hazard mitigation grants and, perhaps, through other federal sources, as well.

Houstons flood czar, drainage engineer and former city councilman Steve Costello, said the project could be a potential paradigm shift for the regions flood risk.

Were trying to lower the risk; were never going to be able to totally eliminate the risk, Costello said, referencing efforts to improve drainage through local projects. Well, a tunnel system, quite possibly, could eliminate the risk.

As expensive and complex as it would be - Costello said he was told it could cost perhaps $100 million per mile, in Houstons soils - he said tunnels may be the most cost-effective way to achieve the gold standard of 100-year storm protection in every major channel.

Jim Thompson, regional CEO for engineering Giant AECOM, said the tunnels are worthy projects that warrant further study, but said officials ought to prioritize long-identified projects along bayous and city streets first.

Would it provide the cure-all relief that everybody is seeking? No, Thompson said. Would it provide a noticeable decrease in flood levels and risk of flooding? The answer is possibly yes.

Auggie Campbell, CEO of the West Houston Association, which has advocated for getting all local waterways to the 100-year standard, suspects it would be cheaper to buy adjacent properties and widen natural channels in areas where land is cheaper and tunnel in areas where buying every parcel would be prohibitively expensive.

The association concluded it would cost $6 billion to run a flood tunnel from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs to the Port of Houston, for instance, and decided excavating the reservoirs deeper was a better option.

Its going to cost about $75 million to $100 million a mile for these flood tunnels, and so there are places where thats as cheap as its going to get, Campbell said. There are some places where our folks thought itd be better to lay back the banks and make room for the bayous using natural channel design ... like on Sims Bayou.

A spokesman for Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said it will take a lot of persuading for (Emmett) to move forward with this in terms of whether this is a more cost-effective way than traditional methods to resolve some of the long-term, chronic flooding problems.

Theres no way that the county could move forward with this project on this scale, without significant help from the federal government and the state of Texas, Emmett spokesman Joe Stinebaker said. This is not a project at this point that the judge sees the county taking on alone.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Greg Abbott said it was too early to comment on the idea.

Zeve said that compared to traditional methods of reducing flood risk  widening bayous, conducting buyouts  the tunnel project would displace and disrupt far less people. He said special machines could construct the tunnels without causing disruption on the surface, and that the flood control district could use existing interstate freeways and other major thoroughfares as routes the tunnels could follow.

While bold, the tunnel idea is not an unfamiliar concept.

In 1996, the flood control district commissioned a study that proposed a tunnel beneath Interstate 10 to carry water out of the reservoirs to a discharge point 12 miles east. The cost was estimated at $325 million to $400 million, but officials never moved forward with the project.

Other cities, including San Antonio, Austin and Chicago, have employed tunnel drainage systems. In February, Dallas voted to award a contract to Southland Mole JV to build a five-mile underground tunnel, 70 to 150 feet underground, that would provide drainage relief to the eastern parts of the city.

Harris Countys proposal by far would be the biggest.

David Conrad, a water resources policy consultant with the Association of State Food Plain Managers, said more and more jurisdictions are building tunnels to relieve flooding. He called the concept tested.

It sure makes sense to me that the community would explore all the potentially viable options, Conrad said. The answers are probably a rather complex selection exercise.

mihir.zaveri@chron.com

mike.morris@chron.comAUSTIN  Russian bots and trolls tried to stoke racial tensions online this week as police hunted for the Austin bomber terrorizing Texas capital city, according to a group that tracks Russian activity in the U.S.

The Alliance for Securing Democracy shows on its website that there was a dramatic spike  a 1,000 percent increase  in activity on social media sites by Russian affiliated accounts starting Monday. On social media platforms like Twitter, Russian bots were fanning suggestions that media werent covering the bombings because the first victims of the attacks were black or Hispanic.

The nonprofit, bipartisan group tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots linked to Russia. That includes those tied to known Russian propaganda outlets as well as automated bots that launch high volumes of posts that closely mirror hundreds of other accounts. Bots are a type of chat tool used in in social media networks to automatically create and send messages.

'TARGET LIST': Bomber's cellphone confession provided locations

The fact that the Austin bombing became a target is not totally unexpected.

According to the alliance  housed at the Washington offices of the German Marshall Fund, which fosters transatlantic cooperation  the same thing happened after the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. And in congressional hearings last year, intelligence officials outlined how Russian-linked Facebook pages helped coordinate a dangerous confrontation between anti-Muslim groups and their critics in downtown Houston.

Sowing dissension

U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican from outside of San Antonio, has been trying to sound the alarm over nefarious Russian activities. Last week he lauded new sanctions placed on Russia because of their meddling in U.S. politics and government.

Russia will stop at nothing to erode trust in our democratic institutions, said Hurd, a former CIA undercover officer.

Hurd has lamented that the hypercharged political environment in the U.S. these days is making it easier for Russians to achieve their goal of sowing even more dissension.

MARCHERS MOCKED: Congressman says activists 'relieved' country 'can go back to talking about guns'

As in past cases, Russian bots try to amplify posts that create wedges between Americans along racial or religious lines.

The tactics are confusing and difficult to understand, even for foreign policy experts.

On one hand, Russia is trying to show it is still a force that has to be dealt with, and on the other they are becoming more isolated as their activities are condemned around the globe and result in more sanctions, said Joshua Shifrinson, who teaches a course in U.S. foreign relations and international security at Texas A&M University.

I dont think anyone fully understands what the Russian end game is here, Shifrinson said.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is leaving the administration at the end of this month, last week called Russias recent activities troubling.

PARKLAND SHOOTING: Russian bots pounce to divide after Florida violence

Russia must assess carefully as to how its actions are in the best interest of the Russian people and of the world more broadly, Tillerson said.

Yet the activity is still ongoing. Tillerson has warned that the Russians were already attempting to interfere in U.S. mid-term elections. And just last week, the Trump administration announced that recent Russian government cyber actions targeted the U.S. energy grid, water resources and critical manufacturing sectors.

Past experience

That announcement came on the same day new sanctions were placed against Russia, including some punishments aimed at the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that is accused of pushing politically divisive posts in America during the 2016 presidential election.

That is what happened in Houston in 2016 outside the Islamic Dawah Center, according to Congress. In May 2016, a rally that pitted people waving White Lives Matter signs against people with bullhorns denouncing them, was staged by Russian-backed social media groups that were trying to incite unrest.

In the days before the rally, a Russian-linked group calling itself the Heart of Texas called on people in Houston to attend a rally to Stop the Islamification of Texas. It included encouragement for people to bring firearms.

At the same time, another Russian-linked group promoted a counter rally at the same location at the same time, urging people to Save Islamic Knowledge.

The rally grew raucous at times but was mostly peaceful.

The Texas targets were just a small part of the tidal wave of digital misinformation spread by Russians in 2016. According to congressional testimony from leading internet content platforms, about 126 million Facebook users saw content from Russians during the presidential election year and more than 1,100 videos related to Russian efforts were posted on YouTube. In addition, there were an estimated 1.4 million tweets from more than 36,000 Russian bots.Statues are only one mark of respect that our society pays to its leaders. Yet the statues of the Allen brothers that grace City Hall leave a massive historic gap  one that should be filled by Charlotte Allen, the mother of Houston.

Charlotte Allen, the wife of Augustus Chapman Allen, doesnt receive enough credit for her role in getting our city off the ground.

John Kirby Allen died two years after locating here in 1838, and Augustus Chapman Allen moved to Mexico 12 years later never to return. In contrast, Charlotte Allen, a suffragette, real estate developer and philanthropist, became a leading citizen, even donating Market Square for a city hall and markethouse, and she stayed here until her death at 90 in 1895.

The story of Charlotte Allen illustrates why once again this March we celebrate Womens History Month. Its a way of balancing a lopsided history and taking a step toward a more equitable future. Its a reminder to honor those who have been airbrushed out of our collective memory due to the prejudices of their times.

Its also a reminder to Houston women that they shouldnt forget to tell their stories and pass them on to their children and grandchildren. With Charlotte Allen, historians can only look to the dry facts of her life and scratch their heads, wondering whether the anecdotes about her are only legends.

As the tale goes, her neighbor, Sam Houston, wanted to name the city after Charlotte, but she deferred, saying that the honor should go to him.

Much progress has been made since Charlotte Allens time. For instance, University of Houston Friends of Womens Studies plays an important role in collecting the archival material of Houstons women trailblazers. Next week, the university is hosting its 21st annual Table Talk luncheon spotlighting women leaders  such as Jennifer Herring, director of re-entry at the Harris County Sheriffs Office, and Jean Janssen, president and chair of the San Jacinto Council Girl Scouts of America  to raise money for the department and the Carey Shuart women archives and research collection.

The goal of Womens History Month should be to get to the point in society where womens stories are told in the same way as mens. Then, we can all celebrate our shared history  together. But its clear that we have a long way to go.

Just look at our statues. Houston has had many talented women leaders worthy of commemoration in stone or bronze, but out of the 80 or so statues of real people, tallied by Houstonia Magazine, we can count only three memorializing real life women: A statue of Peggy MacGregor in the eponymous park, one of Vivian L. Smith in front of Minute Maid that was originally at the Astrodome, and finally a relief of Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas  a passenger on United Flight 93.

No Barbara Jordan. No Ima Hogg. No Oveta Culp Hobby. No Charlotte Allen. Any reader who would like to nominate a female Houstonian worthy of a statue, please write a letter to the editor or leave a comment in the digital version of this editorial.

The photo of Charlotte Allen that remains is of a dour, wrinkled person; not a hint comes through of the woman who raised cattle and had her own brand. During Womens History Month, the eyes of Charlotte are on Houston women to tell their tales and leave behind a story that we can cast in bronze for generations to come.ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods says hes proud of what his company is doing to address climate change. In a recent report to shareholders, he cited the companys support for a carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement as evidence of ExxonMobils unwavering commitment to saving the planet.

That sounds encouraging, but a look behind Woods claims shows that ExxonMobil is  as they say in Texas  all hat and no cattle.

Consider the fact that, according to a December 2015 column on its website, ExxonMobil began supporting a revenue-neutral carbon tax in 2009, and its lobbyists have echoed that message in countless private briefings with members of Congress since then. To ensure that insider access, the company has spent more than $8.33 million on federal campaigns since 2009 and another $126.86 million on lobbying  more than any other oil and gas company.

The $135 million question is, what have ExxonMobil lobbyists been telling lawmakers during those private briefings? Whatever it is, the record is clear: A majority of ExxonMobil-funded senators and representatives consistently oppose a carbon tax.

EDITORIAL: Congress should follow the lead of energy companies on global warming

Neither the House nor Senate has ever voted on a stand-alone carbon tax bill, but legislators in both chambers have sponsored or voted on a handful of amendments and nonbinding resolutions in recent years that put them on record on the issue.

In March 2013, 156 House members cosponsored a resolution expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to American families and businesses and is not in the best interest of the United States. The House never voted on the resolution, but 93 percent of its cosponsors were funded by ExxonMobil.

In March 2015, the Senate voted 58 to 42 in favor of a budget resolution amendment prohibiting a carbon tax. Thirty of the 40 senators who received ExxonMobil campaign contributions voted for the amendment.

And in June 2016, the House passed a resolution stating a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy on a 237 to 163 vote. Eighty-five percent of the representatives who voted for the resolution received ExxonMobil donations.

Lawmakers funded by ExxonMobil also oppose U.S. participation in the Paris climate accord. Nineteen of the 22 senators who sent a letter last May to President Trump urging him to abandon the international agreement collectively received $432,300 in campaign contributions from the company since 2009.

By contrast, when legislators endorse ExxonMobils professed policy agenda, the company ignores them. For example, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Brian Schatz  who get no campaign funding from ExxonMobil  introduced a revenue-neutral carbon tax bill in 2016. Did they hear from the company? No.

EDITORIAL: The Texas AG should not spend time and resources defending ExxonMobil

Regarding ExxonMobils alleged seven years of support for a carbon fee, weve seen no meaningful evidence of that, the senators said in a letter they sent to the company in August 2016. None of the top executives that make up ExxonMobils management team has expressed interest in meeting with any of us to discuss the Whitehouse-Schatz proposal or any carbon fee legislation.

Besides the companys ongoing support for legislators who stand in the way of government action, it also has been a leading sponsor of think tanks, advocacy groups and associations that spread disinformation about climate science and the viability of renewables. Over the last two decades, these groups have regularly issued sham studies and provided dubious experts to testify before Congress and speak to the press. True to form, the denier groups that received ExxonMobil grants in 2016 oppose a carbon tax and the Paris agreement.

Of course, gridlock on Capitol Hill over climate change cant be blamed solely on the machinations of one company. Like ExxonMobil, other fossil fuel industry players have spent millions to influence Congress, and many lawmakers justify doing nothing with a variety of ideological, theological and pseudoscientific rationales. That said, ExxonMobil still bears considerable responsibility for the stalemate.

If Darren Woods and other ExxonMobil officials want us to believe that their company is sincerely interested in combatting climate change, they need to do more than talk. The company needs to immediately stop sponsoring organizations that mislead the public on climate science. And it needs to stop funding lawmakers who dont support a carbon tax and start backing their colleagues who do.

In other words, ExxonMobil, put your money where your mouth is.This is unfair to Malaysian skilled workers. Why should we pay RM3,500 to foreign skilled workers when we have our own? Zahid said. By increasing the minimum wage, it will attract more Malaysians to work in the various sectors.

Zahid was speaking at the launch of the technical and vocational education training (TVET) Malaysia Expo 2018. He also proposed that a TVET council set up to promote and empower the countrys skilled workers.

The DPM also emphasises the importance of encouraging experienced skilled workers to pursue their studies, reported the New Straits Times.

Those with experience should be given a chance to continue their studies at technical universities, be it for diplomas, degrees or higher qualifications. With the combination of experience and paper qualification, skilled workers will be highly recognised in the market, he said.

At the moment, the number of skilled workers in the country stands at 28%, which is lower than the 43% benchmark for a developed country.Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

Perhaps I've become over-sensitive.

But every time I hear that an airline is removing some little thing from its service offering, my cheeks begin to twitch and bump into my eyebrows.

American is the airline that's usually delighting in such behavior.

But then I saw that Alaska Airlines is at it.

One Mile At A Time's Ben Schlappig noticed that the fetching snack boxes that used to be handed out to passengers in Premium Class are being discontinued.

It's a little thing, I know, but a little thing that sometimes contained chocolate, almonds and even cranberries.

And everyone knows that little things grow bigger and become very annoying.

So I asked Alaska whether it was now an admirer of the American way.

"We carefully considered the future of our in-flight food options for Premium Class," a spokeswoman told me.

She added that "after receiving feedback from flight attendants and guests, we decided to eliminate the pre-packaged Lite bite box to reduce food and packaging waste."

Ah, so this was an eco-friendly move? Or a move whose best friend was cost-cutting?

Still Alaska says it's now giving customers what they actually want: "Trail mix or the popular Nature's Bakery fig bar."

Well, and the other things they get in Premium Class, like extra legroom and free cocktails.

Alaska is in a difficult position. It's often voted American's best -- and even most popular -- airline. I cannot confirm that this is because of its astonishingly sane Wine Flies Free program.

But it isn't immune from pressure to constantly raise revenue to please the heartless money-grabbing sorts.

I want to offer Alaska customers hope. Well, at least find some evidence for it.

Alaska's spokeswoman did remind me that "unlike other airlines, Alaska Airlines offers different snacks in Premium Class from Main Cabin, and meals are still available for pre-ordering and purchase."

No, they may not even get Trail mix in the back.

Oh, and this week the airline declared that it's embracing the culture of its newly-acquired harbor of sanity, Virgin America, and offering real West Coast love.

To its First Class passengers, that is.

Samples of this West Coast love include "strawberry-lime smoothie shots, an avocado bacon omelet, or a flank steak salad with green papaya, mint and lime wedges."

There's also Nancy's Fancy gelatos and Sweet Lady Jane brownies from California.

And who could resist "dining on one-of-a-kind Schonwald serving pieces inspired by Virgin America"?

Sadly, in life, even if you think you're getting a premium over those in Economy, you're not getting any Schonwald.

Instead, you're only getting the choice between Trail mix or the popular Nature's Bakery fig bar.Another Twitter user asked, "this should be deleted too, right?" with a picture of the Tesla Facebook page, to which Musk had a cheeky response.

Definitely. Looks lame anyway. -- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018

It might seem like an unusual move, but Musk is awesome for making that decision. Here's why:

Privacy

Facebook has been under fire over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which gave away 50 million people's private data.

Musk is no stranger to such tactics. Last year, one of Tesla's cars was hacked by a Chinese tech giant. Hackers were able to turn on the brakes, open doors, and play music,

Last month, Tesla's Amazon cloud was hacked to mine cryptocurrency. The hacker remains unknown.

Plus, this isn't the first time Facebook has done something unethical to its users. Back in 2014, Facebook manipulated its users' news feed to show positive or negative content. Over 600,000 people were unwittingly part of a massive experiment. Tisk tisk, Zuck.

Less Social Media

In 2016, Motherboard blasted Musk for not following any women on Twitter.

I use twitter for news orgs. My Insta has same women as men. What's up with the phoney PC police axe-grinding? -- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2016

(Note that Musk only follows 48 accounts. Six of them are real people such as his brother and ex-wife. The rest are news organizations.)

This brings up a good question: why should anyone care who a billionaire tech CEO is following on Twitter? Social media has brought a new age of pettiness and obsession. You can't log into any account without hearing about the latest pop-culture celebrity drama or Kardashian lipstick color or makeup line.

Additionally, excessive Facebook use is linked to depression as people often compare their seemingly boring lives to that of friends. It's a huge time-waster too. The average person will spent over five years of their life on social media, with Facebook being the second-biggest offender behind Pinterest.

All in all, removing a social toxin like that seems like it could be a good thing to me.

Continuing to Go Against the Grain

Most people wouldn't dream of deleting a business social media pages with 5 million aggregate followers. Then again, Musk isn't like most people.

Here's a guy that dropped out of Stanford, taught himself programming and rocket science, and, most recently, sold his own flamethrowers. He's most famous for trying to colonize Mars and his Hyperloop project aims to send people from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a half hour.Taylor Swift has shown her support for gun control, making a donation to March for Our Lives.

The largely apolitical musician posted the march's logo to Instagram, with the caption: "No one should have to go to school in fear of gun violence. Or to a nightclub. Or to a concert. Or to a movie theater. Or to their place of worship."

"Ive made a donation to show my support for the students, for the March For Our Lives campaign, for everyone affected by these tragedies, and to support gun reform. Im so moved by the Parkland High School students, faculty, by all families and friends of victims who have spoken out, trying to prevent this from happening again."

Hundreds of thousands of students across the country will take to the streets on Saturday in demand for gun reform; though the main event is in Washington, there are protests planned in New York, Los Angeles, and hundreds of communities across the US.

The march was initiated by student survivors of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Valentine's Day, in which 17 people were killed.



Many celebrities are set to speak at and participate in the marches. George and Amal Clooney, Jimmy Fallon, Cher, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, and Common are amongst those set to attend the Washington D.C. march.

Amy Schumer, Olivia Wilde, Yara Shahidi, Connie Britton, Skai Jackson, Meg Donnelly, TaRhonda Jones, Cappie Pondexter, and Jacob Sartorius are amongst those set to attend the LA march.

Follow Independent Culture on Facebook for all the latest on Film, TV, Music, and more.DuShon Monique Brown, best known for her roles in Prison Break and Chicago Fire, has died aged 49.

The Cook Country medical examiner's spokesperson Becky Schlikerman says Brown died Friday at St. James Olympia Field Hospital outside Chicago. The cause of death was not disclosed.

Brown was part of the cast of long-running NBC drama Chicago Fire, in which she played Connie, the no-nonsense assistant to Chief Boden (Eamonn Walker). She also had a recurring role as nurse Katie Welch in Prison Break, alongside guest spots on Empire and Shameless.

She was also a veteran of the Chicago theatre scene, while working as a crisis counsellor at a Chicago high school and leading its drama programme.

In a statement, Chicago Fire executive producer Dick Wolf said the show's family is "devastated to lose one of its own."

Chicago theatre actor Carla Stillwell, who met Brown in the 90s and become a good friend, told The Chicago Tribune: She was a brilliant actor, but she was also so goofy. We used to get in so much trouble from the stage managers we worked with because we were cutting up so much. She was just a ham. And she was truly loved.

Follow Independent Culture on Facebook for all the latest on Film, TV, Music, and more.The quantity of takeaway drink cups thrown away in the UK is set to rise by a third in the next 12 years, according to a new report.

The increase is part of a wider trend in which overall plastic waste will surge by 20 per cent, according to projections by WWF.

In response to the alarming figures, campaigners have called for the Government to take urgent action on plastic  such as the 25p latte levy backed by The Independents Cut the Cup Waste campaign.

As about two thirds of the UKs plastic waste comes from packaging, the rise from 5.2 to 6.3 million tonnes by 2030 will be driven partly by an increase in demand for convenience foods, such as takeaway meals.

To arrive at these conclusions, the reports authors produced models based on existing data while taking into account relevant factors such as rising GDP and the impact of new European legislation.

Their results are based on a business-as-usual scenario in which urgent action is not taken to deal with the nations plastic waste.

While the 25-year environment plan launched by Theresa May in January set out specific plastic waste targets, it was described as fundamentally flawed by environmental groups due to its lack of legal underpinning.

WWF is encouraging the public to make small changes in their lives to reduce their environmental footprint for Earth Hour, but says these results demonstrate a need for more systemic action.

We cant do it solely on peoples goodwill, we need people to make changes and we need to help people understand why and how they can make changes, but that wont do it on its own, Gareth Redmond-King, head of climate and energy at WWF UK, told The Independent.

 What do people think of Starbucks charging 5p for coffee cups?

While plastic pollution is currently high on the national agenda, Mr Redmond-King said the data still suggests a rise in the appetite for single-use plastics among the British public.

There are more people wanting to eat more conveniently  it becomes easier and easier with Deliveroo, Uber Eats and all of them, he said.

UK consumers are among the biggest consumers in the EU of cotton buds, wet wipes and straws.

In recent months, the Government has pledged to fight what Chancellor Philip Hammond has called the scourge of plastic.

We need not just for individuals to take action but for businesses to make real changes and for the Government to regulate and get rid of this stuff  because its not necessary, said Mr Redmond-King.

Tanya Steele, chief executive of WWF, said: We are polluting our world with plastic, suffocating our oceans and overwhelming our wildlife. The amount of plastic which the UK is throwing away is set to rocket by over a million tonnes by 2030  thats the equivalent of 87,000 more double-decker buses worth of plastic waste each year.

We must act now  banning avoidable single-use plastic by 2025 and introducing incentives to help people and businesses make the right choices to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Mr Redmond-King pointed to the 5p charge applied to single-use bags as a success story. The charge is widely heralded as resulting in a 90 per cent reduction in plastic bag use.

I suspect it wouldnt have been a 90 per cent reduction if we just relied on people doing the right thing, said Mr Redmond-King.

The Independents Cut the Cup Waste campaign has been pushing for measures to deal with the problem of disposable coffee cups in particular, such as the 25p latte levy similar to the charge applied to plastic bags.

Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Show all 6 1 /6 Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Plastic water bottle for a reusable beverage container Instead of continually buying drinks in plastic bottles you can switch to a reusable beverage container and reduce your single-use of plastics. Selfridges' Bobble 550ml filtered water bottle costs 12.95 and includes a replaceable carbon filter that filters water as you drink, removing chlorine and organic contaminants in the process. You can buy it from selfridges.com Getty/Selfridges Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Coffee cup for a Travel coffee mug It is estimated that the UK throws away around 2.5bn disposable coffee cups a year and almost all are incinerated, exported or sent to landfill because their plastic lining makes them expensive to recycle. The new Latte Levy in the UK means there will now be a 25p charge on every disposable coffee cup bought by consumers. Pret A Manger announced that it will double its discount to 50p in an effort to reduce waste. By swapping to a reusable cup you will be able to help cut the cost of disposable coffee cups. This Keep Cup Brew, cork edition, travel cup in Fika is just one of the many available to purchase. It fits under most commercial coffee machines, is splash-proof and ideal for transporting your coffee whilst on the go. You can buy this particular cup for 19.99 from trouva.com. Getty/Trouva Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Plastic bags for reusable cloth bags An eco-friendly alternative to an ordinary plastic bag is this lightweight shopping bag. It comes with a practical pillowcase pocket and features a black and white ink splatter design. Convenient and durable it also has a matte black spring clip to attach it where you need it. You can buy this from paperchase.co.uk for just 5.00. Getty/Paperchase Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Coffee pods for a pot of coffee Cut your plastic coffee pod usage with a cafetiere. This Barista and Co, 3 Cup Gold Cafetiere, from Habitat offers a simple way to brew and serve in style. Made from borosilicate glass and plated stainless steel with an ergonomically designed handle, the cafetiere is built to last and a pleasure to use; a fine metal filter produces a smooth coffee that retains its natural oils. You can buy it for 30 from habitat.co.uk. Getty/Habitat Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Balloons for eco-friendly decorations Instead of using plastic balloons at your party try swapping them for some eco-friendly bunting. Handmade in Scotland, the bunting comprises thirteen brightly coloured pennants which spell out the words 'Happy Birthday', and uses lettering that has been printed onto 100 per cent recycled card. Included is 11ft of natural jute twine to hang the pennants on, and everything comes packaged in a cello bag. You can buy this bunting from Little Silverleaf on notonthehighstreet.com for 12.50. Getty/notonthehighstreet Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Plastic straw for a reusable bamboo one Swap plastic straws for reusable ones made of bamboo. These straws are handmade in Bali and crafted by local balinese artisans. Made of organic and natural materials they are the best eco-friendly alternative to plastic, steel or glass straws. You can purchase them from Bali Boo on Amazon.co.uk for 13.99. PA/Bali Boo/Amazon

A latte levy was proposed by the Environmental Audit Committee in January, and while such action has been widely supported by environmental groups and the public, the idea has not been backed by ministers.

The Government says it wants ideas to curb the UKs plastic problem, but has rejected a levy on disposable cups despite strong public support. These findings show that is a terrible mistake, said Tom Barns, campaigns manager at SumOfUs, which has been running its own campaign to address coffee cup waste.

Its time to get tough with companies who have made vast profits from a throwaway culture which is choking our oceans and killing our wildlife.

That means firm measures which push companies to take responsibility for the damage they are causing, and quickly invest in sustainable alternatives, before its too late.The undisputed queen of effortless style, Alexa Chungs foray into fashion has seen her become the face of some of the worlds most recognisable brands, the launch of her eponymous label and several collaborations.

But theres one area the It girl has overlooked, until now that is.

Having been a brand ambassador for Superga since 2011, Chung has injected her signature British style into the minimalist Italian brand by creating her very own exclusive capsule collection.

My mother wore Supergas when I was growing up so for me theyve always been a classic shoe, Chung says

It has been wonderful to return to this brand as a designer working on a collaboration for this season because in the past Superga were one of the first companies to let me art direct a campaign for them. It feels a lot like coming home, Chung says.

My mother wore Supergas when I was growing up so for me theyve always been a classic shoe and something I have incorporated into my daily wardrobe for years now.

2294 Alexa Chung Cotu, 72, Superga

For spring/summer 2018, the fashion designer, model and TV presenter has reinterpreted classic Superga silhouettes  including the 2750, mid-cut and mule styles  to create shoes that people really want to wear.

Available in different textures and colours, Chung has refreshed the ageless trainer to capture the essence of the new season, adding fabrics like varnish, satin, cotton and terry towel in shades like off-white, burgundy, green and sky blue.

2492 Alexa Chung Satin, 75, Superga

The Superga x Alexa Chung is available to buy now with prices ranging from 72 to 85.

2493 Alexa Chung Satin, 85, Superga

2750 Alexa Chung Varnish, 80, SupergaEaster eggs are alright. But if youre willing to indulge in something a little more bizarre next weekend, there are some fantastic Easterinspired cocktails out there. From Crunchie concoctions spiked with booze and served in Easter egg boxes to mighty hot cross bun dedications, here are the themed tipples you should be sipping on

Aqua Shard  London

Just how much do you love hot cross buns? Not as much as Aqua Shard, we bet; the bar has created a limited edition cocktail that tastes exactly like them. Rocket to the 31st floor of the glass-shaped building on Easter weekend and order The Hot Cross Shard.

Its put together with Hennessey Cognac, Italicus Rosolio di Bergamotto and Mozart Dark Chocolate Liqueur, before being shaken with star anise, coriander seeds, cinnamon, and a few loose cloves. But wait  theres more. This indulgent drink is then topped with a dainty caramel sugar nest and a cluster of mini chocolate eggs.

Aviary  London

As far as Easterthemed cocktails go, this one has left the nest and flown the whole nine yards. Youll find the Easter Egg Flip at rooftop restaurant Aviary, and its got Instagram written all over it. Brought to life with Mozart Chocolate Vodka, Drambuie, Cointreau, salted caramel, egg and orange bitters, it comes in a chocolatecovered glass, garnished with orange flakes and the once-illegal tonka bean, in crumble form.

Be At One  Brighton

Magicians might pull rabbits out of top hats, but Be At One have their own form of magic  mixology magic. The menu at this Brighton den might be swimming with every drink imaginable, but this Easter youve got to order one cocktail, and one cocktail only: The Honey Bunny. Blended with Mozart Dark Chocolate, honeycomb pieces and ice cream, this sweet as hell mix comes served in a Be At One Easter egg box with a Crunchie chocolate bar.

Quaglinos  London

You might say you hate puns, but we know youre lying. Everyone loves puns  even Quaglinos (a haunt thats frequented by the likes of Sir Elton John and Mick Jagger). To celebrate Easter, theyve placed three special cocktails on the menu, our favourite is crowned with the title Eggcellent. And before you ask, yes  Eggcellent truly is excellent. Its stirred with Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva, Mozart Dark Chocolate Liqueur, gingerbread syrup and orange bitters, before being served with an edible chocolate sphere, mascarpone cream and gold glitter.

Dirty Martini  Manchester

People all over the UK ditched meat and dairy to go vegan this January, and just like discovering Dirty Martini for the first time  many havent looked back since. Jumping on the bandwagon to offer a veganfriendly cocktail, the bar team here have truly outdone themselves with The CoCo Bunny. It marries Absolut Vanilla Vodka, Creme De Cacao mixed with cacao powder, Oatly cream, Oatly chocolate drink, and it comes topped with an indulgent Vegan coconut cream foam and Ombar chocolate buttons.

Radio Rooftop Bar  London

Radio Rooftop Bar have really raised the stakes this Easter. Instead of ritually running to Tesco to battle it out for the last chocolate egg on the shelf, you should try their Chocolate Nest. Its easy on the eyes and even easier on the lips, whipped together with Mozart, Chambord, Sherry Marnier and cream.

Little Bat  London

Easter egg hunts arent just for children under the age of 10 with a monstrous appetite for all things sugar. They can be for grownups too. Neighbourhood bar, Little Bat, have teamed up with Bulleit to launch a whiskey menu like no other, and if you happen to spot one of their golden eggs hidden around the bar, youll be rewarded with a free cocktail. Pick from the Lafayette Layback, the Hayrider, and the Flip Flop thats made with Bulliet Bourbon, Briottet Cacao, red wine, egg yolk, double cream and vanilla syrup.

For more info on the best bars in London and across the UK, visit DesignMyNight and follow them on Instagram and Twitter; @DesignMyNightA restaurant selling traditional British food has opened in Paris and its a huge hit with locals.

To many French people, the Englishs knowledge of cuisine is limited  think fish and chips, messy puddings and greasy fried breakfasts.

But it appears that something across the Channel is changing. People are loving British food and its all down to one Englishman.

Recommended Twitter users discuss their most hated vegetables in hilarious thread

Oliver Woodhead, who has lived in Paris for the past two decades, has opened the citys first ever British brasserie, called LEntente, and it only serves classic British dishes like shepherds pie, scotch eggs and fried breakfasts.

So many people are telling me they are pleasantly surprised. I never expected to be le spot de weekend but last Sunday the champagne was still flowing at 5pm, Woodhead told The Telegraph.

The London restaurant scene is light years ahead of Paris.

Its groundbreaking what were doing here  there are 500 registered French restaurants in Britain and countless French-style establishments  in France there is now one British brasserie.

Quickly becoming a cult favourite among locals, the restaurant has only been open for three months but has already opened its doors to a number of big names, including former French president Francois Hollande.

It has become particularly popular among the fashion set too, serving food to designers Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs, and critic Suzy Menkes, and also making an appearance in Vogue.

So, what can you expect to see on the menu?

For a weekend brunch, the restaurant offers earl grey-soaked porridge with fried eggs and black pudding on toast on the side for 24 (20).

Or, if you fancy something a little heartier you could tuck into a shepherds pie for 17 followed by apple crumble for 10.

While many French restaurants will shut on Sunday and Monday, LEntente offers all-day dining and is open seven days a week.Parents hoping to improve their familys social mobility by giving their children money could be doing the opposite, experts have warned, after research found a conclusive link between financial support and increased dependence.

Confirming what many have long suspected, a new study from the Newcastle University and Youth Employment UK not only shows that those whose parents have extensive networks are better paid, but that the children also remain dependent on family and become less ambitious.

But the aim of the study wasnt to chastise parents for wanting to support their kids.

The research brings a new depth to understanding just how much the family matters and how we can support young people with little family resources and those with abundance to progress, says Laura-Jane Rawlings, CEO of Youth Employment UK.

The researchers highlighted the risks involved when young people are financially reliant on their parents, including an increase in intergenerational social inequality and a tougher jobs environment for those who dont have parental support.

However, the study also highlighted that the current generation are worse off than their parents were; with precarious employment, zero hours contracts, low wages and the transition from education to work taking longer and being harder  meaning many have no choice but to rely on their familys help. Many still live with their parents or have had to move back home.

Property prices remaining stubbornly out of reach for many young adults, and a separate study from Aldermore shows first time buyers underestimate the deposit they will require by 31 per cent  or around 15,400.

Indeed, recent data from Royal London suggests that, nationwide, only one in three parents have not and arent planning to offer their children or grandchildren help getting onto the housing ladder.

Regionally, those in more expensive areas are under greater pressure to stump up funds, with only a quarter of London-based parents saying they wont or cant provide help rising to two fifths of those in the East Midlands.

Of those who said they had, or planned to provide assistance, over one-third said they expected the amount provided to be less than 10,000. A further 28% said they had, or expected to provide somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 to family members.

More than one in ten said they had or expected to provide in excess of 50,000. Only 15 per cent expected the money to be repaid.

Even among grandparents, Saga research suggests a third are now financially supporting their grandchildren  typically saving around 50 every month to hand over a total of 9,360 to every grandchild.

The Bank of Gran and Grandad has donated a total of over 37bn in funds to their grandchildren.

Some young people are facing bigger challenges than others in the labour market, and a lot of it has to do with the resources their family has, says Dr Emily Rainsford, research associate in politics at Newcastle University. Its not surprising many turn to their parents for help. The jobs market is risky and family support can soften the ground.

This research shows that families are important for fostering trust, attitudes to work and ambition and passing on the networks that lead to better paying jobs. It also shows how resources are concentrated and reproduced in families leading to an exaggeration of intergenerational inequalities.

"By knowing exactly what parents do to help their young people get on in life we make recommendations for how the rest of the community can step up and help those who do not have the family resources to support them.

Other findings showed that parents networks help their children get better paying jobs and their attitudes to work rub off on their offspring. Young adults whose mothers and fathers made it clear that work and money are directly linked, had a stronger ambition to become economically independent.

For two decades we have discussed social mobility and tried to reduce the inequalities experienced by young people, adds Rawlings.

We know that the policy reforms are not working and this report and recommendations call on the need for the communities around our young people to take bolder and braver action if we are ever to see a real change.

If we really want Britain and its young people to achieve their potential we must as a community step up.Whole Foods just decimated its marketing staff.

Business Insider obtained a recording of a seven-minute conference call on Thursday, during which Nicole Wescoe, the president of Whole Foods north-east region, announced the cuts.

Ms Wescoe said the position of store graphic artist and all regional marketing office positions below associate coordinator would be terminated. The cuts are company wide and do not apply to only Whole Foods north-east region.

It is not clear exactly how many jobs will be affected, but the company operates about 450 stores and 11 regional offices in the US.

Ms Wescoe said the move was a result of the companys efforts to centralise the creation and production of signage and decisions around signage needs.

This means that the SGA role will be removed from the Whole Foods Market structure, she said.

To collect severance pay, the Whole Foods store graphic artists must work until 2 July because the brand is not yet ready to replace its signage.

The severance package features two weeks pay for each year of employment, up to 26 weeks pay. Employee benefits will last until the end of July.

I want you guys to understand that decisions like this across the company  it is no reflection on how we value you, the work you do and how you show up every day, Ms Wescoe said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Ms Wescoe also described opportunities for the affected staffers to apply to other roles.

We will help support, partner and champion you to find another position within Whole Foods Market, Ms Wescoe said. If you believe that you want to stay with the company and move forward, I want to tell you that I will make it my business to help you do just that.

Whole Foods, which was acquired by Amazon last year, has been moving away from its localised approach in the past year, shifting other roles to its Austin headquarters and changing its supply chain and inventory methods to cut costs.

Read more:

 May tackles new Brexit Rebellion

 Philip Hammond and Mark Carney are in China to secure 1 billion of trade deals

 Facebook admits that social media can be bad for you

Read the original article on Business Insider UK.  2018. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.Exposure to chemicals used to manufacture everyday items such as cosmetics, furniture and plastics could be linked to brain development disorders in children, a medical review has found.

A report published in Endocrine Connections found that a number of common chemicals can interfere with thyroid hormone actions  which are essential for normal brain development of children  in pregnant women.

The increase in chemical production has led to widespread environmental chemical contamination, the review found, stating that thyroid-disrupting chemicals in the environment pose real risks for child development and health.

The review, by the French National Centre for Scientific Research at Paris-Sorbonne University, examined published evidence of chemicals, such as pesticides and those used in the manufacture of drugs, cosmetics, furniture and plastics, that can all interfere with thyroid hormones.

It warned that current public health policy does not fully address the risks to vulnerable populations.

Professor Barbara Demeneix, from the university, said: We have reviewed the documented exposures of pregnant women and children to mixtures of thyroid-hormone-disrupting chemicals and propose that the data sets provide a plausible link to the recent increased incidence of neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders.

Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests  but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty

Many experts in the field consider that the current testing guidelines for thyroid-disrupting chemicals are not sufficiently sensitive, do not take into account recent findings and do not adequately consider risks to vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women.

Maternal thyroid hormones are essential for normal brain development of children. Previous studies have found that even moderate disruption can affect their cognitive development and increase their risk of brain developmental disorders.

Additional reporting by PAA serving vicar has won the National Secular Societys (NSS) secularist of the year award after campaigning to expose sexual abuse in the Church of England.

Rev Graham Sawyer was praised for his reliable and consistent demands for reform in the face of institutional hostility inside the church.

Rev Sawyer is being given the award jointly alongside Phil Johnson, a survivor of clergy abuse who now chairs a support group for fellow victims.

NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said: We hope their work will cause those in positions of power to reflect on the damage done by excessive deference to religious authority.

The Church of England must be held to account for its cover-up of abuse, including through independent oversight of its safeguarding policies.

The award comes days after the Archbishop of Canterbury told the child sex abuse inquiry that failing to report the attacks was simply wrong, and that abusers can never be trusted again.

He was appalled and ashamed of the church after hearing and reading evidence given to the panel, he told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).

The Most Rev Justin Welby admitted it was taking too long for abuse victims to get justice. He said on Wednesday: People are not informed, they are not told what is going on.

It can take three or four years and you end up damaging the survivors and victims more. You abuse them in the way you keep them waiting, and for that matter you dont do justice to the perpetrator.

If you cant do it through the present system, then you have to find another that will be more reliable.

He added that he had implemented new safeguarding training within the church, but that there was also a great need for a culture change.

Other nominees for secularist of the year Amina Lone, of the Social Action and Research Foundation

My Stealthy Freedom, a group that encourages women to publicly remove their hijabs

Radio host Maajid Nawaz

Meena Varma, of Dalit Solidarity Network UK

The Western Isles Secular Society

Accepting the prize, Rev Sawyer said he was humbled and accused the church of abusing its power as the countrys established religion in its dealings with sexual abuse victims.

He said: When religious leaders are given secular power or one particular religion, let alone one group in one religion, is given a position of privilege by the state, we all too often see an abuse of power.

Perhaps an example of this is the way that the established Church of England has treated victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by its leaders over so many years.

Recommended Church of England bans former vicar from visiting ministry

Mr Johnson said: I am just one of many people who have stood up to institutions to try to achieve justice, recognition and redress for abuses perpetrated against them. Sadly, many victims are so harmed that they are unable to fight these powerful institutions on their own, so it is important that we continue the fight for them.

Those who have followed the Anglican hearings at IICSA over the last three weeks will have seen revealed an institution that is elitist, sexist and homophobic and does not see itself as accountable to the law. This must change.

At the very least we need a change in the law to require the mandatory reporting of allegations of sexual abuse to the statutory authorities so institutions like the Church of England cannot go on dealing with things in-house and those who fail to report or cover up abuse can be held to account.

A Church of England spokeswoman said: Phil Johnson is an invaluable voice on behalf of survivors with ongoing safeguarding work in the Church of England.

As was demonstrated at the three-week IICSA hearings which have just finished, the church has made appalling mistakes and is absolutely committed to becoming a safer place for all and will continue to work with, and support survivors, to improve our responses to those who are at risk of being, or have been abused, as children or as adults.Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal had written to Vladimir Putin asking if he could return to his home country before he was poisoned in Salisbury, a friend has said.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to be pardoned so he could visit his family in Russia, Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok on 4 March.

The 66-year-old had been accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.

He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.

According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, Mr Skripal did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.

Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland, he said.

Recommended EU leaders prepare to expel Russian diplomats over Salisbury poisoning

In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor... [he told me] he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were [in Russia].

The Kremlin later issued a denial that any such letter was sent to the Russian President.

The attempted assassination sparked a diplomatic crisis between Russia and Britain, which has been supported by its allies in apportioning blame to the Kremlin.

At least six countries in Europe are understood to be considering the expulsion of Russian spies after the EU took the lead and announced it would recall its ambassador to Moscow.

Russia election 2018: in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Russia election 2018: in pictures Russia election 2018: in pictures People attend a rally in Manezhnaya Square near the Kremlin during the ongoing presidential elections. EPA Russia election 2018: in pictures The members of the local election commission open a ballot box for counting at a polling station during the presidential elections in St. Petersburg. EPA Russia election 2018: in pictures Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak attend a debate at the "Navalny Live" YouTube show in Moscow. Reuters Russia election 2018: in pictures Members of a local election commission count votes during Russia's presidential election in the small town of Krasnyi. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures President Vladimir Putin walks out of a voting booth at a polling station during Russia's presidential election in Moscow. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures An elderly woman casts her ballot at her house during Russia's presidential election in the village of Khrapovo. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak votes inside a polling booth in Moscow. AP Russia election 2018: in pictures Russian Communist Party presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin votes at a polling station in the Sovkhoz Imeni Lenina, outside Moscow. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures A woman with her dog lines up with Russian military personnel to vote in the presidential election in Moscow. AP Russia election 2018: in pictures A man casts his ballot at a polling station during Russia's presidential election in the small town of Krasnyi. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures Presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky casts a ballot at a polling station in Moscow. Reuters Russia election 2018: in pictures An elderly woman fills her ballot at her house as a member of a mobile Russian election committee visits residents of the village of Sovyaki. EPA Russia election 2018: in pictures A child plays at a polling station during presidential elections in St.Petersburg. AP Russia election 2018: in pictures A man casts his ballot at a polling station inside Kazansky railway terminal. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures Vladimir Putin casts his ballot. Reuters Russia election 2018: in pictures A man casts a ballot, during the presidential election, inside the Russian Embassy in London. Reuters Russia election 2018: in pictures People leave a polling station during the presidential election in Moscow. Reuters Russia election 2018: in pictures Presidential candidate Sergei Baburin, leader of the nationalist People's Union party, votes at a polling station in Moscow. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures Voters look at a poster displaying presidential candidates at a polling station in the ZIL cultural centre in Moscow. AFP/Getty Images Russia election 2018: in pictures An Orthodox Jewish Russian citizen casts his ballot at a polling station for the Russian presidential elections in the Sergei Building at the Russian compound in Jerusalem. EPA Russia election 2018: in pictures Players of the Russian national soccer team, including Vladimir Gabulov and Yuri Zhirkov, visit a polling station during the presidential election at the Novogorsk training centre outside Moscow. Reuters Russia election 2018: in pictures President Vladimir Putin shakes the hand of a polling station staff member during voting. AFP/Getty Images Russia election 2018: in pictures A man votes at a polling station in Moscow. Rex Russia election 2018: in pictures Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak casts her ballot by scanning it in at a polling station in Moscow. EPA Russia election 2018: in pictures Policemen guarding the General Consulate of Russia in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv watch an Ukrainian activist touching the nose of a dummy embodying Russia's president in a coffin. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures A woman with a dog reads her ballot at a polling station in Moscow. AFP/Getty Russia election 2018: in pictures A man walks out of a voting booth at a polling station in the village of Novye Bateki. AFP/Getty

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while last Sunday the countrys EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov said that from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him [Mr Skripal].

Russias ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko sent his well wishes to Mr Skripal and his daughter on Friday and wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripals aid.

Sergei Skripal was freed in a 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States (AP)

Mr Bailey said his experience had been completely surreal after he was discharged from hospital.The officially designated Brexit campaign, Vote Leave, cheated during the European Union referendum and may have flouted campaign spending rules, a whistleblower has claimed.

The allegation centres around the organisations links to another smaller campaign group  BeLeave  which it helped fund.

Shahmir Sanni, who was a volunteer on the campaign, claimed Vote Leave used it to get around strict spending limits set by the Electoral Commission.

I know that Vote Leave cheated, he told Channel 4 News. I know that people have been lied to and that the referendum wasnt legitimate.

Recommended Vote Leave investigated by Electoral Commission over Brexit spending

Vote Leave has strongly denied wrongdoing and said the 625,000 donated to BeLeave in the final days of the campaign in 2016 was within the rules.

The claims came as Mr Sanni also said that Stephen Parkinson, his former boyfriend and political secretary to Theresa May, had publicly outed him as gay in the run-up to the Channel 4 and Observer disclosures over electoral spending.

Mr Parkinson, who at the time was a senior Vote Leave figure, disclosed on Friday that he had been in an 18-month personal relationship with fellow Brexit campaigner Mr Sanni.

But lawyers acting on behalf of Mr Sanni said: My client is now having to come out to his mother and family tonight, and members of his family in Pakistan are being forced to take urgent protective measures to ensure their safety.

And Mr Sanni said: I never imagined that, with the help of Number 10, would chose to tell the world I am gay, in a last desperate attempt to scare me. This is something Ive never told most of my friends or family, here or in Pakistan, some of whom are having to take measures to ensure their safety.

He knew the danger it would cause, and thats why he did it. My coming out should have happened at a moment of my choosing  not his or the Governments. Some things are more important than politics and I hope that one day he agrees.

 Vote Leave investigated by Electoral Commission over Brexit campaign spending

Mr Sanni went to the Electoral Commission with two other pro-Brexit friends on Thursday, who say they helped the Vote Leave campaign two years ago, Channel 4 reported.

Their lawyers have given the election watchdog signed statements.

Mr Sanni told the broadcaster he was initially a Vote Leave outreach volunteer but he was then assigned to BeLeave.

Vote Leave said it did not recall Mr Sanni working as a volunteer, but he was like hundreds of others who occasionally visited the offices.

Mr Sanni said that he and BeLeaves co-founder Darren Grimes always reported to Mr Parkinson.

There was no time where anything BeLeave did didnt go through Stephen, he said.

In the final 10 days of the 2016 referendum campaign Vote Leave donated 625,000 to Mr Grimes, who was registered as a permitted participant, with the money used to pay Canadian data firm Aggregate IQ (AIQ), the programme said.

Asked whether they could have refused to spend the money on AIQ, Mr Sanni said: We didnt ever feel like we had that level of control.

Thats what I mean, we never felt like we had control over the organisation itself.

Brexit so far: in pictures Show all 53 1 /53 Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit campaign Boris Johnson led the VoteLeave campaign PA Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit campaign Boris Johnson MP, Labour MP Gisela Stuart and UKIP MP Douglas Carswell address the people of Stafford in Market Square during the Vote Leave Brexit Battle Bus tour on 17 May 2016. Their lead line on the tour was: We send the EU 350 million a week, let's fund our NHS instead. Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Voting day A man shelters from the rain as he arrives at a polling station in London on 23 June 2016. Millions of Britons voted in the referendum on whether to stay in or leave the European Union AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Referendum results Leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage, reacts at the Leave EU referendum party at Millbank Tower in central London as results indicated that it was likely the UK would leave the European Union AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Protesting the result A young couple painted as EU flags and a man with a sign reading Im not leaving protest outside Downing Street against the voters decision to leave the EU on 24 June 2016 Getty Brexit so far: in pictures David Cameron resigns British Prime Minister David Cameron resigns on the steps of 10 Downing Street on 24 June 2016 after the results of the EU referendum were declared and the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Theresa May Becomes the new Conservative Party leader Theresa May receives a kiss from her husband Philip, after becoming the new Conservative Party leader on 11 July 2016. May became Prime Minister two days later and although she voted to remain in the referendum was keen to lead Britains Brexit talks after her only rival in the race to succeed David Cameron pulled out unexpectedly. May was left as the only contender standing after the withdrawal from the leadership race of Andrea Leadsom, who faced criticism for suggesting she was more qualified to be prime minister because she had children AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Lancaster House keynote speech on Brexit British Prime Minister Theresa May delivers her keynote speech on Brexit at Lancaster House in London on 17 January 2017. Where she spoke about her offer to introduce a transition period after the UK formally leaves the European Union in March 2019. Despite repeating the pro-Brexit mantra of no deal is better than a bad deal, the Prime Minister claimed she wanted a tone of trust between the negotiators and said Britain was leaving the EU but not Europe. She said there should be a clear double lock needed for the transitional period to make sure businesses had time to prepare for changes to their trading relationships with the EU Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Triggering of Article 50 British Prime Minister Theresa May in the cabinet, sitting below a painting of Britain's first Prime Minister Robert Walpole, signs the official letter to European Council President Donald Tusk invoking Article 50 and the United Kingdom's intention to leave the EU on 29 March 2017 Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Gibraltar nonsense Tensions have risen over Brexit negotiations for the Rock of Gibraltar. The European Council has said Gibraltar would be included in a trade deal between London and Brussels only with the agreement of Spain. While former Conservative leader Michael Howard claimed that Theresa May would be prepared to go to war to protect the territory. Spain's foreign minister stepped in only to assert that there was no need for the dispute Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Shock snap election Soon after triggering Article 50, Theresa May called on 18 April 2017 for a snap general election. The election would be on 8 June and it came as a shock move to many, with her reasoning to try to bolster her position before tough talks on leaving the EU AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Dissolution of Parliament for General Election Campaign Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement in Downing Street after returning from Buckingham Palace on 3 May 2017. The Prime Minister visited the Queen to ask for the dissolution of Parliament signalling the official start to the general election campaign Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Conservatives lose parliamentary majority An arrangement of British daily newspapers showing front page stories about the exit poll results of the snap general election. British Prime Minister Theresa May faced pressure to resign on 9 June 2017 after losing her parliamentary majority, plunging the country into uncertainty as Brexit talks loomed. The pound fell sharply amid fears the Conservative leader would be unable to form a government AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Labour gains Britains opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn gives a tumbs up as he arrives at Labour headquarters in central London on 9 June 2017 after the snap general election results showed a hung parliament with Labour gains and the Conservatives losing their majority AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit negotiations begin Brexit Minister David Davis and European Commission member in charge of Brexit negotiations Michel Barnier address a press conference at the end of the first day of Brexit negotiations in Brussels on 19 June 2017 AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures May speaks in Florence British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks on 22 September 2017, in Florence. May sought to unlock Brexit talks after Brussels demanded more clarity on the crunch issues of budget payments and EU citizens' rights AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures EU council summit  insufficient progress German Chancellor Angela Merkel joins other EU leaders for a breakfast meeting during an EU summit in Brussels on 20 October 2017. The EU spoke about Brexit and announced that insufficient progress had been made AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures DUP derails settlement on the withdrawal part of Brexit DUP Deputy Leader Nigel Dodds walks off after speaking to members of the media as a protester holding flags shouts after him outside the Houses of Parliament on 5 December 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to pull out of a deal with Brussels after the DUP said it would not accept terms which see Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK Getty Brexit so far: in pictures May suffers defeat over EU (Withdrawal) Bill Theresa May suffers defeat in parliament over EU (Withdrawal) Bill on 13 December 2017. The Government was defeated by Conservative rebels and Labour MPs in a vote on its key piece of Brexit legislation. MPs amended the EU (Withdrawal) Bill against Theresa May's will, guaranteeing Parliament a meaningful vote on any Brexit deal she agrees with Brussels. Ms May's whips applied pressure on Conservative rebels who remained defiant in the Commons throughout the day and in the end the Government was defeated by 309 votes to 305 Brexit so far: in pictures EU council summit  sufficient progress Britain's Prime minister Theresa May arrives to attend the first day of a European union summit in Brussels on 14 December 2017. European leaders discussed Brexit and announced there was finally sufficient progress at the end of the two days AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures The game moves to transition Brexit Secretary David Davis gives evidence on developments in European Union divorce talks to the Commons Exiting the EU Committee in Portcullis House, London, on 24 January 2018 PA Brexit so far: in pictures Trade deal is what May wants French President Emmanuel Macron gestures to Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May after they hold a press conference at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, on 18 January 2018. May and Macron agreed a new border security deal, through which the UK will pay more to France to stop migrants trying to reach British shores on 18 January 2018 AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Transition period agreed The UK and EU agree terms for Brexit transition period on 19 March, 2018 Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures No agreement on Irish border The EU and UK however failed to reach an agreement on the Irish border during the successful talks on other Brexit issues AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures EU attacks Mays fantasy strategy For months after the March deal is struck there is little significant progress in talks. One senior EU official tears into Britains fantasy negotiating strategy and accuses Theresa May of not even having a position on a variety of important issue Getty Brexit so far: in pictures UK releases Ireland plan Britain releases a new customs plan to solve the Northern Ireland border but Michel Barnier says it leaves unanswered questions and would not prevent a hard border EbS Brexit so far: in pictures Chequers plan agreed The cabinet agrees on a plan known as the "Chequers deal" on July 6 2018. The plan seeks regulatory alignment on goods and food, divergence on services, freedom from the European Courts of Justice and an end to free movement. Many were surprised that the hard Brexiteers of the cabinet would agree to this plan PA Brexit so far: in pictures Chequers plan sparks resignations Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and numerous ministers resign in the days following the Chequers agreement Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures Davis out, Raab in On 9 July, Dominic Raab replaces David Davis as Brexit Secretary. Raab is a keen Brexiteer and was a housing minister before taking over from Davis Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures Barnier's "deal like no other" EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier claims on August 29 2018 that they are prepared to offer Britain a trade deal like no other, though he stressed that they will not divide or change the single market to accommodate Britain AP Brexit so far: in pictures "My deal or no deal" In an interview on Panorama on September 17, the Prime Minister insists that any Brexit deal will be offered to the EU on her terms. She asserts this amongst continued attacks on her approach to Brexit by Boris Johnson and the European Research Group, headed by Jacob Rees Mogg BBC/Jeff Overs Brexit so far: in pictures EU leaders reject Chequers Quite the blow was dealt to the Prime Minister at a EU leaders summit in Salzburg on September 20. European Council President Donald Tusk stated that the Chequers deal "will not work" Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures May demands respect Following the rejection of her Chequers plan the day before, the Prime Minister voiced her anger that the EU had dismissed it without offering an alternative. She stated that throughout this process, I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same. A good relationship at the end of this process depends on it." Getty Brexit so far: in pictures People's Vote march As the People's Vote campaign and The Independent's Final Say campaign gain traction, 700,000 people turn out in London to demand a final say on the UK's Brexit deal on October 20 2018 PA Brexit so far: in pictures More resignations As the Prime Minister settles on a Brexit deal, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab resigns along with Work and Pensions secretary Esther McVey and many other ministers Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Final Say petitions delivered to Downing Street People's Vote supporting MPs Chukka Umunna, Justine Greening and Caroline Lucas and The Independent editor Christian Broughton deliver over a million signatures in favour of a People's Vote to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street on December 3 2018 PA Brexit so far: in pictures May delays vote On December 10, the Prime Minister delayed the vote on her Brexit deal as it was near certain not to pass through the Commons due to Tory rebels and lack of DUP support AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures No confidence motion Tory MPs triggered a confidence vote in the Prime Minister on December 12. She won by 200 votes to 117 Reuters Brexit so far: in pictures Commons rejects the deal Following the delay, the Prime Minister's deal was rejected in the Commons by a historic 230 votes AFP Brexit so far: in pictures Corbyn tables a no confidence motion Following the rejection of the Prime Minister's deal, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn tabled a motion of no confidence in the government, which the government won by a margin of 19 AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Plan B The Prime Minister won the support of the commons to return to Brussels to renegotiate the backstop on January 29. In the same sitting, MPs also voted against a no-deal Brexit in a non-legally binding motion PA Brexit so far: in pictures EU council president savages Brexit campaigners who failed to plan for departure: Special place in hell There is a special place in hell for pro-Brexit campaigners who demanded Britain leave the EU without explaining how it should happen, Donald Tusk has said. The European Council president launched the scathing attack as he accused anti-EU campaigners of pushing for Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely. Mr Tusk also dismissed suggestions that the EU could reopen negotiations over the controversial Northern Ireland backstop, dealing a blow to Theresa Mays hopes of securing fresh concessions as she tries to get her exit deal through parliament. Speaking in Brussels alongside Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Mr Tusk said: Ive been wondering what a special place in hell looks like for people who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely. He also tweeted the accusation moments later Getty Brexit so far: in pictures EU and UK announce talks to restart after Theresa May visits Brussels Both have agreed to restart Brexit talks to find a way through the deadlock in Westminster, following a visit by Theresa May to Brussels. In a joint statement the British government and European Commission said Ms May had had a robust but constructive meeting with president Jean-Claude Juncker, and that the pair would meet again before the end of the month. But the EU again refused to reopen the withdrawal agreement and its controversial backstop  with any negotiations expected to focus on the future relationship between the UK and EU instead Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Brexit strategy lost MPs voted down May's Brext plans, with a majority of 45. The prime minister did not appear in parliament to see another defeat PA Brexit so far: in pictures Labour and Conservative MPs resign and create the Independent Group Back row of Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Chuka Umunna and Mike Gapes, middle row of Angela Smith, Luciana Berger and Ann Coffey and front row of Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Joan Ryan PA Brexit so far: in pictures Non-biding votes on amendments to Brexit motion On February 27 he house held a series of votes, unanimously calling for the UK and EU to guarantee citizens rights in a no-deal scenario AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Attorney General publishes legal advice A hammer blow for May as Geoffrey Cox said her renegotiated deal can still leave UK in backstop against its will. Mr Cox did say the prime ministers efforts had reduced the risk of the UK being trapped in the backstop indefinitely. MPs went on to vote against her deal by 391 to 242 UK Parliament/PA Brexit so far: in pictures No-deal off the table MPs rejected a no-deal Brexit by 43 votes on March 13, with cabinet ministers rebelling in another humiliating defeat for Theresa May. A day later they voted in favour of the prime minister seeking an extension to Article 50 AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures House speaker bans May from third Commons vote on same Brexit deal John Bercow sensationally told Theresa May he would stop her making another attempt to pass her Brexit deal unless she has secured changes. The Speaker said a further meaningful vote would be ruled out of order if the motion was the same or substantially the same  under an ancient convention to stop the government bullying parliament on issues MPs have rejected Parliament Live Brexit so far: in pictures May writes to Tusk The prime minister wrote to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, to ask for a three-month extension to give her more time to try to get her deal through parliament. However the European Commission advises the EU27 should offer a short extension to May 23 or a longer one meaning the UK would participate in European elections 10 Downing Street/AFP/Getty Brexit so far: in pictures European Council summit Theresa Mays request to extend triggering Article 50 until the end of June was rejected by the EU, and instead offered a shorter time frame. She accepted the offer of a delay until May 22 if her withdrawal deal is approved by Parliament. If MPs rejected it for a third time, the EU said Britain must propose a new plan by April 12. Ms May said she will not support a long delay because it would mean Britain participating in elections for the European Parliament Getty Brexit so far: in pictures Brussels confirms preparations for a no-deal Brexit are completed They warned that it is increasingly likely the UK will crash out. In a statement the European Commission (EC) said preparedness and contingency work, which the EC has been conducting since December 2017, was now finished. The announcement came days after EU leaders agreed to a request by Theresa May to extend the UKs Brexit date AFP Brexit so far: in pictures May resigns Reuters

He claimed: In effect they used BeLeave to over-spend, and not just by a small amount ... Almost two-thirds of a million pounds makes all the difference and it wasnt legal.

Mr Parkinson said he was saddened by the factually incorrect and misleading statements by Mr Sanni and his lawyers.

He added: At the relevant time during the referendum period, the commission advised Vote Leave that it was permissible to make a donation in the way it proposed to do to BeLeave.

Recommended May lines up Vote Leave chief to lead overhaul of Conservative Party

Twice since the referendum the commission has investigated this matter, and twice it has found no evidence of wrongdoing. A third investigation into the same issue is currently taking place.

The Electoral Commission has not contacted me in relation to any of these inquiries, but I will of course be happy to assist in them if they wish me to do so.

I firmly deny the allegations in the programme. I had no responsibility for digital campaigning or donations on the Vote Leave campaign, and am confident that I stayed within the law and strict spending rules at all times.

Mr Grimes also denies all the allegations, Channel 4 said.

A Vote Leave spokesman said it had twice been cleared on this matter by the Electoral Commission adding: There are now a number of new accusations and allegations.

While many of them seem irrelevant or trivial, some are serious and potentially damaging to the reputations of those caught up in those allegations. As has been the case throughout, Vote Leave is obligated to review  to the extent it can after this long elapsed period since the referendum  all such allegations, and is doing so.

We will as appropriate share any relevant findings with the Electoral Commission, again as we have always done.

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said: The commission has a number of investigations open in relation to campaigners at the EU Referendum; it does not comment on live investigations.The national spokesman of a key South African opposition party has said redistributing land from white farmers without compensation is justified because it is not really their land.

Mbuyiseni Ndlozi told The Independent white farmers descended from Dutch and English colonial invaders had have taken it [the land] through a violent crime against humanity.

Mr Ndlozi is one of the most senior officials in the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, which put forward a successful motion last month calling on the government to consider amending South Africas constitution, to make clear that it is within the authorities power to redistribute property on racial grounds.

There have been concerns among South Africas white minority that the motion will encourage attacks on farmers, and the EFFs leader Julius Malema has previously been convicted of hate speech for singing anti-white songs like Shoot the Boer [Farmer].

Many South Africans nonetheless agree that some land distribution is needed as the country continues to recover from the horrors of apartheid and colonial rule. White people officially occupy 23.6 per cent of farmland in the country  a figure which rises to 73 per cent when land owned through private enterprises is taken into account  compared to 1.2 per cent owned by black South Africans.

In this process, white people ought to accept the crime of apartheid and colonisation and how these crimes impacted on black people, Mr Ndlozi said. Whites could show remorse by ceding land they inherited through anti-black racist dispossession, he suggested, adding: Justice leads to reconciliation.

Mr Ndlozi is a rising but divisive figure in South African politics, who at just 32 has garnered a strong following on social media.

A party founded on revolutionary ideals, the EFF itself holds just 25 seats in parliament, trailing behind the African National Congress (ANC) on 249 and the Democratic Alliance (DA) on 89. Yet as third-largest party it punches above its weight by entering into coalitions with the DA and other opposition groupings to obstruct the ruling ANCs legislation.

It is widely understood that the EFFs staunch opposition to President Jacob Zuma accelerated his resignation in February.

The ANC is now very aware of the importance of keeping the EFF on side, moving towards more radical policies like land reform that promise to deliver a fairer economic landscape for South Africas black population  a key EFF message.

We felt a great and overwhelming sense of historic responsibility to finally reconstitute South African society on a truly non-racial land ownership basis, Mr Ndlozi told The Independent.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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Mr Ndlozi said he thought South Africa would be a better place without whites, going on to explain: Yes, any community in the world would be a better place without any one referring to themselves as white.

The EFF is doing little to shake its anti-white image. Just this week the partys deputy president, Floyd Shivambu, was filmed putting his hand round the throat of a white Afrikaans journalist for Netwerk 24, Adrian de Kock, outside parliament.

And earlier this month Mr Malema suggested the EFF would topple a mayor in the coastal town of Port Elizabeth due to his race.

They will be touched  dont worry, Mr Malema told a rally. We are starting with this whiteness  we are cutting the throat of whiteness.

Asked how he could defend such statements, party spokesman Mr Ndlozi said the rhetoric was meant figuratively. By definition whiteness means white hatred of blacks, he said.

You only define yourself as white to distinguish yourself from blacks; whiteness is a reference in as far as it seeks to point out the absolute other, which is black. We are going to take some of their land to share it with other blacks.A family of four was found dead in their holiday apartment while on holiday in Tulum, Mexico, police confirmed.

Kevin Wayne Sharp, 41, his wife Amy Marie Sharp, 38, and their children Sterling Wayne, 12, and Adrianna Marie, 7, were reported missing by their immediate family members early on Friday morning to police in Creston, Iowa.

The Sharps had planned to return to the US on Wednesday, family members said.

Police quickly made contact with the US state department, Creston police said in a statement. A welfare check at the property where the family was believed to be staying led to the discovery of the four bodies.

Autopsies are being performed in Mexico. It is not immediately clear what led to the Sharp familys deaths, but Creston police chief Paul Ver Meer told KCCI that there were no signs of traumatic injury.

Local Mexican authorities have taken over the investigation, according to the state department. The Mexican Tourism Board said in a statement obtained by CBS that preliminary reports from local officials conclude that there were no signs of violence or struggle.

Ashli Peterson, a relative of the Sharps, posted about the familys disappearance on Facebook on Thursday night, around the time that the family contacted police. The post was shared hundreds of thousands of times. On Friday afternoon, Ms Peterson posted an update.

Please respect the family at this time as they go through the grieving process, she wrote. Thank you for all the posts, shares and kind words.

The family were due to return to the US last week (Facebook)

Kevin Sharp was an avid stock car racer known as The Sharpshooter in the local racing scene and he often competed in events in his neighbouring county, Cliff Baldwin, his friend and fellow racer, told the Des Moines Register. He said he knew Mr Sharp and his family his entire life, and that he and Mr Sharp shared a love for the University of Iowa and the Kansas City Chiefs.

He was a great personal friend, Mr Baldwin said. Its hard to talk about. The more I think about him and the family, the harder it is.

Creston is close-knit like all small towns in Iowa, he added. Hes a big part of that community there.

Sharp and his family left the United States for Cancun, Mexico, on 15 March, according to Ms Petersons post. The family then rented a car and drove to Tulum, where they were renting an apartment, according to Amy Sharps sister, Renee Hoyt, who spoke with the Creston News Advertiser.

It was the familys second time in Mexico, according to Amy Sharps cousin, Jana Weland, who told ABC News that the family had planned to meet up with some friends at a water park.

But they never showed up at that water park to meet them, Ms Weland said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The Sharps were supposed to have returned to the United States on Wednesday from Cancun.

The Sharps had informed their family members on 15 March that they had arrived safely in Tulum. So when family members didnt hear from them on Thursday  after they were supposed to have arrived back home  they became worried.

Ms Hoyt, Amy Sharps sister, told the Creston News Advertiser that Mr Sharps phone was tracked using Apples Find my iPhone app, which it pinged in Mexico. The phone had not moved from its location since Thursday morning.

Relatives of the Sharp family could not be immediately reached for comment.

The familys mysterious deaths come amid increased travel warnings to Quintana Roo state, which is home to Tulum  a popular destination for those looking to explore Mayan ruins or snorkel in limestone sinkholes. The state department issued a level two advisory to those travelling to Quintana Roo on 16 March, meaning visitors should be cautious because of increased crime there. Department officials cited a spike in Quintana Roos homicide rate since 2016.

Last month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an investigation that identified more than 150 reports from travellers who said they blacked out or became violently ill after having just one or two drinks at dozens of Mexican resorts in Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Puerta Vallarta and Los Cabos. It is unclear whether those tourists were deliberately drugged or became random victims of tainted alcohol, according to the investigation.

Another Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation from November looked at repeated instances where the travel and restaurant review website TripAdvisor removed posts warning of alleged rape, assault or other injuries at some Mexican resorts. And a July investigation into the death of a Wisconsin college student in Mexico uncovered widespread safety issues, including those tied to tainted alcohol at Mexican resorts.

The Washington PostAt least one person has died after a very powerful but deep earthquake struck the border between Mexico and Guatemala, sending shockwaves that could be felt by around 12 million people across neighbouring countries.

The US Geological Survey measured the earthquake at magnitude 6.9, and there were reports of landslides, power cuts, damage to homes and injuries across Guatemala and Mexico.

One man was killed when a Catholic church collapsed in San Sebastian, in Guatemala's Retalhuleu province, emergency services officials said. Among the more than a dozen people injured were a little girl in San Marcos, Guatemala, who was hurt by a sheet of metal roofing sliding off a building, according to local media.

The earthquake struck 15km (10 miles) north-west of San Marcos at around 1.30am local time (8.30am BST), at a depth of 111km.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said that the relatively deep epicentre, hitting just inland of the Pacific coast, meant there was no risk of a tsunami.

Guatemala lies on a major fault zone, and the tremor was preceded by a series of significantly smaller earthquakes out to sea. An aftershock then followed around 20 minutes later, the USGS said.

The earthquake was felt throughout the national territory and damage assessment has begun, said Julio Sanchez, spokesman for Guatemala's Conred national disaster centre.

The earthquake struck shortly after a series of smaller quakes hit the Pacific coast off Chiapas.

The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of the magnitude 6.9 quake was 8km (5 miles) southwest of Tajumulco, Guatemala.

Power went off in the Guatemalan departments of Retalhuleu, Quetzaltenango and Suchitepequez, authorities said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

And across the border in Chiapas, Mexico, governor Manuel Velasco said via Twitter that there were reports of cracked walls and shattered windows in Huixtla. The Civil Protection Authority posted photos to Twitter showing damaged buildings and homes.

The state's authorities said the quake was felt throughout the state.

In late 2012, a far shallower 7.4-magnitude quake that struck off the coast near the Guatemala-Mexico border killed at least 48 people and trapped others under rubble.A woman has received a $10,000 travel voucher from United Airlines after she was bumped from her flight.

United reportedly had an issue with one of the seats on a fully booked plane leaving from Washington and headed to Austin. They decided that Allison Preiss, a communications director in the US capital who was headed to Texas for a bachelorette party, was the one after nobody volunteered to be booted from the flight and they chose the lowest paying fare to bump.

In a series of tweets, the experience is documented on Ms Preiss Twitter feed as she shifts from outrage that United was forcing a traveller off a flight, to still-inconvenienced surprised delight.

United is offering $1K in travel credit for an oversold flight. If nobody bites, they will kick off the lowest fare passenger by pulling them out of the boarding line. For a flight that THEY oversold. Unreal, she wrote on Twitter at 8.19am while waiting for her flight.

Several tweets later, United had apparently found a bad aide for their mistake.

They really do not want to give me cash. They just offered me $10,000 in travel credit. TEN THOUSAND, Ms Preiss said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

United Airlines later confirmed that the tweets were real to Sky Blog, saying that the voucher was issued per their voucher policies.

United raised the cap on their vouchers to $10,000 last April after a public relations disaster when a video surfaced showing United employees dragging passenger David Dao off of a flight, bloodied up.

After the incident with Mr Dao, United conducted a review and published a 10-point plan, which included raising the voucher limits to $10,000.

United has had other bad publicity lately as well, including the recent death of a pet dog when flight attendants forced a family to put the pup in an overhead bin.Former Vice President Joe Biden has addressed mounting speculation about his possible 2020 presidential bid, saying if he does not run "its not because Im afraid of losing, its because theres somebody better to do it".

Still grieving the loss of his son to cancer and unsure whether hell contest the next White House race in less than three years time, Mr Biden said on Friday America was witnessing a battle for the nations soul.

Barack Obama's erstwhile deputy  who has traded harsh fighting words with Donald Trump over who would come out on top in a hypothetical fistfight  said the US cant afford eight years of the current Republican administration.

Were in a battle for the soul of this nation, he said.

I have to be able to stand in front of a mirror and know that if I dont run, its not because Im afraid of losing, its because theres somebody better to do it and/or because Im not in a position to be all in, he said The jury is still out. Ive done nothing to promote running.

The Democrat spoke before more than 1,500 people at Southern Connecticut State University, hours after he was in Maryland to accept the Naval Academy Alumni Associations Distinguished Graduate Award on behalf of Republican senator John McCain. Mr McCain is battling glioblastoma, the same aggressive brain cancer Mr Bidens son, Beau Biden, died from in 2015.

Hes a very close friend of mine and a political opponent and hes in tough shape and he asked me to go to Annapolis and speak for him, Mr Biden said. Hes my friend. So of course I went.

Earlier this week, Mr Trump criticised Mr Biden in a morning tweet and suggested he could beat him up. After comments made by Mr Biden, in which he said he would beat the hell out of Mr Trump if they were both in high school together, Mr Trump said his opponent would go down fast and hard, crying all the way.

He said the former vice president was attempting to act like a tough guy, but in fact was weak both mentally and physically. Mr Trump warned Mr Biden not to threaten him.

Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault, Mr Trump tweeted.

He doesnt know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Dont threaten people Joe!

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The argument began on Tuesday after Mr Biden criticised the President over previous comments he had made about women.

A guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it, Mr Biden said at an anti-sexual assault rally at the University of Miami.

They asked me if Id like to debate this gentleman, and I said no. I said if we were in high school, Id take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.

Mr Biden ran for Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008, but pulled out of both races early.President Donald Trump's new National Security Adviser John Bolton is a diplomatic hammer" who "sees everything as a nail, according to experts.

Mr Bolton replaces the more measured General HR McMaster and joins erstwhile CIA Director Mike Pompeo, the presidents nominee for to replace former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as part of a new more war-focused Cabinet.

Juliette Kayyem, a professor at Harvard University former Obama-era official in the Department of Homeland Security, told The Independent that the Pentagon-styled Mr Bolton seems [to see] the military as the solution to all threats and it seems inconceivable he can change that opinion. The moustachioed former diplomat under the administration of former President George W Bush became known for his intractable views on beginning the Iraq War, defying the United Nations.

As national security adviser, Mr McMaster was extremely knowledgeable not only in military practice but military history and the impacts of war, according to retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis, who had served with Mr McMaster during the first Gulf War.

Stabilising force were the words one New York Times column used to describe Mr McMaster, which also said his presence would balance the hot heads who occupy Mr. Trumps inner circle.

Mr McMaster was part of what experts called the axis of adults that was dubbed as such to reign in and guide an inexperienced Mr Trump in the areas of diplomacy and military matters. After Mr Tillersons public sacking on Twitter and the Mr McMasters long-rumoured departure, Defence Secretary James Mattis is the only one left.

Whether the former Marine General and Mr Bolton will work together well is a concern, said Mr Davis and may require refereeing on the part of the president. It is a skill for which Mr Trump is not well known. The key will be for Mr Bolton to stay out of the purview and areas of responsibility of the Defence Department and Pentagon.

Mr Davis noted that Mr Bolton, who served in the Maryland National Guard and US Army Reserves towards the tail end of the Vietnam War, does not actually understand or is perhaps unwilling to consider, the impacts of war. He almost rejects diplomacy, Mr Davis said, despite his experience as a former US Ambassador to the United Nations.

 Newly appointed US National Security Advisor John Bolton 'wasn't expecting' Trump to make the announcement with a tweet

Even the relationship with Mr Trump, who clicks on a personal level with Mr Bolton, could be akin to walking on a tightrope, Mr Davis said. He noted that the pair are two big, type-A personalities and all is well when they happen to see eye to eye at this point. What happens when they do not could lead to friction in an already drama-filled White House and term in office.

Beyond potential personality clashes, the Presidents appointment of Mr Bolton is a demonstration of the US becoming less likely to take into consideration the needs of our allies as they make policy, Mieke Eoyang, Vice President for the National Security Program at DC-based think tank Third Way, told The Independent

Of particular concern to foreign policy experts is the upcoming meeting between Mr Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to discuss the possible denuclearisation of the rouge state. Mr Bolton has spent years advocating for wholesale, and inevitably violent, regime change in North Korea and Iran.

Vipin Narang, a political science scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tweeted Did people revise the probability of war up after the announcement? If so, how much? What is the Bolton effect? Ill start: 4x revision up from 5 to 20 per cent. Ms Eoyang said she thinks the North Korea negotiations are also now less likely to include South Korea and Japan, our traditional allies in the region and the meeting will likely not lead to an outcome that leads to a peaceful resolution of tensions.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Others worry that Mr Bolton will act as more of a shill for Mr Trump's own views rather than simply an advisor, which could lead to disastrous consequences with that concern also extending to Mr Pompeo.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Mr Pompeo defended the CIA's use of torture during former George W Bush's administration, saying: These men and women are not torturers, they are patriots...the programmes being used were within the law, within the Constitution".

Mr Trump referred to Mr Pompeo as having the same "thought process" as himself,t. Even US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who has been given a relatively free reign in her domain by Mr Trump and who has been more outspoken and media-friendly than the tacit Mr Tillerson, called the replacement a "great decision".

"Pompeo was the most political CIA director in memory," an administration official told Reuters, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mr Pompeo is also on the same page regarding the Iran nuclear deal with the President.

In October, the president decided not to re-certify the historic deal, signed by Iran and six world powers - a signature foreign policy achievement by predecessor President Barack Obama. It opened the door for harsher economic sanctions to be placed on the country, the mitigation of which was a key inducement for Iran to comply with the deal. Tehran had pledged to rein in its nuclear program in return for some easing of those economic restrictions imposed on it by the US, the UN, and European Union.

European allies, and even Mr Tillerson according to some reports, continued to urge the President to extend the sanctions relief in order to save the deal. Mr Trump will not hear that from the hawkish Mr Pompeo.

I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the worlds largest state sponsor of terrorism, he had tweeted in November 2016, when he was under consideration for the CIA post.

Between the two new faces, Mr Trump is not just adding sycophants, but people who can actually help him make that outlook into reality, Matthew Waxman, a Bush administration official who worked with Bolton during his years at the State Department, told the Lawfare blog of the Brookings Institution.US attorney general Jeff Sessions may become the unlikely guardian of legendary Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

The US government will look to seize the one-of-a-kind record, purchased for $2m (1.4m) in 2015 by disgraced businessman Martin Shkreli, after the so-called pharma bro was jailed for fraud offences earlier this month.

A notice of forfeiture published this week announced authorities intended to repossess the album, along with Shkrelis copy of rapper Lil Waynes upcoming release Tha Carter V, a Picasso painting and $5m cash held in a brokerage account.

The forfeiture would mean Mr Sessions could be left to decide the fate of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, of which only two of its 26 tracks have ever been made public.

The United States hereby gives notice of its intent to dispose of the forfeited property in such manner as the United States Attorney General may direct, the official confiscation notice read.

Any person, other than the defendant in this case, claiming interest in the forfeited property must file a petition within 60 days of the first date of publication of this notice.

The album by the American hip hop group, which comes housed in ornate silver casing, is bound by a legal agreement preventing the owner from commercially benefiting from the music until 2103.

However, the work is still owned in part by Wu-Tang producers Tarik "Cilvaringz" Azzougarh and Robert "RZA" Diggs, who could move to prevent the US government profiting by releasing the album itself.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

"The contract the album was sold under requires Mr Shkreli to bind any new taker of the album to all of the same terms it was sold under," Peter Scoolidge, Azzougarh's attorney told Forbes.

"If and when [the album is seized], my client could file papers in the forfeiture proceeding to enforce the restrictions on use of the album."

Shkreli, who first gained infamy in 2015 for obtaining the manufacturing license for antiparasitic drug Daraprim before hiking its price from $13.50 to $750 per pill, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison earlier in March.

The investor had been found guilty in August of lying to investors who had paid into two failing hedge funds, before defrauding them of millions.The designers of a giant water slide that decapitated a 10-year-old boy went ahead with the project despite having no technical or engineering qualifications, prosecutors say.

Criminal charges have been brought against Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City following the death of Caleb Schwab on its Verruckt water slide in August 2016.

Tyler Miles, a former director of operations at the park, also faces an involuntary manslaughter charge over the incident, in which a raft carrying the boy and two women went airborne, forcing his head into a pole.

A grand jury indictment made public on Friday said Verruckt, German for insane, violated nearly all aspects of industry safety standards.

Court documents said park co-owner Jeff Henry and lead designer John Schooley concocted the idea of building the worlds tallest water slide in 2012 on the spur of the moment.

They produced a prototype for Verruckt, just 36 days after first devising the ride, a job amusement park design experts later told prosecutors should have taken a four-person team of engineers between three and six months.

Mr Henry and Mr Schooley did not possess any formal qualifications in water slide design, and used trial-and-error methods in an attempt to solve problems with rafts going airborne during testing, the indictment says.

Henry and Schooley lacked the technical expertise to properly design a complex amusement ride such as Verruckt, the indictment continued.

Ex-water park director Tyler Miles faces an involuntary manslaughter charge (PA)

Neither of the two men possessed any kind of technical or engineering credential relevant to amusement ride design or safety.

Court documents said Mr Schooley had admitted: If we actually knew how to do this, and it could be done that easily, it wouldnt be that spectacular.

Prosecutors said Mr Miles, Mr Henry and Mr Schooley had all been aware of problems with the slides design and a number of other people had been hurt while riding the 51-metre slide.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

A total of 11 people suffered injuries, including slipped spinal disks, whiplash, broken toes and lacerations on the ride in the period between when it became operational in July 2014 and the day of the fatal crash.

Evidence in the form of corporate emails, memoranda, blueprints, video recordings, photographs and eyewitness statements revealed that this childs death and the rapidly growing list of injuries were foreseeable and expected outcomes, the indictment said.

Verruckts designers and operators knew that Verruckt posed a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death or severe bodily harm.

Mr Miles pleaded not guilty to the charges on Friday and was later released on bail, which has been set at $50,000 (35,000).Pakistani police say a woman was depressed when she allegedly strangled her three children in the eastern city of Lahore.

Police officer Bilal Zafar says Aniqa Khatoon inflicted several cuts on her forearms with a sharp blade on Saturday before informing her father and police of the kids deaths on the outskirts of the provincial capital.

Ms Khatoon alleges her boyfriend killed her two sons, ages 5 and 9 and her 7-year-old daughter.

Mr Zafar said the woman was divorced about seven years ago and has had financial problems.

Police detained the womans boyfriend Hasan Mustafa for questioning, but he has denied he was in the house when the children were killed.

Mr Zafar suspects the mother murdered her children in extreme depression.

APThe French police officer who was shot after he swapped himself for a hostage during an Isis-inspired terror attack on a supermarket has died.

Arnaud Beltrame, 44, took the place of a woman being held captive by suspect Redouane Lakdim at the Super U store in Trebes in the south of France.

He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist, President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement on Saturday morning.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb also paid tribute to the gendarme by tweeting that he had died for his country.

Never will France forget his heroism, his bravery, his sacrifice, he added.

Mr Beltrame, who had served in Iraq in 2005, was one of the first to arrive at the scene of the siege on Friday.

He offered to trade places  unarmed  with a hostage the attacker was still holding. He then entered the store with his mobile phone, which he managed to surreptitiously leave on a table with the line open so colleagues could hear what was happening.

When shots were heard, elite police stormed the building and killed the suspect.

Mr Beltrame, who was shot three times, became the fourth victim of the hostage-taker, a 25 year-old Moroccan-born French national from the nearby city of Carcassonne.

The attack began when Lakdim hijacked a car after injuring the driver and killing a passenger, whose body was later found in bushes.

He then shot at a group of police joggers before driving to the supermarket. Lakdim is reported to have shouted: I am a solder of Daesh [Isis].

He killed a customer and a store worker and seized others as hostages. Most of the people in the store managed to escape by hiding in a cold store before fleeing through an emergency exit.

Isis has claimed responsibility for the attack, which is the first deadly terrorist incident since October 2017.

Lakdim, who was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, had been under surveillance by security services in 2016 and 2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.

Beltrame was a qualified parachutist who has worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Palace offices and residence in Paris.

His mother told a French radio station that she wasnt surprised by her sons courage.

She said: I knew it had to be him. He has always been like that. Its someone, since he was born, who gives everything for his homeland.

Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Show all 14 1 /14 Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Rescue forces and police officers at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes, Reuters Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Forensic police investigate after the gendarme's assault on the Super U supermarket. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes. Reuters Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting A view of the Super U supermarket where a gunman reportedly claimed allegiance to the Islamic State and is holding hostages. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Emmanuel Macron is informed by his security advisor about the hostage situation in Trebes during the joint press conference with Angela Merkel at the summit of European Union leaders. AFP/Getty Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting A gendarmerie helicopter flies over the Super U supermarket. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting French gendarmes and police establish a security perimeter around the Super U supermarket. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Police officers secure evidence. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting French gendarmes block the access to Trebes. AFP/Getty Images Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Police attend the incident in Trebes. La Depeche Du Midi via AP Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting French police and firefighters secure the entrance of Trebes. AP Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting A genera; view of The Super U shop in Trebes, southern France, where hostages were reportedly taken by a gunman claiming allegiance to Isis. Google Street View Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Police block a road near the scene. Reuters Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting French gendarmes block the access to Trebes. AFP/Getty

Mr Macron said of Mr Beltrame: In offering himself as a hostage to the terrorist holed up in the Trebes supermarket, Lieutenant-Colonel Beltrame saved the life of a civilian hostage, showing exceptional self-sacrifice and courage.A man suspected of killing three people and holding shoppers in a French supermarket hostage has been named as Redouane Lakdim.

Police stormed the shop in Trebes, southern France, and killed the suspect. Officials believe he hijacked a car in Carcassonne at around 10am and killed one of the passengers.

He is then thought to have fired on a group of policemen who were jogging, wounding one in the shoulder, before driving to a supermarket three miles from Carcassonne and holding around 50 customers hostage.

He killed two of them and injured 16 more before police stormed the shop and shot him dead.

Those injured include a police officer who was swapped for a civilian hostage and was critically ill on Friday evening.

What do we know about the gunman?

The 26-year-old was of Moroccan descent and lived with his parents and several sisters in an apartment in Carcassonne raided on Friday afternoon, Le Parisien reported.

A neighbour told the newspaper he was calm and nice , saying he regularly attended his local mosque. Lakdim dropped his sister off at school on the morning of the massacre, they added.

The first image of Radouane Lakdim, who authorities have named as the 26-year-old attacker (Handout)

The French President, Emmanuel Macron, said detectives will also try to find out exactly how and when Lakdim was radicalised.

He was known to the police for petty drug dealing, but was on a watchlist of suspected extremists and had been under surveillance.

Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Show all 14 1 /14 Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Rescue forces and police officers at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes, Reuters Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Forensic police investigate after the gendarme's assault on the Super U supermarket. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Police are seen at the scene of a hostage situation in a supermarket in Trebes. Reuters Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting A view of the Super U supermarket where a gunman reportedly claimed allegiance to the Islamic State and is holding hostages. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Emmanuel Macron is informed by his security advisor about the hostage situation in Trebes during the joint press conference with Angela Merkel at the summit of European Union leaders. AFP/Getty Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting A gendarmerie helicopter flies over the Super U supermarket. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting French gendarmes and police establish a security perimeter around the Super U supermarket. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Police officers secure evidence. EPA Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting French gendarmes block the access to Trebes. AFP/Getty Images Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Police attend the incident in Trebes. La Depeche Du Midi via AP Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting French police and firefighters secure the entrance of Trebes. AP Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting A genera; view of The Super U shop in Trebes, southern France, where hostages were reportedly taken by a gunman claiming allegiance to Isis. Google Street View Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting Police block a road near the scene. Reuters Trebes siege: France supermarket shooting French gendarmes block the access to Trebes. AFP/Getty

Interior minister Gerard Collomb described him as a radicalised petty criminal and small-time drug dealer.

He said it was not clear whether he was a committed radical, adding: It was more of a petty criminal who at a certain moment decided to act.Iran is considering turning to Russia and China following Donald Trumps decision to appoint super hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo as his national security adviser and secretary of state.

A senior Iranian politician said the Islamic Republic should strengthen its ties with the two global powers because of the harder line expected from the US administration.

Both Mr Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations and Fox News contributor, and CIA Director Mr Pompeo have criticised the nuclear deal with Iran and are viewed as pro-Israel. Mr Bolton has supported taking military action.

Americans are pushing for harder policies towards the Islamic Republic of Iran and we need to strengthen our view towards the East, especially China and Russia, said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliaments National Security and Foreign Policy Committee.

Iran also condemned the provocative decision by the US to charge nine of its citizens with hacking into government agencies.

The suspects are accused of stealing sensitive information from hundreds of universities and private companies, the US Department of Labour, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and even the United Nations.

More than 31 terabytes of data was stolen during the coordinated campaign of cyber intrusions by staff at the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based company working on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the US Department of Justice.

Today, in one of the largest state-sponsored hacking campaigns ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice, we have unmasked criminals who normally hide behind the ones and zeros of computer code, said US Attorney Geoffrey Berman on Friday.

The hackers targeted innovations and intellectual property from our countrys greatest minds. These defendants are now fugitives from American justice, no longer free to travel outside Iran without risk of arrest. The only way they will see the outside world is through their computer screens, but stripped of their greatest asset  anonymity.

Although a trial is unlikely because there is no extradition treaty with Iran, the grand jury indictment is part of the US governments strategy to publicly identify foreign hackers and block them from travelling.

The US Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on the suspects and the Mabna Institute.

Irans foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said the move was provocative, illegitimate, and without any justifiable reason and another sign of the hostility of the [US] ruling circles towards the Iranian nation.

America will certainly fail in preventing the scientific development of the Iranian people through sanctions, he added.

Iran was branded the greatest challenge in the Middle East by the US President when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month.

Concerns about Iranian influence in the area are also said to lie behind the decision of Saudi Arabia  which is also hostile to Iran  to open its airspace to a commercial flight to Israel for the first time on Wednesday.

However a more hardline US approach is expected to raise tensions ahead of the proposed meeting of Mr Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

South Korea is said to be concerned about the replacement of HR McMaster by Mr Bolton as it prepares to hold high level talks with its neighbour on 29 March.

Mr Bolton has also advocated using military force to stop North Korea gaining deliverable nuclear weapons and described the plan for a US-North Korea summit as diplomatic shock and awe.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Also on Friday, the US Military showed off its stealth aircraft force at sea for the first time during exercises in the seas around Okinawa.

This is a historic deployment. For the first time we take a marine stealth fighter F-35B. We pair it with a navy amphibious ship, said Brad Cooper, commander of the US Navys Expeditionary Strike Group 7.

This represents what I believe is the most significant leap in war fighting capability of our lifetime. It gives us more ability to underscore peace, security and stability in this region.

Mr Bolton is expected to take up his post as National Security Advisor on 9 April while Mike Pompeo is expected to be confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of State sometime during the same month.How does Isis claim responsibility for attacks?

In each attack, the initial claim is made by the jihadist group's Amaq news agency via the social media app Telegram.

The claim typically comes a day after the attack, when evidence has emerged the attacker or attackers were inspired by Isis, though it is not uncommon for it to come days or even weeks later.

The initial claim follows a standard format, with the attacker glorified as a "soldier of the Islamic State" in a statement saying the attack was carried out in "response to calls to target citizens of coalition countries".

After the initial claim, Amaq will often release video, audio or text of the perpetrators pledging bayat or allegiance to the so-called Islamic State's "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

"Later, as if to provide rejoinders to analysts and news commentators who questioned the veracity of Amaqs reports, the group has often extolled terrorists responsible for these attacks in publications like Dabiq and Rumiyah, as well as in videos," terrorism analyst Michael S Smith II told The Independent.

Mr Smith described how one claim even included a screenshot of a tweet in which a terrorist and his coconspirator pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi. The group's propaganda has asked supporters to leave behind notes of support for the group before they carry out attacks.

"Each of these weaves together a larger picture on how Isis seeks to claim attacks and then fetishes their fighter imagery for years," Chris Sampson, cyber and terror analyst for TAPSTRI, said. "They parade each of these attacks as their message of victory."

However, while Isis are often accurate in identifying who carried out the attack, they are less accurate with the details.

"I do not trust Isis estimations of casualty figures, which they typically inflate, or other details including relaying how the attack was carried out," Ms Callimachi said.The BBCs security correspondent has launched a furious attack on Heathrow airport after his wheelchair went missing following a flight from Addis Ababa.

Frank Gardner has depended on a wheelchair since he was shot six times in an al-Qaeda gun attack in Saudi Arabia in 2004, partly paralysing his legs.

In a tweet from aboard Ethiopian Airlines flight 700 parked at Terminal 2, he wrote: Odd that I can travel round the Middle East and elsewhere without a hitch. Yet time and again @HeathrowAirport loses my wheelchair on arrival. Now been on an empty plane 1.5 hours after landing.

Believe me, Im as bored of writing this as you are of reading it.

Just when is the UKs premier airport going to stop treating disabled passengers this way?

Later, he tweeted: Finally got off the plane exactly 100 mins after landing. Ive had better treatment in Djibouti.

Mr Gardner said that cabin crew decide if they can find space in the cabin for the wheelchair, adding BA always let me do this on long haul.

Otherwise it goes in hold with instructions to bring it up to door on arrival. UK ground staff often ignore this.

His wheelchair was unloaded from the hold and taken to the aircraft door. But for some reason before he could reach it, the wheelchair was removed by ground staff to baggage reclaim.

The BBC correspondent later told Radio 4s Today programme: Im not making this fuss about this for me. Im doing this because there are hundreds, possibly thousands of others who suffer the same experience.

Recommended The cost of being disabled in the UK is huge

All we get are these platitudes from Heathrow airport.

Nothing changes, it goes on and on happening.

If you cant walk and your wheelchair has been taken into the terminal, that is your legs gone, that is your mobility gone. Its a basic human right.

A spokesperson for Heathrow said: We apologise unreservedly if the service Mr Gardner received today fell short of the experience we aim to provide to our passengers.

We are working with the responsible airline to investigate what went wrong in this case.

The world's 10 worst airlines Show all 10 1 /10 The world's 10 worst airlines The world's 10 worst airlines 10. Jet AirHelp, has assessed more than 30 airlines using scores for quality of service, on-time performance and responses to claims for compensation. Here follows the lowest ranked airlines, starting with Jet Airways, 35% of whose flights were delayed in 2018 Getty The world's 10 worst airlines 9. Aerolineas Argentinas 15% of Aerolineas Argentinas flights were delayed in 2018 Getty The world's 10 worst airlines 8. Iberia 16% of Iberia flights were delayed in 2018 Getty Images The world's 10 worst airlines 7. Korean Air 36% of Korean Air flights were delayed in 2018 Getty The world's 10 worst airlines 6. Ryanair 14% of Ryanair flights were delayed in 2018 EPA The world's 10 worst airlines 5. Air Mauritius 31% of Air Mauritius flights were delayed in 2018 Getty The world's 10 worst airlines 4. easyJet 21% of easyJet flights were delayed in 2018 AFP/Getty Images The world's 10 worst airlines 3. Pakistan International Airlines 39% of Pakistan International Airlines were delayed in 2018 Getty The world's 10 worst airlines 2. Royal Jordanian Airlines 13% of Royal Jordanian Airlines flights were delayed in 2018 Getty The world's 10 worst airlines 1. WOW Air 25% of WOW Air flights were delayed in 2018 Getty

Airlines are obliged to provide assistance to passengers with disabilities and reduced mobility, known as PRMs, and contract ground handlers to look after them.

The Civil Aviation Authority stipulates: On arrival, your wheelchair or mobility aid should be returned to you at the arrival gate, unless there are extenuating reasons.

Last year Mr Gardner was stuck on an easyJet aircraft after it arrived at Gatwick from the French Alps, after special assistance failed to turn up to meet the flight.Three generations of the Byrne family are at the helm of the Burnside group of companies which employs over 1,000 here and in the US: Caroline Kelly, sales manager; Paddy Byrne, chairman and Pat Byrne, managing director. Photo: Roger Jones

People in Carlow talk about the sugar factory and its era almost as a paradise lost.

And while many mourn the demise of the sugar industry, it has left an enormous legacy that continues to provide life and livelihood to the town and region.

At its peak, 'the factory' and its sister company, Erin Foods employed 1,800 people in Carlow. Its commitment to the upskilling and education of workers has left a lasting skill base and a wealth of entrepreneurs.

The factory closed in 2005 after 79 years in operation, but in its wake a plethora of small industries have grown up - founded by people who spent their formative years in the factory.

Expand Close Three generations of the Byrne family are at the helm of the Burnside group of companies which employs over 1,000 here and in the US: Caroline Kelly, sales manager; Paddy Byrne, chairman and Pat Byrne, managing director. Photo: Roger Jones / Facebook

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Whatsapp Three generations of the Byrne family are at the helm of the Burnside group of companies which employs over 1,000 here and in the US: Caroline Kelly, sales manager; Paddy Byrne, chairman and Pat Byrne, managing director. Photo: Roger Jones

Paddy Byrne met me in the boardroom of his Tullow-based company Burnside Autocyl. The company he co-founded with his three brothers in 1974 makes hydraulic cylinders and rams that are exported all over the world. Burnside Autocyl is one of three companies in the group that employs up to 1,000 people in four factories, three of them in Co Carlow and one in Pennsylvania, USA.

Paddy was born in 1937 on a small farm at Kyle Hill, eight miles from Carlow town. As a young lad he remembers going to the mill with his father and being fascinated with the belts and pulleys. This began a life-long passion for all things mechanical.

His father sent him to the tech in Carlow. "Any young lad who completed the two years in the tech and got his cert got an interview for an apprenticeship in the factory," he explained. Everything looked promising for Paddy until a bout of rheumatic fever meant he missed the last six months of school and missed out on the cert.

"As such, I was unhireable," Paddy explains.

It was the early 1950s and Keenans of Bagenalstown came to the rescue, giving him a chance to serve his time as a toolmaker.

"I owe Keenans everything," he says. In 1962 he moved to work in the factory. His sharp eye and inventive intuition made him indispensable to the smooth running of the machinery on the factory floor and the machinery used by farmers and contractors in the field.

At that time the Sugar Company was diversifying and Erin Foods was taking shape.

However, the machinery was American and unsuited to the heavy and wet Irish ground. Paddy rose to the challenge of recalibrating it and he ended up as technical manager in Armer Salmon, the engineering division within the Irish Sugar Company.

At this time Tullow Engineering, a company making farm machinery, asked him to have a look at its operation.

He revolutionised its processes and eventually in 1974 left the Sugar factory and established Burnside Engineering in Ballymoon, along with his three brothers, Jimmy, Tom and Anthony, all of whom worked at Keenans of Bagenalstown.

Employing 850 people fulltime and another 150 seasonal workers, the business has grown to include three separate companies Burnside Hydrocyl in Ballymoon, Burnside Eurocyl in Bagenalstown and Burnside Autocyl in Tullow, which has a subsidiary factory in Charlesburg, Pennsylvania.

Peter Wall worked in the Sugar Factory from 1962 to 1976 before returning to run the family blacksmith business at Chapelstown on the Tullow road on the outskirts of Carlow in 1976.

"The Walls have had a forge here since 1916. Before that, this was the forge for the Brownshill Estate and before that they say pikes were made here for the '98 rebellion."

He takes me to the oldest part of the complex, a cut-stone building with a brick archway in the shape of a horseshoe.

"The sugar factory was a great place to learn your trade. They made and repaired everything in-house, from the factory machines to the harvesters.

"You learned from the lad working beside you, there was plenty to learn and you came out with a range of skills.

"You had to be prepared to drop tools and do whatever was needed."

Peter's company, Walls Engineering, employs 50 people and is now managed by his two sons: "We do general engineering and general maintenance for bakeries and businesses like that. We do larger projects and did the steelwork for the Tottenham Hotspur grounds. Most of our work is Dublin based where 90pc of the work is structural steel."

Other companies whose founders began their working lives in the factory include Jerry O'Toole who founded J&J Services in Tullow specialising in Agricultural, Motor and Engineering supplies. Agricultural machinery manufacturers Gordon Engineering Ltd, owned by Alan and Barry Gordon at Nurney, grew from a company founded by their father who worked in the Sugar Factory. Also on the farming front, Gerry Murphy in Clonegal worked in the Armer Salmon machinery division of the Sugar Factory now reconditions beet harvesters.

Mick Kehoe has his own engineering business in the heart of Carlow town.

He served his time at the factory from 1982 to 1986, travelled the world and came back to found Piping Ltd, supplying and maintaining pipework for the food industry in particular - with clients that include Tetra Pack and Glanbia. He employs 20 people and takes on apprentices.

"I operate according to the ethos and values of the sugar factory. A man called Enda Smith was in charge of the apprentices and he was like a father to generations of us," he said.

"In the factory you could undertake any course you liked and it was free as long as you passed your exams. It has left a great inheritance."

The name Enda Smith comes up again when I meet Brian Lyons, Mick Kehoe Snr and Paddy O'Farrell, all former employees.

Apprentices

Brian Lyons explains that Enda Smith was the man who helped hundreds of young workers to reach their potential.

"When I started in the factory he noticed I was good with figures so I was sent to do accountancy in Rathmines and ended up as financial controller in Thurles." Enda Smith died recently and he left meticulous notebooks detailing all the apprentices and all their achievements, says Paddy O'Farrell who worked in the factory in his youth and went on to become a teacher with the local VEC.

"In Enda's time apprentices got a half-day on Wednesdays to attend courses provided they did two night classes. The apprenticeship scheme in the factory was an important factor in the Institute of Technology being based in Carlow," he said.

Mick Kehoe (Snr) lists the achievements of the apprentices in international competitions. "They were always in the top 10 internationally and one year Carlow apprentices won first, second, fourth and sixth in the international technical drawing competition."

It is little wonder the Carlow sugar factory is about more than memories - it has left a living legacy.

'Sugar beet industry can be revived if farmers are willing'

The Carlow sugar factory was the life-blood of the south eastern town and county from its establishment in 1926 to its closure in 2005.

In the past year there have been rumours and open discussion about reviving the sugar beet industry in the region.

An Oireachtas report on the future of the tillage sector produced by the Committee on Agriculture published late last year called for a review of the opportunities in sugar beet.

Earlier this year Beet Ireland, a lobby group seeking to re-establish the Irish sugar beet industry, acquired a 200ac site for a factory at Plumperstown on the Carlow-Kildare border.

Michael Hoey of Beet Ireland believes there is a real market for Irish sugar.

"As a food producer we are importing huge amounts of ingredients, there is a definite willingness in the Irish food industry to buy Irish sugar," he said.

While the tillage sector is going through a tough time at the moment he nevertheless believes there are real possibilities.

Now that Beet Ireland has bought the site for a new factory at Plumperstown on the Carlow-Kildare border, and raised awareness of the potential for the industry, Mr Hoey believes that it is up to the farmers to take the opportunity.

"We have the best site in the country, the quotas are gone, all it will take is a willingness on the part of farmers to make it happen," he said.Dominic and Ali Leonard in the tea rooms the opened on their farm

It's a big leap from a background in theology and working with the homeless to organic farming, but its a journey Dominic Leonard has travelled in the last 20 years.

Along with his Australian-born wife Ali, Dominic has overseen the development of Castlewood Farm outside Durrow, Co Laois, into a thriving organic enterprise.

The farm converted to organic in 2001, gaining their full organic symbol with the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association (IOFGA) in 2003. It was a bold move at the time as Dominic was very new to farming having grown up on the outskirts of Dublin.

He originally studied theology and had started to pursue further studies in psychotherapy. He then spent some time working with Focus Ireland, the homeless charity, in Dublin.

However, he changed direction when his maternal uncle offered him the opportunity to move to Durrow and run the family farm.

Dominic agreed on the condition he would be allowed to run the farm organically and could introduce an eco-tourism dimension.

I then set about frantically reading as many books about organic farming as I could lay my hands on, he said. I did the Green Cert but there was virtually no mention of organic farming and I still had a lot of learning to do.

I visited as many organic farms as I could and luckily around that time the Southeast Organic Discussion Group began. It was a fantastic induction to organics and was invaluable to me.

We learned a lot from each other and from then on, it was learning by trial and error, and I am still learning today.

Over the years, Dominic and Ali developed a mixed farming enterprise at Castlewood while also rearing their three children.

The 250ac farm is located in a very picturesque setting with almost 30ac of old woodland and a similar area of land

designated as SAC. The idea of farm diversification was never too far from the couples minds  they were already selling their meat direct to the public so decided to explore the idea of a farm shop.

Having done some research mainly by visiting farm shops in the UK, they opted for a farm shop and tea rooms as both complimented each other.

They got planning permission in early 2010, however shortly afterwards Dominic had a near fatal accident on the farm which put everything on the back burner.

After suffering a brain injury from head trauma, Dominic spent months in rehabilitation.

With hard work and determination, he made a good recovery and it did not deter the couple from continuing with their plans.

In 2013 they received grant aid from Leader and are now facing into their fourth season with the business.

It has been a steep learning curve for us as we learnt on the job, added Dominic. We started with a very basic menu and have slowly expanded it. This year we are hoping to add our own burgers to the menu.

We wanted a small homely tea room, serving local and seasonal food. From the farm, we supply organic meat, apples, apple juice and a small amount of vegetables. Last year we did buy in local organic vegetables from Leo Dunne in Durrow, as demand outstripped what we could supply. The coffee we serve is roasted by Bell Lane in Mullingar, so we are supporting other local businesses.

The farm currently has 25 suckler Simmental cross cows, 120 ewes, 20ac of oats for porridge and a further 20ac of cereals for animal feed on the farm, and any surplus is sold to other organic farmers. Dominic keeps hoggets and has lambs almost year-round.

There is a meat processing facility on site. Every week in the shop there is fresh lamb for sale and we kill a pig once a month to have pork, bacon, rashers and sausages. It is popular as there is not a lot of organic pig meat available on the market.

We also kill a beef animal, but you get a lot of meat from one animal so we sell it fresh initially  the remainder is sold as frozen, which does reduce the quantities that people are willing to buy, said Dominic.

Overall, the venture is going well and accounts for 15pc of the farm turnover at the moment. There are plans in the pipeline to expand on the agritourism aspect of the farm with bespoke camping facilities.

The majority of people visiting Castlewood Farm are regulars and that is important in a rural area.

Diversification is not for every farmer, and you certainly need to enjoy dealing with the public. We open Friday to Sunday as we do not have the footfall to open the entire week, said Dominic.

The drawback is that we have less time with the children on the weekends, but we make up for it in other ways and our objective is to make this farm as financially viable as possible and to enjoy that process.

Since my accident, I have changed my attitude. Before it, I had to finish all the farming jobs today  now I am a bit more relaxed and tomorrow is another day. The work will get done. This is also true of my approach to the business  we are conscious that it grows sustainably and becomes an asset to the local area.Profits at Irish travel software firm Datalex jumped 31pc to $7.1m (5.7m) last year as the firm benefited from increased business from airlines around the world.

Revenue at the firm in which billionaire financier Dermot Desmond is a major shareholder, was 15pc higher at $64m (51.8m). Its adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) - Datalex's most important financial metric - was 16pc higher at $14.2m (11.4m).

Datalex's clients include airlines such as Aer Lingus, Lufthansa, JetBlue and Virgin Australia. Mr Desmond owns 26.7pc of Datalex, which yesterday had a market capitalisation of almost 214m.

The company's annual report also shows that total executive pay last year soared to $1.7m from just under $1.3m in 2016.

CEO Aidan Brogan earned a total of $620,000 (502,000) in 2017 compared to $532,000 in 2016.

Last year's figure included a basic salary of $366,000 and a $210,000 bonus.

But finance director David Kennedy fared better, when he gained $413,000 after the exercise of share options.

That lifted his total 2017 remuneration to $767,000.

Datalex's software platforms help airlines to boost buying opportunities for flyers, enabling the carriers to increase their ancillary revenue.

Datalex said that last year it accelerated its investment in cloud-based digital commerce, as well as new innovations in dynamic pricing driven by artificial intelligence, digital payments and loyalty commerce.

Mr Brogan said that 2017 also saw Datalex progress its deployment programme at Lufthansa. That solution is expected to go live in the second half of 2018.

"This will help drive significant growth in our platform revenue and Adjusted ebitda in 2019 and 2020," he said.

Among the company's priorities for 2018 are to leverage partnership and growth potential in the fast-growing Chinese market, according to Datalex's annual report, which was also published yesterday.

The company is also pursuing more opportunities in relation to loyalty commerce. Last year, it said it reached an agreement with a "leading loyalty coalition network" to deliver a loyalty commerce platform.

"While many of our airline customers currently use components of our loyalty and redemption capabilities, this is our first significant diversification into the loyalty sector," noted the company.

"We believe this is a significant market opportunity for Datalex in the coming years."

Datalex chairman Paschal Taggart, who owns 3.2pc of Datalex, said that the market opportunity for the company is "greater than ever".Dublin City Council has given the go-ahead for a seven- storey 19m hotel in spite of concerns by one of Ireland's best known businessmen.

Ben Dunne, inset, objected to plans to demolish Twilfit House on Upper Abbey Street and Jervis Street to make way for the hotel, mainly because of his interest in graveyards.

Mr Dunne's concerns centred around plans to disturb 125 gravestones in Wolfe Tone Park during the construction phase of the hotel and reinstate them.

"I have concerns over the impact the development will have on the remains interred in Wolfe Tone park. I have a lot of feeling for graveyards," Mr Dunne said in the past. The objection lodged on his behalf contained a number of photos showing headstones in the park that will disturbed by the development.

Twilfit House houses one of Mr Dunne's gyms at Jervis Street but he has said that his opposition to the plan was not motivated by commercial reasons.

In revised plans lodged in response to An Taisce's and Mr Dunne's concerns that included other aspects of the proposal, the firm, Abarta Investments removed one storey and cut the number of rooms from 218 to 180. In an interview yesterday, Mr Dunne said that most of his concerns had been satisfied with the revised plan but not his concerns about the graveyard. He said that if he were to appeal the decision to An Bord Pleanala based on his concerns over the gravestones, "I would be fighting a losing battle -not that I mind fighting a losing battle, but I have got to be realistic as well.

"The applicants revised the plan and I have to say it is a very good plan and I would be only objecting for the sake of objecting if I was to appeal." He added: "I don't like doing to people what has been done to myself time to time." The council ordered that in-situ burials shall not be disturbed during development except in exceptional circumstances and any slabs disturbed shall be recorded, conserved, stored and returned to the site.The 25m Irish money messaging app company, Plynk, is undergoing a "funding crunch" that has led to the departure of several people from the firm, according to its chief executive.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, the co-founder of the 25m-backed firm, Charles Dowd, said the cash problems are close to being overcome and the main financiers are "committed" to the firm's future .

Plynk raised 25m last year in a round led by the European investment firm, Swiss Prive.

The service allows people to link to a bank account and send small amounts of money to one another, such as when splitting a bill at a restaurant. It is live in a couple of European countries.

However, Mr Dowd said that firm has had "some struggles around cash" and this has led to the recent departure of several people from the company.

"We had a six-month timeline to hit certain goals but it has run on three months longer than they [Swiss Prive] thought," said Mr Dowd. "So we ended up having this crunch in funding. We've had a few people leave during the struggles. Now we're in the process of wrapping that issue up and moving on to the next tranche of funding. That will happen in one or two weeks."

Mr Dowd said that the Swiss funders will continue to back the company: "They're at the table and are committed."

He added: "We're in this for the long haul. We've learned a lot from being live for a year and are planning a big revamp of the product offering. We have some big offerings coming down the line but have had three months of a painful process."

He co-founded Plynk with ex-Wonga executive Clive Foley in 2015. Linked to users' Facebook accounts, consumers can send money as a message to a single contact or in-group chats instantly and with no fees. Users receive a dedicated IBAN and virtual Mastercard for online payments.The European Commission has ordered the Government to collect 13bn from Apple for what it claims are unpaid taxes. Stock image

The Government is set to award potentially lucrative contracts to look after the controversial 13bn Apple tax money to a trio of global investment firms.

Amundi, BlackRock Investment Management and Goldman Sachs Asset Management have been named as preferred tenderers to provide investment management services - appointments aimed at making sure than the money is protected during lengthy legal appeals.

The European Commission has ordered Ireland to collect 13bn from Apple for what it claims are unpaid taxes. The Government here and Apple say the tax was never owed and have launched a legal challenge.

However, that could take years and in the meantime the State must collect the tax and hold onto it.

If Ireland wins its case, it will hand the 13bn back to Apple at the end of the process. Investment managers are being hired to make sure the vast pot doesn't lose value in the meantime, because taxpayers would then be on the hook for any losses.

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) is responsible for hiring the advisers. It and Apple will work with the preferred bidders to finalise contracts over the coming weeks, the Department of Finance said. Bank of New York Mellon has already won the contract to act as custodian for the cash.

In October the Commission started a legal action against Ireland for failing to collect the Apple bill fast enough, but that's likely to be dropped as the money is secured in the coming months.Dr. Niamh Shaw is an engineer and scientist who is on a mission to become Irelands first space explorer.

She has just returned from her second simulated Mars expedition which took place in the Negev desert in Israel.

Are you a Spender or Saver?

I'm kind of neither. I've stripped my life back to be as financially compact as possible, so I have very little spare cash to go spending.

But it's not necessarily being saved either! All my money goes towards making my space expeditions happen. Every penny brings me one step closer to becoming Irelands first space explorer!

What has been your biggest purchase to-date?

I got to go to Star City in Moscow and I visited the Cosmonaut Training Facility where I went on a Zero Gravity flight.

I got some sponsorship but I had to fund the majority of that trip myself. I am one of the few people in the world who have experienced the feeling of weightlessness. Money well spent!

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Do you prefer cash or card?

Cash definitely

What are three things you couldnt live without?

My computer, my camera, and my flight suit! All of which I use to document, capture and share the experiences that I have had so far on my space adventures. Priceless!

What would be your largest monthly outgoing?

Rent first and foremost, but also my monthly savings at the moment are going towards my mission to Baikonaur in June.

European Space Agencys Alexander Gerst is heading to the international space station and Ill be there to witness his launch.

What has been the best financial advice that you ever received?

Save 10pc of your salary every month (which was great at the time- but that's not really as feasible when you're freelance)

Dr Shaw will appear in Arnotts on March 31 as part of the department stores interactive STEM (science, technology, engineering, & maths) weekend.DuShon Monique Brown has died at the age of 49.

The 'Chicago Fire' actress passed away from natural causes on Friday, her representative has confirmed, though the exact details of her passing have not been revealed.

However, sources told TMZ DuShon had admitted herself to a Chicago hospital a few days ago after suffering chest pains, but was released shortly afterwards after undergoing tests. Her family then called paramedics on Friday morning because she was feeling ill, and she was taken to St. James Olympia Field Hospital, where she died around noon.

Her spokesperson, Robert Schroeder, said of the actress' "untimely death": "We are devastated by the loss of a very talented and kindhearted soul. DuShon was a film, television, commercial and voice-over actress who also graced the stages of many Chicago theatres. She brought laughter and joy to many and will be greatly missed."

The actress was best known for playing Connie, an assistant to Chief Boden (Eamonn Walker), in 'Chicago Fire' and the team working on the drama are devastated by her passing.

Executive producer Dick Wolf told the Chicago Tribune newspaper: "The 'Chicago Fire' family is devastated to lose one of its own. Our thoughts and prayers are with DuShon's family and we will all miss her."

DuShon - who is survived by a daughter, Zoe - had also previously had roles in 'Empire', 'Shameless' and 'Prison Break' and was well known for her work in Chicago theatre.

Carla Stillwell, a stage actress who first met DuShon in the 1990s, paid tribute to her friend.

She said: "She was a brilliant actor, but she was also so goofy. We used to get in so much trouble from the stage managers we worked with because we were cutting up so much.

"She was just a ham, and she was truly loved."Dance act RDC were crowned the first ever winners of Ireland's Got Talent.

The Cork dancers took home a 50,000 cash prize, as well as the coveted one-hour special show which will be aired on TV3 later in the year.

All judges were full of praise for the 31-strong dance troupe.

Michelle said, What I really love about you - when we see the choreography we know its RDC.

Jason was blown away saying that was absolutely flawless, you wrecked the gaff, it's in bits, you are so talented.

Dance acts Xquisite and FKFT made up the top three finalists.

Other acts in tonight's final included, Aaron J Hart, Double Impact, Linda McLoughlin and the two surprise wildcard entries: dancer Zacc Milne and singing granddad Matt Dodd.

Thousands applied in the biggest ever Irish talent search.

Louis Walsh said that the show will return next year and it will be "bigger and better than ever" as he urged viewers to get involved.

"This is the new Ireland we're seeing on stage," he said. "Everybody on that stage tonight is incredible."

Video of the Day

It's not yet clear if judges Jason Byrne, Denise Van Outen and Michelle Visage will return to the show.Rapist mob boss Christy Griffin will be out of prison in a matter of weeks, and the Herald has learned that he plans to remain in the capital despite continuing threats to his life.

Gardai have not yet formally warned paedophile Griffin (48) of an active threat, nor have they drawn up any special policing plan for the gangster's planned mid-April release from the Midlands Prison.

However, sources said this is expected to change.

Sources said that, despite making a major settlement with the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) in 2009, Griffin will still have access to hundreds of thousands of euro thanks to a major property portfolio, including houses abroad.

Lucrative

They also said he owns a lucrative "front shop" in the north inner city.

From 1993 to 2001, Griffin bought several properties and amassed hundreds of thousands of euro, which he kept in various bank accounts and not all of it was seized.

"Griffin will have access to lots of cash, make no mistake about that. The feeling is that he's definitely going to stay in Dublin," a source said.

"This rapist's imminent release is not what the north inner city needs now, as the area has been destroyed with the Hutch-Kinahan feud already.

"It is not known what side, if any, he will take in that gang war."

In 2011, Griffin had his life sentence for the rape of his partner's daughter reduced to 15 years, meaning he will be back on the streets of the capital in less than a month.

His brave victim, who gave crucial evidence in the course of two trials in 2006 and 2007, had been regularly sexually abused by Griffin from the age of eight until she was 16.

Griffin's vile actions led to a bitter feud in the north inner city, where once-loyal associates turned against each other and took sides with and against him in a dispute that went on to claim five lives.

One of the five men killed was Griffin's close associate Anthony 'Anto' Russell (30), who was shot dead in a pub in Artane in April 2008.

Sources said this murder could well have major repercussions when Griffin is released.

It has emerged that the gangster could go to war with reckless Ballymun criminal Derek 'Bottler' Devoy's associates, because he blames his crew and his slain brother 'Mad Mickey' Devoy for sourcing the guns used in Russell's murder.

Expand Close Derek Bottler Devoy pictured at the scene of the shooting on Balbutcher Drive Ballymun. / Facebook

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"It would be a very serious and dangerous scenario indeed if Griffin and Bottler Devoy's associates went head-to-head, but this could easily happen," a source said.

"For very different reasons they're among the most hated men in the organised crime scene, and an active feud between them could lead to serious bloodshed."

Compounding fears of a feud between the two factions is the fact that a very close, long-time associate of Griffin is suspected of being involved in the double murder that saw Devoy's sister Antoinette Corbally and equally innocent man Clinton Shannon shot dead last August.

Bottler was the intended target.

However, Griffin has numerous other gang enemies, and sources have warned that he faces being murdered if he remains in Ireland.

As part of the previous north inner city feud, Griffin's home in Swords was sprayed with gunfire in 2005 and a grenade was thrown at the property in 2006.

One major gangster who is unlikely to get involved in attacks on Griffin is the Coolock-based drugs trafficker known as 'Mr Big'.

The Herald can reveal he is linked to two young up-and-coming north inner city criminals who have a very close association with Griffin.

Since being sent to the Midlands Prison after his rape conviction in April 2007, Griffin has been mainly under a special protection regime.

When he was originally sentenced to life in jail, there had already been two tit-for-tat gun murders linked to the bitter feud, which began when Griffin was charged with a litany of sexual offences.

It was in this dangerously toxic atmosphere that he was convicted.

Handing him a life sentence that was later overturned, the late Mr Justice Paul Carney - who was himself placed under armed garda protection for the duration of the trial - delivered a scathing judgment on the pervert to a hushed courtroom.

Horrendous

He described Griffin's previous record as "horrendous" and said the sentence had to "take in- to account the age of the victim" and the "gravity of the offences".

While violence raged on the streets of the north inner city, much of it perpetrated by Griffin's mob, the gangster lived a relatively stable life during his time in jail.

In 2011 he was subjected to a savage assault in the recreational area of the Midlands Prison, which was not feud-related.

Last September, Griffin had his jailhouse privileges withdrawn after he was caught with a contraband mobile phone in his cell and was moved to a different wing.THE daughter of a woman who was raped and nearly beaten to death in a random attack told yesterday how her mother is serving a "life sentence".

The horrific assault carried out by brutal Anthony Cassidy was so severe that the woman, aged in her 50s, was treated in intensive care for almost two months and has been left with life-changing injuries.

The Central Criminal Court yesterday heard how Cassidy, a father-of-one of Tinryland, Co Carlow, followed his victim in the early hours of June 25, 2017, before subjecting her to a violent assault that lasted for 35 minutes.

CCTV footage played in court showed a brief clip of Cassidy carrying his victim over his shoulders into the grounds of a castle at 4.16am. The victim was left to die and was only discovered some 12 hours later by a man living on the grounds where the attack occurred.

The victim's daughter told the Herald how her mother has been left serving a life sentence and that Cassidy should never be released. "Whatever time he does, he'll have done it, but the only one with the life sentence is mammy," she said.

"If I had my way, I'd lock him up and throw away the key and never let him see the light of day again, but that's never going to happen.

"To see her go from being bright, energetic, chatty, to just sitting on the chair and looking out the window, that's her life. He's taken everything."

Giving evidence, Garda Sylvia Ryan said the victim was discovered semi-naked and unconscious with visible injuries and bruising.

She was rushed to St Luke's General Hospital in Kilkenny and was only discharged home on October 24 last year - four months after the horror.

Gda Ryan said CCTV footage was obtained from 35 different premises around Carlow town, and that Anthony Cassidy was nominated as a suspect. A warrant was obtained by officers, and Cassidy's caravan at the rear of his mother's home was searched. A number of items were seized for forensic examination, and the victim's DNA was recovered on a jacket belonging to Cassidy. His semen was also found on the victim.

Cassidy was arrested and interviewed on eight occasions, and stated during one interview: "I wouldn't rape a woman. I'd pay for it in a brothel before I'd do that."

He later went on to make certain admissions, including that he punched the victim, but denied raping her. He also claimed his drink may have been spiked prior to the incident.

However, in December, Cassidy eventually pleaded guilty to rape and Section 4 assault in relation to the incident.

The court heard that he had 29 previous convictions in Ireland and a further five in the UK, including a sexual offence for enlisting the services of a prostitute in April 2017.

In a victim impact statement, read out by her daughter, the woman described how Cassidy had ruined her life and that she still lives in constant fear of him.

"Your act of pure evil stole so much for me, but after today, I am closing the door on this," the woman said addressing Cassidy directly. "I am trapped in a body that doesn't work, and it's not my fault. I hear noises or my floorboards are creaky, and I think he's coming for me. I'm in constant fear.

"Beating me nearly to death was bad, but knowing he raped me makes me feel used and dirty. I always think I can smell him on my body. No matter how much I wash or change my clothes I can't get rid of it. I feel violated.

"It has broken me. He just left me there to die. He wasn't sorry. He wanted me dead, and maybe he thought I was."

Justice Patrick McCarthy adjourned the sentencing hearing to April 23.Legislation aimed at bringing transparency to the somewhat murky world of lobbying was introduced three years ago in a belated response to controversies over planning corruption and payments to politicians.

Since September 2015, entities lobbying Government ministers, departments, public bodies or designated public officials must disclose this activity. Disclosures must be made if the lobbying relates to changing public policy, the preparation or amendment of any law, or the awarding of grants, loans, contracts or licences involving public funds.

The definition of a designated public official is quite wide and includes ordinary members of the Oireachtas, such as members of the Opposition.

Who has been contacted, the nature of the contact and the intensity of the communications and activity are all things which must be submitted to the lobbying register. This has proven to be a valuable tool in terms of improving transparency, but it doesn't tell the whole story of how the political system can be influenced.

Over the past two weeks court proceedings taken by media and telecoms tycoon Denis O'Brien against a Dublin public relations firm, Red Flag Consulting, have provided a glimpse of what can go on behind the scenes.

In particular, text messages exchanged by former Fianna Fail TD Colm Keaveney and Red Flag chief executive Karl Brophy paint a fascinating and somewhat troubling picture of how public perceptions can be manipulated by the hidden hand of lobbyists.

The texts, contained in a 15-page exhibit handed in to the High Court, reveal how Mr Brophy suggested and refined potential questions to be asked in parliament. His firm also suggested changes to a draft Dail speech but its version was not delivered.

Mr O'Brien alleges this activity was part of a conspiracy to damage his interests and has been on a mission to find out what client Red Flag was acting on behalf of. The firm denied engaging in a conspiracy or defaming Mr O'Brien.

Mr Keaveney was a critic of Mr O'Brien and supported calls for an independent inquiry into the sale of Siteserv to Millington, one of Mr O'Brien's companies, in a deal that saw IBRC accept the Millington offer even though it was lower than a figure proposed by a French company, Altrad.

Siteserv's board argued there was no certainty the Altrad approach would result in a transaction.

Mr Keaveney has alleged Mr Brophy made contact with him in April 2015 after he spoke about the Siteserv controversy on RTE's 'Late Debate' radio show. Mr Brophy disputes this and says Mr Keaveney initiated the contact.

Mr Keaveney claims that between April and June of that year Mr Brophy urged him to adopt a hard line against Mr O'Brien.

"It is clear from any assessment of the communications as exhibited that Mr Brophy sought to play a very active role in trying to influence me as regards my position in relation to the plaintiff (Mr O'Brien) and as regards the contents of my contributions to the Dail debates in relation to the plaintiff and/or Siteserv," Mr Keaveney said in an affidavit.

According to the one text that April, Mr Brophy gave Mr Keaveney information about the purchase by Mr O'Brien of his own loans from the liquidator of IBRC. "Worth a PQ and questions," he texted to Mr Keaveney. PQ is the commonly used shorthand for a parliamentary question.

Later that month he texted that he would "write up a very short briefing note of lines of questions for the Dail" in relation to the Siteserv sale.

It is clear Mr Keaveney went along with things for a time. The following month he texted Mr Brophy asking him to "recast" a PQ for him. Mr Brophy replied: "Will do."

In a later text Mr Keaveney wrote: "Tidy the PQ pls!"

Mr Brophy responded he was abroad but would do so on his return the following day. He later texted Mr Keaveney saying: "Sent you that and another bonus one earlier. Well worth asking the second one."

In one intriguing text exchange in April 2015, Mr Brophy asked Mr Keaveney to set up a meeting between Neil Ryan, a Department of Finance assistant secretary on the IBRC management team, and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin.

"Don't expose him or even mention who has sent this," the text read.

"He's keen to meet MM. Apparently became increasingly agitated as the week wore on but has no way of speaking out and, I gather is worried about what will happen his reputation. He's a very good banker and he will know EVERYTHING."

Mr Ryan admits meeting Mr Martin, but insists the meeting did not concern Mr O'Brien or any of his companies, including Siteserv.

The pressure brought to bear by Mr Keaveney and other politicians led to the Government establishing a commission of investigation into the Siteserv deal and others where IBRC sustained a capital loss above 10m.

It is not clear from the text messages whether Mr Brophy was acting on his own initiative or at the prompting of a client.

Last December, Mr Keaveney swore an affidavit in which he stated his belief that Red Flag's client was entrepreneur Declan Ganley.

This has been denied by Mr Ganley, but the denial did not stop the High Court from joining him as a co-defendant in Mr O'Brien's lawsuit against Red Flag and a number of its executives.A senior judge has demanded a very full explanation from the HSE about why a psychiatrically ill man with a long history of paedophilia could leave a hospital to move freely within the community for at least four months after reports warned he is a danger to children.

The situation may have been going on even earlier than November 2017 when reports clearly warned of the sexual risk to children that the man represented, the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly said.

He was very concerned the HSE appeared to have been fully apprised since at least November of the danger the man posed to any child but "nothing was done"

"What is the point of having tribunals and commissions of inquiry into things that happened years ago if things like this are still happening today?" he asked. It was purely providential no child had suffered at the man's hands.

The judge said he was not saying the man would have criminal culpability as his mental capacity is such he could not form the necessary intent but that would be of small comfort to any victim.

The man, aged in his thirties and from a very chaotic and troubled family background, has scihzo-affective disorder and mild intellectual disability but the "alarming thing" is that he was involved for some years from 1997 in serious sexual assaults, the judge said.

In 1997, the man was formally cautioned, but not prosecuted, for committing a serious sexual assault against a female special needs child who, like him, was then also in foster care.

Between 1997-99, it was alleged the man claimed to have multiple sexual acts with children between the ages of three and six before he was taken into care.

The man was referred to the Grenada Institute which recommended he needed structured living and supervision, the judge noted.

The judge said he was so alarmed when he first learned last Thursday, as a result of being provided by the HSE with sworn statements and reports for the man in the context of an intended application to have him made a ward of court, he made orders for the mans overnight detention in the psychiatric hospital where he has, since 2014, been a voluntary patient.

On Friday, when the matter returned to court, the judge continued the orders until the matter returns before him next month.

The judge said the orders, which mean the man must remain in the hospital, is not permitted any outings and can be arrested by gardai and returned if he leaves the hospital, were in the mans best interests and also in the public interest, he said.

He stressed he wanted a very full and comprehensive explanation, with no ifs or buts from the HSE as to how this situation had arisen.

He was particularly concerned on being told on Friday by a solicitor appointed to represent the mans interests the solicitor met the man last month in the context of a possible application for wardship. This came as a complete surprise because the HSE had not come into court concerning the wardship application until this week, he said.

Earlier, Barry ODonnell SC, for the HSE, said the man has "a stark history", has been a voluntary patient in the hospital since 2014, is very settled there and there had been no difficulties involving him.

The HSE wanted to regularise the situation with a view to ensuring his supervision and further orders permitting exchange of reports between agencies concerning his history, he said. The judge said he would make those orders.

Mr ODonnell said there had been delays in proceeding to have the man made a ward of court and it had been intended to make that application earlier this year. His side were very anxious to have the situation regularised, he said.

Counsel said he had no explanation as of now for the delays but one would be provided.A taxi driver has been told by a judge to make a dent in repayments after he admitted unlawfully claiming almost 19,000 from the dole.

Father-of-two Mozahid Ahmmed, of Foxborough Road, Dublin, pleaded guilty to making false statements that he was unemployed.

Judge John Brennan heard at Dublin District Court that he made two false declarations to the social welfare authorities in 2015 and 2016.

The total fraud was 18,818.

However, he was paying the money back at a rate of 200 a month and his barrister said he intended to increase the amount to 300.

It would take six years to repay the full amount at the current rate, Judge Brennan was told.

Adjourning sentencing, Judge Brennan said Ahmmed would have to find some money to make a dent into the amount owed.

In the district court the offence can result in a fine of up to 2,500 and a six-month sentence, in addition to repaying the money.

The authorities also have a mechanism to continue to recoup money even after a case has been finalised.A WOMAN who was left with life-changing injuries after she was brutally raped and assaulted has resolved to "close the door" on the attack.

Anthony Cassidy (34) pleaded guilty to rape and assault causing serious harm to the woman on June 25, 2017.

The court heard how he attacked his victim as she was walking to a shop in the early hours of the morning in Co Carlow.

The assault was so severe that the woman, aged in her 50s, was treated in an intensive care unit for almost two months and has been left with life-changing injuries. The court heard the victim has no memory of the attack.

The Central Criminal Court yesterday heard how Cassidy, a father-of-one of Tinryland, Carlow, followed the victim before subjecting her to a violent assault. During the course of the 35-minute ordeal, Cassidy seriously assaulted the woman and raped her. CCTV footage played in court showed a brief clip of Cassidy carrying his victim over his shoulders at 4.16am.

The victim was left to die and was only discovered some 12 hours later by a man living on the grounds where the attack occurred.

In a victim impact statement read out by her daughter in court, the woman described how she was now completely dependent on her family for assistance. She described the ongoing physical pain, immobility and night terrors.

Addressing Cassidy at the end of her statement yesterday, the woman said: "Your act of pure evil stole so much for me but after today I am closing the door on this."

The woman's daughter told the court that the first time she heard her mother whispering her name following the attack was "like winning the lotto a thousand times over".

The victim's daughter later told the Irish Independent how her mother has been left serving a life sentence and that Cassidy should never be released.

"Whatever time he does, he'll have done it but the only one with the life sentence is mammy.

"If I had my way I'd lock him up and throw away the key and never let him see the light of day again, but that's never going to happen," she said.

Giving evidence, Garda Sylvia Ryan said that the victim was discovered semi-naked and unconscious with visible injuries and bruising. She was rushed to St Luke's General Hospital, Kilkenny, and was only discharged home on October 24 last.

Gda Ryan said that CCTV footage was obtained from 35 different premises around Carlow Town, and that Cassidy was nominated as a suspect.

A warrant was obtained by officers and his home was searched.

A number of items were seized for forensic examination, and the victim's DNA was recovered on a jacket belonging to Cassidy.

Cassidy was arrested and interviewed on eight occasions. He later went on to make certain admissions, including that he punched the victim, but denied raping her.

Last December, he pleaded guilty to rape and section 4 assault in relation to the incident. The court heard that Cassidy has 29 previous convictions in Ireland, and a further five in the UK. This includes a sexual offence for enlisting the services of a prostitute in April 2017.

Justice Patrick McCarthy adjourned the sentencing hearing to April 23. The court heard that the DPP deemed the offences to be on the "exceptional upper level" scale of seriousness, and that it warranted a sentence above 12 years and up to life in prison.TURKISH police are investigating reports that a gunman approached a property where a member of the Hutch family was staying.

John Hutch Sr - a brother of Gerry 'the Monk' Hutch - is understood to have jumped over a balcony as he fled the property last night.

He is now recovering in hospital with a suspected broken ankle.

Turkish police have been investigating the incident but no physical evidence of a gunman has been found to date.

He has been living in fear of his life due to the deadly Kinahan-Hutch feud, and has been spending time in Turkey.

In September 2016 an attempt on his life saw shots fired at his Dublin home as children played nearby.

John Sr is not believed to be directly involved in the feud but his life is under threat due to his family connections.

The deadly feud is believed to have claimed 14 lives to date.

John's son Gareth was killed in May 2016 and another son Jonathan was the intended target of a hit in Spain in August of the same year in which an innocent Dublin father, Trevor O'Neill, was killed in a case of mistaken identity.



Guwahati, March 24 : Ahead of panchayat polls in Assam and 2019 general election, BJP President Amit Shah today will meet around 26,000 booth presidents in the state and to prepare the road map for the elections.





Shah will take stock of the partys preparations for the upcoming panchayat polls, which have become a crucial factor ahead of the Lok Sabha polls next year.





With an aim to make Congress Mukt panchayat bodies ahead of the parliamentary election, Amit Shah will address a meeting at around 11 am in Guwahati in presence of around 26,000 booth presidents, 303 mandal presidents, 38 district presidents.





During his day long visit, BJP president will also hold a meeting with the MPs and MLAs of the state at Administrative Staff College in Guwahati.





Later, Shah will hold another meeting with the partys state officer bearers, morcha presidents, spokespersons, districts presidents.



A man is due in court in connection with a major drug seizure in Dublin.

The man was arrested on Thursday, March 22 and will appear before the Criminal Court of Justice this afternoon.

A 26-year-old male was also arrested on Thursday. He appeared before court on Friday.

The two were arrested as part of along of ongoing investigations being conducted by the Garda National Drugs & Organised Crime Bureau andathe Special Crime Task Force targeting serious and organised criminal activity in the Dublin region.

During the operation, gardai intercepted two cars in Ronanstown, Dublin at around 7.30pm on Thursday.

A quantity of cocaine was recovered at the scene and the two men were arrested and detained under drug trafficking legislation at Ronanstown Garda Station.

Follow up search operations took place in the Tallaght and Clondalkin areas resulting in the seizure of significant quantities of cocaine, cannabis, ketamine and drug trafficking paraphernalia.

During this operation controlled drugs with an estimated street value in excess of 1.4 million were seized.A group of people wait for an RNLI Inshore RIB to Rescue them from a sand spit off Sandymount, after they became trapped by the incoming tide. Picture: Frank Mc Grath 24/3/18

An RNLI inshore crew pictured as they guide a group of 6 people away from the sand spit off Sandymount, after they became trapped by the incoming tide. Picture: Frank Mc Grath 24/3/18

A group of teenagers had to be rescued by Dun Laoghaire RNLI's volunteer lifeboat crew after they got into difficulty when walking on Sandymount Strand this afternoon.

The alarm was raised shortly after 2pm today when one of the teenagers called the Irish Coast Guard.

The Irish Coast Rescue 116 helicopter from Dublin was tasked alongside the Dun Laoghaire RNLI crew.

The volunteer crew, helmed by Mark McGibney with crew member Adam O'Sullivan, launched their inshore lifeboat in four minutes. They made their way to the scene, some four nautical miles from the station.

Expand Close A group of people wait for an RNLI Inshore RIB to Rescue them from a sand spit off Sandymount, after they became trapped by the incoming tide. Picture: Frank Mc Grath 24/3/18 / Facebook

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Whatsapp A group of people wait for an RNLI Inshore RIB to Rescue them from a sand spit off Sandymount, after they became trapped by the incoming tide. Picture: Frank Mc Grath 24/3/18

They came across the group of seven teenagers, who they described as "dry, safe and well". They had become stuck on a sandbank surrounded by water when caught out by an incoming tide.

The lifeboat crew walked the lifeboat into the shallow area and transferred the teenagers to the boat, while the helicopter hovered over.

The lifeboat was then brought into deeper water before the engine was started and it made its way back to the lifeboat station escorted by the helicopter overhead.

Speaking following the call out, Dun Laoghaire Helm Mark McGibney praised the teens for raising the alarm.

"We would like to commend the group for raising the alarm when they got into trouble, that was the right thing to do," he said.

"As the weather picks up and as we begin the Easter holidays, we would remind everyone to enjoy themselves but to always respect the water.

"Check the weather conditions and tide times before planning your activity and if you do get into difficulty dial 999 or 112 and ask for the Coast Guard.Major reforms to the way judges are appointed have been described as a "complete dog's dinner" by the Attorney General.

In a rare public statement, Seamus Woulfe suggested the Judicial Appointments Bill has been seriously undermined by Opposition TDs.

It is the pet project of Transport Minister Shane Ross, who has threatened to block the selection of new judges unless the bill is prioritised.

The legislation seeks to significantly reduce the political and legal influence over appointments by setting up a body with a non-legal majority and a non-legal chairperson.

Mr Woulfe, who is the Government's legal adviser, said: "A whole myriad of amendments they made now make the bill a complete dog's dinner at the moment.

"A number of the amendments were contradictory and inconsistent, and unconstitutional. Therefore that makes it a challenge to get the bill to report stage very soon."

His comments at an Association of European Journalists lunch will spark alarm in Government and Opposition.

Earlier this week, there were frank exchanges at Cabinet when Mr Ross expressed strong reservations about the appointment of three new judges.

The minister warned that he will not allow further promotions unless he sees progress on getting the bill passed.

Mr Woulfe said: "I'm sure under our new politics a deal will be done involving various Government ministers and Opposition parties.

"We await with interest over the next few days how that will pan out."Taoiseach Leo Varadkar arrives for an EU summit at the Europa building in Brussels on Thursday, March 22, 2018. Leaders from the 28 European Union nations meet for a two-day summit to assess the state of Brexit negotiations, the prospect of a trade war with the United States and how to react to Russia following to the nerve agent attack in Britain. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

RUSSIA is preparing for instant retaliation when Taoiseach Leo Varadkar orders the expulsion of diplomats in the coming days.

There was shock among Russian representatives in Ireland after the Government threatened action on the back of a nerve agent attack in the UK.

Sources say that any move to impose sanctions on officials here will be viewed as the beginning of a diplomatic war.

The Irish Independent has learned that Tanaiste Simon Coveney has put together a group, including senior officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs, An Garda Siochana and the Defence Forces, to compile an options paper.

It will be delivered to the Taoiseach within the next 48 hours at which stage he seems certain to expel a number of Russian diplomats.

Russias Ambassador to Ireland Yurg Filatov said any attempt to eject officials would be viewed as an unfriendly action.

He implied that British Prime Minister Theresa May is manipulating the Taoiseach and other EU leaders into fighting someone elses unjust war.

Mr Varadkar led the charge for a Europe-wide crackdown on the Kremlin during a private EU Council meeting in Brussels over the past two days.

Moscow continues to deny it is behind an attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury on March 4.

But following consultations with the UK and German governments, Ireland is now formally apportioning blame for the first known offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War II to Russia.

Sources say Mr Varadkar, along with French President Emmanuel Macron, was to the forefront of a decision to take additional punitive measures against Russia.

Mr Macron called the attack unprecedented and said Europe must respond: It is an aggression against the security and sovereignty of an ally that is today a member of the European Union. It demands a reaction. This is clear.

Mr Varadkar told reporters in Brussels that the only plausible explanation for the poisoning of Mr Skripal points to Russian involvement.

He confirmed individual action against suspected Russian agents operating in Ireland will be taken in the coming days.

Sources say the review under way will involve high-level intelligence from An Garda Siochana, which has already warned officials of a growing Russian presence in Ireland.

In particular, there is concern Russia is interested in targeting the large tech companies based in Ireland in order to obtain valuable data.

Already Russia is planning a major expansion of its embassy in south Dublin where it has 17 accredited diplomats. Ireland has only in the region of five diplomats based in Moscow.

Mr Filatov said: The Irish authorities are within their rights to make their own decisions. My wish would be that one would take the interests of Irish people and Russian people into account, and the best interests of Irish/Russian relationships.

Irish trade with Russia has plummeted since a tit-for-tat sanctions war began four years ago as a result of Russian military action in the Crimea.

But the ambassador said the two countries were developing on a very positive and constructive note.

I can only hope that the Irish Government will use the best of the Irish common sense.Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster has accused Sinn Fein of trying to render Northern Ireland dysfunctional.

Addressing party faithful at the DUP's spring conference in Ballymena, Mrs Foster said her erstwhile partners in devolved government were actively seeking to sow division in the region.

Firing the latest broadside in an increasingly acrimonious war of words between the parties, Mrs Foster said the prospects of an imminent return to powersharing were not promising.

In the ongoing absence of devolution, she reiterated her party's support for a form of shadow Assembly that would give locally elected politicians a role in scrutinising decisions taken in Westminster.

Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley is currently examining the half-way house proposal as a potential means to govern the region going forward.

Citing the recent 410 million injection of funds into the region through the DUP's confidence and supply deal with the Tories in Westminster, Mrs Foster insisted her party continued to deliver for the region, while claiming Sinn Fein offered nothing constructive.

"People are starting to see that not only were the naysayers who doubted that the confidence and supply money was real very, very wrong but that the DUP deliver for everyone in every part of Northern Ireland," the DUP leader said.

"What are Sinn Fein delivering for our people? The answer is short and simple - absolutely nothing.

"Sorry, that isn't entirely fair. Sinn Fein are at least trying to deliver. They are trying to deliver division and dysfunction. But we are not going to allow them to hold Northern Ireland to ransom any longer.

"The best way, by far, to deliver for everyone in Northern Ireland, is through sharing power in a restored Assembly at Stormont.

"This party is committed to devolution. We want to see power in the hands of locally elected and locally accountable ministers.

"But in the absence of devolution, the Democratic Unionist Party is finding other ways to deliver for Northern Ireland."

Powersharing imploded last January amid a row over a botched green energy scheme. The rift subsequently widened to take in disputes over issues such as the Irish language, same-sex marriage and how to handle the legacy of the Troubles.

Sinn Fein has claimed Mrs Foster agreed a draft deal to resurrect powersharing last month before pulling the plug in the face of an internal revolt among party members angry at the prospect of concessions on the thorny issue of the Irish language.

It is an allegation Mrs Foster has strenuously denied.

Delivering the leader's address at the conference at the Tullyglass Hotel, Mrs Foster said: "Whether it's health or education or jobs or infrastructure, the DUP is prioritising what is important to people of all persuasions in Northern Ireland.

"What are Sinn Fein prioritising? They're putting their own narrow political interest first.

"Ministerial decisions being made by the Secretary of State is in no way our preferred outcome. But it is far better than no decisions being taken at all.

"We will continue to work closely with Karen Bradley as she makes good on her commitment to do whatever is necessary to fulfil Her Majesty's Government's responsibilities to the people of Northern Ireland including working with her on ways for the Assembly that the people elected last year to have an input.

"We must support and encourage the Secretary of State to take those necessary decisions because, as much as we want to see the Assembly and Executive up and running again, let's face it, the prospects of a return of devolution anytime soon doesn't look promising."

Mrs Foster also said the DUP needed more than ideology if it was to achieve its overarching aim of preserving the union with Great Britain.

"I truly believe that if we are to achieve our overarching aim of preserving the Union then we have to concentrate on our ideas and not our ideology and focus on defying our opponents by making Northern Ireland work for everyone," she said.

"Having secured an historic election victory (in last year's general election) we cannot fall into the trap of complacency.

"We must build on that triumph and the best way to do that is to persuade people that they should vote for the DUP not just because we are the biggest party. Or because we are best placed to beat Sinn Fein. But because we have the best ideas."

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said a shadow Assembly would represent a retreat from powersharing.

Addressing an event in London examining a united Ireland, the party president said: "The way forward in the north is through real and genuine powersharing, the delivery of citizens' rights and equal partnership government.

"Any proposed shadow Assembly would mark a retreat from powersharing and the leadership needed to restore the Good Friday Agreement framework. It would be an unacceptable step backwards, lacking credibility.

"The onus is now on the two governments to act and through their joint stewardship to remove the obstacles to restoring the political institutions.

"Both governments must now convene the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference to find a way to implement outstanding agreements and to fully respect the rights of citizens to marriage equality, to language rights and the funding of legacy inquests.

"Direct rule is not an option. It was a failure in the past and would be so again.

"It's time to face the real challenge to deliver citizens' rights and to re-establish the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement."Last year parents spent an average of 845 on their child's First Holy Communion and the cost puts a massive strain on families who are struggling financially.

One Dublin community is working together to ease the burden for cash-strapped parents with a pop up shop offering new and pristine second hand Communion outfits for boys and girls for no cost, or a small donation.

Theresa Kelly, from Raheny, came up with the idea after she overheard two young women chatting about the pressure of finding the finances to fund their children's big day.

"I overheard a conversation between two young girls saying they had Communions coming up and saying, 'Well I'll have to get a loan of 1000'," she explains. "I thought they were only kids themselves and I went home and it was playing on my mind."

Theresa approached several friends from the area about the possibility of setting up a shop and asking for donations and they all came on board to help.

"It snowballed and people started donating brand new dresses to us," she says.

"The Raheny Inn bought 23 brand new dresses. Dermot McHugh, who owns the local Centra, gave me the shop free of charge and told me to make it our own. Hat Society in Dundrum donated mothers' outfits from their boutique and they're coming over later with accessories. The girls in the Bus Stop Shop Kilmore dry cleaners dry cleaned every suit that came into us free of charge.

"The businesses have been amazing and the people in Edenmore have been overwhelmingly generous."

The shop has boys and girls' Communion outfits as well as outfits for other family members and was open on Friday, as well as today, and tomorrow until 6pm, although Theresa is hoping to get an extension for next week too to cater for demand.

"There is no charge for the clothes for people who need them or if you can afford a donation all donations will go to ICHH (Inner City Helping Homeless)," she says.

"We don't ask for money but the tin is on the counter. It's like a regular shop and the children have no idea it's any different. We send the children in to get changed and tell them Mammy will pay the bill. They get their outfit in a suit bag, same as any normal shop."

The response from the children has been "heartwarming", she says.

"There was a little girl in this morning and she was absolutely sobbing and she came and kissed every one of us," says Theresa. "And there was another couple and the husband couldn't get over it. He was in tears. It was just overwhelming to be honest with you. So far the kids have been skipping out of the shop full of the joys of spring."

Anyone interested in visiting the shop will find it in Edenmore Shopping Centre in Raheny, Dublin 5. For those who would rather a more private visit, Theresa is willing to meet them later in the evening until 8pm and see them privately. People can send her a PM on her Facebook page (above).

"Any outfits which are not taken from the shop will be donated to the women who make little dresses and outfits for babies born sleeping so everybody is a winner," she adds.



Though the floor test of the newly elected Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is approved in the parliament with overwhelming majority, it is likely that the unconsecrated relations wouldnt longer thanks to the conditions forwarded by some political parties for lucrative ministers. The sign of splitting-up the recently forged dramatic relations between the leftist allies and the Madhes based parties particularly with the Federal Socialist Forum Nepal (FSFN) have already surfaced. The leftist government led by CPN UML Chairman Oli has bagged two-thirds majority in the countrys history after some fringe parties including the Mahdes based parties changed their political course in a dramatic way. In the 275 seat Federal Parliament, 268 votes were cast and Oli had received 208 votes, repeating the fate of first elected Prime Minister in 2015 B.S. The backing of two third majorities to the leftist government is not only the new coincidence after the restoration of democracy in 1990 but also a historic achievement to the communist parties for being proficient to run the government with overwhelming support in the parliament. We are also cheered with extent of political understanding among some parties and also do an expectation that the country would get stable government for at least five years.





It seem that the Madhes based parties particularly FSFN- which had agreed first to vote in favor of Oli in condition of getting at least three ministries, has now reached on the stage of not joining in the government, thanks to the differences in the power sharing deal. As FSFNs chairman Upendra Yadav was not appointed as the Foreign Minister, the leaders of his party have begun to pronounce that they would not join in the government but launch strike in Terai and Madhes repeating the fate of previous saga. The support of the Madhes based parties to the Oli led leftist government was itself a surprising incidence as PM Oli and the Madhes based parties used to share hostile relations in the past where Madhes based parties also used to depict him as an anti-Madhesi leader. The incident has approved the avowal of Karl Marx, the ideological legend of many communist parties including the Prime Minister KP Sharma Olis own party- CPN UML. As Marx had said while throwing a salvo of satire to the Napoleon III that the first time tragedy would be a farce in the second time, Prime Minister Oli has proved the statement by taking into confidence to the Madhes based parties to support the government even though both the side had the history of antagonistic relationship.



Ryanair has upped its standard seat selection charges from 2 to 4 per flight.

Other changes to its optional fees this month have seen extra legroom seats jump from 11 to 15 per flight, and front seats (Rows 2-5) to 13.01.

Like all businesses, our fees can change - unlike our fares, which keep coming down," the airline told Independent.ie Travel.

Ryanair's average fares have fallen to 32 per customer, according to its latest quarterly results, though profits continue to soar.

Almost 50pc of passengers pay for seat selection, it says.

The move to double entry-level seat reservation fees comes after multiple passengers have claimed on social media that the airline has deliberately been splitting up groups of individuals who refuse to pay for seat selection.

@Ryanair @TomWitherow where is our other 'random' allocated seat?there are all these free rows around..row 33!!To sit together 28 joke! pic.twitter.com/fSfZWPyYs6  niki spiller (@sleepinbooti) July 3, 2017

Ryanair denies this, however, asserting that unpaid seat allocation is "random" and that its algorithim for assigning unreserved seats has not changed.

"The seats algorithm allocates all of the middle seats and some window and aisle seats to passengers who choose free random seats," Robin Kiely, the airline's head of Communications, has told Independent.ie Travel.

"The algorithm changes on each flight and each route by reference to demands for reserved seats," he explained.

"When all free random seats have been taken up by passengers at check-in, the system releases more aisle and window seats from the allocation for reserved seat customers to free random seat customers. Its your choice."

Ryanair also adds that its family seating policy requires families (with children under 12) to sit together, "with one adult taking a reserved seat for just 4, and the children are given free of charge reserved seats.

Read more:The fascinating world where big business, lobbyists, politicians and the media intersect was aired over two days in the High Court last week, illuminating a web of texts, clandestine 'non-meetings' and secret briefings that led to front-page stories and headlines on television and radio news bulletins.

The communications tycoon Denis O'Brien is now seeking to "join" the Galway-based businessman and political activist Declan Ganley to ongoing litigation against the public relations/lobbying firm Red Flag Consulting and its principals and staff members, Karl Brophy, Seamus Conboy, Gavin O'Reilly, Brid Murphy and Kevin Hiney, claiming they prepared a dossier defaming him and damaging his reputation.

At the centre of this web of intrigue is former Labour Party TD for Galway East Colm Keaveney, who subsequently switched to Fianna Fail, lost his seat at the last election and was later adjudged bankrupt.

"I believe and am advised that it is clear from the evidence adduced that the defendants [Red Flag] were involved in a campaign to brief me as a politician as well as journalists and others with material adverse to the plaintiff [Denis O'Brien] and that the dossier was part of a wider exercise to undermine the plaintiff," Keaveney claims in an affidavit opened during the two days of proceedings.

He goes on to say that it is his belief "that the person who engaged the defendants (Red Flag) to prepare the dossier (the client) is Mr Declan Ganley".

Colm Keaveney said he believes he came to the attention of Karl Brophy, of Red Flag Consulting, after he contributed to The Late Debate on RTE Radio 1 in April 2015 on the issue of the acquisition by Denis O'Brien of Siteserv, the utility company which he bought from IBRC (the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation formerly known as Anglo Irish Bank) which was later awarded the contract to install water meters nationwide.

Expand Close Colm Keaveney / Facebook

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Whatsapp Colm Keaveney

"I was of the view that an inquiry should be conducted into its sale... Mr Brophy sought to play a very active role in trying to influence me as regards my position in relation to the plaintiff [Denis O'Brien] and as regards the content of my contributions to the Dail debates in relation to the plaintiff and/or Siteserv," he said in the affidavit opened during the case.

The result was a gripping series of texts, which Keaveney claims were sent to him "in many instances unprompted and unsolicited" by Karl Brophy in which "he sought to lobby me". On a word count basis, Mr Brophy sent texts consisting of 2,636 words as against 278 words in reply from Mr Keaveney.

"I do not seek to resile from my stated position in Dail Eireann," adds Mr Keaveney. "However, I can confirm to the court that Mr Brophy was active in seeking to undermine the plaintiff [Denis O'Brien] and seeks to do so in Dail Eireann." He adds: "I became increasingly uncomfortable with the manner in which Mr Brophy sought to include me in what to me became a clear agenda by him (and the defendants) to damage the plaintiff [Denis O'Brien] personally. I realised that the information provided by Mr Brophy and his input lacked objectivity and was unbalanced and extreme."

A flavour of the texts to Mr Keaveney, then a Fianna Fail TD - as set out in Mr Keaveney's affidavit - goes as follows:

Expand Close Declan Ganley / Facebook

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April 24/25, 2015: "Journalist very close to the story with access to the IBRC files tells me that DOB's loans were sold (to him) at a discount by the liquidator. Not a huge discount... Saving of 'low single digit millions' apparently. Still millions and still taxpayers' cash. Given to the richest man in Ireland. Journalist tells me at that point loans were in region of 300m (Denis had reduced them from (854m)."

May 1: "Can't really talk as home with the wife and you're pretty close to the top of her list of least favourite people which suits me fine as few would suspect me of speaking to the politician who touted her package after leaving Education around town! By the way, keep mentioning World Press Freedom Day, this Sunday. Journalists will love that."

May 2, 2015 following stories in Sunday newspapers: "Politically this is dynamite and you can win over journalists at the same time. No need to overcook it, keep feeding the lines. Use Dail where you need to."

May 4: "Also, if your man is looking for lines for his speech: What is it about a billionaire tax resident that Fine Gael find so attractive?"

Expand Close Gavin O'Reilly / Facebook

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Whatsapp Gavin O'Reilly

A solicitor with the firm Eames Solicitors (representing Mr O'Brien), Diarmuid O'Comhain, in a further affidavit opened last week said these briefings by Karl Brophy were an attempt "to induce journalists and politicians, including but not limited to Mr Keaveney, Tom Lyons of the Sunday Business Post and David Murphy of RTE to adopt positions adverse to the plaintiff [Denis O'Brien]".

These included a text on May 2, 2015: "Somebody needs to ask about the write down. More importantly you need to stitch Enda, Lowry, Phil, Noonan, etc in to doing deals with DOB (Denis O'Brien)."

Contact between Karl Brophy and Colm Keaveney and his parliamentary assistant Alan Hynes also related to parliamentary questions and amendments suggested by Red Flag Consulting to a speech Mr Keaveney planned to deliver in the Dail.

An email sent by Seamus Conboy to Mr Keaveney in relation to this assured him: "Today you've had not one but two of Dublin's finest spinners writing for you..."

The affidavits opened in court also include rebuttal of Mr Brophy's denial that he "encouraged and assisted Mr (Neil) Ryan to share information in breach of confidence".

Mr Ryan was assistant secretary in the Department of Finance. A text message dated April 26, 2015, to Mr Keaveney from Karl Brophy went as follows: "The Assistant Secretary who oversaw IBRC and banks in Dept of Finance and is still there wants a very confidential non-meeting with your leader to give him some information. Do you want to organise?"

There followed a series of texts between Mr Keaveney and Micheal Martin making arrangements to meet Mr Ryan.

"A plain reading of the text messages appears to suggest that Mr Brophy, having been told that Mr Ryan wanted to speak out, arranged a meeting to do so with Mr Micheal Martin TD and leader of Fianna Fail, the main opposition party. Not only did he arrange the meeting but he communicated considerable extra detail to Mr Keaveney about the matter that Mr Ryan wanted to speak to Mr Martin about," said Mr O'Comhain.

Michael Collins SC, counsel for Red Flag, told the court that an analysis of the texts showed that Mr Brophy had only introduced Mr Keaveney to Mr Ryan, but it was the former Fianna Fail TD (Keaveney) who set up the meeting with his party leader, Micheal Martin.

The court was told last week that Mr Ryan denied ever having had confidential banking information of Denis O'Brien's and says he did not disclose any such information to any member of the Dail or any public relations firm.

Mr O'Comhain's affidavit also refers to the role played by The Irish Times journalist Peter Murtagh in ongoing developments in the case.

Articles which appeared in The Irish Times on January 27, 2018, "which were clearly written with the benefit of the affidavits of Mr Alan Hynes [Mr Keaveney's former parliamentary assistant] and Mr [Seamus] Conboy" before these affidavits had been presented to the court.

"The plaintiff [Mr O'Brien] is also most concerned about the conduct of Mr Peter Murtagh and/or The Irish Times and the email he/it sent Mr Keaveney on the February 6, 2018... which states as follows: 'Hi Colm, wanna talk, this one won't go away and you can still be on the side of the angels. Best Peter.'"

Mr Keaveney said in his affidavit: "I am not seeking to involve myself in disputes involving others and I and my family resent the intrusion by some media into our personal affairs, the most recent of which has been an email I received from the journalist Mr Peter Murtagh of The Irish Times who has called to my home uninvited, and repeatedly doorstepped me for comment on these proceedings as he has been reporting extensively on them.

"I particularly resent this pressure and perceive this as an attempt by a journalist to get me to change my evidence, this is even more so when this email is from a journalist who ought to be providing an impartial account of these proceedings but who, quite clearly, is not and appears to have an agenda of his own."

Mr Murtagh reported on the court case for The Irish Times on Wednesday and Thursday last week.

During those proceedings, Mark Harty SC, acting for Declan Ganley, said there was no evidence his client was Red Flag's "client".

He also said that the terms of a "deal" in which Denis O'Brien withdrew legal proceedings for defamation against Colm Keaveney should be disclosed.

Michael Cush SC, representing Denis O'Brien, read parts of an affidavit lodged by Alan Hynes [Mr Keaveney's former personal assistant in the Dail] concerning a "settlement" between Mr O'Brien and Mr Keaveney: "Mr Keaveney had initially indicated to me that the settlement offer was just a discussion but that he was minded to take it. A rough figure of 250,000 to settle the proceedings was mentioned to me by Mr Keaveney... At one stage Mr Keaveney told me that his response to Denis O'Brien's representative had been 'just tell me what he needs and I'll say it'."

Mr Hynes's affidavit added that this "taints" any evidence given by Mr Keaveney in the proceedings.

However, Michael Collins SC, for Red Flag, pointed out that "Mr Keaveney doesn't say 'it's all rubbish, I never got paid 250,000 or any sum by Mr O'Brien'. And he doesn't say and 'that allegation that I said I'd say whatever Mr O'Brien wants me to say' - he doesn't deny that... which is truly extraordinary when you consider the lengths of the detail he's gone to deal with a far lesser point, namely as to whether Mr Hynes had an input into the speech that he made in Dail Eireann".

Mr Keaveney's affidavit stated: "The last communication I had with Alan Hynes was via text message on August 3, 2016, when he thanked me for providing a positive work reference to him... I last spoke with Mr Hynes in July 2016. I did not meet any legal representative of the plaintiff [Denis O'Brien] until September 2017 and therefore I am at a loss to understand how Mr Hynes can ever [say] that I disclosed matters to him about the resolution of the proceedings taken by Mr O'Brien against me. The timing is entirely inaccurate it being over a year apart."

He added that Mr Hynes had sent him a text message on July 16, 2016, about the case, stating that it's "a murky extraordinary business, like much else surrounding the Red Flag story".

Ms Justice Miriam O'Regan, who heard the application in the High Court in Dublin over two days, will decide at a later date whether Mr Ganley should be joined as a defendant and whether the proceedings against Red Flag can be amended to the effect that Red Flag had encouraged an official of the Department of Finance, Neil Ryan, who was seconded to IBRC, to breach the Official Secrets Act by disclosing confidential information to the leader of Fianna Fail, Micheal Martin, regarding Denis O'Brien's banking affairs.Winners of the Louth Enterprise Awards Nicole Carey (Celtic Testing), Marita Collier (Drummond House Garlic) and Evelyn Garland (Simply Fit Food) pictured with Louths Head of Enterprise Thomas McEvoy and special guest speaker John Teeling. www.LocalEnterprise.ie/Louth. Photo: Jenny Matthews.

Local Enterprise Week Louth 2018 was topped off with a superb showcase event that celebrated excellence across generations. The 'Inspiring Enterprise' lunch event was held in An Tain Theatre in Dundalk's Town Hall and hosted by Local Enterprise Office Louth.

Speaking at the event, Head of Enterprise in Louth Thomas McEvoy declared 'We celebrated innovation, entrepreneurship and endurance at the National Enterprise Awards finals for Louth on 9th March. Our guest speaker John Teeling, a celebrated entrepreneur over many decades, shared his wisdom. He talked of vision, determination, dealing with uncertainty, accessing resources and most importantly, the grit needed to survive when things get tough.'

By contrast, John Teeling shared the stage with some of Louth's emerging entrepreneurs, each of whom scooped a Louth Enterprise Award. Indeed, with three female entrepreneurs taking the three awards, MC Noel Davidson declared that Louth was extending International Women's Day an extra 24 hours.

Marita Collier of Drummond House Garlic in Baltray took home the Innovation Award. Drummond House are Ireland's first and largest commercial growers of Irish Premium Asparagus, Heritage Garlic, Elephant Garlic and Garlic Scapes. Drummond House were praised for creating new products and market demand for a garlic, a product with a previously limited range.

Simply Fit Food's Evelyn Garland collected the Start-Up award. This fast-growing enterprise, operating from the North East Food Hub in Ardee, provides healthy, nutritious ready meals to health conscious, time poor consumers all over the country. This is one in a series of awards the company have collected recently.

Meanwhile, Nicole Carey of Celtic Testing in Dundalk was the recipient of the Best Established Business Award. Celtic Testing will now go forward to represent Louth in the National Enterprise Awards final in the Mansion House Dublin in May. The company was set up to allow growing companies to mitigate risk on their technology investments through technically skilled and experienced consultants. Employing 9 people, and planning to grow to 25 staff in the coming year, the company is renowned for delivering excellence to Irish and international clients.

The recent passing of legendary Louth entrepreneur and visionary Dr. Pearse Lyons of Alltech was also marked with a moment of reflection and a round of applause for all his achievements.

Thomas concluded 'While we might celebrate Local Enterprise Week in March, the team in Local Enterprise Office Louth are here to support enterprise all year round. We provide a range of training, supports, mentoring and, in some cases, grant aid to businesses here in Co. Louth.

Whatever stage your business is at, check out www.LocalEnterprise.ie/Louth or call us on 1890 202 303.

'We're here to help!', concluded Thomas McEvoy.Five students from St. Louis secondary school, Dundalk were high commended for their project at the PExpo at DCU last week.

Sarah Lawrence, Erin Hogan Curtis, Ellie Sullivan, Clara Casey and Nicole Ellis presented their project to judges, teachers and students alike.

Their project, in the Wellbeing category, gave detailed analysis of the work they have been part of since beginning first year last September. Their project focused on addressing 'How healthy and fit we are and what can we do to improve this?'

All students in first year answered an extensive survey and took part in fitness testing. Results indicated that while the majority of students thought they were fit and healthy, this actually was not the case. A large percentage of the year group took less than the government recommendation of 60 minutes daily physical activity and were of a 'below average to poor' level of fitness. Nutritional investigation found similar findings with the majority of first year consuming less than the recommended five-seven portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but conversely consuming too many high sugar foods, averaging three treats a day such as chocolate bars, crisps and fizzy drinks.

As a result of findings, all first year students undertook a six week programme where students learned about eating healthily and the benefits of regular exercise.

Each week of the six week programme, a different aspect became the focus. Examples included swapping unhealthy treats for healthier alternatives and performing exercises to adverts while watching TV.

Students, parents, siblings and even grandparents were all found to have benefited from the work with only positive feedback reported.

Other interventions as part of the project saw students counting their steps daily using pedometers and tracking their fitness through two further fitness tests. With greater understanding came greater knowledge and a greater level of awareness on how motivation can affect lifestyle choices. Students became so engaged with the project they participated in a further challenge at school to reduce the number of unhealthy treats they consumed in one week. First year students were encouraged to stop bringing unhealthy food into school and to reduce their consumption of unhealthy treats to a maximum of three in a seven day period. The challenge was so popular it was extended to the rest of the school and is running in school until the Easter holidays.

In order for the group of five students to establish if their efforts had been successful, all students in first year undertook further fitness testing. Results were conclusive with (83%) first year students more active and consequently fitter.A road accident which claimed three lives has been recalled at Drogheda district court, when a 32-year-old man appeared on a charge in relation to the fatalities.

Before Judge Coughlan was Jason Rowntree, Plantation House, Kingscourt, Co. Cavan, who is accused of dangerous driving causing the deaths of Margaret McGonagle (69), her daughter Mairead O'Neill Mundy (37) and their friend Rachel Cassidy Battles (39).

All were travelling home to Co. Donegal from Dublin Airport when the collision occurred at Aclint, Ardee on 21 July 2017.

Sgt Jim McCumiskey, Ardee, gave evidence of arresting the defendant at 9am on Friday last, and charging him at 9.18am. Mr Rowntree made no reply when charged.

The DPP has directed the matter proceed by trial on indictment, and there was no objection to bail on certain conditions.

The accused lodged 500 cash and must reside at his home address and provide a mobile phone number to gardai.

He was then remanded on bail to Ardee district court on 14 May next for a book of evidence.

He was granted legal aid.The Dundalk Chamber of Commerce recently held a briefing session with Newry Chamber on the Project Ireland 2040 development plan and its potential for the cross-border region.

Pat McCormick, the incoming President and Paddy Malone PRO Dundalk Chamber met with the Board of Newry Chamber for the briefing

Paddy explained that the plan had been radically altered by the inclusion of the M1 corridor as the major growth area in the Midland East Region. (Dublin and surrounding counties)

'The area from Drogheda to Dundalk would not have restrictions on growth as will apply in the rest of the region. Therefore we are ranked alongside the cities,' said Paddy.

'The principal point to note was that the plan now saw the M1 corridor as extending into Newry. Planning would not now be up to the Border but would recognise and work with the Local Authorities in the North and specifically Newry Mourne and Down.'

'We emphasised the fact that the only submissions made from Louth that covered the whole county were Louth CC and Dundalk Chamber. We had gone further in including Newry.

It was agreed to establish a joint working party to develop recommendations on a project by project basis. Newry Chamber is also going to ask their Local Authority to seek observer status at the Regional Assembly. Pat and Paddy both emphasised that while we were at the top table we would have to fight for our fair share.

A number of specific projects were identified and it was agreed that we would meet again shortly. Major concerns were expressed over Brexit and the potential of a 'hard border.'

'Pat McCormick explained the advantages the region has as a whole. Newry were particularly interested in what he had to say about DKIT, where Pat works,' said Paddy

'We in Dundalk are also working with Drogheda and it is hoped that all three will work together for the sake of the region.'Various Search and Rescue Agencies carry wreaths alongside family members led by piper Kian Moore to the LE Niamh from the shore at Blacksod lighthouse during the Memorial Mass for the crew of Rescue 116

Members of the Naval Service transfer wreaths to the LE Niamh from the shore in a RIB. They were then transported to Blackrock lighthouse completing the ceremony following the Memorial service of the crew of Rescue 116 at Blacksod lighthouse

The family of Blackrock coastguard pilot Captain Mark Duffy were among relatives who gathered for an emotional ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the tragic loss of Rescue helicopter 116.

The coastguard helicopter had been on a mission out at sea near Blackrock Island, off the coast of Co Mayo, when it crashed on March 14th 2017.

Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, the commander of the flight, was pulled from the sea in the hours after the crash and never regained consciousness, while the body of co-pilot Captain Mark Duffy, from Louth was taken from the cockpit twelve days later by Navy divers.

The bodies of winchmen Paul Ormsby and Ciaran Smith were never recovered despite weeks of intensive seabed, surface and shore searches.

A touching vigil held for the brave crew at Blacksod helipad included lighting five emergency flares in memory of the Rescue 116 crew. The Rescue 116 helicopter had been due to land to refuel at Blacksod when it crashed en route in the early hours of March 14th.

Representatives of five agencies - the Irish Coast Guard, Naval Service, RNLI, Garda and Irish Lights - bore the wreaths to the pier, accompanied by piper Kian Moore, playing Dawning of the Day.

The floral tributes were taken to the Naval Service ship LE Niamh at anchor in Blacksod Bay. They were then taken to Blackrock lighthouse.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar also spoke about the first anniversary of the tragedy during his trip last week to the United States for the St. Patrick's day celebrations.

He said: I am former Minister for Transport so I know the coast guard well, I met Captain Dara Fitzpatrick during my role as a Minister and I am conscious that there are families who are still grieving and families who do not yet have the remains of their loved ones.

'My thoughts are very much with them and the coastguard at this time."

Meanwhile the Air Accident Investigation Unit published its interim statement on the progress of its inquiry into the crash on Friday, just two days after the first anniversary.

The company that operates Coast Guard rescue helicopters was told to conduct a full review of its safety management systems by the agency.

The AAIU says it has concerns about the efficacy of the systems operated by CHC and has recommended that they be fully analysed.

The AAIU says it is examining all aspects of the fatal flight, including the initial tasking of the crew on the night in question.

A second recommendation has been made in relation to the data recorders used on the helicopter.

This comes after concerns that a software issue could cause some information regarding the flight to go unrecorded.

The AAIU says it has all the necessary information it needs regarding the R116 flight but that its investigations have revealed a possible glitch that needs to be addressed.

The report also recommends that the Minister for Transport should carry out a thorough review of all Search and Rescue aviation operations to ensure there are appropriate processes, resources and personnel in place.Representatives of Louth County Council, who were in New York for the St Patrick's Day period, met with senior executives from Tourism Ireland during their visit.

The United States is the second-largest market for tourism to the island of Ireland. 2017 was the fifth record-breaking year in a row for Irish tourism from the US, when we welcomed a record 1.83 American visitors.

Tourism Ireland recently launched a new strategy to continue to grow tourism from the United States, setting out ambitious targets which will see the island of Ireland welcome 2 million American visitors per year by 2021, representing growth of +23%; and will see revenue generated by American holidaymakers increase by +33%, to 1.37 billion per year.

Our important 'culturally curious' and 'social energiser' audiences are being targeted with distinctive vacation experiences, events and special offers tailored to their interests. Tourism Ireland is creating 'stand out' for the island of Ireland in the US, highlighting experiences like the Wild Atlantic Way, the Causeway Coastal Route and Ireland's Ancient East. Promotions aim to grow travel to the regions of Ireland, during the shoulder and off-peak seasons.

'We were delighted to meet with the representatives of Louth County Council and to have the opportunity to brief them about the extensive promotional programme we are undertaking in the United States this year,' said Alison Metcalfe, Tourism Ireland's Head of North America.

'St Patrick's Day traditionally marks the real start of the tourism season for us; our aim is to bring a smile to the faces of people everywhere and to convey the message that Ireland offers the warmest of welcomes and great fun, as well as wonderful scenery and heritage. We are using every opportunity to capitalise on Ireland's heightened profile this week; the saturation coverage about Ireland at this time of year - across the airwaves, in newspapers and digital media - is an invaluable boost for our overall tourism marketing drive in 2018.'A major illegal cigarette production plant, the first of its kind in the state, was uncovered in north Louth last week by a joint agency task force.

In the key operation on Thursday morning last, officers from the Revenue, An Garda Siochana, as part of the Joint Agency Task Force uncovered and shut down what was described as 'an illicit commercial cigarette factory' in Jenkinstown, County Louth.

A spokesman for the Revenue confirmed 'This is the first time a commercial illicit cigarette production plant was discovered in the State, when Revenue officers and the Armed Support Unit of An Garda Siochana entered the premises just before 8am.'

Eleven men, all from Eastern Europe and aged in their late 20s to late 50s, were later arrested by Gardai and brought to Dundalk Garda Station.

The Revenue spokesman also confirmed that officers found more than 40 tonnes of tobacco, all the pre-cursor components for the manufacture of cigarettes, and approximately 25 million cigarettes, illicitly branded 'Mayfair' which were ready for distribution.

'This was a sophisticated self-contained operation with machinery capable of producing 250,000 illicit cigarettes per hour and pre-processing, processing and packaging facilities,' said the spokesman.

He added that Illicit cigarettes that originated in this factory have previously been seized in both Ireland and the UK.

He added that investigations are ongoing, nationally and internationally.

The raid was carried out by what is known as the cross jurisdictional Joint Agency Task Force (JATF) .

This specialist task force comprises the Police Service of Northern Ireland, An Garda Siochana, HM Revenue & Customs, the Revenue Commissioners, The Home Office Immigration Enforcement, the Criminal Assets Bureau, and the National Crime Agency.

The spokesman explained: 'The JATF sees cross border cooperation across a range of policing areas and is of significant benefit to keeping our communities safe and secure, as well as continuing joint activity on issues which affect our communities such as rural policing and intelligence sharing.'

He added: 'The production of and trade in illicit cigarettes is illegal. The majority of people pay the right amount of tax and duty. If you know someone is evading tax or involved in smuggling, or the illegal cigarette trade, report it. contact Revenue's confidential Freephone 1800 295 295.'

Joint task force commended

The Minister for Justice and Equality, Charlie Flanagan commended the work of the joint task force in uncovering and dismantling the massive illegal cigarette production plant.

In a statement the Minister said 'I commend the excellent work of the Gardai and other State agencies in relation to the illegal cigarette production operation in Jenkinstown, Co Louth. A very substantial amount of cigarettes and tobacco have been seized.'

'This operation clearly demonstrates the benefits of the close working relationship between An Garda Siochana, Revenue, Customs officials and the PSNI in tackling this type of fraudulent activity. Highly trained Armed Support Units also attended the scene and I thank them for their ongoing efforts to disrupt all forms of serious crime.'

Meanwhile, Louth TD Fergus O'Dowd said: 'n extraordinary number of illegal cigarettes have been seized that would have possibly made it's way on to the Irish Market.'

The machinery found on site was capable of making upwards of 250,000 illegal cigarettes per hour, this is very worrying and I hope that this operation will curtail the influx of illegal tobacco in the North East and further a field.'

He added: 'We must continue to work on a cross border and inter agency basis to tackle this type of illegal activity.'Dundalk solicitor Sean T O'Reilly has recently returned from Kosovo where he was part of a group of Irish lawyers assisting the authorities there with improvements in their legal system.

But he also saw the stark reality of the post conflict state when a politician the Irish group was scheduled to meet was shot hours before the meeting.

Mr O'Reilly, who has been involved in similar work in Colombia, was in Kosovo after he was asked by Law Society of Ireland-sponsored charity, Irish Rule of Law International (IRLI) to take part in the project which reviews the training programmes for Kosovan lawyers and suggests improvements, particularly in relation to increasing the numbers of women and Serbian legal participants.

The Cooley-born solicitor explained that Kosovo, which was formerly part of Yugoslavia, is around the same size as Northern Ireland and is a secular Muslim state of around 1.3 million people.

Following the conflict which ravaged the Balkans in the 1990s, the Kosovans set up a new legal system, having resisted the Serbian-led legal system in the past.

Mr O'Reilly said: 'Part of our brief while we were there was to meet with law students, lecturers, lawyers in private practise and the governing body of the Kosovan Bar Association to hear about the issues they are facing.

'We were there to help strengthen the institutions, legal frameworks and training programmes and to actively encourage and implement ideas for the integration of women and Serbian lawyers into this relatively new legal system.

'Serbian lawyers have agreed to get back involved in the legal system and we were the first programme since the EU-brokered peace deal last year to actively engage with them'.

But the darker reality of life in Kosovo was starkly brought home to Mr O'Reilly and the Irish group when Serbian politician, Ljubomir Pantovic was shot dead outside his office just hours before a meeting with the delegation was due to take place.

The Irish lawyers wanted to go ahead with the planned trip, but the Kosovans advised against it.

Mr O'Reilly said: 'Kosovo needs a properly functioning legal system where everyone, no matter their ethnicity or means, has equal access to the courts and legal system. That may not be achievable, in totality, anywhere, but strengthening the training programmes and giving examples of legal systems and best practices and the continuing involvement of the IRLI, are all positive moves in the right direction.'Tipi Adventures near Rathdrum are launching their new Tentsile tree tents which, along with their chill-out hammocks, will allow customers to live among the trees.

TIPI Adventures Ireland not only gives campers a chance to sleep under the stars but will soon allow them to sleep a little closer to the stars as it launches its Tentsile tree tents.

The tree tents will allow visitors to camp in the woods suspended above the ground and, along with the chill out hammocks, will let them, literally, hang out in the wilderness.

Tipi Adventures Ireland is located on a beautiful, tranquil site located between Laragh and Rathdrum. Nestled in woodland, with the Avonmore flowing alongside it, the setting allows visitors to get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life and get back in touch with nature.

The site already boasts a range of Nordi tipis in a number of styles, sizes, diameters and materials.

'These are strong structures providing ample space and protection from the elements,' said Ed Ledesma of Tipi Adventures Ireland.

Tipi Adventures Ireland is perfectly geared towards individuals or families who rarely get the opportunity to go on a camping adventure because they don't have the correct equipment or who are put off by the thought of having to pack everything but the kitchen sink into the car.

In addition to its accommodation, visitors enjoy some of the optional workshops and activities which can be arranged for all age groups. These include canoeing, kayaking, hill walking, hiking, orienteering, rock climbing, archery, bow making, foraging along with basic scouting and bushcraft skills.

Guests can also catch their own fish and bring them back to camp where guides can show them a simple way of cooking it over a campfire.

To celebrate the launch of its Tentsile Tree Tents, Tipi Adventures Ireland is hosting a wild camping and outdoor event over the May bank holiday weekend.

'We're incredibly excited to welcome visitors to our beautiful riverside woodland site to show off our range of tentsile tree tents and tipis,' said Mr Ledesma. 'We've got an action-packed weekend planned - it's a chance for the whole family to enjoy being out in nature and create memories that will last a lifetime.'

Guests will be able to book in for the full two-day camping experience or just stay for one night. During their stay, they can take part in guided wilderness activities and open workshops in basic bushcraft (including fire and camp craft), outdoor living skills (including foraging and animal tracking), fly fishing, first aid and outdoor cooking. There will also be archery and axe throwing taking place.

On Sunday, May 5, there will be a Dutch oven cookout competition, followed by a barbecue feast in the woods.

For more information, visit tipiadventures.ieFloral Art with Luis Da Silva present A Flower Extravaganza demonstration at Whale Theatre on Tuesday, April 17 at 8 p.m.

Established in 2014, today, thanks to the passion of founders Adrienn Eber and Marta, Floral Art is a swirl of colours, scents, creativity and, of course, flowers.

Combining their different styles but shared dream of a floral shop that thinks outside the pot, Adrienn and Marta's Greystones shop has earned itself a reputation for creativity and innovation. Which may explain why Floral Art is always busy.

Not that this duo are about to rest on their plaudits, both believing in constantly improving their skill sets, regularly taking workshops with flower masters from around the world. Given that they're based in the beautiful seaside town of Greystones, inspiration is, of course, all around them, from the dramatic seashore to the tranquility of the surrounding mountains.

Providing beautiful flowers not only for visitors to the Floral Art shop but also for private and corporate clients, as well as weddings nationwide, They have joined forces with the renowned Luis de Silva, course former director at McQueen's Flower School in London, to present a Flower Extravaganza demonstration, combining modern floral designs with the traditional, the evening promises to be heaven scent for flower lovers everywhere.

Tickets are 25 or 20 concession and available at whaletheatre.ie.Despite their young age, three dancers from Rathnew aren't feeling the nerves as they prepare for their semi-final performance on Ireland's Got Talent this week.

Back in February, eight-year-old Freya Roche, nine-year-old Kate Goulding and eleven-year-old Mia Jameson were among the ten-person dance group Xquisite who wowed the audience with a fabulous dance routine that prompted judge Denise Van Outen to press the golden buzzer and put them straight through to the semi-finals.

While most of the group hail from Tallaght, Freya, Kate and Mia are all natives of Rathnew.

Emma Goulding, Kate's mother, said the girls have taken it all in their stride as they look forward to Thursday's live semi-final, which will be aired on TV3 at 8.30 p.m.

'They have been very busy rehearsing and the excitement has been unreal,' said Emma. 'They have been practising at Xquisite Dance Club and with choreographers from the show. They are really busy and I think they still can't believe they received the golden buzzer in the last round.

'They have made such a big impact and it has been such a wonderful experience for them,' said the proud mum.

'Usually the different partners would be competing against one another in competition so it's nice for them that they are all a team in Ireland's Got Talent.'

Over the past week, the Xquisite troupe has been visiting schools in Tallaght and Wicklow, including the Holy Rosary, Dominican College Wicklow, St Coen's NS and Colaiste Chill Mhantain.

'The support they have received is absolutely phenomenal. Big banners of support were put up in Wicklow town and Rathnew and that completely made their day. They aren't nervous about Thursday at all. Dancing is what they love and they are always dancing whenever they can,' said Emma.A Bray man living in Gorey intends to appeal convictions for public order offences as well as possession of a weapon at Deer Park last Christmas Day.

James Sargent (28), 24 Clonattin Close, Gorey, appeared last Thursday in Bray District Court. He denied the garda's version of events.

Garda Aisling Kelly told the court that she and her colleagues attended Deer Park in Bray on December 25, 2017 at 4 p.m., after hearing a report of reckless driving.

They saw Mr Sargent driving at high speed 'on the rims of his vehicle'. On further questioning, she told the court that there were three tyres on the vehicle.

Garda Kelly said that Mr Sargent stopped when pulled over. She said he then approached her aggressively saying 'what the f**k do you want?'

She said that she believed he was under the influence of an intoxicant, that his pupils were dilated and speech slurred.

There were no charges before the court for either driving related offences or driving intoxicated.

Garda Kelly said that Sargent was erratic and behaving in a threatening manner. She said he would not give his name or details.

She said that she saw a hatchet between the driver's seat and the gearbox and took possession of it.

She said he continued to act in an aggressive manner and she felt the need to restrain him with cuffs. She said both her colleagues assisted in restraining him. The garda said that Sargent threw a head-butt at one of the members. He was removed from the car, and then taken away by van.

The defendant said that he was not driving dangerously, that he was moving the car from his auntie's to his mother's due to the flat tyre.

Solicitor Michael O'Connor asked Garda Kelly if she had asked his client why he had the item She said she had not. 'If you had asked you would have found he had a legitimate reason,' he said.

The court heard that the hatchet belongs to Sargent's grandfather. His grandfather told the court that James often helps him fetch wood and the hatchet would commonly be in his grandson's car.

A neighbour told the court that James Sargent was taken from the car by gardai and cuffed. He told the court that he could hear from an upstairs window that Sargent was asking why he was being arrested. He described one garda leaning on his head, another standing on his ankles and one putting on the cuffs, while the defendant said 'get off me and I'll calm down'.

James Sargent told the court that his car had a flat and he was bringing it a short distance to his mother's house.

He said when he was pulled over he rolled down the window but admitted that he would not give his name to the gardai. 'I was being inconvenienced on Christmas Day,' he said.

He said that he was taken from the car and said that one of the gardai punched him in the back of the head. He said he asked why that was done. Sargent told the court that he was calm in the car and gardai were speaking to him casually at that stage.

He said he was only meant to be in Bray briefly and had been in Gorey with his family.

Mr O'Connor said that there was no evidence given that his client had been a danger to himself or others, with regard to the public intoxication charge. He said that there had been a lawful reason given for the possession of the hatchet.

Judge David Kennedy said that he did not accept Mr Sargent's story at all.

'His behaviour was atrocious and a breach of the peace,' he said. The court heard that the defendant had 19 previous convictions. Mr O'Connor said that his client has two children and is working full time.

He handed down three months for the breach of peace, four months for the possession of an offensive weapon, taking into consideration the public intoxication.

He set recognizance at 500 in the event of an appeal. The defendant was not entered into custody pending the appeal.Almost 400,000 will be invested in the arts in Wicklow this year by the Arts Council.

Announcing the funding last week, the Arts Council said the funding of 391,911 will see people in the county get to experience arts in new and exciting ways.

Outlining its plan to invest 68.4 million nationwide over the course of the year, the agency for developing the arts said the focus of this year's investment would be on creating opportunities for the public to experience large-scale work, as well as work of real artistic ambition, by supporting organisations through its two new funding programmes.

Arts Council Director Orlaith McBride said: '2018 is going to be an excellent year for people in Wicklow who enjoy the arts. Whether you enjoy dance, theatre, visual arts or festivals and events, whether you are young or old, you will experience great work that will lift your spirit.'

Among the organisations being funding in Wicklow are: Mermaid Arts Centre (125,000); Wicklow County Council Arts Office (54,300); Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely (45,000) and Bray Jazz Festival (31,000).

Other organisations around the county to receive funding include: Bray Literary Festival (4,000); Emily Gillmor Murphy (9,846); Katie Hennessy (2,180); Laura Kelly (2,250); Michael Nielsen (20,250); Redmond O'Toole (5,375); Sacred Spaces: Sacred Sounds (6,000); Aine Stapleton (49,710); West Wicklow Festival (2,000); Wicklow Screendance Laboratory (10,000) and Wordwell Ltd (25,000).

The Council said more than half of its total grant from Government would be invested through its new Strategic Funding programme, for established organisations operating at the highest level across all the areas of the arts. This includes funding for the first time at this level for several organisations.

In addition, there will be increased funding for particular work by artists, emerging companies and organisations through the new Arts Grants Funding programme

Individual artists will be supported through a range of schemes such as bursaries and the Next Generation award, the Council said, with funding too for the dozens of unique festivals that take place in communities across Ireland in 2018.Education Reporter

Mathew Burciaga is a Santa Maria Times reporter who covers education, agriculture and public safety. Prior to joining the Times, Mathew ran a 114-year-old community newspaper in Wyoming. He owns more than 40 pairs of crazy socks from across the globe.St Marys Macroom students who travelled to UCC for the Psychslam competition and duly won the audience choice award

St Mary's Secondary School in Macroom recently competed in UCC's Psychology Dept's annual 'Psychslam' competition. The competition provides a platform for Transition Year students to go on stage and voice their opinions on several psychology related topics.

Each team was allocated a topic to prepare and each school was given an opportunity to pair up with another "buddy school". Our team was paired with Charleville CBS. The purpose of this activity was to get other students' opinions on our school's project. On competition day, we also had the reassurance that at least one school was cheering for us.

St. Marys' team consisted of: Erin Leahy, Kate Murray and Sarah Wynroe (presenters) and Hanna O'Donovan, MaryAnn O'Shea and Nicole O'Connor (researchers). The topic our team chose to base their project on was 'Is School Killing Our Creativity?'. The project required a Pecha Kucha style PowerPoint. The presentation was in front of an audience which consisted of opposing teams, parents, teachers and a judging panel of three.

While on stage, our team's PowerPoint failed to play automatically like it was supposed to but Kate thought on her feet and solved the problem.

The three presenters were very comfortable with their topic and well prepared. They included theatrical performances and colloquial conversations, whilst also interacting with the audience.

Then the judges deliberated. Considering how the St Mary's team had a malfunction with their presentation and their project was more casual in comparison to others, they were not expecting to win anything.It was a massive understatement to say they were shocked when their names were announced as the winners of the 'Audience Choice' award.

All girls agreed were delighted with their performance.

Written by Jessica Buckley, Erin Leahy, Sarah Wynroe, Caitriona Moynihan, Rachel Bourgoyne, Hanna O' Donovan.HSE nursing homes in County Cork are being paid 50 per cent more to provide care per person than their private and voluntary counterparts, new figures published by the HSE has shown.

The HSE published the fees payable to its nursing homes under the Fair Deal scheme in mid February, after a 16-month delay.

Private and voluntary nursing homes are required to negotiate the fees payable to them under the Fair Deal scheme, with the NTPF (National Treatment Purchase Fund) acting on behalf of the State. However, the fees payable to HSE nursing homes are not subject to negotiation or oversight, with the HSE being the budget-holder and payee.

The published fees show the average fee payable to the 19 HSE nursing homes in County Cork is 1,438 per person, per week, at February 2018. The average fee payable per person to the 55 private and voluntary nursing homes operating within the county, as of February 14, 2018, is 958 per person, per week.

This reveals a 50 per cent differential in the average fees payable in respect of residents between HSE nursing homes in County Cork and private and voluntary counterparts.

Nationally, HSE nursing home fees are paid on average 60 per cent above those payable in respect of residents in private and voluntary nursing homes.

Over the 16-month period since the HSE fees were last published, the fees payable within HSE nursing homes increased by an average 11 per cent. Over the corresponding period, the average fees in private and voluntary nursing homes increased by 3.9%.

The average fee differential between HSE and private / voluntary nursing homes was 53% in 2016, so the gap has grown over the 16 month period.

Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) CEO Tadhg Daly said the publication by the HSE of its fees highlighted what he described as 'glaring discrimination' perpetuated by the State.

"It is unacceptable that private and voluntary nursing homes, which are the lead providers of nursing home care, are forced to provide care for fees that are a fraction of those payable to HSE counterparts," said Mr Daly.

"The discrepancy cannot continue to be justified by the State, which continues to turn a blind eye to the huge chasm that exists nationally and within individual counties.

"The HSE is subject to no negotiation for its fees or independent oversight. We are calling upon the Public Accounts Committee to fulfil a commitment it has previously undertaken to investigate the cost of care in HSE nursing homes.

"Furthermore, it is imperative the Government finally publishes the review of the Fair Deal pricing mechanism that was scheduled for completion and publication in June 2017.

"Private and voluntary nursing homes provide high dependency care but are having their sustainability threatened by the State's failure to recognise the true cost of nursing home care. Independent analyses are critical of Fair Deal's non-recognition of the reality of costs incurred by providers to provide nursing home care and state providing care through the present funding model is unsustainable.

"In the interest of people requiring nursing home care, the discriminatory practice must cease to exist. Publication of the review of the Fair Deal pricing mechanism will propel required discussion regarding implementation of a fit-for-purpose funding model to meet the care needs of people require nursing home care," Mr Daly said.Eleanor Fitzpatrick, Maeve Myers, Corrie O Flynn, PatHayes, and Catherine Barry of Mallow Chamber of Commerce with Margaret Attridge, Aisling Buckley, Darragh Murphy, Pat Britton, Colm Ward and Ian OMahony of Irish Water at last Fridays Breakfast Business Briefing in the Hibernian Hotel. Photos: Sheila Fitzgerald.

A key element of the Irish Water presentation at the breakfast briefing was a run-down by Pat Griffin, the company's regional asset management lead, on ongoing and planned projects across the north Cork region.

Mr Griffin said the multi-million strategy would incorporate a number of individual projects, including the upgrading of the water network and waste water treatment plant in Mallow.

This will consist of new trunk mains on the northern and southern side of the River Blackwater, the upgrading of the pumping station on the bridge and work at the Ballyellis treatment plant.

Mr Griffin said the project, which will increase water quality and cater for projected growth, was at design stage and that it was hoped work would commence in 2019.

Upgrades to the treatment plants in Mitchelstown and Millstreet are also in the pipeline, with preliminary works set to start on both projects later on this year.

"The treatment plants in Charleville, Newmarket, Boherbue and Kanturk are currently being examined as part of a nine-scheme bundle across the county, which is at the concept design stage," said Mr Griffin.

"We are currently at the existing systems, seeing what the demands on them are and looking at options prior to going to the detailed designs stage."

Mr Griffin also outlined progress on various local water supply improvement schemes, including the mains rehabilitation project in Kildorrery.

"The situation there has caused ongoing issues for a number of years and the good news is that the 1.9 kilometres of replacements mains are now in the ground. They are currently being tested and should be working by Easter," he said.

"Another significant project, the replacement of 10.5 kilometres of water mains in Newtownshandrum, is progressing apace with 7.5 kilometres completed and expected to be commissioned by Easter, with all work completed by May."

Mr Griffin said that mains rehabilitation works in both Doneraile and Millstreet were currently at the design stage and would follow "in due course".

National projects with local significance include the 'Fix and Find' initiative, where Irish Water have put together crews dedicated to finding breaks and fixing them.

Mr Griffin said the initiative was part of a plan to reduce the amount of drinking water produced nationally by three million litres per day through addressing leakage problems.

"Crews will be active in Charleville and Newmarket for a few months before moving onto Mallow," he said.

The 'First Fix' initiative aims to address leaks within private homes where there are more than six litres of water passing through the system during the night when water consumption should be at its lowest.

"We have sent out more than 4,000 letters to homes across Cork, but so far the take-up has been just 20%. We would like to see this improve as there are significant gains in water conservation to be made through this scheme," said Mr Griffin.

While he added that a programme to replace lead water mains pipes in Mallow had been completed, funding was available from Cork County Council to replace lead piping on private lands.

"There is a low enough take up for this, so we would like people to be made more aware that this funding is there," he said.Former Eurovision winner Niamh Kavanagh and her band will play the Westcourt Hotel on Sunday April 1 as part of a fundraiser for the Dominican Church repair fund.

The church has set a target of 80,000 for repairs to the roof and a full interior painting job and have been delighted with the support so far.

The painting will actually start in early April and it is expected to take a month - but it will be business as usual for Fr Jim and the team.

'There will be some disruption but I would ask people to bare with us. The end result will be worth it,' Fr Jim explained.

Tickets for the show - including dinner - can be secured from the Westcourt Hotel or the church office on Dominic Street.Do you have time to be a hospital volunteer?

Do you have 2-3 hours to spare in the afternoons. Would you like to make hospital a happier place for a sick child? Children in Hospital Ireland (CHI) would love to hear from you.

CHI is one of Ireland's leading children's charities providing play and fun for sick children in hospital around the country for over 45 years.

They need your help to organise play activities for hospitalised sick children, from painting, helping with jigsaws or board games to simple arts & crafts or reading stories.

They are currently appealing for volunteers, to volunteer in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

An upcoming Information and Interview evening will take place on Wednesday 21st March at 6pm in Drogheda. Successful candidates will then be invited to attend a training session to be held on Saturday 14th April from 10am to 4pm, also in Drogheda. If you are interested in learning more about becoming a volunteer with CHI please RSVP to info@childreninhospital.ie / (01) 290 3510, or visit www.childreninhospital.ie/volunteers. They ask that you do not contact the hospital directly.

Hospitalisation can be a very stressful experience for both children and parents. Play helps to alleviate some of that trauma. Simple play activities introduce a reassuring normality to a strange hospital environment. It is a natural part of a child's life and aids recovery. It also helps the child to build relationships and make new friends, and above all brings fun into the child's life.

Volunteers must be over 18 years of age, enthusiastic, caring, reliable and have 2-3 hours a week to spare and be prepared to sign up for a year. All volunteer will undergo Garda Vetting/Police Clearance. A comprehensive training programme will be provided for volunteers, as well as on-going support.March 20, is the UN International Day of Happiness. It's a day to be happy and to look more deeply at what makes you happy and plan how to be happier. Since 2013, the United Nations has celebrated the International Day of Happiness to recognise the importance of happiness in our lives.

The 2018 UN Happiness rankings published recently ranked Finland as the happiest country in the world. Ireland comes in 14th. 'Happiness is that feeling that comes over you when you know life is good' and 'you can't help but smile giving you a sense of well-being, joy, or contentment'.

The report produced by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network cites six significant factors: gross domestic product per capita, social support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and corruption levels.

Although there are many momentary things that make us happy or perhaps at times merely distract us from unhappiness, a range of studies show there are fundamental patterns to what makes most people happy.

The Harvard study of adult development, the longest study on happiness and health has studied people for 75 years from teenage to old-age. Having good relationships was biggest contributor to life-long wellbeing in 3 major ways.

1. Good relationships keep us happier and healthier - Strong social connections are really good for us. Loneliness kills. People who are socially connected to family, friends and community are happier. Lonely people experience poorer health, brain function and live shorter lives.

2 Quality of close relationships - It is not about the quantity but the quality of those relationships. Conflict is very bad for health. People who were the most satisfied in relationships at 50 were the healthiest in their 80s.

3. Good relationships don't just protect our body but also protect our brains - Memories stay sharper longer when people feel they can rely on others. Good relationships don't have to be smooth but we need to be able to have people we can rely on in difficult times.

The message that good relationships are good for health and wellbeing is age-old. It is not a quick fix and cannot be bought with money, a click or a swipe. Relationships can be difficult and take life-long work and investment. Those who are shown to be happiest in retirement are those that invest in relationships after stopping work.

So what can we do to be happier? We can replace screen time with personal time. We can do our best to solve difficulties we are having with others? We can know that holding grudges take a very big toll on health.

Good relationships are the foundation of a long, healthy and happy life. A very wise person once told me: 'Life is all about relationships'. Your relationship with yourself is the foundation for all other relationships. How you resolve your difficulties with yourself influences how you relate with others. Have patience and kind attention with yourself. Solve problems. Let things go but don't sweep them under the carpet.

Happiness comes naturally when your head, heart and hands work together - when what you think, feel, say and do are all moving in the same direction. In a range of other studies, so many other things are cited as helping us be happier: thinking positively, gratitude, helping and caring for others, learning, growing old, living your purpose, exercise, enjoyment of culture and sports, having pets, volunteering, sex and not trying too hard to be happy. Money, work and fame are not on the list. Engaging positively and fully with people and life are.

Wishing you a very happy day on March 20 and week ahead - Enjoy.We don't need the sun to shine to turn Drogheda yellow, because we've got daffodils!

All this week we've watched shops and businesses in the town jump on board the Paint the Town Yellow campaign to show support for the work of the Irish Cancer Society.

It was back in 2014 when the Drogheda Volunteers first got ambitious, embarking on a fundraising and awareness campaign. By asking local businesses to Paint the Town Yellow in the run up to Daffodil Day, and marching as the yellow army in St Patrick's Day Parade, they sought to remind people of the important services provided and research funded by the ICS.

'The town always looks wonderful and local people go the extra mile to ensure the town is awash with colour,' says committee member Grainne Lally Black.

'Businesses go Yellow and make a donation to the society to show their support for the awareness campaign.'

And this Friday March 23rd is the big day when your support is needed to donate as much as you can.

'Would you believe this is the 30th year I will be out on the streets selling daffodils for Daffodil Day,' says Lizanne Allen, an absolute stalwart of the annual fundraising event.

'It is always so uplifting, even on a wet day, and Drogheda people are incredibly generous.'

Lizanne pays tribute to the legion of women, past and present, who work so hard to promote this vital month for raising funds for cancer research and support.

'We have an incredible committee now, with younger members who work so hard to organise each event, but there have been many, many committee members over the years and their contribution is immeasurable' she adds.

'Over the last three decades committee members and volunteers, in Drogheda and the surrounding areas, have given of their time and talents such that in 2017 Daffodil Day Drogheda has become a veritable Festival of Yellow.'

And successful they are too. Drogheda hosts the biggest Daffodil Day event in the country, and tickets for the hugely successful annual Fashion Show, on Wednesday April 18th in the Westcourt Hotel, are now on sale.

'This started 25 years ago, and I have seen so many local faces up on that catwalk, it always draws huge support,' says Lizanne.

'Gold Tickets are 60, Silver Tickets are 40 and Bronze Tickets just 25, and are selling fast so don't be miss out on a fantastic night.'

The Irish Cancer Society - Drogheda Volunteers committee currently comprises of local ladies, founding member Lizanne Allen, with Mary Convery, Edeltraud Kyck, Jean Coulter, Majella O'Boyle, Niamh Matthews, Vicki Mathews, Rebecca Doherty, Joanne Allen, Majella O'Boyle, Sonya Carr and Grainne Black.Earth Hour, a global movement organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), takes place on Saturday 24 March at 8.30pm. The WWF is the world's leading independent conservation organisation. The mission of WWF members is to create a world in which people and wildlife can thrive together sustainably.

The original idea of Earth Hour was to focus attention on the significant challenges facing humanity in the management of planet Earth. In Sydney, Australia, in 2007, the hour was celebrated as a lights-off event. Individuals, communities, and businesses turned off non-essential electric lights for one hour as a symbol of their commitment to the planet.

The idea caught on and is now a worldwide event in which people are encouraged to turn off non-essential electric lights for one hour, from 8.30pm to 9.30pm next Saturday. Millions of people around the world take part in WWF's Earth Hour every year in a symbolic show of solidarity for the planet. Some of the world's biggest landmarks like Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace, and Edinburgh Castle switch off lights as a visual display of their commitment.

Our planet is facing some of the biggest environmental threats that any generation has ever faced including climate change, unsustainable use of resources, over-consumption, pollution and loss of biodiversity.

The WWF-UK Living Planet Report paints a bleak picture of the damage done over the last 25-30 years: 80% of freshwater species have declined; over 50% of populations of land species have declined; 40% of our forests have disappeared to agricultural land with 15 million trees lost each year just for soy production; 1 in 6 of the planet's species is at risk of extinction from climate change; and so on.

What are you doing this Saturday 24 March from 8.30 until 9.30pm? You could switch your non-essential lights off for Earth Hour. Or you could promise yourself to change your behaviour in some small way that is more environmentally friendly such using a reusable coffee cup rather than buying a throw-away one every time, avoiding plastic cutlery in favour of reusable ones, washing your clothes at 30C rather than at unnecessarily high temperatures, eating less meat, switching to green energy, etc, etc.

We live in a dysfunctional world. We all have a part to play in a cleaner, greener and more sustainable future. What will your drop in the ocean be for Earth Hour, starting at 8.30pm next Saturday?Colin, Petra and Linda Novotna at the Cottage Market at St Peter's Church of Ireland

St Peter's Parish has hosted a number of talks in respect of healing and peace, in Our Lady of Lourdes Church on each Sunday of Lent at 7pm.

The programme ends on March 25th with Elaine Mahon - A mother and a teacher by profession - Elaine is the Author of the Catholic religious curriculum 'Grow in Love'. Elaine has a wonderful sense of how the Church can communicate its message to the world of 2018 with respect and dignity.

All are welcome and invited to join with the wider faith community this Lent in reaching out to the hurt in society.

Simon and Garfunkel show in TLT

Has it really been 50 years since the most successful Folk/Rock Duo of all time recorded their first no1 hit single 'The Sound of Silence'?

Having performed to sold out audiences in over 50 countries across the world from Sydney to Seattle, 'The Simon and Garfunkel Story' is now in the West End at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London. The show is currently the biggest and the most successful theatre show celebrating the lives and career of Folk/Rock sensation Simon and Garfunkel.

Featuring a full cast of talented West End actor- musicians, 'The Simon and Garfunkel Story' takes you back through the 'Groovy' times of the 1960s. It tells the story of both Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel from their humble beginnings as Rock n Roll duo 'Tom and Jerry', right through their massive success, dramatic break-up and finishing with a stunning recreation of the 1981 Central Park reformation concert.

Using a huge projection screen, the show features 1960's photos and film footage whilst a full live band perform all their hits including 'Mrs Robinson', 'Cecilia', 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', 'Homeward Bound', 'Sound of Silence' and many more!

The show is coming to the TLT on Friday May 18th. Further details from the TLT.

Let's Talk Boomerang

THE Let's Talk series at Boomerang Youth Service presents Help Your Child/ Teen With Money & Budgeting Presented by Marie Thompson MABS. Everyone Welcome It's on Wednesday 28th March 2018 at 10.00am at the Boomerang Youth Service at 62 Fair Street.

At Boomerang Cafe, they offer a professional, confidential, quality secretarial service which includes: Typing: Anything from school/college projects to professional business documents, Photocopying: This service ranges from printing images to emails, photocopying passports to birth certificates , Laminating: From Flyers to Cards, Binding: School/College Projects , Scanning: Documents / Photographs / Passports/ I.D. Cards etc.

For more information please drop in for a chat or Call 041 9839916 or email secretarialservices@boomerangcafe.ie.

Discover Boyne Valley agm

The Annual General Meeting of Discover Boyne Valley will take place on Wednesday March 21st at 4 pm in the City North Hotel, Gormanston.

Tourism businesses are reminded that only members of Discover Boyne Valley will be featured in the 2019 Discover Boyne Valley brochure which will have a print run plus be online.

For further information contact Paula McCaul, Boyne Valley Tourism, Buvinda House, Dublin Road, Navan. Phone 046-9097060.Colaiste na hInse student Aoife Forkin was awarded the prestigious title of "Best First Year Speaker in Leinster" at the Leinster Final of the Matheson Junior Debating National Mace.

The Matheson Junior Debating National Mace is the largest debating competition on the island of Ireland with over 300 students participating in Leinster alone.

The Leinster Final took place in Castleknock Community College where the top 80 speakers in Leinster competed for a coveted place in the National Final. Students took part in 3 debates over the course of the day.

Following the Grand Final Ms Forkin was announced as the Best 1st year and will be one of three Leinster 1st years representing their schools in the National Final on the 21st of April.

Ms Forkin will be joined by Liam Walker from Colaiste na hInse and Chidindu Chikwendu from Gormonston College representing Meath in the National Final.Two Drogheda schools will be aiming to steal the show when they feature in the national finals of the Build A Bank competition in Dublin this week.

The AIB Build a Bank Challenge involved a team of six students selected to set up and manage a bank in their school with the full support of a dedicated AIB Student Officer. The students get involved in everything from developing a Business Plan, branding their Bank and engaging with the community to sourcing new customers through creative marketing campaigns.

St Olivers CC and St Joseph's Secondary School got the chance to show off their skills to the local AIB staff last week and didn't disappoint!

Led by their smooth talking Bank Manager, Gearoid Campbell, St Oliver's have based their submission on - Take Flight Bank - Fly Away from Old Age Banking - and it also features Stephen Boland, Fiona Ogunde, Abi Kelly, Sam Floyd and Israel Olajide.

Teacher Rachel McEntee said the group prepared really hard for the event and it is invaluable to show their peers how the banking system while still at school.

'It has improved their confidence and public speaking,' she stated.

St Joseph's billed themselves as Bankers of the Caribbean and were led by the accomplished Bank Manager Stan Goodwin. He had a good crew in Conor McKenna, Shane Lynch, Eoghan Ryan, Jack Connor, Niall McGinnity, Luke Rock and Paul Ziehmes.

They even went on location to record a video for their promotional section.

Teacher Michelle McEneaney has taken on the bankers for this year and is delighted with the effort the lads have put in.

Staff in the AIB were very impressed with the efforts of tbe students.A local teenager who was so high on tablets he couldn't fully recall hi-jacking a taxi or assaulting the driver has been sentenced to four years.

Lee Smyth (19) told gardai in interview that he just wanted to get home to Drogheda that night from Dublin City. He said he had no money and no idea how to get home when he got into the taxi on O'Connell Street.

"All I wanted was to get home. I never meant it to get so bad," Smyth told officers following his arrest months later. He added that it had been a wake-up call and he hadn't taken drugs since.

Garda Brian Healy told Elva Duffy BL, prosecuting that the driver, Eric Byrne, was attacked by Smyth and his co-accused when he arrived at the destination. Smyth, the back-seat passenger, grabbed the man and the pair tried to take his keys from him.

Mr Byrne got out of the vehicle to find something from the boot to defend himself with, while the two males tried to start the car.

Mr Byrne walked away and called the gardai but Smyth came running at him and began kicking and punching him. The pair ultimately took off in the car which was discovered five hours later burnt out in Drogheda.

Smyth of Beechwood Drive, Drogheda, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing harm and the unlawful seizure of a vehicle at Clongriffin train station on September 20, 2016.

His 29 previous convictions include trespass, possession of drugs, criminal damage, assault and aggravated burglary.

Judge Martin Nolan suspended the final 18 months of the sentence on strict conditions including that Smyth engage with the Probation Service upon his release.

He took into account evidence that Smyth had "good hope for reform" as he had taken advantages of services currently available to him in prison.

Judge Nolan praised the work of the gardai in catching Smyth and noted that he co-operated with their investigation. He described it as a serious crime with a "high level of violence".

Gda Healy said Smyth was identified through fingerprints left on the car and after gardai looked at CCTV footage at various points from their pick-up to the train station. The teenagers were also captured on CCTV when they stopped the car en-route to Drogheda to change a tyre.

Gda Healy accepted a submission from Grainne O'Neill BL, defending, that her client had instructions to apologise wholeheartedly for what he did and the effect on Mr Byrne.He agreed that Smyth gave as fulsome account as he could because he had problems with his memory having taken a large amount of tablets.

Ms O'Neill told Judge Nolan that her client, who is in custody serving a sentence from a different offence, had been working towards becoming an enhanced prisoner.

Counsel said reports before the court stated that Smyth had a desire to change, was very well liked in prison and was benefiting from programmes in custody.

"He is a young man showing a willingness to co-operate and turn his life around," Ms O'Neill said .Dublin Airport has agreed a new partnership with the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin aimed at bringing an enhanced public art programme to the airport.

The two-year Creative Journeys partnership will enable NCAD students, past and present, to showcase their ideas and work to an international audience, and will provide Dublin Airport passengers with a unique perspective into contemporary Irish art.

Supported by Business to Arts, this new partnership will deliver a full public art programme at Dublin Airport over the next two years.

Seven sites have been chosen across the airport campus to host works within Creative Journeys. The sites are located in landside and airside areas to allow both departing and arriving passengers to view the works of art. This will enable members of the public who are at the airport but not travelling to view some of the installations.

The first art work within the Creative Journeys programme will be installed later this month and during the two-year programme each location will house several different works of art.

'Providing a world-class passenger experience is a constant goal at Dublin Airport and the visual environment at the airport plays a key role in this,' said Dublin Airport Managing Director Vincent Harrison.

'Dublin Airport provides the first welcome and last goodbye to the island of Ireland for tens of millions of people every year, and Creative Journeys will provide a wonderful showcase opportunity for the creative talents of talented NCAD artists and graduates based here and who are inspired by their surroundings on a daily basis,' Mr Harrison added.

'Creative Journeys is part of a wider programme to help Dublin Airport provide an experience that is engaging and memorable, but also one that also creates a unique sense of place. Dublin Airport is proud to partner with NCAD, which fosters and inspires Ireland's future artists.'

Over the past year, Dublin Airport and Business to Arts worked together to design a process to enable arts organisations to bid to become involved in the project. An open call process was held to identify potential partners for the public art programme. Interest was strong, with initial submissions from a number of agencies and organisations.

NCAD was eventually selected as Dublin Airport's partner for the project. 'We are thrilled to be working in partnership with Dublin Airport on Creative Journeys,' said NCAD Director Sarah Glennie.

'This project creates a fantastic opportunity for a wide public to experience some of the great work that is happening in NCAD and for NCAD students to gain invaluable experience of presenting their work in a highly public space. Ireland's creative sector represents an ambitious and internationally connected wealth of talent and NCAD is delighted to be able to give visitors to Dublin Airport an opportunity to experience at first hand work by our emerging creative practitioners.'The search is on for the 27th time to crown the Swords Young Musician of the Year and talented hopefuls are asked to complete their entry forms by the closing date of May 1.

The competition is open to a range of age groups from under-12s right up to under-21s and anyone from the Swords electoral area can enter as long as they are from or are taught in the area. The Swords electoral area includes Swords itself, as well as the Donabate and Portrane peninsula, as well as surrounding rural communities like Rolestown, Kilsallaghan, Lispopple and St Margaret's.

Violinist, Erin McGahan from Donabate Community College was crowned as the Swords Young Musician of the Year, last year after wowing judges in the annual contest with her skills on her chosen instrument, the violin.

Bursary prizes are up for grabs for the overall and category winners in the competition.

The categories, across the age ranges of the competition include piano, guitar, keyboard, traditional music, strings, contemporary singing, classical voice, woodwind, recorder, brass and finally, there is chamber group award up for grabs in the competition.

The heats and final of the competition will take place over two days on May 12 and 13 in a brand new venue for the competition, at the Carnegie Court Hotel in Swords.

Application forms have already been posted to schools and music teachers but if you have not received one and are interested in taking part, then you can contact Rita Lacey at 01 8402865 or Tim Ryan at 01 8621851.

It's a competition with a long and rich history in Swords, run by the North Dublin School of Music and sponsored by the daa.

Every year it uncovers fantastic musical talent in the area and this year should be no different. Stars of the future have been found in the competition and its enduring popularity is indicative of the depth of musical talent there is in the Swords area. It is a great way for aspiring musicians to start off their musical careers and a chance for one talented musician to enter the title of Swords Young Musican of the Year onto their musical CV. If you have talent, then don't miss this chance to showcase it.There are countless people walking around Fingal today who perhaps would not be here but for the efforts of local fire fighters and after 32 years of selfless devotion to the retained fire service in Balbriggan, former Station Officer, Dermot Murray can retire safe in the knowledge that there are still generations to come that he will never meet that will owe their very existence to him and his colleagues.

Dermot hung up his uniform for the last time recently after 32 years of incredible dedication to a job that tied him to Balbriggan Fire Station, 24 hours a day, seven days a week via a pager that became part of his daily dress code.

Talking to Fingal Independent a couple of weeks into his retirement, Dermot talked about adjusting to civilian life and life without that pesky pager.

He said: 'I have to say I'm adjusting to civilian life pretty well but having said that, you would miss the daily contact with the lads but I don't miss the pager.

'I suppose I'll miss working with the lads and serving the people of Fingal and that's what we do - we are there to serve. But I'm looking forward to retirement because I want to spend a bit of time with my own family. In 32 years, you miss out on a lot of that and I think I've given enough.'

Being a fire fighter was a life-long dream for the Balbriggan man, who explained: 'I always had a great love for the Fire Brigade, to be honest with you. I did quite some time with the Auxiliary Fire Service and I used to go and train with them of a Thursday night in Rathmines Fire Station and then go to the Civil Defence college in the Phoenix Park. So when the positions came up here in Balbriggan, I applied.'

He was successful and about eight years later, after the sad passing of then Station Officer, Richard Tolan passed away, Dermot was first made acting Station Officer and then secured the position permanently and has now played that role for 24 of his 32 years in the service.

Balbriggan is a retained fire service so most of its fire fighters have a second job and Dermot is no different in that regard, managing to hold down a job as a plumber for the Department of Defence while maintaining his giant commitment to the fire service.

Reflecting on 32 years of memories, both joyous and sad in the job, Dermot said: 'I have a lot of good memories, a lot of great memories and a lot of sad ones too.

'When I joined first, drink driving was at its height and we saw the results of that drink driving on our roads. Practically every weekend, we would have a fatal Road Traffic Accident. You're talking it he late 80s and early 90s.

'When new drink driving laws came into force, we saw a huge, huge reduction and then there was another huge reduction with the opening of the M1. We covered the old N1 road before that and it was a notorious road from Mosney Cross all the way to Blake's Cross. When you look at all the people who were killed on that road over those 32 years, it's phenomenal.'

One tragic road traffic accident that involved the death of two children will never be forgotten by the retiring fire officer who, 20 years on, still cannot talk about the incident without becoming visibly upset.

His voice cracked as he related the story of his worst day on the job: 'There is an incident that comes to mind where two young children were killed - two local children were killed. That was probably the worst, so it was. I won't go into names or anything but that was probably the worst. When an incident involves children, you immediately think of your own children and you can't imagine how the parents of that child feels. So any fire fighter who ever dealt with incidents involving the deaths of young children will tell you that's a bad day - that's something that will stay with you.'

Dermot said that whenever that alarm bell sounded and there was a call to be answered, he tried to do his best and he explained that a particular incident early in his career made him realise that one day, that call might be to aid someone he loves.

The retiring fire fighter recalled that night when he was called to a road traffic accident in Garristown: 'When I got there, the car was in a gripe on the Garristown Road and it was practically burnt out and the occupants weren't in it.

'It turned out they were in a house nearby and when I went into the house, there were two young males, one of them was my own son and the other lad was the son of Richard Tolan who was the Station Officer at the time.

'The woman of the house had told me that the two lads didn't want to see anyone from the Fire Brigade so when I heard that, the antennae went up and so, in I go and there's my own son sitting down in the house with Gary Tolan.

'Now my lad was after pulling Gary out of the car - Gary had a broken bone in his leg. My lad had an injured spleen but they were very, very lucky to get out of the car. They couldn't open the doors of the car so my lad had to break the window and pull Gary out of the car through the window.

'So when that bell goes I always gave my best because you really don't know what you're going to. And that really proved it to me and it came home to me that one day, it could be someone close to me.'

Dermot said that wile there were sad and even tragic days in the job, there were many more happy and joyous one, so many in fact that when he's asked to talk about his happiest day in the job, he struggles to narrow his choices to one.

But ultimately he said: 'Probably the happiest day was the night I started in the fire station in Balbriggan. That was the first drill night at the station and I felt that I finally got what I wanted. But having said that, there has been many more happy and joyful occasions.'

He remembered the first night he entered the Fire Station, full of bravado that would be soon chipped away as his older and more experienced colleagues, showed him the ropes.

He said: 'I remember everything about the first drill night. Myself and Dessie Tolan started on the same night. We travelled to the station that night together and Dessie was a bundle of nerves going in and Dessie's brother was the Station Officer. But I went in like I owned the place, a cocky little brat I was, to be honest with you.

'Just because I was in the Auxiliary Fire Service, and I had the attitude that I was going to go in there and show these old lads a thing or two. It wasn't too long before I realised who was showing who the tricks of the trade, I can tell you that. That dawned on me very, very quickly.'

His first call out was for a fire at Reynoldstown House and where he soon realised he had a lot to learn about remaining calm in the face of danger.

He said: 'At the retirement party, I had an old colleague of mine there, David White and David told me where the first fire call was to. It was to a house in Reynoldstown on the Naul Road - it was Reynoldstown House. We had no breathing apparatus on the appliance at the time and when David said it to me, I remembered. I went in with an older colleague of mine, by the name of Nicky Byrne.

The place was smoke-logged - you couldn't see a thing in it. I was nearly on the floor but Nicky was standing there with a 45mm hose and he lashing the fire out of it. When I did get a look at Nicky, I was backing him up on the hose and I looked at him and Nicky had a cigarette in his mouth, casually smoking. That's how good those lads were.'

Dermot deservedly got a big send off from his colleagues at the fire station and personal thanks for his service from Dublin Fire Brigade Chief Fire Officer, Pat Fleming.

Dermot thanked all his colleagues and said he would miss them all and he paid special tribute to his ever patient wife, Mary. He said being a retained fire officer is a 'team effort' and he quipped 'there was many times I had to throw my wife out of the car when a call came in and she, never, ever complained'.

Dermot is now looking forward to spending more time with Mary and the rest of his family and getting back to a bit of fly-fishing and surely, if anyone deserves a rest, it must be him.A man who tried to rob a post office 'in a moment of madness' after earlier asking the staff for a bag has been given a two and half year suspended sentence.

Michael Kelly (55) was recognised by one of the staff as a regular customer. He came into the shop, asked for a bag, offered to pay for it and left the premises.

Garda Campbell Brennan told Eilis Brennan BL, prosecuting, that Kelly returned minutes later and held a note against the cashier window ordering them to fill the bag with money or 'I will kill you'. He also instructed that the gardai should not be alerted.

The staff member refused to fill the bag, saying 'No' to Kelly twice before telling him she was about to press the panic alarm. Kelly left without taking anything.

The woman later told gardai that she was in 'disbelief' because she recognised Kelly.

Gardai arrived and Kelly was ultimately identified through CCTV footage. He was arrested about five months later.

Kelly, of no fixed abode pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to attempted robbery at Rush Post Office in Rush, Co Dublin, on September 24, 2016. His seven previous convictions are for minor offences and he has not come to garda attention since 2004.

Kelly said in garda interview that it was 'a moment of madness', telling officers he was drunk. He said he had been an alcoholic but had been sober for 10 years before the attempted raid. He had recently relapsed and his relationship with his partner was in trouble.

Gda Brennan agreed with Mark Lynam BL, defending, that Kelly was now sober and had been so for over a year.

Mr Lynam told Judge Martin Nolan that Kelly had been dealing with 'alcohol issues' since he was eight years old. He said at the time of the offence Kelly's doctor had advised him that his level of drinking was now a threat to his life.

Counsel said Kelly had since engaged with the Simon Community and was now doing charitable work for them. He was remorseful and accepted it was a nasty and serious incident.

Judge Nolan said it was a 'convincing threat' and a very frightening experience for the staff in the post office.

He accepted that Kelly had a long history of alcohol abuse but had since taken steps to rehabilitate. He said in his view he 'doesn't deserve an immediate custodial sentence' before he suspended a two and half year jail term.The sum being spent on social houses in Gorey and Wexford was questioned by Cllr Joe Sullivan, who said it is unfair that the 'squeezed middle' of Gorey can't afford to live in houses of similar quality.

Cllr Malcolm Byrne welcomed the purchase of 57 properties in Wexford town and Gorey. The average price of Wexford properties comes to 229,429 and 237,100 in Gorey.

'I do realise property prices are going up but these are higher values than current property prices in the town. Are we satisfied that we are getting the best value for money? They are bulk purchases, 35 houses in Wexford and 22 houses in Gorey.'

Cllr Byrne said taxpayers money is being used.

'Yes, we do need to address the social housing issue. When you are paying more than what average house prices are including new houses in other developments, I want an absolute assurance there has been an appropriate investigation that this money is being spent wisely.'

Director of Services John Carley said he was sure a detailed process was implemented, adding 'we are getting value for money'.

Director of Services Tony Larkin said: 'These are new builds. It's a new estate. I know two schemes coming into the market in 2019 in Gorey which are more expensive by quite a way than these houses.'

CEO Tom Enright said the new houses are of a higher energy standard, higher than the A rated houses on the market presently. 'By the time these houses are delivered no doubt prices will have increased. The Whiterock development is part of an overall private development. There is a premium we have to pay as it can impact the overall 'saleability'. We are very happy that there is value for money here as these are sustainable, low maintenance houses.'

Chairman John Hegarty said: 'This is a good news story, you are turning it into a bad news story. This is something we have been crying out for in Gorey and Wexford.'

Cllr Byrne said he wanted an assurance the council was getting the best value for money.

Mr Enright said the company employed to build the houses is local and local people will be employed building the projects. 'It will also help to kickstart private development, so it's good news all round.'

Cllr Sullivan said he shared Cllr Byrne's concerns while acknowledging that houses are needed.

'What about the young couple who gets up at 6 a.m. and drives to Dublin and gets a mortgage for 200,000 to pay for a house that was built ten to 12 years ago. Then a person, for whatever reason, who is unemployed gets a social house that is better. Are we sending out the right message to a sector of society who are being squeezed when houses are readily available in Gorey for between 185,000 and 215,000. They are not A rated but were built within the last ten to 15 years in estates like Ramsgate and Meadowgate and Hazelwood.'

Cllr Sullivan asked if some of these houses can be sourced through the council's house acquisition programme.

Senior Housing Officer Padraig O'Gorman said Gorey is a difficult town to purchase houses in.

'This is the first substantial programme we have had for turnkeys. We are still in the market for houses.'

Mr Enright said: 'We are not giving these houses away for free. In some cases rent can be sustantial. This is a function we have as a council. In terms of young couples travelling to Dublin we have a mortgage scheme with fixed rate mortgages for them.'

Cllr Davy Hynes said: 'I would just as soon see a normal sized house being built if it can be built cheaper. People are as entitled as anyone else to a home. Often social houses are built better than private houses.'

Cllr Lisa McDonald suggested that the council follow what councils in the UK have been doing by building modular houses.Many local businesses enjoyed 'Brexit - An Irish Perspective' in Gorey Library last week in association with Local Enterprise Week and Mintel.

Special guest speaker James Wilson from Mintel gave a presentation which focused on what Brexit means for trade in Ireland and how it has impacted Irish consumer's confidence.

Mr Wilson concluded with a look at where the potential future opportunities for Ireland lie after the UK's departure from the EU.

With the UK set to leave the EU in March 2019, Mr Wilson, who is a Research Analyst for Mintel, focused on topics such as tourism, food and drink, and finance.

After the presentation, everyone enjoyed some refreshments.At the launch of the plan (from left): Tom Enright CE, Wexford County Council; Liz Burns, Arts Officer; Minister Paul Kehoe; Josepha Madigan, Minister for Culture, Heritage & the Gaeltacht; Cllr John Hegart, chairman Wexford County Council; and Minister Michael DArcy

The Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan officially launched a new County Wexford Arts Plan 'Advancing the Arts 2018 - 2022' at a reception in County Hall, Carricklawn.

The visionary five-year plan is the result of an extensive consultation process throughout the county in 2017 which was spearheaded by Arts Officer Liz Burns with independent arts consultant Mary McAuliffe and involved meetings with artists, arts organisations, community groups, elected members, senior council management and other stakeholders.

It puts the arts at the centre of the work of the Council and the Wexford Local Economic and Community Plan 2016 - 2021 with a strategy for the arts to contribute to the key areas of education, well-being, urban and rural regeneration as well as cultural tourism and economic development.

The plan recognises the value of art and the distinct role of artists in Wexford and their unique contribution to our quality of life. 'Advancing the Arts' will also complement the Council's forthcoming Culture and Creativity Strategy being developed in partnership with the Creative Ireland Programme and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

This is the fifth arts plan for County Wexford since the Arts Office was established 24 years ago and has resulted in the arts being embedded in the work of Wexford County Council.

'Wexford County Council has earned itself an enviable reputation for being innovative and forward thinking in its proactive approach to local arts development' said CEO Tom Enright. 'Since the establishment of the Arts Department in 1994, the local authority has committed to developing a strong arts programme and cultural infrastructure capable of meeting the artistic needs of local people and visitors alike.

In the foreword, it states that Wexford County Council looks forward to enhancing its work through this Arts Plan over the coming years and working with its key partners - the Arts Council, Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the Creative Ireland Programme and the HSE as well as building exciting new partnerships with Music Generation, Wexford Waterford Education and Training Board (WWETB) and other key stakeholders.

Minister Madigan said she welcomed the launch of this exciting plan which she is confident will reinforce the importance of the arts in Wexford.

'It illustrates how culture and creativity plays a major role in the lives of people and in communities across this county and sets out how Wexford County Council will lead, develop and work with various partners including my Department and the Creative Ireland Programme to support the arts over the next years', she said.

Wexford's Arts Officer Liz Burns said: 'The Arts are here, there and everywhere, always posing a new and exciting challenge'.

In presenting the plan, she took confidence from the strength of the arts in County Wexford. 'I am excited by the quality and power of the work made by artists and arts organisations and by the high level of artistic engagement and participation by Wexford people', she said.

A number of issues were raised by respondents to an online survey carried out as part of the new strategy including the need for more spaces and places to make art; more opportunities for artists to live and work in Wexford; investment in young arts graduates to help them reach their potential; help for artists with business PR and marketing skills; more arts programmes and projects targeting young people including mental health and disability arts and a more even spread of arts programme provision across the county.

It is accepted that the arts have a direct impact on the health, welfare and economic well-being of society with the capacity to enrich quality of life, quality of place and quality of employment through art-in-education, art-in-the-community and arts for the disabled programmes.

As Wexford has a higher than national average rate of early school leaving, one of the high level goals in tendem with the Local Economic and Community Plan is to 'Foster a culture of educational attainment and lifelong learning' in which the arts have a role to play in developing students' creativity, imagination and innovation and engaging harder-to-reach young people through education initiatives.

County Wexford is one of the most disadvantaged counties in Ireland with a high proportion of households in low paid and low skills groups. Poor job prospects especially for isolated and marginalised communities can lead to social exclusion.

There has also been an increase in the number of older people who are in danger of being isolated due to population decline and in culturally diverse new communities who face integration challenges. Wexford has the 6th highest population of Travellers in Ireland, a large Roma community working as seasonal labourers and other immigrants including Syrian refugees.

The plan recognises that the arts can promote the development of socially inclusive communities by giving people the confidence to grow and become more involved , encouraging bonds and bridging differences between people who don't share the same interests, views or concerns.

It aims to develop and promote Wexford as a great place to live, work and visit, to increase the county's attractiveness through the support of artists, creative activities, events and festivals and to enrich street life through public art commissions, carnivals, street exhibitions and public performances.

'These public art initiatives will play a central role in uplifting and empowering local people, reinforcing sense of place, celebrating local identify and developing active citizenship', it states.

A new Art in the Public Realm Ideas Fund will invite artists to come up with ideas for projects linked to Council-planned regeneration programmes and mentoring clinics will run in each district to give advice and support to the voluntary festival and events sector while the Amateur Dramatic Sector in the county will receive support and a Youth Arts Strategy will also be developed for the county

Art is also seen as good for business and with that in mind, the county will be promoted as a cultural and creative hub and a premier destination for filmmaking with specific efforts to nurture talent and skills to meet the demands of the international film industry while the role of the arts in driving innovation in business will also be fostered. Ultimately, the County Council will seek to ensure that artists as valued members of the community, are supported at the different stages of their careers, to make great work that can be enjoyed by all, for the wide-ranging benefit of the whole county.The red carpet was rolled out to engineers of the future at Taoglas in Enniscorthy recently as they hosted a special event with Enniscorthy Chamber recently for Engineers Week 2018. The event was aimed at encouraging students from across the county to pursue a career in engineering and a tour of the company which provides antenna solutions for companies all over the world certainly fuelled imaginations.

Students, their teachers and parents were all given the opportunity to explore the exciting world of engineering as well as seeing the opportunities available in the field. Taoglas opened up early and put on a showcase for over 50 students, teachers and parents.

Speaking at the event CEO of Enniscorthy & District Chamber Catriona Murphy said: 'Engineers Week provides an excellent opportunity to give young people an insight into the lives of engineers and how possible it is to follow in their footsteps to be an engineer of the future. Thanks to Taoglas the students had the opportunity to learn how antenna products make a difference day to day across the world. We also wanted to simply to students the route they can take to work within this global team.'

Similarly Taoglas were delighted to welcome the students and show them around. 'We were delighted to host this exciting event in our global headquarters,' said Melanie Golden, Operations Manager at Taoglas. 'We wished to explain to students how we function and how exciting the engineering career path is. This event showcases to us at Taoglas how relevant engaging with schools in our locality is and proves County Wexford has world class engineering career opportunities to offer to its students.'

Taoglas RF Engineer Baha Badran captivated his audience within the testing chambers and the students learnt how Taoglas are innovatively working with 5G Automotive products, and how 5G will enable an era of connectivity never seen before with a focus on autonomous driving, tactile internet Ultra HD video and VR based immersive technologies. Enniscorthy & District Chamber were delighted with the event and thanked Taoglas, along with the students who took part.Council staff were praised for their efforts during Storm Emma and the Beast From The East, when they worked 14 hour shifts clearing the county's roads and organising teams of staff throughout the county.

Chairman Cllr John Hegarty said County Wexford was the worst hit county in Ireland during the storms.

'It was the worst weather conditions to hit us in 35 years and we were the worst hit area,' Cllr Hegarty said.

'We need to recognise the massive effort and contribution that our indoor and outdoor staff made. They worked hours and hours on end.'

Cllr Hegarty said there was also a huge effort made by the management team who coordinated services and by other council staff as well.

'So often council workers are viewed in less than a complimentary light but when the worst conditions to hit the county in decades happened our staff rose to the occasion.'

The Civil Defence, army personnel, fire fighters and ambulance staff were all praised. 'There was a whole sense of the community which some place may have felt was lost. It was reinvigorated and the response from local people helped as people assisted their neighbours.'

The chairman said the council didn't get everything right, adding that there are lessons which need to be learned for the next weather event. 'We got a lot of things right. The fear was that there would be a loss of life and that didn't happen. The response shows what can be achieved when we pull together. I want to say a sincere thank you to all the directors and everyone who was involved in it. We will do something to recognise the efforts.'

Cllr Hegarty's speech was greeted with a round of applause in the chamber.

CEO Tom Enright said he wanted to recognise the huge effort put in by council staff, some of who worked for 14 hours during the storm.

Mr Enright said volunteers also made a massive contribution.

'We are very fortunate that there was no serious injury. The air sea resue helicopter was out three times during the storm when people needed medical attention.

'The army was out on a number of calls assisting the ambulance service. I saw first hand the fantastic work done by the community.

'I want to thank everyone on a job well done and particularly to thank our own staff who stepped up when they were needed to ensure that the county was back on its feet as soon as possible.'The curtain came down on the 62nd South Leinster Drama Festival on Tuesday night with adjudicator Imelda McDonagh announcing the winners.

It was a great night for Bridge Drama who won the gold in the Open Section for their brilliant performance with 'Cash on Delivery', and Coolgreany Drama Group who came out on top in the Confined Section for 'Death and the Maiden'.

Bridge Drama's 'Cash on Delivery' won the top prize in the Open Section, followed by Wexford Drama Group's 'Proof' in second place and Kilrush Drama Group's 'The Weir' took home third place. Best Producer went to Trish Doyle for 'Cash on Delivery' from Bridge Drama.

Best Actor went to Brian Sheridan in 'Cash on Delivery' from Bridge Drama and Best Actress went to Danielle Reck in 'Proof' from Wexford Drama Group. Best Supporting Actor went to Phil Lyons in 'Proof' from Wexford Drama Group and Best Supporting Actress went to Jaqui Whelan in 'Cash on Delivery' from Bridge Drama.

Coolgreany Drama's 'Death and the Maiden' won first prize in the Confined Section, followed by Holycross-Ballycahill's 'Bold Girls' in second place and Enniscorthy Drama Group's 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' in third. Best Producer went to Sally Stephens for 'Death and the Maiden' from Coolgreany Drama Group.

Best Actor went to Eamonn O'Sheil in 'Death of a Maiden' from Coolgreany Drama and Best Actress went to Denise Moules in 'Death and the Maiden' from Coolgreany Drama. Best Supporting Actor went to Richard Lister in 'Death and the Maiden' from Coolgreany Drama and Best Supporting Actress went to Carmel Quirke in 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' from Kilworth Drama Group.

Other awards included: Adjudicator Award 1 to Ken Murphy in 'Cash on Delivery' from Bridge Drama; Adjudicator Award 2 to Stephen Byrne in 'Proof' from Wexford Drama Group; Best Lighting, Cian Redmond, 'Death and the Maiden'; Best Setting and Costume, Pip Walsh, 'Proof'.CBS 'The Green' is very much an old school with a new vision. At least that's the impression one gets when strolling through what is a beautifully designed modern extension as it manages to reflect its 90-year-old history while also stating its future intentions.

On arrival I ask for directions to the Principal's Office and I'm kindly pointed towards a modern stairway that leads to a chiselled sandstone facade where the old and new school interconnect.

The new building is what you might expect of any modern school, but the older section has a sort of 1950s Cuban hospital vibe to it. In short: the school's architectural design is a seamless reflection of its past and present pride.

I have a 10am appointment to chat with Anne O'Callaghan who in 2012 became the first female principal of what historically was a male run school.

Hillary Clinton never got to deliver her 'smashing the glass ceiling' of opportunity speech in 2016 when all hope of becoming the first woman US President vanished. But for women like Anne, and thousands more like her, aspiration and opportunity has been achieved without fanfare or fuss.

I'm also aware this is my first time ever going to a principal's office by choice, in a visit that doesn't involve some kind of censure - another historic aspect to the morning.

Anne is a native of Abbeydorney and she attended nearby Presentation Secondary School which can be seen today from her office window. From Presentation, Anne completed her degree and teacher training diploma at UCC in Cork.

I immediately pick up on the Abbeydorney link when Anne tells me that in the early 1980s she devised her own business idea to video greyhounds in action at the track as a means of deciphering their times and movement - something owners and trainers found beneficial, and still do.

But teaching was always well ahead in terms of her future plans and when she grew tired of life in the greyhound tracks of Kerry and Cork, she sold the business and headed for the classrooms of Stockholm and Surrey.

"I just felt it was either make or break at that stage so I went to Stockholm to teach in the International School and at the all-boys Richard Challoner School in Surrey," Anne said.

"Six years passed and I decided to come back to Ireland in 1996. Like all teachers, I started off subbing and Brother Whelan was principal here at the time. Fortunately for me a colleague retired and I was kept on for another year."

Anne's experience of middle management working in a London school added to her sense of ambition and she tells me she always had an interest in leadership, feelings that would find a perfect opportunity on her return home.

"I had always seen myself as wanting to move up the ladder but I didn't think it would happen as quickly as it did. There was a lot of transition here in the school at the time and I applied for the position as acting Deputy Principal in 2011. I was the only female member of staff that applied. A year later I applied for the principal's job and by September 2012 I was the new principal."

Although Anne is aware her appointment was far from keeping with the school's sense of orthodoxy at that point, such changes would not have occurred had there not been a willingness and openness already in place. Signs of the school's gradual shift from a 'male mind-set' were already evident and seniority and patriarchy as the only pathways to progression at Tralee CBS were being relegated to the past.

Anne insists the transition is a reflection of the calibre of her colleagues whose support in her journey from teacher to deputy principal, to eventual principal, was helpful at every turn.

"I just felt, 'why not give it a go?' If you don't put yourself forward no one will know you're interested. I was conscious of the male patriarchy at the school and it was only when I got the job that the sense of history became even more apparent. The fact there was now a woman principal in a Christian Brothers School certainly was different. Some CBS schools in Ireland did have women principals, but as we are the only Christian Brothers Secondary School in Kerry, it felt unusual. It was when other people starting saying it to me that I realised 'this is something different'."

One would be forgiven for thinking the next chapter in the school's story would be a gradual shift towards a mixed school - something many felt would be a natural progression following Anne's appointment. But no such plans are as yet on the horizon and are unlikely to be for the foreseeable future.

"Our numbers are very strong and I can't see it happening just now. I think parents like choice and they feel a single-sex school steadies students.

"Parents have a preference for certain schools and while there's great choice in Tralee, I think this choice is reflected in our student numbers."

I ask Anne if there is something about her role that adds to the school in a way that would not be the case if a male principal was sitting in her chair. She leans forward and considers the question for a few seconds.

"I suppose that's something you have to ask the staff. I have a strong personality that is open and flexible, but also true to the values I believe in. For the students themselves they might think there's a maternal aspect to my role. I'm not suggesting for a second I'm more caring than my predecessors, but perhaps that dynamic is in the school now."

I instantly get where Anne is coming from as I scan the framed photos of her family and pet Golden Retrievers on a table beside her desk, all of which seem worlds apart from the kind of chalky, functional principals' desks that were once the norm.

Anne also believes the emotional climate has changed considerably in schools, largely due to the challenges presented by social media.

Mental health and personal wellness are important aspects of school life today; therefore, schools must provide an environment that enables students to find their own voice and self-expression.

"There's much more coming down the line these days with mental health now a huge issue, an issue once brushed under the carpet. We have to provide a safe environment for pupils who are with us for up to six hours a day.

"Social media is sometimes a nightmare and often the negative agenda it sets can spill into the school environment which we must then deal with.

"This job is not just about 'chalk and talk' and delivering a curriculum, it's much wider than that as the staff also deal with the emotional development of the student."

Anne praises her staff at every turn during the interview and the 'fantastic students' who she calls ambassadors for the school.

She also radiates a wry smile when telling me not every student can be perfect all the time, but the majority are.

"The pupils have a genuine fondness for the school and that is something the school has always enjoyed.

"The student is at the centre of everything we do and I'm fortunate that the staff have that same belief.

"I'd like for pupils to spread the word about CBS when they eventually leave here and that they feel like it was a supportive school," Anne said.

We wrap the conversation up as Anne walks me to the door. We pass a group of pupils busily preparing for their performance of John B Keane's 'Sive' later this month.

As we walk the corridor Anne's sense of pride is obvious as she points to different parts of the building that have been renovated.

We say our final farewells underneath an Andy Warhol-style portrait of Edmund Rice - founder of the Christian Brothers in 1802 - that hangs over the main lobby: yet another example of the school's ability to successfully bridge the gap between its past and present.Foynes Port has received a massive new addition in the shape of a new Liebherr crane, the biggest ever installed at the harbour on the Shannon.

The Shannon Foynes Port Company which has official jurisdiction over all marine activities and port management on the 500km2 Shannon Estuary, has invested 2.8 million on the new Liebherr crane.

The crane, which can lift the equivalent weight of 120 family cars, is the latest purchase as part of the company's ongoing 64million investment programme launched in 2015 that is seeking to transform the Shannon Estuary into a major national and international economic hub.

This programme - which will provide a significant employment boost to north Kerry - is the first phase of a planned long-term investment by SFPC under its Vision 2041 masterplan, which is targeting the creation of 3,000 jobs over the 26-year lifespan of the plan.

The tender was awarded to Liebherr last year and the crane was manufactured at the company's Rostock, Germany plant where it builds some 70 of these units annually.

The bespoke unit was built over a four-month period and had a six-day sailing before it arrived at the mouth of the Shannon Estuary where the vessel carrying it anchored for a day to allow the busy port to free up before the two-and a-half-hour sailing to Foynes could take place. The crew then waited for high water so that the vessel level reached that of the jetty, allowing for the crane to be driven off the cargo vessel by remote control by waiting Liebherr technicians.

The crane investment has been preceded by a 12.5million investment in filling 3.45 acres on the port's East Jetty, where the 370-tonne crane will mainly operate.

The next stage in the investment programme, with pre-planning underway, will be the reclamation of a further two hectares of quayside space and new crane will allow significant traffic growth at Foynes, with the new facilities enabling the SFPC to unload 40,000 ton vessels directly alongside the quay.

"We need efficient jetties but we also need efficient plant and machinery, and this crane gives us all of that and more," said SFPC CEO Pat Keating.

This piece of equipment is future-proofing the port. It's something we need for the here and now but it's also planning for the future.

"The greater lift capacity and reach allows us to bring new business; bigger ships; more ships; and process them with faster turnaround times. So it's an investment in our customers. It also has very low emissions, and noise levels are lower also, so its environmental footprint is minimised," Mr Keating told the media.

John Carlton, Engineering and Port Services Manager for SFPC, said that the crane has been in the planning for a number of years.

"This is the biggest crane we have ever had in the port. Its lifting capacity is just over double our existing capacity at 124-tonne single lift. Everything about this crane is bigger, better, faster, stronger. It's a very significant piece of equipment for the port," said Mr Carlton.

Liebherr previously supplied another crane to the port in 1992 with that crane still operating at the harbour.The failure of US authorities to issue Sinn Fein TD Martin Ferris with a visa in time for his planned St Patrick's Day visit to Boston could have cost the county dear, he told The Kerryman this week.

Deputy Ferris had a busy ten-day visit to the heart of Irish America planned, during which he expected to meet with the mayors of Boston, Tampa and Cinncinati among other luminaries.

But despite having appiled for a visa from the US Embassy in January, none had issued by the time of his planned departure on Thursday, March 8.

He was the most senior of a number of former IRA prisoners, now representing Sinn Fein, who failed to get clearance.

The deputy's daughter Toireasa, who applied at the same time, secured her visa in ten days and travelled last week.

"I was deeply disappointed not to have been able to travel as I had a very busy visit planned in which I was to hold a number of fairly high-level meetings with the mayors of Boston, Tampa, Cinncinati, congressman Richie Neal and others," Deputy Ferris said.

"It's a big week for Irish America and a big opportunity to help drive enterprise and investment in Ireland...it's very important to build and maintain relationships and I had hoped to help promote tourism, particularly to Kerry, as well as helping the plight of the undocumented," he added.A judge has issued a stinging rebuke to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) over how it handled the case of a Listowel woman found guilty of dangerous driving causing serious harm.

At Tralee Circuit Criminal Court on Friday Aine Stack (23) of Bedford, Listowel received an 18-month suspended sentence for dangerous driving causing serious harm, arising from a road accident at Clogherbrien, Tralee on August 30 2013.

An American tourist, John Lenahan (67), was seriously injured in the collision and passed away 10 days later.

Ms Stack was charged with dangerous driving causing death, even though the post mortem could not definitively state that the man had died as a direct result of the accident.

The post mortem report and another medical report on Mr Lenahan -which showed his condition had improved while in hospital after the accident - were only provided to the defence team on the second day of the trial.

It also emerged that in November 2014 State Pathologist Dr Margot Bolster had written to gardai stating that it could not be said "to the criminal standard of proof this collision caused the death of Mr Lenahan".

This written communication also wasn't seen by the defence until the case was underway.

Subsequently - in a move trial Judge Tom O'Donnell described as "highly unusual" - the DPP asked that the charge be amended to a lesser count mid-trial.

Judge O'Donnell said that as a result the defence could justifiably - and "with a considerable chance of success" - have sought a new trial.

This was only avoided by the fact that the accused had agreed to allow her trial proceed on the new, lesser, charge.

Judge O'Donnell expressed grave concerns about how the DPP had managed the case, describing the delays in providing the medical and post mortem documents and the request to amend the charge mid trial as "an extraordinary turn of events".

"The defence would have had ample grounds to have the jury discharged," as a result of the "bizarre twist" that had taken place in the trial he said.

"The defence took a pragmatic decision to allow the case go ahead rather than to prolong the matter," said Judge O'Donnell.

He also expressed confusion as to how Dr Bolster's letter had been sent to a Garda Superintendent in November 2014 but had not been provided to Ms Stack's defence team for over three years.

Judge O'Donnell said the defendant was a young woman of "excellent character" who had no previous convictions "not even a parking ticket."

He added that speed or alcohol had not been a factor in the crash and that the accident seemed to be the result "of a momentary error with a tragic outcome,".

The Judge said Ms Stack had accepted culpability at the earliest possible stage and "had done everything in her power to expedite the matter" and had displayed "genuine remorse at all times,".

Judge O'Donnell also praised the Lenahan family who, he said, had displayed remarkable forgiveness and charity in their request that Ms Stack be spared jail.

Judge O'Donnell imposed an 18-month suspended sentence and banned Ms Stack from driving for four years.Management at the Institute of Technology in Tralee have defended a 571,000 spend on consultants - ahead of its planned merger with Cork Institute of Technology - after the level of spending was criticised at the Dail Public Account's Committee (PAC).

The two colleges are in the final stages of a planned merger that, if successful, will result in the creation of a combined provincial entity, the Munster Technological University.

On March 8, during a debate on Higher Education Authority (HEA) funding for the proposed merger of Ireland's 13 ITs, the PAC heard criticism of ITT and CITs spending to date on their proposed merger, which is due to be finalised by September 2019.

The PAC was told that between 2014 and 2017 the two colleges spent 571,803 on advice from outside consultants.

This is compared with a 3,000 spend by IT Sligo, Galway-Mayo IT and Letterkenny IT in the same period. These three colleges are also planning to merge, though the process is at a far earlier stage than in Munster.

Labour TD Alan Kelly described the spending by ITT and CIT as "alarming."

"We have had to drag these figures from those involved in terms of costs and the breakdown of them. More than 571,000 has been spent and we do not know if it will ever materialise," he said.

Waterford Sinn Fein TD David Cullinane also raised concerns.

"More than 570,00 has been spent on the proposed Munster merger and a fraction of that cost has been spent on the other proposed mergers which are involved in the same process. Why is that the case?" he said.

In response to queries from The Kerryman ITT management said that the spend covered the cost of legal, project management and financial advice as well as due diligence of both colleges and an economic impact study for the Cork Kerry region.

All moneys came from a HEA funded joint account operated by both colleges to cover costs arising from the planned merger.

ITT provided a breakdown of the spending.

Financial advisors Deloitte received 190,611; financial consultant Matthew Fannin received 29,250; solicitors O'Flynn Exhams were paid 62,620; PR firm The Communications Clinic received 70,711; solicitors Arthur Cox received 31,425 and financial services firm PWC was paid 187,517.

ITT said it was college policy to respond to all queries from all State bodies in a "timely and comprehensive manner" and that the PAC's request for information was dealt with when requested and within the specified timeframe.

The ITT is currently compiling further information that has been requested by the PAC and which is due to be handed over by March 24.Landowners who were initially opposed to plans to extend the Great Southern Trail from West Limerick into Listowel when they were first mooted are now fully on board with the project.

It's one of two major developments in the project announced last week that are set to realise an attraction many believe will be worth millions in tourist euros annually to the North Kerry region.

This first official indication of the landowners' change of view comes as massive relief to the thousands of keen walkers and cyclists in the region supporting the project amid deep uncertainty in recent years.

The other major development announced last week is that Kerry County Council has now started designing the new route, having cleared the old railway line on which the greenway will run of vegetation in recent months.

It was a visit to the Deise Greenway in Waterford that convinced the landowners of the potential for a trail design that would address all their concerns. Their subsequent change of opinion was this week credited by the Authority as the key factor in bringing the project to such an advanced stage.

"A key factor in getting the clearance works completed has been the co-operation and assistance of the land owners along the route of the old railway line. A committee of relevant landowners, the 'Landowners on the North Kerry Abandoned Railway Line' group has been instrumental in liaising with the Council and facilitating the works undertaken to date. The group arranged for several farmers along the line to provide access points to the line for the Council's plant and machinery," Council spokesperson Owen O'Shea said.

Landowners' initial objections were due to the lack of any plan providing for their concerns, The Kerryman understands. They feared the impact on their operations could have been disastrous with walkers and cyclists effectively passing through busy farms in a scenario that raised public liability fears.

However, the new route will now be treated as a public road to all intents and purposes, and with guaranteed provision of underpasses/overpasses for cattle and plant machinery; privacy screening and more landowners are finally happy for the whole thing to proceed. Indeed, it was the landowners who first produced just such a plan to the Council after meeting counterparts in Waterford whose initial concerns were fully allayed in the end.There will be a sombre mood in Rosslare Harbour on Saturday (March 24) to commemorate the loss 50 years ago of the Aer Lingus Viscount airliner St Phelim with 61 people on board.

The aircraft crashed into the sea off Tuskar Rock shortly after noon on March 24, 1968, during a flight from Cork to London. In their last message the crew said the aircraft was at 12,000 feet, descending and spinning rapidly. There were no survivors and only 14 bodies were recovered from the sea following the crash, the worst in Irish aviation and the cause of which has never been established.

The passengers and crew were from Ireland, Belgium, Britain, Holland, Britain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. One of the four crew members, air hostess Anne Kelly was from Wexford. Sean Boyce, media relations person with the Rosslare Harbour-based committee formed to arrange and co-ordinate the commemoration, said a lot of relatives of the victims were expected to attend the ceremonies, which are due to begin at 11 a.m. with a flotilla of vessels, led by the LE Eithne heading from the harbour to the place off Tuskar Rock where the aircraft crashed into the sea.

The flotilla will include vessels from the Irish Coast Guard, the RNLI, and some local fishing boats, with a wreath-laying due to take at sea. Following this, at 2.30 p.m. there will be a land-based public commemoration at the Rosslare Harbour Memorial Park attended by relatives of the victims, Swiss and Belgium diplomats, Minister Paul Kehoe, representing the government, Wexford councillors, including the Mayor Cllr Jim Moore, members of the Irish Airline Pilots Association, representatives from Aer Lingus, the coast guard, irish Lights and the Naval Service.

The St Phelim 50th Anniversary Committee Chairman, Leo Coy, said it is important that we remember and continue to pay tribute to everybody involved in something that changed so many lives forever.

'Obviously for the relatives of the 61 people that died, life was never the same again, but for all of the rescue services and the local men and women who opened up their hearts and their homes to assist in whatever way they could, they can never forget the sadness that permeated this corner of Ireland,' he said.There are plans to build houses for people with disabilities on the grounds of hospitals within the county.

Senior Housing Officer Padraig O'Gorman said a sub committee comprising council housing officials and HSE officials has been established.

'It's a very complex area. Supplying the houses is only one part,' he said. 'It needs to be matched with HSE services on the ground. We hope to get a programme together and to have some proposals in place by the end of the year. It's not straightforward.'

Director of Services John Carley said it is a requirement of local authorities to have a 20 per cent allocation of houses for people with disabilities.

'In 2016 we were the highest in the country for housing persons with disabilities. It was reduced to 22 per last year but we are still above the figure outlined in the policy.'

Mr O'Gorman said the plan was approved by a disability working group.

Cllr Michael Whelan welcomed the figures, but questioned why there is a house fully adapted for someone with a disability in the county which has been kept vacant for a year.

Mr O'Gorman said: 'We are trying to get our houses back into use as quickly as possible.'

He said some houses are slightly dilapidated and require refurbishment works, while in other cases a tenant isn't suitable for a particular house.

Cllr Michael Sheehan asked if the council is looking for additional grants for sensory rooms in houses or for funding for new buildings.

Director of Services for Housing John Carley said: 'It's across a range of options. We will be taking a multi-pronged approach. I don't look at it in terms of disability, I look at the ability and if a sensory room is needed that if what will be provided, where possible.'

Cllr Davy Hynes said he is involved with Wexford Disability services.

Calling for a 32 bed mental health facility in the county, Cllr Robbie Ireton said: 'This is something we have all been asking for over a long time. For how long more is this going to drag on? Ths county is badly in need of it and yet we do nothing about it. Nothing is happening and the people are suffering.'

He suggested locating the service within the grounds of Wexford General Hospital. 'A big need is out there at the moment and yet nobody is ready to step up to the mark for them. They need that back up service to attain that level of independent living.'

Cllr Ireton said in some cases parents who once looked after their child with a disability or mental health issue are now too old. 'They need these units now. Clauid is a great example of how things should be done.'

Mr Carley said the local authority has consulted a wide range of groups.

Cllr Ireton said: 'It's not happening for people who need that sort of accommodation now, not in a years' time. They are on the housing list. They are there and they are real people. They need people like us to represent them because they have no voice.'

Cllr Keith Doyle agreed with Cllr Ireton, calling for some small units to be opened in St John's Hospital.The location for the Irish premiere of the gothic horror film The Lodgers was questioned by Cllr Michael Whelan who said New Ross and not Wexford should have been the setting as most of the film was filmed in the New Ross district.

The Lodgers was launched in The Arc cinema in Wexford town on Tuesday, March 6, before getting its New Ross release at St Michael's Theatre on Tuesday night last,

Set largely in the New Ross district, namely in Loftus Hall on Hook Head, Clongeen village and Tintern Abbey, Cllr Whelan said the launch should have been held in New Ross.

Chairman Cllr John Hegarty said the south of the county, including Johnstown Castle, was very well presented in the film, directed by Brian O'Malley.

'It was very well made and it certainly shows south Wexford in a positive light. It should be a huge boost to tourism in the south of the county.'

Cllr Whelan said he would like to join in congratulating the team behind the film, adding: 'I would question why it would go to Wexford town and not to New Ross.'

Cllr Larry O'Brien said he agreed with his fellow New Ross man.

'There are no picture houses in New Ross,' Cllr George Lawlor said.

'I am concerned again that we are being overlooked in the New Ross district. And we do have a cinema at the theatre,' Cllr Whelan said.

Director of Services John Carley said the film production company wanted to have the premiere in Wexford town, adding that Wexford County Council cooperated with the film and put resources into it.

'I understand there is a premiere in New Ross tomorrow,' Mr Carley said.

Cllr Whelan asked if in future can other districts other than Wexford be considered for the launch of events.

Mr Hegarty replied that he attended the launch of the mobile library service in Duncannon three days previously. Cllr Ger Carthy asked if councillors can be given more notice about events as he received an invitation to an event on the morning it was taking place.The Fairtrade committee with speakers Ciara Hollard of Fairtrade Ireland, Ghana Fairtrade officer Juliet Arku-Mansah and Fiona Saluk of Fairtrade Ireland

A Ghanian banana grower visited St Mary's secondary school recently to outline how being a Fairtrade grower has improved her and her family's quality of life.

The New Ross school was designated a fair trade school in 2010 and students and staff use only Fairtrade tea and coffee in the student canteen and in the staff room.

A committee of students from 2nd year to 6th year promote Fairtrade throughout the school community on an ongoing basis. The committee members are: Amie Cadagon, Katelyn Coleman, Molly Laffan, Sarah McGarr, Laura Mullally, Luka Prancilliauskas, Katie Rossiter Feeney, Sorcha Walkden.

As part of their work each year the students invite a speaker to visit the school to address students on the benefits of supporting and buying Fairtrade produce.

Juliet, from the VREL banana co-op in Ghana. was accompanied by Fiona Saluk and Ciara Holland from Fairtrade Ireland to the event, which was attended by the Fairtrade committee, all 2nd Year students, representatives from the Students' Council, principal John MIchael Porter, staff members and the trad group which provided a taste of Irish Culture for the visitors.

The committee members started by explaining how and when they became a Fairtrade school. They also emphasised that Fairtrade starts in New Ross by first supporting local businesses and then buying those Fairtrade products that can't produced in Ireland.

Following some traditional Irish music, Juliet addressed the audience. She gave details about the co-op where she works and her role in it.

The co-op produces conventional and organic bananas for Fairtrade and other export markets and employs more than 400 workers.

Juliet is employed by the estate as both Fairtrade officer and occupational health and safety officer. She was recently promoted in line with VREL's commitment to the Fairtrade philosophy of empowering workers, particularly women.

As management representative on the Fairtrade Joint Body, Juliet supports and advises workers' representatives in selecting and managing projects funded by the Fairtrade Premium.

As Occupational Health & Safety Officer, she oversees the implementation of relevant workplace legislation, such as providing training and protective equipment and for organising health screenings to test workers for diabetes, hepatitis, breast cancer, typhoid, HIV and other conditions.

Juliet spoke about the company she works for and outlined how the workers benefit from the bananas being certified as Fairtrade. Producers are guaranteed a minimum price for their produce along with a Fairtrade Premium which is reinvested in community projects to improve the standard of living of the people living there. The workforce is 100 per cent unionised and more than 95 per cent are on permanent contracts and wage levels are almost 40 per cent above the government minimum wage rate.

She said new school blocks have been built in three communities. At one of the schools some lessons had to be held outdoors under palm canopies which leaked when it rained. They now have a new school building, a computer lab and a head teacher's office.

Juliet then answered a number of questions. The day finished with some more traditional Irish music and a rendition of 'Falling Slowly' from the film 'Once' performed by the 2nd Year music students.

Ms Tinley said: 'Everyone enjoyed the event and went away with a real sense of how by supporting Fairtrade we can make a difference one purchase at a time to the lives of workers/producers like Juliet.'

Fyffes sponsored a Fairtrade organic banana for everyone in the audience.A lot remains to be done for Travellers if their lives are to be improved.

That's the view of a spokesperson for Sligo Traveller Support Group who attended an event an event in Dublin last Thursday to mark a year since Traveller ethnicity was recognised. The spokesperson said: "The recognition of Traveller ethnicity by the Irish State was very welcome last year and was long overdue.

"However, the recognition of ethnicity needs to be more than symbolic in nature and must be followed by real practical actions that will improve the lives of Travellers in Ireland.

"There is a huge accommodation and housing crisis across the country and Travellers are drastically impacted by this. Since 2000 over 55 million for Traveller accommodation went unspent.

"In 2017 over 4.1 million alone was returned by local authorities unspent. This isn't acceptable when there are so many families living without adequate running water, no sanitation facilities and severe overcrowding. In the area of mental health Traveller men have a suicide rate over seven times higher than the rest of the population, the figure is six times higher for women.

"Discrimination is also a priority issue. In a recent survey by Behaviour and Attitudes it was found that that 2% of people said they would "avoid" Polish people compared to 35% for Travellers.

"There is a growing sense of deep frustration in the Traveller community that the recognition of ethnicity has not brought any real change to peoples lives. This will continue to grow.

"Only through drastic action in areas like accommodation, mental health and discrimination will this change."A woman who is part of the Repeal the Eighth movement in Leitrim says the voices of women were silenced by a decision of the St Patricks Day parade committee in Dromahair to threaten to cancel their parade if they turned up with an information stall.

The group decided not to show in view of the threat and also not to go to the Drumkeeran parade an hour later following similar sentiments expressed to Bernie Linnane of the Repeal group.

She had indicated on social media a couple of days in advance of St Patricks Day that she and a small number of supporters would be in attendance at both parades. She saw it as a good opportunity to reach out to a rural community and had been to Manorhamilton and Carrick-on-Shannon several times in the recent past.

It was a chance for people to come up to us and take our leaflets if the wish. Abortion is not mentioned in our leaflets and there is nothing inappropriate about them at all, said Ms Linnane.

She was contacted by a member of the Dromahair St Patricks Day committee who asked if she would be using a megaphone and he was told they wouldnt be and that the group wasnt entering the parade and would not interfere with it in anyway.

Another member of the committee rang on Friday morning to say they were the talk of the town and that if they went ahead and turned up the parade would be cancelled. He said they had a vote and the committee was in favour of cancelling.

Ms Linnane said she felt this was an extreme action to take and was upset by it but that in the circumstances she decided not to attend the parades in North Leitrim. She told The Sligo Champion that it was an issue of free speech and being pro or anti the forthcoming amendment had nothing to do with it.

The issue is about whether a committee can force a group of women off the street. They had not right to tell us we cannot stand in the street, she said.

She posted a message to the Dromahair committees Facebook page saying she no longer felt welcome or a valued member of the local community where she has lived for over ten years.

I was shocked to learn the organising committee would go so far as to cancel the parade to prevent four women, three in their 50s and one in her 20s standing at a small table on the footpath and providing information on the upcoming referendum to those who enquired. Im sure you are perfectly well aware that we did not need your permission to stand on a public footpath, she wrote.

She added: I am disappointed that the parade committee was willing to go to such extremes to stifle our freedom of expression in this village. I would also be fearful for the future of any community which would stand over such actions. The people of Dromahair, especially our children deserve better. I wish you continued success with your parades. I look forward to the day when the women of Dromahair will be free to speak as they see fit and where they see fit.

Ms Linnane said Leitrim women comprised the 2nd highest ratio of those seeking abortions in 2016 in the UK and the issue cannot be forced off the streets.

The committee in a response on Facebook said the parade was a community event and to this end they could not be seen to be endorsing any side of the ongoing debate regarding the Eighth Amendment.

Its response would have been identical if a group with the opposing viewpoint had indicated they would attend the parade in the same way.The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) of the Philippines gave the illegal workers the deadline of April 12 to register themselves for repatriation.

Philippine Foreign Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Sarah Lou Arriola said the DFA is concerned about the more than 6,000 undocumented workers who still have not signed up for repatriation.

A total of 3,668 Filipinos have been flown home since February 11 when the Philippine embassy started repatriating undocumented workers who availed themselves of Kuwait's amnesty programme.

Philippine Ambassador to Kuwait Renato Villa stressed the need to register now, saying it takes at least 10 days to process the repatriation documents and get the necessary clearances from Kuwaiti authorities.

Since Kuwait announced a two-month extension to their amnesty for overstaying foreign workers, the number of Filipinos registering themselves with the embassy has gone down, Villa said.

There are approximately 250,000 Filipinos working in Kuwait, 75 percent of which are domestic helpers, according to government records.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a ban on the sending of new workers to Kuwait last month in wake of numerous complaints that Filipino workers there are severely abused and maltreated.-VNACollaboration is key to the development of Sligo and the North West region, according to the Chairman of ACCA Ireland, the professional body for accountants.

Sligo native John Gaynor, who is Programme Chair of the BA (Hons) in Accounting at IT Sligo, also pointed to the importance of supporting small and medium businesses in the region by creating an environment where enterprise can flourish.

He views investment in a better road network and reliable broadband as crucial and was pleased with commitments made to the region at the recent launch of Project Ireland 2040.

Mr Gaynor was speaking ahead of the annual ACCA Chairman's Business Forum and Lunch, which is being hosted at Markree Castle on March 23rd.

This is the main event in the ACCA calendar and marks the end of Mr Gaynor's tenure as Chairman. Mr Gaynor says it is an honour for him to bring the event to Sligo.

The theme for the business forum is 'Opportunities for SME growth and regional development in the Northern and Western Region' and will feature an opening address by Dr Brendan McCormack, President IT Sligo followed by a panel discussion chaired by Brian McEnery, former ACCA Global President.

The forum will be followed by the lunch with special guest speaker Pat McCann, CEO Dalata Group. .

Mr Gaynor says he wanted to bring the event to Sligo to highlight the great positives in the region.

"It provides a unique networking opportunity for professionals, entrepreneurs and established businesses from the region as well as a national showcase of all the positives the region has to offer," he says.

He pointed to the already great collaboration taking place between such groups as IT Sligo and its Innovation Centre, Enterprise Ireland's New Frontiers programme, co-working space The Building Block in Sligo, the Chambers of Commerce, Local Enterprise Offices, the IDA, the NWRA and the Western Development Commission (WDC).

Mr Gaynor says: "They are all working together for the good of the region. Collaboration is key. Indeed, this forum would not have happened without the support of IT Sligo, Sligo Chamber of Commerce, supporting bodies like the NWRA and businesses in the region. Everyone working together will see the region develop and create the right environment for SMEs to succeed.

"There are 45,000 SMEs in the North West region, with more than 90pc of these micro entities, and creating an environment for them to succeed is something I am passionate about.

"Growing up in a family business gave me a great love of enterprise and is one of the main reasons I chose a career in accounting. I believe accountants can make a substantial difference by helping small business owners to focus closely on the operational performance, manage risk and have a clear strategic focus for the long term."

Mr Gaynor says that during his year as ACCA Ireland Chairman, he travelled a lot and this highlighted to him the importance of a good road network and fast broadband.

"Investment in the region will ensure that the IDA will attract more FDI and provide much needed employment.

"I would like to see more jobs in the region so that our graduates can stay. Many of these graduates could start their own businesses and provide further employment."

He says there are many reasons for the region to be optimistic including the fact that it has been named European Entrepreneurial Region for 2018 and the recent launch by the Government of Project Ireland 2040 in Sligo was also a vote of confidence in the North West.

"It was great to hear plans to upgrade our roads, provide high-speed broadband, develop our hospital, and provide the region with a Technological University and more," says Mr Gaynor, who has been an ACCA member for 28 years and was elected ACCA Ireland Chairman in March 2017.

IT Sligo President Dr Brendan McCormack says: "IT Sligo has delivered accounting programmes for over forty years and enjoys a long-standing strong relationship with the professional accounting bodies. Our BA Honours degree in Accounting is highly regarded and qualifies for maximum exemptions from ACCA and ACA. Many of our graduates have found employment in leading national and international firms. It is an honour for IT Sligo to be associated with this high-profile event and I am delighted to deliver the opening address"

Sligo Chamber of Commerce President Fiona Candon says: "The forum is putting a spotlight on Sligo in front of an international and national business audience, leading the way for the potential for us to host lots more events of this kind. This is a positive message for Sligo and focuses a new audience on truly affirming Sligo as a centre for business growth and development as a holiday and business tourism destination."The passing by the Seanad of the Technological Universities Bill has paved the way for the Connacht-Ulster Alliance (CUA) to progress towards the next stage of the application of IT Sligo for designation as a Technological University for the West/North West.

It's a move which has been welcomed by IT President, Dr Brendan McCormack who said he had been anticipating the completion of all stages of approval of the Technological Universities Bill in both houses of the Oireachtas for some time and was now delighted this was now passed.

"IT Sligo and the CUA are fully aware of the criteria for application that include targets in relation to staff qualifications and research activity, undergraduate and postgraduate student profiles, and the requirement to have designated areas of strategic research activity.

"The CUA also acknowledges the importance of the criteria in relation to external linkages and international activity, particularly in the context of the contribution that the new technological university will make to the regional development of the North-North-West," he said.

Minister of State for Higher Education, Mary Mitchell O'Connor, said the legislation, when enacted, would underpin the development of a new type of higher education institution, building on the strengths and mission of institutes of technology to develop world class technological universities.

"The creation of technological universities provides the opportunity to drive regional development and provide more opportunities for individuals, enterprise and the community," she said.

Dr Perry Share, CUA Project Manager, said: "The Government has strongly endorsed the development of Technological Universities in its National Development Plan Project Ireland 2040 which notes that 'Technological Universities deepen the talent pool for distinctive regional sectoral clusters and drive applied research and innovation'.

"The CUA has agreed a budget for 2018 of approximately 2.5m.

"The partner Institutes will target this expenditure at enhancing the partners' capacity to meet the TU criteria, in particular through support for expanded research activities via postgraduate bursaries and support for Strategic Research Centres, and on support for staff to enhance their qualifications.

"Working groups across the three Institutes will look at the strategies, processes and practices within the Institutes to explore how they can continue working together in areas such as research, governance, integration of IT services and academic planning.

"This will involve more extensive consultation with internal and external stakeholders, such as students and staff, companies, representative bodies of business and community, and professional bodies."O'Hehir's were the overall prize-winners at this year's Sligo St. Patrick's Day parade.

Celebrating 47 years of parades in Sligo town, there were over 70 floats entered. This year's theme was 'women'. "It was great, it went really well," Finbarr Filan, Chairperson of the parade committee, told The Sligo Champion.

He added: "The theme of women was adhered to broadly. The theme is just a bit of a guideline and a bit of fun. Some people go with it and some don't, it's just to get into the general spirit of things. I wouldn't get too caught up in it."

The proceeds of this year's bucket collection will go towards Sligo Social Services. Since Sligo BID (Business Improvement District) took over the running of the parade, they have been able to give something back to the community via the parade. Around 1,200 was raised for Sligo Social Services.

"It's something different. In previous years the money had to go to funding the next year's parade but since BID took it over we can now have a charity partner. We're delighted, we'll hand over that money now on Sunday."

Filan continued: "The parade is sort of a well oiled machine at this stage. We won't meet now until the second Wednesday of 2019 and then we'll meet up every Wednesday.

"The same people do the same things so it's just about lining them up and getting the theme out there.

"We have to liaise with bands from up north too because we have a deal with them whereby five come every year so it's just about picking which ones and organising insurance and all of that. It runs really well. We have a great bunch on the committee, all everyone wants is a good parade so there's never any arguing or anything. We have great volunteers who give their time as well."

Prizewinners were as follows:

Best Represents Theme - Riverside Hotel

Overall Winner Clarence Hotel Cup - O'Hehirs

Industrial & Commercial Shield 1st place - Kool Kids

Industrial & Commercial Shield 2nd place - Abbott

Industrial & Commercial Shield 3rd place - Bank of Ireland

Arts/Culture section - Indian Association

Youth Section - Silver Stars

Sports Section, 1st place - Coolera/Strandhill

Sports Section, 2nd place - Strand Celtic

Scouts Section - Calry Scouts

Schools Cup - Ursuline College

Community Section - Samaritans

Adjudicators Cup - Sligo Rugby Club

Novelty Section - Sligo Gaol

Special Award 1st place - Five Fist Kung Fu

Special Award 2nd place - Sligo Social Services

National Schools - Cnoc na Ri

Band Section - Churchill Pipe Band

Local Bands Section - Ballincarrow School Band

Highly Commended - Benbulben CarnivalIT Sligo will be offering an MA in Social Work in September in direct response to meet the huge demand for workers in the area.

Waiting lists for social worker interventions exist across all service areas including: children and young people; care of the elderly and the disability sector.

Waiting lists for social worker interventions exist across all service areas including: children and young people; care of the elderly and the disability sector.

IT Sligo will be the first Institute of Technology to secure approval for a Masters in Social Work and it is planned it will begin in September and be a full-time course over two years.

Dr. Breda McTaggart, Head of IT Sligo's Department of Social Sciences, said:

"There is an urgent social work crisis in Ireland and more social workers are needed to cope with the demand. The increase in social workers is essential to meet the needs in communities where waiting lists for social worker interventions exist across all service areas. We are delighted that IT Sligo is going to be able to service this need - especially for the North West region."

She added that employer demand for social workers far exceeds the number of graduates available each year with large numbers of vacancies unfilled.

Dr. McTaggart said that there were many reasons why the team at IT Sligo decided to undertake the challenge of pursing an educational opportunity that is most often delivered within the University sector. She said:

"We felt it was important to put ourselves forward for this qualification when looking at the national policy landscape which advocates equity in access in educational opportunities.

We knew there was a demand for such a course from our regional student base which we have not been in position to respond to."

"We knew that with the calibre of the department team, who are well known and respected in their fields, the team was in a strong position to provide this course to a high standard. But most importantly, we felt there was a moral obligation as a provider of Higher Education to address an employment need that impacts on the most of vulnerable in our society."Fine Gael TD and Assistant Government Whip Tony McLoughlin has said he believes efforts being made to reintroduce certain town and borough districts for areas with a population higher than 15,000 people would be warmly welcomed by the people of Sligo.

Deputy McLoughlin, who served as Mayor of Sligo on four occasions before being elected to Dail Eireann in 2011, believes that "it was somewhat misguided" to abolish all of the town and borough councils in 2014 given the historic importance and civic functionality of many of these local executives. He is backing plans by Minister for State at the Department of Local Government, John Paul Phelan to bring back the borough councils.

"Ultimately the decision to abolish the councils was a cost cutting exercise at a time of national emergency. However, in my opinion it is almost as if the baby was thrown out with the bathwater in some regards. This decision ultimately reduced the number of County Councillors nationally by almost 800 and as a result this has left a massive void on the ground locally in terms of political representation. For historic Boroughs like Drogheda, Kilkenny and Sligo, it was as if a piece of our heritage and our identity had been withdrawn.

"Sligo has a large urban area to administer locally and a Borough Council which dated back over 400 years. I believe that these particular types of councils should have been exempt from the reforms The local electoral boundary review is now currently under way, with a decision on these new boundaries expected by June 2018 and it is hoped that within the terms of reference of this review that Sligo Borough Council could be reinstated from 2019," he said.Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin took to the streets of Tubbercurry last Tuesday to meet local business owners, education providers, healthcare providers and locals to discuss the issues that are affecting people in the area.

Having stayed in Cawley's Hotel on the Monday night, he was given a pretty clear view of the main issue affecting people in the South Sligo area at the moment.

Martin said it is a matter of urgency now that a resolution can be found to the current water crisis affecting households and businesses in the area.

"The water issue is the one in this particular area affecting people. Last night I stayed in Cawley's, I really enjoyed it. They were pointing out the water problem to me, that can be very challenging for businesses and for families and mothers of young babies and so on. It's incredible to believe that a planning issue has been the main stumbling block for this," he told The Sligo Champion.

He continued: "I think human health and the availability of water is a fundamental and it should take priority, in my view, in terms of planning criteria and I think it is urgent now that, I understand that efforts are being made, to re-submit that plan for the water treatment plant to get it off the ground and I think our view is that should happen as quickly as possibly."

The current trolley crisis in Irish hospitals is just one of the big issues in the health system at the minute.

The Fianna Fail leader was visiting the nursing home in Tubbercurry during his visit to get the thoughts of workers and residents regarding potential home care packages.

"The health issue looms large in every area and here in terms of the needs of Sligo and rural Ireland, particularly the need for greater investment in home care packages, more home help hours. The home care packages are key because they are an alternative to the nursing home. Whilst we will need more nursing home places, more home care packages will enable more people to stay ion their homes longer.

"I believe that over the last number of years we haven't got a straight story from the Government in terms of the amount of money we require to provide for an ageing population, and a population that's living longer in terms of the array of supports that elderly people need. We have Sligo Hospital itself and the need for increased bed capacity there."

Deputy Martin knows the importance of IT Sligo to the region. He says the IT is a 'key driver' for Sligo and the North-West.

"The Institute of Technology is one that I've been associated with as a former Minister of Education. I would have put a lot of supports there in my time and indeed Fianna Fail, when last in Government, had a very massive investment in terms of Yeats' Library and that 14 million project.

"It is one of the most important institutions in the region, going back to the days of the regional colleges when it was first established it has been a very significant factor in supporting industry, business, providing graduates with work as well as research in niche areas particularly robotics and so on. We see the IT as a key driver for Sligo and the region into the future."

Deputy Martin recently went on the record to speak of his support for repealing the 8th amendment. His Sligo/Leitrim TDs Eamon Scanlon and Marc MacSharry are both opposed to repealing that amendment.

Martin says he made his mind up on the issue having met with women who were forced to travel to the United Kingdom to terminate pregnancies.

"Over two years ago I would have met women who had to travel to England to terminate their pregnancies as a result of a diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality.

"Their stories were horrific in the sense that they were harrowing stories, they wanted to have their babies but had been given this terrible diagnosis but had to go to England to have a termination and then bring their babies back in the boot of a car in some cases. It was very difficult. I don't feel, in conscience, that I can force women in those situations to have to go to England in the future.

"I would equally have a view of rape and incest, particularly in the case of young women, all women, but it gets even more acute when you're talking about 14/15 year olds who become pregnant as a result of rape/incest. You cannot force women in those situations to go through a pregnancy, in my view, I couldn't. The only way to legislate for that then is the Oireachtas committee's determination that up to 12 weeks is the only way you could legally deal with the rape and incest issue."

The availability too of abortion pills has made the procedure more accessible for some, and Deputy Martin says article 40.3.3 of the Irish constitution has not prevented women from having abortions.

He says voters need to trust women.

"Then you have to factor in the emergence of the abortion pill which is used up to 10/12 weeks is happening whether we like it or not so article 40.3.3 hasn't stopped abortion in Ireland and unfortunately women are availing of the abortion pill online without any medical supervision so it's a very difficult issue.

"I respect people with a different view to mine, I think it's a deeply personal issue that people will take themselves in the privacy of their ballot box. I believe we need to trust women, I believe we need to trust obstetricians and gynaecologists and doctors because I don't believe a change is going to open 'the floodgates', to use that terrible phrase.

"I'm not an advocate for abortion, I just believe that in certain circumstances, women shouldn't have to go to England for terminations in the cases I have outlined."

He has previously been critical of the delivery of the National Development Plan which took place in Sligo a number of weeks ago.

The advertorials which appeared in newspapers following the launch of this plan, have been the subject of much criticism since.

"On the National Development Plan, it's all about delivery. At the moment, the Government has failed spectacularly on housing. We had many plans in the last 4-5 years, rebuilding Ireland, we've had a five year capital plan a few years ago, and many of the projects that were announced five years ago have been re-announced in the 20140 plan, about 40%. So why are we spending tax-payers' money on ads for projects that have been already announced?" said Deputy Martin,

He continued: "In some cases the CPOs, the compulsory purchase orders, are underway, in the case of roads, or design teams have been appointed in some schools, or very little has happened in some projects.

"There's a huge question over the nature of the advertising, the nature of the promotion, which is in my view, way out of sync with what is the reality of what is happening. That's not information, that's propaganda. Does it need bus ads? Bus ads traditionally aren't going to give you information."

Following his Tubbercurry visit, Deputy Martin then went to Boyle.

He will be returning to Sligo town and its environs in due course.A special wreath laying ceremony is taking place in Rhue Cemetery tomorrow at 2pm to commemorate Private Thomas Walsh who was killed by a roadside bomb in the Lebanon 29 years ago.

A ceremony will be held in Sligo at 11am at the grave of Private Mannix Armstrong who also died on the peacekeeping mission alongside Thomas and Corporal Fintan Heneghan from Ballinrobe.

Thomas was only 29 years old and left behind a wife and three children, while Mannix also left behind a wife and family. The families of the three soldiers received an apology from the State in 2011 after a report into the tragedy found the device that killed the soldiers could have been detected.

Oisin Walsh, younger brother of Thomas said the wreath laying ceremony at his graveside will be attended by a large group of his relatives including many nieces and nephews. Oisin said the Walsh family were glad to hear that the ceremony will now take place. "As a family we think it's a really lovely gesture. "It's being organised by the UN Veterans Association, they were formed around 7 years ago.

"It's completely new and a lovely way to remember those who have died." Thomas came from a large family who lived in Tubbercurry. "Thomas was 29 when he was killed. He was in the army around 10 years or that. They were due to come back from the Lebanon a month before they were killed.Thomas had a wife and three kids who are all grown up now and have their own families.

"Thomas's death was very hard one everyone including my mother. The wreath laying ceremony is a lovely gesture to remember them by," Oisin added.Bray native Dr Samuel McManus has been shortlisted for the 47th Annual Hennessy Literary Awards.

The awards which take place today (Wednesday, March 21) celebrate the best of new Irish writing.

Described as the Booker Prize for a new generation of writers starting out, the Awards celebrate emerging literary talent from across Ireland. Poets, novelists, short story tellers and lovers of literature will come together on the night as Hennessy reveals the winners of the First Fiction, Emerging Fiction and Emerging Poetry categories, as well as the overall Hennessy New Irish Writer for 2018.

Samuel who is the son of former TD Liz McManus and Dr John McManus is shortlisted in the First Fiction category for his work 'The Dog in the Story.

Samuel said who is living in Oslo said: 'I was staying in a house by the fjord in Norway, surrounded by the books of a man who had died the year before. I found a copy of The Collected Stories of Jack London among them, and that's when the idea of the story began to emerge.'

In addition to being a doctor and writer he is also co-director of Irrgronn Productions, a company that produces music, theatre and literature events. He has previously had his journalism published in The Irish Times, Village Magazine and Irish Medical Times. A Dog in the Story is his first published work of fiction.

Samuel is facing competition in his category from Aaron Finnegan (Louth) for Just This; Maeve McGowan (Cork) for The Summer of Wasps; Pat Nolan (Dublin) for Women and Other Anthropoids and Marty Thornton (Galway) for The Mighty Quinn.

Other categories include Emerging Fiction, Emerging Poetry,

In addition to celebrating new Irish writers, the Hennessy Literary Awards has honoured the success and achievements of established Irish writers and poets by inducting one eminent nominee each year into the Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame.

This year's inductee, celebrated novelist Bernard MacLaverty, will be the 16th key figure from the Irish literary world inducted into the Hall of Fame.Eighteen-month-old Clodagh Teevans and her mum Teresa collects the Water Babies Little Heroes Award from Sile Seoige and Carol McNally of Water Babies

A baby from Blessington has been deemed a 'little hero' after she battled against the odds after being born prematurely.

Clodagh Teevans was one of the winners of Water Babies 2018 Little Heroes Awards held recently in Dublin and presented by Sile Seoige.

The awards are presented to babies who have battled illness and adversity, including premature birth and physical disabilities, and have shown great courage in their little lives so far. Each child has a story of how water and swimming has helped their development or improved their lives and the lives of their family in some way.

Clodagh was only 5lbs 13oz when she was born. Her mum Teresa suffered a pulmonary embolism (blood clot), was rushed to hospital and ended up spending a few weeks in hospital.

Teresa has always had a massive fear of water as a result of a near-drowning experience but she has been inspired by Clodagh to go to adult swimming lessons. Clodagh, now aged a year and six months, has been swimming with Water Babies for a year and is thriving at her class and proving to be a real little hero.As well as the visit of a steam train from Dublin, shuttle services from Wicklow town to Greystones and Arklow will run on the day

The Railway Preservation Society of Ireland has announced that some of its trains will be steaming into Wicklow on Easter Monday.

Some 250 passengers will travel from Dublin and spend a few hours around Wicklow town before returning to Connolly Station.

The first steam train, named the Easter Eggspress, will leave Dublin's Connolly Station at 10.35 a.m. on April 2 and arrive in Wicklow at 12.05 p.m. It doesn't depart from Wicklow back to Dublin until 4.35 p.m. Tickets cost 20 for an adult and 14 for a child (including an Easter egg) and can be purchased at www.steamtrainsireland.com.

Locals seeking a piece of the action can avail of one of two shuttle services operating on the day.

A Greystones shuttle will leave Wicklow station at 12.40 p.m., arriving at Greystones for 1.05 p.m. This service will head back south at 1.35 p.m. to arrive in Wicklow for 1.54 p.m.

An Arklow Shuttle will departing Wicklow at 2.15 p.m. to reach Arklow at 2.50 p.m. before heading north again at 3.30 p.m. to arrive in Wicklow at 3.55 p.m.

Tickets for the Arklow and Greystones Shuttles cost 14 for adults and 8 for children and can also be purchased online. A limited number of tickets are available at Track One Music in Wicklow town.

The Railway Preservation Society of Ireland was formed in 1964 to preserve Irish steam locomotives, carriages and rolling stock and to operate them on the Irish railway network for everyone to see, appreciate, enjoy and travel on.

The Society currently has around 1,000 members from all across the world and depends on its volunteers to keep its stock of steam trains operational.Ashford Studios have been granted permission for a 90 million extension which could attract major Hollywood productions to County Wicklow.

The plan includes four new film studios of 40,000 sq ft each, a TV studio, offices and support space and has the potential to create 1,500 movie related jobs.

In October 2015, Wicklow County Council agreed to no longer seek development contributions from film studios seeking to expand in the county following an appeal from owner Joe O'Connell.

At the moment the hit TV series Vikings is shot in Ashford Studios, as well as other outdoor locations in Wicklow.

Ashford Studios MD Shelley Hargadon has welcomed the decision.

She said: 'Wicklow has a long history of film-making. We have highly-skilled crews in the area, beautiful locations and are close to Dublin International Airport but we have been lacking infrastructure. With this permission, investment can now be made in purpose-built studio infrastructure of scale that can compete with other jurisdictions.'

It is hoped to start construction sometime in June of this year.

The planning approval means Ashford Studio can try and attract large scale studio-based film productions and in turn promote Wicklow as Ireland's movie hub.

The ten year permission allows for the development of film studios with ancillary facilities in 12 buildings.

They will accommodate film making, support offices, visitors centre, costume storage, make up room, set construction, paint shop, plaster shops, metal shop, timber shop, electrical, special effects, chemical store, set assembly and toilets. The buildings vary in size from one storey to four storey.

Cllr Shay Cullen, the Cathaoirleach of Wicklow Municipal District, believes the development could provide a jobs and tourism boost to the county.

'I think it is positive news for both Ashford and the County as a while. It could push Wicklow forward as the centrepiece of the film industry in Ireland.

'The development will enhance the reputation of Ashford Studio and will bring more film and TV productions to Wicklow. It will also improve business and tourism.

'It will also have a knock-on effect on many other businesses who could flourish once the studio expands.'The future of Baltinglass Community Hospital moved a step closer to security thanks to a positive report from HIQA inspectors.

A number of years ago, the hospital's future looked under threat after a HIQA report questioned the suitability of the building.

The hospital was recently inspected by HIQA as part of a three-year registration cycle, and, while the written report hasn't yet been published, it is understood that it will be very favourable.

In correspondence with Cllr Tommy Cullen, David Walsh, Chief Officer for Dublin South/Kildare/West Wicklow, stated: 'I can inform you that the response of the HIQA inspectors on the dates of the inspection was very positive in relation to the care given at the hospital which is a credit to the Director of Nursing, Carol Gannon, and her team of both nursing and non-nursing staff.

'In addition, the HIQA inspectors were very impressed at the recent physical improvements made and stated that it was an example of how older buildings can be modernised to the highest standards.

'I have no doubt that the hospital will be registered without difficulty for the next three-year registration period and that the hospital will continue its fine record of providing care to local people for many more years.'

Cllr Tommy Cullen has welcomed the positive HIQA report and hopes to see Baltinglass Community Hospital expand further in the future.

'I am delighted with the review and that the future of Baltinglass Hospital has been secured for the long term. Hopefully the report will be published soon. The staff, day care committee and all the people associated with the hospital deserve a great deal of credit. This bodes well for the future. A lot of people can't afford private health care so it was essential that Baltinglass Hospital remained open. I look forward to the publication of the report and now I would like to see further extensions to include an eight set down beds and eight full-time care beds.'Cate Blanchett speaks on stage after she won best actress for her work in 'Blue Jasmine" at the 86th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California March 2, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson (UNITED STATES TAGS: ENTERTAINMENT) (OSCARS-SHOW)

Cate Blanchett has spoken for the first time about working with Woody Allen in the wake of an allegation of molestation made against him by Dylan Farrow.

The Australian actress says she knew "nothing" of the sexual assault allegations surrounding Woody Allen when she decided to work with him.

Blanchett starred in Allen's 2013 film Blue Jasmine and her performance earned her an Oscar, but she insists that at the time she wasn't aware that Allen had been accused of molesting his daughter Mia Farrow in 1992.

Cate, 48, made the claim when she was asked by CNN's Christiane Amanpour how she juxtaposed "being a #MeToo proponent, a Time's Up proponent, and staying silent or having worked with Woody Allen?"

But the Australian star hit back, arguing that the reporter's assessment was unfair.

She said: "I don't think I've stayed silent at all. At the time that I worked with Woody Allen, I knew nothing of the allegations.

"At the time, I said it's a very painful and complicated situation for the family, which I hope they have the ability to resolve."

Allen has repeatedly denied the allegations made against him by his daughter. But Cate has insisted she would "support" the case being reexamined if that was considered to be necessary.

She continued: "If these allegations need to be reexamined which, in my understanding, they've been through court, then I'm a big believer in the justice system and setting legal precedents.

"If the case needs to be reopened, I am absolutely, wholeheartedly in support of that."

Cate also spoke about the dangers of social media platforms in relation to the #MeToo campaign, which was created in the wake of the Hollywood sex scandal.

The acclaimed actress said: "Social media is fantastic about raising awareness about issues, but it's not the judge and jury.

"I feel that these things need to go into court, so if these abuses have happened, the person is prosecuted and so someone who is not in the shiny industry that I am can use that legal precedent to protect themselves.

"Always, in my industry or any other industry, they're preyed upon because they're vulnerable."Judd Apatow has hit out at Diane Keaton for defending Woody Allen following claims the 82-year-old sexually abused adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow.

Keatons comments follow a television appearance by Farrow, 32, in which she discussed her allegation that Allen molested her in an attic as a child.

In her first television interview, Dylan Farrow talks with @CBSThisMorning co-host @GayleKing about her allegations of childhood sexual abuse by her father, Woody Allenhttps://t.co/EJ1VNIAKMu pic.twitter.com/IXKZF3voyy  CBS News PR (@CBSNewsPress) January 16, 2018

Allen has always rejected the claim, which first surfaced in the 1990s and re-emerged in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations.

He was investigated at the time but not charged.

The actress, 72, tweeted: Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him. It might be of interest to take a look at the 60 Minute interview from 1992 and see what you think.

Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him. It might be of interest to take a look at the 60 Minute interview from 1992 and see what you think. https://t.co/QVQIUxImB1  Diane Keaton (@Diane_Keaton) January 29, 2018

Keaton has starred in several Allen films including Annie Hall and Love And Death.

In a tweet, Apatow responded: I see a man who wanted what he wanted and didnt care that he was having an affair with a 19-year-old when he was 54 who was also his daughters sister.

The producer added: He also took nude photos of this child who he had known since she was nine and left them out for his family to see. Narcissism.

I see a man who wanted what he wanted and didnt care that he was having an affair with a 19 year old when he was 54 who was also his daughters sister.He also took nude photos of this child who he had known since she was nine and left them out for his family to see. Narcissism. https://t.co/uhiTY5p7bh  Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) January 30, 2018

A growing number of stars have distanced themselves from the filmmaker following the allegations from Farrow.

A Rainy Day In New York star Timothee Chalamet announced earlier this month that he would donate his salary from the forthcoming film to charity, including the Times Up initiative.

Mark Wahlberg also said he would give away his $1.5 million (1.1 million) earnings from the reshoot of All The Money In The World to the movement, which supports accusers of sexual harassment and abuse.Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian West have called for an end to gun violence as they joined protesters in the student-led March For Our Lives.

Kardashian West was joined by husband Kanye and daughter North in Washington DC for the rally which is urging Congress to ban assault-style, high-capacity rifles which have been used with deadly efficiency in recent mass shootings.

Cyrus  who is due to perform at the Washington DC rally  shared photos of her and her family on social media as she vowed: I wont ever give up & neither will the millions that march with us today! #EndGunViolence.

Surrounded by heroines! Lucky to be here at this moment in history with the ones I love! #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/xVF4sDVofh  Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) March 24, 2018

Demi Lovato, Amy Schumer, Ariana Grande and Olivia Wilde are a number of other stars joining the anticipated one million people protesting across the US.

The main rally organised by pupils in the wake of the Valentines Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is taking place in the US capital, although sibling marches are taking place across the US and world.

These lyrics mean more to me now than ever. I wont ever give up & neither will the millions that march with us today! #EndGunViolence pic.twitter.com/P4fEaImwBI  Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) March 24, 2018

Kardashian West wrote on Twitter: So ready to March today! Landed in DC w North & Kanye.

So ready to March today! Landed in DC w North & Kanye. We stand in solidarity with the survivors of gun violence & students who are calling for action on common sense gun safety laws at #MarchForOurLives around the country @AMarch4OurLives @Everytown  Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 24, 2018

We stand in solidarity with the survivors of gun violence & students who are calling for action on common sense gun safety laws at #MarchForOurLives around the country.

On Friday, Taylor Swift lent her support to the movement in a rare political statement from the US pop star while George Clooney wrote a letter to the Parkland school students.

Swift wrote on Instagram: No one should have to go to school in fear of gun violence. Or to a nightclub.

Or to a concert. Or to a movie theater. Or to their place of worship.

Ive made a donation to show my support for the students, for the March For Our Lives campaign, for everyone affected by these tragedies, and to support gun reform.

Im so moved by the Parkland High School students, faculty, by all families and friends of victims who have spoken out, trying to prevent this from happening again, she added.John Collins, 19, a University of Cincinnati student, cheers during the March For Our Lives protest (John Minchillo/AP)

Stars have joined survivors to call for tighter gun control laws as thousands across the US protested against mass shootings in the student-led March For Our Lives.

The main rally organised in the wake of the Valentines Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was held in Washington DC on Saturday.

But they were joined by sibling marches across the States and the world, including in Los Angeles where stars and survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, spoke in support of the mass movement taking on opponents of tighter laws such as the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Carrying placards reading Bullets are not school supplies, My congressman takes NRA blood money and Protect kids not guns, thousands of marchers descended on Downtown LA.

Its very inspiring here down at the #MarchForOurLivesLA. I caught up with @amyschumer who has used her voice in the past in support of gun control and is using her voice again today. pic.twitter.com/iGoxMXRWvJ  Maria Shriver (@mariashriver) March 24, 2018

Actress Amy Schumer told them she was risking having literal targets on our backs by speaking out in the fight for the fallen angels and the children living in fear of guns.

We stand together for your senselessly slain classmates and friends and say this has to stop, she told the crowd.

Its these moments that define us. What we do in the struggle, what we do when things are hard and messy and involve doing whats right and not what is wrong, clearly wrong, like taking money from the NRA to uphold these laws outdated by hundreds of years.

They allow for repeated killings of students.

Willow Smith said she was so proud to support the organisers efforts to make a safer nation.

Actress and model Yara Shahidi added: People, especially the people in our government, have to accept and embrace that we have a right to safety.

Survivors of the Marjory Stoneman shooting, Mia Freeman and Hayley Licata, received a huge applause from the audience.

Mia said: No one should ever have to experience the pain we are all feeling right now.

We should be going to school to get an education and a future, not wondering if we are ever going to see that future.

Hayley hit out at US President Donald Trumps proposal to arm teachers.

The answer to gun violence is not more guns, she said.

LA mayor Eric Garcetti compared the moment to the civil rights movement, adding: Its time to protect kids and not protect guns.

Action since the 17 students and staff members killed in the attack has so far seen tens of thousands stage school walkouts and has thrust the gun debate into the national consciousness.

They have directed much criticism at the NRA and have called for measures including tighter background checks and a ban on assault weapons such as the one used in the latest massacre.

The outcry so far has seen some success, with Florida passing its first new gun controls in more than 20 years and the US Congress issuing funding to improve school safety and compliance with criminal background checks for firearm purchases.

But, the protesters are keen to reiterate, there is still much to be done before students feel safe in the nation where school shootings are a regular occurrence.

Every kid in this country now goes to school wondering if this day might be their last. We live in fear, the March For Our Lives mission statement says.

Protesters also rallied in the UK, with relatives of the victims of the Dunblane massacre joining a march in Edinburgh and hundreds descending on the US embassy in London.Meghan Markle and Prince Harry arrive for a visit to the Eikon Exhibition Centre in Lisburn where they are attending an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space

When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry arrived in Belfast on Friday, making their first official visit to Northern Ireland, there were several things to note about the soon-to-be-Duchesss outfit.

Firstly, the choice of colours; her Greta Constantine skirt was in a patriotic emerald green, and her Mackage coat in a spring-ready pastel pink. Secondly, her Victoria Beckham jumper; Beckham is thought to now be a personal friend of Ms Markles and is a name in the running (albeit at the back of the pack of pacemakers) to perhaps design the dress.

Expand Close Britain's Prince Harry and US actress and fiancee of Britain's Prince Harry Meghan Markle arrive at the Eikon Centre in Lisburn, on March 23, 2018, to attend an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / ARTHUR EDWARDSARTHUR EDWARDS/AFP/Getty Images / Facebook

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But the biggest talking point that Markle wanted us to be aware of today was her handbag. She made sure it was unmissable, holding it front and centre in almost every photo as she and Harry arrived in Lisburn, and there is, naturally, a story behind it.

The bag is a brand new, not-yet-available-to-buy Bloomsbury case, from British brand Charlotte Elizabeth. It can be worn as a satchel or carried by the top-handle, Markle-style.

Charlotte Elizabeth Jones, a 23-year-old from Hertfordshire, is the designer of her namesake label (it is by pure coincidence that she shares a name with Princess Charlotte of Cambridge), which she launched in 2016 with support from The Princes Trust.

In 2014, when she was 19, Charlotte had attended a four-day course in entrepreneurship run by the organisation (which is headed up by Markles father-in-law to-be, Prince Charles) and had learned how to set up a fashion business. She had left school at the age of 16 due to heart complications, and this course gave her the valuable skills she needed to set up shop, however two weeks after the training, she suddenly became paralysed.

Expand Close Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are presented with a posey by Lleyton Jackson 6 and Rosie Jackson 4 Photo credit should read: Joe Giddens/PA Wire / Facebook

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I had a heart operation in 2012 and I had to leave school at 16 because of it, Jones previously told The Telegraph. I couldn't get A Levels or go to uni, and it was hard to find employment because of my physical health conditions.

"I suddenly just collapsed," she recalled of the day her situation worsened in June 2014. "I had had flu-like symptoms for nine months before, but had been told everything was fine. I had a heart arrhythmia that was never supposed to come back after my heart operation, so it was a freak episode. I collapsed and basically lost all muscle ability within seconds.

Expand Close Charlotte Elizabeth Jones with her new-edition Bloomsbury bag, available to pre-order for 175 from charlottelizabeth.com. PIC: The Telegraph / Facebook

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Jones was paralysed for months before making a recovery and was able to start gradually working on her brand again.

"Because I lost the ability to use my hands and muscles, I couldn't draw, so I was trying but it was very childlike," she said of her initial attempts. "My sister's boyfriend is a designer so he drew more specialised sketches so people would know how to make them."

Jones has done a phenomenal job of starting her label - something that many recovering from such difficulties with their health might not have attempted - and with support from The Princes Trust, she has developed her product line, made with leathers sourced at a British tannery, and stitched in Buckinghamshire.

I had such a clear a vision of what I wanted it to be, she says of her design ethos. Very clean cut, minimal and inspired by classic 50s handbags, when it was an experience to have a handbag."

Jones has had a long journey to get to this point and, as Markles endorsement today will undoubtedly launch her label into a different league, it feels like a reward that was worth the wait. Her thoughts on it all? Simply, It is wonderful.

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Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]The speaker of Catalonias parliament has suspended a scheduled vote to elect a jailed separatist leader as the new regional president.

Speaker Roger Torrent announced to the chamber on Saturday that there would be no vote on the candidacy of Jordi Turull, a former regional minister.

Mr Turull was one of five high-profile separatists sent to jail without bail on Friday by a Supreme Court judge for their alleged role in a failed independence bid by Catalonia from the rest of Spain in October.

The separatist majority of the Catalan parliament had the chance to elect Mr Turull on Thursday, but the far-left wing of its bloc sunk his chances by abstaining.Britain's Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faced a backlash after sacking Owen Smith from his shadow cabinet over Brexit.

Mr Smith was replaced as shadow Northern Ireland secretary after calling for a second European Union referendum.

Mr Smith said he had been sacked for his views on the "damage" Brexit will do to the UK's economy and the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr Smith, who unsuccessfully challenged Mr Corbyn for the party leadership in 2016, won public support from pro-EU Labour figures - with former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hain accusing the Labour leader of a "terrible Stalinist purge".

Mr Smith's sacking came amid mounting anger over Mr Corbyn's response to a controversy surrounding allegedly anti-Semitic street art which was being painted over in 2012.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: "In 2012, Jeremy was responding to concerns about the removal of public art on grounds of freedom of speech.

"However, the mural was offensive, used anti-Semitic imagery."

MP Mike Gapes said that "apparently (in) Corbyn world free speech is allowed for anti-Semites but not for Labour MPs supporting the views of our members and our 2016 Conference Policy on the EU".Lys Assia at the Eurovision in 1956

The first ever winner of the Eurovision song contest, Lys Assia, has died aged 94.

The first ever winner of the Eurovision song contest, Lys Assia, has died aged 94.

The Swiss-born songstress triumphed at the inaugural edition of the competition with winning song Refrain in her home country in 1956.

Assia - who turned 94 on March 3 - died on Saturday at Zurich's Zollikerberg Hospital, organisers of the contest said.

They offered their "deepest condolences" to Assia's friends and family and said they will be paying tribute to her "life and her lasting commitment" to Eurovision.

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As well as her 1956 triumph, Assia also represented Switzerland in 1957 and in 1958 where she finished second with Giorgio.

Born in Rupperswil in northern Switzerland in 1924, Assia started her career as a dancer before her lifelong connection with Eurovision.

She was a guest of honour at the contest in 1985 while in 2005 she performed to Congratulations to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Remarkably, at the age of 87, she decided it was time to return as a contestant and unsuccessfully attempted to represent Switzerland in 2012 and 2013.

The competition's organisers said: "We would like to use this opportunity to express our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Lys Assia."The news that former French president Nicolas Sarkozy had been detained this week for questioning over allegations he received millions of euro in illegal election campaign funding from the late Muammar Gaddafi caused ripples not just in France, but also in Libya.

'Gaddafi's ghost looms large over Sarkozy' read the headline in one Libyan media outlet. Libyan social media buzzed with discussions over Sarkozy's role in the country before, during and after the 2011 uprising.

France was a key architect of the Nato-led intervention that year that helped tip the balance in favour of anti-Gaddafi forces. I remember seeing France cheered on the streets of Benghazi soon after the first airstrikes began. Within weeks, cafes and other businesses were named in honour of Sarkozy.

Seven years on, with Libya mired in a chaotic transition marked by bitter power struggles and militia conflict, sentiments towards 2011 and the role played by France are often far more ambivalent.

The Sarkozy probe that resulted in the former president's questioning this week is what Radio France International has dubbed potentially "the biggest scandal in France since the end of World War II".

It is also the Libya-related story that has received most attention in France since 2011 - far more than any documenting of the turmoil that followed in the years since the intervention. French media coverage of the case is raising questions, not just about alleged political corruption, but also Paris' role in the 2011 intervention, which ultimately led not only to the end of Gaddafi's 42-year dictatorship but also his death at the hands of rebel forces.

Investigators are probing claims that the Gaddafi regime provided funds totalling 50m to illegally finance Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign in which he beat his main challenger, the Socialist Party's Segolene Royal, to replace Jacques Chirac.

It is alleged that some of the Libyan money was delivered directly to Sarkozy's office in leather briefcases. If the allegations are true, the funding received would be more than double the legal limit for political donations at the time and would also flout French laws regarding foreign financing and campaign transparency.

Back in spring 2011, in the days leading up to and after the UN Security Council resolution that mandated the Nato-led intervention, Gaddafi and his son Saif gave a series of interviews to foreign journalists in Tripoli in which they claimed they had supported Sarkozy's campaign. "It was because of me that he became president," a bitter Gaddafi - who just a couple of years before had been feted by Sarkozy during an official visit to Paris - told one reporter. "Mr Sarkozy cannot play with us forever," his son told 'Time' magazine. "He plays a very dirty game. And we can do the same thing with him. He should be very careful. We can reveal a lot of things. Secrets. He knows. He knows very well. So, the French should behave, or there is going to be a big fiasco in France."

Saif's current whereabouts are a matter of speculation - he was captured by rebels in late 2011 and held in the western Libyan town of Zintan for many years after that - as is the claim he plans to run for election in Libya in the future. But this week's developments could mean the "fiasco" he warned of could be about to unfold.

Ironically, Sarkozy was taken into police custody almost seven years to the day after the first French airstrikes were carried out in Libya. He was interrogated for 14 hours at a police station west of Paris and summoned again the following day for further questioning. He has denied all allegations. If the case goes to trial, Sarkozy could end up in jail.

The intrigue - which includes a colourful cast of characters - had been building for years before the French launched an inquiry in 2013. Investigative journalists at French outlet Mediapart obtained a document allegedly signed by Gaddafi's intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi showing that the Libyan leader had agreed to finance Sarkozy with 50m. Sarkozy claimed the document was forged. The case gained momentum after French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart that he had personally delivered suitcases stuffed with bundles of euro notes from Gaddafi.

Also key to the case are personal documents belonging to Shukri Ghanem - Libya's former oil minister who drowned in Vienna in 2012 - which allegedly refer to payments to Sarkozy.

Sarkozy has denounced the allegations against him as "monstrous" and "crazy" after he was placed under investigation this week. In a TV appearance, Sarkozy described Gaddafi as a "mad-man" whose "band of killers, crooks and mafiosi" were now trying to target him because of his role in toppling their regime. The ghosts of 2011 are restless.European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attends the European Union leaders summit in Brussels with the embattled Martin Selmayr. Photo: Olivier Hoslet/ Reuters

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, has threatened to resign if his most senior adviser is forced out of a new job at the helm of the EU civil service.

Martin Selmayr, a 47-year-old German lawyer renowned for his shrewd tactics and virulent anti-Brexit stance, was suddenly promoted to the position of secretary general at the Commission in February.

The appointment sparked a furore in Brussels, with MEPs complaining that the appointment was orchestrated in secret, which made the EU look like an "old boys' club".

Mr Selmayr was reportedly handed the job by Mr Juncker in a matter of minutes, following the sudden retirement of his predecessor Alexander Italianer.

But in a meeting with EU leaders on Thursday evening, Mr Juncker fumed: "If he goes, I go," according to German magazine 'Der Spiegel'.

Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said he suspected the row would end with Mr Juncker having his way as "the real power in the EU is with the Commission".

Mr Selmayr's meteoric rise to power is a frequent source of grumbling for MEPs and diplomats, with some accusing him of using bullying tactics to push through his political agenda.

Some former colleagues refer to him as the "monster in the Berlaymont" - the Commission's headquarters.

Mr Selmayr has also been accused of trying to "wreck Brexit", which has led to some Eurosceptics in the UK pining for his dismissal. In September, he branded the UK's decision to leave the bloc as "stupid" and suggested it could be reversed.

He is also suspected of being the source of embarrassing leaks for Britain about a private dinner between Theresa May and Mr Juncker to the 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung', a charge he denies.

A parliamentary committee is due on Tuesday to review whether correct procedure was followed in his appointment.

But Mr Juncker won strong backing from the leaders of France and Germany yesterday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron faced questions about Mr Selmayr at a joint summit news conference.

Ms Merkel said she was pleased his appointment was being reviewed, but praised his "efficiency" and said: "I very much appreciate the work of Martin Selmayr."

Mr Macron, too, offered his personal backing and cautioned against the EU "beating itself up" over questions of the transparency of an appointment when other countries had much bigger problems.

"I have always appreciated the professionalism of this person. His abilities should not be questioned," he said.The mother of a French police officer who was killed after he swapped himself for a hostage during an Islamic extremist attack on a supermarket says that she wasnt surprised by her sons courage.

Col Arnaud Beltrame had offered himself up unarmed to the 25-year-old attacker in exchange for a female hostage in the southern town of Trebes.

The attacker shot him and Mr Beltrame later died of his injures.

Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame, wounded after taking the place of a hostage in the attack yesterday at #Trebes, gave his life to save the lives of others. Truly a hero. Our thoughts this morning with his family and his comrades. And our solidarity with France pic.twitter.com/Ly2xIl90h9  Ed Llewellyn (@EdLlewellynFCDO) March 24, 2018

Mr Beltrames mother told RTL radio on Friday night, before the announcement of his death, that Im not surprised. I knew it had to be him. He has always been like that. Its someone, since he was born, who gives everything for his homeland.

Asked if she was proud of him, she said he would have told her Im doing my job mom, thats all.

She said to defend the homeland was his reason for living. RTL did not give her name.

And his brother, Cedric Beltrame, told RTL radio on Saturday that he gave his life for strangers.

He added that his brother was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing.

Cedric Beltrame also stressed that his brother kept his professional wits about him. The officer managed to surreptitiously leave his mobile phone on so that police outside could hear what was going on inside the supermarket.

Cedric Beltrame said that if we dont describe him as a hero, I dont know what you need to do to be a hero. Its a word I think is appropriate for him in such tragic circumstances.

Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame, shot after taking the place of a hostage at #Trebes attack, has died from his wounds. His quick thinking saved several lives. Incredible valour and sacrifice.  pic.twitter.com/1kn7oTy6lp  Penny Mordaunt (@PennyMordaunt) March 24, 2018

Meanwhile, the manager of the supermarket says she felt helpless as the attacker fired shots in her store.

The woman, who would identify herself only by her first name, Samia, says she was in her office when she heard the shots.

She came downstairs, saw what was happening and called police. She said she helped evacuate as many people as possible.

She said from inside city hall, where the local government had set up a crisis centre, that it was terrifying.Arnaud Beltrame offered himself up to an extremist gunman in exchange for a hostage (Gendarmerie Nationale via AP)

The French police officer who swapped himself for a female supermarket employee being held hostage had already received a lifetime of accolades by the time he walked unarmed into the store under attack by an extremist gunman.

Known for his courage and sang-froid in life, Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame was honoured as a national hero on Saturday after his death from wounds the day before.

After agreeing to the hostage swap, Mr Beltrame surrendered his weapon  but kept his mobile phone on, allowing authorities outside the Super U market in the southern French town of Trebes to hear what was happening inside.

Thanks to his quick thinking, special police units heard gunshots inside the store on Friday and stormed the building immediately, killing the attacker.

Beyond his job, he gave his life for someone else, for a stranger, his brother Cedric told RTL radio in France.

He was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing if we dont describe him as a hero, I dont know what you need to do to be a hero.

Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much, President Emmanuel Macron said.

In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero.

The hostage whose life he saved, an employee named Julie, was in a catastrophic state, her manager said.

Mr Beltrames entire career seemed to lead inexorably to the moment when he responded to the attack Friday in Trebes, a 15-minute drive from the gendarme unit he had led since last August.

Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame, wounded after taking the place of a hostage in the attack yesterday at #Trebes, gave his life to save the lives of others. Truly a hero. Our thoughts this morning with his family and his comrades. And our solidarity with France pic.twitter.com/Ly2xIl90h9  Ed Llewellyn (@EdLlewellynFCDO) March 24, 2018

He joined Frances elite police special forces in 2003 and served in Iraq in 2005.

A former member of the presidential guard, he earned one of Frances highest honours, the Order of Merit, in 2012.

In December, Mr Beltrame organised a counter-terrorism training session for just such a hostage situation  down to the location in a supermarket.

At the time, he armed his officers with paintball guns, according to the Depeche du Midi newspaper.

We want to be as close to real conditions as possible, he said then.

In addition to the four people killed by the gunman on Friday, 15 others were injured.

Investigators searched the home of the attacker, Moroccan-born Redouane Lakdim, 25, and found what a judicial official said were notes that alluded to the Islamic State and appeared like a last testament. They also found a computer and a phone.

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Inside the market itself, investigators found three homemade explosive devices, a handgun and a hunting knife, the official said.

The weapons suggested an intent to do further damage.

Mr Macron called a special Defence Council meeting with key ministers on Saturday to decide the countrys next steps in combating terror.

Across the Atlantic, US President Donald Trump tweeted We are with you @EmmanuelMacron! and condemned the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support.

French police and soldiers have been a prime target of attacks by extremists, with 10 killed in recent years, including Mr Beltrame. Dozens of others have been wounded.

Mr Beltrames mother told RTL radio that, for her son, to defend the homeland was his reason to live.

He would have said to me, Im doing my job, Mom, nothing more, she said.

Flowers piled up in front of the Gendarmerie headquarters in the French medieval city of Carcassonne to pay tribute to Mr Beltrame. Flags at all gendarmeries were flying at half-staff.

Mr Macron said investigators will focus on finding out how the gunman got his weapon and how he became radicalised.

Two people have been detained in the case, one woman close to Lakdim and a 17-year-old male friend.

Lakdim was known to police for petty crime and drug dealing.

But since 2014, he was also on the Fiche S list, a government register of people suspected of being radicalised but who have yet to perform acts of terror.

Despite this, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said there was no warning sign that Lakdim would carry out an attack.

The four-hour drama began at 10.13am on Friday when Lakdim hijacked a car near Carcassonne, killing the passenger and wounding the driver, the prosecutor said.

Lakdim then fired six shots at police officers who had just finished jogging, hitting one in the shoulder.

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Shouting Allahu akbar!  Arabic for God is great and declaring he was a soldier of the Islamic State, he entered the Super U supermarket in Trebes, 60 miles (100 kilometres) south-east of Toulouse, where about 50 people were inside, Mr Molins said.

He killed two people in the market and took an unknown number of hostages.

The supermarkets manager, who would identify herself only as Samia, was in her office when she heard the shots.

Call the gendarmes, she told her employees. Theres a terrorist in the store.

She said she helped evacuate as many people as possible. Other people sought safety in the stores meat locker.

During the standoff, Lakdim requested the release of Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving assailant of the November 13 2015 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.

The interior minister suggested, however, that Abdeslams release was not a key motive.

The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said the attacker was responding to its call to target countries in the US-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against IS militants in Syria and Iraq.

Samia was overcome by emotion when asked about the attack.

Im utterly devastated. This is really a tragedy. I feel deeply for the victims, she said, adding that Mr Beltrame is a hero. He saved our colleague  our Julie.

The mayor of Trebes, Eric Menassi, was equally emotional.

They all looked death in the eye, he said. There will be a before and an after. I think nothing will ever be the same.US President Donald Trump signed a $1.3tn (1tn) spending measure last night, averting a midnight government shutdown just hours after declaring he was considering a veto.

Mr Trump said he was "very disappointed" in the package, in part because it did not fully fund his plans for a border wall with Mexico and did not address some 700,000 "Dreamer" immigrants who are now protected from deportation under a programme that he has moved to eliminate.

But Mr Trump praised the increases the bill provides for military spending and said he had "no choice but to fund our military".

"My highest duty is to keep America safe," he said.

The bill signing came a few hours after Mr Trump created last-minute drama by saying in a tweet that he was "considering" a veto.

With Congress already on recess, and a government shutdown looming, he said that young immigrants now protected in the US under Barack Obama's Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals "have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defence, is not fully funded."

Mr Trump's veto threat was at odds with top members of his administration and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had said that he was supportive of the measure. The White House also issued a formal statement of administration policy indicating Mr Trump would sign the bill. Several advisers inside and outside the White House said earlier yesterday that they suspected the tweet was just Mr Trump blowing off steam.

Finally, in made-for-TV scheduling, Mr Trump took to Twitter again to announce he'd be holding a news conference to talk about the bill. The drama was short-lived: An aide told reporters the signing was on. And telegraphing the outcome, an internal television feed advertised its next programme: "President Trump Participates in a Bill Signing."

Asked why he'd made the threat, Mr Trump said he'd "looked very seriously at the veto," but "because of the incredible gains that we've been able to make for the military that overrode any of our thinking."

Mr Trump also warned Congress: "I will never sign another bill like this again." The will-he, won't he episode came hours after the Senate earlier passed the $1.3tn spending package aimed at keeping the government open past midnight.

Mr Trump has been increasingly frustrated with media coverage of the bill, spurred on by conservative Republican lawmakers and other critics who had spent recent days calling the president, inciting him, and making their cases loudly on cable news shows Trump is known to watch.Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is being probed for some 782,000 US dollars in payments (Martin Mejia/PA)

A Peruvian judge has barred recently resigned president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski from leaving the South American nation for 18 months while he is being investigated for money laundering.

The ruling by a judge in Lima comes a day after congress accepted Mr Kuczynskis resignation and swore in Vice President Martin Vizcarra as his successor.

Mr Kuczynski is being probed for some 782,000 US dollars in payments his consulting firm received a decade ago from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

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Some of the payments took place when Mr Kuczynski was a government minister, raising questions about whether they were made in return for political favours.

The former Wall Street investor has denied any wrongdoing.

Odebrecht has admitted to paying 800 million dollars in bribes to officials across Latin America including 29 million dollars in Peru.

At the same time the hearing was taking place, prosecutors carried out a search of Mr Kuczynskis home in Lima and another property outside the capital.

Peru since the 19th century has watched the sad show as presidents and ex-presidents flee the country and justice, said Hamilton Castro, the anti-corruption prosecutor who had requested the 79-year-old be barred from leaving Peru.

This is the historical behaviour that we seekers of justice have to take into account.

Mr Kuczynskis lawyer promised his clients full co-operation and said he would abide by the prosecutors request not to leave the country. Mr Kuczynski was not present at Saturdays hearing.

He is the fourth former Peruvian president to be investigated for taking payments from Odebrecht.

One is currently in jail while another, Alejandro Toledo, for whom Mr Kuczynski served as finance minister, has refused to return to Peru from the US to face charges.Thousands of Croatian far-right supporters have marched in Zagreb to protest over an international convention they said indirectly legalises gay marriages and gives rights to transgender people.

The protesters sang patriotic songs and chanted slogans against Croatias centre-right government, which last week approved the Istanbul convention that was adopted by the Council of Europe in 2011, but still has not been ratified by Croatias parliament.

Croatias conservative opposition and the Catholic Church  the organisers of the protest  said they support combating violence against women and domestic violence, which is the main point of the convention, but are against its alleged introduction of a third gender into society.

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We are against gender ideology, Zeljka Markic, a leader of the conservatives, told The Associated Press.

The definition of gender separated from sex was not agreed on the level of the European Union or on the level of the Council of Europe.

Since joining the EU in 2013, Croatias population has been drifting toward the far right, including some who deny the Holocaust and have re-appraised the pro-Nazi Croatian Ustasha regime that ruled the country during World War II.

Top Croatian Catholic Church clergy have said before the rally attended by some 10,000 people that all those who support the Istanbul Convention should no longer be considered believers.

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Speakers at the rally on Zagrebs Bana Jelacica square blasted the EU for allegedly wanting to conquer Croatia with its liberal policies. Several placards with photos of German Chancellor Angela Merkel were crossed out.

They say we are backward because we believe in God, said Gordana Turic, a former ruling party politician. The Istanbul convention is against the Christianity.

Several smaller counter-protests were set up along the route of the march, including one with a siren that tried to dampen the speeches by the conservatives on the main square. There were no major incidents.Washington, Mar 24 (IBNS): Sea ice in the Arctic grew to its annual maximum extent last week, and joined 2015, 2016 and 2017 as the four lowest maximum extents on record, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.

On March 17, the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 5.59 million square miles (14.48 million square kilometers), making it the second lowest maximum on record, at about 23,200 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) larger than the record low maximum reached on March 7, 2017.

More significantly from a scientific perspective, the last four years reached nearly equally low maximum extents and continued the decades-long trend of diminishing sea ice in the Arctic. This years maximum extent was 448,000 square miles (1.16 million square kilometers)  an area larger than Texas and California combined  below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum extent.

Every year, the sea ice cover blanketing the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas thickens and expands during the fall and winter, reaching its maximum yearly extent sometime between late February and early April. The ice then thins and shrinks during the spring and summer until it reaches its annual minimum extent in September. Arctic sea ice has been declining both during the growing and melting seasons in recent decades.

The decline of the Arctic sea ice cover has myriad effects, from changes in climate and weather patterns to impacts on the plants and animals dependent on the ice, and to the indigenous human communities that rely on them. The disappearing ice is also altering shipping routes, increasing coastal erosion and affecting ocean circulation.

The Arctic sea ice cover continues to be in a decreasing trend and this is connected to the ongoing warming of the Arctic, said Claire Parkinson, senior climate scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Its a two-way street: the warming means less ice is going to form and more ice is going to melt, but also, because theres less ice, less of the suns incident solar radiation is reflected off, and this contributes to the warming.

The Arctic has gone through repeated warm episodes this winter, with temperatures climbing more than 40 degrees above average in some regions. The North Pole even experienced temperatures above the freezing point for a few days in February.

In mid-March, cooler temperatures and winds pushed out the edge of the sea ice pack and caused a late surge in ice growth that brought the maximum extent closer in line with the past few years.

In February, a large area of open water appeared in the sea ice cover north of Greenland, within the multiyear ice pack  the Arctics oldest and thickest ice. Most of the opening has refrozen but the new ice is expected to be thinner and more fragile, and a new opening might appear during the melt season. This could make the ice in this region more mobile and prone to exiting the Arctic this summer through either the Fram or Nares straits, ultimately melting in the warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

This old, thicker ice is what we expect to provide stability to the Arctic sea ice system, since we expect that ice not to be as vulnerable to melting out as thinner, younger ice, said Alek Petty, a sea ice researcher at Goddard. As ice in the Arctic becomes thinner and more mobile, it increases the likelihood for rapid ice loss in the summer.

Despite the fact that this years melt season will begin with a low winter sea ice extent, this doesnt necessarily mean that we will see another record low summertime extent.

A lot will depend on what the wind and temperature conditions will be in the spring and summer, Parkinson said.

Starting March 22, Operation IceBridge, NASAs aerial survey of polar ice, is flying over the Arctic Ocean to map the distribution and thickness of sea ice. In the fall, NASA will launch a new satellite mission, the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), which will continuously monitor how sea ice thickness is changing across the Arctic.

Credits: NASA/ Nathan KurtzNew York, Mar 24 (JEN): Claiming more than 4,500 lives daily, tuberculosis (TB) continues to be the top infectious killer worldwide as well as the leading cause of death among people living with HIV, the United Nations said Friday, ahead of World Tuberculosis Day.

The world has the resources to end the interlinked epidemics of tuberculosis and HIV, but political commitment and country action are lacking, said the Executive Director of UNAIDS  the Joint UN Programme on HIV and AIDS  Michel Sidibe.

Political, religious and civil society leaders need to step up to guarantee everyone the right to breathe, to live free from tuberculosis and AIDS, he added.

For his part, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) noted the devastating social and economic impacts of TB, including poverty, stigma and discrimination  adding that antibiotic resistance has caused many drugs to lose their efficacy in combatting the disease.

While the world has committed to end the TB epidemic by 2030, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), actions and investments do not match the political realty, he stressed in a video message.

The UN is calling on all partners to take unprecedented and bold action to advance efforts to end TB and AIDS by 2030.

Now is the time to make commitments become actions, we need increased and sustained financing, Mr. Tedros spelled out, calling World Tuberculosis Day an opportunity to mobilize political and social commitment for accelerated progress to end TB.

Video: WHO

While preventable and curable, persistent challenges remain, many of which are shared by the HIV response, including unequal access to services.

Noting that both can be addressed effectively with integrated programmes, UNAIDS outlined five important actions for partners, beginning with impelling political, religious and civil society leaders to champion the universal right to live free from TB and HIV.

Secondly, communities must be empowered to call on governments to demand their right to health  improving living standards to reduce the burden of TB and HIV.

The third action endorses promoting non-discriminatory service delivery to protect all against catastrophic health expenditures in the context of universal health coverage  extending care beyond health to include safe workplaces and places of detention.

Next, UNAIDS advocates that finance ministers be engaged to approach health as an investment, not an expenditure, in which returns demonstrate their long-term value to societies and economies.

Finally, the Joint UN Programme also recommends greater public-private sector partnerships to accelerate for innovative new medicines and vaccines.

Ending global TB and HIV epidemics is possible

In September 2018, world leaders will come together at UN Headquarters in New York for the first-ever UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis to adopt a progressive, visionary and actionable political declaration on the disease.

Both agency heads said that the High-Level Meeting could provide the political, social and financial momentum needed to end TB.

This year could be the most important since Robert Koch discovered the cause of TB, 136 years ago, but only if we all show leadership, said Mr Sidibe.

Im stepping forward for a TB-free world, Mr. Tedros said, please join me.

The Global Fund/John RaeGuwahati, Mar 24 (IBNS): While illicit wildlife trade is continuing in India, Assam police on Saturday rescued several rare and exotic animals of Africa, South America, Madagascar from state capital Guwahati.

According to the reports, the animals are being smuggled from Myanmar through Mizoram to New Delhi.

Based on an intelligence input, the Jorabat police had checked a Tata Sumo vehicle came from Mizoram at Jorabat area, outskirt of Guwahati and recovered several rare and exotic animals worth Rs 5 crore.

The police arrested a person who has been identified as Pradip Kumar hailing from Uttar Pradesh along with the driver of the vehicle.

Three palm size monkey from the thick canopied rain forest of South America (Marmosat), couple of exotic pets (Sugar Glider), two burrowing Mongoose (Merekat), huge turtle form Seychelles Aldabra Island ( Aldabra Turtle), two rare Albino Burmese Python, one giant scorpion of Africa, one Saharan spring tailed lizzard, four most venomous snake of Africa ( Gaboon Viper) concealed in cages were rescued by the police personnel.

In the preliminary interrogation, it was revealed that the recovered animals have been smuggled into the country from Myanmar through Mizoram.

The recovered animals have been kept in the Assam State Zoo.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)Kolkata, Mar 24 (IBNS): Rabindra Bharati University's vocal music department recently held a two-day international seminar on the impact of nature and environment on music at the Dwarakanath Mancha of Jorasanko Thakurbari, Kolkata, on Thursday.

Professor. Dr. Goutam Nag (Department of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University), Pt. Anindya Banerjee (Dean of Academics, The Fifth Note), Professor. Dr. Asit Ray (Department of Music, Rajshahi University, Bangladesh) and Professor John Thorpe (Guest Professor, Rajshahi University) were present at the inauguration.

The objective of organizing this seminar was to make students and scholars realize and rethink about the importance of nature and environment in Indian music.

It focusses on the intimate relationship that nature has with music and how the aesthetics of the natural environment shape human feelings, which in turn gets depicted through music.

Pt. Anindya Banerjee gave an audio-visual presentation which reflected the integral relationship of nature and instruments.

In his welcome address he said, Every instrument that we use for musical purpose is made of a distinct natural element, replacing which will lead to the change of tune.

It was a two day event that featured dignitaries from the Vocal and Instrumental music department of Rabindra Bharati University and Rajshahi University of Bangladesh.

On the second day of the event a musical programme was held with Vocal Musical recital of Biplab Mukherjee, with Pt. Subhen Chatterjee on the Tabla and Hiranmoy Mitra on the Harmonium.

Biplab Mukherjee presented Vilamvit Khayal, a Thumri in Mishra Pilu, Tarana in drut teen taal and concluded his recital with a soulful rendition of Miras bhajan, 'Aliri mere naina baan padi'.

It was followed by the flute recital of Pt. Ronu Majumdar, with Rohen Bose on the tabla. Pt. Ronu Mazumdar began his recital with a composition based on Raag Nageswarawali.

Then he played a short Rupak in teen taal and concluded the evening on the lilting note of a Pahari dhun.

The event also provided for time exclusively dedicated for paper and abstract presentation on the various sub-themes of the "impact of nature and environment on music on both days followed by a certificate giving ceremony.

Dr. Kankana Mitra, Seminar co-coordinator and Teacher-in-charge, Department Of Vocal Music, in a conversation with IBNS, said, It is a very important occasion whereby we want to make people aware of the various facets of music.



(Reporting bySourajit Choudhury)Srinagar, Mar 24 (IBNS): At least two terrorists were killed by security personnel at Anantnag's Dooru area in Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday, officials said.

Security personnel killed the two terrorists during an encounter in early hours of Saturday.

The Indian Army confirmed that the operation is still going on.

Northern Command of the Indian Army tweeted: "#IndianArmy #OpShistargam (#Anantnag) Two #Terrorists killed in Joint Operation. Operation in progress. @adgpi @SpokespersonMoD @PIB_India @JmuKmrPolice @crpfindia."

More details are awaited.

Guwahati, Mar 24 (IBNS) : Ahead of the panchayat polls in Assam and 2019 general election, BJP President Amit Shah will meet around 26,000 booth presidents in the state on Saturday.

He will meet them in an attempt to prepare the road map for the elections.

Shah will take stock of the partys preparations for the upcoming panchayat polls, which have become a crucial factor ahead of the Lok Sabha polls next year.

With an aim to make Congress Mukt panchayat bodies ahead of the parliamentary election, Amit Shah will address a meeting at around 11 am in Guwahati in presence of around 26,000 booth presidents, 303 mandal presidents, 38 district presidents.

During his day-long visit, BJP president will also hold a meeting with the MPs and MLAs of the state at Administrative Staff College in Guwahati.

Later, Shah will hold another meeting with the partys state officer bearers, morcha presidents, spokespersons, districts presidents.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath, Image: Amit Shah Twitter page)Srinagar, Mar 24 (IBNS): At least two terrorists were killed on Saturday during an encounter with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district, officials said.

A police official said, "As a part of a joint operation, Anantnag Police, along with 19 RR and CRPF, launched a search operation in Shishtargam area of PS Dooro. It resulted in an encounter withhiding militants."

In the ongoing encounter, 2 militants have been killed.

The identity and affiliation of the killed militants are being ascertained.

In the process, huge cache of incriminating material, which include AK- 47 rifles, grenades, etc were recovered from the encounter site.

In the encounter, no collateral damage has taken place and security forces are now sanitizing the area.

Speaking on the encounter, the Northern Command of the Indian Army earlier tweeted: "#IndianArmy #OpShistargam (#Anantnag) Two #Terrorists killed in Joint Operation. Operation in progress. @adgpi @SpokespersonMoD @PIB_India @JmuKmrPolice @crpfindia."

In this connection, a case has been registered and investigation has a been taken up under the relevant provisions of the law by the police.

Meanwhile, authorities have suspended train service and snapped internet service in parts of South Kashmir.

(Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri)New Delhi, Mar 24 (IBNS): Congress President Rahul Gandhi has attacked Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad for not paying attention to the appointment of judges in the courts but peddling fake news.

In a tweet, Rahul stated how cases in all the courts are pending.

He took on the law minister for the non-appointment of the judges.

The Congress chief's tweet reads, "Legal system collapsing under Pending Cases: Supreme Court 55,000 + High Court 37 Lakh + Lower Courts 2.6 Crore + Yet, a staggering 400 High Court and 6,000 Lower Court judges not appointed, while Law Minister preoccupied peddling fake news."

Legal system collapsing under Pending Cases:



Supreme Court

55,000 +



High Court

37 Lakh +



Lower Courts

2.6 Crore +



Yet, a staggering 400 High Court and 6,000 Lower Court judges not appointed, while Law Minister preoccupied peddling fake news. #JudiciaryDemonetised pic.twitter.com/qSpKcIuPKW  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 24, 2018

Prasad had recently attacked Rahul over the controversy surrounding Cambridge Analytica, where the BJP alleged that there was a link between the Congress party and Cambridge Analytica to influence India's electoral process through undesirable means.

"What link does Cambridge Analytica have with social media management of Rahul Gandhi and Congress Party?," he said.

Countering Prasad, Congress President Rahul Gandhi has accused the central government of diverting the people's attention from the news of death of 39 Indians in Mosul as it has allegedly been caught lying.New Delhi, Mar 24 (IBNS): In a letter to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah has said the decision of Naidu's Telegu Desam Party (TDP) to quit National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was "unfortunate and unilateral", media reports said.

Shah's letter has been quoted by The Indian Express : "(TDP) decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns."

The TDP had withdrawn itself from the NDA government over the demands of a special status for the state.

The Andhra Pradesh ruling party had alleged that the BJP-led NDA government failed to fulfill the promises it made to the state.

However, Shah has nullified such allegations made by the TDP saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government are always for the development for all.

The BJP President said the central government are committed to develop Andhra Pradesh.

Shah said: "Andhra Pradesh is the only state to receive the award of revenue deficit grants for all the five years besides the north-eastern and hilly states. Does that not show that the Central Government has been sensitive to the needs of Andhra Pradesh?"

The TDP had first withdrawn its two ministers from the NDA government.

Days after quitting the ministries, Naidu's party pulled itself from the NDA government.

The TDP's quit from the central government had raised the instant speculations about a possible third front which are doing the talks for sometime at the national level.Lucknow, Mar 24 (IBNS): After Bahujan Samaj Party suffered defeat in the closely fought Rajya Sabha poll for a seat in Uttar Pradesh, party chief Mayawati on Saturday came out in attacking the BJP and said the ruling party misused power to win the poll.

"In case yesterday's 10 seats, people, including the media, have seen that the Modi and Adityanath governments misused their power," BSP chief Mayawati told media.

Mayawati accused the BJP of creating an atmosphere of terror.

"Everyone knows BJP's misuse of power. They even established an atmosphere of terror," she said.

"Cross voting occurred yesterday," she said.

He said the BJP recently received a blow after its defeat in the recently held Lok Sabha by-polls in Uttar Pradesh.

Beating the Samajwadi Party (SP) and practically decimating the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won nine out of 10 seats in the Rajya Sabha elections.

BJP chief Amit Shah has beaten Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav in the prestige battle for the Upper House seat.

This has come as a big boon for the ruling BJP.

In another crucial win, Anil Agarwal, who was BJPs ninth candidate, defeated BSPs Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar.

Actress Jaya Bachchan won the single seat for SP.

Image: WIkimedia CommonsNew Delhi, Mar 24 (IBNS): Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that India is vulnerable to narcotic drug trafficking as it is located between two largest Opium producing regions of the world i.e. Golden Crescent in the west and Golden Triangle in the east.

He was speaking at the Closing Ceremony of the two-day National Conference on Drug Law Enforcement organized by Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Ministry of Home Affairs here today.

Rajnath Singh said that drug trafficking and abuse pose serious threat to our societies and is matter of serious concern for all of us.

He said that drugs endanger peace, health and stability across regions and it places a heavy burden on public health systems.

"Hence, all of us have to work towards prevention of narcotic drug abuse," Home Minister appealed.

He emphasized both on supply reduction and demand reduction of drugs.

He said, diversion of precursor chemicals and production and trafficking of New Psychoactive Substances poses another challenge.

The Minister also highlighted that the illicit cultivation of Opium and Cannabis in some parts is a matter of concern and must be suppressed.

Shri Rajnath Singh pointed out that during 2017, various drug law enforcement agencies effected seizure of 1,991 kg Opium, 2189 kg Heroin, 1,96,792 kg Ganja, 2657 kg Hashish and 67 kg Cocaine. Various agencies also carried out destruction of illicit cultivation of cannabis and opium poppy all over the country, he said.

The Minister expressed concern that involvement of foreign nationals in drug peddling poses another significant challenge of drug trafficking in India.

He said, during 2017, 332 foreign national have been arrested in drug cases in India.



He added that these foreign nationals were found involved in trafficking of Cocaine from South America to India via Africa and trafficking of Heroin and Precursor chemicals to South East Asia and Africa.

Highlighting several policy and other initiatives by the Government to deal with drug trafficking problem, the Home Minister said, it constituted Narco-Coordination Centre (NCORD) in November, 2016 and revived the scheme of Financial Assistance to States for Narcotics Control. Besides, he said, in 2017, the government approved new Reward Guidelines with increased quantum of reward for interdiction or seizure of different illicit drugs.

The Minister pointed out that for effective coordination with foreign countries including neighboring countries, India has signed 37 Bilateral Agreements/Memoranda of Understanding. In last four years, he said, we have signed 05 Bilateral Agreements/MoUs with Australia, Singapore, Mozambique, Thailand and Nepal in drug matters.

Taking note of emerging drug abuse pattern, he said the government has scheduled 07 new substances into the list of Narcotic drugs in the year 2017 so that action can be taken against trafficking in these substances.

The Minister said, Narcotics Control Bureau has been provided funds for developing a new software i.e. Seizure Information Management System (SIMS) which will create a complete online database of drug offences and offenders.

Rajnath Singh said, the government has constituted a fund called National Fund for Control of Drug Abuse to meet the expenditure incurred in connection with combating illicit traffic in Narcotic Drug, Psychotropic Substances; identifying, treating and rehabilitating addicts, and educating public against drug abuse, etc.

Further, he added, the government is conducting National Drug Abuse Survey to measure extent, pattern and trends of drug abuse in India through Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment with the help of National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre of AIIMS.

He said, there is urgent need to encourage use of technology in drug interdiction.

To stop the inflow of money generated from illegal trade of narcotic drugs into our economy, proper financial investigation needs to be conducted in each significant NDPS case, the Minister said.

The Home Minister also called for identifying drug syndicates & cartels and their kingpins and take stern action against them to disrupt their illegal business.

He said, "We need to spread more awareness among the public particularly among youth about ill effects of drug abuse and need to create adequate infrastructure for treatment, rehabilitation and harm reduction for the victim of the drug abuse."

The conference was inaugurated by MoS (Home) Hansraj Gangaram Ahir here yesterday. More than 50 State and Central law enforcement agencies involved in combating drug trafficking participated in the Conference.

They included State Police organizations, State Excise departments, Border Guarding Forces, Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Central Bureau of Narcotics (CBN), CBI and other Central agencies involved in drug enforcement work.

More than 110 delegates attended the Conference. The Conference working sessions focused on various topics such as Wider context of drug trafficking in India, Financial Investigations and Foreign & Cyber Investigations.

During these sessions various agencies gave presentations while UN and other foreign law enforcement agencies shared their experiences.New Delhi, Mar 24 (IBNS): Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has hit back at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah for calling the Telegu Desam Party (TDP)'s decision to quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government "unilateral".

Taking on Shah on Twitter, Naidu said: "Deeply disturbed after receiving Sri. @AmitShah's concise letter discoursing on the empty promises made to Andhra Pradesh. Despite proving all the facts and figures of BJP wrong, the letter evidently expresses highly insensitive and insulting content towards the people of AP."

Deeply disturbed after receiving Sri. @AmitShah's concise letter discoursing on the empty promises made to Andhra Pradesh. Despite proving all the facts and figures of BJP wrong, the letter evidently expresses highly insensitive and insulting content towards the people of AP.  N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) March 24, 2018

"It is saddening to not have our genuine requirements met by the Central Government. We had modestly demanded funds that were already promised to us in the Reorganisation Act as there is a need for AP to have a 'levelled' playing field for competing with other states.," Naidu said in a follow up tweet.

It is saddening to not have our genuine requirements met by the Central Government. We had modestly demanded funds that were already promised to us in the Reorganisation Act as there is a need for AP to have a 'levelled' playing field for competing with other states.  N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) March 24, 2018

Naidu, who is the TDP chief, said his decision to pull out of the central government was solely to fight for five crore people of his state.

In his latest tweet, Naidu said:"My decisions are only and wholly guided by the wishes of my people, the 5 crore citizens of Andhra Pradesh. I had promised to fight for their right and I have kept my word."

My decisions are only and wholly guided by the wishes of my people, the 5 crore citizens of Andhra Pradesh. I had promised to fight for their right and I have kept my word.  N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) March 24, 2018

Naidu's reaction came after Shah said in a letter, "(TDP) decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns."

The BJP President said the central government is committed to develop Andhra Pradesh.

Shah said: "Andhra Pradesh is the only state to receive the award of revenue deficit grants for all the five years besides the north-eastern and hilly states. Does that not show that the Central Government has been sensitive to the needs of Andhra Pradesh?"

Shah's letter has been quoted by The Indian Express.

The TDP had withdrawn itself from the NDA government over the demands of a special status for the state.

The Andhra Pradesh ruling party had alleged that the BJP-led NDA government failed to fulfill the promises it made to the state.

The TDP had first withdrawn its two ministers from the NDA government.

Days after quitting the ministries, Naidu's party pulled itself from the NDA government.Kolkata, Mar 24 (IBNS): West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has extended support to her Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu over the ongoing verbal tussle between the Telegu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Reacting to the TDP's quit from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which runs the central government, over the demands of a special status for Andhra Pradesh, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah has said in a letter the Centre gave funds to the state but the Naidu government failed to utilise them.

Naidu countered Shah stating that Andhra Pradesh has good GDP, agriculture.

He has also alleged Shah to spread lies.

Banerjee, with whom Naidu had an interaction post TDP quit from the NDA, tweeted, "I appreciate that Chandrababu Naidu Ji @ncbn has stated the facts. Very good. There are many so called leaders who spread lies. They make this a habit. They try and bulldoze States and show that they are doing the States a favour by giving funds. This is fake federalism."

I appreciate that Chandrababu Naidu Ji @ncbn has stated the facts. Very good. There are many so called leaders who spread lies. They make this a habit. They try and bulldoze States and show that they are doing the States a favour by giving funds. This is fake federalism  Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) March 24, 2018

Shah's letter has been quoted by The Indian Express, "(TDP) decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of development concerns."

The TDP had withdrawn itself from the NDA government over the demands of a special status for the state.

The Andhra Pradesh ruling party had alleged that the BJP-led NDA government failed to fulfill the promises it made to the state.

However, Shah has nullified such allegations made by the TDP saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government are always for the development for all.

The BJP President said the central government are committed to develop Andhra Pradesh.

Shah said: "Andhra Pradesh is the only state to receive the award of revenue deficit grants for all the five years besides the north-eastern and hilly states. Does that not show that the Central Government has been sensitive to the needs of Andhra Pradesh?"

The TDP had first withdrawn its two ministers from the NDA government.

Days after quitting the ministries, Naidu's party pulled itself from the NDA government.

The TDP's quit from the central government had raised the instant speculations about a possible third front which are doing the talks for sometime at the national level.Lucknow, Mar 24 (IBNS): Despite the Rajya Sabha poll defeats in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has stated the alliance between her party and Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi party (SP) will continue, media reports said.

A day after the SP-BSP alliance was decimated by the BJP, Mayawati told media the partnership between the two main opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh will remain unperturbed by the poll defeats.

On the other hand, Mayawati has alleged the BJP to create an atmosphere of terror.

"Everyone knows BJP's misuse of power. They even established an atmosphere of terror," she said.

She also said it is because of a terrified atmosphere created by the BJP, now suspended BSP lawmaker Anil Singh had cross-voted in favour of the saffron party.

Mayawati said the BJP tried to break the newly formed alliance between the BSP and SP.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won nine out of 10 seats in the Rajya Sabha elections.

BJP chief Amit Shah has beaten Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav in the prestige battle for the Upper House seat.

This has come as a big boon for the ruling BJP.

In another crucial win, Anil Agarwal, who was BJPs ninth candidate, defeated BSPs Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar.

Actress Jaya Bachchan won the single seat for SP.

The SP and the BSP, which were once the arch-rivals in Uttar Pradesh, joined hands prior to the by-polls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur parliamentary constituencies in 2018 to defeat the BJP.

The alliance had snatched both the seats from the BJP.Guwahati, Mar 24 (IBNS): Agriculture continues to be the engine of economic growth in most developing countries.

Presently, with about 40% of the population living in poverty, livelihood security for the rural poor farmers continues to be a cause of concern in India.

As a majority of the rural population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood, increasing agricultural production through active involvement of the poor and weaker sections of the society is the most appropriate solution.

Keeping this in view some progressive farmers and persons having concern over the interests to increase agricultural production in the state, a cooperative society named Assam farmer producer co-society limited has started in November 2017, with an intention to empower the farming community.

Assam farmer producer co-society limited has set the goal to create an era for the development of the poor farmer people of Assam.

AFPCSL has managed to facilitate financial support to their members for their livelihood and have distributed more than 100 tractors, more than 50 commercial vehicles that to in a subsidised rate of 38%.

At the same time, under the minimizing of expenses of the poor, AFPCSL has distributed commodity item and few electronic goods like mobile in a subsidized rate and have provided financial support of Rs 10,000 to unemployed youths.

Commenting on this important milestone, Kumar Gaurav, Chairman, Assam Farmer Producer Co-Society Limited said that when farmers cooperate, the society benefits.

Members and supporters of co-operative societies have long known to help lift people out of poverty, advance gender equality, give back to the community and address head on the critical issues of sustainable development.

Kumar Gaurav said from the day one we are very transparent to the people of Assam and that is why within a few months, this is the third time the co-operative society is formally addressing the press.

As we understand very well that there is a lack of awareness about the co-operative societies and that is why during our working we have prospectively seen very negative attitude towards co-operative societies.

In spite of the fact that co-operative societies like Amul, Mother Diary and lots of others in India has created an era and set the benchmark for poor people of India.

Inspired by these co-operative society, AFPSCL has also taken pledge to create an era for the benefits and development of the poor farmers of Assam.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)Mumbai, Mar 24 (IBNS): Actress Sunny Leone on Saturday shared an image on social media which looked interesting as she could be seen speaking something to her fans from within a TV set.

Sunny could be seen standing on the other side of a huge TV set.

" Seriously! Who doesn't want to hangout in a TV!?," Sunny captioned the image.

She has been missing from the silverscreen from long time.

She was last seen in 2017.

Tera Intezaar was her last released movie.

It featured Arbaaz Khan.

Image: Sunny Leone Twitter pageNew York, Mar 24 (JEN): A United Nations forum showcasing the latest innovations, tools and approaches that will make sustainable development a reality wrapped up in Bonn, Germany, on Friday.

Some 1,500 participants from more than 100 countries attended the three-day Global Festival of Action for Sustainable Development.

The gathering sought to inspire action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at ending extreme poverty and hunger while also ensuring a healthy environment for all people and the planet.

Billed as a new type of UN conference devoid of fancy suits and long speeches, the festival featured various immersive experiences such as a virtual reality zone showing the human stories behind development challenges, in addition to workshops, demo sessions and film screenings.

Those who could not travel to Bonn were encouraged to follow the activities on UN Web TV and social media, with more than 30,000 watching the livestream while #SDGglobalFest trended across the world.

Among the festival highlights was the presentation of the UN SDG Action Awards, celebrating individuals and organizations from all regions who are working to implement the 17 goals, which have a deadline of 2030.

The awards covered seven categories, including mobilizer, storyteller and connector.

Im going to learn from these seven other people to create a movement and change the world, said one of the winners, Foluke Michael of Nigeria, founder of Creative Youth Initiative Against Corruption, speaking at the closing ceremony.

His organization won the innovator category for its Corruption Busters campaign which targeted the general public and focused on corrupt practices associated with everyday life and how they have an impact on individuals and society.

This was the second edition of the Global Festival of Action for Sustainable Development which was hosted by the UN SDG Action Campaign with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Discussions revolved around five main key themes: innovative approaches, citizen engagement, communicating the SDGs, mobilizing action, and multi-stakeholder engagement.

The world is facing tremendous challenges, and for the first time there is an innovative plan to solve them, said Mitchell Toomey, the Global Director of the UN SDG Action Campaign.

But we cant do this alone, we need everyone to be part of it. We are very excited to once more bring together different key players from governments, civil society, UN agencies, cities, business, and academia in this dynamic, inclusive and innovative festival.

SDG Action CampaignNew York, Mar 24 (JEN): Hunger is on the rise worldwide mainly because people wont stop shooting at each other, the head of the United Nations food relief agency said Friday, telling the Security Council that if it did more to break the link between conflict and hunger, countless lives could be saved.

David Beasley, the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) told the 15-member body that resolving conflicts and ensuring peace are indispensable to achieve food security.

That link, he underscored, is both strong and highly destructive.

If you dont know where your childs next meal is coming from, you may be forced to make impossible choices, he said, noting that for one per cent rise in the rate of hunger, there is a two per cent increase in migration.

Speaking via videoconference from Biel, Switzerland, he called on the Council to help end war and stressed that the price of programmes to tackle the root causes of hunger is far cheaper that the cost of the current conflict cycle.

WFP can save one billion dollars a year if all armed groups respected international humanitarian Law and provided unimpeded access to civilian populations, explained Mr. Beasley.

Briefing the Council alongside the WFP chief, Mark Lowcock, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, explained that almost two-thirds of the worlds hungry live in conflict-torn countries.

On top of this, the conduct of combatants worsens the situation with their actions  contrary to international law  resulting in damage and destruction of water systems, farms, livestock and markets.Conflict  often conflated with extreme climatic shock and high prices of staple food  is the main driver of global food insecurity, he added, speaking via videoconference from Dublin.

It is, therefore, crucial that all States ensure that international humanitarian law is respected by parties to conflict as per their obligation to do so, said Mr. Lowcock, calling on the Security Council to investigate violations of international law and ensure that those who violate it are held accountable.

This Councils main responsibility is peace and international security. In other words, this Council can help prevent famine to ever occur again, he stressed.



UNICEF/ModolaParis, Mar 24 (IBNS): Col Arnaud Beltrame, the French policeman who swapped himself for a hostage held by a gunmen, has died of his wounds, raising the number of people dead in the incident to four, according to reports on Saturday.

France's Interior Minister Gerard Collomb tweeted in French on Saturday:"Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame has passed away. He died for his country. France will never forget his heroism, his bravery, his sacrifice,"

Beltrame, who swapped himself for a hostage in a rampage and siege at a supermarket in Trebes town of France on Friday, was stabbed and shot, according to reports.

The radical Islamist gunman, 25-year-old Redouane Lakdim, was shot dead as police brought the siege to an end.

French President Emmanuel Macron branded the incident as "an Islamist terrorist attack", according to media reports.

The French President also hailed Beltrame as a 'hero' and said he had "saved lives and honoured his colleagues and his country".



Image: MinisterGerard Collomb/TwitterLondon, Mar 24 (IBNS): Demanding an apology for committing 1971 genocide, several Bangladeshi nationals on Friday staged a protest outside the Pakistan High Commission in London.

The protest was organised in the UK city by a group called Bangabandu Parishad.

The agitators were seen holding banners and placards in their hands, demanding an apology from Islamabad.

The genocide in Bangladesh started on Mar 26, 1971, with the launch of Operation Searchlight when West Pakistan began a military crackdown on the Eastern wing of the nation to suppress Bengali calls for self-determination rights.

During the nine-month-long Bangladesh war for independence, members of the Pakistani military and Islamist militias from Jamaat-e-Islami killed and raped Bangladeshi people in largescale.

The South Asian Bengali speaking nation with the help of India witnessed a fierce struggle for attaining freedom during that period.Washington, Mar 24 (IBNS): US President Donald Trump's Friday night order reiterated his stance on transgender troops partially, reports said.

According to the order, most transgender people will be disallowed to serve in the national army.

Last year he had banned the said community altogether from joining the troops.

Trump's new plan is set to cancel another policy implemented by the Obama administration.

The US President seemed to have followed recommendations made by Defense Secretary James Mattis.

"By its very nature, military service requires sacrifice. The men and women who serve voluntarily accept limitations on their personal liberties  freedom of speech, political activity, freedom of movement  in order to provide the military lethality and readiness necessary to ensure American citizens enjoy their personal freedoms to the fullest extent, his memo to Trump read.

He said that present transgender soldiers who have not undergone reassignment surgery should be allowed to stay, provided they have been medically stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex before joining the military.

According to a report published in The Washington Post, Trump's decision will be challeged, much like his previous decision, where he banned transgender troops.

"In service to the ideological goals of the Trump-Pence base, the Pentagon has distorted the science on transgender health to prop up irrational and legally untenable discrimination that will erode military readiness," The Washington Post quoted Aaron Belkin as saying.

Belkin has studied transgender issues for the Palm Center, which worked in tandem with the Obama administration and was instrumental in repealing the previous ban.

"There is no evidence to support a policy that bars from military service patriotic Americans who are medically fit and able to deploy. Our troops and our nation deserve better, Belkin said.Burnaby, Mar 24 (IBNS): Green party leader Elizabeth May and New Democrat MP Kennedy Stewart were arrested following their protest against the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline in British Columbia, media reports said.

Both the leaders joined the demonstrators at the Trans Mountain Pipeline terminal.

May has alleged that the permit issued for the pipeline project did not respect the rights of the indigenous people of the territory.

She was quoted by CTV News, "The commitment to build a pipeline in 2018 when we are in climate crisis is a crime against future generations and I will not be part of it."

"I'm a lawyer, I have deep respect for our courts, I have deep respect for the rule of the law. Frankly, the fact (is) that the federal government and Kinder Morgan are not waiting to see if their permits are legal before cutting down trees within parks in Burnaby, B.C., ignoring the wishes of mayor and council in Burnaby and trampling on the rights of First Nations" she added.

May has also said that she is ready to face the consequences.

In an interaction with media, Stewart said she was just supporting the constituents in Burnaby South being aware of the legal risk she faced.

The expansion of the pipeline will increase its capacity from 300,000 barrels to 900,000 barrels.Grandmothers are perhaps the only ones we love a tad bit more than our mothers. They are our best friends who tell us stories and shield us from the wrath of our parents. They are badass in their own ways, a fact that guides us to be our best selves.

Today we meet 11 grandmothers whose heartwarming stories won our hearts.

1. The grandma who was smitten by Rahul Gandhi

dipali sikand/twitter

A grandmother made us smile when she wished to meet Rahul Gandhi. On her 107th birthday, when asked why she had this peculiar wish, she cutely whispered, Hes handsome. And Gandhi reciprocated her feelings by calling her back to wish her on her special day. Read more

2. The grandmother who learned photography

KIMIKO NISHIMOTO

At the age of 87, this Japanese grandma decided to have some fun. She learned the art of photography at 72 and from there went on to become an artist in her own right. She now takes hilarious self portraits and even edits them on her own! Read more

3. The grandmother who sewed teddy bears for Syrian children

youtube

Lynn Morris spends all her time sewing teddy bears for children who live in refugee camps in war-torn Syria. She dispatches the teddies to Syria along with her childrens book, Jada Jamella's Dream. Read more

4. Twin grandmoms who celebrated their 100th birthday

FACEBOOK/FOTOGRAFIA CAMILA LIMA

When twin sisters Maria Pignaton Pontin and Paulina Pignaton Pandolfi turned a 100-years-old, the two celebrated their big day with a special photoshoot. They put their best dresses and did their hair before posing for the camera. Read more

5. The grandmothers who took a road trip together

FACEBOOK.COM/AGENOBAR2017

Three grandmothers from Delhi, Neeru Gandhi, Monica Chanana and Pratibha Sabharwal decided to go on a road trip. The grandmoms proved that age was no bar when it came to doing things, and travelling was one of them. Read more

6. The grandmothers who did bhangra to Punjabi music

Fizzog Productions/twitter

A group of British grannies made waves across the internet when they did bhangra on Diljit Dosanjhs Patiala Peg. The Fizzogs Dancing Grannies describe themselves as 'a gang of Black Country elderly ladies who like to get down and boogie wherever they please.' Read more

7. The grandmother who got arrested to fulfill her bucket list wish

Politie Nijmegen-Zuid/facebook

99-year-old Annie from The Netherlands, got arrested because she wanted to experience a police cell from within." Annie's niece helped her out with this bizarre request. She immediately called the cops to plan out the arrest. And they gladly played along. Read more

8. The grandmother who googled Please and Thank you

the guardian

A British granny had used the words 'Please' and 'Thank you' while searching how to translate Roman numerals. And among a billion searches, hers was the one that made Google smile its biggest smile yet! Read more

9. The grandmother who attempted to use Google Home device

youtube

85-year-old Maria Actis received a Google Home device as part of her familys Secret Santa exchange on Christmas. While struggling to use it, she kept saying Goo, Goo instead of Google. The internet was finding it hard to control its laughter. Read more

10. The grandmother who cooked 100 plates of maggi

youtube

This Indian granny prepared delicious Maggi, peppered with veggies and the sinful Maggi masala, and made several tummies growl with hunger. In a Desi Kitchen video, she rules the frame with her expert cooking of 100 packets of Maggi! Read more

11. The grandmother who ruled YouTube with her cooking videos

youtube

Meet Mastanamma, a resident of Andhra Pradesh who's slaying it on YouTube with her cooking skills. She is 106 years old with a channel on YouTube that has over 2.5 lakh followers. Her YouTube channel is managed by her great-grandson, K Laxman. Read more

Hats off to these wonderful grandmothers for showing us to not take life seriously and enjoy every moment of this beautiful journey.How come the talks on quality and impartial distribution of fundamental rights are said to be heading for a win when we have excluded our most vulnerable without any support? As the people and activists across the nation loom strategies on the betterment of life and the battle of sexes, a very large section of our society is often left ignored.

Luckily, that's changing.

Transgenders, who have been around from the beginning of time, have been subjected to unnatural acts of molestation, harassment, and nuisance on daily basis, especially young trans people, who have been deliberate targets. In such a case, it is safe to say that all the noise on equality often seems like a mindless blabber when most activist almost forgets to address lakhs of people who make for the third section.

Fortunately, life isnt as bad for some, as it is for others. The last couple of years have worked phenomenally well in the favour of transgenders. Not only have they facilitated equal rights, jobs, and respectable occupation, but also the facilities of public toilets and more.

Heres a brief list of advancements that have helped in the upliftment of the transgender community.

The most recent of all, Keralas Health Minister K K Shailaja has claimed that transgender clinics will be set up in all government medical college hospitals soon. The government is also planning to introduce a surgical wing exclusively for transgender persons.

21-year-old Sobhan Mukherjee from Kolkata set up space for transgenders in public toilets. Following the initiative, over 4 public toilets in the Bansdroni region of Kolkata have opened their gates to transgender people by making out a separate washroom for them. The initiative marks a victory over inhibitions and lack of basic rights for the members of LGBTQ community.

The All-Kerala Self-Financing Schools Federation (AKSFSF) revealed their plans of hiring transgenders as school teachers. They have also expressed their wish to recruit them in school staff, if not teaching.

In order to empower transgenders across the nation, the central government will soon pass the Transgender Bill, which seeks to empower their community by providing them with a separate identity.

This should have been a norm in the first place, but regardless, Kochi Metro pulled an unthinkable and hired 23 transgenders. By hiring 23 transgenders, Kochi Metro Rail Limited has become the countrys first government agency to offer employment to transgenders.

A bunch of transgenders and disabled people in Chhattisgarh are running a cafe called Nukkad Teafe and the growth is mind-blowing. The cafe is setting a new benchmark for the society towards building an all-inclusive society.

7. IIMs opening gates to transgenders

Between failing to recognize and gender and giving them the authority to practise fundamental rights, educational institutes across the nation kept failing at a larger level. However, very recently, ditching all the inhibitions and biases, IIMs rose above sexual bias and opened gates for transgenders.

Transgenders will soon be categorised as "third gender" and be eligible for welfare benefits including reservations in jobs and education. In the hindsight, they will also be able chose their gender after undergoing sex-change surgery.

This was a first, but a year ago in July, Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Service Selection Board (UPSESSB) opened the posts of lecturers and assistant teachers in colleges and schools for the first time to transgenders.

A year ago, Tamil Nadu government allowed transgenders to enter the police force. Third gender applicants will be judged under the female category for education, fitness and reservation criteria.

In fact, even before this rule, Tamil Nadu already produced a proud first transgender, sub-inspector Prithika Yasini!

Not sure if this is an advancement or a setback, but Transgender activists in Pakistan are planning to build a mosque in Islamabad. People of all sexes will be welcomed at this mosque.

It was in 2016 when the government thought it was feasible for transgenders to have a pension and food benefits. Last year, Odisha became the first Indian state to give transgenders social welfare benefits, including a pension, housing and food grains.

A taxi service exclusively designed for transgenders to turn entrepreneurs. In a great move, Kerala unveiled its first Transgender Policy in the country with an aim to end societal stigma towards the Transgender community,

Two years ago, Manabi Bandhopadhyay ventured on a journey to become worlds first transgender school principal. She took charge of the position of associate professor in Bengali at Vivekananda Satobarshiki Mahavidyalaya.

Unfortunately, Manabi has quit now due to peer pressure.

In a historic move, Kerala unveiled its State Policy for Transgenders in Kerala 2015 to help protect the rights of transgenders.

Transgenders have excelled and marvelled in several other fields as well. The only place they lack is public recognition and support. Last year, a transgender helped a 25-year-old woman deliver a baby. They have also helped people in the flood hit areas of West Bengal. Around 45 members of the transgender community distributed relief materials in the two districts.

Lets hope that they continue to thrive and grow, as we do!In a bizarre incident that took place in Uttar Pradesh this week, a python nearly strangled a snake charmer.

At first, the onlookers thought that it was all a part of the act but soon realised that it was as real as it could get. The deadly python coiled itself around its owner's neck during a live show.

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Read more: Malaysian Firefighter Who Shot To Fame As 'Snake Whisperer' Tragically Dies Of Cobra Bite

The snake charmer had initially picked up the python and allowed it to sit on his shoulders. But instead, the snake slithered up the charmer's body and slowly began coiling itself around his neck.

What else would you expect a snake to do? Before anyone could react, the charmer was on the floor, clearly having troubles breathing. He tried grabbing hold of the snake to pull it off him.

The crowd looked on in horror till one man stepped forward and sprinkled water on the snake. It was then the python released the charmer and slithered away.

Also read: MP Man Finds A Snake In His Farm And Bites It, Miraculously Survives Despite Its Venom

According to the Independent, the snake charmer was rushed to the hospital in Varanasi on 20 March. His condition is still unknown.Mahira Khan made headlines in India when her pictures of 'smoking' with Ranbir Kapoor went viral on the internet. Talking about the same, Pakistani actress Mahira Khan says she felt "violated" when images of her sharing a cigarette with Indian actor Ranbir Kapoor emerged in the media.

Mahira also cited that it was the first time that she was embroiled in a controversy.

The Humsafar actress spoke at length about working in Bollywood, the impact of the tensions between India and Pakistan on the countries' film industries, and the controversy, on "HARDtalk on BBC World News".

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Mahira's photograph with Ranbir Kapoor emerged from New York in September last year, months after the actress' Bollywood debut Raees hit the screens.

Recounting how it became a "national topic and debate", she said,

 www.hefclothing.com A post shared by Mahira Khan (@mahirahkhan) on Mar 3, 2018 at 1:20am PST

"That was the first time in my entire career that I was caught up in a so-called controversy and it was strange because there were so many things in that. One, obviously you feel violated, you are in a personal downtime moment and someone has just photographed you. Two, obviously there was an uproar because here I was, someone who is extremely loved in Pakistan, and they sort of keep me up on this pedestal you know, they treat me with a lot of love and a lot of respect. And there are certain things I didn't realize that they don't want to see me do. At that point yes, it was crazy honestly because it lasted for a while... It was crazy, it was ridiculous."

Also Read: Mahira Khan Slut-Shamed By Haters For Chilling With Ranbir Kapoor In NYC In A Tiny White Dress

afp

Her film Raees, starring Bollywood 'badshah' Shah Rukh Khan, did not get a chance to release in Pakistan. Mahira said she was excited for the film to release in her nation.

Also Read: Ranbir Kapoor Lashes Out At Haters For Slut-Shaming Mahira Khan, Says She Is Being Judged Unfairly

"I was more excited about 'Raees' being released in Pakistan than anywhere else, because all I wanted was to sit there with my best friends and my child Azlaan and the audience and watch this and I couldn't."

The Pakistani censorship board had deemed Raees as an "ugly, horrible, unacceptable depiction of Muslims" at the time. Mahira feels had the movie released at any other time, it would not have been banned.

"I think their decisions sometimes are based on things that don't even concern the film sometimes. So you know I don't think that was the reason. They said it but I don't know. I don't know if 'Raees' was released today, would it be released," said the 33-year-old actress.

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The movie, released in January 2017, came just months after bilateral tensions intensified between India and Pakistan over the September 18, 2016 Uri attack that left 19 Indian soldiers dead and the September 28 surgical strikes by India on Pakistan terror camps.

After the incident, India's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena gave an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to leave India. Zindagi channel withdrew telecast of Pakistani shows. And even the Indian Motion Pictures Producers' Association (IMPPA) desisted from allowing Pakistani artistes to work in India.

As a result, Mahira couldn't even promote the movie in India.

She reflected: "It was a two-way thing. We got stuck under the political fire really, nothing else. But by the way, Pakistan is still showing Indian films, we haven't banned Indian films at all."A happy ending is just around the corner for Sonam Kapoor and her boyfriend of over two years Anand Ahuja.

According to a Mumbai Mirror report, Sonam Kapoor is all set to tie the knot with Anand Ahuha on May 11 and 12 in Geneva. There were several speculative reports around their wedding plans but it looks like the rumours were true.

According to a source who has been quoted in the report,

Blue Skies  #latergram #everydayphenomenal A post shared by anand ahuja (@anandahuja) on Apr 2, 2017 at 7:59am PDT

The date and venue for the wedding have been locked and mass bookings for flights are presently underway. Her dad Anil Kapoor is personally making phone calls to invite guests. There will be sangeet and mehendi ceremonies, followed by a traditional Hindu wedding."

A source from the wedding planning team has confirmed that the Kapoors took a long time finalize the venue but when it was done, they started speeding up the process.

The source added,

The nuptials will be preceded by an engagement ceremony attended by the familys inner circle, but the venue for that is presently not known."

Sonam, who is also the brand ambassador for a luxury Swiss watch manufacturer was in Geneva when she couldn't help but zero down the destination as the perfect wedding venue for her.

Sonam's frequent work trips to Switzerland have also led to her decision being firm about the wedding destination.

Unlike Anushka Sharma, who opted for Indian designer Sabyasachi, Sonam's fashion plans are a bit different.

According to sources, Sonam's wedding trousseau and wardrobe for the wedding functions will be from Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla and Brit designer duo Tamara Ralph and Michael Russo.

If we look back and see Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja's love journey, it has been a beautiful ride. Be it celebrating family occasions together or sticking together during rough times and time of tragedy, the couple has always been together.

When last year Sonam received the National Award  Special Mention  for her turn as Neerja Bhanot in Ram Madhvanis film, Anand Ahuja was present with Sonam's parents Anil Kapoor and mother Sunita and that spoke volumes about the kind of relationship that the couple shares.

Neither Sonam or Anand has confirmed the reports but their Instagram PDA is enough for us to be excited about their wedding.

Get. MARRIED. ALREADY. You two!Screengrab

Star has launched the first promo of the show and looks like all the characters are back in form to make us laugh!

Instagram

According to a source who has been quoted in the report,The date and venue for the wedding have been locked and mass bookings for flights are presently underway. Her dad Anil Kapoor is personally making phone calls to invite guests. There will be sangeet and mehendi ceremonies, followed by a traditional Hindu wedding."

Farhan revealed how he is absolutely "heartbroken" after he got to know about it but he is also "proud" of his aunt. Farhan wrote, "Heartbroken upon reading this article but proud that my aunt #DaisyIrani spoke up. Its tragic to see parents push their kids to breaking point in order to achieve success vicariously through them. This should serve as wake up call for the film & TV industry. Be aware. Be warned."

Pinterest

A statement by Irrfan's PR team read, "As suggested by recent news reports, Irrfan Khan is not consulting with Vaidya Balendu Prakash. He at one point had contacted him but other than one phone call there has been no conversation or consultation whatsoever. It is unacceptable to be using someone's illness for your own publicity and personal gain. Like Irrfan khans previous statements, we all need to respect the space asked for and wait for him or his wife's statement for any further update."

Mahira said, "That was the first time in my entire career that I was caught up in a so-called controversy and it was strange because there were so many things in that. One, obviously you feel violated, you are in a personal downtime moment and someone has just photographed you. Two, obviously there was an uproar because here I was, someone who is extremely loved in Pakistan, and they sort of keep me up on this pedestal you know, they treat me with a lot of love and a lot of respect. And there are certain things I didn't realize that they don't want to see me do. At that point yes, it was crazy honestly because it lasted for a while... It was crazy, it was ridiculous."In a cosy relationship, are you? As much as the cuddling, the sharing of intimacy and keeping each other warm through the night might make people who don't share such good fortune envious, there remains one downside happy couples seem to be increasingly facing.

It turns out the old saying is true: being in a relationship does make you put on weight, claims a recent study conducted at the University of Queensland in Australia.

en-konkatsu.com

An extensive study conducted over a decade worth of data of more than 15,000 people revealed that couples in happy relationships weighed an average of 5.8 kilos more than their single counterparts.

Although they found that couples smoked less, eat less junk food, drank less alcohol and even watched less television, they still weighed more than their single counterparts!

sytyson.com

However, even though they are consuming less junk than their single counterparts, the fact they are doing so in together causes a natural increase in the amount of bingeing.

The study published in PLOS One explored this paradoxical behaviour in couples.

Couples who step outside the dating game lay lesser emphasis on being in good physical conditioning and found it less important to engage in healthy lifestyle patterns.

diva.aktuality.sk

"When couples don't need to look attractive and slim to attract a partner, they may feel more comfortable in eating more, or eating more foods high in fat and sugar," told the study's lead author Stephanie Schoeppe, to New Scientist.

The study also reveals that the approximate time frame at which weight begins in to add up to cohabitation seems to be at around the two-year mark.

Although in the long run, a happy couple can bear stress and other problems by enduring it together, a relationship that isnt working out can lead to more weight gain due to heightened stress-related cortisol levels.

sayidaty.net

It turns out things tend to worsen when couples have kids later on as well. When couples have children in the household they tend to eat the childrens leftover snacks, adds Schoeppe, reports the New Scientist.

But wait, relationships can benefit your health too if you make the right choices. Another study published in the journal Health Psychology, claims that the more supportive a marriage, the less likely the either of the partners is to gain weight in their middle ages.

This study suggests a supportive marital relationship is associated with healthier body weight in midlife, said study co-author Ying Chen, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in an email to TIME. It adds to the evidence that a positive social relationship is a health asset.

seiten.de

Our study adds to the growing evidence that positive social relationship (not just marital relationships, but greater social integration and social support in general) may be related to a number of better health and well-being outcomes, she says.Initially it was a strange sight for people in Thiruvananthapuram, a foreigner walking around sticking bills all over the place. But when they got to know his story, many joined him, in his search and to spread the word across.

Andrew Jordan, an Irish national has been frantically searching for his wife Liga Skromane, 33, who went missing in Kerala's Kovalam last week.

Liga had come to Kerala with her sister Ilze Skromane for Ayurvedic treatment for post-traumatic depression but went missing from Thiruvananthapuram since March 14.

The Latvian national is said to have left the Ayurvedic center to buy cigarettes, and never came back.

Since then Ilze and Andrew have been running from pillar to post looking for some information on Liga.

The family is now offering a reward of Rs 1,00,000 for information on Liga but to no avail.

Police too, so far hasn't been able to come up with any breakthrough in the case.

"I was told by the police that my wife was last spotted by locals on March 18. I checked with locals and they could even identify her by her clothes. The description matched. We need help to locate her," Andrew said.

Meanwhile there were reports of an unidentified body of a foreigner recovered from a beach in Thiruvananthapuram.

The family, however, said it wasn't Liga as she did not have any tattoos on her, but the recovered body had.RJD supremo Lalu Prasad was today sentenced to 14 years in jail and fined Rs 60 lakh by a special CBI court in the fourth fodder scam case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 3.13 crore from the Dumka treasury in the early 1990s, a CBI counsel said. Read More

Here's the highlights of the main happenings of today!

2. An Irish Man Is Searching For His Wife In Kerala For More Than A Week After She Went Missing

Initially it was a strange sight for people in Thiruvananthapuram, a foreigner walking around sticking bills all over the place. But when they got to know his story, many joined him, in his search and to spread the word across. Andrew Jordan, an Irish national has been frantically searching for his wife Liga Skromane, 33, who went missing in Kerala's Kovalam last week. Read More

3. Jet Airways Suspends Two Pilots After They Report Tipsy To Work!

Jet Airways has asked its two pilots to quit their job after they were found drunk before operating the flight. The two pilots who have been asked to resign are a captain and co-pilot of a Boeing 737. Read More

4. Mumbai Teenager Stabbed 54 Times By Friend For Speaking Only In English!

Felt mocked by his friend who only spoke to him in English, which he couldn'tunderstand, a 21-year-old Mumbai youth stabbed his 18-year-old friend to death. The incident happened on Thursday in Mumbais Bandra. The accused, Mohammed Amir Abdul Wahid Rahin slit the throat of his friend Mohammed Afroz Alam Shaikh and stabbed him 54 times, in a fit of rage, for being mocked by the latter. Read More

5. 27 Years In Prison, And Counting: Former Soldier On Death Row Since 1991 Without Parole

In the last 27 years, he did not get a single days parole to visit his family. Rais wife, through senior advocate Shekhar Naphade, narrated the Armymans pitiable story on Friday before a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, which sought responses from the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government as well as Naini Jail authorities. Read More

6. Meet Kamala Pujari, A Tribal Agricultural Activist Who Is Now A Member Of Odisha Planning Board

Pujari, a tribal woman from Koraput district had become famous by preserving hundreds of local varieties of paddy and promoting organic farming. Read MoreCome Sunday, March 18 which is also "Gudi Padva", the Maharashtrian New Year the state will be plastic free!

Maharashtra Environment Minister Ramdas Kadam on Friday told the Assembly that the ban would cover the production, use, storage, sale, distribution, import and transportation of plastic.

BCCL

Plastic bags, thermocol, disposable cups and plates, cutlery, non-woven polypropylene bags, plastic pouches and packaging would be banned, Kadam said.

Plastic used to cover medicines, forest and horticulture products, solid waste, tree saplings and the use of plastic in special economic zones for export purposes would be exempt from the ban.

Plastic milk pouches will have to be above 50 microns and it should be recyclable, at a cost not less than 50 paise.

BCCL

The minister also said that the dairy industry must have a mechanism for the collection of used milk pouches and it would be mandatory for them to buy it back.

BCCL

Similarly, plastic water bottles also should be recycled and the retailer will refund Rs 1 to the consumer after he or she returns the bottle.

Those violating the ban would be fined Rs 25,000 and could also face a three-year jail term.The debate over freedom of speech is never ending. It has become difficult to share opinion on social media, especially if it involves something that is not politically correct.

In one such incident, a student of the Motilal Vigyan Mahavidyalay (MVM) in Madhya Pradesh got expelled for one year. This decision was taken by the college after she called its teaching staff as "anti-nationals" in her Facebook post. The student posted this after MVM authorities denied permission to hold a programme at the college auditorium marking the death of revolutionary Bhagat Singh.

Asma Khan/ Image: Indian Express

Asma Khan, a member of the Bhagat Kranti Dal and second year Bachelor of Science (B.Sc) student, was removed from the institute for a period of one year after she uploaded the social media post, reported PTI.

"Two groups, the BKD and another students' union (the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), had sought permission for their respective programmes to mark Bhagat Singh's death anniversary which falls on March 23. After permission was denied to both groups, BKD member Asma Khan called the teachers and professors anti-nationals in a Facebook post," college principal Niraj Agnihotri told PTI.

The college authorities say that the student should either withdraw this post or submit an apology for such a comment. Khan, meanwhile, expressed dismay at the college's action and called it hasty.

"It is surprising that the college authorities decided to rusticate me for one year on the basis of a Facebook post without issuing me a show-cause notice or following set procedures," she said. She said that the post, which was uploaded on March 19, was deleted immediately. "The post didn't name any person. My rights are being ignored," she claimed.In [Asia and North America], we need to see some improvements as we go forwards, Regan commented. He added that QBE needs to improve its consistency and reach similar levels of performance in all regions where it has a presence.

To make progress in Asia, QBE has appointed Jason Brown to the position of CEO for Asia-Pacific Operations. Brown, who used to be the groups chief risk officer, will lead a new Asia-Pacific team that will execute new strategies and build on parts of the business that are performing well in the region, such as the agency-based business.

So far, the change seems to be working out. Regan has spoken publicly about progress [being] good and said he expects to see improvements in 2018.

QBE in North America is also focused on growth, explained Regan, and is looking for more efficiency and capacity in mid-market and specialty businesses.

Related stories:By Mark Gurman

Leaders of Apple, Google, and other US technology giants head to China this weekend to pursue a familiar goal: To do more business in the worlds most populous nation.

The effort has had mixed results, at best, in the past. With a trade war brewing between the worlds two largest economies, the goal has gotten loftier still.

Tim Cook, chief executive, of Apple, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, and Ginny Rometty, head of IBM, are scheduled to attend the China Development Forum, an annual gathering that helps Western corporations build relationships with the countrys government officials.

Mr Cook is co-chairing the event this year, and Apple has the most at stake in China among US tech companies.

Its iPhones and other gadgets have sold well, but revenue from the region fell in Apples last fiscal year.

The company has also been criticised recently for relocating the data of Chinese iCloud users to state-controlled server farms.

Last year, IBM announced a deal with Chinese company Wanda Group at the forum.

The deal was meant to help IBM expand in the countrys cloud market, though it was reported recently that Wanda would stop working with the US firm.

Google pulled out of mainland China in 2010 over government censorship of its search results. The company has been trying to return in recent years but has made little progress.

These hurdles will only get higher if a trade war erupts between the US and China.

This week, US President Donald Trump ordered 25% on at least $50bn (40.5bn) of Chinese imports.

China responded with its own duties on some US imports. Apple could see a negative effect on about 15% of its business if China were to retaliate.

Steve Mollenkopf, Qualcomms CEO, will attend the conference but has cancelled his plan to speak.

BloombergBy Joe Dermody

The IFA has urged Agriculture Minister Michael Creed to use a projected 106m underspend in the 4bn Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 to fund existing and new farm schemes.

The IFA wants the full RDP fund, made up of 2bn in EU funds and and the remainder from national funds, to be paid into schemes to ease the income crisis in Irish farming.

IFA analysis of RDP spending to date and projected spending to 2020 suggests that while some schemes will spend most of their allocation, there will inevitably be underspends in others.

IFA president Joe Healy stated: While there have been well publicised annual underspends in the Rural Development Programme, the minister has always said that this funding will be made up by increased spending in the later years of the programme.

However, our analysis shows that as we are into the second half of the programme that this will not happen and there is a likelihood that there will be a significant underspend.

The minister has always been adamant that all the funding allocated for seven-year programme would be spent over the full programme. He must deliver on this promise and the only way to do so is to reallocate some of the funding to ensure it will be spent in full.

The IFA has proposed increases to the agri-environment schemes: The annual ANC budget to increase to 300m; and the maximum payment under Glas to be doubled to 10,000 with higher payments for farmers who have designated land.

The IFA has also proposed a wide-ranging farm investment scheme; and, a retirement scheme for farmers who pass the farm to the next generation.

Meanwhile, earlier this week in a Dail debate, Kerry Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae asked Mr Creed to clarify his plans for RDP funding in relation to the suckler industry.

Michael Healy-Rae

The Beef Data and Genomics Programme (BDGP) is the main support for the suckler sector, providing 300m to Irish beef farmers under the current RDP.

To date, 135m has been paid out through the scheme.

The BDGP is an agri-environmental measure to improve the environmental sustainability by increasing genetic merit within the national herd. Suckler farmers also benefit from the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and Greening payments under CAP Pillar I.

There are no surplus funds available within the RDP above and beyond the funding already allocated, which has been committed to existing schemes within the RDP, said Mr Creed.

Every scheme, or scheme adjustment, under the RDP must be justified and approved by the European Commission on the basis of additional actions and income foregone by farmers.

Any allocation of funding under Pillar I of the CAP for a coupled payment would in principle require a linear reduction to all existing farmers Basic Payment Scheme payments for redistribution.

I am not of the view that taking already committed money from farmers under the CAP is an appropriate means by which to support suckler farmers.Dancing with the Stars judge Julian Benson moved the nation last night with his story about living with Cystic Fibrosis.

Julian, one of Ireland's top choreographers, sat down with Ryan Tubridy to talk about his life with CF and how he feels about sharing his experience and helping others.

RTE

He began speaking by telling Ryan and the audience that CF has never defined him.

"The reason I'm here tonight, for the last few years I always said to myself that if I ever got to a stage where I had a platform and I got to a successful point, then I could maybe share my story to help other people and believe in themselves.

CF was part of me, it doesn't define who I was

I could maybe share my story to help other people believe in themselves, to just go for their goals and dreams #DWTSIrls @judgejulesoffic on why he has decided to speak publicly about having Cystic Fibrosis #latelate pic.twitter.com/5YCwrpeTR6  The Late Late Show (@RTELateLateShow) March 23, 2018

He told the audience about his experience as a child, how he never felt different and how he was never treated differently.

He said: "I didn't even realise, until later years, that there was anything really wrong with me.

"I was like any other child...I went to school like everybody else. Julian gets up, he takes his medication, he goes to school he does everything else and I was encouraged to do everything I really wanted to do.

At the end of the day, I have CF, it doesnt have me. It doesnt define who I am

"I put that down to my mum because I was encouraged to do everything I wanted to do."

Julian went on to speak further about his mother, who he describes his "everything, my rock, my best friend."

Speaking about why it was so important for him to care for his mother during her illness he said: "It was the most magical and best thing I have ever done in my life, and I've some amazing success in my career but that was the best thing.

"She did everything for me. It's so important for us to give back to our parents and loved ones.

"It's the least I could do to give back for all the love and care that she had given me all my life."

Ryan then asked Julian about something that his mother told him as she was coming to the end of her life.

"I wasn't aware that the doctors, in the early stages of my life, had told her that I wouldn't live past 12 or 13, I only found that out a few years ago.

"She lived through all of that, I never knew anything about that...for any mother looking after a child with any sort of illness, she had that in her head, but she never left it affect her or me.

I was brought up like everybody else in the family, everybody was the same, and this was the magic about her

Viewers couldn't help but be moved by Julian's story and thanked him for sharing and for speaking up about his illness.

"I have CF. CF doesn't have me." I love this man. One of my dearest friends, a great mentor, a medical marvel, an eternal optimist, a constant tidal wave of positivity and a genuine inspiration. All the love you beautiful man. @judgejulesoffic #LateLate #TheLateLateShow pic.twitter.com/rYKAgVdxuv  Eoghan McDermott (@eoghanmcdermo) March 23, 2018

Julian Benson was great on the #latelate absolutely changed my perception of him - such a brave and gutsy man   Niall Horan (@niallhoran) March 24, 2018

If it was possible to love @judgejulesoffic more, it's just happened. What a fabulous man you are Julian. CF will never define you #latelate  Maia Dunphy (@MaiaDunphy) March 23, 2018

For a man with cystic fibrosis, Julian Benson @judgejulesoffic is a wonderful breath of fresh air. Beautiful interview #latelate pic.twitter.com/SoioCmFptj  Conor Cusack (@Conor14Cusack) March 23, 2018

Incredible respect for Julian Benson DWTS judge. I formed an opinion of you without really knowing your story. Shame on me. You are an incredible person with the strength and heart of a Lion. I am confident that you have, and will continue to inspire many people. #dwts #cfireland  Tony Coy (@anthonycoy) March 23, 2018Seven teenagers have been rescued this afternoon from Sandymount Strand in Dublin.

Seven teenagers became stranded on the beach when they were surrounded by water, while out walking.

This incident occurred just after 2.20pm this afternoon when the Dun Laoghaire RNLI was called to the scene at Sandymount Strand.

The volunteer lifeboat crew was requested to launch their inshore lifeboat at 2.24pm at the request of the Irish Coast Guard after one of the students from the group raised the alarm.

They were found dry, safe and well on a sandbank but had got into difficulty when caught by an incoming tide.

The teenagers were safely taken onboard the lifeboat while the Coastguard helicopter hovered overhead.

It made its way back to the lifeboat station escorted by the chopper.

As the weather picks up and as we begin the Easter holidays, the RNLI remind everyone to enjoy themselves but to always respect the water.

Check the weather conditions and tide times before planning your activity and if you do get into difficulty dial 999 or 112 and ask for the Coast Guard.'

- Digital DeskThe Museum of Style Icons in Kildare is one of only two places in the world where an exhibition of Princes costumes and song writing notes can be viewed before they go to auction in May. Esther McCarthy takes a look

A low-key corner of County Kildare is hosting an exhibition thats likely to become the envy of culture lovers and music fans the world over.

Newbridge Silverwares Museum of Style Icons is one of just two places in the world where an exhibition of several of Princes stage costumes and accessories, guitars, jewellery and songwriting notes can be viewed before going to auction in May. Every item tells a story over four incredible decades of one of popular cultures most remarkable talents.

Fans will get to see the black two-piece worn by the star when he filmed Under the Cherry Moon in 1986. Theres the electric blue turtleneck and pants he wore while rocking out with Lenny Kravitz at a concert in (appropriately) 1999. Or the characteristically flamboyant gold and black reptilian print shirt and trousers he wore on stage during his Jam of the Year and Newpower Soul tours. And yes, that really is the navy hat with gold chains draping over the face that the musician wore in his famously funky My Name is Prince video.

But there are more personal items, too, their presence made all the more poignant by the stars untimely death almost two years ago. There are handwritten words of an artist in his purest state of songwriting, including a draft of his song Miss Understood, and a Love symbol pendant given to his wife, Mayte Garcia. They had a boy, Amir, who tragically died from complications of a rare syndrome just days following his birth.

For those who loved his music and lament his loss, or those who simply have an interest in the history of modern popular culture, this exhibition is a treasure. The story of how two Irishmen brought a sense of Minneapoliss most famous son to Newbridge is also unique.

Martin Nolan from Juliens Auctions launching 'Prince, An Extraordinary Collection of Property from the Life & Career of Prince' at Newbridge Silverwares Museum of Style Icons. Picture: Kieran Harnett

The exhibition is the latest collaboration between Martin Nolan of Juliens auctions and William Doyle of Newbridge Silverware, who share a passion for the iconic and a can-do attitude.

I read in the paper how an Irishman was bidding against Givenchy for an Audrey Hepburn dress and I thought: Wow I need to contact him, recalls Martin of their first meeting several years ago.

It was a contact that led to friendship and fostered common interests, and their first exhibition of Marilyn Monroe outfits and collectibles in Newbridge was a huge success. They have worked together on many since, this latest being one of their most spectacular.

Its been quite a journey from Kiltoom, near Athlone, to Hollywood for Nolan, who had a steady and secure job at Teagasc when fate came along and dealt him a hand.

I won a Green Card in a lottery in 1989, a Donnelly Visa. I felt so lucky  there were 19 million applications from 36 countries for 10,000 visas. My name came out of the hat, and with odds like that, I knew I was lucky and I knew I had to go, he says. Its funny how my life has changed so much. On arriving in New York, he got a job as a doorman and later as head bellman at the Hilton Hotel, pressing palms with the likes of James Brown, Sylvester Stallone and Mohammad Ali.

But his background was in finance so he trained and worked as a stockbroker, before his career took another turn. He met top auctioneer Darren Julien, who was going solo, setting up his own business, and was interested in working with the Irishman. Just over a year after he established the now-famous auction house, Martin joined him.

After the Hilton I went to work on Wall Street as a stockbroker and financial advisor. Thats how I met Darren Julien. Darren had just started the company.

We became friends and by March 2005 we were doing the second estate auction for Marilyn Monroe, which was a very big deal. Later, he would spend months on Michael Jacksons Neverland ranch, cataloguing the contents of the stars home for one of the biggest celebrity sales.

In 2009, when an exhibition of Jackson items came to Newbridge for ten days, 5,000 people per day passed through its doors.

Martin Nolan from Juliens Auctions launching 'Prince, An Extraordinary Collection of Property from the Life & Career of Prince' at Newbridge Silverwares Museum of Style Icons. Picture: Kieran Harnett

He has worked with some of the worlds biggest names, but you get a sense that hes especially proud of bringing the Prince exhibition to Ireland. Prince is a true icon and this is the first time this collection has been assembled since Prince wore these items, or played with these guitars, or wrote these lyrics.

Theyre on display here until May 10th, then we take it to the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, New York City. Well have it on display for a week, and then were going to auction it off on May 18th at the Hard Rock Cafe. This is what as an auctioneer you want to work with  the top, iconic person, because it drives so much interest.

How the whole auction came about was because, back in November as part of our Idols and Icons Rock n Roll auction which we have annually in Los Angeles, we sold a Prince guitar, a cloud guitar, teal coloured, for $700,000. That was a world record for a Prince guitar, before that the highest price was $130,000, it was bought by a museum.

That piqued our interest, because Prince is very collectable. Museums want to buy his items. People want to see his items, they want to be up close. Sadly hes no longer with us, so the next best thing is to own something from his life and career  keep his memory alive.

Martin Nolan from Juliens Auctions launching 'Prince, An Extraordinary Collection of Property from the Life & Career of Prince' at Newbridge Silverwares Museum of Style Icons. Picture: Kieran Harnett

His music still lives on but theres tons of unpublished music as well.

In fact we have some lyrics here from songs that havent even been published yet  working lyrics with his notes crossed out and additions and changes made. Thats like the pure art form of the music he created; the very beginning, when you sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil to start writing, to create this magnificent music that we all came to love.

Princes passion for creativity and design makes the collection perhaps even more special. He was a showman and he was involved in the costumes he would wear. He worked with designers and if he liked the designer he repeatedly went back to them, such brilliantly unique items for any performer to wear.

He always wore jewellery, every photograph you see of Prince hes typically wearing jewellery. This is a massive auction for us, in fact theres a total of over 150 lots  here we have about 50 of the top highlights.

High-profile auctions are typically portrayed as very glamorous and dramatic.

Its lights, cameras and auction! agrees Nolan. Three weeks before the auction closes itll be available online. People can start bidding online and it comes right up to the actual auction date. Therell be lots of interest media-wise. Itll be a crowded room in the Hard Rock Cafe. Itll be bustling. People bidding on the phone, people bidding in the room, and each lot will be sold individually and disperse all over the world.

After decades working in the business, Nolan understands the power and draw of classic celebrity collectibles. But sometimes a sale price will surprise him.

We have an idea, you know the iconic items, you know what the pre-auction interest is. If we have something really high-priced, lets say when we were selling John Lennons guitar two years ago, we had an estimate of $600,000-$800,000. We were hoping it would sell for more than a million, which at the time had never happened. We had six billionaires on the phones, bidding against each other for the guitar, and it went on to sell for $2.4 million.

The owner of the guitar was in the room, it was a life-changing event for him. He had the guitar for 47 years and never knew it was a John Lennon guitar. Half of the proceeds were to benefit the Spirit Foundation which was founded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. A great story, and it was so amazing to be a part of the journey of that guitar, even for a short period of time.

Prince - Nothing Compares 2U is housed at The Museum of Style Icons in Newbridge until May 10. Tickets, priced 5-7, can be booked at newbridgesilverware.com or in-store.IM JUST back from a flying visit to California, a mini book tour with a few days in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Ojai (pronounced O hi)  a beautiful valley, north of Los Angeles, carpeted with orange and avocado groves and surrounded by the Topatopa Mountains.

In Los Angeles, I was invited to appear on the Home and Family Channel to talk about my latest book, Grow, Cook, Nourish. I cooked one of my favourite easy peasy recipes, Tortillitas with Aioli, the crew absolutely loved them. I grasped the opportunity to spend a few days in LA, not nearly long enough. One could easily spend two weeks and eat beautiful creative seasonal food for breakfast lunch and dinner. I had difficult choices to make with just four meal slots, I came straight from the airport at 9pm to meet some Ballymaloe Cookery School alumni at a restaurant called The Tasting Kitchen in Venice, a hip and happening area in LA. We shared 10 or 12 little plates of delicious, very Californian food; we loved the little pillows of deep fried bread dough called gnocco fritto, served with San Daniele ham. Chef-owner Casey Lane is definitely a name to watch.

I stayed in a hip boutique hotel designed by Phillipe Stark, called Mamas Shelter, close to the Universal Studios, but you might want to try Chateau Marmont.

There were no farmers markets on while I was in town but I greatly enjoyed nosing around Grand Central Market which has a new lease of life. Its a brilliant spot for adventurous food lovers, check out Clark Street Bakery, Belcampo Butcher, Sari rice bowls, G & B Coffee, Tewasart Tacos and Eggslut (a great name, its on the Broadway side of the market and serves all day breakfast to hundreds of people, daily. Their signature dish is The Slut, a coddled egg on top of smooth potato puree, cooked in a glass jar topped with grey salt and chives, served with slices of baguette is comfort food at its best).

On a more general level there seems to be huge nutritional confusion and a desperation amongst many to find healthy wholesome food they can trust. Tons of money is invested to promote super foods, free-from foods and supplements. The vegan/vegetarian and plant food movement is huge and growing and there are now some fabulously good restaurants and cafes serving exclusively vegan food.

Some of the best pizzas Ive ever eaten have been in the US, particularly California and this time was no exception.

At Chez Panisse in Berkley outside San Francisco, Alice Waters made me a nettle pizza from the fresh new seasons growth.

Im still dreaming about a Turkish inspired pizza with minced lamb topping drizzled with yoghurt and tahini, scattered with feta and lots of flat parsley sprigs and a sprinkling of sumac that I ate at Boulettes Larder beside the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco.

Down in Los Angeles I made a pilgrimage to Nancy Silverstons new Pizzeria Mozza and enjoyed a bubbly Pizza Bianco with Fontina mozzarella, sottocenere al tartufo and crispy sage leaves from a long list of temptations and so wished I had space for the tomato and zucchini blossom pizza.

Dessert was Meyer lemon gelato with champagne vinegar sauce.

Nancy Silverstons Mozza Lemon Gelato with crystallised lemon and champagne vinegar sauce

Serves 8

Crust

75g (3 oz) digestive biscuits, crushed

45g (1 oz) butter

Filling

Lemon Gelato

1 free range egg

250ml (9fl oz) milk

110g (4oz) castor sugar

zest and juice of 1 good lemon

crystallised lemon strips

Equipment

Loose bottomed tin 8 x 3 inch (20.5 x 7.5cm)

Melt the butter and stir in the crushed biscuits, press into the mould in an even layer. Refrigerate while you make the filling.

To make the ice cream, separate the egg, whisk the yolk with the milk and keep the white aside. Gradually mix in the sugar. Carefully grate the zest from the lemon on the finest part of a stainless-steel grater. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and add with the zest to the liquid. Whisk the egg white until quite stiff and fold into the other ingredients. Freeze in a sorbetiere according to the manufacturers instructions or put in a freezer in a covered plastic container.

When the mixture starts to freeze, remove from the freezer and whisk again, or break up in a food processor. Then put it back in the freezer until it is frozen but still slushy. Pour into the crust, cover and freeze.

To serve remove from the freezer. Cut into pie shaped pieces. Serve on a chilled plate. Put a dollop of softly whipped cream on top. Add some crystallised lemon and drizzle with some champagne vinegar syrup. Enjoy.

Nettle and Ricotta Pizza

At Chez Panisse in Berkley, California, Alice Waters incorporates local wild foods into her menu  I enjoyed this delicious pizza straight from the oven.

Makes 1

75g (3ozs) pizza dough

fresh young nettles about 200g (7ozs)

1 clove garlic slivered or finely chopped

35g (1 oz) fresh Mozzarella

Maldon sea salt and freshly ground pepper

extra virgin olive oil

25g (1oz) Ricotta or Ardsallagh goat cheese

Preheat the oven to 475F/250C/gas 9. Preheat a heavy baking sheet in the oven.

Stretch or roll the dough into a thin round. Sprinkle a little cornmeal onto a paddle. Lay the pizza on top. Brush with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with chopped garlic and roughly grated mozzarella. Top with a mound of young nettles. Mist generously with water, season with salt and freshly ground pepper and top with a few blobs of ricotta or Ardsallagh goat cheese.

Cook for 7-8 minutes depending on the intensity of the heat.

Remove from the oven, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and serve immediately with a few flakes of Maldon sea salt sprinkled over the top.

Egg Slut

This little combination of modern industrial coddled egg and potato puree was inspired by a visit to Egg Slut, the egg-centric food stand in Grand Central Market in LA. This irresistible nursery food reminds me of my childhood and certainly seems to hit the spot for a whole new generation also to judge by the length of the queues.

Serves 4

2 tbsp of fluffy potato puree

4 beautiful organic free-range eggs (large)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Finely chopped chives

4-8 slices of toasted focaccia or sourdough bread

Equipment

4 small glass jam jars

Bring a saucepan of water to the boil; put 2 heaped tablespoons of well-seasoned buttery potato puree in the base of each jar. Crack an egg into each jar. Cover with the screw top lid. Bring back to the boil for 10-12 minutes.

Remove the lids. Sprinkle with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and a few finely chopped chives. Serve with some toasted focaccia, sourdough or baguette and with a teaspoon to scoop up the little feast.

Mix the egg and potato together and slather on toast.

Tortillitas a la Patata

The crew of the Home and Family programme loved these little potato fritters which Sam and Jeannie Chesterton of Finca Buenvino in Andalucia, introduced me to. I keep wondering why it never occurred to me before, they are so easy to make and completely addictive. Children also love them and they make perfect little bites to nibble with a drink, preferably a glass of fino or manzanilla.

Makes 26

4 eggs, free range and organic

225g cooked potatoes in 5mm dice

3 tbsp finely chopped mixed fresh parsley and chives

Half tsp salt

Quarter tsp freshly cracked black pepper

Aioli (Garlic Mayonnaise)

2 egg yolks, preferably free range

1-4 cloves garlic, crushed

Quarter tsp salt

Pinch of English mustard or quarter tsp French mustard

1 dstsp white wine vinegar

225ml oil (sunflower, arachide or olive oil or a mixture)  we use 175ml arachide oil and 50ml olive oil (7/2); alternatively use 7/1

2 tsp of freshly chopped parsley (optional)

Extra virgin olive oil for frying, you will need about 5mm in the frying pan.

Maldon sea salt for sprinkling

Whisk the eggs in a bowl, add the potato dice, season with salt and freshly- ground pepper, add the freshly chopped herbs.

Heat about 5mm extra virgin olive oil in a frying pan on a high heat, cook a teaspoonful of mixture and taste for seasoning.

Correct if necessary.

Continue to cook the mini tortillas as needed, using a scant dessertspoon of the mixture. Allow to cook on one side for about seconds, flip over and continue to cook on the other side for a similar length of time, or until slightly golden.

Drain on kitchen paper. Sprinkle with a few flakes of sea salt.

Serve hot, or at room temperature with a blob of aioli.

To make the Aioli

Put the egg yolks into a bowl with the mustard, garlic salt and the white wine vinegar (keep the whites to make meringues). Put the oil into a measure. Take a whisk in one hand and the oil in the other and drip the oil onto the egg yolks, drop by drop whisking at the same time. Within a minute you will notice that the mixture is beginning to thicken. When this happens, you can add the oil a little faster, but dont get too cheeky or it will suddenly curdle because the egg yolks can only absorb the oil at a certain pace. Add the chopped parsley. Taste and add a little more seasoning and vinegar if necessary.

If the aioli curdles it will suddenly become quite thin, and if left sitting the oil will start to float to the top of the sauce. If this happens you can quite easily rectify the situation by putting another egg yolk or 1-2 tablespoons of boiling water into a clean bowl, then whisk in the curdled aioli, a half teaspoon at a time until it emulsifies again.

Hot tips

Shop Local: Remember how grateful we were to our small local shops and butchers who came to the rescue of many during the extreme weather conditions of a few weeks ago. Lets show our gratitude by continuing to support them into the future  use them or lose them. Both urban and rural Ireland would be much poorer not to mention less colourful for their loss.

Bake a Loaf of Bread: What are we like, virtually the whole country went into spasms of panic at the prospect of bread scarcity  civilised, sophisticated grown-ups were virtually tugging sliced pans from each other.

Time to take a look at what weve inadvertently allowed to happen in our crazy busy lives, weve become increasingly deskilled and helpless, consequently dependent on others (ie, supermarkets and multinational food companies) for our basic needs, so if you havent already had a eureka moment  resolve now to learn how to make a loaf of bread. Its not beyond the wit of any man, woman or child to put a few ingredients into a bowl, stir in some buttermilk, scoop out the dough into a bread tin and pop it into a preheated oven. Hey presto youll have a delicious loaf of bread Ive been making bread all my adult life and most of my childhood but every time I still get a oops in the tummy every time I take a loaf of bread out of the oven and you will too and your family will hug you for it

Bake your own bread and bring it home on Friday, May 18, see www.cookingisfun.ie.

darinaallen.blogspot.ieBy Leslie Williams

ON a cold January evening in Paris in 1938, Samuel Beckett was walking home with some friends after a night on the town when he was accosted and suddenly stabbed by a pimp called Prudent.

The knife narrowly missed his heart and he was rushed to hospital  within hours his friend James Joyce was at his bedside, insisting on paying for a private room. While Beckett recovered, Nora sent in batches of her signature custard to remind him of home and you can find the recipe for Assassination Custard in An Irish Literary Cookbook (OMara & OReilly).

These days if you google that dramatic phrase you will mainly find references to one of the very best (and certainly one of the tiniest), restaurants in the country. There are just two tables  one square two to three top and one large round table for sharing. Ken Doherty and Gwen McGrath actually opened a couple of years ago and I have been extremely tardy in visiting, but to make up I visited three days in a row.

Gwen previously worked in places like Good Things Cafe (during the Durrus years) and Ken in Cafe Paradiso, but their influences are myriad  Italy, Spain, and the Middle East being perhaps prominent. The menu changes daily depending on what has been delivered by the likes of Broughgammon Farm or organic farmer Jenny McNally, recent winner of an Irish Food Writers Guild Award.

The menu is hand-written on a small brown paper bag (just as Ive seen in cafes in Morocco) and there is no drinks menu, just large bottles of chilled tap water. There is no corkage charge if you bring your own wine or beer  on one visit I dropped into the nearby Mace for a bottle of Santa Rita 120 (11).

Homemade soft white bread is the first dish to arrive on each of my visits followed by soft ricotta with anchovies or homemade labneh (yoghurt cheese for want of a better description)  creamy and pungent and lifted with pomegranate seeds and a generous sprinkling of sumac.

Panelle chickpea flour fritters (3.50) are a speciality of Gwens  fluffy and nutty and served (on the day I visited) with romesco  this is classic Assassination Custard: why not serve a Catalan fishermans sauce of almonds roasted red peppers with a Sicilian street food?

Salad might be pickled beets or a mound of thinly sliced raw Jerusalem artichokes with pomegranate seeds, walnuts and herbs  a perfect foil for some plump Ray cheeks in beurre noisette.

Or it might just be simply dressed swede or white turnips  Ive never been a big turnip fan but Ken and Gwen can transform them, bitter and earthy as they are, into a crisp nutty palate cleansing salad with good use of oil and vinegar and maybe a slice or two of blood orange.

Endive featured a lot in my visits  I loved the endive slow cooked in butter but I think my favourite dish over the three days was olive oil cooked endive with spiced tahini (sesame seed paste) and hazelnuts. The bitter sweet flavours of the endive worked rather marvellously with the textured sweet nuts and the earthy savoury intensity of the spiced tahini sauce  a flawless dish.

Broughgammon farm rose Veal (9) was cooked rare and served with a creamy rich dressing and topped with tuna and capers, an unconventional take on Piemontese Vitello Tonnato and arguably more interesting. Kid goats heart was also served rare with red onion, roast garlic yoghurt and cherries to add a hint of sweetness  flat leaf parsley gave a herbal undertone and the whole was enlivened with careful use of smoked paprika.

Coffee is sourced from Nicks Coffee Company in Ranelagh and is some of the best Ive been served in the past few months  helped by the only piece of fancy equipment in the kitchen  a large old Gaggia. You cannot leave without having some Ugly Beautiful meringues (3.50) made with fresh fruity-savoury Coriander Seeds or perhaps some Five Spice cookies or maybe a slice of Spanish Almond Cake.

Assassination Custard is a sheer joy to visit, there are very few people cooking in Ireland with such joy and abandon. Go soon and often.

The tab

Lunch for two with five shared dishes plus coffee and cake cost 38.

How to

Lunch 12.30pm - 3pm, Tuesday to Friday.

Tip: Watch for the Little Cafe sign  Assassination Custard is written in the window.

The verdict

Food: 9/10

Service: 9/10

Ambience: 9/10

Value: 9.5/10

In a sentence: A tiny restaurant open just a few hours a week serving gorgeous Mediterranean food with generous flavours ranging from vegan chickpea fritters to goat heart with cherries and spiced yoghurt.

Assassination Custard, 19A Kevin Street Lower, Dublin 8. Tel: 087-9971513; www.facebook.com/assassinationcustardNot that The Menu ever needs an excuse to head west to the City of the Tribes but surely the return of the annual Galway Food Festival (March 29-April 2) is as good a reason as any, particularly as 2018 is the year Galway shares the mantle of European Region of Gastronomy, a programme to promote the unique food culture of the region and further develop its economic potential (galwaygastronomy.ie).

This years festival theme is Planting Seeds, a literal and metaphorical interpretation focusing on education and awareness. More than 100 events include tastings, meals, and talks, and several growing events will be targeted at children. As always the entire schemozzle winds up on Monday night with the Festival Table Quiz in the Kings Head (galwayfoodfestival.com)

Food and power

Registration has opened for the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium 2018 (May 29-30), at Dublin Institute of Technology, this years theme being Food and Power. With more that 50 Irish and international speakers, this years keynote speaker is Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, emerita, at New York University. (https://arrow.dit.ie/dgs/). And, on matters educational, commendations to the UCC Green Campus Committee for its new on-campus farmers market. Potential stallholders should contact greencampus@ucc.ie

Best of the best

Georgina Campbells Ireland: The Best of the Best offers a personal selection of the very best places to eat, drink, and stay, throughout the length and breadth of this glorious green island. It being nearly a decade since the volume was last published, the updated version is an accurate reflection of the relentless march onwards and upwards of the hospitality sector. (Available in bookshops and via Ireland-Guide.com with free P&P in Ireland.)

Wine tasting

ODriscolls independent food and wine store, in Corks Ballinlough, hosts another wine tasting (Thursday, March 29) with accompanying titbits from its in-store treasure trove, this one featuring Spanish and Chilean wines. jjdriscoll.ie

Cottage industry

For all that he owes Dear Old Sainted Mother Menu, his love of cooking is one thing that derives from elsewhere and on more than a few occasions, he took her to the Cinnamon Cottage in Rochestown to pick up some tasty pre-cooked meals for her freezer. A recent sampling of an Indian butter chicken and a cracking orange and pistachio polenta cake reminded him of just why she was so attached to same. Its splendid little wine list was equally enticing to The Menu himself and that remains as alluring as ever. (cinnamoncottage.ie) Having recently enjoyed a most relaxing sojourn at The Mustard Seed, in Co Limerick, The Menu highly recommends its upcoming Easter break package, with two nights B&B plus one dinner, 190 pps (mustardseed.ie)

Todays special

With two younger progeny who diverge on the chilli question  one addicted, the other, a more sensitive soul, deeply and fundamentally opposed  The Menu tends to stockpile chilli sauces and other similar condiments, the better to administer a last-minute blast of heat once Daughter Menu has been served her own uncontaminated portion. Beagh Herbs (Mad for Chillies) Sweet Chilli Sauce offers the required heat from homegrown Thai chillies without losing the run of itself but it is the rich palette of underlying flavours (lemongrass, lime, ginger, garlic, and soy) that marks it out, sweet bass tang that makes it an excellent last minute addition to a homemade mayonnaise or even, as The Menu recently did, providing the coup de grace to a fine fish stew. facebook.com/beaghherbs

Beer of the week

Hopfully Brewing Sakura, 5.4% ABV; 33cl  2.99

Stockists: Mainly Dublin  Fresh, Mace SCR, McHughs, Martins, Kellys, Drink Store, Deveneys.

Hopfully are based in north County Dublin and take almost as much pride in their design aesthetic as they do in their beers. As well as their own range they do occasional contract work  eg, the excellent beers they produce for the Klaw seafood restaurants.

Sakura (cherry blossom) is a California Common style (cf. Anchor Steam) single hop beer made solely with Sorachi Ace hops  the unusual Japanese variety championed by Brooklyn Brewery among others.

Malty tropical and citrus tinged fruity aromas (lemon peel and apricot) with a herbal and noticeable floral overlay, lightly hopped and flavourful with a lingering hoppy and herbal malty finish.By Joyce Fegan

I remember joining Bebo in college. I am not sure we used the term social media to describe the platform.

It was 2005 and the term platform was still primarily used to describe boarding areas at train stations.

The only images that ever went up on Bebo were of nights out.

Back then, there were no flat-lay images of fanned avocados on sourdough toast and there were no mirror selfies of lycra-clad students lifting barbells in the gym.

It would be another eight years before the term selfie was even coined.

In order to upload photos, you needed a digital camera, a USB cable and a computer with a reliable internet connection.

At the time, I was studying for a mixed degree, so while the majority of my lectures took place in the main theatres, for my minor subject I would traverse the universitys grounds to the language labs on the perimeter of the campus.

It was an underpopulated area of the university, which meant you were, more or less, guaranteed to find a free computer to surf the internet on. Once a week, I would have an hour to spare in between language tutorials and Id slip into a hard plastic seat in front of one of these free computers and while away the 60 minutes on Bebo.

I would click from photo to photo, enviously leering at every party I hadnt been invited to. I was chasing memories made by other people, but which I, myself, had not born witness to.

My friends and I have this expression we call sandwiches. If someone asks how you are and you arent feeling at your finest, but nothing specific has occurred to justify this low feeling, you will answer by saying: I am feeling a bit sandwiches. Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffanys referred to it as the mean reds.

After an hour spent sightseeing the lives of others on Bebo I would always, without exception, feel sandwiches. And because the platform and the concept of social media was so new, I was acutely aware of the effects this ill-spent hour had on my mood.

I could categorically attribute the sandwiches feeling to the hour spent comparing my life to the lives of others. My energy had dipped considerably. I felt less than and I felt left out. I also felt my life and the events in it, paled in comparison to what I had just witnessed online.

Social comparison theory states that we determine our own worth based on how we stack up against others. I was able to get so laser-focused on the lives of others, that my own life, filled with sport and drama and college and friends became all but irrelevant, perhaps even invisible to me.

But still, I was able to log out, get up and walk back into the real world where such sites were not at my fingertips while I waited in line for my hot chicken fillet roll.

Thirteen years later, being able to categorically attribute a low mood or an agitated mental state to social media is not so easy. We are now always on.

According to a global mobile phone survey carried out by consultancy firm Deloitte in 2016, 40% of Irish people check their phone within five minutes of waking.

While on public transport, 86% of us are staring into our devices. When we are talking to our friends 80% of people in Ireland are using their smartphone at the same time. While having dinner with family, 73% of us are on our phones.

And when we settle in for the evening and turn on the television, 88% of us are using our smartphones while watching TV.

On Instagram you can see when someone was last active by simply going to your direct messages and checking beneath a persons profile.

With WhatsApp you get the blue tick, therefore confirming that your intended recipient has not only received, but actually consumed your correspondence. Again with WhatsApp and so too with Facebook messenger, you can see when someone is typing.

The anticipation is seductive and you simply must wait to see what they will reply.

Smartphones and social media have infiltrated our lives to such an extent that we can no longer clearly identify the effects they are having on our health. Us humans are social animals and relationships are critical to our wellbeing.

American psychiatrist Dr Bruce Perry argues that digital communication and social media means we have invented a world that is relationally different to the one our brain prefers.

The human brain is not designed for the modern world, he says, because for thousands of generations we lived in small, multi-generational family groups, where there was more touch, more eye contact and more conversation and these all fed the brain in a rich way.

Dr Perry explains that humans feel most rewarded and safest when they are with people they love and respect.

Today, while I am not a prolific social media user, I still scan through various timelines. Twitter allows me to rate my professional success or failings. Facebook reminds me that Ive yet to procreate.

And Instagram takes social comparison to a whole other level, where my boring old life, where its always porridge for breakfast, could never possibly compete.

This week when the data scandal broke, whereby 50m Facebook users had their personal data allegedly harvested by a company called Cambridge Analytica, people began deleting their accounts.

Mark Zuckerbergs net wealth fell from approximately 61bn to 54bn. Facebooks share price fell by more than 10%.

But what does all of this mean for the rest of us? Maybe its time we took stock and ask whos really in control here?

Its time to sit back and take a look at how many minutes of your day you give to other peoples online lives to the detriment of your very own real life.It has to go down as one of the great comedic moments on Irish television: a brilliant acapella rendition of a 25-year-old hit single, led by a psychopath in a vest, whose knife doubles as a microphone and a conductors baton.

Billy Murphy, lovable headbanger from the hit TV series The Young Offenders, has single-handedly brought After All to number one on one of the iTunes charts, generating extensive airplay along the way, in an age when digital downloads are two a penny and competition for the top spot has never been as fierce.

The performance of After All by Billy and his co-stars  after he hijacked a bus by default  and the subsequent surge in downloads, is proof, says the songs composer, Paul Linehan, of the enduring power of music: The great thing about it is, it can still have legs 25 years later.

The Frank and Walters, Pauls band, were riding high 25 years ago, when they appeared on the worlds most prestigious chart show, Top of the Pops, in January 1993.

After All, about a previous girlfriend of Pauls, was charting at number 14. Whitney Houston was at number one, with I Will

Always Love you.

It was a great occasion  a career high. When I was a young fella, I always wanted to be on Top of the Pops. It was a huge deal. The show was on on a Thursday night, and I remember crashing my bike on the way home one evening, I was in such a hurry to see it, Paul says.

Dan Linehan, Irish Examiner photographer (no relation), was assigned to cover the Frank and Walters Top of the Pops appearance, which was front-page news at the time.

It was my first trip away from the office and the Frank and Walters were huge, they were really out there in terms of indie rock. I was delighted to be covering it, but when we arrived at the BBCs Elstree Studio, we were told no cameras allowed.

I had to get a picture so I had a camera hidden under my coat. I was sweating like a pig while everyone else was dancing around. It wasnt very rocknroll.

The Frank and Walters with Paul McCartney at the BBC studios for Top of the Pops in 1993.

Dan tried to take pictures of the band on stage with the camera lens poking through his jacket, but he wasnt convinced hed done enough for a page-one.

As luck would have it, on the way out of rehearsals, they came upon the iconic EastEnders set.

I said Lads, everyone knows Albert Square and I got them to pose by the red post box.

Security arrived to escort them off the set, but Dan had his page-one picture.

The highlight for the Frank and Walters was performing on Top of the Pops the same night as Paul McCartney, whose dressing room was directly across from theirs.

Not everyone can boast of sharing a stage with a Beatle and even fewer can boast of being ahead of a Beatle in the charts.

I remember he was number 30 at the time with Hope of Deliverance and we were number 14.

The band got to meet Paul and his then-wife Linda, and his daughters, including fashion designer, Stella.

I remember Linda trying to convert us to vegetarianism. She said Do you know an animal died so that you can eat burgers?

The Frank and Walters (Paul Linehan, Niall Linehan and Ashley Keating) on the set of EastEnders after recording their appearance on Top of the Pops. Picture: Dan Linehan.

We said: Do you know an animal died so that you could wear those leather shoes?

We had great craic with them.

Niall, Pauls brother, and former band member, remembers telling Linda his mother got her cookbook for Christmas and they were being slowly poisoned. At any rate, Lindas lecture

left its mark, and Niall subsequently became a vegetarian, though hes now in recovery, Paul says.

The bands outfits on Top of Pops were, well, radical, even for their time: orange polo necks and purple tie-dye flare trousers.

We bought the polo necks in a charity shop on Castle St and we got the trousers in Leaders on North Main St, I think they were there since the 70s, Paul says.

And what of his bowl haircut?

My mam did my hair. I had tried to get the same cut in the barbers, but he couldnt do it. My mam had a bowl that fitted my head perfectly and she just cut around it, Paul says.

I cant say I started a trend, but there were fellas around Cork sporting the same haircut on the strength of it. We were anti-fashion you see, and we wanted to highlight the absurdity of it. At the time, fellas were wearing all black, the same black skinny jeans that they are all wearing now.

The bands performance on the night was flawless, even if all the pressure was on Paul: he was the only member performing live.

The Frank and Walters with Linda McCartney on Top of the Pops.

As Evening Echo reporter, David OConnell, wrote at the time: The rest is produced on a backing track as the band attempt realistic mimes of what comes naturally. To facilitate the drummers (Ashley Keating) efforts at making no noise, his kit is covered with thin layers of cushion.

David wrote that the band had rehearsed from early morning like old pros without a hitch, and they took the tedious waiting in their stride before recording for tonights slot.

For some, like Paul McCartney  the main attraction on tonights show  theres no waiting around, but for the rest, its a long day. For all this, you can earn around 140 each in cash  but the real incentive is the massive music audience that Top of the Pops still guarantees every Saturday night.

Paul says in the end, they didnt really cash in on that performance, deciding against an immediate tour of the US.

They did do the Feile festival in Thurles that year, but were sick to death of touring, having spent the previous 12 months gigging in Italy, Germany and Britain  with support act,

Radiohead.

We were fed up, burnt out. When you gig that much, it takes its toll.

He doesnt regret not heading straight to the States, because our sanity meant more to us.

We were overwhelmed by the success, it was just something that happened, you dont expect to become famous.

Billy Murphy sings After All in The Young Offenders.

Paul, who teaches some guitar these days, continues to compose and record albums and perform  including a special anniversary gig last New Years Eve in the Cork Opera House to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of their Grand Parade album. Dan Linehan was there, albeit without a camera under his jacket.

Paul is delighted that After All is enjoying a revival. He describes Billys rendition as brilliant.

Niall, who left the band in 2004 to concentrate on family, says his kids have no interest in his previous career.

I was driving my 13-year-old daughter to the School of Music during the week and After All came on the radio. She didnt even look up from her Kindle. Im an embarrassment to her at this stage.Party sources told the Irish Examiner that its campaign is unlikely to begin until after Easter as, separately, a number of pro-life TDs downplayed suggestions they will join any cross-party pro-life platform.

It is understood while the referendum bill has now passed through the Dail and will be voted on in the Seanad next week, Fine Gael is reluctant to put in place any formal campaign structure until all parts of the bill are passed.

This is because until then, the exact date of the referendum will not be known, and because the partys national executive council is unlikely to meet to finalise who it wants to lead the campaign as national director of elections until that point.

Although Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has confirmed he will campaign in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment, as have a number of other ministers, the role of director of elections has yet to be decided.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty, and others have been mooted as options.

Fine Gael sources say that when this decision is made, the party will prepare for a four- to six-week campaign in the final stages of the referendum campaign, during which it intends to target undecided voters.

Pro-life TDs in Fianna Fail and other parties have downplayed reports they may join an informal cross-party platform of similarly minded supporters of the Eighth Amendment.

Despite reports yesterday suggesting such a move is being considered and an admission that individuals from different parties have spoken about how they will vote, several Fianna Fail TDs insist they have not heard of the cross-party platform and are not in favour of it.

Fianna Fail TD for Carlow-Kilkenny Bobby Aylward told the Irish Examiner he does not know anything about such a platform and that no one has approached me about that, to be honest.

He said he is not really in favour of it and that if anyone approaches me about some kind of cartel or anything like that, I dont want to be in it.

Meanwhile, Cork East TD Kevin OKeeffe said while he has discussed the referendum on a regular basis with Independent TD Mattie McGrath, he does not know of any plans to form a cross-party pro-life platform.

Pro-choice Fine Gael TD Kate OConnell has backed Independent Alliance TD and Junior Minister John Halligans claims that those who voted against the referendum bill are an affront to democracy.

Speaking on RTE radios Today with Sean ORourke programme, Ms OConnell said I would pretty much align myself to where he stands on it and that, for me, John Halligan is definitely right.

Ms OConnell noted that there is nothing complex about just letting democracy happen, saying she believes it is wrong that 32 TDs  including 21 Fianna Fail TDs  voted against the referendum bill allowing a referendum itself.

On the same programme, Fianna Fail TD Darragh OBrien said while he has reservations about the referendum and will vote to retain the Eighth Amendment, he supports the referendum bill because people have a right to have their say.

We should never fear the public having a vote and respecting the public having a vote, said Mr OBrien.Gerard Sheehan spoke out yesterday a day after his brother Pauls funeral to tell people his family did what they could to help him and were driving the streets looking for him on the night he died.

Gerard said his gentle soul brother struggled with alcohol addiction from an early age, had been through treatment, and had turned down several offers of help, preferring to spend time on his own.

He was in treatment six times. He did try. He had a bed, he could have come in with us, but no drink. And drink comes first with an alcoholic. Simple and plain. Before love and before family, said Gerard.

If you are an alcoholic you will get drink. He would never ask you for anything. He was so respectful and so quiet. He wouldnt harm a fly.

Paul Sheehan, 53, a father of one originally from St Marys Avenue, Cathedral Rd, on the northside, was found dead on Wandesford Quay, near the city centre, at around 7am on March 18.

In a lengthy interview with the Neil Prendeville Show on RedFM yesterday, Gerard said: To see your younger brother with a blue blanket thrown over him. All of his family tried and Paul tried very hard. He loved his son.

He revealed the often brutal conditions his vulnerable brother, who walked with the aid of two sticks and who slept regularly in a doorway on Washington St, had to endure while living on the streets.

Most people were very good to him. But people would come along during the night when they were drunk and kick him. They would take money. It goes on. He was beat with hatchets. He was beat with hammers. That man never hurt anyone in his life, he said.

Gerard said when he saw Paul laid out in the coffin during the week, the look of pain had left his face.

Gerard paid tribute to Cork Penny Dinners, where Paul ate almost daily, and singled out Catriona Twomey for special praise.

Penny Dinners was the only place he knew he was safe. He was a respectful man. Thank God drink never took that from him, he said.

Meanwhile, a Mass of Remembrance will be celebrated at the Holy Trinity Church today for another homeless man, Dublin John, who died some weeks ago. His mother and sister are bringing his ashes to Cork. Cork Penny Dinners will host a get-together afterwards.Despite numerous garda appeals, searches of the river, reported sightings, door-to-door inquiries, and internet campaigns, her

parents and sisters do not know what has happened to the 14-year-old.

Elishas disappearance from her home at Carrick-on-Suir has caused widespread shock, sadness, and puzzlement, both among her family and friends and in the wider community.

The search has continued all week, from the first missing person appeal, last Sunday, to today, when more emergency service personnel and voluntary teams will again be out trying to locate Elisha.

The latest Garda appeal has focused on reports of a young girl believed to have been seen in the area of the old mart, on the Faugheen Road, in Carrick, in the early hours of Sunday, just a couple of hours after the last positive sighting of Elisha Gault.

Supt William Leahy, who is leading the investigation from Clonmel Garda Station, on Friday asked for this person, described as being tall with blonde hair, to come forward, so that she can be eliminated from inquiries.

The description issued on Sunday, of Elisha, is that of a 14-year-old girl, between 5ft10in and 6ft in height, with dyed blonde hair and blue eyes.

All week, the gardai have been following up on various reports of possible sightings of the teenager, with nothing positive to report, as yet.

They have also been calling to houses and businesses in the area to try and find anyone who may have seen Elisha since her last-known sighting, on Dillon Bridge, heading towards Carrickbeg, at 10.15pm on Saturday.

Elisha is a pupil of Comeragh College, in Carrick, and an air of sadness hung over the school yesterday, as students broke up for their Easter holidays.

Elishas mother is originally from Belfast and the family lived for some time in Piltown, just over the Tipperary/Kilkenny border from Carrick-on-Suir, before she moved with her mother and sisters to New St, in the town, over a year ago.

Yesterday on Facebook, Grainne Gault said

the family are broken-hearted, with still no news of Elishas whereabouts.

She appealed to anyone with information, no matter how seemingly trivial that information, to get in touch with the gardai or with the family.

If you know of her whereabouts, tell her she isnt in trouble, she wont be forced to come home if she doesnt want to, we just want to know she is safe and well and we can call off all the search efforts and myself, her daddy, and her three sisters love her very much, no matter what.

Mrs Gault paid tribute to the efforts of all of the state agencies, voluntary groups, and others who have taken part in the search and supported the family since last Sunday.

These include the gardai, civil defence, fire service, sub-aqua units, Waterford Marine Search and Rescue, Carrick-on-Suir River Rescue, Nenagh Search and Rescue, Mallow Search and Rescue, and others who have been visible along the river Suir all week.

Numbers out searching are expected to increase over the weekend, as volunteers who have been working during the week make themselves available.

Anyone with information should contact the gardai on 0526177640, or the garda confidential line on 1800666111, or any garda.

Hug your kids that bit tighter tonight; appreciate what you have got, is the last line on Grainne Gaults latest post.Transport Minister Shane Rosss controversial bill to overhaul the appointment of judges is a dogs dinner and needs significant work, if it is to be viable, Attorney General Seamus Woulfe has said.

Mr Woulfe, speaking at an event in Dublin, said the bill  which was the cause of a major row at the Cabinet, earlier this week  is in a poor state, because of amendments made by opposition TDs at committee stage.

Mr Woulfe said that many of the amendments made by the opposition were contradictory, inconsistent, and unconstitutional.

Among a whole myriad of amendments, which they made, which make the bill a complete dogs dinner, at the moment, because a number of the amendments are contradictory, inconsistent, and unconstitutional, he said.

Tensions are escalating within the Cabinet at the slow progress of the bill, despite it being in the Programme for Government and despite a commitment from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar that it would be fast-tracked.

As a result of the amendments, Mr Woulfe indicated that Mr Rosss demand that the bill should be introduced to the Dail next week is very unlikely to be met.

Therefore, Mr Woulfe said, it makes it a challenge to get the bill to report stage, very soon, and tidy up all that.

I am sure, under new politics, a deal will be done, involving various government ministers and opposition parties, and we await, with interest, over the next few days, how that will pan out.

At an event for the Association of European Journalists, Mr Woulfe talked about the role of the attorney general and how, traditionally, it has played an important role in the selection of judges.

However, at committee stage, opposition TDs voted to remove the attorney general from the process, which Mr Woulfe described as an absolutely crazy thing to do.

The attorney has a role in judicial appointments, as being a link person with the bar and knowing the people, knowing the candidates and the judges. Under the new Judicial Appointments Bill, the opposition decided to abolish me at committee stage, by 5-3, to knock the attorney out. Widely thought, not just because it is me, to be an absolutely crazy thing to do, down in the legal system, he said.

Because, hopefully, the AG is a good link person, and knows something about the candidates. But 5-3 went the votes, including my good friend, Jim OCallaghan, who voted, along with Clare Daly and Mick Wallace and two others, against the three Government people, Mr Woulfe said.

As attorney general, Mr Woulfe does not often speak in public and his comments are sure to be met with some shock and hostility by the Independent Alliance, which is demanding swift movement on this bill.

A Fine Gael party supporter, he was appointed by Mr Varadkar last summer.

As revealed by the Irish Examiner, three judicial appointments were only approved by Cabinet last Tuesday, following an almighty dust-up between Fine Gael and Independent Alliance ministers.

Mr Ross and super-junior health minister, Finian McGrath, became embroiled in a heated row with colleagues, especially Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan, according to sources, and threatened to block any further appointments, unless the bill was pushed through the Dail and Seanad.

Mr Ross, who is the chief sponsor of the bill, was up in arms over the delays, while Mr McGrath strongly reminded his Fine Gael colleagues that it is a priority in the Programme for Government.

The Independent Alliance has said its support for the appointment of any future judges is dependent on progress on this bill and it cannot be guaranteed.

Mr Flanagan has said work on the bill is progressing and should be back in the Dail, for enactment, within a few weeks.

The Government is fully committed to the Judicial Appointments Bill, according to a statement issued late by a Government spokesman.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke yesterday evening to Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan and Minister for Transport Shane Ross, who proposed the bill, and also to the Attorney General.The Port of Cork Company confirmed yesterday that it has lodged an appeal with An Bord Pleanala against the decision made by Cork City Council last month to grant permission for the 160m HQ scheme at Horgans Quay.

The appeal was lodged on Thursday just hours before the 5pm deadline.

The mixed-use HQ project, proposed by BAM and Clarendon, has been earmarked for a six-acre north docks site, next to Kent train station and overlooking the ports quays.

It includes some 400,000 sq ft of office space, with capacity for up to 3,500 employees, more than 240 apartments and a 136-bed hotel across eight buildings.

City planners gave it the green light late last month.

But the port company, which is involved in a legal battle with BAM Civil Ltd over the tender process on part of a massive port building project in Ringaskiddy, confirmed it is appealing the decision.

The Port of Cork has no further comment at this time, however, as the developer involved has indicated a willingness to address the Port of Corks concerns, the Port of Cork may be in a position to comment further depending on the outcome of these discussions, it said in a statement.

However, the Irish Examiner understands that the port company has, among other things, insisted the HQ developers provide mitigation measures to ensure that future occupants of the offices, apartments and hotel will not be adversely affected by nearby activity and port-related logistics, including rail freight.

The port company was among those who made observations during the initial planning process.

It described Horgans Quay as a busy, operational port area, handling up to 100,000 tons of cargo annually, and which will remain in active use in the medium term.

It said the area is used by all sorts of vessels, including ferries, container vessels, cruise ships and fishing boats, and that cargo operations here can be intensive, and run 24-hours a day.

Fishing vessels routinely land their catch on Horgans Quay, one document says. The types of cargo may have a residual odour, acceptable in the context of a working port quayside, but which is incompatible with adjacent residential or commercial uses.

The ports planning consultants argued unsuccessfully with city planners that the development of residential and commercial uses next to a working port quayside is premature, pending the identification of alternative suitable quays and a clear timeline for the relocation of the ports city quays activity.

It is understood the port company wants the developer to ensure the ports operations around Horgans Quay are not constrained or negatively impacted during either construction or the operational phases of the HQ development.The migratory swans that overwintered in Ireland took their cue to leave from the rising temperatures of spring so they were in no hurry to depart in the early months of 1968.

February and March had been colder than usual and like the weather of recent weeks, many areas were affected by repeated falls of snow.

But eventually, the pull of the breeding grounds proved too strong and in the latter half of March, the Bewicks swans began setting off for their summer home in Siberia and the whoopers for Iceland.

Their route took them across the south and east coast of the country where they stopped to feed at coastal wetlands, packing on weight for the long journey ahead.

The report of the investigation into the loss of Aer Lingus Flight 712 on a bright, clear Sunday morning 50 years ago today stated:

There seems little doubt that swan migrations from Kerry, Shannon, Galway etc were on collision courses with the track of EI-AOM.

EI-AOM, the official registration of the Vickers Viscount aircraft, St Phelim, went down close to Tuskar Rock, about eight miles off the Wexford coast while on route from Cork to London, killing all 61 people on board.

Many theories have emerged over the years to try to explain the crash, the most intriguing and enduring of all being an accidental missile or drone strike from the Royal Air Force base

at Aberporth in Wales,

perfectly positioned along the St Phelims flight path.

Bird strike was in the mix too, and it remains on the list of possible causes in the last official investigation report from 2002, although there is no hard evidence to support it.

Lack of hard evidence or, some would say, lack of will to find it, has hung over the tragedy for the last 50 years.

Cork woman Celine ODonoghue was a 14-year-old schoolgirl when she witnessed her mothers heartbreak at losing her sister and two young nieces in the crash.

Celines Auntie Eileen and her cousins, Marion, aged 16, and Paula, just two years old, all members of the Gallivan family, were among the 47 victims whose remains were never found. They got Paulas coat and doll but there was no other trace of them, she recalls.

There would be criticism later that not enough effort was made to recover the dead. Local trawlers that came to help were turned away from the crash site in case their nets disturbed the wreckage which was not located for some months and never fully recovered.

Transport minister Erskine Childers would tell the Dail in answer to questions in May that year that he was satisfied the best available methods and equipment are being used in the search and that everything reasonably possible is being done to locate the wreckage.

But a review in the year 2000 of the original investigation completed in 1970 noted that the State did not have a sufficiently equipped naval service to carry out the search and rescue operation and stated: The lack of a financial commitment to indefinitely fund the search and salvage operation may have contributed to its limited success.

From todays perspective, it seems unthinkable not to have thrown everything at the salvage effort, but Celine says questioning authority was not part of the culture at the time.

Not in the Ireland of 1968. We were still nearly fairy and leprechaun country at that point. People were lucky to have landline phones. Computers hadnt even started, she says.

Anything was possible in those days because nobody had any way of knowing otherwise. You can not talk in the language of 2018 for 50 years ago.

Ultimately it was not another language, but a different accent, that brought the lingering questions about the Tuskar air crash into the open.

The family of Joseph and Mary Gangelhoff, the only Americans on board the St Phelim, didnt accept the 1970 investigation report which had left the door wide open to the theory that a British drone or missile had hit the Viscount.

It had stated, with a frustrating level of contradiction, that the conclusion that there was such another aircraft in the area is inescapable while also acknowledging that there was no actual evidence of such aircraft in the area.

There is no substantiating evidence of such a possibility, but it cannot be excluded for it is compatible with all of the presently available evidence, it said.

That report, plus the fact that it was the British military who took charge of the rescue and salvage operation, together with the lack of an independent aviation investigation body separate from the aviation regulatory body (the Air Accident Investigation Unit of today was only established in 1994), led the Gangelhoffs to hire a private investigator to try to unearth the truth of what had happened.

The investigator produced evidence, documentation and purported documentation which did little to establish the facts but the publicity garnered by his efforts fuelled debate and media interest here and gradually, the call for a fresh look at the crash gained momentum.

It hit a peak as the 30th anniversary drew near in 1998 and a Tuskar Relatives Support Group was formed.

It was the first time relatives had gathered in any organised manner and a special anniversary Mass was

arranged at the Church of the Assumption in Ballyphehane, the Cork city parish that encompasses Cork Airport. A Mass will be held there again tomorrow.

It was also the home of Fr Eddie Hegarty and a group of his parishioners who were on the St Phelim on their way to a social gathering with local emigrants in London.

There was no typical passenger on the flight that day.

Joseph Gangelhoff was on business and his Irish-American wife had accompanied him.

Nellie Quinlan, a native of Macroom, was returning to her adopted home in Luton after attending her mothers funeral.

Dr Noel Mulcahy was a chemistry lecturer at University College Cork going to England to source equipment for the universitys new science building.

Maura OHerlihy was on her way to begin her nursing career. Desmond Walls was travelling in connection with his work at the Cork Harbour Oil Refinery. William Cox-Ife, a Londoner, had just finished up a three week stint conducting the musical Oliver at the Opera House.

There were emigrants returned on holiday, a group of Swiss anglers, and Brigadier Maurice Jephson and his wife, Eileen, owners of Mallow Castle.

A Mass was also held this week at the Teagasc agricultural institute in Moorepark, Fermoy, to remember three former researchers, John Nyhan, Michael Cowhig, and Thomas Dwane, who were travelling to Reading.

The planes two pilots, Barney OBeirne and Paul Heffernan, and the hostesses, Ann Kelly and Mary Coughlan, were simply doing their jobs.

Perhaps it was that diversity of background that kept the relatives from grouping together but the 30th anniversary highlighted what they had in common and a strong network formed.

Celine ODonoghue was instrumental in establishing the relatives group. By then, she was the mother of two preschool girls, one the same age as her little cousin Paula when she died, and it played on her mind that such a precious and innocent life could be taken and no

satisfactory reason given.

For a time, she too believed there may be something in the missile strike theory and she was pleased when the Government finally agreed to hold a review of the 1970 report and evidence.

But she says from the moment she heard that the review had noted serious omissions in records of the St Phelims maintenance history, she became convinced the cause of the crash was more mundane if no less catastrophic.

From day one, aviation experts had speculated that the manner in which the plane spun out of control and the valiant struggle the pilots undertook for more than 20 minutes to try and right her, could only be caused by some kind of major structural failure.

In the absence of something colliding with the plane, the finger of blame now seemed to point clearly at a problem with the aircraft itself  a problem that might have been known about if the plane was properly serviced and maintained. Without proper maintenance records, it was impossible to judge.

The day I got a call from Department [of Public Enterprise] in Dublin and they told me that the service cards relating to the Viscount had disappeared on the day of the crash and that that fact was omitted from the original report, I knew then what the real story was, Celine says.

It was an engineering fault, plain as day. So all the talk of it being shot down, of drones, of the British and the military  it was nonsense, it was the best scapegoat they could have thought of at the time and it kept everyones attention away from the real issue.

The Government ordered a fresh study of the crash and that theory was fleshed out. Fresh expert eyes honed in on the tailplane and the strong likelihood that it was rendered ineffective by structural fatigue, flutter [a violent shaking], corrosion or bird strike.

The tailplane, like most of the rest of the plane, was never recovered and what was recovered, the 2000 review stated, was disposed of without adequate notice to interested parties who may have wished to examine same.

It was shocking to many to discover that up to 1995, 139 Viscount crashes had been recorded around the world with a loss of 1,573 lives. Aer Lingus had 12 such aircraft at the time the St Phelim went down and put them all up for sale following the crash, replacing them with Boeings.

After the 2002 report, the relatives had to take stock. They could keep pushing to find out who was responsible for the missing maintenance records but that would require legal action and Aer Lingus had already given statements that it had exhausted all efforts to find out what had happened.

We took legal advice but certainly I felt, we know what happened and the people who caused it to happen know what happened so what were we going to gain? It wasnt going to bring our relatives back, Celine says.

Today, she will join other relatives for a ceremony at the Tuskar Air Disaster memorial erected by a commemoration committee at Rosslare Harbour.

The plan is that they will be brought out to Tuskar Rock itself so they can lay flowers in the spot where the plane went down and where, for a time at least, the remains of the 47 missing most likely lay.

But that depends on the weather and while conditions of the last month have been uncannily similar to the March of 50 years ago, some things have changed.

With climate change, the migrating swans that once shared the skies with the Viscounts rarely need to come as far as Ireland to spend the winter any more, and all but a few hundred now spend the colder months closer to home.

Celine hasnt been out to the crash location before and she says it will undoubtedly be a poignant occasion.

I have moments of sadness when I reflect on what happened and particularly because I remember the effect it had on my mother.

But Im not bitter because I feel one hundred percent that nobody meant this to happen. There was a chance taken  and there are very few human beings who dont take a chance and its all ok. This was one of those days when a chance was taken and it wasnt OK.

I would not like to have been the person who signed off on that plane as being fit for purpose or the person who didnt insist on the scheduled service taking place or whatever else was supposed to be done that wasnt done, but I know that nobody sat there and deliberately decided to crash that plane.

People make mistakes and sometimes other people suffer for it.

So we should use the anniversary to remember the people who died but to remember that lesson too.Tickets for the rock stalwarts only Irish show of the year went on general sale from Ticketmaster yesterday at 9am, ranging in price from 70.45 to 181, not including booking fees or VIP packages.

Ticketmasters own Seatwave website, which sells second-hand tickets, opened its market for Rolling Stones tickets at noon, and within an hour there were hundreds of tickets for sale, some at multiple times the face value cost.

General admission tickets for the pitch, with a 70.45 face value, sold out but appeared on Seatwave with prices ranging from 135.96 to 449 a ticket.

Upper-section seats  which were still available on general sale for 90 or 131 depending on their location  appeared on Seatwave yesterday for prices ranging from 163 to 599.

Lower-tier seats in the Cusack and Hogan Stands were still on sale on Ticketmaster for 181 last night, but Seatwave had listings ranging from 220 to 599.

None of these Seatwave prices include the websites own fees for facilitating the transaction.

On rival resale website Viagogo, which has an office in Limerick, 10 standing tickets, with a face value of 70.45 were advertised for 879 each.

A single ticket from this seller at that price would come to more than 1,200 when fees are added.

Fine Gael TD Noel Rock, who has introduced proposed legislation that would ban selling tickets second hand at prices above face value, said such instances feel like Groundhog Day and that the touting of major events seems to happen on a weekly basis.

If the companies charged with selling tickets wanted to stamp out this practice, they could easily have done so, he said.

Belgium has already successfully introduced legislation in this field. The Irish people are overwhelmingly in favour of legislation  with a recent Ireland Thinks poll showing 89% of people support this.

"The precedent is there, the support is there, now we need to step up and make this happen.

This situation cannot continue: The ticketing industry cannot be relied upon to regulate itself.

It is understood powers banning touting are still some way from coming into force.

Mr Rock said officials have been tasked with finding a solution. Theyve raised concerns regarding the bill as stands. Were working on solving it but progress is slow. We really wanted to have this done for March and thought we would, but realistically its now the goal to get it over line before June.

The Irish Examiner understands that frustration at the delay in introducing the bill is growing to the point that Fianna Fail may use private members time to push through legislative changes.

Wicklow TD Stephen Donnelly had worked with Mr Rock to bring through proposed legislation, and together they met with Department of Business officials last month on the issue.William Hogan, aged 35, of Kellehers Buildings, Dillons Cross, Cork, appeared at Cork Circuit Court yesterday claiming compensation for injuries he said he suffered while travelling as a back seat passenger in a car driven by his partner, Jennifer Cronin, of Brookville estate, Riverstown, Glanmire.

Ms Cronin and another passenger, Rebecca ORegan of Annalee Grove, Mayfield, settled their actions on undisclosed terms when Judge Brian OCallaghan found liability for the accident against Neil Lynch, an off-duty garda, from Sallybrook, Glanmire, who believed he had sufficient time to emerge from the Hazelwood junction in Glanmire on December 27, 2015, but accepted that he did not have as much time as he believed at the time.

There was disputed evidence between Ms Cronin and Mr Lynch on the moments before the collision but Judge OCallaghan found that Mr Lynch was responsible for the collision.

After lunch yesterday, the judge was told Ms Cronin and Ms Egan settled their claims on undisclosed terms.

Mr Hogans claim for compensation went to hearing on the basis of an assessment of damages only, as the liability issue had been determined.

At the end of Mr Hogans claim, Judge OCallaghan said of the witness: This court does not believe a word out of the plaintiff about his injuries. Not one word.

"He expresses his concern about his four-year-old son yet he brings his son into a car with three dangerous tyres and expects the court to be impressed by his concerns about his son. It is a pity he did not have concerns before he got into the car with his son.

The judge said there was one medical report where the doctor had to rely only on the plaintiffs description of injuries but there were no clinical findings of injuries.

It is this courts strong view that this plaintiff suffered no injuries at all. If any they were absolutely insignificant. This court assesses damages at zero.

The judge acceded to an application to have costs awarded against Mr Hogan.

Mr Hogan said in evidence that he was a professional road bowler who had won two All-Ireland titles.

He told his counsel John Devlin that road bowling was his hobby and his life. I am still not back road bowling  you are running, spinning your back and I am not comfortable doing that.

Donal McCarthy, defending, complained that in the plaintiffs pleadings there was no document containing a reference to road bowling and he objected to the evidence being given in court.

The plaintiff testified during the part of the case dealing with liability that after the accident he was not too happy about it and called Mr Lynch names. However, he denied going further or threatening to do him in.

When gardai from Mayfield arrived at the scene of the accident so too did an ambulance and four fire trucks.

Mr Lynchs father was at the scene and could not say who made the comment  Mr Hogan or another man in the back of the car  but he clearly heard someone call out using the slang word, shade for a guard: Money is going to be made out of this because he is a shade.Dateline If an Ethnic Group is Excluded, We Cant Say the Peace Process is Complete

The peace process appears stuck and at risk of giving up hard-won gains. Dateline Irrawaddy discusses what needs to be done to turn the momentum around.

Kyaw Kha: Welcome to Dateline Irrawaddy! This week, we discuss the latest developments in Myanmars peace process. Vice-chairman Ko Myo Win of the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), and political and ethnic affairs analyst U Than Soe Naing join me for the discussion. Im The Irrawaddy Burmese edition chief reporter Kyaw Kha.

U Than Soe Naing, which stage has Myanmars peace process reached? Considering the fresh clashes, is it reversing or has it stalled?

If an Ethnic Group is Excluded, We Cant Say the Peace Process is Complete If an Ethnic Group is Excluded, We Cant Say the Peace Process is CompleteThe peace process appears stuck and at risk of giving up hard-won gains. Dateline Irrawaddy discusses what needs to be done to turn the momentum around. Posted by The Irrawaddy  English Edition on Friday, March 23, 2018

Than Soe Naing: For the time being, it is fair to say that the peace process has stalled. The [third session of] the Union Peace Conference21st Century Panglonghas been put off three times now. The government said that it would be held in early May, but the preconditions have not been fulfilled. There is a big hurdle facing signatories to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) holding national-level political dialogue. This problem has not yet been solved. And as long as this problem remains unsolved, there is no way the third session of the 21st Panglong Conference can be held. I dont know whether I would call this stalled or in reverse, but clashes are still going on between the Northern Alliance and the military. Overall, the peace process is stalled rather than making progress, and there is a need for greater efforts.

KK: Ko Myo Win, why do you think has this happened?

Myo Win: The peace process is broad, and there are two main parts  cooperation between NCA signatories and the government on implementation of the NCA, and secondly, negotiations between non-signatories and the government, as total inclusiveness is vital for the peace process. Assessing both parts, (progress has) not been satisfactory, but has stalled, as U Than Soe Naing has assessed. The implementation of the NCA has stalled, and so has the communication and negotiation between NCA non-signatories and the government. But then, it is notable that the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and Lahu Democratic Union (LDU) recently signed the NCA, which had already been signed by eight ethnic groups. The peace process is based on the NCA. But signing the NCA is not the end. It is just a step to solve political problems through dialogue.

KK: You belong to an NCA signatory group. As everyone knows, there are obstacles to implementing the NCA for the time being. What are the major hurdles?

MW: There are three parts to implementing the NCA. The first is to make sure no more clashes happen. The Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee (JMC) was formed to handle this. Another part is the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC), which is responsible for holding the Union Peace Conference. The third part concerns implementation of plans during the period from the ceasefire to the peace conference, which has not yet been done. There are problems with all parts. Even two years after forming the JMC, not all the provisions of the NCA have been implemented, such as deployment of troops and designation of territories. Because of this, there were clashes with the RCSS [Restoration Council of Shan State], and more recently with the KNU [Karen National Union]. This shows that the JMC cant still be implemented according to the NCA. When there are military problems, political problems also arise since they impact each other. When there is political trust and agreement, there will be military trust. But, there have still been no significant results in the political dialogue.

KK: What is the cause of this? Is it the problem of the military or the government or the ethnic armed groups?

MW: It depends on various factors. Mainly, the political landscape had changed since the 2015 election. Under the U Thein Sein government, the government and Tatmadaw were considered to be the same entity. But under the government of the National League for Democracy (NLD), they are not on the same side. There is also a problem with relations among the ethnic armed groups. Under the U Thein Sein government, ethnic groups formed the NCCT [Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team] and SDs [Senior Delegations] to hold talks with the government. After the NCA was launched, the ethnic armed groups could be divided into two groups  NCA signatories and non-signatories. They were further divided into the bloc of eight NCA signatories, and UNFC [United Nationalities Federal Council] and the Northern Alliance. So, there are different blocs among the ethnic armed groups. This is also a problem for the peace process.

KK: Talking of the peace process, we cant leave out the FPNCC [Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee] led by the UWSA [United Wa State Army]. What are the barriers for them to join the peace process?

TSN: The FPNCC rejected signing the NCA, saying it would take a different route from the NCA. This has made it difficult for both the government and Tatmadaw to continue the peace process. Zhao Guo-ann, the head of the UWSA delegation to the second session of the Panglong Conference, said that they would take a different path because the NCA signatories had experienced troubles and they did not consider the NCA as comprehensive.

Though the FPNCC talked about a different political approach to the NCA, their approach is 70 percent the same as the NCA. They would attend the 21st Century Panglong Conference and participate in political dialogue.

KK: But without signing the NCA.

TSN: Yes, that is the problem. They dont oppose the NCA, but would take a different approach. They also want to participate in the 21st Century Panglong and hold national-level political dialogue as stated in the NCA roadmap. So, we cant say they are totally against the NCA. But we all understand that not opposing the NCA is different from accepting the NCA. But the problem is that NCA non-signatories are barred from attending the 21st Century Panglong Conference. This has caused problems for the Wa and for Mongla [National Democratic Alliance Army]. They didnt participate in negotiating, drafting or signing the NCA. But, they had already signed a Union-level ceasefire agreement. That Union-level agreement is enough for a ceasefire, and the NCA is another step for peace. But, as NCA non-signatories they are not allowed to join the peace process, which has created a problem for the FPNCC.

KK: Now NCA signatories like the RCSS, Arakan Liberation Party [ALP], and New Mon State Party [NMSP] have had troubles in holding public consultations prior to the national-level political dialogue. As the national-level political dialogue could not be held, the 21st Century Panglong has been put off several times. What is the likelihood of the 21st Century Panglong Conference being held without political dialogue? Signatories will have nothing to discuss at the Panglong Conference if the political dialogue is not held.

MW: Thats why I said there is a need to review the negotiation process. There are different negotiation methods in the peace processes used by international countries. And we have to adopt a method that fits our country. Maybe you have noticed that the Northern Alliance expressed their stance in the second session of the Panglong Conference. Their negotiation method is simple: Only ethnic armed groups and the government can hold political dialogue, and there is no national-level political dialogue [to be organized by ethnic armed groups in their regions as stated in the NCA]. Political parties will not be involved. The talks will be between the ethnic armed groups and the government only. Then any agreement will be submitted to the Union Parliament for approval. Then, they will amend the [2008] Constitution as necessary. This is the negotiation method proposed by the Northern Alliance. But according to the NCA, national-level political dialogue must be held with the participation of the public, and the results will be sent to and discussed by the working committee of the UPDJC, and then the Union Accord will be signed. But what has happened is the peace process is now stuck over the negotiation method. The problem is not yet about political disagreements over federalism and democracy, but still about how the political negotiations should be held. The problem is still about the process and not yet about the substance. Nothing has been discussed yet, and the process is stuck in disagreement over negotiation methods. Frankly speaking, I think there is a need to review how the political negotiation should be held.

KK: As everyone knows, the peace process has failed to make progress under the NLD-led government as was expected. Given the current situation, the trend is not good. What preconditions are needed for the peace process to move forward smoothly? For example, agreement between the military and the government or tripartite talks? What do you think?

MW: First of all, it needs the clashes to end. It needs trust to be built with both NCA signatories and non-signatories. Political dialogue will not be successful without trust. Clashes break out as trust is being built. For non-signatories to sign the NCA, first of all, they must have trust in the NCA. But as U Than Soe Naing has pointed out, even the NCA signatories are reviewing the implementation of the NCA. It is worse for NCA non-signatories. The most important thing is the clashes must end, and the government must negotiate thoroughly to halt the clashes. After the clashes stop, political agreement on the NCA must be strictly and systematically implemented. The pledges made during negotiation for the NCA must be fulfilled. The problem is that agreements on the NCA have not yet been implemented.

KK: What is the precondition for peace process to make progress under the NLD-led government?

TSN: The peace process has stalled as NCA signatories are not satisfied with the implementation of the NCA. What is more important is we need to find an opportunity to hold talks with the FPNCC. As Ive said, they dont oppose the NCA, but they want to participate in the 21st Century Panglong. And we need to create a setting for them to join the peace process. Restriction wont work. No matter which group is excluded, the peace process will never end. Especially, if an ethnic group is excluded, we cant say the peace process is complete. [The military] is still clashing with five ethnic armed groups in northern Myanmar. We need to remove all those obstacles that restrict them from joining the peace process. The FPNCC said they would meet the government together as a group. But the government insists it will only meet them separately. It is not a political problem, but a problem of negotiation method. If [the government] can change that, talks can be held with the Wa and Mongla as well as the KIO [Kachin Independence Organization]. For that to happen, first of all, there must be a ceasefire. Military operations and clashes must halt. The key to this is a frank discussion between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is leading the peace process, and Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, who is the chief of the Tatmadaw. I think there are problems with the national-level political dialogue because there is no frank discussion between them. The national-level political dialogue is a mandatory part of the NCA. But when political dialogue is held, the Tatmadaw has raised objections in several places, and then general administration departments have followed suit. Public consultations are a mandatory step. Without them, [the discussions at the 21st Century Panglong] are meaningless. But there are doubts and mistrust about implementation of the NCA. And it is the responsibility of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing to handle them. If the two discuss those issues frankly, I believe the way the peace process is being implemented now can be changed so that it can move forward.

KK: Thank you for your contributions!News Analysis: From Militia Leader to House Speaker

Newly elected lower house speaker U T Khun Myat walks into the parliament for a regular session on Friday. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The move by Myanmars de facto leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to help a former militia leader with a shady past grab the position of lower house speaker caused political analysts to rub their eyes in disbelief and stoked a heated public debate on social media after the results of the secret parliamentary vote become known on Thursday.

Yesterday morning, the lower house held an election for its vacant speaker seat after the incumbent, U Win Myint, resigned in order to contest the presidential post along with the two vice presidents, former Lt. Gen Myint Swe and Henry Van Thio, following U Htin Kyaws resignation from the countrys top official post on Wednesday.

Up until the last minute, senior members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) were telling some local publications that central committee member U Tun Tun Hein, a lower house MP from the Naung Cho constituency in Shan State, deserved the House speakers post.

However, when the NLD parliamentarians submitted two nominees to the Lower Houses patron, U Tun Tun Heins name was not on the list, while deputy speaker U T Khun Myat, an independent representing Kutkai constituency in Shan State, and U Thaung Aye of Pyaw Bwe constituency in Mandalay division were.

Surprisingly, the NLD lower house MP Daw Khin San Hlaing had nominated U T Khun Myat for the job, while not so surprisingly, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the National League for Democracys main political rival, had pushed its man, U Thaung Aye.

With the support of the NLDs parliamentary majority, U T Khun Myat thus was named the new house speaker, while U Tun Tun Hein was elected to the deputy house speaker position. The Irrawaddy has learnt that several NLD lawmakers published status posts on their Facebook accounts that were harshly critical of the nomination of U T Khun Myat rather than publicly express their points of view.

Who is U T Khun Myat?

U T Khun Myat, a Christian ethnic Kachin also known as Jeffery, was born in 1950 in Kutkai Township in Shan State. According to his parliamentary record, he earned a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Yangon and was employed as an interim part-time lawyer in 1975.

From 1990 to 2010, he served as director of the Office of the Attorney General while leading the Peoples Militia in Kutkai Township under the supervision of the militarys North-East division commander. According to some accounts, the militia is still active in the region.

U T Khun Myat was also a member of the 2008 constitution-drafting board and a member of the 2008 constitutional referendum commission, the same year that Tropical Cyclone Nargis caused devastation throughout much of the country, and killed more than 10,000 people.

U T Khun Myat contested the 2010 election on the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) ticket, as an executive member in northern Shan State, and secured a lower house seat while the NLD boycotted the poll on the grounds that the electoral laws were unjust. He was also chairman of the Committee on Bills in the lower house, a body that was empowered to make draft legislation and amend or repeal outdated laws, and which assisted former lower house speaker Thura U Shwe Mann.

As a former militia leader, U T Khun Myat allegedly oversaw opium fields in several areas under his groups control in northern Shan State, including Marsong, Kampapo and Mankaw, Hpapyae, Kyankar, Loingo, and Loinang, In a Shan Drugs Watch report in 2011, U T Khun Myat was dubbed one of the modern druglords in parliament who had allegedly entered the illicit trade following the retirement of the notorious warlord Khun Sa in Shan State.

U T Khun Myat was also a shareholder in Myanmar Mayflower Bank (MMB), which was accused of laundering money for narcotics traffickers and was shut down by the military government in 2005. According to some reports, his militia forced civilians to vote for his ballot in the 2010 election.

The power behind the throne

Despite the serious nature of the allegations, U T Khun Myat twice won parliamentary seats, in the 2010 and 2015 elections. His fate changed drastically in late 2015 when his political patron, the former lower house speaker Thura Shwe Mann became embroiled in a toe-to-toe fight for influence against former president U Thein Sein and was purged from the party due to the internal divisions the power struggle was causing.

Thura Shwe Mann then appears to have become a close ally of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as the opposition party won a landslide victory in the 2015 general elections. He was appointed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as the head of the Commission for the Assessment of Legal Affairs and Special Issues in February 2016. And then, during the formation of the union cabinet and parliaments, Thura Shwe Mann recommended the State Counselor appoint T Khun Myat to be deputy house speaker of the lower house.

During his final press conference as lower house speaker in January 2016, Thura Shwe Mann acknowledged that he had helped Daw Aung San Suu Kyi secure a private meeting with ex-dictator Than Shwe in December 2015. He also confirmed that he had recommended the NLD nominate U T Khun Myat for the deputy house speakers post and expressed his view that the nominee deserved the post as he had successfully accomplished many assignments in parliament and worked for years at the Attorney-Generals Office.

U T Khun Myat also appeared at that event but declined to talk to The Irrawaddy. He was later quoted in other publications as denying the allegations that he had been involved in the drug trade. His appointment was also the talk of the town among political observers back then as well.

When U T Khun Myat was elected to be House Speaker on Thursday, some political observers concluded that Thura Shwe Mann was again acting behind the scenes. However, some senior NLD members claimed that the move was a part of Daw Aung San Suu Kyis national reconciliation efforts and positive for the peace process.

Why did the NLD pick U T Khun Myat?

Similarly, the NLD lawmakers revived the old line they had used in early 2016 that the decision was made in the interests of national reconciliation. Newly replaced deputy speaker U Tun Tun Hein, who also belongs to the NLD, trotted out this line in response to reporters questions on Thursday.

We are implementing national reconciliation and peace, he said. It is our election manifesto as well. I see no contradictions in this move in the NLDs compromises to the public.

Daw Khin San Hlaing, the NLD central executive committee member who submitted the nomination, told reporters that her party decided to pick U T Khun Myat as he had previously completed a five-year term under Thura Shwe Mann and has been working alongside former lower house speaker U Win Myint  who was nominated as vice president on Fridayand had gained much experience in those two years that could be helpful in handling legislative mechanisms.

Whatever, we have chosen him and I hope he will follow our partys policies, guidelines and principles as well, she said.

The Irrawaddy contacted several NLD lawmakers including regional legislators on Thursday, however most were reluctant to express their personal opinions and simply repeated the party line that the leaders chose the best. Yangon division legislator U Kyaw Zeya said it was the right decision and argued that the decision to pick an independent lawmaker such as U T Khun Myat rather than a party member suggested that the party didnt have a quality candidate to fill the post.

Nay Phone Latt, a lawmaker from the Yangon parliament, expressed concern about whether U T Khun Myat could perform as effectively as U Win Myint as he was not a member of the NLD party steering committee.

U Pe Than, a lower house lawmaker from the Arakan National Party (ANP), echoed Nay Phone Lats opinion that his selection could create challenges for the NLD in the near future.

I think no matter what, he will not oppose Daw Suu or U Shwe Mann, he said.

MP U Pe Than said he believed that it was highly possible U Shwe Mann had suggested U T Khun Myat for the speaker position but that the final decision was made by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. However, he also noted that the NLD had several qualified legislators in the parliament who were no less capable than U Win Myint.

Judging the qualifications of a politician based on parliamentary work experience is questionable in this case. If, as the NLD senior members argued, U T Khun Myat was the most suitable person based on his experience, then why were the previous vice president Henry Van Thio and the military-appointed vice president U Myint Swe not deserving of the presidential post, as they had almost two years of prior experience?

How come public debate?

Meanwhile, netizens publicly criticized the election of a former militia leader as speaker o the house, which is the higher chamber in the legislature, and it is a key intermediary position between the parliament and the ruling NLD party. Political analyst Yan Myo Thein called the NLDs choice an insult to its voters. He updated his status on his Facebook wall asking, Where have our votes gone?

He predicted that none of the elected MPs from the NLD would dare to criticize this centrally made decision despite the grand words uttered by some parliamentarians in the post-election period, including from some political prisoners who won seats in the parliament.

He questioned why voters should now have faith in NLD MPs as they are struggling to build a genuinely democratic country. He stated that he was confused by the NLDs promotion of an ex-USDP politician to the house speaker post, as the holder also serves as an essential member of the National Defense and Security Council (NDSC).

The NDSC comprises 11 members: the army permanently occupies six seats, including its appointed vice president (1) U Myint Swe and another five seats for the NLD-appointed president, vice president (2) Henry Van Thio, lower and upper house speakers, as well as the foreign affairs minister, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, respectively. But now the NLD has handed a certain vote to a former USDP politician.

Voting in support (of U T Khun Myat) by the civilian elected NLD MPs in the lower house is the ugliest thing ever, Yan Myo Thein wrote on his Facebook account.

Ko Thiha Thwe, a journalist who contributes op-ed and political analyses to local publications, pointed out that the move had many potential risks for the NLD and a few potential benefits. He predicted one possible advantage of selecting U T Khun Myat as house speaker was that it might decrease partisanship in the parliament and legislative matters might pass more smoothly. However, the NLDs choice also implies it does not have many quality politicians in the party. Moreover, it could be concluded that the NLD politically had surrendered some legislative power.

It could also damage the confidence and sap the spiritual strength of NLD loyalist MPs.News This Week in Parliament (March 19-23)

U Win Myint after being appointed Lower House speaker in 2016. / The Irrawaddy

Monday (March 19)

The Union Parliament approved more than 6.4 billion kyats (US$7.8 million) for the Ministry of Transport and Communications to monitor the internet for people who use it to harm the stability of the country. The Social Media Monitoring Team was formed with the approval of the Union government in February to identify those who instigate political instability on the Internet and social media.

Tuesday (March 20)

The Union Parliament passed the draft Union Taxation Law 2018, agreeing that a separate law would be required for taxation on income from unidentified sources. According to the law, anyone with a minimum annual income of 4.8 million kyats is liable to pay income tax.

Wednesday (March 21)

Lower House Speaker U Win Myint resigned from his post shortly after President U Htin Kyaws sudden departure the same day, prompting speculation that he will be Myanmars next president.

Thursday (March 22)

U T Khun Myat, an ex-lawmaker of the Union Solidarity and Development Party was elected as the Lower House speaker, and U Tun Aung aka U Tun Tun Hein of the National League for Democracy as the deputy speaker. Having stepped down as president before serving his full term and without citing ill health, outgoing president U Htin Kyaw is not entitled to a pension or gratuity, according to lawmakers.

Friday (March 23)

U Win Myint, who resigned as the Lower House speaker on Wednesday, and U Thaung Aye of Pyawbwe Township were nominated to be vice-president. U Win Myint was elected as the third vice-president, one of the three to then be voted the next president.Reddit Email 292 Shares

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Emma Foehringer Merchant at Greentech Media reports that the GOP Congress defied Trumps priorities on green energy almost across the board.

She notes the following:

$2.32 bn. The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)

$353 mn.  the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)

$6.3 bn   The Office of Science [includes national labs such as Lawrence Berkeley]

She notes, All those budgets were increased from 2017.

The Republican Party hasnt rebuked Trump on this funding just for kicks. Representatives and Senators are aware that other countries, including Germany and China, will eat Americas lunch on advances in renewable energy, a key industry even today and one that will dominate the near future.

Moreover, green energy is by now a big business in its own right, providing 18% of American electricity. Tesla/ FirstSolar and big utilities in places like Iowa give campaign donations based on the wellbeing of their industry, and increasingly they have deeper pockets than Big Coal.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has a whole web page devoted to its success stories.

Just for example, you have this news release:

Last fall, wind turbine manufacturer MHI Vestas announced a $35 million, five-year investment with Clemson University to test its new 9.5-MW gearbox at Clemsons SCE&G Energy Innovation Center in Charleston, South Carolina. The gearbox is for MHI Vestass new 9.5-MW offshore wind turbine, which has a rotor diameter of 164 meters (over 500 feet) and will be the most powerful wind turbine in the world. The partnership between Clemson University and MHI Vestas to test the drivetrain over a period of several years marks the achievement of the U.S. Department of Energys (DOEs) goal to establish a U.S. testing facility for both land-based and offshore wind development in the U.S.

Here is the other face of the GOP. A private business, MHI Vestas, and a university in South Carolina along with the US government Department of Energy are jointly creating the most powerful wind turbine in the world for an offshore wind facility. Offshore wind is huge in Germany and Denmark and Scotland but until recently the US had lagged behind.

Forbes just announced that the US offshore wind boom is finally here, however, with big projects now being implemented by New York, New Jersey and Maryland among others.

The new turbine could be important to vastly expanding the industry in the US, which has an enormous amount of offshore wind.

This is the sort of government investment Trump and DOE head Rick Perry say they are against, and theyve done whatever they can to support coal and fracked gas instead.

In the US last year offshore wind was coming in at 16 cents a kilowatt hour. If you take into account how clean it is and that it does not cause global heating, that is a real bargain. In California the average household pays 22 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity, so the offshore wind price is lower than that states average (other states have a lower average cost).

But if MHI Vestas and Clemson can make an even more powerful wind turbine for offshore use, they can help us generate more electricity cheaper, bringing down the cost. The EERE funding that Congress just continued and even increased is important for this enterprise.

Ive spent all this time just talking about one small project, though potentially a significant one. Multiply this research out across $2 billion and imagine the sorts of positive change for consumers and for the planet that are being accomplished.

And you have to applaud the Republicans in Congress for standing their ground on this key research and development. It gives a person a little hope, at a time when humankind is actually increasing its annual deadly carbon dioxide emissions.



Bonus video:

The Real News: Maryland Might Be Home to the Largest Offshore Wind Farm in the USReddit Email 362 Shares

By Stephanie Savell | (Otherwords.org) |  

Americans spend $32 million per hour on wars started during the Bush administration.

This March marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction  weapons that have never been found. Nevertheless, all these years later, Bushs Global War on Terror continues  in Iraq and in many other countries.

Its a good time to reflect on what this war  the longest in U.S. history  has cost Americans and others around the world.

First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown Universitys Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagons war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.

Its hard for most of us to even begin to grasp such an enormous number.

It means Americans spend $32 million per hour, according to a counter by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Put another way: Since 2001, every American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on the wars  equal to the average down payment on a house, a new Honda Accord, or a year at a public university.

As stupefying as those numbers are, the budgetary costs pale in comparison with the human toll.

As of 2015, when the Costs of War project made its latest tallies, up to 165,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a direct consequence of U.S. war, plus around 8,000 U.S. soldiers and military contractors in Iraq.

Those numbers have only continued to rise. Up to 6,000 civilians were killed by U.S.-led strikes in Iraq and Syria in 2017  more civilians than in any previous year, according to the watchdog group AirWars.

In addition to those direct deaths, at least four times as many people in Iraq have died from the side effects of war, such as malnutrition, environmental degradation, and deteriorated infrastructure.

Since the 2003 invasion, for instance, Iraqi health care has plummeted  with hospitals and clinics bombed, supplies of medicine and electricity jeopardized, and thousands of physicians and healthcare workers fleeing the country.

Meanwhile, the war continues to spread, no longer limited to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria, as many Americans think. Indeed, the U.S. military is escalating a shadowy network of anti-terror operations all across the world  in at least 76 nations, or 40 percent of countries on the planet.

Last October, news about four Green Berets killed by an Islamic State affiliate in the West African nation of Niger gave Americans a glimpse of just how broad this network is. And along with it comes all the devastating consequences of militarism for the people of these countries.

We must ask: Are these astounding costs worth it? Is the U.S. accomplishing anything close to its goal of diminishing the global terrorist threat?

The answer is, resoundingly, no.

U.S. activity in Iraq and the Middle East has only spurred greater political upheaval and unrest. The U.S.-led coalition is seen not as a liberating force, but as an aggressor. This has fomented insurgent recruitment, and there are now more terrorist groups in the Middle East than ever before.

Until a broad swath of the American public gets engaged to call for an end to the war on terror, these mushrooming costs  economic, human, social, and political  will just continue to grow.

Stephanie Savell co-directs the Costs of War project at Brown Universitys Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

via Otherwords.org

-

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

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ABOUT BACANORA CANADA:

Bacanora Canada is a Canadian and London listed lithium exploration and development company (TSXV: BCN and AIM: BCN). The Company is exploring for, and developing a pipeline of international lithium projects, with a primary focus on its Sonora Lithium Project. The Company's operations are based in Hermosillo in northern Mexico. The Company is led by a team with lithium expertise and proven mine development, construction and operations experience.

The Sonora Lithium Project1, which consists of ten mining concession areas covering approximately 100 thousand hectares in the northeast of Sonora State. The Company, through drilling and exploration work to date, has established a Measured plus Indicated Mineral Resource estimate of over 5 Mt (comprising 1.9Mt of Measured Resources and 3.1Mt of Indicated Resources) of LCE2 and an additional Inferred Mineral Resource of 3.7 Mt of LCE. The Company's Feasibility Study (which was announced 12 December 2017) has established Proven Mineral Reserves (in accordance with NI 43-101) of 1.67 MT and Probable Mineral Reserves of 2.85 Mt LCE and confirmed the economics associated with becoming a 35,000 tpa lithium carbonate and 30,000 tpa SOP producer in Mexico. In addition to the Sonora Lithium Project, the Company also has a 50% interest in the Zinnwald Lithium Project and the Falkenhain Licence in southern Saxony, Germany. Each of the Zinnwald Lithium Project and the Falkenhain Licence are located in a granite hosted Sn/W/Li belt that has been mined historically for tin, tungsten and lithium at different times over the past 300 years. The strategic location of the Zinnwald Lithium Project and the Falkenhain Licence provides close geographical proximity to the German automotive and downstream lithium chemical industries.

1 The Sonora Lithium Project is comprised of the following lithium properties: La Ventana lithium concession, which is 100 percent owned by Bacanora and El Sauz and Fleur concessions, which are held by Mexilit S.A. de C.V. ('Mexilit') which is owned 70 percent by Bacanora and 30 percent by Cadence Minerals Plc.

2 LCE = lithium carbonate (Li 2 CO 3 ) equivalent; determined by multiplying Li value in percent by 5.324 to get an equivalent Li 2 CO 3 value in per cent. Use of LCE is to provide data comparable with industry reports and assumes complete conversion of lithium in clays with no recovery or process losses.

Reader Advisory

Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information.

Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: commodity price volatility; general economic conditions in Canada, the United States, Mexico and globally; industry conditions, governmental regulation, including environmental regulation; unanticipated operating events or performance; failure to obtain industry partner and other third party consents and approvals, if and when required; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; competition for, among other things, capital, skilled personnel and supplies; changes in tax laws; and the other risk factors disclosed under our profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive.

The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking information to conform such information to actual results or to changes in our expectations except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

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.With his trademark black sunglasses and blanket media presence, Egypts President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi projects an air of benign paternalism.

Whether the people love or loathe Sisi, see him as a bulwark of stability or as a domineering autocrat  there is little doubt that he will remain Egypts president for years to come.

He stormed to victory in the 2014 presidential election, having led the military a year before in ousting the North African countrys first freely-elected leader, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi.

Morsi now languishes in jail, convicted on many and varied counts and sentenced to multiple terms including the death penalty.

Sisi successfully silenced all forms of political opposition during his first four-year term.

This has included sweeping aside all token opposition in the March 26-28 election, leaving himself as the main choice on the ballot paper.

The sole remaining challenger is Moussa Mostafa Moussa, an ardent Sisi supporter who announced his candidacy at the last minute just as it seemed Sisi would have to run alone.

Sisi later denied involvement in sidelining his opponents, saying he wished there were many candidates.

The former career army officer was born in November 1954 in El-Gamaleya neighbourhood in the heart of Islamic Cairo.

Even as a child, Sisi sought to exert control over those around him, according to people who knew him at the time.

He graduated from Egypts Military Academy in 1977, later studying in Britain and the United States, before becoming military intelligence chief under President Hosni Mubarak who was toppled in a January 2011 uprising.

 There to serve 

As Egypts leader, Sisi is often seen microphone in hand, presiding over public ceremonies.

Speaking in the Egyptian Arabic dialect, sometimes laughing in the middle of his own lengthy speeches, he projects an image of father of the nation.

He is fond of telling Egyptians that they are the apple of his eye, stressing that he is there only to serve them.

Enjoying near-unanimous media support, Sisi is popular among many Egyptians who see him as the right man to lead the country after years of political, security, and economic turmoil that followed the ouster of long-time president Mubarak.

A father of four whose wife wears a hair veil, Sisi is described by those close to him as a pious Muslim who does not miss any of the five daily prayers.

But he is also reported to have a strong sense of self-belief, with audio records leaked by Islamic-leaning media pointing to a big ego.

In one leak, Sisi recalls a dream about the late president Anwar Sadat, which he saw as an omen that he would one day become powerful himself.

In another, he tells of a dream in which he held a red sword inscribed with the Muslim declaration of faith.

Ironically, it was the Islamist Morsi himself who appointed Sisi defence minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces in 2012.

 Security problems 

A year later, Sisi ended Morsis turbulent year in power and cracked down on the Islamists supporters, with hundreds of people killed in weeks.

On one bloody day  August 14, 2013  security forces killed more than 700 people in Cairo when they dispersed sit-ins by pro-Morsi protesters.

At the time, Human Rights Watch said the mass killings of protesters that day probably amounts to crimes against humanity.

Since Morsis removal, tens of thousands of his followers have been jailed, and hundreds sentenced in expedient mass trials strongly denounced by the United Nations.

As Islamist-related security issues mounted, Sisi launched a military campaign against Islamic State group fighters based in North Sinai province.

But so far he has been unable to fully quash an insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and military personnel.

Economically, he has begun an IMF-mandated campaign of drastic economic reforms that include cutting energy subsidies, introducing value-added tax and floating the pound.

Many secular and left-wing activists who initially supported Sisi soon came to regret it: he has been regularly accused by international rights groups of committing serious violations to silence dissent.

During his first presidential campaign in 2014, he said that talking about freedoms should not take precedence over national security, and that it would take 20 to 25 years to establish a true democracy in Egypt.Tens of thousands of people turned out across Argentina Saturday to march against a policy allowing ex-military members convicted of crimes during the countrys dictatorship to be moved to house arrest.

Demonstrations were held in squares and parks to denounce setbacks in human rights policy and to demand freedom for political prisoners, according to a statement released by organizers.

The main protest was held at Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, in front of the home of the federal governments executive branch.

At the forefront of the demonstrations were organizations including Madres y Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, set up to search for relatives who were victims of forced disappearances.

Less than a week ago, Alfredo Astiz  who was handed two life sentences for crimes against humanity during the dictatorship  appeared on a government list of 1,436 inmates who could be transferred to alternative forms of imprisonment for health reasons, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service.

The list included over 100 people handed life sentences for their role during the dictatorship (1976-83).

Astiz, 67, has cancer, an illness that would make him eligible for the program.Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.

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Support our mission and join our community now.A model wears a creation by Tibaeg's 2018 fall and winter collection at the HERA Seoul Fashion Week at Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of Seoul Design Foundation



By Rachel Lee



Seoul's biggest biannual fashion event ended Saturday with an accomplishment in promoting Korean beauty.



The six-day HERA Seoul Fashion Week had 37 designer brands, two companies and 90 rising designers unveiling their 2018 fall and winter collections at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul. The trade show kicked off with "hanbok" (Korean traditional dress) designer Kim Hye-soon's collection. This is the first time for the Korean designer to open the trade show.



Along with the catwalk itself, celebrity models like the country's first black model Han Hyun-min and global manufacturers such as Haagen-Dazs heightened the audience's attention. Haagen-Dazs, designer Lee Moo-yeol, patisserie Yoo Min-joo, and photographer Nam Hyun-bum held collaborative seminars under the topic "Haagen-Dazs Collaboration and Fashion Trend," "Desserts and Fashion/ Desserts and Life" and "Artisan Spirit of Twenties."



Renowned fashion experts Sara Maino, Anders Madsen and Isabella Burley also joined the event for a discussion to talk in-depth about sustainability and "new luxury."



The Seoul Collection had the country's big names -- including designer Park Seung-gun of pushBUTTON and Gee Chun-hee of Miss Gee Collection -- as usual. The overall tone for their 2018 fall and winter collection was typical autumn shades -- black, burgundy, brown and khaki -- and some toned down violet and pink.



Here are The Korea Times' three picks:



Tibaeg



Tibaeg, led by Cho Eun-ae, presented a collection of her trademark graphic pattern with a mix of fur jackets and mid-length skirts.



Her hazy, cozy print and calmer, more muted colors was reminiscent of fall when the leaves on deciduous trees begin to turn. It was overall feminine and soft with an added fashion statement graphic top.



Tibaeg's use of diverse colors made her show stand out from the rest. From classic autumn colors to pastel shades and all black looks proved the DNA of the brand which focuses on releasing the "colors" within each one of us, like the way "a tea bag infuses its rich flavors into water."





A model wears a creation by YCH's 2018 fall and winter collection at the HERA Seoul Fashion Week at Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, Thursday. / Courtesy of Seoul Design Foundation



YCH



Yoon Choon-ho presented another collection of his playful, punk separates with mixed colors, but this time in a more elegant way.



Oversized blue print coats and white jackets proved the designer went more provocative within an "80's modern glamour" concept in his 2017 fall and winter collection. Considering that this was his fourth show, the collection was much mature like a girl who has grows up and become a woman, thanks to outstanding patterns. Applying men suits' tailoring techniques into the brand was a new challenge and now an important factor that led to such beautiful garments and a successful show.





A model wears a creation by By D By's 2018 fall and winter collection at the HERA Seoul Fashion Week at Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, Wednesday. / Courtesy of Seoul Design FoundationBy Lee Min-hyung



The United States Forces Korea (USFK) plans to hold its first-ever mass evacuation exercise to the U.S. during the upcoming joint military drills with South Korea next month, according to reports Friday.

The USFK has held the evacuation exercises, called Focused Passage, twice a year to brace for any worst-case military scenarios. But this is the first time some volunteers of USFK families and noncombatant troops will fly to the U.S. mainland, overseas media said. For this year, the evacuation rehearsal is scheduled from April 16 to 20.

Last year, the USFK evacuated some military families here to Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo.

"We cannot disclose any details on any planned drills," a USFK official said, declining to comment further.

The drills will come as part of this year's joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea. The two countries hold the annual drills between late February and early March, but they delayed the plan amid a rare peace momentum on the Korean Peninsula due to North Korea's participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics last month.

The sporting event has since paved the way for the regime to actively engage in peace dialogue with the South, with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offering to invite President Moon Jae-in for a possible summit. After exchanging high-level delegations, the two leaders agreed to hold the historic meeting later next month.

President Moon Jae-in has also taken advantage of Kim's rare signal for dialogue by mediating talks between Washington and Pyongyang. U.S. President Donald Trump also accepted Kim's gesture for dialogue, with both sides expected to meet sometime in May.

Under the peace momentum, Seoul and Washington reached a consensus over keeping the upcoming drills low-key without any strategic weapons  such as nuclear submarines.Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying's Remarks on the US Warship's Entry into the Neighboring Waters of China's Islands and Reefs in the South China Sea

2018/03/24

Q: According to our information, USS Mustin entered the neighboring waters of relevant islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao on March 23. What is your comment?

A: On March 23, USS Mustin entered the neighboring waters of relevant islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao without the permission of the Chinese government. The Chinese Navy has identified and verified the US warship and warned it to leave in accordance with the law. The relevant act of the US side has violated the Chinese law and relevant international law, infringed upon China's sovereignty, undermined peace, security and order of the relevant waters and put in jeopardy the facilities and personnel on the Chinese islands, and thus constitutes a serious political and military provocation.

China has indisputable sovereignty over Nansha Qundao and its adjacent waters. China always respects and safeguards the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea all countries are entitled to under international law, but firmly opposes any country or person undermining the sovereignty and security of littoral countries under the pretext of "freedom of navigation and overflight". At present, the situation in the South China Sea has been improving thanks to the concerted efforts of China and ASEAN member states. Under such circumstance, the US, who deliberately stirs up troubles and creates tension in the South China Sea to disrupt peace and stability there, is running against the will of regional countries who aspire for stability, cooperation and development, and thus unpopular at all.

The Chinese side strongly urges the US side to immediately stop provocative operations that violate China's sovereignty and threaten China's security and faithfully respect the regional countries' concerted efforts to uphold peace and stability in the South China Sea. The Chinese side will continue to take all necessary measures to defend its national sovereignty and security and safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.The harness racing industry in Ireland has reason to celebrate for consecutive Saturdays after announcing on March 24 that government funding has been approved for the Irish Harness Racing Association's Five-Year Strategic Plan.

The update from Chairman Mark Flanagan was posted to the Association's website.

The Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine have signed off and approved funding that will enable the IHRA to deliver our Five Year Strategic Plan.

This vote of confidence by Minister (Michael) Creed and his Department means that we are all now a step closer to delivering a harness industry that will provide you with more:

prize money

improved infrastructure

new tracks

new training centres

more horses being bred

new owners being welcomed to the sport

new trainers

more job opportunities

other industry benefits for vets, farriers, grooms

and much more.

Previously Minister Creed has said:

"As a Department, we see a public gain to be had from working with the (harness racing) sectorandwe recognize the potential of the IHRA to become the kind of body with which we can engage in a structured way and into which we confidently invest taxpayers money"

This is what the Five-Year Strategic Plan will deliver.

Minister Creed and his Department are now following through on their word and showing a true commitment to the long-term future of harness racing in Ireland.

Over the coming weeks IHRA will work toward the development of this Five-Year Strategic Plan and it will become the roadmap identifying all that Irish Harness Racing can and will be in the coming years.

IHRA will be conducting open forums and meetings with its members during the coming weeks. A questionnaire and information gathering from Members will form part of the Five-Year Strategic Plan. Questions, comments, suggestions and issues can be raised and the end result will be the publication of a document and vision the industry can be proud of.

This funding from the Department of Agriculture is recognition and acknowledges of all that we have achieved during these past five years.

Achievements include:

Establishing oversight of the Irish harness racing industry as an Association to oversee the sport across the Isle of Ireland

Joining French Mentoring Programme sponsored by Le-Trot

Receipt of prizemoney subsidies

Assistance with the cost of purchasing a horse

Purchasing of more than two hundred horses from three-year olds upwards, encouraging existing and new owners

Participating in an extensive audit throughout 2015 from which IHRA earned the right to become an active member of the Union of European Trotting (UET)

Fostering ongoing relationships with Horse Sport Ireland, the French Consulate, as well the World Trotting Association and many other nations

Ongoing growth of Irelands premier harness racing weekend  the Vincent Delaney Memorial  with increasing attendances both domestically and especially internationally since its inception five years ago

Taking Irish racing international with meetings from Dundalk broadcast and bet on in the United Kingdom and Australia in 2016

Expanding this international programme in 2017 when Irish trotting received its first PMU meeting in June where four races were wagered on in France, globally the largest harness racing market

Being granted a further PMU meeting in 2018

In 2016 purchasing forty-three pregnant mares from France, thereby establishing the foundation for Ireland to commence working toward the long-term goal of becoming an important breeding country of trotting horses for Europe

Initiating and successfully implementing an integration programme with the support of Government Departments entrusting the IHRA with financial support and backing

Continuing to work toward delivering initiatives that will bring new and fresh talent to the sport

Participating in activities for young people like the Apprentice Championship where the winner of the trotting series (U25) will represent Ireland in the European Championship in September

Celebrating the success of Sean Kane who is currently receiving great recognition on the podium across Europe

Sending top drivers to represent Ireland in International events in France and elsewhere

Successfully lobbying the Government to have an independent report prepared on harness racing in Ireland

Having an independent organisation engaged by the Department of Agriculture to Review the Irish Harness Racing Sector

Receiving the Indecon Report actioned by Minister Creed and the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine which indicated that expansion of the sector is possible and that funding  both seed and state should be considered

Confirming that the Irish harness racing industry can be an equal to both Horse Racing Ireland and the Greyhounds

Becoming an industry that receives the full backing and support of the Government and across all Parties and Independent TDs and Senators

Achieving a fourfold increase in industry turnover during the past four years with a projected 25 percent increase budgeted for 2018

Through your commitment as Members all of this has been made possible. Through your ongoing support this will continue to be made possible.

At this point in time I wish to thank the IHRA Board as well as our Consultant and the role each person has played in developing the industry.

Most of all I wish to thank and applaud you the stakeholders who have enabled us to come this far and who are helping us to continually grow and expand in to the future, this wonderful sport in Ireland.

MARK FLANAGAN

Chairman, Irish Harness Racing AssociationAfter finishing second to Rockin Ron in leg one of the George Morton Levy Pacing Series in his seasonal debut March 17, trainer Jenn Bongiorno is expecting Evenin Of Pleasure to be even sharper in week two of the series. The eight-year-old will start from post three in the eighth race tonight (March 24), the second of four divisions of the Levy series on the 12-race program.

Last week, I was so pleased. I thought it was a great start. Rockin Ron is probably one of the best horses in the series, we were not going to go by him that night, but I was really happy. I felt Evenin of Pleasure finished up well to stay that close to Rockin Ron, Bongiorno said. Rockin Ron already had a start, that was our first start. Second start this week, I think hes in such a good spot. Id like to see him control the race for sure.

Evenin Of Pleasure came to Bongiornos barn in late February with owner Gestion Jean Yves Blais targeting the Levy Series. He initially intended to send Evenin Of Pleasure to Ron Burke, who conditioned the horse during a stint of racing in the Yonkers Open Pace last summer. However, with Burkes series entries maxed out, Bongiorno got the call.

Ron Burke couldnt take the horse for the series because he has horses he owns himself, so he cant put a horse he doesnt own ahead of one that he does, so luckily the owner was pointed in our direction, Bongiorno said. You have that kind of a classy horse, the day he got to the barn, I just ran to his stall and gave him a hug. Its such an honour to even be able to sit behind a horse like that and have the opportunity to race him in such a great series.



Evenin Of Pleasure winning the 2016 Molson Pace Evenin Of Pleasure winning the 2016 Molson Pace

A 27-time winner from 126 starts, Evenin Of Pleasure is a multiple stakes winner with more than $950,000 in earnings. Bongiorno says his class shows in the morning.

One thing Ive definitely learned is better horses are better on the track. They arent the ones that grab on so much. Theyre so smart and just perfect gentlemen basically, she explained. I cant really say enough good things about him. Perfect in the barn, great attitude, turn him out every day. He seems to be really adjusting well to our program.

Although Evenin Of Pleasure arrived with his own rigging, Bongiorno made some adjustments that she feels will help the son of Dragon Again stay sharp as the series goes on, such as a shoeing change that will help to combat Evenin Of Pleasures habit of running down, or hitting his heels on the surface of the track when he races.

Right now, we have him completely off his rundown, so I think that could definitely be something in the series that will help him because that can definitely hurt a horse, she said. When horses run down, the back of their heels hit the ground. With his shoeing and changes we made with that, we were able to get him off that, so thats a plus.

Evenin Of Pleasure arrived at Bongiornos stable in New Jersey nearly ready to qualify. She trained him the week he arrived and planned to qualify him at Freehold the following week, with the aim of qualifying him a second time before starting him in the series. However, a winter storm threatened to derail Evenin Of Pleasures schedule.

That first qualifier was actually supposed to be at Freehold and it was the day of the snowstorm. I was like, oh my gosh, we have to get this horse qualified, because he needed two qualifiers and that first start was going to be the Levy. I was in pure panic mode, I really was, Bongiorno said.

Bongiorno reached out to the Meadowlands race office and got Evenin Of Pleasure in to qualify there after Freehold canceled. He won that March 3 trial in 1:53.1, beating Sunfire Blue Chip and Always at My Place. Six days later, Evenin Of Pleasure posted a six-length score in a qualifier at Freehold.

I thought that was a really nice qualifier over some nice horses: Sunfire Blue Chip, Always at My Place, who won a leg of the series, so I knew that we were in the right direction, Bongiorno commented. Freehold that day, the track was so dead, it was just a dead track. He paced in 1:54.2. We were happy, but we thought he might need another start before he was in tip-top shape. I think second start hell definitely be tighter and better.

Evenin Of Pleasures leg two rivals include Christen Me and All Bets Off, who each finished third in leg one of the series. Bongiorno is confident given her horses favourable draw as Christen Me and All Bets Off will start from posts six and seven, respectively.

When I saw the draw this week, I couldnt have been happier, Bongiorno said. Christen Me is a nice horse, but I thought he had time last week to shake free and win, and he didnt. All Bets Off is probably one of the top two in the series, but he didnt look that good last week either and drawing post seven isnt the easiest way of doing things. I think having the inside is definitely going to be to our advantage.

In addition to Evenin Of Pleasure, Bongiorno will start longshot Franco Rayner in Race 10, the third division of the Levy Series. After finishing fourth in leg one, the Australian import drew post seven tonight and is a 20-1 morning line. Although she believes he has talent, Bongiorno has yet to unlock his full potential.

Ive been saying since we first bought him, I think hes the real deal, Bongiorno said. Foreign horses, it takes time to get them to adapt to life here. Its been a little bit of a battle with him. Last week, he did race well, he left great. He doesnt have the respect yet because hes not proven. Foreign horses have their little issues, well work on it, like keeping him better hydrated. Hes going to need a little more attention because it seems like he can have issues.

First post time tonight is 6:50 p.m.

(with files from SOA of NY)New Delhi, Mar 24: Days after Army vice-chief Lt Gen Sarath Chand red-flagged the imminent shortage of ammunition for the forces, considering the "two-front" threat posed to India, the government has given the approval to procure new assault rifles, light machine guns and close quarter battle carbines.

Defence Ministry sources while speaking to TOI said the Request For Proposals (RFPs) have been sent to a "selected number" of foreign armament companies. The total items for procurement include: 72,400 assault rifles, 93,895 CQB carbines and 16,479 LMGs, the report said.

The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) had reportedly given the assent to procure the assault rifles and CQB carbines on January 16. The two procurements are estimated to cost Rs 1,798 crore and Rs 1,749 crore respectively.

The acquisition of LMGs was given the nod by DAC on February 16. The guns are expected to cost Rs 1,819 crore.

The three procurements will be executed under the fast-track procedure (FTP), which would ensure the new weapons are put to use within a time-frame of one year.

The demand to induct new assault rifles and CQB carbines goes back to 2005. In 2009, the Army also expressed concern over the shortage of LMGs. However, graft allegations and high-technical parameters caused the unprecedented delay.

Over the past couple of years, the call for weapon modernisation has picked up pace as voices within the Army have marked their dissent against "vintage category" arms being used by the forces.

While appearing before a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence earlier in the month, Lt Chand said nearly 68 per cent of weapon stock being used by the Army could prove to be obsolete in face of a conflict.

"The state today is 68% vintage, 24% current and 8% in state-of-the-art category," he said.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 24, 2018 07:13 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).Berlin, Mar 24 (AP): A Portuguese airline has apologised for keeping more than 100 passengers stranded at Stuttgart airport in southwestern Germany after one of its flights was cancelled last-minute because of a drunken co-pilot.

Shortly before the TAP Air Portugal flight was to take off to Lisbon last night, an airport employee noticed the co-pilot walking unsteadily and smelling of alcohol. He notified airport authorities, which decided to keep the plane on the ground. It wasn't immediately clear if the 40-year-old co-pilot was detained.

The German news agency DPA reported today that all 106 passengers were put up at hotels overnight. TAP tweeted today that the passengers would only be able to fly to Lisbon on Monday, "which is, at the moment, the first day with seats available."Mar 24, 2018, 1:59pm ET

Top brass BMW engineer weighs in on fatal Uber crash

\"No possibility\" of Level 4 or 5 autonomous driving without accidents with current technology, he said.

A BMW board of management who oversees development has weighed in on this week's fatal autonomous car crash, in which an Arizona woman was killed after being struck by one of Uber's self-driving Volvos.

According to Motoring, Klaus Frolich warned at an annual accounts conference Thursday that today's autonomous technology is not advanced enough to operate at Level 4 or 5 without accidents.

"At the moment, with the quality and ability of the sensors and the computer processing speed and performance, there is no possibility to have highly autonomous cars without accidents, he said.

Uber, who shifted autonomous testing to Arizona's less regulated environment after numerous warnings from California, halted all testing of its self-driving cars this week after one collided with Elaine Herzberg, 49, who darted across a dark street Tempe on Sunday night, killing her.

Frolich called the crash "very regrettable" and reiterated his stance that "The path towards autonomous driving is a very long path." For its part, BMW intends to develop Level 5 autonomous cars and has plans to test on public streets in Hamburg "only if and where we know we are very secure," Frolich said.Mar 24, 2018, 4:10am ET

Uber's Lidar provider "baffled" by deadly accident [update]

Uber nearly shut down its self-driving car program last year, according to a separate report.

Sensor manufacturer Velodyne stresses its equipment isn't to blame in the crash that killed 49-year old Elaine Herzberg last Sunday. It's "baffled" by what happened.

Based in San Jose, California, Velodyne designed and built the Lidar Uber installed in its autonomous Volvo XC90. The ride-sharing firm isn't the only car or tech company using Velodyne equipment. The difference between the various systems vying for autonomous supremacy largely lies in how they interpret the data provided by the hardware on board. Velodyne blames the crash on a software problem.

"We do not believe the accident was due to Lidar. Our Lidar can see perfectly well in the dark, as well as it sees in daylight, producing millions of points of information. However, it is up to the rest of the system to interpret and use the data to make decisions. We do not know how the Uber system of decision-making works," Velodyne Lidar vice president Marta Hall told the BBC.

She stopped short of blaming the crash on software. Uber refused to comment on Hall's statement while the investigation is on-going.

"We are very sad, sorry, and worried for the future of a project which is intended to save lives," Hall added.

Uber's fleet of self-driving vehicles remains off the road as of writing. It's unclear when testing will resume.

The New York Times writes Uber's autonomous program struggled even before the crash. Its cars required human intervention far more often than those tested by rival Waymo. Internal documents suggest Uber struggled to meet its target of a human intervention for every 13 miles of testing. Meanwhile, Waymo averages a human intervention every 5,600 miles.

The report adds Uber CEO Dara Khosrowhahi considered shutting down the self-driving car program when he took over as CEO in August of last year. He ultimately decided to keep it because it's important to the company's long-term prospects, according to insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Update: Though Hall's comments suggest the Uber prototype uses Velodyne's lidar, the company emailed Leftlane a statement to distance itself from those claims.

"Marta's statement from Bloomberg is defending the technology and Velodyne's sensors. She did not confirm that Velodyne is a sensor supplier to Uber, nor that Velodyne sensors were on the vehicle involved in the incident," a spokesperson told us.Over the past seven months Laois ambassador for Feed Our Homeless Tom Duffy has made many trips to Dublin with car loads of warm clothing, sleeping bags and food supplies donated by the people of Laois.

The realities of homelessness on the capitals streets are truly shocking and devastating. Many harrowing sights and devastating stories were witnessed by Mr Duffy recently at Feed Our Homeless soup run on Westmorland Street and on the voluntary groups outreach services around the city streets.

Some of the stories encountered are almost unbelieveable.

A husband and wife in their 60s along with their son in his 30s left Hungary in search of a better life in Ireland almost two years ago. The mother is in a wheelchair and suffers with diabetes, mental health issues and is awaiting an operation on her leg.

The family walk the streets of Dublin every single day from 8am until they can phone the emergency freephone number seeking beds for the night which doesnt opens until 10.30pm.

Sometimes beds are not available and they must sleep outside, other times the family are separated into different hostels. They feel extremely lucky on the rare occasions they are kept together. The husband has to give his wife four injections per day for her diabetes as people pass by on the streets of Dublin.

Walking the streets for almost 15 hours per day seven days per week is the daily norm for homeless people as they are put out of the hostels by 8am each morning and cant return until they have been allocated a bed again that night, if there are any available.

Tom Duffy explains how the soup run and outreach services work to help such families.

Firstly, the homeless situation is at crisis levels. Between 200 and 300 homeless people are fed and clothed every Thursday and Sunday night outside the old Bank of Ireland opposite Trinity College Dublin.

The founder of Feed Our Homeless Tony Walsh along with his volunteers begins setting up food tables at 7pm. A variety of hot meals and hot drinks are served to homeless people along with sandwiches, cakes, doughnuts, biscuits, crisps, chocolate, fizzy drinks, pizzas and fruit. People could still be queuing to eat at 9.30pm.

All the clothing that Laois people donate to us at my home in Glenbarrow in Portlaoise will be usually gone before 10pm. We re-bag the clothing and label whats in each bag before taking as much as we can on each trip. Everything goes from my house directly to those who need it on the streets.

Hundreds of people look for coats, fleeces, jumpers, hats, scarves, gloves, socks, jeans, jog-pants and nothing is wasted. The queues are enormous and its heartbreaking to see the poverty first-hand. It doesnt really affect you until you are actually there feeding and clothing these poor people.

We then go on outreach walking around the streets looking for homeless people in shop doorways making sure theyre warm and have food, clothing and hot drinks. Many sleeping bags are distributed to the homeless people through Grace Dooleys Go-fund-Me Sleeping Bag Project.

We met a lovely man called Danny who lives with his brother in an old garage on wasteland which has just been sold. They sleep in a tent inside the dilapidated garage with only a small gas heater to keep them warm.

They are waiting for the bulldozers to come. He told us that the last time they used an emergency hostel over a year ago that a drug user leaned over his brothers bed to inject himself. He burst a vein and blood went all over his brothers bed. He videoed this happening, took it down to the staff and showed them. Their reply was that they would put his name in the sin bin. You would need a heart of stone not to shed a tear on the way home, said Tom.

Tony Walsh is the founder of Feed Our Homeless.

Feed Our Homeless have real concerns for the lives of rough sleepers on the streets around the Capital. The feedback that our outreach team are getting from the rough sleepers is that they wont avail of the services because the services are unsafe.

There are way too many rough sleepers on the streets and we are afraid of another death happening. During the bad weather recently there were people sleeping in shop doorways on a blanket of snow. We were blessed that we came out of the Beast from the East without any homeless deaths.

Many rough sleepers dont have drug or alcohol issues and I know several who get up in the morning from a shop doorway, go to work and return to that shop doorway that evening. They are simply priced out of the rental market.

He wants the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, Dublin City Council and the State to put an urgent action plan and intervention in place to make the emergency hostels safe for rough sleepers to stay in at night rather than them being forced to sleep rough on the streets due to fear for their safety.

The one night bed plan isnt working. People need six month beds to have any chance whatsoever of being able to exit homelessness. You cant come out of homelessness without the proper key-workers and being linked into the necessary services. Its just not possible to be able to move forward with your life. In order to get social welfare payments its necessary to have an address, how do these people stand a chance, most beg to survive.

We need a spacious dry hostel with immediate effect where its safe for people without addictions to sleep and to have a place to shelter out of the rain and call home temporarily. People from every county in Ireland and many people from European countries are filling the shop doorways every night. They all echo and highlight the same issues, that the state funded emergency services are not safe for them to stay in.

Nightly in Dublin City, Feed Our Homeless frontline outreach volunteers listen to many serious and worrying issues from rough sleepers outlining disgraceful and frightening experiences while staying in state funded emergency services.

Other rough sleepers are in recovery from addictions. These rough sleepers wont use the state funded emergency services at night because there is a real fear that they will either relapse in their recovery or they will develop a drug addiction when staying in the emergency hostels due to open drug taking.

Rough sleepers explained to our outreach team that open drug use is rife and they constantly get robbed of the little that they have in some of the emergency hostels. Many went on to tell our team they would rather sleep rough and take their chances on the streets.

This is simply not good enough in Ireland 2018. A complete overhaul of the system needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. To put it simply, homeless people are being forced to sleep rough on the streets at night simply because the state funded emergency hostels are not safe for homeless people without addictions or in recovery to stay in. he said.

Tony Walsh wishes to extend his thanks to the people of Laois who continually support Feed Our Homeless expressing that its work could not be carried out without the help of the people.

Anyone who wishes to donate warm clothing, sleeping bags or Easter eggs to Feed Our Homeless can contact Tom Duffy in Laois or Feed Our Homeless in Dublin on their respective Facebook pages.The GAA has announced their replacement for Paraic Duffy as Director General of the association, and it was bad news for Trumera's Liam O'Neill.

O'Neill was in the running along with former Tipperary manager Liam Sheedy and the GAA's current Director of Finance Tom Ryan, and it is the latter, Mr Ryan, who has been chosen.

A Carlow native, Tom has had a lengthy involvement with the GAA in his native county and is an active member and current Treasurer of Faughs GAA Club in Templeogue in Dublin.

He becomes the 19th Secretary General/Director General since the foundation of the organisation and only the fifth since 1929 and is the first Carlow man to fill the role. He will commence in the role at the start of April and his term will span the next seven years.

He replaces Paraic Duffy who served in the role for a decade.

GAA President John Horan said: I am pleased to announce that Tom Ryan has been appointed as the new Ard Stiurthoir of Cumann Luthchleas Gael.

He has served the GAA well in his previous position and has the requisite vision to lead the Association in the years ahead.

He understands the GAA at every level and is highly active at club level which provides him with important insights into the challenges we face as an organisation.

I look forward to working with him and wish him well in the role.

The new Director General added: I am humbled and excited to be assuming this position and I am greatly looking forward to serving the Association and its members to the very best of my ability in the years ahead.Late last Monday night, as the snow was thawing across the country, we received a call about a fox looking dazed and staggering beside Sandyford National School in Dublin.

When it was noticed that the vixen was in fact having great difficult giving birth, word spread among our network of wildlife rehabbers. Two young veterinary nurses attached to Botanic vets in Glasnevin left their warm homes at close to midnight and opened the clinic to administer the emergency help required.

On examination, the young nurses Amy and Laura found a large cub obstructing the birth canal. The young vixen was given drugs to help her along.

The cub that was blocking the way was born soon after and she was alive.

When the first cub was born alive, we could not believe it. Such hope ensued. Then, along came four more cubs in time.

Sadly, the fifth was stillborn but at least his siblings were strong.

However, their mother remained exhausted and very weak.

The dedicated nurses battled to save her life, but she soon lost her fight. She had brought new life and new hope into the world. It is such a pity that she could not have lived to raise them.

Now the enormous and time-consuming task begins with the new born cubs needing feeding every two hours around the clock.

The cubs were spilt into two pairs. Aideen and I took two each.

Its so difficult rearing wildlife so sharing the work load is always better.

We know we have a long road ahead, but with our experience and knowledge we hope to get them through the most precious few weeks.

We are so lucky to have great people helping animals when they need us most.

If you would like to help towards the care of our four orphaned fox cubs, then please send a donation of your choice to our PayPal kafwildlife@gmail.com.

Your support is very much appreciated.

Kildare Animal Foundation, located outside Kildare town, is a voluntary organisation that provides a safe haven for neglected or abused animals. Tel: 045 522929, email info@animalfoundation.ie or log on to www.animalfoundation.ie. All donations welcome.Sinn Fein TD for Sligo-Leitrim, Deputy Martin Kenny, told the Dail that insurance companies are profiteering on the backs of small businesses around the country.

Deputy Kenny said: Many business people take a big risk. They, put themselves on the line in order to try to do something because they have a vision of creating something better for themselves and creating a better future for the community in which they live.

All of us, regardless of where we live in this country, have an obligation to try to make the place around us better. The business community, in particular those involved in small and medium enterprises are at the coalface of doing that and great credit is due to them for the work they do. However, they are not supported.

The broken economic model is at the very core of that. No emphasis is being put on sustaining the small business community in the long term.

There are five cattle marts at the moment in County Leitrim. The mart managers tell me that in many cases the insurance they pay has almost trebled in recent years.

That is no accident. It is not because anyone had an accident in the mart. It is not because anything happened. It is because the insurance companies are trying to get back the money they lost on the bonds, gambling on international markets in the past ten years. The government must recognise that reality and examine it.

We cannot hide behind excuses such as fraud or anything else. Such reasons will always be there. The corporate sector will always find a reason to increase prices and increase profits. What is happening is profiteering on the back of ordinary small businesses around the country.

He has run out of road and must go to prison, said Judge Kevin P Kilrane at last weeks sitting of Manorhamilton District Court prior to imposing convictions for driving without insurance and driving while disqualified against Keith Carpenter who was also handed a four month prison sentence and a six year driving disqualification.

Giving summary evidence Insp Denis Harrington said, Gardai were notified of material damage arising from a traffic accident on May 27, 2017 at Biggaun, Manorhamilton.

The court heard Mr Carpenter, 19 Stonebridge Park, Rochfortbridge, Co Westmeath subsequently produced documents that didnt cover him to drive as he had been disqualified from driving since November 5, 2015.

The defendant, who the court heard has 26 previous convictions, stated, Id started my own business in 2017. I knew I was banned but I thought it ended at the end of 2016.

Defending solicitor Gerry McGovern asked the defendant, Should you not have checked with your insurance company?

In reply Mr Carpenter said, I should have.

When asked by Judge Kilrane why he thought his period of disqualification had ended Mr Carpenter stated, I thought I got two years in 2014.

Having heard the evidence Judge Kilrane remarked, He has 26 previous convictions and on this occasion was driving while disqualified and with insurance based on a false insurance declaration.

He has received at least one suspended sentence in the past. He has run out of road and must go to prison.

Charges of making a false declaration and failing to produce various documentation were withdrawn.

Mr Carpenter was sentenced to four months in prison and disqualified from driving in relation to the charges of driving while disqualified and having no insurance.

Recognisances in the event of an appeal were fixed at 100 own bond; independent surety 900 with 300 to be lodged.

Legal aid was granted to Gerry McGovern.The more the defendant was giving evidence the more he was making it up, said Judge Kevin P. Kilrane prior to imposing a conviction for assault and a 500 fine against Jordan McCarthy, Farm Castlefield, Williamstown, Co. Galway.

Last weeks sitting of Carrick-on-Shannon District Court heard from the injured party, Jack McDermott who said on New Years Eve 2016 he travelled to Carrick-on-Shannon from Castlerea on a bus with friends. He said he had two pints and two or three vodkas before leaving Castlerea.

He added that he had two vodkas and 7up in Dunne's Bar when he arrived in Carrick-on-Shannon before making his way to Club 360.

Continuing his evidence Mr McDermott said he was on the dance floor with his girlfriend when one of the defendants friends came onto the floor and started pushing.

The court heard the individual who had been pushing on the dance floor was ejected from the premises with Mr McDermott adding that shortly afterwards Mr McCarthy approached him on the dance floor.

Mr McDermott recalled the defendant putting out his hand stating, I thought it was to shake hands.

Mr McDermott said he could then feel his hand being squeezed before he was struck with a headbutt.

I was headbutted once. I was told it was twice but I only remember once. Mr McDermott recalled that he was helped to his feet and was bleeding heavily. Having gone to the toilet to clean up he had to leave his T-shirt behind as a result of the amount of blood.

He added that his girlfriend had his jacket and they then went to get food before returning home.

Mr McDermott said he encountered the defendant once more that night, on the bus home to Castlerea.

A few of his friends said to him to apologise. He walked past me on the bus and said 'sorry about that man'.

Mr McDermott added that he subsequently visited the hospital and dentist in relation to the injuries he sustained.

Under cross-examination from defending solicitor Niamh McGovern it was put to Mr McDermott that he was looking to fight Mr

McCarthy and that the defendant was left with no option but to hit back.

In reply Mr McDermott said, No, that is not correct.

Continuing her cross-examination Ms McGovern stated, You had an altercation with Mr McCarthy. You hit Mr McCarthy and he hit you back.

Mr McDermott denied this suggestion saying, Im well able to handle a drink. I know exactly what happened.

Rachel Harte, the girlfriend of Mr McDermott at the time of the incident, gave her version of events saying, There was a lot of people from Castlerea on the dance floor. All of a sudden Jack turned his back and Jordan headbutted him. I left when I saw all the blood.

Ms Harte attempted to locate Mr McDermott afterwards and was told by a member of the security staff that he was not in the first aid room. After ringing his phone twice they met at the cloakroom and left the premises.

Under cross-examination it was put to Ms Harte that she had pushed Mr McCarthy on the dance floor to which she replied, I put my hands up. He was pushing against Jack, I said dont push him.

Ms Harte added, Jack said to me when his hand was being squeezed if anything happens just go. I couldnt hear what was being said with the noise.

I saw Jordan headbutting him, Jack fell against me. He headbutted him again, he fell down. I got scared and left.

Gda Mary Burke gave evidence that she received a report relating to the incident from Castlerea Garda Station on January 12 and she then made contact with the defendant to get his version of events.

A memo of interview with Jordan McCarthy was read in court by Gda Burke.

Giving his version of events during the interview Mr McCarthy said, It started when Jack was on the dance floor. One of my friends was very drunk and Jack pushed him away.

Jack ran up to me and said who is he here with. I said F off, its nothing to do with me and walked off.

Mr McCarthy said he left the dance floor for 10-15 minutes and when he returned Ms Harte was pushing him with both hands.

I knew that he got into a lot of fights in Castlerea. He grabbed my two hands and said do you want to fight me. He swung and punched me into the left side of the face while holding my right hand.

I hit him back. I punched him to the nose. The bouncer came and threw him out.

Mr McCarthy said that he did not intend to cause any harm and apologised to Mr McDermott on the bus with the injured party also apologising.

The memo of interview also heard the defendant didnt believe the incident to be serious saying, I didnt think it was that bad. Shot like that always happens.

A number of witnesses named by Mr McCarthy during his memo of interview were contacted by Gardai but none were willing to give evidence.

Giving direct evidence Mr McCarthy said he had no drink taken before leaving Castlerea and upon arriving in Carrick-on-Shannon went straight to Club 360 where he said he had two pints of Heineken.

When asked why his friends werent present in court Mr McCarthy replied, They didnt think it was that much of a big deal.

Mr McCarthy acknowledged he was wrong during his interview when he stated Mr McDermott was ejected from the club but insisted everything else in the memo was correct.

Under questioning from Insp Denis Harrington it was put to Mr McCarthy that Ms Harte had her hands up in an attempt to calm him.

In reply Mr McCarthy said, She kept pushing me. I didnt feel threatened. He added, I didnt need to be calmed down. I didnt even have that much to drink.

Insp Harrington added, I put it to you she felt the need to do that to prevent you getting into a fight with her boyfriend.

In reply Mr McCarthy added, No.

When asked why he apologised on the bus if he did nothing wrong, Mr McCarthy replied, I didnt want any bad blood. Stuff like that happens in nightclubs all the time.

Mr McCarthy said as he was a trained fighter his punches are going to be a lot stronger.

Insp Harrington then asked how a trained fighter could allow himself to be punched, Mr McCarthy replied, I dont know. I wasnt expecting it.

The defendant's girlfriend, Leah McLoughlin also gave evidence stating Mr McCarthy did punch Mr McDermott but only after he had been struck first.

Having heard the evidence Judge Kilrane imposed a conviction saying, He (defendant) approaches the matter on a basis of its not that serious.

He says it happens all the time, thats his attitude, heaven forbid that was everyones attitude.

Judge Kilrane added the defendant suffered facial, nose and mouth injuries. I am satisfied they were not caused by a punch but by a headbutt. He says once, his girlfriend says twice.

The more the defendant gave evidence the more he was making it up as he was going along with a combination of truth, half-truth and lies.

Outlining her clients circumstances Ms McGovern said, He would have hopes of joining the army, this is not going to help. He has issues with substance abuse which he tackled himself.

Dealing with the matter by way of compensation was considered but the defendant said he was not interested in receiving compensation.

Judge Kilrane ruled as outlined.IT was a day to remember for Limerick man Con Dee, who led the massive St Patricks Day parade in London.

Mr Dee, Murroe, a former president of the Limerick Association in London, carried the tricolour flag at the front of the spectacle, which was attended by over 125,000 people in the British capital last Sunday.

It came after he was asked to do so by the Council of Irish County Associations.

It was a great honour for me, and a huge privilege to be invited to take that role. I enjoyed it very, very much. The atmosphere was absolutely terrific, except for the cold and the chill. It wasnt snowing or raining, but it was bitterly cold. But for an 80-year-old Limerick man to be leading the parade, it was something I will never forget, Con, who now lives in Balham, South London, smiled.

As well as Con, more than 30 Limerick exiles took to the streets of the British capital during Sundays parade.

The entry from the Limerick Association had a touch of colour and style courtesy of two rickshaws which the association added to its parade entry, which took place between Lower Piccadilly and Whitehall.

It was a pleasure and a delight to have many of our great association members and friends take part in this truly fantastic spectacle, and we express our sincerest thanks to London City Hall for what turned out to be one of the most well-organised and memorable St Patricks celebrations in recent years, said the current president of the Limerick Association John Giltenan.

Con said the St Patricks celebrations in London remain very important for the almost 200,000 Irish people living in Britains largest city.

Its a key occasion. Its a wonderful chance to celebrate our heritage. And believe you me, people did celebrate it on Sunday! There was a sea of Irish flags everywhere, he added.

Personally, it was up there with the best, if not the best parade in recent memory, Con added.

Meanwhile, the Limerick Association in London, which exists to support Irish ex-pats in Britain, will mark its 65th anniversary in 2019.

A variety of events are already in the pipeline, Caherdavin man Mr Giltenan, who lives in Kidbrooke, south east London, confirmed.

For more information, and to join the Limerick Association, you can search for Limerick in London on Facebook.

Alternatively, telephone John at 0044-7956855957.FOUR original creations designed by Limerick students have made it through to the national finals of this years Junk Kouture competition taking place at the 3Arena in Dublin in April.

Now in its eight year, Irelands leading fashion and art competition for secondary schools challenges students to create unique, original and innovative outfits from recycled materials and junk.

The students have created their original couture outfits using materials like parts of an old wardrobe, drinking straws, antlers from Curraghchase, egg cartons, bed sheets and contact lenses.

Pupils Lily O'Brien and Rachel O'Brien from Colaiste Ioasef in Kilmallock will proceed to the national finals with their design Stralusion, in which hundreds of recycled straws were ironed and fused together in order to create a new material for their design.

Sixth-year student Emily Noonan from John The Baptist Community School in Hospital also will display her design Intrepid in this years Junk Kouture national final.

Inspired by rebelling against the pressure society sometimes puts on people to keep their passions and creativity caged in, Emily used parts of an old wardrobe as well as straws and egg cartons to create her gown.

Students from Colaiste Nano Nagle in Limerick City will also exhibit two designs in the finals of the competition.

Gala Simic Kokot, Leah Cusack and Gemma Kiely will model their design Insight, created from contact lense waste donated by Vistakon.

Wild-cards Megan O'Mahoney, Emily Griffin and Rebecca Keane will also bring their Munster-inspired design Stand Up and Fight to the 3Areana.

The students were surprised by Junk Kouture Ambassador James Patrice and Bank of Ireland representative Rose Noonan at their school with the news the team had received the Wild Card and qualified for the finals.

Online voting for the competition begins on April 2 and runs until April 6. Votes can be cast on the Junk Kouture website: junkkouture.comA MAN charged in connection with a hatchet attack at a housing estate in Limerick city almost eight years ago has been refused permission to travel to Eastern Europe to work.

Frederick Connor, aged 30, who has an address at Brittas, Thurles, County Tipperary is charged with assaulting Damien Hackett, causing him harm at John Carew Park, Southill, on April 26, 2010.

It is the State case that Hackett, who is now aged in his early 30s, was hit across the back of the head and the side of his face during an altercation with two other men at Donoughmore Crescent.

The victim, who received 20 stitches, sustained two lacerations and has some permanent scarring as a result of the attack which happened at around 8.30pm.

The defendant was granted bail when he was brought before Limerick District Court in January subject to a number of conditions including that he surrender his passport to gardai.

Seeking to vary her clients bail conditions, solicitor Sabina Hegerty said he has received an offer of work in Poland.

She said Mr Connor wishes to earn a livelihood and was seeking the return of his passport to allow him to travel to take up the work.

Detective Garda Shane Ryan opposed the application stating he had concerns the defendant would not return to the jurisdiction if he was allowed to leave.

He said Mr Connor travelled to continental Europe following the alleged incident and that gardai had begun the process of applying for a European Arrest Warrant prior to his arrest earlier this year.

He noted the defendant has been offered work as a general labourer and questioned why he could not find similar work in this country.

The State will have no control over him or be able to check on his whereabouts, he submitted.

The detective accepted the defendant has complied with all of his bail conditions and that he even signed on during the recent bad weather associated with Storm Emma.

Ms Hegerty said her client, who has a number of young children, was willing to give a sworn undertaking that he would return to Ireland for any future court dates.

However, having considered the application and the garda objection, Judge Marian OLeary said was not willing to order the return of Mr Connors passport,

There was no garda objection to an application to remove the nightly curfew and to reduce the signing on requirement to three days a week. Previously, the court was told the DPP has directed that matter is to proceed on indictment at Limerick Circuit Court. The case has been adjourned to early next month to facilitate the preparation of a book of evidence which is at an advanced stage.RURAL roads in West Limerick are being left in a scandalous condition by Gas Networks Ireland as the company continues laying a gas pipeline from Barrigone to Listowel, according to Fine Gaels Cllr John Sheahan.

And the problem is made worse, he claimed, because the local authority cannot lay a shovel of tar or fill a pothole as the company has responsibility for maintenance for up to two years after they open the road for the pipeline.

Speaking at a special meeting to discuss roads in the Newcastle West Municipal District this week, Cllr Sheahan told his fellow councillors of an incident in which he came round a bend and came upon machinery in the middle of the road, with no flag, no previous warning sign to warn traffic. There was just a white van, he said, and even that didnt have hazard lights on.

We need to get a handle on these guys, he said.

Where utility companies come in to do work, Cllr Sheahan argued, a clerk of works should be appointed, at no cost to the council.

Executive engineer, Ger OConnor said he was extremely disappointed to hear Cllr Sheahans description.

I thought we were on top of that, he said.

He acknowledged there had been some difficulties last year but thought it had been dealt with. He was also extremely disappointed to hear about the lack of traffic management, he said.

I will take that up immediately.

A pipeline laying project of this scale causes disruption to the roads infrastructure, a spokeswoman for Gas Networks Ireland acknowledged. But she stressed that the excavation and pipe laying works are almost complete on the Listowel Feeder Main.

The construction works were being carried out under strict engineering conditions and conditions laid down under the councils Road Opening Licence granted to the company, she explained.

"Every effort is made by both Gas Networks Ireland (GNI) and our contractor, MGMC, to adhere to strict engineering requirements set out by Local Authorities.

Outstanding work at this stage is the final double layer of tar and chipping, which is planned for late spring/early summer when road temperatures are at agreed thresholds, making it suitable for carrying out this work, she said.

Once the pipeline is laid, our contractors are responsible for ensuring the trench is re-instated correctly with certified (backfill) materials, adequate compaction and to proper engineering standards, the spokeswoman continued.

In addition to the contractors supervision, an integral part of the process is the full time presence of two Gas Networks Ireland pipeline inspectors, as well as bi-weekly inspections carried out by Limerick City and County Council Inspectors."

The company was deeply grateful to the local community, residents, businesses and road users for their ongoing patience and cooperation, the spokeswoman continued.

The next phase of works will see the service connections to individual businesses and homes that have signed up for a gas connection as well as works in Listowel town centre, which are scheduled to be complete by the end of May.Here, the orbit of Tiangong-1 as of March 22, 2018. The highest point in the orbit, called its apogee, is 145 miles (233 km) above Earth, and its lowest point is about 130 miles (212 km). The International Space Station is in a 250-mile (400 km) circular orbit.

China's defunct Tiangong-1 space station is careening through low-Earth orbit right now, and is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere sometime between March 30 and April 2. Most of the 9-ton (8,500 kilograms) space station will probably burn to bits in the atmosphere  but a few thousand chunks of hot, mangled debris are still likely to survive the trip and land on our planet's surface.

Your odds of being conked on the head by any of this debris are low  about one in 292 trillion, or roughly a million times less likely than hitting the Powerball jackpot. Right now, the potential impact site of the space station covers about one-third of the planet, and a huge majority of that zone is water. However, if by some truly cosmic coincidence you do find a piece of Tiangong-1 in your neighborhood  or if some debris washes up on a shore near you  here's some advice on your best course of action: Don't touch it.

"There are two reasons why you should not approach and touch a piece of space debris," Robert Z. Pearlman, a space historian and editor of collectSPACE.com, told Live Science. "The first is it is a health risk."

Presumably, Pearlman said, the space station is carrying all manner of hazardous materials not safe for human contact, including fuel tanks with noxious fuel inside. "Also, because this vehicle is going to be ripped apart by the process of reentry, whatever does survive to the ground could have very sharp edges," Pearlman added. "Its not something you want to have your kids run out to touch."

Finders keepers?

The second reason not to rush out and bag a chunk of Tiangong-1 is the galaxy of legal trouble it could land you in.

"According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, a countrys spacecraft is their legal property until they say that its not their legal property, Pearlman said. "No matter where it lands  whether it lands in the ocean and sinks to the bottom of the sea, or whether it lands on their own land or some other countrys land  it belongs to that country of origin."

An artist's Illustration of China's Tiangong-1 space lab, which is expected to fall back to Earth between March 30 and April 2, 2018. (Image credit: CMSA)

Part of this legal framework is for your protection, Pearlman said; it makes China legally liable for any damage to person or property that their out-of-control space station may cause. (Again, such damage is unlikely to happen.)

However, it also means that pocketing a piece of Tiangong-1 is tantamount to theft of government property. Believe it or not, people have gone to jail for this.

"Following the Challenger explosion [in 1986], there was a gentleman in the Coast Guard who kept a piece of debris for 25 years," Pearlman said. "He was the cook onboard the ship working on the investigation. While his fellow sailors were out helping with recovering pieces, he decided to use a bucket to scoop up a tile floating in the water and keep it for himself. He put it away for 25 years and then listed it on eBay as 'the ultimate Christmas gift.'"

When NASA found out, the man was arrested. He was found guilty of theft of government property, and sentenced to two years probation. He got off easy; he could have received a $10,000 fine, 10 years in prison, or a combination of both.

Space debris can become a legally legitimate souvenir, however, once the government of origin officially concludes its investigation. Until then, it's probably best to treat any pieces of Tiangong-1 like what they are: hot, mangled wreckage.

So, what should you do if you find a piece of what you think is space debris? "The best thing to do is to contact your local authorities," Pearlman said. "They will contact the federal authorities and arrange for the proper collection and appropriate return to the Chinese government."

"All that being said," Pearlman jokes, "if a piece of debris lands in my backyard  it's mine, all mine!"

Originally published on Live Science.A UC Berkeley student and activist with the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere covered herself in animal feces outside a San Francisco Trader Joe's on Thursday morning.

The woman, Cassie King, was protesting at the store on Fourth Street in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood over conditions at farms that supply eggs to Trader Joe's. A recent investigation by Direct Action Everywhere allegedly found starving chickens living amid heaps of their own waste at a supplier in Michigan.

Trader Joe's has denied that the farm in question is a Trader Joe's supplier.

ALSO: San Francisco becomes largest U.S. city to ban fur

"The supposedly 'humane' eggs sold at Trader Joe's come from birds who lived their entire lives in piles of waste," King said, adding that deceptive labels "mislead consumers into paying for cruelty."

MORE: Berkeley butcher shop hangs sign decrying animal slaughter to stop group's protests

"We have spoken with Dutch Farms, who supplies three offerings of eggs to our stores in the Midwest, and have been assured that the footage shown in the video is not from a farm that supplies eggs to Trader Joe's," Trader Joe's spokeswoman Kenya Friend-Daniel said in a statement.

"At Trader Joe's, we hold our suppliers to high standards for animal care and food safety and expect for them to treat animals in accordance with all legal animal welfare regulations," she added. "If we were to discover that any Trader Joe's supplier is not meeting our expectations, we would take immediate action, up to and including terminating our relationship."

Direct Action Everywhere's attention-grabbing demonstrations crop up frequently around the Bay Area. The activists have stormed the dining area at iconic Berkeley eatery Chez Panisse, protested turkey sales at an East Bay Whole Foods around Thanksgiving time, and pushed for the ban on sales of new fur that was approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors this week.

Filipa Ioannou is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at fioannou@sfchronicle.com and follow her on TwitterNairobi, Kenya

Religious leaders who campaign for wildlife conservation are mourning the death of the world's last male northern white rhino, calling the subspecies' likely extinction a spiritual loss.

"We are staring at the extinction of the animal type, under our watch. I think it's a spiritual matter," said the Rev. Charles Odira, a Roman Catholic conservationist priest from Kenya, where the rhino lived. "I feel as if we have neglected our duty as stewards of creation and should have done more for this species."

The 45-year-old rhino  named Sudan  was euthanized March 19 after suffering an infection and serious complications due to his advanced age. He was kept under armed guard at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, north of Nairobi, and left behind two female white rhinos  a daughter and granddaughter.

The two offspring have health problems that mean neither can likely carry a pregnancy to term.

Sheikh Ole Naado, deputy general secretary of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, urged wildlife conservationists to take the lessons from the death of Sudan.

"It is a kind of warning that others are taking a similar path. It could be telling us that something bigger is happening  like the possible extinction of a community," said Ole Naado, referring to the Maasai tribe to which he belongs and whose lands bridge Kenya and Tanzania.

Many Maasai fear encroaching government and commercial interests and the effects of global warming will compromise or obliterate their traditional way of life. But they themselves understand that they must co-exist with wildlife, said Ole Naado.

As religious leaders preach protection of the natural world, some spiritual beliefs are also part of the problem. Many in Asia believe various body parts of rhinos, elephants and other endangered animals possess healing powers or bring luck. Poachers  driven partly by this demand  continue to hunt these species relentlessly.

While a few northern white rhinos roamed Africa wild in the 1960s, by 2008, they lived only in zoos around the world.

Campaigns against the use of elephants' ivory tusks for carving religious objects in Asia have met with some success, but the demand for rhino is still high. In countries such as Vietnam, a belief that rhino horn cures cancer is widespread.Several hundred people are expected to take part in a March For Our Lives in The Woodlands on Saturday, joining hundreds of thousands expected at scores of similar events across the United States.

The March For Our Lives - The Woodlands protest in south Montgomery County on Saturday will actually be held in Spring at the Woodwinds Center, located at 125 Sawdust. The event is slated to begin at 4:30 p.m. and continue until 6:30 p.m.

Erin Baker, one of the co-organizers of the event, said the event will be done in collaboration with the national and Houston-area marches to end gun violence and make the safety of our school children a priority.

"We will line the sidewalks along Sawdust Road to show our support for common sense gun protections," Baker said in an email. "This is not a march, but a stationary protest. We expect around 500 people to meet at Woodwinds Center. Then, we will all spread out along the surrounding sidewalks with signs to chant and exercise our right to peaceful demonstration. Despite Montgomery County's reputation as a conservative stronghold, we think that there is considerable support to effect common sense gun protections for our school children."

The group has set up multiple social media accounts to spread information about the event, including on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. As of 7:30 p.m., the event Facebook page had more than 190 confirmed attendees, another 300-plus people who had indicated an interest in attending and the event details had been shared more than 140 times.

"The protest hours are 4:30-6:30 (p.m.), but we expect people to come and go at their leisure, and perhaps to even set up chairs along Sawdust Roads on the sidewalks," Baker wrote in her email.

The protest is part of a nationwide series of marches and events intended to spread the message of responsible gun control and protecting students. The protests come more than a month after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed and another 17 wounded. The incident has spawned a new level of activism among youth across the United States, with many of the survivors of the incident appearing on TV news shows, being featured on a CNN town hall and also lobbying lawmakers in both Florida and Washington, D.C.

More Information Event Details: What: March for our Lives, The Woodlands When: 4:30-6:30 p.m., Saturday, March 24 Where: Woodwinds Center, 125 Sawdust Road, Spring See More Collapse

PROTEST LOCATION

Although the name of the protest bears "The Woodlands," the event is technically in Spring. The reason for the change in venue-and the inability of protesters to march on streets-is because protest organizers were unable to secure an event permit from The Woodlands Township or Montgomery County.

Some protesters have falsely claimed the event was forced to be held on private property because township and county officials did not want an anti-gun event in the township.

Both Baker and officials from The Woodlands and Montgomery County said those claims are false.

Baker stressed that officials from the township's Parks and Recreation Department, which handles event applications, went out of their way to help find a suitable location for the protest.

"The Woodlands Township was extremely helpful in helping us find a place," Baker said. "The township was so supportive, they even contacted Montgomery County for permission to cross some roads. They (also) offered Rob Fleming Park, but we wanted a location that was a little more travelled."

Baker personally filed the application for the protest with the township, but said one of reasons the march is outside The Woodlands is because there are a lot of other events in The Woodlands on the same day.

"There were already loads of events that were happening," she said.

Other events slated for Saturday include the Texas Trash-Off GreenUp CleanUp, the Kayak Easter Egg Hunt on The Woodlands Waterway, several children's Easter events at Rob Fleming Park, Camp Terramont family camping event and the long-running BB&T Woodlands CrawPHish Festival - which will take over the Town Green Park from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

EVENT PLANNING REQUIREMENTS

John Powers, the assistant general manager for Community Services for The Woodlands, said claims the township did not want to host the event are completely false, noting that he, township President Don Norrell and several members of the Parks and Recreation staff worked diligently to help Baker and other organizers find a location to hold the event.

"They applied on Feb. 23 to have a walk, the original request was for the Town Center," Powers said. "They wanted to walk Riva Row, Six Pines and the Market Street area. (Our) staff worked with them tirelessly for a place where they could hold the walk."

Powers also said part of the application process for an event that utilizes public streets involves getting the OK from Montgomery County officials. However, the county requires 90 days advance application for use of any streets or roads. Because the event organizers only applied on Feb. 23, they did not meet the county requirement.

"Montgomery County controls the roads," Powers said. "We sent (the request) to the commissioner's office and inquired about a waiver (of the 90-day requirement). The county would not waive the 90 day requirement."

Evan Besong, manager of precinct operations for Montgomery County Precinct 3 Commissioner James Noack, said the 90-day advance requirement for possible events was developed as part of an interlocal agreement between the county and the township so that any event, a protest, walk or running race, can be properly planned and staffed.

"We need to communicate to the public, especially if there are road closures," Besong explained. "We (also) have to have law enforcement and a traffic plan. We need to make sure there is enough staffing. It does take a while for them logistically to get (an event) staffed."

Besong also said traffic plans for any event must be reviewed and authorized by the county engineering department, which can take multiple weeks.

Powers also said the event organizers did not have the required liability insurance needed for a march in the township. In an effort to help the event organizers find a suitable location, Powers said his staff recommended the Rob Fleming Aquatics Center parking lot as well as possibly shifting the event to Harris County.

"(Our) Staffers suggested the march relocate to Harris County," Powers added. "We continued to work with the group until March 8."

Baker said she and other organizers were thankful for the efforts from township staff to help make the event happen despite the short notice.

"They could not have been more supportive," she said of township officials.

Baker also said because the Parkland shooting happened on Feb. 14, the March For Our Lives protest naturally could not have been planned with 90 days advance notice.Samuel Okunola shares the frustration of many Nigerians with the man he voted for three years ago, President Muhammadu Buhari. The 52-year-old tailor no longer feels he can support him in elections next year, but he doesn't see an alternative.

"I can't vote for Buhari in 2019," Okunola said in an interview at his shop in the upscale Victoria Island district in Lagos, Nigeria's biggest city. "I'm looking for someone with compassion for the plight of Nigerians. I pray God produces this person before the elections."

Time is running out for that person to emerge, with elections due in February. However much Buhari's APC takes the blame for overseeing the most severe economic slump in 25 years, failing to end security threats such as the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency and being unable to stop daily power cuts and fuel shortages in Africa's biggest oil producer, there's no sign of a significant threat from the opposition.

While Buhari, 75, hasn't said if he'll seek re-election, he will start the race with a clear advantage unless opposition parties in Africa's most populous nation find their champion soon. The main challenger to the president's All Progressives Congress should be the People's Democratic Party, which remains scarred by a reputation for incompetence and corruption that led to its ouster from power in 2015.

"If the opposition was organized, they would've been able to deliver a killer blow to this government," said Cheta Nwanze, an analyst at Lagos-based business advisory SBM Intelligence. "No party seems poised to do so at the moment."

Part of the PDP's challenge is that it ran Nigeria since the end of military rule in 1999 until its defeat three years ago and left behind most of the seemingly intractable problems that the Buhari administration now faces.

"The PDP's main problem is that it has not been able to shake the perception of a fundamentally corrupt party built on rent-seeking," said Amaka Anku, head of Eurasia Group's Africa Practice.

PDP spokesman Kola Ologbondiyan said the party is meeting with voters across the nation and is confident that it will win support.

"We are lucky that Nigerians have seen through the lie of the APC and they are rallying to the People's Democratic Party," he said by phone on Monday. "A lot of the efforts the People's Democratic Party are making today are still in the background."

New movements have emerged in recent months that reject both main parties. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is touting the Coalition for Nigeria, the Nigerian Intervention Movement is headed by human-rights lawyer Olisa Agbakoba, and the Red Card Movement is led by Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former minister and ex-vice president of the World Bank.

"I don't think analysts realize the depth of dissatisfaction citizens out there on the streets have with the political class in our country," Ezekwesili said by phone on Sunday. "The disappointment as a result of the dismal performance is very, very deep."

Yet for a so-called third force to organize a successful campaign across 36 states is a tall order.

"It doesn't seem other opposition parties have developed the necessary mechanisms at a national level to contest the dominance of these two parties for the time being," said Imad Mesdoua of London-based Control Risks Group.

So the vote may be a straight fight between the PDP and the APC. The PDP will probably choose a Muslim northerner, someone like Buhari, as its candidate. That would be a bid to splinter the regional vote that went to Buhari in block vote in the last contest when he faced Goodluck Jonathan, who's from the mainly Christian south. Parties have until Oct. 7 to nominate their candidates, according to Nigeria's election body.

"Since 2015, there hasn't been any consensual, charismatic or national-appeal figure within the PDP that's emerged as the leader of the party," Mesdoua said. "But there's still time for this to happen."Hong Kong

Phan Van Khai, a Soviet-trained Vietnamese prime minister who helped his country transition away from a state-dominated economy and build a stronger relationship with the United States, died March 17 in Ho Chi Minh City. He was 84.

Khai's death was widely reported this week in Vietnam's state-controlled news media. Nhan Dan, the official newspaper of the country's governing Communist Party, reported that the cause was old age.

Khai, who served as prime minister from 1997 to 2006, had more formal training in economics than previous prime ministers, but also "a practical knowledge that was closely linked to the economic life of the people," said Le Dang Doanh, one of his former economic advisers.

Among other accomplishments, Khai helped Vietnam weather the impacts of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, Doanh said. He also endorsed a landmark 1999 law that made it easier for ordinary people to open businesses, Doanh added, and played a central role in negotiating Vietnam's 2007 entry into the World Trade Organization.

In 2005, a decade after Vietnam and the United States normalized diplomatic relations, Khai became the first prime minister of a unified Vietnam to visit Washington.

"We have a population of 80 million people, which means a huge market for American businesses," he told reporters after meeting President George W. Bush at the White House. "And these people are also very hardworking, creative and dynamic."

By 2016, Vietnam's population had climbed to about 93 million, and the value of trade with the United States had increased to $45 billion from $451 million in 1995.

Economic and security ties have grown in recent years between the two former adversaries, in part because leaders on both sides see a stronger relationship as a bulwark against growing Chinese political and economic influence.

Daniel J. Kritenbrink, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, said in a statement that Khai's 2005 White House visit "helped our two nations overcome our painful past and realize the unlimited possibilities of our bright future together."

"A humble but persistent reformer, his work will influence Vietnam for generations to come," Kritenbrink said.

Phan Van Khai was born on Dec. 25, 1933, in the Cu Chi district of Ho Chi Minh City, then called Saigon, according to the Vietnamese news media. He later studied economics and foreign languages at Plekhanov, a university in Moscow, and from 1965 to 1971 worked for Vietnam's state Planning Committee.

Khai was "sent to the southern battlefields" toward the end of the war against the United States, the state news media reported, without elaborating, and he later began rising through the ranks of Ho Chi Minh City's Communist Party bureaucracy.Morgan County

JACKSONVILLE POLICE

Arrests, Citations

 Sally A. Williams, 47, of 226 Green St. was arrested about 10:50 p.m. Thursday on charges of possession of methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia.

 Paula D. Belk, 50, of Ethel, Mississippi, was arrested about 3:05 a.m. Friday on a charge of criminal trespass to land.

Vandalism

 Someone damaged the front and back doors of a trailer between 10:15 p.m. Wednesday and 2:30 p.m. Thursday in the 300 block of Berkshire Lane, according to a report filed at 8:49 p.m. Thursday.

 A vehicle was damaged in the 1600 block of West Morton Avenue overnight Thursday after an egg was thrown on the vehicle causing damage to the paint, according to a report filed at 1:01 p.m. Friday.

SOUTH JACKSONVILLE POLICE

Arrests, Citations

 Daniel W. Hovendon, 45, of 327 Fulton St. was booked into the Morgan County jail at 2:38 a.m. Friday on a charge of possession of methamphetamine.

Compiled by Greg Olson and Samantha McDaniel-OgletreeSACRAMENTO  The police killing of an unarmed African American man in Sacramento has ignited protests around the state capital and energized members of the Black Lives Matter movement, who are demanding accountability from law enforcement.

Protesters planned to continue their demonstrations after police released body-camera footage earlier this week of Sundays shooting of Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old father of two, who was holding a cell phone in his grandmothers backyard when he was killed.

National attention continued to build Friday, as more than 100 protesters again shut down traffic in downtown Sacramento. Around noon, they began walking from the citys iconic yellow Tower Bridge to the state Capitol a mile and a half away.

What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! the group chanted in a call-and-response.

Two hours later, the crowd neared downtown freeways. California Highway Patrol officers closed many of the ramps and stood guard, preventing anyone from getting onto the freeway.

This is who we need to be mad at, said Nicole Miller, of Oakland, as she held a sign that read Stop Killing Us and pointed at the state Capitol. The system is broken and we want justice now!

Rev. Brian Levingston, a Sacramento resident, was also among the group protesting Clarks killing.

We shouldnt have to be here, not in Sacramento, not in 2018, he said. Were peaceful. We will remain peaceful. I know there are a lot of great leaders in this city, and I wish they were with me now.

The days action came less than 24 hours after hundreds of people took to the streets and disrupted traffic on Interstate 5 during the evening commute before blocking entry to the Golden 1 Center, where they delayed a Sacramento Kings game.

Tensions boiled over after police on Wednesday released body-camera and helicopter footage of the shooting. Clark was suspected of breaking into vehicles in a neighborhood in the southern part of the city and was being pursued by officers and a sheriffs helicopter.

A thermal camera on the helicopter shows a man scaling a fence in a backyard in the neighborhood, and deputies told police the suspect had picked up a toolbar and broken a window of a home.

Two officers then encountered the suspect in a backyard on the 7500 block of 29th Street, where Clarks grandmother, Sequita Thompson, lives. Police said they believed Clark was armed with a gun.

The videos show the officers following Clark into the unlit and overgrown yard. They take cover at the back corner of the home and, seconds after arriving at the scene, one of them yells Gun, gun, gun! The officers then fire 20 rounds.

Clark was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators did not find a gun but recovered a cell phone near his body.

Along with the videos, police released a statement after the shooting acknowledging the seriousness of this incident and the impact it has on our community.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said he was horrified by the videos of the shooting while addressing a crowd at City Hall on Thursday.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Twitter Thursday, Its time to acknowledge some hard truths  a suspect that looks like me would still be alive. Stephon isnt. That must change.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., tweeted that Clarks was death tragic and painfully familiar. She also called for a thorough and transparent investigation and swift accountability.

The Sacramento Police Department has not released the names of the officers who shot Clark, but Melissa Nold, a Bay Area attorney who works with civil rights attorney John Burris, told The Chronicle on Friday that officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet were involved in the shooting. The officers have two and four years of experience with the department, respectively. Neither officer was injured.

Nold said she watched the body camera footage with Clarks family members before the videos were released, and she saw the officers names on the digital files.

Shortly after the officers shot Clark, they muted the sound on their body-worn cameras, raising more questions for the family. The Sacramento Police Department has not responded to questions about the officers muting their cameras.

This is an impossible situation for the family. Theyre devastated, Nold said. From the community perspective, it gives us the opportunity to ask questions.

Burris firm was not hired by the Clark family, but Nold nevertheless said they will be involved in ongoing community actions.

Florida-based civil rights attorney Ben Crump will represent the Clark family, Burris told The Chronicle. Crump has represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, two black teenagers who were also shot and killed under controversial circumstances. In a statement, Crump called Clarks death an all-too-common tragedy.

It is yet another troubling example of a young, unarmed black man being shot by police under highly questionable circumstances, he said.

A GoFundMe page was set up to help Clarks family cover his funeral costs. The page had far exceeded its goal of $50,000 by Friday afternoon.For three weeks, people in the Slovak capital of Bratislava left work on Friday, headed to the main square and jingled their keys in unison to demand a new government.

This week, they got one. A new leadership was installed on Thursday after protests following the murder of a journalist and his fiancee led to the resignation of the country's three-time prime minister.

But rather than an isolated event, Slovakia is just the latest example of how Europe's east looks increasingly volatile with nations embittered over cronyism, allegations of corruption and a lingering mistrust of power.

From the Baltic to the Adriatic, the Iron Curtain that fell across the continent has been replaced by a belt of instability almost 30 years after communism ended. It's one that poses arguably the biggest challenge for western leaders who accuse newly re-elected Russian President Vladimir Putin's of meddling in the region to undermine the European Union and NATO.

As calls mounted for Slovakia's leadership to go, the prime minister in Slovenia suddenly resigned ahead of elections after being hit by a series of strikes. Both came after Latvia was plunged into turmoil in February when the central bank governor, a prominent post-communist figure, was briefly detained over bribery charges.

Then there are the nationalist governments that have been clashing with the EU over rule of law and taking in refugees, emboldened by the kind of populism that swept Donald Trump into the White House.

Poland this week stood defiant against EU claims its political takeover of the country's independent judiciary is illegal before proposing legislation with minor changes to the power grab. Polls show Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a supporter of Trump and Putin, is on course to win a third straight term next month in what he calls his "illiberal state."

"In some sense what's happening in the region is a legacy of communism," said Zbigniew Janas, one of the Solidarity union leaders who challenged the regime in Poland. "Children are being raised by parents who grew up in that system and there were millions of them. Democratic opposition was just a fraction of a percent."

It leaves countries that symbolized hope and the triumph of capitalism over dictatorship now looking more like a collage of misfits just as the EU tries to maintain unity after Britain's decision to leave the bloc.

The political ramifications are far greater, if not the economic ones. While the U.K. was never the most enthusiastic member, the former Soviet bloc is an integration project that's bigger than the Marshall Plan after World War II. It cost 229 billion euros ($282 billion) in aid alone for Poland, the largest net recipient of all 28 EU states.

Slovakia, Slovenia and Latvia are members of the single currency, the euro, and were staunch allies of Germany during the European debt crisis and Greece's collapse.

The disillusionment comes from the perception that politicians are on the make. There's no doubt prosperity has soared, with places like Bratislava now richer than parts of western Europe. Yet relatively low wages and hardship in countries like Poland displaced pro-EU governments.

While Slovakia has moved up the rankings in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, it's at the same level as Italy, the birthplace of the Mafia. Hungary was 66th last year, above only Bulgaria in the EU and down from 48th in 2014 when Orban won his last election.

"The level of corruption by the political elites in eastern Europe is much more serious than in the West and serves as a lightning rod to produce upheavals capable of washing away entire political systems," said Andras Biro-Nagy, a political analyst at Policy Solutions in Budapest. "There's basically not a country in the region that's been unaffected by this in the past decade."

The upheaval in Slovakia started in late February after a reporter and his wife-to-be were killed in what the police said was related to his work investigating mafia links to government officials. Protesters demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico after he led for 10 years. On Thursday, Slovakia's president appointed the cabinet of Peter Pellegrini, the new premier and a pro-EU ally of Fico.

Slovenian premier Miro Cerar resigned just months before the former Yugoslav state goes to the ballot box. Now a comedian-turned-mayor leads all polls, vowing to make sweeping personnel changes at top of institutions.

"People are people and I guess they just have to fall on their faces every now and then to realize that this is the wrong way to go," said Karel Schwarzenberg, a diplomat who was exiled under communism and supported dissidents from the bloc. "Of course I imagined things would have turned out a little differently 30 years ago."

---

Bloomberg's Andrea Dudik and Hayley Warren contributed.The Gettysburg Address. Hull House. The nations first African American president  and first lady.

All of these are due to Illinois bumper crop of political figures and politicians, who represent a diverse range of viewpoints and contributions throughout history.

Here are some of the leaders who came from our state:

.

Jane Addams

A social worker and a leader in the womens suffrage movement, Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She ran Hull House, a settlement house for poor immigrants in Chicago, and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. She also chaired a womens conference for peace in the Netherlands in 1919 and worked unsuccessfully to get the United States to serve as a mediator between warring countries in World War I. She died in 1935 in Chicago. Interstate 90 in Illinois is named after her.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Clintons 2016 Democratic nomination for president culminated a lifetime of public service, including terms as U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, a job where she chaired a task force that devised a plan to provide universal health care for Americans. Raised in Park Ridge, she moved to Arkansas in 1975 and married Bill Clinton, who became the 42nd U.S. president. Her first run for president was in 2008, when she lost the nomination to fellow Illinoisan Barack Obama.

Richard J. Daley

Born into a working-class Irish family in Chicagos Bridgeport neighborhood, Daley worked in the Union Stockyards to pay for law school. He was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, then became Chicagos 38th mayor with a 21-year tenure that ended with his death in 1976. Daley delivered key Democratic votes from Cook County in the 1960 presidential election of John F. Kennedy. He received national attention, and criticism, for authorizing the use of police force during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. His son, Richard M. Daley, followed him as Chicago mayor from 1989 to 2011.

Everett Dirksen

A native of Pekin, Dirksen helped steer the U.S. through the turbulent 1960s. As U.S. Senate minority leader, the Republican held a crucial role in passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. A World War I Army veteran, he was one of the Senates strongest supporters of the U.S. role in Vietnam. He died while in office in 1969 and is buried in Pekin. Did Dirksen say, A million here, a million there, pretty soon, youre talking real money? No written or recorded record has been found, reports The Dirksen Center in Pekin. While a few people emphatically recall him uttering the famous words, at least one remembers the senator denying it.

Stephen Douglas

A rising figure in Illinois early years, Douglas served in the Illinois House of Representatives and as Illinois secretary of state and Illinois Supreme Court associate justice, all by age 27. A few years later he was elected to the U.S. House, then the Senate and became one of the Democrats leaders. The chief nemesis and sparring partner of Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Douglas was nicknamed the little giant because of his diminutive stature and political forcefulness. Douglas (along with Lincoln) championed the Illinois Central Railroad, now part of the Canadian National Railway. He designed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which brought the question of slavery into the national spotlight by allowing slaves in U.S. territories. He died of typhoid fever at age 48 in 1861 and is buried on Chicagos South Side.

Betty Ford

Born Elizabeth Ann Bloomer in 1918 in Chicago, she moved with her family to Michigan before traveling at 18 to study dance in Vermont and New York. She married and divorced, then married Gerald Ford as he was campaigning for the U.S. House of Representatives. He later became the 38th president of the United States. As first lady, Betty was known for her frank and outspoken nature and irked some conservatives because of her support of socially liberal causes, including the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion access. Five years after leaving the White House, she founded the Betty Ford Center after recovering from alcohol and painkiller addiction. She died in 2011 at age 93; her husband died 74 days later.

Ulysses S. Grant

Born in Ohio, Grant served in the Mexican-American War and moved at age 38 with his wife to Galena to join the family leather goods business. The Civil War began a year later and Grant led a regiment south. Eventually promoted to commanding general and reporting directly to President Abraham Lincoln, he helped lead the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy. As the 18th president from 1869 to 1877, he oversaw Reconstruction. He kept a home in Galena. He died in 1885 and is, with his wife Julia, buried in Grants Tomb at the General Grant National Memorial in New York.

Jesse Jackson

Jackson lived under Jim Crow laws during his youth in South Carolina, but later participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches for civil rights and went to work for Martin Luther King Jr., which led Jackson to Chicago to establish an office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He attended the Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained, then later received a master of divinity degree. Jackson was at the Memphis hotel when King was assassinated. As one of the most influential civil rights leaders in the nation, he founded Operation PUSH and organized the National Rainbow Coalition, now merged as Rainbow/PUSH. Jackson ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 1984 and 1988 and later assumed a role in negotiating internationally for release of U.S. hostages and prisoners abroad. President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000.

Ethel Kennedy

A human rights activist, widow of late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and mother of 11, she was born Ethel Skakel in Chicago and later moved to Connecticut. She married Kennedy in 1950 and founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights after his assassination in 1968. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 by President Barack Obama.

Abraham Lincoln

A lawyer and member of the Illinois House of Representatives and U.S. House, Lincoln became the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincolns presidency was marked by the Civil War and he is credited with preserving the Union. His Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared that all slaves within the Confederate states are, and henceforward shall be free. Lincoln is considered a leader in building the new Republican Party. He is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.

Barack and Michelle Obama

Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, came to Chicago to work as a community organizer after graduating from Columbia University. He taught at the University of Chicago Law School before being elected to the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate. In 2008, he became the 44th president of the United States. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Michelle Obama was born in Chicago, attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and returned to Chicago to work at the law firm Sidley and Austin, where she met her husband. As first lady, she made healthy eating and exercise for children a focus.

Ronald Reagan

A former actor and California governor who became the 40th president of the United States, Reagan was born in Tampico and attended Eureka College. The two-term president was dubbed the great communicator and was credited with cutting taxes and bringing a quicker end to the Cold War with the Soviet Union. He survived an assassination attempt in 1981 outside the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., and died in 2004 after battling Alzheimers disease.

Paul Simon

Born in Oregon, Simon moved to Illinois and borrowed $3,600 to take over the Troy Tribune, becoming the nations youngest editor and publisher at 20 and building the newspaper chain to 14 weeklies in the late 1940s. He railed against gambling, prostitution and government corruption and, after Army service during the Korean War, began his political career in the Illinois House of Representatives. A Democrat, he was lieutenant governor under Republican Gov. Richard Ogilvie, the only time those two offices have been held by people from different parties. He was elected to the U.S. House, then the Senate, where he served for 12 years until 1997. Simon ran for president in 1988, but lost in the primary to Michael Dukakis. Simon lived in Makanda and founded the Paul Simon Institute at Southern Illinois University before his death in 2003.

Adlai Stevenson II

Born into a family of prominent Illinois politicians, Stevenson was raised in Bloomington, where his family ran The Daily Pantagraph, and spent his adult life calling a farm along the Des Plaines River near Libertyville his home. His grandfather Adlai Stevenson was vice president of the U.S. under Grover Cleveland, his father Lewis Stevenson was Illinois secretary of state, and his son Adlai Stevenson III was a U.S. senator from Illinois from 1970 to 1981. As for Adlai II, he was Illinois governor from 1949 to 1953 and was the Democratic nominee for U.S. president in 1952 and 1956. Unsuccessful in both attempts, he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and served during the Cuban missile crisis. He died in 1965 in London while traveling on U.N. business. Hes buried in Bloomington; the public Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Mettawa is named after him.Plano police said they arrested a man who they believe suffocated an 81-year-old woman with a pillow to steal her jewelry.

Authorities arrested Billy Kipkorir Chemirmir, 45, on Tuesday and charged him with capital murder.

When police arrested Chemirmir on an outstanding warrant, they found him in possession of a jewelry box containing an address, Dallas Morning News reported. Plano officers went to the address and found the body of Lu Thi Harris, 81, believed to have died of homicidal violence.

According to the Star-Telegram, police were following Chemirmir because he was a suspect in another case, an attempted murder of a 91-year-old woman.

DEADLY TOXIN: Texas man guilty of possessing 'Breaking Bad' poison ricin

Now, Plano police said they will examine 750 unattended deaths of elderly women in the area to see if they can connect any additional murders to Chemirmir.

"Suspect Chemirmir has worked as a healthcare worker and has a history of impersonating maintenance personnel at a retirement community in Dallas," Plano Chief of Police Gregory Rushin said in a news conference. "Chemirmir uses his healthcare experience to his advantage in targeting and exploiting seniors."

"We're worried that we could have more [cases]," he said. "We will go back to the very first time we have any kind of record in the Metroplex of him and begin searching from that point forward."

Above: See notable crimes that have taken place in the Houston-area in 2018.According to the latest polls, a majority of Americans see North Korea as the greatest immediate threat to the U.S. with as many as 73 percent concerned about Kim Jung Uns use of nuclear weapons. The world lives in fear that one more provocation in the form of a North Korean missile or nuclear test could lead to war on the Korean Peninsula.

It is true that tensions have lessened recently, with North and South Korea holding talks and, on March 8, President Donald Trump accepting an invitation to meet with Kim by May.

But past efforts to engage the North have often left participants unsatisfied and disappointed. If these talks fail or lead to frustration, the temptation to resort to military force could ratchet up quickly. And if such direct engagement efforts fall short of expectations, international arbitration might provide  as it has in the past  an alternative to conflict.

As scholars who study international law and Asian politics, our question is: Could arbitration help resolve the present crisis with North Korea?

In 1904, war between Russia and the United Kingdom appeared imminent after the Russian Baltic fleet fired on and severely damaged six English fishing boats, killing two fisherman and wounding six, on Dogger Bank, a few miles off the coast of England.

The British press demanded that the wretched Baltic fleet be destroyed, and the Royal Navy eagerly maneuvered to do just that.

War was avoided at the last minute when the foreign ministers of both countries agreed to arbitration presided over by commissioners from Britain, Russia, the United States, France and Austria. The result was a four-month interval that allowed time for tempers to cool, as well as a complete inquiry and an analysis of the incident.

Ultimately, Russia paid damages for the incident , and the U.K. and Russian governments were both able to step away from war while saving face with their public.

The United States, too, has been party to disputes settled by arbitration.

The most prominent are the Alabama claims in which, after the Civil War, the U.S. demanded reparations from the U.K. for having supplied and armed Confederate ships despite being ostensibly neutral. Such was the tension between the two countries that some American politicians suggested the U.S. annex Canada, then under British rule.

Instead, diplomacy prevailed, and the U.S. and the U.K. agreed in 1871 to an arbitration panel  composed of Switzerland, Italy, Brazil, the U.S. and the U.K.  that awarded $15 million to Washington and, critically, set the stage for a lasting peace between the two countries.

After this arbitration, politicians, including Ulysses S. Grant, thought the world could be entering an epoch when a court recognized by all nations will settle international differences so as to avoid major military conflict.

Indeed, such a court was created in 1899 at the Convention on Pacific Settlement of International Disputes and still exists with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which has been actively involved in settling current disputes in India, Malta, Italy, Timor, Australia and South Africa.

It is not far-fetched, given this positive historical track record, that arbitration could help avoid war on the Korean Peninsula today.

It is impossible to underestimate the enmity between Russia and the U.K. in 1904, or England and the U.S. in the mid-19th century, but arbitration still took place. All three countries were also extremely nationalistic in an age of great power expansion.

What it took to get to arbitration, in the case of Dogger Bank, was a third party, France, concerned about being dragged into a larger conflict  think China today  and individual government officials who were willing to honestly seek peace.

So, assuming willingness on the American and Korean sides, how might this work?

One advantage of such a commission is that it could make relatively objective, logical and practical decisions that politicians could never agree to if they wanted to keep their popular base and their defense establishments happy.

For example, it is likely that Trump could not, at present, agree to let North Korea keep nuclear weapons. At the same time, despite what Kim has told the South Koreans, his generals would probably not be happy with a unilateral promise to cease testing in the Pacific.

Supporting an international arbitration mechanism would certainly offer China a tempting opportunity to restore its international legal image following its rejection of the 2016 U.N. ruling against it and its claims in the South China Sea.

So who would sit on this arbitration panel? We believe it would make sense to decide this on the basis of the U.N. Security Councils permanent members and the leading countries in the region: China, Russia, France, the U.K. and Japan.

The next question is, what would such an arbitration court decide?

There are many scenarios, but the following would be realistic, fair and effective.

Many countries  from France, the U.K and the U.S. to India, Israel and Pakistan  have nuclear weapons. Their primary motive is not aggression but self-preservation. It seems reasonable that this, too, is North Koreas main motivation. All nations today are also acutely aware of what happened in Libya to Moammar Gadhafi and in Iraq when Saddam Hussein did not have weapons to defend against invasion. North Korea, therefore, could make a case to keep its present stock of nuclear weapons.

North Korea would freeze its intercontinental ballistic missile program (those missiles with minimum range of 3,400 miles) and promise not to further test nuclear weapons or to fire their missiles toward or over any other nations.

China would promise to come to the aid of North Korea if invaded  after all, it has come to its aid before, in 1950, during the Korean War. But, critically, the Chinese would also promise that if North Korea acted unilaterally or distributed its nuclear weapons to third parties, China would back the elimination of the present regime.

This last promise would be heralded as a serious shift in Chinas strategy and would send an unambiguous message to the North Koreans while signaling Chinas constructive engagement in favor of stability on the Korean Peninsula.

The point is that North Korea does not want China as an enemy. China, for its part, is loathe to see a nuclear-armed North Korea. This sort of declaration from China would help restore its influence while reining in the Kim regime.

Protecting Trumps desire to put America first seeks to avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary foreign entanglements, such as a significant war on the Korean Peninsula. At the same time, the president has an obligation to protect and defend the United States from a potential nuclear threat.

Although the arbitration route could be vulnerable to domestic political critiques of outsourcing sovereignty, it might, nonetheless, offer a way out of the current menu of unpalatable options.

It is certainly far better than a disastrous war.The Editorial Board in 2018 will be looking periodically at issues of unequal justice in Bexar County and Texas. We start the series by examining mental health in the justice system.

The states failure to meet the growing demand for mental health services has hoisted the responsibility on the criminal justice system.

It is a costly, inefficient and, yes, unequal way to operate.

To fix this, the Texas Legislature has to begin working closely with the newly formed Judicial Commission on Mental Health to come up with better alternatives  alternatives that do not involve incarceration.

In one sense, the state is already doing something.

Taxpayers are footing an estimated annual bill of $1.4 billion in emergency room costs and another $650 million through local justice systems to address mental illness and substance abuse disorders.

In Bexar County alone, 10 percent of the 31,438 individuals booked in the county lockup were diagnosed and treated for mental illness.

And, fortunately for Bexar County taxpayers, many of the people with mental health issues who came into contact with law enforcement were diverted to programs and never made it to jail.

Thats good because studies show that even one night in jail increases recidivism and each additional night increases it even more.

Diversion programs work, but the fact is that not all mental health patients have equal access. There are not enough beds or licensed health professionals to handle the caseload, especially for those who lack medical insurance.

During the last legislative session, state lawmakers earmarked funds to help communities establish programs for handling mental health-related issues. They also funneled money to provide lawyers and judges more training on mental health.

But heres the simple truth: It is not enough.

The state needs to fund more facilities. Grants for community programs usually require local jurisdictions to come up with matching funds, and some small, rural communities are simply not financially equipped to do that.

This is a statewide problem.

Providing more training for the legal community and the judiciary to identify and divert mental health patients from incarceration is great, but it only works if alternatives to jail are available.

A common complaint among judges on the front lines of the problem is that even if they find a bed for a defendant with mental illness, the stays are too short.

A patient who is admitted long enough to get stabilized usually is released with only a limited supply of medication and given a referral to a medical professional.

The judges are finding that, all too often, defendants lack the funds for prescription refills and their medical referrals are for months later. Predictably, they relapse before they can get further treatment  and often end up back in the cross hairs of law enforcement and the justice system.

It is a horrible cycle. It must be broken.

This lack of basic services for those with mental illness in our community is resulting in unequal justice  creating a revolving door into the criminal justice system. Their problems will not be resolved by incarceration.

Last month, the Texas Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals, the two highest appellate courts in the state, established the Judicial Commission on Mental Health.

The 14-member commission will be co-chaired by Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeff Brown of Houston and Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Barbara Hervey of San Antonio. The appointees have not been announced, but the groups first meeting is scheduled in April.

It is imperative that the commission get down to business quickly.

The 86th Legislature convenes in January. Legislative proposals that carry any kind of price tag need to get on the list early.

Texas has just over 2,000 state-operated, mental health beds, and the waitlist for these is long.

Hervey said she would like to investigate using old military bases for mental health facilities. She is also interested in establishing uniform procedures for dealing with individuals with mental health issues.

In recent years, the state has been successful in implementing uniform assessment forms, but the handling of cases varies greatly.

Only 185 of the 254 counties in the state employ a county psychiatrist.

Sharing information on defendants among jurisdictions and medical facilities is another major issue because of federal privacy laws regarding medical records.

Texas courts have been working to address the growing number of defendants with mental health issues coming through the system. However, many judges feel their hands are tied because they have few options.

Where do you send defendants who need more than a jail bed?

The Texas Legislature has been supportive of the effort, but not nearly enough  as the revolving door in jails for people with mental health issues attests.

There can be no more nibbling around the edges. Its time for state leaders to step up their game to meet the actual need.

This editorial is part of the Unequal Justice series, which explores the inequities in Bexar County's criminal justice system and how they can be fixed.The San Antonio Independent School District board of trustees took a drastic measure in voting to hand over its most troubled school to a New York-based charter school network, but it had few options.

P.F. Stewart Elementary School on the Southeast Side has failed to meet state accountability standards for five consecutive years and was facing closure or takeover by the state if it failed again this year.

Intervention was necessary for the school to remain open and allow children to attend class in their neighborhood. Going with the charter school contract at least will allow the district to retain some control over admissions and withdrawals, and have the final say on whether the charter continues to do business in the district.

Democracy Prep Public Schools will take over the school next fall. Under the terms of its contract with SAISD, the charter school must meet state accountability standards by 2020 and maintain a daily attendance rate of at least 95 percent.

Staffing, however, was non-negotiable for the charter school. It demanded complete control over its employees. Democracy Prep will hire its own teachers as at will employees. Some of the Stewart teachers could remain at the school, but SAISD has guaranteed employment to those who dont get hired by the charter school.

Stewart has had a long troubled history. Fewer than half of the children who have attended Stewart Elementary have gone on to earn high school diplomas, Superintendent Pedro Martinez said during a recent media briefing.

We need a better path for these children. I am not going to apologize for advocating this, Martinez said, noting that many of the Stewart Elementary students ready to go on to middle school have spent the past five years in an underperforming school.

Democracy Prep was chosen as a partner by SAISD because of its history of working with economically disadvantaged students, the high college going rate among its students, and the rigorous curriculum it implements using a longer school day.

The move has met with opposition from the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel, the SAISD-based teachers union affiliated with the Texas State Teachers Association, the Express-News reports.

The union cites a lack of transparency and community involvement in the process.

Perhaps this process could have gone a bit differently, but it does not change the fact that this school was in dire need of intervention. Unlike other school closings that have been renegotiated because of public outcry, there were few options in this situation.

Frankly, things should have never been allowed to get this bad. It does not bode well for traditional public schools when charter schools have to be called in to bail them out of a bad situation.

Regrettably, Stewart may not be the last school in this community requiring outside help when turnaround plans fail. Pointing fingers at previous school boards and superintendents, however, will get such schools nowhere.

Change is never easy, but the alternative is worse. Martinez and SAISD trustees deserve public support as they pursue an innovative, ambitious and somewhat controversial new path for Stewart Elementary.

Clearly, the schools 445 students deserve better than they have been getting.

That fewer than half of the students who go through Stewart graduate from high school is unacceptable.



Joy Cowley joins four other nominees, Marie-Aude Murail (France), Farhad Hassanzadeh (Iran), Ulf Stark ( Sweden) and Eiko Kadano (Japan), selected from authors from 33 countries.

New Zealand is gearing up to hear if beloved childrens author Joy Cowley (81) will win the worlds leading childrens literature award, the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, given by the global childrens literature organisation IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People).Joy Cowley joins four other nominees,Sweden) and Eiko Kadano (Japan), selected from authors from 33 countries. (NZ time 1.30am Tuesday 27 March).



To view the presentation via LIVE STREAMING click on LINK

Presented for an outstanding and lasting contribution to world childrens literature, the award will be announced at the Bologna International Childrens Book Fair on Monday 26 March 14:30 CET -To view the presentation via LIVE STREAMING click on Storylines, which is the New Zealand Section of IBBY, is delighted that its Patron Joy Cowley, so recently acknowledged with the Order of New Zealand, has now been acknowledged internationally with this shortlisting for the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award, says Storylines chair Dr Libby Limbrick.



No writer has done more to promote childrens reading and love of books with both her tireless advocacy and literally hundreds of published stories so appealing to two generations of young readers.

The Andersen award is judged by an international jury on each authors entire body of work, its aesthetic and literary quality, freshness, innovation, the ability to see the child's point of view and to stretch their curiosity, and the continuing relevance of the books to children and young people.



In a lifetime of writing for children, Joy Cowley, recently awarded New Zealands top honour, the Order of New Zealand, has published around 800 school readers, more than 40 picture books, some 20 novels for children and young adults, plays and poetry. Her books, especially the educational texts, have been translated into multiple languages, and she is regarded in many countries, particularly USA, as a leading advocate for childrens literacy.



Over more than two decades, she has travelled extensively, conducting workshops as well as consultancy work on writing for emergent readers in many countries including Korea, Singapore, Brunei and Hong Kong.



She is the second New Zealander to be acknowledged by IBBY. The Hans Christian Andersen Medal for writing was won by Margaret Mahy in 2006.



The 2018 award will be presented at the 36th IBBY Congress in Athens, Greece on Friday, 31 August. The organisation, the oldest and most prestigious body working for childrens books, has a membership of 75 countries.





For more information, please contact:

Dr Libby Limbrick, DipTch,PhD,MNZM

021 358 413 or 09 358 4431

l.limbrick@auckland.ac.nz



or Margaret Samuels, Lighthouse PR

027-417-7211

margaret@lighthousepr.co.nz



or Lorraine Steele, Lighthouse PR

021 859 805

For more information, please contact:Dr Libby Limbrick, DipTch,PhD,MNZM021 358 413 or 09 358 4431or Margaret Samuels, Lighthouse PR027-417-7211or Lorraine Steele, Lighthouse PR021 859 805 lorraine@lighthousepr.co.nz (Friday 23 March only)Dedicated farming news website, thatsfarming.com, are planning a vet takeover of their Snapchat account to reveal a day in the life of the typical farm vet.

Harry Ferguson and Roisin McCormack of Longford Animal Health will be front and centre on the @thatsfarming handle on Friday, March 23.

Also read: 84th County Longford Ploughing Championships return to Carrickedmond

Its late March, calving and lambing is in full swing, calf populations are peaking and disease pressure is constantly increasing; farms are stretched to capacity and vets are at their busiest.

Spring can be a very busy time of year on the farm especially on those farms that are calving cows and lambing ewes. If you've ever wondered how a vets day is structured during this busy spring period, this Snapchat takeover will reveal all.

The comprehensive Snapchat campaign is running for the six days with audience interaction and feedback encouraged. Wexford Hurling superstar, Jack O'Connor will be travelling with each vet to showcase their working day.

Also read: National ploughing supremo talks up Co Longford Championships

"We are really excited to partner up with MSD Animal Health and XL Vets once again for this great initiative. Last year, was the first time that anything like this was done on Snapchat. We gave people a chance to see what a large-animal vets day consisted of. This year, we have extended the campaign by an additional day and we have also added more diversity," Shane Ganley, General Manager of Thats Farming said.

"The aim is to get exposure for Veterinary Practitioners. We are going to have different content, more technical content which farmers will be able to learn from," William Minchin of MSD Animal Health added.

"We have a much wider spectrum in terms of demographics; we have a nice mixture of experienced vets, both male and female," he continued.

Also read: South Longford ploughman looks back on county's long held association with annual championships

The campaign generated a huge level of interest that stretched far beyond the core target audience of new and aspiring veterinarians. While we will shortly be recruiting for the 2018/19 Veterinary Graduate Programme we are also going to use the initiative as a launch pad for XLVets Skillnet Agri-Academy; a new online training platform for providing herd and flock health management skill with a 1st module on the management of anti-microbial resistance currently being devised, Geoff Dooley, CEO of XL Vets said.

A day in the life of a vet is proudly supported by XL Vets and MSD Animal Health.The head of Longford County Council has confirmed issues surrounding health and safety measures was the main factor behind the absence of Civil Defence volunteers carrying out front line duties during Storm Emma.

Media reports during the height of the siberian weather front suggested local authority officials had instructed members aligned to the civil defence not to take part in rescue efforts since they hadn't completed appropriate health and safety training for working in inclement weather.



It was claimed over 30 civil defence volunteers were instructed not to take part in rescue and support work in the community with up to six 4x4 vehicles lying idle as a consequence.



A statement issued to the Leader at the time claimed members connected to the Civil Defence were not in a position to carry out certain duties at this time.



It was an admission which led Cllr Mae Sexton to query the matter at last weeks monthly council meeting.



In response, Chief Executive Paddy Mahon attempted to verify the Councils position, insisting the local authority was compelled to follow correct work practices in events of such magnitude.



Before we carry out works we have to make sure the proper risk assessments are in place and before we carry out any works particularly in an environment where we have got a yellow weather alert escalated to a red virtually overnight a dynamic risk assessment must be carried out and that informs the decision you are making, he said.



We have to make sure the people who are working on behalf of ourselves are in the right place to deal with what mother nature was asking.

You may also like to read:

Civil Defence crews 'stood down' in Longford due to Storm Emma

REVEALED: Devastation to Longford roads caused by Storm Emma to cost taxpayer millionsOn 4 April, public sector workers in Denmark will be taking strike action in response to negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement. The government has reacted by threatening 440,000 public sector workers (of a total 825,000) with lockouts, which could take effect any time from 10 April. This could result in the biggest class conflict in 20 years. The impending confrontation bears major historical significance, because it marks the beginning of the end of 'class peace' and 'social partnership' in Denmark.

On 22 March, over 10,000 shop stewards from the public sector met in Fredericia for the biggest meeting of its kind in Danish history. Nurses, nursery teachers, unskilled workers, army personnel in uniforms and teachers of all sorts sat side-by-side, discussing the steps to take against the government offensive. There was a fighting spirit, and it is clear that the government will not have an easy time taking on the organised public sector workers.

Hundreds-of-thousands of public sector workers will strike over planned government lockouts / Image: public domain

The negotiations started in November/December 2017 in a toxic atmosphere. For decades, the public sector has faced cut after cut. Especially after the crisis in 2008, the frequency and intensity of cuts has sharply risen. The anger amongst the public sector workers is palpable. Talk to any of them and their frustrations pour out. Despite high-quality educations, a deep knowledge of their sector and a deep desire to carry out the work on hospitals, in schools and elsewhere, the constant cuts on the sector is making it an impossibility. Almost everybody is burnt out, and those who can are considering finding work elsewhere. The public sector is reaching breaking point.

Aggressive demands of the bosses

It is against this background of frustration that the employers (the state, in the final analysis) have presented their extremely aggressive demands for the new collective bargaining agreement. Their demands cover a wide range of issues for different sectors, but there are three main sticking points:

For the last half century, public sector workers have had a paid 29 minute lunch break. In reality it is not a break, since they often continue working over lunch. But just before the negotiations started, the state employer, Moderniseringsstyrelsen, run by Minister for Innovation, Sofie Lhde, announced that, from now on, they will not consider the paid lunch break a right in the collective bargaining agreement, but a fringe benefit than can be removed by any local state employer at a few weeks notice. To remove this right is equal to prolonging the working week by two-and-a-half hours without compensation: a 7.25 percent wage decrease in absolute terms. The unions will not accept this, and will demand that the paid lunch break be explicitly included in the text of the new collective bargaining agreement. The government claims that public sector workers owe money to the state. This is a technicality, but the point is that in 2008 the public sector won a wage increase after some bitter strikes, which put their wage growth on a par with the private sector. To catch up with the private sector, the growth in the public sector was higher for one or two years. Now the government uses 2008 (the low point just before the public sector wage growth caught up) as the base year for calculating the relative growth. From this calculation they claim that the public sector owes 1.6 percent, or 33bn kroner, which should be deducted from the wage growth in the next collective bargaining agreement. But if you look at the wage growth predicted for just a few years longer, the perspective for the public and private sector will be synchronous. The public sector workers simple demand the same wage growth as in the private sector. The teachers demand that their working hours and rules for lesson planning be part of the collective bargaining agreement and not dictated by the law, as has been the case since a brutal government lockout of the teachers union in 2013. In reality, they are demanding that the same conditions apply to them as to other public sector workers.

These demands have been agreed by all public sector unions, who for the first time in history stand united. Until now the government has not been willing to engage in meaningful negotiations. They just keep repeating their initial demands. The public sector workers face a purely defensive struggle. But the government seeks a confrontation, as evidenced by the lockout warning. So the concrete demands are only one part of the issue. More importantly, this struggle is a defence of the right to organise and make collective bargaining agreements.

There are 750,000 organised workers in the Danish public sector / Image: public domain

Because of the scale of the Danish public sector, the strikes and the lockout will cause Danish society to grind to a halt. Everything indicates that the right-wing government wants to crush the unions and the workers in the public sector. There is little-to-no opposition in parliament from the Social Democracy, which has voted for the lockout alongside the right wing. The aim of the government is to hypocritically use the chaos caused by the total lockout to justify a direct intervention: using the courts to impose their will and fix their demands in law, superseding negotiations with the unions.

The trade union bureaucracy, which has been a fellow traveller of the ruling elite and the state since the 1930s, is now forced to fight to maintain its own position. The whole institutionalised class collaboration system, which is founded on the official cooperation of the unions, the employers and the state, is nearing its end.

The long class peace

The public sector in Denmark is huge. With 750,000 organised workers out of Denmark's total population of 5.6m, the state and municipalities are collectively the biggest employer in the country. The workers are distributed over schools, nurseries, universities, public transportation and the healthcare sector. They are the foundation on which the social democratic welfare state was built. The postwar boom, which in Denmark lasted from 1956 to 1973, made Danish capitalism wealthy and the ruling class was able to give concessions to the Danish workers and thereby buy relative class peace.

The concessions were won by struggle but the gains were negotiated through the state, where the Social Democracy and the union bureaucracy, representing 60-80 percent of the workers, were negotiating on behalf of the working class. The state became involved in everything, through this collaboration between the capitalists, the workers movement and state bureaucracy. Danish capitalism gained class peace and workers gained one of the highest living standards in the world, with free education, free healthcare and relatively decent pensions for all. But this form of social democratic, civilized capitalism has been under pressure for many years. The coming struggle reveals it is at breaking point.

The collaboration between the three pillars of the welfare state, the state bureaucracy, the trade union bureaucracy and the employers organisations, has a long history. This system is called The Danish Model. This model traces its roots back to 1899 and the reformism of the Danish Social Democrats, which even at that time were amongst the most right-wing in the Second International. Through many generations, and betrayals of the working class, the Danish Model has been honed to become one of the smoothest and most efficient systems of ruling over the working class in Europe.

For many years this model only applied to the private sector. But 40 years ago, in a move to get rid of the lifetime job security of the civil servants, the public sector was remodeled along the same lines.

The union bureaucrats, politicians and capitalists used to be a tight-knit group. They shared the same living conditions, whereby (for example) the leader of the nurses union earns 532,000 Euros every year (plus benefits). By contrast, an ordinary nurse earns around 47,000 Euros a year. For generations, the top levels of the union leadership were treasured partners of the ruling class, delivering relative class peace by holding back the working class.

For the last few decades, the unions have thus become completely passive and have not led any struggles. Instead, they have moved sharply to the right, which has also precipitated a gradual decline in membership. The union apparatuses are still enormous, but they increasingly resemble an inverted pyramid. At the same time, the economic foundations of the welfare state (the post-war boom) have long ceased to exist. Governments all over the world, and also in Denmark, are turning to austerity measures, to which the unions are an obstacle. These two factors  the capitalist crisis and the weakness of the unions  has led the ruling class and its government to conclude that it is easier and less costly to push the parasitic union bureaucracy to one side, and instead dictate wages and working conditions directly via the courts.

The weakness of the unions

In 1985, this dynamic led to a pre-revolutionary situation developing in Denmark, when collective bargaining negotiations developed into country-wide strikes, which moved towards a general strike. Back then, the working class turned an economic struggle for a 35-hour week into an offensive against the Danish brand of Thatcherism: the Conservative Schluter government. This regime tried to impose its demands by forcing them through a government intervention. This struggle was the peak of the Danish trade union movement in the post-war period. Despite the enormous energy and will to sacrifice on part of the workers, the Stalinist Danish Communist Party and the union tops succeeded in derailing the movement, which led to its defeat.

A confrontation between the unions and the Conservative Schluter government resulted in a pre-revolutionary situation in 1985 / Image: Lennart Perlenhem

The demoralisation and general ebb of the class struggle in the 1990s reinforced the grip of the right wing over the unions and thereby their general rightward drift. Since then, the unions have for the most part delivered defeats and rotten compromises with the state and the capitalist class. All talk of class struggle has been treated with contempt and they have become terrified of calling their members onto the streets, insisting instead that salaries and working conditions can only be settled through peaceful bargaining with their friends and colleagues, the capitalists.

From being organs of class struggle, the unions have increasingly turned into glorified insurance companies, only handling unemployment benefits and legal cases for the workers. As a consequence they have lost hundreds-of-thousands of members to yellow unions, as well as their own fighting traditions. But now, the onslaught of the employers has forced them to fight, because the capitalists and the state have decided that friendly relations can no longer be maintained.

The end to social partnership

Under the impact of the crisis of capitalism and seeing the weakness of the trade union bureaucracy, the Danish ruling class is being divided into two camps: the old and new school of capitalists. The old-school group wants to continue collaboration with the union leadership, because they have learned from history that the reformist leaders of the workers movement are their greatest allies against class unrest and ultimately revolution. But this comes at a high price. The remit of the collective bargaining agreements keep growing and getting more complex, thus costing time and effort and reducing the flexibility of the workforce.

The new breed of capitalists look to Britain, where the unions have been severely undermined since the 80s. Why should they respect or include a weak union leadership that fears mobilising the workers? What power does this union bureaucracy represent anyway? These people feel it is time to free themselves of the Danish Model and the long and troublesome negotiations and friendly dinners with the union bureaucrats, whom the employers rightly consider to be parasites. What we are witnessing today is this layer of capitalists getting the upper-hand in the internal balance of forces within the ruling class.

Testing ground

The first shots against the Danish Model were fired in 2013. The target was primary school teachers. They were to serve as a testing ground for the current onslaught against all the public sector workers. Since the beginning of the 90s, the influence of the public sector unions had been a thorn in the side of the state bureaucracy. But different governments, both social democratic and liberal, refused to take on the public sector unions, fearing the consequences of struggle. But with the Social Democratic government coming to power under Helle Thorning-Schmidt (married to a certain Stephen Kinnock) in 2011, they found a willing puppet.

In the months leading up to the collective bargaining negotiations in 2013, the Social Democratic government waged a vicious smear campaign against the teachers, saying they were lazy and so on. At the collective bargaining negotiations, the state and municipal employers refused to make any concessions at all. It was their way or the highway! This was highly unusual. The union leaders were taken completely by surprise. Why would the employers not listen to reason?

The reason was, that the government was consciously aiming for a breakdown of negotiations and a conflict, which would enable them to step in and dictate the working conditions through law rather than the collective bargaining agreement.

The Social Democratic government of Helle Thorning Schmidt crushed a teachers' strike in 2013 / Image: Flickr, World Economic Forum

So all primary school teachers who were members of the union (the vast majority) were locked out for four weeks until the Social Democratic government stepped in to restore order through direct intervention. This successful (social democratic) operation is now what is in store for the entire public sector.

The steam-rolling of the primary school teachers was a big factor contributing to the unpopularity of the Social Democratic government, and support for that party collapsed amongst the teachers. In the 2015 elections a right-wing minority government came to power in Denmark. And this government knows that in the coming struggle against almost a million public sector workers, it can count on the loyal support of the Social Democrats in opposition.

Playing with fire

The consequences of a defeat for the public sector workers will be far-reaching. If the public sector workers are defeated, the employers in the private sector will be emboldened to follow the same procedure. The Danish working class is being forced to fight to maintain its semi-civilised living conditions or suffer the same fate as the workers in Britain and Germany, who have seen their living standards decline significantly for the past 20 years.

The break-up between the three pillars of the Danish welfare state is an event of historical significance. And the sheer size of the lockout is breathtaking. It will be the biggest lockout in Danish history.

The current, right-wing government is very weak and unpopular. They have been emboldened by the pathetic nature of the union bureaucracy, but they are playing with fire. Until now they have been following the playbook from 2013, which means that they will probably let the struggle break out and use the ensuing chaos to justify direct government intervention, in which they will dictate wages and conditions. The government feels safe, since they are confident the Social Democrats will support them. But a government intervention in a trade union struggle of this size could backfire. Already, the Social Democrats have lost over 5 percentage points since January bringing them to 25 percent approval, due to their support for the lockout.

Years of attacks and betrayals by all parties and leaders have left a simmering discontent within the working class. There is no guarantee that the workers will respect a government intervention, which would immediately declare a just struggle for decent wages and conditions illegal. They might not accept the governments dictates to return to work. The union leadership could easily lose control over the workers, resulting in a massive illegal strike wave.

The politicians are the most hated people in Denmark and have been so for a long time. The government is very weak and ridden with scandals. It can only stay in power because there is no real opposition in the parliament apart from the relatively small, left-wing, Unity List (with support of around 9 percent). A serious fight on behalf of the working class could realistically trigger a crisis, topple the government and open up a whole period of political instability.

The Danish section of the IMT, Revolutionre Socialister, which is quite young in composition, and its student network, Marxistiske Studerende, have taken the initiative to start a broad solidarity network (SNAS) to forge unity between students and public sector workers. They have worked especially diligently in the universities, to bring the students to the front-lines of the coming struggle, alongside the workers.

Our Danish comrades have launched a broad solidarity network (SNAS) to forge unity between students and public sector workers / Image: SNAS

Given the widespread anti-establishment mood amongst the youth and the treacherous passivity of the traditional political and student organisations, this campaign has been growing rapidly. Within a little more than two weeks of activity, the SNAS facebook page has reached more than 1000 likes and the groups have over 500 members on the ground. SNAS groups have been formed in three faculties in Copenhagen University, Roskilde University, Syddansk Universitet and Aarhus University. This represents all-but-one of the major universities in Denmark, and other groups have been launched in high schools. SNAS is clearly operating within a huge vacuum and more groups of students are expected to join in the next period. All of this is an anticipation of the explosive events ahead.

The perspectives for the class struggle in Denmark have been turned upside down in a few weeks. The reactionary government seems intent on unleashing the pent-up rage of the Danish workers, who have held their heads low for 10 years. The coming struggle confirms what the IMT has repeated on many occasions: sharp and sudden changes are implicit in the current situation  in all countries  even peaceful, social democratic paradises like Denmark.

Our solidarity campaign is active in nearly all the major Danish universities / Image: SNASA persons risk of developing the common heart disorder atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat, may be increased if they also have depression, according to new data. Share on Pinterest If you have depression, you may be at increased risk of A-fib. These data were recently presented at the American Heart Associations (AHA) 2018 scientific sessions on Epidemiology and Prevention | Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health, held in New Orleans, LA. The AHAs 2018 Heart and Stroke Statistical Update claims that 2.7 million people in the United States have atrial fibrillation (A-fib). A-fib occurs when the upper chambers of the heart spasm, which therefore prevents them from moving blood into the hearts lower chambers. When blood collects in the hearts upper chamber it can clot, which may lead to stroke. Figures from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) show that, across the U.S., more than 16 million adults experience depression. And, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during any 2-week period, 7.6 percent of people over the age of 12 have depression. The causes of depression are not well understood, but scientists believe that psychosocial, environmental, behavioral, and genetic factors all play a role.

Depression makes A-fib 30 percent likelier In the recent study, researchers from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles analyzed data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) project. More than 6,600 U.S. citizens from a variety of ethnic groups took part in the MESA, and they were followed for 13 years. The participants were aged 62, on average, and they were free from heart disease at the start of the study. Those who took antidepressants and who had the highest scores on a clinical screening test for depression were found to be at more than 30 percent increased risk for A-fib, compared with participants with low scores for depression and who did not take antidepressants. The study was unable to pinpoint exactly how heart function may be disrupted by depression. But, the researchers hypothesize that inflammation and increased levels of some hormones could prevent the heart from being able to maintain a regular rhythm. Our findings, explains lead investigator Dr. Parveen Garg, identify a large portion of Americans who may be at an increased risk for developing atrial fibrillation and who may benefit from more targeted efforts to prevent this arrhythmia. If our findings are affirmed in future studies, especially those that formally assess for clinical depression, then we will need to see if treating depression may, in fact, lower the risk for atrial fibrillation. Dr. Parveen GargAdvertisement

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that. It also describes monkeypox as "emerging zoonosis."The warning issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warning targets several countries in Africa. The disease is most prevalent in the Democratic Republic of Congo where more than 1000 cases are recorded within a year since 2016.The number of cases reported from other regions of Arica includes the Central African Republic (19 cases), Liberia (2 cases), Nigeria (more than 80 cases), Republic of Congo (88 cases) and Sierra Leone (one case).The organization reports multiple concerns that are making the control of the disease difficult, which includes the fact that many of the countries affected lack the knowledge, experience, and facilities to respond quickly to outbreaks. This increases the likelihood that the virus will continue to spread.Andrea McCollum, epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an expert in pox viruses said that scientists are still unsure what is behind the rise in the number of monkeypox cases.Source: MedindiaAdvertisement

The delay in diagnosis and treatment was for more than twelve weeks in 23 per cent of the patients."Early detection may be crucial for successful breast cancer treatment. Therefore, it's important to influence women's awareness of the symptoms and their attitudes towards treatment," said doctoral student Nitin Gangane in a statement released by the Umea University in Sweden."It's urgent to have a national breast cancer programme in India, while at the local level, we need to raise awareness among women about breast cancer," Gangane said.The team performed two studies including over 1,000 women in the mainly rural-dominated district of Wardha in the state of Maharashtra in central India.Hardly any women in the studies self-examined their breasts. Every third woman had not even heard of breast cancer.On the other hand, most of the women showed a great deal of interest in learning more."Illiteracy, ignorance, poverty and superstition regretfully lead to many women delaying their contact with the health care system too long," Gangane said.In addition, no pain in the breast lump delayed a visit to the doctor.Incorrect initial diagnosis or late referral for examination led to diagnostic delay, while the high costs delayed treatment.According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) India is likely to have more than 17.3 lakh new cases of breast cancer and over 8.8 lakh deaths due to the disease by 2020.It also revealed that the average age of death from the disease has shifted from 50 years to 30 years.Source: IANSWomenyou can't live without them! Every woman is different, yet the way to her heart is often the same. Impressing a woman is easy but keeping her happy is the real challenge. Without any further delay, we bring to you great tips and lessons from famous men around the globe on how to treat a woman like the queen that she is! These men are the greek gods of our world who've been in and out of love, but one thing that has remained true for them is  they have remained chick magnets for ever, not just due to their looks but because of who they are as people, as lovers. Coming to you, straight from the horse's mouth.

1. George Clooney

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George Clooney tops our list as he is a perennial inspiration to every guy wanting to impress a woman. He has ardently proved that age is just a number and women are not just attracted to youth and vigour, but wisdom and self-confidence too!

Star Advice: One of the most famous quotes by this silver-haired sex symbol about picking up women is: I'm different from a lot of guys. I don't go up to girls I don't know in a bar and ask them to dance. I never have. Never. I've never gone up to somebody I don't know and asked them out. I just won't do it and never did [...] So in terms of, like, "Hey, you want to go out?" I don't do it. So, guys take note and ditch being clingy and perk up your pick-up line game.

One lesson that guys can learn from this sexy man is the fact that he proclaims to be old school when it comes to women. He prefers to keep his personal life super private and that is one quality which ensures that relationships don't get blown out of proportion. Believe us, old school never goes wrong.

2. Ranveer Singh

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The guy who currently tugs at the heart of not only Deepika Padukone, but the entire nation right now! Clearly, Ranveer Singh doesn't believe in being polite and low-key when it comes to expressing his love for the fairer sex. The one main lesson to grab from his bag is his flamboyant show of affection towards any woman he has dated.

Star Advice: He leaves no stone unturned when it comes to praising his ladylove Deepika. He once openly proclaimed that I knew she (Deepika) will be easy to work with, but you can't get your eyes off the screen when you are looking at her. I love what I see. I only watch Deepika when I see the monitor. Which woman doesn't dig a guy who not only knows how to love her, but won't shy away from telling the world about it.

3. Shah Rukh Khan

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If you talk about romancing a woman, and you don't mention the king of romance, King Khan, you are committing a sacrilege. Shah Rukh defines dedication and loyalty, not just to his work but to the woman in his life, Gauri Khan. He not only defines mushiness for women, but also defines the 'ideal man'. Loyal husband and doting father, take a cue from him guys, and when you are sure of that special someone in your life, never be afraid to commit. Women like guys who are keepers.

Star Advice: He was once quoted as saying, The reason why women love me is that in my eyes, they see respect...I love them from my heart. About any affairs, he just has one answer always, Gauri has been my first and last girlfriend.

4. Robert Downey Jr.

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This kickass Greek god can make it to any woman's fetish list. He is desirable, badass and looks slick in every frame. The Iron Man has many cards up his sleeves when it comes to his relationships. Behind that body of steel is a soft heart that can melt any woman.

Star Advice: He has often stated that he believes in old school romance. He was quoted as saying The old saying is true. Behind every good man, there is an incredible woman.

All guys can take a cue from the 'Avengers' star about what it is to be a keeper. Love thy woman, and give her credit for what she deserves.

5. Leonardo Di Caprio

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He is not just the wolf of Wall Street , but also a wolf when it comes to being in relationships, on and off. The heartthrob from 'Titanic' is a famous ladies man. Leonardo has a very impressive profile as an actor, an environment activist and a very handsome, desirable man! His concept of marriage is still bleak but his take on relationships is pretty crisp.

Star Advice: Di Caprio has a stark approach when it comes to his relationships. He once confessed, I'm shy, but when the time comes to be wild, I'm fun-loving, adventurous, and mysterious. Now you know, being slow is the key; please don't hurry into things and freak out the girl! Patience always pays, always.

6. Brad Pitt

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This Hollywood hunk is a perfect concoction of everything a woman dreams of. From being a loving partner to Angelina Jolie, to being a caring father, this 'Mr. And Mrs. Smith' star has always been protective of his personal life and space. He defines warmth, and is the epitome of a supporting partner. You can learn the art of making your lady your muse, and being supportive of her through life, from this yummy daddy.

Star Advice: His take on love is very fiery indeed as he once said, The woman is the reflection of her man, and the man of his woman. If you love her to the point of madness, she will become it; as will you.

7. Ryan Gosling

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This chocolate boy owns the term 'boyfriend material' courtesy his irresistibly cute roles in various love flicks like 'The Notebook' and 'Crazy, Stupid, Love'. Chances are, your girl is already hooked to him. What is so obsessive about him you ask? Apart from his insanely handsome looks, he has a very pleasing personality that puts every woman at ease. He has often been quoted as claiming to do roles which have strong women characters because he is surrounded by strong women in real life.

Star Advice: On that one quality that he thinks clicks for him when it comes to women, he stated, If I have any particular appeal to women, maybe it's because I listen more than other guys do and appreciate how they think and feel about things."

Listen more, speak less, got it? Good.What has the quantum age given us? Microwave ovens, GPS navigation, MRI scans, LED displays, satellite TV, solar cells, smartphones... We could go on for quite a while here. The truth is that only few fields of science have had so much impact on our world as quantum mechanics.

Granted, philosophers and scientists have been raising the whole 'what makes up our universe' question for as long as humans have been around, but things sure picked up around the 19th century, when a bunch of new discoveries led to others, in a kind of domino effect that gave us a pretty decent understanding of the building blocks of our universe.

You've heard the names, perhaps in your high school physics lessons, or on TV and in books and magazines  Einstein (as famous as a rock star), Schrodinger (wins credit not just for his theories but for making his work perfect for a series of science jokes), Heisenberg (Yes, Walter White picked his street name in his honour), Oppenheimer (regarded as the 'father' of the nuclear bomb)  these brainy chaps opened the doors to our modern-day age.

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So when you go gaga over unbelievably crisp OLED displays or futuristic cars that use lasers to navigate highways without human intervention, give a silent thanks to the legendary boffins who came up with some seriously groundbreaking ideas that eventually gave birth to so much of the tech we use today.

So here's a very brief look at the stars of the atomic age and what they did to change the course of humanity.

Laying The Foundations: Maxwell, Hertz, Thomson And Roentgen

Einstein might be the most legendary of the atomic age physicists, but as with nearly everything else in the world of science, the wild-haired rockstar scientist was building on the work of other geniuses.

First, there was James Clerk Maxwell, who combined the theories of electricity, magnetism, and light to outline the concept of electromagnetic waves, creating the foundations of modern quantum physics in the process. Then, in 1887, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz not only proved Maxwell's theories in the lab, but also theorized the photoelectric effect (later proved by Einstein). Other milestones came thanks to Wilhelm Roentgen, who discovered X-Rays, and JJ Thomson, who discovered the electron. The building blocks of what was to come? You bet!

Now, all this might seem rather basic to you, but just imagine yourself back in the 19th century! We're talking about a world that might as well be a different universe  there was no Google to help you, no airlines to get you to a conference without much effort, and no Instagram where you could tag your fellow scientists when having a stein of lager.

Max Planck Has A Rather Brainy Idea

 Wikimedia Commons

As the 20th century rolled around, big things were waiting to happen. Max Planck kicked off a storm: While studying 'black body radiation', he encountered results which made him come up with the first ever theory of quantum physics  that energy was only transmitted in 'packets' (quanta). Planck probably didn't even realise it then, but his work is what led to Einstein's theory of relativity!

Einstein Has A Very Good Year

 Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile, Albert Einstein (yes, he of E=MC2 fame), was also at work. In 1905 (at the young age of 26), Einstein published the research that was to eventually win him the Nobel Prize (nope, it wasn't for the theory of relativity)  proving the photoelectric effect and verifying Max Planck's work. But that's not all - Einstein's work also suggested that light had a dual nature - it was a particle, and at the same time, a wave.

Einstein was done, but not yet. In a year that proved remarkably productive, he also published invaluable studies on Brownian Motion, and of course, his Special Theory of Relativity, which has to be the closest a scientific theory (and one that's incomprehensible to most of us) can get to becoming a pop culture phenomenon!

Heisenberg's Pretty Sure This Time While Schrodinger's Cat Is Still Alive

 Famousscientists

We were wrong. Einstein's not the only scientist who's cool enough to have his equations and theories feature on t-shirts. You see, there's Werner Heisenberg, whose Uncertainty Principle is another legendary theory - even if distilled down to a very basic, quip-on-a-shirt level. And then there was Erwin Schrodinger, who's more famous (amongst laymen at least, we must clarify, before a student of physics gets mad at us) not so much for his Nobel-winning work on 'wave equations' but for a legendary thought experiment known as 'Schrodinger's Cat'.

Oppenheimer's Not Happy With The Bomb

 Wikimedia Commons

He missed out on the Nobel Prize. Oppenheimer worked with some of the greatest names of the day - Max Born and Wolfgang Pauli, but to someone who's not studied physics, he's most famous for heading the Los Alamos Laboratory, where he ran the Manhattan Project, the top-secret American effort to develop a nuclear bomb before Nazi Germany. You might not remember him from your old history or physics textbooks, but Oppenheimer was the chap who quoted the Gita upon witnessing the first-ever nuclear explosion. But the Manhattan Project also threw up another legendary physicist - Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate, famous author and world-class prankster (Serious, folks, do yourself a favour and go read his books!).

Indian Scientists Did Some Stellar Work

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But it wasn't just European scientists who were picking up accolades with their work on quantum and atomic physics. Our chaps, too, were doing some great stuff! In 1930, CV Raman was awarded the Physics Nobel for his work on light scattering (lots of modern scientific equipment - from bomb scanners to cutting-edge forensic and health diagnostic tools - is based on his discoveries). Then there was SN Bose, who worked under the tutelage of Marie Curie and Einstein and even has a subatomic particle (boson) named after him!

The Work Never Stopped

But the quantum age didn't end with development of nuclear weapons - instead, it's ticking along just fine, and we're closer than ever to unlocking the mysteries of our universe (while getting some pretty neat tech along the way). Even as we speak, the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, is being used by scientists to study the conditions that may have existed after the Big Bang! And in what was a very momentous development, the 2016 discovery of gravitational waves proved something Einstein suggested a century ago.

 Reuters

And before we sign off, a moment of silence for the remarkable Stephen Hawking, whose work on Black Holes and the creation of our universe introduced a deeply mysterious science in a very layman-friendly manner to millions of readers across the world!UPPER THUMB  Congress has fixed the so-called Grain Glitch in the omnibus spending bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives this week.

Supporters of the fix feared that the unintended mistake in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act could disrupt the agricultural industry.

Patrick OConnor is a partner at CGCN Group, and served as the spokesman for dozens of independent businesses that feared they would have been hurt if Congress did not act to fix the glitch.

Thousands of independent businesses can finally breathe a sigh of relief, OConnor stated in a press release.

By stepping up to correct this unintended mistake, Congress will shield thousands of small businesses across the country from the heartache of closing their doors, while preserving an important tax deduction for farmers and farmer-owned cooperatives and ensuring the long-term stability of Americas agricultural economy," O'Connor added.

A letter was recently sent to the congressional leadership by 78 businesses that were impacted by the unintended drafting error.

Three of those were from Michigan: Star of the West Milling Co. of Frankenmuth; Michigan Agricultural Commodities of Lansing; and Brown Milling Inc. of Mt. Pleasant.

Gary Kaufman, vice president of grain marketing for Star of The West, told the Tribune that this fix puts privately-owned companies back on an even playing field with cooperatives.

The glitch allowed growers in private, independent companies to deduct 20 percent of their net business income, while a grower in a co-op could deduct 20 percent of gross payments received on sales, Kaufman said.

"The bottom line is it gets us all onto an even playing field," Kaufman said. "We don't want our government to dictate where we can do business at."

"It's been a battle for the last three months to get it fixed we're finally on an even playing field," he added.

The letter stated, in part: We are writing on behalf of thousands of independent businesses that help farmers, ranchers and dairy producers across the United States deliver their products to the world. We are concerned that language in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has fundamentally disrupted the agricultural economy by giving farmers, ranchers and dairy producers a substantial tax incentive not to sell their products to thousands of independent companies across the American heartland.

The letter urged Congress to fix the glitch.

If Congress does not fix this unintended glitch in the law, countless businesses including thousands of small, family-owned independent companieswill be forced into costly restructuring, selling to rivals or going out of business, the letter stated. This will not only destroy home-grown jobs and rural economies, but it will also disrupt the supply chain for agricultural products and destabilize the market for everything from milk and grain to meat and poultry,"

This fix is a win-win solution that levels the playing field for co-ops and independent operators, while restoring a competitive market for farmers and giving them the deduction they deserve. We urge you to include this new language in the omnibus spending package working its way through Congress," according to the letter.

The spending bill goes before the Senate next.UPPER THUMB -- The Michigan Department of Transportation recently announced it lifted weight restrictions in parts of Michigan.

The weight restrictions have been lifted from the southern Michigan border north to and including M-43 in Van Buren County east to I-69/I-96 in Eaton County (on the west side of Lansing), then north on I-69/I-96 in Eaton County and continuing on I-69 east to Port Huron in St. Clair County.

Frost restrictions are still in effect for the remainder of the state and will be imposed and enforced on all state trunkline highways north of the M-43, I-69 line. State routes typically carry M, I, or US designations.

In the restricted areas, the following will apply:

 On routes designated as "all-season" (designated in green and gold on the MDOT Truck Operators Map), there will be no reduction in legal axle weights.

 On routes designated as "seasonal" (designated in solid or dashed red on the MDOT Truck Operators Map), there will be a posted weight reduction of 25 percent for rigid (concrete) pavements and 35 percent for flexible (asphalt) pavements.

 All extended permits will be valid for oversize loads in the weight-restricted area on the restricted routes. Single-trip permits will not be issued for any overweight loads or loads exceeding 14 feet in width, 11 axles and 150 feet in overall length on the restricted routes.

County road commissions and city public works departments put in place their own seasonal weight restrictions, which usually, but not always, coincide with state highway weight restrictions. Signs are generally posted to indicate which routes have weight restrictions in effect.

For weight restriction information and updates, call 800-787-8960, or you can access this information on MDOT's website at www.michigan.gov/truckers, under "Restrictions."

All-season routes are designated in green and gold on the MDOT Truck Operators Map, which is available online. You also may sign up to receive e-mail alerts.

Trucking companies located in New Jersey and Canada can obtain information by calling 517-373-6256.PIGEON -- Scheurer Hospital recently announced some future events it will be host.

The hospital will be hosting:

 "I Can Cope" Cancer Support Group: This meeting will be held at noon on April 3 in the Birch room at Scheurer Hospital. Karen Christner, LRT will discuss Lung Cancer. Lunch will be served. Call 989-453-4478 to RSVP.

 GriefShare Grief Support: Held at Country Bay Village at 6 p.m. on Tuesdays. This faith-based grief support group and light dinner is open to everyone. Call Peggy at 989-453-3981 for more information. The event is sponsored by Heartland, Pigeon River Mennonite Church and Scheurer.

 Mental Health Matters: This meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on April 5 in the Wilson Education Center at Scheurer Hospital. Kayla Montreuil and Andrea Vermeersch from Thumb Area Psychological Services will discuss "The ABC's of Behavior and Basics of ABA". Call 989-453-5222 to RSVP or for more information.

 Caregiver Connection: This meeting will be held at noon on April 12 in the Wilson Education Center. Laurie Messing from MSU Extension will discuss food safety. Lunch will be served. Call 989-453-5222 for more information or to RSVP.

 Bariatric Support Group: This meeting will be held at 4:30 p.m. on April 18 in the Birch Room at Scheurer Hospital. This group is designed to provide support and camaraderie for those who are considering, in the process of or are post-bariatric weight loss surgery. Contact Dolores at 989-856-8115 for information.

 Senior Program: This program will be held at 2 p.m. on April 19 at Country Bay Village. Jacob Boynton from Compassus will discuss Hospice and Dr. Makhoul, a Chiropractor from Health Quest in Bad Axe will discuss Neuropathy. RSVP for this free program by calling 989-453-4478.

 American Heart Association Heartsaver CPR: Will be held in the Wilson Education Center at 5:30 p.m. on April 24. The class is $35. Register by going to www.scheurer.org. Call Katie at 989-453-5222 for more information.

 Thrive: This meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on April 26 in the Wilson Education Center at Scheurer Hospital. Grief comfort for teens and young adults lead by Jeana Schemansky. Call 989-453-5222 for more information or to RSVP.HARTFORD  A group of business heads has produced a plan they said would grow the states economy by 3 percent and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour  helped, in part, by increased gas and payroll taxes, highway tolls and tighter union bargaining rules among other changes.

The legislators who asked them to come up with a broad plan to improve the states economy seemed unimpressed.

Its going to be difficult to pass the report in its entirety, said Rep. Caroline Simmons, D-Stamford, chair of the Commerce Committee, one of three committees that held a joint public hearing on the report Friday.

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, agreed that there is more work to do on it.

The Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Growth presented the report to lawmakers Friday.

Its proposals  from reducing the income tax and cutting government spending to raising the minimum wage and investing in transportation and cities  were fashioned in a careful recipe to grow the economy and gather centrist, bipartisan support, said James Smith and Bob Patricelli, commission co-chairs.

However, legislators on both sides of the aisle found different elements of the report to pick apart.

Democrats questioned whether the plan did enough to support Connecticuts low-income residents and worried that it did not address education, workforce development or criminal justice re-entry to their satisfaction. Republicans asked about several labor provisions.

But in more than three hours of questioning, Smith and Patricelli, emphasized that their plan should not be dissected by legislators but rather viewed through a less microscopic eye.

Smith, chairman and former CEO of WebsterBank, gave legislators a detailed look at Connecticuts fiscal situation, which he repeatedly likened to a burning ship.

He highlighted the states shrinking economy  unlike those of its neighbors, he said  growing budget deficits, falling bond ratings and the increasing number of people leaving the state.

When the Commission started investigating, the economy was even worse than he thought, said Patricelli, former chairman and CEO of Womens Health USA.

But the private sector commission found solutions that they said would lead to 3 percent economic growth and cut a perilous future deficit.

On the revenue side, the plan would create a scale to lower income tax rates at the top and even more for working families; raise the sales tax and eliminate exemptions; raise the gasoline tax and move toward highway tolls; impose a 0.8 percent payroll tax on all but the smallest businesses and and give cities and towns the right to raise a sales tax of 0.5 percent, but only if they came together to share services.

It would cut spending by $1 billion a year, which could amount to 10 percent of the portion of the state budget thats adjustable; transfer assets, like lottery revenues, to one or more state pension funds; and increase benefits for a new tier of state employees to attract more and better workers.

It would also raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022; tighten union bargaining rules; lengthen the runway at New Havens Tweed Airport; and push the formation of a Connecticut magnet city by creating a science and technology campus in Hartford, Stamford or New Haven.

The commission also advised legislators to create one budget committee instead of separate committees for taxing and spending.A New Fairfield man accused of having sexual contact with two boys under the age of 17 has pleaded guilty to two charges related to the crimes.

Richard Spring, 51, of New Fairfield, pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sex act with a victim less than 17 and third-degree criminal sex act with a victim less than 17 on Friday. Court records show that there were two victims from the Duchess County area of New York, and the incidents stretch back as far as 2015.The Connecticut Department of Transportation plan to remove the traffic signals from Route 9 in Middletown seems likely to go forward in some fashion, based on the public meeting held on July 26 and the subsequent comment period.

There is broad, enthusiastic support for the main goal from many Middletown residents and elected officials, including Mayor Dan Drew. The pollution, accidents, wasted time, and constant irritation caused by the lights all add up to something now deemed intolerable, so the wheels of state government are starting to move. To view the project on-line, go to www.ct.gov/dot and click on the link Rte 9 Middletown Projects on the left side of the home page.

The specific proposal does, of course, raise concerns, as any project of this scale would. The most often-expressed concern on July 26 was that increased traffic on Main Street north of Washington Street will make peak congestion even worse. The second most-voiced concern was that the elevated southbound highway near Washington Street will block views toward the river and aggravate the existing visual and psychological barrier between the downtown and the riverfront, the same barrier that we have been decrying and seeking ways to mitigate for the last several decades.

Principal Engineer William Britnell explained that the DOT has received many comments and suggestions that are still under review. In particular, his team is considering additional improvements to the area of Main Street, Grand Street and Rapallo Avenue to further improve traffic flow, as well as avoid the highway elevation that will form a 23-foot wall facing deKoven Drive at Washington Street.

The fate of the proposed roundabout at Washington Street and deKoven Drive is still in question. The department seems convinced it would move traffic more efficiently and be safer for bicycles and pedestrians, but DOT also sees this feature as somewhat incidental to the project as a whole.

Mr. Britnell predicts that sometime this fall the department will be ready to share the results of their studies and deliberations  either in the form of a revised proposal or a confirmed commitment to something close to the original version.

Presuming that the concept remains substantially intact, the timeline for the project includes a series of steps to alleviate congestion on Main Street and on Route 9 even before the final major construction takes place.

During the 2017 construction season, the DOT will install the proposed crosswalk bump-outs that, it says, will significantly improve the function of downtown streets and intersections prior to the changes to Route 9 itself. Congestion will be alleviated, the theory goes, because the bump-outs will allow for decreased signal time for pedestrian crossings and lengthened intervals for the movement of vehicles. With the bump-outs, pedestrians will be safer and feel safer because the sight lines at crossings will no longer be obstructed by parked cars.

In 2018, two Route 9 exit turns (northbound onto Hartford Avenue and southbound onto Washington Street) will be eliminated, providing some relief to Route 9 congestion and allowing the public to adapt to the exit changes that are included in the final plan. In 2019, a double lane northbound exit onto Washington Street will be built to further reduce congestion on Route 9 southbound until the underpasses are built.

The elevated lanes on Route 9 south at Hartford Avenue and Washington Street and their associated underpasses are envisioned to be constructed in 2020-21, allowing for the complete removal of the traffic signals. Widening the Route 17 north on-ramp, in order to eliminate the dangerous stop sign that causes so many collisions at that location, has now been postponed until 2022 because the Union Street bridge will be completely replaced.

Those who have paid close attention to the issue of Route 9 traffic congestion and access in and out of Middletown are aware of many other visions and solutions for the highway and its problems. From what I can discern, those other proposals involving tunnels, lowered road surfaces, fly-overs, boulevards, and such have been declared too expensive and completely out of the question, at least for this period of our history. What we need to do now is to make this project the best it can be. Our communal vigilance includes making sure that the City of Middletown follows through on funding its part of the pedestrian walkway from Riverside Plaza to Route 9, from where it will be funded by the state to cross over the highway to Harbor Park.

This walkway is one way of mitigating or compensating for the obstruction of that 23-foot wall facing deKoven Drive, if that additional obstruction to our relationship to the river cant be avoided.

In short, the pressure of all those traffic jams has mounted to become a regional splitting headache. Whether you like it or not, change is coming to Route 9, and we are beginning to see its outlines.

John C. Hall is executive Director of the Jonah Center for Earth and Art, a nonprofit organization based in Middletown that advocates for pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly streets.National security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster will soon see his Army career come to an end, but experts predict that future opportunities will abound for the strategic thinker and warrior scholar who left his mark on the maneuver force.

McMaster's tenure in the post ended after being on the job for a little more than a year. His departure follows President Donald Trump's dramatic ouster of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week. Trump will replace McMaster with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

Those who know McMaster are not shocked by the rumors that Trump clashed with the "headstrong" three-star who carved his name into military history with his victory at the Battle of 73 Easting during the 1991 Gulf War.

"I am not surprised this happened because you have two big personalities," retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who served under McMaster when he commanded Eagle Troop of 2nd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, in the Gulf War, told Military.com in an interview.

"McMaster is really headstrong and you can read his face, no matter what his voice might say ... and I believe that that was a source of constant frustration and friction between the two," he said.

Davis is now a senior fellow and military expert for the military think tank Defense Priorities.

Raymond DuBois, a former under secretary of the Army, said McMaster's three-star rank put him an extreme disadvantage as national security adviser.

"We have to understand the actors in this drama," DuBois, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told Military.com.

"Imagine you are H.R., you have been national security adviser and you are sitting in the situation room with the president of the United States, the vice president, secretary of state and secretary of defense. On the one hand, because you are still a serving, active-duty three-star, you are not the same rank as the other fellows at the table. ... McMaster recognized that it was time for him to step down," DuBois said.

Before accepting the national security adviser job, McMaster had built a reputation as a deep thinker and a respected combat leader.

He most recently served as director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center and deputy commanding general at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.

During the Iraq War, McMaster proved ahead of other leaders when he was a colonel commanding 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar in 2005. He stressed counterinsurgency rather than sledgehammer tactics to quell violence being carried out by Sunni militants against the city's Shiite minority.

But McMaster truly made a name for himself when he was a young captain commanding Eagle Troop on Feb. 26, 1991. His unit ran into a superior Iraqi armored force lying in wait to halt the main U.S. advance into occupied Kuwait.

Advancing through a heavy sandstorm, McMaster's nine M1 Abrams tanks and 12 M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles made contact with the large Iraqi defensive belt in the featureless desert.

His troop destroyed approximately 50 T72 Tanks and about 25 other armored vehicles in 23 minutes in what would become known as the Battle of 73 Easting during Operation Desert Storm. McMaster was awarded a Silver Star, the nation's third-highest valor award, for his actions during that short-lived conflict.

Davis remembers when McMaster took over Eagle Troop.

"The morale of the troop was in the toilet," Davis recalled. "Nobody had any confidence. We weren't doing well at all at any of our exercises, and then he came in and just radically transformed the environment. He gave everybody confidence."

McMaster did have a "fiery personality and he would explode from time to time," Davis said.

"Aside from that, he turned that unit into an exceptional unit," he added. "That was the first thing that really stood out to me was he took this rag-tag, divisive, unsuccessful organization and quickly turned us into a team and a family.

"Everybody has confidence in ourselves, we had confidence in the units on our left and right flank and we knew that we were the best trained unit out there," Davis said.

McMaster plans to request retirement from the Army this summer, according to a statement from the White House.

He had been under consideration for a fourth star, and White House officials hoped it would provide a graceful exit from the West Wing for the longtime soldier, The Associated Press reported.

McMaster, 55, is highly qualified for several four-star commands, but there are none that will be available this summer, DuBois said.

"So then you say to yourself, if you are H.R. McMaster, what do I want be when I grow up? I have had all these jobs. I have been national security adviser," DuBois said. "I can see him sitting down with his wife and his most trusted confidants and saying, 'Now is the time to take off the uniform and retire. I am still young enough to do a whole bunch of really cool stuff.' "

DuBois sees McMaster becoming the head of a university, or "as I have said from time to time, it's time to write 'Dereliction of Duty 2.0,' " he said, referring to McMaster's 1997 book "Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam."

Davis thinks McMaster's outspoken personality has worked against him in the past but will work for him in the future.

"He had a lot of enemies and a lot of people that were against him," Davis said. "But it's like hate or love with McMaster. He also has this whole legion of people who think he is the greatest thing that ever happened, and I have no doubt that he will be in tremendous demand."

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.The man who apparently lit himself on fire and drove through a gate at Travis Air Force Base, California, with propane tanks in his minivan Wednesday night was a legal immigrant from India with no local family and few associates, FBI officials said Friday evening.

Mystery still surrounds the circumstances under which Hafiz Kazi, 51, drove through the main gate around 7 p.m. Wednesday. Kazi's vehicle blew through the first checkpoint and then veered off and crashed, with him inside.

In a press conference in California, Sean Ragan, special agent in charge of the FBI's Sacramento Field Office, said officials are investigating the incident but have not made any determinations as to Kazi's motives or affiliations.

Ragan said Kazi appeared to be on fire as he approached the base in a Kia minivan. By the time emergency responders reached Kazi's car, Ragan said, he had already died. Ragan said it took some time to identify Kazi due to the condition of his body, but ultimately officials were able to ID him using fingerprints.

Inside his vehicle were found five propane tanks, three phones, three plastic one-gallon gas tanks, and several lighters, Ragan said.

FBI officials have yet to locate Kazi's home. Ragan said officials are analyzing Kazi's phones and talking to the few associates they have been able to track down. There's no evidence a continuing threat to the community exists, he said.

Kazi had been a legal permanent resident of the U.S. since 1993, an FBI investigation found. He previously worked as a cab driver, Ragan said, but his recent history is hazy.

"We know what happened, essentially ... but now the question is why," Ragan said. "The investigation we're doing right now is trying to piece together his life and attempt to determine why he was there and why he had those items in his vehicle."

So far, the FBI has not uncovered a concrete link to any organized terror group or ideology, though Ragan said the circumstances around the incident raised suspicions. But while some reports suggested the existence of a jihadist video on Kazi's phone, Ragan said that was not correct.

"We don't have any evidence of religious affiliation or anything at this point," he said.

Located in the San Francisco Bay area, Travis is home to 60th Air Mobility Wing and is the highest-trafficked military terminal in the United States.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.A new policy memo from President Donald Trump concerning transgender service members may allow some to serve, but keep in place tight restrictions for many.

The White House memo, released late Friday night, highlights recommendations from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria be barred from serving, saying these people "may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery."

With limited exceptions that are not spelled out in the memo, these people will be disqualified from military service, according to the policy.

"On the advice of ... experts, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security [Kirstjen Nielsen] have concluded that the accession or retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- those who may require substantial medical treatment, including through medical drugs or surgery -- presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality," the White House said in a released statement.

The new policy, the statement continued, would allow the military to apply health standards equally to all who serve.

Earlier Friday, Mattis' full memo was made public in a filing by the U.S. Department of Justice in U.S. District Court in Seattle. In the three-page memo, Mattis also recommends that transgender persons who "require or have undergone" gender transition be disqualified.

Those with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria should be allowed to serve, he said, only if they have been "stable" in their biological sex for 36 months prior to entering the military or if they receive a diagnosis while currently serving but do not require a change of gender and remain deployable.

Currently serving troops who have been diagnosed since policies created to enable transgender service were introduced under Carter may continue to serve in their preferred gender and receive appropriate treatment, Mattis said.

Gender dysphoria is defined as a conflict between an individual's biological or assigned gender and the gender with which they identify.

In his memo, Mattis called those with gender dysphoria a "subset" of transgender people who experience "discomfort" with their born sex, "resulting in significant distress or difficulty functioning."

"I firmly believe that compelling behavioral health reasons require the Department to proceed with caution before compounding the significant challenges inherent in treating gender dysphoria with the unique, highly stressful circumstances of military training and combat operations," Mattis wrote.

The White House memo comes about eight months after Trump first announced, in a series of tweets, that he intended to ban transgender people from serving in the military "in any capacity."

Those tweets caught the Pentagon off-guard; only a year before, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter had announced a new policy allowing transgender individuals to serve openly. He ordered each of the military services to develop guidance and policies governing transgender personnel, including gender transition procedures and medical treatment.

Mattis' findings come to light as a result of the court system entering the fray in the wake of Trump's tweets. Four courts have now filed injunctions prohibiting new Pentagon policies on transgender personnel as four separate lawsuits against Trump move through the system.

The U.S. District Court in Seattle, which is adjudicating one of the lawsuits, had ordered the White House to turn over meeting documentation having to do with experts brought in to consult as Pentagon brass and the White House crafted the military transgender policy.

It's not clear how many of the estimated between 3,000 and 15,000 serving troops who identify as transgender would be considered to have a gender dysphoria diagnosis, but the policy is expected to bar most troops.

"The Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, with respect to the U.S. Coast Guard, may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals," Trump's memo concludes.

The specific mention of the Coast Guard is notable. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft was the first of the military service chiefs to publicly state support for transgender troops in uniform.

In August 2017, days after Trump's tweets, Zukunft told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that his office had reached out to all the openly serving transgender Coast Guardsmen to say the service did not plan to "break faith" with them.

In a December interview, Zukunft told Military.com he had determined that a tweet did not constitute an executive order, and thus felt empowered to make his statement. At the time, Zukunft said a lot of progress had been made on the topic and the services were now moving forward "in lockstep" to craft policy on transgender troops.

The Palm Center, a think tank on LGBT issues in the armed forces, denounced Trump's policy Friday night in a brief statement.

"Today's announcement fulfills President Trump's July 2017 tweet calling for the reinstatement of the transgender military ban," Palm Center Director Aaron Belkin wrote. "In service to the ideological goals of the Trump-Pence base, the Pentagon has distorted the science on transgender health to prop up irrational and legally untenable discrimination that will erode military readiness. There is no evidence to support a policy that bars from military service patriotic Americans who are medically fit and able to deploy. Our troops and our nation deserve better."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.UPDATE: Late Friday the Navys Chief of Personnel Facebook page removed the post containing a statement from United.

We apologize for the confusion from todays earlier post on Uniteds pet policy. We are getting further clarification and will update when we have obtained more information, officials with the page wrote in a statement. United has yet to make a public statement clarifying the policy.

Troops and active-duty families moving to and from overseas duty stations will still be able to ship their pets on United Airlines after the carrier announced a special military policy exemption Friday.

United on Tuesday temporarily suspended its PetSafe cargo pet transport program, sparking panic among military families stationed on Guam.

As first reported by Military.com, the airline had been the only service shipping pets on and off the island, and families feared that the suspension would force them to abandon their animals during upcoming moves.

But United on Friday announced a special exemption for active-duty military on orders and State Department foreign service officers.

"Active-duty U.S. military personnel on Permanent Change of Station (PCS) and their spouses, along with State Department Foreign Service Personnel (FSP) and their spouses may transport their pet dogs and cats when traveling on assignment to and from international destinations," says the statement, which was posted to the Navy's Chief of Personnel Facebook page and United's website. "Active-duty U.S. military not on orders, conducting personal travel with a pet, would be restricted in accordance to airline policy."

The program suspension had been sparked by a series of recent pet transport disasters, including animals being delivered to the wrong families and the death of a small dog in an aircraft cabin.

All PetSafe reservations made before March 20, including those for non-PCS moves, will be honored under the original policy, officials said.

-- Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com.What Is ISIS-K? Two Experts on the Group Behind the Kabul Airport Attack and its Rivalry with the Taliban

By 2018, the group had become one of the top four deadliest terrorist organizations in the world.The Tigers have granted infielder Alexi Amarista his unconditional release, the teams PR account has tweeted. According to MLB.coms Jason Beck, Amarista had said just yesterday that hed wait until the end of camp before weighing his options, but something seems to have changed in the past 24 hours or so. The 28-year-old had signed a minors deal with Detroit late in January.

Amarista finished the 2017 season on the Rockies roster, with whom he hit just .238/.269/.351 across 176 plate appearances. While he filled in at many different positions around the diamond, defensive metrics rated him poorly at each one of them. Overall, fWAR, bWAR and WARP agree that he played about a win below replacement level, which is notable considering he accrued under a third of a seasons worth of plate appearances. As such, the club decided to pay him a $150K buyout rather than pick up his $2.5MM option.

The decision for a rebuilding Detroit club to release Amarista doesnt come as much of a surprise. Its likely that said decision was influenced by the desire to keep number one overall Rule 5 pick Victor Reyes on the 25-man roster. The club would also probably like to give Niko Goodrum and JaCoby Jones a chance to prove themselves at the major league level.

Amarista owns just a .231/.275/.323 slash line across career 1,901 plate appearances with the Angels, Padres and Rockies. While his bat obviously doesnt provide any value, his ability to play both middle infield positions (in addition to third base and the outfield) has kept him working at the MLB level since his 2011 debut.Uttam Galva Steels Ltd said on Saturday it has received approvals from the BSE and NSE for declassification of world's largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal as a promoter of the company.

"...the company has received the approval of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and BSE Ltd for declassification of ArcelorMittal Netherlands BV as a promoter of the company," Uttam Galva Steels said in a BSE filing.

Uttam Galva Steels Ltd has offered to settle the Rs 5,654 crore loan default by paying 51 percent of the amount upfront to public sector banks so as to abort the auctioning of the company's assets.Suggestions to prevent future banking frauds are flying thick and fast even as the blame game over the fraud at Punjab National Bank continues.

This week, one of the most vocal names was billionaire banker Uday Kotak, Executive Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank has suggested that the Government set up a full-fledged committee to analyse ownership, governance and risk issues troubling the public sector banks.

According to him, the share of public sector banks will come down by 20 percent in the next five years and in order to survive, the banks will have to improve their underwriting standards to stay relevant.

With the Reserve Bank of Indias new framework on resolution of bad loans kicking in, public sector bankers are struggling in transition from the old rule. They have sought more time and clarity from the central bank on the assets that are already under restructuring.

Insolvency updates

As the first set of cases draw closer to resolution, bankers have opted for rebidding of assets in the most prominent company Essar Steel. Bids by Numetal (SPV floated by Russian lender VTB Bank and Rewant Ruia) and ArcelorMittal were rejected by lenders after failing to clear the eligibility test under the IBC (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code) laws that debar related parties from bidding.

Lakshmi Mittal-owned world's largest steel maker ArcelorMittal plans to re-bid for Essar Steels assets, which will see the rebidding in the first week of April.

However, metals and mining giant Vedanta Ltd is unlikely to participate in the second round of bidding, even as it had submitted an Expression of Interest (EoI).

The debt-laden steelmaker Essar Steel owes over Rs 45,000 crore to its lenders.

As for the Bhushan Steels assets, Tata Steel was declared as the successful resolution applicant by the Committee of Creditors (CoC) winning against JSW Steel to buy the assets in the auction under the IBC.

Also Read: SEBI may tighten trading norms for companies sent to bankruptcy court

PNB fraud updates

State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) informed the Parliament this week that the total loss witnessed by the bank during the year FY2017-18 due to frauds are to the tune of Rs 14,500 crore.

PNB has also decided to tighten loan disbursement and set up a monitoring mechanism to check loan slippages and fraud.

The Enforcement Directorate has said it has evidence suggesting that Gitanjali Gems and Nirav Modi companies routed Rs 2,000 crore back into the country through the hawala route.

Meanwhile, Mehul Choksi, who is wanted by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) in relation to the multi-crore PNB fraud case, wrote another letter to CBI seeking his inability to appear before the investigative agency.

Additionally, the online financial messaging services provider SWIFT, which was used to fraudulently issue Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) in the PNB fraud case, has expanded the GPI Tracker system to help banks track their global transactions at all times, keeping full vigil on the payments activity.

In other news

Yes Bank is investing in upgrading skills of its employees across the bank in the fields of operations, risk management and marketing

Further, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan today expressed fears that Artificial Intelligence would take up jobs - both high skilled and unskilled.Rajnath

NCB

19:23 SSC exam paper leak: Mumbra school principal questioned

The principal of a school in neighbouring Mumbra, from where SSC exam papers allegedly leaked and where the main accused was employed, is currently being interrogated in connection with the probe into the case, police said today.

Police said they have observed several irregularities in the functioning of the school in which main accused Firoz Khan worked.

18:47 Production warrant against Abu Salem for March 27 in extortion case

A court here today issued a production warrant against gangster Abu Salem and directed the authorities to bring him before it on March 27 in connection with an extortion case. Additional Sessions Judge Tarun Sehrawat's direction came after the jail authorities informed the court that they would not be able to produce Salem before it today. The matter was scheduled for the final hearing. It relates to an extortion case lodged in Delhi, in which Salem had allegedly demanded Rs 5 crore as protection money from businessman Ashok Gupta, a resident of Greater Kailash in south Delhi, in 2002.18:31 Modi-Xi will 'definitely' meet during SCO summit:India's envoy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit China to take part in the SCO summit in June during which there will "definitely" be a bilateral meeting between him and President Xi Jinping, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale has said.The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a China-dominated security grouping, is increasingly seen as a counterweight to NATO. The SCO summit is due to be held in the Chinese city of Qingdao from June 9-10.

18:03 SP-BSP ties wont' be affected by RS poll defeat: MayawatiThe BSP-SP understanding won't be affected by the defeat in Rajya Sabha polls, BSP supremo Mayawati asserted. She alleged that BJP tried to create a rift between the two parties by indulging in malpractices to defeat her party candidate.'There will not be an iota of difference in the close understanding between the BSP and SP because of the Rajya Sabha results yesterday," Mayawati said at a press conference."I am thankful for the support of Congress and SP whose seven MLAs voted for BSP candidate as well as one SBSP MLA Kailash Nath Sonekar who voted as per his conscience and will stand by him in case he faces any trouble in future," she said. (PTI)

17:33 BJP 'attacking' the Constitution: Rahul GandhiCongress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday accused the BJP of "attacking" the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.Addressing a rally in poll-bound Karnataka after visiting a temple of Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru, he said the BJP was not only snatching away people's money through note ban and GST, but "there is new fashion now, they are attacking the Constitution.""Hear it from here. We will not allow the BJP to change the Constitution. How much ever BJP forces its way to change the Constitution, we will make sure that the Congress will protect the work of Ambedkarji," he told the gathering.Gandhi is on the fourth leg of campaign tour in Karnataka, covering Mandya, Mysuru and Chamarajnagar districts during his two-day visit. He had earlier toured the northern, coastal and Malnad regions. (PTI)

16:48 TDP chief's criticism of Centre untrue & baseless: Amit ShahIn his first attack on TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu for his decision to break ties with his party, BJP president Amit Shah said on Saturday, the Andhra Pradesh chief minister's move was guided by political consideration and not development concerns, and dubbed his criticism of the Centre as "untrue and baseless".In a nine-page letter to Naidu, Shah dwelt at length about development works undertaken by the Centre in the state to assert that it has fulfilled the promises made under the AP Reorganisation Act, which divided the state in 2014 and underlined the BJP's "unquestionable commitment" to it.Seeking to turn the tables on Naidu, he accused his government of "serious lapses", saying it has not provided the Centre appropriate fund utilisation details and that Naidu's comments that his government was under no obligation to give any expenditure statement were "evasive and reflect governance deficit". (PTI)

16:26 UK watchdog reviews evidence after Cambridge Analytica searchBritish regulators finished searching the offices of Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the centre of a Facebook data scandal, before dawn and said they would examine the evidence before considering "next steps".After receiving a warrant from a judge, about 18 enforcement agents from the Information Commissioner's Office entered the company's London offices at around 8:00 pm (local time) on Friday."Our investigators left the premises at about 03:00 am (local time)," a spokesman for the data watchdog said on Saturday. "We will now need to assess and consider the evidence before deciding the next steps and coming to any conclusions."This is one part of a larger investigation by the ICO into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors." (PTI)

15:40 A Delhi court granted anticipatory bail to Karti Chidambaram in Aircel-Maxis case arising out of the 2G spectrum cases, reports News18. The next date of hearing is April 16. The special court had asked him to appear before the investigating officer whenever summoned.

14:07 | Import duty on TV panel part halved to 5% to encourage LCD/LED manufacturingThe government has halved customs duty on 'open cell' used in the manufacturing of LCD and LED television panels to 5 percent, a move intended to boost domestic manufacturing."Open cell (15.6" and above) for use in the manufacture of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) TV panels" would attract 5 percent customs duty, the Central Board of Excise and Customs ( CBEC ) said in a notification.Experts said the move is an extension of domestic manufacturing push by the government after it announced in Budget the hiking of import duty on LCD/LED TV panels to 15 percent."The customs duty of 5 percent on open cells used in the manufacturing of LCD panels is lower than other items mentioned is Chapter 8529, this could ostensibly be to encourage manufacturing of such panels in India," MS Mani, Senior Director at Deloitte India said.14:01 | Amit Shah writes to Chandrababu Naidu , says TDP left NDA for 'political consideration' BJP President Amit Shah today said TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu's decision to quit the ruling NDA was guided by "political considerations" instead of Andhra Pradesh's development concerns, and dubbed his move "unfortunate and unilateral".In a letter to the Andhra chief minister, who broke ties with the BJP after the Centre declined to grant Special Category Status to AP, Shah also said his party is a true well wisher of the state.He also cited a number of development projects undertaken by the Centre for the state, besides funds given to it, as he sought to reject the charge that the Modi government had not fulfilled its promises.13:57 | Lalu Prasad Yadav sentenced to 14 years in prison in fourth fodder scam case RJD supremo Lalu Prasad was today sentenced to 14 years in jail and fined Rs 60 lakh by a special CBI court in the fourth fodder scam case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 3.13 crore from the Dumka treasury in the early 1990s , a CBI counsel said here.CBI judge Shiv Pal Singh awarded two sentences of seven years each to the former Bihar chief minister under the Indian Penal Code ( IPC ) and the Prevention of Corruption Acts, he said.13:43 | Love playing Sherlock Holmes and risking your life? You may be a fit for this insurance job



Are you one of those who love taking risks? Do you love travelling extensively? Do you enjoy flirting with death, even if the job is low paying? If the answer to all the three questions are a yes, then the job of an insurance claims investigator is just what you are looking for.

Two months back, a claims investigator in Bihar was digging deeper into a death claim filed by an individual, when he suddenly disappeared. He had been working on the case for more than three months. Due to the delay, the insurer had to pay the claim amount of Rs 5 lakh. After a few weeks, it turns out that this individual was kidnapped and released only after the insurance money came through.

Read the full story here.

13:33 | Court reserves order on Karti Chidambaram's protection plea in Aircel Maxis case

A Delhi court today reserved its order on the pleas of Karti Chidambaram seeking protection from arrest in the Aircel-Maxis matter arising out of the 2G spectrum cases.Special Judge O P Saini reserved the order for later in the day after hearing a battery of senior advocates appearing for Karti , son of former union minister P Chidambaram .During the hour-long hearing, senior lawyer Kapil Sibal sought anticipatory bail for Karti in the Aircel Maxis cases lodged by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Karti was yesterday given bail by the high court in the INX media case.Arguing in the CBI case, Sibal said there was neither any allegation against Karti in the Aircel Maxis case nor there was anything to show that he knew the FIPB officials.13:11 pm| China says ready to defend its interests in U.S. trade spatThe United States has flouted trade rules with an inquiry into intellectual property and China will defend its interests, Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call on Saturday, Chinese state media reported.The call between Mnuchin and Liu, a confidante of President Xi Jinping, was the highest-level contact between the two governments since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods on Thursday.The escalating tension sent shivers through financial markets as investors foresaw dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up.

12:46 pm| SpaceX , Tesla, other businesses delete their Facebook pagesMozilla, Tesla and other companies are distancing themselves from Facebook following revelations of a major leak of user data to political consultants associated with the 2016 Trump campaign.While the actions will not likely be permanent and won't have much of an effect on Facebook's bottom line, they're the latest fallout the social-media giant has to contend with from the ever-spiralling scandal along with a tumbling stock price and a # deletefacebook movement."We're taking a break from Facebook," Mozilla said in a blog post on Wednesday. The company, which created the Firefox web browser, said it is "pressing pause" on its Facebook advertising and won't be posting on its Facebook page. But it did not delete its page and said it will consider returning if Facebook takes stronger actions to protect users' data and improves privacy settings.

12:25 pm| Love playing Sherlock Homes and risking your life? You may be a fit for this insurance job

Are you one of those who love taking risks? Do you love travelling extensively? Do you enjoy flirting with death, even if the job is low paying? If the answer to all the three questions are a yes, then the job of an insurance claims investigator is just what you are looking for.Two months back, a claims investigator in Bihar was digging deeper into a death claim filed by an individual, when he suddenly disappeared. He had been working on the case for more than three months. Due to the delay, the insurer had to pay the claim amount of Rs 5 lakh. After a few weeks, it turns out that this individual was kidnapped and released only after the insurance money came through. Read the complete report here.

12:09 pm| WTO chief warns trade barriers will 'jeopardise global economy'The World Trade Organization chief warned states today that creating barriers to international trade would "jeopardise the global economy," after Washington slapped steep tariffs on Chinese imports, heightening fears of a trade war."Disrupting trade flows will jeopardise the global economy at a time when economic recovery, though fragile, has been increasingly evident around the world," WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo said in a statement, calling for "restraint and urgent dialogue".US President Donald Trump on Thursday hit China with tariffs on up to USD 60 billion (48.5 billion euros) of imports to retaliate against the "theft" of American intellectual property, fuelling fears of a trade war between the world's two largest economies.Washington also launched today a challenge before the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) against China over intellectual property breaches.

12:04 pm| NIA court sentences Yasmeen Jahid for 7 years

An NIA Special Court has sentenced woman operative Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid to seven years rigorous imprisonment in connection with the Kerala IS recruitment case, reports PTI

11:58 am| ED seizes jewellery, watches & paintings worth Rs 26cr from Nirav Modi in PNB fraud case



The Enforcement Directorate has seized jewellery, watches and paintings worth Rs 26 crore from Nirav Modi's residence in Mumbai in the PNB fraud case, reports PTI.

11:38 am| US charges 9 Iranians with global hacking, intellectual property theft

The US on Friday announced charges against nine Iranians for their massive hacking into over 300 universities worldwide and the theft of precious academic data and intellectual property.

The Justice Department indictment alleges that the defendants worked on behalf of the Iranian government, specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ( IRGC ).

11:27 am| SFIO probes Fortis, Religare for alleged frauds



The Serious Fraud Investigation Office ( SFIO ) is probing Religare Enterprises and its group company Fortis Healthcare for alleged frauds, Union Minister P P Chaudhary said today.Besides, companies linked to Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi groups are under the scanner too, the minister of state for corporate affairs said in a written reply to Lok Sabha .The development comes in the wake of over Rs 13,000 crore scam at the state-run Punjab National Bank ( PNB ).

11:25 am| Nagaland CM Neiphiu Rio presents Rs 1,630.67 cr deficit budget



Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on Friday presented Rs 1,630.67 crore deficit budget for fiscal 2018-19.There were no announcements of any new tax and also no new policies for enhancement of the States revenue. Addressing the House during the first budget session of the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party ( NDPP )-led Peoples Democratic Alliance government in the State Assembly here, Rio, who also holds the finance portfolio, estimated the gross receipts for the new fiscal at Rs 18,232.51 crore and expenditure at Rs 18305.40 crore.

10:56 am| US getting very close to trade deal with S Korea: Trump

President Donald Trump said today that his administration was "very close" to striking a trade deal with South Korea, an achievement that would mark an end to the free trade agreement between the two countries. Trump, who made the comments during a press conference to mark his signing of a USD 1.3 trillion spending bill, has long complained about the trade deal with South Korea. "We are going to have a wonderful deal with a wonderful ally. We're getting very close to it. It was a deal that was causing a lot of problems for our country, in terms of employment and in terms of lots of other things," Trump said. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross who also spoke at the event, said the administration was nearing a "pretty comprehensive resolution" with South Korea.

10:40 am| FIPB officers examined by CBI did not say Karti approached them: HC notes

None of the senior officers of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) who were at its helm when INX Media was granted FDI clearance, have said in their statements to CBI that they were approached or influenced by Karti Chidambaram, the Delhi High Court said today. Justice S P Garg, in his order granting bail to Karti in the INX Media corruption case, also observed that in the entire CBI investigation so far, no public servant has been identified or apprehended who was allegedly approached or influenced to scuttle any action againt the media house for alleged irregularities or illegalities committed by it. The high court noted that the senior FIPB officers had merely informed CBI that if the past history of the case been brought to the notice of the Board before its meeting held on October 24, 2008, its decision with regard to INX Media could have been different.

10:22 am| California Software board approves JV proposal for i-Cryptocurrency, ICOThe board of California Software Company today approved a joint venture proposal submitted by Infinia solutions and Services to launch ICO, i-Cryptocurrency and i-Digital Tokens and Coins.In a BSE filing, the company said its board has approved the resolution for a JV proposal submitted by Infinia solutions and Services to launch ICO (Initial Coin offering), i-Cryptocurrency and i-Digital Tokens and Coins in various countries on Blockchain technology.Infinia, which is a full-service loyalty solutions company, touches 120 million end-consumers and serves 23 enterprise customers.

10:17 am| Chandrayaan-2 launch postponed to October: ISRO chief

to have new database on narcotics crimes, criminals: Home MinisterIndia will soon have a national database of information on all narcotics-related crimes and criminals that can be accessed by enforcement agencies tasked with combating drugs menace, Union Home MinisterSingh said today. The minister, while delivering his valedictory address at the conclusion of the two-day 'drug law enforcement' conference here, said his ministry has sanctioned the required funds to the Narcotics Control Bureau ()."All enforcement agencies including state police departments, up to the district level, will have access to the database," Singh said.

The launch of Indias second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2, slated for next month, has been postponed to October as the experts have suggested some tests, the ISRO said today. The experts had met recently and suggested the tests, following which the mission will now be launched in October, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K Sivan said. Chandrayaan 2 will not be in April, it has been changed to October, he told reporters at the airport here. Union Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office, in-charge of the Department of Space, Jitendra Singh had on February 16 last said the lunar mission under which the ISRO will for the first time attempt to land a rover on the moons south pole, will be launched in April.

10:09 am| ICICI Securities IPO subscribed 36% on day 2

The over Rs 4,000-crore initial public offer of ICICI Securities was subscribed 36 per cent on the second day of bidding today.

The IPO to raise over Rs 4,000 crore received bids for 1,59,57,060 shares against the total issue size of 4,42,25,343 shares, NSE data showed.

Qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) portion was subscribed 54 per cent, non institutional investors 5 per cent and retail investors 39 per cent.

The IPO is of 77,249,508 shares (including anchor portion of 33,024,165 shares).

10:02 am| UK judge approves warrant to search Cambridge Analytica offices

A British judge today approved a warrant to search the London offices of Cambridge Analytica, the scandal-hit communications firm at the heart of the Facebook data privacy storm.

Londons High Court granted the request by UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who is investigating claims that the firm may have illegally acquired Facebook data for political ends.

A full explanation of the decision will be given on Tuesday, according to the court.

10.00 am| CBI arrests promoters of Totem Infrastructure in Rs 1,394 cr fraud case

The CBI on Friday arrested Tottempudi Salalith and Tottempudi Kavita, the promoters of Totem Infrastructure Ltd, in connection with an alleged Rs 1,394-crore fraud perpetrated against a consortium of eight banks, officials said.

The agency had named the company, which worked as a sub-contractor for several major infrastructure firms, and its promoters in an FIR filed on the basis of a complaint from the Union Bank of India, one of the eight banks, they said.

The bank alleged in the complaint that it suffered a loss of Rs 313.84 crore as the loans given to the company had become NPA in June 2012.

They said the total dues towards the consortium stand at Rs 1394.43 crore.

9:51 am| Vedanta board panel approves Rs 4,500 crore NCD issue

Metals and mining giant Vedanta Ltd today said its board committee has approved a proposal to raise up to Rs 4,500 crore by issuing non-convertible debentures.

The company in a filing to the BSE said that the board-appointed committee of directors in a meeting today approved issuing on a private placement basis up to 4,500 secured, rated, non-cumulative, redeemable, non-convertible debentures of face value Rs 10,00,000 each aggregating up to Rs 4,500 crore.

9:44 am| Global payments message service SWIFT expands tracker facility

Secure financial messaging services provider SWIFT said today that it has expanded the GPI Tracker system to help banks track their global transactions at all times, keeping full vigil on the payments activity.

Extension of its GPI Tracker will cover all payment instructions sent across the network, SWIFT said in a statement.

The over Rs 13,000 crore fraud which has been unearthed at Punjab National Bank (PNB) was a case of misuse of non-linkage of banks core-banking system (CBS) with SWIFT messaging system as a few PNB officials, in connivance with diamond jeweller Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi of Gitanjali Gems, bypassed the reporting of global transactions to banks CBS.

9:35 am| Sebi slaps Rs 1 cr fine on Rhine and Raavi Credits, 3 directors

Markets regulator Sebi today imposed a penalty of Rs 1 crore on Rhine and Raavi Credits and Holdings and its three directors for failing to refund the money raised illegally from investors.

The directors are Rakesh Gupta, Birendra Kaji and Surendra Kumar.

In March 2015, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had directed the firm and directors to refund over Rs 36 crore raised from investors along with interest.

Besides, the entities were also banned from accessing the securities market for at least four years.

9:30 am| US drags China to WTO on discriminatory technology licensing requirements

The United States today dragged China to the World Trade Organisation, accusing it of unfair technology practices that run counter to the WTO rules.

The US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, filed a request for consultations with China at the WTO to address Beijings discriminatory technology licensing requirements.

The request comes a day after US President Donald Trump announced that he was directing the USTR to pursue dispute settlement in the WTO to confront China over its policies that result in unfair treatment for US companies and innovators trying to do business in China.By Rajiv Kumar, Drish Infotech

The European Union (EU) has taken the lead in amending its existing data protection laws through the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that comes into effect from 25 May, 2018. But what are the road map of this regulation and how will it impact India enterprises?

That data is increasingly driving economies around the globe is not an over statement. As businesses across the world uncover the right-fit big data and analytics strategies, data protection regulation is in the spotlight. The European Union (EU) has taken the lead in amending its existing data protection laws through the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that comes into effect from 25 May, 2018. So, what are the road map of this regulation and how will it impact India enterprises is the moot question.

Data helps businesses differentiate themselves and thus represents a competitive edge. But concerns have been growing over the way enterprises use consumer data for marketing, as current regulations do not offer any control to them. Thus, GDPR was born with more stringent and prescriptive compliance challenges, backed by fines of up to four per cent of a companys annual global revenue. Other stringent rules include those pertaining to data breach reporting, appointment of mandatory Data Protection Officer, and citizens right to be forgotten in the digital realm among others.

How it impacts businesses

The GDPR will replace the 1995 Data Protection Directive and is aimed at protecting EU citizens personal data in the new digital world. The regulation covers all the EU member states and citizens, so all global enterprises with operations or customers in EU must comply. Businesses are already gearing up to this new data protection regime. A survey recently asked C-suite executives from large American MNCs about their GDPR compliance plans to which more than half of them said that this was their top data-protection priority. Some American businesses are also looking at ways to reduce their GDPR risk exposure or even withdrawing from the market. Another research by revealed that more than one-third of public web pages of FTSE 30 companies capturing personally identifiable information are in danger of violating the GDPR rules. Indian companies with operations in EU or dealing with EU citizens data will also have to comply with this regulation.

Takeaways for India

India is in a unique position as it embarks on a digital transformation journey of unprecedented magnitude through citizen biometric data platform of Aadhaar, e-governance initiative Digital India, fostering presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery through IndiaStack and digitization of citizens documents via DigiLocker. Aadhaar has strong data protection measures but as India moves towards digital at a scorching pace, ensuring comprehensive protection of data while also empowering citizens to leverage their own data will be paramount. For instance, enrollment for jobs or skilling initiatives based on the documents saved on the cloud platform of DigiLocker.

Indias demonetisation move was followed by the Union Budget for 2017, that outlines an ambitious goal of achieving 25 billion digital transactions in 2017-18 -- which means the Government will need to ensure security and regulatory compliance of unprecedented number of websites and web applications offering digital transaction services. With the Goods and Services Tax or GST coming into effect recently, all businesses will now have to maintain electronic invoices on the cloud. India could draw on an over-arching data protection regime by building on GDPR. However, data protection cannot be in the government sphere alone. Businesses in India can also take cognizance and bring in strong data protection measures akin to GDPR, that will only enable their growth in the long run.

One area to be considered is the electronic consent architecture in India, which is a global first, but this needs to be extrapolated further. For instance, Indian citizens should be able to claim penalties, if businesses failed to obtain clear consent to use their personal data. In the horde of digital marketing, consumer right to opt-out is often not delineated or respected. Also, there is the question of what constitutes as personal and sensitive data. Freely available data like a persons name and email ID could be classified as personal data, while information about a persons net worth or investment decisions, should be treated as sensitive data, which requires stronger governance and compliance measures. Digital marketers should be able to leverage technology to classify data categories based on such rules.

They also need to understand the rules for portability of customer data  what can be shared or not shared; with or without their consent; with the competition or industry at large. Indian enterprises dealing with customer data also need to store, organize and provide access control to customer data in their possession in accordance to global norms. This will preempt any data protection governance and compliance norms that may be implemented by the Government, which is likely to happen soon. India Inc. could thus learn from GDPR and leapfrog the curve as it has done in the past, with technology deployments in sectors like banking, telecom etc.

To conclude, GDPR will strengthen data protection measures of enterprises and empower them and their customers, if followed in the right word and spirit. Businesses operating in other regions too will do well to adopt the GDPR standards as data protection increasingly becomes a worry.

(The author is an executive at a member company of the National Association of Software Services and Companies. This piece first appeared in the Nasscom Community bloglive bse live

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Lemon Tree Hotels, the last initial public offering of the financial year 2017-18 will open for subscription on March 26, 2018.

Equity shares are proposed to be listed on BSE and NSE. The global coordinators & book running lead managers to the issue are Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, CLSA India and JP Morgan India. The book running lead manager is YES Securities (India) Limited.

Here are 10 key things that you should know before investing:

Company Profile

It is Indias largest hotel chain in the mid-priced hotel sector, and the third largest overall, on the basis of controlling interest in owned and leased rooms, as of June 30, 2017, according to the Horwath Report. It is ninth largest hotel chain in India in terms of owned, leased and managed rooms, as of June 2017, according to the Horwath Report.

It operates in the mid-priced hotel sector, consisting of the upper-midscale (with 'Lemon Tree Premier' brand), midscale (with 'Lemon Tree Hotels' brand) and economy hotel (Red Fox by Lemon Tree Hotels) segments.

It opened first hotel with 49 rooms in May 2004. It operated 4,697 rooms in 45 hotels (including managed hotels) across 28 cities in India as of January 2018.

As of January 2018, it has a portfolio of 19 owned hotels, three owned hotels located on leased or licensed land, five leased hotels and 18 managed hotels. It also has project design, management and development capabilities through subsidiary, Grey Fox Project Management Company Private Limited.

Its hotels are located in major metro regions in India, including the NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai, as well as tier I and tier II cities in India such as Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Indore and Aurangabad.

In the leisure hotel segment, it operates a resort and a hotel in Goa, one resort in the backwaters of Alleppey, Kerala and one wildlife resort in Bandhavgarh, Madhya Pradesh.

About the Issue

The public issue consists of an offer for sale of 18,54,79,400 equity shares by Maplewood Investment, RJ Corp, Ravi Kant Jaipuria and Sons (HUF), Whispering Resorts, Swift Builders, Five Star Hospitality Investment Limited, Palms International Investments Limited, Satish Chander Kohli and Raj Pal Gandhi.

The offer will constitute up to 23.59 percent of the post-offer paid-up equity share capital of the company.

Bids can be made for a minimum lot of 265 equity shares and in multiples of 265 equity shares thereafter. The offer will close on March 28.

Fundraising

The hotel chain company is aimed to raise Rs 1,001.6-1,038.7 crore through the issue at a price band of Rs 54-56 per share.

Out of total fund raising, it has already garnered Rs 311.60 crore through anchor portion on Friday, one trading day before the issue opens, by allocating 55,643,820 equity shares to 16 anchor investors at a price of Rs 56 per share.

Objects of the Issue

It is entirely an offer for sale issue, so the company will not receive any proceeds from the offer and all the proceeds will go to the selling shareholders.

The objects of the offer are to achieve the benefits of listing the equity shares on the stock exchanges and for the sale of up to 18,54,79,400 equity shares by the selling shareholders. Further, the company expects that listing of the equity shares will enhance visibility and brand image.

Strengths

> Lemon Tree is a leading mid-priced hotel chain with a differentiated business model. It has strong operational performance.

> It has strategically positioned hotels in key geographical areas and developed hotels at locations with high barriers-to-entry within or close to major business centers, airports and other convenient locations.

> It is a hospitality platform with operations and competencies spread across the hotel value chain. Its operations range from acquiring land to owning, developing, managing and marketing hotels.

> Its focus is on brand excellence, providing a value-for money proposition and strengthening employee culture.

> It has experienced promoter and management team.

Financials

Lemon Tree has reported nearly 18 percent CAGR in total operating revenue due to improved occupancy, average daily rate and increased hotel room capacity.

Peer Comparison

Promoter and Promoter Group

Patanjali Govind Keswani is the Chairman and Managing Director of the company. He holds a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and a postgraduate diploma degree in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He has over 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry

Spank Management Services Private Limited is the corporate promoter of the company.

Management

Rattan Keswani is an executive Director of the company. Prior to joining the company, he acted as the president of the Trident Hotels of the Oberoi Group, where he was engaged for a period 30 years. He has more than 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry.

Organisation Structure

Risks & Concerns

Here are some risks and concerns highlighted by brokerage houses:

> Lemon Tree relies heavily on its existing brands and quality of services at its hotels. Any dilution of company's brand reputation or failure of its quality control systems could adversely affect its business, results of operations and financial condition.

> Subdued economic growth

> Slow expansion in the occupancy level

> Poor ramp up of the new hotels

> Increased competition

> Rise in operating expensesMutual funds are busy changing their schemes names to comply with the Securities Exchange Board of Indias directive on rationalisation and categorisation of schemes. This has made mutual funds drop their fancy names and fall in line.

Most fund houses have started responding by changing their names and investment strategy of schemes, wherever applicable. For example, DSP Blackrock Focus 25 Fund has now been renamed DSP Blackrock Focus Fund. Analysts used to treat it as a large-cap fund so far. However, going forward it will be placed in the Focused Fund category.

The idea is to simplify the process of understanding mutual fund offerings and choosing schemes for investments by investors.

To ensure that all schemes launched by mutual funds are distinct in terms of asset allocation and investment strategy, Sebi had proposed categorisation and rationalisation of mutual fund schemes

Under this, fund houses are allowed to offer 10 types of equity funds, 16 categories of bond funds and six categories of hybrid funds. They are also allowed to launch index funds, fund of funds and solution oriented schemes.

Among the other major developments this week, media reports stated that IDFC has begun discussions with IndusInd Bank and Citic CLSA, among others, to merge or sell its AMC - that manages about Rs 71,000 crore -as part of its shareholder value-unlocking move. However, the AMC told Moneycontrol, "This is purely speculative and as a policy we do not comment on market speculation."

A fourth of the AMCs assets under management (AUM) is equity, while the rest is debt. If the deal goes through, it will improve IDFC's capital position. The deal will fetch IDFC about Rs 4,000 crore, which works out to around 6% of IDFC Asset Management's AUM.

According to Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI), in the December quarter, IDFC MF was the 11th largest AMC in the 42-firm strong mutual fund industry.

In October-December 2014, its assets stood at Rs 48,000 crore, from there its AUM has grown almost 48%.

If compared to the top three players in the industry in the last 3 years, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund more than doubled (grew 114%), while HDFC Mutual Fund and Reliance Mutual Fund registered 92% and 93% growth, respectively.

Industry experts say IDFC AMC will be a good buy for a mutual fund player who is interested in expanding its scheme portfolio.

Some of the other stories reported this week were:

In the last three months, as many as five mutual fund houses have appointed co-fund managers for managing their large or flagship funds. A slew of funds are star performers in their respective category.

Recently, DSP BlackRock Mutual Fund appointed Resham Jain as co-fund manager of DSP BlackRock Small and Midcap Fund and DSP BlackRock Micro Cap Fund. Vinit Sambre was solely managing DSP BlackRock Small and Midcap Fund since July 2012 while Vinit Sambre and Jay Kothari jointly manage DSP BlackRock Micro Cap Fund.

The National Stock Exchange is likely to follow in the footsteps of BSE, and levy a transaction fee for using its mutual fund platform: NSE NMFII.

ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund launched ICICI Prudential Bharat Consumption Fund- Series 1, an around three-and-a-year close-ended equity scheme on March 21. Subscription to the scheme will remain open until April 5.

The scheme aims to provide capital appreciation by investing in well-diversified portfolio of stocks that could benefit from growth in consumption and related activities.Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com told CNBC-TV18, "Vedanta is a sell with a stop loss of Rs 281, target of Rs 265. Financials are under pressure so Dewan Housing Finance is a sell with a stop loss of Rs 500 and target of Rs 475."

HCL Technologies is a buy with a stop loss of Rs 950, target of Rs 985," he added.live bse live

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The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is probing Religare Enterprises and its group company Fortis Healthcare for alleged frauds, Union Minister P P Chaudhary said today.

Besides, companies linked to Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi groups are under the scanner too, the minister of state for corporate affairs said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.

The development comes in the wake of over Rs 13,000 crore scam at the state-run Punjab National Bank (PNB).

In the last four financial years, the corporate affairs ministry has ordered investigations through SFIO into the affairs of 575 companies on account of alleged frauds. This included probe in 258 companies in the ongoing financial year (till March 15, 2018), Chaudhary added.

SFIO, which mainly investigates white collar crimes, is probing Religare and Fortis. This comes amid recent reports that financial irregularities have emerged at the two companies.

The companies have also come under the lens of the markets regulator Sebi.

The latest development comes against the backdrop of reports that Fortis Healthcare's promoters Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singhtook at least USD 78 million out of the company without any board approval about a year ago.

Further, Chaudhary said SFIO has ordered investigation into the affairs of companies including Firestar Diamond International, Firestar International, Firestar Diamond Pvt Ltd, Nirav Modi Pvt Ltd, Gitanjali Gems Ltd and Nakshatra Brands Ltd.

A multi-agency probe is already underway into the PNB fraud which was mainly perpetrated by way of fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoUs).

According to the minister, investigations by SFIO have not unearthed any nexus between bureaucrats and corporate houses for the purpose of committing corporate frauds as of now.President Donald Trump said today that his administration was "very close" to striking a trade deal with South Korea, an achievement that would mark an end to the free trade agreement between the two countries.

Trump, who made the comments during a press conference to mark his signing of a USD 1.3 trillion spending bill, has long complained about the trade deal with South Korea.

"We are going to have a wonderful deal with a wonderful ally. We're getting very close to it. It was a deal that was causing a lot of problems for our country, in terms of employment and in terms of lots of other things," Trump said.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross who also spoke at the event, said the administration was nearing a "pretty comprehensive resolution" with South Korea.

Ross and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the US was very close to finishing a trade deal South Korea.

"It will encompass, if it goes through, both the 232s and broader trade issues. And we hope by sometime next week to be able to have a real announcement," Ross told reporters.

The White House yesterday temporarily exempted South Korea from the new steel and aluminum tariffs, which were imposed under a rarely used trade law that allows the president to take trade action to protect national security interests.

That exemption is pending a successful conclusion of talks to amend the 2007 free trade agreement between the US and South Korea, which took effect six years ago, Lighthizer said earlier this week, according to a local media report.

Lighthizer initiated a process last July under the US-South Korea trade deal to negotiate changes to the pact to address market access issues and the trade imbalance between the two countries  one of Trump's chief complaints about the deal, it said.rajya sabha PTI1_4_2018_000050B rajya sabha

Ahead of assembly polls, the JD(S) suffered a setback on Saturday when four of its rebel MLAs resigned from the Karnataka Assembly, a day after cross-voting in favour of Congress' Rajya Sabha candidates.

B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan, R Akhanda Srinivasamurthy, N Chaluvaraya Swamy and Bheema Naik submitted their resignations to Assembly Speaker K B Koliwad at his residence in Bengaluru. The MLAs are likely to join Congress in a day or two, said sources close to them.

The four MLAs were among the seven who rebelled against their party and been vocal against the party leadership, especially H D Kumaraswamy, JDS state unit chief and son of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda.

Koliwad told reporters he had accepted the resignations because they were in order. "Today Chaluvaraya Swamy,B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan, R Akhanda Srinivasamurthy and Bheema Naik have resigned from the legislative assembly. When I asked them personally, they said they resigned on their own without political pressure or any duress. I have accepted their resignations," he said.

Speaking to reporters after resigning, Khan said he decided to walk out of JD(S) because it has become "a party of oneupmanship."

"H D Kumaraswamy does not listen to anyone. He does not bother to consult his father and former Prime Minister H D Devegowda and elder brother H D Revanna. Will he listen to us?" said Khan.

The votes cast by seven JDS rebel MLAs in the Rajya Sabha biennial election yesterday and also support of independents had helped the ruling Congress win the third seat as a bonus, though it had strength only to bag two seats for sure.

Despite the shortfall in its strength with 37 members, including seven rebels, as against the required 44 votes, JDS had also fielded its candidate but boycotted the poll midway alleging electoral malpractice by the Congress in "collusion" with the returning officer.BJP President Amit Shah hit out at the opposition, particularly the Congress, for repeated disruptions in Parliament, saying they were doing so as they were unable to digest his party's victory in one state after another, and asserted that the government was ready to face a no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha.

Both houses of Parliament were adjourned for the 15th day yesterday as the stalemate between the opposition and the government continued for the third week in the second leg of the Budget session.

Parties like the TDP, YSRC, TRS, AIADMK and the Congress have been creating ruckus during proceedings on various issues. After the TDP and YSRCP, the Congress too has given the notice to move a no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha against the Modi government.

"The opposition is not able to digest our victory in states after states post-2014. That is why they are not allowing even a single minute of work in Parliament for the last 20 days," Shah said addressing a rally of BJP booth unit chiefs.

The BJP has nothing to hide and is ready to face the no-confidence motion notices that the opposition parties have submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, he added.

Shah alleged that the Congress was trying to prevent discussion on the key schemes related to healthcare insurance and minimum support prices of the produce that are being introduced by the Modi government.

"The Prime Minister and the BJP want everything to be discussed in Parliament. But the Congress does not want that and it only shouts. They (Opposition) are doing it to prevent discussion of two very important schemes in the Budget," Shah alleged.

He said that the government wants to discuss a scheme for 10 crore families with free healthcare up to Rs 5 lakh, which will benefit around 50 crore people out of the total population of 125 crore. But the Opposition is not allowing it.

"The second scheme is related to farmers, who have never got the due price for their products since Independence. The scheme allows to pay 1.5 times more minimum support prices than the expenses on seeds and farming. This is a big thing done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for poor farmers," Shah said.

The Congress fears that discussion on these two schemes in Parliament will affect its popularity but the BJP will take it to the people if it is not allowed to take raise these in the House, he added.Solar panels are seen on the roof of a car park in Mountain View, California April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Noah Berger TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTSE2K7

The Commerce Ministry's investigation arm DGAD said it is terminating its anti-dumping probe on imports of solar cells from China, Taiwan and Malaysia.

The Indian Solar Manufacturers Association has made a request to terminate the present investigation, it added.

The probe was initiated by the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) on July 21 last year following complaints of dumping of the product by the association.

"The authority is constrained to terminate the present antidumping investigation concerning imports of 'solar cells whether or not assembled partially or fully in modules or Panels or on glass or some other suitable substrates'," from these countries, DGAD said in a notification.

The domestic industry has cited certain reasons for its request to terminate the probe. They have stated that post-initiation, the injury being suffered by the domestic producers on account of dumping has aggravated sharply.

Besides, the industry has said that the imports of the cells from these countries have increased substantially in the recent period.

The period of investigation covers April 2016 to June 2017 (15 months).

The directorate, however, noted that "the reason cited by the domestic industry for termination of the petition is devoid of any merit".

But it said Rule 14(a) of the anti-dumping rules does not grant any discretion to the DGAD in the matter of termination of investigation, once the domestic industry files a written request for termination of the probe.

Anti-dumping duties are levied to provide a level playing field to local industry by guarding against cheap below-cost imports.

Increasing imports and dumping of goods from China have always been an area of concern for Indian companies. India's exports to China were only USD 10.2 billion in 2016-17 but imports aggregated to USD 61.3 billion.

DGAD is also probing dumping of several other products such as certain chemicals and steel products from China and other countries.

India is one of the most attractive markets for global producers due to its large middle class population.

Imposition of anti-dumping duty is permissible under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) regime. Both India and China are members of the Geneva-based body.

The duty is aimed at ensuring fair trading practices and creating a level-playing field for domestic producers vis-a-vis foreign producers and exporters.Nitin Gadkari

The central government has decided to solve the water problems in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan by utilising water from rivers flowing into Pakistan, Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari said here today.

He said the government has also introduced a new scheme where water will reach farmers through innovative technology using pipe system rather than canals, avoiding land acquisition costs to the tune of Rs 6,000 crore.

Gadkari made these remarks in his inaugural address at an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry here, according to a release issued by the organisers. Citing the case of the Godavari, where 3000 tmc of water is flowing to the sea, Gadkari said government is constructing a dam at Polavaram in Andhra Pradesh at a cost of Rs 60,000 crore to check Indravati river flow, which is a tributary of Godavari and flows in full spate through a thick forest.

"This water can then be carried till the tail end of Tamil Nadu, almost 1,300 km by pipeline. Once this project is completed, Tamil Nadu will get almost 450 TMC of water," he said. Gadkari, who also holds the portfolios of road, transport and highways and shipping, said the government is very keen on developing Karwar port in Karnataka and is willing to spend Rs 3,000 crore for the projects if the state government is in agreement.

Touching upon waterways as a cheaper logistical option,he said government is encouraging seaplanes and called on HAL to form a Joint Venture with the government to manufacture them.

According to him, around 10,000 seaplanes would be required in the next two years. Gadkari also emphasised the urgent need to reduce pollution and urged the automobile industry to produce vehicles that would run on electricity and alternate fuels like ethanol and methanol, which could be produced from agricultural waste. "Conversion of waste into wealth is the future," he said. Gadkari also said the current road construction is at 28 kms a day and the target for next year is 40 kms per day.

He stated that the government has already signed work contracts for projects worth Rs 8,50,000 crore for roads, ports, shipping and water resources. Stating that the government's plan was to develop two lakh kilometers of highways, with 12 express highways, he said work on a new highway between Bengaluru and Mysuru at a cost of Rs 7,000 crore, will commence from today.

He also said that government would start work on a ring-road for Bengaluru, which will cost around Rs 10,000 crore. Gadkari said work on the Rs 16,000 crore express highway project between Bengaluru and Chennai is expected to start by end March or beginning of April this year.maoists_soldiers_attack_terrorist_1280x720

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the "serious" challenge of Naxalism in the country has entered its "last leg" and Maoists are now resorting to coward ambushes against security forces as they are unable to undertake a direct fight.

Addressing troops of the country's lead anti-Naxal operations force CRPF on the occasion of their 79th Raising Day, the home minister said due to operational efforts of these forces incidents of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) have "drastically" come down in the recent past and the casualty rate of extremists has gone up.

The demoralised Naxal cadres are now not able to undertake a fight head on with security forces and hence with their limited capabilities are now resorting to coward ambushes and attacks, he said while addressing the men and officers of the force.

The minister, during his speech, paid tributes to the 9 men of the force who were killed in a Naxal ambush in Chhattisgarh's Sukma early this month after a deadly explosive was clandestinely triggered by ultras underneath a mine protected vehicle.

"Maoism has become a serious challenge...but because of the gallant and determined action of the CRPF and other forces, these incidents have come down drastically.

"Earlier, the casualty amongst security forces personnel and civilians was higher but now it is the reverse and the casualty rate of the Maoist cadres is higher," Singh said at the parade ground of the CRPF officers academy here in Kadarpur.

"I can say that the LWE problem in the country has entered its last leg and the people very well understand that Naxlas are anti-poor, anti-tribal and anti-development," the top boss of the country's internal security establishment said referring to killing of CRPF men during road construction work in LWE affected areas.

He asked the CRPF personnel to continue rendering their "multi-dimenisonal" role in various theatres like insurgency in the Kashmir valley and the north east as also against the LWE menace.

"You have always given a muh tod jawab (befitting reply) to these activities," Singh said.

The minister lauded the gallantry of the troops of the country's largest paramilitary force as he underlined that the CRPF men and women did not "lose their patience" during the deteriorating security situation in the Kashmir valley.

He praised the courage of CRPF Commandant Chetan Cheeta who was part of the anniversary parade.

Cheeta took nine bullets during an operation in Kashmir valley last year and displayed rare grit and brilliance during recuperation and he also joined duty few days back at the force headquarters in Delhi.

Singh said security forces like the CRPF need to ensure that no obstacle comes in the way of India becoming an economic super power.

Talking about ensuring better facilities to jawans of the force and for those of other Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), the minister said infrastructure to have more residential facilities will be enhanced in the future.

He said facilities of air courier (dedicated flights for transport of troops to forward areas) and e-ticketing of railway tickets has been started for CAPF personnel recently.

The home minister asked the force to create awareness about goverment-run schemes amongst "peace loving" people in troubled areas so that these citizens can have an increased trust on their country and the government.

The over 3.18-lakh personnel strong CRPF was raised in 1939 under the British rule and is celebrating its 79th Raising Day today.

The anniversary was to be celebrated on March 19 when country's first Home Minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel presented colours to it in 1950 but the event was organised today owing to Singh's busy schedule.Abu Salem

A court issued a production warrant against gangster Abu Salem and directed the authorities to bring him before it on March 27 in connection with an extortion case.

Additional Sessions Judge Tarun Sehrawat's direction came after the jail authorities informed the court that they would not be able to produce Salem before it.

The matter was scheduled for the final hearing.

It relates to an extortion case lodged in Delhi, in which Salem had allegedly demanded Rs 5 crore as protection money from businessman Ashok Gupta, a resident of Greater Kailash in south Delhi, in 2002.

Salem had, on January 15, contended in the court that his trial in the case violated the order by which he was extradited to India.

He had also told the court that the prosecution did not have evidence to prove that he had demanded money from the businessman or that the phone number from which the call was made to the complainant belonged to him.

Salem, who was extradited from Portugal in November 2005, was granted bail in the present case in 2013. However, he is currently in jail in connection with various other cases, including those related to the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

Salem, along with five other accused, is facing trial in the case.

According to the prosecution, Salem had allegedly demanded Rs 5 lakh from Gupta and his son Abhishek in April 2002 and threatened to eliminate their family members if the money was not paid.

The other accused in the case are -- Chanchal Mehta, Majid Khan, Pawan Kumar Mittal and Mohammad Ashraf. One of the accused, Sajjan Kumar Soni, died during the trial.

The police claim to have recorded phone calls made by Salem to Gupta.The most important development during the week that eclipsed all other automotive news was the joining of hands between two companies who are in search for future mobility solutions in a market that has become the most demanding globally.

But the collaboration between Ford Motor Company and Mahindra & Mahindra was more of a necessity than natural synchronisation. Both companies are very diverse in their work cultures, have very different product portfolios and their target audiences are also very dissimilar.

While the big and brawny American firm is known for its huge trucks (pickups as they are known in the US) and muscle cars, the Indian company is known for its rural, rugged and built-for-all-seasons people movers.

But there is one thing that is common to both. Both are under fire from competitors in India where the top two car makers, Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai, control 65% of the market. No other large automotive market in the world is dominated by just two players.

Ford has a negligible presence in India. Save its EcoSport, none of its other models like Figo, Aspire and Endeavour have made a mark in India despite a complete overhaul of its portfolio, which involved phasing out of several older generation models. To sustain operations, its headquarters decided to push exports from India for the time being.

M&M on the other hand has struggled to fend off competition. From a surging Maruti Suzuki to a resurgent Tata Motors every company has launched vehicles in the segment which had been the home turf of M&M. But despite launch of new models like KUV 100, TUV 300, Nuvosport and Thar, M&Ms market share has continued to erode in the utility vehicle segment. From a high of 55% its share in the UV segment dipped to below 30%.

Now as per plans, both companies will help each other develop compact and mid-size SUVs that would be sold under both brands. The engine and transmission units will be shared too. M&M stands to benefit from Fords vehicle platforms, while lower costs structures will help Ford further sustain its India operations.

However, this is not the first time the two companies have come together. More than 20 years ago, M&M agreed to manufacture the Ford Escort, a mid-size sedan for the Indian market. The partnership did not last more than four years as Ford decided to buy out M&Ms stake in the venture.

M&M partnership graph is not too bright either. The company severed ties with Renault, Nissan and Navistar (US truck major) as things went downhill a few years after joining hands.

Besides the conventional agreements, both companies have also decided to work on electric vehicle technology and connected vehicle projects for the future keeping in sync with the predicted changes in buyer preferences.

Even as the two unlikely companies join hands, a European pair have decided to go solo. Despite a set-back in their proposed plans to set up a product development joint venture with Tata Motors, Skoda and parent company Volkswagen have finalised a new range of compact and mid-size cars, crossovers and SUVs for the Indian market.

Skoda Auto is set to take the lead in spinning off vehicles on the India-specific vehicle platform: MQB AO IN. Volkswagen will follow suit with their line of vehicles. Both European brands are under pressure for failing to make a mark in the country despite being here for more than a decade.

Meanwhile, Tata Motors, Nissan and Datsun have decided to raise prices with effect from April 1. Nissan will raise prices by 2% across all models, whereas Tata Motors has decided to go with a price hike of up to Rs 60,000 (depending on the model).The US on Friday announced charges against nine Iranians for their massive hacking into over 300 universities worldwide and the theft of precious academic data and intellectual property.

The Justice Department indictment alleges that the defendants worked on behalf of the Iranian government, specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

They hacked the computer systems of nearly 320 universities in 22 countries, 144 are American universities, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told reporters at a news conference here.

"The defendants stole research that cost those universities approximately USD 3.4 billion to procure and maintain. That stolen information was used by the Revolutionary Guard or sold for profit in Iran," he said.

The defendants worked for an organisation known as the Mabna Institute, which two of the defendants founded for the stated purpose of helping Iranian universities access scientific research.

Their work consisted of stealing research through illegal computer intrusions.

The indictment charges defendants for committing seven federal crimes. The charges include computer fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft, he said.

Rosenstein said every sector of the US economy was the target of malicious cyber-attacks.

"Everyone who owns a computer needs to be vigilant to prevent attacks. Academic institutions are prime targets for foreign cyber criminals. Universities can thrive as marketplaces of ideas and engines of research and development only if their work is protected from theft," he said.

This indictment publicly identifies the conspirators and this type of public identification helps to deter state-sponsored computer intrusions by stripping hackers of their anonymity and by imposing real consequences, Rosenstein said.

Revealing the Mabna Institute's nefarious activities makes it harder for them to do business.

"Additionally, we're working with foreign law enforcement agencies and providing the private sector with information that will help to neutralise Mabna's hacking infrastructure," he said.

As a result of the indictment, these defendants are now fugitives from justice. There are more than 100 countries where they may face arrest and extradition to the US.

According to the Department of Justice, Gholamreza Rafatnejad and Ehsan Mohammadi founded the Mabna Institute in 2013 to assist Iranian universities and scientific and research organisations in stealing access to non-Iranian scientific resources.

The Mabna Institute employed, contracted, and affiliated itself with hackers-for-hire and other contract personnel to conduct cyber intrusions to steal academic data, intellectual property, email inboxes and other proprietary data.

It contracted with both Iranian government and private entities to conduct hacking activities on their behalf, and specifically conducted the university spearphishing campaign on behalf of the IRGC.

According to the indictment, the Mabna Institute, through the activities of the defendants, targeted more than 100,000 accounts of professors around the world.

They successfully compromised approximately 8,000 professor email accounts across 144 US-based universities, and 176 universities located in foreign countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK, it said.

"The campaign started in approximately 2013, continued through at least December 2017, and broadly targeted all types of academic data and intellectual property from the systems of compromised universities.

"Through the course of the conspiracy, US-based universities spent more than about USD 3.4 billion to procure and access such data and intellectual property," it said.Midlands labor market continued to exhibit a strength in February that prompted Tim Dove, president and chief executive officer of Pioneer Natural Resources to quip earlier this month that Midland must be in negative unemployment by now.

The Texas Workforce Commission reported Friday that the Midland metropolitan statistical area had an unemployment rate of 2.5 percent, up marginally from 2.4 percent in January but well below the 3.8 percent posted in February 2017. Midland recorded the lowest unemployment in the state, ahead of Amarillos 2.9 percent, and is tied for the fifth lowest in the nation.

Odessa saw its unemployment inch down to 3.2 percent from 3.3 percent in January.

Willie Taylor, chief executive officer of Workforce Solutions Permian Basin, attributed Midlands marginal rise to seasonal factors. Midlands strong labor market is attracting newcomers, sending the civilian labor force up by about 800 from January to February. While almost all those newcomers found jobs, the few who were added to the unemployment count sent the rate slightly higher.

The activity levels in this region are unbelievable, Taylor said.

Noting that most economists consider a 5 percent unemployment rate full employment, Taylor said Midlands 2.5 percent rate offers challenges.

We dont have enough people, he said. And while Midlands stable wages  and the high wages offered by the dominant mining, logging and construction sector  are attracting people from low-wage areas, he said they cant find affordable housing.

Wages will be an issue, as the tight labor market will put upward pressure on them, Taylor said.

Midland added 100 jobs from January to February, with 200-job gains in the mining, logging and construction and the leisure and hospitality sector and 100 new jobs in the government sector. Those gains were offset by the loss of 200 jobs in the trade, transportation and utilities sector and 100 jobs each in the information and the education and health services sector.

For the 12 months from February 2017 to February 2018, Midland added 8,100 jobs for a growth rate of 9.1 percent. Almost all industrial sectors added jobs during those 12 months, led by the 5,400 jobs added by the mining, logging and construction sector. Trade, transportation and utilities sector was next with 900 new jobs, followed by leisure and hospitality with 800 new jobs. The manufacturing sector, the financial activities sector and professional and business services sector added 300 jobs each, while other services added 100 jobs.

When you look at 8,100 new jobs annually, thats great, Taylor said.

He said with high school graduation season approaching, a number of those students will be headed to college or the military, but he hopes some will stay and join the local workforce.

Statewide, the unemployment rate held steady at 4 percent. Texas added 40,500 jobs over the month and has gained 285,200 jobs over the last 12 months. Texas had reported employment growth for 20 consecutive months, the Workforce Commission said.

While Midland reported the states lowest unemployment, the highest was reported in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission at 7.1 percent.

Midland unemployment

January 2018 2.4 percent

January 2017 4 percent

February 2018 2.5 percent

February 2017 3.8 percent

Preliminary numbers for February with January numbers in parentheses:

Midland 2.5 (2.4)

Amarillo 2.9 (2.8)

Austin-Round Rock 3.0 (3.0)

College Station-Bryan 3.0 (3.0)

Lubbock 3.1 (3.1)

Odessa 3.2 (3.3)

San Angelo 3.3 (3.3)

San Antonio-New Braunfels 3.4 (3.4)

Sherman-Denison 3.4 (3.4)

Abilene 3.5 (3.6)

Wichita Falls 3.5 (3.6)

Fort Worth-Arlington 3.6 (3.6)

Dallas-Plano-Irving 3.7 (3.6)

Tyler 3.8 (3.8)

Waco 3.8 (3.8)

Laredo 3.9 (3.9)

Killeen-Temple 4.1 (4.1)

Victoria 4.3 (4.4)

El Paso 4.5 (4.6)

Longview 4.5 (4.6)

Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land 4.7 (4.8)

Texarkana 4.8 (4.8)

Corpus Christi 5.5 (5.8)

Brownsville-Harlingen 6.7 (6.8)

Beaumont-Port Arthur 6.8 (7.3)

McAllen-Edinburg-Mission 7.1 (7.6)Houston's Apache Corp. said Friday it made a sizable potential oil discovery in the North Sea offshore of the United Kingdom.

Apache's new Garten discovery is located about 4 miles south of its existing Beryl Alpha Platform, fitting with its strategy of exploring closer to its existing footprint so the wells can be developed more cheaply and efficiently. Initial Apache estimates show the discovery could produce more than 10 million barrels of oil.Royal Dutch Shell said Friday it will sell its stake in a major Iraqi oil field to a Japanese firm for $406 million.

Shell's nearly 20 percent stake in the West Qurna 1 oil field will transfer to the Itochu Corp., as well as the assumption of $144 million in additional debt in the project.

Irving-based Exxon Mobil, which owns a nearly one-third stake, will continue to lead the project. PetroChina also owns a nearly one-third stake.

The sale is part of Shell's overall effort to divest itself of $30 billion of its assets over a three-year period. Shell is nearing the completion of the overall target. Shell initiated the divestiture program after buying the British rival BG Group for $53 billion.

Shell isn't completely exiting Iraq though. It will continue its Basrah Gas joint venture with the Iraqi government.

"Iraq is an important country for the Shell Group, and exiting West Qurna 1 allows us to focus our resources on other assets in our Iraq portfolio," said Andy Brown, Shell's upstream director.

"This deal maintains the momentum behind Shell's $30 billion divestment program and is in line with the drive to simplify our upstream portfolio and reshape the company into a world-class investment," Brown added.

RELATED: Shell selling New Zealand assets for $578 million

Shell increasingly has shifted its focus from oil to gas investments in order to prepare for a lower carbon future that is expected to eventually have less oil demand.

Earlier this year, Shell sold its assets in Thailand and New Zealand as part of the divestment program.Midland Crime Stoppers and the Midland Police Department need help in identifying the suspect involved in a burglary.

Two Hispanic males broke into a business located in the 3300 block of North Midkiff Road in the early morning hours of Feb. 14. They kicked in the door and stole teddy bears.Three people from Texas were caught Wednesday with more than three pounds of fentanyl, or "enough to kill everyone in Toledo (Ohio) several times over," authorities said.

Anthony Robinson, 32, Barbera Wilson, 21, and Darrius Lewis, 29, all from Houston, were charged with federal possession with intent to distribute controlled substances after an operation in Toledo, Ohio. The three were also found with more than $8,000 in cash, prosecutors said.

The trio came under law enforcement scrutiny Tuesday night when Robinson and Wilson drove to a post office to allegedly mail a kilo of the drug. Prosecutors said the drug was wrapped in several heat-sealed plastic bags and tested positive for the deadly drug.

METH BUST: Several people arrested on meth charges in Galveston's east end

Local and federal authorities were able to quickly trace the package back to Robinson and Wilson, who were staying with Lewis in a Red Roof Inn hotel. Law enforcement got a subpoena for the hotel room and discovered an additional half-kilo.

They immediately arrested the three.

"The fentanyl seized last night is enough to kill everyone in Toledo several times over," U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman said in a press release.

MONTROSE MURDER: Driver charged after allegedly ramming car into crowd, killing nurse

Officials credited a strong relationship between local, state and federal law enforcement agencies for the operation.

"This arrest should show that the Toledo Police Department, with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners will continue to work diligently and aggressively to keep Toledo's streets free from this poison," Toledo Police Chief George Kral said. "I commend those dedicated investigators who were involved in this large seizure and arrests. God only knows how many lives have been saved, and subsidiary crimes avoided, because of these dedicated men and women. I sincerely hope anyone considering committing illegal activity in Toledo will reconsider doing so."

Lewis has four misdemeanor convictions in Harris County for possession of marijuana in 2009, evading arrest in 2010, unlawfully carrying a weapon in 2010 and driving with a suspended license in 2015.

Robinson has a more extensive rap sheet in Harris County dating back to 1992 for several felony and misdemeanor crimes, including theft, drug and weapon possession, evading, burglary and assault.

Wilson has no apparent local criminal history.

Jay R. Jordan is a breaking news reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan.STERLING (AP)  Firefly Forest is in danger!

Suzy Shortbread, Penelope Pringles, Francis Frogs and others invite you along as they wage an epic battle between dark and white magic in a struggle to control the lands of Morada.

Teacher and self-published author Joplin James Crossland-Sell, 44, of Sterling is releasing the first book in his young readers fantasy trilogy, Tales from Mushroom Manor: The Sorceress Returns.

The tale has been weaving itself through Crossland-Sells life for decades, born of a childhood tragedy.

When I was just 8 years old, my father, James Robert Sell, was killed in a two-man airplane crash that happened here in Rock Falls, he said.

A part of me coped with his dying by creating these fantasy worlds in my mind of other dimensions where he was really at, going on these quests before he would be able to come back to Earth and be my dad again.

The 1992 Sterling High School graduate earned his bachelors degree in public communication/human relations from Western Illinois University in 1998, then his masters in special education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2005.

His teaching career kicked off in inner city Kansas City, and took him to Alamogordo Public School in New Mexico where he taught for 7 years. It was there the idea for Mushroom Manor sprouted.

In teaching, I use a lot of alliteration. The very first thing I wrote was I see a pretty pink pony prancing on a polka dotted ball. Then all of these ideas came to me, Crossland-Sell said.

Every so often he shared his book with his students - without telling them it was his - to see how his target audience responded.

I didnt want them loving the book just because their teacher was the author.

He managed to finish 11 chapters before his busy life - teaching, raising two teen boys as a single dad with no nearby family support - took priority over writing the book.

I realized that I missed my family. I decided to make the move back to Sterling - I wanted my boys to go through the same schools that I went through.

Back in the Sauk Valley, Crossland-Sells taught special education at Sterling High from 2012 to 2013, at Jefferson Elementary School in Sterling the year after, in the autism classroom at Oregon Elementary School from 2016 to 2017, and at Morrison Junior High for half the 2017 school year before accepting his current teaching position at the Jack Mabley Developmental Center in Dixon.

He hadnt touched Mushroom Manor for 5 years when he attended a Pathways to Successful Living seminar in Chicago. It spurred him to set a goal to finish just one chapter, which snowballed into the books completion in about 2 months.

With one book done the the other two on the way, Crossland-Sells, who writes under the name Joplin James, remembers his father through literature.

The creative writer in me was born by how I was able to process the loss of my father. He was such a powerful, loving force in my life, truly instilled my love for the arts and how to be a very involved father to my boys.

I became a writer because of my father, he is the reason my pen name is Joplin James, in honor of him.How to detect cables that can ...GSP denial prompts Dhaka to pursue FTA with Washington

Tariff Commission asked to prepare strategy

Kazi Zahidul Hasan :

The Ministry of Commerce has asked the Tariff Commission to prepare a detail strategy to pursue preliminary discussion on a potential bilateral free-trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, the single largest export destination for Bangladeshi merchandises.

The FTA cell of the ministry in a letter on March 18 asked the Commission to prepare the strategy along with a complete report in this regard.

Officials said the ministry came up with the move following the Trump administration's continuous denial to reinstate Bangladesh's GSP facility, which the US suspended on 27 June in 2013, citing poor working condition in the local ready-made garment (RMG) industries.

The Bangladesh Ambassador in Washington, Mohammad Ziauddin, in a recent letter to the Ministry made the US government's mindset on the GSP issue clear, suggesting it to initiate a Dhaka-Washington bilateral FTA to promote Bangladesh's export to the US market.

"There is a little possibility to get back the US's GSP facility. So, Bangladesh should prepare for a FTA negotiation in a move to expand its export market to the country," said the envoy.

He also suggested for a detailed research on the issue prior to start the FTA negotiation.

"The US mindset on GSP issue has prompted us to lay the groundwork for a future Bangladesh-USA free-trade agreement. So, we have asked the Tariff Commission to prepare for a comprehensive strategy and report prior to launching the FTA negotiation," a senior Commerce Ministry official told The New Nation yesterday, asking not to be named.

He said the ministry also asked the Commission to assess the possible adverse and favourable impact on local export industries if Dhaka and Washington sign the FTA.

"We have decided to switch over from GSP to FTA

considering interest of the local export industries as well as boosting Bangladesh's export to the US market. It could also help expand bilateral trade between the two countries," he added.

The trade official said the US remains the largest trade and investment partner for Bangladesh and the bilateral trade between the countries is growing over the years.

"But Bangladesh's export to US market suffers setback due to high tariff imposed by the US government. The US customs is charging an average tariff of 15.8 per cent on goods imported from Bangladesh. Such a high duty on Bangladeshi products is affecting a smooth trade and economic cooperation between the two countries," he said.

So, the issue of duty-free market access or FTA is crucial to garner from the bilateral trade, the official said.

The bilateral trade between Dhaka and Washington stood about US$7.0 billion last year heavily tilting on Bangladesh side.

Bangladesh's export to the USA totaled $5.84 billion in the fiscal 2016-17 with more than 90 per cent being the garment items.

Commerce Minister Tofael Ahmed has recently said that Bangladesh is likely to sign FTA with the USA to boost exports its largest market, as the country does not enjoy the GSP facility.

"As Bangladesh is graduating from the LDCs status, we won't get duty-free and quota-free access anymore. So, the country could increase its trade facilities through signing the FTA with the USA," he said while addressing the opening ceremony of 25th US Trade Show in the city.

A Kansas grand jury has charged New Braunfels-based Schlitterbahn Waterparks along with a former company executive with involuntary manslaughter in the 2016 decapitation death of a 10-year-old at its Kansas park.

Caleb Thomas Schwab  son of Kansas state Rep. Scott Schwab  died Aug. 7, 2016 while riding the 168-foot Verruckt slide at Schlitterbahns Kansas City park.A student who brought a loaded handgun to a high school in San Lorenzo, prompting an hour-long lockdown on campus, was arrested Friday in class, and two acquaintances were detained for questioning, officials said.

The suspect, a 15-year-old boy, either showed the gun to a classmate or told someone he had it, which caused a rumor mill at Arroyo High School, said Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County sheriffs office.

When word got to a school administrator around 2:30 p.m., police were immediately contacted, Kelly said. Two school resource officers assigned to the high school and upward of 30 other police officers and sheriffs deputies responded to the incident within minutes, he said.

Police called the classroom where the student was located and covertly alerted the teacher that they were planning on taking the teen into custody, Kelly said. Deputies found a loaded handgun in his backpack near him in the classroom.

Right now we dont have an answer as to why the kid brought the gun, Kelly said. Were concerned. Were trying to figure out exactly what his motive was.

Two other students were detained for questioning.

Legislation Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last year bars police from questioning youths 15 and under without an attorney present. For that reason, Kelly said, deputies have yet to try to interview the suspect.

On Thursday, a student who attends the high school was stabbed by a former student and suffered non-life-threatening injuries at a nearby park, Kelly said. It wasnt clear immediately whether the gun scare was connected.

The incident came just a week after students across the East Bay took part in a national walkout to call for stricter gun laws. And on Saturday, the survivors of the Parkland high school massacre and thousands of their supporters plan to converge on Washington, D.C., in what they are calling a March for Our Lives.

In the coming days we will hopefully have more answers, Kelly said. This today was a really good example of when students and administrations and officers work together, we can resolve these incidents quickly before anyone gets hurt. Were very proud of our students who stepped forward.1 Firefighter killed: A New York City firefighter died early Friday battling a fierce blaze on a movie set in a former jazz club after getting separated from his fellow firefighters in the thick smoke. The fire started in the cellar as the crew of Motherless Brooklyn, directed by Edward Norton, was nearing the end of its working day at 11 p.m. Thursday. Flames poured out the windows as firefighters stormed into the five-story Harlem building, dumping water on the blaze to get it under control. Firefighter Michael R. Davidson was found unconscious after suffering severe smoke inhalation and was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after midnight.

2 Fighting back: A rural school district in Pennsylvania is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks as a last resort should an armed intruder burst in, the superintendent said Friday. Every classroom in the district about 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones, said Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel. We always strive to find new ways to keep our students safe, Helsel said. Throwing rocks is more effective than just crawling under desks and waiting, he added.HARTFORD, Vt.  Vermont State Police have identified a person found dead along a major highway last year as a 52-year-old Brookfield man.

Police identified the dead man as Paul Paribello, a former Brookfield resident who had been staying in White River Junction, Vermont for some time prior to his death.

Paribellos remains were found by someone walking through the woods alongside I-91 in Hartford, Vermont on March 5, 2017. Police believed that the remains had likely been there for several months before being found.

Police later confirmed the mans identity by conducting DNA analysis on Paribellos surviving relatives.

The death is not considered suspicious, according to Vermont State Police.Demonstrators around the world demanded action on gun violence Saturday in a massive display spurred by a shooting at a Florida high school last month that left 17 people dead.

Protesters from Los Angeles to London marched, held signs and chanted during "sibling marches" of the March for Our Lives rally, which has drawn an enormous crowd of protesters to the nation's capital.

More than 800 events were scheduled worldwide, according to the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Counterprotests and separate rallies organized by gun rights groups are also taking place.

In New York, a sea of gun-control demonstrators stretched about 20 blocks. In Boston, throngs of people jammed Boston Common. People gathered outside city hall in Las Vegas, where a gunman killed 58 people at a country music festival last year.

And in Parkland, Florida, where the shooting that became the catalyst for the marches took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, a large group gathered at Pine Trail Park to tell their stories and demand change.

"I would give everything to have one more day, one more hour, one more second with the sweetest boy in the world," said Max Schachter, his voice choking up. His son, Alex, was killed at the high school. "He was 14, he was a big boy. But he was also a little boy, that still liked to lie in bed and cuddle with his mommy and daddy."

Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina died in the shooting, said that both sides of the gun debate have to be willing to compromise.

"To our legislators and political leaders, we hope you are listening to your constituents assembled around the country today," Montalto said. "We need to change the status quo when it comes to school safety."

After listening to speeches, the group trekked a mile and a half to Stoneman Douglas. The group stayed completely silent as they walked by the school.

One toddler being wheeled in a stroller started to cry, breaking the silence.

"Shh," the woman pushing the child said. "We have to be quiet for the 17 angels."

Groups gathered outside the U.S. embassies in Copenhagen, London and Stockholm; in London they shouted "gun-control now." In Tokyo, people gathered at Shibuya Crossing, holding signs with the names of people killed in mass shootings. In Frankfurt, a group walked down a street shouting, "No guns in our schools." In Sydney, a group of children held posters.

Megon Barrow brought her 11-month-old daughter, Zoe, to the protest in Boston - where demonstrators marched for more than two miles before rallying on Boston Common - because Barrow said the issue of gun violence will impact her daughter's life.

"People of color have felt powerless about a lot of issues, including this one," said Barrow, who is black. "People in inner cities are probably saying, 'Well, hello world. Our children have been dying of gun violence for years.' "

A protest took place in West Palm Beach, Florida, not far from where President Donald Trump is spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Gun control and gun rights demonstrators yelled at one another in a scene that briefly turned tense, but then diffused. In a statement Saturday, deputy White House press secretary Lindsay Walters said: "Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the President's." The spending bill signed by Trump on Friday includes a provision to tighten the nation's background-check system and may slightly open the door to restoring federal funding for gun research.

"We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today," the White House statement said.

Counterprotests by supporters of gun rights are taking place in cities including Helena, Montana, Boise and Salt Lake City.

In Valparaiso, Indiana, gun control and gun rights demonstrators were separated by a street, silver barricades and a line police officers. As gun control demonstrators chanted, counter protesters - who called their demonstration March for Our Rights - shouted back: "All amendments matter." "Don't tread on me." "Stop confusing education with intelligence."

The loudest chants came from Spencer England, a 42-year-old from La Porte, Indiana. The father of five daughters said his children all know how to shoot assault rifles and he made it a point to tell his older children about the Parkland shooting.

"As a parent I feel horrible for the kids that were killed," he said. "But you don't say, 'Hey there's 200 deaths from drinking and driving and now we take all the cars away from people.' "

In New York, a massive crowd of protesters started their demonstration in front of Trump Plaza on 61st Street. A teenage girl standing near the Dakota, where John Lennon was shot in 1980, held a sign that read, "If I die in a school shooting forget burial - drop my body on the steps of the capitol."

Megan Bonner, 16, survived the massacre at Stoneman Douglas and spoke on a stage in Central Park. In an interview, she said she grew up with active-shooter drills but never felt unsafe.

"I never thought that it would happen at my school," she said. "I never thought that I would have to be one of those schools, and I never thought that I would have to go up on stage and say that I was a survivor."

Bonner said she knew Nikolas Cruz, the alleged shooter in last month's massacre.

"My friends constantly reported that he was threatening them," Bonner said. "For instance, he told my friend that he was excited to gut her like a fish and play with her dead body." She said she wants to see enhanced background checks and a waiting period for people who want to buy guns.

Joe Bermudez, 58, said he is a supporter of President Trump and gun rights - and that no one on either side wants violence.

"They are lovely Americans that are marching here," he said, gesturing to the crowd. "They don't want any violence, and we don't want bloodshed any more than they want it."

High school juniors Lindsy Voelker and Sophia Reynolds go to school in rural Boiceville, New York, where they said many people own guns. They wore orange T-shirts that read "Enough" in multiple languages and featured tally marks to represent lives lost to gun violence. Reynolds, 17, said no one at her school spoke about the Parkland shooting, and that made her mad.

"I was angry, because it's like 17 students were killed and then no one talks about it. It's crazy; we're students. We should talk about it. Around our school, a lot of people own guns," she said. "If we're going to be the future of this country, we need to be taught about these things, so if we want to do anything about it, then we have the choice."

Some in New York came to protest the protesters. Jim McDonald, a 68-year-old New Yorker, wore an National Rifle Association hat and said the demonstrators are "leftists and communists" - and misinformed about guns.

"These people do not understand that the Second Amendment means that a citizen can bear the same arms that an ordinary soldier would," he said.

In Columbus, Georgia, the theme of a rally that was larger than expected seemed to be that, even in the South, gun control can be a viable cause.

"This is very significant," organizer Carolyn Weinbaum said. "This many people in this community in this part of the country. The open question is where do we take it from here, as a community."

Nick Rulon, a student at Columbus State University College of the Arts, said he planned to attend the rally in Atlanta.

"But when I found out there was a rally going on in Columbus, I knew it was much more important to be a part of the dialogue here, in my community," he said.

In Parkland, Anishka Milleret pushed a wheelchair through the grass and up and down the small hillocks at Pine Trail Park.

Her daughters, Dianna and Deanna Milleret, 16-year-old twins, are sophomores at Stoneman Douglas. Deanna's cerebral palsy requires her to be in a wheelchair much of the time.

"They both have memories of that day, and they're both dealing with it in their own ways," Milleret said.

Along with the trauma of being in school during the shooting, the Millerets had the added anxiety of not being able to locate Deanna for hours afterward. She was evacuated along with hundreds of other students to a nearby hotel, but it took her mother hours to get to her.

"I'm hoping things can get back to normal at some point," Milleret said. "I think they will. I hope so."

Zayn Gregory, 13, and her 16-month-old sister, Raeviane, wore matching "MSD strong" T-shirts, as did their father, James Gregory. Zayn said adults should pay attention to the teenagers.

"We are speaking up so this never happens again," Zayn said. "I think people need to listen to us. We can't vote now, but we will soon."

- - -

Donna Bryson in Denver; Diana Crandall and Philip Bump in New York; Jim Lynn in Columbus, Georgia; Lori Rosza in Parkland, Florida; Victoria St. Martin in Valparaiso, Indiana, Doug Struck in Boston and Mark Berman in Washington contributed to this report.

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Video: The Post's Nicole Ellis asked Parkland, Fla., student Aalayah Eastmond whether she thought media coverage of the Feb. 14 school shooting lacked diversity.(The Washington Post)

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Video: The Washington Post interviewed actor and rapper Common, one of the performers of the March For Your Lives rally in Washington, D.C. on March 24.(The Washington Post)

Embed code:Final adieu to 3 more plane crash victims

UNB, Dhaka :

Three more victims of the US-Bangla plane crash were laid to eternal rest at their respective villages in Rajshahi, Barisal and Khulna on Friday.

The victims are freedom fighter Nazrul Islam, Alifuzzaman and Piyash Roy.

In Rajshahi, Nazrul Islam was buried with state honour at Gorhanga graveyard in the city in the afternoon. He was buried beside the grave of his wife Aktara Begum who was also killed in the plane crash. Aktara was laid to rest on Tuesday.

Earlier, Nazrul's second namaz-e-janaza was held

at Upashahar central mosque after Juma prayers, said victim's daughter Kakon.

His body was taken to the city from his Begunbari village home in Gomastapur upazila of Chapainawabganj after his first janaza there. In Barisal, the funeral of Piyash Roy was held at Barisal Mahaswashan around 12 noon. An ambulance carrying the body reached his home in Shitla Khola area of the city around 3:30am.

The body of Piyash, who was an MBBS student of Gopalganj Sheikh Sayera Khatun Medical College, was first taken to its campus around 12:45am. In Khulna, Alifuzzaman, another US-Bangla plane crash, was buried at Yusufia Madrasa graveyard in Rupsa upazila around 3:00pm. His namaz-e-janaza was held at Belfulia Islamia High School playground in the upazila after Juma prayers. Earlier, respective family members received the bodies at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the capital on Thursday afternoon.

At least 49 people, including 26 Bangladeshi nationals, were killed as the US-Bangla Airlines aircraft crashed and burst into flames at Tribhuvan International Airport in the capital of Himalayan county Nepal on March 12.The simple act of enjoying a pizza Monday will help aid in the care of those Connecticut residents who served in the military.

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana is launching a fundraising mechanism, starting Monday by donating 10 percent of lunch and dinner proceeds at its New Haven restaurant to Friends of Fisher House Connecticut.

The donation being made to the Fisher House Connecticut is part of a Good Neighbors Day program that the pizza restaurant is launching in an effort to give back to the people in the community who support us, said Gary Bimonte, the third generation owner of Frank Pepes.

The Fisher House Foundation builds and maintains long term residential facilities near military hospitals nationwide and organizers in Connecticut are in the midst of fundraising to support the West Haven location near the VA Healthcare System campus there.

There are 54 Fisher House locations nationwide and veterans and their families can stay at them free of charge. Over the past 28 years, these facilities have provided services to over 142,000 military families, saving them more than $167 million in lodging and transportation costs.

Here in Connecticut, the effort to support the local Fisher House is being underwritten by the Creed law firm in Bristol.

Kevin Creed, a principal in the law firm, founded the local Fisher House chapter in 2011 and is its volunteer chief executive officer. Creed is an Army veteran of 24 years and former Connecticut State Trooper.

Bimonte said he found out about Fisher House Connecticut through a car club of which he is a member.

My grandfathers business survived through the Great Depression and a World War and so doing something like this is a tribute to what he did for the community, Bimonte said Friday. Back then, nobody had money and yet they still came to his business to eat. He would extend credit to people and do what he could to help others, so I thought this was appropriate.

Bimonte said the restaurant has guaranteed a donation of at least $500, but I know were going to do a lot better than that given the number of customers we usually get on a weekday.

Bimonte said he and his family are still formulating how frequently they will do Good Neighbors Day and what other charities the restaurant will do fundraising for.Trump`s choice of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo stirs war fears

Trump won\'t care what former Obama advisers and editorial writers say about Bolton and Pompeo.

AFP, Washington :

By tapping conservative firebrand John Bolton as his national security chief and hardliner Mike Pompeo as his top diplomat, US President Donald Trump has dramatically raised the stakes in world affairs.

Now, if Trump decides to abandon the Iran nuclear deal he has an adviser who thinks Iran can be disarmed by force-and was one of the principal players who pushed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

If Trump's planned summit with Kim Jong Un does not lead quickly to North Korea's nuclear disarmament he has a team that is more ready than his last to contemplate pre-emptive war.

And, as his ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley pushes ahead with efforts to cuts to US funding for the world body, he will have a die-hard unilateralist by his side, cheering him on.

Bolton's appointment as White House national security adviser was not a surprise but it was still felt as a rude shock by many foreign policy professionals and commentators.

"John Bolton is a national security threat," declared Colin Kahl and Jon Wolfsthal, who were senior advisers to former president Barack Obama, in a stark commentary for Foreign Policy magazine.

"Yes, John Bolton really is that dangerous," wrote an alarmed New York Times editorial board.

"The good thing about John Bolton, President Trump's new national security adviser, is that he says what he thinks. The bad thing is what he thinks," the board warned.

David Wright, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, called said that Bolton's "extreme views are particularly dangerous now given his opposition to diplomacy with Iran and North Korea."

Pressure group Human Rights Watch has denounced Pompeo as a defender of torture and discrimination against Muslims and homosexuals and wrote to urge the Senate to reject his appointment.

Trump won't care what former Obama advisers and New York editorial writers say about Bolton and Pompeo, but at first glance their policy views appear to contradict many of his own.

Before running for president the New York property developer had no foreign policy experience beyond promoting his international hotels and resorts-and it showed.

Several of his first generation of advisers picked up on the campaign trail are under investigation over their alleged involvement in Russian election meddling.

Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was sacked for lying about contacts with the Russian embassy and has since pleaded guilty for making false statements to the FBI.

Under the influence of his nationalist former strategy guru Steve Bannon, Trump's foreign policy positions took an isolationist bent, and he condemned the Iraq war that Bolton worked so hard to promote.

But in his first year in office, Trump chafed under the moderating influence of his second national security adviser HR McMaster and his now sacked secretary of state Rex Tillerson.Talk of murder, drugs and sex permeated Fridays testimony in the racketeering trial of two top former leaders of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club as a former insider shed light on the groups alleged underground conduct in San Antonio.

The insider was not an former Bandidos member, but Magenta Winans, a 46-year-old woman who testified that she helped the Bandidos murder a street gang member in retaliation for the killing of a fellow biker, aided their drug trafficking and ran the groups call girl service in San Antonio, called Platinum Escorts.

RELATED: Jury reaches verdict in TX doctor's alleged murder-for-hire plot

Her testimony was offered in support of a federal indictment that alleges the Bandidos racketeering enterprise spanned 16 years, from 2000 to 2016. Toward the end of that period, the Bandidos were headed by the two lone defendants on trial, former national president Jeffrey Fay Pike and ex-national vice president John Xavier Portillo.

Winans testimony largely implicated Portillo. Though Pike and Portillo are charged in a series of crimes related to racketeering conspiracy, including allegations that they ordered beatings or sanctioned murder, only Portillo is charged in the January 2002 murder of Robert Lara, a member of the Two Six Nation street gang.

Winans, a former meth addict, said she was introduced to the Bandidos in 2001 through a friend, the late boxer Robert Pikin Quiroga.

She said she met Richard Merla and Andrew Corky Gomez, members of the Bandidos Southwest San Antonio chapter, and had an affair with Gomez. She even went to work in his auto shop, Precision Automotive.

At the end of 2001, she heard through Gomez that fellow chapter member Javier Jay Negrete was fatally shot at Tiffanys Billiards off San Pedro Avenue. Gomez introduced her to the boss  Portillo, Winans testified. Portillo, president of the local Bandidos chapter at the time, asked her: Do you think you can take care of this for us? Our brother meant a lot to us. She agreed.

After being given an alias, she infiltrated the Two Six Nation gang and befriended Lara, who confessed he killed Negrete, Winans testified.

When she reported back to the Bandidos, they instructed Winans to lure Lara to a desolate picnic area along Interstate 37 south of San Antonio. There, Merla and fellow Bandidos member Frederick Fast Fred Cortez pulled Lara out of the car and shot him repeatedly, she testified. She assumed the same fate awaited her.

But instead, the club hailed her, and the killing also earned Portillo a promotion in May 2002 to the national chapter, as a national sergeant at arms.

Before he was promoted, Portillo told her, Well make sure youre taken care of.

He said, We can make you property; and if anything happens to you, it happens to us, Winans testified.

She said she agreed with his request to get a tattoo. The tattoo, on her hip, once read: Property of BMC SWSA  Bandidos Motorcycle Club Southwest San Antonio chapter  and was designed to look like the patches Bandidos wear on their vests, she said. She later covered it up with a larger tattoo after her friend Quiroga was killed by Merla in 2005, and she stopped being the clubs property.

The wording and patch outlines of the old tattoo are still visible, according to a photo prosecutors showed jurors.

Winans said she also managed the clubs Playmate Escorts out of an apartment on Cincinnati Avenue, where customers were charged $200 an hour. She said some of the money went to Portillo.

Winans also testified that she broke up methamphetamine for Gomez for distribution and even delivered ounce quantities to Portillo.

After Laras murder, law officers tried to interview her three times about the killing. In June 2002, when she was jailed for traffic ticket warrants, Portillo bailed her out and she lied to police by saying she knew nothing about Laras murder.

When the feds arrested Portillo in January 2016 and searched his home, they found a receipt for what Portillo paid for Winans bail. Prosecutors showed it to the jury during Winans testimony.

Winans also was arrested in January 2006 for possession of 7 grams of meth. She said Portillo her not to worry, to just go with the plan. Dont change your lies, pretty much, and that a lawyer paid by the Bandidos will take care of you.

A year later, she was arrested again for possession of marijuana. The feds, who were investigating the Bandidos, later adopted the state drug charges. Rather than go with the Bandidos lawyer, she chose a federal public defender because I wanted the opportunity to live a structured life.

As part of a plea deal, she pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor for possession of meth and got probation with a requirement for drug treatment and rehab.

For her cooperation, she will not be charged for Laras murder, she said. She will continue testifying Tuesday.A 16-year-old Iraqi girl who went missing in January has been found, but her parents are now facing child abuse charges.

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said Maarib Alhishmawi, who was found in mid-March, told Child Protective Services of abuse at the hands of her parents. She told authorities that her parents poured hot cooking oil on her and hit her with broomsticks when she objected to an arranged marriage.

"At least at one point she was choked almost to the point of unconsciousness," Salazar said. Adding that both parents took part in the abuse.

Her father, Abdulah Fahmi Kala Alhishmawi, 34, and mother, Hamdiyah Sabah Alhishmawi, 33, are each facing at least one felony count of continuous family violence, according to Salazar.

"I believe it was the female suspect, the mother, that at one point actually threw hot cooking oil on her because she was refusing to take part in this marriage," Salazar said.

RELATED: Schlitterbahn Waterparks charged in Kansas decapitation death

He said the FBI may also add charges of their own.

Salazar said the teens parents had arranged a marriage between her and an adult man from another city.

Salazar said investigators believe the arranged marriage is one of reasons Maarib Alhishmawi left home. The details were being worked out in late 2017. Salazar said a price of $20,000 was to be paid to the family was part of the marriage arrangements.

"It's highly likely that he'll be facing charges as well," Salazar said of the intended groom.

RELATED: Woman who ran Bandidos call girl service testifies

The sheriff said Maarib had been safely in the care of another organization while she was missing. He did not name the group.

Maarib and her five siblings, who are between 5 and 15 years old, are now in CPS care, Salazar said. He said it is unknown at the moment if the other siblings have also been abused.

Officials said the family had been in the United States for two years on visas. The type of visas not immediately known.

As seen in local news reports, while the two suspects were being led away in handcuffs from the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, the father could be heard shouting to media, blaming the daughter for the situation.This years Big Give  the online, 24-hour donation drive Thursday that encouraged donors to give to their favorite nonprofits  didnt reach the stated goal of $7 million, but thats not a big deal, chief organizer Scott McAninch said.

That was a lofty goal this year, but we wanted to set the bar high, said McAninch, CEO of the Nonprofit Council. We didnt want folks to think, Oh, they reached their goal, theyre done, we dont need to give.

This years event brought in more than $5 million, donated by more than 33,000 donors to more than 600 nonprofits in a 14-county region around San Antonio.

The participating nonprofits spanned the gamut of causes, from the arts and childrens charities to animal welfare and entrepreneurship.

Basis Texas Schools, a network of charter schools, led the pack with the most money raised, more than $230,000. TracysDogs, a national, San Antonio-based dog rescue and rehabilitation program, snagged the most donors, more than 2,000.

McAninch said this years haul was the biggest in the events five-year history. In 2016, a technical glitch slowed things, but last year the event recovered and raised $4.6 million, he said.

Weve gotten a lot of emails from the participating agencies, and they all seem very pleased this year, he said. A lot of them reached their individual goals, and thats whats important. Were going to build on that success.

A main goal of the Big Give is to increase awareness of all the good that nonprofit organizations achieve, and this years event did that in spades, McAninch said.

We do a lot of analyzing of the data on our website of donor traffic, and we make adjustments year to year, he said. Next year, we hope to raise $10 million.

This years Big Give was moved to March from May, where it had taken place the first four years, out of fear that it would have to compete with various events if it stayed at its original date, McAninch said  a Spurs playoff game, the tricentennial events and post-Fiesta donor fatigue.SAN ANTONIO  A Bexar County Sheriff's deputy died after the car she was traveling in fell into a massive sinkhole on the Southwest Side Sunday evening, officials confirmed this afternoon.

Emergency crews recovered the body of Dora Linda (Solis) Nishihara, a part-time BCSO deputy, just before 1 p.m. from her vehicle, which was submerged in 12 feet of water in the sinkhole in the 8400 block of Quintana Road, officials said.

Fire Chief Charles Hood said crews worked the scene as a "body recovery" rather than a rescue early Monday. The sinkhole, which swallowed two cars, is the diameter of the street and was likely caused by a large sewer line rupture Sunday evening, officials said.

RELATED: SAFD: San Antonio woman injured after saving man from sink hole

"We are heartbroken to confirm Deputy Dora Linda (Solis) Nishihara passed away after her car fell into a sinkhole Sunday," BCSO spokesman James Kieth said in a release.

San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor called the incident a "terrible tragedy" at a morning news conference.

Fire officials connected the submerged vehicles to a crane to remove the car. Hood said during a news conference the two vehicles are likely filled with gravel, dirt and other debris along with the water.

"Both cars are going to be a challenge to get out," Hood said. "This is going to be a slow, tedious response recovery for us."

Some of the challenges the firefighters faced included water continually eroding away the ground underneath the road, rain and trains that are coming through the area. The trains can cause vibrations that may impact the recovery effort, Hood said.

Firefighters and EMS personnel initially responded at approximately 7:30 p.m. Sunday and found two cars inside the sinkhole, according to officials at the scene.

One person who drove into the sinkhole was a 60-year-old man. The man and a woman who helped him were rescued from the hole and transported to a hospital with minor injuries, fire officials said Sunday.

The vehicle carrying Nishihara's body was removed from the sinkhole at about 12:41 p.m. Monday.

"Our rescue team members faced very dangerous conditions with an unstable sinkhole collapsing around them, and swift moving sewer water," Hood said in a news release.

The fire department teamed up with San Antonio Water System crews and the police department to salvage the vehicles trapped in the sinkhole, said SAFD battalion chief Brian ONeil.

It's unknown at this time if the second vehicle has been recovered from the sinkhole.

ONeil told mySA.com on Sunday that the ground surrounding the sinkhole is unstable and could collapse at a moments notice. If anyone fell inside, theyd be swept underground, he said.

RELATED: Watch: Accused S.A. cop killer Otis McKane gives jailhouse interview

Firefighters and SAPD were working to secure the scene by attempting to stop the flow of the sewer line.

SAWS reported Sunday that there had been four different sewer spill overflows so far on Sunday.

RELATED: About 3,000 honor slain SAPD officer Benjamin Marconi at funeral

Staff writers Quixem Ramirez and Chris Quinn contributed to this report.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhiteUnsurprisingly for the former host of The Apprentice, Donald Trump has given us every variety of firing.

There have been necessary firings (at three weeks, the ouster of Michael Flynn was long overdue), cruel firings (Rex Tillerson, check out Twitter) and spectacularly ill-advised firings (the cashiering of James Comey that led directly to the hiring of Robert Mueller).

Now, with Trump frontally attacking the special counsel, there is speculation that the president will deliver his worst firing yet. Moving against Mueller would make the axing of Comey look like a shrewd play. It would likely fail to achieve its objectives and backfire politically, while  as far as we know at the moment  not even be necessary to trying to cover up a corrupt election bargain with the Russians.

At this juncture, the original justification for the special counsel probe, alleged collusion with the Russians, appears to be fading over the horizon. Mueller hasnt charged anyone with crimes related to collusion, even figures who would presumably be central to any conspiracy, including Flynn and Paul Manafort. Absent collusion, an obstruction case is likely to be attenuated  what was Trumps corrupt motive?  and not result in his impeachment and removal or criminal charges.

Even if Trump is dead set on ending the investigation, firing Mueller may not achieve it. The Office of Special Counsel doesnt simply vaporize without Mueller at its head. Someone would take his place, unless Trump directly orders that the entire investigation be terminated. Such a move would roil the Department of Justice more than just removing Mueller and almost certainly become the basis of impeachment charges if Democrats took the House in the fall.

And it would make that outcome more likely. Democrats already hate and fear Trump, the factor that has been driving Democratic turnout in special elections and threatens to swamp the GOP House majority in the fall. Shutting down a legitimately constituted investigation into his campaign and White House would make an insanely motivated (and often simply insane) opposition even more so.

If Trump doesnt like the press coverage of Muellers investigation now, wait until he sees the press coverage of his firing and whatever comes next. Mueller would supplant Comey as the sainted martyr of the Trump era. Any litigation over his firing would get wall-to-wall coverage. And whatever Mueller has learned would certainly make it into the hands of Congress and end up plastered in the nations newspapers.

The timing doesnt make sense, either. Having spent a year cooperating with Mueller, why fire him now, when he might not be wrapping up, but has probably already done the lions share of his work?

Moving at this point would only be rational if Trump fears some thermonuclear revelation that wouldnt be survivable. Its not clear what, in the current news and political environment, that would be. Everything is so perishable, and Trump has such a strong hold on his partys base, he could presumably weather almost anything. Back in the halcyon 1990s, Bill Clinton proved how quickly people can acclimate to an unthinkable scandal and how a political party will defend almost anything if it involves the fate of an elected president.

None of this is to say that there arent legitimate grounds for complaint about Mueller. He was supposed to be hunting down collusion with Russia and has instead been prosecuting violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act that normally dont result in criminal charges. There are legitimate questions about how the Russian investigation began, and a second special counsel to examine the conduct of the FBI in 2016 may be in the offing (the firing of FBI official Andrew McCabe on the advice of professionals at the bureau suggests more revelations to come).

There is one sure way to overshadow any of these questions and ensure a more portentous investigation, and thats to undertake the worst of all firings.The Justice Department has spurned a court order to identify the generals and military experts President Trump said he consulted before ordering a ban on transgender military service.

Information about the presidents deliberations will not be disclosed and is not necessary to decide on the legality of Trumps order, Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge in Seattle on Thursday, the day before the ban had been scheduled to take effect.

That explanation was derided by a lawyer for Lambda Legal, one of the gay rights organizations that has challenged Trumps action in court. Four federal judges have issued injunctions preventing the ban from taking effect.

I think the governments refusal to lay their cards on the table is a powerful indication that they have nothing to go on, attorney Peter Renn said Friday. The government was unwilling to pull back the curtain because there was nothing behind the curtain.

Late Friday, President Trump issued a new executive order banning from military service all transgender people who may require substantial medical treatment. He said exemptions would be granted under certain limited circumstances, which he did not specify.

The order said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who oversees the Coast Guard, agreed with the new directive and would have authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals.

In a series of early-morning tweets in July, Trump announced that after consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.

He said the armed forces could not afford the tremendous medical costs and disruption of transgender service members.

His action appeared to catch military leaders by surprise. Several top Pentagon officials, including Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said transgender troops should continue to serve.

They were first openly admitted in June 2016, when President Barack Obama issued an order removing a previous ban and cited a study that found that transgender service members would not hamper the military. Obama ordered that the ban on transgender enlistment be ended by July 2017, a date the Trump administration first postponed until January and then tried to cancel but was thwarted by the court injunctions.

The injunctions keep Trumps order on hold until the lawsuits are resolved. The next step could come Tuesday, when U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman of Seattle has a hearing on arguments by Lambda Legal and another group, OutServe SLDN, that the transgender ban had no legal justification and would violate the rights of current and prospective service members.

Despite the Justice Departments assertion that the generals and military experts were irrelevant to the case and would not be called as witnesses, Pechman ordered the department to identify them, and the information they provided, by Thursday.

The order did not include penalties for defiance, such as contempt of court and potential imprisonment, but the governments refusal to comply could hurt its case.

In Thursdays filing, Trump administration lawyers said they respectfully disagree with the judges position and maintain that judicial deference to executive decisions about the composition of the military is not dependent upon judicial review of the deliberative process that preceded the decisions.

But they acknowledged that Pechman might use their nondisclosure to determine the level of deference she gives to Trumps assessment of the best interests of the nation and its armed forces.

They understand theyll pay a very steep price for that decision, said Renn, the Lambda Legal attorney. They cant claim that the policy was the product of any reasoned decision-making process.Respected constitutional law expert and University of Zimbabwe lecturer Lovemore Madhuku has said the intervention by the army which culminated in former president Robert Mugabes resignation last November was illegal in terms of the countrys Constitution.

Mugabe resigned in November following an army intervention, which saw the rise of Emmerson Mnangagwa to the position of President.

Following his resignation, debate has been raging on, on whether there was a coup or not, even though regional and international bodies have since welcomed Mnangagwas ascendancy.

Judge president George Chiweshe has since ruled that the takeover of government by the army, which culminated in Mugabes resignation was lawful following an application filed last November by two Zimbabweans who sought an order illegitimising the armys intervention.

Chiweshe said the intervention by the army was justified considering that Mugabe was no longer able to execute his duties independently.

However, speaking on Wednesday at a discussion held at the Southern African Political and Economic Series (Sapes) Trust dubbed, Zimbabwes Constitutional Coup Crisis: The Way Forward, Madhuku said all the events that took place leading to Mugabes resignation pointed to a coup.

I think the debate about a coup or no coup is mixing issues, its, do you like the coup or you do not like the coup.

I mean this nonsensical debate whether there was a coup or no coup, I think its a completely, I would use the word nonsensical, in the sense that there was a coup from a legal perspective, whatever the meaning there was, Madhuku said.

He said even though the word coup does not exist in the Constitution, words like unlawful or unconstitutional or contrary to the Constitution are used instead.

He said the aspect of putting pressure on a sitting president, with a view of pushing him out is described as a coup.

He said even if 100 million people say an elected president must go, if that pressure is put and the president feels threatened, that would amount to a coup as the only lawful process to remove a president is through an election.

The moment that he claims that his resignation was not voluntary, if he says that, then you investigate if it was voluntary or not and if you find that it was not voluntary, then clearly it will be difficult to sustain a situation where you say it was in accordance with the Constitution.

He further said in terms of the Constitution, the president alone is the one equipped with the power to deploy the army into the streets, which was not the case during last years army intervention.

Madhuku further said the events of November 15, 2018, can be defended politically but not legally.

In the legal environment, with the precedent that has been set, the army will do it at any other time and that they will not be targeting Mugabes party now, I think they will be targeting another person or another leader.

We have had countries that have gone through this, until one country that used to say a coup happens, as long as it succeeds its fine, then they found there were more and more coups and decided for a coup to be valid, it must be approved by the courts.

Madhukus other panelists, National Patriotic Front spokesperson Jealousy Mawarire and pro-democracy activist Linda Masarira, also said last years events were illegal.

Mawarire said Mugabe had been told by negotiators during last years army intervention that if he refused to leave, the soldiers were going to open the gates for members of the public and that he was going to go down the former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi way.

He also said the army has effectively taken control of all institutions, including the police.

He further said they will soon be going to court and mobilising protests to test the Mnangagwa-led governments sincerity.

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Related Zimbabwe Latest News- The police has arrested a former Cameroonian minister of water and energy in Nigeria

- The former minister was also repatriated to his country by Nigeria authorities after his arrest

- There are speculations he was arrested as part of an anti-corruption drive known as Operation Sparrowhawk

Cameroons former water and energy minister, Basile Kouna, was arrested in Nigeria and flown home on Thursday, March 22, amid a crackdown on high-level corruption, a police source and local media said.

Atangana Kouna is in Cameroon. He was arrested in Nigeria and sent back to Cameroon. He arrived this evening, one police source, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the press, told Reuters.

Kouna was removed from his ministerial position during President Paul Biyas March 2 cabinet reshuffle. In February, he was ordered not to leave the country.

READ ALSO: Shame on Boko Haram for holding on to only Christian girl - Muslim group calls for release of Liya Sharibu, salutes her courage

Vision 4, a private television channel considered allied to Biya, reported that the former minister arrived at the international airport in the capital Yaounde at 6:20pm (1720 GMT) escorted by police officers. Another channel, Canal 2 International, also reported his arrest in Nigeria and subsequent extradition back to Cameroon.

Cameroons government spokesman was not immediately reachable for comment. Neither were officials in neighbouring Nigeria.

It was not clear what charges Atangana Kouna was facing, but there was speculation on Thursday that he was arrested as part of an anti-corruption drive known as Operation Sparrowhawk.

A former Ministry of Public Works official, the head of a state company, and the ex-rector of the University of Douala, were arrested as part of the operation on Monday, March 19.

READ ALSO: Nigeria will soon become rice sufficient in rice production - FG

Cameroons oil wealth has spawned a sprawling political patronage system fueled by revenues from crude exports. Transparency International ranked it 153 out of 180 countries on its annual corruption perceptions index.

Biya has ruled virtually by decree since taking over from a retiring predecessor in 1982 and then winning an election with 99.98 per cent of the vote a year later. Now 85, Biya is expected to again seek re-election in presidential polls later in the year, but he is currently facing some of the biggest challenges to his 35-year rule.

Cameroons oil-dependent economy has been crippled by low crude prices. And separatists are mounting a guerrilla campaign in the countrys two English-speaking provinces, demanding independence from the majority Francophone Central African nation.

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Legit.ng earlier reported that the Nigerian Army had debunked all claims that the Boko Haram terrorists group leader, Abubakar Shekau, had escaped to Cameroon. The Army said it does not know the whereabouts of the terrorists factional leader.

The then spokesperson for the Army, Sani Usman, said reports that Shekau had escaped to Cameroon is misleading. Usman also said the Army has placed a bounty of N3 million as bond on the terrorists' leader.

Survivors of Boko Haram on Legit.ng TV

Source: LegitEU nations to take more action against Russia over spy issue

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left, speaks with French President Emmanuel Macron, center, and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel during a breakfast meeting at an EU summit in Brussels on Friday

AP, Brussels :

Several European Union countries said Friday they may follow Britain in expelling Russian diplomats, as EU Council chief Donald Tusk predicted member states would introduce more measures against Moscow for the poisoning of an ex-spy in England.

At a summit in Brussels, the 28 EU leaders agreed with Britain that it is "highly likely" Russia is responsible for the March 4 attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. They remain unconscious in critical condition after being exposed to a military-grade nerve agent.

The EU has recalled its ambassador from Moscow for consultations over an incident it called "a grave challenge to our shared security."

French President Emmanuel Macron said the nerve-agent attack was an attack on Europe's sovereignty that required a "coordinated and determined response."

Tusk called the bloc's response "unprecedented," and said "more steps are expected at a national level" starting Monday.

"I am especially pleased that despite tough Brexit negotiations, the EU has demonstrated unanimous and unequivocal unity with the UK in the face of this attack," Tusk said at a Brussels news conference.

He said it was too soon to say whether the bloc as a whole would take more action.

The strong solidarity from the EU - which Britain is due to leave next year - is a victory for British Prime Minister Theresa May's efforts to muster international condemnation of a chemical weapons attack on British soil.

Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both said the evidence presented by May at the EU summit was persuasive - comments echoed by Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite

Britain and Russia have expelled 23 of each other's diplomats since the attack, which has sparked an east-west diplomatic crisis reminiscent of the Cold War. Britain says the expelled Russians, who left London earlier this week, were undeclared intelligence agents.

Several minibuses left the British embassy in Moscow on Friday, reportedly carrying the expelled U.K. diplomats.

Rather than pressing the EU for new economic sanctions on Moscow, May is seeking to erode Russia's extensive spy network by removing intelligence agents operating under diplomatic cover.

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said the Baltic nation might follow Britain's lead and expel Russian diplomats who are judged to be spies next week, in coordination with other EU countries.

Neighboring Lithuania has said it also is considering expulsions. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said it was "probable" that his country would also kick out Russian diplomats, noting that discussions were still ongoing.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Ireland would conduct a security assessment of Russian diplomats with a view to possibly expelling those who are not legitimate.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said his country would also consider "whether we should take unilateral steps."



- Lawal Daura, the Director General of the State Security Service (SSS) said the agency worked on a peaceful return of the girls as ordered by the president

- Daura said insurgents only condition was for a temporary ceasefire to enable them return the girls

The Director General of the State Security Service (SSS), Lawal Daura, on Friday, March 23, said the SSS followed President Muhammadu Buhari's order to secure a peaceful and timely release of the Dapchi girls from their abductors.

Premium Times reports that Daura, who spoke when President Buhari received the schoolgirls at the State House presidential villa Abuja, said there was an intense behind-the-scene dailogue led by the Department of State Service to secure the release of the girls.

105 girls abducted from a secondary school in Dapchi, Yobe state, were returned to the entre of the village by their abductors in the early hours of Wednesday, March 21.

Daura, while speaking on the negotiation that led to the release said the insurgents only condition was their demands for cessation of hostilities and temporary ceasefire to enable them return the girls at the point they picked them.

READ ALSO: Governor Akeredolu loses at Supreme Court

Daura said: The exercise was arduous and quite challenging. The sensitivity of the operation and some uncertainties surrounding it, particularly routes to be used, nature of transportation, realization and concern that the girls were not kept at one place, issues of encountering military checkpoints within the theater and indeed keeping the operation on strictly the principle of need-to-know made the whole exercise more complicating."

Daura said the negotiation was necessary not only for the girls release but also to seure a permanent and possible cessation of hostilities.

Other interests, he said, include discussing the fate of the arrested insurgents and innocent Nigerian citizens being held hostage and the possibility of granting amnesty to repentant insurgents.

He said these factors presently seem problematic because the insurgents are factionalized while holding various spheres of influence in their guerrilla controlled enclaves.

He said: The negative impact of social media on otherwise classified operations, and of course, some of the utterances of the government functionaries who were not competent to comment on the issues, posed challenges that almost marred the rescue efforts."

Daura also spoke about the physical and mental welfare of the girls after their release.

He said: As such, they are given psychological mental evaluation conducted by trained specialists. About four (4) were discovered to have broken limbs and were sent for X-Ray.

Almost all of them had one skin infection or the other having not taken bath for over a month. They have been medically examined, and those with ailments were treated. The measures are to ensure that they are in good health."

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Daura said: "Six more Dapchi girls are yet to be accounted for, and dialogue on these students is still on-going."

Legit.ng earlier reported that the Yobe state police command has denied media reports that they were informed hours before the abduction of over 100 girls in Dapchi community by Boko Haram terrorists.

In a statement sent to Legit.ng by the commissioner of police in the state, Sunmonu Abdulmaliki, the command also denied reports that their men took their heels when the terrorists struck.

Nigerians react as Boko Haram terrorists kidnap over 100 girls in Dapchi, Yobe - on Street Gist

Source: Legit.ng- Ifeanyi Nwaneri is currently facing charges for allegedly fraudulently withdrawing N1.2 billion using a POS issued by his bank

- Nwaneri was arraigned before Justice Olusola Ajibike Williams of the special offences court

- The court also heard the testimonies of a witness in the case

Ifeanyi Nwaneri, a Nigerian, has been arraigned by the Lagos zonal office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) before Justice Olusola Ajibike Williams of the special offences court sitting in Ikeja, on a five-count charge bordering on alleged stealing to the tune of N1.2 billion.

Nwaneri, according to the EFCC, is a customer with Access Bank Plc and was alleged to have fraudulently carried out several transactions on Point of Sales (POS) terminal issued to him by the bank.

One of the counts reads: That you, Ifeanyi Nwaneri, sometime between September 1 and 4, 2017, at Lagos within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, dishonestly converted for the use of Sessy Global Ventures the sum of N25, 000, 000.00, property of Access Bank Plc.

Another count reads: "That you, Ifeanyi Nwaneri, sometime between August 15 and September 12, 2017, at Lagos within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, dishonestly converted for the use of Omede Shedu Silas the sum of N17, 000, 000.00 only property of Access Bank Plc.

After pleading not guilty, the prosecution counsel, Nnemeka Omewa, urged the court to allow his trial begin immediately while Nwaneri be remand in prison custody pending the determination of the charges levelled against him.

READ ALSO: Governor Akeredolu loses at Supreme Court

However, counsel to the defendant, John Don, informed the court of a pending application for bail on behalf of his client and therefore prayed the court to do justice to it.

Ifeanyi Nwaneri, the suspect. Credit: EFCC

Justice Williams granted the defendant bail in the sum of N 5million with two sureties in like sum with a condition that one of the sureties must be a relation to the defendant and must own a landed property within the jurisdiction of the court.

Justice Williams thereafter asked the prosecution counsel to call his witness in the matter.

The first prosecution witness, Chuks Igboerika, a manager with Access Bank Plc, told the court that the defendant had approached the bank sometime in March, 2017 for the issuance of a POS terminal and requested that the POS machine should be enabled in such a way that it would accept international cards, which he was eventually granted.

The witness said after that, the defendant started receiving huge inflows into his account through his international cards on July 30, 2017 adding that he consistently received money from July, 2017 to September 18, 2017 to the tune of N1.2 billion.

When we discovered how money was being credited into Ifeanyis account with Access Bank, he was engaged by the relationship team unit of Access Bank to know the nature of the work he did that could have warranted the large sums of money that he had in his account.

He told the team that he deals in precious stone, in addition to dealing in automobile parts. He also said that his customers were foreigners.

As the money came into his account, he transferred some into different bank accounts. He has so far transferred N508million to other banks, leaving a credit of about N677million in the account with Access Bank, the witness said.

The witness said Access Bank later received a mail from Interswitch in which it made declaration of fraud in the transactions of POS belonging to the defendant and the fact that there was no authorization for the transactions from the legitimate owners of the money involved.

READ ALSO: Nigerian woman becomes first black female high commissioner appointed by UK

Investigations, however, revealed that the defendant carried out the transactions with the VISA international card and when the bank asked the defendant to produce the POS machine issued to him, he said it was not with him.

It was also revealed that when Access Bank asked Interswitch to produce chargebacks-complaints from the persons who lost money so as to declare the transactions fraudulent, it could not produce any.

The loophole was discovered by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) after Access Bank reported the transactions.

It was revealed that Interswitch was hoarding the debits entries in its system records without passing the entries to the appropriate channels, which were the real card holders who have allegedly parted with their money

An international POS transaction must go through Interswitch, then to the card issuing company which, in this case, is VISA card. Then, the transaction must reflect to the card holder and go back through the same channel to the bank before a transaction can be confirmed approved.

And if a transaction was declined or not approved, it goes through the same channel. But in this case, it was discovered by CBN that the transactions done by the defendant started and ended between the defendant and Interswitch, he said.

The witness told the court that all the authorized companies involved in an international POS transaction were invited to review the fraud independently.

They all came to the verdict that the fraudulent transactions done by the defendant were debited from Access Bank authorized by Interswitch, the witness said.

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During cross-examination by the defence counsel, the witness told the court that it was at the point of interrogation that the defendant told the bank what he does for a living.

But the defence counsel pointed out that it was wrong of a financial institution to have failed to do that from the outset.

The case was adjourned to April 23 and 27, 2018 for continuation of trial.

Exclusive: Freed Dapchi Girl Recounts Her Ordeal with Boko Haram (Nigeria Breaking News) - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ngThe Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) on Friday, March 23, commended the federal government for being proactive in securing the release of the abducted girls from Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe state.

The association said this in a statement signed by Pastor Adebayo Oladeji, Special Assistant Media and Communications to the CAN president, Rev. Samson Ayokunle, in Abuja.

Ayokunle said that CAN rejoiced with the families of the schoolgirls released and called on the government for the rescue of Leah Sharibu from the captivity of the terrorists.

READ ALSO: President Buhari receives Dapchi schoolgirls in Aso Rock

We are still crying for the governments intervention and that of relevant security agencies over the callous, ungodly and wicked acts of the Boko Haram terrorists.

Leah Sharibu is still being kept in captivity of untold psychological trauma, the life of that innocent girl means a lot to her parents and to so many Nigerians, irrespective of their religious affiliations, he said.

Ayokunle also appealed to political leaders to live up to the expectations in the discharge of their official assignments.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalled that on Feb. 19, some school girls were abducted by insurgent groups in Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe state.

PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 news app

Meanwhile, Legit.ng earlier reported that the Speaker, Nasarawa State House of Assembly, Alhaji Ibrahim Balarabe-Abdullahi, on Friday urged Nigerians to pray for the safe release of Leah Sharibu by Boko Haram.

Balarabe-Abdullahi (APC- Umaisha/Ugya) gave the advice in a statement issued by his Press Secretary, Jibrin Gwamna in Keffi.

Exclusive: Freed Dapchi Girl Recounts Her Ordeal - Boko Haram (Nigeria Breaking News) | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit- Elder statesmen from the Niger Delta will hold a massive rally to clamor for the restructuring of Nigeria

- Former President Goodluck Jonathan, south-south governors and other Niger Delta leaders are expected to lead the rally

- The rally was organised by Edwin Clark-led Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF)

Some prominent leaders in the Niger Delta region will on Saturday, March 24, hold a mega rally in Yenagoa, Bayelsa state capital to call for the restructuring of Nigeria.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan, south-south governors and other Niger Delta leaders are expected to lead the rally which was organised by Edwin Clark-led Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF).

It is expected that PANDEF with the rally tagged, Restructuring the Nigerian Federation, would insist that the country should be restructured before the 2019 general election, The nation reports.

Chief A.K. Horsfall and His Eminence, King Edmund Daukoru, the Amayanabo of Nembe, serving and former ministers, chairmen and members of boards and parastatals are expected to grace the occasion.

READ ALSO: President Buhari receives Dapchi schoolgirls in Aso Rock

Others are all the current and former National Assembly members, all current and former Speakers and members of Houses of Assembly of the South-South.

The governors, former president Jonathan, PANDEF leader, Chief Edwin Clark, some eminent Nigerians and leaders of ethnic nationalities, civil society groups are expected to deliver speeches at the rally.

Fellow Nigerians; lets restructure now, tomorrow may be too late. A restructured Nigeria will guarantee a free, fair, egalitarian, united, peaceful and prosperous nation where everybody, irrespective of region, religion, creed and status will be happy.

We intend to use the rally to rally support for restructuring of Nigeria. The 2019 general election is a referendum on Restructuring.

We the people of Niger Delta/ south-south want the Nigerian federation to be restructured to enthrone true federalism before the 2019 general election and it is doable, all that is required is a political will on the part of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, chairman publicity of the rally, Chief Thompson Okorotie said in a statement made available to the news outlet.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that the Movement for Cognitive Justice on Monday, February 12, said Nigeria must recognise and give equality to its diverse ethnic groups to end recurring conflicts in the country.

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Dr Kajit Bagu, the founder of the movement, said at a press conference in Kaduna that the present structure has left the country with identity crisis forcing ethnic nationalities to clamour for equality and justice.

What is working well and what needs improvement in Nigeria? on Legit.ng TV.

Source: Legit- Former president, Goodluck Jonathan, has returned to Sierra Leone ahead of the country's presidential run-off-polls

- Jonathan flew back to Sierra Leone to observe the election scheduled for Tuesday, March 27

- The immediate ex-president, who is leading the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, arrived Freetown on Friday, March 23

Former president, Goodluck Jonathan has returned to Sierra Leone to observe the countrys presidential run-off polls scheduled for Tuesday March 27, NAN reports.

Legit.ng notes that in statement issued by Ikechukwu Eze, the spokesman to the former president, noted that Jonathan, who is leading the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) Election Observation Mission, arrived Freetown on Friday, March 23.

Jonathan also led EISA to the first round of the elections on March 7, in which none of the candidates polled required 55 per cent of votes to win at the first ballot.

READ ALSO: Melaye's recall process to start on March 27 as INEC releases timetable

EISA had declared the process of the March 7 general elections as peaceful and credible.

The mission in its interim report presented to the media on March 9 added that the elections were conducted substantially in line with sub-regional, continental and international standards".

It also observed that voter turnout was impressive while the conduct of electoral personnel was professional.

Jonathan, who presented the report also appealed to the people of Sierra Leone and all stakeholders to remain calm until the final electoral processes were concluded.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Nigerias immediate past president, would lead a team of observers to monitor the Sierra Leonean general elections scheduled to hold on Wednesday, March 7.

The former president was named as the leader of the election observation mission of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA).

In a statement issued by Jonathans spokesman, Ikechukwu Eze, it was disclosed that the members of the delegation would be drawn from civil society organisations and election management bodies across Africa.

Obasanjo and Jonathan are good - on Legit.ng TV

Source: LegitThe UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) has announced the resumption of humanitarian operations in Rann town, in Borno state.

Legit.ng gathered that the UN relief wing said the resumption of aid operations in the community followed several security assessments by the UN and non-governmental organisations.

The UN had on March 2, suspended aid operations and withdrew its workers from Rann after a March 1 attack by suspected Boko Haram terrorists, who killed eight persons, including three aid workers, and abducted a nurse.

READ ALSO: Its better not to have any government than for PDP to return - Former PDP chieftain

However, UN aid workers have not yet been authorised to stay overnight in Rann, and daily operations are expected to continue until security conditions are met by the Nigerian authorities.

The UN and partners are providing life-saving emergency assistance in Rann including food, shelter and medicine to over 80,000 women, children and men, among them 55,000 internally displaced people.

The World Food Programme is planning to distribute food to at least 61,000 people this month.

Pre-positioning of food is also key ahead of the rainy season, which starts in June, cutting off road access to Rann, the UN said on Friday, March 23.

It said following the resumption of humanitarian activities in Rann, camp management and displacement tracking activities for impacted people have resumed, in addition to medical services. (NAN)

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that the theatre commander, Operation Lafiya Dole, Major-General Ibrahim Attahiru on Wednesday, October 11, said the army killed 15 Boko Haram terrorists in Gwoza on Tuesday, October 10.

Boko Haram abducted my husband and the Gov't forgot about him - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit- Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been indicted for liquidating the Nigeria Airways

- The indictment was from the chairman of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba

- Ndoma-Egba lamented that Nigeria Airways could have greatly influenced tourism and its multifaceted impact on the Nigerian economy

Chairman of NDDC, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba has indicted former President Olusegun Obasanjo for liquidating the Nigeria Airways, which he said could have greatly influenced tourism and its multifaceted impact on the Nigerian economy.

He made this known on Friday, March 23 at the ongoing Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA), holding in Port Harcourt, Rivers state.

Obasanjo accused of complicity in the liquidation of Nigeria Airways. Photo source: Twitter

READ ALSO: Retro: The rise and fall of Nigeria Airways (photos)

Delivering a keynote address earlier on the theme, The symbiotic relationship of aviation and tourism, the key to economic sustainability, Ndoma-Egba said Obasanjos decision to liquidate Nigeria Airways was the most unfortunate and impulsive by any Nigerian government.

The decision to liquidate Nigeria Airways was one of the most impulsive decisions ever taken, no matter what challenge it was passing through, it was one of the worse decisions that this country ever took, the NDDC chairman said.

On his part, Governor Nyesom Wike called on federal and state governments to be more focused on tourism investment and development.

The governor, who was represented by his commissioner for tourism, Mrs. Tonye Briggs-Oniyide, said for tourism to grow in the country, it would require wholesome commitment from the government, investors and stakeholders in the various aspects of the sector.

Wike said air transport and tourism complement each other, therefore insisting that both should be treated well while challenging both the federal and other state governments to implement existing policies on tourism and culture, address deficit in infrastructure and ensure safety and security of lives and property.

The national carrier was liquidated by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjos administration in 2005, and the workers had been embarking on protests nationwide over their unpaid entitlements.

READ ALSO: Aviation: Nigerias national carrier will be largest in Africa - Minister declares

The Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja is closed for repairs on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit- Nigeria's social media space continues to thrive as more people are enjoin internet access, according to the NCC

- The NCC also disclosed that the countrys phone subscriptions have reached 147 million

- It said commission would soon issue directive to service providers to give 14 days window to subscribers to enable them roll over their unused data

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said the countrys phone subscriptions have reached 147 million as at January this year.

The executive vice chairman of NCC, Prof Umar Danbatta, disclosed this during the NCC Special Day at the ongoing 29th Enugu International Trade Fair.

The fair was organised by the Enugu Chamber of Commerce, Mines, Industries and Agriculture (ECCIMA).

Danbatta, who was represented by the NCC director of public affairs, Mr Tony Ojobo, said the countrys social media space had continued to thrive.

READ ALSO: My daughter, Iyabo, wont take nonsense from anyone - Obasanjo declares

Our statistics continue to show positive movement in the provision of services with internet and phone penetratixns standing at over 100 million and 147 million subscribers respectively in January 2018.

With broadband penetratiox of 21 per cent, Nigerias social media space has continued to thrive and citizens are enjoying access to modern ways of interaction in the cyberspace, he said.

Danbatta said Nigerians were not left behind with services and innovations that abound in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) industry.

It is our commitment to keep the nation abreast of developments in telecommunications industry through innovative and world class regulatory processes, he said.

He said commission would soon issue directive to service providers to give 14 days window to subscribers to enable them roll over their unused data.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

In other words, this will stop the current practice where subscribers lose unused data even if they fail to renew on the date of the expiration of the current subscription," he added.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) suspended the operating licenses of some telecommunications operators for engaging in what it describes as call masking.

The commission also issued warning letters to others caught engaging in the offence.

Tony Ojobo, the director of public affairs of the commission, on Tuesday, February 27, said in a statement in Abuja that the telecommunications regulatory agency had also begun the second phase of investigation on the involvement of digital mobile operators engaged in related offences.

What is working well and what needs improvement in Nigeria? On Legit.ng TV.

Source: LegitThe secretary-general, Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE), Dr Kunle Olajide, has confirmed the death of YCEs president, Chief Idowu Sofola, a prominent Nigerian jurist, Bencher and former president of the Nigerian Bar Association.

Sofola, died on Friday, March 23, in Lagos at the age of 84, took over from retired Maj.-Gen. Adeyinka Adebayo, who passed on in 2017.

Sofola, who was born on September 29, 1934, he was the first black to be appointed the secretary of the International Bar Association (IBA) and was a prominent member of the Ikenne Social Circle and the Obara Ruling House for the Alakenne Royalty.

READ ALSO: My daughter, Iyabo, wont take nonsense from anyone - Obasanjo declares

Sofola, who was born on September 29, 1934, he was the first black to be appointed the secretary of the International Bar Association (IBA). Credit: Google

Olajide told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on telephone on Saturday that the YCE was grieved and shocked by Sofolas death, who he said, was not ill or bedridden.

I spoke with him few days ago, congratulating him on the appointment of his son as a high judge and we were planning an event to host him.

The icon is leaving us at a critical time particularly in Yorubaland as the country prepares for the 2019 general elections.

He was an intelligent man of Yoruba extraction and the vacuum he left behind will be difficult to fill.

It is great shock to me and YCE; a strong advocate and believer in true federalism, brilliant lawyer and defender of human rights and democracy, he said.

Olajide, who said he was leading a delegation of YCE headquartered in Ibadan, to the Ikenne home of the Sofolas in Ogun, added: His death is terrifying.

He condoled with the immediate family, Ikenne people, Ogun State and the Yoruba on his demise and prayed that may Allah grant his soul rest.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that Dr Kunle Olajide, the secretary general of the Yoruba Council of Elders said that the north is a big problem and great obstacle to the development of Nigeria.

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Olajide made the statement in Osogbo on Thursday, March 22, at the first memorial lecture of Nathaniel Abimbola organised by the Osun state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists,

Legit.ng notes that the statement was a reaction to the statement credited to the chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum and former inspector general of police, Alhaji Ibrahim Coomassie, who said that Nigeria could not survive without the north.

What is the problem with Nigeria? - on Street Gist.

Source: Legit.ng- Ngozi Okonjo Iweala has been hailed by the United States Embassy for her services as a public servant

- She was part of those that were celebrated by the embassy as United States observes the Women's History Month

- Some Nigerians have reacted to this on social media, with some accepting that she deserves to be celebrated, while others felt she does not

Former minister of finance during ex-president, Goodluck Jonathan's administration, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has been celebrated by the United States Embassy for her achievements as a public servant.

Legit.ng notes that Iweala was part of those celebrated by the embassy as the Women's History Month is ongoing.

Women's History Month is annually observed to highlight the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. United States celebrates it in the month of March.

READ ALSO: Jonathan back in Sierra Leone for presidential run-off polls

The embassy wrote on its official Facebook page: "Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala served twice as Nigerias finance minister and also as minister of foreign affairs and was the first female to hold these positions. Okonjo-Iweala currently chairs the board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and African Risk Capacity.

"She is also a senior adviser at Lazard. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been widely recognized for her achievements including by Women Power with Purpose (2016), Fortune 50 Greatest World Leaders (2015), David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award (2014), TIMEs 100 Most Influential People in the World (2014), Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women in the World and 3 Most Powerful Women in Africa, both in 2012."

Below is the Facebook post:

These are some of the reactions by Facebook users:

However, some did not agree that she did well as finance minister during the immediate past administration.

Below are the reactions of Nigerians who disagreed with the encomium showered on her:

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former minister of finance, said President Muhammadu Buhari could fight corruption through strengthening institutions and incentives which could help shape the behaviour of people.

Okonjo-Iweala made this known during a panel discussion tagged ''Fighting corruption'' at the World Bank/IMF headquarters in Washington DC, United States of America (USA).

Reports had it that she noted that the introduction of technologies in the financial administration would help checkmate corrupt practices.

What does Nigeria need right now? (Nigerian Street Interview) - Legit.ng TV

Source: LegitDINAJPUR: Freedom fighters at Birampur Upazila arranged a press conference yesterday on boycotting the Independence Day programmes.- Minister of communications, Adebayo Shittu, has denied the allegations of corruption made against him

- Shittu's former media aide, Mr Victor Oluwadamilare, accused him of failing to pay his emoluments

- Oluwadamilare also accused the minister of corruptly enriching himself

Minister of communications, Adebayo Shittu, has denied the allegations of corruption made against him by his former media aide, Mr Victor Oluwadamilare.

Oluwadamilare had accused the minister of failing to pay his emoluments for almost two years and corruptly enriching himself.

Shittu says the allegations against are due to his political ambitions. Photo source: Twitter

READ ALSO:

Responding to the allegations in an interview with Tribune newspaper, Shittu described his former aide as a man who does not have a modicum of humility, of patience and of good manners.

His words:I went out of my way, perhaps out of enthusiasm for the work, to appoint him as my media aide at that time, even though I knew his background. He had worked with Senator Teslim Folarin before and fought with him. He had worked with Governor Abiola Ajimobi before and fought with him. I thought that I could use the appointment I gave him to rehabilitate him.

More so, at the time I appointed him, of all those who applied as media aide, he was the only Christian. I didnt want a situation where all my aides would be Muslims, so I decided to appoint him. And I thought the appointment would rehabilitate him because I knew he was jobless at that time.

When he came on board, again, I thought there would be a way that some of our agencies would assist in paying his salary. In my letter of appointment to him, no salary was defined because I didnt have any idea of how we were going to get money. When it became clear that none of our agencies can lawfully pay for any aide not approved by government, it then fell on me to look for resources, independent of government, to be paying his salary.

I then wrote a letter to him and others sometime in 2016 that each special assistant would be paid a monthly stipend of N100,000. He accepted the letter. He acknowledged the letter. He didnt react negatively. He didnt reject the letter. He didnt resign if he was not satisfied.

He also denied having many houses in Lagos, Abuja and Ibadan as stated by his former aide.

I dont have any house in Lagos. I have one house in Abuja, which I bought on mortgage from Jaiz Bank. I have two houses in Ibadan. So, those extra houses in Lagos, Abuja and Ibadan, he will have to justify them in court, he threatened.

He also refuted Oluwadamilare's allegations that collected estacode in excess of $800,000, saying it is not possible under the Treasury Single Account policy of the federal government.

He also said he will approach the courts where his former aide will be summoned to prove his allegations.

How much is $800,000? That will be in hundreds of millions of naira. Look, he will have to be in court to prove and defend all the stupid allegations he has levelled against me.

He called me estacode minister and by my grace, he has also had the privilege of attending conferences and collected estacodes. He didnt reject these estacodes because they were not unlawful. So, why should I not take estacode if I have to travel and the travel is approved? he concluded.

READ ALSO: Nigerians still chose Buhari over PDP despite your lies - Shittu blast opposition party

Shittu had caused a stir recently when he wore a fez cap with the inscription 'Continuity 19: Muhammadu Buhari/Osinbajo,' to the federal executive council meeting.

"We need a mass burial for our leaders!" man harshly criticizes the Nigerian government on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit- Maiduguri-Bama-Banki International Highway has been opened for commercial and public traffic by the Nigerian army

- The road was certified safe for public use following the successes recorded in the ongoing clearance operation to rout out remnants of Boko Haram insurgents

- Governor Kashim Shettima, lauded the gesture, adding it would fast track social and economic development of the state

The Nigerian army on Saturday, March 24, formally reopened the Maiduguri-Bama-Banki International Highway for commercial and public traffic.

Maj.-Gen. Rogers Nicholas, the Theatre Commander, Operation Lafiya Dole, announced this at the inauguration of the highway in Maiduguri.

Nicholas said that the road was certified safe for public use following the successes recorded in the ongoing clearance operation to rout out remnants of Boko Haram insurgents in Sambisa forest and the Lake Chad basin.

READ ALSO: Sofola, president, Yoruba Council Of Elders is dead

Today, mark another remarkable event in the life of people of Borno and of the military in the Operation LAFIYA DOLE.

Recall that on September 1, 2014; the Maiduguri-Bama-Banki Road was closed due top activities of Boko Haram insurgents in the general and that affected the economic activities in Borno state and the Cameroun Republic.

In the course of our operation with our Cameroonian counterpart we had been able to get rid of the insurgents along this axis particularly the Sambisa Forest.

It is time for people to go back to their homes in Bama, I am happy that today we are opening up the road to Bama and Maiduguri-Bama-Banki

"Road, in the first phase of the operation, it would also give the people the leverage to resume commercial activities along the axis and also give them confidence to return home.

We also implore the people going back and members of the road transport workers to adhere to the guidelines outlined by the military so that they could ply the road with level of safety.

Nicholas disclosed the military authorities had designed strategies to provide escort to ensure safety of motorists plying the road and other highways in the theatre of operation.

He called on the insurgents to take advantage of the presidential amnesty, to lay down their arms and join the peace building process in the region.

Governor Kashim Shettima, lauded the gesture, adding it would fast track social and economic development of the state.

Shettima, represented by his deputy, Usman Durkwa, said the government had adopted proactive measure to accelerate rehabilitation and resettlement of displaced persons in the liberated communities.

He called on the federal government to free the remaining Chibok schoolgirls and other persons in insurgents captivity.

Also, Alhaji Ahmad Musa, the Secretary, Borno Chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), said the re-opening of the road would ease transportation difficulties and encourages growth cross-border commercial activities.

Musa pledged the union support to the military to ensure successful completion of the counter-insurgency campaign.

Some of the passengers, expressed delight over the development, adding that it would allow them to visit their hometowns after it was deserted in the past five years.

Master Abba Ali, a 15-year old displaced person, said that he would be rejoining his family, who took shelter at the Banki Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp.

My parent fled to Cameroon and I fled to Maiduguri to stay with my relatives. I learnt that my parents are in Banki camp, but I could not join them due to closure of the road, he said.

Alhaji Bana Buba, another displaced person, called on the government to rehabilitate the road and assist the affected families to enable them to return to their homes.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that in efforts to make productive use of the available and large expanse of land, Nigerian army commenced construction of road network into Sambisa forest.

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In time past, the forest was used as shelter by the Boko Haram terrorist group and it was believed to be where they kept the hostages from the Chibok school girls kidnapping in April 2014 and their other subsequent hostages.

The Nigerian army had, however, claimed to have cleared the forest of the terrorists.

Boko Haram abducted my husband and the government forgot about him on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit.ng- The presidency has questioned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over their silence on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal

- It also lambasted the PDPs decision to drag the All Progressives Congress (APC) and INEC to the United Nations over alleged plan or plot to rig the 2019 general elections

- Going further, it added that for the PDP to be preaching free and fair elections is like a street-walker preaching about chastity

The Nigeria presidency in a statement on Saturday, March 24, urged the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to stop raising false alarms in order to gain public sympathy and divert attention from its abysmal past record and failures.

Premium Times reports that the presidency also accused the opposition party of keeping silent on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal sweeping through countries.

The statement read in part:

READ ALSO: Sofola, president, Yoruba Council Of Elders is dead

They should, instead, address the concerns raised about their role in the mass data harvesting at the heart of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, following the revelation that they hacked into Candidate Muhammadu Buharis personal data in the run up to the 2015 general elections.

"Nothing undermines a countrys democracy as such unfair practices.

"That is why President Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment when they hacked into the opposition, Democratic Party records, and this is why a special counsel is investigating the alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election, and if President Donald Trumps campaign is complicit in the attempted subversion of democracy in that country.

"The PDPs decision to drag the All Progressives Congress (APC) and INEC to the United Nations over alleged plan or plot to rig the 2019 general elections are not only laughable and puerile, but they also demonstrate the level of desperation that is haunting the opposition leaders.

"President Muhammadu Buhari is passionately committed to free and fair elections in the country and for a man who joined forces with local and international observers to ensure a free and fair election which brought him to power in 2015, the President would under no circumstances tolerate any attempt to derail constitutional democracy.

"The outcome of the gubernatorial elections in Edo, Ondo and Anambra States stand as clear examples of President Buharis commitment to free and fair elections in the country, and Nigerians should indeed be wary of PDPs desperate propaganda.

"For the PDP to be preaching free and fair elections is like a street-walker preaching about chastity.

"We must recall that the PDP postponed the 2015 general elections in the guise of national security challenges because defeat was staring it starkly in the face. However, despite the delay tactics, it was resoundingly defeated when the polls finally held.

"The PDP has lost every moral ground and it is mortally afraid of facing the 2019 general elections because Nigerians will always remember their past and punish them one more time for economically plundering the country.

"The Cambridge Analytica hacking scandal committed against Candidate Buhari by the PDP in 2015 in which billions of Naira was paid out to the Israelis and others hackers has shown that the former ruling party lacks both the integrity and credibility to talk about election rigging.

"Instead of explaining their role in the scandal, the nation is greeted by stunning silence. Do they think this will simply blow away?

"Rigging is PDPs main area of core competence and its party leaders are drowning men who wont mind clutching at any straw for political survival.

"By dragging the United Nations into its political propaganda, the PDP is indirectly suggesting that it is afraid to face the voters in 2019.

"Rather than hiding behind allegations of a plot to rig the elections, the opposition party should work harder to win back the trust of voters instead of spreading false alarm to gain international sympathy.

"It is unfortunate that the PDP is desperately trying all dirty tricks, including the exploitation of tragedy, for political advantage."

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Legit.ng had reported that an oil billionaire supporter of former President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly hired SCL, a data analytics company, to paint President Muhammadu Buhari bad in the buildup to the 2015 elections.

Will you vote Goodluck Jonathan if he joins 2019 race? - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: LegitMoose find a friend in fire: burned areas host highest numbers Quetico Superior Foundation (Chuck L)

Bach and the Erotics of Spring Counterpunch (Chuck L)

Harry Reid on What the Government Knows About UFOs New York Magazine. Lambert: So I guess the question is who brokers the deal between us and the aliens.

UN: Earth undergoing mass extinction event DW

In court, oil companies accept climate science but rewrite its history ars technica (Chuck L)

Researchers find a new material for quantum computing TechCrunch (David L)

Navigating And/Or Avoiding The Inpatient Mental Health System Slate Star Codex. UserFriendly: Helpful for anyone that has to deal with involuntary commitment. Not just that. Look at this part:

I want to be really clear on this: in your head, there might be a huge difference between voluntary and involuntary hospitalization. In your doctors head, and in the legal system, these are two very slightly different sets of paperwork with tiny differences between them. It works like this, with slight variation from state to state: involuntary patients are usually in the hospital for a few days while the doctors evaluate them. If at the end of those few days the doctors decide the patient is safe, theyll discharge them. If, at the end of those few days, the doctors decide the patient is dangerous, the doctors will file for a hearing before a judge, which will take about a week. The patient will stay in the hospital for that week. 99% of the time the judge will side with the doctors, and the patient will stay until the doctors decide they are safe, usually another week or two. Voluntary patients are technically allowed to leave whenever, but they have to do this by filing a form saying they want to. Once they file that form, their doctors may keep them in the hospital for a few more days while they decide whether they want to accept the form or challenge it. If they want to challenge it, they will file for a hearing before a judge, which will take about a week. The patient will stay in the hospital for that week. 99% of the time the judge will side with the doctors, and the patient will stay until the doctors decide they are safe, usually another week or two. You may notice that in both cases, the doctors can keep the patient for a few days, plus however long it takes to have a hearing, plus however long the judge gives them after a hearing. So whats the difference between voluntary and involuntary hospitalization? Pride, I guess, plus a small percent of cases where the doctors just shrug and say whatever when the voluntary patient tries to leave.

China

US destroyer buzzes Chinese island in South China Sea Asia Times

North Korea

Spain Catalonia: Five separatist leaders detained BBC

Brexit

Labour fury as it emerges Jeremy Corbyn once defended anti-Semitic public mural showing a group of hook-nosed men around a Monopoly board Daily Mail. Look at the mural for yourself. This is pretty desperate.

Exonerating the Empire in Venezuela FAIR (UserFriendly)

Aggressive Police Tactics Escalate Against TransMountain Pipeline Protests in Canada Real News Network

New Cold War

Syraqistan

Imperial Collapse Watch

Trade Tantrum

Trump Transition

When I announced yesterday that Im running for gov, one of Cuomos top surrogates dismissed me as an unqualified lesbian. Its true that I never received my certificate from the Department of Lesbian Affairs, though in my defense theres a lot of paperwork required.   Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) March 21, 2018

Hackers are holding the city of Atlantas computer systems for ransom, causing massive outages  and anyone who has conducted business with the city is at risk Business Insider (David L)

Novato condo complex owners trapped in legal battle Marinij Neoliberals trying to separate condo owners from property. Bill C:

Marin County, CA city Novato

2nd article concerns another CIDology Inc project where the General Contracor is suing the company claiming extortion/kickbacks. Meanwhile all sales & refinance activity for the owners is in limbo.

Gunz

Black Injustice Tipping Point

Protests in California after police kill black man carrying only his phone Guardian

Facebook Fracas

Ubers Killer Car

Ubers Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash New York Times

Mr. Market Has a Sad

US stocks suffer worst week in more than two years Financial Times

Can the Fed Engineer the Best Economy Since the 1960s? Chairman Powell Is Going to Try New York Times. Doug S: A pure an example as possible of an alternate universe. Neil Irwin (author) in a Pangloss who clearly lives in a best of all possible worlds  the one populated only by the 1%, the corporations and the politically powerful.

Freight Costs and Volumes Surge, Inflation Fears Heat Up Wolf Street (EM)

Exclusive: Trump official quietly drops payday loan case, mulls others  sources Reuters (EM)

Guillotine Watch

Class Warfare

The Radical Proposal That Moderate Democrats Should Be Running On New York Magazine (Chuck L). Mirabile dictu, advocates a job guarantee. The elites must be waking up to the fact that their behavior has had a Versailles circa 1788 look. Guaranteed Jobs through a Public Service Employment Program Levy Economics Institute (UserFriendly) Which Radical Liberal Policy Proposal Is Worse? Forbes. UserFriendly: ROFL Greyhound bus passengers record mutiny after driver allegedly falls asleep CBS. Good for the writer. Focuses on the right issue after describing the row: The incident raises serious questions about whether a nationwide shortage of bus drivers is pushing current ones to drive without proper rest. I cant attend this screening but readers in the NYC metro area might be interested. Details: I wanted to bring to your attention a new documentary by New York based filmmaker Giorgio Angelini. Owned, A Tale of Two Americas, will have its world premiere at the Full Frame Film Festival on Friday, April 6th at 10:30am at Fletcher. The documentary will also be part of the San Francisco Doc Festival in early June and we are in the process of looking for distribution. Owned is very sociopolitically relevant for our times combining the bubble bursting with red lining and how the American Dream isnt accessible for so many. Ultimately what the film was originally positing was that without a substantial change in our housing policy, we would continue to see a lot of negative externalities associated to it. And during production the uprisings in cities like baltimore to the election of Donald Trump took place. Both of these experiences the film argues are reactions to a country suffering from anachronistic housing policy that only serves a very slim percentage of people today. Link to official website: http://www.ownedfilm.com

The Twilight of Authority Ecosophia (UserFriendly)

Antidote du jour (Tracie H):

And a bonus video related to the discussion above from one of my favorite films, Michael Clayton. Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) and Michael Clayton (George Clooney) are attorneys in the same high-powered law firm. Arthur is the star litigator who has been defending a Monsanto-like company against suits over a toxic weedkiller. Arthur is bi-polar, went off his meds, has decided his client is guilty and has started working actively against it. Immediate backstory is Arthur took his clothes off in a deposition in Wisconsin, Michael the firm fixer came to deal with the situation, and Arthur managed to escape Michaels custody and get back home to New York.

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour hereYves here. Not new to anyone who has been paying attention, but a useful recap with some good observations at the end, despite deploying the cringe-making trope of businesses having DNA. That legitimates the notion that corporations are people.

By Ivan Manokha, a departmental lecturer in the Oxford Department of International Development. He is currently working on power and obedience in the late-modern political economy, particularly in the context of the development of new technologies of surveillance. Originally published at openDemocracy

The current social mobilization against Facebook resembles the actions of activists who, in opposition to neoliberal globalization, smash a McDonalds window during a demonstration.

On March 17, The Observer of London and The New York Times announced that Cambridge Analytica, the London-based political and corporate consulting group, had harvested private data from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their consent. The data was collected through a Facebook-based quiz app called thisisyourdigitallife, created by Aleksandr Kogan, a University of Cambridge psychologist who had requested and gained access to information from 270,000 Facebook members after they had agreed to use the app to undergo a personality test, for which they were paid through Kogans company, Global Science Research.

But as Christopher Wylie, a twenty-eight-year-old Canadian coder and data scientist and a former employee of Cambridge Analytica, stated in a video interview, the app could also collect all kinds of personal data from users, such as the content that they consulted, the information that they liked, and even the messages that they posted.

In addition, the app provided access to information on the profiles of the friends of each of those users who agreed to take the test, which enabled the collection of data from more than 50 million.

All this data was then shared by Kogan with Cambridge Analytica, which was working with Donald Trumps election team and which allegedly used this data to target US voters with personalised political messages during the presidential campaign. As Wylie, told The Observer, we built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.

Unacceptable Violation

Following these revelations the Internet has been engulfed in outrage and government officials have been quick to react. On March 19, Antonio Tajani President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani, stated in a twitter message that misuse of Facebook user data is an unacceptable violation of our citizens privacy rights and promised an EU investigation. On March 22, Wylie communicated in a tweet that he accepted an invitation to testify before the US House Intelligence Committee, the US House Judiciary Committee and UK Parliament Digital Committee. On the same day Israels Justice Ministry informed Facebook that it was opening an investigation into possible violations of Israelis personal information by Facebook.

While such widespread condemnation of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica is totally justified, what remains largely absent from the discussion are broader questions about the role of data collection, processing and monetization that have become central in the current phase of capitalism, which may be described as platform capitalism, as suggested by the Canadian writer and academic Nick Srnicek in his recent book.

Over the last decade the growth of platforms has been spectacular: today, the top 4 enterprises in Forbess list of most valuable brands are platforms, as are eleven of the top twenty. Most recent IPOs and acquisitions have involved platforms, as have most of the major successful startups. The list includes Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Waze, Uber, Lyft, Handy, Airbnb, Pinterest, Square, Social Finance, Kickstarter, etc. Although most platforms are US-based, they are a really global phenomenon and in fact are now playing an even more important role in developing countries which did not have developed commercial infrastructures at the time of the rise of the Internet and seized the opportunity that it presented to structure their industries around it. Thus, in China, for example, many of the most valuable enterprises are platforms such as Tencent (owner of the WeChat and QQ messaging platforms) and Baidu (Chinas search engine); Alibaba controls 80 percent of Chinas e-commerce market through its Taobao and Tmall platforms, with its Alipay platform being the largest payments platform in China.

The importance of platforms is also attested by the range of sectors in which they are now dominant and the number of users (often numbered in millions and, in some cases, even billions) regularly connecting to their various cloud-based services. Thus, to name the key industries, platforms are now central in Internet search (Google, Yahoo, Bing); social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat); Internet auctions and retail (eBay, Taobao, Amazon, Alibaba); on-line financial and human resource functions (Workday, Upwork, Elance, TaskRabbit), urban transportation (Uber, Lyft, Zipcar, BlaBlaCar), tourism (Kayak, Trivago, Airbnb), mobile payment (Square Order, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet); and software development (Apples App Store, Google Play Store, Windows App store). Platform-based solutions are also currently being adopted in more traditional sectors, such as industrial production (GE, Siemens), agriculture (John Deere, Monsanto) and even clean energy (Sungevity, SolarCity, EnerNOC).

User Profiling  Good-Bye to Privacy

These platforms differ significantly in terms of the services that they offer: some, like eBay or Taobao simply allow exchange of products between buyers and sellers; others, like Uber or TaskRabbit, allow independent service providers to find customers; yet others, like Apple or Google allow developers to create and market apps.

However, what is common to all these platforms is the central role played by data, and not just continuous data collection, but its ever more refined analysis in order to create detailed user profiles and rankings in order to better match customers and suppliers or increase efficiency.

All this is done in order to use data to create value in some way another (to monetize it by selling to advertisers or other firms, to increase sales, or to increase productivity). Data has become the new oil of global economy, a new commodity to be bought and sold at a massive scale, and with this development, as a former Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff has argued, global capitalism has become surveillance capitalism.

What this means is that platform economy is a model of value creation which is completely dependant on continuous privacy invasions and, what is alarming is that we are gradually becoming used to this.

Most of the time platform providers keep track of our purchases, travels, interest, likes, etc. and use this data for targeted advertising to which we have become accustomed. We are equally not that surprised when we find out that, for example, robotic vacuum cleaners collect data about types of furniture that we have and share it with the likes of Amazon so that they can send us advertisements for pieces of furniture that we do not yet possess.

There is little public outcry when we discover that Googles ads are racially biased as, for instance, a Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney found by accident performing a search. We are equally hardly astonished that companies such as Lenddo buy access to peoples social media and browsing history in exchange for a credit score. And, at least in the US, people are becoming accustomed to the use of algorithms, developed by private contractors, by the justice system to take decisions on sentencing, which often result in equally unfair and racially biased decisions.

The outrage provoked by the Cambridge Analytica is targeting only the tip of the iceberg. The problem is infinitely larger as there are countless equally significant instances of privacy invasions and data collection performed by corporations, but they have become normalized and do not lead to much public outcry.

DNA

Today surveillance is the DNA of the platform economy; its model is simply based on the possibility of continuous privacy invasions using whatever means possible. In most cases users agree, by signing the terms and conditions of service providers, so that their data may be collected, analyzed and even shared with third parties (although it is hardly possible to see this as express consent given the size and complexity of these agreements  for instance, it took 8 hours and 59 minutes for an actor hired by the consumer group Choice to read Amazon Kindles terms and conditions). In other instances, as in the case of Kogans app, the extent of the data collected exceeds what was stated in the agreement.

But what is important is to understand that to prevent such scandals in the future it is not enough to force Facebook to better monitor the use of users data in order to prevent such leaks as in the case of Cambridge Analytica. The current social mobilization against Facebook resembles the actions of activists who, in opposition to neoliberal globalization, smash a McDonalds window during a demonstration.

What we need is a total redefinition of the right to privacy (which was codified as a universal human right in 1948, long before the Internet), to guarantee its respect, both offline and online.

What we need is a body of international law that will provide regulations and oversight for the collection and use of data.

What is required is an explicit and concise formulation of terms and conditions which, in a few sentences, will specify how users data will be used.

It is important to seize the opportunity presented by the Cambridge Analytica scandal to push for these more fundamental changes.Sniffing out the foundational science of sensors (Nanowerk News) The human nose can distinguish among a trillion different combinations of smells. Even so, there are plenty of gases that our noses can't detect at the level of sensitivity we need. That's where gaseous sensors come in. While some of the first sensors were animals  like canaries in coal mines  we've since replaced them with technologies that can detect miniscule amounts of chemicals in the air.

Just like our own noses, gaseous sensors are essential for safety and comfort. In factories, gaseous sensors can alert managers to chemical leaks or processes running incorrectly. Outside, they measure pollutants, helping cities monitor air quality. In homes, they keep family members safe. Building managers use measurements from humidity and temperature sensors to maximize energy efficiency.

These sensors wouldn't exist without a fundamental understanding of chemistry and physics. This basic knowledge helps scientists understand how and why sensing materials interact with gaseous chemicals. Many cutting-edge materials have promise for use in sensors, if only scientists can learn how to better produce and control them.

This sensor can detect methane at much lower concentrations than current ones. It relies on nanotechnology developed at the Center for Nanoscale Materials. (Image: Ralu Divan, Argonne National Laboratory)

"Sensors are where materials research meets environmental detection," said Pete Beckman, a researcher at Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL).

To set the groundwork for innovation, the DOE Office of Science funds projects and user facilities that support sensors research.

Creating the Materials for Sensing

Like noses, sensors rely on a combination of components to detect and make sense of gases or chemicals in the air. In humans, molecules float up into your nose and bind to special neurons. Neurons then pass the message up to the brain. In sensors, the material inside the sensor acts as a neuron. When that material interacts with a chemical in the air, it may emit light, change its ability to conduct electricity, or shift shape. The materials and electronics around the sensing material communicate that message to the sensor's "brain," whether that brain is a computer or a warning signal like a siren.

Developing sensors' nervous systems and brains is a job for applied science. Fundamental research like the work at the Office of Science's laboratories sets the foundation for that applied science. In particular, this research is expanding scientists' understanding of the materials themselves and how to produce them.

Three types of cutting-edge materials offer huge potential for use in sensors: nanoparticles, two-dimensional (2D) materials, and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Nanoparticles are miniscule particles that are bigger than atoms, but act fundamentally differently from larger particles of the same substance. 2D materials, like graphene, form sheets only a single atom thick. MOFs are compounds made of metal ions linked together by carbon-based connectors.

All of these materials have humongous surface areas compared to their overall sizes. Because lots of gas molecules can interact with their surfaces, they can be sensitive to tiny amounts of chemicals. In addition, scientists can craft all of these materials into a variety of structures. That customization could allow researchers to create specialty materials to detect a particular chemical.

Zinc Sulfide Nanoparticles

The key to building a better sensor may lie in making its sensing material out of nanoparticles. Unfortunately, it's challenging to manufacture some of the most promising of those nanoparticles. Sensors for hydrogen and other gases already use the material zinc sulfide. Producing zinc sulfide in nanoparticle form could make it cheaper and more effective. But the current process for producing zinc sulfide nanoparticles involves very high temperatures, pressures, and toxic chemicals.

Scientists at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) investigated a cheaper, more efficient nanoparticle production process. Researchers supported by both DOE's Advanced Manufacturing Office and Office of Science found that microbes may offer an alternative path forward ("A large-scale technique to produce quantum dots").

Not just any bacteria will do. Scientists used Thermoanaerobacter, a bacteria that normally lives in extremely hot places with no oxygen. After adding a cheap sugar and chemicals that included zinc and sulfur, the bacteria produced about three-quarters of a pound of zinc sulfide nanoparticles. The process was 90 percent cheaper than current methods.

Growing 2D Materials

2D materials are a special form of nanomaterial that are only a few atoms thick. They have so much surface area compared to their volume that they provide a lot of space for gas molecules to interact and are able to hold a large number of them. But 2D materials act so differently from their normal "bulk" counterparts that scientists don't have a good grasp on how they grow. Without this understanding, manufacturers can't consistently produce high-quality versions of them.

To tackle this problem, ORNL scientists explored a better way to grow 2D material gallium selenide (GaSe) (JACS, "Edge-Controlled Growth and Etching of Two-Dimensional GaSe Monolayers"). As they grew the material in a container filled with argon gas, they found that by changing the temperature and flow of the gas, they could switch back and forth between laying down and taking away atoms. But just discovering how to change back and forth between the two states didn't tell them what was actually happening on the chemical level.

"To visualize what we were doing in the lab, we needed high-resolution, state-of-the-art facilities as well as in-situ diagnosis tools," said Tolga Aytug, an ORNL scientist. To get that level of precision, the team turned to the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, an Office of Science user facility at ORNL. The tools there helped them see how the processes they used to grow the material affected its structure and properties. Based on that information, they refined their methods to get the characteristics they wanted.

In the future, scientists may be able to combine various 2D materials into thin, versatile sensors. "The beauty of 2D materials is that you can stack the different layers together to make some artificial material," said Kai Xiao, an ORNL scientist. These artificial materials would be able to detect a variety of different chemicals instead of just a single one.

Metal-Organic Frameworks

The metal ions and carbon-based connectors of MOFs form open, cage-like structures. A MOF only a few inches wide has an amazing 2.5 acres of surface area. That provides plenty of space for molecules to interact with.

As a result, MOFs can sense minute levels of chemicals. Scientists control which chemicals they want a MOF to detect by changing the size of its spaces, its shape, or how its parts link to each other.

"For a MOF-based sensor to work, it has to be very selective and very sensitive," said Praveen Thallapally, a scientist at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

One benefit specific to MOFs is their ability to accommodate new molecules by changing their structures. PNNL scientists found a MOF with a zinc base could capture cobalt and copper. When these metals exited the molecule, the MOF returned to its original structure. This means after a chemical attaches to a MOF and triggers a sensor, someone could reset and reuse the sensor without needing to replace the MOF.

Much of the ongoing research into MOFs focuses on how to discover and build them. MOFs' traditional starting materials are rigid and difficult to work with. In contrast, polymers (flexible chains of molecules) are easier to control. However, they usually bunch together in dense, disorganized clumps. To draw on the advantages of each, scientists from the University of California, San Diego found a way to use polymers to build MOFs ("Novel porous materials made from flexible 'spaghetti-like' molecules"). Using both allows researchers to combine MOFs' consistency and large surface area with polymers' ease of use. The researchers used the hybrid materials to create thin films, which are typically used in sensors.

The next breakthrough in MOF research may come from computer modeling. Using trial and error to figure out which structure will interact best with a specific chemical could take years and be very expensive. In contrast, powerful computer models using machine learning allow scientists to find just the right material in a few days.

PNNL scientists searching for a MOF that could select between xenon and krypton collaborated with the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, an Office of Science user facility at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. After searching through more than 120,000 options, their computer model pointed to a calcium-based material that excelled at this task.

Connecting the Nose to the Body

A great sensing material is essential, but it won't work by itself. Just as a nose needs a body and brain, sensing materials need to be part of a bigger mechanism. Unfortunately, getting these materials to work together within a sensor is often a challenge.

Printing Nanoparticle Ink

"Ink" made of sensing nanoparticles printed onto paper, plastic, rubber, or fabric could allow engineers to create smaller and more flexible sensors.

"Making particles is one thing. But from those particles, making a functional ink is not trivial," said ORNL scientist Pooran Joshi, in a slight understatement.

One ORNL study (ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, "Low-Thermal-Budget Photonic Processing of Highly Conductive Cu Interconnects Based on CuO Nanoinks: Potential for Flexible Printed Electronics") tackled the best way to turn copper-based nanoparticles into high-quality ink. By shining a high-intensity light for only a few millionths of a second, scientists fused the nanoparticles together without melting the surface underneath. When the copper-based nanoparticle ink fused together, it created a printed surface. Researchers then used the printed surface as a component in a temperature sensor.

Combining Nanotubes and Nanocrystals

Scientists know that sensors made of nanotubes and nanocrystals could detect as little as one part per million of a gas  if only they can get these two materials to work together.

Ralu Divan and her team at ANL discovered a way to add nanocrystals of zinc oxide  which is already used in sensors  to carbon nanotubes. Sensors that use the two together could be far more sensitive to methane than current technology. By placing the zinc oxide nanocrystals down atom by atom, they created a thin, consistent layer on top of the nanotubes. With this process, companies can precisely control the zinc oxide's thickness and coverage.

To examine the bonds between the nanocrystals and nanotubes, the team relied on the Center for Nanoscale Materials, an Office of Science user facility at ANL. "Having everything in one place has saved a lot of time and we were able to move faster than we expected," said Divan.

As a result, they developed a sensor that could detect much lower concentrations of methane than previous ones. Operators can use it again in seconds instead of minutes or hours.

This sensor improved so much on the existing technology that in 2016, R&D 100 Magazine recognized it as an R&D 100 finalist. The research team is now working with the Array of Things project, a collaboration between the University of Chicago and ANL. As part of the effort to collect real-time data from hundreds of sensors across Chicago, the Array of Things team anticipates using these methane sensors in the future.Breakthrough antimalarial drug delivery system using mesoporous silica nanoparticles (Nanowerk News) Drug delivery systems (DDSs) control when and how much drugs are delivered to the body. Numerous DDS studies have been conducted but most have focused on treatments for cancer. New research from Kumamoto University uses a DDS to treat malaria (Scientific Reports, "Mesoporous silica nanocarriers encapsulated antimalarials with high therapeutic performance").

The existing treatment for malaria is taken orally and has three main problems: (1) most antimalarial drugs are broken down in the stomach, (2) the drugs have strong side effects, and (3) the medicine stays in the body for only a short time. These issues resulted in malaria treatments that were not particularly effective.

MCM-41 is a porous silica material with a pore size of 2-30 nm. It can incorporate drugs into its pores, which makes it a useful material for DDS applications. A research group headed by Prof. Shinya Hayami from Kumamoto University, Japan believed that MCM-41 could be used as DDS for antimalarial drugs.

Kumamoto University researchers found that using MCM-41 as a drug delivery system for malaria treatment produced a highly efficient treatment in animals. Clinical trials are planned in the near future. (Image: Shinya Hayami)

To test their theory, they created a new DDS by combining the antimalarial drugs Artesunate and Quinine with MCT-41 and performed in vitro and in vivo experiments. They found:

(1) The release time of the antimalarial medicine became very long, one week or longer, which was an improvement from the standard medication time.

(2) Compared to ingesting Artesunate or Quinine, the new DDS increased treatment efficiency by 20 and 240 times respectively in animal experiments. (As defined in this study, the therapeutic efficiency is 50% of the effective dose (ED50), and is used as an index of drug strength. The smaller the value of ED50, the greater the action of the drug. In other words, if an effect is obtained with a small amount of a drug, the treatment efficiency is high.)

(3) MCM-41 itself is non-toxic and inactive. A DDS using MCM-41 is expected to have very weak side effects.Cellular cytoskeleton dismantled by smart demolition machine

(Nanowerk News) University of Tokyo researchers and their collaborators have revealed the mechanism by which microtubules, which serve as the cell's cytoskeleton, are dismantled efficiently.

Microtubules are dynamic tube-like structures formed through a process called polymerization, when large numbers of a protein called tubulin bind together to form the large structure. The proper regulation of the formation (polymerization) and demolition (depolymerization) of microtubules is critical for fundamental events in cells such as the formation of neurons and cell division.

KIF2, a type of motor protein called kinesin involved in intracellular transport, is known to depolymerize microtubules from tip to end; however, the mechanism by which a small number of KIF2 proteins drives the orderly dismantling of a large microtubule comprising a myriad tubulins remained unclear.

In the current study (Cell Reports, "Mechanism of Catalytic Microtubule Depolymerization via KIF2-tubulin Transitional Conformation"), the research group led by Project Professor Nobutaka Hirokawa and Assistant Professor Tadayuki Ogawa of the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Medicine teamed with Associate Professor Nobutaka Shimizu and then-Project Assistant Professor Shinya Saijo of the Institute of Materials Structure Science at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, to address this issue.

KIF2 molecular machine depolymerizing microtubule efficiently. A single KIF2 molecule binds tightly to two sets of tubulin dimers during hydrolysis of ATP, the energy source within the body, to form a large complex compound. Thus, KIF2 is capable of depolymerizing two sets of tubulin dimers. ( Hirokawa Lab)

The researchers carried out detailed analyses of the transitional states of KIF2 depolymerization of microtubules to reveal that a single KIF2 protein binds tightly to two sets of tubulin dimerslarger tubulin molecules formed through the binding of two smaller tubulin moleculesduring ATP hydrolysis, the process by which adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy source within the body, is broken down by proteins, forming a large complex compound; this shows that one KIF2 molecule breaks down two tubulin dimers, thereby revealing that KIF2 functions as a smart molecular machine that efficiently depolymerizes two sets of tubulin dimers with one ATP.

The KIF2 protein works more efficiently to depolymerize a large amount of microtubules when dispersed in a well-balanced fashion allowing it to bind over the entire tip of the microtubule, instead of gathering in the same spot. Failure to properly regulate microtubule polymerization and depolymerization can cause many diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases and cancers.

The microtubule depolymerization mechanism revealed in this study promises to become the basis for understanding the pathology to establish effective treatment methods for microtubule-related diseases.3D-Printing the soft robots of the future

(Nanowerk News) Three-dimensional printing offers unique advantages, but still faces many challenges, for fabricating small, flexible robots that can navigate through the human body and other confined spaces, according to a review in the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials ("3D printing for soft robotics  a review").

Researchers at South Koreas Jeju National University examined the latest research and developments in fabricating soft robots using 3D printing technologies. Their study concludes that 3D printing is well suited to build robots that have complex external shapes together with an internally porous structure. Even so, the field is still new and major gaps must be addressed in order to print robots with multiple materials that readily adhere to each other.

Soft robots are made with highly compliant materials such as fluids, gels and polymers so they can mimic functions present in living organisms. (Image: Suljo / 123RF Stock Photo)

Soft robots are made with highly compliant materials such as fluids, gels and polymers so they can mimic functions present in living organisms. In the last few years, there has been a significant trend toward using 3D printing for their manufacturing instead of conventional moulding and casting approaches.

Many 3D printing technologies are available. They all convert digital data into three-dimensional objects by adding successive layers of a material until the object is fabricated. The printing technologies use different types of materials and approaches for layering them. For example, researchers used selective laser sintering of powdered metals to develop a multi-finger soft robotic hand that can lift, grip, spin and precisely position objects.

Other materials used to 3D print soft robots include dielectric elastomers: polymers that change their size and shape when stimulated by an electric field; shape memory polymers, which change their shape in response to heat; and hydrogels that are affected by a variety of stimuli including heat, electricity, acidity, magnetism and light.

Soft robots are being tested for a variety of purposes inside and outside the human body. For example, a 3D printed soft silicone pump could be used as an artificial heart. 3D printed soft micro-biobots, which can travel through blood vessels or the gut, are being researched for monitoring diseases. Outside the body, soft robots are being developed for prosthetics, for monitoring vital signs, and for organ-on-a-chip devices that can replace animals in drug testing.

But many challenges remain to improve these technologies for clinical use. The materials sometimes shrink during the solidification process, for example. Also, 3D printing is yet too slow for mass production.Ultrashort laser pulses make greenhouse gas reactive

(Nanowerk News) It is a long-cherished dream: Removing the inert greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and using it as a basic material for the chemical industry. This could address two major problems at once by containing climate change and at the same time reducing the dependence on oil. Physico-chemists at the University of Bonn are in the process of making significant contributions to this vision. They have discovered a new way to create a highly reactive form of carbon dioxide with the help of laser pulses.

The results have been published online in advance and will soon be presented in the printed edition of the journal Angewandte Chemie ("An Iron Complex with a Bent, O-Coordinated CO 2 -Ligand Discovered by Femtosecond Mid-Infrared Spectroscopy").

Every day, nature shows humans how to elegantly bind carbon dioxide from the air and transform it into a much-needed raw material. Plants perform photosynthesis with their green leaves when exposed to light. Oxygen and the much-needed energy and nutrient supplier sugar are created from carbon dioxide and water with the help of sunlight.

"Scientists have been striving to mimic this model for a long time, for instance in order to use carbon dioxide for the chemical industry," says Prof. Dr. Peter Vohringer from the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry of the University of Bonn. What makes the concept hard to implement is that it is very difficult to push carbon dioxide into new partnerships with other molecules.

This is Prof. Peter Vohringer (left) and Steffen Straub in the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at University of Bonn.

With his team, the physico-chemist has now discovered a new way of generating a highly reactive variant of the inert and hard-to-bind greenhouse gas. The researchers used a so-called iron complex: The center contains a positively charged iron atom, to which the constituents of the carbon dioxide are already bound multiple times. The scientists shot ultrashort laser pulses of ultraviolet light onto this iron complex, which broke certain bonds. The resulting product was a so-called carbon dioxide radical, which also forms new bonds with a certain radicality.

Such radicals have a single electron in their outer shell that urgently wants to bind permanently to another molecule or atom. "It is this unpaired electron that distinguishes our reactive radical anion bound to the central iron atom from the inert carbon dioxide and makes it so promising for chemical processes", explains lead author Steffen Straub from Vohringer's team. The radicals could in turn be the building blocks for interesting chemical products, such as methanol as a fuel or urea for chemical syntheses and salicylic acid as a pain medication.

Spectrometer shows molecules at work

With their laser and infrared spectrometer, a large apparatus in the basement of the institute, the scientists watch the molecules at work. The spectrometer measures the characteristic vibrations of the molecules, and this "fingerprint" allows them to identify the bonds between different atoms. "The formation of the carbon dioxide radical within the iron complex changes the bonds between the atoms, which reduces the frequency of the characteristic carbon dioxide vibration", explains Straub.

With forensic instinct, the scientists were able to prove that the laser pulses really do produce the reactive carbon dioxide radical. First, the team simulated the vibrational spectra of the molecules on the computer, then compared the calculations to the measurements. The result: Simulation and experiment were indeed an excellent match. Like a "molecular motion picture", the spectrometer took "snapshots" in the unimaginable temporal resolution of millionths of a billionth of a second. On the basis of the spectra, which correspond to the individual images of a film, it can thus be revealed - essentially in slow motion - how the iron complex deforms under pulsed laser illumination over several stages, the bonds break up and finally the radical is formed.A singing robot helps to study human-robot interactions (w/video)

(Nanowerk News) Meet ROVER. If youre lucky  and trigger its heat sensors  itll roll up to you and sing a song.

This friendly robot is the creation of Hannah Wolfe, a graduate student researcher in UC Santa Barbaras Media Arts and Technology program, whos investigating robot-human interactions.

I wanted to create an interactive art installation that would make people happy, said Wolfe, who is based in the rather austere environment at UCSBs Elings Hall. I thought if something came up to people and sang to them that would bring joy into the space.

With a Roomba (sans vacuum) as its feet, a Raspberry Pi as its brain and an Arduino acting as a nervous system, Rover is more than an artistic endeavor, however. It is also a tool for investigating the ways humans respond to robots.

Meet ROVER, the singing robot

Think about it: We ask iPhones Siri or Amazons Alexa for help accessing information, making purchases or operating Bluetooth-enabled devices in our homes. We have given robots jobs that are too tedious, too precise or too dangerous for humans. And artificial intelligence is now becoming the norm in everything from recommendations in music and video streaming services to medical diagnostics.

Whether we like it or not, were going to be interacting with robots, Wolfe said. So, we need to think about how we will interact with them and how they will convey information to us.

To that end, Wolfe has ROVER generate sounds  beeps and chirps and digital effects (think R2D2)  that she found elicit positive versus negative reactions from people. Meanwhile an onboard camera records how individuals respond to ROVER.

I looked through the literature on what kind of audio qualities express different emotions in linguistics and music research, Wolfe explained. While some research focuses on how to compose these sounds, she said, there werent generative algorithms for sounds that could reliably convey the intended emotion  sounds that may be different, but could impart the same meaning.

The results of her research were somewhat surprising: In comparison to computers, people found themselves more emotionally aroused by their desktops and laptops than by a robot that serenaded them. (IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, "Singing Robots: How Embodiment Affects Emotional Responses to Non-linguistic Utterances")

That was definitely against my expectations, Wolfe said, noting it could be due to a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the proximity people have to their computers.

A computer is in our personal space  something that we touch  and having it in your personal space is potentially more threatening or exciting than something in your social space, said Wolfe. ROVER, by contrast, is programmed to keep a polite distance from the person to whom it is singing, and therefore the lack of intimacy may result in relatively less arousal.

Wolfes research is one of many ongoing forays into the nature of human-robot interactions, a research field that is growing in prominence as automatons become increasingly sophisticated and share more space with people. Wolfe points to Jibo, a commercially available social robot created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology media arts professor (and UCSB alumna) Cynthia Breazeal.

Jibo is pretty much Siri with a face that looks at you and talks, Wolfe said. It doesnt move around the space, but it is the beginning of social robots in the home.

Beware the Uncanny Valley

One of the most longstanding areas of research in robotics  and also one of its pitfalls  is a strange phenomenon that occurs as androids begin to more closely resemble their human creators.

If something becomes too real but not quite real enough it falls into the uncanny valley, said Wolfe. Originally a Japanese term coined in 1970 and loosely translated into English, uncanny valley refers to feelings of strangeness, coldness, eeriness and even disgust that arise in people when a robot begins to blur the line between machine and living, breathing human. Star Wars C-3PO, for instance, has an obviously robotic build but a very human affect, which makes him harmless and endearing. Hanson Robotics AI-powered Sophia, on the other hand, is far more lifelike but not quite human, making her fascinating for some, creepy for others.

Theres been a lot work trying to figure out what exactly it is, where things fall into it and how you can kind of get around it using design, Wolfe said. Ive started looking at playing with emotive gibberish, and the sounds that ROVER makes are kind of creepy and gross, which is interesting for art, but inappropriate for social robotics. For that reason, she focuses more on beeps and notes and digital effects as opposed to speech.

However, this wont stop Wolfe from exploring the notion of humans mental discomfort with almost-humans, albeit in a playful manner. She has shown ROVER speaking gibberish at the 2017 International Symposium of Electronic Arts and is planning for another exhibition.Six-legged robots get closer to nature

(Nanowerk News) A study led by researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) has uncovered new ways of driving multi-legged robots by means of a two-level controller. The proposed controller uses a network of so-called non-linear oscillators that enables the generation of diverse gaits and postures, which are specified by only a few high-level parameters. The study inspires new research into how multi-legged robots can be controlled, including in the future using brain-computer interfaces.

In the natural world, many species can walk over slopes and irregular surfaces, reaching places inaccessible even to the most advanced rover robots. It remains a mystery how complex movements are handled so seamlessly by even the tiniest creatures.

What we do know is that even the simplest brains contain pattern-generator circuits (CPGs)[1], which are wired up specifically for generating walking patterns. Attempts to replicate such circuits artificially have so far had limited success, due poor flexibility.

Now, researchers in Japan and Italy propose a new approach to walking pattern generation, based on a hierarchical network of electronic oscillators arranged over two levels, which they have demonstrated using an ant-like hexapod robot. The achievement opens new avenues for the control of legged robots.

Views of the Circuit Board Implementing the Controller and of the Robot. (Reproduced with permission from published article). ( IEEE ACCESS)

Published in IEEE Access ("Versatile Locomotion Control of a Hexapod Robot Using a Hierarchical Network of Nonlinear Oscillator Circuits"), the research is the result of collaboration between scientists from Tokyo Tech, in part funded by the World Research Hub Initiative, the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, Poland, and the University of Catania, Italy.

The biologically-inspired controller consists of two levels. At the top, it contains a CPG[1], responsible for controlling the overall sequence of leg movements, known as gait. At the bottom, it contains six local pattern generators (LPGs)[2], responsible for controlling the trajectories of the individual legs.

The lead author of the study, Ludovico Minati, who is also affiliated to the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, Poland and invited to Tokyo Tech's Institute of Innovative Research (IIR) through the World Research Hub Initiative explains that insects can rapidly adapt their gait depending on a wide range of factors, but particularly their walking speed. Some gaits are observed frequently and are considered as canonical, but in reality, a near-infinite number of gaits are available, and different insects such as ants and cockroaches realize similar gaits in very different postures.

Difficulties have been encountered when trying to condense so much complexity into artificial pattern generators. The proposed controller shows an extremely high level of versatility thanks to implementation based on field-programmable analog arrays (FPAAs)[3], which allow on-the-fly reconfiguration and tuning of all circuit parameters. It builds on years of previous research on non-linear and chaotic electronic networks, which has demonstrated their ability to replicate phenomena observed in biological brains, even when wired up in very simple configurations.

"Perhaps the most exciting moment in the research was when we observed the robot exhibit phenomena and gaits which we neither designed nor expected, and later found out also exist in biological insects," says Minati. Such emergent phenomena arise particularly as the network is realized with analog components and allows a certain degree of self-organization, representing an approach that vastly differs to conventional engineering, where everything is designed a-priori and fixed. "This takes us so much closer to the way biology works," he adds.

Yasuharu Koike, also based at the IIR, comments: "An important aspect of the controller is that it condenses so much complexity into only a small number of parameters. These can be considered high-level parameters, in that they explicitly set the gait, speed, posture, etc. Because they can be changed dynamically, in the future it should be easy to vary them in real-time using a brain-computer interface, allowing the control of complex kinematics otherwise impossible to dominate with current approaches."

And Natsue Yoshimura, also based at the IIR, says: "As the controller responds gradually and embodies a biologically plausible approach to pattern generation, we think that it may be more seamless to drive compared to systems which decode discrete commands. This may have practical implications, and our lab has substantial know-how in this area."

Technical terms

[1] Pattern-generator circuits (CPGs): CPG stands for Central Pattern Generator. A network that autonomously generates rhythmic gait patterns, here referring to the sequence of leg movements.

[2] Local Pattern Generator (LPG): A sub-network that transforms each CPG output into the trajectory of the joints of the corresponding leg.Sherlock Drones - automated investigators tackle toxic crime scenes

(Nanowerk News) Crimes that involve chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) materials pose a deadly threat not just to the target of the attack but to innocent bystanders and police investigators. Often, these crimes may involve unusual circumstances or they are terrorist-related incidents, such as an assassination attempt or the sending of poisons through the mail.

In the recent notorious case of poisoning in the UK city of Salisbury in March 2018, a number of first responders and innocent bystanders were treated in hospital after two victims of chemical poisoning were found unconscious on a park bench. One policeman who attended the scene became critically ill after apparent exposure to a suspected chemical weapon, said to be a special nerve agent called novichok. Police said a total of 21 people required medical care after the incident.

Past examples of rare but toxic materials at crime scenes include the 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the US and the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack in 1995. Following the radioactive poisoning of the Russian former spy, Alexander Litvinenko in London, UK, in 2006, investigators detected traces of the toxic radioactive material polonium in many locations around the city.

Despite these dangers, crime scene investigators must begin their forensic investigations immediately. European scientists are developing robot and remote-sensing technology to provide safe ways to assess crime or disaster scenes and begin gathering forensic evidence.

Using drones to gather information and samples from a hazardous scene can help incident commanders make critical decisions. (Image: ROCSAFE)

Harms way

We will send robots into harms way instead of humans, explained Professor Michael Madden at the National University of Ireland Galway, who coordinates a research project called ROCSAFE. The goal is to improve the safety of crime scene investigators.

The ROCSAFE project, which ends in 2019, will deploy remote-controlled aerial and ground-based drones equipped with sensors to assess the scene of a CBRN event without exposing investigators to risk. This will help to determine the nature of the threat and gather forensics.

In the first phase of a response, a swarm of drones with cameras will fly into an area to allow investigators to view it remotely. Rugged sensors on the drones will check for potential CBRN hazards. In the second phase, ground-based robots will roll in to collect evidence, such as fingerprint or DNA samples.

The ROCSAFE aerial drone could assess crime or disaster scenes such as that of a derailed train carrying radioactive material. It will deploy sensors for immediate detection of radiation or toxic agents and collect air samples to test later in a laboratory. Meanwhile, a miniature lab-on-a-chip on the drone will screen returned samples for the presence of viruses or bacteria, for instance.

An incident command centre usually receives a huge volume of information in a short space of time  including real-time video and images from the scene. Commanders need to process a lot of confusing information in an extreme situation quickly and so ROCSAFE is also developing smart software to lend a hand.

Rare events

These are rare events. This is nobodys everyday job, said Prof. Madden. We want to use artificial intelligence and probabilistic reasoning to reduce cognitive load and draw attention to things that might be of interest.

As an example, image analysis software might flag an area with damaged vegetation, suggest a possible chemical spill and suggest that samples be taken. Information such as this could be presented to the commander on a screen in the form of a clickable map, in a way that makes their job easier.

Sometimes, the vital evidence itself could be contaminated. There may be some physical evidence we need to collect - a gun or partly exploded material or a liquid sample, said Prof. Madden. The robot will pick up, tag and bag the evidence, all in a way that will stand up in court. The researchers are constructing a prototype six-wheeled robot for this task that is about 1.5-metres-long and that can handle rough terrain.

Helping forensic teams to deal with hazardous evidence is a new forensic toolbox called GIFT CBRN. The GIFT researchers have devised standard operating procedures on how to handle, package and analyse toxins such as the nerve-agent ricin, which is deadly even in minute amounts.

When the anthrax powder attacks took place in the US in 2001, the initial response of the security services was slow, partly because of the unprecedented situation. GIFT scientists have drawn up how to guides for investigators, so they can act quickly in response to an incident.

We want to find the bad guys quickly so we can stop them and arrest those involved, said Ed van Zalen at the Netherlands Forensic Institute, who coordinated the GIFT project.

Nerve agents

As well as containment, GIFT devised sensing technology such as a battery-powered boxed device that can be brought to a crime scene to identify nerve agents like sarin within an hour or two. This uses electrophoresis, a chemical technique that identifies charged molecules by applying an electric field and analysing their movements. Usually, samples must be collected and returned to the lab for identification, which takes far longer.

Additionally, they developed a camera to detect radioactive material that emits potentially damaging radiation called alpha particles. This form of radiation is extremely difficult to detect and even a Geiger counter  used to detect most radiation  cannot pick it up. The substance polonium, used to murder Litvinenko, emits alpha particles which create radiation poisoning but because it was a novel attack, the failure to detect it initially slowed the police investigation.Cosmologists create largest simulation of galaxy formation

(Nanowerk News) Humans have long tried to explain how stars came to light up the night sky. The wide array of theories throughout history have one common (and correct) governing principle that astrophysicists still use to this day: by understanding the stars and their origins, we learn more about where we come from.

However, the vastness of our galaxy--let alone our entire universe--means experiments to understand our origins are expensive, difficult, and time consuming. In fact, experiments are impossible for studying certain aspects of astrophysics, meaning that in order to gain greater insight into how galaxies formed, researchers rely on supercomputing.

In an attempt to develop a more complete picture of galaxy formation, researchers from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, the Max-Planck Institutes for Astrophysics and for Astronomy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York have turned to supercomputing resources at the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), one of the three world-class German supercomputing facilities that comprise the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS). The resulting simulation will help to verify and expand on existing experimental knowledge about the universe's early stages.

Recently, the team expanded on its 2015 record-breaking "Illustris" simulation--the largest-ever hydrological simulation of galaxy formation. Hydrodynamic simulations allow researchers to accurately simulate the movement of gas. Stars form from cosmic gas, and stars' light provides astrophysicists and cosmologists with important information for understanding how the universe works.

This is a composite which combines gas temperature (as the color) and shock mach number (as the brightness). Red indicates 10 million Kelvin gas at the centers of massive galaxy clusters, while bright structures show diffuse gas from the intergalactic medium shock heating at the boundary between cosmic voids and filaments. (Image: Illustris Team)

The researchers improved on the scope and accuracy of their simulation, naming this phase of the project, "Illustris, The Next Generation," or "IllustrisTNG." The team released its first round of findings across three journal articles appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ("First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: matter and galaxy clustering") and are preparing several more for publication.

Magnetic modelling

Just as humanity cannot envision exactly how the universe came to be, a computer simulation cannot recreate the birth of the universe in a literal sense. Instead, researchers feed equations and other starting conditions--observations coming from satellite arrays and other sources--into a gigantic computational cube representing a large swath of the universe and then use numerical methods to set this "universe in a box" in motion.

For many aspects of the simulation, researchers can start their calculations at a fundamental, or ab initio, level with no need for preconceived input data, but processes that are less understood--such as star formation and the growth of supermassive black holes--need to be informed by observation and by making assumptions that can simplify the deluge of calculations.

As computational power and know-how have increased, so too has the ability to simulate larger areas of space and increasingly intricate and complex phenomena related to galaxy formation. With IllustrisTNG, the team simulated 3 different universe "slices" at different resolutions. The largest was 300 megaparsecs across, or roughly 1 billion light years. The team used 24,000 cores on Hazel Hen over the span of 35 million core hours.

In one of IllustrisTNG 's major advances, the researchers reworked the simulation to include a more precise accounting for magnetic fields, improving the simulation's accuracy. "Magnetic fields are interesting for a variety of reasons," said Prof. Dr. Volker Springel, professor and researcher at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies and principal investigator on the project. "The magnetic pressure exerted on cosmic gas can occasionally be equal to thermal (temperature) pressure, meaning that if you neglect this, you will miss these effects and ultimately compromise your results."

While developing IllustrisTNG the team also made a surprising advance in understanding black hole physics. Based on observational knowledge, the researchers knew that supermassive black holes propel cosmic gases with a lot of energy while also "blowing" this gas away from galaxy clusters. This helps to "shut off" star formation in the biggest galaxies and thus imposes a limit on the maximum size they can reach.

In the previous Illustris simulation, researchers noticed that while black holes go through this energy transfer process, they would not shut off the star formation completely. By revising the black holes' physics in the simulation, the team saw much better agreement between the data and observation, giving researchers greater confidence that their simulation corresponds to reality.

A long-standing alliance

The team has been using GCS resources since 2015 and been running the IllustrisTNG simulation on HLRS resources since March 2016. Considering that IllustrisTNG's dataset is both larger and more accurate than the original, the researchers are confident their data will be used far and wide while they apply for more time to continue refining the simulation. The original Illustris data release garnered 2,000 registered users and resulted in more than 130 publications.

During that time, the researchers have relied on GCS support staff to help with several low-level issues related to their code, specifically related to memory crashes and file system issues. Team members Drs. Dylan Nelson and Rainer Weinberger also both benefitted from attending 2016 and 2017 machine-level scaling workshops at HLRS. The team's long-standing collaboration with HLRS has resulted in winning 2016 and 2017 Golden Spike awards, which are given to outstanding user projects during HLRS' annual Results and Review Workshop.

Nelson pointed out that while current-generation supercomputers have enabled simulations that have largely overcome most fundamental issues related to massive-scale cosmological modelling, there are still opportunities for improvement.Hubble solves cosmic 'whodunit' with interstellar forensics

(Nanowerk News) On the outskirts of our galaxy, a cosmic tug-of-war is unfolding-and only NASA's Hubble Space Telescope can see who's winning.

The players are two dwarf galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, both of which orbit our own Milky Way Galaxy. But as they go around the Milky Way, they are also orbiting each other. Each one tugs at the other, and one of them has pulled out a huge cloud of gas from its companion.

Called the Leading Arm, this arching collection of gas connects the Magellanic Clouds to the Milky Way. Roughly half the size of our galaxy, this structure is thought to be about 1 or 2 billion years old. Its name comes from the fact that it's leading the motion of the Magellanic Clouds.

The enormous concentration of gas is being devoured by the Milky Way and feeding new star birth in our galaxy. But which dwarf galaxy is doing the pulling, and whose gas is now being feasted upon? After years of debate, scientists now have the answer to this "whodunit" mystery.

"There's been a question: Did the gas come from the Large Magellanic Cloud or the Small Magellanic Cloud? At first glance, it looks like it tracks back to the Large Magellanic Cloud," explained lead researcher Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. "But we've approached that question differently, by asking: What is the Leading Arm made of? Does it have the composition of the Large Magellanic Cloud or the composition of the Small Magellanic Cloud?"

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds gravitationally tug at each other, and one of them has pulled out a huge amount of gas from its companion. This shredded and fragmented gas, called the Leading Arm, is being devoured by the Milky Way and is feeding new star birth in our galaxy. Using Hubble data, scientists have now solved which dwarf galaxy is doing the pulling. (Image: Nidever et al/NRAO/AUI/NSF/Mellinger/Leiden-Argentine-Bonn/LAB Survey/Parkes Obs/Westerbork Obs/Arecibo Obs/Feild/STScI/NASA/ESA/A. Fox/STScI) (click on image to enlarge)

Fox's research is a follow-up to his 2013 work, which focused on a trailing feature behind the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. This gas in this ribbon-like structure, called the Magellanic Stream, was found to come from both dwarf galaxies. Now Fox wondered about its counterpart, the Leading Arm. Unlike the trailing Magellanic Stream, this tattered and shredded "arm" has already reached the Milky Way and survived its journey to the galactic disk.

The Leading Arm is a real-time example of gas accretion, the process of gas falling onto galaxies. This is very difficult to see in galaxies outside the Milky Way, because they are too far away and too faint. "As these two galaxies are in our backyard, we essentially have a front-row seat to view the action," said collaborator Kat Barger at Texas Christian University.

In a new kind of forensics, Fox and his team used Hubble's ultraviolet vision to chemically analyze the gas in the Leading Arm. They observed the light from seven quasars, the bright cores of active galaxies that reside billions of light-years beyond this gas cloud. Using Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, the scientists measured how this light filters through the cloud.

In particular, they looked for the absorption of ultraviolet light by oxygen and sulfur in the cloud. These are good gauges of how many heavier elements reside in the gas. The team then compared Hubble's measurements to hydrogen measurements made by the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, as well as several other radio telescopes.

"With the combination of Hubble and Green Bank Telescope observations, we can measure the composition and velocity of the gas to determine which dwarf galaxy is the culprit," explained Barger.

After much analysis, the team finally had conclusive chemical "fingerprints" to match the origin of the Leading Arm's gas. "We've found that the gas matches the Small Magellanic Cloud," said Fox. "That indicates the Large Magellanic Cloud is winning the tug-of-war, because it has pulled so much gas out of its smaller neighbor."

This answer was possible only because of Hubble's unique ultraviolet capability. Because of the filtering effects of Earth's atmosphere, ultraviolet light cannot be studied from the ground. "Hubble is the only game in town," explained Fox. "All the lines of interest, including oxygen and sulfur, are in the ultraviolet. So if you work in the optical and infrared, you can't see them."

Gas from the Leading Arm is now crossing the disk of our galaxy. As it crosses, it interacts with the Milky Way's own gas, becoming shredded and fragmented.

This is an important case study of how gas gets into galaxies and fuels star birth. Astronomers use simulations and try to understand the inflow of gas in other galaxies. But here, the gas is being caught red-handed as it moves across the Milky Way's disk. Sometime in the future, planets and solar systems in our galaxy may be born out of material that used to be part of the Small Magellanic Cloud.Smart Farming, the voluntary cost saving initiative led by IFA, in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will begin its 2018 work programme in April, identifying ways to improve farm returns and enhance the environment.

In 2018, more than 1,200 farmers across 50 discussion groups, IFA branches and purchasing groups will get involved in Smart Farming. The objectives are clear: to find ways to reduce costs on each participating farm by at least 5,000 and how to reduce climate impact by 10%.

Launching the 2018 Smart Farming programme, IFA President Joe Healy said, Smart Farming works; it is making a difference to the bottom line, which then leads to positive impacts on the wider countryside. I am delighted to see so many farmers continuing to play their part in a tangible way to enhance the rural environment and improve their own returns.

Denis Naughten, Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment commended the leadership provided by IFA and the collaboration with the EPA, Smart Farming is making a real difference for farm families, their communities and the wider environment. This success is underpinned by the leadership provided by IFA, collaboration with the EPA and expertise provided by Teagasc, University College Dublin, Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland and others.

EPA Director General Laura Burke emphasised the need for a greater sense of urgency in making the transition from a society and economy dependent on fossil fuels and the wasteful consumption of natural resources. In this regard she said, The Smart Farming programme is an example of practical leadership in this transition and is resulting in the realisaton of tangible gains for the environment, health and the local economy with lasting impacts on farm returns.

Ends.

Photo Caption:

Smart Farming targets 250,000 in savings for farmers in 2018: launching the 2018 Smart Farming Programme are IFA President Joe Healy; Denis Naughten, Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment; and Laura Burke, EPA Director General.National and secondary schools throughout Tipperary will take part in Tech Week, Irelands national festival of technology, between April 22nd and April 28th.

Tech Week is aimed at sparking an interest in technology and related study and careers among students, parents and the public.

Organised by the ICS Foundation, the social enterprise arm of the Irish Computer Society, and supported by Science Foundation Ireland and Amazon Web Services, this exciting week of events will see more than 100,000 students take part in a range of fun activities.

These will include the finals of several national Tech Week events.

School students will be challenged on their computational thinking skills at the National Bebras final in NUI Maynooth on Saturday, 21st April, and coding projects will be showcased by school children in the Scratch Programming Final in UL on Wednesday 25th April.

Speaking at the launch of Tech Week, the Minister of State for Training, Skills and Innovation, John Halligan, said The Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation is delighted to support Tech Week through Science Foundation Irelands Discover Programme.

All young people love science and finding out how things work. Tech Week is aimed at stimulating childrens natural curiosity and encouraging them to explore, discover and develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

It provides hands-on opportunities for young people to learn about how computing and related technologies are shaping every area of life.

With the European Commission estimating that 90 per cent of tomorrow's jobs will require digital skills, we need to ensure that Ireland is at the forefront of this transformation.The death has occurred of former Ceann Comhairle Sean Treacy.

Mr. Treacy, who was 95, passed away at the South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel on Friday.

He was a member of the Labour Party for most of his political life and served two terms as Ceann Comhairle of Dail Eireann, from 1987 to 1997 and 1973 to 1977.

He was a TD for the Tipperary South constituency from 1961 to 1997 and a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Munster constituency from 1981 to 1984.

He was first elected to Dail Eireann at the 1961 General Election and was re-elected in seven subsequent elections, and returned automatically in three more as Ceann Comhairle.

He left the Labour Party in 1987 and was elected as an Independent TD at the General Election that year.

In 1981 he replaced Eileen Desmond who resigned as an MEP when she was appointed Minister for Health and Social Welfare. He was a member of the Irish Presidential Commission during the presidential vacancies of 1974 and 1976. He retired from politics at the 1997 general election.

During the course of a distinguished political career he also served as Chairman of South Tipperary County Council and as Mayor of his home town Clonmel.

He and his wife Kitty, who died some years ago, lived at Rossa, Heywood Road, Clonmel.

His remains will repose at ODonoghues Funeral Home, Kickham Street, Clonmel on Sunday evening from 5pm, with removal at 7.30pm to St Marys Church, Irishtown.

Requiem Mass will be celebrated on Monday at 12 oclock, with burial immediately afterwards in St Patricks Cemetery.

Mr. Treacy is survived by his family, relations and friends, to whom sincere sympathy is extended.ADN, City Bank signs deal

Business Desk :

Bangladesh's leading digital service provider ADN Digital has signed a partnership agreement on payment gateway solution with City Bank.

The signing ceremony took place at the City Bank Card Division Office in Dhaka recently, ADN Group said in a media release on Thursday.

City Bank's Majharul Islam, EVP and Head of Cards, Arifur Rahman, Head of Merchant Business, Md Refaz Ahmed Bhuiya, Assistant Vice President and Senior Manager, and Md Raihanul Kabir, Assistant Manager, E-Commerce, attended the function.

Ruhullah Raihan Alhusain, Chief Digital Business and Marketing Officer, ADN Group; Mir Sadik Faisal, Head of FinTech, ADN Digital, Kalpataru Biswas, Head of Digital Marketing, ADN Digital, Nirjhor Anjum, Head of Engineering, ADN Digital; Md Ehsan Ali, Head of Sales, ADN Digital, Mohammad Obydul Islam, Head of Business Development- FinTech, Digital Business and Tanvir Md Hafizul Hoque, Head of Brand and External Affairs, ADN Digital, were also present.

(Natural News) According to an internal NSA memo dated March 2013, the National Security Administration (NSA) has been systematically targeting any Bitcoin users they want, by tricking them into giving up personal information through privacy protection software and by tracking their computer activity and financial transactions.

People who want to preserve the privacy of their financial transactions gravitate toward cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. As a digital currency, Bitcoin uses encryption to regulate its units. This encryption conceals the financial transaction from being monitored and controlled by banks, financial institutions, and law enforcement. The drawback: The anonymity of Bitcoin allows organized crime a means to launder money.

The U.S. National Security Administration knows this, and they equate the desire for privacy as a desire to conceal illicit activity. In the search for terrorist activity, the NSA indiscriminately breaches the privacy of any Bitcoin users. This includes monitoring web activity and stealing passwords through covert means. The problem with the war on terror and the massive surveillance state is that it inadvertently puts innocent people in the crosshairs, while shredding away privacy for all.

NSAs MONKEYROCKET program tricks Bitcoin users into giving up private information

Internal NSA documents confirm that data was gathered in the Middle East, Europe, South America, and Asia under the program OAKSTAR and reveal that the NSA used a program alongside OAKSTAR called MONKEYROCKET, which allowed the NSA to track and target Bitcoin users around the globe. The NSA was able to do this by tricking Bitcoin users into using privacy software that was actually an information dragnet that sent users private data directly to the NSA. The NSA deceived Bitcoin users into using a virtual private network which encrypts and reroutes users internet traffic to mask what they are doing online. Instead, the virtual private network sent the information directly to the NSA. The NSAs MONKEYROCKET program was conducted on senders and receivers of Bitcoin and followed Bitcoin users around the world. The findings, revealed by ex-CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden and first published by The Intercept, are a blow to privacy advocates and regular users of Bitcoin who do not engage in illicit activity.

The NSAs massive tracking operation of Bitcoin users was conducted indiscriminately, not based on a warrant or suspicion of crime. The agencys internal memo alerted that Bitcoin is #1 priority of all the cryptocurrencies that they monitored. The tracking was done en masse and collected personal information from Bitcoin users including internet addresses, network ports, and timestamps. The information collected includes personal information taken directly from users home and business computers, all the way down to passwords, internet activity, billing information, and users unique device identification number.

The privacy of a financial transaction is something that matters incredibly to the Bitcoin community, says Emin Gun Sirer, associate professor and co-director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts at Cornell University. People who are privacy-conscious will switch to privacy-oriented coins after finding out about the NSAs crypto-currency spy programs, he said.

Bitcoin users should be furious that the NSA is indiscriminately targeting them for wanting to maintain privacy, but they should have seen this coming. Monstrosities such as the NSA are designed to help control the flow of money and monitor peoples activity to look for potential terrorist activity. The NSA helped shutter Liberty Reserve, a cryptocurrency that began in Costa Rica to help finance the dark web and the trafficking of narcotics and other illicit activities. While the intentions of stopping crime are noble, the power of the NSAs surveillance state can readily be abused. (Related: If you bought Bitcoin, you may have accidentally funneled money to the CIA.)

Sources include:

InfoWars.com

TheIntercept.com

TheIntercept.com(Natural News) When people hear the word ultrasound, the first thing that comes to their mind is a scene of a woman lying on a hospital bed, with the medical technicians hand guiding a device with a cool gel applied her your body.

While thats one of the leading applications of ultrasound  high-frequency sound waves that are inaudible to humans  it has uses that extend beyond detecting whether your baby is a boy or a girl. In medicine, its also used to identify any abnormalities in the body that could cause disease.

Offices and homes use ultrasound as a safety device to sense movement. If it detects movement in an area, the light turns on and stays that way until the person in the area leaves, or when it doesnt find movement in the area. The sensors work at frequencies that reach up to 32 kilohertz, which is higher than the audible range of humans, which is pegged at 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz.

It can also be used to deliver targeted sound, as when a museum plays a recording for guests in one area so those nearby cant hear it. Ultrasound also keeps pests like rodents and insects away by emitting a sound that sends them scurrying elsewhere.

The problem begins when we abuse it

Like most things related to science, ultrasound is complicated. Its widely used in a lot of industries, but it also brings in a lot of challenges to the table. One such problem comes in the form of interference. Assistive listening devices (ALDs) are prone to this type of interference: The ultrasonic signals, which are not commonly audible, are converted into audible sound when picked up by ALDs. At best, the noise is described as annoying, but the nature of its effects have not yet been fully explored.

However, it can also be sinister depending on whos using it. Multiple studies have confirmed that ultrasonic, once it falls into the wrong hands, is a lot of trouble: It can affect micro-electrical mechanical sensing chips, such as those in accelerometers in car airbag systems, as well as hack into smartphones with nothing more than a secret command that cannot be heard.

In an article in LiveScience, authors have written that ultrasound can cause a lot of problems in modern technology, which can be anywhere from a drone crashing in the middle of its flight to even fooling a smartphones location system.

Yet another example of the ill effects of ultrasound was documented in Cuba. In 2017, diplomats and tourists from the U.S. and Canada complained of nausea, speech problems, and hearing loss after staying in the capital city of Havana.

Some suspected Cuba unleashed a mysterious sonic weapon. Others traced the problem to mass hysteria.

A study by electrical engineering and computer science professors Wenyuan Xu and Kevin Fu  which was first published in The Conversation  suggested a case of sloppy engineering. Their research showed that the problem was caused by equipment trying to listen to the diplomats and the tourists conversations.

The researchers used ultrasonic tones to create sounds similar to those recorded in the Cuba summit. They also devised a gadget that allowed them to record audible conversations and transmit these to a nearby team through an inaudible ultrasonic link. It was when they placed a second inaudible ultrasonic device that the interference between the signal was created  which was similar to those in Cuba.

While the Cuba scenario is an extreme case of ultrasound technology gone wrong, the dangers of ultrasound are still real. Some side effects that were reported after exposure to airborne ultrasound included altered blood sugar levels, fatigue, nausea, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), and irritability.

That popular scene we think of when we hear of the word ultrasound? Studies have shown that diagnostic ultrasound contributes to lower birth weights and an increased risk of fetal abnormalities.

Sources include:

LiveScience.com

Audiology.org

APNews.com

Encyclopedia.UIA.orgA day after the Giants got good news about their No. 3 starter, they got bad news about their No. 1.

Madison Bumgarner left Friday's spring training game against the Kansas City Royals in the third inning after a Whit Merrifield line drive hit his pitching hand. That left hand is fractured, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's Henry Schulman.

There is no prognosis yet on Bumgarner's return, according to Giants manager Bruce Bochy.

"Horrible news for us," Bochy told reporters (via Schulman). "That's all you can say about it. There's nothing you can do but push on."

Bumgarner, who's scheduled to start Opening Day against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Mar. 29, was making his final start before the regular season. He was off to a strong start this spring. In five appearances, Bumgarner posted a 2.84 ERA and 0.95 WHIP in 19.0 innings pitched.

The 28-year-old missed nearly three months last season after injuring his left shoulder in a dirtbike accident.

This story is being updated.Hoping to join the March For Our Lives rally but dont have a ride? Dont fret, Lyfts got your back.

The rideshare company will be offering up to $1.5 million in free rides to 50 of the rallies, including the ones in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. The max cost per ride will be $15 a piece and amounts to a total of 100,000 rides.

The March For Our Lives rally is pushing for gun safety reform in the wake of the latest school shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17.

To be eligible, prospective riders must enter the official March For Our Lives rally point as your destination. Once youve registered, riders can use the specific code for their city in the promos tab of the Lyft app.

Check out the Bay Area city codes to help get you to the rally:

San Francisco: MFOLSF

San Jose: MFOLSJ

Oakland: MFOLOAKAround 40 Marjory Stoneman Douglas alumni in the Bay Area are among the thousands who attended the marches in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, according to alumni David Nassau who attended the rally in Oakland on Saturday.

"We have to let the community know that we have their back. Oakland is not that different of a place than Florida," Nassau told NBC Bay Area.

Nassau joined student activists and gun control advocates in the Bay Area, and across the nation, to rally behind Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students who formed the organization in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida, shooting which left 17 people dead.

[BAY] 'Lives Not Guns': People Across Bay Area Attend March for Our Lives

Sen. Dianne Feinstein spoke at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco asked the crowd: "Is this the country we want our children to grow up in?"

"Ive been fighting to get weapons of war off our streets and out of our schools since I was first elected. Never have I seen this passion, this energy, this determination to get #GunReform passed and make our communities safe again!," Feinstein tweeted.

More than 25,000 people said they would attend the rally in San Francisco but it was unclear how many people showed up.

One of the attendees in San Francisco, 13-year-old Benje Choucrouni, said he's at the march because he wants to "protect" students in schools so they don't get killed like those in Parkland and other school shootings.

One of the cities in the Bay Area that saw big crowds is Oakland, where TV host Nev Schulman and comedian W. Kamau Bell attended the rally.

Approximately 2,000 attendees were at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland, according to Oakland Police. The rally was peaceful and there were no reports of arrests, citations, vandalism or injuries, police said.

Oakland City Counsilmember At-Large Rebecca Kaplan said that it's not only important to have a conversation about gun violence when it happens to a large group, but the "daily fear of gun violence that plagues so many of our communities" has to be a part of it too.

Thousands of people fill streets in front of city hall to rally for gun control laws at March for Our Lives.

One of the marchers in San Jose, Terri Possley, told NBC Bay Area that she is marching for her cousin Jordyn Rivera, 21, who died in the shooting in Las Vegas massacre in October.

"Jordyn pushed me here to come," Possley said. "I'm just inspired by the students who led us here. I just wish for the day we can all be safe going to schools, concerts, going to the trains, subways."

The organizer of the San Francisco rally Shoshana Ungerleider said she put the event together on Facebook after she didnt see one planned.

"The poise and composure of the Parkland students standing up and saying to the country enough is enough," Ungerleider said.

Lowell High School freshman Jason Chen, who partook in the school walkouts on Mar. 14 to bring attention to school safety and gun violence, said "Were going to have a big front line of diverse passionate and loud student."

"I want lawmakers to actually pass common-sense gun reforms. This doesnt mean they should arm teachers, this doesnt mean they just overlook it and stay silent," Chen said.

More than 700 sister marches planned for every state in the country.

In all more 800 protests are planned throughout the world, most in the United States and Europe.

"I'm so heartened by the fact that people around the country and people in the Bay Area are getting behind the student-led effort to make change," Ungerleider said.

In Washington D.C., Parkland shooting survivors stood along side those who also experienced gun violence in their communities from Chicago, Los Angeles and Newtown, Connecticut.

Some early estimates, from journalists, of #MarchForOurLives crowd sizes:



800,000 - D.C.

175,000 - NYC

50,000 - Boston

20,000 - Parkland, Fla

15,000 - Chicago

10,000 - San Francisco

10,000 - San Diego  scott budman (@scottbudman) March 24, 2018

The Associated Press contributed to this report.Responding to criticism that outrage over the deaths of young people erupts only when the victims are white or well-to-do, the organizers of Saturdays "March for Our Lives" rally in Washington, D.C., shared the spotlight.

Their lineup included speakers not just from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where the slaughter of 17 students inspired the marches, but also 19-year-old Trevon Bosley of Chicago, there for his slain brother and young people across the country. And Edna Chavez, 17, of South Los Angeles, whose brother was also killed, and 11-year-old Naomi Wadler from Alexandria, Virginia, standing for African-American girls and women who are disproportionately affected by violence.

Im here to speak on behalf of Chicagos youth who are surrounded and affected by gun violence every day, Bosley said. Im here to speak for those youth who fear they may be shot while going to the gas station, the movies, the bus stop, to church or even to and from school. Im here to speak for those Chicago youth who feel their voices have been silenced for far too long.

Most important, Bosley said, he was speaking for his brother, Terrell Bosley, shot and killed outside of a church in April 2006.

He said that it was time to stop judging communities differently based on what they look like, and he accused President Donald Trump of capitalizing on Chicagos violence rather than sending the funds to combat it.

Its time for the nation to realize gun violence is more than just a Chicago problem or Parkland problem but an America problem, he said.

Chavez, a senior at Manuel Arts High School and a youth leader in an community coalition, said she had learned to duck from bullets before she learned how to read. But if she was a survivor, her brother, Ricardo, was not. He died.

It was a day like any other, sunset going down in South Central, she said. You hear pops thinking theyre fireworks. They were not pops. You see the melanin on your brothers skin turn grey. Ricardo was his name. Can you all say it with me?

And the group obliged, chanting his name.

Wadler said she and a classmate had organized a walkout at her elementary school as part of the national protests on March 14. They added a minute to the 17 minutes recognized elsewhere to honor Courtlin Arrington, a teenager who was shot to death at her school in Birmingham, Alabama, after the Parkland shootings.

I am here today to acknowledge and represent the African American girls whose stories dont make the front page of every national newspaper, Wadler said. These stores dont lead on the evening news.

Jaclyn Corin, one of the student organizers, said that the students of Parkland needed an alliance with other communities to spread their message. She acknowledged that her community had gotten the spotlight denied other cities.

We openly recognize that we are privileged individuals and would not have received as much attention if it werent for the affluence of our city, she said. Because of that however we share the stage today and forever with those who have always stared down the barrel of gun.

Corin led the speaker who came after her onto the stage: Martin Luther King Jr.s granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King. King said that her grandfather had had a dream that his four children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream that enough is enough, she said. And that this should be a gun-free world. Period.Allivia Lorusso says the reason she rocks is Aerosmith.

The 20-year-old musician from Ogunquit, Maine, says it was Joe Perry who inspired her to pick up an electric guitar at age 16.

"I just think Aerosmith is the pure essence of rock n' roll," she said. "They introduced me to my passion."

As she forms her own band and forges a professional music career, it's Joe Perry and Steve Tyler who continue to inspire her. So when her rock idols put out a call on social media, asking artists to post their Aerosmith covers, Lorusso knew she had to respond.

Playing Perry's solo from "Walk This Way," she posted a minute-long clip on YouTube and other social media channels, tagging the official Aersomith account. Two weeks went by, and she assumed nothing would come of it. But clearly, her performance struck a chord.

"I was at work [Wednesday] and my phone started blowing up," she said. "It all happened so fast."

On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Aerosmith's social media accounts re-posted Lorusso's performance with the caption, "Check out @AlliviaLorusso rocking this way!" In two days, the video has had more than 100,000 views.

"I honestly freaked out, I was so excited," she said. She re-posted Aerosmith's shout-out, writing on social media, "WHAT?! This is unreal! You have no idea how much this band means to me."

She calls this social media moment a dream come true  but she admits she has one more dream: to be called on stage and play guitar alongside Perry.

Lorusso has tickets to see Joe Perry and Friends perform at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire next month, and would be thrilled to meet the band and thank them for changing her life  twice.

"I can't possibly explain how much this band has inspired me," she said.A spirited throng of students and adults packed Boston Common on Saturday for a "March for Our Lives" rally for changes to the nation's gun laws.

Organizers said the crowd numbered 100,000 and Boston police said it was a large and peaceful crowd with no arrests or citations.

An array of speakers addressed the Boston Common crowd, including sisters Leonor and Beca Munoz. Leonor is a senior at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and witnessed the Feb. 14 shooting, and Beca is a student at Northeastern University.

"I will always remember every single detail. My trauma is not going away," Leonor said.

The sisters spoke about gun violence and led the crowd in a chant of, "Not one more."

"We shouldn't have to fight for our lives, but we will and we are. And we will continue fighting until we're all safe," the sisters said in unison. "Never again."

They also tailored their message to Boston, citing the gun violence in Roxbury.

This was a protest with a purpose, sparked by the survivors of the Majory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre that left 17 students and faculty members dead on Feb. 14 in Parkland, Florida.

Boston's "March for Our Lives" rally began in the city's Roxbury neighborhood at Madison High School, where protesters gathered to listen to speakers before they walked down Columbus Avenue just before 11 a.m. for Boston Common. The larger rally on Boston Common started at 2 p.m.

Two 16-year-old students traveled to Boston from Vermont to join the demonstration and spoke along the march route on Columbus Ave.

"We came out here today because the gun laws need to be changed because a school shooting can happen to any school like it did in Florida, and we really care about students' lives," said one of the teenagers.

Laura-Luiza Cabral Gouvea, a 15-year-old student and local "March for Our Lives" organizer, told NBC10 Boston that she understands the concerns of those defending the Second Amendment, but that she was focused on public safety.

"It's not [about] eradicating the Second Amendment, it's making sure that the rights we were given to life and liberty are just seen before the right to guns," she said on Saturday before the march.

In addition to students at the rally, physicians from Brigham and Women's were in attendance to raise awareness about gun violence as a public health crisis, and Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley held a mass for peace at St. Anthony Shrine on Arch Street, which was followed by a march to the rally on Boston Common.

Saturday's rally is not the first demonstration by local students in the wake of the Parkland shooting. Hundreds of students gathered off of the Common and then marched to the Massachusetts Statehouse earlier this month to participate in a nationwide walkout.Two University of New Hampshire researchers were charged Friday with stealing money from federal research grants, U.S. Attorney Scott Murray announced in a press release.

The indictment alleges that Hailong Zhang, 44, of Nottingham, and Jichun Zhang, 45, of Durham, used credit cards provided to them by the university - and covered by federal research grants - for personal purchases.

Hailong Zhang, a research project manager at the university, is accused of using his business card to purchase Amazon gift cards totaling more than $82,000 and using them for personal items between December 2013 and January 2018. The indictment alleges he attempted to hide this improper use of the grant money by submitting fictitious receipts to the university. His grant was provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health.

Jichun Zhang, a research assistant professor in a different department at the school, is accused of using a university-issued credit card covered by federal grant money to purchase almost $7,000 worth of personal items from various online businesses between January 2016 and December 2017. He allegedly also concealed these purchases by submitting fictitious receipts to the university. His grant was provided by the National Aeronatic and Space Administration (NASA).

The two defendants were arrested Friday and are scheduled to make their initial appearance in federal court Friday afternoon, as per the U.S. Attorney's office in New Hampshire. It's unclear if they have attorneys.

In a statement, University of New Hampshire officials said they launched an investigation after discovering irregularities in employee expense reimbursement claims during a random audit, and added both have been placed on unpaid administrative leave and have been banned from campus.Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Congressman Luis Gutierrez are in Puerto Rico to deliver aid and to inspect the damage left behind by Hurricane Maria last year.

Emanuel delivered medical supplies from Chicago hospitals and also presented checks to help in the relief efforts in multiple cities, including Loiza and the capital of San Juan.

The mayor and his social media team have been posting photos on social media as they tour the island:

#ChicagoParaPuertoRico: Our next stop is Comerio, where roughly 1,700 homes are still without roofs & water infrastructure is in need of repair.

We are moved by the scale of devastation in #PuertoRico 6 months after the hurricane, but also by the spirit of the people we have met. pic.twitter.com/8DsjDuplaW  Archive: Mayor Rahm Emanuel (@MayorRahm) March 24, 2018

The city has helped efforts in Puerto Rico through a variety of methods, including sending Chicago firefighters to help provide assessments for future relief efforts. Puerto Ricans in Chicago have also been given access to various services, including food and health assistance.

Chicago Public School students will also be heading to the island beginning on Sunday, with another weeklong trip scheduled for late June and early July.

Finally, the city has also set up a website for Chicago residents to donate funds to help in relief efforts on the island.Chicago Fire actress DuShon Monique Brown died Friday, her talent agency confirmed to NBC 5.

Brown, 49, played Connie, the assistant to Chief Boden, on the popular NBC drama. She died shortly after noon at St. James Olympia Field Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner. Her agent, Robert Schroeder, said she died of natural causes, but the medical examiner's office had yet to make an official ruling.

"We are devastated by the loss of a very talented and kindhearted soul," Schroeder said. "She brought laughter and joy to many, and she will be greatly missed."

Dick Wolf, the producer behind the "Chicago" franchise, lamented Brown's death in a statement Friday.

"The Chicago Fire family is devastated to lose one of its own," he said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with DuShon's family and we will all miss her."

A letter was also sent home to parents of Kenwood Academy High School students, where Brown previously worked as a counselor, notifying families of her death,the Chicago Tribune reported. The school did not immediately respond to calls and emails requesting the letter.

DuShon was a film, television, commercial and voice over actress who also graced the stages of many Chicago theaters, Schroeder said.

Her biography on Grossman & Jack Talent's website lists a litany of her theatre rolesincluding those at Steppenwolf, Goodman and Chicago theatre companies.

In addition to "Chicago Fire," Brown also appeared in shows such as Empire, Shameless, Boss and Prison Break among others.

"At this difficult time we ask that privacy of the family and loved ones be respected," Schroeder said.Part of the Chicago area will remain under a Winter Storm Warning over the weekend, with several inches of snow possible for some suburbs.

Part of the Chicago area will remain under a Winter Storm Warning over the weekend, with several inches of snow possible for some suburbs.



The watch began Friday night and will continue throughout Saturday afternoon for LaSalle and Livingston counties in Illinois and Newton and Jasper counties in northwest Indiana.

[[456119263, C]]

Anywhere from 4 to 8 inches of snow will be possible with the system far south and west of the city, but several factors will likely limit accumulation north of Interstate 80. Those factors include the potential for a strong easterly wind, which would feed in dry air, and temperatures at or above freezing.

Currently, temperatures are expected to be in the mid-30s along the lakefront, making way for a possible rain-snow mix as the precipitation moves through.

[[477640033, C]]

The main band of precipitation was expected to develop Friday night and into Saturday morning.

The snow and rain could make for hazardous travel conditions across the area.

The system will likely move out by Saturday afternoon, making way for a mostly sunny and cool Sunday.

This forecast is developing. Check back with Storm Team 5 as we monitor for the latest updates.The Aqua Turf Club in Plantsville has been identified as a new target for anti-NRA activists as the banquet venue was poised to host a Friends of the National Rifle Association fundraiser.

The Newtown Action Alliance, a group formed following the shooting at Sandy Hook that left 26 people dead, called on future patrons of the Aqua Turf Club to end their relationship with the facility.

"I think its time for corporations to be held responsible for supporting the National Rifle Association who stands in staunch opposition to any common sense gun reform in our country," said Heather Whaley, who is also associated with Womens March Connecticut.

The Newtown Action Alliance is calling for high schools who may have participated in the nationwide walk out to rethink their plans if they have a major event like a prom planned for the Aqua Turf.

"Its got to be a rude awakening that the place thats holding their prom is also participating in a fundraiser for the National Rifle Association," Whaley said. "I hope that the Aqua Turf ends their relationship with the NRA just like many corporations have decided to boycott the NRA and I would be happy to, in the future, attend any event at the Aqua Turf."

NBC Connecticut reached the Aqua Turfs longtime general manager, Tim Needham, by phone several hours before the fundraiser.

Needham said its not fair to attack the Aqua Turf for hosting the event.

"To be put in a category that these people are putting us in is totally unfair," Needham said. "Theres 1,000 people coming here this evening. I have 50 staff working today and I have 150 staff working tonight. What am I supposed to say to these people?"

Needham also pointed to contributions the owners of the Aqua Turf made to Sandy Hook-related causes several years ago. The Calvanese Foundation, founded by the owners of the club, hosted a gala that provided more than $60,000 in donations to the Newtown Sandy Hook Private Purpose Fund.

He said the Aqua Turf does not discriminate against clients for any reason and said, for the sake of his employees, he cant pick and choose which events are held based on political preference.

"Where does it stop?" Needham asked.

Scott Wilson with the Connecticut Citizens Defense League said gun rights groups have the same right to gather as any group.

"People have the right to assembly and do have dinner and share their common interests with each other and raise funds for the projects and the causes that they believe in," Wilson said.Demonstrations against gun violence took place in towns and cities across Connecticut on Saturday as part of rallies inspired by high school students in Parkland, Florida.

"I think the shooting in Parkland might have been the worst for me," Erica Lafferty told a crowd gathered at the state capitol in Hartford on Saturday.

Lafferty's mother, Dawn Hochsprung, was the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School and was killed while running down the hallway towards the gunfire during the December 2012 mass shooting there.

"There were so many similarities. All the media coverage was just as intense. But most of all, the outcry from the public is just as intense," she said.

Lafferty said the inaction by lawmakers in Washington is the same as it was after Sandy Hook, but not everything has been similar.

"But then something happened. The Parkland students started to speak out," Lafferty said. "What's different about the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is that they are teenagers. Young people who have followed their voices and are not afraid to use them."

Lafferty said her mother's students at Sandy Hook were too young to speak up on their own.

More than 10,000 people showed up for the march at the state capitol, according to Hartford police.

Marches also took place in Stamford and Guilford. Others were planned for Old Saybrook, East Haddam, West Hartford, Shelton, Roxbury, Kent and Enfield.

The events coincided with hundreds of marches across the nation, including the "March For Our Lives" rally in Washington, D.C., anchored by students from Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed in a Valentine's Day shooting.Several students and parents affected by the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took part in the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

Matthew Soto took the stage to speak to the tens of thousands of who gathered for the march. His sister, Victoria Soto, was a teacher at Sandy Hook and was killed along with 20 children and five other educators inside the school.

"At the age of 15, I sat in my high school Spanish class while my sister, Victoria Soto, was being slaughtered in her classroom in Newtown, Connecticut," Soto told the crowd.

Soto was joined on stage by Newtown High School students Tommy Murray and Jackson Mittleman who then presented the students of Stoneman Douglas High with a signed banner that read "Newtown High School stands with Stoneman Douglas."

"We have worked incredibly hard for the last five years to protect other communities," Mittleman said. "But apparently Sandy Hook was not enough for America to make the changes, but after Parkland, we feel hope."

Nelba Marquez-Greene, who lost her 6-year-old daughter, Ana Grace, in the Sandy Hook shooting, marched in the streets of Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

"The students who spoke today were all impacted by gun violence and compelling speakers," Marquez-Greene tweeted. "This should not be their burden. I am proud of them and I am heartbroken this is their reality."

Marquez-Greene even ran into a woman in the crowd who held a sign depicting her daughter, Ana Grace, and read "Love Wins."

"What are the odds I would find this woman in a crowd of thousands?" she tweeted.Police chiefs in Connecticut are hoping the new federal spending bill signed by the president on Friday will help get departments resources to battle the opioid epidemic.

"Its off the charts right now. We went from three or four years ago maybe 10 -under 10 opioid deaths a year to last years 35. Thats unheard of," Norwich Police Chief Patrick Daley said.

Daley said he has two Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants that help put additional patrolmen on the street, but Norwich, Ledyard, Groton and New London are looking to add more officers to their forces to help interdict, investigate and get people addicted to opioids help.

The four departments met with Rep. Joe Courtney on Friday afternoon.

"Eastern Connecticut has really stepped up loud and clear that they want to work together with the other two components in terms of prevention and treatment, but they frankly need more boots on the ground," Courtney said.

Courtney expects the Omnibus Spending Bill will not only add more officers to the force but also get funding for equipment, whether it be Narcan or ways to safely handle evidence like fentanyl.

"The stuff that youre looking at is killing people and were having our officers handle it," Town of Groton Chief L.J. Fusaro told the congressman.

New London Police Chief Peter Reichard agreed officer safety is called into question. Drugs, like fentanyl, are more potent, so his officers have Narcan assigned to their cars in case something were to happen to them or their K9 officers.

Courtney said the state should see more money because Connecticut has seen an increase in opioid deaths.

Ben Iliff has been battling an addiction to opioids, specifically heroin, for about 10 years.



"Theyll give you a bag with some pure white powder in it and youll find out one way or another that it wasnt dope. Youre getting pure fentanyl," the Salem, Connecticut, resident said.

Iliff said what he's seen on the streets has only gotten worse over the last decade.

"We cant arrest our way out of it. Weve all heard that," Iliff's mom, Ceci, said.



Ceci said the detox and rehab system needs to be mended, too.



Iliff said there can always be more officers on the ground, but many need to learn the way to better understand and interact with addicts.Connecticut students headed to Washington D.C. for Saturdays March for Our Lives say they are inspired by the Florida students calling for gun reform since 17 people were killed in a school shooting last month.

"We just wanted to make sure that as many kids as possible would be able to come and represent Guilford," Brendan OCallahan, a Guilford High School senior, said.

At 3 a.m. on Saturday, OCallahan and Tyler Felson will board a bus for the D.C. march with 49 other students from Guilford and nearby shoreline towns.

"We want to send a strong message to our lawmakers that the movement for stronger gun control extends beyond South Florida," Felson said.

Felson went to summer camp with Cameron Kasky, one of the Parkland students leading the Never Again movement.

"Before this happened Ive had conversations with my friends where Im just like the thoughts crossed your mind before it could happen to you right and everyone has had that thought at some point," Felson told NBC Connecticut. "Thats the sad reality about the world we live in today, you dont feel safe in school."

These high school seniors said after marching, they want to continue fighting for changes like expanded background checks.

"The NRA isnt going to let up," Felson said. "We cant let up either."

The shoreline community of Guilford is still shaken by the Jan. 31 shooting death of 15-year-old Ethan Song that remains under investigation.

"Seeing how someone who had so much life left to live, he was an incredible human being, seeing how one instant that can be gone it really shocks you," Guilford High School senior James Hyman said.

Hyman and Olivia Clarke plan to make their voices heard at the March for Our Lives in their hometown.

"We just need to take steps forward to improve gun regulations," Clarke said.

Local march organizer Kathryn Westgard said she is in awe of the students taking a stand against gun violence.

"They give us courage, they give us purity," she said. "They know when somethings just not right and theyre not afraid to say it."

Senator Chris Murphy is planning to speak at the March for Our Lives in Guilford that begins at 12:30 on the town green. Family members of Ethan Song are also expected to attend, organizers said. They are expecting a crowd of more than 2,000 people from the town and nearby communities.

Some parents who lost children at the Sandy Hook school shooting are joining the students marching in D.C.Hundreds of thousands of people joined Saturday's March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., a demonstration responding to last month's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people.

As many as half a million teens and adults are expected at Saturday's March For Our Lives rally in Washington D.C. following last month's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 students and teachers. Here in North Texas -- students planned their own marches.

March for Our Lives organizers asked people to sign a petition that demands three things: to pass a law to ban the sale of assault weapons, ban the sale of high-capacity magazines and improve the background check system.

In North Texas, students planned their own marches.



At least 5,000 people attended the march in downtown Dallas, including relatives of Alex Schachter, a 14-year-old killed in the Parkland shooting.



"We couldnt stay at home and since our loved ones was part of the victims, we had no choice," said Ed Goodman, Schachter's great uncle.



Gun advocates are counterprotesting on social media with the hashtag #WhyICarry from March 23-25.

As many as half a million teens and adults are expected at Saturday's March For Our Lives rally in Washington D.C. following last month's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 students and teachers. Here in North Texas -- students planned their own marches.

In Tarrant County, hundreds marched in the streets of downtown Fort Worth for the March for Our Lives event. They wrapped around downtown streets before returning to the old Tarrant County Courthouse. In McKinney, dozens showed up early Saturday morning to march at the Collin County Courthouse.A school district in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks in what the superintendent says would be a last resort should an armed intruder burst in.

Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel says every classroom in the district about 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones.

"We're empowering our teachers and our students to do something," Helsel told NBC affiliate WBRE. "They hit somebody in the head it could actually knock them out or even hit them in the temple, it could kill them."



He says the rocks are one small part of the district's overall security plan. The district serves 2,600 students through three elementary schools, one middle school, and a high school.

"We're going to throw them at a person who comes through the door as hard as we can," said Randy Nunemacher, a middle school teacher.

Helsel says it is more effective than just crawling under desks, and gives students and teachers a chance to defend themselves.

"It gives me just a little bit of confidence to know that our students just aren't sitting targets," another middle school teacher, Jill Kerstetter, told WBRE.



One student says he supports the plan, adding that throwing rocks is better than throwing books or pencils.

Kenneth Trump, president of a school security consulting firm, calls the idea irrational and says it could possibly cost lives.

The rocks are secured in each classroom, according to Helsel. Students have carried out drills and discussed using the stones, but haven't thrown them.

Rohingya people need more care

Nazmun Nesa Piari , President, Bengal Centre talking to Rohingya children during her visit to Rohingya camps in Cox\'s Bazar recently.

Cox's Bazar Correspondent :

Bengal Centre ( Bengalzentrum , e v ), a non-profit organisation has been working for improving socio-economic condition of Rohingya people who were forced to leave Myanmar for Bangladesh with their own fund .

On March 16, Nazmun Nesa Piari , President of the organization visited different camps in Cox's Bazar including Kutupalang, Balukhali, Lomboshikha . When she visited the areas , found many NGOs are working to impart education to the forced migrated children here and they are also providing healthcare to them . The children narrated their sufferings to Nazmun Nesa Piari and demanded more facilities for them .

The social workers who are working for their welfare said, the children are mentally affected due to forced displacement from the Rakhine state in Myanmar and they lack manners and basic knowledge about their livelihood .

It is mentionable that violence in Rakhine State which began on 25 August 2017 has driven an estimated 655,500 Rohingya across the border into Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. The speed and scale of the influx has resulted in a critical humanitarian emergency. The people who have arrived in Bangladesh since 25 August came with very few possessions.

They have used most their savings on transportation and constructing a shelter, often out of no more than bamboo and thin plastic. They are now reliant on humanitarian assistance for food, and other life-saving needs. Basic services that were available prior to the influx are under severe strain due to the massive increase in people in the area. In some of the sites that have spontaneously emerged, water and sanitation facilities are limited or of poor quality, with extremely high density raising the risks of an outbreak of disease. The Rohingya population in Cox's Bazar is highly vulnerable, having fled conflict and experienced severe trauma, and now living in extremely difficult conditions.

Population movements within Cox's Bazar remain highly fluid, with increasing concentration in Ukhia, where the Government has allocated 3,000 acres for a new camp. People arrived at the new site before infrastructure and services could be established. Humanitarian partners are now building necessary infrastructure in challenging conditions, with extremely limited space.

Nazmun Nesa Piari , President, Bengal Centre ( Bengalzentrum , e v ) while talking to this correspondent said, they need more care on humanitarian grounds and after going back to Germany I will discuss the matter with donor agencies to take up a project for the overall development of the Rohingya people.



Immigrant rights attorneys are urging a major bus company to stop letting federal agents on board to conduct immigration sweeps.

The American Civil Liberties Union's affiliates in 10 states sent a letter Wednesday to officials for the Greyhound bus company asking them to deny agents permission to board without a warrant or on the U.S. border.

The lawyers say U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been searching buses more often to check the immigration status of travelers, singling out people based on race or their appearance. Border Patrol has the power to operate immigration checkpoints and conduct other activities within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of a U.S. land or coastal border according to a federal law. But the letter says the statutes cannot override the Fourth Amendment, which protects people and businesses against illegal search and seizures.

The ACLU alleges that border officials have been randomly boarding Greyhound buses to search passengers, with Greyhound's blessing.

One such incident occurred in Indio last month, when a Los Angeles resident boarded a Greyhound bus, then was detained because his "shoes looked suspicious," according to the ACLU. Because his shoes looked like those of "someone who had recently crossed the border," agents questioned the man regarding his immigration status.

The incident was one of many the ACLU of Southern California says it has received out of Riverside County, though the ACLU's letter to Greyhound headquarters also addressed similar reports out of Washington, Vermont, New York, Michigan, Florida and Arizona. The ACLU affiliates of New Hampshire, Maine and Texas also joined the drafting of the letter.

"Greyhound is in the business of transporting its passengers safely from place to place," said Jennie Pasquarella, director of immigrants' right for the ACLU Foundations of California. "It should not be in the business of subjecting its passengers to intimidating interrogations, suspicion-less searches, warrantless arrests and the threat of deportation."

According to the ACLU, the raids are being conducted by immigration agents "with the agreement of Greyhound," and the number of searches are comparable to actions of "police states."

Greyhound issued a statement earlier this year saying the company was required to cooperate with law enforcement agents who demand to board the buses, but the ACLU insists agents can be denied access if they lack probable cause. Allowing immigration agents to detain passengers without probable cause is a violation of the passengers' Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure, the ACLU argued.The boyfriend of a missing model from Macedonia who killed himself during a police chase Thursday night has been identified, officials said.

Chris Spotz, a 33-year-old aspiring actor, was identified by Riverside County Sheriff's officials as the man who led authorities on a chase from Hesperia to Corona in a stolen Toyota Tacoma. He fatally shot himself at the end of the pursuit.

Spotz had just returned to Southern California from Colorado where he was with his fiancee.



Authorities discovered the vehicle had possibly been used in a homicide that had occurred in Los Angeles County, CHP Public Information Officer Dan Olivas. Details about the case were not immediately available.



Two spike strips were deployed but the driver was able to continue evading and transitioned to the westbound Riverside (91) Freeway.

The suspect got off the freeway at Green River Road and came to a stop on Rio Vista Street, south of the 91 freeway, Olivas said.

As officers attempted a felony traffic stop, the driver shot himself with a handgun and died at the scene, Olivas said.

No other injuries were reported and details about the murder attributed to the suspect were not immediately available.

Earlier this month the family of 25-year-old Adea Shabani offered a $25,000 reward Monday for information leading to the aspiring model and actress from Macedonia. She was last seen about 11 a.m. Feb. 23, near the 1700 block of Wilcox Avenue, between Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin Avenue, near her home, police said.



Shabani has been in Los Angeles less than two years, according to her worried friends.



Her family has hired private investigator Jayden Brant to help find her. He told City News Service his investigators are actively searching.

City News Service contributed to this report.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrated at Saturday's "March for Our Lives" rally in Washington, D.C., with a message for politicians who fail to tighten the nation's gun laws: "Vote them out."



"Stand for us, or beware, the voters are coming," Cameron Kasky, a now prominent figure in the student-led movement from Parkland, Florida, shouted from the stage in front of the Capitol.

Even the youngest speakers put lawmakers on notice. Eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler of Alexandria, Virginia, said, "We stand in the shadow of the Capitol, and we know we have seven short years until we too have the right to vote."

Kasky and his classmates organized the national rally on Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue after a former student of Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed 17 students and staff members with an assault rifle on Valentines Day.



They predicted that the rally, which organizers claimed had drawn more than 850,000 people, would be a defining moment in the long-simmering national debate over gun control legislation. At that size, it matched last year's Women's March, making it one of the largest Washington protests since the Vietnam era and bolstering claims that the nation is ready to enact sweeping changes to its gun control laws.

And the young activists spurred a surge of rallies across the country, with more than 800 sister marches planned for every state in the country and around the world. Protesters took to the streets in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and elsewhere, while marchers turned out in solidarity in London, Rome and Paris.

The demonstrators in Washington, bearing signs reading "We Are the Change," ''No More Silence" and "Keep NRA Money Out of Politics," stretched from the stage near the Capitol back toward the White House on a route that also took in the Trump International Hotel. President Donald Trump was in Florida at Mar-a-Lago for the weekend.

One of the most moving moments came from Emma Gonzalez, an outspoken Stoneman Douglas student who named all 17 victims of the shooting, but then used her time in the international spotlight to stand silent until an alarm beeped.

"Since the time that I came out here it has been 6 minutes and 20 seconds," she said then, the time it had taken for her classmates to be killed. "The shooter has ceased shooting, and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape and walk free for an hour before arrest.

"Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job," she said.

The organizers of the rally are calling for a ban on the sale of assault rifles and large-capacity magazines and the extension of background checks to all gun purchases.

Shilpa Deshpande, attending the D.C. rally with her husband and 7-year-old son, approved.

"We feel like this is an easy problem to fix -- ban assault-style weapons," she told NBC. "My son told me how terrified he and his friends feel whenever they have a lockdown drill in school -- now they have it once every two weeks. We owe a safer world to our children."

Other Stoneman Douglas students echoed Kasky's challenge to politicians. David Hogg, another of the most recognizable faces from the high school, told NRA-supported lawmakers to "get your resumes ready."

Jaclyn Corin, who helped create the "March for Our Lives" campaign and was featured on the latest Time magazine cover, took on the president's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."

"We cannot keep America great if we cannot keep America safe," she said.

"Vote them out" chants rang through the audience.

The young protesters say their age and passion will set their initiative apart from previous attempts to enact stronger gun-control legislation. Stoneman Douglas survivor Sam Fuentas pushed back against critics who charge they are not old enough to take on the problem of guns.

"It is as if we need permission to ask our friends not to die. Lawmakers and politicians will scream guns are not the issue but can't look me in the eye," she said moments before throwing up onstage.

Fuentes, who was shot in the thigh, and hit in the leg and face by shrapnel, gathered herself before shouting: "I just threw up on international television and it feels great."

The Stoneman Douglas speakers shared their drive for gun control with others long affected by gun violence. When Corin finished speaking, she presented a special young guest: the granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr.

"My grandfather had a dream....I have a dream that enough is enough," Yolanda Renee King, 9, said. "And that this should be a gun-free world. Period."

Teenagers from cities that have struggled with gun violence told of the pain it had brought their families, among them Trevon Bosley, a 19-year-old from Chicago, who led an impassioned chant: "Everyday shootings are everyday problems." Bosley's brother, Terrell, was shot to death outside of a church.

Seventeen-year-old Edna Chavez, whose brother was killed in South Los Angeles, said she learned to duck bullets before she learned to read, while 11-year-old Christopher Underwood, lost his brother in Brooklyn, New York.

"I would like to not worry about dying, and focus on math and science and playing basketball with my friends," he said.

The Florida students are determined to avoid the failures after the 2012 shootings at the Sandy Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20 first-graders and six adults were gunned down. A bill to impose universal background checks was defeated in Congress.

Matthew Sotto's sister, Victoria, a first-grade teacher, was among those killed and he and other Connecticut residents criticized politicians who they say have failed the country with their inaction.

"Newtown wants change," Soto, 19, said. "Parkland wants change. The world wants change. Give it to us now."

The Sandy Hook principal, Dawn Hochsprung, also died in the 2012 shooting. Her daughter, Erica Lafferty, told a crowd in Hartford, Connecticut, Saturday, that the Parkland teenagers were "young people who have followed their voices and are not afraid to use them."

In between the speeches at the Washington rally, musicians Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Andra Day and Common performed power-ballads for the crowd. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt sang their new song "Found Tonight," a mashup of two of their Broadway songs in benefit of the "March for Our Lives" campaign. And Jennifer Hudson led an impromptu call-and-response sing-a-long for change.

The White House applauded the young activists for "exercising their First Amendment rights today," but the president himself remained silent on Twitter, his favorite outlet. In a statement to NBC News, deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters pointed to the Justice Department's decision on Friday to ban bump stocks to say that Trump had followed through on his promise to "ban devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns."

At the sister rallies across the country, students, celebrities and survivors of the country's many mass shootings turned out. Some Stoneman Douglas survivors stayed in Florida, marching with thousands there. Students and alumni spoke, among them Sam Mayor, who was shot in the knee. "Change is overdue," she said.

Thousands swarmed Los Angeles, where signs read: "88 days until graduation, which one will be my last?" and "No more thoughts, no more prayers, time for action."

Former Beatle Paul McCartney marched in New York City, just steps away from where bandmate John Lennon was gunned down in 1980 outside the Dakota Apartments on Central Park West. Survivors of Sandy Hook and the Las Vegas shooting, which left 58 people dead at an outdoor concert, spoke.

Katie Taylor, 17, was there with three schoolmates from Somers High School in suburban Westchester County.

"We've sat through too many lock-down drills," Taylor said. "We've watched too many school shootings. We've done that. We're ready to change."

Tara Nash, a 37-year-old former classroom teacher who now works for New York City's Committee on Special Education, accused the NRA of bullying people. If anyone can force changes to gun laws it will be the students, she said.

"Their courage is unbelievable," she said. "It's really inspiring."



In Chicago, Sen. Dick Durbin commended the young people for teaching the adults. "I am not giving them a message," he said. "They are giving us a message."

Hundreds showed up to marches in both Forth Worth and Dallas, where protesters nearly filled City Hall Plaza in downtown Dallas and wrapped through the streets.

Saturday's event was the second major demonstration of the month. Students across the country walked out of their schools on March 14, a month to the day after the Florida massacre, sometimes defying principals and superintendents reluctant to sanction a political demonstration.

The teenagers from Parkland have tapped into a powerful current of pro-gun control sentiment that has been building for years, and have partnered with well-funded liberal groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control advocacy group founded by former New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

They are savvy on social media and their demonstrations come amidst upheaval in American society, from the Womens March to the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements.

"Theyve been very smart at taking some of the opposition's talking points and flipping them in ways that circulate pretty widely in the media and keep their message at the center," said Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media in MITs Comparative Media Studies program in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Polls indicate that public opinion nationwide may be shifting on an issue that has simmered for generations, and through dozens of mass shootings. A new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 69 percent of Americans think gun laws in the United States should be tightened. That's up from 61 percent who said the same in October of 2016 and 55 percent when the AP first asked the question in October of 2013. Overall, 90 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of gun owners now favor stricter gun control laws.

But even with claims of historic social momentum on the issue of gun control, the AP poll also found that nearly half of Americans do not expect elected officials to take action. Among the questions facing march organizers and participants will be how to translate the one-day event into meaningful legislative change.

One way is by channeling the current energy into mid-term congressional elections this fall. Students in Florida have focused on youth voter registration and there was a registration booth at the Saturday rally.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.Facebook is facing the most serious crisis in its 14-year history as its founder was formally called by the Senate Thursday to testify on the major leak of user data to political consultants associated with the 2016 Trump campaign.

Here's a look at the scandal and what it means.

WHAT'S GOING ON?

The U.K.-based data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica has been accused of lifting the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission in order to manipulate elections. A former employee of the firm, Christopher Wylie, played a role in that action, and later told his story to journalists.

The crisis has renewed questions about Facebook's ability to protect the privacy of its users while also exploiting their personal details to fuel its lucrative advertising business. It has also deepened concerns about the social media network's ability to avoid being exploited to spread propaganda and sway elections.

Authorities in both the U.S. and the U.K. are investigating both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Facebook shares have fallen and some users are contemplating deleting their accounts.

WHAT DID CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA DO?

Wylie says the firm sought Facebook information in order to build psychological profiles on a large portion of the U.S. electorate. He said the company was able to amass the database quickly with the help of an academic, Aleksander Kogan, who developed a Facebook app called "This is Your Digital Life" that appeared to be a personality test.

That app vacuumed up information from users who gave the app permission to access their accounts ... as well as additional data from their Facebook friends,

Kogan paid about 200,000 people to take part; tens of millions of their friends were also caught in the data dragnet.

HOW DID CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA RESPOND?

Cambridge Analytica has denied wrongdoing, and the firm said it deleted any data it received from Kogan and denied using any Facebook data in its political work. Facebook, however, said it recently learned from journalists that Cambridge Analytica may have kept some of the data, spurring an investigation.

Kogan said he has been scapegoated by both Cambridge and Facebook. He says the data firm approached him for the project and assured him that everything he did was legal.

WHAT'S THE CONNECTION TO THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN?

Federal election records show that the Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica roughly $6 million. But the campaign has denied using the firm's data, saying it relied on the Republic National Committee for its voter information.

Cambridge Analytica was backed by the conservative billionaire Richard Mercer, a hedge fund manager who supported the Trump campaign. At one point, the firm's vice president was Stephen Bannon, who later became Trump's campaign chairman and White House adviser.

Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, disclosed an advisory role with Cambridge Analytica last August. But the firm's parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories, later said that position never materialized. The company has surfaced in the U.S. probes into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Special counsel Robert Mueller has requested that the firm turn over the emails of any employees who worked on the campaign, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Wylie, the whistleblower who worked for Cambridge from 2013 to 2015, said his team spoke to Americans in focus groups to identify deep-seated concerns and tested ways to tap into those fears through social media. He claims the slogans they developed later became the catchphrases of the Trump campaign, including "drain the swamp" and "build the wall."

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix was caught bragging about the firm's pivotal role in the Trump campaign on a sting video from the U.K.'s Channel 4. He said Cambridge handled "all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting" for the campaign.

WHY ARE PEOPLE MAD AT FACEBOOK?

The Cambridge Analytics fiasco appears to have crystallized the anxiety many people feel about Facebook's enormous sway over daily life and its massive data trove.

A sell-off in Facebook shares reflects fear that the social network may face new regulations that could hurt profits  or that advertisers and users will sour on it.

A U.K. parliamentary media committee is investigating how Facebook uses data, and has summoned CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify. Various U.S. congressional committees are also seeking answers, although Democrats and Republicans have disagreed on what steps to take. Privacy advocates have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate as well.

The hashtag #deletefacebook has been trending. Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook four years ago for $19 billion, has joined the cause. But there are no signs, so far, that users  or advertisers  are abandoning Facebook in droves.

HOW IS FACEBOOK ADDRESSING THE CRISIS?

After five days of silence, Zuckerberg released a Facebook post admitting mistakes and outlining steps to protect user data. He followed up with rare media appearances where he apologized for a breach of trust.

Facebook's response, however, is limited to a narrow range of technical changes that will further limit the data apps can collect and lead to audits of apps that exhibit troubling behavior.

Zuckerberg also emphasized steps the company has already taken, including reducing access outside apps had to user data in 2014. That came too late to stop Cambridge. The company said nothing about overhauling its data collection policies or taking steps to prevent the unauthorized political use of Facebook data.

Facebook suspended Cambridge over allegations that it kept the improperly obtained user data. It has also suspended the access of Kogan and Wylie, as well as Cambridge's parent company, SCL.

Zuckerberg will also face Congress in the coming weeks. The Senate Commerce Committee issued a formal statement Thursday calling on Zuckerberg to testify.

"During our time leading the Commerce Committee, several questions about Facebooks responsibilities and obligations to users have arisen even as the companys reach and importance have grown," the committee said. "On a bipartisan basis, we believe Mr. Zuckerbergs testimony is necessary to gain a better understanding of how the company plans to restore lost trust, safeguard users data, and end a troubling series of belated responses to serious problems."What to Know Students from the school where everything changed on February 14th were the driving force behind the event in our nations capital.

Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg were in attendance along with Broward County Schools Superintendent Dr. Robert Runcie.

For over six minutes, in front of an estimated 800,000 people near the Capitol building in Washington D.C., one of the most vocal leaders of the movement for gun law reform in the wake of the Parkland school tragedy stood silent.

Emma Gonzalez, the 18-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior who has become a national figure with her fiery speeches, had tears rolling down her face as the crowd followed her silent lead.

"Six minutes and about 20 seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us. Fifteen were injured and everyone, absolutely everyone, was forever altered," Gonzalez said.

Students from the school where everything changed on February 14th, when former student and suspected gunman Nikolas Cruz entered and opened fire, were the driving force behind the event in our nations capital  a movement that included an estimated 800 similar rallies across the country.

Stoneman Douglas junior Alex Wind spoke and sharply condemned the National Rifle Association and all politicians and people standing in the way of gun reform.

"Together, we will use our voices to make sure that our schools, churches, movie theaters, and concerts and our streets become safer without having them feel like prisons," Wind said. "If teachers start packing heat, are they going to arm our pastors, ministers and rabbis? This is what the National Rifle Association wants and we will not stand for it."

One of Florida's U.S. Senators, Marco Rubio, said that while he did not agree with all the solutions that those rallying want, he commended those for exercising their First Amendment rights.

"I respect their views and recognize that many Americans support certain gun bans. However, many other Americans do not support a gun ban," Rubio said in a statement. "While protests are a legitimate way of making a point, in our system of government, making a change requires finding common ground...and finding common ground is what it will take to pass our red flag law so we can take guns away from dangerous people.

Gonzalez and David Hogg, students at the school and two of the most vocal members of the gun law reform movement, were in attendance along with Broward County Schools Superintendent Dr. Robert Runcie.

Before he began his speech, Hogg called out Rubio and warned all politicians in power who oppose or are ambivalent to gun reform, adding that low voter turnout will not occur in the 2018 midterm election.

"If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking," Hogg said. "They have gotten used to being protective of their position, through the safety of inaction. Inaction is no longer safe, and to that, we say no more."It started with a rare tweet by a woman who had - "maybe" - 28 followers on Twitter.

Elizabeth Andrews, a D.C. attorney and mother of a high schooler, was moved by the poise and eloquence of students from Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after the deadly Feb. 14 shooting. So four days after the shooting, she tweeted an offer to host young protesters coming to Washington for the newly announced March For Our Lives rally in support of stronger gun control measures.

Within hours, her tweet had taken on a life of its own, with thousands of likes and retweets. Now Andrews, who said she's never been an activist, finds herself running an ad-hoc volunteer network that includes more than 1,500 families willing to host demonstrators and provide logistical support for Saturday's rally. It's all part of the intense preparation and speculation ahead of the most anticipated Washington protest since last year's massive women's march.

"It's been crazy, but crazy in a good way," she said. "People want to find some way to actively participate. Everyone wants to help."

Besides the offers to host young demonstrators, Andrews received proposals to help her organize a grassroots movement that she never intended to launch. A group called DC Local Ambassadors, formed after the women's march to provide support for liberal protests, offered to help create a website to field both host families and demonstrators in need of lodging. Marjory Stoneman Douglas' alumni association, organized as a support network the day after the Feb. 14 shootings, has been sending hundreds of prospective demonstrators her way.

The website went live on Feb. 28 and "48 hours later, we had 300 host families signed up,'' Andrews said. That number is now around 1,620, exceeding the number of demonstrators who have requested lodging.

Anne Tumlinson said volunteering her D.C. home was "a no-brainer'' as soon as she heard about the initiative. A Florida native who grew up in Gainesville, Tumlinson was matched up with a group of 18-year-olds from Jacksonville. The vetting process consisted of chatting briefly with the parents of one of the teens.

"It already feels like it's just a bunch of friends or family members coming to town, like of course I would want them to stay with me,'' she said.

Andrews has been so busy with her network, she's not hosting anyone herself. She said she's now in the "unintended second phase of our work'' - channeling the energy of those volunteers into other avenues.

Aspiring host families without guests are being asked to prepare brownbag lunches or pick up demonstrators from the airport. Others have offered to buy Metro subway cards for the protesters. The MSD Alumni Association came up with a wish list of protester needs - things like rain ponchos, safety vests and energy bars. Every item had been purchased by Wednesday.

Up to 1,000 young protesters have been matched with host families, although it's unclear how many will come since many of them were still frantically fundraising for the trip. At least 1,000 people - students, parents and faculty -are expected to come up from MSD High School, but most will be flying straight back to Florida and not staying overnight.

Exactly how many protesters will actually gather Saturday has become a local guessing game. Organizers predicted up to 500,000 demonstrators in their National Park Service permit - which would approximately match the women's march and place it among the largest protests in Washington since the Vietnam era.

"A lot of parents are looking at what these kids are doing and thinking that they might actually be able to make a difference at this moment in history," Andrews said. "Maybe they can succeed in actually changing the country's gun laws in a way that their parents and previous generations failed."What to Know March For Our Lives rallies, organized by students and survivors of gun violence, took place March 24 in more than 800 cities worldwide

New York City's rally kicked off near Central Park and moved down to Midtown

The rallies call for gun safety legislation in hopes of preventing mass shootings

With calls for action and activism, tens of thousands of people marched near Central Park on Saturday to demand an end to gun violence and mass shootings in schools.

More than 150,000 people flooded the streets as part of the "March For Our Lives," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a tweet. The march coincided with the largest, in Washington, D.C., which hoped to draw half a million people.

Others took place in New Jersey and Connecticut and in more than 800 cities worldwide.

In Photos: 'March For Our Lives' Rally Takes Over Manhattan

As the rally began in Central Park, students urged those attending to get involved, saying thoughts and prayers aren't enough.

"There was so much more that could have been done to prevent this," said Meghan Bonner, who shared her story of surviving the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which killed 17 people including one of her friends. "I want to see change."

"I don't want to feel unsafe in school anymore," she told the crowd.

About 150,000 people marched in near Central Park and in Midtown on Saturday to demand stricter gun control.

Sam Hendler, another Marjory Stoneman Douglas student, read the names of the victims of the massacre and led a moment of silence.

Speakers also included survivors of the shootings in Las Vegas, which killed 58 people, and Sandy Hook, which killed 20 young children and six adults.

Among those joining the student marchers was Paul McCartney. The former Beatle marched just steps away from where his bandmate, John Lennon, was killed by a gunman in 1980.

Parents and students were united with one theme as they moved down Sixth Avenue, chanting things like "NRA go away" and "books, not bullets."

"We don't want guns in our schools, we want our children to be safe," Joele Lebenson, of Scarsdale, said.

"I'm scared to go to school every day," Talia Lebenson added. "I'm scared that a shooter will come into our school."

[NATL-NY] Why Paul McCartney Joined Anti-Gun Violence March in NYC

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the march showed a spirit and activism from the youth that would triumph over the NRA.

"What this generation is saying is we saw Florida, we understand the facts, and it makes no sense, " Cuomo said. "They're saying: If you won't lead, we will lead."

Cuomo directed the World Trade Center to be lit up in orange Saturday night in honor of the march.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the 408-foot spire of One World Trade Center to be lit orange on Saturday night to honor the March For Our Lives rally and its push for gun reform. Today is the day we unite to say the NRA is not going to win, Cuomo said in a press release.

Sen. Chuck Schumer also cheered on the crowd and gave high-fives to those in attendance.

The march also drew counterprotesters. Dozens of people opposed to gun control gathered at Columbus Circle, holding signs that said "Sheep" and "Keep America Armed."

Students have emerged as leaders in the gun control debate since the Feb. 14 shooting. Earlier this month, students led a national walkout that included school faculty and staff.

Saturday's national day of action calls for lawmakers to pass gun safety legislation.

Other rallies took place across the tri-state area, including in Morristown, Jersey City, Newark, Englewood and Hoboken in New Jersey and in Hartford and Enfield in Connecticut.

[NATL]Companies That Changed Policy Over Gun Control Debate

Gianna Serro, a senior at North Bergen High School in New Jersey, had traveled to the New York city protest with two classmates.

"We are the mass shooting generation, basically," Serro said. "Me being 18, spending 13 years in the school system, I've been raised with lock-down drills because you never know who's going to come in. I've never known any different. ... I believe it's important because we desperately need a change."

Brandi Powell, 19, there with two friends from New York University, said she had been inspired by the actions of the Parkland students.

"We believe we need to see the end of gun violence," she said. "We think that we should have a policy change to ban bump stocks and to ban assault weapons."What to Know A 15-year veteran of the FDNY died from injuries he suffered while battling a massive fire at a movie set for an Ed Norton film

Officials said eight other people were injured: four firefighters and for civilians

One family lost both their home and their business in the inferno

A fire at a Harlem film shoot that killed a decorated FDNY firefighter also injured eight other people and destroyed the home and business of one family, officials said Saturday.

The fire broke at an apartment building that is the set of "Motherless Brooklyn," which, according to IMDB, is being directed by Norton and stars Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe, Alec Baldwin, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Leslie Mann.

Michael R. Davidson, a 37-year-old Floral Park resident who has been with the FDNY for 15 years, died from his injuries while battling the fire at a five-story building on St. Nicholas Avenue and 149th Street, the FDNY said.

Davidson was posthumously promoted on Sunday to lieutenant, Mayor Bill de Blasio and FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro announced. Davidson had passed the exam for lieutenant in 2015.

His steadfast dedication to this city will not be forgotten and continues with his deserved promotion to Lieutenant in the FDNY, de Blasio said.



Officials said Saturday that eight other people were injured in the blaze: four firefighters and four civilians. Not all of those injured were severe enough to be hospitalized.

Another family lost both their home and their business in the inferno. The family had owned the Q Deli on the corner of the first floor of the building for at least 15 years, an employee said. They also lived in an apartment on an upper floor.

"This is where they live and this is where they work," said Maged Algutaini, who had worked at the deli for nearly a year. "It was just shocking."

The cause of the fire didn't appear to be suspicious, officials said.

Funeral arrangements were announced for Davidson: A wake was planned on Sunday and Monday in Floral Park, followed by a funeral on Tuesday at 10 a.m. at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

An NBC 4 New York photographer spoke to one of the actors, who said the crew had just finished filming for the day when they smelled smoke while they were breaking down. They called the fire department around 11 p.m. Thursday.

Davidson was the nozzleman, meaning his job was to run the hoseline of Engine 69, which was the first to arrive at the five-alarm scene. The crew rushed to the basement, but the FDNY said once they got down there, the fire got worse, forcing the firefighters to retreat from the building. Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said Davidson somehow got separated from his group "inside the rapidly deteriorating fire conditions."

They turned back to search for him. When firefighters found him, he was unconscious. He later died of critical injuries sustained while battling the blaze.



Davidson, who has been cited for his bravery and life-saving actions four times during his career, leaves behind his wife and four young children -- three daughters, ages 7, 3, and 1, and a 6-year-old son. He comes from a long line of firefighters. His father, Robert, who is now retired, worked in the same firehouse as Davidson. His brother, an 11-year veteran, works at Engine 88 in the Bronx.

Davidson is the 1,150th firefighter to die in the line of duty in the FDNY's 153-year history. His death comes about a week after two FDNY firefighters, who were also members of the 106th Rescue Wing of the Air National Guard based in Westhampton Beach, died in a U.S. helicopter crash in Iraq.

The producers of "Motherless Brooklyn" said in a statement that they immediately notified the fire department once they noticed smoke coming into the set and started alerting residents of the building so that they could get out.



"To our great sorrow, we now know that a NYC firefighter lost his life battling the blaze that grew, and our hearts ache in solidarity with his family. New York City firefighters truly are the bravest in the world," the statement said. "We watched firsthand with astonishment as they charged into the smoke to make sure all were safely out and then fought to contain the blaze and prevent it from spreading, putting their lives on the line as they do every day. The FDNY are real life super-heroes and have our boundless admiration and gratitude.

When Matthew Soto was 15 years old, he sat in his high school Spanish class while his older sister, Victoria Soto, was slaughtered in her first-grade classroom in Sandy Hook Elementary School, Soto told the "March of Our Lives" rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

Victoria Soto was a teacher at the elementary school on Dec. 14, 2012, when she was planning to make gingerbread houses with her students before the holiday break.

How many of you could remember doing that? Soto asked. The anticipation of having to wait all week, to have to be on your best behavior, but that was cut short. They didn't get to make gingerbread houses because gunfire rang out in the hallway. Too many times has gunfire been ringing out in the hallways of schools across this country.

Soto was among the speakers from Newtown to take the stage at the rally organized by students from Parkland, Florida, where on Valentines Day, 17 of their schoolmates students were shot to death by another gunman.

The Sandy Hook shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza of Newtown, killed first his mother and then 20 first-graders and six adults at the elementary school before turning a gun on himself. Soto saved some of the children in her class, hiding them while she tried to divert Lanza.

More than 400 students, teachers and parents from Newtown marched on Saturday in Washington, D.C., Soto said, and they presented a banner to the Parkland community.

We know your pain, he said. We know what you are going through and we are inspired by your fight for change. We need to use our voices because we cannot change the past, we can only fight to change and build a better future.

Tommy Murray was a sixth-grader in Newtown, on lock-down for hours, when Lanza attacked. Among the victims was Murrays former principal, Dawn Hochsprung.

Since then, I have attended vigils, said Murray, now a junior at Newtown High School. I have protested in front of the gun lobby in our town. I have sent letters to Congress. I traveled to DC to meet with Congress to beg them to do something to stop gun violence. But they did nothing.

A third Newtown student, Jackson Mittleman, told the Parkland survivors that they would stand by them as they healed, long after the media trucks had left.

We are forever connected by a tragedy that could have been prevented if our lawmakers had the courage to enact smart gun legislations, Mittleman said.

Mr. Trump, Congress, the Senate and all elected leaders of America: You have failed us and we have had enough of your NRA agenda, he said. I am calling out those who have taken money from the NRA. You better take that check to the bank and put it in your retirement because we are going to vote you out.Kylie Jenner is my love

Punjabi superstar Diljit Dosanjh is head over heels for global sensation Kylie Jenner and his love for her is no secret. Dosanjh has been crushing over this internet celebrity and unapologetically, he has quite often popped up with his Punjabi comments on Kylie Jenner's Instagram account.

During an interview, he said, "Sometimes you end up loving someone very much, what's the harm in it?"

Dosanjh's obsession with the young Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, started with his comments on Kim Kardashian's live Instagram feed. He commented, "Oh Ki haal aa (How are you?)" and "Kylie Kithe aa? (Where is Kylie?)" in Punjabi.

In response to Kylie's cozy and intimate Instagram post with boyfriend Tyga, he commented "Fittey Muh.. (What nonsense)".

He also funnily commented "Hatdi ni Tu.. (You won't resist.)" on a video of Kylie, getting fans worldwide talking and tweeting about the same.

Nearly 72 hours after fire tore through a North Philadelphia home causing the second floor to collapse and injure two firefighters and kill a man, fire officials say they've recovered the bodies of three additional victims.

They were found only after family members say they pleaded with the fire department to do a new search of the hollowed out property.

Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said a 64-year-old man, his 25-year-old daughter, and her 3-year-old son were recovered Friday night from inside a home along the 1800 block of N. 21st Street near Berks Street. Family members identified the woman as Alita Johnson, her son as Haashim Johnson and her father as Horace.



The home, described by Thiel as an illegal boarding house, caught fire around midnight Wednesday during a lull in the major nor'easter that battered the region. That night, a man was found dead inside the home shortly after firefighters arrived.

During the firefight, the home's second floor collapsed. Two firefighters were injured and had to be taken to the hospital.



Family members tell NBC10 they spent the past several days calling the Philadelphia Fire Department saying that all three relatives were missing. They asked that firefighters go back to the home and search for their bodies. That happened Friday evening.

"I want to know why they waited all this time to go in there and find my granddaughter on the step with her son," Herman Fripp, a family member, said Friday night.

Loved ones also expressed their frustrations during a vigil for the victims Saturday night.

"They took their time just to come out here," said Laleeha, Johnson's cousin. "I had to call 10 different people just for them to do another search."



Thiel said the collapsed floor blocked access to the 3rd floor room where the bodies were found. He also said firefighters were unaware that three other people were in the home during the initial entry and investigation.

"This is the worst thing possible for us. Every fire death is tragic. This is worse than that," Thiel said.

Thiel told NBC10 they'll review the entire response to the fire.

The medical examiner will perform autopsies to determine the cause of death for all three victims.A man who investigators say frequently checked a teenager out of school without her parents' knowledge and fled to Mexico with her has returned to Pennsylvania.

District Attorney Jim Martin announced Saturday that Kevin Esterly, 45, has been extradited to Lehigh County. He was taken into custody in Miami on March 18 and brought back from Florida to Lehigh County by Allentown Police Department Detective Andrew Hackman and Lehigh County Detective Edward Ressler Saturday.

Esterly is charged with interference with custody of children after he allegedly took a 16-year-old girl from her school on several occasions between November, 2017 and February, 2018 and to Mexico on March 5 without the consent of the teen's mother.



Federal agents and Mexican authorities found Esterly and the teen in Playa del Carmen on March 17 and flew them to Miami. An extradition hearing was held Monday for Esterly.



The girl arrived in Philadelphia on March 18 and was taken home to Allentown, 60 miles (97 kilometers) away.



The two had been missing since March 5, when Allentown police said they bought one-way tickets from Philadelphia to Dallas and then headed to Cancun. Mexican authorities issued an Amber Alert in the case on Thursday.

Police have said they believe the teen went willingly with the married father of four, who had signed her out of school 10 times in the last few months. The girl had altered her student records to list Esterly as her stepfather, said Gary Hammer, of the Colonial Regional Police Department.

The teen's family previously said the two met at church years ago, and the girl is friends with one of Esterly's daughters.

Attorney John Waldron, who represents Esterly's wife, Stacey, told The (Allentown) Morning Call on Sunday that her husband had been calling her from prison, but she refused to accept his calls and plans to file for divorce.A family flying from Germany to Chicago said they landed at O'Hare International Airport Friday only to find that their dog had been left in Germany.

Dawn and John MacEnulty said they landed in Chicago Thursday afternoon to discover that their 9-year-old beagle and Australian shepherd mix, Joey, which was scheduled to be on a separate Lufthansa flight, was removed from the plane before takeoff.

Originally from St. Louis, the MacEnulty family said that after living in Germany for a year, they were moving back to the United States following the death of John MacEnulty's mother.

They booked their flight through United Airlines on March 15, but used a company called Gradlyn Petshipping to handle the transport of Joey and the family's cat, Molly, per the airline's recommendation.

But Gradlyn told the family it was unable to book the pets on the same flight as the family because United Airlines had suspended its PetSafe reservations program beginning March 20.

The animals were instead scheduled to be on a Lufthansa flight departing 30 minutes after the family's flight, and they were cleared to fly.

Upon landing, the couple said they turned their phones on and received a text message telling them Joey was taken off the Lufthansa flight because he was anxious and had scratched his nose. Molly the cat was on the flight and arrived Thursday evening.

"We got a text that they had to pull him off the plane and we did not know much more than that," said Dawn MacEnulty.

Lufthansa Group said in a statement that the family's dog was "kept from flying and remained from Frankfurt as he was not fit to fly according to the veterinarian that examined the animal."

"We are working closely with United Airlines and once the dog is given the approval to travel, he will be reunited with his family," the airline said in a statement.

The family was told the dog would be flown to Chicago as soon as he is healthy with no additional charges.

Gradlyn did not respond to NBC Chicago's requests for comment.

"It really sucks," Dawn MacEnulty said, adding that she and her family paid $1,700 for Molly and Joey's transport and had started a GoFundMe to raise money for the travel expenses.

"Its terrible, the fact that we cant get any answers," she continued. "Im really disheartened and will never transport an animal again."

Joey is expected to return to the U.S. Wednesday afternoon.



The incident is the latest in a string of animal travel problems making headlines in recent weeks.

It follows the announcement from United Airlines, which said it was halting PetSafe reservations while it reviewed the service that ships animals as cargo.

The company said in announcing the change that it would honor all pet transports booked before March 20, which the MacEnultys say should have included their travel. But United said the flight information was not confirmed in time.

Earlier this month, a French bulldog died after a flight attendant ordered a passenger to put the pet carrier in the overhead bin.

Another mishap involved a German shepherd being shipped to Japan instead of Kansas. After that incident, United chartered a private jet to return the German shepherd back from Japan to the U.S. Two days later another flight made an unplanned landing in Ohio because it was carrying a dog that was put on the wrong plane.In a historic groundswell of youth activism, hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied across the U.S. Saturday against gun violence, vowing to transform fear and grief into a "vote-them-out" movement for tougher laws on weapons.

They took to the streets of the nation's capital and cities such as Boston, New York, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix and Los Angeles, in the kind of numbers seen during the Vietnam era, sweeping up activists long frustrated by stalemate in the gun debate and bringing in lots of new, young voices.

Here are some of the top moments from the March for Our Lives demonstrations:

EMMA GONZALEZ'S MOMENT OF SILENCE

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez, who has become a leading voice in the student-led movement, held a moment of silence to honor the 17 people killed at her high school during her speech in Washington, D.C.

Those at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., paid their respects to the victims of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in a long moment of silence, led by shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez.

PAUL McCARTNEY JOINS THE MARCH IN NYC

When asked why he was participating in the New York City rally, former Beatle Paul McCartney said one of his best friends was killed by gun violence nearby. Fellow Beatle John Lennon was killed outside his Manhattan apartment in 1980.

Legendary musician Paul McCarney joined protesters in New York City marching for gun control.

MLK'S GRANDDAUGHTER SHARES HER DREAM IN DC

Nine-year-old Yolanda Renee King told the crowd that she had a dream "that enough is enough," echoing the words of her grandfather, Martin Luther King Jr. She said, "this should be a gun-free world, period."

Yolanda Renee King, the granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr., spoke to the crowd at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C.

11-YEAR-OLD WALKOUT ORGANIZER: DON'T UNDERESTIMATE KIDS

Naomi Wadler helped lead her elementary school walkout on March 14 in Alexandria, Virginia. She spoke in Washington, D.C., about how kids "know what is right and wrong."

Eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler spoke at the rally in Washington, D.C., sharing stories of black girls whose lives are not talked about on the news.

THE WORLD MARCHES WITH THE U.S.

France, Italy, Sweden, England and Canada all held marches in solidarity with the March for Our Lives demonstrations in the U.S.

Students in Paris and Rome marched in solidarity with U.S. students taking part in the March for Our Lives.

SAMANTHA FUENTES LEADS CROWD IN SINGING 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' TO FALLEN CLASSMATE

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor Samantha Fuentes led a large crowd in singing "Happy Birthday" to her fallen classmate and friend.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor Samantha Fuentes led a large crowd in singing "Happy Birthday" to her fallen classmate and friend.

EDNA CHAVEZ DELIVERS EMOTIONAL SPEECH

The South LA student, speaking to the national crowd in D.C., made an impassioned plea to end the gun violence in her community and highlighted how the violence affects people of color.

Edna Chavez delivered an emotional speech about gun violence in her community to the crowd of protesters in Washington, D.C.

AMY SCHUMER CALLS OUT THE NRA IN LA

The actress spoke out against the National Rifle Association at the rally in Los Angeles. Schumer has been vocal against gun violence, as two young women were shot to death in 2015 at a showing of her movie "Trainwreck."

Celebrities joined forces with demonstrators at the "March for Our Lives" rally in Los Angeles.Tens of thousands rallied Saturday as part of the March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C.

There are more than 800 marches across the country, including a major one in Boston, and plenty of Massachusetts residents were on hand in Washington.

NBC10 Boston's Perry Russom reported live from the nation's capital to cover the scene.



"I think the legislators will pay attention to what happens here in Washington," said Dick Driscoll of Westford. "The others are going to be supportive, but the one that's going to send the message is the one from Washington."

About 100 Boston students boarded buses late Friday night to head down to the capital.

Earlier Friday, more buses and planes dropped off demonstrators who are hoping to make history, creating their own future by calling for an increase in school safety.

"I personally don't feel like there is any reason that people need assault rifles," said Linda Pixley, who flew in with her son from Des Moines, Iowa.

The march is part of the movement demanding changes to the nation's gun laws inspired by the survivors of the Majory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre that left 17 students and faculty members dead in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14.Anthony Curro loves the peace and quiet of the ocean's waves in his back yard in Hampton, New Hampshire. In August of 2017, that serenity was interrupted by the stench of cigarettes.

"Someone just showed up and put his beach chair right around us and and just started smoking," Curro said. "He probably wasn't even aware that there were kids everywhere and now here we are, breathing his smoke."

That incident propelled Curro to file a petition with the town. He got the necessary signatures needed for town selectmen to decide to make it an ordinance on town owned beaches: Plaice Cove and Sun Valley.

"I'm a reformed smoker," said Hampton resident Richard Doulette. "Thirty-five, 40 years. So my only only opinion is if they want to smoke, let them smoke in their residence."

The petition won with residents, but now the town selectmen have to vote to pass the warrant into an ordinance.

"I think if the town did take a position, it might help end some of the litter that we get from these cigarette butts," said Selectman Rick Griffin.

Selectman Russell "Rusty" Bridle was not as optimistic.

"Although well-intended, I think it's going to be very hard to enforce," said Bridle.

"In New Hampshire, in order to enforce an item passed at town meeting, there has to get a state law addressing that issue," said Town Manager Frederick Welch. "There is no state law addressing this issue, so it's kind of an advisory issue."

Welch said if the ban were passed it would be considered a civil ordinance. "It's not a criminal ordinance. Police have no authority here," he explained.

Curro said that in Rye, a smoking ban ordinance and signs were put up, making him hopeful this same thing can happen in Hampton.

Selectmen are scheduled to meet on Monday and are expected to discuss this issue and make a decision whether to make it an ordinance.I am wholeheartedly in support of a re-examination: Cate Blanchett

Hollywood star Cate Blanchett has claimed she knew nothing about sexual abuse allegations aimed at filmmaker Woody Allen when they worked together on Blue Jasmine. Blanchett won a best actress Oscar for her part in the 2013 comedy drama.

During an appearance on CNN's Amanpour, host Christiane Amanpour asked her how she could juxtapose being a #MeToo proponent while staying silent on Allen.

To which Blanchett replied, "I don't think I've stayed silent at all. At the time that I worked with Woody Allen, I knew nothing of the allegations. At the time, I said it's a very painful and complicated situation for the family, which I hope they have the ability to resolve."

Allen's daughter Dylan Farrow has accused him of molesting her when she was a child, something that Allen has denied.



In the U.S., about 13 percent of women and 10 percent of men aged 60 or older have knee pain due to osteoarthritis (OA). Osteoarthritis occurs when a joint becomes inflamed, usually because the protective cartilage and other tissues that cushion joints like the knee become damaged and worn over time. Knee pain from OA can make it harder to take care of yourself, which can damage your quality of life. In turn, that can lead to depression.

According to researchers, knee OA affects some 55 percent of people over age 40 in Japan. A research team from the country recently published a study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society examining the effects of knee pain on depression since, until now, few studies have focused on how knee pain and impaired knee function relate to depression.

To learn more, the researchers examined information from 573 people aged 65 or older who participated in the Kurabuchi Study, an ongoing look at the health of older adults living in central Japan.

When the study began (between 2005 and 2006) none of the participants had symptoms of depression. Two years later, nearly all of them completed follow-up interviews. The participants answered questions about their knee pain and were evaluated for symptoms of depression.

Nearly 12 percent of the participants had developed symptoms of depression. People who experienced knee pain at night while in bed, while putting on socks, or while getting in or out of a car were more likely to report having symptoms of depression, noted the researchers.

The researchers concluded that asking older adults with knee pain whether they have pain at night in bed, when putting on socks, or while getting in or out of a car could be useful for helping to screen people at risk for developing depression.Mumbai: In a major real estate deal, Indiabulls Real Estate (IBREL) has executed a definitive agreement with global private equity investor Blackstone Group to divest 50 per cent stake in its prime commercial properties in the megapolis for Rs 4,750 crore.

IBREL has executed transaction documents with the entities controlled by Blackstone to divest their entire holding in certain subsidiaries and thereby indirectly divesting 50 per cent stake in Indiabulls Properties Private Ltd (IPPL) and Indiabulls Real Estate Company (IRECPL) at an aggregate enterprise value of around USD 1,461.5 million or Rs 9,500 crore, the company had said in a BSE filing last evening.

"Substantial part of sale proceeds would be utilised towards repayment of existing debts of the company and its subsidiaries, and for achieving sustainable long term growth and for further strengthening of their on-going businesses," it said.

The transaction is expected to be completed by March 31.

Once this transaction is concluded, Indiabulls will cease its sole control over the two subsidiaries IPPL and IRECPL, Indiabulls added.

The company, did not give any details about the assets held by these two subsidiaries.

However, according to sources, the two subsidiaries hold premium commercial office assets, Indiabulls Finance Centre and One Indiabulls Centre, in central Mumbai.

Indiabulls in April last year had announced plans to restructure its business by creating a separate venture for commercial and leasing operations as part of efforts to focus on each segment.

It planned to hive off commercial and leasing business into a separate entity Indiabulls Commercial Assets Ltd.

In a recent announcement, the company said it plans to sell its housing and commercial assets in Chennai as part of strategy to exit non-core market and restructure its business.

The US-based Blackstone directly and along with its joint venture partner Embassy group is currently holding huge commercial assets with over 56 million sqft across major cities.

Embassy group is planning to launch the country's first real estate investment trust to monetise commercial assets.

Unlike housing sector, the commercial real estate is doing fairly well and attracting huge investment from global investors like Blackstone and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC.

In late December 2017, DLF promoters concluded sale of 40 per cent stake in rental arm for nearly Rs 12000 crore. This deal included sale of 33.34 per cent stake to GIC for Rs 9000 crore.

Few years back, Godrej Properties had sold over 4 lakh sq ft of office space in Bandra-Kurla complex for nearly Rs 1500 crore.A Jet Airways crew member is being praised on Twitter after he came to the rescue of a passenger suffering a mid-air medical emergency.

When a passenger travelling in Jet Airways 9W0973A flight from Bengaluru to Delhi suffered from a cardiac arrest, crew member Amandeep performed emergency medical procedure to ensure the passenger's well-being.

JDS National Spokesperson Tanveer Ahmed who was aboard the same flight took to Twitter to share the incident and hailed the quick-thinking Amandeep.

He described how Amandeep "worked over an hour" on the passenger and saved his life.

Today I travelled in @jetairways 9W0973 a passanger had a cardiac arrest, Amandeep working with jet worked for over an hour to ensure the patient is alive. He literally saved his life to me Amandeep is a hero @republic @TimesNow @BDUTT @sambitswaraj @narendramodi @ndtv pic.twitter.com/wfisn3EdMF Tanveer Ahmed JDS (@TheTanveerAhmed) March 22, 2018

The official Jet Airways handle later acknowledged the tweet and expressed their pride over having such an able crew working with them.

Glad to hear our guest is safe. Were so proud to have Amandeep as our crew. Thanks Tanveer, for sharing this with us. Jet Airways (@jetairways) March 22, 2018

Twitter users hailed him as a hero and collectively requested the airline to reward him for his heroic stint.

We need more people like him. Narenpal Singh (@narenpalsingh) March 23, 2018

Appreciation to Armandeep for his timely support. Ramesh Balakrishnan (@rameshaiyar) March 23, 2018

Thanks for saving a precious life Amandeep  you are no less than a hero and @jetairways you are the best in the aviation sector and today you have given one more reason to believe and trust you.Great things and experiences dont come cheap,they are priceless. Sameer (@QmSameer) March 23, 2018

Appreciate Amandeep. Very fortunate that the passenger was not traveling by @IndiGo6E  Anand Patil  (@Anandspatil) March 23, 2018

This is what we All Indians must appreciate & Learn... # S.Thapliyal (@Semmukham) March 24, 2018

Amandeep, you are my hero for today ! This is much much beyond your job description. Hope jet acknowledges this feat in equal measure. Such people are the best ambassadors for an org than the millions they spend on ads. Roy Kurian (@Roy72kurian) March 24, 2018

God bless you Amandeep. The gentleman who got his life back will never forget you. You are a God for him. Braj Rath (@RathBraj) March 23, 2018

Speaking to NDTV, a Jet Airways spokesperson explained how the incident unfolded.

"Crew took an update of the guest's medical history from a family member accompanying him and administered medication and oxygen as per the laid down procedures," the spokesperson told NDTV.

The spokesperson added that a nurse who was also aboard the same flight assisted in keeping the passenger's health in a stable condition.

"Captain of the flight requested for priority landing in Delhi and upon landing, Medanta doctors boarded and checked on the guest," the spokesperson further added.New Delhi: The protesters turned up for the indefinite hunger strike of Anna Hazare at the Ram Leela maidan, reminding many of us of the 2011 anti-graft agitation. The comparisons between the two public agitations were bound to happen.

One of the autowallahs was overheard telling his fellow drivers  Is Anna back? But why this time, isnt Modi sarkar working to fight corruption? Before they could reach a conclusion through discussion, one of them made the final statement, hinting at the latest Modi in currency (Nirav Modi) to be the reason.

Hazare paid a visit to the Rajghat and marched to Shaheedi Park before arriving at Ramlila Maidan to address thousands of his supporters. He chose the day, March 23, as Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged to death on this day by the British.

Modi was never serious about Lokpal, he said. Among the farmers was Manohar Padhy, a farmer from Maharashtra, dressed up like Mahatma Gandhi.

Modi government has enormously hiked MPs salaries. This is against the spirit of public service and clean politics. This should be taken back, he said.

Then and Now

The public agitation by Hazare is taking place after seven years. Like the last movement, the strike raked up the question of appointment of Lokpal at the Centre and added the implementation of the Swaminathan Report to address the agrarian distress.

If compared to 2011s India against Corruption movement, the present agitation shows a shift from issues of the middle class to addressing agrarian distress. While the 2011 protest featured the anger of the middle class against the UPA regime, Fridays agitation had the farmers  distressed and hopeful of Annas help  as the chief players in the movement.

The peasants came from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh to fight for the implementation of the Swaminathan Report.

Minus the fanfare of the former one, the strike on March 23 had the support of farmers in big numbers. This time Anna was seen sharing stage with former Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hegde, and former Haryana Lokayukta Pritam Pal.

Ignored By Government, Farmers Look for Anna's Support

Hegde told News18.com that after being ignored by the government and administration, the farmers have turned to Anna for help.

This protest had the support of the farmers. There was no such sign of an overwhelming presence of the middle class, but the non-implementation of the Swaminathan Report resulted in large number of farmers turning up for the peaceful agitation, he said.

The stress on the report is due to its key findings and recommendations, which shows that the agrarian distress has led farmers to commit suicide in recent years.

The report further explains the causes of farmer distress -- Unfinished agenda in land reform, quantity and quality of water, technology fatigue, access, adequacy and timeliness of institutional credit, and opportunities for assured and remunerative marketing. Adverse meteorological factors add to these problems.

It was proposed that farmers need to have assured access and control over basic resources, which include land, water, bio resources, credit and insurance, technology and knowledge management, and markets.

Hegde said that he was told that practically all routes were blocked to challenge the entry of farmers. But the agitation will remain for more days.

Anna is not a politician that he needs to be backed, people come to him spontaneously  and we saw many farmers, added Hegde. The farmers present were voicing their discontent over Yogi-Modi not doing enough for farmers in Gautam Budh Nagar, and using force to dispel any sign of protest against the administration.

The farmers, who came from Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, said that nothings being done for the storage facility and removing the middlemen.

We are not getting our due; our land is being acquired for pittance; we are paying the toll tax and there are not service lanes at the Peripheral Expressway, said Megh Singh from a village in Gautam Budh Nagar.

The farmers further said that they were at the protest to raise certain demands. We dont get the deserving amount on our produce; the farmers who are above 60 dont get pension; and in case of fasal bima yojna, the farmer should get an individual benefit. It should not be treated as a collective gain, they said.

Tragedy and Farce

Badri Narayan, faculty in Allahabads GB Pant University, spoke about the second innings of Anna by recalling a remark by Hegel.

Hegel remarked that somewhere all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, he said.

He further said, The first anti-graft movement was a tragedy - divisions amongst key members of the IAC's core committee eventually led to a split within the movement- Arvind Kejriwal left to form the Aam Aadmi Party, while Anna Hazare left to form Jantantra Morcha. The issue remained  Lokpal. Now this agitation might help in heating up the atmosphere  but it wont be anywhere close to the scale of the first agitation.Thiruvananthapuram: A special NIA court in Kochi has sentenced a 29-year-old woman to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for helping in recruitment of Kerala youths to Islamic State (IS). It is the first ISIS recruitment case registered in Kerala.

The special court in Ernakulam found Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid, a native of Bihar, guilty of hatching criminal conspiracy with the first accused, Abdulla Abdul Rashid of Kasaragod. It said that they intended to further promote the objectives of ISIS. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on her.

While Rashid has travelled to Afghanistan and is propagating ISIS ideology, Zahid is under arrest and the NIA is probing the matter.

The court, in its order, said that considering the fact that Zahid is a lady about 30-year-old, a lenient view has been taken. The court also stated that one of the witnesses had reported that she was threatened. It said that steps should be taken to protect the witness.

As a part of the trial, the court had examined 52 prosecution witnesses, one defense witness and nearly 50 material objects.

The NIA charge-sheet states that the mobile phone, SIM Cards and memory cards seized from Zahid were subjected to digital forensic examination, and it was found that the two memory cards contain "pro-ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) propaganda videos, videos advocating violent jihad, ISIS propaganda material as PDF documents, besides certain communication with Rashid and his wife.

The charge-sheet further examines that Rashid had raised funds for the terrorist organisation. "Some part of the funds were transferred to Zahid to travel to the ISIS-controlled territory. Zahid had received, and utilized these funds to prepare for her travel," it said.

The 28-year-old woman, who had attempted to join IS with her son, was arrested at the Delhi International Airport on July 30, 2016.

Rashid and Zahid were booked after 15 people from Kasargod migrated to Afghanistan to join the terror group in 2016. A total of 21 people, including children, were reported missing from the state two years ago.Guwahati: A class V student died after being allegedly gang-raped and then set on fire in Assams Nagaon district, 122 km from Guwahati, on Friday.

The victim was admitted at the Nagaon Civil hospital on Friday afternoon with 90% burn injuries. She died on the way to the Guwahati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH).

Two of the rape accused have been apprehended while another remains absconding.

I went to see her at the hospital. She was in great pain and had difficulty in speaking, said Nagaon SP Shankar Raimedhi.

However, we have recorded a dying declaration of the victim, and based on that we have nabbed two accused - they are both juveniles who studied in the same school along with the victim. Operation is underway to nab the third, he added.

The crime was committed at the victims house at Lalung Gaon under Nagaons Batadrava constituency. Sources said she was alone at home after returning from school. The three accused led by Zakir Hussain barged into the house, and after raping her, poured kerosene and set her ablaze.

The girl was found in a critical condition by one of her family members who saw smoke coming from the shed. She was immediately rushed to hospital by the police team investigating the case.

Police further said that all three accused are known acquaintances of the victim from the same village.

With inputs from Nilutpal BorahNew Delhi: The Ministry of Culture has extended support to the peoples initiative from the forests of central India to reclaim the identity of their mother tongue Gondi, which is spoken by almost a crore of Gond people, hailing from Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh.

The language has over a period of time acquired many regional influences and has variations as we traverse from one part of the tribal belt to another. The original language of the Gondi people has been fading because of the influences of regional languages on it.

The effort is synchronised to reclaim the past glory and identity of the language. It was organised by the IGNCA and CGNet Swara, Indian voice-based online portalS that allow people in the forests of tribal India to report local news. They came together to bring out the "standard dictionary of Gondi language." This dictionary has 3,500 original Gondi words.The aim is to create a typeface for the language and an app as well in the future.

The people from the tribal belt have come together to find consensus over the accepted words  whether 'Raasta' should be standardised as 'Sarri', as spoken in MP or Chhattisgarh.

The initiative that started in 2014 is supported by the Culture Ministry and is in line with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghs resolution, which was passed at Sanghs annual meeting in Nagpur - the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS).

The resolution said that primary education in the country should be in mother tongue or in any of the Indian dialects, including teaching technical and medical in higher education.

Conflict Resolution

There are many reasons for the tribal people to come together to solve the language problem. One of them is communication. The first workshop began in 2014. At the time, even the Gondi people failed to understand the Gondi language of another region. Over a period of time, they have started learning the variations brought in by regional influences.

One can imagine how difficult it must be to communicate with people speaking other regional languages. One of the reasons for conflict in these areas is lack of communication," said Shubhranshu Choudhary from CGNet Swara, the organiser of the event. He has been a journalist and belongs to the tribal area.

The representatives of the government dont understand their language, which he believes creates a gap and condition for conflict.

As there is work on the ground to bring out a dictionary of 3,500 Gondi words, the initiative comprises representatives from different states who speak different forms or variations of Gondi (Oriya) Gondi (Telugu) Gondi (Marathi) etc. In the workshop the people have come together to form consensus over standardisation of the language.

We are finding the real Gondi, filtering it from the external and non-Dravidian and other regional influences. We want to come out with our original identity, so that we can carry forward the values and history of Gondi, said Professor KM Metry, Department of Tribal studies Kannada University, Hampi.

Controlling drop-out rate in schools

Heerasan Uikey, a lecturer in senior secondary school in Balaghat district, told News18.com, "In Balaghat district, 300 government schools came up with three teachers who did not know Gondi. There was no communication between the students and teachers as they didnt know Gondi language, and children dropped out of the school," she said.

The textbooks of different parts of Bastar also have variants of Gondi, there is no uniformity. "One of the reasons of having standardisation of the language is also to control the dropout rate in schools," Metry added.

In other tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh, 24 new schools came up, none of which exists today because of the lack of communication between children and teachers. There is imposition of Hindi languages in schools. "Because of the language issue in schools, children who know Gondi, dislike going to schools," said Gulzar Singh Markai who belongs to the Gondi-speaking tribal belt.

'Why were we ignored?'

There is fear among the people who speak Gondi language that it will face extinction if concerted efforts are not made.

Gulzar Singh Markai said, "Let us go back in history when the reorganisation of states was taking place. Why were we Gondi-speaking people ignored? When there could be Andhra Pradesh for Telegu-speaking people, Odisha for Oriya -speaking people then why were we, the people of Gondwana region of India ignored?"

He added that though it is ambiguous, the core region can be the eastern part of the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, the parts of Madhya Pradesh immediately to the north of it, and parts of west Chhattisgarh. It can also include parts of northern Telangana, western Odisha and southern Uttar Pradesh.

The tribal people said that there is a long-pending demand to include Gondi in the Eighth Schedule of Indian languages.Mahesh Babu's Bharat Ane Nenu teaser becomes World's second most liked teaser

After breaking records and garnering love from the audience in India, Mahesh Babu is also winning hearts across the globe, courtesy the teaser of his upcoming film Bharat Ane Nenu.

Shattering trends, Mahesh Babu's Bharat Ane Nenu teaser has become the second most liked teaser in the World.

The teaser titled 'Vision of Bharat' crossed more than 14 million views, the newly released sneak peek into the film is also garnering tremendous likes with at present 655K likes. The statistics are a testimony of Mahesh Babu's worldwide audience base.

Trade analyst Ramesh Bala took to Twitter recently and informed about this. He wrote, `With nearly 640K Likes, @urstrulyMahesh 's #BharatAneNenu Teaser Becomes the World's 2nd Most Liked Teaser.`



Shirdi: A Mumbai-based devotee has donated a five-wick lamp made from 1,351 grams of gold worth Rs 39 lakh to the renowned Sai Baba temple in Shirdi, temple authorities on Sunday said.

Temple authorities identified the devotee as Jayantbhai, from Mumbai, but refused to divulge any more details about him.

Rubal Agarwal, chief executive officer of the Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust (SSST), said that the offering was made by the devotee on the first day of the three-day Ramnavami festival that began here on Sunday.

The gold "panchaarti" lamp will be used at the saint's "samadhi mandir" during rituals, Agarwal said.

The first day of the festival saw the arrival of processions bringing in 175 palanquins from different parts of the state, all of them having made the journey on foot, said temple authorities.

They said that elaborate arrangements had been made as thousands of devotees are expected to arrive at the temple town over the next three days to participate in various rituals.

Agarwal said that due to the festival, the morning 'aarti' (kakad), at 4:30am, and the night 'aarti' (shejaarti), post 10pm, would not be held on Sunday and Monday.

The first day of the festival saw state Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar and guardian minister Ram Shinde in attendance.Guwahati: In what is being dubbed as the biggest seizure of exotic creatures in recent times, Assam police team and Guwahati Wildlife division on Saturday confiscated a huge consignment of exotic animals, including venomous snakes and giant scorpions. The seized animals are estimated to be worth several crore rupees in the black market.

Wildlife authorities took the inventory of the animals at the veterinary hospital of Assam State Zoo in Guwahati where they were brought after rescue.

They include 4 Gaboon Vipers, 2 Albino Reticulated Pythons, 8 Giant Scorpions, 13 Corn Snakes, 2 African Spurred Tortoises, 3 Marmosets, a Meerkat and a Sugar Glider. A Central Bearded Dragon lizard was found dead along with two of the Giant Scorpions.

We have taken the custody of these animals. Our vets and experts, including a herpetologist, are monitoring their health and their condition is found to be good, said Tejas Mariswamy, divisional forest officer of Assam state zoo.

According to officials, an Assam Police team was on routine patrolling in Jorabat, around 19 km from Guwahati, when they intercepted the vehicle transporting the animals. The consignment was coming from Mizorams state capital Aizawl. The exotic animals were stashed inside three cartons and were supposed to be sold to a trader in New Delhi.

We have arrested one Pradip Kumar Singh who hails from Uttar Pradesh along with the driver of the vehicle. When intercepted, they offered my team Rs 1 lakh. It is then that we came to know whats inside the boxes. On interrogation, Pradip said that the consignment was to be delivered to a pet trader named Pankaj in Delhi, said Partha Pratim Gogoi, officer in charge of Jorabat police station.

Guwahati divisional forest officer (Wildlife), Pradipta Barua, told News 18 that exotic pet traders usually source the animals from illegal suppliers and smugglers.

Interrogation reveals that the animals were sourced from Thailand and handed over to a broker in Mizoram. They hired a vehicle for Rs 10,000 and drove for more than 15 hours before getting caught at Jorabat. These animals are on the illegal wildlife trade list.New Delhi: India on Friday sent a notice to UK-based Cambridge Analytica asking whether it has misused data to profile Indians and influence elections.

The data-mining firm faces accusation of lifting the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission in order to manipulate elections. Authorities in both the United States and Britain are investigating both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

The IT Ministry has asked Cambridge Analytica to respond by March 31 on six questions, including how the company had collected user data, whether consent was taken from the individuals, and how the data was used.

India has also demanded the name of the entities that engaged Cambridge Analytica and the method used by it for possession of data and whether consent was taken from users.

The move assumes significance as the BJP, earlier this week, had questioned links between the Congress and Cambridge Analytica. Taking a stern view of reports on the misuse of user data obtained from social media platform Facebook, the IT Ministry in a statement said that "breach of privacy cannot be tolerated".

"The government is deeply concerned about such developments and is committed to ensuring the protection of the fundamental right of privacy and safety and security of data for every citizen of India," the ministry said.

The IT Ministry said it had issued a notice to Cambridge Analytica "wherein the serious breach of propriety and misuse of data intended to profile and influence voting behaviour has been highlighted".

The notice comes just days after Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad warned the social media giant Facebook of stringent action for any attempt to influence polls through data theft. Prasad had even threatened to summon its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if needed.

"...the notice addressed to Cambridge Analytica seeks an immediate response to the following questions...Whether they have been engaged in any assignment to utilise data of Indians from the above-cited breach. Who are the entities that have engaged them for the above," it said.

The ministry also questioned the company on how it had come to be in possession of user data and whether user consent had been taken for the same. The company has also been asked to divulge details of how the data collected was used and whether any profiling was done on basis of such data.

"The intermediaries cited above have been given time till March 31, 2018, to submit their responses on the above issue," the ministry said.

Referring to media reports of "gross abuse of social media platform to influence the sanctity of polling process", the ministry said, "any attempt to influence the sanctity of the electoral franchise through dubious and questionable means is unacceptable".

"In particular, all intermediaries and their associates have the legal obligation to maintain security, confidentiality and sanctity of data and any unauthorized use of data can entail legal action," it warned.

The statement said that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has issued advisory laying down security best practices to be followed by social media users, to safeguard personally identifiable information on social network sites.

(With agency inputs)New Delhi: Scores of journalists gathered outside Delhi Police Headquarters at ITO on Saturday protesting against the alleged molestation of a woman photojournalist, who was out covering the JNU march on Friday.

As a mark of protest, the agitating journalists kept their cameras on ground and refused to budge.

The National Commission for Women has ordered a probe into alleged manhandling of JNU students and a woman journalist during a protest march.

"We have ordered a probe and sent a team today (Saturday) to meet the police officials and we will further pursue the matter on Monday," NCW Acting Chairperson Rekha Sharma said.

The protesting students claimed that the "attack" by the police was "unprovoked" with a woman journalist alleging that a man in uniform "groped" her and asked her to vacate the place.

The complaint of the woman journalist was submitted to the Sarojini Nagar police station. They are looking into it and will also examine video footage, a senior official said.

The Delhi police, however, has issued an apology over the incident.

The Delhi Police said that it was not its intention to obstruct the media from doing its job and has called the entire incident an accident. It has also ordered an enquiry into the matter.

Female police personnel mistook the photojournalist as a protester. It was a misunderstanding and the incident was unfortunate. Delhi police will inquire into the matter, said Madhur Verma, DCP, Delhi police.

On Friday, a large number of JNU students and teachers were stopped from marching to the Parliament Complex over various demands, including academic freedom, with police resorting to lathicharge and use of water canons.Ranchi: RJD supremo Lalu Prasad was on Saturday sentenced to 14 years in jail and fined Rs 60 lakh by a special CBI court in the fourth fodder scam case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 3.13 crore from the Dumka treasury in the early 1990s, a CBI counsel said.

CBI judge Shiv Pal Singh awarded two sentences of seven years each to the former Bihar chief minister under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Acts, he said.

Prabhat Kumar, Lalu Prasad's counsel, told journalists that he will appeal to a higher court against the judgment.

Minutes are the court pronounced the sentence, Lalus son and heir apparent Tejashwi Yadav said he feared for his fathers life. We will challenge it in High Court. We will decide further strategy on the basis of overall judgement in all four cases. I am sure there is threat to his (Lalus) life looking at the conspiracy being planned by the BJP, Tejashwi said.

Hitting back, Bihars deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi said Lalu must appeal in court if he had such fears. If a person is under police custody and fears for his life, he must go and appeal in court. What is posing the threat to him? How can he be in danger when no one is allowed to meet him?

The court had on March 19 held the 69-year-old RJD chief guilty along with 18 others in connection with the case - RC 38 A/96.

Former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra, however, was acquitted in the case along with 12 other accused.

Prasad has been serving the prison term in Birsa Munda Jail in Ranchi since December 23 last year after being convicted in the second fodder scam case pertaining to illegal withdrawal of money from the Deogarh treasury.

The RJD supremo is currently undergoing treatment at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi, where he was admitted last week after he complained of chest pain and discomfort in jail.

(With PTI inputs)Beijing: "No change" has taken place at the Doklam standoff area after it was resolved last year, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale said and blamed China squarely for the face off, saying it happened because Beijing tried to alter the "status quo" which it should not have.

The 73-day long standoff ended on August 28 last year after China agreed to halt the road building activities at Dokalam in Sikkim Section.

"No, I can tell you that in Doklam area, which we call close proximity or sometimes the face off site, the area where there was close confrontation or close proximity between Indian and Chinese military troops, there is no change taking place today," India's Ambassador to China Bambawale said, reacting to reports of Chinese military stepping up infrastructure build-up in the area.

The Chinese side may be putting more military barracks to put in more soldiers, but that is well behind the sensitive area, he said in an interview to Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"Those are the things you're free to do and we are also free to do, because you're doing it inside your territory and we are doing it inside our territory," Bambawale said.

Indian troops intervened to stop their Chinese counterparts building a road close to India's narrow corridor "Chicken Neck" area connecting northeastern states. Besides China, the area is also claimed by Bhutan.

Recent reports said that Chinese military was trying to work around or outflank the Indian troops at the Dokalam area.

Bambawale also reiterated his earlier comments that China should not change the status quo along the Indian border and inform India about its plans earlier.

"In the sense that if the Chinese military is going to build a road, then they must tell us 'we are going to build a road'. If we do not agree to it then we can reply that, 'look, you're changing the status quo. Please don't do it. This is a very very sensitive area," the envoy said.

During the Doklam standoff, China claimed that it had informed India about its plans.

About lessons to be drawn, he called for delineation of the 3,488-km long Line of Actual Control (LAC) which China has refused.

"The India-China boundary is un-demarcated and un-delineated, so we have to talk to each other to delineate and demarcate it, which means to draw the boundary line.

"Now for the last 30 years, not a single shot had been fired between the India-China border, which shows that we have been successful at maintaining peace and tranquility. Even during the Doklam incident, a very serious incident, there was no firing, we were able to maintain peace and tranquility. I think this is a successful example of diplomacy between our two countries," Bambawale said.

He said both countries should move further to solve the problem.

"We need to move further to actually solve the problem, which is to draw the boundary line. The boundary is quite long between India and China, roughly 3,500 km. In order to maintain the peace and tranquility, there are certain areas, certain sectors which are very sensitive, where we must not change the status quo. If anyone changes the status quo, it will lead to a situation like what happened in Doklam.

"The Chinese military changed the status quo in the Doklam area and therefore India reacted to it. Ours was a reaction to the change in the status quo by the Chinese military," he said, stressing that the two countries should have high-level communication on it.

"I agree entirely that it has to be brought down to practical levels. It shows that when incidents like Doklam happened last year, it means that we were not frank enough and candid enough with each other. So we need to increase the level of frankness," Bambawale said.

At present both countries are having "a lot of dialogue" at the political level and also at the economic level, the Indian envoy said as he welcomed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's recent comments that Indian elephant and Chinese dragon must not fight but dance together.

Referring to various visits planned between the two countries including that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June to China to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, he said that both the countries "especially on the political level, must be very frank and open and candid with each other".

"There are some issues and problems between India and China, if we have to solve those problems, we need to talk candidly. That's what I mean about the candid discussion. Only through talking frankly and candidly, we will be able to solve the issues and problems and understand each other's concerns," Bambawale said, asserting that the boundary issue is the most important problem between India and China.

"It is a leftover from history, but today's governments are trying to tackle it. We are giving it a high priority. But only when both sides talk to each other very frankly and candidly, we will be able to resolve this boundary issue and decide on a boundary," the envoy said.

Both the sides should address each other's concerns, he said.

"There are two principles that India has suggested to China. One is that each side must be sensitive to the other side's aspirations, their concerns, their priorities and so on. The second is that we must not allow differences to become disputes. For example, we might have differences of opinion on Belt and Road, but that we must not allow that difference of opinion to become a dispute," Bambawale added.Lucknow: A day after the BJP swept the Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party accused Yogi Adityanath of indulging in communal politics and mocked the CM for eating laddoos during Navratri.

Taking to Twitter, Samajwadi Party spokesperson and MLC Sunil Singh Sajan shared a photo of state BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey exchanging sweets with the Chief Minister. He went on to accuse Yogi of using religion as per his convenience.

The caption with the photo shared by Yadav says it was clicked in the Assemblys Central Hall after the BJPs victory. Similar photos were also tweeted by Pandey.

The BJP made a significant gain of 11 additional seats, while the Congress made an overall loss of four in the biennial elections to 58 Rajya Sabha seats on Friday. Its 28 candidates emerged victorious in the polls against 17 retiring members, while the Congress won only 10 seats while 14 of its members will retire next week.

A calculation of tallies show that the BJP's strength in the 245-member Upper House of Parliament will go from the existing 58 to 69. However, a majority in the Council of States will continue to elude the BJP-led NDA.

In a photo-finish in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP took sweet revenge on the opposition by ensuring victory of all its nine candidates, days after it lost two crucial seats in the Lok Sabha bypolls in the state.

The remaining seat went to the Samajwadi Party in the polls marred by cross-voting from both the sides, which led to the defeat of the BSP candidate in the prestigious battle of ballots, touted as a test for the new-found bonhomie between the parties headed by Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati.New Delhi: In an order having wide ramifications, the Supreme Court has restrained deemed universities from admitting students in engineering courses without the approval of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Deemed universities have been asserting their right to admit students in the engineering courses without the need to take the approval of the AICTE since they already have a sanction from the University Grants Commission (UGC).

On Friday, a bench of Justices Adarsh K Goel and Uday U Lalit issued the restraint order in a batch of three petitions arising out of orders of Rajasthan and Madras High Courts.

The order, however, will have its impact across all states in view of the court's prima facie view in favour of the AICTE notice, requiring all deemed and deemed-to-be universities to seek approval for continuing or commencing engineering courses.

Out of 19 such petitions pending across the country, three have been appealed against by the AICTE in the top court, seeking a joint hearing of all such matters in one high court for uniformity of decision.

The bench accepted the submission by Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, who appeared for AICTE, and issued notices on transferring all such cases to the Delhi High Court.

"Issue notice why the matters in question pending before the high courts may not be transferred to the Delhi High Court," stated the order.

About the interim stay, ASG Singh told the bench that since admission process for engineering courses have already been initiated by many such universities, it would be in the interest of students to put their admissions on hold until the issues are resolved.

Singh added that the career of students should not be put in jeopardy by letting deemed universities admit students without AICTE approval because if the admissions are cancelled by the court in future, students would be the real sufferers.

Acknowledging the ASG's concerns, the apex court found it fit to issue a restraint order.

"In the meanwhile there will be stay of admissions without approval of the All India Council For Technical Education," directed the bench.

The bone of contention is an interpretation of a recent Supreme Court judgment (Orissa Lift Irrigation Corporation Ltd) whereby universities have been prohibited from conducting engineering courses through distance learning or correspondence. The Court had then ruled that imparting of technical education require face-to-face teaching and practical training.

Relying on this verdict, both UGC and AICTE issued Public Notices, asking all deemed universities to obtain approval from the AICTE if they wish to continue or commence any engineering course for the academic year 2018-19.

The deemed universities, however approached concerned high courts in Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Haryana, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, against this notice.

They contended that the SC judgment was applicable only to the universities offering distance learning courses and did not direct deemed universities to seek AICTE approval for continuing or commencing engineering courses.

On their petitions, some of the high courts asked the AICTE to hold its hands and not take any coercive action.

This interim order prompted the AICTE to move the apex court, seeking transfer of all cases at one place and halt the admission in the meantime.Designers like Samant Chauhan, Charu Parashar and many more will be part of Rasleela Bridal Fashion Week (RBFW) that will take place in Canada and will later move to the US.

RBFW, a four-day event, will start with the cream de la cream attendees from Lower Mainland in Vancouver to the VIP reception and sit-down dinner on April 14 at Fairmont Waterfront. It will then move to Surrey and Dallas in the US.

Some of the Indian designer brands that will participate are Saaj by Ankita, Royal Fables, Amber Paridi, Amadi Couture and Deepak Bajaj.

Wedding vendors from Canada and overseas will be at their individual stalls for a meet and greet, before the fashion show and dinner.

"With Canada's Government's support, BWV will have leading bridal designers and jewellers from Canada, USA, UK, UAE, India and Pakistan showcasing their collection on ramp, with trade. We will have exhibition space, where designers and wedding vendors will exhibit in stalls.

"It is designed keeping in mind the multi-cultural wedding industry of Canada. This will bring all leading wedding vendors from all cultures under one umbrella," Parvesh Kumar founder of the fashion week, said in a statement.One must laud the chief of the Cannes Film Festival, Thierry Fremaux, for his sheer guts. Earlier in the year, promising radical changes, beginning this decade, to the annual 12-day event every May on the fascinating French Riviera, Fremaux announced in Paris on Friday that he would change the timing of the Press screenings and ban selfies on the famed Red Carpet.

Some weeks ago, he said that the Festival, starting this year, would begin on a Tuesday  not on a Wednesday as has been the practice for decades  and end on a Saturday, not a Sunday. The most important cinematic celebration anywhere in the world will run this time from May 8 to 19.

On Friday, Fremaux, who has been at the helm of affairs at Cannes for about 15 years, told the French journal, Le Film Francais, that the 8.30 am Competition movie would now screen for the Press in the evening  the show coinciding with the gala public opening at 7 pm. The Press would watch these films at Theatre Claude Debussy, while the black-tie premiers of the same titles for the invitees and other dignitaries would unroll in the next-door Theatre Louis Lumiere Grand Auditorium.

The 10 pm gala premieres at the Louis Lumiere Grand Auditorium will be shown to the Press the next morning. No changes will be effected for the afternoon screenings of Competition (of which there are just two or three) and A Certain Regard titles. These are, in any case, mixed screenings  for the Press and the public.

Although Fremaux sought to explain the purpose behind these changes as an attempt to restore all their attractiveness and all their brilliance to the 7pm gala screenings, and the suspense will be total!, I know that he was very unhappy with hundreds of journalists (out of the 4000-plus who are accredited for the Festival) who had made it a habit to tweet their reviews or even blog them even as a movie was running.

Obviously, such reviews or comments can be not only half baked, but also unfair to a film producer or a director or an actor. I know such hurried writing can harm these men. Their movies, especially if they are in Competition and running for the Palm dOr, can be made or marred by critics.

And Cannes critics can be cruel, punishingly so  compared with those at Venice or Berlin or anywhere else, who are much milder! I have in the course of my long association with the Festival seen a movie that might not have gone well with the critics, being booed and shamed -- with just about every publication at Cannes carrying these critical reactions most prominently. In fact, some of the greatest auteurs the world has ever known shy away from sending their works to Competition. They would rather have these slotted in A Certain Regard, the most important Cannes sidebar.

The other radical change that Thierry announced on Friday related to selfies on the Red Carpet. I know he hated selfies, and had always said that one looked just awful in such photographs. And rightly so. He revealed that Cannes would outright forbid selfies on the Red Carpet. We decided with Cannes President Pierre Lescure to outright forbid them. At the top of the Red Carpet, the triviality and slowdown, caused by the untimely disorder created by the practice of selfies, harm the quality of the climb up the steps, and so at the entire Festival. 

The ban on selfies  which may not be easy to execute  will not be such a hot issue as the change in the Press screenings. Already, some leading critics and Cannes regulars have voiced their displeasure over this privilege being taken away from them. One of them asked why Cannes could not think of a review embargo. Easier said than done, because it can well be impossible to rein in so many journalists.

I know that the Tokyo International Film Festival does have a review embargo on some important titles, but then this event is much smaller than Cannes and has far fewer journalists. With most of them being Japanese, these men and women are unbelievably disciplined and follow rules without a murmur. Cannot expect this at Cannes!

Finally, while I, as a member of the media fraternity, do feel a sense of disappointment over the change in the Press screenings, I think a review must be a considered piece of writing. Not just paragraphs dashed off even while one is watching a movie or minutes after a screening is over.

Internet editions have been largely guilty of promoting such quickies  all in the name of getting there first. Quality, in the bargain, is dumped. So too the business prospects of a film. But, who cares what happens to a movie as long as a review pips the post.

Fremaux has rightly checkmated racing reviewers.

(Gautaman Bhaskaran is an author, commentator and movie critic who has covered the Cannes Film Festival for 28 years, and he may be e-mailed at gautamanb@hotmail.com)Mumbai: Pakistani actress Mahira Khan says she felt "violated" when images of her sharing a cigarette with Indian actor Ranbir Kapoor emerged in the media.

Mahira also cited that it was the first time that she was embroiled in a controversy.

The Humsafar actress spoke at length about working in Bollywood, the impact of the tensions between India and Pakistan on the countries' film industries, and the controversy, on "HARDtalk on BBC World News".

Mahira's photograph with Ranbir Kapoor emerged from New York in September last year, months after the actress' Bollywood debut Raees hit the screens.

Recounting how it became a "national topic and debate", she said: "That was the first time in my entire career that I was caught up in a so-called controversy and it was strange because there were so many things in that. One, obviously you feel violated, you are in a personal downtime moment and someone has just photographed you.

"Two, obviously there was an uproar, because here I was, someone who is extremely loved in Pakistan, and they sort of keep me up on this pedestal you know, they treat me with a lot of love and a lot of respect. And there are certain things I didn't realise that they don't want to see me do.

"At that point yes, it was crazy honestly because it lasted for a while... It was crazy, it was ridiculous."

Her film Raees, starring Bollywood 'badshah' Shah Rukh Khan, did not get a chance to release in Pakistan. Mahira said she was excited for the film to release in her nation.

"I was more excited about 'Raees' being released in Pakistan than anywhere else, because all I wanted was to sit there with my best friends and my child Azlaan and the audience and watch this and I couldn't."

The Pakistani censorship board had deemed Raees as an "ugly, horrible, unacceptable depiction of Muslims" at the time. Mahira feels had the movie released at any other time, it would not have been banned.

"I think their decisions sometimes are based on things that don't even concern the film sometimes. So you know I don't think that was the reason. They said it but I don't know. I don't know if 'Raees' was released today, would it be released," said the 33-year-old actress.

The movie, released in January 2017, came just months after bilateral tensions intensified between India and Pakistan over the September 18, 2016 Uri attack that left 19 Indian soldiers dead and the September 28 surgical strikes by India on Pakistan terror camps.

After the incident, India's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena gave an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to leave India. Zindagi channel withdrew telecast of Pakistani shows. And even the Indian Motion Pictures Producers' Association (IMPPA) desisted from allowing Pakistani artistes to work in India.

As a result, Mahira couldn't even promote the movie in India.

She reflected: "It was a two-way thing. We got stuck under the political fire really, nothing else. But by the way, Pakistan is still showing Indian films, we haven't banned Indian films at all."Los Angeles: The organisers of Cannes Film Festival have banned selfies on its red carpet. The news was shared by festival director Thierry Fremaux in an interview with Variety, saying the art of taking selfies on red carpet is "ridiculous".

"We haven't thought out in practical terms how to carry out this new measure. Since we are not policemen, we will trust attendees and their understanding of the situation: Selfies on the red carpet, in a continuous and touristy way, are ridiculous, he said.

"It tarnishes the quality and tempo of the ascending the steps. Some are protesting and commenting negatively but selfies didn't exist 10 years ago, it's obviously not the most important thing in the world. We go to Cannes to see movies, not to take selfies," Fremaux said. He said his job is to preserve the "prestige" of the festival.

"...When we're standing on top of the stairs, we can see the vulgarity and the grotesque aspect of those taking selfies on the red carpet and that's when it becomes a vast mess," he added. Fremaux also talked about the festival's new rule which stated that any film which is selected to compete for Cannes will have to be released in French theatres.

The rule was announced last year and was specifically aimed at Netflix-backed projects. Last year, Bong Joon-Ho's "Okja" and Noah Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)" were screened at the Cannes. "Last year, I thought I could convince Netflix but they refused (to release films in theatres). That's their economic model, and I respect it. But we are all about cinema and we wish to have films that play in competition get released in theaters. That's the model of film lovers and Netflix must respect it as well.

"But Cannes aspires to welcome all sources of contemporary creativity, and today Amazon and Netflix and tomorrow perhaps Apple represent something important. Especially because they work with brilliant filmmakers, some of whom are among Cannes' returning auteurs. These new partners of the film sector have a very strong economic footprint. We will eventually come up with a good agreement," Fremaux said.Sonam Kapoor and her longtime beau Anand Ahuja make for one of the most adorable pairs in B-town. While the two keep posting PDA-filled photos with each other on social media, the couple has never really declared their love in public.

There have been rumours that now the lovebirds are planning to take their relationship a step ahead and are all set to tie the knot this summer. According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, Sonam and Anand will get hitched over a two-day ceremony on May 11 and 12 in Geneva.

"The date and venue for the wedding have been locked and mass bookings for flights are presently underway. Her dad Anil Kapoor is personally making phone calls to invite guests. There will be sangeet and mehendi ceremonies, followed by a traditional Hindu wedding," a source from the team that is planning the wedding told the leading daily.

On the work front, Sonam is currently busy filming for Veere Di Wedding with Kareena Kapoor Khan, Swara Bhasker and Shikha Talsania. The actor will also be seen in a guest appearance in Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Sanjay Dutt biopic.The decision of the Delhi High Court reinstating 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders as members of the Delhi Assembly has been welcomed in Arvind Kejriwals party. Thats pretty natural. For a party which is gasping for breath and with its leader on an apology binge, such relief would for certain come as a whiff of fresh air.

These MLAs were dismissed in January by the President on charges of holding office of profit.

However, its in the BJP circles that the decision is being welcomed, albeit quietly, as a relief. Despite the much chest-beating over its victories in the north-eastern states, the BJP leadership, its pretty well-known, is quite disturbed over the below-par performance in Gujarat Assembly polls and the reverses it has faced in bypolls in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Given the background, the BJP for now can ill afford to enter into an electoral battle in Delhi without the guarantee of a victory. A reversal in the electoral fortune in the national capital and any gains for the Congress would have a magnifying effect on the perception about the political health of the two national parties.

Thus, the reaction of AAPs two rival parties has been very different. Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari has said, rather loquaciously, The Election Commission should definitely give a proper re-hearing to the MLAs, but it should be noted that the court has not absolved the MLAs of the charge of having benefited from holding the office of profit. We welcomed the directions of the high court and the Election Commission in the past. Similarly, we respect Friday's decision. It is a unique proof of the independence of judiciary and freedom in the Indian democracy.

The Congress, on the other hand, has now started to press for the resignation of the MLAs on moral grounds, citing the example of their leader Sonia Gandhi, who on facing similar charges, had resigned the Lok Sabha seat to re-contest and re-enter Parliament.

Despite the desire of the Congress, its unlikely that the AAP MLAs see much value in a moral stand for now. The line taken by the dismissed MLAs, now reinstated by the High Court, is that since no profit ever accrued to them from the office they have purported to have held, they should not be penalised.

The High Court, we must note, has not dismissed the charge but may have inadvertently started a lengthy process of re-examination. The Election Commission, at the time of recommending dismissal of these MLAs, had held the view that the intent of these legislators was to make profit and therefore a bill was brought in the Assembly to include the office of parliamentary secretary to the ministers in the list of exempted positions.

Since the bill sought to include these offices from retrospective effect and had other lacunae, it failed and thus the poll panels decision to recommend dismissal followed.

Its unlikely that the poll panel would reverse its earlier order. But then the process of hearing, parties seeking adjournments during the hearings, and as protagonist Sunny Deol had said in his famous film Damini, Tareekh pe tareekh (adjournment after adjournment), the matter would drag on. It would suit the BJP if the decision by the poll panel is delayed till after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, which now looks quite achievable.

On the other hand, for the Congress, after having given a zero-seat performance in the 2015 Assembly polls, the delay in the by-elections is like an opportunity missed.

Of the 20 seats, which could have gone to polls had the High Court not intervened, 14 have been Congress strongholds in the past, before its vote-bank of Dalits and Minorities shifted lock, stock and barrel to the AAP.

However, a much weakened party organisation of Arvind Kejriwals outfit and the realisation among the non-BJP voters on the need for consolidation would have made retention of all the seats difficult for the AAP.

The voters in Delhi also realise that in the last municipal polls, the BJP managed to romp home because the voters averse to it were divided between the AAP and the Congress.

With the return of prominent faces in the party-fold, and former chief minister Sheila Dikshit once again entering the citys politics, the likelihood of non-BJP votes going to the Congress and not AAP is anytime greater today than it was in the past five years.

Today, the traditional vote bank of the BJP in the city, the business class, is also upset with the ruling party at the Centre for having failed to get it any relief so far from the Supreme Court-monitored sealing drive against the commercial establishments in residential premises.

While the BJP has failed to give relief from sealing and AAP failed to give governance, the Ajay Maken-led Delhi Congress is aggressively reminding people about the Sheila Dikshit government and the good governance it provided to the city.

With corruption charges against Dikshit government, too, not sticking, the Congress naturally feels its the right opportunity for them to make their way back to the centre-stage.

But as TS Eliot had famously said in his epic Hollow Men, Between the idea; And the reality; Between the motion; And the act; Falls the Shadow.

For now, its shadow on the Congress partys attempts at reviving its fortune.

(The author is a senior journalist. Views are personal)New Delhi: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday hit out at the BJP, a day after it managed to grab nine out of 10 Rajya Sabha seats available from Uttar Pradesh.

While it was assured of eight seats, the BJP managed to snatch the ninth seat as well from the SP-BSP combine after cross voting on Friday.

Taking to Twitter, Yadav said that in the UP Rajya Sabha elections, the character of BJP has been revealed, accusing the party of misusing power institutions and money against the poor.

         ,      -      .                  -       ,       ! pic.twitter.com/4qSKS9xmF1 Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) March 24, 2018

The conspiracy of BJP against the election of a Dalit has also strengthened the unity of SP-BSP for the next elections, he added while thanking BSP supremo Mayawati for her support.

Yadavs tweet came after Mayawati asserted that her party's understanding with the SP will not be affected by the defeat in Rajya Sabha polls and that she will not allow the BJP's "design" to create a rift between the two parties to succeed.

There will not be an iota of difference in the close understanding between the BSP and SP because of the Rajya Sabha results yesterday," Mayawati said at a press conference, clearly indicating that the BSP is keen to consolidate its association with the SP which is seen as a major reason for the BJP's defeat in two prestigious Lok Sabha seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats.

Yadav also cancelled the victory celebration for his party nominee Jaya Bachchan to be held in the state capital on Saturday as a sign of solidarity with the BSP whose lone candidate backed by the SP lost in the Rajya Sabha polls.

In the election, BSP candidate Bhim Rao Ambedkar received 32 first preference votes, five short of the magic number in the state. He lost out to BJPs Anil Kumar Agarwal in the second round of counting.

"I am thankful for the support of Congress and SP whose seven MLAs voted for BSP candidate as well as one SBSP MLA Kailash Nath Sonekar who voted as per his conscience and will stand by him in case he faces any trouble in future," Mayawati said, alleging "the BJP tried every trick to defeat the BSP candidate and indulged in malpractice".

"I want to warn the BJP and RSS that I will not allow their design to create rift between the new understanding among the BSP and Samajwadi Party to succeed under which they conspired to the defeat of BSP candidate in the Rajya Sabha election," she said.New Delhi: Days after some ministers from South Indian states accused the Centre of discriminating against the southern region in devolution of tax revenue, a BJP leader has refuted the claim citing how "north India wept more for Sridevi than south India".

Taneja made the statement during CNN-News18's 'Face Off' debate, where representatives of some political parties were discussing the accusations of step-motherly treatment being meted out to the southern states. Going completely off topic, BJP spokesperson Narendra Taneja said, When Sridevi died recently, northern India probably shed more tears than southern India. Was the North looking at the fact that she came from the South?

The statement drew flak from Twitterati, who were irked by the bizarre remark on an actor with a pan-India appeal.

Wow.. in the debate of south subsidizing north.. BJP Spox. Brings Sridevi in the Debate.. says north Indians grieved more than south Indians.. https://t.co/U86tTINPWQ Srikanth (@vgsk09) March 23, 2018

The north Indian media & public described #Sridevi as "Bollywood star", erased her stupendous achievements in any Indian film industry other than the north Indian industry and worse - the blinkered #BJP spokesperson unwittingly gave a perfect example of northern privilege at work https://t.co/C4tRAnwNOd Anna MM Vetticad (@annavetticad) March 24, 2018

The BJP leader further said, It's not only money that unites the country but there are many other things.

Several senior leaders and CMs have raised objections to the revenue sharing model of the Centre under the 15th Finance Commission, formed in November last year.

Two days ago, Andhra Pradesh finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu had said that out of the 42% devolution, the cash flow is only around 2 to 4 % for the southern states, while it is 9 to 17% for the northern states.

Chandrababu Naidu had also accused the Centre of diverting the tax. There is nothing called Central money or states money. Its the peoples money. The southern states contribute maximum tax revenues to the Centre, but the latter is diverting the money to the development of northern states, he alleged.

Siddaramaiah told News18 that Karnataka contributes nearly 10 percent of the overall Central revenue, yet the state gets back only five percent of the redistributed funds.

This new framework is being used instead of the 1971 Census used so far this will further affect the interests of the South, Siddaramaiah said.

Meanwhile, DMKs spokesperson Manu Sundaram said that its not as if the South is against the development of the northern states.

The five southern states and Pondicherry contribute a great deal to the central revenue. We do realise we have a responsibility to help other states which are not doing well. What the southern states are demanding is a greater say in how these taxes are spent and given back to us. The allocation definition and ratios have changed much to the disadvantage of the South, he told News18.Guwahati: Gearing up for the next general election, BJP President Amit Shah on Saturday set a target of 21 seats out of 25 parliamentary constituencies from the northeast in Lok Sabha polls in 2019.

Addressing a rally of BJP booth unit chiefs here, he asked the party members to work towards achieving this target. "I want to give a target for 2019 polls. We want to win more than 21 seats out of 25 seats from North East," Shah said in the rally.

"Except Mizoram, all other states in NE are ruled by NEDA (North-East Democratic Alliance) constituents. So all of you need to take it forward. The BJP needs to win maximum number of seats from northeast to strengthen Prime Minister Narendra Modi so that development of the region continues." Shah said, adding the party won eight seats from the region during last Lok Sabha polls in 2014.

The party chief also asked the Assam BJP unit to expand the network and appoint 'Page Pramukh' or in-charge of each page of the electoral list.

Shah attacked the Congress and said the northeastern part of the country lagged behind other regions post-Independence due to faulty policies of the oldest political party of India. Assam was the fourth developed state in India after Independence but it was fourth from the bottom when Sarbananda Sonowal became the chief minister in 2016, he claimed.

"Congress' policy is divide and rule, while it is sabka saath sabka vikaas for BJP. During 2014 campaign, Modiji had promised to develop northeast like the western part of India. Four years have gone and see the progress of the region done by him," he said.

Assam, he said, had got Rs 79,741 crore from the 13th Finance Commission during the UPA tenure which soared to Rs 1,55,292 crore in 14th Finance Commission during the Modi government. Without naming former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Shah criticised him for allegedly not doing anything significant for the region despite being elected to the Rajya Sabha from Assam twice.

The BJP chief also listed a series of schemes and financial benefits provided to Assam and the other northeastern states during the NDA regime in the last four years. "(With) the stand India has taken on Doklam issue under Prime Minister Modi, a message has been sent to the entire world. He has also solved the border dispute with Bangladesh, helping the (northeast) region to prosper," the BJP chief claimed.

He also highlighted the Assam government's thrust to make the state free from corruption, terrorism, foreigners and pollution.

"The insurgent groups of the region are surrendering one after another and development is on. The way NRC update is going on, the foreigner issue will also be resolved soon," Shah added.New Delhi: After BJP president Amit Shah, in an open letter, termed Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidus decision to quit the NDA alliance as unfortunate and unilateral, the latter hit back asking why was the BJP president spreading lies.

Amit Shah in his letter says Centre gave many funds to the state, we couldn't utilise them. They're trying to say Andhra Pradesh government is incapable. Our government has good GDP, agriculture and many national awards. That's our capability. Why are you spreading lies, said Naidu in the state Assembly on Saturday.

Shahs letter said Naidus decision would be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns.

The TDP pulled out of BJP-led alliance over the refusal to accord special category status to Andhra Pradesh and fulfil other commitments made at the time of state's division in 2014. The TDP has also given no-confidence notice against the Modi government in the Lok Sabha, which could not be taken up due to an unending uproar in the Lower House.

Hitting back at Shah, Naidu said: Amit Shah's letter is full of false information which shows their attitude. Even now Centre is providing special benefits to North Eastern states. Had Andhra Pradesh been given the same hand holding, many industries would have come to the state.

Accusing BJP of being equally responsible for bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, Naidu said the party did it behind closed doors.

"Unscientific division of state pushed us 10 years back. Centre is responsible for that. You claim you're sensitive to our problems. But in reality you too were equally responsible for passing bifurcation bill within 20 minutes behind closed doors," said Naidu.

In his letter to Naidu, Shah said the BJP had safeguarded the interests of Telugu people of both the Telugu states. This is in direct contrast to the Congress Party, which not only mismanaged the bifurcation but also showed zero sensitivity towards the Telugu people

You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in the Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both the states, Shah said in the letter.

He also cited a number of development projects undertaken by the Centre for the state, besides funds given to it, as he sought to reject the charge that the Modi government had not fulfilled its promises.

Listing five infrastructure projects the Central government has initiated in the state, Shah said "a perusal of these would reaffirm what you already know and perhaps would not admit that Central government has fulfilled its obligations and that BJP is a genuine friend add true well wisher of the state."

Shahs letter to Naidu comes around 10 days after the TDP leader wrote to the BJP chief, saying he felt pointless to continue in the NDA.Housewife hacked to death in Narsingdi

UNB, Narsingdi :

A housewife was hacked to death allegedly by her husband over family feud at Daripara village in Dulalpur union of Shibpur upazila on Saturday morning.

The deceased was identified as Nargis Akhter, 20, wife of Lokman Miah.

On Saturday morning, locals and relatives found Nargis, daughter of Salahuddin of Kamar Char village of Sadar upazila, dead while Lokman was injured.

Nargis's uncle alleged that Lokman killed her wife for dowry while Lokman's relatives claimed that some robbers killed Nargis and injured her husband.

On information, police recovered the body and sent it to Narsingdi Sadar Hospital for autopsy and Lokman was also admitted to the same hospital.

Shibpur Police Station officer-in-charge Abul Kalam Azad said they are investing into the matter.

A case was filed in this connection, he added.Lucknow: Despite its Rajya Sabha poll setback, the Bahujan Samaj Party expressed satisfaction with the support extended to it by both the Samajwadi Party and the Congress. The BSP though made it clear that the decision regarding the alliance for 2019 will be taken by party president Mayawati.

Speaking after the results, where BSPs candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar got defeated by the BJP nominee Anil Agarwal in a close contest for the 10th seat, BSP General Secretary, Satish Chandra Mishra said that the SP and the Congress did their best and supported our candidate.

Mishra alleged that the BJP won the election by cheating.

The election was won by use of power, money and cheating. Our two MLAs were not allowed to vote The Congress and the SP stood by their commitment; however, decision regarding any alliance for 2019 will be taken by our national president, said Mishra.

The SP was also quick to show solidarity with the BSP and called off the celebrations, which were planned for the victory of Jaya Bachchan, their only Rajya Sabha candidate.

Although we have won the Rajya Sabha seat of Jaya Bachchan and also we had planned some celebrations but our national president Akhilesh Yadav called off all the celebrations as soon as the results were out, said SP MLC and Spokesperson Sunil Singh Sajan.

Although our supported BSP candidate may have lost but it will not be affecting our understanding with BSP as these polls did not involved public voting and we stood by our commitment. Moreover, this was poll was won by BJP by cheating and using their power, added Sajan.

In the lead up to the polls, Akhilesh Yadav had responded swiftly to Mayawatis demand to name 10 dedicated SP MLAs who will vote for the BSP candidate.

The polls were marred by cross-voting from both the sides, which led to the defeat of the BSP candidate in the prestigious battle of ballots, touted as a test for the new-found bonhomie between the parties headed by Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati.Lucknow: BSP chief Mayawati on Saturday said that the Rajya Sabha election result will have no impact on her party's association with the Samajwadi Party and the two will work with even more force to defeat the BJP in the 2019 general elections.

A day after her party candidate lost to the BJP in an intense contest in Uttar Pradesh despite backing from the SP, the BSP supremo said the ruling party, which secured the win through "undemocratic" and "unconstitutional" means, is expecting that she will break off ties with the SP and "it (BJP) will have a field day in 2019", but she will not let it happen.

But she also voiced her dissaproval, saying that the Samajwadi Party should have assured that the seat went to her party by giving its candidate the first preference. If I had been in place of Akhilesh Yadav, I would have given first priority to BSP candidate rather than the SP candidate, she told reporters in Lucknow.

Of the 10 seats on offer, the BJP was assured of win in eight, while a joint opposition was assured of sending one and was in a close contest to push through a second. Akhilesh nominated SPs Jaya Bachchan for the assured seat.

The BSP had to rely on support from the SP and the Congress to send its candidate, but failed to secure the numbers. BSP candidate Bhim Rao Ambedkar received 32 first preference votes, five short of the magic number in the state. He lost out to BJPs Anil Kumar Agarwal in the second round of counting.

Mayawati was quick to add that her statement should not be seen as a crack in the alliance. The closeness of SP and BSP is not going to change because of this Rajya Sabha result, she said at the press conference.

Akhilesh will gain more political prudence with time. But I assure the BJP that their wish will not be fulfilled - their dream of breaking the alliance, she said, adding that the Rajya Sabha poll will have no impact on the closeness between the two parties. She said that Akhilesh should not be held responsible for the Rajya Sabha defeat. LS polls and RS polls are different. The two have different dynamics. In bypolls people vote directly, she added.

The BSP chief also hinted strongly that two parties could join hands for the Lok Sabha polls next year. If everything goes well, SP and BSP will now work hard to defeat the BJP in 2019, she said. This is the first time that she has admitted that the two parties could partner for the Lok Sabha polls. Initially, she had maintained that this was an understanding limited to the quid pro quo over the Lok Sabha bypoll and the Rajya Sabha election.

For 2019, Mayawati indicated that she is ready to open the doors for Congress too. Saying that the two had always had good relations, she said she was thankful to them for offering support. Our cooperation has extended from the days of UPA. The high command of Congress has helped us, she said.

Hitting out at the BJP, she alleged that the party had misused government machinery for its election win. The BJP misused the government as it wanted to disturb the SP-BSPs new-found closeness. Just like in the past Modi and Yogi used government machinery and muscle power to send an industrialist to the upper house, she said.

Mayawati also suspended party MLA Anil Singh, who had voted in favour of the BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.

The BJPs surprising victory has been pegged as a revenge for the loss it had suffered at the hands of the SP-BSP alliance in the Lok Sabha bypolls just a few days earlier.Lucknow: After suffering unexpected losses in Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls, BJP exacted its revenge on Mayawati when BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar was defeated by the BJP nominee Anil Agarwal in a close contest.

Stakes were high and the focus intense since it was not just about who wins the tenth seat, but more about how the SP-BSP alliance will perform having ousted BJP in the recently concluded Lok Sabha bypolls in the state.

There were ten seats in the fray. The BJP was assured to win eight of them. Akhilesh had enough votes to get its one candidate through. For the final tenth seat, it was Mayawati vs BJP. With help from BJP allies and some cross-voting, the BJP candidate Anil Agarwal sailed through.

Ultimately, the BJP might have won in the race to the Upper House but the alliance didn't falter.

It was not just the SP which kept up its promise to BSP chief Mayawati, even the Congress stood by its commitment for Behen ji. So even in the defeat, the alliance sailed through, indicating that the new-found bonhomie between the SP-BSP is here to stay.

Significantly, soon after his party's defeat on Friday night, BSP's national general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra held BJP solely responsible for his party's defeat.

He said: BJP had won the seat through manipulation and use of money power. Our Alliance partners, the Samajwadi party and Congress stood up to their commitment."

Mishra's statement holds vital clue about future of the larger grand opposition alliance against the BJP.

However, on the specific question about the future of the SP-BSP alliance, BSP general secretary said our president Mayawati will take a final call on it.

But then this response is obvious, keeping in mind that in BSP its ultimately Mayawati who takes a final call on political strategy.

Analysis of the votes polled by BSP makes it clear that alliance did not perform badly.

With just 19 MLAs in the House, BSP was not in a position to win on its own. BJP, on the other hand, after sending eight of its candidates to Rajya Sabha by First preference votes had 28 surplus votes of first preference. While BSP needed approximately 20 extra votes to win the seat, BJP only required eight to nine extra votes.

The only reason why BSP dared to contest was assurance from the SP and the Congress.

Only 17 of BSP MLAs were available for voting as Mukhtar Ansari was in jail and the other member Anil Singh drifted to the BJP.

So if BSP got 32 votes of 1st preference, it means it got 16 votes from the SP- Congress camp.

This support of 16 from SP and also the Congress holds significance and indicates that both of the two were serious towards their commitment to BSP chief Mayawati.

While SP transferred nine votes, Congress transferred all of its seven votes to BSP candidate BR Ambedkar.

SP with only 47 MLAs, first needed minimum 37 votes to ensure victory of its candidate Jaya Bachchan. Jaya actually got 38 votes.

Analysis indicates that probably BSP didn't get the lone vote of the RLD MLA, this despite the promise from RLD's top leadership.

Samajwadi Party's MLC and Akhilesh Yadav's close associate Sunil Singh Sajjan said: We will have to look into the role of 'others' for this loss of two votes. SP transferred nine votes as per its commitment and so did the Congress.

The 'others' in this case is a reference probably to the RLD MLA and a possible lone black sheep within the larger opposition alliance, which also included two independents - Kunda MLA Raja Bhaiya and Vinod Sonkar

Sajjan further added: We tried our best; opposition unity remained almost unbreached...BJP won the seat through deceit.

SP president, in a gesture of good will, cancelled all celebrations planed for the victory of the party candidate Jaya Bachchan.

However, BJP reads the Rajya Sabha poll results in a different light. Immediately, after its victory, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath reached Vidhan sabha on Friday night and accused SP of back stabbing the BSP.

He said, The SP knows only to take and never returns the favour.

Yogi was referencing to SP's win in Phulpur and Gorakhpur Lok Sabha bypolls, which the party won with BSP's support.

Talking to News18, UP's power Minister Srikant Sharma was sharper in his attack on the Samajwadi Party.

He said, BSP chief should now reflect on how much she can bank on Akhilesh Yadav and his party Bhatija has given a memorable gift to Bua ji.

Clearly, BJP hopes to discredit the opposition alliance, trying to create fissures within the SP-BSP unity ahead of the crucial 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Mayawati and Akhilesh have not spoken till now on the future prospect of the alliance, but then point is that Rajya Sabha's electoral dynamics are entirely different from that of the general elections.

It will, therefore, be not politically very prudent to read these elections as an indicator of things likely to happen ahead of the bigger battle of 2019. Even in the BSP's defeat and amidst BJP's mighty presence in the state Assembly 'the opposition alliance' has performed well.

Both Akhilesh and Mayawati should therefore have no major reason to be upset.

Considering a little bump post their victory in the bypolls, it will be unwise to write off the alliance just depending upon the Rajya sabha election results.Raipur: With odds being heavily against them, a win was not something the opposition Congress expected in the Rajya Sabha polls in Chhattisgarh but the eventual outcome still left them a disappointed lot.

The grand old party was left fuming after BSPs lone MLA voted in favour of BJPs Saroj Pandey, while two of its MLAs, led by former CM Ajit Jogis son Amit Jogi, abstained from voting.

The lone BSP member in the House Keshav Chandra, along with the single Independent MLA Vimal Chopda, voted in favour of the BJP candidate.

According to party insiders, the outcome might not change equations between the Congress and Janata Congress Chhattisgarh led by ex-CM Ajit Jogi, but it would dent much-rumoured Congress-BSP alliance in the state in election year.

Leader of Opposition TS Singhdeo has even written to PCC president Bhupesh Baghel for expulsion of two rebel MLAs.

BJPs Saroj Pandey, who managed 51 votes in the Assembly of 89 MLAs, defeated Congress Lekhram Sahu, who could only garner 36 votes.

In 2016, the Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee had expelled former Chief Minister Ajit Jogis son and Marwahi MLA Amit Jogi for six years from the primary membership of the party for his involvement in fixing a by-election in 2015.

However, Amit Jogi, along with two of his known loyalists  Congress MLAs Siyaram Kaushik and RK Rai (under suspension from Congress), had unconditionally announced support to Congress Rajya Sabha candidate Lekhram Sahu ahead of voting that took place on Friday.

The trio however took a U-turn on the day of voting seeking an apology from Congress Chhattisgarh in-charge PL Punia over latters adverse remarks against ex-CM Ajit Jogi. As Punia did not apologise, the three abstained from voting thus increasing the victory margin for Pandey.

However, the real jolt came from the BSP as the Congress till recently was exploring possibility of pre-poll alliance with the party but its lone MLA Keshav Chandra voted in BJPs favour.

Our win was certain but we pocketed two extra votes and the outcome also exposed the chinks in Congress armour. The Rajya Sabha election kick-started the series of wins which would culminate in BJPs victory in 2018 assembly polls, BJP state president Dharmalal Kaushik told the media.

Saying that a Congress win was not on the cards, Leader of Opposition in Chhattisgarh Assembly TS Singhdeo sought expulsion of rebel MLAs  Siyaram Kaushik and RK Rai - over indiscipline. He also wrote a letter to party state chief seeking ouster of both the legislators saying they have been given enough chances by the party.

He, however, denied that BSP MLAs move of voting for BJP would affect their relations with the party saying it primarily reflected their MLAs code of conduct and commitment towards party whip.

However, a defiant RK Rai, who was in the past suspended along with Siyaram Kauhsik for showing allegiance with Ajit Jogi camp, talking to News18 claimed that throwing them out was beyond the powers of party state unit.Malavalli (Karnataka): In a pungent attack on Janata Dal (Secular) of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday dubbed it a "B-team" of BJP and nicknamed JDS as "Janata Dal Sangh Parivar."

Taking on JDS on its turf in old Mysuru region, where it is the principal challenger to ruling Congress, Gandhi said earlier 'S' in JDS stood for secular, "but in this election they have got a new name JDS- Janata Dal Sangh Parivar."

On his fourth round of tour in poll-bound Karnataka, Gandhi said the coming assembly polls was a face-off between two ideologies -- on one side BJP and RSS and on the other the Congress.

"In between there is third party which is the B team of BJP that is JDS," the Congress president said at a public rally here in Mandya district, the Vokkaliga belt considered a JDS stronghold.

He told the gathering, "I will tell you. Let BJP's A team, B team or C team come together. Congress party is going to win this election."

Stating that the Congress believed in the ideology of 12th century saint, social reformer Basavanna, Gandhi said JDS call themselves secular, "but they have become the B team of BJP and are supporting them."

Quoting Basavanna's saying "nudidante made" (follow what you preach), Gandhi said JDS had to think about what Basavanna said.

"They (JDS) preach something and do something else," he said.

Gandhi also alleged that BJP and JDS wherever they go spread lies.

"BJP is a party that believes in dividing the country, we will have to defeat them."

He asserted that the Congress would win the elections in Karnataka because "it is not a new fight, but is a very old fight."

Earlier speaking at Chamarajanagar, Gandhi accused the BJP of "attacking" the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.

Addressing a rally after visiting a temple of Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru, he said the BJP was not only snatching away people's money through note ban and GST, but "there is new fashion now, they are attacking the constitution."

"Hear it from here. We will not allow the BJP to change the constitution. How much ever BJP forces its way to change the constitution, we will make sure that the Congress will protect the work of Ambedkarji," he told the gathering.

In his current two-day visit, Gandhi is covering Mandya, Mysuru and Chamarajnagar districts.

He had earlier toured the northern, coastal and Malnad regions.

The Congress president accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being "insensitive" towards problems related to jobs and demonetization.

"I interacted with young students this morning. One of the girl students stood up and asked me about Narendra Modiji's promise to give two crore jobs every year and his "Make In India" programme...but that turned out to be an empty promise and there was no weight behind those words," he said.

The rally was held here as part of "Janashirvada Yatre."

Gandhi said nobody has benefited from the note ban and questioned the rationale of having five different GST rates, including 28 per cent.

"A girl stands up and says nobody has been benefited by the note ban. Another girl stands up and says why are there five separate rates, including 28 per cent."

"It only means that the students aged between 18 to 20 years have understood the problems, but Narendra Modji is yet to understand," he added.

The Congress chief began his speech by invoking Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Mysore ruler, Krishnaraja Wodayar, 24th Maharaja of erstwhile Mysore kingdom, Sir M Vishveshwariah, renowned engineer, and Kuvempu, Kannada poet, by remembering their contributions to Karnataka and India.New Delhi: In an open letter to Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu, BJP chief Amit Shah termed his decision to quit the NDA alliance as unfortunate and unilateral.

The letter dated March 23, a week since the TDP snapped ties, said the decision would be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns.

The TDP pulled out of BJP-led alliance over the refusal to accord special category status to Andhra Pradesh and fulfil other commitments made at the time of state's division in 2014.

The TDP has also given no-confidence notice against the Modi government in the Lok Sabha, which could not be taken up due to an unending uproar in the Lower House.

BJP National President Shri @AmitShah writes an open letter to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. https://t.co/vrZK6ciKvy https://t.co/ne9YMy0Df6 BJP LIVE (@BJPLive) March 24, 2018

In his letter to Naidu, Shah said the BJP had safeguarded the interests of Telugu people of both the Telugu states. This is in direct contrast to the Congress Party, which not only mismanaged the bifurcation but also showed zero sensitivity towards the Telugu people

You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in the Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both the states, Shah said in the letter.

He also cited a number of development projects undertaken by the Centre for the state, besides funds given to it, as he sought to reject the charge that the Modi government had not fulfilled its promises.

Listing five infrastructure projects the Central government has initiated in the state, Shah said "a perusal of these would reaffirm what you already know and perhaps would not admit that Central government has fulfilled its obligations and that BJP is a genuine friend add true well wisher of the state."

"On the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh, it is regrettable that some political parties are whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate which is the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy. I would like you to introspect whether political parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda," Shah told Naidu.

Shahs letter to Naidu comes around 10 days after the TDP leader wrote to the BJP chief, saying he felt pointless to continue in the NDA.

"Today, a feeling is gaining ground in our state that the BJP is not sensitive to the aspirations of our people. We feel the government headed by it is not willing to implement in letter and spirit the provisions in the AP Reorganisation Act and the assurances given by the then Prime Minister in Rajya Sabha," Naidu had said.

"When our being in the alliance doesn't serve that purpose, we feel that it is pointless to continue," he had noted.New Delhi: The tenure of US President Donald Trump has often been described as White House in crisis. From reports that he colluded with Russian Intelligence in order to get damaging information on his opponent in the 2016 Election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, to allegations that the White House was stoking White Supremacist sentiments  Trump has been firefighting since he took office.

On Thursday, Trump announced he was replacing HR McMaster as the United States National Security Advisor. McMaster is, by no means, the first person to leave the Trump White House. The list, in fact, is so long that the American press has dubbed this White House a 'revolving door'. Here's a complete list of all the other officials who have either been fired or have left the Trump White House.

Heres a list of officials who have left the Trump White House

Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State

John McEntee, Personal Aide to the President

Gary Cohn, Chief Economic Advisor

Hope Hicks, White House Communications Director

Rob Porter, White House Staff Secretary

Omarosa, Director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison

Dina Powell, Deputy National Security Advisor

Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services

Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to the President

Steve Bannon, White House Chief Strategist

Anthony Scaramucci, White House Communications Director

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff

Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary

Mike Dubke, White House Communications Director

James Comey, FBI Director

Mike Flynn, National Security Advisor

Sally Yates, Acting Attorney General of the United States

Steven Goldstein, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs

Josh Raffel, White House Deputy Communications Director

Rick Dearborn, Deputy Chief of Staff

George Sifakis, Director, Office of Public Liaison

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, National Security Council

Michael Short, Senior Press Assistant

Walter Shaub: Director, Office of Government Ethics

Vivek Murthy: Surgeon General of the United States

Angella Reid, White House Chief Usher

Katie Walsh, Deputy Chief of Staff

Preet Bharara, United States Attorney, Southern District of New YorkHelsinki: Finnish police said on Saturday they were seeking to arrest Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, but did not know his whereabouts.

Puigdemont, who lives in self-imposed exile in Belgium, has been visiting Finland since Thursday for talks with lawmakers and had been due to leave Saturday afternoon.

It was not known if he was still in the Nordic country.

"Finland has received a European arrest warrant for a Spanish citizen visiting Finland. The person concerned will be handled in a normal extradition procedure," Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said in a statement.

"The person's whereabouts are not currently known to authorities," the statement said.

Puigdemont is wanted by Spain on charges of "rebellion" and "sedition". Tensions are running high in the region and separatist parties have abandoned plans to name a new president following the arrest of the latest candidate.

Separatist parties won regional elections in December called by Madrid after they attempted to secede and retained their absolute majority in parliament.

But they have still not been able to form a government and face growing legal pressures that have seen many moderate their tone. With numerous leaders abroad or in jail, the separatists have struggled to re-organise or even remain in politics.

Finnish police had earlier told AFP they were awaiting further information from Spanish authorities on the arrest warrant before acting on it.

The Finnish MP who organised Puigdemont's visit, Mikko Karna, told media he had not been in touch with him since on Friday.

Puigdemont's lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas meanwhile told Catalunya Radio his client would not try to escape arrest.

"When the European arrest warrant was issued (a first time), he made himself available to the Belgian justice and police, and he would do the same thing now. I have not spoken to him yet but that is clear, yes."

Spanish media reported on Saturday that Puigdemont may surrender to Finnish police.

"I am aware of the information in the Spanish press but so far at least I haven't heard or seen anything that confirms that. We've had no contact with the person himself or his assistants," Finnish NBI criminal inspector Hannu Kautta told AFP.

Asked if police were actively searching for Puigdemont, he replied: "I don't want to comment on that. We will not divulge the details of what we are doing to get the person in our possession."

However, he said police had "a whole tool box" of options to use once they knew his whereabouts, "one being that we would apprehend him and put him into our custody, ensure due process ... but there are other possibilities as well like house arrest."

Kautta said it was possible Puigdemont may also have left the country.

"Taking into account the fact that the borders between the Schengen countries are not so controlled, it is possible that he has already travelled already abroad. But I can't confirm or deny it because we simply don't have the information," he said.

Meanwhile in Barcelona, the Catalan parliament suspended its debates on Saturday after regional presidential candidate Jordi Turull, who had been due to seek a second-round vote in the parliament, was placed in custody over the region's breakaway bid.

Spain has issued international arrest warrants for five other separatists, including four former ministers who are also in self-imposed exile in Belgium.Colombo: A hardline Sinhala-Buddhist group in Sri Lanka, which was allegedly involved in attacks on Muslims during the recent communal riots in the country, has decided to float a political party.

Mahason Balakaya or the Devil Mahasona's Force, which had allegedly published videos of hate speech against Muslims, said it has forwarded papers to the authorities for the party's registration.

"Sinhalese have got no political party while every race has one. We have decided to form a new political party with Mahason Balakaya and several other Sinhala organisations," a spokesman for the group said in the north central town of Anuradhapura.

Mahason Balakaya was accused in arson attacks on Muslims, their religious sites and properties during the communal violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims in the island's central hills Kandy and Ampara districts.

The communal violence was triggered by the death of a Sinhalese man at the hands of a mob.

The government had imposed a state of emergency and blocked Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media sites following the riots in which three people were killed and hundreds of Muslim-owned properties, including mosques, were damaged.

Nearly 300 people, including a senior leader of Mahason Balakaya, were arrested during the riots.

Violence has risen in the Buddhist-majority country since 2012, with some hardline Buddhist groups accusing Muslims of forcing people to convert to Islam and vandalising Buddhist archaeological sites.BD's inclusion in autocratic countries shameful: Fakhrul

Leaders of BNP-led 20-party alliance holding meeting at its Gulshan party office on Saturday. BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir presided over the meeting.

Staff Reporter :

The BNP on Saturday criticized the present government for a research-report prepared by a German based institution enlisting Bangladesh as one of the five new autocratic countries for its autocratic rule.

"It is a shame that a German based institution's research report is branding Bangladesh as one of five such countries as autocracy is eliminating democracy. The BBC online published the news," BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said it while addressing a press briefing at the party's Nayapaltan central office.

"Those of us who fought for democracy and earned the country's independence are ashamed of the study findings," Mirza Fakhrul said.

According to a recent report of a German Institution Bertelsmann Stiftung, Bangladesh emerged as one of the five new autocratic countries.

Five countries namely by Bangladesh, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Uganda 'no longer meet minimum standards for democracy,' said Bertelsmann report.

Fakhrul came down hard on the government for permitting former military junta HM Ershad and his Jatiya Party for holding rally at Suhrawardy Udyan on the day he grabbed power toppling an elected government and elected president 36 years ago. Whereas BNP, a partner of the anti-autocratic movement, still has not got permission to hold its rally at Suhrawardy udyan despite repeated attempts.London: Two truck drivers guilty of killing eight Indians last year in one of Britains worst road accidents were jailed by a UK court on Saturday.

Ryszard Masierak, a 31-year-old Polish national convicted of dangerous and drink driving at the end of a trial earlier this month, was jailed for 14 years.

Second truck driver David Wagstaff, 54-year-old courier company worker involved in the highway pile-up, was sentenced to 40 months in prison after pleading guilty to causing death by careless driving.

He had been cleared by a jury of the more serious charge of dangerous driving at the end of the trial at Aylesbury Crown Court.

The crash had led to the deaths of Nottingham-based Keralite minibus driver Cyriac Joseph and seven of his passengers all Indians.

The 52-year-old had been hired to drive his passengers from Nottingham to London to join a European holiday tour group when they met with the fatal accident.

"This was a prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of very bad driving. He had consumed significant amounts of alcohol," Prosecutor Oliver Saxby told the court.

Judge Francis Sheridan described the crash as the most serious in the UK for more than 26 years, for which the Masierak had shown "no remorse".

"What you have tried to do is blame everyone and everybody except yourself," the judge told him.

In reference to Wagstaff, the judge blamed his use of a mobile phone while driving for his role in the collision.

"You took no action whatsoever because you weren't concentrating on what was in front of you? they were there to be seen and you didn't see them," he said.

Masierak was also disqualified from driving for 17 years after he was convicted of eight counts of causing death by dangerous driving and four counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. Wagstaff was banned from driving for three years.

"The catastrophic and tragic collision was caused by both the individuals. We lost a great father, loving husband and a very good friend," a family spokesperson for Josephs family said outside the courtroom.

The other victims in Josephs minibus were from Nottingham Malayali community and their relatives.

The entire group was on its way to London to catch a bus to Disneyland Paris when their vehicle crashed with the trucks near Newport Pagnell in southern England on August 26 last year.

Among them were IT professionals employed by Indian software company Wipro.What would a real-life Batman be like? Batman: The Imposter aims to find out

"A vividly real" Dark Knight is coming in Batman: The Imposter comic - from the co-writer of the upcoming filmFamily of Indian man killed in Iraq

Mosul : Raising demands of compensation, families of 39 Indians killed by Islamic State in Iraq held silent protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday officially announced killing of 39 Indians in Iraq's Mosul by the terrorist group Islamic State.

"Deep penetration radar confirmed that all Indians were dead after all bodies were exhumed. It was too difficult to search our people in Iraq, thanks to VK Singh for his support, and the Iraq for the help." Swaraj had stated in Rajya Sabha.

Speaking to ANI, Gurpinder Kaun, sister of Manjinder Singh, who was among the 39 Indians killed in Iraq, refused to stage violent protests against the government, instead opting to sit peacefully. We wont do a violent protest, well just sit peacefully. Union government hasnt contacted us yet. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has not replied to us even after repeated attempts to contact and meet her,  Kaur alleged.

The 39 Indians were abducted by the Islamic State during evacuation in Mosul. Most of them belonged to Punjab in India.Ryan Bundy is running for governor of Nevada after being wrongly prosecuted by the Obama BLM

Fresh off a legal victory after being targeted by a weaponized Bureau of Land Management and corrupt federal and state prosecutors in Nevada, rancher Ryan Bundy has announced he will run for governor of his state.

In an interview with North West Liberty News, Bundy discussed a range of issues, including how he believes state officials are more guilty of failing to protect the constitutional rights of residents than the federal government is in violating those rights.

You may recall that Ryan, along with his father Cliven Bundy, brother Ammon Bundy, and others, were engaged in a tense standoff with federal agents, local police and heavily-armed BLM agents near their southwest Nevada ranch in 2014.

That said, tensions between the Bundy operation and the federal government began long before that.

In 1990, in an effort to protect the desert tortoise, the federal government moved to limit grazing rights on federal land in Nevada, encompassing ground that Bundy had utilized for decades.

In 1993 he refused to renew his grazing rights, claiming the BLM and the federal government had no sovereignty over the state of Nevada.

Federal courts subsequently sided with the government. However, for the next 20 years, Bundy and government agencies butted heads, during which time he racked up $1 million in owed grazing fees and fines. The disagreement came to a head in 2014 when heavily-armed BLM agents moved in to confiscate Bundys cattle grazing on government property. A stand-off ensued as scores of armed civilians showed up to counter BLM agents and local authorities.

Eventually, authorities stood down, fearing the publics safety, and pledged to return Bundys cattle. Bundy continued to graze his cattle, and he and sons Ammon and Ryan were eventually arrested.

They were charged with numerous felonies, including conspiracy, assault on a federal officer and using a firearm in a violent crime, and faced many years in prison.

The case began in late October 2017. However, within two months it completely fell apart; U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial in December after discovering that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence from the Bundys legal team  a violation of the Brady rule, named after a landmark 1963 Supreme Court case which found that evidence withheld from a defendant is tantamount to a violation of the right to due process. (Related: Unsealed court docs show MASSIVE corruption in Bundy case.)

In the interview with North West Liberty News, Ryan Bundy said he has represented himself in numerous court cases over the past several years, never losing a case without having ever gone to law school. He has, instead, spent a great deal of time over the years studying the Constitution. And he said that many have helped him along, especially his father.

As to what is motivating him to run for governor, he says he doesnt believe anyone else who is running or considering a run for the office will really work to protect ordinary Nevadans.

I think about all of those who supported us through the various trials and tribulations his family has endured but who themselves were forced by scheming government agents and federal prosecutors to plead guilty to various crimes of which they are innocent, Bundy said.

Now these men are not guilty of crimes. And yet the government uses tactics and means whichconvict a lot of men that are not guilty of crimes, he added. And so, I am concerned about these men.

Bundy also voiced his support for public schools to once again be focused on teaching the U.S. Constitution  especially the Bill of Rights (which is what we used to call Civics class)  as well as allowing students to take part in proper firearms training if they wanted.

Listen to the full interview here.

J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

NorthWestLibertyNews.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

NaturalNews.comIn this series, Open Every Door, Entrepreneur staff writer Nina Zipkin shares her conversations with leaders about understanding what you have to offer, navigating the obstacles that will block your path, identifying opportunity and creating it for yourself and for others.

In 1993, Lisa Price had an idea. She wanted to create natural skin-care and hair-care products that would be used and loved by everyone, no matter their skin type or hair texture.

With $100 and encouragement from her mom, Carol, Price started experimenting with formulas in her Brooklyn kitchen. It wasnt long before her products were selling out at local markets and festivals.

She opened her first storefront in Brooklyn in 1999 and with the launch of CarolsDaughter.com the following year, she built a devoted following in the early days of ecommerce. In 2002, Price found a fan in Oprah Winfrey and made an appearance on her show, gaining a whole new group of fans across the country.

Prices dedication to making inclusive products with new and interesting ingredients has attracted big name investors including Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Jay-Z and partnerships with celebrities including Mary J. Blige. She has also been a fixture on HSN since 2008, a leap that was no small feat for the self-described introvert.

In 2014, Price sold her company to L'Oreal and today, Carols Daughter products can be purchased at retailers including Dillards, Macys, Sephora, Target and ULTA.

Price shared her insights about what it takes to stay in business for more than two decades, planting seeds for future successes and how to move past fear and find your voice.

Tell me about a time you needed to create an opportunity for yourself or others?

The business has been around for 25 years this coming May. So we've had to do many new things to stay relevant. One of those was being on HSN. I'm basically a shy person and an introvert. If you had said to me 10 to 20 years ago that I would be selling products on television, I would have told you that you were crazy. The first time that I had to do it, I was totally terrified. I said a little little prayer asking my mom to help me out. But it's a great thing. It's the perfect example of when you step outside of your comfort zone and you do something that makes you more comfortable. In the end it turned out to be great.

What was at stake for you? How did you overcome the fear?

I was nervous about messing up. I was nervous because it was live and you can't start over again. I was nervous that people wouldn't relate to me. The people that I saw doing this have been doing it for a really long time. I thought, how do you practice? But usually when I'm in situations like that I have to think about why I'm there. Most of the time I'm there because I'm supposed to be there. I didn't get there because I forced my way in or pushed my way in. I could see the stars align, if you will. And the door opened and even though I was afraid, all that I actually had to do was walk through the door. In the grand scheme of things that's not terribly difficult to do. It would be much more difficult to bang on the door, convince someone to open the door, pave the way, build the door. I just had to walk.

Related: You Need to Meet Your Challenges With Pathological Optimism at Every Turn

What personal traits or strategies do you depend on to create opportunity for yourself and for others?

When you're in a difficult moment, you can get lost in that moment and that moment can feel like forever. It can feel like there's no way out. I always have to remind myself this too shall pass because I've been through this more than once.

I sometimes hear my mother's voice in my head because my mother was diagnosed at the age of 22 with an illness called polymyositis. It's a neurovascular disease, but the way that it manifested in my mom was she had difficulty with her legs. They would cramp up, they weren't very strong. If she sat down and crossed her legs, she actually lifted one leg over the other. She couldn't pick it up off the floor and just cross it. But if you didn't know her and you didn't know that that was part of her reality, you didn't know. Because she didn't focus on it. She didn't complain about it. She didn't talk about it and she lived her life to the best of her ability with it. She was like this constant example.

You can have something wrong with you. But you can still function, you can still live, you can still be strong, you can still be powerful. It's not that you're ignoring that there is something wrong with you, you're just not letting it be the primary focus. So when I'm in difficult situations I remember that I came from her and I might not feel it right there in that moment but I'm stronger than I think I am.

When you experience a setback, what do you do to keep going? How do you get unstuck?

I allow myself time to mourn or grieve. Sometimes you don't have that luxury. I know it sounds weird but you kind of have to postpone that mourning and grieving. When appropriate I allow myself the release of crying. I used to think that crying meant that you were weak and that there was something wrong with it. But energy manifests in different ways. Some people cry or laugh or yell, but you can't keep them bottled up. You have to release it, you have to let it go. When appropriate I let it go so that it doesn't hurt me by keeping it inside.

Once I've done those two things then I'm able to look at the situation. What could I have done differently if anything? Did I do anything to contribute to what occurred and what is a lesson that I need to learn from this? Most of the time it just is what it is and it's the cycle of life. It has ups and downs. The goal is to learn as much you can but not let it consume you and not let it defeat you the next time.

Related: Why You Have the Wrong Idea About Who Is a Great Mentor

People who want to advocate for themselves dont know always know how. What are actionable steps they can take to make themselves heard? What steps do you take?

I've been in situations where I needed to negotiate but I didn't know how to negotiate. I was afraid of negotiating and I was afraid that negotiating [would make] the deal go away. So I didn't negotiate. The next time I needed to negotiate, I was able to talk to a lawyer, talk to a banker who is a friend of mine, and say OK, I don't want to accept this as it is. I feel like there is room to negotiate. What's the best way for me to do it because I really don't want to piss anyone off? I really don't want to come across as being a difficult person.

The advice that was given to me at that time was really pretty brilliant. They said, it's a good deal but if you feel that you need those two extra points, they're not egregious. You're within your right to ask for them. I would present it in such a way that they understand that this is what makes you happier, able to function on the task at hand better, and not that it's a deal breaker.

It was a good perspective for me because then I said OK I'm not being cheated. That fear you have of, are they low-balling me because I'm a woman or because I'm African American. To hear that it was fair took that emotion right off the table. It's gone, it's not in my way. I was able to go into that negotiation very calmly, feeling confident and feeling fair and I actually got what I asked for and now because of that positive experience, if I have to negotiate I understand how to go about it and how to navigate it.

Related: You Must Ask Yourself This Question Before You Pitch Your Idea

Has there been a counterintuitive or surprising way you've opened doors for yourself?

I've opened doors for myself by being somewhere and not knowing that six months or a year down the road that it was going to lead to this other thing. In the moment being there was difficult and being there didn't make a whole bunch of sense. But there was something in my gut that said you've got to do this. Then you realize later the chain of events that led you to that point. You trace it back to that moment two years ago. When you went to that dumb party when it was raining and you had a cold and shouldn't have been out. But because you were there, you met that person, you had a great conversation. You connected and then a year and a half later she remembered you and whispered your name to the person who needed to hear it and you ended up on The Oprah Winfrey Show. That is honest to God a true story.

Was there a blind spot that you had about leadership and opportunity you worked to change within yourself?

When we started to have a chief financial officer, an operating person and a packaging person -- people that had five to 15 years in the beauty business, I said to myself, I need to be collaborative because these people know a lot more than I do. I don't want to be the leader in the room who really doesn't know what she's talking about. What I discovered after years of doing that was I had lost my voice in my own brand.

I learned that I needed to be OK with sitting at the head of the table and be OK with leading even though I didn't have all the answers. I had to be OK with being uncomfortable but that I knew the answers to the most important questions. Everything else I could learn. But the DNA of the brand, that wasn't something that somebody could learn, that was something that was really within me.

Related:

This Introverted Entrepreneur With an Oprah-Approved Brand Shares How to Rise Above Fear to Embrace Every Opportunity

10 of the Richest Women in History

Eight Surefire Ways To Tackle The Office Mansplainer



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com

NEWTOWN  Almost three years after a Newtown man went missing, his family and investigators still wonder what happened to him, according to a documentary series that featured his story this week.

The show, Disappeared, explored the story of Robert Hoagy Hoagland, a 50-year-old father of three who vanished the day before he was supposed to pick up his wife at the airport. It aired Monday night on Investigation Discovery.

It is still unknown whether Hoagland walked away from his life or was a victim of foul play. But the 43-minute documentary, which includes interviews with Hoaglands family and friends, recounts his meeting a few days before he disappeared with some shady men his son claimed had stolen the familys computers.

Were wondering just like everyone else, Where did Mr. Hoagland go? Newtown Police Lt. Richard Robinson told the network. This whole case is incredibly frustrating. and as frustrating as it is for us, I can imagine its 100 times more for the family.

Hoaglands wife, Lori, was returning from a two-week trip to Turkey on July 29, 2013, when she realized he had disappeared. One day earlier, Robert Hoagland had had breakfast with his son Max, played online Scrabble and paid some bills before going outside to mow the lawn, according to witness and family accounts.

Hoagland later stopped the mower and told his son he was going out for a few hours. He left behind his car, his keys, his wallet and cell phone.

Invesigators learned that he had gone to a local bagel shop and then filled his car at a gas station on Church Hill Road, where he also bought a map of the eastern United States, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

Reported sightings of Hoagland were investigated in Brookfield, Rhode Island and Putnam County, N.Y., but he was never found.

Robinson said Max Hoagland, who struggled with drug addiction, had brought two of the familys laptops to an abandoned building in Bridgeport the same week he went missing. Robert Hoagland, who suspected the laptops were either stolen or sold in exchange for drugs, confronted the men inside an old factory where they were known to spend time, Robinson said.

The men denied stealing the computers and police found no evidence linking them to Hoaglands disappearance, according to police.

Another suspicious incident was also found to be unrelated to the case. The day after the disappearance, Max Hoagland was arrested in Bridgeport on a charge of misdemeanor trespass. He told police he was looking to buy drugs, but police said theres no evidence his activities or associations had anything to do with his fathers disappearance.

When police examined Robert Hoaglands work computer, they found he had repeatedly searched an address in Rhode Island. The address was investigated, but it was just another dead end, Robinson said.

Police also examined Hoaglands personal computer, but they were frustrated by a program designed to clear out all internet searches. The program had been downloaded within a month before his disappearance.

Lori Hoagland, a culinary arts teacher at Newtown High School, told the network that her husband, a professional chef, had left the restaurant business to spend more time with his family and was working at a friends law office in Bridgeport. He was also concerned with his sons substance abuse and had been planning to take him on a trip.

He wouldnt leave his kids, absolutely not, Dave Smith, one of Hoaglands friends, told the network. I know he didnt take off on his kids.

Lori Hoagland said the worst part of her husbands disappearance is not to have him around for family gatherings or to see their sons get married.

I miss my husband desperately, she said, but I mourn the things that were not going to get to experience as a couple.

noliveira@newstimes.com, 203-731-3411, @olivnelsonMan killed brutally in Daulatpur

Kushtia Correspondent :

A gang of confirmed criminals killed a local trader over previous enmity at Kazipara of Moubaria village under Daulatpur upazila in the district on Friday night.

The deceased has been identified as Kazi Enamul Haque, 50, son of late Kazi Shamser Ali, from Kazipara of the Khalishakundi union under the upazila.

The incident of murder took place at 8.30pm, and waves of grief and pain flooded the whole village.

On the other hand, the killing gang belongs to Purba Bangla Communist Party (ML Lal Pataka) of regional leader Amirul Islam.

Witnesses said, late Kazi Shamser Ali's son Enamul Haque was conversing with local people in front of the

Kazipara Mosque. Just then criminal Amirul Islam and his gang reached there and begun to abuse Enamul.

As he protested it, Amirul and his accomplices started chopping Enamul with country-made weapons randomly. The deceased's bowel came out.

This was not the end of the cruelty. One of the gang-members named Fazlur Rahman Fazu pushed his dragger into Enamul body to ensure the death.

Witnesses also identified Ashiqur Rahman, Pintu, Ruhul Amin, Abdul Mannan, Nazrul, Kalam, Mahbub, Nannu and Palan who also took part in Enamul killing.

But the armed gang left the spot safety as none dared intercept them.

On information, police recovered the body from the scene and sent to Kushtia General Health Complex for autopsy.

A case (no-36) has been filed in this connection with Daulatpur Police Station on Saturday evening.

None was arrested in this connection.

Confirming the matter, Officer-in-Charge Md Shah Darakhan said, "Police have been sent to the village to arrest the criminals."

According to locals, the outlaw Amirul was accused in several cases, including murders, abduction and extortion.

He was the prime accused in the murders of Delemal, Rafique and Intaz Ali.

The murder incidents took place in the village in 1986, 2004 and 2008.SHELTON-As the state grapples with a growing deficit and looks to impose new taxes and fees on its residents, this citys mayor is promising a 10th year of no tax increase.

Instead Mayor Mark Lauretti is recommending a slight reduction in the citys mill rate from 22.21 to 22.15 while proposing a $124,092,800 budget up slightly from last years $123,308,705.

In doing so, Lauretti, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, could not refrain from taking a shot at the Democratic governor.

Three years ago Gov. (Dannel) Malloy said he will not sign a budget balanced on the backs of education and municiplaities, Sheltons 14-term mayor said. Thats a story thats been going on for three years. Well thats exactly what hes proposed again.

Lauretti said he believes people are creatures of habit.

Did anyone think Dannel Malloy would act differently as governor as he did as Stamfords mayor? Lauretti asked I will tell you we would have Pitney Bowes corporate headquarters here if the governor didnt give them corporate perks.

The mayors proposal marks the start of the budget season here. Beginning next week the Board of Apportionment and Taxation will conduct a series of joint meetings with the Board of Aldermen in hearing from department heads. Once that ends, the tax board will present its proposed budget to the Board of Alderman by April 26. The Aldermen will review it,tinker with it and vote on a final budget around May 31.

There might be some changes, Lauretti said. There usually are but in the end it will I believe be close to what I proposed.

Some of the keys to the mill rate reduction were the $22 million growth in the Grand List and $450,000 in new revenue, maintained Paul Hiller, the citys finance director who previously served as Fairfields chief financial officer before coming to Shelton in 2012..

We have lower indebtedness than virtually any other town,Hiller said.

He said the citys debt service payments were reduced from $11,791,254 to $10,886,542. Lease payments for the school buses dropped from $1,148,457 to $15,901 and on fire communications apparatus from $313,220 to zero.

My notes (bonds) are five years and ten years not 20 and 25 years, Lauretti said. Ask the municipal leaders in Bridgeport, Danbury and Trumbull (all of whom are seeking gubernatorial nominations)are they doing five and 10 year bonds? The quicker you retire debt the sooner you can put on additional debt without raising taxes

Still Lauretti lamented that the state could play a role in his budget.. He said no one knows when theyll set their budget, how much theyll fund municipalities or education and whether theyll make cities and towns bear the teacher pension fund costs.

All those are major impediments to municipalities who must guess on state funding while being limited in revenue raising and mandated to set mill rates and budgets by June 1, the mayor said..

I think the mayor pulled a rabbit out of his hat, said John Anglace, the longtime Board of Aldermen president. I thought he was very generous to the Board of Education.

Still the mayors $72.7 million offer to the Board of Education fell about $1.6 million less than what they asked for by their $74.7 million request.

Lauretti said the differences between their request and his proposal can be an issue until the cows come home.

Enrollment is down 1,000 students in the last 10 years, Lauretti said. Thats not insignificant.

Anglace said hes heard rumblings that the state intends to reduce the citys Educational Cost Sharing grant by $830,000. Lauretti budgeted $5,341,987 coming to the city.

If it (the reduction happens) I dont know what were going to do, Anglace said.

The state also did away with the $254,322 kicked back to Shelton from the Elderly Homeowner Tax Relief program.

Thats not a good message to send to seniors, Anglace said.President Donald J. Trump recently announced a three-pronged plan to battle the opioid epidemic during a visit to a New Hampshire community college. While its a positive step, some experts say its not enough.

Trumps plan focuses on further limiting over-prescription of opioid medications, expanding opportunities for treatment through betting funding from the federal government and reducing the supply of illicit drugs with tougher criminal penalties.

What it doesnt address is the role of families and support systems play in a persons recovery and overall prevention, said Diana Clark, family outreach specialist at New Haven-based Turnbridge Addiction Treatment Center. Her work emphasizes engaging families in the recovery process of addiction treatment and recovery.

The family involvement has not been addressed by the plan, Clark said. If (the family members) arent changing their perspective (on addiction), the odds of a person coming back and being healthy are so much less. It is not just a health epidemic; it is a culture epidemic were seeing.

Roughly 25 million people in the U.S. are suffering from addiction disorders, she said, and for every one person thats addicted, theres four other people affected by it, which means about 100,000 million are feeling the impact. And those people are engaging in patterns that dont promote recovery or (they) protect the disease. They promote comfort and the disease doesnt get treated.

When Trumps plan mentions expanding access to evidence-based addiction treatment, it doesnt specify what the treatment entails or how it will come about. In putting forth messages about the opioid epidemic, it is important for that message to be clear, with specific, measurable goals that take into account the various factors that have contributed to the epidemic, Laura Willis, Quinnipiac University assistant professor of health and strategic communication, said in an email.

Specifically, what works is long-term treatment, involving peer and family support, Clark said. But certain socioeconomic classes cant afford long-term private treatment and also dont qualify for Medicaid that could provide treatment resources. It is that middle bracket that is really struggling, she said. And we need to be able to reach everybody.

We need long term, more robust, more emphasis on the whole person than just stop using drugs, she said. Until we address that human as more than just a person that takes drugs, that they have psychological issues that need to be addressed, we continue to have a problem.

The plan seeks to reduce drug demand through a sizable awareness campaign and prevent over prescribing by cutting nationwide opioid prescription fills by one-third within three years. The prescription of opioid medications has been declining since 2010, but overdose death rates continue to climb. While some argue dramatically reducing prescriptions could have unintended consequence of pushing people to seek out more dangerous, illegal drugs, maybe in conjunction with improving access to treatment, the strategy can be effective, Clark said.

My hope is there would be enough treatment to address the addiction issue as theyre tapering people off opioids, she said. This is an attempt to not create future addicts and thats really important. I dont know if it would increase illicit drug use. One piece at a time doesnt address the issue. It would be less effective to only reduce opioids...There are a lot of elements that need to be addressed.

The positive aspects of the plan include the administrations support of widening the availability of the overdose-reversal drug naloxone and increasing access to addiction treatment medication, such as naltrexone (a drug that reduces opiate cravings), Willis said. But there are more possible medications that can be used to treat opioid addiction than naltrexone, so the plans focus on this one medication is limiting.

Trump also emphasized the need for harsher law enforcement for the people selling illicit opioids, calling for the death penalty in some cases. Willis said this effort will be ineffective at combatting the opioid epidemic at best and a distracting use of resources at worst.

If we could have law enforcement be part of the conversation of addiction being a disease and not a crime, we could make a difference, Clark said, especially if police help connect those suffering from addiction to treatment rather than prison. I dont necessarily condemn the idea that there needs to be some law enforcement, but I think the best use for law enforcement would use law enforcement to connect people with treatment.

Trumps plan does include a provision that supports local drug courts providing offenders struggling with addiction access to evidence-based treatment as an alternative to or in conjunction with incarceration, or as a condition of supervised release, according to the White Houses fact sheet.SHELTON-As the state grapples with a growing deficit and looks to impose new taxes and fees on its residents, this city's mayor is promising a 10th year of no tax increase.

Instead Mayor Mark Lauretti is recommending a slight reduction in the city's mill rate from 22.21 to 22.15 while proposing a $124,092,800 budget up slightly from last year's $123,308,705.

In doing so, Lauretti, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, could not refrain from taking a shot at the Democratic governor.

"Three years ago Gov. (Dannel) Malloy said he will not sign a budget balanced on the backs of education and municiplaities," Shelton's 14-term mayor said. "That's a story that's been going on for three years. Well that's exactly what he's proposed again."

Lauretti said he believes "people are creatures of habit."

"Did anyone think Dannel Malloy would act differently as governor as he did as Stamford's mayor?" Lauretti asked "I will tell you we would have Pitney Bowes' corporate headquarters here if the governor didn't give them corporate perks."

The mayor's proposal marks the start of the budget season here. Beginning next week the Board of Apportionment and Taxation will conduct a series of joint meetings with the Board of Aldermen in hearing from department heads. Once that ends, the tax board will present its proposed budget to the Board of Alderman by April 26. The Aldermen will review it,tinker with it and vote on a final budget around May 31.

"There might be some changes," Lauretti said. "There usually are but in the end it will I believe be close to what I proposed."

Some of the keys to the mill rate reduction were the $22 million growth in the Grand List and $450,000 in new revenue, maintained Paul Hiller, the city's finance director who previously served as Fairfield's chief financial officer before coming to Shelton in 2012..

"We have lower indebtedness than virtually any other town,"Hiller said.

He said the city's debt service payments were reduced from $11,791,254 to $10,886,542. Lease payments for the school buses dropped from $1,148,457 to $15,901 and on fire communications apparatus from $313,220 to zero.

"My notes (bonds) are five years and ten years not 20 and 25 years," Lauretti said. "Ask the municipal leaders in Bridgeport, Danbury and Trumbull (all of whom are seeking gubernatorial nominations)-are they doing five and 10 year bonds? The quicker you retire debt the sooner you can put on additional debt without raising taxes"

Still Lauretti lamented that the state could play a role in his budget.. He said no one knows when they'll set their budget, how much they'll fund municipalities or education and whether they'll make cities and towns bear the teacher pension fund costs.

All those are major impediments to municipalities who must guess on state funding while being "limited in revenue raising" and "mandated to set mill rates and budgets' by June 1, the mayor said..

"I think the mayor pulled a rabbit out of his hat," said John Anglace, the longtime Board of Aldermen president. "I thought he was very generous to the Board of Education."

Still the mayor's $72.7 million offer to the Board of Education fell about $1.6 million less than what they asked for by their $74.7 million request.

Lauretti said the differences between their request and his proposal "can be an issue until the cows come home.

"Enrollment is down 1,000 students in the last 10 years," Lauretti said. "That's not insignificant."

Anglace said he's heard rumblings that the state intends to reduce the city's Educational Cost Sharing grant by $830,000. Lauretti budgeted $5,341,987 coming to the city.

"If it (the reduction happens) I don't know what we're going to do," Anglace said.

The state also did away with the $254,322 kicked back to Shelton from the Elderly Homeowner Tax Relief program.

"That's not a good message to send to seniors," Anglace said.WALLINGFORD  An 18-year-old student at High Roads School has been charged with threatening, a police press release said.

Wallingford police arrested Dikyree Oliver, 100 Lee Ave., Bridgeport, at the school Friday after an investigation into events that happened Monday. Officers found that Oliver had come to school that day with the intention of throwing juice at several school officials, according to the release. Oliver had indeed thrown cranberry juice on all of them, the release said.WASHINGTON - In case you needed reminding that the 2020 election is just around the corner, two 70-something men got into a war of words this week over physically beating each other up. These two men just happened to be the current president and the most recent vice president.

I'm loath to over-analyze the verbal bout between President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden, mostly because it's dumb and doesn't really mean much.

VOTING IMPACT: Census citizenship question could shift power to rural America

But if anything, it shows the premium on being as anti-Trump as possible in the 2020 Democratic primary - so much so that a respected former vice president decided this was how he needed to make a name for himself. Biden apparently didn't get enough attention when he said the same thing back in 2016, so he said it again.

And then there's Trump, who often seems only so happy to give Democrats like Biden the profile-raising feuds they crave. He's serving notice that most every time one of these potential 2020 Democrats tries one of these stunts, he'll happily stunt right back.

It's a recipe for plenty of manufactured political fights over the next two years. Buckle up.

TRUMP VS OPRAH: Social media weighs in on the 2020 contest

For now, here's our quarterly breakdown of the top 15 potential 2020 Democratic nominees, in ascending order.

Worth watching: Former HUD secretary Julian Castro, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Dwayne Johnson (yes, that one).

15. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock:

If Democrats want pragmatism over anything else, they'd struggle to do better than Bullock. A two-term governor of red Montana, he won reelection by four points in 2016 even as Trump was carrying his state by 21. Bullock's main problem is that he's probably too moderate at a time when the party seems anxious for liberalism. But he's interested enough to make a stop in Iowa. (Previous ranking: N/A)

14. Oprah Winfrey:

OK. After plenty of conflicting signals, Oprah says she's out. She said running isn't in her "spirit" or her "DNA." "If God actually wanted me to run, wouldn't God kind of tell me? And I haven't heard that," she said last month. I still have a difficult time dismissing this completely, though, given she seemed awfully intrigued by the idea. And people's minds do change. If she ran, she'd have an instant base. (Previous ranking: 11)

13. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu:

Here's a sleeper for you. The mayor has gotten plaudits for his stewardship of the Big Easy and his compelling speaking style, sometimes earning comparisons to another Southern Democrat by the name of Bill Clinton. Anyone unfamiliar with Landrieu should read about his May 2017 speech on race. He downplayed the possibility of running for president this week, though, telling Trevor Noah, "You never say never," but "at the moment, I can't see a pathway." (Previous: N/A)

12. Former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder:

This is one of the more intriguing possibilities - and one that appears to suddenly be real. Holder said recently when asked about running for president, "Well see." "I think I'll make a decision by the end of the year about whether there is another chapter in my government service," he said. But this might just be Holder trying to build buzz around his role in helping Democrats avoid another redistricting disaster after the 2020 Census. That effort, after all, stands to be very busy in 2019 and 2020. (Previous: N/A)

11. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo:

Cuomo has more immediate concerns right now, with a newly announced primary challenge from former "Sex and the City" star Cynthia Nixon. (I'm told she played a character named Miranda, but I couldn't be sure since I definitely never watched the show.) Nixon has never run for office, but Cuomo has always had problems on his left, and he won his 2014 primary with just 62 percent of the vote. Cuomo has never really signaled any presidential aspirations, and Nixon will at least give him a headache during a time in which other hopefuls are staffing up and strategizing. (Previous: 10)

10. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown:

Brown's reelection hopes appeared to improve earlier this year when his rematch opponent, state Treasurer Josh Mandel, pulled out of the race due to his wife's health. Rep. James B. Renacci is now in the race on the GOP side, but Brown will be tough to beat in this environment. If he won, like Cuomo he'd have to pretty quickly turn his attention to 2020. (Previous: 9)

9. Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick:

Patrick has been off pretty much everybody's radar since leaving office in 2015, but he said recently that running for president is on his. "I am trying to think through 2020, and that's a decision I'm trying to think through from a personal and family point of view and also whether what I believe is going to be on offer by somebody," he said earlier this month. For a guy who has shown little appetite for running, that's something. (Previous: 12)

8. Former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe:

I've been skeptical of McAuliffe's chances, mostly because of his brief tenure as a politician (only four years as governor, after many years behind the scenes) and his ties to the Clintons at a time when the Democratic Party probably wants to turn the page. But he sure seems like he'll run, saying last month, "Who better to take on Trump than me?" (Previous: 14)

7. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy:

Murphy said in late 2017 that he wouldn't run, but he sounded less definitive earlier this month, saying merely that he had "no plans to run." He also said he "can't imagine leaving the Senate until I've gotten a victory on this issue of gun violence." Momentum for large-scale action after the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, seems to have dissipated, though, and Murphy may be asking himself whether he could do more as president. (Previous: 7)

6. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand:

The formerly moderate Democrat took another step toward the left this week, telling The Nation that she supports a federal job guarantee. That wasn't even something Bernie Sanders was talking about two years ago. (Previous: 4)

5. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker:

Booker may have the highest upside on this whole list, and he sure looks like he's ramping up. But his angry, eyes-bulging scene at a hearing after Trump's "shithole countries" comment felt a little forced. (Previous: 6)

4. California Sen. Kamala D. Harris:

Harris is making the kind of visits you'd expect from a 2020 hopeful, including to Nevada a couple weeks back -- her first early-state visit. She is also headed to Michigan soon, got profiled in Vogue (featuring lots of praise from her colleagues) and is shopping a book. And if there's anything that goes hand-in-hand with a book, it's running for president. (Previous: 5)

3. Former vice president Joe Biden:

For everything you need to know about Biden's tangle with Trump this week, read The Post's Dan Balz. (Previous: 2)

2. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren:

It escaped many people's notice given it came a few hours before the tragedy in Parkland, but last month Warren delivered the clearest signal yet that she might run for president. It was a well-crafted speech about her claim to Native American heritage, and it took direct aim at Trump for his "Pocahontas" nickname. It all seemed destined for a stump in Polk County. A sampling: "No one - not even the president of the United States - will ever take that part of me away." (Previous: 3)

1. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Another list; another Bernie at the top. Until he signals he may not run or gets into some real trouble, Sanders has the best chance. But that doesn't mean he's get great odds. Given we could see 15 or even 20 serious candidates, I don't see the front-runner having any more than a 20-25 percent chance of winning. And if things started today, that's where I'd put Sanders. (Previous: 1)Every year in January, the pope welcomes and addresses the ambassadors accredited to the Vatican. The American ambassador to the Holy See is Callista Gingrich, wife of former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

This year Pope Francis chose to devote the meeting to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948, because this year marks the 70th anniversary of this most important document.

We Americans can be very proud of Eleanor Roosevelt whom President Truman appointed as a delegate to the United Nations in 1947. When the commission was formed to draft the Universal Declaration, she was unanimously elected its chairperson.

The Declaration recognizes the inherent dignity and the equality and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. (from the preamble) It thus removes all barriers that divide the human family and favors what Catholic social doctrine calls integral human development, meaning the development of each human being in all our aspects and humanity as a whole.

Francis notes how painful it is to see how many fundamental rights continue to be violated today. First among all of these is the right of every human person to life, liberty and personal security. It is not only war or violence that infringes these rights. In our day there are more subtle means; I think primarily of innocent children discarded even before they are born, unwanted at times simply because they are ill or malformed, or as a result of the selfishness of adults.

I think of the elderly who are often cast aside, especially when viewed as a burden. I think of women who repeatedly suffer from violence and oppression, even within their own families. I think too of the victims of human trafficking, violating the prohibition of every form of slavery. How many persons, especially those fleeing from poverty and war, have fallen prey to such commerce perpetrated by unscrupulous individuals?

He then focuses on the right to health care of each and every human being as well as research and development of medicines and treatments that are essential for saving human lives even though these may not be profitable.

He then asks how can there be integral human development when the proliferation of weapons clearly aggravates situations of conflict and entails enormous human and material costs that undermine development and the search for lasting peace?

In this context, he applauds the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as an important step in favor of disarmament that can lead to ending the use of armed force in dealing with international conflicts.

The last of his points I want to highlight is the right to freedom of thought, conscience and of religion  Sad to say, the right of religious freedom is often disregarded and not infrequently leads to the marginalization and persecution of believers.

Is it possible to achieve these goals? Yes, because of the virtue of hope that moves all people of good will to do what we can to bring them to fruition. He likens this to the builders of the majestic cathedrals throughout Europe. People undertook the arduous task of constructing them even though many knew that they would not see the finished project. Yet they worked diligently knowing they were a part of a project that would be left for their children to enjoy. May the Lord keep this same hope alive in our hearts.Moudud accuses govt of misleading people

BNP senior leader Moudud Ahmed on Saturday alleged that the government is talking about the country's graduation to a developing one only to hide its failures by misleading people.

"The country's people want to see democratic practice and restoration of their rights. As long as it won't happen the developing country will be considered as only a label nothing else," he said.

Speaking at a discussion, he further said, "They (govt) are telling people that the country has got the recognition of a developing country only to divert their attention to a different direction from the crucial issues and their failures."

Khaleda Zia Mukti Parishad organised the programme at the Jatiya Press Club seeking BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia's release from jail.

Moudud, a BNP standing committee member, also said talking about development in a country where there is no rule of law and the independence of the judiciary is nothing but deceiving people.

He said the condition of some Awami League leaders and their men has drastically improved as they made huge money through corruption and plundering. "But the poor people's condition remains unchanged."

The BNP leader said there is point of talking about development here as the country has engulfed by corruption, misrule and unemployment due to corruption.March 23, 2018 Kim Coons , 706-866-9241

Fort Oglethorpe, GA: On Saturday, April 14, at 2 pm, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park will provide a special 90-minute driving/walking tour following General John B. Hoods famous Texas Brigade. This tour begins at the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center.



Hoods Texas Brigade is one of the more storied units of the American Civil War. During Chickamauga, its soldiers were engaged in some of the bloodiest fighting witnessed on the battlefield. This walk will cover the actions of this renowned unit in a part of the battle that one young Texan recalled as The Meanest, Most Unsatisfactory placein the whole war. It will also provide a glimpse into the lives of the men who made up this hard hitting organization.



Please make sure to bring a bottle of water and comfortable walking shoes, as the walk will be about one mile in length.



For more information about upcoming programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, please 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DAKAR, Senegal  The president of Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, was shot and wounded while returning home from a country weekend on Saturday evening in what his spokesman said Sunday was an accidental shooting by a nervous soldier.

That explanation was echoed by the official Mauritanian news agency on its Web site, and by the wounded president himself in a halting televised declaration on the state broadcaster from his military hospital bed, shortly before being flown to Paris for further treatment on Sunday.

But the shooting took place in a fraught regional context in which Mr. Abdel Aziz, a former general who seized power in a 2008 coup and was later elected, is one of the few leaders to have successfully fought Al Qaedas local franchise, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, on the battlefield. The group, which now controls northern Mali, has previously declared the Mauritanian president a sworn enemy.

In addition, Mr. Abdel Aziz presides over a desert nation of chronic political instability, two coups detat since 2005 and armed vigilance against the Al Qaeda faction. The militant group, in turn, is now under pressure as nations in West Africa have vowed to dislodge it by force from Mali, a pledge given preliminary approval by the United Nations Security Council last week.Each week, the Open Thread newsletter will offer a look from across The New York Times at the forces that shape the dress codes we share, with Vanessa Friedman as your personal shopper. The latest newsletter appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here.

Hello, Open Thread!

Vanessa is off in Wyoming this week, enjoying a well-deserved break after the mania of fashion month. The first day of spring was on Tuesday, and its been slow to come to Wyoming: Look at all that snow. Not that we have anything to brag about in New York. Another snowstorm made its belated way in on Wednesday, delaying the subways, shutting down the schools. Me? I made like Fifth Harmony and worked from home.

So maybe its just cabin fever and a winter that seems never-ending, but Im dreaming of being anywhere but here. Someplace where I dont need snow boots for a coffee run, maybe; or, if Im thinking bigger, somewhere magical and not quite of this world.

Like the reborn Dapper Dans boutique in Harlem, where Dap  Daniel Day, the legendary tailor and bootleg couturier  has reopened his old shop; this week, my colleague Val Safronova took us on a video tour.As part of his testimony, Mr. Singh said on Thursday that he had also improperly raised money for Mr. de Blasio in order to win better terms for a lease on the Waters Edge, his restaurant on city-owned property in Queens. Earlier this year, Mr. de Blasio said that he was thoroughly looked at by investigators, and that there were no charges brought because there was nothing there. On Friday, both the citys Law Department and Mr. de Blasios personal lawyer declined to comment on the prospect of him being called as a witness.

If, however, Mr. de Blasio does get a subpoena, he would not be the first big-city mayor to be asked to testify at a federal court proceeding. In 2016, two Chicago police officers sought to compel testimony from Mayor Rahm Emanuel after Mr. Emanuel spoke about his Police Departments so-called code of silence in a speech to the Chicago City Council.

Lawyers for the city tried to block the court appearance, arguing that Mr. Emanuel was busy at City Hall and had no actual and unique knowledge of the case. They contended that it was absurd to suggest that the mayor of the third largest city in the United States should be required to testify in a case of which he has no personal knowledge.

Nonetheless, a federal judge ruled against them and ordered Mr. Emanuel to testify. It never happened, though, because the case was settled before it went to trial.

In a similar situation, a group of black firefighters who were suing New York City for racial discrimination asked a federal judge in 2009 for permission to depose Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in their case. The judge, Nicholas G. Garaufis, sided with the firefighters and allowed the deposition, ruling that Mr. Bloomberg had direct personal knowledge of the matter and that his testimony would not significantly interfere with his management of city business.

But mayors  in New York City and elsewhere  have only rarely appeared as witnesses at criminal proceedings. In 1988, Mayor Edward I. Koch took the stand as a prosecution witness at the federal bribery trial of Bess Myerson, his onetime cultural affairs commissioner. Ms. Myerson stood accused of trying to influence a judge in the divorce case of her married boyfriend, Carl A. Capasso, a millionaire sewer contractor. Fidgeting and sighing, Mr. Koch showed up in court and told the jury he had no recollection of the matter. Ms. Myerson was eventually acquitted.

Last year, lawyers for the Lake Boyz, a group of gang members in Fort Myers, Fla., issued a subpoena to the citys mayor, Randy Henderson, trying to force him to testify about policing practices at their trial. But the subpoena was quashed by the citys chief lawyer, Grant Alley, who successfully argued to a judge that the citys manager, not its mayor, was in charge of the police.

Mr. Alley, however, noted that things might turn out differently for Mr. de Blasio.

In a criminal case, you have to err on the side of the rights of the criminal defendant, he said. If a mayor has relevant information related to a theory of defense, it will be difficult to shield that mayor from a protective order."Lawrence K. Grossman, who as president of PBS doubled the length of the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, its signature news program, then headed NBC News, where he dealt unhappily with budget austerity after it came under General Electrics ownership, died on Friday at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 86.

His granddaughter Rebecca Grossman-Cohen said he had Parkinsons disease and oral cancer.

Mr. Grossman, a former advertising executive, transformed PBS over eight years. Despite his initial reluctance to spend the required money, PBS became the first broadcast network to deliver its programming by satellite.

He expanded the influence of the MacNeil/Lehrer program by lengthening it to an hour, from a half-hour, and started the Frontline documentary series as well as the 13-part series Vietnam: A Television History (1983).

I have never been more optimistic, Mr. Grossman told The Christian Science Monitor in October 1983, shortly before he was hired by NBC. PBS, despite reduced funding, is coming into a golden age of programming with probably its best season starting this month.It was Day 2 of a free, three-day gun training class in Rittman for K-12 public school employees offered by the Buckeye Firearms Association, an Ohio-based gun rights organization. Most attendees were from Ohio schools. Some worked for school districts that were already arming teachers; others hoped to persuade their schools to do so. Many were attending in secret and did not want their employers to know they were there. I was there as a co-producer of the forthcoming documentary film G Is for Gun: The Arming of Teachers in America. Over the past three years, Ive met dozens of teachers, administrators, secretaries, custodians, bus drivers and school nurses in Ohio willing to carry a gun at work and respond with force against an active shooter.Zimbabwe investigates Grace Mugabe for illegal ivory smuggling

Al Jazeera News :

Zimbabwe has launched an investigation into the country's former first lady, Grace Mugabe, over her alleged involvement in an ivory smuggling ring.

The probe was opened after a three-month undercover mission by Australian wildlife photographer Adrian Steirn. Speaking exclusively to Al Jazeera, Steirn said he uncovered the poaching and smuggling syndicate when he began looking into the illegal ivory trade in December.

"Ivory was being sourced either from the national park's vault, being thieved or pilfered, or from live elephants being killed by poaching syndicates. The syndicate would then sell to Grace Mugabe's clientele," he said.

"She would then be able to pack that and send it out through the airport. Anything through that airport, that was the property of the first lady, was not searched or scanned in any way." Steirn has gathered documents, undercover videos and testimonies, which he showed to Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit. They expose the syndicate and the former first lady's involvement in ivory smuggling, he said.

Controlled ivory trade is allowed in Zimbabwe, but its export is not permitted.

In a written statement to Al Jazeera, Christopher Mutsvangwa, a special advisor to President Emmerson Mnangagwa, said Zimbabwe's government "will seek answers from all parties including former First Lady Grace Mugabe about their knowledge of the illegal export of prohibited items from our country."

Two alleged smugglers have been charged with possession of ivory.

Al Jazeera contacted Grace Mugabe's staff, lawyers and relatives for comment, but they did not respond.

During the presidency of her husband, Robert, she was a controversial figure, earning the nickname 'Gucci Grace' for her extravagant shopping sprees.

Her hopes of succeeding him were dashed when the army forced Mugabe from power in November, and Mnangagwa took over.

That was when Steirn saw an opening to investigate, going undercover as an ivory buyer.

Three weeks later, in December, authorities in Zimbabwe seized an illegal shipment of 200 kilograms of ivory destined for Malaysia at Harare's Robert Mugabe International Airport.

Steirn said the evidence he gathered connects that shipment to Grace Mugabe and the smuggling syndicate.

Al Jazeera's Malcom Webb, reporting from Johannesburg, said Mnangagwa's government was keen "to clean up its international image after decades of Mugabe rule".

"The poaching and smuggling investigation is the first major challenge to the Mugabe family dynasty since the change of power," he said.In 1994, John Bolton said that if the United Nations Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldnt make a bit of difference. The quote makes an appearance nearly every time Boltons critics compile a hit parade of his alleged infamies.

My question is: Why is the remark even controversial?

The U.N. is a never-ending scandal disguised as an everlasting hope. The hope is that dialogue can overcome distrust and collective security can be made to work in the interests of humanity. Reality says otherwise. Trust is established by deeds, not words. Collective security is a recipe for international paralysis or worse. Just ask the people of Aleppo.

As for the scandals  where to start? U.N. peacekeepers caused a cholera epidemic in Haiti that so far has taken 10,000 lives. Yet it took U.N. headquarters six years to acknowledge responsibility. An Associated Press investigation found nearly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel around the world over a 12-year period, including 300 allegations involving children. But only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time.

In Rwanda in 1994, U.N. peacekeepers all-but abandoned the country at the outset of genocide that took at least 500,000 lives. In Bosnia in 1995, U.N. peacekeepers stepped aside in Srebrenica and allowed more than 7,000 men and boys to be killed and countless women raped. Its a similar story in Sri Lanka in 2009 and South Sudan in 2016.Humphrey, who had long been the most prominent and productive liberal in the Senate  and the Democrat (other than Johnson) most responsible for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, seemingly vanished from the public eye overnight, In August 1965, the comedian and musician Tom Lehrer sang to a raucous audience, Whatever Became of You, Hubert?:

Whatever became of you, Hubert?

We miss you, so tell us, please:

Are you sad? Are you cross?

Are you gathering moss

While you wait for the boss to sneeze?

Vietnam destined Humphrey to a miserable four years as Johnsons vice president. For his dissent against the war (his disloyalty), Humphrey suffered the brunt of Johnsons unpredictable wrath. Humphreys advisers felt Johnsons intimidating, dismissive treatment was the reason Humphrey reversed his position on Vietnam a year later: why he defended the war as a necessary fight against Communism that provided jobs, hope and prosperity to suffering Vietnamese. It was his only way back into his bosss good graces.

Humphreys support for the war condemned him in history as a supporting player in the tragedy of Vietnam. The war alienated Humphrey from liberals, civil rights activists and young Americans  the same people who, for decades, had loved Humphrey for his support of racial justice, full employment and the labor movement  and ultimately cost him the presidency in 1968. Voters thought Humphrey meant continued war, while Richard Nixon promised an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.

But given what we now know the history of the Vietnam War after 1968, Hubert Humphrey  both his life and political career  deserves re-examination. Humphrey forces us to consider the history that might have been: the possibility of ending the Vietnam War before 1973, an expansion of the Great Society in the 1970s, a different America. Without Vietnam (and his being Johnsons vice president), Humphrey might have won in 1968. The country  and the world  would be drastically different.

Hubert Humphrey arrived in the Senate in 1949 as a liberal in an illiberal institution. Southerners held the reins of power in Congress, and they hated Humphrey for his opposition to Jim Crow segregation and that speech at the Democratic National Convention.

While he was determined in his quest for social justice, his legislation often stalled in committee. He gravitated toward the one man who could help him: Lyndon Johnson. By 1954, Johnson needed Humphrey too  Johnson had become Senate majority leader and wanted liberals to fall behind his leadership; Johnson concluded Humphrey was the brightest and most pragmatic of them. It was a devils bargain: Johnson helped Humphrey with his relationships with Southerners, and Humphrey vowed to keep the liberals in line.FRONT PAGE

Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about President Trumps selection of John R. Bolton to replace Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster as his national security adviser misstated the duration of a sexual relationship with Mr. Trump as described by Karen McDougal in her CNN interview. She said it lasted 10 months, not nine.

NATIONAL

Because of a production error, an article on Thursday, about attorneys general from Democratic states filing environmental lawsuits against the Trump administration, was missing two paragraphs and failed to fully identify the attorney general of West Virginia. He is Patrick Morrissey.

BUSINESS DAY

An article on Friday about new technology that could make car speakers obsolete misspelled the name of the sound system developed by Continental. It is called Ac2ated Sound, not Ac2ate Sound or Ac2uate Sound. The error was repeated in a picture caption.

SPECIAL SECTION: WEALTH

An article on Page F3 about crafting legal documents to minimize friction between individuals inheriting an estate misspells the given name of the chief wealth advisory officer at Ballentine Partners. It is Coventry Edwards-Pitt, not Covington.SAN FRANCISCO  For the past week, Mark Zuckerberg has grappled with a backlash from lawmakers, regulators and users over Facebooks mishandling of data privacy. He has also had to face another restive group: his own employees.

The Facebook chief executive has taken multiple steps over the past few days to communicate with the social networks 25,000 employees over revelations last week that a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, had improperly obtained data of 50 million Facebook users.

The Silicon Valley company held a staff meeting on Tuesday to answer questions about Cambridge Analytica, featuring one of Facebooks lawyers, Paul Grewal. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Zuckerberg addressed employees directly, according to two Facebook employees who asked not be identified because the proceedings were confidential. Mr. Zuckerberg also spoke with staff on Friday at a regularly scheduled employee meeting, said two people who attended the event.

Facebook declined to comment on the meetings.

Speaking to Facebooks employees was a crucial prong of what has become an apology tour of sorts for Mr. Zuckerberg over the Cambridge Analytica fallout. The revelations have raised calls for Mr. Zuckerberg to appear before Congress to explain himself, as well as a #DeleteFacebook movement and other criticism.Four members of an Iowa family whose bodies were recently found in a condominium in Mexico died of inhalation of toxic gases, the authorities said on Saturday.

Kevin Sharp, 41; his wife, Amy, 38; and their children, Sterling, 12, and Adrianna, 7, had been vacationing in Akumal, a small coastal town on the Yucatan Peninsula, the authorities said on Friday.

The state prosecutors office of Quintana Roo, where Akumal is, said on Twitter on Saturday that the cause of death was suffocation by inhalation of toxic gases, ruling out violence or suicide. The statement said investigators had not determined what type of gas was involved.

It said the four had probably died 36 to 48 hours before they were found on Friday. Local officials and firefighters inspected the room on Saturday and are preparing a report, the statement said.British investigators on Friday night searched the London offices of Cambridge Analytica, the data-analytics company that harvested data from 50 million Facebook users to develop psychological profiles on behalf of political campaigns, including that of President Trump.

About 20 investigators from Britains data watchdog, the Information Commissioners Office, descended on the companys offices on New Oxford Street after obtaining a search warrant from the High Court.

We are pleased with the decision of the judge, and the warrant is now being executed, the office of the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, said in a statement. This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data and analytics for political purposes. As you will expect, we will now need to collect, assess and consider the evidence before coming to any conclusions.

Last Saturday, the same day The New York Times and The Observer of London published a detailed look at the companys use of Facebook data, Ms. Denhams office announced an investigation into the circumstances in which Facebook data may have been illegally acquired and used.PACIFIC RIM (2013) 8 p.m. on F.X. If youre planning on seeing Pacific Rim: Uprising, (and you might want to, our critic writes), this first installment directed by Guillermo del Toro will get you acquainted with the robots-versus-monsters story. If you walk in expecting subtlety, or even novelty, you may find yourself more tormented than entertained, the Timess A. O. Scott wrote. But Pacific Rim is also a reminder  either just in time or much too late  that this kind of movie can and should be fun.

2018 KIDS CHOICE AWARDS 8 p.m. on Nickelodeon. With everything else going on in the world, viewers might take comfort in the fact that they can still tune in to watch celebrities get doused in green slime during this annual childrens film awards show. John Cena returns to host.

Whats StreamingBehold, the banana. Whod have thought it would be one of the most contentious fruits of the 1990s? It could be a spin doctors nightmare on either side of the Atlantic if a row about selling bananas sparks a multibillion-dollar trade war. Nobody with any sense wants a tit-for-tat trade war. That is a blind alley if ever I heard of one. Its a tale of how trade restrictions can trigger geopolitical feuds when countries use things like tariffs to protect their own industries. What became known as the banana wars started like this. European companies were importing fruit tax free from former colonies in places like the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific to help support their developing economies. Meanwhile, Europe had tariffs and quotas that restricted the fruit that American companies were shipping to Europe from Latin America. And that limited their access to the worlds biggest market for bananas. The U.S., together with several Latin American countries, repeatedly turned to the World Trade Organization to mediate the dispute. This case has been lost four times. But before the W.T.O. ruled that it could strike back, the U.S. announced a plan to put tariffs on European luxury goods. And that got the Europeans mad. What the Americans have done this last week is clearly unacceptable. Its illegal and its outside the system. Tensions ran high. Each side accused the others of breaking the rules. The European Union is the largest member of the W.T.O. And if you allow them to get away with not abiding by the rules, you start to chip away at that system and saying, is the W.T.O. reliable? Can we count on it? In 2009, Europe agreed to cut back its restrictions on Latin American bananas. But even disputes with a clear-cut resolution can seem to be part of a larger story. For example, what could be called the chicken wars is just one of many disputes between the U.S. and China. The Obama administration will once again take action to hold China accountable. Back in 2010, the Chinese accused the U.S. of dumping underpriced chicken onto its market. So China punished the U.S. with antidumping tariffs. The Americans went to the W.T.O. And they won. Years later, just a month after China lifted the chicken tariffs, President Trump started 2018 with a protectionist bang, widely thought to be aimed at China. He put tariffs on washing machines and solar panels, and made other threats too. It will be 25 percent for steel. It will be 10 percent for aluminum. Threats of retaliation poured in within days. We are discussing different U.S. products from which import tariffs can be imposed. Two weeks later, the president stoked growing fears that a trade war with China could be looming. He announced tariffs on consumer goods to punish China for stealing intellectual property from American companies. This is the first of many. The Chinese immediately responded with threats to retaliate against American products. These unilateral moves could test the strength of the global system for resolving trade disputes. Whether the product is technology, cheap chickens or, yes, even bananas.The White House, engaged in a trade dispute with China, has announced exemptions to steel and aluminum tariffs for several allies, including the European Union, and is marginalizing the World Trade Organization. Below is a selection of notable reactions to the protectionist moves.

If attacked, we will respond without weakness. Everyone needs to understand this, and I think I can say that the American strategy is a bad strategy. ... We talk about everything, in principle, with a friendly country that respects the rules of the W.T.O. We talk about nothing, in principle, when it is with a gun to our head.

Emmanuel Macron, Frances president.

Maybe its a way to exert strong pressure on the European Union, to start some sort of a negotiation with a revolver to our head. Thats a strange way of negotiating with an ally.

Charles Michel, Belgiums prime minister, explaining why he still had doubts after the European Union was among several American allies granted an exemption to steel and aluminum tariffs.WASHINGTON  President Trumps flurry of trade moves this past week raised uncertainty and confusion among financial markets, trading partners, lawmakers and American industry, prompting many to ask what, exactly, his endgame might be.

Just one day before stiff steel and aluminum tariffs were set to go into effect, Mr. Trump offered a temporary 11th-hour reprieve to several allies, including some of the biggest foreign suppliers of steel. Many of them had spent the previous two weeks frantically lobbying the administration for a permanent exemption, but the White House said late Thursday that those nations would have until May 1 to negotiate satisfactory alternative means to address the national security threat that America faced from a reliance on foreign metals.

In addition to the metals tariffs, the White House announced levies on up to $60 billion worth of Chinese imports, a move that provoked immediate promises of retaliation by China and sent stock markets into a tailspin. On Saturday morning, the Chinese vice premier for financial and industrial policy, Liu He, told Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a phone call that the United States actions against China violate international trade rules and run counter to American, Chinese and global interests. He warned that China has the strength to defend its national interests.

On Friday, Mr. Trump boasted that his approach would produce better trade deals for the United States, including what he said was a breakthrough in negotiations with South Korea. Some tremendous trade deals are being made with various countries, he said. Were negotiating very long, very hard, but very quickly.Lalu Prasad gets 14 yr jail term for corruption

AP, Patna :

A powerful Indian politician was sentenced Saturday to 14 years in prison for embezzling 37 million rupees ($570,000) from a state government's treasury while he was the state's top elected official.

Lalu Prasad Yadav was convicted of embezzling the money to buy fictitious medicines and cattle fodder while he was chief minister of Bihar state from 1990 to 1997.

Eighteen former Bihar state officials, contractors and suppliers were sentenced in the case to jail terms ranging from 3  to five years.

Yadav, who already has been convicted three times in related cases, was also fined 6 million rupees ($92,307).

Yadav, 69, who served as India's railways minister from 2004 to 2009, is barred from contesting elections. Earlier this month, he was shifted to a hospital from a prison after he complained of chest pains in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state.

Corruption is endemic in Indian politics. Judges are now expediting trials of lawmakers accused of crimes including murder, fraud and extortion following a Supreme Court order to reach verdicts within one year in such cases.

Captured at 17

Mr. Tran calls himself Duke now, but his name at birth was Tran Duy Duc. He was born in Vietnam in 1961, the son of a colonel in the South Vietnamese military fighting alongside American troops. Mr. Tran was 13 when, in 1975, the North Vietnamese took over the government and sent his father to a prison camp as punishment for helping the Americans. When released four years later, Mr. Trans father paid to sneak Mr. Tran over the Cambodian border.

You have to leave, his father told him.

As soon as he got to Cambodia, though, Mr. Tran was captured by fighters for the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. They forced him to drink vinegar, believing he had swallowed gold and family jewels that the vinegar would help expel. Then they made the 17-year-old their slave, forcing him to dig wells.

Sometimes the soldiers got drunk and took me out and put AK-47s to my head so I would pass out, Mr. Tran said.

Eight months after he was caught, Mr. Trans captors traded him to aid workers who carried humanitarian supplies. He still remembers the items that bought his freedom: a kilo of rice, two boxes of canned tuna, two boxes of sardines in tomato sauce, antibiotics and some other medical supplies.

The aid workers took him to Thailand. From there, the International Organization for Migration helped him reach the United States.

I am so grateful, Mr. Tran said. Here I am, an American citizen.

His first job in America was scrubbing pots in a restaurant kitchen. Soon after that, he got his first call center job, in the payment processing division of a local bank. He said in an interview that he had worked in call centers for a total of 25 years.

In 2002, he began working in a call center for Wells Fargos collections unit in Vancouver, Wash. In March 2013, he transferred to another Wells Fargo unit, the home equity division, in nearby Beaverton, Ore.Shifa Fahim Mahmood and Ramy Mohsen Fakhr were married March 23 at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York in Manhattan. Sheikh Saad Jalloh led a Muslim ceremony, called a nikah.

The bride, 31, is an analyst at the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, an agency focused on after-school learning programs in public schools. She graduated from the State University at New Paltz, and received a master's degree in public administration from City College.

She is a daughter of Nighat Beig and Hafiz Fahim Mahmood of Middletown, N.Y.

The groom, 36, is a partnership manager in the Long Island City, Queens, field office of the Office of Community Schools within the New York City Department of Education. He manages partnerships with community-based organizations and public schools, providing services to students and families. He graduated from Brooklyn College.

He is a son of Maha Fakhr and Mohsen Fakhr of Manhattan.

In early 2015, Mr. Fakhr could not help but notice Ms. Mahmoods pastel head scarf and green eyes as she walked into the room of a Harlem nonprofit group. Both were there for a presentation by the Department of Youth and Community Development, where they worked.A half-century has passed since President Lyndon B. Johnson stunned Americans by announcing, in a televised address on March 31, 1968, that he was drastically reducing the bombing of North Vietnam, appealing to the Hanoi government for negotiations and, most incredible of all, withdrawing from the presidential election that fall. One imagines the stupefied reaction in living rooms all across the country: Did he just say what I think he said?

Johnson did what modern American presidents are never supposed to do: refrain from seeking re-election. (Since World War II, only Harry Truman in 1952 has done likewise.) He feared that his health could not withstand four more years, but what really worried him was the Vietnam War and the divisions it had created. The war was not just a threat to his personal legacy; it was a threat to the very foundations of the liberal political order that he cherished so deeply and that had built so many middle-class American dreams.

His viewers didnt know it, but Johnson had always suspected this moment would come. From his earliest days in office, he repeatedly told his wife, Lady Bird, and aides that he felt trapped on Vietnam, that he would be crucified for whatever he did, that the conflict in far-off Southeast Asia would ultimately be his downfall.

Already in May 1964, a year before he committed the country to large-scale war, Johnson said to his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy: I dont think its worth fighting for and I dont think we can get out. Its just the biggest damned mess. A year later, shortly before the first American ground forces set foot in Vietnam, Johnson told Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee: There aint no daylight in Vietnam. Theres not a bit.Even as they grant that he was elected to shake up the constricted Vatican bureaucracy, his critics see his approach as that of a stealthy revolutionary or a reckless agent of disruption. In fact, Franciss exercise of the papal role reflects the Jesuit practice of discernment, which involves waiting, listening, letting competing options for action emerge, and choosing one after prayer and internal deliberation.

The group of advisory cardinals is significant because it belies the supposed solitary autonomy of papal decision-making and incorporates cardinals from places long thought remote from power: Santiago, Chile, and Mumbai, India, as well as Munich and Boston. The groups members are compromised figures whose blind spots are often akin to Franciss own. But it is a significant step that such a body exists at all.

The 2015 synod on marriage and the family, judged a debacle by many, is better understood as an instance of soft power in action. By calling the synod, Francis signaled that the issues surrounding Catholic teaching on marriage are not closed to further Vatican discussion  in sharp contrast to the Rome has spoken approach of his predecessors. Then Francis set out to point the synod discussions in a progressive direction on the issue of whether divorced-and-remarried Catholics in certain countries may receive communion at Mass. Traditionalists accused Francis of flirting with heresy.

Of necessity, the process was unruly. But discussions were had, and cardinals who opposed Francis were heard  because Francis let them be heard. He gave a closing speech thick with exasperation, replaced some resistant curial officials and demoted the hostile American Cardinal Raymond Burke  but he set aside the most far-reaching proposals about marriage and family for a future time, meanwhile keeping the discussion open.

Francis has acted on his conviction that Catholic faith is less about the use of power to shape the social order  the stuff of present strongmen and past popes  than about straightforward efforts of kindness and generosity.

While John Paul forged a relationship with Opus Dei  the strict and secretive movement with roots in the postwar Spain of Francisco Franco  Francis is at ease with the Community of SantEgidio, founded in Rome during the student uprisings of 1968 and now present in 70 countries, working with the poor, migrants, the elderly and people with AIDS. With its members, Francis has acted like a 21st-century Christian who happens to be pope: washing the feet of Muslim men and women on Holy Thursday, airlifting Syrians out of the Lesbos refugee camp on the papal plane and instituting a shelter for homeless people inside the Vatican.

Francis could serve as pope for another year, or five or 10. The test of his soft power in the coming years will be its encounter with hard power. Will he issue an encyclical on migration and the demonizing of the immigrant other? As he seeks openings for the church in seething Russia and rising China, will he address those countries human rights violations, opposing authoritarianism with the authority of the Gospel? Possibly  but not certainly. Traditionalists in the Vatican are insisting that Francis would do better not to engage with intransigent leaders and intractable problems at all. And Franciss record is frankly poor in some areas. On priestly sexual abuse, for example, he has acted like a highhanded cleric of old instead of taking firm, clear action.

Symbolically, the papacy is meant to be a contrast structure to worldly forms of authority. Too often, it has been such a structure in the wrong ways: crabbed, self-protecting, aloof and denunciatory. Five years into his pontificate, Francis is no small-d democrat, no faultless leader  and no perfect pope. And yet in this pope, our upside-down age has a leader whose approach and example stand as reminders of what the sensitive exercise of power can look like.SAM PRITCHARD, AMES, IOWA

To the Editor:

Robert Leonard concludes by stating, If Democrats want to engage rural America culturally and politically, they need to understand us, and at least some of our ideals. What, though, if we do understand you, but still think that your attitudes toward guns  at least the more extreme attitudes  are unhealthy?

Im a hunter myself and appreciate a nice shotgun as much as any farm boy. But when peoples identities start to be defined by their AR-15s and Glocks, when they start to believe that their liberty is under perpetual threat from vague and sinister forces, and when their sense of self-worth is tightly tied to their ability to exert deadly force over others, I dont think they need understanding; I think they need therapy. Sometimes understanding a culture gives you reason to respect it less, not more.

ROB LEWIS, OAKVILLE, ONTARIO

To the Editor:

Most of the people I know from the Midwest  where I was born, raised and educated  are better, smarter and more willing to engage in serious dialogue than the caricatures Robert Leonard describes.

They know that different views on how to reduce gun violence cannot be resolved by talk radio-style debates on human nature or the effects of original sin and that the real question is what can be done to reduce the incidence of gun violence in the future.

Most small-town Americans also recognize that ignoring the evidence by dismissing it as throwing around statistics is not likely to encourage a healthy dialogue, particularly when common sense suggests  and studies have confirmed  that restricting access to assault weapons reduces the incidence of mass murders.WASHINGTON  Its unnerving covering a president who is treated like a boy king, requiring minders; who is easily swayed because he is underinformed; who can sit still only long enough for short oral briefings; who swaggers and mocks to mask his insecurities; who tries to replace real news with faux; and who cant seem to fathom that distorting reality to suit political ends is dangerous.

Its even more unsettling covering two Republican presidents who fit this description: George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

I watched in alarm as W., who had promised a humble foreign policy with no nation-building and who had been a bipartisan, genial Texas governor, shape-shifted into a hyperaggressive and belligerently unilateral president. His ego and inadequacies were expertly manipulated by his regents, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, bureaucratic samurai with their own rapacious agendas.

A prodigal son who floated around drinking and partying until he was 40, W. was an empty vessel filled up by the wrong people, iron-asses, to use his fathers epithet about the counselors and neocons he felt hijacked his sons presidency  real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything and use force to get our way in the Middle East.MONTCLAIR, N.J.  The first time I drive with my daughter, she makes a left turn without putting on her blinker. She says: Want to know a funny thing about me? I never signal.

I say: Thats not a funny thing. You have to signal.

My daughter shrugs  an adolescent Morse code meaning: Whatever/You dont get it /Julias mom lets her do it. Shes relaxed as we tool around town, picking up a carton of milk here, a sibling there.

From then on, for the rest of the summer, she drives us everywhere. According to suburban legend, teenagers are supposed to spill their secrets when youre in the car together. This doesnt happen with mine  its just a lot of questions about what were having for dinner. But one day, cruising down a quiet street, my daughter says, I love driving.

This is better than a secret. I can still feel my first license in my hand  the heat of it, the freedom. I cant wait for her to feel that, too.Looking from behind the wheel of the SQ5, the road has far more twists than the administration may anticipate. The president seems to think that tariffs will strong-arm manufacturers and suppliers into basing more production in America, or somehow get Europeans to buy Chevys. But supply chains have become so sophisticated as to be borderless, and Audi and other foreign companies have already invested billions of dollars in the United States.

Foreign-badged cars arent the only ones that have foreign parts. The Chevrolet Bolt EV  an important vehicle for General Motors  is composed of 26 percent American/Canadian parts. The sales sheet isnt more specific because the parts dont care whether theyre made in Ontario or Michigan. The motor and transmission  more than half the total parts  are from South Korea, which has already been frosted by President Trumps refrigerator tariff. The Bolt is then bolted together at G.M.s Lake Orion, Mich., plant. In terms of origin, the Chevy Bolt is as American as a karaoke bar  a venue that has become increasingly popular in the United States. Maybe Mr. Trump should slap a tariff on bad singing.

Unlike the president, automakers have realized that free trade isnt a policy; its essential to manufacturing efficiency. They source globally and manufacture locally when it makes economic sense  one reason Audis owner, Volkswagen, is investing in more production capacity in Tennessee. American automakers havent been able to make small cars very profitably in the United States, so some of that production, such as that for Fords Focus, goes to Mexico. Or China. President Trump is now revving up duties on up to $60 billion in unspecified Chinese imports to punish that country for stealing American technology. He might want to avoid autos. Buicks Envision crossover S.U.V., a potential Audi competitor, is manufactured in Yantai, China, from 88 percent Chinese-made parts. Buick is a best-seller in China; indeed, G.M. sells more Buicks there than here. Cadillac sales increased 50 percent in China last year.

One company that is helping the administration close the automotive trade gap with Germany is Mercedes-Benz. It builds and exports S.U.V.s in Tuscaloosa County, Ala. Mercedes says there are about 200 suppliers tied to the plant, the majority of them international firms that have followed the Germans to the United States and built plants here. Theyve added thousands of jobs and pay millions in taxes. Many of these suppliers also export components to other Mercedes-Benz plants worldwide, the company says.

This is how trade works in a rational world  a world the president apparently doesnt visit. Ford uses fewer than a dozen global platforms, meaning that any car built here can be built the same way (with some local modifications) in China or Brazil. Fiat Chryslers all-American Jeep Renegade is assembled in Melfi, Italy. You can order a Renegade with a Tigershark engine built in Dundee, Mich., or with Fiats highly efficient 1.4 liter MultiAir version. Both power plants combine expertise and technology from Chrysler and Fiat. Small world. Thats how Jeep can compete with Range Rover and Toyota outside the United States.When I stepped into his living room, I didnt even recognize him. Surrounded by his family, he looked happy and relaxed, so different from when Id seen him in the clinic. He was wearing a vest to hold his batteries, and I could see part of the device bulging under his white T-shirt, but only if I looked closely.

I settled into the seat he offered me and introduced myself to his sisters while he ducked into the kitchen to pull a steaming plate of baked potatoes, chives and sour cream out of the oven. He had found the recipe on Facebook, he explained. He was eager for us to try it.

As the plate cooled, he showed me around, down the narrow hallway to the bedroom, where he connected himself to a wall socket each night so his batteries could recharge. Limited to the electric cords 20-foot radius, he was like a dog on a leash, until the morning. Luckily, his house was small enough that he could make it from the bedroom to the kitchen even when he was plugged in. The bathroom was even closer.

One time, he woke up at 2 a.m. to a jarring noise. Thinking there might be something wrong with his VAD, he changed his connection from the wall unit to a set of batteries. The sound continued. Frustrated, he fiddled around with the machine, doing things he definitely wasnt supposed to do, and still it wouldnt stop. He dragged himself out of bed to call his VAD team.

It was only when he saw the receiver hanging off the hook that Mr. Chauvin realized the source of the noise  it had been the phone all along. As he told the story, his assembled family members laughed appreciatively, though theyd heard it before. I found myself laughing too, briefly forgetting that he was talking about life or death, about a sound that could have meant he was moments away from collapse.

The laughter quieted and there was a break in our conversation. In the moment of stillness, I found that I was curious about Mr. Chauvins pulse. I asked him if I could feel for it and, seemingly amused, he offered his hand. I placed my fingers on his wrist, where I am used to feeling the rhythmic pulsations of the radial artery. But because the device moved blood through his vessels at a continuous, stable rate of flow rather than the pumping of a normal heart, melding human and machine, I found that I couldnt feel a thing.

By the time we met, it had been more than five years since Mr. Chauvins heart had started to fail and over a year since hed been told he wouldnt get a transplant. So I asked him what it had been like to learn that he would spend the rest of his life with this machine, that the equipment would be with him until he died. That if he were to follow his doctors instructions to the letter, he would never be able to shower the way he liked or take his boat out on the lake. I wondered if he regretted his decision, if he had been angry.The obas intervention was probably motivated by a recent CNN series on human trafficking that focused on Edo. Mr. Edebiri said that the portrayal of the kingdom as a den of illicit activity outraged him and his colleagues. Around the same time, Julie Okah-Donli, the director of Nigerias National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, paid the oba a visit. She said she told him that it was difficult to prosecute traffickers because the victims worried about breaking their oaths.

The fear of these oaths and their supposed consequences is one big reason women remain enslaved in sex work and debt bondage; they often rebuff attempts by activists to set them free.

A native doctor named Olor Elemian boasted to me: I dont need to collect the girls photographs or fingernails or anything else as other native doctors do. All I need is for them to bathe naked before the shrine and to write out their full names. Sitting on the floor in his shrine amid calabashes, animal bones and bloodstained cloths, Mr. Elemian, who inherited the job from his father, said: I can make sure that she never sleeps well or has any peace of mind until she pays what she owes. Something in her head will keep telling her, Go and pay! Go and pay!

In Edo, I also met a 25-year-old woman who was deported from Italy but who along with her family remained petrified by the consequences of her unpaid debt. Her mother eventually borrowed yet more money to pay a native doctor to undo the oath her daughter had taken before she was trafficked.

This belief in juju has been a strong impediment to our prosecution of traffickers, Arinze Orakwue, a top official at the Nigerian anti-trafficking agency, told me. You cant prosecute when nobody is willing to come forward to say this person did this to me.

His agency expects Oba Ewuares pronouncement to have a significant impact in all of Edo. The obas decree is a very strong weapon to support anti-trafficking, Mr. Orakwue said, because the Edo peoples belief system is strongly rooted in traditional worship.

The agencys appeal to the oba is an example of using African solutions to solve African problems. Well-meaning foreign governments and groups can continue to inject millions of dollars into Africa to fix our problems, but those interventions would be much more effective if local people and customs were more deeply considered.

It is all well and good to imagine Africa as a Wakanda, where technology rules and everything works. But Africa is not a Wakanda. At least, not yet. We must use what Africa has today to get it to where we want it to be.Why AL failed to win?

Analyses on SC bar polls

Anisul Islam Noor :

In the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) election, the Awami League-supported panel suffered a massive defeat despite their tight efforts to win this year. But finally all of their attempts have ultimately failed.

The BNP-Jamaat-backed 'Blue Panel' won 10 out of total 14 posts, including president and general secretary. On the other hand, Awami League supported 'White Panel' suffered a massive defeat by securing only four posts.

Analyses and discussions over the SC bar results are being held almost everywhere. The topic of discussions has now spread from the SC bar premises to political circles, and even among the general people.

Some reasons have already emerged from different quarters about the failure of the AL-backed 14-party alliance's white panel against the BNP-Jamaat supported blue panel.

The issue of former Chief Justice SK Sinha, 'compulsory' departure of Acting Chief Justice Abdul Wahhab Mian, government control over the lower court and the issue of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia bail, among others, are being blamed for this.

Lawyers of the highest court of the country did not take various roles of the government in good grace. As a result, the AL-backed panel taste a negative impact on the SC bar election results.

According some analyses, the issue of Khaleda Zia's bail has been the biggest negative impact on the result. The way, in which the bail was suspended in the appellate division, it is unlikely that it can be accepted by any kind. This is extremely harmful in the long run.

The BNP-backed lawyers said that the victory in this election is a reflection of public opinion against the government's various types of wrongdoings and torture, including discrimination against lawyers. Lawyers are very aware. They protested the government's excessive involvement with the opposition, including suppression of opposition and opinion, rule of law, democracy, lack of human rights and good governance, and harassment of police.

According to the sources, the Awami League policymakers have put their all out efforts to get the Supreme Court Bar leadership from the BNP.

On this election, Awami League high command gave strict instructions to the lawyers' leaders of the party. They were instructed to ensure the victory for the Awami League-backed panel at any cost.

In this context, Awami League-backed lawyers have unitedly joined the field to recover the bar. Awami League's lawyer leaders have worked day and night to ensure the victory of their panel.

But the election results were not in their favour. The Awami League was extremely disappointed with the huge victory of the BNP-Jamaat-backed panel.

BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia's imprisonment and BNP's extreme crisis cannot accept any such conquest by the ruling Awami League and the government policy makers.

Especially in the president's post, they are not able to accept the defeat of senior Awami League Advisory Council members and Advocate Yusuf Hossain Humayun. They are till analysing the cause of failure.Many constituencies in this country have been steadily ghettoized in this way; weve just failed to notice. On so many critical issues, like the Iraq war, abortion rights and gun control, the majority popular opinion has gone ignored, especially by Republicans. As the party has increasingly kowtowed to donors and to a small but influential voter base, the will of the rest of the people has become an inconvenience. Its a metaphorical eyesore, a neighborhood to drive through with the windows up.

White people dont frame this kind of negligence as racial, but they should. Blacks do because theyve lived the negligence, and still live it. (We live in a hypocrisy, not a democracy, as Malcolm X once said). Blacks have always known that America is very good at ghettoizing, at separating influencers from losers. Its in our DNA to keep certain folks at the margins.

Unfortunately, Americans are also very good at denying this truth, mostly because it conflicts with our democratic ideals. But even the most idealistic among us tend to see inner cities as Mr. Trump sees them  intractable, lowest on the totem pole, forever on the wrong side of the dividing line. We may be scandalized by Mr. Trumps segregationist logic, but the logic is easy to follow. A world organized into essential and nonessential people makes sense in America, and always has.

The biggest paradox is that the working class and poor white people who have been ghettoized by deindustrialization and outsourcing are among Mr. Trumps staunchest supporters. They think they still live in a hallowed space because the president actually visits them. He holds rallies with them. He goes to their neighborhoods, he seeks them out and he pointedly includes them in his favorite pronoun, we. He flatters them with the idea that hes one of their tribe.

And as a white man, he is. But despite the appearance of favoritism, white working class Americans are as politically marginalized as Mr. Trumps critics; theyre in the ghetto, too. If they could realize that, the oppressed in this country might make common cause, might find strength in numbers and in a diversity its never had. The lowly ghetto, in other words, might finally rise up.Bad policies sometimes lead to interesting economics. For example, the disastrous turn toward austerity after 2009 was a kind of natural experiment that led to an upwelling of good work on the effects of fiscal policy.

And Im starting to think that the Trumpian trade war, which finally seems to have arrived, will lead to some good work on international economic policy. Like the work on fiscal policy, it will of course be ignored by people in power. But still worth doing.

In this little essay Im going to offer some analysis and a few numbers based on a chain of thought that begins with Trumps evident disdain for Japan and ends up in Atlanta, New Orleans, and Buffalo. What? Bear with me if you have a taste for things wonkish.

My starting point is a peculiar aspect of Trumps climb-down on steel tariffs. The ostensible justification for these tariffs was national security; but as was widely noted from the start  although this probably came as news to the Trumpies  most U.S. steel imports come from American allies. And now Trump has granted exemptions to allies that largely vitiate the supposed point of the exercise.Since the earliest days of men and women, there have been charms  bits of stone, animal bones, shells  that were talismans against evil, souvenirs or mementos of good times.

Put a few together and what do you have? A charm bracelet.

The jangling adornments, which in modern times had a heyday in the 1950s and 60s, are having yet another renaissance. Some credit the fun furry figure of Karl Lagerfeld in his fall 2014 show for Fendi with the new interest. But given the recent trend for statement dressing and millennials love of personalization, what could be more timely?

You can really go wild and add anything from smiley faces and stars at Rosa de la Cruz to spiritual symbols at Alemdara, Ida Petersson, womens wear buying director at Browns in London, wrote in an email. The shop also has Venessa Arizagas threadwork bracelets with gold peace symbols and ceramic beads spelling Twitter-inspired labels like #squad.Switzerland manages to pack more than its fair share of hard luxury into its landlocked borders.

As well as being the home of fine watchmaking, it plays host to the giant Baselworld watch and jewelry fair every March. And, in Geneva, some of the worlds highest-grossing auctions are held twice a year at five-star luxury hotels overlooking the citys lake. The Magnificent Jewels auctions by Christies and Sothebys attract the cream of the business, drawing dealers and private collectors from around the world.

During the next sales preview weekend, visitors will have another destination to squeeze into their itinerary: GemGeneve will open to the trade and the public from May 10 to 13.

Billed as a new generation of jewelry fair organized by dealers for dealers, the inaugural event will feature more than 100 exhibitors of gemstones and antique and contemporary jewelry from 17 countries.

The two founders are Geneva-based antique jewelers and merchants with a total of more than 70 years in the trade. Thomas Faerber, the fourth-generation owner of the Faerber Collection, and Ronny Totah, co-owner of Horovitz and Totah, a gem dealer, saw a need for a Geneva jewelry fair that took advantage of the auctions timing and audience.PARIS  The French jeweler Robert Goossens, who died in 2016, isnt exactly a household name; his clientele, however, included some of the most renowned designers of the last century, including Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Cristobal Balenciaga.

At the moment though, the profile of Goossens Paris, the brand he founded in 1950, is growing, as part of a strategy steered by Mr. Goossens son Patrick, its artistic director, and Chanel, which purchased the company in 2005.

We had this idea a few years ago that we developed very slowly with Patrick, to give more visibility to the brand, Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel, said. We decided to treat Goossens as a start-up and to relaunch the story, being able to capitalize on the DNA.

Last year, Barneys New York began carrying a selection of items from the collection; it has been part of Le Bon Marche Rive Gauches jewelry assortment since February 2016. In late 2015, a sleek Goossens Paris boutique opened on Rue Saint-Honore, stocked with jewelry as well as the brands tabletop items, like a thick curved glass dish nestled on top of an ornately tooled metal base that is priced at slightly less than $1,000. Furniture, from small items to large chandeliers and tables, has always been part of the brands assortment.LONDON  Lauren Adriana became obsessed with crystals and gems from an early age. At just 4 years old, she was dragging her mother around the mineral collection at the Natural History Museum every weekend and spending her allowance in the gift shop on tiny sparkling bits of pyrite and rose quartz.

That obsession and a talent for art eventually led to a bachelors degree in jewelry design at Central St. Martins, teaching her the value of self-criticism and of challenging traditional ideas of beauty. But one thing didnt change.

They couldnt dent my love of gemstones, Ms. Adriana said with characteristic dryness during an interview in her Mayfair studio. They were never going to get me to work in latex.ROME  Hear the name Old Curiosity Shop, and images of Dickensian England with odd taxidermy and piles of fusty bric-a-brac will likely come to mind.

But thats the name that Sotirio Bulgari, founder of the Italian jewelry house, chose for the shop of Mediterranean-inspired objects that he opened in 1905 on Via dei Condotti  a diamonds throw from the Spanish Steps here.

It was one of the first Bulgari boutiques, and we were amazed that an English name was written on the facade, said Silvia Schwarzer, Bulgaris senior director of interior design and visual merchandising. She pointed to one of the few existing photographs of the store, its name appearing boldly above the words Lucerna, St. Moritz Bad and Napoli, all of which were the businesss summer locations, with the last where the Greek-born merchant sojourned briefly before settling in the Italian capital.

That faded black-and-white image was the starting point for a new retail concept that Bulgari introduced in December, and called the New Curiosity Shop in tribute.MARRAKESH, Morocco  Crowds of visitors wait in line to see the clothing displays at the Musee Yves Saint Laurent Marrakesh. But, once inside, they seem equally awed by its Ali Babas cave of jewelry.

That cave, as its curator, Dominique Deroche, described it, is a long rectangular vitrine divided into themes  such as color, gold, Africa  that offer another peek into the creative processes of Mr. Saint Laurent, the Algerian-born master designer who died in 2008.

Mr. Saint Laurents accessories have been receiving fresh attention since September, when the Musee Yves Saint Laurent Paris opened in his former headquarters on Avenue Marceau; and October, when the museum opened in Marrakesh (the city, he said, that taught him color) and Phaidon published Yves Saint Laurent Accessories by Patrick Mauries.

Ms. Deroche had long worked for the fashion house as a press liaison. Now 73, she was part of the team that selected pieces from Mr. Saint Laurents vast archive to be displayed in Marrakesh, making what she said were four or five visits to Morocco to complete the job.Taking destination dining to new heights, a celebrated Peruvian chef has just hung out his shingle 11,706 feet above sea level, where the entirety of his street address is ascending 500 meters from the Archaeological Complex of Moray. Yet despite the enigmatic coordinates, and the fact that the nearest villages are all but concealed from the outside world, every taxista within a 100-mile radius will soon know these back roads by heart.

There is, after all, no concealing the resident chef: Virgilio Martinez, who also runs Central, the nine-year-old Lima institution that currently ranks fifth on the closely watched Worlds 50 Best Restaurants list. While hes unassuming in the extreme, the 40-year-old has already left a distinct footprint with his new Andean outpost, Mil, which opened at the end of February.

Having formed a co-op of sorts with the tiny nearby farming communities of Kacllaraccay and Mullakas-Misminay hes aiming to chronicle and revive ancient local ingredients and food practices that might otherwise be lost to time. Among others in his merry band of preservationists are his wife Pia Leon, an acclaimed chef in her own right; his sister Malena Martinez, head of the groups native ingredient-cataloging operation; and Francesco DAngelo Piaggio, the staff anthropologist and community outreach consigliere who has the best backstory of the bunch: When he was still working on his thesis in a nearby rural community, his mo ther saw the Virgilio Martinez episode of Chefs Table on Netflix and insisted her son do the same, given the gentlemens eerily simpatico sensibilities. A series of emails and a job at Mil soon followed.

The result of the groups efforts is unlike anything else in my restaurant-going experience: Lunch (there is no dinner service as of yet) consisted of eight courses, a gustatory grand tour of altitudinous ecosystems, each stop an opportunity to use age-old ingredients and techniques to arrestingly modern effect.At a news conference on Saturday, Manley, the interim police chief, said investigators were leaving open the possibility of questioning Mr. Conditts two roommates again, and added that more arrests in the case could still be made.

This investigation continues, Mr. Manley said.

On Thursday, Sean Philips, a neighbor of Anthony Stephan House, posted what he called a dark and gory account of the attack on Facebook.

Mr. Philips woke up his children to get them ready for school, and then heard, at 6:50 a.m., a sound like a truck slamming into a dumpster.

I immediately ran outside to see what it was. I looked to the left and saw my next-door neighbor, Stephan, (who also happens to be the father of my daughters best friend) standing, covered in blood, with shrapnel lodged all throughout his body and his hands nearly blown off, he wrote. His face had a large gash on the lower side, it looked as if he was hit with an ax. He had a glazed over look on his face, but his eyes were open. Within five seconds, he looked at me and collapsed onto his side.

Mr. Philips said he had administered rescue breaths, but could not perform chest compressions because Mr. Houses body was full of shrapnel.

All around me, the neighborhood was in utter chaos, but I heard not a sound other than the sound of his gurgling blood, he wrote. Meanwhile, there were screaming neighbors, and worse, the screams of My daddy is dead! My daddy is dead! coming from his little angel who saw him like that.Wrong signal from filter : US-Bangla flight makes emergency landing at HSIA

A Malaysia-bound flight of US-Bangla Airlines made an emergency landing at HSIA as pilot receives a \'false signal\' from the air craft on Saturday.

Staff Reporter :

Just after two weeks of the US-Bangla Airlines disastrous plane crash in Nepal that killed 49 passengers, a Malaysia-bound flight of the said Airlines returned to the airport to alert any possible tragic incident on Saturday.

The flight carrying 164 passengers took off from HSIA for Malaysia at 8:45 am on Saturday, but it came back to the airport within 20 minutes due to technical problem.

The pilot got an alarm signal from the engine and realized that it would not be possible for him to reach Malaysia. He decided to come back to HSIA without loss of time. All the passengers and crew members heaved a sigh of relief when the plane landed at HSIA safely.

The US-Bangla Airlines officials said that a tragic incident could occur had the pilot hesitated to take the decision of cancelling the flight.

Bangla spokesperson Kamrul Islam said that the pilot returned to Dhaka after getting a "false alarm" from the fuel filter bypass of the aircraft. "The pilot came back as he didn't want to take any risk," he said.

The flight however left Dhaka again for Malaysia around 11:45am after fresh check-up.

The Director of Civil Aviation Authority (Flight Safety and Regulation) Wing Commander Chowdhury M Ziaul Kabir said, "This is not an emergency landing. The aircraft had to land because the fuel filter bypass warning light was flashing."

Earlier on March 20, a domestic flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines made emergency landing at HSIA for its technical problem.

On March 12 last, at least 49 people, including 26 Bangladeshi nationals, were killed as a US-Bangla Airlines aircraft crashed and burst into flames at Tribhuvan International Airport in the capital of Himalayan country of Nepal on March 12.

Besides, a Jessore-bound US-Bangla Airlines flight also made a safe emergency landing in Dhaka due to signal imbalance after take-off on March 4.Aint no justice. Aint no justice. We are the change. We are the change. I am exasperated by what the Parkland students had to endure. I am agitated that this is what had to be done to unite us. I think you should arm us with books, instead of arming us with weapons. Im angry that I have to worry about losing another brother to gun violence. Im angry that as we walk down the street, we talk about it as if its a regular thing, but its not. Every one of us in here has experienced violence in our community. So how has this affected us and our goals and our hopes and our dreams. I lost my brother to a shootout. And Ive been in countless occasions of just violence about trying to be robbed. Or just trying to get away from a dangerous situation. I know its different for me. I come in here as your teacher, but Ive lost three students over the past years. You can go outside one day and not know whats going to happen to you. Like you could be innocent and all that other stuff. You could be in the middle of something and just get shot. Thank you for engaging it. This is a hard conversation. Im really proud of you. Hes just 15 years old, but KeShon Newman has had to grow up fast. Two years ago, his brother was shot and killed around the corner from his house. He was walking back from taking his girlfriend to the bus stop. And he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And there was a shootout down the block. And he was shot. He was shot nine times, and was killed at the hospital. His brother Randall was 16 years old when he was killed. He didnt even deserve to have his life taken away. I thought I would have had enough time to still hang out with him, still just have fun, just grow up with him. To have it cut so short is a tragic thing. The South Side of Chicago is a world away from Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed in a mass school shooting. But young people here say that the country is finally waking up to a reality they face every day: Gun violence. In my school, I dont really think of it as a place for a mass shooting cause most  most stuff, that happens outside of school. But what I have in common with the kids in Parkland is that I know how it feels to lose someone thats close to you. KeShon lives in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicagos South Side. Its one of the citys most dangerous areas, but theres a strong sense of community here. The homicide rate in this area is 10 times that of the national average. And gun violence in this community is mostly gang related. You will not hear about a kid going into a Chicago high school and shooting up a school. Thats not our reality of gun violence. But they can leave school and on the block where they live, and they can get caught in the crossfire between rival gangs. Lamar Johnson mentors KeShon and other kids at a violence prevention program he runs at St. Sabina, a church in the area. Its a jungle. You have to be alert. You have to be aware, because theres a lot going on. Its a lot of good people here. But at the same time, its a lot of dangers as well. I have to make sure that Im not in the wrong place at the wrong time because a situation can come out of nowhere just from the wrong person, having the  a terrible mindset to actually want to kill someone or to shoot down a block. Lamar took some kids from the South Side of Chicago to Florida to meet with the Parkland survivors. They went to share their stories and their collective grief. We was talking about the differences between how gun violence has affected them that day versus the everyday reality. So I was sitting there with a smirk on my face like, well, I was  I basically told them I said, Well, no disrespect. Welcome to our world. And I mean this with true sincerity. And when I said that one of the students was like, Well, I want to apologize to you because I understand the reason why we have this platform is because were privileged. So yall, I can tell yall alright, yall good? Ever since the Florida shooting, hes led his youth group through some difficult conversations. First of all, lets name some of the similarities and differences, we have apart. Yeah. To the Parkland kids this happened one time. But to the people of Chicago, here, this happens a lot. So if somebody you know got shot, and somebody they know got shot, the feelings going to be the same. Regardless of how many times you experience it, if they experienced it one, two times they still going to feel traumatized because that was a moment that happened. So let me ask, do you feel we get the same attention? No. Not at all. So you think Chicago doesnt get attention for its gun violence? That area was nice and had, like, wealthy  it was nice. It was suburban. You wouldnt have expected it. Youre not  youre not angry at Parkland. You want to know why? Parkland is with us. Young people like Rieonna Holmon say that the threat of violence is always around them. What happened in Florida happens here every day 17, more than 17 people die a year here. More than 17 people die a week here. And I think now they understand that connection is going on. Shes 15 years old and says the dangers in her community marked her entire childhood. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago is really fearful. We cant go outside and just sit on our porch, or just ride around our neighborhoods on our bikes like they can in different neighborhoods. Rieonna, KeShon and others are all heading to Washington to take part in the national march against gun violence. Its probably going to choke me up. Im probably going to cry mostly because its a bunch of youth all working together to achieve one goal. And thats never happened before. Just a week before the march, a conversation born out of tragedy between young people more than a thousand miles apart came to life. Survivors from the Parkland shooting traveled to Chicago for a chance to see firsthand what life is like on the South Side. When Im with these other students and people from Chicago, I feel their pain. This isnt just in schools. This is anywhere and everywhere. There shouldnt be no fear inside someones heart just for them to live their life every day. Pain is pain. It doesnt matter what ethnicity you are, where you come from, where you live, how much money you make. What happened in Parkland, was injustice, and injustice there is injustice here.For Mr. Kushner, progress on Mexico would be a bright spot in what has been a difficult stretch. He was recently stripped of his top-secret security clearance and faces a hostile reception from Palestinians to his Middle East peace plan after Mr. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. His future in the White House is regularly scrutinized, though he has told colleagues he is not going anywhere.

Mr. Kushners aides acknowledge his work could be overshadowed by a breakdown in talks over Nafta. The two countries are in the final stages of negotiations, with officials from both sides putting the odds of a deal at no better than 50-50. Then there is the relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pena Nieto, which has fallen apart twice during angry telephone exchanges over who should pay for the wall.

This month, Mr. Trump dispatched Mr. Kushner to Mexico City to mend fences with Mr. Pena Nieto after their latest clash prompted the Mexican leader to cancel a visit to Washington. The Mexican news media harshly criticized Mr. Pena Nieto for receiving Mr. Kushner, a sign of just how toxic the Trump name has become there.

I give both of them credit for doing it, said Jorge Guajardo, a Mexican diplomat who served as his countrys ambassador to China. In very adverse circumstances, Jared is working to keep things going.

Still, Mr. Guajardo noted that Mexico had long worked with the United States on projects related to the border. These agreements, however useful, cannot repair the damage done by Mr. Trumps inflammatory words about Mexicans crossing the border or his demands that Mexico underwrite the wall.

Weve been doing it for a long time, without all the acrimony, without all the attacks, without the president saying that Mexicans are terrible people, Mr. Guajardo said.

At the heart of Mr. Kushners involvement with Mexico is the relationship he has cultivated with Mr. Videgaray, a close adviser to Mr. Pena Nieto who, as finance minister, brokered Mr. Trumps visit to Mexico City during the 2016 presidential campaign.michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today: The story behind the biggest Supreme Court case of the year. Its Thursday, November 7.

aimee stephens

My name is Aimee Stephens. Im 58 years old, and I live in Redford, Michigan. Now, ever since I was a little kid, Ive been fascinated with the funeral industry. I was hired in as a funeral director and embalmer. It was a chance to be able to comfort people in their  probably one of the worst times of their lives, which was losing a loved one. And for me, it was a calling. It was my chance to be able to help people.

michael barbaro

And what about the particular funeral home where you worked? What would you describe as your relationship to it and the culture of it?

aimee stephens

I thought we had a pretty good relationship. Id been there for over six years. I had some ideas about things they could do to improve the practices and stuff around the funeral home. They took those suggestions and ran with them. In fact, Id just gotten a rather substantial pay increase. So I kind of wasnt expecting this to go south the way it did.

michael barbaro

Aimee, I wonder if you could read from the letter that you handed your boss.

aimee stephens

Sure. Dear friends and co-workers, I have known many of you for some time now. And I count you all as my friends. What I must tell you is very difficult for me, and is taking all the courage I can muster. I am writing this both to inform you of a significant change in my life, and to ask for your patience, understanding and support, which I would treasure greatly. I have a gender identity disorder that I have struggled with my entire life. I have managed to hide it very well all the years. It all started when I was about 5 years old. I knew something was different about me, but I could not have told you what it was then. I have been in therapy for nearly four years now, and I have been diagnosed as a transsexual. I have felt imprisoned in a body that does not match my mind, and this has caused me great despair and loneliness. With the support of my loving wife, I have decided to become the person that my mind already is. I cannot begin to describe the shame and suffering that I have lived with. Toward that end, I intend to have sex reassignment surgery. The first step I must take is to live and work full-time as a woman for one year. At the end of my vacation, on August 26, 2013, I will return to work as my true self, Aimee Australia Stephens, in appropriate business attire. I realize that some of you may have trouble understanding this. In truth, I have had to live with it every day of my life, and even I do not fully understand it myself. I have tried hard all my life to please everyone around me, to do the right thing and not rock the boat. As distressing as this is sure to be to my friends and some of my family, I need to do this for myself, to end the agony in my soul. It is my wish that I can continue my work at R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes doing what I have always done, which is my best.

[music]

michael barbaro

That is a really powerful letter.

aimee stephens

It took a long time to write it.

michael barbaro

How long?

aimee stephens

Somewhere between six and eight months.

michael barbaro

Wow.

[music]

aimee stephens

All this started back in 2012. I had been living basically two lives, one at home and in public, the other at work. And I got to the point that I couldnt go on living two separate lives. It was tearing me apart. And I kind of had the feeling that if I couldnt go forward and I couldnt go backward, what was the point of going on at all? So in November of 2012 I stood in the backyard with a gun to my chest 

michael barbaro

Wow.

aimee stephens

 for an hour. And in that hour, I came to realize that I really liked me and that I wanted to live. So I chose life. And in doing that, there was only one place to go, and that was forward. So I started writing the letter. And then, in July of 2013, I gave it to the boss. He didnt really have any reaction at all as he was reading the letter himself. I was kind of like pins and needles waiting for him to finish it. And then when he did finish it, he folded it up and put it in his pocket and said, Ill have to think about it. And then two weeks later, he came back with his own letter, which was my letter of dismissal.

[music]

michael barbaro

So you had just been fired.

aimee stephens

Yes.

michael barbaro

And so what did you do?

aimee stephens

I went home on that Friday afternoon, and I talked to my wife. And it made me mad  mad enough to the point that on Monday morning, I went to the A.C.L.U., and I talked to Mr. Jay Kaplan. And he put me in contact with the E.E.O.C.

michael barbaro

So the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, the federal agency.

aimee stephens

Correct. After I talked to the E.E.O.C. and they did their investigation, they asked me a question. And that question was, are you willing to see this through to the end? And I told them then that I was raised on a farm, that I was used to hard work, and that I didnt give up so easily, and that, yes, I would see this to the end, however long that took. I had in my mind what I needed to do. And it wasnt to really settle out of court. It wasnt to just give up and walk away. After all, this was not only happening to me, but to thousands of others. At that point, I knew I had to do something. And the only thing I knew to do was basically to take it to court.

michael barbaro

And thats what you did.

aimee stephens

Thats what I did.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back.

archived recording 1 Funeral director, fired for being transgender, is taking her yearslong court battle to the next level. archived recording 2 We want to turn now to that historic day at the Supreme Court. archived recording 3 The U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider transgender rights for the first time.

adam liptak

So its October 8th, the second day of the Supreme Court term. Im in the courtroom along with Aimee.

michael barbaro

Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The Times.

adam liptak

Im sitting in the press box, up by the bench. And 

archived recording (john roberts) Well hear argument next in case 18-107, R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes versus the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

adam liptak

Chief Justice Roberts announces the case.

archived recording (john roberts) Mr. Cole. archived recording (david cole) Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court 

adam liptak

David Cole, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, representing Aimee Stephens, gets up to argue. And theres a charged sense in the courtroom. This is probably the biggest case of the year. And it turns out its going to be very hard-fought one.

michael barbaro

And Adam, what exactly is the question before the court in Aimee Stephenss case?

adam liptak

At bottom, its a very simple question. Its can an employer fire you based on your gender identity? We know that you cant be fired because of your religion, because of your sex, because of your race. But the question which the court has never addressed before is can someone be fired based on their gender identity? And that same day, in a companion case, they were addressing the related question of can someone be fired based on their sexual orientation? And all of these cases turn on how the court is going to interpret a particular law.

michael barbaro

And what law is that?

adam liptak

The law is from 1964. Its Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. And it says that private employers cannot discriminate based on race, religion and sex. And the question for the justices is, how do you read the phrase, in the law, because of sex? You cant fire someone because of sex.

michael barbaro

What is the exact question about that word, sex?

adam liptak

Well, nobody thinks that in 1964, when Congress enacted that law, the particular lawmakers thought they were addressing sexual orientation or gender identity. If you asked them, theyd probably say they were referring to what they would call biological sex and what other people might call sex assigned at birth. But nonetheless, the logic of the words, Aimee Stephenss lawyer David Cole says and other lawyers say, is that in order to fire Aimee Stephens, you have to take account of her sex. And therefore, this 1964 law squarely applies to her.

michael barbaro

So how, exactly, are the plaintiffs lawyers making this argument before the justices?

adam liptak

Well, they use various hypotheticals.

archived recording (david cole) Imagine an employer had six Aimees.

adam liptak

David Cole gives an example of six Aimees, five of them assigned at birth as one gender, one the other.

archived recording (david cole) And one says, I was assigned male at birth. And then he fires the one who says, I was assigned male at birth. Obviously, that person is fired because of her sex assigned at birth.

adam liptak

That sure sounds like discrimination because of sex. Similarly, in the sexual orientation setting, if a worker is a man and wants to date women and is left alone but is a man and wants to date men and is fired, that sounds like discrimination because of sex.

michael barbaro

Thats really interesting. The lawyer seems to be saying, if you are assigned a sex at birth, and you somehow dont live up to that assigned sex at birth, and something happens to you, youre fired from your job because of that expectation wasnt met, thats sex discrimination.

adam liptak

Thats right. And that picks up a second strain of Supreme Court jurisprudence. They have said its sex discrimination if you dont live up to a gender stereotype.

archived recording (david cole) And at the end of the day, the objection to someone for being transgender is the ultimate sex stereotype. It is saying, I object to you because you failed to conform to this stereotype, the stereotype that if you are assigned a male sex at birth, you must live and identify for your entire life as a man. That is a true generalization for most of us, but it is not true for 1.5 million transgender Americans.

adam liptak

Thats a separate ground on which Aimee Stephens can win, and also a fairly powerful ground. And the lawyers in the sexual orientation case make a similar point, that a man who wants to date a man is not living up to some conventional sex stereotypes. And therefore, there, too, on that separate ground, they should win.

michael barbaro

And Adam, whats the counterargument from the lawyers for the government who are on the other side of Aimee Stephens and her lawyer?

adam liptak

Well, there are two basic points. One is the, nobody in 1964 was thinking this, so thats not what the law means. But the second is that these are distinct traits.

archived recording (noel francisco) Sex and gender identity, like sex and sexual orientation, are different traits. Theyre defined. They have different definitions.

adam liptak

And it may well be that Congress should protect the second thing, too, the government says. But it hasnt.

archived recording (noel francisco) And theres a reason why, when Congress wants to prohibit discrimination based on the traits of sexual orientation and gender identity, it lists them separately. It doesnt define sex as including these traits. So as long as you treat men and women exactly the same regardless of their sex, youre not discriminating against them because of their sex.

michael barbaro

So Adam, how did the justices respond to these dueling arguments?

adam liptak

Well, some of them say its up to Congress.

archived recording (samuel alito) May I ask you to respond to what some people will say about this court if we rule in your favor? And what they will say is that whether Title VII should prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a big policy issue. And it is a different policy issue from the one that Congress thought it was addressing in 1964. And Congress has been asked repeatedly in the years since 1964 to address this question. The Equality Act is before Congress right now. Congress has declined or failed to act on these requests. And if the court takes this up and interprets this 1964 statute to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, we will be acting exactly like a legislature.

adam liptak

It may well be a good idea for Congress to protect gay people and transgender people, but they didnt do it in 1964. Its not our job to do it. And people will lose faith in the court if they think were acting as legislators, not judges.

archived recording (sonia sotomayor) Mr. Cole, lets not avoid the difficult issue. O.K.?

adam liptak

The second thing that was going out at the argument was barely legal. It was more cultural. There was a lot of talk about the supposed social upheaval that would follow by a ruling in particular in favor of Aimee Stephens. There was a lot of talk about sports teams, and dress codes, and especially and endlessly about restrooms.

archived recording (sonia sotomayor) And they want to use the womens bathroom, but there are other women who are made uncomfortable  and not merely uncomfortable, but who would feel intruded upon if someone who still had male characteristics walked into their bathroom. Thats why we have different bathrooms. So the hard question is, how do we deal with that?

adam liptak

They wanted to know, basically, if a ruling in favor of Aimee Stephens would result in a free-for-all in the nations bathrooms, and whether thats going to cause the world to go berserk.

archived recording (david cole) Does that argument hold up when you get to specific work requirements? In other words, if the objection of a transgender man transitioning to woman is that he should be allowed to use, he or she, should be allowed to use the womens bathroom, now, how do you analyze that?

michael barbaro

Is that something that this ruling would actually impact?

adam liptak

Its a question not presented in any of the cases. Its a wholly separate question. Its a question that one day they may have to decide. But the fixation on restrooms was really extraordinary.

michael barbaro

So why are the justices, and it feels like both from the left and the right, fixated on this?

adam liptak

Well, I guess its the case that lots of people are made deeply uncomfortable by the idea that they would have to share a restroom with someone they perceive to be of the opposite sex. And I guess those are deeply ingrained cultural norms. And people on both sides of the ideological aisle on the court really were troubled by and were trying to figure out how to deal with the question that not in this case, but in some future case, they might have to decide whether not letting a transgender person use a bathroom is the kind of adverse employment action that could give rise to a lawsuit.

michael barbaro

So, Adam, what do you make of these questions and these reactions from the justices at this point in the hearing? What does it tell you about their thinking?

adam liptak

So I walk into this argument thinking what I usually think, that typically the five Republican appointees, the five conservatives, are going to be on one side, ruling against the gay and transgender people, and the four Democratic appointees, the four liberals, on the other side. Thats you going in proposition, not an unreasonable place to start. But some things got scrambled. There were questions from the left side of the court deeply skeptical of what will happen to the nations bathrooms. And there were questions from the right side of the court, which seemed very sympathetic to the argument that, listen, the words mean what they mean. And its our job to interpret the words. And they may well protect gay people and transgender people. And the person who really captures this best is one of the courts ordinarily most conservative members, but sometimes a bit of a wild card, Neil Gorsuch, President Trumps first appointee, who is an avowed textualist, who really cares about the words and looking at the words in isolation. And he just about says, listen 

archived recording (neil gorsuch) When a case is really close, really close on the textual evidence, and I  assume for the moment Im with you on the textual evidence. Its close. O.K.? Were not talking about extratextual stuff. Were talking about the text. Its close. The judge finds it very close.

adam liptak

If that were the only question in the case, the words seem to protect these people.

michael barbaro

The 1964 Title VII word sex.

adam liptak

Yes, that because of sex does seem to apply. And then he pauses for a beat and says 

archived recording (neil gorsuch) At the end of the day, should he or she take into consideration the massive social upheaval that would be entailed in such a decision?

adam liptak

But what about the social upheaval that would result? Which, by the way, is not a particularly legitimate question for courts to take account of if their job is to interpret the law. Congress makes the law, and the consequences of the law are for Congress to worry about, not courts. So I walk out thinking, what do you know? The four liberal votes are probably locked in.

michael barbaro

In favor of an Aimee Stephens.

adam liptak

Yes. But Aimee Stephens needs a fifth vote to win. Whos that fifth vote? It might well be Neil Gorsuch. I mean, we wont find out for a few months. And it may be yet another 5-4 case along the usual lines. But it did seem that Gorsuch, in particular, was really struggling with his intuition that the words mean what the plaintiffs, what Aimee Stephens, say they mean.

michael barbaro

It feels like the central tension here is not about whether the text of the 1964 law applies to Aimee Stephens. It sounds like, in many cases, they think it does. The tension here seems to be around these justices fears of some kind of practical consequence that theyre not even sure will happen if they agree with Aimee Stephenss lawyers.

adam liptak

Exactly right. Its usually the conservatives who say, all we care about is the text. We dont care about intent. We dont care about purpose. We dont care about consequences. Were going to drill down and look at the semicolons and figure out what the text means. And its usually the left side of the court that says, no. We take account of legislative history and conference reports and floor reports, and we try to figure out what Congress meant to do. And here, they kind of flipped sides. And a little more broadly, I think the court has basically reconciled itself to the fact that they made four major gay rights decisions, and that gay people ought to be protected. But its a new frontier to talk about transgender people. And these two cases arrive at the court at the same time, and theres this feeling that they have to rise or fall together. But theres a disconnect. The transgender case really does sound like because of sex. The sexual orientation case is a little further away from because of sex. But culturally, the court seems O.K. with protecting gay people but still a little uncomfortable with this concept, which seems new to some of the justices, that there are people in the world who are transgender. So theres a mix of things that are a consequence of the fact that theyre hearing the two cases together.

michael barbaro

So, Adam, knowing everything you know about this court and having sat through all this, what do you think is going to happen in this case?

adam liptak

Its an uphill fight for Aimee Stephens. The five more conservative members of the court are likely to rule in lockstep against her. Shes got some shot at picking up one of those votes. If she picks up one vote, she wins. Walking out of the courtroom, I thought it was a little closer than you might have thought. But if you had to put money on it, this is, in this kind of big culture-wars kind of case, a 5-4 conservative court.

michael barbaro

Which would mean that in the case of a judge like Gorsuch, if he joins the conservatives against Aimee Stephens, he will have been prioritizing these fears of societal upheaval that he thinks would result over perhaps the kind of straight legal textural arguments.

adam liptak

If you take him at his word  and, of course, at arguments people are musing and offering up devils advocate ideas  but yes, if you look at what he said at argument, what you say is right.

[music]

michael barbaro

Thank you, Adam.

adam liptak

Thank you, Michael.

michael barbaro

So Aimee, its been seven years, correct, since you were fired from the funeral home?

aimee stephens

Pretty close.

michael barbaro

I wonder if you have had any interactions with your boss there. Hes on the other side of this case. Im sure hes tracking it just as closely as you are.

aimee stephens

I havent spoken to him since I left. I did keep in contact with some of my close friends at work. But the ones that were closest to me have since passed on. So I really dont have anything to do with the funeral home at all nowadays. I have been there for visitations to friends and things that have died and passed on.

michael barbaro

Youve been there for funerals.

aimee stephens

Yes.

michael barbaro

That must be a strange experience.

aimee stephens

It makes me wonder if they even knew who I was.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

aimee stephens

Well, we used to go eat at a particular Chinese restaurant when I was presenting as male. And we were in there eating one weekend. And the manager of the place asked my wife, he says, wheres your husband? And she turned around and she looked at me and she says, he is now a she. And she said, were very happy together. And you could have drove a freight train in its mouth because his jaw dropped. He couldnt believe what he was seeing. Ive had people from the church we used to attend who have stood in front of me in a restaurant and had no clue as to who I was. So Im happy at the point where Im at, and Im sorry that they dont understand that. But to me, life was more important than dying. Im happy being me. I dont think theres anything else Id rather be except me. And it would be nice to be able to work a job that I truly loved, that I was good at. But I was kind of denied that chance, and thats where we are now.

michael barbaro

Well, Aimee, Im really grateful for your time. Im glad to have met you, and I wish you the best.

aimee stephens

Thank you very much.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back. Heres what else you need to know today.

archived recording (adam schiff) I want to let you know, as you may know already, that we will begin our open hearings in the impeachment inquiry next week. We will be beginning with the testimony of Ambassador Taylor and Ambassador Kent.

michael barbaro

On Wednesday, House impeachment investigators said that the public phase of their inquiry would begin next week, with televised testimony from three senior officials from the State Department who will lay out their case against President Trump.

archived recording (adam schiff) And I think you will see throughout the course of the testimony  not only their testimony, but many others  the most important facts are largely not contested.

michael barbaro

All three officials said they either witnessed or were victims of the presidents campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate the presidents rivals, including Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, who was fired after Trump and his allies concluded that she was an obstacle to their plan.

archived recording (adam schiff) We are getting an increasing appreciation for just what took place during the course of the last year, and the degree to which the president enlisted whole departments of government in the illicit aim of trying to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political opponent.

michael barbaro

And, in Kentucky, Republican Governor Matt Bevin has formally requested a recount of votes from Tuesdays election, in which he lost to his Democratic rival, Andy Beshear, by about 5,000 votes.

archived recording (matt bevin) We simply want to ensure that there is integrity in the process. We owe this to the people of Kentucky.

michael barbaroWhatever Mr. Trumps motives, his selection of this team would have been hard to imagine when he first came to office declaring that the continued American presence in Iraq was a disaster, that he was comfortable with Japan and South Korea getting their own nuclear weapons so the United States would not have to defend them, and that America would no longer be the worlds policeman.

Mr. Bolton has come to the opposite conclusion.

He not only fervently advocated the attack on Saddam Hussein from his post at the State Department during the Bush administration, but he also defended its aftermath, and has said he remains convinced it was the right decision. Over the past three years, Mr. Bolton has advocated bombing Iran, attacking North Korea, and carving a new state out of Iraq and Syria.

Mike Pompeo, the nominee for secretary of state, said at the Aspen Security Conference in July that the most dangerous thing about North Korea was the fact that its young, moody and reportedly ruthless leader, Kim Jong-un, controls its weapons.

So from the administrations perspective, the most important thing we can do is separate those two. Right? said Mr. Pompeo, who at the time was months into his current job as C.I.A. director. Separate capacity and someone who might well have intent, and break those two apart.

Assuming that Mr. Pompeo is confirmed, he and Mr. Bolton, the two most forceful, aggressive new members of the policy team, will have to decide in what order they can risk those confrontations. The Trump administration has said it is open to direct talks with Mr. Kim by May  the same month by which the president has said he will scrap the Iran nuclear accord.

Even if you are going to be a superhawk, you cant do all these at once, said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former C.I.A. station chief in Moscow who later hunted down Pakistani nuclear technology as the Energy Departments chief intelligence officer. And if you want to go to war with Iran and North Korea, you have to expect to alienate your allies and run headlong into the Russians.WASHINGTON  Transgender troops who are currently in the United States military may remain in the ranks, the White House said late Friday, but the Pentagon could require them to serve according to their gender at birth.

The policy recommendation that President Trump approved flatly states that transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from military service. But it also largely gives the Pentagon the ability to make exceptions where it sees fit.

The policy adopts recommendations that Mr. Trump received last month from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It comes after court rulings froze the presidents initial ban on transgender troops  issued in July  as potentially unconstitutional.

In my professional judgment, these policies will place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win Americas wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world, Mr. Mattis wrote in a summary of his recommendations to the president.The researchers, Mr. Ozzie said, recognized that this issue is not going away, and were trying to foster constructive dialogue rather than declaring that no solution is possible.

Mr. Savage said the talks had focused on trying to create a safe enough way to unlock data on encrypted devices, as opposed to the separate matter of decoding intercepted messages sent via encrypted communications services, like Signal and WhatsApp.

The stuff Ive been thinking about is entirely the device problem, he said. I think that is where the action is. Data in motion and the cloud are much harder to deal with.

The deliberations shed new light on public remarks by Trump administration officials in recent months. In October, Mr. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, argued in a speech that permitting technology companies to create warrant-proof encryption was endangering society.

Technology companies almost certainly will not develop responsible encryption if left to their own devices, he said. Competition will fuel a mind-set that leads them to produce products that are more and more impregnable. That will give criminals and terrorists more opportunities to cause harm with impunity.

And Mr. Wray, the F.B.I. director, has twice given speeches this year in which he pointed to Symphony, an encrypted messaging system for banks. Pushed by a state regulator, several banks agreed to give copies of their Symphony keys to law firms. Because Symphony keeps a copy of encrypted data on its servers, that arrangement created a backup means for investigators to gain access to the messages if necessary.

At the end, the data in Symphony was still secure, still encrypted, but also accessible to the regulators so they could do their jobs, Mr. Wray told a cybersecurity conference in Boston this month. Im confident that by working together and finding similar areas to agree and compromise, we can come up with solutions to the going dark problem.Many of the young immigrants, a group broadly known as Dreamers, have vowed to stay. But the choice may not be theirs one day. And in Mexico, those who have already returned from the United States warn: Reintegration is rarely easy.

To be sure, voluntary returnees and deportees say that landing in Mexico can have upsides. They can walk the streets without fear of deportation. They can reconnect with long-lost relatives. They can afford college.

But the positive turns can be overwhelmed by the challenges.

Many arrive in a place they never knew as adults, or do not remember. Some may find themselves alone, their friends and relatives still living in the United States. Some may even wrestle with speaking Spanish.

They may struggle to continue their education, find jobs and make their experience in the United States count for something in Mexico.

Their return can carry a stigma: the shame of a deported criminal, or a sign of utter failure.

The early days was just, like, culture shock, man, said Mr. Aguilar, who had grown up in what he called a small white Mormon town in Utah.

After returning to Mexico, I isolated myself in my room pretty much, he said. Isolation and depression, trying to figure out what was going on, how I ended up living in Mexico.BEIJING  Chinas newly appointed economic czar told Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Saturday that Beijing was ready to defend its interests after President Trump announced plans to slap tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports.

Vice Premier Liu He told Mr. Mnuchin in a phone call that the order Mr. Trump signed on Thursday violated international trade rules, Chinas official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The White House says the planned tariffs are intended to punish Beijing for what it depicts as the theft of American technology.

Xinhua quoted Mr. Liu as saying that China was ready and capable of defending its national interest and hopes both sides will remain rational.SEOUL, South Korea  High-ranking officials from North and South Korea will meet on the countries border next week to prepare for the inter-Korean summit meeting planned for late next month, the South said on Saturday.

The officials will discuss the agenda for the meeting between President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and Kim Jong-un, the Norths leader, the Souths Unification Ministry said in a statement. That summit meeting, which both sides have agreed to hold in late April, is expected to be followed within weeks by a meeting between Mr. Kim and President Trump.

Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon will lead the Souths delegation to the talks next week, which will be held Thursday on the North Korean side of Panmunjom, the so-called truce village that straddles the border. The Norths delegation will be led by Ri Son-kwon, one of the senior North Korean officials who visited the South during the Winter Olympics last month, part of the stage-setting for the current detente between the Koreas after a year of high tension over Pyongyangs nuclear program.

The North on Saturday accepted the Souths proposal to meet at Panmunjom, the Unification Ministry statement said.President Rodrigo Duterte has not commented on the current measure. But during the campaign in 2016, he said he was against divorce  a stance reiterated recently by his spokesman Harry Roque. House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, one of Mr. Dutertes closest allies and a co-author of the bill, says he is optimistic he can bring the president around.

No bill on divorce has ever made it this far in Congress. The measure is the rare piece of legislation supported by representatives from both the majority and opposition parties in the House. A survey released this month found that 53 percent of Filipinos support legalizing divorce.

About 80 percent of Filipinos are Roman Catholic, and previous attempts to pass a divorce bill have faltered under the influence of the Catholic Church here, which vehemently opposes legislation that runs counter to its teachings.

The divorce bill comes in the wake of a bitter battle over a reproductive health law that provides modern family planning education and free birth control for the poor. It took more than 13 years to pass into law, which occurred in 2012; it then languished in appeals for several years, and has yet to be implemented fully. Politicians who supported that measure were vilified by priests or threatened with excommunication.

Its just exhausting to be debating with the church all the time, said the deputy House speaker, Pia Cayetano, a practicing Catholic who advocated both reproductive health and divorce, and was denounced as an agent of the devil during Sunday Masses. A lot of my colleagues are just too scared to take on the church, she said.

While divorce may indeed vindicate the rights of women, as congressmen believed, the Rev. Jerome Secillano, the executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, said in a statement, it is unfortunately to the detriment of marriage and family as sacred institutions that should otherwise be protected by the state. Divorce is antimarriage and anti-family.Think of what we could have achieved if we had democracy and good governance

German think-tank reports characterizing Bangladesh as a country under autocratic rule is undoubtedly a big shame. This is the harsh truth the beneficiaries of corruption and abuse of power are taking cover to hide. A government that is not ready to face free election as practised under parliamentary system cannot call itself democratic. We most sincerely wish the government to save itself from the corrupt ones and earn confidence to face free election.



The government is also being misled into believing that we have reached the stage of a developing country. A long way to go to attain that stage in 2024. So only hope has been expressed if we are ready to do things necessary.



The UN body's recommendation that Bangladesh now qualifies to become a developing nation by 2024 should be taken as big responsibility. But the government made it a huge celebration of all sections of the government while deliberately excluding private sector people whose contribution alone made it possible to overcome the status of the least developed country.



So far as the government's contribution is concerned it cannot be denied it is rather more marked by the destruction of the banking system by unprecedented looting of public money with impunity. The Stock Exchange is lifeless. It cannot be denied that the spread of corruption is politically motivated inasmuch as the government is dependent on corrupt elements in every field while it is unable to depend on public support and free election. Let the government departments functioning properly. Police protecting the VIPs will not do alone.

The celebration on Thursday all over the country also made it compulsory for school students to join.



It is no doubt a happy occasion for all of us if we are prepared to accept the challenges of graduating to a developing county by the year 2024.



The government took the occasion to claim its 'big success' in running the country towards higher level of growth. Firstly this level of growth does not speak of success of any particular government because the economic growth was achieved over long years.



Everybody, other than bureaucrats happily misleading the government, will agree that for economic growth the need of good governance is an essential prerequisite. There is terrible division among the people created by the government by its intolerant politics. There cannot be the rule of law without independent judiciary but the government is not ready to tolerate the judiciary for its independence. Nobody can expect foreign good investment unless the investors know there is the protection of rule of law. Some people may feel attracted to the corrupt government for making easy money.



The UN body believed that the country will be able to achieve good governance, reduce unemployment and income gap of between the mega rich the dirt poor. It also believed government will be the people's government and not run by corrupt ones for their selfish gains. The government will allow the Anti-Corruption Commission to probe against government corruption.



But the report by Bertelsmann Stifftung on Friday has seriously undermined the government claim when it said Bangladesh is a country that no longer meets the minimum standard for democracy and is already under autocratic rule with at least four others.



They are Lebanon, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Uganda in this category. It said democracy has been undermined in Bangladesh and the rest four countries for years and the shortcomings often are in the quality of elections that tipped the balance away from democratic rule. Bangladesh has already crossed the threshold to join other autocracies.



Needless to say Bangladesh is known for gross human rights violation now all over the world such as forced disappearance, extra-judicial killing, torture and death in police custody are rampant. Public safety is in danger at all level in absence of good governance under an oppressive political regime. The government is virtually running a one party system where the opposition parties have no political space to freely speak out in the public



But it appears the government is trying to bury its failures by hastily arranging celebration of 'big economic success.' Many believe if there is any big success the nation has achieved, the country's private sector achieved despite many odd in the fields of job creation, exports and remittance by expatriate workers.



Had there been able leadership, good governance and an efficient bureaucracy with some control over corruption and massive misuse of public money, the country would have made way to a developing nation status much before.



It is indeed shame for Bangladesh to be identified as an autocratic nation when people had liberated the country to make it a democratic nation. The government slogan such as 'democracy for development' is a deceitful slogan to make common people fool while powerful people are routinely breaking banks and looting financial institutions moving money abroad to amass illegal wealth.



The German think-tank has revealed the cruel truth; which suggests celebration of development is eyewash when the nation should rather seriously think how to end autocracy and reestablish democracy. Without democracy inclusive development that accrues to common people is not possible.





Eight months after the withdrawal, the Soviet Union passed an amnesty for deserters. Mr. Mohammad said he had no money to move his growing family to Ukraine, and anyway didnt trust the amnesty.

Vyacheslav M. Nekrasov, director of the Russian Cultural Center in Kabul, said Russian consular officials had met Mr. Mohammad. He accepted $2,000 in resettlement aid, but did not move, despite assurances he would not be prosecuted, Mr. Nekrasov said.

In 2012, Mr. Mohammad traveled to his hometown, Amrosiivka, in eastern Ukraine. Mr. Mohammad said he walked in the sunflower fields and felt sorry that it all turned out this way, adding, I missed my home.

He still entertained hopes of moving his family, though his wife, fearful of living in a strange country, opposed the idea. But the final blow to his dream came when Russian-backed separatists seized his hometown in 2014 during the eastern Ukraine war.

After that, any return now would put him again in de facto Russian hands. And the last of his Ukrainian relatives, a brother and nephew, died in the war in Ukraine.Nobody is waiting for me now, he said.

In Kunduz, the Taliban still surround the city; the only way in is on a flight that descends in a steep corkscrew to land on a well-guarded airfield. In town, men in turbans stare warily at strangers. Taliban-held villages are visible from rooftops.

Of the continual fighting around his adopted city, Mr. Mohammad said, This is normal for Afghanistan.PORT LINCOLN, Australia  It has been called Australias answer to the Galapagos: a stretch of rich, pristine ocean facing the Antarctic that is home to calving whales and teeming fisheries that have turned local boat captains into tuna barons.

But now the waters, known here as the Great Australian Bight, or just the Bight for short, have drawn a different sort of resource industry: The Norwegian oil giant Statoil plans to start drilling by the end of 2019 to tap what experts call one of the worlds great remaining natural gas reserves.

Here in a country built on resource extraction, where the fossil fuel industry has a long history of political connections that often give it priority over the environment, people fear that this haven for some of the most unusual marine life in the world will be damaged and put at even greater risk from a spill.PARIS  Swapping places with a woman being held hostage, the French police officer entered the supermarket where a gunman, claiming allegiance to the Islamic State, had already shot and killed two people on Friday.

While he did not carry a gun as he went inside, Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame did bring in his phone, which he left on a table with the line open so that his colleagues outside could listen in, according to Gerard Collomb, Frances interior minister.

The officer spent about two hours inside the Super U market facing the gunman, Radouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old French citizen born in Morocco, officials said.

After officers heard more gunshots through the phone, they rushed into the market and killed Mr. Lakdim. Colonel Beltrame, 44, who had been seriously wounded by gunfire, Mr. Collomb said, died overnight of his injuries.A powerful Indian politician was sentenced on Saturday to 14 years in prison for embezzling 37 million rupees from a state governments treasury while he was the states top elected official.

The politician, Lalu Prasad Yadav, was convicted of embezzling the equivalent of $570,000, to buy fictitious medicines and cattle fodder while he was chief minister of Bihar State from 1990 to 1997.

Mr. Yadav, who already had been convicted three times in related cases, was also fined $92,307.

Eighteen former Bihar State officials, contractors and suppliers were also sentenced in the case to jail terms ranging from three and a half to five years.

Mr. Yadav, 69, who served as Indias railways minister from 2004 to 2009, was shifted to a hospital from a prison earlier this month, after he complained of chest pains in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand State.LONDON  Two senior advisers to Prime Minister Theresa May might have conspired to bypass electoral spending laws when they were leading a campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, a former employee of their effort said this week, in an interview and in testimony he gave to the countrys elections regulator.

The allegations led to a heated exchange, conducted in the British news media, involving allegations of hard feelings over an old romance and of the deliberate outing by the prime ministers office, No. 10 Downing Street, of the former employee as gay.

The former employee, Shahmir Sanni, said in the interview and in a witness statement submitted to the regulator, the Electoral Commission, that the two advisers had funneled more than $900,000 in campaign spending through a puppet organization that they had set up. They did so, he said, by paying the money to a digital advertising firm that was indirectly linked to the Trump campaign and also worked on the push to exit the European Union.

Mr. Sanni volunteered at Vote Leave, the main campaign led in part by the two advisers to the prime minister, and then at the organization that he now says was a puppet, called BeLeave. He spoke with The New York Times for a joint reporting project with The Observer of Britain.DUBAI  Iran should strengthen ties with Russia and China to counter the tougher stance expected from the United States after President Trumps appointment of John Bolton as national security adviser, a senior member of Irans Parliament was quoted as saying on Saturday.

Some commentators see Mr. Boltons nomination as another nail in the coffin of the agreement between Iran and world powers to limit Tehrans nuclear ambitions, a deal struck by the Obama administration that has already been cast into grave doubt by Mr. Trump himself.

Americans are pushing for harder policies toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we need to strengthen our view towards the East, especially China and Russia, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of Parliaments National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told the semiofficial ISNA news agency. The use of hard-line anti-Iran elements indicates that Americans are pushing for more pressure on Iran, mainly to strengthen ties with Israel and Saudi Arabia, Mr. Boroujerdi said.

Mr. Bolton is widely seen as a pro-Israel hawk in the Middle East.

Separately, Iran denounced charges and sanctions announced by the United States against nine Iranians and an Iranian company on allegations of attempting to hack into hundreds of universities worldwide, as well as companies and the United States government, on behalf of Tehran.Masarat Alam will remain a non-starter in J&K thanks to Centres zero tolerance towards separatism

ISI created TRF to give itself, Lashkar plausible deniability for attacks in J&K

2 terrorists killed in encounter in Anantnag's Dooru area

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Two terrorists were gunned down in an encounter between security personnel and terrorists in Anantnag's Dooru area that started Friday night. The security personnel recovered arms and ammunition from the site of encounter in Dooru, reported news agency ANI.

Acting on specific information about the presence of militants in Shistragam village in Dooru area of Anantnag, security forces launched a search and cordon operation in the area late last night, a police official told PTI.

This is the second encounter this week after security forces launched an operation in Kupwara's Arampora and killed five terrorists who opened fire at an Army patrol party.

#SpotVisuals: 2 terrorists gunned down in an encounter with security personnel in Anantnag's Dooru area, encounter over. #JammuAndKashmir (visuals deferred) pic.twitter.com/OGUvAHcbq6  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

"In an encounter in Shishitergam Police station Dooru Anantnag; today morning two bodies of terrorists have been recovered along with two AK47s, pistols, grenades and arms and ammunition.Efforts are on to identify the bodies. Operation concluded", tweets J&K DGP SP Vaid.

Jammu and Kashmir police said all the terrorists killed in the Kupwara encounter are of foreign origin, prima facie appears to be related to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

The encounter has highlighted gaps in the Army's vigil along the Line of Control (LoC) as the group of militants had managed to sneak in nearly 8 km after crossing two ridges of the Shamsabari mountain range, reports PTI.

(With agency inputs)German think-tank report on BD a conspiracy of BNP: Tofail

Staff Reporter :

The Awami League leaders have trashed a study by Bertelsmann Stiftung that dubbed Bangladesh an autocracy which "no longer met the minimum standards of democracy," saying it is a conspiracy of BNP to tarnish the country's image.

They also questioned the study's sourcing and it's timing, which came just after the country's graduation from a least developed country to developing one.

Criticizing the report of Beltesmann Stiftung of Germany, Commerce Minister and Awami League Advisory Committee Member Tofail Ahmed said that tagging Bangladesh along with five other states as an autocrat nation is nothing but a deep conspiracy to tarnish the image of Bangladesh.

When the country is celebrating the occasion of it graduation from the Least Developed Country (LDC), publication of such a report is only to undermine its achievements, he said, mentioning that the people understand it very well.

The minister said this while addressing a discussion on 'Liberation War' at the Jatiya Press Club in the city on Saturday.

"As per the UN standard, we have achieved the category of a developing nation. Now people in Dhaka city and even in remote villages are celebrating the occasion. This report at this very moment is nothing but a conspiracy against the country," Tofail said.

Senior party leaders in separate functions yesterday also accused the BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami of paying lobbyists to smear Bangladesh's image. They allege that a group of intellectuals is always trying to paint Bangladesh as a failed state.

Bangladesh's democratic standard, they claim, is far better than many western countries.

The report, conducted between February 2015 and January 2017, says that five countries, including Bangladesh, did no longer meet minimum standards of democracy.

"These five new autocracies have crossed a threshold that the defective democracies of Honduras, Hungary, Moldova, Niger, the Philippines and Turkey are nearing, though to varying degrees," says the study.

Awami League Presidium Member Abdul Matin Khasru called the study baseless. "Bangladesh is a 100 percent democratic country," he said. "There's no option to question its standards."

"Maybe the Germany-based think tank collected information from wrong sources who had no connection to Bangladesh or from anti-Bangladesh and anti-Awami League people," he added.

Awami League Organizing Secretary Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury claimed that Bangladesh's democratic standard is "far better than the US or any other western country" but the world lobby, bribed by Jamaat, was trying to tarnish Bangladesh's image.



Terror module busted in Delhi, UP shows Dawood is still prime asset for ISI

Delhi Police apologises for manhandling journalist covering JNU protest

India

oi-Shreya

The Delhi Police, after facing the wrath of the media, finally apologised for manhandling photojournalist Anushree Fadnavis on March 24. A video of the incident was posted on Twitter on March 23 and at least 6 police women could be seen manhandling Fadnavis while she was covering a protest by students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

As soon as the video went viral, the police drew a lot of criticism and journalists called for a protest on March 24 against the police high-handedness.

However, on March 24 ahead of the protest by journalists, Delhi Police issued an apology and requested journalists to call off the protest. The police instead asked journalists to meet for coffee.

#WATCH: Policewomen rough up a photojournalist during JNU students' protest, yesterday. Police say journalist was on wrong side of the barricade, journalist refutes the claim, says her camera was also snatched away. Police also added that the matter is being looked into. #Delhi pic.twitter.com/k56GHGsY69  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

The police even said that they "mistook the journalist for a protestor, and will take corrective measures". Many asked if the Delhi Police in the above statement justified brutality on unarmed protestors.

In spite of the apology, journalists have decided not to call off the protest.

OneIndia NewsFodder scam: Lalu Prasad Yadav sentenced to 14 years in prison in fourth case

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

A special CBI court in Ranchi sentenced RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav to 14 years in prison in Dumka treasury case. The case is relating to fraudulent withdrawals of Rs 3.13 crore from December 1995 to January 1996 from the Dumka treasury. The hearing was completed on March 5.

CBI judge Shiv Pal Singh awarded two sentences of seven years each to the former Bihar chief minister under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Acts, he said.

This is the fourth fodder scam case in which former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav was held guilty.

Prabhat Kumar, Lalu Yadav's lawyer, said, "Imprisonment of 7 years each has been given under IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act, both to run concurrently. Total fine will be Rs. 60 lakh. Sentence of previous case to also run concurrently."

A special CBI court in Ranchi had convicted Lalu Prasad on Monday after finding him guilty on the charges of conspiracy and corruption in the case. Lalu has been serving a jail term in Ranchi's Birsa Munda Central Jail since last December after his conviction in two other fodder scam cases. Two days ago, he was shifted to Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) after he complained of chest pain.

The fodder scam has cost Lalu Prasad Yadav his political career. Because of his three convictions so far, in this case, he had to step down from the post of Bihar Chief Minister in 1997, lose his Lok Sabha seat and was also barred from contesting elections for six years following the sentencing due to an earlier Supreme Court order.

Lalu has so far been convicted in three fodder scam cases out of a total of six in which he has been facing trial. Lalu's convictions in other fodder scam cases till date: Lalu Yadav was first convicted in a fodder scam case in 2013 and was awarded five years' imprisonment.

On January 24, a special CBI court awarded five years in jail and a fine of Rs 10 lakh to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav in a third fodder scam case. Special CBI court judge S S Prasad had earlier convicted Lalu and 50 other accused in the case, which pertains to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 33.67 crore from Chaibasa treasury in 1992-1993.

Former Bihar CM Jagannath Mishra was also found guilty and awarded a five-year jail term for embezzling funds from the Chaibasa treasury. Lalu, who is currently lodged jail, was on December 23, 2017, convicted for 3.5 years in the second fodder scam case. Although he was convicted on December 23, the quantum sentence was pronounced on 6th January 2018.

OneIndia NewsHaryana's BJP govt giving step treatment to the people of Delhi, says AAP

India

oi-Shreya

Water-sharing agreements have been made between various states in the country with the underlying principle that river water is a national resource and belongs to the entire country. In fact, in the case of Delhi, there is a Supreme Court Judgment that specifies the amount of Yamuna water that Haryana must release to Delhi. Despite this, the BJP Government of Haryana has not been releasing Delhi's share of water, claims AAP as the protested outside Haryana Bhavan on March 24.

In protest of the Haryana Government's behaviour in this matter, Aam Aadmi Party MLAs along with hundreds of supporters staged a massive protest outside the Haryana Bhavan, situated in the capital. Sanjeev Jha, Shiv Charan Goel, Anil Bajpeyi, Gulab Singh, Alka Lamba, Commando Surender, Madan Lal among other MLAs participated in the protest.

AAP MLA Sanjeev Jha said, "The Haryana Government is not complying with the water sharing agreements between Delhi and Haryana and is not releasing Delhi's share of Yamuna water. The state is also in violation of the Supreme Court order on this issue. It has become clear that the Haryana BJP Government's behaviour is politically morivated and exposes the BJP's step treatment to the people of Delhi."

MLA Madan Lal added, "The summer has now begun in Delhi and the demand for water is also growing. It's unfortunate that the BJP Government in Haryana is playing politics over water and denying Delhi's fair share of Yamuna water. The BJP is seeking revenge on the people of Delhi because they did not vote for the BJP in the Assembly election.

Delhi Jal Board approached the Supreme Court over water dispute. The Delhi Jal Board has knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court to resolve the ongoing dispute between Delhi and Haryana over the Haryana Government's failure to release the mandated 450 cusec of Yamuna water daily to the Wazirabad reservoir. The DJB will mention the petition for urgent hearing in Supreme Court on Monday.

The AAP further said that one can appreciate the gravity of the situation by the fact that the level of water has dropped to the extent that one can simply walk across the river. It is worth noting here that only some months ago the Haryana Government had permitted certain polluting industries to release effluents into the river near Panipat. This had resulted in there being high concentration of ammonia in the river, leading to acute shortage of drinking water in the city. When the Delhi Government had approached the NGT over this, Haryana's Chief Secretary had admitted to it's lapse. This time the Haryana Government has simply reduced the supply of water to Delhi, creating a situation of shortage.

The shortage of water had also resulted in a person's death recently said the AAP. A dispute over water turned violent taking the life of a resident. This incident shows just how serious the crisis of water is.

The BJP Government of Haryana is directly responsible for creating this artificial shortage, and the reasons are not so much administrative as they are political, claimed AAP.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, March 24, 2018, 19:01 [IST]In BSPs RS loss, SP lawmakers missed out on a 5 star dinner and bhajan programme

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

The Samajwadi Party managed to send its lone candidate to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh. However, it was not all smiles for the party as it failed to elect the BSP candidate who was counting heavily on the surplus votes of the SP.

The BJP managed to send its 9th candidate by defeating the BSP in a keenly contested battle. Both the SP and BSP which got together to defeat the BJP in the by-elections were confident ahead of the RS polls.

Akhilesh Yadav had big plans after the elections. He had planned a bhajan session and a grand dinner at a 5-star hotel in Lucknow to celebrate the win of both the SP and BSP, although it was just one seat each in comparison to the BJP's nine.

The programmes that were planned by the SP were to be attended by Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Jaya Bachchan who won the elections. However once the results began to trickle in and the SP realised that the BSP candidate would lose, the programmes were cancelled.

Akhilesh Yadav had in fact done his best to ensure that the BSP won. He wanted to return the favour to the BSP which had not fielded any candidate both at in Gorakhpur and Phulpur. When Mayawati asked him ahead of the RS polls for a dedicated list, he sent the names of his most trusted MLAs.

The SP had 10 surplus votes after it elected Jaya Bachchan who needed 37 votes. Akhilesh even went ahead and sought peace with Raghuraj Pratap Singh, an independent MLA, who was once part of his cabinet.

However drama unfolded and thanks to cross-voting and accurate engineering by the BJP, the BSP's Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar was defeated.

OneIndia NewsIs a Mosque integral to Islam: Supreme Court to decide

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Is a Mosque an essential party of Islam? This is a question of law that the Supreme Court would examine while adjudicating the sensitive Ayodhya dispute.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra said that it would examine if a five-judge Bench was required to go into the question, whether a Mosque was integral to Islam. The Bench, however, turned down a request to refer the original dispute to a larger Bench.

When some of the advocates asked why should only one part be referred to the larger Bench, the court said that it was necessary to put the controversy to rest first.

The Supreme Court had in 1994 in the Islmail Fauqui case said that Mosque is not an essential part of the practice of Islam and namaz by Muslims can be offered anywhere. Accordingly, its acquisition is not prohibited by the provisions of the Constitution, the Court had also said.

Senior counsel Rajeev Dhawan, however, said that the Fauqui case was wrongly decided by the Supreme Court. He said that the verdict contradicted an earlier SC judgment which had stated that a Mosque is forever and it does not lose its significance and remains a place of worship even if it is demolished.

OneIndia NewsJournalists stage sit in protest outside Delhi Police HQ

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Journalists staged a sit in protest outside Police Headquarters on Saturday a day after alleged molestation of a woman journalist by Delhi Cantt SHO and manhandling of another journalist by police during JNU Protest march.

Journalists had heated argument with police outside Delhi Police HQ where they gathered in protest against alleged molestation of a woman journalist by Delhi Cantt SHO. Protesters kept their cameras on ground as mark of protest.

Delhi Police PRO Madhur Verma clarified that Police used water cannons to disperse protesters who were trying to break barricades. Lady constable wasn't aware the woman is a photo journalist. It was a misunderstanding and unfortunate. Delhi assured of an inquiry into the incident.

A large number of JNU students and teachers were yesterday stopped from marching to the Parliament Complex over various demands, including academic freedom, with police resorting to lathicharge and use of water canons.

The protesting students had claimed that the "attack" by the police was "unprovoked", with a woman journalist alleging that a man in uniform "groped" her and asked her to vacate the place.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, March 24, 2018, 17:25 [IST]Ktaka farmers present agriculture manifesto on Facebook ahead of polls, are Cong, BJP listening?

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

Bengaluru, March 24: The farmers of Karnataka are not mutely observing the events ahead of the Assembly elections in the southern state. As the state is reeling under agrarian crises with reports of around 3,700 farmers committing suicide in the last few years, the tech-savvy practitioners of agriculture in Karnataka have gone online to come up with their own agriculture manifesto.

According to The Times of India, a Facebook group consisting of around 2.77 lakh active members from across the globe have come up with an agriculture manifesto ahead of the state elections.

The agriculture manifesto is a kind of demand draft which the farmers have put up online for the political parties to go through before the elections.The elections to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly are likely to take place between the last week of April and the first week of May.

Some of the demands the farmers want political parties to add to their respective manifestos are:

- 24 hours power supply for agriculture pump sets

- Market Price Declaration for agricultural products

- Support price announcement when the price falls down for agri products

- Support for using modern technology

- Control of mediator

- Supporting educated people who enter the agriculture sector

- Hiring science graduates to vill?age level of agriculture technological information

- Water refilling system to be made mandatory.

- Taluk level agriculture warehouses.

- Support for cattle farming and products selling

Speaking to The Times of India, Ramesh Delampadi, one of the group admins, said that earlier group members were from the areas of Puttur and Sullia only, but now it has members from across the world. The members of the Facebook group claim that in the recent times several educated and salaried people have ventured into agriculture.

Along with the traditional farming class in the state, the new-bred of educated and tech-savvy farmers want to change in the agriculture sector which is reeling under myriad problems.

Earlier, OneIndia reported that both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are engaged in a "Twitter war" over farmers in the state. Both the parties claimed on social media that they worked for the betterment of farmers and accused each other of not doing anything to end agrarian distress in Karnataka.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

OneIndia NewsKarnataka polls: Has Brand Bengaluru turned into Barbaad Bengaluru under Congress?

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

Bengaluru, March 24: Keeping an eye on the upcoming Karnataka Assembly elections, incumbent Chief Minister Siddaramaiah gifted Karnataka's capital city, Bengaluru, a logo, Brand Bengaluru, last year. Bengaluru is the only city in India to have its own logo to highlight its cosmopolitan nature. With its own logo, India's IT hub joined international cities like New York and Amsterdam which too have their own emblems.

Just a few weeks ahead of the Karnataka Assembly polls, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has accused the ruling Congress government of turning "Brand Bengaluru" into "Barbaad Bengaluru". Barbaad in local Kannada language stands for ruined.

To put forward its point as "how the once green city turned into a concrete jungle with lack of safety under the Siddaramaiah government", the Karnataka BJP unit has posted a video on Twitter.

The video in Kannada takes the opinion of people, which include a youngster, a woman and an autorickshaw driver, among others. The people, who have been a part of the video, lamented about traffic jams, lack of safety of women in the city, dying of city's lakes due to pollution and water crisis, among others.

Along with posting the video, the BJP wrote on Twitter, "Namma Bengaluru (My Bengaluru) is Namma Hemme (My Pride) and that's why we can't stand its deterioration, that's why we need to reclaim and revive this beautiful city! This is what Bengalureans have to say about how @siddaramaiah led Congress turned Brand Bengaluru to Barbaad Bengaluru. #SaveBengaluru."

Namma Bengaluru is Namma Hemme and that's why we can't stand its deterioration, that's why we need to reclaim and revive this beautiful city!



This is what Bengalureans have to say about how @siddaramaiah led Congress turned Brand Bengaluru to Barbaad Bengaluru. #SaveBengaluru pic.twitter.com/PNrSzsb9we  BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) March 23, 2018

The elections to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly are likely to take place between the last week of April and the first week of May. Both the BJP and the Congress have engaged in a social media war ahead of the elections in the state. Almost on a daily basis, both the parties are coming up with a new accusation against each other. Now, it needs to be seen how much the social media war of words would help the parties to gain votes during the elections.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

OneIndia NewsKerala ISIS operative Yasmeen Mohammad gets 7 year jail term

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

A court has sentenced Yasmeen Mohammad to 7 years in jail in a conspiracy case relating to the Islamic State in Kerala.

The NIA had chargesheeted the 29 year old on charges of criminal conspiracy.

The case relates to the criminal conspiracy hatched within and outside India by certain youths, originally hailing from Kasaragod district of Kerala, with the intention of furthering the objectives of the proscribed terrorist organization, ISIS, and their pursuant exit from India along with their families for joining and supporting the organization.

Investigation by the NIA had established that the accused Abdul Rashid, was the main conspirator behind the offence of motivating a number of youths, hailing from Kasaragod district to exit India along with their families, to join the Islamic State. He had conducted classes at Kasaragod and other places in support of the terrorist organization and its ideology of violent jihad. He motivated another set of 14 co-conspirators, including another arrested accused Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid to join the proscribed organization and plan for Hijrah to the Caliphate announced by the ISIS.

Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid was intercepted at the New Delhi International Airport on the 30th July, 2016 while she was trying to exit India for Kabul, Afghanistan, alongwith her minor child, with the intention of joining her co-conspirator Abdul Rashid, in the territory under the control of ISIS in Afghanistan. Investigation has established that Abdul Rasheed had raised funds for the terrorist organization and transferred such funds to Yasmeen, who utilized it for her activities with the intention of supporting the terrorist organization.

OneIndia NewsNaidu set to sue Modi govt over special status issue for AP

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Chandrababu Naidu, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh is set to sue the Narendra Modi government over the special status issue. Naidu feels that the matter could be taken to a logical conclusion only by approaching the court.

Currently, the officers are preparing affidavits to this effect and the writ petition would be filed after the Parliament session ends. In the petition, the AP government would state that there is a provision for a special status under the AP Reorganisation Act, but the Centre is refusing to implement it.

Further, Naidu would also explain why he accepted the special packages and why he is now demanding a special status for the state.

Naidu who heads the Telugu Desam Party had pulled out of the NDA over the same issue. He also directed two ministers of the TDP at the Centre to tender their resignation.

OneIndia NewsNew Hurriyat chiefs son joins terrorist organisation Hizbul Mujahideen?

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Has the new Tehrik-e-Hurriyat chief's son joined the Hizbul Mujahideen? A picture of Junaid Ahmad Sehrai, son of Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai has surfaced in which he is seen holding an assault rifle.

The police is yet to confirm this development. However the family has given a missing complaint and the police are probing the matter.

The details available on Junaid suggest that he has joined the Hizbul Mujahideen. His code name is Amaar Bhai and is a resident of Bagar Barzula.

His qualification is MBA (K.U). Further it is said that he is active as a terrorist in the Valley since March 24 2018 ie is today.

In a development earlier this week Tehrik-e-Hurriyat after Syed Ali Shah Geelani stepped down as the chairman to make way for his long time friend Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai.

The TeH was started in 2005 and Geelani and Sehrai were its founding members. The reason behind the formation of this organisation was due to a rift that Geelani had with the Jamaat-e-Islami. It was Sehrai who was instrumental in the formation of TeH.

Geelani had in fact proposed Sehrai as his replacement in the TeH. However it was opposed as several members questioned the nomination system especially where there is an election process in place.

The decision by Geelani is a major one and sources say that there were several factors that led to this decision. First and foremost, one could expect Sehrai to play a bigger role in the Kashmir issue in the next couple of years. Sehrai is Geelani's most trusted aide and friend and he would in due course to look to place him as the Hurriyat Conference chief. Further both has similar ideologies.

For Geelani to take this step there are a host of reasons. He cited health as an issue before stepping down. However sources say that he was unable to sustain the pressure that was mounting on him from various quarters. The Indian Government was increasing pressure on him. The probe by the National Investigation Agency in the Kashmir terror funding case had mounted pressure on Geelani.

Further he was also under pressure from the people of Kashmir. It may be recalled that Zakir Musa at the time of quitting the Hizbul Mujahideen had lambasted Geelani for selling false dreams to the youth.

There was an equal amount of pressure from Pakistan as well. The Pakistan establishment felt that he was not doing enough in recent times. Owing to health issues, age and pressure from all quarters, Geelani decided to step down.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, March 24, 2018, 17:10 [IST]Foreign policy not just about embracing: Congress to Modi, urges to raise issues of Indian interest in US

'Opposition demoralised, go tell people the truth', Modi tells BJP MPs

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Reach out to the masses and expose the lies that the opposition has been telling, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the BJP's Parliamentary meeting.

With the Parliament transacting no business over the past three weeks, Modi to the party MPs to counter the lies being spread by a demoralised opposition. Go ahead and tell the people the real reasons behind the opposition's campaign against the government.

He said that the opposition was demoralised. They are facing defeat after defeat in the elections. This is why they are spreading lies. You should counter the allegations and spread the truth instead. It has to reach people," Union HRD Minister Javadekar said quoting Modi. Another important point in Modi's speech was the emphasis on using technology to reach out to the masses, Javadekar said.

The BJP's national president Amit Shah, on the other hand, emphasised on strengthening the party at the booth levels across the country. He said that party MPs must conduct press conferences over the next three days to tell the people that the opposition was responsible for the impasse in Parliament.

OneIndia NewsRahul Gandhi speaks about Nirav Modi scam, note ban, but fails to answer about NCC

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Congress President Rahul Gandhi highlighted Nirav Modi scam and the ill-effects of demonetisation on the economy while addressing a young audience at Maharani's Arts College for Women in Mysuru in Karnataka.

In his speech, Rahul Gandhi, said, "Nirav Modi took Rs 22,000 crore of bank money. Can you imagine how many businesses could have been built by young women like you if we had given Rs 22,000 crore to you."

The Gandhi scion said though the economy is growing but not creating jobs in the market. He said, "We are growing pretty decently as an economy but we are not creating jobs, it is because those who have skills do not have access to finance and support. The problem is a huge amount of money goes to 15-20 people."

Also, he blamed demonetisation and GST regime for causing damage to the economy.

"I think Demonetisation was a mistake and shouldn't have been done. Demonetisation and GST were massive damage to Indian economy and job creation. I have a problem with the way demonetisation was carried out, RBI Governor, Chief Economic Advisor, Finance Minister, none of them knew of it," Rahul Gandhi said.

However, he could answer questions related to NCC. Asked about benefits of NCC 'C' certificate, he said, "I don't know the details of NCC training and that type of stuff, so I won't be able to answer that question."

#WATCH: 'I don't know the details of NCC training & that type of stuff, so I won't be able to answer that question': Rahul Gandhi on being asked, 'What benefits will you give to NCC cadets after passing 'C' certificate examination?' #Karnataka pic.twitter.com/Vb2fCUsVFp  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

Rahul Gandhi is in the fourth phase of Janaaashirwada Yatre. Earlier, he along with Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah visited Chamundeshwari Temple in Mysuru.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

OneIndia NewsKarnataka: Will Congress not allow Kumaraswamy to be CM for full 5-year term?

Is it chief minister Kumaraswamy or chief manager of Congress Ktaka ATM? BJP has an answer

All is well between Congress, JD(S)? Kumaraswamy meets Rahul as Karnataka waits for full cabinet

Rahul lashes out at JDS, calls it "Janata Dal Sangh Parivar"

India

pti-PTI

In a pungent attack on Janata Dal (Secular) of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday dubbed it a "B-team" of BJP and nicknamed JDS as "Janata Dal Sangh Parivar."

Taking on JDS on its turf in old Mysuru region, where it is the principal challenger to ruling Congress, Gandhi said earlier 'S' in JDS stood for secular, "but in this election they have got a new name JDS- Janata Dal Sangh Parivar."

On his fourth round of tour in poll-bound Karnataka, Gandhi said the coming assembly polls was a face-off between two ideologies on one side BJP and RSS and on the other the Congress.

"In between there is third party which is the B team of BJP that is JDS," the Congress president said at a public rally here in Mandya district, the Vokkaliga belt considered a JDS stronghold.

He told the gathering, "I will tell you. Let BJP's A team, B team or C team come together. Congress party is going to win this election."

Stating that the Congress believed in the ideology of 12th century saint, social reformer Basavanna, Gandhi said JDS call themselves secular, "but they have become the B team of BJP and are supporting them."

Quoting Basavanna's saying "nudidante made" (follow what you preach), Gandhi said JDS had to think about what Basavanna said. "They (JDS) preach something and do something else," he said. Gandhi also alleged that BJP and JDS wherever they go spread lies.

"BJP is a party that believes in dividing the country, we will have to defeat them." He asserted that the Congress would win the elections in Karnataka because "it is not a new fight, but is a very old fight."

Earlier speaking at Chamarajanagar, Gandhi accused the BJP of "attacking" the Constitution and vowed to thwart any attempt to change the statute.

Addressing a rally after visiting a temple of Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru, he said the BJP was not only snatching away people's money through note ban and GST, but "there is new fashion now, they are attacking the constitution."

"Hear it from here. We will not allow the BJP to change the constitution. How much ever BJP forces its way to change the constitution, we will make sure that the Congress will protect the work of Ambedkarji," he told the gathering.

In his current two-day visit, Gandhi is covering Mandya, Mysuru and Chamarajnagar districts. He had earlier toured the northern, coastal and Malnad regions.

The Congress president accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being "insensitive" towards problems related to jobs and demonetization. "I interacted with young students this morning. One of the girl students stood up and asked me about Narendra Modiji's promise to give two crore jobs every year and his "Make In India" programme...but that turned out to be an empty promise and there was no weight behind those words," he said. The rally was held here as part of "Janashirvada Yatre."

Gandhi said nobody has benefited from the note ban and questioned the rationale of having five different GST rates, including 28 per cent.

"A girl stands up and says nobody has been benefited by the note ban. Another girl stands up and says why are there five separate rates, including 28 per cent." "It only means that the students aged between 18 to 20 years have understood the problems, but Narendra Modji is yet to understand," he added.

The Congress chief began his speech by invoking Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Mysore ruler, Krishnaraja Wodayar, 24th Maharaja of erstwhile Mysore kingdom, Sir M Vishveshwariah, renowned engineer, and Kuvempu, Kannada poet, by remembering their contributions to Karnataka and India.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

PTIRS polls: With 9 out of 10, how BJP exacted revenge on the BSP-SP

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Cross-voting and a dramatic two-hour delay were what one witnessed in the Uttar Pradesh assembly that voted in the Rajya Sabha elections on Friday. The final result was BJP, nine, SP, one and BSP, none.

The bonhomie between the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party which began during the Gorakhpur and Phulpur by-elections continued in the Rajya Sabha polls but was not good enough. The BSP had helped the SP bag both the seats in the by-polls. The SP returned the favour by polling its surplus votes in favour of the BSP, but the BJP's Anil Agarwal managed to go through to the Upper House.

The contest was a tough one between Agarwal and the BSP's Bhimrao Ambedkar who got 33 first preference votes. Ambedkar was backed by both the SP and Congress.

Agarwal, however, won after the counting of second preference votes as the BSP candidate did not get second preference votes from the Samajwadi Party. Both the BSP and SP faced cross-voting by two of its MLAs.

An MLA of the Nishad Party voted for the BJP. The two jailed BSP legislators, BSP MLA, Mukhtar Ansari and the SP's Hariom Yadav were not allowed to vote by the court. This took the total loss of the SP-BSP alliance to five votes.

The BSP's Anil Singh said he voted for the BJP. He, however, said after casting his vote that he did not know what the rest had done. He was seen heading to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's residence the night before the voting and had sent out an early signal that he would not be voting for his party's official candidate.

SP MLA, Nitin Agarwal who is the son of former SP leader, Naresh Agarwal too voted for the BJP. The BJP also bagged the vote of independent MLA, Aman Mani Tripathi. After voting, he said he had followed the guidelines of Maharaj ji (Yogi).

Independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh also known as Raja Bhaiyya tweeted, "I am with Akhileshji, but this does not mean that I am with the BSP. I will for SP candidate (Jaya Bachchan). Akhilesh Yadav responded by thanking him. However, Raja Bhaiyya who was the last to cast his vote met with Yogi Adityanath which set off rumours.

On Friday, a total of 400 legislators cast their vote. Voting ended at 3 pm, an hour ahead of schedule, but there were dramatic scenes later on. The opposition parties approached the Election Commission complaining of cross-voting. Both the SP and BSP alleged that the lawmakers had not displayed their ballots to the party agents, as is the rule after voting.

At the end of it, the BJP with 324 MLAs managed to easily elect 8 of its candidates who needed 37 preference votes. The Samajwadi Party with 47 comfortably sent is lone candidate to the Rajya Sabha. The BSP has 19 MLAs. However, with one in jail and another cross-voting, its strength was down to 17. It needed an additional 20 votes to elect its candidate but could not manage it.

OneIndia NewsSouth Indias tax being diverted to North: Kerala FinMin calls for meeting of southern states

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Kerala has decided to lead the way to discuss how tax revenues being generated are being diverted for the development of north Indian states. Kerala's Finance Minister Thomas Isaac has called for a meeting of finance ministers of all southern states on April 10 to discuss the issue.

Isaac said that he had written to all the finance ministers of the southern states. All of them have agreed to be part of the discussion in principal. They are however yet to send their official acceptance letters, he also said.

The issue cropped up after the Central Government had recommended to the 15th Finance Commission of using population data from 2011 census instead of the 1971 census for distribution of central tax revenues.

Isaac said that he is opposed to this and it is not right in the spirit of federalism. It will weaken the federal structure of India and also worsen the Central-State fiscal imbalance.

Isaac's move comes just a few days after Karnataka Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah had tweeted, "We need to resist" to all chief ministers of southern states.

The issue was however raked up first by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. He had said that there is nothing called Centre's or State's money. It is the taxpayers' money. Southern states contribute the maximum tax revenue to the Centre, but they are diverting the money to the development of North, he had also said.

OneIndia NewsSSC students celebrate "World Earth Hour Day in a unique way

India

oi-Shreya

On March 24, on the occasion of World Earth Hour Day, students protesting against the deep rooted corruption in SSC found a unique way of saving nature and power.

The students also spread awareness about the youth Halla Bol Rally being organised in Delhi on March 31. They appealed to youth from all over the country to participate in the rally against corruption in SSC.

On February 27, students protesting in the different areas of the country had given a 15-day ultimatum to the government against the widespread corruption in SSC.

The students had said that if their demands were not accepted during this time, thousands of students from different parts of the country will gather in Delhi for the Yuva Halla Bol rally.

The students found support among protesting students in Delhi's Mukherjee Nagar who took part in a flashlight march.

The march that was taken out at 8:30 pm, was to bring throw light on the widespread corruption in SSC. The students are agitating across the country with two demands - CBI enquiry in massive corruption in SSC and postponing of all SSC conducted examinations till then.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Saturday, March 24, 2018, 22:32 [IST]To preserve Lingayats votes in Karnataka, Amit Shah set to meet seers

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

In a bid to prevent a split in the Lingayat votes in Karnataka, BJP chief, Amit Shah will meet with the seers in the state. Shah would meet with Shivakumar Swamiji, a prominent spiritual leader of the Lingayat community.

He would also visit the Muruga Mutts, Sirigere and Madara Channaiah. The meeting is aimed at retaining the Lingayat votes for the BJP. The decision was taken after the Congress government in Karnataka decided to recommend the grant of religious minority status for the Lingayats.

The BJP while assessing the move by the Congress felt that this could eat into the vote share of the party. The meeting between Shah and Shivakumara Swamiji is significant in the backdrop of the recent developments in the state. Moreover, Shivakumara Swamiji turns 111 on April 1.

The BJP has looking to influence the mutts to take a stance against the decision by the Congress. The BJP has said that the move by the Congress was aimed at dividing the Hindu community. A large section of the Lingayats too have voiced a similar opinion.

The Lingayat community which is incidentally the largest in the state is crucial to the political prospects of any party. The community has traditionally backed the BJP and in particular its chief ministerial candidate, B S Yeddyurappa. The BJP which is backing heavily on this vote bank cannot afford a divide ahead of the crucial Karnataka assembly elections 2018.

OneIndia News'Unfortunate and unilateral', Amit Shah tells Naidu in 9 page letter

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Unfortunate and unilateral is what Amit Shah said in a nine-page letter written to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP chief, Chandrababu Naidu.

While defending the BJP, Shah blamed the TDP for quitting the NDA owing to political considerations. Shah said that the decision was unfortunate and unilateral.

The BJP always had the best interest of Andhra Pradesh in mind. Even when the TDP did not have the numbers in Parliament, the BJP has ensured the best interests of AP, he further said.

He also says that Naidu was aware of what the Centre has done for AP. Shah further listed out the schemes of the Centre which were rolled out to expand the state of AP.

While giving a detailed explanation on the Special Status, Shah also said what steps the government had taken for the Polavaram project and also the setting up of Amaravati, AP's capital city.

OneIndia NewsWhy is Raghuram Rajan not on Twitter? Former RBI governor explains

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

Thiruvananthapuram, March 24: It has been almost two years since he left India for the United States (US) and has taken up the role as Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business where he teaches international corporate finance to students.

However, the former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan never fails to elicit interest among his friends and critics in India. On Friday, when Rajan was in Kochi, Kerala to address the Global Digital Summit (#Future), organised by the Kerala government, reporters asked him why he was not on Twitter.

Once again, the renowned economist had an interesting answer to the question. He said he did not join Twitter as he was not quick to respond to tweets in a few words in 30 seconds.

"I don't have time. My sense is that in many of these things, once you start engaging, you have to be consistent... I certainly can't because I don't have the ability to think quickly and respond in, you know, 20-30 seconds in 140 characters," he said when asked about his absence on social media.

While delivering the keynote address at the summit, Rajan expressed fears that Artificial Intelligence would take up jobs--both high skilled and unskilled. With advances in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, this was going to change still further, as they take up the jobs, ranging from those in unskilled sweatshops to high-skilled professions like medicine, the former RBI governor said.

Rajan was hailed as a "rockstar central banker" soon after assuming charge at the RBI in September 2013 but often landed in controversies during the three-year tenure with his outspoken views.

OneIndia NewsWorld Tuberculosis Day: President Kovind, PM Modi ask India to eliminate TB by 2025

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

New Delhi, March 24: Both President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked all stakeholders to come together to help eliminate tuberculosis by 2025 from the country on the occasion of the World Tuberculosis (TB) day on Saturday.

"On World Tuberculosis Day, I call upon all stakeholders to come together to fight tuberculosis. TB continues to be one of the biggest public health challenges in our country. The time has come for all of us to join hands to eliminate TB from India by 2025," the President tweeted.

On World Tuberculosis Day, I call upon all stakeholders to come together to fight tuberculosis. TB continues to be one of the biggest public health challenges in our country. The time has come for all of us to join hands to eliminate TB from India by 2025 #PresidentKovind  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) March 24, 2018

"In the spirit of this year's World TB Day theme of 'Wanted: Leaders for a TB-free world', I urge citizens and organisations to take the lead in the movement to end TB. A TB-free world is a wonderful service to humanity," Modi tweeted.

Government of India is working in mission mode to make India TB-free. While the world has set a target of 2030 for TB elimination, we in India want to become TB-free by 2025!



At the recent Delhi End TB Summit, I spoke more about the subject. https://t.co/mbAbsZ5wMk #WorldTBDay  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 24, 2018

The PM also said that the government was working to make India TB free. "While the world has set a target of 2030 for TB elimination, we in India want to become TB-free by 2025! At the recent Delhi End TB Summit, I spoke more about the subject," he said in another tweet attaching a news report of about his speech on TB on March 13.

The World TB Day is observed across the globe to create awareness about various consequences of the disease and to come up with solutions to restrict the epidemic.

On this day, back in 1882, Robert Heinrich Hermann Koch, a German physician and microbiologist, announced that he had identified the bacterium that causes TB. Because of his path-breaking work, today tuberculosis can be diagnosed and treated.

OneIndia NewsPM Modi likely to visit US later this month

Will review comprehensive global strategic partnership with Biden says PM Modi ahead of US visit

US accuses 9 Iranians of cyber theft campaign worth $3.4 billion

International

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

American justice department authorities on Friday, March 23, said nine Iranians were charged as part of a big state-backed cyber theft campaign targeting several government entities, universities and companies in the US and abroad.

The suspects were accused of breaching the computer systems of the US Department of Labor, the United Nations, states of Indiana and Hawaii and also of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the officials added. The suspects are affiliates of Mabna Institute, an organisation based in Tehran.

America's Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the nine suspects allegedly stole over 31 terabytes of data from as many as 140 American universities, 30 companies and five government bodies besides targeting over 175 universities in 21 countries. The stolen information was valued at a whopping $3.4 billion, the authorities informed.

The hackers allegedly targeted at least 1,00,000 email accounts of university professors and researchers while several thousand accounts were compromised.

Rosenstein even said that the acts were carried out at the behest of the government of Iran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The US has tense relation with Iran, especially in the era of President Donald Trump who has made a reversal of the pro-Iran policy of his predecessor Barack Obama.

'The act will expose Iran'

Though the Iran-based hackers were outside the immediate reach of authorities in the US, Rosenstein said at least their public identification and imposing consequences would deal a heavy blow to the state-sponsored computer hackings.

Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and the acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, said at a press conference that the revelations would expose Iran's deceptive activities in front of the world.

Founded in 2013, the Mabna Institute functioned as a contractor for Tehran to steal valuable research and other information of proprietary, the authorities added.

OneIndia NewsSirisena praises Pakistan's progress via CPEC; Sri Lanka deftly conducts its India & Pak policies

International

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

In what could send alarming signals to India, two of its neighbours Pakistan and Sri Lanka have decided to work together for the promotion of regional peace and security. The revelations were made at a meeting between Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and his Pakistani counterpart Mamnoon Hussain held in Pakistan on Saturday, March 24. Sirisena was in Pakistan as the chief guest at the Pakistan Day celebrations on March 23.

The two countries discussed bilateral issues, including trade relations, and also agreed to make the often struggling South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation or Saarc a more useful platform.

Sirisena even said upon landing at Karachi airport that his country was pleased with the progress Pakistan was making because of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). He thanked Pakistan for being a key ally of Sri Lanka.

Sirisena later met Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi for one-to-one talks and discussed bilateral issues. Three agreements were also signed between the two countries in the presence of their respective heads of the government in matters of youth development and training of bureaucrats and diplomats.

Sri Lanka supports Pak holding Saarc summit

Sirisena also assured support to Pakistan over holding the Saarc summit on its soil, something India and a few other countries had decided to boycott in end 2016 in the wake of devastating terror attacks in an army camp in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir.

Rajapaksa too favours Pakistan

Meanwhile, former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was voted out of power in 2015 but made himself relevant in recent times with the loyalist party winning the local elections decisively, said in an interview to an Indian media house that Sri Lanka always had close relations with India, China, as well as Pakistan and these ties, would continue in the days to come as well.

Rajapaksa said Pakistan is one of Sri Lanka's valued friends who stood by it both in times of war and peace. It shows that irrespective of the political party and colour, Sri Lanka's political leadership has a consistent approach towards Pakistan.

Colombo-Islamabad bonhomie in October 2017

In October last year too, Colombo had backed the prospect of Pakistan hosting the Saarc summit, making observers in India apprehensive that Sri Lanka's foreign policy was seeing a marked shift. Sri Lanka was one of the many South Asian countries in South Asia who had pulled out of the Saarc summit in Islamabad in 2016 the environment was not suitable for holding talks.

It though did not mention anything about Pakistan and its prime minister Ranil Wickremasinghe had also said during a visit to New Delhi around the same time, he said it was because Sri Lanka had never faced any terrorist threat from Pakistan.

A year since then, Colombo's stance saw a visible shift and its support for Pakistan was revealed by Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua during her visit to the Sri Lankan capital.

Janjua said that Sirisena had promised support for holding the summit in Pakistan though it was not mentioned in their official communiques. The Pakistani communique even said that Janjua had raised the issue of Kashmir with Sri Lanka though nothing was said about the latter's response to it.

OneIndia NewsNo change in status quo at Doklam, says Indian envoy, blames China for standoff

International

pti-PTI

"No change" has taken place at the Doklam standoff area after it was resolved last year, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale said and blamed China squarely for the faceoff, saying it happened because Beijing tried to alter the "status quo" which it should not have.

The 73-day long standoff ended on August 28 last year after China agreed to halt the road building activities at Doklam in Sikkim Section.

"No, I can tell you that in Doklam area, which we call close proximity or sometimes the face-off site, the area where there was close confrontation or close proximity between Indian and Chinese military troops, there is no change taking place today," India's Ambassador to China Bambawale said, reacting to reports of Chinese military stepping up infrastructure build-up in the area.

The Chinese side may be putting more military barracks to put in more soldiers, but that is well behind the sensitive area, he said in an interview to Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"Those are the things you're free to do and we are also free to do because you're doing it inside your territory and we are doing it inside our territory," Bambawale said.

Indian troops intervened to stop their Chinese counterparts building a road close to India's narrow corridor "Chicken Neck" area connecting northeastern states. Besides China, the area is also claimed by Bhutan.

Recent reports said that Chinese military was trying to work around or outflank the Indian troops in the Doklam area.

Bambawale also reiterated his earlier comments that China should not change the status quo along the Indian border and inform India about its plans earlier.

"In the sense that if the Chinese military is going to build a road, then they must tell us 'we are going to build a road'. If we do not agree to it then we can reply that 'look, you're changing the status quo. Please don't do it. This is a very very sensitive area," the envoy said.

During the Doklam standoff, China claimed that it had informed India about its plans.

About lessons to be drawn, he called for delineation of the 3,488-km long Line of Actual Control (LAC) which China has refused.

"The India-China boundary is un-demarcated and un-delineated, so we have to talk to each other to delineate and demarcate it, which means to draw the boundary line.

"Now for the last 30 years, not a single shot had been fired between the India-China border, which shows that we have been successful at maintaining peace and tranquility. Even during the Doklam incident, a very serious incident, there was no firing, we were able to maintain peace and tranquility. I think this is a successful example of diplomacy between our two countries," Bambawale said.

He said both countries should move further to solve the problem.

"We need to move further to actually solve the problem, which is to draw the boundary line. The boundary is quite long between India and China, roughly 3,500 km. In order to maintain the peace and tranquility, there are certain areas, certain sectors which are very sensitive, where we must not change the status quo. If anyone changes the status quo, it will lead to a situation like what happened in Dokalam.

"The Chinese military changed the status quo in the Dokalam area and therefore India reacted to it. Ours was a reaction to the change in the status quo by the Chinese military," he said, stressing that the two countries should have high-level communication on it.

"I agree entirely that it has to be brought down to practical levels. It shows that when incidents like Doklam happened last year, it means that we were not frank enough and candid enough with each other. So we need to increase the level of frankness," Bambawale said.

At present both countries are having "a lot of dialogue" at the political level and also at the economic level, the Indian envoy said as he welcomed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's recent comments that Indian elephant and Chinese dragon must not fight but dance together.

Referring to various visits planned between the two countries including that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June to China to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, he said that both the countries "especially on the political level, must be very frank and open and candid with each other".

"There are some issues and problems between India and China, if we have to solve those problems, we need to talk candidly. That's what I mean about the candid discussion. Only through talking frankly and candidly, we will be able to solve the issues and problems and understand each other's concerns," Bambawale said, asserting that the boundary issue is the most important problem between India and China.

"It is a leftover from history, but today's governments are trying to tackle it. We are giving it a high priority. But only when both sides talk to each other very frankly and candidly, we will be able to resolve this boundary issue and decide on a boundary," the envoy said.

Both the sides should address each other's concerns, he said.

"There are two principles that India has suggested to China. One is that each side must be sensitive to the other side's aspirations, their concerns, their priorities and so on. The second is that we must not allow differences to become disputes. For example, we might have differences of opinion on Belt and Road, but that we must not allow that difference of opinion to become a dispute," Bambawale added.

PTI'Small' Chinese condoms could hurt Beijing's Africa aid policy; are rivals watching?

International

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

The removal of Zimbabwe's long-serving president Robert Mugabe was seen as a move orchestrated with the help of China and not the West.

In fact, as Beijing has gone on cementing its place in Africa, its grip on the scheme of things in countries like Zimbabwe has only got better. The boycott of Zimbabwe by the western powers because of its poor political and human rights records has also brought its isolated leadership closer to Beijing. The gains have been mutual for both China and Zimbabwe or entire Africa in general.

Besides the regular aid and infrastructure building and boosting of trade, one of China's major contributions towards the uplift of Africa has been its commitment to fight against menace like AIDS. China has asserted time and again that it would share its success stories on fighting AIDS with the African countries and also be developing health services and co-ordinating with regional institutions in Africa.

No less than the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Peng Liyuan, has said in the past that Beijing was always interested to work towards preventing AIDS in the African continent.

China's Africa aid has hit an unforeseen wall

But the Chinese welfare scheme recently hit an unforeseen wall in Zimbabwe - a country which has even termed Beijing as its "all-weather friend". Recently, the health minister of Zimbabwe, David Parirenyatwa, said the men in his country were not happy with the China-made condoms that Zimbabwe was buying saying the products were too small in size for them. He has subsequently approached the condom manufacturers to come up with a solution.

Zimbabwe is a country with a high count of HIV affected people although it has exceeded the UN Population Fund's regional mark of 30 condoms per man per year. The majority of the country's funding in the fight against HIV comes from international donors.

Big problem but 'small' solution

Promotion of the use of condoms thus become a high priority for the Zimbabwean authorities to protect the people from the deadly ailment but the 'smaller' Chinese condoms have made it difficult for the country's men to maintain the safety standards.

The Zimbabwean health minister has sought domestic manufacture of the condoms that people in the southern African nation prefer but the Chinese have assured that they would come up with the customised variants of their condoms to fit the Zimbabweans' need.

Faulty and ineffective Chinese condoms can seriously hurt Africa's public health

For China which has made all-out efforts to win Africa's heart through all sorts of aid and welfare programme, a condom fiasco would not be a happy experience and they are trying to mend things as fast as they can. Zimbabwe is not the first country to express disappointment over the China-made condoms. In 2013, Ghana seized more than a million Chinese products because their sizes were not befitting and also had poor quality.

If China's condoms fail to win markets in Africa owing to size differences, Beijing's anti-HIV campaign in the African continent, which plays a significant role in promoting its welfare image there, takes a beating because ineffective condoms can have a serious repercussion for the region's public health. This could give China's rivals an opening to come up with an alternative and intensify the power game in Africa.

Reports have said that men from south-western African countries have the largest average penis size while those from the Asian countries have the shortest. Maybe China fumbled to measure the vital length before taking its product to the Africans.

OneIndia NewsChina distracted the world from Ladakh by opening up three fronts in South China Sea

US warship enters South China Sea waters for freedom op, leaves Beijing fuming

International

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

Even as the world focused on the impending trade war between the US and China, tension escalated in the disputed South China Sea region where the US on Friday, March 23, conducted its first freedom of navigation operation since January, inviting Beijing's wrath.

China said the entry of the American guided-missile destroyer named USS Mustin in the contentious waters was a "serious political and military provocation" and it was also "warned off" by two Chinese vessels.

Though sources in Beijing did not reveal the location where the American 'interference' took place, other reports quoted anonymous US officials to say that the destroyer had reached within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands to conduct the operations.

One of China's man-made islands in the Spratlys, Mischief Reef has a big airfield and other military facilities and an approach by the Americans in the zone had understandably upset Beijing.

The Americans, however, defended their activities saying they were in tune with the international law and that they operate in the region, including the South China Sea, daily. The spokesperson of US Pacific Fleet, Lt Cmdr Nicole Schwegman also said that the US would continue to do the same in the future as well. He said the freedom of navigation operation is not aimed at one country and nor is it an attempt to make a political statement.

Washington took a counter dig at Beijing over the latter's man-made islands in the South China Sea - some of which have military bases and weapons. It feels these Chinese outposts could severely restrict movement of cargo in the key passes, affecting global trade.

In Beijing's view, these establishments which are under China's sovereign control are meant for national defence.

Beijing has denied claims of neighbouring countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei over the waters to virtually claiming the entire South China Sea and set up a series of outposts to create what the experts define "fully functioning air and naval bases".

OneIndia NewsYes, the decision belongs on the local level

No, no one should be able to dictate whether people wear masks

Vote

View ResultsKevin Mazur/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Overcome with emotion, one Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivor, her voice shaking, led the March for Our Lives crowd in D.C. in a round of "Happy Birthday" in honor of her slain classmate, Nicholas Dworet, who would have turned 18 years old on Saturday.



Some in the crowd held each other close as they joined along and sang.



Dworet, one of 17 people killed in the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last month, was a passionate swimmer who was headed to the University of Indianapolis to join the university's swim team, his family said.



"He was a happy young man full of joy and life," his family said in a statement. "He dreamed of making the Olympic swim team and going to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. He believed he could accomplish anything as long as he tried his best."

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too.

How much more slaughter in Yeman is the United States government willing to help with?

We found out when State Department announced on March 23 the sale of 6,700 anti-tank missiles to Saudi Arabia.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to discuss the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen on March 23 and the missile deal was announced a few hours later. The State Department notified Congress of the proposed sale which is a part of a $1 billion weapons sales deal.



The State Department on Thursday announced the sale of 6,700 anti-tank missiles to Saudi Arabia, hours after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to discuss the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen.

Coming almost three years to the day that Saudi Arabia, supported by the U.S., began a campaign of airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, the State Department ironically and sarcastically wrote: "This proposed sale will support U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives by improving the security of a friendly country which has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic growth in the Middle East" and will not alter the basic military balance in the region." The U.S. increased its air strikes in Yemen in 2017 by having six times more airstrikes that in 2016.

Secretary of Defense Mattis was unconcerned about civilian casualties in Yemen: "We have been working very hard with the new U.N. envoy to end the fight in Yemen. And we believe that Saudi Arabia is part of the solution. They have stood by the United Nations recognized government. And we are going to end this war. That's the bottom line."

The U.S. is not the only country whose weapons manufacturers are making a killing out of killing Yemeni kids. The U.K., France, Spain and Italy, have sold billions of dollars of weaponry to countries around the world, with Saudi Arabia being one of the biggest weapons purchaser.

A war powers resolution for Yemen that represented an attempt to insert congressional oversight into U.S. military operations in the deadly civil war there was defeated by a vote of 55-44 by the U.S. Senate on March 21. Co-sponsored by three members of the Senate -- Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn, the resolution called for the end of the U.S. role in the war.

Under the proposed massive weapons sale, Saudi Arabia will buy: 6,696 TOW 2B missiles and associated training materials worth $670 million; parts and repairs support worth $300 million for its Abrams tanks and fighting vehicles, and maintenance equipment worth $100 million for its fleet of AH-64D/E, UH-60L, Schweizer 333 and Bell 406CS helicopters.

Congress now has 30 days to block the whole or parts of the sale through a privileged resolution under the AECA.

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Quilts have evolved a long way from their original utilitarian purposes, today's quilts are stunning works of art.

Textile artists competed for more than $50,000 in cash awards in the Lancaster American Quilter's Society QuiltWeek , which attracts approximately 15,000 visitors. The annual event was held this year from March 21 to March 24 at the Lancaster County Convention Center, 25 South Queen Street, Lancaster, PA 17603. This year's winners come from 22 U.S. states and six countries.

According to the 2017 Quilting in America Survey, quilting is a $3.7 billion in dustry in the US, with 7-10 million quilters.

Here are some of the stunning works of art that won ribbons:



Celebration #2 by Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry (Pt Townsend, WA) won Best Use of Color at AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





Pear Drops by Cheryl Kerestes won a Third Place ribbon at the AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





Pear Drops (det.) by Cheryl Kerestes won a Third Place ribbon at the AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





My Rhodie by Andrea Brokenshire (Round Rock TX) received a First place ribbon at AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





Wonderland by Renae Haddadin and Karen Kay Buckley won a Second Place ribbon at AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA









Suwon Hwasung by Mikyung Jang (Seoul, South Korea) won a Third Place ribbon at the AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





Detail of Suwon Hwasung by Mikyung Jang (Seoul, South Korea)won a Third Place ribbon at the AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





Paleo Puzzle by Kimberly Lacy (Colorado Springs, CO) won a Second Place ribbon at AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





Three Thieving Crows by Gayle Pulley (Eatonsville, WA) won Best Original Design at AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





detail Three Thieving Crows by Gayle Pulley (Eatonsville, WA) won Best Original Design at AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA





Taking the Unmapped Road by Margaret Solomon gunn (Gorham ME) won Best Movable Machine Workmanship' at the AQS Quiltweek Lancaster 2018

(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA



Look for additional upcoming articles about this exhibition.

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China has sold Pakistan a powerful tracking system in an unprecedented deal that could speed up the Pakistani military's development of multi-warhead missiles, South China Morning Post has reported.

News of the sale -- and evidence that China is supporting Pakistan's rapidly developing missile program -- comes two months after India tested its most advanced nuclear-ready intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range long enough to hit Beijing or Shanghai, the paper said.

Chinese authorities declassified information about the deal on March 21. A statement on the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) website said China was the first country to export such sensitive equipment to Pakistan. Zheng Mengwei, a researcher with the CAS Institute of Optics and Electronics in Chengdu, Sichuan province, confirmed to the South China Morning Post that Pakistan had bought a highly sophisticated, large-scale optical-tracking and measurement system from China.

The Pakistani military recently deployed the Chinese-made system "at a firing range" for use in testing and developing its new missiles, he said.

India and Pakistan are in a heated race to build up their nuclear-weapons capabilities.

Agni-V

India's January 18 test of its Agni-V ICBM, with a range of more than 5,000km (3,100 miles), is seen as a message that the South Asian giant can deploy a credible nuclear deterrent against China, the Chinese paper said.

While India's single-warhead missiles are bigger and cover longer distances, Pakistan has focused its efforts on developing multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), a type of missile carrying several nuclear warheads that can be directed towards different targets.

Beijing's powerful missile arsenal has driven New Delhi to improve its weapons systems in recent years, with the Agni-V believed to be able to strike nearly all of China.

Tension flared last year between the two neighbors over a long-disputed section of their border high in the Himalayas. India is also increasingly concerned about Beijing's efforts to heighten its influence in the Indian Ocean.

India is already able to strike anywhere inside neighboring Pakistan, its arch-rival.

The Agni-V launch comes one day after India announced that it was spending US$553 million on new weapons for its border guards, including those on the borders of Tibet.

Ababeel missile

The US Defense Intelligence Agency officially confirmed in March that Pakistan conducted the first test launch of its nuclear-capable Ababeel missile in January 2017, "demonstrating South Asia's first MIRV payload", according to South China Morning Post.

Although the Ababeel missile has a range of only 2,200km, it can deliver numerous warheads to different targets. The technology has the potential to overwhelm a missile-defense system, wiping out an adversary's nuclear arsenal in one surprise attack.

There are growing concerns that MIRV technology will tip the strategic balance between India and Pakistan and destabilize the subcontinent, the Post said, adding:

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From Mike Malloy Website



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It's a race to the finish -- which will topple Trump first, Mueller or The Women?

In light of the "#Me Too" movement, I'm cheering for the ladies.

Not since the era of Donna Rice, Fawn Hall, and Jessica Hawn has there been such a career-ending powerful trio of beauties as Karen McDougal, Stormy Daniels, and Summer Zervos. But this time, there's no Gary, Ollie, and Jim. Just Donnie. It's alllllll Donnie.

One of my favorite passages from Fire and Fury was a Bannon quote about Trump's lawyer Marc Kasowitz and how he "took care" of at least 100 women during the campaign. And I don't think he was talking about making them chicken soup.

And we now know Trump's oily Consigliere Michael Cohen spends his days bullying and threatening Trumps victims/lovers, including threats of violence. Sometimes against a Trump girlfriend, sometimes against one of their lawyers. CNN has more:

"The attorney for Stormy Daniels accused President Donald Trump's legal team Thursday of 'engaging in thuggish behavior.'

"Attorneys defending Trump and his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, filed a lawsuit last week alleging Daniels violated a nondisclosure agreement 'as many as 20 times,' and could owe in excess of $20 million as a result. "'Now we have a sitting US president, Chris, who is threatening to sue a private citizen for over $20 million for talking about their relationship,' Michael Avenatti told CNN's Chris Cuomo on New Day. 'It's remarkable. I don't think it's ever occurred in the history of the United States.' "Avenatti went on to criticize Trump's legal team, led by Cohen, for 'engaging in thuggish behavior, threats, intimidation, and hiding the money trail.'"

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From Smirking Chimp

Personnel is policy, they say in Washington. The appointment of John Bolton as national security advisor is by far President Trump's most dangerous decision.

When the president considers foreign policy, no one is closer to his ear than his national security advisor. He will discuss questions of war and peace with military generals and members of his cabinet, but when there's a diversity of opinion, the views of a national security adviser can be determinative.

"Brent Scowcroft defined the role of the National Security Adviser (NSA)," wrote Stephen J. Hadley, former National Security Adviser under George W. Bush. "The only person to hold the job twice [under Ford and George H.W. Bush], Brent established the 'Scowcroft Model' for all who followed him in the job: Be an 'Honest Broker,' running a fair, transparent, and inclusive process for bringing issues to the president."

John Bolton is not an honest broker. John Bolton cannot be an honest broker. No human being on earth is less qualified to be Donald Trump's national security adviser.

Given the fact that Donald Trump already leans hard to the right wing of the Republican Party, and that his advisers are drawn from the extreme right as well, an "honest broker" national security adviser would by definition need to provide balance. Ideally it would come from the NSA himself. At minimum he would bring in people with opposing views. Bolton is congenitally incapable of either.

Bolton must be stopped.

His nomination does not require Senate confirmation. But there's nothing preventing members of both parties from traveling to the White House to inform the president that Bolton is a nonstarter. Congress should have nothing to do with this president as long as this dangerous man is whispering sweet bellicose nothings into his ear.

If you haven't been paying much attention, I don't blame you for smelling a whiff of hysteria. How bad could this guy really be?

Bolton was the king of the George W. Bush-era neocons, a man who made Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz look like wimps. As Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, he remarked that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the institution disappeared or, evoking the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the building housing UN headquarters were to lose a few floors.

These days Bolton is touting "regime change" against Iran. Evoking the same arguments he used to justify the invasion of Iraq, he paints dark portraits of North Korea selling or giving nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that there are any links for common ideology between the two. Just after Trump -- correctly, in my view -- announced that he would meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, Bolton wrote an opinion essay laying out the so-called "legal" argument in favor of a preemptive nuclear strike against North Korea. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when that comes up between American and North Korean officials setting up the summit in May.

Most foreign-policy experts, most ordinary Americans, and most sane people generally agree that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a military, political, economic, and propaganda disaster for the United States and the world. We were not "welcomed as liberators." The war was sold (in large part by Bolton) based on the lie that the U.S. knew that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (they didn't have them so we know that "knowledge" was a lie).

Anti-Americanism increased, as did terrorist attacks and the appeal of terrorist organizations that targeted Americans. Thousands of American troops were killed, tens of thousands wounded, and millions of Iraqis died because of the war. Billions of dollars were squandered and oil prices went up, not down as the neocons had hoped and expected, because of the resulting instability. Perhaps most damning of all, the long simmering Sunni-Shia divide widened into a gaping chasm that continues to chew up the Middle East in places like Yemen.

No one was more in favor of that war than John Bolton. For that reason alone, he's unqualified to provide foreign policy advice to anyone more important than a small marsupial. But Bolton is more than just a warmonger -- he's a stupid warmonger. Which is why he still can't accept the fact that he screwed up.

"I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct," he told The Washington Examiner in 2015. "I think decisions made after that decision were wrong, although I think the worst decision made after that was the 2011 decision to withdraw U.S. and coalition forces. The people who say, 'Oh, things would have been much better if you didn't overthrow Saddam,' miss the point that today's Middle East does not flow totally and unchangeably from the decision to overthrow Saddam alone."

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US president Donald Trump signed yet another massive government spending bill -- $1.3 trillion -- on March 23, after threatening a veto.

Why did he threaten a veto?

Because the bill doesn't fund his cherished US-Mexico border wall idea, and because it doesn't address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that he's threatened to end absent a "fix."

Why did he sign it?

For the military spending. Because, he says, "for the last eight years, deep defense cuts have undermined our national security," and we just can't have that.

Deep cuts? In what universe?

In every year since 2010, the US has spent more than half again as much on its military as in 2003 -- two years into the Afghanistan war and the year that it invaded Iraq.

Since 2010, the US has never spent as little on the military as it did in 2007, the year before Trump's predecessor was elected.

The US Department of Defense's 2017 base budget was a whopping 7/10ths of 1% lower than the 2010 budget, which was smaller than the 2011 and 2012 budgets. Total US military spending in 2017 was only 4% less than in 2010.

Not only is Trump wrong about what actually happened, he's wrong about what the effect would have been if things had happened that way. There's nothing wrong with the security of the United States that "deep cuts" in military spending wouldn't make better.

The US armed forces are far too big, far too powerful, and far too expensive to bear any plausible relation to defense. The primary purpose of US military spending is not to defend the United States, but to continuously transfer as much wealth as possible from the pockets of working taxpayers to the bank accounts of large "defense" contractors.

It's a giant welfare program. And nearly three decades of continuous war, starting with Desert Storm in 1991 and escalating after 9/11, are the excuse for keeping the welfare checks flowing.

If Trump was serious about national security, he'd veto any budget that didn't include those non-existent "deep cuts" he's complaining about. A 75% cut over 10 years would still leave the US the largest military spender on the planet, but likely much less inclined to disastrously intervene in other people's arguments.

But we already knew Trump wasn't serious about national security, didn't we? His tariffs on steel and aluminum prove that. They, too, are welfare programs designed to benefit corporate welfare queens at the expense of American workers and consumers. And they flout the well-known law of history laid down by Otto T. Mallery:

"If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries, goods must do so. Unless the Shackles can be dropped from trade, bombs will be dropped from the sky."

"America First!" Trump cries, while putting Americans last -- and in ever-increasing danger.

Justice Clarence Thomas

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One of the many problems with the gross lack of experience and morality in the Trump presidency is the unfamiliarity with the concept of the double edged sword. So many of the president's craven and hare brained ideas would quickly backfire if there were an opposing party to actually contest them. In his enumeration of the reasons for demanding the firing of Andrew McCabe, Mr. Trump keeps bringing up the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to his wife's political campaign by supporters of Hillary Clinton. Of course this is somehow relevant, but would have been far more relevant had McCabe's behavior in failing to recuse himself from Hillary's email scandal not hurt her campaign as it did. Besides, neither McCabe nor his wife received even a penny of the donations for their personal use, in which case McCabe's actions may have constituted an actual crime as opposed to an ill advised political "Misstep."

On the other hand, Clarence Thomas's wife was personally paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by various special interests to lobby on their behalf regarding the very issues on which her husband was voting. Justice Thomas was asked more than once to recuse himself, but adamantly refused as he voted just as his wife's employers wished. The payments to Mrs. Thomas were essentially paid directly to her husband as part of their joint income, payments which the Judge conveniently failed to report to the Court until he was called out for the omission and forced to admit it.

Typically, the ethical system involving the U.S. Supreme Court Justices as a group can best be described as "the foxes guarding the henhouse." Their ethical standards seem to be significantly lower than those of our Congress, believe it or not, and under normal circumstances even lower than those of the office of the president. I mean even presidents have been impeached, if not convicted, in the last hundred and fifty years or so while no one seems to take the suggestion of impeaching a supreme court judge very seriously no matter how egregious his or her behavior may seem. It's as if our dysfunctional Congress doesn't even seem to realize that it has the power to impeach or at least censure supreme court judges. To me it is quite simple. At the very least, Mr. Thomas needs to return the money, all of it, or be forced to resign from the court without his pension and be prosecuted for a clear violation of the Honest Services Statute.

While we're at it, where the hell is the "Democratic Party of Stu...," excuse me, "Silence" on this issue? I certainly have no idea. As for those apologists praising the office of Inspector General Horowitz for taking time off from its favorite pastime, "turf wars" with other departments to supposedly do its job, I feel compelled to ask: is Mr. Horowitz doing his job or saving his job? From my personal observations of his office's work or lack thereof in monitoring of fraud in the health maintenance organization arena, his record is none too impressive to say the least. Inspector General, do you ever plan on officially investigating Mr. Thomas or, more importantly, those people who paid the Thomases those hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as those who continue to shower the "Justices" with free vacations and other lavish gifts? And, despite what certain members of confused juries may have ruled in the case of elected "politicians," I believe that appointed judges are not supposed to accept expensive gifts from rich political donors. You can discuss it with the president first. It really wouldn't hurt the president or his drones to lose Justice Thomas. They could replace him with any of the multitude of incompetent but properly biased candidates Mr Trump chose from the lottery to fill judgeships, the ones who failed to be confirmed by the Senate. Republicans can muster fifty votes for a ham sandwich if they feel it's important enough as long as they do it before the midterm elections. Oh, and don't cut yourself on that sword you're wielding, it's double edged you know.

Al Finkelstein, D.O., 3/17/18Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too.

See original here

In 2015, while the Obama administration was negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, Bolton wrote a piece titled "To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran." We speak to longtime investigative reporter Gareth Porter. His new piece for The American Conservative is titled "The Untold Story of John Bolton's Campaign for War with Iran."

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: In the latest White House shake-up, General H.R. McMaster is resigning as national security adviser. President Trump has tapped John Bolton to replace him. Bolton is known for his ultra-hawkish views. He has openly backed war against Iran and North Korea, and was a prominent supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, to this day. Just three weeks ago, Bolton wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal headlined "The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First." In 2015, while the Obama administration was negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, Bolton wrote a piece headlined "To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran."

Bolton will take over the position on April 9th and will not need to be confirmed by the Senate. Under President George W. Bush, Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He was given a recess appointment, after Bush feared he would not be confirmed by the Senate. For decades, John Bolton has been one of the most vocal critics of the United Nations.

JOHN BOLTON: The point that I want to leave with you, in this very brief presentation, is where I started, is there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that's the United States, when it suits our interest and when we can get others to go along. " The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

AMY GOODMAN: John Bolton has also been a leading critic of the International Criminal Court. Human rights groups have condemned the selection of Bolton. Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International said, quote, "This is a reckless decision. Bolton's influence over national security policy could result in even more civilian deaths and potentially unlawful killings given his disdain for international law and international institutions." Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council also criticized the selection of Bolton. He said, quote, "Bolton now represents the greatest threat to the United States. This is a dangerous time for our country and a slap in the face even to Trump's supporters who thought he would break from waging disastrous foreign wars and military occupations."

One longtime supporter of Bolton has been right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker reports Mercer has donated $5 million to Bolton's super PAC since 2013 and is Bolton's biggest donor.

We go now to Washington, D.C., where we're joined by longtime investigative reporter Gareth Porter. His new piece for The American Conservative is headlined "The Untold Story of John Bolton's Campaign for War with Iran."

Gareth Porter, welcome to Democracy Now! When you heard the news yesterday, though it has been rumored for months, what were your thoughts?

GARETH PORTER: Well, I thought that it was very probable that John Bolton was going to become the next national security adviser for the Trump administration, but I wasn't expecting it this soon. So, it was, in fact, a bit of a surprise in terms of the timing. But it's really been a matter of some weeks now that there have been rumors that -- not rumors, but reports based on leaks from the White House, that McMaster was going to be replaced and that Bolton was clearly the leading candidate. So, that's why I wrote that piece, in anticipation of the likelihood that this was going to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what are your major concerns?

GARETH PORTER: Well, I think everyone knows, by now, that John Bolton has been, in fact, a very vocal advocate of the -- of war with Iran, as well as with North Korea. I mean, he has, for years, been appearing on Fox News regularly. And I haven't counted them, but there must be dozens of times that he has publicly called for the United States to attack Iran militarily. No one else in American life has done anything even remotely similar to what John Bolton has done in terms of advocating war with Iran. He's not the only one, but he's done it more consistently. And since he left the Bush administration in 2005, basically, he has been -- or, rather, 2007, I guess it was, he has been the leading advocate of war with Iran. So, for President Trump to make him his national security adviser, clearly, is the most alarming thing that has happened in terms of U.S. foreign policy under this administration thus far.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to John Bolton speaking on Fox News in 2015.

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From Mondoweiss

The appointment of John Bolton to be Donald Trump's national security adviser represents the neoconservative restoration, firmly ending the chapter in which Trump claimed to be a non-interventionist. Even Never-Trump neocons are happy today. The intemperate and Islamophobic Bolton is fiercely opposed to the Iran Deal, is militantly opposed to Russian influence in the Middle East, has called for declaring war against Iran and North Korea, and has pronounced the two-state solution dead.

Many today fear that Trump will give us another war. Senator Ed Markey:

"John Bolton supports proactively bombing Iran and conducting a first strike on North Korea without provocation. Appointing him to be Nat Sec Advisor is a grave danger to the American people and a clear message from @ realDonaldTrump that he is gearing up for military conflict."

Bolton is surely realistic in stating the end of the two-state solution. Though his solution to the Israel Palestine conflict is not. It is for pieces of the West Bank to be deeded to Jordan, and Gaza to be deeded to Egypt, on the theory that Palestine is "bits and pieces" of the former Ottoman Empire. Neither Egypt or Jordan has accepted such a proposal; and of course Palestinians have said such an outcome is out of the question.

He wrote in the Hill in January as part of his application process for this job:

"Once it becomes clear the two-state solution is finally dead, Jordan should again be asked to exercise control over suitably delineated portions of the West Bank and have the monarchy's religious role for holy sites like the Temple Mount reaffirmed. Accepting Jordan's sovereignty would actually benefit Palestinians, as would Egyptian sovereignty over Gaza, by tying these areas into viable, functioning states, not to the illusion of 'Palestine.'"

Al Jazeera reports further on Bolton's views of Israel and Palestine. Pro-Israel all the way.

"After former president Barack Obama allowed passage of a UN Security Council resolution in December 2016 that condemned Israeli settlements, Bolton said Obama 'stabbed Israel in the front' and that the measure was 'clearly intended to tip the peace process toward the Palestinians.'"

He said then that the two-state solution is over, per Al Jazeera.

"'Just as a matter of empirical reality, the two-state solution is dead,' Bolton told far-right Breitbart News Radio at the time. 'That's about the only thing John Kerry came close to getting right.'"

It is simply not realistic to insist on two states. For one thing, Israel cannot accept indefensible borders it would have with a Palestinian state alongside it:

"As long as Washington's diplomatic objective is the 'two-state solution' -- Israel and 'Palestine' -- the fundamental contradiction between this aspiration and the reality on the ground will ensure it never comes into being."

Jewish Voice for Peace laments the hire: "The appointment of Bolton is a complete disaster for the Middle East, the U.S., and the entire world." And the liberal Zionist group J Street tweeted:

"Bolton is an unabashed advocate for the premature, unnecessary and reckless use of military force in the Middle East and around the globe. This appointment isn't just unwise. It's disastrous."

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In August 2017, the Israeli Supreme Court approved the expulsion of black asylum seekers to Rwanda and recognized the agreement with the Rwandan government. The State claimed that the agreement was "confidential", and it was filed under seal and reviewed in an ex-parte hearing, excluding the petitioners. Now it is clear that the entire show was a fraud jointly perpetrated by the State Attorney and the Supreme Court. Such agreement never existed at all.

Figure. Tel-Aviv demonstration by African asylum seekers in 2014.



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Figure. Poster for a large March 24, Tel-Aviv demonstration against the deportation of asylum seekers.



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Figure. The 2018 UN Human Rights High Commissioner's report notes serious deterioration in integrity of law and justice agencies in Israel.

____

Tel-Aviv, March 23, Israel, a nation of about 8.5 millions (official figures exclude Palestinians but include Jewish settlers in the territories), is now home to about 50,000 asylum seekers from Africa. The vast majority are from war-torn Sudan or Eritrea. In recent years, the current government has made major efforts to deport them. It has become evident that it would be unthinkable to deport such asylum seekers back to Sudan or Eritrea. Therefore, "third-country" solutions were sought by the Israeli government. Most recently, Israel claimed that it had reached agreements with Rwanda and Uganda to absorb deported asylum seekers.

The case provides unique insights into conduct of the Israeli government and the Israeli justice system.

In order to generate the appearance of due process, relative to the detention and deportation of asylum seekers, Israel operates the Detainees' Courts. However, already the 2013 High Commissioner of Human Rights report noted, "lack of integrity in the electronic record systems of... the Detainees' Courts in Israel." The evidence shows that the courts falsify their own records and document fictitious hearings, which had never taken place in reality. Many of the court files are missing, or hidden with no legal foundation.

Conduct of the Israeli Supreme Court over the past half a year, relative to petitions seeking to stop the deportation, is particularly troubling:Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too.



L'omnipresent guerra AFP PHOTO / ABDULMONAM EASSA SYRIA-CONFLICT

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According to Inside Syria Media Center military correspondents, another checkpoint was opened for the withdrawal of terrorists and their families from the village of Irbin in Eastern Ghouta on March 24, 2018. In addition, there are dozens of buses ready to transport civilians to refugee camps and ambulances for those affected by the bombing.

Despite the fact that jihadists' snipers are actively shooting in this area to kill government forces and do not observe the ceasefire, the initiative with the opening of the humanitarian corridors in Eastern Ghouta proved to be quite successful. As for now, tens of thousands of civilians were able to leave the territory controlled by the radicals.

In addition, the unique aspiration of B. Assad and his allies to solve the problem of Eastern Ghouta using peaceful means has affected the militants themselves. Many of them do not want to risk their lives, even for the money of their western patrons.

Attempts by the Ahraa as-Sham and Jaish al-Islam terrorist groups to unite for a joint offensive towards the positions of the Syrian Arab Army have ended in failure. The militants collapsed even to organize a joint defense. Apparently, jihadists are demoralized, and disagreements between the groups are still very strong hindering their unification.

The situation facilitated an agreement between the terrorists and the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, and the process of military withdrawal began. Islamists from Ahrar ash-Sham left Harastdegrees area with their families towards Idlib de-escalation zone.

According to QalaatAlMudiq, some of the radicals from Harasta have already reached the area of North Hama.

The militants holding Jawbar, Zamalka and Irbin reported on the decision to surrender and stop shelling, following the example set by the Ahrar ash-Sham.

It can be concluded right now that the Eastern Ghouta is completely liberated from the terrorists. It seems that recapturing Douma, Beit Sahm, Babbila, and Yarmouk camp's area is a matter of time.

Follow the latest developments by reading Inside Syria Media Center, subscribe to our telegram channel .Would you like to know how many people have read this article? Or how reputable the author is? Simply sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too.

It's hard not to focus on the fact that Trump has picked the 100th anniversary of the first Armistice Day celebration for his weaponry parade (more on that below). But there was another parade a month and a half before the armistice that cries out for comparison because of its remarkable stupidity. I'm thinking of the Liberty Loan Parade in Philadelphia:



parade

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This was a parade to squeeze more money out of people to pay for war, to celebrate patrioti-nationali-militarism, and to reject fake news. I'll explain that last one.

World War I brought us a number of wonderful gifts: professional propaganda, alcohol prohibition, World War II "The Sequel!," and "Spanish" influenza. But one reason that this disease epidemic was called "Spanish" was that Spain was not at war, so Spanish media outlets were allowed to report that thousands of people were dying of a horrible disease. In nations at war, such a report would have been unacceptably un-cheerful -- and therefore illegal. Few editors wanted to risk jail time to report on the flu in Woodrow Wilson's brave new world. The flu was fake news.

But the flu, which probably started in the United States, was spread among the soldiers fighting World War I. Woodrow Wilson knew he was sending young men off to die first and foremost from the flu. But he did so. And they brought it back to Philadelphia. Health experts warned against gathering a massive crowd together for a parade. They knew the flu would spread. But a war parade was deemed too important. It went on. The flu did spread.

It even spread, more than likely, to Woodrow Wilson, who apparently suffered from it while allowing the Treaty of Versailles to be crafted in a disastrous manner that had wise observers predicting World War II on the spot.

The disease epidemic we face now is not the Spanish flu but the American militarism: more weapons dealing, war waging, war threatening, and societal militarizing than anyone can keep track of. And the risk is of World War III. The poetic justice will not be Trump coming down with a case of war fever. He's already in the later stages. It will be all of us exhibiting symptoms of nuclear apocalypse.

Fortunately, a movement is growing to apply prevention rather than cure to this global health danger.

Find the Stop Trump's Military Parade coalition and sign up here.

November 11, 2018, is Armistice Day 100, a century since World War I was ended at a scheduled moment (11 o'clock on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918). For decades in the United States, as elsewhere, Armistice Day was a holiday of peace, of sad remembrance and joyful ending of war, of a commitment to preventing war in the future. The holiday's name was changed in the United States during the U.S. war in Korea to "Veterans Day," a largely pro-war holiday on which some U.S. cities forbid Veterans For Peace groups from marching in their parades. Trump has planned for this year a super-pro-war weapons parade -- a Trumparade -- for Washington D.C.

Our goal is to get the Trumparade canceled but to carry through with our own peaceful Armistice Day celebration in Washington, D.C., and everywhere else on earth. If the Trumparade is not canceled, our goal is to be bigger and make a more impressive showing for peace and friendship than he makes for war and hatred and profiteering greed.

Everyone who can be in Washington D.C. on November 11 (and possibly side events Friday November 9 to Monday November 12, 2018), should make plans now to be there.

But we need to make a showing for peace, for the original meaning of Armistice Day, and against the Trumparade EVERYWHERE.

If you cannot make it to Washington, work with us to plan now for local events where you are, whether the day is called Veterans Day or Remembrance Day, or something else. Here are some tools you can use:

Event Resources:

Find speakers, videos, powerpoints, activities, and ideas here.

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(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).Medical Electronic Market - Size, Share, Industry Trends, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2023

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Medical electronic refer to a certain class of electronic instruments and equipments used particularly for medical applications such as diagnosis, research, therapy, anaesthesia control, surgery and cardiac control. Medical electronic devices are widely use in the health-related diagnosis by merging biology and medicine science with electronics theories, principal and practices.Request for a free sample of this research report:Based on applications of medical electronics, the medical electronics market is segmented into imaging systems (such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), general purpose X-Ray scanner, ultrasound, and computed tomography scanner/CT scanner), diagnosis (such as endoscope, digital thermometer, and ophthalmoscope), medical therapeutics such as ( programmable syringe pumps, dialysis machine, infusion pumps, and anaesthesia delivery system), monitoring (such as cardiac monitors, hemodynamic monitoring, respiratory monitoring and multi parameter monitor), fitness and wellness (such as electronic pedometer, wearable injectors, smart watches, and continuous glucose monitor/cgm) and others (such as hearing aids, electronic weighing scale, and automated external defibrillator/AED).The global medical electronic market is driven by the number of factors. Increasing global population and growing lifestyle diseases has led to requirement of advanced and fast healthcare services which in turn increases adoption of electronics in the treatment procedure.Increasing urbanization and improving healthcare infrastructure, particularly in the developing countries of Asia Pacific, is expected to drive the growth of the market in double digit during the forecasted period. The medical electronics in the developed countries is driven by the growing adoption of radiation therapy in disease treatment & diagnosis.Explore report at:The growing medical tourism particularly in developing countries of Asia Pacific, coupled with increasing adoption of wearable electronics for health and fitness in healthcare industry, is expected to provide new market opportunities for advanced and sophisticated medical electronics devices during the forecasted period.North America is by far the largest market of medical electronics followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. About 15% of the total GDP (gross domestic product) of North America comprises of the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry. Asia-Pacific is the fasted growing market of medical electronics and the market is expected to grow in double digit during the forecasted period, attributed to the surging urbanisation in developing countries such as India and China. Moreover, the growing per capita income and rising demand for advanced healthcare services in this region is boosting the market of medical electronics.Make enquiry before buying the report:Some of the major competitors in the global medical electronics market are Analog Devices Inc., Philips N.V., Siemens Ag, Texas Instruments, Tekscan, Inc., Renesas Electronics Corporation, On Semiconductor Corporation, GE Healthcare, Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc., Cypress Semiconductor Corporation, STMicroelectronics N.V. and Maxim Integrated.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market Research347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:Electric Motor and Generator Market Size, Share, Industry Trends, Demand and Growth Drivers Forecast to 2023

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The electric motor and generator market has witnessed considerable technological advancement in the recent years due to which the demand for high efficient electric motor and generator system is gaining pace. The power efficient electric motors offer various benefits, such as longer operating life, low maintenance, and lower energy consumption over traditional electric motors.Request for a free sample of this research report:The improvement in energy efficiency of electric motors increasing demand of electric motor and generator from agricultural and industrial sector, growing application of HVAC system, and rising demand of electric and hybrid vehicle are some of the major drivers of the electric motor and generator market in the recent years.Based on the different applications of electric motor and generator the market can be classified as industrial machinery, heating ventilating and cooling (HVAC) equipment, motor vehicles, aerospace and transportation, household appliances, and other application.Explore report at:Asia Pacific has been the largest and fastest growing market of electric motor and generator in 2014. Asia Pacific region is expected to maintain its dominance even during the forecast period, attributed to the rising demand of electric motor and generator from automotive, and other industrial sector from China and India.Country wise, the U.S. and Canada dominate the electric motor and generator market in North America. France, Germany, the U.K., and Italy, are some of the major players in the European electric motor and generator market. China, Japan, India, and South Korea are some of the leading regions in the Asia Pacific electric motor and generator market.Make enquiry before buying the report:Some of the competitors in the global electric motor and generator market are Asmo Co Ltd., Arc Systems, Brook Crompton, Danahar Motion LLC, Ametek Inc., Rockwell Automation, Franklin Electric Co., Inc., Siemens Ag, Johnson Electric Holdings Ltd., Ametek Inc., Allied Motion Technologies Inc., Baldor Electric Company, and Siemens among others.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market Research347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:+20% CAGR to be achieved by Medication Management Solution Market based on Medical Industry, Market Outlook and Global Forecast 2018-2023

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Medication management systems ensure tracking and validation of the medication administered to patients at all points of care. These systems help healthcare organizations to minimize medical errors occurring in the healthcare environment. Owing to these benefits, the global medication management market has received a major boost over the past few years. Market data for medication management systems has been compiled based on sales and the corresponding revenue generated. Prices considered for the purpose of compiling data have are essentially averages taken from quotes provided by suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers.The Global Medication Management Market is estimated to grow at a healthy double-digit growth rate in the coming years. This growth is largely driven by the growing adoption of medication management solutions by healthcare organizations in both developed and developing countries across the world. Currently, an increasing number of healthcare organizations and governments across the globe are considering medication management solutions as tools for minimizing their overall healthcare costs. This can be achieved by minimizing the hospital stay for patients, while delivering better quality of care at the same time.Companies Profiled In This Report:CareFusion Corporation, McKesson Corporation, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Cerner Corporation, Siemens HealthcareDownload PDF Sample Copy@:In this report, The Global Medication Management Market is segmented by systems/software, services, modes of delivery, end users, and geography. This report also covers main market drivers, restraints, opportunities, and threats in the medication management market. These factors are examined on both, regional as well as the global front, for varying levels of depth of market study. The regulatory scenario of the market, with the help of details of key rules, regulations, plans, and policies in the market, is also examined, presenting an overview of the factors that affect a variety of decisions in the global market.Furthermore, the report profiles some of the most prominent enterprises in the Global Medication Management Solution Market to provide valuable recommendations. The product portfolio of the companies profiled are studied in detail. Besides this, information is obtained from their financial reports and strategies they adopted over the last couple of years. The impact of these strategies in the overall market is gauged as well, for the purpose of the study.Avail 30% Discount On This Premium Report@:Reason to Access Global Medication Management Solution Market Research Report:The report is an accumulation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative valuation by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on Global Medication Management Solution Market segments and geographies.For More Enquiry@:Table of Contents:Global Medication Management Solution Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1: Global Medication Management Solution Market OverviewChapter 2: Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3: Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4: Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5: Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6: Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7: Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8: Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9: Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10: Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11: Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12: Global Medication Management Solution Market ForecastIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.HealthCare Intelligence Markets supply market intelligence reports in the domain of personalized drugs & diagnostics after going through a rigorous research process. The healthcare and pharma industry is constantly evolving as trends are getting replaced at a rapid pace.Name: Shreyas TannaCompany: Healthcare Intelligence MarketsAddress: 601, Winterberry Purple, Koregaon Park, Pune, 411001Mail Id: sales@healthcareintelligencemarkets.comContact No: +91 7400242424Human Parainfluenza Viruses Diagnostics Market Share and Growth Factors Impact Analysis 2017  2025

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Increasing burden of infectious diseases on healthcare system is a main concern across the globe and developing countries have heavy share of infectious disease burden. Human parainfluenza virus infection is becoming of major concern among children as it can cause life threatening lower respiratory tract infection. Human parainfluenza virus (HPIV) generally cause respiratory illness in infants and children below 5 years and is the second most common cause of hospitalization in children below 5 years of age. Human parainfluenza viruses are group of four single stranded RNA viruses called HPIV 1-4, with HPIV-1 and HPIV-3 being the most virulent. The virus causes damage to lining of small airways in respiratory tract. There are number of tests available in laboratory for detection of HPIV virus in respiratory sample of patients. The most commonly used method is cell culture using serological and nasal swab specimens. Chest x-ray is used to detect the progression of disease in young children. Improvement in virus culture techniques using immunofluorescence techniques have reduced the time to results. Some of the commercially available human parainfluenza virus diagnostic testing assay kits are R-DiaHPIV, RT-PCR, RespiFast RG Panel, FTD HPIV, Techne PrimePRO QPCR RNA kits, SimulFluor, RealStar PIV RT-PCR Kit etc.Request for Table of Contents @Human parainfluenza has been listed under priority infectious disease with epidemic potential. The program is established for surveillance and monitoring of pathogens with high epidemic potential in resource limited settings and capacities for fast ramp up of diagnostic testing in central lab settings of epicentres of an outbreak and at the point of need. Under this program Alere Inc. has developed RT-PCR assay kit for diagnosis of human parainfluenza virus, which obtained CE mark approval in 2015.Growing incidence of infectious diseases and repeated outbreaks of parainfluenza virus in developing countries such as China, Middle East region etc. are the prime factors driving the growth of global human parainfluenza virus diagnostics market. Besides this, improvements in cell culture techniques, and development of advanced molecular testing methods for detection of parainfluenza virus in human specimen is expected to push the market over the forecast period. However, difficulty in isolation of virus, lack of routine surveillance for some of the HPIV species are the factors restraining the growth of global human parainfluenza virus diagnostics market. Unavailability of point-of-care testing methods for human parainfluenza virus diagnosis poses significant obstacle in deciding treatment options.Among all test types, PCR assays are the most commonly used HPIV diagnostics. Molecular testing assays such as reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction are the most recent technique for diagnosis of human parainfluenza viruses. RT-PCR based methods are the most sensitive methods to detect HPIV and thus are recommended as confirmatory tests for HPIV type.On the basis of geography, global parainfluenza virus diagnostic testing market is segmented into five key regions viz. North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America is projected to hold largest shares in the global market primarily due to growing incidence of parainfluenza virus and innovations in diagnostic techniques. Asia pacific human parainfluenza virus diagnostics testing market is anticipated to witness prominent growth during the forecast period owing to increased healthcare expenditure and repeated outbreaks of infectious diseases in developing countries such as India and China.Request a Sample Brochure of the Report @Some of the key players present in global human parainfluenza virus testing market are Quidel Corporation, Diagenode Diagnostics, QIAGEN N.V., Fast-track diagnostics Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC (Merck KGaA), Liferiver Bio-Tech (United States) Corp., Altona Diagnostics, Alere Inc. etc. among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,Telephone - +1-646-568-7751USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:Human Parainfluenza Viruses Diagnostics Market- Latest Trends and Future Growth Study by 2025

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Increasing burden of infectious diseases on healthcare system is a main concern across the globe and developing countries have heavy share of infectious disease burden. Human parainfluenza virus infection is becoming of major concern among children as it can cause life threatening lower respiratory tract infection. Human parainfluenza virus (HPIV) generally cause respiratory illness in infants and children below 5 years and is the second most common cause of hospitalization in children below 5 years of age. Human parainfluenza viruses are group of four single stranded RNA viruses called HPIV 1-4, with HPIV-1 and HPIV-3 being the most virulent.Request for Table of Contents @The virus causes damage to lining of small airways in respiratory tract. There are number of tests available in laboratory for detection of HPIV virus in respiratory sample of patients. The most commonly used method is cell culture using serological and nasal swab specimens. Chest x-ray is used to detect the progression of disease in young children. Improvement in virus culture techniques using immunofluorescence techniques have reduced the time to results. Some of the commercially available human parainfluenza virus diagnostic testing assay kits are R-DiaHPIV, RT-PCR, RespiFast RG Panel, FTD HPIV, Techne PrimePRO QPCR RNA kits, SimulFluor, RealStar PIV RT-PCR Kit etc.Human parainfluenza has been listed under priority infectious disease with epidemic potential. The program is established for surveillance and monitoring of pathogens with high epidemic potential in resource limited settings and capacities for fast ramp up of diagnostic testing in central lab settings of epicentres of an outbreak and at the point of need. Under this program Alere Inc. has developed RT-PCR assay kit for diagnosis of human parainfluenza virus, which obtained CE mark approval in 2015.Growing incidence of infectious diseases and repeated outbreaks of parainfluenza virus in developing countries such as China, Middle East region etc. are the prime factors driving the growth of global human parainfluenza virus diagnostics market. Besides this, improvements in cell culture techniques, and development of advanced molecular testing methods for detection of parainfluenza virus in human specimen is expected to push the market over the forecast period. However, difficulty in isolation of virus, lack of routine surveillance for some of the HPIV species are the factors restraining the growth of global human parainfluenza virus diagnostics market. Unavailability of point-of-care testing methods for human parainfluenza virus diagnosis poses significant obstacle in deciding treatment options.Among all test types, PCR assays are the most commonly used HPIV diagnostics. Molecular testing assays such as reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction are the most recent technique for diagnosis of human parainfluenza viruses. RT-PCR based methods are the most sensitive methods to detect HPIV and thus are recommended as confirmatory tests for HPIV type.On the basis of geography, global parainfluenza virus diagnostic testing market is segmented into five key regions viz. North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America is projected to hold largest shares in the global market primarily due to growing incidence of parainfluenza virus and innovations in diagnostic techniques. Asia pacific human parainfluenza virus diagnostics testing market is anticipated to witness prominent growth during the forecast period owing to increased healthcare expenditure and repeated outbreaks of infectious diseases in developing countries such as India and China.Request a Sample Brochure of the Report @Some of the key players present in global human parainfluenza virus testing market are Quidel Corporation, Diagenode Diagnostics, QIAGEN N.V., Fast-track diagnostics Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC (Merck KGaA), Liferiver Bio-Tech (United States) Corp., Altona Diagnostics, Alere Inc. etc. among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,Telephone - +1-646-568-7751USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:Gastrointestinal Infection Testing Market Projected to Hamper the Growth by 2025

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Gastrointestinal infection is the most common type of infection encountered in patient populations. These infections are not always severe but they often resolve rapidly on their own without any treatment. Gastrointestinal infections may be caused due to three main causative agents including bacteria, virus or parasites. It causes inflammation of stomach and intestines that comprises our gastrointestinal tract which leads to gastroenteritis. Some of the microorganisms that cause gastrointestinal infections are adenovirus, campylobacter, Clostridium difficile, Escherichia coli, rotavirus, salmonella and shigella and others. The major gastroenteritis symptoms include diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, occasional muscle aches or mild headache and abdominal discomfort. Out of these, diarrhea is the most dangerous gastrointestinal infection, which lowers the water content inside body and causes severe problems. A rapid diagnosis followed by appropriate treatment is required to be done in order to control gastrointestinal infections.Request for Table of Contents @A large number of laboratory tests and microbiological screening tests are performed to detect and confirm the presence of disease causing antigens in stool samples obtained from patients. In a laboratory testing procedure, a routine stool culture is done which begins with the primary step of specimen collection followed by processing of specimen. Stool samples are checked for the presence of reducing substances in stool and identification of pseudo membranes in the colon is done by direct visualization. However, most of the infectious diarrhea are self-limited in nature and require a primary care including oral rehydration, intravenous rehydration or antimicrobial therapy. The gastrointestinal infection testing is broadly categorized into three types including laboratory tests, imaging tests and biopsy. Also, gastrointestinal infection testing is done using conventional techniques, molecular techniques and biochemical techniques.Growing adoption of technologically advanced molecular techniques and rising incidence of gastrointestinal infections are the primary factors driving the gastrointestinal infection testing market. Increased government funding in healthcare projects and growing trend of pharmaceutical companies to manufacture novel drugs and diagnostic techniques are some other factors fueling the market growth for gastrointestinal infection testing methods. However, lack of awareness about novel diagnostic tests and improper regulatory guidelines for laboratory testing is restraining the growth of gastrointestinal infection.On the basis of type of gastrointestinal infection testing, stool analysis is extensively performed over other types of tests owing to its ability to assess the overall health of GIT and thereby providing more accurate results. However, molecular techniques such as a real-time PCR and Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionizationtime of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) allows the lab technicians to perform high-multiplexed tests in order to diagnose gastrointestinal infection.Based on geography, global gastrointestinal infection testing market is segmented into five key regions viz. North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Out of these, North America registered the largest shares in global gastrointestinal infection testing market and is anticipated to dominate over the forecast period on the account of growing patients suffering from abdominal pains and gastrointestinal infections. On the other hand, Asia Pacific is projected to register a highest growth during forecast period in global gastrointestinal infection testing market.Request a Sample Brochure of the Report @Some of the key players present in global gastrointestinal infection testing market are Savyon Diagnostics, bioMerieux India Private Limited, NanoEnTek Inc., Luminex Corporation, Hologic Inc., Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., Becton Dickinson & Company and others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,Telephone - +1-646-568-7751USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:Next-Gen Endoscopic Imaging Market- Segment Overview by 2025

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Endoscopy is a less invasive imaging technology which is used to diagnose variant infections and diseases. This technology has eased the surgical treatments with least invasive procedures. Endoscopy innovation with introduction of next generation endoscopy visualization systems has been a new trend in the endoscopic imaging market. Next-Gen endoscopic imaging is a cost-effective procedure which is minimal invasive and does not leave patients with post-surgery complications and visible scars on body. It allows patients to get discharged from the hospital or surgery center just after the imaging procedure is done, thereby minimizing their stay at hospitals. Unlike other medical imaging devices, next-gen endoscopic imaging provides direct insight observation of the body organs. Distinct endoscopic surgeries now-a-days utilize HD video framework offered by next generation endoscopy visualization systems to get the enhanced images and videos while performing variety of open surgeries and disease diagnosis.These next-gen endoscopy visualization systems are incorporated with color calibration system, easy clan sealed front panels, built-in embedded wireless video and are very sleek and light weight designs. These imaging devices are highly durable and are of medical-grade quality, which enables surgeons and doctors to carry out more advanced endoscopic surgeries and disease diagnosis. New technological innovations such as introduction of 4-LED multi-light to join distinctive wavelengths coming from an incorporated light source provides intensified light spectra. This innovation allows surgeons and specialists to carry out efficient switching between 3 imaging modes, linked color imaging (LCI), white light (WL), and blue light imaging (BLI). Over the period, endoscopy has become cutting-edge imaging technique and has advanced immensely with improved video and computer based imaging technology.Request for Table of Contents @Next-generation endoscopy imaging is performed to diagnose and monitor distinct disease conditions and surgical procedures. The next-gen endoscopic visualization systems are broadly segmented into three types including high-end visualization systems, middle-end systems and low-end visualization systems. These imaging systems finds application in various disease diagnosis and surgeries such as gastrointestinal endoscopy, laparoscopy, obstetrics, arthroscopy, urology endoscopy, ENT endoscopy, and others.Rising gastrointestinal problems and chronic diseases in geriatric population owing to the changing lifestyle and advanced technological innovations in endoscopy platform have been the primary factors driving the next-gen endoscopic imaging market. Growing adoption of next-gen endoscopic imaging, rising incidence of cancer, technological innovation in visualization system, advancement in diagnosis and endoscopic surgeries are some of the factors fueling the demand for next-gen endoscopic imaging systems, thereby driving the growth of next-gen endoscopic imaging market. Additionally, rising awareness of endoscopic imaging and its benefits to patients and growing focus of manufacturers to create digital automated imaging systems with advanced 4K UHD imaging compatibility is further anticipated to grow the market during the forecast period. However, high costs associated with innovations and stringent regulatory approval process is restraining the market growth.On the basis of type of next-gen endoscopic imaging, high end visualization systems are extensively used over other types on the account of generating high quality images and video. Also, rising demand for least invasive surgeries and low cost endoscopic procedure is anticipated to propel the next-gen endoscopic imaging market over the forecast period.Based on geography, global next-gen endoscopic imaging market is segmented into five key regions viz. North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America dominated the global next-gen endoscopic imaging market with largest shares and is anticipated to follow same trend during the forecast period owing to rising incidence of chronic diseases, abdominal pains and gastrointestinal infections. However, Asia Pacific is projected to grow at a highest CAGR during forecast period in global next-gen endoscopic imaging market.Request a Sample Brochure of the Report @Some of the key players present in global next-gen endoscopic imaging market are Olympus Corporation, Fujifilm Holding Corporation, Olive Medical Corporation, Ethicon, Inc., Karl Storz GmbH & Co.Kg, Boston Scientific Corporation, Medtronic PLC, Stryker Corporation, and others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,Telephone - +1-646-568-7751USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:Cytomegalovirus Infection Market: Technology Development Driving Growth of Healthcare Industry 2025

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Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is one of the common herpesvirus infection with different symptoms, which occurs in people of all ages across the globe. This viral infection is communicable and can easily spread through body fluids such as blood, urine, saliva, semen and breast milk. The infection can spread easily through saliva or urine and the people infected with the CMV may have the virus in their saliva or urine for months. The disease can be transmitted from pregnant women to the baby during the delivery. Blood transfusion and infected organ transplant is yet another mode of disease transmission.Request for Table of Contents @The infection can be diagnosed through serological testing methods such as Enzyme-linked immunoassay test. Many of the cases of CMV goes undiagnosed in early stage of infection thus the awareness about the infection is most important factor. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in U.S., each year around 150 infants are born with cytomegalovirus infections and few of them have long term health problems.Cytomegalovirus Infection Market: Drivers and RestraintssThe key factor responsible for growth of cytomegalovirus infection is increasing public awareness related to herpes virus infections which is fueling the diagnosis rate in North America and Europe. North America was observed as the largest market for cytomegalovirus infection treatment followed by Europe. Asia Pacific was anticipated to grow at a fastest CAGR during the forecast period. The key factors assisting the growth of Asia Pacific cytomegalovirus infection treatment market are the rising awareness associated with the rare diseases, developing healthcare infrastructure, high disposable income and government support for novel treatment against rare genetic diseases.Cytomegalovirus Infection Market: OverviewBased on product type, the market is segmented into Cidofovir, Foscarnet, Valganciclovir, and Ganciclovir. These are few of the most prescriobed medication for the treatment of cytomegalovirus. Similarly, based on distribution channel, the market is segmented into, hospital pharmacies, retail pharmacies and online pharmacies. Hospital pharmacies are expected to hold maximum share in the market due to the easy availability of medication and increasing prescription patterns for the treatment of CMV.Cytomegalovirus Infection Market: Regional OverviewRegion wise, the global cytomegalovirus infection market is classified into regions namely, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East and Africa. The growth of CMV virus is attributed to the increasing awareness regarding the herpes virus and increasing diagnosis rate in developed region such as North America and Europe. Similarly, the government initiatives for the awareness regarding rate disease, growing healthcare expenditure and escalating disposable income are few of the factors responsible the market growth in Asia-Pacific.Request a Sample Brochure of the Report @Cytomegalovirus Infection Market: Key PlayersThe key players in the market are F. Hoffmann-La Roche, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Vical, Inc., AiCuris Anti-infective Cures GmbH, ViroPharma, Chimerix, Inc., and others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,Telephone - +1-646-568-7751USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:The Best Prices for Rakhis at Sendrakhi.com

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Sendrakhi.com continues to woo customers all over India with the great prices on its trendy collection of Rakhis and gifts.The online shoppers this Raksha Bandhan season have begun their shopping spree with the latest range of Rakhis at SendRakhi.com. The trendy Rakhis on the website has gained a lot of attention since their launch due to the affordable pricing on them. The website saw a record amount of orders being placed on the first day of the sale itself and the phenomenon has not stopped yet. The offers that are up for grabs at this online gift store have prompted customers to buy more.The average budget of the Indian customer has been kept in mind while devising the offers and deals on most of the Rakhis and gifts up for sale. Mr. Mukesh Kumar, the official spokesperson for SendRakhi.com said, We have to keep in mind several factors that could affect the customers decision to buy from us or not. The most important are the price that we quote. At SendRakhi.com, shoppers will find lower prices for good quality Rakhis and gifts compared to other sites. On top of that, they can avail additional offers that are part of the Raksha Bandhan sale.Raksha Bandhan is set to be an extravagant event for all those who shop from SendRakhi.com. The great savings that customers make while getting high-quality products is the biggest reason for the websites fast increasing popularity in India. Moreover, the many categories of Rakhis that one can choose from here is enough reason to make customers come back here every year. The latest collection reflects the latest trends perfectly. There are Silver Rakhis, Golden Rakhis, Mauli Rakhis, Lumba Rakhis, and much more that are sure to provide satisfaction to the customers who visit this store.SendRakhi.com has gone through big changes within the last year to make better customer service possible. One of the recent initiatives that the website has taken is the improvement in the delivery system and making it faster than before. This benefits the last moment planners and also the whole customer base at large. Faster Rakhi delivery in Mumbai and other cities where more orders are being placed everyday has made way for extra features for those living there.Mr. Kumar further added, Sister looking for designer rakhis for brothers need not waste their time surfing all over the internet as they can get the best prices with us. He gifts combos at our store are quite popular among the younger generation of shoppers. With the added advantage of sending the Rakhis and Rakhi gifts all over the country, and even abroad, our customers just have to place their orders and relax.SendRakhi.com has made continuous progress and achieved a lot of fame thanks to the initiatives they take from time to time to provide satisfaction to their customers.Visit the store by clicking on this linkContact Us-Phone: +91-8510934032Email: support@sendrakhi.comWebsite:About SendRakhi.comIt is an online gift store based in India that has a delivery network spreading all over the world. It has a history of extending the best possible service to its customers and has managed to keep its reputation intact all these years.New Delhi - IndiaPayments Landscape in the Czech Republic: Opportunities and Risks to 2021

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Market Research Hub's new report titled "Payments Landscape in the Czech Republic: Opportunities and Risks to 2021", provides detailed analysis of market trends in the Czech Republic's cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including cash, direct debit, credit transfers, payment cards, and cheques during the review-period (2013-17e).Request For Sample Report-The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry, and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, transaction values and volumes during the review-period and over the forecast-period (2017-21f). It also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including the market shares of issuers and schemes.The report brings together research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers details of regulatory policy and recent changes in the regulatory structure.This report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Czech Republic's cards and payments industry, including -- Current and forecast values for each market in the Czech Republic's cards and payments industry, including debit, credit, and charge cards.- Detailed insights into payment instruments including cash, cheques, direct debit, credit transfers, and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments.- E-commerce market analysis.- Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing the Czech Republic's cards and payments industry.- Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit, credit, and charge cards.Browse Full Report with TOC-Scope- In December 2017, Czech National Bank (the countrys central bank) announced a plan to introduce a nationwide instant fund transfer system by the end of 2018. The system will enable Czech individuals to transfer up to CZK400,000 ($18,792.09) instantly 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. According to the central bank, approximately one third of banks operating within the country were keen to participate in the project as of December 2017. The test phase will begin in the second half of 2018.- To capitalize on the growing acceptance of alternative payment solutions in the country, Google launched Android Pay (now Google Pay) in November 2017, enabling consumers to conduct contactless in-store transactions via Android phones. The solution is compatible with Visa and Mastercard payment card offered by J&T Banka, mBank, Komern banka, and MONETA Money Bank. In August 2016, eskoslovensk obchodn banka (SOB) collaborated with electronic payments provider SIA to launch the NaNkupy mobile wallet, allowing users to make NFC payments. In November 2016, Mastercard collaborated with Shell Czech Republic to enable customers to pay using the Masterpass QR code feature at Shell fuel stations.- The digital-only banking model is slowly entering the Czech market. In November 2017, Cetelem (a BNP Paribas Personal Finance brand) introduced mobile-only bank Hello bank!, which offers a comprehensive banking product portfolio, including a Mastercard-branded debit card. The emergence of digital-only banks is likely to further accelerate the growth of electronic payments.Reasons to buy- Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Czech Republic's cards and payments industry and each market within it.- Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in the Czech Republic's cards and payments industry.- Assess the competitive dynamics in the Czech Republic's cards and payments industry.- Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in the Czech Republic.- Gain insights into key regulations governing the Czech Republic's cards and payments industry.Enquire about this Report-About Market Research Hub:Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of industry reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.Contact Us:90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:Read Industry News at-Packaging Robot Market - Streamline Your Packaging and Palletizing Operation to be Simpler, Faster, and More Efficient

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The global packaging robot market was estimated as USD 1.42 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow significantly with a CAGR of over 13% over the forecast period. Growing manufacturing sector, rising automation in packaging industry are expected to be the key factors driving the global packaging robot market. Moreover, continuous development in robotics technology, and constant growth in retail and e-commerce sector will also influenced packaging robot industry positively.Increasing demand for technology for packaging efficiency, rising need for automation in industries and improved supply chain process will influenced the industry demand positively. Furthermore, growing manufacturing industries and requirement for advanced technology for decreasing the delivery time is projected to create lucrative opportunities for the packaging robot industry.Packaging robots are automated control and versatile machine designed for prompt delivery of products, and primary & secondary packaging. The markets have a wide range of robot sizes, payload, mounting options, and reachability. Few factors associated with packaging robots are labor cost reduction, reduced packaging time, and ability to lift bulky packages. Growing urbanization coupled with increasing disposable income has escalated the adoption of packaging robot across several industries such as sports, healthcare, FMCG. Though, high capital investment is a major challenge for market players.Request For Free Sample Of The Report @The global market is segmented based on application and end-user. Based on application, the market is segmented as picking, packing, palletizing, and gripper. Packing segment is further segmented as Case Packing, Tray Packing, and Filling. Palletizing segment is also bifurcated as Case Palletizing, Bag Palletizing, and De-palletizing, while gripper segment is divided as Claw, Clamp, and Vacuum. On the basis of end-user, the market is segmented as food and beverages, consumer products, tracking and logistics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, industrial packaging industry, and electronics and semiconductor industry.Picking Robots are estimated to grow with higher CAGRPicking and packing robots are expected to witness substantial growth over the forecast period owing to rapidly growing e-commerce sector. The sector primarily employs picking robots for processing an order with reduced time and enhanced efficiency. As a result, automation in the processes improves the efficiency and cost effective.Increasing application of automation in e-commerce, food & beverage, automotive and healthcare for increasing the process efficiency and meeting the requirements. Growth in industrialization and increasing need for automation for reducing costs and waste and enhancing the production efficiency is also positively influencing the industry. Electronics and semiconductor industry is projected to hold the major share in the end-user segment. The industry focusses on high precision ensuring the product quality and increased safety. Growing adoption of electronic product such as refrigerators, televisions, laptops, and washing machine has indirectly impact the industry demand positively.China Maintaining Asia Pacific as most lucrative region for the marketAsia Pacific region is anticipated to contribute majorly in the market share over the forecast period. Increasing deployment of packaging robots in FMCG and food & beverage sector has led to the significant demand in Asia Pacific countries such as China, India, Japan, and South Korea. China is projected to be the largest contributor to the Asia Pacific packaging robots industry owing to the prosperous industrial packaging demand. Japan is also anticipated to witness high growth potential over the forecast period.Obtain Report Details @Prominent players leading the global packaging robot market are Fanuc, KUKA Robotics, Yaskawa Electric America, Okura USA, Adept Technology, Motoman, AFAST Robotics, Denso Robotics, Panasonic, Intelligent Actuator, BluePrint Automation, A-B-C Packaging Machine, Bosch Rexroth, Yamaha Robotic, Fuji Yusoki Kogyo, and Epson Robots.About Us-Xpodence Research is a U.S. based Market Research Company and offers the most extensive collection of progressive surveying syndicated and customized research reports of various categories for private and public industries across the globe.We offer the comprehensive market research solution for all the industries by performing the in-depth study of industry trends, verticals globally. We believe in building an eternal bond with our customers through providing them inclusive research study both customized and syndicated based on their specific requirements.The organizations in every industry such as Technology, Pharmaceuticals, Consumable Goods, Food & Beverage and others demands a market-based solutions for various significant decisions based on productivity and output globally. Our services are tailored specifically to our clients by proposing them the potential outcome, based on our in-depth analysis and insights for exploring the growth strategies through providing the best possible decision for quality production.Contact Us-Xpodence ResearchUSA Office244 , Madison AvenueNew York City, NY - 10016United StatesToll Free +1- 844-445-2861Email-sales@xpodenceresearch.comSmart Hearing Protection Device Market for Increased Safety and Performance, Trends in 2018 by Top Industry Players and Future Prospects up to 2023

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Market HighlightsHearing protection device refers to the device that helps protect the ear from damage due exposure to high noise levels. Hearing protection devices include earplugs, earmuffs, uniform attenuation earplug and hearing bands. Earplugs are hearing protection devices that are inserted in the ear canal to protect the ear. Earplugs are disposable and reusable. Earmuffs are hearing protection devices that fit over the entire external ear, including the lobe and seal against the side of the head with suitable cushion or pad. Uniform attenuation hearing protection devices are earplugs designed to provide more natural sound perception using acoustic filters, with nearly linear attenuation from 100 to 8000 Hz. Hearing bands are hearing protection devices that are used to seal the external opening of the ear to achieve noise attenuation. They are made of soft, rubber-like material that is held in place by a head band or suspension assembly.Request a Sample Report @Market Outlook:Increasingly number of stringent safety regulations, rising employment in construction industry, growing demand for HPD in manufacturing sector, rising demand for next-generation HPD in military sector and, increasing urbanization and development activities across the world are major factors leading to increased demand for hearing protection devices. Also, low cost earplugs launched by local manufacturers are expected to boost demand in developing regions, thereby fuelling growth of the hearing protection devices market. Lack of awareness and improper hearing attenuation are few factors expected to hamper growth of the global hearing protection devices market. Major trends in the hearing protection devices market include rising emphasis on custom-tailored hearing protection devices, increasing number of mergers and acquisitions, technology shift towards ear plugs with acoustic filters and increasing demand for uniform attenuation ear plugs.Top Industry Players:This report studies the global Smart Hearing Protection Device market, analyzes and researches the Smart Hearing Protection Device development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, like: Honeywell, 3M, Phonak, SensGard, Etymotic Research, Sensear, Hunter Electronic, Silenta, Starkey Hearing Technologies, Hellberg SafetyRequest Discount on this repots @Key Benefits Quantitative analysis of the current trends and forecast from 2018 to 2022 are provided to showcase the Smart Hearing Protection Device of the market. The study provides an in-depth analysis of the global water purifier market with current and future trends to elucidate the prominent investment pockets for investors. Current and future trends are outlined to determine the overall attractiveness and to single out profitable trends to gain a stronger foothold in the market. The report provides information regarding key drivers, restraints, and opportunities with impact analysis. Value chain analysis in the report provides a clear understanding of the roles of stakeholders involved in the value chain. Porters Five Force model of the industry and SWOT analysis illustrates the potency of the buyers & suppliers participating in the market and the competitive rivalry among them.Market SegmentsProduct Type Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Major Company of Product Type etc.): Earplugs EarmuffsApplication Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Different Demand Market by Region, Main Consumer Profile etc.): Residential using Commercial building usingRegion Coverage (Regional Output, Demand & Forecast by Countries etc.): North America Europe Asia-Pacific South America Middle East & AfricaBrowse Report @About Future Genic ReportsFuture Generic Reports is a market research and consulting organization, offering premium collection of market research reports, custom research and consulting services to corporations, no-profit organizations and government institutions across the globe.The wide range of information is presented by a team of well-trained researchers of specific sectors through exhaustive research. We deliver premier market research services that cover all industry verticals, including chemicals and material, automotive, healthcare, electronics & semiconductor, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and technology and media.We believe in building an eternal bond with our clients through offering them inclusive research study meeting their specific requirements. Our services are tailored specifically to our clients by proposing them the potential outcome, based on our in-depth analysis and insights for exploring the growth strategies through providing the best possible decision for quality production.Contact us:Future Generic Reports244 , Madison AvenueNew York City, NY - 10016United StatesToll Free +1- 844-445-2861Email: sales@futuregenicreports.comRising Health Concerns To Drive Smart Medical Devices Market Driven By Technology Set To Benefit Patients

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Market HighlightsSmart medical devices are being used as important tools by physicians to detect various disease by monitoring vital signs. Chronic disease such as hypertension and diabetes have thus received a fresh perspective from both the medical industry as well as the patients. From a broader perspective, these devices have drastically reduced the workload for healthcare providers by closely monitoring patient health and taking quick action in case of any major change in the readings. The report predicts that the demand for smart medical devices will be attributable to the growing pool of geriatrics, who are prone to a wide range of illnesses. Furthermore, the rapid technological advancements in the fitness devices have also lured in a large base of consumers who are interested in monitoring their heart rate, calorie intake, and the number of calories burned. The user-friendliness of these devices is also expected to fuel the uptake of smart medical devices in the coming few years.Request a Sample Report @Market Overview:The various products available in the smart medical devices market are On the basis of product, the global market is segmented into therapeutic devices, diagnostic and monitoring devices, and injury prevention and rehabilitation devices. Of these, the diagnostic and monitoring devices segment is expected to dominate the global market. Growing awareness toward fitness is expected to drive the uptake of these devices. The quick and easy accessibility to fitness prompts, near-accurate monitoring of health condition such as diabetes and blood pressure, and wide availability of devices in varying price range is expected to work in favor of this segment.Top Industry Players:This report studies the global Smart Medical Devices market, analyzes and researches the Smart Medical Devices development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, like: Abbott Laboratories, Apple Inc., Dexcom Inc., Fitbit Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, NeuroMetrix Inc, Sonova, Zephyr Technology Corporation, Everist Genomics, Vital Connect, Philips Electronics, Sotera Wireless, Omron CorporationRequest Discount on this repots @Key Benefits Quantitative analysis of the current trends and forecast from 2018 to 2022 are provided to showcase the Smart Medical Devices of the market. The study provides an in-depth analysis of the global water purifier market with current and future trends to elucidate the prominent investment pockets for investors. Current and future trends are outlined to determine the overall attractiveness and to single out profitable trends to gain a stronger foothold in the market. The report provides information regarding key drivers, restraints, and opportunities with impact analysis. Value chain analysis in the report provides a clear understanding of the roles of stakeholders involved in the value chain. Porters Five Force model of the industry and SWOT analysis illustrates the potency of the buyers & suppliers participating in the market and the competitive rivalry among them.Market SegmentsProduct Type Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Major Company of Product Type etc.): Blood Glucose Monitors Heart Rate Monitors Pulse Oximeters Blood Pressure Monitors Breath Analyzer Medical Tricorder Smart Clothing Hearing AidApplication Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Different Demand Market by Region, Main Consumer Profile etc.): Beverages Confectionery DairyRegion Coverage (Regional Output, Demand & Forecast by Countries etc.): North America Europe Asia-Pacific South America Middle East & AfricaBrowse Report @About Future Genic ReportsFuture Generic Reports is a market research and consulting organization, offering premium collection of market research reports, custom research and consulting services to corporations, no-profit organizations and government institutions across the globe.The wide range of information is presented by a team of well-trained researchers of specific sectors through exhaustive research. We deliver premier market research services that cover all industry verticals, including chemicals and material, automotive, healthcare, electronics & semiconductor, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and technology and media.We believe in building an eternal bond with our clients through offering them inclusive research study meeting their specific requirements. Our services are tailored specifically to our clients by proposing them the potential outcome, based on our in-depth analysis and insights for exploring the growth strategies through providing the best possible decision for quality production.Contact us:Future Generic Reports244 , Madison AvenueNew York City, NY - 10016United StatesToll Free +1- 844-445-2861Email: sales@futuregenicreports.comNanowire Battery Market Research Report with Overview, Type, Manufacturing Base, Competitors, Sales, Revenue, Growth Rate and Forecast to 2023

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The research report, titled Nanowire Battery Market offers a clear understanding of the subject matter. The research report tries to comprehend the leading-edge tactics taken by vendors in the global market to offer product difference through Porters five forces analysis. It also points out the ways in which these companies can reinforce their stand in the market and upsurge their revenues in the coming years. Ongoing technological progressions and the tenacious infiltration of the Internet in the remote corners of the world are also responsible for the remarkable growth of the market.Some of the Key Players: Imprint energy Inc., Alveo energy Inc., Pellion Technologies, Quantum cape Corporation, Envia Systems Inc., Sila Nanotechnologies Inc., Boulder Ionics Corporation, Prieto Battery, Sony corporation, Sakti3, Xilectric Inc., Amprius Inc., Boston Power Inc., EnerDel, Inc.Request a sample copy of this research report @Nanowires can be defined as structures that have a diameter of tens of nanometers or less. These batteries are capable of hundreds of thousands of recharges cycles and with the existence in real world, these batteries can change the future of energy storage. The surface area of one or both of the electrodes of a normal battery is increased through the use of nanowires. These wires have the special ability to expand four times their original size when charged without fracturing. The Global Nanowire Battery Market is expected to grow rapidly during the forecast period and as various technologies are coming into picture to make the Nano Technology a reality, soon nanowire batteries will eliminate the traditional batteries.The analysis of the manufacturing cost structure of the Global Nanowire Battery Market has been performed in view of key aspects, for example, industry chain structure, manufacturing process, crude materials, and their providers. Technology is being looked after for both in the engineering procedure and in terms of product features. The market is dynamic in nature and this is rousing testing prerequisites and moreover, the advancement of superior hardware, advancing the development prospects of the market.Get Upto 30% discount on this research report @According to the report based on end-use application, the Global Nanowire Battery Market can be segmented into consumer electronics devices, healthcare, automotive, energy storage, power generation, and others. Solar cells and solar energy devices is one of the important industrial applications of the nanowire battery. Nanowire batteries can be used in various applications in the electronics field such as smart cards, power remote sensors, display screens, and flexible electronics. Nanowire batteries can also be employed in biomedical implant devices, where the battery needs to be charged while remaining implanted. Nanowires are also used largely in electric vehicles.The report Global Nanowire Battery Market is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.Table of Content:Global Nanowire Battery Market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1 Global Nanowire Battery Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2018-2023)Chapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2018-2023)Chapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market Forecast (2018-2023)Chapter 13 AppendixWe at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Jones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.comMedical Skull CT Market 2018-2022 Growth Factor By Siemens Healthcare, GE Healthcare, Philips, Toshiba, Hitachi, Shimadzu

Skull CT Market

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https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-medical-skull-ct-market-by-manufacturers-countries-type-and-application-forecast-to-2022/?utm_source=emp&utm_medium=DC

https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/asia-pacific-toll-like-receptor-8-market-report-2018/?utm_source=rr&utm_medium=DC

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Global Medical Skull CT Market 2017  2022 research report providing information and data By Product, By Application, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast spreading across Enhance data and table & figures in it.Get Sample Copy of this Report:Top Key Players of Medical Skull CT Market:Siemens Healthcare, GE Healthcare, Philips, Toshiba, Hitachi, ShimadzuComputed tomography (CT) imaging, also known as "CAT scanning" (Computerized Axial Tomography), provides a different form of imaging known as cross-sectional imaging. This report mainly covers the medical skull CT.Scope of Medical Skull CT Market:The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry analysis of the key factors influencing the market. The report includes the forecasts, analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Following are major Table of Content of Medical Skull CT Industry:Medical Skull CT Market Sales Overview.Medical Skull CT Market Sales Competition by Manufacturers.Medical Skull CT Market Sales Analysis by Region.Medical Skull CT Market Sales Analysis by Type.Medical Skull CT Market Analysis by Application.Medical Skull CT Market -Manufacturers Analysis.Market Segment by Type, covers2S Spiral Scan CT16S Spiral Scan CT64S Spiral Scan CT128S Spiral Scan CTOthersMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoPrivate HospitalPublic HospitalKey Point Covered in this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward-looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (United States, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)For More Tactical Information:There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Medical Skull CT market.Chapter 1, to describe Medical Skull CT Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Medical Skull CT, with sales, revenue, and price of Medical Skull CT, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Medical Skull CT, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Medical Skull CT market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Medical Skull CT sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceRelated ReportToll Like Receptor 8 Market Report 2018In this report, the Asia-Pacific Toll Like Receptor 8 market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025More Reports:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email:sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:More Report at:Isopropanol (IPA) Market Size 2022 By Dow, Sasol, LG Chem, Tokuyama, LCY, DFPCL, LyondellBasell, ISU Chemical

Isopropanol (IPA) Market

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https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/asia-pacific-toll-like-receptor-8-market-report-2018/?utm_source=rr&utm_medium=DC

https://factsweek.com/author/ashwin/

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Global Isopropanol (IPA) Market 2017  2022 research report providing information and data By Product, By Application, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast spreading across Enhance data and table & figures in it.Get Sample Copy of this Report:Top Key Players of Isopropanol (IPA) Market:ExxonMobil Chemical, Dow, Sasol, LG Chem, Tokuyama, LCY, DFPCL, LyondellBasell, ISU Chemical, Mitsui Chemicals, JX Nippon Oil & Energy, Carboclor, CNPC, HAIKE GROUP, Nalcohol ChemicalMarket Study Report states that the world Isopropanol (IPA) market held an opportunity worth US$4220 Million in 2016. The market is expected to expand at 3.09% CAGR over the period between 2016 and 2022.Scope of Isopropanol (IPA) Market:The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry analysis of the key factors influencing the market. The report includes the forecasts, analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Following are major Table of Content of Isopropanol (IPA) Industry:Isopropanol (IPA) Market Sales Overview.Isopropanol (IPA) Market Sales Competition by Manufacturers.Isopropanol (IPA) Market Sales Analysis by Region.Isopropanol (IPA) Market Sales Analysis by Type.Isopropanol (IPA) Market Analysis by Application.Isopropanol (IPA) Market -Manufacturers Analysis.Global Isopropanol (IPA) Market: Product Segment AnalysisIndirect hydrationDirect hydrationGlobal Isopropanol (IPA) Market: Application Segment AnalysisSolvent applicationsPharmaceuticalsChemical IntermediateProduction of aceloneHousehold,cosmetic,personal-care productsOthersKey Point Covered in this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward-looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversUSA, Europe, India, China, JapanFor More Tactical Information:Table Of Content:Chapter 1 Isopropanol (IPA) Industry Overview1.1 Brief Introduction of Isopropanol (IPA)1.2 World Market for Isopropanol (IPA) by segment and Segmentation1.2.1 Types Analysis1.2.1.1 Indirect hydration1.2.1.2 Direct hydrationChapter 2 Isopropanol (IPA) Market by Major Regions2.1 USA2.1.1 USA Isopropanol (IPA) Market share2.1.2 USA Import, Export and Demand2.2 Germany2.2.1 Germany Isopropanol (IPA) Market shareChapter 3 Market Segmentation3.1 Consumption and the Growth Rate by Types3.2 Consumption by Application3.3 Consumption Value by Regions(USA, Europe, China, Japan and India)Chapter 4 World Isopropanol (IPA) Productions, Supply and Sales Market4.1 Production(k Tons) and Market Share of the Isopropanol (IPA) Major Manufacturers Analysis in 20164.2 Revenue(M USD) and Market Share of the Isopropanol (IPA) Major Manufacturers Analysis in 2016Chapter 5 Company Profiles5.1 Shell5.1.1 Company Details (Foundation Year, Employee Strength and etc)5.1.2 Product Information (Picture, Specifications and Applications)5.1.3 Revenue, Price and Operating Profits5.1.4 Distribution Channel information5.2 ExxonMobil Chemical5.2.1 Company Details (Foundation Year, Employee Strength and etc)5.2.2 Product Information (Picture, Specifications and Applications)5.2.3 Revenue, Price and Operating Profits5.2.4 Distribution Channel informationRelated ReportToll Like Receptor 8 Market Report 2018In this report, the Asia-Pacific Toll Like Receptor 8 market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025More Reports:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email:sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:More Report at:Global Printing Ink Market - Industry Analysis By T&K Toka, Tokyo Printing Ink, Sicpa, Fujifilm, Actega (Altana), Dainichiseika Color & Chemicals

Market Study Report

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https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/asia-pacific-toll-like-receptor-8-market-report-2018/?utm_source=rr&utm_medium=DC

https://factsweek.com/author/ashwin/

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Global Printing Ink Market 2017  2022 research report providing information and data By Product, By Application, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast spreading across Enhance data and table & figures in it.Get Sample Copy of this Report:Top Key Players of Printing Ink Market:Huber Group, T&K Toka, Tokyo Printing Ink, Sicpa, Fujifilm, Actega (Altana), Dainichiseika Color & Chemicals, Yip's Chemical, Epple Druckfarben, Wikoff Color, Royal Dutch Printing Ink Factories Van Son, Grupo Sanchez, Xinxiang Wende Xiangchuan, Zeller+Gmelin, Letong ChemicalMarket Study Report states that the world Printing Ink market held an opportunity worth US$25210 Million in 2016. The market is expected to expand at 3.3% CAGR over the period between 2016 and 2022.Scope of Printing Ink Market:The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry analysis of the key factors influencing the market. The report includes the forecasts, analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.Following are major Table of Content of Printing Ink Industry: Printing Ink Market Sales Overview. Printing Ink Market Sales Competition by Manufacturers. Printing Ink Market Sales Analysis by Region. Printing Ink Market Sales Analysis by Type. Printing Ink Market Analysis by Application. Printing Ink Market -Manufacturers Analysis.Global Printing Ink Market: Product Segment AnalysisOffset inksGravure inksFlexo inksScreen inksOthersGlobal Printing Ink Market: Application Segment AnalysisFood and Medicine Packaging PrintingCigarette Packaging PrintingPaper-Based PrintingOther PrintingTotalKey Point Covered in this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward-looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversUSA, Europe, India, China, JapanFor More Tactical Information:Table Of Content:Chapter 1 About the Printing Ink Industry1.1 Industry Definition1.1.1 Types of Printing Ink industry1.2.1.1 Offset inks1.2.1.2 Gravure inks1.2.1.3 Flexo inksChapter 2 World Market Competition Landscape2.1 Printing Ink Markets by regions2.1.1 USAMarket Revenue and Growth 2012-2017Market overviewMajor players Revenue in 20162.1.2 EuropeChapter 3 World Printing Ink Market share3.1 Major players Market share by production3.2 Major players Market share by Revenue3.3 Major Regions Market share by Production in 2016, Through 20223.4 Major Regions Market share By Revenue in 2016, Through 2022Chapter 4 Supply Chain4.1 Industry Supply chain Analysis4.2 Raw material Market analysis4.2.1 Raw material Prices analysis 2012-20164.2.2 Raw material Supply Market analysis4.2 Manufacturing Equipment Suppliers Analysis4.3 Production Process Analysis4.4 Production Cost Structure Benchmarks4.5 End users Market AnalysisChapter 5 Company Profiles5.1 DIC5.1.1 Company Details (Foundation Year, Employee Strength and etc)5.1.2 Product Information (Picture, Specifications and Applications)5.1.3 Revenue, Price and Operating ProfitsRelated ReportToll Like Receptor 8 Market Report 2018In this report, the Asia-Pacific Toll Like Receptor 8 market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025More Reports:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email:sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:More Report at:Global Cloud Computing Server Market to grow at a CAGR of +13% by 2022 Along with Major Regions Analysis and Revenue Analysis Forecasts to 2023

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Global Cloud Computing Server Market projected to grow at CAGR of +13% from 2018 to 2023This statistical surveying research report on the Global Cloud Computing Server Market is an all-encompassing study of the industry sectors, up-to-date outlines, industry development, drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It contains an analysis of late augmentations in innovation, Porters five forces analysis and progressive profiles of hand-picked industry competitors. The report furthermore articulates an analysis of trivial and full-scale factors indicated for the new and tenured candidates in the market along with a methodical value chain exploration.Get Sample Copy Of this Report @The initial section presents the industry overview of the Cloud Computing Server Market. This part of the study encompasses the specifications and definition of the market. In addition, the types of the machines have been detailed. The application areas of the market come next in the study. The dynamics impacting the development of the Global Market such as the drivers, challenges, opportunities, and trends are also described in detail in this research surveying report.The major players in global Cloud Computing Server market include Dell, Microsoft, Cisco.The competitive landscape of the Global Cloud Computing Server Market is discussed in the report, which also includes the players market share. The report profiles some of the leading players in the global market for the purpose of an in-depth study of the challenges faced as well as growth opportunities in the market. The report also considers the approaches implemented by the main corporations to sustain their hold on the industry. The business synopsis and financial synopsis of each of the companies have been examined.Get Reasonable Discount on This Premium Report @The report provides both, qualitative and quantitative research of the Global Cloud Computing Server Market, as well as incorporates worthy insights into the balanced scenario and favored development methods adopted by key competitors. Distinctive distribution channels and slants inclined to bear fruit in the 2018-2023 forecast period have been bestowed in the report to permit readers to plan captivating strategies.On the basis of geographical regions, the Global Cloud Computing Server Market is segmented broadly into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. The global market is still in its exploratory stage in most of the regions but it holds the promising potential to flourish steadily in coming years. The major companies investing in this market are situated in Canada, U.K., and the US, India, China and some more countries of Asia Pacific region. Consequently, Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe are estimated to hold more than half of the market shares, collectively in coming years.In the last sections of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the Cloud Computing Server Market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global Cloud Computing Server Market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1 Cloud Computing Server Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market ForecastChapter 13 AppendixWe at IT Intelligence Markets conduct intensive market research and generate detailed reports about the products and services offered in the IT domain. Our team is devoted to providing custom reports that are taylor-made to suit the customers requirements. We make sure to keep our customers updated with the latest market dynamics as IT industry is undergoing sea change intrinsically & extrinsically by forces such as regulatory fluctuations, rapidly evolving consumer preferences, and newer technologies. Not only do our market research analysts scrutinize market requirements but also track competitors relentlessly for obtaining the most updated scenario of the market.Name: Vijay TannaCompany: It Intelligence MarketsAddress: Survey No-9/4, Flat# 6, Panchshil Park, Ganpati Marg, Nigidi, Pune 411044Mail Id: sales@itintelligencemarkets.comContact No: +91 705-760-0700Application Delivery Network (ADN) Market [Application delivery controllers (ADC), WAN Optimization controllers (WOC), Application Security Equipments] Global Advancements, Worldwide Forecasts & Analysis (2013 - 2018)

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Global Application Delivery Network Market projected to grow at CAGR of +13% from 2018 to 2023Over the past decade, network traffic patterns have changed significantly in bandwidth-intensive applications that support ERP, video, voice, and unstructured data in transaction-oriented applications. With the advent of virtualization, cloud computing, and high-volume data, demand for highly efficient and secure enterprise networks has increased. Today's biggest challenge for businesses is to cope with challenging competition and improve productivity. Businesses are now focused on ensuring security and responding quickly to changing business needs. Optimize the flow of data to all users across all networks, while maintaining security and competitive advantage.Get Sample Copy Of this Report @This statistical surveying research report on the Global Application Delivery Network Market is an all-encompassing study of the industry sectors, up-to-date outlines, industry development, drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It contains an analysis of late augmentations in innovation, Porters five forces analysis and progressive profiles of hand-picked industry competitors. The report furthermore articulates an analysis of trivial and full-scale factors indicated for the new and tenured candidates in the market along with a methodical value chain exploration.Top key players in This Report: F5 Networks Inc, Radware, Citrix Systems, A10 Networks, Array Network, Brocade, Synercomm, Cisco Systems, Coyote PointThe competitive landscape of the Global Application Delivery Network Market is discussed in the report, which also includes the players market share. The report profiles some of the leading players in the global market for the purpose of an in-depth study of the challenges faced as well as growth opportunities in the market. The report also considers the approaches implemented by the main corporations to sustain their hold on the industry. The business synopsis and financial synopsis of each of the companies have been examined.Get Reasonable Discount on This Premium Report @The report provides both, qualitative and quantitative research of the Global Application Delivery Network Market, as well as incorporates worthy insights into the balanced scenario and favored development methods adopted by key competitors. Distinctive distribution channels and slants inclined to bear fruit in the 2018-2023 forecast period have been bestowed in the report to permit readers to plan captivating strategies.On the basis of geographical regions, the Global Application Delivery Network Market is segmented broadly into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. The global market is still in its exploratory stage in most of the regions but it holds the promising potential to flourish steadily in coming years. The major companies investing in this market are situated in Canada, U.K., and the US, India, China and some more countries of Asia Pacific region. Consequently, Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe are estimated to hold more than half of the market shares, collectively in coming years.In the last sections of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the Application Delivery Network Market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global Application Delivery Network Market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1 Application Delivery Network Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market ForecastChapter 13 AppendixWe at IT Intelligence Markets conduct intensive market research and generate detailed reports about the products and services offered in the IT domain. Our team is devoted to providing custom reports that are taylor-made to suit the customers requirements. We make sure to keep our customers updated with the latest market dynamics as IT industry is undergoing sea change intrinsically & extrinsically by forces such as regulatory fluctuations, rapidly evolving consumer preferences, and newer technologies. Not only do our market research analysts scrutinize market requirements but also track competitors relentlessly for obtaining the most updated scenario of the market.Name: Vijay TannaCompany: It Intelligence MarketsAddress: Survey No-9/4, Flat# 6, Panchshil Park, Ganpati Marg, Nigidi, Pune 411044Mail Id: sales@itintelligencemarkets.comContact No: +91 705-760-0700Sentences may vary based on previous offenses committed by the defendant. Some sentences include other fees imposed by the state. Compiled by reporter Kelly Dame.

The following people were sentenced recently in Midland County's 42nd Circuit Court by Judge Michael J. Beale or Judge Stephen P. Carras:The Isabella County Sheriff's Office investigation of an attempted murder suicide is ongoing, and investigators have spoken with the victim who cannot understand why the incident occurred.

A 911 call made at 5:02 p.m. March 14 by 68-year-old Bradford Hatt of Rolland Township alerted officials to the shooting. Hatt told dispatchers he had shot his wife, Janice Hatt, 66. As dispatchers were talking to Hatt, they heard a gunshot and the caller stopped communicating with them, Sheriff Michael Main stated in a media release.

When deputies and Michigan State Police troopers arrived at the scene, at 10000 S. Brinton Road, they secured the perimeter and attempted to contact the people inside. No one answered, and officials were able to approach the home.

They saw a man on the floor with a weapon near him, and a woman who was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds and was conscious. The man was deceased.

Janice Hatt was airlifted to a hospital in Grand Rapids, where her condition has improved and detectives were able to speak with her. She said she and Bradford had a disagreement the day of the shooting, but it was not physical. She said he might have been drinking that day.

She was shot in her back and torso area as she walked away from him, and he made indications that he was sorry for what he had done. He called 911 for help before ending his own life, a media release states.

"Janice could not understand or offer any reason why her husband escalated to such a deadly encounter," Main wrote.

The case will be closed once detectives receive autopsy and toxicology reports, the release states.Currently Reading

Poignant March For Our Lives signs from around the worldThere is an insane amount of news right now. So much so that this fact is likely getting buried under the legitimately terrifying John Bolton hiring to help run Trumps foreign policy, the Austin bomber, and the looming government shutdown that President Trump tweeted about this morningbut this is a big deal. Roger Stone has advised Donald Trump since the 1980s, and during the 2016 election, he admitted to communicating with Guccifer 2.0 after The Smoking Gun learned that the two had exchanged direct messages on Twitter (which are private messages that no one else can see). Per TSG:

Stone said he thought his entire communication with Guccifer 2.0 was on twitter for the world to see. The brief exchange was public, Stone contended. The 64-year-old Stone, who revels in his reputation as a dirty trickster, added he was unsure that the Guccifer 2.0 on Twitter is really him. With the exception of Guccifer 2.0 replying to one Stone tweet and directing a second tweet at the Republican operative, their Twitter accounts reflect no public back-and-forth communication.

Last night, The Daily Beast confirmed what we all suspected:

Guccifer 2.0, the lone hacker who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russias military intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. Its an attribution that resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft.

That forensic determination has substantial implications for the criminal probe into potential collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia. The Daily Beast has learned that the special counsel in that investigation, Robert Mueller, has taken over the probe into Guccifer and brought the FBI agents who worked to track the persona onto his team.

This is not the first time that Stone has been connected to a suspected Russian cutout. He tweeted about Wikileaks a lot during the election, demonstrating possible advance knowledge about John Podestas time in the barrel a couple months before his e-mails were leaked by Wikileaks every day during the run up to the election in October. Or his vague prediction that may or may not have come true: Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks (Stone was suspended from Twitter so the links to those tweets are no longer available, but here are the remnants of one in my piece examining Russian influence in Trumps campaign from October 2016).

Stone wrote an article in Breitbart, titled Dear Hillary: DNC Hack Solved, So Now Stop Blaming Russia. The entire thing points the finger at Guccifer 2.0 for orchestrating the DNC hack:

I have some news for Hillary and DemocratsI think Ive got the real culprit. It doesnt seem to be the Russians that hacked the DNC, but instead a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer 2.0.

At best, Roger Stone was being unwittingly manipulated by Russian military intelligence. At worst, he was consciously aiding an operation to deflect blame off the Kremlin and on to a surrogate covertly backed by the Kremlin. This is real bad news for Roger Stone, and if youre looking for an explanation for Sam Nunbergs blitz across cable news to separate his father figure, Roger Stone, from the Russia investigation, this is likely it based off of what we know right now. Roger Stone was communicating with Russian military intelligence during the 2016 election and the special counsel tasked to investigate Russian influence in the 2016 election has subpoenaed Sam Nunbergs communications with Roger Stone. No wonder Nunberg was so spooked.

I remain convinced that Nunberg's antics yesterday were straight out of the Roger Stone playbook and it's extraordinary how much sympathy he's garnered from some folks.. https://t.co/MEgloyRAuD  Yashar Ali ???? (@yashar) March 6, 2018

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.Get the SC business stories that matter.

Our newsletter catches you up with all the business stories that are shaping Charleston and South Carolina every Monday and Thursday at noon. Get ahead with us - it's free.A 787-10 Dreamliner was parked on flight line at Boeing Co.'s North Charleston campus last week. The company will deliver its first "Dash 10" to Singapore Airlines on Sunday. The jet is the only Boeing plane that's made exclusively in South Carolina. Leroy Burnell/StaffChloe Johnson covers the coastal environment and climate change for the Post and Courier. She's always looking for a good excuse to hop on a boat.Joseph Cranney is an investigative reporter in Columbia, with a focus on government corruption and injustices in the criminal legal system. He can be reached securely by Proton mail at jcranney@prontonmail.com or on Signal at 215-285-9083.Andrew Knapp is editor of the Quick Response Team, which covers crime, courts and breaking news. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor at Florida Today, Newsday and Bangor (Maine) Daily News. He enjoys golf, weather and fatherhood.Angie Jackson covers crime and breaking news for The Post and Courier. She previously covered the same beat for the Grand Rapids Press and MLive.com in Michigan. When shes not reporting, Angie enjoys teaching yoga and exploring the outdoors.Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.Editorials represent the institutional view of the newspaper. They are written and edited by the editorial staff, which operates separately from the news department. Editorial writers are not involved in newsroom operations.Assistant Columbia bureau chief

Adcox returned to The Post and Courier in October 2017 after 12 years covering the Statehouse for The Associated Press. She previously covered education for The P&C. She has also worked for The AP in Albany, N.Y., and for The Herald in Rock Hill.When it comes to Africa, dont expect much from the changes that are taking place at the State Department. Africa has been poorly served by the Trump administration and that is likely to continue.

The appointment of CIA Director Michael Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State is not likely to produce an uptick in U.S. interest or engagement in sub-Saharan Africa. If anything, it will reinforce the administrations focus on security, military and counter terrorism issues across the continent..

Current policy undermines U.S. influence & integrity in Africa

The emphasis on security issues could take U.S. policy backward  aligning this country with a number of increasingly corrupt and autocratic governments and endangering American lives by ensnaring Washington in longstanding conflicts that cannot be won by military means alone. The Trump team has failed to set out a comprehensive strategy toward Africa or introduce any new African policy initiatives. Important bipartisan programs established over the past 25 years are withering.

The outcome is the undermining of U.S. influence and integrity in those parts of Africa not entangled in conflict.

Tillersons abrupt dismissal following his abridged five-nation Africa trip is not good news for U.S. Africa relations. Although his ouster had nothing to do with Africa policy, he was probably the only cabinet-level official who had any interest or prior experience on the continent. His departure underscores the policy void. There is no senior official in the White House with Africa interest, and key Africa policymaking jobs in the State Department remain unfilled, including that of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

The choice of Pompeo to replace Tillerson is probably bad news for those looking for energized engagement with Africa and a broad set of policies that help address Africas economic, social, health and trade challenges.

Pompeos selection is probably good news for all those who believe that Americas number-one objective in Africa should be expanded security alliances to combat terrorist threats in Somalia, the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin.

West Point graduate and a hawkish conservative, Pompeos limited comments about Africa have focused on Libya and counter terrorism issues. A s a member of the House of Representative Intelligence Committee, he was strongly critical of former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons handling of the terrorist attack on U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the tragic death of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Pompeo has also spoken out on the security issues across the continent, saying theres a big counter-terrorism threat there and asserting that the U.S. government can do more to help Africa address these concerns. Although Pompeo has supported food aid for needy countries, his first priority in Africa is likely to focus on bolstering security collaboration with those states participating in AMISOM military operations in Somalia and with those countries in the Sahel and Lake Chad region fighting against Boko Haram and al Qaeda in the Islam Maghreb (AQIM).

If Pompeo pursues a predominantly security-first agenda in Africa, he will continue a short sighted approach that undercuts and devalues many of Americas important programs that prioritize economic development, good governance and rule of law.

Security and counter terrorism programs are not at the top of the agenda for all or even a majority of the 49 states in sub-Saharan Africa. The heavy focus on security issues gives the appearance of militarizing U.S. relations, diminishes Americas influence and creates a larger political, economic and development void for other countries to fill.

Might Ivanka Trump gloss up a gloomy policy?

Pompeos strong support of Trumps global agenda runs counter to many of the bipartisan policies and programs that have anchored American policy in Africa put in place by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The proposed 30 percent cut in USAIDs budget will have a disproportionate impact on the agencys activities in Africa. The draconian re-imposition of the Mexico City rule, which bars U.S. funding to organizations that provide information on family planning will cut off funding to many of the organizations and African government programs that provide anti-retroviral treatments under President Bushs PEPFAR program to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement will end Americas $3 billion contribution to the Green Climate Fund, which will disproportionately hurt Africa  the continent most vulnerable to climate change. Spending decisions have already reduced the size of YALI (the Young African Leaders Initiative), spending on democracy and governance efforts and programs that support expanded trade and commercial activities

The appointment of an Assistant Secretary for Africa might help to stabilize policy, slow down some of the negative decisions and begin to put into place a more comprehensive framework for working with this important region. However, Pompeos Senate confirmation will probably delay the appointment as well as the selection of ambassadors for critical posts like South Africa, Tanzania and Somalia.

It was widely rumored that a respected former diplomat, Tibor Nagy, would be taped for States key Africa position. But that nomination will probably not move forward in advance of Pompeos confirmation hearing, which is now scheduled for early April, and his confirmation, which could take many weeks.

Once he is confirmed, the new Secretary might be dispatched to Africa to talk up the American security agenda  or perhaps presidential advisor Ivanka Trump will be sent to put a glossy face on a gloomy policy.

Johnnie Carson, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the first Obama administration, is a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace.

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An Abuja Division of the Federal High Court on Friday dismissed the 13-count charge of fraud brought against a Supreme Court justice, Sylvester Ngwuta.

Mr. Ngwuta was arraigned by the federal government, after his house and the residences of six other judges were raided by operatives of the State Security Service in October 2016.

The trial judge, John Tsoho, said the prosecution ought to have first ensured the discipline of the defendant by the National Judicial Council, before filing a suit against him.

Mr. Tsohos decision followed a similar judgement by the Lagos Division of the Appeal Court in December 2017.

The appellate court, in the said judgement, faulted the prosecution for what the court regarded as a negation of Section 158 (1) of the 1999 constitution which empowers the NJC with the responsibility of punishing erring judicial officers.

Following that judgement, in a case involving a Federal High Court judge, Hyeldzira Nganjiwa, Mr. Ngwutas lawyer Kanu Agabi, approached the court with a request that the ruling renders charges against his client null and void.

Mr. Agabi, a former Attorney General of the Federation, said the decision of the higher court rendered the charges against his client primarily defective.

The court granted all the prayers sought by the defendant.

That appeal court ruling was faulted by many Nigerians and activists who said it meant judges enjoyed some form of immunity from prosecution not envisaged by the constitution.

But since the ruling was by a higher court, the high court in the case of Mr. Ngwuta was bound to respect it.

Mr. Ngwuta was accused of fraudulently enriching himself and abusing his office for selfish gains.

He was also accused of being in possession of multiple international passports.ADVERTISEMENT

Ghanas parliament on Friday night ratified a deal granting unimpeded access to the U.S. to deploy troops and military equipment in the West African nation in a vote boycotted by the opposition, legislators said.

The Ghana-U.S. Military Cooperation agreement requires Ghana to provide unimpeded access to agreed facilities and areas to U.S. forces, their contractors and other related services.

In the agreement, facilities provided by Ghana shall be designated as either for exclusive use by U.S. troops or to be jointly

used with their Ghanaian counterparts.

Ghana shall also provide access to and use of a runway that meets the requirements of United States forces, it said.

According to the agreement, the Americans will use Ghanas radio spectrum for free and will be exempted from paying taxes on equipment imported into Ghana.

In return, the U.S. will later in the year invest around $20 million in training and equipment for the Ghanaian

military.

There will also be joint exercises.

The red-band-wearing opposition lawmakers boycotted the vote after failing to block approval, leaving behind only members of the ruling party to ratify it.

We will not be part of the process to endorse this deal in its current form because it is not in our national

interest, minority leader Haruna Iddrisu said amid banging of tables as both sides yelled at each other.

Ghana and the U. S. have strong diplomatic and trade ties, culminating in specific cooperation between their militaries

in the past.

But critics, including some civil society groups, say this years agreement amounted to mortgaging the countrys sovereignty. While some called for its rejection, others wanted the terms overhauled.

The agreement tells you that the army of another country will come into your town  theyll import military equipment which even your security agencies cant inspect, let alone authorise, Srem Sai,

a university lecturer, said.

Forget about your tax authorities  they cant even levy and the army will operate the equipment and drive

them in your streets without your licence. The laws of your country dont apply to them, he added.

Scores of protesters who marched to parliament on Friday to persuade the lawmakers against the deal were blocked

by police.

(Reuters/NAN)The Nigerian government has been advised to increase its investment in the agricultural sector so as to make it a steady and alternative means of revenue generation for the country.

Bill Gates gave this advice at the special session of the National Economic Council meeting focused on human capital development held Thursday at the Banquet hall, Presidential villa, Abuja.

Present at the meeting were the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, who is the chairman of NEC, some governors, ministers, CBN governor, Aliko Dangote, Bill Gates and other development partners.

Mr. Gates in his speech said the government should shift attention from oil and improve the agricultural sector to becoming the pillar of Nigerians economy.

According to him, only four per cent of Nigerian farmers currently have loans to grow their business and this is unacceptable especially in a country where the sector accounted for a large proportion of the countrys GDP, and during the oil price collapse and recession, helped cushion the economy.

He however lamented that the sector is not growing as it ought to and many small scale farmers still lack access to loans that can assist with the expansion of their businesses.

Mr. Gates said the sector still has a lot of potential to grow but pointed out that what is hindering the growth is that majority of Nigerian smallholder farmers lack access to the seeds, fertilizer and training they need to be more productive.

 Healthy people need opportunities to thrive and one of the most important of these opportunities is agriculture, the sector that nourishes Nigerians and supports half the population especially the poorest, he said.

Mr. Gates said lack of access to finance is one of the barriers that continues to prevent smallholders from thriving.

Where three quarters of people have mobile phones, digital financial services can offer the potential to boost the economy from top to bottom. Right now more than 50 million Nigerian adults are at the whim of chance and the informal economy. With access to digital financial tools, they can cope better with disaster that threatens to wipe them out, build assets and a credit history and gradually lift themselves out of poverty, he said.

Mr. Gates urged the government to consider the impact this would have on businesses.

He said of the 37 million micro, small and medium enterprises in Nigeria, more than 99 per cent are micro and their lack of access to finance is a leading reason why their businesses cannot grow.

He said estimates reveals that digital financial services will create a 12.4 per cent increase in Nigerias GDP by 2025. Meanwhile, oil accounts for about 10 per cent of Nigerias GDP.

Imagine adding another oil sector and then some of the economy, but one whose benefit spread far and wide and would reach almost every single Nigerian. There is another benefit to digital financial services that will make everything Im urging you to do much easier. It will vastly improve the governments ability to tax and spend efficiently.

He commended the government for some effort to fill these gaps, with more investment and series of smart policies to encourage private sector investment.

He urged the government to do more because these reforms lay the foundation for a booming agricultural sector that feeds the country, helps end chronic malnutrition and lift up tens of millions of smallholder farmers.

The Vice President, in his remark said not only is the government aware of these issues raised, but it is prepared to take the challenges outlined head-on.

Mr. Osinbajo said the government in 2016 launched a Social Investment Programme comprising a job scheme for unemployed graduates, a feeding programme for public primary schools, a micro-credit scheme for small businesses and a cash transfer scheme for the poorest and most vulnerable households.

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Highlighting the successes of some of the programmes, Mr. Osinbajo said the school feeding programme currently serves over 7 million school children across 22 states.

There are important educational and economic benefits in guaranteeing one hot meal a day to these children, it has pushed school enrollment rate upwards in many communities where it is being implemented, he said

Mr Osinbajo also said the N-power programme has also engaged 200,000 young Nigerians and will be scaled up to 500,000 this year.

He said the government is leveraging on the creativity and innovation of the young people to grow the healthcare and education sector.A judge of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory has ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to remove from its website the name of the chairman of Aiteo Energy Resources Ltd, Benedict Peters, who had been declared wanted by the agency.

In a judgment delivered on Thursday, O.A Musa, the judge, ruled that the act of declaring an individual wanted on the EFCC website without any prior order or leave of court constitutes a violation of the persons fundamental rights.

He, however, held that the EFCC has the power to declare any person wanted within the ambit of Nigerian laws and upon complying with statutory conditions.

The judge did not set aside the arrest warrant on Mr. Peters.

But he frowned at the arrest warrant procured by the EFCC which showed the issuing magistrates signature dated 5th August, 2016, while the commission claimed it received it on 4th August, 2016.

Could this have been a mistake? the judge asked.

If it was, I expected the 1st respondent (EFCC) to have filed a further and better counter-affidavit in order to fully explain why there exist this sort of anomaly.

I am left with no option but to conclude that the 1st respondent has presented to this court an absurd and unimaginable case of receiving a signed document a day before it was actually signed by the person who purported to have signed it.

Mr. Peters had dragged the anti-graft agency before the court seeking a declaration that the act of declaring him wanted on the EFCC website without a court order was a violation of his fundamental rights.

He also sought an order quashing the declaration and a formal written apology by the respondents to be addressed to him as well as a perpetual injunction restraining them from further infringing on his rights.

Joined in the suit was the Attorney General of the Federation.

According to the EFCC, an investigation that began in 2016 showed that Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former petroleum minister; Bernard Otti; Aiteo Energy Ltd; Northern Belt Oil and Gas Company Ltd and others were involved in conspiracy, stealing and money laundering amounting to $300 million.

Mr. Peters is the chairman of both companies, according to the EFCC.

To carry out a holistic investigation and get applicants (Mr. Peters) response, the EFCC wrote a letter inviting the applicant to assist in investigation, the EFCC stated in court papers filed before the court.

The applicant wrote several letters to the commission pleading to come at various dates which he never honoured till the time of filing the suit.

The EFCC said it approached a magistrate in Lagos who issued a warrant of arrest against Mr Peters, after which it declared him wanted.

The commission further stated that Mr. Peters claims of ill health does not hold water because there are Nigerian hospitals capable of managing his ailment.

After an EFCC invitation to appear before it on June 2, 2016, Mr. Peters wrote to the commission claiming he was receiving treatment in France.

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On 1st June, 2016, Mr. Peters said EFCC operatives invaded Aiteos premises and arrested Ewarieze Useh and Tunde Akinpelu, a Managing Director and an Executive Director respectively without any warrant of arrest.

On the same day, according to the Aiteo boss, armed EFCC operatives at about 2 p.m. invaded his Ikoyi home and arrested his driver.

Mr Peters said the invasions were repeated on July 20, 2016, and August 4, 2016.

On August 15, 2016, Mr Peters was declared wanted and the information uploaded on the EFCCs official website.ADVERTISEMENT

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has returned to Sierra Leone to observe the countrys presidential run-off polls scheduled for Tuesday March 27.

A statement issued by Ikechukwu Eze, the spokesman to the former president, noted that Mr. Jonathan, who is leading the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) Election Observation Mission, arrived Freetown on Friday.

Mr. Jonathan also led EISA to the first round of the elections on March 7, in which none of the candidates polled required 55 per cent of votes to win at the first ballot.

EISA had declared the process of the March 7 general elections as peaceful and credible.

The mission in its interim report presented to the media on March 9 added that the elections were conducted substantially in line with sub-regional, continental and international standards.

It also observed that voter turnout was impressive while the conduct of electoral personnel was professional.

Mr. Jonathan, who presented the report, also appealed to the people of Sierra Leone to remain calm until the final electoral processes were concluded.(NAN)ADVERTISEMENT

A Nollywood film on Nigerias resilience during the Ebola virus outbreak in the country was on Friday night screened at Hollywood, Los Angeles, in a collaboration event tagged Nollywood in Hollywood.

The screening of the film, 93 DAYS, which held at the world famous Egyptian Theater in Hollywood with a red-carpet, was also the inaugural Nollywood in Hollywood event.

According to organisers, the event was a celebration of Nigerias growing cinema.

The film is a compelling drama of dedication, sacrifice, resilience and survival based on the true story of the people who risked their lives to prevent a catastrophic virus outbreak in Nigeria.

Nigeria experienced the Ebola virus in July, 2014 when a Liberian American, Patrick Sawyer, who had the disease flew from Liberia to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos and died five days later.

Starring Bimbo Akintola, Somkele Idhalama and Danny Glover, it took the audience through the unfortunate memory lane when Sawyer collapsed upon arrival at the airport, after which he was diagnosed with the Ebola virus.

The film explained that over that 93-day period, men and women from Nigeria, the World Health Organisation and Doctors Without Borders raced against time to contain the deadly disease as lives were lost and heroes were born.

The film was co-presented by the American Cinematheques Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and O2A Media Inc., the production company of Nigerian-American filmmaker, Ose Oyamendan.

There was a question and answer session that followed, with the films director, Steve Gukas.

The screening of the Nollywood film, 93 DAYS, and two others from Nollywood  THE BRIDGE and ISOKEN  in Hollywood, California, which started on Friday and continues on Saturday, would be the first collaboration between Nollywood and Hollywood.

This is also the first time that the foremost film programme in the world and the most historic of all of Hollywoods cinema houses are teaming up to bring a film series from Africa to Hollywood.

Nigeria joined a select list of seven countries from around the world to be part of the prestigious national screening series, according to the organisers.

The ongoing screening would be a question and answer series moderated by the Chairman of the African-American wing of the Directors Guild of America and an open air, post-screening Nigerian party on the historic Hollywood Boulevard.

From very inauspicious beginnings about 25 years ago, the Nollywood industry grew to be the second largest in the world in terms of output.

It is estimated that over 1,000 films are produced in Nollywood every year, most of them direct to video.

In recent years, Nollywood films have garnered critical acclaim and have been exhibited at top film festivals.The man who directed the 2015 governorship campaign of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Akwa Ibom State, has defected to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

The politician, Soni Udom, announced his defection on Friday in Abak during a ceremony organised by people from five local government areas  Abak, Ukanafun, Uruk Anam, Etim Ekpo, and Ika  to endorse Governor Udom Emmanuels aspiration to run for a second term in office.

Several other APC members, including ward chairmen and youth leaders, also defected to the PDP.

Top PDP leaders in the state, including Governor Emmanuel, the Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio, and the state chairman of the party, Paul Ekpo, received Mr. Udom and others into the party.

Mr. Udom is a former chairman of a local government area and a former member of the House of Representatives.

Prior to 2015, he was a stalwart of the PDP before he left the party to join the APC in support of the governorship aspiration of a former Secretary to the Akwa Ibom State Government, Umana Umana.

He is from Oruk Anam Local Government Area, where the state chairman of the APC, Amadu Attai, is from. The governors wife, Martha Emmanuel, is also from that local government area.

We heard about change, but the change turned out to be from frying pan to fire. At least, let us come back to the frying pan, Mr. Udom said while announcing his defection.

His remark elicited laughter from Governor Emmanuel, Mr. Akpabio, other politicians and the crowd. Mr. Udom himself laughed so much almost choked.

The PDP national legal adviser, Emmanuel Enoidem, who was standing next to Mr. Udom on the podium, corrected the defector, saying he was coming back to stay under the umbrella (the symbol of the party), and not inside any frying pan.

Mr. Enoidem quickly brought out an umbrella and symbolically put it above Mr. Udoms head.

I am back to the umbrella, Mr. Udom adjusted. The umbrella is a very good symbol.

He continued: For those who know geography, you know that there is something called ozone layer, which the umbrella can cover; but we discover that the way they use the broom, first of all not to sweep the floor but to clear the ozone layer, such that the sun that has come on us now is so unbearable.

Apart from that, we discover what many people did not know the broom is what witches carry, he said.

Mr. Udom then turned and addressed the governor: Recently, you outlawed cultism in the state. I expected you to outlaw witchcraft, but it is like you spared the witches because their party is in control at the centre. But we wish that when you come back in the second term, you will do the needful.

Mr. Udom, in addition, said the APC does not have a governorship candidate for the 2019 election and that the party was going through internal crisis because, according to him, they had abandoned those who worked for it.

They have forgotten Udoedehe, they have forgotten many people including me. That is why today, we are coming back here, he said.

He said people whose interest was on how to get contracts were the only ones following the Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Nsima Ekere.

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Mr. Ekere, a former deputy governor of the state, is seen as a possible candidate of the APC in the 2019 governorship election in the state, although he has not declared his interest to contest it.

The APC said it was not surprised about Mr. Udoms defection.

We know that in politics anything can happen, the party spokesperson, Edet Eyo, told PREMIUM TIMES, Saturday, in Uyo.

Mr. Eyo said the APC was reliably informed that Mr. Udom, being an architect, was owed money for some professional jobs he did for the state government during the administration of Godswill Akpabio and that the government used it to coerce him to return to the PDP.

If between 2011 to date, a business, that is Soni Udom & Associates, is being owed N300 million, I wonder how you expect that kind of business to survive.

If you are a family man, theres an extent to which you can endure. When you cant put food on your table, you cant pay your childrens school fees, they will call you a useless husband. Soni Udom can no longer hold his own. The extent of his elasticity has gone beyond his control, and he succumbed to pressure.

They promised to pay him. I guess they have even paid him part of the money and he is happy for it.

What I want to caution is this: They say he who rides on the back of a tiger would somehow find himself in the belly of the tiger. Dont forget it is this same Soni Udom that their gang of terrorists attempted to assassinate in 2014. But God was on his side, he escaped by the whiskers.

We bear no grudge against Soni Udom, he has the right to join whichever party he wishes to, the APC spokesperson said.ADVERTISEMENT

The Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has called on all APC delegates to be law-abiding in the local government election primaries holding today (Saturday) in Kaduna.

Mr. El-Rufai, who said he had no preferred candidate, cautioned government officials not to force any candidate on the delegates.

The APC in Kaduna is currently holding its council primaries for the forth coming local government elections.

In a broadcast to party loyalists in Kaduna, on Saturday, the governor said the state government has no preferred candidates, any preson who won (wins) the primaries will be the choice of the delegates.

All our aspirants, members and leaders must make these primaries an exemplary exercise in internal democracy. The primaries will be free, fair and transparent. We will ensure adequate security to deter any distraction from our goal of peaceful and credible primary elections throughout the state.

As your governor, I assure all party members that I have no particular candidate for any chairmanship or Councillorship position. Also, the government that I lead also has no preferred candidate. We have expressed preference for competence of candidates, consensus, fairness and diversity, the governor said.

He also called on delegates to consider electing women and people with disabilities during the primaries and promised that his government will accept whoever emerges ahead of the May elections.ADVERTISEMENT

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Enugu State chapter, has offered special prayers for the re-election of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi in 2019 and Gods continuous favour on him to fulfill his heart desires for the state.

Rising from a mega prayer rally, tagged: Enugu State is in the Hands of God, which was attended by the leaders of the five blocs in CAN Enugu State, namely, Calistus Onaga of the CSN (represented by Donatus Onuigbo); Emmanuel Chukwuma of the CCN; Obi Onubuogu of CPFN/PFN; Michael Ebonine of OAIC and Emmanuel Edeh of ECWA/TEKAN, the chairman of the association.

Christian Obiefuna in his address told Governor Ugwuanyi that your second tenure is in the Hands of God and it is safe with Him because you have acknowledged Him.

Disclosing that the rallys prayer theme originated from the doctrinal and ideological principles of Mr Ugwuanyi, the Christian body commended the governor for his commitment to God and entrenchment of peace and good governance in Enugu State, stating that he pays workers salaries regularly, provides infrastructure and security, etc, in spite of the dwindling economy and meager resources of the state.

CAN Enugu State described Mr Ugwuanyi as a God-fearing leader and stated that the association was proud to identify with a man whose slogan is Enugu State is in the Hands of God, saying: Be assured of our support and supplications to God for a successful, peaceful transition and fulfillment of your heart desires for Enugu State.

The body added that the prayer rally was our own contribution to support the good governance in Enugu State under the supervision of His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, stressing that it is imperative to ensure that the state continues to be in the Hands of God in principle and practice.

Beloved, truly, Enugu State is in the Hands of God. It is imperative that our efforts should be that Enugu State shall continue to be in the Hands of God in principle and practice. CAN is not a political party and shall not act as such.

Our role is to encourage all believers in Christ to fear and respect God in all our dealings in public and private for inheritance of eternal life and to pray for those in authority for good governance, as the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord, said CAN Enugu State.

While wishing the governor a happy birthday and more fruitful returns, the body prayed: God will give you good life, good health, wisdom and understanding and show His mercies on you now and hereafter. As you have handed Enugu State to God, Enugu State is secured. Dont relent in prayers and acknowledging Him because the best is yet to come as He will direct your path.

Responding, Mr Ugwuanyi, who thanked God for His grace in the state, also appreciated the leaders and members of CAN for coming out in their large numbers to pray for him and the success of his administration.

The governor revealed that God is the secret of his administrations success, stating that ever since we handed Enugu State over to God, we can see the hands of God in all we do.

He expressed gratitude to members of all the churches in Enugu State and urged them to continue to remember his administration in prayers as it strives to take the state to the next level.

The event also witnessed prayer session by leaders of CAN blocs, praise worships, choir ministrations, among others.ADVERTISEMENT

The former Governor of old Enugu State, Okwesilieze Nwodo, has extolled the leadership virtues of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State, describing him as a fantastic manager of the states resources to positively touch the lives of the people.

Mr. Nwodo also said Mr. Ugwuanyi is a leader who fears God and cares for the people especially the lowly and less-privileged, stressing that he deserves a second term in office.

The PDP former national chairman spoke during the civic reception organized in honour of Governor Ugwuanyi by the people of Uzo Uwani Local government area in recognition of peace and good governance in Enugu State, and inauguration of Gburugburu Movement in the council area.

Mr. Nwodo, who listed the remarkable achievements of Governor Ugwuanyi in Enugu State in spite of meager resources of the state, maintained that there is every reason for the governors re-election in 2019, saying: We have a good export not only to Enugu State but also to Nigeria.

He therefore, urged the people of the area and Enugu State at large to take the message to their domains for them to continue to enjoy more dividends of democracy.

Also speaking, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria from the council area, Ofodile Okafor, applauded Governor Ugwuanyi for his outstanding leadership qualities, saying: I have seen a character who has affected me.

Mr. Okafor added that the governor has done very well in office and is also a man who is leading his people in honesty and transparency.

According to him, I dont need anything from the government. But I am here to say the truth as it is. He (Ugwuanyi) has put smiles on the faces of the people. Our governor is doing very well and that is why the whole of Enugu State is behind him.

Another speaker from the council area, Oliver Odenigbo, who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the past, equally commended Mr. Ugwuanyi for entrenching peace and good governance in the state, adding, Today, we are witnessing great dividends of democracy in Enugu State and enjoying the goodness of Governor Ugwuanyi.

Earlier in his opening address, the Chairman of Uzo Uwani LGA, Hon. Fidelis Ani, thanked Governor Ugwuanyi for his sterling performance in the state, especially in the areas of peace, security and provision of critical infrastructure.

In the area of critical infrastructure, Your Excellencys caterpillar revolution has made visible impact in these communities in Uzo Uwani  Ugbene, Abbi, Nimbo, Igga, Asaba, Ojjor and repair of collapsed bridge at Asaba and other people-oriented projects, the council chairmen stated.

In his remark, the Director-General of the Gburugburu Movement, Uzo Uwani LGA, Steve Okolo, said it was because of the numerous achievements of Governor Ugwuanyi in the state that the people of the area resolved to be part of this moving train  the Gburugburu Movement.

Other speakers, such as Senator Chukwuka Utazi of Enugu North Senatorial District, Stella Ngwu, who represents Igbo Etiti/Uzo Uwani in the Federal House of Representatives, Maxi Ukuta, among other dignitaries lauded the good works of the governor in Enugu State and called for the continued support of the people for him to render more selfless service in the state.

Governor Ugwuanyi, who thanked God for His grace to entrench peace and good governance in the state, also appreciated the people of the area for their support, solidarity, goodwill and prayers.

He pointed out that the essence of the movement was to have peace, unity and progress in the state and appealed to the people to sustain the existing peace in the state for them to enjoy more dividends of democracy.CodeHS announced its new initiative, Code Oregon, to expand high-quality computer science in school districts across the state of Oregon.

Media Contact

Jeremy Keeshin, CEO & Co-Founder

press@codehs.com Jeremy Keeshin, CEO & Co-Founder

End

-- CodeHS announced its new initiative, Code Oregon, to expand high-quality computer science in school districts across the state of Oregon.In a technology driven world, coding is now a foundational for students. Only 7% of Oregon schools teach AP Computer Science courses despite the fact that by 2020 Oregon will have almost 40,000 new job openings per year in STEM related fields.To kick start Code Oregon, CodeHS is committed to offering CodeHS Pro and professional development to school districts in Oregon for free. School districts can apply online today through April 20, 2018. Selected schools will be provided free 6-12th grade computer science curriculum pathway, professional development training for teachers, CodeHS Pro accounts for the district, and ongoing implementation support. To learn more and complete the application to bring CodeHS to your school district, go to CodeOregon.com.CodeHS understands the need to strong computer science education in schools and is committed to improve computer science education access for all students. "We are excited to expand upon the work we are already doing in Oregon. The Code Oregon initiative is an opportunity to bring more high-quality computer science courses to schools across the state. By providing great online tools and resources to teachers, we are dedicated to helping schools take the next step in computer science education" says Jeremy Keeshin, CEO of CodeHS.About CodeHSCodeHS is a comprehensive teaching platform for helping schools teach computer science by providing web-based curriculum, teacher tools and resources, and professional development. There are over 500,000 students using the platform and 7,000 classrooms on CodeHS every month.Visit http://codehs.com Visit http://codeoregon.comBEIJING, March 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Association of International Chemical Manufacturers (AICM) celebrated its 30th anniversary in Beijing today with a meeting of more than 150 representatives from major chemical multinationals operating in China and a dozen international and local organizations. The 30th anniversary highlighted green manufacturing and Responsible Care, underlining the common vision shared by AICM and its approximately 70 members: to contribute to the sustainable development of a responsible chemical industry in China.

The anniversary featured a number of progarmmes designed to discuss the top priorities for the chemical industry in China. Three panel discussions were held at the event, covering topics such as policies, market trends and prospects, green manufacturing and Responsible Care. During the discussions, panelists from 13 AICM members expressed their confidence in the prospects of the chemical industry in China, citing the fast-growing demand from the rising middle class and stricter implementation of environmental regulations. They also shared views and exchanged experiences on how to formulate corporate strategies in terms of innovation, green technology, operational excellence and collaboration in the local marketplace, as well as how to better promote Responsible Care across China, making the chemical industry safer, greener and more sustainable. The panelists agreed that market segmentation and innovation would feature the sustainable development of the chemical industry in China.

AICM is committed to promoting Responsible Care and other globally recognized chemical management principles among all of its stakeholders, by advocating cost-effective science and risk-based policies, to build up the chemical industry's contribution to the Chinese economy. In the past 30 years, AICM has achieved great success in China. At its 30th anniversary, AICM reiterated its long-term commitment to further promoting Responsible Care practices in China. AICM is also committed to working closely with all stakeholders to tackle the challenges confronting the chemical industry in China.

China is now the world's biggest chemical producer. "Representing nearly 70 leading chemical multinational companies in China, AICM has played a major role in promoting Responsible Care in China and promoting chemistry as a solution to the challenges of our society, underlined by our 30 years of relentless efforts. We would like to express our gratitude to all related parties for their support in the past 30 years, and we are looking forward to working together with all stakeholders to build a sustainable, prosperous and respected chemical industry," said Jeff Zhu, Chairman of AICM.

ABOUT AICM

The Association of International Chemical Manufacturers (AICM) was founded in 1988 and represents nearly 70 major multinational companies across China's chemical industry. Its member's businesses cover the manufacturing, sales, transportation, distribution and disposal of chemicals. AICM and its members share a common vision; to contribute to the sustainable development of a responsible chemical industry in China. AICM is committed to promoting Responsible Care and other globally recognized chemical management principles among all stakeholders, by advocating cost-effective science and risk-based policies, to build up the chemical industry's contribution to the Chinese economy. (www.aicm.cn)

SOURCE AICM

Related Links

http://www.aicm.cn

LONDON, March 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Miners are the heart of Bitcoin, and CoinGeek will work to protect the network from bad actors by taking a pre-emptive stance against dishonest practices like double-spending. To date, a double-spend has not happened on the Bitcoin Cash network and we want to be sure it never will.

A message from CoinGeek founder Calvin Ayre:

"CoinGeek mining systems will reject blocks that are clearly generated by attacks. If a transaction is hidden from the network to create a double spend by other miners to steal funds, we will reject this.

We support honest mining and competition.

Transactions from honest miners propagate. When a transaction is hidden, this is easily detected with clear evidence that is digitally signed. CoinGeek is taking a pre-emptive stand to let the Bitcoin Cash community know that we will not tolerate dishonest practices and we will work to combat criminal actions.

Profit is best derived from long-term investment and we won't stand for criminals attempting to game the system for short-term gain.

We believe that all current miners would support us in an honest majority."

The risk of double-spending is unique to cryptocurrencies. In the Bitcoin Cash network, there is a near-impossible chance of a double-spend happening but risk increases as transactions are chained.

Selfish mining could lead to the centralization of mining operations, with a so-called majority group calling the shots on who can mine, who can't mine and even which transactions will be confirmed on the network.

Now, this scenario wouldn't result from "evil" miners. But there is a real danger of this happening through the efforts of groups who want to take power away from miners by changing the proof of work system in place on the network or other nefarious ideas.

The nChain Group, a leading blockchain technology research and development company, will be releasing free merchant technology to monitor these types of illicit activities for Bitcoin Cash.

We believe that all current miners would support us in an honest majority.

SOURCE CoinGeek.comSHANGHAI, March 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- As the largest online travel agent in Asia and the second largest in the world, Ctrip partnered up with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to support "Earth Hour," a worldwide movement aimed at encouraging individuals, communities, and businesses to turn off non-essential electric lights for one hour, from 8:30 to 9:30 pm on a specific day towards the end of March.

Held in Beijing, this year marks the Tenth Anniversary of Earth Hour in China. Unlike previous years, 2018's Earth Hour "60+" logo strengthens the need to commit to change beyond that one hour. From raising greater environmental awareness to acknowledging the importance of lowering emission reduction and ensuring energy conservation, Ctrip continues to work with WWF to promote environmental protection and sustainability, especially in the travel sphere.

Ctrip is an active advocate for responsible and smart travel, one that is not only sustainable but also eco-friendly. This is more crucial than ever as Chinese tourism is already in a zone of rapid growth. Ctrip's effort in promoting the "Earth Hour" Initiative was evident through using both online and offline channels. All Ctrip stores across the country turned off their lights during the hour and free travel supplies were handed out at the event to reduce waste. Ctrip users are provided with a digital space to learn more about green travel on the APP. Furthermore, more than a dozen of Ctrip's hotel partners joined the 60+ Initiative through giving guests reward points if they bring their own toiletries and supplies. Through joint efforts, we can all be responsible travelers.

Guided by the concept of social responsibility, Ctrip has always been actively involved in environmental education and protection. In 2008, Ctrip introduced a large-scale carbon offset program where members can exchange their Ctrip points to plant trees. In addition to the Ctrip Forest in Inner Mongolia's Alxa League, a total of 631,300 trees have so far been planted by Ctrip.

Commenting on this year's Earth Hour, a Ctrip spokesperson said, "Ctrip will continue to collaborate with WWF and all of our travel partners to promote a greener way to travel through both online and offline channels. We can do more for the earth and are committed to changes beyond that one hour."

About Ctrip.com International, Ltd.

Ctrip.com International, Ltd. is a leading travel service provider of accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours and corporate travel management in China. It is the largest online consolidator of accommodations and transportation tickets in China in terms of transaction volume. Ctrip enables business and leisure travelers to make informed and cost-effective bookings by aggregating comprehensive travel related information and offering its services through an advanced transaction and service platform consisting of its mobile apps, Internet websites and centralized, toll-free, 24-hour customer service center. Ctrip also helps customers book vacation packages and guided tours. In addition, through its corporate travel management services, Ctrip helps corporate clients effectively manage their travel requirements. Since its inception in 1999, Ctrip has experienced substantial growth and become one of the best-known travel brands in China.

SOURCE Ctrip.com International Ltd.Two prominent academic institutions in Qatar and Turkey, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) and Ibn Haldun University (IHU), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at a ceremony in the Turkish city of Istanbul. The agreement will see both higher education institutions cooperate on graduate-level education, as well as collaborate on joint research, publications, specialist area projects, and language programs. The agreement also creates a scope for HBKU and IHU to jointly organize symposia, seminars and conferences.

(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/658423/HBKU_and_IHU.jpg )



(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/658424/IHU.jpg )



In a ceremony attended by members of staff and faculty, President of HBKU, Dr. Ahmad M. Hasnah, and President of IHU, Dr. Recep Senturk, signed the agreement with the presence of members of Turkey's greater academic community, public guests and media personnel.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Dr. Ahmad M. Hasnah, president of HBKU, said: "Meaningful collaborations with institutions that share common goals around the world are integral to what we do at HBKU. This partnership with IHU aims to provide scholars at both institutions with a platform to share knowledge and expertise, which will help them tackle the challenges that face modern societies at the political, social and economic levels. It will also give students the opportunity to study and examine these issues within a dynamic environment, as well as benefit immensely from different educational set ups."

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Dr. Recep Senturk, president of IHU, said: "We welcome the landmark cooperation between IHU and HBKU given our shared strategic focus and the inherent potential that this excellent partnership brings. Ibn Haldun University is committed to furthering its ties with HBKU as we go from success to more success given our ideals of excellence and impact. I look forward to seeing the fruits of our cooperation, as we share the same purpose of striving to do more for our societies and to realize new paradigms of possibility for our nations and fields of knowledge."

As part of the new agreement, HBKU's College of Islamic Studies (CIS) and College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) will cooperate with the Ibn Haldun University on various aspects of their master's program on offer in Qatar, namely Islamic Studies; Islamic Finance and Economy; Islam and Global Affairs; Digital Humanities and Societies; Women, Society and Development; Translation Studies; and Audiovisual Translation. Furthermore, the cooperation will also extend to CIS's PhD program: Islamic Finance and Economy.

The agreement also involves a student exchange element across relevant programs and information. The two academic institutions will facilitate visiting researchers and collaborate on research projects between HBKU's and IHU's respective colleges in the interest of developing an enhanced understanding of Islamic finance, applied ethics, disciplines of digital humanities, literature, gender studies, and leadership development programs. Additionally, the universities will establish multidisciplinary summer programs between the two campuses to create a reciprocal relationship of co-teaching, co-supervising and rotational visits.

Lastly, in a bid to foster an enhanced understanding of each other's respective cultures, the Qatari and Turkish institutions will also collaborate on aspects of Ottoman history, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) studies, and Gulf studies. As this goes into effect, HBKU and IHU will aim to make their Arabic and Turkish language schools available to students and language specialists of each other's campuses.

HBKU's agreement with IHU comes as the latest in a series of academic and research partnerships that the University has signed recently.

About Hamad Bin Khalifa University

Innovating Today, Shaping Tomorrow

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF), was founded in 2010 as a research-intensive university that acts as a catalyst for transformative change in Qatar and the region while having global impact. Located in Education City, HBKU is committed to building and cultivating human capacity through an enriching academic experience, innovative ecosystem, and unique partnerships. HBKU delivers multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs through its colleges, and provides opportunities for research and scholarship through its institutes and centers. For more information about HBKU, visit http://www.hbku.edu.qa

About Ibn Haldun University

Intellectual Independence

Ibn Haldun University (IHU), a pure humanities and social sciences research university that proposes to cover this whole field, including all its basic disciplines, and all the way up to its outer boundaries in music, art, and architecture. IHU provides a comparative and multi-dimensional education through its highly competitive faculty. It also has a robust network of affiliated educational institutions that keep our students connected with a wider world. For more information about IHU, visit http://www.ihu.edu.tr.

Contact:

Name: Aisha Jassim

Mobile: (+974)3317-8848

E-Mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Hamad Bin Khalifa UniversityWASHINGTON, March 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- March for Our Lives is pleased to make available the following pool and satellite transmission details for the video feed of this weekend's event in Washington, DC. Additional details regarding high-resolution photographs are contained below.

Members of the media are encouraged to utilize these feeds for news reporting on the March, with usage rules outlined below.

Usage Rules for the Pool and Satellite Feeds:

These feeds are provided for use of news reporting of the March for Our Lives event in Washington, DC

Pool and Satellite feeds are UNRESTRICTED for the program, inclusive of speeches, videos and musical performances

There will be no chyron or bug on screen

Video is NOT permitted for re-air in its entirety

Unrestricted use of the video expires at 11:59a EST, Sunday, April 1, 2018

Pool Feed : There will be a network pool camera with a head-on shot of the stage as well as a production switch. All members of the DC Network pool and their affiliates/global partners will be able to access the pool head-on shot, as well as the production switch throughout the program.

One Day Subscription: Outlets that are not part of the pool may purchase one-day subscriptions by contacting the NBC News network pool chair contacts via email only: Dave Forman ( [email protected] ) and Alan Young ( [email protected] ). Please note: this one-day subscription will only provide unrestricted access to the head-on pool camera only.



Outlets that are not part of the pool may purchase one-day subscriptions by contacting the NBC News network pool chair contacts via email only: ( ) and ( ). Please note: this one-day subscription will only provide unrestricted access to the head-on pool camera only. The pool chair will share FEED INFORMATION for the pool feed with all subscribing entities by March 23 rd.

Satellite Feed: Media outlets may downlink the production feed of the March for Our Lives program via satellite, which will include a variety of shots and angles. Please note: the production feed will include head-on shots of the stage, but not an isolated head-on shot of the stage. The latter can be obtained via the pool feed.

***For Production Switched Feed Only***

Satellite Downlink Coordinates

3/24 (Show Day) Primary Feed (KU4)

Gal 17 24K Slot A

UL-14,466.5 H

DL-12,166.5 V

Sym: 7.2; FEC:  dvbs2 8psk, mpeg 4

10:30 - 14:30 x 30 (All times in EST)

3/24 (Show Day) Backup Feed 1 (KU3)

SES 3 2K Slot A

UL-14,026.5 H

DL-11,726.5 V

Sym: 7.2; FEC: ; dvbs2 8psk, mpeg 4

10:30- 14:30 x 30 (All times in EST)

Still Photography

Official high-resolution still images will be provided throughout the day, free of charge, available on a courtesy basis to news organizations through the following link: http://assignments.gettyimages.com/mm/nicePath/gyipa_public?nav=pr573859612. Photo Credit/Attribution: "Getty Images for March for Our Lives"

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SOURCE March for Our Lives"Today marks a new day for the Holy Metropolis of Chicago, a new day focused on unity in service of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And to cultivate greater unity and trust among us, we will emphasize fundamental Christian principles of governance and administration, including accountability and transparency," Metropolitan Nathanael will say, according to his prepared remarks.

"I will do all that I can to open those doors that were once shut and be inclusive of everyone in the work of the Churchespecially those who were once ignored or marginalized. I beseech each of you to get involved so that together we can serve as God's left and right hands, thus sharing His hope and love with the world. As I have in my prior ministries, I intend to continue actively working in the community to help those in greatest need, and I will expect the same of our clergy. We must extend the love of God beyond the walls of our churches and into society, particularly to those in greatest need of that love."

"As your Metropolitan and father, I wholeheartedly accept the awesome responsibility and obligation to lead you closer to Christ. It is not adequate when we only focus on finances, administration and on social ties. We must simultaneously pay attention to our spirituality. I do not forget that the primary task of every hierarch is the salvation of souls."

Last month, following the recommendation of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, members of the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul unanimously cast their votes for Metropolitan Nathanael. He was ordained a bishop of the Church with the title Metropolitan Chicago on Saturday, March 17 in New York City. His formal installation and Enthronement marks a new era for Chicago's Greek Orthodox community, one of the largest in the nation.

Born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1978, Metropolitan Nathanael is the third child of Irene and Vasilios Symeonides. He is graduate of Hellenic College (BA, 2000) and of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology (MDiv, 2003). He also earned an STM (2003) and a ThD (2007) in Bioethics from Boston University. Metropolitan Nathanael has also studied the history and ethics of public health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He is a guest professor of Christian ethics and bioethics at Fordham University, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, and Saint Vladimir Theological School. He has authored numerous articles in theology and bioethics and served as Director of the Archdiocesan Committee on Science and Technology (AACST).

Metropolitan Nathanael was ordained a Deacon in 2003 and a Presbyter in 2010. His ecclesial and pastoral work includes service as the Deacon to Metropolitan Methodios (2003-2006); Deacon to the Archbishop (2006-2010); Pastor of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, NY (2010-2013). During his time as a parish priest, he developed an urban ministry, Orthodox Professionals in Action (OPA), which harnessed the gifts and talents of more than 400 young professionals of Manhattan, offering them opportunities to create meaningful change in the lives of those most vulnerable in society. He also served the pastoral needs of the Holy Resurrection Church of Brookville, NY and the Saints Constantine and Helen Cathedral of Brooklyn, NY.

In September 2013 he was appointed Director of the Office of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. In that position, he managed and directed the relationships between the Archdiocese and numerous religious organizations, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, and Permanent Missions to the United Nations. As the Director of the Department, Metropolitan Nathanael was best known for promoting cooperation and inclusivity. In 2015, His Eminence coordinated the Archdiocesan commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Selma, and represented the Archdiocese on the National Council of Churches (NCC) Special Task Force to End Racism in America.

More recently, he convened a colloquium entitled, Orthodoxy and Humanitarianism: Ideas and Action in the Contemporary World, which provided experts from around the world the opportunity to meet and consider ways in which the Church may help respond to humanitarian crises and promote sustainable development in post-crisis regions.

Metropolitan Nathanael became Metropolitan of Chicago following nearly four decades of leadership by Metropolitan Iakovos, who fell asleep in the Lord on June 2, 2017. The Metropolis of Chicago oversees all Greek Orthodox Parishes within Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as eastern Missouri and northwestern Indiana.

While the Enthronement Ceremony is open to the public, large crowds are anticipated and limited seating in the cathedral in reserved. A brief media availability with Metropolitan Nathanael will be held at the cathedral immediately following the Enthronement Ceremony.

Livestream of the enthronement ceremony can be viewed here: https://annunciationcathedralchicago.org/video

Contact: Mark Spencer

Phone: (312) 945-6806

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Greek Orthodox Metropolis of ChicagoHAMMOND, La., March 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Live Oak Village At Hammond Senior Living is now under new ownership and management and has been re-named Oak Park Village At Hammond Assisted Living and Memory Care after an extensive community renovation and upgrade to its offerings and amenities. The renovation includes a new village amenity center, remodeled apartment homes, and new landscaping. The community is also now offering upgraded lifestyle and care services including their signature Sensations Dining program featuring restaurant-style dining with inspiring menus changing daily, a full calendar of Celebrations Activities and Events and personalized Dimensions health, wellness, and fitness programs customized to fit each resident.

Oak Park Village Senior Living Team Member and Resident

Please join us on Wednesday, March 28, 2018, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. for an Open House Jazz Celebration featuring an array of chef-prepared bites and refreshments, along with live music and prizes and giveaways. Guests can indulge in flavorful shrimp and grits, muffuletta and beignets; sip on a world-famous Hurricane cocktail; and groove to a New Orleans-style jazz band at 17010 Old Covington Hwy, Hammond, Louisiana 70403 or call 985-345-8787 for more information.

"It truly is a new day in senior living, and we are so excited to unveil the new Oak Park Village At Hammond," says Richard J. Hutchinson, CEO of Discovery Senior Living. "Bringing innovate care and lifestyle services to our residents, in a fresh and inspiring environment, was our goal, and we succeeded. We have developed a community where residents feel comfortable and happy and their loved ones feel a sense of peace of mind."

Oak Park Village At Hammond is a comprehensive assisted living and memory care community, managed and operated by award-winning Discovery Senior Living.

About Oak Park Village At Hammond Oak Park Village At Hammond provides resident-focused assisted living and memory care and allows you to customize your life through the community's exclusive lifestyle services. Working with new residents and/or their loved ones, the community's team will develop a customized lifestyle based on a resident's wants, needs, and abilities. Oak Park Village At Hammond's professional team has specialized training and education in senior care to assist its residents with daily activities as needed. For more information, please visit: https://www.oakparkvillagesl.com

About Discovery Senior Living Discovery Senior Living, a family of companies founded by Thomas J. Harrison and Richard J. Hutchinson, includes Discovery Management Group, Discovery Development Group, Discovery Realty Group, Discovery Marketing Group and Discovery At Home, a Medicare-certified home healthcare company. For more than 25 years, the award-winning management group has been developing, building, marketing and operating upscale, luxury senior-living communities across the United States. With a flourishing portfolio of more than 7,500 homes for seniors, Discovery Senior Living has become a recognized industry leader in creating world-class resort-style communities. The corporate office is located at 27599 Riverview Center Blvd Suite 201, Bonita Springs, FL 34134. For more information, please visit www.DiscoverySeniorLiving.com.

Press Contact:

Amanda J. Paul

Senior Marketing Manager

Discovery Marketing Group

(239)908-2921 Ext. 1022

[email protected]

Related Files

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Oak Park Village Assisted Living

Oak Park Village Team Member and Resident

Related Links

Oak Park Village Assisted Living and Memory Care

Discovery Senior Living

SOURCE Discovery Senior LivingThis exceptional chronograph has been created in two versions, one with a Blackeye blue dial and the other with a Blackeye gray dial. The hands and the distinctive hour markers are coated with Super-LumiNova, making them easy to read in all lighting conditions.

Both versions boast contrasting small second, 30- minute, and 12-hour chronograph subdials, an indication of the Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01 movement inside. The dial, which has a date window ideally positioned between 4 and 5 o'clock, is clearly legible through a convex sapphire crystal with anti- reflective coating on both sides.

With its dual-acting ball-bearing rotor, the Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01 has a power reserve in excess of 70 hours. You could take this watch off on Thursday night for a long weekend (not that you would want to) and it would still be ready for action and keeping perfect time when the new week begins.

The Chronomat B01 Chronograph 44 is water- resistant to 50 bar (500 meters). As with all Breitling wristwatches, it is a COSC-certified chronometer.

Continuing a Proud Tradition

While the Chronomat has long been established as the watch of choice for aviators, it has found a passionate following among people whose adventures take place not only in the air, but also on land and at sea  above and below the surface. You will understand why the moment you see this stunning timepiece on your wrist.

BREITLING SA - P.O. Box 1132 - Schlachthausstrasse 2 - CH-2540 Grenchen Telephone +41 (0) 32 654 54 54 - facebook.com/breitling

BREITLING.COM

FACTS ABOUT THE WATCH: CHRONOMAT B01 CHRONOGRAPH 44

Reference: AB0115101C1A1

WATCH MOVEMENT

Caliber: Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01 Diameter: 30 millimeters Depth: 7.2 millimeters Winder: automatic with dual-acting ball-bearing rotor Power reserve: at least 70 hours Number of components: 346 Balance frequency: 28,800 a/h or 4 hertz Chronograph: ratchet wheel control, vertical coupling, 30-minute and 12-hour counters Display: hour, minute, second, date Certification: COSC-certified CASE

Material: stainless steel Diameter: 44 millimeters Height: 16.95 millimeters Water resistance: up to 50 bar (500 meters) Glass: sapphire, convex, double anti-reflective Caseback: screwed steel Crown: screw-locked Bezel: unidirectional, ratcheted DIAL/HANDS

Blackeye blue Super-LumiNova luminescent hour markers and hands STRAP

Pilot stainless-steel bracelet with folding clasp

BREITLING SA - P.O. Box 1132 - Schlachthausstrasse 2 - CH-2540 Grenchen Telephone +41 (0) 32 654 54 54 - facebook.com/breitling

BREITLING.COM

FACTS ABOUT THE WATCH: CHRONOMAT B01 CHRONOGRAPH 44

Reference: AB0115101F1A1

WATCH MOVEMENT

Caliber: Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01 Diameter: 30 millimeters Depth: 7.2 millimeters Winder: automatic with dual-acting ball-bearing rotor Power reserve: at least 70 hours Number of components: 346 Balance frequency: 28,800 a/h or 4 hertz Chronograph: ratchet wheel control, vertical coupling, 30-minute and 12-hour counters Display: hour, minute, second, date Certification: COSC-certified CASE

Material: stainless steel Diameter: 44 millimeters Height: 16.95 millimeters Water resistance: up to 50 bar (500 meters) Glass: sapphire, convex, double anti-reflective Caseback: screwed steel Crown: screw-locked Bezel: unidirectional, ratcheted DIAL/HANDS

Blackeye gray Super-LumiNova luminescent hour-markers and hands STRAP

Pilot stainless-steel bracelet with folding clasp

BREITLING SA - P.O. Box 1132 - Schlachthausstrasse 2 - CH-2540 Grenchen Telephone +41 (0) 32 654 54 54 - facebook.com/breitling

BREITLING.COM

DOWNLOADS

All press material can be downloaded free of charge at

http://media.pprmediarelations.ch/Breitling/Baselworld+2018

FURTHER INFORMATION

ROMY HEBDEN Head of Public Relations

BREITLING SA Schlachthausstrasse 2 2540 Grenchen Switzerland

Telephone: +41 32 654 54 54 Mobile: +41 79 731 90 28 E-mail: [email protected] Check our website at www.breitling.com

INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Web www.breitling.com Facebook www.facebook.com/breitling YouTube www.youtube.com/breitling Twitter www.twitter.com/breitling Instagram www.instagram.com/breitling Pinterest www.pinterest.com/breitling

BREITLING SA - P.O. Box 1132 - Schlachthausstrasse 2 - CH-2540 Grenchen Telephone +41 (0) 32 654 54 54 - facebook.com/breitling

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Contact Information:

Heidi Dettinger

Director of Marketing & Communications

Breitling Caribbean & LATAM

[email protected]

786 518 2063

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Foto - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/658360/Chronomat_B01_Chronograph_44_with_Blackeye_Blue_dial_and_Pilot_stainless_steel_bracelet.jpg

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Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/658352/Breitling_Logo.jpg

SOURCE BreitlingIn 2009, Robert Webb, best known for the U.K. TV series Peep Show and Back (now on the Sundance channel) and the sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look, performed on Let's Dance for Comic Relief, dancing to "What a Feeling" from the movie Flashdance dressed as a woman. The performance was watched live by more than seven million people and has since tallied another two million views on YouTube. Webb's touching and funny memoir, How Not to Be a Boy, opens with an imagined conversation between the adult Webb and his 15-year-old self, who, growing up in the conservative, working-class village of Woodhall Spa, in Lincolnshire, England, could never have imagined that performance in his wildest dreams or the long, difficult path his life would take to get there.

Webb came of age in 1980s Lincolnshire. "The message I got loud and clear was that there was only one thing worse than being called a girl, and that was being called gay," Webb says. There were rigid rules for boys: don't talk about your feelings and don't ever cry; fight other boys; and love sports. But Webb was a sensitive kid who preferred poetry to sports. Webb's mother was loving and affectionate, but his father, a woodcutter, was a stern man who cast a shadow over the whole family.

Webb's mother divorced his father when Webb was fivethis was a relief, Webb says, because "I was very scared of him"but when Webb was 17, she died. "My mother was the central influence on my childhood and her death marked its abrupt ending," he says. "She had a tough life and I think I got from her an admiration for stoicism and grace under pressure. There's an idea that being able to keep your head when all around are losing theirs' is an exclusively male trait, and that's obviously ridiculous."

How Not to Be a Boy is a powerful rebellion against old ideas about masculinity. Webb, who moved in with his father after his mother's death and before going to Cambridge, is starkly honest about this period of his life. "I think her death emboldened me," he says. "There was a kind of defiance going on, a kind of Okay, universe, you did your worst, now watch this!' It was a romantic reaction to an unfathomable losshealthier than self-destruction, though I had suicidal thoughts for the next three years, but flawed in its own way." Nonetheless, Webb, who is now married with two daughters, began to see that he could embrace who he really was.

When asked what advice he'd give to boys today, Webb says, "It's okay to cry if you're in pain. It's okay to be not much interested in sports. It's okay to be a virgin. It's okay to dance. It's okay to be fully committed to friendship and love." Webb recalls his own teenage struggles with these issues in what is perhaps the most moving chapter in the book: "Boys Don't Fall in Love (with Other Boys)."

Though Webb is encouraged by the changes in gender roles and expectations, he still thinks we have a long way to go. In "Act Two," the second half of his book, he debunks common myths"Men Are Organized," "Men Don't Need Therapy," "Men Understand Women"to pick apart the way society expects men to be. "If I say doctor' or judge,' what's the picture that flashes into your mind? Is it a woman?" Webb asks. "Men need to see women as fully human and fully equal," he continues. "That sounds simple, but it's depressingly rare. Not equal because they've earned it, or equal because they somehow made it in a man's world. Equal because they were born equal."

And Webb's relationship with his father? Eventually, they found their way back to one another. After his Flashdance performance, Webb found a voice-mail message from his father. "Hello, boy, only Dad. I watched y'dance on the box. Bloody well done. You looked bloody marvelous, Have a pint for me. You know how I feel about you."In her first book to be translated into English, French-born writer Emmanuelle de Villepin, who moved to Italy three decades ago, offers her most personal novel to date, The Devils Reward (Other Press, May). Translated from the French by C. Jon Delogu, the story is based on the life of de Villepins mother and familyand their disappeared aristocratic Catholic way of life.

The way my grandparents lived is not possible today. They lived like kings, de Villepin says over coffee at Winter Institute 13 in Memphis, Tenn., earlier this year. I remember my grandmothers tailor wanting to be paid. She gave him the money, but told [the tailor] that she would never let him dress her again. The tailor was expected to appreciate the honor of having de Villepins grandmother wear his clothes.

De Villepin also recalls her grandmothers rigid Catholicism, which bordered on superstition. When they would walk to church, her grandmother would warn de Villepin to be careful not to swallow any dust for fear de Villepin wouldnt be allowed to take communion, her mouth wouldnt be pure enough to receive the host. When de Villepin went to the bathroom, her grandmother advised her to be quick, so that the devil wouldnt have a chance to see her.

The novel, which is set between the First and Second World Wars, is recounted primarily in the voice of vibrant 86-year-old Christiane, who shares the same name and many of the characteristics of de Villepins mother, whom de Villepin regards as a rebel. And it explores a previously hidden piece of family history: Christianes father Papyruss heroism during WWI, his subsequent drug addiction, and the effects of one great love affair, which reverberated in future generations. The time period, with the sense of a coming new age, is evoked by the real life Austrian philosopher and architect Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), who along with his wife Marie von Sivers, is a character in the book.

Steiners philosophy inspired visual artists like Kandinsky, and Steiner created a form of drama known as eurythmy. But he is perhaps best known in the U.S. today for both his biodynamic approach to agriculture and his educational philosophy embodied in the Waldorf Schools. Although the story dates back nearly 100 years, The Devils Reward opens in present-day in Paris with Christianes daughter, Catherine, calling to tell her that she and her daughter, Luna, a grad student, are coming to visit. Catherine is distraught and needs a break after discovering that her Milanese husband is cheating on her, again. Christiane advises her daughter, whom she finds rigid and stiff, not to overvalue the marriage pact. Goodness and wellness and appropriateness is as dangerous, Christiane says in the novel, as their opposites.

When Luna, who is working on a thesis about Steiner, asks her grandmother about him, both she and Catherine are surprised to learn that Christianes father knew Steiner. And Papyruss story, which even Catherine didnt know, comes tumbling out like the items stored in his military trunka hussars coat, books, notepads, a silver ball for storing opium, and a saints medal pierced by a bullet.

For de Villepin, the devils reward of the title involves finding a balance between goodness and evil. Its a balance that Christiane in the novel seeks to remind her daughter is essential to enjoying life. The story that Christiane tells has parallels to de Villepins generation as well. Her uncle, Xavier de Villepin, was a French senator; his son Dominique de Villepin, served as prime minister of France from 2005-2007. But despite the many similarities between de Villepins life and the bookde Villepins own grandfather was known as Papyrus and was heroic in war and cowardly in privatede Villepin is emphatic that the book is fiction. A novel is a novel, she says.

While de Villepin borrows liberally from her family history and bends it in the service of her storyPapyrus only served in World War I; in the novel he is also drafted to serve in World War IIshe is careful about other types of borrowing. To describe the devastating effects on Papyrus and other soldiers who took part in the Battle of the Somme in World War I, which lasted from July 1 to November 18, 1916, de Villepin used the entire three-and-a-half-page Wikipedia entry, with full credit, as the novels chapter 7. I didnt want to cut and paste, she says. I didnt want to [retell] the Battle of the Somme. It was honesty.

The Devils Reward was originally written in French. And her American publisher, Judith Gurewich, whom she met through a bit of matchmaking by Cristina Foschini, rights and acquisitions director of Gruppo Editoriale Mauri Spagnol in Milan, Italy, helped edit the French manuscript. It was fantastic, de Villepin says. Because she [grew up speaking] French, she knows exactly what I mean. Im not totally betrayed by translation. De Villepin says that she is more comfortable writing in French, because it is her mother tongue.

When she finishes a book, de Villepin says that she is always very sad, even after five books. I miss my characters, she says. There is something totally out of control with the characters. They were born from the writers imagination, but then they become autonomous and their independency is striking for the author. For example, when Dostoyevsky sent the first part of The Idiot, he wrote to his publisher that he still doesnt know if Myshkin was a saint or a manipulator.

In addition to her fiction, de Villepin is known in Italy for her reporting from refugee camps in Lebanon and the Syrian/Lebanese border, along with her photo-journalist daughter, Neige De Benedetti. De Villepin is v.p. of Fondazione Dynamo, the Paul Newman charity in Italy, and president of the association Amici di TOG (Together to Go), a center for rehabilitation programs for children suffering from complex neurological diseases.

For her part, it is de Villepins family history and her extraordinary philanthropic work that attracted Gurewich. I really think she has a soul and has suffered. Her soul is very much reflected in the book. But before she purchased the novel, Gurewich asked a conservative friend who heads Weleda, a company founded by Steiner that makes holistic, natural, organic cosmetics and pharmaceuticals for anthroposophic therapy, in France, to read the manuscript. When he told her that he hated it, Gurewich says with a laugh, I thought it would work.Editor's Note: Baltic Discoveries

Use the links below to read the complete report on publishing in the Baltic regionEstonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

I was briefly posted as a journalist to Tallinn, Estonia, in 1997. This winter, I visited the city again, for the first time in 20 years, and found the place familiar but also alien: LED lights have been strung up around Old Town and the 100-year-old branch of the Rahva Raamat bookstore on Parnu that I used to visit has been superseded by the magnificent Rahva Raamat outlet, considered one of the best bookstores in the world, at the posh Viru Keskus mall.

Riga, Latvia, and Vilnius, Lithuania, were both new to me, and both were revelations. Like many who have never visited this part of the world, I tended to lump the three countriesEstonia, Latvia, and Lithuaniatogether under the idea of the Baltics. This convenient construction is, well, just that: convenient.

What the nations do share is a history of independence, giving way to 20th-century occupation by the Nazis and Soviets (under whom each nation suffered oppression and deportations), and then independence once more, in 1990. This year is an auspicious one for all three countries, as they are each celebrating the 100th anniversary of their initial independence in 1918.

The literatures of the Baltic states also share some characteristics. The Estonians and the Latvians, for example, are devoted to poetry. Lithuania has a strong commitment to publishing work in Lithuanian and brings out a smaller percentage of books from abroad than do the other two countries. Each has produced books that seek to engage with and understand their difficult histories, a fact that is highlighted by each countrys London Book Fair Author of the Day: Estonias Mihkel Mutt, Latvias Nora Ikstena, and Lithuanias Kristina Sabaliauskaite. These authors will be presented at the Fair and are profiled in these pages.



While this report cannot claim to be comprehensive, it does strive to highlight some important aspects of each nations literary program, including feminist writing in Estonia, edgy childrens publishing in Latvia, and the commerce-minded book moguls of Lithuania. There is a look at the extraordinary National Library of Latvia, a thoughtful essay on publishing from one of Lithuanias top practitioners, and commentary on the Baltic literary community from one of Estonias finest writers.



Worth noting is that these nations, tiny in comparison to their large, looming neighbors, have developed dispositions best described as discreet. As a result, these writers and publishers are not prone to self-promotion. This discretion is perhaps best captured by Latvias marketing campaign for this years London Book Fair, #IAmIntrovert, which uses the persona of I, an antisocial Latvian writer, to embody the countrys literary sensibility. The campaign prompted the Estonians to joke that clearly the Latvians were the more extroverted of the two nations, since they have a marketing campaign in the first place.

That you may not be familiar with the literary lives of these nations means one thing: they are still yours to discover. This report is just a sampling, and if it makes you curious about these fascinating countries and their rich literary cultures, we will have done our job.

This special report was published with the support of the Estonian Literature Center, Latvian Literature, and the Lithuanian Cultural Institute.

Read the complete supplement free in our digital edition or follow the links below to read individual articles.

Becoming the Baltics: Novelist Rein Raud Reflects on the Literary Life of His Region

Estonia

An Introduction to Estonian Literature

Mihkel Mutt - the Literary Conscience of Estonia

Maarja Kangro: Estonianand EuropeanFeminist

Adam Cullen - Accidental Translator

Tallinn, Estonia's Rahva Raamat Bookstore

Piret Raud - Estonia's Favorite Children's Author

Latvia

An Introduction to Publishing in Latvia

The Latvian National Library

Exploring Latvia's History in Fiction

Long Live #IAmIntrovert

Printing in Latvia

Children's Book Publishing in Latvia

Lithuania

An Introduction to Publishing in Lithuania

A Publisher's View of the Lithuanian Book Business

Kristina Sabaliauskaite: Finding Lithuania's Present in Its Past

Lithuania's Alvydas Slepikas on the Timeliness of History

Giants of Lithuanian Publishing Weigh InEstonia is a tiny patch of land on the edge of ice. We have been raised in the forest, we have fought in the forest, and we still talk to trees. At one point, we grew bored of that and invented Skype. The Estonian population is hovering around the 1.3 million mark but is decreasing. To keep our heads above water, we introduced e-Residency, which enables those not living in Estonia to establish virtual residency in the country. We are introverts by nature; we do not talk much. Instead, for a couple of centuries and counting, we have enjoyed one of the highest literacy rates in the world. More than half of Estonia is still covered by forest. Our only excuse for cutting down a section of it would be to build bookshelves or make booksor to set up Rail Baltica.

The first printed book in the Estonian language appeared in 1535, and the printing business has been important to us ever since (read Meelis Friedenthal's novel The Language of Angels). But our treasure trove of literature has long been hidden, locked up by a language that is alien to Indo-Europeans.

For us, werewolves and ghostly beings are a part not of science fiction but of classical Estonian literature (read August Kitzberg's play The Werewolf or Andrus Kivirahk's November). Encounters with wild bears are not rare in our woods (read Nikolai Baturin's The Heart of the Bear or Andrus Kivirahk's The Man Who Spoke Snakish). We believe in hard work and that toil is the key to love (read Anton Hansen Tammsaare's monumental Truth and Justice).

Historically, Estonia has been subject to the rule of the Danes, Germans, Swedes, and Russians (read any of the works of Jaan Kross, our grand old master of historical novels). You can still stroll the streets of the medieval Hanseatic towns of Tallinn and Tartu, but first, read the Apothecary Melchior murder mysteries by Indrek Hargla, or The Willow King by Meelis Friedenthal. The Soviet occupation brought strange bedfellows (read Rein Raud's Death of the Perfect Sentence, Jaan Kross's Treading Air, or Ilmar Taska's Pobeda 1946).

We boast outstanding local wise men who draw their inspiration from Estonia's stunning landscape and language (read Jaan Kaplinski and Valdur Mikita). We cherish strong women who are not afraid to tear their own body from the inside out (read Maarja Kangro's The Glass Child or Elo Viiding's The Others). The uranium used in the Soviet nuclear industry was enriched on our soil (read Andrei Hvostov's The Passion of Sillamae), and we have dynamite enough for alchemical madness (read Paavo Matsin's The Gogol Disco). All in all, we are a virgin borderland in many waysmystical and undiscovered, pristine and partly incomprehensible. One of our most translated books is Border State, by Tonu Onnepalu.

Yet, the strongest part of Estonia's literature is its poetry (read Doris Kareva, Jaan Kaplinski, Juhan Viiding, or Kristiina Ehin). The word luuletama, which means to create poetry, has a second connotation: to fib or to fabricate stories. You need not believe all that is written here. Instead, we invite you to read, translate, and publish the wide scope of written word penned on this stony land.

The London Book Fair has chosen to showcase the diversity of our contemporary writing by introducing four outstanding Estonian authors to the British audience. Mihkel Mutt charms with his witty irony; Rein Raud stuns with his knowledge of cultures and languages; Andrei Ivanov is so lovably other, writing in Russian and thinking as a cosmopolitan; and Maarja Kangro proves that women are the stronger sex.

Although digitally the most advanced society in the world, Estonia is still wild by nature with so much to share.

Kerti Tergem is director of foreign affairs with the Estonian Literature Centre.

A slightly different version of this piece was published on the website of the British Council.

Read the rest of the supplement.Estonian writer Mihkel Mutt is among the three Baltic authors being honored as the Author of the Day at the London Book Fair. The prolific novelist's career has spanned several generations of writers, from the Soviet era to contemporary times. Mutt is known for his insightful, if somewhat acerbic, commentaries on Estonian life in fiction and nonfiction essays. "Estonia is a Lutheran Country, so we adore not images but the written word," Mutt says. He points out that during the Soviet era, dissident writers were the closest thing Estonians had to freedom fighters. "Their job was to keep Estonian culture alive, both the psychological and nationalist aspects, and to not be Russified.'"

Of course, he notes, many writers, including himself, participated actively in the Soviet system, and it had its rewards. Things are, he says, very different now, and many of his colleagues had a difficult time adapting to the changes that came after independence. "Back in the Soviet era everyone knew who you were, they knew your face," Mutt says. "It was an age with no mass media and to be a writer was to be a celebrity in an age of no celebrity." This celebrity translated directly into sales. "The numbers for some of the books I published in the 1980s were astonishing40,000 copies sold, a million people or more reading my work. But I'm still suspicious of these numbers, which seemed unlikely then and, frankly, impossible to conceive of today."

He points out that the average print run now in Estonia is less than 1,000 copies. "The golden aura around reading in Estonia has faded," says the man who has served multiple roles in Estonian cultural life, from communications director for the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to editor of the main Estonian literary journal, Looming.

Mutt notes that the changes are a reflection of the true market. "Printing costs are higher because we have a small population, and 1,000 copies sold is considered good," Mutt says. "Also, the introduction of self-publishing means that anyone can publish a book, so while the number of copies sold may be going down, the number of books being published is going up."

Mutt has published more than 40 books, including six memoirs. Among his most recent works translated into English is The Inner Immigrant, a collection of stories featuring Fabian, Mutt's alter ego (think of Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman), as he travels around postindependent Estonia commenting on the best and worst qualities of the Estonian intelligentsia. Another recently translated novel, The Cavemen Chronicle, documents the lives of the same intelligentsiawriters, artists, activistsin the years before and after independence as they gather at a popular bunker-like Tallinn cafe known as "the Cave." Both books are published in English by Dalkey Archive.

Mutt says that over time his writing has adjusted to the social changes. "One change that affects me personally in this society is that people don't understand irony any more. Throughout the whole Soviet system, people had to write between the lines, so to speak. And the result was that people were very gifted in how they dissembled things, how they understood things. The writing was allusive, people were writing fables. Today, the border between journalism and literature is eroding and literary style is more like foam."

He smiles and says, "Okay, I admit it, I am hard to please. But I'm also 100% authentic."

Read the rest of the supplement.Piret Raud is one of the leading children's book authors and illustrators in Estonia, having illustrated over 40 books and written 16. She is the daughter of Aino Pervik and Eno Raud, also two of Estonia's most beloved children's authors, and whose works are featured in the Estonian Children's Literature Center in Tallinn, which hosts some 150 children a day who take part in workshops, browse the library enjoy the playful atmosphere.

Raud is the most visible member of a robust Estonian children's publishing industry, which releases over 750 titles annually. Among the best-known writers and illustrators are Andrus Kivirahk, Kairi Look, Kristi Kangilaski, Kadri Hinrikus, Juhani Puttsepp, and Anti Saar. "This is a good, good time for children's publishing in Estonia, and a good time for foreign publishers to discover new work," says Raud, whose own work has been translated into 12 languages and is beloved by children in Scandinavia and France.

English-language audiences will soon be introduced to Raud's work firsthand, when Thames & Hudson publishers her new book, The Ear, later this year. "It is about what happens to van Gogh's famous appendage," says Raud. "No, it doesn't make sense that an ear has its own life, but in my imagination it does. I write what can best be described as slightly silly stories, and this is one of those. Perhaps it is even sillier because I wrote it in English."

Read the complete supplement.If the narrow aisles of the exhibit hall seemed a little more jammed than usual at last years London Book Fair, its because they were. Boosted by a weak pound and two straight years of positive industry sales, attendance at the London Book Fair has been trending up over the past few years, and organizers hope to keep the momentum going at the 2018 fair, set for April 1012 at Olympia London.

Despite political uncertainty around the globe (related to Brexit in the U.K., the Trump administration in the U.S., and the rise of right-wing movements in Europe), the publishing industry has fared well over the past two years, and publishers at the last two London Book Fairs have been enthusiasticand busy. The rights trade at the fair has been brisk. Technology remains a continually evolving challenge. Thorny debates over copyright and intellectual property continue. And through it all, the book business has demonstrated resilience, with print and bookstore sales resurgent.

The industry is feeding off the chaos in the world outside, rather than being depressed by it, said Anthony Forbes Watson, managing director at Pan Macmillan, at the close of last years fair.

This year, publishers will arrive in London amid continuing political chaos to feed off of, but they are still cautiously optimistic about the state of the book business. Although recent figures suggest that print sales in the U.S. and U.K. may be leveling off, the numbers remain positive. And while the global economy shows signs of stability, growth remains modest, and sluggish.

This year, the London Book Fair will once again unofficially kick off with Quantum, a Monday preconference that, in partnership with Nielsen Book, will deliver an insightful, data-driven program on a range of topicsincluding a focus this year on a sector of the book business showing tremendous growth: audio. The Market Focus will feature the Baltic countries, with more than 22 events scheduled over the fairs three days.

The fairs professional program will again feature a full slate of talks and panels on key issues, including rights and translations, copyright, the freedom to publish, open access and scholarly publishing, technology (including social media), and new opportunities for authors, including the self-publishing arena at the Author HQ. And, of course, agents and publishers will be on hand to buy and sell foreign rights in the bustling International Rights Center.

What U.S. Agencies Will Be Selling at the London Book FairAthens was just one of the many locations across the nation that hosted protests to advocate for more gun control after the shooting at MarjorGot some scoop for our reporters or editors? Click on the link below to send us your information.

Send your newsIf there is one thing worse than realizing that your spring break is coming to a close, its the gradual realization that you will never have A lot goes on around Athens and UGA campus, and sometimes it can be hard to keep up. Bears celebrating their birthdays at Bear Hollow Zoo, to Here's a tip for the planners among us: If you have dinner reservations or theater tickets for Sept. 22, 2135 (it's a Thursday), now might be a good time to scuttle them.

Sometime the day before, scientists say, there is a small chance that an asteroid the size of the Empire State Building will smack into Earth, destroying a lot of living things on the planet.

But don't worry. NASA has got you covered.

Forward-thinking astrophysicists and people who specialize in blowing things up with nuclear weapons have come up with a plan, which they swear was not drawn up by Bruce Willis.

If the asteroid - it is named Bennu - decides to go rogue, they could send a nearly nine-ton "bulk impactor" to push it out of Earth's orbit. Or, more likely, they would gently nudge it out of its apocalyptic path using a nuclear device.

The scheme is called the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response. Or, for people who love acronyms and despise subtlety: HAMMER.

Brent Barbee, the NASA aerospace engineer who helped author the study, insists that it is all theoretical. (His exact words: "Please don't print that an asteroid is going to crash into Earth in The Washington Post.")

But using granular detail and eye-glazing amounts of math, the researchers believe they have a viable solution to a world-rattling what-if question.

There is, of course, no massive mission to build a craft capable of playing a celestial game of space pool. The odds of Bennu actually hitting us are about 1 in 2,700. And the asteroid is not big enough to send us the way of the dinosaurs.

But that doesn't mean there is no practical application, Barbee told The Post.

"We're doing these design studies to prepare ourselves, so if we do find a threatening object, we're better prepared to deal with it," he said.

Things from space smack into Earth all the time. Most of them are not existential threats, but some are large enough to cause injury or property damage. Generating a working framework to avoid an Earth impact could save lives.

Until recently, the framework has basically been luck.

In 1908, what many believe to be an asteroid crashed into an area near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, according to the BBC. It struck with a force 185 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb, flattened 80 million trees and reduced hundreds of reindeer to charred carcasses.

A century later in 2013, a 10-ton, 49-foot-wide meteor streaked over Russia's Ural Mountains at hypersonic speeds, shattering windows and injuring 1,100 people, Fox News reported. (Most were injured by shattered glass as they watched the meteor cross the daytime sky). The meteor broke up before it hit the ground but still left scars in nearby ice that were the length of a bus.

The only reason more people weren't killed or injured, Barbee told The Post, is because the objects struck places where there weren't many people.

NASA has a Planetary Defense Coordination Office that tries to detect dangerous asteroids and comets close to Earth's orbit.

There are more of these things than many people think, Barbee said. Researchers detect about 1,000 new objects each year; 10,000 extraterrestrial objects beelining for Earth could still be unaccounted for.

The defense coordination office also comes up with plans for deflecting or destroying discovered objects.

What Asteroid Bennu provides, besides pretty good fodder for a doomsday cult, is an opportunity for scientists to test those theories.

Bennu is, the report says, a "well-studied roughly spherical body" that gives researchers a good target for their calculations - data points to punch into the algorithm. They can see Bennu with telescopes and track the impact its gravity has on other celestial objects.

Soon we will know more. NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been en route to Bennu for two years, according to the agency. It contains instruments that "will map Bennu and establish the composition of the asteroid, including the distribution of the elements, minerals and organic materials."

It will also scrape off a 2.1-ounce sample and bring it back to Earth, NASA says.

If the odds are not in Earth's favor, and Bennu becomes a bigger threat, OSIRIS-REx could be followed by a beefier craft that would break off a lot more.TORRINGTON  Hundreds of local middle and high school students representing area towns and cities competed at the annual Torrington History Day Regional Contest at Torrington High School on Saturday, March 10.

Schools with a student placed within the top three in a History Day category include:,Conard High School (West Hartford), The Gunnery: Mr. Gunns School (Washington); Irving A. Robbins Middle School (Farmington); Memorial Middle School (Middlebury); Nonnewaug High School (Woodbury); Northwest Regional 7 Middle School (Winsted); Pomperaug High School (Southbury); Rochambeau Middle School (Southbury); St. Timothy Middle School (West Hartford); Talcott Mountain Academy (Avon) Torrington High School; The Unquowa School (Fairfield); Westside Middle School Academy (Danbury); and Wilton High SchoolGUILFORD  Thousands who filled the town green on Saturday in one of 800 nationwide March for Our Lives gun-control rallies, had one overriding message for the nations leaders: If you dont ban assault weapons, bump stocks, ghost guns and take other measures on gun control, you will not get our votes.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who received resounding cheers and chants of Murphy for President, said this was the day the world would see the people power behind the gun-control movement.

We are standing up in record numbers across this county, he said. Were bigger and more powerful than the gun lobby. The world is seeing it today.

Murphy said two weeks ago his son, a kindergartner experienced his first active-shooter drill. In his case, students are to cram into a bathroom in the classroom.

I didnt like it, Murphys son told him, bringing tears to the senators eyes.

Murphy said no 6-year-old, 16-year-old or any other student, should have to wonder if theyre going to survive a day at school. He said children living in urban areas shouldnt feel unsafe walking to the corner store.

He said if gun laws dont change, voters should make their objections known at the ballot box.

Murphy said after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 20 first-graders and six adults, fighting for gun control has become a labor of love for him.

He said young protesters made the difference in Vietnam, in the civil rights movement, in marriage equality and they will do it on the gun-control issue.

While marchers of all ages took to the streets  grandmothers with walkers were holding gun-control signs  teen-agers moved by the school shootings in Parkland, Fla., who gave the most compelling speeches and readings on stage.

Daniel Hand High School students Kate Klein and Grace McFadden, both 16 and juniors, organized their high school walkout on March 14 as part of a nationwide movement.

Klein, who spoke at the rally, said the Parkland shootings hit home because that community is supposed to be safe like Madison or Guilford, and the victims look like people she knows.

We are standing up and saying, This is not okay. Were not looking for prayers, she said.

McFadden read a moving poem by a Parkland survivor.

Ella Franzoni, a high school senior from Clinton, spoke eloquently on stage, saying she heard her age group referred to as the mass shooting generation, on television  but that isnt how they want to be known. She said since she was born in 2000, the U.S. has racked up 194 school shootings, and no one has gotten used to the shaky cellphone videos taken from under desks and inside closets.

My generation is waking up, she said. We see the lies of a corrupt system.

Recently retired Stockton Stocky Clark, of Hamden, arrived at the green two hours early, as did many others, and enthusiastically purchased an orange T-shirt reading: How many kids does it take to change our gun laws? He bought the shirt from the group CT Against Gun Violence.

Clark said he wants to see a ban on assault weapons.

Im outraged by the lack of leadership and common sense in our Congress and president  We are very near a tipping point in terms of the demise of democracy, Clark said. Most of all, we have to protect our children and not turn our schools into war zones.

New Haven residents Mike Gill and Joanne Paone-Gill, said they believe it will be this generation, some of their nine grandchildren among them, who will make the real difference in tightening gun-control laws. She said she was proud their young grandchildren joined the March 14 nationwide school walkout  against the will of their school officials/

These are the kids who are our future politicians, and Joanne Paone-Gill said. Its on not enough to see something and say something. We need to do something.

She said its enough to take guns away, noting the problem stems from several areas, including the heavy influence of the National Rifle Association from the halls of Congress and the White House  a sentiment also expressed on many protest signs.

While there was no organized counter rally, Steve Bristol, of Clinton, sat in his car with a huge handmade sign on the dashboard and visible through the windshield that read: You want the govt the founders feared.

Although no one appeared to react to the sign, Bristol decided to put it in the trunk, fearing someone might damage his car, and I like my car, he said.

Bristol said he is not a member of the NRA and does not own weapons, but is a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights. I believe their goal is to take down the Second Amendment, he said of those a few feet on the green. He said Democrats are incrementally chipping away at the Second Amendment.

After the thousands walked a symbolic 0.8-mile march, local lawmakers spoke, notably state Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr., D-Branford.

Looking at the vast crowd and strongly worded signs, Kennedy said as someone who lost two uncles to gunfire  and whose sprawling family has had to relive the tragedies through news clips and the Zapruder film  he was never prouder than Saturday to be a member of the shoreline community.

Kennedy said his family has never been a fan of the NRA, the organization last year gave $38 million to politicians. But Saturdays show of solidarity on the gun-control issue sent a far more powerful message.

Mike Song, whose son Ethan Song, 15, of Guilford, was killed by a gunshot in a local home months ago, performed John Lennons, Imagine.

Mike Song said there is no way to change the past, but he can help prevent tragedies in the future.

I believe reasonable people can come to agreement, on issues such as background checks, wait times and more, he said.

He said losing Ethan is  like having part of your soul ripped out, but,We are going to make a meaningful change.Iran has criticized new U.S. sanctions against 10 of its citizens and an Iranian company over their alleged involvement in a state-sponsored large-scale hacking and intellectual property theft scheme.

The U.S. Treasury Department unveiled charges on March 23 against nine Iranians along with sanctions against 10 individuals and the Mabna Institute, which it accused of hacking hundreds of universities on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi on March 24 called the accusations "false."

"Iran condemns the United States' provocative, illegal, and unjustified actions, which are a major new sign of the hostility and animosity of U.S. leaders towards the Iranian people," Qasemi said in a statement on the ministry's website.

"They will not prevent the scientific development of the Iranian people."

The two founders of the Mabna Institute, Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38, and Ehsan Mohammadi, 37, were among the nine Iranians indicted in New York and whose assets are subject to U.S. seizure.

The Treasury Department said that since 2013, the Mabna Institute carried out cyberintrusions into the computer systems of 144 U.S. universities, and another 176 universities in 21 foreign countries.

Mabna Institute employees and contractors "engaged in the theft of valuable intellectual property and data from hundreds of U.S. and third-country universities...for private financial gain," the Treasury said.

"For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and, specifically, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said.

The U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, dozens of private firms and nongovernmental organizations such as UNICEF were also allegedly targeted.

Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the Iranians conducted "spearphishing" attacks designed to steal passwords from e-mail accounts in what he called one of the largest state-sponsored hacking schemes ever uncovered.

U.S. President Donald Trump has adopted a tough stance against Iran since taking office in January 2017, and repeatedly denounced a landmark agreement that Tehran reached with world powers to curb its nuclear program.

Trump said in January that the 2015 deal must be "fixed" by May 12 or Washington will walk away.

With reporting by AFP and APBRUSSELS - A day of EU-brokered negotiations between the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia broke up late on March 23 without any reported progress on efforts to normalize relations.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic did not appear at a news conference immediately after the meeting, but he later on Serbian TV Pink accused Kosovo of stalling the implementation of a 2013 agreement on special rights for municipalities with a majority Serbian population.

Kosovo has a large ethnic Serb minority population but the central government is controlled by its ethnic Albanian majority.

"For almost 1,800 days, the six main points [on Serb municipalities] remain untouched," Vucic told Serbian TV. He also cast blame on the European Union for not enforcing the 2013 agreement.

"The blame cant be on the Albanians only; the EU also signed that," he said.

Kosovar President Hashim Thaci after the day of negotiations, including a dinner with EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini, stressed the urgency for the two countries to reach an agreement on normalization this year.

"The longer we prolong this, our countries will pay the price because our European future will be delayed. Therefore I consider that we have to engage more dynamically to reach this agreement, hopefully, this year," Thaci said.

Thaci said the most important thing was that both Kosovo and Serbia want to reach an agreement. "The agreement on full normalization is seen as a very difficult thing, but it is the only way forward," he said.

Mogherini in a statement after the talks stressed that a comprehensive normalization agreement between two countries is a key condition for both countries to further their bids to join the EU.

The EU is pushing for completion of the normalization agreement by the end of 2019.

Addressing the concern raised by Vucic, Mogherini urged Kosovo to move ahead on the agreement on Serb-majority municipalities.

But she also addressed accusations made by Kosovo that Serbia has been dragging its feet on implementation of an agreement on energy and the removal of barriers in the divided town of Mitrovica. Mogherini said Serbia needed to make progress on carrying out those accords.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008, but Serbia has refused to recognize the former province's statehood despite its recognition by 116 other countries.

The EU-sponsored talks started in 2011. The first political agreements between Serbia and Kosovo were reached in April 2013, in what was considered a historic milestone.

With reporting by Serbian TV Pink and dpaA Pakistani court has acquitted 20 people of charges that they were part of a lynch mob who burned alive a Christian couple that had been falsely accused of blasphemy in 2014.

Brick-factory workers Shahzad Masih, 26, and Shama Shahzad, 24, were burned alive in an industrial kiln by a mob that had been incited by accusations the couple desecrated the Koran near the town of Kot Radha Kishan in Punjab by throwing away pages of the Islamic holy book along with the trash.

After the attack, it emerged that the couple had been falsely accused.

Police arrested scores of villagers in the case.

An antiterrorism court in Lahore in November 2016 sentenced five men to death and 10 others were given varying jail terms for playing a supportive role in the killings.

That court also acquitted 93 suspects in the case in 2016.

Prosecutor Abdur Rauf says the court on March 24 acquitted 20 other suspects who had been indicted in the case at a later stage.

The killings triggered international criticism of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, which were introduced in the 1980s.

Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan and a mere allegation can often prompt mob violence.

The U.S. State Department has said Pakistans blasphemy laws are often used as justification for mob justice.

With reporting by APRussian Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Yevtukhov has said Russia will challenge stiff new tariffs that the United States imposed this week on aluminum and steel imports before the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Yevtukhov told Rossia-24 TV on March 23 that the new tariffs of 25 percent on U.S. steel imports will cause about $2 billion in losses for Russian steel exporters, while the 10 percent tariffs on U.S. aluminum imports will cause $1 billion in losses for Russian aluminum producers.

"Our steelworkers will suffer," he said. "It will be necessary to challenge this measure in the WTO."

"The fact that the U.S. has now introduced duties on steel and aluminum closely concerns Russia and China," Yevtukhov told Rossia-24 TV, adding that Moscow will raise its case before the WTO's dispute-settlement authority and argue that the tariffs violate WTO rules.

Yevtukhov said Russia was also considering direct retaliatory measures against the U.S. tariffs, such as imposing reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods. "One must look at the response measures, and all countries will do this," he told Rossia-24.

Russia's delegation at the WTO raised concerns about the tariffs at a meeting of the trade body on March 23, Russian state-run news agency TASS reported.

TASS said the Russian delegates demanded an explanation from the U.S. delegation on why the tariffs were imposed selectively, in what they said was an apparent violation of Russia's "most favored nation" trade status in the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who ordered the tariffs to ensure the survival of U.S. steel producers for what he said were "national security" reasons, temporarily suspended the duties for U.S. allies in the European Union, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and elsewhere.

Based on reporting by AP, TASS, and Rossia-24 TVVOLOKOLAMSK, Russia -- About 1,000 people have protested again in Volokolamsk, some 100 kilometers west of Moscow, demanding the closure of a landfill that has been leaking toxic gas that harmed dozens of children this week.

The protesters gathered outside the local administration headquarters, many of them wearing pink ribbons as homage to a local schoolgirl who shamed Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov with a defiant gesture during a previous protest.

The March 24 protest came despite the fact that Vorobyov the previous day fired the district chief, after dozens of local children were hospitalized on March 21 due to apparently breathing gas that leaked from the Yadrovo landfill near Volokolamsk.

Vorobyov's office said that he replaced Yevgeny Gavrilov with another regional official.

Some 150 schoolchildren sought medical assistance on March 21 after they felt extremely sick following a suspected leak of noxious gas from Yadrovo.

The same day, angry residents scuffled with government officials in Volokolamsk, demanding explanations and the closure of the dump. Vorobyov was pelted with snowballs and confronted by irate residents.

During the protest, 10-year-old Tanya Lozova, a local girl who was wearing a pink ski cap and bright jacket, was caught on cameras pointing her finger in a throat-cutting gesture at Vorobyov, who was promising furious residents that he would quickly deal with the problem.

Lozova, who instantly became an internet hero in Russia, told Dozhd TV that her gesture was meant to say "You are killing us!" She said she wanted the landfill to close so "people finally could breathe fresh air."

On March 7, Volokolamsk authorities declared a temporary state of emergency, saying the level of hydrogen sulphide in the air was recorded as 2.5 times higher and the level of nitric oxide was double usual levels because of a gas leak at the landfill.

The Yadrovo landfill was opened in 2008 and is a dumping site for garbage from Moscow and nearby regions. Local residents have been staging protests, demanding the closure of the landfill for some time.

The Moscow regional authorities said earlier on March 23 that the landfill will suspend its operations until April 14, after which the old section of the dump will be closed.

In the past, local authorities had promised to "modernize" the landfill but refused to consider closing it.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and DozhdSyria's state-run media is reporting that hundreds of rebel fighters and their relatives began leaving eastern Ghouta on buses late on March 24 and were heading for opposition-held areas in the north of the country under an agreement to evacuate the second of three surrounded opposition-held areas east of Damascus.

Earlier on March 24, Syria's state media reported that about 7,000 members of the rebel group and their relatives were preparing for the evacuation under a deal reached a day earlier between Faylaq al-Rahman, the second-most powerful rebel group in eastern Ghouta, and Russia's military.

Bulldozers on March 24 also removed giant sand barriers from a main road in the town of Harasta that the evacuation buses are meant to pass through on their way to northern Syria.

The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said the corridor was being prepared for Faylaq al-Rahman members and their relatives to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Tarma, and Jobar.

The reported evacuations come after thousands left Harasta, the first opposition-held pocket of territory to be evacuated, under a similar deal for armed opposition fighters and civilians.

Based on reporting by Reuters and APSyrian rebel fighters have evacuated one enclave in eastern Ghouta and reached a Russian-brokered deal to leave another, enabling Syrian government forces to regain control over most of the embattled Damascus suburb, observers say.

The developments on March 23 brought Syrian President Bashar al-Assad close to his biggest victory since driving armed rebels out of Aleppo in December 2016, though his opposition still has a few remaining strongholds in northwestern and southwestern Syria.

A devastating Russia-backed government assault since February 18 on eastern Ghouta has killed more than 1,600 civilians but has brought 90 percent of the Damascus suburb back under government control, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Retaking eastern Ghouta, a sprawling semirural area that had escaped government control since 2012, became a priority this year for Assad after a string of gains by the Syrian Army elsewhere around the country.

At the start of the offensive, the United Nations estimated 400,000 people were trapped inside the besieged area without access to food or medicine.

The Russia-backed Syrian campaign succeeded in splintering the territory held by fractured rebel groups into three shrinking pockets, each held by different rebel factions.

Damascus and its ally Moscow then implemented a "leave or die" strategy like the one that enabled them to prevail after a similarly bloody battle in Aleppo.

The killing of hundreds of civilians through intense bombardments within the span of a month provoked an international outcry and global condemnation at the United Nations, but Western efforts to impose a cease-fire that might save civilian lives never took hold.

Syrian state television said on March 23 the town of Harasta had been "emptied" of rebels after an evacuation deal that saw fighters from the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham and their families bused to northwestern Idlib Province, one of the last strongholds for the rebels.

Syrian Army soldiers fired guns in the air in celebration as the last groups of rebels in Harasta boarded buses.

Assad's forces looked set to expand their control further within days after another Islamist group, Faylaq al-Rahman, struck a deal with the Russian military to evacuate starting on March 24.

The agreement will see a southern stretch of territory that includes the towns of Zamalka, Arbin, and Ain Tarma cleared of rebels, while talks are under way over clearing a third and final pocket of rebels, around Ghouta's main town of Douma.

The withdrawal deal came after the Syrian war monitor and the White Helmets rescue group said Russian air strikes using "incendiary munitions" hit the town of Arbin in the last rebel-held enclave late on March 22. Russia denied it was involved in such strikes.

Under the strategy employed by Russia and Syria, each one of the three rebel-held pockets came under intense bombardment that not only killed hundreds but forced people to seek shelter and live underground.

The strategy in each case succeeded in forcing rebel fighters to accept Russia's offer to give them a safe exit if they agreed to leave.

It is a tactic Assad and his Russian sponsors used successfully in Aleppo and elsewhere since Russia intervened in the seven-year civil war in 2015.

Harasta's evacuation -- which began on March 22 -- was the first such deal in eastern Ghouta negotiated by Russia. Syrian state media reported more than 4,500 people, including over 1,400 fighters, left the town.

"Our situation in Harasta was very tragic," Abu Muhammad, a civilian, told AFP. "We couldn't live aboveground because of the heavy bombardment... Some children stayed in basements for four months with no food. We couldn't even find fodder to eat."

Following the same pattern, Faylaq al-Rahman on March 22 sealed a deal for some 7,000 people to leave the enclave the rebel group controlled, which was experiencing famine and the outbreak of disease under the bombardment.

After being hit with what appeared to be incendiary munitions in Douma, the last rebel-held enclave, the Jaish al-Islam rebel group also opened negotiations with Russia on March 23.

The UN estimates more than 50,000 people have fled besieged areas of eastern Ghouta in the past two weeks.

Russia is claiming that more than 100,000 civilians have been evacuated from the area with its assistance since it started imposing daily "humanitarian pauses" in Ghouta, the Russian state-run TASS news agency quoted Russian official Yuri Yevtushenko as saying on March 23.

With reporting by AFP, dpa, and ReutersAmerican family of four found deceased in condominium

Akumal, Q.R.  The bodies of an American family of four have been found in their rented condominium in the seaside resort town of Akumal.

Authorities say the bodies were discovered Friday around 3:00 p.m. after family members alerted US authorities that the Iowa family did not arrive home March 21 as planned. The Prosecutors Office of Quintana Roo announced on social media that four bodies had been found in a tourist complex in Akumal, outside the town of Tulum.

They said that during the inspection, no signs of violence were found on the bodies or in the room.

The bodies of 41-year-old Kevin Wayne Sharp along with his wife, Amy Marie Sharp, 38, and their children Sterling Wayne Sharp, 12, and Adrianna Marie Sharp, 7 of Creston, Iowa were found inside the unit. Local reports say the parents were discovered on the bed, while the children were found on the floor where they appeared to be watching television.

Relative Ashli Peterson shared on social media The Sharps have been located. They were found last night in their condo deceased. There was no foul play! At this time that is all the information we have.

Please respect the family at this time as they go through the grieving process, she said adding, Thank you for all the posts, shares, and kind words.

Renee Hoyt, Amy Marie Sharps sister, told Creston News Advertiser that the family left Creston on March 13 and drove to St. Louis, where they stayed the night before boarding a non-stop flight to Cancun the following day.

On March 14, Hoyt said she received a text from Amy saying they had arrived at their condominium in Akumal safely. They were to return to the US on March 21, but did not arrive as planned.

Police quickly made contact with the US State Department when a welfare check at the Tao penthouse condominium they rented from March 14 to 21 resulted in the discovery of the bodies.

While the causes of death are not immediately clear, Creston police chief, Paul Ver Meer, told KCCI that there were no signs of trauma.

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said, We are able to confirm the deaths of four U.S. citizens in Akumal, Mexico. We extend our sincere condolences to friends and family. Our consulate in Merida is providing consular services. Out of respect for the family during this difficult time, we have no further comment.

Local authorities said the official causes of death will be released after an autopsy.

This was the Sharps second family vacation to Mexico.Playa del Carmen to become Smart City with AT&T Mexico

Playa del Carmen, Q.R.  A collaborative agreement signed between Playa del Carmen and AT&T Mexico will turn the municipality into a Smart City.

The signing of the new agreement, which was done between AT & T Mexico, the municipality of Solidaridad and the Institute for the Development and Financing of the State, will see Playa del Carmen implement an Intelligent Beach Project as part of the new smart city features.

The Intelligent Beach Project will provide free Wi-Fi connectivity within delimited areas, while the smart city aspect will allow monitoring of vehicle and pedestrian traffic in real time, among other applications.

Intelligent nodes will be installed in varying streetlights around Playa del Carmen to build intelligent corridors. With them, lights can be automatically turned on and off and their intensity controlled.

In some spaces, the existing security cameras will be enabled so they can obtain an analysis of pedestrian and vehicular flow, while others will have environment sensors. In turn, the municipality could find a more sustainable consumption of lights as well as strengthened security.

This project seeks to promote the creation of smart cities in Mexico uniting communities, people and infrastructure through technology and the power of the AT&T network. The company is the first to make use of the LTE-M network in Mexico, which has been designed for the deployment of the Internet of Things on a large scale, to the benefit of the tourist community of Playa del Carmen.

The commercial and tourist activity of Playa del Carmen has shown a great growth in recent years, therefore, having more connectivity will help to continue promoting this potential. An intelligent city represents a more accessible space for our inhabitants and is more attractive both for tourism service operators as well as for visitors and future investors, said mayor Christine Torres Gomez.

Andres Canales, vice president of Internet of Things at AT & T in Mexico explained, Internet technology allows connecting objects, machines or things to accelerate business and services, generate savings, improve safety and optimize mobility in cities.

With this project, we will seek to improve the quality of life of the population of Quintana Roo and the tourists who visit the destination.

As part of the agreement, the installation of Wi-Fi modules on the luminaires will also be evaluated, as well as to offer free connectivity to people who have devices.

The project is being done in part with the Institute for the Development and Financing of the State through its investment promotion platform Pro Quintana Roo and is a follow-up to the collaboration initiative announced in December 2017.State repossess Cancun Hotel Zone lots illegally bought during Borge administration

Cancun, Q.R.  The state of Quintana Roo has begun the recovery of its assets with the repossession of three lots that government officials say were illegally bought during the Borge administration.

The three lots were repossessed Friday in the Cancun Hotel Zone as more than 20 armed state police agents guarded the properties. Eduardo Ortiz Jasso, head of the Agency for Strategic Projects of the state of Quintana Roo says there are at least 25 properties throughout the state that were illegally obtained by the previous administration.

He says the state continues to work on the cases to recover its assets.

We are starting the recovery of the states assets, this is what we started Friday. At this time we have the assurance of three properties, he explained.

There are more. Those that we have in the first stage, we are talking about 25 properties in different areas of the state. With this we are initiating the process. We cannot give more information because we do not want to hinder the processes.

We have knowledged more than 25 lots. Of these three, the value is estimated at $4,000 USD per square meter, explained Eduardo Ortiz Jasso.

He said that the trials have already been concluded with the first three lots, adding that they are waiting for the judgments on the remaining properties so they can repossess the land.

But the recovery of these lots, he said, is only the beginning of a long process of recovery, after the abuses committed in the past administration in which a large part of the state patrimony was lost.

The lands were reportedly irregularly sold during the administrations of Felix Gonzalez Canto and Roberto Borge Angulo. The land was acquired at a fraction of its real value by the owner of Corpogas, Ricardo Vega Serrador, through the company Caveri Servicios Inmobiliarios.

It was one of the 23 properties immobilized in the Public Registry of Property by the Attorney General of the Republic for more than a year as part of the investigation against Borge Angulo.

Through a statement, the State Government reported that the Agency for Strategic Projects promoted three civil lawsuits to recover the three properties.

Today we have made progress in doing justice for the Quintana Roo by obtaining possession of the properties, explained Carlos Joaquin.Wastewater cleaning technology created at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania efficiently cleans water from oil products leaving it virtually pollution-free (the concentration of oil discharge in treated water is about 0.2 mg/L). Given the efficiency, the technology is much cheaper than the alternatives currently known in the market.

Although the regulations slightly vary from country to country, mainly in Europe and America oil discharge in water must meet 5mg/L for discharges to surface water drains and the water environment. Although marine life can survive this degree of pollution, the oil products pass into organisms affecting their health and transferring toxic substances further into ecosystem.

"After treatment with our technology the wastewater from oil industries released into the sea not only meets legal requirements, but is virtually clean," says Associate Professor Viktoras Racys, researcher at KTU Faculty of Chemical Technology.

Biological wastewater treatment technology developed at KTU employs microorganisms, which can adapt to certain environment and synthesise ferments to "digest" oil products turning them into CO 2 and H 2 O. The technology has been successfully implemented in Lithuanian oil transfer company Klaipedos Nafta. At the moment, it is being modified to be used in other areas of activity potentially connected to organic contamination, such as food, chemical, agricultural production industries.

According to KTU researcher, the essential challenge is to ensure the stability of microorganisms used for water treatment technology: it is very difficult to cultivate them and very easy to lose.

"Our secret is that we have found out a way of keeping those microorganisms in the system, so they don't leave. Thanks to this, our technology is very stable and very reliable, basically indestructible," says Viktoras Racys.

The currently working KTU-invented technology cleans 160 m3 per hour. It is ready to use in sensitive environmental regions, for the treatment of oil production and refinery wastewater, ballast water, the run-off from car washes and car parks and any petroleum polluted wastewaters containing both legally regulated compounds and the most toxic or persistent compounds.Biodiversity -- the essential variety of life forms on Earth -- continues to decline in every region of the world, significantly reducing nature's capacity to contribute to people's well-being. This alarming trend endangers economies, livelihoods, food security and the quality of life of people everywhere, according to four landmark science reports released today, written by more than 550 leading experts, from over 100 countries.

The result of three years of work, the four regional assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services cover the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, as well as Europe and Central Asia -- the entire planet except the poles and the open oceans. The assessment reports were approved by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), in Medellin, Colombia, at the 6th session of its Plenary. IPBES has 129 State Members.

"Biodiversity and nature's contributions to people sound, to many people, academic and far removed from our daily lives," said the Chair of IPBES, Sir Robert Watson, "Nothing could be further from the truth -- they are the bedrock of our food, clean water and energy. They are at the heart not only of our survival, but of our cultures, identities and enjoyment of life. The best available evidence, gathered by the world's leading experts, points us now to a single conclusion: we must act to halt and reverse the unsustainable use of nature -- or risk not only the future we want, but even the lives we currently lead. Fortunately, the evidence also shows that we know how to protect and partially restore our vital natural assets."

The extensively peer-reviewed IPBES assessment reports focus on providing answers to key questions for each of the four regions, including: why is biodiversity important, where are we making progress, what are the main threats and opportunities for biodiversity and how can we adjust our policies and institutions for a more sustainable future?

In every region, with the exception of a number of positive examples where lessons can be learned, biodiversity and nature's capacity to contribute to people are being degraded, reduced and lost due to a number of common pressures -- habitat stress; overexploitation and unsustainable use of natural resources; air, land and water pollution; increasing numbers and impact of invasive alien species and climate change, among others.

Declining Biodiversity -- Now and in the Future

The Americas

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"In the Americas, rich biodiversity makes an immense contribution to the quality of life, helping to reduce poverty while strengthening economies and livelihoods," said Dr. Jake Rice (Canada), co-chair of the Americas assessment with Dr. Cristiana Simao Seixas (Brazil) and Prof. Maria Elena Zaccagnini (Argentina).

"The economic value of the Americas' land-based nature's contributions to people is estimated to be more than US$24 trillion per year -- equivalent to the region's GDP, yet almost two-thirds -- 65% -- of these contributions are in decline, with 21% declining strongly. Human-induced climate change, which affects temperature, precipitation and the nature of extreme events, is increasingly driving biodiversity loss and the reduction of nature's contributions to people, worsening the impact of habitat degradation, pollution, invasive species and the overexploitation of natural resources."

According to the report, under a 'business as usual' scenario, climate change will be the fastest growing driver negatively impacting biodiversity by 2050 in the Americas, becoming comparable to the pressures imposed by land use change. On average today, the populations of species in an area are about 31% smaller than was the case at the time of European settlement. With the growing effects of climate change added to the other drivers, this loss is projected to reach 40% by 2050.

The report highlights the fact that indigenous people and local communities have created a diversity of polyculture and agroforestry systems, which have increased biodiversity and shaped landscapes. However, the decoupling of lifestyles from the local environment has eroded, for many, their sense of place, language and indigenous local knowledge. More than 60% of the languages in the Americas, and the cultures associated with them, are troubled or dying out.

Africa

"Africa's immense natural resources and its diverse cultural heritage are among its most important strategic assets for both human development and well-being," said Dr. Emma Archer (South Africa), co-chair of the African assessment with Dr. Kalemani Jo Mulongoy (DRC) and Dr. Luthando Dziba (South Africa). "Africa is the last place on Earth with a wide range of large mammals, yet today there are more African plants, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and large mammals threatened than ever before by a range of both human-induced and natural causes."

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"Africa is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and this is going to have severe consequences for economically marginalized populations. By 2100, climate change could also result in the loss of more than half of African bird and mammal species, a 20-30% decline in the productivity of Africa's lakes and significant loss of African plant species."

The report adds that approximately 500,000 square kilometres of African land is already estimated to have been degraded by overexploitation of natural resources, erosion, salinization and pollution, resulting in significant loss of nature's contributions to people. Even greater pressure will be placed on the continent's biodiversity as the current African population of 1.25 billion people is set to double to 2.5 billion by 2050.

Marine and coastal environments make significant economic, social and cultural contributions to the people of Africa. Damage to coral reef systems, mostly due to pollution and climate change, has far-reaching implications for fisheries, food security, tourism and overall marine biodiversity.

Asia-Pacific

"Biodiversity and ecosystem services contributed to rapid average annual economic growth of 7.6% from 1990 to 2010 in the Asia-Pacific region, benefitting its more than 4.5 billion people. This growth, in turn, has had varying impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services," said Dr. Madhav Karki (Nepal), co-chair of the Asia-Pacific assessment with Dr. Sonali Senaratna Sellamuttu (Sri Lanka). "The region's biodiversity faces unprecedented threats, from extreme weather events and sea level rise, to invasive alien species, agricultural intensification and increasing waste and pollution."

The report says that although there has been an overall decline in biodiversity, there have also been some important biodiversity successes including, for example, increases in protected areas. Over the past 25 years, marine protected areas in the region increased by almost 14% and terrestrial protected area increased by 0.3%. Forest cover increased by 2.5%, with the highest increases in North East Asia (22.9%) and by South Asia (5.8%).

There are concerns, however, that these efforts are insufficient to halt the loss of biodiversity and the decline in the value of nature's contributions to people in the region. Unsustainable aquaculture practices, overfishing and destructive harvesting threaten coastal and marine ecosystems, with projections that, if current fishing practices continue, there will be no exploitable fish stocks in the region by 2048. Intertidal zones are also rapidly deteriorating due to human activities, with coral reefs of critical ecological, cultural and economic importance, already under serious threat, and some reefs having already been lost, especially in South and South-East Asia. According to the report, up to 90% of corals will suffer severe degradation by 2050, even under conservative climate change scenarios.

The report emphasizes that climate change and associated extreme events pose great threats, especially to coastal ecosystems, low-lying coastal areas and islands. Climate change is also impacting species distributions, population sizes, and the timing of reproduction and migration. Increased frequencies of pest and disease outbreaks resulting from these changes may have additional negative effects on agricultural production and human well-being, with impacts projected to worsen.

Forests, alpine ecosystems, inland freshwater and wetlands, as well as coastal systems are identified as the most threatened Asia-Pacific ecosystems. The increasing variety and abundance of invasive alien species is highlighted as one of the region's most serious drivers of ecosystem change and biodiversity loss.

Europe and Central Asia

A major trend is the increasing intensity of conventional agriculture and forestry, which leads to biodiversity decline. There are also examples of sustainable agricultural and forestry practices that are beneficial to biodiversity and nature's contributions to people in the region. Nature's material contributions to people, such as food and energy, have been promoted at the expense of both regulating contributions, such as pollination and soil formation, and non-material contributions, such as cultural experiences or opportunities to develop a sense of place.

"The people of the region consume more renewable natural resources than the region produces," said Prof. Markus Fischer (Switzerland), co-chair of the Europe and Central Asia assessment with Prof. Mark Rounsevell (UK), "Although this is somewhat off-set by higher biocapacities in Eastern Europe and northern parts of Western and Central Europe."

In the European Union, among assessments of the conservation status of species and habitat types of conservation interest, only 7% of marine species and 9% of marine habitat types show a 'favourable conservation status'. Moreover 27% of species assessments and 66% of habitat types assessments show an 'unfavourable conservation status', with the others categorised as 'unknown'.

The authors find that further economic growth can facilitate sustainable development only if it is decoupled from the degradation of biodiversity and nature's capacity to contribute to people. Such decoupling, however, has not yet happened, and would require far-reaching change in policies and tax reforms at the global and national levels.

Abandonment of traditional land-use systems, and loss of associated indigenous and local knowledge and practices, has been widespread in Europe and Central Asia, the report finds. Production-based subsidies driving growth in agricultural, forestry and natural resource extraction sectors tend to exacerbate conflicting land-use issues, often impinging on available territory for traditional users. Maintenance of traditional land use and lifestyles in Europe and Central Asia is strongly related to institutional adequacy and economic viability.

Global Development Goals in Jeopardy

"One of the most important findings across the four IPBES regional assessments is that failure to prioritize policies and actions to stop and reverse biodiversity loss, and the continued degradation of nature's contributions to people, seriously jeopardises the chances of any region, and almost every country, meeting their global development targets," said Dr. Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES.

"Achievement of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and the Paris Agreement on climate change, all depend on the health and vitality of our natural environment in all its diversity and complexity. Acting to protect and promote biodiversity is at least as important to achieving these commitments and to human wellbeing as is the fight against global climate change."

"Richer, more diverse ecosystems are better able to cope with disturbances -- such as extreme events and the emergence of diseases. They are our 'insurance policy' against unforeseen disasters and, used sustainably, they also offer many of the best solutions to our most pressing challenges."

The assessment of the Americas concludes that continued biodiversity loss could undermine the achievement of some of the SDGs as well as some of the international climate-related goals, targets and aspirations.

All the plausible future scenarios explored in the Africa assessment highlight that the drivers of biodiversity loss will increase, with associated negative impacts on nature's contributions to people and human well-being. Achieving the African Union's Agenda 2063, the SDGs and the Aichi Targets is unlikely in three out of five scenarios explored.

The experts of the Asia-Pacific assessment point to the value of ecosystem based approaches and identify, among others, lack of solid waste management, as well as air, water and land pollution as factors undermining gains in a number of the Aichi Targets and SDGs for many countries (e.g. extinction of plant and animal species due to deforestation, rising temperature and water pollution).

There has been some progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets in Europe and Central Asia, e.g. in terms of the area under protection or in mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society. However, the pressures on biodiversity from direct drivers of change are unlikely to be reduced and so progress has been negative for indigenous and local knowledge, the equitable distribution of nature's contributions and water security.

Looking beyond the 2030 timescale of the SDGs, scenario analysis highlights that continuation of past and current trends in drivers of change will inhibit the contribution of the region to the widespread achievement of the SDGs, while scenarios which focus on achieving a balanced supply of nature's contributions to people and incorporate a diversity of values are more likely to contribute to achieving the majority of the SDGs.

Promising Policy Options Available

Accompanying the stark concerns of the IPBES experts, however, are messages of hope: promising policy options do exist and have been found to work in protecting and restoring biodiversity and nature's contributions to people, where they have been effectively applied.

In the Americas, protection of key biodiversity areas increased 17% between 1970 and 2010, yet fewer than 20% of key biodiversity areas are protected and coverage varies significantly. The report makes it clear that protected areas and restoration projects are only some of the possible interventions -- with a need to also focus on strategies to make human-dominated landscapes more supportive of biodiversity and nature's contributions to people.

It also makes the point that biodiversity and nature's contributions to people are better protected when integrated into a broad array of economic and sectoral policies, such as payment for ecosystem services and voluntary eco-certification. Appropriate combinations of, for example, behavioural change, improved technology, research, adequate levels of finance, improved education and public awareness programs are among other options.

Measures taken by African Governments to protect biodiversity and nature's contributions to people, have contributed to some recovery of threatened species, especially in key biodiversity areas, and these efforts could be enhanced. Such measures include the establishment and effective management of protected areas and networks of wildlife corridors; restoration of degraded ecosystems; control of invasive alien species and reintroduction of wild animals. Despite the African Union's priorities of poverty alleviation, inclusive growth and sustainable development, especially in the context of global climate change, the report finds that the continent is greatly undervaluing its natural resources.

In addition to enhancing biodiversity conservation through appropriate governance, policies and national implementation, the authors emphasize the need for better integration of indigenous and local knowledge and greater use of scenarios in African decision-making. Of the five possible scenarios they explore, two (regional sustainability and local sustainability) are identified as the most likely paths to meet Africa's economic, social and environmental development aspirations, but the authors point to the need for capacity building on the use of scenarios in decision-making.

For Asia and the Pacific, the IPBES experts point to the success of countries that achieved rapid economic growth in gradually restoring and expanding protected areas -- especially forests. They emphasize that, while assisting these countries in their efforts to meet some of the SDGs and Aichi Targets, this alone will not be sufficient to reduce biodiversity loss caused by the negative impacts of monoculture. For instance, the region registered a growth of 0.3% in terrestrial protected areas and 13.8% in marine protected areas -- putting many countries on track to meet Aichi Target 11 -- but most of the important bird areas and key biodiversity areas remain unprotected."

Better application of science and technology, empowerment of local communities in decision making, integrating biodiversity conservation into other key sectors, scenario planning that is sensitive to economic and cultural diversity, private sector partnerships in financing biodiversity protection, as well as better cross-border regional collaboration, are some of the many important approaches the report identifies.

A range of governance options, policies and management practices is available in Europe and Central Asia to safeguard biodiversity and ensure nature's contributions to people. Some progress has already been made in mainstreaming biodiversity and nature's contributions to people into public and private decision-making.

The assessment report highlights integrated approaches. These include measuring national welfare beyond GDP. Governance could become more effective by using well-designed mixes of policy instruments to motivate changes in behaviour to support sustainable development. The authors also emphasize the relevance of reconciling biodiversity conservation and human rights standards through rights-based instruments, as well as capacity building for indigenous peoples and local communities. Sufficient funding is also needed to support research, monitoring, education and training.

Speaking about the policy options emerging from the four regional assessments, Watson said: "Although there are no 'silver bullets' or 'one-size-fits all' answers, the best options in all four regional assessments are found in better governance, integrating biodiversity concerns into sectoral policies and practices (e.g. agriculture and energy), the application of scientific knowledge and technology, increased awareness and behavioural changes."

"It is also clear that indigenous and local knowledge can be an invaluable asset, and biodiversity issues need to receive much higher priority in policy making and development planning at every level. Cross-border collaboration is also essential, given that biodiversity challenges recognize no national boundaries."

By the numbers

The Americas

Trends / data

13%: the Americas' share of world's human population

40%: share of world ecosystems' capacity to produce nature-based materials consumed by people, and to assimilate by-products from their consumption

65%: the proportion of nature's contributions to people, across all units of analysis, in decline (with 21% declining strongly)

>50%: share of the Americas' population with a water security problem

61%: languages and associated cultures, in trouble or dying out

>95%: North American tall grass prairie grasslands transformed into human-dominated landscapes since pre-European settlement

72% and 66% respectively: of tropical dry forest in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean have been transformed into human-dominated landscapes since pre-European settlement

88%: Atlantic tropical forest transformed into human-dominated landscapes since pre-European settlement

17%: Amazon forest transformed into human-dominated landscapes since pre-European settlement

50%: decrease in renewable freshwater available per person since the 1960s

200-300%: Increase in humanity's ecological footprint in each subregion of the Americas since the 1960s

9.5% and 25%: Forest areas lost in South America and Mesoamerica respectively since the 1960s

0.4% and 43.4%: net gains in forest areas in North America and the Caribbean respectively since the 1960s

1.5 million: approximate number of Great Plains grassland hectares loss from 2014 to 2015

2.5 million: hectares under cultivation in Brazil's northeast agricultural frontier in 2013, up from 1.2 million ha in 2003, with 74% of these new croplands taken from intact cerrado (tropical savanna) in that region

15-60%: North American drylands habitat lost between 2000 and 2009

>50%: US wetlands lost since European settlement (up to 90% lost in agricultural regions)

>50%: decline in coral reef cover by the 1970s; only 10% remained by 2003

Economic value of nature's contributions to people

$24.3 trillion: estimated value per year of terrestrial nature's contributions to people in the Americas (equivalent to the region's gross domestic product)

$6.8, $5.3 and $3.6 trillion per year: nature's contributions to people valued as ecosystem services in Brazil, USA and Canada respectively

>$500 million: annual cost of managing the impacts of invasive alien zebra mussels on infrastructure for power, water supply and transportation in the Great Lakes

Projections

20%: expected regional population increase (to 1.2 billion) by 2050

+/-100%: expected growth in region's GDP by 2050, intensifying many drivers of biodiversity loss if 'business as usual' continues

40%: expected loss by 2050 of the region's original biodiversity under a 'business as usual' scenario for climate change (with loss of 35-36% expected under the three "pathways to sustainability")

By the numbers

Africa

Trends / data

+/- 500,000: km2 of land is degraded due to factors such as deforestation, unsustainable agriculture, overgrazing, uncontrolled mining activities, invasive alien species and climate change, leading to soil erosion, salinization, pollution, and loss of vegetation or soil fertility

+/- 62%: rural population directly dependent on wild nature and its services for survival (the most of any continent)

+/- 2 million: km2 of land designated as protected (including 6% of biodiversity-rich tropical evergreen broadleaf forests and 2.5% of Africa's seas

25%: people having faced hunger and malnutrition (2011-2013) in Sub-Saharan Africa, the world's most food-deficient region Economic values of nature's contributions to people

West Africa

$4 billion: coastal fishery value added (per year)

$40,000: water purification services (per km2, per year)

$4,500: mangrove coastal protection services (per km2, per year)

$2,800: coastal carbon sequestration services (average per km2, per year)

Central Africa

$2 billion: coastal fishery value added (per year)

$0.8 billion: inland fishery value added (per year)

$14,000: forest carbon sequestration services (average per km2, per year)

$3,500: mangrove coastal protection services (per km2, per year)

$3,000: timber value added (per km2, per year)

Southern Africa

$0.5 billion: coastal fishery value added (per year)

$0.3 billion: inland fishery value added (per year)

$9,000: recreation value (per km2, per year)

North Africa

$0.6 billion: inland fishery value added (per year)

$0.5 billion: coastal fishery value added (per year)

$300: coastal carbon sequestration services (average per km2, per year)

$2,000: timber production (per km2, per year)

East Africa and adjacent islands

$2.5 billion: coastal fishery value added (per year)

$1.2 billion: inland fishery value added (per year)

$16,000: food production (per km2, per year)

$12,000: forest carbon sequestration services (average per km2, per year)

$11,000: erosion control (average per km2, per year)

$7,800: forest bioprospecting (per km2, per year)

$5,000: mangrove coastal protection services (per km2, per year)

$2,200: coastal carbon sequestration services (average per km2, per year)

Projections

>50% of African bird and mammal species could be lost to climate change by 2100

20 -- 30%: expected decline in productivity of lakes by 2100

2.5 billion: predicted population of Africa in 2050 (double the current figure)

54%: Africans expected to live in urban and peri-urban areas by 2030 (up from 39% in 2003) By the numbers

Asia-Pacific

Trends / data

Zero: exploitable fish stocks in the region by 2048 if current fishing practices continue

Up to 90%: percentage of corals expected to suffer severe degradation by 2050, even under conservative climate change scenarios

1%-2%: annual estimated coral loss even for the most managed reefs

4.5 billion: people that benefit from the region's biodiversity and ecosystem services, including food, water, energy, and health security, as well as cultural and spiritual fulfilment

400 million: region's share of people below the poverty line (out of 767 million worldwide) -- defined as $1.90 per person per day, using 2011 purchasing power parity

7.6%: regions' average annual economic growth (1990-2010) compared to 3.4% global average

2-3%: region's annual urbanization rate (among the fastest in the world)

Nearly 200 million: people in the region that directly depend on the forest for their non-timber forest products, medicine, food, fuel as well as other subsistence needs

$33.5 billion: estimated annual economic loss due to invasive alien species in South-East Asia

12.9%: reduction in forest cover in South-East Asia due largely to an increase in timber extraction, large-scale bio-fuel plantations and the expansion of intensive agriculture and shrimp farms (1990 to 2015)

22.9% and 5.8%: respective increase in forest cover in North-East Asia and South Asia (1990 to 2015), through policies and instruments such as joint participatory management, payment for ecosystem services and the restoration of degraded forests

37%: share of aquatic and semi-aquatic species in the region's freshwater ecosystems threatened by, among others, climate change, overfishing, pollution, infrastructure development and invasive alien species

60%: grasslands degraded due to overgrazing by livestock, invasion by alien species, or conversion to agriculture, resulting in a rapid decline of native flora and fauna

8 out of 10: top most plastic-polluted rivers in the world are in Asia -- accounting for up to 95% of global load of plastics in the oceans

Nearly 25%: proportion of region's endemic species that are threatened

ProjectionsResidents in San Franciscos Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood are dismayed by what they see as a covert effort by city officials and a private developer to muscle a mixed-use, affordable housing project onto the site of a long-planned community center at 1550 Evans Ave.

Since 2015, the nearly 5-acre site has been pegged as the future home of an all-new Southeast Community Facility, a neighborhood hub that provides educational resources, social services and career-placement programs. Working closely with Bayview residents for the past seven years, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which owns 1550 Evans, has envisioned a 45,000-square-foot building with ample green space and other amenities.

But the recent release of emails among several city departments and developer Build Inc., which was working with the city to meet its affordable housing requirements at a nearby India Basin development, shows that the city has a very different concept of 1550 Evans than the neighbors and the citys PUC do.

The emails have raised serious concerns among Bayview residents that their plans for a new community center could be derailed in favor of a mixed-use housing proposal conceived without their input or consent.

Michael Macor/The Chronicle

No one comes into this community to dictate to this community, said Oscar James, a Bayview resident and activist, speaking at a recent Southeast Community Facility Commission committee meeting. The commissions seven members are appointed by the mayor charged with overseeing operations at the center.

One email, a memorandum sent to Mayor Ed Lee two days before his death in December, neatly sums up the citys proposal for 1550 Evans: We believe that this piece of land  a rarely available, almost five-acre city-owned site  should be more intensively developed to include affordable housing development, in addition to the uses that (the PUC) currently plans. The PUC has expressed concerns that they are already moving forward with a nonresidential project and that any change would cause delay and upset community members. We do not agree.

The city guessed wrong.

The emails really alarmed us, said Rodney Hampton, a Bayview resident. Theyre working in opposition of a vision thats been talked about, and decided upon, years ago. Thats like a dagger in the heart, he said.

I want to see the campus that was promised to us. The city owes that to us, said Gwen Jackson-Fagan. Her mother, Espanola Jackson, was a Bayview activist who helped broker the deal with the PUC that created the original Southeast Community Facility. The center was intended to mitigate the impact of the 1980s expansion of the nearby Southeast Treatment Plant, the sprawling and often foul-smelling site that processes 80 percent of the citys wastewater. Espanola Jackson died in 2016.

I feel like these people in City Hall and people behind the scenes  its like theyve done in the past, taking things from us without us even knowing, Jackson-Fagan said.

Michael Macor/The Chronicle

City officials working on the housing proposal say the plan eventually was to bring a fully realized pitch to the PUC and the Bayview community.

It was just the beginning of a dialogue that we hope could still happen, said Kate Hartley, the director of the Mayors Office of Housing and Community Development. Hartley was one of four housing officials who sent the December memo to Lee, along with Planning Director John Rahaim; Ken Rich, the director of development at the Mayors Office of Economic and Workforce Development; and Jeff Buckley, a senior adviser on housing in the mayors office.

All we were doing was gathering information so we could go back to the community and say, Here is a concept that may be workable, and then get feedback, she said. There was never any idea that housing alone would replace those community-serving spaces.

The campus would replace the current Southeast Community Facility, a drab and outdated building at 1800 Oakdale Ave., less than a mile away.

The recently released emails also came as a surprise to city PUC officials, who say they were largely cut out of the citys deliberations about the site. The agency said it is not inclined to tear up its designs for the community facility to add housing.

When I saw the (emails) I got really upset, PUC General Manager Harlan Kelly said.

He had been approached by city officials in the past, including Lee and District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen, who represents the Bayview, about developing housing at 1550 Evans, but said he was clear he had reservations. Kelly thought the matter had been settled and said he was blindsided to see the emails, some sent as recently as last month, showing that other city departments had not given up on the housing idea.

Im shocked that they were planning stuff on property that the SFPUC owns, Kelly said. Theyre trying to build something in the background. How it played out is inappropriate.

Former Build Inc. partner Michael Yarne said the site was one of several the developer was scouting for affordable-housing development along the Third Street transit corridor.

We did our study, like a good neighborhood partner does, and we shared it with various folks with the city, Yarne said. We had neighbors who loved the (housing) idea, and we had some Bayview folks who thought it should only be a community center. Either way, we dont control it and were not the ones deciding what happens there, he said.

Part of Build Inc.s study of the site included design plans released along with the bundle of emails. Those designs show a U-shaped housing complex crowned by the community center.

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It looks exactly like a prison, said Steve Good, chairman of the Southeast Community Facility Commission. Weve been having commission meetings for years now on this, he said. There were thousands of surveys, thousands of doors knocked on. Where was this conversation about housing then?

Michael Macor/The Chronicle

In an email, Build Inc. President Lou Vasquez said the firm had halted all internal analysis of 1550 Evans in February.

Rahaim agreed that Build Inc.s conceptual drawings for the space were problematic.

Frankly, its not very good, and its not a plan that I would support, he said.

The PUC may own 1550 Evans, but it needs Planning Commission approval to build the community center. Rahaim said the Planning Department received the PUCs preliminary paperwork for the community center project two or three weeks ago.

The next step, he said, is to formally respond to their proposal, which lays out a road map for the approval process.

But he said he was optimistic the city and Bayview residents will reach an accord over the site, which he said could easily accommodate the community center and affordable housing.

Hartley, from the mayors office of housing, said the city still intended to coordinate with (the PUC), with the goal of creating a cooperative plan for community outreach and dialogue.

It may be too late for that.

I cant imagine the city derailing the project at this point, Good said. It would be a slap in the face to the Bayview community. I dont think anyone wants that on their back.Over the years, tech companies have pushed the boundaries of gathering intimate details of our lives  from lists of our family and friends to our searching, buying and sleeping habits. But the events of last week, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the way user data had been mishandled, could be considered an alarming wake-up call.

Disturbed by the social media manipulation of public opinion during the 2016 presidential campaign, some privacy advocates believe this could be a watershed moment that finally forces the government to better police the way our personal data are shared with tech companies.

A tsunami of criticism, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer protection advocacy group, is going to change the whole nature of how we regulate the digital economy.

The nationwide discussion on privacy stems from revelations that political firm Cambridge Analytica obtained data on 50 million people through a Facebook app without their consent. Facebooks stock declined last week. Senators have called for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before a congressional committee. State governments are looking into the matter, and now, Facebook executives say they are open to regulation.

Mark has said, Its not a question of if regulation, its a question of what type, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks chief operating officer, said Thursday in an interview with CNBC.

Unlike Europe, the U.S. has very little regulation over the collection of data, especially in industries outside finance and health care, said Susan Freiwald, a law professor at the University of San Francisco. Thats in part because the U.S. has a more free-market approach compared with Europe, and people are expected to protect themselves by reading privacy policies and deciding which products and services theyd like to use, she said.

The problem is, almost nobody reads privacy policies, and if they do, they dont understand them, Friewald said.

The European Union has taken a different approach. On May 25, its member countries will begin enforcing the General Data Protection Regulation, a set of rules that give consumers more control of their data. Internet users will be able to delete all personal data collected by a company, see the personal data collected about them and transfer that data elsewhere. If companies do not comply with the regulation, they could face significant fines.

Roslyn Layton, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says she doesnt think the Trump administration would be against a similar regulation coming to the U.S. (Layton advised Trumps transition team on telecommunications issues.)

Its a winning proposition for Republicans and Democrats that privacy would be respected, Layton said. Its hard to argue against that.

It is still unclear what type of regulation would result from the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and its users. Privacy advocates hope the U.S. will put into place personal data consent regulations similar to those in Europe. Facebook investors hope for the opposite  that there will be minimal regulation so the company can continue to make large amounts of money by selling ads tailored to its users. Facebook did not immediately respond to questions about what types of regulation it would be open to or whether it would support EU-style regulation for the U.S.

One of the troubling aspects of the Facebook controversy is that users whose information was given to Cambridge Analytica may not have given their consent or had any idea that their information was being stored and transferred, experts said.

Cambridge Analytica received information about tens of millions of Facebook users through a licensing deal with a researcher who created a quiz app on Facebook installed by about 300,000 people. Those people consented to sharing their data with the apps creator, but because of Facebooks rules at the time, the app also had access to those users friends. Facebook changed those rules in 2015 but did nothing about data that had already been shared.

Cambridge Analytica said that it deleted the raw data that year, after receiving a request from Facebook to do so, but people who used to work there told the New York Times that Cambridge Analytica still has most or all of it. Facebook suspended Cambridge Analyticas access on March 16, shortly before the Times and other outlets reported that Cambridge Analytica had retained the data.

Facebook is not the only company that has been tripped up by its handling of user data. In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for misleading consumers by tracking them on Macs, iPhones and iPads for advertising purposes, despite promising otherwise. Google told the Wall Street Journal those trackers were intended for users who had already opted into Google's network and that no personal data was taken.

Last year, Uber was criticized for tricking regulators and law-enforcement officials by secretly limiting their ability to hail rides and catch drivers violating local rules. At first, Uber said the deception was directed at opponents who collude with officials on secret stings meant to entrap drivers. Under pressure, it backed down and said it would stop the practice.

Many tech companies say they collect data to learn more about their customers  their habits and preferences  and deliver better service. Uber cant send a driver to a riders doorstep without obtaining a location, for example. But that data in some cases is also used to better market advertising.

Thats a business model that has helped Facebook and Google to thrive and one critics say is extremely invasive.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Pam Dixon, executive director with the World Privacy Forum, pointed to a case where a health plan company obtained data on how much people spent online and used that to price their health plans.

The FTC declined to confirm reports that it has opened an investigation into the latest concerns about Facebook. But Commissioner Terrell McSweeny said in a statement that the allegations highlight the limited rights Americans have to their data.

Consumers need stronger protections for the digital age such as comprehensive data security and privacy laws, transparency and accountability for data brokers and rights to control over their data, McSweeny said.

If there were more regulation over digital data collection, it could hurt companies that rely on digital advertising, said Daniel Ives, head of technology research for GBH Insights.

The last thing you want to hear if you are an investor in Facebook is the word regulation, Ives said. If this leads to significant regulatory crosshairs, then the thesis on Facebook goes by the wayside.

Some analysts believe Facebook will be able to forestall some regulation through more internal oversight. Facebook said it is hiring more people to monitor content and will make it easier for users to change privacy settings.

For now, it is unclear how many Facebook users have chosen to delete their accounts or significantly reduce the amount of time they spend on the social network. Facebooks mobile app actually rose in Apples App Store ranking this week, suggesting more downloads. Banking and investment firm Wedbush estimates that less than 5 percent of Facebooks roughly 2 billion users changed how they use it as a result of the present controversies.

Still, some experts like Dixon believe that public sentiment is changing. In the past, when people were unable to see the credit scores that determined whether they were able to get a loan, they resisted. As a result, a 1970 law was passed that enabled them to see those scores, Dixon said. The outcry over Facebook could prompt consumers to do the same, she said.

The right thing to do here is to require Facebook to be better, Dixon said.Dont worry about building a career, the late composer and musical thinker Pauline Oliveros used to say. Build a community.

The percussionist and conductor Steven Schick cited this aphorism on Friday, March 23, at the beginning of a delightful hour-long stretch of music either written or inspired by Oliveros. That in turn was part of a two-night, four-part extravaganza of new work, presented at Z Space by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players to celebrate both Oliveros and Schick, who is stepping down after seven fruitful years as the groups artistic director.

The invocation of communal endeavor seemed particularly apt on both fronts. Oliveros, who died in 2016 at 84, had a knack for bringing musicians together  composers, performers, listeners  in ways that simultaneously challenged their thinking and confirmed their shared humanity. And Schicks inventive but short-lived tenure with the Players has only reinforced the organizations spirit of adventure across a wide range of musical undertakings.

To witness both strains in action, one only had to attend willingly to the twin performances of Oliveros 1980 improvisatory work The Witness, which framed the second of Fridays two compact programs. Less a score in the traditional sense than a set of performance instructions, The Witness prompts any number of musicians to forge an impromptu musical experience out of the act of attentive listening  first to oneself, secondly to the other performers, and finally to, well, everyone.

As always with creations of this sort  improvisatory, un-notated, conceptual  The Witness feels problematic, or at least unorthodox, when considered through the lens of traditional authorship. The pleasures or longueurs of any given performance are far more the province of the performers themselves than of Oliveros verbal settings.

Yet in both go-rounds, there was something inspiring the musicians to almost outlandish feats of vivacity and inventiveness. Bassist Richard Worn took the first shift solo (or as Schick put it, along with an imagined ensemble), and created a wondrous 15-minute skein of individual sounds, cryptic melodic utterances and increasingly dense musical textures.

At the end of the evening, a quintet of musicians  along with Worn, they were oboist Kyle Bruckmann, clarinetist Peter Josheff, percussionist Loren Mach and violinist Hrabba Atladottir  retraced similar steps in a vein that now felt both familiar and freshly revelatory.

In between came three short pieces by young local composers that drew on some of Oliveros conceptual repertoire in new ways. Danny Clays witty, winningly theatrical Playbook combined mime with musical sounds in surprising ways. John Ivers Bellow, Cycle interwove chordal passages with episodes of deep breathing, and Nathan Chamberlains Dawn Chorus elicited a variety of unpredictable gestures from the performers.

The first program of the evening was devoted to more traditional, notated fare, all of it beautiful and arresting. (The second night of the Players weekend, on Saturday, March 24, brought music by Celeste Oram, Xenakis and Feldman.)

It included the commissioned world premiere of Cold Mountains, One Belt, Heartbreak Green, a sweet-toned, thoroughly entrancing instrumental work by Carolyn Chen. Over the space of 12 minutes, Chen creates a gently rhapsodic tapestry atop the cushiony sounds of a bass flute and bass drum; spare, tinkly notes gradually coalesce into a series of oscillating harmonies.

Something similar happens in Xavier Betetas enchanting octet La Catedrale Abandonata, which Schick also conducted  individual notes, first in octaves and unisons, spread out and diversify to create basic harmonic patterns that support an ever more vigorous musical dialogue. The effect is like watching stars flicker into view in a night sky, form constellations and fade away again.

Mezzo-soprano Sylvie Jensen joined the ensemble for a performance of Berios Folk Songs that was tonally and expressively rich, yet seemed stylistically a little out of sync with the rest of the evening.

And perhaps the most exciting component was the 1957 Grand Duet of Galina Ustvolskaya  a dynamic, abrasive, breathtakingly vigorous piece that got a formidable performance from cellist Stephen Harrison and pianist Kate Campbell. This is a piece that needs be a staple of every cello recital for the next 10 years, until it and Ustvolskayas other work are restored to their proper place in the repertoire.

Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicles music critic. Email: jkosman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoshuaKosman

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players: 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday, March 24. $14-$65. Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. (415) 633-8802, www.sfcmp.orgSACRAMENTO  Nancy McFadden, chief of staff for California Gov. Jerry Brown and a driving force behind his agenda, died Thursday in her home after a long battle with ovarian cancer. She was 59.

Nancy was the best chief of staff a governor could ever ask for, Brown said in a statement. She understood government and politics, she could manage, she was a diplomat and she was fearless.

McFadden was hired as Browns chief of staff in 2011, when he returned to the governors office, and quickly became an indispensable asset as he pushed ambitious policies on climate, criminal justice reform and more.

McFadden didnt know Brown and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, very well when she took the job, but the three quickly became a well-matched team.

She loved that (Brown) trusted her to be the implementer, said Donne Brownsey, McFaddens closest friend and a former lobbyist and legislative adviser. He gave her, deservedly, wide latitude to form teams throughout state government to solve problems.

McFaddens high-profile political work began long before she joined the Brown administration.

She served as deputy associate attorney general in the Clinton administration, then as deputy chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore. She was also general counsel for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Nancy McFadden was a truly extraordinary public servant thanks to her brilliant mind, big heart and uncanny ability to get things done, Bill and Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

McFaddens skills as a shrewd political negotiator were put to the test last year during the fight to reauthorize Californias cap-and-trade program, a critical piece of Browns climate change-fighting efforts. It was McFaddens job to find a bridge between the oil industry, environmental justice groups and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

After months, she helped strike a deal that extended the landmark program through 2030 and focused on cleaning up poor air quality in low-income neighborhoods. It was a deal that made none of the sides completely happy, but one that passed.

McFadden called it the most difficult job she ever faced.

Former Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes, who gathered together critical votes from a small group of Republicans, said McFadden was unfailingly honest and trustworthy during the complicated negotiations.

She was incredibly tenacious without being overbearing, Mayes said. During all of my time of working with Nancy, she was always very warm and friendly, but she also knew what she needed. She was a true diplomat.

McFadden was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2001 and beat it, only to have it return four years ago. She stepped away from the Capitol in January to focus on her health, but was taking conference calls and working right up until the end, said Brownsey, who cared for her.

I would be helping her because she was so ill and I would say, What do you want to do now? and she would say I think Ill make a few calls, Brownsey recalled.

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.

McFaddens style was no drama, no ego leadership, said Evan Westrup, Browns press secretary.

Friends and colleagues recall her as someone who loved music and the Christmas holiday, cared deeply for those around her and celebrated others accomplishments.

She could knock heads but could also put an arm around you if you had a rough day, Westrup said.

Despite her outsize presence, she always shared credit with her team.

As Brownsey put it, I almost feel like shes standing behind me poking me saying make sure you talk about others and not me.SACRAMENTO  The police killing of an unarmed African American man in Sacramento has ignited protests around the state capital and energized members of the Black Lives Matter movement, who are demanding accountability from law enforcement.

Protesters planned to continue their demonstrations after police released body-camera footage earlier this week of Sundays shooting of Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old father of two, who was holding a cell phone in his grandmothers backyard when he was killed.

National attention continued to build Friday, as more than 100 protesters again shut down traffic in downtown Sacramento. Around noon, they began walking from the citys iconic yellow Tower Bridge to the state Capitol a mile and a half away.

What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! the group chanted in a call-and-response.

Two hours later, the crowd neared downtown freeways. California Highway Patrol officers closed many of the ramps and stood guard, preventing anyone from getting onto the freeway.

This is who we need to be mad at, said Nicole Miller, of Oakland, as she held a sign that read Stop Killing Us and pointed at the state Capitol. The system is broken and we want justice now!

Rev. Brian Levingston, a Sacramento resident, was also among the group protesting Clarks killing.

We shouldnt have to be here, not in Sacramento, not in 2018, he said. Were peaceful. We will remain peaceful. I know there are a lot of great leaders in this city, and I wish they were with me now.

The days action came less than 24 hours after hundreds of people took to the streets and disrupted traffic on Interstate 5 during the evening commute before blocking entry to the Golden 1 Center, where they delayed a Sacramento Kings game.

Tensions boiled over after police on Wednesday released body-camera and helicopter footage of the shooting. Clark was suspected of breaking into vehicles in a neighborhood in the southern part of the city and was being pursued by officers and a sheriffs helicopter.

A thermal camera on the helicopter shows a man scaling a fence in a backyard in the neighborhood, and deputies told police the suspect had picked up a toolbar and broken a window of a home.

Two officers then encountered the suspect in a backyard on the 7500 block of 29th Street, where Clarks grandmother, Sequita Thompson, lives. Police said they believed Clark was armed with a gun.

The videos show the officers following Clark into the unlit and overgrown yard. They take cover at the back corner of the home and, seconds after arriving at the scene, one of them yells Gun, gun, gun! The officers then fire 20 rounds.

Clark was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators did not find a gun but recovered a cell phone near his body.

Along with the videos, police released a statement after the shooting acknowledging the seriousness of this incident and the impact it has on our community.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said he was horrified by the videos of the shooting while addressing a crowd at City Hall on Thursday.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Twitter Thursday, Its time to acknowledge some hard truths  a suspect that looks like me would still be alive. Stephon isnt. That must change.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., tweeted that Clarks was death tragic and painfully familiar. She also called for a thorough and transparent investigation and swift accountability.

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 Sacramento Police Department has not released the names of the officers who shot Clark, but Melissa Nold, a Bay Area attorney who works with civil rights attorney John Burris, told The Chronicle on Friday that officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet were involved in the shooting. The officers have two and four years of experience with the department, respectively. Neither officer was injured.

Nold said she watched the body camera footage with Clarks family members before the videos were released, and she saw the officers names on the digital files.

Shortly after the officers shot Clark, they muted the sound on their body-worn cameras, raising more questions for the family. The Sacramento Police Department has not responded to questions about the officers muting their cameras.

This is an impossible situation for the family. Theyre devastated, Nold said. From the community perspective, it gives us the opportunity to ask questions.

Burris firm was not hired by the Clark family, but Nold nevertheless said they will be involved in ongoing community actions.

Florida-based civil rights attorney Ben Crump will represent the Clark family, Burris told The Chronicle. Crump has represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, two black teenagers who were also shot and killed under controversial circumstances. In a statement, Crump called Clarks death an all-too-common tragedy.

It is yet another troubling example of a young, unarmed black man being shot by police under highly questionable circumstances, he said.

A GoFundMe page was set up to help Clarks family cover his funeral costs. The page had far exceeded its goal of $50,000 by Friday afternoon.The scandal involving political consulting group Cambridge Analyticas exploitation of personal data of 50 million Facebook users offered a grim reminder: Nothing is truly free on the Internet. Even that handy cell phone flashlight can sell you out.

Many Americans have been alarmed to learn that their Facebook data was scooped up and dissected to compile a psychographic profile to help a company bankrolled by a conservative billionaire and aligned with the Trump campaign to target voters in 2016.

The scheme was insidious and in clear violation of Facebooks stated privacy-protection assurances.

The notion that an active user of social media could be unwittingly offering a treasure trove of data to people eager to leverage it for profit or political gain is neither surprising nor unusual. In fact, data mining is the business model that is generating about $50 billion a year in global advertising for Facebook, and untold millions if not billions more for the applications in its orbit.

Weve been told for a long time that Google and Facebook may know everything about us, but they dont sell it and they dont share it, said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit group from Santa Monica. Weve sort of believed that because their business model is to protect that information so they can charge advertisers to find us.

Trust no more, if you ever did.

I think that we have lost sight of the fact that were not the customer for Facebook, said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, whose district includes its Menlo Park headquarters. Were the product. The customer is the advertiser.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed the vulnerability of Facebook and its users to deception.

The origins of this huge data breach was an app called Thisisyourdigitallife that attracted 270,000 Facebook users seeking personality profiles. It was advertised as academic research. The survey did ask permission of the participants, but did not disclose that it would then obtain information about their Facebook friends. In so doing, the data capture expanded exponentially to profile 50 million Americans.

Those data collections can provide telling identifiers about an individuals race, gender, wealth, intelligence or sexual orientation, as well as whether he or she might tend to be extroverted, introverted, narcissistic or eager to please.

Cambridge Analytica has bragged to its clients that it can use this data to better assess someones personality traits than his or her friends.

Such information was invaluable to a group such as Cambridge Analytica. Microtargeting is the cutting edge of modern politics, and individualized profiles are pure gold for strategists trying to determine which voters to motivate or discourage before an election.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly requested the emails of Cambridge Analytica staffers who worked with the Trump campaign as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Steve Bannon, a former Cambridge Analytica vice president and board member who worked for the Trump campaign and White House, said last week that he didnt even know anything about the Facebook mining.

The commercial world has long recognized the potential of data mining. Advertisers call it your digital shadow, which you are refining with every click.

There is a profile that lives out there about each of our psychological tendencies, said Consumer Watchdogs Court. It is the commodification of our persona. Thats the most dangerous information to have stored anywhere, because its most likely not accurate and it can be used to discriminate us in all sorts of ways.

It goes well beyond those adds for Pottery Barn popping up after you check out a bed frame. You are constantly and inadvertently providing a road map to your wallet and a window to your soul.

Its an invasion of privacy that we dont even begin to understand, Speier said of data mining on the Internet.

So what can you do about it?

Some folks are abandoning Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica revelations (the hashtag #DeleteFacebook is trending), but one does not necessarily need to untether from the joys of sharing pics with friends and family, and reconnecting with long-lost neighbors and classmates.

As a social-media user, you can constrain the tentacles of data miners. Review the privacy settings on your Facebook account. Know that applications connected to Facebook become readily accessible for data mining. Dont voluntarily allow an app access to your photos, location, address book or other information it doesnt need to perform its stated function.

I would advise consumers: Never sign in (an app) with Facebook, said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

And then there is the policy prescription.

Signatures are being gathered for the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which would establish a consumers right to request that a business disclose what categories of personal data it gathers, and to offer the right to say no without losing services or otherwise facing discrimination. That disclosure must be made within 30 days, free of charge.

If that measure qualifies, it will provoke a battle royal in November. Facebook and Google are among the early contributors ($200,000 each) to what is expected to be a multimillion-dollar opposition campaign.

The tug-of-war between privacy rights and commercial innovation is reminiscent of the fight at the turn of the century over whether and how to restrain financial institutions from selling or sharing customer information without permission.

Yet those concerns about banks exploiting personal information seem almost quaint today.

The dossiers (online sites) they have on us now are so much more fulsome because its not just the information you provide to Wells Fargo when you took out a loan or got a credit card, said Speier. They know who your friends are, they know what makes you happy, what makes you sad, they know what you gravitate to.

You almost feel like youre being unclothed.

Ultimately, the financial services industry was forced to yield, but not after an epic three-year fight that consumed about $20 million in lobbying costs on a 120-member California Legislature. Yet Speier, then a state senator, was relentless in pursuit of a privacy bill. A signature drive for an extremely rigid privacy law was the tipping point: Banks and insurance companies, sensing they would lose at the polls, withdrew opposition. Gov. Gray Davis signed the landmark privacy bill in August 2003.

There is a lesson there for Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and other titans of Silicon Valley. They would be wise to work with the state and federal lawmakers to develop reasonable regulations that could balance the sometimes conflicting values of innovation and privacy.

Otherwise, voters might take the matter into their own hands.

Speier readily acknowledged that data collection is a difficult area to regulate, especially with its constant evolution, but it should be guided by two principles.

I do think that we should have choice, and we have a right to know, she said. Those are two fundamental consumer protections that are missing at Facebook right now.

Oh, and about that flashlight: The FTC in December 2013 actually sanctioned the maker of the Brightest Flashlight Free app for offering third parties, including advertising networks, the location and identifying code of phones even before the user clicked accept.

There is no such thing as a free app. Y ou are the product. Remember that the next time you are tempted to upload the cant-live-without game or other application.Regardless of your view on guns, this is a day to share in what we all agree on  we must end gun violence in our nation. Thats why millions of people are expected to hit the streets Saturday to March for Our Lives, stepping forward to demand sensible gun laws from Congress and the president.

The marches are inspired by the impassioned and articulate teenagers who survived the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, where a lone gunman armed with an assault weapon killed 17 on Valentines Day. They will march on Washington and theyve asked other concerned Americans to mobilize their own communities. Marches are planned in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and cities throughout the Bay Area and the nation. Indeed, there are some 750 March for Our Lives events organized across the globe.

Will this march or any march reduce gun violence that has terrorized our communities and given us all second thoughts about attending public events? That fear has schools participating in mandatory active-shooter drills where children have to come to grips with the idea that the classroom is where someone, maybe someone they know, might try to kill them.

No one march, no single action, will change political culture overnight. It is the decision to participate, to step up to a pernicious problem in our society, that will sow the seeds of change.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 paved the way for civil rights reforms that were almost unimaginable a decade earlier and are changing our society for the better today.

The Vietnam War protests that began in 1964 brought an end to the war that killed 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians  and altered American society in profound ways.

For this generation, the Parkland shooting may be that moment of political awakening.

I never thought this would happen to me, considering the fact that Parkland is a fairly safe city. But here I am, urging you to remember that this can happen anywhere, so long as gun laws remain as weak as they are, Jaclyn Corin, a high school junior who survived the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, wrote in Seventeen magazine.

The shooting sparked her to embark on a crash course in politics and become active in working for political change. This seemingly never-ending cycle has been deemed inevitable in the minds of Americans, and learned helplessness has allowed this epidemic to spiral out of control, she continued.

She and other teens from Parkland are reminding us we arent helpless. We have a voice. We can come out in numbers as a show of force. We have the vote (or, in Corins case, she will soon have the vote when she turns 18).

We can choose not to have the weapons of war on our streets like the Parkland shooter, the Las Vegas concert shooter and the Orlando nightclub shooter used in their deadly rampages. We should draw strength and inspiration from the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.

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.At one of San Francisco's newest luxury apartment buildings, you don't need to buy groceries, run out to do errands or clean your own house. A service called "Hello, Alfred" will do all that for you  for a fee.

That's the promise to the residents of the 35-story mostly luxury apartment building at 33 Tehama in San Francisco's SoMa district, according to a report by the San Francisco Business Times.

Hinds, the company that developed the building with Invesco, wanted to present "condo-quality" apartments that offered the "highest quality" for rental housing in the city.

RELATED: Feast your eyes on the most expensive apartments in San Francisco

The building already offers co-working spaces, a kitchen for entertaining groups of people, room for barbecues, a game room, and a spa-equipped, high-end gym with scheduled group classes.

But on top of all that is Hello, Alfred, the optional butler service that will take care of lessor's annoying or time-consuming errands, such as going to the dry cleaners, taking the dog for a walk or ordering takeout food.

The company bills itself as users' "secret superpower," and on its blog, idealizes how its service can be utilized:

"Imagine a fridge filled with what you need without you having to ask," the blog reads, "deliveries unpacked and put away, toiletries replenished along with new products to sample, a human-powered home operating system to provide the daily support we all need and deserve."

RELATED: Here's a recap of the asking prices on those slick new SF apartments

For 33 Tehama, its a service that needed to come to San Francisco.

"This is a whole new level of service that San Francisco has never seen," Paul Paradis, the company's senior managing director, told the SF Business Times. "When you live here, you don't need a gym or private club membership. You don't even need a car."

That is, of course, if you're earning enough to lock down one of these apartments, which could have a monthly rental price between $3,600 for a one-bedroom and $15,000 for a penthouse two-bedroom.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.

As hundreds of thousands of students and their allies took to the streets to advocate for gun control measures, California Democrats cheered them on with messages of support on social media.

"Young people are demanding that we get assault weapons off our streets. Let's listen to them," tweeted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.Olly Wilson, an adventurous composer who integrated African, African American and electronic rhythms, riffs and sounds into Western classical music conventions, died March 12 in Oakland. He was 80.

His daughter, Dawn Wilson, said the cause was complications of dementia.

Wilson, a longtime professor at UC Berkeley, grew up listening to jazz and spirituals. He studied African music in Ghana under one of his two Guggenheim Fellowships, opened an electronic music studio at the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he had formerly taught, and wrote academic papers, including a major essay on the art of black music.

I see him very much as a musician, composer and a scholar  these things are hard to separate with him, Ryan Skinner, a musicology professor at Ohio State University, said in a telephone interview. His music is, in many ways, the resounding of his scholarship.

In his composition Sometimes, Wilson used the call-and-response tradition of African American churchgoers to create a dialogue between a tenor singing Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child and a tape that included a distorted recording of that sorrowful spiritual.

In his review of the New York Philharmonics performance of Sometimes in 1977, Donal Henahan of the New York Times wrote that tenor William Brown handled its vocally excruciating demands to gripping effect, and that the sibilants, gurgles and moans from the tape produce an almost suffocating mood of isolation and sadness.

Wilson, whose music was played by orchestras around the world, aligned himself with an African American musical heritage that includes Frank Johnson, a 19th century bugler, bandleader and composer; Harry Burleigh, a composer and baritone soloist; and contemporary composer T.J. Anderson. His other influences, he said, ranged from Igor Stravinsky and Edgard Varese to Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

Music is experience consciously transformed, and because my experience has been an African-American experience, I think it expresses that, he told Bruce Duffie, a radio producer and interviewer in 1997, when asked if he were conveying African American ideas in his pieces.

In the early 1990s, Wilson wrote a viola concerto for Marcus Thompson that had an improvisatory feel, with riffs associated with a jazz saxophone or trumpet and a bluesy middle section. Thompson said in a telephone interview that, compared with other viola concertos, Wilsons was special because he writes from a completely different medium; hes a jazz player whos written all sorts of chamber music.

The work, titled Viola Concerto, had its long-delayed premiere in 2012 with the Rochester Philharmonic. Stuart Low, of The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, called the work searing and haunting.

Olly Woodrow Wilson Jr. was born in St. Louis on Sept. 7, 1937. His father was a butler and a cook; his mother, the former Alma Grace Peoples, was a domestic. Theirs was the second African American family in their neighborhood.

The elder Wilson, a tenor who sang in choirs around St. Louis, insisted that all of his children learn to play the piano, Olly Wilson told an oral history project at Berkeley. He thought understanding the piano was fundamental.

Young Olly, who also played the clarinet and string bass, was in an acoustic band as a teenager that played local bars in St. Louis when Chuck Berry arrived one day; this was early in Berrys rise to stardom, when he performed with house bands. The band  with Wilson on piano alongside a drummer, a bassist and a saxophonist  tried in vain to keep up with Berry, who brought an amplifier to augment his guitar.

So we played, but it really didnt make any difference because you couldnt hear us, Wilson said in the oral history. He just wiped us out  bang, bang, bang  on his guitar.

Recalling Berrys famous duck walk, which made women in the bar swoon, Wilson said, We considered that silly music because we were jazz aficionados. He and his friends were more enamored of Parker and Davis.

Wilson graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a bachelors degree in music, then earned a masters in music composition from the University of Illinois and a doctorate in music composition from the University of Iowa, where his dissertation was a long piece called Three Movements for Orchestra.

After teaching at Florida A&M University from 1960 to 1965, Wilson joined the faculty of Oberlins Conservatory of Music. In addition to teaching music theory and composition, he established a course in African American music as well as the schools electronic music studio. After his departure, the studio turned into a program known as Technology in Music and the Related Arts.

With electronic media, he told a music department publication at Berkeley in 1997, you can work with sound like a sculptor or painter.

He joined Berkeley in 1970  where he would teach until 2002  and soon after received the Guggenheim grant to study music in Ghana. His year in West Africa was the inspiration for an orchestral piece, Shango Memory, a celebration of Shango, a Nigerian deity, and what he called the cultural memory of African ideas reflected in music.

At Berkeley, he was also an administrator dealing with affirmative action in the 1970s and 80s and helped diversify the music curriculum.

Wilson received numerous commissions, including two from conductor Seiji Ozawa  one when Ozawa was music director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the second when he was music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Another commissioned work, for the Boston Musica Viva ensemble, was A City Called Heaven, which has elements of swing music, blues, spirituals and boogie-woogie. It was first performed in 1989.

You cant think of that piece without being overwhelmed by its imagination, said Thompson, who is also a music professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its all based on the spirituality thats common in the black community. He had the courage and skill to do it, and thats how black culture appears in the classical canon.

In addition to his daughter, Wilson is survived by his wife, the former Elouise Woods; his son, Kent; his sisters Marion Palmer and Barbara Washington; and six grandchildren.

Wilson described in the oral history how his work as a scholar affected his work as a composer.

Because I studied African music and the history of African American music doesnt necessarily mean that I consciously drawn upon that when I do my work as a creative artist, he said. But I think the pleasure that that gives me and the understanding that gives me does reflect positively on what I do as a creative artist.The steps up to Sarah Johnsons apartment are decorated with sand dollars that she collects, often on walks with her grandson. Inside, light streams into her living room, which she likes, because it makes her feel almost like shes outside.

Johnson, 68, has lived in her one-bedroom apartment near San Francisco States campus for four years, but she might lose it soon. After her retirement last year as director of the Early Childhood Education Center at San Francisco State University, where she worked for 26 years, she is facing eviction from the universitys employee housing. The notice came in the mail four months after she retired: She had to move in 60 days.

She says she is shocked.

Employment was never mentioned as a condition of my rental agreement, Johnson said. Through the housing office, she was able to work out an extension for 10 months, but her time is up in May.

This comes as San Francisco State  which has had employee housing for about a decade  is struggling to house its students, the university says. Ann Sherman, the interim vice president and chief financial officer at San Francisco State, said 3,000 students are on the wait list for campus housing every fall.

Our primary priority has to be our students, she said.

The university said in a statement that as a way to free up room for students, it began telling tenants seven years ago that they would need to maintain an active affiliation with the university to stay in campus-owned buildings. Theyve also been raising rents for staff and faculty as a way to free up room for students.

Starting last July, rent hikes for staff and faculty could be up to 5 percent annually, because the university is exempt from local rent control laws. The university says that the housing for faculty and staff averages 15 percent below market rate.

Michael Bar, a professor of economics who is leading a campaign against the housing policy, said four retired faculty and staff members are facing eviction. Sixty-nine faculty members and 66 staff live in 121 apartments near campus, a university spokeswoman said.

Bar said he regrets moving into his apartment now. Housing choices in a rent-controlled environment are irreversible, he said. Back in 2005, I missed some opportunities to rent somewhere that would stay below market rate.

Though university officials say the local rent control exemptions have been clearly communicated, professors said they werent properly notified about the change in policy. Bar called the school deceptive and said it was a single opaque clause in his contract that he didnt read when he renewed it. For years, his rent had been increasing the same amount allowed by rent control ordinances.

Another professor, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the administration, said that when he was hired in 2016, he was lured by the promise of rent-controlled housing. I got explicit promises that we would have below-market rent and rent control in my negotiations, he said.

As for Johnsons eviction, Sherman said she was given ample notice.

I would say shes had a year to find another place to live, Sherman said.

Johnson feels insulted by that logic after 26 years at the school. I raised more than $7 million in grant money to provide for child care stipends, she said. I feel like I helped build this university. I feel hurt and shunned.

Shes single and retired, and she cant afford the market-rate rent for a one-bedroom in San Francisco. She doesnt want to move from the city, as one of her sons and her two grandchildren are all here.

She also loves where she lives. She keeps a collection of birds nests on a glass shelf. Giants memorabilia and bobbleheads are scattered throughout the room. And an entire corner of her apartment is devoted to kids toys, many of which she saved from her days working in early childhood education for her grandchildren.

I dont know what my next steps will be, she said. I dont want to end up out on the sidewalk.At the microphone in downtown Oakland was 16-year-old Olive Blair, with a voice that boomed through the city and a message that echoed around the country: If you think our voices are getting louder, its because they are, she proclaimed.

Olive, in a bright red jacket, stood in front of what police said were 2,000 or so people at Oaklands version of March for Our Lives, a worldwide rally calling for stronger gun control in the wake last months shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that killed 17 people.

If you arent shaken  you need to be, Olive said, confidently reading a speech she had practiced in front of her parents the night before.

The Oakland event, which Olive helped organize with a group of students from around the East Bay, was one of hundreds of similar marches that erupted across the world Saturday. In one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam War era, hundreds of thousands of people were jolted into action by the survivors of the Florida shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In San Francisco later in the afternoon, thousands gathered in Civic Center Plaza, spilling onto the sidewalk and along the front steps of the Main Library and Asian Art Museum. They carried signs with school-themed slogans: A Farewell to Arms, Arming math teachers is as irrational as pi, and Bullets are not school supplies, the latter with an image of a bullet next to a row of crayons.

Mayor Mark Farrell kicked off the Civic Center rally, which featured speeches by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., San Francisco Supervisor London Breed, and a procession of gun control advocates and high school students. Some performed rap lyrics or read poetry. Others gave wrenching personal stories.

Cimone Powell, a student at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, told of getting caught in the cross fire of a gunfight at age 13, while she walked home from school with her sisters.

Since that day, she said, shes been rattled by loud noises  even things as routine as a door slamming shut.

This is not normal, she told the crowd. I should be fearing my college application to NYU, not a loud door closing in my house.

Another speaker, Briar Goldberg, survived the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. She urged everyone in the crowd to check their investments and retirement accounts and sever ties with the gun industry.

Feinstein touted the assault weapons ban she is pressing in Congress, which she said now has 30 co-sponsors.

There is a school shooting almost every month, Feinstein said. Is this the America we want our children to grow up in?

Her question drew cheers from the intergenerational crowd, which included babies in strollers and budding activists such as Erik Alden, an 8-year-old student at Yick Wo Elementary School.

Im here because I dont want to get shot, the boy said.

After two hours of speeches, the Civic Center crowd marched down Grove Street, took a left onto Market Street and strode to the Ferry Building. There were enough people to fill the main downtown artery and keep the pace at a slow but spirited crawl, chanting all the way.

In Oakland, demonstrators held signs with stark messages: Stop killing our children, read one. Another, held by a 7-year-old, read: Am I Next? Although many of the speakers and attendees in Oakland had been untouched by gun violence in their own lives, they wanted to join in the call for change.

Were tired of being labeled as a generation that is lazy and just sits on their phones, said 15-year-old Ivan Garcia, another organizer of the Oakland event. He said this protest is the beginning of a new chapter in history, where youths like him will no longer need to be afraid that their school could be the next stage for a mass shooting.

The attendees werent just teens. The audience was largely made up of adults like 43-year-old Shantel Byrd, who didnt want her young daughter to grow up in a time where mass shootings were commonplace.

I want to help put an end to this, Byrd said.

After two hours of speeches, chants and musical performances in Oakland, hundreds of people spilled onto city streets and marched toward Lake Merritt. Many others jumped on the train and headed into San Francisco for the later rally.

The Bay Area rallies, which included marches in San Jose and Redwood City, were largely peaceful, with police officers and security personnel visibly standing guard around the perimeters. By midafternoon, there were no reports of arrests, citations, vandalism or injuries in Oakland, police reported. Few opponents to the marchers were visible, unlike in Boston, where a group of counterprotesters left Boston Common under a police escort.

In Washington, D.C., tens of thousands of people paraded between the Capitol and the White House chanting Vote them out! and holding signs reading We Are the Change, No More Silence and Keep NRA Money Out of Politics. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco was among the politicians who joined the Parkland students in Washington.

In Oakland, 66-year-old Don Grundmann held a sign that read Support the NRA  a message starkly contrasting with the anti-gun signs around him. Two security guards stood next to him as some people yelled at him, saying he was disrespecting the movement and the victims of the Feb. 14 shooting.

Grundmann, who said he doesnt own any guns but supports the Second Amendment, stood firm in his position: Kids die from texting and driving every day. Why dont we have rallies on that?

While a reporter was talking to him, one organizer of the march  Sevan Apollo  pushed through the crowd around Grundmann and shook his hand.

Thank you for being here; we respect your views,  Apollo said.

Apollo then walked away, disappearing into the crowd of hundreds of people calling for change.Apple plans to introduce low-cost iPads and education software this week in a bid to win back students and teachers from Google and Microsoft.

In its first major product event of the year, Apple will return to its roots in the education market. The event on Tuesday at Lane Technical College Prep High School in Chicago will mark the first time Apple has held a product launch geared toward education since 2012 when it unveiled a tool for designing e-books for the iPad. Its also a rare occasion for an Apple event outside its home state of California.

In Chicago, the worlds most-valuable technology company plans to show off a new version of its cheapest iPad that should appeal to the education market, said people familiar with the matter. The company also will showcase new software for the classroom, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private plans. Apple declined to comment.

Steve Jobs made schools a priority for Apple early in its life. But as the company has driven toward mass-market and higher-margin products in recent years, Google and Microsoft have had success breaking into classrooms with inexpensive laptops and tablets. Last year, the global educational technology market generated $17.7 billion in revenue, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan.

Apple accounted for 17 percent of mobile computing shipments to American students in kindergarten through high school, according to data from the third quarter published by Futuresource Consulting. Devices running Googles operating systems on Chromebooks or Android tablets held 60 percent of the market, and Windows PCs had 22 percent. While Macs and iPads make up less than 20 percent of Apples sales, students and teachers are a key market to drive future purchases.

A cheaper MacBook laptop is in the works and likely destined to replace the MacBook Air at a price less than $1,000, but it probably wont be ready in time for this week, the people said. The MacBook Air, introduced about a decade ago, hasnt seen a major change since 2010, the same year the iPad came out. Although the laptop is popular with college students, it has languished as Apple focuses on more expensive Macs.

Rival laptops have made inroads into the education market, a field that originally helped Apple make its name. The sector is prized among industry giants because students learn to use a certain type of device, then head into the workforce and spread the technology wider.

With a recent advertising onslaught, Apple is hoping to capture more young minds with the iPad. The company has revised its tablet strategy over the years by releasing different versions at a variety of prices. Thats helped the iPad business return to growth after multiple declining quarters. Still, demand for tablets is weak. According to research firm IDC, the market shrank by about 7 percent in 2017. Apple grew 3 percent last year and leads the industry with about a quarter of the market.

Apple offers a slew of education-related software. The companys Classroom app for the iPad lets teachers manage Apple devices that are assigned to students for classwork. Theres also an iTunes U app that lets teachers issue homework, grade assignments and post lessons online. It also lets students complete assignments and take tests. The company offers a software coding curriculum via the Swift Playgrounds app and sells interactive textbooks through its e-book store.

More software is coming. Apple is working on a new version of the iBooks app thats more in line with the design of the App Store, though its unclear if itll be shown this week.

In an invitation to the Chicago event, Apple said it will introduce creative new ideas for teachers and students. Having a venue where attendees can see the new technology in action inside a classroom would be a sound strategy for a company that focuses its announcements on live demonstrations.

The event will also provide an opportunity for Apple to boast about the work its doing with Chicago schools. In December, the Cupertino company partnered with the citys public school system and City Colleges of Chicago on a coding curriculum for thousands of local students. Apple has also discussed additional education-related programs with the city, people familiar with the talks said.

According to Apples website, the school where the event will take place is not an Apple Distinguished School, a designation given to institutions with curriculum that uses Apple products and provides iPads to all students.

Apple has tried citywide iPad deals for students in the past, with little success. In 2013, the Los Angeles Unified School District said it would spend $30 million to provide some students with iPads. The deal was expected to become a $1.3 billion initiative to give every student in the district an iPad, but it fell apart.Political consultant Mark Jablonowski predicts that Facebook wont lack for political ads during this years campaign season despite the rancor caused by Russian election meddling and a massive data leak.

For the time being, people are still on Facebook, and political advertisers want to advertise where their constituents are, said Jablonowski, partner and chief technology officer at DSPolitical, a digital ad firm that serves Democrats.

The Menlo Park company has grown into a colossus in campaign spending, serving up a rich bounty of intimate data that is used to target potential voters from among its online audience of more than 200 million monthly users in the U.S. Campaign spending on Facebook and other digital media will rise to an estimated $600 million this year, compared with about $250 million in 2014, the last congressional election year without a presidential contest. Facebook is poised to get three-fifths of that.

Yet Facebooks role in American elections is under intense scrutiny amid revelations that the data of millions of users was obtained by a political consulting firm linked to President Trump. The firm, Cambridge Analytica, had siphoned data from some 50 million Facebook users as it built an election-consulting company that boasted it could sway voters in contests all over the world.

The United Kingdoms top privacy watchdog said Friday it was granted a warrant to search the London offices of Cambridge Analytica. The Information Commissioners Office said it is leading the probe with the backing of the European Unions remaining 27 regulators, who this week vowed to collaborate to get to the bottom of the very serious allegation with far-reaching consequences.

Questions remain about how Russia used Facebook to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. An indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller described a multiyear effort by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian outfit, and others to shape American opinions, including by impersonating Americans on Facebook, Instagram, Googles YouTube and Twitter Inc. About 150 million users saw posts from a troll farm whose main purpose was to push Kremlin propaganda, and 11 million users saw ads it purchased.

Members of Congress want Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about the scandals, even after he broke days of public silence to outline steps to prevent a recurrence and to suggest that more regulation may be appropriate. House lawmakers sent him a letter Friday, saying many questions were unanswered by Facebook representatives who briefed congressional staff, and that you are the right person to testify.

More disclosure about ad sponsors is a first step, said Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington policy group dedicated to strengthening democratic processes. Lets find out whos paying for these ads.

We may be at the beginning of a close look at the Internet, and a public realization that its not just the kid in the bedroom blogging about something, Noble said.

Asked about the potential impact of the scandals on Facebooks campaign revenue, spokesman Andy Stone referred to public statements by company executives pledging to protect user data. Facebook is testing advertising-transparency tools in Canada and will bring them to U.S. users by the summer, Stone said.

The company generated more than $40 billion in revenue from all sources last year.

Jablonowski, the Democratic consultant, said regulations may dim  but wont seriously dent  Facebooks appeal as an advertising vehicle for campaigns.

There will be additional scrutiny and additional hoops that advertisers will have to jump through that Im sure will cause some political advertisers not to spend as much, he said.

Dean Petrone, president of Go Big Media, a Washington firm that works with Republican candidates and political action committees, or PACs, on digital media, said he still expects robust digital ad spending by clients.Ubers robotic vehicle project was not living up to expectations months before a self-driving car operated by the San Francisco company struck and killed a woman in Tempe, Ariz.

The cars were having trouble driving through construction zones and next to tall vehicles, like big rigs. And Ubers human drivers had to intervene much more frequently than the drivers of competing autonomous car projects.

Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per intervention in Arizona, according to 100 pages of company documents obtained by the New York Times and two people familiar with the companys operations in the Phoenix area but not permitted to speak publicly about it.

Yet Ubers test drivers were being asked to do more  going on solo runs when they had worked in pairs.

And there also was pressure to live up to a goal to offer a driverless car service by the end of the year and to impress top executives. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was expected to visit Arizona in April, and leaders of the companys development group in the Phoenix area wanted to give him a glitch-free ride in an autonomous car. Khosrowshahis trip was called Milestone 1: Confidence in the company documents.

Tech companies such as Uber, Waymo and Lyft, as well as automakers such as General Motors and Toyota, have spent billions developing self-driving cars in the belief that the market for them could one day be worth trillions of dollars.

The crash, which occurred March 18, was a major setback for Uber, which has been trying to improve its image since Khosrowshahi replaced Travis Kalanick in a messy transfer of power in August. In February, Uber also settled a long-standing legal fight with Waymo.

On Monday, Uber halted autonomous car tests in Arizona, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. It is not clear when the company will revive them.

The Tempe Police Department said it is investigating the crash and has not determined whether the car was at fault. A Volvo XC90 sport utility vehicle equipped with Ubers sensing technology struck Elaine Herzberg, 49, while it was going 40 mph in a 45-mph zone. According to the police, the car, with one safety driver and operating in autonomous mode, did not slow down before impact.

A video shot from the dashboard camera showed the safety driver looking down, away from the road. It also appears that the drivers hands were not hovering above the steering wheel, which is what drivers are instructed to do so they can quickly retake control of the car. Herzberg, pushing a bicycle across the street, appeared in the camera right before she was hit.

As we develop self-driving technology, safety is our primary concern every step of the way, said Matt Kallman, an Uber spokesman. Were heartbroken by what happened this week, and our cars remain grounded. We continue to assist investigators in any way we can.

Uber has been testing its self-driving cars in a regulatory vacuum in Arizona. There are few federal rules governing the testing of autonomous cars. Unlike California, where Uber had been testing since spring of 2017, Arizona state officials had taken a hands-off approach to autonomous vehicles and did not require companies to disclose how their cars were performing.

Waymo and Cruise, a self-driving car company owned by GM, reported their intervention numbers to California regulators. Ubers goals in Arizona were mentioned in internal documents  Arizona does not have reporting requirements  and it has not been testing self-driving cars in California long enough to be required to report them.

Ubers first road tests in its self-driving car effort, code-named Project Roadrunner, were actually in Pittsburgh in September 2016. The Phoenix area was added a year ago, and quickly became the companys main testing ground, with 400 employees and more than 150 autonomous cars driving local roads because of favorable regulatory environment, favorable weather conditions, according to a company document.

When Khosrowshahi took over as Ubers chief executive, he had considered shutting down the self-driving car operations, according to two other people familiar with Khosrowshahis thinking.

But he became convinced that it was important to Ubers long-term prospects. His visit to Phoenix was seen by the Arizona team as a critical opportunity to demonstrate their progress, according to the people familiar with the companys operations in the Phoenix area. They wanted to take him on a ride without human interventions to demonstrate that the cars could handle so-called edge cases, tricky road situations that are hard to predict.

With autonomy, the edge cases kill you, so youve got to build out for all the edge cases, Khosrowshahi said at a conference in November. Which makes it a very, very difficult problem.

By September 2017, Ubers autonomous cars had driven 1 million miles in a year nationwide. Uber tallied its second million in 100 days and added its next million at an even faster clip, according to company documents.

Early on in Phoenix, there were two groups of test drivers. A smaller group stressed the cars by putting them in challenging situations where, without human intervention, they would have crashed.

A larger group of drivers was focused on picking up customers in the autonomous vehicles. Those drivers were expected to pay more attention to little details, often taking control to prevent a bad experience like hard braking, according to a company document.

Around October, Uber merged the two groups to get to a point where it could offer a truly driverless car service to customers as quickly as possible. The customer pickup service was mostly dropped so drivers could focus on accumulating miles and gathering data to help the system become more reliable.

Around the same time, Uber moved from two employees in every car to one. The paired employees had been splitting duties  one ready to take over if the autonomous system failed, and another to keep an eye on what the computers were detecting. The second person was responsible for keeping track of system performance as well as labeling data on a laptop computer. Kallman, the Uber spokesman, said the second person was in the car for purely data related tasks, not safety.

Waymo had also moved from two operators at all times to one in some situations in late 2015, said Johnny Luu, a Waymo spokesman. Waymo still uses two test drivers when it is adding new systems or moving to a new location.

But Ubers autonomous cars are not operating nearly as well as those of its competitors. Cruise reported to California regulators that it went more than 1,200 miles per intervention. After its strong California results, Waymo is now testing cars in Chandler, Arizona, a Phoenix suburb, with no safety drivers.

Kallman said miles per intervention is not a measure of safety but a rate of system improvement that could differ depending on where and how the cars were driven.

When Uber moved to a single operator, some employees expressed safety concerns to managers, according to the two people familiar with Ubers operations. They were worried that going solo would make it harder to remain alert during hours of monotonous driving. Kallman said it delayed the start of its single-driver initiative to allow for more training and to make sure drivers felt comfortable for the new role.

Uber also developed an app, mounted on an iPad in the cars middle console, for drivers to alert engineers to problems. Drivers could use the app anytime without shifting the car out of autonomous mode. Often, drivers would annotate data at a traffic light or a stop, but many did so while the car was moving, said the two people familiar with Ubers operations. Kallman said it designed the app to meet government safety guidelines for in-car software to minimize distractions.

Waymo had a different solution when it moved to a single safety driver. It added a button on the steering wheel for drivers to create an audio explanation when they took the car out of autonomous mode.

Not all drivers followed Ubers training. One was fired after falling asleep at the wheel and being spotted by a colleague. Another was spotted air drumming as the autonomous car passed through an intersection, according to the two people familiar with Ubers operations.

Uber was planning to seek regulatory approval by December to start a self-driving car service in Arizona, according to company documents. Uber said the vehicles would have to be safer than human drivers before they would commercialize it. They would not operate around the clock and would stop for bad weather or traffic. And the service did not need to prove longer-term financial viability.

Already, one milestone will be missed. Khosrowshahi will not travel to Phoenix next month because of scheduling problems that came up before the crash, Kallman said. But it is unclear how the crash will ultimately affect Ubers plans for autonomous vehicles.

The collection of bad news around Uber creates a reputation in peoples minds, said Michael Ramsey, an automotive analyst at Gartner. Every other company would get a black eye, too, but they might be forgiven. For Uber, its going to be hard to shake.Virgin America departing soon

Virgin Americas final flights will depart at 9:30 p.m. April 24 from San Francisco International Airport  heading to Newark and Los Angeles. As of late Friday morning, the cheapest tickets for the LAX flight cost $63; for the Newark flight, a red-eye, theyre $269, according to Google Flights. The Burlingame airline merged with Alaska Airlines in 2016 and is taking on Alaskas identity. Alaska is stopping service from SFO to Minneapolis, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Mexico City after May 19, and to Denver after June 5. Service to Chicago is being cut back, too.

The feminine mistake

If you dont think women have a long way to go to make up the gender gap in technology, consider the results of a LivePerson survey of 1,000 Americans 18 and older. When asked to name a famous male and female leader in technology, 49 percent said they could come up with a man, with many naming Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. But only 4 percent could come up with the name of a woman  and one-fourth of them listed that name as Siri or Alexa.

Musk unfriends Facebook

Elon Musk is hopping on the #DeleteFacebook bandwagon. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted Friday that he didnt even know SpaceX had a Facebook page. When prodded by others on Twitter, Musk agreed to delete Facebook pages for both of his companies.Zain Bahrain, a leading telecommunications provider in the kingdom, has become one of the first operators in the region to upgrade its Quality Management System (QMS) to meet the new ISO 9001:2015 standard, as well as to successfully conform to the existing ISO 27001:2013 standard.



Awarded following an audit by international certification firm DNV GL, this exercise confirms the operators compliance to the certifications requirements including customer satisfaction, continuous improvement of processes and practices, and information security and confidentiality. Zain Bahrain has held both ISO certifications since 2005.



"The ISO certification is a testament to our efforts in applying effective policies and procedures across all our operations. It is also an assurance that our operations are managed in accordance with international industry benchmarks, supporting Zain Bahrains commitment to providing superior service to its customer base. I would like to take this opportunity to thank each team member who has contributed to Zain Bahrain's attainment of this international accreditation," said Zain Bahrain general manager Mohammed Zainalabedin.



Zain Bahrain has been certified since 2005 against ISO Quality and Information Security Management System standards, and Zain Bahrain employees have contributed to achieving the new ISO 9001:2015 standard and are certified internationally. This plays an integral part in Zain Bahrain management System. - TradeArabia News Service1 Preventable death: The parents of a 2-year-old girl who died of pneumonia have been convicted of involuntary manslaughter after prosecutors said they declined to seek medical care for the child on religious grounds. Jonathan Foster, 35, and Grace Foster, 34, also were convicted Friday in Berks County court of child endangerment in the November 2016 death of daughter Ella Grace in Upper Tulpehocken Township, Pa., the Reading Eagle reported. The Fosters, who remain free pending sentencing in April, attributed their daughters death to Gods will, according to a police affidavit. The defendants belong to Faith Tabernacle Congregation, which instructs members to avoid doctors and pharmaceutical drugs.

2 Stolen ashes: An Ohio woman is urgently asking whoever broke into her Columbus home to return an urn containing the ashes of her stillborn daughter. WSYX-TV reports Iesha Harvey says she doesnt care whether any of the other items stolen from her home Monday are returned. Harvey lost the baby because of complications in 2013. Columbus police say the lack of fingerprints, witnesses or surveillance camera footage means its unlikely the theft will be solved.Celebrities joined thousands of people across the nation at March for Our Lives rallies to protest gun violence.

Music legend Paul McCartney, pop star Miley Cyrus and actor George Clooney were among the faces at some of the 800-plus events held around the country on Saturday.

Marching near Central Park, McCartney took a moment to remember his Beatles bandmate John Lennon. The iconic musician was shot and killed in front of his New York apartment by Mark David Chapman in 1980.

READ ALSO: Paul McCartney remembers John Lennon

"One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here," he told CNN. The musician went on to stress how "important" the issue is to him.

Other celebrities took to social media to share photos of themselves protesting or to project messages in support of gun control.

Late-night host Jimmy Fallon posted an image from the New York City march with the caption, "The next generation is shining bright.".

Kanye and Kim Kardashian West flew to Washington D.C. to march near the Capitol.

"We stand in solidarity with the survivors of gun violence & students who are calling for action on common sense gun safety laws," the reality TV star tweeted.

The voices undoubtedly speaking the loudest at the national protests belonged not to celebrities, but young people, like David Hogg.

Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting that killed 17 people, has emerged as one of the student leaders of the movement.

"If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking," he told a sprawling crowd of demonstrators at the Washington march.

"We will get rid of these public servants who only care about the gun lobby."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf.Some people look at old houses and see problems. Larry Litton of Cleveland sees potential and history.

Over the last decade, Litton has restored at least a dozen old homes in the Cleveland area, including the Hill and Sara McClanahan Home at 401 Austin St. and the Tom Hill House at 211 S. Bonham St., both of which are now recorded Texas Historic Landmarks.

When scouting for new properties recently, Litton, a former mortgage company owner who now invests in real estate, came across a house on Fostoria Road south of Cleveland that appears to be forgotten by time.

On the property are two houses -- one a small, wood-framed structure last occupied decades ago by the father of the man who owned the second house. Both are now deceased, said Litton, and it appears that many years have passed since anyone entered the father's home.

Litton, who now owns both homes, said the old wood-frame home is a time capsule of sorts. Old mail dating back to the 1940s sits on the dining room table. A calendar dating back to 1968 hangs on a wall. Tins and boxes of food items, long past their expiration date, can still be found in the kitchen cabinets and the previous occupant's meager clothing still hangs in a bedroom closet.

A stack of newspapers from two decades ago are the only sign that someone has been in the home "recently," according to Litton.

The home appears to have been left just as it was when the owner was alive. Though none of the contents have any real monetary value, Litton sees the house as a castle, at least for the previous occupant.

"Whether we realize it or not, each of us build a trail of what our life is like by the way we live, where we reside, how we spend our time and what we do," he said. "If you were to abandon your 'castle,' and suppose someone wandered upon it 35 to 40 years later to find it just as you left it, what would that someone think? Don't you think the home and its contents would tell a story and provide facts that would be of interest to those looking at what had become a 'time capsule?'"

Litton believes the natural inclination for anyone would be to wonder about the person who lived there and what happened to them.

"What was their occupation? Or maybe, what was life like in this old home for those who once lived here?" he said.

Litton explained that while he finds the old letters he discovered in the house to be interesting, he is content with them remaining a mystery.

He refuses to open the letters, which appear to be from a serviceman staying on Treasure Island in California around the same time as World War II and the Korean War.

"I just don't have it in me to read the personal mail of another. To me, it would be an infringement into the life of the one receiving the mail, as well as the writer of the letters," he said.

Instead he has gleaned details about the life of the occupant from the simple belongings inside the home.

"A man who liked to hunt once lived here," Litton said, evidenced by the hunting jacket still containing ammunition that he found on the front porch. "He also knew about the cross and the presence of a crucifix gives the impression of being religious. He also was someone who split logs for use in the wood-burning stove to keep the castle warm.

"An investment in a first-class cook stove causes one to think that good meals were part of the lifestyle of this home and perhaps used to prepare meals for a family or more than one person," Litton said.

Litton is still undecided on what will become of the home. He is contemplating restoring the home or selling it to someone who will bring it back to life.

"It would sure be shame to see it torn down because the house is still sturdy and definitely could once again become a castle for another family," he said.Sothebys International Realty has launched its new campaign on one of the worlds largest international airlines, Emirates.



Travellers can discover the unique stories of inspiring people as they visit some of the most beautiful properties around the world on the way to their next destination.



The Live videos can be seen during all in-flight videos, on all flight routes. - TradeArabia News ServiceRetaj Hotels and Hospitality has expanded its portfolio to Asia with the signing of a strategic partnership with Thai group Taj Hana.



Dr Mohamed Bin Johar Al Mohamed, vice chairman and managing director of Retaj Group and Luqman Nani, managing director of Taj Hana Group, signed the strategic partnership at Al Meroz Hotel in Bangkok.



The agreement was signed in the presence of Wan Muhamad Noor Matha, former deputy Prime minister and former President of Parliament, as well as many officials from the two leading groups and more than 200 academics and investors in hotel tourism sector, in addition to landowners and medical tourism experts.



This came as a part of Retaj's overseas expansion plan and global strategy as one of the leading hotels and hospitality companies in the Middle East and GCC region.



Under the agreement, Taj Hana will provide more than 27 hotels for Retaj Hotels & Hospitality to operate over the next five years in key locations in the Far East region, the most important of which are Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and China.



Retaj is aiming to provide Halal and authentic Arabian hospitality to the Arabian and Gulf tourists and investors as well as from various nationalities visiting the Far East countries.



The two groups also signed a partnership agreement whereby Retaj Hotels and Hospitality will offer Taj Hana Spa brand in all Retaj new hotels, allowing Retaj Guests to enjoy the international Spa experience and renowned Thai treatments of the Taj Hana.



Sheikh Jassim bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, Qatar's Ambassador to Thailand, expressed his thanks to the management of the Qatari company Retaj for its kind invitation to the mission to attend the signing ceremony. He wished the two sides success in their cooperation and bilateral relations between Qatar and Thailand.



Dr. Mohamed Bin Johar Al Mohamed, vice chairman and managing director of Retaj Group, also expressed his thanks for the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its support to the projects of the group abroad, and thanked the Ambassador Al-Thani and all the staff of the Qatari Embassy in Thailand for their participation in the signing ceremony and the hospitality they have extended to the delegation of the Retaj Group in Thailand.



Dr Johar added: "Retaj has established itself as a key brand, being the first and only Qatari hotel brand operating inside and outside the state and which has succeeded in spreading to many countries in Asia, Africa and Europe."



"The Far East countries of Asia are among the most important tourist destinations in the world and the most popular among Southeast Asian countries as there is great potential for tourism in these countries," he said.



Luqman Nani, director general of Taj Group, said that the tourism industry is a top priority of the Thai government. He pointed out that medical tourism is the most important sector in Thailand as it has gained a global reputation to become a major pillar of the tourism sector in Thailand.



Luqman explained that the partnership includes a provision of 2,000 hotel rooms to be managed by Retaj Hotels and Hospitality in Thailand in addition to 3,000 hotel rooms in East Asia including China, Japan and South Korea, allowing the hotel brand to provide Halal tourism in those regions.



Matha praised the strategic partnership between Taj Hana and Retaj Group, noting that it forms the base for growth and development at the economic and community level in Thailand. He added that Taj Hana and Retaj Group's unique Halal tourism offering will make a "significant difference in the hospitality style of East Asia". - TradeArabia News Service

Fish in some Bay Area counties will be getting a shot in the arm, or rather, the fin, from the state's Wildlife Conservation Board in the form of several million dollars in grants, the board announced.

Awards including about $5.4 million to the Alameda County Water District, about $900,000 to the Sonoma Resource Conservation District and around $900,000 to the San Mateo County Resource Conservation District were made at the board's Thursday meeting.

The board awarded about $33.1 million Thursday to 22 projects throughout the state aimed at benefiting fish and wildlife habitats by enhancing stream flow. The legislature approved funding for these projects as authorized by the Water Quality, Supply and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014, the board said.

A total of $200 million was allocated to the board for projects that enhance stream flow.

Salmonids - a group of fish including salmon, trout and chars - will get two concrete fish ladders thanks to the $5.3 million grant awarded to the Alameda County Water District.

While the image of a fish climbing a ladder might seem comical, the "ladders" actually resemble a series of steps with water flowing over them that will help the fish get around existing barriers.

The fish ladders will be built as part of a cooperative project between the Alameda County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, California Natural Resources Agency, State Coastal Conservancy and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to modify flow releases in Alameda Creek and construct the fish ladders.

The project will provide salmonids access to rich habitat upstream of its location, about 17 miles north of San Jose and 22 miles southeast of Oakland.

The board also awarded $851,806 to the Sonoma Resource Conservation District. This award involves a cooperative project with the Coast Ridge Community Forest and 29 landowners to install rainwater-harvesting tanks. Also, it involves agreements to forbear stream flow diversions during dry season periods.

Another one of the grants awarded to Bay Area counties included $886,590 to the San Mateo County Resource Conservation District. This is a cooperative project with San Mateo County, California Department of Water Resources, Blue House Farms and other entities.

The purpose of this project is to install instream flow conditions in San Gregorio Creek for salmonids during yearly low stream flow periods.

###Bay Area elected officials have requested an investigation into the resignation of former Bay Area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman James Schwab, who quit earlier this month alleging that the agency had made false statements.

In a letter Thursday, Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, along with 10 of their Democratic colleagues, urged John Kelly, acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, to investigate Schwab's resignation.

"We have serious concerns that Trump administration officials are misrepresenting the facts and statistics surrounding this enforcement action for political purposes," the letter said.

"Public policies and law enforcement operations must be informed by facts, not the fabricated overstatements or distortions of political officials," the letter continued.

Schwab, who had been stationed at ICE's San Francisco office, reportedly said he left because he did not want to perpetuate misleading statements by ICE about Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf's recent warning about immigration raids.

White House officials have suggested that Schaaf may have engaged in obstruction of justice by warning the community before recent ICE raids in Northern California that resulted in the arrest of about 230 people.

The letter sent by Feinstein and her colleagues also asks that Kelly examine email messages and other communications between Schwab and officials within the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice concerning the immigration sweep, known as operation "Keep Safe."

The letter also asks for details regarding the immigration action including the total number of people arrested and the total number of those arrested with criminal convictions, including violent crimes.

On Feb. 24, Schaaf issued a statement saying immigration agents might conduct an operation in the next 24 hours in Oakland and other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Shortly afterward, more than 150 undocumented immigrants were arrested in Northern California by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

ICE Deputy Director Thomas Homan said that 864 additional targets remained at large - including at least two believed to be living in Oakland.

Homan said "some of (the undocumented immigrants) were able to elude us thanks to the mayor's irresponsible decision," referring to the statement issued by Schaaf alerting her constituents of the impending operation.

Homan also claimed Schaaf put his agents at risk and increased the likelihood of "collateral arrests," in which individuals who were not the intended target of an operation end up getting detained.

Schaaf said, "I commend Mr. Schwab for speaking the truth while under intense pressure to lie. Our democracy depends on public servants who act with integrity and hold transparency in the highest regard."

###The Monterey County District Attorney's Office announced today that a former University of California at Santa Cruz student has been sentenced to six years in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for a collision that killed two in 2016.

Lynnea Hernandez, a 21-year-old resident of Cedar Park, Texas, pleaded guilty on Jan. 17 to two counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and two counts of reckless driving causing injury, according to prosecutors.

On March 21, 2016, Hernandez and her friends decided that they wanted to take a daytrip from Santa Cruz to Big Sur during their spring break, prosecutors said.

At about noon, seven friends got into Hernandez's Lexus SUV and drove down U.S. Highway 101, posting videos of themselves "dancing raucously, singing and passing around a marijuana pipe" on the social media application Snapchat, prosecutors said.

At one point in a Snapchat video, Hernandez is seen taking her eyes off the road as she sings directly into the camera, according to prosecutors.

At 12:12 p.m., Hernandez's SUV crossed into oncoming traffic and hit a vehicle driven by Monterey resident Nikolas Malliarodakis, 24, killing him instantly, prosecutors said. Lillian Scott, Hernandez's friend seated in the middle backseat, was also killed on impact.

Hernandez's friends Sydney Beyer, Guadalupe Valdez and Morgan Benninger all suffered major injuries from the crash, the district attorney said.

Malliarodakis was on his way back to work in Watsonville after having lunch with his fiancie who had just gotten off the nightshift at her job, prosecutors said.

In court, Malliarodakis' family challenged Hernandez to use her time after she is released from prison for "positivity and to make the world a better place in Niko's honor."

###The Solano County Sheriff's Office on Friday announced the arrest of a man in Arizona in connection with trying to solicit sex from a minor stemming from an incident reported in Vacaville.

Alden Pascual Cacpal, was arrested on suspicion of several crimes including solicitation of a minor and using a minor for purposes of posing for sexual conduct, according to the sheriff's office.NEWARK (BCN)

A man was shot to death in Newark late Friday night, police said today.

Officers responded at 10:58 p.m. to a report of gunshots heard in the area of the 7700 block of Wells Avenue and found a man suffering from an apparent gunshot wound, according to police.

The man was subsequently declared dead, police said. Newark police detectives are investigating the incident as a homicide, according to police. Officers don't think the incident was a random act.

The victim hasn't been identified yet, police said. The investigation is continuing.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Newark police Sgt. David Higbee at (510) 578-4962 or via email at david.higbee@newark.org or Detective Jennifer Bloom at (510) 578-4931 or via email at Jennifer.bloom@newark.org.

###Across the country and the Bay Area, rallies and marches led by young people calling for stricter gun control laws are taking place today.

Some of the marches in the Bay Area today include a march that will begin at 10 a.m. at Lake Merritt Amphitheater between 12th Street and First Avenue in Oakland.

Also at 10 a.m. in Oakland there will be a march beginning at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway in Oakland. "Teens On Target," a youth group, will meet at 14th and Clay streets to join this march.

Marches will be held at 10 a.m. in locations including downtown Richmond, downtown Livermore and downtown Benicia. The downtown Benicia march is at 170 First Street.

One of the largest gatherings is expected to take place this afternoon at 1 p.m., at San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place. The event will begin with a rally at City Hall with speeches and then participants will march to the Embarcadero.

On the national level, youth from Oakland are participating in the country's focal event, a march in Washington, D.C., according to Congresswoman Barbara Lee's office.

"I am so honored to have students from the East Oakland Youth Development Center participate in this important march to protest gun violence, as many of them know far too well the devastating effects of this violence," Lee said in a statement.

The congresswoman noted that mass shootings such as the recent tragedy in Parkland, Florida, galvanize attention on the gun control debate, "but we cannot forget the reality of daily gun violence in black and brown communities," Lee said.

"I personally support all of the young people marching to protect their lives," Lee said. "Congress must hear their cries and do its part to get weapons of war off our streets."

###SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A housing group based at San Francisco State University today condemned the university for allegedly raising rents on employee housing and evicting residents who have retired.

According to SF State Tenants Rights Group, the school announced in September a 34 percent rent increase on employee housing over the next six years. The group says that after inquiring more about the increase, residents found out that university housing is exempt from local city and county regulations such as rent control and minimum-service standards.

In 2005, the university bought two residential properties adjacent to the school for housing for faculty and staff, respectively called University Park South and University Park North.

Between 2005 and 2017, San Francisco State has increased the rent at the maximum allowed rates by the San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board, the tenants rights group said.

But according to the group the university never explicitly stated that its housing was exempt from local regulations and therefore should take responsibility for misleading the residents to believe that this was a long-term housing option.

"When I moved-in in 2005, I received no warning that SF State does not abide by rent controls," resident and Economics department faculty Michael Bar said in statement. "If I had known back then that SFSU housing is not rent controlled, I would have rented at Park Merced. Now market rents on campus are way too high."

In a letter to residents in October, university officials said the rent increase would go toward exterior painting, light upgrades, part-time patrol staff and other security enhancements, hazardous materials remediation, plumbing replacements, fire alarms and sprinklers, securing fencing and access controls, and window replacement.

The group is also alleging that the university has started to evict resident staff and faculty following their retirement.

Sarah Johnson, retired director of the on campus Associated Students Early Childhood Education Center, moved-in in 2014 and was never given any indication that she would have to move out upon retirement, the group said.

"I've been the director of the AS Early Childhood Education Center for over 26 years, during which time I helped expand and build the state-of-the-art campus childcare facility, wrote grants in excess of $7M to provide childcare stipends for low-income student-parents and worthy wages for teachers and spearheaded a task force to create a BA degree in Child Development at SFSU," Johnson said in a statement.

"Four months after I retired, a 60-day termination letter arrived in my mailbox! Employment was never mentioned as a condition of my rental agreement, and as a senior citizen, I can't afford renting at the current market prices," she said.

San Francisco State University officials were not immediately available for comment.

###A Tuolumne County dam that leaked Thursday, flooding the area and trapping two people on top of a chicken coop, is stable and the Bay Area's water supply is safe, a San Francisco Public Utility Commission spokesman said today in a statement.

The Moccasin Dam and its reservoir help regulate the Hetch Hetchy water system, which provides water to about 2.7 million Bay Area consumers. Heavy rain Thursday sent a surge of water and debris toward the dam, causing concerns that it might fail, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

The dam did not fail, and Utilities Commission officials said the Bay Area's water supply has not been affected and was never at risk.

Representatives from the California Department of Water Resources Division of Safety of Dams arrived onsite today and are inspecting the dam for potential damage, utility officials said.

The evacuation notice for Moccasin staff was lifted at 7 a.m. today and staffers from the commission are working at Moccasin today. However, the evacuation order for Moccasin Marina and the residences associated with the fish hatchery downstream of the dam are still in effect until further notice, utility officials said.

The National Weather Service is calling for possible rainfall this evening and commission staffers are preparing for any additional rain-related stress on the dam or the reservoir, according to utility officials.

If it rains, any excess water that cannot be handled by the dam or its spillways will be captured by the Don Pedro Reservoir, utility officials said.

Significant flooding was reported Thursday. The Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office dispatched a swift water rescue team to assist a couple who were caught on top of a chicken coop after their home and vehicles were submerged in water.

Sheriff's officials said the couple's neighbors were able to get the couple to safety.

###A student at Arroyo High School in San Lorenzo in unincorporated Alameda County was arrested on suspicion of possessing a gun on the campus and two other students were detained for questioning, a sheriff's spokesman said today.

Sgt. Ray Kelly said the school, which is located at 15701 Lorenzo Ave., was placed on lockdown at 2:30 p.m. but the lockdown was lifted before 4 p.m.ABDULMONAM EASSA / AFP/Getty Images

BEIRUT  Hundreds of members of a rebel group and their relatives Saturday boarded 17 buses in preparation to leave eastern Ghouta to opposition-held areas north of the country Saturday as part of an agreement to evacuate the second of three pockets held by opposition fighters east of the capital Damascus, Syrias state media reported.

State TV and the government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said more than 500 fighters and their relatives will leave Saturday night toward northern Syria, and hundreds more will evacuate the next day. State TV and SCMM earlier said that a total of 7,000 people will leave four towns in eastern Ghouta before reporting that the number had dropped to just over 3,000, without providing an explanation.Page Content

SHRM's expertise on preventing and addressing sexual harassment in the workplace was sought once again by lawmakers in the California legislature and the U.S. Congress and was provided through testimony from SHRM members Kathy Ruffino, Sharon Sellers and Patricia Wise.

California Legislature

SHRM A-Team advocacy captain and HR consultant for Train Me Today Kathy Ruffino, SHRM-SCP, testified on Wednesday, March 14, before the California Joint Subcommittee on Sexual Harassment Prevention & Response at a hearing titled "Preventing Sexual Harassment Through Training and Culture Change."

The joint subcommittee was established earlier this year and marks the first time the California Senate and Assembly are working together to examine how sexual harassment complaints are handled in the state capitol. The subcommittee has invited SHRM to provide a series of SHRM witnesses to share expertise on preventing and addressing workplace harassment.

In her testimony, Ruffino focused on sexual-harassment training and the need to include senior management. The joint subcommittee previously heard from:

SHRM President and Chief Executive Officer Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP (pictured above) on the key role of workplace culture.

SHRM A-Team advocacy captain and chief talent officer at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Nooshin Nathan, on reporting sexual harassment and victim support.

SHRM A-Team advocacy captain and employment attorney at Spengler Nathanson Patricia Wise, on workplace response to allegations.

U.S. Congress

In the U.S. Congress on March 15, SHRM A-Team advocacy captain and president of SLS Consulting LLC Sharon Sellers participated as part of the Committee on House Administration's bipartisan roundtable examining sexual harassment in the workplace. Sellers drew from her experiences as head of an HR consulting firm and provided the committee with insight into how HR can prevent and address harassment. The committee is focused on improving the House of Representatives' response to harassment claims and specifically invited SHRM to discuss effective practices from the private sector.

On Monday, March 19, Patricia Wise, following an appearance before the California Joint Subcommittee on Sexual Harassment Prevention & Response, testified before the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues during the hearing "Beyond the Headlines: Combating Service Sector Sexual Harassment in the Age of #MeToo." Wise previously served on the EEOC's Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace.

After two weeks locked in a small room in the Commonwealth Courts Building in Melbourne, one thing about the banking royal commission is clear: It's not going to investigate everything that has caught its attention. It will investigate what it can within the time frame given.

The best illustration of this came on Friday when investment banking giant Citi received a reprieve. It would not be cross-examined - as had been planned - over its statements regarding its alleged misconduct in selling credit cards.

The banking royal commission shows problems with a lack of trust. Credit:Fairfax Media

Citi is one of the largest providers of plastic money in the country and given the groups previous run-in with the corporate cops its quite the get-out-of-jail free card. Citibanks evidence will now go unchallenged. Its executive will be spared the perp walk outside the court.

And so it was for the findings that were read out to the commisison by counsel assisting Rowena Orr, QC. As the clock hit 4.10pm, proceedings were wrapped up with only half the findings declared. The rest were contained in a document that had not been made public by Fairfax Media's deadlines.When Lillian Armfield and Maude Rhodes began their work as the first constables in the newly formed Womens Police, part of the NSW Police Force, in 1915, World War I was raging in Europe and the Middle East, and Australian troops experienced warfare on a mass scale for the first time as they went ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April. Far-off places like Egypt, the Dardanelles and Turkey came to life for ordinary Australians as they read about the latest campaigns in the newspapers. Every day the casualty lists told their own story of what the Australians were going through. The Sydney Morning Herald included a regular series on "Australian Heroes", with photographs of troops who had been wounded or killed at the front.

Lillian Armfield was one of two women who were the first policewomen in the NSW Police Force.

For one family in Orange, in the central west of country NSW, events much closer to home were far more pressing in July 1915. Their young daughter was missing and they suspected she had made her way down to Sydney. The girls parents phoned Central Police Station and officers acted quickly on the information. The girls description was sent to all city stations and a photograph was distributed and then pinned up in Central Police Station. She was a long way from home, some 300 kilometres, and had never been to the city before. With a population of over 700,000, Sydney was the nations largest city and a stark contrast to the girls home town of Orange with fewer than 10,000 people. A country runaway could easily get lost in Sydney, which is what the girl from Orange was banking on.

Detective Sergeant Tom Mankey called Lillian Armfield into his office. He handed her the photograph of the teenager and watched as she studied the image, memorising the girls face. Mankey didnt think it would take much to find the girl, given she was a very pretty kid and would stand out in the crowds. Lillian was less convinced. The girls blonde hair and beautiful looks would bring her the worst attention from Sydneys pimps, prostitutes and drug runners. Everything about the girl sent alarm bells ringing for Lillian. She was a young, naive easy target.

Lillian handed the photograph back to Mankey and listened as he gave her his orders. He wanted the girl found as soon as possible, telling Lillian to patrol the inner-city streets and keep a lookout for the girl from Orange. Lillian needed to get hold of her quick and snaffle her before, as Mankey pointed out, she had time to change from that blue frock with the polka dots. If she changed her dress, she would be almost impossible to find. Lillian also had to act quickly before the young girl found somewhere to stay and hide.The Bachelor is a tale as old as time  you've got your handsome, muscular leading man who takes off his top and stares into the distantce a lot; the girl-next-door who's a shoo-in from the outset; the court jester; a few randoms to make up the numbers and then there's the "villain"  the one that everyone loves to hate, but loves to watch even more.

Alisha Aitken-Radburn during filming of the first cocktail party at The Bachelor mansion.

Sometimes they cast themselves in the antagonist role, other times they are put in that position by producers and their co-stars. Their qualities include, but are not limited to, competitiveness, brazenness, outspokenness, over-confidence and a thick skin.

This year Alisha Aitken-Radburn seems to fit the bill.

The 25-year-old left Bill Shorten's Canberra office, where she had been working for the past year, to try her luck at love with former Wallaby, Nick "Honey Badger" Cummins, 30.Jason Isbell is playing at Enmore Theatre.

SUNDAY, MARCH 25

ART Take a look at the youthful talent on show at Artexpress Fest Day with an exhibition tour of some of the best Higher School Certificate visual arts pieces. Little ones can also make an animal mask, create a tropical collage or have their face painted. 10am-4pm, Hazelhurst Arts Centre, 782 Kingsway, Gymea, free, hazelhurst.com.au

PARTY Neighbourhood Watch is a family-friendly bash held in a car park presented by Aussie hip-hop collective One Day. Groove along to DJ sets from Nick Lupi, Levins, FlexMami and Nes, grab a bite to eat at pop-up food stalls or watch a graffiti mural being painted live. Noon-9pm, Public House Petersham, 292 Stanmore Road, Petersham, free, publichousepetersham.com.au

COMMUNITY Take time out with the dearly departed at memorial event Picnic Among Friends. Visitors are invited to Rookwood Cemetery to set out a blanket and add reminders of loved ones to a memory tree. 1-4pm, Village Green, Rookwood Cemetery, cnr Necropolis Drive and Hawthorne Avenue, Rookwood, free, rookwoodcemetery.com.auOf all the debates swirling over Sydney's burgeoning population and where to house an extra 80,000-plus residents each year, few feature the height of a dam wall on the city's western edge.

But Bob Debus aims to change that, hosting a public debate in Springwood on Monday to challenge the wisdom of lifting Warragamba's dam wall by 14 metres.

The real motivation for the $700 million project is to open the way for more development in the flood-prone Hawkesbury-Nepean valley.

Lake Burragorang, behind Warragamba Dam, Sydney's main reservoir. Credit:Jonathan Ng

Its principal purpose is to allow more development in an area where it should never be allowed, Mr Debus, who served as NSW environment minister for eight years, told Fairfax Media."In building, topics logged as an enquiry or complaint are around concerns that building works may not be compliant, the quality of works, concerns structures may not be approved, safety issues, non-completion of works, defects or warranties," the spokeswoman said. 'While these are the topics which may have been logged, it does not mean that in all cases the concerns are founded." Have you had a bad experience during building work? Contact kimberley.lelievre@fairfaxmedia.com.au The spokeswoman backed the complaints system and said it was working as intended in the territory. "There is no one size fits all when it comes to such matters as each has individual circumstances and complexities," the spokeswoman said.

"Due to the nature of building work, what the issue is may determine what support can be provided. "Consumers should take a keen and active interest in building works undertaken and where they sense things may not be going to plan contact Access Canberra." Constructions Occupations registrar Craig Simmons said the industry was working "effectively enough for us but there are tweaks to the system that will improve things". "It's an industry that is incredibly dynamic with new products and new techniques coming in all the time," Mr Simmons said. He said changes would be incremental in working their way through the system because "the building code is designed to allow for innovation".

Mr Simmons said each complaint about the industry was worked through individually because of the complexities around differing types of legislation that covered consumers. "They're often made more difficult [because] we need to see what's in there, what's in the statutory framework and what sits in the contractual relationship that has been established." He said unlike other states, his role was broader as it covered not only building and construction but the licensed trades that go hand in hand with that, including plumbing and electricity. "It's largely a function of our size that puts all the occupations together," Mr Simmons said. "The breadth of the remit means we have more regular contact with what's going on."

Mr Simmons defended the majority of those in the industry, saying it took all sorts to make up one of the biggest industries in the territory. "There is a full scope of people in the industry, we have really high quality experienced and excellent builders in the territory, at the other end of that, they probably aren't as good as we want them to be. When we find those ones, we work with them to improve their capacity or remove them from the industry." He said they find the low-quality builders through the Access Canberra complaints process. But Mr Simmons admitted taking away a builder's licence was complicated. "Sometimes there are licences where people simply don't renew, sometimes that's because they've decided, through our intervention, that it's not worthwhile to continue. Sometimes licences can move into suspension if they become bankrupt.

"The cancelling of licenses in the building side of things has to happen through a statutory process, it's much more rare than for some of the other occupations." He said education of the standards of work required was the priority, rather than removing a licence. Master Builders ACT chief executive Michael Hopkins said licenses needed to be implemented for all trade contractors not just electricians and plumbers, and ongoing training needed to be mandatory. "If there's a problem with a builder at one point in time, that's picked up and the licence isn't automatically renewed year on year. There should be extra training put in place for builders, or if it's needed to address a particular area of weakness. If there is a trend of safety breaches, there should be targeted training before their licence is renewed." He said the MBA had called on the government to better resource Access Canberra to help deal with the complaints that were coming in.

"In our MBA Budget submission for the 2018-19 Budget we did call on the government to provide more resources in Access Canberra," he said. "We've called for them to make sure that the resources provided in that area are increased in line with a growing Canberra and more building activity in the territory." He said the MBA would continue to lobby for increased consumer protection in the ACT, saying the reforms to address this and building quality were "long overdue". "However, Master Builders is not the building regulator. It is important that consumers or contractors that have disputes deal directly with the ACT government's independent building regulator, Access Canberra," he said. Housing Industry Association southern NSW and ACT executive director Greg Weller said while he wasn't seeing an increase in complaints overall compared with amount of building being undertaken, there were specific parts of the industry that weren't working.

He said licensing was a particular area that should be looked at. "We do take a soft approach to licensing in the ACT." Mr Weller said HIA would like to see an expanded licensing program to include other trades and people dealing with the public. He said another area for improvement was dispute resolution. "We do have a strong regime of protection for consumers with the building act in the ACT but we would argue for improved dispute resolution procedures rather than heading to a tribunal," Mr Weller said.The arch-Grumbletonians hand it to Whiney Warden for his capacity to get prime space in The Canberra Times to air his denigrating prose but why does Whiney want a Venice in Canberra when we have Kingston Foreshore with its concrete promenades, pubs, restaurants, retaining walls slapped by lake water, along with basement water seepage?

Of course the theft of 2.8 hectares of lakebed is small bickies in an area of 664 hectares and there is lots more lakebed and lake edge for the taking. Another decent chunk is already planned for plunder in the Acton Peninsula draft design. By the time the grand-descendants of Whiney and his dog Voss are running around, be assured there will be no natural lake edge in West Basin, few pesky waterbirds, let alone annoying water rats and platypus.

There will instead be lots of gorgeous rigid retaining walls and concrete promenades like at the new park constructed with millions of taxpayer money for the West Basin apartment dwellers.

Recently I consulted with the ducks, the coots, cormorants and swans in an ACT style "meet the residents" workshop. They were unanimous in their disgust of retaining walls covering all of the beaches and lake-edge habitats in West Basin. They also noted that human children and roos can't get out when they fall into the lake from retaining walls. They believe that the lake landscape is of national significance and are grateful to the international heritage bodies that protect their visiting foreign Snipe friends and the lake landscapes.Australia is part of that elite list  we were ranked the 10th happiest nation out of 156 in the study. Finland was first, followed by Norway and Denmark. The Global Happiness Report draws on the massive Gallup World Poll to measure aggregate happiness among migrant and locally born populations. There are three groups directly affected by migration  migrants themselves, the people they leave behind, and the host societies where migrants relocate. As you'd expect migrants across the globe become happier after switching countries. Their reported quality of life jumps by an average of 9 per cent following migration. New citizens at an Australia Day Citizenship ceremony in Sunshine in Victoria. Credit:Luis Ascui

Some migrants tend to be happier than others, of course. The happiness data shows, for instance, those who move from the United Kingdom to Australia or New Zealand are especially cheerful after they migrate. It must be the weather. One striking finding is that, typically, the happiness of migrants ends up being similar to the residents in their adopted countries. Migrants who shift to a happier country become more cheerful while those who move to less happy nations tend to become more miserable. The happiness levels of migrants converge substantially towards the average happiness level in the host country, the report said. Even the family members left behind after migrants depart are surprisingly positive. While they lose the company and direct support of the migrant, household members in the country of origin generally evaluate their lives more positively after the departure. One likely reason for this is the remittances they tend to receive from family members who move to more wealthy countries. Remittances totalled about $US500 billion ($647 billion) globally in 2015.

But what about the locals? Those in countries, like Australia, that receive a significant number of new migrants. The authors say this question is one most difficult in all social science. Judging from the intense political conflict over immigration you might expect that having a large migrant population would be a major drag on a communitys happiness. Kim Thien Truong wears an outfit she made to her citizenship ceremony. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui In fact, no effect - either positive or negative - was found on the happiness levels of local populations, based on the level of immigration in those countries.

There is no effect of the immigrant share on the average happiness of the locally born, the report says. However, the researchers conclude that immigration works best where newcomers from other nations are welcomed and where they integrate well. A tolerant attitude in the host country will benefit both migrants and locals. The degree of social distress caused to the existing residents depends importantly on their own frame of mind  a more open-minded attitude is better both for immigrants and for the original residents, the report says. And on that count Australia is a strong performer.

The polling firm, Gallup, has recently developed a Migrant Acceptance Index which gauges public response to new arrivals across countries. Australia is ranked the worlds seventh most accepting nation out of the 140 countries including in the survey (Iceland topped the list followed by New Zealand and Rwanda). A common thread tying many of the most-accepting countries together was a long history of receiving migrants. Those who were younger and more educated tended to be more accepting. The index also showed that in the most welcoming countries both newcomer and long-term migrants are much more positive about their future than those in less-accepting nations. For the first time the World Happiness Report this year ranked nations according to the happiness of their migrants, not just the overall population. Australias migrant population was rated the worlds sixth happiest - even better than our overall 10th ranking on the global happiness league table.Over-indebtedness can also have significant longer-term effects, including on mental health and personal relationships, and can contribute to family breakdown. Personal financial difficulties have been found to be the leading cause of stress by the Australian Psychological Society.

The provision of loans is important to help people build assets and, over time, financial security. However, where banks provide inappropriate or unaffordable loans, the consequences can be disastrous. Many people cut back on essentials to keep up their debt repayments, negatively affecting their wellbeing. And when they do finally fall behind on payments, stressful debt collection and legal action often follow.

Bank lending practices have been under scrutiny at the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. What is being revealed is an awful lot of unlawful lending. Banks are putting profit and administrative convenience ahead of complying with the law.

Lenders have a legal obligation to lend responsibly  to ensure loans align with the customers needs, and dont cause substantial hardship. Yet take the case of Joanne, for example, whose case study was featured in Consumer Actions submission to the royal commission. Joanne, a single mother of two, had a credit card with an $8500 limit. Over a few years, the bank slowly increased her limit to $15,500. Joanne was struggling to control her debt, and when it reached $12,500, the bank offered to transfer it to a personal loan. When the balance was transferred, the bank gave Joanne her card back with the full $15,500 credit limit available again. The debt piled up, and Joanne ended up having to declare bankruptcy.

Nearly everyone who borrows money wants to repay it, but Joannes story demonstrates why it is so important that banks lend responsibly  she was provided credit that she could not afford to pay back, leading to substantial harm.

Lenders tend to market credit as a way to improve peoples financial situation (get on top of your debt!), when clearly a credit card or personal loan involves taking on more debt. Moreover, many of our clients have limited income, and in Joannes case more debt was offered in the guise of allowing her to get on top of her financial difficulties. Clearly, in Joannes case, the bank has breached responsible lending laws.

Senior Counsel Rowena Orr at the royal commission's initial public hearing into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry.

Unfortunately, the consequence for any bank that breaches responsible lending laws is insufficient to encourage compliance.For eight years, Dylan John Bailey hadn't touched alcohol because he knew it made him violent.

But on the afternoon of July 23, 2016 - a chilly Saturday in the Blue Mountains - he went to the shops with his girlfriend and bought a bottle of gin to take to a nearby gathering.

The pair had driven from Padstow to Hermitage Flat, near Lithgow, to visit Katy Usherwood, a friend of his girlfriend. When they arrived about noon, four others were there, including Ms Usherwood's boyfriend Guy Henderson.

Murder victim Guy Henderson. Credit:Facebook

While the friends socialised, Bailey went out to his car and brought back a large hunting knife, which he later told police was used for killing pigs. He said he brought the knife inside to cut a mobile phone SIM card to size, because other knives in the house were blunt.Police are hunting for two men who allegedly fled the scene of a fiery car accident in Sydney's north-west.

Police say they have launched an investigation after a car carrying five people collided with a power pole at Bungarribee Road in Blacktown at about 3.20 am on Sunday.

The vehicle caught alight after impact and three men  one aged 21 and two aged 19  were taken to Westmead Hospital with serious injuries.

The 21-year-old is currently in a critical condition with serious head injuries, one of the teenagers is in a serious condition and the other is stable.

Two other men, described by police as being in their 20s and of African appearance, are suspected to have fled the scene on foot after members of the public helped to free them from the car.Another public transport crisis has been averted after Sydney and NSW Trains workers voted to accept their latest enterprise agreement.

The result came on Saturday evening after a postal ballot was returned with 52.8 per cent of Sydney Trains workers voting to accept the deal and 50.8 per cent of NSW Trains employees also in favour.

The accord will see them each receive a 3 per cent a year increase in pay over three years, as well as a one-off $1000 payment and seven days paid domestic-violence leave.

The two agreements - one which covers NSW Trains employees and one for Sydney Trains workers - will now go to the Fair Work Commission for approval.

Despite the result, the Rail, Tram and Bus Union was not impressed with the offer and slammed Transport Minister Andrew Constance for the "stress" the negotiations had caused.Check your most recent sent text messages.

There's a good chance that in at least one of them you included an emoji, one of those little cartoon characters that have become hugely popular in modern communication.

What started with emoticons such as the humble smiley face has become an increasingly complex world, filled with an endless variety of icons to match every conceivable situation.

Some of the hundreds of emojis that can be added to text messages.

We use them for all sorts of reasons: to save time, to add emphasis to what we're saying, or even as a way of changing the meaning of a text, such as with a winky face.One police dog has died and eight have fallen ill.

A pet food linked to the death and illness of several Victoria Police dogs has been pulled off the shelves.

Advance Dermocare dry dog food has been recalled after one police dog died and eight others became sick from an incurable condition called megaesophagus.

A Mars Petcare Australia spokeswoman said 3kg, 8kg and 15kg bags of Advance Dermocare dry dog food would be recalled.

"We advise dog owners who have purchased this product to return them to the place of purchase for a full refund," she said.Australia has a responsibility to examine prospects for its involvement in a missile defence scheme with Japan and the United States, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson says.

Dr Nelson said North Korea was a rogue state with nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities in a part of the world where Australia conducted trade worth almost $150 billion a year.

Dr Nelson and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer held talks with their Japanese counterparts on security issues last week.

"One part of those discussions is obviously the missile defence capability being developed jointly between Japan and the US," Dr Nelson told the Nine Network.

"Australia must responsibly make sure that we have the potential to have ships deployed which can protect our troops and our allies.The generosity of two anonymous bone donors has allowed a 12-year-old Perth girl to take to the dance floor again after years of excruciating pain.

Bianca Valenti from Thornlie was diagnosed with a large aneurysmal bone cyst on her right femur in March last year, after years of suffering constant leg pain.

Bianca Valenti can dance again thanks to the kindness of strangers.

Aneurysmal bone cysts are benign bone lesions that occur in children and adolescents and can cause severe pain, swelling and bone fractures.

Bianca's mother Tania Valenti said her daughter, who turns 13 on Saturday, had endured years of leg pain and a revolving door of doctors who had failed to identify the cause.When I and my idealistic, lefty, Trotskyite team are swept to power at the next ACT elections (the voters excited by my vision of a progressive socialist paradise) there will be an early whirlwind of exciting reforms and initiatives.

Two of my early initiatives will be the means testing of all traffic fines (so that Canberra's bourgeoisie pay fines 10 times chunkier than those paid by the battling poor) and the long-overdue creation of the post of Canberra Poet Laureate.

Fireworks entertain a large crowd at Regatta Point for Skyfire 2018. Many received a parking fine. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

A third emphasis of my government (an issue made newsworthy this week given the horror caused by the discovery that a Shorten Labor government will give Catholic schools $250 million extra in the first two years of Labor office and billions of dollars over 10 years) will be vigorous extra support for Canberra's public, secular schools.

In a fourth initiative, connected with our frowning upon religious schools, celebrity atheist Professor Richard Dawkins will be invited to become our city's first Thinker In Residence.The Turnbull government is drafting new powers that could block Chinese companies from building Australia's next mobile phone networks amid growing concern about foreign influence over the services.

The move is fuelling claims that consumers will pay a higher cost for the 5G services if Australian companies are forced to turn away Chinese equipment suppliers such as Huawei, given estimates the company is a step ahead of its US and European rivals on price and performance.

Fairfax Media can reveal that US President Donald Trump raised the US concerns about Huawei directly with Mr Turnbull and other officials, but those aware of the talks said this did not mean Australia had decided to ban the company.

The Turnbull governments message to the US was that the Trump administration must do more to prevent Chinese companies leapfrogging their American competitors and offering cheaper and better technology.

At stake is the rollout of 5G networks that offer faster speeds for consumers but represent mammoth investments for Telstra, SingTel Optus and Vodafone using equipment from a shrinking list of Chinese, European and US suppliers.Matt Pearson has so many dreams, he has to be careful to order them, so he doesn't lose track.

First, he wants to build a flying race car. Then, he wants to build another, and have them race against each other through the desert. This year.

Then, he wants to launch a flying grand prix  in 2020.

The Airspeeder on display at the 2018 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park. Credit:Paul Jeffers

So far, he has succeeded in building a drone.Prime Minister since April 2009, Najib has in recent years been rocked by allegations levelled by the US Department of Justice that he received $US681 million in stolen funds from sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), of which he is chairman. Investigations are underway in at least five countries, though Najib has denied any wrongdoing. In January, Mahathir announced his return to lead a coalition of opposition parties in a bid to defeat Najib and the ruling coalition Mahathir once led, which has ruled the country since 1957, the year of Malaysian independence. Mahathir tells Fairfax Media in an interview that beating Najib is going to be "very tricky", but that "Najib has destroyed everything that we have built up in this country. Today he is ruling the country without regard to the rule of law. Mahathir Mohamad speaks to Fairfax Media. Credit:Fadza Ishak

"We are facing the problem of a very dirty election which is unfair to the opposition, skewed towards giving Najib victory. So this is against all our beliefs in a system of democracy, the rule of law and all that. It has all been abandoned." Mahathir, Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister, ruled the country as an autocrat; his championing of democracy and the rule of law has left many pundits scratching their heads. And that's where the story takes a Shakespearean twist: Mahathir has agreed to seek a royal pardon for Anwar and to step aside so Anwar can replace him as prime minister if the opposition wins the election. For a country that has grown relatively prosperous since independence under a succession of mildly autocratic rulers and a near one-party system, the next few months promise an extraordinary, bare-knuckle political fight. But can the opposition parties actually take power and bring political change to Malaysia after all this time?

Despite the bewildering 1MDB scandal and the unlikely alliance of Mahathir and Anwar, the answer is probably no, according to University of Malaya politics professor and columnist Edmund Terence Gomez. Gomez says that to win, Mahathir and Anwar have to muster sufficient support in the Malay heartland states, and potentially the Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah, to get over the line. That's something they will struggle to do. Unlikely alliance: Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad at a rally in Shah Alam, Malaysia, earlier this month, with opposition leader Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. Credit:AP The key factor in deciding the result will not necessarily be policies but rather an electoral boundary redistribution which will be pushed through parliament in the next couple of weeks, and which will favour the government and likely ensure Najib gets over the line. "Najib will likely win a simply majority to form government, even if he loses the popular vote," Gomez says, "but things could change, you cant ignore the Mahathir factor. The electorate in the Malay heartland now has a choice between two leaders, a sitting prime minister and a popular former prime minister."

"The question is can Mahathir convince people Najib doesnt have the moral right to continue as prime minister because of the serious allegations of corruption against him?" The alliance between Mahathir and Anwar marks the coming together of "deadly enemies", Gomez says, but it may not be enough. "Politics is about the coming-together of strange bedfellows. The common agenda is to remove Najib. "Is it politically savvy? Yes. Is it difficult to fathom? Yes. Thats why there is disillusionment that the opposition is led by the man who contributed to many of the problems in this country. But politically it makes sense." Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, is also an MP and is currently serving as deputy opposition leader to Mahathir in the four-party Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) coalition.

"It's a bit surreal": Wan Azizah Wan Ismail speaks to Fairfax Media at the Kuala Lumpur hospital where her husband is admitted for shoulder surgery. Credit:Fadza Ishak In an interview with Fairfax Media, she admits to mixed feelings about being on the same side as Mahathir. "It's a bit surreal. Is this really happening? But yes it is and of course for me it shows how bad the situation is that the former prime minister who actually handpicked Datuk Seri [Najib] as prime minister - it has come to this stage where he [Mahathir] actually wants to get rid of the man that he chose himself." Both Mahathir and Wan Azizah are outraged by the 1MDB scandal, and the opposition will attempt to capitalise on it during the campaign, but Gomez isn't sure it will sway votes as it "is way over the head of most rural folk". It will, however, have some bite among the educated middle classes, though other scandals, such as in a land distribution agency, are better understood and will help the opposition more.

Gomez predicts a nasty, negative campaign in which the perennial issue of race will also play a part. Malaysia is a racially diverse state of ethnic Malays, Chinese and Indians in which the electoral boundaries favour the Malay population. Activists from the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih), march during a rally in Kuala Lumpur in 2016. Credit:AP The redrawing of boundaries for the 222-seat parliament is expected to deliver an even more unbalanced electoral map that favours the ruling party, with some seats to have as many as 160,000 voters and others less than a quarter of that number. Griffith University Asia Institute lecturer Lee Morgenbesser predicts that gerrymandering will ensure Najib's government retains power. "It is highly likely that we will see the most extreme display of disproportion in recent memory. This heightened level of manipulation is owing to the unpopularity of [Najib] and the peculiar threat posed by Mahathir," he says.The US-born British citizen Browder is the chief executive and founder of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment management fund specialising in Russian markets. According to The Economist he used to be one of Vladimir Putins most vocal cheerleaders. But his company was working to expose corruption in the companies it held an interest in, to reduce the "corruption discount" on the shares. State-controlled Gazprom was one of his targets. And suddenly Browder found himself blacklisted as a threat to national security, his business raided, his employees harassed and worse. In 2008, Browders tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was imprisoned on false tax evasion charges after exposing a $300 million fraud by Russian interior ministry officials. Magnitsky died 11 months into his prison sentence  without a trial - after a vicious beating by prison orderlies. Browder made it his mission to push so-called Magnitsky laws around the world. These laws enable authorities to seize the assets of anyone who profited from human rights abuses and deny them visas. Decent Russians

Browder says his beef is not with the Russian people. Theres 144 million decent Russians. Most of the people here (at Hermitage) are Russian, my wife is Russian. Im very partial towards Russians, but Im not partial towards Russian criminals who are running the country right now. Hes received death threats. US intelligence has told him a kidnapping plot has been hatched against him. Russia repeatedly attempts to extradite him to face a prison sentence imposed in absentia. Theres a whole program of personal attacks on me from propaganda all the way up to murder, he says. Its a full-on, well-organised, fully resourced program to try to destroy me. It requires a lot of effort [for me] to stay intact. His first legislative success was in the US in 2012. My pitch to [legislators] was: should we allow Russian torturers and murderers to come into America and should we allow them to use the American banking system? Yes or no? Investigators in protective suits at the scene of the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, believed to have been an assassination attempt by the Russian state. Credit:AP

Last year, Canada passed the full set of Magnitsky laws, and the British parliament passed a subset of them  thanks, Browder says, to the government being weakened and distracted by Brexit. Soon, in the wake of the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal, he expects the UK to pass the rest. The executive branch in every country doesnt want this to happen. They do not like having sanctions  it just causes trouble," he says. But now - theres no way they can not do it". The signs are that he is right. On Monday Britain's minister for Security and Economic Crime Ben Wallace told parliament the intention of this government is to make life incredibly hard for people who have committed human rights abuses, and to prevent them and their families [from enjoying] the benefits they currently enjoy. Kleptocrats love London Russian kleptocrats have certainly enjoyed the benefits of London. Its their playground of choice.

Roman Borisovich, founder of the Committee for Legislation Against Moneylaundering in Properties by Kleptocrats (ClampK) has been running "kleptocracy tours" for several years  the latest on Thursday this week. Journalists were crammed into a school bus and ferried around Belgravia and Kensington, past the columned edifices of multimillion-pound mansions bought with tainted money. Roman Borisovich, the main man behind ClampK, with an 'unexplained wealth order'. Credit:Nick Miller According to Naomi Hirst of Global Witness, 86,000 properties in London worth 122 billion ($223 billion) are owned by companies registered offshore. Some are merely set up that way for rich husbands to hide wealth from their wives. Still, billions of pounds' worth of suspicious wealth is invested in the London property market every year. When activists trace the owners, often they turn out to be Russian. Most of these men were not self-made millionaires, Borisovich says. Their money came from transactions with the Russian government.

Either they sold something very dearly or they bought something for pennies, or did both  and they somehow became immensely rich, he says. They are suitcase businessmen who spent a few weeks a year in Britain  though often their wives, mistresses and children are more permanent residents. Borisovich says Russian oligarchs and senior government figures use shell companies and networks of cronies to avoid sanctions  he points to the case of a mid-level Russian oil company official who somehow managed to spend 250 million on London property in just a few years  almost certainly on behalf of one of the billionaires closest to Putin. Browder says Magnitsky laws, properly enforced, can stop this. Next on his list of countries is Australia, as well as Sweden, France and the Netherlands.

National Memorial service for victims of MH17 at St Paul's Cathedral, August 2014. Credit:Eddie Jim He hopes Australia will be an easy win  it is culturally similar to Britain, the US and Canada, it has a good sense of right and wrong, he says. And it has suffered at the hands of Russia, in the shooting-down of flight MH17. We have the product, we have the distribution, we need to get the last mile, Browder says. He is corralling an alliance of human rights activists and NGOs, encouraging them to use their contacts to motivate legislators. He wants to get a handful of "Magnitsky champions" in parliament to put pressure on the government. Magnitsky laws are not just tools to attack Putin, Browder says. Indeed, he doesnt think they should be used politically. They are for tackling human rights abuse.

Australia reluctant In Australia, the laws would also have a wide effect, Browder says. I think theres a lot of low-hanging fruit in China in terms of human rights abuses  people involved in the security services, people involved in arresting booksellers and arresting and torturing Tibetan monks. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has pushed back against the idea of Magnitsky laws in Australia, saying we already put financial sanctions on entities and individuals as a result of Russian aggression. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop: resisted calls for Magnitsky law. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

But human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC, who has worked with Browder since the early days of his trouble with Russia, says more needs to be done. The power to deny visas to unwanted people is applied haphazardly and occasionally. International cooperation is failing, he says. Democratic countries have to look to their own sovereign laws to deal with these human rights abusers who want to play in Western casinos, put their cash in Western banks and their children in Western schools and their parents in Western hospitals. Magnitsky laws can target the lower echelons of corruption - the train drivers to Auschwitz - and if Australia does not join its allies in passing such laws, it risks creating a perverse incentive that will attract dirty money, Robertson says. It is an international democratic effort and Australia should step up to the plate. Julie Bishop has been consistent in pledging Australias support to an international rules-based order, but what do you do when those international rules are not accepted? Vladimir Ashurkov is the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation founded by Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.Update for 9:30 p.m. EDT: China's Tiangong-1 space station fell to Earth above the southern Pacific Ocean today (April 1) at 8:16 p.m. EDT (0016 GMT on April 2). Read the full story: Farewell, Tiangong-1: Chinese Space Station Crashes in Fiery Finale Over South Pacific

How to Track Tiangong-1 | Crash Odds for You | Tiangong-1 Photos

What is China's Tiangong-1 Station?

Tiangong-1, whose name translates as "Heavenly Palace-1," launched without anyone aboard on Sept. 29, 2011. It settled into an orbit about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above Earth  a little lower than the International Space Station, whose average altitude is 250 miles (400 km).

The 9.4-ton (8.5 metric tons) Tiangong-1 is about 34 feet long by 11 feet wide (10.4 by 3.4 meters) and features 530 cubic feet (15 cubic m) of habitable internal volume. [China's Tiangong-1 Space Lab in Pictures]

Tiangong-1 consists of two components: a "resource module," which contains the space lab's solar-power and propulsion systems, and an "experimental module" that accommodated astronauts and scientific work. The experimental module features two beds and some exercise gear, but it doesn't have a bathroom or kitchen; these latter facilities were provided by the spacecraft that visited Tiangong-1.

And other spacecraft did visit. That was the focus of Tiangong-1's successful mission, after all; the space lab was lofted primarily to test the docking and rendezvous technologies that China will need to build a bona fide space station in Earth orbit, which the nation plans to do by the early 2020s.

China's first-ever in-space docking occurred in early November 2011, when a robotic craft called Shenzhou-8 visited the newly launched Tiangong-1. Two crewed missions to the space lab followed  Shenzhou-9 in June 2012 and Shenzhou-10 in June 2013. Both Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 had three crewmembers, and both missions lasted about two weeks.

Can I Track Tiangong-1 in Space?

Yes. Tiangong-1 is visible to the unaided eye (while it's still in space, of course) and you can spot it if you know when and where to look. The websites Heavens-Above.com and N2YO.com offer ways to find the best times to spot Tiangong-1 for your personal location. N2YO.org also has a widget available that lets you track Tiangong-1in orbit now. Check it out here .

You can also track Tiangong-1 on Space.com's Satellite Tracker page here, powered by N2YO, and also see other spacecraft in orbit today.

Meanwhile, the Aerospace Corp., an indepdent analysis company, has created a live dashboard of Tiangong-1 tracking data that you can use to get up-to-the-minute details on where the space station is in its orbit, where it will most likely fall, and when it will crash to Earth. That dashboard is available here and by clicking the link in the tweet below:

See more

Why is Tiangong-1 falling from space?

Tiangong-1 was designed to keep ticking for just two years, and the Shenzhou-10 visit marked the end of the space lab's operational life; China put it into "sleep mode" shortly thereafter. Originally, Chinese officials had said they planned to de-orbit Tiangong-1 in a controlled fashion, using the craft's thrusters to guide it into Earth's atmosphere. But in March 2016, China announced that Tiangong-1 had stopped sending data back to its handlers. The spacecraft's functions "have been disabled," according to a report at the time by the state-run Xinhua news service.

So a controlled re-entry was no longer in the cards; the space lab would fall back to Earth on its own, pulled down by atmospheric drag.

Tiangong-1 won't be the biggest spacecraft ever to fall uncontrolled from the sky. In July 1979, for example, NASA's 85-ton Skylab space station burned up over the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. Some big chunks survived the fall, and the Australian town of Esperance famously sued NASA $400 for littering. And in February 1991, the Soviet Union's 22-ton Salyut 7 orbital outpost came tumbling down while it was connected to another 22-ton spacecraft called Cosmos 1686. Nobody was aboard Skylab or the Salyut-Cosmos 1686 complex when they hit Earth's atmosphere. (The Soviet-Russian space station Mir was even larger, at about 140 tons. But its March 2001 destruction was a controlled re-entry.)

Where will Tiangong-1 fall to Earth?

Based on Tiangong-1's orbital details, that will happen somewhere between 43 degrees north latitude and 43 degrees south  a huge swath of the globe that stretches from the South Dakota-Nebraska border all the way down to Tasmania.

A map showing the area between 42.8 degrees north and 42.8 degrees south latitudes (in green), over which Tiangong-1 could re-enter. The graph at left shows population density. (Image credit: ESA CC BY-SA IGO 3.0)

That's as specific as the experts can get at the moment. [Biggest Spacecraft to Fall Uncontrolled From Space]

Will any parts of it reach Earth?

Most of Tiangong-1 will break apart and burn up in Earth's atmosphere, but some of the space lab's hardier pieces will probably survive re-entry, experts have said. However, these flaming space-junk chunks will probably splash down in the ocean, which covers about 70 percent of the planet's surface.

And don't worry about death from above: The chances that a piece of Tiangong-1 will hit you are less than 1 in 1 trillion, according to an FAQ published by The Aerospace Corporation.

But if you do stumble across a piece of smoking space wreckage, don't pick it up or breathe in any fumes it may be emitting, the FAQ added: It might be made of, or carrying, toxic material.

Any pieces of Tiangong-1 that survive re-entry will likely fall to Earth along a long but narrow track, according to analyses by The Aerospace Corporation. (Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation)

And by the way: The law of finders-keepers doesn't apply to space junk. "Any pieces of Tiangong-1 that reach the ground, regardless of where they fall, remain property of China until the Chinese government explicitly relinquishes ownership," Robert Pearlman, editor in chief of the space history and memorabilia site (and Space.com partner) collectSPACE, told Space.com. Such ownership is spelled out in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which both China and the United States have signed, Pearlman explained.

Will I be able to see Tiangong-1 in the sky?

In the unlikely event that Tiangong-1 falls to Earth near your house, you may be treated to a nice sky show. "Incandescent objects during this re-entry may be visible and will likely last up to a minute or more, depending on time of day, visibility conditions and the observer's location," the Aerospace Corp. FAQ states.

It's unclear exactly how much money will go up in smoke when Tiangong-1 comes down; China hasn't announced a price tag for the space lab. But in June 2012, Chinese officials did say that the country had spent 39 billion yuan  about $6.1 billion US  on its human-spaceflight program over the past 20 years, according to Spaceflight Now.

What came after Tiangong-1?

Tiangong-1 wasn't the last of its kind. In September 2016, China launched a slightly bigger follow-on called Tiangong-2, which hosted the visiting Shenzhou-11 craft and its three crewmembers in October of that year. China also launched a robotic cargo vehicle called Tianzhou-1, which docked with and refueled Tiangong-2 in April 2017. Tianzhou-1 performed two additional docking-refueling operations before being de-orbited under command from ground controllers in September 2017. (Tiangong-2 is still aloft.)

It doesn't look like there will be a Tiangong-3. After the Tianzhou-1 successes, Chinese officials said that the nation will soon start building and assembling a permanent space station, which crews could visit as early as 2022.

Selected Tiangong-1 stories

China's Tiangong-1 Space Lab Expected to Fall to Earth Over Easter Weekend

The Chinese Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth, But It Probably Won't Hit You

International Campaign Will Monitor Fall of China's Tiangong-1 Space Lab

Guessing Game: When Will China's Space Lab Fall to Earth?

China's First Space Lab Tiangong-1 Reaches End of Mission, Successor Planned

China Set for More Manned Space Missions

China Launches 1st Female Astronaut and 2 Men to Space Lab

'No Chance' Secret X-37B Space Plane Spying on China Module: Expert

2011: A Year of Transition for Human Spaceflight

China Succeeds in First Space Docking by 2 Spaceships

China Launches 1st Space Lab Module Into Orbit for Docking Tests

Multimedia

China's Tiangong-2 Space Lab Mission in Pictures

Gallery: Tiangong-1, China's First Space Laboratory

Photos: China Launches First Space Lab, Tiangong-1

Photos: China's Shenzhou-10 Space Mission in Pictures

Liftoff! Launch Photos of China's Shenzhou-9 Docking Mission

Shenzhou-9: China's 1st Manned Space Docking Mission (Pictures)

Shenzhou-8: Photos From China's 1st Space Docking Mission

Photos: China's First Space Station

Space Station Evolution: 6 Amazing Orbital Outposts

Tiangong-2: China's Space Lab for Long Missions (Infographic)

Shenzhou-10 Explained: Chinese Astronauts Head to Space Lab (Infographic)

Shenzhou-9 Explained: China's 1st Female Astronaut Heads to Space Lab (Infographic)

How China's First Space Station Will Work (Infographic)

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+.WASHINGTON  An Alaskan spaceport will host the first launch of a rocket developed by a stealthy startup company as soon as next week, spaceport officials confirmed March 20.

Alaska Aerospace Corp., which operates Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska (PSCA) on Kodiak Island, said the launch period for the flight of the unidentified vehicle runs from March 27 to April 6. It did not specify when during the day the launch would take place.

A "Local Notice to Mariners" issued by the U.S. Coast Guard March 14 included a notice about a rocket launch planned from PSCA, giving a window of March 26 to April 6. The notice included two caution areas, one in waters immediately south of the spaceport and the other several hundred kilometers to the south-southwest, that mariners should stay clear of during launch operations.

The spaceport is releasing few details about the launch itself. "I can only say PSCA is conducting a launch operation called P120 and it is a commercial California company," said Barry King, director of range operations for Alaska Aerospace, in a March 20 email. "No other details can be provided until after launch."

King did state that the launch would be suborbital and that, being a commercial launch, would require a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. No launch licenses for any vehicles operating from Alaska are included on a publicly available list of active licenses maintained by the FAA, although it is not uncommon for such licenses to be issued shortly before a scheduled launch.

A local newspaper, the Kodiak Daily Mirror, also reported the launch plans, but gave a launch window of April 6-13, a timeframe stated in an earlier Coast Guard notice superseded by the March 14 notice. Craig Campbell, chief executive of Alaska Aerospace, told the newspaper the upcoming flight was "the first truly commercial launch" in the spaceport's history but did not reveal the customer.

One possibility is that the launch is being performed by a little-known startup company known as Astra Space. Alaska Aerospace signed a contract with Astra Space in 2017 to support launches of that company's vehicle from PSCA, according to the minutes of an Alaska Aerospace board of directors meeting in August 2017.

Alaska Aerospace "has a contract with Astra to support the first four launches of their small liquid fuel commercial launch vehicle from PSCA. The first launch is planned for December 2017," the minutes state. It added that it would be the first liquid-propellant launch from the spaceport, which previously had hosted only solid-fuel rockets. "This will be a very innovative launch."

Minutes from a Nov. 2 meeting of the Alaska Aerospace board stated that "Astra is moving forward" with plans, holding weekly planning teleconferences and paying a $100,000 deposit for a launch date. That launch was planned at that time for "possibly February or later."

Astra Space has operations in Alameda, California, where it leases a building from the city in an area that formerly hosted a naval air station. The company was originally known as Ventions and worked on a number of propulsion and other technologies under contracts with NASA and DARPA before reincorporating as Astra Space in 2016. The company's chief executive is Chris Kemp, a former NASA chief technology officer who has been involved with several technology companies since leaving the agency in 2011.

"Astra Space designs, tests, manufactures, and operates next-generation launch services that will enable a new generation of global communications, earth observation, precision weather monitoring, navigation, and surveillance capabilities," a document describing the citys lease of a building to the company states. That work includes development of a rocket called Astra that is 12 meters tall and capable of placing 100 kilograms into low Earth orbit, according to a presentation attached to the lease information.

The company goes by the name Stealth Space Company in some job listings. "We believe that space is the ultimate high ground, and we are on a mission to provide routine access to earth orbit for the entrepreneurs and enterprises that are launching a new generation of services powered by small satellites that will connect, observe, and influence our planet," states the company description on those listings.

In February, a rocket belonging to the company was spotted on the tarmac at the naval air station by a helicopter from San Francisco television station KGO-TV. The rocket appeared to be undergoing ground tests, but the company provided few details about its activities.

Alaska Aerospace has been working for years to attract new users to the spaceport, formerly known as the Kodiak Launch Complex. The launch site last hosted an orbital launch in 2011, when a Minotaur 4 launched the TacSat-4 satellite for the Operationally Responsive Space Office. A failed U.S. Army missile test in August 2014 damaged the spaceport's facilities, which were repaired and rededicated two years later.

At least one other company developing a small launch vehicle is interested in launching from PSCA. Tucson, Arizona-based Vector announced Feb. 15 that it plans to carry out the first orbital launch of its Vector-R rocket from the spaceport no earlier than July. That vehicle is still in development with additional tests planned before its orbital debut.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.



15.12  "Send in the Clowns"

Directed by Alex Chapple

Written by Julie Martin & Brianna Yellen

Reviewed by KathM



The story this week is about Haley, a young woman who meets a man in a clown mask at a club and subsequently disappears. Team SVU searches high and low to find her, eventually bringing a case against the clown to trial without a body. However, is there more to Haley's disappearance than meets the eye? It's SVU; of course there is. Also, we get to see Fin and Stone spend a bit of time with their families, some of which is bittersweet.



At the beginning of the episode we see a man wearing a clown mask slithering around a club with a circus theme. He's looking for someone young to play with, and and the eerie camera view shown from the perspective in the slits in his mask allow us to watch as he surveys the various and sundry women (and their body parts). After reviewing various honeys he settles on a pretty girl dancing with her friend and carrying a while boa. He slides up and offers to buy the girls a drink. Non-alcoholic, of course; turns out that it's a 16 and up club, which is a great change from the usual we sneaked into an adult club because we're from the stix and have never seen a bar before. SVU trope. The girl with the boa is Haley who, with her friend Jenni, is up from Beaver Falls, PA for Spring Break. Haley is a piano prodigy, Jenni offers, apropos of nothing. Oh, and if you watch the scene where Clown Boy is talking to them, you can see a much more terrifying man dressed up as an evil mime in full makeup. Frankly, I thought he was scarier than the Clown Boy by a mile.



Haley dances and hangs out with Clown Boy, and when curfew calls Jenni can't find Haley. Nobody remembers her in the club, and as Jenni stands on the street screaming into her phone as she leaves Haley what is most likely another voicemail, you get the idea that Something Bad Has Happened. Or may have happened. It's hard to know at this point.



Instead of going back to the hotel and talking to her chaperons, Jenni spends the entire night going to places that Haley might want to go, like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. In the middle of the night. In New York City. It seems that the story could easily have become What Happened to Jenni, but the episode didn't go there. Instead she and the two chaperons (James Turner and Charlotte Cooke) appear at SVU, desperately hoping for help to find Haley. Benson talks to Charlotte in her office, where she gives she the standard Small Town Angel Lost in the Big City story: Haley is a good kid, no problems, no boyfriend, close to parents, didn't know anyone in NYC, and a music prodigy (this, it would seen, is still more evidence that Haley is sweet and blameless and the Big City ate her).



Suddenly, out of his SPAM folder, Turner finds a video that Haley sent him last night. This is where the episode begins to go wonky for me. Because the video seems specifically designed to give the police everything they need to find her, or at least to find Clown Boy. As Fin, Benson, and Turner watch, we see: Haley frightened in a car, shots of Clown Boy, who is driving, saying menacing things, then Clown Boy suddenly pulling off his mask, clearly showing his face to the camera. There's also a shot of a wrapper on the floor for Balzarini Brothers Butcher Shop, a popular shop in Brooklyn.



I'm sorry, but while I buy that Haley was able to get some shots with her camera, I doubt they're the shots she sent Turner. She had clear images of everything she needed to tell her story, and Clown Boy didn't seem to have any problem with her shooting his face, masked or not. She doesn't seem to be hiding what she's doing, which is not something one is able to do when one is actually in trouble. Not that she didn't end up being in trouble, but I'm just saying.



Carisi and Rollins head off to Balzarini Brothers Butcher Shop where, coincidentally, Clown Boy works. In the back. Chopping meat. His name is Vinny Drago, which is a great name for a suspect, and he has some convictions in his past, including a restraining order against him filed by his last girlfriend. Seems the threatened to cut her head off with a cleaver. Not what you want to have on your record, particularly when you're being questioned about a missing Musical Prodigy. He says that they went back to his place, where they didn't have sex because she was only sixteen. Then he conked out on the couch and when he woke up she was gone. Clown Boy = Ultimate Party Machine.

To prove that Haley isn't at his place, Vinny heads over to his apartment with Carisi, Rollins, and a couple of uniforms. Oh, Vinny, it sucks to be you. Not only is there blood on a shower curtain and inside the tub, we also see a bloody white feather boa on the bathroom floor, So, back Vinny goes to Interrogation, where we find out still more incriminating evidence against him. Was he at home all night like he said? NO! He made two calls to a burner cell, then was seen on a security camera unloading a big, body-shaped bag near the waterfront. It is not looking good for Vinny right now. But wait, he has an explanation! He's been selling meat past its sell by date to a restaurant meat buyer called Jose for a little extra cash. Vinny's boss has no idea if it's true, and SVU can't find Jose. So the only recourse they have is to search dump sites for Haley's body.While all of this Vinny stuff has been going on, Haley's Ma and Pa (the Sadlers) arrive from Beaver Falls, anxious and angry. Dad is a big bear of a man, desperate for to find his Princess and tear Vinny to shreds. Ma is also worried, but in a kind of annoyed, distracted way. She blames Pa for the whole because he let Haley come on the trip, and she's not speaking from from a place of histrionic love and concern. Hummm...interesting dynamic. The pair go on television standing in front of the courthouse with a picture of Haley, and Pa talks about how much he oh wait they. Right, they love Haley. Okay, at this point I'm thinking incest, but not really. It just sounds like it. The television news also show a video of Haley playing the piano and a lovely shot of Vincent in jail where he mumbles creepily that they will never find Haley's body. I think he wants to come across as innocent, but he isn't bright enough to realize that what he's doing isn't cutting it. Cutting get it? HA! Since he is sitting right next to his lawyer, and his lawyer is not a guest star, I know that most likely Vinny has nothing to do with Haley's disappearance.They don't find Haley's body in the dump, possibly due to a scheduling error, but her parents make for lovely camera fodder when they arrive at the dump themselves. Pa Sadler has to be held back by Carisi when he tries to get to the trash bags himself, shouting that he has to find his daughter. I think that will be running on the late news on every channel.I've been bored and only mildly interested in what's happened to the Haley the Music Prodigy for some time, but it's when SVU doesn't find any evidence of Haley and Stone still decides to put Vinny on trial that I know it's all wrong. Because if anything had happened to Haley we would have seen her by now, maybe in pieces or in a cage, waiting with some other captive appetizers. Or she could be on the run, or hiding from her Pa. The thing is, Vinny didn't have anything to do with it. If SVU were really interested in finding Jose, Vinny's meat-buying friend, they could have asked around the various butcher shops and most likely found him. And I don't see them running any kind of background check on anyone, like the chaperons or the parents. They aren't doing anything, and it doesn't look like anything is going to happen. At this point, why am I worried about Haley? I'm not.We then visit the trial, which is pointless. Why is Stone trying Vinny with no body and circumstantial evidence is beyond me. Doesn't seem like something he can win. The witnesses for the prosecution on Day One consists of Jenni, who talks about how she and Haley met Vinny/Clown Boy and he was the last one she'd seen Haley with (relevant), and that she recognizes Vinny despite the fact that he was wearing a mask because of his creepy eyes (calls for speculation, or something). Pa Sadler also appears on the stand, and his testimony is about how much he loves Haley and what a good girl she is. I'm not sure how he's relevant to the case at this point, but he adds some emotion to the courtroom and gives the jury what a great person Haley is/was. Vinny's lawyer has no questions for either witness, but reiterates that the prosecution has no body. I like the way he shrugs when he says it; I'm shrugging, too. I really want something to happen. I'm bored and I've eaten all of the ice cream with nothing to show for it. Scar me, SVU. Creep me out. Something!In the hallway the Sadler's tell Stone they are worried about what the defense lawyer said about there not being a body, and how they will impact the trial. Stone reassures them and then James Turner, one of the chaperons who had been standing with Ma and Pa, says that maybe they should just hold off on the trial until they find her body. AH HA! Haley is alive and he has her stashed somewhere! That, or his brain is incapable of processing basic concepts because you don't put a trial on hold. I don't think they can try Vinny again because Double Jeopardy, body or no. It isn't like pausing Netflix when you go get ice cream. Stone reminds Turner that he's up first in the morning to testify for the prosecution, and Stone will see him there tomorrow. Um, no, There is no way Turner's coming back.In the morning Stone goes into the SVU squad room and said that Turner didn't show up for trial. Surprise! Suddenly SVU is interested in Turner, to the point of having Carisi and Rollins drive all the way to Beaver Falls (a six hour drive) to talk to Turner's wife instead of just calling her. Mrs. Turner did talk to her husband last night, as a matter of fact; he was nervous about testifying. Yeah, I'll be he does. She then goes on to say that even though Haley is dead (it's a tragedy), it did kind of annoy her how much time her spouse spent with Haley, going to concerts with her and watching her recitals. Talking about her constantly. Hello, warning bells! Now, she only met Haley once, when she came over to borrow some sound equipment from Turner's studio, and they were down there for hours. Really, honey? Really? You have NO idea why they'd be down there? I just can't...when Carisi and Rolling head downstairs they do find all kind of sound equipment and instruments and, oh, some not remotely pornish pictures of Haley. I mean, she's licking a lollipop and in one shot has her blouse unbuttoned, but nothing worth selling. So now they, too, know that Turner most likely has something to do with Haley's disappearance.Benson is talking to the Sadlers, who suddenly remember that Turner does have a friend in NYC. His name is Alan Hubert; he and Turner worked on a dog food jingle long ago. Hubert is now rich and beyond full of himself, hurrying toward his car because he's late for a meeting with Lin-Manuel. He does manage to tell the detectives that Turner is a loser, while he, Hubert, is not. He did feel sorry for Turner the last time Hubert talked to him, though. So he gave him the key to his house in Oyster Bay. Three guesses where he and Haley are!Yep, there they are, cuddled up all naked in a bedroom together. Could we not have gotten to this sooner? As they pull Turner out of bed Haley begins screeching that she loves James, she loves him!!! In fact, she tells Rollins on the way back to NYC that they were going to move to Vienna together and he'd write sonatas for her to perform all over the world. Which would be interesting because she's supposed to be dead and all. For his part, Turner thinks of their love as a fugue, and he and Haley fit together as perfectly as two instruments whose names I blocked out because ew.Oh, and Vinny? Haley is sorry about that. But he looked creepy and thought he'd be someone they could throw some suspicion on as she and James made their getaway. How could they know they'd picked the one patsy dressed as a clown in New York at that club that night who threatened a women with a meat cleaver? Surely nobody would arrest him and put him on trial or anything, right.I've moved on from bored to baffled about these idiots, and I must see what's going to happen.Now Haley, Ma and Pa Sadler, and Turner are all in the squad room with the SVU posse, and all hell breaks loose. You know Ma? Well, as she tries to get close enough to Turner to kill him, it comes out that Turner had seduced HER about 17 years ago. Math, anyone? Turner has been sleeping with his own daughter!!! And as Pa breaks down at the betrayal of the one-off between him and the creepier than a clown Turner, Haley is happy that her dad isn't a garbage man, after all. I'm sorry, that? She and ActualPa are both just so very, very, very messed up. Then Turner gets arrested for incest, and that's about it.The best part about the end of the episode where Benson throws in a blase explanation to Stone about GSA (Genetic sexual attraction), which is what ActualPa and Haley were experiencing. Apparently it's becoming more common. Ick. This would have been an interesting topic to explore in more detail, but I think Law and Order: CI did it years ago. Or SVU. I can't remember.So.This episode just lumbered along without very much actual sleuthing until the very end of the episode with the shocking reveal. Frankly, I could have done with it sooner. Or intimated that something interesting might happen. At some point. There is just nothing going on until the end, when the episode speeds up and they toss in a much as possible. I'm actually past caring; I wasn't even freaked out about ActualPa Turner and Haley and we saw her psychotic love. Honestly, I laughed when Ma Sadler told them. It just seems thrown together, you didn't learn anything at all about Haley until the end, when you found out she was delusional and possibly dangerous. Isn't she supposed to be the focus of the episode, even a little?But there were some bright spots.One was Fin's birthday party in the squad room, with a cake picked out by his baby grandson, Jaden (hate the name). Fin's son Ken and his husband Alejandro have brought Jaden and his choice of a cake (with a clown on top!) and balloons and birthday cheer. Fin is thrilled to see them all, and it's good to see given the history he and Ken have had throughout the show. Ken sets the theme for the episode by saying that regardless of how busy their lives are, Family's family.Stone also spends time with a loved one; his sister, Pamela. He tells Benson that Pamela is schizophrenic, and their father visited her every week at her clinic in Upstate New York. Now that he's back in the Big Apple, it's his turn. When he visits Pamela in a nice-looking house, she calls him Daddy as she takes the gift she's given her. She has no idea who he is, and it no doubt hurts him that she thinks Stone is his dad, but he stays for a while. Why? Because Family is family.And some families, as we've seen in the last ten minutes of this episode, are creepy and deserve their own scary clown masks.: In the third season of Law and Order, Ben Stone mentions Pamela in the episode Skin Deep.STAMFORD  Never mind the recent snow and the ongoing chill  its cafe season.

It began March 15 and lasts until Nov. 30. Its the time each year when the city allows restaurants to set up tables on sidewalks for outdoor dining.

Its good for restaurant-goers, who enjoy eating alfresco.

Its good for restaurant owners, who like the extra tables and the customers they attract.

Its good for the city, which collects $250 for each permit and $2 for each square foot of sidewalk that becomes an outdoor cafe.

Its a win-win-win.

Except theres one loser.

Pedestrians.

They have trouble making their way along sidewalks when restaurant owners violate the outdoor-dining ordinance  which requires a clear and unobstructed path at least 4 feet wide. Paths sometimes are blocked with tables, chairs, A-frame menu signs, space heaters, planters and other objects.

Its a particular problem for people in wheelchairs or those who rely on walkers, canes and guide dogs.

Thats why the outdoor-dining ordinance ended up on the agenda of the Board of Representatives Legislative & Rules Committee last week. City Rep. John Zelinsky, D-11, wanted legislators to discuss whether the law should be amended to enhance compliance.

Maybe there should be bigger fines, Zelinsky said.

But city Rep. Benjamin Lee, D-15, the committee chairman, said the penalties are sufficient. The ordinance says that any restaurant cited by the zoning enforcement officer has five days to correct a violation or face a $90 fine. If a restaurant is cited a second time during the same cafe season, its outdoor-dining permit could be revoked for a week. The permit may be revoked for 30 days for a third violation.

Its not really the ordinance, Lee said. Its a question of enforcement.

Two sides

Zoning Enforcement Officer James Lunney told the committee he receives 10 to 20 complaints a season, and he resolves them by visiting restaurants and asking owners to comply. Lunney said he does not recall an instance when a citation was issued.

I have seen violations, he said. Im not saying there are no problems  but I dont think (restaurants) are blatantly disregarding the ordinance.

But Lunney acknowledged that his staff of three, including himself, is far too small to conduct all the inspections needed in a booming city.

At that point, Phillip Magalnick, a downtown resident who is blind and navigates sidewalks with a guide dog, got up and left the meeting.

I was so frustrated, Magalnick, president of the southwestern Connecticut chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, said afterward. He is a member of the Stamford Mayors Committee on Access for All, which has been trying to increase compliance with the outdoor-dining ordinance since the first cafe season in 2016, Magalnick said.

The zoning enforcement officer said we dont have the people to do it, but were doing it. It cant be both, he said. The zoning enforcement officer said the problems are minor, but on the Access for All Committee, its the No. 1 topic.

No teeth

During the height of cafe season, youll see a bunch of violations every day, Magalnick said. Someone who is able-bodied probably thinks a chair in the middle of a sidewalk is an inconvenience. To someone with a disability  or even a senior citizen or someone pushing a baby stroller  its a hazard. It sends a message that were not welcome downtown.

Frank Mercede, chairman of the Access for All Committee, said it was difficult to attend the Legislative & Rules meeting because it was not a public hearing and they were not allowed to speak.

The biggest problem that was not brought out is that when Lunney said he would go to a restaurant and they would fix it, an hour later they put the tables back again, Mercede said. There is a small group of repeat offenders that keep getting away with it. Nobody ever got their hand slapped. If somebody did, word would get out and it would deter the others.

Mercede, whose daughter is in a wheelchair, said he thinks about half the restaurants with outdoor-dining permits comply with the rules.

Sandra Goldstein, president of the Downtown Special Services District, said she thinks 98 percent of restaurants comply.

There are a few  who are serial non-compliers who push the envelope. We have, on a number of occasions, asked the zoning enforcement officer to deal with that, Goldstein said. People who are challenged have the right to navigate the downtown streets. The outdoor-dining parameters are set with those people in mind, as they should be.

Table police

The downtown is patrolled by DSSD goodwill ambassadors who Goldstein said look for tables and chairs encroaching on sidewalks and notify restaurant owners.

Everybody can make a mistake once or twice, but I dont have much sympathy for serial offenders, Goldstein said.

Magalnick said he has complained for two years, to little avail.

Nothing is done. There is no follow-up. There are few, if any, citations, he said. I think there is too much money to lose for these restaurants, and the city is not going to shut down their outdoor cafes.

He has hope, however, when he learned what happened after he left the Legislative & Rules meeting. A member of that committee, city Rep. Jonathan Jacobson, D-12, heads the Board of Representatives Operations Committee, which can tackle matters of enforcement.

Jacobson said his committee will take up outdoor dining.

I think things can happen if we are allowed to get our side of this out, Magalnick said.

Mercede said he is encouraged.

Lets get in front of the right committee and share our points, he said.BRUSSELS - President Donald Trump's decision to make John Bolton his new national security adviser ricocheted around the globe Friday, unsettling allies and raising alarm that a hawk who advocates military action against North Korea and Iran will have the president's ear.

From Berlin and Jerusalem to Seoul and Tokyo, U.S. allies who have been relieved that Trump's unconventional rhetoric on foreign policy often has not translated to concrete policy are bracing for a shift. Following the nomination last week of the hawkish Mike Pompeo to become secretary of state, Bolton's elevation means that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is the lone survivor among a trifecta of advisers who pushed Trump to hew closer to conventional foreign policy positions.

Now, Bolton's regime-change rhetoric toward North Korea and Iran may lead to a hardening of policy, allies believe. Europeans, who widely support a 2015 deal to restrict Iran's nuclear program, fear its imminent demise. Some Israelis - even those who criticized the pact - are also concerned. And in South Korea and Japan, there are fears that Trump is preparing for war if talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, expected by May, fail to yield breakthroughs.

More broadly, the appointment has fueled worries that the Trump administration is turning its back on Washington's decades-long role as the preeminent guarantor of global stability.

"We would desperately wish to see the United States in a constructive leading role as a steward of the international system," said Norbert Rottgen, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the lower house of the German Parliament. He said he fears that Washington is moving in the opposite direction.

"We are concerned that the policy is coming closer to the rhetoric," he said. Trump "has now surrounded himself with people who share his intuitions and his general views."

Some leaders dreaded increased turmoil.

"We are at the greatest risk of real conflict than we have been for many years, perhaps decades," said Xenia Wickett, head of the Americas program at Chatham House, a London think tank.

The appointment inflamed concerns about the prospects of a conflict with North Korea. H.R. McMaster, the outgoing national security adviser, was no dove on Pyongyang, repeatedly talking about military options to make it give up its nuclear weapons program. But Bolton, who has advocated preemptive strikes, moves into the president's inner circle as the South Korean president prepares to hold a summit with Kim Jong Un at the end of April, with Trump following suit in May.

"Trump is sending a message to the regime, telling them that they should come out to talks in order to avoid such drastic military backlash," said Kim Sung-han, a former South Korean vice foreign minister who is now dean of Korea University's Graduate School of International Studies.

Bolton has advocated a hard line against North Korea since he served as undersecretary of state for arms control and ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration.

At that time, the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency regularly denounced him, calling him "human scum and a bloodsucker."

Bolton's ascent raises the stakes of the diplomatic effort now underway.

Many national security analysts say the type of strike he has argued for would put the greater Seoul region, home to 25 million South Koreans, at risk of a counterstrike. Japan has also been increasingly concerned about becoming collateral damage, as North Korea last year fired several missiles over Japanese territory and threatened to strike American military bases there.

"I am particularly worried that if the Trump-Kim summit fails, Bolton will take that as proof that we must hit North Korea," said Robert Kelly, an American who teaches international relations at Pusan National University in South Korea.

In Europe, even before the Bolton move, leaders were gathered for a two-day summit in Brussels that was dominated by concerns about Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum, another area that threatens the transatlantic relationship that has underpinned Western stability since the end of the Cold War.

For Europeans, Bolton is a throwback to the era of clashes with Washington at the outset of the war in Iraq in 2003. This time, though, he will have far more power than in his Bush-era role.

"This is a person who guarantees allies will be driven away, allies will be insulted, allies will be ignored," said Reinhard Butikofer, a German member of the European Parliament. "It may have been forgotten a year into the Trump presidency, but it used to be kind of common sense that in a dangerous world, alliances are what make us strong."

The appointment comes days after EU and U.S. officials clashed over the future of the Iran nuclear deal, which Europeans are trying desperately to preserve ahead of a key deadline for U.S. adherence to the pact.

The Trump administration has said it will not sign a new sanctions waiver for Iran by May 12 unless changes are made to the agreement on grounds that Tehran has not lived up to the "spirit" of the deal. Bolton has been a critic of the accord, which Europeans see as critical to avoiding war in their immediate neighborhood.

Before the appointment, optimism had been growing in Europe that Washington could be talked into some sort of compromise. Now the shifting currents have some here throwing up their hands, frustrated at yet another likely policy shift from their most important partner.

"With the appointment of Mike Pompeo on the one side, and John Bolton on the other, the group of personalities who have never made any mystery of their opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran is growing," said Pierre Vimont, a retired senior French diplomat who has been involved in past negotiations with Iran.

The official response from Iranian officials was muted Friday.

The spokesman of the Guardian Council, a body of influential clerics, criticized Bolton as a supporter of the Mujahideen-e Khalq, an exile group that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic republic.

And an adviser to the speaker of parliament said that Trump had chosen Bolton as part of a more militarized approach to the Middle East. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that the United States only understands the "language of power" and that Iran's military arsenal is essential to communicating that message.

In Israel, where many are critical of the Iran deal, Bolton's appointment was widely welcomed by members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government. Education Minister Naftali Bennett called Bolton an "extraordinary security expert, experienced diplomat and a stalwart friend of Israel."

But even in Jerusalem, his return stirred some concern.

While Netanyahu has lobbied for the United States to "fix or nix" the Iran nuclear deal, some Israeli security officials have warned against a complete collapse of the pact - a prospect that may be more likely with Bolton as national security adviser. They argue that a flawed agreement is better than none at all. Bolton has said that the deal was a "strategic mistake" and should be "abrogated."

Meanwhile, Israel is likely to be at the sharp end of any conflict with Iran, something Bolton has repeatedly floated.

The Israeli security establishment is split, said Ofer Zalzberg, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. "There is a concern that he's primarily an ideologue and there's a risk to stability, and others who say he has decades of experience."

Bolton's ascension further infuriated Palestinians already angered by the planned move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

The appointment of Bolton, who has argued that the Palestinians do not have a right to self-determination, "adds insult to injury," said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee.

"This is unprecedented, this lethal combination of hard-liners, Israel-firsters, who are in charge of decision-making in the U.S."

- - -

Fifield reported from Tokyo and Morris reported from Jerusalem. The Washington Post's Min Joo Kim in Seoul and Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem contributed to this report.Sustainability has gone from a fringe concern to a key factor in countless successful businesses in under a decade. It can be seen in everything, from finance and consumer goods, to education and transportation -- not to mention condoms.

Yes, condoms.

Jeffrey and Meika Hollender are the father-daughter team who founded Sustain Natural, a nontoxic, eco-friendly vegan condom line, in 2013. As Meika Hollender told the New York Times last year -- and as Jeffrey Hollender wrote for the Stanford Social Innovation Review in 2015 -- the latex in Sustain condoms is produced at a Fair Trade rubber plantation in India, and produced at a solar-powered factory. Most significantly, the condoms do not contain nitrosamines, which are found in many popular brands and have been tabbed as a possible carcinogen.

Related: Figuring Out What Can Sink Your Business -- and How You Can Save It

Everyone is thinking about the ingredients in their food and their makeup, Meika Hollender told the Times. But no one is thinking about the ingredients that go in the products they put in the most intimate parts of our body.

The advent of Sustain is in keeping with Jeffrey Hollenders efforts at sustainability; he also founded Seventh Generation, which produces green cleaning products, baby diapers and laundry detergent.

It is also in keeping with a more widespread trend that has seen major players take stock of how their practices affect the outside world. In adapting to this global practice, the companies that are able to accommodate a more conscientious view are seeing the benefits. When it comes to being sustainable, one thing is for certain: its not just for niche businesses anymore.

According to the 2016 State of Sustainable Business Survey -- which included responses from 300 business leaders and 152 global companies -- 49 percent of the respondents indicated that sustainability is among their CEOs top five priorities, up from 35 percent a year earlier. The survey further revealed that sustainability is at least fairly well-integrated in nearly 70 percent of companies, and 72 percent of the respondents indicated that the concept is a prominent part of the companys stated purpose.

Related: How These Entrepreneurs are Working Towards Creating a Conscious and Sustainable Fashion Industry

Faisal Hoque, the founder of a business-management company known as Shadoka, has long advocated for sustainability, going so far as to quote management guru Peter Drucker: Indeed the modern organization was expressly created to have results on the outside, that is, to make a difference in its society or its economy.

Hoque also outlined seven fundamentals of sustainable business growth:

Authentic purpose A powerful brand Partnership and collaboration Customer retention Community Repeatable sales Flexible, adaptive leadership

Jeffrey Hollender noted in his piece for the Stanford Social Innovation Review that companies can, and should, strive to be net positive, a concept succinctly explained by The Guardian: Businesses have positive and negative impacts on the environment and society. For a company to be net positive, the latter need to greater than the former. Or, as the Guardian further explained: The natural world and society should be better off with companies than without them ... or so the theory says.

Jeffrey Hollender believes he has achieved that with Sustain. Besides being nitrosamine-free, his condoms are low in proteins that cause allergies and packaged in recycled materials. They are also produced in a factory, that in addition to being solar-powered, meets standards for waste reduction, water collection and energy savings, and one in which employees are paid three times the minimum wage.

Further, Sustain donates 10 percent of its profits to womens reproductive healthcare. It is employee- and female-owned, and its goal, Jeffrey Hollender writes, is empowering women -- altering the negative attitudes and impacting the cultural restraints that result in what he described as dangerously low levels of condom use among young American women.

Related: Insights About Leadership, Happiness and the Future From Arianna Huffington, Will.i.am and Other Global Thought Leaders

Jeffrey Hollender cited BT, a telecommunications giant based in the United Kingdom, as another company that has embraced sustainability. BT has set as its goal the reduction of carbon emissions by at least three times the companys current footprint by 2020.

Another European company, a home-improvement outfit known as Kingfisher, has four big goals, coupled with 12 major targets, all of them centered on saving energy and money while reducing environmental harm. The goal is to achieve all of them no later than 2025.

Then there is IKEA, the furniture retailer. Among its many initiatives, it is striving toward 100 percent renewable energy, as well as the sourcing of all its wood from more sustainable sources by 2020. According to the companys website, its various commitments have resulted in $1 billion in climate action.

Not only is it possible in this day and age to have a sustainable company, it is also increasingly a necessity.

Related:

What Condoms Can Teach Us About Sustainability

5 Technology Trends that Will Dominate the Consumer Electronics Market in Coming Years

#3 Steps to Turn Your Passion into a Leading Career



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com

M y love affair with Ireland began firmly on the east coast, with Dublins charm and Wexfords beauty, but my allegiance now belongs on the west coast - and this is very much thanks to Ballynahinch Castle Hotel.

Ballynahinch Castle has been a hidden jewel of the Connemara area for over seven centuries, from the recorded battle between the OFlahertys and OMalleys in 1384, to being built by Donal O'Flaherty and Grace OMalley in 1546, and as a shelter for the starving during the Great Famine of 1847 - the castle is steeped in history.

Now a world-class luxury hotel, the castle is set on 700 acres of woodland and rivers in the heart of Connemara, Co. Galway with a backdrop of the Twelve Bens Mountain Range. In short, it is the closest you will ever get to absolute tranquillity.

Where is it?

About an hours drive from Galway, or three hours drive from Dublin, Ballynahinch is located in the Connemara countryside on the West of Ireland.

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Found along the Wild Atlantic Way, Ballynahinch is the perfect base to explore the rugged coast and sweeping countryside.

Style

Grand, elegant and utterly charming, Ballynahinch has a way of making you feel at home. With a number of different sitting rooms where you can cosy up by one of the six open log fires, you wont falter to find a nook to relax in.

Many of the rooms overlook the picturesque river, where you can take in the stunning sunrises or sunsets and simply bask in the beauty of natures hues. Throughout the hotel there is a country house feel, from the framed memorabilia on the walls, to the cloakroom filled with wellington boots and fishing gear and the bookcases filled with old-timey novels - its a place that draws you in and makes you want to keep going back for more.

One of the best things about Ballynahinch is the staff. From the get-go we were greeted by Patrick, the general manager who made sure we felt comfortable throughout our stay. His warmth and friendliness was mirrored by all the other members of the staff who make sure every guest feels like theyre at home.

Which room?

While all of the rooms are exquisite, our pick is the riverside suite. With unrivaled views over the Salmon river and woodlands, these rooms are the pinnacle of luxury and the ultimate place to relax and unwind.

The bathroom has a large, luscious bath tub, separate shower and two sinks for your convenience. It also has a separate dressing room and luxe furnishings throughout.

Food & Drink

Just past reception you will find the Owenmore Restaurant, which perches above the hotels terraces and overlooks the idyllic river. Even when dark, with no street lights around you are treated to a sea of sparkling stars while you enjoy your meal - and enjoy you will.

The Owenmore Restaurant boasts an exquisite seven-course menu for just 65 (56), with the majority made with local produce from the surrounding farmlands. For the starter you can choose from pigeon breast, goats cheese with wild garlic (my pick, and it was divine) and seared scallops among others. The mains include halibut, lamb and beef - whichever you choose will be a meal to remember. Oh, and go for the lemon tart for dessert, trust me.

The Owenmore Restaurant / Ballynahinch Castle Hotel

You can also have a bite to eat at the Fisherman's Pub & Ranji Room which have a number of pub food type meals to choose from - all with their own Ballynahinch twist. Before dinner, make sure you take a seat in the bar and order the Ballynahinch specialty gin cocktail for a fruity take on a gin martini.

During the day, the Owenmore transforms into a delightful breakfast venue for the hotel guests, making use of the morning sunshine streaming through. You can choose from a buffet breakfast - with cooked gammon you can slice yourself - or order from the table menu. I went for the mixed grill which came with the Irish breakfast staples, black and white pudding. It even won the prestige Georgina Campbell Irish Breakfast Awards Best Breakfast in a 4-star hotel.

If this isnt enough, the Owenmore also hosts a delightful afternoon tea - a traditional high tea boasting Connemara produce and the best seasonal products available. Ballynahinch has also partnered with Galway-based master tea blender Jorg Mueller of Solaris Tea to help compile their loose-leaf tea menu, including their signature tea using foraged herbs from the Twelve Ben Mountains.

Ballynahinch Castle Hotel

Extracurriculars

The first thing you need to do when you get to Ballynahinch, or even before you go, is book in a guided walking tour with Noel Joyce. Noel is the man behind Connemara Hikes, his hiking company that will take you just about anywhere in the Connemara area. A local to the area, Noel is from nearby Loch na Fuaiche and has lived in London and Berlin before coming back to Connemara. But its his knowledge of Ballynahinch that is unparalleled. He took us for a walk around the river, detailing the rich history of the castle, back to when clans fought on the lands right through to modern day.

This is just one of the many experiences offered at Ballynahinch. You can also fish in the river at one of the three beats, take part in the islands and lobster experience, try your hand at clay shooting, or go for a cycle on one of the hotels bikes.

When to go

Any time of year if the perfect time to visit Ballynahinch and the Connemara region as the scenery is picture-perfect stunning all-year round.

Ballynahinch Castle Hotel

How to get there

The easiest way to get to Ballynahinch is via car, either from Dublin or Shannon airport. Or, you can fly into Cork and take the Wild Atlantic Way up to Ballynahinch for an even more scenic route.

Details

Rooms from 161 per night.

There are also a number of deals to choose from like the Midweek (Sun - Thurs) Two Night Break - two nights bed and breakfast with dinner on one evening in the Owenmore Restaurant from 215 per person sharing. Or the Islands and Lobster Experience with two nights bed and breakfast and a half-day guided sea trip costs from 375 per person.U ndoubtedly one of the best things about living in London is how easy it is to access European travel.

With many budget airlines operating in all of Londons airports, travelling to a new country for a weekend is the norm - and for the most part it can hardly make a dent in your wallet.

Next weekend is Easter. Good Friday and Easter Monday are taken as public holidays in the UK meaning we have a four-day weekend - so what better time to go and explore Europe?

Using Skyscanners search everywhere tool, weve found the cheapest places to travel over the long weekend - so you can book your last-minute break ASAP.

1. Glasgow, Scotland

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Pixabay

Head north for the weekend and discover the delights of Glasgow. With a short flight time, youll have four days to soak up the wonders of Scotlands art capital. Lap up the culture or head out into the highlands with Loch Lomond just a short drive away.

Flights from 85 return.

2. Gdansk, Poland

Gdansk's waterfront

The port city of Gdansk is a melting pot of architectural influence from Austria, Germany and Holland all formed to create one gorgeous city. While there, make sure you visit the Long Market (Dugi Targ), the 1618 Golden House and the 1560 Green Gate buildings  some of the best examples of medieval Polish architecture.

Gdansk is also a great base for some day trips to Polish castles like the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork.

Flights from 154 return.

3. Gothenburg, Sweden

While Stockholm is Swedens tourist hotspot, Gothenburg - with its covetable Nordic design, modern art, craft beer and enviable food scene - is undoubtedly its coolest city.

Flights from 155 return.

4. Amsterdam, Netherlands

With Eurostar opening their London to Amsterdam train tickets, the Dutch capital has never been more in-demand. Wander the canals, eat some poffertjes and soak up some culture at one of the many niche museums.

Flights from 160 return.

5. Hamburg, Germany

Pixabay

Take a trip to Germanys second-largest city for modern art, a plethora of museums and electric nightlife.

Flights from 163 return.

6. Kosice, Slovakia

(Shutterstock ) / Shutterstock

Close to the Hungarian border, you could even tick off two countries during your long weekend. Kosice is located in eastern Slovakia and contains a number of points of architectural interest. Make sure you check out Spis Castle, an expansive, ruined 12th century castle for some other-wordly beauty.

Flights from 160 return.

7. Helsinki, Finland

Getty Images

Last year Finland celebrated a century of Independence - so theres never been a better time to visit. Make sure you go to a traditional Finnish sauna during your visit.

Flights from 175 return.

8. Budapest, Hungary

Pixabay

Budapest is an unexpected foodies dream. From the goulash to the langos, the colder months are the perfect time to experience these belly warmers.

Flights from 185 return.

9. Copenhagen, Denmark

Unsplash

A trip to the laid-back Freetown is a must when visiting Copenhagen to see the overgrown streets and have a beer or two. The food market on the other side of the harbour to picturesque Nyhavn is also a must-visit as is the iconic Little Mermaid statue.

Flights from 180 return.

10. Guernsey, United Kingdom

Shutterstock

Located between the UK and France, Guernseys dramatic coastal cliffs and picturesque towns make it a charming Easter weekend visit.On March 14, the beginning of the seven-day spate of killings, a teenager was stabbed to death in Chadwell Heath. Lyndon Davis, 18, was the seventh London teenager killed through knife crime this year.

On the same evening, but in a separate incident, 20-year-old Joseph Torres was shot dead as he sat in his stationary car in Walthamstow. A 15-year-old has been charged with murder and another teenager, 17, has been arrested.

In the early hours of Saturday, March 17, Russell Jones, 23, died after being shot and stabbed outside a shopping parade in Enfield. The same incident left another man in a serious condition.

The following morning, 42-year-old Tyrone Silcott was found stabbed to death in Homerton, east London, after a St Patricks Day party. A 28-year-old man was charged with murder.

A 36-year-old was found stabbed to death in a hotel room near Heathrow Airport on Sunday morning. Police named the victim as Hersi Hersi, who was a trans woman called Naomi.

A man in his 40s was killed in a stabbing in Walthamstow, near Wood Street station, on Monday night.

In another case, two men have been charged with the murder of 48-year-old Balbir Johal from Slough, who died of a stab wound in Southall on Monday.

On Tuesday night, Romanian Beniamin Pieknyi, 20, was stabbed to death as he tried to protect his friend at the Stratford Centre in east London.T wo men were shot outside a busy Tube station following a shocking week of violent crime in London.

Armed police swarmed on Mile End station in east London after the double shooting on Friday night.

Witnesses reported seeing at least one man being treated by medics outside the station, which was closed off by police following the shooting.

The two men, both in their 20s, were taken to hospital in a serious condition.

Police presence: The aftermath of the shooting in Mile End / Twitter/@AABDURRASHID

One witness wrote on Twitter: So many police vans and cars and police stood directing people away. Taped off all outside William Hill too.

Another witness, Oli Hannaford, added: "Just saw a body in mile end with about 30 police people about. Apparently a shooting. What's going on around here man".

And Vic Hood said: "Just got to Mile End as someone was shot. Armed police and ambulances everywhere.

The latest incident comes after a horrific spike in violent crime in London saw eight people killed in the space of seven days.

Eight killed in shocking week of violence in London

Seventeen men under the age of 25 have now been killed in violent crimes in London so far in 2018.

A Met Police spokesman said officers were called to reports of gunshots at Mile End station just after 10.30pm on Friday.

He added: Officers, including firearms officers, attended. Two men, aged in their 20s, were found suffering from gunshot injuries.

They were both taken by the London Ambulance Service to an east London hospital where they remain in a stable condition. Their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

Officers remain at the scene. The Trident and Area Crime Command has been informed.H undreds of protesters have gathered outside the US embassy in London to demand an end to mass shootings, pledging to "stay angry" until gun laws are reformed.

It comes as tens of thousands are set to march on the White House on Saturday in a rally organised by survivors of the Parkland school shooting in Florida.

Hundreds more gathered outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh in solidarity with the victims.

Student Courtney Chatterton, 21, told the Standard about a false alarm at her university near Chicago, Illinois, on March 14, the day before she flew to visit a friend in the UK.

'March For Our Lives' protests - in pictures 1 /21 'March For Our Lives' protests - in pictures Sir Paul McCartney joins thousands of people, many of them students, march against gun violence in Manhattan during the March for Our Lives rally Getty Images Crowds and celebrities attend the March for Our Lives Rally on March 24 Getty Images North America Ariana Grande performs "Be Alright" during the March for Our Lives rally on March 24, 2018 in Washington, DC Getty Images Protesters participate in the March for Our Lives rally at Las Vegas City Hall Getty Images Thousands of protesters line the streets in Washington Getty Images North America Miley Cyrus sings during the March for Our Lives Rally in Washington Getty Images Lin-Manuel Miranda performs "Found/Tonight" during the March for Our Lives rally on March 24, 2018 in Washington, DC Getty Images Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Student David Hogg addresses the March for Our Lives rally on March 24, 2018 in Washington, DC Getty Images Thousands of protesters in Seattle Getty Images North America The March for Our Lives rally at Las Vegas City Hall Getty Images Rita Ora performs at the March for Our Lives Los Angeles rally Getty Images Thousands of people joined the protest in Washington AFP/Getty Images Getty Images People hold signs as they participate in the March For Our Lives event at Pine Trails Park before walking to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a mass shooting took place, in Florida Getty Images Marchforourlives1 Protesters during the London March For Our Lives anti-gun rally outside the US Embassy in London PA Wire/PA Images Marchforourlives2 Protesters during the London March For Our Lives anti-gun rally outside the US Embassy in London PA Wire/PA Images Marchforourlives3 Protesters during the London March For Our Lives anti-gun rally outside the US Embassy in London PA Wire/PA Images Marchforourlives4 Protesters during the London March For Our Lives anti-gun rally outside the US Embassy in London PA Wire/PA Images Marchforourlives5 Protesters during the London March For Our Lives anti-gun rally outside the US Embassy in London PA Wire/PA Images Protesters during the Edinburgh March For Our Lives anti-gun rally outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh. PA Wire/PA Images Protesters during the Edinburgh March For Our Lives anti-gun rally outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh. PA Wire/PA Images

She said: "We got all these emergency messages saying there was a shooter on campus. It was utterly terrifying, I started shaking immediately.

"People were barricading themselves in classrooms."

'The scariest thing in school should be my grades' / PA Wire/PA Images

The March For Our Lives movement is urging Congress to ban assault-style, high-capacity rifles which have been used with deadly efficiency in recent mass shootings.

They also want "background check loopholes" closed that allow dangerous people to "slip through the cracks and buy guns online or at gun shows".

Protesters chanted "Not one more" and "books not bullets" before they staged a three-minute silent "die-in" in remembrance of shooting victims.

'Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change' / PA Wire/PA Images

Organiser Stephen Paduano urged the crowd to "stay angry" at Congress over its "dereliction of duty".

Crowds and celebrities attend the March for Our Lives Rally on March 24 in Washington / Getty Images North America

Julia Langfitt, from Maryland, who moved to Surrey with her family two years ago,said: "It's time. It's ridiculous how many children are killed every week and still nothing is done about it."

Sir Paul McCartney joins thousands of people, many of them students, march against gun violence in Manhattan during the March for Our Lives rally / Getty Images

Her daughter Kathrine, 16, added: "My childhood friends go to class knowing they could be killed. No-one should ever be that scared at school.

"They had a lockdown the other week - they happen all the time. They're terrified that this is the new normal."

Thousands of protesters line the streets in Washington / Getty Images North America

Around 800 protests are happening worldwide on Saturday, sparked after a former pupil wielding a AR-15 rifle gunned down his ex-classmates at Stoneman Douglas High School.

He massacred 17 students and teachers in the Valentine's Day spree.

The marches follow synchronised national school "walk-outs" across the US earlier this month, when thousands of pupils left class for 17 minutes - one minute for each victim.J eremy Corbyn was facing a backlash from within his own party after he sacked shadow minister Owen Smith for calling for a second EU referendum.

Mr Smith was forced out as shadow Northern Ireland Secretary last night for expressing his long held views on Brexit.

He vowed to continue to express his concerns over the damage Brexit will do to the economy and the Good Friday Agreement.

Labour peer Peter Hain accused Mr Corbyn of carrying out a Stalinist purge.

Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith during last year's leadership battle / Getty Images

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott  a key ally of Mr Corbyn  said Mr Smith could not continue to serve on the front bench while expressing views which were contrary to official Labour policy.

In November, Ms Abbott herself told her Hackney North constituents that she would push for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal, before backtracking and saying she wanted a Parliamentary vote.

Mr Smith, who unsuccessfully challenge Mr Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2016, said his views are shared by Labour members and supporters and I will continue to speak up for them, and in the interest of our country.

A YouGov poll of Labour Party members in January found that 78 per cent want a second referendum on any Brexit deal.

Senior backbench MP Chuka Umunna said: Its extraordinary that a shadow cabinet member - doing an excellent job in their brief - should be sacked for standing up for our principles and advocating a Brexit policy that commands the overwhelming support of our members, supporters and voters. What has happened to our party?

Heidi Alexander said Mr Smith "deserves our respect and unequivocal support" adding that Mr Corbyn knew his views on the EU when he appointed him.

Former minister Ben Bradshaw said he was very sorry about the departure of Mr Smith, who will be replaced by former shadow housing minister Tony Lloyd.

Mr Smiths sacking came after he wrote a Guardian article in which he said Labour should do more than just back a soft Brexit or guarantee a soft border in Ireland.

He added: If we insist on leaving the EU then there is realistically only one way to honour our obligations under the Good Friday Agreement and that is to remain members of both the customs union and the single market.T he Kremlin has denied a claim that poisoned former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be pardoned and to be able to visit his home country.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to visit his family, his friend Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury on March 4.

Moscow has stepped up its campaign to discredit Theresa May's assertion that it is "highly likely" Russia was responsible for the attack.

Double agent: Sergei Skripal was found unconscious in Salisbury, where he had been living a quiet retirement

The diplomatic crisis has plunged relations between Russia and the UK into the deep freeze and could trigger further action by European Union members in support of the Prime Minister's stance.

But the Russian embassy in London kept up its attempts to challenge the UK's case - reiterating its suggestion that the Porton Down defence laboratory was developing its own "military-grade poisons".

Russian Spy Sergei Skripal: Salisbury Nerve Agent Incident 1 /14 Russian Spy Sergei Skripal: Salisbury Nerve Agent Incident Investigators in protective gear pursue the probe into the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal Getty Russian spy 'poisoning': Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal are fighting for life in hospital PA Personnel in hazmat suits work to secure a tent covering a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent Andrew Matthews/PA ilitary personnel are deployed to help remove vehicles from the scene after former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found critically ill after exposure to a nerve agent in Salisbury Getty Images Military in protective clothing remove vehicles from a car park in Salisbury EPA Police cordon: Military personnel in Salisbury PA Traces of the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found at Zizzi in Salisbury PA Amber Rudd: she visited the scene where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found after having been poisoned by a nerve agent REUTERS Personnel are helped from their hazmat suits (right), after securing a tent covering a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent Andrew Matthews/PA Personnel in hazmat suits walk away after securing a tent covering a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent Andrew Matthews/PA Police put a red bag inside a police evidence bag immediately after the nerve agent attack on a Russian spy. Officers previously issued CCTV of a woman clutching a red bag Solent news Snap Fitness 24/7 Police activity in the cul-de-sac in Salisbury that contains the home of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal who was poisoned along with daughter Yulia with a nerve agent PA Sergei Skripal shops at Bargain Stop in a CCTV image from five days before his apparent poisoning

The lab, located less than 10 miles from Salisbury, is where tests were carried out to identify the Novichok substance.

Porton Down chief executive Gary Aitkenhead told the BBC: "We have got the highest levels of controls, of security around the work that we do here.

"We would not be allowed to operate if we had lack of control that could result in anything leaving the four walls of our facility here."

Putin smirks as he's asked about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal

A Russian embassy spokesman said Mr Aitkenhead's comment "amounts to admitting that the secret facility is a place where new components of military-grade poisons are being researched and developed".

On Friday, EU leaders promised an "unprecedented" diplomatic response to the attack after backing Theresa May's assertion that Moscow was responsible.

The bloc is recalling its ambassador to Russia for "consultations" on the Salisbury attack.

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while on Sunday Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's EU ambassador, said that "from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against [Mr Skripal]".

The 66-year-old was accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.

He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.

Traces of the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found at Zizzi in Salisbury / PA

According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.

"Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland," he said.

"In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor... (he told me) he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were (in Russia)."

Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who fell ill after responding to the Salisbury spy attack, has been discharged from hospital / PA

Russia's ambassador to the UK sent his well wishes to Mr Skripal and his daughter on Friday, saying he hoped for their recovery.

Alexander Yakovenko wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripals' aid.

Mr Bailey said his experience had been "completely surreal" after he was discharged from hospital.J eremy Corbyn was today at the centre of a fresh Labour anti-Semitism row after posting support for an offensive street art on Facebook.

The Labour leader faced a backlash from his own MPs for a post in which he questioned why an "indefensible" mural was to be painted over in east London.

The post from 2012 offered support for Los Angeles-based street artist Mear One who painted a mural featuring anti-Semitic tropes.

Posting a picture of the mural on Facebook, Mear One said: Tomorrow they want to buff my mural Freedom of Expression. London Calling, Public art.

Mr Corbyn commented: Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Vieras mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.

The street art depicted a group of businessmen playing a Monopoly-style game on a board balanced on the backs of people.

The artist denied being anti-Semitic, saying the mural is about "class and privilege" and contains a group of bankers "made up of Jewish and white Anglos".

Mr Corbyn said he made a "general comment about the removal of public art on grounds of freedom of speech" but acknowledged he should have looked more closely at the image before posting on Facebook.

He said: "I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on, the contents of which are deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic."

It is the latest row over anti-Semitism to hit Labour and MP Chuka Umunna said "there clearly is an issue" within the party.

"It isn't that a majority of our members are anti-Semitic but there's definitely amongst the minority a real problem here which is not in keeping with the values of the Labour Party," Mr Umunna told BBC's Newsnight.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Education Trust, said the mural was "indefensible".

"The mural was blatantly anti-Semitic, using images commonly found in anti-Semitic propaganda - it is impossible not to notice.

"If as he says, Mr Corbyn is against all forms of racism, why does his stance on anti-Semitism always fall short?"

Labour MP Luciana Berger said she had raised the issue with Mr Corbyn's office. She later said the response "fails to understand on any level the hurt and anguish felt about anti-Semitism".

The row came as Jeremy Corbyn was facing a backlash from within his own party after he sacked shadow minister Owen Smith for calling for a second EU referendum.

Mr Smith was forced out as shadow Northern Ireland Secretary last night for expressing his long held views on Brexit.

Responding to the rows engulfing Labour, MP Wes Streeting said: "If only anti-Semites were dealt with as swiftly as Remainers."J eremy Corbyn faced questions over his apparent support for an artist behind an anti-Semitic mural on a London street.

The Labour leader was challenged by some of his own MPs over his response to a Facebook post by the street artist Mear One about the plan to paint over the work.

Mr Corbyn's response suggested the artist was "in good company" because the Rockefeller family had covered over a mural featuring Lenin in their New York development.

In his post responding to the imminent destruction of the mural, Mr Corbyn said: "Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller (sic) destroyed Diego Viera's mural because it includes a picture of Lenin."

It is understood that at the time of the post in 2012, Mr Corbyn did not condone the artwork but was expressing concerns about free speech.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: "In 2012, Jeremy was responding to concerns about the removal of public art on grounds of freedom of speech.

"However, the mural was offensive, used anti-Semitic imagery, which has no place in our society, and it is right that it was removed."

The mural, in east London, was painted by Mear One - whose real name is Kalen Ockerman - and depicted a group of businessmen playing a Monopoly-style game on a board balanced on the backs of people.

The artist denied being anti-Semitic, saying the mural is about "class and privilege" and contains a group of bankers"made up of Jewish and white Anglos".

Mr Corbyn's response to the decision to paint over the work was highlighted by Labour MP Luciana Berger who demanded an explanation.

Fellow Labour MP Wes Streeting said Ms Berger was "not alone" in demanding an explanation.

Both MPs have previously been critical about Mr Corbyn's response to allegations of anti-Semitism within Labour ranks.A midwife who appeared on the reality TV show One Born Every Minute is under investigation for allegedly having an affair with the partner of a woman whose baby she helped deliver.

Joanne Lumsden, a midwife at Liverpool Womens Hospital, appeared on the Channel 4 series but allegedly failed to declare a conflict of interest before delivering the child.

The distraught mother, who did not wish to be named, said she had been through the most horrific ordeal.

She said she believed Ms Lumsden had taken matters into her own hands and made sure she was present that day.

Speaking to the Liverpool Echo, she said the memory of the birth of her child had been ruined by the knowledge that it was delivered by a woman who was allegedly having an affair with the babys father.

I am now left with a life-long memory of the midwife holding my newborn baby in her arms with the knowledge that she was having sexual relations with my babys father during my pregnancy and being fully aware that I was under the care of her place of work.

This will haunt me for as long as I live, she said.

Ms Lumsden is said to have began an affair with the father of the child whilst on holiday in Benidorm. Upon his return, the father began to miss hospital appointments relating to the pregnancy for fear of the affair being uncovered, it was reported. He is also said to have failed to attend the birth of his first child.

The parents of the child are no longer together. The mother said Ms Lumsden caused the "destruction of a family."

Liverpool Womens Hospital has taken disciplinary action against Ms Lumsden after the mother sent an open letter of complaint to the Womens Hospital trust.

A spokesman for the hospital said: Whilst we cannot discuss the detail of individual cases due to patient confidentiality, we can confirm that disciplinary proceedings were undertaken by the Trust as a result of two members of staffs conduct.

The Trust took this action immediately upon being made aware of the incident and an internal investigation was also conducted.

The disciplinary process undertaken with the members of staff involved is now being dealt with by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

The hospital also issued an apology to the mother

In one of Ms Lumsdens appearances on One Born Every Minute she said: I get to experience the miracle of childbirth every day, and watch couples become a family.M eghan Markle and Prince Harry fuelled rumours that they are planning for a family when they joked about baby products during a visit to a tech hub in Belfast .

Ms Markle and Prince Harry were introduced to the entrepreneurs behind an innovative range for new-borns during a visit to Catalyst Inc in the regenerated docklands east of the city.

When the royal couple were told they could have a non-slip bath free of charge, Prince Harry quipped: "How many have you got?"

His US fiancee laughed and gestured to all the products on view, and said: "I'm sure at some point we'll need the whole (lot)."

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle joked they would need a "whole lot" of baby products / PA

Prince Harry and Ms Markle met Adam and Sinead Murphy - the husband and wife team behind Shnuggle baby products during their tour around the tech hub.

When Mrs Murphy showed the prince the non-slip bath called "bum bump", he joked: "That takes all the fun out of bath time."

Later, the designer said the couple had taken a keen interest.

"Probably the one that captured their attention was the baby bath," she said.

"Its 'bum bump' stops baby slipping, so as soon as Harry saw it he said: 'Oh yeah, it stops them doing that' so I just wonder if he has been involved in bath time with his niece or nephew because he instantly got it."

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry arrive in Belfast / Getty Images

During the visit to the not-for-profit organisation aimed at nurturing entrepreneurial innovation, the couple also encountered a somewhat gory sight when they met Nuala Campbell, who specialises in prosthetic props for the film industry.

She showed Prince Harry and Ms Markle dismembered feet, hands and fingers made from her unique gelatine mix.

The Prince was brave enough to touch one of the lifeless rubbery fingers, though he appeared to regret it.

"That's horrible," he said, as Ms Markle gasped: "Oh my goodness."

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle look at some prosthetic limbs made by the Titanic FX company during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast / Getty Images

Afterwards, Mrs Campbell said it was a reaction most people had to the life-like props that are used in shows such as hit fantasy drama Game of Thrones.

"I think everyone when they touch it for the first time is creeped out," she said.

Earlier, as they arrived for what was their third engagement of the day, the couple waved at well-wishers who had braved the rain to catch a glimpse of the royal visitors.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding invitations - In pictures 1 /12 Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding invitations - In pictures Lottie Small use the die stamping press at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May PA Lottie Small use the die stamping press at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May Kensington Palace Lottie Small, who recently completed her apprenticeship, printed all of the invitations in a process known as die stamping, on a machine from the 1930s that she affectionately nicknamed Maude Kensington Palace Lottie Small use the die stamping press at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May PA Invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May, after they have been printed at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London PA Lottie Small cuts the crests being used on the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May, at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London PA Lottie Small use the die stamping press at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May PA Lottie Small adds gold ink to the die stamping press at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May Kensington Palace The office and workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May PA Lottie Small use the die stamping press at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May PA Lottie Small adds gold ink to the die stamping press at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May PA Lottie Small use the die stamping press at the workshop of Barnard and Westwood in London, who are printing the invitations for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in May PA

Inside, they were greeted by a number of dignitaries, including Lord Mayor Nuala McAllister and East Belfast MP Gavin Robinson.A French police officer who took the place of a hostage in a deadly supermarket siege has died, officials said.

Arnaud Beltrame, 45, had been left fighting for his life after he was injured during the siege in which he swapped places with a female hostage at the Super U store in the town of Trebes in southern France on Friday.

It is believed he was hurt when police stormed the building after hearing gunshots. The gunman was killed and lieutenant colonel Beltrame was injured.

President Emmanuel Macron said the officer fell as a hero and showed exceptional courage in helping to bring an end to the a gunmans shooting spree.

Lieutenant colonel Beltrame's death takes the number killed during the rampage to four. Sixteen people were injured.

Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, began his rampage began when he hijacked a car in Carcassonne, injuring the driver and killing one of the passengers whose body was later found in a bush.

He then shot at a group of police joggers, wounding one of them.

French gendarmes block an access to Trebes / AFP

It is believed Mr Lakdim then drove the short distance to the small town of Trebes where he stormed into the Super-U supermarket.

He killed a customer and a store worker before seizing hostages.

Mr Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.

Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame offered himself up to an extremist gunman in exchange for a hostage has died of his injuries / AP

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack. President Macron has said security services are checking that claim.

More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group.

France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria, where the group has lost substantial ground in recent months.

Police officers secure evidence during the police operation near Trebes / EPA

One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice.

Lieutenant colonel Beltrame, in his mid-40s, was a qualified parachutist who served for a spell in Iraq in 2005 and also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the French president's Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris, President Macron said.

The Super U store was the first deadly attack since October 2017, when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him.

Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations.

President Macron said of lieutenant colonel Beltrame: "In offering himself as a hostage to the terrorist holed up in the Trebes supermarket, lieutenant colonel Beltrame saved the life of a civilian hostage, showing exceptional self-sacrifice and courage."B ritish households and major landmarks alike switched off their lights for 60 minutes to mark Earth Hour on Saturday night.

Countries around the world have switching off the lights for Earth Hour, a global call for international unity on the importance of climate change.

Since beginning in Sydney in 2007, Earth Hour has spread to more than 180 countries, with tens of millions of people joining in.

Sidney went dark for 60 minutes / AFP/Getty Images

Theresa May showed her support for the movement, tweeting via the @10DowningStreet Twitter account: "Downing Street switches off its lights in support of [Earth Hour]".

The London Assembly tweeted: "It's time to [connect the Earth]. Each and every Londoner has the power to make a change."

Lights out at the Colosseum in Rome / AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile in Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dark, while in Jordan, the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature arranged 11,440 candles on a hilltop in the capital of Amman, establishing a Guinness World Record for the largest candle mosaic.

The scene was repeated over and over across the world: at Sydney's Opera House; at Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers; at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland; at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and at St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.P oisoned former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be pardoned and to be able to visit his home country, a friend has said.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to visit his family, Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.

Mr Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the highly lethal nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury on March 4.

The attempted assassination sparked a diplomatic crisis between Russia and Britain, which has been supported by its allies in apportioning blame to the Kremlin.

Russia 'highly likely' to be behind Skripal nerve agent attack, May tells MPs

On Friday, EU leaders promised an "unprecedented" diplomatic response to the attack after backing Theresa May's assertion that Moscow was responsible.

Meanwhile, the EU is recalling its ambassador to Russia for "consultations" on the Salisbury attack.

Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while on Sunday Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's EU ambassador, said that "from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him (Mr Skirpal)".

Pardon request: Vladimir Putin / AFP/Getty Images

The 66-year-old was accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.

He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.

According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.

"Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland," he said.

"In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor... (he told me) he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were (in Russia)."

Putin smirks as he's asked about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal

Russia's ambassador to the UK sent his well wishes to Mrs Skripal and his daughter on Friday, saying he hoped for their recovery.

Alexander Yakovenko wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripal's aid.T housands of people are set to march in more than 800 locations around the world demanding stricter gun control in the US.

March for Our Lives protests will take place across the globe on Saturday.

The main event will take place in Washington DC, while solidarity marches will be held in other locations including London.

It comes after the devastating shooting massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida which left 17 dead.

Support: People arrived at the school after the shooting with emotional support animals, including horses and donkeys, to help the students / Getty Images

Following the shooting, survivors formed the #NeverAgain movement and are being helped by gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety to organise and coordinate the event.

Thousands of teachers, students and parents will attend the protests across the world.

Countries marching around the world UK, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Ghana, India, Vietnam, The Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Lithuania

The March for Our Lives has three demands:

It wants a law to be passed to ban assault weapons, a stop to the sale of high-capacity magazines and a restriction on the amount of ammunition.

It is also calling for the loopholes in background checks to be closed including online and at gun shows.

A march will be taking place in London outside the US embassy and will begin at 12pm and a minute's silence will be held at around 1.20pm.

The rally is organised by US nationals studying at the London School of Economics and being held in solidarity with the Washington DC march.

Students from surrounding schools gather at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan during the school walkout on March 14 / Getty Images

Elsewhere in the UK, demonstrations will take place in Edinburgh, Belfast, Newcastle, Dublin and Cork.

Florida Shooting Vigil - In pictures 1 /15 Florida Shooting Vigil - In pictures People attend a candle light memorial service for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Getty Images Attendees raise their candles at a candlelight vigil for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School AP People hug as they attend a candlelit memorial service for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Getty Images Mourners stand during a candlelight vigil for the victims of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida AFP/Getty Images Zachary Haupert, 14, painted "RIP Luke," on his hoodie in honor of his friend Luke Hoyer, who was one of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, as he attends a candlelight vigil AP City, county and state officials release balloons in honor of the victims during a prayer vigil for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting at Parkridge Church in Coral Springs, Florida AFP/Getty Images Ella Thompson, right, 8, hands out ribbons at a candlelight vigil for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School AP A handwritten note to a lost friend is surrounded by candles and flowers at a candlelight vigil the day after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Reuters Students console each other as they weep during a candlelight vigil for the victims of the Wednesday shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School AP Veronica Laureano, center, holds a teddy bear as she attends a vigil with her daughter Zorayha Laureano, 11, at the Parkland Baptist Church, for the victims of the Wednesday shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School AP Virginia Cancte prays at a cross setup during a candle light memorial service for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people Getty Images Attendees comfort each other at a candlelight vigil for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School AP Mourners gather during a prayer vigil for the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting at Parkridge Church in Coral Springs, Florida AFP/Getty Images A woman places roses on a stage during a vigil at Pine Trails Park for the victims of the Wednesday shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School AP People attend a candlelit memorial service for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Getty Images

Organisers have raised more than three million on GoFundMe which is set to be split between the Action Fund and the Broward Education Foundation to support families of those injured or killed in the shooting.

George and Amal Clooney donated $500,000 (353,000) to the cause with Oprah Winfrey and Stephen Spielberg matching the amount. Ellen DeGeneres and Shutterfly made a joint donation of $50,000 (35,000)

While Italian fashion brand Gucci also donated $500,000 (353,000) to the cause.Q antas Airways is set to make history with the first ever non-stop flight from Australia to the UK.

The QF9 flight carrying 200 passengers took off from Perth at 7pm local time on Saturday (11am GMT) and is due to land in London at 5am GMT on Sunday.

The airline is using the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner for the 17 hour flight which will cover 9,009-mile over the course of the journey.

Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce, one of the passengers on the inaugural flight, described it as a major milestone for Australia as well as global aviation.

The QF9 flight took off from Perth airport on Saturday at 7pm / Qantas

This is a truly historic flight that opens up a new era of travel. For the first time, Australia and Europe have a direct air link, he said.

The route between Australia and London was originally dubbed the kangaroo route for the seven stops it made over four days in 1947.

Now we can do it in a single leap, Mr Joyce said.

The flight is due to land in London Heathrow at 5 am on Sunday / Qantas

The new link with Perth will be around three hours quicker than routes which involve stopping in the Middle East to change planes or refuel.

It will also enable faster journeys to Sydney and Melbourne than flying via Dubai.

Travel firm Flight Centre has recorded "high demand" for the new Qantas flights.

Its head of aviation, Justin Penny, said: "Flight Centre definitely feels that long-term the new route is viable and we will see additional services being launched from Europe to Australia in the coming years."

Aviation consultant John Strickland said the launch of the flights is a significant moment for the airline industry.

He said: "It will be a further test of how successful airlines can be with ultra-long-haul flying and whether this delivers sufficient profitability to justify the investment in aircraft.

"Qantas will certainly be hoping to attract a higher proportion of premium customers due to the speed advantage combined with the 787's better cabin atmosphere."

Pilots prepare for take off on the QF9 flight from Perth to London / Qantas

The Dreamliners on the Perth-Heathrow route will have 42 business class flat-bed seats, 28 premium economy seats and 166 economy seats.

The aircraft boasts a number of advantages over other models, including lower cabin noise, larger windows, improved air quality and technology to reduce turbulence.

They are also heralded for their fuel efficiency, although the impact of this will be reduced by the weight of the fuel needed to fly between the UK and Australia without stopping.

The world's longest regular passenger flight is operated by Qatar Airways between Doha and Auckland, at 9,025 miles.C lint Eastwood may be a Hollywood icon and one of the industrys leading men  but his son feared he wouldnt make it as an actor even with a famous father.

Scott Eastwood graduated with a degree in communications in 2008 and considered a career as a fire fighter over fears he wouldnt be able to support himself as an actor.

I was a huge fan of film growing up and I thought what a cool way to go through life and tell different stories and affect people, he told Standard Online. I didnt think Id always make it as an actor. Its a flighty thing.

For many years I was working odd jobs as a bar tender, as a valet, while I was making movies, but I didnt really know if I could support myself doing it. At some point it started to kick in. But I always thought maybe Ill go and be a fire fighter.

Iconic: Scott and Clint Eastwood / Kevin Winter/Getty

He continued: I got a college degree so I always had a backup plan. I really was looking into fire fighting because I thought that would be a fun career choice  its outside, helping people, its different all the time.

Scott has enjoyed roles in Suicide Squad, The Fate of the Furious and recently joined the Pacific Rim franchise to play pilot Nate Lambert alongside British star John Boyega in Pacific Rim: Uprising.

Pacific Rim: Uprising - Trailer 2

Asked if he feels he has cemented his status as an actor he said: Im trying to do different stuff, not just to get my name out there, doing stuff that I think is cool and interests me and films that I would want to see. Pacific Rim is a perfect example of that. I was a fan of the first one, its a global movie, its multi-cultural and has a great message for kids.

Scott could soon be swapping one sci-fi world for another after he was rumoured to be in the running to take over from Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. The Australian actor played the X-Men mutant for 17 years before bowing out in Logan last year.

Scott said he is keen to take on the Marvel hero, but is yet to be approached by film bosses.

He said: I have heard some things online. Of course [Id love to play him]. Wolverine is an iconic character. Hes one of my favourite comic book characters, but I havent talked to anybody about that.Countries & Areas

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Avangard is to be installed on intercontinental missile, such as the 200-ton Sarmat ICBM. Delivered to the desired orbit at an altitude of 100 km from the Earth using a pre-booster, it can glide to its target at a speed of Mach 20 (5-7 km/s) while maneuvering with the help of stabilizers.

This is the first mass-produced weapon with a glider warhead that can travel at such an altitude in the dense layers of the atmosphere. The boost-glider vehicle can also abruptly change course. The system produces signatures, which are quite different from traditional intercontinental systems, to hinder attempts to spot and engage it.

The use of composite materials enables the re-entry vehicle to resist temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Celsius. It can fly within plasma and the glider is also protected from laser irradiation. The system passed its trials with flying colors.

The weapon is perfectly suited for knocking out an enemys critical infrastructure and leaving him unable to strike back. Its yield ranges from 150 kilotons to one megaton.

Russia, not the US, has been the first to achieve prompt global strike capability. Thats what makes this weapon especially important. The Russian president wasnt exaggerating when he described the Kinzhal hypersonic missile. Now another new system is almost ready to go, further shaming those who doubted its existence.

President Putins address, in which he described these new super weapons, had nothing to do with serving the interests of the military-industrial complex. The development of the systems mentioned in this speech was prompted by the US withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty. That agreement had been the cornerstone of strategic stability until Washington pulled out in 2002, a move that was followed by the rollout of NATO missile-defense sites in Romania and Poland (this year). The ABM Treaty was not the only major international agreement the US put an end to. Today it is openly violating the NPT treaty. The Nuclear Posture Review released this year seeks to bury arms control. The announced plan to breach the 1991 presidential nuclear initiatives and arm naval ships with long-range missiles is nothing but an open threat to upset the strategic balance.

The Russian president made no threats; he just wanted to explain the measures his country had to take in response. This is quite a natural thing to do at a time when arms control is in crisis. None of the weapons systems he mentioned violates the New START Treaty. Russia never said it wanted to withdraw from the arms-control agreements still in force. Its the US, not Russia, who seems to doubt that the New START or INF Treaty is worth preserving. The voices clamoring to tear up the intermediate-forces agreement are getting louder in America. There is a bumpy road ahead, so President Putin is taking steps to protect Russias citizens  which is exactly what he has always promised to do. Washington bears full responsibility for having convinced Moscow it needed to strengthen its defenses. Now America lags behind Russia in military technology that makes it possible for super weapons to be produced and added to the active arsenal. Tu las voulu, George Dandin!After a series of high-level meetings between officials from Seoul and Pyongyang, the proposal for a face-to-face meeting between the American and North Korean leaders appeared before President Trump, who without much hesitation accepted, upsetting the last 50 years of relations between the countries.

Donald Trump tweeted: Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze. Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!

In the blink of an eye, fifty years of international relations were overturned in a tweet. Skillful South Korean diplomacy had also been working towards this end for months. The meetings at the Olympics between Korean diplomats, and in general the good relations between the two countries, have facilitated a thawing of tensions, leading to dialogue that has come after months of insults and threats being thrown between Washington and Pyongyang.

The next move in the White House saw the dismissal of Rex Tillerson, with Mike Pompeo replacing him as Secretary of State. Even National Security Advisor H.R McMaster could be shown the door in what looks like a big shake-up within the White House, with two central matters looming in the coming months and years for the Trump presidency. The American president is focused on creating his legacy, seeking to eclipse that of his predecessors by achieving a peace agreement and trying to avoid a foreign country. The backdrop for these events is a weak American foreign policy exacerbated by the absence of strategic military planning, and a president who has the constant need to give the impression of being strong, in control, esteemed by his colleagues, and not in conflict with a portion of Washingtons security establishment.

Trumps intention to seek political agreements with his opponents is offset by his inflammatory fire and fury statements and his shameful speech to the United Nations threatening to totally destroy North Korea (as the Americans already did in the Korean War during the 1950s). In line with this schizophrenic attitude, Tillerson has been removed from office to send two very important messages to Pyongyang and Tehran. If diplomacy fails, the military option remains on the table.

This military threat, however, is unrealistic if not unattainable, and its consequences unforeseeable. It is strongly opposed by many in Washington as well as by its allies and enemies. Trump, however, loves employing bombastic rhetoric and brinkmanship to reinforce the idea that even the unthinkable may be thinkable. Given the image that he has built in recent months, this madman strategy seems to dovetail with the strategic intentions of the White House. The idea is to present Pyongyang with two options: a diplomatic opening and relative trust in negotiations, but at the same time leaving open the option of war if diplomacy fails. Kim for his part is certainly more rational and grounded in his actions than Trump. His father tried negotiating with Washington a couple of decades ago, only to see the United States allowing it to fail, thus forcing Kim Jong-un to embrace the only possible solution left to him to ensure survival of his country, namely nuclear weapons as a deterrent. While the sanctions and international isolation visited on the DPRK have played a role in bringing Pyongyang to the negotiating table, the acquisition of a credible nuclear deterrent has served to reassure Kim Jong-un, while also strengthening his negotiating hand vis-a-vis Washington.

As evidence of this theory, the proposal for a face-to-face meeting was put to the United States by South Korea, with Kim presumably assenting, even if Pyongyang has yet to respond. But the move is shrewd, showcasing the diplomatic skills of the North Koreans. If Washington were to sabotage the meeting, the blame would fall entirely on the United States, with Pyongyang being left off the hook as they are yet to accept.

There are big question marks over the topic of discussion and over what agreements can be reached in the first meeting. Certain hypotheses can be made, and other requests can already be excluded. For example, it is practically impossible for the peninsula to find itself free from the American presence. The United States is stationed in Korea especially to contain China and increase pressure around Russia, placing ABM systems that threaten the Sino-Russian nuclear deterrent. For the US the issue is much more than simply opposing a country like Pyongyang. The THAAD system is in fact directed at China and Russia, while it has little operational effectiveness against any missiles launched from North Korea.

The other hypothesis, currently unattainable, concerns the dismantling of Korean nuclear weapons. The request is impossible without an all-encompassing agreement that would see the the US relinquishing its presence on the peninsula. The argument plays in North Koreas favor, because here is Pyongyang contemplating the abandonment of its nuclear weapons, while Washington refused to entertain any thought of abandoning its military position on the peninsula.

Realistically, an intense dialogue could put a halt to provocative exercises by South Korea and the United States, as well as halt Pyongyangs testing of new nuclear-capable missiles. This would then open the way for a continuation of direct negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang while also allowing for the inclusion of other regional actors, namely, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. It would effectively be a return to the six-party negotiations, which for over a decade attempted to accommodate the concerns of all the parties in an effort to reach a peace deal.

Trump and Kims unpredictability could bring new twists and turns that further buck the norms and conventions governing international relations. This scenario is certainly dangerous, but it is also full of possibilities. The personalities of these two leaders could be what will ultimately make the difference.Iran recently revealed another new, locally developed weapon that looked like a much older American model with a few modifications. The latest one is called Azarakhsh and looks like an older model American AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile with a new seeker and warhead. Azarakhsh was described as a short range (10 kilometers) air-to-ground missile that could also be used from ground vehicles. Azarakhsh was described as weighing 71 kg (155 pounds), 3.1 meters (12.1 feet) long and using a heat seeking guidance system. The rear of the Azarakhsh, and the control fins are identical to those of the 2,000 AIM-9J and P models Iran bought in the 1970s before the 1979 revolution. This new weapon appears to be another publicity stunt.

From the 1960s to the 1980s the U.S. developed but never widely used air-surface versions of the AIM-9. More recently (2009) the U.S. developed new fire control systems that make the current AIM-9X) missiles easily used against ground targets without any modifications to the missile. This is real and in use and works best if used with a look and shoot helmet visor. In 2007 the U.S. Air Force asked the manufacturer of the AIM-9X missile if the weapon could be adapted to hit ground targets (including armored vehicles and Iranian speedboats). The manufacturer got to work and by late 2009 conducted several successful of the modified AIM-9X. The mods apparently were mainly in the fire control software.

The AIM-9 is a heat seeking missile, and the heat sensors have become much more sensitive since the first AIM-9 entered service in the 1950s. The current versions of the missile work by detecting a heat source at the point where the pilot is looking. This is done using the JHMCS (Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing Systems), which allows a pilot to see, displayed on his visor, critical flight and navigation information. Sort of like a see-through computer monitor or Head Up Display. Most importantly, the pilot can turn his head towards a target, get an enemy aircraft, or ground target, into the crosshairs displayed on the visor, and fire a missile that will promptly go after target the pilot was looking at. For Sidewinder, the pilot has to be looking at something giving off enough heat to catch the attention of the missile heat sensor.

In 2009 JHMCS was already used with some air-to-ground missiles, although it was revealed that no special air-to-ground software was needed for Sidewinders fired at ground targets. Instead, the air-to-air software was modified. This is important, because one of the reasons for this mod was to give the F-15C, which carries no air-to-ground weapons (it's strictly an air-to-air fighter) some air-to-ground capability. In addition, fighter-bombers (like the F-18, F-16, F-22 and F-35) will now be able to use their air-to-air weapons, in a pinch, once all their actual air-to-ground weapons are gone.

Although developed in the 1950s, the Sidewinder has been the most effective air-to-air missile ever produced. The first Sidewinder (AIM-9B) was 3 meters (9.3 feet) long, weighed 71 kg (156 pounds), and had a max range of five kilometers. The most current model, the AIM-9X, is the same size, weighs 87 kg (191 pounds), and has a max range of over 20 kilometers. All models have a warhead weighing about 10 kg (22 pounds). The AIM-9X can go after the target from all angles, while the AIM-9B could only be used from directly behind the target. The AIM-9X is about seven times more likely to bring down the target than the AIM-9B. The 9X entered service in 2000, but the older 9M is nearly as accurate, although without the additional flexibility and capabilities.

But then there are the Iranian versions. Every year the Iranian media features several new weapons described as locally designed and produced. This is to improve morale among a population that knows the country has been under an international arms embargo since the 1980s and not really able to compete when it comes to new technology developments or mass production of whatever is developed. All of this new stuff is fluff, with a bit of recycled reality to back it up. If you go back and look at the many Iranian announcements of newly developed, high tech weapons, all you find is a photo op for a prototype. Production versions of these weapons rarely show up and even fewer are mass produced. Its all feel-good propaganda for the religious dictatorship that runs Iran and its supporters.

The Iranians have become obsessed with these "propaganda weapons," especially since the government found they could get away with just hacking something together from an existing Russian or American system and proclaim it to be a breakthrough weapon "designed and manufactured in Iran." It's all rather pathetic, and it all began during the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq were fighting a nasty war. Some of the hacks worked, after a fashion. Iran created a longer range SCUD missile by the simple expedient of lengthening the missile with a larger fuel tank. This changed the flight characteristics of the missile but since these things were being fired at city size (as in Baghdad) targets, it didn't matter. Actually, the Iranians didn't really need the longer range missiles because Baghdad was pretty close to the Iranian border. Iran actually got the technology for these SCUD mods from North Korea but Iranian press releases always touted the achievement as being the work of Iranian scientists and engineers.

After 2003 the announcements became more ambitious, apparently in response to the impressive American weapons being used next door in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus in 2013 the Iranian Air Force announced that it had begun mass production of a new jet fighter, one that was designed and manufactured in Iran. This, according to the air force commander, means that Iran does not have to rely on foreign suppliers (all of whom are intimidated by international arms sanctions imposed on Iran). This is all a bit of dark humor because the aircraft in question was apparently the Saeqeh jet fighter. In 2012 it had been announced that three more of these had been produced and that fifteen had been delivered to the Iranian Air Force. In 2011, Iran announced that they had put into service their first squadron of twelve Saeqeh. It was in 2006 that Iran first displayed a modified American F-5 fighter and proclaimed the new "Saeqeh" as similar to the American F-18 jet fighter. Iran was apparently producing a clone of the 1960s era F-5 design, not a rival for the F-18. Their local manufacturing and international smuggling capabilities are certainly up to the task of obtaining the components needed for this. But all this is mainly a publicity stunt to reassure Iranians that, despite decades of international arms embargoes, Iran still has weapons that can defend the country.

This was not the first time Iran has run a stunt like this. But even with a redesigned tail and better electronics, the F-5 was still a low cost and low performance aircraft. The Saeqeh was not the first Iranian attempt to rebuild F-5s. In the 1990s, they built a clone of the F-5E, calling it the Azarakhsh. There were apparently four of these in service at one time and further modifications of F-5 airframes produced the Saeqeh. A new Azarakhsh missile seems to indicate that the Azarakhsh jet fighter, or at least the name, has been recycled.

The Iranians had dozens of damaged F-5s from their war with Iraq, along with many more elderly F-5s that are un-flyable or barely so. In the late 1970s Iran had nearly 300 F-5 aircraft but many were destroyed in combat with Iraq during the 1980s, or due to accidents, and most of the remainder just wore out.

The F-5E, the most recent F-5 model the Iranians had when the Islamic revolution took over in 1979, is an 11 ton aircraft, with a max speed of 1,700 kilometers an hour, and a range of some 1,400 kilometers. It was armed with two 20mm cannon and could carry about 3 tons of missiles and bombs. The Iranians had taken the basic F-5 frame and rebuilt it to hold 2 Russian engines. The Chinese did the same thing with the MiG-21 and produced the J-8 (a twin engine MiG-21) that turned out to be not worth the effort.

Although the Iranians were using Russian components (if only because these were better than Chinese ones), they probably had technical assistance (for a price) from China. The Chinese have a lot of experience reverse engineering Russian warplanes and developing variations. The Chinese are getting away from that because they finally realized that all they ended up with was a lot of crap fighters. Now they are building a new air force with expensive, and high tech, fighters imported from Russia or built under license (or just copied illegally).

Iranian weapon fantasies reached their peak in early 2013 with the announcement that they had developed a stealth fighter, the Qaher 313. It showed photos of a single engine fighter with some curious (to aeronautical engineers) features. The air intakes were too small, the airframe was similar to older (unsuccessful) American experimental designs, and the cockpit controls were the same as those used in one and two engine propeller driven aircraft. There was a video of the Qaher 313 in flight but nothing showing it landing or taking off. Engineers concluded that the Qaher 313 was a crude fake and that the aircraft seen in flight was a small remote controlled model of the larger aircraft shown in a hangar. A deception like this was nothing new for Iran. In fact, this sort of thing has become a staple of Iranian media. The Qaher 313 was the most ambitious fake so far. Stealth tech is not something you can recycle from decades old gear, nor is it something you can easily deceive the experts with.

Now that the sanctions are being lifted Iran will be under pressure (internal and external) to get some of these wonder weapons into use and offer them for export. It will be interesting to see how the Iranians handle that. The government just ignores those queries. Apparently Iran has handled the fantasy weapons work over to their more radical military organization. The Azarakhsh missile was introduced by an officer of the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps). Iranians know that you do not question or argue with the IRGC.Pakistan and Sri Lanka have agreed to work together for regional peace and development. The understanding came at a meeting between President Mamnoon Hussain and his Sri Lankan counterpart Maithripala Sirisena in Islamabad today.

The two sides discussed the entire gamut of bilateral relations. The two sides also agreed to further bolster their trade relations. During the meeting, they also agreed to make the SAARC more effective.

In his remarks, President Mamnoon Hussain emphasized the need for greater people to people contacts between the two countries. The Sri Lankan President thanked the Pakistani side for awards cholarship to Srinlankan students and officers.Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi remarked on Saturday that there is no possibility of any judicial coup or martial law in Pakistan.

Democracy will continue to prosper in the country, he stressed while addressing the inauguration ceremony of first ever CCV cable and Aluminium Alloy Plant at Sundur Industrial Area in Lahore.

The premier said that the next elections will be held in July in which people will elect their new government and the course of development will continue.

The PM stressed that the present government has carried out historic work in different spheres, including infrastructure development and energy.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government has added ten thousand megawatts of electricity to the system and started projects which will meet future energy requirements of the country.

He shared that he was confident that the development of infrastructure will give further impetus to bringing investment in the country. He said the economy is expected to grow by five point six percent this year while for the next year our target is six percent.

No one can end Nawazs political career: Nawaz

The prime minister had remarked that no one can put an end to the political career of former premier Nawaz Sharif.

No one has been able to do it before nor will they be able to do it now, remarked PM Abbasi in an interview with a private news channel.

Nawaz was previously convicted in a highjacking case, he said, adding that the former premier was even termed a highjacker.

Over the Supreme Courts verdict which led to Nawazs disqualification as the president of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the PM said that after the verdict the party decided that Nawaz will be the Quaid [leader] while his brother Shehbaz Sharif was elected president.

Decisions have also been made after holding discussions with party members, he shared, adding that Nawazs opinion holds considerable value while making party decisions.

On February 27, the Central Working Committee of the PML-N met at the Sharif family residence in Model Town Lahore and elected former prime minister Nawaz Sharif as lifetime Quaid (leader) of the party.

The CWC meeting was held after Nawaz Sharif was disqualified as the PML-N president following the Supreme Courts verdict in the Elections Act 2017 case. The apex court ruled that a person disqualified under Article 62 and 63 cannot serve as the head of a political party.

Furthermore, the premier dismissed the chatter about Nawaz going to jail as mere speculation. Nawaz has been to prison before. He can give party policy from prison as well. People have won elections while being imprisoned.

Nawaz even managed to run the party even during the tenure of former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, he added.Pakistan Peoples Party has a long-standing relation with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), said PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari during a rally on Saturday.

While addressing the public in Bannu, Bilawal said it was PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who had announced to demolish the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR)from Malakand Division during his speech there.

He added the brave people of KP have been fighting for a long time as the valley of fragrance has been turned into one of blood.

To solve the issues of KP a court is needed that could impart justice, the PPP chairperson said.

We need a police force that people could trust and institutes that ensure rule of law, he added. I trust our police be it of KP, Punjab, Balochistan or Sindh as they all have made sacrifices and fought terrorists with valour.

Bilawal said police was the countrys frontline, which ought to be strengthened on the whole as every street cannot have a soldier deployed.

Speaking about war against terrorism, Bilawal said it was his party that brought together the entire Parliament and united people for the sake of sustainable peace in Swat that was taken over by terrorists soon after Benazir Bhuttos martyrdom.

The PPP chairperson also claimed of repatriating the nearly 2.5 million internally displaced persons to their native areas within three months.

Bilawal said that the time had come to show the province's ruling party that the public had seen its real face.

He stressed that the public was not concerned about why political leaders were disqualified from public office. The PPP chief was referring to PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif's questions about his disqualification following the July 28 Panama verdict by the Supreme Court.

"The people just want their problems to be solved. The people just want roti (food), kapra (clothing), and makan (shelter)," Bilawal said.

Bilawal is flanked by other party leaders such as Anwar Saifullah Khan, Sher Azam Wazir, Humayun Khan, Senator Rubina Khalid and Faisal Kundi.

Party supporters from different areas have come to Bannu to attend the rally and show their support for their leader.

As many as 400 police officers were deployed for security purposes.

On March 18, Bilawal had questioned former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's slogan of 'respecting the vote'.

Nawaz, who was disqualified as premier and head of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz by the Supreme Court in separate cases, has been raising the slogan of respecting the vote.

Addressing party supporters in Kotli Sattian, the PPP chairman recalled the relationship of the tehsil with the party.

"Nawaz thinks democracy linked to him only," he said, terming the former prime minister Gen (retd) Ziaul Haq's "opening batsmen".

In an apparent jibe at Nawaz's daughter Maryam, Bilawal said: "look now, we have stopped you".

Referring to Nawaz's recent tirade against the opposition parties, Bilawal said the PML-N leader, and not the PPP leader, is the biggest wound up toy, whose key is broken at present.A Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) councilor Anis Siddiqui was on Saturday gunned down by unidentified men in Orangi Town area of Karachi on Friday.

According to details, Anis Siddiqui was sitting in the drawing room of his house situated in Bangash Colony in Orangi town when assailants sprayed bullets at him through a window, killing him on the spot.

An MQM-P spokesperson informed media that the deceased belonged to MQM-P. His body has been shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for post mortem.

MQM-P Bahadurabad faction leader Amir Khan reached the hospital to condole the death on Anis Siddiqui with his family. On the other hand, Dr Farooq Sattar, MQM-P head of PIB Colony faction, has strongly condemned the killing of Anis Siddiqui and demanded inquiry of the incident.Firearms safety warnings are being made by police as deerstalkers prepare to take to the bush for The Roar.

Late March and April, is the rutting season for the most common deer species in NZ.

Their pre-occupation with mating leads the stags to become vocal and makes them vulnerable to hunters. The extra activity in the outdoors, and the excitement this time of year brings for hunters, can make them vulnerable too.

The Roar is when most New Zealand hunting accidents happen.

Theres a significant increase in the number of hunting-related incidents and Search and Rescue operations at this time each year, with target misidentification being the biggest cause of fatalities, says Detective Senior Sergeant John Wilson.

As a starting point I suggest that the mindset of the hunter when they see what they think is a deer should be, is this another hunter? rather than, it is probably a deer.

The consequences of failing to fully identify a target beyond all doubt are immediate, tragic and catastrophic.

It is crucial that you positively identify it is a deer, and that you are looking at the whole animal, not just a part of it, says John. If in any doubt dont shoot.

If you pull the trigger you will have to live with the consequences forever.

There are also incidents every year during The Roar involving hunters who are injured, and sometimes lost. Most injuries come from a fall, a trip, or a stumble. Becoming lost or injured happens, but there are things to do which will mitigate this risk:

 Take care in the outdoors.

 A little preparation pre hunt will go a long way.

If you are fit then you are a lot more resilient if you do have a fall or suffer from an injury

Follow the Outdoor Safety Code. Police also recommend considering the use of technology to make things safer and more enjoyable. Beacons can be a lifesaving tool as it means emergency services will be aware that something has happened much faster if you do get injured or lost

The Mountain Safety website is recommended.Nearly 70 survivors of New Zealands worst shipwreck in modern times, as well as family members of the 53 who died, are expected to attend the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the disaster.

They, along with rescuers and those involved in the disaster relief, are coming from across the country, from Australia, Thailand and the United Kingdom, says Chair of the Wahine 50 Charitable Trust Rhys Jones.

The trust was formed three years ago by a group of survivors and rescuers to plan the 50th commemorations.

As well as being a very significant day for those with a tangible connection to the Wahine disaster, this 50th anniversary is an important day for the wider community, says Rhys.

The 50th anniversary of the Wahine disaster will be commemorated in and around Wellington on Tuesday, April 10.

During a severe storm, the Wahine struck Barrett Reef in Wellington harbour on April 10 1968 and started to list. By the time its passengers and crew were ordered to disembark, the community had sprung into action. Boat owners and other volunteers took to the harbour, risking their lives to rescue people in the face of the most appalling conditions.

On land too, the communities of Eastbourne and Seatoun were galvanised into action, says Rhys. Hospital staff, police, ambulance staff, and many more were also involved. Thanks to this astonishing response, 683 passengers and crew survived.

We invite all to join us on 10 April at the Wahine 50th commemorations, says Rhys. This anniversary is a time to remember the heartbreak as well as the courage shown on that disastrous day 50 years ago. But it is also an opportunity to reinforce the importance of community  of pulling together to help in times of adversity  and of the need for us all to be prepared.

The programme features a dawn service; choral tributes; a rare Steam-past Review on Wellingtons harbour; public displays by school children, rescue and safety experts, and the Wellington Museum; and more.

The Wahine 50 Charitable Trust invited those with a close connection to the Wahine disaster to register as part of its hosted group for the day. It has received 220 registrations including nearly 70 from surviving passengers and crew of the Wahine. The public is invited to attend the free events listed.

The Wahine 50 programme of public events  10 April 2018, Wellington.

In Eastbourne

From 8.30am Eastbourne Remembers  a Wahine display of student works, photographs, and memorabilia, Muritai School

In Wellington

The trust can be contacted by email or through its website.It's fair to say Facebook hasn't been in the best of situations lately. Following the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal which involved the firm improperly acquiring information from 50 million Facebook users, average internet users and companies alike have expressed their distaste with the way Facebook has handled the situation.

Indeed, yesterday Firefox developer Mozilla opted to pull their ads from the platform as a result of the incident. Today, Sonos has followed suit, albeit only for a week. Elon Musk has also hidden SpaceX and Tesla's Facebook accounts after being challenged to do so via Twitter.

Unfortunately for Facebook, though, user backlash and advertisers temporarily pulling out aren't the only things they'll have to contend with. According to an SFGate report, Facebook has been slapped with four separate lawsuits in San Francisco and San Jose-based federal courts.

These lawsuits are being filed by the company's shareholders and regular users alike. One of the lawsuits in question was filed by Maryland resident Lauren Price, who hopes to turn the suit into a class-action case representing the 50 million people who have had their personal information compromised as a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Two other lawsuits filed by shareholders Fan Yuan and Robert Casey are also seeking class-action cases.

The fourth lawsuit is perhaps the one with the most potential, however. Filed by San Francisco-based attorney Jeremiah Hallisey, the legal action is reportedly a "shareholder derivative suit" filed on behalf of Facebook's shareholders against the company's leadership team. The suit's targets include company CEO Mark Zuckerburg, COO Sheryl Sandberg and Facebook's board members.The Cuban President recalled that the July 11 destabilization attempts were preceded by an anti-revolutionary campaign led by the United States through social media. | Read MoreLanora Franck thought she knew about illegal behaviour. Armed with a master's degree in criminal justice, Franck is a juvenile justice liaison for the Sedgwick County Department of Corrections in Wichita, Kansas, where she lives. No one could fool her, or so she thought.

But someone did: Her husband, William H. Nolan, who went to prison in 2012 for embezzling more than $US2 million from his employer, Steckline Communications. "It was like a machete to the heart," said Franck of her husband's betrayal.

Lanora Franck and her daughter Sarah in Wichita, Kansas, earlier this month. In 2012, Francks husband, William H. Nolan, went to prison for embezzling more than $US2 million from his employer. Credit:Shawn Brackbill/The New York Times

"I just didn't pay attention," said Franck, now 54. "I was incredibly busy raising four kids and getting them where they needed to be. He did all of the bill paying. We didn't live in a mansion; we lived in a very middle class home in a middle class neighborhood. We always drove nice cars, had nice phones and brand-new clothes, but I didn't really question it because we weren't living ostentatiously."

Just like that, Franck became the spouse of a man convicted of white-collar crime, a club no onewants to belong to, yet so many women do. It might be one of the most complex intersections of money and trust on the planet. And while wives are often the ones betrayed, they are not always the sympathetic characters in the dramas. What did they know and when did they know it are common questions.Q: My Swiss-French husband kisses all women (old, young, beautiful or not) three times on the cheek. How can I find out if they like it or not? G.M., NEWCASTLE, NSW

A: The Swiss-French Triple Cheek Kiss sounds intriguing. I'm guessing it would start with a Swiss kiss on one cheek  just a polite little peck, completely neutral, don't get involved. Then a French kiss on the other cheek: a passionate, full-on, open-mouthed smooch, exploring the entire cheek with lips and tongue. Then back to the first cheek with a Swiss-French combo kiss: closed-mouthed, Alpine icy, with the faintest scent of filterless Gauloises.

Illustration by Simon Letch.

I can see why the women of Newcastle might be a little freaked-out by Swiss-French Triple Cheek Kissing. They'd only be familiar with the traditional Novocastrian greeting: a toot from a passing ute, and a lump of coal chucked at the back of their head. Chances are they're a bit uncomfortable with it: one kiss is fine, two is quaint, three is just confusing and awkward and a real time commitment for people on busy schedules.

But you should be able to tell whether they like it or not by reading their body language, looking for subtle signs. If a woman is pulling away from your husband's kiss and yanking his head back by both ears, then maybe it's not her cup of tea. If a woman disappears with your husband and you don't see him again until the following Sunday, she may be okay with it. You also need to ask yourself, are you okay with this triple kissing? Because if you're not, you might want to tell your husband to tone it down a tad: maybe just pull back to a single Swiss kiss. A harmless little peck on one cheek, with a lovely little trace of Toblerone-honeycomb stickiness.A 13-year-old girl from Canberra has died after a boat with six people on board capsized off the Moruya bar on Saturday morning.

NSW police acting superintendent Darren Wood said the girl was found under the hull of the boat about 40 minutes after the vessel capsized.

A girl has drowned after a boat capsized on the south coast.

The girl's father was also on board the vessel. Police believe he was not the driver at the time of the incident.

Surf Life Saving NSW responded to reports of a capsized vessel just before 7am on Saturday. Crews from Moruya and Broulee rescued five people from the overturned boat, some of whom had been picked up by a passing boat.In the other notable breach of trust, the personal information of some 50 million Facebook users was misused by a political consultancy to help Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign target voters. The consultancy, now notorious, is called Cambridge Analytica. Facebook shrugged off the scandal and stonewalled the public and the US Congress for the first five days. It responded not to its angry customers or concerned Congress members but only to its falling share price. Facebook founder and major shareholder Mark Zuckerberg decided that it was serious only after he had lost $US9 billion in personal wealth. "So this was a major breach of trust and I'm really sorry that this happened," were Zuckerberg's first words in a CNN interview this week. "So our responsibility now is to make sure that this doesn't happen again." A self-driving Uber. Uber has suspended its trials of self-drive cars. Credit:Gene J. Puskar Which sounds good until you recall that it has already happened again, and again. One of the reasons that this is a problem for Facebook is that the company gave a formal undertaking to the US Federal Trade Commission in 2011 that it would not.

"Users had no idea that Cambridge Analytica was accessing this data. It's a clear violation of the 2011 consent order," Sam Lester of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre told CBS News. A former mentor of Zuckerberg's and one of his earliest investors, Roger McNamee, pointed out: "Potentially it could cost them $US40,000 for every offence, times 50 million." That comes out at a possible maximum $US2 trillion, a bankrupting bill even for a company the size of Facebook. McNamee says he's been trying to persuade Zuckerberg to tend to the ethics of his business for years, in vain. Zuckerberg eventually cut off contact. Facebook users are "finally starting to recognise that this is not the fun and games, innocent place they thought it was," says McNamee, still a shareholder in the business. "There's been an increasing understanding that when you're using Facebook, a lot of bad things are going to happen to you, as a user."

A tech writer for Slate, Will Oremus, says that it was inevitable: "The real scandal is that this wasnt a data breach or some egregious isolated error on Facebooks part. What Cambridge Analytica did was, in many ways, what Facebook was optimised for - collating personal information about vast numbers of people in handy packets that could then be used to try to sell them something." Facebook CEO has said the company will make changes. Yet it took a long time and multiple scandals for the political and regulatory system to turn serious attention to the firm. The firm has shown indifference to systematic abuse when Daesh, or Islamic State, terrorists were having a field day recruiting and propagandising on Facebook, and when Russian operatives used it to manipulate the US presidential election. The US Congress is investigating the Facebook data breach and has called Zuckerberg to appear. The US Fair Trade Commission is investigating. The European Parliament has passed new laws effective in May to require companies to protect users' personal data online under pain of a penalty of up to 4 per cent of a company's global revenue. If applied to Facebook last year, for instance, that would equate to a $US1.6 billion fine. And the frustrated tax authorities of the European Union are getting serious about Big Tech's record of tax avoidance. This week the European Commission proposed a tax of 3 per cent on all payments to digital companies, even where they have no physical presence. That would raise some 5 billion euros ($8 billion) a year.

The commission says this would be only an interim measure till it can get a proper grip on the slipperiness of Big Tech's tax doings. Italy and India already apply a similar transaction tax on the ad revenues collected from their countries by companies like Facebook and Google. By abusing initial trust and exploiting its wow factor to the hilt, Big Tech's cool image has finally started to fade. Its soft power is now yielding to the hard power of the state as parliaments and regulators start to apply normal standards to the sector. Australia is a world leader in some of its approaches to the so-called digital economy, and is still finding its way on others. Canberra has pioneered taxing the industry, and it has led on protecting citizens from some of the most harmful effects of its reach. The Tax Office under former policeman Chris Jordan has taken a tough line on multinational tax avoidance, with a special interest in Big Tech. His tax avoidance taskforce collected $5 billion in extra revenue in back taxes from digital multinationals last year. A permanent extra $7 billion a year has been added to Australia's tax base through a more rigorous approach to the affairs of multinationals including Big Tech. Other countries are studying the Australian experience.

Australia created the Office of the eSafety Commissioner three years ago, another world first. Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, formerly with Twitter and Microsoft, is now empowered to protect against serious cases of cyber bullying and revenge porn. The office has helped remove harmful online bullying material in 720 cases under threat of a fine of up to $18,000 a day. It has a success rate of about 80 per cent in removing revenge porn used against Australian citizens.

But the core of the Big Tech challenge to societies is a kind of extreme libertarianism. It's in the water in the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem. If unchallenged, the firms that spring from this culture will not just disrupt industries. They will strip nations of their tax bases and societies of their labour markets. The Amazon founder and chief Jeff Bezos routinely demands that governments start paying universal basic incomes to all citizens, enough to keep people above the poverty line. A professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, Scott Galloway, argues that this is simply a tech sector preparing to renounce all social responsibility, lumping governments with responsibility to make up for the deficiency at the centre of its vision: "What's clear," Galloway writes in his book The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, "is that we need business leaders who envision and enact a future with more jobs - not billionaires who want the government to fund, with taxes they avoid, social programs for people to sit on their couches and watch Netflix all day." "Jeff," he chides the Amazon founder, "show some real f---ing visions." The ACTU's Sally McManus employed a lot of hyperbole this week in her demands for a new labour market regulation, but one of her agenda items is highly relevant - governments need to address the rise of the "gig economy" where work is done not by employees but as piecework by contractors without adequate pay or conditions. Like Uber drivers.

Much of this agenda will be addressed through Australia's Fair Work Commission, which has a number of cases before it brought by Uber drivers unhappy with Uber. Fair Work, a creation of the previous Labor government, will rule on these, making, through case law, a new set of standards for the gig economy. This will happen without the need for legislation. But more will be needed. The digital economy need not be jobless and abusive. A landmark Australian agreement struck last year by one new tech firm in the digital economy, Airtasker, is a showcase. Airtasker posts jobs online and workers can bid to do them. The company was attacked for allowing these "gigs" to be paid at exploitative pay rates. Rather than shut out the critics and claim a special exemption for being "cool", the company sat down with Unions NSW and worked out a deal to protect workers' pay and conditions. Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey praised the firm for establishing "an important beachhead for regulating the gig economy. Others should follow Airtasker's example and consider the ethical dimension of their impact". Inevitably, further intelligent policy responses will be needed and the political winner will not be the party that dismisses it all as fun, cool, tech, nor the party that responds with a regulatory sledgehammer, but thoughtfully and creatively balances economic creativity with worker rights. Thoughtful and creative are not adjectives often applied to Australian political parties. But this is a whole new agenda. Opportunity awaits. We live in hope.Though Cunningham lived to see greater acceptance, he became modest and effacing in his self-presentation, usually wearing a French sanitation worker's blue jacket and khakis to capture the more flamboyant citizens of New York. He submitted reluctantly to a 2010 documentary.

"It feels like he had internalized that reaction," Richards said of the disapprovals of his childhood. "It's speculation to think of why he decided not to publish this in his lifetime, but my assumption, having spent a lot of time with the text, is because though he really wanted to tell the story of this special period in his life, his education in creativity and style, at the same time he was worried how people were going to respond."

But aside from some scenes of family discord, Cunningham's memoir is a rosy account of an irrepressible dreamer who tripped his way from the stockroom of Boston's newly opened Bonwit Teller to hat shops of his own in New York. He arrives in the city in November 1948 on opening night of the opera ??? then a tent pole of the New York social calendar ??? and stays long after the Social Register stopped being anyone's bible.

Much of the material is new, even to his relatives. "Bill kept his family life in Boston and his work life in New York very separate," wrote his niece Trish Simonson, in an email. "He told us stories over the years, but nothing that painted a full picture of what he did and how he came to do it. The drafts of the memoir we found, titled and edited and written in his own unmistakable voice, filled in a lot of blanks of how he made it from here to there, and what he thought along the way."

There is some gossip, mostly decades old (the columnist Eugenia Sheppard does not come off very well), but little about Cunningham's personal life, other than sly asides.Professor Lynette Russell will be speaking at the World Science Festival

Historian Lynette Russell says science is starting to catch on to medicinal and environmental knowledge Indigenous Australians have held for generations but progress is slow.

But long before it was sold at the local supermarkets and service stations, Indigenous Australians used the plant to treat ailments including colds and wounds.

Tea tree oil is a staple of many modern medicine cabinets.

Contemporary environmentalists can learn from traditional Indigenous management of land through fire and their manipulation of the land to ensure food security.

Likewise, traditional healing practices, such as herbal ointments, can have a place within modern medicine.

The Monash Indigenous Studies Centre director will appear in a panel on Australias history at the World Science Festival in Brisbane on Sunday, to discuss how Indigenous knowledge is used today.

At the moment, science is catching up. People in the scientific community are starting to recognise the value of Indigenous knowledge and traditions, Professor Russell said.

However, she said there was work to be done in changing public perception of Indigenous practices.Residents have been evacuated after a fire at a derelict warehouse on the Hoffman Brickworks site in Brunswick on Saturday.

An explosion and loud bangs were heard by neighbouring residents who reported the blaze in Dawson Street about 3.30pm.

Firefighters battle a blaze at the former Hoffman Brickworks site in Brunswick on Saturday. Credit:Anna Prytz

The MFB has issued a community warning due to smoke billowing over surrounding suburbs including Brunswick West, Carlton North, Parkville, Princes Hill and Travancore.

Dawson Street is closed between Sydney Road and Melville Street and people are asked to avoid the area and keep roads clear for emergency vehicles.Dion Costigan was watching his boys skate in Eaglehawk, in central Victoria, when he turned and saw something in the sky like nothing he had ever seen before.

"I just thought, wow!" he said on Saturday morning.

"The line, the formation of clouds just had amazing colours in it, these light greys all the way down to black."

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Tom Delamotte said the cloud mass Mr Costigan and many other social media users captured was a shelf cloud formation.A Perth businessman has been sentenced to more than two years in jail after he was found with over $1 million worth of illegally harvested sandalwood.

Stephen John Darley, 56, was the sole director of AustOils Pty Ltd in 2013 when 96 tonnes of stolen sandalwood lumber was discovered at properties he controlled and 200 tonnes of sandalwood byproduct was found at his Bibra Lake distillery plant.

Stephen John Darley, 56, was sentenced to more than two years in jail. Credit:Louie Douvis

Sandalwood is so valuable even the byproduct, known as spent charge, was worth about $200,000.

The District Court of WA heard during sentencing on Friday that Darley disagreed with the state government's strict regulation of the industry, which at the time of his offending limited the total annual harvest to 3000 tonnes.Former federal Privacy Commissioner Malcolm Crompton has blasted Australias major political parties as incredibly secretive about the information they gather on voters and suggested their exemption from privacy laws is indefensible.

His comments come after Fairfax Media revelations that Facebook approached the major parties before the 2016 election, offering a new and powerful data-matching tool, and that Labor used the technology.

Scrutiny of the use of personal information by data analytics has intensified following claims Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested Facebook data to target American voters.

There are claims Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested Facebook data to target voters ahead of the 2016 US election.

Investigators from Britain's data watchdog on Friday searched Cambridge Analyticas London offices after a whistleblower alleged the firm gathered private information of 50 million Facebook users to support Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.In the words of one image consultant, Mark Zuckerberg had 15 minutes to deal with the Cambridge Analytica crisis that has wiped billions from the value of his company.

It took him five days, and even then his glib response did little to fix the problem. Indeed, Facebook's shares carried on falling. It has been a lamentable performance from what should be one of the world's most media savvy firms.

What could have been a minor setback if handled properly has turned into a potential extinction event for Facebook. Credit:The New York Times

But hold on. It is far from alone. In fact, all the tech giants are terrible at communicating. Cocooned within a bubble of self-righteousness and dominated by founder-entrepreneurs, they react to a crisis with a mixture of bluster and arrogance that takes a bad situation and makes it several times worse. Sooner or later they are going to have to find a way of fixing that - or else find themselves constantly hammered by one crisis or another.Sixty-six million years ago, Earth's dinosaurs were suddenly wiped out in a cataclysmic blast of fire and smoke. On Thursday, a similar fate befell a life-size animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex at a dinosaur-themed park in central Colorado, only this extinction was captured on video. The 7-metre-tall reptile replica at the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience was set ablaze by an electrical malfunction in the early afternoon, the park's owners said in a Facebook post. After smouldering for about 10 minutes, visitors watched as the inferno spread through the dinosaur, which appeared at times to be breathing flames. No one was injured in the fire, which also burned a nearby obstacle course, according to park owners Zach and Carman Reynolds, who responded to the incident with some entirely appropriate dad jokes.

"Holy smokes! We always knew T-rex had a bad temper but today he blew his top," they said in a statement. "There was an unfortunate (and rare) electrical issue with our mighty T-rex and he is no longer. You might even say ... extinct." The park posted video of the fire roaring against the backdrop of mountains and a bright blue sky. The fire broke out during the park's busy spring break rush. When it finally extinguished, the T- rex's metal skeleton was still standing silhouetted in the afternoon light, its poorly-evolved, disproportionately-small arms bent plaintively toward the sky. The Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience opened in 2016 and sits along a picturesque stretch of highway just outside Canon City, Colorado. The T-rex was one of more than a dozen animatronic dinosaurs found throughout the park's "Dinosaur Wild Walk" exhibit. The Triceratops, Brachiosaurus and others didn't get singed. Zach Reynolds told the Associated Press that the blaze was a total loss but "it made for some spectacular imagery along the way." He said he was in touch with the manufacturer about getting a new T-rex before summer. The park will bring a new stegosaurus fossil cast to its museum around the same time, the Daily Record reported.President Donald Trump is preparing to expel dozens of Russian diplomats from the US in response to the nerve-agent poisoning of a former Russian spy in the UK, two people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

Trump agreed with the recommendation of advisers and the expulsions are likely to be announced on Monday, the people said, though they cautioned that Trump's decision may not be final. Trump is prepared to act but wants to be sure European allies will take similar steps against Russia before doing so, aides said.

The advisers reached recommendations for a US response to the UK attack at a National Security Council meeting on Wednesday and honed the proposals on Friday. Trump discussed the issue Friday with US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, outgoing National Security Adviser HR McMaster and others, two people said.

All of the people familiar with the discussions asked not to be identified. White House spokespeople declined to comment.Mina Alyeshmerni wasnt going to cancel her dinner plans just because of an inconvenient blizzard. Especially since this was no ordinary dinner  it was Nowruz, or Persian New Year, a dinner party her ancestors have hosted for over 3,000 years.

While Nowruz has roots in Zoroastrianism, its inclusive of everyone. Held at the turn of the vernal equinox, the holiday is observed not just at the tables of Iranians but Indians, Turks, and Afghans. Alyeshmerni has a tendency to collect culturally hungry artistic types, whether in her own home or as part of her store, Maimoun, so its no surprise that she gathered a group of like-minded women in her home for a Nowruz party on Tuesday night.

Photo: Clemence Poles Photo: Clemence Poles

The custom of setting the table for Nowruz is known as a haft-seen. In Alyeshmernis Williamsburg apartment, there was first a khooneh takouni (a shaking of the house, the Persian version of spring cleaning). Then family heirlooms were brought out on the mantle.

Mina dressed an end table with satin, placing on top a mirror, garlic, lentil sprouts, apples, dishes of vinegar and sumac, and a plate of sweet paste called samanu. She told me the items displayed all start with the letter s in the Persian alphabet. Added to the chef doeuvre were eggs, coins, hyacinth, a bowl of fish, and an Iranian poetry book.

My family loves hosting poetry nights, she explained, lighting candles.

Photo: Clemence Poles

Minas finishing touch was her guest list of fashionable Iranian women, who, like her, work for themselves: Clemence Poles from Passerbuys, Nicole Najafi who runs Tio y Tia and Industry Standards  and an eccentric blogger named Pari Ehsan, who was wearing Lou Dallas and had just gotten back from sneaking into David Zwirner for a photo shoot. Also at the table was writer Fariha Roisin.

Gita served us traditional stews called khoresht karafs and gheimeh, kebabs, lemon chicken, and green Persian rice with tahdig. During dinner, she talked about her life in Iran before the revolution, and asked the table if anyone had gone back yet. Pari said it had been difficult because she hadnt obtained her birth certificate. Its easier to go to Iran if youre a foreigner than when youre an actual citizen, she professed. We grabbed seconds over discussions of systemic racism and the fundamental hurdles of being Muslim.

Photo: Clemence Poles Photo: Clemence Poles

Under the dim lights, Nicole recalled memories of growing up around parties full of belly dancing and songs until dawn. Gita described older customs of Nowruz  jumping over rows of fires, hitting each other with scallions. Bastani, a pistachio ice cream doused in rosewater and saffron, was brought out for dessert. The flavor of the rosewater paired with orange wine made everyones breath smell like jasmine.

We moved from table to couch, continuing to weave stories of the past with hopeful anecdotes for the future. The evenings intimacy made it easy to forget about the arctic landscape outside, and everyone agreed that welcoming the new year on the first day of spring is logical nonetheless. After all, its a celebration of adaptation. Be salamati! Eide Mobarak! we toasted by the end of the night. To life! Happy new year!Amy Schumer at the March for Our Lives in Los Angeles. Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

On Saturday, Amy Schumer pleaded for lawmakers to protect children from gun violence in an emotional speech at the March for Our Lives rally in Los Angeles.

The comedian has been an outspoken gun-control advocate since a July 2015 shooting at a Louisiana screening of her film Trainwreck, during which two women  Mayci Breaux, 21, and Jillian Johnson, 33  were killed. After the shooting, Schumer teamed up with her cousin, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, to encourage politicians to get interested in fighting gun violence.

Speaking on Saturday, Schumer thanked the student organizers and everyone else in attendance at the march for standing up and saying, No more.  She continued, Because we know its hard and we know they will twist our words and laugh at us and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie. How do they sleep at night?

You are kiling children, Schumer said. And they call people like me Hollywood liberals like theres something in it for us. Well, whats in it for us is knowing were doing our part to keep our children alive. She explained that speaking out about gun-control puts literal targets on our backs and narrows the audience for her work. She also said that it leads to entertainers like her selling half as many tickets.

You see that politicians? You can make a little less money and be able to look at yourself in the mirror with no blood on your hands, Schumer added.

The actress went on to tell politicians who arent standing up for gun-control that they are digging the graves of the people theyve sworn to protect. Watch her speech below.Berlin, Germany. Photo: Adam Berry/Getty Images

After losing 17 of their classmates and teachers to a horrific school shooting, student survivors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized the March for Our Lives protest against gun violence. The main demonstration is in Washington, D.C., but the event inspired hundreds of related events around the U.S., and a number of mass protests in cities around the world.

Why They March: Four Best Friends From Parkland Explain Why The March Matters to Them

Protests have been reported in Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Brisbane, Australia; Brussels, Belgium; Berlin, Germany; Tel Aviv, Israel; Rome, Italy; Amsterdam, Netherlands; London, England; and a number of other cities, where thousands of children and adults have joined together to demand an end to unnecessary gun violence and call on lawmakers to enact stricter gun legislation. Below, the most powerful scenes from March for Our Lives protests around the world.

Paris, France:

Photo: Owen Franken/Corbis via Getty Images

In Paris, France, the March for Our Lives rally faces the Eiffel Tower at Place de Trocadero. Student Beatrice Spencer is protesting against both gun violence and the pervasiveness of sexual harassment, as she has the phrase Times Up! written on her face.

Amsterdam, the Netherlands:

Supporting #marchforourlives with @marchforourlivesnl from across the Atlantic pic.twitter.com/zfGRwwdlhb  Rebekah McQ (@rebekahmcq) March 24, 2018

Protesters gathered at the Museumplein in Amsterdams Museumkwartier neighborhood.

Mallorca, Spain:

Photo: CATI CLADERA/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutter/CATI CLADERA/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutter

The world supports U.S.A. gun reform, one sign reads.

Tokyo, Japan:

At the March for Our Lives in Tokyo, demonstrators held up the names of Americans killed by guns https://t.co/JxwjWfm7tK pic.twitter.com/6AuB8e1gHZ  CNN International (@cnni) March 24, 2018

Demonstrators in Tokyo carried signs with both the names and ages of Americans who were killed by gun violence.

Munich, Germany:

Photo: Alexander Pohl/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Rome, Italy:

London, England:

Photo: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images

The scariest thing in a school should be my grades, reads the sign held up by a student in London.

Brussels, Belgium:

Photo: Romy Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto via Getty Images

This post will be updated throughout the day.Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

In more than 800 cities across the world, people are joining in March for Our Lives rallies to deliver in unison a cogent message to lawmakers, the National Rifle Association, and Second Amendment advocates: Never again should a student die in a school shooting.

Why They March: Four Best Friends From Parkland Explain Why The March Matters to Them

The #NeverAgain movement started in Parkland, Florida, after a tragic school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School left 17 dead, and students around the country have joined survivors including Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, and David Hogg to advocate for better gun control in America.

Below, the most powerful moments from the March for Our Lives rallies:

The crowd chants thank you as Parkland students arrive at the march

CBS4s Lauren Pastrana tweeted an inspiring video of the Parkland student survivors arriving in D.C. for the main march, during which the crowd is heard chanting, thank you.

Student injured during Parkland shooting still stands up

Stoneman Douglas junior Samantha Mayor, 17, was shot in the knee during shooting rampage on Feb. 14. Here she is with mom Ellyn at #MarchForOurLives in Parkland. pic.twitter.com/Co67wSRC9c  Susannah Bryan (@Susannah_Bryan) March 24, 2018

Samantha Mayor may have been shot in the knee during the Stoneman shooting a little over a month ago, but shes not letting her injury prevent her from standing up for gun control.

Newtown students head to D.C.

Homemade signs by Newtown students, from one of 8 buses en route to #MarchForOurLives@jameswest2010 and I are tagging along with @Junior_NAA @NewtownAction today. Halfway to DC  pic.twitter.com/jeKGXZgcr6   Mark Helenowski (@MarkHelenowski) March 24, 2018

I cant wait to vote, reads a sign held up by a student from Newtown, Connecticut, whos on one of the eight buses en route to the March in D.C. Its been more than five years since 20 children and six adults were killed during the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Students hold photos of those killed in school shootings

New York City. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Students in New York City cover their faces with sheer white cloth and hold pictures of students who were killed in school shootings, like Stoneman and Sandy Hook.

Vocal Parkland survivor delivers a message to lawmakers

Cameron Kasky, a student Parkland survivor who co-founded the advocacy group Never Again MSD, delivered a compelling argument to politicians in D.C.: The voters are coming.

Los Angeles student calls for change

"I have learned to duck from bullets before I learned how to read," Los Angeles student Edna Chavez says at #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/YqshSjJFtW  NBC News (@NBCNews) March 24, 2018

I have learned to duck from bullets before I learned how to read, says Edna Chavez, who lost her brother to gun violence.

Brother of a Chicago shooting victim speaks for his citys youth

Im here to speak for those Chicago youth who feel their voices have been silenced for far too long. And Im here to speak on behalf of everyone who believes a child getting shot and killed in Chicago or any other city is still a not-acceptable norm, 19-year-old Trevon Bosley says.

David Hogg wants to put the USA over the NRA

Were going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians, but as Americans. Because this  this  is not cutting it, Parkland survivor David Hogg says as he points toward the U.S. Capitol.

We will continue to update this post throughout the march.Yolanda King, Martin Luther King Jr.s granddaughter. Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Martin Luther King Jr.s granddaughter has a dream, too. At the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., standing alongside Parkland survivor Jaclyn Corin, 9-year-old Yolanda King disclosed her desire in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands: I have a dream that enough is enough, and that this should be a gun-free world. Period.

Four Best Friends From Parkland Explain Why March for Our Lives Matters

From 11-year-old Naomi Wadler, who recently led a walkout at her school in Virginia, to Stoneman survivor Emma Gonzalez, a number of fearless teenagers and children have delivered powerful messages in support of stricter gun-control at the student-led protests. The biggest event, organized by the survivors of the tragic school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has drawn numerous high-profile celebrities and inspired similar demonstrations around the world.

King, who wore an orange gun violence awareness ribbon pinned to her coat, proudly introduced herself as MLKs granddaughter as she stood onstage, gripping Corins hand.

My name is Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, she said. My grandfather had a dream that his four little children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

To close out her speech, she led the audience in a call-and-response chant after divulging her wish for a world without gun violence. Spread the word. Have you heard? All across the nation. We are going to be a great generation, she yelled into the crowd.

Watch the full inspiring speech below.Naomi Wadler at the March for Our Lives. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Saturdays March for Our Lives protests were filled with powerful moments, from speeches given by the survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, to students from Newtown, Connecticut, joining the rallies. But one of the most inspiring moments of the day came when 11-year-old Naomi Wadler, who recently led a walkout at her school in Virginia, took the stage in Washington.

Why They March: Four Best Friends From Parkland Explain Why The March Matters to Them

With more eloquence and poise than most adults could ever hope to muster, Wadler told the crowd in D.C., Me and my friend Carter led a walkout at our elementary school on the 14th. We walked out for 18 minutes, adding a minute to honor Courtlin Arrington, an African-American girl who was the victim of gun violence at her school in Alabama after the Parkland shooting.

Wadler continued: I am here today to represent Courtlin Arrington. I am here today to represent Hadiya Pendleton. I am here today to represent Taiyania Thompson, who at just 16 was shot dead at her home in Washington, D.C. I am here to acknowledge and represent the African-American girls whose stories dont make the front page of every national newspaper, whose stories dont lead on the evening news.

The young student went on to say that these black girls and women have been just numbers for far too long. Im here to say never again for those girls, too. I am here to say that everyone should value those girls, too, she said.

Many people on social media were appropriately inspired and impressed by her speech:

Naomi Wadler is an incredibly poised 11-year-old. We know its only seven short years until we have the right to vote.  Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen) March 24, 2018

Naomi Wadler is currently standing in the gap for all of the black girls and black women who are victims of gun violence. All the black girls and Black women who dont get a hashtag and who dont become front page news. Thank you Naomi. #MarchForOurLives  Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) March 24, 2018

naomi wadler is only 11 years old and is more woke and educated than our president #MarchForOurLives  marissa 13 (@prfctcamiIa) March 24, 2018

Naomi Wadler: Remember her name. Young Black Girls Rock. #MarchForOurLivesDC pic.twitter.com/OTjogrm7WQ  Chris Redwood  (@KissyfurRedwood) March 24, 2018

My gosh. Naomi Wadler is in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL and she is speaking better than I could to the crowd in Washington. AMAZING young person  Matt Perrault (@sportstalkmatt) March 24, 2018

Naomi Wadler: you are a massive force for change. We are all so proud of you. https://t.co/BYmohwMAJf  mom friend allie (@SaltyFeminism) March 24, 2018

Watch her full speech below.President Donald Trump speaks at The Generation Next event, a White House Forum featuring millennial voters and administration officials on March 22, 2018, in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on March 22, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

After Threatening Veto, Trump Signs $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill

After briefly threatening to veto the $1.3 trillion government spending bill, President Donald Trump signed the measure on Friday, March 23. While lamenting the measures many flaws, the president said that it had to be signed in order to fund the military.

Trump warned lawmakers that he will never again sign a similar measure and blamed the Democrats for stuffing the budget with wasteful spending.

The bill provides an additional $60 billion for the military compared to last year for a total of $654.6 billion. Trump spent a portion of the announcement listing the items that would be purchased with the money: jet fighters, helicopters, tanker jets, ships, and more.

For the last eight years, deep defense cuts have undermined our national security. Theyve hollowed our readiness as a military unit and put America at really grave risk, Trump said.

There are a lot of things that we shouldnt have had in this bill but we were in a sense forced if we wanted to build our military we were forced to have, he added.

The bill provides $1.6 billion for the construction of a border wall, far short of the $25 billion Trump fought for. Building the wall was the presidents signature campaign promise, but the budget limits what can be built using the $1.6 billion. The president described the wall as part of national defense, appearing to suggest that the structure may have to be built by the military.

National defense is a very important two words because by having a strong border system, including a wall, we are in a position, militarily, that is very advantageous, Trump said.

Trump placed the blame for not funding the wall on Democrats, saying that the money is tied to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program, an Obama-era initiative that granted temporary legal status to over 800,000 aliens who entered the country illegally as minors.

Trump ended the program in September and offered the Democrats a deal: the government would revive DACA in exchange for $25 billion for the border wall. The Democrats instead demanded that Trump provide a path to citizenship to an extended pool of aliens. The White House rejected the deal, Fox News reported, citing GOP sources.

DACA recipients have been treated extremely badly by the Democrats, Trump said. We wanted to include DACA in this bill. The Democrats would not do it.

The president also called on Congress to give him the power to veto line items in spending bills which would enable him to strike out specific provisions. He also called on Congress again to end the filibuster rule. Both measures could drastically alter the budget process.

Trump highlighted the fact that this would be the second largest spending bill ever signed. The largest spending bill was signed by former president Barack Obama.

The bill funds several of the presidents key priorities, including $4 billion for addressing the opioid addiction and abuse epidemic, an increase of $3 billion. The measure also funds Trumps infrastructure plan and provides money for boosting school safety in the wake of the Florida school shooting.

In addition to the border wall funds, the spending bill raised funding for the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement by 10 percent to $621 million and provided $505 million for the Department of Justice to hire and deploy new immigration judges.

From NTD.tv

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President Trumps First State of the Union AddressKhalid Hussain (L) and Assad Hussain were among the seven men convicted for their involvement in a sex gang who abused young girls on a massive scale. (SWNS)

Child Sex Exploitation Gang of Seven Predatory Men Convicted in Oxford

A sex gang of seven predatory men has been convicted of abusing young girls in the UK.

The group of seven men was described by an Oxford Crown Court judge as predatory and cynical.

The court heard how the gang frequently abused girls aged between 13 and 15 in a purpose-adapted vehicle they called a [expletive] wagon, with a license plate ending SHG.

After a lengthy five-month trial, which began on Oct. 9, 2017, and concluded on Friday, March 23, the men were found guilty. A jury of four women and seven men took a record-breaking 107 hours and 31 minutes, over the course of 24 days, to reach their verdict.

The charges faced by the men, aged between 37 and 47, included indecent assault, rape, and false imprisonment, on five victims between 1998 and 2005.

During the trial, Oxford Crown Court heard accounts from the victims, all of whom were aged between 13 and 15 at the time, who said they were plied with drink and drugs and took part in sex parties. A number of the women also recalled the sinister vehicle the men used, in which some of the abuse reportedly took place.

Judge Peter Ross, who presided over the trial, said once the final verdicts were handed out, Systematic and widespread grooming, that is what this case has revealed. The investigation has involved countless hours of work and [the police] are entitled to commendations for the work they have done.

He also thanked jurors for their hard work and phenomenal dedication to the case in returning their verdicts, following the longest jury deliberation in Oxford Crown Court history.

The trial saw seven defendants convictedRaheem Ahmed, Moinul Islam, Kamran Khan, Kameer Iqbal, Khalid Hussain, Alladitta Yousaf, and Assad Hussain.

Two others who stood trial, Saboor Abdul and Haji Khan, were acquitted of all charges. Two other men involved in the proceedings cannot be named for legal reasons.

All accused denied their part in the child sexual exploitation.

The court heard throughout the trial how the seven men on numerous occasions coerced the girls into sex at a number of addresses across Oxford.

These included at guest houses, in parked cars, and at local parks.

Prosecutor Oliver Saxby called the abuse routine, cynical and predatory sexual exploitation.

Opening the trial in October, Saxby said, Each of the young girls we are dealing with shared one very important characteristic, they were vulnerable. Perfect prey for, in the main, young men prepared to exploit them for casual sexual gratification that was easy, regular and readily available.

During the trial, one victim recounted how she would be pressured into sex at numerous locations across Oxford, between February 1998 and February 2001.

In some of the instances of abuse, the girls were plied with drink and drugs as part of what prosecutors called the grooming process.

They were made to take part in sex parties at a number of addresses across Oxford involving large groups of men.

A number of the woman also recalled a black Nissan Serena people carrier in which many instances of sexual abuse allegedly took place.

One woman said of the vehicle They would pick the girls, have sex with them, and dump them. Everything happened in that Serena.

The men will be sentenced at Oxford Crown Court in June.

Below are the charges in full and the findings of the court.

Raheem Ahmed, 40, of Starwort Path, Oxford, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault and one count of false imprisonment. He was cleared of one count of rape.

Moinul Islam, 41, of Wykeham Crescent, Oxford, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault, one count of rape, and one count of supplying cannabis to another. He was cleared of false imprisonment.

Kamran Khan, of Northfield Road, Bolton, was convicted of indecent assault and false imprisonment. He was cleared of one count of rape.

Kameer Iqbal, 38, of Dashwood Road, Oxford, was convicted of three counts of rape.

Khalid Hussain, 37, of Ashhurst Way, Oxford, was convicted of one count of rape and count of indecent assault. He was cleared of another count of rape.

Alladitta Yousaf, 47, of Bodley Road, Oxford was convicted of one count of indecent assault.

Assad Hussain, 37, of Iffley Road, Oxford, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault, three counts of rape, and two counts of conspiracy to rape. He was cleared of one count of indecent assault.

Saboor Abdul, 37, of Oxford Road, Cowley, one of only two defendants to take to the stand, was unanimously cleared of a single count of rape.

Haji Khan, 37, of Littlegreen Lane, Birmingham, was cleared of one count of conspiracy to rape and one count of indecent assault.

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Corvette ChasePresident Donald Trump holds up a poster of before and after photos of a segment of the border wall prototypes with Chief Patrol Agent Rodney S. Scott (R) in San Diego, Calif. on March 13, 2018. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Did Trump Just Hint at Building the Border Wall Using the Military?

News Analysis

President Donald Trump briefly threatened to veto a giant spending bill on Friday and then reluctantly signed it to keep the military funded.

The lack of funding for a border wall with Mexico is likely one of the presidents biggest frustrations. Trump mentioned the wall when he threatened to veto the bill. The $1.3 trillion budget includes just $1.6 billion for wall construction along the southern border, far short of the $25 billion needed to accomplish Trumps signature campaign promise.

To make matters worse, the spending bill specifically prohibits Trump from building the kind of wall he wants. The president nevertheless celebrated the progress and pointed out that construction can begin immediately.

But Trump also dropped an eyebrow-raising hint that he could take an unprecedented option and build the wall using the enormous military budget.

I want to address the situation on border security, which I call national defense, Trump said. I call it stopping drugs from pouring across our border. And I call it illegal immigration. Its all of those things. But national defense is a very important two words. Because by having a strong border system, including a wall, we are in a position, militarily, that is very advantageous.

For the first time, Trump underlined the significance of the barrier as a military structure and a matter of national defense. Up to now, the president promoted the wall as a way to curtail illegal immigration and stop the deadly flood of illicit drugs. The introduction of the walls military function is significant, especially in terms of funding it.

Roughly half of the spending bill is dedicated to the military for a total of over $654 billion allotted to the Pentagons base budget and overseas counterinsurgency operations. Thats enough to build the wall 26 times.

Immediately after he alluded to the walls military function, Trump called upon Gen. James Mattis to comment on the newly secured military budget.

In 1790, in George Washingtons first annual address to Congress, he stated, to be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving the peace, Mattis said. Now, its our responsibility in the military to spend every dollar wisely in order to keep the trust and the confidence of the American people and the Congress.

The generals mention of spending every dollar wisely stood out in particular because the military would have to secure just 3.8 percent in cost savings in order to fund the wall construction.

Considering how urgently Trump wants to build the wall, its a surprise he didnt float the military option earlier. As commander in chief, he has ultimate power over the military. Each branch of the armed forces has a construction division. The Army Corps of Engineers alone employs 37,000 people who specialize in building critical infrastructure.

Its hard to argue against the barriers military significance. Irans terror proxy, Hezbollah, has built up an alarming presence in South America. As Trump ramps up pressure on the Iranian regime, the threat of commandos crossing the border on suicide missions to cause mass civilian casualties is real.

Meanwhile, illegal drugs flooding into the country via the Mexican border are resulting in a tragic loss of life. Fentanyl, a commonly trafficked drug, was responsible for 20,000 American deaths in 2016.

America lost 4,491 troops during the entire eight years of the war in Iraq, which cost the United States up to $6 trillion. In comparison, erecting a wall that can help reduce the staggering loss of life from the drug epidemic is well worth 3.8 percent of the military budget.

Video: Trump Describes Border Wall With Mexico as a Military AssetLieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, the gendarme who voluntarily took the place of a hostage during a deadly supermarket siege in southwestern France on Friday, March 23, 2018. (Gendarmerie Nationale/Handout via Reuters)

Hero French Policeman Who Took Place of Hostage Dies of Wounds

PARISA gendarme who was shot three times after voluntarily taking the place of a hostage during a supermarket siege in southwestern France on Friday has died, France announced on Saturday March 24.

Arnaud Beltrame, who once served in Iraq, had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after the siege in which he took the place of a female hostage at the Super U store in the town of Trebes, near the Pyrenees mountains.

He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist, President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday.

Fridays attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, not far from Trebes, a tranquil town of about 5,000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon.

AFP is reporting out this photo of Redouane Lakdim, the dead alleged Moroccan Islamic State attacker who took grocery shoppers hostage in southern France earlier today. 3 were killed & 16 injured. https://t.co/AvbGmTbcvS pic.twitter.com/rpeRfNrgc9  Andy C. Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) March 23, 2018

Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.

The attacker, whose rampage began when he shot at a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole, killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday, according to a government readout.

Beltrame was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene; most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit.

#ArnaudBeltrame is the name & the face to remember today

During the terror attack in a supermarket in #Trebes the @Gendarmerie officer exchanged himself for a hostage & left his phone on a table with an open line enabling police outside to listen in

Critically injured in assault pic.twitter.com/dW0zEFz6iy  Tom Antonov (@Tom_Antonov) March 23, 2018

He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding, whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table, line open. When shots rang out, elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant. Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times.

The 44-year-olds death takes the number killed to four.

The ISIS terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron has said security services are checking that claim.

More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to ISIS or were inspired by the group.

France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing ISIS strongholds in Iraq and Syria, where the group has lost substantial ground in recent months.

One multiple attack by ISIS gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice.

Beltrame, who would have turned 45 in April, was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005. He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris, Macron said.

Fridays assault was the first deadly attack since October 2017, when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him.

Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations.

Macron said of Beltrame:,In offering himself as a hostage to the terrorist holed up in the Trebes supermarket, lieutenant colonel Beltrame saved the life of a civilian hostage, showing exceptional self-sacrifice and courage.

The news of Beltrames death was first announced Frances interior minister, who said in a Twitter post, Dead for his country. France will never forget his heroism, bravery and sacrifice.

By Brian Love

Recommended Video: President Trump Visits FranceFormer US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton speaks to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland, Feb. 24, 2017. (Mike Theiler /AFP/Getty Images)

John Bolton Will Seek to Redefine US-China Relations and Pushback Against Aggression

News Analysis

Decades of a conciliatory approach by the United States toward China could be finally coming to an end, as President Donald Trump has tapped John Bolton to be the next national security adviser.

With a single March 22 tweet, Trump ousted H.R. McMaster and announced that Bolton will be taking over the most powerful national security leadership role in the country on April 9. The change has long been speculated by many and is the latest in a string of personnel changes that Trump had made recently.

Bolton served under former President George W. Bush as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (2001-2005) and as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. (2005-2006).

Both in those official capacities and also in his later career as a TV and media personality, Bolton has distinguished himself as one of the nations most hardline foreign policy voices. He has consistently advocated hawkish responses in dealing with aggression by foreign regimes, including Iran, Russia, Syria, North Korea, and China.

A New Era

It is Boltons hardline view toward China that could lead to the most consequential change to U.S. foreign policies and strategies in the years ahead, observers said.

I think unlike many established China specialists [in the United States], John Bolton recognizes very clearly that we are entering a new era where the reconciliatory style of diplomacy with China from Nixon-Carter era is long-dead, said Arthur Waldron, Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bolton understands there are structure differences between the United States and China that are irreconcilablethat is, unless China undergoes some fundamental changes, said Waldron. He will be more robust and will not be afraid of Chinas threat of war.

Bolton is also well known for his strong support of Taiwan, which he has visited frequently. He has repeatedly called for U.S. decision makers to formally resume diplomatic relations with the democratic island nation.



[Diplomatic] negotiation should not mean Washington gives and Beijing takes. We need strategically coherent priorities reflecting not 1972 but 2017, encompassing more than trade and monetary policy, and specifically including Taiwan. Lets see how an increasingly belligerent China responds, Bolton wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January 2014.

June Teufel Dreyer, Professor of political science at the University of Miami, said that she expects Bolton to make full use of the newly-enacted Taiwan Travel Act to encourage exchanges of officials at the highest levels between Taiwan and the United States.

The passage of the Taiwan Travel Act had been sharply criticized by the Chinese communist regimes officials and state media, who claimed that the act violates the one-China principle, which the United States calls the One China Policy and interprets differently. Bolton, however, has said on numerous occasions that the policy is inherently ambiguous and the United States should strengthen its alliance with Taiwan regardless of Beijings protests.

Dreyer also said that as the new National Security Adviser, Bolton would likely push forward for more regular, high-profile freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, which would directly challenge Beijings aggressive island building and sovereign claims over the disputed water.

Multiple Changes

Bolton joins a Trump national security team that has seen a number of changes to top personnel recently that could indicate a clear shift toward a hardline U.S. response to Chinas growing aggression and military buildup.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has recently been sacked and will soon be replaced by CIA chief Mike Pompeo, a former Congressman who is also known for his hawkish stance toward Chinas aggression.

Trumps chief trade adviser, Peter Navarro, known for espousing a hardline view toward U.S. relations with China on trade and other issues, is also set to have a greater influence on the administration following the departure of Gary Cohn, another top economic adviser who favors a conciliatory approach to China.

The new White House National Security Strategy released last December, which specifically designated China as a strategic rival, also resonates with Boltons hardline view.

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How Doctors in China Turn into MurderersTeenager Who Tried to Bomb London Train Jailed for 34 Years

LONDONAn Iraqi asylum-seeker was jailed for 34 years on Friday, March 23 for trying to set off a homemade bomb on a rush-hour London commuter train in a botched attack that injured 30 people last year.

Ahmed Hassan was found guilty last week of trying to murder passengers on an underground train heading to central London on Sept. 15. Police said it was only luck that his device, packed with shrapnel, did not properly detonate.

At Londons Old Bailey Court, he was sentenced to life in prison and told he would spend at least 34 years behind bars.

You were determined to create as much death and carnage that day as possible, said the judge, Charles Haddon-Cave.

Ahmed Hassan, 18 (01.06.99) of Sunbury, Surrey who planted a home-made bomb on a London tube has been found guilty of attempted murder today #ParsonsGreen pic.twitter.com/l3gNPfH0HD  Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) March 16, 2018

I am satisfied that you were driven and motivated by four things: a mind-set of ISIS (Islamic State) extremism, a deep-seated hatred of this country, a desire for revenge against Britain and America whom you blamed for your fathers death in Iraq and anger at the continued bombing of Iraq by Western Coalition forces.

The Iraqi, who the judge said was older than his given age of 18 but younger than 21, came to Britain illegally in 2015 and told officials he had spent three months in an ISIS training camp.

He was a model student, winning a prize for student of the year at his local college, but the judge said he harbored dark thoughts although only began researching his attack just a month before he carried it out.

On the day of the bombing, the teenager left his foster home in Sunbury-on-Thames, southwest of London, and headed for the local station with his bomb placed in a bucket and hidden in a supermarket shopping bag.

It was made with the highly volatile triacetone triperoxide (TATP)known as the mother of Satanand packed with more than 2 kg of metal shrapnel including screws, bolts, nails, knives and screwdrivers.

The device went off at Parsons Green station in Fulham, where flames engulfed the carriage with 93 people on board but because it did not fully explode, injuries were limited. Authorities said it was Britains fifth major attack of 2017.

He had got off at the previous stop and the following day was arrested in the southern port of Dover where he had been trying to flee abroad.

Hassan, who had denied the charges, admitted to police he had made the bomb but said he had never intended to kill and merely wanted attention.

You should understand that the Koran is a book of peace; Islam is a religion of peace, Haddon-Cave told him.

You have violated the Koran and Islam by your actions, as well as the law of all civilized people. You will have plenty of time to study the Koran in prison in the years to come.

By Michael Holden

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Trump Calls on Nation to Answer Hate with Love after Florida School Shooting TragedyTexas 4-Year-Old Shoots 7-Month-Old in Apparent Accident

In Temple, Texas, a 4-year-old accidentally shot a 7-month-old baby.

The infant was rushed to McLane Childrens Hospital on Thursday, March 22, and according to KWKT-TV, was conscious and breathing.

Eyewitness Bradley Martin described the scene in the aftermath of the shooting and said he saw what looked like a lifeless-looking baby being taken to an ambulance.

The police officer carried [the infant] out, witness Bradley Martin said, the Independent reported. [The baby] just looked lifeless in his hands. You know what I mean. There was blood all over [the infant]. They put [the baby] in the back of an ambulance and took off down the road.

But a family member who spoke to KWTX said, It looked like everything was going to be okay with the baby boy.

Investigators at the Temple Police Department are working on the case, but according to reports, police are treating the shooting as accidental.

TPD is in scene where a 4 year old has accidentally shot a 7 month old. The 7 month old is in an unknown condition at the Childrens Hospital. #onscene #temple  Temple Police Dept (@TempleTX_Police) March 22, 2018

Police received a 911 call from a woman at the house, believed to be the childrens mother, Newsweek reported.

No details were available at the time of reporting as to the type of weapon used or how it got into the hands of the 4-year-old.

If youre going to own guns lock it up, thats all I can say, said Martin, who told KWTX that moments before hearing sirens he saw the 4-year-old playing in the yard while his mother was mowing the lawn.

Temple Police Department spokeswoman Shawana Neely said that the woman at the property at the time of the incident was the mother of one of the children. The shooting is believed to have taken place inside the house.

Newsweek reported that there was a sign outside the home that read The average response time of a 911 call is 23 minutes. The response time of a .357 is 14 hundred feet per second.

Neighbor Adrian Martinez told KXXV that he would not jump to conclusions.

Im not there to judge them, but in my family, it happened once with my cousin, Martinez told the station. My cousin killed accidentally my other cousin. It happens. Accidents happen.

Speaking to KWTX, next-door neighbor Marta Guillen praised the family.

The woman is good people, a good mother, a stay at home mom who doesnt work and stays home with her children, Guillen said, according to the station.

Guillen and her husband also told KWTX the family had surveillance cameras overlooking the front and backyard so they could watch the children outside.

I hope the babys OK, and I hope the family is going to be alright, said Ami Fontenot, another neighbor. And if theyre going to have guns, take precautions, obviously.

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First Lady Melania Trump Meets with School Shooting Survivor Kyle KashuvUPDATE: Travis Air Force Base Attack Investigated as Terrorism

The explosion at an Air Force base in California is now being investigated as an act of terrorism, a new CBS report revealed.

Law enforcement sources told CBS that a car loaded with propane tanks was driven through the main gate at Travis Air Force Base on Wednesday night, March 21, before exploding into flames.

A video posted on an Air Force forum on Facebook showed military personnel fighting to put the fire out. The bases Explosive Ordinance Disposal team also responded, along with the Office of Special Investigation.

The sources said the driver deliberately ignited the fire, before dying inside the car.



Law enforcement officials have identified the driver but not released his name publicly.

Investigators are treating the incident as an act of terrorism, prompting FBI agents to join the Air Force in the investigation.

The driver gained unauthorized access to the main gate, authorities told the Los Angeles Times.

#TeamTravis, Please advise the latest update on the incident at the Main Gate. #TravisStrong pic.twitter.com/yo8xWJUSQI  Travis AFB Official (@Travis60AMW) March 22, 2018

Air Force officials said there was no threat to the base, which houses some 7,000 active military members and 3,700 civilians. Its the largest military aerial port in the United States.

The safety and welfare of our airmen, their families, and our local community is our top priority, Col. John Klein, commander of the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis, in a statement.

I am extremely proud of how our first responders quickly addressed the situation to keep Travis and the surrounding area out of harms way, he said.

He added, We are fortunate to have enduring relationships with federal and local law enforcement, and will continue to work hand-in-hand with them through the investigative process.

#TeamTravis

Security Forces personnel have begun implementing additional security measures at the main and hospital gates. Be prepared for longer than usual commute times. #TravisStrong  Travis AFB Official (@Travis60AMW) March 23, 2018

On Friday morning, the bases official Twitter account released another statement.

Security Forces personnel have begun implementing additional security measures at the main and hospital gates. Be prepared for longer than usual commute times, it stated.

Epoch Times reporter Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.

From NTD.tv

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First Lady Makes a Plea to Promote Compassion to ChildrenParx Racing track in Bensalem, Pa., where a horse jockey sustained severe injuries that led to his death. (Screenshot via Google Maps)

Wealthy Jockey Dies After Horse Collapses on Race Track

A jockey that earned tens of millions in his career died after the horse he was riding collapsed during a race.

The 57-year-old Jose Flores was riding a horse called Love Rules and was in the lead in a race at Parx Racing, on March 19. Suddenly, the horse fell, leading to horrific injuries for Flores, according to the New York Post.

Another horse came from behind and fell on top of the pair. A third horse managed to avoid falling onto the pile, but the rider of that horse was unseated, Daily Racing Form reported.

The spill caused Flores severe spine and skull injuries. He was taken to a hospital but never regained consciousness. His parents traveled from Florida to say goodbye to him while he was kept on life support. Flores died three days after the accident, according to the Daily Racing Form. Love Rules was euthanized.

The entire Parx Racing team is deeply saddened by the loss of Parx Hall of Fame Jockey, Jose Flores. He embodied all that is good in the world of horse racing, and will be missed immensely. We offer our deepest condolences and prayers to his family https://t.co/yGnls7IBDB  Parx Racing (@parxracing) March 22, 2018

Jose was a good-natured, good-hearted guy, Floress agent David Yannuzzi told the Daily Racing Form. He had money but he loved to ride. Hed say, Why should I stop? I love the morning training, I love the afternoons, I love the camaraderie. There must have been 55 people at the hospital Monday night.

Flores started racing in 1987 and earned more than $64 million in his career. He had a total of 4,650 wins, according to the New York Post. Overall he raced in 28,683 races and is No. 42 on the list of all-time wins in North America, according to the Daily Racing Form.

Flores was inducted into the Parx Racing hall of fame in 2013. He has a total of 2,255 wins at the Bensalem, Pennsylvania, track, the Daily Racing Form reported.

Parx canceled races the day after Floress fall and planned a memorial service.

Jose was a very well-respected mentor in the local jockey colony, said Sam Elliott, Parxs director of racing, via the Daily Racing Form. We canceled out of respect for Jose, his career, and his family.

Racing today at Parx Racing has been canceled due to circumstances from yesterday's 9th race. Our thoughts and prayers are with Hall of Fame jockey Jose Flores and his family.  Parx Racing (@parxracing) March 20, 2018

Flores was married to former jockey Joanne McDaid-Flores and had three sons, the youngest being 7 years old, the Daily Racing Form reported.

The last time a jockey died from injuries at a race was in October 2017, according to Terry Meyocks, national manager of the Jockeys Guild, via the Daily Racing Card. Flores is the 157th jockey to die from race injuries since the guild started keeping records, in 1940.

From NTD.tv

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Driver Maxes Out Audi S4 as Police Give ChaseSTAMFORD  While students from Newtown High School and Parkland, Fla. gathered in Washington, D.C. in a dramatic gesture of solidarity, thousands of supporters rallied as nearby as Stamford to demand an end to gun violence.

Hannah Keyes, a senior at Norwalk High School, was one of them. Keyes was eating lunch in an unsupervised classroom last month at Norwalk High when the school went into lockdown over a threat of a gun being in school.

Keyes sister, Rebecca, a freshman, was in class with a teacher who was able to calm them down. But Hannah said she was alone with fellow students who werent sure if it was safe to go across the hall to find a teacher. Instead, the students barricaded the door with chairs and hid behind a desk.

The moment reminded both girls how unsafe they are, even in school, which is why they decided to rally for better gun laws at the Stamford chapter of the March for Our Lives.

We feel really impacted by this whole movement, Hannah Keyes said while carrying a sign declaring we are students, we are victims, we are change. We feel really strongly students arent safe in school.

Both girls said they would like to see a ban on assault weapons, while Erin Aymerich, another Norwalk High School senior who spoke at the march, said she wants to ensure student voices are heard.

I matter, said Aymerich, 17. We should have the right to live.

Aymerich wasnt in school the day of the Norwalk gun scare, but said her brother, a freshman, was in class at the time and she texted him in a panic.

Your first thought is youre never going to see each other again. Your mind goes to the worst place. It wouldnt be a issue if guns werent even available, she said, noting shes not even legally old enough to rent a car, and yet shes allowed to purchase a gun.

Darius Williams, a senior at Brien McMahon High School, also spoke at the march. Williams said Brien McMahon had a demonstration and walkout on March 14, but he felt that wasnt enough.

I want to encourage other youths to use their voices, said Williams, 18.

The March for Our Lives movement was sparked by student activists following the Valentines Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed.

Students from Westhill, Stamford High, the Academy of Information Technology and Engineering, Darien High School, Norwalk High, Brien McMahon High School, Rippowam Middle School, Trinity Catholic High School and Our Lady of Fatima School in Wilton gave speeches, performed songs and read poems to share their thoughts about gun violence and school safety. They were introduced by local leaders including Stamford Mayor David Martin, state Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, and state Rep. Caroline Simmons, D-Stamford.

Im hoping the march itself does make an impact and we do see legislation and policy come out of the march, said Westhill junior Alyssa Goldberg, the student-speaker coordinator for the march. I hope it sets the stage for future activism and people know were not going to give up on this issue until we do see more gun safety laws in place.

The March for Our Lives sibling event held in Stamford was the only official march held in Fairfield County. The event was held in partnership with SUPER, a statewide student organization that began in Stamford to represent student ideas on school safety. Moms Demand Action Stamford, Everytown Survivor Network, Women on Watch, Connecticut Against Gun Violence and the Stamford-based ENOUGH campaign also teamed up to host the march.

According to Kristin ONeill Hermes, local leader of the Stamford chapter of Moms Demand Action, the national organization required any group getting funding for a march be aligned with a student group. On March 2, Everytown, which Moms Demand Action is a part of, said they were giving 500, $5,000 grants to support sibling marches of March for Our Lives around the country.

At the march, Goldberg was the first student speaker, her voice cracking with emotion as she spoke to an equally moved crowd. Her speech touched upon not only her own fears as a student, but how gun violence affects suicide rates and those with abusive partners.

Today we are here saying never again, she said, sparking a never again chant within the crowd.

Goldberg was followed by dozens more speeches and performances, including one from New Canaan resident Paul Simon who played The Sound of Silence.

In the hour leading up to the protest while people filled Mill River Park, students from Stamford High and Brien McMahon laid on the ground with signs toting the names and ages of the Parkland victims. Two memorials were also set up in the park, one to commemorate victims of gun violence and the other, a blank wall with markers for people to share their feelings.

But the march was about more than just school shootings, as made evident by the 96 T-shirts hanging on clothes lines as people walked in. The shirts represented the 96 lives lost to gun violence in America every day.

Not everyone was in agreement of the march and its purpose, however. Scott Wilson, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, said he feels guns can do a lot of good protecting people when in the right hands.

Our constitution is a marvelous thing, Wilson said. It allows people to have the ability to go out and use free speech. I do find it ironic in this instance that they are using free speech to help diminish their own rights  not just the rights of gun owners who currently own guns and Second Amendment supporters  but there may come a day in some of their own lives where they want to exercise Second Amendment rights. There they are clapping and cheering for the elimination of their own rights.

Geraldine Uribe, a student speaker from AITE, disagreed.

It needs to stop happening, she said before taking the stage at the event. Were old enough to speak up and use our First Amendment rights. Were not trying to take away the Second Amendment. We're trying to make rules and policies to make it stronger.WILTON  It seemed a match made in heaven when Beverly Weed first came across the newly opened congregate housing in Wilton Commons in 2016.

The 77-year-old had been living alone in her Norwalk home since her sister had moved to Wilton Meadows for help with her dementia, and she figured it was about time to downsize.

The new units were close to her sister, whom she visited each day, and there was no waiting list  a rarity in Fairfield County, where some assisted-living facilities have waiting lists up to six years. Most importantly, the units were affordable.

It was almost too good to be true, Weed said.

Last week, Weed and other residents of the 23-unit facility learned the low prices that lured them to Wilton Commons were indeed too good to be true.

Residents said they were blindsided when they learned state subsidies would be recalculated and prices could go up by as much as $700 at the beginning of July.

The unexpected announcement has some residents worrying that rising costs will force them out of their new homes.

I feel like theyre just putting us out to pasture, said 82-year-old Philomena Ferraro, who moved into the complex in October 2016.

They hoodwinked us into coming here with low prices and now theyre forcing these increases on us, all the while knowing we wont be able to find another place on six months notice, said 80-year-old Silvia Sartow.

Mike Santoro, the director of policy and research for the state Department of Housing, said the state had been over-subsidizing occupants of the congregate housing for the first year-and-a-half it was open, due to an error in calculation by the Wilton Commons management company, Connecticut Housing Partners.

On July 1, the state will implement the standard statewide calculation for congregate subsidies to Wilton Commons residents, which in turn could result in price hikes for some residents.

There isnt any good way to share this news, said Renee Dobos, the CEO of Connecticut Housing Partners, formerly known as the Mutual Housing Association of Southwestern Connecticut.

Some residents will be paying less, some will be paying the same, and some will be paying more, as its dependent on their income and ability to pay. I want to stress that not every resident will experience an increase. Our preliminary calculations are suggesting approximately one-third of the residents will experience an increase, she said.

While rents would likely dip for most residents under new calculations, the congregate fees for weekly housekeeping services, such as a one daily hot meal, 24-hour emergency staffing, on-site health and nutritional services, is another matter.

According to preliminary projections, Weeds congregate costs will jump from $78 to $1,271 per month  a 1,529-percent increase. And at least seven other residents are facing a similar jump in costs.

While Connecticut Housing Partners stated that these estimates are based off 2016 figures and are due to be updated by May, many residents are worried adjustments wont be enough.

Like losing a second family

When Weed first learned of the potential price hikes, she said she was broken-hearted.

Weed had moved to Wilton Commons from her Norwalk home of more than 40 years in order to be closer to her sister, Dorothy. But in October, Dorothy passed away after a long battle with dementia.

The loss was particularly hard on her, Weed said. Both sisters had been unmarried and had lived together their whole lives. In their later years, the two took to traveling around the world, visiting places from the Grand Canyon to Alaska, and Bermuda.

But Dorothys sudden death left Weed with an unmistakable void in her life  a hole she had only recently begun trying to fill with her new friends in Wilton Commons. But just as she was beginning to open that new chapter in her life, Weed fears it may be coming to an abrupt end because of circumstances that are outside her hands.

Its like theyre taking away my second family. All of these people dont know if theyll be able to afford living here anymore, and it just breaks my heart, Weed said.

Some residents have already begun looking for other housing options in the area, but they said the options are slim. Waiting lists at affordable assisted-living facilities in the area, such as the Marvin Home in Norwalk, are up to two-and-a-half to three years long.

Every place weve looked at has a waiting list six years long, and they are only giving us six months to try and find a new place. Its just unfair, said 88-year-old Anne Planinsek, who moved to the Wilton Commons from Maryland along with her 77-year-old husband, Louis.

How can they do this to us seniors? Weed said.NORWALK  The design and building plans for the new Columbus Magnet School in South Norwalk have received both praise and criticism from area residents and representatives, as the city awaits state approval to build it.

The new school will be at the site of the former Nathaniel Ely School and will house students from pre-K to grade 8, with 50 students divided into two sections per grade. The current Odyssey Preschool will remain in place.

This will be the second school in South Norwalk, which was cited as the area of greatest need for additional student seats in the district-wide building program plan approved in January 2017. As current district assignments stand, and with only one school in South Norwalk, many students in area have to endure long bus rides to different schools across the city.

Such was the case for Georgana Ruckers grandson, who had to take the bus to Silvermine Elementary School before he was accepted into Columbus Magnet School by lottery application.

She said she fully supports the plan for the new school and the districts transition from a series of neighborhood schools to school choice.

She recently attended a public presentation in South Norwalk on the new school.

This is about education and whats best for our children, Rucker said.

However, others have taken to issue with the building and design plans, including Common Council member Travis Simms, who represents South Norwalk, and longtime state Rep. Bruce Morris, who is from South Norwalk.

They are concerned about the removal of the softball field where part of the new school will be, reducing the amount of public recreational space open to the community. They arent fond of the new multipurpose area that will be added farther north to reduce the overall loss of recreational space either, because they feel the community wasnt given the chance to provide input on what it should be used for.

They also worry houses along Ingalls Avenue and near the intersection of Ryan and Ely avenues might be impacted if those streets need to be widened for the planned bus route. Norwalk building and facilities manager Alan Lo said this would be highly unlikely and against the interest of the city since it would cost more money.

For Morris, his biggest criticism is what he feels has been a lack of communication and transparency from the Board of Education. He acknowledges there were public meetings held in South Norwalk over the past year but argues those were more about the strategic operating plan and less about the building and facilities plan.

He said his staff is working on organizing a public forum with the commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services, Department of Education, and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

The Board of Education will be invited too.

Im just trying to make sure that everybody is fully cognizant and not just the people who are going to use the school, Morris said. Its more for the surrounding neighbors who are going to be impacted so they fully understand.

Board of Education chairman Mike Barbis said these concerns have been at the center of an ongoing battle between the board and South Norwalk residents and leaders, ever since plans for the new school started to develop.

But he stands by the board and citys efforts to keep the public informed on the building and design plans.

He noted that the boards school facilities and planning committee changed its meeting time in response to complaints from several South Norwalk leaders and referred to three previous public meetings held in the area.

He feels the opposition is a reaction to change.

A number of residents, a number of political leaders in South Norwalk are wondering whats going to be the result of all this, Barbis said. Change is scary, but it can be exciting too.

Another area of concern is whether or not the school would truly be a community school, since it would continue as a magnet.

Barbis said the school would be a hybrid of the two, since state racial balance regulations for schools prevent it from being a fully fledged neighborhood school.

Like other district schools, the new Columbus Magnet School will have a target racial balance of about 85 percent minority or less  with a neighborhood preference for immediate neighborhood and families in income restricted housing within a quarter-mile from the school.

Thats been a fact for a long time, Barbis said. Its not new information.

The expected population for the school is 450 students, Barbis said, with at least 200 of them from South Norwalk at the minimum. Right now, he said the current Columbus Magnet School has 365 students and 170 are from South Norwalk.

The new school is expected to open by September 2020.

Barbis said a new school hasnt been built since 1971.

Its going to be our first brand new school in 50 years, he said. I mean look at the plans. JCJ Architecture are phenomenal architects. Who would not want this school in their neighborhood?The following companies are subsidiares of Exxon Mobil: AKG Marketing Company Limited, Aera Energy LLC, Al-Jubail Petrochemical Company, Ampolex (Cepu) Pte Ltd, Ancon Insurance Company Inc., Barnett Gathering LLC, Barzan Gas Company Limited, Caspian Pipeline Consortium, Celtic Exploration Ltd., Coral FLNG S.A., Cross Timbers Energy LLC, Ellora Energy Inc., Esmeroon Oil Transporta Imperial Oil Limited, Esso (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Esso Australia Resources Pty Ltd, Esso Deutschland GmbH, Esso Erdgas Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Esso Exploration Angola (Block 15) Limited, Esso Exploration Angola (Block 17) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Angola (Overseas) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Chad Inc., Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (Deepwater) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (Offshore East) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited, Esso Exploration and Production UK Limited, Esso Global Investments Ltd., Esso Italiana S.r.l., Esso Nederland B.V., Esso Norge AS, Esso Petroleum Company Limited, Esso Raffinage, Esso Societe Anonyme Francaise, Exxo Holdings Inc., Exxon Azerbaijan Limited, Exxon Chemical Arabia Inc., Exxon International Finance Company, Exxon Luxembourg Holdings LLC, Exxon Mobile Bay Limited Partnership, Exxon Neftegas Limited, Exxon Overseas Corporation, Exxon Overseas Investment Corporation, ExxonMobil (China) Investment Co. 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Ltd., InterOil Corporation, Jurong Aromatics Corporation Pte Ltd, MPM Lubricants, Marine Well Containment Company LLC, Mobil Australia Resources Company Pty Limited, Mobil California Exploration & Producing Asset Company, Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company, Mobil Chemical Products International Inc., Mobil Corporation, Mobil Equatorial Guinea Inc., Mobil Erdgas Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Mobil Exploration & Producing Australia Pty Ltd, Mobil International Petroleum Corporation, Mobil Oil Australia Pty Ltd, Mobil Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast Inc., Mobil Oil New Zealand Limited, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, Mobil Producing Texas & New Mexico Inc., Mobil SerLimited, Mobil Venezolana De Petroleos Inc., Mobil Yanbu Petrochemical Company Inc., Mobil Yanbu Refining Company Inc., Mountain Gathering LLC, Mozambique Rovuma Venture S.p.A., Palmetto Transoceanic LLC, Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas Global Company LDC, Permian Express Partners LLC, Phillips Exploration LLC, Qatar Liquefied Gas Company Limited, Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited, Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited (II), SPI Limited, Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery Company Ltd., Saudi Yanbu Petrochemical Co., SeaRiver Maritime Inc., South Hook LNG Terminal Company Limited, Tengizchevroil LLP, Terminale GNL Adriatico S.r.l, Trend Gathering & Treating LLC, Wolverine Pipe Line Company, XH LLC, XTO Delaware Basin LLC, XTO Energy Canada, XTO Energy Inc., and XTO Holdings LLC.The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 211 E. Russell Road LLC, Air-Relief, Belliss & Morcom Brasil, Belliss and Morcom, Boardwalk Enterprises, Charm Merger Sub Inc., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. 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Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Ltd., Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Ltd. - US Branch, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Ltd., Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Ltd. - US Branch, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SA, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Services Ltd, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Hoffman, Gardner Denver Holdings, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica, Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd. Branch, Gardner Denver International, Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Intl Ltd Middle East Regional Rep Office, Gardner Denver Investments, Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan, Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd, Gardner Denver Ltd, Gardner Denver Ltd South Africa, Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd. Branch (Ireland), Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co, Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oberdorfer Pumps, Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Petroleum Pumps, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia, Gardner Denver SudAmerica S.r.l., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas, Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH, Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver UK, Gardner Denver Water Jetting Systems, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, Indonesia Foreign Trade Representative Office, LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MP Pumps Inc., Mako Compressors, Nash, Nash Elmo, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Robuschi, Rotary Compression Technologies, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Syltone, TCM Investments, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, TODO AB, Tamrotor Marine Compressors AS, Thomas Industries, Thomas Industries Inc., Tri-Continent Scientific, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, and Zinsser NA.Wall Street analysts have given Engie a "Buy" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but Engie wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

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Good News For H.B. Fuller Company, Bad News For Everyone Else

H.B. Fuller Is Raising Prices To Offset Inflation H.B. Fuller Company (NYSE: FUL) just added a new twist to the evolving narrative surrounding the Q3 earnings season. The company produced better than expected results and offered positive guidance on the back of pricing increases that are expected to restore margins, as the company put it, to their previous levels.

Read ArticleHALIFAXSeven Black janitors being laid off from their cleaning jobs at a Halifax office building are accusing the property manager and an incoming contractor of racial discrimination.

The unionized workers of African descent, who clean Founders Square, said Friday they are filing a complaint with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.

But the property manager of the historic Hollis Street building said the former cleaning company was terminated because of poor service, and its up to the new contractor to decide who it hires.

In a statement, the Armour Group said its decision to part ways with GDI Integrated Facility Services was performance based only.

Our dissatisfaction with the cleaning services being performed was communicated in countless emails, phone calls and several in-person meetings with senior management at GDI over a period of twelve months, the company said.

The Armour Group said it has a contractual obligation to maintain standards of cleanliness in the building, and that it received over 200 complaints in 2017 about cleaning issues.

The property manager recently awarded its cleaning contract to Deep Down Cleaning Services, prompting GDI to issue layoff notices to all its cleaners at Founders Square.

Darius Mirshahi, an organizer with the Service Employees International Union Local 2, said the new cleaning contractor only rehired a white non-supervisory janitor.

The janitors are all set to lose their jobs at the end of the month, he said.

Its very typical in this industry when a new contractor comes in that they keep the workers who are already working there, who know the building and have experience cleaning it, Mirshahi said. The basis of our complaint is racial discrimination.

But the Armour Group said its up to the new contractor, Deep Down Cleaning, to decide who it hires.

Our sole concern in our vendor service contracts is the quality of work performed, the company said.

The janitors and their supporters gathered outside the Hollis Street building in protest Friday, chanting justice for janitors and waving placards that said Black workers matter.

This is what racism looks like, local activist El Jones told the small crowd. Its looks like Black workers being kicked out of their minimum wage jobs where they are barely supporting themselves in the first place.

Taylor MacLean, one of the janitors who received a pink slip, said it has been a stressful experience.

Ive still got to pay rent. Ive still got to feed myself, he told reporters. Its very up in the air how long I wont have a job for.

NDP Leader Gary Burrill said his party unconditionally supports the laid off workers and called on the province to adopt a law that establishes successor rights.

Under the proposed law  which he says is in place in Ontario  if a unionized company loses a contract, the new company takes over the workers and abides by the unions hiring and employment terms, Burrill said.

Meanwhile, Mirshahi said a picket will be set up outside the building starting next week if the new cleaning contractor does not offer to hire the janitors.

Deep Down Cleaning did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.

Mirshahi said the cleaning company didnt provide any reason for its decision not to hire the Black workers. He couldnt immediately say whether the worker offered a position with the new cleaning company had more seniority.

The group Working While Black in Nova Scotia issued a statement condemning the company for not rehiring any of the Black janitors.

Racism, whether at work or elsewhere, is too often brushed off as something that is no longer a problem, the statement said. The reality is that racism is embedded into our economic system. Low-wage workers are disproportionately people of colour, who face multiple barriers to meaningful, stable employment.

Read more about:An innocent cab driver caught up in a bomb blast as police closed in and killed a suspected terrorist in Strathroy, Ont., has filed a lawsuit against the RCMP and other authorities for the trauma he says was visited on him.

In his unproven statement of claim, Terry Duffield asserts authorities were negligent in failing to warn or protect him from Aaron Driver, who was shot dead in August 2016 after setting off an explosive in the back of a cab.

The defendants knew, or ought to have known, that in putting Terry in harms way and failing to intervene earlier, Terrys safety, health and well-being would likely be harmed, the claim states. The defendants were negligent in the planning, preparation and execution of the apprehension of Driver.

Duffield is seeking $1 million in damages from the federal government, which is responsible for the RCMP and the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, the Ontario government for acts committed by provincial police, and two local forces.

The claim has not been tested in court and the defendants have yet to file responses.

A spokesperson with Ontarios attorney general said the province will defend the action. And an official with London, Ont., police  one of the police forces named in the lawsuit  said she could not comment because the matter is before the courts.

The other defendants were not immediately available for comment.

According to the statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court, the case arose in December 2014 when the RCMP began investigating Driver in Winnipeg over his online communications with known terrorists.

Police arrested him in June 2015 under anti-terrorism legislation, alleging he had referred to non-Muslims as enemies and posted information to help people travel to Syria to join the terrorist group, Daesh. Police also said they found a recipe for a homemade bomb on his personal computer.

Driver was released on several conditions and moved to Strathroy, where an alarmed neighbour in July 2016 complained about explosions coming from his home, the claim says.

Police did no, or insufficient, followup or investigation as a result of the complaint, according to the statement of claim. In the next 10 days, Driver completed the manufacture of a homemade bomb.

On Aug. 10, 2016, American agents found a video Driver had posted on the internet indicating he was bent on striking a Canadian target within 72 hours. They alerted Canadian authorities, who in turn quickly alerted various transit authorities across the country but not the local cab company Driver regularly used to get around, the statement of claim says.

That afternoon, Driver called for a cab to go to nearby London and Duffield responded. Duffield had no idea the RCMP, the bomb squad and other agents had set up a command post near Drivers home, the claim states. On the cabs arrival, Driver grabbed a backpack, which contained a bomb, and got into the back seat.

The defendant authorities knew or ought to have known that Driver likely had a bomb or explosive device with him or otherwise posed a danger to Terry but did nothing to warn Terry or to prevent Driver from coming closer to Terrys vehicle, the claim says.

As Duffield began reversing out of the driveway, police yelled at him to stop as heavily armed officers swarmed the vehicle. Without warning, Driver detonated his device, rocking the cab and filling it with smoke and debris.

Duffield, who was leaning over to retrieve cigarettes, escaped the full force of the blast because the back of the front seat protected his head and upper body. Nevertheless, he suffered cuts to his arms and ongoing pain and loss of function, his claim states.

Pandemonium ensued. Terry heard multiple gunshots, the claim states. He lay frightened and traumatized by the violent activity.

Police ordered Duffield from the car and told him to lie face down in the gravel, which he did. Nearby, police fired several shots at a twitching Driver, the claim says.

Aaron Driver was shot dead on the driveway, feet away from where Terry lay face down, the claim says. This further violent act  was devastatingly shocking to Terrys psyche.

After briefly questioning him, RCMP released Duffield to find his own way home. Among other things, the claim filed last week asserts Duffield has suffered from post-traumatic stress, lives in pain and with depression, and cannot work.Rose Vuong, owner of a west-end restaurant, is holding out.

Vuongs eatery, open for decades, is wedged between properties owned by The Drake Hotel.

At one point, she was presented with an offer to sell to The Drake, but declined.

Ive been in business a long time, said Vuong, 66, owner of Saigon Flower on Queen St. W. I have a skill and loyal customers.

When she retires, she plans to pass down her restaurant, which specializes in a fusion of Vietnamese and Chinese fare, to her two daughters.

This is why she turned down The Drakes proposal.

Torontos hot real estate market makes Vuong want to keep Saigon Flower in the family.

She says it would be difficult to get something close to identical if she were to sell.

I built up this business. Before, it was nothing, she said.

Vuong, who lives upstairs from her restaurant, is completely surrounded by The Drake.

The hotel bought three properties immediately east of its flagship hotel in 2004, which is where the planned expansion will go.

Adjacent, to the east of Saigon Flower, is another parcel, purchased a year later. But, says John Granger, director of development, there are no plans to develop it yet. The space was formerly the site of The Drake Commissary, which moved to Sterling Rd. last year, and now boasts a restaurant, larder, bar and bakery.

Years ago, we did approach Vuong to see if she would be interested in selling, Granger said. Shes very adamant; shes committed to being part of the neighbourhood.

The hotels expansion will begin next month and be completed, Granger projects, by spring 2020.

The development will include 32 new hotel rooms, which will bring the room count to 51, and the lobby will be revamped.

Were trying to really extend the existing streetscape, he said. Continuing the facade, balancing with what exists there already and extending the hotel lobby experience through there.

Vuong came to Canada from what was then known as Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) as a refugee. She opened the restaurant in 1986 with her late husband, Thai Khac Chuong, a noted photojournalist.

Four full-scale black-and-white photographs taken in Vietnam adorn the walls. One is the winner of a World Press Photo award for spot news in 1976. The picture shows a man being pushed away from bordering an evacuation plane in what was then South Vietnam.

Vuong said she doesnt know how to feel about The Drakes expansion until its completed, but she does have concerns; it will be five storeys, which would block her windows, she said. Shes also worried about snow and rain runoff.

I have a view. I have the sun. I open the window and let the fresh air in, she said.

Granger said that Vuong is being kept informed of all construction-related details, a process thats been going on for years.

Those windows are part of the discussions now, he said. Theres probably a half a dozen things were working on with her right now. Weve had tremendous success here. This is whats driving the entire expansion. I think having the local businesses beside us is a key part of it. It really is a community experience when people come out to stay at The Drake. Its all part of the fabric here.

(Rose has) been our neighbourhood since, for, well, prior to The Drake, Granger continued. Happy shes there.

On the business side of things, Vuong said that, while its hard to say how Saigon Flower could be affected, she said she hopes more young people means more business for her.

You build first, Ill build later, she said, laughing, referring to the expansion.On consecutive nights this week, a man and woman were fatally shot.

Both had their backs turned to the gunmen. Both were innocent victims.

Neither was implicated in the crimes unfolding around them on opposite sides of the city: a neighbourhood war, and the slaying of an alleged gang member.

Ruma Amar, 29, was shot in the back of the head as she and her husband and sister were leaving a North York bowling alley last Saturday. Two suspects had rained gunfire in what police say is a targeted shooting of another man, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

In Etobicoke the night before, Nnamdi Ogba was approached from behind by assailants in what police are characterizing as a neighbourhood retaliation that led to the death of an innocent man. The 26-year-old was not even a resident of the Scarlettwood Ct. neighbourhood he was visiting last Friday.

Shootings account for over half of city homicides. Its unclear how many innocent people have been the victims of targeted shootings, but there have been at least 12 bystanders killed by errant bullets in Toronto in the last decade alone.

We always assume that the person who gets shot was implicated somehow in a crime, said Jooyoung Lee, an associate professor at the University of Toronto. He added that crossfire is part of the gun violence narrative we dont hear enough about.

Toronto Police homicide Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux was the lead on two crossfire cases. A challenge for investigators handling cases of innocent shooting victims is offering an explanation to families, in some cases when a motive for the shooting is undetermined, he said.

I try to get them to wrap their head around something like having lost a family member under those circumstances  something so senseless, and so preventable, and unnecessary and all those other adjectives that you want to use, but its difficult to come up with an explanation, the veteran investigator said.

This was the case for Bailey Zaveda, a young woman shot outside a bustling Duke of York tavern in 2008. Her case was solved. Zavedas killer, Kyle Weese, was convicted in 2011 of second-degree murder in a shooting that injured four other people, not including the shooters intended target.

But the homicide of Derek Wah Yan is still an open case. He was killed when a bullet tore through his house as he was putting his young son to bed in 2003.

Where would one want to feel more safe than in their own home, putting their son to bed? Giroux said, adding he makes a yearly appeal to the public on this unsolved case.

Giroux believes a bullet fired from street level passed through the wall of Wah Yans house, a large portable radio, and ultimately killed a man remembered as a devoted father of two.

Wah Yans youngest son was downstairs the night tragedy struck the family.

Though Felix Yan was not old enough to fully grasp what was going on around him, he instantly understood that gun violence was bad, obviously because of what happened and what it had taken away from me.

Its something that time and again we would discuss, like how would life be different, how would we be living if my father was still around, he said of his older brother, Andrew, and mother.

His tight-knit family has worked to move on from the anger, but grief and weariness can sometimes peek through, the 22-year-old chemical engineering student said. For instance, walking in a safe neighbourhood at night or being out too late tends to evoke questions of personal safety more than they otherwise should, Felix Yan said.

Even speaking to the Star was a decision he made with some hesitation. Felix Yan elected not to go over the painful details of that night, but said its important for victims of gun violence to talk to someone.

Its good to talk about these things. Its not good to take all your emotions and bottle it inside, he said.

South of the border, the carnage from gun violence in mass shootings, including a school shooting in Florida, has spurred local community activists to hold a solidarity march on Saturday, beginning at Toronto City Hall.

In the shootings this past week, police said Ogba was leaving the home of friends who live in a Scarlettwood Ct. complex when he was ambushed by two hooded men who had followed him at a distance before the shooting. They fled in an SUV.

I ask that you look into your heart at this particular situation. This situation was not one gang member shooting another. Its an innocent man being gunned down walking to his car, going to see his fiancee, a homicide investigator told reporters Monday.

I believe that these suspects may harbour some kind of animosity towards the neighbourhood of Scarlettwood Ct., and those residents who reside in it, said Det. Jason Shankaran.

Amar was married to Amandeep Luthra one year ago this month. The young couple was looking at baby cradles the morning of her death.

All I know is the next moment I was just trying to hold her, and she was bleeding so bad, her husband told the Star Monday.

Police say the intended intended target was 32-year-old Thanh Tien Ngo. Ngo is an alleged member of the Chin Pac, police documents show, a gang in years-long rivalry with the Asian Assassinz. Police have not indicated that Saturdays shooting is gang-related.

University of Toronto professor Lee has ventured to gangland grounds  from south central Bloods and Crips territory in L.A. to the streets of Philadelphia  as part of his research on gun violence.

Once you start to squeeze that trigger and fire projectiles into a crowd or into a public place, any number of things can happen, he said, recounting the horrific tale of a ricochet bullet victim in Philadelphia, who was at a stoplight when gunmen opened fire on the street. A bullet ricocheted off a building and pierced the trunk of her car, then the car seat, then her stomach. She survived.

Reminders of these bullets are sometimes carved in the neighbourhood, through dents and marks in concrete, or piercings in building walls.

But its the scars below the surface that continue to haunt communities.

I know of families within the community where I work, where young people are absolutely traumatized by the sounds of guns at night, said Donna Harrow, chair of the African-Canadian Coalition of Community Organization.

She has met with mothers who have lost sons to gun violence, with one woman who has to make the daily walk past the same corridor in her social housing unit where her son was killed.

I think that its not as simple as gangs. It goes much deeper than that  . Because young people dont just wake up in the morning and decide to pick up a gun.Survivors of gun violence and relatives of victims were among several hundred people who marched on Queens Park Saturday calling for stricter gun control laws in the wake of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman High School in Florida last month that left 17 dead.

The rally coincided with at least 12 other events across Canada and some 800 around the world held in support of the massive March for Our Lives gathering in Washington, D.C. that was organized by students after the Florida tragedy and other school shootings in the U.S. since then.

Against a backdrop of drumbeats and placards, speakers told the crowd that the shooting has helped spur an anti-gun violence movement along with a political awakening among young people.

Pointing out that Canada has not been immune to school shootings, although not on the scale of the U.S., Riverdale Collegiate Institute Grade 10 student Colin Monahan said gun laws should be tightened not only in the U.S., but in Canada as well.

We need a long gun registry, we need extended wait times (to purchase a gun) and better background checks, the 15-year-old said, adding that assault rifles restricted in Canada can be smuggled in from the U.S.

Read more:

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U.S. Congress tiptoes toward narrow gun legislation ahead of March For Our Lives rally

Chanting no more silence, end gun violence as they marched north from Nathan Phillips Square along University Avenue toward Queens Park, Members of Communities for Zero Violence, which organized the Toronto rally, stopped with the crowd for a moment of silence in front of the U.S. consulate.

Evelyn Fox, whose 26-year-old son, Kiesingar Gunn, was shot dead outside a club in Liberty Village in 2016, said she has devoted her life to her sons memory and to ending the scourge of gun violence.

Sometimes I dont know how Ive kept going but I have to, Fox said.

Scarborough resident Louis March, who founded the Zero Gun Violence Movement of community organizations in Toronto, said the city has experienced a sharp increase in shootings over the past three years and a spike so far in 2018, including an attack last weekend that saw two people shot dead outside a bowling alley  one of them allegedly targeted, and the other a bystander.

I think its important to have this march today in solidarity with students in the United States because gun violence is taking its toll on families, individuals, communities across North America.

March said that as a society we can do better, adding that the June provincial election in Ontario and the Toronto mayoral race in October present opportunities for voters to support politicians that back a more comprehensive approach to ending gun violence, including expanded funding for community outreach and intervention programs.

Hannah Alper, 15, told the Star by phone Saturday that she marched in solidarity with the American students affected by gun violence.

Everyone can do something about it, no matter where you live, no matter how much money you have, no matter how young you are, Alper said. Just because we live in Canada doesnt mean we shouldnt take action on issues that we are passionate about.

I know when I get home Im going to research more about gun control and gun violence, and what we can do to help stop it, Alper said.

Meanwhile, Toronto Mayor John Tory in a tweet said he remains committed to updating and strengthening Canadian gun laws so we can get guns off Torontos streets and keep them out of the hands of criminals.

With files from Jenna MoonTorontos popular Indian restaurant Banjara has been forced to close down, after a fire suspected to have started in the kitchen.

Toronto Fire was called around 2 a.m. Friday to the Christie Pits location near Bloor St. W. and Crawford Ave. where they found the restaurant engulfed in flames.

A firefighter was rushed to hospital after a fall off of his ladder resulted in injuries to the side of his face and a fractured arm, Toronto Fire District Chief Stephan Powell said.

The restaurant, owned by chef Raj Veerella, is one of two in the city  the other is near Yonge St. and Eglinton Ave. E.

There has been a fire, and we will be closed until further notice, the companys website said. Our Eglinton location will be accepting all orders for our Bloor location till we are able to reopen.

Toronto fire said they are still investigating the incident, and have not yet determined what exactly caused the fire.From the sidewalk, very little about the lowrise brick building at 795 College St. appears to have changed.

Inside, however, the spacious and once extremely affordable apartments have undergone extensive renovations to become luxury rentals, with the three-bedroom units advertised online for at least $4,000 a month.

The building is also missing the original renters, who tried and failed to stop their evictions at the Landlord and Tenant Board.

What happened at 795 College St. is a story of tenants in a rapidly gentrifying city, who were forced out of their homes because rental housing law allows landlords to remove tenants during renovations but doesnt have the power to ensure they get back in, based on a recent ruling.

The term renovictions is used to describe when a landlord pushes people out for renovations and counts on them not coming back so they can dramatically raise the rent and find new tenants. But it is a tenants legal right to come back once work is done and without a substantial increase in rent.

Five former renters at 795 College St. said that is what happened to them after their building was bought for just over $1.5 million in 2014. Two years later they were ordered out. The tenants claim they clearly stated their intention to move back in, but the property owner gutted their apartments and found new people willing to pay three times the rent, ignoring their rights.

But heres the hitch. The new occupants of 795 College St. are entitled to protection under the Residential Tenancies Act and cant be ordered out, a board adjudicator determined in March.

I thought the whole point of the Landlord and Tenant Board was to protect people in these situations and I am aghast at how flimsy that was, how empty that promise was, said Aurora Browne, 45, who lived with partner Kris Siddiqi, 37, in the building for close to 10 years. It seems as if the Landlord and Tenant Board has absolutely no spine and it is open season on tenants.

For the former tenants, the building was more than bricks and mortar. It was where they met business partners and future spouses and raised their kids and were able to pursue their careers because of reasonable rent.

A spokesperson for 795 College Inc., the company that owns the building, declined to comment because the issue is still before the board, but said they are dedicated to preserving rental housing in the urban core.

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Evan Johnsen, an officer and director of 795 College Inc., told one former tenant he isnt some horrible archangel landlord person treating everybody terribly. But after dealing with major structural deficiencies and putting in brand new stuff it doesnt make sense to let her return at her original rent, he said. He intended to move his son in. The tenant Johnsen spoke with is not involved in the current case.

Its no secret that the rent you were paying there was well below what that space was worth and Im not going to try and pretend that thats not part of the story thats evolving here, because obviously it is, said Johnsen, according to a transcript of the December 2016 conversation submitted to the board.

I cant pay for your heat and your property taxes and a guy to mop the front hall for $1,200. Its so far beyond, oh Evan wants to make an extra $50 so he can drink more expensive champagne or some st like that, said Johnsen. This building is a major system catastrophe.

During the most recent of many board hearings, the tenants lawyer Simon Wallace had argued the owners used the new renters as both a sword and a shield or knew it was unlikely new tenants could be evicted. He also argued the board had broad powers to uphold the intent of the act, or protect tenant rights.

Lawyers for the building owner had argued it was not within the boards power to evict.

Board member Roger Rodrigues wrote in his March decision that clearly the people who drafted the legislation were focused on circumstances when a tenant could be placed back in possession of a unit, and there is nothing in the legislation so allowing when the unit has been re-rented to new tenants.

The building was purchased by 795 College Inc. in 2014. Johnsen and Neil Spiegel are the registered officers and directors of that company. The men are co-founders of Circa, a development company that transforms lowrise buildings and older homes into luxury condominiums, the Star reported in 2016. Johnsen is also identified as president of 795 College Inc., in a 2014 document detailing a $700,000 loan against the building.

The Star spoke with Johnsen in early February. His answers were terse. No, he said, he did not own 795 and no, he was not doing renovations.

If you have questions regarding 795 College, somebody from that company will call you back.

But he offered no help in who to speak to. Im not under any obligation to tell you anything, he said.

Danny Roth, with Brandon Communications Inc., then emailed the Star on behalf of 795 College Inc. and said at the time of sale there were 46 city work orders against the property and after the sale city building inspectors deemed it unsafe and in need of significant renovations.

Despite the scope of the work and resources required to return the building to good standing, we committed to the process, and remain convinced that preserving the building and preserving rental housing in the urban core were the right things to do, wrote Roth.

As the process to resolve these matters is still ongoing, and given that we believe that it is through the board and not through the media that individual tenant issues should be resolved, we will have no further comment on the matter at this time.

City staff told the Star that during renovations the owners engineer found that some of the floor joists were not supported and advised the owner multiple times to put in shoring, before the city was forced to issue an order.

Roth also declined to respond to additional questions sent this week about the tenantss case, Johnsens statement, the transcript, the corporate structure of 795 College Inc., the joists and the board decision.

The next hearing should address the tenants complaints about the property owners tactics leading up to, during and after the eviction, including that they were moved out in bad faith.

There is also a dispute over whether the owner violated an order the board made in November forbidding the re-renting or occupation of the apartments until the board hearings wrapped up. The order was issued because somebody was seen moving into Browne and Siddiqis old apartment.

All of the units have been leased, the board heard in February. The lawyer for the former tenants has been asking the board since December for permission to move a contempt motion into Divisional Court.

The group say they know they are fortunate to have the time and resources to fight and hope their case results in better protections for tenants, particularly low-income renters.

Councillor Mike Layton said the board needs to be better equipped to take action in cases like this.

Nobody wants to see these other people evicted, but at the same time justice needs to be done, said Layton, who will be putting forward a motion at city council next week, asking the city to call on the province to find a way to fix what has happened.

The Ministry of Housing Rental Housing Enforcement Unit is investigating whether the owner intended to keep the tenants out. Violations of the Residential Tenancies Act could be dealt with in Provincial Offences Court, where individuals can be fined up to $25,000 per count and corporations up to $100,000.

Former tenant Karri North, 47, described the board decision as an ironclad gift for landlords, made at the detriment to our citys future.

It is not like it is this little clause hidden in the (Residential Tenancies Act) said North, a photographer who lived at 795 College with husband Michael OConnell, a musician. It says right on the front of the eviction notice, you have the right to reoccupy your unit.

Located in Torontos Little Italy neighbourhood, 795 College St. was home to visual artists, actors  among the evicted are two members of the Baroness von Sketch Show on CBC  and musicians, paying about $1,240 a month.

It was an old building and if a fuse or toilet needed changing they sometimes handled it themselves, but stressed it was comfortable, safe and well maintained. We were coming into each others apartments. We were looking after each others kids, said Siddiqi. I always equated it to one of the warmest quilts, but held together with twist ties and duct tape.

In 2016 the tenants were sent forms informing them significant renovations were planned and they could be legally ordered out.

The tenants, in turn, sent letters to 795 College Inc. and the property manager and said they would be pursuing the right of first refusal, or a tenants right to move back in and to pay close to the same amount of rent.

To be honest, the whole way through, at every stage, everybody has told us you will have to leave, said Browne. Weve stuck with it regardless.

The owner offered the tenants $4,800 per unit to leave voluntarily, said Browne. They were later paid the equivalent of three months rent, as required by law.

Throughout the process the tenants went to the board trying unsuccessfully to make the case that the landlord intended to keep them out.

We were told that we were crystal balling ... that we were imagining things, said Carolyn Taylor, 45. The loss of our homes was never treated with any urgency.

Browne and Siddiqi moved out last April, staying in Toronto.

OConnell and North were out at the end of May and moved to Meaford.

Taylor was out of town when her possessions were placed in storage and her home stripped down to the studs.

She had been set to move out by midnight on June 30, but days before a friend sent her an advertisement promoting the first of eight units in an intimate complex that was just renovated to perfection, with black hardware, designer lighting and heated floors.

It wasnt mine, I was still living in mine, but it said first of eight units and there are only eight units in the building, Taylor told the Star. That same friend toured the building and was told Taylors unit would be ready for fall, but there was a waiting list.

She contacted the lawyer for 795 College Inc., informing him she was applying for a stay of her eviction. Johnsen called her back, she said. She also got her own lawyer who sent an application to the board, with the rental ad and a transcript of the conversation between Johnsen and the tenant. A board member had refused to listen to the tape in an earlier hearing, in part because it wasnt about Taylor, she said.

Taylor had plans to go up north. So with Johnsen notified and a lawyer hired she made the beds, left a note for her house-sitter, put up a tiny sign by her light switch saying no trespassing, took her plant and left.

A few days later her lawyer contacted her and told her the stay was issued. The next day, the house-sitter texted her, told her to take a deep breath and sent photographs of her gutted home filled with garbage bags.

Taylor said it took close to two months to track down her possessions and set up a time to crawl through a storage locker.

It was a humiliating horrible experience to poke through stuff crammed into a storage unit ... They watched and I got to tick things off a list.

The next hearing has not been scheduled.A long-time Toronto justice of the peace found himself on his feet on the other side of the bench Friday, presenting arguments in a bid to keep his job.

Tom Foulds was found guilty of judicial misconduct last month by a panel of the Justices of the Peace Review Council, an independent body, for repeatedly inserting himself in a criminal case in which his friend-turned-partner was the complainant.

On Friday, the panel heard submissions from lawyers on both sides as to the appropriate penalty, with a decision to come at a later date.

Presenting counsel Scott Fenton  the lawyer who presents the case to the panel but who does not advocate for any particular punishment  said there is a strong case against Foulds that could warrant the toughest sanction available: a recommendation to the attorney general that he be fired.

Foulds lawyer, Mark Sandler, argued for something less harsh, such as a 30-day suspension without pay.

But before the penalty submissions, Foulds argued for the panel to hear his motion to reconsider the findings made against him.

In an unusual move, the justice of the peace represented himself with regards to the motion, while his lawyers sat silently next to him, waiting to make their submissions on penalty.

Ontario Court Justice Peter Tetley, the chair of the discipline panel, was clearly not impressed that the motion was being brought on the same day as the penalty submissions, noting it could have been scheduled much earlier.

He described it as a most unusual and undesirable circumstance.

Foulds motion was soon dismissed, the panel finding it had no jurisdiction to hear it.

In his submissions on penalty, Fenton, the presenting counsel, pointed out this is Foulds second time being disciplined by the council: he was previously found guilty of judicial misconduct in 2013 and suspended for seven days without pay for interfering with the health inspection of a friends restaurant.

You may find it troubling that that parallel exists in this case, Fenton said, referring to Foulds being found guilty of misusing his office to help a friend.

In its February decision on judicial misconduct, the panel found Foulds repeatedly tried to insert himself in the criminal case in which his friend-turned-partner, known as AA due to a publication ban, was allegedly assaulted by BB. The charges against BB were later stayed by the Crown.

Foulds signed the information laying out the charges against BB, despite knowing who he was, asked Crown attorneys about the case on more than one occasion as they tried to brush him away, and signed the subpoena compelling AA to testify.

Sandler, Foulds lawyer, argued Friday that he should not be fired, highlighting that he has had a long career on the bench, unblemished if not for the two misconduct findings. He also has 41 years of military service.

He takes great pride in his work, Sandler said. He finds the job immensely fulfilling and is deeply concerned at the prospect of not being able to continue on.

The panel will release its decision at a later date. Foulds was appointed to the bench in 1999 and presided over cases at Old City Hall. He is not currently presiding over cases, but continues to collect his salary, as required by law.The vice chair of the TTC is calling for a full review of the design of Queens Quay, after criticizing the recently reconfigured lakefront street as confusing to road users, including himself.

The transit agency announced a week ago it would erect a gate at the streetcar tunnel at Queens Quay and Bay St. after yet another driver entered it illegally and became stuck.

The TTC says that since 2014 roughly 25 drivers have entered the tunnel, and the problem persists despite measures aimed to prevent it.

But at a meeting of the agencys board on Tuesday, TTC Vice Chair Alan Heisey said the tunnel isnt the only part of Queens Quay thats causing trouble. Drivers also regularly encroach on the streetcar right-of-way elsewhere on the street, he said. The right-of-way is supposed to be reserved for transit vehicles.

Heisey even admitted to making the mistake himself.

At night I have entered, unintentionally, the (streetcar right-of-way) westbound at Bathurst, he said, jokingly reassuring his colleagues he was stone cold sober at the time.

Heisey argued that installing a gate at the tunnel isnt enough to cure the problems on the street, and said Queens Quay needed to be redesigned for its whole length.

The question is the overall design of Queens Quay. It is not clear. It is not understandable, he said.

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This is what happens when planners design places, but dont design workable places.

The stretch of Queens Quay between Bathurst and Yonge Sts. was the subject of a $128.9-million overhaul that was completed in 2015. The project went over budget by $35.7 million.

Waterfront Toronto, the government agency that led the project, said the redesign was aimed at creating a stunning grand boulevard that opened up waterfront properties to the public and had space for all road users.

In addition to lanes for car traffic it has a multi-use trail for cyclists and joggers, and wide sidewalks. The streetcar right-of-way is on the south side of the street for much of the route instead of in the middle, which is unconventional for Toronto.

Since its reopening, critics have raised concerns that the reconfiguration is overly complex and even potentially unsafe. Not only do drivers often mount the streetcar right of way, but the multi-use trail disappears at intersections and forces cyclists into mixed zones often crowded with pedestrians.

The city and the TTC havent officially committed to a full review of the street, but before Heiseys comments TTC staff and city transportation officials were already planning a site visit to the York St. intersection in the coming days.

Thats where its believed many drivers mount the right-of-way before driving more than 200 metres and entering the tunnel. The hope is additional preventative measures at the intersection might stop people from proceeding into the streetcar portal.

We are moving quickly on that piece, said TTC spokesperson Stuart Green.

Green didnt go so far as to say Queens Quay is unsafe, but said our operators do observe pedestrian and motorist intrusions into the right-of-way from time to time.

The agency would raise those concerns as part of any broader review, Green said.

Chris Glaisek, the senior vice president of planning and design at Waterfront Toronto, said in an email that since the street reopened three years ago the agency has been monitoring how it functions. Several modifications have already been made, including reconfiguring the traffic signals at Simcoe St. to alleviate conflicts with turning vehicles.

Additional changes are being planned with City of Toronto and TTC staff, including steps to prevent vehicles entering the TTC right-of-way, which will be implemented in the coming months, Glaisek. He didnt specify what the changes could be.

According to Gregg Loane, manager of traffic systems capital delivery at the city, how Queens Quay is functioning isnt something were specifically concerned about but the transportation department is keeping an eye on the situation.

He noted some road users love the new design. As many as 500 cyclists an hour use the multi-use trail, making it the busiest bike facility in the city.

Weve installed something that perhaps isnt traditional, Loane said.

Should we be monitoring it for its effectiveness? Yes, but I believe we are doing that.There are plenty of rules in Carmine Guidos old world. One of the key ones is that men like him must be killed.

In rare insider testimony, the former York Region resident gave a Toronto jury a ground-level view of life working with the Ndrangheta organized crime group.

For the past week, Guido has testified in detail that he was deeply involved in fraud, drug trafficking and enforcement in a local Ndrangheta cell under Giuseppe (Pino) Ursino, 64, of Bradford.

He also testified in the Superior Court of Justice that there are definite rules for people like himself who secretly work with police. Court has heard that he was paid more than $2-million as a police agent.

If they found out (his location) theyd kill me, right, Guido testified in a flat, raspy voice.

Guidos name has been changed and theres a court ordered ban against publication of his image.

Guido told the jury there are also dire consequences for the families of those who turn police agent.

If they cant find him, theyll go after his family  brother, one of his parents, Guido said.

And do what? asked Crown Attorney Jeremy Streeter.

Hurt him, Guido said.

Ursino and Romanian-born Cosmin (Chris) Dracea, of Toronto each face two counts of cocaine trafficking for the benefit of criminal organization and a charge of conspiracy to commit an indictable offense.

That makes the structure of the Ndrangheta key to the prosecutions, which stem from a two-year RCMP-led investigation called Project OPhoenix, which ended with 19 arrests in June 2015.

Police then seized 8.5 kilos of cocaine at a time when the drug had an estimated street value of $55-$60,000 in Toronto, according to the RCMP.

Thats not a huge haul of cocaine by organized crime standards. Streeter quickly tried to establish that the Ndrangheta doesnt just exist to make money, although theyre definitely interested in that.

In his opening address, Streeter told the jury the Ndrangheta is a highly structured organization, which uses extortion, loan sharking, theft, electoral crimes, crimes of violence and drug trafficking, among other things, to sustain itself and make members feel respected.

Respect. Its something everybody wants, Streeter said in his opening remarks.

Guido later expanded on that theme under questioning by Streeter.

Does somebody get power when they kill somebody? Streeter asked.

Yes, Guido replied.

Court heard that the Ndrangheta has offshoots around the world, including Germany, Australia and the Greater Toronto Area, in a report from Leondro Piccoli, a lieutenant-colonel in the Italian national police force, the Carabinieri.

People in Italy have to be responsible for their representatives here but the final word comes from Italy, Guido said.

Streeters team has produced more than 40 audio and video recordings of Guido while he worked as a police agent.

Some of the conversations are in Italian but most are in English.

Guido said that he worked as part of Ursinos group and that Ursino introduced him to Dracea to get involved in smuggling cocaine.

He said he paid Ursino $1,000 for the introduction because Ursino was a Ndrangheta boss. Guido said he also agreed to split a shipment of 100 kg of cocaine with him once it reached the GTA from the Caribbean.

Asked by Streeter what he gained from his association with the Ndrangheta, Guido replied: Just the respect other people give us.

In one intercepted conversation, Ursino told Guido: Moneys not everything.

The jury heard from Guido and Piccolis report that there are two basic grades of membership: major and minor.

Piccoli said different ranks of the Ndrangheta range from picciotto at the low end of The Societara Minore, or lower level group, to Mammasantissima and Cavalairi di Cristo in the Societa Maggiore, or higher level group.

Cells are called locali or locale and must have at least 50 members, Piccoli said.

The Locali outside of Calabria replicate the structure from Calabria, and are connected to their mother-Locali in Calabria, the agreed statement of facts says. The authority to start Locali outside Calabria comes from the governing bodies of the organization in Calabria. The Locali outside of Calabria are part of the same Ndrangheta organization as in Calabria, and maintain close relationships with the Locali where its members come from.

Watching out over GTA Ndrangheta activities is a board of control called the Camera Di Controllo, Guido said.

Its the board that makes all of the final decisions, Guido said.

While blood ties help, each member must ultimately be selected for membership, Guido said, adding that there are special ceremonies when members are made.

Staff Sergeant Brad Trainor told court the project originally targeted four GTA men: Ursino, Cosimo Commisso, Diego Serrano and Carmine Verduci.

Commisso was not charged. Verduci was murdered in April 2014 outside the Regina Cafe at 140 Regina Rd., in an industrial and retail plaza near Highway 7 and Martin Grove Rd. The murder remains unsolved.

Was he (Verduci) a member of Ndrangheta?, Streeter asked.

Yes, Guido replied, adding that Verduci had been on the local board of control.

Guido testified that the cocaine at the core of his case was to be transported in chunky jerk sauce from Jamaica through an import-export company he ran.

Ursino did his best to stay in the background, Guido said.

At one point in the intercepted conversations, Ursino said: Honestly, I dont ever want to touch it.

Guido testified it was common practice for a boss not to want to get his hands dirty.

Its just the custom that the boss makes the introduction and they step back, Guido replied.

Did the drugs ever come? Streeter asked.

The drugs never came, Guido replied.

Most of Guidos recorded meetings were in a York Region coffee shop. Another was at a bakery and a few were in the parking lot of a bookstore. In one conversation, a baby can be heard screaming from near their table.

Court has heard characters in Guidos old world had nicknames like The Chosen One for senior boss and Frank Crutches, for a lesser boss whose legs were crushed in a car accident as a teenager. Guido said he knew another member just as the guy with the coffee truck.

Streeter asked why he would kick up profits to his boss, Ursino.

Because he was the boss of the family, Guido replied. (If there were) ever any problems it would be him that saves us.LIMA, PeruA Peruvian judge on Saturday barred recently resigned President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski from leaving the South American nation for 18 months while hes investigated for money laundering.

The ruling came a day after congress accepted Kuczynskis resignation and swore in Vice-President Martin Vizcarra as his successor.

Kuczynski, 79, is being probed for some $782,000 U.S. in payments his consulting firm received a decade ago from Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant at the heart of Latin Americas biggest-ever bribery scandal. Some of the payments took place when Kuczynski was a government minister, raising questions about whether they were made in return for political favours.

Read more:

New Peruvian president sworn in following corruption scandal

Analysis | Peruvian president taken down by corruption scandals he vowed to end

The former Wall Street investor has denied any wrongdoing. He said the consulting firm, Westfield Capital, was then being managed by his business partner and that he paid taxes on all earnings from that era.

Odebrecht has admitted to paying $800 million in bribes to officials across Latin America including $29 million in Peru.

At the same time the hearing was taking place, prosecutors carried out a search of Kuczynskis home in Lima and another property outside the capital.

Peru since the 19th century has watched the sad show as presidents and ex-presidents flee the country and justice, said Hamilton Castro, the anti-corruption prosecutor who had requested Kuczynski be barred from leaving Peru. This is the historical behaviour that we seekers of justice have to take into account.

Kuczynskis lawyer promised his clients full co-operation and said he would abide by the prosecutors request not to leave the country. Kuczynski was not present at Saturdays hearing.

Kuzynski is the fourth former Peruvian president to be investigated for taking payments from Odebrecht. One is currently in jail while another, Alejandro Toledo, for whom Kuczynski served as finance minister, has refused to return to Peru from the U.S. to face charges.ELIZABETH CITY, N.C.Back in the Second World War when the U.S. and Russia were allied against the Nazis, hundreds of Soviet aviators were trained on the North Carolina coast as part of a secret spy project  but now, an effort to honour their mission has triggered a miniature Cold War in a small American city.

The Russian Ministry of Defence wants to place a 25-ton bronze monument in Elizabeth City, where the recently declassified Project Zebra was carried out. Russia would pay for the 13-foot tall monument, with the city footing the bill for improvements to the as-yet undeveloped park on the Pasquotank River where it would be located.

But amid international tensions and fears about Russian hacking of U.S. elections, Elizabeth City elected officials have rejected a memorandum of understanding that was to be the next step.

Read more:

Opinion | Rick Salutin: Voters are reduced to spectators as life imitates art in Washington

Opinion | Heather Mallick: Trump and Stalin: where comedy goes to die

U.S. accuses Russia of trying to hack energy grid; 19 Russians sanctioned over alleged election interference

One council member warned the monument could be a Trojan horse. Johnnie Walton worries the Russians could put something in it that could be triggered remotely to disrupt the internet or electrical grid.

Russia is known for hacking now. Theyre experts at hacking, and then weve got the largest Coast Guard base (that) cant help anybody because our computers have gone down, because Russia controls our mouse, Walton said at a committee meeting, according to The Daily Advance of Elizabeth City.

A Russian-American joint commission on PoWs and MIAs wanted the monument in Elizabeth City because of a top-secret Second World War operation at U.S. Coast Guard station there. Declassified just a few years ago, Project Zebra helped train about 300 Soviet aviators. Their mission was to find German submarines and bomb them.

One night in 1945, three Russians, a Ukrainian and a Canadian were killed when a seaplane bound for Russia crashed in the Pasquotank River. Their sacrifice was never publicly recognized and the crash was forgotten for decades.

After Project Zebra was declassified in 2013, efforts slowly developed to honour it with a monument, which would include three figures  one each of Soviet, U.S. and United Kingdom aviators.

The previous city council unanimously approved the statue in May 2017. So supporters were caught off-guard by when the new council backtracked and voted nyet in February  especially because three of the negative votes came from incumbents who had supported it earlier.

Located in northeastern North Carolina near the Virginia border, Elizabeth City was founded in 1793 and has a population of about 18,000. Locals describe the area as progressive in some ways but also fiscally conservative.

In 2013, the local Republican Party challenged an African-American college students candidacy for city council. Eventually, the State Board of Election interceded, and the student ran for office and won.

And for what may be the first time, the councils majority is African-American and so is the mayor.

Public discussion has played out along mostly racial lines; four of the five council members who oppose the monument are black, and two of three who support it are white. At one meeting, council member Darius Horton asked the city manager if Elizabeth City has any monuments to minorities or women.

Information about the monument didnt filter to the African-American community as well as it did to the white community, said Hezekiah Brown, one of two citizens who spoke against it. Not that hes convinced that more information would matter.

Were at war with Russia still. Were in a cyberwar here, Brown said. They interfered in our election. And theyve not said they wont do it again. ... The war has to end. Then you do something. You dont do it while youre at war.

For its part, Russia is sensitive to actions it regards as disrespectful to the Soviet Unions military campaign against Nazi Germany. In 2007, weeks of cyberattacks shut down websites of government ministries, banks and news media in the former Soviet republic of Estonia amid a dispute with Moscow over plans to relocate a statue of a Red Army soldier in the capital Tallinn. Estonian officials accused Russia of orchestrating the onslaught.

Elected officials also are hearing from citizens such as Rick Boyd, who turned in a petition with 569 local signatures supporting the project. He said another 200 people have signed an online petition. The monument offers the two rival nations a chance to show that we worked together in the past, and that we can work together in the future, he told the council.

Mayor Bettie Parker suggested the vote might have turned out differently if it had happened earlier. I keep hearing now is not the time to deal with anything thats coming from Russia, said Parker, who only votes in a tie.

Council member Billy Caudle, who supports the monument, says people who are concerned about the appearance of an alliance with Russia are confusing current events with history.

Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Robert Foglesong, chairman of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on PoW/MIAs, has asked the city council to reconsider its vote. But for now, the council majority seems steadfast.

Members complained at their most recent meeting that the monument debate has divided Elizabeth City and they need to concentrate on more important issues. Walton said he was sick of discussing the monument and recommended that it be erected in Russia.

Those peoples relatives live in Russia, he said. Give them the opportunity to ride by on a Sunday, say a prayer, do all the things that people do when youre memorializing somebody.The electoral exercise on which Ontario will soon embark, in addition to choosing a government, will reveal much about human nature, about the way our brains work, how our emotions are stirred and tapped, and how thoroughly  or otherwise  we consider, understand and decide on the questions posed by an increasingly complex world.

On June 7, Ontario will vote. In the weeks between now and then, leaders of the political parties will tour the province to tout their policies and platforms.

Yet there is much research to suggest it will not necessarily be such details, or the experience, expertise or character of the competing leaders, or even a practical comparison of options on offer that will guide voting decisions.

Its been five years since Canadian pollster and researcher Allan Gregg warned, in an essay called The Assault on Reason, of a troubling trend in which evidence and facts were being replaced by dogma, whim and political expediency as the basis of policy and promises. Even more troublingly, he wrote. Canadians seem to be buying it.

Theres little reason to think things have improved much in the intervening years, for the simple reason of our own human modes of thought.

The political brain is an emotional brain, psychologist and political strategist Drew Westen wrote in his book The Political Brain. It is not a dispassionate calculating machine, objectively searching for the right facts, figures and policies to make a reasoned decision.

In fact, the biggest mistake any campaigner can make is to assume they will win voters over by bombarding them with statistics and detail.

In political choices, emotion almost always trumps reason, Westen argued. What drives people are their wishes, fears and values, not a line-by-line analysis of policy books.

The phenomenon of low-information rationality suggests that most people collect only as much information as necessary to make most decisions, and explains why a campaign of a few main promises and slogans will often beat one boasting a comprehensive, many-paged, wholly-costed platform.

Voters respond to a compelling narrative, usually told by a leader with whom they can identify as being like them or, if not, for them. Certainly one who understands them.

Candidates of the right, in both Canada and the United States, have been far better than others at understanding such truths.

The right has better exploited our innate preference for gut feeling over reason, our resistance to facts that contradict our established ideas. Their campaigns have shrewdly taken advantage of what has been described as the biases of our unreasoning minds.

They have recognized that most voters, understandably, pay little attention to politics or policy details between elections. And, also understandably, that when it comes time to make such choices voters are chiefly concerned with their families, jobs and leisure pursuits.

Theyve understood that voters, not because they belong to one party or another but because they are human, are most easily animated by fear or anger.

Stopping the gravy train, draining the swamp, basket of deplorables are all shorthand slogans that, for better or worse, tap into those emotions.

The privileging of visceral, intuitive, gut feelings is central to the movement known as common-sense conservatism, which has become a powerful force everywhere in the Western world, not just the United States, Joseph Heath, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, wrote in his 2014 book Enlightenment 2.0.

The central appeal of this, American conservative strategist Frank Luntz has written, is that common sense doesnt require any fancy theories; it is self-evidently correct. Our brains like such things. If you win and occupy the rhetorical territory owned by common sense, your position will be virtually unassailable, adds Luntz.

Such common sense doesnt even have to true or remotely accurate.

Tom Nichols, in his recent book The Death of Expertise, says, in fact, that many Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue.

In both the 2010 election of Rob Ford as mayor of Toronto and the 2016 presidential victory of Donald Trump, candidates won despite  maybe even because of  their lack of expertise and policy coherence. Instead, they tapped into the public mood.

The fact that political mayhem ensued almost immediately in both jurisdictions is a piece of evidence that may or may not be considered in Ontario in 2018.

In an ideal world, politicians would not exploit such quirks of our neurology and human vulnerability. But such a world appears unreachable for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, what effective citizenship should demand, Heath has argued, is a commitment from leaders to more rational politics, an insistence by voters that leaders speak in something more than bumper-sticker slogans and be frank about the potential consequences of their plans.

For progressive strategists, the challenge is to learn how to effectively respond to and counter deceptions and untruths, while framing their own message in ways that show they understand that simplicity and emotion have power.

As Drew Westen writes, We do not find policies worth debating if they dont touch on the emotional implications for ourselves, our families or the things we hold dear.

Long centuries ago, a similar notion was exquisitely expressed by Blaise Pascal. The heart has its reasons about which reason knows nothing.

In the weeks ahead Ontario voters deserve  and should demand  an election campaign, and clearly enunciated policy programs, that speak respectfully to both their heads and their hearts.

Read more about:Wynne pitches health, dental spending, March 20

As an optometrist practising in Ontario for nearly 28 years, I would highly recommend Ontarios dentists not entertain any government plan to fund dental services.

Since 1989, the government has increased funding in community eye care by only 16 per cent  yes 16 per cent  over nearly 30 years.

They also cut services entirely for all adult patients 15 years ago, and they have not covered for any new procedures due to changes in technology over the past 20 years. In fact, they havent increased funding at all in the past decade.

Lets also not forget the Rae Days era, when optometrist billings were also clawed back 15 per cent every month for several years.

Ministry of Health bureaucrats cant even find time annually to meet with my professions regulators to update our drug-coverage prescribing regulations, as they promised in 2011. The government is great at announcing promises, very poor at delivering.

In theory, government funding of eye-care services (and dental services) could and should work but, in practice, they have failed miserably for decades. Ontario dentists: stay away from any government proposals in funding your field of expertise.

Peter Rozanec, optometrist, MississaugaPrice of Singhs misstep is unfair, Paradkar, March 19

In 2008, it came to the attention of the media that presidential contender Barack Obama was a member of the congregation of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, led by a controversial African-American pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons came under increasing scrutiny and criticism by the media for certain opinions he held.

Wright was a fierce critic of racism and what he perceived as Americas militaristic role in the world. Initially, Obama denounced Wrights statements, but eventually he and his wife had to withdraw from membership in the church. This despite a respected Republican like John McCain defending him.

This is the price of leadership. This is the experience that NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh needs to draw on.

NourbeSe Philip, Toronto

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh may be ready to represent all Canadians but until we know he doesnt have another agenda, why should Canadians be ready to have him represent us?

Columnist Shree Paradkar says there is precedent for him to support issues from his ancestral home. How does a previous wrong make a current wrong right? I prefer my politicians to put their country and their people above all other interests  money, power, family and ancestral homes.

Mr. Singhs refusal to condemn the Air India bombing is akin to a Canadian immigrant in another country refusing to condemn the residential school horrors.

Robert Mulumbu-Knight, Toronto

Merely condemning Air India perpetrators will never absolve NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh of his past history of supporting Sikh elements that participated in various acts of anti-India activities.

Singh has defended, condoned and supported the Khalistani separatist movement, along with lending sympathy and moral support for the organizers of the Khalistani movement, whose core manifesto is to divide and destroy India. For a Canadian party leader to attend such a rally is tantamount to Canada supporting the fragmentation and eventual destruction of India.

Kris Sahay, Winnipeg

Jagmeet Singh coverage an extreme double standard on extremism, Kanji, March 21

Much appreciation to columnist Azeezah Kanji for her eloquent and thorough analysis of the differing kinds of scrutiny paid to politicians of different religious beliefs or ethnic backgrounds.

Ms. Kanji wrote what I thought about the medias attention to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singhs attendance at rallies, but what I failed to write myself.

I believe she speaks for many people, not just those of the Sikh faith. She speaks for all people who believe that equality and fairness are principles to be practised at all times.

Marc Cote, Toronto

Read more about:ALTON  Yet another suspicious fire heavily damaged a vacant house in Alton early Friday, this time with a city firefighter slipping on debris, falling and injuring his back.

Once the fire was knocked down, they went inside to extinguish any hotspots and fire that was not extinguished, said Chief Bernie Sebold of the Alton Fire Department regarding the fire at 619 Brookside Ave. He went halfway up the basement stairs; debris had fallen and he slipped on the debris.

The small wood frame house, with front and back porches and a steep rear hillside, has a walk-in basement.

Sebold said the firefighter, who he would not identify, went to Alton Memorial Hospital for evaluation. If a doctor releases him for duty, the firefighter would be back at work next week, Sebold said.

A cause and origin team comprised of representatives from the Alton Fire and Police departments is working with the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal in investigating this fire and three previous, recent blazes in Alton that Sebold or other fire officials have called suspicious.

With the count of such fires growing, and a firefighter injury, Sebold said he is concerned about the trend. He asks the public for assistance if they saw, heard or read anything related to who is responsible for the fires.

I am very concerned, to me we have an individual or individuals setting fires in vacant houses, a couple of the houses were adjacent to occupied homes and caused damage to the occupied homes, he said. We dont want to see innocent residents injured and displaced by a fire, or see fire personnel injured from these fires. We ask the public to let us know if they hear something or see something on social media. We need someone to step forward and give us a tip. Any series of fires is a concern.

He asks anyone with such information to call the Alton Police Departments tip line at: (618) 465-5948 or the Fire Marshals hotline at: 1-(800)-252-2947.

We are relying on the public to come forward if they saw someone or heard someone talking about it, Sebold said. Any information from anyone seeing anything is appreciated. Evidence doesnt always point to someone. We certainly rely on public information.

According to state statute, arson is a felony. If a police officer or firefighter is injured while on duty responding to such a fire, the crime is enhanced to aggravated arson  the highest level  a Class X felony carrying a prison term of six to 30 years upon conviction.

A neighbor on the street behind the house called 911 at 2:50 a.m. to report seeing the flames. Police who were in the area arrived first to discover the 745-square-foot house fully involved in flames.

AFD struck a mutual aid box alarm, summoning firefighters from the East Alton Fire Department. Sebold also called in four off-duty firefighters to staff another engine in case of another fire call.

Firefighters attacked the blaze with four hose lines, quickly extinguishing the flames. It was far enough from any exposure, the house next door was not damaged as with heat from another recent suspicious fire that damaged siding on a neighboring homes garage.

The house, though, is heavily damaged and Sebold said the Alton Department of Building and Zoning would be tagging it for demolition. It was in very poor condition prior to the fire, it had a hole in the roof.

Firefighters were at the house until about 6:15 a.m., Sebold said.

As with three other recent suspicious fires in the city, and one in Godfrey, the Brookside house had no utility service connected that might have ignited the building. The house has been vacant for some time, it was listed for sale. We have not talked to the owner but we have talked to the Realtor, Sebold said.

Alton Township Assessors Office records say Jack Tellor owns the approximate, 70-year-old house.

This most recent fire under investigation is the fourth in a vacant structure in Alton since March 11. Three of the fires were in houses, with the fourth in the former, Lenhardt Tool & Die Company building at 5th and Piasa streets on March 18. The other Alton fires, both on March 11, were near each other at 1414 Fletcher St. and 1125 Hampton St.

The Illinois State Fire Marshal and the local cause and origin team are investigating those fires, as well, with none being resolved as of yet. The only apparent connection between the fires is that they happened in vacant buildings with no utility service, he said. While two of the fires were in the same neighborhood, the others were on opposite ends of the city.

They were at different times of day, and on different days of the week, Sebold said.

Reach Linda N. Weller at 618-208-6450 or on Twitter @Linda_WellerPrince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Eikon Centre and attend an event to mark the second year of the youth-led peace-building initiative 'Amazing the Space' on March 23, 2018 in Lisburn, Nothern Ireland. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

The highly anticipated British royal wedding takes place on May 19 this year, when Prince Harry will marry his American actor fiance Meghan Markle.

It won't be former Suits star Meghan's first time down the aisle however; the 36-year-old has been married before, a detail that apparently is referred to with very subtle wording in the royal wedding invites.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre where they learnt from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and met bar staff, local comedians and musicians Britain's Prince Harry and US actress and fiancee of Britain's Prince Harry Meghan Markle arrive at the Eikon Centre in Lisburn, on March 23, 2018, to attend an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / ARTHUR EDWARDSARTHUR EDWARDS/AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Eikon Centre and attend an event to mark the second year of the youth-led peace-building initiative 'Amazing the Space' on March 23, 2018 in Lisburn, Nothern Ireland. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Eikon Centre and attend an event to mark the second year of the youth-led peace-building initiative 'Amazing the Space' on March 23, 2018 in Lisburn, Nothern Ireland. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) Britain's Prince Harry and his fiancee, US actress Meghan Markle walk into Edinburgh Castle, during a visit to Scotland on February 13, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / Jane Barlow (Photo credit should read JANE BARLOW/AFP/Getty Images) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive for a visit to the Eikon Exhibition Centre in Lisburn where they attended an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive for a visit to the Eikon Exhibition Centre in Lisburn where they are attending an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrive for a visit to the Eikon Exhibition Centre in Lisburn where they attended an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space Meghan Markle departs from a walkabout at Cardiff Castle on January 18, 2018 in Cardiff, Wales. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Chris Jackson/Getty Images) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during their visit to Edinburgh Castle on February 13, 2018 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Eikon Centre and attend an event to mark the second year of the youth-led peace-building initiative 'Amazing the Space' on March 23, 2018 in Lisburn, Nothern Ireland. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre where they learnt from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and met bar staff, local comedians and musicians

As noted by Hello! magazine, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's invites refer to a 'Ms. Markle', while older brother Prince William's wedding invites to now wife Kate Middleton referred to the bride as 'Miss Catherine Middleton'.

A tiny detail, but one which the magazine is purporting to be a deliberate one, so as to cite the soon-to-be Duchess' previous relationship.

"Tradition states that a bride would be addressed as "Miss" on the invitation for her first marriage," the magazine writes, "while in the case of a second wedding she would be named as "Mrs" or "Ms"."

Expand Close Meghan Markle during a visit to the Eikon Exhibition Centre in Lisburn, where, along with Prince Harry, she attended an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space / Facebook

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Whatsapp Meghan Markle during a visit to the Eikon Exhibition Centre in Lisburn, where, along with Prince Harry, she attended an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space

According to TheKnot.com however, the use of 'Ms' and 'Miss' on a wedding invite is interchangeable, and 'Ms' can be used for a person on the guest list whose 'marital status is unknown'.

Also; "It's often preferred for older (thirty and up) women who are not married."

Read More

Meghan Markle dated her former spouse Trevor Engelson for six years before the two tied the knot, however their marriage was a short-lived two years.

The couple divorced in 2013 citing 'irreconcilable differences', and both went their separate ways.

Read More

Harry and Meghan have sent 600 invites out to guests for the big day, which will take place in St George's Chapel before a reception hosted by the queen in a lunchtime reception at St George's Hall.

That evening the couple will have a reception in Frogmore House, hosted by the groom's father, Prince Charles.

About 1,900 people were invited to the lavish wedding of Harry's elder brother William and wife Kate at London's Westminster Abbey in 2011.

While plans seem to be taking shape for the upcoming British royal wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, one big question that still eludes royal watchers is who exactly will be walking the bride up the aisle.

Rumours have been rife since the couple announced their engagement that Meghan was hoping to be given away by her mother on her big day, with many noting that the former Suits actress is far closer to her mother than to her father.

Read More

Meghan's bridesmaids, if she will have any, have also yet to be revealed, however it's thought that Prince William and Kate Middleton's children will be in the bridal party.The official range of commemorative china celebrating Prince Harry and Meghan Markles wedding has gone on sale.

Unveiled by The Royal Collection Trust, the beautiful bone china comes in cornflower blue with white detailing and features a gold monogram of the couples initials side by side, tied together with a white ribbon.

Whats more, the decorative border on each piece is inspired by the stylised tree ironwork of the 13th century Gilebertus door of St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle, where the couple are set to marry on May 19.

Read More

Interestingly, the Gilebertus door is rarely used despite hundreds of tourists and visitors passing by it everyday.

That being said, the Queen and other members of the royal family use it to enter the chapel when attending services.

Finished in 22 carat gold, the official china has been handmade in Stoke-on-Trent using 250-year-old methods and it has been confirmed that all profits from sales will go to The Royal Collection Trust  a registered charity responsible for the care and conservation of the Royal Collection.

The couple have approved the entire range which includes a miniature coffee mug costing 19.95, a standard coffee mug for 25, a pillbox at 35, a tankard for 39 and a plate at 49.

Each piece will also be presented in a coordinating cornflower blue gift box and include a card that explains the significance of the design.

Royal Collection Trust is delighted to offer the official range of commemorative china to celebrate this happy occasion, said Nuala McGourty Royal Collection Trust's retail director.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre where they learnt from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and met bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire Prince Harry and Meghan Markle look at some prosthetic limbs made by the Titanic FX company during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 23, 2018. Niall Carson/Pool via REUTERS Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Eikon Centre and attend an event to mark the second year of the youth-led peace-building initiative 'Amazing the Space' on March 23, 2018 in Lisburn, Nothern Ireland. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit the Eikon Centre and attend an event to mark the second year of the youth-led peace-building initiative 'Amazing the Space' on March 23, 2018 in Lisburn, Nothern Ireland. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images) Britain's Prince Harry and US actress and fiancee of Britain's Prince Harry Meghan Markle arrive at the Eikon Centre in Lisburn, on March 23, 2018, to attend an event to mark the second year of youth-led peace-building initiative Amazing the Space. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / ARTHUR EDWARDSARTHUR EDWARDS/AFP/Getty Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to the Crown Bar in Belfast City Centre where they learnt from National Trust representatives about the pub's heritage, and met bar staff, local comedians and musicians. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday March 23, 2018. See PA story ROYAL Harry. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire

We are pleased to continue our support of the potteries of Stoke-on-Trent, who have manufactured our previous commemorative wares to celebrate royal birthdays, anniversaries and weddings.

The official range of commemorative china can be purchased from royalcollectionshop.co.uk and in Royal Collection Trust shops at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse.If anything happens to me, please tell my story. This was...The recent incident of data breach in Facebook by Cambridge Analytica has put the limelight on the lack of regulations to curb data breach by social media companies in India. Experts with whom THE WEEK spoke to said that though data analytics or data mining is new to politics, it has already been widely used in business as enterprises are mining customer centric data to plan their marketing or digital marketing strategies in order to target the right customers based on their personal information and behavioural patterns.



Data security expert, Rajiv M. Ranjan, founder and MD of Mumbai-based fintech startup BigWin Infotech, is of the opinion that Facebook defended itself from the latest controversy about social media "Breach of Trust" by saying that the incident wasn't a breach because users consented to share their data to a third party app.

While security experts agree no systems were breached, the concerns about the Facebook debacle points to worrying overarching issues around security, privacy and personal data harvested by social media companies. It may sound controversial to call social media nascent given its current pervasiveness, but the industry is in its infancy from a legal and regulatory perspective, and the complexities social media has introduced into the business environment challenges every organisation today, Ranjan told THE WEEK.

Ranjan acknowledges that some regulations do exist to regulate social media provider's control over end-user data, including a 2011 consent decree that mandates the users should be notified that they explicitly gave consent that data is shared beyond the privacy settings that were established.

Another expert in data mining and data analytics, Saurabh Saha, Director Industry Outreach Institute of Product Leadership, feels that incidents like these from market leaders such as Facebook do show us the ugly side of trusting social media platforms with our data. If data is core to Facebooks business then breaches like these should have been nipped in the bud when they came to know about it two years back. This incident has also jeopardized the democratic election process that was the hope for most people around the world due to its sanctimonious nature. This is an extremely sensitive issue and it would make customers lose faith in data mining companies including companies based out of India, Saha told THE WEEK.

Saha also said that if proper data security measures are not put in place, a lot of analytics companies whose business models revolve around customer data would find a major chunk of their businesses evaporating, to say the least. Indian companies would have to invest a lot strategically around data security to ensure breaches like these never happen, further remarked Saha.

Some experts such as Kris Lakshmikanth, founder and CEO of the recruitment firm Head Hunters India Limited, is of the opinion that such kind of data breaches can affect the business of data mining firms in India. Presently, there are no concrete restrictions or regulations for data breaches by social media companies in India. When we sign up for many social media sites and apps we just blindly agree to the terms and conditions without seeing their clauses. Many of the customer data is bought by enterprises and companies from social media companies who in turn take the help of data scientists and data analytics firms to mine the data to build some customer centric strategies that is very important in this highly competitive environment. However, if some restrictions are announced it may hamper the healthy growth of the data mining firms in India, Lakshmikanth told THE WEEK.

On the other hand, experts such as Alok Shende of Mumbai-based Ascentius Consulting feels that data mining and data analytics has become a very common thing among Indian firms particularly, banks and online e-commerce companies, who mine customer data using data analytics.

When a user has allowed or given his consent to use the data, the server or the machine will mine that data. The data which is being generated is huge and usually used by companies to study their customer and to target them as per their personal preferences. However, there is no legal restriction in India around it and there is no clear cut definition around data breach by social media companies in our country. I do not see that the data mining industry will be hit by such incidents as it has been happening for many years and that has now become a norm in the industry, said Shende.

Interestingly, the Indian marketing analytics industrys present annual revenue is pegged to be around $2.03 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.8 per cent till 2020. As per a Business to Customer (B2C) Marketing Automation Report India, 2017 launched by Research NXT and Netcore Solutions, 29 per cent of marketers believed that it is important to have the right marketing mix in order to gain better Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). According to the report, 28 per cent of marketers were considering the use of analytics, while 18 per cent had already included analytics at the core of their marketing strategy. The report also emphasized that analytics is going to play an important role in automating and improving customer engagement. This, in turn, is going to help the marketers get a better conversion rate optimisation by enabling brands to engage in a personalised manner with their customers, leading to an increased CLV.The Ram Navami wave by the Bharatiya Janata Party has not only spread across Bengal but also forced its rival to take note of it or join. A day before the Ram Navami to be observed across the country, BJP has kick-started the festival celebrations in a massive way and as promised, with swords and sharp knives.



In North Dinajpur, it took out a big procession which was even joined by the youths known to be having allegiance to Trinamool Congress and Congress.

Trinamool Congress secretary general, Partha Chatterjee in a strong worded statement said that none would be spared.

Our government has decided not to allow any rally with arms. I would urge the administration to take strong legal action. I will personally see to it, said Chatterjee, also a cabinet minister of West Bengal.

BJP has also taken out rallies in Birbhum, Midnapore and Nadia as well.

Asked about it, the BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said, Today there have been some small rallies. Tomorrow we would celebrate birthday of Ram in a big way.

While Chatterjee said even the Trinamool Congress workers would not be spared if they are found to be rallying with arms, the BJP has been supported by other Hindu organisations like VHP, RSS and another organisation named has Hindu Samhati, a new emerging Hindu religious group in West Bengal.

Its leader Tapan Ghosh dared Mamata Banerjee to prevent the armed rallies.

West Bengal government would go through huge trouble if they try to prevent Hindus from celebrating Ram Navami. Hindus will not stay silent, said Ghosh.

RSS, however, officially maintained that it would not participate or encourage any such rally with swords or sharp weapons. It will bring out processions without arms.

BJP workers today, in four different districts, were found to be brandishing sharp knives, swords and other sharp implements. Whether they are from TMC or Congress or BJP or its sister organisation, all of them were shouting slogans, Jai Shree Ram.

CPI(M) politbureau member, Biman Bose, who led the Ram-Rahim rally in Birbhums Rampurhat termed the situation in Bengal as dangerous.

We want peace and secular atmosphere in the state. Such a secular atmosphere in the state which was kept in tact for long is now under threat. We would like to see sensible people condemn to what is being done in the name of Ram Navami. It is competitive communalism going on in Bengal, said Bose.

Sources have confirmed to THE WEEK that senior leaders of the BJP would hit the streets tomorrow. While state president Ghosh would lead the biggest rally in his hometown, Midnapore, other vice presidents and general secretaries have been deployed in different parts of the streets.

There is no act in the country where sword puja on the day of Ram Navami is banned. Let the West Bengal government prevent us. It would be responsible for any kind of untoward incident if take place, said a senior BJP leader.

However, police did not touch anybody and allowed the procession with swords. If Chatterjees threat comes true, all of them would be booked later on.

The leaders of the BJP said, Just two months to go for panchayat elections and one year to go for general elections, we will show how much powerful the BJP has become in Bengal.Amid high drama, the ruling Congress in Karnataka won three Rajya Sabha seatsG.C. Chandrashekhar (46 votes), Naseer Hussain (42 votes) and L. Hanumanthaiah (44 votes)and the BJP candidate and sitting MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar won with 50 votes.

The JD(S), which had fielded a lone candidate despite not having the required number of MLAs, boycotted the polls citing 'election malpractice', after two Congress MLAs were given a second chance to cast their ballots. A total of 185 valid votes were polled, including two from the JD(S) cast before the boycott, though the current strength of the Legislative Assembly is 217.

Interestingly, the JD(S) had to forego the seat for the second time as seven rebel MLAs cross-voted once again in favour of the Congress Party. The official candidate of the JD(S)B.M. Farook,who had contested the RS polls in 2016tasted defeat for the second time, due to the rebel camp, which has openly identified itself with the Congress, but not quit the party. The JD(S) alleges the Assembly speaker has not yet acted on the status of these rebel MLAs.

Two senior Congress MLAs being given a second ballot paper caused a commotion inside the polling booth when JD(S) objected to it. Though the two votes were eventually declared invalid (along with two other votes) by the Election Commission, it was enough for the regional party to boycott the polls after petitioning the EC seeking countermanding of the elections.

An embarrassed Congress maintained that the veterans had 'inadvertently' made a mistake while voting due to old age. Meanwhile, the JD(S) alleged the duo had cross-voted and it was no case of 'error' but a proof of the internal turmoil of the Congress party.

Former speaker and revenue minister Kagodu Thimmappa (86) and former minister Baburao Chinchansur (70) sought a second ballot paper, stating they had made an error. According to JD(S) members, the Congress polling agent noticed that the two had cross-voted and insisted that the MLAs cast a second ballot. This triggered a war of words between the JD(S) and the Congress members. Eventually, the matter was referred to the Election Commission, which immediately sacked the returning officer and resumed polling.

Unhappy with the Congress for harbouring rebels from his party, JD(S) state president H.D. Kumaraswamy warned that the Congress would start worrying about JD(S). The Congress party will perish if we simply stand with the BJP and cough, mocked Kumaraswamy.

Congress must remember that it is the B-team of the JD(S), taunted Kumaraswamy, hitting back at AICC president Rahul Gandhi's recent remarks over JDS being a B-team of the BJP.

In 2004, the Congress Party had joined hands with the JD(S) to form a coalition government despite the BJP emerging as the single largest party. However, Kumaraswamy withdrew support and struck a coalition with the BJP in 2006.

The souring relations between the Congress and the JDS (which share power in Bengaluru city civic body) is hinting at a strong possibility of the regional party aligning with the saffron party, which is yet to find the confidence that it can secure a clear majority in the April-May elections.The special NIA court in its verdict in the first case registered in Kerala related to the Islamic State pronounced Yasmin Mohammed Zahid of Bihar guilty and sentenced her to seven years in prison.

Yasmin is accused of recruiting 15 people from Kasargod district in Kerala and helping them migrate to Afghanistan to join the terror outfit. The Kerala Police had initially registered missing persons cases in this regard, and the National Investigation Agency later joined the investigation after the involvement of IS was suspected.

Yasmin had attempted to join the IS with her son and was about to leave for Kabul when she was arrested by the Kerala Police at the Delhi International Airport on July 30, 2016.

The NIA had filed the chargesheet against Yasmin, the only one to be arrested in the case, and her husband Abdul Rasheed, who is believed to be in Afghanistan currently. The agency had also stepped up its hunt for the remaining accused in the case with the help of Interpol.

The court cross-examined 52 prosecution and three defence witnesses and examined digital and other material evidence.

Some of the accused are reported to have been killed while fighting for the IS against security forces in Afghanistan.

The NIA is currently investigating six cases of a similar nature. The suspects in most of these cases have direct links with Kerala.

With inputs from OnmanoramaFormer Bihar chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday was sentenced to seven years in prison in the fourth Fodder Scam case.

Yadav was held guilty in the Dumka Treasury case by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Ranchi earlier on March 19.

The RJD chief was found guilty of fraudulently withdrawing Rs. 3.13 crore from the Dumka Treasury between December 1995 and January 1996, when he was the chief minister of undivided Bihar.

Former chief minister Jagannath Mishra from the Bhartiya Jan Congress (Rashtriya) was acquitted by the court in the case. At least 14 others were also convicted.

Yadav is already serving a jail term of 13.5 years in three Fodder scam cases and has been lodged in the Birsa Munda jail in Ranchi.

It is yet unclear whether the new sentence will be served concurrently with the existing terms or will add on it.Tensions may high between India and Pakistan, but for a day, hostilities among the diplomatic communities were called off just for a brief bit on Friday. And the 'p word'and the lack of ithung heavily at the blue-domed Pakistan High Commission like the strands of white jasmine strewn into a giant 70 that greeted guests at the gate.

Pakistan Day is the biggest gathering that the High Commission welcomes and a long queue of black sedans with the blue diplomatic number plates made a beeline for its tall gates.

The Indian government, however, made its displeasure known as it sent only Minister of State for Agriculture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat as its representative. Shekhawat did not stay for long.

Since independence in 1947, India and Pakistan have completed 70 years as free nations. At the time of independence, our founding fathers had envisioned an amicable relationship between the two countries. The relations, however, evolved on a different trajectory,'' said Pakistan High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood.

The Pakistan high commissioner had arrived late Thursday night after his long consultations'' in Islamabad. His departure from Delhi had sparked rumours that he was being recalled. Mahmood, however, struck a conciliatory note as he hoped that there would be hard reflection on the time that is lost, and the opportunities missed'' as the two countries turn 70.

Building a future different from the past remains indispensable. We owe it to our next generations. We must give them a future of hope and opportunities,'' he said.

The first tiff between India and Pakistan in this government had begun with Pakistan Day and the invitation extended to the Hurriyat. The newly elected NDA government had then raised a vociferous objection to separatists being issued an invitation. Four years later, the bitterness seems to have only increased.

Across the border in Islamabad, there was a similar sort of brief softening on Friday. For the first time, senior Indian military officials and diplomats attended the Pakistan military parade. The idea to invite the Indian officials was that of Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa, who wanted to send a message of peace.As more number of patients continue to fall victim to Tuberculosis, the disease has become a major health concern in India. The government is pulling up its socks and introducing stricter rules, to get as many number of TB-afflicted cases to be notified with public health facilities as possible. Each year the government, through the Central TB Division, releases an annual TB report on the March 24commemorated worldwide as the World TB day.

The government of India has set a goal of ending TB in the country by 2025, which is five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals' target and ten years before the World Health Organisation's 'End TB' target. According to Minister of Health and Family Welfare J.P. Nadda, India's goal is "indeed very ambitious." However, to pursue it, he says in the report, "we have prepared the National Strategic Plan 2017-25, concentrating on universal health coverage, along with social protection, implementation of which will help us achieve our goal."

TB is an infectious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs. The government is taking a number of steps to ensure that the count of patients in the country is contained in a structured manner, within a timeline of eight years. For instance, through the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP), novel diagnostic tools are being made available, including installation of over 1,000 CBNAAT (Cartridge based nucleic acid amplification test) test machines across the country, which will drastically reduce the time taken for achieving test results in the detection of drug resistant TB. The newer anti-TB drug Bedaquiline has been introduced for DR-TB patients and Delamanid is set to be rolled out as well. These two drugs (both expensive) will prove effective in treating drug resistant TB. The government has also launched a campaign for Active TB Case Finding, wherein door to door visits are made by health personnel in an effort to find patients with varied symptoms of TB, who are then brought to the public health facilities. "We have also decided to provide Rs 500 per month to each TB patient for the duration of his treatment," the minister said.

Yet, late diagnosis of the disease, non-adherence or non-completion of the treatment, co-morbidities, DR-TB, and inter and intra-state difference in health response are some of the challenges in attaining the goals, says Dr. B.D. Athani, Director general Health Services. "In order to achieve the TB Elimination goal by 2025, we need to have a decline in TB incidence by about 15-20 per cent annually," he adds.

A few days back the Central government announced that it would take strict action, including jail term from six months to two years, against those pharmacists, chemists, doctors and private hospitals who fail to notify TB patients. The government has made it clear for all pharmacists and chemists to submit the data of TB patients and the medicines prescribed to them and in turn it has also said that pharmacists who notify will receive an incentive of Rs 1000 and doctors who do the same will also be incentivised with Rs 500. "As nearly half the patients seek treatment from the private sector, we are striving to integrate the efforts of the public as well as the private sector through mandatory notification of TB by all healthcare personnel," Preeti Sudan, secretary, department of health and family welfare, states in the report.

As per the Global TB report 2017, released by World Health Organisation (WHO), India continues to have the highest number of TB cases in the world. An estimated 27.9 lakh patients in the country suffered from TB in 2016, and the estimated incidence of TB in India was approximately 28,00,000 accounting for about a quarter of the worlds TB cases. The National Strategic Plan is aiming to achieve elimination of TB, by 2025. According to the TB India report 2018, during plan period, targets for TB are:

1. 80 per cent reduction in TB incidence (reduction from 211 per lakh to 43 per lakh)

2. 90 per cent reduction in TB mortality (reduction from 32 per lakh to 3 per lakh)

3. 0 per cent patient having catastrophic expenditure due to TBIt's that time of the year again when people voluntarily turn off the electricity for an hour, an initiative, which if only symbolic, still makes a strong case for saving the earth by reducing consumption patterns.

The Earth Hour, which started out in 2007 with Australia turning off its lights for an hour, has become the world's largest grassroots movement for the environment and for stemming climate change.

On Saturday, from 8.30pm to 9.30pm, Earth Hour will be observed in India and Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change Dr Harshavardhan has pledged to switch off all non-essential electrical connections in his home and office and has appealed to people to do the same. The minister, who began the concept of doing a 'Green Good Deed' everyday, feels that observing the Earth Hour is the ideal step for the present day.

The Earth Hour is a campaign of the World Wide Fund for Nature, and has participation of 178 countries around the world. This year, WWF-India has launched the 'give up to give back' initiative, encouraging individuals and institutions to choose to curb habits and lifestyles that are bad for the environment. Some of these actions are doing away with single-use plastics, giving up of fossil fuels and encouraging car pooling.

The Bharat Scouts and Guides in India, an association of 5 million people, has decided to give up it plastic woggles. The Indian Hotel Company Limited, which runs the Taj Group of hotels, is participating in a plastic elimination challenge over a period of two weeks in support of the Earth Hour's theme. The hotels of the group are competing with each other in coming up with innovative solutions, the best of which will be tested for potential scaling up across the company.

The electricity supply company BSES too has joined the movement and appealed to consumers to switch off. Last year, during Earth Hour, Delhi NCR saved 290MW of power. The amount may not be much, but it quantifies what teachers often tell students: that every action counts, that little drops of water can make a mighty ocean.

The movement has had its share of critics. There was a time when people were asked to turn off the power and light a candle to show their solidarity with the earth. It led to criticism over unnecessary use of paraffin wax and also, how pointless the act was. So, over the years, the movement itself has reworked itself into being less symbolic and more meaningful. This year's theme, for instance, can take the message forward beyond the one hour.

I have been observing Earth Hour for years, says Suchitra Kulkarni, a programme director with the Ananta Centre. I spend that one hour taking a walk, admiring the dark. It's a good way to bond with the earth. And while the images of national monuments and brilliant skylines going dark have become associated with the Earth Hour, there is now focus also being given to reclaiming the dark skies.

Light pollution has become so great in recent years, that from cities, only the brightest stars can be seen. We hear that there will be meteor showers and other celestial phenomena, but we can barely see anything from cities. The Earth Hour gives city dwellers a peek into the dark skies and their brilliance,'' adds Kulkarni.

For those who don't know what to do when the lights are off, here are some suggestions:A mix of religion and politics often creates chaos. And, the ruling Congress is betting on this to retain its biggest stateKarnataka. Ahead of the assembly elections, due in May, the term Lingayat has become a hot-button issue in the state. Like the Patidars influenced the recent Gujarat assembly elections, so will the Lingayats in Karnataka. However, electoral fortunes aside, the Lingayat issue will also set a precedent for all future demands for a separate religion.

The BJP accused Siddaramaiah of social-engineering a split among the numerically strong and politically astute Lingayats. The minority tag would greatly benefit the influential leaders and pontiffs who run educational institutions. Will an average Veerashaiva boycott Hindu temples and the Vedas to be part of a minority community?

On March 19, in a major political gamble, the Siddaramaiah government accepted the Justice H.N. Nagamohan Das committees recommendation to grant religious minority status to Lingayats and Veerashaiva-Lingayats (those who follow Basavanna) under Section 2(d) of the Karnataka State Minorities Commission Act. The state government will forward the recommendation to the Union government, seeking notification under Section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992. The demand will now have to pass through a complex legal and political prism, and withstand massive social scrutiny before the Centre accepts it.

But, who are the Lingayats? Traditionally, they are followers of social reformer Basavanna, who rejected the Vedas and other Hindu scriptures. Veerashaivas, on the other hand, are a Shaivite sect that follows Hindu rituals and the ideals of Basavanna (for more, see graphics). And, that is where the governments decision gets problematic. While Veerashaivas want the minority statusthey contend that both groups have always been treated the same and considered a single communitythey want it without any riders. They do not want to be seen as only Basavanna followers. In fact, several Veerashaiva pontiffs and leaders have questioned the governments ploy to divide the two groups.

For the past several months, the two groups have been at loggerheads over their common identity and nomenclature. One argument was that only the term Lingayat should be used, as the very mention of Veerashaiva would be linked to the Shaivite sect of Hinduism, and the demand for a separate religious tag would be rejected. However, as tension brewed among the factions, many pontiffs and leaders suggested the use of Veerashaiva-Lingayat to keep the community united. Some prominent Lingayat pontiffs, like those of the Suttur and Siddaganga mutts, have stayed away from the controversy, instead preferring a decision after the elections.

There has also been a political upheaval. The All India Veerashaiva Mahasabhathe oldest and the largest Veerashaiva association, led by veteran Congress leader Shamanur Shivashankarappahas been sidelined by the newly formed World Lingayat Council, which is backed by state Congress ministers M.B. Patil and Vinay Kulkarni. The two had earlier said that they would fight for a religious tag only for Lingayats. In an earlier cabinet meeting, Congress ministers Eshwar Khandre and S.S. Mallikarjuna had threatened to quit if the government accepted the report. But, Siddaramaiah pacified them. Then, after delegations of the two warring factions met Siddaramaiah, on March 15 and 18, a truce was declared to woo both groups.

Name calling: lingayats and veerashaivas clash in kalburgi after the minority status announcement | PTI

The cabinet has accepted the expert committee report to consider grant of recognition as religious minority to the Lingayat and Veerashaiva-Lingayats (believers of Basava ideals), said Law Minister T.B. Jayachandra. The committee has also recommended that the decision should not affect the existing benefits available to other religious or linguistic minorities. The effective date of the notification will be notified by the state government, after meeting the procedural requirements and taking note of its impact on other minorities and the public at large.

Shivashankarappa had accepted the decision on March 19, but made a U-turn the following day. He said his acceptance was hasty and that he later realised that the decision was not in the interest of the Veerashaivas. There is speculation that he might even quit the Congress to join the BJP.

On March 23, the Veerashaiva Mahasabha will convene a meeting as it feels the state cabinet had differentiated between the factions for an ulterior motive.

The BJP, too, is accusing Siddaramaiah of social-engineering a split among the numerically strong and politically astute Lingayats, who have traditionally voted for the BJP.

Given that Lingayats form about 17 per cent of the states population (close to 6.5 crore) and hold sway in about 100 seats in the 224-member assembly, the move was bound to result in political chaos. The Congress has, conveniently, passed the buck to the Centre and put the state BJP in a tight spot.

Among other factors, the demand for a minority tag is to do with inducements like reservation, said experts. Currently, the Lingayat community has 99 sub-sects that get benefits under Category 2A (15 per cent) and 3B (5 per cent) of the Karnataka reservation list. Lingayats will continue to be under Category 3B, and any increase in quota will be decided after the Centre accords the minority status and after studying the impact on the existing quotas, said M.B. Patil.

The minority tag, incidentally, would greatly benefit the influential leaders and pontiffs who run educational institutions. The tag provides the right to establish and administer educational institutions without any government interference, while qualifying for special funds from the government. It also allows 50 per cent reservation for members of the community in their educational institutions and allows free practice and propagation of religion. There are about 1,100 Lingayat mutts in the state, and a large number of them, like Siddaganga and Suttur, run educational institutions, as many Lingayat politicians do.

Keepers of faith: Swami Shivakumara (right) of Siddaganga Lingayat mutt in Tumkur | Bhanu Prakash Chandra

That Siddaramaiah wanted the Lingayat vote was clear when, last April, he made it mandatory for all government offices to display Basavannas portrait. The government had also named the womens university in Vijayapura after Lingayat saint Akka Mahadevi. Even Congress president Rahul Gandhis recent visit to the Gavi Siddeshwara (Lingayat) Mutt in Koppal and Anubhava Mantapa in Bidar was carefully planned to woo Lingayats.

However, it remains to be seen whether the Lingayats, traditionally loyal to the BJP, will vote for the Congress. Former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa is still the tallest Lingayat leader in the state, and has had a track record of pampering Lingayat mutts with sops in each of his budgets.

Experts said that by trying to win over the Lingayats, the Congress was countering the BJPs agenda of uniting all Hindus. However, they added that the move could backfire as any perceived threat to Hindus can lead to consolidation of the Hindu vote. While the Congress could benefit from the Lingayat belt in Bidar and surrounding districts, it could lose voters in the Veerashaiva belt, including in Siddaramaiahs home turf of Mysuru.

Accusing the Congress of carrying forward the British legacy of divide and rule, BJP general secretary P. Muralidhar Rao said: Siddaramaiah is playing with fire for vote-bank politics. Why did the Congress do this just before the elections, and not four years back?

Interestingly, on March 20, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said the Congress-led UPA II had itself rejected the demand in 2013. Apparently, the Registrar General of India had then, in a letter, told the Veerashaiva Mahasabha, which had raised the demand, that the community was a sect of Hinduism.

But, if the Congress flip-flopped, so did the BJP. Yeddyurappawho said that his party would abide by the Veerashaiva Mahasabhas decision on March 23 had signed the 2013 petition.

The [current] demand did not have the backing of the entire community, but the support of only a section, including pontiffs and political leaders, said Dingaleshwara Swami of Balehosur mutt, a Lingayat.

Said Veera Someshwara Rajadeshikendra Shivacharya of Rambhapuri Peetha: Basavanna was neither a guru nor a founder of Veerashaiva faith, but a social reformer. We declare a religious war against forces that have tried to break our community. What is the hurry to resolve the Lingayat issue when there has been no consensus. We did not see the same sense of urgency in resolving the Mahadayi [water-sharing] issue that affects the same (north Karnataka) region.

BJP spokesperson Tejaswini Ramesh, too, said the Lingayat decision would backfire. The Congress has ill-treated its Lingayat chief ministers S. Nijalingappa and Veerendra Patil. The BJP, for the first time, has announced a chief ministerial candidate [Yeddyurappa] even before the polls and also made him the party president. It has never been the case in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana or Gujarat. The Lingayat community is wise enough to understand this.

Said Janata Dal (Secular) founder H.D. Deve Gowda: The state has seen several Lingayat chief ministers, but none had dared to pick the issue. Even backward class leaders like Veerappa Moily and S. Bangarappa did not dare to do it.

Kannada writer S.L. Bhyrappa feels the current debate was born out of a political conspiracy to divide the Hindu community for electoral gains. The demand is to circumvent stringent rules stipulated by the government, which are not binding on minority-run institutions, he said.

However, experts said that, if history was any indication, the Union government might not declare Lingayats a minority community. The reason for rejecting the demand in 2013that Veerashaivas were part of Hinduismmight crop up again.

The bigger question, however, is: will the average Veerashaiva boycott Hindu temples and the Vedas to be part of a minority community?The demand that Lingayats be delinked from Hinduism is not new. Come elections or census, the demand gains momentum. In 1941, during the Veerashaiva Mahasabha meeting at Davangere, two resolutionsto rename the Mahasabha and to seek a separate religion tagwere moved by pontiffs of Naganur and Bhalki, and adopted by the Mahasabha, said Shivanand Jamdar, a former bureaucrat and coordinator of the movement. Unfortunately, they were not implemented. This is only a revival of the long-pending demand.

Jamdar explained that Lingayats were mentioned as minorities along with Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains in the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 and the Hindu Succession Act of 1956. While all three have been accorded minority status in 1993, 1963 and 2014, respectively, Lingayats have not been extended the same status. We urge the Centre to declare Lingayats as minorities, and extend all rights and benefits [to them], said Jamdar.

According to the five censuses of Mysore state, from 1881 to 1931, Veerashaiva was a sub-sect of the Lingayat community. Ninety-nine sects have embraced Lingayat religion and the question of it being a sub-caste does not arise, contended Jamdar.

But, Bhramaramba Maheshwari, Vedic scholar and priest of Rambhapuri Peeta, said Veerashaivas existed before Basavanna. The followers of Pancha Peeta adopt their gurus name as the gotra, similar to Brahmins, she said. Lingayats are followers of Basavanna, who came from different castes and communities and perform only the linga puje. Basavanna also studied the Vedas and introduced shivadhara [sacred thread], which was inspired by the yagnopavita [a ritual] of Brahmins. His concept of a niraakara [formless] god is also part of Hindu belief. The dasoha [selfless service], kayaka [exertion of the body to liberate the soul] and shivaaradhane [daily worship] are not new to Hinduism. Basavanna [only] revived them as part of a social and spiritual awakening.

Dr M. Chidananda Murthy, a Veerashaiva and biographer of Basavanna, however, said Veerashaivas or Lingayats can at best be considered a religious denomination within the Hindu religion. In February 2000, the Veerashaiva Mahasabha wrote to the Registrar General and Census Commissioner seeking enumeration of Veerashaiva/Lingayat in the 2001 census under a separate code number in the religion column, and not be counted as Hindu. Murthy, in his letter, urged the census commissioner to ignore the plea, calling the claims utterly baseless and motivated by petty political expectations like minority status, reservations. The Veerashaiva sect has its philosophical roots in Vedic literature, he said. Basaveshwara did not establish any new religion, but revived the earlier Veerashaivism and gave it a reformist dimension.

However, Mate Mahadevi, head of the Lingayats Basava Dharma Peeta, said, Lingayats are not Hindus, as we have a separate guru [Basavanna] and follow his vachanas, and not the Vedic scriptures like the Hindus. Ours is a secular cult that is based on social equality.The following companies are subsidiares of Teledyne Technologies: Alia Corporation Inc, Bolt Technology Corp, Bowtech Products, CARIS, CDL do Brasil Equipamentos e Servicos Submarinos Sociedade Empresaria Ltda., CETAC Technologies, DALSA, Demo Systems, Detcon Holdco Inc., Ensambles de Precision S.A. de C.V., Falcon Analytical, Frontline Test Equipment, GMI Group Holdings Limited, Hafmynd ehf, Hanson Research Corp, IST Oldham Instruments India Private Limited, Industrial Control Machines, Intelek, Intelek Limited, Intelek Pension Trustees Limited, Intelek Properties Limited, LeCroy (Beijing) Trading Co. Ltd., LeCroy Corporation, Lidar Aviation Services Inc., Maple Imaging LLC, Micralyne Inc, Ocean Design Ltda., Oldham Instrument (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Oldham Simtronics SAS, Oldham-Winter GmbH, PDM Neptec, Reynolds Industries Limited, Rhombi Canada LP, Rhombi Holdings Limited, Rhombi Netherlands B.V., Rockwell Scientific Company, Simtronics AS, TDY Jersey Limited, Teledyne Advanced Pollution Instrumentation, Teledyne Australia Pty Ltd, Teledyne BlueView, Teledyne Bogatin Enterprises LLC, Teledyne Bowtech Limited, Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., Teledyne C.M.L. Group Limited, Teledyne CARIS B.V., Teledyne CARIS Inc., Teledyne CARIS UK Ltd., Teledyne CARIS USA Inc., Teledyne CDL Inc., Teledyne CDL Limited, Teledyne Catalyst Enterprises Inc., Teledyne Computer Access Technology Corporation, Teledyne Controls LLC, Teledyne Cougar, Teledyne Czech s.r.o., Teledyne DALSA (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Teledyne DALSA Asia-Pacific Ltd., Teledyne DALSA B.V., Teledyne DALSA GmbH, Teledyne DALSA Inc., Teledyne DALSA Industrial Products Inc., Teledyne DALSA K.K., Teledyne DALSA Semiconductor Inc., Teledyne Dalsa, Teledyne Defense Electronics LLC, Teledyne Denmark A/S, Teledyne Detcon Inc., Teledyne Digital Imaging Inc., Teledyne Digital Imaging US Inc., Teledyne Energy Systems Inc., Teledyne Europe Holdings C.V., Teledyne France, Teledyne France SAS, Teledyne Gas Measurement Instruments Limited, Teledyne Gavia ehf., Teledyne Germany GmbH, Teledyne Hanson Research Inc., Teledyne ICM SA, Teledyne ICM SPRL, Teledyne Innovaciones Microelectronics S.L.U., Teledyne Instruments Inc., Teledyne Instruments Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Teledyne Japan Corporation, Teledyne Korea Ltd., Teledyne Labtech Limited, Teledyne LeCroy AB, Teledyne LeCroy Delaware LLC, Teledyne LeCroy GmbH, Teledyne LeCroy Inc., Teledyne LeCroy India Trading Private Ltd., Teledyne LeCroy Japan Corporation, Teledyne LeCroy Korea Ltd., Teledyne LeCroy OakGate Inc., Teledyne LeCroy S.A.R.L., Teledyne LeCroy S.R.L., Teledyne LeCroy SA, Teledyne LeCroy Singapore Pte. Ltd., Teledyne Limited, Teledyne Micralyne Inc., Teledyne Monitor Labs, Teledyne Monitor Labs P.R. Inc., Teledyne Netherlands B.V., Teledyne ODI, Teledyne Optech Inc., Teledyne Paradise Datacom Limited, Teledyne RD Instruments, Teledyne RD Technologies (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Teledyne RESON, Teledyne RESON A/S, Teledyne RESON B.V., Teledyne RESON GmbH, Teledyne RESON Holding B.V., Teledyne RESON Inc., Teledyne RESON Pte. Ltd., Teledyne RESON UK Limited, Teledyne RISI Inc., Teledyne Rad-icon Imaging Corp., Teledyne Redlake MASD LLC, Teledyne Reynolds Inc., Teledyne SG Brown Limited, Teledyne Scientific & Imaging LLC, Teledyne Scientific Imaging GmbH, Teledyne Scientific Imaging Limited, Teledyne Signal Processing Devices Sweden AB, Teledyne Singapore Private Limited, Teledyne TSS Limited, Teledyne Taiwan Company, Teledyne Technologies (Bermuda) Limited, Teledyne Technologies (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Teledyne Technologies International Corp., Teledyne Technologies Israel Ltd., Teledyne Tekmar Company, Teledyne UK Limited, Teledyne VariSystems, Teledyne VariSystems Inc., Teledyne Wireless LLC, Teledyne e2v, Teledyne e2v (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Teledyne e2v (Overseas) Holdings Limited, Teledyne e2v Asia Pacific Limited, Teledyne e2v Limited, Teledyne e2v Semiconductors SAS, and The Oceanscience Group Ltd..The following companies are subsidiares of POSCO: 2015 POSCO New technology II Fund, BLUE O&M Co. Ltd., Brazil Sao Paulo Steel Processing Center, Busan E&E Co. Ltd., DAESAN (CAMBODIA) Co. Ltd., DAEWOO INTERNATIONAL GUANGZHOU CORP., Daewoo Amara Company Limited, Daewoo Global Development. Pte. Ltd, Daewoo International, Daewoo Power and Infra (PTY) Limited, Daewoo Precious Resources Co. Ltd., Future Creation Fund Postech Early Stage account, GOLDEN LACE POSCO INTERNATIONAL CO. LTD., GRAIN TERMINAL HOLDING PTE. LTD., Growth Ladder POSCO K-Growth Global Fund, HONG KONG POSCO E&C (CHINA) INVESTMENT Co. Ltd., HOTEL LAONZENA, HUME COAL PTY LTD, Hunchun Posco Hyundai Logistics, JB CLARK HILLS(*1), Korea Fuel Cell, LA-SRDC, Mapo Hibroad Parking Co. Ltd., MegaAsset Co. Ltd., Myanmar POSCO C&C Company Limited., Myanmar POSCO Engineering & Construction Company Limited., Myanmar POSCO Steel Co. Ltd, Mykolaiv Milling Works PJSC., PGSF L.P., PNR, POS-CD PTY LTD, POS-GC PTY LTD, POS-LT Pty Ltd, POS-Minerals Corporation, POS-NP PTY LTD, POS-ORE PTY LTD, POSCAN Elkview, POSCO (Thailand) Company Limited, POSCO A&C, POSCO AFRICA (PROPRIETARY) LIMITED, POSCO AMERICA ALABAMA PROCESSING CENTER CO. LTD., POSCO AMERICA COMERCIALIZADORA S DE RL DE CV, POSCO ASSAN TST STEEL INDUSTRY, POSCO AUSTRALIA GP PTY LIMITED, POSCO AUSTRALIA PTY LTD, POSCO America Corporation, POSCO Argentina S.A.U., POSCO Asia Co. Ltd., POSCO CHEMICAL CO. LTD., POSCO COATED STEEL (THAILAND) CO. LTD., POSCO Canada Ltd., POSCO Center Beijing, POSCO ChengDu Processing Center, POSCO China Dalian Plate Processing Center Co. Ltd., POSCO Coated & Color Steel Co. Ltd., POSCO DAEWOO E&P CANADA CORPORATION, POSCO DAEWOO WAIGAOQIAO SHANGHAI CO. LTD, POSCO E&C (THAILAND) CO. Ltd., POSCO E&C CHINA Co. Ltd., POSCO E&C HOLDINGS CO. Ltd., POSCO E&C Mongolia, POSCO E&C SMART S DE RL DE CV, POSCO E&C Vietnam Co. Ltd., POSCO ENERGY CO. LTD., POSCO ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION DO BRAZIL LTDA., POSCO ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION. CO. LTD., POSCO ENGINEERING (THAILAND) CO. LTD., POSCO ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION AUSTRALIA (POSCO E&C AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD, POSCO ES MATERIALS CO. LTD., POSCO Engineering and Construction India Private Limited, POSCO Europe Steel Distribution Center, POSCO Family Strategy Fund, POSCO GEM 1th Fund, POSCO Gulf SFC LLC, POSCO Humans, POSCO ICT, POSCO ICT BRASIL, POSCO ICT VIETNAM, POSCO ICT-China Co. Ltd, POSCO INDIA PROCESSING CENTER PRIVATE LIMITED, POSCO INTERNATIONAL (CHINA) CO. LTD, POSCO INTERNATIONAL AMERICA CORP., POSCO INTERNATIONAL AUSTRALIA HOLDINGS PTY. LTD., POSCO INTERNATIONAL Corporation, POSCO INTERNATIONAL Deutschland GMBH, POSCO INTERNATIONAL INDIA PVT. LTD, POSCO INTERNATIONAL ITALIA S.R.L., POSCO INTERNATIONAL JAPAN CORP., POSCO INTERNATIONAL MALAYSIA SDN BHD, POSCO INTERNATIONAL MEXICO S.A DE C.V., POSCO INTERNATIONAL MYANMAR CORPORATION LIMITED, POSCO INTERNATIONAL POWER (PNGLAE) LTD., POSCO INTERNATIONAL POWER(PNGPOM) LTD., POSCO INTERNATIONAL SHANGHAI CO. LTD., POSCO INTERNATIONAL SINGAPORE PTE. LTD., POSCO INTERNATIONAL TEXTILE LLC., POSCO INTERNATIONAL UKRAINE LLC., POSCO INTERNATIONAL VIETNAM COMPANY LIMITED, POSCO India Steel Distribution Center Private Ltd., POSCO JAPAN Co. Ltd., POSCO Japan PC CO. LTD, POSCO M-TECH, POSCO MAURITIUS LIMITED, POSCO MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., POSCO MPPC S.A. de C.V., POSCO Maharashtra Steel Private Limited, POSCO NCR Coal Ltd., POSCO O&M CO. Ltd. (formerly POSMATE), POSCO Philippine Manila Processing Center Inc., POSCO Processing&Service, POSCO RU Limited Liability Company, POSCO Research & Technology, POSCO Research Institute, POSCO SINGAPORE LNG TRADING PTE. LTD., POSCO SS VINA JOINT STOCK COMPANY (Formerly POSCO SS VISA CO. Ltd.), POSCO SUZHOU PROCESSING CENTER CO. LTD., POSCO TMC INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, POSCO TNPC Otomotiv Celik San. Ve Tic. A.S, POSCO Thainox Public Company Limited, POSCO VST CO. LTD., POSCO Venture Capital Co. Ltd., POSCO Vietnam Processing Center. Co. Ltd, POSCO WA PTY LTD, POSCO WOMANS FUND, POSCO(Chongqing) Automotive Processing Center Co. Ltd., POSCO(Dalian) IT Center Development Co. Ltd., POSCO(Guangdong) Automotive Steel Co. Ltd., POSCO(Guangdong) Coated Steel Co. Ltd., POSCO(Liaoning) Automotive Processing Center Co. Ltd., POSCO(Suzhou) Automotive Processing Center Co. Ltd., POSCO(Wuhu) Automotive Processing Center Co. Ltd., POSCO(Yantai Automotive Processing Center Co. Ltd., POSCO-CFPC Co. Ltd., POSCO-CTPC Co. Ltd., POSCO-China Holding Corp., POSCO-China Qingdao Processing Center Co. Ltd., POSCO-India Private Limited, POSCO-India Pune Processing Center. Pvt. Ltd., POSCO-Indonesia Jakarta Processing Center, POSCO-Italy Processing Center, POSCO-MKPC SDN BHD, POSCO-Malaysia SDN. BHD., POSCO-Mexico Villagran Wire-rod Processing Center, POSCO-Poland Wroclaw Processing Center Sp. z o. o., POSCO-South Asia Company Limited, POSCO-TISCO (JILIN) PROCESSING CENTER Co. Ltd., POSCO-Terminal Co. Ltd., POSCO-VIETNAM Co. Ltd., POSMATE-CHINA CO. LTD, PSC Energy Global Co. Ltd., PT KRAKATAU BLUE WATER, PT. Bio Inti Agrindo, PT. KRAKATAU POSCO, PT. KRAKATAU POSCO ENERGY, PT. POSCO E&C INDONESIA, PT.Krakatau Posco Chemtech Calcination, PT.Krakatau Posco Social Enterprise, PT.MRI, PT.POSCO ICT INDONESIA, PT.POSCO INDONESIA INTI, Pohang Scrap Recycling Distribution Center Co. Ltd., Pos-Sea Pte Ltd, Posco Group University, Posco e&c Songdo International Building, Qingdao Pohang Stainless Steel Co. Ltd., SANPU TRADING Co. Ltd., SPH Co LTD., SUZHOU POSCO-CORE TECHNOLOGY CO. LTD., Songdo Development PMC (Project Management Company) LLC., Suncheon Eco Trans Co. LTD, TANCHEON E&E (formerly POSCO E&E), Ventanas Philippines Construction Inc, Yuzhnaya Stevedoring Company Limited LLC., ZHEJIANG POSCO-HUAYOU ESM CO. LTD, Zhangjiagang BLZ Pohang International Trading, Zhangjiagang Pohang Refractories Co. Ltd., Zhangjiagang Pohang Stainless Steel Co. Ltd., Zhangjigang Pohang Port Co. Ltd., and eNtoB Corporation.GIADA ENTERTAINS: "GIADA'S ITALIAN EASTER PARTY"

Food Network, 11 a.m.

Huge Easter eggs made of chocolate and crisped rice? Sign us up! Chef Giada De Laurentiis hosts a dinner party for that special Sunday, explaining, "Besides Christmas, Easter for Italians is the biggest holiday of the year."

SNAPPED: NOTORIOUS: AILEEN WUORNOS

Oxygen, 6 p.m.

The long-running true-crime franchise explores American serial killer Aileen Wuornos, whose story of abuse and revenge was brought to life in the 2003 film "Monster," which earned its star, Charlize Theron, an Academy Award. In this riveting two-hour special, go inside Wuornos' trial and decide if the self-professed "highway prostitute" was a villain or a victim.

INSTINCT: "WILD GAME"

CBS, 8 p.m.

Although Dylan (Alan Cumming) has returned to teaching, Lizzie (Bojana Novakovic) calls upon his expertise with profiling sociopaths to assist with a bizarre case in which a venture capitalist was murdered and his body ritualistically displayed. Recurring guest star Whoopi Goldberg returns in the new episode. CALL THE MIDWIFE

PBS, 8 p.m.

Season Premiere! Poplar welcomes Lucille Anderson, the first West Indian midwife to be featured as a series regular. This season, the nuns and nurses are tested as never before, as they face challenging issues from leprosy, tokophobia and stroke to Huntington's chorea and unmarried mothers.

THE WALKING DEAD: "DO NOT SEND US ASTRAY"

AMC, 9 p.m.

After unexpected visitors at the Hilltop arrive, the community is thrust into action. Heartbreaking discoveries are made.

NCIS: LOS ANGELES: "WARRIOR OF PEACE"

CBS, 9 p.m.

Callen (Chris O'Donnell) pursues every alternative when the Diplomatic Security Service apprehends his father, Nikita Aleksandr Reznikov (guest star Daniel J. Travanti), as part of an exchange for two American photographers being held hostage in Iran.

WHEN CALLS THE HEART: "LOVE AND MARRIAGE"

Hallmark Channel, 9 p.m.

Jack and Elizabeth's marriage is put to the test; Pastor Frank and Abigail resolve the future of their relationship; and Bill helps a young girl solve a mystery.

KINGPIN: "PABLO ESCOBAR"

History, 9 p.m.

In the 1970s, the Colombian cocaine trade is wide open. Hundreds of small-time smugglers compete for control of the lucrative new racket. Discover the rise of Pablo Escobar from petty thief to the most powerful criminal in history, as he unleashed a bloody reign of terror to create the first global drug cartel and become the first billionaire kingpin of the 20th century.

DECEPTION: "ESCAPOLOGY"

ABC, 10 p.m.

When an art museum docent is held hostage, Kay (Ilfenesh Hadera) enlists Cameron (Jack Cutmore-Scott) and his team to use the art of escapology to help rescue her.

MADAM SECRETARY: "THE UNNAMED"

CBS, 10 p.m.

In the new episode, Elizabeth (Tea Leoni) and the team are caught in an uncertain situation when they are about to award a foreign leader with the Medal of Freedom but learn he may have known that a minority group in his country is being persecuted.

TRUST

FX, 10 p.m.

New Series! The new drama goes even deeper into the real-life Getty family saga than the film "All the Money in the World." Donald Sutherland stars as unimaginably wealthy oil baron J. Paul Getty Sr., and Harris Dickinson plays his teenage grandson, J. Paul "Little Paul" Getty III, who was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1973 in Rome. Getty Sr. refused to pay the ransom, leaving the negotiations to the boy's desperate mother (Hilary Swank) and the investigation to an ex-CIA agent (Brendan Fraser).

SILICON VALLEY

HBO, 10 p.m.

Season Premiere! The Emmy-winning series, set in the modern-day epicenter of the high-tech gold rush, returns for a fifth season.

BILLIONS

Showtime, 10 p.m.

Season Premiere! As Season 3 begins, Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) and Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis) find themselves in a world that has shifted on its axis. Both men are still determined to destroy each other, but they must also battle for their own survival amid new forces and powerful enemies. Joining the cast is Clancy Brown, who guest-stars this season as Waylon "Jock" Jeffcoat, the new attorney general, who has a compelling portfolio of accomplishments, a wicked intellect and a serious interest in Chuck and Bobby.

BARRY

HBO, 10:30 p.m.

New Series! SNL alum Bill Hader cowrites, directs and stars in the titular role in HBO's dark comedy. Barry is a depressed hitman whose newest mark takes him to Los Angeles, where he accidentally gets sucked into an acting class and a close-knit theater group, which prompts him to rethink his career. Also stars Henry Winkler.

Brought to you by the publishers of TV Guide.  TV Guide 2018"Midnight Sun" doesn't have a real bad guy in the entire cast.

The closest thing is a jealous wannabe girlfriend, and she's in two short scenes, totaling maybe 45 seconds of screen time. Think about how rare that is in a teen film. Every John Hughes movie, Brat Pack release and nerd party comedy has had at least one complete jerk in it. Whatever disparaging words are written in the next nine paragraphs of this film criticism, thank you, "Midnight Sun" filmmakers, for presenting a positive view of humanity during this tumultuous time for our species.

But there are villains in this romantic drama: The sun, and faulty scriptwriting  and not necessarily in that order.

The film features high school graduate Katie (Bella Thorne), a girl with a rare disease that allows brief sunlight exposure to spark a cancer that will kill her. After a walk outside in the safety of night, she meets Charlie (Patrick Schwarzenegger), her longtime crush. He falls for her, too. There is a lot to like about their romance, and much of this earnest film, which is based on a 2006 Japanese production "Taiyo no Uta." Thorne and Schwarzenegger (eldest son of Arnold and Maria, in his first feature film leading role) are both pleasant on screen. Schwarzenegger is so different from his father  in voice, stature and more reserved acting approach  that it's easy to imagine him finding his own comparison-free niche in Hollywood. Leave any "Commando" remakes to Jason Momoa. Patrick Schwazenegger could slot more easily into a role as a resident on an "E.R."-style TV drama.

The makers of "Midnight Sun" fill the corners of the movie with likeable characters, including blunt tool comic Rob Riggle in a more straight-forward and convincing turn as Thorne's protective but very loving dad. Katie and Charlie's teen friends are forgivably shallow, which highlights the believable bond between the more introspective lead actors.

The problem is a flawed narrative, that (getting deeper into spoilers here) has Katie waiting to tell Charlie about her affliction. As time passes, audience tension escalates, and everyone watching the movie knows this dense decision will lead to an inevitable crisis. The plot device goes from frustrating, to infuriating, to so contrived that there's nothing left but to stifle the screams you'd like to direct at the big screen. "She has a disease, Charlie! The sun will KILL her! Get her home BEFORE SHE DIES!"

These kinds of storytelling liberties may be acceptable by young fans of the teen cancer romance genre, in the same way that horror junkies don't mind when a lead actor makes a wish on the scary enchanted box they were told not to open. But those liberties keep "Midnight Sun" from being embraced by a wider audience. We don't just need to like Katie. We need to believe she's smart enough to have 47 backup plans, that will prevent the one thing that can kill her.

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Once the believability drops, the seams start to show, whether it's some extras who seem aware of the camera, bad edits, comic timing misfires, or songs written for Thorne that aren't quite as good as everyone on screen says they are. With modest production values throughout, "Midnight Sun" feels like four or five episodes of a pretty good drama on the WB network in 1997. In other words, something you used to get for free.

There is a point, after maybe the 17th bad decision by a major character, that you'll give in to the general good will of this film again. After so much dishonesty in the name of heightened drama, you never completely stop supporting the people you're supposed to like. The tears at the end of the film are earned.

The sun and bad screenwriting aren't the only villains here. The cynicism baked into the hearts of critics is an enemy of the film as well.Former Playboy model Karen McDougal gave her first televised interview Thursday about the affair she says she had with Donald Trump, speaking emotionally about a romantic relationship she says lasted for 10 months shortly after the birth of Trump's youngest child.

The interview marked a remarkable moment both for the president, whose romantic past has begun to draw more scrutiny as McDougal and adult-film star Stormy Daniels have sought to free themselves from confidentiality agreements signed before the election, and the media, for whom the intensely personal interview was a prime-time event on CNN.

In the more than hour-long interview with host Anderson Cooper, McDougal spoke about a relationship she says she had with Trump in 2006 and 2007, choking up as she recounted the guilt she felt for being a party to the affair, reflecting about the connection she developed in hotel rooms and restaurants with the "sweet" man she said she fell in love with and unflinchingly recounting the affair's most intimate details.

"When I look back where I was back then, I know it's wrong," McDougal said, choking back tears. "I'm really sorry for that."

The affair began around June 2006, McDougal said, which would have been just a few months after the birth of Trump's youngest son, Barron.

In her telling, the two met during a filming for "The Apprentice" at the Playboy Mansion, where McDougal, who was Playmate of the Year in 1998, was working.

"He said hello and then throughout the night it was kind of obvious that there was an attraction," McDougal said.

She said Trump asked her for her phone number, and by the time of his next visit to Los Angeles, around his June 12 birthday, they had been speaking on the phone.

That night, they had a "date," she said, for dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Trump's bodyguard, Keith Schiller, picked her up and drove her to a rear entrance at the hotel, she said.

"I'm thinking to myself, 'Are we going to a room because I thought we were having dinner,' " McDougal said. The two did have dinner - in a private bungalow that she said Trump liked to stay in at the hotel.

"Then as the night ended," she told Cooper, "we were intimate."

More for you Stormy Daniels' lawyer tweets about possible photos proving porn star's alleged affair with Trump

The night ended, she said, with a faux-pas made by Trump. McDougal said he tried to hand her cash - an experience that she had never had before and one that left her crying in the car ride home.

"The look on my face must have been so sad," she said. "I looked at him and said, 'That's not me. I'm not that kind of girl.' "

The experience made her feel "terrible" about herself, she said.

"I cried a lot," she said. "I got over it, but it did hurt."

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter.

Still the relationship between the two continued, McDougal said. For the 10 months that they were together, McDougal said, they saw each other a minimum of five times a month.

Earlier this week, McDougal filed a lawsuit against American Media Inc. (AMI), the publisher of the National Enquirer, which bought the rights to her story three months before the 2016 election but did not publish it. The suit claims that her former attorney, Keith Davidson, worked secretly with AMI and Trump attorney Michael Cohen as "part of a broad effort to silence and intimidate" her.

The complaint also alleges, without providing specifics, that Davidson had helped "catch and kill" other stories that would have been damaging to Trump.

Hours before the CNN interview, Davidson demanded that McDougal stop accusing him of mishandling her case and said he was poised to defend himself publicly.

In a letter to her new attorney, Peter Stris, Davidson said, "The complaint and various media appearances portray an incomplete and misleading depiction of the facts, circumstances and communications related to my prior representation of Karen." Any further disclosures, Davidson said, "will be deemed to be a complete express waiver of the attorney-client privilege."

Stris responded Thursday in writing: "We disagree with multiple statements in your letter, but are writing to acknowledge that we have received it. We hope that you will comply with your ethical responsibilities."

AMI has denied any wrongdoing and has said the contract with McDougal is valid.

McDougal is asking the court to declare her contract with AMI void, saying her story about Trump "is core political speech entitled to the highest protection under the law."

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, comes two weeks after Daniels sued Trump to invalidate her own confidentiality agreement. Daniels' deal was with Cohen, who has said he "facilitated" a payment of $130,000, using his own money. Cohen has sought to keep Daniels quiet through private arbitration, alleging in a court filing that she could owe as much as $20 million for violating the agreement.3 1 of 3 Tina MacIntyre-Yee Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Alex Wong Show More Show Less 3 of 3





U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter could fiercely debate legislative opponents on the House floor, then sing harmony with them for charity, use her scientist's mind to argue for human rights and sweeten a discussion with homemade rhubarb pie, Washington colleagues recalled Friday at her funeral.

"Even her opponents couldn't help liking her and respecting her," Hillary Clinton said inside a Rochester auditorium filled with family, constituents from her western New York district and two planeloads of congressional colleagues and staff.Washington

President Donald Trump grudgingly signed a $1.3 trillion federal spending measure Friday and averted a midnight government shutdown  but only after undercutting his own negotiators and setting off a mini-panic with a last-minute veto threat.

Trump said he was "very disappointed" in the package, in part because it did not fully pay for his planned border wall with Mexico and did not extend protection from deportation to some 700,000 "Dreamer" immigrants due to lose coverage under a program the president himself has moved to eliminate.

But Trump praised the bill's provisions to increase military spending and said he had "no choice but to fund our military."

The bill signing came a few hours after Trump created his latest round of last-minute drama by tweeting that he was "considering" a veto.

With Congress on recess, and a government shutdown looming, he said that young immigrants now protected in the U.S. under Barack Obama's Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals program "have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded."

Trump's veto threat put him at odds with top members of his administration and Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had said publicly that Trump supported the bill. Advisers inside and outside the White House said they never expected Trump to go through with his threat and believed he was just blowing off steam.

Finally, Trump took to Twitter again to announce he'd be holding a news conference to talk about the bill. The drama was short-lived: An aide told reporters the signing was on. And it was a monologue by Trump, not a news conference. He answered two questions called out to him as he left the room.

Asked why he'd made the threat, Trump said he'd "looked very seriously at the veto," but "because of the incredible gains that we've been able to make for the military that overrode any of our thinking."

He warned Congress, "I will never sign another bill like this again."

The giant spending bill, though, expires Sept. 30, and another funding measure will be needed. To boost the party-in-power's ability to muscle its agenda through Congress, he called for an overhaul of Senate rules to allow for simple-majority votes on all bills and appealed to Congress for line-item veto power to kill specific spending items he disagrees with. The Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that a congressionally passed line-item veto was unconstitutional.

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Trump backed the bill only reluctantly, and Republican lawmakers and aides acknowledged the deal involved trade-offs for Democratic votes that were needed despite the GOP majority lock on Congress.

The president had been especially frustrated in recent days by media coverage of the bill and by conservative Republican lawmakers, some of whom had been calling to harangue him and making their cases loudly on cable news shows he is known to watch.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., House Freedom Caucus chairman and a friend of the president, said in a tweet that the group would "fully support" a veto, adding that Congress should pass a short-term budget resolution while Trump and congressional leaders "negotiate a better deal for the forgotten men and women of America."

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., also egged Trump on to a veto. "Please do, Mr. President," he tweeted. "I am just down the street and will bring you a pen. The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque."

Trump's decision to ultimately sign the bill came after a call from Speaker Ryan.

At around 9:30 a.m. Friday, Ryan encouraged the president to sign the bill, according to a person familiar with the communication, and discussed all the wins it delivered, especially for the military.Audi Teases New SUV; Could This Be BMW X6-Fighting Q8?

Unless its a model that we have no idea about, it might as well beDo you have a news tip?

Want to share good news story, or do you have information that should see the light of day? Then we want to hear from you.

More hereIs Gary Griffith the local version of Donald Trump? I get that impression since his ramblings are so similar to Donald Trump where, in this case, he seems to feel he owns the position of Commissioner of Police ...-:- Message from Tripadvisor staff -:-

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We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.Seriously, if you are considering driving from BM to Canberra at evening/night time, you are crazy. The route via Oberon is a beautiful drive and worth doing during the day just for the scenery,,but from a safety perspective should not be done at night. The number of dead wombats and roos on that route are astounding, and if you come across one several things can happen:

1: it bounces off your car and causes minor damage but your car is still driveable

2: it bounces in to your csr and takes out the radiator etc and you are stuck in the middle of nowhere for hours waiting for a tow truck....and the expense of the animal strike

3:you see the animal coming and you swerve to miss it - you might be lucky and have no damage, but more likely you will lose control and end up on the side of the rosd. You may be able to drive off, you may not. Stastically a fatality from an animal strike is not likely, but I know of incidents where swerving has caused the vehicle to roll rendering the driver injured and obviously the vehicle undriveable. I know of at least one recent accident where the vehicle hit a wombat, became airborn, and hit a tree causing a fatality. Unless you are prepard to creep along at well below the speed limit, driving in this region at night in a vehicle not equipped with roo bars is a very silly idea.

Drive safe please.Early disclaimer: I'm just starting my research and haven't dug through all the forums yet.

My daughter will be working in Perth for 6 months starting in May and we're absolutely taking advantage of this great opportunity to visit Australia for the first time.

Mid 50's, active couple that love to explore and travel...but sadly can only take 2 weeks from work for this escape. October looks to be the most flexible for our work schedules, but that's not cemented in yet. Plus, our daughter may spend a month in the Sydney office so that's a variable to consider too.

At the moment, assuming she's in Perth... we'll be flying from DC and I think should go west to east across Australia - starting in Perth. We definitely want a visit to Sydney, met a lovely couple in Queensland on a trip to Italy that we'd love to visit, & perhaps visit Melbourne too. (might be too much on this short trip).

We want to maximize our experience, but have so much we'd like to see. Flights best path across country? Our get more exposure by Train?

So for a first visit, what are the *MUST SEE* this time?

Thanks in advance...and yes, I'll start reading into trip reports now.We will be spending 12 days in Japan starting and ending in Tokyo. We plan on getting a 7-day JR pass and plan on visiting Kyoto, Kanazawa, Matsumoto for two nights each before heading back to Tokyo.

In terms of routing  which is better / more scenic?

1.Kyoto to Matsumo to Kanazawa? Or

2. Kyoto to Kanazawa to Matsumoto?

Option 1 is fastest but I was wondering whether option2 would be more scenic? Any other random advice is also appreciated.

Thanks in advance.I stayed there once for a few days about 9 years ago when like you the vast majority of hotels were booked out. Don't remember much about the area--it's kind of a forgettable urban area, but all I rembmember it was about a 10 minute walk from the subway station. There were some places to eat, supermarket etc..

Beware that the subway lines running into Tokyo are fully jam packed in the morning rush hour. You would not want to get on in rush hour with luggage

It is in no way a touristy area and there's nothing really to recommend it , but in a pinch, perhaps it's ok. As for transport, you have to look at the subway map and figure out how to get to Tokyo station which will involve at least one transfer.

It if were me, I think I would stay at Narita the night before even though you say it's not your preferred choice. Tour Tokyo during the day if you wish and head to Narita at night.

As

Edited: 3 years ago- A Member of German Parliamentary group asked Kenya to guarantee Miguna's safety once he jets back

- The MP who spoke to Miguna said his family and friends were worried of his safety in the country

- He further asked the government to treat Miguna in accordance with human rights since he was a Kenyan citizen

The Kenyan Government was on Wednesday, March 21 urged by German Member of Parliament, Groogor Gysi to guarantee lawyer Miguna Miguna's safety when he flies back into the country.

Gysi wrote to Kenya's Ambassador to Germany, Joseph Magut, saying the controversial lawyer was concerned his safety in the country was not guaranteed.

"Recently I had a conversation with the opposition politician of your country, Dr Miguna Miguna. He was induced to leave his country on February 6, 2018. He is now determined to return to Kenya on March 27, 2018, whose state citizen he is,"' read the letter in part.

READ ALSO: Miguna's deportation is a national security issue - Matiangi

The Kenyan Government was urged by German Member of Parliament, Groogor Gysi to guarantee lawyer Miguna Miguna's safety when he flies back into the country. Photo: Lagaless/ Twitter

READ ALSO: Miguna Miguna deported

According to a report by The Standard, Gysi further asked the Government to treat Miguna in accordance with human rights as he had a right to live in Kenya.

"He and his friends are worried that his safety in Kenya could not be guaranteed," Gysi said in the letter

"That is why I ask you in this letter to do everything possible to ensure that it is treated in accordance with human rights and has a chance to live freely in Kenya," he added.

READ ALSO: Miguna's deportation was a mistake and Govt must now face the consequences

Miguna got a reprieve on February 15, 2018 after High Court declared the decision to deport him as illegal.

In his ruling, Judge Luka Kimaru said that at the time the fiery lawyer was deported, IG Joseph Boinnet and DCI George Kinoti were in contempt of court orders.

On February 12, 2018 Miguna filed a suit at the High Court through veteran counsel John Khaminwa seeking to quash the deportation orders and reinstate his citizenship.

READ ALSO: Miguna Miguna suffers asthma attack while at Lari police station, claims his lawyer

Miguna Miguna had a meeting with the Foreign Committee Members of the German Parliament. Photo: Lagaless/ Twitter

Miguna welcomed the court ruling saying NRM and patriotic Kenyans would use the Constitution in fighting against injustices.

Interior Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka claimed Miguna lost citizenship when he acquired a Canadian passport in 1988 after his application for a Kenyan one was denied on September 12, 1987.

Miguna was deported aboard a KLM flight on the night of February 6, 2018 over what the Government termed as violation of the provisions of section 33(1) and 43(1) of the Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act, 2011.

READ ALSO: Orengo leads final preparations ahead of Miguna's return on March 26

The MP's sentiments came at time when Miguna's anticipated return on Monday, March 26 was confirmed by his lawyers as it was reported earlier by TUKO.co.ke.

Migunas lawyers including Siaya Senator James Orengo on Friday, March 23, had a press briefing with the Chairperson of Kenya National Commission on Human Rights where they finalised the logistics for his return.

We are happy and satisfied with work that has been done so far in compliance with the court order and we will keep on consulting until Miguna arrives and safely enters in the territory of Kenya, said Orengo said.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news

Kalonzo Musyoka dismisses removal of Moses Wetangula from Senate | TUKO TV:

Source: Tuko Breaking News Latest- Former gubernatorial aspirant revealed he has already secured an air ticket

- He said upon his return, he will "lead the mother of all struggles"

- Miguna was deported by Kenyan government which stripped him of his citizenship

- High Court ordered the government to organise Miguna's return

Controversial lawyer Miguna Miguna is likely to be back in the country soon judging by his recent utterances.

Miguna announced that he will fly back to Kenya on Monday, March 26.

Speaking to BBC in an interview on Friday, March 23, the former gubernatorial aspirant divulged he has already secured an air ticket for trip to Nairobi.

READ ALSO: Court orders government to fly Miguna Miguna back to Kenya

Miguna announced he will return to Kenya on Monday. Photo: Miguna Miguna/ Twitter

READ ALSO: Do everything possible to ensure Miguna's safety - German MP to Kenya

Miguna was forced onto a flight departing for Canada by the Kenyan government which stripped him of his citizenshipm on Tuesday, February 6.

This came following his illegal detainment in police custody for four days.

He was dramatically arrested for organising and participating in the controversial swearing in of Raila as the people's president.

READ ALSO: Railas meeting with Uhuru was just selfish - Miguna Miguna

The combative lawyer revealed upon his return, he will "lead the mother of all struggles" adding that his aim is to remove President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto from office.

His return will be interesting given that recently, in a scathing attack, he faulted opposition leader Raila Odinga for meeting with Uhuru.

As formerly reported by TUKO.co.ke, Miguna vowed to steer NRM cause alone following the peace pact between the two leaders.

READ ALSO: Bungoma deputy governor, Jubilee MP engage bitterly at public function, supporters fight

He termed the move by ODM leader as "selfish and that of an "individual rather than a leader."

I never said a handshake constituted a structured discussion. Raila needed to engage NASA not as a person but as a leader of the institution. He did not consult Kenyans that voted for him. He did not do a transparent and public participation as a leader. He met Uhuru as a private person. So it was a private personal meeting between two people. He said.

He held that Raila acted out of his own interests, otherwise he would have sought approval from supporters and fellow NASA co-principals.

His announcement come barely a month after High Court Judge Chacha Mwita ordered the Immigration Department to organise how Miguna will come back to Kenya.

The court ruled that Miguna is not prohibited from setting foot in Kenya.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news

Nairobi floods: Heavy rains rock Nairobi city (Kenya News) | on TUKO TV

Source: Breaking News- Miguna's family members in Kisumu expressed their worry the lawyer's life could be in danger

- The prolific lawyer's kinsmen stated his safety could be compromised if he returned home next week

- Recently, a German MP had urged the Kenyan government to ensure Miguna remains safe when he jets back to the country

Lawyer Miguna Miguna's family has come forward to express their fears over the lawyer's safety once he returns to the country.

Miguna's kinsmen from Kisumu stated they weren't really comfortable with his homecoming as they felt it was still unsafe for him to return.

READ ALSO:Miguna's deportation is a national security issue - Matiangi

According to them, the coast is still not clear for the self-styled NRM general to jet back into the country as he announced.

They however stated they highly hope Miguna would consider vying for a political seat in his rural area once he returned to Kenyan soil.

Migunas family worried over his safety.Photo: Lagaless/Twitter

"It would be really nice if we had the son of the soil (Miguna) vying for a political seat back home," one of his relatives said.

READ ALSO:Miguna Miguna deported

Just recently, a German MP, Groogor Gysi, urged the Kenyan Government to guarantee the NRM general's safety once he arrives at the country.

He further stated the controversial lawyer and his family were concerned over his safety once he touched down in Kenya.

Groogor asked the government to treat Miguna in accordance with Human Rights as he is a Kenyan Citizen.

Groogor asked the government to treat Miguna in accordance with Human Rights as he is a Kenyan Citizen. Photo: Lagaless/Twitter

READ ALSO:Miguna Miguna suffers asthma attack while at Lari police station, claims his lawyer

Prior reports by TUKO.co.ke indicate Miguna got a reprieve on February 15, 2018 after High Court declared the decision to deport him as illegal.

In his ruling, Judge Luka Kimaru said that at the time the fiery lawyer was deported, IG Joseph Boinnet and DCI George Kinoti were in contempt of court orders.

READ ALSO:Miguna's deportation was a mistake and Govt must now face the consequences

Prior reports by TUKO.co.ke indicate Miguna got a reprieve on February 15, 2018 after High Court declared the decision to deport him as illegal. Photo: Lagaless/Twitter

Interior Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka claimed Miguna lost citizenship when he acquired a Canadian passport in 1988 after his application for a Kenyan one was denied on September 12, 1987.

Miguna was deported aboard a KLM flight on February 6, 2018 over what the government termed as violation of the provisions of section 33(1) and 43(1) of the Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act, 2011.

The fiery lawyer is expected to be back to the country on Monday, March 26 as he already has a plane ticket.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Source: Tuko KenyaRussian-backed militants launched three attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) area in Donbas over the past day.

This is reported by the ATO Headquarters press center.

In Donetsk direction, the enemy used 120mm mortars to fire at Avdiivka (18km north of Donetsk). As a result of the enemy fire, a house and a farm building were partially destroyed. There were no civilian casualties.

The enemy also used 82mm mortars to fire at the Ukrainian positions near Kamyanka (62km south of Donetsk) and used grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms to shell the Ukrainian positions near Marinka (35 km south-west of Donetsk). As a result of the enemy attacks, Ukrainian servicemen were neither killed nor wounded.

In Luhansk direction, the ceasefire was observed over the past day.

ishNo Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) area in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesman for ATO issues Dmytro Hutsuliak said this at a briefing on Saturday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Russian-backed militants continued to violate the ceasefire regime. Two attacks on our position were defined as targeted. The Ukrainian defenders were neither killed nor wounded," he said.

ishPrime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman has visited the Sikorsky Challenge innovative environment under the National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute".

"I have recently visited the Sikorsky Challenge innovative environment at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. I saw many useful developments," he wrote on Facebook.

In particular, Groysman was interested in CamTouch device, which turns any flat surface into an interactive one.

"CamTouch is produced in Ukraine. The device was tested in 60 Ukrainian schools and received more than 200 applications," he added.

ishPresident of the United States Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill into law, having earlier threatened to veto it.

"President of the United States Donald Trump signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives for the fiscal year 2018. The total volume of assistance to Ukraine stipulated in the document is determined at $620.7 million, which exceeds last year's corresponding estimate," Ukraine's Embassy in the United States wrote on Facebook.

According to the law, the Pentagon allocates $200 million in military and technical assistance to Ukraine, which is by $50 million more than in 2017. These funds will be used to finance U.S projects for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in particular, such as training of soldiers, provision of military equipment, lethal defensive weapons, other military equipment and services, and logistic support. The assistance also includes intelligence support for Ukraine's armed and security forces.

The aid to Ukraine from the U.S. Department of State and related agencies is estimated at $420.7 million, which is $10 million more than the corresponding expenses of the previous year.A final version of the law on national security will contain a provision on civilian parliamentary control over the activities of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stated this during the events on the occasion of the Day of the Security Service of Ukraine on Saturday.

"The final version of the new law on national security will provide for the introduction of civilian parliamentary control over the activities of the Security Service," he stressed.

According to the president, this provision will give an opportunity to ensure full compliance of the law on national security with NATO standards.

The president also noted that NATO membership remained Ukraine's strategic goal and promised to initiate the introduction of appropriate changes to the Constitution in the near future.

ishFrance is also concerned about increased militarization of Russian-occupied Crimea.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says his country is aware what country is behind aggression against Ukraine.

"In France we understand which country is the aggressor and which country is exposed to the aggression," Le Drian said at a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said.

The French official confirmed France's firm and unchanged position on supporting the territorial integrity of Ukraine, which is based on international law. The French minister also said that France does not recognize the illegal occupation of Crimea by Russia.

Read alsoFrench FM: France to finance some humanitarian projects in Donbas

During the talks, the two ministers discussed in detail the situation in Donbas, Ukraine's east, and opportunities to move further towards a peaceful settlement.

Klimkin noted a significant role played by France and President Emmanuel Macron personally.

"Donbas should return to a European and democratic Ukraine, and a UN peacekeeping mission will help with the fulfillment of this task," the Ukrainian minister said.

"Russia must ensure a stable ceasefire regime, which will create prerequisites for the implementation of the Minsk agreements," Le Drian said, in turn.

A meeting of the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Germany and France was announced to be held in Kyiv as part of further efforts to put an end to Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine.

In addition, the French minister said that France would allocate half a million euros for the implementation in Ukraine of humanitarian projects of the French Red Cross and Triangle Generation Humanitaire.

As UNIAN reported, during his visit to Kyiv on March 23, Le Drian announced possible tougher individual sanctions against the Russian Federation after the March 18 presidential election in occupied Crimea. France is also concerned about increased militarization of Crimea.

Also, a statement of intent was signed on March 23 on the development of bilateral cooperation between the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and the Ministry for European and Foreign Affairs of France. In particular, France plans to sell 55 Airbus helicopters to Ukraine.Fight against corruption deserves a strong, joint commitment from all relevant Ukrainian institutions.

The EP's Delegation to the EU-Ukraine PAC in cooperation with the European Commission hosted a stock-taking event on the anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine on Thursday.

Together with Commissioner Hahn, representatives of the Ukrainian authorities and heads of anti-corruption agencies, academic experts and civil society organizations MEPs debated the achievements and challenges to fight corruption in Ukraine, according to the European Parliament's press release.

"Today's event demonstrates the joint commitment of EU institutions to maintain a strong focus on a successful fight against corruption in Ukraine. Organizing such a discussion does not mean that we want to dwell on negative developments only, when dealing with Ukraine  quite the contrary. Our exchange of views has shown that there is good reason for hope, as corruption is being combated not only through the setting up of relevant institutions, but also through an impressive range of sectoral actions which decisively contribute to closing the space for corruption in many areas. Reforms in the energy sector, the privatization of state-owned enterprises, the decentralization process or new tools for public procurement equally play a tremendous role in this respect," MEPs Dariusz Rosati (EPP, PL), Rebecca Harms (Greens, DE) and Michael Gahler (EPP, DE) said following the event.

Read alsoUkraine's chief anti-corruption prosecutor on resignation rumors: "They wish!"

"Today we clearly said that all these parallel processes deserve further encouragement and consolidation, but also that all attempts to water down already achieved progress do not go unnoticed. In particular, we were worried to hear that the law obliging civil society activists working in the field of anti-corruption to submit an e-declaration of assets is unlikely to be revised any time soon. And it will take probably at least one more year to set up the High-anti-corruption court which has been under discussion for many months already. We see, unfortunately, a lot of resistance, and failure to deliver costs a lot to Ukraine  the non-establishment of an effective verification system for asset declarations has for example been one of the reasons for the recent cancellation of a last 600 million euro tranche of EU macro-financial assistance to Ukraine," they said.

"In our view, fight against corruption deserves a strong, joint commitment from all relevant Ukrainian institutions  a commitment which should be reflected in strategic documents setting out priorities with clear deadlines. Fighting corruption should furthermore also be each and everyone's responsibility  and here education plays a crucial role when it comes to decreasing the tolerance to corruption. It is our firm intention to further monitor closely the related developments and to continue these discussions, including in Ukraine with our counterparts in the Verkhovna Rada," MEPs added.The event puts emphasis on cooperation between both partners, fostering convergence between the EU and Ukrainian regulations on specific issues.

On March 27, Elzbieta Bienkowska, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will visit the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

The prime objective of the visit is to discuss with Ukrainian officials and business representatives the progress of reforms, the potential of EU-Ukraine industry and priorities for bilateral industrial and economic cooperation, EU Neighbours reported.

Read alsoLe Drian in Kyiv: France aware what country behind aggression against Ukraine

According to the EU press release, Commissioner Bienkowska will meet with Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and First Vice Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv, with whom she will open the 2nd EU-Ukraine High-Level Industrial and Regulatory Dialogue.

The event puts emphasis on cooperation between both partners, fostering convergence between the EU and Ukrainian regulations on specific issues, such as the automotive industry, textiles, raw materials, technical barriers to trade and public procurement. It also promotes enhanced cooperation on issues such as SME strategy and clusters and Ukraine's participation in key EU programmes, such as the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (COSME) and Horizon 2020.Poroshenko emphasized that the work of the Service on combating economic crimes was aimed, first of all, at shutting down the financial flows of the supply of terrorism.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has congratulated the SBU Security Service of Ukraine on the 26th anniversary.

"Each of 26 years of operation of the Security Service of Ukraine is in its own way important and special. But there's nothing to discuss, the last four years are the most important, the most complicated, the most crucial. The muscles the Service has grown over the years instill fear in the enemy's mind and confidence in Ukrainian society. The Security Service of Ukraine has finally become an effective protection mechanism for the security of the state and its citizens," Poroshenko said at the festivities on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the establishment of the Security Service of Ukraine, the president's press service reports.

The president said the current anniversary of the Security Service had coincided with the process of reformatting the Anti-Terrorist Operation. "The ATO has become for you not just a school of life, but the life itself. I want to remind you that the first casualties in 2014 were the employees of the Service. Officers and employees who sacrificed their lives for the sake of Ukraine will remain forever in the ranks of the Service," Poroshenko said.

The attendees honored the fallen heroes with a moment of silence.

Read alsoSBU detains "LPR intelligence commander"

The president also emphasizes that the Security Service's contribution to the ATO cannot be underestimated, as well as it is difficult to underestimate the struggle of the Service with the Russian aggressor. "There are hundreds of exposed informants and detained militants, dozens of localized attempts of sabotage and prevented terrorist attacks on your account. Only last year, dozens of acts of terrorism and sabotage were stopped by the Security Service," he said.

According to Poroshenko, the units of the Center for Special Operations "Alpha" carried out more than 7,000 special and operational-fighting measures in the ATO zone, including prevention of the penetration of sabotage and reconnaissance groups into the country. The Service detained 591 people involved in terrorist activities, gathering intelligence and assisting militants and Russian invaders.

"Dozens of separatists have been exposed and brought to justice. Those who encroached on the integrity of our country, participated in the so-called illegal referendum, destabilized the situation in Donbas, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Only in 2017, 13 traitors were sentenced for treason," the president stressed.

In the framework of counteraction to hostile propaganda, almost 100 "specific" citizens of the Russian Federation are forbidden to enter the territory of Ukraine. "These are the spiritual descendants of Goebbels who take part in the information war against Ukraine: so-called journalists, bloggers and experts. Some 36 verdicts were delivered by the courts to owners and administrators of communities and pages on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and even Facebook for committing crimes envisaged in Article 109 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. These are 'actions aimed at forcible change or overthrow of the constitutional order or seizure of state power,'" the president said.

Read alsoSBU chief to Poroshenko: Level of terrorist threat for Ukrainians highest since independence

Poroshenko emphasized that the work of the Service on combating economic crimes was aimed, first of all, at shutting down the financial flows of the supply of terrorism. "In 2017, convictions were imposed on 11 persons involved in the financing of terrorism. And I can say that lawsuits initiated in the international courts against the Russian Federation for violating the Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism are also largely based on materials of the Security Service of Ukraine," he said.

At the same time, the president said: "Changes related to reformatting the ATO in no way imply reducing the role of the Service in the region. The law on the reintegration of Donbas establishes a special procedure for the implementation of measures to ensure security, rebuff and deter the Russian aggression. This will help concentrate efforts on the priority component of the Service  counterintelligence, not only reinforcing it in the collision area, but also intensifying counterintelligence activities throughout the territory of Ukraine".

"This is especially important now when we see that the fewer shots in the combat zone, the greater the enemy's activity in the rear. The aggressor is struggling to move the epicenter of the hybrid war closer to the heart of Ukraine. And the heart is our ancient capital, beautiful Kyiv," Poroshenko said.

He reminded that in recent months the Service had conducted two large-scale operations, which "are worthy of pages in textbooks for the future employees of special services". "At first, the connection of the so-called protest camp under the Verkhovna Rada with the Little Russian political emigration in Russia, which sits under the cover of the Russian FSB, was brilliantly revealed and legally documented. Convincing evidence was obtained and the financial channel between the Dnipro and the Moskva River, which they used to transfer these 'thirty pieces of silver', was blocked," the president said.

"It is even more important, and I am grateful to you, Mr. Head of the Security Service, and to all the staff of the Service that you revealed that hostile clique, which was preparing large-scale terrorist attacks in Kyiv with numerous victims, as they called it 'controlled chaos', coup d'etat, rebellion in Ukraine in the interests of the Russian Federation," the head of state said.

"Such results of the Security Service's work are possible only due to the systemic changes that gradually strengthened the functional capabilities of the Service on the protection of the interests of citizens and the state from external and internal threats," the president concluded.

The head of state also presented state awards to the staff of the Service for personal merits in strengthening the national security, courage, exemplary performance of the official duty and on the occasion of the Day of the Security Service of Ukraine.No ceasefire violations were recorded in the Luhansk sector.

Russia's hybrid military forces attacked Ukrainian army positions in Donbas three times in the past 24 hours.

Read alsoUkraine: Donbas truce observed for 2nd day in row

"In the Donetsk sector, the town of Avdiyivka came under fire from 120mm mortars banned by the Minsk accords. In total, the enemy launched six mortar shells on this settlement, resulting in a manor house and an outbuilding were partially destroyed," the press center of the headquarters of Ukraine's military operations reported on Facebook on Saturday morning.

"Around midnight, the Russian occupation forces fired grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms at our positions near the town of Maryinka, as well as 82mm mortars near the village of Kamianka. No Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded in action," the report says.

It is also reported no ceasefire violations were recorded in the Luhansk sector.In the Luhansk sector, the Ukrainian positions near the town of Schastia came under fire from small arms.

Russia's hybrid military forces mounted five attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas on Saturday, March 24.

Read alsoRussian-led forces mount three attacks on Ukraine in Donbas in last day

"In the Donetsk sector, the militants fired grenade launchers of various types at the Ukrainian fortified positions near the village of Kamianka. The occupiers also used grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms three times against the defenders of the village of Lebedynske, which is in the Mariupol sector," the press center of the headquarters of Ukraine's military operations said in an evening update as of 18:00 on March 24, 2018.

In the Luhansk sector, the Ukrainian positions near the town of Schastia came under fire from small arms.Russia has denied such U.S. allegations in the past, citing a lack of evidence.

Russia is supporting and even supplying arms to the Taliban, the head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan said.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Gen John Nicholson said he'd seen "destabilizing activity by the Russians."

He said Russian weapons were smuggled across the Tajik border to the Taliban, but could not say in what quantity.

"We see a narrative that's being used that grossly exaggerates the number of Isis [Islamic State group] fighters here," Gen Nicholson told BBC News. "This narrative then is used as a justification for the Russians to legitimize the actions of Taliban and provide some degree of support to the Taliban."

Read alsoKabul attack update: Seven Ukrainians killedThe general admits it is hard to quantify how much support Russia is actually giving the Taliban, but senior Afghan police officers and military figures have told the BBC that it includes night vision goggles, medium and heavy machine guns as well as small arms.

Afghan sources say these weapons are likely to have been used against Afghan forces and the NATO advisers who support them on some combat missions.

Russia has denied such U.S. allegations in the past, citing a lack of evidence.Mr. Trump is expected to take a final decision next week.

The United States and up to 20 European countries are preparing to expel Russian diplomats linked to Moscow espionage networks.

Read alsoFive EU member states considering expulsion of Russian diplomats  media

The unprecedented co-ordinated action will begin on Monday with the recall of the European Union's ambassador to Moscow for four weeks, according to The Times.

President Trump's National Security Council recommended last night that a yet-to-be determined number of Russian diplomats be expelled from the U.S. in response to the Salisbury attack. Mr. Trump is expected to take a final decision next week.According to Timoshkov, Skripal did not see himself as a "traitor".

Sergei Skripal wrote to President Putin asking to be allowed to return home.

Skripal was "shunned" after being convicted of treason and his old classmates felt he had betrayed his country, Vladimir Timoshkov, a school friend of Skripal, told the BBC.

He said he had reconnected with Skripal through his daughter Yulia after the conviction and in 2012 spoke to his old friend on the telephone for half an hour.

Read alsoU.S., 20 European countries preparing to expel Russian diplomats  The Times

According to Timoshkov, Skripal did not see himself as a "traitor" because the "oath he had sworn was to his socialist Motherland, the Soviet Union, not Russia".

He regretted being "a double agent" because his life had become "all messed up", his friend claimed.

He also asked to be allowed to return to Russia because he wanted to see his mother, brother and other relatives.

The Kremlin denies receiving a letter from Skripal.

Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, remain critically ill in hospital, after they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

The UK government says they were poisoned with a nerve agent of a type developed by Russia called Novichok while the Russian government denies any involvement in the attack.Trump is prepared to act but wants to be sure European allies will take similar steps against Russia before doing so, aides said.

President Donald Trump is preparing to expel dozens of Russian diplomats from the U.S. in response to the nerve-agent poisoning of a former Russian spy in the U.K., two people familiar with the matter said Saturday.

Trump agreed with the recommendation of advisers and the expulsions are likely to be announced on Monday, the people said, though they cautioned that Trump's decision may not be final, Bloomberg wrote.

Read alsoTrump: "It certainly looks like" Russia behind poisoning of ex-spy

Trump is prepared to act but wants to be sure European allies will take similar steps against Russia before doing so, aides said.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Raj Shah told Bloomberg on Saturday: "The United States stands firmly with the United Kingdom in condemning Russia's outrageous action. The president is always considering options to hold Russia accountable in response to its malign activities. We have no announcements at this time."

As UNIAN reported earlier, the United States and up to 20 European countries are preparing to expel Russian diplomats linked to Moscow espionage networks.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

A two-day free medical camp was arranged at Qamar Abad Asghar Kale and Pandi China in which 1500 patients were treated.

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :A two-day free medical camp was arranged at Qamar Abad Asghar Kale and Pandi China in which 1500 patients were treated. Fata Health Directorate arranged the free medical camp at Qamar Abad Asghar Kale and Pandi China and adjacent area where medical checkups and free of cost medicines were given to the patients.

The camp was arranged under the supervision of Agency Surgeon Dr Ayub Afridi in which around 1500 patients were examined by the specialist doctors. Medical facilities including medicines and expert doctors were present at the camp to facilitate the ailing people. Around 695 children, 520 women and 285 male patients were examined at the camp and provided with free of cost medicines.Indian troops, in their fresh act of state terrorism in Indian occupied Kashmir, martyred two Kashmiri youth in Islamabad district

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :Indian troops, in their fresh act of state terrorism in Indian occupied Kashmir, martyred two Kashmiri youth in Islamabad district. According to Kashmir Media Service, the troops killed the youth during a cordon and search operation at Shashtargam in Dooru area of the district.

The puppet authorities have snapped the mobile internet services in the area while train service between Srinagar and Banihal has been suspended. On the other hand, people staged forceful demonstrations and raised pro-freedom and anti-India slogans after Indian police and troops launched a cordon and search operation in Sirnoo area of Pulwama district.

The police fired teargas shells to disperse the protesters, triggering clashes between the demonstrators and the forces' personnel. The protesters compelled the Indian forces to call off the operation. Meanwhile, the troops have launched a massive search operation in several villages of Sunderbani area of Rajouri district. Educational institutions have been closed in the area.Police have arrested 11 people over violation of the sound system Act from different areas of the district, here on Saturday

SARGODHA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) ::Police have arrested 11 people over violation of the sound system Act from different areas of the district, here on Saturday. Police said that, the teams of different police station conducted raids in village Silky, Sahiwal, Kot Mosa, Chak 28/SB, Chak Mosa, Mangowal and other areas, besides arresting 11 persons over violation of sound system Act.

The accused were identified as Molvi Muhammad Mazhar, Muhammad Aafzal, Ramzan, Molvi Ehsan, Abul Ghaffar, Imran Raza, Imran Parvez and others. Cases were registered.o(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Police on Saturday claimed to have arrested 22 drug peddlers and recovered narcotics and illegal weapons from them.

SARGODHA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) ::Police on Saturday claimed to have arrested 22 drug peddlers and recovered narcotics and illegal weapons from them. Police said that, the teams of different police stations conducted raids and arrested Riaz Maseeh, Malik Mehfooz, Allah Yar, Ansr, Mursalin, Pervez, Fraz, Sheraz, Tanvir, Nawaz, Rafiq, Naeem, Sharif, Asad, Ghulam Ullah and others.

The police also recovered 3,668 grams hashish, 265 bottles of liquor, two guns and nine pistols from them. Cases were registered against the accused.Rawalpindi Police have arrested 23 outlaws from different areas of the district with 350 grams charras, 25 liter liquor, 10 bottles of liquor, six 30-bore pistols with 44 rounds, fireworks and other items.

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Mar, 2018 ) :Rawalpindi Police have arrested 23 outlaws from different areas of the district with 350 grams charras, 25 liter liquor, 10 bottles of liquor, six 30-bore pistols with 44 rounds, fireworks and other items.

According to a police spokesman, Saddar Wah police nabbed Iftikhar for having 1350 grams charras. R.A.Bazar police rounded up Zafar for carrying seven liters liquor while Civil Lines police arrested Tariq with eight liters liquor.

Rawat police also recovered eight liters liquor from the possession of Asif.

Other accused were sent behind the bars for having illegal weapons, drugs and liquor. Pirwadhai police apprehended Ibrahim, Liaquat, Akram and Hassan for using fireworks items.

Gujar Khan police rounded up Yasin for running an illegal petrol agency while Saddar Wah police held Saif ur Rehman on Wall-chalking ban violation. Saddar Wah police acting on a tip-off conducted a raid in New City-1 area in its jurisdiction and rounded up Abdul Rehman and two females who were allegedly involved in immoral activities.Anti-Human Trafficking Cell (AHTC) of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Lahore Friday arrested three human smugglers involved in looting millions of rupees from innocent citizens on the pretext of sending them abroad for jobs.

LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Mar, 2018 ) :Anti-Human Trafficking Cell (AHTC) of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Lahore Friday arrested three human smugglers involved in looting millions of rupees from innocent citizens on the pretext of sending them abroad for jobs.

According to an FIA spokesman, the accused namely Umer Hanif, resident of Faisalabad fraudulently received Rs 370,000 from complainant Amjad Mushtaq of Lahore on the pretext of providing Turkish employment visa.

The other accused Riasat Ali, resident of Okara, received Rs 500,000 for employment visa of Abu Dhubi from complainant Muhammad Imtiaz of Okara. The third accused Nazir Ahmad, resident of Sargodha ,received Rs 220,000 for employment visa of Saudi Arabia from complainant Muhammad Saleem of Lahore. First investigation reports have been registered against the accused persons.A total of 32 suspects including two facilitators were held in five hour long search operation by Shakardara Kohat police along with large cache of weapons and huge quantity of narcotics.

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :A total of 32 suspects including two facilitators were held in five hour long search operation by Shakardara Kohat police along with large cache of weapons and huge quantity of narcotics.

This was stated by DPO Kohat Majeed Abass Marwat while talking to media men after successful operation conducted against anti-social elements in different areas of Kohat District. The police also seized 2 Kalashnikov, one repeater, six pistols, dozens of cartridges and three kilogram Cannabis.

The operation was led by SHO Muhammad Afzal Awan while elite force, police dogs, and bomb disposal squad also took part in the operation.ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) will conduct a weeklong course workshop of PGD and M.Sc Gender and Women Studies Programme of first Semester (Autumn 2017) from April 16 to 21.

The courses includes: 4641-Psychology of Gender, 4642-Lifespan Development of women:Psychological Context, 4643-Pakistani Khawateen ka shairi Adab main Kirdar, 4644-Pakistani Khwateen ka Nasri Adab main Kirdar, a news release Saturday said.

Timing of the workshop would be 9:00 am to onward daily. According to workshop coordinator, Mehreen Qaisar, Students from Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore, D.

G Khan, Gujranwala, Mirpur, Muzaffarabad, Faisalabad and Multan regions will attend their workshops at their regions through Video-Conferencing system while the students from other regions will attend their workshop at the WM Zaki Auditorium of the University at Sector H-8, Islamabad.

Information letters for attending the workshop have been sent to all the enrolled students at their given addresses. For further detail, the students can contact Atifa Nasir, Incharge Gender & Women Studies at Phone No.9250079 and 9057842.LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi Saturday expressed his confidence that the democratic system in the country would keep on flourishing as there was no room for any judicial martial law or any other coup.

He was addressing the inauguration ceremony of first CCV line and aluminum alloy manufacturing plant in the Sunder Industrial Estate. He said in the upcoming general election in July, only the electorate would decide about the fate of next government and their decision would be accepted.

In the meanwhile, development and prosperity journey of the country would continue, he added. The prime minister said the PML-N government faced energy and power challenges and the backlog of the previous governments, but it had solved the energy issues, with addition of 10,400MW of power into the national grid.

He said the government had been performing well during its tenure which was matchless and resolved the energy issues for the next fifteen years. About 1,700 kms six lanes motorway network was being completed, he said and expressed his resolve to serve the country within the limited resources.

The prime minister also regretted that after 1999 coup, a case was registered against PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif for establishment of Sunder Industrial Estate. He said it was an irony that those who served the country were punished instead of giving the respect and hounour.

He wondered about those people who were rejected in the last general election by public, were preaching morality and integrity. He said Pakistan had the huge potential to increase its export products by adhering to global quality and standard which were requisite for global competition.

The government had taken steps for facilitating the private sector investment with different incentives which led to increase in the business activities and eventually boosted the exports, he said and added the investment activities paved the ways for creation of jobs and generation of tax revenues.

He said the government had provided gas, power and infrastructure facilities so that the cost of production could be reduced. He stressed upon maintaining the quality and standards in the production by bringing the local products at par with the international competitors to attract investment in the country.

The prime minister observed that Pakistan was a market for billions of Dollars investment and certain issues like tariff re-balance, cost of production and taxation system faced by the industry, would be resolved.

He announced that tax incentives package would be announced prior to next fiscal budget. He emphasized that the private sector and government required working hand in hand to achieve export targets.

"Industries play a vital role in the progress and prosperity of any country, adding that we want to ensure stability of policies as continuity of policies is of high importance". Abbasi hoped that country's industry would focus on improving quality as latest technology and efficiency not only help in growing business activities but also help earn good profit.

He said government was striving to achieve a balance in import and export through short and long term policies. He said the availability of energy had been settled and the growth rate was hovering around 6% which would further surge.

The prime minister assured that the government wanted to further strengthen the investors' policies by seeking input from the opposition. He said the industrial estate in the provincial capital made him happy that work was being carried out here as per by-laws which investors always look for.

The prime minister appreciated the contribution of the private sector in meeting the energy demands of the nation and introducing new technologies for local manufacturing products to reduce reliance on imports.

He also congratulated Fast Cables for establishing state-of-the-art manufacturing facility and mentioned that such projects play an important role in national prosperity through creating jobs. Fast Cables Director Kamal Mian, in his welcome note, said the first CCV manufacturing facility could produce medium voltage cables upto 33 KV using the latest dry curing technology.

Minister for Commerce Pervaiz Malik, Minister for Kashmir Affairs Barjees Tahir, State Minister for Industries and Production Arshad Khan Leghari and Punjab Minister for Industries Sheikh Allaudin were also present on the occasion. Fast Cables Chief Executive Officer Mian Ghulam Murtaza Shaukat presented a souvenir to the prime minster. APP/irf-yrb-zhrPresident Azad Kashmir Sardar Muhammad Masood Khan Saturday said India should refrain from making China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) controversial as under international laws, development works could be carried out in disputed territories.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :President Azad Kashmir Sardar Muhammad Masood Khan Saturday said India should refrain from making China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) controversial as under international laws, development works could be carried out in disputed territories.

Addressing a press conference accompanied by Member of European and British Parliament Afzal Khan, he hoped that Kashmir would become the part of CPEC very soon. He called upon the international community to play its due role against the ongoing human rights violations by the Indian forces in Indian occupied Kashmir.

He said the UK was an important member of the United Nations' Security Council so it should play a role to resolve the Kashmir issue according to the UN resolutions. AJK president said India wanted to create tension by continuously attacking innocent people at the Line of Control (LoC).

"We are thankful to the Labour Party which made Kashmir dispute part of its manifesto." He asked the House of Commons to help for resolving the dispute, adding that Indian government had closed the doors of negotiation and the struggle would continue till the freedom of Kashmir.

He said compensatory amount for the victims of Indian firing at the LoC was being increased threefold. It had been principally decided to build concrete bunkers alongside every home for what allocation had already been made.

Masood Khan said Pakistan and India could not considered equal at the LoC because India had adopted aggressive policy while Pakistan retaliating the Indian aggression in its defense. "Indian forces have created insurgency at the LoC due to the advent of elections in India," he added.

Masood Khan criticized the western powers for keeping mum over the issue of Kashmir for sake of their interests related to trade with India. He urged the overseas Pakistanis to get united only for progress and prosperity of Pakistan and resolve the Kashmir issue according to the resolution of UN instead of politicizing it.

He said consequent to Indian atrocities at the LoC, Pakistan should not give up its positive role as targeting innocent civilians could not be allowed. Masood Khan said the government of Pakistan was playing its role for the solution of Kashmir issue according to the aspirations of Kashmiris but there was a dire need to gear up those efforts at diplomatic level.

Speaking on the occasion, Afzal Khan said Pakistani government had conferred on him Sitara-i-Quaid-e-Azam Award which was an honour for him as well as the overseas Pakistanis. He said the UK was historic and influential country and it should play its positive role for the resolution of Kashmir issue as it was an unaccomplished agenda of the partition of the subcontinent.

He said self-determination was basic demand of the Kashmiris that should be fulfilled according to their will and that there should be no compromise over it. "India should come up for dialogue as it is not an issue of Kashmir, Pakistan or India rather it is the matter of world peace.

We should divert our resources towards public instead of purchasing the weapons," he added. To a question about the ongoing political situation in Pakistan, Afzal Khan said the UK was in favour of democracy.

For the last 70 year, he said Indian atrocities were increasing day by day in Kashmir and the matter could not be taken to its logical end. He said due the current situation in Kashmir whole subcontinent was faced with the problem.

Afzal Khan said after the 9/11, western media also acting against the Muslims with 99 percent of its content focused against Muslims. Even the irresponsible attitude of the political leadership was also the reason being anti-Muslim campaign.

Regarding the distribution of letter to declare the Muslims as terrorists, he said four members of the UK parliament had taken notice of the letter and after that political parties had also condemned the act.

Afzal Khan said institutions were working to search out the responsible for this letter. To another question regarding the overseas Pakistanis, he said overseas Pakistanis should participate in the local politics to become strong and play their role for strengthening Pakistan and help resolve the Kashmir issue.

"Our hearts beat with Pakistan and the one who desires to do politics of Pakistan should come and play his role while being in the country," he added.Balochistan Assembly has passed a resolution demanding an increase of 20 seats in its current 65-member legislature after it surfaced that the new delimitation in the province was flawed, on Saturday.

QUETTA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :Balochistan Assembly has passed a resolution demanding an increase of 20 seats in its current 65-member legislature after it surfaced that the new delimitation in the province was flawed, on Saturday.

Balochistan Provincial Assembly Session was held at Balochistan Assembly here today, presided by Speaker Raheela Khan Durrani. The resolution stated that, Balochistan Assembly is authorized by Article 144 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, that under Article 51 and 106 of the Constitution, Balochistan Assembly can increase number of National Assembly seats for Balochistan to 24, 5 reserved seats for women.

Additionally, number of provincial assembly general seats can be increased to 20, reserved seats for women to 4 and one additional seat for minorities. Speaking on the relevance of the resolution, opposition leader Abdul Rahim Ziaratwal said the number Balochistan MNA's in the National Assembly is equal to salt in the flour.

Whenever we demand for equal resources to Federal government, people of the establishment division tell us the same thing that resources are being distributed by the ratio of population only. Food Products can be distributed by population, but distribution of other resources also with population ratio is injustice with the province.

In this regard, speaker Rahila Hameed Khan Durrani constituted a committee of MPAs for approaching all elected senators and MNAs to ensure implementation of its resolution. The speaker said, "Balochistan election commissioner should remove apprehensions of public representatives regarding new delimitations." It was also decided that the provincial election commissioner would be summoned to brief the legislators on the delimitation process carried out in Balochistan.

The resolution was jointly moved by provincial ministers and opposition members in the assembly. National Party member Mir Rehmat Saleh Baloch while presenting adjournment motion during the session said that every vehicle in Panjgur is charged Rs.200 tax which is illegal, Deputy Director of Agriculture and Deputy Commissioner are also involved in this course of bribery.

When Chief Minister Baluchistan himself has said that no amount would be received at check posts, then how security personnel's deployed at check posts receiving taxes from citizens, Provincial minister for agriculture should take notice of these illegal activities.

Provincial Minister for agriculture Sheikh Jaffar Khan Mandokheil said that we are elected to resolve public issues, department will take strict action against government officers involved in this matter.

Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti requested Rehmat Saleh Baloch to withdraw this adjournment motion and said that I assure this matter would be investigated, no one would be allowed to receive illegal taxes from the masses at security check posts all across the province, on which Rehmat Saleh Baloch agreed and withdrawal the motion he presented.

Muslim League (N) Muhammad Khan Lehri presented a joint resolution in the House, saying that Naseerabad Division is an agricultural area, most of the wheat crop cultivation and harvestation throughout Balochistan is carried out in this district, wheat crop is cultivated, grown fully and matures till start of March but harvest starts from March 25.

Balochistan government makes wheat procurement plan after wheat crop harvestation, while other provinces of the country wheat procurement plan is prepared before harvestation, due to which Balochistan government starts purchase of wheat in late June instead of March, landowners are facing many problems in this area.

The provincial government has been opined to take concrete steps to start wheat procurement in month of March, to facilitate landowners. After the resolution was presented, Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti assured that he will raise this issue again in the next session, in this matter Chief Minister and Advisor to CM for food will be concerned.

He requested Muhammad Khan Lehri to withdraw this motion, on which he agreed and withdrawal his adjourned motion. Later on, the session of Balochistan provincial assembly was adjourned till 27th March.President Mamnoon Hussain and his Sri Lankan counterpart Maithripala Sirisena Saturday agreed to work together for the regional peace, bilateral cooperation and enhancement of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) role.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :President Mamnoon Hussain and his Sri Lankan counterpart Maithripala Sirisena Saturday agreed to work together for the regional peace, bilateral cooperation and enhancement of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) role.

During their meeting at the Aiwan-e-Sadr, both sides agreed that they would continue their close cooperation for the regional peace, stability, development and prosperity of the people, a press release said.Both sides stressed upon further enhancement of SAARC role by making it more effective.

The presidents held a brief one-on-one meeting and later on, joined by delegations from both sides. During the meeting, President Mamnoon Hussain welcomed the visiting dignitary and said his participation during the Pakistan Day ceremony reflected the close ties between the two countries.

Sri Lankan president also expressed his gratitude and said it was a matter of pleasure for him and an honour for the Sri Lankan people. He said they considered Pakistan as their real brother and close friend.

President Mamnoon Hussain proposed for working together to increase bilateral trade between the two countries to which his Sri Lankan counterpart agreed.

The president also underlined the need to boost air and maritime linkages so that the cooperation in business and industry besides, other sectors, could be strengthened.

President Sirisena expressed his satisfaction over the increasing cooperation in different sectors including defence and expressed the confidence that it would witness further boost in future. He reiterated his country's support to Pakistan in its efforts against terrorism and expressed his satisfaction over the achievements against it.

He also thanked the president for extending academic and training scholarships to Sri Lankan students and officers. The meeting was also attended by Sri Lankan minister Wasantha Senanayake, minister for rehabilitation MLAM Hizbullah, members of parliament from Sri Lanka Syed Ali Zahir Moulana, Abdullah Maroof and SM Marikkar and minister for SAFRON Abdul Qadir Baloch, foreign secretary and other high officials.

Earlier, upon his arrival at the Aiwan e Sadr, the Sri Lankan president was received by President Mamnoon Hussain. Children clad in traditional dress, presented bouquets to the visiting dignitary.(@FahadShabbir)

The Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) Friday hosted a lunch in honour of a 30-member delegation of Central Asian Republics (CARs).

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Mar, 2018 ) :The Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) Friday hosted a lunch in honour of a 30-member delegation of Central Asian Republics (CARs).

The delegation comprising members from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan is on a six-day visit on the invitation of Government of Pakistan, which started from March 19.

PTDC Managing Director (MD) Chaudhary Abdul Ghafoor Khan welcomed the delegates on their arrival here at Flashman's Hotel, which was decorated with colorful banners, flags, and buntings. A cultural show comprising dance performances and folk music was also organized.

Speaking on the occasion, Chaudhary Abdul Ghafoor said the visit would further strengthen the brotherly relations between Pakistan and Central Asian states. Pakistan was blessed with countless tourism opportunities available for all kinds of tourists.

Pakistanis considered Central Asian republics as brotherly nations, he added. He said there might be a few negative stories about Pakistan but, the situation absolutely contrary and Pakistan was completely safe and secure tourism destination for the international tourists.

He said Pakistan had opened its doors for the international tourists to come and enjoy the hospitality, see and believe that the country was safe and it had the most of nature blessed treasures spread all over Pakistan from Khunjerab to Karachi.

Pakistan, he added, had beautiful deserts, beaches, mountains, valleys, diverse culture and rich history.

He said visa on arrival facility would be introduced for group tourists for more countries and investment opportunities/projects for joint venture in tourism & hospitality sector of Pakistan would be shared among potential investors of the CARs.

To foster the process and cooperation among national tourism agencies, as well as private sector companies and provincial tourism organizations be encouraged, he said and recommended that fully sponsored scholarship opportunities should be offered to youth in undergraduate/graduate degrees in tourism and hospitality.

He said Central Asian countries could help Pakistan to promote tourism and remove negative propaganda against it. Development of road link and operation of direct flights by national airlines between Pakistan and Central Asian Republics was also essential for increasing tourist flow, he added.

Uzbek delegation was headed by Former Vice Prime Minister and Chairman of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry Ikramov Adham Ilhamovich, Kyrgyz delegation lead by Deputy Director, National Institute of Strategic Studies Baidoletov Nuradil Esenbekovich while Georgiy Dubovtsev was the Head of Kazakhstan delegation who is Deputy Minister for Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, Tajikistan delegation was lead by Dr.

Khudaberdi Kholiqnazar, State Minister Level for Center for Strategic Studies whereas Merdan Bayramdurdyyev, Deputy Minister of Finance and Economy was the head of the delegation of Turkmenistan.Sindh Senior Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said Pakistan Peoples Party's founding leader and former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Bhutto set the foundation of development and gave the nuclear power to Pakistan.

HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) :Sindh Senior Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said Pakistan Peoples Party's founding leader and former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Bhutto set the foundation of development and gave the nuclear power to Pakistan.

He told a press conference at the residence of provincial minister Imdad Pitafi in Qasimabad area here Saturday that the party and its supporters would pay tribute to Bhutto on his death anniversary on April 4.

"He didn't bow down his head before the dictator and achieved an eternal place for himself in the history," the minister said. Khuhro said during the five decades since the PPP was formed, several attempts had been made to break the party but the party remained strong and united under the leadership of chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

The PPP leader informed that around 3 million people in Sindh had joined the party since the membership campaigns started in January this year. He said the provincial autonomy, 18th constitutional amendment and 7th National Finance Commission (NFC) award were given during the PPP's government.

"People will keep in view the PPP's services when they go for vote in 2018 general elections," he said.

Responding to a question, he said the alliances against the PPP were formed during the 2013 general elections and 2015 local government elections, adding that similar groupings would also emerge before 2018 elections.

"But like the past, these alliances would be defeated with the power of vote," he expressed the hope. Khuhro said the delimitation of Constituencies had been done by Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) after the population census which was conducted after a long lapse of 19 years.

He said the ECP should allow the submission of objection to the delimitation in the offices of provincial election commission to save time of the people filing the objections. The provincial minister Imdad Pitafi, PPP's leader Waqar Mehdi, Syed Ali Nawaz Shah Rizvi, Rashid Rabbani and others were present on the occasion.

Earlier, Khuhro chaired a meeting Hyderabad, Nawabshah and Mirpurkhas divisions' chapters to discuss arrangements for April 4 death anniversary commemoration of Bhutto.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Friday expressed grief and sorrow over the death of mother of Senator Shaheen Khalid Butt.

LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Mar, 2018 ) :Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Friday expressed grief and sorrow over the death of mother of Senator Shaheen Khalid Butt. The chief minister, in his condolence message, sympathised with the bereaved family and prayed that Almighty Allah rest the departed soul in eternal peace.The Peshawar police have arrested the alleged killers involved in brutal assassination of five members of a family of Yahya Khan three days back in the outskirts of Peshawar who happened to be his real brother and brother in law as both committed to the crime over land dispute.

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Mar, 2018 ) :The Peshawar police have arrested the alleged killers involved in brutal assassination of five members of a family of Yahya Khan three days back in the outskirts of Peshawar who happened to be his real brother and brother in law as both committed to the crime over land dispute.

SSP Operations Peshawar Javed Iqbal told media here today that the police have arrested the main accused Junaid and Amir, brother and brother in law of slain Yahya Khan, Lab Assistant at UET Peshawar respectively and recovered weapons used in the offence within 72 hours of the occurrence of the brutal incident.

The accused have confessed to their crimes before the police investigation team in the initial interrogation, he added. He said dispute over land and some domestic matters stated to be the main reason behind the merciless assassination of the entire family of Yayha Khan.

The police was also trying to track down whereabouts of two sister of accused Junaid Khan who are missing after the incident.

The SSP maintained that soon after the incident IGP Salahuddin Mehsud immediately instructed CCPO Tahir Khan to personally investigate the case.

The police team have expanded the investigation scope in the incident and succeeded in apprehending the real culprits. The police have seized the weapons used in the offence on the pointation of the arrested accused Junaid and Amir.

It merits a mention here that on March 20, Aurangzeb son of Ayub Khan Resident of Tarnab Farm Chamkani uncle of slain Yahya Khan lodged an FIR in Chamkani Police Station that he was in his home when he heard about the incident and immediately rushed to the site.

Upon reaching the site, he saw his nephew Yahya Khan, his wife Kainat, two minor kids Zohaib and Shuaib and his sister in law Ayesha brutally murdered.(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) has allocated Rs 5.191 million for the rehabilitation of city parks.

FAISALABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) ::Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) has allocated Rs 5.191 million for the rehabilitation of city parks. A spokesman of the authority said here Saturday that Rs 1.937 million would be spent on the rehabilitation of Jhumra Road Park near graveyard whereas Rs 1.

428 million would be spent for Aasa Singh Park D-Type Colony.

Similarly, Rs 303,000 would be spent on electric work of Usman Park Jameel Abad, Rs 294,000 on installation of water pump in Farooqia Park Sharif Chowk D-Type Colony, Rs 695,000 for a park in Ejaz Town and Rs 531,000 on tree plantation of Sitiana Road Model Graveyard, he added.Police have arrested seven shopkeepers on the charge of decanting from various parts of the district on Saturday.

FAISALABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) ::Police have arrested seven shopkeepers on the charge of decanting from various parts of the district on Saturday. Police said that, the police teams conducted raids and arrested Rehan, Samiullah, Irshad, Boota, Rizwan, Shakeel and Liaqat red-handed while decanting gas. Cases were registered against the accused.On Saturday 8:30 p.m local time, WWF-Pakistan joined 184 nations around the world in celebrations marking the ninth edition of Earth Hourthe movements biggest edition yetin a global moment of solidarity for climate change.

Lahore (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Mar, 2018 ) On Saturday 8:30 p.m local time, WWF-Pakistan joined 184 nations around the world in celebrations marking the ninth edition of Earth Hourthe movements biggest edition yetin a global moment of solidarity for climate change.

Landmarks across the country switched off their lights and joined WWF-Pakistans call to stand with millions of people to connect to Earth to combat climate change and protect our biodiversity and nature.

The event in Lahore, organized at WWF-Pakistans Head Office, hosted by RJ Sophie of Radio FM91, included a live concert by percussionists Quadrum and Space Cassette, an underground band, candle lighting and sky lanterns ceremony with celebrities, corporate partners, guests and pledges by goodwill ambassadors.

Hundreds of students and educationists from across the country also vowed to connect to Earth, the theme for Earth Hour this year. As part of Earth Hour, people, cities and businesses around the world switched off their lights for one hour to draw attention to the urgent need to step up the fight against climate change and protection of biodiversity.

With the historic Paris Agreement on climate change now in full force, theres never been a more crucial time to hold leaders accountable and show strong public support for efforts to stem climate change.

From the Eiffel Tower to Taipei 101 and the Empire State Building to the Acropolis, thousands of landmarks switched off their lights in solidarity as individuals, communities and organisations worldwide delivered on their potential to help change climate change, the planets biggest environmental challenge yet.

In Pakistan landmarks which switched off lights included DCO office Lahore, Avari Hotel, PC Hotel, Wapda House, WASA, LESCO, Fatima Group, Wazir Khan Mosque, Hazori bagh, Trail Dehli Gate, PHA, MCB House, LDA Complex, Parliament house, Supreme Court of Pakistan, Pakistan National Monument, Damn e Koh, Pak-China Friendship centre, Shah Faisal Mosque, Convention Centre, D-Chowk, Lake View park, 7th and 8th Avenues, Sindh Assembly and frere Hall.

Asma Ezdi, Head of Communications and Marketing, WWF-Pakistan said, Pakistan is among the top ten countries affected by climate change and this environmental challenge is already impacting our economy severely.

On this Earth Hour, by joining WWF millions of people around the world have shown their commitment for the planet. Switching off all unnecessary lights for one hour on Saturday, 24 March is a symbolic gesture.

All of us should pledge to take action in our capacity as an individual, business and policy and decision-maker to reduce our footprint, save nature and protect the environment.  Speaking on the day Dr Uzma Khan, Technical Advisor Wildlife, WWF-Pakistan said, Climate change is one of the biggest challenges to wildlife species and their habitats and also people.

We are already seeing the consequences globally, a portion of the iconic Great Barrier Reef has already died, birds migration patterns have changed in Europe, massive floods of 2010 in Pakistan caused losses of Indus River dolphin.

In 2008, Tian e Zhou oxbow in China, froze for the first time in the recorded history and finless porpoises injured themselves in the effort to create breathing holes, subsequently at least six died.

We have witnessed loss of livelihoods and destruction of villages because of flash floods in Chitral and landslides in GB. Climate change is real, we all are responsible and only our collective actions can help the earth, unless we all decide to move to a different planet. The year 2018 marks the eleventh anniversary of Earth Hour, which started as a symbolic event in Sydney in 2007.

Today, it is the worlds largest grassroots movement for the environment, ensuring that people who are on the frontlines of climate change, are also empowered to be the planets first line of defence.

The one-hour event continues to remain the key driver of the movement encouraging individuals, communities, households and businesses to turn off non-essential lights as a symbol for their commitment to the planet.

Earth Hour events were also celebrated at WWF-Pakistans Bahawalpur and Khanewal office as well as Faisalabad in Punjab where students, families and corporate members participated. In other parts of the country, events were organized in Islamabad, Quetta, Peshawar, Nathiagali, Gilgit, and Sukkur.

Friday night was quite the nostalgic Vegas party when 90s punk rockers, The Offspring, and reggae-rockers, Sublime with Rome, kicked off the fall season at Downtown Las Vegas Events Center. The versatile outdoor venue housed a whopping 7,000 fans, from around the world, for this sold-out extravaganza (Photo credit: Tom Donoghue).

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Among the thousands was reality star Kendra Wilkinson who was spotted rocking out to The Offspring hit, Self Esteem with some friends in the VIP section. The Girls Next Door star then graced the stage with the D Casino Hotel owner, Derek Stevens, as he welcomed the excited crowd to DLVEC and extended an invite to the after-party being held across the street at the Ds LONGBAR! He then went backstage to greet the bands, each member being awe-stricken by his custom-made jacket embroidered with the bands Twitter handles!

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

When Sublime With Rome hit the stage, Kendra was seen rocking out with some fans right in the center of the pit! From Wrong Way to Santeria, no classic was left out by the Long Beach rockers.

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue

Theres no better high than a mutual exposure to beloved 90s hits under the Vegas lights, and that certainly held true on Friday night.

With so many different types of events, the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center seems to be a MUST in Vegas! Check out upcoming events at: http://dlvec.com/Australian scientists say a powerful ground-based laser targeting space junk will be ready for use next year. They say there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris circling the Earth that have the potential to damage or destroy satellites.

Reducing the amount of space junk in orbit has been the focus of a meeting of scientists this week in Canberra organized by Australias Space Environment Research Center.

The meeting has heard that a laser using energy from light radiation to move discarded objects in space could be ready for use within a year. Researchers in Australia believe the technology would be able to change the path of orbital junk to prevent collisions with satellites. The aim is to eventually build more powerful laser beams that could push debris into the Earths atmosphere, where it would burn up.

Professor Craig Smith, head of EOS Space Systems, the Australian company that is developing the junk-busting devices, explained how it would work.

We track objects and predict collisions to high accuracy and if we think a space debris object is going to have a collision with another space debris object then we can use our laser to change its orbits rather than crashing into a satellite or another space debris object causing more space debris. Again as we ramp up the power to bigger and bigger lasers then, yes, you can actually start moving it enough to what we call de-orbit the satellite by reducing its velocity enough that it starts to change orbit height and eventually hits the atmosphere and the atmosphere takes over and drags it, Smith said.

The system, which would operate through a telescope near the Australian capital, Canberra, is expected to be finished early next year. It is estimated there are 7,500 tons of trash in space. This includes an estimated half-a-million marble-sized pieces of junk, while other items, such as discarded rockets and disused parts of space crafts, are much larger.

In 2012, the eight-ton Envisat Earth Observation satellite unexpectedly shut-down in orbit, where it remains. The size of a school bus, the satellite is one of the largest pieces of 'junk' in orbit and could become a catastrophic hazard if struck by other space debris and broken into fragments.

But space debris does not have to be big to cause damage. A floating fleck of paint is thought to have cracked a window on the International Space Station.

In Europe, large nets and harpoons are being developed to catch debris encircling our planet.Separatist violence in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon along the border with Nigeria have completely stalled trade between the two countries. Buses no longer ply the Bamenda-Enugu road corridor as attacks and kidnappings continue.

About 70 men and women have assembled at Kandem, a village in southwestern Cameroon on the border with Nigeria to discuss what to do with their farm produce and how to get supplies from neighboring Nigeria. Five months ago, Kandem was a bustling market town along the $423-million African Development Bank-funded road linking Bamenda, Cameroon, with Enugu, Nigeria.

Pierre Atemengue, who came from central Cameroon, opened a plantation in Kandem. He says constant conflict between Cameroon government troops and armed separatists fighting for the independence of the English speaking from the French speaking regions of Cameroon have paralyzed business. He says 90 percent of the local farm produce has not been sold for the past five months.

He says he has asked all men to store cocoa in their community warehouse, while the women make sure that perishable farm produce like plantains, fresh maize and vegetables are harvested only when buyers come to their villages. He says women have been asked to work in groups to be able to meet supply deadlines whenever demand will be high.

Atemengue says goods imported from Nigeria are now difficult to come by, and when found are very expensive.

VOA mounted a commercial motorcycle to visit abandoned businesses in the village.

Rider Lionnel Mbung says the fighting has scared off the busloads of Nigerians that used to flood the village to buy farm produce and supply basic commodities, and that 80 percent of the youths in the village have fled the conflict.

Lionnel says he braved the crisis and stayed, but is now out of business after the government of Cameroon banned motorcycles because armed separatists were using the bikes to attack the military and kidnap government workers.

"Since the situation in Cameroon started, the bike business has dropped down, there is no way for us, things are not moving. They have passed orders that they do not want to see bikes, so we hide our bikes here, then we go to look for passengers because when we go there with our bikes, the police will catch [arrest] us."

Access to most villages along the border with Nigeria is by motorcycle. The ban on their use has also helped to paralyze business.

Paul Atanga Nji, Cameroon minister of territorial administration who ordered the ban says the government will only reconsider its decision when peace returns and when an identification of the riders he has asked for is complete.

"The population has complained time and again because most of them kidnap, kill, destroy. So we are asking them to put order in this profession," said Atanga Niji.

Cameroon, with a population of about 23 million, depends on Nigeria for most basic commodities, and Nigeria's 160 million people count on Cameroon for rice, maize, tubers, plantain, cocoa and other farm produce.

The unrest in Cameroon began in November, when English-speaking teachers and lawyers in the Northwest and Southwest regions, frustrated with having to work in French, took to the streets calling for reforms and greater autonomy.

Over the past year, armed separatist groups have emerged demanding all-out independence for the two English-speaking regions. The government says at least 30 soldiers and police have been killed in recent clashes.

Australian actress Cate Blanchett says she is bewildered by Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyis silence over the atrocities being committed against Rohingya Muslims.

More than 670,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have sought safety across the border in Bangladesh since August 2017, after a military campaign against the minority group that a U.N. official has previously called genocide.

Oscar-winning actress Blanchett visited some of the displaced Muslims from Myanmar last week in her capacity as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. The Australian star warns that thousands of refugees are at risk of disease and starvation as the monsoon season approaches. The Rohingya are not recognized as citizens by Myanmar and have lived under a segregated ethnic system in the country's western Rakhine state for decades.

Blanchett, who is also goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is criticizing Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, the country's de facto leader, for not speaking out over the crisis.

It is bewildering, is it not, that someone who has been such a fighter for even a fragile democracy, someone who upholds human rights, does not seem to be speaking out more clearly about the atrocities that are so very clearly happening under her watch. The most pressing thing for me is the need to support the refugees in the very immediate present as the monsoon comes. Obviously, political solutions are absolutely vital, Blanchett said.

Aung San Suu Kyi was in Australia earlier this month for the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, where she was also criticized by the Malaysian Prime Minister. In unusually stern language, Najib Razak said Myanmars treatment of Rohingya Muslims put them at risk of radicalization by extremists because they have no hope for the future.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Aung San Suu Kyi had addressed the controversy during private talks with other South-East Asian leaders in Sydney.

Aung San Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest for many years by Myanmars military dictators before the country embraced democracy. The author and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize was widely thought to be the champion of human rights and tolerance in Myanmar, although her reputation has clearly been dented by the Rohingya crisis.Two Asian-American photographers from New York traveled to the deep south  The Mississippi Delta  to explore the roots of a seldom-mentioned, but long-established Chinese community. Their images explore the diverse contributions and experiences of both native-born and immigrant residents. But the young photographers' journey is also a story of self-identity in an environment far from home.President Donald Trumps tweet, in which he threatened to veto Congress $1.3 trillion funding bill over immigration and border wall issues may well have been a nod to constituents who are not happy with what the huge bill does in regard to immigration.

The omnibus spending bill is a disgrace, Mark Krikorian wrote in the conservative National Review online magazine Friday. Krikorian is executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a hard-line immigration group.

The bottom line is this: There are no immigration-related provisions in the omnibus that are consistent with what President Trump and congressional Republicans told the American people they would do when they were sent to Washington, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), complained in a statement released Thursday. FAIR takes a similar hard-line position.

So what does the bill do for immigration?

Immigration enforcement

Perhaps the biggest blow to the Trump immigration agenda is the funding, or lack of it, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The administration had asked for 1,000 new ICE agents. It is getting about 10 percent of that, according to Vox, and they are not the immigration agents who arrest undocumented immigrants. Instead, the hires are support staff who work for a different part of ICE. Without the additional personnel, ICE will not be able to expand its rate of detentions.

Also, the bill provides no new detention space. On the contrary, Krikorian said, it funds less detention space than is currently being used.

Last years omnibus bill allotted enough money for ICE to hold 39,324 immigrants in detention at any one time. But ICE routinely overran that number.

That led Congress to issue a rebuke in an explanatory note in the bill signed Friday: ICE is directed to manage its resources in a way that ensures it will not exceed the annualized rate of funding for the fiscal year.

The bill increases the daily cap, but not substantially, to 40,520, leading Krikorian to conclude, In effect, the (Republican-dominated) House of Representatives voted to continue a policy of catch-and-release, where illegal aliens, as under (former President Barack) Obama, are apprehended and then let go into the U.S.

DACA and border wall

The 2,200-page bill makes no mention of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented young people who were brought to the U.S. as children and given temporary protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program established under Obama. Trump ended the program last September, giving Congress a six-month deadline to find a legislative solution.

But because the courts have intervened, those who are currently in the DACA program can continue to renew in two-year increments at least until DACA gets its day in court.

The bill does mention the wall but does not authorize building it.

The administration had requested $1.6 billion for border fortification in the fiscal 2018 budget. Congress gave it $1.375 billion, but the money has strings attached. It is allocated for levee and pedestrian fencing in the Rio Grande Valley, replacement of secondary fencing in San Diego, and additional pedestrian fencing.

Repairs, drones and pedestrian fencing, Stein writes, but no wall construction.

In fact, the omnibus specifically prohibits the Trump administration from building any of the new wall designs it commissioned and had built as prototypes last year. The bill specifies that the funding be used for operationally effective designs as defined in a bill Trump signed last year.

Sanctuary jurisdictions

Another immigration issue that does not appear in the omnibus is that of sanctuary jurisdictions  cities, counties and states that choose not to help federal immigration agents. There is no mention of withholding federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions, which is something their opponents advocate.

The idea of sanctuary cities is deeply unpopular, and yet measures that would have restricted funds to them  were stricken from the bill, Krikorian wrote.

On Thursday, the Trump administration claimed the omnibus as good for its immigration agenda.

Generally speaking, we think this is a very, very good immigration package, Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters.In a surreal scene from the 2001 film Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise runs through a deserted Times Square before screaming in despair. In a satirical version widely shared in Egypt, the square is filled with campaign billboards for President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

Open your eyes anywhere in Egypt these days, and youll see billboards, banners and posters hailing the general-turned-president, who will stand for re-election next week against a little-known politician who has made no effort to challenge him.

The outcome of the election is a foregone conclusion, so the advertising blitz appears aimed at encouraging turnout to try and bolster the votes legitimacy.

The memes begin

In the meantime, the displays have provoked a wave of grim satire on social media, one of the last remaining avenues for dissent amid a sweeping crackdown that has escalated in the lead-up to the March 26-28 vote.

A still photo cropped from the 1997 blockbuster Titanic shows Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet seated on the doomed ships deck with an el-Sissi banner in the background. Another shows the stars of Friends gathered at their favorite cafe, with a sign outside saying: Gunther and the rest of the staff at Central Perk support Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

The real banners are paid for by individuals and entities from all walks of life, from private businesses and loyal political groups to lawmakers, trade unions and state-owned companies. Even a small tea house or grocery store might hang a banner out front.

You alone are our beloved, swoons one banner, sponsored by a private company in the Sinai Peninsula. Another, with the image of a child, says Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa supports Grandpa el-Sissi.

Dictators ploy

Autocratic rulers across the Middle East have enjoyed similar displays of public adulation for decades. Iraqs Saddam Hussein and Libyas Moammar Gadhafi stared down from ubiquitous signs and billboards, until joyous crowds tore them down when the longtime dictators were overthrown.

During Egypts 2011 uprising, crowds tore down portraits of Hosni Mubarak and changed the name of a central metro station from Mubarak to Martyrs. When they took over Cairos Tahrir Square they transformed it into a sprawling gallery of opposition banners, artwork and revolutionary graffiti.

Egypts first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, was widely mocked, both online and off, during his divisive year in power, before being overthrown by the military on el-Sissis orders. Since then, the government has silenced its critics, arresting thousands of Islamists as well as prominent secular activists, and blocking hundreds of independent and critical websites.

Egyptian culture

Imad Hussein, the pro-government editor of the independent Al-Shorouk daily, says the proliferation of banners in support of el-Sissi is part of Egyptian culture.

Its like a traditional Egyptian wedding when the guests try to outdo each other with how much money they give the newly wed couple to help them start their life together, he told The Associated Press.

Others see the banners, and the election itself, as the latest evidence of Egypts slide back into authoritarianism. A string of potentially serious candidates withdrew from the race under pressure or were arrested, and the resulting vote strongly resembles the one-man referendums held by Arab autocrats going back to the 1950s.

Most of these banners are made by people as a means of self-preservation or as part of their pursuit of personal gain, said Ibrahim Awad, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo. The satire and sarcasm on social media show that a large segment of the population, especially activists, is not taking the elections seriously.

Aphrodite to Harry Potter

A collage posted online has an elderly man waking up in his bed, shocked at the sight of an el-Sissi banner smiling down at him. Another has a statue of a nude Aphrodite with an el-Sissi sticker pasted on it. With her hand on her chest, she seems to plead with a passing museum visitor, saying: Enough with the posters already.

The master of darkness and all death eaters support Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, declares a banner hung over a scene from a Harry Potter movie with the staff and students of Hogwarts seated around a conference table.

The banners have inspired other jokes that are circulating the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth. Theres the one about the voter who cant decide between the two candidates  el-Sissi looking to his left or el-Sissi looking to his right.U.S. President Donald Trump has denounced Friday's attack in France that claimed four lives, including that of a police officer who exchanged himself for a hostage the gunman was holding captive in a supermarket in the southwestern town of Trebes.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the horrible attack in France yesterday, and we grieve the nation's loss," the president posted on Twitter.

He added, "We also condemn the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support. We are with you @EmmanuelMacron!"

Earlier Saturday, France's interior minister said Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, the police officer who exchanged himself for the hostage, had died.

"He died for his country. France will never forget his heroism," Interior Minister Gerard Collomb wrote Saturday on his Twitter account.

Authorities said two people had been arrested in connection with the shootings, including a woman who was reported to have been close to the assailant.

The gunman shot three people to death Friday during a burst of violence.

Car hijacking

First, he hijacked a car near Carcassonne, in southern France, Friday morning, killing the passenger and wounding the driver. He then drove off in the car and shot into a group of police officers who had been jogging, wounding one of them.

Next, in Trebes, near Carcassonne, he walked into the Super U supermarket where he opened fire, killing two people. He held several hostages in the supermarket, where Beltrame volunteered to trade himself for a hostage.

The gunman agreed and Beltrame kept an open line on his phone so his fellow officers could hear what was going on. When the officers heard more gunshots, they stormed the market, killing the gunman. Beltrame had been wounded.

Terrorism

After Macron said evidence suggested the gunmans actions were considered terrorism, the Islamic State militant groups propaganda arm claimed responsibility.

The person who carried out the attack in Trebes in southern France is a soldier of the Islamic State and he carried out the operation in response to a call to target the states of the anti-IS global coalition, the Amaq agency stated on the messaging app Telegram.

Collomb said Friday, however, that police had not considered 26-year-old suspect Redouane Lakdim, who was born in Morocco and lived in Carcassonne, a terrorist threat.

He was known by the police for petty crimes. We had monitored him and did not think he had been radicalized, Collomb said. He added, He was already under surveillance when he suddenly decided to act.

The Paris prosecutors office said counterterrorism authorities had assumed control of the investigation.

France has been on high alert after being hit with a series of Islamic State extremist attacks since 2015 that have killed more than 200 people.A Washington lawyer and Fox News guest who was expected to join U.S. President Donald Trump's legal team this week in the special counsel's Russia probe has yet to be retained, another of Trump's lawyers said Friday.

Joseph diGenova's hiring is pending completion of a review of potential conflicts of interest that may arise from representation of other clients at his law firm, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow said.

On Monday, Sekulow said diGenova would sign on this week to help Trump respond to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump's lead lawyer in the special counsel investigation, John Dowd, resigned Thursday.

DiGenova has not responded to requests for comment.

His law firm, DiGenova Toensing, has represented Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for Trump's legal team, and Sam Clovis, a former campaign aide. Sekulow said he had expected the review to be completed by now.

Corallo represented Trump's outside lawyers until last summer, when he resigned during another legal team shake-up.

Since then, Corallo has spoken with Mueller about what he viewed as a false statement dictated by Trump from Air Force One about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York City that included several Russians, according to a person familiar with the matter. That meeting was attended by Trump's son, Donald Jr.

Clovis, a former Pentagon official, was a campaign supervisor who wrote "great work" in an email after Trump's foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos discussed efforts to broker a meeting between the campaign and Russian leaders.

Corallo told Reuters on Friday that he had signed a waiver of potential conflicts Monday.

Clovis could not be reached for comment, but a person familiar with the matter said appropriate waivers had been signed.

The addition of diGenova may signal a more aggressive strategy by Trump's legal team to discredit Mueller, although Sekulow said this week that the team would continue to cooperate with the special counsel.

Trump's lawyers have been negotiating the terms of a possible interview for him with Mueller, sources have said.

DiGenova has appeared on Fox News accusing the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Justice Department of trying to frame Trump with false charges of colluding with Russia during the campaign.

Trump has had trouble finding outside lawyers to assist him in the Russia probe.

Major firms such as Williams and Connolly and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher have turned him down in the last year, citing conflicts, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

Trump representatives have reached out to some of those firms again, sources said.Britain's opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sacked his shadow Northern Ireland minister Friday after he called for a second referendum on Brexit, a move that exposes deep divisions in the party over whether to leave the European Union.

Owen Smith, who challenged Corbyn for the party leadership in 2016, wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper Friday urging his party to reopen the question of whether Brexit was the right decision.

Smith said he was sacked for voicing his opinion that Brexit will damage the economy and threaten the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, which ended decades of armed sectarian conflict in the province.

"Those views are shared by Labour members & supporters and I will continue to speak up for them, and in the interest of our country," Smith said in a Twitter post.

Labour is narrowly ahead in opinion polls but, like Prime Minister Theresa May's ruling Conservatives, remains deeply divided on Brexit.

Britain is due to formally leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

Over the last few months, Labour has diverged from the government's policy on Brexit. Last month it said it wanted to remain in the EU's customs union  a move that would make commerce with the European Union easier but limit Britain's ability to strike future trade deals with non-EU countries.

The government has ruled out staying in any form of the customs union.

Corbyn, who supported the "Remain" campaign in the 2016 referendum but with little enthusiasm, has repeatedly said it is not Labour's policy to offer Britons a vote on any final deal that Britain negotiates with the EU.

Smith will be replaced by a former Labour minister, Tony Lloyd, who returned to parliament last year after quitting in 2012 to become police and crime commissioner in Manchester.

Critics of the move

Some Labour lawmakers criticized Corbyn's decision to sack Smith.

Pro-EU Labour lawmaker Chuka Umunna said it was "extraordinary" that a shadow cabinet member should be sacked for advocating a Brexit policy that commands the overwhelming support of the party.

"What has happened to our party?" he said on Twitter.

Peter Hain, the former Northern Ireland minister and a Labour lawmaker in the House of Lords, Britain's unelected upper house, accused Corbyn of carrying out of a "Stalinist purge."The tiny nation of Lesotho is threatening to erupt into violence again, less than a year after one of its former leaders fled into exile in South Africa. Now, the brutal killing of a top military officer has sent former leaders back into South Africa - where they are watching anxiously as regional officials head into Lesotho to try to restore peace.

Lesotho has had a disproportionate share of troubles in the last year - from a reported coup attempt in August to a recent spate of violence and reports of a growing political crisis.

The landlocked nation surrounded by South Africa has seen years of political feuding and tension between the police and army.

The trigger for the most recent tension was the brutal slaying of the former army chief in front of his children last month.



That, said opposition leader Thesele Maseribane, spurred him and two top leaders - including the former prime minister and a top female leader - to flee to South Africa.

Maseribane, who heads the opposition Basotho National Party, spoke to VOA News from Johannesburg, where he said he plans to apply for political asylum.



Maseribane said reliable sources told him that he was on the list of targets of controversial army commander Tlali Kamoli, who Maseribane said is the man who orchestrated the killing of former Lesotho Defense Force commander Maaparankoe Mahao. The two men were bitter rivals.

We are running away from the Lt. Gen Kamolis orders that we must be arrested and must be assassinated. We flee for our lives. Thats how simply I can put it, said Maseribane.



South Africa involvement

South Africa has sent its deputy president into Lesotho in an attempt to reduce tensions. Regional leaders from the Southern African Development Community handled last years crisis by bringing elections forward, a move that temporarily brought calm; but, Maseribane says mediators have consistently failed to address a major issue in Lesotho.

One of the issues is Kamoli himself, whose firing last August led to the attempted coup. He then was reinstated by the new leader, against mediators recommendations.

The security issue has been an outstanding issue that was never addressed by the facilitators or by the SADC," said Maseribane. "The issue of the defense force succession, the issue of the arrest of those special forces members that killed people, the issues of the 29th of August, has not been addressed.

The United States has urged Lesotho to investigate Mahaos death and to conduct urgent security sector reform.

Maseribane said the Lesotho government also needs to clean up its affairs.

I think that the most important thing that has to happen is that we need a special independent investigation into the matters. We need arrests, we need to see arrests, we need to see justice being outlined in Lesotho," said Maseribane.



"We need to see those people going behind bars, who have killed people. Nobody can just go on hurting people on any day in front of his children," he said. "Nobody has the right to kill people and refusing to go to justice because he is a soldier. This is something that the world has to support.



This is an issue that affects South Africa directly -- as Lesothos only neighbor, violence in the mountainous enclave could spill over into South Africa."Fight for your lives," a high school student urged the crowd Saturday in Washington at the March For Our Lives demonstration.

Emma Gonzales has emerged as one of the most outspoken student leaders from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a shooter killed 17 people last month.

WATCH: Hundreds of Thousands in US March, Speak Out for Gun Reforms

Gonzales and other students from the Florida high school organized the demonstration in Washington to rally for stricter gun laws. More than 800 sister marches were held in other U.S. cities and around the world.

The mass shooting at the Florida school has sparked outrage and political activism among young people across the U.S.

During Gonzales' address to the crowd, at one point she stood silently for six minutes and 20 seconds, the time it took for the gunman to kill the 17 people at her school. Then she said, "The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job."

David Hogg: Politicians who oppose gun laws, get your resumes ready

On Facebook Saturday morning, the National Rifle Association (NRA) which has consistently opposed stricter gun laws posted a message: "Today's protests aren't spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plans to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones."

Protest in Atlanta

In Atlanta, Georgia, tens of thousands of people -- including more students from Parkland -- marched carrying signs saying "Protect Kids, Not Guns," and "Vote Them Out."

Civil rights leader and U.S. Representative John Lewis marched, too, wearing a large red letter "F" pinned to his clothes. He said it was the grade -- on a scale of A to F -- that the NRA gave him for supporting gun control.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and several members of the state Legislature also attended the Atlanta rally.

In New York City, former Beatles member Paul McCartney attended the rally, telling CNN, One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, so its important to me. McCartney was referring to his former bandmate John Lennon, who was shot to death in 1980 outside his New York City apartment building.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said in a statement: "The sight of patriots in Washington, D.C. and across the country speaking out for change was more than inspiring. It was a sign that there has never been more energy and urgency behind the demand for sensible reform."

Gun enthusiasts march, too

However, the gun control marches were met in some places with objectors.

A man who wanted to be identified only as Joe from upstate New York spoke to VOA in front of the Trump International Hotel, just blocks from the White House.

This whole march  is just an emotional reaction to something that is very tragic, he said. He added that gun control proposals are not going to reduce gun violence, its just going to take away the rights of law-abiding citizens.

Hundreds of gun enthusiasts marched in Salt Lake City Saturday, calling for better protections for schools and for arming teachers. They turned up in Phoenix, Arizona, as well, challenging the gun-control activists to debate the issue.

Rubio releases statement

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, whose district includes the Parkland, Florida, high school where last months shooting took place, has been criticized by the Parkland students for accepting more than $3 million in political contributions from the NRA. On Saturday, he released a statement welcoming the demonstrations, but added, Making a change requires finding common ground with those who hold opposing views.

President Donald Trump, who has not commented on Saturdays demonstrations, is spending the weekend at his vacation home in Florida, less than an hours drive from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In Palm Beach

Hundreds of protesters in Palm Beach lined up along the route Trumps motorcade usually takes from his golf club to his vacation home, Mar-a-Lago, on Saturday. But his motorcade took a detour, avoiding the demonstrators.

The Palm Beach Post reports the detour also avoided a large billboard installed along the motorcade route last week that calls for the presidents impeachment.

Opinions shifting

A new poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reveals that nearly half of Americans do not expect their politicians to change gun laws.

The poll also found, however, that 69 percent of Americans surveyed thought gun laws should be tightened, up from 61 percent in in October 2016 and 55 percent in October 2013.

Overall, the survey indicated 90 percent of Democrats, 50 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of gun owners favored stricter gun control laws.Governments around the world are using the threat of terrorism as a justification to crack down on human rights defenders and civil society activists, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights warned this week in Washington.

"I remain deeply concerned in my role as special rapporteur that civil society groups are being targeted by national security laws and administrative procedures for engaging in legitimate activities that are protected by international human rights law," Fionnuala Ni Aolain said in a speech Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"The harassment, suppression, detention and killing of civil society activists, lawyers and human rights defenders cannot be accepted and legitimized by reliance on national security excuses or doctrines," she added.

Ni Aolain warned that many counterterrorism measures used by governments could actually fuel extremism and politically motivated violence because, she said, they are being enforced at the expense of undermining freedoms and violating human rights.

This was not the first time that human rights officials and experts had expressed concerns about the misuse of counterterrorism measures by certain governments around the world.

Measures found to backfire

A two-year study released in 2017 by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) found that measures deployed by African governments to combat terrorism drove more people to join violent groups.

Journey to Extremism was based on interviews with more than 700 people, nearly 600 of whom were voluntary or forced recruits of extremist groups in Kenya, Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan, Cameroon and Niger.

State violence and abuse of power serve as a "final tipping point" for the people to join extremist groups, the study suggested.

"Militarized responses to violent extremism have only served to deepen long-standing mistrust and alienation," the U.N. report said, adding that many African countries have used counterterror agendas to limit the space for political opposition and suppress civil society and the media.

Last month, Amnesty International released a report arguing that space for civil society continued to shrink across Europe. It criticized several European countries for imposing "discriminatory counterterrorism laws" through the EU Directive on Combating Terrorism.

'Vague' terrorism definitions

Amnesty said some countries, especially Turkey, use "vague definitions of terrorism" to persecute activists and human rights defenders.

Turkey is often criticized for bringing terrorism charges against those who oppose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rule or express sympathy for the country's Kurdish population that is seeking autonomy.

The U.N. on Tuesday called on Ankara to end its 20-month-old state of emergency. It contended that the emergency declaration had led to the arrest of nearly 160,000 people and to the dismissal of nearly the same number of civil servants, which the U.N. said amounted to "collective punishment."

Turkey resorted to mass arrests and dismissals following a failed coup in July 2016, but it has rejected the U.N. allegations, claiming its actions were taken to protect its citizens from terrorist organizations.

The Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the U.N. accusations were unfounded. It asserted that Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the U.N. human rights envoy, was teaming up with terror groups.

"This person [Al Hussein], who is the head of an international body bearing an unquestionable global importance, has unfortunately relegated the said U.N. body under his administration into a position of being a collaborator with terrorist organizations. We condemn this situation. We are also saddened because of the damage inflicted on this universal organization," the statement said.

Lack of clear definition



According to Ni Aolain, lack of a clear definition of terrorism in international law is at the heart of why counterterrorism measures can lead to a rollback of freedom and human rights more broadly.

"What we are seeing is an epidemic across the globe of loose, vague and highly problematic definitions of terrorism. ... The result is, in practice, the term 'terrorist' or 'extremist' is increasingly defined in many countries as those who simply dissent, those who disagree, those who offer oppositional views, those who challenge the purity of the ethnic composition of the state," Ni Aolain said.

Ni Aolain's comments came ahead of an expected U.N. meeting in June to lay out a new global counterterrorism strategy.

Human rights organizations are likely to pressure governments to secure more space for civil society in the new strategy. The current strategy, adopted in 2006, emphasizes the importance of protecting human rights and freedoms by states as complementing and mutually reinforcing the fight against terrorism.

Rights activists say the strategy lacks punitive measures, however, for countries that violate those rules.

A new report at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Counterterrorism Measures and Civil Society: Changing the Will and Finding the Way, recommended that governments should undertake legal reforms to ensure that definitions of terrorist acts are narrowly crafted to avoid ambiguity.

The report said countries with a history of open civic space could help protect human rights by conditioning the sale of weapons and arms to governments that abuse counterterrorism laws for silencing opposition.

Shannon Green, one of the report's authors, said expanding the space for civil society also could help millions of people in areas affected by war. She cautioned that the increasing pressure of counterterrorism measures has limited space for aid organizations.

"When these counterterrorism measures impact the ability of humanitarian organizations, development organizations or peace-building organizations to access those areas to offer that help, it has very concrete effects on people's ability to get clean water, their ability to get enough food to feed their families and keep them well-nourished, and to access lifesaving medicines," she said.Russian and Syrian media say more than 105,000 people have left Syria's eastern Ghouta area, including some 7,000 members of one of the rebel groups occupying the area.

Thousands of fighters and their families departed the area by bus, according to an agreement between the Faylaq al-Rahman rebel group and Russian and Syrian authorities.

The departure comes a day after Faylaq al-Rahman agreed to surrender its territory in Ghouta  including the suburbs of Arbeen, Zamalka, Ein Tarma, and Jobar  in exchange for safe passage north to Idlib province.

The rebels said in a statement Friday that the agreement will allow humanitarian aid and medical care to be delivered to civilians in the area, who have lived through years of occupation and nearly nonstop fighting as of late.

Syrian Central Military Media said a safe corridor is being prepared for the movement of rebels, family members, and other civilians to leave the area. Sand barricades at a major intersection in the town of Harasta are being removed so the road may be used to convey people to rebel-held parts of northern Syria.

Russian control

As Russian troops take over the towns of Arbeen, Zamalka, Ein Tarma, and Jobar in eastern Ghouta, Faylaq al-Rahman says it and the government will hold a prisoner exchange, swapping 3,500 people held by the rebels for allowing 3,000 "humanitarian cases" to be evacuated.

The departure of the rebels from their long-held Ghouta enclave means that only one other pocket of rebellion remains in the area: the city of Douma, capital of Douma district.

The military offensive to capture Ghouta back from the rebels consisted of days of near-continuous shelling and the deaths of some 1,600 people, according to the war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In Idlib on Saturday, a car bomb exploded, killing at least seven people and wounded 25 others, the Observatory said.

On Friday, Faylaq al-Rahman said according to its agreement with Russian and Syrian government authorities, civilians who decide to stay in eastern Ghouta will be guaranteed safety. Russian police are expected to deploy in areas currently controlled by Failaq al-Rahman, including the suburbs of Arbeen, Zamalka, Ein Tarma, and Jobar.

Syrian state news agency, SANA, reported that more than 4,000 people left Ghouta on Friday. State media said more than 6,000 left the day before.

Rebel officials say they expect the evacuation to last several days.

The evacuation deal was brokered by Russia and worked out between Syrian rebels and the government. It also includes a prisoner swap and is similar to other agreements that let opposition fighters and their families leave besieged areas peacefully.

Syrian forces, backed by Russia, launched air and rocket attacks and took back control of most of eastern Ghouta last month.

The operation split the region into three nonadjacent, rebel-held pockets, which are now down to one  Douma  after recent evacuations.The Syrian army paused its bombardment of Douma, the last rebel bastion near Damascus, after midnight, a war monitor said on Saturday, as insurgents prepared to leave the rest of their former enclave of eastern Ghouta.

Thousands of fighters and their families departed neighboring Harasta by bus on Friday after a deal with the government to surrender the town. Insurgents in several other towns nearby have agreed to leave on similar terms.

Some army soldiers and other people captured and held by the rebels were freed on Saturday as part of the same deal and were shown on state television leaving Harasta in a minibus.

Buses queued at a crossing point and moved into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades, debris and unexploded ordnance. They are to carry thousands more people - fighters and civilians - into exile.

The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit, state media said.

It means only Douma is left of the opposition's easternnGhouta enclave which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400,000 people and constituted the rebels' main stronghold near Damascus.

The army offensive to capture it, heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the seven-year war with warplanes, helicopters and artillery, has killed more than 1,600 people, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.

Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminately - inaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally Russia, which has helped his air campaign, have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians.

Evacuation

About 7,000 fighters, along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad's rule, were to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday, rebels and state media said.

They will go to Idlib province in the northwest - the destination for many such "evacuations" after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years.

It will not mean an end to their experience of war. Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week, killing dozens of people.

Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups. On Saturday, an explosion at a headquarters for al-Qaida's former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others.

The rebels leaving the eastern Ghouta towns will release several thousand captured Syrian soldiers, state media reported.

The Britain-based Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish al-Islam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners.

Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted, rebels said on Friday. However, rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting.

A Russian military webcam at the al-Wafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory on Saturday, carrying children and sacks of belongings.

Russia's military said on Saturday more than 105,000 people had left eastern Ghouta, including over 700 on Saturday.

Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters already too full to take them.

Thousands of African asylum-seekers and their local supporters protested Saturday against an Israeli plan to deport them.

Organizers said 15,000 people gathered in front of Tel Aviv City Hall.

The Israeli government says the migrants have to leave the country for an unnamed African destination in exchange for $3,500 and a plane ticket, or they will be incarcerated indefinitely.

The Africans, nearly all from dictatorial Eritrea and war-torn Sudan, say they feel great appreciation for Israel, coupled with dread over the looming expulsions.

Israel considers the vast majority of the nearly 40,000 migrants to be job-seekers and says it has no legal obligation to keep them. Critics have called the government plan unethical and a stain on Israel's image as a refuge for Jewish migrants.U.S. President Donald Trump has issued an order banning most transgender people from serving in the military, except under limited circumstances.

A Friday night statement from the White House said the secretaries of defense and homeland security have concluded that the accession or retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria  those who may require substantial medical treatment, including through medical drugs or surgery  presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.

Gender dysphoria (formerly known as gender identity disorder) is defined by strong, persistent feelings of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with ones own assigned sex that results in significant distress or impairment.

The president pledged last year to block transgender people from joining the military, a move reversing former President Barack Obamas policy of accepting them.

Trumps push for the ban has been blocked by several legal challenges, and the Pentagon began allowing transgender recruits to seek enlistment in January.

Criticism swift

Criticism of the renewed effort towards a transgender ban was immediate from politicians, human rights groups and LGBT activists.

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called the presidents ban cowardly and disgusting. She said the hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military. ... Once more, the Presidents agenda of hate and prejudice is dictating our national security, instead of honor, decency and strength.

The outcome of the new policy is likely to be little more than stoking culture war, said Gregory Angelo, president of Log Cabin Republicans, a Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives and allies. He said his organization commends the brave LGBT military personnel who put their lives on the line to keep us free and recommits to fighting for their freedoms.

What the White House has released tonight is transphobia masquerading as policy, said Joshua Block, an ACLU senior staff attorney. Transgender people in our military deserve more from their government than a myth-driven proclamation about their unfitness for full civic inclusion.

Blake Dremann, president of SPART*A, an association of LGBT people who currently serve or have served in the U.S. Armed Forces and their families, said the average transgender service member has eight years of service and has been on two or more deployments.

There is no justification for a ban, and there is no justification for leaving our country without service members who are capable and performing their duties to the standards set forth by our commanders, Dremann said.

Lawsuit over ban

Transgender service members sued in August to try to block Trumps original ban, and a U.S. district judge granted them an injunction, halting enforcement of it until the case is resolved.

Trump then signed a memorandum in August that directed the military not to accept transgender people as recruits and halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgeries for active-duty personnel unless the process was already underway.

His memo called on Mattis to submit a plan by Feb. 21, 2018, on how to implement the changes.

In February, Pentagon spokesman Major Dave Eastburn confirmed to VOA that the secretarys recommendation was sent to the president on Feb. 23. He did not discuss details of the guidance because it was a private matter between Mattis and Trump.

Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.Turkey's president on Saturday criticized anti-war students at a top university, calling them terrorists following a fight there.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said "communist traitor youth'' tried to mess up a student stand opened by "religious nationalist local youth'' at the public Bogazici University. Erdogan announced an investigation and said "we won't give these terrorist youth the right to study at these universities.''

On Monday, a group of students opened a stand distributing sweets dubbed "Afrin delight'' to commemorate fallen soldiers in Turkey's cross-border operation in Syria. Another group protested against them, holding anti-war banners.

Turkey's official Anadolu Agency said a fight broke out and 12 people were later detained.

Turkey hasn't tolerated criticism of its military offensive to oust a Syrian Kurdish militia that it considers a terror group.The United States has flouted trade rules with an inquiry into intellectual property and China will defend its interests, Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call on Saturday, Chinese state media reported.

The call between Mnuchin and Liu, a confidante of President Xi Jinping, was the highest-level contact between the two governments since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods on Thursday.

The deepening rift has sent a chill through financial markets and the corporate world as investors predicted dire consequences for the global economy should trade barriers start going up.

Several U.S. chief executives attending a high-profile forum in Beijing on Saturday, including BlackRock Inc's Larry Fink and Apple Inc's Tim Cook, urged restraint.

In his call with Mnuchin, Liu, a Harvard-trained economist, said China still hoped both sides would remain "rational" and work together to keep trade relations stable, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

U.S. officials say an eight-month probe under the 1974 U.S. Trade Act has found that China engages in unfair trade practices by forcing American investors to turn over key technologies to Chinese firms.

However, Liu said the investigation report "violates international trade rules and is beneficial to neither Chinese interests, U.S. interests nor global interests", Xinhua cited him as saying.

In a statement on its website, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said it had filed a request - at the direction of Trump - for consultations with China at the World Trade Organization to address "discriminatory technology licensing agreements."

China's commerce ministry expressed regret at the filing on Saturday, and said China had taken strong measures to protect the legal rights and interests of both domestic and foreign owners of intellectual property.

Counter moves

During a visit to Washington in early March, Liu had requested Washington set up a new economic dialogue mechanism, identify a point person on China issues, and deliver a list of demands.

The Trump administration responded by telling China to immediately shave $100 billion off its record $375 billion trade surplus with the United States. Beijing told Washington that U.S. export restrictions on some high-tech products are to blame.

"China has already prepared, and has the strength, to defend its national interests," Liu said on Saturday.

According to an editorial by China's state-run Global Times, it was Mnuchin who called Liu.

Firing off a warning shot, China on Friday declared plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium, imposed after a separate U.S. probe.

Zhang Zhaoxiang, senior vice president of China Minmetals Corp, said that while the state-owned mining group's steel exports to the U.S. are tiny, the impact could come indirectly.

"China's direct exports to the U.S. are not big. But there will be some impact due to our exports via the United States or indirect exports," Zhang told reporters on the sidelines of the China Development Forum in Beijing on Saturday.

Global Times said Beijing was only just beginning to look at means to retaliate.

"We believe it is only part of China's countermeasures, and soybeans and other U.S. farm products will be targeted," the widely-read tabloid said in a Saturday editorial.

Wei Jianguo, vice chairman of Beijing-based think tank China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, told China Daily that Beijing could impose tariffs on more U.S. products, and is considering a second and even third list of targets.

Possible items include aircraft and chips, Wei, a former vice commerce minister, told the newspaper, adding that tourism could be a possible target.

Soybeans, autos, planes

The commerce ministry's response had so far been "relatively weak," respected former Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei said at the forum.

"If I were in the government, I would probably hit soybeans first, then hit autos and airplanes," said Lou, currently chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund.

U.S. farm groups have long feared that China, which imports more than third of all U.S. soybeans, could slow purchases of agricultural products, heaping more pain on the struggling U.S. farm sector.

U.S. agricultural exports to China stood at $19.6 billion last year, with soybean shipments accounting for $12.4 billion.

Chinese penalties on U.S. soybeans will especially hurt Iowa, a state that backed Trump in the 2016 presidential elections.

Boeing jets have also been often cited as a potential target by China.

China and the U.S. had benefitted by globalization, Blackrock's Larry Fink said at the forum.

"I believe that a dialogue and maybe some adjustments in trade and trade policy can be in order. It does not need to be done publicly; it can be done privately," he said.

Apple's Tim Cook called for "calm heads" amid the dispute.

The sparring has cast a spotlight on hardware makers such as Apple, which assemble the majority of their products in China for export to other countries.

Electrical goods and tech are the largest U.S. import item from China.

Some economists say higher U.S. tariffs will lead to higher costs and ultimately hurt U.S. consumers, while restrictions on Chinese investments could take away jobs in America.

"I don't think local governments in the United States and President Trump hope to see U.S. workers losing their jobs," Sun Yongcai, general manager at Chinese railway firm CRRS Corp, which has two U.S. production plants, said at the forum.A Virginia man was arrested Friday, after a discussion about marijuana policy in the district office of U.S. Representative Scott Taylor devolved into violent threats, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Wallace Grove Godwin, 69, allegedly told two staffers for Taylor on Thursday afternoon after a discussion about marijuana did not go his way that he was planning to attend a Saturday event with the congressman and get his shotgun and "do something about this," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

"I will just handle this myself," a Capitol Police special agent quotes Godwin as saying, in an affidavit filed in the case. "You two are next," Godwin added, referring to the congressional staffers.

The documents do not say what specifically upset Godwin, who was charged with threatening to murder and assault a United States official, and could face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted.

Marijuana policy has become a major source of debate in recent months, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed Obama-era guidance that had discouraged federal prosecutors from pursuing marijuana-related criminal cases in states that had legalized the drug.

Sessions' decision could lead to more federal marijuana prosecutions.

Previous incidents

Prosecutors said that Thursday's incident in Taylor's office is not the first time Godwin, a resident Virginia Beach, Virginia, had exhibited aggressive behavior toward the congressman.

Last year, he allegedly went to the congressman's home and blocked his car. When the congressman came outside and asked him to move, Godwin tried to speak to him about marijuana policy, according to court records.

He was also reported to Capitol Police in March 2017, after he paid another visit to the district office, where he yelled aggressively at the staff, the special agent wrote.

Information about who may be representing Godwin at his initial court appearance Friday was not immediately available.Austin, Texas, is not California's Silicon Valley technology corridor. But companies from Silicon Valley and other major U.S. hubs are taking notice of Austin's growing tech scene. Austin's lower cost of living and doing business, combined with its smaller size, are just a few reasons that people are attracted to the area. VOA's Elizabeth Lee explains other reasons that tech companies are opening up shop there.When a Silicon Valley company in northern California asked Sumat Lam to transfer to Austin, Texas, common stereotypes came to mind.

I definitely was confused when I was offered the role out of college for Austin. You think about cowboys. You think a little bit about the barbecue. Everything is bigger in Texas, Lam, a Cambodian-American, recalled.

Texas could have seemed like another country for Lam, who grew up in California as the son of immigrant parents. He is from the Greater San Francisco Bay Area and went to Stanford University, in the Silicon Valley technology corridor. His friends encouraged him to give Austin a try. He moved and has been working in Austin for the last four years.

WATCH: Why is Austin an Attractive Hub for Many Tech Companies?

I definitely love Austin more after four years here. I was really taken aback by how small it was. I was expecting a much larger metropolitan area, but me, I actually love the size of Austin.

Its not as embedded in the Texas stereotype as people presume, Lam said. People from all over are coming, people are bringing in the culture, their influences from Boston and New York and Philadelphia.

Characteristics of a tech hub

While Austin is not Silicon Valley, technology companies from that area and other major U.S. hubs are taking notice of Austins growing tech scene. The lower cost of living and doing business, combined with a smaller size, are among the reasons that people and companies are attracted to Austin.

I look at all the companies that have already moved here or in the process of moving here. Google, Apple, two of the big leaders in the tech already have large offices down here, Lam said.

Ive heard people call it Silicon Ranch. I think its kind of hilarious, said Austin native Meghan Berry, who also works for a tech company.

Start-ups and big companies are taking up office spaces downtown and more are being built.

Offices influenced by Silicon Valley tech culture, featuring ping pong tables, catered meals and massage therapists, can be found in Austin. Lam also noticed the areas transient culture.

Ive come to realize its such a transient place. People tell me they do a few years at a given tech company and look for the next role at another company, he said.

What fuels Austins tech industry?

Many Texans consider the Austin-based computer company Dell, as the flagship firm that gave birth to an entire tech ecosystem in the city.

There was a thing called Dellionaires, and so people who became millionaires after they worked at Dell, then went out and they started a bunch of companies, said Chris Valentine, event manager and producer for a technology event called the SXSW Accelerator Pitch Event.

The University of Texas, plus the annual SXSW (South by Southwest) technology conference and music festival increase the citys tech presence on the map by attracting tech experts and entrepreneurs from around the globe. People in the music business also fuel the tech industry in Austin.

A lot of my friends are musicians. They also work in the tech field so theres a huge overlap, Berry said.

Theres a strong foundational tech base thats here. Theres that creative aspect and really bringing that all together is a powerful combination, said Lou Kikos, general manager of Los Angeles-based web hosting provider Media Temple. The company has had a presence at SXSW in Austin for the past 11 years.

A lot of companies are coming here. They have access to capital; its a very open community. Thats one of the wonderful things about Austin; people just seem to be kind of very open, kind of wanting to help each other, Valentine said.

Culturally, Lam said that while Austin is home to people from Latin America and Europe, there are not that many people who look like him in town.

When I walk out on the street, lets just say Im more than likely to be one of the only minorities, sort of, on any given street or any given room, he said.

While Lam misses Cambodian food, he would recommend Austin to anyone who wants to relocate because the standard of living is high, and Austin has all the benefits of a big city without being too big. Another perk, Lam said, is the people.

Ive never felt unwelcome here, he said.The ongoing wave of ethnic violence sweeping through northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo has forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. The U.N. Refugee Agency says nearly 50,000 have crossed into Uganda. Halima Athumani reports from the Sebagoro landing site in western Uganda.Roberto Fico of M5S elected in the chamber of deputies, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati of Forza Italia in the senate.

Roberto Fico of the anti-establishment Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) and Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati of centre-right Forza Italia have been elected as the new speakers respectively of the chamber of deputies and senate.

Casellati is the first woman to serve as the speaker of the senate, Italys second highest office of state.

Fico, who is considered the leader of the orthodox wing of the populist movement founded by Genoa comedian Beppe Grillo, was elected on 24 March on the fourth round of voting with 422 votes. He needed an absolute majority of voting members, or 311 votes, to win.

Casellatti was elected on the third round with 240 votes. She also needed an absolute majority of voting members, or 160 votes, to win.

M5S and the centre-right coalition led by the right-wing Lega of Matteo Salvini, the two parties that emerged victorious from the ballot box on March 4 but without a clear majority in either house of parliament, agreed on the names during all-night talks after initial voting on Friday failed to deliver a result.

Fico, 43, was first elected to the chamber of deputies in 2013 and served as president of the parliamentary watchdog commission on state broadcaster RAI during the last parliament. He is the main exponent of the M5Ss left-wing strand and has on several occasions come into collision course with party leader and aspiring prime minister Luigi Di Maio, 31.

Casellati, 71, is a family lawyer by profession and is extremely close to FI leader and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. She has a long experience in parliament and has also served in government as undersecretary for health and justice on three occasions. She dedicated her inaugural speech as senate speaker to all Italian women and to Italys new life senator and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre.

The run-up to the opening session of parliament on March 23 was characterised by difficult political negotiations and vetoes from all sides that did not bode well for the formation of a new government.

Now that the speakers have been elected the parliamentary parties can form, after which outgoing prime minister Paolo Gentiloni will resign.

President Sergio Mattarella will then start consultations with the new parliamentary speakers and whips and with the leaders of all the main political parties in order to identify the person considered best placed to form a stable government.

This could be the prime ministerial candidate of one of the leading parties or a non-partisan figure.

Laura ClarkePlease enable cookies on your web browser in order to continue.

The new European data protection law requires us to inform you of the following before you use our website:

We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. By clicking I agree below, you consent to the use by us and our third-party partners of cookies and data gathered from your use of our platforms. See our Privacy Policy and Third Party Partners to learn more about the use of data and your rights. You also agree to our Terms of Service.Kyla Waite, a special-education teacher in Chicago, said she was thinking of her students as she marched in the District , including those who lost their lives to gun violence. And the students who are so numb to tragedy that they talk about their brother in the hospital suffering from a gunshot wound in the same mundane tone they invoke talking about what they ate for breakfast.He hoped to build on those gains and restore NBCs news division to its former glory, but in 1986 the network was bought by General Electric. The new corporate leaders instituted across-the-board budget cuts, which Mr. Grossman ignored as long as he could. With his onetime patron, Tinker, out of the picture, Mr. Grossman often clashed with NBCs new president, Robert C. Wright.According to court records filed Saturday, Lozanos great-grandfather left the home sometime Friday afternoon. Thats when Lozano allegedly attacked her great-grandmother. Shortly after 3 p.m. Friday, the victims husband returned home to find his wife unresponsive and not breathing and called 911, court records say. He also said hed seen his great-granddaughter running away, according to police accounts filed in court.I would give everything to have one more day, one more hour, one more second with the sweetest boy in the world, said Max Schachter, his voice choking up. His son, Alex, was killed at the high school. He was 14, he was a big boy. But he was also a little boy, that still liked to lie in bed and cuddle with his mommy and daddy.Todays Headlines

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By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy PolicySergei Skripal was poisoned with one of a class of nerve agents known as Novichok agents and chemically described as organophosphorus compounds. They act as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, which means that they disrupt the central nervous system. These compounds can come in solid, liquid or gas form, and we know that nerve agents work when ingested or inhaled. But its not yet clear what specific chemical compound was used in this case and how it was administered. Because of this, we dont know how much of the agent was needed or how the victims were exposed.Nix, who was suspended this week amid the controversy, did not respond to a request for comment. But in a statement released Friday, Cambridge Analyticas acting chief executive, Alexander Tayler, expressed regret over the firms handling of the Facebook data, which he said was deleted in 2015. He said the board has launched a full and independent investigation into the practices of the firms British parent company.Trumps puzzling intervention to seemingly derail the kind of megaproject that a self-styled master builder might be expected to champion was less about Gateways merits and more about who was backing it  specifically, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), according to multiple lawmakers and congressional aides involved. His decision to prioritize a political blow to Schumer offers a fresh demonstration of how Trump dealt with his political rivals in the months leading up to his signing of the spending bill  hours after he delivered one last veto threat over its failure to deliver substantial border wall funding.The Americans by happenstance sent an all-female delegation, which some officials in Washington worried might upset the Taliban. But the Taliban representatives did not seem to care. They opened the meeting at their Doha office by giving the head of the U.S. delegation a small lapis vase, according to officials briefed on the negotiations. When the Americans remarked that the Taliban did not have a gift for their Afghan government guests, a Taliban official was quickly dispatched to rectify the oversight.3 1 of 3 Richard Marchisotto / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Richard Marchisotto / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Long Island Medium, the hit TLC show starring Theresa Caputo, returns to television on Sunday, April 8. But days before the new seasons premiere, Caputo will be in Connecticut to present her live show at Mohegan Sun Arena.

Theresa Caputo Live!  The Experience is set for Thursday, April 5. Caputo, who hails from Hicksville, will give readings to audience members throughout the event. She has said her readings involve messages from loved ones who have passed on, meaning those who attend could be in for a life-changing evening.STAMFORD  Laurel House has received an anonymous donation of $500,000, which President and CEO Linda Autore said will ensure the future of the nonprofit mental health centers Thinking Well program.

That donation was celebrated Friday with a re-dedication ceremony during which the Thinking Well Center was named after Harrison Hoffman, a former and beloved Laurel House board member.

What this anonymous donation really does for us is sustain the program for a number of years to come and ensure that we can continue to offer this program free of charge, Autore said.

Established about three years ago, Autore said the Thinking Well program couples instructor-led computer-based exercises with therapeutic discussion sessions to help individuals with a mental health diagnosis re-learn or develop skills in working memory, attention, reasoning and problem solving, information processing and verbal and visual learning. Participants also engage in regular progress meetings to ensure the individual feels they are accomplishing something and making progress toward their goals.

The program is designed to help individuals with a mental health diagnosis to re-learn cognitive skills and help them improve their productivity in life, whether it be in school, or obtaining independent living or in a work setting, she said.

Since its inception, Autore said more than 300 individuals have completed the program, which consists of 90-minute session twice a week for 20 to 30 sessions.

The program utilizes an evidence-based cognitive remediation program developed by thought leaders in neuroscience to help individuals re-learn or improve their thinking skills, Autore said, particularly in those who are dealing with the burden of mental health illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bi-polar or anxiety disorders or traumatic brain illnesses or injuries.

Based on assessment tests, each program is tailored to the individual, Autore said, to address the specific skills or areas that individual needs to develop or improve.

Over the years, Autore said the program shown proven success.

Of 101 participants, data showed 98 percent of participants showed positive functional outcomes such as the ability to perform at their jobs or go to school, and 89 percent exhibited improvement in 4 or more cognitive areas. Additionally, 69 percent showed significant improvement in two or more cognitive areas.

But its the human outcomes, more than the statistical data, that Autore said really stands out.

Individuals who have completed the program feel renewed confidence, she said. They feel like they can get back into the workforce or start school, they can read a book and actually concentrate, they can better interact socially and/or live more independently. So, we really cant better measure success than seeing someone who has completed the program gain the confidence to go out and get a job or pursue something they didnt have the skills to do before.

In the future, Autore said she hopes Laurel House will be able to expand the Thinking Well program beyond the Stamford community.STAMFORD  While students from Newtown and Parkland met in a dramatic show of resolve in Washington Saturday, thousands of others their age stood in solidarity, in places as far away as Vietnam and as close as Stamford, to demand an end to gun violence.

Greenwich High School senior Rene Jameson, 18, was one of them.

Im so excited to see youth engagement, Jameson, president of the GHS Roots and Shoots service club, said as she took in the the 2,000 people gathered in Mill River Park at the Stamford March For Our Lives rally.

Hannah Stritzinger, 18, stood nearby on a bench, holding a poster high against the blue sky.

Girls clothing is more regulated than guns in America! it read.

Stritzinger moved to Greenwich from Austin, Texas in June and is soon to graduate from Greenwich High School.

Im hoping that lawmakers will become more aware of our situation and do more to change gun laws, she said. I dont feel its fair or right, whether its a budget thing or a religion thing, their political parties.

Nearly a dozen students from Stamford, Darien, Norwalk and Wilton spoke at the Stamford rally. They were joined by New Canaan resident and music legend Paul Simon who performed The Sound of Silence as a comment on Congress inaction in the face of ever-mounting student deaths.

The afternoon event, which drew people from across Fairfield County, was one of more than 800 like it to take place across the country and world. In New York, Hartford and Miami, Tel Aviv, Mumbai and Rome, students, families and activists took to the streets to demand lawmakers pass gun legislation to make schools and communities safer.

The movement was sparked by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students after 17 people were killed at the Florida school on Feb. 14.

Isaac Bragg, a sophomore at the Pinnacle School in Stamford, was one of the speakers at the Stamford event. Bragg, 16, became good friends with a student at Douglas High when they previously attended the Villa Maria School together in North Stamford. His friend was close with Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, and Alaina Petty, 14, both of whom were shot to death.

She told me the saddest thing was five minutes before, they were in the bathroom talking, Bragg told the crowd. She didnt know in five minutes theyd be killed.

Shouldnt be afraid

Greenwichs Stritzinger attended the rally with her aunt and uncle, Riverside residents Noelle Moore, and Chris Burdick, and their three sons who also go to Greenwich Public Schools.

I want my kids to be safe in school, said Moore, 46. I dont want them to be worried about getting shot. I dont want anyone to be worried about getting shot.

Our Constitution had been changed so many times, said Burdick, 45. We need to hold politicians feet to the fire. It might take everyone to be a single-issue voter.

If we really want change, he said, people need to go out and vote in November.

Jameson said she hopes the rally helps show Greenwich High kids that civil disobedience doesnt need to be convenient.

We shouldnt be afraid of the consequences, she said. We need to address these issues.

Her comments were a criticism of Greenwich Highs decision to hold a non-partisan, scheduled rally in the Student Center with speakers from student government earlier this month on the day that students across the nation held walk-outs to protest gun violence.

Theres been a lot of mixed reactions about what GHS did, she said. Instead of a walk-out, administration got involved ... It was put in the schedule.

Its not supposed to be convenient, said Jameson. I appreciate their efforts but it wasnt enough. We need continued action. We will be doing more.

Some students at the Stamford rally performed songs or read poetry.

The lead in the bodies of the fallen could have been used to write the law that saved them, read Westhill senior Marcos Pinto Leite in his piece Childrens Constitution. The people in charge didnt inherit the Earth. They only borrow it from us.

Victoria Iparraguirre, an AITE senior, sang Imagine by John Lennon, as well as Rise Up by Andra Day, with a short speech between the two numbers.

I thought both of them spread the message were kind of done imagining, the 18-year-old said. Were ready to make the dream happen.

Signs and symbols

While students spoke, attendees showed support by waving handmade signs, many on orange poster board, which is the color used by activists to represent gun safety.

Many signs were adorned with rallying cries such as Enough and Never Again. One used lyrics from the musical Hamilton, to make its point: This is not the moment, its the movement while another sought to do so through humor: I go to school for As and Bs, not PTSD.

Others were chilling in their directness. Many signs held by students asked Am I next? while one begged Fix it before Im texting my mom under two desks.

In the hour leading up to the protest, as people filled the park, students from Stamford High and Brien McMahon lay on the ground with signs touting the names and ages of the Parkland victims. Two memorials were set up in the park, one to commemorate victims of gun violence and the other, a blank wall with markers for people to share their feelings.

Ninety-six T-shirts hung on clothes lines to greet people as they walked in to the park. The shirts represented the 96 lives lost to gun violence in America every day.

Not everyone was in agreement with the march and its purpose. Scott Wilson, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, said in an interview before the event he feels guns can do a lot of good protecting people when in the right hands.

Our Constitution is a marvelous thing, Wilson said. It allows people to have the ability to go out and use free speech. I do find it ironic in this instance that they are using free speech to help diminish their own rights  not just the rights of gun owners who currently own guns and Second Amendment supporters. But there may come a day in some of their own lives where they want to exercise Second Amendment rights. There they are clapping and cheering for the elimination of their own rights.

Geraldine Uribe, a student speaker from AITE, disagreed.

It needs to stop happening, she said before taking the stage. Were old enough to speak up and use our First Amendment rights. Were not trying to take away the Second Amendment. Were trying to make rules and policies to make it stronger.

Solidarity in D.C.

While people young and old demonstrated the world over, the main March for Our Lives event took place in Washington, D.C.

Students from Newtown High School carried a message of solidarity to Washington for their counterparts at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

After Parkland, we feel hope, Jackson Mittelman said, as he and others presented a banner Saturday to students from that Florida town, where grief has galvanized into youth activism. After the media trucks leave, we will stand by you.

Along with hundreds of thousands, the students had come together in D.C. in a call for action.

The banner read: Newtown High School stands with Stoneman Douglas, and featured the image of a red ribbon.

Student survivors of the shooting at the Florida high school were the primary speakers and motivators at the D.C. rally.

We hope our message from Newtown High School will help you through your darkest days, Mittelman, who is co-chairman of the Jr. Newtown Action Alliance, said to the Parkland students.

Young people from Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles and elsewhere also stepped to the podium in D.C., recounting lives in turmoil after acts of gun violence.

If you listen real close you can hear the people in power shaking, said David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student. Were going to make this a voting issue. We will get rid of these public servants that only serve the gun lobby. And we will save lives.

Recalling a dark day

When it was their turn, Mittelman and fellow co-chairman Tommy Murray recalled being in lockdown in sixth grade on Dec.14, 2012, the day Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 children and six adult staff members with a Bushmaster AR-15 variant, before killing himself.

It was one of the worst days of my life, said Murray, whose mother, Po Murray, is the chairwoman of Action Newtown Alliance.

While there were rallies Saturday in Hartford, Stamford and elsewhere in Connecticut, Newton students made their case on the days biggest stage, in Washington. The demonstration appeared likely to draw 500,000 participants  a massive outpouring by D.C. standards.

Sandy Hook was not the nations first mass shooting at a school. But it has stuck in the nations collective consciousness because the 20 childhood victims were ages 6 and 7. Similarly, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting stimulated a movement among teenagers that is widely seen as rejuvenating the push for greater regulation and restriction of guns.

The Newtown group chartered eight buses that left before dawn and arrived in downtown Washington just in time for the noon rally on the Mall, four blocks west of the U.S. Capitol.

Virtually all of the speakers were high school students whose calls for action on guns were punctuated by performances of stars including Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Inaction by Congress was a common theme, even though the just-passed Omnibus spending bill included Fix NICS, co-authored by Sen Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and language clarifying authority for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct research on gun violence.

Together, our stories will create the change we need, Tommy Murray told the cheering crowd, which chanted never again, never again.

If these shootings can happen in Parkland and Newtown, they can happen anywhere, he said.

Never again

The first wave of D.C. arrivals from Newtown was greeted by Avery Gardiner, co-director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which sponsored the Washington march.

Among those in the Newtown contingent was Sue Lach, who stepped off the bus holding a Sandy Hook Promise sign and shouting, Never again, never again!

Sandy Hook Promise co-founder Nicole Hockley, whose son, Dylan, was killed in the 2012 shooting, reflected on how far the movement for more gun control has come since then.

Im just excited that all these people are here, Hockley said. We havent had a march like this for this issue. Its good to know so many people are here demanding change.

Hockley noted a sea change in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High shooting.

Sandy Hook started this (movement) and its been growing ever since, but now the kids are raising their voices, she said.

Three busloads of students came from the University of Connecticut, Portland resident Isabelle Guilmett among them.

I want people to stop dying, she said. Its time something happened.

Guilmett pointed to the failed 2001 shoe bomb attempt that occurred on an American Airlines flight. Security procedures at U.S. airports have since asked people to remove their shoes before proceeding through scanners. But nothing has happened similarly in the wake of mass shootings in schools, Guilmett said.

Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Murphy have credited youthful vigor for re-stimulating the movement for gun-violence prevention, which has most often faded away after galvanizing in the wake of mass shooting incidents.

The National Rifle Association was mostly silent leading up to Saturdays rallies. But there were some counter-demonstrators in Washington. A group of people wearing military-style camouflage and calling themselves the Patriot Picket stood about a block from the main demonstration, holding signs that said, among other things, good guys with guns stand by you.

No matter what you want to do, American freedoms are not the enemy, said Jeff Hulbert, founder of the group based in Annapolis, Md., that brought about 45 people. The groups website says it mounts protests to counter anti-gun demonstrators. Looney lefties everywhere, said a posting on its Facebook page Saturday.

Since the Florida shooting, President Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill have called for greater focus on mental health and early pinpointing of troubled students. And they coalesced with Democrats around Fix NICS.

But Murphy and other Democrats have insisted that tougher restrictions on guns must be part of any effort to reduce gun violence. At a meeting with lawmakers from both parties last month, Trump appeared to embrace much of the Democratic agenda, only to back off after subsequent a subsequent meeting with NRA leaders.

erin.kayata@stamfordadvocate.com; @erin_kayata; (203) 964-2265STAMFORD  While students from Newtown and Parkland met in a dramatic show of resolve in Washington Saturday, thousands of others their age stood in solidarity, in places as far away as Vietnam and as close as Stamford, to demand an end to gun violence.

Isaac Bragg, a sophomore at the Pinnacle School in Stamford, was one of them. Bragg, 16, became good friends with a survivor of the Florida school massacre when they previously attended the Villa Maria School together in North Stamford. His friend was close with Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, and Alaina Petty, 14, both of whom were killed in the Feb. 14 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

paShe told me the saddest thing was five minutes before, they were in the bathroom talking, Bragg told the 2,000 people gathered in Mill River Park at the Stamford March For Our Lives rally. She didnt know in five minutes theyd be killed.

Bragg was one of nearly a dozen students who spoke at the Stamford event. They were joined by New Canaan resident and music legend Paul Simon, who performed The Sound of Silence as a comment on Congress inaction in the face of ever-mounting student deaths.

The afternoon event, which drew people from across Fairfield County, was one of more than 800 like it to take place across the country and world. In New York, Hartford and Miami, Tel Aviv, Mumbai and Rome, students, families and activists took to the streets to demand lawmakers pass gun legislation to make schools and communities safer.

The movement was sparked by Douglas High students after one of their former classmates killed 17 people and injured many others.

Never again

Im hoping the march itself does make an impact and we do see legislation and policy come out of the march, said Westhill junior Alyssa Goldberg, who was student speaker coordinator for the Stamford event. I hope it sets the stage for future activism and people know were not going to give up on this issue until we do see more gun safety laws in place.

Students from Westhill, Stamford High, the Academy of Information Technology and Engineering, Darien High School, Norwalk High, Brien McMahon High School, Rippowam Middle School, Trinity Catholic High School and Our Lady of Fatima School in Wilton gave speeches, performed songs and read poems. They were introduced by local leaders including Stamford Mayor David Martin, state Sen. Carlo Leone and state Rep. Caroline Simmons, D-144.

Goldberg was the first student to speak, her voice cracking with emotion as she addressed an equally moved crowd. Her speech touched upon not only her own fears as a student, but how gun violence affects suicide rates and those with abusive partners.

Today we are here saying never again, she said, sparking a never again chant from the crowd.

Some students performed songs or read poetry.

The lead in the bodies of the fallen could have been used to write the law that saved them, read Westhill senior Marcos Pinto Leite in his piece Childrens Constitution. The people in charge didnt inherit the Earth. They only borrow it from us.

Victoria Iparraguirre, an AITE senior, sang Imagine by John Lennon, as well as Rise Up by Andra Day, with a short speech between the two numbers.

I thought both of them spread the message were kind of done imagining, the 18-year-old said. Were ready to make the dream happen.

Signs and symbols

While students spoke, attendees showed support by waving handmade signs, many on orange poster board, which is the color used by activists to represent gun safety.

Many signs were adorned with rallying cries such as Enough and Never Again. One used lyrics from the musical Hamilton, to make its point: This is not the moment, its the movement while another sought to do so through humor: I go to school for As and Bs, not PTSD.

Others were chilling in their directness. Many signs held by students asked Am I next? while one begged Fix it before Im texting my mom under two desks.

In the hour leading up to the protest, as people filled the park, students from Stamford High and Brien McMahon lay on the ground with signs touting the names and ages of the Parkland victims. Two memorials were set up in the park, one to commemorate victims of gun violence and the other, a blank wall with markers for people to share their feelings.

Ninety-six T-shirts hung on clothes lines to greet people as they walked in to the park. The shirts represented the 96 lives lost to gun violence in America every day.

Shira Tarantino, a leader of the Stamford-based ENOUGH campaign, said race and gender also play a role in gun violence which expands beyond school shootings. According to the Everytown Survivor Network, an average of 50 women are shot to death by a partner every month, and black men are 13 times more likely to be shot and killed with a gun than white men.

Not everyone was in agreement with the march and its purpose. Scott Wilson, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, said in an interview before the event he feels guns can do a lot of good protecting people when in the right hands.

Our Constitution is a marvelous thing, Wilson said. It allows people to have the ability to go out and use free speech. I do find it ironic in this instance that they are using free speech to help diminish their own rights  not just the rights of gun owners who currently own guns and Second Amendment supporters. But there may come a day in some of their own lives where they want to exercise Second Amendment rights. There they are clapping and cheering for the elimination of their own rights.

Geraldine Uribe, a student speaker from AITE, disagreed.

It needs to stop happening, she said before taking the stage. Were old enough to speak up and use our First Amendment rights. Were not trying to take away the Second Amendment. Were trying to make rules and policies to make it stronger.

The Stamford march was held in partnership with SUPER, a statewide student organization that began in Stamford to promote school safety. Moms Demand Action Stamford, Everytown Survivor Network, Women on Watch, Connecticut Against Gun Violence and the Stamford-based ENOUGH campaign also teamed up to host the march.

Solidarity in D.C.

While people young and old demonstrated the world over, the main March for Our Lives event took place in Washington, D.C.

Students from Newtown High School carried a message of solidarity to Washington for their counterparts at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

After Parkland, we feel hope, Jackson Mittelman said, as he and others presented a banner Saturday to students from the Florida town, where grief has galvanized into youth activism. After the media trucks leave, we will stand by you.

Along with hundreds of thousands, the students had come together in D.C. in a call for action.

The banner read: Newtown High School stands with Stoneman Douglas, and featured the image of a red ribbon.

Student survivors of shooting at the Florida high school were the primary speakers and motivators at the D.C. rally.

We hope our message from Newtown High School will help you through your darkest days, Mittelman, who is co-chairman of the Jr. Newtown Action Alliance, said to the Parkland students.

Young people from Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles and elsewhere also stepped to the podium in D.C., recounting lives in turmoil after acts of gun violence.

If you listen real close you can hear the people in power shaking, said David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student. Were going to make this a voting issue. We will get rid of these public servants that only serve the gun lobby. And we will save lives.

Recalling a dark day

When it was their turn, Mittelman and fellow co-chairman Tommy Murray recalled being in lockdown in sixth grade on Dec.14, 2012, the day Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 children and six adult staff members with a Bushmaster AR-15 variant, before killing himself.

It was one of the worst days of my life, said Murray, whose mother, Po Murray, is the chairwoman of Action Newtown Alliance.

While there were rallies Saturday in Hartford, Stamford and elsewhere in Connecticut, Newton students made their case on the days biggest stage, in Washington. The demonstration appeared likely to draw 500,000 participants  a massive outpouring by D.C. standards.

Sandy Hook was not the nations first mass shooting at a school. But it has stuck in the nations collective consciousness because the 20 childhood victims were ages 6 and 7. Similarly, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting stimulated a movement among teenagers that is widely seen as rejuvenating the push for greater regulation and restriction of guns.

The Newtown group chartered eight buses that left before dawn and arrived in downtown Washington just in time for the noon rally on the Mall, four blocks west of the U.S. Capitol.

Virtually all of the speakers were high school students whose calls for action guns were punctuated by performances of stars including Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Inaction by Congress was a common theme, even though the just-passed Omnibus spending bill included Fix NICS, co-authored by Sen Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and language clarifying authority for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct research on gun violence.

Together, our stories will create the change we need, Tommy Murray told the cheering crowd, which chanted never again, never again.

If these shootings can happen in Parkland and Newtown, they can happen anywhere, he said.

Never again

The first wave of D.C. arrivals from Newtown was greeted by Avery Gardiner, co-director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which sponsored the Washington march.

Among those in the Newtown contingent was Sue Lach, who stepped off the bus holding a Sandy Hook Promise sign and shouting, Never again, never again!

Sandy Hook Promise co-founder Nicole Hockley, whose son, Dylan, was killed in the 2012 shooting, reflected on how far the movement for more gun control has come since then.

Im just excited that all these people are here, Hockley said. We havent had a march like this for this issue. Its good to know so many people are here demanding change.

Hockley noted a sea change in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High shooting.

Sandy Hook started this (movement) and its been growing ever since, but now the kids are raising their voices, she said.

Three busloads of students came from the University of Connecticut, Portland resident Isabelle Guilmett among them.

I want people to stop dying, she said. Its time something happened.

Guilmett pointed to the failed 2001 shoe bomb attempt that occurred on an American Airlines flight. Security procedures at U.S. airports have since asked people to remove their shoes before proceeding through scanners. But nothing has happened similarly in the wake of mass shootings in schools, Guilmett said.

Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Murphy have credited youthful vigor for re-stimulating the movement for gun-violence prevention, which has most often faded away after galvanizing in the wake of mass shooting incidents.

The National Rifle Association was mostly silent leading up to Saturdays rallies. But there were some counter-demonstrators in Washington. A group of people wearing military-style camouflage and calling themselves the Patriot Picket stood about a block from the main demonstration, holding signs that said, among other things, good guys with guns stand by you.

No matter what you want to do, American freedoms are not the enemy, said Jeff Hulbert, founder of the group based in Annapolis, Md., that brought about 45 people. The groups website says it mounts protests to counter anti-gun demonstrators. Looney lefties everywhere, said a posting on its Facebook page Saturday.

Since the Florida shooting, President Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill have called for greater focus on mental health and early pinpointing of troubled students. And they coalesced with Democrats around Fix NICS.

But Murphy and other Democrats have insisted that tougher restrictions on guns must be part of any effort to reduce gun violence. At a meeting with lawmakers from both parties last month, Trump appeared to embrace much of the Democratic agenda, only to back off after subsequent a subsequent meeting with NRA leaders.

erin.kayata@stamfordadvocate.com; @erin_kayata; (203) 964-2265HARTFORD  An overflow crowd on Friday sent a legislative committee a mixed message over banning devices that allow a rifle to fire nine bullets a second, and kits that allow purchasers to build untraceable guns.

Several bills before the General Assemblys Judiciary Committee seek to ban bump stocks  devices that increase the rate of fire  and ghost guns, weapons assembled from parts that do not contain a serial number and can be purchased without a background check.

Daniela Snow, a Norwalk mother of three, said ghost guns and bump stocks are not needed.

"Ghost guns and bump stocks are a clear example of how technology evolves and the laws around it dont," Snow said. "We have to be better as a society and be ahead of the curve. It seems like a common sense solution to ban both."

But Ralph Russo of Stamford said there is no reason to prevent law abiding citizens from owning ghost guns or bump stocks, noting the device and weapons are used for competition, hunting and self-defense.

"[The bill] includes broad and overreaching provisions that could criminalize firearm modifications commonly done by law abiding gun owners to make their firearms more suitable for self-defense, competition, hunting or even overcoming disability," Russo said.

The daylong public hearing offered little guidance for lawmakers. Between remarks offered in person and the hundreds of pieces of written testimony submitted to the committee, there was little consensus.

National polls have shown voters want more gun control and easily support banning bump stocks and ghost guns, especially considering the 2017 Las Vegas massacre in which 58 concert goers were killed and 851 were injured.

The shooter, firing above the crowd from a hotel room, attached bump stocks to his various rifles to increase the rate of fire. He discharged 1,100 rounds in less than 15 minutes of firing.

Ghost guns have also raised eyebrows. The guns can be purchased in parts without a background check and are relatively easy to assemble. They do not contain serial numbers that allow law enforcement to track weapons.

So far, five states have banned bump stocks: California, Massachusetts, New Jersey , Washington and Florida. Maryland has passed a ban in the House and its under consideration in the Senate. President Donald Trump recently ordered the Justice Department to issue regulations banning bump stocks.

Action demanded

State Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said bump stocks and ghost guns are not needed.

Clearly these sites are meant to exploit loopholes in gun control regulation, Martin said, referring ghost gun web sites. Connecticut should close this loophole and make our state safer. There is no legitimate reason why bump stocks should be owned or sold in our state.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said the state must take action considering the inability to pass gun controls in Washington, D.C.

We cannot sit back while Congress continues to capitulate to the demands of the NRA over the demands of the American people, Malloy told lawmakers. Let us do what Congress cannot and will not do  let us work together to close dangerous loopholes and ban bump stocks in Connecticut.

Scott Wilson, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, said the bills will accomplish little other than trample on legal gun rights.

"Someone that is bent on committing the most unconscionable of acts will not be swayed by any law," Wilson said. "This law will simply trap innocent people who competitively shoot, or simply want to improve the accuracy of their firearms by limiting common gunsmithing techniques."

Philip Davis, a Torrington resident and retired police officer, noted "These unregulated firearms and dangerous accessories do not belong in the hands of civilians."

But Alan Blaschik of East Haddam said Connecticut has enough gun laws.

There are already laws in Connecticut that address the AR type rifles," Blaschik said, referring to a ban on assault weapons.

"There are existing laws that prohibit magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, Blaschik said. Banning bump stocks is a feel good law that will do nothing except turn law abiding citizens into felons.

A little shocking

Melissa Kane, a Westport selectwoman, told the committee about a recent lockdown at Staples High School caused by a student who threatened a mass shooting. Kane urged the committee to ban bump stocks and ghost guns.

"As a parent of a child at Staples, there were many emotions, not the least of which is surprise," Kane said. "To think this is happening right here is a little shocking."

Lilly Kane, Melissas Kanes 15-year-old daughter and a Staples student, said she needs to feel safe at school.

"After having to shelter in place in my school, I can tell you these bills are not about politics," Lilly Kane said. "Its about the chance for my class to be able to live through high school. Please protect Connecticut and allow me the right to live."

But State Rep. Doug Dubitsky, R- Chaplin, and a farmer, took issue with the ghost gun bill, saying it makes law abiding citizens a felon.

"A person with a machine shop in his garage  and possesses many blocks of steel  and he pulls up directions to turn one of those into a firearm, it appears under this bill he would be a felon," Dubitsky said.

"Is it the persons intent?" Dubitsky said. "Where is that line drawn."

Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim, a Democrat running for governor, said bump stocks and ghost guns must be banned.

"Our 2nd Amendment is an important foundational piece of American freedom," Ganim said. "But there is simply no reason for any person outside of the military or law enforcement to possess a weapon of war."

Wilson said the proposed laws will not help reduce violence.

"This committee is seeking to pass feel good legislation by banning an object that is not even needed to bump-fire a gun," Wilson said. "The action can be accomplished with the use of belt loops, shoestrings, rubber bands, or the devices themselves can be made with wood, sheet metal or plastic."HARTFORD  The mayors of Bridgeport and New Haven lobbed criticism at the state Friday for a bailout deal paying off some of Hartfords debt to rescue the capital city from bankruptcy.

We question whether it represents an equitable practice, said Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim and New Haven Mayor Toni Harp in a joint statement. It seems the state continues to shortchange New Haven and Bridgeport - its two largest cities, with comparatively stable finances, while rewarding the past practices of other cities that put them on the edge of financial collapse.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of top lawmakers defended the approximately $90 million allocated over two years toward Hartfords debts in the legislatures budget signed in October.

What this allows Hartford to do is restructure its debt, it gives them some stability for the short term, but most importantly the state picking this up ensures, we are never going to see a default in debt, said House Majority Leader Matt Ritter, D-Hartford.

Speaking to press at the Capitol, legislators emphasized that the money is only for the next two years.

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said lawmakers were upset by representations about the Hartford deal published Thursday that suggested the state will pay off all of Hartfords $550 million in debt over the next two decades.

Hartfords funding comes with a significant sacrifice in autonomy, said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin. The state will now review the citys contracts and budget through an oversight board.

Bridgeport would meet eligibility criteria for Municipal Accountability Review Board help, confirmed Chris McClure, a spokesman for the state budget office, in January. The city has not applied for the program.

Ganim and Harp said Friday they will meet next week to discuss developing a consistent municipal aid program for all cities in the state.

Bridgeport does not need the kind of state oversight mandated by MARB, Ganim said in an interview, but we need a comprehensive plan that does not support one city at the expense of another.

Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, encouraged Bridgeport to discuss applying for MARB aid.

I have long said Bridgeport should be seeking outside assistance to help stabilize its tax rate and address its unfunded liabilities, he said in a statement Friday.NORWALK  The earliest it became clear that Chris Marrero would become some kind of mechanic was when he was just 2 years old.

His father found him in the garage with every single one of his tools trying to get the training wheels off his bike. And to his fathers surprise, the then 2-year-old Marrero figured how do it by himself and rode his bike in the cul-de-sac without training wheels on afterward.

And here I am today, Marrero said, sitting inside J.M. Wright Technical High School in Stamford on a recent morning. I love what I do. I love working on cars.

Marrero, who lives in Norwalk, is now a senior at the technical school, where he studies automotive technology and has earned more certifications than some of the professionals hes worked with at car dealerships and motorsports shops.

While many high-schoolers decide to go to college or a university upon graduating, Marrero knew early on he wanted to go to trade school instead. In the fall, hes headed to the University of Northwestern Ohio to study diesel and high performance, and automotive business and administration.

After trade school, he hopes to fix cars for a living and to eventually start his own business, just as his father started his own electrical business after he went to trade school.

Though his father closed the business and now works for the Bridgeport Fire Department, he still keeps himself busy with electrical projects on the side.

You always find something to fall back on, no matter what happens, Marrero said, of life after trade school. People always need their cars fixed. People always need nurses. Youre always going to need electricians. Youre always going to need plumbers.

Youre always going to have skills that no one can take away from you.

Phyllis Bartoli, principal of J.M. Wright Technical High School, said the need for trade- school workers is booming in Fairfield County. Statewide, trade-school jobs  such as electricians, barbers, plumbers, roofers and cooks  are among the fastest-growing occupations, according to data from the state Department of Labor.

J.M. Wright trains students in 10 different trades and is connected to local associations in related industries, including the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of Connecticut.

In those construction trades, they need our kids to continue to make Fairfield County successful and to continue to help it grow, Bartoli said. The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk area alone saw a near 11 percent drop in construction jobs from 2017-18, with 9,900 construction workers employed, according to data from the state Department of Labor.

More students at Norwalk High School are looking to trade school for their higher education plans, according to Daniel Sullivan, chairman of the schools guidance program. And so, the school and district have initiated different ways to support those who arent pursuing a four-year college degree.

Earlier in the school year, students at Norwalk High learned about different post-secondary options during college week: four-year colleges, two-year colleges, trade schools and military options. More of these career pathways will be embedded in the districts upcoming high school curriculum redesign, Sullivan said.

With the cost of college, I think it forced people to be better consumers and look at options more holistically and not just do whats socially expected of you, Sullivan said.

Senior Nicolas Monteleone agrees, and believes theres a stereotype about trade school being a last resort. But to him, going to trade school is a quicker track to his career destination.

Both of his parents graduated from J.M. Wright Technical School and are supportive of him attending vocational school instead of college, as long as he is committed to it.

He has been accepted into the New England Institute of Technology and will study civil engineering in the fall.

You sort of just go right into the craft and get to work on it, Monteleone said. Thats why I thought of trade school as a cool option.

Similarly, senior Janessa Martinez is applying to a hairdressing academy in Newtown after hearing about it from a hair salon co-worker.

At first, Martinez said her parents, both graduates of technical high school, werent fond of the idea. But their minds changed once they saw how determined she was to become a hairdresser.

With college, I didnt know what I wanted to do. But with trade school, I know exactly what I want, Martinez said. I learn better hands-on, not from somebody teaching from the white board. So if youre that type of person who needs to see something get done to learn, trade school would be a better option for you, too.Kind and caring Breda was always thinking of othersIt would be a grotesque understatement to say the northern white rhino has seen better days.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/3/2018 (1279 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

It would be a grotesque understatement to say the northern white rhino has seen better days.

It was headline news when the worlds last male northern white rhino, a 45-year-old bruiser named Sudan, had to be euthanized last week at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a private reserve in Kenya.

According to Reuters, Sudan was put down because of a rapid deterioration in his health. He was being treated for age-related complications that affected his muscles and bones and left him with extensive skin wounds.

Sudans death means there are only two female white rhinos alive in the world  his 27-year-old daughter Nadine and 17-year-old granddaughter Fatu  to save the subspecies from extinction. The majestic creature has all but been wiped out by poaching.

Researchers have saved some of Sudans genetic material in hopes it can be used in the future to attempt reproduction of northern white rhinos.

"Its very sad to lose Sudan because it shows clearly the extent of human greed and what sort of impact humans beings can have on nature," Samuel Mutisya, head of wildlife conservation at Ol Pejeta, told Reuters. "If we dont take care of what we have, we will definitely continue to lose it, particularly lose other species that are currently endangered."

There is faint hope for the northern white rhino, which is more than we can say for the creatures on todays list of Five Species That Have Vanished Since Humans Hit the Scene:

5) The ex-species: The Caribbean monk seal

The Caribbean monk seal was declared officially extinct by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service in 2008. (Tony Cheng / Associated Press files)

What it (used to) look like: These large brownish and/or greyish seals could grow up to 2.4 metres in length and weighed 170 to 270 kilograms. They had a distinctive rounded head with wide-spaced eyes, upward opening nostrils and light-coloured whiskers on their broad muzzle.

The obituary: This species, the only seal native to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, had the honour of being the first New World mammal to be discovered by Christopher Columbus and his company on the coast of Santo Domingo during the legendary explorers second voyage in 1494. It did not end well for the seal, as Columbus promptly ordered his crew to kill eight of the animals, which he dubbed "sea wolves," for food, which paved the carnivorous way for European immigrants who came in his wake.

The once-abundant creatures were hunted for their oil, fur and meat, and slaughtered by fishermen, who saw them as competitors, notes listverse.com. Sluggish on land, these creatures also lacked a fear of humans.

Last seen in the early 1950s, the seals were declared extinct in 2008 after a five-year review by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations National Marine Fisheries Service.

"Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them in the wild," Kyle Baker, biologist for NOAAs Fisheries Service southeast region, said in 2008. "Unfortunately, this led to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes... Worldwide, populations of the two remaining monk seal species are declining. We hope weve learned from the extinction of Caribbean monk seals, and can provide stronger protection for their Hawaiian and Mediterranean relatives."

4) The ex-species: The Tasmanian tiger

What it (used to) look like: This shy, nocturnal creature looked like a medium-to-large-sized dog, with a stiff tail, abdominal pouch and dark stripes that radiated from the top of its back (kind of like a tiger) to the base of the tail. A fully grown specimen could measure 180 centimetres from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail and stand 58 cm high.

The obituary: What we are talking about here is the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times, formally known as the thylacine but commonly called the Tasmanian tiger.

These creatures were already rare or extinct on the Australian mainland before the arrival of the British, but survived on the isolated island state of Tasmania off Australias south coast. Like the dingo, it was a quiet animal but was considered a relentless hunter, not unlike a wolf. It was basically hunted to extinction in 1936 in Tasmania, where it was thought to be a threat to sheep and other small farm animals. Constant hunting, disease, the introduction of dogs and human encroachment all contributed to the demise of this unique creature.

The last known thylacine, who became known as Benjamin, died on Sept. 7, 1936, apparently as the result of neglect  he was reportedly locked out of his sheltered sleeping quarters and exposed to freezing temperatures at night in Tasmanias Hobart Zoo.

Thanks to a preserved pup floating in a jar of alcohol in an Aussie museum, the entire thylacine genome has been sequenced by University of Melbourne researchers, revealing the predator was in poor "genetic health" and may have struggled to fight disease had it survived.

"Our hope is that there is a lot the thylacine (genome) can tell us about the genetic basis of extinction to help other species," Prof. Andrew Pask, the project leader, said in 2017. "As this genome is one of the most complete for an extinct species, it is technically the first step to bringing the thylacine back, but we are still a long way off that possibility."

Sightings have been reported as recently as 2015, but none have yet been confirmed.

3) The ex-species: The Pyrenean ibex

What it (used to) look like: Also known by the Spanish name bucardo, it was a form of wild mountain goat. The male was faded greyish-brown in summer and had black fur on the mane, forelegs and forehead. In winter, it became dull and faded. The female could be mistaken for a deer, while the male had distinctive, thick horns that curved outwards and backwards, then outwards and downwards, then inwards and upwards.

The obituary: This is an animal that famously went extinct, then even more famously  albeit extremely briefly  became "un-extinct."

The Pyrenean ibex was once common in northern Spain and in the French Pyrenees, but extensive hunting during the 19th century reduced the wild goats numbers to fewer than 100 individuals, according to Britains Telegraph newspaper.

Poaching, diseases and the inability to compete with other species for limited food are also seen as reasons the once-abundant animals disappeared. They were declared protected in 1973, but by 1981 just 30 remained in their last foothold in the Ordesa National Park in the Aragon District of the Pyrenees.

They were declared extinct when the last bucardo, a 13-year-old female known as Celia, was found dead in January 2000 by park rangers near the French border with her skull crushed by a fallen tree.

Shortly before Celias death, scientists had preserved skin samples of the goat in liquid nitrogen.

"Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known," the Telegraph reported in 2009. "Its the first time an extinct animal has been cloned."

Tragically, the cloned newborn died seven minutes after birth because of physical defects in its lungs.

"Other cloned animals, including sheep, have been born with similar lung defects," the Telegraph notes. "But the breakthrough has raised hopes that it will be possible to save endangered and newly extinct species by resurrecting them from frozen tissue."

2) The ex-species: The quagga

Quagga mare in enclosure, London Zoo. (Frederick York photo)

What it (used to) look like: A subspecies of the Plains Zebra, it looked like a horse and a zebra squished into one animal. Believed to have been around 257 cm long and 125 to 135 cm tall at the shoulder, it was distinguished from other zebras by a pattern of mainly brown and white stripes on the front part of the body, whereas the rear was brown and without stripes, much like a small horse.

The obituary: The quagga (named for its call, which sounded like "Kwa-ha-ha") used to roam South Africa in vast herds  at least until European settlers fixed the beasts in their sights in the 19th century, killing them at an alarming rate.

"The quagga became extinct because it was ruthlessly hunted down for meat and leather by South African farmers, also they were seen by the settlers as competitors, like other wild grass-eating animals, for their livestock, mainly sheep and goats," listverse.com notes.

It was likely hunted out of existence in the wild by 1878, and the last captive specimen, a mare, died on Aug. 12, 1883, in an Amsterdam zoo, where she had lived since May 1867.

It is believed only one quagga was ever photographed alive and only 23 skins are preserved today. In 1984, the quagga famously became the first extinct animal to have its DNA analyzed, and a group of scientists outside of Cape Town known as the Quagga Project is trying to bring the creature back from the grave through selective breeding of its closest living relative, the Burchells zebra.

They have bred an animal that is strikingly similar to the original quagga, working on the theory the quagga genes are still present in the zebra.

"The progress of the project has in fact followed that prediction," project leader Eric Harley told CNN in 2016. "And in fact, we have over the course of four, five generations seen a progressive reduction in striping, and lately an increase in the brown background colour showing that our original idea was in fact correct... If we can retrieve the animals or retrieve at least the appearance of the quagga, then we can say weve righted a wrong."

1) The ex-species: The passenger pigeon

A mounted passenger pigeon. (University of Illinois)

What it (used to) look like: It was a pigeon, with the males 390 to 410 millimetres in length, mainly slate-blue with copper undersides and hints of purple, whereas the females were 380 to 400 mm long and duller and browner than the males.

The obituary: The demise of the passenger pigeon has been described as the most tragic extinction story in modern times, because it underscores the fact mankind is the most destructive force to ever wallop Mother Nature.

At the height of their population, some 200 years ago, these pigeons were not just abundant, especially in North America, they were arguably the most common species of bird on the planet, with numbers estimated as high as five billion.

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"Passenger pigeons once migrated through Canada, the United States and the Gulf of Mexico in numbers so huge that they darkened the sky," the website of the American Museum of Natural History notes. "One flock was described as a column, eight or ten miles in length... resembling the windings of a vast and majestic river. In 1808, one flock of passenger pigeons in Kentucky was estimated at more than two billion birds. Today, they are extinct owing to a combination of results of human activity, including the destruction of their food sources, westward expansion and overhunting."

The massive size of the flocks led to the birds being hunted as a cheap source of meat, especially for the poor, and vilified as a threat for farmers crops.

"The flocks were so thick that hunting was easy  even waving a pole at the low-flying birds would kill some," recalls the website of Audubon magazine. "The professionals and amateurs together outflocked their quarry with brute force. They shot the pigeons and trapped them with nets, torched their roosts and asphyxiated them with burning sulfur. They attacked the birds with rakes, pitchforks and potatoes. They poisoned them with whiskey-soaked corn."

The last wild bird was shot in 1901, and the last passenger pigeon, a bird nicknamed Martha, died alone in the Cincinnati Zoo at about 1 p.m. on Sept. 1, 1914, almost 113 years ago.

Its somehow comforting to know scientists are working to reconstruct this once-common birds genome in an effort to bring it back from oblivion. As with most creatures that disappear from the planet  and there are a stunning number of them  its extinction can largely be traced to another animal, the human being.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.caStephen Hawking, according to Stephen Hawking, is not in heaven or with God, neither of which he believed in.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 23/3/2018 (1280 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Stephen Hawking, according to Stephen Hawking, is not in heaven or with God, neither of which he believed in.

His consciousness has not reunited with any kind of divine force behind the universe, the late theoretical physicist and cosmologist would say. If there was ever anything before the universe and its physical laws  God or otherwise  Hawking didnt particularly care, because there was no way to study it.

Hawking, who died this past week at age 76, was about as pure an atheist as they come. "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail," he once told the Guardian. When he died, Hawking figured, his mind would go to the same place as the Siri app on that iPhone you dropped in the bathtub. Nowhere. Nothing. He would just be over.

These were Hawkings beliefs, insofar as the most famed scientist of our time believed in anything he could not study and prove. And yet, a Facebook hoax and thousands of gullible people refuse to let him rest in oblivion.

"Before he died, Stiph Hawkins who did not believe in God requested to visit the Vatican," read a caption with a photo of Hawking with Pope Francis on a Catholics Online Facebook page. "Now I believe was the only statement he made after the Holy Father blessed him," the post concluded.

This is not even a quality hoax, as hoaxes go. It was published March 14, shortly after Hawking died, and was shared nearly 15,000 times over the subsequent week, not counting fake news stories and knockoff tweets. As the fact-checking site Snopes explained, everything about the post is phoney, except for the photo.

Hawking did meet Pope Francis at the Vatican  but in 2016, nearly two years before he died. The physicist didnt request the visit  he went as a member of a papal scientific committee, which he had served on since the 1960s, according to the Catholic Herald. To public knowledge, Hawking has never said he believes in God and has repeatedly said the opposite. He was in Rome that year to present his notion of the (ungodly) origins of the universe, just as he had presented lectures before three other popes in his role on the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, whose mission is "to honour pure science wherever it may be found."

Just because Hawking was a strong non-believer does not mean he was a particularly didactic one. He respected the churchs centuries-old effort to marry faith and science. He simply saw no need for the former  at least for himself.

"I believe the simplest explanation is there is no God," Hawking once said, as Lori Johnston recounted for the Washington Post. "No one created the universe, and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife, either."

The Rev. Robert Spitzer once tried to square the Jesuit notion of God with Hawkings hardcore logic and empiricism. "God is the reason why existence itself exists," the priest said on CNN, according to the Catholic Herald. "God is the reason why space and time and the laws of nature can be present for the forces to operate that Stephen Hawking is talking about."

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But Hawking really wasnt interested in debating the issue. Like most physicists, he thought space, time and the universe as we know it originated with the Big Bang, billions of years ago. What happened before that explosion? It didnt matter to Hawking, because it was outside the universe we live in, and therefore irrelevant to it.

"Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory and say that time began at the Big Bang," he wrote in a lecture titled "The Beginning of Time." Thats a long way from "Now I believe," as the fabricated "Stiph Hawkins" was quoted as saying on Facebook.

Snopes reminds us that famous religious skeptics often appear in dubious conversion stories after they die. It happened to the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the atheist writer Christopher Hitchens.

In Hawkings case, Snopes wrote, the lie appeared on an infamous Facebook page that poses as a repository of mainstream Catholic news stories. If you click through the news feed youll end up at websites on which appear 10-foot demons and "10 FACTS ABOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT THAT MAY SURPRISE YOU."

Its ironic, and sad. A fake news feed makes a poor tomb for the legacy of a man who valued knowledge and truth. Not that Hawking should mind now, any more than your dead iPhone.

 Washington PostHey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/3/2018 (1279 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The competition is over. The winners are declared.

But unlike the Olympics, after which the athletes can go home and bask in the glory, the victors of the federal governments "supercluster" competition are faced with a rather stark reality.

Now, the real work begins.

Protein Industries Canada (PIC), a highly diverse cluster of organizations that coalesced around the notion of making Canada a global leader in plant-based ingredients, was among the five winners announced earlier this month in the hotly contested federal competition for innovation funds.

It was awarded $153 million out of the supercluster pool of money, but its leaders predict that when all the in-kind contributions and other government program contributions are tallied, the total investment in western Canadian economic diversification could top $800 million.

The real prize is tapping into a global market opportunity for plant-based protein thats worth an estimated $13 billion and the potential for increasing Canadas agri-food exports by upwards of $30 billion.

You could argue that this is the western Canadian agricultural economys coming of age, finally, after more than a century of policies that favoured the export of raw commodities and more than two decades after those policies  namely grain export subsidies  were ended.

But the future is unfolding far differently than the pundits imagined. Back in the 1990s, no one predicted farmers would shift production away from cereals that were no longer economical to export. No one anticipated the trade, currency, and disease issues that would plague the meat sector. Nor did they predict that Canada would become the worlds leading supplier in a surging global market for plant proteins.

Plant-based proteins are now expected to make up one-third of the global protein market by the midpoint of this century, according to a Canada West Foundation report released late last year. Consumption is expected to double between now and 2023.

The growing middle class in developing countries is eating more meat; consumers in industrialized countries are eating more plant proteins.

Fractionating or separating the protein from co-products closer to home means more accessible markets for farmers and more high-tech jobs for workers. So the opportunity is there, its real, and Canada is well positioned to take full advantage. But will it?

As coalitions go, Protein Industries Canada is unique. It has pulled more than 110 companies, commodity groups and research organizations into a value-chain approach. It promises to further the interests of farmers through better germplasm and precision-agriculture technologies, invest in sorely needed food-processing innovations and develop new markets. Processing is the missing link; the region historically has exported raw grains.

"It will allow us to develop new processes for fractionating seed and taking the high value out and developing new markets," said Frank Hart, chair of the PIC board of directors in an interview on the Between the Rows podcast. "Although you can pull 20 per cent of the seed out as protein in a pulse crop for example, what do you do with the other 80 per cent?

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"You have to find the value in industrial products, cosmetics, animal feed other uses for the starches. That will make the whole processing cycle a lot more viable and profitable, which means that processing companies will be attracted to locate in the region."

It all makes perfect sense, except for the historic truths of this region. Lets face it. were talking about a region in which governments get into tit-for-tat spats over licence plates from the neighbouring province parked at construction job sites.

The Canadian West Foundation report didnt tiptoe around the issue, noting that Canadian provinces "do not always have the best record on co-operation. Interprovincial trade disputes abound and there is often a sense of me too in terms of federal funding," it says. "Provinces can choose to compete against each other or they can collaborate and compete against the rest of the world," the report said.

Hart cites "catalytic forces" behind the PICs pan-Prairie approach. "Its attracting people with a strong incentive to collaborate even though they are competitors  because it will benefit the whole industry."

Their mission now: keep everyones eyes on the prize.

Laura Rance is editorial director at Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at 204-792-4382 or laura@fbcpublishing.comBRANDON  A man at the centre of a major investigation into the distribution of illegal drugs in southwest Manitoba has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/3/2018 (1279 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON  A man at the centre of a major investigation into the distribution of illegal drugs in southwest Manitoba has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

"(Leslie) Bisson was a significant presence in the drug scene... He was prepared to sell virtually any type of drug to further his criminal enterprise, and he introduced kilograms of substances into our community which caused untold misery for those who used it. He showed little to no regard to the consequences of his actions until he was caught," Judge John Combs said in provincial court Friday.

"He was not the head of a sophisticated organization but he was a big player in a smaller community."

Bisson, who pleaded guilty to trafficking cocaine, possessing a firearm while prohibited and possessing proceeds from a crime, was the primary target of Project Derringer, an investigation conducted by Manitoba polices integrated organized crime task force.

Police monitored a large-scale shipment of illegal drugs into Brandon and placed Bisson under surveillance, using tactics such as tracers, bugs and "sneak peeks" into homes to collect evidence.

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In one of those sneak peeks into Bissons stash location, four kilograms of vacuum-sealed cocaine (estimated street value of $260,000) were found, along with 1.8 kg of marijuana (street value of $8,000) and 1 kg of "magic mushrooms" (worth $4,000).

Police were also able to identify Bissons customers and his supplier  a "courier" from Toronto who would deliver multi-kilogram amounts of cocaine to Bisson every five to seven weeks.

In multiple sentencing hearings that concluded in January, Crown prosecutor Erin Magas and defence lawyer Eric Wach argued about Bissons level of involvement in the elaborate drug trafficking scheme.

Combs said there were aspects of Bissons operation that were "inconsistent with him being at a high level."

After credit for time served, Bisson has spent a little more than two years in jail, leaving him with 70 months, or just under six years, to serve.

 Brandon SunThe Senate committee tasked with studying the impact of cannabis legalization on Indigenous peoples met Friday in Winnipeg to hear testimony from local experts on health and child welfare.

This article was published 23/3/2018 (1279 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Senate committee tasked with studying the impact of cannabis legalization on Indigenous peoples met Friday in Winnipeg to hear testimony from local experts on health and child welfare.

"The big question that some of us have is, whether or not Indigenous communities across Canada have been adequately engaged and consulted about Bill C-45," said Sen. Daniel Christmas, who is Mi'kmaw from the Membertou First Nation in Nova Scotia and sits as a member of the Independent Senators Group.

In response to his own inquiries, Christmas said, federal departments told him they had consulted with national Indigenous organizations.

"But it seemed to me that they never really engaged with communities," he said in an interview. "So that's where my concern is, that the level of engagement with Indigenous people shouldn't be just at the national organization level, it should be at the community level as well."

Christmas said he'd heard a mix of concerns and hopefulness about cannabis legalization from Indigenous people.

"It's an interesting combination of issues, where on one hand people are worried about the social consequences of legalizing cannabis, and on the other hand, they see this as an economic opportunity that could increase the level of prosperity on First Nations."

The standing Senate committee on Aboriginal peoples is one of five committees tasked with examining Bill C-45 from various perspectives and proposing possible amendments. On Thursday, the bill passed a Senate vote that will ensure those committees get a chance to study the bill further before going to a third and final vote, expected on or before June 7.

One area of interest for the committee, said Christmas, is why the proposed federal excise tax on cannabis sales  a portion of which is being shared with provincial and municipal governments  won't be shared with Indigenous governments, as well. Those governments will face new costs for policing and education in their communities after legalization, he said.

"And where's that money going to come from?" Christmas asked.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Sen. Dennis Patterson recently toured Nunavut to engage leaders on cannabis legalization.

Friday's meeting was held in the vaulted atrium of Winnipeg's Neeginan Centre, and followed an earlier meeting in which senators heard from local Indigenous leaders about "the new relationship between Canada and First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples."

In an interview, Conservative Sen. Dennis Patterson echoed his colleague's concern.

Indigenous people have "been left out of the excise tax bonanza," said the former premier of the Northwest Territories, who represents Nunavut in the Senate.

Patterson recently returned from a tour of 25 communities across Nunavut, where he met with local leaders and citizens to discuss cannabis legalization. He described the trip as an eye-opener.

On a visit to the remote community of Resolute Bay, he said, he spoke to cannabis users who reported paying as much as $100 a gram for the drug. (In Canadian cities, $10 a gram is a more typical price.)

Some Nunavummiut, said Patterson, told him they welcomed legalization because they were currently "getting ripped off by drug dealers." Others told him they felt cannabis was a "better than alcohol."

"I'm not saying there was a unanimous chorus of opposition," said Patterson.

But concerns about addiction  and a lack of addiction treatment options in far-flung northern communities  were a common theme on his trip, Patterson said. Northerners who need addiction treatment need to travel far away from their families to get that help, and Patterson said he'd like to see cannabis legalization include some kind of funding for treatment facilities in Nunavut.

"We need to develop our own community wellness programs," he said.

"We have elders, we have the ability to take care of our own people in our own language, but we need support to develop these programs before you lay another threat to our vulnerable social fabric on top of (the) residential schools' legacy, the dog slaughter, the alcohol problem, the suicide problem. There's going to be impacts, negative impacts from easy access to marijuana."

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jack Park and Dr. Catherine Cook testified at the Senate Aboriginal people's committee public meeting at the Negginan Centre (Higginsand Main) to hear Indigenous perspectives on cannabis legalization.

Sen. Mary Jane McCallum said she's concerned about how legal cannabis might complicate other struggles faced by Indigenous people in Canada, like a lack of access to health care, substance addictions, missing and murdered women, and sex trafficking.

"Right now, we need our youth to be looking towards their role as change activists," said McCallum, who represents Manitoba as a member of the Independent Senators Group.

"And I think this will be just one more lure away from that responsibility, and that the effects of marijuana are not fully known even now. And yet they're rolling out the possibility that it will become law, so that really causes me great, great concern."

A "public health approach" to legalization, said McCallum, might reduce the likelihood Indigenous youth want to use cannabis. "You're looking at, how do we keep the youth busy in a positive way?"

Keeping children engaged is one possible way to reduce youth drug use, said a family physician who testified in front of the Senate committee Friday. And cannabis legalization, he said, could help achieve that goal.

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"I think the idea that cannabis restriction or cannabis criminalization keeps youth from using cannabis is incorrect," said Dr. Ian Whetter, who serves as the medical program advisor with the University of Manitoba's Ongomiizwin Health Services. "The youth are using cannabis."

Keeping drugs such as cannabis illegal, said Whetter, "can keep people from using substances in the safest way possible," in addition to creating a black market.

"In doing that, drug laws definitely, disproportionately, result in the incarceration of Indigenous people," he said.

"I think that there's something much more positive that we can imagine, and this is what they've done in Colorado and Washington, where by regulating cannabis sales... they've been able to take the profits from cannabis tax and turn it into programming for youth."

solomon.israel@theleafnews.com

@sol_israelBRANDON  Memories of the Strand Theatre are hanging heavy in the hearts of Brandonites, as the building is dismantled in preparation for demolition.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/3/2018 (1279 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON  Memories of the Strand Theatre are hanging heavy in the hearts of Brandonites, as the building is dismantled in preparation for demolition.

However, its longtime vacancy has no doubt helped ease the minds of former patrons. Even by its 2005 closure, the theatre was well past its heyday, with its final day of operation finding only a "trickle" of an audience showing up to see the critically panned superhero movie, Elektra, according to a Brandon Sun report.

Brandon Sun A look at the Strand Theatre and surrounding buildings in 1959. (Lawrence Stuckey/Lawrence Stuckey collection, S.J. McKee Archives, Brandon University)

Despite efforts to keep the building open, including a years-long effort by Brandon Folk, Music & Art Festival leadership to turn it into an events venue, the building slowly degraded until it was deemed unsalvageable. A 2017 media tour of the interior revealed its dilapidated state, with extensive water damage noted throughout. Demolition is expected to begin next week.

Its not the theatres disappointing swan song nor the buildings slow death that has stuck with local movie fans. Instead, its memories of their first movie, the close-knit community atmosphere the theatre fostered, and other fond recollections.

Brandon General Museum and Archives vice-chairman Brent Chamberlain said his fondest memories of the theatre date back to the early 1960s, when hed attend Saturday matinees with a group of friends.

"Wed save our bus money and walk, especially in the summers, and wed usually have enough for admission and popcorn and a drink or something," he said. His first movie at the Strand was the Disney animated feature The Sword in the Stone.

John Pungente grew up at the Strand Theatre, which opened in 1916. "It was a clean environment and a safe place to leave kids on their own," he said.

His father, also named John, managed the Strand from 1943-87. There was something about the loud noise, big screen and larger-than-life atmosphere, Pungente said, "you get drawn into. You dont have to do anything but sit there and let it envelop you."

Now a film critic based in Toronto, Pungente looks back on the Strand and other similar single-screen theatres with fond nostalgia.

"The kids today, with social media, are quite happy to watch movies on their phones," he said. "Its just not the same."

When the Strand Theatre opened, it was hailed as a symbol of "western progress and development."

The first movie screened at the theatre was the silent drama film The Honorable Friend on Nov. 27, 1916  an opening night the Brandon Sun reported as being an "unqualified success."

"From the time the doors opened, every seat was filled and there was not a moment for several hours afterwards when the long corridors were not crowded with men and women waiting their turn to go in and see the show."

The building and "its floor of inlaid tile and artistically wainscotted walls, prepares the visitor for the high-class tone of the interior conditions."

Despite the buildings interior undergoing a number of renovations over its lifespan, it began showing its age in its final years.

Mike Waddell said the seats "werent the most comfortable" by the time he started going to moves in the 1990s.

"It wasnt modern, but it was truly a movie theatre It wasnt like stepping into a spacecraft like the new ones are," he said.

Waddell said the floors were uneven, and there was popcorn grease embedded in everything. But it remained a unique experience he remembers fondly. The first movie he remembers seeing there was Titanic.

Diane Nelson said the theatre "went from old-world elegant to modern chic design" during its final years.

A former Brandon Sun reporter, Nelson attended one of the more notable events the Strand Theatre hosted  the 1994 premiere of For the Moment.

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Filmed in the Brandon area in 1992, the wartime story was set in 1942. (It was not released in the U.S. until 1996.)

A grand event featuring the likes of writer/director Aaron Kim Johnston and star Russell Crowe, the premeire found the theatre packed solid, necessitating a second showing that evening.

"The excitement was palpable," Nelson said.

Famous Players closed the Strand in 1991, with the movie house reopening a few weeks later under new management.

When Landmark Cinemas announced plans in 2004 to expand its other local theatre, the Capital, it signalled the end of the downtown venue.

 Brandon SunI re-entered public life five years ago because I wanted to make the lives of Manitobans and the prospects for Manitoba better.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/3/2018 (1279 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

I re-entered public life five years ago because I wanted to make the lives of Manitobans and the prospects for Manitoba better.

In 2016, Manitobans placed their confidence in my team to govern our province.

It is an honour and a sacred trust. Everything our government does passes through the filter of what is best for our citizens and our province. Not what is best for one group of citizens or one part of the province, but for all citizens in all parts of Manitoba.

Those are our values. That is how we govern.

On the other hand, when an entity such as Manitoba Hydro makes a decision, it does so with the interests of Manitoba Hydro as its priority. Manitoba Hydro represents Manitoba Hydro. Our government represents all Manitobans. So, as the government for all Manitobans, we have to ensure that those decisions  the priorities and policies of Manitoba Hydro  align with our priorities and policies for the province.

Earlier this week, our government sent a directive to Manitoba Hydro to not proceed with a payment of nearly $70 million to the Manitoba Metis Federation. This agreement was in exchange for a commitment by the MMF to not oppose Hydros Manitoba-Minnesota transmission line project and some other projects, as yet undefined, for decades into the future

That payment would not have been a good use of taxpayers money. For one thing, Hydro is already in a precarious financial position because of the irresponsible actions of the former government. Further, there are avenues for the MMF to express their concerns about the transmission line, such as the Clean Environment Commission and the National Energy Board review, and my government will not attempt to restrict the MMF in their right to participate in these processes.

I dont see spending your money for a special payment to one group, in order to smooth the way for the transmission line, as a very transparent or responsible thing for a government to do. Even more troubling is the precedent it would set for the future. If we bought co-operation for $70 million this time, what will it cost next time? What will we be faced with when we attempt to move forward with the absolutely critical Lake Manitoba outlet channel to prevent a repeat of the devastating floods in the Interlake in 2011?

What would the cost be to buy co-operation for that vital project, a project that will protect Indigenous and non-Indigenous Manitobans alike?

What if all this causes such delay that we experience another flood similar to 2011 in the interim? Will we be spending another $400 million on housing and returning displaced residents to their homes? Will we be spending millions more on compensation payments for lives disrupted and homes, farms and cottages destroyed?

Before too long, we would be looking at a billion-dollar boondoggle. A billion dollars of taxpayers money spent on an entirely preventable scenario.

The Hydro board resigned once our governments directive became clear. They cited a lack of access to myself and our government, but this situation did not arise because of a lack of communication between the Hydro board and the government.

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Crowns Minister Cliff Cullen and my senior officials have met or spoken with the Hydro board chair many times in the past year.

I myself committed to meeting with the board immediately following the Public Utility Boards decision on Hydros rate application. It would be inappropriate for me to meet with the board before that, as it would open both sides to accusations of attempting to influence a quasi-judicial process. A previous Hydro chair has told me that during the 10 years he held the post, he had three meetings with the premier.

This situation was not caused by a lack of communication. It was caused by our governments refusal to agree to a deal that would have been bad for Manitoba. A deal that tries to sell away the future rights of Metis people to express their views on Hydro projects.

Its a bad idea for rate payers, landowners, the Manitoba Metis and Indigenous people. Its not about truth or reconciliation. Its about Hydro using millions of ratepayers dollars to buy rights they have no right to buy, from a person who has no right to sell them.

When there is a conflict between an arm or an agency of government and the interests of all Manitobans, this government will stand up for Manitobans every time

Brian Pallister is the premier of Manitoba.Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. operates and licenses convenience stores. Its convenience stores sell tobacco products, grocery items, beverages, and fresh food offerings; road transportation fuel; and stationary energy, marine fuel, aviation fuel, and chemicals. The company operates its convenience store and road transportation fuel retailing chain under various banners, including Circle K, Couche-Tard, Holiday, Ingo, Mac's, Re.Store, and Topaz. It is also involved in the sale of lottery tickets, calling cards, gift cards, postage stamps, and bus tickets; issuance of money orders; and provision of automatic teller machines, cashing checks, and car wash services. As at April 30, 2018, it operated and licensed 12,740 convenience stores, which include 9,718 company-operated stores in North America, Ireland, Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltics, and Russia, as well as 2,000 stores, which are operated under the Circle K banner in China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guam, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam. The company was formerly known as Actidev Inc. and changed its name to Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. in December 1994. Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Laval, Canada.

Read MoreBengaluru, (IANS): The Karnataka government on Friday notified minority religion status to Lingayats amid protests by some sections of the community.

The state Social Welfare Department has issued a notification terming Lingayat followers of 12th century social reformer Basavas philosophy (tatva) as a religious minority, an official told IANS here.

The notification comes three days after the state cabinet decided to grant the status to Lingayats and Veerashaiva Lingayats who are believers of Basava ideology.

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Lingayats, who worship Hindu god Shiva as their deity, and Veerashaiva Lingayats constitute the largest community (17 per cent) in the southern state.

The notification, however, omitted Veerashaiva word to Lingayats as then UPA government had in 2013 rejected the state governments proposal to grant religious minority status to them (Veerashaivas) as they are considered to be Shaivaites and hence cannot get a separate religious tag.

Earlier in the day, the Akhila Bharatha Veerashaiva Mahasabha urged the state government not to grant minority religion status to the community and withdraw the cabinet decision.

Lingayats and Veerashaiva Lingayats are one and the same. They cannot be treated separately from followers of Basava as Panchacharyas founded the Veerashaiva, which is an ancient religion, Mahasabha President and state Horticulture Minister Shamanur Shivashankarappa told reporters here.

The Mahasabha urged the state government not to divide the community.

The state government should go back and revisit the report that was submitted to the UPA government on the issue after which the decision to grant the religious minority status to Veerashaiva Lingayats and Lingayats was earlier stopped, added Shivashankarappa.

BJPs state unit president and former Chief Minister B.S. Yeddurappa termed the government move as an election gimmick and accused the ruling Congress of dividing the people on religious and caste basis.

The Congress government is dividing society on emotional issues. There is only one Lingayat-Veerashaiva. The separate religion tag to Lingayats is an election gimmick. It is an attempt to mislead the people, Yeddyurappa said earlier.CGG is an integrated geosciences company, which provides geological geophysical and reservoir capabilities to its broad base of customers primarily from the global oil and gas industry. It manufactures geophysical equipment, as a provider of marine, land and airborne data acquisition services. The company operates its business through the following segments: Contractual Data Acquisition, Geology, Geophysics & Reservoir and Non-Operated Resources. The Contractual Data Acquisition segment comprises of Marine: offshore seismic data acquisition and Land and Multi-Physics and other seismic data acquisition. The Geology, Geophysics & Reservoir segment comprises the Multi-Client Business Line and the Subsurface Imaging and Reservoir business line. The Non-Operated Resources segment comprises the costs of the non-operated marine resources as well as all of the costs of its Transformation Plan .CGG was founded by Conrad Schlumberger on July 23, 1931 and is headquartered in Paris, France.

Read MoreConagra Brands, Inc. engages in the manufacture and sale of processed and packaged foods. It operates through the following segments: Grocery and Snacks; Refrigerated and Frozen; International; and Foodservice. The Grocery and Snacks segment includes branded, shelf stable food products sold in various retail channels in the United States. The Refrigerated and Frozen segment comprises branded, temperature controlled food products sold in various retail channels in the United States. The International segment consists branded food products, in various temperature states, sold in various retail and foodservice channels outside of the United States. The Foodservice segment focuses in the branded and customized food products, including meals, entrees, sauces, and a variety of custom-manufactured culinary products packaged for sale to restaurants and other foodservice establishments in the United States. The company was founded by Alva Kinney and Frank Little in 1919 and is headquartered in Chicago, IL.

Read MoreTransMontaigne Partners L.P. provides integrated terminaling, storage, transportation, and related services. The company operates through Gulf Coast terminals, Midwest terminals and pipeline system, Brownsville terminals, River terminals, Southeast terminals, and West Coast terminals segments. It offers its services for companies engaged in the trading, distribution, and marketing of light and heavy refined petroleum products, crude oil, chemicals, fertilizers, and other liquid products. The company operates 8 refined product terminals in Florida with approximately 7.0 million barrels of aggregate active storage capacity; a 67 mile interstate refined products pipeline; 2 refined product terminals with approximately 5 million barrels of active storage capacity; and 5.4 million barrels of aggregate storage capacity. It operates 1 crude oil terminal in Cushing with an aggregate active storage capacity of approximately 1.0 million barrels; 1 refined product terminal located in Oklahoma City with aggregate active storage capacity of approximately 0.2 million barrels; 1 refined product terminal located in Brownsville with an aggregate active storage capacity of approximately 0.9 million barrels; and a 16 mile LPG pipeline from its Brownsville facility to the U.S. border. In addition, the company operates a 174 mile bi-directional refined products; 7.1 million barrel terminal facility on Houston Ship Channel; 12 refined product terminals with approximately 2.7 million barrels of aggregate active storage capacity, as well as operates a dock facility; 22 refined product terminals located along Colonial and Plantation pipelines with an aggregate active storage capacity of approximately 11.9 million barrels; and 2 refined product terminals with active storage capacity of approximately 5.0 million barrels. TransMontaigne Partners L.P. was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.

Read MoreEdgewell Personal Care Company is a manufacturer and marketer of personal care products in the wet shave, sun and skin care, feminine care and infant care categories. As of September 30, 2016, the Company had a portfolio of over 25 brands. It manages its business in four segments: Wet Shave, Sun and Skin Care, Feminine Care and All Other. Its Wet shave products are sold under the Schick, Wilkinson Sword, Edge, Skintimate, Shave Guard and Personna brand names. Its Sun and Skin Care products are sold under the Banana Boat, Hawaiian Tropic, Wet Ones and Playtex brand names and offers Wet Ones, portable hand wipes category, and Playtex household gloves, the branded household glove in the United States. Its Feminine Care segment markets its products under the Playtex, Stayfree, Carefree and o.b. brands and markets pads and liners. Its All Other segment includes infant care, pet care and miscellaneous other products.

Read MoreNew Media Investment Group Inc. invests in, owns, and operates local media assets in the United States. The company's principal products include 146 daily newspapers with total paid circulation of approximately 1.5 million; 323 weekly newspapers with total paid circulation of approximately 268,000 and total free circulation of approximately 1.4 million; 132 shoppers with total circulation of approximately 3.1 million; and 581 locally-focused Websites, including Internet and mobile devices with approximately 364 million page views per month. Its principal products also comprise 77 business publications; and UpCurve Cloud and ThriveHive, which provides digital marketing and business services. In addition, the company produces niche publications that address specific local market interests, such as recreation, sports, healthcare, and real estate. Further, it offers print and online products that offer local market news and information on various topics comprising local news and politics, community and regional events, youth sports, opinion and editorial pages, local schools, obituaries, weddings, and police reports, as well as commercial printing services for publishers; and prints commercial materials, including flyers, business cards, and invitations. Additionally, the company produces approximately 350 annual events with a collective attendance approximately 400,000, such as themed expo, signature event, endurance event, and white label event services; and provides digital and print advertising services. It reaches approximately 22 million people per week; and serves approximately 199,000 business customers. New Media Investment Group Inc. was founded in 1997 and is based in New York, New York.

Read MoreVivendi SE operates as a content, media, and communication company in France, the rest of Europe, the Americas, Asia/Oceania, and Africa. It operates through Universal Music Group, Canal+ Group, Havas Group, Editis, Gameloft, Vivendi Village, and New Initiatives segments. The Universal Music Group segment engages in the sale of digital and physical recorded music; and exploitation of music publishing rights, as well as provision of the artist and merchandising services. The Canal+ Group segment publishes and distributes premium and thematic pay-TV and free-to-air channels; and produces, sells, and distributes movies and TV series. The Havas Group segment includes communications disciplines, such as creativity, media expertise, and healthcare/wellness. The Editis segment engages in the publishing of literature, educational, and reference books, as well as selling and distribution of books. The Gameloft segment engages in the creation and publishing of downloadable video games for mobile phones, tablets, triple-play boxes, and smart TVs. The Vivendi Village segment provides ticketing services and live performances through Olympia production, festival production, and venues. The New Initiatives segment operates Dailymotion, a video content aggregation and distribution platform, as well as develops ultra-high-speed Internet service. Vivendi SA was founded in 1853 and is headquartered in Paris, France.

Read MoreHornbeck Offshore Services, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides marine transportation, subsea installation, and accommodation support services to exploration and production, oilfield service, offshore construction, and the United States military customers. It operates offshore supply vessels (OSVs), multi-purpose support vessels (MPSVs), and a shore-based facility to provide logistics support and specialty services to the offshore oil and gas exploration and production industry, primarily Gulf of Mexico in the U.S., Latin America, and internationally. Its fleet of U.S.-flagged OSVs and MPSVs support deep-well, deepwater, and ultra-deepwater activities of the offshore oil and gas industry, such as oil and gas exploration, field development, production, construction, installation, well-stimulation, and other enhanced oil recovery, as well as inspection, repair, and maintenance services. The company also provides vessel management services, including crewing, daily operational management, and maintenance activities for other vessels owners. As of December 31, 2018, it owned and operated 66 OSVs and 8 MPSVs. Hornbeck Offshore Services, Inc. was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Covington, Louisiana.

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 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research.The Bank of New York Mellon pays an annual dividend of $1.36 per share and currently has a dividend yield of 2.72%. The Bank of New York Mellon does not yet have a strong track record of dividend growth. The dividend payout ratio of The Bank of New York Mellon is 33.92%. This payout ratio is at a healthy, sustainable level, below 75%. Based on earnings estimates, The Bank of New York Mellon will have a dividend payout ratio of 29.44% next year. This indicates that The Bank of New York Mellon will be able to sustain or increase its dividend.

View The Bank of New York Mellon's dividend history.Cambian Group plc, together with its subsidiaries, provides specialist educational and behavioral health services for children in the United Kingdom. It offers services in the areas of autism and learning difficulties, residential care and education, therapeutic fostering care and emotional support, and deaf. The company delivers its services through a network of 222 specialist children's facilities in England and Wales. In addition, it is involved in property and trading businesses. The company was formerly known as Project Zelda plc and changed its name to Cambian Group plc in March 2014. Cambian Group plc was founded in 2003 and is based in London, the United Kingdom.

Read MoreSolium Capital Inc. provides cloud-enabled services for administration, financial reporting, and compliance related to equity-based incentive plans in Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company offers Shareworks software-as-a-service platform that provides financial record keeping, trade execution, and reporting services; Global Compliance, which offers regulatory information and tax rates and rules applicable to global equity incentive plans through online databases; and Executive Services, a solution for companies to manage executive-level plan transactions. It also provides Shareworks Scenarios that offers tools to determine the effect that new financings and liquidity events have on capitalization structure and distribution waterfall; and Solium Analytics, a valuation practice that provides 409A valuation opinions. In addition, the company offers Capshare, a cloud platform for capitalization table management, electronic-share tracking, modeling and waterfall analysis, and compliance; and Advanced-HR, a compensation data and planning solution. Solium Capital Inc. was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.

Read MoreAGT Food and Ingredients Inc. produces and exports pulses, staple foods, and food ingredients worldwide. It operates through three segments: Pulse and Grain Processing; Bulk Handling and Distribution; and Food Ingredients and Packaged Foods. The company offers lentils, peas, chickpeas, beans, popcorn, canary seed, flax, and other specialty seeds. The company also produces pulse proteins, fibers, starches, and flours for food ingredient and industrial uses; milled durum wheat products, such as semolina and pasta under the Arbella brand; and bulgur wheat, as well as medium grain and long grain milled rice. In addition, it offers retail and foodservice dry packaged and canned foods under the CLIC, Pouyoukas, and Freshpop brands; and distributes durum, sorghum, popcorn, coffee, canola, sugar, spices, and various seeds. The company was formerly known as Alliance Grain Traders Inc. and changed its name to AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. in October 2014. AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Regina, Canada.

Read MoreReinsurance Group of America, Inc. is a holding company, which engages in the provision of traditional and non-traditional life and health reinsurance products. It operates through the following segments: U.S. and Latin America; Canada; Europe, Middle East, and Africa; Asia Pacific; and Corporate and Other. The U.S. and Latin America segment markets individual and group life and health reinsurance to domestic clients for a variety of products through yearly renewable term agreements, coinsurance, and modified coinsurance. The Canada segment offers individual life reinsurance, and to a lesser extent creditor, group life and health, critical illness and disability reinsurance, through yearly renewable term and coinsurance agreements. The Europe, Middle East, and Africa segment serves individual and group life and health products through yearly renewable term and coinsurance agreements, reinsurance of critical illness coverage that provides a benefit in the event of the diagnosis of a pre-defined critical illness and underwritten annuities. The Asia Pacific segment comprises individual and group life and health reinsurance, critical illness coverage, disability, and superannuation thr

Read MoreBT Group plc provides communications services worldwide. Its Consumer segment sells telephones, baby monitors, and Wi-Fi extenders through high street retailers, online BT Shop, and Website BT.com; and offers home phone, copper and fiber broadband, TV, and mobile services in various packages. The company's EE segment offers 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile network services; broadband, fixed-voice, and TV services; and postpaid and prepaid plans, and emergency services network. This segment also sells 4G mobile phones, tablets, connected devices, and mobile broadband devices from various manufacturers. Its Business and Public Sector segment provides fixed voice, mobility, fiber and connectivity, and networked IT services to retailers, utilities, public sector, healthcare, sports, construction, finance, and educational sectors. The company's Global Services segment offers business communications and ICT services comprising BT Connect, BT Security, BT One, BT Contact, BT Compute, BT Advise, and BT for financial markets. This segment serves approximately 5,500 customers in 180 countries. Its Wholesale and Ventures segment enables communications providers and other organizations to provide fixed or mobile phone services. Its ventures provide mass-market services, such as directory enquiries and payphones; and enterprise services comprising BT Fleet and BT Redcare. This segment also provides broadband and Ethernet, voice, hosted communication, mobile virtual network operator, managed solutions, machine-to-machine, roaming, and media services. The company's Openreach segment engages in the provision of services over the local access network; and installation and maintenance of fiber and copper communications networks that connect homes and businesses. The company was formerly known as Newgate Telecommunications Limited and changed its name to BT Group plc in September 2001. BT Group plc was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

Read MoreSunTrust Banks, Inc. operates as the holding company for SunTrust Bank that provides various financial services for consumers, businesses, corporations, institutions, and not-for-profit entities in the United States. It operates in two segments, Consumer and Wholesale. The Consumer segment provides deposits and payments; home equity and personal credit lines; auto, student, and other lending products; credit cards; discount/online and full-service brokerage products; professional investment advisory products and services; and trust services, as well as family office solutions. This segment also offers residential mortgage products in the secondary market. The Wholesale segment provides capital markets solutions, including advisory, capital raising, and financial risk management; asset-based financing solutions, such as securitizations, asset-based lending, equipment financing, and structured real estate arrangements; cash management services and auto dealer financing solutions; investment banking solutions; and credit and deposit, fee-based product offering, multi-family agency lending, advisory, commercial mortgage brokerage, and tailored financing and equity investment solutions. This segment also offers treasury and payment solutions, such as operating various electronic and paper payment types, which comprise card, wire transfer, automated clearing house, check, and cash; and provides services clients to manage their accounts online. The company offers its products and services through a network of traditional and in-store branches, automated teller machines, Internet, mobile, and telephone banking channels. As of December 31, 2018, it operated 1,218 full-service banking offices located in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. SunTrust Banks, Inc. was founded in 1891 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Read MoreThe following companies are subsidiares of Tenet Healthcare: 1 Subsidiaries of this entity in which Tenet Healthcare Corporation directly and indirectly held a 95% ownership interest at December 31 2020 are set forth in the table below., 25 East Same Day Surgery L.L.C., 300 PBL Development LLC, 45th Street MOB LLC, 601 N 30th Street I L.L.C., 601 N 30th Street II L.L.C., 601 N 30th Street III Inc., AHM Acquisition Co. Inc., AIG Holdings LLC, AIGB Global LLC, AIGB Group Inc., AIGB Holdings Inc., AIGB Management Services LLC, AMC/North Fulton Urgent Care #1 L.L.C., AMC/North Fulton Urgent Care #2 L.L.C., AMC/North Fulton Urgent Care #3 L.L.C., AMC/North Fulton Urgent Care #4 L.L.C., AMC/North Fulton Urgent Care #5 L.L.C., AMI Information Systems Group Inc., AMI/HTI Tarzana Encino Joint Venture, APN, ARC Worcester Center L.P., ASC Old Co. LP, ASC of New Jersey LLC, ASJH Joint Venture LLC, Abrazo Health Network EP Clinical Services LLC, Abrazo Surgical Outpatient Center LLC, Advanced Ambulatory Surgical Care L.P., Advanced Center for Surgery  Vero Beach LLC, Advanced Regional Surgery Center LLC, Advanced Surgery Center of Metairie LLC, Advanced Surgery Center of Sarasota LLC, Advanced Surgery Center of Tampa LLC, Advanced Surgical Care of St Louis LLC, Advanced Surgical Concepts LLC, Advantage Health Care Management Company LLC, Advantage Health Network Inc., AdventHealth Surgery Center Celebration LLC, AdventHealth Surgery Center Mills Park LLC, AdventHealth Surgery Center Wellswood LLC, AdventHealth Surgery Center Winter Garden LLC, AdventHealth Surgery Centers Central Florida LLC, AdventHealth Surgery Centers West Florida LLC, Adventist Midwest Health/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Alabama Cardiovascular Associates L.L.C., Alabama Digestive Health Endoscopy Center L.L.C., Alabama Hand and Sports Medicine L.L.C., Alamo Heights Surgicare L.P., All Star MOB LLC, Allegian Insurance Company, Alliance Surgery Birmingham LLC, Alliance Surgery Inc., Alvarado Hospital Medical Center Inc., Ambulatory Surgical Associates LLC, Ambulatory Surgical Center of Somerville LLC, American Institute of Gastric Banding Ltd., American Institute of Gastric Banding Phoenix Limited Partnership, American Medical (Central) Inc., Amisub (Heights) Inc., Amisub (Hilton Head) Inc., Amisub (North Ridge Hospital) Inc., Amisub (SFH) Inc., Amisub (Twelve Oaks) Inc., Amisub of California Inc., Amisub of North Carolina Inc., Amisub of South Carolina Inc., Amisub of Texas Inc., Anaheim Hills Medical Imaging L.L.C., Anaheim MRI Holding Inc., Anesthesia Partners of Gallatin LLC, Arizona Care Network  Next L.L.C., Arizona Health Partners LLC, Arlington Orthopedic and Spine Hospital LLC, Arrowhead Endoscopy and Pain Management Center LLC, Asia Outsourcing US Inc., Aspen Healthcare, Atlanta Medical Center Inc., Atlanta Medical Center Interventional Neurology Associates L.L.C., Atlanta Medical Center Neurosurgical & Spine Specialists L.L.C., Atlanta Medical Center Physician Group L.L.C., Atlantic Coast Surgical Suites LLC, Atlantic Health-USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Avita/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., BBH BMC LLC, BBH CBMC LLC, BBH DevelopmentCo LLC, BBH Imaging Jasper LLC, BBH NP Clinicians Inc., BBH PBMC LLC, BBH SBMC LLC, BBH WBMC LLC, BCDC EmployeeCO LLC, BHC-Talladega Pediatrics LLC, BHS Accountable Care LLC, BHS Affinity LLC, BHS Integrated Physician Partners LLC, BHS Physician Performance Network LLC, BHS Physicians Alliance for ACE LLC, BHS Physicians Network Inc., BHS Specialty Network Inc., BT East Dallas JV LLP, BW Cardiology LLC, BW Cyberknife LLC, BW Hand Practice LLC, BW Office Buildings LLC, BW Parking Decks LLC, BW Physician Practices LLC, BW Retail Pharmacy LLC, BW Sports Practice LLC, Bagley Holdings LLC, Baptist Accountable Care LLC, Baptist Diagnostics LLC, Baptist Health Centers LLC, Baptist Physician Alliance ACO LLC, Baptist Physician Alliance LLC, Baptist Plaza Surgicare L.P., Baptist Surgery Center L.P., Baptist Womens Health Center LLC, Baptist/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Bartlett ASC LLC, Baylor Surgicare at Baylor Plano LLC, Baylor Surgicare at Blue Star LLC, Baylor Surgicare at Granbury LLC, Baylor Surgicare at Mansfield LLC, Baylor Surgicare at North Dallas LLC, Baylor Surgicare at Plano LLC, Baylor Surgicare at Plano Parkway LLC, Bear Creek Surgery Center LLC, Beaumont Surgical Affiliates Ltd., Bellaire Outpatient Surgery Center L.L.P., Berkshire Eye LLC, Bloomington ASC LLC, Blue Ridge/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Bluffton Okatie Primary Care L.L.C., Bluffton Okatie Surgery Center L.L.C., Bon Secours Surgery Center at Harbour View LLC, Bon Secours Surgery Center at Virginia Beach LLC, Bozeman Health/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Bozeman MOB LLC, Briarcliff Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Bristol Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Broad River Primary Care L.L.C., Brookwood - Maternal Fetal Medicine L.L.C., Brookwood Ancillary Holdings Inc., Brookwood Baptist Health 1 LLC, Brookwood Baptist Health 2 LLC, Brookwood Baptist Health 3 LLC, Brookwood Baptist Imaging LLC, Brookwood Center Development Corporation, Brookwood Development Inc., Brookwood Diagnostic Imaging Center LLC, Brookwood Garages L.L.C., Brookwood Health Services Inc., Brookwood Home Health LLC, Brookwood Occupational Health Clinic L.L.C., Brookwood Parking Associates Ltd., Brookwood Primary Care - Homewood L.L.C., Brookwood Primary Care - Inverness L.L.C., Brookwood Primary Care - Mountain Brook L.L.C., Brookwood Primary Care - Oak Mountain L.L.C., Brookwood Primary Care - Vestavia L.L.C., Brookwood Primary Care Cahaba Heights L.L.C., Brookwood Primary Care Hoover L.L.C., Brookwood Primary Care The Narrows L.L.C., Brookwood Primary Network Care Inc., Brookwood Specialty Care - Endocrinology L.L.C., Brookwood Sports and Orthopedics L.L.C., Brookwood Womens Care L.L.C., Brookwood Womens Diagnostic Center LLC, C7 Technologies LLC, CGH Hospital Ltd., CHIC/USP Surgery Centers LLC, CHN Holdings LLC, CHRISTUS Cabrini Surgery Center L.L.C., CHVI Tucson Holdings LLC, CML-Chicago Market Labs Inc., CRNAs of Michigan, CS/USP General Partner LLC, CS/USP Surgery Centers LP, California Joint & Spine LLC, Camp Creek Urgent Care L.L.C., Camp Lowell Surgery Center L.L.C., Captive Insurance Services Inc., Cardiology Physicians Associates L.L.C., Cardiology Physicians Corporation L.L.C., Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery Associates L.L.C., Cardiovascular Clinical Excellence at Sierra Providence LLC, CareSpot of Austin LLC, CareSpot of Memphis LLC, CareSpot of Orlando/HSI Urgent Care LLC, Carmel Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Carondelet St. Marys-Northwest L.L.C., Cascade Spine Center LLC, Castle Rock Surgery Center LLC, Catawba-Piedmont Cardiothoracic Surgery L.L.C., Cedar Hill Primary Care L.L.C., Cedar Park Surgery Center L.L.P., Centennial ASC LLC, Center for Advanced Research Excellence L.L.C., Center for the Urban Child Inc., Central California Healthcare Holdings LLC, Central Carolina Physicians - Sandhills L.L.C., Central Carolina-IMA L.L.C., Central Jersey Surgery Center LLC, Central Texas Corridor Hospital Company LLC, Central Valley Quality Alliance LLC, Central Virginia Surgi-Center L.P., Centura Ventures Surgery Centers LLC, Centura/USP Colorado Springs Surgery Centers L.L.C., Chalon Living Inc., Chandler Endoscopy Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Charlotte Endoscopic Surgery Center LLC, Chattanooga Pain Management Center LLC, Chesterfield Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Chesterfield Anesthesia Associates of Missouri LLC, Chico Surgery Center L.P., Childrens Hospital of Michigan Premier Network Inc., Citrus Heights ASC RE LLC, Clarkston ASC Partners LLC, Clarksville Surgery Center LLC, Coast Healthcare Management LLC, Coast Surgery Center L.P., Coastal Carolina Medical Center, Coastal Carolina Medical Center Inc., Coastal Carolina Physician Practices LLC, Coastal Carolina Pro Fee Billing L.L.C., Coastal Endo LLC, Colorado GI Centers LLC, Commonwealth Continental Health Care Inc., Community Connection Health Plan Inc., Community Hospital LLC, Community Hospital of Los Gatos Inc., Conifer Care Continuum Solutions LLC, Conifer Ethics and Compliance Inc., Conifer Global Business Center Inc., Conifer Global Holdings Inc., Conifer Health Solutions LLC, Conifer Holdings Inc., Conifer Patient Communications LLC, Conifer Physician Services Holdings Inc., Conifer Physician Services Inc., Conifer Revenue Cycle Solutions LLC, Conifer Value-Based Care LLC, Conroe Surgery Center 2 LLC, Coral Gables Hospital Inc., Coral Ridge Outpatient Center LLC, Corpus Christi Surgicare Ltd., Covenant/USP Surgery Centers LLC, CreAtiv Management Company Inc., Creekwood Investors LLC, Creekwood Surgery Center L.P., Crown Point Surgery Center LLC, DH/USP SJOSC Investment Company L.L.C., DH/USP Sacramento Pain GP LLC, DMC Detroit Receiving Hospital Premier Clinical Co-Management Services LLC, DMC Education & Research, DMC Harper University Hospital Premier Clinical Co-Management Services LLC, DMC Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital Premier Clinical Management Services LLC, DMC Imaging L.L.C., Dallas Surgical Partners LLC, DeTar/USP Surgery Center LLC, Delray Beach ASC LLC, Delray Medical Center Inc., Delray Medical Physician Services L.L.C., Denton Surgicare Partners Ltd., Denton Surgicare Real Estate Ltd., Denville Surgery Center LLC, Des Peres Physician Network LLC, Desert Cove MOB LLC, Desert Regional Medical Center Inc., Desert Ridge Outpatient Surgery LLC, Desoto Surgicare Partners Ltd., Destin ASC RE LLC, Destin Surgery Center LLC, Detroit Education & Research, DigitalMed Inc., Dignity/Abrazo Health Network LLC, Dignity/USP Folsom GP LLC, Dignity/USP Grass Valley GP LLC, Dignity/USP Las Vegas Surgery Centers LLC, Dignity/USP Metro Surgery Center LLC, Dignity/USP NorCal Surgery Centers LLC, Dignity/USP Phoenix Surgery Centers II LLC, Dignity/USP Phoenix Surgery Centers LLC, Dignity/USP Redding GP LLC, Dignity/USP Roseville GP LLC, Dignity/USP/John Muir East Bay Surgery Centers LLC, Doctors Hospital of Manteca Inc., Doctors Medical Center Neurosciences Clinical Co-Management LLC, Doctors Medical Center Orthopedics Clinical Co-Management LLC, Doctors Medical Center of Modesto Inc., Doctors Outpatient Center for Surgery LLC, Doctors Outpatient Surgery Center of Jupiter L.L.C., EPHC Inc., EPIC ASC LLC, East Atlanta Endoscopy Centers LLC, East Cobb Urgent Care LLC, East Cooper Coastal Family Physicians L.L.C., East Cooper Community Hospital Inc., East Cooper Hyperbarics L.L.C., East Cooper OB/GYN L.L.C., East Cooper Physician Network LLC, East Cooper Primary Care Physicians L.L.C., East Portland Surgery Center LLC, East West Surgery Center L.P., Eastgate Building Center L.L.C., Effingham Surgical Partners LLC, Einstein Montgomery Surgery Center LLC, Einstein/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., El Mirador Surgery Center L.L.C., El Paso Center for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy LLC, El Paso Day Surgery LLC, El Paso Urology Surgery Center Curie LLC, Emanate/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Emanuel Medical Center, Emerson Surgery Center LLC, Encinitas Endoscopy Center LLC, Endoscopy Center of Hackensack LLC, Endoscopy Center of South Sacramento LLC, Endoscopy Consultants LLC, European Surgical Partners Ltd., Eye Center of Nashville UAP LLC, Eye Surgery Center of Nashville LLC, FMC Medical Inc., FMCC Network Contracting L.L.C., FPN  Frisco Physicians Network, FREH Real Estate L.L.C., FRS Imaging Services L.L.C., FSC Hospital LLC, FSH IT Services LP, First Choice Physician Partners, Flatirons Surgery Center LLC, Folsom Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., Fort Bend Clinical Services Inc., Fort Worth Hospital Real Estate LP, Fort Worth Surgicare Partners Ltd., Foundation Bariatric Hospital of San Antonio LLC, Foundation San Antonio Borrower Sub LLC, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, Fountain Valley Surgery Center LLC, Franklin Endo UAP LLC, Franklin Endoscopy Center LLC, Fresno Surgery Center L.P., Frisco Medical Center L.L.P., Frontenac Ambulatory Surgery & Spine Care Center L.P., Frye Regional Medical Center Inc., FryeCare Boone L.L.C., FryeCare Morganton L.L.C., FryeCare Physicians L.L.C., FryeCare Valdese L.L.C., FryeCare Watauga L.L.C., FryeCare Womens Services L.L.C., GCSA Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Gamma Surgery Center LLC, Gardendale Surgical Associates LLC, Garland Surgicare Partners Ltd., Gastric Health Institute L.L.C., Genesis ASC Partners LLC, Geneva Surgical Suites LLC, Georgia Endoscopy Center LLC, Georgia Gifts From Grace L.L.C., Georgia Musculoskeletal Network Inc., Georgia North Fulton Healthcare Associates L.L.C., Georgia Northside Ear Nose and Throat L.L.C., Georgia Physicians of Cardiology L.L.C., Georgia Spectrum Neurosurgical Specialists L.L.C., Georgia Spine Surgery Center LLC, Glen Echo Surgery Center LLC, Golden Ridge ASC LLC, Good Samaritan Medical Center Inc., Good Samaritan Surgery L.L.C., Grapevine Surgicare Partners Ltd., Grass Valley Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., Graystone Family Healthcare - Tenet North Carolina L.L.C., Great Lakes Surgical Suites LLC, Greater Dallas Healthcare Enterprises, Greater Northwest Houston Enterprises, Greenville Physicians Surgery Center LLP, Greenwood ASC LLC, Greystone Internal Medicine - Brookwood L.L.C., Gulf Coast Community Hospital Inc., HCH Tucson Holdings LLC, HCN Emerus Management Sub LLC, HCN Emerus Texas LLC, HCN Laboratories Inc., HCN Physicians Inc., HCN Sunnyvale Holdings LLC, HCN Surgery Center Holdings Inc., HDMC Holdings L.L.C., HMA/Solantic Joint Venture LLC, HMH-USP Surgery Centers LLC, HMHP/USP Surgery Centers LLC, HNMC Inc., HNW GP Inc., HNW LP Inc., HPI Holdings LLC, HPI North LLC, HPI Physicians LLC, HSRM International Inc., HSS Palm Beach Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, HSS/USP Surgery Center LLC, HUG Services Inc., HUMC/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Hacienda Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Hagerstown Surgery Center LLC, Hardeeville Medical Group L.L.C., Hardeeville Primary Care L.L.C., Harlingen Physician Network Inc., Harper-Hutzel AHP Services Inc., Harvard Park Surgery Center LLC, Haymarket Surgery Center LLC, Hazelwood Endoscopy Center LLC, Health & Wellness Surgery Center L.P., Health Horizons of Kansas City Inc., Health Horizons of Murfreesboro Inc., Health Horizons/Piedmont Joint Venture LLC, Health Services CFMC Inc., Health Services HNMC Inc., Health Services Network Care Inc., Health Services Network Hospitals Inc., Health Services Network Texas Inc., HealthCorp Network Inc., Healthcare Compliance LLC, Healthcare Network Alabama Inc., Healthcare Network CFMC Inc., Healthcare Network DPH Inc., Healthcare Network Georgia Inc., Healthcare Network Holdings Inc., Healthcare Network Hospitals (Dallas) Inc., Healthcare Network Hospitals Inc., Healthcare Network Louisiana Inc., Healthcare Network Missouri Inc., Healthcare Network North Carolina Inc., Healthcare Network South Carolina Inc., Healthcare Network Tennessee Inc., Healthcare Network Texas Inc., Healthcare Partners Investments LLC, Healthmark Partners Inc., Healthpoint of North Carolina L.L.C., Heart and Vascular Institute of Michigan, Heritage Park Surgical Hospital LLC, Hershey Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., Hialeah Hospital Inc., Hialeah Real Properties Inc., Hickory Family Practice Associates - Tenet North Carolina L.L.C., Hill Country ASC Partners LLC, Hill Country Surgery Center LLC, Hilton Head Health System L.P., Hilton Head Regional Healthcare L.L.C., Hilton Head Regional OB/GYN Partners L.L.C., Hilton Head Regional Physician Network LLC, Hilton Head Regional Physician Network  Georgia L.L.C., Hinsdale Surgical Center LLC, Hitchcock State Street Real Estate Inc., Holston Valley Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Holy Cross Hospital Inc., Home Health Partners of San Antonio LLC, Hoover Doctors Group Inc., Hoover Land LLC, Horizon Ridge Surgery Center LLC, Hospital Development of West Phoenix Inc., Hospital RCM Services LLC, Hospital Underwriting Group Inc., Houston Northwest Partners Ltd., Houston PSC L.P., Houston Specialty Hospital Inc., Houston Sunrise Investors Inc., Hyde Park Surgery Center LLC, ICNU Rockford LLC, Imaging Center at Baxter Village L.L.C., InforMed Insurance Services LLC, Integris/USP Health Ventures LLC, International Health and Wellness Inc., Irving-Coppell Surgical Hospital L.L.P., JFK Memorial Hospital Inc., JFP UAP Sugarland LLC, Jackson Surgical Center LLC, Jacksonville Endoscopy Centers LLC, Journey Home Healthcare of San Antonio LLC, KHS Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, KHS/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Kingsport Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Laguna Medical Systems Inc., Lake Endoscopy Center LLC, Lake Health Care Facilities Inc., Lake Lansing ASC Partners LLC, Lake Surgical Hospital Slidell LLC, LakeFront Medical Associates LLC, Lakewood Regional Medical Center Inc., Lakewood Surgery Center LLC, Lancaster Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Lansing ASC Partners LLC, Lawrenceville Surgery Center L.L.C., Lebanon Endoscopy Center LLC, Legacy Warren Partners L.P., Legacy/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Leonardtown Surgery Center LLC, Liberty Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Lifemark Hospitals Inc., Lifemark Hospitals of Florida Inc., Lifemark Hospitals of Louisiana Inc., Lone Star Endoscopy Center LLC, Longleaf Surgery Center LLC, Los Alamitos Medical Center Inc., Lubbock ASC Holding Co LLC, MASC Partners LLC, MCSH Real Estate Investors Ltd., MH Memorial City Surgery LLC, MH/USP Bay Area LLC, MH/USP Brazoria LLC, MH/USP Kingsland LLC, MH/USP Kingwood LLC, MH/USP Kirby LLC, MH/USP Main Street LLC, MH/USP North Freeway LLC, MH/USP North Houston LLC, MH/USP Richmond LLC, MH/USP Sugar Land LLC, MH/USP TMC Endoscopy LLC, MH/USP West Houston L.L.C., MH/USP Woodlands Parkway LLC, MSH Partners LLC, MSV Health/USP Surgery Centers LLC, MVH/USP Surgery Centers LLC, MacNeal Management Services Inc., MacNeal Medical Records Inc., MacNeal Physicians Group LLC, Magnetic Resonance Imaging of San Luis Obispo Inc., Magnolia Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Manchester Ambulatory Surgery Center LP, Maple Lawn Surgery Center LLC, Marion Surgery Center LLC, Mary Immaculate Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Mason Ridge Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Mayfield Spine Surgery Center LLC, McLaren ASC of Flint LLC, Meadowcrest Hospital LLC, Medical House Staffing LLC, Medical Park Tower Surgery Center LLC, Medplex Outpatient Medical Centers Inc., Medplex Outpatient Surgery Center Ltd., Memorial Hermann Bay Area Endoscopy Center LLC, Memorial Hermann Endoscopy & Surgery Center North Houston L.L.C., Memorial Hermann Endoscopy Center North Freeway LLC, Memorial Hermann Specialty Hospital Kingwood L.L.C., Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Surgical Hospital L.L.P., Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Brazoria LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Cypress LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Katy LLP, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Kingsland L.L.C., Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Kirby LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Main Street LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Memorial City L.L.C., Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Northwest LLP, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Pinecroft LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Preston Road Ltd., Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Richmond LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Southwest L.L.P., Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Sugar Land LLP, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Texas Medical Center LLP, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Woodlands Parkway LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center  The Woodlands LLP, Memorial Hermann Texas International Endoscopy Center LLC, Memorial Hermann West Houston Surgery Center LLC, Memorial Hermann/USP Surgery Centers II L.P., Memorial Hermann/USP Surgery Centers III LLP, Memorial Hermann/USP Surgery Centers IV LLP, Memorial Surgery Center LLC, Memphis Urgent Care #1 L.L.C., Memphis Urgent Care #2 L.L.C., Merced Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Mercy/USP Health Ventures L.L.C., Metro Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Metro Surgery Center LLC, MetroWest HomeCare & Hospice LLC, Metrocrest Surgery Center L.P., Metropolitan New Jersey LLC, Michigan ASC Partners L.L.C., Michigan Pioneer ACO LLC, Michigan Regional Imaging LLC, Mid Rivers Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Mid State Endo UAP LLC, Mid-State Endoscopy Center LLC, Mid-TSC Development LP, Middle Tennessee Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Midland Memorial/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Midland Texas Surgical Center LLC, Midwest Digestive Health Center LLC, Midwest Pharmacies Inc., Midwest Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Millennium Surgical Center LLC, Mobile Imaging Management LLC, Mobile Technology Management LLC, Modesto Radiology Imaging Inc., Monocacy Surgery Center LLC, Mountain Empire Surgery Center L.P., Munster Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Murdock Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, NHSC Holdings LLC, NICH GP Holdings LLC, NKCH/USP Briarcliff GP LLC, NKCH/USP Liberty GP LLC, NKCH/USP Surgery Centers II L.L.C., NKCH/USP Surgery Centers LLC, NMC Lessor L.P., NMC Surgery Center L.P., NME Headquarters Inc., NME Properties Corp., NME Properties Inc., NME Property Holding Co. Inc., NME Psychiatric Hospitals Inc., NME Rehabilitation Properties Inc., NSCH GP Holdings LLC, NSCH/USP Desert Surgery Centers L.L.C., NUCH of Georgia L.L.C., NUCH of Massachusetts LLC, NUCH of Michigan Inc., NUCH of Texas, Nacogdoches ASC-LP Inc., Name of Entity, National ASC Inc., National Ancillary Inc., National Diagnostic Imaging Centers Inc., National HHC Inc., National Home Health Holdings Inc., National ICN Inc., National Imaging Center Holdings Inc., National Medical Services II Inc., National Outpatient Services Holdings Inc., National Surgery Center Holdings Inc., National Urgent Care Holdings Inc., National Urgent Care Inc., Network Management Associates Inc., New Dimensions LLC, New England Physician Performance Network LLC, New H Acute Inc., New Horizons Surgery Center LLC, New Medical Horizons II Ltd., New Mexico Orthopaedic Surgery Center LLC, New Salem ASC RE LLC, Newhope Imaging Center Inc., North Anaheim Surgery Center LLC, North Atlantic Surgical Suites LLC, North Campus Surgery Center LLC, North Carolina Community Family Medicine L.L.C., North Central Surgical Center L.L.P., North Denver Musculoskeletal Surgical Partners LLC, North Fulton Cardiovascular Medicine L.L.C., North Fulton Hospitalist Group L.L.C., North Fulton Medical Center Inc., North Fulton Primary Care - Willeo Rd. L.L.C., North Fulton Primary Care - Windward Parkway L.L.C., North Fulton Primary Care - Wylie Bridge L.L.C., North Fulton Primary Care Associates L.L.C., North Fulton Pulmonary Specialists L.L.C., North Fulton Womens Consultants L.L.C., North Garland Surgery Center L.L.P., North Haven Surgery Center LLC, North Miami Medical Center Ltd., North Shore Medical Billing Center L.L.C., North Shore Medical Center Inc., North Shore Same Day Surgery L.L.C., North Shore Surgical Suites LLC, North State Surgery Centers L.P., NorthPointe Surgical Suites LLC, NorthShore/USP Surgery Centers II L.L.C., Northern Monmouth Regional Surgery Center L.L.C., Northridge ASC RE LLC, Northridge Surgery Center L.P., Northwest Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Georgia Orthopaedic Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Regional ASC LLC, Northwest Regional Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Surgery Center LLP, Northwest Surgery Center Ltd., Novant Health/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Novant/UVA/USP Surgery Centers LLC, OCOMS Imaging LLC, OCOMS Professional Services LLC, OLOL/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Okatie Surgical Partners L.L.C., Oklahoma Center for Orthopedic and Multi-Specialty Surgery LLC, Old Tesson Surgery Center L.P., Olive Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Olive Branch Urgent Care #1 LLC, Ophthalmology Anesthesia Services LLC, Ophthalmology Surgery Center of Orlando LLC, Optimum Spine Center LLC, OrNda Healthcorp, OrNda Hospital Corporation, Orlando Health/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., OrthoArizona Surgery Center Gilbert LLC, OrthoLink ASC Corporation, OrthoLink Physicians Corporation, OrthoLink Radiology Services Corporation, OrthoLink/ Georgia ASC Inc., OrthoLink/Baptist ASC LLC, OrthoLink/New Mexico ASC Inc., Orthopedic Associates of the Lowcountry L.L.C., Orthopedic South Surgical Partners LLC, Orthopedic and Surgical Specialty Company LLC, PAHS/USP Surgery Centers LLC, PDN L.L.C., PHPS Inc., PHPS-CHM Acquisition Inc., PHS/USP Health Ventures LLC, PM CyFair Land Partners LLC, PMC Physician Network L.L.C., PPRE LLC, PSS Patient Solution Services LLC, Pacific Endo-Surgical Center L.P., Pacific Endoscopy and Surgery Center LLC, Pain Diagnostic and Treatment Center L.P., Paley Institute Global LLC, Palm Beach Gardens Community Hospital Inc., Palm Beach International Surgery Center LLC, Palm Valley Medical Center Campus Association, Palos Health Surgery Center LLC, Paramus Endoscopy LLC, Park Cities Surgery Center LLC, Park Plaza Hospital Billing Center L.L.C., ParkCreek ASC LLC, Parkway Recovery Care Center LLC, Parkwest Surgery Center L.P., Patient Partners LLC, Peak Gastroenterology ASC LLC, Pediatric Surgery Center  Odessa LLC, Pediatric Surgery Centers LLC, Physician Performance Network L.L.C., Physician Performance Network of Arizona LLC, Physician Performance Network of Detroit, Physician Performance Network of South Carolina LLC, Physician Performance Network of Tucson LLC, Physicians Performance Network of Houston, Physicians Performance Network of North Texas, Physicians Surgery Center at Good Samaritan LLC, Physicians Surgery Center of Tempe LLC, Physicians Surgical Center of Ft. Worth LLP, Physicians Surgery Center of Chattanooga L.L.C., Physicians Surgery Center of Knoxville LLC, Piccard Surgery Center LLC, Piedmont ASC LLC, Piedmont Behavioral Medicine Associates LLC, Piedmont Cardiovascular Physicians L.L.C., Piedmont Carolina OB/GYN of York County L.L.C., Piedmont Carolina Vascular Surgery L.L.C., Piedmont East Urgent Care Center L.L.C., Piedmont Express Care at Sutton Road L.L.C., Piedmont Family Practice at Baxter Village L.L.C., Piedmont Family Practice at Rock Hill L.L.C., Piedmont Family Practice at Tega Cay L.L.C., Piedmont General Surgery Associates L.L.C., Piedmont Internal Medicine at Baxter Village L.L.C., Piedmont Physician Network LLC, Piedmont Pulmonology L.L.C., Piedmont Surgical Specialists L.L.C., Piedmont Urgent Care Center at Baxter Village L.L.C., Piedmont Urgent Care and Industrial Health Centers Inc., Piedmont/Carolinas Radiation Therapy LLC, Placentia-Linda Hospital Inc., Pleasanton Diagnostic Imaging Inc., Point of Rocks Surgery Center LLC, Practice Partners Management L.P., Premier ACO Physicians Network LLC, Premier ASC LLC, Premier Adult and Childrens Surgery Center LLC, Premier Endoscopy ASC LLC, Premier Health Plan Services Inc., Premier Medical Specialists L.L.C., Prince William Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Professional Anesthesia Services LLC, Professional Liability Insurance Company, Pros Temporary Staffing Inc., Providence/UCLA/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Providence/USP Santa Clarita GP LLC, Providence/USP South Bay Surgery Centers L.L.C., Providence/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Pueblo Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, R.H.S.C. El Paso Inc., RE Plano Med Inc., RHC Parkway Inc., RLC LLC, Reading Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Reading Endoscopy Center LLC, Reagan Street Surgery Center LLC, Redmond Surgery Center LLC, Renaissance Surgery Center LLC, Republic Health Corporation of Rockwall County, Resolute Health Physicians Network Inc., Resolute Hospital Company LLC, Resurgens East Surgery Center LLC, Resurgens Fayette Surgery Center LLC, Resurgens Surgery Center LLC, Rheumatology Associates of Atlanta Medical Center L.L.C., Richmond ASC Leasing Company LLC, Rio Grande Valley Indigent Health Care Corporation, River North Same Day Surgery L.L.C., Riverside Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Rock Bridge Surgical Institute L.L.C., Rock Hill Surgery Center LLC, Rockwall Ambulatory Surgery Center L.L.P., Rocky Mountain Endoscopy Centers LLC, Roseville Surgery Center L.P., Roswell Surgery Center L.L.C., SCNRE LLC, SFMP Inc., SFMPE - Crittenden L.L.C., SL-HLC Inc., SLH Physicians L.L.C., SLH Vista Inc., SLPA ACO LLC, SLUH Anesthesia Physicians L.L.C., SMSJ Imaging Company LLC, SMSJ Tucson Holdings LLC, SPC at the Star LLC, SRRMC Management Inc., SSI Holdings Inc., Sacramento Midtown Endoscopy Center LLC, Safety Harbor ASC Company LLC, Saint Agnes/Dignity/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Saint Agnes/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Saint Francis Cardiology Associates L.L.C., Saint Francis Cardiovascular Surgery L.L.C., Saint Francis Center for Surgical Weight Loss L.L.C., Saint Francis Hospital Billing Center L.L.C., Saint Francis Hospital Medicare ACO LLC, Saint Francis Hospital Pro Fee Billing L.L.C., Saint Francis Hospital-Bartlett Inc., Saint Francis Medical Partners East L.L.C., Saint Francis Medical Partners General Surgery L.L.C., Saint Francis Physician Network LLC, Saint Francis Quality Alliance LLC, Saint Francis Surgery Center L.L.C., Saint Francis Surgical Associates L.L.C., Saint Francis-Arkansas Physician Network LLC, Saint Francis-Bartlett Physician Network LLC, Saint Thomas Campus Surgicare L.P., Saint Thomas Surgery Center New Salem LLC, Saint Thomas/USP Surgery Centers II L.L.C., Saint Thomas/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Saint Thomas/USP  Baptist Plaza L.L.C., Saint Vincent Physician Services Inc., Salmon Surgery Center LLC, Same Day Management L.L.C., Same Day SC of Central NJ LLC, Same Day Surgery L.L.C., San Antonio Endoscopy L.P., San Fernando Valley Surgery Center L.P., San Gabriel Valley Surgical Center L.P., San Martin Surgery Center LLC, San Ramon ASC L. P., San Ramon Ambulatory Care LLC, San Ramon Network Joint Venture LLC, San Ramon Regional Medical Center LLC, San Ramon Surgery Center L.L.C., Santa Barbara Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Santa Clarita Surgery Center L.P., Savannah Endoscopy Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Schertz Surgery Center LLC, Scripps Encinitas Surgery Center LLC, Scripps/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Seaside Surgery Center LLC, Shands/Solantic Joint Venture LLC, Shelby Baptist Affinity LLC, Shelby Baptist Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Shore Outpatient Surgicenter L.L.C., Shoreline Real Estate Partnership LLP, Shoreline Surgery Center LLP, Shrewsbury Surgery Center LLC, Sierra Pacific Surgery Center LLC, Sierra Providence Health Network Inc., Sierra Providence Healthcare Enterprises, Sierra Vista Hospital Inc., Silicon Valley Outpatient Surgery Centers LLC, Silver Cross Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Silver Cross/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Sinai-Grace Premier Clinical Management Services LLC, Siouxland Surgery Center Limited Liability Partnership, Solantic Corporation, Solantic Development LLC, Solantic Holdings Corporation, Solantic of Jacksonville LLC, Solantic of Orlando LLC, Solantic/South Florida LLC, South Carolina East Cooper Surgical Specialists L.L.C., South Carolina Health Services Inc., South Carolina SeWee Family Medicine L.L.C., South County Outpatient Endoscopy Services L.P., South Denver Musculoskeletal Surgical Partners LLC, South Florida Ambulatory Surgical Center LLC, South Fulton Health Care Centers Inc., SouthCare Physicians Group Neurology L.L.C., SouthCare Physicians Group Obstetrics & Gynecology L.L.C., Southeast Ohio Surgical Suites LLC, Southern Orthopedics and Sports Medicine L.L.C., Southern States Physician Operations Inc., Southwest Ambulatory Surgery Center L.L.C., Southwest Childrens Hospital LLC, Southwest Endoscopy LLC, Southwest Orthopedic and Spine Hospital LLC, Southwest Orthopedic and Spine Hospital Real Estate LLC, Southwestern Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Spalding Regional Medical Center Inc., Spalding Regional OB/GYN L.L.C., Spalding Regional Physician Services L.L.C., Specialty Surgery Center of Fort Worth L.P., Specialty Surgicenters Inc., Spinal Diagnostics and Treatment Centers L.L.C., Spine & Joint Physician Associates, Springfield Service Holding Corporation, St. Augustine Endoscopy Center LLC, St. Christophers Pediatric Urgent Care Center - Allentown L.L.C, St. Josephs Hospital Surgical Co-Management LLC, St. Josephs Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, St. Josephs Surgery Center L.P., St. Louis Physician Alliance LLC, St. Louis Surgical Center LLC, St. Louis Urology Center LLC, St. Lukes/USP Surgery Centers LLC, St. Marys Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, St. Marys Hospital Cardiovascular Co-Management LLC, St. Marys Hospital Surgical Co-Management LLC, St. Marys Levee Company LLC, St. Marys Medical Center Inc., St. Vincent Health/USP LLC, St. Vincent/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Stockton Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Subsidiaries of USPI Holding Company Inc., Suburban Endoscopy Center LLC, Summit View Surgery Center LLC, Sun View Imaging L.L.C., Sunrise Medical Group I L.L.C., Sunrise Medical Group II L.L.C., Sunrise Medical Group IV L.L.C., SurgCenter Camelback LLC, SurgCenter Northeast LLC, SurgCenter Pinellas LLC, SurgCenter Tucson LLC, SurgCenter at Paradise Valley LLC, SurgCenter of Deer Valley LLC, SurgCenter of Glen Burnie LLC, SurgCenter of Palm Beach Gardens LLC, SurgCenter of Plano LLC, SurgCenter of Southern Maryland LLC, SurgCenter of St. Lucie LLC, SurgCenter of White Marsh LLC, Surgery Affiliate of El Paso LLC, Surgery Center at Mount Pleasant LLC, Surgery Center at University Park LLC, Surgery Center of Atlanta LLC, Surgery Center of Canfield LLC, Surgery Center of Columbia L.P., Surgery Center of Coral Gables LLC, Surgery Center of Okeechobee LLC, Surgery Center of Pembroke Pines L.L.C., Surgery Center of Peoria L.L.C., Surgery Center of Richardson Physician Partnership L.P., Surgery Center of Santa Barbara LLC, Surgery Center of Scottsdale LLC, Surgery Center of Tempe Real Estate II L.L.C., Surgery Center of Tempe Real Estate L.L.C., Surgery Centers of America II L.L.C., Surgery Centre of SW Florida LLC, Surgical & Bariatric Associates of Atlanta Medical Center L.L.C., Surgical Clinical Excellence at Desert Regional LLC, Surgical Elite of Avondale L.L.C., Surgical Health Partners LLC, Surgical Institute Management LLC, Surgical Institute of Reading LLC, Surgical Specialists at Princeton LLC, Surgicare of Miramar L.L.C., Surginet Inc., Surgis Inc., Surgis Management Services Inc., Surgis of Chico Inc., Surgis of Phoenix Inc., Surgis of Redding Inc., Surgis of Victoria Inc., Sutton Road Pediatrics L.L.C., Sylvan Grove Hospital Inc., TENN SM LLC, TFPS IV L.L.C., TH Healthcare Ltd., TH International Services Florida LLC, THV Park Cities LLC, THVG Arlington GP LLC, THVG Bariatric GP LLC, THVG Bariatric L.L.C., THVG Bedford GP LLC, THVG Bellaire GP LLC, THVG DSP GP LLC, THVG DeSoto GP LLC, THVG Denton GP LLC, THVG Fort Worth GP LLC, THVG Frisco GP LLC, THVG Garland GP LLC, THVG Grapevine GP LLC, THVG Irving-Coppell GP LLC, THVG Lewisville GP LLC, THVG North Garland GP LLC, THVG Park Cities/Trophy Club GP LLC, THVG Rockwall 2 GP LLC, THVG Valley View GP LLC, TLC ASC LLC, TMC Holding Company LLC, TOPS Specialty Hospital Ltd., TPG Hospital LLC, TPR Practice Management LLC, TPS VI of PA L.L.C., TRMC Holdings LLC, TSPE LLC, Tamarac Surgery Center LLC, Tempe New Day Surgery Center LP, Templeton Imaging Inc., Tenet Business Services Corporation, Tenet California Inc., Tenet Central Carolina Physicians Inc., Tenet EKG Inc., Tenet El Paso Ltd., Tenet Employment Inc., Tenet Finance Corp., Tenet Florida Inc., Tenet Florida Physician Services II L.L.C., Tenet Florida Physician Services III L.L.C., Tenet Florida Physician Services L.L.C., Tenet Fort Mill Inc., Tenet Global Business Center Inc., Tenet HealthSystem Bucks County L.L.C., Tenet HealthSystem Graduate L.L.C., Tenet HealthSystem Hahnemann L.L.C., Tenet HealthSystem Medical Inc., Tenet HealthSystem Nacogdoches ASC GP Inc., Tenet HealthSystem Philadelphia Inc., Tenet HealthSystem Roxborough LLC, Tenet HealthSystem St. Christophers Hospital for Children L.L.C., Tenet Hilton Head Heart L.L.C., Tenet Hospitals Limited, Tenet Network Management Inc., Tenet Patient Safety Organization LLC, Tenet Physician Resources LLC, Tenet Physician Services - Hilton Head Inc., Tenet Rehab Piedmont Inc., Tenet Relocation Services L.L.C., Tenet SC East Cooper Hospitalists L.L.C., Tenet South Carolina Gastrointestinal Surgical Specialists L.L.C., Tenet South Carolina Island Medical L.L.C., Tenet South Carolina Lowcountry OB/GYN L.L.C., Tenet South Carolina Mt. Pleasant OB/GYN L.L.C., Tenet Unifour Urgent Care Center L.L.C., Tenet Ventures Inc., TenetCare Frisco Inc., Terre Haute Surgical Center LLC, Teton Outpatient Services LLC, Texan Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Texas Endoscopy Centers LLC, Texas Health Venture Arlington Hospital LLC, Texas Health Venture Baylor Plano LLC, Texas Health Venture Carrollton LLC, Texas Health Venture Centennial LLC, Texas Health Venture Ennis LLC, Texas Health Venture Fort Worth L.L.C., Texas Health Venture Granbury LLC, Texas Health Venture Heritage Park LLC, Texas Health Venture Keller LLC, Texas Health Venture Las Colinas LLC, Texas Health Venture Mansfield LLC, Texas Health Venture Plano Endo LLC, Texas Health Venture Plano LLC, Texas Health Venture Plano Parkway LLC, Texas Health Venture Texas Spine LLC, Texas Health Ventures Group L.L.C., Texas Orthopedics Surgery Center LLC, Texas Regional Medical Center LLC, Texas Regional Medical in Sunnyvale, Texas Spine and Joint Hospital LLC, The 6300 West Roosevelt Partnership, The Ambulatory Surgical Center of St. Louis L.P., The Healthcare Insurance Corporation, The Healthcare Underwriting Company a Risk Retention Group, The Huron Corporation, The Outpatient Center LLC, The Southeastern Spine Institute Ambulatory Surgery Center L.L.C., The Surgery Center at Jensen Beach LLC, The Surgery Center at Williamson LLC, The Tresanti Surgical Center LLC, Theda Oaks Gastroenterology & Endoscopy Center LLC, Titan Health Corporation, Titan Health of Chattanooga Inc., Titan Health of Hershey Inc., Titan Health of Mount Laurel LLC, Titan Health of North Haven Inc., Titan Health of Pittsburgh Inc., Titan Health of Pleasant Hills Inc., Titan Health of Princeton Inc., Titan Health of Sacramento Inc., Titan Health of Saginaw Inc., Titan Health of Titusville Inc., Titan Health of West Penn Inc., Titan Health of Westminster Inc., Titan Management Corporation, Titusville Center for Surgical Excellence LLC, Toms River Surgery Center L.L.C., Total Joint Center of the Northland LLC, Tower Road Real Estate LLC, Tower/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Treasure Coast ASC LLC, Trophy Club Medical Center L.P., True Medical Weight Loss L.P., True Medical Wellness LP, True Results Georgia Inc., True Results HoldCo LLC, True Results Missouri LLC, Tucson Digestive Institute LLC, Tucson Hospital Holdings Inc., Tucson Physician Group Holdings LLC, Turlock Imaging Services LLC, Turlock Land Company LLC, Tuscan Surgery Center at Las Colinas LLC, Twin Cities Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Twin Cities Community Hospital Inc., UAP Las Colinas Endo LLC, UAP Lebanon Endo LLC, UAP Nashville Endoscopy LLC, UAP Scopes LLC, UAP of Arizona Inc., UAP of California Inc., UAP of Missouri Inc., UAP of New Jersey Inc., UAP of Oklahoma Inc., UAP of Tennessee Inc., UAP of Texas Inc., UCC Tucson Holdings LLC, UMC Surgery Center Lubbock LLC, UMC-USP Surgery Centers LLC, USC/Norris Cancer Hospital, USP 12th Ave Real Estate Inc., USP Acquisition Corporation, USP Alexandria Inc., USP Assurance Company, USP Athens Inc., USP Atlanta Inc., USP Austin Inc., USP Bariatric LLC, USP Beaumont Inc., USP Bergen Inc., USP Bloomington Inc., USP Bridgeton Inc., USP Cedar Park Inc., USP Chesterfield Inc., USP Chicago Inc., USP Cincinnati Inc., USP Coast Inc., USP Columbia Inc., USP Connecticut Inc., USP Corpus Christi Inc., USP Creve Coeur Inc., USP Denver Inc., USP Des Peres Inc., USP Destin Inc., USP Domestic Holdings Inc., USP Effingham Inc., USP Encinitas Endoscopy Inc., USP Fenton Inc., USP Festus Inc., USP Florissant Inc., USP Fort Lauderdale Inc., USP Fort Worth Hospital Real Estate Inc., USP Fredericksburg Inc., USP Fresno Inc., USP Frontenac Inc., USP Gateway Inc., USP HMH Surgery Center at Shore LLC, USP Harbour View Inc., USP Houston Inc., USP Indiana Inc., USP International Holdings Inc., USP Jersey City Inc., USP Kansas City Inc., USP Knoxville Inc., USP Little Rock Inc., USP Long Island Inc., USP Louisiana Inc., USP Lubbock Inc., USP Maryland Inc., USP Mason Ridge Inc., USP Mattis Inc., USP Michigan Inc., USP Midland Inc., USP Midland Real Estate Inc., USP Midwest Inc., USP Mission Hills Inc., USP Montana Inc., USP Morris Inc., USP Mt. Vernon Inc., USP Nevada Holdings LLC, USP Nevada Inc., USP New Hampshire Inc., USP New Jersey Inc., USP Newport News Inc., USP North Carolina Inc., USP North Kansas City Inc., USP North Texas Inc., USP Northwest Arkansas Inc., USP OKC Inc., USP OKC Manager Inc., USP Office Parkway Inc., USP Ohio RE Inc., USP Oklahoma Inc., USP Olive Inc., USP Orlando Inc., USP Philadelphia Inc., USP Phoenix Inc., USP Portland Inc., USP Reading Inc., USP Richmond II Inc., USP Richmond Inc., USP Sacramento Inc., USP San Antonio Inc., USP Santa Barbara Surgery Centers Inc., USP Securities Corporation, USP Silver Cross Inc., USP Siouxland Inc., USP Somerset Inc., USP South Carolina Inc., USP Southlake RE Inc., USP St. Louis Inc., USP St. Louis Urology Inc., USP St. Peters Inc., USP Sunset Hills Inc., USP TJ STL Inc., USP Tennessee Inc., USP Texas Air L.L.C., USP Texas L.P., USP Torrance Inc., USP Tucson Inc., USP Turnersville Inc., USP Virginia Beach Inc., USP Washington Inc., USP Waxahachie Management L.L.C., USP Webster Groves Inc., USP West Covina Inc., USP Westwood Inc., USP Winter Park Inc., USP Wisconsin Inc., USP-HMH Surgery Center at Central Jersey LLC, USP/Carondelet Tucson Surgery Centers LLC, USP/SOS Joint Venture LLC, USPI Group Holdings Inc., USPI Holding Company Inc.1, USPI Holdings Inc., USPI Physician Strategy Group LLC, USPI San Diego Inc., USPI Stockton Inc., USPI Surgical Services Inc., Ulysses True Results NewCo LLC, Underwood Surgery Center LLC, United Anesthesia Partners Inc., United Real Estate Development Inc., United Real Estate Holdings Inc., United Surgical Partners Holdings Inc., United Surgical Partners International, United Surgical Partners International Inc., Universal Medical Care Center L.L.C., University Surgery Center Ltd., University Surgical Partners of Dallas L.L.P., Upper Bay Surgery Center LLC, Upper Cumberland Physicians Surgery Center LLC, Urgent Care Centers of Arizona LLC, Utica ASC Partners LLC, Utica/USP Tulsa L.L.C., VB Brownsville LTACH LLC, VBOA ASC GP LLC, VBOA ASC Partners L.L.C., VHM Services Inc., VHS Acquisition Corporation, VHS Acquisition Partnership Number 1 L.P, VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 1 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 11 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 12 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 3 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 4 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 5 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 6 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 7 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 8 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 9 Inc., VHS Arizona Heart Institute Inc., VHS Brownsville Hospital Company LLC, VHS Chicago Market Procurement LLC, VHS Childrens Hospital of Michigan Inc., VHS Detroit Businesses Inc., VHS Detroit Receiving Hospital Inc., VHS Detroit Ventures Inc., VHS Harlingen Hospital Company LLC, VHS Harper-Hutzel Hospital Inc., VHS Holding Company Inc., VHS Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital Inc., VHS Imaging Centers Inc., VHS New England Holding Company I Inc., VHS Outpatient Clinics Inc., VHS Phoenix Health Plan Inc., VHS Physicians of Michigan, VHS Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan Inc., VHS San Antonio Imaging Partners L.P., VHS San Antonio Partners LLC, VHS Sinai-Grace Hospital Inc., VHS University Laboratories Inc., VHS Valley Health System LLC, VHS Valley Holdings LLC, VHS Valley Management Company Inc., VHS West Suburban Medical Center Inc., VHS Westlake Hospital Inc., VHS of Anaheim Inc., VHS of Arrowhead Inc., VHS of Huntington Beach Inc., VHS of Illinois Inc., VHS of Michigan Inc., VHS of Michigan Staffing Inc., VHS of Orange County Inc., VHS of Phoenix Inc., VHS of South Phoenix Inc., Valley Baptist Lab Services LLC, Valley Baptist Physician Performance Network, Valley Baptist Realty Company LLC, Valley Baptist Wellness Center LLC, Valley Health Care Network, Vanguard ASC LLC, Vanguard Health Financial Company LLC, Vanguard Health Holding Company I LLC, Vanguard Health Holding Company II LLC, Vanguard Health Management Inc., Vanguard Health Systems, Vanguard Health Systems Inc., Vanguard Holding Company I Inc., Vanguard Holding Company II Inc., Vanguard Medical Specialists LLC, Vanguard Physician Services LLC, Ventana Surgical Center LLC, Veroscan Inc., Victoria Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Virtua-USP Princeton LLC, WHASA L.C., Walker Baptist Affinity LLC, Walker Street Imaging Care Inc., Warner Park Surgery Center LLC, Watermark Physician Services Inc., Webster Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Wellington Endo LLC, Wellstar/USP Joint Venture I LLC, Wellstar/USP Joint Venture II LLC, West Boca Health Services L.L.C., West Boca Medical Center Inc., West Boynton Urgent Care L.L.C., West Bozeman Surgery Center LLC, West Palm Healthcare Real Estate Inc., West Suburban Radiation Therapy Center LLC, Westgate Surgery Center LLC, Westlake Hospital LLC, Westlawn Surgery Center LLC, Westminster Surgery Center LLC, Westminster Surgery Centers LLC, White Fence Surgical Suites LLC, Willamette Spine Center Ambulatory Surgery LLC, Wilmington Endoscopy Center LLC, Wilshire Rental Corp., Winter Haven Ambulatory Surgical Center L.L.C., Wisconsin Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Wymark Surgery Center LLC, and YNHHSC/USP Surgery Centers LLC.The following companies are subsidiares of BP: 200 PS Overseas Holdings Inc., 563916 Alberta Ltd., ACP (Malaysia) Inc., AE Cedar Creek Holdings LLC, AE Goshen II Holdings LLC, AE Goshen II Wind Farm LLC, AE Power Services LLC, AE Wind PartsCo LLC, AM/PM International Inc., ARCO, ARCO British International, ARCO British Limited, ARCO Coal Australia Inc., ARCO El-Djazair Holdings Inc., ARCO Environmental Remediation L.L.C., ARCO Exploration Inc., ARCO Gaviota Company, ARCO International Investments Inc., ARCO International Services Inc., ARCO Midcon LLC, ARCO Oil Company Nigeria Unlimited, ARCO Oman Inc, ARCO Resources Limited, ARCO Trinidad Exploration and Production Company Limited, ARCO Unimar Holdings LLC, Actomat B.V., Advance Petroleum Holdings Pty Ltd, Advance Petroleum Pty Ltd, Air BP Albania SHA, Air BP Brasil Ltda., Air BP Canada LLC, Air BP Croatia d.o.o., Air BP Finland Oy, Air BP Iceland, Air BP Limited, Air BP Norway AS, Air BP Sales Romania S.R.L., Air BP Sweden AB, Air Refuel Pty Ltd, Allgreen Pty Ltd, AmProp Finance Company, American Oil Company, Amoco (Fiddich) Limited, Amoco (U.K.) Exploration Company LLC., Amoco Bolivia Petroleum Company, Amoco Bolivia Services Company Inc., Amoco Canada International Holdings B.V., Amoco Capline Pipeline Company, Amoco Chemical (Europe) S.A., Amoco Chemicals (FSC) B.V., Amoco Cypress Pipeline Company, Amoco Destin Pipeline Company, Amoco Environmental Services Company, Amoco Exploration Holdings B.V., Amoco Guatemala Petroleum Company, Amoco International Finance Corporation, Amoco International Petroleum Company, Amoco Leasing Corporation, Amoco Louisiana Fractionator Company, Amoco MB Fractionation Company, Amoco MBF Company, Amoco Main Pass Gathering Company, Amoco Marketing Environmental Services Company, Amoco Netherlands Petroleum Company, Amoco Nigeria Exploration Company Limited, Amoco Nigeria Oil Company Limited, Amoco Nigeria Petroleum Company, Amoco Nigeria Petroleum Company Limited, Amoco Norway Oil Company, Amoco Oil Holding Company, Amoco Olefins Corporation, Amoco Overseas Exploration Company, Amoco Pipeline Asset Company, Amoco Pipeline Holding Company, Amoco Properties Incorporated, Amoco Remediation Management Services Corporation, Amoco Research Operating Company, Amoco Rio Grande Pipeline Company, Amoco Somalia Petroleum Company, Amoco Sulfur Recovery Company, Amoco Tri-States NGL Pipeline Company, Amoco Trinidad Gas B.V., Amoco U.K. Petroleum Limited, Amprop Illinois I Limited, Amprop Inc., Anaconda Arizona Inc., Arabian Production And Marketing Lubricants, Aral Aktiengesellschaft, Aral Luxembourg S.A., Aral Services Luxembourg Sarl, Aral Tankstellen Services Sarl, Arco Mediterraneo Inversiones S.L., Areas Noriega S.L., Areas Singulares Reyes S.L., Aspac Lubricants (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Atlantic 2/3 UK Holdings Limited, Atlantic Richfield Company, Atlantic Richfield Companyd, Autino Holdings Limited, Autino Limited, Auwahi Wind Energy Holdings LLC, B2Mobility GmbH, BASS Management Pty Ltd, BP (Abu Dhabi) Limited, BP (Barbados) Holding SRL, BP (Barbican) Limited, BP (China) Holdings Limited, BP (China) Industrial Lubricants Limited, BP (GTA Mauritania) Finance Limited, BP (GTA Senegal) Finance Limited, BP (Gibraltar) Limited, BP (Guangzhou) Advanced Mobility Limited, BP (Hunan) Petroleum Company Limited, BP (Indian Agencies) Limited, BP (Shandong) Petroleum Co. Ltd, BP (Shanghai) Trading Limited, BP - Castrol (Thailand) Limited, BP AMI Leasing Inc., BP Absheron Limited, BP Advanced Mobility Limited, BP Africa Limited, BP Africa Oil Limited, BP Akaryakit Ortakligi, BP Alaska LNG LLC, BP Alternative Energy Holdings Limited, BP Alternative Energy Investments Limited, BP Alternative Energy North America Inc., BP Alternative Energy Trinidad and Tobago Limited, BP America Chembel Holding LLC, BP America Chemicals Company, BP America Foreign Investments Inc., BP America Inc, BP America Inc., BP America Limited, BP America Production Company, BP Amoco Chemical Company, BP Amoco Chemical Holding Company, BP Amoco Chemical Indonesia Limited, BP Amoco Chemical Malaysia Holding Company, BP Amoco Exploration (Faroes) Limited, BP Amoco Exploration (In Amenas) Limited, BP Andaman II Ltd, BP Angola (Block 18) B.V., BP Argentina Exploration Company, BP Argentina Holdings LLC, BP Aromatics Holdings Limited, BP Aromatics Limited, BP Asia Limited, BP Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., BP Asia Pacific Holdings Limited, BP Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, BP Australia Capital Markets Limited, BP Australia Employee Share Plan Proprietary Limited, BP Australia Group Pty Ltde, BP Australia Investments Pty Ltd, BP Australia Nominees Proprietary Limited, BP Australia Pty Ltd, BP Australia Shipping Pty Ltd, BP Australia Swaps Management Limited, BP Aviation A/S, BP Benevolent Fund Trustees Limited, BP Berau Ltd., BP Biocombustiveis S.A., BP Bioenergia Campina Verde Ltda., BP Bioenergia Ituiutaba Ltda., BP Bioenergia Itumbiara S.A., BP Bioenergia Tropical S.A., BP Biofuels Advanced Technology Inc., BP Biofuels Brazil Investments Limited, BP Biofuels Louisiana LLC, BP Biofuels North America LLC, BP Biofuels Trading Comercio Exportacao Ltda., BP Bomberai Ltd., BP Brasil Ltda., BP Brazil Tracking L.L.C., BP Bulwer Island Pty Ltd, BP Business Service Centre Asia Sdn Bhd, BP Business Service Centre KFT, BP CIV Pty Ltd, BP Canada Energy Development Company, BP Canada Energy Group ULC, BP Canada Energy Marketing Corp., BP Canada International Holdings B.V., BP Canada Investments Inc., BP Capellen Sarl, BP Capital Markets, BP Capital Markets America, BP Capital Markets America Inc., BP Capital Markets p.l.c., BP Car Fleet Limited, BP Caribbean Company, BP Castrol KK, BP Castrol Lubricants (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., BP Central Pipelines LLC, BP Chembel, BP Chemicals (Korea) Limited, BP Chemicals East China Investments Limited, BP Chemicals Investments Limited, BP Chemicals Limited, BP China Exploration and Production Company, BP Comercializadora de Energia Ltda., BP Commodities Trading Limited, BP Commodity Supply B.V., BP Company North America, BP Company North America Inc., BP Containment Response Limited, BP Containment Response System Holdings LLC, BP Continental Holdings Limited, BP Corporate Holdings, BP Corporate Holdings Limited, BP Corporation North America, BP Corporation North America Inc., BP D-B Pipeline Company LLC, BP D230 Limited, BP Danmark A/S, BP Developments Australia Pty. Ltd., BP Dogal Gaz Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, BP East Kalimantan CBM Limited, BP Eastern Mediterranean Limited, BP Egypt Company, BP Egypt East Delta Marine Corporation, BP Egypt East Tanka B.V., BP Egypt Production B.V., BP Egypt Ras El Barr B.V., BP Egypt West Mediterranean (Block B) B.V., BP Energy Asia Pte. Limited, BP Energy Colombia Limited, BP Energy Company, BP Energy Europe Limited, BP Energy Solutions B.V., BP Energy do Brasil Ltda., BP Energia Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., BP Espana S.A. Unipersonal, BP Estaciones y Servicios Energeticos Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, BP Europa SE, BP Exploracion de Venezuela S.A., BP Exploration & Production Inc., BP Exploration (Absheron) Limited, BP Exploration (Alaska), BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., BP Exploration (Algeria) Limited, BP Exploration (Alpha), BP Exploration (Alpha) Limited, BP Exploration (Angola), BP Exploration (Angola) Limited, BP Exploration (Azerbaijan), BP Exploration (Azerbaijan) Limited, BP Exploration (Canada) Limited, BP Exploration (Caspian Sea), BP Exploration (Caspian Sea) Limited, BP Exploration (D230) Limited, BP Exploration (Delta), BP Exploration (Delta) Limited, BP Exploration (El Djazair) Limited, BP Exploration (Epsilon) Limited, BP Exploration (Gambia) Limited, BP Exploration (Greenland) Limited, BP Exploration (Madagascar) Limited, BP Exploration (Morocco) Limited, BP Exploration (Namibia) Limited, BP Exploration (Nigeria Finance) Limited, BP Exploration (Nigeria) Limited, BP Exploration (Psi) Limited, BP Exploration (STP) Limited, BP Exploration (Shafag-Asiman) Limited, BP Exploration (Shah Deniz) Limited, BP Exploration (South Atlantic) Limited, BP Exploration (Xazar) Pte. Ltd., BP Exploration Angola (Kwanza Benguela) Limited, BP Exploration Argentina Limited, BP Exploration Australia Pty Ltd Level 15, BP Exploration Beta Limited, BP Exploration China Limited, BP Exploration Company (Middle East) Limited, BP Exploration Company Limited, BP Exploration Indonesia Limited, BP Exploration Libya Limited, BP Exploration Mexico Limited, BP Exploration Mexico S.A. De C.V., BP Exploration North Africa Limited, BP Exploration Operating Company, BP Exploration Operating Company Limited, BP Exploration Orinoco Limited, BP Exploration Personnel Company Limited, BP Exploration Peru Limited, BP Express Shopping Limited, BP Finance Australia Pty Ltd, BP Finance p.l.c., BP Foundation Incorporated, BP France, BP Fuels & Lubricants AS, BP Fuels Deutschland GmbH, BP GOM Logistics LLC, BP Gas & Power Investments Limited, BP Gas Europe S.A.U., BP Gas Marketing Limited, BP Gas Supply (Angola) LLC, BP Ghana Limited, BP Global Investments, BP Global Investments Limited, BP Global Investments Salalah & Co LLC, BP Global West Africa Limited, BP Greece Limited, BP Guangdong Limited, BP High Density Polyethylene - France, BP Holdings (Thailand) Limited, BP Holdings B.V., BP Holdings Canada, BP Holdings Canada Limited, BP Holdings International B.V., BP Holdings North America, BP Holdings North America Limited, BP Hong Kong Limited, BP India Private Limited, BP Indonesia Investment Limited, BP International, BP International Limited, BP International Services Company, BP Investment Management Limited, BP Investments Asia Limited, BP Iran Limited, BP Iraq N.V., BP Italia SpA, BP Japan K.K., BP Korea Limited, BP Kuwait Limited, BP LNG Shipping Limited, BP Latin America LLC, BP Latin America Upstream Services Inc., BP Lubricants KK, BP Lubricants USA Inc., BP Luxembourg S.A., BP Malaysia Holdings Sdn. Bhd., BP Management International B.V., BP Management Netherlands B.V., BP Marine Limited, BP Mariner Holding Company LLC, BP Maritime Services (Singapore) Pte. Limited, BP Marketing Egypt LLC, BP Mauritania Investments Limited, BP Mauritius Limited (in liquidation), BP Middle East Enterprises Corporation, BP Middle East LLC, BP Middle East Limited, BP Midstream Partners GP LLC, BP Midstream Partners Holdings LLC, BP Midstream Partners LP, BP Midwest Product Pipelines Holdings LLC, BP Mocambique Limitada, BP Mocambique Limited, BP Muturi Holdings B.V., BP Nederland Holdings BV, BP Netherlands Upstream B.V., BP New Ventures Middle East Limited, BP New Zealand Holdings Limited, BP New Zealand Share Scheme Limited, BP Nutrition Inc., BP Offshore Gathering Systems Inc., BP Offshore Pipelines Company LLC, BP Offshore Response Company LLC, BP Oil (Thailand) Limited, BP Oil Australia Pty Ltd, BP Oil Espana S.A., BP Oil Hellenic S.A., BP Oil International, BP Oil International Limited, BP Oil Kent Refinery Limited (in liquidation), BP Oil Llandarcy Refinery Limited, BP Oil Logistics UK Limited, BP Oil New Zealand Limited, BP Oil Pipeline Company, BP Oil Senegal S.A., BP Oil Shipping Company, BP Oil UK Limited, BP Oil Venezuela Limited, BP Oil Vietnam Limited, BP Oil Yemen Limited, BP Olex Fanal Mineralol GmbH, BP One Pipeline Company LLC, BP Pacific Investments Ltd, BP Pakistan (Badin) Inc., BP Pakistan Exploration and Production Inc., BP Pension Escrow Limited, BP Pension Trustees Limited, BP Pensions (Overseas) Limited, BP Pensions Limited, BP Petrochemicals India Investments Limited, BP Petroleo y Gas S.A., BP Petrolleri Anonim Sirketi, BP Pipelines (Alaska) Inc., BP Pipelines (BTC) Limited, BP Pipelines (North America) Inc., BP Pipelines (SCP) Limited, BP Pipelines (TANAP) Limited, BP Pipelines TAP Limited, BP Polska Services Sp. z o.o. Ul., BP Portugal -Comercio de Combustiveis e Lubrificantes SA, BP Poseidon Limited, BP Products North America, BP Products North America Inc., BP Properties Limited, BP Raffinaderij Rotterdam B.V., BP Refinery (Kwinana) Proprietary Limited, BP Regional Australasia Holdings Pty Ltd, BP River Rouge Pipeline Company LLC, BP Russian Investments Limited, BP Russian Ventures Limited, BP SC Holdings LLC, BP Scale Up Factory Limited, BP Senegal Investments Limited, BP Services International Limited, BP Servicios de Combustibles S.A. de C.V., BP Servicios territoriales S.A., BP Shafag-Asiman Limited, BP Shipping Limited, BP Singapore Pte. Limited, BP Solar Energy North America LLC, BP Solar Espana S.A., BP Solar International Inc., BP Solar Pty Ltd, BP South America Holdings Ltd, BP Southern Africa Proprietary Limited, BP Southern Cone Company, BP Subsea Well Response (Brazil) Limited, BP Subsea Well Response Limited, BP Taiwan Marketing Limited, BP Technology Ventures Inc., BP Technology Ventures Limited, BP Train 2/3 Holding SRL, BP Transportation (Alaska) Inc., BP Trinidad Processing Limited, BP Trinidad and Tobago, BP Trinidad and Tobago LLC, BP Turkey Refining Limited, BP Two Pipeline Company LLC, BP UK Retained Holdings Limited, BP Venezuela Investments B.V., BP West Aru I Limited, BP West Aru II Limited, BP West Papua I Limited, BP West Papua III Limited, BP Wind Energy North America Inc., BP Wiriagar Ltd., BP World-Wide Technical Services Limited, BP Zhuhai Chemical Company Limited, BP+Amoco International Limited, BP-AIOC Exploration (TISA) LLC, BPA Investment Holding Company, BPNE International B.V., BPRY Caribbean Ventures LLC, BPX (Eagle Ford) Gathering LLC, BPX (KCS Resources) LLC, BPX (Karnes) Gathering LLC, BPX (Permian) Gathering LLC, BPX (WSF Operating) Inc., BPX Energy Inc., BPX Midstream LLC, BPX Operating Company, BPX Production Company, BPX Properties (GP) LLC, BPX Properties (LP) LLC, BPX Properties (NA) LP, BTC Pipeline Holding Company Limited, BXL Plastics Limitedv, Bahia de Bizkaia Electridad S.L., Baltimore Ennis Land Company Inc., Black Lake Pipe Line Company, Brian Jasper Nominees Pty Ltd, Britannic Energy Trading Limited, Britannic Investments Iraq Limited, Britannic Marketing Limited, Britannic Strategies Limited, Britannic Trading Limited, Britoil Limited, Burmah Castrol, Burmah Castrol Australia Pty Ltd, Burmah Castrol Holdings Inc., Burmah Castrol PLC, Burmah Castrol South Africa (Pty) Limited, Burmah Chile SpA, Butamax Advanced Biofuels, CASTROL Austria GmbHb, CH-Twenty Inc., CNAA, Cadman DBP Limited, Casitas Pipeline Company, Castrol (China) Limited, Castrol (Ireland) Limited, Castrol (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Castrol (Shenzhen) Company Limited, Castrol (Tianjin) Lubricants Co. Ltd., Castrol (U.K.) Limited, Castrol Australia Pty. Limited, Castrol B.V., Castrol BP Petco Limited Liability Company, Castrol Brasil Ltda., Castrol Caribbean & Central America Inc., Castrol Colombia Ltda., Castrol Del Peru S.A., Castrol Egypt Lubricants S.A.E., Castrol India Limited, Castrol Industrie und Service GmbH, Castrol KK, Castrol Limited, Castrol Lubricants RO S.R.L, Castrol Mexico S.A., Castrol Namibia (Pty) Limited, Castrol Offshore Limited, Castrol Pakistan (Private) Limited, Castrol Philippines Inc., Castrol Servicos Ltda., Castrol Ukraine LLC, Castrol Zimbabwe (Private) Limited, Centrel Pty Ltd, Charge Your Car Limitedc, Chargemaster, Chargemaster (Europe) GmbH, Chargemaster Limited, Charging Solutions Limited, Clarisse Holdings Pty Ltd, Coastwise Trading Company Inc., Consolidada de Energia y Lubricantes (CENERLUB) C.A., Conti Cross Keys Inn Inc., Coro Trading NZ Limited, Cuyama Pipeline Company, DHC Solvent Chemie GmbH, Dermody Developments Pty Ltd, Dermody Holdings Pty Ltd, Dermody Investments Pty Ltd, Dermody Petroleum Pty. Ltd., Dome Beaufort Petroleum Limited, Dome Wallis (1980) Limited Partnership, ECM Markets SA (Pty) Ltd, Elektromotive Limited, Elite Customer Solutions Pty Ltd, Elm Holdings Inc., Energy Global Investments (USA) Inc., Enstar LLC, Estacion de Servicio Alto Campoo S.L., Estacion de Servicio Ganzo 10 S.L., Estacion de Servicio Reocin 9 S.L., Estacion de Servicio Santillana II S.L., Estacion de Servicio Sardinero S.L., Estonian Aviation Fuelling Services, Europa Oil NZ Limited, Exomet Inc., Expandite Contract Services Limited, Exploration (Luderitz Basin) Limited, Exploration Service Company Limited, FWK (2017) Limited, FWK Holdings (2017) LTD, Finite Carbon, Flat Ridge 2 Holdings LLC, Flat Ridge Wind Energy LLC, Foseco Holding Inc., Foseco Holding International B.V., Foseco Inc., Fosroc Expandite Limited, Fotech Solutions Ltd, Fowler Ridge Holdings LLC, Fowler Ridge I Land Investments LLC, Fowler Ridge II Holdings LLC, Fowler Ridge III Wind Farm LLC, FreeBees B.V., Fuel & Retail Aviat ion Sweden AB, Fuelplane- Sociedade Abastecedora De Aeronaves Unipessoal Lda, GOAM 1 C.I S. A .S, Gardena Holdings Inc., Gelsenkirchen Raffinerie Netz GmbH, Grampian Aviation Fuelling Services Limited, Guangdong Investments Limited, Highlands Ethanol LLC, Hosteleria Noriega S.L., IGI Resources Inc., Insight Analytics Solutions Holdings Limited, Insight Analytics Solutions Limited, Insight Analytics Solutions USA Inc., International Bunker Supplies Pty Ltd, Iraq Petroleum Company Limited, Jupiter Insurance Limited, Ken-Chas Reserve Company, Kenilworth Oil Company Limited, Kingbook Inversiones Socimi S.A., Latin Energy Argentina S.A., Lebanese Aviation Technical Services S.A.L., Limited Liability Company BP Toplivnaya Kompania, Limited liability company Setra Lubricants, Lubricants UK Limited, Lytt Limited, Manormaker (Nominee No. 1) Limited, Manormaker (Nominee No. 2) Limited, Manormaker GP Limited (99.90%) 11 Black Horse Lane, Mardi Gras Transportation System Company LLC, Markoil S.A., Masana Petroleum Solutions (Pty) Ltd, Mayaro Initiative for Private Enterprise Development, Mehoopany Holdings LLC, Mes Tecnologia En Servicios Y Energia S.A., Minza Pty. Ltd., Mountain City Remediation LLC, No. 1 Riverside Quay Proprietary Limited, Nordic Lubricants A/S, Nordic Lubricants AB, North America Funding Company, OMD87 Inc., OOO BP STL, Omega Oil Company, OnSight Analytics Solutions India Private Ltd., Orion Delaware Mountain Wind Farm LP, Orion Energy Holdings LLC, Orion Energy L.L.C.b, Orion Post Land Investments LLC, Oyambre 1 S.L., PRODUITS METALLURGIE DOITTAU, PT BP Petrochemicals, PT Castrol Indonesia, PT Castrol Manufacturing Indonesia, PT Jasatama Petroindo, Pacroy (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Peaks America Inc., Pearl River Delta Investments Limited, Petrocorner Retail S.L.U., Phoenix Petroleum Services Limited, Pozuelo 4 S.L., Prospect International C.A. (In liquidation), Puente Arce 4 S.L., Remediation Management Services Company, Richfield Oil Corporation, Rio Corvo 2 S.L., Rolling Thunder I Power Partners LLC, Romax Insight Korea Ltd., Ropemaker Deansgate Limited, Ropemaker Properties Limited, Ruhr Oel GmbH, Rusdene GSS Limited, SOFAST Limited, SRHP, Saturn Insurance Inc., Sherbino I Holdings LLC, Sherbino Mesa I Land Investments LLC, Sociedade de Promocao Imobiliaria Quinta do Loureiro SA, Societe de Gestion de Depots d'Hydrocarbures - GDH, South Texas Shale LLC, Southeast Texas Biofuels LLC, Southern Ridge Pipeline Holding Company, Southern Ridge Pipeline LP LLC, Sp/f Decision3 (GreenSteam) Company, Standard Oil Company, Standard Oil Company Inc., Standard Oil of Ohio, Stryde Limited, Sunrise Oil Sands Partnership, TISA Education Complex LLC, TJKK, Taradadis Pty. Ltd., Telcom General Corporation, Terre de Grace Partnership, The Anaconda Company, The BP Share Plans Trustees Limited, The Burmah Oil Company (Pakistan Trading) Limited, The Standard Oil Company, Toledo Refinery Holding Company LLC, Torrelavega 7 S.L., Union Texas International Corporation, Vastar Pipeline LLC, Veba Oel AG Veba Oel, Verenium, Viceroy Investments Limited, Villacarriedo 8 S.L., Warrenville Development Limited, Water Way Trading and Petroleum Services LLC, Welchem Inc., West Kimberley Fuels Pty Ltd, Westlake Houston Development LLC, Whiting Clean Energy Inc., Windpark Energy Nederland B.V., and Winwell Resources L.L.C.The following companies are subsidiares of TransDigm Group: ARA Deutschland GmbH, ARA Holding GmbH, Abbott Electronics Ltd., Acme Aerospace, Acme Aerospace Inc., Adams Rite Aerospace GmbH, Adams Rite Aerospace Inc., Advanced Inflatable Products Limited, Aero-Instruments, AeroControlex Group Inc., Aerosonic, Aerosonic LLC, Air-Sea Survival Equipment Trustee Limited, Airborne Acquisition Inc., Airborne Global Inc., Airborne Holdings Inc., Airborne Systems, Airborne Systems Canada Ltd., Airborne Systems Group Limited, Airborne Systems Holdings Limited, Airborne Systems Limited, Airborne Systems NA Inc., Airborne Systems North America Inc., Airborne Systems North America of CA Inc., Airborne Systems North America of NJ Inc., Airborne Systems Pension Trust Limited, Airborne UK Acquisition Limited, Airborne UK Parent Limited, Aircraft Materials Limited, AmSafe, AmSafe Aviation (Chongqing) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Private) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport Ltd., AmSafe Global Holdings Inc., AmSafe Global Services (Private) Limited, AmSafe Inc., Arkwin Industries, Arkwin Industries Inc., Aviation Technologies, Aviation Technologies Inc., Avionic Instruments, Avionics Instruments, Avionics Specialties Inc., AvtechTyee Inc., Beta Transformer Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Beta Transformer Technology Corporation, Beta Transformer Technology LLC, Breeze-Eastern Corporation, Breeze-Eastern LLC, Bridport Erie Aviation Inc., Bridport Holdings Inc., Bridport Ltd., Bridport-Air Carrier Inc., Bruce Aerospace Inc., Bruce Industries, CDA InterCorp, CEF Industries LLC, Champion Aerospace, Cobham, DDC Electronics K.K., DDC Electronics Ltd., DDC Electronics Private Limited, DDC Electronique S.A.R.L., DDC Elektronik GmbH, DDL195 Limited, Data Device Corp., Data Device Corporation, Dukes Aerospace Inc., Edlaw Limited, Electromech Technologies LLC, Elektro-Metall Export GmbH, Elektro-Metall Paks KFT, Esterline, Extant Components Group Holdings Inc., Extant Components Group Intermediate Inc., GQ Parachutes Limited, HARCO LLC, Harco, Hartwell Corporation, ILC Holdings Inc., Irvin Aerospace Limited, IrvinGQ France SAA, IrvinGQ Limited, Johnson Liverpool LLC, Kirkhill Elastomers, Kirkhill Inc., Kunshan Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., MarathonNorco Aerospace Inc., McKechnie Aerospace, McKechnie Aerospace (Europe) Ltd., McKechnie Aerospace DE Inc., McKechnie Aerospace DE LP, McKechnie Aerospace Holdings Inc., McKechnie Aerospace US LLC, Mecanismos de Matamoros S.A. de C.V., Militair Aviation Ltd., Norco, Nordisk Asia Pacific Limited, Nordisk Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, Nordisk Aviation Products (Kunshan) Ltd., Nordisk Aviation Products AS, North Hills Signal Processing Corp., North Hills Signal Processing Overseas Corp., Pascall Electronics Limited, Pemberton 123 Ltd., Pexco Aerospace, Pexco Aerospace Inc., PneuDraulics, PneuDraulics Inc., Rancho TransTechnology Corporation, Retainers Inc., SSP Industries, Schneller, Schneller Asia Pte. Ltd., Schneller S.A.R.L., Schroth Safety Products, Semco Instruments, Semco Instruments Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., Signal Processing Matamoros S.A. de C.V., Skandia, Skandia Inc., Skurka Aerospace, Skurka Aerospace Inc., Symetrics, Symetrics Industries LLC, Symetrics Technology Group LLC, TDG Germany GmbH, TEAC Aerospace Holdings Inc., TEAC Aerospace Technologies Inc., TTERUSA Inc., Tactair Fluid Controls Inc., Takata Protection Systems, Technical Airborne Components Industries SPRL, Telair International, Telair International AB, Telair International GmbH, Telair International LLC, Telair International Services PTE Ltd (JV 70.5%), Telair US LLC, Texas Rotronics Inc., TransDigm (Barbados) SRL, TransDigm European Holdings Limited, TransDigm Ireland Ltd., TransDigm Receivables LLC, TransDigm UK Holdings plc, Transicoil (Malaysia) Sendirian Berhad, Transicoil LLC, Whippany Actuation Systems, Whippany Actuation Systems LLC, XCEL Power Systems Ltd., Young & Franklin, and Young & Franklin Inc..Thursday night saw success for Prime Minister Theresa Mays efforts to get the European Union (EU) to echo her charge that Russia was highly likely to be responsible for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury.

The formulation is a vital feature of the UKs diplomatic and media campaign blaming Moscow for the alleged attempted assassination of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yuliabased on unsubstantiated claims that the nerve agent employed is of a type (a Novichok) once manufactured in the former Soviet Union.

May is using the Skripal case to ally the UK with powerful sections of the US political and military establishment who have been pushing for a more hardline stance against Russia. Reinforcing the special relationship, she hopes, will strengthen her hand in negotiations over the terms of Britains exiting the EU. Domestically, it helps unite a government deeply divided over Brexit and has served as a valuable bludgeon to be wielded against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is portrayed by the media as a Kremlin stooge.

May has until now encountered significant resistance from Europe. Concerned at the economic impact of a further deterioration in relations with the government of Vladimir Putin, Monday saw a meeting of EU foreign ministers balk at adopting the UKs formulation. EU states, including Austria and Greece, did not want to identify Russia as guilty, and there were divisions on the issue in Germany and Francedespite their expressing solidarity with Britain.

CNBC ran an article on the day of the summit asking, Why Germany is sending mixed messages over Russia following the ex-spy attack? It noted with obvious concern that despite international sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and perceived role in a pro-Russian uprising in Ukraine, trade between Germany and Russia grew dramatically in 2017, citing the particular importance of increased demand for Russian natural gas and crude oil and Germanys backing for the Nord Stream II pipeline that would double gas supplies from Russia to Germany

Thursday evening was, therefore, an occasion for horse-trading and arm-twisting, centered on a three-way discussion between French President Macron, German Chancellor Merkel and May. As a result, the statement by the leaders of 28 EU states agreed regarding Salisbury that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation is responsible and that there is no plausible alternative explanation.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, indicated that there were still disagreements within the EU, telling the press that the continents political landscape... makes it not so easy to keep the 28 together.

But the next day saw a significant shift that the Russian Foreign ministry said signified the EU was heading towards an anti-Russia campaign, instigated by London and Washington.

The EU ambassador to Moscow is being recalled for consultations over the Salisbury attack.

Merkel and Macron held a joint press conference Friday, with Macron pledging to lead a coordinated reaction of the EU and of its member states including France and Germany, against an attack to all European sovereignty.

Merkel declared that sanctions are necessary, but did not specify what they would be. Macron said it was obvious that France would itself take further action.

Collective sanctions could take until July to agree. But at least 10 EU member states, led by key UK ally, the Republic of Ireland, indicated that Russian diplomats could be expelled as early as Monday. Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, was a key actor, alongside Macron, in proposing that the EU endorse Britains accusations against Russia, describing Russian diplomats as agents. Others indicating similar measures included Denmark, Bulgaria, the three Baltic States, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Sweden.

In a press statement, the UK attributed the European Council standing together to May having provided a detailed update on the investigation into the reckless use of a military nerve agent, of a type produced by Russia, on the streets of Salisbury. May said there had been a positive identification of the chemical used as part of the Novichok group of nerve agents by our world leading scientists at Porton Down.

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray issued a devastating refutation of such claims on his blog Thursday. Under the headline, Boris Johnson, A Categorical Liar, Murray noted that a British court ruled Thursday that investigators from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) could take blood samples from Sergei and Yulia, to check against the analysis performed by the UK military's Porton Down research laboratory.

Murray noted that in an interview Wednesday with Deutsche Welle, UK Foreign Secretary Johnson had claimed that Porton Down had now told him they had positively identified the nerve agent as Russian.

Their identification of the nerve agent as a Novichok, produced in Russia, was, Johnson said, absolutely categorical I asked the guy myself, I said, Are you sure? And he said theres no doubt.

Murray wrote in response that the High Court judgement giving permission for new blood samples to be taken from the Skripals, by Justice Williams, included a summary of what Porton Down have actually said.

A Porton Down Chemical and Biological Analyst states that blood samples from the Skripals tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent OR CLOSELY RELATED AGENT.

Murray writes, The emphasis is mine The truth is that Porton Down have not even positively identified this as a Novichok, as opposed to a closely related agent. Even if it were a Novichok that would not prove manufacture in Russia, and a closely related agent could be manufactured by literally scores of state and non-state actors.

This constitutes irrefutable evidence that the government have been straight out lyingto Parliament, to the EU, to NATO, to the United Nations, and above all to the peopleabout their degree of certainty of the origin of the attack.

The fact is that the EU heads of state know very well that the UK is lying to them. That they are ready to endorse the lie indicates that they are moving towards what Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, described as confrontational steps due to fundamental economic and geopolitical considerations. These calculations are bound up, above all, with preventing an escalation of antagonisms with the US.

The run-up to the summit was dominated by frantic negotiations between the European powers, led by Germany, and the US to prevent $60 billion in trade sanctions targeting Chinese steel and aluminium from also applying to the EU.

On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it was temporarily exempting the EU to allow trade talks to continue. May announced that she would now stay at the summit on Friday to discuss this important development.

That morning she all but claimed personal credit for the US decision, telling the media, We have been working very hard to secure an EU-wide exemption to the steel tariffs that the Americans have announced What I will be working with my fellow EU leaders today on is to see how we can secure a permanent exemption for the EU from these steel tariffs.

Fridays agenda timetabled a decision by the EU on approving guidelines for the negotiation of future relations with the UK after Brexit. The EU leaders reportedly took less than 30 seconds to agree the proposed text on trade, security and other issues, paving the way for the next round of talks before the UK is due to leave in March 2019.

May, who has faced widespread criticism on the terms proposed from both hard-line Brexiteers and Remainers, proclaimed a new spirit of co-operation and opportunity and a new dynamic, while Tusk spoke of a new positive momentum.Millions of students and young people are participating in demonstrations today in 800 cities throughout the United States, along with many other cities internationally.

According to a USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll, more than one in five people between 13 and 17 said they would participate in the demonstrations, which would make the protests the largest student-led demonstrations in the history of the United States. Another 25 percent of youth say they plan on participating on social media.

The March For Our Lives protests were initially called and organized by survivors of the February 14 Parkland, Florida school shooting, which left 14 students and three teachers and coaches dead and another 17 injured. School shootings have affected an entire generation. According to an analysis by the Washington Post, since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours, directly impacting 187,000 students.

School shootings, however, have become the focus of a much broader set of grievances. There is a general sense among youth that the regularity with which they are massacred in their schools reflects the indifference and contempt with which the ruling class views their lives.

The New York Times nervously pointed to the political radicalization of young people reflected in todays protests in an article posted on Friday. As a group, the Times noted, they combine liberal social beliefs with an intensely wary view of the existing political and economic order, opinion polls have found.

The Times oblique remark about hostility to the economic order is a reference to polls that show more young Americans would prefer to live in a socialist or communist society than in a capitalist one. Surveys of Americans between the age of 18 and 29 show that only 14 percent think that the country is headed in the right direction, a figure that, if anything, is even lower among high school youth.

Working-class youth today face conditions far worse than their parents, who are themselves confronting a historic reversal in their conditions of life. The median earnings of young people are 43 percent lower than in 1995. Average student debt has increased to $37,712, from $24,000 in 2008. Nearly one in five children in the US under the age of 18 live in poverty, while more than 40 percent live in low-income households that make less than twice the official federal poverty level.

The growth of a political movement of young people is coming amidst an expanding wave of working-class struggle throughout the United States and internationally. The strike by West Virginia teachers in February-March has been followed by a one-day strike by New Jersey teachers and calls and plans for walkouts in Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee and other states. Internationally, protests of teachers and educators have erupted in Kenya, Nigeria, Argentina, Jamaica, the Netherlands, the UK, Slovenia, Canada and other countries.

The opposition among teachers is an expression of a broader anger in the entire working class over record social inequality. On Thursday, tens of thousands of train drivers, teachers, nurses, air traffic controllers and other public-sector workers in France went on strike against President Emmanuel Macrons right-wing labor reforms.

The simultaneous development of a movement among workers and student youth portends a major eruption of social and class conflict.

The Democratic Party and the media are seeking to restrain the anger of young people to calls for gun controlwhich, if implemented, would inevitably be connected to efforts to increase state power and the monitoring of the population. Moreover, as the bombing spree in Austin, Texas has demonstrated, such measures would not halt the epidemic of mass violence in the United States, which would find different forms.

The main concern of the ruling class is to prevent a movement that addresses the underlying cause of violence in American society, which would inevitably connect the protests of youth with the struggles of workers. The Democrats hope that they can direct student anger to the ballot boxthat is, to electing Democrats in elections this year and in 2020.

Any serious examination of the causes of gun violence, however, points to the catastrophe produced by the capitalist system.

It is impossible to separate the series of homicidal acts by alienated and brutalized individuals from a broader mood of despair and hopelessness produced by disastrous social conditions and the suppression of any progressive opposition to the capitalist system. According to one recent study, the suicide rate for white children and teens soared by 70 percent between 2006 and 2016, while the suicide rate for black children and teens increased by 77 percent.

Nor can violence at home be separated from violence abroad. Those involved in the protests today have lived their entire lives under the war on terror: the invasion of Afghanistan nearly 17 years ago, in 2001; the invasion of Iraq in 2003; the bombing of Libya in 2011; the ongoing US-backed civil war in Syria. More wars are on the agenda.

Trillions of dollars are spent on armaments, while resources for public education, health care (including mental health) and other social services are slashed. The Trump administration signed a budget yesterday, backed by Democrats and Republicans, that allocates a record $700 billion to the Pentagon, even as the ruling elites insist that there is no money to ensure that teachers are paid a decent wage and young people who graduate college are not burdened by tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

The fact is that the greatest purveyor of violence is the American state, abroad and within the country. While 122 people have been killed in school shootings since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, police have killed some 1,000 people a year over the same period, many of them youth and students.

The bloody violence of American imperialismand the cheering of this violence by the mediahas the most noxious consequences within the United States. It infects the political culture of the entire country, of which the presidency of Donald Trump is only one expression.

Since the mass protests that erupted following the inauguration of Trump just over a year ago, the Democratic Party has devoted all its efforts to directing mass opposition to his right-wing and fascistic policies behind a campaign for aggression in the Middle East and against Russia. They have hailed CIA torturers and military commanders guilty of war crimes as the champions of democratic rights. If their agenda was to be realized, it would mean that many of those participating in protests would be sent off to war.

The emergence of protests and demonstrations among workers and student youth resembles the conditions that developed in France in 1968. The ability of the ruling class to contain social unrest, however, has been severely undermined. The parties of the political establishment, in the US and internationally, are deeply discredited. The Stalinist and Social Democratic organizations that fifty years ago worked to contain working-class struggles no longer exist or have moved sharply to the right. The right-wing, anti-working-class trade unions are seeking desperately to suppress a movement that is developing outside of and in opposition to them.

For young people seeking a way forward, the turn must be to the working class. The struggles of working-class youth must be linked to the fight of all workers for decent jobs, wages, health care, and a secure retirement. The fight against the conditions that produce violence in America must be consciously developed as a movement against war, inequality, and the capitalist system. This requires a complete break with the Democratic and Republican Parties and the state apparatus of the ruling class.

The Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, are building a socialist political leadership in the working class. We call on young people participating in the protests today, and all students and workers throughout the world, to join the IYSSE and the SEP and take up the fight for socialism.US AFRICOM on Monday conducted a drone strike near the village of Mubaarak, some 40 miles southwest of Somalias capital city, Mogadishu. In a press release after the attack, AFRICOM spokesperson Robyn Mack claimed the strike was conducted in support of the US-backed Somali Federal Transitional Government (FTG), and targeted Al-Shabaab Islamist militants. According to Mack, the strike killed two militants and wounded three others, along with destroying a vehicle.

Mondays strike was the ninth such attack this year, marking a sharp escalation of the US war in Somalia and putting 2018 on track to overtake the total reached in 2017 of 35 drone strikes. By comparison, 13 strikes were carried out 2016, and 5 in 2015. The 35 strikes conducted in 2017 outnumber all previous years since the American air war began in Somalia in 2007.

While 2017 marked a sharp expansion of AFRICOMs offensive in Somalia, in the first months of 2018 the Trump administration is making clear that it plans an even more dramatic and deadly offensive in the impoverished country. Since the beginning of 2018, US air strikes have killed at least 22 across Somalia. The number of deaths is certainly higher, but the precise figure is unknown as AFRICOM has only provided press releases of six of the nine attacks.

In April 2017, shortly after taking office, Trump increased the number of troops deployed to the country and issued new rules of engagement which essentially constitute open-ended warfare in the Horn of Africa. The loosening of restrictions which were in place to ostensibly protect the civilian population grants broad autonomy for American forces to carry out massacres without accountability.

With AFRICOMs announcement in November of expanded troop deployments to the country, Robyn Mack stated, [The larger] advise and assist mission [is now] the most significant element of our partnership [in Somalia].

Making clear the Pentagons intentions in Somalia, retired Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who headed AFRICOM until June, told Politico, We had to put more small teams on the ground to partner in a regional way with the Somali government. So we changed our strategy and we changed our operational approach. Thats why the footprint went up.

Currently, the American military footprint in Somalia is the largest since 1993, when then President Bill Clinton deployed a contingent of special forces to Mogadishu to defeat the insurgency of Mohamed Farrah Aidid. One ensuing battle resulted in 19 US personnel killed, with scores more wounded.

In 2017, the number of US soldiers deployed to Somalia increased to 500, with dozens of special forces personnel consisting of Green Berets, Navy Seals, and Army Rangers. The US military contingent is augmented by a 22,000-strong African Union force made up of soldiers from several African countries, including Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda.

Nearly three decades of US-instigated wars have completely devastated Somalia, currently among the worlds most impoverished nations, with a poverty rate of 73 per cent.

As a consequence of these conflicts, vital infrastructure such as sanitary water facilities and health care services are virtually non-existent, particularly in areas outside of Mogadishu, and the spread of treatable diseases is rampant. An estimated 60 per cent of Somali children do not have access to education. Compound this social crisis, the historic famine currently sweeping through the country has left more than 6 million people, half the population, in dire need of water and food.

The US-backed government has virtually no popular support anywhere in the country, and indeed, a majority of the population views the puppet regime with hostility. As a measure of this lack of popular support, the FTG is made up of a number of wealthy Somali-American technocrats educated in Europe and the United States, and largely performs governmental functions outside the country in neighboring Djibouti.

Underlying the conflict is the geostrategic importance of the Horn of Africa for the dominance of American imperialism in the region. Somalia fronts the Gulf of Aden, a major waterway for the worlds oil traffic flowing from the Persian Gulf.

Also to be considered is the growing influence of China, which has emerged over the last decade as an economic rival for Africas vast resources, with Beijing expanding its economic influence across the continent. Washington is mobilizing its military power to offset Chinas economic influence.

Causing no small amount of consternation for Washington, last August Beijing opened its first overseas naval base in Djibouti, just five miles from Camp Lemonnier, the American military base operated jointly with France.

After Washington expressed its dismay toward the base as a threat to its longstanding military dominance over the Horn of Africa, Beijing downplayed any military significance of the base, declaring the facilitys operations are more of logistical character.

While China is not an imperialist power, the establishment of a military base in defense of its economic interests on the African continent represents nothing less than a direct challenge to the dominance of US imperialism on the continent, which could lead to the outbreak of all-out war between the two nuclear-armed countries.President Donald Trump appeared to take by surprise those Republicans still not familiar with the basics of television competition with his morning tweet that he is considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill.

Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conway, for instance, had insisted this morning that Trump would sign the bill. Yesterday, House Speaker Paul Ryan boasted that Trump supports this billno two ways about it.

Trump, however, this morning tweeted he is considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill passed after midnight Thursday, based on the fact that the 800,000 DACA recipients have been totally abandoned which he insisted was the work of Democrats, saying they were not even mentioned in Bill).

Trump also complained the bill does not fully fund the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense. Trump had vowed Mexico would pay for the BORDER WALL when campaigning.

This mornings news cycle was destined to be all about CNNs Anderson Cooper interview with former Playboy Bunny Karen McDougal, who claims she had a 10-month affair with Trump about a decade ago. McDougal is fighting to be freed from the deal she signed with National Enquirer parent American Media Inc., not long before the election, in which she was paid $150K for exclusive rights to her story. AMI, whose chief is Friend of Trump, did not publish her story about her alleged relationship with then reality-TV star Trump, in what is known as a catch-and-kill strategy to squash stories that hurt Trumps campaign.

Trumps tweet:

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

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I will never sign another bill like this again, Trump said, scowling at the 2,000-plus page document. Nobody has read it.

No one has been able to read it. You tell me who can read that quickly?! Trump growled. It takes time to read it.

Its only hours old, Trump continued to complain. People dont know whats in it.

Trump said he decided against a veto for the sake of the military.

As a matter of national security I signed this omnibus bill, POTUS said, adding that there are a lot of things Im unhappy about in the bill.

He blasted its $1.3T price tag which he called the second largest ever, adding, Obama signed one even larger, which Im sure he wasnt happy with ether.

The pricetag is the fault of Democrats, he insisted. It became so big because we needed to take care of our military, and because Democrats who dont believe in that, and added things to get their votes.

My highest duty is to keep America safe. Nothing is more important, Trump said, claiming the bill reverses military spending cuts of past presidents.

Trump painted a picture in which he tried in vain to explain to [Democrats] the military is for everybody. We have tremendous opposition to what will be the strongest military we have ever had, he gloated.

On his border wall, Trump said he was not happy he got only $1.6B, but it does start the wall and we will make the $1.6B go very very far.

He also had a message for DACA recipients: The Republicans are with you. They want to get the situations taken care of. The Democrats fought us every single inch of the way. They did not want DACA in this bill. And, as you know, DACA also is tied to the wall for the major funding.:

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Democrats, he added, are using you for their own purposes.

Trump took just two questions as he was exiting the room during what he had said would be a press conference. Asked about that morning tweet, Trump insisted it was not a stunt and that he had looked very seriously at a veto but the incredible gains we have been able to make for the military over-rode any of our thinking about a veto.

Trump had kicked off his Friday festivities with a veto threat tweet that proved to be brilliant counterprogramming for the mornings news cycle chatter about Anderson Coopers interview with former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal. McDougal claims she had a months long affair with Trump about a decade ago and got duped into a catch-and-kill deal for exclusive right to her story with National Enquirer parent American Media Inc.

As Trump had hoped, his tweet gave news operations  still not familiar with the basics of TV counterprogramming  the vapors. Might also have caused a flutter for House Speaker Paul Ryan who had confidently boasted Trump supports this billno two ways about it.

Trump tweet threat, he said, was based on the fact that the 800,000 DACA recipients have been totally abandoned which he insisted was the work of Democrats, saying they were not even mentioned in Bill. Trump also complained the bill does not fully fund the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense. Trump had vowed Mexico would pay for the BORDER WALL when campaigning.

Trumps tweet immediately pushed all McDougal talk to the back burner. That tweet:

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

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Arnold Schwarzenegger: Republican Party "Like The Titanic"; Says No Love Between Trump & CaliforniaGeorge Clooney told the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas who are standing up for gun safety after the deadly Parkland shooting that they make him proud of his country again.

In a letter published by The Guardian newspaper in London  where student journalists from the Eagle Eye, the award-winning newspaper at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, will guest edit the newspapers coverage of March for Our Lives in Washington DC on Saturday  Clooney added that Amal and I are 100% behind you and will be marching in DC on the 24th.

The Oscar winner, 56, continued, Congratulations on the incredible work you and all of your fellow students are doing to make the country a safer place.

We both feel very strongly that this is your march. Your moment. Young people are taking it to the adults and that has been your most effective tool. The fact that no adults will speak on the stage in DC is a powerful message to the world that if we cant do something about gun violence then you will. The issue is going to be this, anyone you ask would feel proud to be interviewed by you but its so much more effective if its young people.

George Clooney (Photo: Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)

In February, George and Amal Clooney donated $500,000 to March for Our Lives  a sum later matched by Oprah Winfrey, 64, who tweeted George and Amal, I couldnt agree with you more.

These inspiring young people remind me of the Freedom Riders of the 60s who also said weve had ENOUGH and our voices will be heard.

The March for Our Lives is expected to draw thousands of young people to the streets of the US capital at noon on Saturday, to advocate for gun control. Thousands more will join them at 831 other events in cities worldwide.

Addressing his letter to Eagle Eye co-editors Emma Dowd, Lauren Newman and Rebecca, Clooney urged all young people involved to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

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Its terrific that youre editing the Guardian. Its a stellar newspaper and they must feel honored to be working with you, added Clooney.

You could talk to a dozen kids like the young kids from Chicago and L.A. that Emma met with. You could take over the Guardian and make it tell the stories of children by children. Its a once in a lifetime opportunity to point to this moment and say it belongs to you. You certainly should do what you want but that would be my hope for you.

You make me proud of my country again, he concluded.George Clooney has penned a letter in The Guardian newspaper praising the Parkland high school students for their strength in advocating for better gun control laws. The teenagers from Stoneman Douglas High School formed the Never Again MSD gun control organization following a school shooting that killed 17 of their fellow classmates and teachers. Their efforts will culminate in the March For Our Lives this Saturday, March 24.

Read More:Bill Murray Compares Parkland Teens Fighting Gun Laws to the Students Who Helped End Vietnam War

Earlier this year, George and Amal Clooney announced a $500,000 donation to the March For Our Lives campaign. Marches will be held in Washington D.C. and across the country on March 24 in order to advocate for stricter gun laws. The Clooneys donation was matched by Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and more.

Amal and I are 100% behind you and will be marching in DC on the 24th, but we both feel very strongly that this is your march. Your moment, Clooney wrote. Young people are taking it to the adults and that has been your most effective tool.

The fact that no adults will speak on the stage in DC is a powerful message to the world that if we cant do something about gun violence then you will, he continued. The issue is going to be this, anyone you ask would feel proud to be interviewed by you but its so much more effective if its young people.

Clooneys letter follows a statement from Bill Murray which similarly stressed the importance of having students being the one to protest. Murray compared the Parkland teenagers to the students who protested and helped end the Vietnam War.

You can read Clooneys letter below (via Deadline):

Dear Emma, Lauren, and Rebecca,

Thank you for your note and congratulations on the incredible work you and all of your fellow students are doing to make the country a safer place.

Its terrific that youre editing the Guardian. Its a stellar newspaper and they must feel honored to be working with you.

Story continues

Amal and I are 100% behind you and will be marching in DC on the 24th, but we both feel very strongly that this is your march. Your moment. Young people are taking it to the adults and that has been your most effective tool. The fact that no adults will speak on the stage in DC is a powerful message to the world that if we cant do something about gun violence then you will. The issue is going to be this, anyone you ask would feel proud to be interviewed by you but its so much more effective if its young people.

You could talk to a dozen kids like the young kids from Chicago and LA that Emma met with. You could take over the Guardian and make it tell the stories of children by children. Its a once in a lifetime opportunity to point to this moment and say it belongs to you. You certainly should do what you want but that would be my hope for you.

Amal and I stand behind you, in support of you, in gratitude to you.

You make me proud of my country again.

Thank you.

All the best,

George

Sign Up:Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

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Hulu Doubles Down on George Clooney: All 331 Episodes of 'ER' Are Now Streaming For The First TimeAmid news of his legal woes and downgraded security clearance, Jared Kushner can count on wife Ivanka Trump to defend him to President Trump, according to a new report from Vanity Fair.

In a new profile documenting the couples turbulent time in the White House, an official from Trumps 2016 campaign said that while Trump was running for president, Ivanka once stormed into her fathers office in Trump Tower and told him, You have no idea what [Kushner is] sacrificing to be here and how hard he is working for you.

According to the campaign official, after Ivanka told her father that his lack of appreciation hurt her, Trump caved immediately and asked his daughter, What does he want?

After campaigning for his father-in-law, Kushner was tasked with overseeing relations with Mexico and helping to secure peace in the Middle East peace.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump

RELATED: Trump Is Reportedly Looking to Oust Ivanka and Jared as Source Says Theyll Be Happy to Leave

Following Kushners highly publicized security clearance downgrade  which security experts previously told PEOPLE will severely impact Kushners ability to do many aspects of his job  The New York Times reported that Kushners family business had received around $500 million in loans from two U.S. companies after their top executives met with Kushner in the White House, which could represent a conflict of interest.

In addition, special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly looking into Kushners efforts to secure financing for his company from foreign investors during the presidential transition. Mueller is also reportedly investigating Kushners contacts with Russians.

And according to the Washington Post, officials in at least four countries have discussed ways to manipulate Kushner by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience.

Jared Kusher and Donald Trump

RELATED: White House Chief of Staff John Kelly Wonders What Ivanka and Jared Do All Day: Report

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So why might Trump still want to keep Kushner around?

Vanity Fair reports that, according to a former Trump adviser, the reason is partly because Trump fears letting him out of his sight  particularly if he gets indicted.

However, a Trump insider previously told PEOPLE that if Kushner and Ivanka leave the White House, their exit will likely come as a relief.

If they leave theyll be happy to go back to their old lives, said the source. They love their kids so much and this is so distracting, to be a young family and have all this pressure instead of focusing on the kids. But now Jareds name will be tarnished, which sucks for them.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner

The New York Times has also reported that Trump has privately asked Chief of Staff John Kelly for help removing his daughter and son-in-law from their White House roles, while simultaneously telling the couple they should stay.

In private conversations, the president vacillates between sounding regretful that Mr. Kushner is taking arrows and annoyed that he is another problem to deal with, according to the report.You may have noticed Jim Carreys paintings getting some media attention this week  both good and bad publicity.

Conservatives ripped the actor after he released a portrait of a so-called Christian. Though the actor never revealed who inspired the painting, many thought it bore a striking resemblance to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous! pic.twitter.com/MeYLTy1pqb  Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 17, 2018

Then there was Carreys satirical portrait of the green-skinned WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST WING, who happens to be wearing a suit similar to those worn by President Trump. The cartoon even included PUTINS FLYING MONKEYS.

If you liked my last cartoon you may also enjoy "THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST WING AND PUTINS FLYING MONKEYS pic.twitter.com/slBG7j1s8d  Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 19, 2018

Carreys latest painting, however, has grabbed attention far beyond the White House and into the depth of Hell.

The actors artwork contains 666, the devils number, which made some wonder whether Carrey was referencing the Church of Satan. Hes not. The organization made that very clear:

Attention everyone:

1. Yes weve seen this.

2. No, it has nothing to do with us.

3. 666 is a real and specific street address being reference in the artwork.

4. Jim Carrey is not now, nor has he ever been our high priest.

Thank you, that is all. https://t.co/RwevXURSBL  The Church Of Satan (@ChurchofSatan) March 23, 2018

It turns out the portrait was not referring to the devil, but rather portrays an actual street address in New York City: 666 Fifth Avenue is a 41-story office building in Manhattan owned by Jared Kushner. Twitter was quick to pick up on the reference and, unlike with his other paintings, critics largely appreciated Carreys latest piece of art.

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For the record, Carrey did not respond to the Church of Satan denouncing him as their high priest.

Watch: Donald Trump says he could beat up Joe Biden, and the internet really wants it to happen:

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:With just weeks to go before her royal wedding, Meghan Markle excitedly showed off her engagement ring to the crowds in Belfast during her surprise trip to Northern Ireland with Prince Harry on Friday.

Grace Simpson, 21, had been waiting outside the famous Crown Liquor Saloon when Harry and Meghan walked out to chat to the hundreds of well-wishers.

She held out a dozen red roses for Meghan and congratulated her on her upcoming wedding. She said youre so sweet,  Simpson tells PEOPLE.

She said, Whats your name? so I told her and she said, Nice to meet you, Im Meghan! 

I had been dying to see her ring, so I asked her about it and she held out her hand. She said, It was the sweetest moment. Hes the sweetest guy. And she turned back to look at him, Simpson says.

We all watch Suits in our house and I asked her if the proposal was as romantic as the one on Suits. She said even more!

The prince proposed with a three-stone diamond engagement ring that he designed himself.

The stunning sparkler is made up of three diamonds, with one large stone in the center flanked by two smaller stones on the sides. It was crafted by British jewelers Cleave and Company, who are the jewelers to Harrys grandmother, Queen Elizabeth.

The ring has plenty of sentimental connections for Harry: The two stones are from his late mother, Princess Dianas personal collection (making them difficult to value), while the other stone is from Botswana, a country that is close to his heart.

Another well-wisher, Anne Brownlee, 45, asked Harry if hed had his bachelor party yet. He said, no comment, and smiled, she says.

Meghan recently escaped to the Soho Farmhouse, a luxury retreat located in the Cotswolds, not too far outside London, for a weekend of pampering and girl time with some of her closest friends, a source confirmed to PEOPLE.According to the United Nations Population Fund, Armenia has approached the threshold of aging societies: as early as 2050, almost a quarter of the population of the republic will be people over 65, due to decline in fertility and high emigration. Just over the past 10 years Armenia has lost half a million of its population.

It's very likely that absurdity of the Armenian leadership's policy, which created a mononational state through national cleansing in Karabakh, at the same time calling in the "war for liberation", probably led to such situation. Meanwhile, it still remains unclear from who did they "liberate" Karabakh, if during Soviet times the Karabakh autonomy was already controlled by them. Ultimately, "liberation" of Karabakh resulted in the replacement of legitimate authority - Boris Kevorkov - by an unrecognized separatist regime. The first Secretary of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast lost his post in February of 1988 after extraordinary session of People's Deputies of this region appealed to the Supreme Soviets of the Armenian SSR, Azerbaijani SSR and the USSR with a request to consider and agree to transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast from Azerbaijan to Armenia.

He was succeeded by Henry Poghosyan, who supported annexation, carried out by the Armenian SSR, which, in particular, led to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. After that, there was a series of puppet regimes Karabakh. It was headed by Robert Kocharyan, Arkady Ghukasyan, and, finally, Bako Sahakyan. All of them acted as "liberators", but this "liberation" turned million Azerbaijanis into refugees and internally displaced persons, expelled by force from occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other Azerbaijani regions, as well as from the territory of now mononational Armenia, where Azerbaijanis lived together with Armenians for centuries. Similarly, "liberation" of Karabakh forced many Armenians to leave Baku, Kirovabad, and other towns and villages of Azerbaijan forever.

Karabakh became a territory free of peace, life and future. Due to this conflict, all Azerbaijanis who were once considered the second largest ethnic group in the country left Armenia. In the end, Armenia became the most monoethnic and the least populated country in the post-Soviet space. Monoethnicity can't be explained by anything other than nationalism, and problems with population are the result of ongoing processes, including those happening in the economic sphere. Armenians that settled abroad, whether in the US or in Russia, just like magnet, attract their compatriots because of higher standard of living. Millions of Armenians live today outside the country, most of them assimilated easily, and there's no hope for their return to historical homeland. Russian businessman, head of the Sberbank CIB, former president of the Skolkovo business school, Ruben Vardanyan, was repeatedly asked about presidential ambitions. Every time he answered that he has none, citing the fact that Armenia "has its own problems, its difficulties as mononational state with very strickt clan-like management principles."

Armenia looks bleak on the background of multinational map of the Caucasus. Experts believe that it can be explained by expulsion of other peoples and creation of an area with one hundred percent monoethnic Armenian population.By Jessica McKinney

In 2003, an ancient, six-inch-long corpse was found near a church in a ghost town of South Americas Atacama Desert. To many collectors and scientists at the time, the unusual anatomical makeup of the mummified remains suggested proof of extraterrestrial life. But those theories were most recently put to rest after a team of scientists from the University of California-San Francisco and Stanford University reportedly determined that the skeleton is not an alien, but actually the remains of an indigenous Chilean girl, The New York Times reports.

In addition to its remarkable size, the skeleton reportedly has a long skull, giant eye sockets, and 10 ribs, rather than the normal 12. On Thursday (March 22,), the team of scientists presented new data that determined the bones contain DNA that shows that it belongs to the human species. Furthermore, the researchers identified as many as 54 mutations in its DNA caused by a hereditary disorder, which explains the bizarre form. The mutations include: skeletal dysplasia, rib anomalies and dwarfism, according to reports.

It is quite surprising how many mutations this child has, Atul Butte, director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California-San Francisco told Gizmodo. And thats pretty relevant today. Children with rare and undiagnosed diseases are now more frequently getting genetic sequencing, and typically we in the medical field search for the one gene with the problem.

After reconstructing the body, scientists determined that the girl  whom they refer to as Ata  lived less than 500 years ago, approximately around the 16th century, NYT reports. In addition to being of Chilean descent, they also discovered a lineage of European and South American ancestry. In a new study in the Journal Genome Research, scientists found that Atas bones were as developed as a six-year-olds, although she was no bigger than a modern human fetus.

I was amazed by how much you can tell from the genetic blueprint, Genome Research scientist Sanchita Bhattacharya told NYT. Scientists are still trying to determine all of Atas mutations and genetic details. Butte said that their discoveries will most likely help with finding cures and therapies for children with rare mutations today.

This post Mummy Mystery Solved: Alien-Like Skeleton Related To Indigenous Chileans first appeared on Vibe.Paris Hilton lost her ice in a bucket of ice.

According to Page Six, the heiress, whose been proudly wearing her $2 million, 20-carat engagement ring since fiance Chris Zylkas romantic New Years proposal in January, was reportedly dancing with friends at the RC Cola Plant night club in the hip Wynwood section of Miami Friday when her ring came loose and slipped off her finger. (In January, a source confirmed to PEOPLE that the couple hired extra security on their Aspen engagement trip to safeguard her $2 million diamond.)

Zylka was on hand to help the security team at Miami night club search the VIP area for his bride-to-bes ring, an uneasy task as the venue is nearly 50,000-square-feet and holds up to 7,000 people, according to its website.

A panicked Hilton reportedly waited in tears until her needle-in-a-haystack nightmare was over. Her one-of-a-kind ring was found in an ice bucket two tables away from her VIP area. Diamond expert and celebrity jeweler Michael Greene designed the gigantic, pear-shaped sparkler Zylka proposed with during the couples holiday ski trip in Aspen.

The 20-carat center stone is set on a platinum split shank halo band which boasts another two carats of smaller diamonds and is valued at close to $2 million, according to Greene.

RELATED PHOTOS: See Paris Hiltons $2 Million Engagement Ring from Every Angle

Hilton has yet to address the ordeal, but the British deejaying trio Above & Beyond referenced her lost-and-found ring saga on Twitter, writing that they were glad she found her precious ring.

@ParisHilton nice to meet you and glad you found your ring ????

 Above & Beyond (@aboveandbeyond)

March 23, 2018

The jeweler behind the ring told PEOPLE that the design was inspired by a special ring Hiltons mom, Kathy, wears.

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Paris at one point in time told Chris she really loved her mothers pear-shaped diamond, and when Chris came to me that was his request, Greene told PEOPLE exclusively at the time of the couples engagement. The pear-shaped really jumped out for him and ultimately for her. He did some fishing, but in the end it was all him. Hes a smart guy, and hangs out a lot with the family, and I think she realized how much she liked her moms ring.

Hilton, 36, and Zylka, 32, have been dating for two years and are not shy about showing off their love for one another on social media. The Leftovers actor knew his bride-to-be so well that he kept the ring design process a complete secret.

Paris was not involved. Chris did it all, Greene said. He wanted to do everything so perfectly. He wants the best thing for his princess. And he did all the right things. He told me he had to set up a time to meet up with Paris father to ask for her hand in marriage. He did the whole thing. All the traditions.

Hilton could not have been more blown away by her ring. She told PEOPLE of the enormous rock: The ring was so gorgeous and sparkling. I was shaking as I put it on. It is the most beautiful ring that I have ever seen!

At the time of their engagement, a source confirmed to PEOPLE that the couple hired extra security to safeguard her $2 million diamond while vacationing in Aspen. Hilton has taken extra measures to protect her belongings after her home was robbed by the infamous Bling Ring, a group of eight Hollywood teens who stole valuables from A-list homes from 2008-2009.

Earlier this week Hilton told people that shes already focused on wedding planning.

Its a lot of planning to do, Hilton told PEOPLE. Right now, we are just trying to figure out a date and a location and my dress. I definitely want it to be very magical. I love Disney princess vibes.Paris Hilton and Paris Jacksons families have a long history. (Photo: Getty Image)

A clip that Paris Hilton shared of the toast she gave at the birthday party of her mother, Kathy Hilton, has got people talking, not about what she said, but about the fact that Paris Jackson was sitting in a prime spot at the family soiree. Jackson, the 19-year-old daughter of the late Michael Jackson, also attended Paris Hiltons birthday party last month.

#BirthdaySpeech for the #BirthdayGirl A post shared by Paris Hilton (@parishilton) on Mar 21, 2018 at 7:12pm PDT

So what gives? The truth is that Paris Jackson has long had a connection with Paris Hilton and the entire Hilton family, which began before either Paris was born.

Paris & Paris A post shared by Paris Hilton (@parishilton) on Feb 16, 2018 at 2:19pm PST

Kathy and Michael were close friends when they attended the same high school, she explained on CNNs Piers Morgan Tonight in May 2011.

We met when I was 13 and he was 14, and developed a friendship and a bond throughout the years. And we always kept in touch, Kathy said. And then when I moved to New York and he would come, and wed always go to his concerts. And, you know, we started with  we used to make prank phone calls together. And we were little kids.

We had a really great time. And then he came and visited when Paris was born, she continued. And then he ended up living at the  ended up moving into the [Waldorf Astoria New York] for six months, when we were living there for eight years. And right before he died, he was at the Bel-Air Hotel [in L.A.], where we were living while we were renovating our home. So he was there about three or four months. So we got to spend, you know, great time.

Kathy revealed that she was close to Jacksons children, including Paris and her brothers  Prince, now 21, and 16-year-old Bigi (better known as Blanket).

At the Bel-Air, he did not have any nanny at all. And when Id go to pick up the kids to take them somewhere, hed be brushing their hair and buttoning up the sweater and just so warm and wonderful. And I just  I love him. His whole family, theyre a really wonderful, beautiful family.

Story continues

Both Kathy and Paris Hilton, 37, described their shock when finding out Jackson had died suddenly on June 25, 2009. Kathy went to the hospital, where she said Michaels siblings La Toya and Randy Jackson took her in to see their brothers body. Paris went to Michaels house to find the Jackson children.

Kim Richards, Paris Hilton, La Toya Jackson, and Kathy Hilton attend the premiere party in 2010 for The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. (Photo: Jason LaVeris/Getty Images)

Paris Hilton remembered Michael fondly.

One of the first memories I have of him was when my mom took us to the music video set of Thriller, she said. And we have the pictures still. I just always loved him. I used to go to his concerts and hed bring my sister and I on stage, and wed sing up there.

Kathy also mentioned to Morgan that La Toya, who was also a close friend, had the story about how Paris Hilton and Paris Jackson came to share a first name. In fact, La Toya spoke about that very subject  their common family name  in a 2012 interview with Yahoo. She said that she, Michael, and Kathy made a name pact as kids.

Its so funny because when we were growing up, we all said that we were going to [one day] have children, La Toya said. And I told them, Well, Im going to name my first son Prince and my first daughter Paris. We all said it. Then Kathy had kids, she did it. Michael had kids, he did it. And me, well, I only had dogs!

La Toya said that, from the time she was 16, she named all her dogs Prince and  yep  Paris.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:Jason Bittner

An Ohio man is behind bars after police said he broke his infant daughter's ribs multiple times.

According to WLWT, the 3-month-old's mother took her to the hospital this past month for a traumatic brain injury along with multiple rib fractures. Officials say they were in multiple stages of healing.

RELATED: Disturbing Details About The Man Who Checked A 16-Year-Old Girl Out Of School And Ran Away With Her After Police Learned They Were In An Illegal Relationship

The child had over 28 rib fractures of varying ages, meaning they had happened at different times, prosecutor David Fornshell said.

The infant girl's father, 33-year-old Jason Bittner, allegedly told the doctors that the child's injuries were caused by an accident. But they believed her to be a victim of abuse and called the police.

Fornshell revealed that Bittner, who's a chiropractor, was disappointed that his daughter was "fussy." He was also upset that she wasn't a boy.

His company's website indicates that he and his wife have two daughters.

Bittner is reportedly seen as a pillar of his community, and Fornshell said that people who know him "will be shocked at what comes out at trial."

RELATED: Heartbreaking New Details Revealed About The 3-Year-Old Ohio Girl Who Died Two Weeks After A Trusted Babysitter Assaulted Her

Mr. Bittner is a medical professional, the prosecutor said. By all accounts hes a member of good standing in the community hes active in his church and I think people think that people like that are incapable of committing acts of child abuse or even domestic violence and those kind of situations but unfortunately those types of acts are committed by all manner of people.

Though she was in the intensive care unit, the 3-month-old has been released from the hospital.

According to court documents, Mason police said Jason Bittner was home alone with his three month old daughter and two-year-old daughter when his wife left for work on Feb 26 & he left his newborn in a baby bouncer that did not have a harness restraint or safety gear activated  Karin Johnson WLWT (@karinjohnson) March 21, 2018

Bittner is facing one charge of assault and two counts of endangering children. The second county is reportedly for failing to get his infant daughter medical attention.

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He posted bond Mar. 21.

RELATED: Horrific New Details Released About WHY A Mother Let Her Boyfriend And His Cousin Rape And Murder Her 10-Year-Old Daughter While She Watched

Emily Blackwood is an editor at YourTango who covers pop culture, true crime, dating, relationships and everything in between. Every Wednesday at 7:20 p.m. you can ask her any and all questions about self-love, dating, and relationships LIVE on YourTangos Facebook page. You can follow her on Instagram (@blackw00d) and Twitter (@emztweetz).

Keywords: crime, child abuse

read more[SOUND] [UPBEAT MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

Though we may never get a Sex and the City 3, we havent stopped thinking about Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda since Monday, when 51-year-old actress Cynthia Nixon officially announced her candidacy for New York governor.

New York is my home; Ive never lived anywhere else, she said in her announcement. Since, the actress-turned-political figure has continually made headlines, just four days into her run.

I love New York, and today I'm announcing my candidacy for governor. Join us: https://t.co/9DwsxWW8xX pic.twitter.com/kYTvx6GZiD  Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) March 19, 2018

Nixon, whos running against Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has already addressed issues she plans to tackle, like the delay of New York Citys Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) system under his leadership.

She got stuck on the train en route to a campaign event Tuesday, which members of her team shared on Twitter. It should have taken 30 minutes. Its now an hour and 10 and we are still not there, she told AM New York.

Cynthia NIXON speaks about her no good commute to her first event: A quintessential moment in Cuomos MTA pic.twitter.com/XJVg6ysSw1  Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) March 20, 2018

Opposing subway issues aside, Nixon is facing a wave of criticism for her lack of political experience. Christine Quinn, a former candidate for mayor of New York City, called Nixon an unqualified lesbian in an interview with The New York Post earlier this week.

Quinn, who is also a lesbian, later apologized for her comments, saying, My point was never to say her sexual orientationor anybodysis a negative when theyre running for office.

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Her apology did little to quell the internet frenzy surrounding her original remarks, however, and her words even inspired comedian Marie Connor to sell T-shirts stamped with Unqualified Lesbian ($20; teespring.com) in support of Nixon. Does Nasty Woman suddenly ring a bell?

RELATED: There Was a Devil Wears Prada Reunion and Yes, It Was Groundbreaking

Yesterday, Quinn stood by her skepticism of Nixons candidacy to The New York Times in columnist Frank Bruni's opinion piece, Cynthia Nixon and the Degradation of Experience. "Its as if I decided I wanted to be an actor, she said. I speak in public. I get my picture taken. I need to lose a little weight, but aside from that, why cant I do this? Because I cant. The years I might have spent developing skills in that area, I spent developing other skills.

I couldn't be a bigger fan of Cynthia Nixon as actor. She's brilliant. But as governor? I'm unconvinced, and I'm worried about our degradation of experience. https://t.co/rkUkTyrmKt  Frank Bruni (@FrankBruni) March 22, 2018

So whats Nixon have to say about it all? She addressed Quinns unqualified lesbian comments during a campaign event at the Stonewall Inn, a historic LGBTQ site in New York City. I just want to say tonight that she was technically right, Nixon said. I dont have my certificate from the Department of Lesbian Affairs. But in my defense, there is a lot of paperwork involved.

I support & respect any former colleagues right to make their own career choices. https://t.co/zae7nJ6VFi  Kim Cattrall (@KimCattrall) March 22, 2018

Happy to see my friend running to help all the great folks of NY state!#NIXON4NY A wonderful and smart and most of all ...deeply ethical person. Go forward Cynthia, Serving the people of New York #education! pic.twitter.com/C50t7RxVoN  David Eigenberg (@DavidEigenberg) March 21, 2018

Lynn Cohen, the woman who portrayed Mirandas nanny, Magda, stands behind her as well. I also think we need women. You look at the government now and you think, where are the women?  Women are the smartest, lets face it, she told The Cut.

Nixon's response to Quinn may have been hilarious, but until Friday, it was unclear if Nixon would address the fact that indeed, shes a candidate better known as Miranda from Sex and the City than your top-choice for N.Y. governor.

In her first interview since announcing her candidacy, she opened up to Glamour not only about what inspired her to run (I think its the election of Donald Trump. I think its the defeat of Hillary Clinton, she said) but also about her experience on the hit HBO show. I love Miranda! Mirandas great, she said, also responding to the fact that at first, fans of the show didnt want to be associated with the characters brass, say-it-like-it-is personality. But that has changed with time.

Its such a funny thing. You know, when I started the show, I was 30 or 31. People would ask me, How are you like your character? And I was like, I am not like my character at all! I am in this long-term relationship. I am a momI always knew Id be a mom. I am very domestic. I am not a confrontational person. I am, yes, smart and a career person, but those are the only two things Miranda and I have in common, she said. What was fascinating to me is that when the show ended, and people would say How are you like Miranda? I would be like, I am just like her in just about every way!"

RELATED: Kim Cattrall Addresses Former SATC Co-Star Cynthia Nixon's Run for Governor

Nixon added, She and I are so much more interwoven than we were at the beginning of the show.

In the interview, she also moves on to discuss how she plans to be taken seriously, despite her celebrity status. I think by just talking to people and making yourself available, she said. People are always surprised to see me around and about as if I am living in some cloud somewhere. Theyre like, Why are you on the subway? And I'm like, Why are you on the subway? Arent you going somewhere? I am going somewhere too!

Will the unqualified lesbian defeat Cuomo? I feel incredibly optimistic, she added.New Details About Teen Girl The Maryland Shooter May Have Targeted

The Maryland shooter allegedly had one target in mind  his ex-girlfriend.

Austin Wyatt Rollins, 17, was gunned down by a Great Mills High School Resource Officer, County Sheriffs Deputy Blaine Gaskill, Tuesday after he shot Jaelynn Willey, 16, in the head, and wounded another student in the leg.

Rollins and the female victim had a prior relationship that recently ended, the St. Marys County Sheriffs Office said in a statement, NBC reports.

Police believe Rollins intended to kill Jealynn for personal reasons, possibly a recent breakup.

Facebook

All indications suggest the shooting was not a random act of violence, police said in a statement.

Willey died at 11:34 p.m. Thursday when her parents took her off life support, according to the Baltimore Sun.

"She will not make it," her mother, Melissa Willey, said during a news conference Thursday night before the family pulled the plug. "She's brain-dead and has nothing  no life left in her."

RELATED: Scary New Details About The Teen Who Beat His Friend To Death With A Baseball Bat Because He Started Dating His Crush

The St. Marys County Sheriffs Office released a statement announcing her death.

It is with heavy hearts and great sadness we provide this update, the Sheriffs Office said in a statement.

Parents of Jaelynn Willey say they are taking her off life support this evening. She was shot in the head at Great Mills High school on Tuesday, they said. pic.twitter.com/rP0OiuZ7mX  Ian Duncan (@iduncan) March 23, 2018

In a press conference Thursday night Melissa said she felt it was necessary to share her familys decision to take Jaelynn off of life support at the University of Maryland Prince Georges Hospital Center.

"On Tuesday ... our lives changed completely and totally forever, Melissa said. My daughter was hurt by a boy who shot her in the head and took everything from our lives.

Story continues

She reminisced about her daughter during her speech and again in a statement released by the family.

RELATED: New Details Emerge About The Victims Of The Florida School Shooting  Including The Heroic High School Coach Who Acted As A Human Shield To Save Students

Jaelynn is an amazing young lady, whose peaceful presence and love of her fellow students and family is known throughout her Maryland-based school, the Willey family said in a statement.

Jaelynn left behind seven younger siblings and one older.

It is hard for us not to see her shining, smiling face right now, and to see her light up the room with her presence, the statement continued.

Facebook

A YouCaring donation page was set up by a friend in support of Jaelynn and her family.

Please help support the Willey family through this trying time, the YouCaring page reads. Please pray for her siblings and send love to them as well. This is an amazing tight-knit family full of love that you are helping. Your generous donations and many, many good thoughts and prayers are so appreciated.

The fundraising page had raised over $82,000 by Friday morning.

Now more than ever we need to stand together as a school community to love, cherish, and support one another, Principal Jake Heibel said in a statement on the schools website. We have and we will continue to stay strong, stay together, and find a way to get through this.

RELATED: 7 New Details Revealed About The Texas Serial Bomber And Why Police Think There May Still Be More Bombs

Keywords: school shooting

read moreOil exports from southern Iraq have fallen by 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) this month, according to shipping data and an industry source, suggesting OPECs second-largest producer is heading for a third month of lower shipments. As Reuters writes in the article Iraq's southern oil exports fall for third month in March: sources, southern Iraqi exports in the first 21 days of March averaged about 3.36 million bpd, compared to 3.43 million bpd in February, shipping data followed by Reuters and independent tracking by an industry source showed.

The fall suggests there is still no sign of extra supplies reaching the market from Iraq even though oil prices rallied this year to $71 a barrel for the first time since 2014, supported by an OPEC-led agreement to cut output.

Iraq says it is committed to the OPEC deal. We are seeing lower volumes, the source who tracks Iraqs exports said. Southern shipments have fallen as one of the single point loadings used to fill tankers was under maintenance for part of March because of a leak, a shipping agent said. Also, loadings have dropped at the small port of Khor al-Amaya.

Iraq had been boosting exports from its southern terminals, which handle the bulk of such trade, to offset a halt in shipments from its northern Kirkuk oilfields in October after Iraqi forces seized control of fields from Kurdish fighters.

Northern exports have averaged 270,000 bpd so far in March, compared with an estimated 340,000 bpd in February, according to shipping data and the industry source. That is far below levels of more than 500,000 bpd in some months of 2017.

Iraqi oil officials say there are no plans to resume oil flow through the Kurdish-owned pipeline, as no agreement has been reached yet. Northern exports could rise if Iraq goes ahead with a plan to export Kirkuk oil by truck to Iran, but this has been delayed.

Based on loadings so far, total exports in March have averaged 3.63 million bpd, down from 3.77 million bpd in February, 3.81 million bpd in January and 3.84 million bpd in December, according to Iraqi figures and loading data. Southern shipments reached a record in December.

OPEC, Russia and other producers are cutting output by about 1.8 million bpd until the end of 2018 in an effort to get rid of a global crude glut and support prices.

Iraq complied less with the supply deal than its OPEC peers, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, for much of 2017, but the drop in Kirkuk output boosted Iraqi and overall compliance.Kyle Kashuv is a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who is against limiting access to AR-15s. (Photo: Fox News)

In the wake of a shooting that left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, a group of student survivors advocating for gun control have taken center stage. This week, they landed on the cover of Time, beneath the word Enough, and this weekend theyll be leading a highly anticipated demonstration in Washington, D.C., March for Our Lives.

But as they fight for legislation that limits access to guns, particularly AR-15s (the type of gun used in the school shooting), another survivor from Marjory Stoneman Douglas is fighting against gun control. Heres what you need to know about Kyle Kashuv.

Hes a junior at Stoneman Douglas who survived the shooting.

In an interview with Fox, the 16-year-old said that he was in a classroom when the shooting began and ended up hiding in a closet for two hours until a SWAT team could clear the area. Kashuv said he had never met Nikolas Cruz but did know one of the students who was killed. According to Inside Edition, he was fourth in his class.

He was first interviewed by a CNN reporter on a #NeverAgain bus to Tallahassee.

One of the earliest mentions of him in the media is a CNN piece from Feb. 20, in which students on a bus to the states capital were interviewed. Kashuv is described in the piece as a Republican and Trump supporter whose pro-gun stance has changed a bit. In a video of him tweeted by CNNs Dianne Gallagher, he discusses wanting to add restrictions to gun sales, specifically regarding mental health. I have always been very pro-gun  we should be able to defend ourselves, he says. But I think there should be a limit to who should acquire such weaponry.

Since then, he has distanced himself from the #NeverAgain group, specifically David Hogg.

In the weeks since the tragedy, Kashuv seems to have distanced himself from classmates like Hogg and called out what he considered to be the hypocrisy of their comments. Hes specifically expressed outrage at Hogg for reportedly hanging up on President Trump during a phone conversation about gun control. Hes also sternly against the groups main goal: limiting access to AR-15s.

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Is this a joke? You want to ban AR-15s which are protected under #2A as ruled by SCOTUS in Heller v. DC. Dude, please stop. You don't know what you're talking about https://t.co/PlRzORd3z5  Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) March 23, 2018

He made headlines this week for calling out a Spirit Airlines flight attendant.

When a flight attendant on his plane arriving in Baltimore mentioned the March for Our Lives demonstration (of which Hogg is one of the founders), Kashuv took to Twitter to berate the airline. (Spirit later apologized, which Kashuv said was great to hear.)

Just landed in Baltimore on @SpiritAirlines and the stewardess felt compelled to give us all a speech about the March for Our Lives, which openly says on the petition are trying to categorically ban AR-15s, and made everyone clap. Can anything just be non-political anymore?  Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) March 22, 2018

He defends the National Rifle Association.

While his classmates were calling out the National Rifle Association (NRA)  and companies that profit from it  on Twitter, Kashuv went on Fox News to say that he disagreed with their approach. People have been pegging the NRA as a scary boogeyman that truly doesnt care about the kids  and I dont think thats true at all, Kashuv said. The NRA represents 5 million-plus American citizens  gun-law-abiding citizens  and simply painting the NRA as the issue here, it kind of detracts from the actual changes that could be made  targeting the proper aspects like mental health reform and making sure that we deliver all the information to the proper agencies referring to background checks.

Hes met with many lawmakers since the shooting occurred.

According to Mediaite, Kashuv has met with dozens of lawmakers about gun reform in Washington, D.C.  most of them on the right, but Democrats as well. This list includes Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and Vice President Mike Pence (who is in Kashuvs current Twitter profile photo). Hes shared a lot from the meetings on his Twitter page, which has more than 100,000 followers.

.@senorrinhatch congratulated me on a job well done! pic.twitter.com/qR8RJwS7LW  Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) March 23, 2018

Policy and legislation aside, @senorrinhatch gave me a huge hug after we met and told me that I need to keep in touch with him. We need more people like him. Mr. Senator, when I am in Utah lets go to a gun range and celebrate that law abiding citizens have the #2A. #MSDStrong pic.twitter.com/9yy5KiiVAg  Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) March 9, 2018

Hes also had a private meeting with President Donald Trump, twice.

Kashuv initially planned on meeting only with first lady Melania Trump, but while he was at the White House, she reportedly took him to meet the president. Kashuv called the meeting astonishing and amazing. He reportedly met with Trump again this week.

He feels maligned by the mainstream media.

Although featured prominently on Fox News, Kashuv (and others) have called out other news organizations for reportedly not featuring his viewpoints. The Daily Caller has even alleged that an interview he had planned with CNN was canceled when the network learned of a retweet he did calling one of their anchors a fake news hypocrite. (CNN has not commented on the allegation.) Kashuv has been questioned multiple times by Fox News about why he wasnt included on the Time cover featuring several Parkland students. Hes retweeted parody versions that have been created with him on the cover instead.

Once upon a @TIME they did real journalism in this country. pic.twitter.com/ZhECVpOHvM  The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) March 23, 2018

Hes working on an app called ReachOut.

Kashuv was reportedly brought to the White House to meet Melania Trump in order to discuss his app, ReachOut. According to the apps Twitter account, #ReachOut is a chat app that lets students reach out to one another. When a student is struggling emotionally or just needs someone to talk to, this app gives them a platform to seek help from other student volunteers. According to the last update on Twitter, its still in the process of being built.

The #ReachOut App is currently being designed and developed by volunteers wanting to see our schools a safer more loving environment.  100% volunteer-ran.

 We have no financial backers.

 We arent making money. Were committed to helping students help students!  ReachOut App (@TheReachOutApp) March 8, 2018

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.



Photo credit: Chris Jackson - Getty

From Harper's BAZAAR

If you haven't checked your mailbox recently, you might want to. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding invitations just went out yesterday, and they're the real-life equivalent of a golden ticket.

Even if your name somehow didn't make the list (us too, it's fine), Kensington Palace oh-so-kindly allowed the world to catch a glimpse of the coveted cards by releasing a few photos. Eagle-eyed fans quickly noticed one major word missing from the formal request. Can you see it?

Photo credit: WPA Pool - Getty

Hint: It has to do with Meghan's or should we say Rachel's name. The former actress was actually born Rachel Meghan Markle, but has gone by her middle name almost her entire life. The discrepancy recently came up when Queen Elizabeth issued her formal consent for the marriage. In her note to her Privy Council, she wrote, "I declare My Consent to a Contract of Matrimony between My Most Dearly Beloved Grandson Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales and Rachel Meghan Markle."

So why does the Queen use Rachel but the invite says Meghan? It all comes down to personal choice, explains Grant Harrold, a British etiquette expert known as the The Royal Butler online and on Twitter.

"Buckingham Palace does things by the book, so they will list your full name," he told GoodHousekeeping.com. It's understandable that the Queen likes using the utmost formalities; she's a very classy lady, after all. But even though the sovereign is in charge of granting permission, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have a lot more say when it came to the actual invitations.

They clearly obeyed all of the formal etiquette, with the groom understandably forgoing his nickname for the invites. The cards read "His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales." As for the bride, they went with "Ms Meghan Markle." Dropping the Rachel acknowledges how the rest of the world recognizes her, Harrold explains.

Story continues

"Even though it's an official occasion, they've obviously decided that she's known to as everybody as Meghan Markle and issued the invitations under that name," he says. Plus, it's still a lot more formal than the uber-casual "Meg" that her dad apparently uses.

The choice seems especially interesting when you compare the invitations to the ones the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge sent out for their 2011 wedding.

Photo credit: WPA Pool - Getty

First of all, Kate was referred to as "Miss" while Meghan uses the address "Ms." This subtle difference acknowledges the fact that Meghan was previously married while the Duchess was not.

As for the name itself, the invite used "Catherine Middleton," not the nickname she's known by in the media. Apparently, Prince William uses Catherine at home too, while Prince Harry once referred to her as "Cath" in an interview. As for the Duchess herself, she once politely remarked, "I will answer to most things.

So as you can see, these royals go by a lot of names. Meghan (Rachel? Meg?) will fit right in.

You Might Also LikeFor the better part of the last month, Donald Trump has been winging it. His standoff with his chief of staff, John Kelly, appears to be resolved for the time being, with Trump having decided to return to the seat-of-the-pants decision-making that he believes won him the presidency. That doesnt mean he has fully given up the idea of firing Kelly, though. One outside adviser to the White House said Trump has recently mulled the concept of creating a new West Wing structure without a chief of staff, one that would instead have four co-equal principals reporting directly to him. Trump seems to be loving his new freedom. He was fucking excited and jubilant, said one Trump friend who spoke to him in recent days. He was like, everythings great and these fuckers in the media are beside themselves.

But Trumps self-liberation comes at a dangerous moment, with special counsel Robert Muellers investigation reaching closer and closer, stoking Trumps impulses to go to war. Earlier this month, Mueller crossed one of Trumps stated red lines when he subpoenaed Trump Organization business records. According to four Republicans in regular contact with the White House, the move spurred Trump to lose patience with his team of feuding lawyers. Trump hit the roof, one source said. Today, Trumps personal lawyer John Dowd resigned under pressure from Trump.

In the days since Mueller issued the subpoena, Trump has been on the attack. Last Saturday, Trump encouraged Dowd to call for an end to the Russia probe, a source told me. On Sunday, Trump blasted Mueller as partisan, tweeting: Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? And on Monday, he retained combative lawyer Joseph diGenova, who once declared on Fox News that the Justice Department was framing Trump with a false crime.

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Trumps new offensive is a sign that hes unilaterally abandoning the go-along, get-along strategy advocated by Dowd and Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer overseeing the response to Mueller. Cobbs standing with Trump has been falling for months, after Cobb made the now-infamous prediction that the Russia probe would be over by Thanksgiving 2017. Dowd assured Trump that he had a great relationship with Mueller and could manage him, according to sources. That obviously hasnt happened. Trump just wants something to change and nothing was changing, the outside adviser said. The genial and mustachioed Cobb has always been somewhat of an odd fit for Trump, whose mental picture of a lawyer is Roy Cohn, his early mentor. Sources said Trump reluctantly conceded to allow Cobb to play good cop. Trump is looking at this saying, I did it your way for months, now Im fucking doing it my way, a former West Wing official said. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

In private, Trump friends and outside advisers have been stoking his desire to go on the offensive for months. Trump has heard that his lawyers are idiots; that Muellers probe is a coup detat; and that Trumps only crime is having won the election.

Sources said Cobb is unlikely to be fired imminentlyalthough with Trump you never knowbut in the meantime, Trump is prospecting for a potential replacement. In recent days, he has made overtures to Emmet Flood, a veteran of Bill Clintons impeachment defense team, as well as Ted Olson, George W. Bushs solicitor general. (Olson declined.) Their reticence highlights a larger problem for Trump: no heavy-hitting white-shoe law firm seems to want to represent him. According to two former administration officials, before hiring Cobb last summer, Trump was turned down by major white-shoe law firms that would have normally jumped at the opportunity to represent a president.

Which is perhaps why Trump is turning to aggressive lawyers like diGenova. According to sources, diGenova was recommended to Trump by Dave Bossie and Jeanine Pirro, two of Trumps hard-edged outside advisers. Two sources said Trump is likely to add diGenovas wife (and frequent Fox News guest), Victoria Toensing, to the legal team. Shes a killer, one Republican who knows the couple said. Toensing is currently representing William Campbell, a former lobbyist and F.B.I. informant, who claimed in an interview with members of three congressional committees that Russia steered money to the Clinton Foundation to grease the so-called Uranium One deal. The hiring of Toensing would be a sign that Trump wants to flip the script and investigate his investigators. Appearing on Fox News, Toensing has called for a second special prosecutor to investigate Mueller, the logic being that he was F.B.I. director at the time that the Uranium One acquisition was approved.

Sources also said that Trump is considering hiring back Marc Kasowitz to serve on his defense team. Theyre talking a lot, one Republican briefed on the conversations said. (Kasowitz did not respond to a request for comment.) Bringing back Kasowitz would be a sign of how rattled Trump is by the looming prospect of being interviewed by Mueller. Last July, Trump sidelined Kasowitz after it was revealed he struggled with alcoholism and told a stranger to watch your back, bitch in an e-mail. (Kasowitz has denied reports of alcohol abuse.) Sources also said Kasowitzs return would be a signal that Trump is willing to put his own survival ahead of his family. A month before Kasowitz was ousted, a former White House official told me, he had told Trump that Jared Kushner needed to leave the White House.Photo credit: Getty

From Cosmopolitan

Ahead of the national March for Our Lives march against gun violence, Mic obtained a March 10 letter from former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, addressed to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a mass shooter killed 17 people in February.

In the handwritten letter, the Obamas wrote they were inspired by the students' bravery and praised them for calling for an end to gun violence. Read it in full below:



To the students of Parkland -

We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.

Not only have you supported and comforted each other, but youve helped awaken the conscience of the nation, and challenged decision-makers to make the safety of our children the countrys top priority.

Throughout our history, young people like you have led the way in making America better. There may be setbacks; you may sometimes feel like progress is too slow in coming. But we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.

Barack Obama Michelle Obama

While the letter was dated weeks after the shooting, the Obamas had both also tweeted in support of the students and common sense gun laws in the days after the shooting took place. In one tweet, he wrote, "We've got your backs," former President Obama wrote, and "we're behind you every step of the way," Michelle added.

We are grieving with Parkland. But we are not powerless. Caring for our kids is our first job. And until we can honestly say that we're doing enough to keep them safe from harm, including long overdue, common-sense gun safety laws that most Americans want, then we have to change. - Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 15, 2018

Young people have helped lead all our great movements. How inspiring to see it again in so many smart, fearless students standing up for their right to be safe; marching and organizing to remake the world as it should be. We've been waiting for you. And we've got your backs. - Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 22, 2018

Im in total awe of the extraordinary students in Florida. Like every movement for progress in our history, gun reform will take unyielding courage and endurance. But @barackobama and I believe in you, were proud of you, and were behind you every step of the way. - Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) February 22, 2018

Last week, students across the nation joined together in a national walkout during school hours to honor victims of gun violence and raise awareness. The March For Our Lives march against gun violence and for better gun control laws is this Saturday in Washington D.C., and there will also be marches across the country.

You Might Also LikeAfter passing a new government spending bill on Thursday, the Republican-run Congress had called it a day, expecting that President Trump would sign the omnibus bill into law before shutting down for a break until the Senate returns to chambers on April 9th.

The $1.3 trillion dollar bill was intended to keep DC funded through September of 2018, and was rushed through both the Senate and the House in order to meet Fridays deadline, but President Trump tweeted early Friday morning that he may veto the bill, citing a lack of clear funding for DACA and his border wall as the main reasons.

While the president did sign the bill, he told reporters in the afternoon that he was unhappy with the whole process.

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill), the president tweeted. And the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.

Trumps morning tweet refers to the fact that no compromise deal has been reached with Democrats to preserve DACA funding while simultaneously funneling money into the presidents so-called security wall along the US-Mexico border. Its worth remembering, of course, that it was the president himself who moved to rescind DACA in the first place.

In a brief press conference Friday, the president said that while he was unhappy with many elements of the bill, he felt that he had no choice but to sign it into law in order to get more funding for defense into the budget. The president also said he wanted Congress to give him line-item veto power, an executive privilege that was ruled unconstitutional in 1998.

There are a lot of things Im unhappy about in this bill. There are a lot of things that we shouldnt have had in this bill, but we were in a sense forced if we want to build our military, Trump said. I said to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again.

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The omnibus also includes an item that would allow the Centers for Disease Control to spend money on research on gun violence throughout the country. Previously, the Dickey Amendment was read by constitutional scholars as a bill that cut off all funding for the CDC to research health outcomes as they pertain to gun violence in the country. Although todays bill doesnt remove the Dickey Amendment entirely, it does clarify that money can be used to research gun violence.

The president isnt the only lawmaker unhappy with the bill. Some Republican senators voted against the bill, worried that the spending limits outlined were too high and would create even more debt for the country. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) replied to the presidents tweet, saying, please do [veto the bill], Mr. President. I am just down the street and will bring you a pen. The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque, throwing all of our children under the bus. Totally irresponsible.

In signing the spending bill into law, President Trump averted what would have been the third government shutdown of 2018.

(Photo via Mark Wilson/Getty Images)President Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill at the White House on Friday, and members of the far-right of the presidents party are not happy.

The legislation avoids a government shutdown and keeps the government running until September, but deficit hawks attacked the president for signing one of the largest increases in federal spending in years. Conservatives also attacked the president for signing a bill that failed to fully fund a wall on the southern border.

Trump had tweeted earlier in the day that he was considering vetoing the bill over its lack of funding for the border wall, and its failure to offer a solution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. At the signing ceremony, Trump said he thought about vetoing the bill, but ultimately deemed the legislation necessary to create by far the strongest military weve ever had.

Trending: The NRA Is A Public Charity That Doesnt Pay Taxes

Many conservatives on Twitter said passage of the bill was a win for Democrats. Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter mocked the signings by tweeting "Congratulations, President Schumer," in reference to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT SCHUMER!  Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 23, 2018

Fox News host and Trump supporter Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, claimed that by signing the bill, the president had furthered his chances of being impeached if Democrats win back control of the House in the 2018 midterms.

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Missed opportunity by @realDonaldTrump by signing this spending bill. If he loses the House, Dems will go straight to impeachment. @realDonaldTrump  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 23, 2018





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The final version of the 2,000-page bill wasnt unveiled until Wednesday, giving Congress just a few hours to read the legislation before voting on it. The short time frame prompted Trump to declare that he would never sign another bill like this again.

Nobody read it. Its only hours old, Trump said.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekFor more than three decades, March has been designated as Womens History Month. You would think that a historian like me, who has devoted 15 years to trying to win recognition for the many female sovereigns whose achievements and influence have been grievously overlooked, would be heartened by this attempt to combat the prejudices of the past. But I am not happy about Womens History Month. I think it is a mistake, just as I think having a separate Womens Studies curriculum or building a National Womens History Museum in Washington, D.C., is a mistake.

Its not that I think feminine accomplishments should be ignored, that students should not be required to study and learn about them. But by allowing women to be shunted off to the side in this way  for no matter how impressive the academic department, or how large the museum, or how many previously unknown females are highlighted in the month of March, that is what we are doing  we ensure that women remain a subset of history rather than integral components of recognized major events.

In my field in particular  European history  the almost complete exclusion of female leadership from survey courses has ingrained in the general population the idea that (with the possible exception of Elizabeth I and now, thanks to PBS and Netflix, Victoria and Elizabeth II as well), women played no role in the momentous wars and political intrigues that are ticked off one by one in the average Western Civilization lecture series. This casual diminishing of half the population has led to all sorts of ludicrous explanations for pivotal episodes, one of the most droll being that angels led Joan of Arc to the court of the hapless dauphin, Charles VII. In fact, it was Yolande of Aragon, queen of Sicily, the dauphins mother-in-law and one of the most competent and effective politicians in world history, who was responsible for recruiting Joan of Arc, just as it was Yolande who financed and organized the army that relieved the siege of Orleans, universally recognized as the turning point in the Hundred Years War. Yet when this period is covered in high schools and colleges, you wont find any of this on the syllabus.

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I have experienced this sort of careless historical chauvinism personally. Three years ago, the radio talk show host Leonard Lopate (since removed for sexual harassment charges), while interviewing me about the 16th-century French Queen Catherine de Medici, fatuously observed that Catherine was best known for having brought fine cuisine to France. Since Catherine de Medici, who ruled for nearly three decades, was responsible for the St. Bartholomews Day Massacre at which thousands of French Protestants, known as Huguenots, were slaughtered in Paris, this was akin to saying that Syrian President Bashar al-Assads major achievement is importing a French chef to Damascus. I was shocked that he said this, but Lopate didnt seem embarrassed, because as an educated person he felt that if Catherine de Medici had actually been a figure of real historical significance, he would surely have learned about her in school.

I could list dozens of examples of women who have changed the course of western civilization, exercised real power, divided up Europe, restored the papacy to Rome, started major wars, ended major wars, conducted complex political and financial negotiations at the very top levels of government, and dictated political and economic policies that affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of their subjects. Yet hardly any of these women rate even two sentences in a textbook or as part of the core curriculum in an AP European history or university course, so they remain invisible.

A good part of the reason for this is that we have allowed ourselves to be contented with the sop of parallel studies and a single month devoted to womens achievements. It takes the heat off conservative academics who think that female influence is overrated and that in any event there is no need to incorporate these figures further as a separate discipline exists to address this subject. So what looks like inclusion is actually exclusion.

Of course, no scholar will go on record as not wanting to change a course to include women; and their feelings on the subject may well be subconscious, or unconsidered. But the survey courses and textbooks have not been changed to include female leadership (except for Elizabeth I), which means that there has been at best general ignorance or at worst deliberate omission. This is obvious from even the most cursory perusal of on-line college syllabuses and sample test questions for A.P. European history.

When Womens History Month  or Black History Month for that matter  was initiated it was a necessary first step towards remedying inequality. But it has been over 30 years now and the achievements of powerful women of the distant past are still almost totally unrecognized. As Morgan Freeman said in a 2005 interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, I dont want a Black History Month. Black history is American history. That is exactly how I feel about Womens History Month. Womens history is world history.

Like so many others, I have been inspired by the recent #MeToo and Times Up movements. They are to today what feminism was to the 1970s. But they also show that we still have a long way to go, and part of that means rethinking how we teach history. We cannot hope to lay claim to the future if we dont start owning the past.

Nancy Goldstone is the author of Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots, among other books.Dave Majumdar

Security,

This is a new plane--with an old look.

Here's Why Russia's 'New' Tu-160M2 Could Be NATO's Worst Nightmare

Russias fleet of new build Tupolev Tu-160M2 Blackjack strategic bombers will be equipped with upgraded engines that would extend the range of the aircraft by roughly 600 miles. The massive Mach 2.0 capable bombers are also expected to receive a new generation of stealthy long-range cruise missiles as their main armament.

According to Russian deputy defense minister Yuri Borisov, engine manufacturer Kuznetsov is working on the development of a modernized version of the NK-32 afterburning turbofan for the new Tu-160M2 variant.

"In its upgraded version, it [the engine] will be 10% more efficient, which will make it possible to increase the flight range of the strategic bomber by about 1,000 km," Borisov said during his visit to the Kuznetsov plant in Samara according to TASS.

Development of the Tu-160M2 is proceeding on schedule according to Borisov.

The work is proceeding, by and large, according to schedule so far. As for the engine, this is the basic unit, which will determine the performance characteristics of the new plane," Borisov said.

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But the engines are only one part of the modernization of the Tu-160. The aircraft are essentially going to be gutted and fitted with completely new avionics and weapons.

We are going to purchase the entire fleet of our strategic Tu-160 bombers in their new version and carry out heavy upgrade of operational aircraft where only the fuselage will remain while all the onboard radio-electronic equipment and engines will be replaced, Borosov said. That is why, we will get the renewed fleet of strategic aircraft somewhere by 2030.

While the new Tu-160M2 will receive some low observable coatings, the Blackjack remains primarily a cruise missile carrier. Unlike American bombers such as the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit or the B-21 Raider, the Russian Air Force relies primarily on long-range standoff weapons to strike targets inside heavily defended airspace. As such, the Tu-160M2 will receive stealthy next-generation long-range cruise missiles.

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"Alongside, we are developing new airborne weapons, and you cant compare the Tu-160 plane with the Kh-55, Kh-550 and even Kh-101 missiles and the plane, which we hope to get serial-produced by the 2030s with new airborne weapons that will have quite different ranges," Borisov said.

For Russia, given the role that its bombers play in both its conventional and nuclear doctrine, the upgraded Tu-160M2 seems to be a commonsense and relatively affordable way to recapitalize its fleet. Certainly, it is a more cost effective and technically feasible route than immediately trying to move directly into program to develop a stealth bomber such as the PAK-DA.

Eventually, Russia will probably develop and field a PAK-DA, but the Tu-160M2 should suffice for the short to medium term future.

Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar.

Image: Creative Commons.

Read full articleGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel laid out a six-point plan this week to prevent a future migrant crisis, including a common asylum system across all European Union (EU) member-states. As Breitbart writes in an article "Merkel Pushes for EU Common Asylum System After Inviting Millions of Migrants to Europe", the German leader, who recently formed a new coalition months after last Septembers election, released her six-point plan to stop another migrant crisis after many held her responsible for creating the first one in 2015.

The first point involves support for the EU-Turkey migrant deal, which saw the political bloc give billions to Turkey and a promise of visa liberalisation for Turkish citizens, in exchange for keeping migrants from crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece. I know that the EU-Turkey agreement has many opponents. But I will defend it, Merkel said.

Merkel also declared that Germany and other countries should pour more funding into United Nations programmes like the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNCHR).

The causes of migration were another major topic raised by the Chancellor with Merkel arguing that more should be done to condemn regimes like that of Syrian president Bashar Assad, and highlighting steps to forge agreements with African countries to prevent further migration.

A strong EU external border is something that has been advocated by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and others since 2015, and Merkel did voice her support for increased security on the political blocs shared border. We need such control because we have had to experience that among so many peaceful and irreproachable refugees there were also Islamist terrorists, Merkel said  using the opportunity to and call for the creation of a joint EU border security force.

Most significantly, she called for a common EU asylum system, a policy very much opposed by Prime Minister Orban, who has labelled it an institutionalisation of mass migration. Merkel said she expected an agreement on the matter by June of this year.

In her final point, Merkel argued that any migrants who received resident status must be integrated as soon as possible and that the German federal government would support language classes and daycare for children, and help regions with funding such programmes.President Donald Trumps threat to veto a massive spending package Friday morning rattled Capitol Hill and upset his own White Houses carefully presented pledges of support.

Despite earlier statements that he would sign the $1.3 trillion omnibus bill, which lawmakers approved on Thursday before leaving for a two-week vacation, Trump argued that the bill did not include money for a border wall with Mexico or a solution for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

The tweet alarmed many on Capitol Hill, which was otherwise quiet: many members of Congress already had left town for the recess period, which would make it more likely that a veto could end in a government shutdown. Most people are gone, one senior congressional aide tells TIME. If this happens, were having a shutdown.

It also left many scratching their heads. Trump blamed Democrats for the absence of a DACA solution, but it was the Democrats who earlier this week offered the president what many in their party considered a generous compromise: full funding for Trumps border wall, to the tune of $25 billion, in exchange for a path to citizenship for the 1.8 million young immigrants known as Dreamers.

In the end, no compromise on immigration was reached. (Trump got just $1.6 billion for border security, most of which was allocated for fencing.) But the bill nevertheless had adequate bipartisan support to pass  and, it should be stressed, the vocal backing of the Trump Administration. On Thursday, the White House described the omnibus bill as a victory for the American people and supports President Trumps priorities.

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In remarks at an event in New Hampshire on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence praised the package, commending its emphasis on military funding.

President Trump promised to rebuild our military and restore the arsenal of democracy, Pence said. And in just a day hes going to have on his desk a bill that will make the largest investment in our national defense since the days of Ronald Reagan.

Lawmakers and their staffs are now steeling for a contingency plan should Trump indeed veto the package. Democrats saw a possible silver lining: if the government shuts down, they will have new leverage to negotiate.

One of two things will happen, a senior Democratic leadership aide told TIME. Either hell sign the bill by the end of the day, or hell sign a bill thats worse for him after the Republicans come to the Democrats to end a shutdown.

But when it comes to this administration, predicting the future is more often than not a futile exercise.

No one expected it, but no one was that surprised by it, the aide said of Trumps veto threat. This is what he does.Think back, if you can, to early 2008. In the real world, that's just 10 years ago, but in electric-car time, it's several millennia.

The Tesla Roadster had been announced, but hadn't yet struggled into production.

The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt were still deep in development, and the plan for a Tesla Model S hadn't been announced beyond a vague promise in Tesla's published 2006 "Secret Master Plan."

DON'T MISS: RIP Mitsubishi i-MiEV: lowest-range, slowest electric car departs U.S. market (Aug 2017)

So it was nothing short of a revelation when Mitsubishi announced it would produce and sell a modern battery-electric hatchback, capable of seating four adults, with a range of 60 to 80 miles from a 16-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack.

That plan followed several years of testing prototypes of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, itself adapted from a Japanese minicar called the "i" first sold in 2005.

The i-MiEV went on sale in the U.S. in November 2011 and was finally withdrawn from the North American market after the 2017 model year.

2017 Mitsubishi i-MiEV

2017 Mitsubishi i-MiEV

2017 Mitsubishi i-MiEV

2016 Mitsubishi i-MiEV Quick Drive - photo credit Doug Berger, NWAPA

That car, remarkably, remains in production even today at the Mizushima plant in Japanand it can still be purchased new in that country and several European markets.

Now the second-generation of the Nissan Leaf is available, rated at 151 miles, as well as the 238-mile Chevrolet Bolt EV. That's huge progress in 10 years, so it seems like a good time to turn back and offer some words of appreciation to the world's first mass-priced modern electric car.

According to Mitsubishi, the company had built 46,827 i-MiEVs as of the end of February, though a mere 2,100 were sold in the U.S.

CHECK OUT: Drive Report: 2010 Mitsubishi i-MiEV Electric Car (Jun 2009)

Half of those U.S. sales came during 2013, also the Leaf's highest-selling year to date, when competing electric cars were far more sparse than they are today.

But for a couple of years before the i-MiEV officially went on sale, Mitsubishi held demonstrations and loaned out test carsin some cases, right-hand-drive examples from Japan before re-engineering to meet U.S. safety standards had been completed.

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We had our own ride and drive in an i-MiEV in December 2008, in the streets outside a conference in Washington, D.C.

RHD Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Tesla Roadster electric cars, February 2010 [photo: Chelsea Sexton]

We were able to confirm it did actually fit four adults, with plenty of headroom and adequate legroom, even if their shoulders tended to touch.

Longtime electric-car advocate Chelsea Sexton wrote in February 2010 about her family's week with one of those RHD i-MiEVs, which they nicknamed Mr. Bean.

Once the i-MiEV hit the market, a few of the very earliest of early adopters snapped them up and embarked on a process much of the world will undergo over the next 30 years: learning what it's like to live with an electric car day to day.

Of course, others were more ambitious: a team of Canadians drove an i-MiEV across the country in the "Clean Across Canada" drive in the fall of 2010.

The i-MiEV also proved popular among urban dwellers in crowded Japanese and European cities, and Mitsubishi ultimately expanded the lineup in Japan only to include a tiny pickup truck and delivery van as well.

Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car used for Clean Across Canada long-distance drive, Autumn 2010

Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric pickup truck, seen in New Zealand, 2018 [photo: Chelsea Sexton]

Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric pickup truck, seen in New Zealand, 2018 [photo: Chelsea Sexton]

In the U.S., one of those early adopters was our auto-writing colleague and friend Mark Vaughn of AutoWeekwho wrote a memorable 2016 road test titled, "I-Miev: We test the worst-selling car in America!"

That article wasn't a conventional road test, since it reflected on his own five years with the Mitsubishi i-MiEV he bought in December 2011.

That car now has almost 53,000 miles on it. Vaughn laid out his fondness for the little egg-shaped electric car in further comments for Green Car Reports:

2017 Mitsubishi i-MiEV

Yes, I'm the guy who bought the i-MiEV. Maybe theres another one out there, but not many. Before this cute little road pod was finally and mercifully taken off the market last year, Mitsubishi sold a whopping 40 of them a month. I dont really understand why.

Heres my deal: I write about cars for a living, and Ive done so for 35 years. So Ive driven everything ever made in the modern era of wheeled anything, from the Bugatti Veyron to to the i-MiEV.

I stopped being impressed by luxury marques and brand engineering long ago, I have no interest in impressing the neighbors. I actually prefer anonymity when I drive.

When I bought it, there were only two battery-electric cars on the market: the i-MieV and the Nissan Leaf. But the Leaf was $6,000 more, which made the Mitsubishi the obvious choice.

I charge it via electricity generated from solar panels on the roof of my house. In theory, it could be the last thing running when the oil runs out.

2016 Mitsubishi i-MiEV Quick Drive

I like it not just because its eco-friendly, but because, as a wannabe engineer, it is the most efficient means of transportation short of light rail or an electric skateboard (the latter which wont hold four people).

It actually does seat four full-sized adults, has room for luggage, and the rear seats fold down so you can put a bike back there. It's the ultimate in efficient transportation.

After all these miles I still love it and would do it all over again.

The one thing Im disappointed inthough I shouldnt be, because it was to be expectedis the reduction in range over six years. It started out with an official 62-mile EPA range, and I could get 80 if I tried. Once I even got 100 miles.

Now itll do 40 or so miles. Mitsubishi told me the dealer can test it to determine whether the range depletion is normal. If its not, I'll get a new battery; if that decline is within the specs, tough cookies.

I believe the future is electric, not because it's cleanerthough it isbut because it's the most efficient way to get a wheel to turn.

Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car at quick charging station

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

But here's a thought: If the i-MiEV was a revelation in 2008, and a glimpse of what might be possible to imagine 10 years later ... what will today's electric cars look like from the vantage point of 2028?

And what kind of electric cars will be on the market by then?WASHINGTON  The $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that President Donald Trump reluctantly signed on Friday includes a boost to federal arts funding.

The legislation funds the government through Sept. 30, and includes a $3 million boost in the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as for its sister agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Their budgets will each be nearly $153 million for the fiscal year 2018.

The White House had proposed eliminating funding for the NEA and NEH in its budget proposals this year and last year. But Congress ultimately sets spending levels.

This increase could not have happened without the unified, tireless, persistent work of the arts community and grassroots advocates nationwide, Robert Lynch, the president and CEO of the advocacy organization Americans for the Arts, said in a statement.

He noted that this was the second time in a row that a Republican-led Congress has reversed a request from President Trump to cut our federal cultural agencies funding.

Hundreds of advocates for arts funding lobbied lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week, urging them to retain funding for the agencies. Trumps budget also calls for the elimination of funding in the fiscal 2019 budget, which has not yet been set.

The spending bill also retains the $445 million in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund public TV and radio stations. The legislation also included $20 million for upgrading the public broadcasting interconnection system, and $27.7 million for the Department of Educations Ready to Learn program.

The White House had also recommended eliminating the federal funding to public broadcasting, but lawmakers ignored the proposal.

The legislation reaffirms that federal funding for public media is an investment that continues to deliver proven value and service to the American people, said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Story continues

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Subscribe to Variety Newsletters and Email Alerts!The City of Atlanta is probing the extent of a ransomware cyberattack on several customer-facing networks which has encrypted some data and demanded a payment in cryptocurrency for its return, officials confirmed Thursday.

In a series of updates published to Twitter, it emerged that billing systems and court networks had been impacted on March 22. Later, CBS46 published images of the ransom on a computer screen, which was asking for 0.8 bitcoin ($6,780) for each affected PC or 6 bitcoin ($50,800) to unlock every compromised machine.

A note provided city officials with a step-by-step guide on how to pay, linking to a website URL hosted on the dark web. But at a press conference led by city mayor Keisha Bottoms, officials confirmed that they are still attempting to understand the extent of the incident, together with experts from Cisco and Microsoft.

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The City of Atlanta has experienced a ransomware cyberattack, confirmed chief operating officer (COO) Richard Cobbs during the briefing. This attack has encrypted some of the city data, however we are still validating the extent of the compromise. It remains unknown what strain of ransomware was used in the attack.

Ransomware

ROB ENGELAAR/AFP/Getty Images

Police officials confirmed that emerging 911 response was not impacted but said the department had reverted to making pen-and-paper reports out of caution.

An official statement read: The City of Atlanta is currently experiencing outages on various internal and customer facing applications, including some applications that customers use to pay bills or access court-related information.

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At this time, our Atlanta Information Management team is working diligently with support from Microsoft to resolve the issue, it added. We are confident that our team of technology professionals will be able to restore applications soon.

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Mayor Keisha Bottoms said the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had been informed of the cyberattack and urged all Atlanta residents to be vigilant.

On the option of paying the ransom, Bottoms said: We cant speak to that right now, we will be looking for guidance specifically from our federal partners on how best to navigate the best course of action. Right now, we are focused on fixing the issue.

The explanation is simple, we dont know the extent. I would ask that people assume you may be included if personal data has been breached. We dont know if it's information related to just our employees or if its more extensive than that. Because we dont know, I think it would be appropriate for the public to be vigilant checking their accounts and making sure credit agencies can also be notified.

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Security experts and law enforcement officials do not typically recommend paying the ransom demands of digital crooksbut acknowledge its a complex scenario.

In a major 2016 advisory on the subject, the FBI said: Paying a ransom does not guarantee the victim will regain access to their data; in fact, some individuals or organizations are never provided with decryption keys after paying a ransom.

Paying a ransom emboldens the adversary to target other victims for profit and could provide incentive for other criminals to engage in similar illicit activities for financial gain, it continued. While the FBI does not support paying a ransom, it recognizes executives, when faced with inoperability issues, will evaluate all options to protect their shareholders, employees, and customers.

Luckily, there are some cross-industry initiatives including No More Ransom which can help victims recover from some strains of ransomware attack. In 2016, a U.S. hospital in Los Angeles paid $17,000 for its files to be restored after infection.

Ransomware caused a global alert last year after a variant dubbed WannaCry quickly spread to hundreds of thousands of computers across the world.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekPhoto credit: Getty Images

From ELLE UK

Ahead of the national March for Our Lives march against gun violence, Mic obtained a March 10 letter from former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, addressed to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a mass shooter killed 17 people in February.

In the handwritten letter, the Obamas wrote they were inspired by the students' bravery and praised them for calling for an end to gun violence. Read it in full below:

To the students of Parkland -

We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.

Not only have you supported and comforted each other, but you've helped awaken the conscience of the nation, and challenged decision-makers to make the safety of our children the country's top priority.

Throughout our history, young people like you have led the way in making America better. There may be setbacks; you may sometimes feel like progress is too slow in coming. But we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.

Barack Obama Michelle Obama

While the letter was dated weeks after the shooting, the Obamas had both also tweeted in support of the students and common sense gun laws in the days after the shooting took place. In one tweet, he wrote, "We've got your backs," former President Obama wrote, and "we're behind you every step of the way," Michelle added.

We are grieving with Parkland. But we are not powerless. Caring for our kids is our first job. And until we can honestly say that we're doing enough to keep them safe from harm, including long overdue, common-sense gun safety laws that most Americans want, then we have to change. - Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 15, 2018

Young people have helped lead all our great movements. How inspiring to see it again in so many smart, fearless students standing up for their right to be safe; marching and organizing to remake the world as it should be. We've been waiting for you. And we've got your backs. - Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 22, 2018

Im in total awe of the extraordinary students in Florida. Like every movement for progress in our history, gun reform will take unyielding courage and endurance. But @barackobama and I believe in you, were proud of you, and were behind you every step of the way. - Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) February 22, 2018

Last week, students across the nation joined together in a national walkout during school hours to honor victims of gun violence and raise awareness. The March For Our Lives march against gun violence and for better gun control laws is this Saturday in Washington D.C., and there will also be marches across the country.

You Might Also LikeThe actor and Saturday Night Live veteran makes his directorial debut with the dark comedy series Barry (debuting March 25 on HBO), co-created by Alec Berg. Hader stars as a dejected assassin who follows a mark to an acting class and decides to make a career pivot.

How do you find the humor in a story about a depressed hit man?

Alec and I both come out of comedy, so we cant help but not take certain things too seriously. Barry goes to meet with Chechen mobsters, and I dont like when there are just bad guyseveryone has their reasonsso we opened those characters more. It turned into, Oh, what if the mobsters henchman was kind of like a guy from the Apple Genius Bar?

How are Barrys two roles  assassin and actor  connected?

As a hit man you have to be in the shadows and anonymous and emotionally dead inside, but to be an actor you have to live in the spotlight and be known and totally accessing your emotions all the time. The more we explored it, the more the idea held water. The hit man world and being an actor is similar in the sense that youre traveling a lot, youre living out of a suitcase, and as exciting as it all is its actually a lot of time alone in a city you dont know and a lot of waiting around.

What would you say to people concerned about depicting gun violence?

Our show does not glorify it. It shows it for what it is: brutal and sad. One of my favorite parts is when [a dead characters] dad shows up and Barrys like, Oh, right, these people have families that love them. If Barrys purpose is to get out of that world, that world should be awful.

Is directing your big dream?

That was the thing I moved to Los Angeles to do be a director and writerand I kind of fell into acting and performing. A lot of directing is making people feel secure in what theyre doingand if its not working, being honest. It always sucks when a director is telling you, Thats great! when you know it was terrible.

You were famously anxious on SNLare you still?

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Its there the minute you walk into 30 Rock. Theres no second take, so if you screw up a joke, thats it. And Ive done thata lot.

Youre known for your skill with impressions. Is there anyone youve tried to do but cant get?

Theres a ton where Id say, Oh, put me in as someone else. Im known for impressions but I can really only do a handful of people. I can never do Christopher Walken  a lot of people can, but I can never figure him out. And Jeff Goldblum. Its harder to find the handle on more modern-day actors, the thing you can grab on to and exploit in an impersonation. I remember one time  and nothing against him  but I had to do an impression of Robert Pattinson, and I was like, Well, its more of just a look and a British accent. It wasnt like doing Cary Grant. These were the problems we had at SNL.

Why dont you use social media?

Im semifamous and on talk shows, so I dont know what social media would be good for, and I like a certain degree of privacy. Right before I was about to go on Twitter [for Trainwreck], my publicist said, I kind of dont like you on Twitter. Do you want to be doing this? I said no, and he said dont do it.

Whats New Yorks hottest club right now?

I dont knowI dont go out to clubs. Im not taking the bait. But I appreciate the effort.Thousands of people are expected to take part in protests across Poland opposing the so-called "Stop Abortion" bill currently under debate in a parliamentary commission.

Polish women fought and won against government plans to limit access to legal and safe abortion in October 2016, launching the "black protest" movement that mobilized about 30,000 people in the capital city of Warsaw and thousand more in cities across the country and the world. They're planning on doing so again with the "black Friday" protest scheduled for this afternoon.

The "Stop Abortion" bill was introduced following a so-called citizen initiative led by the anti-abortion-rights group Life and Family Foundation that gathered more than 800,000 signatures, allowing it to be proposed to the parliament in January, Agence France-Presse reported. A competing citizen initiative which proposed to liberalize abortion laws was instead rejected by the legislative assembly, where the right-wing Law and Justice party controls a majority of the seats.

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Abortion activists have been protesting against the bill for months, but Friday's protest is particularly urgent because lawmakers have expressed support for the law. If passed, it would prohibit abortions in cases of severe or fatal fetal anomaly, which account for 96 percent of procedures in the country, according to Human Rights Watch.

03_22_Black_Protest_1

Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

The bill proposes to further limit access to legal and safe abortions in a country that already has some of the most restrictive laws in the European Union. About 1,000 legal abortions are performed every year in Poland, while the number of procedures performed illegally or abroad is estimated to be between 80,000 and 150,000.

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Under current Polish law, a pregnancy can be terminated only in case of rape, incest, a threat to life or severe fetus anomaly. In a statement last week, the country's influential Roman Catholic Church urged lawmakers to go further and impose a total ban on abortion, the Associated Press reported.

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Critics of the "Stop Abortion" bill worry that forcing women to carry out these pregnancies presents a potentially fatal risk to their health. This proposal, if enacted, would place womens health and lives at risk. Parliament must listen to women in Poland who are saying loud and clear that they will fight against this attack on their bodies and their health," Draginja Nadazdin, director of Amnesty International Poland, said in a statement emailed to Newsweek.

Women in Poland are strong and determined and we will defeat this threat. But we should not have to fight our own members of parliament to get our basic rights, she added.

03_22_Black_Protest

Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images

The Facebook event page set up to promote Friday's protest in Warsaw featured more than 33,000 people attending. Other protests were being organized across Poland, and solidarity events are taking place in European cities such as London, Paris, Dublin, Spain's Barcelona and Oslo, Norway.

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We need your support and we need it now! We need solidarity and sisterhood. It's been two years since the ruling party in Poland with backing of the Catholic Church has been trying to turn our lives into hell," Natalia Greniewska of the Strajk Kobiet (Women's Strike) movement said in a statement to human rights group Amnesty International.

Some protests are already underway. A group of women blocked traffic on a busy road in Warsaw on Friday morning while holding protest signs and banners.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekThe United States and China have fired the dramatic opening shots of what could become a trade war. But it's what happens next that matters most. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese exports to the United States. Beijing quickly outlined new import taxes of its own on US products worth $3 billion. As CNN writes in the article The world is on the brink of a trade war, the increasingly bellicose rhetoric suggests that further escalation is possible: Trump described his actions targeting China as "the first of many," while Beijing said "it is impolite not to reciprocate" and promised a "fight to the end."

China's response Friday was framed as retaliation for steel and aluminum tariffs Trump unveiled earlier in March, not his Thursday broadside. That means a second strike could be in the works. If Trump unveils yet more punitive measures, Beijing is almost certain to respond. That could be followed by another round, and another. That pattern of retaliation is what economists call a trade war. "The main source of lingering concern is uncertainty over what happens next," said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics.

What Trump wants

It's difficult to predict how the spat will evolve, but there may be clues in what's happened so far. Trump said repeatedly during his campaign that he would take tough stance on trade with China. He said the United States had been ripped off, and he would take action to reduce the US trade deficit with China. In recent weeks, he has demanded that China cut the deficit by $100 billion. In addition to steel and aluminum, the Trump administration has targeted imported washing machines and solar panels with taxes that would affect China. It has not said which products will be hit by the latest round of tariffs. Trump has framed these and other actions as part of a negotiation. Several US allies, for example, were given an 11th hour temporary reprieve from the steel and aluminum tariffs. "When it comes to China, the US is looking for a large deal that addresses the trade balance and liberalizes China's market," said Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Williams said that Beijing is unlikely to change its trade practices, which have given its companies a leg up. The big question: Are the actions Trump has already taken enough to satisfy the president and his supporters? "The key uncertainty now is whether President Trump sees [the tariffs] as an end in themselves, or whether they are followed by a further escalation when, as seems likely, they fail to narrow the trade imbalance significantly," said Williams.

The response from China

It takes two countries to have a trade war. So analysts are watching very closely to see how Beijing responds in the coming weeks and months. China has plenty of options to hit back at the United States. It is one of the biggest buyers of US crops, including soybeans or sorghum. China could put a tax on those, or buy more soy from places like Brazil and Argentina. Beijing could also slap tariffs on American aircraft, doing great damage to US companies such as Boeing (BA). Or it could simply direct its state-backed airlines to buy more from Airbus(EADSF) in future. China's retaliation has, so far, been limited. It's possible that more measures will be announced when the scale and impact of the latest round of tariffs from Washington become clear. Still, China knows it has a lot to lose if things get out of hand. "[Beijing] may want to appear to be standing up to foreign bullying in the coming weeks. But at this stage, they can afford to be fairly relaxed and their response is likely to be limited," said Williams. "China's leaders have no desire to see the global trading system further destabilized."

How to avoid a trade war

Cooler heads may prevail if Washington and Beijing look at the bigger picture. The actions announced so far will have relatively little impact on the world's two largest economies. Capital Economics estimates, for example, that the new US tariffs will cause China's GDP to decline by just 0.1%. A full blown trade war would have much more profound economic implications for the United States and China. It would also drag down global trade and put vulnerable economies under pressure. US allies are calling on the Trump administration to change its tactics, and address trade grievances through discussion and in accordance with global trade rules. "Preserving the global rules-based system for trade is what we should all be working towards," EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom tweeted Friday. Roberto Azevedo, director general of the World Trade Organization, urged countries to resolve their trade disputes by using the mechanisms of the WTO. "Actions taken outside these collective processes greatly increase the risk of escalation in a confrontation that will have no winners, and which could quickly lead to a less stable trading system," he said on Friday.By Adam Jourdan and Norihiko Shirouzu

SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - China's capital city has given the green light to tech giant Baidu Inc to test self-driving cars on city streets, indicating strong support for the budding sector even as the industry reels from a fatal accident in the United States.

Beijing's move is an important step as China looks to bolster its position in the global race for autonomous vehicles, where regulatory concerns have come into the spotlight since the crash earlier this month.

The accident in Tempe, Arizona, involving an Uber self-driving car, was the first death attributed to a self-driving car operating in autonomous mode, and has ramped up pressure on the industry to prove its software and sensors are safe.

Beijing has given Baidu, best known as China's version of search engine Google, a permit to test its autonomous vehicles on 33 roads spanning around 105 kilometres (65 miles) in the city's less-populated suburbs, the firm said in a statement.

Baidu is leading China's push in driverless technology, with Beijing keen to keep up with global rivals such as Waymo, the self-driving arm of Google parent Alphabet and Tesla. It has a major self-driving project called Apollo.

"With supportive policies, we believe that Beijing will become a rising hub for the autonomous driving industry," Baidu Vice-President Zhao Cheng said in the statement.

Two people close to DiDi Chuxing, China's dominant ride-hailing company which is also working on self-driving, said earlier this week firms developing autonomous vehicles were not likely to slow down plans for testing and developing

"I am quite positive on the potential of the technology because autonomous technology makes vehicles far less prone to accidents than human drivers," one of the people said.

Didi declined to comment.

Earlier this month China issued licences to auto makers allowing self-driving vehicles to be road tested in Shanghai, which included Shanghai-based SAIC Motor Corp Ltd and electric vehicle start-up NIO.

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Regulations in the sector are, however, still catching up with fast growth and increasing numbers of firms wanting to carry out tests on public roads.

Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li tested his firm's driverless car on Beijing's roads last July, stirring controversy as there were no rules for such a test at the time. The firm hopes to get self-driving cars onto the roads in China by 2019.

Baidu said that before conducting tests on public roads, autonomous vehicles using its Apollo system would go through simulation tests as well as trials on closed courses.

(Reporting by Adam Jourdan and Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Stephen Coates)By Dmitry Zhdannikov

LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese conglomerate CEFC had already started paying for a stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft when authorities took its chairman Ye Jianming away, halting the $9.1 billion deal in its tracks, according to three sources close to the matter.

The fate of the deal, one of the largest Chinese investments in Russia, has become a litmus test of how far President Xi Jinping's government is prepared to go with a crackdown on financially risky activities among big-spending conglomerates.

The acquisition of the stake in Russian state oil firm is seen as strengthening relations between Russia and China, the world's top energy exporter and top energy consumer.

CEFC China Energy was buying the 14.16 stake from a consortium including Swiss trader Glencore. It had transferred the first tranche of payment before it ceased all communications, the sources told Reuters.

The sources declined to say how much had been paid. One said the fact some money has changed hands would make it more difficult for any party to back out of the deal.

CEFC founder and chairman Ye was put under investigation by Chinese authorities over suspected economic crimes, Reuters reported at the beginning of March, and he will step down from his position at the firm.

Rosneft representatives have since travelled to China but failed to get any update from CEFC on the stake acquisition deal, according to the sources.

"The other party (CEFC) has just vanished," one source said.

Rosneft and Glencore declined to comment, while CEFC did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Another of the sources said it was difficult to predict how the deal would unfold. "One thing is clear though. The Kremlin wants China to own a stake in Rosneft. And China has long said it wants to boost Russian energy ties," he added.

The Chinese foreign ministry said it did not know about the deal, but added: "China and Russia's governments pay great attention to energy collaboration and keep close communication."

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The Chinese national development and reform commission, a state economic management agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Kremlin declined to comment.

RAPID GROWTH

The investigation into Ye, who founded CEFC in 2002, followed mounting concerns among Chinese authorities about the finances and opaque ownership of the Shanghai-based private firm which has grown from a niche fuel trader into an oil and finance conglomerate with assets across the world.

An investment firm owned by the Shanghai government has been tasked with evaluating CEFC's financial position as part of a restructuring and takeover process.

State-controlled China Huarong Asset Management Co has taken a 36.2-percent stake in CEFC Hainan International, the unit that is acquiring the Rosneft stake.

Complications to the deal could prove a blow for Rosneft boss Igor Sechin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sechin is keen to attract new foreign investment as a way of showing the Kremlin oil producer is not crumbling under the pressure of Western sanctions but is growing.

In 2016, Sechin clinched a deal with Glencore and Qatar's state fund QIA to sell 19.5 percent in Rosneft for 10.2 billion euros. Qatar contributed 2.5 billion euros with the rest mainly coming from Russian banks.

Less than nine months later, CEFC agreed to buy out the majority of the stake with QIA keeping its stake intact at around 5 percent, equal to its initial contribution.

(Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Aizhu Chen; Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Pravin Char)Police in Boynton Beach, Florida, arrested a man on Wednesday, March 21, for impersonating a US marshal, after he said he was not a member of law enforcement but was a limo driver.

Police released body camera footage of police interacting with John OGrady, 61, before arresting him. He can be heard telling police his gun is fake and that he is not a federal marshal. Congratulations, you just impersonated a police officer, one of the officers says. Thats a federal offense.

Police then examine a badge OGrady is carrying on his hip. When an officer asks him why hes carrying the gun, OGrady says hes a limousine driver. He also tells officers he didnt know it was illegal to carry a fake US marshal badge.

Police said in a press release officers were called to Best Buy because the suspect had been observed shoplifting an iPhone X several days earlier. Police asked OGrady if he was a member of law enforcement after they observed his US marshal lapel pin, leading to the body camera footage released.

Officers also searched OGradys vehicle, where they found an iPhone X, police said.

OGrady was charged with impersonating a law enforcement officer and retail theft (grand). Credit: Boynton Beach Police Department via StoryfulComedian Jim Carrey posted his latest artwork to Twitter Friday, showing figures that appeared to be President Donald Trump and alleged former mistress Stormy Daniels in a compromising position. He labeled the piece, Fifty Shades of Decay, playing off E.L. James popular erotic Fifty Shades of Grey series.

Its not the first time Carrey has gotten political. Late Saturday night, he seemingly targeted White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders when he posted a painting on Twitter of an irritated-looking woman. He labeled her a so-called Christian and a liar. This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous! the caption read.

On Tuesday, Carrey took aim at Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. It featured Zuckerbergs infamous 2004 quote: They trust me, dumb fucks! The artwork was released as an apparent response to Facebook clandestinely sharing the information of 50 million users with Cambridge Analytica, a political research firm that worked for Trump when he was running for president.

Previously, Carrey told W magazine in September 2017 that hes been painting for the last six years. I do a lot of political cartoons. Ive been doing them all along, he said. "I still tweet and draw political cartoons and play the part of Arjuna who has to fight the battle in Bhagavad Gita. Its not a battle I want to fight, but youve got to play a part. Every day at some point theres pretty much a peaceful acceptance of whats going on in my life right now, but I do also tune in to the Republicanwhat could I call on it?war on logic, intelligence, and compassion at least once a day.

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Jim Carrey

Photo by J. Countess/Getty Images

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Daniels is an adult-film star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She claims she had a sexual relationship with Trump more than a decade ago, around the time his wife, Melania Trump, gave birth to his youngest child, Barron Trump.

Daniels hasnt spoken about the alleged 2006 affair publicly. Days before the 2016 election, Trumps lawyer, Michael Cohen, reportedly paid Daniels $130,000 to remain silent about the alleged affair.

She recently filmed an interview with CBS 60 Minutes that is slated to air on Sunday. If it airs, Daniels could be sued by the president for $20 million for breaking the agreement.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekPhoto: Getty Images

In a series of tweets, journalist Frank Gardner said staff at Heathrow Airport in London lost his wheelchair Saturday morning as he was returning from Ethiopia. The tweets prompted an outcry, with some sharing similar experiences they had while traveling.

Garder writes that he is so utterly sick of Heathrow airport ground staff losing his wheelchair. He goes on to share that he had been stuck waiting on the plane for more than an hour at that point.

I am so utterly sick of @HeathrowAirport ground staff losing my wheelchair. Over 70 mins after landing back from Ethiopia Im still stuck on an empty plane while they try to find it Just when is UKs premier airport going to stop treating disabled passengers this way? pic.twitter.com/f84wXCgXKB  Frank Gardner (@FrankRGardner) March 24, 2018

Whats even more worrisome is the fact that this isnt the first time it has happened, and apparently it has only happened at Heathrow. In his second tweet, he shares that hes been sitting on an empty plane 1.5 hours after landing.

Odd that I can travel round the Middle East and elsewhere without a hitch. Yet time and again @HeathrowAirport loses my wheelchair on arrival. Now been on an empty plane 1.5 hours after landing. Believe me, Im as bored of writing this as you are of reading it. pic.twitter.com/ZKQLFmGOIF  Frank Gardner (@FrankRGardner) March 24, 2018

Finally off after 100 minutes  Frank Gardner (@FrankRGardner) March 24, 2018

Not surprisingly, Gardners followers and others on Twitter were upset to hear about how he was being treated and shared their dismay.

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Its 2018, disabled passengers should never be treated like this. @HeathrowAirport must sort this out.  Miles Holder (@MilesHolderUK) March 24, 2018

That sounds really shit. Genuine question  what is the procedure for wheelchairs on flights? Do they have to be stored in the hold? Is it the airports fault or the airline or both?  James Pearce (@jamespearce87) March 24, 2018

Others shared their experiences with airlines and airports treating differently abled passengers poorly. One had lost his wheelchair; one person was stuck in the window seat when a wheelchair went missing for the passenger next to him, and another shared a story about their elderly parent being pushed through an airport by a porter who wasnt strong enough.

A young man in my village had his wheelchair destroyed when his costly chair, which provided for his independence & was specially tailored, was placed atop a trolley with no restraint  from which it fell & was smashed. Cmon airlines  wake up!  Bonnie Evans-Hills (@EvansHills) March 24, 2018

Same happened for disabled gentleman on my flight back from Beirut. I was by the window and trapped with him till finally disembarked. And he was apologising to me?! Appalling disregard for disabled passengers institutionalised at Heathrow. This needs fixed. Now.  Neil Graham (@NeilGraham10) March 24, 2018

Sorry to hear this. Same goes for ill/elderly passengers who need a wheelchair within the airport. My parent was embarassed having their wheelchair rolled by a girl who was probably only 18 and she was struggling so much to push it we felt bad for her and just told her to go.  me (@applexpear) March 24, 2018

Finally, the airports official account tweeted an apology, but Gardner reiterated that the problems keep happening, and Heathrow keeps apologizing, but nothing changes.

Hi Frank, we are really sorry to hear that. Are you able to DM us with further information?  Heathrow Airport (@HeathrowAirport) March 24, 2018

Apology not accepted. You do this nearly every time. You create a case number then it happens again the next time. This casual disregard for disabled passengers is a disgrace to British airports. LHR2 flight ET700 from Addis Ababa.  Frank Gardner (@FrankRGardner) March 24, 2018

According to Heathrows website, Heathrow is responsible for providing special assistance at the airport. In a section specifically for those flying with mobility issues, the site says, If you need help getting from your seat, well use an aisle chair to wheel you to the aircraft door. And if youre traveling with your own wheelchair, well bring it to the door ready for use as soon as you leave the aircraft.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.



A new law could make it illegal for employers in New York to expect their employees to check their emails outside of their official working hours.

Brooklyn Councilman Rafael Espinal put forward The Right to Disconnect Bill on Thursday afternoon. If passed, it would make New York City the first American city to ban private employers from demanding workers be on call after they have clocked off.

I think that because of technology, the lines have been blurred on when the work day begins and when the work day ends, and there are employers who take advantage of that fact, Espinal told the citys Observer news website.

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He said he hopes the law would be a win-win for both parties: It would allow workers to decompress, reduce anxiety and be able to perform better when they get to the work the next day.

olu-eletu-13086-unsplash

Olu Eletu/Unsplash

Espinal added that New Yorkers are excited about the law. Though some employers have expressed concern about how it would be put into practice.

Under the proposal, it would be unlawful for businesses with 10 or more staff members to require employees to check and respond to emails and other electronic communications outside of contracted hours. Businesses that breach the rule would be fined $250.

Firms that retaliate against employees who comply with the law will be required to compensate the wages and benefits lost by their staff, and pay a $500 fine. The penalty rises to $2,500 in the case of an employee being fired.

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The proposal is the latest bid by lawmakers to help employees strike a work-life balance, as technology risks turning the home into an extension of the office.

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In 2016, France passed a law requiring companies with more than 50 workers to each draw up a charter of good conduct outlining when workers are not expected to respond to emails.

"All the studies show there is far more work-related stress today than there used to be, and that the stress is constant," Benoit Hamon, a Socialist French Parliament member, told BBC News at the time.

"Employees physically leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leashlike a dog. The texts, the messages, the emailsthey colonize the life of the individual to the point where he or she eventually breaks down," he said.

"Recent research has shown that individuals who work 55 hours or more per week have a 33 percent increased risk of stroke compared to those who work between 35 to 40 hours, and a 13 percent increased risk of coronary heart disease," Stephen Bevan, head of HR research development at the Institute for Employment Studies, told Newsweek.

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"If employees were given a legal right to disconnect this may encourage more employers to moderate their expectations of employees and allow them to re-establish a boundary between home and work."

But he questioned how easy it is to implement in a competitive work environment.

"The problem with this is that organizational cultures which drive high-intensity working are less likely to be sympathetic to the idea that working anywhere might have downsides for employees," he said.

"They will argue that it should be a matter of personal choice and that working in a 24-hour global economy and responding to the demands of customers is ultimately the biggest priority for business. Ambitious employees will not want to appear uncommitted to the business by claiming the right to disconnect, and some managers will regard those who do as lacking drive and ambition to progress. In some organizational cultures disconnecting may lead to career death.

It is rather the responsibility of those in senior positions to set the tone when it comes to a work-life balance, said Bevan.

"We need more employers to recognize that the high-intensity and long-hours working which can result from technology is not sustainable, and can ultimately damage employee health, motivation and productivity," he said.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekThe $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill unveiled Wednesday would incentivize increased background checks and stipulates the Center for Disease Control and Prevention can research gun violencesomething it hasn't done for more than two decades.

A provision in the 2,232-page bill would tweak what's known as the "Dickey Amendment," which became a de facto ban on the CDC from studying gun violence. Then-representative Jay Dickey (R-Arkansas) described himself as "the NRA's point person in Congress," issued a provision to an omnibus bill in 1996 that declared "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control."

Dickey's amendment was in response to comments made by Mark Rosenberg, the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control director, to the New York Times in 1994.

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"We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes," Rosenberg said. "It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbolcool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadlyand banned.

GettyImages-505706838

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Dickey and the NRA deemed the statement as advocating for gun legislation during a critical time for the gun rights. The CDC had just funded a 1993 landmark study on gun violence that showed how the presence of a gun in the home put its occupants at greater risk.

"They were saying if you want to keep your family safe, if you are a real man, you will have a gun at home, Rosenberg told the Times. Bringing the gun not only didnt protect you, it put you at much, much greater risk.

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Following the 1996 spending bill's passage, Congress cut funding for the CDC's gun research. The agency then declined to study the issue further without funding; the Dickey Amendment has been renewed every year since.

After he left Congress, Dickey expressed regret that his amendment has stymied research. That's where my regret is, he told NPR. I didn't follow through and say, we needstill need to do research. I didn't do that.

Still, some gun control advocates said the provisions in Wednesday's bill dont go far enough.

This is a baby step, Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America, told Newsweek. Its a first step, but its really just the beginning of this battle.

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Watts said the bill only clarifies the language in the Dickey Amendment but fails to address its impact: the loss of funding. This does not overturn the Dicky Amendment, she said. It does not appropriate any funding for research.

Watts said the reason lawmakers are hesitant to take bolder gun control steps is that many officials are dependent on the NRA for votes and funding.

There are too many of them beholden to the NRA, she said. Theres a quid pro quo thats been going on for decades: the NRA provides A rating and campaign donations for votes [] our Congress is used to doing the bidding of the gun lobby."

The spending bill also includes a rider known as the Fix NICS bill, which shores up the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) first introduced the bill after the Sutherland Springs, Texas shooting that left 26 people dead when a gunman stormed a church in November and opened fire with a military-style rifle.

The measure would provide funds to strengthen background checks and close some loopholes, like the one that allowed the Sutherland Springs shooterwho should not have been able to legally purchase a firearmfrom buying a gun.

The NRA did not immediately respond to Newsweeks request for comment on the spending bill.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekDonald Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly: Getty Images

Donald Trump is said to have considered firing his White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and not naming a successor in the midst of a massive White House shake-up.

Citing three people familiar with the discussions, NBC News reported that Mr Trump threw out the idea to his close associates that he could run the West Wing by serving as his own chief of staff, similar to how he ran his own business empire.

The President appears to have tabled the suggestion for now, the news outlet said.

The report came after Mr Trump announced that he was replacing his National Security Adviser, HR McMaster, with former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired last week, and top economic adviser Gary Cohn resigned earlier this month.

Mr Kelly is Mr Trumps second chief of staff in the year and four months the real estate mogul has been President.

There have been multiple reports that the retired four-star Marine general has considered resigning from his gatekeeper role - but Mr Kelly has debunked those rumours.

Mr Trump has reportedly considered the idea of not replacing Mr Kelly if he left, NBC reported, apparently liking the idea of having unfettered access to outsiders and fewer roadblocks to decision making.

Last year, Mr Kelly made moves to control the information Mr Trump sees and who has access to the President.

The presidents former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, suggested the President should become his own chief of staff if Mr Kelly ever departed.

Ive actually argued that if General Kelly at any time does decide to leave - (or) the president decides its time for him to move on - I dont believe there will be another chief of staff, Mr Bannon said at a Financial Times forum. I think there will be five or six direct reports like there was in Trump Tower.President Donald Trump said Friday that he is considering a veto of a $1.3 trillion spending deal because it does not address the fate of the nearly 700,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or a border wall.

The 2,000-plus page omnibus bill does not address the so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Though it does include $1.6 billion for border security, including some spending for border barrier planning and design, that amount is far short of the $25 billion Trump has said he wants.

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

President Trump ended the DACA program last September and has since outlined strict pillars he wants addressed in any deal to offer deportation protections, or a path to citizenship, for the population of immigrants who have and would benefit from it. Those pillars have stymied Congressional efforts to fix DACA, even as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have worked to find a compromise.

During an early round of negotiations, Trump told lawmakers he would work with them on a bill of love, only to throw cold water on plans that didnt include his wants, including cuts to family-based migration and the diversity visa lottery program.

There were reports that the White House and congressional leaders were discussing a plan to push through a short-term extension of the DACA program that was tied to border funding, but no such plan was included in the omnibus package.

As the spending deadline rapidly approached, the White House had proposed tying $25 billion in wall funding to a three-year extension of DACA. Democrats, however, could not agree to that plan because it did not include a path to citizenship for the nearly 1.8 million people who are considered Dreamers, according to the Washington Post.

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The Post reports that Democrats proposed tying the $25 billion in border funding to a path to citizenship for the entire Dreamer population, but the White House would not agree to protecting all 1.8 million without broader immigration changes.

Trump has lashed out at Democrats on Twitter as a result of the impasse.Almost 3,100 militants and their family members have left the settlement of Harasta in Syrias Eastern Ghouta over the past day, TASS reported citing Russias Defense Ministry.

"A total of 3,084 militants and their family members have been evacuated in a convoy of 59 buses through the organized humanitarian corridor to the Idlib province in one day. All in all a total of 4,979 militants and their family members have been evacuated from the settlement of Harasta to the Idlib province," the ministry said in a statement.

Agreements reached between the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the opposing sides in Syria and leaders of the Ahrar al-Sham group have enabled militants to leave Eastern Ghouta.

"On March 24, one more checkpoint for evacuation of militants and their family members from the settlement of Arbil (Eastern Ghouta) was opened as a result of agreements reached between the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the opposing sides and leaders of illegal military groups," Russias Defense Ministry said.Apple fans still coming to terms with paying $999 for a smartphone could be set for another price gauge on the next iPhoneall thanks to Donald Trump.

The president announced yesterday (March 22) that he would introduce an import tax of 25% on Chinese products for about $50 billion worth of goods. The technology sector is expected to feel the brunt of the tariffand that could include Apple products.

Despite the company being based in Californiaand all products being designed in Cupertinothe products are built in China. Trump claimed it would impact around $60 billion worth of products, but his staff later clarified it would be around $50 billion.

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Trump signs China tariff

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

We have a tremendous intellectual property theft problem, Trump said, according to CNN. Its going to make us a much stronger, much richer nation.

They [China] are helping us a lot in North Korea. But we have a trade deficit there are many different ways of looking at it, but no matter which way you look at it, it is the largest trade deficit of any country in the history of the world.

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If the 25 percent tariff is applied to iPhone products, the 64GB iPhone X would rise to $1249 and the 256GB model to $1436. Anyone hoping to buy a mid-range Macbook Pro will pay an extra $450from $1799 to $2249.

The United States trade deficit was at $375 billion in 2017. Trump has said he wants to cut at least $100 billion off.

iPhone X

ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP/Getty Images

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Chinas ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, said China was not afraid of a trade war. We dont want a trade war with the United States, or with anybody else, Cui said, according to Phone Arena. But we are not afraid of it. If somebody tries to impose a trade war on us, we will fight.

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In January, Apple chief executive Tim Cook announced the company would spend $30 billion in the U.S. over the next five years. It is expected to create 20,000 local jobs. We are focusing our investments in areas where we can have a direct impact on job creation and job preparedness, Cook said in a statement.

A proposed list of products to be taxed will be released within 15 days. Following a notice period for feedback, a finalized list will be released.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekBy Helen Reid

LONDON (Reuters) - Mounting fears of a global trade war after the U.S. slapped tariffs on imports from China sent British stocks to a 15-month low on Friday.

The FTSE 100 (.FTSE) ended the session 0.4 percent lower at 6,921.94 points, clawing back some losses after hitting its lowest level since December 2016 in early trading.

Investor unease extended to the response from China, which urged the United States to "pull back from the brink", and unveiled its own plans to impose tariffs on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports.

Bank stocks and miners were the biggest drags as risk sentiment soured and the most trade-sensitive sectors suffered.

Some felt this was a long-overdue selloff in stock markets, which enjoyed an unusually robust 2017 but have run into obstacles since the start of last month.

"It could have been anything that caused it, it just happened to be trade," said Daniel Lockyer, senior fund manager at Hawksmoor Investment Management.

"The market is a discounting mechanism and we didn't think it was discounting enough risks out there, whether it's corporate earnings disappointing, political risks, the end of QE," he added.

Indivior (INDV.L) shares plummeted more than 20 percent at the open before recovering, ending down 6.3 percent, after the pharma firm lost a patent protection case, setting it up for cheap competition to its opioid addiction treatment.

A U.S. court ruled generic drugs firm Alvogen had not infringed three of the British firm's patents, a blow to Indivior whose Suboxone Film treatment accounts for as much as 80 percent of its revenue.

GSK (GSK.L) rose 3.3 percent after it pulled out of the bidding war for Pfizer's consumer health business (PFE.N) after Reckitt Benckiser (RB.L) did likewise earlier this week.

Smiths Group (SMIN.L) dropped 4.4 percent to the bottom of the FTSE 100 after reporting a weaker first-half profit than expected. The engineering group pointed to currency headwinds and higher R&D costs.

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Next (NXT.L) bounced 7.7 percent to the top of the index after its annual results, with investors relieved the clothing retailer did not issue a profit warning.

A broadly challenging retail environment has caused many of Britain's high street stores to suffer sharp losses, making Next a relative winner.

UK-listed funds invested in Japan and China were among the worst performers on the mid- and small-cap indexes after a rout in Asian trading overnight.

Baillie Gifford Japan Trust (BGFD.L) fell 2 percent, while Fidelity China Special Situations (FCSS.L) tumbled 3.1 percent. Among small-caps Fidelity Japanese Value (FJV.L) shares dropped 3.4 percent and Schroder Japan Growth Fund (SJG.L) lost 1.4 percent.

(GRAPHIC: Trade fears sink FTSE 100 to 15-month low - http://reut.rs/2pAOA8C)

(Reporting by Helen Reid and Kit Rees; Editing by Andrew Heavens and John Stonestreet)Brussels (AFP) - European countries are set to take further steps as early as Monday to punish Russia over the poisoning of a former spy in England, officials said, as diplomatic pressure builds on Moscow over the nerve agent attack.

Russia, for its part, accused London of trying to force its European allies to take "confrontational steps" and unleashing an "anti-Russian campaign".

EU leaders meeting in Brussels have agreed to recall the bloc's ambassador from Moscow over the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday the poisoning with the Soviet-made "Novichok" agent was an "attack on European sovereignty", after EU leaders unanimously backed London's assessment that it was "highly likely" Moscow was to blame and that there was no plausible alternative explanation.

A number of member states are considering following Britain's lead and expelling Russian intelligence agents posing as diplomats, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying further coordinated actions were "necessary" to respond to the attack.

The 23 diplomats expelled by Moscow in a tit-for-tat move "have returned to the UK safely", British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Twitter late Friday.

The question of whether to expel Russian diplomats will be left to individual member states and EU President Donald Tusk said action was expected as early as Monday.

But divisions remain over how far to go, with Austria already ruling out expelling diplomats, and Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, said it was not clear how many states would join the expulsions.

"More than one but I don't think that it will be the whole group," Tusk said.

Macron told a joint news conference with Merkel after the summit in Brussels that the March 4 incident -- for which Russia denies responsibility -- was "a serious challenge to our security and... an attack on European sovereignty".

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"It calls for a coordinated, determined response from the European Union and its member states," the French leader said.

- 'Extraordinary measure' -

British Prime Minister Theresa May briefed other EU leaders on the probe into the attack over a summit dinner on Thursday.

She managed to overcome resistance from countries like Greece and Italy who were reluctant to put their close Kremlin ties in jeopardy to persuade them to back Britain's conclusion that Moscow was to blame.

Merkel said May had shared "certain findings" which left little doubt Moscow was behind the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War II.

"We believe that the analyses are already very well-founded and this has not been questioned by anyone," Merkel said.

"We agreed -- Germany and France at least -- that such reactions are still necessary in addition to recalling the ambassador."

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said the recall of the ambassador was an "extraordinary measure" never before taken by the bloc.

The leaders of former Soviet bloc EU states the Czech Republic and Lithuania, as well as Denmark and Ireland, have said they were considering further unilateral steps, including expelling diplomats.

Latvia was the first to commit explicitly to expelling Russians, saying it expected to make an official announcement on Monday.

- 'Confrontational steps' -

Moscow denounced the moves by Britain and the EU.

"As for the decision taken, we regret in this context that again such decisions are taken using the wording 'highly likely'," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"We don't agree with this and we repeat again that Russia absolutely definitely has nothing to do with the Skripal case."

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on a visit to Hanoi, separately accused Britain of "feverishly trying to force allies to take confrontational steps", suggesting London's focus was now on making "the crisis with Russia as deep as possible".

The Russian ambassador to Britain wrote Friday to a policeman exposed to the nerve agent used against the Skripals, insisting on Moscow's innocence and thanking him for his bravery.

Alexander Yakovenko told Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was released from hospital Thursday following two weeks of treatment, that he hoped the officer and the Skripals "get well soon".

"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for your bravery when reacting to the assault on two Russian nationals," he wrote.

burs/mtp/jahBy Paresh Dave

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Big internet companies and small software developers alike are likely to face scrutiny over how they share customer information in the wake of the scandal involving Facebook Inc and the British election consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

Lawmakers in the United States and the EU have called for probes into how Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to access data on 50 million users and use it to help the election campaign of President Donald Trump. Facebook shares have fallen 8.5 percent this week as investors fear the incident will lead to new regulation.

The scrutiny and the risk of regulatory action could affect Alphabet Inc's Google, Twitter Inc, Uber Technologies Inc, Microsoft Corp's LinkedIn and the many others that make their user data available to outside developers.

The interconnections between platforms such as Facebook and Google and third-party services sit at the core of the contemporary internet, enabling people to quickly share articles to Facebook from news websites and log into shopping apps using their Google account.

But the Facebook case has turned the application programming interfaces, or APIs, that enable such data sharing, into a new front in the escalating battle between lawmakers and tech companies over the monitoring and securing of their vast platforms. Threat of sanctions has already prodded companies into better policing of inappropriate commentary on their services.

"All companies are going to need to do a lot more than just laissez faire policy to manage third-party data access moving forward," said Jason Costa, who helped run APIs at Pinterest Inc, Twitter and Google and now works at GGV Capital. "The days of (the) 'we're just a platform and can't be held responsible for how users use it' line that many companies use, is no longer going to be tenable."

APIs have raised privacy concerns since they emerged around 2005, but their adoption and impact has grown rapidly as companies move data online and look for ways to make it more useful.

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Uber, for example, in 2016 enabled apps that provided tax and lending services to import driver paystubs. The company did not respond to a request for comment on its monitoring and auditing practices.

The economic dynamic behind APIs is simple: software developers create new tools that benefit big tech companies' users, and in return they gain instant access to a large number of consumers.

The big platforms say they have built in protection, such as human reviews and automated scanning tools to detect abuse by partners.

But software experts say policies are toothless because auditing is lax; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, under intense public pressure, said Wednesday the company would now perform audits of the information it shared with partners before it tightened rules in 2014.

Dartmouth University engineering professor Geoffrey Parker, who has assigned students to develop apps based on APIs, said automated policing methods will detect spam-like apps and brazen efforts to steal data. It is much more difficult to enforce bans on storing or mashing together information, or acting against users' interest, he said.

Some companies added safeguards in the last several years. Facebook stopped allowing developers access to information on its users' friends. But compliance audits were minimal, a former employee said on the condition of anonymity.

Twitter and LinkedIn limited free public access.

For paid deals, LinkedIn said "partners are rigorously vetted and regularly declined." The company added that it regularly monitors API usage and takes "swift action when we see or hear of any abuse of our terms."

Software developers acknowledged they often do not even read the terms of use for APIs. Rule-breakers can fly under the radar and amass significant information, said Andres Blank, chief executive of recruiting software maker Scout.

"It's hard to police if the alarms aren't being sounded," said Blank, who has worked with APIs from LinkedIn and Google.

Alex Moore, chief executive of Baydin Inc, which develops Boomerang, an app that can send emails on time-delay, said Microsoft scrutinized his services when the companies partnered on a new feature. But he was not aware of any auditing after it launched.

Google recently asked whether Boomerang could access less information, but that was a rare "poke," Moore said.

"There's going to be things people took for granted about data sharing that come to light," he said.

Google declined to comment. Microsoft did not respond to a request to comment.

Clamping down could limit the supply of innovative tools built on data sharing. But some providers, including Royal Bank of Canada, which announced an API this week, have gone a step further to only allow access to vetted partners.

Paul Nerger, senior vice president at Developerprogram.com, which helps companies such as Cisco Systems Inc manage APIs, said clients have limited the number of partners so that software can be tested "to make sure they are not illegally harvesting" data.

Startups are taking heed too. Affectiva, which last year released an API for identifying consumers' emotional states from speech samples, said that it would audit partners as its program grows.

Gabi Zijderveld, the company's chief marketing officer and head of product strategy, said, though, "we inevitably need regulation and legislation on ethical and transparent use of data."

(Reporting by Paresh Dave; Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Neil Fullick)Helsinki (AFP) - Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont foiled attempts by Finnish police to arrest him under a European arrest warrant, after his lawyer confirmed on Saturday he had left the country.

Puigdemont, who lives in self-imposed exile in Belgium, had been visiting Finland since Thursday for talks with lawmakers.

Tensions are running high in Catalonia and separatist parties have abandoned plans to name a new president following the arrest of the latest candidate.

"I confirm that President Puigdemont is no longer in Finland," his lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas tweeted Saturday, without stating where the former leader was.

Finnish MP Mikko Karna, one of the ousted leader's hosts in Finland, also said he had "received information that Charles Puigdemont departed from Finland yesterday evening by unknown means to Belgium," in a statement posted on Twitter on Saturday.

"Puigdemont confirmed to me today that in Belgium he will fully cooperate with authorities," Karna wrote, after earlier telling media that he had not been in touch with him since Friday.

Puigdemont is wanted by Spain on charges of "rebellion" and "sedition".

Spain on Friday also issued international arrest warrants for five other separatists, including four former ministers who are also in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

- 'Won't escape arrest' -

Separatist parties won regional elections in December called by Madrid after they attempted to secede and retained their absolute majority in parliament.

But they have still not been able to form a government and face growing legal pressures that have seen many moderate their tone.

With numerous leaders abroad or in jail, the separatists have struggled to re-organise or even remain in politics.

Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) confirmed earlier Saturday that it had received a European arrest warrant for "a Spanish citizen visiting Finland", but did not know the person's whereabouts.

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"We've had no contact with the person himself or his assistants," NBI criminal inspector Hannu Kautta told AFP.

Puigdemont's lawyer had earlier told Catalunya Radio his client would not try to escape arrest.

"When the European arrest warrant was issued (a first time), he made himself available to the Belgian justice and police, and he would do the same thing now. I have not spoken to him yet but that is clear, yes," Cuevillas said.

- Fresh elections? -

Meanwhile in Barcelona, the Catalan parliament suspended its debates on Saturday after regional presidential candidate Jordi Turull, who had been due to seek a second-round vote in the parliament, was placed in custody over the region's breakaway bid.

"The presidential candidate of the Generalitat (Catalan executive) is in prison with other lawmakers of this chamber," Catalan parliament speaker Roger Torrent said at the start of Saturday's session, which had been aimed at electing a new regional leader.

"It's clear that under these circumstances the session cannot take place."

It is the third time that the parliament has been unable to nominate a new president, after Puigdemont and another pro-independence leader, Jordi Sanchez who is currently in jail, were forced to withdraw their candidacies.

If a new president is not elected by May 22, fresh elections will be triggered.

And as long has it does not have a government, Catalonia will remain under direct rule from Madrid, imposed after the independence declaration in October last year.By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A minivan that burst into flames as it breached the main gate of Travis Air Force Base in northern California earlier this week was carrying several propane tanks and gasoline cans that the driver apparently ignited himself, law enforcement officials said on Friday.

The driver, identified as Hafiz Kazi, 51, a native of India living in the United States since 1993, was pronounced dead at the scene of Wednesday's incident, about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of San Francisco, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Kazi was the only person harmed in the late-evening incident. No motive was known and there was no immediate evidence of any extremist ideology involved, authorities said.

"I wouldn't classify it as a suspected terror attack," Sean Ragan, the FBI special agent in charge of the bureau's Sacramento field office, said at a news conference.

"We don't have any evidence of a religious affiliation" behind the encounter, he said. "We don't have any nexus to terrorism at this point."

Inexplicably, the interior of Kazi's minivan appeared to base personnel to be on fire as he approached the gate, then drove through the checkpoint and crashed as flames engulfed the vehicle, Ragan said.

The doors to the vehicle had been locked, and Kazi was dead by the time he was extricated, Ragan said.

Inside the vehicle authorities found five propane tanks, three plastic gasoline canisters and several lighters, along with a gym bag containing personal effects, according to Ragan. Exactly what sparked the flames was still unknown.

But investigators believe the driver ignited the fire himself, according to a law enforcement source who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

No shots were fired at the minivan, Ragan said. The local coroner was performing an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death.

Kazi apparently acted alone, and authorities saw no further threat to the base or surrounding community, Ragan said. He said it was not yet determined if Kazi had any prior connection to the base.

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A legal permanent U.S. resident, Kazi previously drove a cab and lived mostly in the San Francisco area since moving from India about 25 years ago, Ragan said. Investigators were seeking to establish his last place of residence and latest occupation.

No family members have been located in the United States, but the FBI notified a relative in India of his death, Ragan said, adding "some associates" of Kazi's were being questioned.

Travis Air Force Base, located east of Fairfield, California, is home to the largest airlift organization in the Air Force, with a fleet of C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster III cargo planes and KC-10 Extender refueling aircraft.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)Florida school shooting survivors appear on the cover of Time - Peter Hapak / Time magazine

Survivors of last months Florida school shooting who remain at the forefront of the reignited debate on US gun control have appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

The Parkland teenagers, who have become the face of a national youth movement calling for tighter gun laws following the tragedy, appear next to the headline ENOUGH.

In the five weeks since the Valentines Day mass shooting carried out by alleged gunman Nikolas Cruz which left 17 dead, the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have taken on the powerful US gun lobbyists, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and politicians urging for Congress to pass meaningful gun legislation.

Survivors Jaclyn Corin, Alex Wind, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky and David Hogg represent a much larger group driving the movement against gun violence, using social media to mobilise protests calling for action on gun control.

Emma Gonzalez

TIME's new cover: The school shooting generation has had enough https://t.co/4YI173gqTxpic.twitter.com/7yFEXuVjyb  TIME (@TIME) March 22, 2018

Emma Gonzalez, 18, gained global prominence after delivering an impassioned 11-minute speech at a gun control rally outside a federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, just days after the shooting.

Addressing President Donald Trump and the NRA, the grieving teenager told the crowd: They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS!

I believe Emma Gonzalez is the most inspiring female of 2018 with her pure, raw speech that started a movement & she deserves special mention this #IWD2018https://t.co/VOpfZYaU8S  Johnny Boy (@GeeForce77) March 8, 2018

We are going to be the last mass shooting, the buzzcut senior announced in the speech that has subsequently been watched by millions on social media.

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Gonzalez, who hid at the back of the schools auditorium during the gunmans rampage, also co-founded the Never Again movement and has won praise for her mature cross examination of NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch in a live TV debate.

Good Morning! It's a beautiful day to remember that teachers shouldn't have to worry about anything except their Home Life and Educating their Students  (and maybe sometimes planning ice cream parties but thats just me)  Emma Gonzalez (@Emma4Change) February 26, 2018

She now has more followers than the NRA on Twitter, a platform she only joined last month.

David Hogg

David Hogg hid during the mass shooting Credit: Getty

Aspiring journalist David Hogg, who studies TV production at Stoneman High and writes for the school paper, has become the groups informal press secretary.

The 17-year-old was in an environmental science class when he heard gunshots and hid in a closet with other students as the school was placed on lockdown.

He began recording from inside the building on his mobile phone and started interviewing other terrified students who called for the introduction of tighter gun control laws. Hopefully Ill live through this, he said.

As desperate students called their parents from the classroom, Hogg recorded a plea for legislators to take action and stop this from happening.

Thousands of people have died from gun violence and it's time to take a stand  for human lives, for children's lives, he said.

After a series of TV interviews, Hogg was even forced to rebut conspiracy theories claiming he was a crisis actor employed by anti-gun activists.

Jaclyn Corin

Jaclyn Corin, a junior-class president who appears barefoot on the Time cover, lost her friend Joaquin Oliver in the Parkland mass shooting.

The 17-year-old, who wrote a 50-page research paper on gun control last year, became an anti-gun activist the day after the shooting and is a prominent member of the Never Again movement.

Her video using the hashtag #whatif to create debate about gun control and posted by fellow Parkland survivors has garnered more than 1.5 million views.

Shooting survivor Jaclyn Corin meets with the House Speaker Paul Ryan in the US Capitol in Washington Credit: Reuters

What if politicians valued childrens lives, not dollars? she asked. What if 19-year-olds didnt have access to weapons of war?

Ms Corin also organised a trip with 100 of her fellow students to meet lawmakers to discuss gun legislation in Tallahassee.

Cameron Kasky

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Credit: AP

Cameron Kasky is one of the founding members of the Never Again movement, coining the name and posting it as a hashtag on Facebook. He invited friends to his house after the shooting to discuss what they could do to make a meaningful difference on gun control.

The 17-year-old junior has given more than 50 interviews since the shooting and asked Senator Marco Rubio live on CNN: Can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?

WATCH & SHARE

Stoneman Douglas Student Cameron Kasky asks Marco Rubio whether he will pledge not to take any more NRA money #CNNTownHall#StudentsStandUp#NoNRAMoney#AMJoypic.twitter.com/yYEdYRjGan  #LaquanMcDonald (@ifuaskmee) February 24, 2018

Senator Rubio responded: I will always accept the help of anyone who agrees with my agenda.

In an op-ed for CNN, Kasky wrote: We can't ignore the issues of gun control that this tragedy raises. And so, I'm asking -no, demanding - we take action now.

Alex Wind

Alex Wind speaks during a rally in advance of Saturday's March for Our Lives event Credit: Reuters

Alex Wind joined Kasky at his home in the hours following the shooting where they founded the Never Again movement.

He urged Mr Trump to make stricter gun control laws on Twitter after the president offered prayers and condolences to families of the victims.

Make stricter gun control laws then https://t.co/UH9VGlX8XK  Alex Wind (@al3xw1nd) February 14, 2018

In an interview with CNN, Wind admitted he was terrified of returning to school following the tragedy.

I want change to happen so badly, I dont want to feel unsafe in my own school, he said.

March For Our Lives

The students will be leading the March For Our Lives protests on 24 March, as protesters take to the streets of Washington DC to demand action to end gun violence and mass shootings in schools.

Tens of thousands of students will also be campaigning in cities across the US and in six continents this weekend.

Mass shootings have become more frequent in the US

People are saying that its not time to talk about gun control, and we can respect that, said Kasky announcing the march. Heres a time: March 24, in every single city marching together as students begging for our lives.

Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, Demi Lovato and Common are due to be among performers at Saturday's main march.By Johanna Decorse

CARCASSONNE, France (Reuters) - Just hours before killing three people and terrorising shoppers in a supermarket in southern France, 25-year old Redouane Lakdim took his younger sister to school, French media said, leaving his family's flat outside Carcassonne's medieval city walls.

Lakdim, a French national born in Morrocco, was known by police for petty crimes and possession of drugs - for which he spent one month in jail in 2016.

French interior minister Gerard Collomb said nothing suggested he was violent: "We had monitored him and thought there was no radicalisation," Collomb said. "He was known for possession of drugs, we couldn't have said that he was a radical that would carry out an attack."

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said although nothing suggested imminent action, Lakdim had been on France's terrorism watch list since 2014 and had links to networks of Salafists.

Survivors of the supermarket siege said he shouted "Allahu Akbar" and identified himself as a supporter of Islamic State willing to die for Syria.

He lived with his mother and sisters, a neighbour told Reuters, in a charmless social housing block outside Carcassonne's famed walled city, a UNESCO heritage site.

"It was a calm family," a 17-year old girl who lives in the same building told Reuters, declining to give her name.

Although the area was recently renovated, like many of the poor neighbourhoods that ring French cities it still suffers from crime. Local newspapers had recently reported a playground had been set on fire. On Friday, gangs of youths threatened journalists seeking reactions from locals.

Neighbours said Lakdim was a regular visitor to the Carcassonne mosque. Recent mug shots showed him sporting a long black beard.

On Friday morning, after stealing a white Opel Corsa, killing the passenger and injuring its owner, he drove towards a nearby military barracks where he waited a few minutes, the prosecutor said.

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Changing target, he headed towards the riot police's garrison, where he shot at four officers jogging outside, before driving away.

Storming into a supermarket in the nearby town of Trebes, he shouted "God is Greatest" and shot dead a customer and an employee before taking the other 50-or-so shoppers hostage.

During his standoff with police, he briefly came out of the supermarket, threatening to "blow everything up", the prosecutor said.

When he started shooting at a gendarme who had swapped himself with a female hostage, anti-terrorism police launched the assault in which he was killed.

(Writing by Michel Rose in Paris; Editing by John Irish and Peter Graff)Azerbaijan's Defense Minister, Colonel-General Zakir Hasanov will take part in a trilateral meeting of the defense ministers of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia in the Turkish city of Giresun on March 31, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on March 24, Trend reports.

The ministry reported that Hasanov will leave for Ankara on March 28 with an official visit upon the invitation of Turkey's Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli.

During the visit, Hasanov is expected to hold meetings with the heads of military-political and other structures of Turkey.WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump on Friday signed a government spending bill that fails to fund his long-promised border wall, notwithstanding a threat just hours earlier to veto the legislation.

As a matter of national security Ive signed this omnibus budget bill. There are a lot of things Im unhappy about in this bill, the president said in a rambling, 20-minute explanation of why he approved the spending plan despite his misgivings. I say to Congress: I will never sign another bill like this again.

Trumps explanation, though, may not be enough to mollify his base of supporters, many of whom expected Trump to follow through on his often-repeated promise of a border wall.

This will crush the spirit of the deplorables, as this is exactly what they voted against, said one Republican adviser close to Trump who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier Friday, Trump said he was considering a veto because of the lack of wall money, as well as the failure to fix the DACA immigration program  even though his own White House last month sabotaged legislation accomplishing precisely those two items.

The veto threat of the $1.3 trillion spending bill came after fierce lobbying from a group of conservative House members, which included a pointed accusation that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) had lied to Trump about how much money was included for his wall along the Mexican border, according to the Republican adviser.

Key members of the House Freedom Caucus, including Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), began urging Trump to veto the bill almost immediately after Ryan returned from a White House visit on Wednesday to win Trumps support for the spending plan, the Republican adviser said.

That plan wound up clearing both chambers Thursday. Had Trump failed to sign the measure, the government would have run out of spending authority and partially shut down at midnight Friday.

Meadows declined to comment.

Freedom Caucus members explained to Trump that the spending plan does not actually allocate money to start construction of a modern wall along any stretch of the border that does not already have some form of barrier, the adviser said. Rather, it includes $641 million to build levees and fencing for 33 miles that currently lack a barrier.

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What doubts that Freedom Caucus members planted in Trumps mind, the adviser said, Fox News nurtured to fuition, with highly critical Thursday night programming about the spending deal.

Theres a 50-50 shot he vetoes this, the adviser predicted earlier Friday.

President Donald Trump inspects border wall prototypes in San Diego, California, on March 13, 2018. (Photo: MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images)

Trumps veto threat came in a Twitter statement issued at 8:55 a.m. I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded, he wrote.

Yet those demands would have been met in a bipartisan proposal that received 54 votes on the Senate floor last month  six short of the threshold needed to proceed. That came after a furious lobbying effort against the proposal by Trumps White House, including an extraordinary conference call in which a senior administration official attacked South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham by name.

He has been an obstacle to immigration reform. He has been an obstacle in the way of getting relief for Dreamers, said the official, who spoke on the condition he not be identified.

Trumps Department of Homeland Security put out a similarly strident statement opposing the plan: The changes proposed by Senators Schumer-Rounds-Collins would effectively make the United States a Sanctuary Nation where ignoring the rule of law is encouraged.

Dreamers is the colloquial term for undocumented immigrants who were brought into this country as children. About 700,000 received work permits and formal reprieves from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program during former President Barack Obamas administration. Trump rescinded the program in September.

Under the proposal sponsored by senators, including Republicans Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Susan Collins of Maine, as well as Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, the DACA-eligible population would have been allowed to stay permanently and be given a lengthy path toward eventual citizenship. In exchange, Trump would have been given the authorization to build his wall in full.

The White House instead pushed its own plan, which included the DACA fix and wall funding, but also limits on legal immigration and asylum seekers. That proposal received only 39 votes in the Senate  the fewest of any of the competing plans voted on that day.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the pro-reform group National Immigration Forum, said he believes the Rounds-King bill would have succeeded with 60 votes had the White House not come out against it.

There is a deal that includes the protection of Dreamers and the protection of our border if the president is serious, Noorani said. Up to this point, hes missed every opportunity to take that deal.

Democratic lawmakers offered Trump that same swap in recent days: $25 billion for his border wall in exchange for a path to citizenship for 1.8 million DACA-eligible undocumented immigrants.

The White House proposal gave them everything they asked for while leaving Dreamers in limbo, a senior Democratic aide said. Our counteroffer lined up perfectly with what the president had proposed, but of course, he said no to his own deal. Again.

Trumps Friday morning veto threat came less than 24 hours after top White House officials said definitively that Trump would sign the spending plan when it reached his desk. Lets cut right to the chase: Is the president to sign the bill? The answer is yes, budget director Mick Mulvaney said Thursday.

And those assurances of Trump approval came the day after Ryan trekked through a snowstorm to explain to Trump why he should sign the spending bill. The meeting took place in the White House residence and included Vice President Mike Pence. Ryan told Trump this was the best deal he was likely to get, and emphasized the large increase in military spending that Trump had sought and could claim as a victory, according to an official familiar with the meeting.

Ryan apparently succeeded in his sales pitch. Trump signaled support for the plan in a Twitter statement at 11 p.m. that night: Got $1.6 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border, rest will be forthcoming. Most importantly, got $700 Billion to rebuild our Military, $716 Billion next year...most ever. Had to waste money on Dem giveaways in order to take care of military pay increase and new equipment.

In the end it was the increase in military spending that Trump cited Friday, too. My highest duty is to keep America safe. Nothing more important, he said, adding that he had very seriously considered vetoing the measure.

Trump has spoken about his great wall on the Mexican border since his campaign announcement speech at Trump Tower in June 2015. For the 17 months of his campaign, Trump promised many hundreds of times that he would build a 30-foot-tall wall to keep out illegal immigrants.

Trump also promised that the wall would be built at no cost to U.S. taxpayers, and that he would force Mexico to foot the bill. Mark my words, he said during his announcement speech.

That promise, however, has proven elusive. A planned meeting between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was recently canceled because Pena Nieto would not back away from his refusal to pay.

Matt Fuller contributed reporting.

This article has been updated to note that Trump signed the legislation.

Also on HuffPost

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.By Brian Love and Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS (Reuters) - France was in mourning on Saturday for a French security officer who died from gunshot wounds after voluntarily taking the place of a female hostage during a supermarket siege by an Islamist militant.

Arnaud Beltrame, 44, a gendarme who once served in Iraq, had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after being shot by the gunman during the siege at the Super U store in the southwestern town of Trebes near the Pyrenees mountains.

His actions were described as heroic by politicians across the political spectrum and calls for a national tribute increased on social media networks.

"He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist," President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday.

Friday's attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, not far from Trebes, the tranquil town of about 5,000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon.

Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.

The attacker, whose rampage began when he fired on a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole, killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday, according to a government readout.

Beltrame's death took the number killed to four.

He was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene. Most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit.

He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding, whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table, line open. When shots rang out, elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant. Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times.

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Politicians from the left and right called Beltrame a "hero" on Twitter, including opposition leader Laurent Wauquiez, far-right National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen and Olivier Faure, set to become the next Socialist party head.

#ArnaudBeltrame was a trending topic on the social network where people expressed their respect and gratitude for the officer, and thoughts for his wife. Several cities, the National Assembly and police stations lowered their flags in his honour.

The Grand Mosque of Paris, the largest in the country, said the Muslim community joined in mourning for a man who had "fallen heroically under the bullets of the terrorist Redouane Lakdim in the exercise of his mission."

British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed Beltrame's courage and sacrifice on Twitter, saying they would never be forgotten.

ARRESTS

Police arrested two people as part of the investigation into the attack, one of them a woman connected to Lakdim, on Friday and a 17-year-old man said to be one of his friends overnight, judicial sources said.

Searches at the attacker's home showed notes referring to Islamic State that appeared to be a will, as well as a phone and a computer, judicial sources said.

Investigators also found three improvised explosive devices, a 7.65 millimetre handgun and a hunting knife in the supermarket, the source said.

The Islamic State (IS) militant group claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron said security services were checking the claim.

U.S. President Donald Trump condemned "the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support."

"We are with you @EmmanuelMacron!" he added on Twitter.

More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the ultra-hardline group.

France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria, where in recent months IS has lost much of a self-proclaimed "caliphate" of territory it seized in 2014.

One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015 while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice in July 2016.

Beltrame was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005. He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris, Macron said.

Friday's assault was the first deadly Islamist attack in France since October 2017, when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him.

Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations.

The news of Beltrame's death was first announced by France's interior minister, who said in a Twitter post: "Dead for his country. France will never forget his heroism, bravery and sacrifice."

(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Helen Popper)President Donald Trump threatened to use his veto powers Friday on the recently passed omnibus spending bill over a lack of funding for his proposed border wall and legislation to help the so-called Dreamers. His words potentially raised the possibility of a second government shutdown in two months.

The Senate passed the $1.3 trillion bill just after midnight Friday, less than a day after the House pushed the threat of another shutdown until just before this years midterm elections. The bill covers the governments budget until September 30, following months of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. The last shutdown took place January 20 to January 22.

The chances of a shutdown appear slim. Most members of Congress have already left Washington for regular work in their states. The House is currently out of session and will not return until April 10, while the Senate will start a state work period Monday through April 6.

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However, U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was still in town and encouraged Trump to veto the bill, describing part of it as grotesque.

Trump accused Democrats of abandoning Dreamers, immigrants brought to the country by their parents at young ages and currently partially protected by the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA), and claimed there were not enough funds for a U.S.-Mexico border wall needed for our National Defense.

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I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded, Trump said.

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Trump, who campaigned and promised a massive wall, received roughly $1.6 billion in funding for additional barriers along the border.

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The president had expressed displeasure with the bill earlier this week. Trump tweeted Wednesday that his administration was able to secure the wall funding and an increase in military spending, but that he had to waste money on Dem giveaways in order to take care of military pay.

Got $1.6 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border, rest will be forthcoming. Most importantly, got $700 Billion to rebuild our Military, $716 Billion next year...most ever. Had to waste money on Dem giveaways in order to take care of military pay increase and new equipment, Trump said.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekThe plane flying from Perth to London will be a Qantas Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Getty Images AsiaPac

Passengers have taken off for the first direct flight between Australia and London, passing a major milestone by reducing to 17 hours a trip that once took 12 1/2 days.

The 9,000-mile flight from Perth, one of the worlds most isolated cities, marks the first direct passenger service between the continents.

Qantas Airways' inaugural service between the Australian city of Perth and Heathrow took off on Saturday evening and will touch down in London at 5.05am on Sunday before departing for the return trip at 1.15pm that afternoon.

Passengers will be on board the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft for 17 hours as they make the 9,009-mile journey.

This is 24% further than the UK's existing longest route of 7,275 miles, operated by Garuda Indonesia between Heathrow and Jakarta.

Everything you need to know about the first non-stop flights from Britain to Australia

The new link with Perth will be around three hours quicker than routes which involve stopping in the Middle East to change planes or refuel.

It will also enable faster journeys to Sydney and Melbourne than flying via Dubai.

The new link is part of Qantas' ambitious plans, unveiled over the past two years, to add ultra long-haul flights to its global schedules.

This will eventually include non-stop flights from Australia's eastern seaboard to Europe in an effort dubbed "Project Sunrise".

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce last year said such flights were "the last frontier of global aviation ... the antidote to the tyranny of distance and a revolution for air travel in Australia".

Travel firm Flight Centre has recorded "high demand" for the new Qantas flights.

Its head of aviation, Justin Penny, said: "Flight Centre definitely feels that long-term the new route is viable and we will see additional services being launched from Europe to Australia in the coming years."

Top 10 | The worlds longest flights

Lisa Norman, the flight's captain, said "we have been working towards (this) for the past three years and its very exciting.

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When I joined Qantas not in my wildest imagination would I have thought this possible, she told the West Australian.

Capt. Norman says she will be absolutely exhilarated when the plane touches down in London.

Its like when a painter puts the final brush stroke on the work.

Alan Joyce checks in for the first Perth to London direct flight. Possibly the most filmed check in ever at @PerthAirport@7NewsPerthpic.twitter.com/KjKhpbfbdu  Rob Scott (@Rob7Scott) March 24, 2018

Aviation consultant John Strickland said the launch of the flights was a significant moment for the airline industry.

He told the Press Association: "It will be a further test of how successful airlines can be with ultra long-haul flying and whether this delivers sufficient profitability to justify the investment in aircraft.

"Qantas will certainly be hoping to attract a higher proportion of premium customers due to the speed advantage combined with the 787's better cabin atmosphere."

The Dreamliners on the Perth-Heathrow route will have 42 business class flat-bed seats, 28 premium economy seats and 166 economy seats.

The aircraft boasts a number of advantages over other models, including lower cabin noise, larger windows, improved air quality and technology to reduce turbulence.

History is being made today. Our new international terminal will open and all @Qantas services will operate from T3/T4. Check your itinerary for your terminal number. The first non-stop flight from Perth to London will depart this evening.   Perth Airport (@PerthAirport) March 24, 2018

They are also heralded for their fuel efficiency, although the impact of this will be reduced by the weight of the fuel needed to fly between the UK and Australia without stopping.

The world's longest regular passenger flight is operated by Qatar Airways between Doha and Auckland, at 9,025 miles.

For Qantas, the Perth connection is a high-profile test for a planned ultra long-haul network that the airline hopes will span the world by 2022.

You have the resources sector on both sides, you have banks, you have lawyers that all want to fly fast and reliably and comfortably, said Rico Merkert, professor of transport and supply-chain management at the University of Sydneys business school. And I think theyre prepared to pay the premium.

flight board is live! Perth-London non-stop - last two continents to be connected by direct air service. Care to guess exact flight time (scheduled 17hrs, 20min)? Im tipping 16.59 pic.twitter.com/i3fOk73O9i  Andrew Parker (@ajamesparker) March 24, 2018

Mining companies in Western Australia dig up more than a third of the worlds iron-ore and bring in some of the largest hauls of gems and rare earths. The sector also supports financial-services firms such as Hartleys Ltd., whose Perth-based director of corporate finance Steve Kite is booked on Sundays flight -- the second in the new service to London -- for just a four-day trip.

Its effectively an overnight flight for me and that feels like Im saving a lot of time, Mr Kite said.

Not everyone is convinced of the routes commercial future.

Aircraft leaving Perth for London will need feeder passengers from around Australia, said Volodymyr Bilotkach, author of the book The Economics of Airlines. But flying from Sydney to London via Perth saves little time over a transfer in Asia or the Gulf, he said.

Historic flight Perth-London direct tonight with @Qantas Dreamliner making the first 17-hour non-stop service. Glad to be a part of last night's launch. Sure beats four days and 9 stops in 1947. Great boost for WA tourism and investment. pic.twitter.com/BpqLJY8Ueq  Michael McCormack MP (@M_McCormackMP) March 24, 2018

Andrew McGinnes, a spokesman for Qantas in Sydney, said bookings on the new route have been strong and corporate clients in eastern Australia have indicated theyll stop in Perth for meetings on their way to London. Its a very competitive market but this is a unique flight, Mr McGinnes said.

An analysis of flight times and prices highlights the challenges Qantas faces.

Flying business class from Perth to London with Qantas in mid-June would cost A$6,614 (3,600). Opting for Singapore Airlines via Singapore would take an extra 2 1/2 hours but cost just A$4,843 (2,600), according to fares on Webjet.

Qantas has challenged Boeing and Airbus to build a jet by 2022 that can fly fully loaded from Sydney to London without a break. Success on the Perth-London service would lay the foundations for even longer routes to Europe.

Its really just the beginning, said Merkert at the University of Sydney.France has identified the suspect behind the latest deadly attack to be claimed by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in Europe.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said Friday that 26-year-old Redouane Lakdim killed a driver and stole a car in the southern French city of Carcassonne before opening fire on and attempting to ram six police officers, injuring one with his vehicle, France 24 reported. After driving to the nearby town of Trebes, he entered a Super U supermarket and took those inside as hostages. He shot two dead, one customer and one employee.

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Lakdim, a citizen of Morocco, reportedly demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving suspect behind the ISIS shooting and bombing attacks that killed up to 130 people in Paris in November 2015. Police then stormed the building and killed Lakdim.

Shortly after, official ISIS outlet Amaq News Agency officially took responsibility.

RTS1OYNB

Regis Duvignau/Reuters

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"The perpetrator of the Trebes attack in southern France is a soldier of the Islamic State and executed the operation as a response to calls for targeting the coalition countries," the outlet wrote, referring to the U.S.-led coalition of mostly Western nations bombing the jihadis in Iraq and Syria, in a message sent to Newsweek by counterterrorism expert Michael S. Smith II.

Lakdim was described by authorities as a petty criminal who was radicalized by ISIS propaganda. ISIS, which once claimed nearly half of Iraq and Syria at its height in 2014, has been mostly defeated in recent years by local troops, militias of various allegiances and international forces, including Russia and the U.S.-led coalition.

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Though the militants have lost nearly all of their territory, they have maintained an extensive and powerful online media machine capable of distributing daily information to followers around the world. Since at least 2014, calls to target the so-called "crusader" states in the West have been heeded, with France being the most frequent target.

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RTS1OYBD

Maps4News/Reuters

Months after two Al-Qaedasupporting brothers reacted to satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo's publication of a cartoon featuring the Islamic Prophet Muhammad by storming the paper's offices and killing 12 in January 2015, the November ISIS rampage in Paris became the deadliest attack in the European Union since the 2004 Madrid attacks, also perpetrated by Al-Qaeda supporters. In France, they were the deadliest attacks since World War II.

Not one year later, ISIS claimed responsibility for a truck ramming that killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice. The jihadis have also claimed responsibility for several other shootings and stabbings in France, some of which have targeted police officers.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekROME (Reuters) - A Rome prosecutor has opened a probe into whether any breaches of Facebook data had occurred in Italy after a Britain-based political consultancy accessed information about 50 million users, a judicial source said on Friday.

The country's postal police, which handles cases related to the Internet, is investigating the matter, the source said.

Magistrates in Italy can open an investigation without identifying a suspect or specifying a crime. The judicial source said the investigation would look into whether Facebook data was used by third parties to influence Italian elections.

Facebook has lost more than $50 billion in market value since allegations this week that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data to build profiles on American voters and influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

(Reporting by Domenico Lusi; Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Crispian Balmer)Ivanka Trump challenged her father President Donald Trump over his treatment of her husband, Jared Kushner, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Vanity Fair reported Friday.

A campaign staffer told the publication that Ivanka burst into her fathers Trump Tower office to take him to task for his treatment of her husband, who worked as an adviser on his presidential campaign.

09_25_Ivanka_Trump_Kushner_emails

Win McNamee/Getty

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Hes left his business to be a part of this. You have no idea what hes sacrificing to be here and how hard he is working for you, the First Daughter added.

When she said how much his conduct had hurt her and her husband, Trump reportedly "caved" immediately, and replied.

All right, all right, all right. What does he want?

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After Trump was elected President, he appointed Kushner as an adviser with a sprawling set of responsibilities, including brokering Middle East peace deal and relations with Mexico.

However the appointment of John Kelly as White House chief of staff saw his portfolio reduced, according to multiple reports in November.

In February, Kushners security clearance was downgraded, and it was reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is probing Kushner's efforts to secure financing from foreign investors during the presidential transition as well as his contact with Russians during the presidential campaign.

Jared and Ivanka have also faced accusations of conflict of interest since taking their White House roles, with officials from other countries reportedly discussing how to gain influence over Kushner by exploiting his business ties and inexperience.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekLt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is out as Trumps national security advisor, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and current Fox News contributor) John Bolton is in. This is no mere rotation of on-screen personalities in the latest episode of The Trump Show. It is a move with potentially profound implications for the direction of U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, Boltons ascendance increases the risk of not one but two wars  with North Korea and Iran.

McMaster was no dove. But Bolton falls into an entirely different category of dangerous uber-hawk. Fifteen years ago, Bolton championed the Iraq War, and, to this day, he continues to believe the most disastrous foreign-policy decision in a generation was a good idea. Boltons position on Iraq was no anomaly. Shortly before the 2003 invasion, he reportedly told Israeli officials that once Saddam Hussein was deposed, it would be necessary to deal with Syria, Iran, and North Korea. He has essentially maintained this position ever since. Put plainly: For Bolton, there are few international problems where war is not the answer.

As the nuclear crisis with North Korea enters a critical period, Trumps choice of Bolton as national security advisor dims the prospect of reaching a peaceful solution. Bolton, like McMaster, sees Kim Jong Un as fundamentally irrational and undeterrable  a view that seems to justify launching a preventive war if North Korea refuses to denuclearize. But McMaster supported diplomacy and, as a military man with extensive combat experience, understood the costs of war. Bolton, on the other hand, has spent his entire career sabotaging diplomacy with Pyongyang and seems downright giddy about a possible military confrontation.

A little history is helpful here. Bolton was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security when President George W. Bushs administration made the fateful decision in 2002 to kill the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea. The Bill Clinton-era accord froze North Koreas plutonium program under effective verification. But when it was discovered that Pyongyang was pursuing a separate uranium enrichment program with the help of Pakistan, a key decision had to be made: re-engage in diplomacy to expand the agreement to prohibit uranium enrichment or tear it up, isolate a member of the Axis of Evil, and push for regime change. Bush, guided in part by Bolton, chose the latter approach. And once the Agreed Framework collapsed, North Korea took the secured plutonium under its control and built about half a dozen additional nuclear weapons, testing its first in 2006. For many arms control and nonproliferation experts, this case represents a cautionary tale about the risks of foreclosing diplomatic engagement. In Boltons mind, however, North Koreas actions simply prove that diplomacy doesnt work with rogue states and that the only solution is to end these regimes all together, through U.S. military might if necessary.

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More than a decade later, Bolton continues to cling to this dark worldview. In a Sept. 3, 2017, Fox News interview, Bolton declared that the only option left to address the North Korean nuclear challenge is to end the regime in North Korea and strike first. Anybody who thinks that more diplomacy with North Korea, more sanctions, whether against North Korea or an effort to apply sanctions against China, is just giving North Korea more time to increase its nuclear arsenal, Bolton warned. We have fooled around with North Korea for 25 years, and fooling around some more is just going to make matters worse.

In an echo of the rationale that drove the United States to topple Saddams regime, Bolton painted an apocalyptic picture of the gathering danger posed by Kims nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The North Koreans are very close to being able to hit targets all across the United States  with thermonuclear weapons, Bolton said. Moreover, this regime will sell anything to anybody for hard currency. They could sell these weapons, ballistic missiles and the nuclear devices themselves, to Iran in a heartbeat. The metaphor of the Axis of Evil is not really a metaphor  it is a reality. North Korea can sell these devices to terrorist groups around the world. They can be used as electromagnetic pulse weapons  destroying our electrical grids capabilities. They can be used for nuclear blackmail. If we fail to act, it would be a lesson to every would-be nuclear state in the world that if you just have patience enough, you can wear the United States down. Instead, we should heed Franklin Roosevelts advice. When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you dont wait until it has struck before you crush it. I would argue that today North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and Irans while were on the subject, are the rattlesnakes of the 21st century.

To further lay the groundwork for taking military action, Bolton penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal just last month titled The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First. Recalling the Bush administrations flawed analysis in the run-up to the Iraq War, Bolton argued that the threat is imminent and that the United States has every right to take launch a preventive war before it is too late.

On March 8, Trump shocked the world by agreeing to meet with Kim sometime before the end of May. The presidents decision represents a high-stakes gamble that could produce a diplomatic breakthrough  or send the United States and North Korea careening toward a war that could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Reports suggest that the timing of Trumps move to replace McMaster with Bolton, as well as the presidents earlier decision to fire Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replace him with Mike Pompeo, is an effort to put key personnel aligned with his views in place leading into the summit. Yet if Bolton reflects, or influences, Trumps position on North Korea, the entire endeavor is doomed. Indeed, Bolton reacted to news of the summit by dismissing any prospect for success and rooting for a quick failure so the United States can move on to other options. According to Bolton, the only value in having this unproductive leader-to-leader meeting now, instead of starting with a more deliberate set of working-level talks, is to foreshorten the amount of time that were going to waste in negotiations that will never produce the result we want, which is Kim giving up his nuclear program.

Boltons doomsaying views are not reserved for North Korea alone; he is equally likely to encourage Trump to chart a path toward military confrontation with Iran. McMaster was no fan of Iran. As an Iraq War veteran who lost troops to Iranian-made rockets and roadside bombs, he favored a muscular policy to push back against the Islamic Republics regional ambitions. But McMaster did not favor ditching the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (officially, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) because he understood that doing so would isolate Washington, not Tehran, and make it even harder to contain Irans other destabilizing behavior. Not so with Bolton.

Over the past two years, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have filed nine consecutive reports showing that Iran is living up to its commitments to constrain its nuclear program in accordance with the JCPOA. Yet Bolton claims, I dont think the evidence is there that this agreement is slowing them down. Bolton has also repeatedly asserted, without any actual evidence, that Iran is on the cusp of acquiring off-the-shelf nuclear weapons from North Korea. If Tehrans long collusion with Pyongyang on ballistic missiles is even partly mirrored in the nuclear field, he wrote last year in the Wall Street Journal, the Iranian threat is nearly as imminent as North Koreas. Whatever the extent of their collaboration thus far, Iran could undoubtedly use its now-unfrozen assets and cash from oil-investment deals to buy nuclear hardware from North Korea, one of the worlds poorest nations. Moreover, for Bolton, actual Iranian compliance with the JCPOA seems beside the point. As he wrote on Twitter in January: Theres been far too much debate over whether #Iran is in violation of the #NuclearDeal. The point is that this was a bad deal to begin with and its a bad deal now and it should be torn up.

As is the case with North Korea, Boltons appointment comes at an incredibly sensitive time for the Iran nuclear deal. In fact, the fate of the JCPOA will likely be decided in May  the same month as the proposed Trump-Kim summit. On Jan. 12, Trump set a 120-day deadline for European allies and Congress to fix the agreement, or he would stop waiving U.S. nuclear-related sanctions and withdraw from the deal. McMaster  along with Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis  repeatedly urged Trump not to trash the JCPOA, searching for a minimally sufficient agreement with Europe and U.S. lawmakers to keep the president in the deal. A State Department team has been working with their counterparts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to identify a compromise that would entail additional European commitments to sanction Irans ballistic missile program, a reaffirmation of IAEA inspection rights, and a framework to negotiate additional restrictions on Irans nuclear program when constraints on uranium enrichment weaken at years 10 and 15 of the JCPOA in exchange for Trump remaining in the accord. Bolton  perhaps with support from fellow Iran hawk Pompeo  is likely to tell the State Department not to bother and encourage the president to reject any arrangement with the Europeans as insufficient.

Last August, Bolton wrote a memo to Trump, published in the National Review, dismissing the notion that the JCPOA can or should be fixed, instead outlining a strategy for ripping up the deal. And when asked by Fox Business on Oct. 4, 2017, what advice he would give Trump, Bolton said: I would urge him to get out of the Iran deal completely. We shouldnt try a too-cute-by-half approach [of seeking to improve the deal]. America benefits from strong, clear, decisive leadership. This is a very bad deal for the United States. Thats what the president believes. He should just get out of it.

This month, Gen. Joseph Votel, the top U.S. military officer in the Middle East, said that the JCPOA addresses one of the principle threats that we deal with from Iran, so if the JCPOA goes away, then we will have to have another way to address Irans nuclear program. There is no doubt what Bolton envisions as the alternative: As he argued in an infamous 2015 New York Times op-ed, and has repeatedly advocated over the years, to stop Irans bomb, bomb Iran and push for regime change. Bolton has been completely transparent about his game plan here.

In October 2017, Bolton outlined the steps he would recommend to the president following a U.S. exit from the nuclear deal: I think you put more American sanctions on them for their nuclear and ballistic missile program. You investigate more carefully the highly likely level of cooperation with North Korea. We know theyre cooperating on missiles  almost certainly they are on nuclear weapons as well. You go to the Europeans and say, We understand this is going to cause you some difficulty, but you need to join with us. And we see what we can do, including talking to Israel about possible military steps. Unsurprisingly, Boltons ultimate goal toward Iran  like it was with Saddams Iraq and is with Kims North Korea  is regime change. As he argued in yet another Wall Street Journal piece, Americas declared policy should be ending Irans 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary.

Boltons views on Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and other issues reveal a general pattern of thought: a tendency toward worst-case thinking; a pattern of warping and misusing intelligence to build the case for war with rogue states; a disdain for allies and multilateral institutions; a blind faith in U.S. military power and the benefits of regime change; and a tendency to see the ends as justifying the means, however horrific. Bolton also has a long and documented history of stifling views that differ from his own and even punishing subordinates who disagree with him. While this style may make him a good fit with Trump, it will compound the ongoing demoralization of the intelligence community, career civil servants, and National Security Council staff and contribute to the further dysfunction of an already broken national security process.

McMasters departure and Boltons appointment represent just the latest sign that Trump is sick of being constrained by the adults in the room. Instead, the president seems increasingly inclined to go with his gut and is looking to surround himself with ideological bedfellows and enablers. And, in Bolton, Trump has found a national security advisor who will feed his worst instincts: his uncomfortable relationship with objective facts; his belief that a bullying maximalism is how the United States leads; his disdain for real diplomacy; his tendency to value the military instrument above  and to the exclusion of  all others; and his conviction that a toxic work environment and ridicule produce good outcomes. In government, personnel often is policy  and Trumps latest personnel move is likely to leave the United States and the world less safe.Secretary of defense James Mattis  with his relatively moderate views on war  now could be the only one standing between America and the abyss



This is not only a time for concern, but also for action. Every American needs to speak out against this appointment. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Donald Trump is assembling his war cabinet. The appointment of John Bolton as national security adviser  following the nomination of CIA director Mike Pompeo as secretary of state  could be the beginning of Trumps march to war. Or wars.

The timing is not coincidental. In May, Trump will likely rip up the diplomatic agreement that has prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, sparking a period of heightened tensions with Iran and removing one of the final barriers to escalating military conflict with Iran across the Middle East.

If Trumps upcoming summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un fails  as is highly likely  the next step could be preventive military action.

Two wars, on two fronts, with incalculable costs.

If youre not scared yet, you should be. John Bolton has been thinking about this for a long time.

In 1998, Bolton signed a letter encouraging then president Bill Clinton to invade Iraq. As undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs from 2001 to 2005, Bolton was a senior George W Bush administration official helping orchestrate the invasion of Iraq.

As one career state department official who worked with Bolton wrote, John Bolton was a key player in the early machinations toward war of the George W Bush administration who knew very well how the administration was misrepresenting the intelligence about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Not even years of catastrophe in Iraq after the invasion sobered Boltons views: he said in 2015: I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct.

That Trump  who claimed (falsely) to have opposed the Iraq war  named Bolton his national security advisor just days after the 15th anniversary of the beginning of the invasion of Iraq is some very sick irony.

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Today, John Bolton has new targets.

Iran is in Boltons sights. In 2015, Bolton wrote an op-ed advocating military strikes on Iran, claiming that: The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israels 1981 attack on Saddam Husseins Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required.

And just when one thought that Trumps embrace of diplomacy with North Korea might have indicated a new, more peaceful direction in US policy, Boltons entrance to the White House should disabuse everyone of that notion.

Bolton supports preventive military strikes against North Korea: It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current necessity posed by North Koreas nuclear weapons by striking first. In a recent appearance on Fox News, Bolton appeared to hint that if Kim doesnt come to the table ready to hand over his nukes, military action could follow.

Some may claim that this is yet another chaotic staff change in a White House where all staff is eventually discarded, and the only opinion that matters is that of Trump. And that may very well be true. But with such a reckless, impulsive president, all that stands between Trump and disastrous wars is a short meeting with his advisors to place the orders.

The appointment of John Bolton just moved America one very large step closer to that disastrous moment. Bolton may be a radical, but hes not incompetent. Hes a weekly feature on Fox News, practically providing Trump his presidential daily briefing. He is a highly skilled bureaucratic fighter. It doesnt take much to imagine Bolton in the Oval Office telling Trump to bomb Iran and North Korea; that Obama didnt have the guts to do it; that it will cement his place in history.

The job of the national security advisor is to work with the relevant US government agencies to compile policy options for the president. Theres no reason to believe that Bolton will push anything but his own radical views, as illustrated by his cherry-picking of Iraq intelligence while at the state department. With Mike Pompeo  a hawk on Iran and North Korea, and a true Trump enabler  likely headed to State, the internal obstacles to catastrophic military decisions are being removed.

Secretary of defense James Mattis  with his relatively moderate views on matters of war and peace  now could be the last man standing between America and the abyss.

This is not only a time for concern, but also for action. Every American needs to speak out against this appointment. While Boltons new position does not require Senate confirmation (Bolton was so radical he could not get confirmed by a Republican Senate in 2005), Trump must hear a chorus of voices in Congress express grave concern and make clear that they will act to prevent Trump from starting unnecessary wars.

The Senate must vote down the nomination of Pompeo. This is a genuine national emergency.The Czech Airlines is resuming regular Prague-Yerevan flights from June 8, Armenias General Department of Civil Aviation revealed on Friday, March 23, PanARMENIAN.Net reported.

The carrier will fly to the Armenian capital twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

As reported earlier, Brussels Airlines is also relaunching regular flights to the Armenian capital from June 2.In choosing to make John Bolton his third National Security Adviser, Donald Trump is empowering a hawkish figure who rose to prominence under George W Bush.

A vocal supporter of the American invasion of Iraq, Mr Bolton served in the State Department during Mr Bushs first term before becoming Americas ambassador to the United Nations.

Critics called the ambassador post an inappropriate choice given Mr Boltons history of assailing the United Nations. He ultimately resigned with Democrats poised to block a confirmation vote.

He has continued to question the UNs effectiveness, lambasting the body in a 2015 op-ed as a vast, sprawling conglomerate, overwhelmed by unsustainable ambitions, inadequate capacities, and plain reality.

Characterised by speeches, meetings, reports, resolutions, and endless ways to spend money, the UN has managed to construct a large carbon footprint. What else it actually accomplishes is a different issue, Mr Bolton wrote.

The fact that Mr Trump will be receiving counsel from a staunch advocate of the US deploying its military might abroad contrasts with the America First focus Mr Trump espoused during the campaign.

But Mr Bolton has also been a fierce critic of Iran and North Korea, two countries that Mr Trump has forcefully criticised and that will likely continue to feature prominently in the Trump administrations global posture.

In 2003, when he was serving as Americas chief arms control diplomat, Mr Bolton delivered a speech in Seoul, South Korea denouncing then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a tyrannical dictator whose country resembled a hellish nightmare.

The President is no stranger to using vivid language to denounce North Korea, threatening the regime of Kim Jong-un with military force as the country menaced neighbours and tested multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles in recent months.

But Mr Trump has also embraced a diplomatic opening with his extraordinary agreement to meet with Mr Kim. In late February, shortly before the White House announced Mr Trump had accepted Mr Kims offer to meet, Mr Bolton wrote an op-ed backing a preemptive military strike on North Korea.

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Mr Bolton also shares Mr Trumps suspicion of Iran, a country the President has singled out as a threat to the United States. Mr Trump has frequently excoriated a deal forged during the Obama administration to halt Irans nuclear programme.

Warning Mr Obamas approach toward Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe, Mr Bolton in 2015 authored an op-ed advocating a military strike on Irans nuclear facilities.

The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure, Mr Bolton wrote, saying that only military action can accomplish what is required.There is intense reaction to Karen McDougals revealing CNN interview about her alleged affair with Donald Trump.

It's just so tawdry, Gayle King said on CBS This Morning Friday. The president, a porn star, a Playboy model.

I feel like I almost want to take a shower," ex-Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on CNN.

The interview, which ran for an hour and 40 minutes, made for riveting television.

McDougal said she and Trump were intimate dozens of times and he never used protection.

She says their affair began in June 2006 at a party at the Playboy Mansion during the filming of The Apprentice.

"The Playboy bunny, she's like the house mom, is what we call her. She actually made a comment like, 'Wow, this guy is really into you. And that's kind of when I started like paying attention. And he was," McDougal recalled.

"I kind of smiled at it, I thought it was kind of cute and funny," she added. "And then at the end of the night, you know, after striking up many conversations, we exchanged  he actually asked me to write... my phone number down for him to keep."

Their first date allegedly took place 12 days later, when McDougal says she was picked up by Trump's longtime personal bodyguard Keith Schiller, who would later serve as director of Oval Office operations in the White House.

Schiller drove her to The Beverly Hills Hotel.

"Keith said, 'We have to go around to the back. We don't want to walk through the hotel,'" she recalled.

Trump was staying in a $15,000-per-night bungalow that was a mini-mansion set behind the main hotel building, offering privacy and discretion.

"We had dinner, had a good time," she said. "As the night ended, we were intimate."

Afterward, she says, she said she felt humiliated when Trump offered her money.

"I didn't know how to take that," she said. "I had a look. The look must have been so sad. I told him, 'Im not that kind of girl.'"

Story continues

She says the affair continued for 10 months. They met at the bungalow whenever he was in Los Angeles. She recorded all their meetings in her diary, referring to trump only by his initials, "DT."

She said she referred to him by "DT" because she "didn't want to expose myself or him."

She admits she has no other documentation to prove her story.

McDougal also revealed that she was in love with Trump and claims he told her he was in love with her.

In January 2007, she ended the affair, saying she felt guilty.

"It was tearing me apart," she said. "I knew I had to get out."

She says they remained on friendly terms, but were never intimate again.

Two years after the break-up, he invited her to the Miss USA Pageant in Las Vegas, but she didnt go because she was dating someone else  actor Bruce Willis.

There was no reaction Friday to the interview from the White House and not a single tweet about it from the president.

Some believe Trump tried to divert attention away from the interview by firing his national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Even McMaster's replacement, John Bolton, says he was taken by surprise, telling Fox News he "didn't expect that announcement this afternoon."

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Related Articles:In the late 1980s, when he helped oversee information security at the KGB, Vladimir Rubanov already had a grasp of what cyber wars would look like in the futureand they terrified him.

The Americans had far surpassed the Russians by then in most types of technology, not least with the invention of the internet and the personal computer. At the KGB headquarters and other facilities around Moscow, Rubanov had a chance to study these machinesslow, ugly and cumbersome things by todays standards, but still advanced enough for him to realize their potential in everything his agency did best: subversion, sabotage, intelligence gathering.

From the very beginning it was clear, he tells TIME by phone from Moscow, where he now works mostly in the private sector. We told our people, Look, the public may not realize yet whats going on. But we need to raise the alarm on a political level, because this stuff is a danger to our vital infrastructure.

The tables appear to have turned since then. The vital infrastructure now at risk is in the U.S., according to a March 15 report from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, which found that Russian hackers had penetrated deep into the control rooms of U.S. power stations, putting a finger on the light switch of American homes. Since at least March 2016, the report states, Russian government cyber actorstargeted government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors.

These were precisely the sorts of attacks that Rubanov had feared from the Americans. He wouldnt comment on whether Russia was in fact responsible this time; his old habits of discretion die hard, and he still serves as an occasional adviser to the Russian government. But he did note, with a tone of regret rather than self-satisfaction, that the Americans should have listened to his warnings two decades ago.

Story continues

After the KGB was dissolved in 1991 along with the rest of the Soviet Union, Rubanov went to serve on the Kremlins Security Council, where he was also in charge of information security. He soon got to work, along with some colleagues at the Foreign Ministry and other agencies, on drafting rules of engagement for cyber spacea code of conduct of the type that governs the use of nuclear and chemical weapons.

The point was to have a kind of non-aggression pact in the cyber sphere, one that would prohibit such attacks against sovereign nations, he says. Their hope was that these rules would eventually be adopted by the United Nations and become international law. But the effort stalled, says Rubanov, in large part because the worlds last remaining superpower wasnt interested. Each country wants to have guarantees of security, but it does not want to extend those guarantees to others. So this is where we ended up. In a place where no one is safe.

Give peace a chance

Soon after Vladimir Putin took office in 2000, Russias cyber strategy got an overhaul. The new doctrine on information security that Putin signed at the end of that year did not explicitly blame the U.S. for menacing Russia. But the implication was clear when document referred to the desire of some countries to dominate and infringe the interest of Russia in the global information space.

A reputed technophobe, Putin had always been mistrustful of the Internet, which he has called a CIA project. And like many of Russias spy chiefs, he feared that microchips and operating systems imported from the U.S. were designed to function as secret tools of American sabotage, surveillance or both. But there was little he could do about it. In the field of cyber weaponry, Russian generals felt they were losing the global arms race, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan wrote in their recent book, The Red Web, a history of Russian cyber policy. So instead of trying to match American technology, Russia tried using diplomacy to put some limits on the United States offensive capabilities.

These limits would have amounted to cyber disarmament. As outlined in 2009 by one of Rubanovs successor at the Security Council, Vladislav Sherstyuk, Russia wanted a ban on cyber implants, which can act as remote-controlled bombs inside an enemys computer networks; a ban on the use of deception to hide the source of an attack; and, a rule that would extend humanitarian law into cyber space, effectively banning attacks on civilian targets like banks, hospitals or power stations.

But the Kremlin did not have the leverage to get broad support for such a deal during the first half of Putins tenure. In virtually all areas of digital technology, Russia still lagged far behind the U.S., and it was hopelessly dependent on foreign imports even when it came to satellite navigation for its military. Despite Putins wish to be treated like the leader of a superpower, Russias technological backwardness forced his diplomats to continue asking the U.S. for a peace accord in cyber space.

U.S. officials described one of these overtures in a cable dated March 2009, and despite the reserved tone of the document, it seems to suggest that the Russians were practically groveling. Andrey Krutskikh, the head of the delegation from Moscow, gave a long monologue about how he thought the U.S. and Russia could work together in the area of cyber security, the cable states, according to a copy published the following year by Wikileaks. He said that Russia was willing to demonstrate flexibility and listen to the American experience.

The U.S. side was unimpressed. Michele Markoff, then the acting chief of cyber affairs at the State Department, told the Russians that cyber threats could not be usefully addressed by traditional arms control-type constraints. According to the cable, she noted that it would be meaningless to restrict the cyber arsenals of nation states, because they would still be able to use proxies to conduct their attacks in secret. The best way for Russia to deal with its concerns, Markoff suggested, would be to build up its own defenses. In other words, prepare for war.

The Wild West of cyber space

Putin has done exactly that. Over the last five years, his armed forces have raced to close the gap with the U.S. in cyber defenses. Russias Defense Ministry and its main intelligence agency, the FSB, have both established new units devoted to this task since 2013. During a televised interview that year, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu expressed awe at the power of what he called the new weapons of mass destruction in cyber space. They can stop the water supply in major cities, he said. They can turn off the electricity. They can block the sewer systems.

Under Shoigu, who took up his post in 2012, the Russian military has set up new scientific squadrons to recruit computer programmers from around the country, giving them much higher salaries and better living conditions than most other branches of the Russian armed forces. The results of such efforts have been impressive. As James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under the Obama Administration, told the Senate in early 2015: The Russian cyber threat is more severe than we had previously assessed.

That was putting it mildly. By the fall of that year, the U.S. and its allies in NATO had seen a barrage of attacks attributed to Russias new cyber forces. Among the reported targets in 2015 alone were the White House, the U.S. House of Representatives, a German steel plant, the Polish stock exchange, a French TV channel and the New York Times. The Russian cyber operation to sway the U.S. presidential race was up and running by the end of that year, and according to U.S. intelligence assessments, it involved hackers working both for the Russian Defense Ministry and the FSB.

As details of those intrusions have emerged over the past year and a half, some American officials and experts have come around to the idea of an international agreement on the rules of cyber war. We went through a couple decades of essentially Wild West in this area, Aston Carter, who served as Secretary of Defense during Obamas second term, told a panel hosted by TIME in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. As the discussion turned to the need for a Digital Geneva Convention, Carter said, Norms and rules do matter. They define when a transgression has occurred, and they create at least potentially the possibility for collective response. Im all for that.

But Russia isnt so sure anymore. As its own cyber arsenal has grown in strength, the Russian government has cooled on the idea of letting international law constrain it. One of the ironies of this apparent role reversal between the U.S. and Russia has been the position of Michele Markoff, the State Department official who essentially told the Russians to get lost when they pleaded with her for cyber disarmament in 2009.

Her more recent efforts at the U.N. have focused on much the same goal: getting international laws to apply to cyber conflict, including humanitarian laws that could ban attacks on civilian targets. But Russia has reportedly stood in her way. Last summer, when the talks on this issue broke down, Markoff wrote an impassioned complaint against the states that do as they please in cyberspace, with no limits or constraints on their actions. She continued: That is a dangerous and unsupportable view, and it is one that I unequivocally reject.

Rubanov rejects it, too. But in Moscow his voice no longer counts for much. The men who sit on the Security Council today are mostly inclined to see the tools of cyber warfare as a cheap and effective way of hurting an enemy. They are not likely to give up those tools, especially since there is no treaty prohibiting them. If we had that document, and enough trust to verify compliance, we would be a lot better off, says Rubanov. Now he fears its way too late.By Ece Toksabay and Raya Jalabi ANKARA/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sources in northern Iraq said on Friday Kurdish PKK guerrillas would withdraw from the Sinjar area, after Turkey threatened cross-border military action against them there. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state for decades. President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday they were creating a new base in Sinjar, and warned Turkish forces would attack if necessary. The PKK gained a foothold in Sinjar in 2014 after it came to the aid of the Yazidi minority community, who were under attack by Islamic State militants. "Guerrilla forces intervened in Sinjar in order to rescue the Yazidis from genocide. With the confidence of reaching this goal, guerrilla are withdrawing from Sinjar," said a statement on Friday from the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella group of Kurdish organizations. It was unclear when the guerrilla withdrawal would actually begin, and a source in the region said local groups affiliated to the PKK would maintain a presence in Sinjar. A source in the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a local ally of the PKK, said the withdrawal would happen soon. The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and United States, has for decades been based in the Qandil mountain range near Iraq's border with Iran. Erdogan alleged on Monday a "second Qandil" was being established in Sinjar, further west. Erdogan said Turkey had demanded that the Iraqi government clear the area of militants, and warned that Turkish forces would launch a military offensive "if this issue is prolonged much longer". Turkish forces are currently pressing an offensive against Kurdish fighters in northwest Syria. Erdogan said the campaign could be extended along the length of Turkey's border with Syria, and if necessary into northern Iraq. Sinjar lies in disputed, ethnically mixed territory. After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the area came under control of Kurdish government forces but was claimed by Baghdad. In October, Iraqi government forces launched an offensive to retake the area in response to a Sept. 25 referendum on Kurdish independence, which Baghdad opposed. Iraqi forces, including Iran-backed Shi'ite militias, have since shared control of the Sinjar area with KCK-affiliated groups, in a largely peaceful but uneasy alliance. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Raya Jalabi in Baghdad; Editing by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Andrew Roche)LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sacked his shadow Northern Ireland minister on Friday after he called for a second referendum on Brexit, a move that exposes deep divisions in the party over whether to leave the European Union.

Owen Smith, who challenged Corbyn for the party leadership in 2016, wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper on Friday urging his party to reopen the question of whether Brexit was the right decision.

Smith said he was sacked for voicing his opinion that Brexit will damage the economy and threaten the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, which ended decades of armed sectarian conflict in the province.

"Those views are shared by Labour members & supporters and I will continue to speak up for them, and in the interest of our country," Smith said in a Twitter post.

Labour is narrowly ahead in opinion polls, but, like Prime Minister Theresa May's ruling Conservatives, remains deeply divided on Brexit.

Britain is due to formally leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

Over the last few months Labour has diverged from the government's policy on Brexit. Last month it said it wanted to remain in the EU's customs union - a move that would make commerce with the European Union easier but limit Britain's ability to strike future trade deals with non-EU countries.

The government has ruled out staying in any form of the customs union.

Corbyn, who supported the 'Remain' campaign in the 2016 referendum but with little enthusiasm, has repeatedly said it is not Labour's policy to offer Britons a vote on any final deal that Britain negotiates with the EU.

Smith will be replaced by a former Labour minister, Tony Lloyd, who returned to parliament last year after quitting in 2012 to become police and crime commissioner in Manchester.

Some Labour lawmakers criticised Corbyn's decision to sack Smith.

Pro-EU Labour lawmaker Chuka Umunna said it was "extraordinary" that a shadow cabinet member should be sacked for advocating a Brexit policy that commands the overwhelming support of the party.

Story continues

"What has happened to our party?," he said on Twitter.

Peter Hain, the former Northern Ireland minister and a Labour lawmaker in the House of Lords, Britain's unelected upper house, accused Corbyn of carrying out of a "Stalinist purge".

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill. Editing by Gareth Jones)After President Donald Trump threatened on Friday morning to veto a massive spending package, you might have expected a bit more chaos on Capitol Hill.

After all, when the House and Senate left the Capitol on Thursday evening, they were leaving for a two-week recess, and many of them headed straight to the airport for overseas trips with other members of Congress. Had Trump vetoed the bill, there would have been a mad scramble of lawmakers returning to town to cobble together a new bill; in the meantime, the government would run out of money at midnight on Friday and shut down.

But the Capitol Building was quiet on Friday morning, confirming what many on the Hill told TIME: that they never really took Trumps threat all that seriously.

Sent just before 9 a.m., Trumps tweet lamented the lack of funding in the bill for a wall on the Mexican border and criticized Democrats (somewhat inaccurately) for failing to reach a compromise on the undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

But many in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, simply rolled their eyes at another flash of empty drama.

No one thought he would go through with it, one senior aide to House Democratic leadership said. There were no conversations about [members] coming back.

And so the Capitol Building was still in the hours after Trump sent his tweet. The automated subway that links the legislative building to the adjacent Senate office buildings was running, but its cars were mostly empty, a ghost train humming along the tracks. Members of the Capitol Police wondered to one another whether theyd be off by 3 oclock; congressional staffers, without any instruction from their superiors to stand by, got in their Ubers and headed to Reagan National Airport. Reports that Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman was seen in the hallways could not be independently confirmed by TIME.

Story continues

The response  or non-response  to Trumps tweet is a testament to how many members of Congress have chosen to operate amidst the deluge of bluster and contradictory signals spewing from the Oval Office: keep your head down, do your job as always, and trust that the presidents staff will help keep him from following through.

In this case, Trump and his team were clearly at odds. His threat to veto the bill contradicted the official stance presented by the White House just hours earlier.

Speaking in New Hampshire on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence praised the legislation as the largest investment in our national defense since the days of Ronald Reagan. (The bill allocates $650 billion in military spending, up $61 billion from last year, and in a concession to Democrats, also increases funding for domestic programs.)

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, was less equivocal. Lets cut right to the chase: Is the President going to sign the bill? The answer is yes, Mulvaney said on Thursday. Is it perfect? No. Is it exactly what we asked for in the budget? No. Were we ever going to get that? No. That is not how the process works.

But Trump was reportedly furious over the $1.6 billion allocated for border security, a paltry sum compared to the $25 billion hed wanted. (Of that $1.6 billion, only $38 million goes to the planning and design of a border barrier, i.e. a wall; most of it is for fences.) Still, his veto threat on Friday morning didnt add up. He fumed in his tweet that 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats, referring to the executive immigration program he repealed in September, but in reality the Democrats had been so eager to reach a compromise on a legislative solution for these immigrants that they had initially offered full funding for Trumps border wall. (Republicans refused.)

Still, most chose to assume he was bluffing, and they were right. Trump gave televised remarks shortly after lunchtime, telling reporters that he had signed the bill, while also criticizing it. Trump said he was signing the bill out of concern for the military, but he described the drafting of the 2,232-page legislation  a hasty process that also upset several members of Congress  as a ridiculous situation.

I will never sign another bill like this again, Trump said. Nobody read it. Its only hours old.

Trump was not alone in his ire. A faction of conservative Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus penned a letter to Trump earlier in the week lamenting, paradoxically, the bills record levels of wasteful spending and its inadequate funding for border security. On Thursday night, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky delayed the Senate vote by instead live-tweeting his reading of the lengthy bill, which he called a sad excuse for legislation.

Still, even those who opposed the package expected Trump to blink. We never thought the President would veto this horrendous piece of legislation, one senior Republican aide told TIME in an email. We sure wished for it to be vetoed. The White House needs better legislative staff to ensure nothing similar to this ever makes it to his desk. They should have raised red flags all along the way. Simply put, conservatives got screwed. 

In any event, crisis was averted. And on Capitol Hill, another brief flash of drama had passed without too much heartburn. No one expected it, but no one was that surprised by it, one Senate Democratic aide told TIME. This is what he does.Over the past four years, the interethnic relations in Crimea have been harmonized due to the creation of a comfortable living environment for all ethnic groups, an analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza Ekaterina Vinnik said today in the National Question program on Vesti.FM.



"Four years is a serious period for the national policy, especially in such an ethnically multi-layered region as Crimea. In my opinion, the changes are so striking that they cannot be ignored. First of all, it should be mentioned that there are 175 nationalities living in Crimea and according to sociologists, almost 90% of Crimean respondents believe that there are no interethnic problems on the peninsula.This result was achieved due to the competent policy of the federal and local authorities, who take into account the importance of the regions ethnic diversity, " she said.



The expert noted that to date, 14 active regional national cultural autonomies have been registered in Crimea, which has become an important component of the civil society and made a significant contribution to the strengthening of the interethnic and interconfessional harmony in Crimea. "In addition, 21 one public-national organizations operate on the peninsula, within the framework of which the national communities conduct various cultural events," the analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza reported.



She also drew attention to the fact that the national editorial staff is working on the state television, and schools have created classes where education is conducted in the national languages of the most numerous ethnic groups - in Tatar and Ukrainian. "In addition, the project My Neighbors with the support of the International Islamic Mission was successfully implemented in Crimea. The goal of the project is to strengthen the neighborly relations in the multiethnic environment of Crimea," Ekaterina Vinnik said.



"As for religious tolerance, it is worth mentioning that the Muslim holidays of Uraza-Bairam and Kurban-Bairam along with Easter and the Trinity have been announced in Crimea as days off. The process of transferring religious buildings and structures to the religious organizations continues, " the analyst said.



In addition, she recalled that in April 2014, the president signed a decree on the rehabilitation of the deported Crimean peoples, and in 2017 - on simplifying the residence permit for them. "Thanks to these measures, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Armenians, Greeks and representatives of other deported peoples received the opportunity for full rehabilitation and development," Ekaterina Vinnik said, adding that in order to prevent conflict situations, an electronic monitoring, forecast, and analysis system for interethnic and interconfessional situations was introduced to help the authorities make the right decisions to bypass acute situations.A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon takes off during the Joint Forces Demonstration Arctic Thunder Open House on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), Alaska, June 30, 2018.

Robert Farley

Security,

Moving forward, the U.S. military will need to navigate a world in which it enjoys advantages that are merely large, but not overwhelming.



Yes, the U.S. Military Is In Decline. And There Is No Need to Panic



The question isnt whether unipolarity will persist, or whether U.S. primacy will endure. Unipolarity and primacy do not necessarily include the military, economic, and diplomatic capability of dictating terms on Russias borders, or at Chinas twelve mile limit. The United States will never feel as invulnerable as it did in the 1990s, mostly because the 1990s were a deeply weird period in the history of modern geopolitics.

Last week, Air Force General Frank Gorenc argued that the airpower advantage the United States has enjoyed over Russia and China is shrinking. This warning comes as part of a deluge of commentary on the waning international position of the United States. The U.S. military, it would seem, is at risk of no longer being able to go where it wants, and do what it wants to whomever it wants. Diplomatically, the United States has struggled, as of late, to assemble coalitions of the willing interested in following Washington into the maw of every waiting crisis.

Does this mean that U.S. global power in on the wane?

Recommended: Air War: Stealth F-22 Raptor vs. F-14 Tomcat (That Iran Still Flies)

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Recommended: How an Old F-15 Might Kill Russias New Stealth Fighter

If so, should we blame this decline on specific policy decisions made by this administration, or the previous administration? As Dan Drezner has argued with respect to who is winning the Ukraine crisis, the answer depends crucially on the starting point.

(This first appeared in 2016.)

Pax Americana:

In the early 1990s, the United States established a degree of military and political supremacy rarely, if ever, glimpsed in the history of the modern state system. This supremacy was built on a degree of long-term economic stability and growth that rarely endures in advanced economies. An extremely advantageous geographic situation abetted this advantage, along with the near collapse of Americas premier strategic competitor. The rest of the worlds major players decided to go along in order to get along.

Story continues

The successful U.S. embrace of standoff precision-guided munitions (PGM), combined with effective and well-financed investments in training and force protection, made the U.S. military effectively unbeatable in conventional conflict. This did not always mean that the United States military could achieve its political objectives through the use of force, but it generally meant that the U.S. could put in other military in check.

The idea that this level of dominance might wane was hardly alien to the conversation on U.S. foreign policy in the early 1990s. Liberal internationalists suggested that this represented a moment, not unlike the immediate wake of World War II, in which the United States could establish a rule-based system that would endure beyond the dwindling advantage enjoyed by American military power.

Neoconservatives, on the other hand, rejected the idea that American military power needed to decline. The draft Defense Planning Guidance document of 1992, for example, proposed a set of military, economic, and political steps designed to maintain U.S. power and preclude the emergence of peer competitors. Although dismissed at the time, many of these idea have persisted, in bipartisan form, though several Presidential administrations.

Both of these perspective had to contend with serious problems. First, even in the 1990s, very few analysts denied the potential for China and India to enjoy long-term economic growth exceeding that of the United States. While both nations had endured severe economic hardships during the Cold war, by the 1990s both were experiencing sustained growth in excess of U.S. rates, and both were becoming deeply integrated in the global economy.

Thus, the U.S. needed to either convince the Chinese and Indians to play nice, or develop a means of preserving presumptive military advantage over each. Both of these things are very hard. Moreover, the United States needed to ensure against a resurgence of traditional military powers in Eurasia, including Germany, Russia, and Japan, either through containment or co-option.

The New Baseline:

Surprisingly, many of these things worked out. Germany and Japan remain (relatively) docile and harmless. India is feeling its way to closer alignment with the United States. Russia is struggling to maintain control over borderlands that it had ruled for centuries prior to 1990. Even China, which has enjoyed nearly uninterrupted high economic growth (at least until a few weeks ago), and which has engaged in a remarkable military buildup, has only begun to probe the political and military weaknesses of the existing order in the East and South China Seas. As a variety of theorists pointed out in the early 2000s, some kind of US unipolarity might endure for a while.

So why the concern?

In the Science of Muddling Through, Charles Lindblom suggested that organizations and decision-makers rarely revisit core assumptions when making decisions. Instead of examining the roots of a problem, organizations settle on two or three easily understandable options, then base their decisions upon a set of pre-established metrics. Decision-makers rarely look at the big picture, in part because looking at the big picture only rarely tells them something useful about the day-to-day decisions they need to make.

As a strategic framework, muddling through has its merits. It refrains from deep theorization, and allows an organization (in this case, the United States) to evaluate decisions based on intelligible, readily available evidence. Muddling through can lead to altogether better outcomes than an effort to impose a grand theoretical framework on the world.

But muddling through is particularly susceptible to bad choices in baseline. If we lack an intellectual framework that can help us understand the huge, enduring advantages that the United States possesses, we will likely overstate the importance of short run trends. Conversely, if we choose as a baseline a moment that was essentially ephemeral (the zenith or nadir of national power, for example), we run the risk of completely misunderstanding foundational shifts in the international balance of power.

The Weird 1990s:

And this is where we find ourselves now. The theorists and analysts who expressed concern about the long-term viability of U.S. power in the 1990s were right; predictable long-term trends were going to lead to the diminishment of U.S. superiority over potential challengers. The advantages that the U.S. enjoyed over China, Russia, and others in the 1990s were ephemeral, and the shrinking gap is the consequence of a return to a more normal balance of international power.

The question isnt whether unipolarity will persist, or whether U.S. primacy will endure. Unipolarity and primacy do not necessarily include the military, economic, and diplomatic capability of dictating terms on Russias borders, or at Chinas twelve mile limit. The United States will never feel as invulnerable as it did in the 1990s, mostly because the 1990s were a deeply weird period in the history of modern geopolitics.

Wrap:

A wise man once pointed out that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Relative to the 1970s and 1980s, the United States is almost incomparably powerful and secure, enjoying presumptive military advantage over any opponent or plausible coalition of opponents. We sometimes forget, for example, that there is some history to the idea of Russian troops freely operating in Ukraine.

And the point is not that the United States deserves some kind of comeuppance for its arrogance. Geopolitics isnt a Shakespearean drama, or a morality play. Noting that Russia, China, and others have the growing capability to act independently in their regions does not imply that they will act justly, or that they have any special right to torture their neighbors.

Nor is it to suggest that the Bush and Obama administrations deserve no blame for their foreign policy choices. Allowing that they are not responsible for U.S. relative decline is different than suggesting that neither President has made serious mistakes. Moreover, theres nothing wrong with the steps that the United States has taken designed to ensure future military superiority. The third offset wont bring back the 1990s, but it will help keep the United States more than competitive against potential challengers.

But the appropriate question should be will the offset (and various other policy initiatives) help maintain U.S. military superiority? not will it help ensure U.S. military supremacy?

Moving forward, the U.S. military will need to navigate a world in which it enjoys advantages that are merely large, but not overwhelming. Thats not such a bad place to be. For better and worse, the 1990s are gone.

Related Video: Trump Criticizes NATO Members on Defense Spending

For more news videos visit Yahoo View.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat.

Read full articleEleven-year-old Naomi Wadler stunned many with her March for Our Lives speech honouring black girls whose stories dont make the news, with some calling her their president and our future.

The fifth grader from Alexandria, Virginia was chosen to speak at the main event in Washington after she organised a walkout at her elementary school to protest gun violence and honour the 17 lives lost during a shooting last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

I am here to acknowledge and represent the African-American girls whose stories dont make the front page of every national newspaper, whose stories dont lead on the evening news, Ms Wadler said. I represent the African-American women who are victims of gun violence, who are simply statistics instead of vibrant, beautiful girls full of potential.

She and her friends may be 11, she said, but we know life isnt equal for everyone and we know what is right and wrong.

We also know that we stand in the shadow of the Capitol, and we know that we have seven short years until we too have the right to vote, Ms Wadler added.

The fifth grader has made waves on Twitter.

Now This News wrote that this brilliant 11-year-old girl is doing more to address gun violence and systemic racism than most adults.

Wow wow Naomi Wadler, another person wrote. She is ELEVEN YEARS OLD. And smarter than us all. #marchforourlives.

The more than three-hour event in front of Capitol Hill was led by students of Stoneman Douglas.

They, along with several other young speakers affected by gun violence, called on members of Congress to pass tighter gun control laws.

Unless legislators acted, they would be voted out of office, the students said.

This brilliant 11-year-old girl is doing more to address gun violence and systemic racism than most adults pic.twitter.com/oRqCFMBAqz  NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 22, 2018

Wow wow Naomi Wadler. She is ELEVEN YEARS OLD. And smarter than us all. #marchforourlives  Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) March 24, 2018

Young Ms. Naomi Wadler just rocked my world and thrilled the nation. Her eloquence and intelligence, her exquisite poise and dignity, and her insistence that little black girls not be left behind, was a searing call to justice for those who are often forgotten! A star is born!  Michael Eric Dyson (@MichaelEDyson) March 24, 2018

Emma Cummings, 24, and Katie Whittum, 23, said it was impressive that all of the speakers were young, were from different places across the US and had such different experiences.

I thought that made the impact greater, Ms Cummings told The Independent.Thirty-eight days after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, hundreds of thousands of students across the country will take to the streets in an anti-gun violence protest of unprecedented size for the issue.

The marches  which consist of a main event in Washington alongside sister protests in New York, Los Angeles and hundreds of communities across the country  is the culmination of weeks of planning by student survivors of the Parkland, Florida shooting in which 17 people were killed on Valentine's Day

The mass protests have been organised by a group of survivors who have forced the nation into a debate about gun control, even as the tragic cycle of gun violence has continued to repeat itself in communities across the country.

End this crisis, they have told politicians, while shootings across the country  in Chicago, in Birmingham, Alabama, in Great Mills, Maryland and elsewhere  have added to the harrowing tally of the dead. Youve made this mess, the students have repeatedly told the adults who have failed for years to address gun violence in America, and were going to clean it up.

Weve all come together and weve all united which is why the march in Washington tomorrow will be so effective, Parkland student Demitri Hoth said on Friday during a press conference in Washington, with the towering Capitol building behind him. People were hunted down in the hallways of my school, and thats not okay.

Parkland students are aware that the best way to see lasting change is to raise their voices and make sure they are heard.

Weve been silent for too long as a nation. Weve allowed these things to continue for too long, David Hogg, one of the more outspoken of the Parkland students, said this week during a panel at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Whats important is that we speak up to legislators and let them know that this is what their constituents want. And if they choose not to vote on the side of human lives that are innocently taken ever year, thats OK, because well vote you out. Its as simple as that.

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The group of students, including Mr Hogg, have seemingly been everywhere  from television to the cover of Time magazine  as they have amplified their message in the build-up to Saturdays marches.

They have visited their peers in Chicago, and spoken in New York City. They chastised Florida Senator Marco Rubio for taking money from the National Rifle Association (NRA) during a nationally broadcast town hall meeting, and posted viral tweets, gun control statistics and support for other organisers, as well as exchanging light-hearted banter with each other, highlighting the fact that the people leading one of the most prominent political debates in the country are mostly 17 and 18 year-olds.

The movement has seen some early success, though gun laws in America remain largely the same. In the weeks after the shooting in Parkland, Florida passed gun restrictions to raise the minimum age for buying a firearm in the state, and to impose a waiting period to receive those weapons, defying the powerful NRA presence in the state even as advocates said the bill did not go nearly far enough.

On the federal level, the persistent cries for help from the Parkland teenagers forced President Donald Trump to hold a listening session with students, and to float several possible ideas to tackle gun violence  even going so far as to suggest that taking guns from potentially dangerous people should be priority, and that the constitutional right to due process could be worried about later.

But, just weeks later Mr Trump, who has received notable support from the NRA, appeared to bow to the gun lobby and back away from loftier gun control bills and his calls for raising the age to buy semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent for this story.

Andrew Patrick, the media coordinator for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told The Independent that the NRAs hold on political leverage may change because of the momentum the Parkland students have created. The continued push to politicize gun violence and tie the deaths of students across the country to the NRA, he said, have placed a dark mark on the gun lobby.

Theyve pretty much made the NRA politically, and culturally, toxic, Mr Patrick said. They have really awoken the nations  view on this and I think were going to see for the first time ever  probably for the first time in a long time  where people are going to be voting on gun violence prevention and gun safety.

With the 2018 midterms months away, Democrats have seized upon the issue, campaigning alongside the students who have repeatedly threatened to unseat politicians who do not push for gun control measures. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2020, voiced his support, for instance, showing that gun violence has become a potentially potent political issue that could impact the ballot box in November and beyond.

Theyre going to win, Mr Biden said Friday, before saying he is ready for a fight. Watch  We can beat the NRA.

Josh Sugarmann, the director of the Violence Policy Centre, told The Independent that he hasnt seen youth engagement to compare to Parkland in his three and a half decades working in gun control advocacy, and that he has never seen a march of this size on gun violence. For Mr Sugarman, the question is whether they can continue the momentum beyond Saturday.

I think the success of what comes out of Parkland is not measured in marches but will those who participated in them continue to be engaged on the issue Its not just these students: Its their friends, their family, their siblings, he said. The question is, is this one step towards helping to create and organise a working grass roots movement that will work on gun violence prevention?

The Parkland students, for their part, say that their march in Washington is just the start.

Speaking at another press conference inside the US Capitol on Friday, Aaliyah Eastmond, one of the Parkland students visiting for the march, said that they are not going anywhere until they get what they want.

A lot of people feel like this is the end and the march is just  thats going to be it. The march is just the start, Ms Eastmond said. We will fight for this until change happens. If you guys dont want to hear about it anymore, you fix it, so we dont have to keep repeating ourselves.Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida issued a statement on March for Our Lives: Getty Images

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has told those who attended the March for Our Lives protests that while he respects their views on gun control, he does not agree with all of the solutions they propose.

The Republicans constituents include the survivors of last months shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead.

Stoneman Douglas students took the stage in downtown Washington to urge members of Congress to pass stricter gun control laws, saying inaction would no longer be tolerated. The march in the nations capital was accompanied by hundreds of sibling protests in cities across the US.

I commend those who today are peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights to march in favor of a gun ban, Mr Rubio said in a statement.

He continued: While I do not agree with all of the solutions they propose, I respect their views and recognise that many Americans support certain gun bans. However, many other Americans do not support a gun ban. They too want to prevent mass shootings, but view banning guns as an infringement on the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens that ultimately will not prevent these tragedies.

My full statement on today's marches: pic.twitter.com/ZpRNotSbyP  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 24, 2018

Mr Rubio went on to say that while protests are a legitimate way of making a point, in our system of government, making a change requires finding common ground with those who hold opposing views.

The Stoneman Douglas students have frequently criticised Mr Rubio for accepting campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful gun-rights lobbying groups.

On Saturday, students wore orange $1.05 price tags  the amount the NRA has contributed to Mr Rubio divided by the number of students in Florida. They says this is how much each student is worth to the two-term senator.

During a CNN town hall in February, students demanded that Mr Rubio refuse to accept future contributions from the gun lobby. The Republican declined to meet this demand.Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are getting married in less than two months, but that doesnt mean Markle isnt already thinking about another blessed occasion: royal babies.

During the dynamic duos first official visit to Ireland, Prince Harry and Markle stopped by Catalyst Inc. for a meet and greet with local business owners. One of them was Shnuggle, a company that sells baby products for bath time and sleep time.

And Markle said something pretty major when she gestured toward the various wares. Im sure at some point well need the whole thing, she said, according People.

Royal baby alert! ???? #PrinceHarry and #MeghanMarkle met a husband and wife team who make innovative baby products today in #Belfast. Meghan pointed to the product range and said: "I'm sure at some point we'll need the whole (lot)."!!! ????????????????????????  Rebecca English (@RE_DailyMail) March 23, 2018

As the world waits for Kate Middleton to give birth some time in April, Markles at some point remark is all the proof royal fans need to know shes actively thinking about family. That means there could be more royal children for the world to fall in love with on the days when Prince George doesnt make an endlessly amusing face.

The couple eyed a Moses basket, a bath, and a baby mat that caught the eye of the world famous ginger, Prince Harry.

They seemed very engaged with the products. Harry was particularly interested in the bath. I wonder if he has witnessed bath time with his nephew or niece, Shnuggle founder Sinead Murphy said, according to People.

Prince Harry and Markle will tie the knot on May 19. But its only a matter of time before people start betting on another potential announcement from Kensington Palace.First lady Melania Trump gave a speech on women and courage. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Melania Trump delivered a speech on courage during a State Department event honoring recipients of the International Women of Courage Awards.

According to the Daily Mail, Melania wore a $4,220 pastel pink Emilio Pucci suit with a canary-yellow blouse and beige stilettos to address the crowd. This award is reserved for those women around the world who have shown incredible courage and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, equality, and womens empowerment, said the 47-year-old.

She added, As we recognize these incredible women, let us think for a moment about what courage truly is. Courage is the quality most needed in this world, yet it is often the hardest to find. Courage sets apart those who believe in higher calling and those who act on it. It takes courage not only to see wrong but strive to right it. Courage is what sets apart the heroes from the rest. It is equal parts bravery and nobility.

Melania concluded, In recognizing them, we stand for what is right. In telling their stories, we can teach young women and girls all over the world what it means to have courage and to be a hero. Their examples define courage.

According to People, Melania honored 10 women, including Aiman Omarova, a lawyer from Kazakhstan who fights against sexual abuse crimes; Feride Rushiti, the founder of the Kosovo Center for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims; and Afghanistan filmmaker Roya Sadat, who advocates for womens rights.

Melanias speech occurred amid explosive rumors that President Trump was unfaithful during their 13-year marriage. On Thursday, while speaking to Anderson Cooper, former Playboy model Karen McDougal issued an apology to the first lady for her alleged 10-month affair with the president in 2006, one year after he married Melania.

Former Playboy model Karen McDougal has apologized to Melania Trump for her alleged affair with the president. (Photo: Getty Images)

According to NBC, earlier this week McDougal filed a lawsuit against American Media, Inc., which owns the National Enquirer. McDougal claims the company paid her $150,000 during Trumps presidential campaign for her story, which didnt run. McDougal is asking to invalidate the contract.

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AMI lied to me, made empty promises and repeatedly intimidated and manipulated me, McDougal said in a statement to USA Today. I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life, free from this company, its executives, and its lawyers.

Former adult film star Stormy Daniels claims she had unprotected sex with President Trump. (Photo: Getty Images)

The president is also involved in another lawsuit, filed by former adult star Stormy Daniels, whose lawyer tweeted a photo on Tuesday of her taking a 2011 lie detector test  which she passed admitting to having unprotected sex with Trump.

People on Twitter wondered whether the first lady was an appropriate choice to deliver a speech on courage.

@FLOTUS You're not being courageous by staying with your cheating, lying, bullying husband. Quite the opposite. The courageous thing would be to stand up to him. So please, don't speak to women about courage. #Melania #trump  JudyK (@portside27) March 23, 2018

Today at a State Dept. ceremony, Melania Trump honored "International Women of Courage." Wonder if any of them tried to give her the courage to leave Donald.  Janice Hough (@leftcoastbabe) March 23, 2018

Melania Trump spoke today saying it takes courage not only to see wrong but to strive to right it. Excuse me for possibly being harsh but where does she get off talking about courage and righting wrongs when she is married to the most lascivious and malicious person EVER!  Macinca19 (@Macinca19) March 23, 2018

And God knows it takes courage to be Melania Trump. pic.twitter.com/VpDo7qBing  Harold Itzkowitz (@HaroldItz) March 9, 2018

Today #MelaniaTrump talked about courage to women, she should go by her own words and she herself should find courage to leave her husband for cheating on her.  gk707 (@gklemen707) March 23, 2018

In 2017, when Melania spoke at the International Women of Courage ceremony, people on Twitter called her participation ironic.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.By Katanga Johnson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voter registration activists fanned out among throngs of young Americans who marched for tighter gun laws on Saturday, signing up thousands of first-time voters who want to eject lawmakers who oppose gun control. With mid-term Congressional elections eight months away, the activists flocked to some 800 marches across the country to register young voters likely to back Democratic and independent candidates who tend to favor tougher firearms laws. In Washington, volunteers for the HeadCount voter-registration effort raised their fists and chanted "demonstration without registration leads to frustration" before heading out with clipboards to sign up some of the nation's newest voters. "Parkland's Emma Gonzalez called for more Americans to vote and that is why Headcount is here today," volunteer Aaron Ghitelman, 26, said of the student who along with classmates forged a national, youth gun control movement following the Feb. 14 massacre at her high school in Parkland, Florida. Hugh Williams from Ypsilanti, Michigan, was among many 18-year-olds who answered her call. "Registering to vote today lifted a weight off of my shoulders. The more I see people marching and standing up for a cause I believe in, I want my voice to matter, too," he said at the Washington march, adding that gun violence was a menace in his community. Organizers of the voter registration drive hoped to sign up at least 25,000 people on Saturday, a potential boost for Democrats who back stronger controls on assault-style weapons, bump stocks that let semiautomatic rifles fire like automatic weapons, and tighter access to guns for young people and the mentally ill. At a rally in Chicago, 17-year old Kara Sharp from Island Lake, Illinois, carried a sign reading "Protect students not guns - 2020 Voter" after traveling to the event with her father, a 53-year-old machinist. Volunteers from a local chapter of lobbying group Indivisible435, which backs progressive political candidates, told her how to register to vote once she got home, as she did not have her driving license with her. "It's time to disarm hate. I'll be looking at NRA ratings of politicians and also how they treat LGBQ issues," said Sharp, a junior at Wauconda High School, referring to the grade the National Rife Association gives members of Congress for their voting record on gun rights. 'TOOLS TO MAKE A CHANGE' Registration activists are targeting four million Americans turning 18 this year, as well as the many 19- to 21-year-olds who have never voted. Participation in U.S. elections by young voters is often low. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday showed 64 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they would vote on Nov. 6, while 27 percent said they would not. Nine percent said they were uncertain or declined to answer. In Parkland, Florida, Sari Kaufman was among students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the mass shooting happened, who urged peers to get involved in politics, register to vote and turf out lawmakers who did not protect them. "With this movement, we will ensure record-breaking turnout not just in the next presidential election, not in the next midterm election, but in all elections," Kaufman told a crowd of thousands at a rally in Parkland. "We're here today to give you the tools to make a change and demand the politicians take action." (Additional reporting by Robert Chiarito in Chicago and Zachary Fagenson in Parkland, Florida; Writing by Andrew Hay; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Nick Zieminski)President Donald Trump was far from the only one in Washington left with a sullen face as a spending bill was finally signed Friday afternoon.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle turned up empty-handed when Trump reluctantly signed an omnibus spending bill that didn't include sufficient funds for his border wall, doesn't defund "sanctuary cities," nor provide any solution on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Now, without the threat of a government shutdown and a trillion-dollar budget proposal to motivate Republicans and Democrats to bargain in good faith on immigration, lawmakers are back at square one and more frustrated than ever at having to resolve a problem many say Trump created himself.

"The president has rejected at least six or seven bipartisan solutions that have been presented to him," Congressional Hispanic Caucus whip Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told Newsweek on Friday. "We need to be clear: Democrats and Republicans are scrambling to clean up a mess created by the administration's anti-immigrant agenda."

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Trump rescinded DACA suddenly in September, giving lawmakers on Capitol Hill until March 5 to come up with legislation that would give Dreamers a path forward and accommodate his own immigration policy demands. Since then, legislators have struggled to reach a compromise that will satisfy the majority of their parties on Trump's timeline. The Supreme Court's decision to stay out of DACA disputes didn't help move things along either, effectively relieving pressure on members of Congress to come up with a solution for the program's recipients.

Amid calls for bipartisanship, the president has continued to blame Democrats for the impasse on DACA.

"DACA recipients have been treated extremely badly by Democrats," Trump said during a press conference Friday afternoon, after threatening to veto the omnibus bill on Twitter earlier that morning. "We wanted to include DACA and include them in this bill...[but] the Democrats would not do it."

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Trump and some Republicans, meanwhile, complained that the bill neither adequately funded the wall nor defunded so-called "sanctuary cities."

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See my full statement announcing my intention to vote against the disastrous omnibus spending bill here > https://t.co/j369TXex7o pic.twitter.com/okprJQD9Qc  Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) March 22, 2018





.@realDonaldTrump I stand with you, Mr. President. Veto this #omnibus and let's fund the wall and get a better deal for the American people.  Ted Budd (@RepTedBudd) March 23, 2018

Lawmakers like Aguilar say the president risks pushing members of Congress further back into their respective corners by stoking the flames of partisan politics.

"If anyone thinks the president is going to play a positive role in the conversation on Dreamers they're making a huge mistake," Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) told Newsweek. "Part of the strategy has to be to ignore him."

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Grijalva and Aguilar plan to do just that.

Both congressmen have proposed creative solutions to bring a clean, standalone Dream Act to a vote, like invoking the "Queen of the Hill" rule, which would allow members of Congress to debate every DACA bill that's been proposed so far. That would include Aguilar's own bipartisan legislation, which he co-sponsored with Texas Republican Will Hurd in January. The bill would give DACA recipients a path to citizenship and give the Department of Homeland Security "operational control" of the southern border by the end of 2020 through "physical barriers" and other means.

Political strategists say resolving DACA is crucial for members of both parties, especially as midterm elections draw near.

"Democrats and any interested Republicans should be working hard to put legislation together so they can tell voters, 'Hey, we're trying to work on this,'" Matt Barreto, the co-founder of research firm Latino Decisions, told Newsweek. Barreto says if there's still no solution by November, Republicans may be the ones to pay the price, because it's Democrats, he says, who have the "winning card" when it comes time to debate immigration issues.

Still, some Democrats have already expressed worry that a disillusioned Latino electorate could cost them the key seats they need to win to flip at least one chamber of Congress. But in the immediate aftermath of another failed DACA deal, Grivalja and Aguilar worry most about the everyday lives of the families in their district, who make up the more than 700,000 DACA recipients across the country.

"Maybe some people on either side of the aisle would rather not have any action on this and would rather focus on the November elections," Aguilar said. "But we owe it to our communities to get a permanent solution for this issue, and I think we can. There's always plenty of time for politics."

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekNorth Korea has suspended activity at its main nuclear site, according to recent satellite imagery and expert analysis that appeared to support Pyongyang's offers to solve the crisis on the Korean Peninsula diplomatically.

President Donald Trump's decision to accept an unprecedented invitation to meet North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un came after South Korean officials assured the Republican leader that Kim was willing to denuclearize in exchange for peace. As suspicions arose as to what North Korea's true intentions were, leading analysts Frank V. Pabian, Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. and Jack Liu found a major slowdown at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in a report posted Friday to 38 North, a project of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

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"Imagery from early March had shown signs of continued tunneling excavations at the West Portal, including mining carts and significant amounts of new spoil deposits. Large groups of personnel were also noted in the open support areas serving the nuclear test sites Command Center. However, imagery from March 17 showed no evidence of tunneling operations or the presence of any personnel or vehicles at any of the support areas including those near the Command Center," the report read.

"This is an important development given efforts to establish high-level meetings between the United States, South Korea and North Korea. However, whether this is just a temporary development or whether it will continue over time is unclear," it added.

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The Punggye-ri nuclear test site has been the venue of all six North Korean nuclear tests dating back to 2006. Located in the country's remote northeast, experts have used satellite imagery to carefully follow developments at the top-secret site, which most recently hosted a powerful hydrogen bomb test last September.

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In the same New Year's speech that Kim indicated a willingness to restart dialogue with U.S.-backed South Korea, the young leader vowed to continue developing nuclear weapons and launching ballistic missiles, which were now capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. Neither Kim nor his various state-run media outlets have announced a change in this policy, but North Korea has long maintained its weapons were only necessary for self-defense.

Sets of photographs taken at three main areas on March 2 and March 17 showed substantial signs that Kim actually may be pausing his nuclear ambitions to pursue diplomacy with his sworn enemies. At the West and North Portals, drainage was significantly reduced and tunnel excavation appeared to have come to a halt. Personnel vanished entirely from the main administrative area and command center.

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After meeting with Kim in Pyongyang, South Korean National Security Director Chung Eui-yong and his delegation flew to Washington on March 8 to meet his U.S. counterpartwhose recent dismissal has experts concernedand to deliver a personal invitation from the North Korean leader to Trump. Standing in front of the White House, Chung said Trump had accepted the invitation to become the first sitting U.S. president to meet North Koreas supreme leader.

Last year saw a series of milestone military breakthroughs for North Korea, but the early months of 2018 have brought diplomatic firsts instead. The U.S. has yet to formally play a role in the ongoing inter-Korean dialogue, however, and neither Washington nor Pyongyang have announced any concessions. Upcoming joint U.S.-South Korea military drills would also be a test for Kim, who has considered the exercises a threat to his own security in the past.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he told both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that Turkey will not step back in Syria, vowing that the ongoing campaign in Afrin will be expanded to other parts of the war-torn country, including Manbij, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

Last night I spoke with U.S. President Trump on these issues. I discussed the same things with Putin two days ago. I told them: We wont take steps backward from here. We are on the side of the suffering and the oppressed, Erdogan said in an address at a meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Istanbul.Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentine opposition leader Carlos Zannini was freed from prison Saturday, where he was detained over his suspected role in covering up a 1984 bombing at a Jewish center allegedly carried out by Iran, a prosecutor confirmed.

Zannini was arrested as part of an investigation into former president Cristina Kirchner and her role in signing a 2012 pact with Iran, which said that officials suspected of involvement in the bombing could be investigated in their own country and not brought to Argentina.

At a press conference upon leaving prison in Ezeiza, 20 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, Zannini -- a key figure in the Peronist governments of former presidents Nestor and Cristina Kirchner (2003-2015) -- said he was a "political prisoner."

He also accused the government of fabricating the case -- which has seen a judge call for the imprisonment of Kirchner, a current senator.

Gabriela Baigun, the prosecutor who secured Zannini's release along with that of community leader Luis D'Elia, told radio Mitre Saturday that the releases may not prove popular, "the law states that under certain conditions, which these two people meet, they have the right, and in fact the obligation, to be free."

A court will try Kirchner and around 20 others, including Zannini, D'Elia and former foreign minister Hector Timerman, at a hearing not yet set.

Argentina accuses Iran's late former president Ali Rafsanjani and his government of organizing the bombing against a Buenos Aires Jewish center which killed 85 and injured 300.Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - A senior Palestinian official on Friday slammed US President Donald Trump's choice of hardliner John Bolton as his new national security advisor.

Trump on Thursday announced that Bolton, an arch-hawk and former United Nations ambassador, would replace army general HR McMaster.

Bolton is known for his strong support for Israel and hostility to Iran. He has previously said the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead.

"This man has a long history of hostility to Palestinians, dating to when he was at the United Nations, where he was protecting Israeli immunity," senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi told AFP, referring to US vetoes of UN resolutions targeting Israel.

With Bolton's appointment, she said, the Trump administration "has joined with extremist Zionists, fundamentalist Christians and white racists".

"All this will lead to a devastating reality for Palestine and the region."

In contrast, members of Israel's government, considered the most rightwing in the country's history, hailed the appointment.

"President Trump is continuing to appoint true friends of Israel to senior positions. John Bolton stands out among them," said Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, of the far-right Jewish Home party.Jaclyn Corin, Alex Wind, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky and David Hogg on the cover of Time. (Photo: Time)

The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas made their magazine cover debut on Thursday when five of them appeared on the front of Time. But that wasnt the only appearance theyd be making before the weekends March For Our Lives. On Friday, Teen Vogue launched a couple of digital covers for their March issue, where Parklands Emma Gonzalez and Jaclyn Corin were joined by a handful of other young gun control advocates. Through numerous profiles, stories and videos, the students that make up the #NeverAgain movement are introduced to readers throughout the nation  and the casual styling choices made by both publications helped serve that purpose.

For Corine in particular, the 17-year-old stood out from her four peers, going barefoot on Times cover. While the entire group looked super relaxed in their own choice of clothes, Corine took to Twitter to clear up the reason for her look, which was essentially no reason at all.

Thank you, @TIME. To everyone wondering why Im not wearing shoes in the cover: I didnt feel like it  plain and simple. Hippies didnt wear shoes in the 60s so Im just jumping on the bandwagon  pic.twitter.com/1Ysg7XAxTC  Jaclyn Corin (@JaclynCorin) March 22, 2018

To everyone wondering why Im not wearing shoes in the cover: I didnt feel like it, she wrote, plain and simple. Going with whatever clothing made the students feel comfortable seemed to actually be the only styling direction given, according to the cover storys writer Charlotte Alter.

Lol bc theyre kids and we just had them wear whatever they wanted. She didnt wear shoes and we didnt ask her to!  Charlotte Alter (@CharlotteAlter) March 22, 2018

Although each of the student activists appear to be wise beyond their years, its important to remember that theyre still kids, and the styling choices help to drive this home. Because theyre talking about adult topics, directing their messages to adults, and on public stages (controlled by adults), many have begun to view these teens as all grown-up. But thanks to creative assets, the groups collective precociousness is slightly dissipated.

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Introducing our March cover stars: The activists leading the #MarchForOurLives. Meet the new voices of gun reform  from Parkland and beyond  raising their voices to make gun violence a thing of the past: https://t.co/Xg0eBoZD3l #NeverAgain pic.twitter.com/ic3TjImMKM  Teen Vogue (@TeenVogue) March 23, 2018

The same can be said for the multimedia assets filmed by Tyler Mitchell for Teen Vogue. In the main digital cover of the March issue, five young activists leading the March For Our Lives are seen getting off of a hallway floor and coming to the forefront of the screen, and the movement. The powerful clip features them all in their own choice of clothes  including one student, Natalie Barden, whos wearing a Newtown swim team T-shirt  which the publications fashion director Rajni Jacques reiterated was an intentional choice.

Clifton Kinnie, Kenidra Woods, Nick Joseph, Natalie Barden, and Jazmine Wildcat are all young gun control activists. (Photo: Tyler Mitchell for Teen Vogue/@tylersphotos)

It was important to us that they all feel their most comfortable, Jacques tells Yahoo Lifestyle. We provided clothing options for our subjects to choose from  some opted to incorporate those pieces into their ensembles, some stayed in their own clothes, and others were dressed entirely by us.

However, the other cover had some more fashion direction in order to send a strong message. For one of the covers, it was important for them to be dressed in black to pop against the orange background which was a nod to the Wear Orange movement, Jacques explains.

"We, the youth of the United States, have built a new movement to denounce gun violence and call for safety in all of our communities. This is only the beginning." @Emma4Change pens a searing op-ed on this generation's plans to make change: https://t.co/MV34GJgrdI #NeverAgain pic.twitter.com/FWTpOD1WKL  Teen Vogue (@TeenVogue) March 23, 2018

In the end, the main intent of both publications, is easily put into words by Jacques: No matter the outfit, the point was clear: Our focus was the message of the two covers.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Who is Eryn Gilchrist, the 28-year-old challenging the Maine Republican who mocked Parkland students?

Students in Arkansas hit with detention for participating in walkout

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Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.



Paul McCartney joined the March for Our Lives on Saturday in New York City  not far from where his former Beatles bandmate John Lennon was fatally shot years ago.

Protesters for the New York march gathered on Manhattans Upper West Side near the Dakota apartment building at the corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West, where Lennon lived with his wife, Yoko Ono, and their son, Sean Lennon.

McCartney and his wife, Nancy Shevell, wore black T-shirts that read, We Can End Gun Violence. He also held up a sign with the March for Our Lives logo.

Alluding to Lennon, McCartney told CNN, One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, so its important to me.

Paul McCartney and his wife, Nancy Shevell, march in New York City on March 24, 2018. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

When asked whether he thinks change can happen at the federal level, McCartney said, Im like everyone; I dont know. But this is what we can do. So Im here to do it.

Lorna Mae Johnson, the assistant treasurer for the Democratic National Committee, asked McCartney whether he would share his message on camera. He told viewers, Get out and vote. You can make the change. Its up to you.

Slideshow: Scenes from March for Our Lives rallies around the world >>>

Lennon and McCartney formed what many consider the greatest songwriting partnership of the 20th century. The Beatles enjoyed unprecedented critical and commercial success, and had an enormous impact on the thoughts and attitudes of the 60s youth. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, the former bandmates pursued successful music careers  Lennon as a solo artist and McCartney primarily as the frontman for Wings  but both were routinely asked whether their old band would reunite one day.

Items left at the mosaic named for John Lennons song Imagine at Strawberry Fields, the Central Park garden dedicated in his honor in New York. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

But on Dec. 8, 1980, a deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, shot and killed Lennon, an outspoken advocate of pacifism. Chapman had waited outside the Dakota all day and asked for Lennons autograph as he walked to a limousine, heading to a recording session. Later that night, as Lennon returned to the entrance of the Dakota, Chapman fired five shots at the musician, striking him four times in the back. He was pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital.

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The March for Our Lives demonstrations, which are dedicated to student-led activism for ending gun violence and mass shootings, took place across the U.S. and at locations around the world. They were organized in response to last months mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed and many more were wounded.



_____News of John Boltons appointment as national security adviser, displacing General H.R. McMaster, landed like a bomb in Foggy Bottom. Washingtons usually staid diplomatic corps was already on edge following the shock expulsion of Rex Tillerson, soon to hand the State Department over to somewhat trigger-happy C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo. Bolton, however, is his own unique breed of hawk. Horrified has been the ongoing feeling. Many recall his poor tenure at the U.N. [and] as undersecretary, a current senior State Department official told me, reflecting on Boltons controversial resume. While serving under Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bolton was both a cheerleader and early architect of the Iraq war. General expectations keep falling.

Boltons ascension, like Tillersons downfall, was seen by many as an inevitability, as Donald Trump reconfigures his inner circle to better reflect his nationalistic impulses. A veteran of the George W. Bush administration with an infamous fondness for military adventurism, Bolton reportedly made an impression on Trump with his frequent diatribes on Fox News, railing against the Iran nuclear deal and calling for more aggressive posturing toward North Korea. Bolton was always going to end up in the Trump White House sooner or later. His world view, or more accurately, anti-world view, is vastly closer to Trumps than most of the presidents existing advisers, said Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert and professor at Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs. He loves to talk about U.S. strength, and he is a notoriously aggressive negotiator. Those are precisely the qualities Trump looks for, and the two men fully deserve one another.

Denizens of the Deep State fear Bolton for mostly predictable reasons. A nationalist with little patience for the pragmatic realism of the G.O.P.s old guard or the democracy promotion that defined the early Bush years, Bolton is expected to tell Trump what he has been waiting to hear: that he should ditch the J.C.P.O.A. binding the United States to the Iran nuclear framework, and impose harsh sanctions on Tehran. Bolton is not interested in [a deal], a Senate aide told me. Its like the perfect storm with where the president has been on it. He has his yes-man. (Bolton famously wrote a 2015 op-ed titled To Stop Irans Bomb, Bomb Iran.) Others worry that Bolton could be a de-stabilizing force amid the North Korea crisis, sabotaging the potential for high-level talks between Trump and Kim Jong Un. Bolton, Pompeo, and [Nikki] Haley could turn into a very hawkish triumvirate running the U.S. foreign-policy machine, Gowan said. They are likely to be rivals behind the scenes, but on issues like Iran they are actually all certified hard-liners.

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On a more prosaic level, however, there is the fear that Bolton will succeed in navigating the Swamp where so many other Trump advisers have failed. Everyone that knows him knows that he is very smart, and not only is he very smart, but he is very effective, a former senior U.S. official cautioned. Bolton is so dangerous because he is good at what he does. Ian Bremmer, a foreign-policy analyst and founder of the Eurasia Group, described Bolton as extremely bureaucratically capablean infighter with sharp elbows and a tactile understanding of the media. He knows how to get in meetings that matter, he knows how to play the media, and he is going to push hard to be a very strong national security adviser with those views vis-a-vis his colleagues in Cabinet.

While Pompeo has ingratiated himself, for example, by telling Trump what he wants to hear, critics worry that Bolton will push the president further, tapping into his most aggressive instincts at a moment when the United States is facing a foreign-policy minefield. To be honest, I think the president is more pragmatic, a former State Department official, who knows Bolton, told me. [Trumps] business background seems to lean him more toward looking for a deal, not being wedded to a sharp position. As the presidents top adviser on national security, however, Bolton will be rivaled only by Chief of Staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis for power in the West Wing. We know that Trump is clearly influenced by some of the last people that he speaks to, the Senate aide added. Besides the chief of staff, the national security adviser is usually the last person that speaks to the president before a major decision.

Along the Acela corridor, Boltons official return to the White House, announced Thursday in a tweet dismissing McMaster and thanking him for his service, precipitated a somewhat arcane debate over whether Bolton is indeed a nationalist as opposed to a neoconservative, or if some other term might better encapsulate his worldview. While Bolton served in the Bush administration alongside such neoconservatives as Paul Wolfowitz, he has demonstrated little regard for the value of either democracy promotion or international institutions. In 1994, more than a decade before he would serve as ambassador to the U.N., Bolton infamously said of the 38-story Secretariat building in New York, If it lost 10 stories, it wouldnt make a bit of difference. Jeet Heer at The New Republic lays out three major policy wings on the right, which he identifies as the prudential realists, neoconservatives, and radical nationalists. Bolton, he writes, falls into the latter category.

For many members of the D.C. policy establishment, however, these are distinctions without a difference. The difference between, in my mind, a conservative hawk who is just hard-nosed about American power and a neocon is that a neocon has a certain amount of wishful thinking or fairy-dust belief that, when you strip away bad things, what happens is good for America, said Cameron Munter, a former U.S. ambassador who overlapped with Bolton at the State Department. Conservative hawks, he explained, want to use military might to boss people around. Bolton is a magical thinker, now armed with a hammer, who sees a world full of nails. He is a hawk without thinking through or even understanding what the consequences could be, said a second former State Department official who served during the Bush years. Which I always found very difficult to understand because he is not a stupid person.

The cognitive dissonance is amplified by the distance between Boltons positions on Iran and North Korea and the isolationist principles that defined Trumps thinking for years. During his campaign, Trump ran on a foreign-policy platform centered on restricting American involvement in foreign wars. But Boltons appointment to a key national security post signals an extreme shift in the opposite direction, Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, told me. Back in 2013, for instance, Trump had tweeted, All former Bush administration officials should have zero standing on Syria. Iraq was a waste of blood & treasurea point he sounded repeatedly on the campaign trail. Bolton, meanwhile, has called for regime change in Iran by force, and a first strike against North Korea, DiMaggio said. Both of which would result in catastrophic wars.

As with the appointment of any new Trump adviser, Boltons arrival in the West Wing comes with disclaimersand the beginning of the countdown clock to his inevitable departure. There is the whole policy side, and then there is the personality side, the second former State Department official said. He has an extremely aggressive, negative personality. Bolton, this person explained, has demonstrated that he is entirely capable of being reasonable, capable of listening, capable of taking advice. But he also has very serious anger-management problems, the former official said, recalling Bolton throwing papers, pens, and pencils during arguments. He is acerbic, condescending, gruff, [and] demeaning when somebody doesnt agree with him or he doesnt like your argument. I cant imagine how he is going to moderate that tendency all the time with Trump.

Nor is he known for humility in the face of obvious mistakes. Of all the Iraq war defenders, Bolton is among the least apologetic. I think it is sort of half amazing that he could have been wrong on so many issues, and not only be not apologetic about it, but double down on wrong predictions, a current State Department staffer told me. With someone like Trump, who has little inclination to look beyond whats spoon-fed to him, this tendency is particularly dangerous. When leaders get to an environment where people can no longer give them real news, thats when things start falling apart, Bremmer said. It is one thing for Trump to say that other things are fake news. It is [another] thing for his own advisers to facilitate that. I fear that we are heading into that environment.

There is one issue in particular that sources I spoke with highlighted as a potential future source of tension between Bolton and Trump: Russia. Bolton has previously characterized Russian interference in the 2016 as an act of war, called for harsher sanctions to make Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies feel pain, and suggested that Trump should be insulted by Putins refusal to admit to meddling in the U.S. electoral process. Theres this accepted story, this narrative, that the reason that Tillerson and McMaster got shown the door is that they tried to speak truth to power . . . If he didnt like them speaking truth to power, how is he going to like Bolton telling him about Russia? the former U.S. official mused.

Bolton may struggle, too, to build out the team he needs to be an effective national security adviser. The first former State Department official described Bolton as sharp elbowed and not someone youd describe as a consensus builder or team buildera problematic disposition for someone tasked with coordinating between agencies. The current State Department staffer, who has interacted with Bolton, echoed the sentiment. He prides himself on being the anti-diplomat and, unfortunately, in this world, you do still have to work with people and build teams. I would be hard-pressed to find anybody that would want to work with him again, the staffer said. Who is dying to go work with Bolton?Lima (AFP) - Authorities in Peru raided two houses owned by former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as part of a money laundering probe, the public prosecutor's office said on Saturday.

Both homes are in Lima, the office announced on Twitter.

Television images showed officials entering the properties with boxes, a day after Congress accepted Kuczynski's resignation.

In another development, Kuczynski's defense team said it accepted a request from the prosecutor's office to ban the ex-president from leaving the country.

He later tweeted that he was happy to cooperate with the investigation and would "clear my name and honor."

He added he was a victim of political persecution and the media spectacle would damage the country's image abroad.

The former Wall Street banker, 79, is under investigation over bribes he allegedly accepted from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht to secure public works contracts.

The bribes were allegedly paid to consulting companies linked to Kuczynski when he was finance minister under President Alejandro Toledo, who governed from 2001 to 2006.

Toledo is himself accused of receiving $20 million in kickbacks in return for awarding the Brazilian construction giant a contract to build a road in the Amazon.

Kuczynski offered his resignation Wednesday, a day before Congress was due to vote on impeaching him for lying about his ties with Odebrecht.

He had denied all links with the company until it revealed it issued the bribes in exchange for contracts in December.

On Friday, new President Martin Vizcarra, Kuczynski's vice president, was sworn in to replace him.Photo: Getty Images

A Florida police deputy has been suspended after his son used his police vehicle to harass the sons ex-girlfriend, Boston 25 News reports.

Christopher Combs, 23, used his fathers patrol vehicle to allegedly pull over his ex-girlfriends car. The incident occurred in October 2017. Combs was arrested and fired from his then-cadet position. His father, Palm Beach County Sheriffs lieutenant deputy David Combs, was suspended for 40 hours in December and he permanently lost the use of a take-home vehicle.

The younger Combs was arrested after deputies went to investigate an alleged armed robbery. A man told deputies he and his girlfriend were hanging out near a lake when a friend of Combs drove by and yelled at them. The girlfriend told the officers she recognized her ex-boyfriends voice on the vehicles intercom.

According to the report, Combs allowed his son to take the car to fill it up with gas, but his son used it for more than just that. Christopher Combs followed his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend as they were leaving a lake in the Pompano Beach area. He activated the emergency lights and made the couple pull over. He forced the boyfriend to walk to the patrol car with his hands up and lie on the ground, terrorizing the couple.

According to the Palm Beach Post, the younger Combs was a cadet with the Palm Beach County sheriffs office and his father was a lieutenant with the agency.

An accomplice who was in the passenger seat of the patrol car got out and took all the new boyfriends belongings, including a pocket knife and various gift cards. The men in the patrol car then left the scene.

The younger Combs was charged with robbery, impersonating a police officer and false imprisonment, and placed under house arrest.

His case is still awaiting trial.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

The best photos from March for Our Lives around the world

Simple move makes bloggers booties look totally different in side-by-side pictures

This teens sharing a prom dress with a girl in need sparked a movement

Story continues

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.



Alexandria (Egypt) (AFP) - Two policemen were killed in a car bomb attack Saturday targeting the security chief of Egypt's Alexandria, officials said, two days before the start of the country's presidential election.

The bomb, which exploded near a convoy transporting General Mostafa el-Nemr through a residential area of the Mediterranean city, killed one officer on the spot, while a young recruit died later of his wounds, a security source said.

Five other people wounded in the blast were being treated in the city's military hospital, the official said.

Nemr was not among the casualties of the "terrorist bombing that targeted the convoy", his office said, quoted by state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram.

The security chief, escorted by guards, appeared on Egyptian television visiting the scene shortly after the attack.

Prosecutor General Nabil Sadek ordered an "urgent and wide inquiry".

Photographs posted online showed black smoke rising above the site of the attack near a police station on Al-Moaskar Al-Romani street.

An AFP correspondent at the scene said security and military units had cordoned off the area of the attack, which left several burnt-out cars. Police forensics experts were examining the charred remains of the vehicle used for the bombing.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which came ahead of Egypt's presidential election starting Monday, in which incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi looks certain to sweep to a second term in office.

- Army securing election -

Egypt's military said Saturday on Twitter that it was making "intensive preparations for the armed forces to secure the presidential election" on March 26-28.

Sisi stormed to victory in a 2014 poll, a year after leading the military in ousting Egypt's first freely elected leader, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi.

Since the ouster of Morsi and a crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood, security forces have sought to quell attacks by jihadists.

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The Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group, which has declared allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group, has killed hundreds of soldiers, policemen and civilians, mainly in its North Sinai stronghold but also elsewhere in Egypt.

IS claimed the 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner carrying tourists from the South Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, which killed all 224 people on board.

It has also killed scores of members of Egypt's minority Coptic Christian community in church bombings and shootings.

During Palm Sunday celebrations in April 2017, suicide bombers killed 45 worshippers in attacks on churches in Alexandria and Tanta, also north of Cairo. Sine then Egypt has been under a state of emergency.

Sisi gave the armed forces and police a three-month deadline in November to wipe out the jihadists.

The president's ultimatum came after suspected IS gunmen massacred more than 300 worshippers in a Sinai mosque associated with Sufi Muslims, seen by IS as heretics.

The deadline has since been extended and the armed forces have launched their most comprehensive campaign yet to end the five-year-old jihadist insurgency.

The military gives regular updates on the operation, saying it has killed more than 100 jihadists so far while losing at least 20 troops.Christina Neuner and her daughter Molly were inspired by the thousands of protesters of all generations at the March for Our Lives in their home city of Portland, Maine, on Saturday.

Molly, a 12-year-old in the seventh grade, told Yahoo News that the way kids are protesting is important  they arent being rude about it.

Theyre getting their message across very kindly and very respectfully, but also very assertive, like, This is what we need and this is a change that we need to make, and heres how we can do it, she said.

Molly said shes been politically active ever since April 2017, when she challenged a dress code at King Middle School that she considered sexist. She was reprimanded for wearing a spaghetti-strap top to class, so she returned to school two days later with #IAmNotADistraction written on her arm. The story went viral and was covered in the national press.

Christina Neuner, left, and her daughter Molly participate in the March for Our Lives in Portland, Maine. (Christina Neuner)

Her mother, Christina Neuner, 39, said that incident caused many mothers in their community to speak out against the policy and take a stand. She similarly felt inspired, she said, by seeing all the young people protesting gun violence on Saturday. It was Neuners first protest.

Theyre kind of encouraging us to stand up and stand out. We were kind of the generation of just keep quiet; keep the peace, and our kids are really bringing that out and teaching us that its OK, she told Yahoo News.

Neuner said that Molly learned so much about herself from the dress-code experience  perseverance, self-assurance  and thinks the March for Our Lives demonstrations will do the same for many more children.

Slideshow: Scenes from March for Our Lives rallies around the world >>>

These kids are seeing that their voices count and matter. Kids did this. I think this is going to give them so much confidence, she said.

Several girls hold up protest signs at the March for Our Lives in Portland, Maine, on March 24, 2018. (Photo: Courtesy of Christina Neuner)

Despite the fact that the protests were organized by kids, Neuner said, she was touched by the wide age range of people participating in the march, including baby boomers. She heard one of her friends daughters suggest that the older generation was there because they love their grandchildren and want to protect them.

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Neuner said, Yeah, but what you havent realized or learned in school yet is that theyre kind of the original protesters. They spent their earlier years as protesters. Now here they are stepping up for you again.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's military research facility at Porton Down said it could not have been the source of the nerve agent that poisoned Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the city of Salisbury this month, the BBC reported on Friday.

The BBC quoted Porton Down Chief Executive Gary Aitkenhead as saying there was "no way" the substance could have come from its laboratories as Russia has suggested.

He said the laboratory had the "highest levels" of controls and security, the BBC said.

Russia denies any involvement in the attack on the pair who have been critical in hospital since they were found unconscious on March 4 on a bench in Salisbury.

Russia's EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov noted in an interview with the BBC earlier this week that the Porton Down lab is only eight miles (11km) from Salisbury, insinuating that may have been the source.

The Foreign Office has said there was "not an ounce of truth" in his implication the nerve agent could have been linked to Porton Down.

(Reporting by Stephen Addison; editing by Michael Holden)Turkey will soon be with the people who are seeking the country's support along the Syrian border, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, Anadolu Agency reports.

Speaking at the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Partys ordinary provincial congress in Black Sea province of Samsun, Erdogan said: We will not stop until we rescue our brothers in Syria and completely eliminate the trap set for our country.

He also rejected the claims that Turkey is invading Syria through Afrin operation and said: Nobody can say Turkish army and Turkey are carrying out an invasion in Syria. Erdogan vowed to protect the people of Afrin, saying the civilians started returning to Afrin.Lisbon (AFP) - Portugal on Saturday launched an unprecedented drive to clear its vast forests in order to prevent a repeat of last year's deadly wildfires, which killed 112 people and sparked a massive backlash against the Socialist government.

Prime Minister Antonio Costa, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and some 20 senior government officials joined workers across Portugal to start clearing several hectares of the forests covering two-thirds of the country.

Costa has made the fight against wildfires his number one priority after his cabinet faced huge public anger over what critics said was its inefficient handling of the devastating blazes in June and October 2017.

It was the first major failure for Costa's government since it came to power in November 2015, having enjoyed popularity over the European Union member's rebounding economy after years of economic crisis and austerity.

"For the first time Portugal is becoming aware that it is absolutely necessary to clear high-risk areas to reduce the number of summer fires," Costa said Saturday after arriving in the town of Loule town in the southern Algarve region.

Portugal and neighbouring Spain last year grappled with a devastating drought that left rivers nearly dry, sparked the deadly wildfires and devastated crops.

In February, Costa issued tough new rules forcing landowners to clear their woods and cut trees until March 15 or face fines of up to 120,000 euros ($150,000).

But the decree sparked outcry from an important number of local officials and environmental organisations, which had criticised the short deadline.

"The government wants to make up in three months what should have been done over the past five years," said green group Quercus.

In response to the criticism, the government has extended the delay to May 31.

The government's push has also hit other obstacles.

The depopulation of rural areas means that landowners are often either absent or too old to cut down trees.

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In addition, dissatisfaction is brewing among Portugal's 68,000 firefighters, 80 percent of whom are volunteers who find themselves on the frontline of the blazes.

Many were left unable to communicate during last year's disasters when the wildfires destroyed phone lines and mobile network transmitters.

The authorities' plan to replace highly flammable eucalyptus plantations with more resistant species like the cork oak have been met with resistance from the paper industry.

Many small land owners in central Portugal live off the eucalyptus trade.Rome (AFP) - Politicians in Italy appeared to reach an agreement on Saturday in the battle for speakers in both houses of parliament, which could lay the ground for the fight over who will lead a new government.

Following a stalemate in a second round of voting on Friday, the newly-elected Chamber of Deputies and the Senate gathered again on Saturday morning.

Leaders of the right-wing coalition, which won 37 percent of the vote in the March 4 elections, made a breakthrough after tense negotiations to pick Elisabetta Alberti Casellati for the presidency of the Senate.

Meanwhile, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5s) which garnered 33 percent of the national vote announced that party heavyweight Roberto Fico would be its candidate for the Chamber of Deputies.

The positions are important because until both speakers are chosen consultations between Italian President Sergio Mattarella and those competing to form a new government cannot begin.

Both Luigi Di Maio's M5s and the right-wing alliance, led by Matteo Salvini, are hoping for a chance to lead the country.

The two sides had been working on a deal that would let the right have the Senate speaker and see M5S take the lower house.

The right-wing coalition had been fielding Paolo Romani, economy minister in Silvio Berlusconi's last government and a member of the media mogul's Forza Italia party, for the post of Senate speaker, but M5S said it could not vote for Romani due to his 2014 conviction for embezzlement.

Saturday's announcements follow a strained few days as cracks widened within the right-wing coalition.

Salvini, the leader of the League which heads the right-wing alliance, enraged former prime minister Berlusconi by backing a candidate without consulting the veteran.

Berlusconi, currently banned from public office, branded Salvini's support for Anna Maria Bernini an "act of hostility" designed to fracture the coalition and push the League closer to M5S.

M5S and the right both say they are ready to work with any party that would be willing to adopt their programme, although the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), whose coalition came third with 23 percent, has refused to form an alliance with either of the two top groups.President Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill into law at the White House on Friday, narrowly avoiding a government shutdown, despite concerns it was full of what he deemed wasteful programs.

I was thinking about doing the veto, Trump told reporters. But because of the incredible gains that weve been able to make for the military, that overrode any of our thinking.

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

The president read a laundry list of multi-billion dollar weapons purchases included in the bill, rattling off battleships, warplanes and submarines. However, many of the programs he listed by name have been plagued with cost overruns, programmatic delays and the very taxpayer waste that he criticized.

The F-35 fighter jet. The KC-46A aerial refueling tanker. The P-8A Poseidon submarine-hunting jet.

Were very proud of many of the items that weve been able to get, Trump said. Were very disappointed that in order to fund the military, we had to give up things where we consider in many cases them to be bad or them to be a waste of money. But thats the way unfortunately right now the system works.

The more than 2,200-page bill includes nearly $700 billion for the military and $591 billion in non-defense spending. At least $2.9 billion of that money will be invested into whats known as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

The radar-evading fighter jet, manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp., has been beset by problems since it first began in 2001. It has been delayed by glitches in its onboard computer systems, cracks in structural components and even bugs with the pilots high-tech helmets. The price tag, meanwhile, has nearly doubled to more than $400 billion for 2,456 jets.

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Robert Behler, the Defense Departments director of operational testing, said in an annual report released in January that there are about 1,000 unresolved deficiencies with the aircraft nearly two decades after it started.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and frequent critic of defense spending abuse, once called the F-35 program both a scandal and a tragedy and a predictable consequence of a broken defense acquisition system.

It took the Air Force three attempts and a decade to begin replacing its fleet of 415 Eisenhower Administration-era refueling tankers. The process, which also began in 2001, failed two times amid accusations of underhanded politics and discriminatory rule-making.

Boeing Co. was finally declared a winner over rival Northrop Grumman Corp. for the $35 billion contract in 2011, yet the planes still arent operational. The spending budget has set aside $510 million in taxpayer money for three KC-46A tanker aircraft, despite the chagrin of military leadership with the program.

U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson laid out the concerns Tuesday during testimony with the House Armed Services Committee.

One of our frustrations with Boeing is theyre much more focused on their commercial activity than on getting this right for the Air Force and getting these aircraft to the Air Force, she said. And thats the message we took to them in Seattle last week. We have asked them to put their A-team on this to get these problems fixed and get this aircraft to the Air Force.

Boeing has amassed around $2 billion in charges on the program related to delays and cost overruns. The P-8A Poseidon, another Boeing-made plane, has also been criticized although to a much lesser degree. The program previously had deficiencies anti-submarine warfare and wide area reconnaissance capabilities, two of its main missions.

William D. Hartung, director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said the cost and performance problems with programs like the F-35 and KC-46 are notorious and shouldnt be overlooked.

If the President wanted to talk about waste he should have referenced the ramping up of these programs, which are clearly not ready for prime time, Hartung said. Whats not clear is whether the president has any sense of the strategic value of any of the items he reeled off, or a sense of whether the programs in question are well managed.

Defense Secretary James Mattis, who appeared alongside Trump at the White House, said it was the largest military budget in history, reversing many years of decline and unpredictable funding.

Most military spending has been capped for the past few years under budget controls meant to rein in government debt. Trump blamed this on the Democrats but, in fact, it was Republicans doing.

In July 2011, now-House Speaker Paul Ryan locked his veteran Budget Committee staff director, Austin Smythe, in a room for 48 hours with his aides and had them rewrite the 1985 Budget Control Act that first created the across-the-board cuts known as the sequester. That modified bill became the $1.2 trillion end-of-the-year spending-cut threat that is caused the GOP so much grief as the nation annually hung on a fiscal cliff.

The new infusion of cash gives the military invites waste and abuse, according to critics like Hartung, because its more money than the Pentagon can absorb. But to arms manufacturers and the defense industry, it is a welcome reprieve after the many years of living under the sequester.

John Luddy, vice president for national security policy at the Aerospace Industries Association, which represents the defense industry on Capitol Hill, said in a statement that the bill was a big step in the right direction for the Pentagon.

It makes significant investments in vital acquisition programs and provides necessary flexibility on operations and maintenance spending, he said. To meet the strategic objectives outlined in the National Defense Strategy, well need to continue to increase investment for at least the next five years.(Reuters) - Puerto Rico's federally appointed Financial Oversight and Management Board said on Friday it would postpone certification of the bankrupt U.S. commonwealth's fiscal plan and announce a new certification date soon.

The board said it would also reschedule the plans to transform the island's deficit for its power and water authorities, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewers Authority (PRASA).

Asked about the reason for the decision, a spokesman said the board "is continuing to work with the government on the details of the plans."

The board is tasked with helping the U.S. territory manage its finances as it navigates the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. government history, trying to shed $120 billion in bond and pension debt.

Natalie Jaresko, who leads the oversight board's executive team, told Reuters she had expected the revised fiscal reform plans submitted by Puerto Rico's government to be certified on Monday.

Jaresko had highlighted three critical structural reform areas - the electrical grid, overseen by PREPA; labor market reforms; and making it easier to do business.

Puerto Rico's benchmark bond price hit a 22-week high earlier this week as creditors anticipated the approval of this plan at the board's scheduled meeting on Monday in San Juan.

Governor Ricardo Rossello released a revised fiscal plan last month that would use $18 billion of additional money from the U.S. federal budget to help transform the island's deficit into a $3.4 billion surplus within six years.

(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler)Cairo (AFP) - Egypt's military is conducting a sweeping assault to crush a resilient Islamic State branch in Sinai, but the jihadist group is unlikely to be vanquished quickly, analysts say.

The operation was launched on February 9 after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is expected to sweep to a second term in polls next week, gave the armed forces and police a three-month deadline in November to wipe out the jihadists.

The deadline has since been extended, and the armed forces launched their most comprehensive campaign yet to end the five-year-old jihadist insurgency.

The military gives regular updates on the operation, saying it has killed more than 100 jihadists so far while losing at least 20 troops.

"Egypt is doing a really good job controlling the narrative," said Zack Gold, an analyst with the US-based CNA research group.

"Even ISIS has been challenged to put out statements. This suggests Egypt is in control," he said, using an alternative name for IS.

"But (it) makes it hard to assess what's really going on and whether long term impact will be different."

Egypt had already launched several operations against jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula, who have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen.

The Egyptian Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group pledged allegiance to IS in 2014, gaining expertise and logistical support from the international group, which controlled a self-declared "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

The Sinai jihadists soon ramped up their attacks on civilians, planting a bomb on a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a south Sinai resort in 2015, killing all 224 people on board.

Starting in late 2016, they also began targeting Christians, killing more than a hundred in church bombings and shootings across the country.

Sisi's ultimatum came after suspected IS gunmen massacred more than 300 worshippers in a Sinai mosque associated with Sufi Muslims, seen by IS as heretics.

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"There appears to be greater emphasis on actively targeting individual militants alongside degrading their logistical supply," wrote EgyGreenfly, an anonymous blogger for Egypt Defence Review.

"Whereas previous Egyptian offensives focused on a particular area independent of the others at any one time, 'Sinai 18' appears to have finally coordinated efforts across the country."

- Election threat -

The military has said about 60,000 soldiers are taking part in the campaign, launched after a period of intelligence-gathering in the peninsula, which borders Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Omar Ashour, an associate professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said the latest operation was different from previous assaults in several ways.

He cited "intensive media propaganda/coverage, the size of the forces mobilised... the sustained cooperation with 'militias' or armed tribal formations fighting alongside regular army, and the increased tactical and operational coordination with Israel."

The operation is likely to weaken IS in Sinai, which consists of no more than around 1,000 hardcore combatants who increasingly rely on hit-and-run attacks, roadside bombings and sniping attacks, analysts say.

But it will not bring about a decisive victory and end attacks.

"The military appears to be relying on a combination of air strikes and ground operations to degrade the capabilities of terrorist groups in northern and central Sinai," said Stephanie Karra, research associate for North Africa with The Risk Advisory Group.

"That said, the latest campaign does not appear to differ significantly from operations in the area in the past few years. And the military seems to be using the same conventional tactics that it has used in the past," she added.

In response, IS has vowed to attack election-related installations and to redouble its efforts to target tourists across Egypt.

Security will be boosted for the poll, set for March 26-28.

IS in Sinai "continues operations against security forces in the Sinai but it has certainly been disrupted," said Jantzen Garnett, Middle East analyst with the Navanti Group analytics firm.

"This may frustrate any plans the terrorist group had to disrupt the upcoming presidential elections."

However, Garnett added, "if the Islamic State's mainland cells, which have not conducted attacks in several months, operate independently, the Sinai campaign will have little effect on its capabilities."Harasta (Syria) (AFP) - Syrian rebel fighters on Friday left one pocket of battered Eastern Ghouta and reached a deal to quit another as the regime drew close to regaining full control over the key enclave after a more than month-long battle.

A blistering Russian-backed assault since February 18 on the last opposition bastion near Damascus had splintered rebel territory into three shrinking pockets, each held by different factions.

Damascus and its ally Moscow have implemented a "leave or die" strategy with deadly air strikes on the enclave as they look to end six years of opposition control.

State television said the town of Harasta had "been emptied of terrorists" after a deal that saw fighters from Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham and their families bussed to northwestern Idlib province, still largely rebel-held.

The evacuation extended regime dominance to over 90 percent of the bombed-out Ghouta enclave that the rebels have clung to through years of punishing government siege, a Britain-based war monitor said.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces look set to expand their control soon over another key area after Islamist group Faylaq al-Rahman struck a deal to evacuate starting at 0700 GMT on Saturday.

The agreement will see a southern stretch of territory that includes the towns of Zamalka, Arbin and Ain Tarma cleared, while talks are under way over the third and final pocket, around Ghouta's main town of Douma.

The withdrawal deal came after Russian air strikes using "incendiary munitions" hit the town of Arbin late Thursday, killing 37 civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. AFP reporters saw similar munitions fall on Douma.

But Russia denied it was carrying out any such strikes.

- 'From under the rubble' -

Each one of the three pockets has come under intense bombardment, essentially forcing the rebels who control them to sue for an exit in a tactic commonly used by Assad's forces in Syria's seven-year war.

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The Observatory says that more than 1,600 civilians have been killed in just over a month.

Harasta's evacuation -- which began Thursday -- came as part of a deal negotiated by Russia.

Syrian state media reported more than 4,500 people including over 1,400 fighters left.

Fighters and civilians on Friday loaded onto a fleet of 50 buses in a buffer zone outside their former bastion before beginning the journey to Idlib.

The head of the rebel-controlled local council in Harasta, Hossam al-Beiruti, described a pitiful scene as he and other residents readied to leave their town.

"They came out from under the rubble. They came out of cellars they had been buried in without food," he told AFP by phone.

"They emerged back to life despite their feelings of abandonment by the international community."

The first batch of fighters to leave Ghouta arrived at a camp in Idlib province on Friday after spending the night on the edge of rebel-held territory.

"Our situation in Harasta was very tragic," Abu Mohammed, a civilian told AFP in the town of Maarat al-Ikhwan.

"We couldn't live above ground because of the heavy bombardment... Some children stayed in basements for four months with no food. We couldn't even find fodder to eat."

Retaking Eastern Ghouta, a sprawling semi-rural area which had escaped government control since 2012 and lies within mortar range of central Damascus, was made a priority this year after a string of regime gains.

On the regime-held side of Harasta, an AFP correspondent said Syrian soldiers fired celebratory gunshots into the air after they heard of the deal to evacuate the second pocket of the enclave.

- Scabies -

Ahrar al-Sham had made some demands in talks before the evacuation but were pummelled into accepting whatever conditions were imposed to them.

"The one thing they got was that they were able to leave without being killed," said Nawar Oliver, an analyst at the Turkey-based Omran Centre.

Some 80 civilians were reported killed on Thursday in bombardments of the territory held by Faylaq al-Rahman before they sealed a deal for some 7,000 people to leave.

"The humanitarian situation continues to be catastrophic, with no food, emergency items nor medical supplies and outbreaks of disease due to civilians stuck in crowded and insalubrious basements," Faylaq al-Rahman spokesman Wael Alwan told AFP before the deal.

"There are cases of lice and scabies," the Turkey-based spokesman said.

AFP video and pictures from Douma, which is controlled by the rebel faction Jaish al-Islam, showed bright white streams falling from the sky in a fashion consistent with incendiary munitions.

Jaish al-Islam too opened negotiations with Russia.

The offensive on Eastern Ghouta has caused widespread outrage and marked one of the darkest episodes of a war that entered its eighth year this month.Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel investigating alleged Russian interference in the US election, will scrutinise links between Donald Trump's campaign and Cambridge Analytica - the British firm accused of using the personal information of millions of Facebook users for campaigning, without their consent or knowledge.

Mr Muellers investigators have questioned officials who worked on the US Presidents campaign about its data operations, particularly about how they collected and used voter data in battleground states, according to two sources close to the investigation.

Authorities in Britain and the US are investigating whether Cambridge Analytica may have used data improperly obtained from more than 50 million Facebook users to try to influence the 2016 White House race.

Several digital experts employed by the Republican National Committee (RNC) worked closely with both the campaign and the London-based data-mining firm, according to the two former campaign officials.

The campaign paid the firm just under $6m (4.26m) for its work, federal records show.

Mr Mueller is leading a criminal probe into whether President Trumps team had ties to Russia and whether he may have obstructed justice. He has subpoenaed the Trump Organization in the investigation into alleged collusion between members of the President's 2016 team and Russian officials.

The Trump campaign has distanced itself from Cambridge Analytica, which had been financed by major Republican donors and, for a time, employed Steve Bannon, the former editor of right-wing outlet Breitbart News, who later became Mr Trumps former chief strategist.

The exact role that Cambridge Analytica played for the Trump campaign remains unclear. Staff at the firm are known to have made several overtures to campaign officials before the firm was eventually retained.

They first requested a meeting in spring 2015, before the billionaire real-estate mogul officially announced his candidacy, according to four former campaign officials.

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Alexander Nix, the Cambridge Analytica chief executive, captured on a sting video released this week, met with then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to make a pitch about what his company could offer, including its psychographic method of profiling.

Mr Lewandowski refused, in part because staff believed Mr Trump would not be willing to make a sizeable financial investment in an analytics firm, according the two sources.

Cambridge Analytica then worked for the campaign of Mr Trumps Republican rivals Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. But after Mr Trump became the presumptive nominee, the data firm again made contact, this time with Paul Manafort, the new campaign chief.

Mr Manafort was also sceptical, but hired Cambridge Analytica, in part as a friendly gesture to the Mercer family, heavyweight Republican donors who had helped fund the companys launch a few years earlier.

Records show the Trump campaigns first payment of $100,000 (70,000) to the firm came in July 2016.

Five of the firms staff were assigned to work with the campaigns digital director, Brad Parscale, at his Texas-based firm. Parscale and Jared Kushner, Mr Trumps son-in-law, emphasised using social media  particularly Facebook  to better target voters, and pressed its importance on Mr Trump.

Cambridge Analytica built a database of small-dollar Republican donors, information the company had from its prior work for the Cruz and Carson campaigns.

But when it became clear the RNC would share its much-improved data operation with the Trump campaign, the firm fell out of favour. Two of the former officials said their tools were not useful, though Parscale said a month after the election that the firm had been involved in daily polls and helped shape spending.

Another campaign official said the firm was kept around mostly to placate the Mercers and their allies on Trumps staff.

Mr Bannon, with the Mercers backing, served as vice president of the firm from June 2014 to August 2016, when he joined the Trump campaign. He recently tried to distance the campaign from Cambridge Analytica, saying he had no knowledge of the data-mining operation, instead blaming Facebook.

Chris Wylie, a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, told The Washington Post that the firm had begun testing phrases such as drain the swamp before Mr Trump launched his campaign.

Senator Mark Warner, vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the scandal was more evidence that the online political advertising market is essentially the Wild West.

Whether its allowing Russians to purchase political ads, or extensive micro-targeting based on ill-gotten user data, its clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency, he tweeted.

AP contributed to this report.London (AFP) - The Russian ambassador to Britain wrote Friday to a policeman exposed to a nerve agent during the poisoning of a former Russian spy in southwest England, insisting on Moscow's innocence and thanking him for his bravery.

Alexander Yakovenko told Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who was released from hospital Thursday following two weeks of treatment, that he hoped the officer, as well as targeted ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, "get well soon".

"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for your bravery when reacting to the assault on two Russian nationals," he wrote.

"Please be assured that Russia has nothing to do with this reckless incident and is ready to cooperate with the British authorities," Yakovenko added.

Skripal and daughter Yulia were found poisoned in the southwest English city Salisbury with what Britain has determined was a military grade nerve agent.

Prime Minister Theresa May has blamed Russia for an "attempted assassination".

She won the backing of other European Union leaders at a summit this week, who unanimously agreed it was "highly likely" that Moscow was responsible for the attack.

Russia has ridiculed the accusation, and in an escalating war of words following tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions, suggested British military laboratory Porton Down may be the source for the attack.

Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the facility, said on Friday there was "no way" a nerve agent could have left the site.

"It's very frustrating to hear that because everyone here knows that's just not true," he told the BBC. "We've got the highest levels of controls."

He added: "It's a coincidence that it's down the road", in reference to Porton Down's proximity to Salisbury, which is less than 10 miles away.By Alexandria Sage, Tina Bellon and Nick Carey

(Reuters) - The fatal accident involving an Uber self-driving car cranks up pressure on the self-driving vehicle industry to prove its software and sensors are safe in the absence of strong government standards, experts in the field said.

Automakers including General Motors Co, technology companies such as Alphabet Inc and ride services providers like Uber Technologies Inc have all urged policy makers at the federal and state level not to put a heavy regulatory hand on an industry still in development. They have said their extensive testing demonstrates commitment to safety.

Uber is currently looking for a head of global safety operations who would "drive key strategic programs including Safety Experience and Building Trust," according to a job posting on the company's website. The search was posted before the Arizona fatality.

The Uber accident in Tempe, Arizona this week was the first death attributed to a self-driving car operating in autonomous mode. It has given ammunition to critics of the industry concerned that the lack of clear standards allows manufacturers to test faulty or partially developed technology on public streets.

Well before Sunday's fatal accident, industry executives had begun to confront questions about whether self-driving cars can be trusted. They have opened up about their testing methods without revealing secrets of system designs.

Public disclosure of self-driving car testing data is inconsistent and varies by state. California requires manufacturers to report instances when an autonomous vehicle system disengages. Arizona does not.

"There is no question whatsoever that regulations are coming," said Doug Mehl, a partner at A.T. Kearney's automotive practice, based in Detroit. "But right now (automakers), software developers and service providers have an opportunity to shape what those regulations are going to look like."

Story continues

Alphabet's Waymo self-driving car unit has underscored in a report that its autonomous vehicles have now logged 5 million miles in real-world testing, and billions more in computer simulations. GM's Cruise Automation unit has highlighted its decision to teach its driving system to navigate San Francisco's congested streets.

Still, Amnon Shashua, head of Intel Corp's Mobileye vision systems unit, said the industry must do more. He has called for the self-driving vehicle industry to develop "provable safety assurances".

"We need to prove that these vehicles are much, much safer than humans," Shashua told Reuters. "How do you go and guarantee that you have a technology that the probability of a fatality per one hour of driving is 1,000 times better than a human? Nobody talks about that because nobody knows what to do."

NO FEDERAL STANDARDS

Most self-driving vehicles are equipped with radar sensors and lidar sensors, which use lasers to detect obstacles around the vehicle. There are no federal standards yet specifying how such systems should work. Congress and federal regulators are still debating how tightly to regulate such systems.

"There should be vision tests for the sensors they are using, both static and dynamic to see how well they work," said Missy Cummings, a Duke University mechanical engineering professor.

The short video recorded by cameras in the Uber vehicle that struck pedestrian Elaine Herzberg while crossing a street in Tempe, Arizona late Sunday raises questions about whether the Uber system responded better than a human driver, experts said on Wednesday.

Uber has hired human operators to sit in driver's seats of its autonomous vehicles to intervene if necessary. The video released by Tempe police shows a human operator behind the wheel of the Uber vehicle before the impact.

The operator is seen looking down, away from the street, in the seconds before the vehicle struck Herzberg. She was pushing a bicycle across the street from left lane into the right lane where the Uber vehicle was driving.

"It seems it should have detected her," Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at University of California Davis told Reuters in an email after viewing the video. "It seems unlikely that a human driver would have done better. We do want AVs to do better than us and the potential exists."

Americans were wary of autonomous vehicle technology even before Sunday's fatality.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released in late January, two-thirds of Americans are uncomfortable about the idea of riding in self-driving cars.

"The greater risk for the industry is that if people feel it is unsafe, or the testing is unsafe, you'll see a real backlash against this technology," said Matthew Johnson-Roberson, co-director of the University of Michigan Ford Center for Autonomous Vehicles.

(Reporting by Alexandria Sage in San Francisco, Nick Carey and Paul Lienert in Detroit, Tina Bellon in New York. Editing by Joseph White, Kenneth Maxwell and David Gregorio)Freetown (AFP) - Sierra Leone's High Court on Saturday ordered the electoral commission to halt preparations for a March 27 presidential run-off following a legal filing by a lawyer linked to the ruling party.

The order stops the National Electoral Commission (NEC) from working until "the hearing and determination of this court", adjourning the matter until Monday, the eve of the vote.

This would allow time for the commission to submit a question to the Supreme Court, it said, after which the High Court would sit again to reconsider the matter.

The decision means the commission will be unable to transport election materials or organise polling until the injunction is lifted.

Lawyer Ibrahim Sorie Koroma, a member of the ruling All Peoples' Congress (APC), argued in his filing that electoral fraud allegations should be investigated before the vote goes ahead.

The APC's candidate, Samura Kamara, finished slightly behind Julius Maada Bio of the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) in the first round of voting on March 7, but neither candidate gained the 55 percent of votes needed to win outright.

Tensions are high ahead of the vote with a campaign marked by violent attacks and intimidation against politicians and supporters, along with an increase in inflammatory tribal rhetoric.

There are already opposition accusations the police are in the pocket of the APC after they entered NEC premises and interrogated staff this week.

That follows a raid on the home of SLPP candidate Bio after polls closed on the day of the first round.

That vote was declared fair and credible by international and domestic observers.The Trade Houses of Ingushetia and Kazakhstan signed a memorandum on cooperation, which envisages the implementation of joint projects in the field of agriculture.

The agreement was signed by the chairman of the board of directors of the Ingushetia Trading House, Yusup Barkinkhoyev, and the director general of the Baursak retail chain, Elena Kondakova.

"We have been negotiating for more than half a year, we are exploring Kazakh products, analyzing its price and quality in our market, whether it is suitable for our consumers." And, of course, we have decided to cooperate, "Barkinkhoyev said.Freetown (AFP) - Sierra Leone's High Court on Saturday issued an order to halt Tuesday's presidential run-off until it resolves a legal dispute filed by a lawyer linked to the ruling party.

Tensions are high ahead of the vote with a campaign marked by violent attacks and intimidation against politicians and supporters, along with an increase in inflammatory tribal rhetoric.

The order prevents the National Electoral Commission (NEC) from going ahead with the vote until "the hearing and determination of this court", and also prevents the body from undertaking preparations including distribution of election materials.

The court adjourned the case until Monday to allow time for the commission to submit a question to the Supreme Court, after which the High Court will sit again to reconsider the matter.

"Noting that the matter will return to court on Monday, 26 March, the commission will temporarily cease all logistical preparations for the run-off," the polling body said in a statement.

Lawyer Ibrahim Sorie Koroma, a member of the ruling All Peoples' Congress (APC), had argued in his filing that electoral fraud allegations should be investigated before the vote goes ahead.

The first round was declared fair and credible by international and domestic observers.

The APC's candidate, Samura Kamara, finished slightly behind Julius Maada Bio of the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) in the first round of voting on March 7, but neither candidate gained the 55 percent of votes needed to win outright.

Kamara told AFP on the campaign trail he was "looking forward to the courts ensuring that NEC clears all the discrepancies and irregularities of the March 7 election before the run-off," speaking at a meet and greet in Freetown.

The opposition has already alleged that the police are puppets of the APC after they entered the NEC premises and interrogated staff this week, and say the party is now using the courts to try and derail the electoral process.

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"We view this so-called interim injunction as a deliberate ploy by President Ernest Koroma to illegally extend his tenure," an SLPP statement issued late Saturday said.

"All indications are that President Koroma will not hand over power without the involvement of the international community, as he has compromised the efficacy of all state institutions, including the judiciary," it added.

The police raided the home of SLPP candidate Bio after polls closed on the day of the first round, but did not arrest him.

The Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), Mohamed Ibn Chambas, said Thursday the polling body was "working under exceptional challenges to discharge its constitutional responsibilities within tight time constraints".

He further demanded all sides "exercise restraint and not interfere with or compromise the independence and integrity of NEC".Cairo (AFP) - As a supporter of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and yet his sole challenger, Moussa Mostafa Moussa is seen by critics as a token candidate to try to legitimise the Egyptian leader's re-election.

The 65-year-old businessman had already started campaigning for Sisi when he himself was declared a candidate on January 29, the final day for applications to run in this month's presidential election.

A Facebook page in Moussa's name at the time featured a photograph in support of the president, but the post has since been deleted.

"No to taking part in this charade," Hamdeen Sabbahi, who was a candidate in 2012 and 2014 presidential elections, told a press conference held by opposition parties the next day.

Before Moussa's inclusion in the race, all serious presidential hopefuls had dropped out one after the other.

Two, including General Sami Anan, a former armed forces chief, were arrested, while others including rights lawyer and 2012 presidential candidate Khaled Ali said their campaigns faced harassment from the state and withdrew.

To avoid Sisi running alone, supporters tried to push one of their own to throw his hat into the ring: Sayed al-Badawi. But the liberal Al-Wafd party which he leads refused.

Finally, Moussa, who since 2011 has headed Al-Ghad (tomorrow), another liberal party, emerged as the candidate to oppose Sisi in the March 26-28 polls.

It was necessary to "balance" the vote, Moussa told AFP. Now, the elections are "very clear, very democratic" because Sisi "is no longer the only candidate".

However, he remains loyal to the president. "This is nothing new. We have the same political ideals," said Moussa.

Ever since then army chief Sisi led the July 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi amid mass protests against his rule, Moussa has remained in the camp of Sisi, who was voted into office in 2014.

Moussa admits that his campaign, financed by his own funds, "isn't comparable to that of the president".

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-'Rhetorical competition'-

Questioned on international criticism of Egypt's human rights record, Moussa declined to answer. "I do not wish to judge things that I do not know," he said.

But the challenger insists he is his own man.

"I have ideas and concepts, and I see things from another angle," said the candidate who has received the support of Arab tribal groups.

"I'm going into this election with the intention of winning," Moussa said, despite all the cards being stacked in Sisi's favour.

The goal of boosting exports is at the core of his "well-established" economic programme, the challenger said, although details were still being finalised.

He will "work on bridging the gap that allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to rise" to power in 2012 before they were ousted by Sisi, said Adel Esmat, Moussa's spokesman.

Morsi, who hailed from the Muslim Brotherhood, was Egypt's first democratically-elected civilian president, but his year in power proved deeply divisive.

Moussa's smiling face has appeared on banners in Cairo, vastly outnumbered by Sisi's ubiquitous posters.

The challenger was "a relatively unknown politician" prior to his candidacy, said H.A. Hellyer, a non-resident researcher at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

With limited financial means, little known by the public, and facing an incumbent who remains popular, Moussa does not pose any threat to Sisi.

But his "participation will be able to provide the Sisi administration with the appearance of some kind of competition, if only in terms of rhetoric", said Hellyer.Did police tell an unarmed black man who they were before shooting him to death in a dark backyard in Sacramento, California? That question is forcing an examination of policies dictating when and how police identify themselves while encountering suspects.

Two Sacramento police officers, responding to a report of someone shattering car windows, killed Stephon Alonzo Clark, 22, on Sunday in a hail of bullets.

stephon clark

Black Lives Matter Sacramento

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Police video has shown the officers chasing Clark around the side of his grandparents house, yelling Show me your hands and Gun before firing. Police said they believed Clark held a gun, but it turned out to be a mobile phone.

The release of the video late on Wednesday sparked street protests.

On Thursday, protestors gathered outside Sacramentos city hall to demonstrate against the killing. They then blocked a road, causing long tailbacks and surrounded the Golden 1 Centre, where the Sacramento Kings were scheduled to play the Atlanta Hawks.

Clarks family, through their attorney Benjamin Crump, disputed the police account that Clark was breaking windows.

Many protesters have said police did not appear to have identified themselves when they confronted Clark on that dark night as he stood in his grandparents backyard. On the video, the officers cannot be heard saying they are police.

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He (Clark) didnt make any threats against the police, there is no evidence he committed a crime, there was no warning from the police, there was no identification from the police, Crump said.

Crump represented the family of black teenager Michael Brown, whose shooting death in Ferguson, Missouri, by police in 2014 sparked nationwide protests.

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Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said this week that city officials would examine police protocol for how they identify themselves in such cases.

I have a 21-year-old son and I never had to teach him the importance of holding his hands high if he is ever stopped by a police officer, Steinberg said Friday on Facebook. No words can describe how it must feel for an African-American family who has to teach that lesson as a reality of growing up black.

Sacramento police guidelines posted on the departments website do not specify that officers must identify themselves when encountering suspects. Sacramento police spokeswoman Linda Matthew said she did not believe such a policy existed.

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Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said that policies for departments vary across the country, but it would be impractical under such circumstances to expect officers to identify themselves.

If youre in a chase and everybodys running, there isnt a lot of talking back and forth going on, he said.

The Sacramento shooting could lead some police departments to change their rules, but such policies can be difficult to follow in the heat of the moment, said Eugene ODonnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

It wont surprise me if some departments add some other specific rule after this, but the cops are already weighed down with rules, he said.

Sacramento police spokeswoman Matthew said Clark could have assumed police were in the area because a Sacramento County Sheriffs Department helicopter was circling overhead.

The officers were in full uniform and the suspect fled from them, she said.

Investigators are looking into whether the officers, who were searching the neighborhood for several minutes for a suspect, announced to Clark that they were police, Matthew said.

With this incident and with every incident we have, we always look for ways in which we can improve, Matthew said. However, this was very rapidly evolving.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekWASHINGTON  They were three generations of women, up from Harrisonburg, Va., for the March for Our Lives. Jan, the grandmother, held up a sign that said: My generation failed them.

My generation failed them too, read the sign by the mother, Becky

And the granddaughter, Amy: My generation will fix this.

That was the point of it, the theme and the common hope among the hundreds of thousands massed along Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington Saturday afternoon, in support of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, survivors of the Feb. 14 mass shooting that left 17 dead.

Just reading the signs was an education in national politics, in teenage sociology and in grief. They were poignant but often funny, photos of victims of gun violence held high next to denunciations of the National Rifle Association and images of cartoon characters. There were signs honoring the victims of Columbine and Newtown, Vegas and Orlando.

Family members Jan, Becky and Amy hold signs at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. (Christopher Wilson/Yahoo News)

There were legal arguments boiled down to what would fit on a piece of cardboard, and profanity, as supporters from across the country skipped the numerous local rallies to come to the capital.

As many said, this is where the Parkland kids were, so this is where they had to be.

Some of the best signs were the simplest, images of schoolchildren lost to gun violence. James Hartley quietly sat a few dozen yards from the throngs on Pennsylvania Avenue, holding a photo of Sara Engel, a 6-year-old who was slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Slideshow: Scenes from March for Our Lives rallies around the world >>>

Newtown really affected me, said Hartley, who lives in Frederick, Md., and I just wanted to bear witness to this.

Many had made the trip from Parkland, Fla. Richard Newbery was one of them, holding a sign that said Grab them by their midterms and passing out some of the hundreds of ribbons the community had made in advance of the march.

Tucker Foreman holds up his custom jersey in honor of those who died in the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech. (Christopher Wilson/Yahoo News)

Splashes of burnt orange and maroon showed the colors of Virginia Tech to honor those killed in the 2007 shooting in Blacksburg, Va., a four-hour drive from Washington. Tucker Foreman, a D.C. resident, held up a Hokies jersey with the word Remember. Foreman said he had purchased it the week after the attack.

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The reason is the conversation I just had, said Foreman when asked what inspired him to bring the jersey on Saturday. The gentleman over there asked Whats that jersey? and when I told him he said, I forgot. We cant be in a situation where there are so many of these [shootings] people forget.

Among the thousands of students were a number of teachers, many expressing displeasure with President Trumps idea for stopping school shootings by giving teachers guns to shoot back. Books not bullets was a popular refrain. Robert McDaniel of Gainesville, Fla., stood on a patch of grass, holding a sign that said Retired principal against arming teachers.

Thirty-five years in public education showed me that teaching is the toughest job around, said McDaniel, and thats without having a gun. He said he had spent the morning with teachers coming up to him to say thank you and take photos.

Robert McDaniel of Gainesville, Fla., holds a sign at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. (Christopher Wilson/Yahoo News)

McDaniel said it had been an emotional morning. He and his wife, Anna, had a personal connection to the days events. They were close friends with the aunt and uncle of Carmen Schentrup, one of the students killed at Parkland. Schentrup had been accepted into the honors program at the University of Florida, where Anna McDaniel serves as dean of the College of Nursing.

Greg and Erin Mueller, a pair of teachers from McLean, Va., had brought their 9- and 12-year-old children to the rally to show them what democracy looks like. Erin Muellers sign read Im a teacher not a solider, and she said that she didnt feel kids would feel safe with armed teachers roaming the school.

Many of the signs were political, with a focus on the 2018 midterm elections  and beyond  with pointed messages for President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. The National Rifle Association, along with its president Wayne LaPierre and spokesperson Dana Loesch, also made for popular sign fodder. Younger attendees held signs advertising when they would be eligible to vote, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence passed out stickers counting down the days to the midterms: 227 days from Saturday.

Emma, 14, holds her sign comparing the dress code regulation for high school girls versus gun regulations at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. (Christopher Wilson/Yahoo News)

A common theme among teenage girls attending the rally was the comparison of the number of rules for guns versus the number of restrictions in their respective high school dress codes. Emma, a 14-year-old from Silver Spring, Md., held a representative sign that read, Why are my clothes more regulated than your guns?

Girls especially are very regulated on what they can wear just because its distracting to boys, said Emma. And the government is doing nothing about things that are actually putting us in danger, things that could be ending  that are ending  peoples lives.

Signs also compared how much more strictly womens reproductive rights were restricted than gun ownership. One theme was that students would get more protection from Congress if they never left the womb. Several signs warned men that possession of a firearm did not enhance the size of any body part, one in particular.

Trish Manzke wears a wig and holds up a sign at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. (Christopher Wilson/Yahoo News)

There were signs meant to interpret the Second Amendment for the benefit of the courts, pointing out the absurdity of using 18th century policy to regulate 21st century technology. Muskets. We meant muskets read a sign carried by Trish Manzke who underscored the point by donning a silver Revolutionary-War-era wig she had purchased just for the occasion.

Her son, Skye, 17, stood nearby and said he really appreciated what his mom was doing. Trish Manzke was particularly pleased her son had just registered to vote in Novembers election.

The crowds favorite Federalist, by far, was Alexander Hamilton, whose Broadway incarnation in the musical Hamilton was the inspiration for dozens of signs: History has its eyes on you, Tomorrow there will be more of us and I will gladly join the fight. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the show and starred in it, performed at the rally along with fellow Tony winner Ben Platt from Dear Evan Hansen.

One of the many Hamilton-inspired signs at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. (Christopher Wilson/Yahoo News)

One of the attendees with a History has its eyes on you sign was Claudia Buettner, a 19-year-old student from Louisiana.

I wanted to speak to my generation, said Buettner when asked why she had chosen those particular lyrics, because a lot of them dont think about history outside of whats in the book they have to read or look at the news, and I think its important for them to realize what an important period this is.

She said some of her fellow Hamilton fans had been stopping by over the course of the morning.

A couple people have come up to me and said, We have the same sign!

Dr. Tyr Wilbanks, a trauma surgeon from the Bronx, wore his operating-room clothes and held a sign that said, No more blood on my scrubs.

I could have gone to the New York rally, but I wanted to be where the Florida kids were, said Wilbanks. If the students from Florida were here, then I should be here. Theyre like the child who pointed out the emperor has no clothes, theyre demanding action and not settling for thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Tyr Wilbanks holds a sign at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. (Christopher Wilson/Yahoo News)

Wilbanks said he had treated many gunshot wounds in his time and was appalled by the waste of young lives. His daughter held up a chart showing that the U.S. had by far the highest rate of gun deaths among developed nations.

Im so proud of what theyve done, Wilbanks said of the Parkland students. Theyve provided a great counter balance to the NRA.

A number of the signs paid tribute to the words of activist Emma Gonzalez, a Parkland senior and one of the leaders of the Never Again movement. Gonzalez rose to prominence following an emotional speech just days after her classmates were killed, a speech in which she declared We call BS on lawmakers and gun advocacy groups. More explicit references to what BS stands for were common, although the placard of one young girl perched atop her mothers shoulders included an age-appropriate parenthetical of Bologna sandwiches.

Along with the somber tributes and calls for policy changes, there were also plenty of memes  oh, so many memes. The Parkland survivors have been praised for their social media savvy, digital natives who understood how the internet functioned, and many of their supporters brought the online into the real world for the march. They took the inside jokes that spread across social media  esoteric references that are barely comprehendible unless youre comfortable with the weirder corners of the internet  and attempted to wield them as weapons in pursuit of gun policy reform.

There were references to the rapper Drake and to a confused Brazilian telenovela star, but the most prolific meme by far was that of cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, a signifier of absurdity meant to mock ideas such as arming teachers.

One of the many SpongeBob SquarePants memes at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. (Christopher Wilson/Yahoo News)

I wanted to think of the most patronizing thing possible, said Mary McDowell of College Park, Md., who had designed a SpongeBob sign for her friend. And also inject a little humor into this.

Danielle Gatapia, a graduate student from Boston, held a SpongeBob sign with the same message, deciding she wanted to show her support without doing something too serious. She had found kindred spirits in her fellow meme warriors.

Ive seen a few other people with memes, said Gatapia, and theyve come up and weve high-fived and said we need more memes.

And change.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:Three teenagers were arrested in Memphis, Tennessee, after allegedly raping a teenager and broadcasting the attack on Facebook Live.

Martin Milan, 19, Antun Hester, 18, and Rayford Smith, 19, were all charged with aggravated rape and especially aggravated exploitation of a minor after the 17-year-old girl reported the attack Wednesday, reported WREG.

The girl had invited Milan to her house to have sex but when he asked if he could bring his brother she said she was not interested, reported the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper, citing the arrest affidavit.

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Police have reportedly recovered text messages between the girl and Milan.

Milan later arrived at her home with Smith and Hester in tow, but she said that she was only interested in Milan and asked the others to wait in a different room while they had sex.

Several minutes later, Smith and Hester allegedly entered the teenagers room and raped her, according to police.

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Unknown

Police Handout

Smith is accused of recording the attack on video and posting it on Facebook Live. Officers recovered the footage from his cellphone.

After the attack, the teenager allegedly hid in her grandmothers bathroom and telephoned police.

The suspects were due to appear in court Friday, with Milan's bond set at $100,000 and Hester and Smith's at $50,000 each.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekJerusalem (AFP) - Thousands of people demonstrated Saturday in central Tel Aviv to protest against Israel's plan for the mass expulsion of Eritreans and Sudanese who entered the country illegally.

Israeli media said more than 20,000 people -- migrants and Israelis -- took part in the rally, with footage broadcast live on the Ynet news website showing them chanting: "we are all human beings".

"There is no difference between their blood and our blood," chanted the demonstrators.

Israel's supreme court earlier this month suspended the controversial government plan to deport thousands of Eritrean and Sudanese migrants in response to a challenge from those opposed to the move.

The court said in its decision the state was given until March 26 to provide further information and the suspension on deporting them to a third country would remain in place until then.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January said migrants who entered illegally have the choice of leaving voluntarily or facing indefinite imprisonment with eventual forced expulsion.

On Tuesday, he said an electronic fence along the Israel-Egypt border has saved the Jewish state from "severe (jihadist) attacks... and something much worse, a flood of illegal migrants from Africa".

The interior ministry says there are some 42,000 African migrants in Israel, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea.

Most of them began arriving in 2007, through the border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Netanyahu on Tuesday said a tide of non-Jewish immigration would threaten the very fabric of Israel.

During Saturday's protest, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the far-right Jewish Home party, appealed to the government in a tweet not to give in to those opposed to the deportations.

Describing the migrants as "the illegal infiltrators" who enter Israel in search of work, he said allowing them to stay would turn the country into "an employment agency for the entire world".Bratislava (AFP) - Thousands of protesters across Slovakia called for snap elections Friday, in a sign that a change of government ministers has not been enough to quell a public backlash triggered by the murder of a journalist probing corruption.

The president on Thursday appointed the new cabinet led by Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, whose predecessor and close ally Robert Fico had quit over the scandal.

Demonstrators in the capital Bratislava chanted "we want elections" and "shame" and held up signs with slogans such as "we have the right to vote" and "we don't want this government".

The new cabinet of the three-party coalition retains most of the people from the previous administration.

Analysts believe Fico will continue to call the shots from behind the scenes as he remains chairman of Pellegrini's Smer-SD party.

The local SME daily estimated that around 25,000 people turned out at the Bratislava rally, while smaller rallies took place in other cities.

Journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova, both 27, were found shot dead last month in their home near Bratislava.

Police said Kuciak's death was "most likely" related to his investigation into alleged ties between top politicians and Italian mafia.

His death has raised concerns about media freedom and corruption in the EU member of 5.4 million people and sparked weekly anti-government protests.

Organisers of the previous "For a decent Slovakia" protests had called off this week's Friday edition after the new government was appointed.

But people took to the streets anyway in the new "We do care" protest organised by university students.

"We students decided to get involved in the events in our country, and be active in making positive changes in Slovakia," one of the students, Timotej Lauko, told protesters in Bratislava.

"Nobody else will improve things for us."Air Force, C-5, AMC, Travis, Navy,

A vehicle crash inside Travis Air Force Base in California that occurred on Wednesday night (March 21) resulted in the vehicle bursting into flames and the driver perishing. Both the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations are working to establish the reasons behind the incident.

Some details of Wednesdays events are still not clear, but it has been revealed that the vehicle entered Travis via the main gate, crashed shortly afterwards and caught fire, a statement from the Air Force said. The driver is the only casualty of the incident, according to multiple reports.

Trending: Will the Government Shut Down Again? Trump Threatens Veto of Spending Bill Over DACA, Border Wall

The vehicles access to the base was unauthorized according to the Air Force. Respondents, including the bases Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, arrived on the scene immediately.

Air Force, C-5, AMC, Travis, Navy,

U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Joey Swafford

A U.S. official, speaking to ABC News on the condition of anonymity, said the vehicle carried propane tanks inside it. The official also noted that the driver was not a member of the armed services but a civilian. All motives, ranging from the psychological state of the driver to possible terrorism or a suicide attempt, are being looked at.

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According to CNN, it is not even clear if the driver intended to crash in this way. "The safety and welfare of our airmen, their families and our local community is our top priority," John Klein, 60th Air Mobility Wing commander told the network. "I am extremely proud of how our first responders quickly addressed the situation to keep Travis and the surrounding area out of harm's way."

Story continues

The Travis base is operating as usual and the main gate is functional, according to the Air Force. The military facility, situated in the San Francisco bay area, houses around 10,000 military personnel and serves as a major hub for logistics and U.S. military operations in the Pacific Ocean.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekThe United States and up to 20 European countries are preparing to expel Russian diplomats. The unprecedented co-ordinated action will begin on Monday with the recall of the European Unions ambassador to Moscow for four weeks, British publication The Times reported.

According to the publication, this decision was made in connection with the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, for which the UK Prime Minister Theresa May blames Russia.

The newspaper cited an unnamed source who reported that "a coordinated series of expulsions" will take place in France, Germany, Poland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Chelorg.com writes.

Earlier, US President Donald Trumps National Security Council recommended that a yet-to-be determined number of Russian diplomats be expelled from the US in response to the Skripal poisoning. Trump is expected to take a final decision next week.

Moscow will immediately take retaliatory measures if Washington decides to expel Russian diplomats, Deputy Chairman of Russian Federation Council's Committee on International Affairs Vladimir Dzhabarov said on Saturday, Sputnik reports.

"If the United States decides to expel Russian diplomats, the retaliatory measures will be taken immediately," Dzhabarov said.

The lawmaker, however, noted that Trump was unlikely to follow such recommendations as there are a lot of problems in US-Russian relations which have to be settled, especially taken into account the fact that UK Prime Minister Theresa May's accusations were unfounded.President Trump announced steps to institute new tariffs and penalties to crack down on Chinas intellectual property practices as concerns grow that a recent spate of trade actions could launch a global trade war.

We have a tremendous intellectual property theft situation going on, which likewise is hundreds of billions of dollars, Trump said before signing a directive for the U.S. Trade Representative to assess tariffs.

A senior Administration official said the proposed tariffs will hit a wide range of consumer products  some 1,300  and will have a targeted value of around $50 billion. Trump said the number would be $60 billion at a press conference Thursday.

The Trump Administration conducted a months-long case, known as a Section 301 investigation, to build a case that China has forced U.S. companies to share technology and intellectual property as a condition of doing business in China, among other concerns.

Trade associations representing a wide range of the business community said they largely agree with criticism of Chinas intellectual property practices, but criticized the tariffs as a poor remedy that could ultimately harm U.S. businesses and raise prices for consumers.

The overall focus of the Section 301 investigation should be to bring China to the negotiating table for a meaningful resolution of specific, sector-by-sector issues, Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council trade association wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. Premature, unilateral sanctions alone are unlikely to achieve this objective.

U.S. trade partners were already on edge about a slew of Trump tariffs announced earlier this year as the president seeks to make good on a campaign promise to reduce the U.S. trade deficit and crack down on what he sees as unfair trade practices. Past actions have covered steel, aluminum, washing machines and solar panels.

The announcement Thursday compounded industry fears. As news of the impending announcement spread, China announced that it was preparing tariffs of its own on U.S. soybeans, sorghum and live hogs, all of which originate in areas that overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

A senior administration official said that the U.S. had already engaged China on the topic in diplomatic discussions and the tariffs were a last resort. China will have a choice about how to respond, the official said. They have benefited from this relationship far more than we have.

The tariffs will be subject to a 15-day comment period before the U.S. Trade Representative finalizes the move. Other measures, including new restrictions on Chinese investment in the U.S., will take longer.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John Bolton, U.S. President Donald Trump's new national security adviser, said Trump should insist that any meeting he holds with North Korea's leader must be focused squarely on how to eliminate that country's nuclear weapons programme as quickly as possible.

Bolton, a hawk who Trump named on Thursday to replace H.R. McMaster in the key security role, told Radio Free Asia on Monday that discussions at the proposed summit with Kim Jong Un should be similar to those that led to components of Libya's nuclear programme being shipped to the United States in 2004.

"Let's have this conversation by May, or even before that, and let's see how serious North Korea really is," Bolton said, according to a transcript of his remarks posted on the RFA website on Friday.

"If they're not prepared to have that kind of serious discussion, it could actually be a very short meeting."

Bolton said North Korea had used negotiations in the past to camouflage its weapons development and he was sceptical about its intentions. He said U.S. ally South Korea, which restarted talks with North Korea this year, should be cautious before agreeing to anything with Pyongyang.

"We should insist that if this meeting is going to take place, it will be similar to discussions we had with Libya 13 or 14 years ago: how to pack up their nuclear weapons programme and take it to Oak Ridge, Tennessee," he said.

Bolton said it was important for Trump to "make the point that he's not there to waste time and that we expect real denuclearization, not talks about talks about denuclearization, but concretely how we're going to eliminate their programme as quickly as possible."

Bolton also said the United States should not offer North Korea economic aid, or a peace treaty, adding, "they're lucky to be having a meeting with the President of the United States."

Bolton, a hardliner who has advocated regime change and military force against North Korea, said no one wanted to see military action, but it would be a mistake to leave the country with nuclear weapons. He warned of the risk of Pyongyang selling nuclear weapons technology to Islamic State, al Qaeda, or any aspiring nuclear-weapons state.

Story continues

"President Trump has unattractive options ... he doesn't have much time," Bolton said. "Somebody said, you know, we can't kick the can down the road any further because there isn't any road left."

South Korean officials met Kim Jong Un this month and told Washington the leader was open to giving up his nuclear weapons if North Korea's security was guaranteed.

Trump responded with a surprise announcement that he was willing to meet Kim before the end of May in a bid to resolve the crisis over North Korea's development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States.

North Korea argues its weapons programme is needed for defence, a belief analysts say is reinforced by the fate of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi after giving up his nuclear programme.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by James Dalgleish)Wall Street isnt the only place where President Donald Trumps tariffs have struck a nerve. Agricultural communities across the U.S. fear escalating trade tensions will increase prices of U.S. goods abroad and harm their business.

Trump announced plans for tariffs on a slew of products from China this week with a value of at least $50 billion, the latest in a string of tariffs the White House has described as key to protecting the U.S. economy. Previous tariffs hit imported aluminum, steel, solar panels and washing machines, raising the prices for domestic consumers and causing the stock market to dip.

But what worries U.S. agriculture is the threat of retaliation that could reduce demand for U.S. agricultural products. China is the greatest U.S. agricultural export market with more than $21 billion in products sent there in 2016, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Im very concerned, says John Heisdorffer, a soybean producer from Iowa and president of the American Soybean Association. If we lose trade to China, our neighbors to the south will be glad to take up that trade.

China has so far issued a measured response to Trumps first move with $3 billion in tariffs of its own on products including wine, fruit and pork. But the specter of more lingers on the horizon. The country has hinted that soybeans  the largest U.S. agricultural export  are a likely next target.

That threat has led to a decline in futures for soy beans, among other products, at a time American farms are already struggling. The USDA projected last month that U.S. farm income is expected to decline nearly 7% this year.

The mess over tariffs  and the threat of a trade war  came the same week as Trump declared on Twitter that the Administration is delivering for farmers.President Donald Trump said Friday that he had signed the 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion spending bill that the House and Senate approved this week, funding the government through September and preventing an imminent shutdown.

The announcement came hours after the president threatened to veto the bill because it did not provide enough funding for his border wall or a solution for immigrants brought to the country as children under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

Trump called the bill a ridiculous situation while speaking at a White House press conference, pointing to a large stack of papers that represented the package. But he said he had decided against a veto because the bill boosts military spending.

As a matter of national security, Ive signed this omnibus spending bill, Trump said.

Theres a lot of things Im unhappy about in this bill. Theres a lot of things we should have in the bill, he added. Ill say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again. Ill never do it again. Nobody read it. Its only hours old.

President Donald Trump talks about Congress' $1.3 trillion spending bill during a signing ceremony at the White House on Friday. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)

The bill provides $1.6 billion for border security measures including secondary fencing, levee fencing, pedestrian fencing and replacement fencing. Yet that amount falls far short of the $25 billion the White House had requested to construct a full wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Trump once again blamed Democrats for the delay in finding a solution to DACA, an Obama-era program the president chose to end in September.

The package also provides a 2.4 percent pay bump for the military and a 1.9 percent bump for civilian government employees. It allocates $144 billion for Pentagon spending, along with increases for both U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The bill also includes an effort to strengthen the background check process for gun purchases.

The bill landed on Trumps desk six months after it was due, and around two days after it was first introduced.

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Congress passed five continuing resolutions to keep the government funded while Republicans and Democrats negotiated priorities. Gridlock resulted in two brief shutdowns earlier in the year.

The president called on Congress to ban the practice of delaying votes with filibusters and to grant him the power to reject individual provisions of government spending bills so he could prevent future budget problems.

According to Trump, only President Barack Obama has signed a larger spending bill.

And Im sure he wasnt too happy about it, either, Trump said.

The spending bill passed the House 256-167 on Thursday, and passed the Senate 65-32 early Friday.

This article has been updated with additional details about the bill.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story indicated the bill passed the Senate 65-42. In fact, it passed 65-32.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.President Donald Trump signed a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill Friday, even as he slammed large parts of it as well as the process that saw it arrive at his desk.

Trump had left the outcome of whether he would sign the bill needed to continue funding the federal government in doubt, right until he appeared before reporters at the White House Friday afternoon. Although he ultimately put pen to paper, stating he only did so for reasons of "national security," he made sure everyone knew how unhappy he was in doing so.

"There are a lot of things that Im unhappy about in this bill," he said. "There are a lot of things that we shouldnt have had in this bill but we were in a sense forced if we want to build our military, we were forced to have. There are some things that we should have in the bill. But I say to Congress that I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again. Nobody read it, its only hours old."

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JUST IN: President Trump announces he is signing the $1.3 trillion spending bill passed by Congress this week despite misgivings because he wants to "take care of our military.



Trump warned Congress: I will never sign another bill like this again. https://t.co/oCMuKedwhP pic.twitter.com/V65UIPtmFJ  CNN (@CNN) March 23, 2018



Trumps comments came just hours after he tweeted the possibility that he could veto the bill.

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"I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded, he said.

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded. Most popular: Will North Korea Give Up Nuclear Weapons? These Photos Suggest Kim Jong Un May Be Serious  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

The bill will fund the federal government through September after passing the Senate by a vote of 65-32 on Thursday. It includes funds for Trumps plan to tackle the opioid epidemic as well as money for the military and $21 billion advocated for infrastructure projects.

Story continues

It did not, though, do anything to address the fate of some 800,000 so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the United States illegally as minors. And, although it provides $1.6 billion for border security, the money will go toward existing fencing structures and not come close to the $25 billion the president reportedly requested.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekUS president said he would sign bill to avert shutdown of the federal government because of the need to strengthen the military

Donald Trump announced on Friday that he had reluctantly signed Congresss $1.3tn spending bill, despite a threat he made hours earlier to veto the budget and shut down the federal government.

The president caused consternation with a tweet in which he said he might exercise his right to veto over the bills lack of immigration measures. But in impromptu remarks at the White House, Trump said he would sign because of the need to strengthen the military.

My highest duty is to keep America safe, Trump told reporters. We need to take care of our military  As a matter of national security, Ive signed this omnibus budget bill. Theres a lot of things that Im unhappy about in this bill.

He added that in a sense we were forced, describing the rushed nature of the negotiations on Capitol Hill as a ridiculous situation. The 2,232-page bill was released to lawmakers hours before it passed the House and Senate on Thursday, a day before the shutdown deadline.

He vowed: I say to Congress: Im never going to sign a bill like this again. Nobody read it. Its hours old.

He blamed Democrats in particular for not giving priority to the military  which gets a $66bn increase over 2017 spending  and insisting on their own measures being included.

We have tremendous opposition to creating really what will be by far the strongest military weve ever had, Trump said.

The president admitted he was disappointed with just $1.6bn for his much-trailed wall on the Mexican border, far short of the $25bn he wanted. Not happy with $1.6bn but it does start the wall and we will make that $1.6bn go very far, he said.

The bill takes some actions on gun control and the opioids crisis but does not include protections for young undocumented migrants brought to the country as children, known as Dreamers and previously protected under an Obama-era executive order, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or Daca.

Story continues

As a matter of national security, Ive signed this omnibus budget bill. Theres a lot of things that Im unhappy about Donald Trump

Trump sought to blame Democrats. The Republicans are with you, he said. The Democrats fought every single inch of the way. They did not want Daca in this bill  Republicans are much more on your side than the Democrats, who are using you for your own purposes.

But Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, hit back. She said: The GOP shamefully offered only a temporary patch for only a few Daca recipients, tied to billions for the border wall and extreme interior enforcement that many Dreamers made clear they could not support.

She went on: Speaker Ryan has failed to live up to his promise to bring a Daca solution to the floor, and we will continue to press him to give us a vote to protect Dreamers.

The bill passed the House 256-167 and the Senate by 65-32. Trump called for the Senate to remove its filibuster rule, to allow legislation to advance by a simple majority of 51 votes, and for Congress to give him a line-by-line veto of future budgets to prevent a repeat situation.

The budget passed the House and Senate despite opposition from groups on the right and left. Without new funding the federal government would have been partially shut down, a third such closure in months.

The bills $1.6bn for border security is not authorized to be used on the wall prototypes Trump recently viewed in California. Trumps presidential campaign made building a wall a signature issue, the candidate repeatedly promising that Mexico would pay for it.

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill, Trump wrote in his Friday morning tweet, based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.

Daca was canceled by Trump in September. However, litigation has kept protection for many Dreamers in place. Trump rejected a deal with Democrats that would have protected Dreamers in exchange for $25bn for his wall.

DACA was abandoned by the Democrats, Trump tweeted on Friday. Very unfair to them! Would have been tied to desperately needed Wall.



Trump made his veto threat despite being scheduled to leave Washington for his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday evening. In the capital, the House had adjourned.

Mark Meadows, the chair of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, tweeted his support. Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Senate budget hawk who has clashed fiercely with Trump, tweeted: Please do, Mr President. I am just down the street and will bring you a pen. The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque, throwing all of our children under the bus. Totally irresponsible.

Before Trump made the bill law, a senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill told the Guardian: One of two things will happen. He either signs the bill by the end of the day or he ends up signing a bill he likes even less after Republicans have to renegotiate with Democrats to get out of a shutdown.

After Trump signed, a Republican staffer combined the presidents campaign slogan with an acronym for Republicans in Name Only to complain that Trump had increased the national deficit. Hes made Rinos great again, the staffer said.Washington (AFP) - By tapping conservative firebrand John Bolton as his national security chief and hardliner Mike Pompeo as his top diplomat, US President Donald Trump has dramatically raised the stakes in world affairs.

Now, if Trump decides to abandon the Iran nuclear deal he has an adviser who thinks Iran can be disarmed by force -- and was one of the principal players who pushed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

If Trump's planned summit with Kim Jong Un does not lead quickly to North Korea's nuclear disarmament he has a team that is more ready than his last to contemplate pre-emptive war.

And, as his ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley pushes ahead with efforts to cuts to US funding for the world body, he will have a die-hard unilateralist by his side, cheering him on.

Bolton's appointment as White House national security adviser was not a surprise but it was still felt as a rude shock by many foreign policy professionals and commentators.

"John Bolton is a national security threat," declared Colin Kahl and Jon Wolfsthal, who were senior advisers to former president Barack Obama, in a stark commentary for Foreign Policy magazine.

"Yes, John Bolton really is that dangerous," wrote an alarmed New York Times editorial board.

"The good thing about John Bolton, President Trump's new national security adviser, is that he says what he thinks. The bad thing is what he thinks," the board warned.

David Wright, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, called said that Bolton's "extreme views are particularly dangerous now given his opposition to diplomacy with Iran and North Korea."

- Fulminating pundit -

Pressure group Human Rights Watch has denounced Pompeo as a defender of torture and discrimination against Muslims and homosexuals and wrote to urge the Senate to reject his appointment.

Trump won't care what former Obama advisers and New York editorial writers say about Bolton and Pompeo, but at first glance their policy views appear to contradict many of his own.

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Before running for president the New York property developer had no foreign policy experience beyond promoting his international hotels and resorts -- and it showed.

Several of his first generation of advisers picked up on the campaign trail are under investigation over their alleged involvement in Russian election meddling.

Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was sacked for lying about contacts with the Russian embassy and has since pleaded guilty for making false statements to the FBI.

Under the influence of his nationalist former strategy guru Steve Bannon, Trump's foreign policy positions took an isolationist bent, and he condemned the Iraq war that Bolton worked so hard to promote.

But in his first year in office, Trump chafed under the moderating influence of his second national security adviser HR McMaster and his now sacked secretary of state Rex Tillerson.

He preferred his near daily briefings with his CIA director Mike Pompeo, whose gung ho attitude towards Iran rhymed with his own, and enjoyed watching Bolton fulminating on Fox News.

And this despite Bolton's critique of administration policy. Trump is proud of the diplomatic pressure campaign he thinks forced Kim to invite him to a nuclear summit. Bolton thinks it's a failure.

"It is past time for Washington to bury this ineffective 'carrots and sticks' approach," Bolton wrote in August in a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for pre-emptive military strikes.

Many in Washington fear that Trump's all-or-nothing bid to resolve the North Korean stand-off in early one-on-one talks with Kim will fail and leave all diplomatic options exhausted.

If this comes to pass, then with Bolton at his side Trump is more likely to resort to military action that might spiral into a war that could kill millions and harm US allies Japan and South Korea.

And, as for Iran, many saw the sacking of Tillerson as the death knell for a deal still fiercely defended by Washington's European allies as the best way to prevent Tehran from getting the bomb.

But with Pompeo set to replace him and Bolton on his way to the White House, the accord's coffin may well have been nailed shut.Ankara (AFP) - Turkey on Friday condemned a statement by European Union leaders bitterly critical of Ankara's policies towards bloc members Cyprus and Greece, raising tensions just days ahead of a key summit.

"The statement that was issued contained unacceptable comments against our country that serve the interests of Greece and the Greek Cypriots," foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy told reporters in response to Thursday's EU statement.

EU President Donald Tusk and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker are due on Monday to hold talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Bulgarian city of Varna.

Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik later said Ankara "cannot accept" the statement just before the summit in the Black Sea city.

"We consider the Turkey-EU summit of March 26 in Varna to be an important opportunity to move relations forward. We expect the same positive and constructive approach from the EU," Celik said on Twitter.

The statement by the 28 EU member states meeting in Brussels called out Turkey for "illegal actions" towards Greece and Cyprus, after Ankara's arrest of two Greek soldiers and its promise to prevent the internationally-recognised Greek Cypriot government from exploring for oil and gas.

Aksoy complained that the EU had backed Athens and Nicosia simply because they are members, "without considering whether they are right".

"The EU has lost its objectivity on the Cyprus issue," he said.

- 'Important summit' -

Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded and occupied the northern third of the island in response to a Greek military junta-sponsored coup.

While the Greek-majority Republic of Cyprus is internationally recognised, the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is recognised only by Ankara.

Erdogan has warned foreign energy companies not to "overstep the mark" after Turkey's warships blocked an Italian drilling vessel of energy giant ENI off Cyprus in February.

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The Greek soldiers were arrested on March 2 for entering a military zone in the northern Turkish province of Edirne and have now been remanded in custody ahead of trial.

"The legal process continues. We expect the EU council to avoid statements which represent interference in the judiciary," Aksoy said.

In a discussion with French President Emmanuel Macron Friday evening, Erdogan asserted the need to "defend the legitimate rights of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus towards hydrocarbon sources in the eastern Mediterranean", according to Turkish presidential sources.

Erdogan also stressed "the importance of reviving the process of accession" to the EU for Turkey.

The summit between Erdogan and the EU chiefs is seen as crucial in setting up the future framework of Turkey's relationship with the bloc.

Turkey had sought to join the EU for over half a century but membership talks hit the buffers over Ankara's crackdown imposed in the wake of the 2016 failed coup.

Some EU leaders have suggested membership is no longer realistic and a pragmatic partnership should be forged instead.

"Of course this summit is important for us. We are expecting relations with the EU to be energised," said Aksoy.SheKnows

While much has been written about Jan. 6 and Donald Trumps reaction while it was going down, Bob Woodwards new book, Peril, is giving readers more insight into what happened behind closed doors. The day was fraught with a lot of drama, and as we know, much of the burden of getting through to the []By Aidan Lewis and Ayman al-Warfalli TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - U.S. forces said they had killed "two terrorists" in an air strike in southwestern Libya on Saturday as part of efforts to deny militants a safe haven in the country's vast desert. The strike hit on the outskirts of the city of Ubari and was carried out in coordination with the internationally recognized Government of National Accord in Tripoli, the U.S. Africa Command said in a statement. "At this time, we assess no civilians were killed in this strike," the statement said. A witness in Ubari told Reuters by telephone that a large explosion had been heard around midday. A house in the Fursan neighborhood was hit and two bodies were found there, he said. Residents from the neighborhood said the house was frequented by foreigners, according to the witness, who did not want to be identified for security reasons. Pictures in local media showed a body on the ground with several limbs and its head missing, and a car with its windows blown out and dozens of holes in one side. U.S. forces have carried out occasional air strikes targeting militants in Libya over the past few years. They also launched an air campaign against Islamic State in the group's former Libyan stronghold of Sirte in 2016, as local forces battled to oust jihadists from the city. Last year, the United States said it had killed dozens of suspects in air strikes in desert areas south of Sirte as it tried to stop militants regrouping. Saturday was the first time it had acknowledged a strike as far south as Ubari, which lies about 700 km (435 miles) south of Tripoli, on the road to Libya's border with Algeria. Libyan and Western officials have long warned about the risk of militants linked to Islamic State and al-Qaeda using southern Libya as a base. "We are committed to maintaining pressure on the terror network and preventing terrorists from establishing safe haven," the U.S. Africa Command statement said. It gave no information about the identity of those targeted. Libya slid into conflict after a 2011 Nato-backed uprising and has had rival governments based in Tripoli and the east for the past four years. Competing factions have fought for influence in the country's south, where the Libyan National Army (LNA), which is aligned with the eastern-based government, recently stepped up military activity. Communal violence has also flared in recent weeks in Sabha, about 170 km northeast of Ubari, displacing hundreds of families. On Saturday, LNA jets carried out strikes targeting Chadian mercenary forces southeast of Sabha, air force commander Mohamed Manfour said. Instability in southern Libya has drawn in fighters from Chad and Sudan's Darfur region who have battled for opposing sides in Libya's internal conflict. (Editing by Dale Hudson and Edmund Blair)The militant, liquidated today in the course of the counterterrorist operation in the Botlikh district of Dagestan, was linked to the ISIS terrorist organisation (banned in the Russian Federation).

The house where the insurgent hid was blocked by the special forces of the Russian FSB with the support of Rosgvardia and the law-enforcement bodies. At the scene, a sniper rifle with ammunition, grenade, radio station and a thermal imager were found.Nadiya Savchenko, the former military helicopter pilot turned parliamentarian who rose to fame after she was captured by pro-Russian rebels, was arrested in Ukraine Thursday for allegedly planning to overthrow the government.

Kievs secret service detained the high-profile politician for allegedly plotting a military-style coup using grenades and automatic weapons. The arms were allegedly taken from pro-Russian separatists who operate in the eastern part of Ukraine known as the Donbass. Savchenko was arrested after lawmakers voted to remove her parliamentary immunity on Thursday.

Savchenko has not denied the accusations against her. Instead, she said undercover agents had encouraged her to plan a coup in order to discredit her, and that she had pretended to go along with the scheme to raise public awareness about it. Videos recorded undercover show her attempting to convince members of the military to stage a coup. Some analysts argue that Savchenkos behavior and rhetoric have been suspicious.

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She is extremely unusual in that she seems to be moving freely between occupied areas [in the Donbass] and the rest of Ukraine. Her face is one of the five or 10 most visible in Ukraine, and so the fact that she can move around so freely raises questions about whether there was some cooperation [with pro-Russian separatists], Adrian Karatnycky, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who focuses on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, told Newsweek.

She has a radical position and used some of the tropes the Kremlin is using. And she has said military coups are the most humane way of dealing with an illegitimate government, Karatnycky noted, adding that Savchenko has spoken positively about the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who staged a coup in Chile in 1973.

630410284

Michele Tantussi/Getty Images

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A former military pilot, Savchenko was kidnaped by pro-Russian rebels fighting to separate from Ukraine in 2014 and was smuggled into Russia illegally. Once there, she was found guilty in court of directing artillery fire that killed two Russian journalists. Ukraine and its Western allies called the case a show trial.

The high-profile trial, along with her defiant attitude, transformed Savchenko into a hero in Ukraine, where she was dubbed the Ukrainian Joan of Arc. During her time in Russia, she participated in a hunger strike and showed a judge the middle finger on live television.

She was eventually returned to Ukraine in a prisoner swap in 2016, and Savchenko immediately became involved in politics.

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This is a very sad situation. She is a genuine hero of Ukraine, what she did during the war was incredible, the way she withstood deprivation and torture for years, John Herbst, who served as the U.S. ambassador for Ukraine from 2003 to 2006, told Newsweek.

Shes quirky and not sophisticated, and she has strong opinions that make sense to her but which are not the most sophisticated or useful, Herbst noted, adding that he has met Savchenko personally. I dont think she has a real political future in Ukraine because she isnt a good politician. But she was and in a sense still is a hero of Ukraine, even if that doesnt justify calls for revolution.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekTehran (AFP) - Growing hostility from US President Donald Trump means Iran must strengthen its ties with Russia and China, a top official said on Saturday.

"The use of radical elements hostile to the Islamic Republic shows that the Americans are trying to increase the pressure against Iran," said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament's foreign affairs committee.

His comments, carried by the semi-official ISNA news agency, were the first reaction by a senior Iranian official to Trump's appointment of conservative firebrand John Bolton as his national security chief.

That came days after Trump picked hardliner Mike Pompeo as his top diplomat.

The appointments raised fears of US military action against Iran.

Bolton, a former UN ambassador and outspoken supporter of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, opposes a historic 2015 Iran nuclear deal which Trump has threatened to scrap.

Bolton has also championed regime change in Tehran, writing in a 2015 op-ed that "only military action ... can accomplish what is required".

Boroujerdi said that Trump was working "to reassure the Zionists (Israel) and Saudi Arabia".

"We need to strengthen our relations with important countries like China and Russia, which are also subject to US sanctions and face significant challenges from that country," he said.

Boroujerdi said boosting ties with China and Russia, permanent members of the UN Security Council, would "help reduce the impact of US pressure".

Iran has in recent years developed its relations with China and Russia.

Tehran and Moscow are key backers of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, while China is Iran's top trading partner.Washington (AFP) - A measure signed into law Friday by President Donald Trump changes the rules for cross-border law enforcement requests to internet firms and could render moot a long-running court battle between the US government and Microsoft.

The CLOUD Act, inserted in a massive spending bill signed by the president, was designed to streamline the process for law enforcement seeking digital evidence, but it has been roundly criticized by civil liberties and digital rights activists.

US lawmakers drafted the bill in response to the court battle in which Microsoft refused to turn over the contents of an email account used by a suspected drug trafficker whose data is stored in a cloud computing center in Ireland.

The case was argued earlier this year in the Supreme Court, as government attorneys argued that a win for Microsoft could set up a scenario in which police might never be able to access digital evidence because of how it is scatted across the internet "cloud."

The legislation -- Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data -- was backed by Microsoft and other major tech companies, which reasoned that it provides a clear legal framework for handing over data both to US authorities and to foreign governments.

Microsoft president Brad Smith said in a blog post this week the measure offers "a modern legal framework for how law enforcement agencies can access data across borders," while offering privacy protections.

By speeding up the law enforcement process with safeguards, tech firms hoped to stem a trend toward "data localization" in which some countries insist any digital information on their citizens be kept on local soil.

The new law enables the US Justice Department to establish agreements with other countries to speed up data requests, bypassing the existing lengthy diplomatic process, by certifying those countries enforce privacy and civil liberties.

- Open to abuse? -

But some activists said the new law could open the door to increased surveillance and erode protections for human rights activists, journalists and others.

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With the new law in place, "US and foreign police will have new mechanisms to seize data across the globe," said David Ruiz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"Your private emails, your online chats, your Facebook, Google, Flickr photos, your Snapchat videos, your private lives online, your moments shared digitally between only those you trust, will be open to foreign law enforcement without a warrant and with few restrictions on using and sharing your information."

Critics said the law lacks adequate safeguards against foreign governments' abuse of human rights standards.

It "fails to impose limits on foreign governments' real-time collection of communications that mirror those that would be required of the US government," said Robyn Greene of the New America Foundation.

"It also does not define what constitutes 'serious crimes' under the bill, and leaves interpretation of that inherently vague concept to the discretion of the foreign government."

Some analysts say the new law will enable the Supreme Court to sidestep a difficult choice -- whether to give the US government broad authority to obtain data stored anywhere, or allowing cloud firms to keep data out of reach for law enforcement.

But law professor Jennifer Daskal of American University argues the CLOUD Act is positive for privacy and civil liberties.

"For the first time, the bill sets up a mechanism for the US government to review what foreign governments do with data once it is turned over," Daskal said in a blog post with Peter Swire of the Georgia Institute of Technology. "This is a privacy win."

The post said that "the status quo is not sustainable" because foreign governments have become frustrated by what they see "as an imperialist attempt to insist that foreign governments obtain a warrant issued by a US judge even for data needed in the investigation of local crimes."Trebes (France) (AFP) - Along with a heroic police officer who offered himself as a hostage, the victims of the jihadist shooting spree in France were a butcher and two pensioners.

- Jean Mazieres, retired winemaker -

The first victim of gunman Radouane Lakdim was the passenger of the car he hijacked in the medieval town of Carcassonne, retired winemaker Jean Mazieres.

In his sixties, the married father-of-one had retired two years ago and delighted in playing an active local role, notably through a committee to organise village fetes.

"He was very jolly -- he loved life, he loved parties," said Marc Rofes, the mayor of nearby Villedubert where Mazieres and his family had lived for four generations.

"We have lost someone who was liked by everybody," Rofes said.

"He was really in the wrong place at the wrong time. A tragic fate."

Lakdim also shot the driver of the car, a Portuguese national who remains in a critical condition.

- Christian Medves, supermarket butcher -

After stealing the car and shooting and wounding a police officer who was out jogging, Lakdim drove to the Super U supermarket in the nearby town of Trebes.

He shot the store's chief butcher Christian Medves in the head, according to a colleague who gave his name as Jacky.

"We still don't know what happened, but knowing Christian, I imagine he would have wanted to intervene," said Franck Alberti, Medves' friend for the past 45 years.

"He was a good guy, a brave and dignified guy," Alberti told regional newspaper l'Independant.

Medves, a married father of two daughters, had just celebrated his 50th birthday and became a grandfather a year ago.

Friends said he was an accomplished sportsman and a jovial figure, who loved a good bottle of wine and partying with friends late into the night.

- Herve Sosna, retired builder -

Lakdim also gunned down a customer at the butcher's counter: 65-year-old Herve Sosna, a retired builder.

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A Trebes local, Sosna "had a huge intellectual capacity -- he read an enormous amount, especially poems," his half-brother William Durand told the regional Depeche du Midi newspaper.

"He never wanted to leave Trebes, so he went into building work," said Durand, who saw his brother every day.

Sosna went to the supermarket twice a week.

"He never asked for anything, and he was killed, just like that," his brother said.

- Arnaud Beltrame, hero policeman -

Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, deputy chief of the regional force of gendarmes, has been hailed a hero for taking the place of a woman at the supermarket whom Lakdim was using as a human shield.

He hoped to be able to negotiate once all the shoppers and staff had been taken to safety, but Lakdim shot and stabbed him.

President Emmanuel Macron led tributes to an officer who "displayed exceptional calm in the heat of the moment".

His family say they were not surprised that Beltrame would put the lives of others before his own.

"He was always like that -- he's someone who ever since he was born did everything for his country," his mother, who has not been named, told RTL radio.

"He would tell me, 'Mum, I do my job. That's all'."

Beltrame's brother Cedric said he would have known all too well the risk he was taking.

"He certainly knew he didn't stand a chance," he said.

"He gave his life for another."The other shoe dropped. On the heels of his cowardly fire-by-tweet dismissal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump has dismissed National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and replaced him with John Bolton, the hard-line former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Uber-hawk Mike Pompeo is headed from the CIA to the State Department, and Gina Haspel, a CIA loyalist who ran a torture site for George W. Bush and authorized the destruction of videotapes documenting what the CIA was doing, has been picked to replace him. Just how scared should you be?

There seem to be two general reactions to the latest upheaval in Trumps topsy-turvy. One interpretation is that this latest reshuffle amounts to Trump getting rid of the grown-ups who have been trying to manage the tweeter-in-chief for the past year and replacing them with advisors who see the world as he does and will let Trump be Trump. In this view, the new team will enable him instead of trying to rein him in, and hell become the Trump of 2016, who called U.S. foreign policy a complete and total disaster and promised America First. Trump himself has encouraged this view by suggesting that he is finally assembling the sort of team he has always wanted. (Which raises an obvious question: Who was the idiot who picked his first team? Or his second? Oh, right.)

The second interpretation is more alarmist and basically tells you to start digging that backyard bomb shelter. In this view, the departures of Tillerson and McMaster and the arrivals of Bolton, Pompeo, and Haspel herald the ascendance of a hawkish contingent that will tear up the Iran deal, reinstate the torture regime, and eventually start a war with North Korea that goes way beyond a simple bloody nose. And with Bolton in the White House, Trump is going to be advised by a guy who never saw a war he didnt like (when observed from a safe distance, of course).

Let me be clear: Boltons appointment is on par with most of Trumps personnel choices, which is to say that its likely to be a disaster. His views on foreign policy are crude and bellicose, and his track record as a policy advocate and pundit do not, to put it politely, inspire confidence. Nor does he seem to have learned a thing from his past mistakes. And where McMaster and Tillerson did what they could to limit the damage that Trump has done to Americas international reputation and critical alliance partnerships, Boltons particular skill as a diplomat seems to have been finding creative new ways to offend Americas friends.

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But Boltons arrival is hardly a return to the Trump that we saw in the 2016 campaign. Trump ran for president by attacking the entire foreign-policy establishment, suggesting that it was out of touch, unaccountable, and prone to get the United States into pointless wars. Since becoming president, however, Trump has increased defense spending, escalated in Afghanistan, given the Pentagon and certain headstrong U.S. allies the green light to use more force in more places (with disappointing results), and generally doubled down on the same overly militarized approach to foreign policy that had repeatedly failed under Bill Clinton, Bush, and, yes, even Barack Obama. Boltons appointment (along with Trumps other personnel shifts) is not a bold move toward America First  if that term means a smarter and more restrained foreign policy that would reduce U.S. overseas burdens, improve the countrys strategic position, and actually make Americans safer and richer.

Instead, whether Trump knows it or not, putting Bolton, Pompeo, and Haspel in key positions looks more like a return to Cheneyism, by which I mean a foreign policy that inflates threats, dismisses serious diplomacy, thinks allies are mostly a burden, is contemptuous of institutions, believes that the United States is so powerful that it can just issue ultimatums and expect others to cave, and believes that a lot of thorny foreign-policy problems can be solved by just blowing something up.

Boy, that formula really worked well the last time the United States tried it, didnt it? No wonder a sophisticated foreign-policy expert like Trump wants to try it again.

Thus, the real lesson of the Bolton appointment has less to do with Bolton himself and more about what it says about the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. Youre undoubtedly going to read a lot of heartfelt, knickers-in-a-twist commentaries in the next few weeks about the dangers of appointing a wild-eyed radical to such a sensitive position, but the plain fact is that Bolton is not really an outlier within the U.S. foreign-policy community. Its not like Trump just appointed Medea Benjamin (from the left) or Rand Paul (from the right) or even an experienced and knowledgeable contrarian such as Charles W. Freeman Jr. or Andrew Bacevich. Instead, he appointed someone with decidedly hawkish views but who is still within the acceptable consensus in Washington.

Look at Boltons pedigree and career. Hes a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School. He worked at Covington & Burling, a venerable D.C. law firm where former Secretary of State Dean Acheson also worked. He has been a senior fellow for years at the conservative but mainstream American Enterprise Institute. He writes frequently for obscure, wild-and-crazy, radical publications including, er  the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and even Foreign Policy. Is this your idea of a fringe figure?

True, Bolton was a vocal supporter of the Iraq War, but that hardly makes him a weirdo. As Im sure hed be the first to point out, a lot of other people drank that particular Kool-Aid, including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, James Steinberg, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Susan Rice, Robert Gates, and a long, long list of other respectable figures. And dont forget that the other geniuses who dreamed up and sold that disaster  people such as William Kristol, James Woolsey, Robert Kagan, Bret Stephens, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, David Frum, Paul Wolfowitz, etc.  are still respected figures in the foreign-policy establishment despite having never admitted they were wrong or expressed any public regret for launching a disastrous war in which hundreds of thousands of people died.

Like Trump, Bolton seems particularly worried about Iran and North Korea, but so are most members of Congress and much of the think tank world in D.C., too. Indeed, there are plenty of people who strongly support the current nuclear deal but who also believe the United States should get tougher with Tehran. Nor is Bolton the only person in Washington who has proposed taking military action against North Korea. After all, it was Boltons predecessor, the now-departing McMaster, who kept making the case for the bloody nose approach.

Bolton is also something of an Islamophobe and is deeply suspicious of international institutions, but that hardly makes him unique in U.S. foreign-policy circles either. He seems especially fond of using military force, but how many prominent foreign-policy intellectuals are openly opposed to it and willing to stand up and say so? Id say damn few, because nobody angling for a top job in Washington wants to be seen as soft. Remember how Democrats and Republicans alike applauded Trump when he authorized some strategically meaningless cruise missile strikes on Bashar al-Assads regime in Syria? That simple fact goes a long way toward explaining how the United States came to be waging wars of various sorts in a dozen or more countries, with no end in sight and with hardly anyone saying boo about it. Bolton is just a more outspoken member of the consensus here, too.

Dont get me wrong: Im not trying to normalize this appointment or suggest that it shouldnt concern you. Rather, Im suggesting that if you are worried about Bolton, you should ask yourself the following question: What sort of political system allows someone with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous war, never expresses a moments regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again?

So by all means worry. But the real problem isnt Bolton  its a system that permits people like him to screw up and move up again and again.John Bolton on Thursday was named national security advisor by President Trump, replacing H.R. McMaster, who stepped down.

Bolton will be the third national security advisor to serve Trump, following the departures of three-star Army generals Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster.

Here's a roundup of his views on national security matters.

John Bolton is a hardline Republican, a foreign policy super-hawk and President Donald Trump 's pick to replace H.R. McMaster as national security advisor.

Senate confirmation is not required for the White House national security post, and Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations, will inherit a staff of several hundred specialists from the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies.

He will be responsible for advising Trump on a wide spectrum of national security issues, from the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State to China's aggressive actions in the South China Sea to North Korea's growing nuclear threat.

Bolton will be the third national security advisor to serve Trump, following the departures of three-star Army generals Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster.

"It's kind of a head-scratcher, because he seems really out of step with what the president has said and stood for going all the way back to the campaign," retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who served under McMaster during the Persian Gulf War, told CNBC.

Davis, who is now a senior defense fellow for Defense Priorities, notes that Bolton has taken an opposite position on several topics Trump pushed for in 2016.

"[Trump] was adamant about no more regime change, that was one of his mantras in the campaign, no more stupid wars, all this kind of stuff, and that's what Bolton has lived for," Davis said.

As George W. Bush 's undersecretary of state for arms control, Bolton was a supporter of the invasion of Iraq and was confident that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

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"The president has also said that he was against President Bush's war in Iraq, saying it was a disaster. And Bolton was one of the architects of that [war,]" added Davis, who also wrote an opinion piece on Bolton's appointment for CNBC .

After leaving the Bush administration, Bolton joined the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, where he expressed some of his confrontational rhetoric in op-eds like " To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran ." Within the last year, he wrote " The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First " and " How to Defund the UN ."

"If you take his advice and attack North Korea, and if you take his advice and change the regime in Iran, I mean, my goodness, if you thought Iraq was bad, this is like 10 times that," Davis said in regards to Bolton's op-eds.

"Bolton doesn't even talk about diplomacy. For him, it's either abject surrender on the opposition or it's war, and there doesn't seem to be any room for negotiation."

Meanwhile, Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy firm Eurasia Group, said Bolton's post is "a dramatic shift in favor of a more military-first approach to policy." He called it "less 'jaw-jaw' and more 'war-war.'"

"That matters a great deal for an America First president who is inclined to take policies on his own, without consulting allies or, frequently, dissenting opinions in his own Cabinet," Bremmer added.

Bolton, through a spokesperson, declined comment for this article.

Here's a roundup of Bolton's views on various national security matters:

Bolton on the Iran nuclear deal

Similar to Trump, Bolton has called the nuclear agreement a "strategic debacle," and said in January on Fox News that the deal should be scrapped, sanctions reimposed, and regime change encouraged.

In January, Trump said he would stick with the deal for now, but wants to fix the agreement's "terrible flaws."

"The appointment of John Bolton is bad news for those who were hoping the Iran deal would somehow survive," said Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest. "The deal is RIP as of right now."

And while it is unclear if Trump will rollback the 2015 nuclear agreement, Davis said it would be "disastrous" if the U.S. were to withdraw because it would "undermine" negotiations with North Korea.

"What possible motivation would any country have to begin negotiations with you when they see a fellow country  that did exactly what the United States is asking you to do  just throw it away? You wouldn't trust the paper the thing was written on," Davis said.

Bolton on North Korea's nuclear program

In the aforementioned op-ed for The Wall Street Journal , published one month before Trump's on-the-spot acceptance to meet with Kim Jong Un, Bolton made a case for taking pre-emptive strikes against the North.

Under third-generation North Korean leader Kim, the reclusive state has conducted its most powerful nuclear test, launched its first-ever intercontinental ballistic missile and threatened to send missiles into the waters near the U.S. territory of Guam.

What's more, the acceleration and frequency of testing show not only Kim's nuclear ambitions but also that the nation has developed an arsenal.

In 2003, on the eve of six-nation talks over Pyongyang's nuclear program, Bolton called then-North Korean leader Kim Jong II a "tyrannical dictator." The North responded by calling Bolton "human scum."

At present, the North has yet to formally acknowledge the proposed meeting, which was announced two weeks ago and is slated to occur by the end of May.

While the U.S. waits to enter negotiations with North Korea, Bremmer said Bolton's new post will make the summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un "far riskier."

Kazianis agreed that Bolton will take a harder line than his predecessor.

"Bolton will not tolerate any sort of games from Pyongyang. If the North Koreans ask for bribes or incentives to talk, look for the administration to snap to an even harder line  think the maximum pressure on steroids," Kazianis said.

Bremmer added that the likelihood "the U.S. ends up in military conflict with North Korea" has increased.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon will move forward with its annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises that usually agitate North Korea. The massive war games have been described by the North's government as a dress rehearsal for an invasion of the Korean peninsula.

Bolton on Russia's new weapons

Earlier this month, during a two-hour state-of-the-nation speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a slew of new nuclear weapons as well as a hypersonic missile .

Bolton responded to Putin's latest military capabilities with his trademark bellicose rhetoric on Twitter.

"There needs to be a strategic response to Russia's new nuclear missiles to show our allies in Europe that we will not let #Russia push the U.S. or its allies around," he wrote.

His actions made Davis question if Bolton was "really an upper-level diplomat" and if Trump would appreciate his national security advisor stepping into the limelight.

"Those are the kinds of things you need to handle under the radar and off the front page," Davis added.

Meanwhile, Trump announced Tuesday that he plans to " get together in the not-too-distant future " with Vladimir Putin in order to discuss the international arms race.





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On Friday, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrived in Belfast for their first official joint trip to Northern Ireland. The stop concludes the soon-to-be-married couple's paired visits to the United Kingdom's four nations.

Unlike the couple's previous joint ventures, their trek to Northern Ireland was not made public ahead of time. The region prohibits royal visits from being announced due to security reasons, Vanity Fair reported.

The pair, who are expected to tie the knot May 19, had a long list of activities to tend to during their visit. But their day started at an event held at the Eikon Centre that honored the second year of Amazing the Space, which is a youth-led peace-building initiative. Last September, the organization was launched by Prince Harry "to encourage young people to become ambassadors for peace within their communities," Kensington Palace said.

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Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle are visiting Belfast today for their first official joint visit to Northern Ireland. pic.twitter.com/vzizD09LYF  Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 23, 2018

As the duo arrived at Amazing the Space, they were welcomed by 2,000 students who had no prior knowledge of the visit, according to People magazine. Prince Harry and Markle then watched performances put on by local schools that aimed to recognize the arts' ability to unite a variety of communities. The couple also listened to the school-aged children's thoughts on the reconciliation work occurring across Northern Ireland.

The next stop on the engaged couple's itinerary was a visit to the Crown Liquor Saloon, one of Belfast's oldest buildings. In doing so, Prince Harry and Markle learned about its history from National Trust staffers. The duo was later spotted greeting fans on Great Victoria Street and visiting Catalyst Inc's Belfast campus to speak with entrepreneurs.

Story continues

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Prince Harry, Meghan Markle

Chris Jackson - Pool/Getty Images

Prince Harry and Markle's wedding is less than two months away. Since confirming their engagement in November 2017, the couple has solidified some plans for the royal event. Invitations to the big event were mailed out to 600 guests Thursday, Kensington Palace confirmed. But the couple said they desire to allow more than 2,600 members of the public to watch them and their guests arrive at the wedding.

The hour-long ceremony is set to be broadcast live May 19 at 7 a.m. EST.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekThe Trump administration indicted members of an Iranian hacker network on Friday, claiming that the group was responsible for one of the largest state-sponsored hacking campaigns the U.S. has prosecuted.

Officials said the hackers allegedly targeted dozens of U.S. universities, companies and government agenciesas well as the United Nationsand stole around 31 terabytes of data and intellectual property from entities worldwide.

The group was allegedly hired by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a small division of Irans military tasked with defending the countrys Islamic Revolution. The IRGC is controlled by Tehrans most hardline religious leaders, and often collects information on foreign entities. Nine of the 10 people named in the indictment were connected to the Mabna Institute, an Iranian tech firm that allegedly hacks on behalf of the IRGC.

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Iranian hackers have often been viewed as less skilled and less tenacious than hackers from countries like China and Russia. But Fridays indictment, together with recent research, suggests that this is changing quickly.

Theyre more sophisticated than the other players, Robert Katz, executive director of the Cyber Science Institute, told Newsweek.

They had a major coordinated attack that did damage to our financial institutions on Wall Street. That was 2012, that was before we saw Russia being organized. Shortly after that, they had a physical attack against Saudi Aramco. They destroyed computers and turned them into paperweights, Katz described.

All of those are very sophisticated compared to all of the unsophisticated stuff weve seen from North Korea and the outright silly stuff weve seen from Russia. The Russia stuff was just a basic phishing attack," Katz continued. Iranian hackers also attacked a U.S. dam in 2016, an attack officials at the time called "a frightening new frontier of cybercrime."

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517219120 (1)

Alex Wong/Getty Images

China, North Korea, Iran and Russia are among the world's biggest state sponsors of cyber attacks. But experts say that only Chinese hackers steal more intellectual property than Iranian hackers. Russian hackers, meanwhile, are often easy to track.

Reports suggest that Iran, however, has developed a sophisticated network of hackers who are skilled and trained in cyberespionage, and who often go undetected.

A report released in January by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace claimed that cyber incidents involving Iran have been among the most sophisticated and costly in the history of the Internet.

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Offensive cyber operations have become a core tool of Iranian statecraft, providing Tehran less risky opportunities to gather information and retaliate against perceived enemies at home and abroad, the report stated, adding that the hackers often work on behalf of Irans Ministry of Intelligence or the IRGC.

Though Iran is generally perceived as a third-tier cyber powerlacking the capabilities of China, Russia, and the United Statesit has effectively exploited the lack of preparedness of targets inside and outside Iran, the report continued.

Russian hackers have garnered a lot of attention over the past year, especially in the wake of the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee by hackers believed to be affiliated with the Russian government. But this has drawn attention away from Iranian hackers. Some cybersecurity experts say the decision to target Iranian hackers demonstrates that the U.S. government is starting to take the threat seriously.

A country such as Iran can gain through intellectual property cyber theft what it could never develop through its own investments, years of development, and human knowledge and expertise. The country can gain the cyber espionage expertise through an ecosystem of hackers for hire willing to steal on Irans behalf for a fee, Steve Grobman, chief technology officer for the cybersecurity firm McAfee, told Newsweek

At its most basic level, the theft of intellectual property is a theft of the future. It's a theft of future national security, future business for companies, future wealth for a nations communities, future high paying jobs and future standards of living for a nation's citizens, Grobman continued.

This isn't the first time the U.S. government has indicted foreigners in response to cyber attacks. Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian operatives and three entititesincluding the notorious Internet Research Agencyfor meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, and the Obama administration indicted members of China's military in response to attacks on U.S. companies by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. The U.S. also indicted seven Iranian hackers in 2016 for cyber attacks on a dam and several banks.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from NewsweekThe press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, said that Vladimir Putin is in favor of the purity of the elections.

"The purity of the election is what President Putin demands and requires, whether it's a single voting day that occurs in September, or whether it's parliamentary elections or presidential elections. As the head of state, Putin always speaks consistently for the cleanest and transparent elections, Peskov said.

He also noted that according to the head of state, there should be no uncompetitive atmosphere. "Moreover, he does not need it himself, because he is a candidate with very strong positions," RIA Novosti quotes Peskov as saying.The state comptrollers report on Operation Protective Edge , which was released last week, went relatively unnoticed.

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I read it thoroughly and I feel an obligation to tell IDF commanders and the defense establishment that this is an erroneous report, which fails to understand the essence of the war, weakens the IDF, puts soldiers at risk and even helps increase the damage to the civilian population on both sides rather than reduce it.

The IDF should, therefore, refuse to accept the reports findingsand stash it away.

Because of its (important) desire and preoccupation with minimizing the damage to uninvolved civilians, the IDF nearly forgot to win in Operation Protective Edge (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

The law of war system in international law is still based on laws from the end of World War II, which see war as a conflict between countries regular forces.

In the 21st century, reality is completely different, and the war is against stateless, uninhibited terrorists who use a civil population as a human shield and take advantage of international laws incompatibility with this reality as a weak spot for targeting soldiers and civilians.

Instead of dealing with the terms of proportionality and uninvolved civilians to allow the IDF to defend the states citizens and win, the comptroller has chosen to grovel and unconditionally give in to irrelevant demands in the name of international law, harming the IDFs ability to fight by demanding the inclusion of more legal advisers in the fighting ranks.

The comptrollers report and the quotes from the chief of staff, Air Force commander and defense minister are a clear indication that they went above and beyond to reduce the damage to uninvolved civilians. Instead of praising them for that and concluding that there is no need for further involvement of jurists in the planning, in the course of the fighting and in the following operational investigation, the comptroller criticizes them and demands more and more judicializationinstead of understanding that because of its (important) desire and preoccupation with minimizing the damage to uninvolved civilians on the enemy side, the IDF nearly forgot to win in Operation Protective Edge.

As a result, the operation was extended, both sides suffered many losses and thousands of uninvolved civilians were hurt. Even when dealing with the legal side, the drawing of conclusions and the report should contribute to the ability to win rather than add another layer to the ass-covering. But thats not what the state comptroller is doing.

Israel invests more than any other country in defending its citizens. The Iron Dome defense system and the law requiring a secure space in every apartment are just examples. Hamas hasnt invested a penny in its citizens defense. On the contrary: A large part of the cement transferred to Gaza for civilian construction purposes is used to build tunnels for smuggling weapons or launching attacks against Israel. Furthermore, Hamas uses them as a human shield as it fires rockets aimed at harming out citizens. Hamas uninvolved civilians are actually involved against their will, and Hamas is responsible for their death.

the comptroller is rewarding Hamas for its cynical use of children in the psychological warfare (Photo: AFP)

How have we sinned? Is the fact that the efficient defense we have built fails to provide horrific images of wounded children? We should be proud of that. Instead, the comptroller is rewarding Hamas for its cynical use of children in the psychological warfare.

What proportionality do we owe the jurists sitting in the ivory towers in Europe, who have never heard a Code Red alarm in their lives? Yes, were a law-abiding state and we must act like a law-abiding state. And yes, when we plan wars, and then when we fight them, we do the utmost to avoid harming innocent civilians. But the IDF must first of all defend its citizens, and to do so it must fight and win. I have learned form my experience that persistence and aiming for victory does a better job in preventing damage to uninvolved citizens and serves the proportionality principle better too.

Israel doesnt have to grovel to the international legal system, which is using an irrelevant war law codex. Instead, it can lead the legal handling of modern terrorism and promote an update of the war law to adapt it to reality.

During a conflict, the IDF should leave the responsibility in the commanders hands, while seeking assistance from legal experts, and not the other way around. The investigation aimed at drawing conclusions, and the criminal investigation aimed at clarifying things, are the IDFs proper and sufficient tools, and there is no need to add another complex system.Elad, who works in a company based in central Israel, must be a walking miracle: As he serves customers at the place of business in the early afternoon, records show he is physically in the offices of a large NGO several kilometers away, as a civilian service volunteer.

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There are many other people like him. Some study, others enjoy life, and some workbut only sometimesat the association they have been assigned to.

While coalition members keep fighting over an amendment to a low for the conscription of members of the ultra-Orthodox community to the IDFan amendment which will likely give the Haredim more freedom to choose if and where to enlista Yedioth Ahronoth investigation reveals what has been going on in the place which should have served as an alternative for young Haredim who do not enlist but still wish to integrate into the Israeli society: The Haredi national-civilian service.

Haredim outside IDF recruitment center. Civilian service has become a profitable solution (Photo: Office)

Simply and unpleasantly put, this seems to be a method of beating the system on an unusual scale. Most of the 1,600 Haredim registered in civilian service are not doing what they have been assigned to do. They receive the moneyhundreds to thousands of shekels a month, according to their marital status, and many other benefitsand go on with their daily life.

In some cases, they occasionally show up. For instance, when the coordinators inform them of an expected inspection. In other cases, many of them never come in but arrange for the records to show that they did come in.

In the more radical cases, according to testimonies we received, some leave the money in the coffer of the NGO they are registered with, or split the money received from the Chaverim organizationwhich manages the national-civilian servicewith the NGO managers.

The National-Civilian Service Administration is aware of these figures and of the magnitude of the problem, but is rightly turning responsibility over to the government, which has allocated a budget for only two inspectors. For years, they say, we have been asking for a budget for more inspectors, but the Treasury keeps refusing. The administration, they say, is only the regulator and is incapable of dealing with this mess.

But despite the problems revealed here, National-Civilian Service Administration Director Sar-Shalom Gerbi is visiting Asia these days to regulate and take care of new jobs allotted to young Haredim: A heavenly service at Chabad centers around the world. In other words, yet another 100 young men who most likely wont be supervised by anyone.

An inspection by request

Haredi civilian service was the product of good intentions: To serve as an interim solution for an equal share of the burden. The idea was to allow Haredim from the age of 21 to contribute to the state and integrate into the Israeli society without joining the IDF, and to receive the same rewards and recognition as ex-servicemen.

The problem is that civilian service is voluntary, and not as worthwhile financially as serving in the IDF (less than half the sum) or even studying in a kollel (an institute for full-time, advanced Talmud studies), when it comes to unmarried men. Furthermore, it is met with the strong objection of radical Haredi rabbis.

In spite of these built-in difficulties, the state has set impossible enlistment targets2,000 people a yearand has been pressuring the National-Civilian Service Administration to meet these targets. But while the army has succeeded in meeting close to 100 percent of its enlistment targets in the past five years, in civilian service the success rate is less than 50 percent in a good year. Last year, for example, the National-Civilian Service Administration succeeded in meeting less than 40 percent of the objective set by the government.

The national-civilian service is divided, in general, into three tracks. The security track is the exception: The police, the fire and rescue services, the Israel Prison Service and organizations like ZAKA and United Hatzalah. About 300 Haredim serve in this track, and our investigation pointed to high attendance rates, especially in positions operated by the authorities.

Apart from the salary, civilian service volunteers receive a release grant of NIS 6,600 for serving in the social track and NIS 8,880 for serving in the security track and are entitled to a deposit and benefits (Photo: Yaron Brener)

Another track includes governmental offices and authorities, like the National Road Safety Authority, the Tax Authority and the Law Enforcement and Collection Authority, which dont offer many positions but require workers to punch the clock, resulting in high attendance.

The problematic tracks are the social and educational ones, which include hundreds of associations across the country: Hospitals and psychiatric institutions, famous volunteer organizations like Yad Sarah, but also associations like Shtilim Rakim for children with special needs, which we were unable to find in the Associations Register and on the GuideStar website; the Shmaya organization in Bnei Brak, which doesnt even seem to have an orderly management certificate; the Haifa-based Yafutzu Mayanotecha organization, which aims to educate youth on Judaism; Or Mazal U'Bracha from Jerusalems Har Nof neighborhood; Orot LaNoar and Kol HaKrayot from Ashdod; Ohalei Tiferet Moshe and Em HaBanim from Beitar Illit; and many more.

A considerable number of these associations are involved in important, genuine charity activity, and young people with ideological motivation and a desire to help might find their place in them. But according to the testimonies and information we have obtained, there arent many of them.

Sometimes, because of the pressure to meet the enlistment quotas, all these associations are given civilian service positions based on criteria we have been unable to track down so far, with zero supervision. This results in a negative incentive to fill up the positions, including registering people fictitiously, as no one actually checks who shows up and who doesnt.

Those who dont show up gain a particularly profitable deal: A salary ranging from NIS 400 (roughly $116) for single men to NIS 3,800 ($1,104) for married men with childrenthe majority of volunteers in the security track.

Yoel (not his real name) decided to do civilian service after he had completed an academic degree and had already started working in the field of communications. I felt uncomfortable about not contributing to the state, he explains, but it turned out the service is one big joke.

Ill give you an example of how it works: Im registered as doing civilian service in an organization affiliated with a famous Hasidic movement, but I never set foot in that place. On the other hand, they have an activist in the organization who works there but doesnt want to do civilian service for ideological reasons. So he comes in every morning, types in my IDF number, and that way they get the money theyre entitled to from the state for me. They pay this guy privately, and I get significant benefits too.

At first, Yoel worked at an association dealing with dropout youth. I had to dedicate to the youth six hours a day, for two years, he says. Compared to others, I did the service, although not all the hours and days. The coordinators are from the same Hasidic movement, and we had no contact with them at all, which is why you see volunteers who have never set foot in the association. The employer would update us on inspections and brief us on what we should say, and even then, not everyone would show up.

A civilian service source explains, however, that if a supervisor arrives and sees that someone is absent, he subtracts only one day of the payment the person is entitled to. The associations simply receive jobs and trick everyone, says Yoel. So when you attend the conference held at the end of the service, you meet people who have no idea where they served.

Apart from the salary, civilian service volunteers receive a release grant of NIS 6,600 for serving in the social track and NIS 8,880 for serving in the security track. Like ex-servicemen, they are entitled to a deposit of NIS 10,080-13,464 later on. Additional benefits include free public transportation, discounts on property tax, national insurance, income tax, daycare and different medical services. They also receive assistance in purchasing a home and in the labor market.

According to the figures we obtained, many civilian service volunteers have also received a scholarship from the Ministry of Religious Services before beginning their service. Together with the salaries, the sum they receive totals tens of thousands of shekels per person. A person doing national-civilian service is supposed to serve an average of 30 hours a week for two years, or 20 hours a week for three years. In practice, the figures we were exposed to show that less than 20 percent of volunteers in the non-security track complete the full hours.

Working on holidays

Chaverim, the organization which has been managing the Haredi civilian service program since 2011, operates a system of coordinators, many of whom play along with the trick.

So who does it work? The volunteers, for example, are supposed to mark their own attendance by making a phone call from a landline in the associations offices. In dozens of cases we looked into, they actually did it from a different landline, in their home or in their real workplace. No one bothered to check. And thats what happened when the volunteers marked their own attendance. In more than 80 percent of the cases we examinedway beyond a representative samplethe volunteers attendance was marked by their coordinators.

The attempt to beat the system is revealed in all its glory in one issue those coordinators havent taken into account. As most of them are ultra-Orthodox themselves and work according to the Jewish calendar, they didnt notice they were marking attendance for the civilian service volunteers on dates in which there is no chance a Haredi person would work. Our examination revealed, for example, that hundreds of young Haredim allegedly showed up for work at the associations they were assigned to on Jewish holidays and during the Bein Hazmanim periodthe vacation time in Jewish Orthodox yeshivot.

About one-third of those who serve in the social track are people who gave up an exemption from the IDF (Photo: Reuters)

Dubi (not his real name), who volunteers in an association for the needy in Jerusalem, demonstrates how it works. Theres a telephone system to mark a persons entry and exit, which you have to call from the landline in the association, but we actually call from our cellphone and no one pays attention, he says.

As part of my volunteer work, Im supposed to spend six hours a day at the association, but I finish all my assignments within two hours and spend the rest of the time at my real job. I know theyre supposed to have inspections, but in practice no one really checks. Last Monday, for example, I wasnt planning to show up, but then I got a phone call from the coordinator of the Chaverim organization, who told me to come over because I was going to have an inspection. I went there, and no one came to do the inspection in the end. Its really unprofessional.

One of the most amazing figures pointing to the extent of the deception is that, according to estimates, about one-third of those who serve in the social track are people who gave up an exemption from the IDF. Clearly, the deal is so worthwhile that its a breach they simply cant resist.

Asher, for example, gave up an exemption from military service to apply for civilian service in an educational institution for youth at risk. I was highly motivated when I arrived, but after a short while I realized it was a joke and that I wasnt contributing anything to anyone, he says.

I hadnt received any training, and they just sent me to work with youth. At first, I put in a lot of effort, but then I realized no one cares about them. Sometimes, they would send me to run errands for the manager. Thats how things work when the association has a workforce it doesnt pay for. Slowly, I started doing a sloppy job. Luckily, I didnt encounter any criticism, and I got all the money of course.

Nachman volunteered for civilian service after getting married and becoming a father. I heard from a friend that its really profitable when youre married, so I went for it, he says. "I served for two years in the security track, but in a non-governmental organization, and I was put in chargealong with four other peopleof opening a storeroom when someone had to borrow equipment. There were times I would come in once a month or every two months.

On the other hand, I had to put down my hours and have the employer sign. In the first two weeks I came in, and then the supervisor explained that I didnt have to come in and that he would just sign my hours at the end of the month.

Serving in the track and organization he selected, Nachman says, is the most profitable service. Im considered a volunteer in a security organization, and the sums I earn are significantly higher because Im also married and have a child, he explains. Most Haredim postpone their military service, and then get married, volunteer and enjoy a nice income. I received 2,500 shekels, which is the basic sum, plus 1,600 shekels from the organization. In my case, the employer and I reached a deal that I would barely show up for work, and in return I would pay the organization back the 1,600 shekels. It was still worthwhile of course, along with the grant, the deposit, the scholarships, and more.

While the basic payment (subsistence allowance) to a civilian service volunteer is very low, NIS 400 for an unmarried man, most Haredim who volunteer for the serviceabout 70 percentare already married and have families, so the sums range from NIS 1,000 if they volunteer for only a few hours to NIS 3883 for a married man with a child who puts in 36 hours a week. Our investigation revealed that about half of the volunteers work in another job simultaneously.

According to a source in the Civilian Service Administration, the only positive incentive is also problematic: Associations that receive positions give the volunteers more money, basically qualifying them as full-fledged employees. At least it gives something both to the volunteer and to the state, the source says, but it isnt always legal.

Sharing the profits

Yosef, who runs an association in northern Israel, has several positions for civilian service volunteers. I had a youth club, so we registered the volunteers there for civilian service jobs, although they volunteered in any case, he says. There are quite a lot of guys who work to bring people closer (back to religion) or work with youth through an association, and along the way they apply for positions in the association. Theyre basically diong this job anyway and are getting paid for it. We know about the inspections in advance. They always inform and prepare us.

Who informs you?

With the local coordinators, one covers the other ones ass. You have to understand, not a single Haredi person volunteers for civilian service for ideological reasons. I know a manager of a Hasidic association in central Israel who received dozens of positions and struck a deal with the volunteers: They get fictitious jobs, and he gets the money.

One of the associations suggested that I give them volunteers who would get 4,100 shekelsincluding the salary from the associationwhile studying in a kollel. When theyre needed, theyll be called in. Its worthwhile for the yeshiva students. Theyre both considered civilian service volunteers and they get a nice salary while actually just studying.

And there is one particularly felonious trick: Dividing the payment received from the state between the volunteer and the owners of the association or the institution. I get 2,400 shekels a month, one of the volunteers explained, and give him 1,200. In addition, I get the benefits and the grant, and it says that I completed my service although the only times I showed up was in the rare cases when I was informed that an inspection was about to be held.

I got similar offers, says Yosef. Some time ago, a Haredi student came over and explained to me that he had dodged the IDF and had to apply for civilian service for an internship in law. He suggested that I register him and he would pass the money over to me every month. I said, Are you an idiot or what? So he took it back and said he wouldnt transfer the money to my pocket, but as a donation to the association.

A basic calculation indicates that the state is pouring at least NIS 30 million a year into a track with questionable success (Photo: Ofer Amram)

While working on the investigation, we received more and more testimonies pointing to complete lawlessness. A basic calculation indicates that the state is pouring at least NIS 30 million a year into a track with questionable success, and that a large part of the volunteers do it just for the unusual incentive to deceive and beat the system.

In a recorded greeting on the Chaverim organizations homepage, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says: You are the pioneers leading the way. You contribute to society Occasionally, I meet you, visit you, and I am deeply impressed by the way you perform your work faithfully and joyfully. You are the best proof that there is a common denominator in the Israeli society. You have succeeded in finding the golden path between your way of life and your faith on the one hand, and the contribution to society and to the community on the other hand Thanks to you, there is a deep change going on in your communities. Instead of separatism, there is a desire to be an integral part of the Israeli society. You are your communities ambassadors I ask you to keep following this path, of serving the nation. You have my full support and appreciation to keep doing your important double activity.

In reality, the path is indeed golden because the project has failed but the volunteers are celebrating with their profit. The money invested in this project could have been easily diverted to other projects for the integration of Haredim, without ant tricks. In the current situation, it seems there will be no escape from allotting huge budgets to fix the situation or, alternatively, closing all the non-security civilian service tracks.

A lot has been said in the past about the lawlessness in the National-Civilian Service Administration, which keeps following the Religious Zionism movements ministers (from Bayit Yehudi and previous parties) to the ministries they are put in charge of. During Uri Orbachs term, it was subject to the Ministry for Senior Citizens, then it was moved to the Ministry of Science and Technology under Daniel Hershkowitz, and today it is subject to Minister Uri Ariel in the Ministry of Agriculture. When we asked for the ministrys response, they avoided dealing with the hot potato and referred us to National-Civilian Service Administration Director Sar-Shalom Gerbi, who was abroad at the time.

A source involved in civilian service blamed the state for the current situation, explaining that the government was basically encouraging the Haredim to keep studying in the yeshiva till the age of 24, and then to fictitiously volunteer for a social track service.

There is no reason for an unmarried Haredi person to do civilian service, he said. On the one hand, the state is pushing to fill up the positions. On the other hand, its failing to allot supervisors and is unwilling to reward Haredim who are interested in a meaningful service, forcing them to get stuck in the yeshiva for four more years. The way things look now, there will be no escape from a dramatic change, because were fooling ourselves.

We abide by every law

The Chaverim organization offered the following response: Chaverim operates a system of supervisors according to clear, unequivocal instructions from the National-Civilian Service Administration and abides by every law and regulation. Should we learn of an association and body failing to act in accordance with the clear rules and unequivocal regulations, we shall immediately cease our engagement with them and report it to the administration.

The National-Civilian Service Administration offered the following response: The administration operates a comprehensive, professional supervision and control system which carries out coordinated inspections and surprise inspection in the different places of service on a daily basis across the country, by the administrations inspectors and by an external inspection company that offers the administration inspection services, as well as by the operating body.

Furthermore, the administration operates computerized attendance and control systems which show, in real time, the status of service and the exact location. When we receive complaints from volunteers, operating bodies or inspectors and supervisors on the ground about irregularities in the professional conduct, we work together with the Chaverim organization, using a zero-tolerance policy.

"Having said that, in light of the alleged graveness of the findings, the administrations director, Mr. Sar-Shalom Gerbi, has ordered the appointment of a professional committee for an in-depth examination in a bid to deal with the revealed defects.

As for the civilian service enlistment targets, the reason they are not being met is that the terms of service defined as part of the law for an equal share of the burden discourage, to say the least, young Haredim from joining civilian service. This is something the administrations director has warned of every time the issue has been discussed.

As we previously explained in the law enactment stages, if the administrations recommendationsparticularly in regards to raising volunteers subsistence allowance and changing the defined age for entering the service (from age 21)are not accepted, we expect no change in the rate of new volunteers, and we therefore do not expect to meet the set targets at a later stage either.LONDON  Britain called on Israel to improve the treatment of Palestinian children in military detention on Friday and said Israel should do more to safeguard vulnerable people in its care.

The Foreign Office issued a statement in the wake of the sentencing of Palestinian teenage girl Ahed Tamimi, who was arrested after kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank in December.

Tamimi, who was 16 at the time of the incident, accepted a plea deal this week under which she will be sentenced to eight months in prison, her lawyer said.MK Tamar Zandberg was elected Thursday by a large majority to lead the Meretz political party, with 71.12 percent of the vote.

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Former head of Peace Now Avi Buskila, Zandberg's most backed competitor, got 28.48% of the vote.

A total of 17,031 party members voted, 54 percent of the total amount of the party's members.

MK Tamar Zandberg (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Following the withdrawal of Gal-On and MK Ilan Gilon from the race, MK Zandberg and Buskila remained the main candidates to lead the party.

Buskila congratulated Zandberg on her win, complimenting her by stating she is "a worthy leader" to the party.

Thanking her voters, Zandberg stressed they should not celebrate her victory, but the return of her party to true political significance.

"In the past two months something amazing has happened here; we have returned to believing in ourselves, we have returned to the political arena, we have become the alternative (to the Likuded)starting tomorrow morning, Meretz will lead a revolution," she said in a speech after her win.

She added that she had met with Buskila before her speech and "complimented him on a respectable and fair campaign that he conducted" and assured his voters "that Meretz will be our home and together we will turn it into a party that we dreamed of."

Zandberg with Buskila (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Zandberg continued by thanking Zehava Gal-On, the party's outgoing chairperson, praising her as a "model of leadership and public courage" in a time of social apathy, stating she is privileged to stand where she once stood.

Speaking directly to the Israeli public, Zandberg attacked incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming he "turned human rights organizations into a punching bag, he pursues them just like Putin."

Then, addressing Israeli-Arabs directly, she told them to vote for her party as the government fdoes not represent them, gibing Netanyahu for his comment during the 2015 elections, when he warned that "Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves" to spur the Israeli public to vote for a right-wing government.

"The government has ostracized you, come to us on buses because we believe in public transportation," she said.

(Photo: Motti Kimchi)

But it wasn't just the right Zandberg was criticizing.

The Zionist Union, a left-wing opposition party, was deemed by her to be acting like "Netanyahu's bodyguards." She said the Union has not represented the Left in Israel for a long time now, and invited their voters to join them.

"Together we will prove to Netanyahu who said it is impossible to beat him in the ballotsyou are corrupt and in elections you can be beaten," she concluded. "We will lead the leftist bloc."

Meretz, a social-democratic and green political party in the opposition, currently has five seats in the Knesset, as opposed to the current strongest part in the coalition, the Likud, which has six times as many.SEOUL - North Korea has agreed to hold high-level talks with South Korea on March 29 at the border truce village of Panmunjom to prepare for a summit of their leaders planned for April, the South said on Saturday.

A team of three officials will be led by Ri Son Gwon, the chairman of North Korea's committee for the peaceful reunification of the country, the North told its neighbor early on Saturday, the South's Unification Ministry said.

"This morning, North Korea sent a message through a communication channel in Panmunjom agreeing to our suggestion made on the 22nd to hold high-level inter-Korea talks," the ministry said in a statement.Moscow and Tokyo plan to carry out more than 120 joint political, economic, and cultural activities in 2018, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said ahead of a meeting with Japans Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko on Saturday, TASS reported.

"More than 120 joint political, economic, and cultural activities are planned to be carried out, the effect they will have on the two countries economy and people depends on our work," she said.

According to Golodets, Moscow has suggested to Tokyo that a green corridor be created for pharmaceutical companies.

"We have suggested that the so-called green corridor be created for pharmaceutical companies, as we want to ease the access to the Russian market for Japanese companies," she said.

The meeting also involves Russian Economic Development Minister Maksim Oreshkin.The United Nations Human Rights Council ended its first and longest session of the year Friday by adopting five resolutions critical of Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians or throwing support behind their long, fruitless cause for statehood.

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Another two "country-specific" resolutions focused on Syria, where hundreds of thousands have died in a seven-year civil war. South Sudan, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea garnered one each.

Among the resolutions passed against Israel were ones that discussed "human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan," the "right of the Palestinian people to self-determination," the "human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem," the "Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan," and "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem."

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley (Photo: Reuters)

The resolutions adopted in Geneva include a call to adhere to Resolution 2334, which was passed in late 2016, according to which the Israeli settlements are illegal. The resolution called on world nations to "condemn the expansion of settlements" and "distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967."

Another resolution calls on Israel to refrain from expanding construction and population of the Golan Heights, due to the fact it is an occupied territory.

Nine months ago, US Ambassador Nikki Haley stormed the United Nations' top human rights body demanding an end to what she said is its bias against Israel and raising the prospect of a US pullout if it didn't.

On Friday, Haley railed that the 47-member Geneva-based body every March sets aside only two sessions to debate rights violations and abuses -- one for Israel and one for the rest of the world.

Once again, the @unhumanrights Council fails to fulfill its duty to uphold #humanrights around the world. This is unacceptable. The anti-#Israel bias must stop. Other countries must step up.  Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) March 23, 2018

"When the Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran and Syria, it is the council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name," she said.

Haley said it is time for "the countries who know better to demand changes," saying many agree the council's agenda "is grossly biased against Israel, but too few are willing to fight it."

Amb. Haley: When the Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran, & Syria, it is the Council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name...Todays actions make clear that the organization lacks the credibility needed to be a true advocate for human rights. pic.twitter.com/AvjAMFrmsu  US Mission to the UN (@USUN) March 23, 2018

"When that happens, as it did today, the council fails to fulfill its duty to uphold human rights around the world," she said.

Haley said the Trump administration is continuing to evaluate its membership in the Human Rights Council.

"Our patience is not unlimited," she said. "Today's actions make clear that the organization lacks the credibility needed to be a true advocate for human rights."Israeli hacks have allegedly offered information about two politicians now serving as heads of states to the company Cambridge Analytica , which worked on US President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, according to a report in the Guardian earlier this week.

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The Guardian cited multiple sources as saying senior directors in the data analytics firm, including its chief executive Alexander Nix, instructed staff to analyze materials from the Israeli hackers on the election campaigns in Nigeria and the Caribbean island of St Kitts and Nevis.

However, two incidents in 2015 led Cambridge Analytica employees to refuse to handle the data, suspecting it might have been obtained illegally, according to the Guardian.

Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix (Photo: Twitter)

SCL Elections, Cambridge Analyticas parent company, has denied obtaining or using hacked or stolen information for any purpose.

Cambridge Analytica is being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, as well as by four US congressional committees.

Russia has denied meddling in the election, and Trump has said there was no collusion between Moscow and his campaign.

Trumps campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 and paid it more than $6.2 million through last December, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The month after his firm was hired, Nix emailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for help tracking down some 33,000 emails that Clinton supposedly had deleted from her private server, the Daily Beast and The Wall Street Journal reported in October.

US President Donald Trump (Photo: EPA)

Nix wanted to convert the missing and potentially damaging emails into a searchable database for use by the Trump campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee, the Journal reported.

WikiLeaks confirmed to Reuters that it was approached by Nix, but a representative said it turned down his request.

In a more recent development, Cambridge Analytica is now under mounting pressure to explain how it received access and collected personal data on 50 million Facebook users.

This follows allegations by a whistleblower that the British political consultancy firm improperly accessed users information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect Trump.

Cambridge Analytica staffers who worked on the 2015 re-election campaign for then-Nigeria president Goodluck Jonathan, told the Guardian that they met with representatives of an Israeli cyber security company in London in early 2015. They were told the meeting was arranged by a senior Cambridge Analytica director, Brittany Kaiser.

Goodluck Jonathan and his rival Muhammadu Buhari (Photo: AP)

According to these staffers, the Israelis gave them a USB stick containing what they believed were personal hacked emails.

"It made everyone feel really uncomfortable," one source told the Guardian. "They wanted people to load it into their email programs."

But the staffers "freaked out," according to another employee. "They wanted to have nothing to do with it," he told the Guardian.

According to these sources, Nix, who was suspended earlier this week, as well as other senior officials in the company, instructed employees to search the emails for incriminating material on Jonathan's opposition, Muhammadu Buhari, who eventually won the elections.Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh visited Umm al-Fahm last week amid growing violence in the city. But while he saw the new police station and met with Mayor Khaled Hamdan Aghbariyya and senior officials at the police station, he did not meet with any of the residents.

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"The police must do its job to eradicate the shootings, violence and crime and be present on roads and in neighborhoods to create a sense of security among the residents. We hope this presence continues, and won't just be for a short period of time," the mayor said during the meeting.

In his visit, Alsheikh noted the need to increase the number of police officers and police activity in the city so residents could feel safe.

Police Commssioner Alsheikh visits Umm al-Fahm

However, since the police chief's visit, three residents have been shot in Umm al-Fahm, with one in very serious condition and the other two in moderate and light condition respectively.

The Umm al-Fahm residents were angered by the fact they were not told of Alsheikh's visit in advance and were not invited to speak about the dangers they face.

"Had I known the police commissioner was supposed to come to Umm al-Fahm, I would've come to convey to him the real things. He needs to know we're not feeling safe, and that the police are unable to stop the shootings," said Ahmad Mahmid, one of the residents.

"Unfortunately the meeting was kept a secret and was not opened to the residents, because they know there is a serious problem here and they're not interested in hearing us out," Mahmid added. "Instead of accepting us, they ignore, and the first to ignore is the police commissioner."

He went on to assert that "if this was happening in Afula, Nazareth Illit or Tel Aviv, suspects would've been arrested and (police) would be thinking how to stop the shootings. But the Arab society is abandoned."

Car bomb goes off in Kafr Qasim

X

Violence has been rampant in the Arab city, with the latest incident taking place on Thursday night when a 38-year-old man was shot by unknown perpetrators near the main road in Umm al-Fahm. He was taken to HaEmek Medical Center in Afula in very serious condition and is fighting for his life.

Relatives said he was visiting his sister with his wife. "When they left, a man came and shot him in front of his wife and sister at short range, and then fled the scene."

"It's still unknown who tried to eliminate him and for what reason. This is a respected man who has no conflicts with others and received no threats," one relative said.

The relatives added the shooting victim is a father of five. His brother was shot to death two years ago at age 26, and his killer remains at large.

Scene of the shooting in Umm al-Fahn on Thursday night

"We're suffering from the shootings that happen almost every day, and particularly at night time," an Umm al-Fahm resident said. "We don't know how long this will continue. At any moment, we could be hearing about a gunshot injury, shooting into the air, or a robbery - and there is no one to handle the matter. It's as if nothing is happening."

"The situation in the city is not simple, and it's painful," he continued. "My children start crying whenever they hear gunshots. It scares them and they stay close to us throughout the night. They're also scared to go to school because they're afraid of the shootings."

Six men have been murdered in the Arab sector since the beginning of 2018, with four of the murders still under police investigation.

Samer Awad, 33, from Yafa an-Naseriyye, was stabbed to death. Suspects have been arrested and an indictment has been filed against them. Assad Naif Amara, 55, from Zalafa, was shot to death by a relative who was arrested and charged.

However, police are still investigating the murder of four other victims: Quasi Sultan, 40, from Tira; Muhammad Masrawa, 27, from Tayibe; Rabia Farij, 29, from Kafr Qasim; and Mustafa Al-Atrash, 25, from Hura.

Five of the men murdered in the Arab sector since the beginning of 2018

The Israel Police said in response, "Thanks to the determined and professional operations of the Israel Police in the city of Umm al-Fahem, there has been a significant decrease in the number of shooting incidents since the beginning of the year (compared to the same period last year).

"Every incident of violence or shooting is investigated and handled by the police, who are investing efforts and using both covert and overt measures, when in some of the recent cases suspects have already been arrested.

"As part of prevention efforts, the police are acting with determination against the phenomenon of arms possession and, indeed, thanks to intensive intelligence activity, unprecedented amounts of weapons have been seized throughout the Arab sector.

"In recent years, the Israel Police and the Ministry of Public Security have been implementing a multi-annual plan to expand police services in the Arab sector, while responding to the unique needs of Arab society, reducing crime and increasing the sense of security and trust in the police and the rule of law among citizens. The police will continue to invest efforts in the war against internal violence in the sector, despite all the difficulties, and will cooperate with any leader who will be willing to act to eradicate violence wherever it is."The Paris prosecutors' office said Saturday that police have detained a 17-year-old in connection with the investigation into the Islamic extremist attack that killed four people, including a police officer, in southern France.

The unidentified young man was arrested overnight over alleged criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise. He is a friend of the gunman, identified by prosecutors as Morocco-born Redouane Lakdim, who was killed in a shootout Friday at a supermarket in Trebes where he took hostages.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday that another person, a woman close to Lakdim, was taken into custody on the same grounds. Molins didn't identify her.

Paris counterterrorism investigators took over the probe into the attack in Trebes and nearby Carcassonne.NEW YORK  For nearly 80 years, the trail was stone cold for a missing 16th-century Renaissance portrait, looted by the Nazis from an estate in the Netherlands.

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But late last year, Christie's auction house was contacted about its potential whereabouts, and the prized painting was returned to the Los Angeles heir of its owners. It will go on sale next month in New York.

The painting, a portrait by the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, had belonged to Fritz Gutmann, who owned a large collection on his estate in the Netherlands. Gutmann and his wife were killed in the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz death camps, and their collection looted by the Nazi high command.

Portrait of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony (Photo: AP)

After the war, Gutmann's son and then grandson searched for the painting, one of the gems of the collection, for decades. The grandson, Simon Goodman (the family changed the spelling of the name), said the painting was listed on an inventory of works recommended for the personal use of Adolf Hitler. "That was the last mention I could trace," Goodman told The Associated Press. "The trail had gone completely cold."

But late last year, people in possession of the work, whose identity Christie's is not making public, approached the auction house to see if it was indeed from the Gutmann collection. "They weren't sure what they had," Goodman said.

Goodman, who lives in Los Angeles, said the approach to the auction house was spurred by his book, "The Orpheus Clock," in which he detailed his search for his family's looted artworks. "Go figure, someone picks up my book at the local library, and look what comes back," he said. "It's all rather serendipitous." He added that of all his family's missing artworks, this painting was one of those he least expected to findand most wanted to.

Goodman finally saw the paintingtitled "Portrait of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony"a few weeks ago in New York, he says. "My wife took a picture of me hugging it like a long-lost family member," he said. "It's wonderful when you find something that has survived. I'm touching something that my grandfather loved."

Goodman, 70, was born in London, a few years after his grandparents, who originally came from Germany but moved to the Netherlands, were killed. Through the artwork, he said, "I'm reconnecting with the family I never knew." He said about a third of his family's collection has been recovered so far, and he continues to search for many piecesa fulltime pursuit.

The painting will be auctioned April 19. Christie's has estimated the price at $1 million to $2 million.Syria filed an official complaint to the United Nations this week accusing Israel of smuggling Torah books and precious artifacts from the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Damascus in a secret operation with Turkey.

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Syria's ambassador to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, sent a letter to the Security Council, saying his government "wishes to transmit highly credible intelligence to the effect that the terrorist groups that are active in the area of Jobar, near Damascus, cooperated with the Turkish and Israeli intelligence services to loot artifacts and manuscripts from the ancient synagogue there."

The Jobar synagogue in ruins (Photo: The Daily Beast)

Jaafari went on to claim that "the items were then smuggled through local and foreign intermediaries to Istanbul, where they were received by antiquities experts who certified that they were extremely valuable antique objects. The items were subsequently smuggled to New York."

In the letter, the Syrian ambassador stressed that Syria will "insist on realizing its rights in accordance with international law and the resolutions of the Security Council in order to restore the stolen cultural assets, including those from the synagogue in Jobar."

Jaafari's letter was a response to a UN report about imposing sanctions on terror organizations ISIS and al-Qaeda and their proxies, which included many claims that terror groups operating in Syria receive aid from foreign elements. The ambassador claimed humanitarian conveys coming from Turkey are used to smuggle weapons, funds and logistical assistance to terror organizations operating in Syria.

"We are open and willing to cooperate with the writers of the report and UNESCO and provide the necessary information on the topic," he wrote.

Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon slammed the accusations, calling them "another attempt by the Syrian regime to draw attention away from the horrible atrocities it commits against its own people."

"While the Assad regime continues mercilessly slaughtering innocent civilians and children, Israel continues giving humanitarian aid to Syrian residents and treating Syrian wounded that arrive at its doorstep," Danon added.

Israeli Ambassador Danon (UN PhotoEskinder Debebe)

The Jobar Synagogue was built atop a cave where the biblical prophet Elijah is said to have hidden, and the prayer hall there is believed to be the place where Elijah anointed the prophet Elisha.

The synagogue is located inside a run-down outer district of Damascus called Jobar, which was home to a large community of Musta'arabi Jews for hundreds of years until the 1800s.

Theft and shelling during the Syrian civil war have damaged the ancient synagogue, one of the oldest in the world. There are conflicting reports about the fate of the artifacts in the synagogue. One report claims the rare Torah books were smuggled out of the synagogue by rebels, but were seized by the Syrian army.CAIRO - A bomb placed under a car exploded in Egypt's second city Alexandria on Saturday, killing two people including a policeman, state news agency MENA reported.

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The bombing, which also wounded four policemen, had targeted Alexandria's security chief police Maj. Gen. Mustafa al-Nemr, the interior ministry said.

Al-Nemr survived the explosion and he was seen on a local TV channel in good condition while inspecting the area of the blast in the vicinity of a police station in the central district of Roshdi shortly after it took place.

Scene of the explosion in Alexandria

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No group immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion. Islamic State released a video last month in which it warned Egyptians against taking part in the upcoming vote and urged Islamists to attack security forces and leaders.

MENA quoted Nemr as saying that two people, a policeman and a driver, were killed in the blast.

Photos on social media that Reuters could not independently verify showed a burnt out car and smoke at the site of the blast.

Scene of the explosion

"On Saturday March 24 an explosive device planted underneath a car exploded ... as the Alexandria security chief drove by," the interior ministry statement said.

Eyewitnesses said police and military personnel had formed a perimeter around the site of the explosion, which took place two days before the country is due to hold a presidential election.

MENA said the public prosecutor ordered an investigation into the incident.

Scene of the explosion

Islamic State attempted to assassinate Egypt's defense and interior ministers in December during a trip the pair made to the Sinai Peninsula, where the hardline militant group has been waging an insurgency for almost five years.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Friday that Islamic State militants would soon be defeated in the Sinai as he visited troops battling the jihadists there.

Polls will open on Monday when voters choose between Sisi and one little-known candidate who supports the former field marshal. All credible opponents dropped out in January, citing intimidation by the authorities after the main challenger was jailed.

Sisi's critics say he has cracked down harshly on dissent and that tough economic reforms have eroded his popularity. Supporters say such measures are needed to stabilize Egypt, which was rocked by years of unrest after protests toppled veteran leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

As military commander, Sisi led the ousting of Egypt's only competitively-elected leader, President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was toppled amid demonstrations against his rule in 2013, a year after taking power. Sisi took office with a landslide election victory a year later.

State news agency MENA blamed the Brotherhood, which is now banned in Egypt and designated a terrorist group, for Saturday's bombing.

"This attempt comes in the context of terrorist Muslim Brotherhood elements trying to disrupt the electoral process and influence citizens into not going to the polls and participating in the presidential election," the agency said.

Islamic State and other militant groups have successfully assassinated officials in recent years. Islamic State bombed a hotel in Sinai in 2015 during a parliamentary election, killing seven people including two judges overseeing the vote.

Egypt's top public prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, was killed by a car bomb in June 2015.KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian police have arrested seven men with links to the Islamic State militant group who were planning attacks on non-Muslim places of worship and other targets, authorities said on Saturday.

Six Malaysians were arrested in Johor state, north of Singapore, while a seventh, a Filipino member of the ISIS-linked Abu Sayyaf group, was detained in the eastern state of Sabah, in multiple operations between Feb. 27 and Mar. 15, Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement.

He said the six detained in Johor were members of an ISIS cell and included a 37-year-old technician who recruited new militants and was believed to be the mastermind of planned attacks on non-Muslim places of worship in the state's capital.A new ultra-Orthodox initiative is calling for a voluntary separation of men and women on Jerusalem's light rail.

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Even before the light rail started operating in the capital in 2011, Haredi politicos examined the possibility of applying the model that exists in some bus lines in the cityin which ultra-Orthodox men sit at the front of the bus, while women are relegated to the backto the train service as well.

The proposal had the support of senior officials in CityPass, the company that operates the light rail in Jerusalem. But the High Court determined in January 2011 that this model was illegal, and the proposal was shelved.

Flyer includes a photo marking the desired car for Haredi men

Now, after six and a half years in which men and women have been sharing train cars, the Haredi public is being urged to enact the separation voluntarily, without the matter being officially recognized.

The upcoming intermediate days of Passover are expected to bring an increase in public transportation use in the capital. In anticipation of that, flyers have been handed out in synagogues and Haredi neighborhoods across Jerusalem advocating for the separation.

"Dear Jew, you must have had the opportunity to travel on the light rail in Jerusalem, and you must have encountered the lack of modesty prevalent there, particularly during summer time," the flyer reads. "No more! Starting today, with G-d's help, we will all gather at the front of the last car during every train ride (in pleasantness and without causing Chillul Hashem, heaven forbid)."

The organizers of this initiative expect that "in this way, by gathering all of the sons of Torah there, a more modest and pure atmosphere will be created there."

They called on the men to influence the women in their families. "You should ask the dear daughters of your home to choose a different place to sit in," they wrote.

The flyer also includes a photo of the light rail with a red circle marking the preferable car.

An old trick

The Yerushalmim municipal party was outraged by the proposal, alluding it is an old trick.

"We know this trick, we were not born yesterday," they fumed. "Such initiatives start in a 'voluntary' manner and seemingly pleasantly, but very quickly facts are set on the ground, with separate cars and men spitting and forcing women to sit at the back.

"We saw that happening on buses and it should not be allowed to happen on the light rail."

The party's chairwoman, Fleur Hassan-Nahum, added that "men are not animals, and there is no reason why they should not be in the same car with a woman. One must stop treating women as objects. If there is someone who cannot control himself, it is his problem and not the public's. Such a person is invited to go on foot."

The Israel Women's Lobby reiterated the party's assertions, noting that "the last time they pleasantly asked women to move to the back on public transportation, it ended with harsh verbal violence and concern for the safety of women," bringing up as example the case of Tanya Rosenblitan Ashdod resident who refused to sit at the back of a bus despite the demands of ultra-Orthodox passengers and received threats on her life in response.

The lobby concluded by emphasizing that "the High Court of Justice has absolutely prohibited asking or instructing women to travel in public transportation."

In 2011, the HCJ ruled that "Public transportation operators (like any other person) are not permitted to tell, ask or instruct women where to sit on the bus simply because they are women, or what they should wear, and they are allowed to sit wherever they please," adding any operator that does "will be subject to criminal penalties."Israeli ministers on Friday hailed US President Donald Trump's choice of hardliner John Bolton as his new national security advisor, a pick denounced by a senior Palestinian official.

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Trump on Thursday announced that Bolton, a former United Nations ambassador and arch-hawk, would be replacing embattled army general HR McMaster in the key position.

Bolton is known for his strong support for Israel and his hostility to the Jewish state's key foe Iran, and once said the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead.

John Bolton (Photo: Reuters)

"President Trump is continuing to appoint true friends of Israel to senior positions. John Bolton stands out among them," Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of Jewish Home said in a statement.

"The Trump administration is turning out to be the most friendly administration to Israel ever," she added.

Bayit Yehudi Chairman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted that Bolton was "an extraordinary security expert, experienced diplomat and a stalwart friend of Israel."

Naftali Bennett (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

Environment Minister Zeev Elkin of Netanyahu's Likud echoed his cabinet colleagues, telling Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM Bolton was "unquestionably a friend of Israel for many years, including in his position as US ambassador to the UN".

In contrast the Palestinians reacted angrily, with Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, slamming Trump's pick.

"This man has a long history of hostility to Palestinians, dating to when he was at the United Nations, where he was protecting Israeli immunity," Ashrawi told AFP, referring to US vetoes of UN resolutions targeting Israel.

With Bolton's appointment, she said, the Trump administration "has joined with extremist Zionists, fundamentalist Christians and white racists."

"All this will lead to a devastating reality for Palestine and the region."

Hanan Ashrawi (Photo: Reuters)

'Three-state' solution

Bolton was known as a sharp-tongued and controversial UN ambassador during George W. Bush's administration who virulently defended Israel.

In 2009 he wrote in The Washington Post that the idea of a two-state solution to the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict was "stillborn" and suggested giving the Palestinian territories to Egypt and Jordan.

"We should look to a 'three-state' approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty," he said at the time.

"Any two-state solution based on the PA (Palestinian Authority) is stillborn," he wrote.

An Israeli state side by side with a Palestinian state has been the widely accepted basis for solving the Middle East conflict for decades, though Trump's administration has yet to commit to it officially.

Bolton has also praised Trump's decision, announced on December 6, to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to transfer the US embassy to the city from Tel Aviv.

"We've been living in a delusion by not acknowledging the fact that Jerusalem is Israel's capital," he tweeted.

Trump's Jerusalem declaration outraged Palestinians and broke with decades of international consensus that the disputed city's status must be negotiated between the two sides.

Israel unified Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War in a move never recognized by the international community.

The Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Bolton has also strongly argued for the US to abandon the 2015 Iran nuclear deal , which Trump said must be "fixed" by May 12 or the United States will walk away.

Israel too has called for the deal between world powers and its nemesis Iran to be " fixed or nixed ."President Donald Trump is expected to receive a recommendation from his National Security Council on Friday that he expel a yet-to-be-determined number of Russian diplomats from the US in response to the poisonings of a former spy and his daughter on UK soil, a source with knowledge of the situation told CNN.

The decision to send that recommendation to the President comes after a high-level meeting at the White House on Wednesday during which the NSC drew up a range of options to take action against Russia, according to multiple State Department officials and a source familiar with the discussion.Organizers of anti-deportation rallies against the planned mass expulsion of African asylum seekers have been receiving an increased amount messages wfilled with invective language and death threats on social media.

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Anti-deportation activists, who already suffered in recent weeks from verbal abuse have now begun fearing for their well-being, with people expressing their desire to harm them in various ways and means, from maiming to decapitation.

Adi Berkowitz, an anti-deportation activist who recived death threats

It's a shame that they did not kill you instead of Esther Galili," said one, referring to a 70-year-old woman who provoked a drunk Sudanese immigrant and was subsequently beaten to death by him. "May an illegal immigrant dismember your corpse, you Ashkenazi whore," he ended.

Others were just as brutal, wishing on the activists violence and rape by the very asylum seekers they wish to aid.

"If I could I would get you into rubber boats with holes and throw you in the ocean without food and without water so you can eat each other until you die!!!", another said.

"The initial feeling is frightening," said Adi Berkowitz, an activist in the "Stop the Expulsion" movement who received some of the hate mail.

"There is a feeling that someone is entering your private space, that everyone can reach you. It feels very real and very close. I do not want to say that we got used to it because you can't really get used to it, but there is no doubt that after dozens of such messages it has become an integral part of this struggle."

Saturday's mass anti-expulsion rally (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Berkowitz added that in the last few days, ahead of Saturday's planned mass rally, the tone of the messages she received has become more blunt and violent.

"I considered more than once to go to the police," she said. "The only reason I did not do it is because I know that everyone who writes these messages wants to frighten us and make us stop our struggle. So this is a good opportunity to tell them that we are not afraid and that this is not what will help them. We will continue until we stop the expulsion. "

Carmel, another activist, claimed the increasing vitriol is a sign their struggle is making headway.

"In the last week, apparently because the rally produces a lot of pressure (to stop the mass deportationed), there is an attack of insults and threats on many activists and on our Facebook page. The attack is not only on our private pages but also in the responses on other pages, and there is no doubt that their number and level of aggression is increasing.

"On the one hand it's obviously unpleasant, no one wants to get up in the morning and get bashed with all those curses and threats. It's not something that you can prepare for in advance, and it always catches you off guard, and it makes me really ask myself where this hatred comes from.

"On the other hand, there is no doubt that whoever does it does so out of anxiety and this is further proof that the public struggle that began with a few dozen people is sweeping the majority of the public."

Sheffi Paz, surrounded by policemen

Sheffi Paz, leader of the pro-expulsion South Tel Aviv Liberation Front, excused the Left of fueling "a civil war in south Tel Aviv," with every demonstration adding oil to the fire.

She warned that "none of us can stop this from boiling over as soon as the last hope is taken from us," stressing that "every sign and every petition and every demonstration they make is perceived in south Tel Aviv as direct incitement against the residents."

She noted her organization chose not to stage a counter protest on Saturday, as the mass rally is planned to be held in Rabin Square, and not in southern Tel Aviv, and continued by mocking the demonstrators' alleged naivete on immigration.

"For all we care, they can come in droves from all over the country in hundreds of buses to flood the square with illegal immigrants, to hear music, to feel morally superior to all of us, and to return home," she said. "But don't leave empty-handedtake home a 'refugee.'"An Israeli was arrested at the Egyptian border crossing on Friday after a weapon magazine was found in his vehicle. He was released after about 30 hours in detention and fined.

The Foreign Ministry said that the embassy in Cairo helped release him.Four Palestinians entered Israel from the Gaza Strip in the area of Kibbutz Kissufim and attempted to torch engineering tools used in construction work of the underground anti-tunnel barrier.

An IDF force approached them and the four fled back to the Gaza Strip.

There were no casualties and no damage was caused to the tools.Roselyn Ngissah, one of Ghanas own talented actresses is pregnant, according to her latest Instagram post.

The actress who seems to be missing in the system after the collapse of the movie industry, shared a photo of herself on her Instagram page with a caption suggesting that she would be a mother soon.

Actress Roselyn Ngissah

READ ALSO: Rare photo showing when and how Ebony started her dreadlocks pops up

Roselyn Ngissah wrote: Very soon.... My pregnant self....

It is not clear if the actress is indeed pregnant, or it's just a scene of one of her many movies.

Some few weeks ago, she was in the news saying she would soon get married.

The Kiss Me If You Can lead actress indicated that she was under pressure to get married, but she would not do so under pressure.

READ ALSO: I married to avoid baby mama drama  Stonebwoy

She also disclosed that it was her desire to have her own child soon, therefore, with her current pregnancy state, it is obvious that Roselyn Ngissah has one of her dreams fulfilled.

Many congratulatory messages have poured out from her fans and followers on Instagram, and this shows how Roselyn is loved by her fans.

Here are some of the messages:

rytha_the_faith_girl Oh this is beautiful.

sakazym Yeeh! Mama is having a baby 

orashida Woooow best pic ever.

nneamakasylvia U look beautiful my lady.

READ ALSO: This video of Ebony and her dad cracking funny jokes would break your heart

Roselyn Ngissah has many movies to her credit.

She has acted alongside others including Jackie Appiah, Nadia Buari, Juliet ibrahim, John Dumelo, Majid Michel, and Kobi Rana.

READ ALSO: Did Stonebwoy tag Shatta Wale as an 'irresponsible baby daddy'?

Who is going to be Ghanas next top pastor? Check out YEN.com.gh's top picks:

READ ALSO: Ebony's response to her managers when they asked her about her 17 tattoos

Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page

Source: YenGhanaian dancehall artiste, Ebony, lost her life on Thursday, February 10, 2018, in an accident on the Kumasi-Sunyani road.

Two others, her childhood friend, Franky Kuri and a military man, Francis Vondee also met their untimely deaths.

Since her unfortunate demise, Ghanaians have been reminiscing about her life and times, and all that she did which made her unique.

YEN.com.gh brings to you 9 photos of Ebony that show that she would be greatly missed:

In this photo, she is seen seated in a chair and holding a glass of wine.

READ ALSO: 7 photos of Francis Vondee that prove he was an action man

In another photo, she took a seat in a chair and slightly turned her head to one side. She looked lovely in a red blouse and a multicoloured skirt.

In yet another photo, she held on to a lovely clutch bag. Her blue dress matched with the background and coupled with her smile, made the photo look so lovely.

And there was another photo in which she settled for a round-necked yellow dress. Her facial expression gave the impression of someone in deep thought.

Daddy's girl took a lovely photo with her father this time around. She wore a blue shirt and jeans shorts.

In another photo, she took fun to another level, as she grabbed a microphone ad performed on stage.

Ebony was all smiles as she took a shot with popular media personality, Afia Schwar.

In this photo, she wore a shoulder strapped jeans matched with Kente shorts. Her hairstyle and glowing skin was enough to make her look lovely.

In the video of her popular song, 'Maame Hwe', she looked lovely in a beautiful headscarf, matched with sunglasses.

READ ALSO: I would speak more when Ebony is buried - Father

I want people to listen to my music  Kobla Jnr speaks to YEN.com.gh on Star Gist:

Want to be featured on YEN.com.gh? Send us a message on our Facebook page or on Instagram with your stories, photos or videos

Source: YenDaughter of Africas richest man, Fatima Dangote and her husband, Jamil Abubakar, have celebrated the grande finale of their marriage in a blazing ceremony.

The couple had a 6-part event which was held in Abuja, Kano and Lagos. Fatima looked so beautiful in her white wedding dress while the groom who is the son of Nigerias former Inspector General of police looked hadnsome in his Tuxedo.

Bill Gates, wife of President Buhari, Aisha Buhari, her daughter Zahra Buhari, son in-law Mohammed, Ghanas president Nana Akufo-Addo, former Vice President Namadi Sambo, Genevieve Nnaji, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde were among the guests at the grand wedding finale of Africas richest man, Aliko Dangotes daughter Fatima to her husband, Jamil Abubakar, son of former IGP M.D Abubakar which held at the Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos last night.

See photos from the ceremony:

READ ALSO: Photos of Ebony lying in state in style

YEN remembers the beautiful life of dancehall diva Ebony Reigns with this video below:

READ ALSO: NDC officials storm Ebony's funeral

Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page

Source: Yen NewspaperAfrin has been completely taken under control as part of the ongoing Operation Olive Branch, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) said in a statement on Saturday, Yeni Safak reports.

The military stated that all villages located in Syrias northwestern Afrin region had been cleared of terror elements.The plane of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, departing from Samsun, could not land at Ordu-Giresun airport, Trend reports with a reference to Turkish media reports March 24

The reason for this was weather conditions. In this connection, the pilot had to return to Charshamba airport in Samsun.

The head of Turkey was taken to Ordu by helicopter from there.HA NOI  Condotels are becoming a hot development target in the real estate market, as international tourists flock to Viet Nam with increasing speed. Condominiums that are operated as hotels, with owners allowed to make their units available for short-term rentals, the properties are attractive for tourists and business visitors.

The condotel market is forecast to keep booming in 2018. But the rapid development has left many concerned about oversupply.

Supply exceeding demand?

According to data from the Viet Nam Real Estate Association (VNREA), in 2017 condotels became the brightest star in the resort real estate sector. The investment in condotel projects has accounted for more than half of total inflows into the real estate market. The supply of condotel products hit 22,837 units across developments throughout the country. Successful transactions account for 65-70 per cent of the volume offered.

The above numbers show the excitement focused on this segment of the real estate as well as the potential for investors. This year, it is forecast that there will be 29,000-33,000 condotel units available for sale.

Stephen Wyatt, CEO of global real estate services firm JLL Viet Nam , said the development of this type of resort condominium is in direct proportion to the accommodation needs of tourists. As tourists demand grows, this type of asset has a positive future.

The Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism reported that international visitors to Viet Nam in 2017 reached nearly 13 million, a sharp increase of 29.1 per cent over the previous year. The most attractive tourist destinations include HCM City , Ha Noi, a Nang, Nha Trang and Phu Quoc.

In addition, according to the Law on Tourism 2017 approved by the National Assembly, the Government expects the tourism industry to develop into a key economic sector in the future. Supporting policies and investment incentives will create momentum for resort real estate.

In addition, Viet Nam s hosting of regional and international conferences also contributes to the development of tourism. For example, hosting APEC 2017 in a Nang City led the city to perfect its tourism infrastructure as well as attract the attention of visitors and investors from around the world.

With this foundation, 2018 is expected to be another exciting year for resort real estate as investors simultaneously introduce their projects to capture the wave of development of Viet Nam s tourism industry, Wyatt said to baotintuc.vn.

As for the question of whether condotel developments have crossed the threshold into oversupply, Wyatt said the answer was uncertain and depends on the overall future of the tourism industry. And at the moment, tourism was a promising sector thanks to the Governments commitments to playing a supportive role.

It is necessary to focus on quality, business strategy and commitment to profitability in order to adapt to the growing market and increasingly tight legal framework of this market, Wyatt suggested.

Need a plan

According to Wyatt, there are three main reasons this type of vacation apartment attracts investors.

First, resort condominiums hit the investment market within the last three years, so the competitiveness of this sector is still low compared to other markets such as apartments, townhouses, villas and land plots. In addition, this type of real estate is attractive to investors because developers typically promise that investors will receive a certain amount of profits.

Second, like other types of real estate for sale, this type of product offers a rapid return on investment.

Third, the 2017 Tourism Law identifying tourism as a key economic sector in the future will create momentum for the development of resort real estate.

However, many management agencies and experts say the condotel boom demands strategy and planning.

Nguyen Tran Nam , chairman of VNREA, emphasised that it was necessary to have a soft, flexible plan for condotel development and investment.HA NOI  Viet Nam and Oman are seeking to boost co-operation to reach its full potential, heard attendants of the third meeting of the Joint Committee on Economic and Technical Co-operation (JCETC) between Viet Nam and Oman held in Ha Noi yesterday.

The two sides reviewed the socio-economic development of each country as well as progress towards implementing the plans made at the second meeting in 2014. Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh and Omani Minister of Commerce and Industry Ali bin Masoud Al Sunaidy attended.

Viet Nam and Oman agreed to focus on negotiations to sign a visa exemption agreement for holders of diplomatic and official passports to facilitate travel between the two countries. In addition, they pledged to enhance co-operation between the two ministries to help businesses of each country access their markets.

Viet Nam and Oman also plan to increase co-operation between the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the Omani Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OCCI) to encourage the business communities of the two countries to actively exchange information, carry out market surveys and trade promotion activities, and attend trade fairs, exhibitions and investment events.

The two sides also aim to exchange information relating to trade policies, import-export regulations, market demand, trade opportunities and investment projects in each country.

Viet Nam and Oman will study strategies to expand co-operation in sectors such as petroleum, finance, banking, labour, agriculture, seafood, transport, culture and tourism.

Concluding the event, the two ministers signed the minutes of the third meeting.

Business forum

The day before, sixty local firms and 10 Omani enterprises operating in various fields sought investment partnerships at a Viet Nam-Oman business forum held in Ha Noi by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), the VCCI and the Vietnam-Oman Investment (VOI) joint-venture.

Addressing the seminar, MoIT Deputy Minister Cao Quoc Hung called on Oman to organise more visits of enterprises to Viet Nam to explore trade and investment opportunities. He urged Vietnamese firms to pay more attention to studying the Oman market through field trips to and exhibitions in the Middle Eastern nation.

Hung highlighted the fruitful co-operation between the two countries in recent times, saying two-way trade has witnessed impressive growth, hitting US$120 million in 2017, an increase of 122 per cent year-on-year.

Viet Nams exports to Oman include mobile phones, spare parts, automobile spare parts, coffee, seafood and pepper while the country imports metal, ore, minerals and cattle food from Oman.

Oman has five investment projects in Viet Nam with total registered capital of $340 million so far.

At the event, Omani side said the country was considering importing food from Viet Nam, expressing hope that the Vietnamese side would open bonded warehouses in Oman, thus facilitating the distribution of Vietnamese goods in Oman and exports to adjacent markets.

Le Thai Hoa, deputy head of the Asia-Africa Market Department under the MoIT, said the ministry was creating favourable conditions for the two sides enterprises to learn about each others markets. The ministry was working with ministries and sectors on a plan to open a direct flight between the two nations, towards promoting economic and culture exchange, he noted.

The VOI is considered an outstanding model for economic co-operation between Viet Nam and Oman. Established by the Oman State General Reserve Fund and Viet Nams State Capital Investment Corporation, the Vietnam-Oman Investment (VOI) joint venture operates with strong support from both sides.

Since its initial commitment of $100 million in 2009, VOI doubled its capital by 2014.

Abdullah Al Harthy, chairman of the board of directors of VOI and a member of the Oman-Viet Nam Joint Committee, said that his country thought globally on economic co-operation, even though it was only a small country in the Middle East. Oman saw long-term prospects for economic co-operation in Viet Nam, he said.

VOI has focused on Viet Nams competitive sectors and those with contributions to long-term sustainable development, such as electricity and logistics, he added.

The VCCI and its Oman counterpart, the OCCI, signed a memorandum of understanding on co-operation to make it easier for the two sides enterprises to connect in the future.  VNSThe State will have breakthroughs in the reform of legal regulations and business investment conditions for the domestic real estate market this year, according to experts. Photo batdongsanexpress.vn

HA NOI  The State will have breakthroughs in the reform of legal regulations and business investment conditions for the domestic real estate market this year, according to experts.

The Ministry of Construction will prioritise completion of the reforms.

Nguyen Manh Khoi, deputy director of the Ministry of Constructions Department of Housing Management and Real Estate Market, said this at a seminar on property business held by the Vneconomy newspaper and the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry earlier this week.

The ministry is planning to submit a draft resolution on reforming administrative procedures to the Government in the second quarter of this year, Khoi said.

In the draft resolution, its expected to create more favourable conditions for economic sectors, especially foreign-invested businesses, investment and business activities in the local property market by amending the Housing Law and Real Estate Business Law.

The ministry will complete specific information on the local property market and identify problems in business activities, along with finding measures to solve them, Khoi said.

However, Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the HCM City Real Estate Association, said the State should amend the Land Law, regulations on land use rights for lands of tourism resorts, Investment Law, Enterprise Law and Bidding Law to have a transparent competitive environment.

He said real estate investors should be most concerned about the risk of supply and demand.

Earlier, Minister of Construction Pham Hong Ha said in 2018, the ministry would implement a project on assessing the situation, forecasting trends and proposing market solutions and management policies to promote a stable and healthy development of the real estate market, according to baodautu.vn.

This is an important database to follow developments in the property market, propose solutions to promote those developments and enhance inspection and supervision to implement laws on housing and real estate market, Ha said.

The ministry will regularly engage in dialogues with associations and businesses to deal timely with feedback and proposals of enterprises and the public.

Nguyen Tran Nam, chairman of the Viet Nam Real Estate Association (VNREA), said the domestic real estate market has had a stable and healthy development.

In 2017, the number of real estate transactions increased sharply against 2016. Ha Noi and HCM City had 64,263 successful transactions, mainly including affordable and mid-level apartments, Nam said.

Property prices were generally stable. The price rose by five per cent for apartment and 10 per cent for land. Meanwhile, the inventory of property products in 2017 continued to decline by 17 per cent year-on-year.

In a survey jointly conducted by VNREA and its Thai partners, it shows that commercial housing projects have been consumed within six months, an expected duration in Southeast Asian countries.

Nam said credit in the real estate sector continued to grow in safe limits. By the end of 2017, outstanding real estate loans accounted for some 8 per cent of total outstanding loans. Under the direction of the Government, credit for the real estate sector has had a safe development, and more foreign investment has flown to this sector.

According to Nam, State Bank of Viet Nam this year should apply a more active and flexible credit mechanism for the real estate market.

At the same time, the State should adopt policies to promote the development of social and commercial houses as well as create conditions for the development of other sectors.

VNREA has also urged the Government to come up with solutions to the existing problems of the property market, including land fund for social houses and cheap commercial houses, as well as regulations for new kinds of real estate, such as condotel, officetel and village resorts. These solutions are expected to create favourable conditions for an impressive growth of the property market this year, Nam said.  VNSState Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) and South Koreas Financial Services Commission (FSC) signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the field of financial innovation in Ha Noi on Thursday.  Photo tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn

HA NOI  State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) and South Koreas Financial Services Commission (FSC) signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the field of financial innovation in Ha Noi on Thursday.

The signing is part of the Viet Nam-Korea Financial Cooperation Forum, which was jointly organised by the Vietnam Banks Association and Korea Federation of Banks.

This is the first agreement in this area that SBV has signed with a foreign partner, marking an important milestone to perfect the legal framework for comprehensive co-operation between the central bank and FSC.

The agreement is seen as a legal basis for the two sides to enhance exchange, share information and conduct co-operations contents related to the modernisation of the banking and financial system as well as application of modern financial technology in the operation of banking system and services.

Speaking at the forum, SBV Governor Le Minh Hung said the forum was very meaningful in the context of the strategic partnership between Viet Nam and South Korea, which had been continuously developing in the past few years.

The forum is an opportunity for the two sides to further understand the needs and potential in financial and banking co-operation in the coming time, especially in the time of the 4.0 industrial revolution that is opening up new development possibilities for the world in general and the banking sector in particular.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations more than 25 years ago, Viet Nam and South Korea has made remarkable progress in all fields, including politics, economics, trade, investment, culture and tourism, said Hung.

In the banking sector, South Korea is among the top 10 countries and territories in Viet Nam with the highest number of credit institutions, including two banks, seven banking branches, six representative offices and two finance leasing companies.

Hung said South Korean credit institutions had always been active, dynamic, efficient and law-abiding investors in Viet Nam and that they had made remarkable contributions to the development of economy, banking and finance in the country as well as in the co-operation between the two countries.

The 4.0 technology revolution brings a lot of opportunities, creating added value and driving force for economic development. The banking and finance sector is the pioneer in adopting and applying the technology solutions to innovate and improve products and services, helping cut costs and bringing many benefits to customers, Hung said.

He, however, pointed out that the financial and banking system would face many challenges due to the replacement of machines and automation solutions, increase in competition from Fintech companies as well as new risks from the technological environment.

South Korea is a country performing well in science, technology and start-up innovation, being the cradle of Fintech development in Asia. As a management body in the Fintech sector, FSC has developed a number of policies to support the development of the sector.

Hung emphasised that the co-operation was an inevitable trend to bring benefits to businesspeople, investors and citizens of the two countries. He hoped the relationship between Viet Nam and South Korea in general and in the banking and finance sector in particular would develop greatly in the coming time, especially in the field of innovation.  VNSSome American soldiers who were held as prisoners during the American War did not think it was a good idea for their country to be in Viet Nam.

One such soldier, Walter Eugene Wilber, ended up as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down.

While in prison, he thought a lot about things and sent messages to authorities back home to stop the war.

by Thomas Eugene Wilber

On March 19, a special exhibition commemorating an important element of the US movement against the American war in Viet Nam will open in Ho Chi Minh City. It is called Waging Peace: US Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed Americas War in Viet Nam. The exhibit will feature details that have been missing in action from public memory about antiwar activities that arose within the military itself.

A special section of the display will recall the voices raised against the war by American POWs held in Ha Noi. The exhibit will have special meaning to me because my father, Walter Eugene Wilbers voice was one of those.

On June 16, 1968, flying off the aircraft carrier AMERICA on his twenty-first mission over North Viet Nam, Dad parachuted from the spent hulk of his burning F-4J, which had been hit by a missile. He landed on the bank of a rice paddy in Nghe An Province. A week later, he was in Ha Noi, beginning his 56 months of internment, the first 20 months living in solitary confinement at Hoa Lo Prison. He was 38 years old.

My father was born in rural Bradford County in north central Pennsylvania. The son of sharecroppers, he joined the Navy in 1948 hoping he would be trained to fly. In his early twenties he made two deployments to Korea and continued to fly and deploy over the years. Always eager to do his job, Dad was confident in the Navys system of accountability for mission assignments and target choices, the chain of command that rose to the civilian leadership level of the President as Commander-in-Chief. I was fighting for peace, he would later remember.

However, in the mid 1960s things began to change for him.

By the time my father deployed to Southeast Asia, he was well aware of the questions and criticisms mounting among American citizens and the calls to end the war. He listened to the critical words of Martin Luther King, Jr, in 1967. In succession, he saw Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara inexplicably depart his post, and he watched his Commander-in-Chief, Lyndon Johnson, quit.

Imprisoned in Ha Noi, Dad had time to listen to his conscience. He thought through the things that he knew and examined them word by word: passages from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, his King James Bible, and the words of the commissioning oath he took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. He wanted to make sure he was fulfilling the obligations inherent in those words.

The religious, conservative, right - leaning, career military officer that he was, Dad worked through his own thoughts and concluded that the war was wrong: it was not declared through international or national protocols; it was being directed and sustained by a succession of executive orders, not by legal declaration of Congress.

To support and defend the Constitution of the United States as best he could from his room in Ha Noi, he decided to speak out. Through letters, taped broadcasts, and interviews, he called on Congress to stop the war, urged US citizens to voice their opinions, and exhorted all who might hear him to work for peace. On my 15th birthday in 1970, his taped voice, broadcast over Radio Ha Noi, told me that I was old enough now to work for peace.

On February 12, 1973, my father left Ha Noi with 115 other newly freed captives. Four days later my family and I greeted him at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. Over the next few weeks and months, the state of our family would remain strong. However, Dads story had challenged the official story of the POW experience. While other prisoners who had spoken out against the war accepted an amnesty when they recanted before they returned, Dad did not recant; moreover, he announced publicly that the statements he made while in captivity were voluntary.

That is when the real controversy began. A fellow returnee initiated formal charges for collaboration with the enemy against my father and one other returnee. The charges were later dropped, although Dad was prepared for the trial. He remained steadfast; certain that we never should have gone to Viet Nam and that speaking out against the war had been the right thing to do. He remained steadfast in his personal values as well: religious, conservative, and always believing in the higher principles that our country stood for. At 85, Dad died three years ago in Bradford County, Pennsylvania.

Now 50 years from the tumult of 1968 and 45 years from the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, we need to remember the dominating presence that the war in Viet Nam had over peoples lives, and the courage that it took to speak out for peace. The voices of conscience that came out of Hoa Lo Prison have a special place in that story. The Waging Peace exhibit in Ho Chi Minh City will help restore those voices to our memory of the war years.

Following the exhibit opening, American and Vietnamese veterans of the war will gather at a meeting to share experiences. I will attend both events. Our next generations need to know the sacrifices that active duty servicemen were willing to make to help end the war, as we seek to wage peace today.

Tom Wilber researches documentation regarding US prisoners held in the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam from 1964 until 1973. His career includes 20 years of naval service. He has made dozens of trips to Viet Nam, locating sites and conducting interviews. Wilber is a visiting lecturer at Ha Noi University in the undergraduate course on American Foreign Policy. He assists Hoa Lo Prison Museum with exhibits on POWs, and he has facilitated the return of memorabilia from former prisoners to Hoa Los permanent collection for use in future displays.





GLOSSARY

On March 19, a special exhibition commemorating an important element of the US movement against the American war in Viet Nam will open in Ho Chi Minh City.

An exhibition is a display.

Commemorating means honouring.

On June 16, 1968, flying off the aircraft carrier AMERICA on his twenty-first mission over North Viet Nam, Dad parachuted from the spent hulk of his burning F-4J, which had been hit by a missile.

Spent, in this case, means no longer powerful

A hulk is a big body (in this case of an aircraft).

A missile is something that is shot out of a gun to hit and harm a target.

A week later, he was in Ha Noi, beginning his 56 months of internment, the first 20 months living in solitary confinement at Hoa Lo Prison.

An internment is a time of imprisonment.

Solitary confinement means living alone in prison cell and not having anyone to talk to.

My father was born in rural Bradford County in north central Pennsylvania.

Rural means, in the country.

States in the United States are divided into counties much like provinces in Viet Nam are divided into communes and wards.

Pennsylvania is a state in the United States.

The son of sharecroppers, he joined the Navy in 1948 hoping he would be trained to fly.

A sharecropper is a farmer who does not own the land he farms but pays rent to the owner in the form of a part of the crops he harvests.

In his early twenties he made two deployments to Korea and continued to fly and deploy over the years.

Deployment means taking troops and military equipment to a place in order to be ready for military action.

Always eager to do his job, Dad was confident in the Navys system of accountability for mission assignments and target choices, the chain of command that rose to the civilian leadership level of the President as Commander-in-Chief.

Eager means keen.

To be confident in the Navys system of accountability means to believe it works and to trust it.

Accountability means being able to give a correct answer to why you do things.

By the time my father deployed to Southeast Asia, he was well aware of the questions and criticisms mounting among American citizens and the calls to end the war.

Criticisms are things people say about you when they think you are doing something wrong.

If criticisms are mounting, it means that people are saying what you are doing wrong more and more often.

In succession, he saw Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara inexplicably depart his post, and he watched his Commander-in-Chief, Lyndon Johnson, quit.

In succession means one after the other.

The Secretary of Defense in the United States is a top government called the Minister of Defense in many other countries.

Inexplicably means in such a way that cannot be explained.

Imprisoned in Ha Noi, Dad had time to listen to his conscience.

Your conscience is what tells your mind what is right and wrong, and therefore it guides how you behave.

He thought through the things that he knew and examined them word by word: passages from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, his King James Bible, and the words of the commissioning oath he took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

A countrys Constitution is its set of values that guides how it should be run and which changes to the law should be acceptable and which should not.

An oath is a promise. A commissioning oath is a promise a soldier will make when he, or she, is given powers of authority.

He wanted to make sure he was fulfilling the obligations inherent in those words.

Obligations are things you are expected to do.

Inherent in those words means deeply rooted in those words.

The religious, conservative, right - leaning, career military officer that he was, Dad worked through his own thoughts and concluded that the war was wrong: it was not declared through international or national protocols; it was being directed and sustained by a succession of executive orders, not by legal declaration of Congress.

Protocols are official procedures.

Through letters, taped broadcasts, and interviews, he called on Congress to stop the war, urged US citizens to voice their opinions, and exhorted all who might hear him to work for peace.

Exhorted means urged.

On February 12, 1973, my father left Ha Noi with 115 other newly freed captives.

Captives are prisoners.

However, Dads story had challenged the official story of the POW experience.

POW stands for Prisoner of War.

While other prisoners who had spoken out against the war accepted an amnesty when they recanted before they returned, Dad did not recant; moreover, he announced publicly that the statements he made while in captivity were voluntary.

To recant means to say you no longer have a certain belief.

To do something voluntarily means to do it without expecting to be paid.

That is when the real controversy began.

A controversy is an issue people feel strongly about, both in support of it and against it.

A fellow returnee initiated formal charges for collaboration with the enemy against my father and one other returnee.

A returnee is someone who returns to somewhere after having been away a long time.

Initiated means started.

Collaboration means holding talks with an idea to doing something wrong.

He remained steadfast; certain that we never should have gone to Viet Nam and that speaking out against the war had been the right thing to do.

Steadfast means dedicated.

Now 50 years from the tumult of 1968 and 45 years from the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, we need to remember the dominating presence that the war in Viet Nam had over peoples lives, and the courage that it took to speak out for peace.

Tumult means chaos.

WORKSHEET

Find words that mean the following in the Word Search:

The county in Pennsylvania where Walter Eugene Wilber came from. The month in 1973 when Walter Eugene Wilber left Ha Noi. A city in France where peace accords were signed forty-five years ago. The force within the United States military that Walter Eugene Wilber was part of. The letters that stand for Prisoner of War.

y i m o y t u j s g u d g f b s b l b d h f e l j p e i p p y s j o w p v a b b k g w r t u d s b h v b r a d f o r d c r e h h w u b t h c p a b s a c b r a t b n b p g f a c e p a r i s c m b t q v h o x d y r f m h i w d r w n a v Y d r

ANSWERS:

 Duncan Guy/Learn the News/ Viet Nam News 2018



1. Bradford; 2. February; 3. Paris; 4. Navy; 5. POWABC(WASHINGTON) -- A 9-year-old girl was a surprise guest at the March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. She appeared onstage before hundreds of thousands of people to tell them about a dream her grandfather had -- and that she, too, has a dream.



"My name is Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King and Loretta Scott King," she told the massive crowd. "My grandfather had a dream that his four little children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that enough is enough, and that this should be a gun-free world, period."



Yolanda, the eldest granddaughter of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., stood alongside Jaclyn Corin, a 17-year-old student who survived the Valentine's Day shooting at her Florida high school. The pair held hands and grinned from ear to ear as the sea of people before them erupted in a roar of applause and cheers.



Yolanda then beckoned the crowd to join in on an uplifting chant: "Spread the word, have you heard, all across the nation, we are going to be a great generation."



"Now I'd like you to say it like you really, really mean it and the whole world can hear you," she yelled to the crowd with a big smile, before repeating the chant once more.



The March for Our Lives rallies were anchored by the main event in the U.S. capital, where students, teachers, parents and other members of the public marched for gun control and school-safety measures on Saturday, in the wake of last month's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. There were more than 800 so-called "sibling marches" planned worldwide for this weekend in solidarity of the main event.



The marchers across the country and around the globe called on American lawmakers to make schools safer and pass stricter gun control laws, such as by prohibiting the sale of high-capacity magazines and banning the high-powered, highly-lethal assault-style weapons often used in mass shootings.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reservedHA NOI  The Kafka Festival Ha Noi 2018 will review the legacy of great writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924) through exhibitions, film screenings, concerts and dance performances.

Activities running from now until April 14, co-sponsored by a wide range of embassies and cultural partners, aim to help Vietnamese readers better understand Kafkas life, vision, philosophy and career, said Czech Ambassador Vitezslav Grepl at a press briefing yesterday.

An exhibition entitled Kafka  A Journey to Vietnamese Readers will be on display at the East-West Cultural Space, Heritage Space and Ha Noi University of Social Sciences and Humanities until April 14.

The exhibition, presented in Vietnamese and English features a number of valuable photos and information on the novelists life and career, which were collected and presented worldwide by the Franz Kafka Society in Prague , Czech Republic . Before coming to Vietnamese readers, the exhibition was held in Hong Kong (2013), Bangkok (2014) and other Asian cities.

During the exhibition, a number of rare publications, such as translations of Kafkas works and books about him, which have been printed in Viet Nam since the 1960s, will also be displayed for visitors to grasp the legacy of Franz Kafka in Viet Nam .

Cinema lovers can enjoy various films and documentaries including Who Was Kafka? ( Switzerland ), Joseph Kilian ( Czech Republic ), The Castle ( Germany and Austria ) and The Trial ( France , Germany and Italy ).

Buy something for Kafka: Kafkas Corners with souvenirs and books available at a discount are arranged in more than 20 cultural spaces in Ha Noi.  VNS Photo Minh Thu

Writer Kafka was born in Prague in the Czech Republic , in a German-speaking Jewish family. He wrote mostly in German. He travelled through many European countries, including Austria , France , Germany , Switzerland and Italy . Many of his famous works were inspired by and written during his journeys.

His works present a vision that was ahead of his time in their content and artistic style, said Grepl. Therefore his legacy is an inestimable treasure for our people that we will continuously admire and try to discover.

Kafka is widely studied across the world. In literature, he is regarded as a critical influence on postmodern writers. But his work also contributed to many other literary schools and later philosophies such as irrationalism, magical realism and existentialism.

Accordingly, the Kafka Festivals programming spans diverse events and spaces.

Kafkas Corners with souvenirs and books available at a discount will be arranged in more than 20 different cultural spaces in Ha Noi including East West Cultural Space, Heritage Space, Nha Nam bookstores, TPD Cinema Development Centre, Bluebirds Nest cafe and Tranquil Book cafe.

The screening of the film Who Was Kafka?, which recreates the life of the author through stories and memories from his relatives, including his best friend Max Brod, fiance Felice Bauer and lover Milena Jesenska, will be attended by Swiss Ambassador Beatrice Maser Mallor. She will share with audiences the importance of Kafkas legacy to humanity in general as well as to the people of Switzerland in particular  a country he loved and visited many times.

The Old Quarter Cultural Exchange Centre (50 ao Duy Tu Street, Hoan Kiem District) will host a Kafka-inspired dance performance by dancers Charlotte Spitzer and Ziga Jereb ( Austria ).

An international conference entitled Perceptions of Kafka in Asia, Particularly in Viet Nam will gather many Vietnamese and foreign experts at the Ha Noi University of Social Sciences and Humanities on April 14.

Another seminar, Franz Kafka - Life And Legacy will analyse Kafkas Letter to His Father, a literary masterpiece, and an important document often used by researchers to explore the relationship between him and his father, which is often believed to have had a strong influence on his motivation to write.  VNSPrime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (r) receives Special Advisor to the Japanese Cabinet Isao Iijima in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

HA NOI  Cultural exchanges play an important role in boosting Viet Nam-Japan relations, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told Special Advisor to the Japanese Cabinet Isao Iijima.

Meeting Iijima in Ha Noi yesterday, Phuc expressed hope that Japan will continue leading in terms of foreign direct investment in Viet Nam, particularly in the supporting industry, manufacturing, renewable energy and hi-tech agriculture.

He lauded Japans ongoing Sakura Blossom Festival in Viet Nam to mark the 45th founding anniversary of diplomatic ties, saying such cultural exchange activities play a significant role in enhancing bilateral ties.

Iijima hoped that there will be more Japanese sakura and Vietnamese apricot blossom festivals to promote cultural exchanges between the two nations.  VNSNational Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan leaves for Europe this morning to attend the assembly meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and pay an official visit to the Netherlands.  Photo nguyenthikimngan.org

HA NOI  National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan leaves for Europe this morning to attend the assembly meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and pay an official visit to the Netherlands . She will travel in Europe until March 30th.

Ngan will first arrive in Switzerland to lead the Vietnamese delegation at the 138th Assembly of the IPU at the invitation of the union president Gabriela Cuevas Barron.Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh (r) receives Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo

HA NOI  Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed on measures to boost bilateral ties during their talks in Ha Noi yesterday.

They lauded the steady growth of bilateral ties in the past few years, especially the political relationship with strong trust which has laid a solid foundation for the sustainable and dynamic development of the Viet Nam  Russia comprehensive strategic partnership.

Both sides agreed to increase all-level exchanges and improve the efficiency of existing co-operation, dialogue and consultation mechanisms, and accelerate negotiations and signing of new deals to create legal foundations for all-around ties.

Hailing the positive outcomes of the Viet Nam - Eurasian Economic Union Free Trade Agreement (VN-EAEU FTA), they agreed to further strive to lift two-way trade to US$10 billion by 2020. The figure rose 31 per cent year-on-year to $3.55 billion in 2017.

Discussing regional and global issues of shared concern, host and guest stressed the importance of maintaining peace and stability in the region, ensuring security, maritime and overflight safety and freedom, respecting diplomatic and legal processes and peacefully settling disputes in the East Sea (South China Sea) in accordance with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Concluding the talks, both sides signed a co-operation plan between the two foreign ministries for the 2019-2020 period.

Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (r) receives Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo Tri Dung

Russias friendship

Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong met with Lavrov on the same day, saying that the Party, State and people of Viet Nam always treasure the traditional friendship with Russia and give top priority to strengthening the comprehensive strategic partnership.

The Party chief stressed that the deepening reliable political relations between senior leaders of Viet Nam and Russia is a firm foundation to further step up co-operative ties in other fields.

Viet Nam is always prioritised in Russias foreign policy and is a leading partner of Russia in the Asian-Pacific region, said Lavrov, adding that Russia always wants to witness Viet Nams strong development and growingly important position in the region and the world as well.

The minister affirmed that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs will spare no effort to accelerate the implementation of bilateral co-operation agreements in all spheres, thereby creating practical changes in relations between the two nations in the coming time.

President Tran ai Quang (r) receives Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo Nhan Sang

Economic co-operation

President Tran ai Quang also received with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday, during which he reiterated Viet Nams wish to foster fruitful bilateral co-operation in all spheres.

The two sides should actively carry out the signed agreement on co-operation in controlling the quality and safety of agro-forestry-fishery products so as to boost trade links, the President said, asking Russia to consider permitting more Vietnamese businesses to export aquatic products to the country.

President Quang also called on both sides to create favourable conditions for their oil and gas businesses to co-operate effectively within Viet Nam-Russia joint ventures in the two countries.

The State leader said that Viet Nam is finalising procedures to ratify a protocol amending the protocol on supporting the production of motorised transportation vehicles in Viet Nam.

Viet Nam is willing to assist the formation of automobile joint ventures in the country, he said, adding that Viet Nam supports Russian firms to participate in new co-operation projects on energy and transport infrastructure.

The President proposed the Russian side back Vietnamese-invested projects in Russia, thus contributing to the enhancement of economic, trade and investment co-operation between the two countries.

Viet Nam wants to continue working with Russia in using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, he said, suggesting that the two sides soon conclude negotiations on an inter-governmental agreement on using and developing the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), aiming to enhance co-operation in information and communications as well as exploiting universal space for peaceful purposes.

Briefing the host on the results of his talks with Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, Lavrov said that both sides recognised the expansion of the Russia-Viet Nam co-operation, especially in the field of oil and gas, adding that the two sides also discussed the construction of a liquefied petroleum gas-fuelled power plant in Viet Nam, as well as the modernisation of Viet Nams railway sector.

Russia highly evaluates co-operation prospects between the two countries in defence-security and military technology, he added.

Labour export

The President suggested Russia support Viet Nam in training human resources, create favourable conditions for the Vietnamese community to reside, work and do business in Russia, and work with Viet Nam to promote culture exchanges and tourism promotion between the two nations.

The Vietnamese leader also urged the two sides to soon begin negotiations and sign an agreement on labour co-operation, making it easier for Viet Nam to send workers to Russia.

Lavrov reaffirmed the Russian Governments stance to solve citizen-related issues in line with its current legal regulations, saying that Russia is ready to discuss new legal mechanisms, including those related to the sending of Vietnamese labourers to work legally in Russia and increasing scholarships for Vietnamese students.  VNSPresident Tran ai Quang (r) receives RoK President Moon Jae-in in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Nhan Sang

HA NOI  Viet Nam and the Republic of Korea (RoK) have agreed to lift two-way trade to US$100 billion by 2020 during talks in Ha Noi yesterday between President Tran ai Quang and RoK President Moon Jae-in.

The talks took place right after the welcome ceremony held on the morning of the same day. It is the first-ever State visit to Viet Nam by President Moon from March 22-24.

Quang affirmed that Viet Nam always highly values developing ties with the RoK and wishes that the country will continue sharing its experience for the sustainable development of the two countries, and for peace, stability, development and prosperity in the region and the world.

Both sides agreed to maintain annual visits and exchanges, improve the efficiency and frequency of exchange and dialogue mechanisms, extend collaboration between the two nations governments, legislatures, Party agencies and localities, and in important fields of diplomacy, national defence, security and legal enforcement.

Apart from adopting trade balance measures, the two sides vowed to improve the efficiency of partnerships across investment, engineering, energy, labour; consider science-technology a pillar to create new momentum for bilateral links, as well as extend co-operation in culture, education, tourism and people-to-people exchange.

The Vietnamese leader welcomed Korean investment in large-scale infrastructure, industrial and smart urban areas, and equitisation of State-owned enterprises.

He asked the RoK to continue stepping up examination on agro-fishery products and chicken and pork-derived processed food, bring Vietnamese products to domestic and global distribution chains, provide Viet Nam with development assistance and preferential credit, and effectively implement the 2016  2020 credit frame agreement and financial co-operation deal.

The host spoke highly of the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on sending and receiving workers to the RoK under the Employment Permit System programme, and wished that the RoK government will continue assisting Vietnamese nationals living in the country.

The two leaders vowed to further enhance close support at international forums, and jointly cope with global challenges and non-traditional security issues. They underscored the importance of ensuring peace, security, maritime and overflight safety and freedom in the East Sea (South China Sea) while promoting the settlement of conflicts and disputes in the East Sea via peaceful means in line with international law.

The Vietnamese President lauded the RoKs efforts in accelerating inter-Korean dialogue. He reiterated Viet Nam s consistent policy of supporting denuclearisation in the Korean peninsula and constructive actions to promote dialogues for the sake of peace, security and stability in the Korean peninsula.

He welcomed the regular exchange of visits between Vietnamese and Korean ministries, agencies and localities, and further strengthening of coordination in support and automobile industries towards a more balanced trade.

The guest promised to assist Viet Nam in human resources development, science-technology, information technology, environment management, agriculture, and extend bonds across transport, energy, infrastructure and smart urban areas.

The RoK will continue with projects to support Viet Nam  RoK multicultural families, and Vietnamese brides living in the two countries, he said. He also expressed his hope for Viet Nam s facilitation of Korean investment in North-South highway and Long Thanh international airport projects.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (r) receives RoK President Moon Jae-in in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

Trade opportunities

While stressing that Viet Nam and the RoK share a range of cultural and historical similarities as well as strategic interests, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc lauded the RoKs New Look South Policy for co-operation and peace, under which the RoK considers Viet Nam a key partner.

Meeting with PM Phuc on the same day, Moon praised the strong development of Viet NamRoK relations, particularly in trade, investment and culture.

Expressing his delight at the important achievements in the bilateral relations, particularly after the establishment of the strategic partnership, the President noted that the RoK is now the second-biggest trade partner of Viet Nam , while Viet Nam is the fourth-biggest trade partner of the RoK. In 2017, Viet Nam welcomed the most Korean visitors among Southeast Asian nations.

Phuc asked the RoK to address difficulties related to quarantine of Vietnamese agricultural products, including star-apple, dragon fruits, rambutan, longan and lychees, and to open its market for Vietnamese pork and chicken in 2018.

Viet Nam wants the RoK to provide preferential credit packages and effectively implement the financial co-operation agreement worth $12 billion for a number of projects on transport infrastructure, technology transfer and revising the agreement on avoidance of double taxation, and help Viet Nam build the e-government, he said.

PM Phuc went on to say that Viet Nam expects that the RoK will receive more Vietnamese guest labourers, particularly skilled workers, adding that the two sides need to boost technology transfer in supporting industry, automobiles, mechanic, apparel, electronics and renewable energy sectors.

The PM expressed his hope that the RoK government will boost co-operation with Viet Nam in culture, education, tourism and people-to-people exchanges and allow Vietnamese airlines to increase flights and air routes to RoK localities. He also expressed hope that the South Korean government will simplify visa procedures for Vietnamese visitors and give more government scholarships to Vietnamese students.

Viet Nam is home to more than half of all RoK firms operating in Southeast Asia , the RoK President said, suggesting the Vietnamese Government facilitate their operations and investment.

Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan meets with RoK President Moon Jae-in in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Trong uc

Vietnamese bride issue

Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan met with President Moon on the same day during which both sides expressed delight at the progress of the two countries ties over the past 25 years.

Ngan urged Moon to ensure the legitimate rights and benefits of Vietnamese citizens living in the RoK, especially brides and second-generation children.

President Moon, in response, vowed to join Viet Nam s efforts to strengthen support and protection of Vietnamese brides and the future generations of the two countries.

He wants the two sides to step up co-operation in language training and soon sign an agreement on social security.  VNSHA NOI  General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong hosted a reception in Ha Noi yesterday for President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea, during which the host highlighted the significance of Moons current visit to Viet Nam.

The Party chief expressed his belief that the visit will contribute to deepen the cooperative ties between the two countries, while praising the development of Viet Nam-RoK co-operation in various fields, especially economic trade and investment.

Viet Nam always attaches importance to its relations with the RoK, he said, suggesting the two governments continue boosting co-operation, creating a firm political, economic and social foundation and further deepening the Viet Nam-RoK strategic co-operative partnership.

President Moon attributed the bilateral relations strong development over the past 25 years to the common efforts of the two countries leaders and peoples.

The president affirmed the RoK will exert more efforts to join hands with Viet Nam to foster the two countries future relations, bringing practical benefits for both peoples for peace, security, stability, development and prosperity in the region and the world.

He hoped the two countries would continue to closely work together to deepen the bilateral ties and soon elevate the relationship to a new height in the time to come.

President Moon invited Party General Secretary Trong to visit the RoK at a convenient time. The latter accepted the invitation with pleasure.  VNSIan de Cruz, the Global Director of Partnering for Green Growth and Global Goals 2030 (P4G), a Denmark-inspired new initiative to support innovative public-private partnerships, talks to Viet Nam News about P4G and how it could work in Viet Nam on the occasion of his three-day visit to the country this week

What is P4G?

P4G is an international agreement that provides a frame for how we want to move the world into the future. It brings business, government and civil society organisations together to find public-private-partnerships and advanced solutions in five sectors. The first is food/agriculture, the second is water, the third is energy, the fourth is cities and the fifth is the circular economy. We have seven partner countries. The Danish government will provide funding for the next five years. The funding for this year is expected to be about US$4 million. In 2018, P4G expects to fund 5-10 partnerships with investment ranging from under $100,000 to up to $1 million.

[P4G was established in January 2018, with initial funding over five years from Denmark. The initiative was created with international partners, including Chile, Denmark, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Republic of Korea, Mexico and Viet Nam. P4G will deliver market driven, green solutions to support countries efforts to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through three key things].

In P4G, we do three key things; provide direct support for public-private-partnerships, organise high-level summits, workshops and other meetings and showcase transformative solutions and recognise them. The biggest P4G summit will be hosted in Copenhagen this October. We are looking to have high-level representation, including governments, businesses and civil society.

What are the major activities of P4G in Viet Nam this year? How will it benefit Viet Nam?

The major activities are hoped to be implemented in the sectors of textile, energy and pepper in Viet Nam this year. We hope to increase the number of textile companies participating in P4G. The current number is only 20 companies. Another major activity is building energy efficiency, where Viet Nam is part of global leadership on building energy efficiency acceleration. In the last example, there is a lesson Viet Nam has learnt in terms of spreading sustainable value chains in coffee, which can also apply to pepper.

The first benefit is issuing what is the global experience and comparing to what has been done in Viet Nam. March 30 is the deadline for P4G partnership applications. This is an opportunity to clarify the best proposals in Viet Nam. Another benefit is Viet Nam could set up its national platform based on experiences of P4G partner countries and create a sustainable partnership between the public, private sector and civil society.

What are the criteria to choose businesses for P4G funding? How will P4G help Viet Nam reach its targets in the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement?

The key part for partners in term of organisations and enterprises is how they can help accelerating and implementing the best P4G partnership ideas. A good P4G partner is one beyond the transactions of today; with strategic directions and shared values. These are the firms P4G has secured funding for the next five years. Our goal is to aim towards 2030. So we want partners that can run until then.

How can we increase energy efficiency in all buildings in Viet Nam, how can we improve agriculture productivity and land use in commodities such as coffee and pepper, how do we address water leakage issue in the cities in Viet Nam? This is the intent behind the sustainable development goals and the Paris agreement.

If we use the principles of the circular economy, we can help efficiency in resource activities that use fewer natural resources and provide additional income for the local community. And what we want to show here in P4G is some small ways we can help implementing goals locally in Viet Nam. We could both partner and support you better.  VNSHA NOI - Digital technology and social media are powerful in supporting Viet Nams goal to eliminate HIV by 2030, it was announced at a forum yesterday.

The forum was held in Ha Noi to discuss the potential of Viet Nams growing social media ecosystem to boost HIV control.

The workshop brought the government, the private sector, and communities together to discuss how to further integrate HIV services and support into the digital age.

Dr Phan Thi Thu Huong, vice director of Viet Nam Administration of HIV/AIDS Control, said that over 50 per cent of Vietnamese people have access to the internet, and a majority of them use social media.

We need to find creative ways to reach them through new and exciting social media channels, she said.

Le Minh Thanh, director of social enterprise G-link, said that our online community on social media provides a safe space for people at risk of HIV to learn and talk about safe sex and services such as HIV self-testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

We can reach more people online and especially those who are afraid to discuss these topics publicly. We can then translate these online conversations into offline action, Thanh said.

For example, we share online booking tools to link people at risk of HIV directly to services, guide them to our e-stores to purchase essentials such as condoms and lubricants, and help them to manage adherence to long-term prevention methods such as PrEP with the iPrEP app on their mobile phones, he added.

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and PATH, an international non-profit health organization, initiated a Healthy Markets project that aims to grow a viable market for HIV-related goods and services capable of meeting the needs of people facing the greatest risks.

The project is working with local civil society organizations such as G-link, Lighthouse and Vsmile to test and scale online tools such as the Rainbow Village and Be Me.Be Sexy! Facebook communities and the I Reserve app.

I Reserve app, for example, has helped nearly 500 people make appointments for HIV testing and counselling since last year.

Among those who use the app, 12.5 per cent were diagnosed with HIVan HIV-positive rate that is twice as high as that seen through face-to-face referrals. This demonstrates that online tools offer effective ways to engage those most at risk of HIV.

Dr John Eyres, USAID Health Office Director, believed that with the introduction of forward-thinking methods such as community-based HIV testing and PrEP, Viet Nam is known as an early adopter of innovative ways to prevent and manage HIV.

Cutting edge online initiatives that are driven by communities, civil society groups, entrepreneurs, and businesses are boosting the uptake of HIV testing, PrEP, and essential products such as condoms, and are playing a critical role in Viet Nams efforts to achieve the 90-90-90 goals, he said.  VNSUpdates from the studio of Valerie JohnsonAnimals are all over the internet in many different forms such as cute photos, memes, news stories and so on. We love these furry hair balls SO much that...

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16 (23) Jan 15 (30) Jan 14 (20) Jan 13 (18) Jan 12 (24) Jan 11 (11) Jan 10 (23) Jan 09 (22) Jan 08 (17) Jan 07 (17) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (18) Jan 04 (15) Jan 03 (19) Jan 02 (14) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (15) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (7) Dec 26 (10) Dec 25 (16) Dec 24 (13) Dec 23 (16) Dec 22 (11) Dec 21 (26) Dec 20 (28) Dec 19 (14) Dec 18 (25) Dec 17 (23) Dec 16 (19) Dec 15 (22) Dec 14 (38) Dec 13 (26) Dec 12 (25) Dec 11 (27) Dec 10 (31) Dec 09 (15) Dec 08 (30) Dec 07 (31) Dec 06 (27) Dec 05 (38) Dec 04 (25) Dec 03 (27) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (36) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (17) Nov 28 (23) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (16) Nov 25 (14) Nov 24 (18) Nov 23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1)Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain.

Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred.

For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here.Samanth Submaranian at The New Yorker:

Doshi was not alone in infusing Le Corbusiers modernism with an Indian spirit. A small school of other architectsCharles Correa, Ranjit Sabikhi, Raj Rewaljoined him in this idiom between the nineteen-sixties and the eighties. The Indian state was still building itself out, so there were plenty of public commissions on offer, and the socialist temper of the times agreed with these architects interest in planning for utopia. They were displaced only a couple of decades ago, when the countrys economy opened up and a global design aesthetic blew in. Commissions now come from companies that seem to want their buildings to fit into a universal ideal of a central business district. The most ambitious government-funded project in decadesthe design of Amaravati, a new state capitallies in the hands of the world-trotting English starchitect Norman Foster.

India isnt always a pleasant country for architects. In some way, architecture has been associated with the countrys urban problems, Gautam Bhatia, an architect in New Delhi, told me. The housing is insufficient, the infrastructure is insufficient. When you have these problems, is it even ethical to worry about design? Theres a strange guilt the profession harbors. Most architects, as a result, work on private commissions, Bhatia said.

more here.Jamie Fisher in the London Review of Books:

Nominally a book that covers the rough century between the invention of the telegraph in the 1840s and that of computing in the 1950s, The Chinese Typewriter is secretly a history of translation and empire, written language and modernity, misguided struggle and brutal intellectual defeat. The Chinese typewriter is one of the most important and illustrative domains of Chinese techno-linguistic innovation in the 19th and 20th centuries  one of the most significant and misunderstood inventions in the history of modern information technology, and a historical lens of remarkable clarity through which to examine the social construction of technology, the technological construction of the social, and the fraught relationship between Chinese writing and global modernity. It was where empires met.

Long before it could be a technological reality, the Chinese typewriter was a famous non-object. In 1900, the San Francisco Examiner described a mythical Chinatown typewriter with a 12-foot keyboard and 5000 keys. The joke caught on, playing to Western conceptions of the Chinese language as incomprehensible, impractical and above all baroque: cartoons showed mandarins in flowing robes, clambering up and down staircases of keys or key-thumping in caverns. After all, Thomas Mullaney writes, if a Chinese typewriter is really the size of two ping-pong tables put together, need anything more be said about the deficiencies of the Chinese language? To many Western eyes, the characters were so exotic that they seemed to raise philosophical, rather than mechanical, questions. Technical concerns masqueraded as irresolvable Zen koans: What is Morse code without letters? What is a typewriter without keys? A Chinese typewriter was an oxymoron.

More here. [Thanks to Ali Minai.]WASHINGTON (AP) - New United Nations scientific reports diagnose that Earth is getting sicker, losing plants, animals and clean water at a dramatic rate.

Scientists meeting in Colombia looked at shrinking biodiversity in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. They report Friday that nowhere is doing well.

Study team chairman Robert Watson says shrinking biodiversity means less food and clean water for people.

The reports project that by the year 2050, if current trends continue, the Americas will have 15 percent fewer plants and animals than now.

They forecast that in Asia there will be no fish stocks for commercial fishing by 2048.

Scientists say that 28 percent of the species that live only in Europe are threatened now.

The reports say Africa could lose half of some bird and mammal species by 2100.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)The Alabama Supreme Court won't review the cases of two men currently on Alabama Death Row.

In orders issued Friday, the court denied a writ of certiorari-- or a request to review-- the case of Willie Earl Scott. The court also quashed a writ of certiorari for Alfonzo Morris.

Scott, now 38, was convicted in the Sept. 11, 1999 rape and asphyxiation death of 10-year-old Latonya Sager, who was found dead in her bed at her home in Birmingham's Norwood neighborhood.

In 2010, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld his conviction and death sentence, but the Alabama Supreme Court said that the opinion of a Jefferson County judge upholding the conviction was almost identical to briefs filed by prosecutors. The court told the county judge to Scott's case and write a new opinion.

Morris, 57, was twice convicted and sentenced to death in the 1997 beating death of an 85-year-old woman.

Miriam Rochester, who weighed 92 pounds and used a walker, was found in the hall of her Second Avenue South home on Feb. 25, 1997. Evidence showed she had been knocked to the floor with a blunt object in her living room, but had made it to a hallway before receiving the fatal blow. Her house was ransacked, and her killer stayed to eat, drink, and smoke in the home.

The Alabama Supreme Court announced they will not review the case of Alfonzo Morris (ADOC)

Morris was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003 for the crime, but the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction and sentence after determining Morris was denied a fair trial because he was not given money to hire an independent mental-health expert.

In April 2008, Morris was again tried for the two counts of capital murder, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict and the trial court declared a mistrial. His third and final trial began the next month, and Morris was again convicted and sentenced to death based on the recommendation of the jury.

In 2016, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed a circuit judge's dismissal of the inmate's appeal.A Birmingham police officer was arrested late Friday after he was charged with two felony crimes.

The Jefferson County District Attorney's Office issued warrants against Officer Tony Noble Williams for first-degree theft of property and ethics law violation, police said.

No details of his alleged crimes have been released. Jail records indicate the crimes happened March 14. Williams is assigned to the South Precinct.

Williams was booked into the Jefferson County Jail at 1:26 a.m. Saturday and released at 3:23 a.m. after posting $10,000 bond.

"The position of the Birmingham Police Department is, though an officer has been charged, they have not yet been found guilty,'' Interim Police Chief Orlando Wilson said. "We want these charges to play out in court the same as it would for anyone else."

Police said that is the only statement they will be releasing at this time.People in areas affected by severe storms on Monday will have extra time to file their taxes.

The Alabama Department of Revenue is extending deadlines for individuals and businesses in the counties where a state of emergency is in effect, a press release said.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Alabama who have been affected by these disastrous storms," Revenue Commissioner Vernon Barnett said. "As they recover from the challenges and hardships caused by the storms, the Department is offering this assistance to hopefully help ease some of the burden."

Taxpayers affected by the March 19 storms in the declared emergency areas with returns due from March 20 through April 30 have two months beyond the original deadlines to file without penalties, the department said.

The counties included in the state of emergency, signed by Gov. Kay Ivey Tuesday, are: Blount, Calhoun, Cherokee, Clay, Cleburne, Colbert, Cullman, DeKalb, Etowah, Fayette, Franklin, Jackson, Jefferson, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Limestone, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Morgan, Randolph, Shelby, St. Clair, Talladega, Walker, and Winston.

According to a press release, people who use this extension should write "Severe Weather Relief - 2018" in red ink on any state paper return or report which relies on this filing extension relief. For electronically filed returns or reports, affected taxpayers should contact ADOR to make sure they do not receive penalties.

For those in counties not specifically designated in the state of emergency, but are having situations related to the March 19 storms that prevent filing on time , the ADOR may be able to grant a waiver of late-filing and late-payment penalties. Those interested in the service should contact the ADOR and provide appropriate documentation.

For phone numbers to help with individual and business tax filings, visit the ADOR website.Garry Lynn Logan

Authorities have released the name of a Birmingham man found dead Friday afternoon behind an apartment building.

Birmingham police on Saturday identified the victim as Garry Lynn Logan. He was a 29-year-old father of four daughters and local rapper.

West Precinct officers responded about 3 p.m. to the 2300 block of South Park Drive on a report of a person down, said spokesman Lt. Pete Williston. When officers arrived on the scene, they found Logan in a grassy area. He had been shot multiple times, and was pronounced dead on the scene.

A neighbor discovered Logan Friday afternoon, but authorities don't yet know when the deadly shooting happened. Neighbors said they've heard gunshots for the past three nights in the area.

One man who was doing work nearby said one of his employees on Thursday parked a truck not far from where the body was found and returned on Friday to find it riddled with bullet holes. He suspects whoever shot the victim also damaged the truck.

Many of Logan's family members were at the scene, including his mother and grandmother.

Police have not yet identified a motive in the slaying, and no arrests have been made. Logan is Birmingham's 25th homicide this year, and the 37th in all of Jefferson County. Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.A Boaz man was killed in a single-vehicle crash Friday afternoon in Etowah County, authorities said.

Kenneth Reed Bruce, 63, died after his Nissan 300Z left the roadway on Alabama Highway 179 and struck several trees. He was not wearing a seatbelt, was ejected from the car and pronounced dead at the scene.

The wreck occurred around 4 p.m. Friday about two miles south of Boaz.

Alabama State Troopers had no further information on the incident and continued to investigate the crash as of Friday night.The owners of four dogs that mauled to death a woman in Marshall County have been indicted on felony charges of manslaughter and assault.

Amanda Dawn Albright, 40 and Doyle Simpson Patterson, 47, both of Guntersville, are charged in the Nov. 29, 2017 death of a 46-year-old woman, said Sheriff Scott Walls.

Tracey Patterson Cornelius died in the dog attack on Jason Road, just off Alabama 79 South. A second woman was injured.

Albright and Patterson were indicted by a Marshall County grand jury this month. A grand jury issues indictments when it determines prosecutors have enough evidence to send cases to trial. If convicted, the suspects face up to 30 years in prison.

Doyle Simpson Patterson

Albright and Patterson have been released from the Marshall County Jail on $20,000 bail.A former employee of a Kansas City water park has been charged with manslaughter in connection to the 2016 death of a 10-year-old boy on what was billed as the "world's tallest waterslide."

Tyler Austin Miles, the former operations direct for Schlitterbahn Waterpark, turned himself in Friday morning, according to media reports. His bail was set at $50,000.

An indictment names Miles and Schlitterbahn Waterpark as co-defendants in the Aug. 7, 2016 death of Caleb Schwab. Miles and the park were also indicted on multiple counts of aggravated battery and aggravated endangering a child, along with other charges including concealing evidence and interference with law enforcement.

Schwab was killed while on the park's signature ride, the 168-foot tall Verruckt water slide. Police said Schwab died of a neck injury; two women with him in the ride's three-person raft received minor injuries. The ride was closed indefinitely after the boy's death.

According to the Chicago Tribune, investigators discovered 13 other injuries during the 182 days the ride operated, including the case of a 15-year-old girl who went temporarily blind.

The indictment alleges the park knew the ride had a "persistent airborne problem" that was supposedly addressed during a 2014 renovation. The renovation did not solve the problem, the indictment alleges, even as park officials rushed to reopen the attraction.

Miles allegedly attempted to cover up other reports of injuries on the ride, the indictment states.

In a written statement, the park denied the allegations, saying at no time did it cover up or withhold evidence.

"The safety of our Schlitterbahn guests and employees has been at the forefront of our culture throughout our 40 years of operations. Many of us rode Verruckt regularly, as did our children and grandchildren. We have faith in the justice system and are confident that when we finally have an opportunity to defend ourselves, it will be clear that this was an accident. We stand by our team and will fight these charges," the statement said.

Schwab's family reached a settlement of an undisclosed amount with the park's owners and the ride's manufacturer last year.The three Republican challengers to Gov. Kay Ivey in the GOP gubernatorial primary are united:

Let's debate.

Both state Sen. Bill Hightower and evangelist Scott Dawson told AL.com on Thursday they were eager to participate in a debate while Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle issued two press releases this week pushing Ivey to join the other candidates on the debate stage.

State Sen. Bill Hightower. (AL.com file photo)

"I'm ready to debate anytime, anywhere," said Hightower, R-Semmes. "I've got some great ideas I want to tell Alabama about. So everybody's talking about it but I'm ready to do it."

Dawson echoed those sentiments almost verbatim.

"Everyone says they want a debate," he said. "So if you say you're going to debate, then the next step is actually debating."

So far, though, no debates have been announced.

There is still time for a single debate or even a series of debates to be arranged, of course, since the June 5 primary is more than two months away. For instance, a televised debate between GOP U.S. Senate candidates Luther Strange and Roy Moore came together quickly last fall and took place less than a week before voters went to the polls in September.

But if Ivey is the favorite as the sitting governor - she took office April 10, 2017 after Robert Bentley was forced to resign - and with an outsized campaign war chest compared to others in the race, her opponents are eager to bolster their hopes discussing issues on the same stage with the governor.

Battle on Thursday included a list of five would-be debates and candidate forums he has committed to attend. His press release also included a newspaper clipping from 1982 in which Ivey, who was challenging incumbent Jan Cook, was seeking election as state auditor. According to that clipping from The Montgomery Advertiser, Ivey sent a telegram to Cook, inviting her to appear with her throughout the state to discuss qualifications for office.

Cook declined the invite.

In that 1982 race, Ivey held a press conference on the capitol steps that included an empty chair with Cook's name on it.

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle. (AL.com file photo)

"Tommy Battle agrees with Gov. Ivey, 'All residents of Alabama deserve to hear from each candidate, personally, about their qualifications and their vision for our great state, especially since neither of us have yet to be elected Governor,' said Battle," according to the press release.

Battle, Dawson and Hightower all argued that gubernatorial debates would be the good of the state - Battle and Dawson both used the word "deserves" when speaking of a debate for voters while Hightower said "needs."

Ivey's campaign told The Associated Press last month that she would be "happy to discuss her record" in a debate setting. Earlier this week, Ivey's campaign - in a statement to AL.com in the wake of Battle's first press release - did not directly address the issue of a debate.

"Gov. Ivey has already attended events with her fellow candidates, and she will continue to do so," campaign manager Mike Lukach said. "She has been crisscrossing the state sharing her message. Thanks to Kay's conservative leadership, Alabama is working again."

AL.com is planning debates for both Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates and has extended invitations to all candidates to participate. The dates for those debates have not yet been announced.

"I'm eager to do it," Hightower said. "I will do it on my own if nobody else does it. I think I've got the best ideas. But also, we've got to reach Alabama and Alabama needs to know what our vision is because Alabama needs a leader. I've been in Montgomery for only a few years (he was elected to the state Senate in 2013) but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see we haven't had leadership."

Gov. Kay Ivey. (AL.com file photo)

Since Ivey was not elected governor, Dawson said it makes debates all the more important.

"We do not have an elected governor at this stage," he said. "We have a selected governor because our previous governor was removed. So I think all of Alabama deserves to hear all four candidates on the platform to share their ideas and their vision instead of being dictated by other people."

But after all the lobbying and pushing for debates, for now the question remains: Will it actually take place?

"I don't know if the debates are going to happen or not," said Dawson, who said he is meeting with voters on a daily basis. "I can't put all my eggs in that basket."Another omnibust. A spendoggle. Those are just a few of the colorful labels attached to the H.R. 1625, The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 which President Donald Trump signed into law. Facing ugly midterm election prospects, Republicans could use more enthusiasm from their voters. Weighing in at more than 2,000 pages, the new spending law is a backhand to their conservative base.

This isn't what responsible governance looks like regardless of party.

The $1.3 trillion abomination is the offspring of a broken congressional process and the misguided belief that Americans won't realize they're being fleeced...again.

Our federal government operates on a fiscal year. It runs from October 1st of one year to the following September 30th. Many in Congress seem shocked to discover this phenomenon happens every single year. Stopgap spending measures like continuing resolutions don't create surprises either. The moment one becomes law, Congress knows exactly when it expires.

On the other hand, Congress could pass 12 appropriations bills under the regular funding process. That's the most basic function we should expect from our elected officials. Forget all other legislative aspirations, Congress has the constitutional power of the purse and the obligation to use it regularly and responsibly.

There's a reason we break appropriations into 12 different pieces of legislation. Federal spending deserves scrutiny. Legislators need to debate spending priorities and have the ability to oppose spending without shutting down the whole government.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell claims to agree. "Beginning the [budget] process early means giving Senators from both sides more opportunity to debate and offer ideas they think might make these bills even better," said McConnell in May 2016.

Speaker Paul Ryan has been even more specific. "We are supposed to study up and do the homework that [our constituents] cannot do," he said after being elected speaker in October 2015. "So when we do not follow regular order, when we rush to pass bills that a lot of us don't understand, we are not doing our job."

McConnell and Ryan know Congress isn't doing its job, and they're at the helm.

The truth is we haven't really funded our federal government through the process outlined in the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act for about a decade. After Democrats stopped trying to pass regular appropriation bills under former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republicans promised a return to that process. They simply haven't delivered.

These days McConnell and Ryan routinely leave members with the option of either shutting down the federal government or supporting a single, massive legislative dumpster fire. When that fire dies out, we do it again.

Don't confuse opposition to these irresponsible spending practices with fiscal hawkishness. We ought to fund government. We don't need to do it this way.

The ensuing congressional spin is an insult to every one of us who know this isn't right. What's worse is when it comes from self-proclaimed conservatives in Congress. Representative Bradley Byrne (AL-1) represents Alabama's most conservative congressional district. Here's what he had to say about the latest federal spending blowout (my annotations in bold):

With today's vote, we are finally getting the resources to our military men and women they need to keep our nation safe. So Congress hasn't adequately funded our military until now? Also important, the bill adequately funds long-needed infrastructure improvements, programs to address the opioid epidemic, border security, and medical research programs. For the price of $1.3 trillion, we paid for a few things. I am confident in the Trump Administration's ability to spend this money in a way that reflects our conservative priorities and rebuilds our national defense. Since when does a broken process resulting in explosive spending without transparency become a conservative priority?

Like virtually every congressional district, Byrne's does benefit from federal spending. That said, his press release on the bill doesn't raise one critique of the new spending law. He's basically expecting his constituents to appreciate the backhand because it has some goodies along with it.

Byrne wasn't alone. Other than Representatives Gary Palmer (AL-6) and Mo Brooks (AL-5), the seven other members of Alabama's federal delegation supported the monstrosity.

Even President Trump could smell the swamp stank coming off this omnibus. "I will never sign another bill like this again," he said. "I'm not going to do it again. Nobody read it. It's only hours old. Some people don't even know -- it's $1.3 trillion."

Yet sign it he did.

Trump isn't an innocent party here. He's the President of the United States. He begins the budget process, and he has a responsibility to engage along the way. Ironically, much of his displeasure originated from the lack of funding for a border wall and DACA reforms.

Republicans can quit the act about transparency, draining the swamp and restoring regular order to the federal spending process. It's business as usual--particularly if we look at the vote count on legislation like this.

The average American might not know all the details of what's happening in Washington, but we've seen this spending sham for too many years. We don't need another tired excuse from politicians that this is the best Congress can do. We need to send politicians to Washington who actually do better.

Cameron Smith is a regular columnist for AL.com and vice president for the R Street Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.Sessions addressed Black Law Enforcement Officials in Birmingham

Hallelujah, we've resolved America's cocaine crisis! We've stemmed that rising tide of deaths due to cocaine overdoses that plagued our communities between for years!

Heroin, too! Good riddance to the scourge that killed nearly 14,000 Americans in 2015, according to the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control!

What, we didn't?

You mean nearly two million people used cocaine, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration and killed nearly 7,000 people last year, the most in more than a decade?

And heroin has never been more addictive and deadly?

You'd never know from listening to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' address to the National Organization of Law Enforcement Officers Friday in Birmingham.

The nation's top law enforcement official returned to his home state to tell his audience pretty much what they already knew about the nation's opioid epidemic--that fatal overdoses are soaring, up among whites by 55% between 2010 and 2016 and more than doubling among African Americans.

"By the time I finish speaking," he said, "another American will have died of an opioid overdose and another baby will be born who is physically dependent on opioids."

Indeed, Sessions mentioned the word "opioids" (or some variation) at least 13 times.

"Cocaine"? Not once.

He even called out Fentanyl a couple of times.

"Heroin"? Once.

The opioid crisis is undoubtedly worthy of the attention it's receiving--as well as the $6 billion Sessions said the federal government will spend to fight it.

Sessions speaks with black law enforcement officials in Birmingham

And it is indeed a health crisis, as it's been labeled by Trump administration and health officials and embraced by the media.

So was the surge of cocaine--specifically, its deadly derivation, crack--that ravaged black communities throughout the nation in the 1980s.

But as we all know now, that epidemic was treated much differently--not at all like a health crisis but as the impetus for perhaps President Ronald Reagan's most racist actions: mandatory sentencing laws that transformed low-level users into criminals and lead to a mass incarceration epidemic African-Americans destroyed black families and at least two generations of African Americans who were thrust into the penal system and never offered the kind of treatment today's drug users are being offered.

Never offered the kind of legal muscle being used today to choke the distributors and manufacturers of opioids.

Never offered the empathy opioid users universally receive.

Reagan's criminalization stance put Richard Nixon's "war on drugs" on steroids.

And made it an all-out war on black people.

The CIA was even funding some of the groups in Central America primarily responsible for flooding black communities with crack--all under the guise of fighting communism.

We lost that war. Badly.

America lost that war.

Many of the ills that plague our poorest, predominantly black neighborhoods right now are easily traced to Reagan's purge of mostly black men but many young black women, as well, from their homes, their jobs and their families, including--in way too many instances--their children.

Many of those families are still broken. As are many of those men, women and, especially, those children. And their children.

Too many are still dying from cocaine and crack overdoses.

The rates of cocaine-related deaths among blacks are about the same as heroin and opioid-related deaths among whites, a study revealed late last year.

Sessions speaks with black law enforcement officials i Birmingham

Speaking to a group of African-American law enforcement leaders, Sessions ignored an opportunity to re-write the national narrative--the "messaging", as Houston Police Chief Vera Bumpers described it--that today's drug epidemic features a "whites only" sign in its focus on opioids.

He disregarded this perfect time and place to broaden its truth and acknowledge an audience whose communities have been fighting a debilitating health crisis for generations.

Communities still in the midst of a war none of us can afford to lose.

Roy S. Johnson's column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Hit me up at rjohnson@al.com or/and follow me at twitter.com/roysj.John Mica, a former Florida congressman and UF education alumnus, held up a letter dated Feb. 4, 1988 during the Norman Hall groundbreaking ceremony Friday.

He said former UF president John Lombardi had sent it to Mica addressing the need for renovations to the education building.

Sorry, John, Lombardi had written. Im a little late.

About 200 politicians, alumni, students and faculty members gathered Friday at Norman Hall Plaza to celebrate the renovation of UFs education college that has been in the making for years. The college started construction with a groundbreaking ceremony that included speakers, cake and light refreshments of ice tea and water.

The UF College of Education Dean Glenn Good said the college and staff first began planning for this reconstruction since the 1980s.

As long as I have been dean here at the College of Education, weve been talking about the need for rehabilitation of our beloved Norman Hall, he said.

The $29 million renovation will take part in two phases, according to Alligator archives. Phase one began in December with Norman library and the third floor of the east Norman building. It is expected to be completed by early May. Phase two will be the rest of Norman with updated classrooms, study spaces and faculty offices.

Good, UF President Kent Fuchs, Florida Congressman Ted Yoho, Former Florida Congressman John Mica, UF Trustee Anita Zucker, College of Education Associate Dean Tom Dana and lead architect Joe Walker of Walker Architects were some of the speakers at the ceremony.

With this project, we return Norman to its former glory, Fuchs said.

Tom Dana, the education associate dean of academic affairs, said Norman Hall construction has already started on the east side of the building. However, the entire college will be closed off until May 15.

Im thrilled that theres going to be some great places for students to hang out, he said.

Anita Zucker, who graduated from the education college in 1972 and sits on the UF Board of Trustees, said the importance of updating Norman and the accomplishments the college has already achieved.

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Seeing what this university is able to bring to other places makes me so proud, she said.

Leaders of the Norman Hall Rehabilitation project participate in a ceremonial groundbreaking Friday at the Norman Hall Plaza.OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- By mid-morning Saturday, there were already well in excess of 100 children, accompanied by parents, grandparents and others, gathered at Little Children's Park in downtown Ocean Springs for the city's annual Easter Egg Hunt.

Children took part in numerous games and activities and posed for photos with the Easter Bunny as they waited for the first wave of children to be called for the first round of egg hunting.

Promptly at 10 a.m., the carnage began, with kids up to two years of age and their parents swarmed into the open grass area of the park to pick up the colorful, plastic eggs with various goodies inside.

By the time the four different age groups finished swarming over the eggs, more than 3,000 were distributed.

"It's a great turnout. Great," said Bre Liddell, Camp and Special Event Coordinator for the Ocean Springs Parks & Recreation Department. "I'd say this is the biggest one we've ever had. We filled more than 3,000 eggs and we'll go through all of them, easily."

The decades-long event (no one remembers exactly when it started) continues to be one of the more popular and well-received family events in Ocean Springs, drawing children and their parents from throughout Ocean Springs and elsewhere.

"This is so fun. Seeing the kids here, especially the little ones, having a great time -- they're so cute," said Donna Lackey of St. Martin. "I like the fact it's here in the park, fenced off, where it's easy to keep track of the kids and it's safe. They're all having a great time."

The event has in past years been sponsored by local businesses, but this year the parks & recreation department absorbed the roughly $2,500 cost, said Liddell, who has worked the past eight Easter Egg Hunts.

In addition to the egg hunts and other activities, there were multiple drawings for each age group for large Easter baskets put together by Liddell and her staff.1. Why are people marching?

As part of March For Our Lives, the local march and protest at Bo Diddley Plaza is one of 843 currently planned worldwide in support of the #NeverAgain movement, led by the high school students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida. Over 500,000 marchers are expected in Washington, D.C., alone, according to the Washington Post.

2. Where will the march take place?

The Saturday march will begin from Bo Diddley Plaza at 1:30 p.m., said Heather Yu, a UF mathematics and microbiology freshman organizing the march. Participants will march down West University Avenue to the intersection of Northeast Archer Road, State Road 24, and West University Avenue. Marchers will then protest for about an hour before returning to Bo Diddley Plaza.

3. Whos speaking?

Yu will welcome attendees at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Local politicians will speak, including Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe and UF political science junior Shreyas Amol Jethwani, whos running for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives.

Also speaking are several Marjory Stoneman Douglas alumni and 11-year-old Aagneya Singh Banerjee, who organized a walkout at his school, Joseph Williams Elementary School, more than a week ago to advocate for gun reform.

4. What are the police departments safety measures?

As of press time, GPD spokesperson Ben Tobias said police officers will not close any streets for the march, but that could change depending on the number of marchers. Hes expecting about 300 people to attend. Yu, however, expects about 1,000 marchers to attend. Tobias said the department may have undercover police officers and may call in officers scheduled to be off duty if they feel there is the need.

5. What food and entertainment will there be?

Yu, a march organizer, said no food vendors or food sponsors will be at the event. However, local restaurants, including Steamers in Bo Diddley Plaza, will be open.

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Two local bands, Michael Tamayo and Friends and The Rick Ryan Band, will be performing throughout the day.

Contact Elliott Nasby at enasby@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter at @_ElohEl.

Contact Robert Lewis at rlewis@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter at @Lewis__Robert.

More than 800 marches for Saturday have been organized worldwide. This graphic shows the locations of the U.S. marches.The remote island of Hendersona tiny dot in the South Pacific Oceanlies approximately halfway between New Zealand and Chile. It is one of four islands that make up the Pitcairn Group. It was here, in 1789, the mutineers of the HMS Bounty sought safe heaven, eventually settling on the island of Pitcairn, located some 190 km away from Henderson. Pitcairn is the only inhabited island in the group. No one lives on Henderson Island, and aside from an occasional visit from scientists and Pitcairns dwindling population, there are hardly any tourists here. The nearest major landmass is more than 5,000 kilometers away.

Photo credit: Jennifer Lavers

Yet strangely, Henderson Island is not untouched by human influence. What should have been pristine sandy beaches are littered with trashfishing nets and floats, water bottles, helmets, and large, rectangular pieces of plastic. Researchers estimate there are some 38 million pieces of plastic, weighing 18,000 kg in total, scattered around the islands waterfront. The majority of the debrisapproximately 68 percentis not even visible; they are buried under the sand.

Every square meter of Hendersons beaches has between 20 and 670 pieces of plastic on the surface and between 50 and 4,500 pieces buried in the topmost 10 centimeters. About 3,750 new pieces of litter wash up on the islands north beach everyday. If these estimates are correct, Henderson Island might have the highest densities of plastic pollution reported anywhere in the world.

Where do all these trash come from? The giant plastic soup called the ocean, of course. Henderson Island lies on the outskirts of the Southern Pacific Gyre, a large rotating ocean current circling between Australia and South America, bounded by the Equator. The gyre's rotational pattern draws in trash from across the South Pacific Ocean and far-off continents and deposits them on Hendersons shore. A similar phenomenon occurs in the Northern hemisphere, where plastic from around the North Pacific Ocean gets washed onto Hawaiis Kamilo beach.

Jennifer Lavers, a scientist at the University of Tasmania who lead the research, have traced the source of the debris on Henderson Island to 24 different countries from every continent.

Once plastic lands on the island, irradiation from the suns UV rays makes the plastic brittle and they break apart into hundreds or even thousands of pieces, some of which are less than 2 millimeters across. They become buried in the sand and became a permanent part of the island.

Sadly, the whole place was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1988. The UNESCOs website still describes the island as one of the few atolls in the world whose ecology has been practically untouched by human presence.

A purple hermit crab on Henderson Island. Photo credit: Jennifer Lavers

Trash on Henderson Island. Photo credit: Jennifer Lavers

Photo credit: Ron Van Oers/WikimediaUS school gives teachers and students rocks to fight off shooters

The Biblical ways are always best. Obey the 10 Commandments. If you see a burning bush talk to it. And the best way to slay a lunatic Philistine bristling with weaponry is to sling stones at them. It might just work in Pennsylvania, where one school district is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks.

Every classroom in the Blue Mountain School District in rural Philadelphia is equipped with a 5-gallon bucket of river stones. We always strive to find new ways to keep our students safe, Superintendent David Helsel tells The Associated Press. Throwing rocks is more effective than just crawling under desks and waiting, and it gives students and teachers a chance to defend themselves.

The rocks form the C part of the ALICE action plan in case of emergency  Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate.

There has never been a mass school shooting in Pennsylvania. In much the same way there has never been a Islamist attack on a school in the UK, but children in many prepare for such a horror with a drill. In 2017, when the bells sounded at Craigie High School, Dundee, children hid under desks. The school went into lockdown. It was a false alarm. They were given no prior warning.

In common with other schools across the city, Craigie High School periodically tests the resilience of its procedures, said a spokesman for Dundee City Council. Clearly it is important that any drill is as realistic as possible, but as soon as the procedures had been tested, the school community was informed that it was an exercise.

Should we be worried that the threat of a rare attack is now part of growing up in the West? What happened to terrorists not changing our way of life?

As for life in Blue Mountain School District, if reason cant defeat the shooter and change US gun laws, maybe an army of Davids can.

Paul Sorene

Posted: 24th, March 2018 | In: News Comment | TrackBack | PermalinkOn 19 March, an opening ceremony for the Russia-Belarus tactical peacekeeping exercise took place in Ulyanovsk. The exercise is involving Russian Airborne Troops and Special Forces of Belarus.



On 19 March, an opening ceremony for the Russia-Belarus tactical peacekeeping exercise took place in Ulyanovsk. (Picture source: Russian MoD)

The Russian formation are providing BMD-4M airborne combat vehicles and BMD-4M APCs, parachute systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, transport and combat helicopters, special EW equipment, small arms, sniper equipment. In total, some 600 troops and 80 pieces of military and special hardware are to be involved in the exercises.

This first Russia-Belarus exercise is being held in the territory of the Russian Federation, in accordance with the Cooperation Plan between the Russian and Belarusian defense ministries.Could not establish database connection.

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The administrator has been notified and will resolve the problem ASAP.With Sridevis demise last month, there was uncertainty about the time when the marriage takes place.

Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja have locked in their wedding destination.

Mumbai: News of Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja getting married made its way post the glamourized Virushka wedding.

However with Sridevis demise, there was uncertainty about the time when the marriage takes place.

Mumbai Mirror has now reported all the details about the SoAnand wedding  from the venue to the date and the ceremonies, theyve got it all covered.

The date and venue for the wedding have been locked and mass bookings for flights are presently underway. Her dad Anil Kapoor is personally making phone calls to invite guests. There will be sangeet and mehendi ceremonies, followed by a traditional Hindu wedding, a source from the team planning the wedding told Mumbai Mirror.

As reported since a long time now, Sonam and Anand will have a destination wedding, and have reportedly locked in Geneva for the same. Sonam discovered Geneva while visiting it for brand commitment.

The nuptials will be preceded by an engagement ceremony attended by the familys inner circle but the venue for that is presently not known, the source added.

The daily even reported that designers Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla will be designing her wedding outfit and Ralph & Russo have also been roped in for the ceremony.The allegation is that then Finance Minister P Chidambaram granted the approval without going to the CCEA.

Karti filed his plea seeking protection of arrest before Special Judge O P Saini in the Aircel-Maxis matter, in which the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) have lodged cases in 2011 and 2012 respectively. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has accused former Finance Minister P Chidambaram's son Karti of "forum shopping". The investigation agency said that Karti has approached multiple courts through multiple applications in connection with the Aircel-Maxis case.

The allegation is that then Finance Minister P Chidambaram granted the approval without going to the CCEA.

However, counsel appearing for Karti Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal asked how the then finance ministers approval being valid or not had any relation with Karti.

Hours after being granted bail by the Delhi High Court in the INX media case, Karti Chidambaram on Friday filed anticipatory bail pleas in a city court in cases relating to the alleged irregularities in FIPB clearance to a company in Aircel-Maxis matter arising out of the 2G spectrum cases.

Karti filed his plea seeking protection of arrest before Special Judge O P Saini in the Aircel-Maxis matter, in which the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) have lodged cases in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

The matter pertains to grant of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance to firm M/S Global Communication Holding Services Ltd for investment in Aircel.

The CBI had in August 2014 filed a charge sheet against former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanithi and six others, including four firms for the alleged offences punishable under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC and under relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The CBI is probing how the then finance minister (Chidambaram himself) had granted Foreign Investement Promotion Board (FIPB) approval to a deal involving a foreign firm when only the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) was empowered to do so.

The CBI had claimed that M/s Global Communication Services Holdings Ltd had sought FIPB approval for USD 800 million for which only the CCEA was competent, but Chidambaram had given approval to the firm in March 2006.

(With PTI inputs)BJP wins 12 out of 25 seats in 6 states; Congress gets 5.

Lucknow: On a day of swift manoeuvres, the BJP outsmarted Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati to win nine of the 10 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, while the Samajwadi Party won one.

It was a case of sweet revenge for the BJP as independent candidate Anil Agarwal, backed by the saffron party, defeated Mayawatis nominee Bhimrao Ambedkar amid cross voting by both SP and BSP legislators and a dramatic two-hour delay in counting after the Opposition parties complained about cross voting to the EC.

The BSP had helped the SP win two of the saffron partys safest Lok Sabha seats in last weeks bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.

Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, was the most prominent among the nine BJP nominees to be elected from Uttar Pradesh. The SPs Jaya Bachchan also made it to the Upper House.

Over all, it was a day of big gains for the BJP in the RS elections as it won 12 of the 25 seats for which voting took place on Friday. The Congress won five.

On March 15, 33 candidates from 10 states were declared elected unopposed, of whom 16 were BJP MPs. Out of the 58 Rajya Sabha seats that will fall vacant this April, the BJP has managed to bag 28, the Congress has got 10 and 20 seats have been won by other parties.

Before the elections on Friday, the BJP was the largest party in the House with 58 MPs followed by the Congress with 54 MPs.

In April, the tenure of BJPs 17 MPs lapses. With these results, its tally in Rajya Sabha rises to 69.

Congratulating the victorious party MPs, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, Congratu-lations to all those elected to the Rajya Sabha from various states and best wishes for their parliamentary career. I hope they effectively voice the aspirations of the states they will represent.

Earlier, counting of votes in Uttar Pradesh was delayed by over two hours following complaints filed by SP and BSP and two votes being declared invalid by the EC - one each of the BJP and BSP.

Uttar Pradesh parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Khanna, who was present during counting, said that the votes were declared invalid due to overwriting.

The victorious BJP candidates in Uttar Pradesh included G.V.L. Narsimha Rao, Anil Jain, Sakal Deep Rajbhar, Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, Kanta Kardam, Harnath Singh Yadav and Ashok Bajpai.

Samajwadi Partys candidate Ms Bachchan won another term to the Rajya Sabha with 38 votes, one more than the required 37 votes.

A tough contest was seen between the BJP-backed Independent candidate Mr Agarwal, who got 22 first preference votes, and BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar, who got 33 first preference votes. The BSP candidate was backed by the SP and the Congress.

However, the BJP candidate won after counting of second preference votes as the BSP candidate did not get second preference votes from the SP. The BSP and SP faced cross-voting by two of their legislators.

An MLA of ally Nishad Party also went with the BJP, while two jailed legislators  BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari and SP MLA Hariom Yadav  were not allowed by the courts to cast their votes. Taking the total loss of the SP-BSP alliance to five votes.

BSP MLA Anil Singh voted for the BJP and said, I have voted for the BJP. I do not know about the rest. Mr Singh, late on Thursday night, was seen heading for the chief ministers residence for a dinner meeting which made it clear that he would not vote for his partys official candidate.

SP MLA Nitin Agarwal, son of former SP leader Naresh Agarwal, also voted for the BJP.

Independent MLA Aman Mani Tripathi said that he had followed the guidelines of Maharaj ji (Yogi Adityanath) and voted for the BJP.

Two MLAs of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, a BJP ally, are reported to have cross-voted in favour of the BSP. The other ally of the BJP  Apna Dal which has nine MLAs  claimed to have voted in favour of the BJP.

Independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya left everyone guessing on Friday.

He tweeted that he had not changed and neither had his ideology. I am with Akhileshji but this does not mean that I am with BSP. I will vote for SP candidate (Jaya Bachchan).

Shortly after Raja Bhaiyyas tweet, Akhilesh Yadav tweeted, Thank you for supporting Samajwadi Party with his photograph with Raja Bhaiyya who, ironically, is seen wearing a saffron kurta.

Raja Bhaiyya was one of the last legislators to cast his vote and immediately after casting his vote, he proceeded to meet chief minister Mr Adityanath that sent rumor mills spinning.

Raja Bhaiyya is known for his anti-BSP stand after he and his father Uday Pratap Singh were booked under POTA in 2003 by the then chief minister Mayawati who accused them of plotting to topple her government. He is said to be upset over the SP-BSP alliance.

BSP MLAs arrived together to cast their votes, as did the seven Congress MLAs. From the Samajwadi Party, Shivpal Yadav was the first to cast his vote. A total of 400 legislators cast their votes on Friday.

Voting ended around 3 pm, an hour earlier than scheduled. But there were dramatic scenes before the counting as Opposition parties approached the EC over cross-voting.

The EC asked for security camera footage after the SP and the BSP alleged that the lawmakers had not displayed their ballots to party agents, as is the rule after voting.

We complained to the EC that our MLA Anil Singh did not show his vote to the election agent of the party before casting it, said Uma Shankar Singh, deputy leader of the BSP in the state Assembly.

The SP lodged a similar complaint against MLA Nitin Agarwal, who had switched sides after his father quit the party and joined the BJP recently.

There were 11 candidates for 10 Rajya Sabha seats and 37 first preference votes were needed for each seat. The BJP had 324 MLAs to ensure a win on eight seats comfortably. The Samajwadi Party had 47 lawmakers, enough to win one seat while the BSP had 19 lawmakers of which one is in jail and one has cross voted. So, with an effective strength of 17, the BSP needed 20 extra votes which it failed to manage.

In West Bengal, the ruling Trinamul Congress won four seats. All four TMC candidates  sitting Rajya Sabha member Nadimul Haque and first-time nominees Subhasish Chakraborty, Abir Biswas and Santanu Sen  made it to the Upper House comfortably.

Congress Abhishek Manu Singhvi won the fifth Rajya Sabha seat from the state. He called his victory humbling and uplifting and the result of cooperation between different groups and MLAs.

In Assembly poll-bound Karnataka, three seats were won by the Congress and one by the BJP. Congress Dr L. Hanumanthaiah, Dr Syed Naseer Hussain and G.C. Chandrasekhar and s Rajeev Chandrashekar bagged the seats in the state.

BJPs Saroj Pandey won the lone seat in Chhattisgarh by beating Congresss Lekhram Sahu. In Jharkhand, the Congress and the BJP won one seat each.

In Telangana, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi(TRS) won all the three seats. TRS candidates B. Prakash, B. Lingaiah Yadav and J. Santosh Kumar were declared elected.

In Kerala, M.P. Veerendra Kumar, the state president of the Janata Dal (U) Sharad Yadav faction, retained his seat in Kerala bypoll. He had vacated the seat in December 2017 to protest against JD(U) leader and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar joining hands with BJP-led NDA.Tony Morrison/ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- In the wake of last months deadly shooting at a Florida high school, hundreds of thousands are marching in the nations capital and at rallies across the country today, demanding change so that the carnage in Parkland, Florida, will Never Again take place.



Thousands of students, teachers, parents and more activists came out for todays March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C., and at sister rallies around the country.



"Good Morning America" asked activists on the ground why they chose to march today.



Here is what they said, in their own words.



"I am marching for my friends that passed, and all children that have been taken from their families and friends because of gun violence," Lauren Hogg, a ninth-grader at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, told ABC News.



Lauren, who is the sister of student activist David Hogg, continued: "I am marching because of the empty desk in my classroom where my friend once sat and the unfulfilled conversations about our futures that we shared. I am marching for my unsaid goodbyes and the future of America. I hope that things will change and one day we can once again feel safe in the places in which we should already be able to feel safe such as schools."



Rebecca Boldrick, the Hoggs' mother, told ABC News, "As a mother and a teacher I am marching because our schools need to return to being the sanctuaries they should be.



"I don't want there to be any more senseless mass killings by assault rifles," she added.



Brianna Fisher, also a student at MSD, said she is marching "so students can return to a place of safety and learning rather than violence and war."



Jeremiah Godby, 24, said he stepped out in the nation's capital today because "enough is enough."



"This is not about Democrat or Republicans, this is about coming together and about finding solutions," he added. "We are stronger when we are together and when we are united."



Riyo, 15, a high school student marching in D.C., said she was out today because "no student should ever be afraid to go to school."



Miami, Florida: 'Enough is enough'



Much closer to Parkland, scores of activists stepped out at an event in Miami to show solidarity to those marching in the nation's capital today.



Genesis Davila, the current Miss Florida USA, stepped out at a rally in Miami today, saying she is there "supporting all the children."



"Enough is enough," Davila added.



Briana Borres, also in Miami, told ABC News, "Im here to march for all of those who have no voices left and we are here to support those who cant support themselves."



The rally in Miami also had students and alumni of Marjory Stoneman Douglas in attendance, including Catherine Zhao, who told ABC News, "I am here because I am a proud member of the Stoneman Douglas graduating class of 2014."



Elsewhere around the country



Thousands of activists also stepped out at sister rallies around the country, slamming senseless gun violence and showing solidarity with students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.



Hamdia Ahmed, 18, in Portland, Maine, told ABC News that she is out marching because "we are here to stand up against gun violence and for our leaders to step up to end gun violence."



In Albany, New York, Kaelyn, 17, said she is marching "because I realize that I have a voice and that I have the power to make a change in this country."



Katie Evans, 18, an activist in Little Rock, Arkansas, told ABC News she is out today "marching against gun violence."



"I am marching for the safety in our schools, churches, just in general, all students, all people deserve to be safe," she added.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.Supreme Court of Kentucky. COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY, APPELLANT/CROSS-APPELLEE v. WILLIAM ROY HELM, JR., APPELLEE/CROSS-APPELLANT 2016-SC-000370-DG Decided: March 22, 2018

COUNSEL FOR APPELLANT/CROSS-APPELLEE: Andy Beshear Attorney General of Kentucky Brian Darwin Morrow Assistant Attorney General COUNSEL FOR APPELLEE/CROSS-APPELLANT: Euva Denean Blandford Department of Public Advocacy

REVERSING AND REINSTATING

We granted the Commonwealth's motion for discretionary review to determine whether the Court of Appeals erred when it reversed the trial court's denial of William Roy Helm Jr.'s RCr 11.42 post-conviction motion for a new sentencing-phase trial based upon ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Remanding for a new sentencing-phase trial for Helm, the Court of Appeals held that the trial court erred by failing to find Helm's trial counsel's performance constitutionally deficient for having advised Helm to enter into a sentencing agreement with the Commonwealth to waive jury sentencing and accept a plea agreement under which he was sentenced to the maximum penalty to avoid potential risks to his parole eligibility and meritorious credit against his sentence. We reverse the Court of Appeals' decision because we hold that it misapplies our ineffective-assistance-of-counsel standard by failing to consider, as the trial court properly did, the totality of the circumstances of Helm's case from the perspective of an objectively reasonable trial attorney, placing too much emphasis on Helm's agreeing to the maximum penalty.

We also granted Helm's cross-motion for discretionary review to consider his argument that the trial court erred by denying his motion for relief for ineffective assistance of appellate counsel, who advised him to dismiss an earlier appeal in favor of pursuing the RCr 11.42 motion now before us on discretionary review. Because it reversed the trial court on the denial of the RCr 11.42 motion, the Court of Appeals did not reach the defective-appellate-counsel issue Helm presents to us. But we agree on discretionary review with the trial court's determination that appellate counsel's performance was not constitutionally deficient.

Accordingly, we reverse the opinion of the Court of Appeals and order that the trial court's order be reinstated.

I. BACKGROUND.

A circuit court jury convicted Helm of five counts of second-degree rape, two counts of second-degree sodomy, and two counts of first-degree sexual abuse . Before the guilt phase of the jury trial, Helm and the Commonwealth reached the following sentencing agreement: the trial court would sentence Helm to ten years' imprisonment for all crimes committed against each victim (there were two victims), meaning a 20-year prison sentence, to be served consecutively, with 20% parole-eligibility.

The events culminating in the sentencing agreement are the source of Helm's first RCr 11.42 ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim. As the trial court found, the trial record reflects that Helm's trial counsel and the trial court acknowledged that 20 years' imprisonment, by law, was the maximum sentence Helm could receive. The parties were unsure at trial as to whether, by law, Helm's convictions would make him 85% parole eligible, as opposed to the 20% eligibility that Helm wanted.

But Helm agreed to these terms partly because his trial counsel asserted that the Department of Corrections had been classifying similarly situated prisoners at 85% parole eligibility. In addition to providing his own anecdotal evidence from his experience as an attorney, Helm's counsel supported the necessity of this stipulation in the sentencing agreement because of the following language contained in the Department of Public Advocacy's trial manual:

WARNING!! KRS 439.3401(1) which lists the offenses which can qualify a person as a violent offender, includes offenses which are Class C or D felonies, or even misdemeanors. For example, subsection (1)(d) says that a person is a violent offender if convicted of or has pled to, The commission or attempted commission of a felony sexual offense described in KRS Chapter 510. Sexual abuse 1st Degree is a Class C or D felony. KRS 510.110. Attempted Sexual Abuse 1st Degree is a Class A Misdemeanor. KRS 506.010(4)(d). Although subsection (4) seems to limit 85% parole eligibility to Class A and B felonies, nevertheless, the Department of Corrections has applied it to ALL felony sexual offenses in the past. DPA Appeals Branch had to do a Declaratory Judgment action. So, have the judge make a finding of parole eligibility at the sentencing hearing and get an agreed order.8

Helm appealed the conviction as a matter of right. This Court affirmed Helm's convictions, but remanded the case to correct two errors. The Court determined that the trial court improperly imposed upon Helm a $1,000 fine and that Helm's sentence was illegal because of an error on the face of the judgment. This judgment erroneously stated that on Count 2 Helm was convicted of second-degree rape, when he was actually convicted of first-degree sexual abuse on that Count. Because of this clerical error, Helm technically agreed to, and the trial court imposed, an illegal sentence of 10 years' imprisonment for a Class D felony.

On remand, the Commonwealth moved to amend the judgment under Kentucky Civil Rules (CR) 60.01 and/or 60.02(a) and (f), arguing that a new guilt-phase trial was unnecessary because the parties agreed to the total sentence and the error in the judgment was simply clerical in nature. The trial court agreed with the Commonwealth and entered orders amending the judgment to correct the error to reflect that Helm was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse rather than second-degree rape. This was done before Helm had an opportunity to respond to the Commonwealth's motion. Helm eventually did respond, opposing the Commonwealth's motion, arguing that it was contrary to the mandate of this Court and that he was entitled to a new guilt-phase trial because the error was not simply clerical but the basis for an illegal sentence.

The trial court reviewed the sentencing proceedings and found no misunderstanding between the Commonwealth and Helm regarding his convictions and the length of his sentence. The trial court concluded that the amended judgment corrected the clerical errors and memorialized the actual terms of the sentencing agreement between Helm and the Commonwealth. The trial court determined that an entirely new guilty-phase trial was unnecessary.

Helm filed a direct appeal from the amended judgment, which he later successfully moved to dismiss. This decision to dismiss the appeal is the source of Helm's second ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim. In Helm's motion to dismiss the appeal, he acknowledged that:

The record shows that the appellant agreed to a maximum sentence of 10 years for all crimes against one victim and agreed to another maximum 10 years for all crimes against the other victim. He agreed on the record that those two ten-year periods would run consecutively for 20 years. After reducing the erroneous 10-year sentence to 5 years, the cumulative sentences for the two victims still totals at least 20 years. Thus there is no basis on this record for challenging the re-imposition of a 20-year term after correction of the clerical error.

The record also revealed an affidavit from Helm in which he admitted that appellate counsel's recommendation was correct and that he met with appellate counsel, who discussed the benefits and risks of pursuing or abandoning the appeal.

Helm then filed an RCr 11.42 motion, arguing that his trial counsel was ineffective for recommending the sentencing agreement, that his appellate counsel was ineffective for recommending dismissal of the appeal of the new judgment after remand, and that he was entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his motion. The trial court denied the motion without a hearing, concluding that Helm received a benefit from the agreement in the 20% parole eligibility secured by his counsel and the benefit of ensuring receipt of meritorious good-time credit on his sentence. Helm then appealed to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals agreed with Helm that his trial counsel was ineffective, remanding the case to the trial court for a new sentencing-phase trial. Because the Court of Appeals remanded the case for a new sentencing-phase trial, the Court of Appeals did not reach Helm's ineffective assistance of appellate counsel and evidentiary hearing argument.

II. ANALYSIS.

The United States Supreme Court stated the showing that must be made to assert and prove a successful ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim:

A convicted defendant's claim that counsel's assistance was so defective as to require reversal of a conviction...has two components. First, the defendant must show that counsel's performance was deficient. This requires showing that counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the counsel guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment. Second, the defendant must show that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense. This requires showing that counsel's errors * were so serious as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial, a trial whose result is reliable. Unless a defendant makes both showings, it cannot be said that the conviction...resulted from a breakdown in the adversary process that renders the result unreliable. 15

When a convicted defendant complains of the ineffectiveness of counsel's assistance, the defendant must show that counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness. In any case presenting an ineffectiveness claim, the performance inquiry must be whether the counsel's assistance was reasonable considering all the circumstances. Stricklandcalls for an inquiry into the objective reasonableness of counsel's performance, not counsel's subjective state of mind. Judicial scrutiny of counsel's performance must be highly deferential.

The Supreme Court in Strickland summed up the analysis a court must undertake to decide an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim:

Thus, a court deciding an actual ineffectiveness claim must judge the reasonableness of counsel's challenged conduct on the facts of the particular case, viewed as of the time of counsel's conduct. A convicted defendant making a claim of ineffective assistance must identify the acts or omissions of counsel that are alleged not to have been the result of reasonable professional judgment. The court must then determine whether, in light of all the circumstances, the identified acts or omissions were outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance. In making that determination, the court should keep in mind that counsel's function, as elaborated in prevailing professional norms, is to make the adversarial testing process work in the particular case. At the same time, the court should recognize that counsel is strongly presumed to have rendered adequate assistance and made all significant decisions in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment.20

The reasonableness of counsel's actions may be determined or substantially influenced by the defendant's own statements or actions.

The U.S. Supreme Court adopted the Strickland test to challenges to guilty pleas based on ineffective assistance of counsel in Hill v. Lockhart. In addition, In cases where a defendant complains that ineffective assistance led him to accept a plea offer as opposed to proceeding to trial, the defendant will have to show a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial.  The Court of Appeals in Rigdon v. Commonwealth expounded on the test:

A criminal defendant may demonstrate that his guilty plea was involuntary by showing that it was the result of ineffective assistance of counsel. In such an instance, the trial court is to consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding the guilty plea and juxtapose the presumption of voluntariness inherent in a proper plea colloquy with a Strickland v. Washington inquiry into the performance of counsel.24 To support a defendant's assertion that he was unable to intelligently weigh his legal alternatives in deciding to plead guilty because of ineffective assistance of counsel, he must demonstrate the following: (1) that counsel made errors so serious that counsel's performance fell outside the wide range of professional competent assistance; and (2) that the deficient performance so seriously affected the outcome of the plea process that, but for the errors of counsel, there is a reasonable probability that the defendant would not have pleaded guilty, but would have insisted on going to trial.25

In the context of deciding whether to file an appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court in Smith v. Robbins stated the following as the proper standard for reviewing a defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claim:

[Defendant] must first show that his counsel was objectively unreasonable in failing to find arguable issues to appealthat is, that counsel unreasonably failed to discover nonfrivolous issues and to file a merits brief raising them. If [defendant] succeeds in such a showing, he then has the burden of demonstrating prejudice. That is, he must show a reasonable probability that, but for his counsel's unreasonable failure to file a merits brief, he would have prevailed on his appeal.26

After reviewing the record and taking into account all the rules of law regarding ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims, we hold that the trial court did not err when it ruled that both of Helm's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims fail. Despite [t]he fact that [Defendant] received the maximum sentence for the offense to which he pled guilty satisfies the requirement of prejudice, neither trial nor appellate counsel acted in an objectively unreasonable manner nor committed an error outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance so as to characterize their assistance as deficient. In addition, we agree with the trial court's observation that the benefits received by Helm from the sentencing agreement call into question whether Helm was truly prejudiced.

Regarding Helm's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim against trial counsel, simply stated, there was nothing unreasonable, outside the range of professional competent assistance, or erroneous about trial counsel's assistance. We cannot deem trial counsel's actions unreasonable when trial counsel advocated for Helm in reliance upon his own experience as a criminal defense attorney dealing with similarly situated defendants and upon the Department of Public Advocacy's trial manual warning trial counsel that the Department of Corrections consistently misapplied the parole-eligibility law to similarly situated offenders. Trial counsel's fears, although unsupported according to the letter of the law, were practically objectively reasonable and not without a basis in fact, especially since this exact situation was shown to exist as reflected in a published case from this Court and in other cases. Trial counsel was trying to avoid a seemingly pervasive problem, that defendants were at that time subjected to incorrect parole eligibility benchmarks by the Department of Corrections, supported by the Department of Public Advocacy's Trial Manual, trial counsel's own experience, and case law, by securing an objectively favorable sentencing agreement for Helm in the face of this problem.

More importantly, in addition to the benefit of certainty regarding parole eligibility, Helm received an additional benefit from the sentencing agreement. Recall that the jury convicted Helm of two counts of second-degree rape. Because of the timing of Helm's criminal conduct, he could have been subject to the amendments to KRS 439.3401(1)(e) making any felony sex offense a violent offense. Before the 2006 amendments, even with such a conviction, Helm could have still received meritorious credit of up to 10 days a month on his sentence. But after the 2006 amendments, a conviction of any felony sex offense eliminated consideration of meritorious credit. And had Helm opted to continue with jury sentencing at trial, the jury could have determined that Helm's actions took place during the time period when the amendments would apply, thus denying Helm the ability to receive meritorious credit on his ultimate sentence.

Trial counsel presumably avoided this altogether and secured the benefit of meritorious credit for Helm by stipulating in the sentencing agreement that Helm's criminal conduct occurred before the amendments took effect, thus securing Helm the ability to acquire meritorious credit. Trial counsel's assistance in this sense cannot be characterized as unreasonable. Although Fraser would say that because Helm received the maximum possible sentence, the prejudice requirement of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim is satisfied, both the benefit of securing meritorious credit for his client and avoiding a parole eligibility classification issue support the trial court's conclusion that Helm really did receive a benefit from the sentencing agreement and was not prejudiced.

We acknowledge that the meritorious-credit rationalization made for the propriety of the settlement agreement was not discussed between trial counsel and the trial court during the trial court's colloquy with Helm about the guilty plea. Although courts may not indulge post hoc rationalization for counsel's decision making that contradicts the available evidence of counsel's actions, neither may they insist counsel confirm every aspect of the strategic basis for his or her actions. There is a strong presumption that counsel's attention to certain issues to the exclusion of others reflects trial tactics rather than sheer neglect.

Additionally, while the meritorious-credit rationalization was never discussed in depth, it may have been mentionedHelm's trial counsel during the sentencing hearing did state that the sentencing agreement contained two stipulations agreed to for the benefit of Helm. Unfortunately, Helm's trial counsel never expounded further on the second stipulation because the discussion centered on the application of the 85%-parole-eligibility rule. The second stipulation referred to by Helm's trial counsel could have been the date as to the occurrence of these crimes being July 1, 2006. This would imply that the meritorious-credit rationalization was included as part of the record in forming this agreement, unlike what the Court of Appeals concluded. The fact that this date was stipulated to in the agreement in and of itself is objective evidence of trial counsel's effectiveness in representing Helm, as it secured Helm the ability to obtain meritorious credit.

Regarding Helm's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim against appellate counsel, we find nothing unreasonable about appellate counsel's assistance. Not only was appellate counsel correct in stating that only a clerical error in the judgment needed to be corrected and that this error had absolutely no impact on the actual outcome of the case , Helm provided a sworn affidavit admitting this, confirming that his appellate counsel's decision was correct. In addition, Helm admitted in the affidavit that appellate counsel explained the benefits and risks of pursuing or abandoning my appeal and that Helm understood the benefits and risks of dismissing his appeal. Helm's appellate counsel objectively reasonably determined that filing an appellate brief in this case seeking an entirely new penalty phase would have been frivolous because the only error to correct in Helm's case was clerical, supported by our first opinion in this case. Helm also cannot show a reasonable probability of success of gaining an entirely new sentencing phase on appeal either, again, because the only error needing correction was clerical.

Helm received effective assistance from both his trial and appellate counsel. Therefore, Helm's claim for ineffective assistance of counsel must fail. We also affirm the trial court's correction of the clerical error in this case. The trial court's amended judgment now correctly states that Helm was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse instead of second-degree rape.

III. CONCLUSION.

We find that Helm's trial and appellate counsel provided effective assistance and that the amended order provided the necessary corrections to Helm's sentence. So we reverse the opinion of the Court of Appeals and reinstate the order of the trial court entered May 27, 2014.

FOOTNOTES

. Kentucky Rules of Criminal Procedure.

. Second-degree rape is a Class C felony under KRS 510.050(2), for which a maximum ten-year imprisonment sentence is imposed under KRS 532.060(2)(c).

. Second-degree sodomy is also a Class C felony under KRS 510.080(2).

. First-degree sexual abuse is a Class D felony under KRS 510.110(2) because the victims in this case were not under the age of twelve, for which a maximum five-year imprisonment sentence is imposed under KRS 532.050(2)(d).

. See KRS 532.110(1) (c).

. In fact, Helm would fall under the 20% parole eligibility rule, not the 85% rule. The applicable version of KRS 439.3401 did not characterize Helm as being a violent offender for which the 85% applies because Helm was not convicted of any of the enumerated offenses in subsection (1) that characterizes a defendant as a violent offender. So the 85% parole eligibility mandate in KRS 439.3401(3) does not apply. Rather, 501 KAR 1:030(c)'s 20% parole eligibility rule would apply.

. It appears that this truly is a pervasive problem. See e.g. Mason v. Commonwealth, 331 S.W.3d 610 (Ky. 2011); Conley v. Commonwealth, 2014-CA-000053-MR, 2015 WL 4598774 (Ky. App. July 31, 2015).

. (emphasis in original).

. Ky. Const.  110(2)(b).

. Helm v. Commonwealth, 2008-SC-000716-MR, 2010 WL 4683562, *6 (Ky. Nov. 18, 2010).

. Id. at *6-7.

. Id. at *7.

. Id. Per KRS 532.060(d), the maximum allowable sentence for a Class D felony is five years.

. While we acknowledge that our first opinion in this case stated, the case [is] remanded for a new penalty phase or other proceedings consistent with this opinion, the opinion is littered with language stating that the case Was to be remanded simply for correction of the clerical error. Helm, 2010 WL 4683562, at *1-6. The clear intent of the Court was to remand the case simply for the trial court to enter a judgment reflecting that the jury convicted Helm of first-degree sexual abuse and not second-degree rape.

. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984).

. Id. at 687-88.

. Id. at 688.

. Id. at 110. (citing Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688).

. Id. at 689.

. Id. at 690.

. Id. at 691.

. 474 U.S. 52, 58 (1985).

. Missouri v. Frye, 566 U.S. 134, 148 (2012).

. Bronk v. Commonwealth, 58 S.W.3d 482, 486-87 (Ky. 2001).

. Rigdon v. Commonwealth, 144 S.W.3d 283, 288 (Ky. App. 2004) (citing Bronk, 58 S.W.3d at 486-87).

. 528 U.S. 259, 285-86 (2000).

. Fraser v. Commonwealth, 59 S.W.3d 448, 457 (Ky. 2001).

. Mason v. Commonwealth, 331 S.W.3d 610, 628-29 (Ky. 2011).

. See e.g. Conley v. Commonwealth, No. 2014-CA-000053-MR, 2015 WL 4598774, *2-3 (Ky. App. July 31, 2015).

. Helm testified that he had sexual intercourse with one of the victim as a present to her for her fourteenth birthday, the date of which was July 16, 2006. The 2006 amendments to KRS 439.3401(1)(e) took effect on July 12, 2006.

. Under the applicable version of KRS 439.3401, subsection (1) did not characterize any of Helm's convicted offenses so as to make Helm a violent offender. Therefore, subsection (4), the prohibition against meritorious credit, did not apply to Helm.

. KRS 439.3401(4) (2006).

. Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 526-27 (2003).

. Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 109 (2011).

. Id. (citing Yarborough v. Gentry, 540 U.S. 1, 8 (2003)).

. See Helm, 2010 WL 4683562 at *1-6.

. Id.

. While the Court of Appeals' opinion in this case may suggest that Helm did possess a reasonable probability of success on appeal, as the Court of Appeals agreed with Helm, the Court of Appeals unreasonably overlooked our previous opinion in this case that remanded this case to the trial court simply for a clerical error correction. See Helm, 2010 WL 4683562 at *1-6.

OPINION OF THE COURT BY CHIEF JUSTICE MINTON

All sitting. Minton, C.J.; Cunningham, Hughes, VanMeter, Venters, and Wright, JJ., concur. Keller, J., concurs in result onlyThe journalist filed complaint against Delhi Cantt Station House Officer, saying a police official molested her during a JNU protest march.

A female photographer was also manhandled by policewoman during the protest. (Representational Image)

New Delhi: A woman journalist on Friday filed a complaint against Delhi Cantt Station House Officer, saying a police official molested her during a JNU protest march.

According to a tweet by Delhi Police, further enquiry of the complaint by the woman will be handled by the vigilant branch.

A female photographer was also manhandled by policewoman during the protest. "They took my camera and did not return it. I told them I am from the media, but they were just pulling me away," said the photographer.

An investigation has been initiated into the matter and further action will be taken accordingly, the police said.

The JNU Teachers' Association (JNUTU) and students on Friday marched to demand suspension of Professor Atul Johri, who has been accused of sexual harassment by eight students.

Read: You have nice boobs: Prof Atul Johri told JNU student

The JNU teachers are protesting against the removal of several department heads and a coordinator for not complying with the university's new attendance rules, and a number of them are on a hunger strike.

The Delhi police on Friday ordered a lathicharge and fired water cannons on thousands of Jawaharlal Nehru University students and teachers near INA market.

Also Read: Delhi Police stop JNU teachers, students march; resort to lathi-charge, water cannons

They were marching towards Parliament to protest the removal of several department heads and a coordinator for not complying with the university's new attendance rules.The commission is also looking to review its association with Facebook to encourage enrolment of young voters.

New Delhi: Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad held discussions with senior ministry officials to explore steps to ensure that consumers data on social media is not misused to influence elections.

The meeting held with top IT ministry officials on Thursday lasted for over two hours and deliberated the long-term solutions to address the issue.

The IT ministry is looking into the issue of misuse of data, and exploring steps that can be taken to ensure protection of user information against misuse, without curbing the social media offtake in the country.

According to sources, the Election Commission is also going to discuss the issue of data harvesting and misuse of social media platform like Facebook to influence voters in its meeting soon. The commission is also looking to review its association with Facebook to encourage enrolment of young voters.

The EC will coordinate with enforcement agencies for suggestions to prevent unlawful activities such as attempts to influence polls, Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat said. The EC secretariat will be coordinating with enforcement agencies to come up with suggestions on what needs to be done to prevent such unlawful activities which adversely effect the Indian elections, he told a news agency.

A data scandal has erupted after a whistle blower revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to Trumps presidential campaign, accessed personal data from 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge, and might have kept that data even after Facebook told the company to delete it. Cambridge Analytica (CA) had created psychological profiles on 50 million Facebook users via a personality prediction app, created by a researcher named Aleksandr Kogan.

Over the past several days, Facebook has been facing an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and calls for legislative testimonies in the US and Europe.Pakistan is facing the heat globally for its complicity with terrorist organisations targeting India and Afghanistan.

The Pakistan Army continues to maintain a vice-like grip on the countrys strategic affairs and policy, particularly on fostering hostility with India.

New Delhi: Pakistan wants a peaceful neighbourhood and peaceful co-existence in South Asia, its high commissioner Sohail Mahmood said on Friday, adding that this can only be achieved through diplomacy and dialogue. Speaking on the occasion of his countrys national day, Mr Mahmood said it was important to resolve the J&K issue peacefully through dialogue. Mr Mahmoods speech was rather conciliatory and sober in content and contained none of the aggression that one saw in the speeches of his predecessor Abdul Basit. But it could be too early too say whether Islamabad is indeed offering the olive branch to New Delhi, particularly since the diplomat harassment row between the two countries is on in full swing and ties remain rock-bottom.

Also, the Pakistan Army continues to maintain a vice-like grip on the countrys strategic affairs and policy, particularly on fostering hostility with India. Mr Mahmood returned to New Delhi to host the celebrations, about a week after being recalled to Islamabad for consultations in the wake of the diplomatic row.

Mr Mahmoods speech addressed the issue of terrorism, but only that which was aimed at Pakistan. The speech was silent on Indias core concerns of terrorism against New Delhi emanating from Pakistani or Pakistan-occupied territory.

In a statement, the Pakistan high commission said, In the regional context, high commissioner Sohail Mahmood underlined the importance of Pakistans vision of peaceful neighbourhood. He added that Pakistan desired peaceful and good neighbourly relations with India on the basis of sovereign equality and respect. It was important to resolve all the outstanding issues including the J&K dispute peacefully through dialogue. Pea-ce was in the mutual interest of both countries and it could only be achieved through diplomacy and dialogue. Peace, security, stability and prosperity in south Asia could only be promoted on the principle of peaceful co-existence.

The speech referred to the Pakistan Armys operations against the Pakistan Taliban, claiming that Islamabad was effectively addressing challenges related to extremism and terrorism.

Pakistan is facing the heat globally for its complicity with terrorist organisations targeting India and Afghanistan.Ravi Shankar had alleged that the Cong used the services of Cambridge Analytica during the 2017 Gujarat Assembly polls.

Rahul said while a staggering 400 high court and 6,000 lower court judges were not appointed, the law minister was preoccupied peddling fake news. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

New Delhi: In a scathing attack on the Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took to Twitter to elaborate on the legal system collapsing under pending cases in India.

He said while a staggering 400 high court and 6,000 lower court judges were not appointed, the law minister was preoccupied peddling fake news.

"Legal system collapsing under Pending Cases: Supreme Court 55,000 + High Court 37 Lakh + Lower Courts 2.6 Crore + Yet, a staggering 400 High Court and 6,000 Lower Court judges not appointed, while Law Minister preoccupied peddling fake news," the tweet read.

With the war of words between the Congress and the BJP over the data breach by Cambridge Analytica refusing to subside, Ravi Shankar Prasad had earlier on Thursday alleged that the Congress used the services of disgraced firm, Cambridge Analytica during the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections.

The Union minister implied that the Congress came up with the viral catch phrases Gabbar Singh Tax and Vikas Gone Crazy with the help of the data analysis firm.

The company (Cambridge Analytica) is known for aggressive fake news, below standard campaign. Do I need to record before you the language of Rahul Gandhi, Gabbar Singh Tax and the whole social media campaign?" Ravi Shankar Prasad had said.

Also Read: Cambridge Analytica behind Rahul's 'Gabbar Singh Tax', implies I-T min

Earlier, Congress President Rahul Gandhi accused the Centre of "inventing" stories on the Congress' involvement with Cambridge Analytica.

The Congress and the BJP have blamed each other after it emerged that the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica - a London-based data firm accused of accessing data of millions of Facebook users to help elect US President Donald Trump in 2016 - could have links to electoral process in India.Delhi police roughed up media covering JNU students protest march to Parliament complex on Friday.

New Delhi: A day after a Delhi photojournalist, covering JNU padyatra (protest march), was molested by Delhi Cantt SHO police, a sit in protest was carried out by media professionals this afternoon outside the Delhi police headquarters to protest Delhi Police personnel roughing up with the journalist.

The police had stopped hundreds of students and teachers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) near INA Market in South Delhi from marching towards Parliament complex to highlight various points, ranging from opposing privatisation of education to demanding the arrest of the university's professor Atul Johri accused of sexually harassing female students.

Also Read: Delhi police 'molests, manhandles' woman photojournalist during JNU protest

When the students stopped from entering Lutyens' Delhi refused move back, the police also resorted to water cannons and baton charge to disperse the agitators.

Anushree Fadnavis of the Hindustan Times was one of the journalists covering this march.

Never thought I would be manhandled by lady delhi police officers while doing my job. My camera was snatched and I haven't yet received it https://t.co/qYXnCVyg7b  Anushree Fadnavis (@anu_fadnavis) March 23, 2018

On video, a group of policewomen is seen roughing her up. "Please, at least don't break my camera," a woman's voice is heard in the background. According to reports, some other journalists were also manhandled.

"Never thought I would be manhandled by lady Delhi police officers while doing my job. My camera was snatched and I haven't yet received it," Fadnavis later tweeted.

#WATCH: Policewomen rough up a photojournalist during JNU students' protest, yesterday. Police say journalist was on wrong side of the barricade, journalist refutes the claim, says her camera was also snatched away. Police also added that the matter is being looked into. #Delhi pic.twitter.com/k56GHGsY69  ANI (@ANI) March 24, 2018

Delhi Police ignored the complaints through the day.

On Saturday, police spokesperson Madhur Verma tried to explain the manhandling to a misunderstanding.

Verma said the police personnel were not aware that the woman was a photo journalist, adding that when a senior police officer identified her as a journalist, she intervened. He said the the incident happened due to misunderstanding and called it an unfortunate one.

He, however, added that an inquiry would be carried out.TDP, once the BJP's biggest ally in south, pulled out of the Centre on March 16.

Chandrababu Naidu's TDP is trying to bring a no-confidence motion against the government in the Parliament. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: A week after Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party exited the NDA alliance at the Centre over the demand for 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh, BJP national president Amit Shah on Friday wrote to the Andhra Chief Minister and TDP supremo, saying "TDP's decision to quit the NDA family was unfortunate and unilateral".

"This decision is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns," Amit Shah wrote in his letter.

Amit Shah further wrote, "Andhra Pradesh figures very prominently in our agenda of National Development and it is widely known that the Union Government led by Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has left no stone unturned in ensuring the growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh."

TDP, once the BJP's biggest ally in south, pulled out of the Centre on March 16.

Chandrababu Naidu's TDP is trying to bring a no-confidence motion against the government in the Parliament, after arch-rival Jagan Mohan Reddy's YSR Congress sent a notice.

The two parties are seen as involved in one-upmanship ahead of 2019 Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections.

Shah said, "Since the discussion of bifurcating united Andhra Pradesh till the present, it is the BJP that has led the voices of safeguarding the welfare of Telugu people in both the Telugu states (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana). This is in direct contrast to the Congress Party, which not only managed the bifurcation but also showed zero sensitivity towards Telugu people, which is in line with their historic apathy to Telugu community."

Shah reminded TDP chief that it was BJP that set the party's agenda and ensured justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both the states. "You may recall that during the previous Lok Sabha and in the Rajya Sabha, when your party did not have adequate representation, it was the BJP that set the agenda and they ensured that justice is done to the hardworking Telugu people in both the state," said the BJP chief.'There is no truth as there has been absolutely no breach of UIDAIs Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure,' UIDAI said.

Going by the logic of the report, since the utility companys database also had bank account numbers of its customers, would bank databases also be considered to have been breached, UIDAI questioned. (Photo: representational | file)

New Delhi: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Saturday refuted reports about a fresh data leak of Aadhaar holders, and asserted that there has been absolutely no breach of its database.

The statement comes after ZDNet, a technology news portal cited a security researchers claim to state that a system of state-owned utility firm was allegedly leaking information on Aadhaar holders.

Also read: Aadhaar system security flaw: Every Indian citizen's private details at high risk

In a statement issued in New Delhi, UIDAI, the Aadhaar-issuing body, said, There is no truth in this story as there has been absolutely no breach of UIDAIs Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure.

It termed the data breach claims as totally baseless, false and irresponsible.

UIDAI today has refuted reports in a certain section of media sourced from the news website ZDNet which has quoted a person purportedly claiming to be a security researcher that a state-owned utility company has vulnerability which can be used to access a huge amount of Aadhaar data including banking details, UIDAI said in its statement.

The UIDAI has argued that even if the report claims were taken to be true, the security related concerns should be around the database of utility company in question. It has nothing to do with security of UIDAIs Aadhaar database, it said.

Going by the logic of the report, since the utility companys database also had bank account numbers of its customers, would bank databases also be considered to have been breached, UIDAI questioned.

The answer would obviously be in negative, it added.

UIDAI argued that mere availability of Aadhaar number with a third person will not be a security threat to the Aadhaar holder nor will it lead to financial or other fraud. This is because a transaction is contingent upon a successful authentication through fingerprint, Iris or OTP of the Aadhaar holder, UIDAI said.

The ZDNet report had claimed that a data leak on a system run by a state-owned utility company can allow anyone to download private information on all Aadhaar holders, exposing their names, their unique 12-digit identity numbers, and information about services they are connected to, such as their bank details and other private information.

The report of the alleged security lapse comes at a time when a Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court is hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar Act and the use of biometric identifier in various government and non-government services.

Earlier this week, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey had made a powerpoint presentation in the Supreme Court to defend the governments ambitious Aadhaar scheme. He had said that breaking Aadhaar encryption may take more than the age of the universe for the fastest computer on earth.Naidu denied that the state government had not been able to utilise funds given to it by the Centre.

New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday attacked Andhra Pradesh chief minister and TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu saying that his decision to break ties with the NDA was unfortunate as well as unilateral and guided by political consideration and not development concerns in the state.

In a letter to the Andhra chief minister, who broke ties with the NDA earlier this month after the Centre declined to grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh, Mr Shah dubbed Mr Naidus criticism of the Centre as untrue and baseless.

Reacting to the letter, the TDP president accused Mr Shah of spreading lies. Amit Shahs letter is full of false information which shows their attitude. Even now, the Centre is providing special benefits to Northeastern states. Had Andhra Pradesh been given the same hand-holding, many industries would have come to the state, Mr Naidu said.

Mr Naidu also refuted Mr Shahs allegation that the state government was not able to utilise the funds given to it by the Centre.

Mr Shah, in his nine-page letter, dwelt at length about development works undertaken by the Centre in the state to assert that it has fulfilled the promises made under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, which divided the state in 2014, and underlined the BJPs unquestionable commitment to it.

The BJP chief accused the Andhra Pradesh government of serious lapses, saying it has not provided the Centre appropriate fund utilisation details and that Mr Naidus comments that his government was under no obligation to give any expenditure statement were evasive and reflect governance deficit.

Mr Shah called Mr Naidus attack on the Centre over the special category status issue as a case of political parties whipping up public sentiments rather than encouraging an informed debate.

He said Andhra Pradesh is the only state to receive revenue deficit award for five years and that the NDA government has more than doubled assistance to it in the last five years.

Mr Naidu denied that the state government had not been able to utilise funds given to it by the Centre.

Amit Shah in his letter says Centre gave many funds to the state, we couldnt utilise them. Theyre trying to say Andhra Pradesh government is incapable. Our government has good GDP, agriculture and many national awards. Thats our capability. Why are you spreading lies? he asked.

TDP is synonymous with development. Andhra Pradesh is the highest contributor to CGST. Despite our strong efforts and better development in GDP, Andhra is still lagging behind all the southern states in per capita income, Mr Naidu said.

Earlier, Mr Shah gave details of the Central help to the state for developing its new capital and also the Polavaram irrigation project.

I would like you to introspect whether political parties should be pitting sentiments and development against each other to further their political agenda. This decision (quitting NDA) is both unfortunate as well as unilateral. It is a decision that I am afraid will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns, Mr Shah said.

Mr Shah also told Mr Naidu that the BJP ensured that justice was done to the state when it was divided and the TDP did not have much representation in either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. The BJPs stand was in contrast to the Congress, which not only mismanaged the bifurcation but also showed zero sensitivity towards the Telugu people. Which is in line with their historic apathy to the Telugu community, he said.

It is widely known that the Union government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has left no stone unturned in ensuring the growth and prosperity of Andhra Pradesh, he said.

He pointed out that the Centre has already initiated action on five feasible projects out of eight infrastructure projects that the AP Reorganisation Act proposed and had accorded approval to the Vijayawada metro rail project of Rs 6,769 crore.

The 14th Finance Commission has awarded the state revenue deficit grants of Rs 2,2113 crore in five years and the total award of funds to the state under tax devolution and grants under various heads during the five years between 2015 and 2020 is Rs 2,44,271 crore, he said.The court also slapped a fine of Rs 60 lakh on him during a hearing conducted through video-conferencing as Lalu Yadav was in hospital.

Lalu Yadav, who has been in Birsa Munda Jail in Ranchi since December 23, 2017, after his conviction in two similar cases, will have to serve the two seven-year jail terms one after the other. (Photo: PTI/File)

Ranchi: Former Bihar chief minister and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was on Saturday sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment in the fourth fodder scam case linked to illegal withdrawal of Rs 3.31 crore government funds from the Dumka treasury by animal husbandry department officials between 1991 and 1996.

The Rs 950 crore fodder scam involved embezzlement of treasury funds to non-existent companies to supply cattle fodder in Bihar in mid-1990s, when Lalu Yadav was the chief minister. The first case against Lalu Yadav in the scam was filed by the CBI in 1996.

CBI judge Shiv Pal Singh in Ranchi on Saturday awarded two separate sentences of seven years each to Lalu Yadav under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Acts in the Dumka case, making it the longest jail sentence yet given to him in the fodder scam cases.

Lalu Yadav, who has been in Birsa Munda Jail in Ranchi since December 23, 2017, after his conviction in two similar cases, will have to serve the two seven-year jail terms one after the other. The court also slapped a fine of Rs 60 lakh on him during a hearing conducted through video-conferencing as Lalu Yadav was in hospital.

For default or non-payment of fine, the RJD chief will have to spend one more year in prison for each of the two sets of sections under which he was convicted.

Soon after the court decision, Lalu Yadavs younger son and Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Yadav said, We apprehend a threat to Lalujis life as he has been challenging the BJPs hegemony and trying to unite the parties opposed to it across the country. He is innocent and he will get justice in the higher courts. The people of Bihar will give a befitting reply to those behind the conspiracy against the RJD supremo.

Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi dismissed dismissed Tejashwi Yadavs allegation that there was a threat to his fathers life and pointed out that the RJD supremo enjoyed a foolproof security in jail.

Union minister Giriraj Singh told reporters, As one sows so one reaps. This is the law of nature and it is futile to make a fuss over todays verdict. The RJD workers should remember that the BJP was not in power when the fodder scam cases were lodged.

The court had on March 19 held the 69-year-old RJD chief guilty along with 18 others in connection with the Dumka treasury case. Lalu Yadav was convicted under penal provisions for cheating, criminal breach of trust, forgery and criminal conspiracy.

Former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra, however, was acquitted in the case, along with 12 other accused..

On Saturday, co-convict O. P. Diwarkar, former regional animal husbandry director, was also sentenced to 14 years imprisonment and slapped a fine of Rs 60 lakh. Nine animal husbandry department officials and former IAS officer Phoolchand Singh were sentenced to 7 years jail and fined Rs 30 lakh each. Seven fodder suppliers sentenced to 3.5 years in prison; fined Rs 15 lakh each

Lalu Yadav is currently undergoing treatment at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi, where he was admitted last week after he complained of chest pain and discomfort in jail.

There were a total of 47 accused in the Dumka treasury case. Fourteen of them had died during the course of the trial while two had turned approvers. Of the remaining 31 accused 19 were convicted earlier this month. The Saturdays verdict has come as big jolt for Lalu Yadav and his family as they were hoping for less punishment due to his poor health.

Legal experts say that trouble for Lalu Yadav may not end soon as he may have to move Supreme Court for bail. Lalu Yadav, who has so far been convicted in four cases, is facing trial in two more cases related to fodder scam.

On January 6, the special CBI court had sentenced Lalu Yadav to three and a half years in jail for his involvement in a case related to illegal withdrawal of Rs 89 lakh from Deoghar treasury. On January 24 this year, he was sentenced to five years jail in the third fodder scam case for fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 37.62 crore from Chaibasa treasury. His conviction for five years in the first case related to illegal withdrawal of Rs 37.7 crore from Chaibasa treasury on September 30, 2013, had resulted in his disqualification as a member of Parliament and made him ineligible to contest elections.

The fifth case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 139.39 crore from Doranda treasury is still pending with the court. Five fodder scam cases were shifted to Jharkhand after the separation of the state in 2001 while the trial in one case related to Bhagalpur treasury is going on in Patnas CBI court.

The fodder scam had surfaced in 1996 and a charge sheet against 38 persons was filed by the CBI on October 27, 1997. Lalu Yadav was made one of main accused in the case.Srinagar's SSP Imtiyaz Ismail has confirmed receiving a complaint from the family and said that it has taken the cognisance of the same.

Srinagar: Days after Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, a close confidante of Kashmir's separatist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani, replaced him as the chief of Tehrik-e-Hurriyat (TeH), the former's son has gone missing, giving anxious moments to the family and friends.

The family sources said that Sehrais son Junaid Ashraf Khan left his home in Srinagar's Baghat area on March 23 afternoon to offer Friday prayers at a nearby mosque but did not return home.

He also told them that after namaz he would be going to Lal Chowk (the City centre) to get his mobile phone repaired. The family waited for him till (Friday) evening but when he didn't return it reported the matter to the police, said the sources.

Srinagar's SSP Imtiyaz Ismail has confirmed receiving a complaint from the family and said that it has taken the cognisance of the same.

The police sources said that Junaid's brother Raashid Ashraf visited Srinagar's Saddar police station on Saturday afternoon to report that his 26-year-old brother was missing since Friday.

Sahrai took over as the new head of TeH, virtually a breakaway wing of his and Geelani's parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami, on March 19. The TeH is the dominant constituent of the Hurriyat Conference faction led by octogenarian leader (Geelani). It was launched in 2004 after Geelani reached an "agreement" with the Jamaat.

Meanwhile, a photograph showing Junaid with an assault rifle has gone viral on social media. The message with the photograph says that he has joined Hizb-ul-Mujahideen outfit. The police officials said that they are verifying the veracity of the photograph. "We're trying to find out if this is a fresh photograph taken after Junaid went missing or it is an old one," said a police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Soon after his appointment, Sehrai had asserted that those raising the Islamic State or Daesh flags in Kashmir were helping New Delhi. It set off a debate on social media and he was both appreciated and criticised for his remarks.

The septuagenarian separatist leader had told Greater Kashmir newspaper in an interview that Aazadi camp in Kashmir does not have a global agenda, it has nothing to do with the Daesh and its ideology and that the organisations with an international agenda have no role in Kashmir.

"Some elements are creating confusion among masses by raising ISIS flags at the funeral of militants. We have kept a close watch on them, and will soon chart out a plan to stop them after TeH elections. Expressing concern over the "ISIS thinking" finding resonance among a section of youth, he had said, "It could be the handiwork of agencies keen to defame the Kashmir movement and undermine its indigenous characterOur agenda is simple. We only want Kashmir to be free from Indian occupation. Nothing else."

The police sources had earlier said effort to trace Sehrai's son is underway. The police has got in touch with Junaid's close friends and some acquaintances. The sources had also said that it would wrong to jump on conclusions or try to link Junaid's disappearance with the politics of his father.

Meanwhile, two Jaish-e-Muhammad militants were killed in a gun battle with the security forces in Doru area of southern Anantnag district overnight. The police said that both of them were Pakistani nationals and that the operation ended without any collateral damage.Supreme Court of Kentucky. DEVERON SHIVELY APPELLANT v. COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY APPELLEE 2016-SC-000256-MR Decided: March 22, 2018

COUNSEL FOR APPELLANT: Susan Jackson Balliet, Assistant Public Advocate COUNSEL FOR APPELLEE: Andy Beshear, Attorney General of Kentucky, David Bryan Abner, Assistant Attorney General

OPINION OF THE COURT BY JUSTICE WRIGHT

AFFIRMING

Appellant, Deveron Shively, was convicted by a Jefferson Circuit Court jury of criminal attempt to commit murder, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, and tampering with physical evidence. For these crimes, the jury recommended sentences of twenty, seven, and three years, respectively, to be served concurrently. The trial court sentenced Appellant to twenty years' imprisonment in line with the jury's recommendation. Appellant now appeals to this Court as a matter of right. Ky. Const.  110(2)(b). He asserts four claims of error in his appeal: (1) the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress his statement to police, as that statement was coerced; (2) the trial court erred in refusing to allow certain cross-examination of the victim in order to show bias; (3) the trial court erred in denying Appellant's motion for a mistrial; and (4) the jury instructions on the possession of a handgun by a convicted felon charge deprived Appellant of his right to a unanimous verdict.

I. BACKGROUND

Misty Shirley had been staying with her fiance's daughters, Courtney and Carrie, Courtney's boyfriend, D.J., had been in an altercation with Misty's fiance after he and two unidentified males entered Courtney and Carrie's apartment looking for pills. After the altercation, Misty decided to leave Courtney and Carrie's apartment and stay with other friends. D.J. called Misty numerous times, and Misty finally answered the phone the following day. D.J. put Appellant (his friend) on the phone, and Misty told Appellant she planned to walk to Walgreens.

When Misty exited her friends' apartment to walk to the drugstore, she saw Appellant emerge from the building next door, where D.J. was staying. Appellant offered to walk with Misty to Walgreens, and Misty agreed. The two did not go directly to the drugstore, but, instead, went to Appellant's mother's house, as Appellant indicated he needed to get his license. While on the street where Appellant's mother lived, Misty and Appellant were joined by two unidentified men. The four then continued their trek to Walgreens on the railroad tracks, heading toward a field at the back of the store.

When Misty started to step off the tracks and into the field, someone struck her in the back of the head with a gun, knocking her down. When she got up, Appellant faced her, with one of the unidentified men on either side. Misty testified that both Appellant and one of the unidentified men had guns. One of the men shot in Misty's direction and the three demanded money and drugs. They finally asked Misty to call someone to set them up. When Misty failed to contact anyone from whom the three could obtain drugs, the unidentified man with a gun said, Kill the bitch, and Appellant shot her in the mouth. Misty was shot a second time in her back, with this bullet exiting through her side.

When Misty regained consciousness, she crawled across the field, and made her way inside Walgreens. When Misty reached the front of the store, she stood up in an effort to keep her grandmother, whom Misty was meeting at Walgreens, from being scared. Misty told the cashier she had been shot before collapsing in the floor.

The two detectives who spoke with Misty in the ambulance and at the hospital both testified she said the nickname of the individual who shot her was Man. One of the two detectives knew Appellant's nickname was Man, and gave Appellant's name to Detective Shannon Reccius, the lead detective on the case. Reccius put together a photographic lineup and presented it to Misty. Misty identified Appellant's photograph, and told Reccius Appellant was the shooter. She told Reccius she had known Appellant for a few days and had been with him on the day of the shooting.

Appellant was arrested about three Weeks after the shooting. Reccius testified Appellant signed a rights waiver and agreed to speak to the police.

Appellant was indicted for criminal attempt to commit murder, first-degree robbery, and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon related to Misty's shooting. Later, the Commonwealth obtained another indictment related to the shooting, adding first-degree assault (as a lesser-included offense of attempted murder) and tampering with physical evidence. The indictments were subsequently amended to add complicity. The handgun charge was severed from the other charges, and heard separately by the same jury. The jury found Appellant guilty of criminal attempt to commit murder, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, and tampering with physical evidence. The trial court sentenced Appellant to serve twenty, seven, and three years' imprisonment, respectively, and ordered those sentences to run concurrently This appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Appellant's Statement to Police

Appellant first argues that his statement to police was involuntary, as it was induced and coerced. After his arrest, he was placed in an interview room at the police station. Before Appellant was interviewed by police, he asked a detective if he could speak to Officer Dale (the officer who had executed the warrant). Appellant provided Dale with the location of an individual wanted for another crime. Dale told Appellant he should be straight and be honest when they come in here, and that Appellant should start taking responsibility.

Appellant told Dale that he (Appellant) was hurting his family and was scared for their safety. Dale responded that there were people looking for you, and fold Appellant the big wigs at the department had met about what's being said between these groups and how they're putting hits on people, it's serious. Because usually that person ends up dead. So I was warning your parents, your mom, keep away from the windows, just be careful, cause the word's out. Appellant asked if the officers had determined who put the hit out, and Dale responded that they had not as of yet, but that they were working on it. Dale told Appellant the department had cars there [at Appellant's mother's house] to protect you, to protect your mom, to protect that family. Dale reassured Appellant that he would look out for [his] family. The two exchanged a fist bump before Dale left. Reccius, who had watched the interview from behind one-way glass, entered the interview room several minutes after Dale left Appellant alone.

Reccius read Appellant his Miranda rights and then interrogated him about Misty's shooting. Appellant spoke with her and did not demand an attorney. He gave Reccius a lengthy statement. Appellant objected to the admission of this statement at trial, arguing the initial interrogation by Dale coerced Appellant into giving the statement to Reccius.

We first note that the interaction between Dale and Appellant was not an interrogation, as framed by Appellant. Interrogation has been defined to include any words or actions on the part of police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect  focus[ing] primarily upon the perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police. Smith v. Commonwealth, 312 S.W.3d 353, 359 (Ky. 2010) (quoting Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 301 (1980)). In Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court of the United States said: By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way. 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966) (emphasis added).

Appellant does not argue that he was entitled to his Miranda warnings before speaking with Dale. In fact, Appellant does not deny that he initiated the conversation. Dale did not question Appellant during their conversation about Misty's shooting. While he did encourage Appellant to be forthcoming and honest in the subsequent interrogation regarding the shooting, he did not hinge his protection of Appellant's family upon that honesty; much to the contrary, Dale said, I'll look out for your family. I give you my word on that. . . Nothing's gonna change from now on out, okay? The trial court found that [a]t no point did Officer Dale undertake to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. '

While Appellant did admit to being close to his mother's house on the day of the shooting, and did make some inconsistent statements during his statement to Reccius, he firmly denied any participation in Misty's shooting. Appellant argues his statement amounted to an involuntary confession. He points out that the Supreme Court of the United States has held that a confession must be the product of a rational intellect and a free will in order to be properly admitted at trial. Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U.S. 199, 208 (1960). That Court has recognized, the general rule that the confession must be free and voluntarythat is, not produced by inducements engendering either hope or fear  Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 557-58 (1897).

This Court has held that [t]o determine whether a confession is the result of coercion, one must look at the totality of the circumstances to assess whether police obtained evidence by overbearing the defendant's will through making credible threats. Henson v. Commonwealth, 20 S.W.3d 466, 469 (Ky. 1999). We went on to explain that [t]he three criteria used to assess voluntariness are 1) whether the police activity was objectively coercive; 2) whether the coercion overbore the will of the defendant; and 3) whether the defendant showed that the Coercive police activity was the crucial motivating factor behind the defendant's confession. Id. (quoting Morgan v. Commonwealth, 809 S.W.2d 704, 707 (Ky. 1991)).

In its written order denying Appellant's suppression motion, the trial court noted that Appellant asked to speak with Dale. Dale did not question Appellant about the crime, though he did encourage him to tell the truth. When Appellant stated he (Appellant) was harming his family, Dale confirmed that he had been protecting his mother's home and had spoken with her about the danger. Dale never threatened to remove police protection if Appellant did not cooperate. The trial court found that Appellant's waiver was not obtained through coercive tactics. The trial court pointed out that the conversation never touched on the subject of Misty's shooting. That court also noted that Appellant was calm throughout his conversation with Dale. Therefore, the trial court found that Dale's conversation with Appellant was not objectively coercive, and that [Appellant's] will was at no point overcome.

In reviewing a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress, [f[irst, we review the trial court's findings of fact under a clearly erroneous standard. Under this standard, the trial court's findings of fact will be conclusive if they are supported by substantial evidence. We then conduct a de novo review of the trial court's application of the law to the facts to determine whether its decision is correct as a matter of law. Simpson v. Commonwealth, 474 S.W.3d 544, 547 (Ky. 2015) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted).

Here, the trial court's findings of fact were supported by substantial evidence and were, thus, not clearly erroneous. The trial court also applied the proper law to those facts. We agree that Dale's actions were not objectively coercive, for the reasons identified by the trial court. Since the actions were not objectively coercive, our analysis need go no further. Therefore, we affirm the trial court's denial of Appellant's suppression motion.

B. Misty's Criminal History

Appellant argued at trial he should be allowed to introduce evidence that, at the time of her testimony, Misty had three pending charges and was on probation. The defense theory was that Misty's pending charges and criminal history indicated that she had a motive to please the Commonwealth in hopes of favorable treatment in her pending cases. Appellant asked for Misty to be required to present avowal testimony and the trial court denied that motion. Appellant argues this denial violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront a witness in his trial.

This Court has stated: An essential aspect of the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause is the right to cross-examine witnesses. Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 415, 418  (1965). Additionally, the exposure of a witness' motivation in testifying is a proper and, important function of the constitutionally protected right of cross-examination. Davis, v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 316  (1974). Davenport v. Commonwealth, 177 S.W.3d 763, 767 (Ky. 2005). However, the right to cross-examination is not unlimited. In Delaware v. Van Arsdall, the Supreme Court of the United States held trial judges retain wide latitude insofar as the Confrontation Clause is concerned to impose reasonable limits on such cross-examination based on concerns about, among other things, harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness' safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant. 475 U.S. 673, 679 (1986). This Court has quoted the First Circuit with approval in stating  [s]o long as a reasonably complete picture of the witness' veracity, bias and motivation is developed, the judge enjoys power and discretion to set appropriate boundaries.  Commonwealth v. Maddox, 955 S.W.2d 718, 721 (Ky. 1997), (quoting U.S. v. Boylan, 898 F.2d 230, 254 (1st Cir. 1990)).

Appellant argues that he was not allowed to present a reasonably complete picture of Misty's veracity and motivation, and was prevented from presenting facts that would have shown a possible influence on Misty. Appellant argues that the fact that the jury heard that Misty was a convicted felon was not sufficient to safeguard his Sixth Amendment right to cross-examination, He insists the fact that Misty was facing current criminal charges in Jefferson County (where Appellant's trial also took place) would have given her a natural motivation to please the Commonwealth's Attorney. However, we agree with the Commonwealth that Appellant had no basis to demonstrate that Misty would gain the Commonwealth's favor through her testimony.

Misty was the victim in this case and her statements to police were made before any of the pending misdemeanor charges against her were brought. Misty's counsel in her pending cases assured the trial court that he had no knowledge of any deal between the Commonwealth and his client regarding her testimony in Appellant's trial. Furthermore, Misty's pending charges were all misdemeanorsand, therefore, would not be prosecuted by the Commonwealth's Attorney's office, which prosecuted Appellant's case.

This Court has held:

The cross-examination must, at the threshold level, be appropriate, in that it must elicit testimony of such a nature as to reasonably call into question the witness's reliability. There must exist some practical connection between the evidence sought to be introduced and the alleged implication of bias. Specifically, the evidence should have some proclivity to demonstrate impropriety or partiality beyond abject speculation. When it does not, the trial court is well within its purview in limiting evidence that does not support such an inference of bias.

Holt v. Commonwealth, 250 S.W.3d 647, 653 (Ky. 2008) (internal citations omitted.) Here, the evidence had no proclivity to demonstrate impropriety or partiality beyond abject speculation. Therefore, we hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying Appellant's request to question Misty regarding potential bias brought about for her pending misdemeanor charges.

C. Mistrial Motion

Appellant objected and moved for a mistrial due to Detective Reccius's testimony. Specifically, Reccius testified that Appellant told her he was not the perpetrator, but that he had seen two people walking across the field in question when he was at his mother's house on the day of the shooting. The Commonwealth asked Reccius What else did [Appelant] say about seeing those two individuals? Reccius responded:

I think at one point in the conversation, it was two individuals that turned into three. Umm. I do remember him saying something about he heard two shots. And that at one point in the conversation, I believe he told one detective that was in the interview with me that he didn't see good far away. So, I was getting mixed signals onI mean, clearly he was trying to hide something from me.

The Commonwealth argued that Reccius's comments were made in the context of her explanation of why she had conducted her investigation in a particular way and why she had moved from one subject to another in questioning Appellant. The trial court denied Appellant's motion for a mistrial and his request for the jury to be admonished that a witness cannot give an opinion about whether someone is being truthful or not.

We have held, it is generally improper for a witness to characterize the testimony of another witness as lying or otherwise. Lanham v. Commonwealth, 171 S.W.3d 14, 23 (Ky. 2005). In Moss v. Commonwealth, this Court quoted a decision from a sister state in reaching our holding: A witness's opinion about the truth of the testimony of another witness is not permitted. Neither expert nor lay witnesses may testify that another witness or a defendant is lying or faking. That determination is within the exclusive province of the jury. 949 S.W.2d 579, 583 (Ky. 1997) (quoting State v. James, 557 A.2d 471, 473 (R.I.1989)). Here, the trial court stated that Reccius's comment that she was getting conflicting information from Appellant was not tantamount to saying Appellant was lying during the interrogation. We note that hiding something and sending mixed signals are not necessarily an indication that someone is lying. A person can hide something by omission or by avoiding the subject in controversy. While Reccius's testimony may have indicated that Appellant was hiding things during the interrogation, she testified neither that people who hide things are often lying, nor that she thought Appellant was lying because he was hiding things from her. She was testifying in the context of her investigation about her investigatory techniques and why her questions shifted. Simply put, she did not characterize Appellant's statements as lies or opine that he was lying.

Appellant argues that [t]his Court has consistently held that a witness may not express an opinion to the jury as to the defendant's guilt. However, even if Reccius's statement were a comment on Appellant's truthfulness, she never gave her opinion as to Appellant's guilt or innocence. Appellant also points us to Ordway v. Commonwealth, 391 S.W.3d 762, 776 (Ky. 2013), in which we held: The determination of an individual's guilt or innocence must be based upon the evidence of the particular act in question; it cannot be extrapolated from an opinion, that his behavior after the event comports with some standardized perception of how the typical suspect behaves. Again, this is simply inapplicable to the case at bar. Here, based upon Reccius's interview with Appellant, the detective testified that she was getting mixed signals and that Appellant was trying to hide something. She did not testify that Appellant behaved in a way that guilty people usually behave. Rather, she testified as to the manner in which Appellant's story changed and her belief that he was hiding something from her based upon those changes. She linked his behavior neither to his guilt, nor to the behavior typical of guilty parties.

This Court has held that [a] mistrial is an extreme remedy and should be resorted to only when there appears in the record a manifest necessity for such an action or an urgent or real necessity. Bray v. Commonwealth, 177 S.W.3d 741, 752 (Ky. 2005) overruled on other grounds by Padgett v. Commonwealth, 312 S.W.3d 336 (Ky. 2010). The occurrence complained of must be of such character and magnitude that a litigant will be denied a fair and impartial trial and the prejudicial effect can be removed in no other way. Gould v. Charlton Co., 929 S.W.2d 734, 738 (Ky. 1996). Furthermore, [i]t is well established that the decision to grant a mistrial is within the trial court's discretion, and such a ruling will not be disturbed absent a showing of an abuse of that discretion. Woodard v. Commonwealth, 219 S.W.3d 723, 727 (Ky. 2007), overruled on other grounds by Commonwealth v. Prater, 324 S.W.3d 393 (Ky. 2010). The test for abuse of discretion is whether the trial judge's decision was arbitrary, unreasonable, unfair, or unsupported by sound legal principles. Commonwealth. v. English, 993 S.W.2d 941, 945 (Ky. 1999).

Reccius's comments were made in the context of explaining her investigatory techniques and why she shifted her questioning of Appellant from one subject to another during the interview. She made no comment on her opinion as to Appellant's guilt or innocence during the course of her testimony. She merely explained what Appellant had told her, and stated that she was getting mixed signals from him and that he was hiding something. We cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in denying Appellant's motion for the extreme remedy of a mistrial, as there was no manifest necessity to grant such a motion.

Appellant requested that the trial court admonish the jury that witnesses cannot give an opinion about whether someone is being truthful or not. He now asserts that, at the very least, the trial court should have granted his request for an admonition. An admonition is not such an extreme remedy as a mistrial, and trial courts often admonish juries to disregard improper evidence in lieu of the harsher remedy of a mistrial. However, Reccius's commentswhile they may have come closedid not run afoul of our precedent. While she stated that Appellant was hiding something, that does not necessarily indicate that, in her opinion, he was lying. Again, a person can hide something by omission or by avoiding the subject. Her testimony regarding the course of the interrogation did not amount to her giving an opinion about whether someone is being truthful or not. The members of this Court may have exercised their discretion differently and opted to grant the admonition to guard against jurors interpreting Reccius's testimony as a comment on Appellant's veracity. However, based on our precedent, we cannot say the trial court abused its discretion in denying Appellant's requested admonition.

Furthermore, even if we were to hold that the denial of the admonition amounted to an abuse of discretion, any such error would be harmless. The jury heard testimony regarding Appellant's statementand the shifting story he gave during his interrogation. The victim identified Appellant in a photographic lineup as her shooter, and testified that she had known Appellant for a few days before the shooting. Reccius's statement in question was a fleeting part of her comprehensive testimony. Any error in the trial court failing to admonish the jury that witnesses cannot give an opinion about whether someone is being truthful or not would be harmless.

D. Unanimous Verdict

Finally, Appellant argues that the jury's verdict finding him guilty of being a felon in possession of a handgun lacked unanimity. He admits this alleged error is unpreserved and requests palpable error review under RCr 10.26. Appellant's complaint arises from the fact that the instruction allowed the jury to find he was convicted of a felony on 1) December 15, 2011; AND/OR 2) September 24, 2013. He insists that our cases forbidding duplicitous instructions prohibit such an instruction, and, therefore, the jury's verdict on this charge must be overturned. Under Appellant's reasoning, some of the jurors may have believed he was convicted of a felony in 2011, while others may have believed the conviction came in 2013, and still others may have believed he was convicted on both dates. We find his argument unpersuasive.

This Court has stated;

A duplicitous count, whether appearing in an indictment or jury instructions, presents multiple constitutional problems, including that the jury verdict is not unanimous, which is the issue raised in this case. The courts have stated that two of the reasons for rejecting duplicitous indictments are that a general verdict of guilty does not disclose whether the jury found the defendant guilty of one crime or both and that there is no way of knowing  whether the jury was unanimous with respect to either.  [Johnson v. United States, 398 A.2d 354, 369-70 (D.C.1979) (quoting United States v. Starks, 515 F.2d 112, 116-17 (3d Cir 1975)).

Johnson v. Commonwealth, 405 S.W.3d 439, 454 (Ky. 2013). We went on to state, .[w]hen it is the jury instruction for a single count that covers two different instances of the crime, [t]hese principles apply with equal force.  Id. (quoting Johnson, 398 A.2d at 370). Furthermore, in Kingrey v. Commonwealth, we held: A general jury verdict based on an instruction including two or more separate instances of a criminal offense violates the requirement of a unanimous verdict. 396 S.W.3d 824, 831 (Ky. 2013).

Appellant relies on this line of cases in arguing that the jury instruction in his case ran afoul of his right to a unanimous verdict. However, his attempted analogy between his case and those he cites misses the mark. Johnson and Kingrey are simply not applicable here. In Johnson, the jury could have convicted the defendant for criminal abuse based on evidence of two separate injuries suffered on different dates. 405 S.W.3d at 448. This Court held that, because the jury instructions did not differentiate between the separate acts of abuse, Johnson did not receive a unanimous verdict.

However, unlike the jury in Johnson, the jury here was not asked to determine if a particular act occurredand given evidence of multiple occurrences of that act without differentiation in the jury instructions. Here, the jury was merely asked to determine Appellant's status as a convicted felon. He does not dispute that the prior felony convictions were valid, but only argues that the jurors may not have all agreed as to the date on which he was convicted. Unlike the Johnson and Kingrey line of cases, the jury was not asked to find that Appellant committed a particular act on a particular date. The instructions did not include[e] two or more separate instances of a criminal offense. Here, the jury instructions specified the date Appellant allegedly possessed a handgun. After making the determination that Appellant had possessed the handgun, the jury was merely asked to determine his status as a convicted felon. The fact that he had more than one felony conviction does not create a unanimity problem. The jury merely had to determine his status as a convicted felon. It was immaterial whether the jury believed he was convicted in 2011, 2013, or both.

This Court considered a similar issue in Conrad v. Commonwealth, 534 S.W.3d 779, 784 (Ky. 2017). While that case dealt with a persistent felony offender charge, the same reasoning applies. There, we stated:

Conrad argues that the jury did not reach a unanimous verdict because his conviction could have been based on a litany of his prior convictions, and the instruction did not require that the jury specify which prior convictions formed the basis of their decision to convict him of being a first-degree persistent felony offender. But, combination instructions are not forbidden in the Commonwealth. And a conviction of the same offense under either of two alternative theories does not deprive a defendant of his right to a unanimous verdict if there is evidence to support a conviction under either theory. [Miller v. Com., 77 S.W.3d 566, 574 (Ky. 2002).] For Conrad, the jury could have concluded he was a persistent felony offender first-degree based on any two or all of the prior convictions given in the instruction.

We hold that Appellant's right to a unanimous verdict was not violated.

III. CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated herein, we affirm the trial court.

FOOTNOTES

. Misty also identified another of the pictures as being one of the men who was with Appellant. However, the individual in that photograph was in another county jail at the time of the shooting and could not have been with Appellant.

. The indictment also included charges for an unrelated incident: possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, tampering with physical evidence, illegal possession of a controlled substance, and illegal use or possession of drug paraphernalia. These charges were later dismissed.

All sitting. All concur,Mayawati said that the BJP had used all tactics, including blatant misuse of the state machinery, to ensure BSPs defeat.

Lucknow: A day after losing a Rajya Sabha seat to the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, BSP president Mayawati said on Saturday that the defeat of her party candidate in the biennial elections will not impact her partys developing relationship with the SP and that the two will work with greater intensity to defeat the BJP in 2019.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president thanked the Samajwadi Party and the Congress for voting for her partys candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections but added that her candidate had not got the vote of Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).

Blaming SP chief Akhilesh Yadavs inexperience for her party candidate Bhimrao Ambedkars loss, Ms Mayawati said that the BJP had used all tactics, including blatant misuse of the state machinery, to ensure BSPs defeat.

If he (Akhilesh) had been more mature, he would have concentrated on ensuring the victory of the BSP candidate more than his own candidate, she said.

The former chief minister warned that despite the adverse result in Fridays election, the BSP will work closely with the SP.

The BJP thought that this will disturb the new bonhomie between the SP and the BSP and make it easier for them in the Lok Sabha elections next year. I want to tell them that we will now work under a new strategy and ensure their defeat in the general elections, she said.

I want to warn the BJP and RSS that I will not allow their special aim of creating rift in the new understanding between the BSP and the SP to succeed, she said.

To show solidarity with the BSP, the Samajwadi Party said it had planned a function at the party headquarters here to celebrate the victory of its candidate Jaya Bachchan in Fridays election but cancelled it as the candidate of its ally BSP could not win his seat.

Ms Mayawati accused the BJP of creating anarchy by fielding an extra candidate and forcing election on the Rajya Sabha seats. They did not have the numbers and could have allowed elections to be held without polling but they encouraged horse-trading, she alleged.

The BSP chief said that the BJP had created fear among legislators to make them vote against their party line. She also questioned the state governments role in preventing one SP and one BSP MLA lodged in jail from casting their vote.

The BSP president also thanked Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) MLA Kailash Sonkar for voting for BSP candidate. If Sonkar is troubled by the state government, my party will stand by him, she said.

The BSP president also reminded the BJP that its former chief minister Kalyan Singh had called independent MLA Raja Bhaiyya a goonda from Kunda. She said that as chief minister she had put him behind bars.

Replying to a question, Ms Mayawati said that her party will welcome if the move if the Yogi Adityanath government ensures reservation within reservation for the maha-dalits and most backwards.After raping the culprits poured Kerosene on her leaving the victim with 90 per cent burn injuries.

Police have apprehended the accused minors, aged 11 and 10, while three other culprit are still at large. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

Guwahati: A class five student died after being gangraped and then set afire by five people, including two juveniles in Assam's Nagaon on Friday.

After committing the heinous crime, the rapists poured Kerosene on her. She was rushed to the Nagaon Civil Hospital with 90 per cent burn injuries.

According to reports, police have apprehended the accused minors, aged 11 and 10, while three other culprit are still at large.

"The minors have admitted to the crime. During questioning, they said the girl was alone at home after returning from school when the youth Zakir Hussain raped her. The juveniles then joined in and set them later set her on fire," police said.

Police also said that the victim's parents were at work when the crime took place.

According to a NDTV report, the girl, lying on stretcher and moaning in pain had managed to name four accused - Jagir, Hussain, Rahul and Amdadul.

The horrific incident happened at Dhaniyabheti in Lalung Gaon of Nagaon. Reports say there is tension in the area after the gangrape.

According to reports, a possible personal enmity of the family with Zakir may have triggered the crime.

Villagers say this is not a one off case; security of women is a huge concern in the locality.

Recently the Member of the Assam Assembly, representing Batadroba constituency, under which Dhaniyabheti village falls, had raised the issue of women's safety in the state assembly. The MLA said women in her constituency have been living in constant fear of sexual assault.

On March 17, police in Nagaon arrested eight people in connection with the alleged gangrape of a 35-year-old woman. Reports say the woman was travelling by a local train when the accused struck a conversation with her husband and later lured then to a secluded place and assaulted her. Police said the women in her statement said eight men tied her husband to a tree and gangraped her through the night.For now, women and their doctors should opt for the cheapest moisturizer available over the counter.

For now, women and their doctors should opt for the cheapest moisturizer available over the counter. (Photo: Pixabay)

For women bothered by vaginal symptoms after menopause, prescription local estrogen treatments and expensive specialty lubricants may provide relief, but no more so than a dummy drug, researchers say.

Nearly half of postmenopausal women report bothersome vaginal dryness, pain and other symptoms, but there isnt much evidence supporting the value of prescription treatments, the study authors write in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Our work suggests that the expensive $200 prescription treatment is not better than a cheap, over-the-counter treatment, which is helpful information for many women who cant afford the more expensive therapy - and whose insurance doesnt cover it, said lead author Dr. Caroline Mitchell of the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Overall, most women in our study - no matter what treatment they were randomized to - improved, which is a positive result for women in general, she told Reuters Health by email.

Mitchell and colleagues enrolled 300 postmenopausal women between ages 55 and 64 with moderate to severe symptoms of vulvovaginal itching, dryness, irritation and pain during intercourse in a 12-week randomized clinical trial that took place in 2017 at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Women were randomly assigned to use one of three combinations of treatments: Vagifem vaginal estradiol tablets plus a placebo gel lacking active ingredients in specialty feminine moisturizers; or nonhormonal Replens vaginal moisturizer plus a placebo tablet lacking hormones or other active ingredients; or the placebo gel and placebo tablets.



Based on interviews and questionnaires, researchers scored the severity of the womens symptoms from 1 to 3, with 3 being the most severe. They also asked women to identify their most bothersome symptom. For 60 percent of women, this was pain with vaginal penetration; for 21 percent, it was vulvovaginal dryness.

At the outset of the study, all the participants rated the severity of their most bothersome symptom at about 2.5.

Women were given instructions for using their assigned tablets and gels over the next 12 weeks. The researchers also collected samples to measure vaginal moisture and pH, which they repeated at the end of the study. The participants answered questionnaires about their symptoms throughout the trial.

The research team found at the end of the trial that women in all of the groups had average reductions of 1.2 to 1.4 points, or about 50 percent, in the severity of their most bothersome symptom.

Although over half of women had a reduction in symptoms, fewer women had a complete resolution of symptoms, Mitchell noted. More research and better treatments are needed for these symptoms.

For women assigned to use the Vagifem tablets, there were also slight changes in the vaginal wall and pH, but these were not associated with reduced symptoms, the researchers note.

In follow-up studies, Mitchell and colleagues are using the samples from this trial to evaluate the different factors that may affect the severity of symptoms, such as the vaginal microbiome, vaginal inflammation and vaginal estrogen receptors. The research team wants to understand the root causes of postmenopausal vaginal discomfort.

Since all women have a decrease in estrogen after menopause, but only half get vaginal discomfort, we suspect it is more than just low estrogen, Mitchell said.

A limitation of the trial is that it only studied a 10-microgram dose of the estradiol tablet, said Dr. Alison Huang, a womens health and menopause researcher at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine who co-wrote a commentary accompanying the study.

Were finding that the treatments we think are more effective dont turn out to be that way, she said in a telephone interview. This is sometimes disappointing but can force us to change our deeply entrenched beliefs about treatments.

For now, women and their doctors should opt for the cheapest moisturizer available over the counter, at least until new evidence suggests otherwise, Huang said.

If youre a woman suffering from these symptoms, this study suggests youre not any more likely to benefit from taking prescription tablets, she said. This means we can save women - and their insurers - a little bit of money.The new HIV treatment, Juluca, is a fixed-dose once-daily tablet that combines two previously approved drugs, dolutegravir and rilpivirine.

The combination was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in November. (Photo: Pixabay)

A panel of European Medicines Agency on Friday recommended approval for GlaxoSmithKlines two-drug regimen to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) backed the two-drug combination, which is aimed at lessening the side effect of current treatments that combine three or four medicines.

The combination was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in November. The CHMP opinion sets the stage for a likely approval by the European Commission, which is expected toward the end of the second quarter of 2018, GSK said in a statement.

The new HIV treatment, Juluca, is a fixed-dose once-daily tablet that combines two previously approved drugs, dolutegravir and rilpivirine, and is available to patients who have been on a stable regimen for at least six months.

Juluca is produced by GSKs majority-owned ViiV Healthcare, in which Pfizer and Shionogi also have small stakes.

ViiVs integrase inhibitor drug dolutegravir is part of GSKs traditional triple-therapy used to control HIV, while rilpivirine is a Johnson & Johnson drug.Usually the TB bacteria affects the lungs, and if left unnoticed, it can also spread throughout the body and cause secondary infections.

Relatives braid the hair of an Indian woman suffering from tuberculosis, admitted at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Government Hospital at Ram Nagar in Varanasi, India, Tuesday, March 13, 2018. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday launched a campaign to fast-track the India's response to tuberculosis, which is now the world's leading infectious killer. (Photo: AP)

New Delhi: With over 20 lakh cases of Tuberculosis worldwide, India is the second leading country to contribute to the related mortality rate.

Usually the TB bacteria affects the lungs, and if left unnoticed, it can also spread throughout the body and cause secondary infection affecting the kidneys, abdomen, brain, uterus and even the fallopian tubes.

Genital TB can be a great cause of concern for both the partners if they are trying to conceive.

Speaking about it, Dr Arifa Adil, IVF expert, Indira IVF Hospital, New Delhi said, "Though the symptoms may not be so evident enough but the effects can be seen if timely diagnosis is not done. The infections can spread to the uterus and cause thinning of the endometrium, thereby creating a barrier in development of the fetus. TB in females is a chronic disease with low grade symptoms."

She further added, "Tubal factor infertility along with the involvement of the endometrium is the major cause of infertility. Women are more often affected than males that cause irregular menses, vaginal discharge with blood stains or excessive pain during intercourse and sudden pelvic pain. The condition can even mimic other gynecological conditions like ovarian cysts, PID, ectopic pregnancy or even genital cancer."

As per the latest study done by the ICMR, over 50% of female patients coming for IVF procedure have been reported to have genital TB. In over 95% of the cases, the infection was found to affect the fallopian tube, 50% endometrium and 30 % ovaries.

Though it can occur in any age group (15-45 years) the average age was found to be 31 years. In most of the cases the disease was asymptotic or present with very few symptoms. Incidents reported in the Delhi NCR region shows that one in every five women with TB were unable to conceive naturally which accounted for 40%.

"Even though it's difficult to diagnose the presence of TB in genital tract, there are certain ways to detect them, like a sample of tissue taken from a women suffering from TB of fallopian tubes, endometrial tissue is collected from uterus and sent to lab, where the bacteria are grown and later used for testing," said Dr Arvind Vaid, city based gynecologist.

He further added, "The most trustworthy method of diagnosis is making a histological diagnosis of tubercles, which helps doctors on laparoscopy to confirm whether these suspicious lesions are due to tuberculosis or not. Hysterosalpingography (HSG) is also a very useful tool in visualizing the abnormalities in the uterus and the endometrium. And chronic infections can even lead to narrowing of the uterine cavity."

The effects can also be seen in post menopausal women where the condition may be prominent with symptoms of endometrial malignancy, post menopausal bleeding and persistent vaginal fluid discharge. This is also similar in case of affected males where reduction in sperm quality, concentration and motility are few traits.

Treating TB with medications can help women to conceive through ART, either IVF of or IUI, where intervention can be done to repair the after effects. One can prevent themselves against TB by staying away from crowded areas, where you could come into regular contact with people who are infected, have access to a proper healthcare system and undergo physical exams on a regular basis, get vaccinated against the condition, if possible.The ruling partys win is bound to come as a boost further ahead of the ensuing Panchayat Elections in the state.

Kolkata: The Trinamul Congress on Friday comfortably won four seats out of five in the Rajya Sabha (RS) Elections while ensuring the victory for Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress for the fifth seat with its support to the Upper House of the Parliament from West Bengal. The ruling partys win is bound to come as a boost further ahead of the ensuing Panchayat Elections in the state.

Among the four Trinamul candidates, Subhashish Chakraborty was elected with the highest number of votes: 54 in the 294-seat West Bengal Assembly where the polls were held throughout the day during which chief minister Mamata Banerjee and leader of the Opposition Abdul Mannan cast their ballots alongwith other MLAs from all parties.

He was followed by Nadimul Haque and Abir Biswas with 52 votes to each, according to the election results which were announced after the counting was held. Another Trinamul candidate Santanu Sen was elected to the RS with 51 votes. This is the second consequtive time Mr Haque, an editor of an Urdu daily, has been elected to the RS. For the three others it is the first time.

Mr Singhvi who was supported by the Trinamul MLAs got 47 votes, two votes less from 49, the required figure for each candidate to win. A Trinamul veteran explained that the Congress candidate got 17 additional votes from the ruling party apart from his party MLAs.

Left Front candidate Rabin Deb from the CPI(M) who contested for the fifth seat against Mr Singhvi, got 30 votes only as the Left has the same figure of MLAs in the assembly.

Speaking about his victory Mr Singhvi later said, It is humbling and uplifting. It is a result of cooperation between different groups and MLAs. He also met Ms Banerjee in the Assembly.

Votes of two Trinamul MLAs Zakir Hossain of Jangipur in Murshidabad and Mrigen Maity of Midnapore in West Midnapore were however cancelled due to errors, sources indicated.The child and his family also thanked the Mumbai Police for fulfilling his wish, Senior Police Inspector Shripad Kale said in a statement.

As part of a programme by the Mulund Police Station and the NGO, the jubilant Arpit Mandal donned the khaki uniform complete with a police cap, for a day. (Photo: ANI)

Mumbai: The Make a Wish NGO and Mulund Police station on Friday jointly fulfilled a seven-year-old cancer patient's wish of becoming a Police Inspector.

As part of a programme by the Mulund Police Station and the NGO, the jubilant Arpit Mandal donned the khaki uniform complete with a police cap, for a day.

ACP Anil Walzade, Senior Police Inspector (PI) Shripad Kale, PI Lata Sutar, and other officers and men of Mulund Police Station, along with the NGO members were present with Arpit on his big day.

The child and his family also thanked the Mumbai Police for fulfilling his wish, Senior Police Inspector Shripad Kale said in a statement.There is little to be gained in trying to establish culpability for this deplorable state of affairs.

Politicians are supposed to have their finger on the pulse of the people, but they are hopelessly out of sync with what people feel with regard to the spectacle they make of themselves in Parliament. The simple fact is that Indians are fed up of Parliament looking like a circus gone berserk. They are tired of the indiscipline, ruckus, din, vandalism, hooliganism and sheer bad behaviour of their elected representatives, both in some state Assemblies and in the Sansad  the highest temple of democracy.

The ongoing session of Parliament has not functioned for a single day. Within minutes of the House convening, MPs shout slogans, display placards, hurl invectives and enter the Well of the House, thereby forcing an adjournment. On some occasions, an attempt is made to convene the House a second time, but now mostly both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha are adjourned for the full day. The next day the same tasteless charade is repeated. In its entire history, the House of Commons has not been adjourned for a single day. Soon we will be able to say with pride that there is not a single day when our Parliament is not adjourned!

Does this behaviour further the cause of the protesting MPs/political parties? I think not. There was a time when a spectacle in Parliament leading to an adjournment made news. No longer. Since adjournments  preceded by the predictably undecipherable din  happen so regularly, they have no news value, and only create another ripple of disgust in the ordinary citizen. In fact, the paralysis of parliamentary business is increasingly proving to be counter-productive: people are more annoyed at Parliaments non-functioning than supportive of the reasons why it is not allowed to function. The agitating MPs would do far more for their cause if they allowed for a discussion, where they could present their point of view in a reasoned manner, and enable the entire country, through the media to hear it.

There is little to be gained in trying to establish culpability for this deplorable state of affairs. All parties are culpable. When the UPA government was in power, it blamed the BJP for disruptions. This was not untrue. The BJP actually sought to give ideological sanction to their parliamentary indiscipline. Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, Leaders of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha respectively, asserted that disruption of the House is a legitimate part of parliamentary strategy. As a consequence, Parliament did not function for days on end.

But now the shoe is on the other foot. The BJP occupies the treasury benches, and the Congress  along with its erstwhile UPA allies  is in the Opposition. No one in politics suffers from amnesia in these matters. So the Opposition is now doing to the BJP what it did to them. The treasury benches protest, just as the UPA, when in power, used to. This undignified game goes on as part of a hopeless vicious circle, while the nation  and the world  watches the antics of the worlds largest democracy.

What can be done? It is true that the primary responsibility to run the House lies with the treasury benches. The ruling party must interact with respect with the Opposition  both in the House and outside, or in forums in Parliament created for this purpose  so that logjams are broken. A key role here is that of the minister of parliamentary affairs. In the UPA years, Rajiv Shukla held this post. Pranab Mukherjee, then leader of the House, used to tell Mr Shukla that his performance would be judged by the amount of time he spends in the Opposition benches, building bridges and diluting friction. The same responsibility now lies with the leaders of the BJP, and it cannot be implemented with arrogance or disdain. But, equally, the Opposition cannot say that it is blameless. There is nothing the treasury benches can do if the Opposition is hell bent on now allowing the House to run. That is the plain truth.

Can the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha enforce discipline? Of course, they can. The presiding officers of the two Houses are invested with wide ranging disciplinary powers. They decide when a member speaks and for how long; they decide what will not go on record; they can direct a member to withdraw from the House for a specific period; any member who flouts their orders can be named, and in such cases, may have to withdraw from the House; they can warn a member for flouting rules and suspend him; the marshals of the Houses work under them; and, within the House, their rulings in such matters, are unchallengeable. With such powers at hand, why do presiding officers not exercise them to maintain the discipline and decorum of the House? For too long now, blatantly unacceptable behaviour has been tolerated or condoned by presiding officers, and this lack of a resolute stand has undoubtedly contributed to the slide into parliamentary chaos over the last few years.

The basic fact is that the non-functioning of Parliament must stop. Over Rs 2.5 lakhs is spent per minute to run Parliament. The current leg of the Budget Session is for 23 days, of which 14 have so far been wasted. Important bills that affect the lives of ordinary citizens are pending, even as every day both Houses are adjourned. There is merit in the proposal that if Parliament does not work due to lack of parliamentary decorum, members should not be paid their allowance for that day, and presiding officers should be impartial in enforcing this rule.

The nation expects reasoned debates of the highest calibre from its elected representatives  as, indeed, used to be the case in the past. The Opposition must establish the validity of its point of view through the dignity and substance of debate and not through slogan shouting. The treasury response should be likewise. To put it bluntly, the people of India have had enough of the unseemly shenanigan in Parliament. The time has come for all political parties to get this message.The hard reality is that despite all the talk about ushering in change, the old system remains very much in place.

Delivering the valedictory speech at the plenary session of the Congress last week, an impassioned party president Rahul Gandhi declared that his first task was to break the two walls in Indian politics  the wall between party workers and leaders, and the wall between the youth and political system. But these reassuring words meant little for the delegates, who travelled from across the country to participate in the two-day jamboree. The hard reality is that despite all the talk about ushering in change, the old system remains very much in place. Delegates pointed out that if Mr Gandhi was serious about breaking barriers, he would have begun by doing away with the separate enclosures for workers and leaders, which ensured there was little or no interaction between them at the session. Not only were the delegates and leaders seated in demarcated enclosures, they were also segregated into separate halls during meal times, which is normally an occasion for workers to mingle freely with leaders. Congress delegates said plenary sessions were originally meant to serve as an excellent occasion for workers to meet and bond with their leaders in an informal environment, but the VIP culture in the party, they said, had taken away the joy of attending such meetings. As one member pointed out: When theres such a lack of communication within the party, how are we expected to communicate with the public?

Ever since it came to power four years ago, the BJP has made systematic attempts to appropriate the icons of the Congress. While Sardar Patel has been coopted as their leader, the BJP has also been working overtime to project itself as the inheritor of Mahatma Gandhis legacy. For instance, BJP president Amit Shah recently came up with a series of reasons to argue that their party is the true follower of the Mahatma. For one, he pointed out, like Gandhi, the BJP is not apologetic about being seen in the company of rich people. In this connection, Mr Shah pointed to Gandhis association with leading industrialists like the Birlas and Bajajs during the freedom struggle. Though there were no television news channels in those days, Mr Shah said Gandhi was extremely conscious of the role played by the media in propagating their viewpoint. Mr Shah recalled that Gandhi even delayed the start of his famous Dandi March to await the arrival of a correspondent of a foreign news agency. The BJP president said Gandhi was very particular about optics and this, he said, was even reflected in the manner in which he posed for cameras. The BJP, he said, had imbibed these lessons well from Gandhi, which made their party his real followers.

Ever since senior Congress leader Digvijay Singhs Narmada yatra came in for appreciation from the people, a host of party leaders made it a point to join the senior leader on this parikrama. Last week, former Rajasthan chief minister and Congress general-secretary Ashok Gehlot put in an appearance at Mr Singhs yatra. Mr Gehlots presence led to considerable speculation in about the reason for his trip. Currently a favourite of Congress president Rahul Gandhi, there was a buzz that Mr Gehlot may be carrying a message for Mr Singh from the party chief. It is speculated that Mr Gandhi may have sent Mr Gehlot as his emissary to ferret out information about Mr Singhs future plans. Though he has described his six-month yatra, as a non-political exercise, those who know Mr Singh are convinced that he planned to use this effort to connect politically with the people of his home state who had rejected him in 2003. The Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh are due this year-end and there are signs that Mr Singh is not going to sit on the sidelines during these crucial polls. Mr Gandhi had better watch out, given Mr Singhs penchant for creating trouble.

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan hosted a special lunch for MPs and mediapersons last week at the Parliament House on the occasion of Gudi Padwa. These meals usually are a good occasion for journalists to chat informally with the lawmakers. But, as in the case of the Congress, the Speakers office also chose to segregate mediapersons (with the exception of a few senior editors) from MPs by hosting them at different venues. While the meal for MPs was organised in the Parliament House forecourt, the journalists were hosted in a separate hall on the first floor. Predictably baffled at this discrimination, the guests were left wondering about the purpose of this exercise as the journalists only ended up socialising with each other. While chafing at this discriminatory attitude, mediapersons were also unhappy that their hostess did not put in an appearance at their lunch.Rosenblum credited Facebook for having its government affairs point person reach out to her.

Company officials have apologized after connections between President Donald Trump's campaign and the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica surfaced.

Salem: Oregon's attorney general says she is reviewing whether to launch an investigation of Facebook, including whether it violated a state law that protects online customers' private information.

Ellen Rosenblum told The Associated Press Thursday that she and several other state attorneys general are drafting a letter to Facebook, asking how it allowed a developer to misuse the data of millions of customers.

Rosenblum credited Facebook for having its government affairs point person reach out to her March 23rd, but added tough questions need to be answered.

She wants to know whether Facebook monitored what developers did with data they collected, and did it have safeguards to ensure data wasn't misused?

Company officials have apologized after connections between President Donald Trump's campaign and the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica surfaced.Trump's claim that he had Dreamers' best interests at heart provoked an uproar among immigrants and Democratic lawmakers.

Trump had multiple chances to craft a DACA fix with Congress. But one never materialized, despite overwhelming public support for letting Dreamers stay. (Photo: File)

Washington: America's so-called "Dreamer" immigrants and supportive lawmakers were left fuming and fearful Friday after anti-deportation measures were left out of a federal spending bill signed by President Donald Trump.

More than six months after Trump announced he was scrapping an Obama-era program that protected hundreds of thousands of immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children, he signed the controversial measure into law -- then blamed Democrats for the collapse of immigration negotiations.

"The Republicans are with you, they want to get your situation taken care of," Trump said at the White House.

Democrats, he said, fought against a deal for Dreamers "every single inch of the way. They did not want DACA in this bill."

Some 690,000 immigrants are registered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that Trump ended on March 5.

After that deadline came and went, and the spending bill left out immigration, Trump's claim that he had Dreamers' best interests at heart provoked an uproar among immigrants and Democratic lawmakers.

"I'm actually angry at this point," Francis Madi, a 28-year-old Dreamer and activist in New York, said.

"We don't know what's the next step," said Venezuelan-born Madi.

Student Lizbeth Huitzil, 19, who arrived from Mexico 14 years ago, said she felt let down by the president "blaming another party, when it's he who can make a decision" on supporting a DACA fix.

"It's still scary, because you don't know what your status is going to be," she said.

Several Democratic lawmakers blasted Trump for his remarks.

"You are the one who put an expiration date on Dreamers' backs, then refused to compromise to fix #DACA," Senator Ben Cardin tweeted.

Senator Dianne Feinstein added: "If there is no DACA fix today it's because the president didn't want one."

Trump had multiple chances to craft a DACA fix with Congress. But one never materialized, despite overwhelming public support for letting Dreamers stay.

In January he implored lawmakers to pass a "bill of love" to resolve the standoff. But he rejected a plan providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers in exchange for USD 25 billion in border security, including his much-promised wall.

Meanwhile the fate of Dreamers rests with federal courts, whose rulings have blocked Trump's administration from ending DACA for now, and ordered the resumption of DACA permit renewals.

But the actions can be overturned by a higher court.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus chairwoman Michelle Lujan Grisham said Trump is to blame for the latest impasse.

"By not including a permanent fix for Dreamers in the omnibus (spending bill), the president and Republicans have prolonged this self-inflicted crisis and have left Dreamers in limbo and at the mercy of a temporary court injunction," she said.The NSC is one of the most powerful wing of the White House that drives the administrations national security agenda.

John Bolton led negotiations for America to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so that the Bush administration could proceed with a national missile-defence programme. (Photo: AP)

Washington: US President Donald Trump Friday fired National Security Adviser Lt Gen H R McMaster, replacing him with former UN Ambassador John Bolton, the latest high-level shakeup in the White House.

Reports of McMasters ouster had surfaced last week but the White House had dispelled them saying there were no changes at the National Security Council (NSC). Trump, however, took to Twitter Friday to make an announcement in this regard.

I am pleased to announce that, effective 4/9/18, John Bolton will be my new National Security Adviser, Trump said on Twitter.

I am very thankful for the service of General H R McMaster who has done an outstanding job & will always remain my friend. There will be an official contact handover on 4/9, Trump said.

McMaster was Trumps second national security adviser after Michael Flynn was dismissed in 2017 for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the US.

The NSC is one of the most powerful wing of the White House that drives the administrations national security agenda.

The announcement of McMasters ouster, who the White House said had a good working relationship with Trump, is the latest in a string of high-profile White House departures since President Trump took office in January 2017.

The announcement came just days after he replaced secretary of state Rex Tillerson with his close ally, CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

That move, Trump said, was in preparation for upcoming top-level nuclear talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

According to a White House official, Trump and McMaster mutually agreed that the latter will resign as the National Security Adviser (NSA). He will retire from the US Army after 34 years of distinguished service.

The two have been discussing this for some time. The timeline was expedited as they both felt it was important to have the new team in place, instead of constant speculation. This was not related to any one moment or incident, rather it was the result of ongoing conversations between the two, the official said.

Trump and McMaster both released written statements thanking each other, with the president describing McMaster as an architect of his America First foreign policy.

He has won many battles and his bravery and toughness are legendary. General McMasters leadership of the National Security Council staff has helped my administration accomplish great things to bolster Americas national security, Trump said.

He helped develop our America First National Security Strategy, revitalise our alliances in the Middle East, smash ISIS, bring North Korea to the table, and strengthen our nations prosperity. This work and those achievements will ensure that America builds on its economic and military advantages. I thank General McMaster and his family for their service and wish them the very best, Trump said.

McMaster said after 34 years of service, he is requesting retirement from the US Army effective this summer after which he will leave public service.

Also Read: Youre fired: From The Apprentice to White House, Trump hasnt changed

Throughout my career, it has been my greatest privilege to serve alongside extraordinary service members and dedicated civilians. I am thankful to President Donald J Trump for the opportunity to serve him and our nation as national security adviser. I am grateful for the friendship and support of the members of the National Security Council who worked together to provide the President with the best options to protect and advance our national interests, McMaster said.

The White House has described Bolton, who replaces McMaster, as one of the strongest voices and experts on the full range of national security issues and challenges facing the country.

Bolton served as US Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2005-2006 and as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from 2001-2005.

Bolton, during his tenure at the United Nations, was a leading voice on the need for the Security Council to take strong and meaningful action against international proliferation and terrorism.

Along with Frances ambassador, Bolton led the Security Council to approve a unanimous resolution to end the summer 2006 Hezbollah war on Israel, to authorise UN peacekeepers and to create an arms embargo against Hezbollah.

He also assembled an international coalition that blocked the bid of Hugo Chavez, Venezuelas Marxist strongman, to join the Security Council.

As Under Secretary, he repeatedly advocated tough measures against the nuclear weapons programs of both Iran and North Korea, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction generally.

He led negotiations for America to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so that the Bush administration could proceed with a national missile-defence programme.Womens rights groups also accuse South Korean courts of treating sex offenders too leniently.

This file photo shows then Samsung worker and now lawyer, Lee Eun-eui, during an interview in Seoul. The ground for the wave of #MeToo accusations sweeping socially conservative South Korea was laid by a defiant saleswoman who took on Samsung, won a harassment case against her boss and changed career to become a lawyer. (Photo: AFP)

Seoul: The ground for the wave of #MeToo accusations sweeping socially conservative South Korea was laid by a defiant saleswoman who took on the corporate might of Samsung, won a harassment case against her boss and changed career to become a lawyer.

Lee Eun-eui now focuses on helping victims of sex abuse herself. The #MeToo movement against the abuse of women at first met a muted response in the country, where victims fear losing their jobs and public humiliation if they complain.

But a growing number of South Korean women have come forward to accuse powerful figures in fields from politics and the arts to education and religion.

Ms Lee was a pioneer. An elite salesperson at Samsung Electro-Mechanics, a components unit of the giant conglomerate, she complained to management in 2005 about a boss who had repeatedly touched and verbally harassed her for years.

The supervisor was quietly moved to another firm with no formal investigation, but Ms Lee was labelled an agitator who backstabbed her superior.

I was given no work for more than a year... My employee evaluation scores dived, she said.

She was transferred to another department where the manager told her he did not like her or want to work with her, so other colleagues also refused to talk to me  plunging her into depression.

Ms Lees options, it seemed, were to resign, or just stay and quietly suffer the career setbacks, she said. But the 44-year-olds soft-spoken manner belies her determination. I did nothing wrong, she said. So I decided to fight.

She filed a complaint of sexual harassment and workplace bullying at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, following up with a lawsuit.

Samsung dominates the worlds 11th-largest economy, with the groups total revenue equivalent to about a fifth of the nations GDP and its lobbying power second to none  so much so that South Korea is sometimes dubbed the Republic of Samsung.

Samsung denied both charges, but the commission ruled in Ms Lees favour and in 2010 a court awarded her 37.5 million won ($34,000) in damages.

Ms Lees rare public battle against the behemoth  and even rarer legal victory  made headlines in a society where patriarchal values remain deeply ingrained despite economic and technological advances.

South Korea is regularly at the bottom of rankings related to the gender pay gap or female representation in senior roles among the OECD club of advanced economies.

It was also named the worst place for working women among 29 advanced nations in this years Glass Ceiling Index by the Economist.

During the lawsuit, Ms Lee received many messages of support from female Samsung staff thanking her for driving management to respond better to complaints.

This feeling that my lonely fight was bearing fruit somewhere out there gave me so much strength, she said.

After winning her case she quit Samsung, studied law and set up her own firm in 2014. Now about 70 percent of the cases she handles involve sexual harassment at work or school.

Ms Lees clients have included an actress who had nude images included in a film without her consent, and a sex worker who accused a K-pop star of raping her in a toilet.

Many of my clients come to me knowing my past, she said.

Prosecutor Seo Ji-hyeon appeared on television in January to talk about sexual harassment by a superior and the professional setbacks she suffered after reporting it.

Her interview opened a floodgate of similar revelations by women who accused figures ranging from politicians to writers to film directors, and brought down prominent men, including a would-be presidential candidate.

While inquiries to Ms Lees firm have increased, she said, South Koreas fundamentals have yet to change.

Victims who spoke out against powerful figures have been widely praised for bravery, but Ms Lee said: We need to pay attention to victims around us rather than those you only see on TV.

Samsungs response to my sexual harassment complaint was really bad, she added, but I am afraid that the situation at other companies in the South is even worse.

Many firms view these women who complain about sexual harassment as just tiring and annoying, she explained, someone with issues, who is oversensitive, or simply too loud.

Womens rights groups also accuse South Korean courts of treating sex offenders too leniently.

Under South Korean law rape is defined by whether there was violence or intimidation rather than an absence of consent  terms criticised by a UN convention earlier this month.

But Ms Lee suggests the law may be less at fault than the prosecutors and judges who apply it.First choice would be to get her here on a tourist visa and include her in the application.Second choice is to get her over here after sc.820 is lodged and add her to the application.Third choice is to apply offshore and include her in the offshore application.Fourth choice is to apply for a sc. 445 visa after the sc. 820 has been granted.As the previous poster said, get professional advice to work out a suitable strategy.The Californian's Robert Price answers your questions and takes your complaints about our news coverage in this weekly feedback forum. Questions may be edited for space and clarity. To offer your input by phone, call 395-7649 and leave your comments in a voicemail message or email us at soundoff@bakersfield.com. Include your name and phone number; they wont be published.HOW IT WORKS

The proposed downtown Property-based Business Improvement District has been long discussed among business owners, but it still has to be run through some hoops before it can become a reality. Here are the next steps:

Organizers have sent petitions to property owners regarding the district, and will present their proposal to the Bakersfield City Council by mid-May.

If approved by the council, property owners will have a 45-day period to fill out their ballots voting for or against the formation of the district.

If more than 50 percent of property owners vote for the district, the area will be adopted by the assessor's office as a PBID and assessments would show up on 2019 tax bills.

After that, PBID organizers must form a nonprofit board, which would include property owners and at least two business owners to manage and oversee the $850,000 annual budget.

How would all that money be spent? Here's the planned breakdown of finances:

$602,720, or 71 percent of the budget, would go toward an Ambassador Program and Clean Team. Ambassadors would work to support the police department, property owners and tenants in crime prevention efforts while providing customer services to downtown visitors. The Clean Team would sweep, scrub and wash sidewalks and public spaces, clear litter and trash and provide maintenance and landscaping.

$110,000, or 13 percent of the budget, would go toward hiring staff to oversee the PBID, providing daily management and carrying out day-to-day operations while also advocating on downtown policy issues.

$87,280, or 10 percent of the budget, would go toward economic development and marketing to improve business retention and recruit new businesses to the area.

$50,000, or 6 percent of the budget, would be placed into reserves.

So how much are businesses being charged? Properties are assessed on a per square-foot basis, and it works on a sliding scale. Commercial properties west of L Street and south of 24th Street are in Zone One, and are being charged the most, and those in areas north (Zone Three) and east of it (Zone Two) being charged less. Here's a breakdown:There was a fatal crash at about 5:30 Thursday morning, killing at least one person, on Highway 46 near Buttonwillow.Around 100 people came out to a meeting at Stonecreek Park on Wednesday evening to hear about and discuss a proposal by the Sikh community to Spend less. Graduate faster. Earn more.

Under the University of Tennessee at Chattanoogas new Take 15, Graduate in 4, tuition plan, UTC students can earn their bachelor degree in four years and begin their careers more quickly.

The plan will be implemented for fall semester 2019 and is virtually identical to the UT Martin Soar in Four tuition plan adopted in 2016. The plan is based on a full time student taking and paying for 15 credit hours rather than 12 credit hours.

Students taking 12 or more credit hours will continue to be classified as full time for federal financial aid purposes, but the Take 15, Graduate in 4 tuition plan provides incentive for students to enroll in 15 credit hours per semester so they can graduate in four years.

Under the new tuition model, students taking 12 or more credit hours will have access to enhanced financial aid, advising, career services, and course offerings. In exchange, students taking 12 or more credit hours will be assessed an 11 percent charge on their in-state maintenance fee, which would currently be an annual increase of $758.

There will be no change in the tuition plan for students already enrolled at UTC, regardless of whether they are taking 12, 15 or more hours. These continuing students will have four years to graduate under their current fee structure.

The new degree completion model will be phased in with the class of new students arriving fall 2019. They will become the first students benefiting from the new plan.

Garbage and Recycle collection scheduled for Good Friday, March 30, will be collected as normal. Please place containers along the curbside before 7 a.m. on collection day to ensure pickup.

The city landfill off of Birchwood Pike in Harrison, the Household Hazardous Waste Facility and Wood Recycle Center will be closed Friday, March 30, in observance of Good Friday. The Household Hazardous Waste Facility and Wood Recycle center will be reopen Saturday, March 31, for regular business hours.

The Refuse Collection Centers and Recycle Collection Centers will be closed on Sunday, April 1, in observance of Easter and will reopen on Monday, April 2.

Citizens may call 311 for any additional questions.Latest Articles

is Indias #1 and most trusted website for Banking Jobs. The portal has complete information about all Banking and Insurance Jobs, its latest notifications, from all state and national level jobs, and updates. These exams and jobs are regularly updated as per the official information available. Check thehere.It will soon be illegal in Florida for anyone under the age of 17 to get married under a bill signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.

Scott on Friday signed 74 bills into law including the ban on child marriages and a tax cut package that authorizes a back-to-school sales tax holiday in August.

The ban takes effect in July.

The legislation was a compromise between the House and Senate. The Senate originally passed a bill that banned the marriage of anyone under 18, but the House wanted exceptions for some 16- and 17-year-olds when there's a pregnancy.

The bill signed by Scott would set limits on the marriage of 17-year-olds. While pregnancy won't be a factor, anyone marrying a 17-year-old couldn't be more than two years older and minors would need parental consent.Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park will provide a special 90-minute driving/walking tour on Saturday, April 14, at 2 p.m., following General John B. Hoods famous Texas Brigade. This tour begins at the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center.

Hoods Texas Brigade is one of the more storied units of the American Civil War. During Chickamauga, its soldiers were engaged in some of the bloodiest fighting witnessed on the battlefield. This walk will cover the actions of this renowned unit in a part of the battle that one young Texan recalled as The Meanest, Most Unsatisfactory placein the whole war. It will also provide a glimpse into the lives of the men who made up this hard hitting organization.

Participants should bring a bottle of water and comfortable walking shoes, as the walk will be about one mile in length.

For more information about upcoming programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, please contact the Lookout Mountain Visitor Center at 821-7786, the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center at 706-866-9241, or visit the parks website at www.nps.gov/chch.Sheriff Jim Hammond announced Hamilton County Sheriffs Office Detective Shane Forgey ahs graduated from the UT Law Enforcement Innovation Center  Institute for Public Services National Forensic Academy in Oak Ridge.

The National Forensic Academy is an intensive 10-week training program co-funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, designed to meet the demanding needs of law enforcement agencies in evidence identification, collection, and preservation. The NFA is offered in-residence, utilizing a curriculum developed by leading forensic practitioners from across the United States.

I am very proud of Detective Forgey for completing this professional career milestone, said Sheriff Hammond. The knowledge and practical experience he has gained by graduating this respected academy will greatly benefit the Hamilton County Sheriffs Office Criminal Investigations Division and the citizens of Hamilton County.

Throughout the NFA training, participants were challenged in the various disciplines of forensic science through extensive classroom instruction, laboratory activities, and field practicums. Academy participants also completed written and in-class competency exams to demonstrate mastery of the subject areas as well. The goal of the National Forensic Academy is to prepare the crime scene investigator to recognize key elements and to improve the process of evidence recovery and submission.

The training Detective Forgey received in the Academy is Tennessee POST Certified and includes 400 hours of coursework. Graduates receive a formal diploma of completion and a Bloodstain Pattern Analysis 40-hour class completion certificate. The NFA is recognized by the IAI as providing the necessary training required for the four levels of crime scene certification. The curriculum also includes 170 hours of in-class work, 230 hours of field practicum, and a comprehensive, practical final.Friends and family were gathering today (Saturday) at Mrs. Lee Harvey Wysongs home in Tunnel Hill, Ga., to honor her on the occasion of her 105th birthday.

Her son Charlie said, To say that Momma is 105 years old does not tell the whole story. She doesnt use a cane or a walker. She doesnt have arthritis, high blood pressure or diabetes. She takes no prescription drugs and has never had a physical exam in her life.

She loves God, and He has been very good to her. She enjoys life and is almost never sick.

Lee Wysong was born March 24, 1913 in New Orleans. She lived for 94 years in Atlanta and now lives in Tunnel Hill.

She was married to Charles F. Wysong, and they had five children. Mr. Wysong was an associate professor of Ceramic Engineering at Georgia Tech and started Southern Porcelain, Inc. a manufacturer of industrial ceramics. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II where he invented a computer for ship-based naval guns. In all, he held six patents in various fields. He passed away in 1964.

Mrs. Wysong was born during the presidency of the 32nd president Woodrow Wilson. She has lived during the terms of 25 U. S. presidents. She first voted in 1933. In 2016 she voted in her 21st presidential election and voted for Donald Trump.

She has taken part in politics her entire adult life and has never failed to exercise her right to vote. She continues to have strong political opinions. Mrs. Wysong was an early member of the John Birch Society, she was the Georgia President for Phyllis Schlaflys Eagle Forum and helped in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

She was a long time member of the Cherokee Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution while she lived in Atlanta. In the 1970s she was inducted into the Gracious Ladies of Georgia. The impeccable manners and love for others that she was taught as a child are still much in evidence.

Mrs. Wysong has 19 grandchildren and 39 great-grandchildren.With the number of homes, apartments and condos built downtown, why is a 40 percent property tax increase necessary? Are these new structures on the paying property tax role? I need to know whats going on downtown and why isnt that money benefiting the city? Georgia Vaughn (click for more)

The email comes my way from a nurse at Erlanger Hospital: I wanted to thank you for the columns you have written recently regarding the need to get vaccinated. If people could see the COVID-affected patients that I see every day in the hospital I believe they would run to the nearest health department to get the vaccine. It is the worst thing I have ever seen. Watching young, previously ... (click for more)ABCNews.com(WASHINGTON) -- Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Jaclyn Corin delivered a passionate plea on Saturday to the hundreds of thousands of people who converged on the nation's capital to rally against gun violence.



"There is strength in numbers, and we need each and every one of you to keep screaming at your own congressman," Corin yelled to the massive crowd at the March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C. "We cannot 'keep America great' if we cannot keep America safe," she added, using air quotes to reference President Donald Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."



Corin, 17, survived the Valentine's Day shooting at her Parkland, Florida, school that left 17 people dead. Since then, the high school junior has been among the most outspoken students calling for action. She and her classmates helped organize Saturday's event.



"Parkland is the heart of this movement. But just as a heart needs blood to pump, my hometown needs the alliance of other communities to properly spread this message," she said. "We openly recognize that we are privileged individuals that would not have received as much attention if it not were the affluence of our city. Because of that, however, we share the stage today and forever with those who have always stared down the barrel of a gun. That is why Parkland cannot and will not do this alone."



The March for Our Lives rallies across the nation and around the globe were anchored by the main event in the U.S. capital on Saturday. There were more than 800 so-called "sibling marches" planned worldwide for this weekend in solidarity of the main event.



Like Corin, many in the crowd were not old enough to vote yet. But she urged her peers to use their voices to convince Congress to enact tougher gun control and school safety measures. The March for Our Lives organizers have called for banning the high-powered, highly-lethal assault-style weapon often used in mass shootings as well as prohibiting the sale of high-capacity magazines.



"Our elected officials have seen American after American drop from a bullet. And instead of waking up to protect us, they have been hitting the snooze button. But were here to shake them awake," she said.



"So I need each and every one of you -- no matter your age -- to continue to fight alongside us, because hearts cannot pump without blood and I dont want your community to join the ghastly inner circle that mine is now a part of. In the end, we are all fighting for our lives. But we are a great generation and well be the ones to make America safe."

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.The UnifiEd Action PAC, that was formed in order to identify, recruit, and work towards the election of pro-public school candidates for County Commission, School Board, and county mayor, has issued its endorsements for the upcoming election.

Officials said this month, the PAC went through an exhaustive endorsement process that included candidate interviews and written responses that tackled:

fair and transparent funding for our schools

reducing or eliminating concentrated poverty in our schools

expanding access to early childhood education

increasing dual-enrollment opportunities for high school students

supporting the turnaround efforts of our lowest performing schools

creating a cohesive vision for our public schools







UnifiEd Action PAC is focused on ensuring that every child in Hamilton County has the support and environment to succeed in the 21st century. The candidates we are endorsing today have committed to providing that when they are elected to local office, said Lakweshia Ewing, UnifiEd Action PAC board member.



Ten candidates are being endorsed for election to the County Commission and County Mayor's office "based on their commitment to ensuring full implementation of the above priorities for the public schools in Hamilton County."UnifiEd Action PAC is focused on ensuring that every child in Hamilton County has the support and environment to succeed in the 21st century.The candidates we are endorsing today have committed to providing that when they are elected to local office, said Lakweshia Ewing, UnifiEd Action PAC board member.

Endorsed candidates include:



Jim Coppinger- County Mayor

Randy Fairbanks- County Commission District 1



Chip Baker- County Commission District 2

Elizabeth Baker- County Commission District 2

Rosabelle Gorman- - County Commission District 3

Warren Mackey- County Commission District 4

Katherlyn Geter- County Commission District 5

David Sharpe- County Commission District 6

Sabrena Smedley- County Commission District 7

Brent Lambert- County Commission District 8

*Note: The PAC has decided to endorse both candidates in District 2.



We are excited to fight alongside our endorsed candidates while they advocate for the best public school system possible, said PAC President Lorie Runge. We strongly believe that these candidates will be champions for the 43,000 students being educated in the Hamilton County Public Schools.



A new metro line with driverless trains is expected to be tested by the end of March in Shanghai, the Shanghai Shentong Metro Group announced on Friday.

A new metro line with driverless trains, the APM line, is expected to be tested by the end of March in Shanghai. [File Photo: Weibo.com]

Stretching 6.7 kilometers, the APM line, or Automated People Mover system, links Huizhen Road and Shendu Highway Station, where passengers can transfer to line 8. It has six stations.

With a lightweight design and an intelligent energy management system, the driverless trains will consume less energy compared with regular trains, according to the operator.

A new metro line with driverless trains, the APM line, is expected to be tested by the end of March in Shanghai. [File Photo: Weibo.com]

The APM system has been used widely across the world and has previously been introduced in Beijing and Guangzhou.

Currently, Shanghai has the world's longest metro network of 666 kilometers.Mozilla, Tesla and other are distancing themselves from Facebook following revelations of a major leak of user data to political consultants associated with the 2016 Trump campaign.

While the actions will not likely be permanent and won't have much of an effect on Facebook's bottom line, they're the latest fallout the social-media giant has to contend with from the ever-spiraling scandal along with a tumbling stock price and a #deletefacebook movement.

"We're taking a break from Facebook," Mozilla said in a blog post on Wednesday. The company, which created the Firefox web browser, said it is "pressing pause" on its Facebook advertising and won't be posting on its Facebook page. But it did not delete its page and said it will consider returning if Facebook takes stronger actions to protect users' data and improves privacy settings.

German bank Commerzbank also said it was putting Facebook advertising "on hold" as it evaluates data security. And Sonos, which makes speakers and other electronics, said it is pulling advertising from Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Twitter for a week.

Elon Musk, meanwhile, made waves, saying in a Twitter exchange that he would take down the Facebook sites for his Tesla and SpaceX. As of Thursday afternoon, the sites appeared to be inactive. Tesla and SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

While the actions are likely temporary, they're one more piece of the growing headache for Facebook since of the leak broke a week ago. It has faced criticism because CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg did not speak out until five days after the story broke.

The company's stock price shed 14 per cent of its value this week. And the grumblings by users, and now, businesses shows no sign of abating.

"The Cambridge Analytica scandal, like many recent headlines coming out of Silicon Valley, raises questions about whether Big Tech is doing enough to balance its own interests with one of its biggest responsibilities: safeguarding your privacy," Sonos wrote in a blog post.

But Facebook downplayed the actions by the businesses. "Most of the businesses we've spoken with this week are pleased with the steps we've outlined to better protect people's data, and they have confidence that we'll respond to these challenges and become a better partner and company as a result," the company said in a statement when asked about the advertiser defection.

The fact is, most advertisers need Facebook as a platform because its reach is so great, so any break is likely to only be temporary, said Allen Adamson, founder of brand-marketing consultancy Metaforce.

" can take a short-term hiatus to get some positive spin in the market, but there's no other alternative for digital marketing today," he said. "If you don't use Facebook, the other options are not great."Apple Inc's Chief Executive Tim Cook on Saturday called for "calm heads" and more open trade, amid rising fears of a trade war between the United States and China. Trade tension between China and the United States flared this week when President Donald Trump unveiled plans on Thursday to slap tariffs on potentially up to $60 billion in Chinese goods. China's Commerce Ministry on Friday urged the United States to "pull back from the brink", saying it was not afraid to engage in a trade war. "I'm cognizant that in both the US and China, ...Revelations that a voter-profiling company that worked Donald J Trumps presidential campaign harvested private information from 50 million Facebook profiles have many people wondering: What, if anything, can they do to protect their data connected to the social network? Heres the harsh truth: Not much, short of ceasing to browse the web entirely or deleting your Facebook account. Yet there are some best practices you can employ to help safeguard your data, such as installing software to block web tracking technologies and carefully vetting the apps that you use on ...We all know that in the month of June 2014, 39 Indians were captured as hostage by ISIS in Iraq. This topic was discussed many times in the House. The last discussion was held on July 27 in the Rajya Sabha.

On July 27, 2017, Honble Bajwa Ji had raised this topic in the Zero Hour and the next day I came to the house to give my reply. I would like to read what I had said at that time. I had said, Till the time I have no proof that they have been killed, I will not declare them dead; I will not declare them dead. Deputy Chairman Mr Kurien was presiding on that day. ...Former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad will be jailed for 14 years in the fourth fodder scam case he has been convicted in, with a special CBI court here on Saturday sentencing him to seven years each in two cases under it, and ordering the sentences run consecutively.

Pronouncing the sentence, CBI judge Shivpal Singh sentenced the Rashtriya Janatya Dal (RJD) supremo to seven years rigorous imprisonment on the various sections of the Indian Penal Code he has been charged under and levied a fine of Rs 30 lakh, which if unpaid, would entail a further year's simple imprisonment.

Lalu Prasad was sentenced to a similar sentence and fine on the charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

"The sentences run in the consecutive way, not concurrently," says the judgment of the special court.

The court on March 19 convicted Lalu Prasad in the fourth fodder scam case but acquitted another former Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra.

Both Lalu Prasad and Mishra are facing five cases each in the fodder scam in Ranchi.

There were 31 accused in this case, of which 19 were convicted and 12 acquitted.

Lalu Prasad was convicted in the first fodder scam case in 2013 and awarded five years in jail.

He was convicted by a special CBI court in the second case on December 23, 2017, and awarded three and half years' imprisonment on January 6.

He was convicted in the third case on January 24, related to fraudulent withdrawals from the Chaibasa treasury, and got a five-year jail term.

The multi-million-rupee fodder scam surfaced in the 1990s when Lalu Prasad was Chief Minister of undivided Bihar. The probe was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation on the Patna High Court's order.

The bulk of the cases were transferred to Ranchi after Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in 2000.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Nikhil Desai is a 30-year-old working professional and lives in Dadar, a central locality in Mumbai, with his parents. He has recently done up his home, installing the latest electronic appliances for the convenience of his parents. He has also ensured his mother, a homemaker, does not have to make routine trips to the neighbourhood grocery store. Digital-savvy, Desai uses his latest iPhone to order groceries online and has even taught his mother how to do it on her Xiaomi phone.

Desais story is that of myriad youths across the country. As India gets younger -- over a third of the countrys population is below 35 -- consumption has also risen. The uptick has been most pronounced in the last one decade, say experts, coinciding with the rise of social media, technology and smartphones.

India is already the second-largest smartphone market in the world after China. It shipped over 40 million smartphones in the July-September period of calendar year 2017. India is also counted among the largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and durable markets in the world, worth Rs 2.5 trillion and Rs 700 billion, respectively. It is no surprise then that most big, small and medium-sized consumer goods companies -- from durables to mobile phones, food, beverages, personal care and household items -- have made a beeline for India in the last one decade.

A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) says India could become the third-largest consumer economy by 2025, from sixth now, touching $4 trillion. India will be trailing only the US and China by 2025, says BCG, driven by growing affluence, changing consumer lifestyles and behaviour.

Deven Choksey, managing director of KR Choksey Investment Managers, who has tracked the consumer sector closely, says Indias consumer economy has been largely driven by the increase in per capita income (PCI), which has grown from Rs 29,524 in 2006-07 to Rs 103,219 in 2016-17.

Estimates are the 2017-18 financial year will see Indias PCI at 111,782, a year-on-year growth of 8.3 per cent, according to the Central Statistics Office.

The increase in PCI, says Choksey, has pushed up peoples propensity to consume in the last one decade, fueling the growth of a number of categories from staples to discretionary.

The last few years have seen central and state governments devote more attention to building infrastructure, improving road, rail and air connectivity as well as increasing focus on housing and providing electricity to people. Greater attention has also been given to the rural areas, with welfare schemes and better price to key agricultural crops, he says.

What does this mean for companies then? As Sunil Duggal, chief executive officer, Dabur India, says an economy on the growth path always spells good for consumer-facing businesses.

Between 2006-07 and 2016-17, for instance, the compounded annual growth rate for the top 25 FMCG and durable companies in terms of net sales was 13 per cent, operating profit was 14.27 per cent, and net profit was 13.5 per cent (See chart).

The next decade could see the compounded annual growth rate in terms of net sales and net profit cross the 13-per cent mark as companies increasingly focus on volume growth and rein in excessive advertising and sales promotion expenditure.

While the last 10 years were also marked by drought (in 2014 and 2015), demonetisation (in November 2016) and rural distress (triggered due to drought, unseasonal rains, and cash crunch), experts say the economy is slowly but steadily coming out of this.

Between 2002 and 2007, the FMCG market was marked by intense competition between rivals and multinational players such as Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Colgate, who were all looking to consolidate their position in the marketplace, says G Chokkalingam, founder and managing director, Equinomics Research & Advisory.

The period from 2008 onwards, however, has seen the emergence of Indian FMCG players such as Dabur, Marico, Emami and Godrej Consumer, which grew on the back of acquisitions. The last three to four years, in particular, have been more about the rise of ayurvedic giants such as Patanjali as people attempted to go back to their roots and adopt a healthy way of living, he says.

The ayurvedic trend is expected to strengthen, with most personal care companies devoting more investment and energy on the segment as consumers demand chemical-free products. As far durables and electronic companies are concerned, the thrust now is on increasing local manufacturing rather than assembling. This comes as the government tighten the screws, slapping higher import duties on components, parts and fully and partly built product units.Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have clashed on artificial intelligence, space travel and the direction of technology. On Friday, Musk showed just how little love lost there was between the two tech titans. Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, deleted the Facebook pages of both of his companies. In doing so, he joined a growing chorus of tech leaders calling for people to abandon Zuckerbergs social network after it allowed a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, to obtain and misuse data on 50 million users. The revelations have plunged Facebook into ...Britains opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sacked his shadow Northern Ireland minister on Friday after he called for a second referendum on Brexit, a move that exposes deep divisions in the party over whether to leave the European Union. Owen Smith, who challenged Corbyn for the party leadership in 2016, wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper on Friday urging his party to reopen the question of whether Brexit was the right decision. Smith said he was sacked for voicing his opinion that Brexit will damage the economy and threaten the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in ...One policeman lost his life and four others were injured in an explosion that took place on Saturday in the coastal region of Alexandria in Egypt.

The Egyptian Interior Ministry confirmed the incident.

The explosion took place days ahead of Egypt's presidential election.

The Interior Ministry further informed that the explosion occurred in the district of Roshdi as the head of the Alexandria Security Directorate was passing by.

No group has claimed the responsibility for the explosion yet.

The Presidential elections are scheduled to take place between 26- 28 March where ruling President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is expected to be re-elected.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)At least 48 terrorists including 14 Islamic State militants were killed in multiple military operations conducted by the Afghan air forces in Afghan province on Saturday.

Further three were injured and 13 others arrested in the military operations conducted in Nangarhar, Kunar, Paktia, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, Farah, Badghis, Faryab and Helmand provinces of Afghanistan, as per the Tolo News.

Afghan National Defense and Security Forces conducted 10 clearance operations and 12 special operations in nine provinces during the past 24 hours, Tolo News quoted a statement by the Ministry of Defence.

The Ministry further said that three strongholds of the militants were eliminated in the military operations.

According to the Ministry, the Afghan Air Force conducted 66 flights to support army soldiers and targeted 14 strongholds of terrorists.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday file a reply in a Delhi court and opposed the anticipatory bail plea filed by Karti Chidambaram in connection with Aircel-Maxis matter.

Karti, son of former union minister P Chidambaram, yesterday filed an anticipatory bail plea in the Delhi Court in the case which pertains to the alleged irregularities in FIPB clearance to a company in Aircel-Maxis matter arising out of the 2G spectrum cases.

Karti sought protection of arrest in the case, in which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the ED have lodged cases in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

The ED also accused Karti of 'forum shopping' and said, "Karti has approached multiple courts through multiple applications."

The court would pronounce its order at 3 pm today.

Meanwhile, Counsel of Karti Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal said, "The allegation is that the then finance minister P. Chidambaram granted the approval without going to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA). The question is whether the finance minister's approval was valid or not. What has that got to do with Karti Chidambaram?".

The CBI had registered an FIR in 2011, while the ED registered an enforcement case investigation report (ECIR) in 2012, in connection with the case.

The Aircel-Maxis deal refers to a series of allegations of kickbacks in the telecom sector, which was part of the wider 2G scam that engulfed the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah on Saturday expressed confidence of winning 21 seats out of 25 parliamentary constituencies from northeast in Lok Sabha polls in 2019.

"In the upcoming elections of 2019, the BJP will win more than 21 seats out of the 25 seats (of northeast)," Shah said while addressing a rally in Guwahati.

Shah even attacked the Congress partyand raised a question on the initiatives taken by them for the development of the Assam.

"The BJP wants to ensure Assam's progress through development. Congress leaders including their party president had visited North East for rallies and had put baseless allegations on us. I want to ask Rahul Gandhi, what did he do for Assam's development in last 10 years?" Shah asked.

He even accused the opposition of halting the working of the Parliament and said that they are ready to debate on all issues.

During the address, he also challenged the opposition to bring the no-confidence motion, adding that the BJP government is all prepared to face it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Social networking giant Facebook has been slapped with four legal lawsuits within a week amid claims that UK-based analytical firm Cambridge Analytica is accused of harvesting millions of users' data from Facebook.

A Facebook user named Lauren Price of Maryland filed a suit in San Jose on Tuesday on behalf of up to 50 million people whose data was used by Cambridge Analytica.

"It's a class action lawsuit that claims Facebook has "absolute disregard" for my personal data, despite allegedly stating it would not disclose data without permission or at least notice," said Price.

The suit also noted that during the 2016 US presidential election, Price often saw political ads on her own Facebook feed.

Individual shareholders in Facebook - Fan Yuan and Robert Casey, each filed their own class action lawsuit against its CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CFO David Wehner.

The plaintiffs seek to recover the losses incurred when Facebook's stock tanked this week, which cost the company nearly 10 percent of its market value, according to The Verge.

A fourth lawsuit was filed by attorney Jeremiah Hallisey on Thursday in San Jose, on behalf of the Facebook's shareholders against Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and board members.

The suit claims that the executives and board of directors failed to stop the data breach or tell users about it when it happened, and therefore "violated their fiduciary duty."

Hallisey is also asking for payment that restores the company shareholders to their previous positions and a court order for Facebook to improve its internal processes respectively.

Cambridge Analytica is accused of harvesting personal data of Facebook users to influence elections in several countries including the US presidential elections. It suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, for the same.

The company, founded by Stephen K. Bannon and Robert Mercer, a wealthy Republican donor who has put at least USD 15 million into it, offered tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behaviour.

The so-called psychographic modelling techniques, which were built in part with the data harvested from Facebook, underpinned the company's work for then-Republican nominee and US President Donald Trump's campaign in 2016.

On Thursday, Zuckerberg said that he was sorry about the Cambridge Analytica scandal affecting "tens of millions" and that he would be "willing to testify before the US Congress."

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have denied any wrongdoing.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Centre has issued a notice to the scandal-hit analytical firm Cambridge Analytica, asking them to reply to six questions by March 31.

In a notice that was issued on Friday by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Government has raised questions like- how it came to be in possession of user data, whether consent was obtained from the individuals concerned, and how such data collection was used.

The questions in the notice are as follows:

1. Whether they have been engaged in any assignment to utilise data of Indians from the above-cited breach?

2. Who are the entities that have engaged them for the above?

3. How did they come to be in possession of such data?

4. Was consent taken from the individuals?

5. How was such data collected used?

6. Was there any profiling done on the basis of such data?

British High Court judge yesterday approved a warrant, allowing law enforcement officers to search the Cambridge Analytica, which is in the midst of the Facebook data privacy storm.

The London High Court granted the request by UK Information Commissioner (ICO) Elizabeth Denham, who is investigating claims that the firm may have illegally acquired Facebook data for political ends.

According to the court, Judge Leonard will seek a full explanation of the decision on March 27.

Denham first sought the warrant on Monday, as Cambridge Analytica was accused of harvesting millions of Facebook users' data. However, it did not happen due to legal delays, according to HuffPost.

In a statement on Friday, before the 18 enforcement officers went in, the ICO said, "We're pleased with the decision of the judge and we plan to execute the warrant shortly."

Cambridge Analytica has said that "it is willing to cooperate with the ICO in its investigation."

Cambridge Analytica is accused of harvesting personal data of Facebook users to influence elections in several countries including the US presidential elections.

The company, founded by Stephen K. Bannon and Robert Mercer, a wealthy Republican donor who has put at least USD 15 million into it, offered tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behaviour.

The so-called psychographic modelling techniques, which were built in part with the data harvested from Facebook, underpinned the company's work for then-Republican nominee and US President Donald Trump's campaign in 2016.

On Wednesday, the Indian Ministry of Information Technology had sent out a word of caution to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding any incident of data theft of an Indian citizen if found.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have denied any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Cambridge Analytica has suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix over the same issue.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Reacting to the continuous ruckus in the Parliament over no-confidence motion, the Communist Party of India (CPI) has announced that they will observe a black day, if the House adjourns sine die before April 5.

Talking to ANI, CPI state secretary K Ramakrishna accused the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) of obstructing the Parliament.

"There are rumours that before April 5, they may adjourn the house sine die. If this happens, we will observe a black day," the CPI leader said.

He further said that the party will also hold a demonstration to conserve the Constitution of India.

"Everyday they are repeating the same thing. Some regional parties like AIADMK and TRS are getting along with Prime Minsiter Modi to obstruct the Parliament. On March 27, we are staging a demonstration to conserve the Constitution of India," he added.

Lok Sabha, on Friday, was adjourned till March 27, following the protest by opposition parties in the Parliament premises, over various issues.

While the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) continued its protest demanding Special Category status to Andhra Pradesh, the Congress party staged a protest demanding the Government to file a review petition against the Supreme Court ruling on the SC/ST Act that has diluted the provisions for immediate arrest under the act.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday continued his tirade against demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) while saying that both did massive damage to Indian economy and job creation.

"I think demonetisation was a mistake and should not have been done. Demonetisation and GST were massive damage to the Indian economy and job creation. I have a problem with the way demonetisation was carried out, RBI governor, Chief Economic Advisor, Finance Minister, none of them knew of it. When I called Chidambaram, he called demonetisation insane," Rahul said while interacting with the students at Maharani's Arts College for Women in Mysuru.

Reacting on the multi-thousand-crore Punjab Bank (PNB) fraud case, the Congress leader said, "Nirav Modi took Rs 22,000 crore of bank money. Can you imagine how many businesses could have been built by young women like you if we had given Rs 22,000 crore to you?"

Rahul further said, "We are growing pretty decently as an economy but we are not creating jobs, it is because those who have skills don't have access to finance and support. The problem is, huge amount of money goes to 15-20 people."

Earlier in the day, the Congress chief, along with Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, visited Chamundeshwari Temple in Mysuru.

Ahead of the election in the 224-member assembly in Karnataka, the state has witnessed frequent visits by leaders, from both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

While the ruling Congress is trying to retain power in Karnataka, the BJP is eyeing to seize the southern state from it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)On the occasion of Earth Hour, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Saturday held a meeting in candlelight at his residence.

The lights in the Chief Miniter's House were dimmed for an entire hour from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

Meanwhile, in Delhi lights were put out at places like, Rashtrapati Bhawan, North and South Block of the Central Secretariat from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

Further, the war memorial of India Gate also plunged into darkness to observe the Hour.

Mumbai also contributed towards saving the electricity as the lights at the Gateway of India were dimmed too.

The movement of the Earth Hour began in 2007 in Australia, and it has now become a global campaign wherein non-essential lights are turned off at 8:30 PM on a specific day towards the end of March.

Globally various other countries, including Australia, United States of America, Egypt and France, also observed the hour by dimming the lights of famous historical monuments including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, New York's Empire State Building, Pyramids of Egypt and, the Eiffel Tower.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Gendarmerie who suffered injuries in the Friday's French supermarket shooting breathed his last on Saturday bringing the total death toll to five.

France's Interior Minister, Gerard Collomb, announced the death of Lt Col Arnaud Beltrame who had bravely offered himself to the deceased gunman Redouane Lakdim in place of a lady hostage.

"We will never forget his heroism, his bravery, his sacrifice. With a heavy heart, I send the support of the entire country to his family, friends and colleagues of the gendarmerie of the Aude," The Guardian quoted Collomb as saying.

Later President Emmanuel Macron issued an official statement saying he was "deeply moved" to learn of the officer's death from his injuries.

Beltrame was shot in the throat at the end of a four-hour supermarket siege in the quiet town of Trebes, near Carcassonne, in southern France on Friday.

He hijacked a car, killed its driver and attempted to mow down four police officers while opening fire at them. One policeman got injured in the incident while he was jogging at a park.

He later drove the car to the supermarket and immediately opened fire upon people, killing two before taking several others as hostages.

It took three hours to bring the situation under control when the police shot dead the gunman in a cross firing.

The militant organisation Islamic State took the responsibility of the attack.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The automotive industry of India ranks amongst the biggest ones in the world; thanks to companies like Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG) who has been producing world-class auto ancillary products since 1975. SMG leads the list of product suppliers to the global automotive industry and recorded a turnover of USD 9.1 billion (approx.) during 2016-17.

The chairman and co-founder of Samvardhana Motherson Group, Vivek Chaand Sehgal, is an Indian-born Australian businessman who co-founded the group with his mother. As of May 2017, Vivek Chaand Sehgal's net worth was estimated at USD $4.3 billion by Forbes and has over 36 years of experience in the automotive industry. He was recently a part of EO Gurgaon's learning event at The Leela Ambience, Gurgaon, where he enlightened the audience about his journey and shared his experience.

EO Gurgaon member, Anirudh Khaitan, shared his views on the session, "Well the most memorable part of the evening for me was when he said don't become the managing director of the company if you want to be an entrepreneur. Let professionals run the Company. It was truly an enlightening experience".

Gaurav Jhunjhunwala, EO Gurgaon member, "Listening to Sehgals' contrarian views on various topics such as people management, and acquisition strategy gave me a lot of food for thought as an entrepreneur. It was also very inspiring to hear about his journey and most of all it filled me with immense pride to hear how an Indian company has become a global force to be reckoned with in the automotive sector".

Ayush Agrawal, EO Gurgaon member said, "Fabulous and a great learning experience. Sehgals' viewpoint on connecting his dynamics with ancient India philosophy is great take home for the young entrepreneurs! And not to forget how he debunked everything thing we have learnt at MBA schools and still created an empire. Truly inspiring speaker".

For EO Gurgaon, Chaand Sehgal said, "Thanks for the hospitalities and the courtesies extended and I hope I have done some inspirational activities for the new younger generation. I am sure someone is going to benefit from this talk and story".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)North Korea has agreed to hold high-level talks with South next week to discuss the details about an inter-Korean summit.

The South Korean news agency, Yonhap quoted the Ministry of Unification as saying on Saturday that North Korea has given its nod to the South's proposal for the talks.

South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon will lead a three-member delegation.

The Unification Ministry said in a release, "North Korea delivered its agreement via the border communication channel today, saying it will send a three-member delegation headed by Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for Peaceful Reunification."

"The government will make full preparations for the inter-Korean summit through the March 29 talks," it added.

Earlier on Thursday, Seoul had informed the Pyongyang via a border communication channel of its proposal for the talks.

Leaders of both countries are expected to hold a meeting on the sidelines on the summit, which will take place in late April.

In the year 2000 and 2007 was the last time when South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held a meeting.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday received his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Budenbender at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

President Kovind also hosted a banquet in their honour.

Before meeting the President, Steinmeier met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the evening and both visited Delhi's Sunder Nursery and discussed wide range of issues.

Earlier in the day, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on Steinmeier, and held discussions on broadening and deepening the strategic partnership between the two countries.

He was also accorded with the 'guard of honour' at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Steinmeier arrived in India on March 22 to embark on his maiden four-day visit.

The German President's visit to India is considered significant after German Chancellor Angela Merkel was re-elected to the German Parliament for a record fourth term on March 21.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Peruvian regional governor Martin Vizcarra was on Friday sworn in as the country's new president, after his predecessor Pedro Pablo Kuczynski abruptly resigned on Wednesday over a corruption scandal.

Vizcarra, while taking oath on Friday, has vowed to eliminate economic corruption from the country.

This comes hours after the Peru Congress voted overwhelmingly to accept the resignation of Kuczynski.

The 79-year-old-leader had offered his resignation, after secret video recordings entangled him in the new corruption scandal, on the eve of an impeachment vote, The Guardian reported.

He resigned as Peruvian lawmakers prepared to vote for the second time in three months whether to oust the Kuczynski from office for "permanent moral unfitness" in a plenary session of the Congress.

In a televised message to the nation on Wednesday, Kuczynski said he would offer his resignation to avoid being an "obstacle" to the country. He, however, denied any wrongdoing.

In his address, Kuczynski blamed "selectively tendentious" edited recording for giving the impression of vote buying and said "political confrontation had created a climate of ungovernability", which in turn did enormous damage to the country.

He is accused of repeatedly lying about decade-old business ties to a Brazilian firm, Odebrecht, which has been at the centre of the continent's biggest corruption scandal. It has tainted nearly all of Peru's main political players in the last two decades.

Violent protests had erupted over the week, demanding the resignation of Kuczynski, as protesters said that the Peruvian leader represented the "corrupt political class". Amid clashes with police, protesters chanted to "get rid of them all".

Maintaining a low profile throughout, 81 percent of Peruvians do not recognise the new Peruvian president's name in an opinion poll conducted earlier this month.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!Praising farmers in helping Madhya Pradesh bag Krishi Karman Award for the fifth time in a row this year, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Thursday doubled their relief fund.

Madhya Pradesh recently bagged the annual 2018 Krishi Karman Award on March 17. This award is given every year to a state which has demonstrated continuous positive work in the agriculture sector for that particular year.

During the event, Chouhan also announced to double the relief fund for the farmers from Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 30,000 per hectare.

"I congratulate state farmers for their hard work and dedication that has helped us bag Krishi Karman Award for the fifth time in a row this year. To help state farmers we have doubled relief fund from Rs 15,000 to Rs 30,000 per hectare this year," Chouhan said while addressing an agricultural event organised to initiate a dialogue between the state government and the farmers.

He later discussed about the government's Bhuvantar Bhugtan Yojana also known as price-deficit scheme under which the state government would pay the farmers the difference between modal rate (the average prices in major mandis) and the minimum support prices (MSPs) for the kharif crops.

Meanwhile, a group of farmers, demanding a complete loan waiver from the chief minister, conducted a march from Madhya Pradesh's Sagar city to its capital Bhopal, covering a distance of 185 km.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Investigation Agency (NIA) court here on Saturday sentenced Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) recruiter Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid to seven years in prison in ISIS Kasaragod module case.

The case relates to the activities of Kasaragod district's 14 people, who along with their families had exited India between May and July 2016 and joined the ISIS.

Zahid, a native of Sitamarhi district, Bihar, has been convicted under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) read with 125 (waging war against country)of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) besides sections 38, 39 and 40 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The court has awarded punishment of seven years of Rigorous Imprisonment (RI) with a fine of Rs. 25,000 to her.

An investigation by NIA revealed that the principal accused Abdul Rashid Abdulla had recruited the other accused persons in this case including Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid by conducting classes at Kasaragod and other places since Ramadan 2015, in support of the terrorist organisation ISIS/ Daesh and its ideology of violent jihad.

He had motivated his co-conspirators including Yasmeen Mohammed Zahid to join the terrorist organisation waging war against Asiatic powers at peace with the Government of India.

Zahid was intercepted at New Delhi International Airport on July 30, 2016, while she was exiting India for Kabul with the intention of joining her husband and co-conspirator Abdul Rashid in ISIS/ Daesh-controlled territory in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, which the accused persons consider as part of the Khorasan Wilayat of the Islamic State.

Absconder Abdulla had raised funds for the terrorist organization and transferred such funds, while being in Afghanistan, to Zahid, who had utilized it for her activities intended at supporting the terrorist organization. Zahid had got acquainted with Abdulla, while working in Peace International School at Kottakkal in Malappuram district, Kerala and they had later got married secretly.

On January 27, 2017, NIA filed a charge-sheet against accused Abdulla and Zahid under sections 120B read with 125 of IPC besides sections 38, 39 and 40 of UAPA.

The trial of the case commenced on November 9, 2017, and the prosecution had examined 52 witnesses through whom 115 documents and 29 material objects were exhibited, while the defence had examined one witness.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Former world No. 1 Novak Djokovic dashed out of the Miami Open after suffering a second round defeat on Saturday as he continues his return from an injury.

Djokovic lost 6-3, 6-4 to French world number 47 Benoit Paire in a match, which lasted over 69 minutes.

It is Djokovic's third consecutive defeat since he reached the Australian Open fourth round, where he made a comeback after a six-month injury lay-off.

Earlier this month, the Serb was knocked out of the Indian Wells Masters after losing to Taro Daniel of Japan in the second round tie.

"I mean, I'm trying, but it's not working. That's all. That's all it is. I'm not feeling great when I'm playing this way. Of course, I want to be able to play as well as I want to play. Just it's impossible at the moment. That's all. I lost to a better player," Djokovic said post his defeat.

Elsewhere in Miami, Belgium No. 1 David Goffin was defeated by Portugal's Joao Sousa 6-0 6-1.

Goffin was playing his comeback match after sustaining an eye injury at the Rotterdam Open in January.

Later in the day, World No. 1 Roger Federer will begin his Miami Open campaign against Thanasi Kokkinakis of Australia.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Who knew a simple interactive session would lead to a severe trolling session on Twitter!

Such was a case for Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday, during a session with the students of Maharani's Arts College for Women in Karnataka's Mysuru, where he said, he does not know much about the Cadet Corps (NCC).

Trollers swung into action after Gandhi said, "'I don't know the details of NCC training and that type of stuff, so I won't be able to answer that question."

His response came after one of the students questioned, "What benefits will you give to NCC cadets after passing 'C' certificate examination?"

One of the trollers said, "There is no ncc in Italy."

""that type of stuffs"?? how ignorant are you! You talk about army, defence, etc.

when u go to colleges, meet students, such questions are obvious. Not prepared?" said another.

While few came out in support of the Gandhi scion, as one said, "He's honest so I don't think he's bad there are several leaders who noe nothing and still talk"

"update : more than 99% of politicians/civilians are not well aware about the NCC. rahul was at least, honest enough to accept it, least he too have uttered pure fakery like the emporer of bhakts," said another user.

Ahead of the election in the 224-member assembly in Karnataka, the state has witnessed frequent visits by leaders, from both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

While the ruling Congress is trying to retain power in Karnataka, the BJP is eyeing to seize the southern state from it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Yoga Guru Ramdev will be giving 'Deeksha' (initiation ceremony into asceticism) to 85 religious scholars in Haridwar, on Sunday.

Speaking to ANI, the scholars said the purpose of serving the country drove them to choose asceticism .

Mahila Patanjali Yoga Samiti Chief Coordinator and a PhD scholar in Philosohpy Suman said, "I always knew I have to live for God and my country, but how to live was a question mark. I have been in touch with Swami ji for the last three years, so I came here without qualms."

"For India to reach where Swami ji has envisioned it to be, we need spirituality and a sense of service. We found a great platform for this here, so we connected with Patanjali Yogpeeth for serving others," she added.

Shruti, a student pursuing her Master of Arts (MA), said, "Asceticism is a path of service. As an ascetic, a person accepts the whole world as a family. People ask me why I am choosing this path when I can serve the society otherwise too. But, I say why not, it has been a tradition since antiquity."

Another scholar who will be taking 'Deeksha', Sumit, told ANI, " During the time I was in Australia, in 2010-11, Ramdev ji Maharaj was leading an anti-corruption movement in India. He was saying that if we are born in India, we have taken food and water of this soil, then our energy should be for India, so that thought convinced me. To be a part of that movement, I came back to India and joined Swami ji."

Sumit said he was pursuing Masters in IT from Melbourne Institute of Technology (MIT), Australia, when he made the decision.

The yoga guru will give a mantra and initiate the scholars to meditate, fast, and live their life with discipline.

A village for these 85 sages is also under development so that they can spend their lives and dedicate themselves towards spirituality.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Saturday said that it is the respect for the achievements of India and the people, which brings him to the country time and again.

The German president made this remark while interacting with the media after meeting President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

"I have been to India several times but this is my first visit here as the President of Germany. I am coming here again and again because I have huge respect regarding the achievements in India, for the people and the country itself," Steinmeier said.

Steinmeier, who is accompanied by his wife Elke Budenbender, was even accorded with 'guard of honour' at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Later he paid floral tribute to Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi at Raj Ghat.

Steinmeier arrived in India on March 22 to embark on his maiden four-day visit.

The Steinmeier's visit to India is considered significant after German Chancellor Angela Merkel was re-elected to the German Parliament for a record fourth term on March 21.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Hip-hop artist Russell Simmons, who has been accused of rape in a new $10 million lawsuit, has 'vehemently' denied the allegations.

According to the lawsuit, filed Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a woman identified as Jane Doe accused the Def Jam Recordings co-founder of luring her to his hotel room and raping her.

The 60-year-old, who is 'shocked' by the accusations, told E! Online, "I vehemently deny all the allegations made against me."

"They have shocked me to my core as I have never been abusive or violent in any way in my relations with women. I have submitted myself to multiple lie detector tests. I denied forced sex and sexual harassment allegations brought against me in each test; I also answered no to the question, 'Have you ever physically forced any woman to have sexual intercourse?' I passed all of the lie detector tests."

In her complaint, the plaintiff alleges Simmons raped her in a hotel room after she met him at a concert - which she was attending with her son - where he had lured her with an invitation to an after party. He then allegedly forced her onto a hotel bed and raped her.

In recent months, at least 14 women have accused the Simmons of sexual misconduct, which he has denied.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier here on Saturday.

Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar informed on Twitter that Swaraj held a discussion with the German President on broadening and deepening strategic partnership between the two countries.

"EAM @SushmaSwaraj called on President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Engaging discussion on broadening and deepening our strategic partnership. The two sides attach priority to the relationship, bilaterally and also in the global context (sic)," Kumar tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Steinmeier, who is accompanied by his wife Elke Budenbender, was accorded with 'guard of honour' at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Steinmeier said it is the respect for the achievements of India and the people, which brings him to the country time and again.

The German president made this remark while interacting with the media after meeting President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

"I have been to India several times but this is my first visit here as the President of Germany. I am coming here again and again because I have huge respect regarding the achievements in India, for the people and the country itself," Steinmeier said.

Later he paid floral tribute to Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi at Raj Ghat.

Steinmeier arrived in India on March 22 to embark on his maiden four-day visit.

The Steinmeier's visit to India is considered significant after German Chancellor Angela Merkel was re-elected to the German Parliament for a record fourth term on March 21.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Amit Shah on Saturday termed the decision of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu to pull out of the Democratic Alliance (NDA) over special category status to the state as 'unfortunate' and 'unilateral'.

Shah in a letter to the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister said that the BJP has been a firm believer in the concept of ' of performance' and 'development for all.'

"It is a decision; I am afraid, will be construed as being guided wholly and solely by political considerations instead of developmental concerns," the letter read.

Shah further said that Andhra Pradesh has always been on the agenda of development and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has left no stone unturned to ensure its growth and prosperity.

He further said that it was BJP who led the voice of safeguarding the welfare of Telugu people in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, long before its bifurcation.

"This is in direct contrast to the Congress Party, which not only mismanaged the bifurcation but also showed zero sensitivity towards the Telugu people, which is in line with their historic apathy to the Telugu community," he said.

Stressing on the issue, the BJP chief said that the NDA has a firm commitment for the development of Andhra Pradesh.

The Andhra ruling party pulled-out from the NDA, last week over the demand of special category status which was promised during the bifurcation of the state in 2014.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Jammu and Kashmir Police on Saturday categorically stated that the two terrorists, who were gunned down in Anantnag's encounter were from Pakistan and belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militant outfit.

"The preliminary investigation suggests that both the killed terrorists are from Pakistan. Based on seizures made from the spot and other incriminating materials collected so far confirmed they were a part of outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militant outfit," Jammu and Kashmir, Zonal Police Headquarters said in a statement.

At least two terrorists were killed in the encounter that broke out between security personnel and terrorists in Shistargam Dooru area of Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir.

The encounter began late Friday night, which continued for quite some time. The operation ended without any collateral damage.

"The encounter broke out at Shistargam Dooru area of Anantnag district Army, Anantnag Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) strongly retaliated to the attack. A huge cache of arms and ammunition have also been recovered following the encounter," Jammu and Kashmir police said earlier in the day.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)First Quantum's release also says that it "unequivocally refutes this assessment", and goes on to say that it does "not appear to have any discernible basis of calculation".

The tax assessment would be a "new significant risk for the company", Jefferies analyst Christopher LaFemina said in a client note, as nearly half of First Quantum's estimated value and around 80 per cent of its estimated pre-tax earnings in 2018, come from its Zambian copper assets. CEO Philip Pascall elaborated on some of the numbers behind the tax assessment.

Shares of First Quantum dropped 12% in Toronto Tuesday when trading was halted ahead of the company's statement. It will need four to six months to review the claim, which affects over 23,000 bills of entry and US$540 million in imported equipment, Pascall said.

Zambian President Edgar Lungu wants his tax authority and First Quantum Minerals to speedily resolve a disputed tax bill the copper producer received this week, which at $7.9 billion is bigger than the country's 2018 budget.

It was unclear how Zambia calculated the $2.1 billion penalty, First Quantum said, noting that smuggled goods tend to get a 300-percent penalty for customs avoidance, while simple errors typically get a 15-percent penalty.

"We have, in the past, seen assessments that were significant and then the settlement might be reduced considerably", Pascall said.

The company's share price took a hit after being handed the bill by the Zambian Revenue Authority on Tuesday.

"If anything like these claims is actually enforced, it will make Zambia largely uninvestable for any mining company, and probably any other industry as well", Gait said.

First Quantum, which operates the Kansanshi and Kalumbila mines in Zambia, accounted for more than half of the country's copper output previous year and is the largest individual taxpayer.

In 2017 Zambia cut power to mines, including the Kansanshi pit owned by First Quantum, and two operations held by Glencore, after a fight escalated over tariffs.United States President Donald Trump on Saturday approved new limits on transgender troops in the U.S. military, allowing most of them to remain in the ranks.

The Pentagon, however, could require them to serve according to their gender at birth.

The policy recommendation that President Trump approved flatly states, "transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from military service," The New York Times reported.

But it also largely gives the Pentagon the ability to make exceptions where it sees fit.

The policy adopts recommendations that President Trump received from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

It comes after court rulings froze the president's initial ban on transgender troops, issued in July 2017, as potentially unconstitutional.

"In my professional judgment, these policies will place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win America's wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world," Mattis had written in a summary of his recommendations to Donald Trump.

In August 2017, Trump had directed the Pentagon to reverse an Obama administration policy that had allowed transgender people, or those diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or had discomfort with their biological gender, to serve in the military.

However, in October, a judge in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia had temporarily blocked Trump's ban and said the reasoning behind it was most likely unconstitutional because it represented a "disapproval of transgender people generally".

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had ruled that the military's current policy should remain in place.

Meanwhile, Trump's new order allows the defense secretary and the homeland security secretary to "exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)United States President Donald Trump on Saturday denounced the French Supermarket attack which left five people dead.

President Trump took to his Twitter account to offer his condolences to those who lost their lives in the shooting attack on Friday.

He tweeted, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the horrible attack in France yesterday, and we grieve the nation's loss. We also condemn the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support. We are with you".

The deceased gunman Redouane Lakdim on Friday conducted the entire terror operation at 'Super U' market near Trebes, Carcassonne, in southern France.

He hijacked a car, killed its driver and attempted to mow down four police officers while opening fire at them. One policeman got injured in the incident while he was jogging at a park.

He later drove the car to the supermarket and immediately opened fire upon people, killing two before taking several others as hostages.

Later on Friday, the gunman himself was shot dead by the security forces thus ending the entire operation.

It took three hours to bring the situation under control when the police shot dead the gunman in a cross firing.

The militant organisation Islamic State took the responsibility of the attack.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Vakrangee Limited through its wholly owned subsidiary company "Vakrangee Logistics Private Limited" has entered an alliance with Blue Dart Express Limited to offer last mile courier and logistics services on a PAN India basis.

As per the arrangement with Blue Dart, VLPL through Vakrangee Kendras will offer courier pick-up and delivery services to the citizens - more affordable, reliably and efficiently.

In the first phase, VLPL in collaboration with Blue Dart plans to roll out last mile delivery services across selected locations in Maharashtra, which will further be extended to cover the entire network of Vakrangee Kendras across the country.

This association will allow Blue Dart to extend their reach to un-served and under-served areas through Vakrangee Kendras. Parallelly, this alliance will benefit Vakrangee Limited by further expanding their bouquet of services for citizens.

"This strategic partnership is a game changer for the e-commerce industry in India that is struggling for delivery of goods to the large rural population of India. Blue Dart is a well-known brand and this tie-up is very important to us as we scale up our logistic services to provide courier booking and last mile delivery services to citizens across the country. This tie-up will also open up additional sources of revenue to our franchisees. Vakrangee Ltd. promises to give every Indian, their rightful access to a wide range of modern-day products and services," said CEO, Vakangee Logistics, Shailendra Jindal.

"At Blue Dart our vision is to establish continuing excellence in delivery capabilities focused on the individual customer and this partnership with Vakrangee Logistics Private Limited enables us to expand our reach to the hitherto unserved and underserved areas across the country. We have evolved an infrastructure unique in the country today to provide express delivery services through our exceptional people, processes and superior technology. The 44000 plus Vakrangee Kendras will further expand our reach and delivery capabilities that could give new dimensions to the e-commerce logistics," said Managing Director, Blue Dart Express Limited, Anil Khanna.

Vakrangee is a technology-driven company, focusing on creating India's largest network of last mile retail points-of-sale.

The company's aim is to potentially enable every Indian to seamlessly benefit from financial inclusion, social inclusion, digital India, skill development, employment, government programs and a wider access to basic goods and services.

It is the third largest franchisee network globally with more than 44000 Vakrangee Kendras in more than 17 states.

The company endeavours to bridge the financial inclusion gap between developed urban India and under-developed rural India through Vakrangee Kendras.

Blue Dart Express Limited, South Asia's premier courier, is an integrated express package distribution company.

Its extensive domestic network covers over 35000 locations, and services in more than 220 countries and territories worldwide through their group company DHL, the premier global brand name in express distribution services.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A British High Court judge on Friday approved a warrant, allowing law enforcement officers to search the scandal-hit analytical firm Cambridge Analytica, which is in the midst of the Facebook data privacy storm.

The London High Court granted the request by UK Information Commissioner (ICO) Elizabeth Denham, who is investigating claims that the firm may have illegally acquired Facebook data for political ends.

According to the court, Judge Leonard will seek a full explanation of the decision on March 27.

Denham first sought the warrant on Monday, as Cambridge Analytica was accused of harvesting millions of Facebook users' data. However, it did not happen due to legal delays, according to HuffPost.

In a statement on Friday before the 18 enforcement officers went in, the ICO said, "We're pleased with the decision of the judge and we plan to execute the warrant shortly."

"This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data for political purposes and we will now need time to collect and consider the evidence," it added.

Cambridge Analytica has said that "it is willing to cooperate with the ICO in its investigation."

Cambridge Analytica is accused of harvesting personal data of Facebook users to influence elections in several countries including the US presidential elections.

The company, founded by Stephen K. Bannon and Robert Mercer, a wealthy Republican donor who has put at least USD 15 million into it, offered tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behaviour.

The so-called psychographic modelling techniques, which were built in part with the data harvested from Facebook, underpinned the company's work for then-Republican nominee and US President Donald Trump's campaign in 2016.

On Wednesday, the Indian Ministry of Information Technology had sent out a word of caution to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding any incident of data theft of an Indian citizen if found.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have denied any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Cambridge Analytica on Tuesday suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix over the same issue.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A woman journalist on Friday filed a complaint against Delhi Cantt Station House Officer, saying a police official molested her during a JNU protest march.

According to a tweet by Delhi Police, further enquiry of the complaint by the woman will be handled by the vigilant branch.

A female photographer was also manhandled by policewoman during the protest. "They took my camera and did not return it. I told them I am from the media, but they were just pulling me away," said the photographer.

An investigation has been initiated into the matter and further action will be taken accordingly, the police said.

The JNU Teachers' Association (JNUTU) and students on Friday marched to demand suspension of Professor Atul Johri, who has been accused of sexual harassment by eight students.

The JNU teachers are protesting against the removal of several department heads and a coordinator for not complying with the university's new attendance rules, and a number of them are on a hunger strike.

The Delhi police on Friday ordered a lathi charge and fired water cannons on thousands of Jawaharlal Nehru University students and teachers near INA market. They were marching towards Parliament to protest the removal of several department heads and a coordinator for not complying with the university's new attendance rules.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)The Ministry has ordered investigation into the affairs of Fortis Healthcare Ltd and has assigned the same to SFIO vide order dated 17.02.2018.

During the investigation process all the issues in their entirety will be examined by the SFIO. The investigation is presently in initial stage.

Following are the details of the cases involving companies assigned for investigation, completed and pending in SFIO during the last three years and current year:

Financial Year Investigation of companies (Balance Forward) Investigation assigned Investigation completed Investigation pending2014-15 94 71 39 1262015-16 126 184 60 2502016-17 250 111 87 2742017-18 (current as on date) 274 209 118 365*

*(Including quashed/withdrawn and stayed cases involving 17 companies).

The Government has taken many steps to check the corporate frauds, including treating fraud as a substantive offence has been introduced in the Companies Act, 2013; stricter norms of Corporate Governance have been prescribed under the Companies Act, 2013; information Communication Technology (ICT) tools are being used for early detection of frauds through data analysis, surveillance and forensics etc.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)BJP President Amit Shah said on Saturday that "a bomb to every bullet" is the only solution for Pakistan which has still been infiltrating terrorists in India.

In an interview with Aaj Tak, Shah said that India will respond with a bomb to every Pakistani bullet. "This is the only solution. We can't have peace talks amid bullets and bombs," he said to a query, why despite the surgical strikes, the situation along the Line of Control has not changed with Pakistan still infiltrating terrorists into India.

Despite party's loss in Gorakhpur and Phulpur by-polls in Uttar Pradesh, Shah claimed that the BJP will win with a massive majority in the forthcoming Karnataka assembly polls and the 2019 general elections under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"We have formed a committee to look into the reason for the losses and will deliberate on its report. Bypolls are fought with local issues in mind. Every local poll has different dynamics. But in general elections, big leaders and issues are involved. In 2019, the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will get more seats," Shah said.

Shah said the BJP started preparation for 2019 Lok Sabha polls the very next day after the government took oath in 2014.

"We will contest the elections under his (Modi) guidance and popularity. The way Narendra Modi has run the government for four years, every state feels that India is going ahead. He is one of the most popular leaders in the world," he said.

Asked about whether BJP could win more than 50 seats in 2019 if Samajwadi party and Bahujan Samaj Party come together, he said: "This is not easy. Now, the media is gung-ho about the results in these two seats (Gorakhpur and Phulpur). We have lost eight seats, but have won in 11 states so far. No one mentions Tripura, where we won with a clean sweep."

Shah also scoffed at Congress President Rahul Gandhi's visits to temples, churches and mosques in Karnataka to win over voters.

"He went to temples in Gujarat and Himachal too. But what happened? After 1967, the Congress has never won more than 50 per cent of votes. We won 50 per cent of votes in Gujarat, Himachal and Tripura. To win 50 per cent of votes in a multiparty democratic system is a big mandate," he said.

Asked about election promises made during 2014 Lok Sabha poll campaign and party's biggest achievement that it will tout in the general elections, Shah said the BJP has tried to raise the living standard of the poor, brought in an impartial and decisive government and boosted India's pride and image.

On Sonia Gandhi's likening of BJP's slogan 'India Shining' in 2004, with the party's 2014 winning slogan 'Achhe din aane waale hain', Shah shot back, "What do you expect from her. Will she say Modi will win?"

He added that could anyone imagine that India will carry out surgical strike across the border like Israel and America to avenge the deaths of our soldiers, Isro will place 104 satellites in the orbit and an Indian PM would address the plenary session of the World Economic Forum.

Shah, however, hailed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, saying the state is on the right track.

"There is zero corruption, problems of farmers have been solved and there is law and order. Many investment summits will be held. Akhilesh Yadav (former chief minister) could not hold such summits fearing untoward incidents. The state is moving in the right direction and will have double-digit growth," he said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Several individuals have lost their money investing in the savings scheme floated by city-based jeweller Nathella Sampath Jewelry Private Ltd while State Bank of India (SBI) has reported it had lost Rs 250 crore.

The jewellery company also did not honour commitments made to people who had offered their jewellery for sale and were promised they would be paid the money later.

"I had invested in the savings scheme floated by the jeweller. I had invested sizeable sum and yet to get back the money," an investor told a television channel on Saturday.

Another person said Nathella Sampath Jewelry promised to pay him the value of his jewellery after sometime but failed to do so.

The jewellery chain downed its shutters sometime back promising that it would settle the dues.

Meanwhile, the SBI on Friday in a filing in BSE said it had sanctioned an aggregate limit of Rs 250 crore in a consortium arrangement to Nathella Sampath Jewelry.

The bank said it has classified the loan as "fraud" on December 22, 2017 as the company had misrepresented its financial statements from 2010 and liquated its primary security.

The matter has been reported to CBI, the bank said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Any attempt by China to change the status quo along the Indian border may lead to another Doklam-like stand-off, India's envoy Gautam Bambawale has said, adding that the best way to prevent such incidents is through candid and frank talks.

In an interview to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, Bambwale said the un-demarcated border between India and China is "the most serious problem between the two countries" and they need to redefine the boundary soon.

Bambawale said New Delhi will oppose the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) but won't let the difference over Belt and Road become a dispute with Beijing. He also downplayed the reports of India joining the bloc of the US, Japan and Australia to counter China.

The two militaries were locked in a 73-day stand-off at Doklam in the eastern sector of their border last year. The issue was resolved in August, only after souring the bilateral ties.

"In order to maintain the peace and tranquillity (along India-China border), there are certain areas, certain sectors which are very sensitive, where we must not change the status quo. If anyone changes the status quo, it will lead to a situation like what happened in Doklam," Bambawale said in the interview published on Saturday.

"The Chinese military changed the status quo in the Doklam area and therefore India reacted to it. Ours was a reaction to the change in the status quo by the Chinese military.

"... when incidents like Doklam happened last year, it meant that we were not frank and candid enough with each other. So we need to increase the level of frankness.

"In the sense that if the Chinese military are going to build a road, they must tell us 'we are going to build a road'. If we do not agree to it then we can reply that, 'look, you're changing the status quo. Please don't do it. This is a very very sensitive area'," he said.

On India's concerns about China's Belt and Road project, Bambawale said if the initiative meets the norms of an international programme then New Delhi has no problem.

"One of the norms is that the project should not violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country. Unfortunately, there is this thing called the CPEC which violates India's sovereignty and territory integrity. Therefore, we oppose it."

The CPEC is the flagship project of China's Belt and Road project, a network of roads, ports and sea lanes that aims to connect Asia, Africa and Europe. India opposes it as it cuts through Kashmir held by Pakistan, but claimed by it.

"We might have differences of opinion on Belt and Road, but that we must not allow that difference of opinion to become a dispute," Bambawale said.

Asked about India's concerns over China making inroads into its neighbourhood, he said New Delhi was not worried about it.

"Let me tell you very clearly that India has its own relationships with all these countries. These are very strong relationships and India is also doing a lot of projects in countries like Maldives, Nepal or Sri Lanka. So, our relationships with these countries are very strong, they are historical, people-to-people contacts."

"I don't think we are worried about what China is doing. Those countries are free to have relationships with any third country, including China."

On the talks of India joining an emerging bloc called Quad, Bambawale sought to allay China's fears. "I do not see India becoming part of any alliance. Let me also repeat what I have already said to you before."

"As far as four countries are concerned, let me tell you very clearly that India has never been a part of any alliance. I think countries like India and China are too big to be part of any alliance," he added.

The envoy said that there are hosts of bilateral meetings lined-up, including the one between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Summit in June.

(Gaurav Sharma is the IANS correspondent in Beijing. He can be contacted at gaurav.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)On World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday urged citizens and organisations to take the lead to end the disease.

"In the spirit of this year's World TB Day theme of 'Wanted: Leaders for a TB-free world', I urge citizens and organisations to take the lead in the movement to end TB. A TB-free world is a wonderful service to humanity," Modi tweeted.

He also said that the government was working to make India TB free.

"While the world has set a target of 2030 for TB elimination, we in India want to become TB-free by 2025! At the recent Delhi End TB Summit, I spoke more about the subject," he said in another tweet attaching a news report of about his speech on TB on March 13.



In the spirit of this years #WorldTBDay theme of 'Wanted: Leaders for a TB-free world I urge citizens and organisations to take the lead in the movement to end TB. A TB-free world is a wonderful service to humanity.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 24, 2018

The World TB Day is observed to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of tuberculosis and to step up efforts to end the global epidemic.

The date marks the day in 1882 when Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease."I can be absolutely certain that if a South African person arrived by boat to seek asylum in Australia they would not end up on Manus Island and Nauru under Peter Dutton's regime", he said.

"They're radicals and they try and pretend that they're interested in the environment, which is why they get young people to vote for them", Mr Dutton said.

Mr Dutton insists he is blind to skin colour and will continue to bring in migrants based on the national interest.

On Sky News on Thursday, McKim, the spokesperson for the Greens on immigration, said that Dutton had "exhibited racism right through his public career", and also "exhibited some of the things we know through human history are associated with fascists".

A Muslim journalist has slammed Australia as racist for wanting to rescue white South African farmers who he says "aren't being persecuted".

A spokesperson for the Australian Department of Home Affairs previously told News24 that Dutton's request was to "have a look at options and ways in which Australia can provide some assistance".

"I think the ABC and others report these things how they want to report them, and how they want to interpret them", Mr Dutton told 2GB radio station.

"If we take away the farmers from South Africa, we rob them of the capacity to farm that ground and ultimately feed the population", he told ABC Radio.

He wants the farmers fast-tracked through Australia's refugee program. "They don't realise how completely dead they are to me", he continued.

"There's lots of outrage from some of the insane lefties at the ABC, The Guardian and The Huffington Post can express concern and draw mean cartoons about me and all the rest of it - they don't realise how completely dead they are to me", he said.

It also set off claims at home that Dutton was a racist amid fears that it signalled a return to the "White Australia" policy, referring to laws in place for seven decades from 1901 that prevented non-white immigrants settling Down Under.

"I believe the humanitarian program's credibility comes from the fact that it is non-discriminatory and that each application is assessed on its merits", she said.

It concerns me that people are being persecuted at the moment, that's the reality - the number of people dying or being savagely attacked in South Africa is a reality. "So we just get on with making the decisions that we need to".

The Agricultural Union of the South Africa Transvaal, created in 1897 to gather white farmers in the former region of Gauteng province, warned that it will take all possible measures to avoid land confiscation without compensation.

While the video argued white South African farmers were less likely to be murdered than black men, it made no mention of radical Marxist MP Julius Malema who said he wanted to "cut the throat of whiteness".

Mr Broad, who travelled to the country several years ago, urged other MPs to visit and see for themselves.Protesters in Catalonia region clashed with the police after Spain's Supreme Court ruled that 25 separatist leaders should be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobeying the state, the media reported on Saturday.

According to the ruling on Friday, convictions could result in up to 30 years in prison, the BBC reported.

Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena in Madrid ordered five more Catalan leaders to be detained without bail, pending trial over their involvement in October's banned independence referendum.

One of those taken into custody was Jordi Turull who was to be the subject of a vote in the Catalan parliament on Saturday for regional president.

More than 20 people were injured as the police used riot batons to keep protesters away from federal buildings in Barcelona on Friday night.

Demonstrations also took place in other parts of Catalonia.

Friday night's rallies had been organised by a separatist group before the court decisions were announced, reports the BBC.

But the rulings appeared to inflame the protesters and angry crowds confronted lines of riot police protecting Spanish government buildings in Barcelona.

Tensions spilled over into violence as some protesters tried to break through police lines.

Friday's rulings were considered the most serious challenge to date for the Catalan independence movement. Almost the entire leadership now faces a major legal fight.

Former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont remains in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Hitting out at the Congress for continuous disruption in Parliament, BJP President Amit Shah on Saturday alleged that it was running away discussing the Central government's major budget announcements on health insurance scheme and steps taken up by it for welfare of farmers.

He also dared the Congress to move no-confidence motion against the Modi government, saying the ruling NDA was ready to face it as it had enough numbers and support to defeat the motion.

Addressing party workers here at a booth level meeting, Shah said the Congress was not able to digest its continuous defeats in assembly polls and was thus disrupting the proceedings of Parliament.

"Despite our repeated appeals, they are not allowing Parliament to function. On one hand, they claim that they want discussion but on other hand they create ruckus and disrupt the proceedings."

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech announced two major welfare schemes. One is health insurance scheme for 10 crore families and the other was guaranteeing farmers minimum support price of 1.5 times of production cost.

Shah said: "If Parliament functions then these issues would be debated. Fearing this, the Congress is not allowing Parliament to function. If they won't allow Parliament to function then we will go to the public. We don't nothing to fear."

He challenged the Congress to go ahead with its no-confidence motion against the government.

"We are ready to face it. End the disruption and debate. We have full majority. We have nothing to hide.

"Despite the fact that the Union Budget has been passed, Parliament is on because Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) wants the House to take up discussion on issues concerning common people. But the Congress does not want the House to function. They want only disruptions."

Charting out the Central government's various development projects, Shah also claimed that the BJP along with its allies would won at least 21 out of total 25 seats in the Northeast in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"Due to the policies of Congress, this region of the country was kept away from development. Their policy was divide and rule and our's is 'sabka sath, sabka vikas'. After Narendra Modi took over power, he took several initiatives for the development of the northeastern states. This is the reason we have been winning one after one elections," he said,

Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the way he solved the crisis in Doklam, Shah said,"It sent a message across the globe that no one would dare to touch our boundaries."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Euros, worth Rs 58 lakh, were seized from two Bangkok-bound passengers, who had concealed the money in their rectum, as they were about to board a flight at the NSCBI International Airport here, a DRI release said here on Saturday.

Acting on intelligence that a smuggling syndicate would be attempting to smuggle illegally acquired foreign currency out of Kolkata Airport to Bangkok, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence sleuths targeted two passengers belonging to the syndicate - Raju Bahadur and Sonia Kapoor.

"These two were slated to travel to Bangkok by an Indigo Flight while carrying the illegally acquired foreign currency. DRI officers intercepted the two passengers as they were about to board their flight.

"After intense questioning, the duo admitted to carrying the foreign currency in their rectums and voluntarily ejected out the currency which had been rolled up and wrapped in a rubber," the release said.

The euro currency notes recovered from the duo were seized under provisions of the Customs Act, 1962.

In quite a few cases in the past, rectum concealment has been used to smuggle and ferry gold biscuits.

However, this is the first instance in Kolkata in recent times, where foreign currency has been attempted to be smuggled through this route.

A few days back, an airhostess of a prominent Airlines was intercepted carrying foreign currency illegally outside India.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Police in France arrested a second person for Friday's attacks by a gunman, which led to the death of four people.

A report by state-run France Info radio said the young man, born in 2000 and a friend of the gunman, Redouane Lakdim, was placed in custody.

Lakdim began his rampage by hijacking a car in the southern French town of Carcassone. He shot one passenger dead and injured the driver.

In Carcassone, he also fired at jogging police officers, injuring one, before driving to nearby Trebes. He stormed a supermarket there, telling the 50-odd people inside that he was "a soldier of the Islamic State" and was seeking "to liberate brothers".

Later, 25-year-old attacker Lakdim was shot dead by the police. He was initially believed to have acted alone.

The death toll climbed to four after a police officer who voluntarily took the place of a hostage during the supermarket siege died on Saturday, the BBC reported.

Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame, 44, "fell as a hero" and showed "exceptional courage", French President Emmanuel Macron said.

Col. Beltrame's death was announced on Twitter by French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb. In a radio interview, Col. Beltrame's brother, Cedric, said Arnaud's actions were "beyond the call of duty".

"He gave his life for strangers. He must have known that he didn't really have a chance. If that doesn't make him a hero, I don't know what would," he said.

Earlier, Macron had revealed that Col. Beltrame suffered serious injuries and was fighting for his life in hospital. Sixteen people were injured, two seriously, in what Macron called an act of "Islamist terrorism".

Lakdim was said to have demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam, a key surviving suspect in the November 2015 attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people.

Initially, an 18-year-old woman was taken into custody for criminal association.

Lakdim was known to police for robbery and drug trafficking. He had been on the terror watch list since 2014 for links to the Salafist movements but had not showed any signs suggesting he would plan a terror attack, Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins said.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack. French security services were checking the claim's authenticity.

--IANS

soni/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)A global sell-off triggered by trade protectionist measures imposed by major world economies unleashed the bears in the Indian equity markets during the week, pushing the key indices -- NSE Nifty50 and BSE Sensex -- to their 5-month lows.

Apart from the prospects of escalating trade wars, the risk-taking appetite of investors was marred by rising crude oil prices, the ongoing turmoil in the domestic banking system as well as the uncertainty on the political situation in the country.

On a weekly basis, the barometer 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE shed 579.46 points or 1.75 per cent to close at 32,596.54 points -- its lowest closing level since October 23, 2017.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the wider Nifty50 ended below the psychologically important 10,000-mark and closed trade at 9,998.05 points -- down 197.1 points or 1.93 per cent from its previous week's close -- its lowest closing level since October 11, 2017.

"Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty fell 1.75 per cent and 1.93 per cent respectively during the week, posting their longest stretch of weekly losses in 16 months as the domestic market joined a global sell-off triggered by prospects of a trade war," Arpit Jain, Assistant Vice President at Arihant Capital Markets, told IANS.

According to D.K. Aggarwal, Chairman and Managing Director of SMC Investments and Advisors, the global stock market traded lower after US President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, a move that has heightened concerns that the global trade war will escalate.

"Back at home, dragged by escalating trade tensions among global economies, the Indian stock market too witnessed selling pressure amid other domestic factors. Since the beginning of the year domestic market witnessed some hiccups on the back of imposition of LTCG (long term capital gains) tax, liquidity issues, rising bond yields and volatile global markets," Aggarwal told IANS.

"Also, a surge in crude oil prices impacted the market sentiment. The Indian rupee, too, witnessed a volatile move ahead of Fed rate-hike and global trade war concerns," he added.

On the currency front, the rupee weakened by eight paise to close at 65.01 against the US dollar from its previous week's close at 64.93.

"Sentiments were affected by rising crude oil prices, bond yields and a troubled domestic banking system. Uncertainty around the political situation in the country added to the woes, and collectively dragged the sentiment across the street," Gaurav Jain, Director at Hem Securities, told IANS.

Provisional figures from the stock exchanges showed that foreign institutional investors purchased scrips worth Rs 2,524.13 crore and the domestic institutional investors (DIIs) scrips worth Rs 211.91 crore during the week.

Figures from the National Securities Depository (NSDL) revealed that foreign portfolio investors invested in equities worth Rs 2,060.04 crore, or $316.99 million, during March 19-23.

"The market breadth was negative in three out of the five trading sessions of the week. The top sectoral losers were realty, metal, Bank Nifty and pharma indices. There were no gainers," said Deepak Jasani, Head - Retail Research, HDFC Securities.

The top weekly Sensex gainers were: NTPC (up 2.90 per cent at Rs 170.15); IndusInd Bank (up 1.36 per cent at Rs 1,750.20); Power Grid (up 1.04 per cent at Rs 194.25); Hindustan Unilever (up 0.05 per cent at Rs 1,299.75); and Larsen and Toubro (up 0.01 per cent at Rs 1,267.75).

The losers were: Yes Bank (down 8.37 per cent at Rs 286.70); ICICI Bank (down 7.48 per cent at Rs 275.80); State Bank India (down 7.13 per cent at Rs 234.60); Tata Steel (down 5.65 per cent at Rs 566.60); and Axis Bank (down 4.29 per cent at Rs 501).

(Porisma P. Gogoi can be contacted at porisma.g@ians.in)

--IANS

ppg/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Goa's Water Resources Minister Vinod Palienkar on Saturday apologised for his comment that the retired judges on the Mhadei interstate Water Disputes Tribunal had a "soft corner" for the state.

"I have only spoken about the good of Goa, but still irrespective, if the Karnataka government believes, it is improper, then I apologise to the judiciary," he told reporters here.

On Thursday, while speaking at a function organised by the Water Resources Department, Palienkar had said: "May God give us success in this case. The judges also know what the matter is about and they have a soft corner for Goa. We are dependent on the Mhadei river, not just us but also wildlife."

Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra are currently involved in a dispute over controversial Kalsa-Bhandura dam project across Mhadei river, through which Karnataka aims to divert water from the Mhadei basin to nearby basin on the Malaprabha river. The issue is before the Tribunal, which is expected to deliver a verdict in a few months.

Mhadei, also known as the Mandovi river, is considered as a lifeline in the northern parts of the coastal state. It originates in Karnataka and meets the Arabian Sea in Panaji, while also briefly flowing through Maharashtra.

The river course is 28.8 km in Karnataka, and over 50 km in Goa.

--IANS

maya/vd

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Iran's Foreign Ministry on Saturday condemned the US sanctions on 10 Iranians and an organisation and called the measures "illegal and provocative".

Washington imposed sanctions on Iranians and an Iranian firm on Friday, all related to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for the massive theft of valuable data from hundreds of universities, private firms and government agencies worldwide.

The US' "illegal and provocative" measures could not affect the country's scientific growth, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was cited as saying by Xinhua news agency.

"The US move proves the country's inherent hostility towards the Iranian nation," he said.

Through the Treasury Department and the Justice Department, the US government established penalties on the suspected perpetrators of the cyber attack, through which 31.5 terabytes of sensitive data were appropriated from universities, US and UN agencies, as well as from private companies.

According to US authorities, the sanctions consisted of freezing all the suspects' assets under US jurisdiction and banning them from doing business with Americans.

The organisation to be sanctioned was the Mabna Institute, which was supposedly subcontracted by the IRGC to carry out these cyber intrusions and committed the data theft for private profit.

--IANS

soni/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Khizr Khan, father of Capt. Humayun Khan who was killed on duty in Iraq, personally appealed to the Supreme Court to strike down President Donald Trump's travel ban, arguing that it was unconstitutional and "desecrates" his son's sacrifice, the media reported.

Originally from Pakistan and a Muslim, Khan filed the legal brief on Friday because, in his view, Trump's travel ban "not only desecrates Humayun Khan's service and sacrifice as a Muslim- American officer in the US Army, but also violates Khizr Khan's own constitutional rights". his attorney, Dan Jackson, wrote in the brief.

The ban places varying levels of restrictions on foreign nationals from eight countries: Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Somalia and Yemen, CNN reported.

Known for his impassioned speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan is also a lawyer.

Capt. Humayun Khan was killed in 2004 when he moved to stop a car containing suicide bombers headed toward his base in Iraq, for which he was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star.

The brief describes the Khan family's history and the service of Humayun Khan, mentioning as well the DNC speech where Khizr Khan held up a pocket Constitution and emotionally asked Trump if he had read it.

The brief also notes Trump's comments on the campaign trail that he wanted to institute a "Muslim ban", a key component of critics' arguments that the administration's travel ban is a thinly veiled attempt to target Muslims.

"The taint of discrimination has not been washed away," the brief argues, saying the latest travel ban and its predecessors all flow from that original idea.

"The message is that Muslims are unwelcome outsider... And that message has been received loud and clear -- not only by Muslims like Mr. Khan, but by those who have been denigrating and attacking Muslims with increasing frequency and vehemence since President Trump called for, and then began trying to implement, his unconstitutional Muslim Ban."

Jackson told CNN on Friday that Khizr Khan felt compelled to weigh in because of the impact of the travel ban on his son's legacy.

"I don't know anyone who respects our Constitution more, or has suffered greater loss for its defence, than Mr. Khan and his family," Jackson said.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Peru's new President Martin Vizcarra took the oath of office on Friday, pledging to take a strong stance against corruption in government.

Vizcarra, who was vice president until scandal-hit Pedro Pablo Kuczynski handed in his resignation as president on Wednesday, also called for national unity.

"We will be very firm in combating actions that go against the law, no matter where, no matter what the cost ... with a steady hand," Xinhua quoted Vizcarra as saying in his first national address after being sworn in by the head of parliament.

Kuczynski's fall from grace should mark "the start of a new era," he added.

Earlier in the day, lawmakers accepted Kuczynski's resignation letter following a lively debate, with 105 votes in favor, 11 against, and four abstentions.

The vote officially left the top office vacant, paving the way for Vizcarra's swearing in, though there was little doubt that the majority of legislators would accept Kuczynski's departure.

Kuczynski was accused of accepting bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht when he was minister in the first half of the 2000s, with payments made to a U.S.-based consulting firm that he owned.

Kuczynski, who took office in July 2016, survived one impeachment vote in December 2017 and was about to undergo a second vote on Thursday, but videos surfaced appearing to show his political allies trying to buy legislative votes in his favor.

Prosecutors have filed a petition to prevent him from leaving the country.

Vizcarra is set to see through his term until 2021.

--IANS

qd/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)